Many, many thanks to the mysterious "A.I" for the comments. This chapter is for you, whoever you are.
A very very minor sex scene. Again, there's no explicit stuff. Less like lime and more like… uhm… pineapple.
A Romeo and Juliet Story
Chapter 10
The only thing Kogure could see was Kaede's eyes shining as he lay awake; just two pin-pricks of light in the otherwise blackened bedroom. Through the darkness Kogure moved. Afraid.
More than ever he had been made aware of the force of Kaede's determination, his merciless strength and utterly ruthless nature. The evidence of it hung all around in the heavy silence and in the insistent stench of blood that choked the stale air like a death sentence.
As he moved with hammering heart through the black air he felt like he was walking into the ninth circle itself. In spite of everything Kaede was more focused and more capable than ever. Faced with such composure anyone would be afraid. One could almost believe those rumours of a monster without a soul.
Kogure padded closer, creeping in the darkness like a thief, not entirely sure why he was feeling so nervous. It was just the shock of it he supposed. The nightmarish quality of the whole thing which he was still having trouble believing although god knows he'd seen the proof of it at first hand. Quite how Kaede was managing to maintain his calm was astonishing. Frightening.
Kogure was carrying a tin of ointment in one hand, and a roll of fresh bandages in the other and was holding them both up ahead of him like a shield. He nearly dropped them both however when a reprimanding voice said "Don't creep in the dark, sempai."
The bedside light clicked on and Kogure stood quite still in the centre of the suddenly lit room as if caught in headlights. Warmth and shadows cast about the familiar bedroom in equal measure and, under Kaede's intense stare, Kogure tried to settle his jittery nerves. His breathing sounded impossibly loud, as if he were gasping or panting, and that made his cheeks redden in his own peculiar shame. He felt guilty and afraid and shamefully excited all at the same time.
If Kogure's nerves troubled Kaede he didn't show it. His eyes moved down to the objects Kogure was holding and, seeing them, he shifted obediently and laid his hand on top of the blankets. Blood had already soaked through the old dressing to leave crimson splodges on the white bandage.
Kogure's heart was hammering so loudly he was sure Kaede could hear it, but he forced himself to cross the rest of the distance and sat down on the stool placed at the bedside for his use. He reached nervously for the pair of delicate, stainless steel scissors he'd placed on the bedside table not two hours ago and silently set about cutting the sodden bandage away from Kaede's hand. He noticed that the flesh of Kaede's forearm felt icy cold under his steadying fingers, and was cripplingly conscious of Kaede's fierce eyes taking in the sight of him diligently working.
Despite feeling hopelessly ill at ease, his hands were steady and efficient and the process took not more than a few minutes. By the time the bandage had been cut away, the scissors and Kogure's fingertips were all pressed sticky with Kaede's blood.
He cleaned it up as best he could and, brushing his fringe out of his eyes, took hold of Kaede's hand to examine the wounds. Just looking caused nausea to rise in his throat in powerful waves.
In the space where a thumb and index finger should have been there were only two bloody stumps where both digits had been completely hacked away. The hand had become odd and lopsided as a result, more like a tree branch or a claw or a rake than a hand. It was weirdly inhuman.
And this pitiful deformation was all that was left of the fastest and most accurate gun hand the Rukawa family had ever produced.
Quite how this disaster had come about was as yet unclear. Hisashi had done it – although the reasons remained anyone's guess. By the time the family had all reconvened at the house and Kaede's horrific injury discovered, it had been well after three, so instead of dealing with the dispute immediately they had decided to confine the two brothers within their rooms and hear out the story in the morning.
On the face of it, it seemed to everyone that Hisashi had made a mistake, for what other result could he expect except the house turning against him?
Hisashi and Kaede had never been close. Even as children they had seemed to know instinctively the tensions that divided them. Hisashi, Anzai's undoubted favourite son from his first dearly-loved wife, and Kaede who, although well outside Anzai's regard remained fiercely within the protection of the house on account of his highly valuable skills. Yet the rivalry which had persisted between the two brothers almost like a game for so many years had this night suddenly evolved into something much more noxious.
