[Fruits Basket] Haru/Rin, #6
Title: So Much Empty Sky
Author: Ysabet MacFarlane (umadoshi)
Pairing: Sohma Hatsuharu and Sohma Isuzu (Rin)
Fandom: Fruits Basket
Theme #6 (the space between dream and reality)
Disclaimer: Fruits Basket belongs to Takaya Natsuki and Hakusensha; English-language versions by FUNimation (anime) and Tokyopop (manga). This piece of fiction is in no way endorsed by or affiliated with any of the copyright holders. Please support the original work!
Notes: Set just over a year after the end of the series. ~2700 words. Title from Tom McRae's "On and On".
**********
May 2002
**********
Sometimes she knows she's dreaming, even during the worst of it, when her subconscious dredges up every bit of pain and betrayal she's lived through and forces her through it again. She can distance herself then, watch from behind her own eyes and wonder if her mind is victimizing itself, unable to let go, or if someday it will have purged itself and leave her scrubbed raw of the hurt that clings to her.
Sometimes she doesn't know, and when she wakes, she remembers that the worst dreams are something else entirely. She dreams of being a child, of her mother sitting at her bedside and reading her favorite story for the hundredth time, of her father tucking her hair behind her ear and the blanket so close around her that it's almost like being held. He kisses her forehead to say goodnight, and she wakes up smiling.
"Good dream?" Haru asks, not quite awake himself, but opening his eyes in time to see her face when he feels her stirring beside him.
"I guess so," she replies, finding his hand under the covers and gripping it until he comes fully awake and rolls over to hold her, his fingers in her hair nothing like her father's, nothing at all.
Sometimes she dreams of having been loved, and the lie hurts more than everything that came after it.
**********
The phone call wasn't entirely a surprise. Rin had been half-expecting it for months; her mother's few efforts at contacting her over the last two years had all been intercepted, but neither Haru nor Kazuma had ever tried to hide them from her. Seeing her mother's name on the caller ID for the first time since she'd programmed it into the phone--Why?--Rin sank down to the floor and stared at it, with only the space of a few breaths to decide for herself whether she could bear to hear her mother's voice.
Just before it went to voicemail, she took the call.
**********
Seeing her father shouldn't have been unexpected, but Rin froze at the sight of him seated next to her mother when she arrived at the unfamiliar teahouse across town. She unthinkingly crumpled the rough map she'd drawn from her mother's directions and stared at him, pouring all of her sudden desire to scream into crushing the scrap of paper into a tiny wad.
"You didn't say he'd be here," she told her mother, not taking her eyes off him. He met her rudeness with a miniscule frown, the look of a man trying to rebuke his wayward daughter without shaming her in front of strangers. "You didn't--" Her father stood, silently gesturing her to a chair. She flinched at the motion, looking back and forth between her parents' identical offended expressions.
"Please sit down," her mother said stiffly, and Rin stood there a minute longer, trying to swallow the deathly dry feeling in her mouth while she figured out what to do.
If I walk out now I'll never see them again, was the first clear thought that crossed her mind. I'll never be able to make myself do this again. She carefully sat down across from her mother, as far away from her father as she could get, and tried to unclench her hands. "What did you want to talk to me about?"
She kept her gaze fixed on her mother, ignoring the disapproving way her father was looking at her clothes as he took his place again. He hadn't spoken to her since the last night she'd lived with them, the night before she'd been hospitalized for the first time. It was her mother who'd grabbed her by the wrist one day as they passed each other in the Main House, when Rin had been barely fifteen, and hissed, Haven't you humiliated us enough without dressing like trash, Isuzu?
Today her mother's disapproval was focused entirely on the ring Rin wore, but she said only, "Your hair looks good like that." The inanity of it took Rin aback; she gritted her teeth and held her hands in her lap instead of reaching up to touch the blunt edges of her haircut.
"You didn't call me to talk about my hair. Or my clothes," she added, turning further away from her father's examination. His scrutiny made her skin crawl in a different way than the hungry leers of strangers--most men eyed her with either appreciation or distaste for how much her clothes revealed, but always with some sort of heat. Her father's eyes were only cold, as if he were studying an overrated piece of artwork. "And I'm getting it cut again soon."
"Did you want something to eat?" her mother asked, looking over Rin's shoulder as if to find a waitress.
