[fic -repost] Verbal Abuse in the Minor {tefu}
Title: Verbal Abuse in the Minor
Author: ezyls_girl
Rating: T (possible M for death)
Genre: Romance/Angst
Pairing: Perfect as main, with side helpings of Royal, Dream, and one-sided Imperial.
Published: 10-27-08, Updated: 10-27-08
Chapter: 1, Words: 5,979Notes: TeFu. One-shot. Explanatory. Death. Not to be updated soon. Disclaimers apply. I am speaking in fragments. XD. [notes eta 2009: Decided to clean up my old journal by reposting. I don't suppose this'll catch your interest at all, because this is poorly-written and beyond sappy. "DD You can still find the original version at ff.net or f-locked on my personal lj.]
So this was what it was like, when the top of the world falls on you. When everything you’d lived for had withered right in front of your eyes.
Tezuka was drowning.
/to cry/
And, to think, it had all begun when Fuji Syuusuke jumped off a bridge.
The one at the east port, and on the midnight of June 31st, no less. No one had been there to witness it, save for a meandering, gossipy pair of old women (God knows what they were doing up that late and strolling the banks of such a shadowy river). The fatter of the two ladies -the one who had not thrown up at the sight- had described the boy as “a drunk, young man, who was about to pass out before he went down.”
The description was so blunt, so blunt that Tezuka wished there had been more details.
Fuji was wearing a violet-colored tennis shirt; the one Tezuka had given to him for his twenty-third birthday. By the time the police had finally managed to fish the brunette out of the river with an old wooden boat, he was drenched from head to foot, his face a mask of pale white, and a curious note clenched tightly in his right hand, so tightly that it had somehow escaped the curse of the murky river water.
“I’m sorry, Eiji.”
Kikumaru had cried, of course, absolutely bawled his lungs out. It might’ve been due to the fact that he and Fuji had been lovers since the end of high school.
High school. Tezuka was pretty sure that was the last time he’d talked - actually talked, with Fuji (the birthday shirt had been delivered by an anonymous, carefully packaged UPS box). Not any big, deep conversation, even. Just polite small talk that usually began with “How are you,
Fuji?” and ended in “I’m good, too.”
He wondered, with a slight bitter sadness, why he hadn’t been mentioned in the note. The scrap of paper couldn’t have held anything more than that tiny apology to Eiji, and Tezuka was sure that Fuji’s mind hadn’t been filled with anything but alcohol at the time, but he reasoned that, since he’d never been jealous of anything else in his life, he could allow himself the liberty of thinking, just once, a bit more for himself.
Fat lot of good that would do for him, now, anyhow.
And Fuji was dead, after all. That was fact.
He contemplated the situation, and a why popped out. Why would Fuji Syuusuke, at age twenty-six, already a successful photographer with several prestigious art awards tucked under his belt, the tensai of all tensais, why would he ever considering plummeting to his death from a sixty-foot high water dam?
He realized that it couldn’t have really been the liquor. Fuji had always been one to hold his own at drinking. Why, once he’d downed three pints of Kawamura’s best sake, and still managed to annihilate Momoshiro in a ten-minute match. He’d also been uncharacteristically rough, so rough that the power player hadn’t gotten in a single point, even complaining about his shoulder hurting after the game.
And Fuji’s swimming couldn’t have been much of an issue, either. Tezuka remembered the time, at a class outing, when the boy had jumped into a lake to rescue one of his fangirls (it didn’t really matter that it was actually Fuji’s fault that the girl had fallen off the cliff in the first place).
No. Fuji had jumped, simply because he had given up.
Given up on life.
Given up on Eiji.
Gave up on Tezuka.
His stomach involuntarily lurched at the thought.
That was why he hadn’t cried when he attended the funeral. When he heard the dark, melancholy chamber music that Fuji favored, he had turned his head around and frowned at everyone. When the palette bearers marched solemnly down the aisle (Fuji Yuuta leading the procession, a mechanic smile situated on his stony features), Tezuka had the urge to get up and stretch. When the time came for the eulogies, he decided to skip out and leave the hall altogether, climbing into his green SUV and driving home in an irritated mood. It was like something was bothering him then, an itch in his mind that he just couldn’t scratch, no matter how hard he tried to claw at it.
And even if Tezuka didn’t want it to appear so, he knew it all along.
If anything, he was being a coward.
A stupid, fucking coward.
It had been the absolute last straw when Izumi dumped him, sealing the fate of seven unsuccessful relationships. In desperation and utter defeat, he’d let a few tears drop down.
