If I didn't say so before, this story will be made up of the past, the present, and fantasies. I'll mark the chapters to show which is which. For instance, this chapter is about how Fuji and Tezuka met.
Yeah… so the story was proofread instead of me packing. (If I try and put just one more towel in the thing, I think it's going to explode. Kyoka is NOT a good packer. And... I think my brain's going to die if the phone rings once more!
Thank you everyone, for your kind reviews.
I will be back by next Saturday… probably will be updating my other story rather than this one, though.
Disclaimer: No, I don't own anything.
Chapter One- MEMORIES
-Fuji-
The Past
The gentle wind blew listlessly across the beach, sketching a picture of perfection. Today the sun shone down on the sand, revealing a beach that stretched peacefully for miles. Encompassed within the whole place was a myriad of different ecosystems, each unique to the environment that had developed within a picture of larger scale. There was grass not far off, known for small rodents and insects. Nearer to the ocean one would come across the tide pools, a diverse world of their own.
Occasionally, the unwary, or more likely arrogant, tourist would venture in and ruin one of the ecosystems by trampling within the small pool of water, disturbing or even killing the organisms within. Some children would even pull the animals out of the tide pools if nobody reprimanded them for it.
A man, though, was known to guard the beach on weekends when the tourists were most prevalent. He would reprimand the small children scurrying about the beach, reminding them coolly that the ecosystems within the tide pools were made up of living, breathing creatures. When he seemed to figure that his work was done, the stranger would drift over to the tide pools and hunch over them for an hour or so, either sketching what he saw or taking pictures with his camera. Sometimes a little girl, wide-eyed and soft-faced accompanied him, clinging to his hand.
Ancient beliefs seemed to guide him. He followed the ideas that the earth was a breathing thing, and if one didn't know him properly, they would mistake his appreciation for nature as worship of the mother earth.
He had an eternal smile, breaking across his features brightly. He seemed to be able to walk around with his eyes closed, except when he found a particular action to be bothersome. Then, his eyes would open and that gentle smile would fade like a dampened picture. Fuji was a person of strong beliefs, not somebody to allow himself to be pushed around. If anyone were to be doing some sort of pushing, it would be he, because Fuji Shuusuke was never cornered. At least, that was how others made him out to be.
He'd at first not been particularly fond of the arts. Fuji's attention and mind was fleeting as good weather on a sweet spring day. In school, he was focused, yet if one were to place him in a lively flower field, he would one moment be sniffing a daisy and then another chasing after a butterfly. One moment it would be sunshine, and then it would be torrents of dangerous rain to be followed by a thunderstorm. This unpredictability was possibly what gave him the eye for natural beauty. One could fairly say that he had an appreciation of the smaller things in life. At times, he could seem vengeful, but at times when that wasn't the case, he was calm as the clear, unbroken surface of the water.
Many tourists on one Saturday scattered away from him as vast as the sea before them. They ebbed and flowed like the ocean, too, and Fuji having both experience with crowds and ocean was able to follow this strong current to where he intended to be without being swept away in the process. Many had heard the stories of him, or perhaps had overheard whispers of rumors of him while sitting idly at their breakfast table poking at their cornflakes. He was cunningly smart, some said, a child prodigy. Others warned of his tendency to point in the wrong direction just to see a person's reaction, because he liked to play with a person's mind. Obviously, though, whatever they had been told at their hotel over breakfast was not something positive, because mothers would pull their children in the opposite direction whenever he came near, and only a few souls chose to ignore him.
The smile on his features widened. He knelt next to a young woman observing the tide pools, peacefully so. At the moment, his aura seemed light, playful. His eyes didn't open, but the threat ran through the air.
"Shuusuke!" The name was pronounced slowly, from general knowledge. A little girl broke space between the two and thrown her arms around Fuji to the best of her ability.
