defeminized (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
defeminized) wrote2012-04-09 12:26 am
defeminized) wrote2012-04-09 12:26 am
Entry tags:
Siúil A Rúin - Maru/Junno
Title: Siúil A Rúin
Pairings/Characters: Nakamaru/Taguchi
Wordcount: 8219
Rating: PG
Warnings: AU, vague timeline, sappy wartime romance, lack of porn, angst, implications of abuse in military
Notes: Events in this fic more or less happened sometime early 20th century-ish. Title taken from the traditional Irish song of the same name, apparently sung by women whose husbands went to war. Here’s a link to the version performed on Flatley’s Lord of the Dance, which I listened to as I edited this fic.
Written forje_levy for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fic_the_faith, originally posted here. Betaed by pinkeuphoria1, as usual, thank you for the last minute help. <333 All other mistakes are mine. I think I remembered certain parts requiring editing, but I don't know where are they now.
I really like how this turned out to be, when I had less than a day (because the deadline was..the day itself, and I had to recreate another story from the scratch because the previous draft didn't work out) to plan and write the entire story. In a way, I consider it one of my best works yet, considering the depth the fic ended up showing and the timeframe used to produce this.
Summary: Nakamaru was about to begin a journey away from everything that represented his honour and it seemed like he had been assigned a companion in the form of Taguchi.
*
They met a few times before that day, mostly in passing.
It was nothing out of ordinary. None of their training schedules clashed and Taguchi didn’t seem like someone whom he would get along with. Nakamaru knew Taguchi as this rather popular recruit in the camp, famous for his (in Nakamaru’s opinion, rather annoyingly) loud laughter and his good looks. Nakamaru’s best friend, Koki, enjoyed insulting him, and naturally, Koki and Taguchi got along. In fact, it was a strange occurrence to many that Nakamaru and Taguchi never managed to be anything more than just acquaintances.
He felt like he should be surprised at seeing Taguchi appear in the Sergeant’s office, but he wasn’t. Not really.
“He will escort you home,” Sergeant Domoto said.
Nakamaru was about to begin a journey away from everything that represented his honour and it seemed like he had been assigned a companion in the form of Taguchi.
*
An entire day of train journey and six hours by foot later, they were nearing their destination. Neither spoke anything at all, at least not more than necessary. Taguchi tried when they first started their train journey, but gave up soon after realising that Nakamaru didn’t want to do anything but sleep. Nakamaru faked-slept his way through the train journey.
He stopped in his steps about a mile away from the entrance to his town. Despite having the entire nation at war, his hometown was robust and bustling with activities, owing to its obscure location, being surrounded by mountains and thick woods. There were smokes from houses, children playing, women cleaning, and men, as little as they were, working. It was as though the town was from a different time, a time where Nakamaru didn’t have to learn to fight.
Maybe going back was the best choice, he admitted with a heavy heart.
“Nakamaru-kun?”
He dropped his belongings. Going back might be the best option, but it didn’t mean that he wanted to do it.
“I think I should stay somewhere else for the moment,” Nakamaru said, trying not to sound weak.
To his surprise, Taguchi grabbed his hand and pulled him forward.
“You’re going back to your family.”
*
Nakamaru lay on the riverbank, basking in the heat and the hues of the twilight.
He had just settled back home, to his mother and sister, who had been preparing to welcome him after being informed of his injuries. His mother and sister bowed to Taguchi, whom they thanked for bringing him home safely. Taguchi also complimented him, spoke about his bravery and courage and everyone in the army being proud of him but sad at the same time that they were losing someone who could potentially be their best recruit. Nakamaru was sure that Taguchi made those up, because he wasn’t even sure if Taguchi even remembered his face before he had to take him home.
“Hey,” someone said beside him. It was Taguchi.
“Oh, it’s you,” Nakamaru said, unfazed.
“Your town is beautiful,” Taguchi said, lying next to him. “Where I live, there were only ruined buildings left.”
“What happened?”
“Attack happened,” Taguchi stated matter-of-factly. “My family is safe, however. They relocated to somewhere closer to the mountains.”
Nakamaru turned to look at him. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Taguchi said. “I’m glad you get to go home.”
*
Taguchi was invited to stay the night. His sister seemed to be enamoured by him.
“I’m quite a charmer, didn’t you know?” Taguchi laughed when Nakamaru mentioned it, “and your sister is very pretty.”
“Lay off my sister,” Nakamaru said, almost sending the pillow across the room into his face.
“Careful,” Taguchi said with a warning. “Your arm.”
“I’m not disabled.”
“You’re recuperating,” Taguchi said, “it’s like a temporary disability.”
“Judging by what the doctor said, it might as well be permanent,” Nakamaru said, not realising that his voice had dropped to a mutter.
“You were saying?”
Nakamaru smoothened the futon his mother prepared for Taguchi.
“Nothing. Your futon is done, you can sleep now.”
*
Nakamaru couldn’t sleep that night, so he went out to the backyard of his house. He poured himself a cup of tea and stared at the moon.
It had only been exactly two months since he was first enlisted in the army, and now he was back, like the failure that he was, mourning for his lost purpose.
He still remembered the day when he was barely five and saw the army marching in the city, when he was there with his father to get his mother some medicine for her postnatal sicknesses.
“When I grow up, otousan,” he had yelled on top of his lungs, “I will be one of them.”
Hearing that, his father brimmed at him. “That’s my son!” he had declared, and carried Nakamaru on his shoulder so that he could see the mighty soldiers clearer.
“I was about to be among them, otousan,” he whispered to the night. “I’m sorry I’m such a failure.”
There was an axe on a piece of wood that his mother used and he rushed to wield the axe with his injured left hand. The effect of the strain was excruciating clear; his hand was shaking, his muscles were yelling soundlessly, and his shoulder felt as though it could break into a million pieces anytime soon.
Still, he made himself hold the axe high up in the air and swing it down.
Before he could drop it, someone snatched it away from him and pushed him a few steps backwards.
Someone had just stopped him.
“Taguchi!”
Nakamaru shoved him away and Taguchi dropped to the ground.
“Why did you do that?” Nakamaru yelled.
Taguchi stood up and shook Nakamaru’s shoulders.
“Are you mad?”
“No, I’m useless,” Nakamaru hissed. “Why did you stop me?”
Taguchi raised Nakamaru’s left hand and twisted it, and Nakamaru immediately screamed.
“STOP!”
Taguchi twisted harder.
“I SAID STOP, TAGUCHI!”
Taguchi let go of him and Nakamaru stormed back to his room, massaging his painful arm.
It was a miracle that none of his family members had woken up at the commotion.
*
Nakamaru didn’t sleep that night.
The pain in his arm subsided, but the pain in his chest didn’t.
Beside him, Taguchi was suspiciously sleeping soundlessly.
*
Nakamaru went back to his spot on the riverbank and Taguchi found him right before noon. This time, he was fully-dressed, preparing to head back to the camp.
“Obaachan told me you’d be here,” Taguchi said.
“Really,” Nakamaru answered simply.
“Hey, Nakamaru,” Taguchi said softly.
Nakamaru’s arm immediately stung with the leftover pain Taguchi inflicted.
“I’m sorry,” Taguchi said.
Nakamaru rose up, startled by the apology.
“What?”
“I said I’m sorry,” Taguchi repeated. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It was nothing,” Nakamaru said, going back to lying on the grass.
“Let me massage your arm,” Taguchi offered, rolling his sleeves and squatting next to him. He carried Nakamaru’s back upwards and positioned his palms on the spot where he twisted his arm the night before.
Nakamaru shoved him away with his right hand. “I’m alright,” he insisted.
“No, you’re not,” Taguchi insisted as well. “Talk to me, Nakamaru-kun.”
“You almost broke my already-broken arm,” Nakamaru shouted. “I’m not talking to you.”
Taguchi sat down beside him.
“I’m sorry.”
“Go back to the camp.”
“I’ll write to you,” Taguchi said.
“Don’t bother.”
With that, Taguchi bowed at his former fellow recruit, marched away and left Nakamaru alone on the riverbank.
He didn’t want to admit to himself, but he knew that Taguchi was trying to save him from being pathetic.
Nakamaru watched the sunset and felt his heart sink into his stomach.
*
Three weeks passed and there was no letter from Taguchi.
Nakamaru felt slightly guilty for having possibly chased away a friend who cared.
*
“Oniichan!”
Nakamaru dropped his pen. “Eriko! I told you not to startle me like that!”
“But there’s a letter from Taguchi-kun to you!”
“Really?” he asked, bending down to pick up the pen.
Eriko shoved a piece of paper in front of Nakamaru.
It was addressed to him.
“To Nakamaru,” his sister read. “I’m not even sure if you’ll read this…oniichan, did you guys argue?”
“I need that letter,” Nakamaru dismissed his sister and went to his room with the letter.
*
To Nakamaru,
I’m not even sure if you’ll read this, but I told you that I’d write to you, so here I am.
I hope you have forgiven me for doing that to you when I was staying at your house. I’ve done some thinking myself and I realised that I shouldn’t have done that to you. I understand that you must have been hurting from the broken arm and pride—
Nakamaru winced at that line.
—and it was really inconsiderate of me not to keep that in mind. I hope I can see you again, because Koki was hoping that you’ll be able to meet us in the ramen stall you guys used to go during breaks whenever you guys were free. He misses you a lot.
Sincerely,
Junnosuke.
It took Nakamaru a few minutes to remember that ‘Junnosuke’ was Taguchi’s first name.
*
Taguchi wasn’t the first who cared about him, not by a million years.
But the fact that Taguchi cared almost felt like it meant the world to him.
*
Nakamaru told his mother that Taguchi-kun wrote, because his mother had somewhat developed a fondness for the ‘fine, upstanding young man’. He had a feeling that his mother was eyeing him as a potential candidate for a son-in-law.
“You should visit them,” his mother said. “Don’t let your injuries inhibit you.”
Nakamaru knew that his mother meant well. Nakamaru had been doing nothing at home for the past few months and it might be best if he could see his fellow friends and recruits.
“Watching them do their best might cheer you up,” his mother reasoned.
Nakamaru was reluctant, but he agreed that it might be for the best.
Just because he agreed, it didn’t mean that he liked it.
*
Nakamaru wrote back anyway.
To Taguchi-kun,
Please let Koki know that I miss him, and I miss the trainings.
Also, tell him that I’ll be there on the first weekend of June, we’ll meet then.
Sincerely,
Nakamaru.
It was after Nakamaru paid for the delivery that he realised that despite having addressed the letter to Taguchi, he didn’t really say a word to him.
*
His mother packed him two days’ worth of meal, because train journeys could be lonely, she said. Nakamaru protested, because all he would be doing was either sleeping or staring outside the window. His mother relented after Nakamaru insisted that food for train journeys would probably end up as food for stray cats.
Naturally, a few bento boxes appeared by his bed when he woke up. ‘I packed some daifuku, they can last for more than a day at least, you can bring them for Koki-kun and Taguchi-kun’, his mother scribbled messily on a note stuck on one of the bento boxes.
