[Translated fanfic] Suppression [Uruha/Aoi, 1/?]
This is my fanfiction, was translated by my friend syzygy_lestat , and this entry was posted at her Livejournal, I just coppied the whole of it :3 Thank you all so much~
[Translated fanfic] Suppression [Uruha/Aoi, 1/?]
Title: Suppression
Chapters: 1/?
Author: alzheimer13
Translator: syzygy_lestat
Genre: Au, Romance
Ratings: PG [expected to be higher in later chapters]
Warning: None
Pairings/Characters: Uruha/Aoi
Synopsis: “The youth has already died, don’t let the flower wither…please?”
Comments: This is the story that alzheimer13 has written for me recently, answering to my repeatedly molestation :D. I really like it, so I decide to translate it into English to share with you guys. Please note that English isn’t my mother tongue language, there might be some mistakes here and there. And one more thing, you’ve already known that translation makes the text lost its original meaning to some extent. There are things that are very beautiful in our language, but somehow sounding strange and illogical in English. Anyway, I’ve done my best and don’t hesitate to ask if you find anything difficult to understand. And Happy birthday to alzheimer13 ^^
Chapter 1
In the afternoon, the sun was burning hot. Pushing his fingertips through the door shades, he stared at the asphalted road in front of the building. Fingers moved slightly to widen the cracks for a better view. His eyes looked as if he was intending to do something.
In a swift movement, he retreated his hand, hastily rummaging a clutter of utensils on the table. The action caused them to scatter all around the room, before he snatched at a handkerchief, footsteps pounding on the floor in urgent. Putting the tiny soft object into his pocket, he rushed out of the room, running through the hall of his luxurious tenement, jumping to the elevator and throwing his body pass the glass door.
The baking sun seemed to be at its pinnacle that noon. He didn’t even know where all those beads of perspiration came from.
He stopped, taking quiet steps through the gate.
In front of his eyes was a man who was walking in limp in the middle of the pavement. Black suit covered his form, and a rivulet of tears was rolling down his left cheek.
“Aoi…” He called, holding out the handkerchief “How…is she?”
The other man snapped out of his daze by the question, a sheer panic appeared on his face as if he had just waken up from a nightmare. Aoi stared, tears suddenly flooded out, occupying the corners of his eyes and overflowing on his cheeks. Each stream of the salty liquid ran nonstop down his neck, sticking his black strands, wetting even the collar of his shirt.
“She…” Aoi strived to answer, his tongue seemed to be curved inversely into his throat “She couldn’t make it…”
Aoi was only an ordinary man, living in this city.
“Uruha san, she has gone.” Having that said, Aoi walked away. Uruha stretched out his arm quickly to pull the other man back. The snatch caused Aoi to stumble backward, he almost coiled his trembling body into Uruha’s hold.
The blonde tucked the sticky, covered in grime strands behind the other man’s ear, revealing his miserable tearstained face. Uruha was hurt “The youth has already died, don’t let the flower wither…please?” He said, eyebrows knitted into a line.
Aoi looked at him, but he couldn’t see clearly. The sunlight at noon was so blazing that it had turned him into a blind man. From his big forehead, beads of sweat followed the roots of his hair and moistened his face. Uruha was only a huge silhouette which concealed even the sun in his eyes.
“Aoi” The brunette breathed out that name “Can a flower be equal to the youth?” And everything turned into darkness. He threw his exhausted body into Uruha’s tight squeeze. And let nothingness invaded.
Aoi and Aoi, a lovely couple, to the extent that the God has bestowed them with the same name. One is the youth, and one is hollyhock.
~
The memory of that girl, whose soft old dress covering her feet, hanging on the girder of the attic room manifested itself. Everything was the same at that moment, the light from the sky made everything be under cover of darkness. The silence was deafening in his mind. All was only pieces of glistering black and white.
They were deeply in love with each other.
“Are you alright?”
The fan on the ceiling repeatedly rotated around its axis. Aoi said nothing to Uruha’s question. He just couldn’t stand the fact that the girl he loved had passed away. There wasn’t even a single reason. They were still here, her shimmering smiles, her oh-so-chaste kisses in place of good night wishes. But only after a night…
Uruha was mulling over hundreds of queries in his head as well for the time being. He was about to stand up, before he caught a glimpse of Aoi’s lonely dark orbs.
