Disclaimer: I'd like to take a moment to thank my sponsors for supporting my endeavors thus far. Asahi beer has helped greatly in my writing forays…What? What? I'm too young to admit I consume alcohol? Great, now the law's gonna come after me…
Figured I'd give this a shot at a multi-chapter. We'll see how it goes.
The Days I LostChapter Two:
The Days I Loved
"Kyou no baka!"
The infuriated exclamation was followed by the shattering of pottery against a tree trunk, and Yuki stared at the broken shards of clay, as appalled as exhilarated by his uncharacteristic display of violence. His chest heaved with the sudden exertion, and he caught himself looking around for another pot to smash; exercising his impressive willpower, he restrained the unexpected urge to destroy everything breakable in sight, clenching his fists impotently at his sides.
"Kyou, you idiot," Yuki repeated, no less vehemently than his first outburst. He glared at the well-tended garden patch in the middle of the small clearing, the forest rising calm and quiet around him, the soothing presence unable to erase the black fog that choked his heart. Anger, vile and bitter, spewed into his throat, and Yuki spat the words into the air, hoping, wanting to wound.
"Take the easy way out, huh? Leave all the rest of us behind to clean up your mess, will you? Because when you're gone, it's up to us to take care of everything you ran away from without finishing, you coward!"
The sorrow and pain and regret-tinged guilt that had swamped him during the funeral had passed, leaving him hollowed-out and edgy, and had been replaced with an all-consuming and altogether unfamiliar feeling of rage. It was a burning rage, one that consumed like a fire rampant in his blood, and Yuki whirled, storming up the rows of his small garden patch. Fragile stems broke beneath his sneakers, but he barely noticed the quiet cries of greenery as he killed plants and ruined months of careful work.
It was only poetic justice that he unconsciously chose the leeks to crush beneath his cruel and unrepentant feet.
"You think that this is the only way you're going to win, BAKANEKO!"
Yuki stopped, staring behind him at the rows of flattened, trampled leeks as if he hadn't fully been aware of his actions until that moment. Well. He passed a hand over his face, ran his fingers through his hair in a rare display of weariness. Perhaps Kyou's uncontrollable temper hadn't died with him after all.
Yuki lowered himself slowly onto the dead tree stump he often used as a seat when he felt overwhelmed and had to escape to the solitude of his little field.
Silence settled around him, tentative, like sunshine shining timidly out between angry clouds in the slight break between storms, apologetic for its absence, afraid of retribution. Birds chirped in the forest, and Yuki caught the slight shift that was the feet of small animals—squirrels, mice, grasshoppers—moving over the winter grass and forest floor. The air was icy as it flowed around him, stinging his cheeks, and Yuki tugged his jacket closer around his shoulders as the mid-afternoon chill began to register in his mind.
Temper passed, leaving him as empty as before. Cursing Kyou had done nothing—had never done anything, Yuki admitted. Blaming him was meaningless now. Always had been. How could you assign the guilt to someone who was already so tainted by the knowledge of his own culpability?
The first wave of emotion had been guilt, and had left him exhausted. The second was anger, a reflexive and unstoppable rush to blame someone, something, anything, for the senseless loss of life. It was wrong for someone as young and healthy and vivid as Kyou had been to die. To take his own life…
It's a family tradition, now.
Yuki banished the thought. Sorrow reigned now, heavy and silver-edged, blue on the inside with nothing but pure mourning for the orange-headed boy who had been the closest thing Yuki had had to a 'best friend'. There was nothing traditional about taking one's own life. Even if Kyou's own mother had done so didn't predispose Kyou to the same fate, to the same inclinations.
Just because your parents were monsters didn't mean you were, too, did it?
"Why did you do it, then?" Yuki tipped his face back to stare at the pale, washed-out sky overhead. There were no discernible clouds, merely a sort of hazy covering that blurred the blue beyond, an omniscient presence that dampened the world. Light filtered through everywhere, as if the clouds were nothing more than gauze spread over all life below.
"Why did you do it, Kyou? What went wrong, so wrong, at the end? You had so much left, so much to live for. What went wrong that made you choose to go the way that leads to the one end you can never return from? The one choice you can't do anything to fix?" He felt tears, cool and filled with grief—simple grief, a clean sort of grief—slip down his face. "You'd already been through so much and come out so far ahead. Why give it up now? Kami-sama, Kyou…what happened?"
It was a question, Yuki knew, that would haunt him for a long, long time.
"Hey."
Yuki jerked, surprised, and sprang lightly to his feet to find Rin standing at the edge of the field. Her black eyes shifted from one side to the other, as if she were embarrassed to be there, and Yuki reached up to wipe the tears that stung on his cheeks. "Rin? What are you doing here?"
