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Droughts hit his farm just as they did others. So did rainstorms.
Never mind his produce’s part in it, the weather had struck him hard this year.
He wouldn’t be able to meet his quota: A whole batch of harsh winder winds, the kind that bites cheeks and noses and carries the scent of snow had dried out before the rain came. The rain had drowned the slow summer drafts that had survived the droughts because he prioritised watering them with what little water he had – they best thrived in wet soil to guarantee headache inducing humidity.
Tenn was at a loss. Harvest was soon, and the merchants would demand for autumn breezes to play with leaves and for autumn storms to play with trees. They would demand to stock up, just in case. Just in case summer returned for a brief day, or just in case winter decided to come early and show its teeth; white death coming earlier, biting earlier than expected.
He didn’t have anything to offer them.
The night was pressing against his window like a giant moth, and he was thinking.
How to proceed? He was out of options.
Taking the losses and hoping for the best… He couldn’t afford to go hungry in winter. Winter winds were harder to take care of, even infantile.
Then there was only one thing left for him to try.
He needed to ask for help.
It wasn’t an honourable thing to do he felt, but a meagre autumn harvest wasn’t unheard of. Nearly all older harvesters had a story like this:
Poor harvest turned into poor harvester asking for help and the wind carrying with it… help. Help in any shape or form.
Tenn hadn’t thought it would be his turn this soon, but he couldn’t deny that he wasn’t in any position to choose.
He got up from his table carrying a candle. The night was not welcome in here and he needed it to know. A howl from the wind, the eternal wind surrounding every harvester’s life (sometimes Tenn wondered who harvested his wind), sounded from outside. It knew that he was coming. It was waiting.
He threw open the door and let the wind in. It rustled through his clothes and his hair, almost affectionately. His candle flickered but prevailed.
“Hello”, Tenn said. “I don’t really know how this works, but—” He paused as he felt the wind going deeper into the house, as if looking for something. When he was sure that it was still listening, he continued: “The harvest is bad this year and I could use some help. Anything is fine. I’ll take seeds, or a new greenhouse. Just… help. Please.”
The wind seemed to chuckle.
The candle died.
Night crawled inside on her spider legs, engulfing all in her way with darkness so deep that for a heartbeat Tenn felt like he was floating in a great emptiness. Nothing could exist in this darkness. Nothing should exist in this darkness.
And then he saw a light. A glow emitted from a person in the middle of his room, something he wouldn’t have noticed in the light of day, but in the chitin darkness of the room it was starkly visible.
They were looking around, quite confused as to where they were.
“Hello”, Tenn said, and his words cut the darkness, banned the night from his house and alerted the person to his presence.
“Hi”, they answered with a voice that carried a pleasant baritone.
“The wind brought you to me”, Tenn said and looked at them quizzically. “Have you been born of it?”
“Pretty sure I’m born of my parents”, they answered. “But with this talk about the wind… you’re a harvester? That’s cool, I’ve never met one of those before.”
“My name is Tenn”, Tenn said. “And yes, I’m a harvester. I called for help and the wind brought you to me.”
“That’s sweet, but I don’t know how to help harvesters. I’ve never worked a farm either. My name is Gaku by the way.”
“The wind doesn’t make any mistakes, Gaku. You’re here to help me.”
“Look, I work in an office at the city hall. I don’t know what to tell you, but I don’t think I can help you with the farm.”
“Maybe it’s something different then”, Tenn raised his hand to his chin in thought. “What could it be…”
“Wait wait, before we talk about it more. I kinda have an appointment tomorrow morning? It’s an honour being called by the wind and all, but I also need to get back to my own life. So uh. Where is this? I want to try to catch a bus home. And then I’ll come back when I’m free, okay?”, Gaku pulled a device out of his pocket, and it lit up. “Aw damn, no signal.”
“I can send you back”, Tenn said. “The wind can, I mean.”
“Ohhh, so this is a ‘not a real physical place’ thing! I’ve always wondered about that.”
Tenn didn’t know what he meant by “‘not a real physical place’ thing”, but he was getting a headache anyway. Was it possible that there was an error in the wind’s decision? There was no way, right?
