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There’s a little boy sitting in the flower, and Hajime’s first thought is that he probably should have listened to his mom and not eaten that marshmallow cereal for breakfast, because clearly this is some sort of sugar-induced hallucination.
“Uh.”
“Don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open, you’re going to swallow a fly.” His voice is a tinny little squeak, his nose turned up in the air, eyes regarding Hajime disdainfully. Hajime closes his jaw with a sharp snap, and the boy smirks.
“Oh, such an obedient little human.”
“Why are you in a tulip?” Hajime asks, his heart racketing around his chest, still trying to tell himself this can’t be real.
“Really? That’s your question?” the boy sneers. “’Why are you in a tulip?’ Of all the dumb—oh, I see, you’re not the brightest, are you?”
“Are you yokai?” Hajime wonders—he had heard his grandmother speaking about them, knows that she occasionally leaves presents for them in the woods, but he’s never heard her speak about actually meeting one. He had always assumed they were a nasty kind of being, ugly and misshapen, intent on causing havoc—he never imagined that they would be quite so…pretty.
“Yokai?” the boy sniffs daintily, derailing Hajime’s train of thought, “No, I am far more dignified than mere demons of the forest. I am one of the fair folk, little human. One of the fae.”
“Fae?”
“Fairy.”
Hajime squints. “Where are your wings, if you’re a fairy?”
“Oh, so the little human can be observant. Well, that’s the reason I’m stuck in this tulip. My wings are gone.” He sighs, and Hajime crouches closer—his nose brushes the upstanding petals, and the fairy glares up at him. His whole body is glittery, thick brown hair interwoven with little golden vines. His eyes are a similar shade of butterscotch and so bright they look like they’re illuminated from behind. He’s certainly small, but upon closer inspection of his face, it seems that he’s significantly older than Hajime—no baby fat in his cheeks, a sharp chin and lovely bone structure. Not a child, like Hajime is. But definitely smaller. Very, very small. The size of Hajime’s thumb, maybe.
“Why are they gone?”
“They were stolen from me, by some of those brutish mountain yokai. And now I am left in this pathetic excuse of a tulip, to rot for the rest of all eternity.” He crosses his arms petulantly, resting them on his drawn knees—he then glares up at the cloudy, tempestuous sky. “And look, it’s going to rain soon. It’s the stormy season—it’s going to be a downpour. This flower will fill up with water, and I’m going to be drenched but I still won’t be able to drown and be put out of my misery. Oh, woe is me. Woe. Is. Me.”
Hajime privately thinks that this is somewhat dramatic, as it looks like it would be easy enough for the fairy to simply crawl out of the flower, even without wings. But he already looks so pitiful, and Hajime’s mom is always telling him he should be more considerate of other people’s feelings. He frowns, absently picking at some dried mud on his ankle. It flakes off into his socks. “Do you want me to move you somewhere else?”
The fairy glances up, his round eyes hopeful. “I don’t suppose you have someplace warm and dry I could sit?”
Hajime ponders this for a moment—he looks around the backyard, and spots what he had left on the stone porch steps earlier in the day. He stands, grinning. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” He runs off back towards the house, unhearing of the sarcastic little, “Oh, because I was just about to leave—“
He’s back in seconds, a little short of breath. “Here. I bring bugs home with me all the time, and my mom’s too grossed out to look inside. You can stay in my room until the rain stops.” It’s a simple glass jar, small holes poked into the lid and the bottom littered with bits of twig and grass clippings. Usually he uses it for the temporary housing of stag beetles and butterflies (roly-polies if it’s a slow day), but he doesn’t see how it would be unacceptable to the fairy; it looks comfortable enough, if you asked him.
Yet the fairy eyes the jar distrustfully. “That doesn’t look very hygienic.”
“Hy...hy…what?”
He rubs a hand up and down his tiny face, eyes rolling skyward. “Good heavens. Okay, fine. Fine. Just one more thing—do you swear on your life that you will not show me to anyone?”
Hajime hadn’t been planning on it, so he doesn’t think twice before answering. “Sure.”
“Very well. You may pick me up—gently, and your hands better be clean.”
There’s dirt under Hajime’s fingernails, but he doesn’t tell the fairy that. He picks him up around the middle, carefully as instructed, and lifts him to the lip of the jar. He tilts it on its side, allowing the fairy to easily slide down the glass to land softly on the cushion of grass below.
“It smells like stinkbugs in here.”
“Sorry.”
And Hajime heads back to the house, just as the first drops of rain begin to fall.
Hajime deeply regrets everything.
“You talk so much,” he grumbles, resisting the urge to cover his ears with his hands. The fairy—who had helpfully supplied that his name was Tooru—has not stopping speaking for the past hour and a half, and Hajime wistfully looks out his bedroom window; raindrops are still steadily pouring down, skating across his window in tremble-y little blobs, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be letting up anytime soon.
“What was that?” Tooru asks, smiling widely and swinging his legs—he’s perched on the rim of the jar now. It had only taken ten minutes for him to warm up to Hajime, and his lips have not stopped flapping since.
“Why do you never stop talking?” Hajime moans, louder this time.
Tooru’s smile does not falter in the slightest; in fact, it becomes downright ornery, and his eyes narrow gleefully. “You’re alright, I suppose. For a human,” he replies instead, completely avoiding the question. Hajime wonders if he should be flattered or irritated. He settles for an odd mixture of both.
