THE PASSING WIND

-TheSilentReader-

[PROLOGUE]

For a while, I didn't realize that Kobayashi, a good friend of my brother, was in front of me, giving me information that Kashiwagi were following my orders. I'd always thought that Kashiwagi couldn't be bullied or moved by anything, but somehow, knowing that he has a weakness for me, knowing that he wanted me, gave me some sort of power of dominance over him. It was a good feeling, more so when the great Kashiwagi Suguru could work at the flick of my fingers. But, until now, even after that phone call, he seemed to be more composed than before, as if he were enjoying himself.

I couldn't understand that, if ever my assumptions were correct.

But Touma Ryu snorted after he heard my words. "Of course, he enjoys it. Anyone who has all his life on the palm of his hands becomes bored. He wanted someone to put them in a leash, someone who he thinks is better than himself to entertain him."

For many years, my vanity was all I wanted to cultivate—my self-confidence I want to perfect. All the while I aspired as someone who dominated, who was domineering, and who enjoyed being one. Being submissive was something I abhor, because I think that was the cause of my downfalls. I really think it was. Touma Ryu said that because they were the same, he and Kashiwagi.

But somehow, your very existence demonstrates so many times that you couldn't count, that compromise is never out of the equation. Imperfect that is to everyone's idea of a relationship, it exists nevertheless. Maturity teaches one that.

Touma looked at me and said, "The moment he told me his intention of fabricating your work, I have known that you'll be up for the job."

It was not that surprising, that he's still a child, uncompromising. No matter how complicated he might seem to appear.

CHAPTER 26

Five hours ago

When I saw Touma Ryu at a lone gazebo at the gardens of the Touma Mansion, I felt nothing. Even when I realized that he should have been in the hospital to take care and watch over his wife, I felt nothing about him. A servant directed me to his location, and once he saw me walking to him, he stopped and put down a cellular phone. The servant left after Ryu signaled a nod to him.

He was sitting on a chair, staring at me from the head down to the poor pair of shoes I was wearing. I heard his comment—a comment that I have heard before. He said to me, "What do you have that she couldn't let you go?" That moment I remembered Kashiwagi.

I answered, "Maybe because I once loved her too much." It did bother me to say it, but hiding it won't make it less true.

"I love her so much, too. So you see." He replied. He made a gesture for me to sit with him, then offered me tea. It was a different blend from what Shimata-san was making regularly. It was a blend that made me remember coffee.

"It's so generic, so everywhere, its uniqueness lies on who gives it." He snickered. "No matter how sick it is."

"You are much better conversationalist than Kashiwagi." I said, keeping my eyes on him. Of course, I meant otherwise. In that regard, he was very much like Kashiwagi, who likes to put flowery bullshit as if it makes him more respectable to my eyes.

I noticed that he fiddled too much on the phone he has been holding, and when I mentioned his friend, my irritation scaled a notch higher. He put it down on the small round table, twirled it round and round with his middle finger. "That was Suguru-san on the phone. Did you know he told me that you ordered him to send you away to me? Nobody does that to him. Nobody." He emphasized the last word with amused grin.

I decided to stop myself from answering back, feeling that he'd read something from my words.

"There's so much to say about his efforts, isn't there?" He asked me, knowing fully the reason I seek his audience when he commented, "You are not the sort of person who'd seek for someone."

I answered, "It's important, Touma-san. All my life I was taught to suck it up. I've never done that for a long time, so this is rather a breath of fresh air." I felt proud of what I've said.

But then, he looked at me without mocking. He said, "No. You've been breathing this kind of air the whole time."

"Kashiwagi-san told me that you need to know how The Passing Wind was found." He said to me, before he put down his teacup. "Surely you must know that it was found days after they stole it from the gallery. Otherwise, Kashiwagi-san wouldn't be able to fabricate seven copies until he got it perfectly." He said, as he looked at the vast gardens surrounding the gazebo.

"Somehow, he found time to paint eight copies while staying with me every evening." I said.

He looked at me proudly. I dismissed his screaming thoughts. "I worded it wrong, Touma-san."

"Oh," He blinked. Then sighed, "And when I thought he was getting a proper woman to indulge him. I already considered him celibate."

I felt myself rolling my eyes.

