Apple flowers
Name: Apple flowers
Author: Rin
Beta: Meame (the Finnish version) & Invisible (the English version)
Fandom: Kis-My-Ft2 & A.B.C-Z, AU
Pairing: Kitayama/Fujigaya
Genre: drama, history, one-shot
Rating: PG
Warnings: Depictions of war. Not very detailed, though.
Summary: The year 1946 came, bringing the people of Japan the long yearned peace and new hope for the future. Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy for the survivors to start reconstruction and a new life in a world that had changed so much.
A/N: I've wanted to write a fic of war for a long time. The problem is that I just can’t. Then, some time ago I realized that even though I can't write about war, I can write about the time after it. The idea of the fic was in my mind for many days before I then wrote it on one night. I like this fic a lot myself, and I wish the readers will like it, too.
The fic was originally written in Finnish and I translated it in English by myself. I also edited it a bit here and there at the same time.
- - -
It was a warm evening in the middle of spring. The kind of evening that has always inspired poets to praise the beauty of the nature. The cherry tree was glowing softly like a light pink cloud, yet it was the apple flowers that dazed Kitayama Hiromitsu's senses.
The apple tree had stood there in the corner of the garden for decades. Its ragged branches were heavy and it couldn't stand upright without support anymore. And still, every year it bloomed prettily and reminded him of the summer that was soon to begin. Hiromitsu sighed quietly and closed his eyes to enjoy the scent of the white flowers even better. It felt so unbelievable that this year, too, he could see these apple flowers.
The young man felt the familiar anxiety in his mind as he remembered the dust of collapsed houses in his lungs, the tingling of broken glass under his boots and the sickening smell of burnt human flesh floating in the air. Desperate cries of seriously injured people and the heart-breaking weep of a lost child still reached his ears through the birdsongs.
Only eight months earlier Hiromitsu had still been wearing the green uniform of the Japanese army as he had been sent to help the suffering people. To clear the ruins of Hiroshima. To save anything that was yet to be saved.
After returning to the reserve in the autumn he had first suffered from a disease called mild radiation sickness. After that he had been harassed by a stubborn fever for the whole winter. During the few moments when he could think straight between fever ravings and throwing up he had just lain on his bed staring at the ceiling with dull eyes, wishing for death to come sooner.
Yet he hadn't died. With Taisuke's careful treatment and help of the other villagers, the sickness had given up. Next spring Hiromitsu was pale and weak, but at least he was alive and could even stand up from his bed.
How he wished Taisuke could have seen these apple flowers, too.
- - -
The war had hit the small countryside village hard. All the adult men had been sent to the battle. Few had come back.
Tsukada and Kawai had been killed with their brothers at the battlefront in Singapore. Goseki and his brother had drowned near the Midway Islands when the Allies had scuttled the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi. Iida had stepped on a landmine in the Philippines. The radiation sickness had taken over Totsuka, who had been in Hiroshima with Hiromitsu. Unlike him, the younger man had withered away in a couple of weeks.
Besides Hiromitsu and Taisuke, only Miyata and Yokoo had made it back home. The younger of them would never walk anymore and the older one was still tortured every night by horrible nightmares in which he was in the middle of the madness called ‘war’ again.
The ones who had been left in the village hadn’t survived easily either. The boys who had been small kids at the beginning of the war had grown up to be young men. Now these boys had to take the places of the dead fathers and big brothers and carry the responsibility of their own lives as well as their families’ welfare.
Takashi, the oldest son of the Nikaido family, had begun to take care of his three younger siblings after their parents’ death. The youngest sister was only four years old and often, especially in the evenings, Hiromitsu could hear the child crying in the next door. Her big brother tried to soothe her in vain - there was no end to the child’s longing for her parents.
Senga’s father had lost his life in the same battle with Tsukada and Kawai. His older sister had been working in a nearby town until the factory had been bombed completely down in the middle of a workday. Now Senga was the only one who could help his old mother, and he worked hard for both of their lives. The boy who had been so wild and careless before had now changed into a serious and hardworking young man. Diligence was never a bad thing, though, and even more important it was now that the assaulted nation of Japan was trying to get on its feet again. Even though there were darker shades in the smile of the youngest adult of the neighborhood, he could still cheer Hiromitsu up a bit whenever they met at the village road.
Tamamori had completed his military service just before the end of the war, and he had been ordered into the same detachment with Iida. That first task had been his last one. Even though the younger man had received serious injuries in the explosion, he had survived alive. However, the young man that returned from the hospital was like a completely different person. The cruel death of a friend had crucially unsettled his mind, and Tamamori didn’t even recognize his own family anymore. When talked to, he always smiled and nodded quietly and politely as if he was listening to a complete stranger. He only communicated with his dog nowadays, but instead of treating it like a dog, he talked to it as if it were a human being.
