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The Swordsman and the Flowergirl
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TWO: Return to the City of Games
Two years.
Two years to the day since Amelda had set out on his own in search of himself.
He had spent the first year in his desolated homeland, helping to fix up what could be saved and marking graves.
He had found his brother's. He had never forgotten where it was. But it didn't hurt so much anymore to go to it. Miruko was with him no matter where he went; he was content with that.
At least, he had been.
The days continued to pass without any real sign of ending, and Amelda came to realize just how long life could be. The nights were short, but his waking hours were painfully long. After a time, he finally left his scarred home to wander around the rest of Europe.
Now, he was heading for a place he had only gone to once.
Japan. Domino, Japan.
- - -
"Big brother…"
The twelve year-old Amelda sat up and found himself in a vast field of flowers. The sky was the most beautiful blue he had ever seen, and with the green of the earth beneath it, he thought he was in heaven.
"Brother."
He turned to find a familiar boy crouching beside him. His hair was short wine-red hair, silver eyes that matched his own, dressed in torn, dirty clothes. "Miruko…?"
Amelda's little brother smiled.
"Miruko!" He hugged him tightly. "Oh, it's wonderful to see you again! I've missed you to death!"
"I know," Miruko smiled. "But you know I'm always with you, right?"
Amelda looked around. "I don't understand. Where are we? This place…what is it? How did I get here?"
The younger brother shook his head. "That's not important."
A gust of wind picked up and blew a wave of flower petals into Amelda's face. Looking after the wave, he smiled and looked back to his brother who returned the smile. The younger of the two then looked away from his brother and pointed.
Following Miruko's gesture, Amelda looked beyond to find a small girl in a white dress with a huge sunhat picking flowers a few yards away with her back to the two of them.
"Come on!" Miruko called, jumping up and pulling Amelda after him.
"W-wait!" Amelda stumbled a bit as he got to his feet and followed after his little brother. When the two came within a few feet of the girl, they stopped and stood staring at her.
She was really tiny, maybe only a little older than Miruko, and the sunhat blocked any of her other features.
Suddenly, another wind shot across the field and Amelda shielded his face from the wave of petals; he also caught sight of the girl's hat flying away and watched after it until it disappeared.
Turning back, he found the girl standing and looking at him, her lilies and tulips held tightly to her chest. Her hair was shoulder length and a fiery-cinnamon color, while her large, innocent eyes were a simple brown.
The girl stared at him a while longer before finally speaking.
"Are you sad?"
- - -
Amelda snapped awake, finding himself once again twenty years old and in his seat on the plane headed for Japan.
What had that been about?
He was familiar with the nightmares of the day his brother died in that tragic air raid; he had a dream about finding Miruko the day Doma fell, and that had comforted him enough to keep living. But this was completely different.
He gave a light cough and moaned when it passed, rubbing his sore throat through his black turtleneck. Somewhere he had caught a cold and it was getting worse; he hated being sick. And he always took great care of himself, so how the hell did he catch a bug?
He chalked it up to having gone on three flights to get to Japan, and having shared the same compact air with two dozen other people, something must have latched on to him.
"Attention, Passengers," the pilot's voice spoke from the intercom. "It is now 5:45 and we are now passing over Domino and will be landing within the next few minutes. Please secure your belongings and set your tray tables in the upright position."
Amelda looked out the window he sat by to gaze out at the city he was familiar with, but had only visited once, as it was curtained by falling rain. That time hadn't really been a vacation, but he had been the one to fly his friends and himself over there.
He caught sight of a tall building in the middle of town that he knew very well. His hate for that corporation and its master had faded long ago, and now he wondered how things were going with the two Kaiba brothers.
Last he'd heard, they were building Amusement Parks in America. Amelda found himself smirking at the though of them building one such park on the spot of the fallen Doma headquarters.
'That would be irony,' he thought with a chuckle, but was cut off when he started coughing again. He would wonder about his dream and reminisce later; he had to get something into his system to fight off this lousy cold.
- - -
The young, red-haired woman finished wrapping the bouquet of roses and tying it shut with a red ribbon. "Here you are," she handed the flowers to the woman and accepted the fee in exchange. "Date planned for tonight?"
The woman nodded. "I wanted to make my husband's and my anniversary special," she smiled. "I remember; I got my wedding bouquet from this shop…" The woman gazed off into the distance with a soft, dreamy sigh. "You've been open for so long, Kawai-san. I hope you know how much it means to me…"
Kawai Shizuka smiled. "Our shop wouldn't be anything if no one came," she said. "It's you and the others that come here that make it what it is."
The woman blushed and left with a soft 'Thank you,' and a bow.
Shizuka sighed gently and looked out the windows of her flower shop at the hard rain. It had been really cloudy lately, but the clouds had finally burst, releasing their moisture. She smiled, glad to have the cool weather after the harsh summer.
