starry sky, fanfiction.
amaha tsubasa & kinose azusa ft. amaha eisuke and shino, oneshot.
word count: 1845
warning(s): none, for once! omfg it's a miracle! (nobody dies!)
3/2/2013, happy birthday tsubasa~
(a/n) i've been meaning to write this for a long time, so i finally cracked down and did it for this occasion.
Not too far from Grandpa Eisuke's old house in the countryside, there is a field of sunflowers. They grew over a meter tall, and although Tsubasa is much taller than them now, he remembers what giants they seemed to be when he was a child. Their leafy stalks were like green stilts, the bright yellow heads raising their heads towards the sun; Tsubasa would stand there in the middle of the field, lifting his chin and watching the sky with inquisitive eyes as if waiting for something miraculous to happen until Grandpa Eisuke told him that if he stared at the sun any longer, his eyes would burn out. Tsubasa would ask Grandpa Eisuke where the sunflowers came from, and who planted them, and Grandpa would just shrug, telling him that he didn't know either- they'd been there as far as anyone could remember. Tsubasa always wondered that if he kept the flowers in Grandma Shino's garden watered, would they grow to that height as well?
There's a spot on the front porch of Grandpa Eisuke's house that Tsubasa would sit at while tinkering at his inventions during the hot summer afternoons. For several hours, the shadows were cast at a perfect angle so that Tsubasa could hang his feet off the edge of the porch and feel the warm breeze tickle at his toes without having the searing rays of sunlight beating down on his head. He would sit there with an invention on his lap, a toolbox set down beside him, swinging his legs to the rhythm of an inaudible tune as he worked away. Maybe it was the sound of his hammer tapping against the metal, or the swiveling of his screwdriver; or maybe he had hummed a song in his head as he worked. Tsubasa doesn't quite remember, but many years later, when he's older, he sits at the same spot again, and finds it amazing that his feet touch the ground beneath him.
Tsubasa is sitting at this spot on the porch when he hears the purr of a motor in the distance. He remembers looking up and spotting a very dusty car bouncing down the bumpy dirt road, small clouds of sand and grit trailing behind it and staining the grey metal exterior of the vehicle. He remembers hopping off the porch and landing on the ground, not caring if Grandma Shino scolds him later for trailing dirt inside the house with his bare feet, and stepping closer to where the car will pass. The car stops right before him, and Tsubasa sees a round six-year old face peer back at him from the window, only it's not his reflection; it's a boy named Azusa with badly-cut black hair and sparkling purple eyes. And it appears that Azusa is here to stay for the summer while his parents go out of the country for a month-long business venture.
That night, Tsubasa insists that Azusa share his room although there's many many spare rooms in the old house built for a large family but now inhabited only by an elderly couple and their grandson. He also insists that he sleep on a futon on the floor next to his cousin. Grandpa Eisuke complains that he's going to break his back as he carries two futons up the stairs, squeezes them through the door frame, and manages to fit them on the floor of the room, but Tsubasa knows that it's all in jest because the crows' feet in the corner of his eyes are wrinkled with unspoken smiles. Tsubasa remembers staying up past midnight- which is commonplace for him these days, but had seemed a most delinquent and sacred act back then- whispering and making pinkie promises with Azusa, talking about the city, tv shows, stars, ghosts, and everything in between.
The next morning, Grandma Shino can tell by the rings around their eyes that they've stayed up late and reprimands them for it, calling them a pair of rambunctious tanuki. When she turns her back, Grandpa Eisuke's chuckles and tells them the story of the tanuki who disguised his testicles as a house in hushed tones; Grandma Shion is somehow able to hear this despite their best attempts at discretion, and whips around with a scandalised gasp, only to fix Grandpa Eisuke with a dour glare that he duly ignores. The boys dissolve into giggles when Grandpa Eisuke mimics the yelping retreat of the burnt tanuki when Grandma Shino threatens to beat him over the head with a broom. This time, the crows' eyes on her face are crinkled with laughter.
One evening when the setting sun casts a dye of yellow, orange, and pink gradients across the canvas of the sky, and the field of sunflowers vaguely looks like it's on fire from the distance, Grandma Shino tells the boys to go out to the forest with her. It's a bit of a walk, and Azusa nearly falls in a ditch trying to chase a grasshopper, so by the time they arrive on the edge of the woods, the sky is nearly dark. Grandma Shino lights her paper lantern carefully so the sides won't burn, and shushes them with a skinny finger held to her lips as she leads them deep into the trees.
