Eyes of a Ghost
By silverymare.
Challenge #5. - One-shot. A character must survive either a week/day without something that very regular in their life.
A/N: How about an eternity?
From above, spots of brightness fell onto the tree's darkened, many-veined leaves, that covered the branch where a ghost sat. This sunlight allowed the animal residents, not noticing their other visitor, a glance down from the shrine's tree, to stop for a moment from their daily, hurrying lives, and peek at a tall man. He was standing hesitantly at the quiet burial ground, his body stiff with emotion. With a book briefcase at his shod feet, and a professor's look about him, his round glasses were perched onto a firm nose; Fujitaka Kinomoto glanced up for a moment at the familiar and undisturbed tree, drinking in the sight. For the occupants of the ceaseless tree, the insects, small birds and wild bees, he too was a familiar sight, but one that was of no significance. In Tokyo, Japan, there was little ground left over for the masses of dead. Life was to be lived; and the living earth was left for those who were still loving, crying and remembering. The ghost looked on.
From the numerous slate-grey steps, up to where the Shinigami Shrine loomed from above, Kinomoto-sensei had climbed. First, it had been every day, then to each week, then to months, and finally, select days of the year. The familiar sight of shrine grounds, encompassing the graveyard, had seen snow, rain, hail and fallen leaves in his weary eyes.
It was her resting place, and they had chosen where the shrine mount met the blue, everlasting sky in solemn greeting and worship, though she had never been religious. Trying to allow them a sense of closure, it was here that the shrine's monk had left them on the first day. To mourn, to seek peace and to regret. The youngest had not fully come to terms that her mother had disappeared, forever enquiring when 'Okaa' would be home.
The oldest, was left with a quieter nature. He quit his piano lessons, locked himself in his room, and refused meals. Told off his sister for asking about her mother, making her cry and leaving the room in a stoic daze. She had left a broken family, something that they had never planned, or foreseen. She had never wished it upon them all, only wished for innocent, small things in death. Yes, she had asked for them to be happy, but there was one selfish wish. It was this particular wish that had been the reason to why he had journeyed far from their separated resting places, him, their yellow home, and her, her grave, to adorn her final resting place. Flowers, she had asked for. Life to be surrounding her, so that even in death she would never find herself longing for colour and vibrancy. The same virtues that she herself had carried, in her everlasting smile, every bouncy step she took, every flower she caressed, and right down to every gentle grey curl.
Though it was the ending of the flower's season, he carried arms full of pink flowers, and their sweet scent drifted over the nearby graves. Nadeshiko, it whispered to the faded dead. The ghost smiled, pleased at the offering. Slowly and gently the man knelt, with one tender hand embracing on the cold, emotionless headstone, his loving brown eyes directed at the inscription tooled into the grey slate. His down-turned mouth faced the lovely portrait he had placed on the side of the tomb. It was of a smiling, contented woman, who had placed one hand on top of her swollen stomach, her curls gently crushed and shaded by a wide-brimmed summer hat, dressed in a loosely flowing dress, complimented in its leaf-green shades. Nadeshiko.
He stood there, the warm wind gently caressing his cheek, all the while staring at the photo, drinking in one of her soft moments. It spoke of her happy pregnancy with Sakura, and their viewing of the first pink blossoms that Spring. A photo he had taken himself, when she had taken a break from her modelling. It was also a very different picture, unlike her pale, silent but smiling form just before the death. When Fujitaka had brought her in to the hospital, she had been frightened, bewildered at her lack of speech. She had clung to him like a lost child, looking to him with pleading eyes, asking for an explanation of her problems.
It had been due to her genetics, Miro-sama had said. A stroke had hit her brain, and she had lost the ability of speech, and she could not walk. So he had left her there, walked away with their curious but apprehensive children. She had not despised him; she wrote on her pad, she did not hate the hospital for its cold, clinical walls and the matter-of-fact nature the doctors and nurses carried. When she had still been able to be wheeled around, nurses had often found her either in the children's wards, playing with the ill children or staring into the newborns' glass windows, alongside proud fathers and families with softened looks. Hospitals were a place of death, much assured, but they were also a place of life, and second chances.
She had not been given a second chance however. He remembered his last visit to the hospital. The wintriness of her bony hands, the gentle, affectionate grey eyes that remained closed. They had placed a white sheet closed over her, sealing her forevermore. She had died in the oncoming Winter's embrace, like the flowers die until Spring.
Her grey eyes still haunted him, and at various times of the day, though always alone, they annoyed and beamed down on him, watching from the different portraits he had changed daily. Sometimes he could feel himself about to lightly berate her for leaving her lunch behind, and turned around to find she had vanished, only to be reminded of her death. Times like that he either retreated to his study, as the harrowing early death still cut into him deigning to follow him around. And the dust motes that floated in from the weedy sunlight reminded him of the cherry blossom petals that fell in their small wedding ceremony.
The death haunted him. He always seemed to feel a presence near, or about the yellow, memory-filled house. Sometimes it followed him, walking, if one could call it walking, with him or faded away when he turned to check. Other times he felt a whisper over his own daughter, like a murmured breath or when he had caught his oldest looking off to a side, at ease with what he saw. Sakura had never met her mother. There was little to remember, as day by day, Fujitaka himself struggled to remember what he knew of his wife. What he thought was the memories of her. But each time a memory is pulled out, it is altered in the slightest way, so the colours and laughter will sound different to what life had been. And in time, even he would forget.
He stroked the photo, his calloused thumb gently rubbing over her glassy cheek, before dropping his hand with a sigh. No tears would fall, one of the many promises that he'd given her. He knelt in front of the man-made grave, and reverently placed the blossoms from his arms over the grassy knoll. Twenty six had been such a young age. They had only been able to spend ten blissful years together, but now the crevasse of seven, weary-long years had come between.
"Nadeshiko," he whispered. "Nadeshiko."
He stood, brushing grass motes off his pant leg and opened his leather briefcase. From within the neatly arranged papers and pens, he gently took out some still-warm sweet cakes, wrapped in pink tissue, white and wholesome pastry, which he placed onto the foot of the grave. Murmuring a prayer, his head tilted in solemn emotion, his hands pressed together. She had always favoured sweet cakes and red tea.
He closed his briefcase. With one last sweeping gaze at the grave and surroundings; the blue heavens and white clouds, he walked away, following the long, steep path down to the shrine. The ghost moved. It regarded his retreating figure with bright emerald eyes, standing in the spot where he had only moments been. It waved at his back, smiling happily and tenderly, its hand reaching up as high up in the sky as possible. Dressed in a flowing, flowery dress, the ghost makes no attempt for speech, as an unknown breeze makes its dress flutter. It guards his movements, and watches over him. As he makes his way back to the front of the shrine, a soft rain dusted his clothes, as if a kiss.