"Just tell me what you want, or I'm leaving." She almost prayed her mother wouldn't find anything to say, so they could both tell themselves they'd tried and the horrible meeting could end. After only a few minutes in her parents' presence, she couldn't remember why coming to see her mother had seemed like the right thing to do, or why she hadn't told Haru. Because he would have hated it, even though he wouldn't have tried to stop me.
"We hear you're married." The words fell loudly into a lull in the murmur of voices around them, and Rin sat up straighter, startled despite the way her mother had been looking at the wedding ring Haru had made.
"What about it?"
"Hatsuharu-kun's parents allowed it even though he's underage?"
"They wouldn't have had to if he wasn't," Rin retorted, trying to decipher the line of questioning; a month-old marriage was no explanation for how long her mother had been trying to contact her.
There was an oddly grim determination to the way her mother pressed on. "But Hatsuharu is...well, you know, he's..."
It was the tone that suddenly told her what her mother was skirting around. A wash of anger almost drowned out the jangling of her nerves. "He's what? Violent?" Venom crept into her voice as her mother nodded. "Did you honestly call me here because you're worried that Haru might hurt me? Is that why you've been--" Oh. "You started calling when you found out we were together, didn't you?"
She turned to her father, disbelieving. "What about you, Daddy?" He looked back at her, still wordless, and she retreated behind the pure viciousness that had been her best protection for so long. "Can't you stand the thought of your little girl getting hurt? What could he possibly do to me that you haven't?"
"Isuzu, it's true we haven't been the best parents--" her mother began, and Rin stood up, shoving her chair back from the table.
"Mama, you both hated me. You couldn't even stand looking at me and remembering I was your monster child."
"But now you're not!"
"Now I'm not." The anger was melting away too quickly, disappearing into the hollowness that had been all she'd felt during the last years she'd lived under their roof, leaving her nothing to fight with. "You don't want me, and I..." She stopped, tasting the ash and bitterness of the words before she said them. "And I don't want you. Not either of you, not anymore."
"You have no idea what we went through with you."
People around them were staring, some more overtly than others. Rin winced, almost embarrassed by the realization that her mother was making a last-ditch effort to manipulate her without having the faintest idea how to do it. Akito had known--had always, always known--exactly what to say, exactly how to twist the knife of truth to get the precise result she'd wanted. Her mother was painfully clumsy in comparison. "And you don't even know me," she said.
"You're our only child!" her mother spat, her mood changing with the mercurial speed that had terrified Rin when she was a child. She looked at Rin's father as if for support, and he shook his head as he got to his feet and went outside, taking a long way around to the door to avoid passing Rin. "Maybe you think you don't need us, but you'll regret it when you have children of your own and know how we feel, you selfish little--"
"I'll never know how you feel," Rin interrupted, gripping the edge of the table as an icy tremor went through her legs. It brought her too close for comfort, close enough that she could smell the roasted tea going cold where her father had been sitting, close enough that her arms shook even harder as she leaned on them. "I'll never be anything like you, and I don't ever want you to call me again."
"You'll regret it," her mother repeated.
"If I ever have children--" she straightened up, holding her voice steady "--you'll never be allowed to see them, or talk to them, or us. Don't make Haru tell you the same thing, Mama. He won't be this nice about it."
As she turned and walked away, she heard her mother laugh once, a mirthless sound she couldn't interpret. Outside, she saw her father sitting on a bench across the street, but she kept going without letting herself look back at him.
**********
She meant to head straight back to the apartment, but instead she found herself detouring to visit the same stylist she'd gone to only a week before. That time, Haru had been waiting for her when she got home and had given the new cut one of his faintly quizzical looks. I thought you were going to grow it out? he'd said, and I changed my mind, she'd replied. Maybe this time.
And here she was a week later, sitting ramrod straight and silent while the stylist she paid so well to not ask questions or make conversation cut deeper layers into her hair and she did her best not to cringe with every snip of the scissors. "If you decide to grow it longer, come back so I can reshape it a little," was all he said as she paid.
Haru wasn't home when she got in, and it took her a moment to remember that he'd gone to spend the day helping Kagura with something at her job, where he was a popular figure among the small children Kagura worked with. Rin dropped her keys and traded her boots for house slippers, and went to wash the stress of the afternoon away.
