Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Inflorescence: (n.) Latin. A flowering or blossoming; an arrangement of flowers.
It had not been the best of competitions. She'll just leave it at that without elaborating further. It would only drag down her mood even more.
Everytime she loses, she wonders what would happen if she just gave up her dream of going pro. There are other more lucrative careers and whole worlds out there she hasn't yet discovered. Wouldn't it be better to become a teacher, or a nurse, or an office worker than a professional Go player?
But then...but then she thinks of how much she loves to win and how painful it would be to quit and she doesn't know anything except putting her head down and soldiering on.
Still, those thoughts aren't important now. She's come back to visit Uchiha-senpai again.
"Oh, are you going up to visit Uchiha-san again?" The receptionist stops her before she makes her way upstairs.
"I am." She's missed the normal weekend practice because she'd been at the competition, and it's a soft Monday evening, close to dinnertime. "Is there something wrong?"
"He had someone else come visit earlier." Honda-san sighs. "I just wanted to tell you, just in case that young man is still up there."
"Thank you." Kanae bows to her once in gratitude and walks up anyway. If there is someone else there with Uchiha-senpai then she could simply leave. It does not have to be awkward or of concern.
She pauses for a moment before the door of 217-B. There's no noise on the other side, so she assumes the visitor must have left.
She's curious though, about who visited Uchiha-senpai. Honda-san had said it was a young man.
"You're late." Uchiha-senpai says. "You normally come on weekends." There's a card on the table. Presumably from the other person who visited, but no other sign that anyone else has been by except for the wilting sunflowers in the vase.
She doesn't mention the card. It's his own business.
"I was at competition and then at school." She sets her bag down and goes to get rid of the dead sunflowers. "Do the nurses want to make you sicker?" She shakes her head. "Leaving these here, really."
"Competition?" He asks.
She throws the sunflowers away in a small trash can she finds in a corner. "I play club Go." And it feels like I've been getting worse at it instead of better.
"And neglect your English homework in the meantime?"
Her head snaps back to look at him. "How did you—"
"How did I know that?" He holds up a single sheet of paper. "One of your old English exams was stuck in the book you left me. You seem to have a problem with irregular past participles?"
She flushes a shade to match her hair. "Senpai…" She sighs. "Can I have that back?"
She can't fault him for being bored. He might even have thought it was something important that he'd have to remember to give back. He's been here at least a month and a half by now, and so far, this is the first time she's heard of someone else visiting him. She can only blame herself for leaving that embarrassing test score in her Go book.
"It's not horrible." He does return it to her quite readily. "I've done worse."
"Sure." Izuna-kun had never, in the two full weeks they'd spent sweeping the classroom, said anything about his brother having issues with his English classes. Still, whether or not it is true, that's not the point. He's trying to help. He doesn't look down on her, but still she's embarrassed that he's found it anyway.
"You didn't bring new flowers." He seems to be ignoring that argument in favor of a new one.
She thinks about it. "You didn't approve of my last choice." Yet, he hadn't asked any nurse to remove the dead sunflowers. Did he want to keep them? He didn't ask me to stop when I was throwing them away though.
He huffs. "They were something to look at." Oh, so he had wanted to keep those after all.
That's...a bit surprising.
"I'll bring you flowers again next time then." She'd forgotten that without those sunflowers his room looks rather cold again.
They lapse into another silence.
It's late November now. And he's been here for a month and a half.
She's starting to get a little worried, but she's also afraid to ask. Have they not found you a donor yet? It's still somewhat traditionally taboo to donate organs. The idea of not being able to go to the afterlife because of a physical deficiency still scares far too many people into opting out of becoming an organ donor.
It could take a long time to find a match. She doesn't know how long a normal person can live on dialysis.
Those two facts cloud her thoughts.
"What are you doing, sitting in my room with a face like that?" He snaps her out of her thoughts with a sentence that is much equivalent with getting slapped in the face with a bucket of ice water. I don't want you in my room if you're going to look like that.
His words are rude, but perhaps she had been moping about it. She supposes he's got enough to worry about without worrying about her too. "I was just wondering how much longer you have to stay here."
"What's it to you?"
What is it to me? What sort of question is that? Do you expect other people not to like you?
"Because," she stumbles over her words. "Because, I care about you, you dumb Senpai." And it's true.
