fic; Iris
Title: Iris
Characters: Nishikido Ryo and Sawajiri Erika
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Owned by Johnny's Entertainment and Stardust Promotion. Not mine, just messing with.
Summary: When everything's made to be broken. Post-marriage, twist for a fic I got in je_whiteday. Thank you, calledinvain. This is for you.
There are only three things she would come to Japan for.
The first is April the 8th, her birthday. In the mornings her mother surprises her with a fruit cream cake and they share a slice in bed, talking about birds and beaches, and things that can be seen from high places.
The second is her brother's death anniversary. Taichi had died in a motorcycle pileup when he had tailgated a truck driver over a cliff pass. Sawajiris generally lived fast and died young. He was only sixteen.
The third is her father's death anniversary. Sawajiri Yoshimasa passed away due to liver cancer on the same year that Erika was accepted into Stardust Promotions' Idol-Do program. The letter was in her hand when they broke the news to her mother. Kenji had ended up comforting them both in his arms.
It has been two years since she last set foot at Narita, and in that amount of time, nothing had seemingly changed. Mobbed by reporters once she was out of the gates, she was bombarded with questions: "How does it feel to be back home?" "How long are you going to be here for?" "Was your husband's death a government cover-up?"
She breezes through the walkalator, adjusting the sunglasses on her eyes. No comment even as the crowd repeatedly yells out the moniker she has infamously acquired repeatedly. Erika sama acknowledges no one, and gets into a waiting cab, where she tells the driver, simply, "Meiji Jingu."
She was the one who insisted to get married witnessed by God and her late father. And so every step into the shrine is painful. Erika walks past the outer precinct into the Naien, trying to remember where her father and brother's graves were. The place was not at all hard to locate. Beside her family shrine stood a tall man wearing a dark suit, head bowed. She notices quickly that the flowers have been changed for fresh.
Erika comes to a stop beside the man, and without looking at him, speaks. "Where is my mother?"
Ryo raises his eyes and turns to look at her-- airplane-weary, dressed far too casually, fragile and small. "Hello to you, too."
"I asked you a question."
"She hasn't come yet."
She turns to look at him then, a puzzled expression on her face. "How long have you been here?"
"A while."
He has his reasons, but she doesn't ask after them. It's peculiar that he would pay so much attention to two people he had never met in his entire life, but then, she knew Ryo well enough to understand that he was wont towards the doing of peculiar things in varying degrees of sense, it was an Oosakan thing. She kneels before the tombstones, and reaches up to trace the letters engraved with her fingertips.
Meiji Jingu. 2007.
"It's so quiet," he observes in a low voice, coming around the front of the car to open her door-- too late, because by the time he gets there she's already stepping out, careful not to crush her armful of flowers. It's winter, and she's wearing a dress under a scarlet coat, sunglasses over her eyes to shield from the light and the paparazzi. Ryo takes her hand.
"What did you expect?" She's quiet today, he thinks, and not because they were in a shrine-- from the time he'd picked her up, and the whole drive over, she had said maybe ten words to him, most of them monosyllabic. Now he understood why she became suddenly melancholy around the end of November-- because of this. Her fingers curl around his automatically.
Erika leads the way over an uphill path, and midway through, he lets go of her hand and wraps an arm over her shoulders instead. She leans in, held close, and he kisses absently into her hair, because this time it's her in a place that's far from him now, and he gets the distinct feeling that she doesn't want to come back just yet.
It's her who breaks the silence, after a beat. "So, you're really meeting my dad," she murmurs, picking a lily out of the bunch in her arms and tucking it behind her ear, a summer promise despite the cold.
He nods, breathing in to steel himself. "I said I would," he tells her easily, smiling down at her. He feels suddenly warm when the smile is returned to him, and she turns back to the path.
"You seem kind of worried," she notes idly, walking past anonymous gravestones and faded flowers.
"I'm a little nervous," he admits openly, nodding once as he swallows down. Despite herself, she smiles.
"Don't be," she tells him, catching sight of the family shrine. "It's not as if he can yell at you or anything."
"Could do a lot worse," he mutters under his breath, earning him a nudge in the ribs, painful.
"Ryo," she warns, coming to a stop in front of two tall stones, one taller than the other. Sawajiri Yoshimasa is carved on the first. Sawajiri Taichi is on the second. Her father, he knew, was a large man who dwarfed his little daughter, based on the pictures scattered in frames all over her Nerima apartment. Her brother had had her eyes.
Erika takes off the sunglasses, and he's surprised to find that there was not even a shadow of makeup on her face. Seeing her like this, she seemed more fragile somehow, more life-worn-- the bags under her eyes from working day and night, her cheeks sallow from the bitter cold. He watches her inhale shakily, one time and then two, and then turns to look at the graves, silent.