And Kogure knew that Hisashi was no fool. He wouldn't have risked this if he hadn't been sure that he would gain more than he would lose. As for why he'd done it, or why he'd done it now and not before, Kogure couldn't begin to guess. But he knew that the air in both Kaede and Hisashi's rooms was identical – heavy with strategy and plan. He had no doubt that Hisashi had known exactly what he was doing, and Kaede, well, it seemed madness to say it but even to Kaede the whole thing did not seem wholly unexpected.
But Kogure had no real comprehension of the events of last night. He could decipher nothing specific about the conflicting designs of the two brothers who were silently aligning themselves in opposition. What seemed certain to him was that Hisashi's intention had been to take away Kaede's ability to hold and fire a gun. To take away that very last shred of influence Kaede still commanded within the family.
And this time Kogure feared that Kaede might really… lose.
He shook his head and attended more closely to his task. He tied the fresh bandage as tight as possible and noticed that Kaede didn't even wince. Task complete, he set about gathering the things to take away and to wash, feeling almost grateful that Kaede hadn't spoken during this visit because he just wouldn't have known how to comfort him. But then, as he stood silently to leave, the first stabbing light of dawn brought a trail blaze of red through the French windows into the room. In the same instant Kaede reached out with his left hand and seized Kogure's wrist with a fierce intensity.
Kogure stilled.
"Sempai..." Kaede's sudden voice in the aching silence was dry, hard, and merciless. "I need your help with something."
And Kogure, who had never once heard Kaede ask for help from anyone, felt more afraid than ever.
Cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life.
In an elegant lounge in the Sendoh house Akira was staring intently at a patch of red dawn sun that had appeared in sharp lines between his feet. It seemed unbearable the way the line it made was not entirely parallel with those on the carpet. He felt an irrepressible need to straighten it out. Around him the beautiful room was silent and awful, as were the seven others sat in it with him, and the whole world in general.
How long had it been? It felt like hours and hours. It felt like a moment. Time's strange and paradoxical moments crept over his skin in cold shivers, as if he were the pathway for a thousand tiny running feet. How he clung to the free-falling reality, and how he failed to do so, was written clearly in his semi-stupored eyes.
The door bent and opened and everyone except Akira stood up.
Taoka Sendoh and Masaya Aida entered along with the doctor to the family: Ishizuka. He was a middle-aged man dressed in white overalls with eyes that were continually moving and seeking giving the impression of a great but restless intellect. Akira couldn't help but notice the way the colours on his shoes seemed to melt and blend with the carpet, and immediately became entranced by the spectacle.
"Any news?" Koshino's baited voice sounded oddly distant, as if he were calling through thick glass.
The doctor adjusted his clothes as his impatient eyes flickered about, taking in the roomful of intense gathered faces who awaited his words with such anxiety. To Akira's dazed eyes he appeared to shift in and out of focus, blurry against the morning air.
"Hanamichi-sama received a single bullet in his upper right chest which clipped his lung," Ishizuka explained. "The bullet has now been removed and there were no complications. He is still under the effects of the anaesthetic but is thankfully stable."
With a look of dawning relief, Koshino tumbled slowly back into his seat.
"He's going to be okay?" he had to ask, as if not daring to believe the good news.
"Yes, I expect him to make a full recovery."
A short moment of glad silence permeated throughout the room and was swiftly followed by an outbreak of relieved chatter as the anxiety of the past hours washed off the occupants like warm soap water. Akira alone remained tense and silent.
"While this is excellent news…" Taoka, who'd already heard the details before he'd arrived, quietened them all with his authoritative tone, "…I want to hear what happened exactly. I'm waiting anxiously to hear upon whom my retribution is due."
He seated himself with his usual self-importance in one of the plush armchairs while everyone else looked uncertainly towards Akira who still hadn't lifted his eyes from the doctor's shoes and didn't appear to even be aware of his father's presence.
Taoka surveyed his eldest son's vacant expression with annoyance; "What the hell is wrong with him?"
"He was quite distraught when he got Hanamichi back last night," Hikoichi explained quickly. "So we gave him some valium to calm him but..."
Taoka's shoulders heaved in irritation. "Akira!" He pronounced each syllable loudly as if talking to a deaf man. "Tell us what happened!"
