Sayonara
Chapter 1: Their Memories
Misaki had never been a very social child. She had kept her distance from other children, always isolating herself in the corner of the playground, looking up ocassionally from her book to let the teachers know that she was still alive. She had never had a work partner for projects; for her it was always the same excuse to the teachers to stop them worrying 'I'm fine. Besides, I prefer to work alone.' But there was one child who stopped her from being completely alone. When her mother had died, he'd appeared with his father at Aiko's funeral. His unblinking green eyes met hers across the room and he watched as she howled, tears streaming in a constant flow down her small face. She had only been six years old. A child needed her mother. There was then the matter of her father who had disappeared the moment he got word of his wife's death. She was all alone. And she hated it. A hand, warm and soothing, wiped away her tears and she looked up in surprise. He had easily stepped into her bubble of isolation, without a care in the world. He looked quite a charmer but he didn't start talking about himself or his family or even her. He simply said, "I'm sorry."
Though it was a horrid place for two children to meet, they had never been separated since. His father had been a very good friend of Aiko's and, with no father present to care for her, Kou happily took Misaki into his care. "She'll be a right delight if she's Aiko's daughter. Besides, Takumi needs somebody his own age to talk to at home." And so she went, willingly, into the young boy's home. It was a mansion rather than a house and Misaki, with her own home quite small, was won over in awe. But not because she now had a big, proper home, but because she had a friend.
~o~
"Misa?" His voice echoed around the drawing room on the third floor of his mansion. A young girl of ten sat in front of a canvas, a paint brush in hand, splatters of paint on her apron, dress, hands and face. She turned with a grin, blue paint rising with the lift of her lips and yellow paint dotted across her cheeks.
"Hi Ta-chan." She taken on that nickname somewhere during the first few months of their meeting each other. Seeing the paint on her face, he smiled.
"Wait here." He returned and crossed the room with a wet flannel and held her shoulder lightly, wiping away the unwanted paint left on her face. "How'd you get it on your face?" He laughed, brushing her hair back behind her ear to keep it out of the wet paint on her skin. She shrugged.
"I just got too into painting I guess." He tsked.
"Misa, you've got it in your hair." Her hands rose to touch the painted strands of hair and found that he was right. "Go on, go and have a shower. I'll clean up your paints." She grinned and skipped out of the room.
"Thanks Ta-chan." He turned to the canvas and froze. On the white canvas in front of him was a boy and a girl, smiling at each other from across a black stary background. It was them. He touched the corner of the dried painting and smiled. He took a black pen out of the pen box and walked around to the back of the canvas and took the lid off the pen. He wrote a small note on the wooden frame. I love you and I'm sorry.
He'd known for a week that the next day, he'd be on a plane to England. And he would leave her here in the care of the house maids and butlers until he returned.