Author's notes before finishing: This is my first Jun romance story, and I really like it. It's for Cynthia, Piedmon's Lady Jun Romance Contest (well, duh). Since she said she liked long stories, I decided to make this quite long; I really like this story, too. You just should know that this story is set in the spring before Season 01, and is in the POV of a twelve year old Jun.
Author's notes after finishing: :::bangs head on keyboard::: WHAT! IS! WRONG! WITH! ME!!! :::rubs head::: ow. Okay, so I tried to make this a Jun romance with Osamu; really I did. I was on a good track with it, too. But then, it hit me. How the FUCK was I supposed to end something like this? The last part to this seems more like a Jun/Daisuke sister/brother moment than anything else; if the fic was defined by that part, it wouldn't seem like such a romance fic at all.
:::crosses fingers::: Despite the fact that, in the end, I decided the Jun/Osamu romance wasn't the main focal point of the fic, I hope that Cynthia still allows this as a Jun romance fic for her contest.
I awoke one Sunday morning to see Daisuke, my eight year old younger brother, standing over my bed and staring at my face with a perplexed look.
I blinked, and raised my hand to rub the sleep out of my eyes and yawned. Daisuke's nose crinkled in disgust, and he observed, as eight year olds naturally do: "Jun-sama, your breath stinks. And your hair looks all weird, too."
Despite my brother's rude bluntness, I couldn't help but smile at his naive observations. "That's because I just got up, squirt," I replied, looking over at my digital clock radio and seeing that it was quite early, and on a Sunday, no less. "And why are you so up and about? You do know it's Sunday morning, right?"
Daisuke giggled, and, to stop me from going back to sleep, or probably just to annoy me, jumped on my bed, shaking and waking me up. "Because today is the day you promised to take me to the park, Jun-sama!" he said excitedly.
I rolled my eyes and buried my head in my pillow, hoping he would just go away. "Leave me alone, Daisuke, I groaned, pulling my light pink Sailor Moon blanket over my head. "It's too darn early to go to the park."
I heard Daisuke sigh sadly. "Oh...okay," he said in a quiet voice. "I didn't really want to go to the park, anyway...it's just that...well..." I took the blanket off of my head to see a very sad, pouting face before me. "...you promised."
I sighed. I really didn't want to get up this early, but I had promised my brother I would take him to the park, and I just couldn't say no to that adorable, pouting face. Daisuke might be a little demon sometimes - well, most of the time - but when he was near tears, I could never say no to my little brother.
"All right, all right; just get off my bed," I said, as Daisuke's sad pout brightened into a wide grin. "And give me five minutes."
"One two three, three two one...I'm at the park with my sister JUN!"
Daisuke was skipping along with sidewalk leading to the neighborhood playground, merrily making up his own song that annoyed me to no end. I had only been eight four years ago - I was twelve now, but a very mature twelve - but I had never remembered doing anything nearly as embarrassing as Daisuke did on a regular basis.
Daisuke stopped skipping when we reached the cheerfully painted gates of the park. I smiled reminiscently, remembering when I was only Daisuke's age, and I used to sip along this very walkway with my parents being the ones embarrassed.
My mental trip down memory lane was cut short, however, when I saw Daisuke trying to climb up to the top of the high gates.
"Daisuke!" I screamed in shock, as my absolutely clueless little brother looked down at me with a confused look on his face. "Get down from there! Can't you wait till we get in the park before you start climbing on everything? You're gonna break your neck!"
The little bugger nodded, and jumped down effortlessly. "Sorry, Jun-sama," he said quickly, and dashed off past the gates and towards the jungle gym. I gave out a distressed sigh; there are some times that I mistake Daisuke for a monkey, what with him climbing on nearly anything he can get a good grip on. Daisuke really scares me sometimes when I take him to the him to the park and he does things like this; I wouldn't know what to do, or how to react, if my little brother ever got hurt doing those stupid stunts he pulled. I wasn't that good in stressful situations; I wouldn't know square one about what to do in a disaster.
