"if you write something you wish for three times, it will come true."
yao did not know if this strange belief held even a bit of truth, but that did not stop him from scrawling zhongguo he riben, zhongguo he riben, zhongguo he riben across the paper, his usually perfect calligraphy uneven, characters shaky and illegible. china and japan, zhongguo and nihon, yao and kiku-
but then he wondered if he could write in chinese, because forcing others to conform to his way of life was what had caused this mess in the first place and so he wrote nihon nihon nihon and it wasn't enough and he wrote for them all all of them zhongguo nihon taiwan hangug xianggang over and over until the paper was covered in words upon words, scribbled over each other until barely any trace of the original paper could be seen and it still wasn't enough. china japan taiwan korea hong kong chinajapantaiwankoreahongkong they used to be so close what happened, weishenme, weishenme-
and he still wrote.
jia, jia, jia.
it was jia, family, that had taken a sword and sliced his back open. with every slight movement, every stroke of the brush (people were rarely using brushes any longer, but he was, he always would) and the fabric of his shirt shifted and the wound hurt. all he could do was hope. if he wrote enough everything would go back, it would, it had to.
and everything was red.
the coppery smell and it was bright red and bitter but yao was fine, he was no stranger to being alone. and then now everything was red, everywhere, with tiny golden stars. the stars in the sky above beijing were slowly becoming less bright year by year, these small ones of gold were all he could keep- but the red surrounding them seemed to drown it all out- his people wanted happiness, and he obliged them, but it wasn't workingit would eventually, it had to.
and then he couldn't see the sky anymore.
the stars, the moon, the rabbit-
this smoke, this dirty pollution, this corruption, now he remembered why he had resisted change because he had finally industrialized and look where it had gotten him, he couldn't see the sky anymore. and he couldn't see the moon.
when he tried to think back to that day where everything had somehow gone wrong, all he could remember was throwing down his pride and shouting, screaming after that retreating figure until his voice cracked and he couldn't make another word come out, "bie zhou, bie zhou, kiku, bie likai wo" but the black eyes that he had never been able to read the emotion in were as blank as ever and they faded away and disappeared as the figure in a military uniform, a western military uniform, did exactly what he had begged him not to and left him.
—-
yet another japan/china drabble. I should stop writing these. but that's unlikely to happen soon.
also, thank you very much to the person who corrected me on my less-than fabulous chinese! I've only been taking mandarin for a little less than a year, so hopefully I got it right now.
oh, and I don't own hetalia.
translations:
zhongguo he riben- china and japan
weishenme- why
jia- family
bie zhou- don't leave
bie likai wo- don't leave me