“Anyway, as I was saying—Keiji seems to be under the illusion that this particular owl spirit is charming, and he has become absolutely smitten. Personally, I’m not so sure some sort of infatuation spell hasn’t been cast, because when you look at the facts—“
“I don’t care,” Hajime whines, smacking his forehead against the windowpane, and is sorely disappointed that he fails to knock himself out.
“—Keiji is just so far out of Koutarou’s league. I don’t care how powerful a spirit he is; he spits up those pellets four times a day, and it is frankly disgusting to watch.”
Hajime sighs, leaning his head on his arm. He’s kneeling by the window, Tooru’s jar sitting on his work desk beside him, and this way they are at eye-level with each other. “It’s not very nice to say those kinds of things about people. You don’t even know him, do you?”
“Koutarou? I know him plenty. I’ve watched him grow from an owlet to what he is today. His shrine has been getting an awful lot of visitors lately, is the problem. It’s all gone to his head.”
“Mm.” Hajime’s tuned out at this point, watching two raindrops race across the glass, and in his mind he bets on which one will reach the edge first.
“So, what do you think, little human? What should I tell Keiji?”
Hajime’s eyes turn away from the racing droplets, considering Tooru on the jar who is watching him like he cares what his answer is. “I don’t think you should tell him anything, because it’s none of your business.” He turns away again. “If you were a real friend, you’d let him be with anybody that makes him happy. Even if you think they’re gross.”
Tooru’s quiet then, seeming to mull over Hajime’s words. This makes Hajime plenty happy, and he’s content to just listen to the pitter-patter of water on the roof, of the soft gushing through the storm drain.
“You’re good, for a human,” Tooru repeats after a few blessed minutes of silence. Hajime mourns the loss—it had been nice while it lasted. “What’s your name? I’d completely forgotten to ask.”
“It’s Iwaizumi Hajime.”
“Hajime being your first name? ‘To begin’.” He smiles, then, rather dazzlingly, and Hajime blinks, feeling a little like the smile punched him in the face. “How fitting.”
Hajime’s not about to figure out what that’s supposed to mean, so he ignores it. He turns back to stare outside, grumbling when Tooru slides down from his perch to join him at the window—he presses his tiny hand to the glass, the warmth making it fog up all around his fingers. “I’m going to get my wings back, Hajime,” he murmurs softly.
Hajime sighs with relief. “Okay.”
He turns to look up at Hajime then, uncharacteristically serious. “And when I do, I’m going to come back for you.”
Hajime’s eyes widen. “No—“
“Nope, too late! I’ve decided.” He nods to himself importantly. “We’re going to be friends.”
Hajime helplessly fists his hands on the sill, nails scratching the paint slightly. “But—“
“Anyway, if I want to get my wings back from the tengu then I’ll have to walk, and that’s going to take several days at least. But never fear, my friend! I’ll be back before you know it!”
“You don’t have to come back,” Hajime hedges, nose wrinkling as he tries to think of a polite way to say please don’t.
“Nonsense! A fairy never breaks their promises. You’ll see.”
Hajime doesn’t reply. He turns away, vaguely wondering if it would be too out-of-the-blue to ask his parents if they could move to a different prefecture.
A week later Hajime’s sitting in the driveway in front of his house, drawing on the asphalt with sidewalk-chalk. The blacktop is warm from the sun, and he’s starting to feel a bit drowsy—maybe a nap will be necessary today, even though he normally doesn’t need one.
He takes a moment to sit back and admire his drawing—a rhinoceros beetle, colored in yellow and red. It’s one of his best yet, in his option. He claps his hands to dislodge chalk dust from his palms, and he blinks when he catches movement to his left. At first, he thinks it’s just an abnormally large and colorful grasshopper, but when he takes another few moments to quietly observe his eyes go wide.
“Tooru!”
The fairy takes the last few steps necessary to be standing in front of Hajime, and then he strikes a dramatic pose, lips pursed and hand poised on his cocked hip. “Hello, Iwa-chan. I have my wings back, as you can see see.” He does, and they’re beautiful. Like concentrated sunshine, bright and iridescent, shimmering scales of the purest sky blue Hajime’s ever seen, webbed with glittering gold—it nearly hurts to look at them, so he averts his eyes like he’d been looking too long at the sun.
“How’d you get them back?”
Tooru’s preening them, tenderly running his fingers along the webbing, an admiring smile on his face. “I killed the demons who stole them.”
Hajime stares, and Tooru lets out a laugh, sounding almost exactly like the tinkling of a tiny bell. “I’m kidding! Oh, your face—no, dearest Hajime, it was a joke. The crow tengu of the mountain had seen how shiny they are, and had plucked them off of my back to keep for their barbaric collection.” He grins. “But, being the most gracious of fairies, I forgave them. Tobio has properly apologized for his partner’s crimes, and it is now, as they say, water under the bridge. Also, they are going to be working for me for the next thirty celestial cycles.”
Hajime doesn’t know exactly how long that is, but it sounds like a very long time. Suddenly, he feels truly awful for the poor mountain tengu. Spending so many continuous years with Tooru must be exhausting.
“Come and play with me,” Tooru says then suddenly, and Hajime looks down to find Tooru tugging at his knuckles with tiny hands.
His drawing is complete and he knows if he goes back outside then his mom will want him to wash his hands. “Where?”
He also knows he’s probably going to regret this.
“Talking about bridges reminded me. I’ve been wanting to try something for a while now, but no one to try it with. You have a bicycle, don’t you?”