I walked into the park, calling after him, "Be careful!" to which Daisuke only recognized with a wave of his hand. I sighed, giving up on trying to keep my brother in a big playground where he's sure to get a scraped knee or two.
I plopped down on one of the red wooden park benches, hoping to make the most out of this early, yet otherwise beautiful, Sunday morning. Actually, it wasn't all that early in the morning now; it had taken quite a while for Daisuke and me to get ready, eat breakfast, and walk over here from out apartment building, what with my fussy and fidgety brother making the trip take twice as much time than it usually does. It was now a reasonable hour of the morning, and the streets were bustling with rush-hour traffic. many other kids had joined us at the park, and I smiled from my vantage point as Daisuke happily played with his new playmates. The spring air was pleasantly warm, the sun shone brightly down on my skin and unruly burgundy hair, and I was almost ready to fall asleep at the park and make up for waking up so early today when...
"Ken-chan! Be careful! And don't play near the sprinklers; Mom would kill me if you come home soaked!"
I opened my eyes to see a bespectacled dark-haired boy about my age standing in the park, calling out to a younger boy, who looked about Daisuke's age, climbing on the monkey bars. The older boy looked a little geeky, but he wasn't that bad looking, really; his eyes were bright and intelligent behind his glasses, and I sat up and took notice of his warm smile. It seemed to me that his face looked familiar, but I just couldn't place where I saw him before...
I smiled as the boy gave one last harried look at his younger brother Ken. Looked like I wasn't the only one who was dragged out of bed this Sunday morning.
"So," I shouted to the boy, "you got roped into coming here, too?"
The boy turned to me, and a smile spread across his face, a smile of mutual recognition. He started walking over to me, and said, "I don't know what it is, but there's something about eight year old kids and early morning trips to the park."
"Maybe it's a secret plan," I said with a laugh, "to get all the older siblings up early...just to annoy us for the whole day." I held out my hand and smiled. "The name's Jun. Motomiya Jun."
"Ichiouji Osamu." The boy named Osamu took my hand in both of his and shook my hand warmly. Wow...I wasn't expecting that kind of an introduction. Osamu sat down next to me on the bench - after slowly letting my hand go, though he seemed pretty reluctant to do so. He smiled at me with that winning smile I was starting to get used to, and I blushed uncontrollably, though I didn't really know why. This boy...this Osamu...was it just my imagination, or was he trying to flirt with me?
I looked away from his deep eyes and blushed, trying to get my mind off what I was thinking, though it wasn't that easy. "Ichiouji Osamu? I...I think I've seen you before. You were on the news a few days ago! You're the kid genius!" I gasped out of shock of that I just said. Was I actually talking in the park with the famous kid computer whiz of Odaiba? It was too early in the morning to be believing this!
Osamu chuckled a bit and blushed. "No matter where I go," he said, a little sadly, as if he wasn't happy about me knowing about his intelligence. "I'm always haunted by my fame." He sighed and looked away from me. His entire mood seemed to change the minute I said I had recognized him. "Sometimes I wish I never really was that smart."
"Oh!" I gasped. I didn't know I hit such a sensitive nerve in Osamu. I immediately began to apologize. "I...I didn't mean anything bad by it, Osamu; really," I said sincerely.
Osamu looked into my eyes, his face full of optimism and hope. "You really mean it?" he asked.
I smiled embarrassingly, and blushed until I thought my cheeks were going to be set ablaze. "Well, actually," I said, nervously tucking a particularly unruly lock of my dark wine colored hair behind my ear, "I think it's pretty cool to be that smart. You don't know what I'd do to get math scores like you probably do."
Osamu smiled flirtatiously and replied, "Well, I don't know now what you'd do for smarts like mine," he said, looking straight into my eyes. "but I'd love to find out sometime."
