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Ever since that day, Junichiro has had nightmares that plague his sleep.
He doesn't remember much, just faint pieces of a fainter whole; a crime of passion, the news article had called it. The Tanizaki siblings were never strangers to their parents' fights; debts, love affairs, missing money, and the influence of alcohol fueling the fire. However, they would never know what provoked their last brawl.
After that, their mother went missing, fleeing from the weight of her crime.
As for them, they were sent to live with some distant relative neither was aware existed. Personally, Junichiro believed Fukuzawa Yukichi wasn't someone they were related to by blood, but he was a kind, strict man whose only flaw was he smelled slightly like dried sardines. Furthermore, Naomi seemed to like him well enough, so Junichiro never said a word of opposition to their new living arrangements.
Every night since they left their home Junichiro saw his mother in his dreams, his mind filling in the gaps of his father's death. The first night it was a discovered affair, the second night his father declared he'd leave and never come back, in the third night his father begged her to kill him. With each night the reasons became more absurd; in the tenth night his mother fell down and accidentally slashed his father's throat, and in the seventeenth, his mother revealed she was an assassin sent to kill him.
And every night since they left their home Junichiro would be woken up by a worried Naomi, and she would hold him tight until he went back to sleep.
As faith had its way to do things, one evening Naomi entered his room with a smile he hadn't seen in weeks and told him of something she overheard some kids saying. He sighed but couldn't dismiss her excitement, so he proposed they could talk it over tea.
"A baku?," Junichiro asked once she was done talking. Naomi gave him a small nod and proceeded to take a sip of her tea. Of course, he had heard of them. Or it. He wasn't sure. He remembered when his mother told him about it, one of the nights his nightmares weren't about her. She explained that if he asked a baku, it would take away his bad dreams, and sometimes it would replace them with good ones. There was a but in the story somewhere, but that was long ago, the details weren't all there. Most importantly, there was a little detail Naomi casually omitted. "That's a kids' tale."
Naomi offered him an apologetic smile and got closer to him, grabbing his hand in hers.
"Maybe, but isn't it worth a try?" He took a sip himself and avoided looking her in the eye, she couldn't be serious. Naomi got closer and brought his hand to her forehead, and as a whisper, he heard: "Brother, I don't want you to keep on like this. We're both grieving and we're both scared, it's not fair you're the only one being haunted."
They were nothing more than waves in the air, yet carried something that made his chest hurt. Junichiro patted her head like he used to do and when Naomi looked up, he wiped away the single tear that escaped her eyes.
"It's worth a try," he assured with the best smile he could muster at the time.
They agreed that night Naomi would sleep in her room. After the first nights, she gave up on leaving him every night, and they both slept in his room to wait for the nightmares to wake him.
It was a relief that she wanted to trust so much in the existence of the baku, but if Junichiro remembered correctly those things were not pleasant to the eye. It wasn't that he believed a mythical creature would show up to eat his bad dreams, but if it did he wasn't sure what he'd do.
He did his best to relax. According to Naomi, he could also summon a baku before the nightmares came, so he took a deep breath.
"Baku-san, come eat my dream."
It's okay, nothing's going to happen.
"Baku-san, come eat my dream."
Do it for Naomi.
"Baku-san, come eat my dream."
Please let this work.
In the fifteenth night, instead of red, he saw green. Kilometers and kilometers of the greenest grass he'd ever seen, with nothing else other than the blues sky above. Not a single cloud, a bright Sun warming his skin, and a light breeze moving his hair.
It was too eerie.
The sky was too blue, and the grass too green; the breeze was too nice, and the warmth too soothing. He didn't deserve such a dream.
"You do, now shut up and appreciate this."
He turned to the origin of the voice. Behind him stood a ginger-haired young man, maybe his age, if not a bit older. Despite being shorter than him, the man carried himself in a manner that made Junichiro feel smaller than he was. His amber eyes shone with the sunlight, and if it weren't for his fashion sense, Junichiro would be completely at a loss of words. The asymmetry in his clothing was distracting, and if the band-aid over his nose was a statement or not, he didn't want to know.