As if it were Iida.
Hashimoto had lost his whole family. The other villagers had taken care of him until one day the relatives of his mother had come and taken the boy with them to the north.
- - -
A few white petals fell slowly to the ground. They were so beautiful and yet so fragile. Just like people were.
Hiromitsu still remembered how bad it had felt every time he had heard about the death of a friend. The memory was as clear as the memory of being the one to press the trigger of the gun himself.
He didn’t know which one was worse.
A long time ago Hiromitsu had dreamt about war, victory and bravery. Very soon he had been forced to see the cruel truth as each day had turned out to be a new fight for survival. Six long years of the war had taught him many things.
Never leave your friends. Never surrender.
Not for self, but for country.
Kill or get killed.
During the war the instruction given by the platoon commander had echoed in Hiromitsu’s mind from day to day. He had always obeyed the command without any objections, but he had never found justification to his actions.
He didn’t have a family waiting for him to come back home, but the most of the other men had - also those on the opposite side. Had those men been shooting at him because they had wanted to kill him? Or had they been like Hiromitsu himself, fighting just because they had been ordered to do so?
How many tears had been shed because of his bullets, had Hiromitsu often wondered. How many women were there waiting in vain for their husbands to come back? How many children had lost their fathers because of him?
One shot was enough to end a life.
One bomb was enough to turn a whole city to ash.
War served no one’s purposes.
- - -
A blackbird that perched on a branch of the apple three stopped singing and flew up on the roof when Hiromitsu heard a sliding door opening behind him.
“Be careful of the doorsill,” he reminded quietly.
“I will. I know where it is, you know.”
Taisuke walked slowly across the small garden and when he was close enough, Hiromitsu raised his hand on the younger man’s shoulder to tell him where he stood. Taisuke smiled, tilted his head and took a deep breath.
“The apple tree is blooming. I could smell the scent even inside the house.”
“Mm. Yeah.”
“You came here to mope around by yourself again, right?”
Taisuke’s warm, gentle scolding startled the older man from his thoughts.
“I wasn’t. I was just watching these flowers and I thought -”
“You were thinking about the war,” the other man finished the sentence for him, and Hiromitsu really couldn’t object to that.
”Haven’t I told you dozens of times already?” Taisuke sighed, wrapping his arms around the other man’s thin waist from behind. “What we’ve lost we can’t get back. And worrying will make you forget even the things that you actually still have.”
“So you’re saying I’m not allowed to miss my friends?” the older man asked even though he knew the answer. They had talked about this so many times before.
”That’s not what I mean and you know it. What I meant is that you shouldn’t think about it so much. You should be happy that they were our friends as long as they lived. Each one of us knew that not everyone would survive. We were all ready to die for our friends and families, remember? You know, I’m sure they’d want you to smile when thinking about them.”
A soft breeze of wind flew around the garden before it settled down to ripple the leaves of a big maple on the other side of the house. Suddenly Hiromitsu felt as if Totsuka, Iida and all the others had been sitting up there on the branches, looking down at him and smiling.
“Can you hear it? You’re not alone. The dead never leave us - they just change. They’re somewhere there even though you can’t see them.”
When the older man still kept silent, Taisuke gave a sudden laughter and turned him around so that they were standing face to face.
“You don’t believe me? Then how are you going to explain me the fact you’re really here even though I can’t see you?”
When hearing the question, Hiromitsu shrugged and shook his head. In his opinion they were talking about two completely different things.
“I know what you’re thinking right now,” Taisuke whispered and touched the shorter man’s cheek carefully. “You wish that I could see those flowers, too. And you’d gladly become half blind if that meant I could be able to see even with the other eye.”
Hiromitsu opened his mouth and closed it again when he realized he had no idea how to answer to the younger man. He looked at his empty grey eyes and nodded insecurely.
He couldn’t lie to Taisuke.
The younger man had received a stray piece of a grenade on his face in the battle two years ago, and it had taken his eyesight. After losing his eyes, though, Taisuke had trained himself to sense Hiromitsu’s feelings with all the other senses he still had, and his instinct almost never failed.
“Don’t worry about me. I know exactly what that tree looks like. I don’t need to actually see it - the scent is enough to remind me. I’m not embittered anymore, so you shouldn’t be either.”
The older man nodded slowly and clenched Taisuke’s hand in his own. For a long time they just stood there quietly, and after a while the blackbird had enough courage to fly back to the apple tree and continue its yearning songs. Maybe it was hoping for the song to help another blackbird to find it.
Hiromitsu smiled and leaned against the taller man. He had found his Taisuke a long time ago already, and despite all the dark thoughts and terrible memories from the past years, the only thing he could feel at that moment was gratitude. He was thankful that even after all these exhausting and difficult years he could still keep Taisuke close to him.