“Okay, then how about I come back tomorrow afternoon?”, Gaku said. “I’ll bring snacks and then we can talk about how we’ll make this work.”
“Sure”, Tenn didn’t see a point in protesting. “I’ll call for you tomorrow afternoon.”
And Gaku stepped into the wind outside and disappeared, the only evidence of him having been here being Tenn’s throbbing temple.
Tenn had thought Gaku to be born of the wind on their first meeting, but he soon noticed that his thinking so had been ludicrous. Nothing springing from the wind could be as infuriating as Gaku was.
Gaku would appear without fail whenever Tenn called to the wind for help, but that was all that went right with him. He was no help on the farm and each and every conversation with him seemed to end in argument.
Tenn couldn’t wrap his head around it. Why had the wind chosen Gaku of all people (or things for that matter) to be sent to him?
Gaku was… hopeless when it came to practical use on the farm. If he let him roam free, he’d likely increase the pinch that Tenn was in, and if he had to keep an eye out for the chaotic force that was Gaku he would never get any work done. And his schedule was less than ideal. Of course Tenn adamantly refused Gaku’s offer to reschedule or skip out on appointments. Often Gaku would turn up just after sundown, the night in all her multilegged terror in tow.
Once he had gotten used to the wind carrying him, he had taken to calling for it himself instead of the other way around, so it could take him to Tenn. It made for fewer embarrassing situations as well. Tenn had feared that one day he would catch Gaku off guard, and he would be called upon in the middle of changing or other similarly unfortunate circumstances.
Nonetheless: Gaku’s presence wasn’t of any help. There was still no way that Tenn would be able to meet the quota, and he doubted anything would change that. He hoped that a fresh batch of spring breezes and a single blizzard he had been nurturing would lead to something at least, but the market for spring was small in autumn and harvested blizzards were hard to take care of. To keep one contained until the moment of their fated release was hard work, and the fewest merchants were willing to put in that effort, especially when the time for blizzards wasn’t nearly there yet.
“I fear I won’t be able to feed myself during winter”, Tenn voiced his concern aloud to Gaku one evening. There was nobody else who he could have told it to, except for the wind, and the wind already knew. So Gaku had to do.
Said man perked up.
“You know what! Maybe I’m here for a reason after all”, Gaku said. “I wasn’t sure until you said that just now, but I think I know what I can do to get you through winter.”
The next time he came, he brought a basket and a book.
“Can I use your kitchen?”, he asked.
“Of course”, Tenn didn’t use his kitchen very often. It was on the east side of his house, so the night came there first, compound eyes peering inside through the window and making his skin crawl. Mornings could be quite nice in there, but he’d rather spend them outside than inside his house, breathing in the first rays of the sun. He didn’t mind letting Gaku use it at all. “It’s all yours.”
“Great”, Gaku said and disappeared, until a few minutes later a heavenly smell came from inside. Tenn, curious, followed it and found Gaku chopping vegetables and working a frying pan where onions were already being prepared. So that was what had been inside the basket.
“You said you were worried about getting through winter”, Gaku said and smiled at Tenn proudly. “So I’ll just have to feed you. I’m a decent cook if I do say so myself.”
Tenn raised a brow. “Are you sure? I don’t know if your clumsy hands can make anything that isn’t poisonous.”
“Give me a break”, Gaku rolled his eyes, hands never stopping to move. “I only dropped things one or two times and that was because they were awkward to hold. Would it kill you to not bring that back up again?”
“It was funny though.”
“Ugh. Fine. I don’t know how you little brat manage to carry all that heavy stuff anyway.”
Tenn decided not to answer anymore and watched Gaku in silence for a moment, contemplating.
“Where did you get the ingredients from?”, he asked then.
“The grocery store? Should I go to the market next time? I didn’t really have time today, but I made sure it’s good stuff—”
“That’s not it”, Tenn interrupted. “I can’t have you paying for my survival. That just can’t be the solution. The wind’s guidance is supposed to help me support myself.”
“Yeah, I mean. The wind kinda blew cash at me after I stepped out of the store, so I wasn’t technically paying”, Gaku said. Tenn could hear the smile in his voice. “It’s still a little ridiculous to me. I knew about the whole magic wind thing, we have a whole belief system around it, but that I’m getting spirited away by it regularly is still surprising.”