Akira's eyes trailed languidly over to him without recognition and he sighed long and low, the whole world pressing him down. Everything around him appeared unfamiliar and weird and horrible. His recollection of last night was fractured into oddly unconnected moments, like so many pebbles rattling in his fogged mind while each little fragment kept replaying in his head over and over again maddeningly.
"…went f' a drive…" he began tiredly, hearing the strange slur in his own voice and the odd way it seemed to echo as if he were talking into a microphone "…heard gunfire, came back." He raised his head to see ten faces peering intently at him and hoped that the reflection of Kaede wasn't still visible in his eyes, "picked Hanamichi up an' drove 'wards home, but then he was… there.. .just… in the middle o' the road 'n…"
"Who was there?"
He was quite sure he wouldn't be able to say the name aloud.
"K… Ruka… kawa… son" was all he managed.
"Hisashi?"
"Yeah bu' no, but…" he huffed in frustration. It seemed to him that they were being intolerably dense "other one."
There was a blinking silence.
"The kitsune?"
He nodded wordlessly. The others exchanged brow-raised glances so he closed his weary eyes to their sceptical stares.
"…and?" Taoka's irritated tone pressed him on. With a tired frown Akira reluctantly opened his eyes and continued.
" 'michi said we should try 'n run 'm down but, I don' know how but, well, we were goin' so fast and still, you see, he just jumped out of the way. He shot 'n jumped out of the way. That's all."
He gave a final heavy sigh as if the explanation had taken all his strength and fell into silence.
"Then you're saying it was the kitsune?" someone queried in bewilderment.
"He must mean Hisashi, I think" another person supplied.
Akira groaned in irritation. Hadn't he told them already? Why did he have to say it again? "Not Hisashi" he grunted.
Quite suddenly a rush of drugged exhaustion overcame him and he doubled over, head to his knees, quite sure that he was about to pass out. The miserable world tilted and spun mercilessly around him. He could see about him so many identical masks of surprise mirroring his own shock that he felt a weird affinity with them as if they all shared in his chaos of confusion.
Kaede had shot Hanamichi.
After all… after everything… the carefully built trust… had everything broken, shattered, just like that? Unable to understand it he slumped forward pathetic and tired and nauseous in his sorry seat.
"Do you mean to tell us…" Uozumi began in disbelief "…that the Kitsune missed?"
Akira took a few seconds before finally looking up.
"Missed?" he echoed, staring at Uozumi. "No, he did… in the…" he looked towards the doctor for support "…hit him in the…" he trailed off in confusion.
"Masaya," Taoka interrupted Akira's faltering mumbles, "what's your opinion?"
Akira felt too weak to care that he was being so readily excluded from the conversation. His head drooped again, only listening.
Masaya frowned thoughtfully, "As far as I know, the kitsune has never participated actively in the rivalry. It certainly is strange for Anzai to use him now."
"But you predicted something like this would happen," Taoka pointed out.
Masaya brought his hands up as if to defend himself, "I predicted that Anzai would want Hanamichi killed, true. But this situation is entirely outside my expectations. For the kitsune to miss… well… what do you think doctor?"
Once again under everyone's combined observation the doctor adjusted his glasses and shifted his feet restlessly, "Based on what I've seen of his victims, I too would have to doubt that it was the kitsune who shot Hanamichi-sama last night."
"Why?" Koshino pressed in curiosity, sitting fully forward in his seat.
"Well," the doctor explained, "I had the chance to examine several kitsune gun victims a few years ago. Eight shot from his right hand, and a further seven from his left. The most striking thing was that every single one of them had been shot in the same place," he pointed demonstratively "the forehead. When we measured the precise location of the wounds we found that the average deviation from centre was less than a centimetre. I assure you his accuracy is not in question."
"Then," Koshino demanded impatiently, "you think Sendoh-sama made a mistake? It definitely couldn't have been the kitsune who shot Hanamichi?"
"Well… there are still other scenarios," the doctor responded patiently and looked directly at Taoka as he said, "It is possible that he missed on purpose."
Akira startled out of his revere in sudden surprise, saved the embarrassment of notice only because no one was looking in his direction. He felt himself turn sheet pale.
Masaya put his hand to his chin as if thinking deeply while Akira held his breath.
"It can't be denied that it is possible," Masaya said finally, "but I've told you my opinion before. The boy is little more than a machine, only capable of following instructions. If he missed on purpose, it would be because Anzai told him to."
