Disclaimer: Tactics is the creation of Kinoshita Sakura and Higashiyama Kazuko, not mine.
Summary: They were going to develop the area.
Author's notes: Fic #15 for Livejournal community Ficlets on Demand's Fic a Day June Challenge '08. Request: Incorporate a Chinese poem by xellosspoo. Poem used: To the Tune of Riverside City - A Record of My Dream on the 20th Day of the First Month of Year Yiyou by Su Shi.


Heartland

by monitor screen

-o-

For ten years here I wander and there you lie.

I don't think about you often, yet how can I forget you!

Haruka did not bother with the affairs of humans these days, so it was a while before he got the news: They were going to develop the area.

They were going to develop the area. The grounds where Kantarou rested, eternally.

With your grave a thousand miles away, where can I confide my loneliness?

It was hard not to snarl. But Haruka had learned a little more about restraint after all these years. It was not like there would be any physical remains of the exorcist left by now, in all honesty.

Even if we met, could you recognize me,

With dust all over my face, and hair like frost?

But these grounds were still different. They would always be, no matter what change others might bring. These grounds bore the memories of them.

Last night I had a dream in which I returned home.

By the window, you were combing your hair.

They had worked and played and shouted and fought and lived together, once. For Haruka, it was difficult to fathom how everything could be gone so soon, impossible to grasp the fragility and transience of human lives.

We looked at each other silently, with tears streaming down our cheeks.

For a tengu, the years floated away as quickly as seconds.

And now they were going to obliterate the last remembrance of his master. Going to turn this place into some random, impersonal, foreign constructions.

Haruka drank in the sight of ancient trees and open sky, and then turned away, spreading his wings. There would be no looking back - he had no need to, anymore.

The scene lived in his heart now - where it would be out of reach for tarnish.

There's a place which every year will be my misery:

The moonlit night, the hill of short pines.

-o-