“Tomorrow…I’ll move.” Aoi said.
“Why?” The blonde asked in surprise.
“There were so many…so many things that I shouldn’t see here.”
“But where are you going to go? To the suburb? Or return to Mie?” Uruha was worried.
“I…”
The brunette wavered, the insecurity in words gave his desire to stay in Tokyo away. Uruha understood it too well, so he stopped at the edge of the bed, where Aoi was leaning his back on.
“Don’t be afraid…”
“I’m not afraid” Aoi said.
“Yes, you are. You’re very afraid to be exact.” Uruha kneeled down beside Aoi, strong arms propped on the mattress, one of his hands gently touched the other man’s shoulder “I can’t leave you like this. One Aoi is enough. I don’t want to lose another Aoi. Please, don’t run away?”
“Everything was still normal last night” The brunette said “Why did it turn out to be…”
“That’s the inevitable consequence.”
“What did you just say???” Aoi panicked “Inevitable???”
Uruha turned his face away from the brunette, his lips pressing into a thin line in reflection. There was something he didn’t want to reveal, and yet Aoi longed to know…”We both are artists you see. For women, this industry is more or less than an abyss. Even I myself sometimes wanted to end it.” Uruha paused, taking in slow yet hard breath. Something was lying suppressed in his heart, making him pant like a fish caught in a shoal. “You and I, we can’t help her. She was always like that…”
“What do you mean?”
“In fact, if an artist suddenly committed suicide, it wouldn’t be too hard to guess for the reason.” He whispered in his dry husky voice “But there is no one dare disclose it, so…”
“No, it can’t be.”
“Yes…”
“No.”
He was only an ordinary man, living in this city.
“No…”
Uruha kept silent.
“How can I not know what she had done…we had been with each other for that long…how…”
Aoi choked.
Uruha…didn’t say anything more.
The blonde feebly coughed to clear his throat and then glanced into the distance outside the window. Facing Aoi’s room was Uruha luxurious tenement.
“You mustn’t run away…never” He said in a low voice, his gaze lingered anxiously on the window. “Never.”
~
A week after the funeral, Aoi returned to his office. Pinning a tiny cross on his pocket, the man let other people know about his sorrow. He was the manager of a tourism company, so dealing with many customers everyday was a part of his job. Vaguely, he wondered if it was because of that reason that smiles could come back to his lips. To tell the truth: that was how he kept on living.
“Oh this boy appears again” An employee in dark suit quickly stepped in, hanging around in front of the TV in the middle of the company hall, despite his busy schedule. He laughed off “Is this boy Uruha your friend?” and put a pile of tidy handbooks on Aoi’s desk, absentmindedly asking the brunette some questions.
Aoi nodded, his smile got brighter “Yes, he lives in the tenement opposite to mine.”
“Isn’t he bothered by girls? Considering how famous he is?!”
“If you don’t tell them where he is living then I will be very grateful.”
The employee then burst into laughing “There is no time for that you know.”
~
In the late afternoon, rays of sunlight dyed lines of tree on the roadside in sepia. Hordes of students hurried to the underground station after school, the sound of chattering and laughter was endlessly was sent to his ears. It was in rush hours that this street seemed to be in the peak of happiness. Aoi lethargically stood at the stair, his eyes weren’t able to shut though there was nothing they were to see. There were a great deal of invisible things, and yet not that because we couldn’t sight them, we assumed they didn’t exist. He gently touched the cross on his pocket.
“Aoi.”
It wasn’t his voice but another man’s.
“Uruha…do you also use the subway?”
In no time, the tall form was standing before him. His hair hung down disheveledly on the shoulders, the hat covered half of his face. However, the mole on his neck and the familiar necklace with that headless angel pendant clearly told Aoi it was no one but Uruha. Aoi stared at the pendant, before being waken up from his daze by the blonde’s brushing against his shoulder.
“I’m not feeling secure when you’re alone in the street. So I take my time to follow you.”
“Since when did your company become that compliant?” Aoi felt a little uneasy because of the close proximity between them. His back had touched the banister. Still, from behind, he could sense how that big hand wanted to embrace his whole body, how it wanted him to indulge in its hug.
