Wandering For Love -Epilogue (Part 1/3)-
Title: Wandering For Love
Author :kame_kiyumi
Pairing : Akame
Rating : PG-13
Genre : Romance, friendship
Summary: When two persons meet one another at a cross-junction, will there be a turning point or everything will remain intact? Does true love come by so easily? What will true love bring upon to the two persons? Fate will decide them all. But before they can get the happiness they want, they have to cross a few obstacles…
Epilogue Part 1:
Finally, the awaited big day had arrived. Exactly the same as the previous time, only Jin and Kazuya’s families and close friends were invited. Even the event was still held at the same venue when they had first announced that they wanted to get married and be bonded with each other for eternity - their own apartment. Inside the posh apartment, everyone was busying themselves with the drinks and delicious food served on the long table and mingling with the familiar people around there.
Everyone, everything had been well-prepared and staged accurately. The drinks, the food, and the display of the microphones with their stands that stood straight in the middle of the hall and the chairs and tables well arranged for all the guests were all at their respective places. Everything was almost perfect. Almost. Because the only missing thing was the loving couple - Jin and Kazuya, who were also the hosts of the whole event.
Just then, Keita made an elegant, smooth whistle sound. Everyone turned to look at him curiously while he cocked his chin once at the dazzling pair who was dressed in their stylish suits and were currently making their way down the corridor from their own bedroom.
They sauntered down to the hall and halted among their guests with bright smiles. They lingered around to initiate short chats with their guests.
“Are you feeling nervous now, Kame-chan?” Yamapi asked teasingly, wriggling his eyebrows up and down in a playful manner.
Kazuya rolled his eyes and smirked. “How could that be? I will never be nervous.” He accepted a plate of sandwiches gratefully from Jin who raised an eyebrow at Kazuya’s answer.
“Anyway, how was the proposal like actually? We are very interested and curious in knowing the entire process!” Koki exclaimed inquisitively.
“We wanted to know how this Bakanishi actually said those mushy words to you. He doesn’t seem like one.” Nakamaru piped in with extravagant enthusiasm while Kazuya snickered cutely at that.
Jin was about to protest, not wanting to let anybody else knew how he had actually won Kazuya’s heart because… because he felt shy about it. At that point of time, Ueda spoke up tranquilly. “But I am more interested to know how exactly and what method he actually used to let our Kame-chan gave a nod.”
“Oh well, he…” Kazuya started harmlessly but Jin had to cut him off immediately before his reputation would be put on stake, or rather, he knew he would become a laughing stock for the others for a lifetime. A lifetime. So no, he would definitely stop that, no matter what it took.
“Kazu! Don’t reveal anything!” Jin interrupted in horror.
“Why?” Kazuya raised a questioning brow mutinously.
“Because… Because…” Jin panicked as he couldn’t come up with anything to retort at all. He was flustered to the max. But one thing he remembered clearly was ‘never reveal anything to anyone’.
“Ah~ Bakanishi is shy~ oh my!” Yamapi teased mischievously.
“No! I’m not! I… that was only between me and Kazu!” Jin defended obstinately.
“Aww… Bakanishi-” Yamapi was about to say something again when he was being stopped brutally.
“Shut up, Pi!” Jin scolded. Right after that whine from Jin, Keita gave a sharp smack onto Yamapi’s head, causing the latter to wail out in pain. “Ouch!”
“Serves you right for teasing Jin.” It was all Keita retorted smartly with his ever-so-cool-yet-innocent look.
“Keita!” Yamapi pouted.
“Well, it’s alright; I can always tell you guys another time.” Kazuya smirked evilly while Jin glared unbelievingly at his soon-to-be husband and mumbling something like “Kazu’s so mean”. Kazuya chuckled out loud; he was obviously enjoying this scene.
“Kazu-chan.” Keita called out in a chiding voice.
“Hmm?” Kazuya answered innocently, oblivious to Keita’s hint.
Keita narrowed his eyes at Kazuya before shifting his directed gaze to the pouting Jin beside them and tilted his head slightly as a signal. That should be enough to be a hint.