"Shizuka…help…?"
Turning at her name, the young woman rushed to help her boarding employee; he was a year or so older than her with white hair that went down to his shoulders and big, puppy dog-brown eyes. Bakura Ryou sighed when he and Shizuka finally placed the box of snapdragons down by the window.
"I thought I might be able to carry it on my own," he wiped his brow sheepishly.
"Hey, even you fall under the weight of heavy stuff sometimes, Bakura-kun," Shizuka smiled. Just then the bell above the door opened and couple more people entered. "Back to work," she winked.
- - -
Amelda walked his bike out of the Airport cargo bay, his bags and bedding strapped to the back. It was difficult to transport, but his bike was all he had that made him happy; to feel the wind rushing into him was the closest he could get to flying without a helicopter or plane and he wouldn't be caught dead without his bike.
Pulling on his helmet and gloves, he revved his bike and zoomed off down the street. He remembered from his only time in Domino that there was a decent hotel nearby; that was where they had had stayed for a couple of days.
As it turned out, he only had enough money to rent a room for about one night. Nonetheless, he took it and soon found himself collapsing on a comfortable bed with a sigh.
He was still incredibly tired, despite having slept on the flight, but it was late and his throat was getting worse. Taking a bottle of water from the small fridge, he filled a glass with ice and poured the bottle's contents into it; ice water usually helped a sore throat, though it did nothing for the cold itself.
Sitting back down on the edge of the bed, Amelda looked out the window on his right at the city lights. Since the sky was so dark in big cities, he guessed that the buildings and cars tried to make up for the lack of starlight.
'Miruko would have liked it…' he thought, like he always did whenever he saw the colors of a city.
Thoughts of his brother made his mind stray back to the dream he had had on the flight. He had no idea what his little brother had been trying to tell him, or who that girl had been.
He didn't remember her from his childhood, and he was fairly certain he had never met her the past two years of walkabout, and definitely not during his days with Doma. He had had next to no contact with girls or women growing up; he never had much of a reason to, especially at that time.
He didn't know that girl; of that much he was certain.
Setting the glass on the bedside table he took off his jacket and shoes before laying down on the bed. Five minutes of lying in bed without any real signs of sleep approaching passed before he got up, taking a pillow with him.
'I should know better by now,' he sighed as he found a comfortable corner, threw his pillow down and soon fell asleep.
- - -
It was late and the flowershop was bright in the dark of night. "It's almost eight, Shizuka," Ryou said. "It's about closing time."
Just then the phone rang and the young woman picked it up from its place on the wall. "Moshi moshi, Edening Blooms."
"Shizuka, hey!" Piped up the familiar voice of her brother on the other end.
"Ah! Onii-chan!" Shizuka brightened and nodded to Ryou, allowing him to proceed to close up shop. "How have you been?"
"Fine, great in fact!" Jounouchi Katsuya replied. "I just wanted you to be the first to know that…that…Mai…"
The redhead's eyes widened. "She's back?" A sheepish chuckle was her reply. "Oh, Onii-chan, that's great! When did she come by? How is she?"
"She came by this afternoon, we met at Yuugi's game shop," Katsuya went on. "She seemed to be doing well. She…talked about staying in town for a while, so…maybe when you have some time you can drop by and hang with her."
Shizuka smiled at her brother's regular elusive admissions of what he really felt and thought. "Yeah, if I can, I'll do that."
There was a pause.
"So…how have you been, Shizuka? Holding up alright?"
"Yeah," she pulled up the stool behind the counter. "The shop's doing great! Just as many customers as usual, always a familiar face."
Another pause.
"Onii-chan?"
"Yeah?" Katsuya sounded as though he had snapped out of a daydream.
"I'm okay," she said softly. "It's been a good long while; I'm feeling a lot better. And with Bakura-kun here, I'm not all that lonely."
"Good," her brother said. "That's…that's really good." They talked for a little while longer before they both admitted they had to leave and left well-wishes as they hung up.
"How are things with Jounouchi-kun?" Ryou asked as they turned off the lights and headed up the stairs.
"Great! Mai-san came back to Domino!" Shizuka replied.
Ryou's hair perked. "Really? That's fantastic! She must be feeling better then." The two took made their way up the stairs and stopped to take off their shoes before going down the hall to the living room. "I'll start dinner."
Making his way through the living room, the white-haired youth paused to bow to a picture on the bookshelf. "Tsureishimasu."
Shizuka sat herself down at the traditional Japanese table and smiled at the photograph of the woman on the shelf. "A lot of familiar faces, a couple new ones. Either way, still as busy and slow as ever, ne?"
Shizuka's eyes softened, but were still as bright as they always were. "It was a good day today, Ogaa-san," she said.
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