STANDARD DISCLAIMER APPLIED.

mend
by: pixie paramount (3/14/2008, 9:46 PM)
Oofuri, Mihashi-san & hope floats


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She thinks of her boy, sometimes.

She thinks of her silly, awkward little boy—the one she loves more than anything, her boy—sadly, angrily, because she thinks that they, those boys, broke her boy.

And she's nervous today, waiting for him with a hot cup of tea in her hands. She hopes he won't come back more jaded and broken than he is; his smiles are few and he's hurting, real deep down, she is sure.

She hates those boys and, most of all, herself—because she wasn't there, didn't see, so many things. If she had done better, seen the tiny things instead of brushing them off, he'd still be whole.

(And she knows she can't pick up the pieces anymore, because she's unworthy, unfit, to do such a thing.

So she waits each day for someone who will take her boys hand in his or her own and tell him that he's alright, he's fine the way he is. Perfect the way he is.

She waits.)


The days seem to pass quicker with each day.

Her boy begins to come home babbling about a boy, this Abe-kun, and, for a moment, she sees that small, smiling little boy from long before.

Abe-kun this, Abe-kun that, Abe, Abe, Abe—like this boys name is something sacred, something beautiful.

(And, to him, it might just be. Abe-kun is the only boy to really care, the only boy to treat her boy the way she thinks he deserves to be treated, the only boy who hasn't hurt him to pieces yet, who hasn't started to prick open his old wounds open and torture him, slowly. He's the only boy and she hates admitting it but he might just take her boy away.)


She feels unending gratitude to that boy, Abe-kun, and for months, she continually pester her boy about it.

She feels that she ought to thank him, this Abe-kun, for letting her see her boy smile, no matter how slight, once more.


One day, it works. Mihashi comes home with a taller, serious-faced boy behind him in the doorframe, babbling about how he's going to stay until dinner and that this is Abe-kun, Mom.

She smiles to this boy and ushers him in, "Come in, come in! Mihashi talks so much about you." Near the foot of the stairs, she can hear Mihashi gasp; she pictures him burying his face in his hands, red in the cheeks, and frazzled. Why, Mom, why?

"He does?"

Ah, she thinks, Maybe you can mend my boy.

Maybe you can fix him up for good.

"Oh, he does."

She knows that he will.