With the sound of the salty seawater slapping against the kelp-ridden sandbar, calmly in the background as if no melodrama had occurred in the last ten minutes except a hermit crab being picked up by a gull, Tezuka made his way back to his car.
He drove home in a daze, the feel of a dry, cracking wetness over his cheeks where the tears had been before, and arrived at the bottom of his apartment building, where he lived by himself in a penthouse flat. It was a few minutes before nine, and when he’d finally climbed up the stairs (he never thought the elevator was good for anything), Tezuka met with the enraged face of his building manager. The balding man was standing directly in front of Tezuka’s front door, arms crossed firmly against his chest and an annoyed look on his face, like he’d been guarding the entrance for ten hours and waiting for the owner to return.
“No more girls.”
Tezuka frowned. Golden eyes blinked behind clear, frameless lenses.
“Pardon?”
The manager rolled his eyes, “I said, no more girls, you got that? And cut out all the questionable activities, too. I’ve already got way to many complaints from Takahashi-san down the hall and Li-baa-san downstairs, reporting loud thumps and screams against your walls, deep into the night…” his fat cheeks reddened when he realized what he was implying.
Tezuka remained polite. It helped in uncomfortable situations like this one.
“I regret any distress I’ve caused. Please accept my sincere apologies; it won’t happen again,” he murmured softly, twisting the lock on the door and pushing it open with a slight creak, “Good-evening, Ueno-san.” The door snapped shut in the little man’s pink face.
“I’m home,” he called to no one in particular, save for a framed photo sitting on a stand and shrine on a wooden shelf above the fireplace.
If anyone asked, Tezuka would be the first to admit that it was a rather foolish thing to do, setting up a little secure place in the living room for a long-lost person he’d grown far apart from in a few years. Even so, he still kept it there, sometimes indulging himself for a while just staring at the photo, his thoughts drifting.
It was stupid. Once or twice he’d removed the picture and thrown it into the trash, but it would never get far before he fetched it our and brushed it off, slipping it back into its rightful place. There was a time when Tezuka had been so desperate to retrieve the photo he had chased after the dump truck, running after it like a madman and making quite a scene frantically digging through the garbage bags for that little photograph as the garbage man stood off to one side, tapping his boot on the asphalt road and shouting various forms of the phrase,
“Make up yer mind already, dammit.”
And it wasn’t because he didn’t want to leave it, but because he couldn’t leave it.
Atobe had been the one to save his neck in the end, covering for him at the office and firing anyone who had come close to the truth of their boss having gone through a pile of dirty paper diapers and rotten apple cores looking for something so frivolous.
“A meaningless photograph,” the purple-haired diva had declared, “and it’d be better if you just forgot all about it.”
But he couldn’t. That was the frightening bit. Tezuka couldn’t live without that photo. It was so silly to say, but he knew it was the truth. To think that, once being Seigaku’s pillar of support, and so independent and strong, he had fallen to a state of complete reliance on a simple picture.
It was laughable. He was laughable.
That was how he ended up dating all the girls in ore-sama’s reject pile. And whenever he invited one of them to his flat, each of them would inquire, with a certain amount of jealousy, who’s the pretty brunette in the photo, a past girlfriend?
To this, they would receive a curt response, “Actually, he was a good friend of mine in high school.”
If they asked for further details, an even icier answer would come, its tone flat and expressionless, “He’s dead.” (And that would usually signify the end of their date.)
He’s dead.
Indeed, Fuji Syuusuke was dead.
And Tezuka hadn’t been able to talk to him before he left.
Maybe it was the guilt that had gripped him, or the shame he felt from ignoring Fuji’s attempts at communication, that kept the close-eyed,
forever-angelic face (with a hint of slight darker side) to keep looking down from the mantel as Tezuka watched the evening NHK broadcast while finishing a late dinner.
The man was guilt-ridden. But anger would always replace that guilt when he thought of Kikumaru, and Fuji and Kikumaru.
Eiji. Tezuka remembered the last year of high school…
It was an hour after the last period, he had gone back to the physics classrooms to grab his textbook, and walked in on the two of them, locked in a passionate embrace and a chilling kiss.
Tezuka had felt a large tremor in his chest, and his breathing stopped as he hastily backed out, gripping his textbook like it was about to crack.
He shut the door behind him, and ran like hell. And however uncharacteristic he seemed right then, in full sight of anyone, he just. Didn’t.
Care.
Not anymore.
