Disclaimer: Refer to chapter one.
Summary: Written originally for the "summer" challenge at lj community iyficchallenge. Set a long, long time after the Feudal Era has been drawn to conclusion. Refers to Chapter 411 ("The Kind Man"), and provides an oddly tragic take on it.
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Stagnation
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They were surely the oddest group of travelers to have graced Japan's Feudal Era. But for him they had been guidance, much-needed during his days of utmost stubbornness.
Like the younger days of the year they were vivid and dynamic. But just as the earliest spring snows they were quick to dissipate and leave him standing, still cursedly immutable, upon unforgiving earth that had one by one swallowed them up.
As chinooks and thunderstorms he rages and wanders awhile – a long while. Eventually he settles for stifling, musky existence that erodes exultation and sufferings past day by day, point by point, until the union of infinitely many points forms the beginnings of the most harmless and uninteresting of lines.
He passes the next chapter of his life in comfort but listlessness. Falling back, always, upon the opiate called lethargy. He dyes his hair so that he is by appearance just another middle-aged human male among the many that inhabit the heart of Tokyo. Working a monotonous job by day to return, hours later, to an equally monotonous apartment, he revels in the idle insouciance of hot, dreary nights.
He tells himself that all that holds him now – all that has ever held him for decades past – is merely the necessity of existence.
Except that one day he rounds a corner on the way home from work, and unwittingly glimpses a silver-haired boy walking a fence rail. He ought not know what to think, because it is been so long since he's thought anything.
It is children that stand adamant at another turning of the seasons, wishing sullenly that time could give back what it takes.
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