Work Text:
“Chuu~ya,” The young boy called out, slowly teetering back and forth on the swing he sat on. “What are you doing?”
The large, shady tree that loomed over them swayed in the hushed breeze. The boy named Chuuya, who had been faced away from his friend, turned around upon hearing his name. He kept one hand on his navy blue cap, struggling to prevent it from being swept up by the wind. In Chuuya’s tiny grasp lay bright red petals that overlapped one another, stemmed out of dull green leaves.
“Waa.. I’ve never seen such a pretty flower before,” The young boy uttered in amazement, attention completely fixated on the plant. From the vivid shade of red it emanated, to the perfect geometrical layers it grew into, everything about it looked spectacular.
“‘Course you haven’t, Osamu!” Chuuya huffed in a sarcastic tone. “All you do is read and daydream.”
Osamu stopped the swing’s momentum with his foot and gently hopped off of it, approaching Chuuya. “What kind of flower is that?” He asked, voice still lowered as if it would vanish into thin air if he were even one decibel louder.
“It’s a ‘Camellia’,” Chuuya found himself subconsciously whispering too, like he was sharing a secret. “That’s what my big brother told me.”
He had been observing for a few months then, and concluded that this species of flower bloomed from leafy bushes scattered randomly around the school’s garden. They came in a variety of colors, not just red. A pink that couldn’t help but make him crave cotton candy, white so pure that its petals resembled snowflakes in the winter, and yellow so striking Chuuya figured it must have absorbed a part of the Sun.
Osamu hummed in acknowledgement, still mesmerized by the Camellia rose.
Chuuya felt obliged to keep quiet. He didn’t want to ruin the moment.
Ever since they met four months ago, on the first day of kindergarten, Chuuya could tell something was off about Osamu - not necessarily in a bad way, just that he was perpetually wrapped in bandages (‘Mummy-Boy’ was what Chuuya addressed him by before learning his name), stubbornly quiet and maintained a comfortable distance from everyone else. Regularly, Chuuya would hear teachers praise Osamu for being ‘mature’ or ‘grown-up for his age’. But no one thought much of it, they just unanimously decided that it was one less child to worry about.
Not Chuuya, though.
Figuring out what made Osamu seem so desolate was near impossible, considering how much he kept to himself. Instead, Chuuya found that whenever he was around, the other boy smiled much more often. His mood would be much more bubbly, he’d poke fun at Chuuya, and even talked to a few of his classmates sometimes.
Even Mori-sensei once said, “Dazai-kun seems so much happier when he’s with you, don’t you think so, Chuuya-kun?” He didn’t understand why, but those words struck a chord with him. He had not been absent a single day since, reminding himself every morning of those words, visualizing a dejected Osamu eating at lunchtime by himself and sitting in a corner reading a book.
And so Chuuya decided, if it meant keeping a smile on Osamu’s usually dreary face, he would do whatever he could to give the lone boy a reason to look forward to life.
Of course, Osamu didn’t need to know that.
So, he stuck out the hand that held the flower, a ‘tch’ escaping his lips.
“Since you like it so much, you can have it.” Chuuya turned his head to the side to avert his gaze, a little embarrassed to give a flower to someone his age. He waited a few seconds, but the Camellia rested still in his grip.
He shifted to look at Osamu, who was staring at him blankly, replaying those words in his head until it finally clicked. Osamu tilted his head to the side, observing his newly gifted flower, this time, with an air of despondency.
“It’s so fragile,” he muttered, a tone so frail and quiet it almost made Chuuya tear up. “I never realised that before.”
He raised the flower up in the air, against the sky’s persistent gleam.
“If I were to let go, it’d be swept up by the wind.”
He held it down against the grass, which complemented the Camellia’s red hue.
“If I were to drop it, it’d never get up again.”
Finally, he brought his now lifeless gaze back to Chuuya.
“If I were to leave it alone, it would simply die.”
His eyes barely reflected any light, even if the high noon Sun left no nook and cranny unlit.
Osamu’s voice creaked. “We’re alike, in the sense that even the slightest disruption could break us.”
Chuuya kept silent. He listened to every word Osamu lamented. Truth be told, he didn’t understand much, but the depressing undertone of those sentences made him consider it for a few moments as well.
“The difference between flowers and humans,” Chuuya contemplated the words on his tongue. “is that humans can rely on one another, right?”
Osamu then redirected his sight to Chuuya, who peered back at him every few seconds to gauge his reaction. The brunette tried to contain a grin, evident from how his lips writhed a little.
He took a few steps forward and fell gently into Chuuya’s arms.
Chuuya caught him, barely managing to keep them both from tipping over. He could feel Osamu’s quiet sniffles as the brunette buried his head in his shoulder, just inches away from his ear.
“..Right.”
Osamu didn’t even notice it at first, but the Camellia in his hand had slipped away. It fell onto soft green grass, barely making so much as a sound.
Nothing could have been more comforting than the shuffling of leaves and the soft whistle of the wind, all while in the other’s embrace.
The wind blew again, causing the tree to waver and the swingset to rock sporadically, but Chuuya wasn’t the slightest bit cold. He didn’t even bat an eye as the sly gust of wind stole his cap from him. Osamu’s warm embrace was insurmountable against any cold, he thought, lifting his hand and running his fingers gently through brunette hair.
Soon, they would have to return to class and leave this moment a secret between themselves.
But until then, they weren’t going anywhere.