Her name, known in western order as Anna Jacobs, was something Fuji had grown accustomed to saying. The young woman he'd kept his eye on for the past few minutes had her hands in her lap, and seemed to be blushing slightly. Tilting his head to the side slightly, he swept Anna into his arms and looked expectantly at the other girl. It was a test, really. At least, that was what he told himself. The degree of red in her cheeks darkened slightly. Fuji thought it to be a shame, really. He wasn't thinking of anything other than the fact she might have been a shy girl, like Anna.
Today, she seemed to be the only one who got near the tide pools yet respected them. She was the only one who didn't scurry off when she was within a two-foot radius of Fuji. "Shuusuke, who is she?" Anna clung tighter. The woman was observing a snail as it made its way slowly across the rocky bottom. In the distance, the gulls cawed, sweeping down to pick at some food that a careless traveler had left. Fuji's eyes opened and looked expectantly at her.
She wasn't a half-bad looking young woman, with fair hair and soft green eyes. Fuji felt nothing for her, despite what his thoughts might have led to. Her eyes were a lush green, much like a forest. Licking the roof of his mouth, he extended his hand. He wasn't from around here, but he knew the nation's customs. Just as of late he'd gotten used to the western order of names. "Anna-chan, I wouldn't know."
Exotic… his voice sounded exotic. The woman looked up, slightly taken aback. The voice was sweet, though, like powdered sugar, coated to the point where it was almost too sweet. One might have even taken his voice as a threat. The girl tried her tongue across her lips, testing the bittersweet taste in the air and deciding if she was supposed to speak or not. "Why don't you introduce yourself?"
Her look lasted long and hard; she tried with all her might to find a skeleton in his closet, to find some flaw among his perfect face. The attempts didn't work though, and she slowly stated "Amy… Amy Johnson." He nodded. With a weak, trembling finger, she pointed towards Anna.
"Is she yours?" All of the shy nature was gone from her voice, and the tone warmed to the temperature of the sun beating down from above. Far away, a wave crashed; the water washed up near their ankles before the pull of the current brought the water farther back, away from people. Fuji took a deep breath of air. A shallow-water fish leapt from the water and made a splash.
"No, I just take care of her."
It was a surprise to him, really, that Anna's parents even paid her medical treatment. Anna said that they constantly worked, and sometimes if it wasn't for Fuji, she would be walking on her own to the hospital, unaccompanied for her doctor's checkup. The parent's insolence upset him; they were icebergs when it came to the emotional well-being of their daughter, not to mention it didn't take a genius to realize that it was good for such a young girl to be walking to her own doctor's appointments, especially unaccompanied by any form of adult.
Her hair, a faded red, blew lightly in the wind. Anna had been assigned to a program pairing younger children with older teenagers. A schoolteacher hadn't enrolled her because of the emotional neglect from her parents, but because of her social skills. Anna could be described into proportion as a turtle, perhaps. She was nervous and took things slow, sometimes withdrawing her head when she became frightened. Anna was smaller than most children her age and was affected by leukemia, something that Fuji had suffered and survived when he was younger.
The small, thin girl was clinging to him, as if she expected Amy Jacobs to turn into a ferocious man-eating bear. Her small faced pressed into his neck and her arms tightened around his throat. "Anna-chan… I can't breathe…" His wheezy voice came out with a gust of wind, and it was carried by the wind to a far-off place. Fuji's eyes gently closed again when she loosened her arms from around his neck. The woman laughed, her giggle sounding windy and high-pitched to him. Anna muttered her apologies to Fuji.
"And what's your name?" Her questioned seemed warm, though a little prodding. Fuji shifted, and for some strange woman he did not feel comfortable under the affection of a woman. He didn't know why, even though he had always been like that. Unlike some boys his age, his throat did not constrict around a pretty girl. He didn't go chasing after them like some did, even at age seventeen.
"Shuusuke Fuji." He still hadn't gotten used to saying his own name in Western order. "But you can call me Fuji." Fuji surveyed the sun, sinking
"Ah, that's a nice name. So you're Chinese?"