There were general nods of agreement around the room and a murmur of interest as the conversation became diverted by Anzai's supposed motives.
Perhaps it was the clouds muddling Akira which held at bay the implications of Masaya's words for the moment. In fact a little ironic relief returned to him now that his family seemed to have become preoccupied by this convenient falsehood. They were actually seeking to absolve Kaede of the deed. Akira didn't even need to try to manipulate the situation or defend Kaede from this, if he were even capable of such a thing given his current state. It felt as if he had been snatched back from the very edge of discovery. It was so providential, so very expedient for him that he relished in foggy gratitude.
And then, even as he sat calmed, he found himself wondering about what Kaede was doing at that moment and whether he was in a similar meeting over at the Rukawa house. And even as he envisioned it, the chilling comprehension of reality gripped him. His breath stilled in his throat for a moment and he stood up unsteadily in horrified realisation.
All at once he saw just how much danger Kaede was in.
"Sendoh-sama?" Masaya queried him in puzzlement.
Akira looked dazedly at all the familiar faces pointed his way which spun and blurred so that he couldn't recognise any of them. He only saw last night's image of Kaede, kneeing in the mud and vanishing into the distance in his rear-view mirror, Tetsuo and Hisashi beside him. Why the hell hadn't he realised this earlier?
"Feel sick" he blurted, and fled the room.
Romeo, away, be gone!
Stand not amazed:- the prince will doom thee death,
If thou art taken – hence, be gone, away!
Fifteen minutes later and Akira was hurtling down the road to Miura in Hanamichi's blue BMW. The roof was down so that the wind's blast would help to keep him awake but he was still having difficulty concentrating, having had no sleep and a heavy dose of sedatives. It was only adrenaline and sheer force of will that kept him functioning.
He sped past mile after mile of determinedly deserted beach, his panic rising with each moment in which there was no sign of that distinctive green bike. Kaede had said to meet here but… what if something had gone wrong? There was no way for Akira to find out what the situation was. His stomach churned with the uncertainty of it all.
He rounded a bend and all at once spotted a miraculous shape in the distance. A single rider on a stationary bike waiting by the beachside. In relief and joy he pressed his foot to the floor only to ease off uncertainly when he realised that it was neither Kaede nor Kaede's bike after all.
This rider was unidentifiable, dressed in full black leathers and helmet. The bike was an expensive and rare Honda NR750 also in black which Akira had never seen before. The stranger appeared much shorter than Akira, Yohei's height perhaps, and yet his build was far too slender to be Hanamichi's ruffian friend. His head was turned to watch the car's approach attentively.
Akira rubbed a sleepy hand across his eyes. If it turned out to be an enemy he knew he was in no condition to defend himself. He looked around the area and tried to think clearly. The beach was open and deserted with unobstructed views a good mile or two in either direction so there was no chance of an ambush coming from there. The other side of the road was a thick scrub of trees which might conceal men but was too dense to accommodate a bike or a car. It seemed that apart from that one individual, there would be no others to contend with. Considering that the stranger was of modest stature and slender build he hardly seemed a match for Akira, and so Akira elected to continue to approach, but not without drawing a handgun from the car's glove department.
He drew up a short distance away, opening the door of the car but not cutting the engine. With his gun gripped tightly in his right hand he put one foot out and stood, his head rising out of the open roof into the familiar salty sea-air of the beachside.
"Who are you?" he called loudly and firmly, blue-eyes narrowed in suspicion.
The rider tipped his head to the left as if puzzled for a moment and then gently tugged at his helmet until it came loose in a tumble of brown locks. He clunked it down carelessly on the fuel tank between his thighs and sighed.
"Sendoh-san" he greeted.
The eyes that lifted and looked unhappily over at Akira were devoid of their usual warmth. The boy looked as bad as Akira felt, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed with black from lack of sleep.
"Kogure-san…"
Akira abandoned the gun and the car and approached him, feeling as if each step were one more towards the guillotine. Kogure's presence, he knew, could only be a bad thing. There was an uncomfortable silence filled with both of their exhaustions until Akira managed to put forward a question;
"What…" he could hear his voice collapsing into a hoarse whisper even as he spoke "… what have they done to him?"
