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It was so peaceful Kou thought he was hallucinating. The chirping birds and bright sun, the smell of dirt lingering in the air, and slightly wet grass from the night’s quick rainfall, and Mitsuba’s close presence were all creating a cozy peace filling Kou with calmness.
Kou sat on the grass watching Mitsuba take pictures of the surroundings, neither of them speaking, with the only noise being the quiet winds that occasionally blew in their direction.
Kou was starting to zone out a little bit, when he heard the click of the camera close to him. Snapping back to attention, he noticed Mitsuba slightly crouched in front of him, pointing the camera towards him with a smirk on his face. “You should see how stupid you look,” he said, pulling the camera back as Kou reached out to grab it to try and see. “What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing. It’s nice out, is all,” Kou replied.
Mitsuba turned his back to Kou and raised the camera again before snapping another picture. He backed up then, falling in the grass next to Kou before letting out a sigh. “We should probably get to class soon.”
“Let’s be a bit late. I like it here.”
Mitsuba shifted in the grass. “Me too.”
The sun rose a little more, and they sat there in silence until they heard the faint chatter of people around them. Mitsuba stood up and gestured for Kou to stand up as well.
Kou shakily stood up and took a deep breath to steady himself.
“Are you okay?”
Kou looked over at Mistuba, who was standing close to him with slight concern on his face, which Kou was surprised to see. “What do you mean?”
Mitsuba looked away, seeming slightly embarrassed. “Well, you look a little pale.”
“Oh. I’m okay, I just stood up too fast.” Kou smiled, and Mistuba seemed to perk up a little before seeming embarrassed again. “Kou, I have...something.”
“Hmm?”
Mitsuba approached him and pulled out a small blue flower from his pocket before holding it out, avoiding eye contact. “I thought it was pretty, and was taking pictures of it earlier…I thought you’d like it.”
Kou reached out and took the flower, taking a moment to observe it. His voice was quiet when he spoke. “Thank you,” he said, smiling a little.
They split apart when heading to their classes, and following that interaction Kou felt hyper-aware of the flower he had been given in his own pocket.
He had noticed multiple flowers the whole day, and couldn’t help picking the ones that caught his eye the most, such as one that he found growing along the side of the road. It was a light hue of orange with slight yellow and he wondered how a flower as pretty as that could grow so casually among concrete.
He looked for Mitsuba the rest of that day too, once he had the orange flower curled tightly in his hand. He had decided he would give him a flower in return.
Kou had found Mitsuba again when school ended, just as he was ready to head home. He hurried up to him and grabbed his hand so quickly Mitsuba cried out in surprise, only to calm down when he noticed it was Kou. “What do you want?”
Kou opened up Mitsuba’s palm to place the flower in it. “I found a flower too.”
“Oh...thank you. It's ugly, but thank you.”
Kou had gone home that day expecting nothing of Mitsuba the next day, but when he arrived at school as the sun rose the following morning, he found Mitsuba waiting by the doors, holding another flower. This time, it was a small red one.
“I found it growing behind my house,” he said, giving it to Kou.
Kou looked at the flower and gently put it in his pocket. “I’ll give you a prettier one, you’ll see,” he said, before smiling and running off to find another flower.
He found a purple-blue one, among the gardens of the school. He asked if he could pick it, to classmates working around there, and once he got an answer of yes he reached down and picked it.
“Is it for someone?” His friend Nene was leaning on her shovel, smiling widely, looking at the flower.
Kou felt his face heat up. “Well, yes.” It’s not like THAT though, he thought.
“Aww, well, you’re welcome to pick up flowers when you need them.”
“Thanks.”
He wasn’t able to return to Mitsuba as he had to go to class, but then he found him again later and practically threw the flower at him.
Mitsuba laughed looking at it. “Isn’t this from the gardens?”
“...No!”
“Yes, it is. This isn’t better than mine.”
“Still!”
“Okay, then, if you’re so insistent that yours is better, I will find one that is better than yours.” Mitsuba ran off right after finishing his sentence.