Hajime does, but he still uses training wheels—he flushes, embarrassed at the thought of letting Tooru see his little-kid bike. “No.”
“Hmm, a pity. Well, you’ve got such long legs, I’m sure we’d get there in no time, regardless! Come on, come on, let’s go! Up, up!”
Maybe as a form of courtesy Tooru doesn’t flutter himself to sit on Hajime’s shoulder of his own accord—instead, he reaches his hands up, fingers grabbing, like Hajime does when he wants his father to pick him up and swing him around the room. He takes the hint, reaching to hold him around the middle as delicately as if he were handling a brittle cicada shell. He lets Tooru sit on his shoulder, and he resists the urge to squish his cheek against it when he feels the airy tickle of wingtips against his neck.
“I’ll direct you, okay? I’d fly there myself, but then you wouldn’t know where to go. First off, head two-hundred paces east—at the edge here, yes, now turn right—good! And we’re off!”
He steps out of the walkway and into the quiet of the street, turning as he’s told and walks at a steady pace down in the direction of the public library. He notices his neighbor out in the front yard, weeding out sprouts from between the cracks in the pavement. He turns his body so that hopefully Tooru is completely out of sight behind the line of his neck.
The voice is even tinnier when it’s right beside him, and it sounds almost like a mosquito buzzing around Hajime’s ear. It takes real effort not to swat at it. “Turn left here. Do you know where Kitagawa Daiichi middle school is? Yes? Good, that will make this easier.”
Hajime turns when directed. “Where are we going? My mom doesn’t want me wandering around without telling her.”
(From this close, he can smell Tooru, a scent he wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. He doesn’t have a very expansive archive of catalogued smells to compare it to, but he supposes the closest thing he can match it to is graham crackers. Sweet and honey-tinted.)
“It’s a surprise! But don’t worry, we’ll be back soon. She won’t even know you’re gone!”
“If I get in trouble, I’m going to pick your wings off again.”
“And here I thought you were a nice boy! But you’re actually a mean little goblin, aren’t you?”
“’m not a goblin.”
“You sure? You got the nose to be a goblin. And your hair—“ he laughs, reaching to grab onto Hajime’s earlobe when a finger comes up to poke his head.
“If you’re going to be annoying I won’t play with you.”
“Now, don’t be like that, Hajime! And it’s going to be such a fun game, too. Oh, oh, stop here! Stop here!”
“Here?”
There’re on the small wooden bridge that extends over one of the narrower parts of the river, Kitagawa Daiichi middle school in the near distance and visible between branches of freshly-leaved trees.
Tooru flutters from his shoulder to drift mid-air, his body swaying side-to-side in the light breeze. Hajime’s grown slightly more accustomed to the brightness of his wings, so it doesn’t hurt to look at them much anymore.
“I want to race you.”
“Okay.” Hajime blurts immediately. He’ll win, he’s the fastest runner in his class, he’s—
“I want to race—grass, in the river.”
That’s—
“What are you talking about.”
Tooru huffs impatiently. “I saw some human children play this, I’m not sure how long ago. You and me—we’ll throw bits of grass over one side of the bridge, then see whose reaches the other side first.”
“That’s a sucky game.”
But he’s not sure how he gets coerced into this—into plucking long strands of wheat grass from the edges of the road, into handing one to Tooru, who has to hold onto it with both hands. He throws his onto the water below, feet thundering across the bridge as he runs to the other side, leaning out over the railing to see which blade the current favors. Most of the time it’s fifty-fifty, and even though nothing about this game requires any type of skill whatsoever he still finds himself crowing when he wins.
It’s beyond dumb, but he doesn’t have the heart to say this to Tooru, who looks like he’s never had so much fun in his life. It is fun, Hajime finds, when Tooru isn’t being bossy. It’s why he agrees to play hide-and-seek the next day (which is almost impossible to play, because when Tooru didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be.) After that, it’s a slightly awkward version of ohajiki, in which Tooru must tackle the marble pieces with his entire body. Sometimes they just go walking in the forest, or down the country lane, Tooru perched in his shoulder. Day after day, they play, and bicker, and a part of himself discovers that he’s grown fond of Tooru, in a way. He’d even consider him a friend, though he would never say that.
One of these days several months later is very hot indeed, and the leaves of the trees are brightly green and fanned out fully. There is the sound of locusts, and soon the cicadas will join them once summer truly begins. Hajime enjoys the warm weather, and normally so does Tooru, but today it looks like he has…wilted. He looks like a flower that has not been watered in several days. Hajime would ask what’s wrong, but he knows Tooru well enough by now that he simply has to wait, and Tooru will complain without any prompting whatsoever.
Today, Hajime had set up the sprinklers in the backyard so that he can run through them and cool off. Tooru is seated moodily at the edge of the changing flower bed, the petals of his tulip long since withered and fallen away. He refuses to join Hajime, as apparently he dislikes getting his wings wet.
“You’re being boring,” Tooru grumbles. Hajime shakes the water from his hair, squinting at him against the sun.
“Then go home.”
“I wouldn’t have come today at all,” he mutters, barely audible as Hajime comes closer. He sits down on the grass, still dripping, so that he can hear his tiny voice better.
“Why did you?” Hajime tilts his head—he doesn’t like the idea of coming home from school and not having anyone to play with, but he doesn’t want Tooru to be miserable. Something, again, he would never share aloud.
Tooru blows air out from between pursed lips, his sigh like wind rustling gently between blades of grass. “I came to see you because I wanted to tell you goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” Hajime echoes, the bottom dropping out of his stomach.
