Disclaimer
Kurama, as portrayed below, is strictly based on the fictional main character with the same name from Yu Yu Hakusho, created by Togashi Yoshihiro and adapted to the small screen by Fuji TV in Japan and FUNimation Entertainment in the U.S. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N
Sorry that was so long. Just giving credit where credit is due. And now that that's out of our way… Happy reading! ^-^
The Trial of Minamino Shuuichi's Lover
It's time.
To look back upon what I have done.
"We're here."
His hand finally left my eyes. I just hated the way that those silky fingers of his brushed against my face. I'm not comfortable with him touching me. He'll never tell me that my cheeks must feel as soft as sandpaper.
(Don't tell him, but it's times like these when I sort of feel some pressure into learning to use moisturizer. Don't get me wrong, okay? It won't be to please him or anything. It's just that… well, even at age twenty-five, I still don't know how. I can't even tell the difference between that and lotion and cream and everything else stacked on those boutique stands. My brain hurts just thinking about the sheer number of 'em.)
I must be making a stupid face or something. He's laughing at me again. As usual.
But I don't mind. Seeing a smile on his face… relieves… me. It assures me that even just for the moment, all is right with his world, so he could afford to smile.
He smiles a lot less often than other people believe he does, you see.
So I look for his smile in his eyes.
But the very few times I find it, it's annoyingly infectious. In next to no time, I catch myself grinning like an idiot, too. He likes to share, Minamino Shuuichi. He gives me a smile when I don't have one of my own.
Oh, darn it. I'm rambling again. Sorry about that.
Back to where we were. Yawning before us was the mouth of a cave, inviting us into a deep, hollow unknown.
"Irima Cave."
I said, just to point out to him that I had already figured out where he had taken me. (Sharp-witted as he is, I have to keep up.) What I haven't figured out yet, though, is why we're here.
"You running out of vacation ideas or something?"
We both knew that I meant that as a joke, but he didn't laugh this time. Something was up.
"Come with me."
He stuffed his hands into his pants pockets and strode right into the dark cavern. I didn't make him wait.
"There's something you need to see."
Even after all these years, we were still the same.
We walk side by side without holding hands.
She would take it against me. She's that independent. She would insist to go the distance alone, that she needs no one to hold her for guidance or support, not even companionship. But she keeps in stride with my footsteps. I listen to her breathing and the beat of her heart.
Now it's slowing down. She's not afraid of this place. How many times has she been here before?
She followed alongside me, clasping her hands behind her back. I kept my own in my pockets, beyond her reach. This way, we would make no mistake.
Over the years I have come to understand her reasons for this. Her refusal to touch me… It just makes her every touch all the more special.
Before long, we had gone further underground and plunged into blind darkness. I reached into my arsenal. Around thirty seeds. These would do.
I threw the first seed away from the stalagmites spearing out of the ground. The weed needed at least three inches radius to grow. It took root seconds later than I expected, but it did blossom into the flower I intended to plant.
She noticed it right away.
"A marker."
I couldn't help but smile again. She just never fails to understand what I'm thinking.
"How smart of you. Always planning ahead."
And she makes me sound more impressive than I really am.
"It's a lamp weed."
I offered as explanation. But she didn't need it.
She sank to her knees before it—she never did care if her jeans got dirty in the process—and peered into its petals. Curiously, like a child.
Cute.
"Phosphorescent?"
I needed only nod. She knew how it worked. Hers was a rare condition: a woman with the worldview of a child and a mind unmatched by many a man.
"A glowing golden flower. Has anyone ever told you that this is the stuff children's storybooks are made of? And you bring them to life, too."
She chuckled. So did I. She has a habit of leaving me with something new to think about at the end of the day.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say TinkerBell had sprinkled too much pixie dust on it. Hey, I could make a fairy tale out of all this."
And she's about to give me a sample of that. I just know it.
"This is the story of The Little Firefly. Once upon a time, there was a little firefly that lived in the bud of a magical golden buttercup. The bud only opened at night, but when it did, it was the most beautiful flower of all…"
I was right.
Even after all these years, she was still the same.
With every turn we took, he scattered those flowering seeds of his behind us as if they were some Demon World version of trail mix. Wouldn't he run out of them soon?
"Uh, if it helps—and even if it doesn't—I have a flashlight with me."
I volunteered. I even took it out of my jacket pocket, just to be sure.