I could hear myself giggle, but I didn't even know I had done it. Was I actually falling for Ichiouji Osamu, child genius? No, I thought to myself. Not Ichiouji Osamu, child genius; I'm falling for just normal boy Osamu, the guy who decided one early Sunday morning to sit next to an odd-looking girl at the playground and flirt with her.
"I am having trouble in my math class," I confessed to break the tension between us, as a mist of silence had seemed to fall upon us since Osamu's last remark. It was true, after all; I was in danger of failing math class, and if that happened, my parents were threatening to make me take Daisuke to - yecch - summer camp in the woods for the summer. I certainly didn't want that to happen, or I might be hanging around my little brother all summer long. "And I would really appreciate it if...maybe...you could tutor me?" I looked at Osamu with hopeful eyes, trying to mentally will him to say yes - one of the many stupid and mystical things all twelve year olds believed in at one time or another.
To my surprise, Osamu smiled brightly back at me. "I would be honored to tutor you, Jun-chan," he said, shifting his position on the bench to face me, one leg propped up on the bench, and one arm draped over the back of the bench - over my shoulders.
I desperately tried to keep my cool, even though I felt like jumping up from the bench and climbing all over the park myself. He just called me Jun-chan!
Smiling as seductively as I could I scooted over on the par k bench towards Osamu and deliberately brushed my fingertips against his bare knee. I didn't really know if what I was doing would work, but from what I had seen on all those American teen sitcoms, it had to. "Well, then," I said, "we're definitely going to have to see each other again one day."
Osamu's smile faded, and his face took on a worried expression. "That might be a problem, Jun-chan," he said, a bit sadly.
I sat up and looked him in his saddened eyes. "Why?" I asked. "Is there something wrong?"
"Not with you," Osamu apologized quickly, taking me hand with his own. My heart was racing - Osamu-kun just held my hand! And - oh! - I just called him Osamu-kun! "Oh, Jun; please don't think this has anything to do with you. It's just that...well, my family doesn't live around this playground, really; actually, Ken and I live all the way across town. I don't even know if I'll be able to ever see you again like this."
A question arose in my mind. "But if you live across town, Osamu-kun," I said, mustering up the courage to call him "Osamu-kun" to his face, "then why are you and your brother at this playground? It seems a little out of the way to come to this park, so early on a Sunday, no less."
Osamu grinned. "That's the strange thing!" he exclaimed in wonder. "This morning, Ken decided that he didn't want to go to our neighborhood park, and insisted that we go to this park today. I tried to talk him out of walking all this way just for a different playground, but he whined and whimpered until I gave in. I'm very glad he did insist, too; if he hadn't then I probably would have never met you, Jun-chan. It's almost as if us meeting at this park was -"
"- fate." I finished, finding myself helplessly trapped in what I felt to be a very romantic situation and trapped in Osamu's dark eyes. Listening to his story, I soon did begin to believe, more and more, that I was meant to meet Osamu today and to nearly fall in love, or whatever I could call this feeling that was sweeping over me. All signs seemed to point to pure destiny: it was destiny for Ichiouji Osamu to be at this park this Sunday morning, so that we could meet each other and possibly even fall in love. It was Osamu's destiny to be right there, right at this moment.
Little did I know his destiny never included me at all.
"Jun-sama! Jun-sama!" I heard the high-pitched excited squeal of Daisuke behind me, and I stood up and turned around to see my little brother skipping towards me with great delight and Osamu's brother in tow. The two were holding hands and laughing as they approached us; it seemed that Osamu-kun and I weren't the only ones to find a friend at the park today.
It was only until Daisuke ran up to me and hugged me tightly around my waist did I notice that the two boys were absolutely drenched with water.
"Uggh!" I cried, annoyed yet pleasantly surprised by my little brother's water attack on me. I tried to stay angry at him, but it wasn't working, and by the time I remembered to scold him I had to stop myself from laughing aloud. "Daisuke! You are so dead when we get home!" I joked, ruffling his wet hair so that he looked like a gel porcupine. Daisuke merely giggled, and hugged me tighter, making my clothes totally soaked.