"You must be angry to have kept it from you." He said, looking at me.

"If you're a friend, I'd be angry, even though you have so many reasons to keep it until now."

"If I were a friend?" He chuckled, hints flashing before his eyes. The spotlight was instantly focused on me—I barely hid my feelings through my face—because I remembered a friend that should have been here to help me. I remember her face, and all her promises to me. I remembered her telling me, we won't grow up, and we'll do it together.

He shattered the projected face that flashed before me with his voice. "Satou-san didn't have to say things to me. The first time I said your name to her, blood drain from her face. She must be thinking," He gulped as he constricted his vocal cords, "Yumi's gonna be so fucked up. That moment, she knew who stole it."

It took one sliver of giddiness in his rather calm voice that gave conviction to this, "It was you."

"Yes, it's me."

"There, there . . ." he stretched his forefinger at me as he smiled in recognition, "That was the face. She was so angry at me she almost bit my nose." Then he chuckled.

"Why did you do it?" I asked, hoping for a better reason from him. I watched him played with the liquid in the teacup, waiting for anything.

Then, he said, "Why indeed?"

This has reduced me to put my frustrations into tangible actions—why was he still mocking me? Because I know nothing? Or because I know everything there was to know about loss and the shallowness that came along with it that I somehow sympathize with him? But this is my life he was messing with.

I stood and accused: "Is this because of Sachiko and me—"

"Yes, that is my reason."

Truth is always simple, I always say to myself. It may have evolved into convoluted plots and elaborate events, but truth always starts with a single base root—it always starts simple.

"It's the petty things that anger us the most, isn't it? That passive-aggressive play. You know that he's already licking the lollipop, but then you grab it, water it with your saliva. And when you're not satisfied yet, you drop it on the ground and step on it, knowing your saliva, the sole of your shoe, and the ground had dirtied it so much he can't eat it anymore."

He looked at me calmly, as he explained. "You can glare at me all you want, but look: everyone has his own demons to release every once in a while. I almost knew it that Sachiko would try to help you by giving up that portrait of hers and loaning it to the gallery."

Kashiwagi's rescue flashed back into my immediate memory. Then, it somehow made sense, why he was there to rescue me in the first place.

Touma continued, "Do you think I was fool enough not to notice that it was her? Yes, the face was unrecognizable, half of the face was casted with shadow, the rest were . . . incidentally crafted for your eyes only." Anyone who see Sachiko as she was could easily identify its meaning with me. It was not surprising, because I belonged to those that admired Sachiko. It was a pure coincidence that I was picked among the crowd, like a stroke of luck in a lottery. "But it's not only you that is obsessed with her. She's not only for your appreciation."

I gritted my teeth, "You are pathetic."

He looked at me incredulously, "I won't say that. We just fell in the same pit. We are both pathetic people, falling for the wrong woman. It's just a matter of opportunity to get even with rivals."

"So this is a way of provoking me." I told him with a calm voice that I thought I could never produce. Somehow, he liked what he saw.

He smiled as he engrossed himself with the mobile phone he was fiddling. "You are already provoked. The time that you first cried in Sachiko's arms telling yourself and her that you won't forgive her was enough provocation."

Another memory: at my workroom, at Kashiwagi's compound. "You were listening. You were spying on us."

His voice shuddered as he terrified me with a growl he heaved, "Then how should I know? How should I know what she feels about you?"

Touma Ryu, the person I thought I could hate as much as I could with Sachiko, revealed to me a simple truth that I could not deny from him. He admitted, "I suspected, all the while. I wasn't happy about that. Can you blame me?"

"How will you work this out with the old man? The police? Everyone? Me?" I asked, after silence engulfed us with his bold confession. He was more honest than me, I thought. He was more honest and calm on the outside, knowing that my presence enraged him. As his enraged mine.

"Money." He said nonchalantly.

"What about me?"

"You aren't at the shortest end of the stick. In fact, you're left unscathed by everything. You're the hero of the story." Ryu looked at me with sadness in his face. Was it his fate once Sachiko knows about this?

The fact that it affected me, put me in a much precarious battle with myself. I must not pity him, for he deserve it if Sachiko left him. But my untactful mouth did not help my plight. "I did nothing but lead her on . . . to believe in you. And to keep her from moving forward . . . away from me."