She might not have known him very much before his accident, but she likes visiting him, even with all the arguments. Here, she doesn't have to worry about her English homework, or her Go competitions or being judged for liking Soran Bushi. Uchiha-senpai has never called her foreigner even when he was mad and grieving, and he never told her he's too busy to talk or brushed off her fears as silly.
Honestly, he's quite nice, even despite his tendency to say rude things.
"Why?" He seems genuinely confused. It's not just another one of his snarky comments.
"You're really quite mean…" She huffs. "Why shouldn't I care? You're a person I know, aren't you?"
"You only know who I am because you keep coming to visit." His voice is mild, but she hears the raw hurt underneath. "We didn't even meet before that, Uzumaki-chan. You could have left this well alone." He really doesn't expect other people to care about him.
It's really...very sad.
"But I couldn't have done that." She really couldn't have. "That wouldn't have been right." Why is he like this today? She thought she solved all of those problems the last time she came by explaining why she had come to 217-B each time.
Clearly, today she is back for her Go book, if he really needs that excuse.
She'd wanted to see him, is all.
Is it because someone else visited today? For not the first time, she wonders who could have put him in such low spirits. One of his cousins? Honda-san had said the visitor was a young man, but that really could be anyone.
He sighs. "I will remain here for the foreseeable future."
"Oh." So they hadn't found a donor for him yet.
"Did your competition go well?" He asks before the silence settles too deep. "You said you went to one earlier."
She'd hoped not to think about it, and it must have showed on her face, because he heaves another heavy sigh.
"It didn't go well, I assume?"
"Not as well as I hoped." She frowns. "If I'd won in Takasu, then I would have advanced to 5 kyu."
But she hadn't won because she'd frozen at a critical point in the third set of her semifinal match, and now she won't have another chance to advance until perhaps next year.
Tanaka-shishou would be so disappointed with her. She has avoided calling him just because of that.
"How old are you, Uzumaki-chan?"
His question is surprising. "Sixteen and a half." She'll be seventeen by June, but it is only November now.
"6 kyu isn't bad." He half smiles, and it's the first time she's ever seen him even remotely happy. "Don't take it to heart so much. You're doing fine."
I'm really not. She wants to tell him. I'm falling so far behind in everything, and I don't know how to go on like this… But she doesn't tell him.
He has enough to worry about without worrying about her too.
So all she does is smile and hope that it reaches her eyes. "Thank you, Uchiha-senpai."
She takes her leave soon after.
She's back again on Friday that same week, because she'd overheard Okaasan and Otousan talking about finances when they thought she was asleep that morning.
Do they have enough to send Neesan, the Twins and herself through college all at the same time? The four of them are only two years apart in age.
She had done her best to get over that hushed conversation as Okaasan and Otousan both worried over the state of the store and the state of their savings and the state of their children's futures.
And then the latest round of exam scores had come back and while she'd again, done badly in English, she'd done exceptionally well in Japanese.
She'd even been happy for a little bit, until she passed a group of her classmates on her way back to her desk and heard their whispers. What a weird foreigner, can't even speak her own mother tongue, but she has the audacity to speak ours?
That had been it.
The last straw in the latest of current situations.
And now here she is again, wiping away tears in front of the door of 217-B.
She has to make herself presentable after all. There's no need to worry Uchiha-senpai. He has enough to grieve for without being burdened by her problems too.
She's so distracted by this force of habit that she doesn't even notice the vague sounds of an argument going on just beyond the door.
She slides open the door.
"OUT!"
The roar takes her by surprise, and she flinches back, a slight squeak escaping her. Me?
"Not you, Uzumaki-chan." Uchiha-senpai is sitting up in bed, a hand against his chest, breathing hard. There is another young man standing next to his bedside. "Hashirama was just about to show himself out."
She's read too much into things again.
"Mada—" The young man, Hashirama — his name is Hashirama, Kanae reminds herself — protests.
"Do I need to ask you again?" Uchiha-senpai hisses at him. "I don't want to see your face again, you hear? Get out!"
They are evidently close, for they use no honorifics with each other. Uchiha-senpai had called him Hashirama, and he had called Uchiha-senpai Mada, which is not even Uchiha-senpai's full first name.
But they are also edges rubbed too raw, because this is the angriest she's ever seen Uchiha-senpai before. He'd been snippy with her, and angry and short, but not furious, not to the point of bellowing his rage so the whole hall can hear.
