A/N: Oh look, I'm still alive! And so is the fic! …are you? ^_^' I hope so. I hope you've all been well.
It's been a while, so I have many things to say. First off, this was meant to be one chapter of Shiro's birthday but then it got too long so I divided it. Second, Even little lions grow isn't the actual title of the chapter(s). The title I wanted was Even without their parents, children can grow up but that was too long. ^_^' There's a reason, of course. Those are Shiro Fujimoto's favourite words according to his character profile, and they fit very well in this context too. (I'm seriously starting to think that it might be canon that Shiro was an orphan.)
ANNOUNCEMENT! Have I got your attention? Sweet! Don't worry, I won't be long.
Do you know what TheKnow is? Doesn't matter, I'll tell you anyway: it's a group on deviantArt that works like a human resources database for writers. It gets the person who has questions hooked up with the person who has answers in the smoothest way possible. All you do is file a little note there stating your experience ("I'm fluent in Romanian", "I live in a Muslim society", "I'm a fisherman") and some day some writer who needs info on Romanian/Islam/industrial fishing can contact you and ask for help from a first-hand source.
The idea is fucking brilliant, if you excuse my French. I know how much research matters and how hard it is to find what you need. Now, the reason I'm bringing up TheKnow here is of course that in order to be useful, a database needs resources. That's you. =P You're chemists, artists, linguists, historians, teachers and students; you specialize in the Roman Empire, linguistics, heraldry, fencing, architecture, and things I don't even know about; you speak Polish, German, Italian, French, Finnish, Spanish and Macedonian. And so on in infinity. Some of you have already given me a hand with translations and info, and you have been an invaluable help. I couldn't have written The End of the Beginning if I hadn't had people like you to ask. If you would like to do the same for other writers, be they fan fiction writers or writers of original stories, go check out TheKnow and see what you can contribute with; or just spread the word to friends who might be interested. =)
Did I say "I won't be long"? And you believed it? Tsk tsk if you've read this far you'd know I'm as brief as an ice age. ;9 Thanks for taking the time to read!
/Dimwit
P.S. Of course, by now I have a minor library of my own from all the research I've done for TEotB. If there is any particular thing I've touched upon that you would like to read more about I have the sources saved if you want them. =) D.S.
(Yeah that is the last tedious author note before the chapter. Promise.)
I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.
Birthdays happened. They came and they went, inevitable as every other day of every other year. Shiro preferred to treat his birthdays like that. The intermittent stream of congratulations that came with birthdays made him feel awkward – a strange reaction, maybe. Most people enjoyed the attention that came with birthdays, but everything is relative.
Birthdays at an orphanage were a… funny business. "Ambiguous", if Shiro had felt inclined to use such words, but "funny" came closer to the sense of sneering irony that had marked those occasions. Most people are glad and proud to become parents; some… Some count sleeping hours and incoming yens, and find the arrival of a child something to mourn rather than celebrate. Most orphans where he was placed had been like that. Throw-aways. Unwanted goods deposited in storage where they wouldn't interfere with their parents' lives. Really, birthdays at orphanages…
It hadn't all begun at the orphanage, though. Shiro had been old when he was orphaned, old enough to have been shaped by the normal life of a child with a mother and a father. Old enough to remember how his parents had showered him with presents on the tenth of May, drowned him in love and gratitude that finally, finally they had been blessed with a child. It had been amazing – or maybe he only thought so after they no longer could celebrate him? Who knew…
It had been embarrassing, at the same time; his parents had been so very enthusiastic about it, and as he got older the embarrassing aspect won out. He had asked them, at some point, why they made such a big fuss over it.
Shiro was quite sure that that indiscernible feeling had begun to tint his birthday after he had asked. The feeling of something twisting his gut and worming reminders into his ears that had manifested when the birthday cake sat among the presents on the dining table. It was a day he got to celebrate because his three older siblings had left the world as bloody, misshapen lumps of flesh before they had even entered it. It was a day when he was grateful that his parents had kept trying, grateful that he had been the healthy one, the lucky one – grateful that the others had died so he got the chance to live.
They would have been grateful, too, if the lottery of life had chosen them; he was sure of that. So he shouldn't feel guilty. He shouldn't feel like celebrating his life somehow also celebrated their death. He hadn't had anything to do with what happened to them. He had been lucky where they hadn't, that was all.
It just made the celebration of his birthday feel that little bit weird every year.
The earliest congratulation came first thing in the morning, when Shiro dragged himself out of bed after a night of restless sleep where memories of dead classmates had haunted his dreams – again. Saburota's congratulation was neither embarrassing nor enthusiastic – in fact Shiro wondered what could possibly make Saburota act enthusiastic. His roommate's words carried a ring of social protocol, laced with a formality that made Shiro wonder if they came with attached hopes of something in return, like gratitude was just another way of indebting someone to doing favours.
Congratulations kept dropping in throughout the day, well-wishes from more or less familiar faces and some from people he didn't even know the name of. He returned the greetings with an awkward "thanks" and a reserved smile for the ones he actually could pin a name on. There weren't many of those. The children of generation '57 had graduated from the Academy a year ago and were adult Japanese citizens by now. The school's corridors and plazas were full of younger, unfamiliar faces that slowly learnt their way around the maze: and occasionally mistook Shiro for one of the teachers. It was more awkward for them than it was for him, in all honesty, but they had a point. Twenty years old and still in high school – what a fucking joke.
"Eyoo Shiro-kun~!"
