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When the bamboo rustled in the wind, it sounded like whispers. As soon as he learned to walk, Hajime learned to stand at the edge of the grove for hours just to listen to the wind talk to him.
Hajime had always felt things more. He was a child of the earth like his grandmother, the villagers said, born with an affinity for nature and its spirits. He would help them bridge the gap between the living and the others, as she did. Their village was small, tucked in the foothills of the mountains where human visitors were less frequent than spirit ones. He was destined to replace his grandmother someday as their leader.
Hajime accepted this as a simple truth. He never wanted to leave his village. He knew his place was here. He would put his roots down and protect these people from the dangers they could not see.
There were very few children born here, and fewer still his age, but he was never lonely. Tooru, born a mere month after him, was his best friend.
Tooru would hold his hand and listen to the bamboo with him, until he grew cold and frightened and demanded to be taken home again. Tooru was bright and inquisitive and wanted to see everything, wanted to know what Hajime was hearing and seeing, was even jealous that he did not have the talent himself. Hajime didn't feel like he was anything special, the way Tooru made him sound; it was just the way he was. Hajime always did his best to share everything he could, though, just because Tooru wanted him to.
Tooru confided that he wished to leave the village someday, and see the world on the far side of the mountain.
Tooru wanted them to travel together, and even though Hajime knew his place was to stay right here, he thought if anyone could convince him to be selfish and leave, it would be Tooru.
Tooru would never leave the village.
They were only ten years old when it happened. Tooru went off exploring on his own like he'd always been warned not to. He chased the wind, chased his dream, and Hajime was still too young to know how to save him.
Hajime never stopped feeling Tooru, long after his grandmother banished the yokai and recovered Tooru's remains from the bamboo grove. He listened to Tooru's shivering sobs in every gust of wind, but Hajime didn't cry. When they buried Tooru, he could still feel him, curling warm and safe within the hollow of his chest.
Hajime carried Tooru home that night, clasped his hands over his beating heart, and whispered a solemn promise that he would always share every part of himself.
He would always have space for Tooru in his bones. And eventually Tooru stopped weeping for his lost body, and learned to believe him.
For a long time after his death, Tooru was too scared to leave the safety of Hajime's ribcage. Neither of them could stand to go near the bamboo grove. But the spirits of nature were all around them, small and otherworldly and benign. Tooru was terrified of them.
Many times the little ones scented the energy of two souls in one body and drew near out of curiosity, and Hajime felt the icy clutch of fear choke the air from his lungs, dropping him to his knees.
"I won't let anything hurt you ever again," Hajime whispered hoarsely, over and over, clutching at his chest until Tooru remembered to let him breathe. He would shudder and gasp like a drowning man each time Tooru released him, only to panic again. Once the spells of terror passed, the small warmth in Hajime's chest seared hot in guilty apology.
It took them a long time to get the hang of sharing each others' space, as clumsy and awkward as it was at first. But he knew Tooru never meant to hurt him, even when it happened anyway.
Hajime learned to be patient. Tooru learned to be brave.
In his teenage years, Hajime took part in the village's festivals and rites. He learned from the elders to lead the traditional dances, solemn and dignified with his villagers falling in step behind him. He learned how to purify a space that had been defiled, and to offer sake to please the nature spirits to guarantee safe passage through the mountains.
He learned from his grandmother how to banish the malevolence that crept in like jealousy and black rust where their crop fields met with the edge of the forest, so that no unlucky child would fall prey to it again. His grandmother was the only one who knew that Tooru had never left him. And so Tooru learned from her as well – how far he could explore before returning to the safe curves of Hajime's ribs, how the strength of his presence waxed and waned with his moods, how to better control his influence on the world he was stubbornly clinging to. They were both continuing to grow.
They fell into a strange but comforting rhythm, a communication that no longer needed words. Tooru was the cool kiss of air that made the hairs on the nape of Hajime's neck stand up even when he was standing in warm sunlight. Tooru was the playful gust that whipped his straw hat away and flung it carelessly onto rooftops to make him scowl and curse. Tooru was the terrible windstorm that rattled foundations and threatened to uproot trees on nights when the clouds obscured the stars and all the land was blanketed in darkness.
Sometimes Hajime would pick up leaves just to let them fall, so he could watch Tooru make them soar and dance. He hung chimes all over his home – their home – so that Tooru would not be silent, his sounds as gentle and melodic or loud and cacophonic as he liked. And every night when he laid his head to rest, Tooru was the whisper that blew the candle out, before settling in the hollow beside his beating heart.
The fishermen were too frightened to go out on the lake that summer. They claimed they'd seen lights dancing above the surface of the water, and pleaded with Hajime to banish whatever ayakashi had settled in before lives were lost. Hajime readily agreed.
He wanted to face the thing head-on, to learn what it wanted, so he rowed to the center of the lake and simply waited. The summer air was hot, but stagnant, making his clothes stick to his skin as he languished in the direct sunlight. The surface of the lake was smooth as glass, disturbed only by the ripples from his boat.
He listened for a voice, but it was unnaturally quiet. The reeds along the shore wilted. There were no frogs or insects. Not a single bird sang. The stillness grated at his nerves.