Fair enough, he thought.
*
It had only been two months (slightly less by a few days for Taguchi) since Nakamaru had seen either of them, but both had changed so much, it felt like they hadn’t seen each other in years.
“Taguchi was worried sick,” Koki said while gobbling down the daifukus at an impossibly rapid pace.
“Really?” Nakamaru said, amused.
Taguchi flailed his arms. “No, no, I was worried, but I wasn’t…worried sick, if you know what I mean.”
They laughed and Nakamaru realised that it felt good to see Koki not threatening to erase Taguchi’s existence once every few minutes. Nakamaru recalled the way they, Koki and Taguchi, used to share the kind of relationship that could be very easily mistaken for aggressive antagonism, with Taguchi provoking him with every gesture he made and Koki reciprocating the subconscious provocation by physically and verbally attacking him. Nakamaru usually stood by the side and tried not to get too involved.
Despite the ‘aggressive antagonism’, or whatever term another recruit, Ueda, might have coined after his departure, there were times when Nakamaru felt that Taguchi and Koki shared something rather private, like their arguments were the chains that tied their vastly different personalities together.
“Obaachan’s really amazing,” Koki gushed, “I haven’t eaten anything like this in a million years!”
Nakamaru slapped Koki’s arm.
“Liar!” he said. “You came to my house last winter, remember? That was only a few months ago.”
“Exaggerating is fun,” Koki said, slowing down his eating pace as soon as he realised that there were not many daifukus left.
“Is everything fine?” Nakamaru asked.
“You mean in the camp?” Taguchi asked back. “If by ‘fine’ you mean unbelievably torturous and pain-inducing, then yes, everything is fine,” he answered, flashing Nakamaru a blinding smile that was quite a contrast to his reply.
“Ueda missed you too,” Taguchi said, referring to their quieter (in comparison with the three of them) fellow recruit. “He has been talking more, but mostly I suppose he wishes that you could come back.”
Ever since he got discharged from the army training camp, Nakamaru had been frequently experiencing moments when he felt his chest getting heavy and dropping downwards; this was one of them.
Koki stood up suddenly.
“Sorry, buddy,” he said, draping himself all over Nakamaru for a quick hug. “I need to go, Sakura’s waiting for me.”
Sakura was a stray dog Koki picked up and left to the care of this old lady three blocks away from their favourite ramen store.
“But I just got here!” Nakamaru yelled to the speedily running Koki.
“Come here more often, then! You know I miss you!”
*
Taguchi nudged Nakamaru for a walk along the pedestrian bridge.
It was awkward. They walked side by side without uttering a single word and Nakamaru didn’t know why he hadn’t rejected his invitation and gone straight home.
Just as he predicted, coming to visit his friends led to an adverse effect on his pride. He had never felt worse than he did now.
Taguchi coughed and Nakamaru looked sideways. Taguchi’s features looked sharper than they were a few months back, evidence that he had been toughened by the training. He also observed that he had faded scars over some exposed skin, somewhere near the neck, his fingers, the back of his palm and there was a line below his eye, possibly what remained of a gash.
Great, he thought. He was sent back and became a wimp while everyone he knew were being molded into patriots.
“Nakamaru,” Taguchi started. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Nakamaru said.
“Please forgive me,” Taguchi said, sighing as he spoke. He put his hand on Nakamaru’s injured arm and Nakamaru waved his arm slightly (it still hurt a lot).
“Told you it was nothing,” he admonished.
“Don’t you want to get something for Eriko-chan?”
“What?” Nakamaru asked, shocked at the sudden change of topic.
“I—I just thought it might be that you don’t want to talk about things pertaining your injury, so—“
“Then stop mentioning it.”
They watched the sunset and Nakamaru wondered why he hadn’t left when he should have.
Then again, he could never tell when was the right time for him to walk away from Taguchi.
*
He was lucky that Ueda’s parents owned this small inn in the outskirts of the town near to the training camp and he could rent a room for the night at an impossibly low price.
He shifted and tossed and turned and thought about Taguchi.
Maybe he had overdone it. He shouldn’t have been this antagonistic towards him when he knew that he hadn’t meant anything malicious.
*
The next day, Nakamaru sent a note to Taguchi via the town post. He couldn’t bring himself to return to anywhere near the camp.
*
Taguchi replied a month later. It was short as compared to his previous note.
To Nakamaru,
I won’t mention it again. I hope you’re well.
Sincerely,
Junnosuke.
*
Nakamaru thought of replying Taguchi with something like “no, I’m sorry too, I overreacted” or “I’m fine, my arm is feeling better” or “is Koki doing well?”.
He never did.
It was like the words love getting stuck in his mind whenever he tried to express them in any way.
*
The town doctor told him that his arm was recovering at a speed so slow, it was abnormal.
When he failed to pick a pebble from the riverbank with his left hand, he knew that it was time to stop feeling sorry for himself.
*
He finally replied Taguchi.
To Taguchi,
I’m sorry, I overreacted.
Will you guys be getting a weekend off next month? I’ll come for a visit. Ask Koki too.
Sincerely,
Nakamaru.
*
He didn’t wait for Taguchi’s reply before hopping on to the next available train to the city. His mother complained about not having enough time to make another set of daifukus for Koki-kun and Taguchi-kun.
She stopped complaining when Nakamaru said that he would be making regular trips to the city and there would be more chances for Koki and Taguchi to eat her daifukus in the future.
*
Taguchi was so surprised, he hugged Nakamaru.
“I was so happy to read your reply,” he said, almost sobbing from glee.
Nakamaru hugged him back.
*
They stood on the same pedestrian bridge, eating some daifukus Taguchi bought from the first store they saw selling daifukus. It made Nakamaru smiled when Taguchi whined about the quality (or the lack thereof), because apparently nothing could beat the daifukus that were made by Nakamaru’s mother.
“What could possibly keep Koki this busy?” Nakamaru asked rhetorically. He knew very well that it could only be Sakura or other animals. He remembered that Koki had once said that he wanted to build an animal farm if he managed to survive the war.
(“And get married, of course,” Koki had added quickly, as though he thought Nakamaru was judging him.)
“I heard Rai’s not feeling well,” Taguchi explained, “Koki has been worried sick, and I do mean worried sick.”
“Rai?”
“Another dog.”
“Just how many does he have…” Nakamaru muttered under his breath.
*
Taguchi touched Nakamaru’s arm before he returned to the camp and asked warily.
“I hate to bring this up again, but is your arm—”
“It’s not getting better,” Nakamaru answered.
Taguchi’s eyes widened slightly. “Did I—”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Nakamaru—“
Nakamaru pulled him into a hug.
“Trust me, you didn’t.”
He wouldn’t have recovered even if Taguchi never twisted his arm that night.
*
On the train on his way back, Nakamaru watched the people passing by instead of staring blankly at the scenery outside.
*
Six months after he left the army training camp, Nakamaru mustered the courage to confess to his mother and sister.
He wasn’t going back to the camp.
His mother shed a few tears, but told him that she had expected it.
*
Nakamaru apologised again to his father, this time in front of his grave.
He told him that his arm wasn’t going to heal, but it wasn’t the reason why he didn’t want to go back to the army.
It was the most honest thing he had said to anyone in his family for a few years.
*
He brought daifukus from his mother during his next visit to an expectant Taguchi, and Nakamaru swore to himself that he would ask his mother to stop making food for him.
“But I love your mother,” he said, lips white with the flour from the daifuku he was eating.
Nakamaru slapped Taguchi’s arm.
“Lay off my mother,” he said.
“What’s wrong with loving your mother, she’s the closest thing to maternal figure that I was able to get in recent years!”
“But it’s my mother,” Nakamaru reasoned, “and you saying it makes it creepier than it should be.”
“I think you have a problem with your family liking me,” Taguchi said, grinning.
“Are you trying to implying something?”
“Well, your mother and sister—“
“Don’t hit on my sister!”
*
“Hey Nakamaru,” Taguchi said as they stood on the pedestrian bridge like they always did, watching the sunset.
“What is it?”
“We are going on a defence mission next month,” Taguchi announced.
“We?” Nakamaru asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Koki’s enlisted too. The north is facing severe manpower shortage, General Yamamoto—“
Nakamaru dropped to the floor before he knew what was going on.
“Are you alright?”
Nakamaru felt his entire body shaking uncontrollably.
“I—I—I don’t—“
“Did you eat something bad? Was it some side effects from any medicine you’re taking? What kind of medicine did you take?”
Nakamaru’s head started aching and he suddenly had flashes of the day when he broke his arm.
There were people yelling, there were punches to his face and there was him, lying helplessly on the floor.
He held his head and massaged his own temples, hands still shaking.
“I don’t know.”
Taguchi’s eyes shrouded with concern, and Nakamaru felt like the most useless being ever.
*
He stopped shaking a few hours after the train had started moving, and Taguchi’s words reeled in his head.
“Nakamaru, I—I—I won’t be able to see you for a while,” he stammered.
“Stop being a sap,” Nakamaru snapped at him, albeit slightly stuttering from the shock earlier.
“Did you see yourself back then?” Taguchi raised his voice. “You looked like you were being shot!”
“I’ll be fine,” Nakamaru insisted.
“Write to me every week,” Taguchi requested.
“I’m not your girlfriend!”
“You’re more than that!”
They paused. Taguchi looked like he couldn’t believe what he had just blurted out.
“Just—just write to me.”
“But how,” Nakamaru said, voice softened.
Taguchi hugged him. “I’ll find a way. I just need to know if you’re safe.”
He felt like he should have made a bigger deal out of Taguchi declaring that he was more than a girlfriend to him, but try as he might, he didn’t know why he had panicked from mere memories.
*
He went on a frenetic search through his belongings to test the credibility of his own memory.
There was a pendant, a gift from his late grandmother. Apparently it was given to her by her mother, and she had given it to Nakamaru because Nakamaru was supposed to be a girl (his sister hadn’t been born yet). His grandmother sounded rather upset that Nakamaru turned out to be a boy.
There was a piece of pressed flower, but the colour was so faded, Nakamaru couldn’t remember what kind of flower it was. But he did know that it was something his mother brought back from a trip and because he was a young boy who thought that flowers were magical, flowers from places far away even more so, he asked the florist obaachan for advice on how to preserve the pretty flower his mother got for him. The result was that piece of pressed flower.
There was a broken comb. It was something the girl he had once fancied dropped on the ground. He didn’t return it because he had stepped on it before he realised what it was. He kept it with him, even though the girl eventually married the son of a rich businessman.
He could remember almost everything, and he didn’t know why something as recent as the reason for his broken arm was such an elusive recollection.
*
Sometimes Nakamaru dreamt about abstract things.
Dreaming about things like the aroma of his mother’s cooking made him wake up smiling and hungry.
Dreaming about random, inanimate things yelling at him made him wake up panting and wishing that Taguchi’s letter, or whatever he planned to send him, could arrive sooner.
*
Something tiny flew into his window one day, and it was after it moved that Nakamaru realised that it had wings.