The congratulation routine came to an abrupt end – or perhaps just a change of pace – at lunch break. Shiro had only just left the library where he had his Italian classes when Midori pounced on him: in the literal sense, of course, since this was Midori. Shiro wasn't given time to protest before he found himself kidnapped and slung over her shoulders like a felled deer.
"Bridal style next time, please – oh god…"
The sprint distance had been short yet long enough for Shiro to decide that he did, after all, prefer bridal style carrying. It might bruise his manly pride, but he had more important manly parts that he did not want bruised against somebody's shoulder when jumps were involved.
"What kills you doesn't make you stronger", Midori proclaimed with a grin and patted his shoulder reassuringly.
"Sharp observation." He grimaced at how choked his voice sounded. He was still hunched over slightly, waiting for the pain to bloom out fully in his gut and for the worst of the nausea to pass. "It's supposed to be 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger'."
Midori took a moment to purse her lips and ponder if she really liked that version better than her own. Her left ear twitched twice, maybe from concentration and maybe from an annoying fly: and then conclusion flooded her face with a bright smile.
"So your children will get stronger, then. Kasumi-chan will be pleased." She clapped her hands together as if it were a done deal already that Honda Kasumi would be Fujimoto Kasumi. It did nothing to ease Shiro's gut pain. Only made him wish for a very quick change of subject.
"Was it really necessary to carry me like that all the way here?"
The end station of Midori's grab-and-run was ironically familiar. This was where it had all begun, two years ago when he climbed this dorm building with a bag of chòu dòufu clamped between his teeth. It was the same flat roof, the same humming iron air vents; the only difference was the puddles of rain water lingering like mirror shards on the raspy concrete.
Shiro's reflexes jolted into red alert when suddenly fire crackers went off in rapid succession. Midori flattened her big fox ears down against her head and grinned as she stepped aside to reveal her and Sen's latest handiwork.
You could tell when Midori was behind the decorations. Always.
They had occupied the space between one of the vents and the wall of the stairwell that opened onto the roof, and with joint efforts they had created a huge rope hammock – more like a triangular trampoline – and strung it up between the vent and the stairwell like a spider web. The firecrackers that hung from the edges of it flicked fiercely with their explosions. Sen and Ryuuji waved at them from the hammock, while simultaneously trying to make Sen's goblin stay put beneath and not try to climb up in it.
"Happy birthday, Shiro-san!"
Getting up in the hammock was easy: Shiro didn't mind climbing and the homemade rope ladder had been steadily secured. The hammock itself was made from everything the girls could get their hands on: some ropes, but mostly a plethora of tightly braided plastic bags. And it was swaying. Shiro's stomach clutched his intestines tightly and warned him that he had better stay really still if he wanted to eat anything of that big chocolate cake over there. His three classmates had already made themselves comfortable around the uprooted Don't feed the ducks sign that lay on the hammock web, and the cake on top of it looked positively delicious. Something else moved in his gut: something fresh and warm and grateful.
"Wow, thank you guys! Who made this?"
Shiro counted twenty lit candles – and one singed twig – on it as he gingerly crawled over the knots and braids.
"My classmate in regular school", Midori replied proudly. "His mother works in a bakery – he says maybe they give me summer job!"
Shiro had a vague suspicion that said classmate might have certain hopes with his friendliness, but since that was only a suspicion – and mistakes were very effective teachers – he decided to leave that matter in Midori's hands. He could focus on finding a way to sit comfortably in the hammock instead.
"I'd like to see what kind of cakes you'd make", he said with the tone of a backhanded joke. "You got any summer job, Sen-chan?"
The Futotsuki girl smiled her distant, otherworldly smile.
"Eating cakes."
"My best customer~", Midori sang and snuggled her face into Sen's hair, putting her arms around the Tamer as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Shiro had, in all honesty, never really gotten used to the sight of two girls being affectionate towards each other. It didn't bother him – oh it really didn't bother him – but it still wasn't something his mind could see without… skipping a beat. Or painting over one of them with the image of a guy. Or something.
"I doubt you will need any other customer than Sen-chan", Ryuuji joined the conversation with a smile at the two. "I still can't make sense of it, how you can eat so little normally but when it comes to sweets you're just a bottomless pit."
"Does it have to make sense?" Sen managed to look surprisingly sage when she said it, despite scratching her girlfriend behind the ear as she did. She and Midori really made a good couple.
Shiro's thoughts clicked suddenly, and he felt like an ass.
"Shit, guys, I'm sorry. It was your anniversary last month, wasn't it?" He didn't know why he was asking, because he knew that already. April 2nd, that was when the two had become a couple. "I completely forgot – I'm sorry. Belated congratulations."
"You were very busy, so we didn't want to… you know. Take up your time. I'm sorry, maybe we should have…"
Ryuuji's tone made Shiro cringe. The guy had outgrown much of his teenage insecurity and awkwardness, but he still had a habit of humbling himself to degrees that just made you feel like you had kicked a puppy.
"Don't apologise when I'm the one who should be apologising for forgetting something like that. I was busy, but that's no excuse. I shouldn't have forgotten about you; so I'm the one who's sorry. Have you got any knife for the cake?"
"Yeah, sure."
"We forgot, too", Sen said when Ryuuji fumbled with paper plates and a kitchen knife wrapped in a towel. "That is what Ryu-san is apologising for. We didn't invite you to the anniversary party because we forgot."
Shiro blinked. Oh. Not because they had thought he was busy, then. They had forgotten about him altogether. Ryuuji fumbled some more with the plates, trying to cover the flush of embarrassment that made its way out to his cheeks. Trust Sen to completely miss – or just ignore – that someone was trying to smooth over the situation.