“No! Stop.” Aoi started.
“What?” Uruha asked surprisingly “You don’t want to move to somewhere else?” The reverse question from Uruha even worsened the brunette’s awkward situation. He didn’t understand why he ever felt those hands wanted to do something else, though the thought only stayed in his head for a moment, before it disappeared completely.
Uruha accompanied Aoi until they reached the brunette’s tenement, he just didn’t go up to visit the brunette’s apartment. Aoi seemed to share the same notion though. He didn’t want Uruha to treat him so special, since he hoped the blonde would never think he would do something reckless. He really longed to get over and live on, even though he had to be lonely.
On their way back home, Aoi walked in the front, his shadow cast down backward in a distraught way, looking as if it was accidentally clasping on Uruha’s shoulder. The blonde didn’t walk too close, neither too distant, from Aoi. The person before him became bizarrely alienated. On the spur of the moment, he sped up his pace a little bit so that he could say something to break the secluded atmosphere of that afternoon.
Aoi tilted his head to the side as if he was aware Uruha’s approach. “Aoi san” The blonde called.
“What?” Aoi asked, tiredness wearing on his face.
“Can we go home later? I want you to come to a place with me?”
After hearing Uruha’s suggestion, Aoi heaved a long sigh as he pondered on it “Whenever we go, we will have to return eventually.”
Knitting his eyebrows, the blonde looked attentively at him “Why do you always have to worry about every single thing before you take an action?” Having that said, Uruha dragged him along, acting as if he knew there wasn’t any strength left on the brunette to refuse. They passed by a lot of wooden houses, dense alleys, only to stop at a fallow behind a dilapidated building.
The soil here had been in desertification, tufts of grass only remained scattering on the edge, leaving a strip of white sand amidst the wasteland. Uruha took off his shoes and socks, stamping his feet on the surface until they were buried deep into the sand. He turned to Aoi, who stood still behind him, and let out a silly smile “Come here, quickly!!!” Seeing Aoi not moving just a bit, he smacked his lips and put the shoes on his hand down, running towards the brunette and insistently tugging him “Don’t worry, there are only children around here. No one will judge us for anything.” Uruha shoved Aoi down until the other man sat comfortably on the sand “Stay still.” He smiled, before gently lifting Aoi’s feet up. The action only made Aoi more bewildered.
“It’s ok, just stay till!” Uruha continued.
Aoi did as he was told, holding the briefcase to his chest, letting the tall blonde do anything he wanted to. And out of the blue, he realized something. This blazing red of late afternoon sun, and this scenery…were parts of his memory about them three in old days: Aoi, Aoi and Uruha. The brunette had struck up a friendship with a girl whose name was the same as his, two names with two different meanings and yet molding with one another in perfect harmony. Back then, Uruha was only a tall blurry figure behind that girl. Uruha left no impression on the brunette except the image of a younger boy with strange lips: they curved up naturally as though the boy was in the sulks, but were a perfectly suitable feature on his face nonetheless.
At that time, the brunette’s heart was beating in excitement with his eventful life, when his love for that girl was obvious as fate. From that very sepia afternoon, she and his new friend - Uruha- started walking on the same path, they became artists who were loved by countless of people. Aoi and she were still deeply in love, their hands still held each other’s tightly. But now, the more he thought about it, the harder he could steadily respire. Everything had changed.
Deep in his meditation, he didn’t notice that Uruha had already taken off his shoes. Only when the brunette felt the warmth from those hands hugging his feet did he slowly have the understanding of what was happening.
“What…what are you doing?” Aoi was taken aback.
Without an answer, Uruha pushed his feet down, burying them into the cold sand “Sand massage.”
Aoi was even more confused “What do you mean???”
Uruha sat down next to him, his feet also overwhelmed in the sand as he averted his sight to the low-roofed housed on the other side of the canal. When Aoi gradually felt the cold and ruggedness of the material, he stopped questioning for the reason, simply mimicking Uruha by hiding his toes, which were wobble due to being in those tight shoes for so long, into every grain of sand.
“Hey, Aoi-san, do you still remember what we said when we made friend?”
