Chapter Text
It was yet another warm, summer’s day in the matriarch of Karasuno. The sunlight travelled round the stone pillars and poured into the castle grounds, serving as the only source of light in the dim and murky corridors. The delicate fragrance of jasmines wafted in the air, subtly mixed in with the earthy scent of composted soil originating from the greenery of the courtyard. Heavy silence hung in the dreary atmosphere of the castle, the occasional chit-chatter of the passing-by maids and knights apparent every now and then.
A young, stone-faced boy trailed behind a middle-aged woman dressed in the castle’s maid uniform. They were making their way to the prince’s quarters that was on the second floor, and so they were headed to the staircase at the main hall that the corridor led to. Clad in a dark green tunic weaved out of a light, airy material and a pair of dark trousers secured with a belt around the waist—a manner of clothing resembling that of common folk, the boy appeared to be a servant of the house. Or to be more precise, a servant of the royal castle that lied at the very centre of the Kingdom of Karasuno.
Better known as the land of the crows, the Kingdom of Karasuno was a country that was presently ruled by the wife of its late king. Karasuno was a small kingdom situated in the continent of Miyagi, and also contained most of the continent’s borders shared with Tokyo. Miyagi lied far to the east and was home to many powerful countries—notably the affluent Great Empire of Shiratorizawa and the renowned Kingdom of Aobajohsai, which has steadily been growing in influence over the past decades.
Karasuno was once a powerful force of its own in the political world. But due to the lack of strict regulations controlling the agricultural usage of land, the soil had been overexploited by farmers and has become mostly infertile, unable to produce fruit. The country has since declined into a barren wasteland, now relying heavily on imports for the civilians to survive. Despite the many peace treaties that have been put into place, the threat of invasion continues to loom over the weaker countries like Karasuno, especially with the rising tensions between Shiratorizawa and Aobajohsai. Rumours of war had become talk of the town in Karasuno ever since the cold-blooded murder of the king and the princess a year ago that continues to shrouded in mystery to this day.
It had been almost a year since the young Osamu first stepped foot in Karasuno, and he was still not accustomed to living in the new environment. The sun shone strongly and ever so brightly over the land of the crows, even more so than in Inarizaki where Osamu originally hailed from. Karasuno lied closer to the equator compared to the other countries in Miyagi, so the intense sunlight was no stranger around the areas. Even in the winter, it rarely snowed, and the last time there was ever snow was more than a decade ago. As much as Osamu enjoyed the sun, the excessive sunlight and the humidity of the air were still difficult to get used to.
It was not only the weather that was different. Ever since his arrival at the castle, Osamu had been treated as a stranger, an oddity who was constantly the focus of gossip among the castle workers. Everywhere he went, he was frequently met with suspicious looks from the people around him, who were all determined to make sure he never got too comfortable in his new home. It was to be expected, as anyone was easily able to conclude from his accent alone that he was an outsider who was not from around the area. The workers were also envious of the special attention the queen paid to him, and to this day, none of them could comprehend why the queen held a measly child servant in such high regard.
After so long of being alone, Osamu had forgotten how it felt like to actually belong somewhere. He found it especially difficult to believe that just a year ago, he was running about the palace halls, playing along with his brother’s antics without a single care in the world.
'I’m hungry…' were the thoughts that ran through Osamu’s brain over and over again as he ventured down the seemingly never-ending corridor. He wasn’t allowed a second serving of lunch again today, and his stomach felt dry and empty as always.
“You’re walking too far behind,” the maid chided, turning her head around to cast a glare at the boy.
Osamu held in the urge to roll his eyes. Just a couple minutes ago, she was making a fuss about how he was walking too close to her. If it mattered so much, why not give him the exact measurement, according to the so-called ‘castle guidelines’, of the distance he should be walking away from her? He could never understand why the castle workers were so particular about his behaviour when it was no secret that when around each other they couldn’t care less about keeping up airs.
Regardless, the boy did as he was told, picking up the pace and barely closing in the distance between them.
The maid was already back to facing her front though, not bothering to check whether Osamu really was at the ‘perfect’ distance away from her. He exhaled a slow, shaky breath and unclenched his fists, recognizing that this was another case of an adult exercising their make-belief authority over him.
“Don’t you dare show the same level of disrespect to the prince,” the maid emphasized. “Even the queen wouldn’t excuse you for such rudeness.”
'Okay okay, whatever ya' say.' Osamu thought to himself mockingly.
Ironically enough, to Osamu’s knowledge, the queen was not a semblance of the bad image the maid painted her out to be. Unlike everyone else in the castle, the queen never once berated him for walking the ‘wrong’ distance away from her. In fact, she only ever beckoned him to walk closer to her whenever she found him lagging behind, and never once accused him of overstepping his boundaries.