"Well, you know what, it doesn't matter." Shiro waved the matter away and grabbed the kitchen knife. It shouldn't matter. They had all forgotten so they were even, right? "The past is the past. Who wants cake?"
Cake was served, and small talk settled over the four on the sunny rooftop. However, it isn't quite as easy as saying that something doesn't matter. Some things do matter, whether you like it or not; whether they matter to you or not. That Shiro could brusquely put the anniversary matter out of his mind didn't mean that it left the minds of others.
It just meant that he seemed like he didn't care.
"But do you really think it would be possible?" Ryuuji wondered, three pieces of chocolate cake later. "To develop a demon radar? We don't even know if demons give off an electromagnetic field, and if they do we don't know if it's possible to distinguish between that and the field of the host."
"In theory, Matsuri-sensei says." Midori shrugged from her reclined position with her head in Sen's lap. "We live in age when technology makes quick advance."
It always came down to school talk, sooner or later. Since Shiro had skipped classes and moved ahead at lightning speed he was no longer in the same class as his old friends (he wasn't in any class, technically; he skipped between them, taking one class here and one class there and doing loads of self-studying), which meant that school talk was when he got caught up on what they had been doing all semester and vice versa.
"What of you, Shiro-kun?" Sen offered another spoonful of cake to her girlfriend. "Still making quick advance?"
"Trying to, at least. You'd think missions automatically get more difficult when you go out with senior teams but it's quite the lottery. When we were Pages we got missions to suit our level – there's still an evaluation of mission suitability for Esquires – but when you go out with licensed exorcists you don't always know what kind of situation you're walking into. We can get calls with just 'something potentially demonic is doing this and this over there' and when we get there it can be anything from goblins to yamaubas." Needless to say, everybody liked it better when it turned out to be yamaubas. Shiro had even heard exorcists that referred to goblins as 'creampuffs' because they were considered a light-weight pest control problem that was best dumped on Esquires. "Last mission I was on was clearing out a jorougumo nest in the subway. They made it sound harder than it was, but I-"
"Was told off by Toshio-sensei", Midori filled in for him when she had swallowed her cake. "We had mission supervised by him yesterday, and you were our bad example for how not to act on missions."
"Is that really ethical?" Ryuuji questioned with a concerned look. "Pointing someone out like that, it sounds… I don't know. You have nerves of steel, but I would have felt awful if I was made the bad example."
"Ah-ah, sensei didn't say it was Shiro-kun. He said 'there was Aria-Dragoon student on last mission I supervised'." Midori jutted her jaw forward and squinted as she mimicked their Knight teacher's Look Of Disapproval. "'His gun jammed in middle of fight but he kept chanting.'"
"I was almost at the end of it", Shiro protested.
"'And if you see any of your team mates do that I want you to knock them out with blunt side of sword.'"
"Really? I must've pissed him off more than I thought." Shiro scratched his chin with a small but satisfied smile. "Thanks for the heads up: next time I'm out on mission I'll steer clear of the Knights."
"Maybe you should act like an Aria when you meister in Aria?" Sen suggested with something that might, if you looked closely, have been humour. "Better for the teamwork."
"But Shiro-kun is good for teamwork!" Midori brightened up in her girlfriend's lap. "He makes sure the Doctors get practice."
Shiro self-consciously noted that, while Midori had manhandled him during the kidnapping, the wound on his arm had opened up and stained his shirt through the bandage. When he was an actual licensed exorcist he would have access to an unlimited supply of uniform garments; as an overqualified Esquire he had to replenish his wardrobe from his own wallet. Scholarship or not, his wallet wasn't happy with that.
"That was kind of the point with meistering in more than just Aria", he muttered and attempted to roll his sleeve up past the injury to avoid getting more blood on it. "I can cover for myself as long as my damn gun doesn't jam."
"Your thoughts don't go all the way to door, hm~? Two Meisters is good thing, but is stupid to pick a Meister you aren't good at."
"I am a good Aria, I'm just not good at acting like an Aria."
"Then you are no good Aria", Midori concluded with that kind of innocent obviousness only she could pull off.
"I'm not a conventional Aria, but I'm a good Aria that kicks serious ass in the field."
"And get his arm hurt."
"That has nothing to do with my Aria skills! Gimme a break, would you? My role as an Aria is to draw demons out for the others and get the chants right so I can exorcise them. Even the best Arias get hurt if their teammates don't cover them properly."
"The best Arias let their teammates cover them."
"Wha- You can't gauge my skill based on how people around me perform. My skill as an Aria depends on how well I can memorise verse and how well I can recite it, and I'm darn good at that."
"No good if demons kill you before you finish."
Midori was absolutely awful to argue against. The way she saw the core of things you couldn't lead her along in an argument; she just stood stomping on the same – sore – spot that you tried to move away from until you yielded out of either fatigue or frustration.
"Fuihehehe nice noodle argument, Midori-chan!"
It wasn't until Ryuuji started laughing aloud that Shiro noticed how both he and Sen were enjoying the debate.
"Noodle argument?" Shiro had no clue what the hell a noodle argument was, and the way Midori winked at him suggested that he was the only one who didn't.
"She's not really arguing against you, you know. A noodle argument is when you start an argument over something and then tricks the one you argue with into tangling himself up in explaining a point you don't actually care about." Ryuuji nodded at the happily grinning half-demon. "Midori-chan meisters in that along with Doctor and Knight."
"We made it up on ski trip when instructor was mean to Ryu-kun for learning slow."
"I thought that was 'the skiscraper'?"
"No, the gauges under the skis were when she wanted to keep them from going outwards when she went down the slope."
