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When Shinji brings up the bonsai, he expects Yuu to roll her eyes. To groan and say it’s too much effort. Instead, she scrutinizes him for a moment before letting out a long sigh.
“Fine. But I’m not joining a class, so don’t even think about it.” She scratches the back of her head, making a face like he’s begrudged her into something. “I swear, you’re such an old man.”
“I’m not,” he argues, but later, while they’re at the home center and she’s bent down, looking through their selection of seeds, he says, “Thank you.”
She turns to him and grins. Doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to.
“How’s juniper sound?”
They start by chilling the seeds. He’s already described the germination process, but Yuu still gives him a look when he places them in the back of the refrigerator.
“Couldn’t you just use your quirk?” she asks.
“There’s no point if I use my quirk.”
“The point would be not having juniper seeds in your fridge for a month.”
He frowns at her. “No quirks. I want us to do this together, naturally.”
“Whatever.” She caves with a huff. “ You’re the tree guy.”
The bonsai is like them, he explains when they take the seeds out. It starts small and takes time, patience, and sensitivity to grow. That’s why they need to do it naturally. Using his quirk, they could have their tree in under a second, but in the process they’d be robbing it of what makes it special.
They’re on his deck filling a planter when he says this. Yuu leaves it to him, barely lifting a finger to help, but has somehow still managed to cover herself in dirt. It’s on her knees, in her hair, up her arm, and smeared across her face. She won’t be happy when she looks in the mirror, but for now she’s calm, eyeing the seeds that are still chilled from the fridge.
“I feel like you could’ve picked something better than a tiny tree to represent us,” she says dryly.
He gives her a confused look and she gestures up and down her body.
“It’s a metaphor.”
She rolls her eyes. “I know that. I’m just saying.”
There’s something in her frown and the furrow of her brows that looks nervous, which is unlike her. Usually she’s brazen, unapologetic even when she knows she’s in the wrong. It’s strange to see her so out of her element now, when all she’s done is hold a bag of soil and stare at the seeds like they might get up and start dancing on the plate.
Later, he finds her on the couch, curled around one of his books on bonsai with that same look on her face, as if she’s fighting an inward battle.
“How do they make them so small?” she mutters to herself, unaware that he’s even in the room.
He leaves the tea he’s brewed for her on the table and leaves her to her reading.
Waiting for seeds to grow is an odd feeling. He knows that it’ll take three months for a sprout to appear, and that it’ll be around a year before it grows big enough to repot. Even so, it’s surprisingly nerve-wracking being unable to use his quirk. Some days, he finds himself pacing after watering. There’s always the chance that the seed has been hit by some kind of disease. The urge to use his quirk is like an itch, nearly impossible to ignore. He’s only barely able to resist the temptation.
Still, he cannot help pacing.
Yuu continues to read his books when she thinks he won’t notice. Usually he doesn’t. Not until he looks at the bookshelf and finds them rearranged. It should annoy him, like when she neglects to organize the silverware, but it doesn’t. He reads over the titles and checks where she’s dogeared the pages, expecting that to bother him as well, but it’s just the opposite. He imagines her on his couch with that same serious frown and smiles quietly to himself as he puts the books back in proper order.
She often gets on his case for being unable to properly express himself.
He thinks it’s a quality they share.
The day the juniper sprouts, she texts him simply: the juniper sprouted.
He does not wait five minutes before calling her.
“Thought you were at work,” she says, teasing. Shinji pushes through it.
“How does it look? Is it healthy?”
“How am I supposed to know? It’s just a little beansprout-thingy.” She can’t hide the energy in her voice, the sound rounded as it leaves through her smile. “You can look when you get home.”
When he finally sees it for himself, he discovers that she’s right: it’s nothing but a thin white stalk tipped with a pair of light green fronds, sitting so tiny and insignificant in the soil that he might not have noticed were he not looking for it. It’s been nearly four months since they started, and all they have to show for it is a single, minuscule shoot.
They celebrate all night.
It’s two years before they can shape the juniper. By then, it’s grown from a sproutling to something vaguely tree-like, just a bit taller than his hand. They’ve talked extensively about the kind of tree they want to shape it into. He prefers the formal, upright chokkan style, while she prefers the languid kengai style, where the tree droops all the way out of the pot. An s-curved moyogi style is their compromise. It’s both natural and, in her words, “sexy”.
On the counter he lays out the aluminum wire, wire cutters, cloth, and the water he’ll use to dampen it. There’s a chair next to him, but his nerves make his heart beat too fast to sit.
Picturing the tree they want, he picks up the wire . He unspools it and lifts the wire cutters as if they could explode, pressing the blades against the wire. He feels silly. Compared to all of the dangerous people he faces every day, something like clipping a wire should not make him so nervous.
His hands shake. If he makes a mistake, they’ll have to wait two more years before they can try again. If Yuu will even be willing to.
She leans in close and inhales sharply.
The wire starts to give under the blades as he applies pressure. Just a little more and it’ll snap—
Yuu sneezes right into his ear.
The sound is so loud and startling that he jumps. His legs tangle with the chair beside him and he topples as the wire and clippers shoot from his hands. An exaggerated crash sounds as he hits the floor.
He thinks he’s broken the chair until Yuu starts to laugh, high and uncontrollable. He opens his eyes to find the sun above him, peeking through a hole in his ceiling. The juniper has punched clear through it, twisting in a long, dramatic s-shape down to his counter, where it’s taken root. Wherever the trunk bends, the branches reach out, filling the room.
It’s their ideal tree, except many times too big.
I used my quirk, he registers, but he doesn’t have time to feel ashamed before Yuu snorts, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“Now that —” She points at the juniper with a thumb. “— that is a metaphor for us.”
She cackles harder at his befuddled look.
Shinji sighs to himself, watching her laugh. For a second, he tries to make himself feel the frustration he knows should be there, but it never comes. What comes instead is a familiar smile that sneaks across his face, splits his frown open and forces a soft chuckle from him.
He looks up at the giant, perfect bonsai filling his entire house and shooting through his roof, and he agrees.
This is a much better metaphor.