Tooru nods importantly. “The Queen has requested that I return to the capital and assist her with organizing migration patterns for the new batch of seasonal fae.” He narrows his eyes, pursing his lips. “Time is strange, on the other side of the veil. It’s different than it is here, and doesn’t move in a straight line. It’s…wavy, and I don’t fully understand it.”
“What?”
“All I’m saying is that it may be many years before you see me again.”
“Oh.”
He’s dazed, so without meaning to, he lets more than a little unhappiness slip into his voice. It’s not lost on Tooru, who visibly perks up at his apparent misery. He laughs. “Don’t be sad, little Hajime! Once it’s spring, come and check in your garden when you have the chance. One day, I’ll return to the tulip bed, and we may speak then.”
“I’m not sad,” Hajime rushes to argue.
Tooru frowns. “Well, you should be.”
“I’m not, though.”
“Why not? Aren’t we friends?”
“I don’t think so,” Hajime lies.
“But we are! Wasn’t playing with me fun? Don’t you enjoy talking to me?”
That has him hesitate, and he looks away. “…a little bit,” he finally mutters.
Tooru points up at him, his face firm with a surprising amount of determination. “That settles it then! We’re friends, you’re going to miss me terribly, and when I come back you better be happy about it!”
Adolescence is a strange and horrifying thing, Hajime thinks. For a few years, nothing goes the way he wants it to. His skin breaks out and always seems to be oily, no matter how often he washes his face. His voice cracks too much and his limbs hurt with how fast they grow—and even then, he doesn’t grow as much as he’d like, which is extremely frustrating. He takes his anger out into physical activity, so at least his body’s in good shape. He’s strong, and the fastest kid in his class by far, but it’s a shallow kind of victory, when there’s still a handful of girls his age that are taller than him.
Every so often he thinks about the fairy he once met in his mother’s garden. He always entertains the idea that the whole encounter had just been one convoluted and very strung-out figment of his overactive imagination, but he knows that that’s not true. He’s not an artist beyond the sidewalk-chalk, which he quickly grows out of. He likes science fiction well enough, but he’s never able to actively come up with ideas himself. No, this he knew for sure—somewhere out there, in this world or the next, there is a fairy that calls Hajime by his first name.
The April of the year he turns seventeen is a beautiful one. It’s unusually warm, and the flowers had bloomed early. One day, he’s washing dishes and looking out the little window in front of the sink into the backyard. He eyes the bright splotch of red—tulips, their heads freshly opened and gently swaying in the wind. Slowly lowering the soapy plate in his hands, he wonders—what’s the harm in just checking? It’s been a few full springs since he’s even bothered to look, and so far it’s been fruitless. If he’s not there, then he’s not there, and Hajime can come back inside and do homework. Or, better yet, change into his running clothes and take advantage of the beautiful day.
The earth under his bare feet has a little bit of give to it, still damp from the rain two nights ago. The air smells fresh and clean, and feels good on his skin. He figures he’ll check the tulips first; after all, this is where he had found Tooru the first time, so maybe—
“Well, it’s about time you came to see me! I was beginning to worry you’d forgotten about your oldest and dearest friend!”
Hajime’s pulse spikes, his mouth dropping open in dumbstruck wonderment, because there he is. He’s lounging in the edge-most tulip, hands behind his head, giving Hajime the stink-eye. Against his better judgement, a relieved smile breaks across Hajime’s lips. “Back so soon?” he asks, crouching down. Tooru smirks up at him, waggling the tiny lines of his eyebrows.
“Miss me?”
Hajime shakes his head. “Not at all.”
“Oh, I see. So I guess you ‘didn’t miss me’ so much that it’s just a coincidence you’re out here inspecting flowers?”
“I will yank those dumbass wings off.”
Tooru barks out a laugh. “Hajime! Your tongue’s gotten so sharp!” He claps his hands together delightedly. “I love it!”
“Really.”
He smiles, blinding as the sun. “Well, sure. Even when you were little, I’ve loved talking with you. Even though you weren’t half as mean back then.” He tilts his head to the side, squinting. “But, wow, you’re so much taller! And uglier—is that supposed to happen?”
Hajime scowls. “You’re still tiny. And annoying.” And it’s true, because everything about him—from the golden ivy in his hair to the shimmer of his skin is exactly the same as it had been all those years ago. He doesn’t look like he’s aged a single second—and, Hajime realizes, maybe he hasn’t.
Tooru gets to his feet, coiling a loose curl of hair around his finger, lips pursed and eyes scrutinizing. The head of the tulip bobs as he moves. “It’s strange. For me it feels like it’s been no time at all since we last spoke. Now look at you! All grown up.” He sounds oddly put off by this, and Hajime frowns.
“I’m only sixteen.”
Tooru waves his hand flippantly. “That means little to me, Iwa-chan. Fairies don’t care for such notions as age.”
“So you’re immortal?”
“My, my, Iwa-chan. Such a big word. But yes, I suppose you could say that.”
Hajime wrinkles his nose. “So I guess that means you won’t be dying anytime soon.”
Tooru considers him. “Hmm, maybe I misspoke. You’re definitely more than two times meaner than you used to be.”
Hajime shrugs. “I’m not mean. I just don’t see the point in lying.”
“Says the boy who definitely didn’t miss me.”