That still made his throat tighten with slight anger and annoyance, even though in America many people would get China mixed up with Japan. Fuji couldn't see why. The languages both sounded different. The Chinese used calligraphy entirely rather than the Japanese using a mixture of kanji, hiragana, and katakana. China was a very large country bound in the continent of Asia. Japan was off the coast of Asia and was made up of four main islands.
"Japanese," he corrected. His brows knitted together in slight frustration. This hadn't been the first time he'd needed to correct somebody, and it was getting quite annoying.
"That's so cool!" she responded. Inwardly, Fuji's face sunk. So she wasn't really a shy girl after all. The phrase held the likeliness of a Japanese schoolgirl's phrase "Sugoi, ne!" Even though he had left Japan years ago, he could remember seeing a cartoon series where a girl had done that exact thing, except her eyes had been wide and there were sparkles surrounding her figure. Fuji had found it all incredibly cheesy, even at the young age of six.
The sun was sinking low in the sky, and Fuji found it as an excuse. Besides, Anna obviously didn't like the woman. She was nice enough, well mannered and kind, but Anna being an extremely shy girl rarely warmed up to people quickly. Fuji didn't want her to spend the rest of the daylight hours with her face buried in his neck. Not to say that he didn't thank the gods above, because the woman had something strange about her that made him uneasy.
"I have to go," he explained, scooping Anna up in his arms. The sky was a lovely mix of pinks and blues, making a nice painting. The scenery never changed, until one eyes met the telltale signs of civilization, a street and houses in the background, along with a hotel. "You see, we live in the city, and I'm supposed to be back there before dark." That wasn't true; he was allowed to stay out after dark and considering that Anna's parents generally worked until the vicinity of three in the morning, it was better that he keep her with him for as long as possible. Besides, the sun was about to set, casting a red glow across the ground. It was almost an hour to get back to the city, and it would be dark long before they reached their destination.
"Oh," Her hands twisted when she stood on stiff legs, stumbling slightly. Anna took her head out of the crook of his neck and lay instead against his shoulder. There was a gentle wind, though it wasn't even enough to successfully knock a speck of dust of the head of a pin. "Fuji… Shuusuke, I have something to ask you." Her voice was bashful, and she mispronounced his given name. Fuji didn't make a move to correct her.
"Do you believe in love at first sight?" The silence bit like the bitter cold of an arctic winter, it's frosty winds tugging at Fuji, blowing his hair back and chilling his face. Unconsciously, Fuji shivered. He didn't like this woman that much, and he could never call it love at fist sight. Her hand touched his, and he stepped back. The skin of a woman was almost too soft for his liking. "I had a lot of fun talking to you, Fuji. I hope that we can see each other again." Leaning in, she had the audacity to kiss him lightly on the lips. Fuji pushed her away, gently, though.
"I do not believe in love at first sight." His reply was not cold, but it was not very considerate of her feelings. It foretold a warning that would never be spoken, a dangerous wind that blew over the coast as a strong storm, darkening the skies to an angry, threatening black. "I am sorry. It was nice meeting you, Miss Johnson."
"Wait!" Her call was broken up like a garbled radio broadcast, being carried away by a sudden gust of wind. Fuji set Anna on the ground and took her hand, heading towards the bus stop. Nowadays, there was a bus that came and went from the city every half an hour, and if one paid twenty-five cents they could ride the line all the way to the outskirts of the city, where Fuji needed to go. Luckily, the woman hadn't followed him. The sun was setting, the atmosphere changing into night.
They caught the bus ten minutes later, placed the fee into the collection box, and took a seat near the windows. Anna liked to point out at the scenery and say how pretty it was, even in the dead of the night when light didn't extend far from the battery powered lights overhead that cast a dim glow across the entire length of the bus. The driver hummed to himself and had the radio playing softly. Few people rode the bus at this time.
