Disclaimer: Kenshin does not own the Yuu Yuu Hakusho characters (they are the property of Togashi Yoshihiro et al), and does not make any money from said characters.
What Kenshin does own, however, are all the original characters in this work. Any attempt to "borrow" these characters will be met with the katana, or worse.
The events in Idiot Beloved take place shortly after the Dark Tournament; Firebird Sweet directly follows that timeline. As canon, I use a combination of the subtitled YYH anime and the American manga, plus some of the CD dramas.
This particular tale takes place just before Yuusuke tracks down Hiei, Gouki, and Kurama to retrieve the objects they've stolen from Reikai.
Title: Landscape With Blur
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: General
Rating: K+/PG-13
Summary: Kuwabara Kazuma awakens in an unfamiliar house, facing the battle of his life.
A/N: As always, thank you for reading this, and I appreciate your reviews!
He wasn't sure he had it in him, but Kuwabara the man always gave his best.
Landscape With Blur
by
Kenshin
The persistent jeet-jeet of cicadas awakened him.
It was hot. For a few moments, Kuwabara Kazuma did not remember where he was. Then his gaze traveled past the end of his futon, where he had propped a hand-lettered card that displayed the comfortable, familiar motto, like a miniature inspirational poster:
Sleep, Eat, Fight Urameshi.
He'd slept; still needed to eat, but as for the fight-
For once, it had nothing to do with Urameshi Yuusuke.
Early sun scattered thin fingers of light across the polished floor. His sleeping mat lay in the center of a spartan room that resembled a monk's cell.
Though the ramshackle farmhouse was not far south of Tokyo-the Miura Peninsula, Kanagawa prefecture-his shirt clung to his back, damp with sweat. Here, the past seemed more vivid than the present, and reminded him of his long-ago promise. The night before, he and classmate Yukimura Keiko had taken the train from Tokyo to fulfill that promise, and though Keiko had nothing to do with the promise itself, it was why he'd skipped school, the reason for his journey.
Kazuma's mouth felt dry. This was not going to be a fight in the sense that he would have to clock someone. This battle would take place in a much more painful realm.
After washing up and putting his things away, he padded from his room into the kitchen.
Kazuma had worried about the rendezvous. He could take the train, then a bus, then slog the rest of the way on foot, but he had remembered Urameshi's childhood friend and fellow classmate Keiko had 'family out in the country.' She often spoke of them.
At a Western-style table, the family gathered in chairs, rather than on the floor. A rice cooker steamed away on the counter and a pot of miso soup bubbled on the stove.
Yukimura Keiko and her 'country cousins' glanced up. Kazuma bowed to everyone in greeting.
Yukimura Aimi, Keiko's aunt, struck him as one of those unflappable women who always has a cleaning rag in her hand and family on her mind. The grandfather, his face like a wizened apple, read the paper.
A few family members were absent. The three young kids were in school; their father, Uncle Yukimura, a college professor, was already at work at the university.
A college professor. Now there was an idea. Kuwabara Kazuma did not come from educated, lofty stock, and neither did his buddies, but that was something to think about.
He settled at the breakfast table, and Auntie Yukimura gave him a bowl of 'cat food:' miso soup over rice.
He barely noticed its salty taste. "Sorry to be so much trouble; I just want you to know how much I appreciate this."
Grandpa and Auntie assured him it was no trouble at all, they were not worthy to be of service to him.
It was in fact a huge imposition, but because of his need, he had dared ask, and here he was.
Keiko's chocolate eyes and sleek hair gave her a demure appearance, but she was tough as nails and whip-smart. She took a sip of green tea. "I admit to curiosity about your father. And to all the secrecy."
Kazuma shrugged apologetically. "It's just that I don't want Urameshi finding out."
"I understand." Keiko cut her gaze to her aunt and grandfather, then to Kuwabara, a look that read: Yuusuke's barely returned to the living world; he's got other things on his mind.
After breakfast, they piled into a Toyota Land Cruiser and began the drive up the foothills to their destination. It was only a little past eight.
The car was noisy. Keiko did not engage Kazuma in conversation. Too bad. It would have distracted him. Hot, dusty air blew in from the open car windows, depositing grit in his teeth.
As the Land Cruiser churned up the mountain road, Kazuma's stomach knotted with dread. There were fewer and fewer cars; the landscape seemed parched, forbidding, isolated. No time to prepare.
The car mounted the final switchback, and turned a corner. The road leveled out. They pulled into a broad expanse of blacktop, and there it lay.
The prison.
Kazuma let out a breath.
The Natsutani Jiro Correctional Facility was no maximum-security prison, and the men incarcerated there were not the hard cases, the truly dangerous ones; those were sent elsewhere. Here were petty criminals, embezzlers, writers of bad checks.
A man was standing just outside the prison gates. They left the car, and he approached them.
