Aokigahara

disclaimer: no, it's not mine.
(1) Gaijin means foreigner, usually with a demeaning and alienating connotation.
(2) Fujisan is the Japanese name for Mount Fuji

Alright, so this had to be the worst way to spend his first week in Japan. Go explore the wilderness, his raving lunatic of a father had suggested, and the next thing he knew, he had been locked out of the house with a backpack and a malfunctioning compass. Admittedly, Japan was vastly different from America, but Ichigo still found it an insult to his intelligence that he had managed to get lost.

Ichigo sighed. Everything had been fine that morning when he took the train down to Mount Fuji, but clearly the world had other plans when he alighted at the wrong stop, took the first bus he saw and leapt off when he saw fit only to discover that he was well and truly lost. If the abundance of overgrown trees and eerie lack of people were any indicator, that is.

It had been several hours since that horrible split-second decision he'd made to enter the forest and Ichigo was regretting it with all his heart. The utter silence was killing him and the complete lack of life - not even insects - had begun to creep him out long ago.

Pity the compass was broken.

Though he had briefly considered walking in a straight line until he met a wall or a road (he thought the latter was more likely), Ichigo had resigned to his fate of sleeping on a tree that night. Regardless, he pressed on, crunching his feet noisily on the carpet of dead, fallen leaves and wondering why exactly the place was so darn deserted.

Honestly, how could he have spent over half a day without even meeting anyone? For the first few hours or so of wandering, there had at least been litter - signs of human life. Long, white strips littered the ground, though he wasn't quite sure of what they were for. But now, the forest seemed almost untouched by human and animal alike, the still air humid and windless.

Ichigo slowed down, dragging his feet heavily across the hard ground. He could vaguely hear a rustling noise somewhere to his left.

Wait - noise?

He spun, almost too quickly, to see a small white-haired boy balanced atop a large tree root protruding from the ground. The boy was awfully short; how old was he? Ten? 'Hey,' he called out, hoping to receive a response.

The boy whirled around, his eyes wide with shock.

Teal. Never seen that before.

Those eyes were bright with fear and the boy stood, transfixed for a moment, his mouth hung slightly open. Without warning, he stumbled off the tree root and ran.

And damn, that kid could run. Huffing and puffing like a big bad wolf, Ichigo had finally caught up and grabbed the thin wrist to stop him from escaping. Almost immediately the boy's other hand was at work, prying Ichigo's larger fingers off his own wrist. He was shaking terribly and Ichigo spotted tears glistening in his eyes, threatening to spill if he didn't let go.

So grabbing him hadn't been the brightest of his ideas. Hurriedly he knelt down and loosened his grip. 'Hey, I'm not going to hurt you or anything. I just need to get out of this forest.'

Judging by the look he was getting, Ichigo hadn't done much convincing or comforting. 'Okay, maybe we didn't get off on the right foot. I'm Kurosaki Ichigo,' and he extended his hand in what he hoped was a friendly gesture. Hesitantly, the boy shook it.

'So what's a kid like you doing here?' The boy visibly blanched.

'I'm not a kid. I'm twelve.'

'Right. Uh, I'm new here and I'm kind of lost and maybe you could - oh. Don't tell me you're lost too.' The boy withdrew his hand from Ichigo's lengthy handshake with a scowl and the silence once again had Ichigo fumbling for words.

'Could you tell me your name, then?'

'Hitsugaya Toshiro,' he mumbled softly.

'How old are you? Not twelve, are you?' too many thoughts inundated Ichigo and questions came tumbling out uncontrolled. 'Where do you stay? What are you doing here?'

White eyebrows knitted together. 'I should be asking you that, Gaijin. What are you doing here?'

'Look, I'm just lost, and if I swear I'm not going to mug you, will you swear to at least let me stick around you so I don't feel so pathetically lost?' The boy - Toshiro, he reminded himself - laughed dryly, though the tremor in his voice did not go unnoticed.

Hitsugaya stepped back, attempting to distance himself from the orange-haired male. 'I don't want to have anything to do with you. What you do here is none of my business. Stop coming towards me! Go away, do whatever you want. Leave me alone! I don't want to see anyone here!' His voice had slowly escalated to a scream, the panic in his tone evident.

Ichigo could tell, this Toshiro kid was terrified of him. 'Why are you so scared anyway? I haven't even done anything to you, why would you-'

'You don't know what it feels like to see someone...see them...' He trailed off, fierce hardened eyes quickly softening as he lowered his gaze to the ground.

'Wait. I don't get it at all! Hey, I - wait up! You little brat, stop running away!' Hitsugaya raced through the forest floor nimbly while Ichigo stumbled clumsily behind him, grabbing at random tree trunks as he passed by to steady himself every so often.