His arm drops when she steps forward to lay the flowers down before her father, kneeling on still-damp grass. The first thing she does is reach up to trace the name on the gravestone slowly, searchingly, before bowing her head. Her hair falls forward, and the lily shifts. Moments later, he hears her speak softly, barely perceptible over the wind.
When she turns back and holds out a hand for him, he blinks, woken from a daydream. Ryo pulls her up as she dusts her dress off with her free hand, and then lets go, stepping up to address her father directly.
He bows deeply first, and keeping his head down, states firmly but quietly, "It's good to meet you, sir. My name is Nishikido Ryo. I came here today with your daughter, to meet you.
Straightening, he swallows down to clear his throat. He sees her father before him instead of a gravestone, a formidable man, looking down at him sternly, the look in his eyes clearly saying, 'do you think you're good enough for my daughter? Do you?'.
Ryo speaks up despite his nervousness. "The fact of the matter, Sawajiri san, sir, is that I love Erika," he blurts out in one breath, and he watches one corner of her father's lips curve up into a smirk, and he takes that to mean that he must go on.
He takes Erika's hand suddenly, and she clasps it between hers as he speaks, keeping her head bowed.
"I love her," he repeats with more conviction than before. His nervousness causes him to laugh a little, weakly, as he continues. "I may not be the best man for her, but... I'm trying hard to prove to her, and to myself, that I deserve her." Ryo can feel heat colouring his cheeks, but struggles to keep his eyes trained on Sawajiri Yoshimasa. "She often thinks otherwise, but she's amazing. And she--"
Ryo trails off helplessly, but doesn't look away. "I... I've never felt more alive, in my life, than I am now, with her," he says finally, inhaling slowly. Her father's sizing him up now for seriousness, so he follows up with a shake of his head. "Oh, no, sir. I'm serious; I meant that-- what I said. It may sound pretentious, but..." he chuckles just a little helplessly, bowing his head. "I don't know how to put words together in a way that doesn't sound clichéd.
"Erika makes me very happy, sir. And..." he looks up, looks her father in the eye, wanting to convey that this is the most serious he'll ever be in the twenty-three years he's lived this life. "And I intend to make her happy, too. Every day."
A teardrop falls on the back of his hand. He squeezes on hers tightly, thanks her father for bringing her into the world. He lets go of her hand to bow low, again, before straightening up and turning to her, pulling her into his arms and holding on so tight he may as well crush her. Her red coat billows in the wind, and the lily in her hair falls to the grass, forgotten, as she cries.
Ryo has never heard the words she speaks to her father before, but he's close enough to hear them now.
"Papa," she begins, hand frozen over the last character in his name. "It's Kacchan. I have come home."
Erika's hand drops to her lap and she keeps her head down and he can just imagine her father, berating her for not coming for so long. It's entirely apt that an apology escapes her lips the next time she speaks. She tells her father that she is doing well, but it's said in such a way that indicates her weariness of the world.
And he would give up-- he couldn't think of anything he wouldn't give up now-- just to reach out and be able to touch her, to be able to feel that she was real and he wasn't stuck in some hazy hallucination. But she was in a place that was far from him now, even standing two steps away from her.
She speaks to her father about a part of her life that had been a mystery to him up until then, her move to Spain, her decision to quit, her journeys to exotic places, and her husband's accident. The case was finally closed in December of the year passed. Takashiro Tsuyoshi was presumed dead.
"Wherever you are, Papa," she whispers, voice breaking. "Wherever you are, you can watch everything, can't you? Wherever he is, please, keep an eye on him for me." And she seems so small and so frail that it takes all of his self-control not to just pick her up and hold her. Ryo keeps still as she stands up and dusts her jeans off, watches her bow deeply before the graves. When she takes a step back, so does he.
"Thank you," she begins, voice surprisingly steady. "For the flowers. I'm sure he appreciates it, too." She still isn't looking at him.
"Don't mention it," he says, shrugging just as his phone blares out a warning. The manager had already messaged twice and when Ryo hadn't replied, probably sent Koyama to hunt after him. He lets out a tsk of frustration as he silences the phone, and when he looks up, she's watching him.
Her smile is the last thing he expects to see. It isn't quite the same smile. But he feels suddenly warm inside, spreading outward. She opens her mouth and he barely acknowledges the words.
"You should go."
Ryo blinks, looks at her, then at his phone. It rings again, and Yamapi's name flashes across the screen like a beckoning time bomb. He kills the call and raises his eyes to meet hers. "Erika."
"I'll be fine," she tells him softly. And she will be fine, he knows-- she's often stronger than him sometimes, after all--
He turns to leave, only a couple of steps away, before he turns back and says her name again.
Erika turns around, a question in her eyes. He holds out a hand.
She reaches out, fingers sliding over his palm, squeezing lightly.
I'm here.
I know.
They drop their hands at the same time. Ryo walks away.