The ginger sighed in content and let himself fall into the grass, where he stretched his arms and closed his eyes. A part of his abdomen was left visible, not that he noticed that. "I worked hard on this, so you better like it."
Junichiro didn't want to sound ungrateful, but an endless meadow wasn't a hard thing to think of. He inspected the guy and thought of what he'd said, and honestly, he didn't expect to be so happy that it worked.
"I thought you'd be less like a human," he admitted as he sat down next to the Baku, his legs pressed against his chest. "More like a deformed elephant-dog than a handsome guy."
The Baku looked at him astonished, a light blush dusting his cheeks. "I beg your pardon?"
Don't say it.
Junichiro chuckled and decided to listen to himself and opted for a change of topic. "What did you mean I deserve this?"
The Baku groaned in annoyance and sat up. "Well," he started, more to break the silence than to answer. After what felt like hours of uncomfortable silence, with his arms crossed and his eyes looking up the sky, the Baku continued. "I've actually been looking at your nightmares for a while, and no one deserves that."
But if he knew about his nightmares then-
"Why didn't I help you sooner?"
Wait, could he-
"Yes, I can, I also heard the 'then beg'."
It was Junichiro's turn to blush, he wasn't safe in his own dream.
"Anyway," he fanned his face to make the heat go away faster. It didn't work. "You didn't answer, why didn't you?"
"I need to be summoned, I had to fight my way into getting here first."
Junichiro closed his eyes and imagined how it must be to fight every night to get something to eat, he felt sorry for the baku. It wasn't so common anymore for kids to believe every single thing they were told. Well, if it meant he didn't have to relieve the same evening every time he closed his eyes at night, then he wouldn't mind spending time in such a perfect meadow.
When he opened his eyes, and his gaze met a pair of amber eyes. He found himself unable to move and completely incapable of tearing his gaze away.
"Do you mean it?" The Baku asked with the same tone Naomi used when he told her they could stop by a bakery and get whatever she wanted.
Since he could hear Junichiro, he most likely referred to the whole 'summoning a baku every night' situation he thought about. Did he mean it? He looked into the Baku's eyes, how they showed expectancy, hope, and fear, all at the same time. How could he say no?
The Baku backed away. Junichiro realized he had held his breath, and felt relieved to breath again, but he felt disappointed as well. The Baku got up in one swift move and extended his hand.
"Well, then, tomorrow say 'Michizou, come eat my dream' three times and I'll take care of you, deal?"
Michizou showed him a smile as bright as the Sun behind him, and Junichiro cursed his weak heart.
In that offer, Junichiro saw an escape. An escape from the sleepless and painful nights, and from the truth he's been trying to deny all along. He passed his fingers through his hair, an unnatural color for his dark-haired family, a curse that led to his father losing it, to his mother fighting against death and running away when she won, only to find they took her children away once she came back.
A crime of passion, they called it. But it had been building up from the moment he was born. It wasn't sudden; there had been eighteen years of premeditation. If that was the truth was it wrong to want to run away from it?
He reached towards Michizou's hand, who held him tight and helped him up. Junichiro kept his head low and he whispered 'deal' more to himself than anything else, because he knew Michizou had already heard him loud and clear.
"And now, to seal the deal."
Junichiro felt a Michizou's hands grab him by the shirt and pull him closer. He didn't have time to react fast enough to stop the kiss, and even if he had he wouldn't have stopped it. It was over as fast as it began, nothing more than a peck on the lips, but it was enough to leave him with an uncontrollable heartbeat and Michizou with a face as red as his hair.
He opened his mouth to say something but Michizou interrupted him.
"You can't back away, got it? You can't give your dreams to anyone else but me."
Junichiro wasn't sure if the kiss was a method to make his dreams only edible for Michizou or something like that, but he hoped it didn't. When someone works so hard to make a plain meadow just for you and accepts you even when they can hear your thoughts and look like that , how could he say no?