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He’s got it under control. “Really, I do!” he promised his mom with a wide grin, age thirteen and able to walk outside for the first time without clovers bursting through the concrete after his footsteps, without the palm trees waving at him, calling to him when he passed by. He can’t let her down now, seventeen and radiant with joy and the promise of forever, trying to uncurl the vines that had twined around his wrist without Langa noticing.
It manifested when he was young, barely six. One day, he asked his mom why the bonsai wished him “good luck” before he’d headed to school that morning. “What’s his name?” he’d asked.
“I don’t know, Reki. Why don’t you ask him?” she replied absently as he ran off to do just that, randoseru abandoned in the entry. Then it clicked - and she did the only thing she could do; call her mom and try to bring her back down to Okinawa.
It’s not a Kyan family trait. It came through her mother’s line, skipped her in favor of her younger sister who tends to an apple orchard in the north now; fruit always perfectly shaped and perfectly sweet. There’s something inside some of them that makes the plants call out, respond beautifully; chatter absently to them and listen, and sometimes - when their moods are high and happy, when they have energy to spare for the world - compels them to grow.
She pressed the phone to her chest and sighed while looking at Reki, bouncing around the room, delighted to find a friend; outside, the hibiscus bloomed a little brighter. Energy to spare? Her boy is like the sun.
And , she thought. I’ve always wanted a garden.
---
Reki is banned from spending all his time in the garden less than a month later, when a cucumber grew almost as big as him overnight, yearning to impress him.
He would talk to the bonsai - Hideki, he insisted - instead.
---
The weirdest part, according to his aunt when he turned down her offer to spend a summer with her, learning the ins and outs of orchard maintenance, is that he doesn’t really care about it.
“He’s always forged his own path,” his mom said, watching him carefully refill the first aid kit with colorful band-aids, several already on his face and fingers. “Just because they talk to him doesn’t mean he has to go into gardening, or farming, or anything like that.”
But when he made his own deck for the first time, touched the wood of the board, he gasped and pulled it closer to him; in the dried whirls of grain, he could hear the call. The dying rapture of a massive tree, a final story, final song. Even dead plants carry something of their life in them, voices louder the fresher the cut. Walking into a flower shop is torture, every bloom bounding towards him all at once.
He wanted to give it a second life; he wanted it to grow tall again. He’ll help it fly.
A week later he landed his first ollie.
---
It’s easy enough to keep it under wraps for a long time; he skates and that takes all of his energy, his joy. An outlet for his rays of golden sun.
When he skates, the ground quakes a little below his wheels, as if long dormant seeds suddenly are pounding at their walls. The bushes and hedges overlaying Crazy Rock peek down at him, check in on him when he crashes, cheer for him when he races; in this way, he doesn’t need people. They don’t have to know his name when there’s a whole ecosystem that loves him.
Reki can leave forests in his wake; instead, he skates and gifts his cheerful words to his grandmother’s bonsai, kisses blessings into the baby sprouts of herbs in a windowsill, sneaks into an abandoned house to rescue a potted orchid and nurse it back to life.
In the classroom, he sits as close to the window as possible, so the trees don’t wind their branches inward, clawing for him. They try to distract him during lessons, feed him answers during tests, but he doesn’t listen then. Plants have few worries; the strength of the wind, the sun poking through the clouds, the mushrooms rotting nitrogen into the soil; what care do they have for calculus?
His mom’s garden grows heavy with his gaze, the hibiscus always blossoms for him. It’s just enough to keep them happy, sated, the world around them in balance; he doesn’t pull focus.
But then he and Langa press infinity between their fists, and everything changes.
---
1. Hebi-Chan
“Hey, Reki, your mom handed me more cake? I don’t know where she got it from but it looks good,” Langa says as he enters the bedroom while Reki is trying to bat away the leaves of the snake plant trying to tickle him.