Characters: Nishikido Ryo and Sawajiri Erika
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Owned by Johnny's Entertainment and Stardust Promotion. Not mine, just messing with.
Summary: When everything's made to be broken. Post-marriage, twist for a fic I got in je_whiteday. Thank you, calledinvain. This is for you.
There are only three things she would come to Japan for.
The first is April the 8th, her birthday. In the mornings her mother surprises her with a fruit cream cake and they share a slice in bed, talking about birds and beaches, and things that can be seen from high places.
The second is her brother's death anniversary. Taichi had died in a motorcycle pileup when he had tailgated a truck driver over a cliff pass. Sawajiris generally lived fast and died young. He was only sixteen.
The third is her father's death anniversary. Sawajiri Yoshimasa passed away due to liver cancer on the same year that Erika was accepted into Stardust Promotions' Idol-Do program. The letter was in her hand when they broke the news to her mother. Kenji had ended up comforting them both in his arms.
It has been two years since she last set foot at Narita, and in that amount of time, nothing had seemingly changed. Mobbed by reporters once she was out of the gates, she was bombarded with questions: "How does it feel to be back home?" "How long are you going to be here for?" "Was your husband's death a government cover-up?"
She breezes through the walkalator, adjusting the sunglasses on her eyes. No comment even as the crowd repeatedly yells out the moniker she has infamously acquired repeatedly. Erika sama acknowledges no one, and gets into a waiting cab, where she tells the driver, simply, "Meiji Jingu."
She was the one who insisted to get married witnessed by God and her late father. And so every step into the shrine is painful. Erika walks past the outer precinct into the Naien, trying to remember where her father and brother's graves were. The place was not at all hard to locate. Beside her family shrine stood a tall man wearing a dark suit, head bowed. She notices quickly that the flowers have been changed for fresh.
Erika comes to a stop beside the man, and without looking at him, speaks. "Where is my mother?"
Ryo raises his eyes and turns to look at her-- airplane-weary, dressed far too casually, fragile and small. "Hello to you, too."
"I asked you a question."
"She hasn't come yet."
She turns to look at him then, a puzzled expression on her face. "How long have you been here?"
"A while."
He has his reasons, but she doesn't ask after them. It's peculiar that he would pay so much attention to two people he had never met in his entire life, but then, she knew Ryo well enough to understand that he was wont towards the doing of peculiar things in varying degrees of sense, it was an Oosakan thing. She kneels before the tombstones, and reaches up to trace the letters engraved with her fingertips.
Meiji Jingu. 2007.
"It's so quiet," he observes in a low voice, coming around the front of the car to open her door-- too late, because by the time he gets there she's already stepping out, careful not to crush her armful of flowers. It's winter, and she's wearing a dress under a scarlet coat, sunglasses over her eyes to shield from the light and the paparazzi. Ryo takes her hand.
"What did you expect?" She's quiet today, he thinks, and not because they were in a shrine-- from the time he'd picked her up, and the whole drive over, she had said maybe ten words to him, most of them monosyllabic. Now he understood why she became suddenly melancholy around the end of November-- because of this. Her fingers curl around his automatically.
Erika leads the way over an uphill path, and midway through, he lets go of her hand and wraps an arm over her shoulders instead. She leans in, held close, and he kisses absently into her hair, because this time it's her in a place that's far from him now, and he gets the distinct feeling that she doesn't want to come back just yet.
It's her who breaks the silence, after a beat. "So, you're really meeting my dad," she murmurs, picking a lily out of the bunch in her arms and tucking it behind her ear, a summer promise despite the cold.
He nods, breathing in to steel himself. "I said I would," he tells her easily, smiling down at her. He feels suddenly warm when the smile is returned to him, and she turns back to the path.
"You seem kind of worried," she notes idly, walking past anonymous gravestones and faded flowers.
"I'm a little nervous," he admits openly, nodding once as he swallows down. Despite herself, she smiles.
"Don't be," she tells him, catching sight of the family shrine. "It's not as if he can yell at you or anything."
"Could do a lot worse," he mutters under his breath, earning him a nudge in the ribs, painful.
"Ryo," she warns, coming to a stop in front of two tall stones, one taller than the other. Sawajiri Yoshimasa is carved on the first. Sawajiri Taichi is on the second. Her father, he knew, was a large man who dwarfed his little daughter, based on the pictures scattered in frames all over her Nerima apartment. Her brother had had her eyes.
Erika takes off the sunglasses, and he's surprised to find that there was not even a shadow of makeup on her face. Seeing her like this, she seemed more fragile somehow, more life-worn-- the bags under her eyes from working day and night, her cheeks sallow from the bitter cold. He watches her inhale shakily, one time and then two, and then turns to look at the graves, silent.