“That’s so cute!” Eriko exclaimed, immediately rushing towards the small, colourful bird.
Nakamaru watched as his sister cooed over the bird. “Isn’t she adorable, oniichan?”
The tiny bird fluttered its wings and revealed something stiff and white underneath it.
“Oniichan,” Eriko said as she took out that something white. “I think it’s a letter for you!”
Even from the distance, Nakamaru could make out the owner of the handwriting on the paper Eriko opened and immediately took the bird and the letter into his room.
*
To Nakamaru,
This bird’s my tenth gamble, and before you ask, yes, I did try many other methods to send a letter to you from where I am. The post office is very far away. We are hiding in the mountains and it would take us almost three days to be able to see any town.
The journey to this place was long and tiring. I kept wondering if you have recovered from the..whatever had shocked you.
“Of course I have, you idiot,” Nakamaru said to himself. His chest started pounding and things inside him started fluttering along with the bird’s wings.
Koki’s starting to cough really badly. I think he’s not very resistant towards cold weather. He has started moaning the names of his ‘pets’ in his sleep too. I find that really adorable.
“What a creep,” Nakamaru muttered with a smile.
Please reply to me with this bird. I think I have trained her to be able to find me.
Sincerely,
Junnosuke.
“But how did you train her to find me?” he asked, not expecting any answer.
Just when he was about to fold the letter, he found some small scribbling at the back.
p.s. I taught her to recognise your smell from the letters you wrote to me. If she found you this way, she’s a genius among the bird clan.
Nakamaru picked up the bird and she pecked his thumb affectionately.
“You can feel it too, right? You owner just praised you,” he said to the bird.
She hooted, as though she was dismissing Taguchi’s compliments.
Nakamaru smiled.
“Taguchi, looks like even a bird has something against you.”
*
He named the bird Aoi, after the pretty blue-coloured streaks on her wings.
*
To Taguchi,
I’m fine. Sometimes I dream about things, but I have yet to collapse from them. It might have been just that one time, so you don’t have to worry.
This little genius bird is Aoi. You really do know how to pick them.
Okaasan misses you. Eriko too. We are waiting for you.
Sincerely,
Yuuichi.
After Aoi flew away, Nakamaru realised with a start that it was the first time he had signed his letter with his given name.
*
It had been a month and Aoi hadn’t come back. Nakamaru found himself subconsciously wandering around the town, peering at random discussions and hoping to hear any news with regards to the army forces up in the north.
*
The town doctor said that Nakamaru’s arm showed a vast improvement in recovery speed from the last time he had checked him, when he had told him that his arm was abnormally slow in recovery.
“Is there any chance I can wield a weapon again?”
The doctor shook his head and Nakamaru felt slightly crestfallen.
*
Nakamaru threw pebbles into the river, this time using his right arm, the perfectly functioning one.
For the first pebble, he tossed it into the water. It dropped with a small ‘plop’.
For the second pebble, he swayed his arm slightly backwards and threw it into the water. It drowned into the water with a slight splatter and a quite audible ‘plop!’.
For the third pebble, he raised his arm, built a momentum with a swing over his head and flung it towards the water. It made a splash on the water and it was thrown so far away, Nakamaru couldn’t hear the sound it made.
*
A few days later, a newspaper vendor stopped to speak to Nakamaru, and he found out that the army in the north had gained some sort of small victory against the foreign invaders.
When Nakamaru asked if he was talking about the training recruits stationed in the north, the newspaper vendor answered with a simple question.
“What training recruits?”
*
Autumn drew to a close and Nakamaru wondered if Aoi could complete her travels in such cold weather.
*
Winter started with a government officer driving a truck into the village and dropping a bunch of women and children into the town hall. It looked like something terrible had happened where they used to live, with some of them having bandaged limbs, eyepatches over their eyes, and gloomy expressions.
The newspaper vendor helpfully supplemented Nakamaru with information that there had been a surprise attack down south, and most of the men had been ruthlessly murdered. The few that remained alive recruited themselves into the army, swearing with their blood-soaked hands that they would avenge their beloved home.
“Why are you even here?” Nakamaru asked the vendor. “You sound like someone who would have been enlisted into the army.
The newspaper vendor smiled brightly and Nakamaru immediately understood.
“They will never believe that I’m a guy. I made sure of that.”
*
Over time, Nakamaru learnt that the newspaper vendor’s name was Kazuya, nicknamed Kame, for the uniqueness of his surname, Kamenashi.
*
Spring was approaching and still there were no signs of Aoi.
*
Nakamaru caught himself staring at the sky in mid-spring. He searched high and low for Aoi, sometimes even entering the woods and hooting for her, just in case she had fallen somewhere.
Waiting for Aoi gradually felt like reading a book, and he couldn’t find the next chapter no matter where he looked.
*
Summer came and the boys from the south started mingling with the local kids, as though the trauma from the attack was gradually diminishing and they slowly settled into a new place to call their home. Nakamaru loved watching them comparing the sizes of their fists, the distances they could jump, and the accurateness of their calculations.
There was this boy who loved calling the rest of his friends “idiot”, and there was this boy whose greatest talent was to give other boys reasons to bully him, and then there was this boy who was so quiet, the rest of them quiver in shock every time he said something amazing.
They reminded him of Koki, Taguchi and Ueda respectively.
*
Aoi appeared at last, but there was no letter attached inside her wings.
There was, however, a scar across her right wing and Nakamaru realised that his worst fear during Aoi’s absence had come true.
*
Nakamaru brought Aoi to all the clinics in the town, hoping that one of them would agree to tend to her injuries.
He was almost in tears when he met Kame on his way back home, learning that none of the clinics in town knew how to treat an injured bird.
Fortunately for him, Kame apparently knew how to.
*
“Hey birdie—what’s her name?”
“It’s Aoi,” Nakamaru said, oddly flustered at the way Kame respected an animal as small as Aoi.
Kame smiled and spoke softly to Aoi.
“Aoi-chan, it will be painful, please stay strong.”
*
Aoi’s wings made the funniest sound ever as she flapped her bandaged wings.
“Thank you so much!” Nakamaru said, bowing to Kame.
“It was nothing,” Kame said, bowing as well. “I just love animals, that’s all.”
“Still,” Nakamaru said, taking Aoi into his palm gently, “you saved her.”
“I devote myself to the worthy causes,” Kame declared. “Enlisting into the army isn’t one of them.”
Aoi whined when Nakamaru touched her injured wing.
“Don’t do that!” Kame instructed immediately. “You’ll risk breaking it again!”
Nakamaru was painfully reminded of the twist Taguchi first inflicted on his arms and he gulped uncomfortably.
“I think I understand that feeling,” he said, stroking Aoi’s feathers as a gesture of apology.
“What, you broke any wing before?” Kame asked nonchalantly.
Nakamaru swallowed his saliva and said calmly. “It’s my left hand. There’s a reason why I left the army.”
“Hang on,” Kame retreated, taken aback by the revelation. “You were—“
“Kame-chan!”
A man with a limp leg appeared, huffing and puffing, appearing to be bringing an emergency news for Kame. Nakamaru recognised him as the other vendor who usually rode the bicycle tailored for the disabled.
“Yamamoto—“
And Nakamaru collapsed to the ground.
*
That night, Nakamaru dreamt of inanimate things yelling things at him.
When he woke up, tear droplets were escaping his eyes and he couldn’t recall anything he dreamt, only the residual feeling of panic.
*
To Taguchi,
This letter took a long time because Aoi-chan was injured. It was hard to find anyone who could treat her, as apparently nobody in town knew how to treat animals. Luckily, I met this guy (I think you would like to meet him, he evaded having to serve the nation because the army recruiters wouldn’t believe that he was a guy!) who could treat her, and he isn’t even a doctor. Can you believe that?
She was so jumpy when I touched her bandaged wing and it reminded me of the time when you twisted my arm. I think I finally understand how you must have felt that time.
There have been a lot of changes in this town, you might be shocked when you come here. There are war refugees from the south and sometimes some government officers stay to watch over them.
I must be lucky to be living in such a strategic place, right?
Nakamaru’s train of thought travelled to the way he had crumbled at the sound of a name, the name that Taguchi also knew, and he was immediately numbed.
He continued his letter, but avoided the topic.
I hope you guys can come back soon. It has been ages since I last saw you guys.
Sincerely,
Yuuichi.
*
Aoi chirped excitedly as Nakamaru delicately slid the letter under her wing, as though glad to be on a mission again.
*
There was the sound of a screeching brake of a bicycle.
“Yucchi!”
It was Kame, who had taken the liberty of giving Nakamaru a nickname.
“Are you alright?”
It took Nakamaru a few seconds to realise that he was talking about the other time when Nakamaru had collapsed in his office.
“I’m alright,” Nakamaru answered.
He walked away, deaf to Kame’s repeated calls.
*
Nakamaru started volunteering in the refugee centre. He had no medical background and no job experience whatsoever, but they were so short of manpower that they were willing to accept anyone who would help.
He worked ten hours a day, doing odd but light jobs. The centre’s supervisor wasn’t very happy when she found out that Nakamaru had only one properly working arm.
“But the town doctor said that I only can’t fight,” he protested. “I can still do other things with my left arm.”
“Save it,” she dismissed. She appeared to have a short temper, a trait rather unsuitable for the centre, Nakamaru felt. “If you use that arm you’ll have none left later. I’m not going to be responsible for your disability.”
Rather blunt too, Nakamaru thought.
*
Another month passed by and Aoi was still somewhere in the sky, or at least that was what Nakamaru hoped.
Kame told him that the General had recalled all forces from the north. Apparently, he wanted to reconcile the strategies for the entire army force.
It was the best news Nakamaru had ever heard from Kame.
*
There was this boy in the refugee centre who started following Nakamaru on the second week of his service. He was one of the luckier ones to remain physically unscathed from the attack, but they couldn’t release him because he was orphaned and nobody in the town was willing to take an unnecessary baggage into their household.
He appeared to want to follow him home too, but Nakamaru took him back to the centre before he got too far.
*
Everywhere—on radio, flyers, everyone’s lips—people were beginning to talk about the possibility of a reformed nation.
The youth were excited and the elderly scoffed.
Nakamaru couldn’t care about what other people thought. To him, it meant that he could see his friends again.
If they made it back alive.
Nakamaru didn’t want to think of the alternative.
*
Aoi came back tweeting happily and perching on Nakamaru’s shoulder. She brought him the shortest letter from Taguchi to date.
I’m coming home.
*
The boy who seemed to be interested in Nakamaru followed him again.
“What is it?”
The boy’s eyes trembled and Nakamaru immediately wished he could take back his words.
“What’s your name?”
The boy searched for a twig and carved a few invisible lines on the ground, and Nakamaru understood with a twinge of embarrassment that the boy couldn’t speak.
“Hi, Ka, Ru,” Nakamaru read.
The boy nodded.
That day, he took Hikaru back to his home.
*
Nakamaru was about the introduce Hikaru to his mother when he saw the shadow of a familiar-looking man in the living room.