The following days were just many flower exchanges, until they both had so many flowers they could make a bouquet. And, of course, there was the day where Kou was so desperate to find prettier flowers than what Mitsuba was finding that he literally made a bouquet.
Mitsuba had gone shock-still upon seeing it, before sighing loudly. “How am I supposed to beat that?”
“Make another?" Kou had said, dropping it in front of Mitsuba.
The same afternoon Mitsuba had also showed up with a bouquet, and it was much bigger than Kou’s. He waved it in his face while laughing. “Beat that.”
“How did you find so many flowers that fast?” Kou sighed before vowing to make a better bouquet. And - the next day, brought one even bigger than Mitsuba’s previous one. Mitsuba had immediately run off, and Kou did too after noticing what he was up to.
Right after school that day, Kou and Mistuba both showed up with a bouquet of the same size.
A few more days of bouquets passed before they both got tired of it, deciding on a tie, and once again Kou expected nothing of Mitsuba the next day, but Mitsuba showed up with one single wild honeysuckle. Kou ended up giving him a dandelion in return.
They started not a competition, but simply a little flower gift every day. Sometimes they would argue about who had the prettier flower, but they had started accepting it with nothing but a smile and a thank you, and they never had to worry about their flowers dying, because every day they saw each other, there would always be a fresh one to add to their growing collection.
At one point, Mitsuba started taking pictures of his favorite flowers. One time he had let Kou try to take a picture of them for a change. Kou was moving the camera too much which made it blurry, but Mitsuba never deleted the photo.
Weeks passed and eventually they got so many flowers Mitsuba started joking about how they would make flowers go extinct by the time summer came.
But, when summer actually did come around, it was almost the opposite as even more flowers were popping up. They continued their exchange, which they would do pretty much any time they saw each other. Sometimes they would surprise each other with multiple flowers or something random like rocks or bark for no apparent reason.
Mitsuba really liked the rocks Kou gave him, and Kou often found himself giving him rocks when he couldn’t find any good flowers.
These small exchanges continued into the beginning of autumn, until it was a little difficult to find flowers, and they both decided to give each other dandelions and little weeds that were still growing.
As the leaves started to fall, they eventually switched from dandelions to leaves, as one day Kou had found a bright red leaf that looked like a textbook-perfect picture. Mitsuba had taken a picture of it and had returned to school the next day with a yellow leaf. The occasional dandelion was still found and exchanged, but usually it was leaves exchanged instead. Of course, rocks were still sometimes in the mix.
They sometimes sat together and made patterns with the leaves they saved, and Mitsuba would take pictures of them all.
Kou wasn’t sure when, but he started giving things to Mitsuba as a genuine way to show how much he enjoyed his presence, and hoped Mitsuba would notice.
Every time he saw Mitsuba’s hair in the distance, or caught his gaze, his heart would do somersaults.
He wanted to give him all he could.
The exchanges continued until all the leaves were off the trees, and the cold winter breeze chilled them both. Mitsuba sometimes chipped bark off of trees to give to Kou, so for the first few days of winter, they exchanged tree bark until Mitsuba proclaimed it “boring” and vouched to wait for warmer weather.
Kou managed to find rocks outside for the next week which Mitsuba really seemed to enjoy - and that made Kou really happy, but Mitsuba wasn’t giving him anything back because “it was too cold” and Kou didn’t want to overdo it, so he stopped.
Sometimes they would sit together in the locker room, looking at the pictures they had taken when flowers could grow.
On a cold Tuesday when they were sitting together, Kou said that when the next spring came, he would find the best flower of them all. The prettiest out of any either of them had ever gotten.
Mitsuba retorted with a simple “no, I will," before smiling.
Kou wished he would smile more often.
Some more days passed and Kou missed the feeling of seeing what Mitsuba would get for him, but he was glad he at least had Mitsuba and the pictures of the flowers saved on his camera.
Near the end of that week they noticed all the remaining autumn leaves they had saved were brown and crunchy, and so they crumpled them up and threw them out into the cool breeze during their lunchtime.
