[gaspuh AU, Ikuta Toma/Narumi Riko] Transcendence
Title: Transcendence
Drama/Pairing: Ikuta Toma and Narumi Riko
Rating: PG
Summary: He thought he was waiting for her to grow up. She does, far too soon than either of them anticipated.
A/N: Dedicated to all who have kindly and wonderfully pinch hit for JE White Day 2011 ♥♥♥ Inspired and formulated while I was watching that sad drama special starring Ryo whose title is kinda long I can’t remember it whole right now except Niini, so I apologize for the angst and sap D:. AU and unbeta'd.
”I love you,” she says.
Her hair is tied back in a messy ponytail and there’s a smudge of dirt on her nose, and it’s all I could do not to laugh out loud in her face as she glares at me with all the fierceness her ten-year-old self can muster. I snort, though, biting on my lower lip as I turn away to lie on my side, grass tickling my arm. “No, you don’t.”
“I do,” Riko insists, and from the tone of her voice I can tell that she’s not pleased and just might possibly throw a tantrum soon.
“You don’t.”
“I do!”
“You don’t-”
“I do I do I do!”
It amuses me more than her, making this silly verbal exchange go on for several more moments, when she abruptly stops, as if realizing that her childish parrying highlights exactly what she is in this moment: still a child. Ten years old, I muse. I’m eighteen. Yet I didn’t even know a tomboy like her who could punch boys in the playground instead of letting them make her cry thought of things like being in love.
“You have to say it back,” her voice cuts into my reverie. I’d been about to fall asleep. Sleep is something of a vice once you’re in university: there are simply too many things to do that left little time for it. I thought I’d get to catch up on it when I come back home from vacation-being pestered by my ten-year-old neighbor was not part of my plans.
“Maybe later,” I mumble, turning around again and yawning.
“Promise?”
“Mmmh.”
Her hand slips into mine, and I find that I don’t mind, because for all the things she does and the situations she gets herself into, it is a mystery to me how soft and warm it always feels. “You promise?”
“Promise,” I say, trying to muster a smile and hope it doesn’t look like a grimace. Her hand tightly clutches mine as I hold it, her knuckles white from the grip. Or from fear. I’d rather not think of the latter one, even though she is looking up at me with eyes wide from exactly that.
“But it always hurts,” she whispers, licking her lips, though her grip relaxes a little. “It hurts when they stick the needle in, Toma-kun, it really does…”
“It won’t, this time,” I tell her, lying. I nod, giving her a reassuring smile. “The doctor told me. It’ll hurt just a little-” I hold up my thumb and forefinger to my eye to indicate a small, small space between them. “See? Like an ant bite. Just like that.”
She nods, believing me, and I feel my smile crumbling a little as she smiles up at me brightly. “Thank you.”
“For what?” My thumb brushes over her knuckles of its own accord, and she sighs, closing her eyes and relaxing back against her pillows.
“For being here… I thought you wouldn’t come.”
”Why would you think that?”
She bites on her lower lip, looking away, and I can’t quite connect this shy fifteen-year-old to her sassy ten-year-old self who had so confidently proclaimed her love for me. Now Riko can barely look me in the eye, but when she does, I find myself drawn in. She looks the same, except-this is cliché but true-all grown up. Maybe it’s the way her hair is down, or that clip that secures some of it away from her face as if asserting her femininity. Maybe it’s the way her face is rid of the perpetual black smudge on her nose, not having any make-up on but looking clean. Or maybe it’s the way her eyes are soft with none of the you-and-what-army look she always had when she was younger. I have half a mind to crack a joke and ask her if she’d been sent to an academy that taught ladies how to be prim and proper, but the thought dies when she looks away again, her head tilted to one side, making a lock of her hair fall over her cheek.
I have to suppress the sudden urge to reach out and tuck it behind her ear.
“No reason,” Riko says finally, smiling a little, as if she has a secret she had yet to share with the world. “Your parents hadn’t said you’d be coming home.” I am twenty-three, and I think, this must be what free-falling feels like. “It’s really good to see you again.” She turns to face me, and it is all I can do not to run away.
I can’t run away, not while she’s inside for yet another test. I think I’m sick of all the tests and the white-washed walls of this hospital, sick of her being sick and this feeling in my chest that still feels tight and heavy, no matter how much I draw air in-and feel even more sick when I think that if there’s anyone who ought to be sick of all this, it’s her. But I’ve never heard her complain, not even once. Not even when I ran my hand through her hair and it came away with my fingers in clumps. Her eyes had widened before looking away in-not only embarrassment, but shame. I’d taken her into my arms then and whispered that she still looks beautiful no matter what.