He blessedly enters backwards, giving Reki an extra moment to disentangle himself from the sharp, waxy leaves and reach towards Langa to grab a plate. Langa looks at Reki, a little more disheveled than when he left him, and the plant - whose leaves have curved toward the corner. “When did you get a plant, Reki?” he asks, handing him a slice of cake. His fingers are cold where they touched, despite the heat outside.
“Ah, she’s always been there,” he waves as they sit down to dig in. Hebi-chan is normally quieter, though; more likely to pester him about wearing a jacket or let him know when Koyomi sneaks into his room. He dragged her home after S one night years ago, distraught to find her abandoned in a broken pot on the edges of the old factory. She’s also become obsessed with Langa recently, devouring any stories Reki can give her; in his absence, she’d been trying to convince Reki to let her go home with him, like the field trips he’d taken as a child.
“She?” Langa asks, suddenly. “Like Carla?”
Reki thinks about Carla, about Cherry’s long nights in the hospital with her by his side, the way she charges quietly beside them when they crash Sia La Luce for a late dinner; about how Hebi-chan lets out soft hisses whenever she adjusts her leaves in the night, and how it lulls him to sleep. “Yeah,” he says. “Like Carla.”
---
Later that night, Reki can't sleep for Hebi-chan's whining. Finally, after hours of her pleading, he cracks.
Pads across the room to her, brings her pot back to his bed, tucks her into the safe spot at the corner of it, protected by the wall on two sides. He touches one of her leaves as he lies sideways on his pillow, breathes in the smell of dirt, that raw earth.
"G'night, clingy," he whispers into the dark; she gives an answering shudder.
---
2. Light
It happens again, kind of, at Dope Sketch. Reki and Langa head in for their shift to find Manager Oka standing at the counter, alternating between looking befuddled at the potted flower Shadow had gifted him and scrolling through his phone. The flower looks a little droopy, the edges of it a little soft; Reki can already hear it calling out for him.
Sketchy, meanwhile, is resting - at peace for once, in no danger of being petted.
“Are you okay?” Langa asks, and Oka levels a flat stare at him.
“Peachy keen,” he says, even though he’s clearly not. Langa takes him at face value and goes to the back to throw on his uniform shirt; Reki heads to the counter to check on the flower.
He picks up the pot, gently, with both hands. “Hey there little guy,” he says. “I’m Reki!” Then he examines the leaves, the stalk; tests the soil to find it moist. From his touch the flower seems to perk up a bit. Not enough to make a dent in the long run, but the way coffee can brighten a morning, a mid-afternoon bun carries us through the rest of the day. Oka watches on, amused.
“When did you become a plant expert?” he asks. “Have you been studying under Shadow?”
“Hahaha,” Reki replies. “I’ve picked some stuff up, yanno. Here and there.” He waves his hand at Oka to demonstrate, as he sets the flower back down on the counter and leans towards it, his elbows propped on the table. “Does this flower have a name?” Oka shakes his head, and Reki pouts. “Bad form,” he says. “All plants should have one! How else do they know they’re loved?”
Oka rubs at the back of his head - Reki doesn’t know if he picked up that habit from him, or the other way around - awkward in his body. “I’m not really good at naming things,” he says, and they both look at Sketchy. The fox opens a single, delicate eye at them, before huffing and turning away. They sigh.
“Hmm,” Reki says, looking at the blossom before him. All the while the flower has been whispering, it’s voice soft and delicate and longing. “Hiromi? Where is Hiromi? I miss him,” they call. “I want him back,” they yearn. “Why did he leave me,” they plead, and Reki understands.
“It’s not your fault,” he says to the flower - “What’s not my fault?” Oka tries to respond, but Reki hushes him - and pets at the seam of one of its leaves. “He didn’t leave you. He put you in someone else’s care; a friend, someone to love you even more! I bet he’ll visit you soon,” Reki promises.
The blooms shake slightly, shivering in agreement. “Hiromi soon!” they cheer, a small sound in the back of Reki’s brain, their words vibrating through him. Reki nods, and points at Oka.