A sudden swell of wind buffeted his hair, cold and stinging on his face. Tooru's wariness settled uneasy under his skin, prickling goosebumps along his arms. Hajime shifted in his seat, a scowl pulling at the corners of his mouth.
Sweat beaded along his brow as the boat drifted aimlessly. As he waited, Hajime gazed over the side of his rowboat, distracted by the unfamiliar sight of his own reflection.
At twenty, Hajime had grown broad shouldered and strong. His sun tanned skin was calloused, rough on his well worn palms, still smooth on his youthful face with just a hint of crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled. He wondered what Tooru would look like now if they had grown up together, the way they were supposed to. He liked to think he would be taller than Tooru; more rugged and masculine, since he pictured Tooru as a slight young thing, all elbows and knees like he had been.
Hajime could scarcely believe ten years had passed since the last time he saw Tooru's face.
His hand reached out to touch his reflection, ripples distorting his features. His fingers came away cold as ice.
He closed his eyes and tried his damndest to remember – there was a bright smile, always full of hope; a shock of messy brown hair, and soft, trusting doe eyes – but the features were disconnected in his mind, mere parts of a whole he could not properly recall. He wondered how age would have changed that face – if his eyes would still be so wide and trusting once he'd seen more of the world, if he could still smile the way he used to.
He wished he could see Tooru again, one more time.
When he opened his eyes again, all he saw was blackness.
The water was shockingly cold. Hajime's jaws were parted in a muted cry, silver bubbles bursting from his throat as the black water rushed in to take its place. Bewildered, he looked around him, but could see no signs of the boat. He did not remember falling or being pulled. Everything was inky darkness.
Had he jumped in?
It was a clever spirit, he remembered in his grandmother's voice, that would convince you it was your idea all along.
He was sinking. He thrashed his limbs to no avail, clawing into the blackness for anything to hold onto and slow his descent. He wasn't even sure which way was up. The sun had vanished. There was no light to orient himself by, and his thoughts were shutting down quickly.
He tried to shout, but the icy water was already expanding his lungs, filling him with an inexorable coldness.
Hajime was going to drown.
The singular thought hovered at the center of his failing mind as black rust crept into the corners of his vision.
He was not afraid. It was a simple fact. He was drowning.
His panic dissipated, leaving an eerie calmness in its wake. Hajime was willing to accept this, he thought. He had been patient long enough. His arms and legs slowed, then went limp; his head slumped forward, lips still parted as he sank. His consciousness was dimming. These were facts he was distantly aware of, as though it were happening to someone else's body rather than his own.
If he would never wake again, at least he would be entwined with Tooru for an eternity. If he became a spirit too, he would finally see Tooru's face. The last bubbles of air slipped between his lips.
If the spirit of the lake picked his bones clean, Tooru could still have the white arches of his ribs to call his castle. He wondered if they could still share it once nature reclaimed his skeleton, a garden of plants springing up between his bones as they submerged into the soft earth of the lakebed. They could rise from the water like a rolling fog and play on the wind together like they were children again.
Suddenly Hajime gasped. He sputtered, coughing lake water with a confused groan, as air rushed into his lungs. He could breathe. He was breathing! But –
-He was lying on the bottom of the lake.
Hajime stared incredulously at the water shimmering inches from his nose. He blinked, but it did not go away. A bubble of air had formed around his face, just as it had forcibly expelled the water from his lungs. He could still feel the frigid water on the rest of his body, the leaden weight of his limbs pressed down into the silt of the lakebed.
"Tooru," he croaked.
A violent ripple swept through the preternatural blackness of the lake. The malevolent aura of the ayakashi vanished into nothing.
Sunlight filtered down through the clear surface of the water. Life crept back into the lake almost immediately, the flicker of fish moving in the corner of his eye, pond weeds unfurling and reaching toward the sun. The shadow of the rowboat bobbed overhead, unharmed. The blackness was nowhere to be seen.
"You saved me," Hajime whispered, hushed with awe.
Bubbles gathered beneath his limp body, buoying him as he floated lazily toward the light. He did not move even when he broke the surface, and the warmth of the sun touched his clammy skin. He lacked the strength to do much other than float on his back.
He coughed again as the wind fled his lungs in a rush, skipping along the lake surface to push the rowboat to his side. If it were possible for a breeze to feel smug, Hajime would have accused the wind of being just a little too proud of all of its control.
The boat nudged him insistently until he raised his head and glared at it.
"Show-off," he muttered as he clambered awkwardly into the boat, nearly capsizing it in the process.
He collapsed on his back, utterly spent, and stared at the sky.
"You could have just let me die, you know," Hajime whispered after a long moment. "I would have stayed with you."
The wind whipped fiercely at him, mussing up his hair.
"Yeah, the village needs me this way," Hajime conceded.
He let his weary eyes flutter shut. A light breeze caressed his face, tracing the curve of his jawbone down the column of his throat. Hajime shivered with something he did not know how to express: pride, affection, protectiveness, and relief, all at once. He settled for humming a soft tune, and letting the wind steal his notes and whisk them away.
With a great effort, he raised his arm, and patted his chest. "I just need to rest a bit," Hajime mumbled, voice thick with sleep. "…C'mere, Tooru."
His breath hitched in his chest as grateful warmth coiled below his sternum, finding the space in his ribs Hajime saved just for him, and curling into his heartbeat.