Tenn hummed in thought. “The money might be a coincidence. Or you’re right and this is the solution.”
“I think it is. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, right?”
“Sure sure Mr. Amazing Cook. Didn’t you tell me about the time you nearly burnt down the house making a breakfast meal for your mother?”
“Shut up, the pancake incident only happened once! And I was seven, so it doesn’t count.”
While Gaku was cooking, Tenn sat at the kitchen table, watching him cut and wash ingredients, endlessly chattering about his day.
“Today I was making calls to organise a concert in the city hall. Sounds easy, but the amount of people you need to call and make sure they all have all the information? Ridiculous. Also none of these people seem to read their emails properly. No, it’s not Tuesday, it’s Thursday, that’s a couple of letters apart! Can I even trust them to do their job right when it comes down to it if their reading comprehension is that poor?”
Tenn didn’t really know what all of these words meant, but he enjoyed listening to Gaku. The night’s buzzing outside didn’t bother him as much when Gaku’s voice was talking over it.
The food was as amazing as that first waft of smell that had gotten Tenn to follow it had suggested. He felt warm and protected, and Gaku also seemed to enjoy it. In the light of eating together the kitchen felt larger than usual, and it seemed to be lit with a soft golden glow.
Gaku’s cooking improved every time he came. By now he was over almost every day, sometimes even arriving in the morning and leaving in the evening on weekends. He endlessly chattered about his work, his friends, his family. His father was mayor of the town Gaku worked for, but he hadn’t had a part in getting Gaku his job, at least that was what Gaku told Tenn as if he had suspected anything else.
Sometimes Gaku seemed to feel something conflicting about his job, but he was either good enough to mask his exact feelings or Tenn wasn’t good enough at reading him. He supposed it might be a combination of the two, because the only people he had communicated with before were the merchants and those weren’t exactly conversationalists. But he didn’t push it – talking about Gaku’s job wasn’t really why they were together after all.
Today Tenn was digging up old dead roots that wouldn’t bear any plants or fruit anymore, so he needed them gone to plant something new. Maybe he would replant one or two of them to see what he could salvage, but this field wasn’t their place anymore. Gaku sat beside him, weaving together some autumn flowers that he had found. He was talking again.
“The fair last week worked out fine. I got to talk to a lot of people, and it was a lot of fun. I mean, sometimes I think I want to do something different. I like organising events, but sometimes I want to do stuff with my hands, like you, or do something with my head only.”
“You’re doing things with your hands when you cook”, Tenn said, even though Gaku’s work on his farm was less of ‘work’ and more of ‘volunteering’. And the whole ‘voluntary’ part of the volunteering wasn’t exactly given either, considering the wind had just ripped Gaku away from his life one day.
Gaku laughed. “You’re not wrong about that. Anyway, what I wanted to say before I got distracted. Sorry for not being able to spend more time here, I was just really busy…”
“You were here every day but Thursday Gaku”, Tenn said. “This isn’t work. You don’t need to be here a certain amount of time and do a certain number of things. You know that, right?”
“But the wind—”
“The wind asked you to help, not to give up your life. To most people what you experience here would be like a dream. Don’t spend your life in a dream world.”
“Tsk”, Gaku clicked his tongue. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“You just told me what to do. Hypocritical old man.”
“I’m twenty-two! That’s not old.”
Tenn had no concept of age, but he knew that the number of days he had been alive was similar to what Gaku had experienced. But he had found out that the jab about age was one that got Gaku riled up just enough to be funny.
“Anyway”, Gaku said. “I want to be here, so I’ll come whenever I want.”
Tenn didn’t answer. It was Gaku’s choice, and he wouldn’t complain if that was what Gaku chose. Still, he sometimes wondered if Gaku wasn’t missed.
They stayed in silence that wasn’t quite comfortable. It was as if a thread of energy connected them, charged with the argument they left unsolved. Tenn wondered if it was something that could be seen from the outside… If it would keep the night away if she saw it.
