Published: 10/11/2015
Kyouya: Sweet Deepener
They are standing at the gate once again. Tsubasa has his gear on his back, and he wears his usual wide grin. Kyouya grins back, but it fades after a moment.
"Be careful," he murmurs after a moment of meaningful silence. Tsubasa's grin shifts into something softer, something more mellow and more retrospective. Kyouya finds himself mirroring him, and they both take a minute to show each other relieved faces, silently confiding memories of shorter, more acrimonious partings.
Kyouya has always known Tsubasa was like him. The unwanted have a look about them that is telling to their fellows. A bastard child and a rejected lover… from the very first moment Souhei had appeared with the nine-year-old boy he'd pulled from the Naka River, he had known.
"Always," Tsubasa softly replies. "Wait for me, alright?"
"I will," Kyouya promises solemnly.
And like he has so many times before, Tsubasa turns and leaves, shutting the wooden gates behind him. Kyouya heaves a sigh and puts his hands in his sleeves as he returns to the house, walking the long, winding pathway back. Every step on this little paved road is its own expansive journey…
Kyouya works as he usually does, reading and writing letters, managing finances and merchandise. He used to be able to do this from noon till night, but lately his legs cramp up and fall asleep more quickly than they used to. Sighing, he sets his brush down and props his head up with his hand, shifting out of the punishing seat of seiza and crossing his legs instead.
Today, it seems, there is no concentration to be found. He is too fidgety and too distracted. Is it because Tsubasa is gone on a mission, perhaps? Or maybe he's just feeling his age more acutely today. Not his physical age, because fifty isn't so wearying, but his real one.
Well, he decides, he's not getting any more work done today. He might as well go take a walk. It is already early evening, but it would be a shame to waste was what left of the day.
And yet, when he leaves the estate and goes walking in the village, he finds himself standing at the edge of the village lands. His destination is the large bridge that crosses Konoha's lifeblood: the River of Southern Joy. A dark, mirthless smile finds its way onto his face.
The story went that Tsubasa had been walking here with his father and his brother when he'd slipped and fallen into the ravine. And while everyone else who knows the tale takes this as the truth, Kyouya does not. One does not just simply slip and fall into this river. The bridge is sturdy and has high railings, and the path winds well away from the cliff's edge. Tsubasa had not ended up in the Naka River on accident, that is certain—either he'd been pushed, or he'd gone in of his own accord.
Tsubasa has never told him so, but he's never denied it, either.
He still remembers how Souhei had shown up in front of him, carrying that sopping wet child on his back. Both of them had been soaked through at that point, and though the hospital would have been closer, the boy had been confusedly mumbling in English and Souhei hadn't wanted people to be asking him dangerous questions. So they'd taken him inside; Souhei had healed the bleeding gash on the back of his head, checked his back and spine, and made sure that everything was alright. He had been lucky to fall at the lowest part of the ravine, or the whole affair surely would have ended in death.
Kyouya snorts and turns away. Noriko had backstabbed him, but he hasn't had it nearly as bad the the black sheep of the Yoshizawa. Any number of wealthy men can tell stories of being used for their money and then being thrown aside when things become too troublesome. Far fewer can say their family members have tried to murder them because of a mother who had cheated. Frankly, when Tsubasa had shown up on his doorstep a year after that first meeting, dragging a single suitcase behind him, he hadn't even questioned him. Maybe they'd tried to kill him again, or maybe he just couldn't standing living with them any longer—Kyouya doesn't know the whole of his circumstances. He already knows enough.
He sighs and looks up at the trees around him. The river, despite everything that has happened upon it, still sings beautifully. It always does, oblivious of everything, and it makes Kyouya's heart want both to lighten and to sink.
As he stands there, watching the sun fall into the horizon, he contenplates an unlikely friend who had come to him in even unlikelier circumstances.
Tsubasa, he finds himself thinking, cannot return from his mission soon enough.
A/N: Takes place a few days before Suzu visits Kyouya in chapter 32. Title comes from Matsuo Basho's haiku: Twilight whippoorwill . . ./whistle on, sweet deepener/Of dark loneliness.
Anyway, there it is—explanation for both Tsubasa's entry into the group of Earthlings and the reason why he lives with Kyouya. And for why Kyouya never got married. I think he really regrets that he let getting burned keep him from trying to find love with someone else, though.