It had been four years since father and son stood together, but Kuwabara Kazuma immediately recognized this man.
Pop was still huge, with biceps like balloons. He had always been a moose, but with the quickness of a much smaller man. Kazuma had expected him to trudge out in prison gear. Instead, Pop wore a white t-shirt and khakis, and over that, a red Hawaiian shirt, which made him look like a tourist. His dark hair was cut short. An earring glinted in his right ear.
They exchanged a brief greeting, stiff and unsure at first, but then Pop beamed and patted Kazuma's shoulders. "Wow, Kaz, I'd know you anywhere. But you sure have grown."
"Yeah, Pop." Kazuma answered with a grin of his own. "That'll happen to a kid."
Takeshi's gaze fell upon Keiko. "Pretty. She your girlfriend?"
"No," Kazuma put in, before Pop could embarrass her. "A classmate. Her aunt and uncle live in the valley and offered to drive me here."
Much to Kazuma's relief, Pop let it go with a nod. "Nice of 'em." He sketched a little bow their way.
Then Kazuma saw the old painting kit clutched under Pop's arm: a wooden box with a folding easel that strapped to the underside. He caught his breath, flooded with memories that he had to fend off. "That all you're carrying?"
"You know me. Always travel light."
"Well." They moved to the car, and Pop seemed to dwarf the vehicle's interior. They drove in strained silence down the mountain, toward a small dock from which ran a ferry.
("I sure would like to see the world some when I get out," Pop had said, and even at ten, Kazuma had promised to make it come true.)
The drive was mercifully short, and they reached a small parking lot adjacent to the ferry slip. Ahead lay the cool green waters of the harbor.
The ferry was there. Good timing.
Only Kazuma and Pop got out of the car. Boards creaked underfoot as they walked down the dock toward the ferry, and a welcome breeze stirred their clothing. They stopped at the end of the dock.
A tramp steamer waited far out in the harbor, a tiny speck on the water. From there, Pop was going to work his way around, visit other ports.
Pop beamed again. "You give my best to Shizuru," he said. "She still kickin' ass?"
"Same as always." Kazuma's sister had in fact made it clear she wanted nothing to do with the old man. He hadn't told her yesterday where he was going, but Shizuru probably knew; she and Kazuma each had a well-honed sixth sense.
Kazuma was wondering what he would say in farewell. But then Pop handed him the painting kit. "Here ya go, son."
For a moment Kazuma couldn't understand what his father meant. Then Pop winked. "Passin' it on to you. See if you inherited any of your ol' dad's talent."
"Pop..."
"Least I can do, seeing as how you're standing me the fare and all."
Swallowing hard, Kazuma stared at the water. He could barely make out the tramp steamer. "So what's next for you?"
"Who knows? China maybe, or Madagascar, or Mr. Universe." He playfully gave a double-biceps shot.
"Pop."
Kuwabara Takeshi shook his head. "Thanks for the ride. Let's not draw this out or make it any worse 'n' it has to be."
His face set like granite, Kazuma watched his father turn away and climb the ferry plank, whistling. Gulls wheeled overhead. The ferry cast off.
Time was already pressing him, urging him to go before he wore out his hosts' good nature. His hand hurt. He looked down. The painting kit. He was gripping it hard enough to press ruts into his flesh.
He switched the kit to his other hand, then returned to the car. Auntie started up and they pulled away, reversing course. The car climbed. Good-bye... that's it? A beat-up painting set?
No one spoke; Kazuma was alone with his thoughts. A pressure began to grow in his chest, building, clogging his throat, with no outlet.
On the south side, the mountain road had virtually no shoulder, exposing it to the sea far below, and it seemed as though they flew above water, skating through the air like the shrieking gulls.
To the north, the foothills crowded them, creating a sense of claustrophobia, nudging them too close to the sheer drop on the other side.
Among those hills, Kazuma saw the approach of a flat space, as though someone had scooped out a bit of farmland in the middle of the wilderness. On the small green expanse was a thick stand of trees. Beneath the trees lay a crumbling stucco shack.
Light danced across leaves and bark and stucco, and the red tile of the roof. Kazuma couldn't tell if the weathered building had been a chicken coop or a home or simply a way station.
An idea siezed him, like the other half of an incomplete promise. If he did not do this, he would indeed burst apart.
"Stop!" he cried, and the car rolled to a halt.
Keiko and Auntie and Grandpa probably thought he was going to beg them to turn around so he could go back to the docks, follow his father to who-knew-where. But this was not his goal.
There was something about the light playing over that ruined shack. The way the trees were trying to protect it from the desolation of wind and salt spray.
Pop always said that if you couldn't immediately snag what you were after, it wasn't worth getting in the first place: "Painting captures a moment in time, like a snapshot."
