In the middle of March, Kawahira showed up for the first time since letting her know about the identity of the boy in the alley, the longest he had been away from his home. Granny gave him a scolding for not showing up sooner and then fed them both while she was at it, because she was a firm believer in showing she cared through scolding and feeding.
Hotaru waited until Granny lightly pushed him into his usual seat at the table before she set the table and lightly patted him on his back, a silent offer of comfort. His eyes looked exhausted behind his glasses, more so than usual, and his shoulders were slumped with something heavier than the usual slouch.
Kawahira didn't say anything, but he did nod once before Granny finished cooking.
He stayed for breakfast and lunch and even tea in the afternoon before he began to drift out once more. It was clear he would be leaving soon, from the way his exhausted eyes seemed to gaze into the far distance even when he made eye contact with either Hotaru or Granny. It was his tell, that he would be leaving.
Granny didn't try to stop him, and neither did Hotaru, both knowing that he had his own business to take care of, and that he would return in his own time. Even when she asked questions about the Silver Millennium from his perspective, digging for information he knew would be passed back to the sailor soldiers and Chiba Mamoru, he only evaded some questions and gave answers to others, and never forbade her from inquiring or left with the intent to not return.
It gave Chiba Mamoru a headache trying to think about the information Hotaru had passed onto him, and on why Acheron was willing to speak with Hotaru and not him, but otherwise they got along peacefully.
As he was about to head out again, he paused to turn back to her.
"Yamamoto Ameyuri is dead," Kawahira pronounced.
For a moment his words didn't sink in, but when they did she stood up from her seat. The price to pay for that abrupt movement was that she smashed her knee against the coffee table, hard enough to make her cry out in pain.
"Careful," he said, a little late for his warning to do any good. "That table's probably hard enough to survive the Apocalypse."
It felt like it, too, and they were probably two of the most qualified people on the subject. Wincing and deeply missing her power to heal, she rubbed at the sore spot to make the pain go away so she could focus on more important things. "Ameyuri-san?"
"Dead," Kawahira said, confirming his words and crushing her hopes. "A car accident took her life. The driver of the vehicle that hit her dozed off at the wheel, and she died before she made it to the hospital."
"Oh," Hotaru said. Car accident. Right. A common cause of death. It happened to many people every year, and it was why Haruka always wore a seat belt and a helmet when she raced. It was why Hotaru and all her family wore seatbelts, and worried as much as they cheered when they saw Haruka racing.
Ameyuri laughing. Visiting TakeSushi with Granny and finding that the food, while not the same quality as Michiru's preferred restaurants, had an emotional warmth to it that made it delicious to eat. Ameyuri speaking to her, a virtual stranger she only knew the name of, about her concerns regarding her son. Ameyuri, easily laughing mother of a young boy and loved wife of a man.
"Oh," she said again, the only thing she could say.
A hand landed on her head and roughly, almost carelessly, ruffled it. A silent offer of comfort, returning what she had given earlier that day. Hotaru didn't doubt that her hair would look ridiculous after this but couldn't find enough room in herself to care about how she looked at the moment.
"Her funeral is in two days," Kawahira informed her. He didn't console her with kind words. Truth be told, if he did, she might have felt a little awkward, or undeserving of them. She herself barely knew the woman, after all. Three meetings didn't establish friendship or a very close emotional attachment.
Kawahira drifted out as Hotaru bit her lip, conflicted.
But, despite the short time she had known the woman, Hotaru had liked Ameyuri. And she knew what kind of devastating hole would be torn by her loss to those she meant more to than just a likeable acquaintance on her way to becoming a friend of sorts.
Hotaru began to dial a number, one she was less familiar with than her parents', but knew nonetheless because it had been one of the numbers written in the phone number book packed for her, with promises that she could call any time for any reason and they would always answer or get back to her as soon as possible. She waited patiently as the ring tone repeated itself for three times before the person on the other end picked up.
"Hello?" came a cheerful, strong voice, one of a woman firmly grounded in kindness and solidly confident in herself.
"Makoto-san?" Hotaru took a deep breath, as if she was trying to pull the young woman's courage to herself. "It's Hotaru."
"Hotaru-chan! How have you been? What can I help you with?"
She had no magic of her own. And even if she did, hers wouldn't have been helpful, not really.
Loss of love brought a weakness, a wound opened and vulnerable.
"I need flowers," Hotaru said to the Guardian of Protection. "Special ones, for a funeral."
When Takeshi was six, his mother died in a car accident.
Takeshi rarely got sick, but he came down with a severe cold that day. He remembered not wanting to take the medicine, because it didn't taste like grapes like the bottle said. The fake grape taste was a lie and he didn't like it, but his mom coaxed him into taking it.
Through the fever and the chills, Takeshi received the news that his mother had been in a car accident. Or rather, his father did, and that was the weakest he had ever seen his father. Shoulders hunched, face lined and eyes leaking tears, his father looked fragile, like a drinking glass Takeshi had knocked over the table, about to shatter into tiny jagged pieces at the moment of impact.
To be honest he remembered little of what happened after. He cried, but his mom wasn't there to wipe away the tears and hug him until he felt better. His cold went away, but his mom didn't come back. The house felt a lot emptier without her laughing at least once a day, loud and bright, and neither of them smiled because there was no one to match them.
In matching clothes of an off-shade white he had never worn before, Takeshi stood at his father's side and watched as other adults in black clothes came in to give their condolences before bowing at the closed casket sitting in front of his mother's picture.