It was obvious from her kind treatment that the queen wanted to make Osamu feel more at home in the foreign land. But Osamu wasn’t naive and knew exactly what her intentions were. He may have grown up spoiled by the riches and wealth of his former position of royalty, but he learned from once being poisoned himself that he should never trust anyone. The sentiment was stronger than ever now after what he had been put through over the past year.
In the end, no matter how humanely anyone treated him, Osamu was nothing more than a tool for both the queen’s and his family’s political agenda
Osamu was no puppet without a will of his own either, though. He wasn’t about to let the queen have her way so easily. As cruel as it was, he was going to take this chance to use the prince he was about to meet to regain his freedom and foil any plans the queen had to bring ruin to his home country. It was his responsibility as one who carried the royal blood to protect the country and bring it to greatness, as his father had taught him long ago. Discard any weakness, we don't need memories.
“Ugh, quiet children are so creepy...” the middle-aged woman scoffed, peeved by the boy’s lack of reaction to her warnings. Osamu had long lost count of the number of times he was called ‘creepy’ in this month alone.
Suddenly, the sharp noise of rustling leaves reached Osamu’s ears, disturbing the instilled image of the peaceful and quiet castle halls in his head. The boy drew to a halt, and twisted his head to his side towards the direction the noise appeared to be coming from—the garden courtyard. There, his gaze lingered upon a field of bright, tall yellow flowers—a kind Osamu had never seen before—swaying along with the gentle summer breeze. The flowers were planted in rows that occupied the entire length of the garden lining the open corridors. The flowers seemed to glow and shimmer under the sun from where Osamu was looking from the darkened corridors.
He had walked past the same field of flowers many times already, but it never crossed his mind just how breathtaking and enchanting the view of the flowers in full bloom had been. The flower’s bright petals were boldly spread out around its dark, grainy centre, resembling the sun shining in the blue skies. The brilliant yellow pigment of the petals was a stark contrast to the dark green leaves that grew out of the stems, and perfectly complemented the lush greenery and the blue skies in the backdrop. The vibrant colours were a tiny bit painful to the eyes under the intense sunlight, but overall, it was a pleasant sight. Osamu eventually came to the conclusion that the earlier noise must have been due to flowers being blown back and forth against each other by the wind.
Out of nowhere however, three heads—a blonde, a ginger and a raven—poked out from the centre of the bed of flowers, startling the poor child. Osamu blinked a couple of times, before deciding to step out into the sun to investigate out of an adolescent’s curiosity.
“As the prince’s newly-appointed valet, I hope you are aware that you are expected to carry out every duty to the utmost...” the maid stopped in her tracks when she couldn’t see Osamu’s brunette hair in her peripheral vision. She looked to her left and right in alarm, “Wha—! Where did that kid go?!”
Osamu hid behind one of the pillars as he waited for the maid to wander off elsewhere in search of him. She turned on her heel and ran the opposite direction, probably thinking the boy had tried to escape. After confirming that he was out of the maid’s line of sight, Osamu made his way to the bed of flowers with his head hung low in caution. He kneeled on one leg and pushed the stems apart, gently enough so as to not make any rustling noises and potentially alert the three in hiding. He peered into the gap to check whether the suspicious figures were visible from all the way there, but all he could see was even more green and green.
Osamu resolvedly sprung back upwards and dusted his lap. Now that he was actually standing up straight, he noticed the strange flowers were almost on level with the crook of his neck. Navigating his way through the flowers would definitely be just as strenuous as crossing a muddy river.
He nervously swallowed the lump in his throat, and trod into the sea of flowers, making sure he only stood on his toes and that he only stepped on the ground where no stems were shooting out. It was easier than said though, because the flowers were more densely packed than he expected.
Osamu honestly didn’t care about the heads turning out to belong to spies or enemies of the kingdom. His single-tracked mind was only filled with the possibility of finding another child like himself. As much as he refused to admit to himself, he didn’t want to be alone in this cold hell-hole of stuck-up adults and children anymore. To hell with responsibilities, Osamu was still just a child, and he wanted to grow up and experience life like any normal human.
So if there was even the smallest chance of returning to the light-hearted days from back then, he would take it as long as it wasn’t a matter of life-or-death. He knew he was being reckless, but he was also convinced that there was no way a trained spy would decide to hide in flowers out of all places. It could only be a bunch of silly kids playing out in the courtyard, right...?
Osamu gradually drew closer to the three tufts of hair. He continued his slow trudge through the flowers as his fingers kept sweeping against the soft petals.