Osamu, on the other hand, was not as pleased with Ken's wet appearance as I was with Daisuke's. His eyes grew cold behind his glasses and all thoughts of humor to him were gone. "I can't believe you, Ken," he said, as the dark haired boy pouted and lowered his head. "I specifically told you not to go in the sprinklers because you'd get wet, and you deliberately disobeyed me. I'm very disappointed in you; I thought a big boy like you would listen better."
The boy protested. "But onni-chan, I..."
Osamu cut him off. "I don't want to hear it, Ken! This is just like you going through my things when I tell you not to. You're in a lot of trouble, Ken." Osamu sighed, and I looked on as Ken nearly began to cry. "Come on. We're going home now."
He then turned to me. "I'm sorry I'm cutting our time here so short, Jun," he said politely, "but Ken and I have to leave now if we're going to make it back home for lunch."
I smiled warmly, and then felt the emptiness in my stomach, reminding me it was almost lunchtime. "Daisuke and I should be going, too," I said, saddened by the thought of leaving this boy so soon after I met him. Frantically looking around, I spied a young girl drawing on a nearby bench with a pad of paper and colored markers. Quickly apologizing to the surprised girl, I snatched the paper and a marker from her hands and scribbled down my phone number. Handing the paper with my number to Osamu, I said with a smile, "Here's my phone number...if you ever want to...tutor me sometime."
Osamu smiled, ignoring the cries of the brunette frail-looking girl behind us, and ignoring the dirty looks her goggled older brother was giving to us as well. "I'll definitely take you up on that," he said flirtatiously, knowing that neither he nor I were talking about anything that had to do with studying for a math test.
He took the numbers scrawled on the paper with red marker in his right hand and placed it in the pocket of his shorts, and took the hand of his sniffling little brother in his left. I took my own brother's hand in mine - a tough thing to do, considering Daisuke was still jumpy and energetic despite an early Sunday morning play at the park - and walked with Osamu to the brightly colored gates of the playground, thus exiting the comforting place of my childhood memories and, as of today, the place of my renewed interest. If cute, intelligent, charming guys like Osamu were at the playground every day, then why hadn't I volunteered to take Daisuke there every morning?
Because, I reminded myself, guys like Osamu aren't there every day. It was fate that we met today. Fate...
"You know, Jun-chan," Osamu spoke up as we left the park and began to stroll down the sidewalk, "I really feel that us finding each other today was fate. I mean, why else would Ken want to go to this park, out of all the parks in the city? And on the same day, at the same time..." Osamu shook his head and laughed. "I mean, what else could it be but destiny?"
I smiled back at him as we reached the corner of the busy street, just wondering if Osamu had just read my mind, or if we were on the same wavelength, and maybe we really were meant for each other. My skeptical twelve year old mind rejected the former, but it embraced the other, more romantic explanation. That was it; I had made up my mind. I didn't care how far away Ichiouji Osamu lived; he could have lived in California for all I cared. No matter what the obstacles, I was going to see much more of his boy, even if it killed me.
I turned to look both ways at the corner, still tightly clutching Daisuke's hand, and began to cross the street due North, towards my family's apartment, until I realized that Osamu wasn't following me. I turned back and returned to the curb, finally realizing that this was going to be our goodbye. "I guess we'll be seeing each other, Osamu," I said with a big, genuine grin on my face.
Osamu opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
I don't think I would have heard them even if he did say something.
All I could hear, as the traffic light above us changed from green to red, was the merry tinkling of the bells belonging to the ice cream truck across the street, making its daily rounds through the neighborhood playgrounds, and the unmistakable squeal of delight from Ichiouji Ken and his voice shout "Ice Cream!" as he spotted the truck across the busy intersection.
Then, it happened. I never even noticed anything was wrong until it was too late.