Which, ultimately, lead him to lose sight of the boy, and Ichigo wound up sitting on a tree root uttering profanities to himself.

/

Hitsugaya thought he had run pretty far, pretty fast, or at least enough to lose the strange carrot-top. Pressing his back against a broad tree, he struggled to catch his breath.

He was finally regaining his composure, his breaths slowing down, when a loud thud echoed from the other side of the tree, accompanied by a little colourful language. His breath hitched and he froze.

'Dammit. Stupid little brat, how does he expect me to get out of here now?' Twigs snapped. 'What happened to the whole "Japanese are kind and helpful" rubbish?'

Hitsugaya continued to hold his breath, his mind spinning in every possible direction thinking of ways to leave silently. The deep voice very clearly belonged to the orange-haired young man he'd met earlier. He was confused, he'd been able to outrun anyone who'd happened to cross paths with him in this forest. But...this person seemed different from all the others.

'Geez, what is up with this forest anyway? Doesn't seem like the typical tourist place to me,' Hitsugaya was ready to believe his blood was freezing over as he listened to the frustrated person's - what was it again, Kurosaki's? - monologue. How could one not know where this was? Aokigahara was infamous.

Too infamous.

He slowly inched around the wide trunk, until he was less than a metre away from Kurosaki. 'You...' he considered his words carefully. 'You do not know where this is?'

Kurosaki yelped and leapt a considerable distance into the air. 'W-whoa! Toshiro, you seriously scared the shit out of me!'

'Hitsugaya,' he muttered irately.

'Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. So, since it seems like you know something, what's wrong with this forest?'

'For some who's hopelessly lost in a foreign land, you seem pretty blase.'

'Foreign? Where do you stay, then?'

'Yamanashi. Where do you think you are?' The piercing teal eyes held a certain shadow of mirth.

'Well, I originally intended to go to Mount Fuji, but I kind of got lost and...well...Yamanashi? I guess.'

Teal eyes rolled, and a smirk tugged the dry lips upwards. 'So, what did your Geography teacher tell you about Yamanashi and Fujisan?'

Ichigo paused. 'I didn't study in Japan!' He exploded. 'And if I did, why should I remember crap like that! And do Elementary students even do Geography?'

'Okay, fun fact,' Hitsugaya droned monotously. 'Yamanashi is North-west of Fujisan. Aokigahara is at the North-west base of Fujisan. Aokigahara is a deserted forest.'

Ichigo spoke hesitantly, quite unsure of whether the kid was over with the little lesson yet. 'So you say this forest is called Aokigahara? What's wrong with it? You speak like it's cursed or something.'

Hitsugaya sighed softly, the light puff of white air reminding Ichigo that the sun was setting and the autumn temperatures were dropping. 'You'd be better off not knowing. You wanted to get out, right? North-west should take you somewhere, and your compass should tell you which way that is.'

Ichigo shifted uncomfortably. 'Actually, it's kind of broken,' he confessed, quite sure he looked like a complete idiot to this boy.

The feeling was confirmed with the strange look he was receiving. 'Could you direct me out, then?'

'What makes you trustworthy?'

'Hey! What's that supposed to mean? If anything it's my life that's on the line, isn't it? I mean, you could just ditch me and make a break for it, like you did earlier on, can't you?' At Ichigo's words, Hitsugaya flinched, his back straightened and his shoulders squared nervously.

Several awkward minutes of silence later, Ichigo attempted to start conversation again. 'If I tell you my life story, would you finally tell me what exactly is the problem with this forest?'

Hitsugaya raised a thin eyebrow from his position on the hard ground. Ichigo took it as a cue to begin.

'Uh, I lived with my father and two sisters overseas, up until last week. My mother was killed in a car accident ten years ago, and I'd rather not talk about that. We moved to Chiba, and my sisters are your age. My dad is a psychopath with a medical degree, and this morning he threw me out of the house with this backpack and this sorry excuse for a compass. He told me to journey through the wilderness, so here I am?'

Toshiro had begun to laugh, which Ichigo took as a good sign. Perhaps now he wouldn't be seen as a threat? 'Your turn,' he suggested.

Hitsugaya took a deep breath, slowly exhaling. 'Aokigahara is known as a suicide spot.' The dirt on the ground was suddenly very interesting; he kept his gaze fixated on it as he restlessly scuffed his grey shoes in it. 'People only come here to end their lives. Countless numbers of people come here each year, every single one of them with suicide plans. They come, and they think that nobody knows or cares about what they're doing. Even the government can't be bothered anymore.'

Ichigo was stunned. He shifted uncomfortably on the fallen branch under him, unsure of what to say. 'Um, why don't you tell me about your family, then?'

