Summary: Fast forward to 18 years later from The Present. Character death.
The Future, Part 1
Hibi knew nothing about it, of course. Makoto may have looked as plain as she did, except for those prominent green eyes, but all along she had the personality of the father she detested with all her heart. Hibi puttered about Shuichi's roses for the five days she was left alone at home, completely oblivious to her daughter's ballistic activities. For the first time in 18 years, Hibi realized that no amount of fertilizer nor care could make the roses as alive as how they had been under Shuichi's infuriatingly capable, magical hands.
Shiori dropped Makoto home at 11 PM on the fifth day, still scandalized and speechless at the younger woman's audacity to blissfully intoxicate herself before her very eyes, consecrating each shot with "Good riddance, Minamino Shuichi!" However, Makoto immediately sobered upon finding Hibi prone on the living room floor, unconscious, clutching at her heart. Both rushed to the fallen woman, and behind them, the frantic househelper made the necessary calls.
"The ambulance should be here at any second now." the househelper reported, a little shaky from anxiety. "Gomen nasai, Shiori-sama, Makoto-chan. I didn't think such a thing could happen, so I turned in for the day."
Shiori smiled at her ruefully in gratitude and pardon. She bit her lip. "Ano, Shiori-sama... should I call Shuichi-san as well?"
Makoto flashed livid eyes at the two women and snarled in legendary fury, "What for?!" Her tears flooded her face.
"Go," Shiori told the househelper, ignoring Makoto. "Call Shuichi."
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"Shiori-sama, I don't think Shuichi-san is at his apartment right now. No one is answering." At the househelper's statement Makoto saw her grandmother's eyes turn thoughtful for a split second. She didn't like it.
"What a despicable, selfish, philandering bastard!" Makoto roared, balling her fists. Her tears flooded her face again, but she tried her best to avoid letting them fall on her mother's face which was just underneath hers.
Ignoring Makoto again, as she had done in similar circumstances all those years, Shiori requested of the househelper, "Try his other number. It's in the directory, under Hiei-kun's name."
"Hai," the househelper bowed and complied.
Hiei. Hiei! Hiei!!! It was the first time Makoto heard her father's concubine's name. Grandmother is doing this deliberately. WHY?! Makoto gently extricated Hibi's head from her lap and sped up to her room, her footfalls thundering in blind rage. She shut the door so hard the doorframe could have collapsed.
After the call was made the ambulance arrived.
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Right after dinner, Kurama hefted on Hiei's dining table the paperwork he had to take home to finish and present the next day. Sympathetic, Hiei sat next to him as he worked diligently, turned on the TV to pro-wrestling, muted it and absently watched, though he mentally flamed the sport as a shoddy excuse for entertainment. They stayed like that for hours. Then Kurama started to digress, kissing and flirting with Hiei after every three minutes in agitation. Moments later a call came in.
Hiei picked up. "Hai."
"Hiei-kun," Shiori greeted with strained affection, "is Shuichi there?"
Hiei glanced at Kurama. The latter inexplicably looked discombobulated as he met his eyes. "He is, Shiori-san. Just a second, please."
Kurama took the offered phone warily. "Hello, Mother. How are you--"
"Come to the city general hospital, quick. Hibi-chan collapsed. The ambulance will be taking her there shortly," Shiori said, then hung up immediately.
Kurama's thoughts flatlined. He had never heard Shiori speak with him in such cold, fluid tones. She specifically sounded like she was fed up with something about him and was close to not giving a damn anymore.
Hiei silently panicked when he saw Kurama blankly stare at the phone he precariously held. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"Hiei..." Kurama turned to him with hurt, shocked, desperate, vulnerable eyes. "Mother hung up on me," he said, stifling an urge to sob.
"Baka," Hiei chided gently, standing to embrace the redhead. "Not that. Why did she hang up on you?"
"She said Hibi-san's been rushed to the hospital..."
They both stiffened as the revelation sunk in. Kurama whispered sharply, "Oh no, Hibi-san!"
Hiei, on the other hand, felt a liberating, vague, if not twisted, sense of triumphant justice. He knew a greater part of Kurama's sudden anguish was from Shiori's earlier rejection and not from Hibi's casualty. Likewise, a greater part of Hiei rejoiced in that, convinced that Kurama deserved it for being irrational, selfish, foolish and enslaved by the thing he reminded him of every night: "love."
But when he regained his senses and instead felt his troubled partner slinking into his arms and hungrily thrived on whatever he found there, Hiei realized that this was his sin as well. I love you. The different ways of how Kurama professed of his love for 18 years echoed in his mind. He kissed the beloved, feverish forehead and helped Kurama up - with a seemingly newfound courage. He told him, "Come, we need to hurry. I'll drive you there."
