A/N: Well, folks, hope you stick with me on this one, it's nearly three thousand words. What can I say, Katsuya's death is a bit of a moment we pass by in Furuba. Anyway. So, guess what I should be doing right now? That's right, studying. But to hell with that. Oh, and R&R people!!! You should know how it makes a writer feel when you press that button at the bottom of the page!
Katsuya smiled as he turned off his phone. Kyoko was worried about him, again. A part of him wanted to gently reprimand her, he was a grown man wasn't he? But another part warned him that Kyoko was more often right than not.
His smile widened as he remembered the rest of their conversation. Kyoko had told him of Tohru's misadventures today, something about mistaking bobby pins for chopsticks. That little girl was truly the second light in his life, but instead of taking away from Kyoko's bright light, she added her own glow to make such a beautiful display.
Kyoko…was he truly right in marrying her? She had been so young, only out of middle school. Sure, he had gone many nights without sleep during their engagement, trying to reason his love. She was only a child then, what right did he have to take her before she had barely lived? What if she fell in love with someone else when she was older, and knew a bit more about romance? The only feelings she probably had for him was infatuation, or that of a fatherly figure. Lord knows her own father had been anything but a role model. What if she thought she was in love, but wasn't?
Katsuya took a breath, and sat back. The thoughts from so many years ago were of no use now; she was his now, and she didn't seem to regret marrying him. For that, he could be grateful.
What was wrong with him, then? Falling in love with a middle school student? And not even until she was older, but proposing to her outright? Maybe he really was a pedophile. Or maybe…but that couldn't be right.
But maybe, some part of his spirit said in a quiet voice, maybe soulmates existed. And maybe they had just been born a few too many years apart. Maybe they met each other too quickly, and had so had to defy tradition to be together.
God, the "maybes" were getting to him.
He shook his head, and rifled through the bag he had brought with him, looking for medicine for his cough. After emptying the contents onto his bed, he was forced to admit that he didn't pack any.
What a time to forget, Katsuya thought, strangely disaffected by the absence of medicine. Ah well, a night without medicine won't kill me.
He changed out of his work clothes, and into the old-fashioned robe he brought to sleep in. By the time his head hit the pillow, he was already asleep, more tired than he thought he was.
The fever raced through his body, leaving nothing unscathed. It felt like his throat had never heard of a concept called "water." Every part of him wanted to get up and drown in liquid, any liquid, but his limbs were in rebellion, and stayed firmly on top of the bed cover. He wanted to thrash, to convulse and warn someone, but no matter what he told his body, it would not follow him.
And then the visions began. Nightmarish, horrible images flashing across his eyes. His father, reprimanding him for deserting his promising teaching career. His father seemed near tears himself, and yet he was still shaking in fury.
"I was never supposed to be a teacher! I'm happier as I am now!" he yelled, but his father didn't seem to hear him.
Instead, he turned away and suddenly Katsuya could see, as if shadow had been hiding them all this time and now a light was on them, the rest of his family. They were gathered in twos and threes, scattered around, whispering to each other.
"You were right, my brothers and sisters. I have failed. Forget him. Forget everything about him."
The people nodded, agreeing to disinheriting him.
"No! Father! You haven't failed me! Why are you punishing me for doing what I wanted to do?" Katsuya yelled.
He was never mad at you for becoming what you are, Katsuya.
Katsuya looked up. Kyoko's voice? he wondered, and the tears he didn't know he had been shedding stopped. His eyes locked on his father's and his father nodded, as if in agreement with Kyoko. He smiled, waved goodbye, and walked away, whistling that tune he had whistled so often in Katsuya's youth. Katsuya sighed, and looked around for Kyoko, trying to locate her voice.
Katsuya…
"Kyoko? Where are you?"
Damn bastard!
Katsuya reeled back, surprised at the venom in her voice. He had never heard her use that tone, not even when she screamed that she hated the world.
What is he doing? wondered another voice, one from his family, What does he think he's doing, marrying a girl so young?
I never knew our promising Katsuya had a fetish for miniskirts and middle school girls, said another.
You would think he would at least hide it, for professional reasons.
"What are you talking about?" cried Katsuya, "I love her!"