Hajime opens his mouth to retort, but then freezes when he sees movement in his peripheral—Tooru becomes stock-still, his eyes wide. Hajime’s mother is leaning out of the back door, staring at him with a bemused expression, holding a watering can. “Hajime, is someone there? Don’t tell me you’ve starting talking to bugs again?”
Hajime flushes deep red, and Tooru shoves his face into a stigma of the tulip, to muffle his laughter.
“Uh, no, I’m not. I’m just…talking to myself?”
She smiles, puzzled. “Oh, okay then, honey. While you’re out here, do you think you could water the potted plants under the awning for me?”
He’s flooded with relief—his mom thinks he’s sleep-deprived now, probably, but it’s better than the alternative. “Sure.”
“Thanks, sweetheart!” She sets the watering can down on the first stone step and disappears back inside.
Tooru’s face is completely covered in yellow pollen, and he wrinkles his nose, reaching to wipe it off with the back of his arm. He flutters over the crimson petals of the tulip, sliding down the stalk to take a seat on one of the plant’s narrow and waxy leaves. He primly crosses his legs, hands braced behind him. “Well, now I absolutely must hear all about your insect-whispering escapades.”
“Yeah, because talking to an elf is so much better.”
“Rude. I’ll have you know I’m a thousand times prettier than any elf you may meet. Plus, they smell like dirty feet and mushrooms. Nauseating.”
“I didn’t need to know that.”
In a way, it almost feels like no time at all has passed, because things between them pick up right where they left off—with an easy, natural friendship.
It’s every day now after school that Hajime goes into the back garden, and there he stays until it’s too dark to see clearly. More often than not Tooru will perch upon one of Hajime’s bent knees, cheek resting on his arms, looking up and speaking in his voice that sounds like the tinkling of windchimes. Other days Hajime will do some gardening work, to give the illusion of productivity so his parents won’t ask why he’s spending so much time sitting on the grass, talking to the air. On those evenings, Tooru will flutter from flower to flower, sampling nectar and packing pollen onto the backs of wandering bumblebees.
Hajime turns seventeen in early June, and when he gets home from school that day he finds that Tooru has brought him a shiny black bracelet as a gift, woven from the feathers of the crow tengu and sprinkled with the dust from Tooru’s wings. It shimmers green and blue under the sunlight, and is extremely soft to the touch. It’s supposed to bring protection and good luck, Tooru tells him. It easily slips over Hajime’s broad hand to rest on his wrist, and it’s so light that he wouldn’t even know it was there, if he wasn’t looking at it.
“Thank you,” he murmurs, a little awed. It’s the most unique present he’s ever received, and he can feel where the magic touches his skin—electric, an enchanting little tingle that feels like pure energy.
Tooru beams, cheeks glowing rosy, and Hajime realizes then and there that the feeling burning deep in his chest is affection—Tooru has become important to him, without him even being conscious of it. His best friend. He keeps this to himself, because Tooru’s already pompous enough as it is, but the knowledge is something that makes Hajime feel warm all the way to the tips of his toes.
Summer is a good time for them both. Hajime gets several weeks off of school, and he’s able to spend all his time outside, and most of his time with Tooru. He’ll pick Tooru up from the garden first thing in the morning, letting him ride on his shoulder as he takes his bike and pedals his way through the countryside.
Hajime doesn’t mind anymore that Tooru talks so much, and finds himself tilting his ear towards his shoulder, to get closer to the little voice exclaiming about his adorable underlings and his summer chores and that one annoying fairy on the royal guard—we’re the same rank, Iwa-chan! Yet that darned Wakatoshi still thinks he gets to boss me around! Well, no matter! The Queen likes me better, anyhow!
One day in late August, Tooru’s quieter than usual, strangely morose. He doesn’t sit on Hajime’s knee or shoulder, choosing instead to sit among the small blooms of a snap dragon plant, the stem bending slightly from his weight. He holds another leaf over his head, acting as a parasol to protect him from the sun. Hajime occupies his hands by digging a new hole at the edge of the flower bed—he wants to plant some anemone bulbs so that Tooru will have something new to taste in the coming spring. He’s wearing gardening gloves, a wide-brimmed sun hat protecting his face and the back of his neck as he works.
“Summer’s almost over, Iwa-chan.”
Hajime glances up, frowning at the sad way Tooru ducks his head, eyes downcast. “Yeah? I mean, it kinda sucks but fall’s not too bad—“
Tooru shakes his head, interrupting him. “I have to leave soon, again.”
Hajime slows his digging, the trowel becoming loose in his grip. His stomach pinches, and he vaguely remembers a similar feeling from more than a decade ago. “Why?”
Tooru smiles faintly. “I’m a seasonal fairy too, dummy. I come and leave with the warm weather; I wouldn’t do well in the cold. I don’t have the best track record with snow fairies, either. A bunch of overly-festive hooligans, is what they are.” He suddenly looks nervous. “But if you ever see one, don’t tell them I said that, okay?”
“So I won’t see you again until next spring?”
Hajime expects Tooru to start teasing him at that—but he doesn’t. He just nods, kicking his legs and staring at his bare feet.
“Is it just the cold that’s the problem? What if you—"
“What if I just stayed in your room all winter? As tempting as that sounds, I wouldn’t do well that way either.” He smiles then, something about it sincere and heartbreaking, and something weird happens in Hajime’s throat. “Thank you for offering.”
Hajime sets down his shovel, turning away from Tooru to sit down square in the dirt. He takes off his hat and wipes the sweat off his forehead with his arm. “When do you leave?”