Flying along with the breeze, Uruha’s brown blond strands embraced his whole face. Under the late afternoon sun, they looked as if they were about to dissolve into the scenery. He coughed and rephrased his question, waking up Aoi’s wandering mind “Do you remember?”
Aoi’s thin lips cracked, haft wanting to open, haft wanting to close and leave the words unvoiced. Uruha chuckled “We have promised we would always be honest with each other.”
Aoi looked at Uruha, before his sight descended to the sand surface, his feet still buried deep down as though they wanted to keep the emotions at bay. Uruha proceeded “After all those years, perhaps…there were a few times we couldn’t keep it, right?”
“It…isn’t important anymore” Aoi said “Eight years has passed, I’m satisfied with what we’ve been through.”
“Aoi san…if…”
“What?”
“Supposing that….I’m….”
Uruha was left speechless as he couldn’t finish his statement. And without warning, he felt like a sleepwalker, jerking his body and hastily turning away.
“This place has changed” Aoi smiled softly, raising his feet from the dune “The sand, where are they from, and the meadow from bygone days, I don’t know where they has gone to.”
Uruha put his hand on Aoi’s feet, gently caress them to flicking off the remaining dust “Why do you ask that? The dune was born from the very meadow before.”
Aoi stared at him and suddenly sniggered “I never saw them earlier, and neither did they.” And then he stood up, shaking off his feet, putting on his socks and shoes.
“I want you to be strong, because every difficult period has its time to end, really.” Uruha bounced up.
“Uh.”
“This fallow might looks a little deserted, but you see, children like it a lot. Their joy is being able to playing around here after school time. Before, when it was still a meadow with those bushy trees, there was only us. But henceforth, there is to come a park and I think it will be much merrier.”
“You mean…?”
“Maybe what I’ve said is a little incomprehensible?”
“…”
Uruha grabbed his shoes, walking towards Aoi with his bare feet. His eyes shut as he was deep in thought. After taking a certain thing in his mind into considerable, he opened his eyes, hands reached out to stroke Aoi’s shoulder “We should live for the future. Even though things are hard at the present, tomorrow will come, and it is the most realistic thing. We can’t stop it from coming, so….either way….please lead a good life. Future won’t be as terrible as we may think.”
“Just like this fallow?”
“Yes. It’s strange for me to say so, but if we couldn’t prevent the future, as well as couldn’t deliberately end our life, then our last choice would be living.” Uruha said.
Aoi smiled sadly. Even he himself didn’t know whether he was really living or not. But he still agreed it half-heartedly, since he knew all of his friends just want him to live through the incident. Aoi took in a deep breath, savoring the flavor of the present to remind himself that his two feet were still keeping balance on the ground.
“Let me take you home” Uruha suggested.
“Uh” Aoi nodded.
End chapter 1
T/N: I don’t have any knowledge in Japanese. So this is a small explanation from the author and a friend of mine who is studying Japanese. About the name Aoi and two meanings of its. According to them, “blue” was pronounced “ao” in Japanese and “aoi” is its adjective. “Blue” usually joins with “spring” to form “seishun”, which means the youth ‘___’. Due to the difference in Chinese characters, Aoi’s girl friend was referred as “the youth” and Aoi himself as the “hollyhock”.
My comments: Uhm...I’m feeling really happy when I can finish this. I have many feelings, both negative and positive, after reading it. Either way, it’s really a worth-reading story and I’m eagerly waiting for the next chap. There are many things I want to say about it, but my mind refuses to work now. So uh…just the strongest impression I had when I first read the story. Somehow, I really like the way she portrayed Uruha’s image in Aoi’s eyes. In this chap, although Uruha appeared throughout, to comfort Aoi when he was facing the death of his girlfriend, to protect Aoi, to try to encourage him and give him the strength to keep on living, Aoi, on the other hand, was kind of unaware to Uruha’s presence. In Aoi’s eyes, Uruha was only “a silhouette, a shadow”. Answering to Uruha’s silent love, Aoi only turned to that girl ~
That’s all I guess. Recently, things were a little hard for me when I seemed to have lost my enthusiasm in writing. Doing this was a way I thought I could gain it back. And truthfully, as I’ve said, I’m feeling quite well now. Hope that it can help me to continue what I’ve meant to do for a long time.