What killed him even more, though, was the fact that it had clearly been Fuji who had initiated the kiss, pinned Eiji onto one of the desks, and undid the first three buttons of his shirt.
It was that day, when he realized that he would never get what he had desired for the past three years. And thus, he decided to break contact with Fuji and Kikumaru. He had reasoned that it wouldn’t be as painful as talking to them and knowing full well what they were doing together behind his back. He would’ve kicked both of them off the tennis regulars team (he was that angry), but decided that it was inappropriate and would probably just stimulate even more rumors. As if there weren’t enough of those.
Instead, he resigned. He, Tezuka Kunimitsu, head of the Seishun High tennis club since sophomore year, had resigned from tennis.
(Not really, of course. In the end, he decided to try playing in the minor circuits, and wound up winning a few trophies and medals here and there. The pro-leagues he had left for Echizen to master.)
And everything had been coming along just fine: he’d graduated college as class valedictorian, gotten a well-paying job (though, unfortunately next to Atobe), and even dated a few girls in his spare time…
…until Fuji decided to throw himself off a bridge.
That was how Tezuka became a closet mourner, continuous dumpee, and a man of a million broken dreams.
/to laugh/
He could swear he’d been hallucinating a lot, lately. Or maybe he’d just been taking in too much caffeine. No, that couldn’t be quite it. Tezuka had always prided himself in being able to get up in the morning and catch the early bird special at the parking lot near his working complex.
It was just…
Lately, every time he’d been walking alone, or practicing by himself at a street tennis court, Tezuka would always feel another presence watching him. Watching, and waiting. It was a pearly mist that often circled around his footsteps.
The first thought that had come to his mind: Stalker. But his checking behind him every three steps, coupled with his lightning fast reflexes (honed from years of hardcore speed tennis) proved that Tezuka was just scaring himself.
Funny, he had never pegged himself as one of those paranoid schizophrenic types. Tezuka had never visited even visited a psychic before, and doubted he ever would (it might have been just because Atobe was a regular guest at Madame Eye’s coffee shop, but he could never be sure).
But the mist was so real, almost like a cool, ghostly presence, a chilly breeze in midsummer -
And then he had an annoying thought.
God. I’ve become dependent on an inanimate object and now I’m entirely paranoid. What’s next, entering a state of being completely mentally unhinged and actually accepting Atobe’s dinner offers?
It was disconcerting, to say the least. But he found himself rather liking this presence. In fact, he had been so sure that he had once seen a figure drift between those clouds, a familiar, smiling boy.
“Tezuka, are you okay?” A cup of fine, French roast coffee was settled down amongst the scattered internship applications and stat reports in Tezuka’s in-tray. Atobe Keigo plopped down opposite his co-worker, in the leather seat for customers only.
The honey-haired man glared, but his gaze softened at the sight of French-roasted coffee. Trust Atobe to know what his weaknesses were.
Honestly, Tezuka didn’t know how he could’ve survived at the company for so long without the purple-haired diva always lending him a hand.
He’d learnt to accept the diva’s help, however grudgingly. There was a time when Tezuka needed no help, held no weaknesses, but those days were gone. Even though he still despised Atobe’s overtly-pompous presence and his odd, egotistic habits, he’d gotten used to it. He and Atobe were business partners, after all, and one word from the guy could easily kill Tezuka’s job for good.
Tezuka looked up, “Yes?”
“Ore-sama doesn’t like it when his business partners are under the weather. Oh, don’t tell me, did that bitch Izumi dump you?”
Tezuka’s eyes averted from the diva’s penetrating gaze. What was he supposed to say?
I’m being haunted by the ghost of a man who had jumped off a bridge three years back?
Certainly not.
I still love him, and constantly think about him?
Atobe would probably cart him off to the hospital. He was the one who had been against Tezuka’s feelings for Fuji, in the first place. If the diva could read Tezuka’s mind at that moment, he’d might’ve joined Fuji and jumped off that bridge, too.
Having received no answer from the stony man in front of him, Atobe breathed out a sigh and stood up from his seat and stepped out of
Tezuka’s office, with a sharp sense of disdain.
You don’t understand, do you, Tezuka?
Of course he didn’t. He never would.
Ore-sama loves you.
And it was as simple as that, but at the same time utterly funny. Atobe Keigo, one of the biggest business tycoons in the world, had fallen in love with his handsome co-worker. They had worked together for six years, now, ever since Tezuka left college and begged Atobe for a job in order to pay off his sick mother’s health care. The diva had agreed without a true word of protest, not because he pitied the man…but because he had loved him since the end of junior high.