“It’s not an exact science. I’ll just…know, I guess. I’ll try to give you some warning, but if one day I’m not here, I just wanted you to know why.”
“Okay,” Hajime says, voice soft.
Neither of them say much after that, and they stay outside long after the crickets start their song, and the sun dips down below the trees.
One evening in mid-September, after setting down his backpack in the kitchen and stepping back outside, Hajime is suddenly hit by how silent the backyard feels. The birds are still twittering and insects still buzz around his ears, but there’s definitely something amiss. Like all the magic’s gone; the colors are less vibrant, the smells are less sweet.
Tooru isn’t in the flower bed, like he has been every day since early spring, and Hajime immediately understands the implications of this. He lies down in the dry and browning grass, arms behind his head, and looks up at the clouds scuttling across the sky. He inhales deeply through his nose, and catches the scent of the impending autumn.
He has never hated the ending of summer so much before.
When the air is icy cold and the first of the snow begins to fall, Hajime’s first thought is that Tooru must be happy wherever he is, away from the foolish snow fairies and their festivities.
His second thought is that it would be fun to play with Tooru in the snow, and that he must look very pretty with flakes in his hair.
The following spring, when Hajime finds Tooru leaning against the heavy head of a daffodil, something is different. There’s an unspoken weight thick in the air between them, and Hajime can feel it hotly in the back of his throat. His chest aches. He doesn’t know what it is, and there’s a small moment of panic that evaporates the moment Tooru opens his mouth.
“Miss me?”
His voice is the same, high and musical, and it has the same effect on Hajime as a gentle hand caressing his cheek. He relaxes his hands that had unconsciously balled into fists, and kneels in the grass. He looks at the twinkle of golden ivy, warm butterscotch eyes and starry freckles. His tunic this spring is made of camellia petals, brightly pink and making his skin look milky in comparison. He’s—
Beautiful.
“Yeah, actually.”
The words are his own, but they had left his lips unthinkingly. Still, he means them. He had missed Tooru. His voice, his face, his laugh, his wild stories and unstoppable liveliness.
“Oh,” Tooru says softly. There’s a stunned quality about his expression, as if it was the exact last thing he expected Hajime to admit. He’s wide-eyed, tiny pink mouth parted, and Hajime becomes overwhelmed. With what, he doesn’t know, but the feeling causes him to think of a question he suddenly desperately needs to know the answer to.
“You never told me how those two turned out,” he blurts. Tooru blinks at him, stupefied. “Your friend and the owl spirit.”
Why is it so important suddenly that he know what became of the fairy and the yokai? Why does he need to know if despite their differences, they were able to find happiness in each other? He doesn’t know, he has no clue, but it’s something he’s craving to hear.
Tooru takes a moment to process the abrupt question, but when he does he laughs, the sound a little off. “Those two are disgustingly in love. It makes me sick. The two of them share a beech tree in Koutarou’s forest. Koutarou brings Keiji a bouquet of spring flowers every day and Keiji cleans the altar of Koutarou’s shrine each morning. I’ve never seen two creatures so foolish for each other.” He sounds bitter, almost. His pretty lips are twisted into a very small grimace, and he looks down at his bare feet.
Hajime swallows, strangely eager. “So they don’t care that they’re two different species? Or, mythological creatures, or whatever.”
Tooru looks up to stare at him. “They’re not mythological since they’re real.”
Hajime rolls his eyes. “You know what I meant.”
“No, they don’t care,” Tooru replies gently. He bites his lip, lashes lowering and he once more looks away. “They’re…happy,” he murmurs, so quietly it’s nearly lost.
“Good for them,” Hajime says, earnestly. And he means it. He’s thrilled—he’s elated—but for what reason? Why does this news send him over the moon? Why does his chest fill with something so…hopeful?
Tooru doesn’t say anything, and very quickly changes the topic to the menaces that are the garden’s local hummingbirds.
The warm season passes by much like it had the year before, but this time it’s tinged by something different. There’s a layer of fragility, a knowledge that come September all of this—these special, precious days—will end, at least for another half a year. It makes Hajime more mindful of what he says, and how he says it. He doesn’t want this time tarnished with petty, meaningless arguments. He doesn’t want to say anything that will dim that sunny smile for even a moment. He treads gently, keeping his words soft and his touches softer. He catches himself stroking Tooru’s head with a fingertip on more than one occasion, as tender as if he were caressing a wilted rose petal. He’s afraid that Tooru is going to call him out on it, or tell him to stop, yet he never does. He leans his head into the touch, eyes half-closed, cheeks flushed. But then one day, his lip starts to tremble. Enormous tears, the size of raindrops, pool in his eyes, spilling down his cheeks and rolling down the waxy petals of his daffodil tunic.
“Tooru?” Hajime says, alarmed. He pulls his hand away immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s soon,” Tooru warbles, voice cracking. He bites his lip, pinching his eyes shut. The tears continue to fall. His nose is turning red. The sight is more than Hajime can bear.
“What is?” he asks, desperately. He tries thinks of something, anything that he could say or do, if only to make the tears dry. If only to bring back that beautiful smile.
“It’s almost autumn,” Tooru sobs. He wipes at his face uselessly with the back of his wrists. “Any day now. And then I have to leave you again.”
“Don’t,” Hajime blurts, the bottom dropping out his stomach. “Don’t leave.”
“I don’t want to,” Tooru wails. “I never want to leave. I want to be with Iwa-chan, always.”
