Silent Storm


It didn't snow right away in Japan; Winter was filled with a long, cold-wind duration, whilst the fall of snow would be a probability. The white roses in the garden had been plucked and used for varying reasons. The Akabane preferred to ferment their own rose wine with their seasonal rose, hand-making Christmas wrath for decorations and other uses.

Yet, the little red-headed boy was spawning chaos, his interest absorbed solely by the gardening scissors. The morning in the Akabane Mansion was filled with crowd.

"Young master! Drop it!" the maids cried, trying to catch up with the little prick, laughing with a pair of gardening scissors in his possession.

"But these are great!" Karma laughed, climbing to the sofa in the guest room, throwing the blades in a circling motion before catching them mid-air. "I am Karma-the-Scissors-hand!" he announced, and jumped off in time before the maids caught him.

"Young master Karma, please, it's dangerous to play those!" the gardeners who had been chasing him finally caught up in the room. "Yukihiro-sama would be angry to see this!"

"Why? It's not dangerous at all," Karma innocently said, throwing the gardening scissors and catching them mid-air again, making his servants watch with suspense. "Oh well, if you won't let me play with them then," he casually threw the scissors to the floor, and walked away as if nothing happened.

"Goodness," the maids sighed in relief, and one of the gardeners collected the blades from the floor. However, Karma didn't want to let them breathe in relief just yet.

"I can just play with this, instead," the boy said, pulling out a butcher knife.

The servants froze.

They could hear the chef was glowering from afar, and Karma laughed as he began to run again.

"Somebody's taking my precious butcher knife!"

As told earlier, the red-haired boy greatly admired sharp things. Generally tricky things. Karma had a hobby to give people a heart-attack. In the past, he had fun with fireworks, blasting everything in the house, at school, in the car. This year's favorite would be knives and scissors.

He had no trouble keeping himself safe. Despite seemingly reckless, Karma understood and believed the importance to keep oneself's safety.

His belief in this matter clashed with the blue-haired boy whom Yukihiro brought today for dinner.

~.X.~

Across the small guest table, was a boy shorter than Karma by a head, meekly glancing around the glamorous room. Karma was staring at the boy curiously, since the boy was Yukihiro's son, named Nagisa. Yukihiro only talked about his son once in a while, probably because compared to Karma, this boy wasn't that much interesting.

At first, Karma thought he was a girl, but when he remembered that Yukihiro told him he had a son, he couldn't help but snort a little. Why does a boy look so pretty? It didn't make any sense.

"Dinner is ready," Yukihiro announced as he entered, followed by a couple of maids with their dinner trays. "Is the table too tall for you, son?"

"Um," Nagisa meekly nodded, looking around. "C-Can't we...sit on the floor like at home? With kotatsu?"

Karma laughed at the suggestion. "Haha! That's gross! Who sits on the floor?" he laughed at the very absurd idea.

However, his laughter was echoing in the silent room, and Karma gradually fell silent, realizing there was something he didn't understand. The maids had this wry, yet understanding smile. Yukihiro was laughing awkwardly, and Nagisa was looking down in shame that only the top of his head was visible across the table.

There was a world beyond his knowing. Beyond the manners and cultures he's educated, Karma knew nothing of how a regular Japanese family would have dinner. He knew nothing about a kotatsu, or a floor-table which some family that couldn't afford a dining table would eat together at.

After stacking adequate sitting pillows to support Nagisa's height, they began to eat dinner. Karma watched as Nagisa seemed overwhelmed by the variety of forks, spoons and knives set by his meal. His father patiently told him to take example from the red-head, and Nagisa seemed to spend a lot of courage just to look at Karma.

"You eat the soup with a soup spoon—the small one, correct. And the fish, it has bone in it, you have to take it out using that knife. Hold the fork with your left hand, Nagisa-kun. Good boy," Yukihiro warmly laughed, patting his son's head, and nodded to Karma. "Please enjoy your dinner. I must attend the brewery. Be good boy, Nagisa,"

Yukihiro left the guest room. Karma kept watching Nagisa, who was being too careful as he ate. Apparently, the shorter boy realized his staring, and his face gradually grew redder.

"What is it, Akabane-sama?" Nagisa braced himself to ask.

Karma raised his eyebrows, slightly disappointed to find the boy just like the others. "Do you know why you have to hold your knife with your right hand?"

"Because it's a dominant hand?"

"No, because if you accidentally hold it with your left hand when you're eating dinner with the Queen of England, they will cut your hands off,"

Nagisa turned pale in instance, gripping onto his silver utensils as hard as he could, glaring at Karma in fear. The red-head blurted a laugh at this obvious reaction. The boy across him was such a commoner!

"No, it's just a joke. It's all this thing called 'ettiquette' or something."

The boy let out a sigh of relief. "I don't think I will ever eat with a Queen, though—or any royalty, for that matter. I mean—" he blushed again. "I can't believe I'm eating with someone as rich as you are! This is making me...ugh..."