"I appreciate the thought…"
He's just so gracious and all prim and proper, isn't he? Sometimes I still find it hard to believe that this delicate red rose has oh, so many deadly thorns.
"… But these serve another purpose."
"I know. They're also for finding our way out of here."
I've gotten used to him by now. This master thief embarks on no mission without a backup plan, a backup to his backup plan, a backup to that… Need I say more? He even has his endless lists of routes and methods of escape. I feel like a plainclothes undercover spy just accompanying him to the mall.
All of a sudden, I noticed something.
"Faces on the walls."
His eyes followed mine. Against the light of his flowering plants, his green eyes still shone even amidst eternal night.
"I see them as well."
"This one…"
Now, I don't normally do this because, well, it's just so awkward, but this time, it felt somewhat… right. I clutched the end of his shirt sleeve, by his wrist, so when I rested my hand against the jagged rock before us, so did he. I wanted him to touch that ghost of a face in the wall, to explore all the textures lost in the stone. Even if this is Minamino Shuuichi we're talking about, he can't appreciate texture to the fullest with just his eyes.
"… looks like a polar bear. Like he or she had been frozen there. Do you see it too?"
I don't know. Maybe to him it was all random holes in the wall.
"Your imagination…"
He sounded distracted. Lost in his thoughts. It's not a polar bear to him after all.
We aren't the same, Minamino Shuuichi and I. The silently screaming phantasms that stood before my eyes eluded his. All he could see were shadows nondescript, nameless. Something tells me that he's even on red alert right now, all senses on overdrive, checking and double-checking if any of those shadows were moving… a likely enemy.
He's like that. Always ready to rumble.
"Are you…"
He hesitated. Whatever it was he was about to ask, he already knew that I would say no.
"… afraid?"
This tears it. He is on Code Red! Danger! Danger! mode right now. He is officially the most protective being in my book. (Others might consider him borderline paranoid, but I don't. He has his reasons for behaving the way he does… his motivations. Heck, I believe that there's something almost… sweet… about all thi—oh, darn. I'm getting mushy here. Moving along…)
"No."
I shook my head, slowly, just to show him that he needed not worry. We're both safe, Minamino Shuuichi. You can let your guard down.
"None of these faces have any sign of life in them. Maybe they weren't faces after all."
His shoulders sank while listening to me. He closed his eyes and smiled. Yup. He got my message.
Sigh. This is how it's like, being with someone who'd always been on the lookout for his life.
"The human eye sees what it wants to see."
How right he was. The human eye strives to find familiarity in the arbitrary. We should know. We hadn't always been human.
"… Left. Right. Right. Right. Left. Right. Left. Left…"
She recalls our path as I have. Just as well. Even if something happens to my lamp weeds, we could still find our way back above ground on our own.
We arrived at the excavation site of what was once the tunnel connecting the Human World to the Demon World. The water in the pool is bluer than before. But that long crack in the wall… it hadn't changed at all. A constant reminder of how Kuwabara-kun had gotten us out of the Gatekeeper's Uraotoko… I will never forget how he, Hiei, Mitarai, and I could only watch from inside it as Yusuke fought for his life and lost.
Sensui… You—
Suddenly, a hand clapped against my own.
"You're brooding again."
Without even looking at me, she had loosened my fist.
I understood better now. Her touch was special because she knew just when to touch me.
"Nothing wrong with that, really. But I believe that you need to be reminded: what's done is done."
She's right.
I sighed and squeezed her hand. She fell silent at once. Just as I expected. She's ill at ease again. She remains unaware of how special her touch is to me.
She could easily pull her hand away from mine. And knowing her, she's about to, any time now.
She didn't.
I'm grateful.
"Tough times never last. But tough people do. Ne?"
She looked at me, eyes filled with meaning. She must have meant me. She's subtle when she wants to be.
"As for that monster… He's in a timeless dimension now, forever in the arms of his lover."
Her words painted a picture in my mind. I returned her look with a remark:
"A beautiful end."
Her hand jerked in mine.
"Would it ever be our own?"
Man, how could he speak of all this fluff without me seeing his lips move at all? I just don't get it.
Good thing I'm still standing. Those legions of fangirls of his would have melted like butter by now.
We walked further, her hand still in mine. (Are we setting a new personal record?) Although I had taken her here, she was guiding me.
"This place… It brings back so many of your memories. A historical sanctum of sorts. All of you experienced a breakthrough here."