“That’s your new dad,” he explains, ignoring Oka’s shocked sputter before him, because the flower drinks life from the soil, spreads it into the leaves and petals, letting the cell walls fill with water and expand, becoming full again; the leaves, impossibly greener. “What do you want him to call you?”
They bristle in an invisible wind, talking amongst themselves; they throw out ideas, concepts that pass through him, like the sensation of water on their leaves, or the way it travels through their roots, the pain of a particularly hungry caterpillar, the way the sun warms the soil, the sun-
”Light!” they scream as one. “Call us Light!”
Reki looks up at Oka. “Did you hear that? Name them ‘Light’,” he says. “Can’t have a Shadow without one.”
Oka looks at him through the hand he’s splayed across his face, the one he groans into. “You’re late for your shift, Reki, go get changed,” he says. Then he points at his eyes with two fingers and then at Reki with one. “We’re talking about this later, by the way, you and me. Whatever just happened.”
Reki rolls his eyes. “Sure, fine; don’t you have to be more responsible though? You’re a father now,” he laughs.
Shaking his head like he can shake Reki off of him that way. “Remind me to water Light before we close for the day,” he says, and Reki smiles. “Where’s Langa? What’s taking him so lo-”
Langa opens the door to the back office, his shirt somehow covered in water, hair half dripping wet. “There was an accident, sorry. Who’s Light”?
Oka sighs, and digs under the counter for a spare hair dryer; Reki sneaks a kiss onto Langa’s cheek, feels the wet strands against his nose, as he heads to the office. There's no sink; just a puddle of water on the ground.
---
Later, Oka stares down a potted plant.
"I'm not your real dad," he says, and - whaddaya know. The petals do seem to droop a little. He looks at his phone, open to a text message draft he hasn't sent yet.
"Well then, Light," and if he isn't imagining the happy preen, the distant sound of ringing like joy. "How about a little Shadow for you?"
He presses send.
---
3. Rosewind
He's able to suppress a lot of the world's reaction to him. Living plants, ones with roots in the soil or about to burst from their seeds, are more forgiving; malleable. They can be convinced by the promise of more of his light tomorrow, or to seek growth in other places, or that he'll come back and visit them regularly besides.
Word spreads like pollen; when he's with Langa, the trees hold back their calls, the vines don't reach toward them, the flowers don't turn toward him and prematurely bloom.
It's the dying ones you have to look out for; the cut flowers, bouquets, corsages. When he was younger and had less of an outlet for his happiness, he accidentally ruined a proposal. Flower petals, arrayed in a heart shape, on the ground near enough where he was playing in a park, creeped toward him, rolling in an impossible wind. By the time the couple reached the spot, the heart was entirely gone and the petals were stuck to his body, nearly refusing to come off.
(They fell off later that night, dissolved to dust; the last gasp of their energy for one final hug.)
Dead flowers are single minded once they have a goal to work towards; unfortunately, Reki - a touchstone, a boy whispered about by the wind as someone who can call to them - is often their target. He can't visit Shadow's flower shop anymore for fear of disturbing the blooms. He came close once, and turned away when he saw a bucket of zinnias knock themselves over through the window, pretended to receive a phone call from his sister and waved Langa and Miya ahead of him.
It's easy enough to avoid them. Stay away from hospitals or fancy offices, walk in the opposite direction of wedding parties, avoid the kind flower cart salesman no matter how much you might want to bring one home to your mother.
The one variable Reki neglected to consider was Adam; or rather, Adam's love of the ephemerally beautiful. Those carefully planned explosions of spectacle, the space he takes up on his own terms, his own accord, for exactly as long as he wanted it to be. He’s a master at creating those images, the ones that stick in your mind for weeks, inspire awe all the while.
For months he had delighted in pyrotechnics, and his appearances were accompanied by fireworks or flames or once, mystifying, lightning accenting his silhouette on an otherwise calm and quiet night. He's changed his focus tonight, no telltale sign of gunsmoke in the air. Everyone's waiting for his appearance.