Closer...
Closer...
Closer...
And closer—
The orange head in the middle suddenly jolted out of the flowers, and Osamu’s shoulders jumped as he reflexively took a step backwards. The mysterious boy’s eyes widened when they landed on Osamu, who had gone stiff from being found out.
“You’re—!”
The boy immediately flopped his arms in surprise, and in the middle of his panic, his foot got caught in the stem of the flower adjacent to him. Before Osamu knew it, the boy had tripped and his smaller body had been falling towards him.
Osamu’s heart almost leaped out of his chest when he initially thought the sun had somehow fell from the sky and was about to incinerate him to ashes with its scorching heat. But the shock went away the instant he noticed the outline of deep brown orbs that stood out from the overwhelming orange-ness of the human figure. It was just a human boy, not the sun.
Osamu didn’t crack even the smallest noise despite having been caught off-guard, and he instead reached out for the child, securing his arms around his body. But the boy proved heavier than Osamu expected, and he accidentally lost his balance and found his back crashing down against the poor flowers behind him.
Yellow petals flew in the air like confetti, and the flowers were pushed out of the way as the boys’ combined weight pulled Osamu all the way down to the crumbly soil. Osamu’s head landed flat on the soil’s surface and made its mark on the ground. Osamu winced with his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he squawked an ‘ow!’ from the impact. The boy whose fall he cushioned laid unharmed on his chest, his hands clutching tightly the fabric of Osamu’s tunic.
“Your Highness!” two boyish voices hollered in unison.
Osamu’s eyes fluttered open, and the first thing he saw was the two other heads from earlier peering over him in worry. There was also an odd feeling of warmth enveloping his body, and only then did he remember that the literal human form of the sun had been lying on top of him. The boy stammered as he lifted his face off Osamu’s chest, the edges of his hair brushing against the latter’s chin. Osamu simultaneously raised himself from the ground with an arm buried in the soil to support him, his other arm still draped protectively around the smaller boy.
Although he had still been a little disoriented from the fall, Osamu had still managed to pick up what the two boys had said; Your Highness . Was the boy in his arm perhaps—
Their eyes suddenly met as Osamu cocked his head down to have a better look at the boy when the same boy just happened to look up at him at the same time. Dull green-gold irises locked with the dark brown irises that discerned the boy from the sun.
The two shared silence as they stared into each other’s eyes, and Osamu found himself completely lost in the warm brown hues of the other boy’s eyes. At that moment, it felt like the world only consisted of the two of them, surrounded only by the flowers that danced around them without a care in the world.
The boy had messy, orange hair that emanated the same radiance as the sun, and his skin seemed to glow with full of life as if each spot had been kissed by the gentle rays of sunlight. His parted lips had been a pale pink in colour, giving off the image of softness. The boy reminded Osamu of the view of the sunset from the palace's balcony that had once been an everyday sight for him.
The boy’s almost otherworldly beauty immediately took Osamu’s breath away, and he would have nearly forgotten how to breathe at that moment, if not for the realization that he had been suffocating under the boy’s weight.
Osamu unwound his arm from around the boy’s frame and reluctantly broke the silence, “Um, could ya’ get off me…? Yer’ heavy…”
“Aaah—! I’m sorry...!” the boy instantaneously came back to his senses, and he slid off Osamu’s body and settled down on the ground, his legs tucked underneath him. Concerned brown eyes looked to Osamu once again, “...Um, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Osamu answered simply as he picked out the petals that were caught in his hair.
“I’m really, really sorry about that!” the boy apologized again, his head hanging down in remorse. “I didn’t expect someone to be walking about in the flower beds...”
Osamu blinked at him, “It’s really not a big deal, don’t worry ‘bout it.”
The boy’s troubled expression seemed to diminish from hearing Osamu’s reassuring words, but his face tightened once more when he noticed the dishevelled field of flowers behind Osamu, “Ah, the sunflowers...!”
Sunflowers, so that’s what they were called. How fitting, Osamu thought to himself.
“It's all messed up... I’m sure the gardener can do something about it though,” one of the boy’s companions chimed in. Upon closer inspection, his hair was more of a dark shade of pink-brown than blonde. “But are you alright, Your Highness...?”
“Mmm, I guess so... Big sis Saeko is really good with plants, after all.” the boy mumbled to himself. “But I still feel kinda’ bad...”
“You actually still call her that?” the other boy with spiky raven hair scoffed lightly, and he extended a hand out to the ginger. “Anyway, come on, Your Highness. The cranky maids wouldn’t be too happy to hear that you were playing in the dirt again.”
