A/N: My first Hirunaka fanfic! I wrote this for Shishio Week, but for tomorrow! However I decided to post this today because wowowowow I'm really proud of it omg.
I hope everyone enjoys! Comments and pointers are always welcomed!
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Hirunaka no Ryuusei.
I.
It was the summer going into high school that he got offered a cigarette.
"Come on, just try it out."
He was young, so he was naïve, but he also knew that his father died for smoking – or was that something else?
He remembers his hands shaking – he was nervous. He didn't know what to expect when he brought the cigarette up to his lips and took a drag.
It suffocated him, and he coughed it out. Everyone around him laughed at him.
"He's so cute," A young woman said.
She was beautiful, he remarked.
And he took another drag.
Smoking kills, his mother would tell him every day when she caught him smoking outside of their house. Give me that!
So he left to the café to find the short hair girl who would offer him cigarettes.
I'll die young, he guessed.
II.
She kisses him when he's walking her home.
She's older than him, so probably has more experience with kissing.
He's only just going into his first year of high school – what could she gain from him?
She kisses him, and that's the second time he feels his throat suffocating. When she moves away from him, he's flushed.
She laughs at his wide eyes and strokes his hair affectionately and keeps walking in front of him.
He follows suit.
"You're so cute," she tells him. He blushes a deep red color.
"Shut up," he grumbles out.
When they reach her apartment, she turns around, kisses him once more, and goes into her building.
He thinks, then, that that's what it must feel to like someone.
III.
"I think your name sounds beautiful."
He didn't agree with her, but when his name rolls off her tongue – Shishio Satsuki – he compromises with her compliment.
He hates his name, but when she says it, he loves it a bit more every day.
"Shishio, want to watch a movie?"
"Shishio, let's go to the aquarium, yeah?"
"Oi, Satsuki, come here. Do you think these pictures look nice?"
"Hey, Satsuki, what's wrong?"
"I think you're beautiful, Tsubomi," he tells her in response; that's the only thing he can think of saying.
He smiles down at him, kisses him, and blushes. "Thank you."
No, thank you.
IV.
She leaves him a note.
"I'm sorry, but I'm leaving to pursue a career in photography."
Five years and six months. That's how long he loved her.
And after so long, he feels his lungs close in on him, and he can't breathe.
"Tsubomi… why?" He cried out that night.
But he knew he wouldn't get an answer.
She was older, anyway.
V.
He bumps into a girl and holds her arm with his hand so she doesn't fall on the ground.
Blue eyes, brown hair, fat cheeks, flushed face.
His heart skips a beat.
"Hey, let go of me!" She yells at him, and shakes him off.
"Is that how you're going to say thanks to me for saving you?"
She pouts, and walks away. The girl stops, looks confused around her, and turns back and walks towards him, embarrassed. She gives him a piece of paper with a map and a circled street.
"Do you know how to get here?" She asks him, sighing.
He smirks.
"Of course."
He didn't know it then, but that was the start of his new life.
VI.
He didn't expect her to be his student. Really, there are a lot of schools in the city, and for her to be a freshman in the high school he worked in was something no one would have guessed would happen.
"The universe just likes playing tricks on me," he sighed out, sitting outside on the school roof.
He takes out a pack of cigarettes and looks up at the sky.
The roof door creaks open, and he drops the cigarette on the ground, crushing it with his shoes.
Oh no.
"Shishio sensei? You eat out here?"
Not her.
"Not particularly. I just come up here to take in some fresh air, that's all. Chun-chun, why are you here?"
She lets out a sigh and walks to the fence surrounding the roof. "I just haven't really been fitting in recently, is all."
He blinks up at her.
He sees her eyes stinging red and he wants to hold her hand as a way to show compassion, but his job is at risk.
So he stands up, and his hands shake, nervous, because he doesn't know what to expect next.
Her eyes go wide when he begins to pat her head.
"You'll fit in soon enough, it's okay."
VII.
They fall on top of each other one afternoon inside their classroom.
She was hiding from some girls from class who were teasing her for coming from the countryside.
He opened one of the lockers at the far end of the classroom the same time she was coming out of it.
Her hair is covering his face on either side, and his hands were wrapped around her waist.
He stares into her eyes, and he feels the back of his throat clog up again, hands shaking, face turning red.
She wants to move away but she's entranced with his green eyes.
He would push her away but he wants to feel her warmth just a bit more –
"I'm so sorry, sensei," she says urgently, stands up, and bows.
He stands up, brushes dust off his clothes, and pats her head. "There's no need to worry, Chun-chun."
She stares at him for a split moment before running away.
He closes his eyes, blushing. "That was too close…"
VIII.
He stands outside the girl's bathroom sometimes and hears her crying.
He thinks, how could she be teased so much? He wants to help her.
Although they are so close to touch, they are far apart from each other. It's impossible for him to help her.
So he listens as she chokes out sobs, and cries out, "Why?"
And when she walks out of the bathroom, he acts like he was walking in front of the bathroom towards the third floor.