Really? said one of the condescending voices, And how do you know if she loves you? What if she thought she was in love with you? Girls' hearts are fickle when they are that young.
"Why would she stay if she didn't?" he demanded.
You got her pregnant! What was she to do, leave the child? Or make the child grow up without a father? She may not love you, but she at least loves the child! She is, at the very least, that mature and understands her situation.
"Kyoko's not that type of person! If she had a complaint, she would tell someone! Tell me!"
How do you know? How do you know? How do you know? The voices faded away, the figures dissolving into the air with them. The question, however, still hung in the air, asking Katsuya the very things he had been avoiding for these many years.
"Kyoko…"
"You're very lonely, aren't you?" asked a quiet voice.
Katsuya's head snapped up and he saw a small girl standing before him. Her hair came down to her neck, its ends uneven, though it had been fastidiously cleaned. Her black eyes were nearly overflowing with tears, but nothing stained her porcelain cheeks. She wore a ceremonial robe, and her neck and hands were layered with the jewelry of the royal family, though the hem was torn and frayed, the fabric stained, the jewelry dented and dull. Her feet were bare and bruised, looking as if they had seen a thousand miles of dirt roads, nights under the open sky, and thorny paths.
"Who are you?" Katsuya asked dully, not really caring what the answer was.
"That's a difficult one, traveler. I cannot remember the last time I spoke, and I do not remember the last time I met someone traveling this way. But you can call me Takara, if you wish."
"Takara?"
"Yes, Takara. In any event, have you seen where you are?" she asked, head cocked to one side.
Katsuya looked around, curious as to what she asked. The world looked the same as it had been when his family members had disappeared, black with formless shadows. The only light was where Katsuya kneeled, though he could see the girl quite plainly, though she was several feet away.
"No," Katsuya said slowly, "Where are we?"
"Don't you hear it?" she asked, her eyes closed, the corners of her mouth lifted in a reminiscent smile.
Faintly, at the edge of his hearing, he heard what she was referring to. The rhythmic sounds of energy flowing in and out, crashing when it came into contact with the ground.
"The sea!" he said, getting up and starting in the direction of the noise.
"Is that what you hear?" the girl called Takara asked.
"Why? What do you hear?" he asked.
"Fue."
"Fue? Don't you mean a flute?"
"No. Fue."
Katsuya closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the thing she was hearing, but could only hear a few ghostly notes, darting in and out of his awareness.
"Goodbye, traveler," she said, taking a step towards her music.
"Wait!" he yelled after her, "You're leaving?"
She looked over her shoulder, and said in a voice that beguiled her apparent age, "I hope you will find your nirvana, traveler. I have searched many years for mine, and have yet to find it. Goodbye."
She left, her battered feet moving with absolute silence across the ground. He watched her leave, and vowed to himself that he would find whatever it is she was searching for, before he could end up like her. Wandering forever in this nothingness was something he would never do, even if he had to kill himself to avoid it.
Kill himself? Wasn't he already dead? Looking around, he realized the truth the apparitions of his family before had tried to hide. His heart, which he always thought no one could feel, sat motionless in his chest, and he was never so aware of a lack of movement.
His feet, without direction from him, began moving towards the direction of the waves. If he couldn't live anymore, he would at least surround himself with some of the greatest memories of his life.
The journey was longer than he had expected. Endless minutes went by, and he could have sworn the sound crept away, to a different location than he originally thought. He could see now why Takara would spend centuries following the sound of a fue. At times, the sound came from the way he had just come from, others from the very air around him.
Would this search never end?
He wondered if he should lie down and sleep, if things would look clearer in the proverbial morning. But no matter how he rationalized rest, his body would not listen. His entire being, not just his soul, wanted to find the ocean, and, though he never thought it, Kyoko.
Rationally, he knew she wasn't dead. He died in a hotel a few hundred miles away from Kyoko, and she wasn't even sick when he hung up the phone. Hopefully, if she had caught whatever he had, she would be smarter and go to a hospital about it. Tohru couldn't grow up without both of her parents, after all. And he could think of a spare handful of people who would take her in if Kyoko died.