Reki holds Langa's cold hand in the middle of the fray, giddy at the grounding weight of it on his palm, the way Langa looks at him like he's the wide sky at night, milky way glimmer across his face.
Beside them, Shadow is muttering something about how the shop's been sold out of -
Roses.
Adam makes his entrance, seeming to come from below ground as a semicircle of small cannons fire wave after wave of carefully trimmed roses into the crowd. Reki watches the slow arc of them in the air and can hear their defanged battle cries.
Wherever they've been stored, they've had enough time to listen to the songs the rest of the plants have been singing - the calls of the trees and the seeds dropped on the ground, the ones that tell them exactly where Reki is; that in his arms, by his side, they can taste the sun for the last time.
He watches as their trajectory changes in midair; the rest of S follows their curve through the sky, waiting to see if they'd be blessed with one of Adam's flowers, only to find them all on an impossible arc towards Reki.
At least Adam hasn't noticed yet; back still facing the crowd. His own shadow - Snake - locks his eyes on Reki, narrows them.
"Langa," Reki says, absently.
"Reki," Langa replies; steadfast.
"Run."
And Langa doesn't, stays still like he's frozen in place until Reki spins him by the waist and starts pushing him back, back, back, as the first roses land right where Reki's feet once were, a small pile like a pyre.
An impossible wind starts blowing and the roses start scattering in mid air, voices growing faint with the loss of their final burst of energy; Langa catches one and clips it behind Reki's ear. "Cute," he says, running a thumb over the curve of it, brushing some hair back into his headband; Reki shivers, cheeks flushing pink.
Behind them, Miya shakes his head.
When Reki looks back toward the stage, Snake is still looking at him. His hair seems to crackle with static, strands floating in that same, strange wind.
A night of impossible things.
---
Tadashi discovered his powers by accident when he was 9; summoning a rain cloud that hovered over his head to mirror his own sour mood. Ainosuke had laughed, and that sound like bluebells cleared the sky.
Ever since, he's spent a little energy controlling the wind around him, all the better to not damage the careful arrangement of Ainosuke’s hair; the budget line item for hair wax would be twice as high if not for him.
A dutiful secretary. A loving companion.
---
4. Sakura
Reki doesn't know how to explain to a plant that it's out of season for them to bloom; that they've already paid their dues for the year months ago, that now is the time to rest and conserve energy for the next year's bounty, so far away.
But he never took up his aunt's offer for hands-on education, and his grandmother only ever taught him how to listen and talk, so he’s stuck arguing with the cherry trees outside of the calligraphy studio, which have started budding in the moments he's been waiting outside, killing the time until Langa and Cherry finish their lessons.
The first time Cherry caught sight of Langa's handwriting, Reki could see him cycle through at least half of all human emotions, some he'd never personally experienced. Joe had pulled him out of the cycle, slapping his shoulder and volunteering Cherry for tutoring.
And now he's here, stifling yells at a plant. They don't understand why he's angry. "You bring us light," they say. "You are our energy. We can feast on you."
But plants don't know secrets, only honesty; only what is hidden inside that seed until it sprouts, maybe only what is hidden below the dirt. His family keeps this secret close to their chest; passing on stories through the bonsai, pressing perfect apples into each other's hands, pruning ivy and hedgerows and orchids with the utmost love and care.
He brushes over a bud. “You’ve gotta go back, man; you don’t have to look pretty for me all the time,” he says. Plants have been peacocking for him his whole life, but never as ostentatiously or obviously as this; blooming in real time, before his eyes, like a stop motion film, growth fast forwarded. Can they even go back, or are they stuck like this, wasted energy, dying young for him?
“Please go back,” he says, even as the bud bursts open under him, the petals spreading to better cushion his flesh. It’s so soft on his finger, and he pets it absentmindly, and the tree vocalizes pleasure. Reki sighs.