He was outside the walls, knowing that he wouldn't take if he stepped before her family grave. His chauffeur knew to steer clear from watching his master's back, as he talked to himself. He's a very old man now, and only this time that he had the courage to travel despite his fragile health.

"Setsuna. You died, and I didn't know.

"That was your boy, wasn't he? He changed so much I never noticed him at all. He has your eyes, but I never noticed it until I he showed rage and anger at me. In my office.

"I have been so alone, ever since I came back to Musashino. Sachiko was there to give me something to entertain myself, but she was like me too, I noticed it when it's too late. I turned her into someone I don't want to be when I was her age. But when your boy came . . .

"I regretted that I didn't even see you, that I didn't know about your boy. Now, I couldn't ask directly from you . . ." He whispered, just so no one could hear him, ". . . if he's my son too.

"He could have inherit my company instead of Tooru—he never wanted it anyway. Now, Sachiko was adamant to take over, just like I wanted to since the beginning. But now that I found your son . . . how should I put this?

"He likes to play the game. He's out there to destroy me. Is this some sort of karma that I've been waiting all along? Because I like to see where this is going. This game of ours, Setsuna."

He knew that staying out would be too much for his body, and he was not stupid to fully immerse himself in the angst that he created many decades ago by doing stupid things. He's still his father's son.

"Even in your grave, Setsuna, you're still intimidating."

Sei said, tapping her hands onto the crate that she was holding ever since Sachiko saw her on her hospital doors. How she got inside her premises, Sachiko was not surprised at Sei's bat-like stealth. "He still doesn't know. Even with all that happened, the father is that last to know about his child."

Sachiko asked weakly, but it was heard only within the walls of her dreadfully silent room. "What are you doing here?"

"I brought you a gift. Do you like it?"

The crate was empty, it was now in front of Sachiko's bed, for her to behold.

Sachiko had no energy to act as defiant as she always did. "If that's what I think that is, then you should return that to Yumi."

"No. Not yet. But I want to show you this. Tell me what you see."

She replied, "I see my husband."

Satou Sei's eyes narrowed at her.

"I see my husband, losing his faith in me. I don't deserve any of it anyway, but . . ."

Satou Sei gritted out. "You don't deserve him. Just like you don't with Yumi. I thought that you've changed, that somehow she will change you . . . you did, but you let her down."

Sachiko claimed. "I'm sorry."

"We all are. I'm sorry I didn't fight for her. I'm sorry I left her with you. I'm sorry I didn't take my chances. But this has to change . . . because now, you have someone to reign you back. Your child. Why still are you not telling him?"

Sachiko meekly replied, "Because I wasn't ready before; because I still have unfinished business with the past."

"But you haven't closed it yet."

"I suppose. But I've tried. Even if I failed. But I tried."

I heard him say, as I stepped away from the sheltered gazebo, "Didn't you know? She's carrying my child."

I dusted my sleeve as I moved along the well-manicured path. "I know."

He stayed looking away from me; his gaze at the flower beds, "I wanted her to choose, to trust me or not. To let me go after once she knew of my petty fights with everyone she loves, or to let me stay and suffer the consequences. I want my child to see her mother not burdened by her marriage to me. It sounds hypocritical. I might change my mind, fickle I am.

"Even though I left her to her own devices, I watch her closely. I know what is going on with her, even when she failed to tell me important things sometimes. I know her despair when she was failing to tell me about it. I am her husband. Petty things I do just to annoy her."

I ground my teeth as she imagined Sachiko's burdens. "Why are you doing this to her? Why are you provoking her to make decisions that don't involve you? Why make me suffer? Why not leave me alone?"

"I want her to decide."

Even when I pitied him, when I already saw his insecurity, somehow I failed taunting him. This was my chance, my petty chance to torment him at last, for the last three months of pain. For the three months of being away from my painting. I failed when I had the greatest chance of success.

It's petty, this whole thing.

TO BE CONTINUED

A/N: There goes my latest chapter. I know, It's been too long and I don't think this chapter is at par with my best chapters but I hope you send me reviews just so I know if this story still stands. I won't bother you with excuses, it would be an insult to you guys. But then, happy reading. I hope you like this.

TSR