"I should go…" She tries to back away, but Hashirama choses that moment to brush by her on his way out the door.
"No, don't. He clearly asked you to stay." And then he's gone.
It is only Uchiha-senpai and herself now.
"Did I make you cry again?" He doesn't want to tell her who Hashirama is then. That's okay. She doesn't need to know about that.
She sniffs and brushes away another tear. "N-no." She doesn't like crying, but she's managed to do it twice in front of him already. "I was already crying, so it's not about you."
"You were already crying." He says after a long pause. "What, on this green earth made you show it such a sad face?"
She hesitates. It isn't that she is afraid of telling him, not that, but he has so much to carry already. Surely her cares and worries are too insignificant to talk about. "It's nothing."
"It wouldn't make you cry if it's nothing." He huffs at her, the huff turning into a slight coughing fit. "Out with it."
He's more irritable today than normal, but considering that he had just thrown someone out of his room for something she's not sure what it is, and she's curious, but it's not necessary for her to know, and she won't pry, it's a good enough conversation.
"Well…" She sighs. And now that she's here, again she hesitates.
"I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to know." He snaps. "Just out with it already."
"Do you think I look like a gaijin?" She asks. It's only the tip of the iceberg, but it's the easiest to talk about.
"Give me your phone." His demand takes her completely by surprise.
"What?"
"Give me your phone." He makes a 'give it here' gesture, and startled, all she does is hand it over wordlessly. He opens it and fiddles with it a little. "The next time someone even breathes the word in your direction, you call me to scream at them. I'm getting bored sitting here doing nothing."
"So you don't think I look…out of place?" She should have just said 'thank you, Senpai' and moved on, but she doesn't. He wants her to call him so he can scream at the people who call her a foreigner in the women's washroom?
Wouldn't that earn her the ire of more than one teacher? Won't his throat get tired? Wouldn't he get tired of screaming? Wouldn't the nurses be concerned? It's not at all feasible is it?
Still, she is quite touched that he'd consider it.
He waves her sunflower yellow phone case at her. "Do the little narutos on this tell you anything about yourself?"
A giggle escapes her despite herself. "I suppose a ramen topping keychain is a little cutesy."
He shakes her phone at her. "Really." He doesn't look impressed as he examines the little string of narutos dangling from one end. "Any cuter and you'll just disappear under a poof of pink cotton candy or something." He hands it back to her. "Any other reasons you were crying outside my door?"
He'd given her his number, with his contact name as Madara.
"No." Her family's financial problems aren't going to be something he could fix so easily as putting his number in her phone and forcing her to consider how cute her accessories are. She is so very normal after all.
He stares at her with irritated dark eyes for a moment but decides not to prod her further. "You're not going to ask about Hashirama?"
Now that is a minefield. She would like to know, but she doesn't think it's really her place to ask. "Umm."
"He's a childhood friend of mine." Uchiha-senpai stares up at his blank white ceiling. "Past tense. He's been more trouble than he's worth honestly."
"You don't want to see him, but you still do care for him." It slips out without her approval. Normally, she's so much more careful than this, but she notices things about people far too easily. Now that she is more comfortable speaking to him, she can't even help saying these sorts of things.
"Do I?" Uchiha-senpai continues staring up at the ceiling. "Why do you think that?"
It's simple really. "You wouldn't be so angry with whatever you were fighting about if you didn't."
And if Hashirama had come to see him in the hospital, they aren't really past tense friends.
"We were fighting about my family issues." He's talkative today, almost melancholy. "My grandfather, the old bastard, has some inheritance that he wants to cut me out of after this incident."
This incident being the car crash she supposes.
"He wants me to suck up to the old bastard, as if I care about his rotten money." He continues. "I'm lying here waiting to die, anyway. Who cares about his money?"
"Don't say that." He turns his thousand pound stare at her and she feels the urge to continue, words tumbling faster now. "I meant about the waiting to die part not the whatever he wants you to do part. They'll find you a donor, Uchiha-senpai—"
"Madara."
"So it'll be alright you see, and—"
"Why do you care so much if I die or not?" It's the frank way that he asks this, as if asking for a dinner menu or someone to pass the salt that opens the floodgates again.