"Just happened to work good on instructor, too", Midori snickered happily.
What followed was a tennis match of unfamiliar expressions flying back and forth, and Shiro couldn't keep up for shit. Ski trip? What ski trip? He hadn't heard of any- On the other hand he had been busy with church and studies all winter and just…
Not been there.
"You are good Aria and good Dragoon", Midori acknowledged at last; and then something glinted in her eyes. Something worried and painful. "But those are no good against the demons you fight." And then the worry was gone, as quickly as it had come, and Midori reverted to teasing and smiling; "Especially when you are no conventional Aria. Too itchy to stay behind the frontline, Shiro-kun~?"
"Yeah, maybe."
Itchy? That was one way to put it. Studies worked fine for taking his mind off the knot of emotion buried in his chest; it took a bit more to ease it loose. It took muscles bleeding adrenaline and demons disintegrating in miasma clouds to scratch that itch. It might make him reckless, yes. So? If any exorcist in True Cross could afford to act a bit reckless it was him. If any human exorcist in True Cross could take on a demon bare-handed it was him. Every time he did, every time he pushed beyond his body's limits, he grew stronger.
It didn't bring him closer to exorcising his own demons, but it felt good. It felt better than seeing Midori carry out those facial acrobatics to cover that she still worried about him. Shiro suppressed a churning, guilt-ridden feeling that she didn't want to spoil his birthday as he had spoiled hers.
"Oh, I think I heard Nii-san say something interesting, speaking of that – speaking of fighting demons in unusual ways, I mean."
Ryuuji did his best to fill the awkward silence, too. He always sounded excited when he spoke of his brother, Taichi. Had he told him that he was going to quit cram school? Shiro held back a heavy sigh and chalked that up as another thing on the list of stuff he didn't know while Ryuuji relayed stories from Taichi's stationing in the Soviet Union.
That the Order had managed to acquire a Soviet visa for Taichi was nothing short of a miracle. There was no love lost between Japan and the Soviet, not since they had begun quarrelling over ownership of a handful of islands over a century ago; add a couple of world wars and other conflicts to that and the picture was complete. None of that prevented enthusiasts like Taichi from nursing a profound fascination with Soviet, though. He had known where he wanted to go when he applied to cram school and he had gotten there through sheer stubbornness.
Given how enormous the Soviet Union was, it was no surprise that there were innumerable small, isolated societies where you could find local traditions of exorcism that differed vastly from the main traditions they were taught in cram school. Taichi, Ryuuji told them, had encountered one such tradition near the Black Sea. There, people were apparently fighting demons in hand-to-hand combat using some form of tattooed seals.
"Like Futotsuki seals…?" Shiro asked, genuinely interested. "Not related, obviously, but something similar?"
"In a way. Get this: the symbols don't work on demons if you inscribe them on paper or on objects, same as the Futotsuki symbols. You have to put them on a human."
"The Order likes to speak of faith but doesn't like what it doesn't understand", Sen added softly.
"But it depends on the origins of the symbols, too, doesn't it?" Shiro fell in. "I remember something like that from that book I read about the Futotsuki clan. The Order tried to match your symbols against known diagrams from their traditions to see if there was a relationship; if there was, they would consider using them." And if there wasn't, there was a good chance they would be listed as witchcraft. As more and more of the Futotsuki clan's traditions had become known – certain controversial practices like giving their children demon soulmates – the comparing studies had been abandoned and the clan had been classified as a demon worshipping cult. Its seals were not taught in the Order.
"I think they're doing that with these Black Sea tattoos – Taichi calls them that. He complained that he had to leaf through dusty old tomes to see if there were similar symbols in recorded history but I don't think he found anything." Ryuuji was completely engrossed in his tale and didn't notice when Sen's goblin snatched his empty paper plate and ate it. "He said they look a little bit like what you can find in Solomonian grimoirs and a little bit like what you can find in alchemical texts but most of all they look like a mix of both."
"You could get tattoos, Shiro-kun! Always armed when Aria – always match Kasumi-chan~" Midori winked.
"Nah. Tattoos and glasses aren't a good combo", he said, absentmindedly cleaning his ear with his little finger. "But it's more the idea of having something stuck on my body for the rest of my life. I don't think I'm so keen on that."
"That kind of does contradict how you act on missions, you know", Ryuuji pointed out and prodded Shiro's bandaged arm.
"Oi, it's bleeding well enough on its own. Anyway scars are different: they're a side-effect of living. It's-" It was on his tongue to say that it would draw attention if a priest had tattoos, but that part of his Roman reassignment would be suspicious to people who knew him. "Kinda manly, don't you think? Anyway, about your brother: have you told him yet?"
It turned out that Ryuuji had gone through with his intention to quit cram school. Taichi had taken the news well, telling him that of course not all people were cut out to become exorcists. So Ryuuji was now a civilian citizen again – and it suited him. Somewhere deep down Shiro was convinced that at least some of the insecurity Ryuuji used to radiate was there because he didn't feel like exorcism was his calling. Now that he had declined those responsibilities he seemed like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
"So does that mean you'll be focusing everything on your music?" Shiro asked while meticulously scraping the last bits of orange-flavoured chocolate icing from his paper plate. "Like you're gonna go on tour with the folk music troupe again this summer?"
"Ryuuji-kun is making a moooovieeee~!" Midori happily threw her hands in the air, making the web sway and making Shiro instinctively grab the cords he sat on to hold himself still. In the process he dropped his plastic spoon, but Sen handed him a new one in the blink of an eye. Shiro didn't immediately take it, though.
"A movie? You're kidding?"
