Yui Miyamoto 
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Disclaimer: Fruits Basket = not Yui’s.Music Without Words
Chapter 4 – toki.
“You’ll have to do everything I
tell you until then. It won’t be much, but it will be enough.” He then lifted up
my chin. “I’ll show you all that happiness is just an illusion.”
Then, he
let go as he went to the window. “You can’t tell him any of this,
okay?”
“Hai,” I replied while covering my wound while getting up.
“When he rejects you, you might take Yuki’s place.” He smiled to
himself. “I’ve always loved those determined eyes of yours. Maybe I should have
taken yours instead of Hatori’s. Hahaha.”
“Haru?”
I looked at his
face.
“You only have one month.”
Without asking for his
permission, I said to him, “The only thing I ask of this agreement is that he’ll
be able to live as he chooses. That’s all.”
“We’ll see.”
Angry as
I was, I had to be satisfied with that.
Without another word, I left and
went to Hatori. He just looked at me as I opened my shirt to reveal what Akito
had done to me, but I said nothing of it. I didn’t have to
though.
“Akito’s still a child,” he simply said. But as I looked at
Hatori’s face, I could see a softness that I had never seen from anyone else in
the household when it came to Akito.
It was funny that someone as stoic
as Hatori would be the only one to understand Akito so well. I couldn’t tell if
it was because Akito got sick so much that Hatori was next to him…
…or
was he really…no, I won’t think of that.
Hatori took out a cigarette.
“Let’s go for a drive.”
I blinked at him. That was random. “All right,” I
told him with hesitation in my tone.
And so there we were driving to the
Sohma cabin deep into the woods. I opened the window to let the cool air come in
as Hatori just plopped himself comfortably onto the sofa.
“Won’t Akito
get mad that you’re here?” I asked as I looked up to the clear sky with the moon
shining brightly outside.
“Akito gets jealous of everything,” he simply
answered.
Straight and to the point. I always like Hatori for
that.
I closed my eyes as I looked up at the moon again. I was silent,
but Hatori wouldn’t let me swim in my own grave.
He was always generous
that way. He and Yuki were the same in that sense.
They could always do
something for you, but you couldn’t do a damn thing back for them, no matter how
much you tried.
“You finally stepped over the boundary, didn’t you?” He
then sighed as he took out a pack of Lucky Sevens from his pocket as well as a
pack of matches. Lighting up his cigarettes, he inhaled it while I could still
feel his stare on me.
“The boundary? There’s a boundary to everything in
this damn household, isn’t there?” I turned around to him, annoyed. “Even when
you care for another person.”
He just closed his eye a bit and looked
away, knowing from pure experience what the hell I was telling him.
“I’m
not rebelling because I want to defy Akito.” I shook my head. “That’s very
stupid. I might as well throw myself from this window.”
“Then _why_ are
you doing this, Haru?” he asked me while taking another puff of his
cigarette.
“Because this way of life isn’t living.” I sighed as I put my
hands on the windowsill before me. “I’m going to go insane. If I have to live
everyday fearing someone because of the way they look at me or have to subject
myself to the whim of someone who’s supposed to be head of our
clan.”
Then, I turned to him. “What _is_ that, Hatori?”
I then
pulled on my shirt showing him the bandages he had wrapped around my body.
“There’s not much to expect from the world and I didn’t want anything from it. I
just want to show Akito that his warped way of affection isn’t the way it’s
supposed to be.”
Then, I smiled a little to myself and continued, “But
Yuki…just like Tohru showing him that he shouldn’t be ashamed about being the
way he is, he didn’t know that was his own charm. He made me see what was
twisted about the way we lived. And when he left the main house, that’s when I
realized how much things were empty without him. Despite the fact that Akito
wasn’t shouting for him or that I could just sit next to him in the garden being
really quiet.”
Hatori just continued to listen to me quietly while
looking at me.
“I asked him once, ‘If you could live only as an animal or
human forever, what would you pick?’ And you know what he told me? He told me,
‘Either is fine as long as I get to live the way I want. Whether it’s wrong or
right to do so.’
I then asked him while leaning my head on his shoulder,
‘Then, Yuki? Where do we fit in?’ Shaking his head, he smiled, ‘Nowhere. But
that makes us special. We can be both, can’t we? Despite…despite the fact that
turning into an animal can be kind of disheartening to yourself as well as
frighten the people around you.
“I had told him, ‘Then, they don’t know
anything, do they, Yuki? They only love with their eyes, don’t they?’ He only
looked at me gently while patting my head.”
With tears in my eyes, while
I gulped, I looked at Hatori, I told him, “I believe that. I believe in him. And
because of those things, I want to protect the life he wants to lead, even if
I’m not it.”
“What did Akito want you to do?” he asked me while looking
deeply at me.
Just as intensely, I gave him my determined eyes.
No
fear…
I didn’t fear anything as long as it came to Yuki.
“In one
month, I’m supposed to make Yuki fall in love with me if Akito’s going to accept
our relationship.” While looking to the ground, I gulped a bit, then I looked
back into his face. With a smile, I answered, “And if he doesn’t, I will
die.”
Hatori took the cigarette from his mouth and just kept his mouth a
bit as he just stared at me in shock.
Turning around, I looked at the
moon. “I don’t expect anything from Yuki and I’m telling you right now that I
will just continue things as they have always been.”
“You sound like
you’re giving up already,” Hatori answered with a slightly annoyed voice.
I shook my head. “No, it isn’t that. I don’t want Yuki to love me
because of an ultimatum or because he’s on the rebound. I want him to always
stay the way he is and I want him to be happy.”
“If you die, he’ll cry
for you.”
It was then that Hatori got up and patted my shoulder. I told
him, “As long as he knew I was alive, that’s enough for me.”
“I wish…”
Hatori sighed while looking out the window with me. “I wish that other people
were as strong as you are now.”
Then, he let go as he lit another
cigarette. “Yuki may have had the worst among all of us, but it seems that he’s
very lucky because of it too.”
“I want Yuki to realize that I love him
for everything. That he doesn’t have to be so harsh on himself.” Then, I turned
to Hatori and laughed. “Especially when you’re close to
perfection.”
While we were driving home the next morning, I looked out
the window and prayed. “I just want Yuki to stay the same and to live the way he
wants. Just as long as he’s happy…”
Hatori kept his eye on the road as he
asked, “You knew exactly what you were doing when you went into Akito’s room,
didn’t you?”
I knew it ever since he gave me that look from Yuki’s futon
years ago. When he became insanely jealous at the gentle way I looked at
Yuki.
I simply answered, “I knew this day would come.”
It was only
a matter of time.
I just didn’t expect it so
soon.
Tsuzuku…
--
Author’s note: Haru is so gentle, I can’t
describe what it is. When I write from his perspective, there’s this nice,
peaceful feeling inside of me.
But as we progress, it’s becoming more and
more painful. I can’t stand the thought that Haru might die in the fic. I’m in
the process of re-editing the fic and writing the ending for it, but * sighs *
it’s hard.
Toki – translated as ‘when’ or ‘time’.
Yui Miyamoto
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