"Shuusuke, can we go to the park before I have to go home, please?" It was hard to argue with a little girl's pleading tone, because it was so innocent. Her ever-so-large eyes reflected the hope that Fuji would honor her simple wishes. She, unlike some children her age, never asked for material things, or perhaps something else that involved money. She got a lot of amusement out of going to the park with Fuji, though. It was like giving a normal seven-year-old child year's worth supply of candy. Here, she blinked and clasped her hands gently, twisting to look up at Fuji. Her lower lip quivered slightly. The bus driver up front coughed. "Please?" The plea was long and drawn out.
The park wasn't the most well lit place at night. One of the streetlights near it had gone out, and beyond the borders the park was almost completely dark. That, and Fuji had seen some strange boys about his age loitering around. Fuji was a daredevil, always teasing danger. This time, though, he felt slightly nervous. Here, the crickets chirped. The one time when Fuji had passed, the teenagers had looked up their conversation. Everything had fallen to an eerie silence. One of those boys had looked at him strangely once when he was taking a shortcut through that part. Fuji had never seen anything else like that before, and he felt slightly worried should Anna run off. Fuji knew self-defense, and could easily give any one of them a bloody nose and a black eye. Anna, though, was only a little girl and wouldn't be able to stand up for herself if those boys turned out to be absolute creeps. Her soft eyes persisted in pleading him, though.
"Okay, then. But you have to stay with me, okay?" He rubbed Anna's red hair. She smiled softly, something the little, pale girl rarely did. "Do you promise?" He was like a father to her, perhaps, though it made sense. She had little else to go home to, and it was most likely that if Shuusuke wasn't their as the assigned "big brother" she wouldn't go anywhere but her bedroom and the living room. No doubt, the park was a treat for her. Her parents gave her as many physical necessities as a young girl would need, but when it came to emotional support, they failed. If Fuji didn't have other issues to worry about, he would go up and punch the irresponsible mother and father in the face. Parents were supposed to take care of their children.
"I promise!" The bus let them off only a little ways away from the park, and even through the sound of cars, he was able to hear the peaceful chirp of crickets from the park. It really was dark out now, and he had to let his eyes adjust from that dimly lit setting in the bus. He looked around cautiously for a moment. Tonight, there was no sign of those teenaged boys, and Fuji was grateful. There was an older man about forty occupying himself with picking up trash. Fuji dismissed him as any sort of threat and took Anna's hand.
She was a little girl, and that was all there was to it. She played with the sand in the sandbox, and Fuji push her on the swings, and then went back to happily making mountains of sand. The tiny grains flowed easily through her fingers. A flash of light caught Fuji's eye. It bothered him slightly, and only by chance he turned his head.
They were being watched.
It wasn't one of those teenagers, but an older man with eyes that glinted like diamonds, with an unspoken emotion just as had the teenager's. Fuji kept an eye on him, though only out of the corner of his eye. Anna giggled, clapped, and told Fuji that she had named the largest mountain of said "Shuusuke Mountain." She smiled and began naming others with sillier names, while Fuji listened, nodded, and kept a close watch on the strange man, who was approaching closer.
"This one's called Fluffy Mountain, after my neighbor's cat. Fluffy is so cute!" She was only this sociable around he, but Fuji wasn't paying attention. There was a glint of a knife, and it was enough to raise a red flag, enough for him to stand and step out of the sandbox. Anna looked at him with a light pout and a sad look in her eye. "Don't you like my mountains?" Her question carried a bit of sadness.
"Of course I do, they're great." He looked over at the man and knelt at the sandbox. "Anna-chan, I need you to stay here, okay. Don't leave that spot no matter what. I need you to cross your heart."
"I won't leave, Shuusuke." Her reply was innocent, and surely the stranger had heard. Yet when he turned on his heels with full intentions of confronting the man before anything happened, he heard a cry behind him. He'd known right when he saw that man that they were being ambushed, and it probably wouldn't have been safe to leave, but he hadn't expected this. That teenage boy he'd seen only once before was holding a struggling Anna by the neck. "Shuusuke!" she cried in distress. Fuji's fists clenched. In the background, the crickets chirped. This was hardly a peaceful situation, though.
