Part I: Heaven

The torn cloud, the rainbow
now gleaming in the sky
and the field enveloped
in a beacon of rain and sun.

It is only by chance that he finds himself in front of Sugi again.

The teahouse is not two blocks away from the CCG's main office. Taishi and Aki had invited him to dinner to a restaurant not four blocks away, like they always did every few months or so since their wedding, and he'd found no real reason to refuse; the park Sugi is in lies between the two waypoints – he'd cut through it to save time on his way back to headquarters, but then it began to drizzle, and before he knew it, there he stood in Sugi's entryway.

It is an old building, built of wood and stone, a beacon in the middle of the night – the sight is warm and homely, and something in his mind stirs with memory. Two lamplights guard the footpath leading up to Sugi's wooden steps, and he remembers he'd sat there as a teenager and gazed up at the moon, once.

His footfalls on the stepping stones are muffled by the sound of the rain bearing down on the surrounding pine forest. His eyes are fixed on Sugi's entrance, and unconsciously he envisions his sixteen year old self waiting on the stairs not seven feet before him.

He is shorter, more youthful. Hair still a vivid blue, not a single snowy strand in sight – his head is stuck in the clouds, completely unknowing of what would come soon after – whether it was the rain, the girl he'd had to murder while in high school, or Taishi's heartbroken realization that their classmate had been a ghoul.

Eventually Arima moves past his apparition to stand before Sugi's open doors. The inside is lit in gentle shades of orange and yellow, just as he remembers, and the overwhelming smell of freshly brewed tea fills his senses as he comes inside. A man in a kimono is waiting for him, all raven hair and friendly amber eyes that seem to blend into Sugi's interior. He bows, "For one?"

"Yes, thank you," Arima utters. The rain continues around them, but the atmosphere in Sugi is no less welcoming. He is shown to a table with a view of the gardens; on the other side of the room through glass windows is a view of the park. There is only one other patron at this time of the night, though they are tucked into a different corner of the teahouse.

Soon after he is seated, the man who'd shown him in smiles apologetically. "Please excuse me for a moment," he bows again, "I believe there's something that needs my attention. Someone will be here to take your order once you're ready, though."

He disappears into a set of sliding doors. Then there are the voices:

"Megs! It's been forever—"

"Seriously? You didn't have to come in tonight! Especially with this weather, Akiko—"

"Well I doubt you would have forgiven me if I didn't come straight away."

"Ssh! We still have patrons over, pipe down."

"This late—?"

The voices are suddenly hushed; he surmises, however, that the man from earlier is 'Megs,' and there is a new visitor 'Akiko.' He pays no more attention to the relation between the two people—yet the 'someone' Megs had promised to take his order turns out to be a woman. She is dressed just as formally, but her hair is damp and a little bit wild around her head, and her face is flushed like she'd just run through the rain.

Akiko.

"Good evening," She says with the voice of the woman from earlier, and his suspicion is confirmed. She is taller than the average woman, long blonde hair pushed past her shoulders and tucked behind her ears. And yet the smile she wears seems familiar, and her eyes are just as warm and bright as—

Ah. Siblings. It would explain the resemblance, and the familiarity he'd overheard in their voices.

They stare at each other. Uncannily enough, it seems as if she has come to her own realization—she blinks at him, once, twice, before her mouth opens to quizzically utter, "Excuse me, but have we met?"

"I don't believe so," Arima says. What?

The woman—Akiko—laughs. It's a generous, hearty thing; not at all condescending, but born out of genuine amusement, it would seem. "Forgive me, but I never forget a face. How strange! I'm rather sure it was here in Tokyo as well."

It would not be impossible. He had met an innumerable amount of people over the years; his operations in the CCG had taken him far and wide through the wards. But all those faces blur into an incomprehensible amalgamation in his mind; the only people he has little difficulty in remembering are either his colleagues or ghouls he has hunted for more than a month.

"Please indulge me," She continues with a small smile, "my brother tells me you're not one of the regulars. Do you remember the times you've been to this teahouse?"

There is little reason to be having this conversation except for the request of a woman he does not even know, despite her claiming to the contrary. Yet all he reads in her face is sincerity, and he finds that he equally has little reason to refuse her. "Once. Six years ago."

"I must've been...sixteen, then? And in Tokyo, obviously," she muses out loud, though the latter part she mostly says to herself. But apparently she remembers something, because she is suddenly straightening her spine, discreetly looking him up and down. She grins and claps her hands: "Oh! It's you! You were that boy! The one that was with all the investigators."

The words still him. This time, it's his turn to blink at her in silent amazement.

It comes to him in a flash—the girl with the lantern; forgotten umbrellas and gray clouds, pine trees and the tea she had brought him. He had been too busy looking up, and the night had been too dark for him to get a proper look at her.

Still. That was her?

"Do you remember me now?"

"I…" He is just as dumbfounded as she is at the massive coincidence that has brought them together. "…I do."

She seems happy at this. Smiling to herself, tucking a stray lock of hair that had escaped from behind her ear. "Well, my family owns Sugi, so I'm glad you decided to patronize us again." She says with a chuckle.

His eyes shift away from her, coming instead to look at the garden. There is no real need to sound so grateful. "I was in the area."

"And it would seem you've forgotten your umbrella again," The woman bows. "We would be more than happy to lend you one; you're an investigator for the CCG, right? It would be easy to send someone over to the main office and pick it up when you're done with it, if you can't spare the time to return."

"You remember much."