She still looked vaguely disturbed, as if she were treading on sacred ground with blasphemous boots—knee-high, high-heeled leather ones—but she approached him slowly. Realization tickled the back of Yuki's mind, and he guessed that she probably knew about how carefully he guarded this little secret of his. Rin didn't like collaborating with anybody on anything, and sharing a secret was definitely a team sort of game.
"Hiro wanted to talk to Tooru." She shrugged, her slender shoulders clad in thin black wool moving restlessly. "Something about how he wanted to ask her to talk to Kisa. Apparently she's been abnormally gloomy and depressed since Kyou's death." Rin was never known for her tact or her subtlety; if she noticed Yuki's wince at her blunt and less-than-sensitive reference to Kyou's…well, his death, she didn't mention it. Or take it into future notice.
"He thinks it has something to do with the fact that they're both cats—well, she is, he was, at least." Rin glanced at the broken leeks; her gaze flickered with something that was maybe pity, but her voice held the same bored sneer that was as inherent a part of her character as her bold sense of fashion. "Anyway, I said I'd keep him company on the way over. He's just a little kid, after all. Don't want him getting hurt."
Yuki wasn't quite sure what Rin thought she'd be protecting him from, but he kept his silence. Hiro was in seventh grade now—had time really passed that quickly?—and was certainly more than capable of guarding his own on the trip across town. How many times had he escorted Kisa over? But Yuki merely gave a mental shrug. If Rin wanted to come with Hiro, it wasn't any of his business what her ulterior motives were, was it?
"You haven't talked to Kagura after the funeral, have you?"
There was something altogether too offhanded about Rin's tone as she took a casual seat on the tree stump he'd just vacated, and Yuki's eyes narrowed reflexively. "No, I haven't seen her since. Of course, I don't make it a habit to visit the Souma main house. Is there something wrong with her?"
Rin shook her head, a little too flippantly for Yuki's comfort, and suspicion crowded into his dark gray eyes. "Oh, no, no, nothing's wrong. She's fine, considering the one person she's based her entire life on decided to up and off himself. I'd say her symptoms are pretty normal for someone who thinks their life has ended—she doesn't eat, she refuses to speak, she barely comes out of her room except to shower, she hasn't been outside the house since the funeral…Yesterday she took the portable DVD player to her room and locked herself in there for hours. When she came out, she looked as if she'd had the crying jag of the century." Something that looked like sympathy flashed across Rin's face. "She won't talk to me about what's wrong, which is weird. You'd think she'd trust me after all these years we've lived in the same house." She shrugged again. "Well, maybe it's because we've never socialized, really, outside sharing the same roof over our heads. Not like you, you know. You and Tooru and Kyou used to hang out with her a lot, didn't you?"
Surprised, not quite sure he was interpreting things right, Yuki blinked. His question was hesitant as he wondered how deeply he would offend the touchy girl. "Rin…are you asking me to talk to Kagura?"
Her dark eyes pierced him with one stabbing look. "I don't ask people for favors." Her voice was flat. "If you're thinking I'm doing this out of, I don't know, compassion or anything, you're wrong." And the tone of her voice indicated that she knew Yuki would see straight through her lies. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just came along with Hiro."
She straightened, glanced back over her shoulder. "He should have had enough time to talk to Tooru by now. He can't tolerate her for very long, anyway. He's a funny kid, that Hiro." Affection softened her voice, but it was gone by the time she looked back at Yuki through flat, expressionless eyes. "By the way, if you suddenly decide to come to the Souma house—you know, for some indiscernible reason—Kagura's mom works late on Thursday nights. Kagura's usually at home alone until around eleven, eleven-thirty. I'll be out with Haru after school every day this week, so, you know, it'd be nice if she could have some company."
It wasn't the subtlest of hints, but Yuki held his tongue against making any comments. She was doing a friend a favor, after all; no need to insult her for caring.
Rin started towards the path that would take her around Shigure's large holdings and to the front yard, but Yuki's voice stopped her. "Rin." She turned her head to look at him, his eyes earnest as they met hers unflinchingly. "Thank you."
Snorting, she waved a carelessly dismissive hand at him over her shoulder as she headed into the trees. Believe me, Yuki. Her thoughts were dark to match the worry that gnawed at her heart.
You've got nothing to thank me for.
2.12.05
NOTES: Well, this one wasn't so bad. I'm sort of sad at having killed my Kyou-kun, who's usually my POV character, but I think this one will turn out all right without him to guide me. Yuki makes for an interesting vehicle, I think, very complex. And Rin is another one of my favorites, all mysterious and dark and edgy.
Glossary:
Baka—stupid, idiot
Kami-sama—God
Kyou no baka—"Kyou, you idiot"