“There’s no convincing you, huh?” More bloom, petals spread wide and facing him, and he steps back from the tree just as the door opens. Langa pokes his head out; the softest chill wind blankets him before it’s swallowed by the heat.
Langa looks between him and the tree for a moment; something in his eyes questioning, like he’s waiting for Reki to provide an answer. But Reki’s never been able to explain this, not with words. He knows the feelings: the way their words tingle their way into the back of his head, how the taste of grass and leaves rise on his tongue when they talk; how his joy spreads from him and leaks into the soil in a way that’s almost tangible, like an extra arm, and how he can feel the roots and seeds below the surface; how the chorus of plants is a welcome soundtrack to his life, that he’s never felt truly alone or lonely when he has them; that sometimes his power scares him, the way he draws life to him, a target for their love.
He doesn’t have the words, so he doesn’t give them; instead he takes Langa’s arm and they head back to the rest of the world. Cherry watches them from his window as they walk away.
---
A client compliments him on the late bloom of flowers before he notices, a touch of criticism in their tone to communicate that they’re upset that he’s somehow disturbed the natural order, like this is his fault.
He examines a fallen petal with narrowed eyes; an impossible bloom, the remains of a particular kind of control of the forces of nature. If he could quiet the sounds of the rest of the world, he may have been able to hear their dying gasps for a boy with eyes like amber, like sap, like the woody trunk of a tree.
---
5. The Call of a Void
“Reki?” Miya calls from the hall outside of his room. “I need your help.”
He and Langa pull apart immediately, lips red and puffy. Reki lets out a sigh. “He used my name. Must mean it’s serious.” Langa pouts, but moves aside anyway, adjusting the buttons on his shirt as the door slides open.
“I don’t know what’s go- what were you doing?” Miya asks from the door, holding a small paper cup in both hands like the perfect, hollow shell of a cicada. He looks between the two of them - the shirt Langa’s got his hands on, the headband Reki’s fixing, hair a little off kilter still. “Nevermind, this is more important.” He walks up to Reki, hands him the little cup.
It’s full of dirt, and Reki gets a sinking feeling in his chest. “What’s up with this, Miya?”
MIya looks at him; this close, his eyes are wide. Even though he’s got his unflappable veneer pasted on his face, Reki can see something vulnerable soften his edges, something almost sad. “We’re trying to grow plants for a class project; mine is the only one that hasn’t sprouted. Your sister told me you were good with plants. Tell me what’s wrong.” Koyomi is a menace, he thinks.
Langa stares at the plant in his hand. “I didn’t know you were so good with plants, Reki.”
Reki shakes his head. “It’s more luck than skill,” he says, even as he presses against the soil, feeling how damp it is. It’s more good fortune than luck, really, to be blessed with this strange power, a verdant company. But there’s something wrong with the cup. That sinking feeling is cold and heavy in his chest, and Hebi-chan - who woke up this morning and demanded to sit by the window - squirms; the heavy incense at a funeral, the agony of mourning. “I think your seed is dead,” Reki decides, already poking a finger into the dirt to drag it out.
Miya and Langa look at each other, then at him. “How could you tell?” Miya asks. And Reki does have an answer; one separate from his powers, even though he never really learned anything about how plants grow beyond what they learned in biology.
“It’s the only logical thing, right?” He replies, feeling for that void in the dirt. “Occam’s Razor; your soil felt fine, you’re fastidious and not forgetful, and most importantly: plants are easier than you think. Just a bit of love and they’ll do fine, unless nature is working against you from the beginning.” The two of them are staring at him now, unreadable expressions, a reaction to his impromptu speech. He doesn’t have the time to parse it though; he’s recovered the seed, tipped it into his palm.
He brushes the dirt away and holds it out to Miya. There’s a tender sprout there, barely half a centimeter long; but it’s old, the color faded, almost shriveled. “See?” he says. “It wanted to grow for you; used all the energy it could. But sometimes wanting isn’t enough. There wasn’t enough life in it to grow for long, but it did its best because it felt your care, your attention.” He looks at Miya then, and his eyes are wide and almost glistening. The boy reaches into Reki’s palm and pets against the broken seed with a soft, gentle finger; a hello and goodbye, all at once.