"Yeah!" Ryuuji beamed. "I mean no! No, I'm not kidding. We really are making a movie, or sort of. Didn't I…? Geez, sorry, I can't believe I forgot to tell you – I feel like it's the only thing I've been talking about for weeks." Ryuuji scratched the back of his head in embarrassment and managed to look both proud and shy at the same time.
Something settled in Shiro's chest then. It was hollow at the same time as it was heavy as lead, and he had pinned it down in split seconds. It was the feeling he used to get when he was twelve or so, when he peered through the gates of the orphanage and saw other kids walking past, holding hands with their mom or dad. That very special feeling of seeing others have what you don't.
"I'm not allowed to say what the title is, but it's going to be a samurai film. Basically they wanted some folk music elements in it, for the historical feeling, so they asked the troupe I play in, and…" He swept his arms out with an incredulous smile. "We're making a movie."
Shiro swallowed the void of lead in his chest and put on his best face of approval.
"That's awesome – congratulations! But you'll tell us the title afterwards, right?" So we can go watch it. He had meant to say that, but the words turned around on his tongue and stabbed him with a sharp reminder that he wouldn't be there to watch it with them.
…In a way, it was as if he had already left.
"You can bet I will! Oh, has everybody finished eating? Alright, time to open the presents!"
Shiro decided that the feeling that he was drifting away, that he wasn't part of their tight-knit group anymore, was wrong. He shoved it aside as far back in his mind as he could, and tried to soak in the expectant faces of his friends instead. They had thrown him a birthday party, hadn't they? They cared. Their friendship may have been thinned and frayed at the edges, but they were still there for him.
"I'm really grateful you did this, guys."
Shiro turned the first present over carefully in his hands, a crooked smile tugging at his lips. It was Midori's, clearly; it looked like she had gotten hold of one of the school's old, discarded banners and wrapped the gift in that. He opened it gingerly, not sure what was going to come out of it.
"Wow. You really…? Midori-chan you could sell these. Thank you!"
He turned the sculpture to admire it from all angles. It was a lion made from wire – probably the wire he had given her on her birthday in March – and it was just unbelievable how she had managed to bring out the texture of the mane and all the little details; it even had teeth and claws.
"Little lion goes to Rome", Midori sang to some improvised melody, "and big lion comes back to Japan~" Then, she sank her eyes into him like grappling hooks. "Right?"
"Right. No goodbyes", he smiled warmly.
"No goodbyes." Midori beamed back at him, satisfied with his reply.
"Alright, next is… Sen-chan." She had at least used paper for her present. It came in two parts tied together: one large and flat and one shapeless, hard lump. The flat one turned out to be a stack of fine calligraphy paper. The lump contained an inkstone, an inkstick, and a calligraphy brush with bamboo body and a brush tip of an unmistakeable red colour.
"You made it from Midori-chan's hair?" Shiro let the tip run over his finger. It was incredibly soft and felt like it would soak up ink well.
"It grows fast", was Sen's only comment to that. "We expect letters from Rome."
"Be warned, they're gonna look like they were written by a five year old. It's been ages since I wrote with a brush." Smiling, Shiro set the brush and ink aside carefully on the parcel with the papers. "Thank you. And Ryuuji-san's…"
Ryuuji's gift was a cube that rattled in an unidentifiable manner when he handled it. When Shiro opened it his lap was flooded by a good ten cassette tapes in cases. The ones he spotted first were the ones he expected to get from Ryuuji: there was Goro Yamaguchi and other traditional stuff from gagaku to ondo music. Then there were enka artists whose names he recognised although he had no idea what their music sounded like – Misora Hibari, Fuji Keiko, Koga Masao. And then there were more Western sounding bands that he actually knew of, like Happy End, Tomita Isao, Carol, and even one tape with The Mops. The last one gave Shiro an unwelcome flashback of discussing music with Samael once. As soon as he had mentioned that he liked Mops, the demon had had a fit of maniacal giggles. Shiro had never been able to find out why.
"I hope it's not- I wasn't sure what you liked, so I picked a bit of everything and… uh, yeah, I hope there's something there that you like." Ryuuji tried really hard not to start fidgeting with his tie, and while he succeeded quite well with that it didn't improve his nervous stumbling much. "Nii-san says the thing he misses the most when he's stationed abroad, except the food, is Japanese music, so… Happy birthday?"
Yeah… It was, wasn't it? Better than he had hoped for. Bearing in mind how things could have turned out, Shiro did consider this a happy birthday.
"Thank you, guys", he smiled, taking an uncharacteristic moment to look at his three friends and commit them to memory. "I'm pretty sure I'll be able to stave off the homesickness with this."
The memory of sitting on the roof with his friends kept glowing softly in Shiro's chest for the rest of the day. Then school ended, and students poured out on campus to enjoy the warm afternoon. They fanned out in different groups and different directions, filled with summer spirit and eager to make the most of their spare time. There were places to go eat and shops to check out before everything closed for the day, and all these things formed a susurrus atmosphere of youthful excitement in the air.
The crowds thinned, and the chatter dispersed, and in the wake of summer spirit one student walked alone, aloof, and silent across the campus grounds. The chirping of birds didn't reach his ears. The budding greenery of the Academy's flowerbeds passed him by unnoticed. His thoughts were elsewhere, on a mission that involved demons he had allowed to control his actions far too long.
Shiro stepped off the tram in Western True Cross Town and adjusted his uniform jacket for the twelfth time or more. Sentou was one of the smaller stations. It had a ticket booth in the far corner, three benches with brass armrests along the concrete wall that supported the roof, and that was all. The moment he got off on the platform he was immediately assaulted by the smell. It didn't smell bad – or good, for that matter – but it smelt familiar. It smelt of memories.