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"Please stop crying, Makoto-chan," Shiori begged of her granddaughter when the tears would not stop flooding from her angrily set eyes. "Everything will be all right. Your mother's a strong woman. She'll wake up soon, you'll see..."
Beside her, Makoto would not listen. She gripped at her jeans so hard that she trembled.
Then Kurama burst into the room, abjectly holding Hiei's hand as though it was a possession he could not go without. Shiori stood upon seeing him.
Makoto instantly seized crying. She found herself unable to summon the age-worn animosity that she always had for her despicable, selfish, philandering father; the one whom she now looked in the eye, the one who was so beautiful he took her breath away. For one unforgivable second Makoto thought that he was so beautiful that he had the birth right to philander. Inadvertently, her eyes fell on Hiei, whose handsome yet austere features looked so humble as he fervently tried to make himself invisible from the unhappy gathering that was worsened by his attendace. Makoto remembered her anger.
Kurama, taking note of his hostile daughter's presence, closed in on Shiori slowly, carefully. "Mother," he started, releasing Hiei's hand in an attempt to embrace her, when the next thing he became aware of was Makoto's face and Makoto's hand slapping him across the face without reservations, and his face burning from the impact. It happened so fast that Hiei was the only one who saw it unraveling; he did nothing to stop the blow, however.
Shiori was scandalized. "Makoto!" she sternly called. The girl looked back at her defiantly.
"This is all HIS fault, Grandmother!" Makoto bellowed. She raised another hand to deliver another slap, but Shiori intercepted it, parrying it to the side vehemently in reproach. Kurama put a hand on Shiori's arm, gently.
"It's okay, Mother," he sighed resignedly. He turned to his daughter. "Please hit me all you want, Makoto-chan, even if it won't erase my shortcomings at all."
Even as he prostrated himself before Makoto's mercy, Kurama was ruthless and haughty at his next words that Hiei could have sworn the assertive Youko stealthily took over. "The only regret I have is you and your mother suffering the consequences of the love I have for Hiei. But I'm not sorry for anything."
Hiei turned his head away. Shiori wept, torn. Kurama knew the two persons he loved were blaming him, but he was impervious to anything that could alter his resolve. He closed his eyes in submission. Makoto slapped him on the other cheek with all her might before she stormed out of the hospital room. Her sobs billowed hauntingly in the floor corridor.
After the sting of Makoto's attack had faded, Kurama opened his eyes to Hiei's absence. He did not even feel him leaving the room; it was as if Hiei did not want him to know. Worse, Shiori would not talk to him.
Kurama walked to the bed where Hibi laid. He held her hand, and he thought that her lifeless touch was a poor remedy to his desolation and a poor surrogate to the touch he was yearning for at the moment. Then her hand twitched; with wide eyes he met Hibi's, swollen with fresh tears and filled with love for him. She had witnessed everything that transpired.
I love you, Shu! I love you, I love you! she was trying to say frantically, yet her tongue was strangely arrested that all that came out were garbled, incoherent mumbles. Hibi cried harder once she realized she was unable to render intelligible the feelings she desperately wanted to let her estranged husband know.
"Hibi-chan, Hibi-chan!" Shiori called out to her. "Hang in there!"
Outside, Kurama searched urgently for a doctor. Hiei... you secretly hated me all these years, didn't you?
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At the hospital rooftop, as the cool midnight air caressed his face, Hiei dispassionately stared at the gold matrimonial ring on his hand. He loved Kurama without a doubt - dearly, deeply; he was just tired of feeling trapped in this illicit - not to mention, illegitimate - romance. He didn't want to give up his lover, but neither could he stand any longer the reality that other people were paying the price in their ungrateful behalf.
We may never be legally married while we're here in the Ningenkai, he remembered Kurama saying that night of their bonding, but know that I love you most. And this ring - Kurama kissed the ring that he put on Hiei's finger reverently - more than represents all that amazing magic.
You're such a cornball.
I enjoy making you uncomfortable, beloved.
Hn.
I love you, Hiei.
Hiei wanted to weep from the memory that would not stop washing over him; it suffocated the universe around him, and it sent him plummeting down to the heart of confusion. That night, Kurama looked, smiled, made love, loved only him, but Kurama was never really only his. He did not know what to do anymore.
I do too. Kurama.
TBC
Since this chapter is the bulk of the story, it's inevitably kinda long, so I had to chop it into two. Oh well oh well.
I have no idea about the details of legally changing one's name in Japan, but since I trust that legal transactions there are dealt with faster than ahem somewhere else I know ahem my country haha, I thought five days was a reasonable time give. Do tell if my assumptions are so wrong I ought to change that part. Thank you.