Kogure bit his lip and wouldn't meet Akira's eyes. He seemed reluctant to speak, as if saying it would make it more real somehow. He twisted his hands about each other nervously as Akira waited desperately for him to speak.
"Kogure-san I…"
"His fingers…" Kogure hissed in a voice stained black with bitterness "…Hisashi cut off his fingers."
Akira felt his whole body go cold.
Then turn tears to fires
The first few moments of numbness were a blessing.
Kogure's dull eyes and vacant expression made everything seem temporarily less real. Akira watched as if he weren't really there. As if it were all beyond him, the life of another person. Panic didn't reach him. The crumbling world didn't rock him. Nothing touched him for a few precious seconds of sacred airy suspension.
And then it fell upon him.
He struggled desperately against his imagination, trying to shut it down. He tried not to envision Tetsuo forcing Kaede to the floor, Hisashi crushing his brother's forearm into immobility with his boot, right there in the dirt tracks Akira had left behind. He tried not to hear the sounds of grunting, gasping, desperate struggling, nails clawing at the dirt, the blade moving through the air, the splintering of bone. He tried not to wonder whether Kaede – proud, dangerous Kaede – had screamed.
Akira looked down in shock and saw his hands. He wondered whether they were really his, large and ungraceful and so incapable of protecting what he cared for. He wondered who and what Akira Sendoh really was and why he had failed so terribly.
He looked up into Kogure's eyes and caught sight of his reflection - a man he no longer recognised, worn down by love and despair and cursed, inescapable fate. Among the red roads of eye blood shot like streamers he could see everything as little paths of intentions and reactions, intricate and twisting and yet strangely comprehensible. Puzzlingly mathematical in its exactitude. How horrible.
Kogure's back was straight and stiff and his face a well calculated picture of composure. Akira stared at him in curiosity and wondered what was going on behind those tired eyes. Perhaps like Akira he'd been broken under the crushing wheels of fate, or perhaps like Kaede it had been only a mask to hide his agony all along. As he stared, Akira began to see with increasingly clarity that even as Kogure sat with his proud back, his entire world and all he lived for was turning to dust around him, and that he knew it, and that he despaired.
Akira frowned. Was the same fate reserved for him too? Would he, in the end, see what he had come to love crushed and destroyed as he stood by helplessly – trapped by this ridiculous taboo, this wall, this name which he carried in his blood like a slave-brand? Would cruel gods never think to grant this warm, desperate love a happy ending?
Something inside him twisted with resentment at the unfairness of it all. He clenched his fists in rising anger. If the world would not grant Kaede and he even one short moment of freedom, then he would just have to create one himself. His pride and his blood, powerful and sharp, rose within his chest, just as bile rose in his throat and he looked at Kogure suddenly filled with revulsion.
He wouldn't accept this. He was more than that. He was not prepared to lay down before the inevitable. He was going face the coming onslaught with his sword drawn. Not to bow for a second to that fickle dance of fate, but to defy and struggle until he reached whatever sorry end awaited two star-crossed lovers.
He didn't know precisely what to do, or how to do it, but he knew with a valium-induced clarity greater than he'd ever known that he could not leave things like this.
He met Kogure's eyes determinedly.
"I must go to him," he said.
Stand up, stand up; stand, an' you be a man.
The moon was being fickle. She would bring herself out of her clouded robe to tease and tantalise and bath the parkland around the house in her own eerie whiteness before retreating as if struck with sudden shyness.
Under her capering frivolities, creatures were moving in the midnight moonscape. Tiny moths and other night-loving insects flew secretly among the grasses. Small rodents – voles and shrews – sniffed and snorted through the dry undergrowth while a fox with a sharp whiskered face slunk warily among the trees.
It had been more than eighteen hours since he'd met with Kogure, but Akira's vehemence had not relented. And so now he was here, moving with natural-born confidence through the landscape, pushing aside the long, moon-kissed stems of wildgrass as he went. This night was going to be of his conception; he was making it, forging it out of his own nerve and fire. Nothing, nothing, was beyond his power. Not even the bricks of the walls could refuse him on this night.
