Love's Occasions
Arrhythmic: O-kay! Now, we finally have a Japanese-festival specific chapter, which is... the annual cherry blossom viewing! Now, knowing Subby-chan's job, there is much-much-much angst attributed to this chapter, though our two lovely protagonists finally come to a realization about some things. SK fangirls unite! (Non-SK writers, unite anyway!)
Chapter Four: Cherry Blossoms In the Wind
In Japan, the annual cherry blossom viewing festival is a highly joyous occasion, a moment to see the pink-white national flower bloom in all its glory. Now, somewhere in Japan, the cherry blossoms grow particularly thick and beautiful. At the center of this park stands one Tree, ancient beyond counting. This Tree has learnt to defend itself through a human.
The Tree of the Sakurazukamori. And the families that picnic under it do not know that the petals showering down are the result of buried bodies turned to bloody fertilizer. Imagine your daughter, simply killed one night, an innocent laughing body devoured by the hungry roots of the Sakura...
Kamui worried for Subaru. The onmyouji was withdrawn, smoking cigarettes almost compulsively in the room they shared. It was a bad sign, because since the Promised Day Subaru had gradually been smoking less and less. But the festival had triggered a deep unhappiness somewhere within him, all the pent-up frustration of serving as the Sakurazukamori.
The one part of Seishirou he had never been able to throw away, despite the fact that his life was shared with Kamui now. It was an often-ignored reminder, that golden eye beside his green one. The eye that wasn't Subaru but was a part of him. It hurt Kamui, and Subaru knew it hurt Kamui. But it was the one reminder of an old life; a reminder that could not just be discarded so simply.
Subaru flung himself back against the bed, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. Today was the cherry blossom festival. In Ueno Park, there would be families under the Tree, and the Tree would bask in their vitality, drink it in and its hunger would be awakened. Subaru would again, have to tonight go out and find a victim who would not know for what he had died.
Subaru hated killing. The Dark Kamui had saw wishes, had once said that very few people in Japan did not want to die at all costs. The innocence of children, maybe, and their resilience for hardship. Maybe it took a certain selfishness to have that wish; a total instinct of self-preservation that humans had since chucked in cultivating relationships with other people.
Dying for someone was a commonly entertained idea. Dying because of someone was probably even more common.
Yet, Subaru couldn't help but feel revolted every time he slit someone's throat. Seishirou had always used far more brutal methods of death, knowing the fear in the victim's final moments seasoned the flesh for the Tree. Strangulation, the typical hand-through-the-chest... but for Subaru, there was a small, functional blade in his pocket when he dressed in Seishirou's clothing and set off into the night. They usually never knew what hit them, and he supposed that was a small blessing.
Outside in the living room, Kamui made a decision- and decided to execute it before his nerves left him. Walking to the bedroom, he gave two sharp knocks before cracking it open just that fractional inch, pausing as he stuck his head in tentatively. 'Subaru?'
Subaru knew he shouldn't be irritated at Kamui. Kamui had come to mean a lot to him, and Subaru knew the younger boy cared deeply for him. But in a moment like this... he would never admit it, but he would rather have had Kamui leave him alone to wallow in misery.
'Let's go out.'
'Where?'
Kamui took a deep breath. 'Ueno Park. I want to visit the Sakura.'
The silence was almost unbearable for those few moments before Subaru sat upright and gave Kamui an oddly measuring look. 'You want to visit the Tree.' It was not a question, but Kamui nodded nonetheless.
'What if I say no?'
Kamui took another breath and fixed Subaru with a pleading but firm look in those big amethyst eyes. 'Then I'll go alone, Subaru. But I would like it a lot more if you came with me.' This would mark the closest they had ever come to a quarrel, considering that both of them were usually very much unwilling to fight with each other.
One second. Two. Then Subaru sighed and said, 'Get your coat. Let's go.'
Resisting the urge to whoop like a five-year-old, Kamui smiled brilliantly at Subaru. 'Thank you.'
They drew eyes from all around them, the older man and the young teenage boy, the man with mismatched eyes that frightened those who looked too closely. The green eye suited him, suited his overall air of sadness, of having seen too much. The golden eye looked as if it belonged in a face more gamine, more accustomed to danger. An eye that had seen as much of death as the other, but interpreted it in a far different way.
