Ooooookay. This story is rated PG-13 for: Language, bitterness, bitching, crudity, and mild descriptions of injury and insanity. Oh, and gayness. Got a problem -- get out. It's that simple. (To the interested, this is not the sequel to HBT)
Tsukioka Katsuhiro was not a happy man – both in the general, everyday, and in the specific, right-now sense. There were many causes for this, but if one had to be singled out as the main cause, it would not be that Sano was gone.
Definitely not.
After all, why should he care that Sano left? He hadn't even been back for a year, and almost a year of something was a drop in the bucket when compared to ten years of nothing. Yes, he had cared before, cared that Sano was gone, cared that he had left with a smile, a nod, a last request for money and contacts that was never going to be repaid now, and a "oh, by the way, see ya later" except that he wouldn't … Katsu had cared very much, as a matter of fact. He had just gotten used to Sano always being around, and then he left. But really – hadn't he expected something of the sort to happen? Hadn't he known that Sano was going to leave? Of course he had. And he hadn't cried, this time. No – Katsu was a grown man, and it wasn't proper for grown men to cry like little boys, even when their best friends were leaving.
People leave. Sometimes they die, sometimes they just go away. No one's so special that the world will stop in its tracks for them: people leave – so what. Deal with it. Pick up the pieces and move on. If they're worth anything, they wouldn't want you to spend any more time grieving than you have to.
Sano was worth something.
So no, Katsu wasn't unhappy that Sano was gone, not anymore. What he was unhappy about now was his current location – or rather, lack thereof.
Katsu was traveling. He hated traveling with a passion, especially since he couldn't afford a train ticket. Not that any trains ran from Tokyo to Nagano, but still. It was three days walk from Tokyo to the village of Nagano and Zenkoji temple, allowing for sleep and meals. For Katsu, who was not as active as Sano was, three days of straight walking was no little thing …
"Achoo!"
Katsu sniffed and rubbed his nose irritably. And then there was the sick thing. He had picked it up on the way home (this was his second day of travel) – nothing terribly major: a slight headache, fuzzy senses, delayed reaction time, and a nasty cough weren't life-threatening at all, really. It was just enough to render him completely miserable while still almost completely able to travel, and, stubborn ass that he was, he had turned down the offer of a few days recovery time from the monks at the temple. Oh well. He was over halfway there, after all …
Unfortunately for him, Katsu was just sick enough that he didn't notice the bandits on the side of the road … not that he would have been able to do anything against them if he had. His lack of self-defense without a bomb or two handy was really starting to irritate Katsu – too late for that now.
His last thought was "oh, shit," which is a terrible and all-to-common last thought to have, especially when you know what the odds are of ever having another.