He walked onwards with all the power and dignity due to the heir of Sendoh, with his eyes forward and his feet sure, as if the midnight parkland around him were part of his own private estate. The ingrained comprehension of his own authority, impressed on him since birth, showed itself in every effortless stride he took. To an observer it would have seemed like the entire world was his to lead, to command and possess.
And yet the elegant mansion that rose at the centre of his vision was not his own. For these lands and this house belonged to that other great family – Rukawa – and despite his equally heavy ancestry, Akira was now playing at little better than common thievery. But unlike a thief Akira felt no need to hide from the moon. Where he was treading now he felt sure, with every ebb and flow of his pounding soul, was wholly and entirely his own. Because he was, more fiercely than he'd ever been before, Akira Sendoh, and it had taken eventual comprehension of the antithetical strength of Kaede Rukawa to find that in himself. To decide that he would never again allow himself to fail.
He crossed the silent, formal gardens, crunching gravel under his feet, exposed so clearly in the moon's laughing light. Perhaps it was his impossible confidence alone that enabled him to walk so brazenly through this veritable viper's nest unscathed, and let him arrive underneath Kaede's second floor balcony without having seen another soul. And there he paused and looked up calmly.
There was nothing to make this window distinctive among the dozens of others that fronted onto the gardens. The railing was white painted oak, sturdy vertical columns in an antiquated shapely design supporting the main rail. Gaps between the posts allowed Akira to see that this balcony was empty, devoid of the plant pots or hanging baskets of flowers. There were only French sliding doors leading from the bedroom to the outside, iron wrought with clear sheet glass, simple but with a small embellishment around the handle, the metal shaped into an elegant spiral.
Akira didn't doubt for a moment whether this was the right window. He only had Kogure's word to go by, and yet it was as if for this night he had an in-built comprehension of such things. He didn't even feel concerned how he would manage to climb up the twelve feet separating him and it. He just knew that he would.
What must be, shall be.
With complete surety he reached out to the vertical wall before him, stepping into the flower bed and pushing away the thick, leathery leaves of the climbing vine that grew there. Flower heads which, in the daytime would show their summer splendid colours in yellows and oranges, danced around his feet dulled by the moonlight. Bypassing the vine leaves, Akira pressed his hands against the rough brickwork, certain that it would yield to him, and indeed it seemed to as his fingers hooked a small gap in the frontage where a brick was missing. Keeping one hand on it he reached up higher with his other and found a second similar handhold.
Someone, perhaps years ago, had created a way to climb up and down from this exact balcony which belonged to Kaede. Akira didn't question this, the evidence was clear enough, and it didn't seem particularly remarkable to him then – a whole lot less like luck and a whole deal more like fate. Whoever had made it for whatever purpose seemed less important than the fact that it was there and so he was content simply to climb.
The strong muscles of his arms and shoulders contracted and slid over one another as he pulled himself upwards through the vine. He would have looked exceedingly odd to any passer-by: a tall boy scaling the side of the building, but tonight there was no one there to see. Finally he put his hands directly onto the balcony rail and with a powerful heave of his arms pulled himself up and over it, onto the balcony proper.
Akira didn't linger but moved immediately forwards and found the French window open by only the merest of cracks, not even wide enough to accommodate his smallest finger. He had to hook it with his nails to drag it open. And then finally he paused, not in hesitation but in contemplation of this moment to which he'd brought himself.
He was about to break into the Rukawa mansion, and the thought made him smile with the mad irony of it. He who, only three short months ago had had no contact whatsoever with the rival family, was stood here now on the verge of initiating an unrecognisable future, for better or for worse. And yet it felt so peaceful, so natural that he couldn't reconcile the imbalance between fast approaching chaos and this short moment of serenity.
He breathed in deeply, the warm air passing by him out of the room and into the cool night had a fragrance. The strange scent of an unfamiliar house coupled with something else – the familiar consolation of the boy his soul was joined to. He breathed it and felt himself surrounded by it. Silently he stepped in through the opening.
The room that met his eyes was not what he had been expecting.
The first thing that caught his eye were posters on the walls of sports teams and NBA players, fading and curling at the corners and dated for seasons long past. Although they were indistinct in the midnight darkness, Akira could imagine small immature fingers pressing the sticky tack determinedly between the sheet and papered wall. It made him realise that there had been a time when Kaede had been a normal kid, had had dreams and interests and passions just as any other child would. That he had been enthusiastic enough to put up all these posters. Such a contrast to the boy who no longer cared enough to even take them down again.