- - -
Author: Rin
Beta: Meame (the Finnish version) & Invisible (the English version)
Fandom: Kis-My-Ft2 & A.B.C-Z, AU
Pairing: Kitayama/Fujigaya
Genre: drama, history, one-shot
Rating: PG
Warnings: Depictions of war. Not very detailed, though.
Summary: The year 1946 came, bringing the people of Japan the long yearned peace and new hope for the future. Nevertheless, it wasn’t easy for the survivors to start reconstruction and a new life in a world that had changed so much.
A/N: I've wanted to write a fic of war for a long time. The problem is that I just can’t. Then, some time ago I realized that even though I can't write about war, I can write about the time after it. The idea of the fic was in my mind for many days before I then wrote it on one night. I like this fic a lot myself, and I wish the readers will like it, too.
The fic was originally written in Finnish and I translated it in English by myself. I also edited it a bit here and there at the same time.
- - -
It was a warm evening in the middle of spring. The kind of evening that has always inspired poets to praise the beauty of the nature. The cherry tree was glowing softly like a light pink cloud, yet it was the apple flowers that dazed Kitayama Hiromitsu's senses.
The apple tree had stood there in the corner of the garden for decades. Its ragged branches were heavy and it couldn't stand upright without support anymore. And still, every year it bloomed prettily and reminded him of the summer that was soon to begin. Hiromitsu sighed quietly and closed his eyes to enjoy the scent of the white flowers even better. It felt so unbelievable that this year, too, he could see these apple flowers.
The young man felt the familiar anxiety in his mind as he remembered the dust of collapsed houses in his lungs, the tingling of broken glass under his boots and the sickening smell of burnt human flesh floating in the air. Desperate cries of seriously injured people and the heart-breaking weep of a lost child still reached his ears through the birdsongs.
Only eight months earlier Hiromitsu had still been wearing the green uniform of the Japanese army as he had been sent to help the suffering people. To clear the ruins of Hiroshima. To save anything that was yet to be saved.
After returning to the reserve in the autumn he had first suffered from a disease called mild radiation sickness. After that he had been harassed by a stubborn fever for the whole winter. During the few moments when he could think straight between fever ravings and throwing up he had just lain on his bed staring at the ceiling with dull eyes, wishing for death to come sooner.
Yet he hadn't died. With Taisuke's careful treatment and help of the other villagers, the sickness had given up. Next spring Hiromitsu was pale and weak, but at least he was alive and could even stand up from his bed.
How he wished Taisuke could have seen these apple flowers, too.
- - -
The war had hit the small countryside village hard. All the adult men had been sent to the battle. Few had come back.
Tsukada and Kawai had been killed with their brothers at the battlefront in Singapore. Goseki and his brother had drowned near the Midway Islands when the Allies had scuttled the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi. Iida had stepped on a landmine in the Philippines. The radiation sickness had taken over Totsuka, who had been in Hiroshima with Hiromitsu. Unlike him, the younger man had withered away in a couple of weeks.
Besides Hiromitsu and Taisuke, only Miyata and Yokoo had made it back home. The younger of them would never walk anymore and the older one was still tortured every night by horrible nightmares in which he was in the middle of the madness called ‘war’ again.
The ones who had been left in the village hadn’t survived easily either. The boys who had been small kids at the beginning of the war had grown up to be young men. Now these boys had to take the places of the dead fathers and big brothers and carry the responsibility of their own lives as well as their families’ welfare.
Takashi, the oldest son of the Nikaido family, had begun to take care of his three younger siblings after their parents’ death. The youngest sister was only four years old and often, especially in the evenings, Hiromitsu could hear the child crying in the next door. Her big brother tried to soothe her in vain - there was no end to the child’s longing for her parents.
Senga’s father had lost his life in the same battle with Tsukada and Kawai. His older sister had been working in a nearby town until the factory had been bombed completely down in the middle of a workday. Now Senga was the only one who could help his old mother, and he worked hard for both of their lives. The boy who had been so wild and careless before had now changed into a serious and hardworking young man. Diligence was never a bad thing, though, and even more important it was now that the assaulted nation of Japan was trying to get on its feet again. Even though there were darker shades in the smile of the youngest adult of the neighborhood, he could still cheer Hiromitsu up a bit whenever they met at the village road.
Tamamori had completed his military service just before the end of the war, and he had been ordered into the same detachment with Iida. That first task had been his last one. Even though the younger man had received serious injuries in the explosion, he had survived alive. However, the young man that returned from the hospital was like a completely different person. The cruel death of a friend had crucially unsettled his mind, and Tamamori didn’t even recognize his own family anymore. When talked to, he always smiled and nodded quietly and politely as if he was listening to a complete stranger. He only communicated with his dog nowadays, but instead of treating it like a dog, he talked to it as if it were a human being.