Hajime doesn’t even think— “Why can’t you?” he demands. His soul is crying out, wanting so desperately this picture that has suddenly been painted; Tooru, every day. Tooru, when he wakes up in the morning. He remembers a time when the thought repulsed him—now, he wants it more than anything. He never wants these days to end.
“I lov—" he chokes on his tongue, fire burning his eyes and the back of his throat as he realizes, finally.
I love you.
Tooru looks up at him, eyes wide, tears still trickling from the edges. He blinks, and at first Hajime thinks he’s stopped crying, but then it gets worse. Tooru buries his face in his hands and sobs, shoulders heaving with it, his entire little body shaking like a leaf. “You can’t love me! You’re human!” he howls. “I can’t be in love with a human! What was I thinking?”
Hajime ignores everything but that one small bit of very, very necessary information. “You love me?” he demands.
“Of course I do, you great big stupid goblin!” Tooru shrieks. He glares up at Hajime furiously. “You’re so slow! Unbelievably slow! How could I of all fairies have possibly fallen for someone as slow as you—"
“Then, will you stay with me?” Hajime pleads. A switch is flipped, and the anger stops, as do the tears. Tooru sits back down quietly.
“Will you carry me in your pocket, every day for the rest of your life? Will you let me be buried with you, when you die?” He rests his chin in his palm, eyes downcast, long, glittering eyelashes shadowing his cheeks. His breath hitches, and Hajime’s heart twists. “Do I have to make friends with your wife? Do I have to pretend like I don’t wish I were her?”
Hajime reaches for him, but is unable to bring himself to touch. “I’m not getting married, Tooru.”
He hides his face in his knees. “Not now. Not yet. But you will.”
There’s no point in saying that Hajime has no interest in marriage or romance. None at all, not unless it was with one specific, very tiny individual. His mind races, thinking of possible solutions, or compromises, anything to make this very fragile something a reality.
“Is there a way? For you to be human?” he asks. He tries to picture a human-sized Tooru, his mind unable to conjure something of that grandeur. A smile that big would blind the entire world.
Tooru sniffs. “I don’t know. Maybe. But it’s no magic that I know.” And then, more quietly, “I’ll look for it. I promise.”
A gust of wind blows over them then, carrying with it the scent of decaying leaves. Autumn. Hajime’s heart stops, and when he glances back down, Tooru is gone.
He spends the next few weeks in varying states of misery.
His lovesick heart has left everything bland. Food, school, even volleyball. He’s slow, dragging his feet. Usually, he gets over this slump by now. A few days of mild unhappiness is all it’s supposed to take before he’s moved on from the Tooru-shaped hole in his life. But it’s different this time. Things are different when you’re in love. And he’s not entirely sure he likes it.
No, actually he’s sure. It sucks.
But he wouldn’t want to take it back. Never, not for a second.
He still goes to the garden when he gets back from club activities, even though he knows no one will be there to greet him. He tends to the flower bed, even though no one is there to appreciate it. He wants to keep it looking nice for next spring. He doesn’t want Tooru to show up and immediately start chewing him out for neglecting his property. The days start getting noticeably shorter, and he’s wondering if soon he’ll need to start working in the dark. Maybe he could invest in a headlamp, he thinks absently one night, crawling into bed. He twirls the bracelet of tengu feathers around his wrist, cherishing the magic that radiates inside. He’s still thinking about gardening tools when he dozes off to sleep.
And then is woken back up almost immediately.
“Hajime.”
Her face is apple-shaped, soft and young, cheeks red and eyes round. Her hair is short, and her gown is long—it’s dark, like the night sky, and dotted with what looks to be the stars themselves. She’s ethereal; she’s too perfect to be anything other than a real-life dream.
“Who…?”
The beautiful woman shakes her head, the faintest glimmer of a smile on her lips. “Do you promise to cherish Tooru for the rest of your life?”
“Tooru…?”
“Do you swear that you will stay by his side, sharing the truest of friendships? Will you adore him unconditionally, until the Earth calls the both of you home? I must know these things, Hajime. Tooru is someone who I hold very close to my heart.”
This woman seems to fill the entirety of Hajime’s room, like her soul expands beyond her body, even large as it is. She smells like snow and decaying leaves, like grass under the sun on a hot day and the clear water of a freshly melted spring. She smells like how Hajime would image starlight might smell like. She looks like the way he feels inside his chest when Tooru smiles at him.
The Queen, Hajime realizes belatedly, hazy and head full of sleep. The fairy queen.
“I’ve known Tooru since I was six,” Hajime mumbles. He squints, staring up at her lovely, patient face. “If I haven’t gotten tired of him by now, I kinda doubt I ever will.”
“And why is that?” she prompts, the smile more pronounced now, a little smug and a little sly, and Hajime can see how Tooru adores her.
“’cause I love him, I guess.”
“You guess,” she echoes, one eyebrow arched.
Hajime groans, turns and slams his face into his pillow. His next words are muffled, even more so by how they are quiet with embarrassment. “I love him a lot, okay? And I want him to be with me all the time.”
“That’s all I needed, Hajime.” He feels a gentle hand thread through his hair, and instantly he becomes overwhelmed by a feeling of such joy tears spring to his eyes. “Take care of him, please. I leave him to you now.”
He falls back into sleep, his head filled with shooting stars and the sound of windchimes.
His hair is brown, and now his eyes are, too.