[Translated fanfic] Suppression [Uruha/Aoi, 1/?]
Title: Suppression
Chapters: 1/?
Author: alzheimer13
Translator: syzygy_lestat
Genre: Au, Romance
Ratings: PG [expected to be higher in later chapters]
Warning: None
Pairings/Characters: Uruha/Aoi
Synopsis: “The youth has already died, don’t let the flower wither…please?”
Comments: This is the story that alzheimer13 has written for me recently, answering to my repeatedly molestation :D. I really like it, so I decide to translate it into English to share with you guys. Please note that English isn’t my mother tongue language, there might be some mistakes here and there. And one more thing, you’ve already known that translation makes the text lost its original meaning to some extent. There are things that are very beautiful in our language, but somehow sounding strange and illogical in English. Anyway, I’ve done my best and don’t hesitate to ask if you find anything difficult to understand. And Happy birthday to alzheimer13 ^^
Chapter 1
In the afternoon, the sun was burning hot. Pushing his fingertips through the door shades, he stared at the asphalted road in front of the building. Fingers moved slightly to widen the cracks for a better view. His eyes looked as if he was intending to do something.
In a swift movement, he retreated his hand, hastily rummaging a clutter of utensils on the table. The action caused them to scatter all around the room, before he snatched at a handkerchief, footsteps pounding on the floor in urgent. Putting the tiny soft object into his pocket, he rushed out of the room, running through the hall of his luxurious tenement, jumping to the elevator and throwing his body pass the glass door.
The baking sun seemed to be at its pinnacle that noon. He didn’t even know where all those beads of perspiration came from.
He stopped, taking quiet steps through the gate.
In front of his eyes was a man who was walking in limp in the middle of the pavement. Black suit covered his form, and a rivulet of tears was rolling down his left cheek.
“Aoi…” He called, holding out the handkerchief “How…is she?”
The other man snapped out of his daze by the question, a sheer panic appeared on his face as if he had just waken up from a nightmare. Aoi stared, tears suddenly flooded out, occupying the corners of his eyes and overflowing on his cheeks. Each stream of the salty liquid ran nonstop down his neck, sticking his black strands, wetting even the collar of his shirt.
“She…” Aoi strived to answer, his tongue seemed to be curved inversely into his throat “She couldn’t make it…”
Aoi was only an ordinary man, living in this city.
“Uruha san, she has gone.” Having that said, Aoi walked away. Uruha stretched out his arm quickly to pull the other man back. The snatch caused Aoi to stumble backward, he almost coiled his trembling body into Uruha’s hold.
The blonde tucked the sticky, covered in grime strands behind the other man’s ear, revealing his miserable tearstained face. Uruha was hurt “The youth has already died, don’t let the flower wither…please?” He said, eyebrows knitted into a line.
Aoi looked at him, but he couldn’t see clearly. The sunlight at noon was so blazing that it had turned him into a blind man. From his big forehead, beads of sweat followed the roots of his hair and moistened his face. Uruha was only a huge silhouette which concealed even the sun in his eyes.
“Aoi” The brunette breathed out that name “Can a flower be equal to the youth?” And everything turned into darkness. He threw his exhausted body into Uruha’s tight squeeze. And let nothingness invaded.
Aoi and Aoi, a lovely couple, to the extent that the God has bestowed them with the same name. One is the youth, and one is hollyhock.
~
The memory of that girl, whose soft old dress covering her feet, hanging on the girder of the attic room manifested itself. Everything was the same at that moment, the light from the sky made everything be under cover of darkness. The silence was deafening in his mind. All was only pieces of glistering black and white.
They were deeply in love with each other.
“Are you alright?”
The fan on the ceiling repeatedly rotated around its axis. Aoi said nothing to Uruha’s question. He just couldn’t stand the fact that the girl he loved had passed away. There wasn’t even a single reason. They were still here, her shimmering smiles, her oh-so-chaste kisses in place of good night wishes. But only after a night…
Uruha was mulling over hundreds of queries in his head as well for the time being. He was about to stand up, before he caught a glimpse of Aoi’s lonely dark orbs.