'I stay with my adoptive grandmother,' Toshiro's icy tone was beginning to trickle back, surely it was a good sign. 'And she had a granddaughter. She was four years older than me, and we grew up together.'

'Was?' Ichigo interrupted. 'What happened to her?'

Toshiro hugged his knees tightly, and Ichigo knew it wasn't because of the cold.

/

He knew something was wrong. He knew from the moment she didn't return at five that evening that something was horribly wrong.

'She's just lost track of the time,' Granny tried to reassure him, 'you know how girls are when they go shopping.'

But he knew all too well that Granny was worried too. Momo was never one to lose herself in the day's activities and neglect her curfew. The thirteen-year-old girl was responsible. Granny herself had told him so many times before.

Nonetheless here he was, nine years old, undersized and very worried. Unable to bear with the anxiety, he pushed the front door open with much effort, hurriedly grabbed a sweater and rushed out, promising to find her.

He'd spent over an hour combing the shopping district without any signs of Momo. He looked through the park; checked her favourite ice-cream parlour.

Yet he came away empty-handed.

Confused and desperate, he turned to enter the forest every responsible adult warned children against ever setting foot into. They always said "People only go there to die. Never enter the forest. You'll get lost. Don't even try."

He turned this way and that, ducked under hanging branches and clambered over roots, batted aside leaves and ran as fast as his legs could carry deeper and deeper into the dank forest.

It was purely by chance that he spotted a flash of pale pink in his peripheral vision. Stopping abruptly, he turned slowly to see the familiar brown hair, the pale pink jacket that usually hung next to his own green one in the closet, the worn-out yellow sneakers that always sat by his smaller brown ones at the house entrance, the tear-stained face and puffy red eyes of the one anf only sister he ever had.

'Momo-nee-chan...? What are you doing here? Granny's worried, and it's getting late...' The frailness and weakness of the child's voice was apparent.

'Shiro-chan?' Momo took a step back. 'Y-you shouldn't be here, but I'm glad...that someone will know.'

'Know what? Momo-nee-chan should come home. Granny has already made dinner.'

'I don't want anyone to worry later on, so Shiro-chan, take this,' and she pressed a little compass into his hands. 'I'm sorry, but there isn't a point anymore.'

The next moments were a blur to his memory. He only remembered Momo collapsing to the ground, surrounded by a sticky liquid that he now knew had to be blood. Momo was holding a knife, and she reached out to wrap her arms around him. 'Shiro-chan, don't forget that I'll always love you, okay? Be strong, not like me, live on, go back home, tell Granny I love her too, grow taller...'

And just like that, he watched the light fade from those warm brown eyes, felt the warmth recede, and discovered that the only person who spoke to him at school would never wake up again. He sat, arms tight around her as tears streamed down his pale cheeks until the police turned up accompanied by a hysterical Granny.

Everyone was puzzled. The news of Momo's passing stumped them all; not even the best psychologists could figure out why, and most decided it had to be caused by emotional stress.

He was speechless; it was one thing to enter the rumoured forest of death, and another thing to watch someone die right before you. He vaguely recalled the strong hands of the policemen prying his stiff, numb arms off his sister, and remembered bursting into unstoppable tears as Granny wrapped him in a warm hug.

/

'It's been three years, but I don't think I'll ever forget. I don't think I'll ever let go. You have no idea how scary it is to see someone in here, knowing you'll never see that person again.' Toshiro had buried his face into his knees, trying his best to stop the tears. 'I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't be-'

'Hey, it's alright, you know, to let your emotions out once in a while,' Ichigo smiled at him.

Toshiro nodded, but stubbornly brought his arms up to wipe his face on his sleeve. Getting to his feet, Ichigo offered him a hand. 'We should get out, your grandmother's probably getting worried. She probably has dinner ready, and I don't think you want her to send a search party out for you again, do you?'

Slowly standing, a small albeit genuine smile lit up his face as Toshiro shook his head. 'Out's this way,' and began walking without waiting for a response from his companion.

'W-wait! How did you know that? Isn't the compass broken?'

'Try coming here every afternoon for three years and tell me if you'd still get lost.'

end!

AN: okay, first, thanks for reading to the end! Secondly, I woud like to justify my erratic usage of Kurosaki/Ichigo and Hitsugaya/Toshiro in my narration. Just in case anyone thinks I'm going a little bonkers. I like to write in a mesh of first-third POV, in other words its a biased narration, told through the perspective of only one character. Therefore, the surrounding characters are renamed suitably to fit the perspective I'm using. It's rather handy when it comes to switching POVs without using the line thing.

lastly, please review! It would make me very happy. Thanks.

(by the way, Aokigahara is a real place, and the facts about it in this fic are pretty much accurate, including the geography)

Edit 24/01/2012: a sequel, titled Saiko has been posted for those unsatisfied souls out there.