We stopped before a mound of sunken earth. The dirt against our feet… where Yusuke had fallen, defeated by the hands of Sensui's most vicious persona.
"Urameshi discovered his atavistic demon roots here. Another new power also fully awakened in Kuwabara-san. An actual prince had knelt upon this very soil, humbled before a former servant once loyal to him and his cause. And the timid Mitarai-kun finally grew a backbone here and used it to stand up for what he chose to believe in. I'm proud of him."
It's astounding, how she knows everything.
"But the biggest breakthrough was Hiei's. He fought for the sake of someone other than himself and didn't bother to hide it from any of you. Good thing Kuwabara-san was too distracted with Urameshi's sudden death to poke fun at Hiei for it. It's nice to know that that tough cookie's actually capable of breaking out of his cookie cutter mold."
Very few take the time and trouble to see Hiei in that light. I'm glad she's one of them.
"True. There is more goodness to Hiei than even he sees."
"Blind to his own beauty, huh? Always playing hard to get even with himself, that little softie."
Her laughter rang in my ears. Never will I forget the sound. The most full-throated songbird could only hope to sound like her.
"But your breakthrough didn't pale in comparison, either."
I wanted to hear what she knew about me, yet somehow I didn't.
"For once, you freed your mind. Since your enemy back then could read your mind, you had to learn not to rely on it like you always do."
Really, she's the only one I know who could make my instinct for murder sound like a good thing to have.
"Ne, is this…"
Her fingers… they're slipping away…
"… what you wanted to show me?"
She found it. The only Sinning Tree I had ever planted in the Human World.
"… RAAAAA…"
So this is the Elder Toguro whom I've learned so much about. He's still struggling to free himself. He's still alive.
He's crying without tears.
"… MAAAAA…"
It's been an entire decade since he was trapped to this tree, yet I can still hear a very familiar name escaping his lips.
"… WHYYYYY…"
Still no end to his hallucinations, huh? He's still writhing in pain, even if he had long become one with the tree. The tree's tendrils… they look like human veins, only made of wood. Throbbing to his pulse… digging deep into his face… bulging out of his cheeks… slithering along his arms and wrists… sprouting out of his nails… bursting from his now-empty eye sockets… Ugh. His body… Should I even call this a body? Does this still count as a body? It served as the tree's branches now. The leaves growing out of his dead nails… his wasted scalp… they're the greenest leaves I've ever seen. (See how Minamino Shuuichi just loves to give life irony, and to give life to irony?) The parasitic tree has never stopped twisting Toguro-san's insides, crushing every organ in his degenerated yet ever-regenerating body to a bloody pulp while feeding off what little life he had left.
"… WON'T…"
To forever see before you he who made you this way…
"… YOU…"
He whom you most fear…
"… DIIIIIEEE…"
And he just so happens to be Minamino Shuuichi…
My arms feel cold.
I whirled to face my only breathing companion—the very demon, now human, who had cursed this wretch to his eternal fate. His eyes refused to meet my own. He still never moved his lips, yet his voice was all I could hear.
"This ends here, you soulless fuck."
The words clouding the Elder Toguro's consciousness… the last words he had ever heard before being blindly bound to the tree that disciplines depravity…
"This ends here, you soulless fuck."
Those very words…
"This ends here, you soulless fuck."
They haunted me more than his cries.
"This ends here, you soulless fuck."
"… KUUUUU… RAAAAA… MAAAAA…"
Toguro was immortal. Minamino Shuuichi simply took that to his advantage. If I have any intention of being with him, I must…
"… you soulless fuck."
Understand that.
"… you soulless fuck."
Withstand that.
"… you soulless fuck!"
I must accept that… all this cruelty… all that I see and hear before me…
"… you soulless fuck!"
… had been said and done…
"… you soulless fuck!"
… by Minamino Shuuichi.
He is capable of all this.
I don't like it.
I don't like it one bit.
I can't watch them. Not her and Toguro. Together.
No.
This was a mistake. I shouldn't have tested her. I shouldn't have taken her here. I shouldn't have let her see him.
I shouldn't have shown her the true face of my past.
I shouldn't have…
But I only did what I must. I did what I must. I… No. She has to understand.
What does she think of me now…?
Again, I did what I must. I covered her ears.
All of a sudden, I felt his hands cup both sides of my face. He doesn't want me to hear Toguro-san. But it's useless. Their conversation… They're having it in my mind!