It was Taguchi.
*
I’m coming home, Nakamaru repeated the words written in Taguchi’s last letter.
Everything came to him—Aoi, his weaknesses, their arguments, the sunsets they watched from the pedestrian bridge—and shattered into a million pieces right there and then.
*
Taguchi sported a fresh scar across his forehead. His hair was shorter, his skin was darker, and his muscles were harder.
“I asked Koki to come with me,” Taguchi said. “But he, as expected—“
“Too busy visiting his pets?”
“I refuse to confirm.”
“It’s alright,” Nakamaru said with a small laugh. “We both know that at the rate he’s going, he might as well marry one of them.”
“I can’t believe you just suggested bestiality. I hope Koki’s not sneezing right now.”
“I was just saying it as a metaphor,” Nakamaru argued, “you don’t have to take everything literally.”
“But you said that Koki might as well marry one of his pets,” Taguchi rebutted, “if that didn’t imply bestiality, what else does?”
“I’m not talking to you,” Nakamaru scoffed.
Taguchi laughed.
Nakamaru turned away for a while, then glanced back at Taguchi.
“What happened?” he asked.
“What happened to what?”
“Your forehead.”
Taguchi put a palm on his forehead. “Oh this?” he said, pointing at the scar. “It’s nothing. It wasn’t even a souvenir from being stationed in the north. Just some silly accident that happened on the way back.”
Nakamaru leaned closer to Taguchi and touched the wound with his finger. “It looks like it was painful.”
Taguchi caught his left hand and before they knew what was going on, their faces were merely a breathing distance away from each other.
“It told you, it was nothing,” Taguchi whispered. “Probably wasn’t even as painful as your arm.”
Taguchi’s eyes stubbornly refused to leave Nakamaru’s.
“Funny,” Nakamaru replied, “this conversation sounds familiar.”
“That’s because it’s what we always talk about.”
Taguchi withdrew slightly and bent his head towards Nakamaru’s arm. He slid the sleeves upwards and kissed his bare forearm.
Nakamaru was paralysed. He felt utterly incapable of doing anything to stop him.
“You and I,” Taguchi said, “we are the same, you see.”
Nakamaru’s insides flipped.
“The pain is our shield, the scar is our armour,” Taguchi said. Nakamaru almost wanted to ask if he rehearsed that lame, idiotic line, but something was hammering hard in his chest, rendering him temporarily incapable of proper speech.
He bent slightly to pull Taguchi closer, then kissed him.
*
Nakamaru had always seen sunsets with Taguchi, but this time, he saw fireworks.
*
When they broke apart, Nakamaru saw that Taguchi had his eyes closed and he was breathing deeply.
Taguchi leaned forward again, this time, he extended his hand behind Nakamaru’s neck to envelop him in his arms and Nakamaru suddenly felt himself shaking uncontrollably.
It was as though his body was trying to resist.
He grasped Taguchi’s arm, trying to warn him, but Taguchi pulled him closer until they could feel each other’s heartbeat. They kiss again, this time with Taguchi pushing his tongue deep into Nakamaru’s mouth.
Nakamaru gripped Taguchi’s arm harder and tried to push him away, but all Taguchi did in retaliation was to kiss him harder.
He gathered all his strength and finally broke free from Taguchi.
“I can’t,” Nakamaru stammered.
Taguchi held his hand and entwined their fingers.
“I can’t do it,” he repeated, voice trembled with resignation.
*
That night, Nakamaru sneaked into Taguchi’s futon and embraced him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, hand searching for Taguchi’s and squeezing it tight.
“I feel like that’s all we say to each other.”
Nakamaru’s chest felt heavy. “I didn’t mean to push you away.”
Taguchi leaned in to allow Nakamaru to hold him closer.
“I know,” he said, “you don’t have to explain.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I do,” he insisted. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“How could you understand anything when I don’t even understand it myself?”
They stayed silent until Aoi was stirred awake and pecked affectionately at both of her owners.
“Some things are not meant to be understood completely,” Taguchi said.
Nakamaru nestled his nose against Taguchi’s nape.
“I’m sorry.”
“You can push me away,” Taguchi said softly, almost like a plea, “but I want to stay with you.”
*
Those pieces that shattered at the sight of Taguchi when Nakamaru saw him a day before, he knew that they would never again be together.
He watched Taguchi leave and he knew he’d never be whole again.
*
Aoi stayed with Nakamaru and switched her loyalty towards Hikaru.
*
“When are you going to the city again, Yuuichi?” his mother asked. Nakamaru suspected that his mother was getting far too attached to Taguchi.
“I don’t know,” was Nakamaru’s only reply.
*
He kept hearing people yelling at him in his dreams.
It made him wake up and hug himself tight.
*
Nakamaru started teaching Hikaru kanji characters.
He started with the character that corresponded to the reading of his name, the kanji that meant ‘light’.
“It’s really powerful, you know,” he explained. “It’s both a means of measurement and an object. You have something quite incomparable as your name.”
Hikaru only smiled at him because he still couldn’t speak.
*
Kame came to him, complaining that someone finally noticed that he was a boy.
“Training to fight,” Kame uttered aimlessly. “I wonder how it would be like.”
Nakamaru’s right hand darted to his left arm. It didn’t hurt anymore.
“Hey, Yucchi,” Kame said, patting his shoulder. “Someday.”
“What?”
“Someday,” Kame repeated, “you will tell me all about that arm.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Kame smiled.
“You know, Yucchi,” he said, “you’re one of the kindest persons I ever met. Don’t let anything change that.”
*
Hikaru brought his friends along on the third—or was it fourth? Nakamaru didn’t keep track—lesson and they asked Nakamaru to interpret their names.
*
Everywhere—on radio, flyers, everyone’s lips—people were beginning to talk about the reformation plan of the country.
Nakamaru didn’t like that the plans involved transforming the country into a military-driven revolution.
*
A few weeks later, Eriko celebrated her twenty-third birthday. She was probably never going to be married to a man of her dreams.
“It’s alright,” she said as she embroidered a pretty rabbit on Hikaru’s pants to cover up a hole.
Nakamaru looked at his sister. She was beautiful; doe-eyed, silky raven hair, snow-white skin and a face befitting the paintings of a legendary beauty. If only she was born a century earlier, Nakamaru thought regretfully.
“Done!” she declared happily, handing over the pair of pants to Hikaru.
“Tha…nk y..ou,” Hikaru stammered.
Nakamaru and Eriko were dumbfounded.
Hikaru, too, until he realised what just happened.
“I—I—“
“You spoke!”
Tears came streaming down Eriko’s face as she hugged Hikaru tightly.
*
Nakamaru went to the river and threw pebbles into it.
With his left hand.
The first pebble didn’t manage to fall into the river.
The second pebble landed on a rock an inch away from the water.
For the third pebble, he raised his hand as high as possible and threw it into the river.
It was the furthest throw he had ever made.
*
“Okaasan,” Nakamaru greeted as he reached home and took off his shoes. “I’m going to the city in two days.”
*
Hikaru said that the “yuu” section in Nakamaru’s first name, Yuichi, was impossible to write. There were too many strokes in the said kanji character.
“Do you know what it means?” Nakamaru asked.
Hikaru shook his head.
Nakamaru wrote the kanji for “yuu” on the sand.
“It means ‘hero’,” Nakamaru said.
*
Aoi began to show up less frequently. Hikaru said that Aoi had set her eyes on a male bird.
*
“Yuuichi-niisan,” Hikaru asked after he knocked on the door to Nakamaru’s room.
“What is it?”
“You said that you name means ‘hero’,” Hikaru said.
“Yes, it does. I’m not a hero though,” Nakamaru said, chuckling.
“I think you are,” Hikaru said.
“Am I really?”
“Yes, Yuuichi-niisan.”
Nakamaru hugged him.
“You’re my hero.”
*
“Otousan,” Nakamaru said to the tombstone of his father, “I won’t disappoint you again.”
It was more of a promise to himself than to his late father.
*
The ride to the city felt short this time.
Time passed like a few fleeting seconds and he arrived before he could feel like he just left his hometown.
*
“You came,” Taguchi said, like he didn’t believe that Nakamaru had just appeared right in front of him.
“Yes, I came,” Nakamaru said. “After all, you were the one who told me that you wanted to stay.”
“But why—“
Nakamaru tugged at Taguchi’s shirt and kissed him.
“How am I supposed to let you stay if you tend to leave without a word?”
*
“Are you allowed to leave the camp like this?” Nakamaru asked as they kissed furiously in the room he usually stayed at the inn that Ueda’s parents owned.
“I can’t, actually,” Taguchi admitted, panting. “But nobody has to know.”
“Wait,” Nakamaru said. “Koki knows.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Taguchi said. “I have more dirts on him than he has on me.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to know.”
*
“I never told you, but I did some research on my own,” Taguchi said.
“On what?”
“General Yamamoto,” Taguchi answered.
“Oh,” Nakamaru replied, amused at how he wasn’t reacting at the mention of his name.
“I knew what happened to you,” Taguchi said.
“Really?”
“He touched you, didn’t he?”
“Barely,” Nakamaru said, gripping Taguchi’s hand tight.
“He also sent people to attack you, didn’t he?”
“Taguchi—“
“You said I didn’t understand anything,” Taguchi said nervously. “But I knew everything.”
“Hey, Taguchi—“
“I knew everything that happened that day.”
*
Nakamaru never talked about it, never said anything about it, never remembered it, but deep inside his mind, there was a part of him that memorised every detail of what happened on the day he broke his arm.
*
“I made peace with it,” Nakamaru said as he caressed Taguchi’s cheek.
He brought Taguchi’s face close to his and brushed their noses together.
“That was how I could make peace with my feelings for you.”
*
Those pieces that were once shattered at the sight of Taguchi when he showed up in his house returning from war, Nakamaru felt them reattaching themselves, like they were healing after a tremor.
He let Taguchi see his naked body and felt at once how it was like to be whole.
*
“I’m still not coming back to the army,” Nakamaru declared.
“Why?”
“I want to be a teacher.”
*
There were many more boys like Hikaru.
Nakamaru wanted to help them find their heroes, even if he couldn’t be it.
*
“I’m not leaving the army,” Taguchi said.
“I know.”
Taguchi laughed.
“You’re ruining the moment.”
“But it’s true! I never expected you to leave the army.”
*
There were many more women like Eriko.
Nakamaru couldn’t fight for the sake of their happiness, but Taguchi could.
*
“I don’t want you come back to the army,” Taguchi said.
Nakamaru didn’t need to ask why.
*
There were many more mothers like Nakamaru’s mother.
Nakamaru wondered if all soldiers who were fighting in the frontline had a home to return to and a mother who would welcome them with a plate of delicious daifukus.
*
“What happened to Yamamoto?” Nakamaru asked, dropping the title from the name he still resented.
“Oh, he tried to get his hands on this pretty new recruit, and unfortunately got his ribs broken. The new recruit was surprisingly tough.”
“Really?” Nakamaru said, amused.
“I think you know him too, he’s from your hometown.”