His skin doesn’t glitter, but his lips are still the color of fresh-bloomed roses. The shirt he wears is thin and white, buttoned up just below the hollow of his throat, and the collar ruffles in the light autumn breeze, only touched with the promise of the future chill. He’s beautiful, and Hajime kind of wants to say so, but his breath is still refusing to leave his chest.
His mother comes up behind him to the front door, a plate of fresh-cut mango in her hands, and she smiles delightedly. “Oh my, what a handsome boy! Is this a friend of yours, Hajime?”
Hajime still can’t find his voice, his face growing purple with how he still hasn’t taken a breath, but Tooru makes up for his lack of finesse by leaning to the side and waving, cheerful and smiling the brightest Hajime’s seen in a long time—maybe ever. And he was right. It’s so bright that it leaves him utterly dazzled. “Hi, Iwa-chan’s mom! I know Iwa-chan from when we were little—I used to live over by the bridge—you know, the one by the middle school—but I moved away a long time ago. Now I’m back! And I want to borrow your son for a little while, if that’s okay? You’re very beautiful, by the way. Simply stunning. Now I see where Iwa-chan gets his captivating bone structure.”
His mother now firmly wrapped around Tooru’s little finger, Hajime can only flounder wordlessly as Tooru grabs onto his wrist and tows him outside. His feet stumble clumsily under him, heart beating loudly in his ears, not entirely convinced this isn’t some strange hallucination. But he doesn’t eat sugar cereal for breakfast anymore, and the warmth around his wrist is very much real. He’s pulled into a narrow alley between two houses, and before he even processes what’s going on he’s getting the air squeezed out of him, his face being stuffed into lilac-scented hair, strong arms wrapped around his middle.
“My dearest, dearest Hajime,” Tooru breathes, hugging him tight, and Hajime’s body feels alight with sparks, with magic, and he wonders hazily if maybe that’s exactly what this is. Magic. “I can finally hug you now. Oh, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this—“
“Tooru,” Hajime wheezes. “How—you—what—“
“She’s granted my wish, Iwa-chan. Yui—my Majesty, my sweet, sweet Yui—she’s granted my wish. I get to be human, like you. I’m human.”
“I—just like that?”
Tooru pulls away, bites his trembling bottom lip. He nods, eyelashes fluttering. “Just like that.”
“What…what does she want in return?”
“She said that my lifetime happiness—that it was enough for her. She said that if I was happy being with you, then so is she.”
“You traded that? You traded everything—your life—to be with me?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
Tooru ignores his question, instead dropping his hands from Hajime’s shoulders only to take both of his hands in his own. “Will you marry me?”
Hajime blanches. “What?”
“I want you forever. That’s what marriage is for, isn’t it?”
He feels like he’s just been struck across the face. “I...”
“I don’t feel like I’ve given anything up, Hajime. That’s my answer. That’s why. Because living forever is pointless if I have to be away from you six months out of the year. It’s pointless when I don’t get to see you grow, and I don’t get to see what you look like when it’s snowing, and I still don’t know what face you make when you wake up first thing in the morning. That is criminal, Iwa-chan, because I bet it’s hilarious—“
Hajime shakes his head, hanging onto the voice that is much bigger than before, but still holds that strange musical quality. How lovely it is. “And so you propose to me? So that you can say for sure whether I drool or not?”
Tooru beams. “Dummy. I want to marry you because I don’t see the point in waiting. Since I won’t want anybody else, anyway.”
“Oh.”
“This bracelet,” Tooru holds up Hajime’s wrist, fingers gentle, “was my proposal.”
“That was a year ago.”
“I have loved you for a very long time, Hajime. Since you were a little boy. The love I felt then and the love I feel now are different, but they are fundamentally the same.” He brings Hajime’s hands to his mouth, holding his eyes steady as he presses a kiss across each and every knuckle. Hajime blushes scarlet all the way up to his ears. “I adore you in each and every way. Would you accept me?”
His head is muddled, heart floating like a dandelion puff. “I…we can’t. There are rules—laws, and I don’t think—"
“Do you want to, though?”
Tooru’s face has come closer, enough for his breath to be felt across Hajime’s lips. He smells like honeysuckle. Hajime can’t think.
“Huh?”
“You still haven’t answered my question.” Tooru huffs impatiently. “Will you marry me? It’s a yes or no question, Iwa-chan, honestly.”
He can’t think, so he can’t think of a reason why he would want to answer dishonestly. “Yes,” he blurts, staring obscenely at Tooru’s rosy lips. Oh, how he wants to…“I’ll marry you.”
He’s watching so intently that the sudden smile very nearly blinds him. “Then that’s enough. As long as we both know it, then that’s all that matters.”
He finally glances up, startled. It’s a mistake. The eyes are so much worse. Crinkled at the corners, gleaming and so happy that Hajime stops breathing. “That’s it?” he manages to wheeze.
“Well, I want some kind of ceremony. After all, I still need to rub your existence in Ushiwaka’s face, and for some reason Tobio and his little shorty have an odd fascination with you, and of course I’d like to kiss the bride—"
Hajime rests his forehead with too much force against Tooru’s collarbone, and Tooru makes a slight hiss of pain. Hajime smiles, invisible. “Why do you never stop talking?” he asks, teasingly.
Tooru’s fingers brush gently down the back of Hajime’s neck, and he nuzzles his nose down into the soft skin below his ear. His lips skim across the shell, and Hajime shivers.
“If you want me to stop talking,” he whispers, a smile in his voice. “I can think of a good way to shut me up.”