“Look”, Gaku said a few minutes later, and Tenn turned around, just as a gust of wind blew from behind him, past him. It must have hit Gaku directly because his hair and the crown of flowers that he was wearing were gently disturbed, but none of that could weaken Gaku’s grin. “Pretty cute, right?”
Tenn didn’t know what to say. The bright oranges and yellows looked exceptional on Gaku, and he felt as if this moment was something he wanted to capture, to trap in a little box that he wanted to open in the darkest hours of the night to bring some light into his life and mind.
Not for the first time he wondered if the food wasn’t actually why Gaku had been sent to his place and there was something else. Moments like this that gave him perspectives and sights that he wouldn’t otherwise see. Moments that gave him a kind of nurturing that food and solitude couldn’t achieve. His heart was beating up into his throat at this thought (or the sight, they had coincided after all) and Tenn could only croak out a “Yeah” before he returned to his work.
“I can make one for you too”, Gaku said. “I’m sure you’ll look pretty too.”
“No need”, Tenn mumbled, but he was already looking forward to it.
Tenn wasn’t good at reading Gaku or being sensitive, but today even he noticed that something was wrong. Gaku had turned up in the middle of the day, snow on his hanging shoulders and in his hair and looking like death herself. There were deep circles around his eyes and if Tenn wasn’t mistaken they were puffy as if Gaku had been crying.
He dropped the snow shovel and jogged up to Gaku who was still standing in the place he had appeared in.
How was he supposed to react in this situation? Should he just ask what had happened? Or ignore that anything was wrong to give Gaku a break? Offer comfort? How would he even do that?
Before he could even do anything, Gaku slumped over and Tenn had to catch him before he hit the floor.
“Sorry”, Gaku mumbled, low enough that Tenn needed to strain his ears to hear him properly. “I guess I’m pathetic today.”
Instead of saying anything, Tenn led Gaku inside and set up a kettle to make some tea for him. Gaku was shivering from the snow, and not even the blanket Tenn had offered him seemed to change anything about it.
When he had taken a few sips of the tea, Gaku sighed. “Sorry you had to see me like this.”
“Stop the excuses”, Tenn said. “I didn’t think you were a perfect human who never gets upset to begin with.”
A shaky laugh was the only thing Tenn got for his quip.
“So do you want to talk about it, or is a warm and quiet place what you need right now?”
“…”, Gaku thought about it for a moment and then took a deep breath. “I argued with my dad.”
“The mayor?”
“Not the mayor anymore. He got caught up in a corruption scandal and had to take the blame for it. I nearly got fired too, but I wasn’t involved in it at all, so I could keep my job. Well, he wanted me to quit anyway to work for the family business he’s taking over again.”
Tenn listened quietly, sitting on the armrest.
“I got really worked up about it because he just doesn’t get that I’m my own person outside of being “son of Yaotome Sousuke”. Maybe this is why my mom divorced him”, a sigh. “Anyway, I stormed out on him and then I felt bad and couldn’t sleep all night. At work everyone looked at me wrong, as if I was a criminal. And I kind of am. Everyone already thinks I only got the job because of my dad. Maybe I did and he just didn’t tell me.”
Tenn put his hand down on Gaku’s shoulder. He felt a tremble going through it, as if Gaku was supressing sobs. The touch made Gaku gather up some strength.
“Anyway, I think I quit my job after two days of that.”
“You quit?”
“I left without telling anyone. If they needed an excuse to fire me, that’s it.”
“I don’t think they should be able to do that for just you leaving early once.”
Gaku shrugged. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
He blinked heavily.
“You can use my bed”, Tenn said in lack of having anything else to say. He wished he had more knowledge of Gaku’s world, but he was limited to the wind and the night. “How long have you been awake?”
“Three days and two nights?”, Gaku said.
“Use my bed”, Tenn repeated. “It’ll all look brighter after you sleep.”
Gaku followed Tenn’s words and soon he was snoring softly from Tenn’s bed.
Tenn himself went outside again to free more sensitive winds from the snow.
“I hope he’ll be okay”, he said to nobody in particular, even though the wind answered with a distant howl.
After that one time, Gaku stayed over more often. He had a mattress next to Tenn’s bed and sometimes it felt like he lived here more than he lived at his own home now.
