let me tell you where love has led me

by tunnelOFdawn

Episode 12 from Hanamori's point of view.

let me tell you where love has led me:

a heart strangled, a heart fractured

burning delirium and glossy eyes

lovelorn and grief-stricken

a bitter and hollow echo

part i. let me tell you of my love

There is a snake slumbering in his chest, Hanamori knows for certain. Its thick coils wrapped around his heart in a vice grip he will never escape. Its fangs embedded deep in his heart, pumping venom. With every breath he takes, every beat his heart takes, this venom circulates through him and consumes him entirely. He is slowly, slowly burning up on the inside—voracious flames licking at his insides with no mercy, with no restraint. He wants to keen in pain and despair, but all he can do is smile that sweet, sheepish smile of his, all doe-eyed. And nobody notices a thing out of place.

What Hanamori knows for certain is that he loves Shindo. His aching heart bursts with a wholehearted love for Shindo. He loves and he is in love. Hanamori loves every part of Shindo with a love that does not forcefully consumes Shindo obsessively but rather immolates Hanamori with the force of his own love.

He loves Shindo in the silences they share as their work for the day gently dies down. He loves Shindo in the loudness of the bar as the night winds down and they feel soft, sleepy with intoxication. He loves Shindo in the morning when his shiny black hair is silky and ruffled with his dark brown eyes clouded over with sleep. He loves Shindo at work when he is slim and sleek in his perfectly tailored suit.

Hanamori loves Shindo for his cool calmness and casual kindness. Shindo is so clever and intelligent as he smoothly negotiates. He never forgets that one side is just as human and real as the other. Shindo is Hanamori's beacon of light in the midst of dark, turbulent waters. He shines home, home in every step he takes, every breath he takes. Every tilt of his head, every tilt of his lips is a welcome beckoning Hanamori home, home.

Love makes him heady with delirium (choking on the rotten-sweet smell of overripe decay and flushing with vigor unknown), Hanamori knows for certain. So it's no surprise that he can recognize it in every longing glance, every inquisitorial glance thrown by Saraka Tsukai and Yaha-kui zaShunina (these are the names he'll never forget that cause resentment to well up in his chest and stuff his mouth with cotton).

It's funny how Shindo, the consummate negotiator (so considerate to all and equally as perceptive), does not realize how loved he is. Hanamori can tell that Shindo thinks they're just close friends and there's nothing slumbering beneath the shell of their friendship. Hanamori can tell that Shindo believes his and zaShunina's quick closeness is merely the result of being zaShunina's first human encounter and relationship when zaShunina is equally as entranced and attached as Hanamori. Hanamori knows that Shindo is more aware that Saraka is a woman and that there is the potential, the spark for more. But even then, it takes Shindo a while to realize the depth of her regard.

It is inevitable that the sharp sting of disappointment stabs at Hanamori's heart when Shindo's and Saraka's paths intertwine carnally. Hanamori cannot fault Shindo for his choice. He cannot rage, rage against him in despair. Hanamori never dared to confess his feelings. He never explored the possibility of developing something more. Now, Hanamori can do naught but accept this heterosexual love. It's expected, really. Two bright, intelligent people with good hearts brought together by their conflict with zaShunina (there's a part of Hanamori that empathizes with zaShunina's loss of Shindo).

What really hurts is when Shindo unwittingly hammers wretched despair in his heart when Shindo requests Hanamori's help in his and Saraka's plan against zaShunina.

There is a child.

Hanamori cannot help but love it just as he had helplessly tumbled into love with Shindo.

It hurts to see the full realization of Shindo's and Saraka's relationship in this tiny, tiny baby named Yukika. It hurts even more when he begins to doubt Shindo (everything was so perfect before this anisotropic convergence). Yukika isn't a baby born out of pure love and the desire to build a family. Yukika is a baby born to surpass her anisotropic-human heritage in order to defeat zaShunina. Uncannily enough, it feels like raising a lamb in its pen for slaughter, or rather, to slaughter. What a wretched plan, Hanamori cannot help but think. It is the wrong answer to a question that should never have been asked.

This is the plan: raise this anisotropic-human baby for sixteen years (malleable but powerful) as their trump card—the ultimate surprise for zaShunina. Raise this baby to surpass her parents and her anisotropic kin. Raise this baby in isolation to defeat zaShunina.

Yukika is a tool.

Hanamori's heart begins to splinter (wood rot disintegrating and hollowing him out) at the conception of this wretched, wretched plan.

part ii. let me tell you of my child

Hanamori has morals and god help him, Yukika may be Shindo's and Saraka's alien hybrid lamb, but this child is now his. They asked him to raise their child for sixteen years, as if once sixteen years is over he'll be able to just abandon what is now, essentially, his child. As if they expect him to meekly lead her to slaughter. As if they haven't given up any rights to this child by promptly abandoning her after birth, just so they could use her as some twisted trump card.

Hanamori loves Shindo, but his lovestruck blindness has worn off. That shiny, reflective coating on Shindo has flaked off. Shindo is still beautiful, inside and outside in his eyes, but he is only human. He makes mistakes and Hanamori can disagree without feeling disloyal.

This is a terrible plan all-around but they're all stupidly desperate and desperately stupid. And if Hanamori can't dissuade Saraka and Shindo from this plan, then Hanamori plans to mitigate the damage by doing his best with Yukika (Shindo was right to trust him with Yukika, Hanamori concedes).

Hanamori had always wanted children—a family. And now he has an infant with a tuft of purple-black hair and magenta eyes. He never wanted this, but here he is with a piece of Shindo (and Saraka, for all he wishes otherwise).

Raising Yukika does not fill the void Shindo has left in Hanamori's heart. But in raising her, Yukika carves out her own place in his heart. Raising her alone is strangely satisfying and simultaneously terrifying.