"I don't want you to die." If it was her brother, any of her brothers, lying in a hospital bed, she'd never want to hear anything like that come out of their mouth. "I don't want you to die. You're not going to die."
He brushes a stray bit of hair out of her face. "I'm not dying right this minute, Uzumaki-chan."
Oh, she threw herself at him as if he was really one of her brothers. He doesn't seem to mind that she's hugging him a little too tightly around the chest as if that would prevent him from dying if he really wants to die.
"Kanae." She blinks a little too fast to prevent herself from crying again. It doesn't work. "My name is Kanae."
His hand settles in her hair against the back of her neck. "If you were me," he says almost far away, as though in deep thought. "Would you want to die?"
"I've never wanted to die before." Why do you want to die, Senpai? He had said his name was Madara, but she still can't quite bring herself to call him that, even while she's thinking.
"If you killed your brother, would you want to die?"
If I — He was driving when the car crash happened. "You didn't kill him." Oh how to say this? How has he lived these past two months if this is what he had to occupy himself with? Of course he'd been angry when she mentioned Izuna.
How raw are the wounds on his heart if he blames himself like this?
She'd known he was sad, but she didn't know this.
"You couldn't have known something like this would happen."
"I was drunk." He still sounds perfectly clear. He's thought about this for a long time then. "Did you know I killed six other people with my own stupidity, Kanae-chan? Why did I live after such a stupid thing? Why not any of them? They deserved to live far more than me."
Oh. Oh. That's why he blames himself. "You still couldn't have known it. And no one deserves to live more than someone else."
He hadn't made the right choice, but who is she to tell him that he should have died? He doesn't deserve to die. It isn't as if he woke up one morning and decided to kill people.
"I should have known it." He sighs. "I'm a very bad person, Kanae-chan."
Does anyone else know that he wants to die? Who could she possibly ask to help?
She's never tried to ask him much about himself before, because it wasn't her business, but he's told her this much and all his bleeding edges makes her want to stop the pain even if she doesn't know how. He's a good person, and for all his rough words he has been very nice to her, so she doesn't understand why thinks that making a mistake would turn him into a bad person.
"You're not a bad person." She sounds petulant, like a small child somehow. She doesn't think she's being petulant though. "You're a nice person who made a bad decision. How would you have known that it would end that way?" You volunteered to yell at people for me, Madara-senpai. You're not a bad person.
He almost laughs, but it still sounds like he's breaking inside. "Do you think anyone's a bad person?"
And she can safely say that she hasn't thought anyone was truly bad before. "Not entirely. Everyone loves something." People do plenty of good things for love.
"Mmm." He moves his hand away and lets go of her hair. "It's late, Kanae-chan. Your sister will miss you."
It's a clear dismissal, and he looks tired when she rises, so she turns to go. "Have a good night, Madara-senpai."
She's almost out the door when he replies. "Have a good night, Kanae-chan."
That weekend, she revises her English study plan in between matches at a tournament in Kamikawa. There's time enough to memorise some conjugations instead of just sitting and stressing about the match to come. She still remembers Madara-senpai's slight jab. And neglect your English homework in the meantime? Strangely, it helps to calm her nerves.
She wins the final match still distracted and floating through irregular verb conjugations, and while it is not going to advance her to 5 kyu, it still delights her anyway.
"Tanaka-shishou!" She calls her teacher on the train ride home. "Tanaka-shishou, I did it! I won!"
"I always knew you could." The gruff acknowledgement warms her heart, even though it is immediately followed by "But don't get a big head, girl. You've still got a long way to go if you want to go pro."
"Thank you, Shishou!"
She's still delighted even after the 27 minute walk back home in the chilly air of a late November evening. Inside, Neesan is still studying for the University Entrance exam.
She has until spring when she takes the exam that could potentially make or break her dream of going to law school, so these days, Neesan is always busy. Kanae doesn't begrudge her the time. Neesan's dreams are important.
"How did your competition go?" Neesan asks her without lifting her head from her book.
"I won." Kanae beams at her, though she doubts Neesan sees.
"Congratulations." Neesan flashes her a smile. "That's great news, Kanae-chan."
She sits down on the other side of the kitchen table from Neesan. "Do you have a moment? I wanted to ask you something."
Neesan pushes her book aside. "What did you need to ask?"