“Oh…” And smart Kazuya seemed to get the tip-off. Thank God.
“Jin.” Kazuya called out to his attention. “Thanks for this sandwich. You want to share with me?” Kazuya asked while bringing the said sandwich to his mouth, wanting to give a big bite. He had successfully gotten his hungry boyfriend’s attention who had grinned back at him. If Jin has a tail, he would have wagged and swept it around occasionally on the ground like how little Ran-chan who was sprawling on the floor between Kazuya and Jin’s feet would be doing now.
Just then, Keita let out a loud shout inadvertently at the same time as he tried to stop Kazuya from biting down on the sandwich. “Kazu-chan! Hold on! There are tomatoes in it!”
“Hmm?” Kazuya halted without more ado and examined the piece of deluxe bread in his hand.
“Jin, you should know by now that Kame-chan doesn’t like tomatoes, why didn’t you pick it out before giving the sandwiches to him?” Koki asked in a tone more like accusing than plainly inquiring.
“Well, Kazu…” Jin started but Kazuya hurried to help him to clarify.
“This is not Jin’s fault.” Kazuya smiled genially at the others. “I have decided to start trying to eat tomatoes from now on.” Jin spared Kazuya a perceptible look. “Jin has always been telling me about how good tomato is for my health and it’s not disgusting at all, so… I would like to conquer my own fear and start to give it a try. It’s not really a big deal anyway.” Kazuya gave off a devious shrug and attempted to bite into the bread except that Jin could see a tint of hesitance on his face.
“But Kazu, you don’t have to compel yourself. If you really don’t want to eat it, it’s fine.” Jin assured compassionately.
“Jin, it’s alright. I’m doing it for you, for us.” Kazuya finished with a warm, assuring smile. Jin mirrored the smile, resembling more like a gleeful, beaming kid and he moved forward to stamp a peck on Kazuya’s right cheek. “You’re right anyway. I really should start eating tomatoes if they are so beneficial to me. It’s just that I need more time to get used to eating them.”
Jin nodded knowingly and pecked on Kame’s right cheek one more time, to which this action caused all their friends to roll their eyes at the couple. Kazuya then proceeded to bite down on the sandwich but grimaced a bit while masticating.
“Anyway Kei, you’re getting more and more gorgeous now! With this new hairstyle and hair color, it’s like you liberated a kind of… different aura from previously. And you’ve started to wear the studs again! I have always loved seeing you with diamond studs.” Kazuya moved off to comment spontaneously about Keita, checking out his childhood friend after swallowing the food. He was totally oblivious to Jin’s grim expression which was so aghast that looked like he was suffering from a hard-to-control nervous breakdown at the moment.
‘Did Kazu just checked Keita out!? It couldn’t be!’
“Oh! And I remembered your new song goes like this ‘baby, don’t remind me~’. Am I right? I listened to it a lot and I especially love this line.” Kazuya continued to state his awesome remarks without even sparing a few seconds to think about Jin who was scowling from beside him. “Oh! And that ‘addicted to la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la love~’, I love that as well!”
Jin stared at Kazuya in astonished surprise. ‘Kazu has actually paid so much attention to Keita? How did his actions went through without me noticing them?!’
Without realizing, he pouted dumbly. But soon, the dumb pout turned into a furious pout as his own words started to sink in deeper into his sea of thoughts. He wrapped his hand around Kazuya’s wrist and pulled harshly, causing the smaller man to crash against his side, nearly sending the remaining food from the plate to the floor. Jin couldn’t care at the moment and he shot his ferocious glare narrowly at Kazuya then at Keita.
Keita immediately got the implication. Jin was damn jealous and possessive now. That spelled troubles. “Wow. Easy, Jin. I’m not going to snatch Kazu-chan away from you. Not to mention on this day.” Keita snickered at Jin’s huge, possessive reaction and Kazuya’s embarrassed, bashful expression.
“Jin! What the hell are you thinking about? Don’t pull me so hard!” Kazuya exclaimed furiously but yet felt touched by Jin’s possessiveness at the same time. It’s his possessive Bakanishi afterall.