His world has been cut down to one person. They have no contact with the outside world. They're in their own little world, an isolated space running on a different time in comparison to the outside world, the real world. Knowing that in sixteen years hardly any time will have passed in the outside world is frightening. He'll be out of sync, Hanamori knows. He's going to lose sixteen years of his life in what will seem like an instant to his friends and family. It's a unique set of circumstances that no will ever be able to understand.

But it's worth it to be the one to raise Yukika. A great, ineffable wave of affection had surged up in Hanamori when he gazed into her strangely clear-eyed stare. This is how the human race has survived—with love, the fierce love that wells up in a parent's heart, that makes them want to move worlds for their offspring, and that makes them willing to endure the ravages of time and all its hardships.

When Yukika smiles her first smile, it's less of a developmental milestone and more of a sign to Hanamori that all of this is worth it just to see her smile. When he cradles her in his arms and hears her cooing babble, he cannot help the gentle curve of his mouth. When she says her first word, his heart flutters. When she starts taking small, juddering steps, he is frozen in pride and fear. And when she falls, he is there to catch her in his arms and swing her around in delight.

Yukika is perfect in the way all children are to their parents. But Hanamori is aware of the way that Yukika is different. When it comes to her developmental milestones, she progresses on an advanced timeline. He's always aware of the fact that she isn't entirely human. It's visible in the way that she never needs to nap and never gets sleep-deprived cranky; the way she is never bored and never seems to find entertainment in playing with the soft, plush toys and the games littering her room; and the way her eyes go empty and she just stares, stares for hours.

Hanamori never has to explain to Yukika that she isn't fully human. She's always known by the way that Hanamori cannot control the anisotropic in the instinctive way she does. She's always known by the way she can feel around the edges of this isolated space, the universe, and the anisotropic. Hanamori can tell that she knows the way that the anisotropic and their universe interacts much better than zaShunina. In her eyes, there is a sense of knowing.

There is a divide between Yukika and Hanamori that cannot be fully bridged. She isn't Hanamori's biological daughter, for all that he wishes otherwise. She is too intelligent, too independent to only rely on Hanamori, for all that he yearns otherwise. As she grows, Yukika is constantly on the verge of becoming—becoming something more, something beyond human, and something beyond anisotropic. Yukika is the only human-anisotropic being in existence and that, Hanamori knows, must be lonely.

Yukika does not call Hanamori dad. Hanamori has often told her about her parents (he talks about zaShunina—everything)—kind, intelligent, determined Shindo and steadfast, caring, openhearted Tsukai. She calls him Shun-kun. It's an affectionate name to be sure, but Hanamori cannot help but long for dad.

Is Hanamori destined to love those who can never love him the same way back?

part iii. let me tell you of my despair

Sixteen years have passed.

Their time is up.

Laugh lines and crow's feet age Hanamori by sixteen years. Smiles still come easily to his face, lighting him up inside-out. Light-hearted and quick to laugh are characteristics that were not so quick to leave him. Yet, there is a new quality that tempers him into self-assured calmness. It's the sort of characteristic you gain after bearing heavy responsibilities.

Silky violet hair frames Yukika's gently pointed face. Her eyes are still a limpid magenta reflecting the world and all its information around her. Every step she takes, every breath she takes is an exercise in serenity. The calm, placid waters of a lake lull her mind into calmness. There is a quiet confidence in every word she speaks and every word she does not speak.

Their time is up.

They make their grand entrance, pulling up in a black car with a casual nonchalance that fools you into thinking that this, this is all normal and easy. Hanamori watches out the car window as Yukika bats zaShunina around as easily a cat with a mice trapped between its paws. Yukika is better than zaShunina for having been born from the union of a human and an anisotropic being. She has an instinctive knowledge of the manipulation required to use the anisotropic in this universe—in this information cocoon. Yukika was born for this information.

When Hanamori steps out, he shares a nod with Saraka and stands back to let it all unfold. Hanamori pities zaShunina for their shared loss. Shindo is dead and zaShunina will never get the chance to bring Shindo to the anisotropic world.

Shindo Kojirou, I've raised a singularity (just for you), Hanamori muses.

zaShunina's last word in this universe is "Shindo".

How horrifying, how terrible is it to witness the inhuman become human. To be human is to open yourself up to pain and poor zaShunina could not cope with humanity.

Now, he, Yukika, and Saraka stand over the corpse of Shindo. "Shindo-san," Saraka softly cries with all the pent-up emotion that Hanamori cannot express. Yet, Yukika's "Yeah. That's right, dad." Is indicative that beyond the information Hanamori's senses can perceive and process, beyond the anisotropic, there is more and in that more, there lies Shindo, the man who enraptured humans and anisotropic beings alike.

"He wasn't that bad a guy," Yukika says.

No, zaShunina wasn't. He just became human too fast, too quick. Quick enough to experience the delirium of love and fast enough to rage against the world.

And now nothing of the anisotropic remains in the world, thanks to Yukika. "Amazing, right?" Hanamori cannot help but exclaim with fatherly pride. "She's my daughter, you know!"

It hurts when the others so casually, so easily rip off his mantle of fatherhood. Raising a child alone is hard, but worthwhile. Raising a child of inhuman heritage is even harder. Raising a child functioning on a different level is equally difficult. "I raised her! It was really, really hard! She never listens to me!" he defends himself. She never truly listened when he told her much he loved her as they both grew older and she grew colder. There was no resonance, no echo.

And now she's gone. Shindo's gone too. Hanamori's eyes burn with suppressed tears. His throat tightens in grief as the true sense of his loss engulfs him.

"…all on our way somewhere," Saraka says.

What sort of destination is this?