It was unbearably cliché.
Atobe would’ve told him-oh yes, he would’ve-had not once heard, with his very own ears, Tezuka Kunimitsu profess his love for Fuji Syuusuke, in all his drunken glory.
He didn’t remember where, exactly which bar they had tramped into the night of the brunette’s pitiful funeral, but all he knew was that Tezuka had called him and asked for his company…something the man had never required from Atobe before.
Seeing the downcast look on his friend’s face, the diva demanded to bartender for a couple of slim whiskey shots and a quick chaser. He hadn’t expected Tezuka to actually join him when he motioned for two shot glasses, but the man had unexpectedly wrestled the cup from Atobe’s hand and took a full shot, tipping his head back and not uttering a single word afterwards.
Something was wrong.
One glass filled into two, two into four, four into twenty-six. By the end of his ninth shot, Atobe had given up and stared in amazement as the former tennis captain consumed glass after glass. The man’s movements increased in awkwardness, becoming more and more stagnant as his tolerance approached its limit and the only sign of it an unnatural rosy tinge in his usual ghostly pale cheeks. He hadn’t tried to stop the guy, it looked like he was actually enjoying it and Atobe had never seen Tezuka enjoy anything, really.
“I really loved him.”
“Who?” the diva asked, examining the whiskey bottle and barely registering as to what the hell Tezuka was nattering on about.
“Syuusuke.” The name came out slurred-sounding, but it was obvious to Atobe’s ears. Even so, he assumed it to be drunken talk and paid no attention until he saw the Tezuka’s face.
The brown of his eyes glinted with a clear, sober light beneath crystal clear lenses and fluorescent bar lighting.
So this was what it was like, when the top of the world falls on you. When everything you’d lived for had withered right in front of your eyes.
Atobe’s eyes widened.
“Wait-”
But Tezuka had totally entered drunken heaven, tipping the rest of the Alaskan whiskey onto Atobe’s clean shirt and conking out right there,
on the polished wooden countertop of the bar.
And so Atobe knew, and Tezuka knew that Atobe knew, and that was how it went with the two of them. (It also helped that Tezuka had somehow discovered Atobe’s secret Echizen fetish, so it would be fair to say that things remained even between them.)
How surprised his co-worker would be, if he knew that Atobe had another one up his sleeve. But this secret, this secret wanting of Tezuka, was one that Atobe would never spill. Over his dead body.
It was something to get over, Atobe supposed, and he left it at that. And it wasn’t as if the diva didn’t already have his own personal romance to toy with. Opening the door of his private chambers, the man thumbed the speed dial on his cell phone, cursing when the robotic, distinctly-female-sounding speaker rumbled, “Ca-lling. E-chi-zen Ree-oh-ma.”
He could always live life without Tezuka, as long as he had a reservation and the silken bed sheets of L’Hôtel Royale waiting for him, and an anxious, naked little Ryoma crouched on top of that.
He just wasn’t sure if he’d be able to live life to the fullest.
Oh, well. Not that it mattered much.
And the thought passed through Atobe’s brain without another suspicious glance backwards.
/to run/
It wasn’t like Tezuka had no experience with women. He had just never been quite as interested in them as he was supposed to, he guessed. It may have been because of all the premature exposure to all the feral (or perhaps, crack-smoking) fangirls watching his every step, before he had grown a set of hormones and a proper-sized-well, you-know-what. The fact that his early life mainly revolved around eight other boys of the same age could’ve contributed to it, too.
But there was that time, when…
The vague image of a gentle brush in the hand and a shrill laugh echoed in his head, and the old déjà vu kicked in for a millisecond.
He couldn’t really remember what happened, anyways.
And when he had finally gotten to a stage where he became romantically interested it was -just a bit- too late. Fuji Syuusuke had already been staked (or rather, the pretty boy had already staked someone else, and that someone had not been Tezuka).
It was, to say the least, a disappointment. Tezuka had always figured that he would be able to get over it, and eventually make peace with his childhood friends, but the time had never come. And before he knew it…
Death was upon them. Fuji had -clearly, now, but not-so clear then- other plans.
Now, the only place Tezuka would ever be able to reconcile with was in his own living room, and towards the still form of a sixteen-year-old boy, forever captured between a sheet of glass and three pieces of cheap cardboard backing.
Sometimes, he really wanted to stop living like this. Atobe had once commented that he “resembled a living ghost who did everything without a second thought, except when it came to Fuji”.