And sometimes, she follows him, and walk together.
IX.
The moment his throat clogs up when he realizes he loves her is the day she dresses up with a kimono for the school festival.
He stares at her for the first time as a woman – not his student, a teenager, or a girl.
Her eyes looked clearer than usual, and her lips looked redder.
Although she was wearing the same clothes as the rest of the girls in their class, she looked exceptionally beautiful.
And the few moments she brushed her hand next to his to serve him tea, his heart would beat in between his ears, and the only thing he'd think of was, "You're so cute."
X.
"The color black is beautiful," she tells him.
He invited her to one of the art classes he took. He told her it was good for expressing yourself.
He stares at her as he's walking her to her uncle's house.
"It's a combination of colors, you see," she explains to him. "I'm not morbid and punk rock, I just find that to be beautiful."
"I like the color white," he admits to her, and gives her a small smile.
"Ironic, isn't?" She asks him. "You like the absence of color and I prefer the presence of colors."
"Is it so ironic? Isn't it just natural?" He asks her, and his hand holds hers.
She doesn't push him away, so he continues to hold her hand in his until they reach her home.
XI.
He's in Suzume's Uncle's bar late one night and he's smoking his pack of cigarettes and talking to the old man.
A woman sits next to him, and her scent reaches his nostrils and he drops his cigarette on the cigarette holder.
She's smiling at him. "Say, Satsuki, how have you been?"
"What are you doing here?" He asks her, resentment in his voice.
"Is it illegal for me to be in this bar?" She asks teasingly and takes out a cigarette while asking for a Sapporo. "You didn't answer my first question."
"Is it really of your concern to ask me that? You're the one who left in the first place…"
"And I'm sorry about that. You did know I loved photographing. I'm sorry if I broke your heart."
"If?" He asks her. "You did."
"That's why I'm here. I want to make amends with you – like adults. Talking it out… But let's drink, yeah? Drinking helps numb the pain away."
"I don't want to drink –"
"Old man, bring him one beer, please."
That night it was the first and last time they slept together.
And he wasn't surprised when she disappeared for good the next morning, leaving a letter that said, "Thank you."
XII.
She brought him lunch the following week after Tsubomi left again. She told him it was as a thank you for introducing her to the art class.
And he said not to worry about it.
They ate on the school roof, mostly in silence, unless Suzume would choke on her food for eating too fast. That would make him chuckle, and her blush.
Summing up confidence, he asked her, "You still don't have any friends at school?"
She put her chopsticks down and stared at him. "Not really. This boy started talking me the other day, though. He seems kind. Why do you ask?"
He looks down at his bento, and holds his chopsticks. "Haven't you thought it'd be best to transfer back to your home town if it continues? I mean, that is, you not finding friends."
She gives him a smile – the first smile he's ever seen coming from her – and tells him, "No."
He looks at her, and he knows she's lying.
XIII.
"Are you doing anything this up-coming summer break, Chun-chun?"
She turns around, her hand holding her book bag strap tightly, her breath hitching in the back of her throat. "No, why?"
"Want to come with me to the aquarium? I won two free tickets the other day and I kind of want to see the –"
"-penguins," she mumbles out.
"You like them too?"
"They are my favorite bird, actually –" And you kind of look like one too, got stuck in the back of her throat.
"Mine as well."
"See you, then, sensei," she waves at him, walking off.
"I'll pick you up Saturday at eight in the morning!" He yells at her, and a smile creeps on his face.
XIV.
The day of the aquarium was the first time in seven years that it took him so long to get dressed.
The first time was when he went out for the first time with Tsubomi.
The day of the aquarium was the first time in five years that he saw a girl crying after he gave her a present.
The other time was when Tsubomi's grandfather passed away.
The day of the aquarium was the first time he kissed a girl in two months.
The last time was when he slept with Tsubomi.
XV.
He confessed his love to her a week before school began at the summer festival.
It was the second time he saw her dressed in a kimono and it still managed to keep his heart beating loudly between his ears.
Two tears fell from her eyes and the rest she wiped away furiously. She bowed, and he tried to stop her, but she said, "Thank you."
And he told her, "I just want to be there for you."
And as she cried, he held her.
XVI.
The first day back to school, he arrived an hour earlier because insomnia got to him, so he had a restless night.
When he arrived at his desk there was a note on his desk.
The only thing it said was, "Thank you, sensei."
And his eyes, in the distance, caught brown hair floating in the distance and a body falling from above outside his window.
"…No."
And then he realized, that his answer to why it happened was because he was just too old to help her before.
XVII.
Sometimes, he finds himself smoking on the school roof and stares up at the sky that reminds him of her crystalline, blue eyes.
And sometimes he catches himself smiling at some memory that crosses his mind from her time with him, and other times his heart begins to ache because he won't eat her bentos ever again.
Some days, he just cries by himself and drowns himself in the smoke of his cigarettes.
I'll die young to be with you, he guesses.