"What?"

Nagisa frowned, glancing away. "I...I just want to go home. I want to eat at home. I don't understand why Tou-chan took me here..."

Karma blinked. "Why? Is this food not good? Is the food at your home better or something?"

"No, sorry!" he quickly shook his head. "I'm just...not used to this," he meekly admitted.

The red-head tapped his fingers on the table. "Then, how do you usually have dinner?"

~.X.~

"A-Ara, anata, welcome home," Nagisa meekly greeted, greeting Karma from the door, and waved his hand to the cardboard-table they made on the floor. "Would you like to have dinner first or bath?"

Karma gruffly took a seat on the sitting pillow, slamming his fists onto the cardboard table and shook the food on top of it. "Shut up and sit down. Serve me already, you good-for-nothing wife!"

"Y-Yes, Karma-kun," Nagisa weakly and obediently approached the table, taking out a bowl of rice for Karma. "Today I bought some edamame to go with your sake after dinner, if you'd like..."

Karma glared at the blue-haired boy menacingly. "Edamame...? Of all things you could serve me for snack, it has to be edamame? I've worked hard for this family, and that's all you got for me!?" the red-head gritted his teeth in anger.

Nagisa shivered in fear. "I-I'm sorry...I didn't have enough money for a more decent sn-snack—"

"You're saying I didn't give you enough, then!?" Karma snapped, then, setting his hands below the table, he flipped; "DON'T SCREW WITH ME, WOMAN!"

Karma flipped the table.

The fish, the miso-soup, the rice and what-not flew off in an arch-motion before finally hitting the ground with loud shattering noises.

The door of the guest room was slammed open, revealing a pale Yukihiro and a couple other servants behind him.

"Young master!? What happened!?"

Karma grinned. "I've always wanted to flip a table like that. Well that was fun!" he laughed.

Yukihiro twitched, staring down at the mess on the floor.

"What is this?" he slowly turned to his son. "Nagisa?"

Nagisa stuttered. "W-We were reenacting a family comedy drama that Karma-kun once read in a manga...He...He said he wanted to flip a dining table."

"Well, there's no harm about it, right?" Karma casually whistled, completely guiltless. "It's not like I'm so hungry or anything...But yeah, that was fun! Alright, Yukihiro, please clean that up, will you?"

Yukihiro sighed and pulled out a napkin from his pocket, but then, Nagisa came up to Karma and slapped him in the face.

"What was that for!?" Karma yelled.

"So—So you flipped an entire course of meal for fun, and asked my father to clean that up!?" Nagisa angrily snapped, his blue eyes burning with heat. "It must be so great to be so rich, huh?"

Karma narrowed his eyes at how condescending he trailed his tone. No one had ever spoken to him that way.

"You agreed to it, though!"

"I didn't know you were going to flip the table! I didn't read the manga!" Nagisa snatched his father's napkin and knelt down, beginning to clean up the mess on the floor. "And even so, I guess it's my fault, so I will definitely clean it up! I don't have any servants to order around, after all!"

Karma's eyes widened, and his face was burning in shame. Yukihiro was very overwhelmed with his son's sudden outburst.

"Nagisa! You shouldn't speak like that to him! Get up—it's my job,"

"It's alright, I did this, just leave it, Tou-chan," Nagisa stubbornly said, half-way finishing the floor, stacking the plates and bowls. The maids began to collect them from behind.

"Give me that," Karma mumbled, snatching the napkin from Nagisa's hand. He began to wipe the miso-soup spilling under the sofa.

"Young master, you shouldn't!" Yukihiro pleaded.

"Shut up, Yuki!" Karma snapped, his face was very red. "I can clean up after myself. Or do you think I'm too dumb for that? I'm seven! I'm already grown-up!" without waiting for a response, he continued wiping the floor.

Nagisa was collecting the food scattered around whilst scolding Karma. "...Don't miss that rice under the chair, and how are we going to clean up the stain on that carpet?"

"I got it, I got it, just shut it!"

Yukihiro watched his son and his Young master with wide-eyes, unable to find a word to say. He took Nagisa to work today, hoping that Karma would have a friend to go to the new amusement park. Yukihiro didn't understand why his son was very nervous and hateful towards his job; perhaps Nagisa had been carrying a silent storm within himself.

Nagisa might have been antagonizing the Akabane. Being only seven, it was obvious that there were many things he didn't understand. However, Yukihiro was glad to see that his son finally open up. Even more, the other boy probably had learned something he had never understood from inside his world. In truth, Karma might actually be happy than how he looked.

Because, that was the first time someone was brave enough reprimanded Karma Akabane.

Though, Karma was still going to find out if Nagisa Shiota was really brave or just plain dumb. There was something about the bluenette that fascinated him; the sensation he had once felt when watching a storm during a summer cruise. Today would be a flash of that storm he saw from Nagisa.

For Karma, the beginning of a storm. The kind of storm that is yet to be learned.


The kind of storm that is so gay it will wreck your house.