The soft whiff of hot steam got more prominent when he walked down the stairs from the station. It was a smell that carried the memory of a thousand days of walking to elementary school past that public bath, across the walk bridge over the highway and then a right turn at the dry cleaning facility after three blocks. Shiro stopped when he reached the ground. Stopped and just stood there. He knew the way as clearly as if it had been yesterday, remembered times when he had forgotten his bento box and rushed back home, tripped and fallen and ran again: and how his mom had fussed over his bleeding knee so that he had been late for school once she let him go. The memories were everywhere, etched into the asphalt and the brick, bloomed in signs in shop windows and cracks across the pavement, everywhere…
Shiro was so overwhelmed that it took two "excuse me" from the young mother with the baby cart before he noticed her and stepped out of the way. The sidewalk hadn't seemed that narrow when he was eight.
It's a strange feeling; to… outgrow one's past. To come back and find that everything is the same and entirely different. Time has a weird way with things. Some change, some remain the same. Most of all, people change. Despite some stores being closed and others opened, and the once worn road crossings being freshly painted, what had changed most of all was Shiro himself.
As he walked, Sayuri's words came back to him several times to gloat, pat him on the shoulder and point out how right she was. "Damaged by work". You get damaged by every kind of work – Shiro just hadn't been able to gauge how damaged he was until now, when he was outside the community of exorcists and the warded confines of True Cross Academy. Here, there were demons everywhere. No one really minded the coal tars that teemed around gloomy thoughts like mosquito swarms. A couple of gremlins were tinkering with a vending machine in the corner of the street, hoping to learn how it worked by unscrewing something here and pulling something loose there. The demons had been there all the time, of course. What was different now was that Shiro could see them, and that he kept reflexively reaching for a gun that wasn't there. Although he had his exorcist license in hand technically, he didn't actually have a card and an ID-number that gave him permission to carry firearms outside missions.
Damaged by work… funny. It's all about habit, when you break it down. What you've grown used to and what you haven't. Fighting demons; no problem. Eating with relatives? He had no idea how to do that.
Some five blocks farther, Shiro spotted a middle-aged man on the sidewalk across the road, yanking the leash of his dog and snapping harsh words at it for being an undomesticated pest. The dog kept barking and tugging, teased by a hobgoblin that had figured out the animal couldn't reach it for the leash. Shiro had the death verse on his lips and… No. If he started chanting the demons would get agitated in the midst of all civilians; better to let the reflex pass, turn a blind eye and keep walking. He had enough to think about without getting involved.
"They know nothing about demons." At least he assumed his relatives didn't. "They know nothing about Satan's vessel or what went down in Deep Keep. There's no reason they would dislike me."
Arguing against the tight knot of anxious flight instinct in one's gut is an interesting thing. For one, that knot isn't good at listening. At all. And despite that, it has its own very convincing arguments against your reasoning.
They didn't want you nine years ago: why would they want you now?
Habit. Shiro snorted out a humourless laugh at himself. He had already concluded once that habit held power, but that didn't seem to be enough – not enough to apply what he had understood, at any rate. He was walking the circle tracks of habit right now, with that thought: habit could conceal danger by making you used to it, yes, but it could conceal other things too; like weakness. Or fear. Or cowardice.
For nine years Shiro had fed the habit of avoiding his relatives. He was not about to run from it this time: he just took a detour, to another place he hadn't visited in many years.
"Like a warm-up", he thought to himself as he passed the gates and felt the gravel crunch under his shoes.
The Western district of True Cross had two graveyards, referred to without embellishments as the Old Graveyard and the New Graveyard. The Fujimoto family hadn't lived in True Cross Town long enough to have anybody buried in the Old Graveyard, which Shiro had only seen from the outside. The New Graveyard was bigger; a terraced sweep of earth carved into the side of a hill and fenced in with sharp metal spikes, as if to keep the dead from escaping in case they started walking.
"Damaged by work", he observed with disinterest.
Shiro squinted at the afternoon sun that shone brightly on the square, white stone pillars. They had seemed like a forest when he was little, a maze of white walls and eyeless gazes. Now they had shrunk into a grain field, growing and thriving on the remains as more were born and more were buried.
Would they grow until one day there was no one left to bury the dead, and all of earth was covered in forests and fields of square, white stone pillars…?
Slowly, Shiro followed the crunching path into the cemetery. The fog of memories was thick there, too. They woke from hibernation between the graves, memories of coming here for Obon when he was little. Memories of burning incense and sending lanterns down the river, honouring a grandfather he had never even met; memories buried deep in bone and flesh that knew the way even though it all looked different from his full-grown point of view.
The first Fujimoto grave was nondescriptly white, like all the others. It was with some surprise that Shiro noticed his grandmother's name, Aiko, filled in with red paint. She was still alive…? She must be nearing eighty by now. Her husband, Kanetake, had been dead for a good thirty years but she had been adamant about remarrying.
"Didn't dad complain about that all the time…? That it was too early for her to be moving in with her children?"
The rest of the way he racked his mind in search of how matters had been solved regarding his grandmother, but the only clear memory he seemed to have of her was the ubiquitous natto.
The second Fujimoto family grave was unmistakeable; neglected, striped with bird shit and surrounded by weeds that dotted the gravel patch around it. If graves had been sentient things, the neighbouring headstones would have leaned away from it in disgust.
Shiro's steps slowed… and stopped. What do you say to a grave? "Long time no see?" He sat down on his haunches, level with the names etched into the stone beneath discoloured lichens.