His arm drops when she steps forward to lay the flowers down before her father, kneeling on still-damp grass. The first thing she does is reach up to trace the name on the gravestone slowly, searchingly, before bowing her head. Her hair falls forward, and the lily shifts. Moments later, he hears her speak softly, barely perceptible over the wind.
When she turns back and holds out a hand for him, he blinks, woken from a daydream. Ryo pulls her up as she dusts her dress off with her free hand, and then lets go, stepping up to address her father directly.
He bows deeply first, and keeping his head down, states firmly but quietly, "It's good to meet you, sir. My name is Nishikido Ryo. I came here today with your daughter, to meet you.
Straightening, he swallows down to clear his throat. He sees her father before him instead of a gravestone, a formidable man, looking down at him sternly, the look in his eyes clearly saying, 'do you think you're good enough for my daughter? Do you?'.
Ryo speaks up despite his nervousness. "The fact of the matter, Sawajiri san, sir, is that I love Erika," he blurts out in one breath, and he watches one corner of her father's lips curve up into a smirk, and he takes that to mean that he must go on.
He takes Erika's hand suddenly, and she clasps it between hers as he speaks, keeping her head bowed.
"I love her," he repeats with more conviction than before. His nervousness causes him to laugh a little, weakly, as he continues. "I may not be the best man for her, but... I'm trying hard to prove to her, and to myself, that I deserve her." Ryo can feel heat colouring his cheeks, but struggles to keep his eyes trained on Sawajiri Yoshimasa. "She often thinks otherwise, but she's amazing. And she--"
Ryo trails off helplessly, but doesn't look away. "I... I've never felt more alive, in my life, than I am now, with her," he says finally, inhaling slowly. Her father's sizing him up now for seriousness, so he follows up with a shake of his head. "Oh, no, sir. I'm serious; I meant that-- what I said. It may sound pretentious, but..." he chuckles just a little helplessly, bowing his head. "I don't know how to put words together in a way that doesn't sound clichéd.
"Erika makes me very happy, sir. And..." he looks up, looks her father in the eye, wanting to convey that this is the most serious he'll ever be in the twenty-three years he's lived this life. "And I intend to make her happy, too. Every day."
A teardrop falls on the back of his hand. He squeezes on hers tightly, thanks her father for bringing her into the world. He lets go of her hand to bow low, again, before straightening up and turning to her, pulling her into his arms and holding on so tight he may as well crush her. Her red coat billows in the wind, and the lily in her hair falls to the grass, forgotten, as she cries.
Ryo has never heard the words she speaks to her father before, but he's close enough to hear them now.
"Papa," she begins, hand frozen over the last character in his name. "It's Kacchan. I have come home."
Erika's hand drops to her lap and she keeps her head down and he can just imagine her father, berating her for not coming for so long. It's entirely apt that an apology escapes her lips the next time she speaks. She tells her father that she is doing well, but it's said in such a way that indicates her weariness of the world.
And he would give up-- he couldn't think of anything he wouldn't give up now-- just to reach out and be able to touch her, to be able to feel that she was real and he wasn't stuck in some hazy hallucination. But she was in a place that was far from him now, even standing two steps away from her.
She speaks to her father about a part of her life that had been a mystery to him up until then, her move to Spain, her decision to quit, her journeys to exotic places, and her husband's accident. The case was finally closed in December of the year passed. Takashiro Tsuyoshi was presumed dead.
"Wherever you are, Papa," she whispers, voice breaking. "Wherever you are, you can watch everything, can't you? Wherever he is, please, keep an eye on him for me." And she seems so small and so frail that it takes all of his self-control not to just pick her up and hold her. Ryo keeps still as she stands up and dusts her jeans off, watches her bow deeply before the graves. When she takes a step back, so does he.
"Thank you," she begins, voice surprisingly steady. "For the flowers. I'm sure he appreciates it, too." She still isn't looking at him.
"Don't mention it," he says, shrugging just as his phone blares out a warning. The manager had already messaged twice and when Ryo hadn't replied, probably sent Koyama to hunt after him. He lets out a tsk of frustration as he silences the phone, and when he looks up, she's watching him.
Her smile is the last thing he expects to see. It isn't quite the same smile. But he feels suddenly warm inside, spreading outward. She opens her mouth and he barely acknowledges the words.
"You should go."
Ryo blinks, looks at her, then at his phone. It rings again, and Yamapi's name flashes across the screen like a beckoning time bomb. He kills the call and raises his eyes to meet hers. "Erika."
"I'll be fine," she tells him softly. And she will be fine, he knows-- she's often stronger than him sometimes, after all--
He turns to leave, only a couple of steps away, before he turns back and says her name again.
Erika turns around, a question in her eyes. He holds out a hand.
She reaches out, fingers sliding over his palm, squeezing lightly.
I'm here.
I know.
They drop their hands at the same time. Ryo walks away.