"It's about Ma-Uchiha-senpai." How to put this? Neesan's stressed. She doesn't need to stress about Madara-senpai too. Kanae just wants to know who his grandfather is.
Surely, he wouldn't judge his own grandson so harshly after his anger had time to cool.
"Go on."
"Who's his grandfather?" This was not what Neesan expected her to ask. Still, she almost sees the mental shrug her elder sister gives to why she wants to know that.
"Uchiha Indra. He's the founder of their family company." Neesan scans her face for something but doesn't find it. "You know, Kanae-chan." She continues as she pulls her book back in front of her. "I'd say that going to visit him so many times can only be a friendship."
A friendship. She rolls the words over themselves slowly in her mind. Am I friends with Madara-senpai? I would like to think so. "I've never had a friend like him before." She remarks.
Neesan snorts. "I don't know that there's anyone else like him in the entire world, Kanae-chan."
She quite agrees, even if that isn't what Neesan meant.
The next night, she calls Niisama who lives in Kyoto. "I have something I want to ask you, Niisama."
She'd looked up Uchiha Indra the night before, after Neesan had dropped the name. The knowledge that he is a very rich and busy old man had done nothing for the idea that had sprouted in her heart after hearing Madara-senpai talk about his grandfather, until she remembered that Niisama might be able to help her.
"What do you need, imouto?" He sounds a little tired, but in no hurry, so she does her best to explain everything to his satisfaction.
"And that's why I want to talk to Uchiha Indra-san." Niisama might be the gossip of their small town because of his boyfriend, but he is still Anaharaya Biwa's son and set to inherit a corporate dynasty of his own.
A normal high schooler has no chance of ever even seeing the chairman of Tsukinogan Inc's shadow, but Anaharaya Kyoya's little sister might be able to.
There's a quiet pause on the other end of the line broken only by the sound of Niisama typing on his laptop. "Consider it done, Imouto."
"Thank you, Niisama." It might be grasping of her to use this connection. It might even be a little deceptive as she isn't Anharaya Kaname's granddaughter, but normally, she doesn't ask her eldest brother for much.
She just never wants to see Madara-senpai so dead inside again, and if she has to use family connections that most high schoolers don't have to get there, then that's what she'll do.
"Give me thirty minutes. I'll make a few calls." Niisama's end of the line goes dead, and she lies there for a long moment, fingers loosely curled about her yellow phone case.
Madara-senpai, she thinks, are you alright?
Waiting like this has to be painful for your body too, not just your heart. She won't bring him anything with a high salt content again, but she has to check on what he can and cannot eat.
Perhaps she could ask one of his nurses? Sayako-san might have the time to draw her a chart of foods he can and cannot eat.
After spending so long in the hospital, he has to miss eating home cooked meals. She could bring him unsalted food? That might only make his homesickness worse though.
It's an idea that needs more thought.
Her phone buzzes with a call from Niisama. She picks up. "Niisama?" Please tell me it went well.
"Your appointment with Uchiha-san is at eleven on Saturday the 14th." She has a competition on the 15th, so it's good that her appointment with Uchiha-san is on the 14th. She doesn't want to withdraw, especially since another chance has come up for her to advance to 5 kyu. "Do you need money for the train fare to come to Kyoto?"
Does she want to ask more of Niisama when he's gone far out of his way to help her with this? "It'll be okay, Niisama. I have savings." And prize money from placing at a few competitions that she'd been saving for something important.
This counts as something important, and she has her own money to spend without having to rely on her eldest brother's generosity.
"Alright." He agrees after a moment. "I'll meet you at our seafood place after your meeting with Uchiha-san? Does a reservation for three at one o'clock sound good to you?"
He is probably going to take advantage of her visit to Kyoto to clear his own afternoon and evening schedule and spend time with her.
"It sounds very nice, Niisama." She smiles, even though he can't see it. "I'll see you soon."
"I'll see you soon." She hears him typing on his laptop once more, and Habiki-san's voice singing softly in the background, perhaps another room. "Have a good night, Kanae-chan."
"Have a good night, Niisama."
She lies there on her bed another moment more, thinking.
There's a way forward now, however faint to helping Madara-senpai. She'll take it.
A.N. A little more of Kanae's motivations and some of the plot shows up a little more. Only two more chapters for this!
I hope you all enjoy this as much as I enjoy writing it.
See you next Saturday!
~Tavina.