The pieces spread apart in the air, flying and twirling until some fell to the ground. Mitsuba shivered and pulled at Kou’s wrist. “Let’s go back inside, this wind is freezing.”
The two hurried inside the school and huddled together for a moment, and Kou was especially cold, so he reached out to pull Mitsuba closer without thinking, but before he could be embarrassed enough to pull away, Mitsuba leaned into him. He stayed that way until Mitsuba declared that he was so warm that he was starting to sweat.
The next day Mitsuba and Kou met up in the locker room. Mitsuba took his camera and began flipping through the pictures.
“Hey, remember that picture you took when we first exchanged flowers? You told me I looked stupid. Now that I think about it, you never showed me that picture,” Kou said.
Mitsuba chuckled, a smirk on his face. “So you want to see it?”
“Well...”
Mitsuba flipped even faster through the pictures until he slowed down again and turned the camera screen towards Kou again, quite obviously trying to hold in laughter.
It was a slightly blurred picture of Kou, where he was too close to the camera and looked extremely dazed. Kou rolled his eyes and pushed the camera back towards Mitsuba.
“Whaaat, you can’t lie that it’s not funny,” Mitsuba said.
“I never said it wasn’t funny!”
Mitsuba finally let himself laugh, and Kou felt himself start laughing as well. He liked Mitsuba’s laugh, very much.
More than he wanted to admit.
That day, at the school doors, Mitsuba had waved to say goodbye to Kou, before suddenly raising his camera and snapping another picture of him as Kou started to turn away. Kou turned back around, ran forward and tried to take the camera, a smile tugging at his lips when he heard Mitsuba laughing again. Before he could grab the camera Mitsuba quickly backed away and gave him a small wave.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Mitsuba said, as he ran away from the school.
Kou watched him run for a little bit until he decided to begin heading home, as the winter air was making his ears numb.
The next day, he didn’t see Mitsuba. He didn’t think much of it. He probably was late, as he sometimes was, and they probably didn’t notice each other if they passed each other.
But the following day, and the day after, he was gone too, and Kou was a little worried, to the point where that night he couldn’t sleep very well.
The next morning, Mitsuba was gone too.
It seemed quite empty without him, because now not just the flowers were gone. The person he exchanged them with was gone too.
The weekend passed, and Mitsuba still wasn’t there.
Kou wanted to know something, anything.
But not...
“Did you hear?”
“Mitsuba Sousuke died somehow…”
“It was an unknown accident…”
He wasn’t dead, Kou kept telling himself.
He just wasn’t.
He pinched himself to the point where his skin was red, over and over, to be sure he wasn't just stuck in a dream.
But the emptiness in his heart where Mitsuba used to be was more than enough for him to know it was reality he was in.
He still didn't want to believe it.
Winter break came and went, and Mitsuba still wasn’t there.
And it hurt, very much, because it was when Kou saw how much he had cared for Mitsuba, in ways he didn’t understand very well yet.
He had cared so much you could probably call it love.
The winter’s winds soon started shifting to warmth again.
That was when Kou really realized, as the flowers began to grow again, as he saw them on the side of the road as he walked to school, as the school’s gardening club began to grow them once more, that he really was gone.
His presence, his laugh, it was all gone.
For a few weeks, Kou couldn’t stand looking at flowers anymore.
They disgusted him, or made him cry.
But afterwards, after the initial disgust left his body, he began picking them again.
Not for anyone in particular. Maybe for himself. But he held them in his hand, and tied them together at the stalks to make a bouquet, and placed them in his room at his windowsill.
One particularly hot day, where the leaves were starting to turn green and the season was on the border between spring and summer, Kou sat down, on that same place where he and Mitsuba had sat a year ago.
He leaned backwards, resting his back on the sun-warmed grass. His soul was the only one there, but he didn’t mind too much. He had picked a flower earlier, a yellow one, that he twirled around in his fingers a few times before placing it next to him in the grass.
It was so peaceful Kou thought he was hallucinating.