"One wrong move and I'll break her neck. It wouldn't be that hard." Fuji's heart clenched in fury at his threat; why, if it weren't Anna who was being threatened right here and right now, this boy would be in a world of hurt. Nobody touched the people he cared about it and got out of it uninjured. Fuji simply couldn't allow such a thing.
A pair of arms pulled him from behind, pulling the very breath from his lungs. Fuji took a shaking gasp. It hurt now to breathe. He registered dimly the feeling of being slammed hard against an oak tree. The teenaged boy didn't let go of Anna, and by the time he did he joined the other in pinning Fuji against the tree.
Now, Fuji couldn't struggle. He tried, he even kicked a few times, but it got no reaction of the foes, and he couldn't do much considering both arms and legs were pinned firmly to the bark. It made his back ache in a horrendous, searing pain; it bruised him. Once again, he was faced with that teenaged boy's eyes. Anna came and tried to rescue him. "Leave him alone! What are you going to do?" She clung to the teenager's leg, but he kicked her off with no effort. Fuji's eyes were wide open, angry.
"What a pretty face." His smirk revealed gleaming white canines. "Such anger, though." He clicked his tongue lightly. Fuji's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps we should fix that." His lips were just barely against his neck before a deep voice called out.
"What are you doing, you two?" The voice was stern, and over the shoulder of the teenager, he saw a man probably only a few years older than Fuji stoop to pick up a sobbing Anna. She whimpered into his arms, but unlike her normal reaction to strangers, she only pointed her small finger over towards Fuji, her lips trembling. It took him a minute, as I he was trying to decide whether or not he should intervene in the situation. Fuji's pulse raced just beneath pale, colorless lips that were too close for comfort.
"Let him go." Fuji was slightly unpinned, but the teenaged boy turned back to the older man, challenging him with the hair on the back of his neck slightly raised.
"Take the girl or something, or find your own. I got him first." Fuji's eyes were narrowing again. It wasn't all that pleasurable being referred to as if he was property. Anna wasn't, either. Why, if that man hurt Anna…. Fuji's fists clenched, his teeth ground. He was looking more like a mad dog not sure to whom to attack first. The man was calm, surveying the situation and deciding what to do.
"My orders don't have to do with anything that you speak of."
The fight persisted. "Come on, I've been waiting for this for months. Why do you have to have him?"
"Both of you," the man's voice was still soft, but it held a very dangerous note, perhaps as strong as the one's that Fuji was able to muster. The two men looked up, suddenly frightened by his tone. "Go, or there will be consequences. We will discuss this later." Both grunted, and Fuji found himself being released very rapidly. His knees gave out and he fell to the ground. Anna squirmed lightly within the man's arms, straining to get towards Fuji. The man knelt beside Fuji and released Anna. She immediately clung to him, but he could tell that her eyes were firmly affixed t this strange man. The two others left the park muttering about how this man, now dubbed "Tezuka" ruined all the fun.
Fuji opened his mouth. He supposed he deserved an explanation for what had happened. "What are you doing out so late, and with a young girl?" His question was expectant. Fuji's eyes looked up, firmly affixed on the strange man who had saved him from the two creepy others.
"Why does it matter to you?" He completely ignored Fuji's retort. Nobody was able to ignore it before. He had done it successfully, though, brushing it off as if it were nothing.
The man wasn't too strange looking he supposed, aside from being pale. Handsome features stood chiseled. The man was a tall figure, with messy hair and hazel eyes, hidden behind rimless glasses. Perhaps the strange thing about him was his outfit. He wore a long, black trench coat, rather heavy for the night. It didn't look bad on him or anything… it was just that it wasn't the sort of season he should have been wearing it.
Fuji was sure right now that this pressure he felt on his chest, weighing it heavy was annoyance, annoyance that the man had already pried into his business and was now ordering him around. His pulse still raced having yet to calm as the man's eyes swept over him, acting as x-rays, trying to extract the truth.
"Do you believe in love at first sight?"
Fuji's eyebrow raised in remembrance of that question.