Her screams pierce through the door, and I lean my head against it, hands clenching as I wish I can take her again into my arms right now.
She feels as frail as she looks when I gather her close, later when she is wheeled back into her own room. “I’m sorry,” I whisper into her ear.
Her fingers twitch slightly, too weak to even curl against my shirt. “For what…?”
For running away, I think, taking two steps at a time as I thunder up her house and into her room. I hadn’t run away that day, but I’d stayed away for two years. My studies kept me busy, I reasoned. She wrote long letters. I wrote back sparingly. It was my mother who’d written to tell me Riko is sick. Cancer, inoperable, a year or so left to live.
I burst through the door, startling all of them. She’s sitting on her bed, the sunlight coming in from her window making her hair fanning out behind her appear to be some sort of halo. Her parents and younger brother and my parents are there, but all I see is how her face lights up when she sees me, ashen cheeks turning into two spots of pink as she silently holds out her arms to beckon me closer.
For all the injustice in the world I currently felt, there is nothing more right in this moment than holding her against me and feeling her holding me just as tightly.
“A boy and a girl,” she murmurs against my neck.
“Boy first?” The hospital bed is too narrow to fit both of us in. I sit on the bed, careful not to dislodge any of the tubes around her.
“Mmm. So he can protect his sister.”
“But what if I want two girls?”
“Boy and girl,” she insists. I chuckle, glad to see a shadow of her stubborn self, wishing that her body could be just as stubborn as needed for her to survive.
“That means you’ll get well, and then someday…” We’ll get married, I think, but don’t have the courage to say out loud.
She smiles. It will forever be engraved in my memory. “I love you,” she says, and I don’t have the courage to say it back, either.
”Isn’t she the most precious thing?”
I’m not quite sure what I’m doing in the next house, but my mother had exclaimed something about going to see the baby, and I was dragged with them. I am eight years old and do not particularly have any interest in seeing a screaming baby; I’d had enough of that with my own brother. But somehow this baby is thrust into my arms, and I find myself staring at her, blinking as she lets out a yawn and stretches against me, and I smile.
“You’re the most precious thing,” I whisper.
She stirs, inhaling shakily, then exhaling, her breathing getting more few and far in between. Her existence is slowly slipping away right in front of my eyes, but never have I felt her more alive as I press my ear to her heart, listening to her faltering heartbeat.
“I love you,” I say. The words resound, hollow in her chest.
Drama/Pairing: Ikuta Toma and Narumi Riko
Rating: PG
Summary: He thought he was waiting for her to grow up. She does, far too soon than either of them anticipated.
A/N: Dedicated to all who have kindly and wonderfully pinch hit for JE White Day 2011 ♥♥♥ Inspired and formulated while I was watching that sad drama special starring Ryo whose title is kinda long I can’t remember it whole right now except Niini, so I apologize for the angst and sap D:. AU and unbeta'd.
”I love you,” she says.
Her hair is tied back in a messy ponytail and there’s a smudge of dirt on her nose, and it’s all I could do not to laugh out loud in her face as she glares at me with all the fierceness her ten-year-old self can muster. I snort, though, biting on my lower lip as I turn away to lie on my side, grass tickling my arm. “No, you don’t.”
“I do,” Riko insists, and from the tone of her voice I can tell that she’s not pleased and just might possibly throw a tantrum soon.
“You don’t.”
“I do!”
“You don’t-”
“I do I do I do!”
It amuses me more than her, making this silly verbal exchange go on for several more moments, when she abruptly stops, as if realizing that her childish parrying highlights exactly what she is in this moment: still a child. Ten years old, I muse. I’m eighteen. Yet I didn’t even know a tomboy like her who could punch boys in the playground instead of letting them make her cry thought of things like being in love.
“You have to say it back,” her voice cuts into my reverie. I’d been about to fall asleep. Sleep is something of a vice once you’re in university: there are simply too many things to do that left little time for it. I thought I’d get to catch up on it when I come back home from vacation-being pestered by my ten-year-old neighbor was not part of my plans.
“Maybe later,” I mumble, turning around again and yawning.
“Promise?”
“Mmmh.”
Her hand slips into mine, and I find that I don’t mind, because for all the things she does and the situations she gets herself into, it is a mystery to me how soft and warm it always feels. “You promise?”
“Promise,” I say, trying to muster a smile and hope it doesn’t look like a grimace. Her hand tightly clutches mine as I hold it, her knuckles white from the grip. Or from fear. I’d rather not think of the latter one, even though she is looking up at me with eyes wide from exactly that.