Fujimoto Hideo
Fujimoto Nanako
At each other's side in death but not in life.
"Some weird culture we have, considering suicide honourable", he mused. He agreed more with the Catholic on that particular point. Suicide was a coward's way out. A selfish person's way out. For them it was over; for the ones left behind…
Shiro gazed at the grave. The shabbiness of it seemed fitting, almost comforting; at least in death the façade of perfection was crushed and gone.
"You didn't buy me any honour back. That was never the point either, was it? It was always about you. Your honour. Your lives."
There it was, as painful and piercing as it had been then. The feeling of betrayal. Of being abandoned. Unwanted. It hurt just like it had then, flared inside him just like it had then, and for the briefest of moments Shiro could almost hear his own voice, eleven years old, screaming what about me?!
"Yeah, what about me?" his adult voice replied, blunt with the adult knowledge that in the end, nobody cares. In the end the only one you can rely on is yourself. "All I got was the burdens you didn't want."
…But who ever wants burdens? Hideo and Nanako hadn't. They had wanted to escape their problems so badly they had ended their lives to do it. Lots of people did. Human nature gave two options for solving issues, two basic options that divided mankind in two types: those who ran and those who fought. Shiro's parents had been runners, and he had been left behind – not because they had intended it that way, not because they wanted to betray him: not for any reason at all. Demons did such things by design, to harm, but Hideo and Nanako had just… Been human.
Somehow, that insight was as liberating and as it was devastating.
"I turn twenty today." His voice sounded dissonantly loud in the silence. The grave didn't seem to mind; it remained still and tranquil in the face of the statement. "I've bought my first legal carton of cigarettes. Doesn't do much good since my lighter's out. I thought I'd do it 'cause I could."
Without really knowing why, Shiro pulled the carton out of his pocket and leant forward to place it before the grave. It wasn't incense of the traditional kind, and it wasn't lit, but he reasoned it would do as much good there as it would in his pocket. The grave looked less dead that way.
"I graduate as an exorcist in a couple weeks", he continued, feeling less and less awkward and more and more like he wanted to… get things out. "It's gonna be kinda nice to have a real job again. Less nice to have more paper work, but that's life." Without anything else to do, he started to absentmindedly pull weeds out of the gravel. His summer as school janitor had created certain habits, too. "I'm off to visit uncle Satoshi. Don't know what you would've thought of that. I remember you didn't get along; don't remember why. I'm not even sure I ever knew why."
Had there been a reason why…? Or had it just been human nature screwing things up?
Shiro propped his lower arms up on his knees and let them dangle limply, backs of his hands almost touching before him. He nearly lost his balance and tipped backwards before well-used muscles attuned themselves to the squatting position. The grave waited, silent, wondering if he would continue or if he was done.
There was nothing particularly comical about the thought, and yet the corners of his lips twitched upward.
"Knowing you, it was some small thing you ignored till it grew huge." The smile sank slowly, gone as swift as it had come. The grave remained silent. "Some small thing that grew. To think that was all it took to get you here." And to get Shiro there. He was older now than he had been then. A little more mature. A little better acquainted with life. He was not… the same child that had hated his parents to the depths of hell when they left him, one after the other. "There's worse things to be than neglectful", he confided to the grave, quietly. "You screwed up: people do that, even if they don't mean to. I know that." His lips quirked into a wizened smile again. "Better than I'd like to."
People screw up. Then they do their best to fix it. Then it fails, and lines they had never thought they'd cross seem like a better and better way out of the mess.
"I've grown up, I suppose. Made my own stupid mistakes and grown wiser." For a long time, he stared at the grave, trying to fasten the memories of his parents' faces on the dirty surface. "Your mistakes were just as stupid", he said, weighing his next words carefully on his tongue. He wanted to know they were true before they came out. "But I don't think I can hate you for them anymore."
The grave said nothing. No reproach, no gratitude; if his heart was any lighter, it was by a fraction too small to notice. He had made his peace, sort of – with the mistakes of his parents. Not with his own.
And in the stillness something stirred, slow and sluggish as a hedgehog crawling out of winter hibernation.
Shiro remembered the sandy confines of a playground, vast in a child's eyes and shimmering with images of fortresses that were just waiting to be built. It had been him and cousin Akane against her older sister, Tomoe. Akane was an undefined blur of laughter behind him while Tomoe drifted like a mirage ahead of them on her long legs, as easy to catch as the moon. She'd had her school uniform on, bright white and navy blue, with her yellow scarf in hand and his short fingers trying in vain to snatch it. And then the swing: Tomoe had rushed right through the swings, elegant as a deer, and when Shiro had tried to do the same he had gotten one right in his face. That, he remembered clearly. That and sitting in his mom's lap on the park bench while she pressed a cold bottle of mineral water to his throbbing lip, way too hard for comfort. Aunt Noriko had been there, too. They had fussed over him and he had been angry at them – and at himself. He hadn't wanted to be a crybaby in front of Akane, because Akane was a Girl, and he was a Boy. Boys should be strong and cool so that girls could admire them.
"…I called aunt Noriko fat, didn't I?" The memory plopped out of his mouth as soon as it occurred to him that she had had her huge baby belly that time. "No, I asked you why she was fat – when she was pregnant with my youngest cousin." Cousin… what? Shiro scrunched his eyebrows together and quietly mouthed the names of his cousins in order: Saki, Tomoe, Akane… the last name refused to turn up. He sighed and rubbed the wrinkles from his forehead. Great. Couldn't even remember her name. "This is going to be awkward, isn't it?"