“Tomorrow…I’ll move.” Aoi said.
“Why?” The blonde asked in surprise.
“There were so many…so many things that I shouldn’t see here.”
“But where are you going to go? To the suburb? Or return to Mie?” Uruha was worried.
“I…”
The brunette wavered, the insecurity in words gave his desire to stay in Tokyo away. Uruha understood it too well, so he stopped at the edge of the bed, where Aoi was leaning his back on.
“Don’t be afraid…”
“I’m not afraid” Aoi said.
“Yes, you are. You’re very afraid to be exact.” Uruha kneeled down beside Aoi, strong arms propped on the mattress, one of his hands gently touched the other man’s shoulder “I can’t leave you like this. One Aoi is enough. I don’t want to lose another Aoi. Please, don’t run away?”
“Everything was still normal last night” The brunette said “Why did it turn out to be…”
“That’s the inevitable consequence.”
“What did you just say???” Aoi panicked “Inevitable???”
Uruha turned his face away from the brunette, his lips pressing into a thin line in reflection. There was something he didn’t want to reveal, and yet Aoi longed to know…”We both are artists you see. For women, this industry is more or less than an abyss. Even I myself sometimes wanted to end it.” Uruha paused, taking in slow yet hard breath. Something was lying suppressed in his heart, making him pant like a fish caught in a shoal. “You and I, we can’t help her. She was always like that…”
“What do you mean?”
“In fact, if an artist suddenly committed suicide, it wouldn’t be too hard to guess for the reason.” He whispered in his dry husky voice “But there is no one dare disclose it, so…”
“No, it can’t be.”
“Yes…”
“No.”
He was only an ordinary man, living in this city.
“No…”
Uruha kept silent.
“How can I not know what she had done…we had been with each other for that long…how…”
Aoi choked.
Uruha…didn’t say anything more.
The blonde feebly coughed to clear his throat and then glanced into the distance outside the window. Facing Aoi’s room was Uruha luxurious tenement.
“You mustn’t run away…never” He said in a low voice, his gaze lingered anxiously on the window. “Never.”
~
A week after the funeral, Aoi returned to his office. Pinning a tiny cross on his pocket, the man let other people know about his sorrow. He was the manager of a tourism company, so dealing with many customers everyday was a part of his job. Vaguely, he wondered if it was because of that reason that smiles could come back to his lips. To tell the truth: that was how he kept on living.
“Oh this boy appears again” An employee in dark suit quickly stepped in, hanging around in front of the TV in the middle of the company hall, despite his busy schedule. He laughed off “Is this boy Uruha your friend?” and put a pile of tidy handbooks on Aoi’s desk, absentmindedly asking the brunette some questions.
Aoi nodded, his smile got brighter “Yes, he lives in the tenement opposite to mine.”
“Isn’t he bothered by girls? Considering how famous he is?!”
“If you don’t tell them where he is living then I will be very grateful.”
The employee then burst into laughing “There is no time for that you know.”
~
In the late afternoon, rays of sunlight dyed lines of tree on the roadside in sepia. Hordes of students hurried to the underground station after school, the sound of chattering and laughter was endlessly was sent to his ears. It was in rush hours that this street seemed to be in the peak of happiness. Aoi lethargically stood at the stair, his eyes weren’t able to shut though there was nothing they were to see. There were a great deal of invisible things, and yet not that because we couldn’t sight them, we assumed they didn’t exist. He gently touched the cross on his pocket.
“Aoi.”
It wasn’t his voice but another man’s.
“Uruha…do you also use the subway?”
In no time, the tall form was standing before him. His hair hung down disheveledly on the shoulders, the hat covered half of his face. However, the mole on his neck and the familiar necklace with that headless angel pendant clearly told Aoi it was no one but Uruha. Aoi stared at the pendant, before being waken up from his daze by the blonde’s brushing against his shoulder.
“I’m not feeling secure when you’re alone in the street. So I take my time to follow you.”
“Since when did your company become that compliant?” Aoi felt a little uneasy because of the close proximity between them. His back had touched the banister. Still, from behind, he could sense how that big hand wanted to embrace his whole body, how it wanted him to indulge in its hug.