As if it were Iida.
Hashimoto had lost his whole family. The other villagers had taken care of him until one day the relatives of his mother had come and taken the boy with them to the north.
- - -
A few white petals fell slowly to the ground. They were so beautiful and yet so fragile. Just like people were.
Hiromitsu still remembered how bad it had felt every time he had heard about the death of a friend. The memory was as clear as the memory of being the one to press the trigger of the gun himself.
He didn’t know which one was worse.
A long time ago Hiromitsu had dreamt about war, victory and bravery. Very soon he had been forced to see the cruel truth as each day had turned out to be a new fight for survival. Six long years of the war had taught him many things.
Never leave your friends. Never surrender.
Not for self, but for country.
Kill or get killed.
During the war the instruction given by the platoon commander had echoed in Hiromitsu’s mind from day to day. He had always obeyed the command without any objections, but he had never found justification to his actions.
He didn’t have a family waiting for him to come back home, but the most of the other men had - also those on the opposite side. Had those men been shooting at him because they had wanted to kill him? Or had they been like Hiromitsu himself, fighting just because they had been ordered to do so?
How many tears had been shed because of his bullets, had Hiromitsu often wondered. How many women were there waiting in vain for their husbands to come back? How many children had lost their fathers because of him?
One shot was enough to end a life.
One bomb was enough to turn a whole city to ash.
War served no one’s purposes.
- - -
A blackbird that perched on a branch of the apple three stopped singing and flew up on the roof when Hiromitsu heard a sliding door opening behind him.
“Be careful of the doorsill,” he reminded quietly.
“I will. I know where it is, you know.”
Taisuke walked slowly across the small garden and when he was close enough, Hiromitsu raised his hand on the younger man’s shoulder to tell him where he stood. Taisuke smiled, tilted his head and took a deep breath.
“The apple tree is blooming. I could smell the scent even inside the house.”
“Mm. Yeah.”
“You came here to mope around by yourself again, right?”
Taisuke’s warm, gentle scolding startled the older man from his thoughts.
“I wasn’t. I was just watching these flowers and I thought -”
“You were thinking about the war,” the other man finished the sentence for him, and Hiromitsu really couldn’t object to that.
”Haven’t I told you dozens of times already?” Taisuke sighed, wrapping his arms around the other man’s thin waist from behind. “What we’ve lost we can’t get back. And worrying will make you forget even the things that you actually still have.”
“So you’re saying I’m not allowed to miss my friends?” the older man asked even though he knew the answer. They had talked about this so many times before.
”That’s not what I mean and you know it. What I meant is that you shouldn’t think about it so much. You should be happy that they were our friends as long as they lived. Each one of us knew that not everyone would survive. We were all ready to die for our friends and families, remember? You know, I’m sure they’d want you to smile when thinking about them.”
A soft breeze of wind flew around the garden before it settled down to ripple the leaves of a big maple on the other side of the house. Suddenly Hiromitsu felt as if Totsuka, Iida and all the others had been sitting up there on the branches, looking down at him and smiling.
“Can you hear it? You’re not alone. The dead never leave us - they just change. They’re somewhere there even though you can’t see them.”
When the older man still kept silent, Taisuke gave a sudden laughter and turned him around so that they were standing face to face.
“You don’t believe me? Then how are you going to explain me the fact you’re really here even though I can’t see you?”
When hearing the question, Hiromitsu shrugged and shook his head. In his opinion they were talking about two completely different things.
“I know what you’re thinking right now,” Taisuke whispered and touched the shorter man’s cheek carefully. “You wish that I could see those flowers, too. And you’d gladly become half blind if that meant I could be able to see even with the other eye.”
Hiromitsu opened his mouth and closed it again when he realized he had no idea how to answer to the younger man. He looked at his empty grey eyes and nodded insecurely.
He couldn’t lie to Taisuke.
The younger man had received a stray piece of a grenade on his face in the battle two years ago, and it had taken his eyesight. After losing his eyes, though, Taisuke had trained himself to sense Hiromitsu’s feelings with all the other senses he still had, and his instinct almost never failed.
“Don’t worry about me. I know exactly what that tree looks like. I don’t need to actually see it - the scent is enough to remind me. I’m not embittered anymore, so you shouldn’t be either.”
The older man nodded slowly and clenched Taisuke’s hand in his own. For a long time they just stood there quietly, and after a while the blackbird had enough courage to fly back to the apple tree and continue its yearning songs. Maybe it was hoping for the song to help another blackbird to find it.
Hiromitsu smiled and leaned against the taller man. He had found his Taisuke a long time ago already, and despite all the dark thoughts and terrible memories from the past years, the only thing he could feel at that moment was gratitude. He was thankful that even after all these exhausting and difficult years he could still keep Taisuke close to him.
- - -