Strange, how he could think of Kyoko's death as if it were a distant thing, not the end of someone he held so dear. But, after being dead himself, he had a different perspective on death.
His foot caught on some irregular thing on the flat surface he was used to, and he fell forward. His hands caught him, and he immediately winced. The objects he was grasping were jagged and cut his hands, though no blood flowed. What were these things? he thought. He looked up and saw something.
Rocks.
Rocks, the kind you would find around a shore, guarding the haven from those who couldn't handle a little sharpness. No longer caring if it was a trap (after all, who would want to trap him?) he scrambled to his feet and plunged forward, flinching with every step.
Suddenly, the rocks were gone, only left with chilling, fine sand. Katsuya blinked, greeted with an alien view. The water was a cool gray, the sand a darker shade. The sky above was darker still, though the darkest was ultimately the rocks he had ran over. The waves crashed down, the foam on them the lightest color, a dull whitish-gray.
This wasn't the ocean. This was a pale reproduction of one, painted with a color-blind hand. Katsuya collapsed against the sand, devastated and tired. He had searched this long for a scene that, ultimately, would only bring back memories he didn't wish to remember. Alone and devastated, he did the only thing he knew to do: He cried.
He cried for things he didn't even know he could cry for. He cried for the hearts Tohru would have to break, and he cried for the times when her own would be broken. He cried for the family that had deserted him, and Kyoko's as well. He cried for the people in the world who lived their lives without finding someone to spend it with. He cried for those who were ostracized, and those who were so appalled or desolate they took their own lives rather than live on. He cried for Takara, wandering for eternity for a sound that would, in the end, only make her weep as he was weeping, for the promise of a paradise lost.
Though he wasn't paying attention, the tears that were falling down changed the sand beneath him. The sand, though in tiny, miniscule amounts, amounts no eye could see, started to color. A deep, red color saturated the sand around him, staining the world. When the waves crashed down on the turf, the water also started to change, though to a bottle green instead. As Katsuya cried for the world, he unwittingly nurtured the color, bringing color to this monochromatic world.
When the sea and sand met on the rocks, they joined them, bringing out their own hidden color, a dark, royal blue. And when the sand, rocks, and sea spray met the air, it also began to metamorphose into a rich purple. And Katsuya was still grieving, unaware of the change until, at last, his tears spent, he looked up, and gasped at the change he had wrought onto this realm.
"What is this?" he wondered, the last of his tears falling to the ground.
Katsuya…
"Kyoko?" he asked, wondering how long he had stayed like that.
Katsuya, where am I? I hear your voice, but I can't see you? And…what are you doing here?!?!
"Kyoko?"
Get away from me! I have nothing more to do with you! You were the ones who got rid of me…don't tell me that! Mom, Dad…Why would you say something like that?
"Kyoko! They're not your parents!"
A wail sounded, and Katsuya flinched. He could feel Kyoko's feet pounding on the ground, running from her parent-ghosts.
"Kyoko! Just come to the sound of the waves!" he yelled, but was no longer certain she could hear him.
He waited for endless moments, not wanting to leave before she came here, and see no one on this beach. He looked behind him, but could see no end to the rocks, and so could not know when she came. If she came. He had no guarantee that she had heard his last words.
"Katsuya!" the voice he had missed so much yelled.
"Kyoko! How are you? How did you die? And…what did you do to your hair?!?!" She fell in his arms, and he wrapped them around her, caressing her back.
"Katsuya, what are you doing here? One minute I was lying on the pavement, the next I was here, and my parents…" She broke off in a sob.
"Were never there, Kyoko. They were meant to camouflage your descent into this world. So you wouldn't know you were dead until it was too late."
"But I knew I was already dead. I had been hit by a car and Jari was there--"
"Jari?"
"A kid I had grown attached to. He had the strangest hair…"
"Speaking of hair…what happened to yours?"
"Oh, I cut it a few years ago…do you like it?"
"Sure." He said, stroking it warily.
"Oh God, Katsuya," she said, laughing, and then burying her head in his chest, crying her own tears.
When she had spent the last of her tears, she looked up and asked the question he had been waiting for: "Where are we, anyway?"
"A beach. And we have all eternity to enjoy it together."