They tread softly as instructed, until Tsubasa can hear the babbling of a brook in the background. Grandma Shino sets her lantern down on a rock, and tells the boys to wait. As the sun is slowly swallowed by the horizon and the forest becomes more and more foreboding, Tsubasa scratches at the moss on the ground as Azusa clings to his sleeve muttering something about ghost parades. Azusa nearly shrieks when the first light appears, tiny and hovering in the distance, but Grandma Shino cups a hand over his mouth and tells him just to watch.
Stars are appearing one by one beneath the thick cover of trees, small hovering, buzzing lights that look like Christmas decorations. Grandma Shino produces a pair of nets and glass jars from her sleeve, as if by magic (for a period of childhood, Tsubasa was quite convinced that she was a kitsune, at least in her past life), and hands them to the boys.
That night, Tsubasa finds out that patience and subtlety, not gung-ho bursts of energy and screams, are the key to catching fireflies. He and Azusa end up with a combined bounty of two fireflies, while Grandma Shino nearly fills up an entire jar with so many of them that none of them can count the numbers properly. Grandma Shino doesn't let them keep the fireflies, because they'll die in a matter of days and she doesn't want to clean up jar after jar of dead bugs from the house. When she finally releases the fireflies back into the air, it's like river of stars flowing up into the air before dispersing, and Tsubasa thinks of the milky way river separating the lovers in the Tanabata story. The glow of the fireflies lights up Grandma Shino's face, and Tsubasa remembers that she looks a lot like Orihime in that moment.
Over the next few weeks, Tsubasa and Azusa become Grandma Shino's disciples in the art of firefly hunting. She teaches them to use the blue lantern to lure them close, how to scoop them up when they're unaware. They both improve significantly by the end of the month, but there's surely some sort of secret technique that she refuses to divulge to her pupils, because Grandma Shino consistently catches the largest number out of the three of them every time. When Grandpa Eisuke complains that they never bring him along on their firefly hunting excursions, Grandma Shino primly replies that he wouldn't be able to catch an elephant in the dark if he wanted to, let alone a firely.
Tsubasa has a bicycle that he rides from home to school, and Azusa takes the school bus, so he has no use for that. This means that he can't ride a bicycle with two wheels, which is utterly confounding in Tsubasa's eyes. It takes nearly a week for Azusa to get the hang of balancing and maintaining equilibrium on the bike, and the both of them earn many scraped knees and elbows as a result of such efforts, but Tsubasa eventually teaches Azusa how to ride. Afterwards, they take turns sitting in the front as they ride down the slope on the path to the convenience store, hands off the brakes and up in the air. The first time they try (Azusa's suggestion, strangely enough), it's the most exhilarating thing that Tsubasa has ever done. He remembers the wind in his face, the shrillness of their screams and hoots, and the bump bump bump of the pebbles and dirt beneath his wheels.
The second time they try speeding down that hill, they crash into a fence and while they come out unscathed, the bike is quite mutilated. Grandma Shino spanks them both with a bamboo stick, and neither of them can sit comfortably for the next few days, but both of them are convinced that it was very much worth it.
Tsubasa also takes Azusa to his first matsuri, because apparently he's never been to one in the city. Grandma Shino still has a picture of the both of them wrapped up in colorful patterned kimonos, wearing plastic masks of a red sentai ranger and a kitsune respectively, as Azusa grasps a plastic bag holding a bewildered looking goldfish inside, shaking it in victory. The fish dies a few days later, but neither of the boys are particularly distraught about it, truth be told.
Grandpa Eisuke sometimes brings watermelons home, and he'll let the boys try to chop through the skin with the heavy kitchen cleaver, although they barely even manages to lift it. Tsubasa remembers the dull sound of the metal against the watermelon, and the neat triangular slices that Grandpa Eisuke would cut it into. Tsubasa, Azusa, and Grandpa Eisuke would sit with their legs hanging off the porch and the field of sunflowers in the background as Grandpa Eisuke pointed out the stars in the sky and told them stories about Orihime and Hikoboshi.
When Tsubasa wanders through the jungle of sunflowers near Grandpa Eisuke's home, he remembers the sound of Azusa's laughter, the tickle of summer breeze against his toes, the warmth of Grandma Shino's smile in the glow of the fireflies , and Grandpa Eisuke's jocular storytelling. Tsubasa remembers how reluctant Azusa was to go when his parents finally came back to pick him up at the end of the summer, and the way that they'd pinkie-promised to stay friends forever, as well as to see each other again.
Tsubasa stands in the field of sunflowers, the leafy stalks brushing at his legs and the vibrant saffron petals flanking his shoulders. Tsubasa lifts his head to the sky, closing his eyes and spreading his arms out wide as if waiting for something miraculous to happen. It feels nostalgic, and he laughs.