Kazuma was just the opposite, going after things with bulldog persistence. His fights with Urameshi were just one example, but-as a tribute to his father, he'd try it Pop's way.
With profuse apologies, Kazuma pleaded for a quarter-hour, to paint the scene.
Keiko's eyes widened in surprise, but she said nothing. Frowning thoughtfully, neither did Auntie.
Kazuma sweated, waiting out the silence.
Then the grandfather stated something peculiar in a cracked, quavery voice: "Let the boy say his good-byes."
Time crawled forward.
"Very well," said Auntie. "We'll pull off the road and gaze at the water for a bit."
"Go for it," added Keiko. "Yuusuke would."
"A thousand thanks." Kit in hand, Kazuma got out and chose the best spot to capture the scene.
Sun beat down on his bare head, and with the smell of the sea as a backdrop, he unstrapped the easel.
Funny. His goal was to beat Urameshi, and here was something Urameshi could not do, yet would never know.
He opened the painting kit: a wooden box of about fourteen by eighteen inches, battered and worn, with brass hinges and latch, and slots in the lid to hold a palette and panels.
Kazuma had never painted, only colored with crayons. But the rags, the metal tubes of paint, the mediums in their little glass bottles, were like old friends, and the childhood memories he had pushed aside came trickling back.
In addition to the palette, there was one new pressed-board panel in the lid, as though waiting just for him. Taking out both panel and palette, he drew a deep breath. His hands were shaking. Big hands, like Pop's. He set out his paints, brushes and mediums.
The linseed oil, almost smelling of fish. The colors, Titanium White, Hooker's Green, Prussian Blue, Ivory Black, Alizarin Crimson, Yellow Ochre. The palette of a landscapist on a tight budget.
There were only three brushes, their stiff white bristles stained from long use: a one-inch flat and a half-inch flat, and a number six round, nothing meant to capture fine detail.
Pop always said being an artist was more about looking than applying paint, so Kazuma briefly studied the scene, and with swift, decisive strokes, blocked it in.
Snapshot, huh? Not exactly-photographs capture everything, even passing cars, strangers, things you didn't want. With a painting, you alone decide what to include.
Buttery paint going down in thick swaths, green and ochre and bronze. First the palette knife flashing, laying in the composition and tone: background to foreground, sky, hills, trees, shack. Then brushes darting like dragonflies, adding detail. And damn if it wasn't just exactly like a battle, with the conflict and thrust of line and mass and color like armies going at it.
It went so smoothly that Kazuma was astounded. Beginner's luck, he told himself.
But as he worked, he started to appreciate the wisdom in Pop's method. Like he was getting inside the old man's skin.
He recalled the times he had watched his father paint, out in the yard, Pop painting their own weeds, or fence, or a bowl of fruit on a card table. Dashes of red, yellow, blue, green, flung seemingly at random, but when you stood back from the swaths of color, they became a patch of brilliant wildflowers, a batallion of fence-boards, apples in a bowl glorified by the sun.
Behind him lay the water. The ferry had surely reached the tramp steamer. He imagined Pop standing on board, waving at his back, as the steamer chugged out of the harbor.
Out of his life. But then Pop had never exactly been in his life, not since-
Pop had never taken any classes, never pursued art as a career, never made anything of his gift.
Kazuma felt his back stiffen, his throat lump.
It ain't about forgiveness. I forgive you. Ain't about what you did. I don't even care that you did it.
I looked up to you, but I can't be like you. Always gotta do the right thing, even when it's not easy or quick.
Kuwabara the man.
Pop.
His eyes brimmed over, stinging. Maybe once upon a time he would have told himself it was hot and dusty, he was just blinking away grit, but those were tears tracking his cheeks. No use lying about it. In fact, in an odd way, it released tension, and he got his second wind.
Almost in a trance, as though by a hand other than his, Kazuma continued. His upper back and shoulders burned with fatigue. Had to be fifteen minutes by now.
Then, inexplicably, he felt a chill, even in this heat.
A startling tingle of awareness swept through him, as though someone had thrown cold water at the back of his neck.
A ghost?
No-a sudden, piercing, powerful presence-moving. Possibly dangerous.
The old man, out on the tramp steamer, waving good-bye?
Wishful thinking.
There was a hissing rustle of leaves, but not a breath of wind. A blur of movement in the trees caught Kazuma's eye, and as he followed it, his brush, also as on its own, raked the canvas, leaving a dark trajectory of paint.
He had done all he could with the scene. But that blur-
Dark green, almost black, it gave the impression of movement through the treetops. An accident, a mistake marring the scene.
Kazuma took up a rag to wipe it off-
No. It was a thing of the moment. He sensed, but could not explain, that he had captured something of significance.
He would not remove the blur.
That much settled, Kazuma signed the work, dated it. Wiped his face with the back of his hand, looked at the panel. Seen close up, the painting was nothing but blobs and dashes of color. He stood back.