The grave didn't reply this time either. Shiro stretched his hand forward, weighing on the balls of his feet where he sat. He fished a cigarette out of the carton, on the off chance he could smoke at uncle Satoshi's. On second thought, he fished out two cigarettes. Didn't know how long into the evening he might stay.
"One from each of you, as a birthday present." Shiro rose smoothly to his feet, slipping the smokes into the chest pocket of his school uniform blazer as he did. He stared at the grave for a second, this grave that was younger than most and more neglected than most, with uprooted weeds scattered haphazardly about the gravel patch. Then he put his palms together, for the first time in a decade, and bowed. "Wish me luck."
A/N:
Yamauba is a demon or monster hag that may or may not be cannibalistic.
Painting names red on graves isn't so common anymore, from what I've been able to find, but I remember seeing it in a (very beautiful) graveyard in Kyoto. Back in the day it was more economical to etch the whole family's names into the stone at once, and to distinguish between the dead ones and the living ones you filled the names of the living with red paint; when they died it was removed.
Dear Inspired Guest
Some timing I have sometimes. x) Thank you so much for your kind words! Without adding any pressure, I'd like to take you up on that hope by making a wish of my own: someday I hope I will get to read a story with Shiro and/or Mephisto written by you. =)
Dear 1st timer
…and that is how you turn a writer into a soggy mess of joy. QwQ Thank you so much! I mean… wow. I guess I'm a little dazed here. ^_^' I've been told similar things before, but I'm the kind that tends to pass praise off as exaggerated and one-time-only flukes (low self-esteem makes you do that, I know it's stupid). I'm slowly working up some kind of confidence in my ability, though, and I can't pass these things off as flukes when I get feedback like yours from several sources (the same result obtained in independent studies gives scientific strength to a thesis). So… I guess I am getting good at writing. =)
I think that part of the magic in writing is to reach out to people and make them feel something. That's an amazing thing to be able to do – I guess that's what most writers wish for. (I do!) If I'm able to do that, I'm lycklig. (That's a word I can't translate fully, sorry. It combines "tranquil harmony" with "complete joy" and is a very pleasant state of being. Don't trust translation engines that render it as "happiness", it's way more than that.)
I thought it was funny how you picked just the right moment to post this review. =P It was eleven days to my birthday when you wrote to me. It was a milestone birthday for me in a personal way (no, I don't turn 20; I don't turn 30 either) so I was kind of sappy about it. I have now been writing stories for half of my life. That number can be either depressing or uplifting, depending on how you look at it; depending on how far you feel you've come. When I read your review it was like all those years flashed before me and I grew this huge cheesy grin all over my face. You made me feel like those weren't wasted years and that I've actually started to become the kind of writer I always dreamt of being; delighting people, inspiring people, making them strain their brains… making them pay attention in English class? I don't think I ever dreamt of doing that. xD Goes to show that surprises are the awesomest things. ;9
*end of author's sappy reminiscing*
I want to thank you so much for your review, and I wish you luck in high school!
Dear loogoo
Thank you!
Dear Guest (1)
…that was fast and to-the-point: I feel like I've been subjected to a literary drive-by. xD Thanks, I'll do my best!
Dear Twinnstars
I have to say that I wish I could update more often, too. x'D *ducks flying table* I owe an explanation, I know. I don't know if it aids your patience, but since I used to be a swift updater perhaps you wonder what happened that changed that. Mainly there's three things that regulate my writing pace.
§ My school. The higher up in the grades you come the more demanding does it get. Dentists are essentially doctors with a specialization on the mouth and surrounding tissues, and as such it is inherently a demanding education. Right now I'm writing my bachelor's degree essay, and with the bureaucracy of the Swedish school system combined with a school that has incredibly poor communication between its units it is… a mild version of a Kafka novel at times. 8|
§ My research. I know you guys appreciate the amount of research I put into this story. =) I love doing it, too, so the only catch in this win-win symbiosis is that it sometimes takes ridiculous amounts of time to find the material I need. (That's why I tried to promote TheKnow in the other A/N.) This particular time I had to order (and wait for) a few books from the library to really picture what kind of life and values that shaped Hideo and Satoshi Fujimoto. Yes, it is a bit overkill for a character that only appears in, say, one chapter, but… Well, I can't ignore the impact the Great Depression, WWII and the post-war occupation had on the people who were directly affected by it, and I can't write a person who grew up in the midst of that without knowing what it was like. I had an initial image of what Satoshi would be like, but when I got down to reading about that era he changed (a lot!) and grew with my understanding of Japanese history and society. Much of the research I do doesn't show directly in the story but works its magic from between the lines, for example in how characters act and think. I hope that explanation makes sense… ^_^'
§ My head. Because obviously, you need to have a few screws loose to put several years and lots of work into writing a mammoth piece of literature that won't earn you a penny. x'D (Not entirely true. I learn a bunch of things, I have lots of fun and get great feedback: that's excellent payment as far as I'm concerned.) Well, truth is my head has a few screws that are a little too loose, so when school and life in general rattles it around too much things fall apart in there. When that happens I huddle up in a corner somewhere out of sight and patch myself together, but during that time my head isn't good for much of anything. ^_^'
Sorry for being long-winded. x/ Now with all dreary explanations out of the way, I want to thank you for your lovely words of this story. =) It's the kind of feedback that makes me smile even when I sit in a corner out of sight and glue the pieces of my head back together. Thank you. =)
Dear Guest (2)
I feel like I'm living up to my nickname right now, 'cause I don't get what you mean. Humour tag STAT? You think I should tag the fic genre as Humour instead…? Me no speak English natively, ursäkta!