“Oh, seriously?”
“I think his name is Kame—something.”
Nakamaru laughed.
*
“Taguchi, fight.”
“What?”
“Fight in my stead.”
*
When Taguchi returned to the camp, Nakamaru felt like he was finally free from everything that had been burdening him for years.
*
“I’ll come home,” Taguchi promised.
*
Pairings/Characters: Nakamaru/Taguchi
Wordcount: 8219
Rating: PG
Warnings: AU, vague timeline, sappy wartime romance, lack of porn, angst, implications of abuse in military
Notes: Events in this fic more or less happened sometime early 20th century-ish. Title taken from the traditional Irish song of the same name, apparently sung by women whose husbands went to war. Here’s a link to the version performed on Flatley’s Lord of the Dance, which I listened to as I edited this fic.
Written for
je_levy for fic_the_faith, originally posted here. Betaed by pinkeuphoria1, as usual, thank you for the last minute help. <333 All other mistakes are mine. I think I remembered certain parts requiring editing, but I don't know where are they now. I really like how this turned out to be, when I had less than a day (because the deadline was..the day itself, and I had to recreate another story from the scratch because the previous draft didn't work out) to plan and write the entire story. In a way, I consider it one of my best works yet, considering the depth the fic ended up showing and the timeframe used to produce this.
Summary: Nakamaru was about to begin a journey away from everything that represented his honour and it seemed like he had been assigned a companion in the form of Taguchi.
They met a few times before that day, mostly in passing.
It was nothing out of ordinary. None of their training schedules clashed and Taguchi didn’t seem like someone whom he would get along with. Nakamaru knew Taguchi as this rather popular recruit in the camp, famous for his (in Nakamaru’s opinion, rather annoyingly) loud laughter and his good looks. Nakamaru’s best friend, Koki, enjoyed insulting him, and naturally, Koki and Taguchi got along. In fact, it was a strange occurrence to many that Nakamaru and Taguchi never managed to be anything more than just acquaintances.
He felt like he should be surprised at seeing Taguchi appear in the Sergeant’s office, but he wasn’t. Not really.
“He will escort you home,” Sergeant Domoto said.
Nakamaru was about to begin a journey away from everything that represented his honour and it seemed like he had been assigned a companion in the form of Taguchi.
An entire day of train journey and six hours by foot later, they were nearing their destination. Neither spoke anything at all, at least not more than necessary. Taguchi tried when they first started their train journey, but gave up soon after realising that Nakamaru didn’t want to do anything but sleep. Nakamaru faked-slept his way through the train journey.
He stopped in his steps about a mile away from the entrance to his town. Despite having the entire nation at war, his hometown was robust and bustling with activities, owing to its obscure location, being surrounded by mountains and thick woods. There were smokes from houses, children playing, women cleaning, and men, as little as they were, working. It was as though the town was from a different time, a time where Nakamaru didn’t have to learn to fight.
Maybe going back was the best choice, he admitted with a heavy heart.
“Nakamaru-kun?”
He dropped his belongings. Going back might be the best option, but it didn’t mean that he wanted to do it.
“I think I should stay somewhere else for the moment,” Nakamaru said, trying not to sound weak.
To his surprise, Taguchi grabbed his hand and pulled him forward.
“You’re going back to your family.”
Nakamaru lay on the riverbank, basking in the heat and the hues of the twilight.
He had just settled back home, to his mother and sister, who had been preparing to welcome him after being informed of his injuries. His mother and sister bowed to Taguchi, whom they thanked for bringing him home safely. Taguchi also complimented him, spoke about his bravery and courage and everyone in the army being proud of him but sad at the same time that they were losing someone who could potentially be their best recruit. Nakamaru was sure that Taguchi made those up, because he wasn’t even sure if Taguchi even remembered his face before he had to take him home.
“Hey,” someone said beside him. It was Taguchi.
“Oh, it’s you,” Nakamaru said, unfazed.
“Your town is beautiful,” Taguchi said, lying next to him. “Where I live, there were only ruined buildings left.”
“What happened?”
“Attack happened,” Taguchi stated matter-of-factly. “My family is safe, however. They relocated to somewhere closer to the mountains.”
Nakamaru turned to look at him. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Taguchi said. “I’m glad you get to go home.”
Taguchi was invited to stay the night. His sister seemed to be enamoured by him.
“I’m quite a charmer, didn’t you know?” Taguchi laughed when Nakamaru mentioned it, “and your sister is very pretty.”
“Lay off my sister,” Nakamaru said, almost sending the pillow across the room into his face.
“Careful,” Taguchi said with a warning. “Your arm.”
“I’m not disabled.”
“You’re recuperating,” Taguchi said, “it’s like a temporary disability.”
“Judging by what the doctor said, it might as well be permanent,” Nakamaru said, not realising that his voice had dropped to a mutter.
“You were saying?”
Nakamaru smoothened the futon his mother prepared for Taguchi.
“Nothing. Your futon is done, you can sleep now.”
Nakamaru couldn’t sleep that night, so he went out to the backyard of his house. He poured himself a cup of tea and stared at the moon.
It had only been exactly two months since he was first enlisted in the army, and now he was back, like the failure that he was, mourning for his lost purpose.
He still remembered the day when he was barely five and saw the army marching in the city, when he was there with his father to get his mother some medicine for her postnatal sicknesses.
“When I grow up, otousan,” he had yelled on top of his lungs, “I will be one of them.”
Hearing that, his father brimmed at him. “That’s my son!” he had declared, and carried Nakamaru on his shoulder so that he could see the mighty soldiers clearer.
“I was about to be among them, otousan,” he whispered to the night. “I’m sorry I’m such a failure.”
There was an axe on a piece of wood that his mother used and he rushed to wield the axe with his injured left hand. The effect of the strain was excruciating clear; his hand was shaking, his muscles were yelling soundlessly, and his shoulder felt as though it could break into a million pieces anytime soon.
Still, he made himself hold the axe high up in the air and swing it down.
Before he could drop it, someone snatched it away from him and pushed him a few steps backwards.
Someone had just stopped him.
“Taguchi!”
Nakamaru shoved him away and Taguchi dropped to the ground.
“Why did you do that?” Nakamaru yelled.
Taguchi stood up and shook Nakamaru’s shoulders.
“Are you mad?”
“No, I’m useless,” Nakamaru hissed. “Why did you stop me?”
Taguchi raised Nakamaru’s left hand and twisted it, and Nakamaru immediately screamed.
“STOP!”
Taguchi twisted harder.
“I SAID STOP, TAGUCHI!”
Taguchi let go of him and Nakamaru stormed back to his room, massaging his painful arm.
It was a miracle that none of his family members had woken up at the commotion.
Nakamaru didn’t sleep that night.
The pain in his arm subsided, but the pain in his chest didn’t.
Beside him, Taguchi was suspiciously sleeping soundlessly.
Nakamaru went back to his spot on the riverbank and Taguchi found him right before noon. This time, he was fully-dressed, preparing to head back to the camp.
“Obaachan told me you’d be here,” Taguchi said.
“Really,” Nakamaru answered simply.
“Hey, Nakamaru,” Taguchi said softly.
Nakamaru’s arm immediately stung with the leftover pain Taguchi inflicted.
“I’m sorry,” Taguchi said.
Nakamaru rose up, startled by the apology.
“What?”
“I said I’m sorry,” Taguchi repeated. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It was nothing,” Nakamaru said, going back to lying on the grass.
“Let me massage your arm,” Taguchi offered, rolling his sleeves and squatting next to him. He carried Nakamaru’s back upwards and positioned his palms on the spot where he twisted his arm the night before.
Nakamaru shoved him away with his right hand. “I’m alright,” he insisted.
“No, you’re not,” Taguchi insisted as well. “Talk to me, Nakamaru-kun.”
“You almost broke my already-broken arm,” Nakamaru shouted. “I’m not talking to you.”
Taguchi sat down beside him.
“I’m sorry.”
“Go back to the camp.”
“I’ll write to you,” Taguchi said.
“Don’t bother.”
With that, Taguchi bowed at his former fellow recruit, marched away and left Nakamaru alone on the riverbank.
He didn’t want to admit to himself, but he knew that Taguchi was trying to save him from being pathetic.
Nakamaru watched the sunset and felt his heart sink into his stomach.
Three weeks passed and there was no letter from Taguchi.
Nakamaru felt slightly guilty for having possibly chased away a friend who cared.
“Oniichan!”
Nakamaru dropped his pen. “Eriko! I told you not to startle me like that!”
“But there’s a letter from Taguchi-kun to you!”
“Really?” he asked, bending down to pick up the pen.
Eriko shoved a piece of paper in front of Nakamaru.
It was addressed to him.
“To Nakamaru,” his sister read. “I’m not even sure if you’ll read this…oniichan, did you guys argue?”
“I need that letter,” Nakamaru dismissed his sister and went to his room with the letter.
To Nakamaru,
I’m not even sure if you’ll read this, but I told you that I’d write to you, so here I am.
I hope you have forgiven me for doing that to you when I was staying at your house. I’ve done some thinking myself and I realised that I shouldn’t have done that to you. I understand that you must have been hurting from the broken arm and pride—
Nakamaru winced at that line.
—and it was really inconsiderate of me not to keep that in mind. I hope I can see you again, because Koki was hoping that you’ll be able to meet us in the ramen stall you guys used to go during breaks whenever you guys were free. He misses you a lot.
Sincerely,
Junnosuke.
It took Nakamaru a few minutes to remember that ‘Junnosuke’ was Taguchi’s first name.
Taguchi wasn’t the first who cared about him, not by a million years.
But the fact that Taguchi cared almost felt like it meant the world to him.
Nakamaru told his mother that Taguchi-kun wrote, because his mother had somewhat developed a fondness for the ‘fine, upstanding young man’. He had a feeling that his mother was eyeing him as a potential candidate for a son-in-law.
“You should visit them,” his mother said. “Don’t let your injuries inhibit you.”
Nakamaru knew that his mother meant well. Nakamaru had been doing nothing at home for the past few months and it might be best if he could see his fellow friends and recruits.
“Watching them do their best might cheer you up,” his mother reasoned.
Nakamaru was reluctant, but he agreed that it might be for the best.
Just because he agreed, it didn’t mean that he liked it.
Nakamaru wrote back anyway.
To Taguchi-kun,
Please let Koki know that I miss him, and I miss the trainings.
Also, tell him that I’ll be there on the first weekend of June, we’ll meet then.
Sincerely,
Nakamaru.
It was after Nakamaru paid for the delivery that he realised that despite having addressed the letter to Taguchi, he didn’t really say a word to him.
His mother packed him two days’ worth of meal, because train journeys could be lonely, she said. Nakamaru protested, because all he would be doing was either sleeping or staring outside the window. His mother relented after Nakamaru insisted that food for train journeys would probably end up as food for stray cats.
Naturally, a few bento boxes appeared by his bed when he woke up. ‘I packed some daifuku, they can last for more than a day at least, you can bring them for Koki-kun and Taguchi-kun’, his mother scribbled messily on a note stuck on one of the bento boxes.