This is the hard part, Reki thinks. Many plants - the small ones, at least, the flowers like this one - create as many seeds as possible and hope that as many as one in a hundred takes root. It’s a vicious system, one full of risks and burdens. For a human, especially Miya, who puts so much care and attention into one thing - his skating, blossoming beautifully - it can be devastating. Reki makes a decision. He stands up, drops the seed into Miya’s fist this time.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go to the garden. I’ll show you around.”
They follow him.
---
1. Orchid
Honestly? Langa thinks it’s funny that they call him Snow. No one here knows that he can coax intricate snowflakes into life, throw all the water in the air into order and call forth ice.
No one back in Canada knew either, except for his dad and mom.
It’s not enough to blanket the ground, but it’s enough to bring comfort to him sometimes. Just enough to mimic the soft powder of the slopes, the thick ice overlaying a pond. Sometimes he loses concentration, distracted by something - Reki - and it all collapses to water. More often than not, though, he can run his hand through it and feel the welcoming cold.
He's thinking of telling Reki. There's something about him that's different than anyone else. It's the way his presence can make his snow melt, how easily he can reach him, his figure a bright, warm light in the void.
He thinks, sometimes, that maybe Reki already knows; he always wants to show off for him, wants to admit that when Reki thought he saw snow fall in Okinawa? His eyes were right. The adrenaline gave him power and Reki called out to him, made him want to show off, direct all his energy to the glowing sun at the center of his body. Let a few flakes fall, between the blooming explosions.
That's what he's thinking about when he goes to the door to Reki's house, an open invitation from Mama Kyan for her son's boyfriend. The rest of the family is out today - a long, overdue trip to visit some family friends - but Reki stayed behind to watch over the house and garden. The window is open, and he hears Reki's voice through it.
He stops, moves to the window, hides himself around the shape of it.
"He's amazing, Hideki," is what he hears, Reki's voice full to the bursting. Who's Hideki? What stranger is Reki hiding, and how can he curb the way jealousy seems to fill his veins, pumping through his body.
"Langa! That's who. I know you're old, so I'll remind you of him." Oh. The feeling dissipates, the tension eases. Of course it's him. He presses his hand to his heart, feels it beat relentlessly; he wonders if it beats in time with Reki's.
"He's kinda like that orchid, remember? Blue and white, a touch of yellow when she finally bloomed? She was finicky, and I worried she'd never grow again; but then suddenly something changed, and she wanted it? Desperately? He's like that, Hideki. He's incredible." He can't help it; he pokes his head into the window. One of the hedges below seems to - impossibly - be trying to push him away.
What he sees is Reki, alone; or, not alone, but with that massive bonsai. He's gently looking through the leaves and branches, giving it care and attention that Langa wants. And he's talking to it; but weirdly, it's not a monologue. There's a push and pull to the conversation, like Reki's actually talking to the plant, meandering through topics like Langa, his grandmother's game of chess-by-mail, the latest updates on the Swallows. Like this is an old friend, a loved one.
And then, impossibly, Reki holds out a finger to one of the long branches sticking out of the bonsai - Hideki - and that branch curls around it, a loving caress. A century of growth and change, all for Reki; all that energy, all that power, all that love for him.
"I really, really like him, Hideki," Reki admits, and it's like he's glowing, lit from within by some immeasurable power. Langa thinks, for a moment, about what Reki knows he's given him. About skating, love, friendship; an outlet, relief; his happiness, returned; that darkness lifted.
As if Reki can hear this, he turns his head to the window. When he notices Langa there he beams and - still entwined with Hideki - sticks out his tongue at him.
A large snowflake blooms out of the thin air, lands on Reki's tongue. A taste of winter in Okinawa. Two impossible boys.