She didn't cry until she'd finished showering and settled into the tub to soak, but once the tears came it took a long time to get them under control. The water was starting to cool when she heard the front door open and close, and then a knock on the bathing room door. "Rin?"
"You can come in." She drained some water and turned the hot tap back on, cupping her hands around the slow stream of warmth where it passed into the cooler water.
"I'm home," Haru began as he came in and shut the door behind him, and then he stopped at the sight of her. "Did you cut your hair?"
"Mm hmm."
He knelt beside the tub as she sat back again, resting his arms on the edge. "What happened?"
Rin closed her eyes and took a moment to be sure that telling him wouldn't bring on another bout of crying, and then said, "I saw my parents today."
Haru said nothing while she explained, and when she was finished he reached for her, holding her awkwardly with the tub wall between them. "Your shirt's getting all wet," she said, and he shrugged.
"Like I care." He cupped the back of her head in both hands and kissed her forehead. "I need a shower anyway, and--Rin, hey. Shh, it's okay." He kissed her cheeks, wiping at the tears that had started escaping again. "I've got you."
"Sorry," she managed. "That just reminded me..." She touched the spot where he'd kissed her forehead. "Yesterday I was dreaming about my father, and he--when I was little, really little, he'd kiss my head every night before I went to sleep." Her voice dwindled. "He didn't say anything to me today. I don't even know why he was there. I think Mama wanted to pretend nothing ever happened, but Daddy just...didn't say anything."
"What could he say?" Haru asked. "By now I bet he's had plenty of practice convincing himself that what he did to you wasn't even that bad, same as your mom, but maybe he wasn't crazy enough to think he could get away with playing innocent."
Rin shivered, sliding a little further under the water. "Can you turn the tap off?" Haru reached over and obliged. "I guess she mostly just thinks it looks bad that their delinquent daughter went and married a boy with a bad reputation. But she was talking about us having children, too."
"Oh." Haru's eyes went distant and soft, and then hard. "That's got nothing to do with them."
"That's what I told her."
"And then...?"
"And then I left. I told her not to call me again." She sat up and leaned back into Haru's arms, wincing at the wet fabric under her cheek. "I don't know what I'll do if she does--I can just not pick up, or put you on the phone--"
There was an edge to Haru's quiet laugh, but it was gone when he added, "Or you could change your cell number and make damn sure she never gets it."
It was an appealing idea. "I think I'll do that tomorrow." The comparative coolness of the air raised goosebumps as she got out of the tub. "Are you taking a long enough shower that I should cover the bath up?"
"I'll be quick." He started undressing, and Rin wrapped herself in a towel to watch. Unlike her, he took his wedding band off with the rest of his jewelry, exposing the tattooed ring underneath. "I can soak tonight instead if you don't want to be by yourself."
"It's okay." She kissed him slowly, moving his hand from her arm to her shoulder when he touched her. "That's okay too," she said, and his fingers went to the back of her neck, making her shiver. "I'm going to get dressed and think for a while, and then can you tell me about your day?"
"If that's what you want, yeah."
"I'm just sick of crying over them--over everything."
"Well, you didn't cry over much of anything for an awfully long time," Haru said, incorrigibly sensible. "You've got a lot to get out of your system. It'll get better." He answered her skeptical look with a half smile. "You know it will. And now I'm getting in the shower so you don't freeze to death in that towel."
"You don't get to say that when you're standing there naked," Rin grumbled, taking his hand and holding it between them while she traced the tattoo on his finger. "But fine. I'll leave you to it."
He kissed her again when she let go, as if she were going much further away than the other side of their apartment.
**********
Dressed again, Rin curled up in the chair by the window and looked down into the street several stories below. The lingering fear of heights she'd been left with after being pushed had been one she could fight, and enough time had passed that it was mostly gone; watching people and cars from above was hypnotic, the visual equivalent of white noise to accompany the sounds of the shower, which Haru had been in for longer than she'd expected.
"The bathwater's going to be cold," she said under her breath. Late afternoon sunlight spilled in and over her, bright enough to warm the room and begin to thaw the knot of grief in her throat. Only her hands still felt cool, trembling even when she rubbed them together. I'm sorry, Mama. It'd be too late even if I believed you. In the street, people who looked no bigger than her finger were hurrying home.
But I'm already home. She rested her head against the glass and looked up instead, watching the movement of the clouds while she waited for Haru.
fin.