Somehow, with Gaku snoring on the floor next to him, Tenn didn’t fear the clicking jaws of the night as much.
“The kitchen really grew since I first cooked here”, Gaku observed. “Did you really only have one pot and one pan before I came?”
“I didn’t really cook”, Tenn said.
“How are you still alive? You may be good at the whole harvesting thing, but you’re hopeless at taking care of yourself.”
“Thanks.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
Tenn rolled his eyes. “You may also be good at the whole cooking thing, but you’re hopeless at confronting your father.”
“Ugh, no need to bring that up”, Gaku opened the pot he was working on to peer inside. A cloud of steam hit him in the face, and he blinked the heat away. It was kind of cute.
“You’re welcome.”
“That definitely wasn’t a compliment.”
Tenn shrugged. “Just take it as one, I also did that.”
“You’re impossible”, Gaku said and jokingly threatened Tenn with his ladle. “Careful young man, or you’ll go to bed with no dinner.”
“I’ll be good then”, Tenn said with a smile. “So what’s for dinner?”
“This might be the last time we meet”, Tenn said. He felt a hint of bitterness at the back of his throat. He knew why. With Gaku’s light gone from his life the night would come back full force. He didn’t know if he was ready.
But spring was approaching, and he had a fresh batch of last winter winds ready for the merchants. He was fine again. There was no need for Gaku anymore.
“What if I just don’t leave”, Gaku said. “Half my things are here anyway. I sleep here more often than not. It wouldn’t even make much of a difference.”
“You…”, Tenn was at a loss for words. “What are you even saying?”
Gaku had… work. Family. He had something to get back to.
He wasn’t serious.
He couldn’t be serious.
“I’m dead serious”, Gaku said. “I don’t want to go back to my old life if that means I can’t ever be with you again.”
It was embarrassing. Someone saying this kind of thing, but also Tenn’s reaction to it. He felt his chest tighten with longing.
Yes, he wanted Gaku to stay with him too.
But that was exactly why he had to politely decline.
How could Tenn ask Gaku to stay when it was the wind that brought him Gaku to survive the winter and winter alone? Winter would be over very soon. He was a harvester. He had a duty, and that duty did not include Gaku. His life wasn’t supposed to include Gaku and yet he had fit in snugly, even after some starting problems, even after their trading insults, and even after their arguments.
“You want me to stay too”, Gaku said, observant as ever.
“No”, Tenn lied and tried to get his facial expressions under control again. “I’m fine now and the spring harvest looks promising too.”
Hurt flashed across Gaku’s face. Then resignation.
“Alright”, he said. “I’ll leave for now. But even if the wind won’t take me here anymore, I’ll find a way to come back to you. Because—“, he turned and took a deep breath, facing the wind’s direction, as if he wanted to tell the wind more than he wanted to tell Tenn. Maybe that was really the case. No matter what, the wind was blowing in his face now, and the breeze picked up as if anticipation was affecting it as well. “Because I think I love you!”
“You think?!”, Tenn answered against the wind. “You have the guts to confess to a harvester even though you aren’t sure about it?”
He was laughing even though he wasn’t sure if that was the appropriate reaction. Maybe he should have been crying. “I can’t believe what a numbskull you are. Really. You’re… infuriating. You’re. Winds, Gaku. I think I love you too.”
“Really?”, Gaku turned back around to face Tenn again.
“Yes. Yes… I think that’s what’s happening. It makes sense. Probably.”
“That’s great! That way we ca—“, a buffet of wind interrupted Gaku, taking hold of him and carrying him away in the way that Tenn had seen countless times. And yet, somehow, he felt like this time it was final, and he hadn’t even said goodbye properly. He hadn’t even really touched Gaku.
As a harvester he couldn’t allow himself to be angry with the wind, so he chose to direct all anger at himself in a futile attempt to calm his raging mind.
Tenn was furious. Tenn was sad. Tenn was filled with fear.
He feared the night. The night… she would come and snatch him away in his vulnerable state, spin her web around him, catch him and liquidate him, suck him up leaving no trace of him.
So when he finally went to bed, he wrapped himself up tightly into a cocoon of blankets, mimicking a little night himself.