“Quit being a jealous freak, Jin.” Keita commented freely. “Relax.”
Jin immediately glared at Keita again before smirking wickedly. He cleared his throat and began to sing with two tunes which Keita was awfully familiar with, w-inds.’s ‘Don’t Remind Me’ and ‘Addicted to Love’.
“Keitaaaa, now you shall listen to meeee~ Jin here is addicted to la la la la, loveee~~”
Keita was astonished and murmured softly, “how the heck did he manage to combine the chorus melody of both songs together?”
That caused almost all of their friends to laugh out uncontrollably including Kazuya. Ran-chan brought up her head in bewilderment, pondering why her owner and his crazy friends were laughing like mad people now.
Jin grinned in triumph and just when he wanted to go on with his singing, Kazuya smacked his palm onto his mouth, making Jin mumbling incoherent words instead.
Keita tried to halt their laughing spree and reminded the couple kindheartedly. “I think it’s time for you two to start off with the ceremony.”
“Oh, right~ it’s about time. Come on, Bakanishijinjin. Stop pouting and glaring at me like this…” Kazuya laughed out again, enjoying his teasing on his soon-to-be husband.
He slipped his hand into Jin’s smoothly and pulled the latter towards the center. Ran-chan got up from her position on the floor instantly and trailed after her owner, wagging her tail left and right once in a while. Once they had stood before the microphones, Kazuya began to address all the guests in the hall. “Good afternoon, everyone. We’re sorry to keep everyone waiting.” They bowed down slightly to express their apology.
After they had straightened up, Jin took hold of his own microphone. “Thank you for coming over today to commemorate this blissful moment with us. This blissful moment that will change both Kazuya’s and my life from now on. It is a significant turning point in our lives.”
Everyone in the hall stayed still in their positions and listened to them attentively.
“I’m sure it’s clear to everyone here regarding the objective of this event this afternoon.” Kazuya smiled and turned sideway to peek at Jin who returned his smile automatically.
Kazuya turned back to his own microphone and began to talk. “I know that there’s a high possibility that Jin might kill me right after my speech but… I felt that I wanted to share my happiness with everyone here.” Jin gradually twisted his head and gazed at Kazuya intriguingly.
“Jin and I… we have known each other when we first met in school. It was an unexpected yet significant encounter when it’s like… the time has stopped and there’s only the two of us in the classroom when in actual fact, all the classmates were present. I remembered we were exchanging random lines of dialogs, I’m not positive whether Jin remembered them but for me, I will never forget any of it. I will remember them throughout my whole life. The sweet, alluring taste of the first time we were together is a light situated deep in my heart, shining glamorously even up till now.”
Kazuya paused for a few seconds before continuing. “I never quite believe in love before. To me, it’s like a nasty mystery. The more I know about love, the more apprehensive I become of it. I even swore that I would never love anyone. However, I met Jin. From then on, my self-restraint broke down. My heartstrings got tugged at. Since then, Jin and I have ambled a long, rough way to reach one another and subsequently took another elongated, uneven path to come to this last stop, building and protect our happiness. And frankly speaking, I was very touched by how he had proposed to me that night during our anniversary.”
“Kazu!” Jin shrieked into the microphone, feeling flustered and bashful at the same time.
“It’s okay, Jin. We should share our happy moments with everybody here. Ne, my love?” Kazuya sweet-talked while he pulled at Jin’s arm slightly in a whining way.
Jin had to relent upon hearing Kazuya’s sweet, pleading voice. There’s no way he could resist that addictive voice. So he knew… he had lost, he would have to let Kazuya shared his embarrassing act with everyone.
Kazuya sensing that Jin was keeping quiet, he took the opportunity to start his story while holding dearly onto Jin’s hand in his.
“That night, when I’d arrived back home, Jin had already prepared dinner for us. Then after we had eaten, he said he had prepared gifts for me. But he needed me to play a game in order to get the prizes. The rule was to choose two numbers out of the three numbers he was going to read to me. So I chose the first number which is my birth date and I got a song he composed in return as the first gift. Anyway, that song was the reciprocation for the song I have composed for him, remember Kizuna?”