“No! Stop.” Aoi started.
“What?” Uruha asked surprisingly “You don’t want to move to somewhere else?” The reverse question from Uruha even worsened the brunette’s awkward situation. He didn’t understand why he ever felt those hands wanted to do something else, though the thought only stayed in his head for a moment, before it disappeared completely.
Uruha accompanied Aoi until they reached the brunette’s tenement, he just didn’t go up to visit the brunette’s apartment. Aoi seemed to share the same notion though. He didn’t want Uruha to treat him so special, since he hoped the blonde would never think he would do something reckless. He really longed to get over and live on, even though he had to be lonely.
On their way back home, Aoi walked in the front, his shadow cast down backward in a distraught way, looking as if it was accidentally clasping on Uruha’s shoulder. The blonde didn’t walk too close, neither too distant, from Aoi. The person before him became bizarrely alienated. On the spur of the moment, he sped up his pace a little bit so that he could say something to break the secluded atmosphere of that afternoon.
Aoi tilted his head to the side as if he was aware Uruha’s approach. “Aoi san” The blonde called.
“What?” Aoi asked, tiredness wearing on his face.
“Can we go home later? I want you to come to a place with me?”
After hearing Uruha’s suggestion, Aoi heaved a long sigh as he pondered on it “Whenever we go, we will have to return eventually.”
Knitting his eyebrows, the blonde looked attentively at him “Why do you always have to worry about every single thing before you take an action?” Having that said, Uruha dragged him along, acting as if he knew there wasn’t any strength left on the brunette to refuse. They passed by a lot of wooden houses, dense alleys, only to stop at a fallow behind a dilapidated building.
The soil here had been in desertification, tufts of grass only remained scattering on the edge, leaving a strip of white sand amidst the wasteland. Uruha took off his shoes and socks, stamping his feet on the surface until they were buried deep into the sand. He turned to Aoi, who stood still behind him, and let out a silly smile “Come here, quickly!!!” Seeing Aoi not moving just a bit, he smacked his lips and put the shoes on his hand down, running towards the brunette and insistently tugging him “Don’t worry, there are only children around here. No one will judge us for anything.” Uruha shoved Aoi down until the other man sat comfortably on the sand “Stay still.” He smiled, before gently lifting Aoi’s feet up. The action only made Aoi more bewildered.
“It’s ok, just stay till!” Uruha continued.
Aoi did as he was told, holding the briefcase to his chest, letting the tall blonde do anything he wanted to. And out of the blue, he realized something. This blazing red of late afternoon sun, and this scenery…were parts of his memory about them three in old days: Aoi, Aoi and Uruha. The brunette had struck up a friendship with a girl whose name was the same as his, two names with two different meanings and yet molding with one another in perfect harmony. Back then, Uruha was only a tall blurry figure behind that girl. Uruha left no impression on the brunette except the image of a younger boy with strange lips: they curved up naturally as though the boy was in the sulks, but were a perfectly suitable feature on his face nonetheless.
At that time, the brunette’s heart was beating in excitement with his eventful life, when his love for that girl was obvious as fate. From that very sepia afternoon, she and his new friend - Uruha- started walking on the same path, they became artists who were loved by countless of people. Aoi and she were still deeply in love, their hands still held each other’s tightly. But now, the more he thought about it, the harder he could steadily respire. Everything had changed.
Deep in his meditation, he didn’t notice that Uruha had already taken off his shoes. Only when the brunette felt the warmth from those hands hugging his feet did he slowly have the understanding of what was happening.
“What…what are you doing?” Aoi was taken aback.
Without an answer, Uruha pushed his feet down, burying them into the cold sand “Sand massage.”
Aoi was even more confused “What do you mean???”
Uruha sat down next to him, his feet also overwhelmed in the sand as he averted his sight to the low-roofed housed on the other side of the canal. When Aoi gradually felt the cold and ruggedness of the material, he stopped questioning for the reason, simply mimicking Uruha by hiding his toes, which were wobble due to being in those tight shoes for so long, into every grain of sand.
“Hey, Aoi-san, do you still remember what we said when we made friend?”