Akira moved further into the room in fascination, feeling like he was catching secret glimpses of a Kaede he didn't know. He noticed the shelves which supported dozens of small trophies. In curiosity he drew closer and picked one up. The engraved words were only just visible in the darkness; 1992 Japanese Children's Nationals 25m Rapid Fire Pistol Event First Place. The one beside it was similar; Gold Award Detroit Sports Festival Under 15s 1993 10m Air Pistol. He stared blankly at them; old and neglected monuments to a phenomenal talent dated from a time before the abomination known as the kitsune had come to be. In fact the whole room felt like it had been preserved, trapped in the past, ten years ago, steeped in the ruins of so many dreams.
He shivered and felt suddenly alone.
"...Akira?"
But was not alone.
He looked towards Kaede who was now sitting upright in bed, woken by his arrival.
Blue eyes were fixed on him without any obvious emotion – no surprise, no anger or joy, only that well-familiar blankness, a certain expectant waiting, without bias or anticipation. That marvellous openness disguised as indifference that Akira had come to appreciate so much.
He didn't hesitate but moved quickly to Kaede's side, ignoring the stool at the side of the bed and sitting directly on the mattress, close to Kaede's warmth.
"Because I had to see you" he said, although no question had been asked.
Kaede stared at him, a shadow of emotion passing briefly over his features before it was gone again.
"It's dangerous" he pointed out in mild accusation.
Akira frowned, "Do you think that I am afraid?"
Kaede hesitated.
Of pain, of death? Who would not be afraid?
He opened his mouth as if to reply, only to close it again. His eyes had seen far too much of both.
Seeing a darkness flicker in the depths of Kaede's almost infallible expression Akira leaned forward, and Kaede's eyes widened as their foreheads pressed together, breath mingling and blue eyes meeting across impossible closeness.
"There's not a single thing they could do to me that would change what I feel for you."
There was a short moment of quiet breathing before Kaede managed to echo the word; "Feel..?" as he recalled the sensations Akira had given him the night before. It hadn't been just a reaction of the flesh but something else, something faltering in his chest, something that had made him spare the life of that red-headed boy simply because Akira would have wished it. The pleasure his body had felt under Akira's touch had been balanced by the pain Hisashi had inflicted on him and he could understand that. But the other feelings, less tangible, remained constant and unchanged and utterly incomprehensible to him.
Seeing his confusion, Akira couldn't help but reach out with one hand to touch a pale, troubled cheek, astonished at the ferocity of his desire to comfort this long-wandering child who had become so lost among unkind years. He caught his fingers in Kaede's hair behind his ear, pressed his palm against the elegant jaw and cupped his face gently. Kaede immediately flushed with the motion of tenderness, and with the sticky heat Akira's breath left on his cheek.
Arise, fair sun.
"I love you."
That was all, said so simply. Akira's words like little pins trust into his dark soul. Kaede stilled in bewilderment. He had to squeeze his eyes tight to the pain of blinding light. How was it that Akira could speak it so easily, when Kaede couldn't even muster the ability to open his suddenly dry lips? Didn't he have to say something? Wasn't he supposed to say something back? To step out, somehow, into the daytime? But how was he supposed to repeat it when he knew that those words from his wraith lips would be sacrilege; foul, noxious and nothing better than an insult? A shadow like him had no right to speak of the dawn, let alone curse others with such an utterance. But if he didn't speak, wasn't that… rejection? How could that be when it was he and he alone who deserved censure and exclusion?
Akira watched the struggles in Kaede's creased eyebrows and shuttered eyes. He knew that warmth, kindness, affection had been blanks in Kaede's life, and that the boy's hands were probably stained with more blood than he could begin to imagine. He knew too that Kaede had very little control over his own emotions, didn't know how to express himself, struggled even to acknowledge his own feelings. He was almost like a child in his emotional immaturity. And so Akira expected nothing back. For now at least his desires were much simpler. Only to sit beside one another in silence would have been enough for him. Just to breathe the same air. Just to rest their foreheads together like this in a moment of sweet contentment. Just to know that with a shift of his body they might brush against each other, a hand or a knee or a gentle touch of shoulders. That alone would have been enough.