Fair enough, he thought.
It had only been two months (slightly less by a few days for Taguchi) since Nakamaru had seen either of them, but both had changed so much, it felt like they hadn’t seen each other in years.
“Taguchi was worried sick,” Koki said while gobbling down the daifukus at an impossibly rapid pace.
“Really?” Nakamaru said, amused.
Taguchi flailed his arms. “No, no, I was worried, but I wasn’t…worried sick, if you know what I mean.”
They laughed and Nakamaru realised that it felt good to see Koki not threatening to erase Taguchi’s existence once every few minutes. Nakamaru recalled the way they, Koki and Taguchi, used to share the kind of relationship that could be very easily mistaken for aggressive antagonism, with Taguchi provoking him with every gesture he made and Koki reciprocating the subconscious provocation by physically and verbally attacking him. Nakamaru usually stood by the side and tried not to get too involved.
Despite the ‘aggressive antagonism’, or whatever term another recruit, Ueda, might have coined after his departure, there were times when Nakamaru felt that Taguchi and Koki shared something rather private, like their arguments were the chains that tied their vastly different personalities together.
“Obaachan’s really amazing,” Koki gushed, “I haven’t eaten anything like this in a million years!”
Nakamaru slapped Koki’s arm.
“Liar!” he said. “You came to my house last winter, remember? That was only a few months ago.”
“Exaggerating is fun,” Koki said, slowing down his eating pace as soon as he realised that there were not many daifukus left.
“Is everything fine?” Nakamaru asked.
“You mean in the camp?” Taguchi asked back. “If by ‘fine’ you mean unbelievably torturous and pain-inducing, then yes, everything is fine,” he answered, flashing Nakamaru a blinding smile that was quite a contrast to his reply.
“Ueda missed you too,” Taguchi said, referring to their quieter (in comparison with the three of them) fellow recruit. “He has been talking more, but mostly I suppose he wishes that you could come back.”
Ever since he got discharged from the army training camp, Nakamaru had been frequently experiencing moments when he felt his chest getting heavy and dropping downwards; this was one of them.
Koki stood up suddenly.
“Sorry, buddy,” he said, draping himself all over Nakamaru for a quick hug. “I need to go, Sakura’s waiting for me.”
Sakura was a stray dog Koki picked up and left to the care of this old lady three blocks away from their favourite ramen store.
“But I just got here!” Nakamaru yelled to the speedily running Koki.
“Come here more often, then! You know I miss you!”
Taguchi nudged Nakamaru for a walk along the pedestrian bridge.
It was awkward. They walked side by side without uttering a single word and Nakamaru didn’t know why he hadn’t rejected his invitation and gone straight home.
Just as he predicted, coming to visit his friends led to an adverse effect on his pride. He had never felt worse than he did now.
Taguchi coughed and Nakamaru looked sideways. Taguchi’s features looked sharper than they were a few months back, evidence that he had been toughened by the training. He also observed that he had faded scars over some exposed skin, somewhere near the neck, his fingers, the back of his palm and there was a line below his eye, possibly what remained of a gash.
Great, he thought. He was sent back and became a wimp while everyone he knew were being molded into patriots.
“Nakamaru,” Taguchi started. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Nakamaru said.
“Please forgive me,” Taguchi said, sighing as he spoke. He put his hand on Nakamaru’s injured arm and Nakamaru waved his arm slightly (it still hurt a lot).
“Told you it was nothing,” he admonished.
“Don’t you want to get something for Eriko-chan?”
“What?” Nakamaru asked, shocked at the sudden change of topic.
“I—I just thought it might be that you don’t want to talk about things pertaining your injury, so—“
“Then stop mentioning it.”
They watched the sunset and Nakamaru wondered why he hadn’t left when he should have.
Then again, he could never tell when was the right time for him to walk away from Taguchi.
He was lucky that Ueda’s parents owned this small inn in the outskirts of the town near to the training camp and he could rent a room for the night at an impossibly low price.
He shifted and tossed and turned and thought about Taguchi.
Maybe he had overdone it. He shouldn’t have been this antagonistic towards him when he knew that he hadn’t meant anything malicious.
The next day, Nakamaru sent a note to Taguchi via the town post. He couldn’t bring himself to return to anywhere near the camp.
Taguchi replied a month later. It was short as compared to his previous note.
To Nakamaru,
I won’t mention it again. I hope you’re well.
Sincerely,
Junnosuke.
Nakamaru thought of replying Taguchi with something like “no, I’m sorry too, I overreacted” or “I’m fine, my arm is feeling better” or “is Koki doing well?”.
He never did.
It was like the words love getting stuck in his mind whenever he tried to express them in any way.
The town doctor told him that his arm was recovering at a speed so slow, it was abnormal.
When he failed to pick a pebble from the riverbank with his left hand, he knew that it was time to stop feeling sorry for himself.
He finally replied Taguchi.
To Taguchi,
I’m sorry, I overreacted.
Will you guys be getting a weekend off next month? I’ll come for a visit. Ask Koki too.
Sincerely,
Nakamaru.
He didn’t wait for Taguchi’s reply before hopping on to the next available train to the city. His mother complained about not having enough time to make another set of daifukus for Koki-kun and Taguchi-kun.
She stopped complaining when Nakamaru said that he would be making regular trips to the city and there would be more chances for Koki and Taguchi to eat her daifukus in the future.
Taguchi was so surprised, he hugged Nakamaru.
“I was so happy to read your reply,” he said, almost sobbing from glee.
Nakamaru hugged him back.
They stood on the same pedestrian bridge, eating some daifukus Taguchi bought from the first store they saw selling daifukus. It made Nakamaru smiled when Taguchi whined about the quality (or the lack thereof), because apparently nothing could beat the daifukus that were made by Nakamaru’s mother.
“What could possibly keep Koki this busy?” Nakamaru asked rhetorically. He knew very well that it could only be Sakura or other animals. He remembered that Koki had once said that he wanted to build an animal farm if he managed to survive the war.
(“And get married, of course,” Koki had added quickly, as though he thought Nakamaru was judging him.)
“I heard Rai’s not feeling well,” Taguchi explained, “Koki has been worried sick, and I do mean worried sick.”
“Rai?”
“Another dog.”
“Just how many does he have…” Nakamaru muttered under his breath.
Taguchi touched Nakamaru’s arm before he returned to the camp and asked warily.
“I hate to bring this up again, but is your arm—”
“It’s not getting better,” Nakamaru answered.
Taguchi’s eyes widened slightly. “Did I—”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Nakamaru—“
Nakamaru pulled him into a hug.
“Trust me, you didn’t.”
He wouldn’t have recovered even if Taguchi never twisted his arm that night.
On the train on his way back, Nakamaru watched the people passing by instead of staring blankly at the scenery outside.
Six months after he left the army training camp, Nakamaru mustered the courage to confess to his mother and sister.
He wasn’t going back to the camp.
His mother shed a few tears, but told him that she had expected it.
Nakamaru apologised again to his father, this time in front of his grave.
He told him that his arm wasn’t going to heal, but it wasn’t the reason why he didn’t want to go back to the army.
It was the most honest thing he had said to anyone in his family for a few years.
He brought daifukus from his mother during his next visit to an expectant Taguchi, and Nakamaru swore to himself that he would ask his mother to stop making food for him.
“But I love your mother,” he said, lips white with the flour from the daifuku he was eating.
Nakamaru slapped Taguchi’s arm.
“Lay off my mother,” he said.
“What’s wrong with loving your mother, she’s the closest thing to maternal figure that I was able to get in recent years!”
“But it’s my mother,” Nakamaru reasoned, “and you saying it makes it creepier than it should be.”
“I think you have a problem with your family liking me,” Taguchi said, grinning.
“Are you trying to implying something?”
“Well, your mother and sister—“
“Don’t hit on my sister!”
“Hey Nakamaru,” Taguchi said as they stood on the pedestrian bridge like they always did, watching the sunset.
“What is it?”
“We are going on a defence mission next month,” Taguchi announced.
“We?” Nakamaru asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Koki’s enlisted too. The north is facing severe manpower shortage, General Yamamoto—“
Nakamaru dropped to the floor before he knew what was going on.
“Are you alright?”
Nakamaru felt his entire body shaking uncontrollably.
“I—I—I don’t—“
“Did you eat something bad? Was it some side effects from any medicine you’re taking? What kind of medicine did you take?”
Nakamaru’s head started aching and he suddenly had flashes of the day when he broke his arm.
There were people yelling, there were punches to his face and there was him, lying helplessly on the floor.
He held his head and massaged his own temples, hands still shaking.
“I don’t know.”
Taguchi’s eyes shrouded with concern, and Nakamaru felt like the most useless being ever.
He stopped shaking a few hours after the train had started moving, and Taguchi’s words reeled in his head.
“Nakamaru, I—I—I won’t be able to see you for a while,” he stammered.
“Stop being a sap,” Nakamaru snapped at him, albeit slightly stuttering from the shock earlier.
“Did you see yourself back then?” Taguchi raised his voice. “You looked like you were being shot!”
“I’ll be fine,” Nakamaru insisted.
“Write to me every week,” Taguchi requested.
“I’m not your girlfriend!”
“You’re more than that!”
They paused. Taguchi looked like he couldn’t believe what he had just blurted out.
“Just—just write to me.”
“But how,” Nakamaru said, voice softened.
Taguchi hugged him. “I’ll find a way. I just need to know if you’re safe.”
He felt like he should have made a bigger deal out of Taguchi declaring that he was more than a girlfriend to him, but try as he might, he didn’t know why he had panicked from mere memories.
He went on a frenetic search through his belongings to test the credibility of his own memory.
There was a pendant, a gift from his late grandmother. Apparently it was given to her by her mother, and she had given it to Nakamaru because Nakamaru was supposed to be a girl (his sister hadn’t been born yet). His grandmother sounded rather upset that Nakamaru turned out to be a boy.
There was a piece of pressed flower, but the colour was so faded, Nakamaru couldn’t remember what kind of flower it was. But he did know that it was something his mother brought back from a trip and because he was a young boy who thought that flowers were magical, flowers from places far away even more so, he asked the florist obaachan for advice on how to preserve the pretty flower his mother got for him. The result was that piece of pressed flower.
There was a broken comb. It was something the girl he had once fancied dropped on the ground. He didn’t return it because he had stepped on it before he realised what it was. He kept it with him, even though the girl eventually married the son of a rich businessman.
He could remember almost everything, and he didn’t know why something as recent as the reason for his broken arm was such an elusive recollection.
Sometimes Nakamaru dreamt about abstract things.
Dreaming about things like the aroma of his mother’s cooking made him wake up smiling and hungry.
Dreaming about random, inanimate things yelling at him made him wake up panting and wishing that Taguchi’s letter, or whatever he planned to send him, could arrive sooner.
Something tiny flew into his window one day, and it was after it moved that Nakamaru realised that it had wings.