And it was true. He’s walk to the supermarket, pick up some apples, and Fuji Syuusuke and his Fuji-apple addiction would come to mind. When he’d had his evening coffee and sometimes a glass of red wine, he’d suddenly remember Fuji’s pink lips, as the brunette drank a cup of vegetable-flavored pearl milk tea (his favorite rendition of Inui juice). Half-way through typing up a critical report for tomorrow’s business meeting, Tezuka would suddenly hear tinkly laughter, the kind that Fuji used when he reminded Tezuka that he shouldn’t over-work himself so much.
The worst was when he needed to pee. When an image of Fuji Syuusuke appeared in his head in the middle of unzipping his fly, Tezuka would almost immediately have to jump into the shower stall and dash himself with cold water (that was how he had once ruined his best long-sleeved shirt).
Tezuka was drowning.
Surely, this was worse than stepping off the edge of a bridge and holding your breath for a few seconds. Much worse.
He brushed the rest of the golden hair that had somehow managed to get in his eyes, and decided to take a walk.
The streets outside were considerably dimmer and much less bustling at a quarter to midnight. For once, Tezuka despised the deadbeat whispers, absence of cars, and the lights in all the nearby shops dampened.
Where was a distraction when you needed one? Tezuka stepped out into the moonlight, swamped by murky summer storm clouds, and pocketed his keys. A stroll in the park would do.
It was when he started to walk, did Tezuka notice an all-too familiar mist beginning to gather around him. He still couldn’t believe it was a ghost…it was too surreal.
He remembered a time in junior high, when there were strange rumors of a haunted racket still floating around the tennis club. It was bizarre, and only he and one of the freshmen, Horio Satoshi, didn't buy the twisted tale.
"Tezuka, do you believe in ghosts?"
He had given Fuji an alarmed look, added a curt shake of the head.
Now, he wondered if he had spoken too soon.
The park was empty, save for a few slumbering homeless people and the occasional stray cat. Tezuka sat down at a park bench and focused his thoughts on something else. Anything else. And then he remembered reading the police reports early that morning. His mind had been wandering, and debating whether or not to hire a butler that Atobe recommended (he had decided that Atobe was crude enough to think that he needed one), but he had managed to catch a few lines in the third paragraph on the right.
Fuji Yuuta - Suspected death of suicidal drug overdose. Initial cause is still unclear and in the midst of investigation.
Tezuka felt like he'd been run through by a chalk of ice.
Fuji Yuuta. The pleasant, feisty younger brother. He would never understand why people referred to him as Fuji's little brother, but it was definitely not because they looked down on his tennis. Tezuka knew that people respected the youngest Fuji sibling as much as the eldest.
No, it'd been clear to everyone but Yuuta, that it was just easier to refer to him as Fuji's brother, than Fuji Yuuta. It wasn't much of an excuse, but it was one nonetheless.
In any case, all of that didn't matter. Because Fuji's little brother had killed himself.
Tezuka blamed the stupid police reports, not giving him a minute of a peace of mind.
And then he had realized, with more jumbled thoughts in-tow, that it was three minutes until the clock struck twelve, and that after three minutes it would mark the death of Fuji Syuusuke for three years.
Had Yuuta planned this? To die almost three years after his older brother, as some sick tribute to a loved one? Was it too much to bear? What would happen to their older sister, then, Yumiko? Tezuka was a bit amused that he’d still managed to recollect the name of Fuji’s sister. He rarely remember the first names of any girls he encountered (it was only five years later from his last year in junior high did he learn that Ryuzaki-sensei’s granddaughter was named Sakuno).
But Fuji Yumiko was special, he thought. He remembered the countless times Fuji’s sister had drove by Seigaku, asking Syuusuke and sometimes Tezuka himself, if they needed a ride home in her pretty red convertible. He had been more in awe of the woman with her car, rather than her name, but somehow, perhaps during one time when Fuji had delightedly held his seatbelt for him, his breath in Tezuka’s ear and spoke to Yumiko-nee about something exciting during tennis practice, did he catch onto Fuji’s sister’s name.
It was two minutes till midnight. His head was spinning, and it took a while for him to realize that he had strolled out of the park and arrived in front of a flower boutique that opened until twelve AM. He decided to visit Fuji’s grave. The cemetery was nearby, in any case.
The lone store owner was a heavyset man with a toothbrush mustache and tiny glasses shoved-up a pug nose. He was watching reruns of Happy Family from a small, counter-sized black television set sitting on the flower counter.
“I’d like to buy some white lilies,” Tezuka brushed his hair back from his glasses. Obaa-san had always told him how well lilies dressed-up a gravestone, and Fuji’s favorite color was white.