Flying along with the breeze, Uruha’s brown blond strands embraced his whole face. Under the late afternoon sun, they looked as if they were about to dissolve into the scenery. He coughed and rephrased his question, waking up Aoi’s wandering mind “Do you remember?”
Aoi’s thin lips cracked, haft wanting to open, haft wanting to close and leave the words unvoiced. Uruha chuckled “We have promised we would always be honest with each other.”
Aoi looked at Uruha, before his sight descended to the sand surface, his feet still buried deep down as though they wanted to keep the emotions at bay. Uruha proceeded “After all those years, perhaps…there were a few times we couldn’t keep it, right?”
“It…isn’t important anymore” Aoi said “Eight years has passed, I’m satisfied with what we’ve been through.”
“Aoi san…if…”
“What?”
“Supposing that….I’m….”
Uruha was left speechless as he couldn’t finish his statement. And without warning, he felt like a sleepwalker, jerking his body and hastily turning away.
“This place has changed” Aoi smiled softly, raising his feet from the dune “The sand, where are they from, and the meadow from bygone days, I don’t know where they has gone to.”
Uruha put his hand on Aoi’s feet, gently caress them to flicking off the remaining dust “Why do you ask that? The dune was born from the very meadow before.”
Aoi stared at him and suddenly sniggered “I never saw them earlier, and neither did they.” And then he stood up, shaking off his feet, putting on his socks and shoes.
“I want you to be strong, because every difficult period has its time to end, really.” Uruha bounced up.
“Uh.”
“This fallow might looks a little deserted, but you see, children like it a lot. Their joy is being able to playing around here after school time. Before, when it was still a meadow with those bushy trees, there was only us. But henceforth, there is to come a park and I think it will be much merrier.”
“You mean…?”
“Maybe what I’ve said is a little incomprehensible?”
“…”
Uruha grabbed his shoes, walking towards Aoi with his bare feet. His eyes shut as he was deep in thought. After taking a certain thing in his mind into considerable, he opened his eyes, hands reached out to stroke Aoi’s shoulder “We should live for the future. Even though things are hard at the present, tomorrow will come, and it is the most realistic thing. We can’t stop it from coming, so….either way….please lead a good life. Future won’t be as terrible as we may think.”
“Just like this fallow?”
“Yes. It’s strange for me to say so, but if we couldn’t prevent the future, as well as couldn’t deliberately end our life, then our last choice would be living.” Uruha said.
Aoi smiled sadly. Even he himself didn’t know whether he was really living or not. But he still agreed it half-heartedly, since he knew all of his friends just want him to live through the incident. Aoi took in a deep breath, savoring the flavor of the present to remind himself that his two feet were still keeping balance on the ground.
“Let me take you home” Uruha suggested.
“Uh” Aoi nodded.
End chapter 1
T/N: I don’t have any knowledge in Japanese. So this is a small explanation from the author and a friend of mine who is studying Japanese. About the name Aoi and two meanings of its. According to them, “blue” was pronounced “ao” in Japanese and “aoi” is its adjective. “Blue” usually joins with “spring” to form “seishun”, which means the youth ‘___’. Due to the difference in Chinese characters, Aoi’s girl friend was referred as “the youth” and Aoi himself as the “hollyhock”.
My comments: Uhm...I’m feeling really happy when I can finish this. I have many feelings, both negative and positive, after reading it. Either way, it’s really a worth-reading story and I’m eagerly waiting for the next chap. There are many things I want to say about it, but my mind refuses to work now. So uh…just the strongest impression I had when I first read the story. Somehow, I really like the way she portrayed Uruha’s image in Aoi’s eyes. In this chap, although Uruha appeared throughout, to comfort Aoi when he was facing the death of his girlfriend, to protect Aoi, to try to encourage him and give him the strength to keep on living, Aoi, on the other hand, was kind of unaware to Uruha’s presence. In Aoi’s eyes, Uruha was only “a silhouette, a shadow”. Answering to Uruha’s silent love, Aoi only turned to that girl ~
That’s all I guess. Recently, things were a little hard for me when I seemed to have lost my enthusiasm in writing. Doing this was a way I thought I could gain it back. And truthfully, as I’ve said, I’m feeling quite well now. Hope that it can help me to continue what I’ve meant to do for a long time.