It was trees, all right, and the crumbling shack, all glorified by the sun.
Feeling lighter, almost carefree, Kuwabara Kazuma packed up both painting and kit, and returned to the car.
0-0-0-0-0
True to her word, Keiko never mentioned that day to anyone.
Over the course of the next few years, Kuwabara Kazuma met the girl of his dreams, and battled monsters in the company of strange, powerful allies. Some of those allies-notably Kurama and Kaitou-helped him get into an excellent school.
Though they remained friends, and Urameshi forever an inspiration, Kazuma's life had expanded beyond the scope of that simple motto: Sleep, Eat, Fight Urameshi.
He was headed for college, and a career teaching science.
He did not pursue art, but never parted with his father's painting kit-which drew many a sharp reproof from Shizuru, until she realized he would not be messing up the house with it.
Every now and then Pop sent him a post card from some exotic locale. Kuwabara Takeshi had switched his medium to watercolor, and the scenes he dashed off were economical and vigorous. Pop wrote that he was now making a living as a street painter.
Sometimes, Pop also sent money. Kazuma donated the money to charity; Shizuru would have thrown it out. But Kazuma had grown to appreciate the effort Pop made to stay in touch, however distant he was physically.
Kazuma stored the post cards inside the painting kit. He also kept the painting he had created the day he sprang Pop from stir, but never showed it to anyone until he met Yukina, and even then, this unveiling occurred years later.
Over time, Kazuma had formulated a number of theories as to the nature of the blur. Rejecting his initial impression that it had been Pop (after all, he'd sensed danger, and whatever else he might be, Pop was not dangerous), he drifted from one possibility to another. Eventually he settled upon a single notion, and it was then that he knew to whom the painting must go: Yukina-san.
Destiny was at work, for some time after Kazuma painted the scene, Urameshi Yuusuke got an assignment to rescue an Ice Maiden imprisoned in a remote mansion by the millionaire gangster Tarukane Gonzo.
An Ice Maiden's tears become gemstones, and Tarukane tortured her to get as many as she could produce. The Ice Maiden was Yukina, and the moment Kazuma saw her on that videotape, he knew he had to come along.
Many years later, Yukina still bore the scars of her captivity. She made light of them, but Kazuma never forgot their source.
Yukina was now staying with Master Genkai up in the mountains, a rural place, but a world apart from that shabby country jail and dockside. Yukina seemed happy enough. Kazuma's happiest times were spent visiting her.
One week after Kazuma decided to give Yukina the painting, he traveled to Genkai's retreat, cradling the framed artwork under his arm, well aware that he still had to walk some distance through dense forest from the bus stop.
The air was so clean it sparked in your lungs, the greenery so lush that Kazuma momentarily felt an urge to paint again.
Down the twisting, winding path he went, until he reached the mountain retreat, a traditional house that also served as Genkai's doujou.
Yukina herself appeared to greet him, and Kazuma's heart leaped. She wore an aquamarine kimono that almost matched the color of her hair, which was pulled back with a crimson ribbon the color of her eyes.
"Kazuma-san! Please come in." Master Genkai, she revealed, was out and about. Yukina giggled, covering her giggle with one hand. A shame. She had a lovely smile.
They moved to a low table in the middle of a spartan room very much like the one he'd stayed in at the Yukimura country place so many years ago.
Maybe I should paint Yukina instead of landscapes. Kazuma studied her, then decided it would need an artist of Da Vinci's caliber to paint her: the heart-shaped face, the curve of her neck, the grace of her hands pouring tea.
Above all, the radiant kindness of her soul.
Kazuma was no longer quite so tongue-tied in her presence, and after a while spent in pleasantries, he passed the painting over to her, explaining its genesis. "I want you to have it."
Her surprise was gratifying. "For me?"
Wrapped in fragile yellow tissue, the painting revealed itself at a touch from Yukina's hand. "Kazuma-san!" She gasped in delight. "This is really something."
Neither artist nor art critic, Yukina herself had never before looked upon the painting, but she knew the instant she spotted that blur.
Kazuma raised an eyebrow. "Well?"
Still holding the picture, Yukina turned her shimmering eyes upon him. "Why, it's Hiei! You captured him to perfection."
-30-
(A/N: This little vignette came wrapped in the gift of a dream. Many thanks to Saffy-chan for her dream analysis, and to Aisha-chan for giving me the push to write it.
Think of Landscape With Blur as a sort of Two Shots, but starring Kuwabara and Hiei, rather than Kurama and Hiei.
I speculated that, as Kuwabara meets with Pop south of Tokyo, Hiei was also there, pursuing another false lead about Yukina. When Hiei flickered through the trees, Kuwabara unconsciously froze the moment in paint-thus "meeting" his future ally without either realizing it.)