Ken slid out of Osamu's grasp and made a run for the truck. He ran right into the busy street, not looking or thinking about the cars speeding in front of him; the only thing on his mind was getting a double-dipped strawberry waffle cone.
Osamu sprinted after him, his eyes wide with shock and horror. I guess he wasn't thinking about the cars, either; he was only thinking about the welfare and safety of his beloved little brother. Even though he yelled at the small boy in the park before, I knew deep inside that he must have loved him. It was almost impossible for an older sibling not to love their little brother; as annoying as Daisuke was, I knew I would have done the same thing as Osamu if he was the one to run across that street.
Time seemed to go so slowly then. Osamu ran like a bolt of lightning after his young brother. I saw him push Ken out of the way of traffic, and try, desperately, to reach the curb himself in time.
Ken's giggles and hopes of strawberry stopped.
The ice cream truck's bells ceased to make noise.
The horn of a metro bus blared loud like a firecracker.
And I screamed.
"Jun-sama, what's going on?" Daisuke tugged on my arm frantically, trying to make sense of the madness that he saw before him.
I covered his eyes with my hand and shielded his body with my own, turning him away from the intersection. "Don't look, Daisuke!" I screamed, my own eyes shut as tight as I could stand, though my tears still managed to escape and roll down my face.
That boy - the goggled older brother of the girl whom I had stolen the markers and paper from - would read the next day in the newspaper about the tragic accident at his neighborhood playground, where a city bus collided with an unidentified twelve year old boy running across the street in the early Sunday morning rush hour. He would read that the boy suffered massive internal injuries upon collision, but did not die on impact. He would discover that the boy died en route to the hospital, of severe blood loss and respiratory failure. He would read about how his little brother was inconsolable for four hours, and so authorities had no way of discovering the boy's identity for the whole of the day.
If he cared enough, the boy would read in the next day's paper that the dead child's name was Ichiouji Osamu.
I wouldn't read about it, though; I wouldn't have touched the newspaper.
I didn't do anything. I just stood there and watched as this boy, this new, amazing guy who just came into my life, found his destiny on that busy intersection and fell in the path of the speeding bus. I didn't even move from my place on the ground with Daisuke as I heard Ken's hysterical cries for help, and for his onni-chan. And when the paramedics came, and I stole a glimpse of Osamu's blood on the pavement, I grabbed Daisuke's hand and ran home. I never looked back at the boy who, only five minutes before, I thought I could have had a good friendship with, or maybe even more. I never looked back.
I didn't come out of my room for two weeks after it happened.
"Jun-sama?"
I heard the quiet voice of my brother Daisuke and the slow creak of my bedroom door in the darkness. I wasn't looking at my clock radio, but I knew it had to be past midnight, and long past Daisuke's bedtime.
As for me, it didn't matter when my bedtime was. It was the night after the accident, and I hadn't left my bedroom since the morning. I didn't plan on leaving any time soon, either; it would have been perfectly fine with me if all of Japan was bombed and the world ceased to exist.
I didn't answer Daisuke. I didn't feel I had the strength or the will to speak, and my voice was probably sore from crying all day. I simply sniffled in reply, and tossed my head from one side to the other on my tear-soaked pillow.
Daisuke silently crept into the room, and before I knew it, I could feel his presence beside my bed. "I couldn't sleep, Jun-sama," he said in a timid voice. It sounded like he had been crying tonight, too. "I had a nightmare."
I couldn't see my brother, yet my eyes stared intently at his silhouette, unable to take my gaze away from his small, vulnerable form. I felt my eyes grow wet with new tears, yet I did not reply.
"Jun-sama, can I sleep with you tonight?" Daisuke persisted, his voice wavering with fearful tears of his own. I didn't want any company tonight - for some reason, I wasn't in the most hospitable of moods - but even though the darkness, I could feel my brother's presence, and it was pouting. And if there was one thing I couldn't say no to, it was my brother's sincere little pout.