The farm was empty without Gaku. Days passed and Tenn thought about him whenever he could afford it between merchants arriving and appraising and purchasing his produce.
Where was Gaku right now? Was he thinking about Tenn as well? He had promised that he would come back, but how realistic was that? The wind could as well have obstructed every path to this place. The wind could have blown away every memory Gaku had of him. He wanted to see Gaku again badly. He wasn’t going to pretend that his chances of it were very high.
He preferred being right over being disappointed when his hopes and wishes were never fulfilled.
That way he spent most of his days, missing Gaku, already preparing for summer and harvesting the spring winds, pleasant little things and the occasional rainstorm, missing Gaku, thinking about what to do for autumn, missing Gaku.
Missing Gaku became part of his routine as much as being afraid of the night was back as a major part of it.
The night was especially horrible these days. She had noticed that his strong link was missing and attempted to crawl in through every nook and cranny. Every gap and every crack seemed like a giant gaping entrance, inviting her in.
Most days Tenn fell asleep shivering in fear he might awaken to a face full of night.
Today… He woke up in the darkest hour because a loud banging had woken him up.
“Tenn!”, a familiar voice called.
He hadn’t known that the night was able to imitate voices as well. And he hadn’t realised she was quite as cruel as to imitate Gaku to torture him.
“Tenn, it’s me, open up!”
“Gaku…?”, he asked through the door.
“Yes! I’m back! I found a way. Sorry it took me so long.”
“Is it… really you?”
Gaku (?) was silent for a moment. “Oh!”, he exclaimed then. “The night. Yes, of course. Hm, let me think about how I can prove to you that it’s me.”
He was silent for a moment.
“My name is Yaotome Gaku. Yaotome Sousuke is my father. I work in an office job at the city hall. I like my job.”
“She could have heard that…”, Tenn mumbled to himself.
“Not enough, huh…”, Gaku (?) outside said. “I was called here to this farm by the wind and began cooking for you. I made flower crowns for the both of us. You saw me at a very low point in my life. Basically half my stuff is in your house and based on what you said right before I was taken away by the wind again, you haven’t thrown it out yet.”
Tenn really wanted to believe that it was Gaku out there. He wanted it so badly that he was about to just open the door now. Damn the consequences if he was wrong.
“Tenn, if you want, I’ll stay outside until morning, so you know I’m not the night imitating me, I’ll do that. I mean, I love you. I’m surer about that now too.”
Tenn took a deep breath, the deepest he had ever taken. Damn the consequences.
He opened the door.
Gaku was standing outside, a wide and idiotic grin all over his face.
“Hi”, he said.
“Hello”, Tenn answered.
And then they hugged.
“You won’t believe how I got back here”, Gaku mumbled. He was so close.
Tenn felt all the tensions of the last weeks leave him, falling off like they had been heavy robes and Gaku had loosened the fasteners keeping them on his body. He clung onto Gaku and wasn’t really planning on ever letting go again, but he kind of had to if he wanted to close the door, and he really wanted to close the door.
“Oh right, the door”, Gaku said and let go of him.
After he had closed the door and collected himself a little more, Tenn invited Gaku in properly. Sitting down in the living room with a cup of tea each, Tenn looked at Gaku expectantly.
The tale he told was astounding. After he had been picked up by the wind he had yelled and cursed the wind, which was sacrilegious in itself. But the wind, instead of punishing him, had answered to his tantrum. Gaku had been told that if he found a wind harvested by Tenn, he would be able to use it to return to the farm. So Gaku had spent the last weeks asking each and every wind, every gust and every breeze, every storm, and every slight breath to take him to Tenn. And finally, a wind that was so languid, it seemed to just be strolling past his balcony, had been the answer.
“So if you always had a wind that I harvested…”, Tenn mumbled and stared at their locked hands.
“I can always come back, yep!”
Tenn couldn’t believe that he was allowed a happy ending after all.
“I’ll prepare you a basket of wind tomorrow morning. But promise to use it often. You don’t believe how much I missed you these last weeks.”
“Oh, trust me. I do”, Gaku said. “So of course, I’ll use it as often as I can. You just promise to always refill my basket of wind.”
“It’s a deal.”