The guy didn’t look up at first, “Sorry, we’re not open right now, sir, and it would be nice if-why, you’re T-Tezuka Kunimitsu!”
And here comes the paparazzi…Oh, he could hear it now. Tezuka Kunimitsu, rumored boyfriend of corporate tycoon Atobe Keigo, seen stalking through a flower shop during midnight. Could he have been cheating on Atobe? Or is this a typical new development of the recent heart-breaker?
Just because he was close with Atobe didn’t necessarily mean that he was supposed to be intimate. Gossip columns were always gossip columns.
The thought sickened the bespectacled-man, and his nose scrunched-up just a bit, otherwise betraying no shock. It was better to remain stoically silent, a trait he had picked up through the years, “Please, make it quick,” he responded, a bit of impatience edging into his voice.
The cutting and wrapping of the limp stalks took a whole five minutes, and, after he’d finally convinced the store owner that yes, he would like to pay for the flowers, and no, he didn’t give out autographs, it was 12:24. Tezuka made his way out of the maze of flower pots and tin buckets, ushered by the awed flower vendor, and hastily out the door to walk to the city east burial grounds.
It was too late to take a cab. He opted to walk.
Out on the sidewalk again, the mist reached a whole new level of intensity. As Tezuka stumbled confusedly towards his destination, he couldn’t help but wonder why all the bad things happened to him. It couldn’t have been that his didn’t want the good to occur, it was really just because…
He’d always been a tad too late. Too late to catch the late bus. Too late to understand the signals the fangirls were always sending him. Too late to notice his attraction to the second-best man on his tennis team.
They say that people with charisma were always more suited to the quiet life, no matter how many people were pulled towards them. Tezuka wondered if he had, at any point in his life, contained any of that charisma.
And the ironic part was, Tezuka had always hated tardiness, and prized punctuality. He laughed.
The mist around him cleared, and Tezuka was reminded of the lull in a storm, the calm before something dastardly appeared. It left him standing at a barren street intersection, one that he didn’t really recognize. Tezuka clutched the clear cellophane wrapped around the lilies tighter.
His eyes widened when he peered across the street…
No way.
But it was.
No. It couldn’t be.
But it was…
Standing at the far side of the asphalt paving, the blinking red lights of the street flashing blindly behind, with a gentle smile and a quiet wave, his light brown bangs dancing in the invisible breeze, was Fuji Syuusuke.
I must be hallucinating; the brown-haired man thought irritably, he’s dead.
And he wasn’t coming back. Certainly not.
Yet the figure of the boy seemed to grow sharper, bolder until it was almost impossible for him to be a figment of imagination. His face shone in the traffic lights, and his left foot was moving back and forth, like he was getting impatient for Tezuka to come over and greet him-perhaps even an embrace and a kiss, or two. What was even more startling, though, was that he young-looking-no creases in his skin, no hair sprouting from the chin…this was the Fuji that haunted Tezuka’s dreams at night, clammed his palms with cold sweat and made his breathing ragged…the forever pre-pubescent, girly-version of Fuji Syuusuke. The smiling version, the close-eyed wonder of their middle school years. The one that, with one look, could send Mizuki Hajime into his little heaven-hell-interlude, could throw even Kirihara Akaya off his game, could stun the prince himself, Echizen Ryoma.
Except this time, unlike all those other times in Tezuka’s own thoughts, he was real. Unbelievably real.
Tezuka, do you believe in ghosts?
He wondered why this line always came up at the most appropriate moments.
“S-Syuusuke…” his beginning was feeble.
The boy gave a nod of encouragement, and leaned back expectantly against a telephone pole.
“You…I…”
Another nod.
He took a step forward.
Another step. Another. Until he had broken into a run across the street.
Fuji just stood there, smiling serenely, until the boys eyes had somehow widened with horror, shocked.
And Tezuka was, once again, too late.
Too late, to notice the large truck speeding down the road. The moment he saw the vehicle was the moment the large bumper plowed into
his chest.
BEEP, BEEP!
The mist shattered into a billion pieces.
When the paramedics left, the only sigh of there ever being an accident on the corner was a scattered, trampled bouquet of white lilies, each and every petal stained with droplets of a damp, bloody red.
/to die?/
A/N: This. Is. The biggest piece of shit I've ever written. You don't have to review, unless you plan to flatter me. And I don't think I deserve it, at all.
Actually, I doubt ANYONE but me actually read this thing through...-.-"