It all felt very numb to Takeshi, like a really bad dream he couldn't wake from. As if it wasn't actually happening, or he was detached from it somehow. Mom liked laughing. Would she be laughing at her own funeral, Takeshi wondered. Trying to cheer up others?
Death was supposed to be something that came to old people. His mom was old, but not that old. It didn't make sense, or at least he didn't want it to make sense.
He focused instead on the people entering, solemn-faced and in black, and that was what let him catch Hotaru slipping in. She was dressed in black like all the others, but unlike them, she was carefully holding three flowers to her chest, stems nearly as long as her arm, and she was here by herself. Not even the old woman she had come with to TakeSushi was with her.
She looked at him and his father, the only ones in white in the room, but his father was speaking to the elderly couple that ran the ramen shop they sometimes went to. Her eyes fell on his briefly, and she nodded to acknowledge him before she turned away and made her way to the casket.
Takeshi watched as she set one of the flowers in front of the casket. It wasn't anywhere people could step on, just in front of the incense that filled the room with a scent he found grating to his senses. No one else was doing it, and the action drew some eyes to her, but she ignored all of them like she was in a world of her own and silently held her spot for a long moment before she left to walk towards him.
The white flowers in her hands stood out against the black she was dressed in, and they changed hands as she offered them to him.
Takeshi took them before he knew what he was doing. They looked different from the white chrysanthemums in the hall, with fewer and larger petals. He had no idea what they were called, much less what he was supposed to do with them.
"Stargazer lilies," Hotaru said. Her voice was quiet, but her words were audible to him through the murmuring din of the room, like she was speaking directly into his ears.
Takeshi stared. "Did I say that out loud?"
She shook her head and explained. "You looked confused."
Had he? Takeshi looked down at the flowers again. That was probably because he still had no idea what he was supposed to do with them. Or with himself.
"They mean sympathy," she murmured, and Takeshi wondered if his face was really that transparent. "These are for you – and your father."
"So we can give them to Mom?" he asked. They were pretty flowers, he guessed. His mom might have liked them.
"No," Hotaru corrected, not unkindly. His mom had said Hotaru was a nice girl. Takeshi could tell that much, but he also thought she was a little different from everyone else. Different in a good way. "For you."
Takeshi looked down at the flowers. He had never received flowers. He was the type to give them, plucking wildflowers – because the bigger, prettier ones were usually the flowers that other people put a lot of effort into growing, he had learned – and bundling them together as an offering to his mother, who would smile widely and thank him before putting them into a glass of water to put on the table at home.
He didn't know what to do with flowers that were for him. These ones – stargazer lilies – were too big to fit inside the usual glass cup.
Hotaru reached out and ruffled his hair, the contact light but still real. Takeshi stared at her. She wasn't smiling, but she looked soft. That was the best word Takeshi could think to describe her with. Soft, like a pillow, or a hug.
"It's hard, losing a parent," she whispered, and it occurred to Takeshi that while he still had his father at his side, she was standing all by herself. The only adult he had seen her with was an old granny. No parents.
"But sometimes, when we mourn the dead, we forget to care for the living."
He glanced up at his father, who was speaking with another man in a suit. Every now and then, though, he would glance towards Takeshi, making sure he was still there. He had a light that didn't look right in his eyes, but it was still his dad.
He was still there. And so was Takeshi.
Takeshi looked back at Hotaru, who was still patiently focused on him.
Like he had every time he had seen her, he asked a question.
"What do you do?" he asked, because every question he had asked her she had known the answer to. "How do you make it better?"
There was no patient explanation that made the mysteries of the world more apparent to him, not this time.
"I don't know," she confessed, the pupils of her eyes flickering to the ground before slowly coming back up, as if they were too heavy for her and required effort to raise. "It never really goes away, and you feel like you have a hole in your life. Even when a lot of time passes and it feels better, there's always bad days when you remember, or you wish that it went differently."
Her words sped up near the end before she cut herself off from continuing. Hotaru stopped talking, but her eyes still looked heavy.
"I don't know," she said again, words distant. "You grieve and you love who or what you can, and you live, and sometimes it gets better. You always miss them, though."
She said she didn't know, but that was still an answer for Takeshi.
"Is it hard?" he asked again. It sounded hard to him now. It was hard for him now, and it seemed impossible.
"Yes." Hotaru could answer this question with confidence, and she confirmed what he suspected. "It's one of the hardest things to do, and it's especially hard when you're alone. Don't let yourself be alone, Takeshi-kun."
Takeshi looked around the room. People – familiar faces, a lot of them, because TakeSushi had customers in the neighborhood he had lived in all his life – but surrounded by them all, he felt alone.
Almost.
In front of him Hotaru had her dark eyes fixed on his own, on him, quiet, patient and understanding.
The flowers, he decided, clutching at them as tightly as he could without wrecking them, were nice.
At the same time he also wanted to cry. Even if his mom wouldn't be there to hug him and wipe away his tears, he still wanted to.
Hotaru hesitated, and then slowly opened her arms in a silent offering. She wasn't as tall as his mom, but –
Takeshi stepped forwards, closing the distance between them one slow step at a time, and awkwardly hugged her. It was the first time he had hugged anyone that wasn't his parents, and she was unfamiliar to him.
Hotaru still wrapped her arms around his stiff body, though.
"Do what you need to do," she whispered to him.
He ended up crying, and she stayed long enough to wipe away his tears until he stopped. It wasn't the same, and it would never be, but it helped.
AN: Hi my name is Huinari and when I make an OC I always ask myself how they die.
Sweet Dreams~