“That’s so cute!” Eriko exclaimed, immediately rushing towards the small, colourful bird.
Nakamaru watched as his sister cooed over the bird. “Isn’t she adorable, oniichan?”
The tiny bird fluttered its wings and revealed something stiff and white underneath it.
“Oniichan,” Eriko said as she took out that something white. “I think it’s a letter for you!”
Even from the distance, Nakamaru could make out the owner of the handwriting on the paper Eriko opened and immediately took the bird and the letter into his room.
To Nakamaru,
This bird’s my tenth gamble, and before you ask, yes, I did try many other methods to send a letter to you from where I am. The post office is very far away. We are hiding in the mountains and it would take us almost three days to be able to see any town.
The journey to this place was long and tiring. I kept wondering if you have recovered from the..whatever had shocked you.
“Of course I have, you idiot,” Nakamaru said to himself. His chest started pounding and things inside him started fluttering along with the bird’s wings.
Koki’s starting to cough really badly. I think he’s not very resistant towards cold weather. He has started moaning the names of his ‘pets’ in his sleep too. I find that really adorable.
“What a creep,” Nakamaru muttered with a smile.
Please reply to me with this bird. I think I have trained her to be able to find me.
Sincerely,
Junnosuke.
“But how did you train her to find me?” he asked, not expecting any answer.
Just when he was about to fold the letter, he found some small scribbling at the back.
p.s. I taught her to recognise your smell from the letters you wrote to me. If she found you this way, she’s a genius among the bird clan.
Nakamaru picked up the bird and she pecked his thumb affectionately.
“You can feel it too, right? You owner just praised you,” he said to the bird.
She hooted, as though she was dismissing Taguchi’s compliments.
Nakamaru smiled.
“Taguchi, looks like even a bird has something against you.”
He named the bird Aoi, after the pretty blue-coloured streaks on her wings.
To Taguchi,
I’m fine. Sometimes I dream about things, but I have yet to collapse from them. It might have been just that one time, so you don’t have to worry.
This little genius bird is Aoi. You really do know how to pick them.
Okaasan misses you. Eriko too. We are waiting for you.
Sincerely,
Yuuichi.
After Aoi flew away, Nakamaru realised with a start that it was the first time he had signed his letter with his given name.
It had been a month and Aoi hadn’t come back. Nakamaru found himself subconsciously wandering around the town, peering at random discussions and hoping to hear any news with regards to the army forces up in the north.
The town doctor said that Nakamaru’s arm showed a vast improvement in recovery speed from the last time he had checked him, when he had told him that his arm was abnormally slow in recovery.
“Is there any chance I can wield a weapon again?”
The doctor shook his head and Nakamaru felt slightly crestfallen.
Nakamaru threw pebbles into the river, this time using his right arm, the perfectly functioning one.
For the first pebble, he tossed it into the water. It dropped with a small ‘plop’.
For the second pebble, he swayed his arm slightly backwards and threw it into the water. It drowned into the water with a slight splatter and a quite audible ‘plop!’.
For the third pebble, he raised his arm, built a momentum with a swing over his head and flung it towards the water. It made a splash on the water and it was thrown so far away, Nakamaru couldn’t hear the sound it made.
A few days later, a newspaper vendor stopped to speak to Nakamaru, and he found out that the army in the north had gained some sort of small victory against the foreign invaders.
When Nakamaru asked if he was talking about the training recruits stationed in the north, the newspaper vendor answered with a simple question.
“What training recruits?”
Autumn drew to a close and Nakamaru wondered if Aoi could complete her travels in such cold weather.
Winter started with a government officer driving a truck into the village and dropping a bunch of women and children into the town hall. It looked like something terrible had happened where they used to live, with some of them having bandaged limbs, eyepatches over their eyes, and gloomy expressions.
The newspaper vendor helpfully supplemented Nakamaru with information that there had been a surprise attack down south, and most of the men had been ruthlessly murdered. The few that remained alive recruited themselves into the army, swearing with their blood-soaked hands that they would avenge their beloved home.
“Why are you even here?” Nakamaru asked the vendor. “You sound like someone who would have been enlisted into the army.
The newspaper vendor smiled brightly and Nakamaru immediately understood.
“They will never believe that I’m a guy. I made sure of that.”
Over time, Nakamaru learnt that the newspaper vendor’s name was Kazuya, nicknamed Kame, for the uniqueness of his surname, Kamenashi.
Spring was approaching and still there were no signs of Aoi.
Nakamaru caught himself staring at the sky in mid-spring. He searched high and low for Aoi, sometimes even entering the woods and hooting for her, just in case she had fallen somewhere.
Waiting for Aoi gradually felt like reading a book, and he couldn’t find the next chapter no matter where he looked.
Summer came and the boys from the south started mingling with the local kids, as though the trauma from the attack was gradually diminishing and they slowly settled into a new place to call their home. Nakamaru loved watching them comparing the sizes of their fists, the distances they could jump, and the accurateness of their calculations.
There was this boy who loved calling the rest of his friends “idiot”, and there was this boy whose greatest talent was to give other boys reasons to bully him, and then there was this boy who was so quiet, the rest of them quiver in shock every time he said something amazing.
They reminded him of Koki, Taguchi and Ueda respectively.
Aoi appeared at last, but there was no letter attached inside her wings.
There was, however, a scar across her right wing and Nakamaru realised that his worst fear during Aoi’s absence had come true.
Nakamaru brought Aoi to all the clinics in the town, hoping that one of them would agree to tend to her injuries.
He was almost in tears when he met Kame on his way back home, learning that none of the clinics in town knew how to treat an injured bird.
Fortunately for him, Kame apparently knew how to.
“Hey birdie—what’s her name?”
“It’s Aoi,” Nakamaru said, oddly flustered at the way Kame respected an animal as small as Aoi.
Kame smiled and spoke softly to Aoi.
“Aoi-chan, it will be painful, please stay strong.”
Aoi’s wings made the funniest sound ever as she flapped her bandaged wings.
“Thank you so much!” Nakamaru said, bowing to Kame.
“It was nothing,” Kame said, bowing as well. “I just love animals, that’s all.”
“Still,” Nakamaru said, taking Aoi into his palm gently, “you saved her.”
“I devote myself to the worthy causes,” Kame declared. “Enlisting into the army isn’t one of them.”
Aoi whined when Nakamaru touched her injured wing.
“Don’t do that!” Kame instructed immediately. “You’ll risk breaking it again!”
Nakamaru was painfully reminded of the twist Taguchi first inflicted on his arms and he gulped uncomfortably.
“I think I understand that feeling,” he said, stroking Aoi’s feathers as a gesture of apology.
“What, you broke any wing before?” Kame asked nonchalantly.
Nakamaru swallowed his saliva and said calmly. “It’s my left hand. There’s a reason why I left the army.”
“Hang on,” Kame retreated, taken aback by the revelation. “You were—“
“Kame-chan!”
A man with a limp leg appeared, huffing and puffing, appearing to be bringing an emergency news for Kame. Nakamaru recognised him as the other vendor who usually rode the bicycle tailored for the disabled.
“Yamamoto—“
And Nakamaru collapsed to the ground.
That night, Nakamaru dreamt of inanimate things yelling things at him.
When he woke up, tear droplets were escaping his eyes and he couldn’t recall anything he dreamt, only the residual feeling of panic.
To Taguchi,
This letter took a long time because Aoi-chan was injured. It was hard to find anyone who could treat her, as apparently nobody in town knew how to treat animals. Luckily, I met this guy (I think you would like to meet him, he evaded having to serve the nation because the army recruiters wouldn’t believe that he was a guy!) who could treat her, and he isn’t even a doctor. Can you believe that?
She was so jumpy when I touched her bandaged wing and it reminded me of the time when you twisted my arm. I think I finally understand how you must have felt that time.
There have been a lot of changes in this town, you might be shocked when you come here. There are war refugees from the south and sometimes some government officers stay to watch over them.
I must be lucky to be living in such a strategic place, right?
Nakamaru’s train of thought travelled to the way he had crumbled at the sound of a name, the name that Taguchi also knew, and he was immediately numbed.
He continued his letter, but avoided the topic.
I hope you guys can come back soon. It has been ages since I last saw you guys.
Sincerely,
Yuuichi.
Aoi chirped excitedly as Nakamaru delicately slid the letter under her wing, as though glad to be on a mission again.
There was the sound of a screeching brake of a bicycle.
“Yucchi!”
It was Kame, who had taken the liberty of giving Nakamaru a nickname.
“Are you alright?”
It took Nakamaru a few seconds to realise that he was talking about the other time when Nakamaru had collapsed in his office.
“I’m alright,” Nakamaru answered.
He walked away, deaf to Kame’s repeated calls.
Nakamaru started volunteering in the refugee centre. He had no medical background and no job experience whatsoever, but they were so short of manpower that they were willing to accept anyone who would help.
He worked ten hours a day, doing odd but light jobs. The centre’s supervisor wasn’t very happy when she found out that Nakamaru had only one properly working arm.
“But the town doctor said that I only can’t fight,” he protested. “I can still do other things with my left arm.”
“Save it,” she dismissed. She appeared to have a short temper, a trait rather unsuitable for the centre, Nakamaru felt. “If you use that arm you’ll have none left later. I’m not going to be responsible for your disability.”
Rather blunt too, Nakamaru thought.
Another month passed by and Aoi was still somewhere in the sky, or at least that was what Nakamaru hoped.
Kame told him that the General had recalled all forces from the north. Apparently, he wanted to reconcile the strategies for the entire army force.
It was the best news Nakamaru had ever heard from Kame.
There was this boy in the refugee centre who started following Nakamaru on the second week of his service. He was one of the luckier ones to remain physically unscathed from the attack, but they couldn’t release him because he was orphaned and nobody in the town was willing to take an unnecessary baggage into their household.
He appeared to want to follow him home too, but Nakamaru took him back to the centre before he got too far.
Everywhere—on radio, flyers, everyone’s lips—people were beginning to talk about the possibility of a reformed nation.
The youth were excited and the elderly scoffed.
Nakamaru couldn’t care about what other people thought. To him, it meant that he could see his friends again.
If they made it back alive.
Nakamaru didn’t want to think of the alternative.
Aoi came back tweeting happily and perching on Nakamaru’s shoulder. She brought him the shortest letter from Taguchi to date.
I’m coming home.
The boy who seemed to be interested in Nakamaru followed him again.
“What is it?”
The boy’s eyes trembled and Nakamaru immediately wished he could take back his words.
“What’s your name?”
The boy searched for a twig and carved a few invisible lines on the ground, and Nakamaru understood with a twinge of embarrassment that the boy couldn’t speak.
“Hi, Ka, Ru,” Nakamaru read.
The boy nodded.
That day, he took Hikaru back to his home.
Nakamaru was about the introduce Hikaru to his mother when he saw the shadow of a familiar-looking man in the living room.
It was Taguchi.
I’m coming home, Nakamaru repeated the words written in Taguchi’s last letter.
Everything came to him—Aoi, his weaknesses, their arguments, the sunsets they watched from the pedestrian bridge—and shattered into a million pieces right there and then.