[previous entries can be found here]
Author: Ysabet MacFarlane (umadoshi)
Pairing: Sohma Hatsuharu and Sohma Isuzu (Rin)
Fandom: Fruits Basket
Theme #6 (the space between dream and reality)
Disclaimer: Fruits Basket belongs to Takaya Natsuki and Hakusensha; English-language versions by FUNimation (anime) and Tokyopop (manga). This piece of fiction is in no way endorsed by or affiliated with any of the copyright holders. Please support the original work!
Notes: Set just over a year after the end of the series. ~2700 words. Title from Tom McRae's "On and On".
**********
May 2002
**********
Sometimes she knows she's dreaming, even during the worst of it, when her subconscious dredges up every bit of pain and betrayal she's lived through and forces her through it again. She can distance herself then, watch from behind her own eyes and wonder if her mind is victimizing itself, unable to let go, or if someday it will have purged itself and leave her scrubbed raw of the hurt that clings to her.
Sometimes she doesn't know, and when she wakes, she remembers that the worst dreams are something else entirely. She dreams of being a child, of her mother sitting at her bedside and reading her favorite story for the hundredth time, of her father tucking her hair behind her ear and the blanket so close around her that it's almost like being held. He kisses her forehead to say goodnight, and she wakes up smiling.
"Good dream?" Haru asks, not quite awake himself, but opening his eyes in time to see her face when he feels her stirring beside him.
"I guess so," she replies, finding his hand under the covers and gripping it until he comes fully awake and rolls over to hold her, his fingers in her hair nothing like her father's, nothing at all.
Sometimes she dreams of having been loved, and the lie hurts more than everything that came after it.
**********
The phone call wasn't entirely a surprise. Rin had been half-expecting it for months; her mother's few efforts at contacting her over the last two years had all been intercepted, but neither Haru nor Kazuma had ever tried to hide them from her. Seeing her mother's name on the caller ID for the first time since she'd programmed it into the phone--Why?--Rin sank down to the floor and stared at it, with only the space of a few breaths to decide for herself whether she could bear to hear her mother's voice.
Just before it went to voicemail, she took the call.
**********
Seeing her father shouldn't have been unexpected, but Rin froze at the sight of him seated next to her mother when she arrived at the unfamiliar teahouse across town. She unthinkingly crumpled the rough map she'd drawn from her mother's directions and stared at him, pouring all of her sudden desire to scream into crushing the scrap of paper into a tiny wad.
"You didn't say he'd be here," she told her mother, not taking her eyes off him. He met her rudeness with a miniscule frown, the look of a man trying to rebuke his wayward daughter without shaming her in front of strangers. "You didn't--" Her father stood, silently gesturing her to a chair. She flinched at the motion, looking back and forth between her parents' identical offended expressions.
"Please sit down," her mother said stiffly, and Rin stood there a minute longer, trying to swallow the deathly dry feeling in her mouth while she figured out what to do.
If I walk out now I'll never see them again, was the first clear thought that crossed her mind. I'll never be able to make myself do this again. She carefully sat down across from her mother, as far away from her father as she could get, and tried to unclench her hands. "What did you want to talk to me about?"
She kept her gaze fixed on her mother, ignoring the disapproving way her father was looking at her clothes as he took his place again. He hadn't spoken to her since the last night she'd lived with them, the night before she'd been hospitalized for the first time. It was her mother who'd grabbed her by the wrist one day as they passed each other in the Main House, when Rin had been barely fifteen, and hissed, Haven't you humiliated us enough without dressing like trash, Isuzu?
Today her mother's disapproval was focused entirely on the ring Rin wore, but she said only, "Your hair looks good like that." The inanity of it took Rin aback; she gritted her teeth and held her hands in her lap instead of reaching up to touch the blunt edges of her haircut.
"You didn't call me to talk about my hair. Or my clothes," she added, turning further away from her father's examination. His scrutiny made her skin crawl in a different way than the hungry leers of strangers--most men eyed her with either appreciation or distaste for how much her clothes revealed, but always with some sort of heat. Her father's eyes were only cold, as if he were studying an overrated piece of artwork. "And I'm getting it cut again soon."
"Did you want something to eat?" her mother asked, looking over Rin's shoulder as if to find a waitress.