"I…" Kaede faltered over the words so inelegantly that Akira had to smile. He brushed his thumb over the lips that he knew would never be able to explain.
You don't have to say anything, Kaede.
Kaede's eyes opened. There was something odd in his expression, Akira couldn't quite place it. A flicker like anger, and yet not anger. Pride wounded by frustration. Decision.
He blinked in surprise when Kaede silently reached forward to take his hand. Such a rare, gesture made Akira still; only watching Kaede move in wonder. He noticed the rough, white bandage that was bulky around Kaede's right hand, but since Kaede himself didn't seem conscious of it, he didn't mention it. He only looked on in fascination as Kaede lifted his hand up gently, and then sucked his breath in with surprise when soft lips pressed a velvet kiss against his finger tips.
There was such sweetness in the gesture. An overwhelming naivety; innocence pressed honey-like from the mute lips of a boy whose name was synonymous with death and violence – oh. A soft, moist tongue brushed curiously against his sensitive touch, trembling slightly in a haze of actualisation. The lips parted, and his two fingers slipped fully inside the warmth of that unspeaking mouth and then Akira couldn't breathe. Momentarily the silent tongue was trapped below his pressing tips but it soon escaped to the side and wrapped itself in silken drapes around him like a love poem in which words would have been entirely superfluous.
The sensation of the heated air that passed over his skin as Kaede breathed out, followed by the cool rush of it as he breathed in again was so much like hot life, so dire and needy, it felt like Akira was brushing his fingers against Kaede's very desire to live; the fundamental thirst for air which could not be sated. Yet even that marvel was pale compared to the sight of him. Surrender. Defencelessness. Confession. Akira's stomach twisted into increasingly beautiful knots.
When Kaede opened his blue eyes and gazed up at him, Akira couldn't help but wrench his fingers away, more forcefully than he intended, and gripping Kaede's shoulders firmly he replaced them almost desperately with his mouth.
As he pushed Kaede back down onto the pillows, he realised that he was going to make love to this creature, and that this could well be the only chance he would ever have to do so. With his hands tangled in Kaede's hair Akira peeled back clothes as if peeling back the layers of the soul. Seeking for the centre of him, only to realise that he already held it, then to lose it and then to find it again. And Kaede's gasps, his pain, his ecstasy, was in its turn Akira's gasps and pains and ecstasies.
Two souls already meshed so tightly together that the joining of their bodies was only an imitation of it, and not the thing itself. Not a primal, fleshy twist of passions but an acknowledgment, reverence, veneration.
And as they comforted one another they both knew, as if they shared one mind, that this was their last chance. The last moment. There was no going back. Whatever ends they were bringing upon themselves they brought now with their eyes open and their minds clear and their hearts beating. And knowing that this could be both the first and the last time, Akira lost himself in the bitter-sweetness of what was so beautiful and yet so fleeting.
How to capture it? How to make it last beyond the bearing dawn?
He didn't know.
So smile the heavens upon this holy act,
That after-hours with sorrow chide us not.
By the time morning came to Kaede's room, Akira and all traces of him were long gone.
Wincing with discomfort Kaede sat up and lifted his eyes to the image of the Rukawa crest that dominated the wall of his bedroom. His awakened mind twisted the image in ways he'd never noticed before. He saw the black stain of ink spread like claws across the crisp white canvas; an irremovable brand across the soul. Across the bottom cut that ever-persistent name: Rukawa.
For a moment he could almost imagine the lines of ink coming to life, touching him with those icy branch-like fingers, restricting his breathing, squeezing the life out of him.
He shook his vision off coolly and continued to stare at it for a long time – the family he was set to betray.
Finally he looked down at his mutilated, bandaged hand and smiled idly.
We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not.
~tbc
I don't know what to say. I'm aching with the effort of writing this. Sigh.
If anyone is kind enough to help me out as a beta reader - not for spelling/grammar but someone who can look critically at plot, characterisation, themes and timing - please send me a message! I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!
Please leave a review if only to say "climbing up to the balcony? That's SO freaking corny", "needs moar sex!", or "hold it! We're all outta noodles".