"You shouldn't be out here. The next time such a thing happens, you might not be so fortunate." He picked up Anna and bade him to stand. Fuji looked to be challenging a rock; it was like he was trying to race with it, and despite the fact that he had working legs and the rock did not, the rock was still winning. Frustrating as it was, he did probably save Anna… Fuji was remaining firm in the fact that given a few minutes, he would have been able to take care of the situation on his own.
"Where are you going?" Tezuka began to move, with Anna in his arms. Anna called after him, reaching out gently. He followed without question. The man gave no answer, but as soon as he was out of the park, he asked where Anna lived. Fuji reluctantly gave an address, and they were off. People weren't on the streets at this time of night, but Fuji was sure that they would have stared if they had been. His eyes flicked towards this man whom had been called Tezuka. This man knew his way around well, though he was like a shadow, slipping through a few alleys and taking a route Fuji never would have normally took. The moon cast a glow across the street, and the man's skin seemed to glow with it; he seemed inclined to that moonlight, energized by it.
They reached Anna's doorstep a minute later and he set her on it. "Don't wander out by the park again, not at this time of night." He told Fuji firmly. With that, he turned heel and began to walk away, his coat swishing behind him like a storm cloud. Fuji suddenly stopped.
"Anna, I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" He stood fully and his feet moved before he could think. He was following the man, almost somebody who would be a person to be on a wanted poster. He didn't have that certain cruelty about him most street criminals did. In fact, he didn't seem entirely safe. He seemed almost to the likeness of one of those men who ended up going crazy and becoming a secret serial murderer.
Fuji ignored it. He'd always been the one to be stubborn about things like that.
"You're following me," he noted a minute later. His voice was stern; almost in the way a leader would order his follower. This man wasn't his ruler, though. Fuji was determined to get what he wanted from the man: a name, and an explanation.
"That wasn't my home. It was Anna's. I can walk myself home, by the way." The man turned to him. They slowly reached a stop. The wind was quiet. "I want your name, and I want to know what happened back there. Why did they listen to you?"
"I am their leader," he answered. Fuji looked at him, and tapped his toe. The cool wind passed. A car passed. It didn't break their silence. Fuji's tapping foot continued. He looked as if he was angry, and ready to challenge Tezuka at something. "And my name is Tezuka Kunimitsu." Fuji's eyebrows raised, knit together, and then fell. He wanted to punch the man, for some strange reason. His hand shook, rose, and was stopped by Tezuka's hand. Fuji's eyes dilated. Perhaps he only gave that information because he thought it would likely make Fuji go away, go home.
Flash one, Tezuka's fingers were pushing down his arm.
"Tezuka…" the name sounded like it hadn't been said in Western order. It sounded like it was more of a family name, than anything. "So you're Japanese?" Maybe he had ended up putting up with locals confusing Japan with China, too. There was a firm nod.
"Yes." A smile curled across Fuji's lips.
"I am, too. I was born in Kyoto."
Flash two, Fuji's hand fell to the side, with Tezuka's still hovering slightly above his. Their fingers twined for a minute, only by accident.
"Tezuka-san…"
Flash three, and Tezuka's head was bowed in low apology. Fuji usually wasn't used to feeling like this. His heart skipped a beat, and Fuji disliked it very much.
"It was a pleasure to meet you, Fuji-kun." When he spoke, Fuji realized that it revealed two gleaming white teeth that were sharper than normal. Tezuka's eyes were dilated for just a second, and in that one fleeting millisecond, he gave Fuji a hungry look. Soon enough, though, it disappeared. Tezuka was quiet. He didn't seem to be one very much inclined to words.
What was he?
Flash four, Tezuka was walking calmly in the opposite direction, and by the time Fuji was able to feel movement in his legs again, he was gone. Fuji was left alone on the street, wondering if he had imagined an extremely handsome man standing before him on the sidewalk. Fuji would let go, his thoughts taking flight.
He would fly away…
Into the sun…
That strange feeling in Fuji's chest wouldn't go away.