"Just tell me what you want, or I'm leaving." She almost prayed her mother wouldn't find anything to say, so they could both tell themselves they'd tried and the horrible meeting could end. After only a few minutes in her parents' presence, she couldn't remember why coming to see her mother had seemed like the right thing to do, or why she hadn't told Haru. Because he would have hated it, even though he wouldn't have tried to stop me.
"We hear you're married." The words fell loudly into a lull in the murmur of voices around them, and Rin sat up straighter, startled despite the way her mother had been looking at the wedding ring Haru had made.
"What about it?"
"Hatsuharu-kun's parents allowed it even though he's underage?"
"They wouldn't have had to if he wasn't," Rin retorted, trying to decipher the line of questioning; a month-old marriage was no explanation for how long her mother had been trying to contact her.
There was an oddly grim determination to the way her mother pressed on. "But Hatsuharu is...well, you know, he's..."
It was the tone that suddenly told her what her mother was skirting around. A wash of anger almost drowned out the jangling of her nerves. "He's what? Violent?" Venom crept into her voice as her mother nodded. "Did you honestly call me here because you're worried that Haru might hurt me? Is that why you've been--" Oh. "You started calling when you found out we were together, didn't you?"
She turned to her father, disbelieving. "What about you, Daddy?" He looked back at her, still wordless, and she retreated behind the pure viciousness that had been her best protection for so long. "Can't you stand the thought of your little girl getting hurt? What could he possibly do to me that you haven't?"
"Isuzu, it's true we haven't been the best parents--" her mother began, and Rin stood up, shoving her chair back from the table.
"Mama, you both hated me. You couldn't even stand looking at me and remembering I was your monster child."
"But now you're not!"
"Now I'm not." The anger was melting away too quickly, disappearing into the hollowness that had been all she'd felt during the last years she'd lived under their roof, leaving her nothing to fight with. "You don't want me, and I..." She stopped, tasting the ash and bitterness of the words before she said them. "And I don't want you. Not either of you, not anymore."
"You have no idea what we went through with you."
People around them were staring, some more overtly than others. Rin winced, almost embarrassed by the realization that her mother was making a last-ditch effort to manipulate her without having the faintest idea how to do it. Akito had known--had always, always known--exactly what to say, exactly how to twist the knife of truth to get the precise result she'd wanted. Her mother was painfully clumsy in comparison. "And you don't even know me," she said.
"You're our only child!" her mother spat, her mood changing with the mercurial speed that had terrified Rin when she was a child. She looked at Rin's father as if for support, and he shook his head as he got to his feet and went outside, taking a long way around to the door to avoid passing Rin. "Maybe you think you don't need us, but you'll regret it when you have children of your own and know how we feel, you selfish little--"
"I'll never know how you feel," Rin interrupted, gripping the edge of the table as an icy tremor went through her legs. It brought her too close for comfort, close enough that she could smell the roasted tea going cold where her father had been sitting, close enough that her arms shook even harder as she leaned on them. "I'll never be anything like you, and I don't ever want you to call me again."
"You'll regret it," her mother repeated.
"If I ever have children--" she straightened up, holding her voice steady "--you'll never be allowed to see them, or talk to them, or us. Don't make Haru tell you the same thing, Mama. He won't be this nice about it."
As she turned and walked away, she heard her mother laugh once, a mirthless sound she couldn't interpret. Outside, she saw her father sitting on a bench across the street, but she kept going without letting herself look back at him.
**********
She meant to head straight back to the apartment, but instead she found herself detouring to visit the same stylist she'd gone to only a week before. That time, Haru had been waiting for her when she got home and had given the new cut one of his faintly quizzical looks. I thought you were going to grow it out? he'd said, and I changed my mind, she'd replied. Maybe this time.
And here she was a week later, sitting ramrod straight and silent while the stylist she paid so well to not ask questions or make conversation cut deeper layers into her hair and she did her best not to cringe with every snip of the scissors. "If you decide to grow it longer, come back so I can reshape it a little," was all he said as she paid.
Haru wasn't home when she got in, and it took her a moment to remember that he'd gone to spend the day helping Kagura with something at her job, where he was a popular figure among the small children Kagura worked with. Rin dropped her keys and traded her boots for house slippers, and went to wash the stress of the afternoon away.