Everyone smiled knowingly. Kazuya was so sure that everyone must have remembered his song for ‘kizuna’ was the only one thing that refused to fade away despite their separation and it was also the only one thing that kept Jin and Kazuya connected regardless of how much time has passed.
“Then after he had played and sang the song, I was touched and burst into tears.” Kazuya giggled at his own embarrassment and Jin laughed along coyly with him as well. “The melody when he strummed the guitar, the lyrics when he sang to me, it is a song that declined to fade away from my mind. It is like… a magical power that keeps us connected. Following that, he comforted me with soothing, touching words.”
“Like what kind of words!?” Koki’s playful voice rang around the whole area.
“Koki, shut up!” Jin scolded lightly, face fuming red in embarrassment.
Kazuya chuckled. Their parents looked on with amusement.
“Alright, so Jin comforted me with his words… then he told me to choose another number for my second present. And this time, I chose his birth date which yes, I still got it right.” Kazuya had to roll his eyes for the effect.
“Ah~ that’s too easy for Kame-chan, Jin-kun! You must have cheated ne~” Junno shouted, his teasing mood on.
“Shut up, Junno! Before I kick you out of my apartment.” Jin gritted his teeth to show his anger, eyes shooting daggers at poor Junno who tried to hide behind Ueda.
“Yes, I thought the same like you too, Junno. Because it’s really too easy for me, you know it, right?” Kazuya laughed out. “But… Jin swore that it’s the truth. He didn’t cheat at all.” Kazuya shrugged his shoulders halfheartedly. “Anyway, that’s not the important point here. The important part is before he gave me the present, he got down on one of his knees and handed a velvet box out for me. This was totally unexpected for me.”
He felt Jin released a shudder and tightened his hold on his hand. He squeezed Jin’s hand back as a response and continued to speak. “The note along with the rings was a touching and mushy one. For that, I won’t be sharing it here since… that’s really between the two of us. At least I wanted to keep that tiny little part as a secret between us.” Kazuya smiled like a shy kitten while waving his index finger alternatively between Jin and him to emphasize his point.
“AWW~” Echoes were heard.
“The rings were a pair. So he proposed to me with the ring and well, yeah… the rest you should have known right?”
“Aww~ that’s sweet~” Mrs. Kamenashi and Mrs. Akanishi cooed enviously like teenage girls. “Why didn’t our husbands did the same like them?”
“I want to keep replicating this lifestyle I have with Jin, all these acts that build up to our love. I’m addicted to love. I’m addicted to Jin.” Kazuya smiled bashfully. “That’s all I wanted to share… the rest is between me and Jin then.” Kazuya ended with a blissful smile.
All of their friends cheered and whistled for them. It took Jin a few minutes to regain his calm composure and spoke up.
“Yes, exactly. The encounter between Kazuya and me is an once-in-a-lifetime meeting. So going by the normal implication, it meant that it’s not easy to just meet the right person in this whole wide world, not to mention that the chances are lesser than one percent. Yet, I found Kazuya and just lose myself in this love that hit me with a lightning speed. Like what Kazu has just mentioned, we have taken a long and hard time to come together, to be what we are today. However, all these would not be achieved without some help from our parents.”
Jin gave a warm bittersweet smile. “The memories of the period when Kazuya and I broke up are still fresh in my mind. It’s a ghastly feeling. I remembered, that time I couldn’t find any words to respond to Kazuya’s ‘goodbye’, it’s a thing I couldn’t accept, but… I couldn’t see him in front of me any longer. It’s like…” Jin trailed off faintly to try and gathered the right words to describe his feelings during that awful, distressing time. He furrowed his eyebrow and thought attentively. “Like… the empty shell of me has been smashed into millions of uncountable pieces. If only I could turn the hands of the time back to that day, that room, that moment when I could stop the words from spilling out from our lips, I would definitely do it within a heartbeat.”
Click here to the second part~