Leo: Light SouKazu here...Not really much more than a when Soushi comes back type deal.
I'm here
Tears are tears, and would always remain them, never to be changed and never to do more than display the loss and sufferings. They would never serve as a comfort nor would they achieve sating the hurtful memory, or painful tang of loss. They would simply fall and be a reminder that nothing can ever be changed by them. And so more would fall at the realization. And then the weary weeper would grow tired of them and escape them by sleep. Truly what it means to cry yourself to sleep.
Ever since the start of the war and til the very end. Kazuki had begun to believe this. He's never wanted to cry, because he knew it would be pointless. And in a sense this caused him to question why humans do half of what they do and hat it really means in the bigger, more important picture, the great scheme of things.
He remembered. Another thing he wished he could stop like his tears. Make them go away and let them dry to nothingness when they stopped rolling through his mind. But he knew he would never be allowed that. Humans, as always, rebelled against the common nature of living things. To simply live and die was too simple for the complexity of the human mind.
And so when the memories of that single goodbye, stung his bitter heart he knew that it would never go away. The unfairness of it all. The loss of the only one who ever seemed to understand him. The single fact that he could not save him. Ate soulfully away at him. He knew the others felt guilty, and he knew they missed him dearly. But they could never comprehend his agony.
He always found himself walking out by the port, mulling over the situation as the only thing he could ever do was wait for him to return. Of which he may never do.
"Ka…zuki…" He would always hear the faint whisper, brisk on the breeze of the cold night. He always believed it was real and always re-felt the disappointment when he discovered it wasn't. He could cry forever, but he learned early that it was pointless. And even as he watched them place the memorial he had not. Save for the day he lost him, Kazuki never cried for Soushi…because he remembered Soushi promising him he'd come back. And Soushi wouldn't lie right?
He supposed he truly thought that Soushi wouldn't come back it he had cried. Or maybe he was delusional to even think he'd return. And if he had, what was to say he wouldn't have become like Akane Makabe? What's to say he'd even remember Kazuki at all? So small a chance for that…
But that evening. That evening he couldn't take it any more and the tears flowed more freely than they ever had in his childhood. He collapsed by the port and for hours he'd called out to Soushi, but he never came. And some how there was no surprise in this. Yet he returned, day after day. Wish upon wish, hoping upon straining human hope. If ever a thing he wanted back from his childhood or any other time in his distant life, he wanted Soushi.
He wanted to apologize, to cry to him and tell him he's never meant to destroy his left eye's ability to see. To tell him he wished he'd never left at all. That he wanted to know more about him. And understand him. That he'd always looked up to him and how beautiful he thought Soushi really was. And to finally tell him how much he meant to him. To finally tell Soushi he'd loved him.
That's all he wanted. For a year he cried to the bleak still waters. Knowing that it would only serve to make his heart sink deeper and deeper, until he knew he would be unable to even cry that name for the sobbing that would consume him.
He looked out with ever hope that one day Soushi would keep to his promise and return. He'd prayed and some how it never seemed to happen. He tried to go on with life as normal. But he wouldn't, and he knew everyone else had noticed it. They'd have had to be stupid or blind not to. If they hadn't known how much he missed Soushi, then they didn't know him at all.
He finally conceded defeat late in the fall. Standing up wearily he turned away from the splashing ocean tide. And he slowly dragged his feet back home. Or attempted to. Along the way, he'd detoured…for whatever reason he found himself walking up the steps of that damnable shrine. The one he'd always hated going to for the memories it brought back of the one he never thought could possibly leave him, but did.
He couldn't help but notice as the steady drops of rain fell around him and the dark sky thundered loudly over hear, flashing white from the lightening that crashed about. He knew he shouldn't have been out in that weather. He was told not to by his father, but he did any ways. He promised to wait. He said he'd wait forever and he wasn't going to break that promise.
He stopped when he noticed the outline of a figure lying at the base of the steps, with their head on the second step and the rest of their body sprawled in the muddy ground at the base of the shrine.
"Kazuki…" He heard a very faint whisper. H could hardly make out the voice and assumed it to be Maya or someone else.
"Kazuki…" The voice repeated and he walked closer hesitantly, stopping only to flick the water out of his dark hair.
"Kazuki…" The voice got louder.
"Kazuki!" He nearly jumped when the voice cried out loudly, repeating his name, over and over, crying for him, screaming for him. In pain and bearing only enough to say his name. Hurt by the lack of response, with no where to go if the one he cried for did not respond to his call.
Kazuki recognized the voice, he knew who it was and nearly dropped to his knees, for fear of this person suddenly vanishing as fast as he'd reappeared.
"Kazuki! Kazuki! Kazuki!" The voice, drenched with pain and hoarse from screaming continued.
"Soushi…"
"Kazuki? Anata wa souka ni imasu ka, Kazuki?" The voice quieted dramatically, as if the reply would determine whether or not he would have the strength to sustain his existence any longer.
"Hai, Soushi…Hai. I'm here, now that you are here." Kazuki crawled closer holding the half conscious boy to him, suddenly aware of how damaged he was mentally. "I'm here Soushi I'm here…Come back to me Soushi…I promise I'll wait…I'll be here until you can come back…When you get better…I promise…" He stroked the light brown hair, soaked from the rain. "I'll be here. I'm here. I promised I would be…"