Sighing loudly, I moved over on my small bed, and heard the bedsprings squeak slightly as Daisuke climbed into bed with me, taking no time in curling his body into a tight ball underneath the light covers. Even though Daisuke was fearful of sleep tonight - probably more fearful than me, if that was possible - I felt a certain level of comfort with having him here. This morning made me think of all that I had to lose in this world, and the first and most important thing that flashed across my mind was the love of my little brother.
I could feel the tension in his body even from where I was, and out of sheer concern I reached out with my arm and touched Daisuke's shoulder. It was shaking uncontrollably; it was only then that I discovered he had been crying ever since he climbed into the bed. I heard him whimper when I touched him, and my heart instantly went out to him. I crept closer to him on the bed and took him into a warm embrace, nearly wanting to cry myself as I felt him sob into my shoulder.
"Daisuke, it's all right," I tried to soothe him, but to no avail. Daisuke kept crying quietly, and it wasn't until a good ten minutes before he began to calm down again.
"Oh, Jun-sama...I...I had a bad dream," he said again, using the sleeve of his pajamas to wipe his nose, now running from his crying. "I dreamed that you were dead...just like Ken-chan's brother. I had a dream that you left me, and I kept screaming for you, but you didn't answer..."
Daisuke's small body shook with sobs again, as he unsuspectingly took me back to the accident of this morning. God, how self-centered was I... Until just then, I was only thinking about myself, and how I was ever going to deal with this pain welled up inside of me. I kept thinking about Osamu-kun, and how it all could have possibly changed if he wasn't so distracted with talking to me instead of watching his little brother. I couldn't stop thinking about what I could have done to prevent Osamu's death, or what I was going through. I never thought about what this morning could have done to Daisuke's mental state.
"Oh, Daisuke..." It was all I could say. I didn't know how to react to Daisuke's terrifying nightmare, or what I could do to possibly make him feel better in this, one of the most fearful times in his young life. I was only thinking about how I couldn't scold myself enough for being so selfish and caring only about my needs of the day.
Daisuke gripped onto my pajamas with a small fist, and clung on to me for what seemed like dear life. "Jun-sama, please don't leave me like Ken-chan's brother did. Please, I'll be a good kid; I won't be too annoying or wake you up too early ever again. Just please...don't die. Please don't ever leave me..."
That did it. I couldn't hold my tears in any longer; my brother's innocent pleas were too much for my heartstrings, and I felt hot tears fall down my face. "Daisuke," I whispered. I picked his head up to look him in the eye. "Daisuke, I can't promise that. I'm not going to say that I'll never leave you." What was I going to say? I couldn't lie to the boy and say I was never going to die; actually, I was grappling with the same exact emotions of mortality myself, and how it could even be possible for a bright young twelve year old life like Ichiouji Osamu to just be over. I didn't want him to break out in hysterics, though, so I continued with what I had to say.
"But I'll tell you one thing," I said, "I don't know when that day will be. I can't tell you if it'll be fifty years from now, or even next week." I swallowed hard at my last words; what if I actually did die next week? It was because of that rationalization and that one alone that I refused to leave my room for two weeks, and even after that was deathly afraid of taking public transportation for years to come.
"I can tell you, though, that I will always love you, no matter what happens. And that love will stay with you, Daisuke, even after I'm gone. You will always be loved, Daisuke," I finished, feeling my insides swell with happiness, an emotion I hadn't truly felt since early that Sunday morning, when I had first fallen for Osamu-kun. "you will never be alone."
I kissed the top of my little brother's head, and felt his grip on my pajamas loosen. He had fallen asleep; maybe from exhaustion, maybe from too many tears, but from his calm breathing, I believed he fell asleep content, knowing in his own mind after my speech that everything will be all right. I guess Daisuke needed to know that after all that had happened today.
And I guess I needed to know everything would be all right, too.
Smiling for the first time in hours that night, I snuggled in closer to my sleeping young brother on the bed, and held him tighter than I ever had before, never wanting to let him go.