She didn't cry until she'd finished showering and settled into the tub to soak, but once the tears came it took a long time to get them under control. The water was starting to cool when she heard the front door open and close, and then a knock on the bathing room door. "Rin?"
"You can come in." She drained some water and turned the hot tap back on, cupping her hands around the slow stream of warmth where it passed into the cooler water.
"I'm home," Haru began as he came in and shut the door behind him, and then he stopped at the sight of her. "Did you cut your hair?"
"Mm hmm."
He knelt beside the tub as she sat back again, resting his arms on the edge. "What happened?"
Rin closed her eyes and took a moment to be sure that telling him wouldn't bring on another bout of crying, and then said, "I saw my parents today."
Haru said nothing while she explained, and when she was finished he reached for her, holding her awkwardly with the tub wall between them. "Your shirt's getting all wet," she said, and he shrugged.
"Like I care." He cupped the back of her head in both hands and kissed her forehead. "I need a shower anyway, and--Rin, hey. Shh, it's okay." He kissed her cheeks, wiping at the tears that had started escaping again. "I've got you."
"Sorry," she managed. "That just reminded me..." She touched the spot where he'd kissed her forehead. "Yesterday I was dreaming about my father, and he--when I was little, really little, he'd kiss my head every night before I went to sleep." Her voice dwindled. "He didn't say anything to me today. I don't even know why he was there. I think Mama wanted to pretend nothing ever happened, but Daddy just...didn't say anything."
"What could he say?" Haru asked. "By now I bet he's had plenty of practice convincing himself that what he did to you wasn't even that bad, same as your mom, but maybe he wasn't crazy enough to think he could get away with playing innocent."
Rin shivered, sliding a little further under the water. "Can you turn the tap off?" Haru reached over and obliged. "I guess she mostly just thinks it looks bad that their delinquent daughter went and married a boy with a bad reputation. But she was talking about us having children, too."
"Oh." Haru's eyes went distant and soft, and then hard. "That's got nothing to do with them."
"That's what I told her."
"And then...?"
"And then I left. I told her not to call me again." She sat up and leaned back into Haru's arms, wincing at the wet fabric under her cheek. "I don't know what I'll do if she does--I can just not pick up, or put you on the phone--"
There was an edge to Haru's quiet laugh, but it was gone when he added, "Or you could change your cell number and make damn sure she never gets it."
It was an appealing idea. "I think I'll do that tomorrow." The comparative coolness of the air raised goosebumps as she got out of the tub. "Are you taking a long enough shower that I should cover the bath up?"
"I'll be quick." He started undressing, and Rin wrapped herself in a towel to watch. Unlike her, he took his wedding band off with the rest of his jewelry, exposing the tattooed ring underneath. "I can soak tonight instead if you don't want to be by yourself."
"It's okay." She kissed him slowly, moving his hand from her arm to her shoulder when he touched her. "That's okay too," she said, and his fingers went to the back of her neck, making her shiver. "I'm going to get dressed and think for a while, and then can you tell me about your day?"
"If that's what you want, yeah."
"I'm just sick of crying over them--over everything."
"Well, you didn't cry over much of anything for an awfully long time," Haru said, incorrigibly sensible. "You've got a lot to get out of your system. It'll get better." He answered her skeptical look with a half smile. "You know it will. And now I'm getting in the shower so you don't freeze to death in that towel."
"You don't get to say that when you're standing there naked," Rin grumbled, taking his hand and holding it between them while she traced the tattoo on his finger. "But fine. I'll leave you to it."
He kissed her again when she let go, as if she were going much further away than the other side of their apartment.
**********
Dressed again, Rin curled up in the chair by the window and looked down into the street several stories below. The lingering fear of heights she'd been left with after being pushed had been one she could fight, and enough time had passed that it was mostly gone; watching people and cars from above was hypnotic, the visual equivalent of white noise to accompany the sounds of the shower, which Haru had been in for longer than she'd expected.
"The bathwater's going to be cold," she said under her breath. Late afternoon sunlight spilled in and over her, bright enough to warm the room and begin to thaw the knot of grief in her throat. Only her hands still felt cool, trembling even when she rubbed them together. I'm sorry, Mama. It'd be too late even if I believed you. In the street, people who looked no bigger than her finger were hurrying home.
But I'm already home. She rested her head against the glass and looked up instead, watching the movement of the clouds while she waited for Haru.
fin.
[previous entries can be found here]