Taguchi sported a fresh scar across his forehead. His hair was shorter, his skin was darker, and his muscles were harder.
“I asked Koki to come with me,” Taguchi said. “But he, as expected—“
“Too busy visiting his pets?”
“I refuse to confirm.”
“It’s alright,” Nakamaru said with a small laugh. “We both know that at the rate he’s going, he might as well marry one of them.”
“I can’t believe you just suggested bestiality. I hope Koki’s not sneezing right now.”
“I was just saying it as a metaphor,” Nakamaru argued, “you don’t have to take everything literally.”
“But you said that Koki might as well marry one of his pets,” Taguchi rebutted, “if that didn’t imply bestiality, what else does?”
“I’m not talking to you,” Nakamaru scoffed.
Taguchi laughed.
Nakamaru turned away for a while, then glanced back at Taguchi.
“What happened?” he asked.
“What happened to what?”
“Your forehead.”
Taguchi put a palm on his forehead. “Oh this?” he said, pointing at the scar. “It’s nothing. It wasn’t even a souvenir from being stationed in the north. Just some silly accident that happened on the way back.”
Nakamaru leaned closer to Taguchi and touched the wound with his finger. “It looks like it was painful.”
Taguchi caught his left hand and before they knew what was going on, their faces were merely a breathing distance away from each other.
“It told you, it was nothing,” Taguchi whispered. “Probably wasn’t even as painful as your arm.”
Taguchi’s eyes stubbornly refused to leave Nakamaru’s.
“Funny,” Nakamaru replied, “this conversation sounds familiar.”
“That’s because it’s what we always talk about.”
Taguchi withdrew slightly and bent his head towards Nakamaru’s arm. He slid the sleeves upwards and kissed his bare forearm.
Nakamaru was paralysed. He felt utterly incapable of doing anything to stop him.
“You and I,” Taguchi said, “we are the same, you see.”
Nakamaru’s insides flipped.
“The pain is our shield, the scar is our armour,” Taguchi said. Nakamaru almost wanted to ask if he rehearsed that lame, idiotic line, but something was hammering hard in his chest, rendering him temporarily incapable of proper speech.
He bent slightly to pull Taguchi closer, then kissed him.
Nakamaru had always seen sunsets with Taguchi, but this time, he saw fireworks.
When they broke apart, Nakamaru saw that Taguchi had his eyes closed and he was breathing deeply.
Taguchi leaned forward again, this time, he extended his hand behind Nakamaru’s neck to envelop him in his arms and Nakamaru suddenly felt himself shaking uncontrollably.
It was as though his body was trying to resist.
He grasped Taguchi’s arm, trying to warn him, but Taguchi pulled him closer until they could feel each other’s heartbeat. They kiss again, this time with Taguchi pushing his tongue deep into Nakamaru’s mouth.
Nakamaru gripped Taguchi’s arm harder and tried to push him away, but all Taguchi did in retaliation was to kiss him harder.
He gathered all his strength and finally broke free from Taguchi.
“I can’t,” Nakamaru stammered.
Taguchi held his hand and entwined their fingers.
“I can’t do it,” he repeated, voice trembled with resignation.
That night, Nakamaru sneaked into Taguchi’s futon and embraced him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, hand searching for Taguchi’s and squeezing it tight.
“I feel like that’s all we say to each other.”
Nakamaru’s chest felt heavy. “I didn’t mean to push you away.”
Taguchi leaned in to allow Nakamaru to hold him closer.
“I know,” he said, “you don’t have to explain.”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I do,” he insisted. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“How could you understand anything when I don’t even understand it myself?”
They stayed silent until Aoi was stirred awake and pecked affectionately at both of her owners.
“Some things are not meant to be understood completely,” Taguchi said.
Nakamaru nestled his nose against Taguchi’s nape.
“I’m sorry.”
“You can push me away,” Taguchi said softly, almost like a plea, “but I want to stay with you.”
Those pieces that shattered at the sight of Taguchi when Nakamaru saw him a day before, he knew that they would never again be together.
He watched Taguchi leave and he knew he’d never be whole again.
Aoi stayed with Nakamaru and switched her loyalty towards Hikaru.
“When are you going to the city again, Yuuichi?” his mother asked. Nakamaru suspected that his mother was getting far too attached to Taguchi.
“I don’t know,” was Nakamaru’s only reply.
He kept hearing people yelling at him in his dreams.
It made him wake up and hug himself tight.
Nakamaru started teaching Hikaru kanji characters.
He started with the character that corresponded to the reading of his name, the kanji that meant ‘light’.
“It’s really powerful, you know,” he explained. “It’s both a means of measurement and an object. You have something quite incomparable as your name.”
Hikaru only smiled at him because he still couldn’t speak.
Kame came to him, complaining that someone finally noticed that he was a boy.
“Training to fight,” Kame uttered aimlessly. “I wonder how it would be like.”
Nakamaru’s right hand darted to his left arm. It didn’t hurt anymore.
“Hey, Yucchi,” Kame said, patting his shoulder. “Someday.”
“What?”
“Someday,” Kame repeated, “you will tell me all about that arm.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Kame smiled.
“You know, Yucchi,” he said, “you’re one of the kindest persons I ever met. Don’t let anything change that.”
Hikaru brought his friends along on the third—or was it fourth? Nakamaru didn’t keep track—lesson and they asked Nakamaru to interpret their names.
Everywhere—on radio, flyers, everyone’s lips—people were beginning to talk about the reformation plan of the country.
Nakamaru didn’t like that the plans involved transforming the country into a military-driven revolution.
A few weeks later, Eriko celebrated her twenty-third birthday. She was probably never going to be married to a man of her dreams.
“It’s alright,” she said as she embroidered a pretty rabbit on Hikaru’s pants to cover up a hole.
Nakamaru looked at his sister. She was beautiful; doe-eyed, silky raven hair, snow-white skin and a face befitting the paintings of a legendary beauty. If only she was born a century earlier, Nakamaru thought regretfully.
“Done!” she declared happily, handing over the pair of pants to Hikaru.
“Tha…nk y..ou,” Hikaru stammered.
Nakamaru and Eriko were dumbfounded.
Hikaru, too, until he realised what just happened.
“I—I—“
“You spoke!”
Tears came streaming down Eriko’s face as she hugged Hikaru tightly.
Nakamaru went to the river and threw pebbles into it.
With his left hand.
The first pebble didn’t manage to fall into the river.
The second pebble landed on a rock an inch away from the water.
For the third pebble, he raised his hand as high as possible and threw it into the river.
It was the furthest throw he had ever made.
“Okaasan,” Nakamaru greeted as he reached home and took off his shoes. “I’m going to the city in two days.”
Hikaru said that the “yuu” section in Nakamaru’s first name, Yuichi, was impossible to write. There were too many strokes in the said kanji character.
“Do you know what it means?” Nakamaru asked.
Hikaru shook his head.
Nakamaru wrote the kanji for “yuu” on the sand.
“It means ‘hero’,” Nakamaru said.
Aoi began to show up less frequently. Hikaru said that Aoi had set her eyes on a male bird.
“Yuuichi-niisan,” Hikaru asked after he knocked on the door to Nakamaru’s room.
“What is it?”
“You said that you name means ‘hero’,” Hikaru said.
“Yes, it does. I’m not a hero though,” Nakamaru said, chuckling.
“I think you are,” Hikaru said.
“Am I really?”
“Yes, Yuuichi-niisan.”
Nakamaru hugged him.
“You’re my hero.”
“Otousan,” Nakamaru said to the tombstone of his father, “I won’t disappoint you again.”
It was more of a promise to himself than to his late father.
The ride to the city felt short this time.
Time passed like a few fleeting seconds and he arrived before he could feel like he just left his hometown.
“You came,” Taguchi said, like he didn’t believe that Nakamaru had just appeared right in front of him.
“Yes, I came,” Nakamaru said. “After all, you were the one who told me that you wanted to stay.”
“But why—“
Nakamaru tugged at Taguchi’s shirt and kissed him.
“How am I supposed to let you stay if you tend to leave without a word?”
“Are you allowed to leave the camp like this?” Nakamaru asked as they kissed furiously in the room he usually stayed at the inn that Ueda’s parents owned.
“I can’t, actually,” Taguchi admitted, panting. “But nobody has to know.”
“Wait,” Nakamaru said. “Koki knows.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Taguchi said. “I have more dirts on him than he has on me.”
“What?”
“You don’t have to know.”
“I never told you, but I did some research on my own,” Taguchi said.
“On what?”
“General Yamamoto,” Taguchi answered.
“Oh,” Nakamaru replied, amused at how he wasn’t reacting at the mention of his name.
“I knew what happened to you,” Taguchi said.
“Really?”
“He touched you, didn’t he?”
“Barely,” Nakamaru said, gripping Taguchi’s hand tight.
“He also sent people to attack you, didn’t he?”
“Taguchi—“
“You said I didn’t understand anything,” Taguchi said nervously. “But I knew everything.”
“Hey, Taguchi—“
“I knew everything that happened that day.”
Nakamaru never talked about it, never said anything about it, never remembered it, but deep inside his mind, there was a part of him that memorised every detail of what happened on the day he broke his arm.
“I made peace with it,” Nakamaru said as he caressed Taguchi’s cheek.
He brought Taguchi’s face close to his and brushed their noses together.
“That was how I could make peace with my feelings for you.”
Those pieces that were once shattered at the sight of Taguchi when he showed up in his house returning from war, Nakamaru felt them reattaching themselves, like they were healing after a tremor.
He let Taguchi see his naked body and felt at once how it was like to be whole.
“I’m still not coming back to the army,” Nakamaru declared.
“Why?”
“I want to be a teacher.”
There were many more boys like Hikaru.
Nakamaru wanted to help them find their heroes, even if he couldn’t be it.
“I’m not leaving the army,” Taguchi said.
“I know.”
Taguchi laughed.
“You’re ruining the moment.”
“But it’s true! I never expected you to leave the army.”
There were many more women like Eriko.
Nakamaru couldn’t fight for the sake of their happiness, but Taguchi could.
“I don’t want you come back to the army,” Taguchi said.
Nakamaru didn’t need to ask why.
There were many more mothers like Nakamaru’s mother.
Nakamaru wondered if all soldiers who were fighting in the frontline had a home to return to and a mother who would welcome them with a plate of delicious daifukus.
“What happened to Yamamoto?” Nakamaru asked, dropping the title from the name he still resented.
“Oh, he tried to get his hands on this pretty new recruit, and unfortunately got his ribs broken. The new recruit was surprisingly tough.”
“Really?” Nakamaru said, amused.
“I think you know him too, he’s from your hometown.”
“Oh, seriously?”
“I think his name is Kame—something.”
Nakamaru laughed.
“Taguchi, fight.”
“What?”
“Fight in my stead.”
When Taguchi returned to the camp, Nakamaru felt like he was finally free from everything that had been burdening him for years.
“I’ll come home,” Taguchi promised.