“Jeez, you shouldn’t talk about the maids like that, Kouji,” the boy playfully advised as he reached for his friend’s hand. “Oh, and it’s thanks to him—”
“It’s you brats again!”
All four of them were caught by surprise when the angry voice of a woman suddenly erupted from the distance. A slight turn of the head revealed the owner of the voice to be the maid who had been escorting Osamu from earlier.
“How many times do I have to tell you that you aren’t allowed to wander around the castle?!” the maid’s face was boiling red with anger.
“Ah, it’s the head maid—!” the soft-looking boy sputtered
“Geh, it’s the devil again!” the boy who was referred to as Kouji staggered backwards and turned on his heel. “Sorry, but we gotta’ get going first, Your Highness!”
“O-Okay, don’t get caught!” the boy on the ground nodded.
The two frantic boys wasted no time in getting away as they were already sprinting the other direction before the ginger could even finish his sentence. The maid failed to notice both Osamu and the said boy as she had unconcernedly run past them while pursuing the duo, hands holding up her lengthy skirt.
Although Osamu felt bad for the two kids, he was more relieved than anything that the maid was gone. It may have only been for a short while that he was left alone, but he appreciated any moment of peace and solitude he could have in this castle.
There was also the fact that he was now alone with this sun look-alike, however. As much as Osamu hoped for his company, he didn’t know whether the boy would entertain the idea of spending time around a stranger like him. It didn’t help that Osamu had no idea how to actually make friends, too.
Oh well , Osamu shrugged, deciding that it wasn’t a matter worth his brainpower. He pressed on his palms and proceeded to lift himself up from the ground. But before he could completely get back to his feet, he felt the boy pull on his sleeve.
“Um, were you on your way to somewhere...?” the boy asked, his tone timid.
Osamu eyed the boy confusedly, “...Not really.”
“Oh, that’s perfect!” the boy was suddenly beaming as bright as the sun in the skies, causing Osamu’s heart to skip a beat. “Come play with me then!”
Catching his breath, Osamu raised a brow in bewilderment, “Play with you?”
“Izumin, Kouji and I were just looking for bugs a while ago, and I think I spotted a really pretty one just now! We should go look for it together!” the boy enthused, and he used both his hands to take Osamu’s hand into his own. “Hey hey, what’s your name? I’m—”
Osamu flinched at the abrupt show of familiarity, and he quickly shook off the boy’s hands. He only realized his actions when he noticed the look of hurt on the boy’s face. It had been a long time since he had held a person’s hand that sharing physical contact with someone after so long was downright scary to him now.
“—Aren’t ya' the prince?” Osamu blurted out without thinking. “Shouldn’t ya’ be in yer’ quarters taking lessons right now?”
Osamu cursed himself internally. What was he doing? He wanted to be friends, yet he was coming off as a distant, harsh jerk on their very first meeting. Besides, someone as jovial, laxed and lacking in finesse as the boy couldn’t possibly be the prince even if the other kids did refer to him as such. It must have just been a nickname, and yet here he was, seriously believing it. Now the boy was definitely looking at him weird.
“Um...” the boy seemed genuinely shaken by Osamu’s comment. “N-No way, I could never be the prince! I may look as cool as him, but I am definitely not him!”
Oh. He’s just like ‘Tsumu.
Osamu heaved a sigh, “Yer’ really bad at lying, ya’ know that.”
“I-I’m not lying!” the boy insisted.
“So ya’ were sayin’ yer' name?” Osamu asked.
“Oh, it’s Shouyou—” the boy said, before covering his mouth in realization. “Oops.”
Prince Shouyou. That was a name Osamu was familiar with after hearing it countless times from the servants and the queen herself. Judging from how the people around him praised and spoke of the prince so highly, Osamu had always thought him to be a refined noble who gave off an air of grace like his mother. The last thing he expected the prince to be was a lively boy dressed in humble commoner’s clothing that was now covered in dirt. Yet there was something about him that drew Osamu in, but he still couldn’t pinpoint just what it was.
Nevertheless, Osamu could sympathize with Shouyou skipping his princely duties. His brother was just the same, after all. But it was only for this once though, as he was his valet now and he couldn’t afford to be lenient on the prince.
“...Osamu.”
“Huh?” Shouyou gaped.
“My name, ya’ asked for it, right?” Osamu straightened his back and bowed, bringing his right hand over to his chest. “I’ve been assigned to ya’ as yer’ valet by the queen. I guess it’s nice to finally meet’cha, Your Highness.”
Shouyou only stared at him in awe, before finally perking in realization and screaming a drawn out 'eeeeeh?!' in response. Osamu couldn’t stop the edges of his lips from curling upwards.
He’s funny.