"KUUUUU… RAAAAA… MAAAAA…"
"This ends here, you soulless fuck!"
"WHYYYYY… WON'T… YOU… DIIIIIEEE…?"
Can't you two chitchat somewhere else? I don't have to be part of this! Get out of me!
"Do you really want an answer to that?"
Oh, darn. I snapped. I just had to join in. Me and my big mouth.
"Because you wouldn't die, Toguro-san."
I heard a soft gasp from behind me. Minamino Shuuichi mustn't have expected me to actually talk to his former enemy. All of a sudden I felt strong, empowered. I had to make my point.
"Because you just wouldn't die."
"Toguro-san"…?
She must be the only one in all worlds who would call him that. If the circumstances weren't what they are, I could laugh.
Perhaps it's just her way of paying her respects to the undead.
What will she say to me?
Will she scorn me? Will she scold me? Will she say there could have been some other way? Will she think of me as she does Sensui—a monster?
Will she spend the rest of her life with a monster?
Could I spend the rest of my life with…
… her…
… thinking of me… that way…?
Genocide. The eradication of the human race. That was what that manipulative monster wanted. In an ironic twist of fate, that human wanted an end to his own world.
And in another twist, even more ironic than before, this demon…
This demon in my presence…
This demon, who gives me his own smile when I lose my own…
He didn't even originally belong among humans.
But he wanted to save them and their world.
And Toguro-san was standing in his way.
Facing her…
Why is this more difficult than facing every foe I've ever fought…?
He let go of me.
Now he's just standing there, the forelocks of his crimson hair hiding his eyes. He's not looking at me. His fists are at his sides again.
They're trembling.
His emotions. They're showing.
Sorrow. Pain. Loss. Guilt? Regret? Remorse?
But I… I get it.
I know why he brought me here.
He… wanted to see if I could still…
Accept him.
For all that his green thumb had ever planted.
The roses and the weeds.
Footsteps, dying into the distance. That was all I expected to hear. Her walking away. Perhaps she would run.
I planted the lamp weeds for this. In case she turns back alone. In case she leaves me behind. No. In case she just…
Leaves me.
I do.
This sound… It's close…
She's still here.
What is she doing?
I strained to listen more closely. A splash of water. Another one, back into water. And another one, seeping onto earth.
I can't take much more of this.
I opened my eyes. She was kneeling again, this time by the foot of the lake. She scooped up the water in her hands and rose to her feet, carrying water from the lake to…
What?
She's…!
Ugh, I'm spilling so much. I knew that I should have worn my cap today—I could have used it as a makeshift pail. But he did say that we were going someplace where the sun doesn't shine much, so all I bothered to bring was my flashlight. I didn't really think that I'd need a cap in the dark. Hn. I should listen to my gut next time.
Unless… there won't be a next time.
She's watering the Sinning Tree!
I poured more water onto the roots of his tree. He must be wondering why I'm doing this.
"Even your most undeserving plant could use a little water to grow, ne?"
I will water each seed you've ever sown, Minamino Shuuichi. The roses and the weeds.
To be continued… if you want it to be.
(Just tell me so in a review! ^-^)
Hi there! \^o^/ Mikageshi here!
Thank you for reading this far! Please REVIEW, so that I'd know how to write better in the future! (Yes, I strive for self-improvement. ^^)
If you read this without reading my other YYH fanfic, entitled The Kurama whom Kurama Never Knew (yeah, it is a long title, isn't it? XD), then I assume you don't know who the OC in this little drabble is. Actually, she's not quite an OC—she's really a one-time anonymous extra in Episode 94 of YYH who serves as one of the lead characters of my fic. If you want to know her name (in my fic, anyway), it's Setsu. If you want to know more about her, and her and Kurama together, then please feel free to check out Never Knew! ^-^
Now, if you have read Never Knew, then I'm so happy you found this little fanfic of mine, too! *launches rocket-shaped firecrackers into the air* And since you were wondering… This will be written as (part of) a future chapter in Never Knew—as always, when the time is right. (I'm sure you already knew that. XD) But Kurama and Setsu won't be speaking in first person POV there, of course. (That's why they did here. ^^) What do you think of this? I really want to know…! *hyperventilates in excitement* I look forward to hearing from you! *loves you even more than I already do*
Okay then, back to writing Chapter 17 of Never Knew. Happy reviewing! ^-^
P.S. Should those two have at least kissed by now?