“But it always hurts,” she whispers, licking her lips, though her grip relaxes a little. “It hurts when they stick the needle in, Toma-kun, it really does…”
“It won’t, this time,” I tell her, lying. I nod, giving her a reassuring smile. “The doctor told me. It’ll hurt just a little-” I hold up my thumb and forefinger to my eye to indicate a small, small space between them. “See? Like an ant bite. Just like that.”
She nods, believing me, and I feel my smile crumbling a little as she smiles up at me brightly. “Thank you.”
“For what?” My thumb brushes over her knuckles of its own accord, and she sighs, closing her eyes and relaxing back against her pillows.
“For being here… I thought you wouldn’t come.”
”Why would you think that?”
She bites on her lower lip, looking away, and I can’t quite connect this shy fifteen-year-old to her sassy ten-year-old self who had so confidently proclaimed her love for me. Now Riko can barely look me in the eye, but when she does, I find myself drawn in. She looks the same, except-this is cliché but true-all grown up. Maybe it’s the way her hair is down, or that clip that secures some of it away from her face as if asserting her femininity. Maybe it’s the way her face is rid of the perpetual black smudge on her nose, not having any make-up on but looking clean. Or maybe it’s the way her eyes are soft with none of the you-and-what-army look she always had when she was younger. I have half a mind to crack a joke and ask her if she’d been sent to an academy that taught ladies how to be prim and proper, but the thought dies when she looks away again, her head tilted to one side, making a lock of her hair fall over her cheek.
I have to suppress the sudden urge to reach out and tuck it behind her ear.
“No reason,” Riko says finally, smiling a little, as if she has a secret she had yet to share with the world. “Your parents hadn’t said you’d be coming home.” I am twenty-three, and I think, this must be what free-falling feels like. “It’s really good to see you again.” She turns to face me, and it is all I can do not to run away.
I can’t run away, not while she’s inside for yet another test. I think I’m sick of all the tests and the white-washed walls of this hospital, sick of her being sick and this feeling in my chest that still feels tight and heavy, no matter how much I draw air in-and feel even more sick when I think that if there’s anyone who ought to be sick of all this, it’s her. But I’ve never heard her complain, not even once. Not even when I ran my hand through her hair and it came away with my fingers in clumps. Her eyes had widened before looking away in-not only embarrassment, but shame. I’d taken her into my arms then and whispered that she still looks beautiful no matter what.
Her screams pierce through the door, and I lean my head against it, hands clenching as I wish I can take her again into my arms right now.
She feels as frail as she looks when I gather her close, later when she is wheeled back into her own room. “I’m sorry,” I whisper into her ear.
Her fingers twitch slightly, too weak to even curl against my shirt. “For what…?”
For running away, I think, taking two steps at a time as I thunder up her house and into her room. I hadn’t run away that day, but I’d stayed away for two years. My studies kept me busy, I reasoned. She wrote long letters. I wrote back sparingly. It was my mother who’d written to tell me Riko is sick. Cancer, inoperable, a year or so left to live.
I burst through the door, startling all of them. She’s sitting on her bed, the sunlight coming in from her window making her hair fanning out behind her appear to be some sort of halo. Her parents and younger brother and my parents are there, but all I see is how her face lights up when she sees me, ashen cheeks turning into two spots of pink as she silently holds out her arms to beckon me closer.
For all the injustice in the world I currently felt, there is nothing more right in this moment than holding her against me and feeling her holding me just as tightly.
“A boy and a girl,” she murmurs against my neck.
“Boy first?” The hospital bed is too narrow to fit both of us in. I sit on the bed, careful not to dislodge any of the tubes around her.
“Mmm. So he can protect his sister.”
“But what if I want two girls?”
“Boy and girl,” she insists. I chuckle, glad to see a shadow of her stubborn self, wishing that her body could be just as stubborn as needed for her to survive.
“That means you’ll get well, and then someday…” We’ll get married, I think, but don’t have the courage to say out loud.
She smiles. It will forever be engraved in my memory. “I love you,” she says, and I don’t have the courage to say it back, either.
”Isn’t she the most precious thing?”
I’m not quite sure what I’m doing in the next house, but my mother had exclaimed something about going to see the baby, and I was dragged with them. I am eight years old and do not particularly have any interest in seeing a screaming baby; I’d had enough of that with my own brother. But somehow this baby is thrust into my arms, and I find myself staring at her, blinking as she lets out a yawn and stretches against me, and I smile.
“You’re the most precious thing,” I whisper.
She stirs, inhaling shakily, then exhaling, her breathing getting more few and far in between. Her existence is slowly slipping away right in front of my eyes, but never have I felt her more alive as I press my ear to her heart, listening to her faltering heartbeat.
“I love you,” I say. The words resound, hollow in her chest.