The younger boy was next to catch attention- how could he not, with a pair of eyes that seemed to eclipse every other feature on his face at first? Dark violet, set in a face that was almost feminine, with its full lips and pale, delicate skin. Eyes that had seen plenty of pain and darkness. One could not help but feel that the joyous occasion only seemed to add to more of his sorrow.
Actually, by the time Kamui and Subaru had arrived at the park, at five thirty in the afternoon, most people had begun to pack up, happy faces showing on all sides. Cherry blossom viewing was the general purpose, but people spent the day in the company of friends and loved ones. No one could spend five hours contemplating the beauty of a sakura petal.
Except maybe Subaru. He was at the Tree already, Kamui having lagged behind for a while, and staring into its pink-clad branches with a certain sort of horrid fascination, like watching someone's limbs get amputated. Horror is the topmost instinct but a disgustingly human curiosity forces you to keep watching. You can't look away.
Rather than break the spell, Kamui walked up to the Sakura and laid a cautiously respectful hand against its bark.
Falling. Drowning. Sakura petals in a blitzkrieg all around him, binding him, filling his senses...
It was a sharp cry of his name- 'Kamui!'- panicked, scared that brought him back, and there was an arm on his, tugging him away from the grasp of that ancient creature of power. He was suddenly in Subaru's arms, and there were curious looks directed at them from the people around him... fighting off the wave of dizziness, he didn't object as Subaru lowered him to the ground, leaning Kamui against himself rather than against the Tree. 'Never touch the Tree knowing what it is. Even the Sakurazukamori doesn't do that... although I think that sometimes Seishirou did. He liked, possibly needed, the brush with death: it left him with a sense of the Tree's hunger, enabled him to kill better, even.'
Kamui was silent for a moment as he stared up at the Tree from within the shelter of Subaru's arms. 'Subaru? You loved Seishirou, didn't you? That's why you're doing this?'
It took a while. During the events leading up to the Promised Day, Subaru had been almost eager to talk to Kamui about Seishirou, like it was a release of some kind. But now, after the man's death and his trying to move on, Seishirou was barely mentioned, and then only if Kamui brought him up.
If Kamui had exorcised the pain that came with the memory of Fuuma, Subaru never had. Not for nearly ten years already.
'Yes, Kamui.' The admission was quiet, pained, pressed from Subaru. 'I did love him, very much. Sometimes I think I still do. I'm sorry-' the last part was uttered quickly, the giving of an excuse, the guilty cover-up of something that needed saying even though truth would hurt another person, because carrying the burden was growing too heavy to carry.
Kamui stopped him, struggling upright. 'There is nothing for you to be sorry about, Subaru.' It was the use of his name that seemed to calm the onmyouji; he subsided as Kamui went on talking in a low voice. 'I knew you loved Seishirou since ages ago. It's part of what made you who you are.' And unconsciously he traced the inverted pentagram emblazoned onto the back of Subaru's hand.
Subaru seemed to slacken in defeat. 'You know something, Kamui? I'm afraid. Afraid of loving you. I do love you, you know,' he added almost conversationally. 'The only thing is, the people I've really loved have all died, one after the other. Hokuto first, for love of me. Seishirou second, for love of me again. I'm starting to wonder if I'm bad luck of some kind.' His tone tried for flippancy, but there was a strained note within it that spoke of Subaru's inner pain.
'Trust me, Subaru. After all I've seen, if I die it won't be for, or because of you,' the words were harsh, almost, but they seemed to give an odd comfort to Subaru. Kamui's smile was molten steel. 'And besides, that won't stop me loving you.' There. The words were out. The words they'd danced over and around and about, because somehow it didn't seem right to say them and force that confrontation, force that acknowledgement. Maybe if they loved silently, the gods above wouldn't take notice.
And suddenly both of them knew they needn't have worried. There was worry, and pain, and then there was a sudden sense of acceptance. A sense of inevitability.
Subaru never did go hunting that night. Both of them slept chastely side by side, tucked together in bed, loving each other the way they always had. The Sakurazukamori refused to hear the rustling of the Tree in the night wind, listening instead to the silent beating of hearts in tandem.
Arrhythmic: Alright! I'm still on schedule! I shall be glad. Chapter Three didn't get many reviews... may I be so bold as to ask for some nice peoples to write me some nice new ones? And there's a question: would you prefer the last chapter on the twenty fourth, or the twenty fifth?