"It was a memorable night. It wasn't every day that father stayed open late to accommodate some of Tokyo's finest."

When he continues to say nothing, she looks at him with twinkling eyes. "I'm a people person. Didn't I say I never forget a face? Now then, I can bring you something if you've made up your mind already."

True to her word, she brings him the tea he asks for, but there is little more conversation; got my hands full, sorry, she says with a lofty wave of her hand and a not-so-sorry grin, as if he'd even asked. A different waitress brings him the second cup of tea he orders when the rain continues with no sign of letting up. She is overly formal when she recognizes his black suit and the CCG pin he wears, and stays mostly silent with a nervous look in her eye.

He stays until the very end, lost in thought and the sounds of a nearly empty teahouse stuck in the middle of a rainstorm, the end being when he notices the same nervous waitress discreetly close up shop around him. As he is readying to leave, he thinks of Akiko popping out of another set of sliding doors, all smiles and warm laughs, please come back again or something to that effect uttered in her easy voice.

But all that greets him is her brother, near the entrance; as promised, there is a sleek black umbrella, large enough to comfortably fit three people, in his hands.

"I'm Megumi, by the way," The man says. He looks older than Akiko, oddly named but seemingly proud of it with his amiable smile, "of the Kobayashi family. Thank you for all your hard work with the CCG. Your kind will always be welcome in Sugi."

Arima wonders if the sentiment comes from Megumi alone or from both siblings. He has no clear answer; Akiko didn't seem to react much to his being an investigator. He steps out into the walkway: when he glances at the wooden steps, he finds that his mind has already conjured a companion for his younger self.

Now two apparitions are stargazing, sitting side by side; now his mind has filled what his old memories can't, and Akiko's face is illuminated with starlight, eyes wide open at the sky. His mind has difficulty remembering the exact style or shape her hair had been in, but he knows for a fact that it had been a deep, dark black. It seems as if she's dyed her hair blonde, which is odd, because he had thought it natural upon first seeing her.

The rain falls in sheets. The smell of wet earth wafts the farther and farther he walks from the tea house; the main office will be cold when he returns, and there will still be a few people milling in the offices to see him. He could leave the umbrella with the woman manning the reception, ask her to call Sugi the next day. It would be over and done with by just a few words, one simple, polite request.

And yet.

And yet he rewraps the umbrella when he steps in the main office's elevators. He stows it in the corner of his office, standing against the wall as if it were one of his unsheathed quinques. Hirako comes in with the finished reports, and as Arima gives the immaculate accounting of his squad's operation that day a passing glance, he resolves to come back to Sugi tomorrow.

It will be a change of pace from the CCGs cold mechanical air and white tiles; in Sugi he will seat himself once again and sip more of their green tea, relaxing in the company of pine trees.

She isn't there when he arrives.

This is the first thing he is told, when he darkens the doorway of Sugi on that Friday's warm afternoon; Megumi takes the borrowed umbrella and hands it to another staff member, and then smiles, as if she is the real reason for his entire squad's surprise when he'd told them he was leaving the office at five, just like the rest of them.

"You see," Megumi is saying, "she helps me manage the teahouse. I can't tell you her shift because she doesn't really have any."

The assumption makes the investigator raise one unconcerned brow. "I'd like a table, please."

"Of course."

He is given the same table from the night before. The interior garden is lit by the waning afternoon sun, and only then can he witness the planted wisteria tree's beauty, even with the few wilting flowers it has left on its long vines, the single tree amongst unrolled ferns and moss-covered rocks. The teahouse is considerably busier now, with cheery patrons young and old.

He stays shorter than he had meant to – the tea is still bitter against his tongue, still balanced well against the bowl of sweet fruit he is also served, but the atmosphere in Sugi is different at night; the next time he comes back, he knows it will be with the moon raised in the sky.

Megumi is surprised when he sees him return to Sugi's entrance after just a half-hour. "You're always welcome…"

"Arima," He supplies without pause. A name for a name. "Arima Kishou."

The man smiles. "You're always welcome here, Arima-san."

He slips on his shoes and steps onto the walkway once again. The park is golden from the early rays of sunset. Water drips from the trees; the ground glistens from a light sprinkling of rain. The sun is accompanied by thin clouds, and Arima almost comes away from a visit to Sugi without having to see her, but somehow they manage.

She is coming up the entryway; he is leaving, and their gazes meet for just that protracted second.

She stands still among the stepping stones, dressed in her traditional clothes; almost the picture of a noblewoman in one of those old woodblock prints, if not for the tenderness in her face and her blonde hair. One hand is lifting the hem of her kimono and revealing her socks and her raised sandals, impractical things to be wearing with the summer rains already underway. Her other hand is clutching to her chest a package wrapped in silk, and she looks at him with no sign of surprise to be found in her pleasant smile, "Leaving already?"

There is no expectation in her voice at all, just mild teasing—she speaks like they're good friends, like he is a regular tea-drinker at her family's shop; she probably doesn't even know his name, and she hasn't even bothered to properly introduce herself to him. There are those eyes again—those eyes that are bright like the etching on IXA's handle against the black lance, amber or honeyed or molten gold like the CCG pin he wears on his lapel.

He finds himself nodding. Silent, unknowing of what kind of answer she expected.

But she seems satisfied with him all the same, and when they pass each other on the narrow stone path, she sketches a bow with her lips still quirked. "Another day, then. We'll be expecting you."

Notes:

(1) The opening verse is from a translation of Antonio Machado's poem, "The Torn Cloud, the Rainbow," from which I also take this fic's title.