Chapter Text
These stupid fireworks are Izuminokami’s last chance, and he’s going to make damn sure it doesn’t go to waste, he swears on Hijikata-san’s grave.
In hindsight, he probably should’ve taken the fact that he spent almost half an hour trying to tie his obi on right as a sign that things were just going to go downhill from there, but he still hadn’t really expected to keep messing up this much. So far, he’s absolutely failed at catching goldfish (those tiny nets are just too flimsy for his finger muscles), shooting down stuffed animals (fine, he’ll pay attention the next time Kunihiro gives him archery lessons), and even coolly sharing takoyaki (which he’d figured would be the easiest of the lot — he just hadn’t expected it to be hot enough to burn his tongue).
Well, he’ll take the candied apple as a half-victory. Sure, a bunch of rowdy kids ran into his side not two minutes afterwards and sent the thing crashing to the ground, but at least Izuminokami has the image of Nari in her summer yukata, bending slightly down, one hand tucking her hair behind her ear, to take a bite — out of where he’d bitten! — to preserve for all eternity, and then some.
But a half-victory is still also a half-defeat, and Izuminokami Kanesada isn’t a sword who settles for half-defeats! Izuminokami Kanesada is a sword with a mission! A mission that is honestly growing more daunting by the minute, but he’s gotten this far, damn it, he can’t back out now!
Literally. Kunihiro will kill him. And then bring him back to life so Nosada can kill him again.
“Kane-san? Why do you look so nervous?” Nari peers up at him. Izuminokami has to concentrate really hard on keeping his thoughts straight and not veering off to lavish mental praise on how good her hair looks done up in braids. Then her eyes widen and she says, quietly, “Do you, ah… not like fireworks? They’re pretty loud, huh?”
“Huh? Oh, uh.” Izuminokami clears his throat. Now is absolutely not the time to be distracted by her beauty! He’s been distracted all night already! “No, I mean — they’re not so bad from afar! Anyway, what’s a summer festival without fireworks, right?”
“Right, I guess…” Nari frowns. “I just thought — well, you know how dogs don’t like fireworks.”
“I’m a dog now?”
Her cheeks go pink. Izuminokami will count this as another small victory. “I-I just thought that the sounds…! Would, um, be a little… much.”
Oh. She probably thinks the fireworks — the flash and bang of them, the way they echo in your ears — would remind him of gunshots, bullets, shattered spines and bodies hitting the ground. And Izuminokami supposes they do, a little, but he’s not the only sword who used to freeze up and reach for their blade whenever someone dropped a frying pan in the kitchen. The world’s changed, for better or worse, and he’s made his peace with that by now.
“I’ll be fine.” On a whim — but also with very carefully calculated casualness — Izuminokami slings an arm around her shoulders to pull her closer, even though the humid summer air has him kind of sweaty and gross. Normally he’d just ruffle her hair, but if he messes up even a single strand on her head, he has a feeling Hachisuka will kill him before Kunihiro and Nosada can. “You worry too much, Aruji.”
Now it’s the tips of her ears going pink. Izuminokami will count this as another small victory as well, though he’s not actually sure what such a sign means. “You just looked so nervous! What else should I have thought?”
A really good line would be something like, Can’t a guy be nervous when he’s about to watch the fireworks with the girl he likes? but Izuminokami hasn’t gotten this far in life without knowing his limitations. He goes with, “Pft. Haha. Nervous? W-Why would I be nervous?” and decides he probably doesn’t know his limitations all that well, actually. Can he go one second without sounding so totally uncool?
Nari looks unconvinced. Izuminokami can’t blame her, seeing as he can’t even convince himself. “I don’t know. Maybe because the others are—” She breaks off at that, blinking, then rises slightly from where she’d been sitting on her legs to look around them. “Wait. Where is everyone else? Weren’t Hachisuka-san and Hakata-san just here?”
“Ohh? Wonder where they went?” While she’s distracted, Izuminokami surreptitiously checks to see if his braid is still intact, neat, and most of all free from any takoyaki sauce stains. “Geez, weren’t they right behind us? Where’d those layabouts slack off to, huh?”
Nari now looks both unconvinced and unimpressed. Once again, Izuminokami can’t blame her. That ‘geez’ had probably been way too forced. “Did you… lose them on purpose, Kane-san…?”
“W-W-What? No! No way!” Izuminokami sputters, for once actually telling the truth. Okay, he sort of has an idea as to why no one else is around, mostly because he has eyes: though a bunch of them had gone out to the summer festival all together, they’d naturally started splitting off into smaller groups after a while. Some five minutes ago, when Nari had been busy ravaging the remains of her okonomiyaki, Izuminokami saw Hachisuka and Kunihiro exchanging hushed whispers as they silently stood up and tiptoed away from where they’d been sitting just behind Nari.
Kunihiro caught Izuminokami’s eye and gave him a thumbs-up, mouthing ‘you can do it, Kane-san!’ which might have been encouraging if his smile didn’t also look slightly pitying. Probably he thought Izuminokami was going to either chicken out or mess up at the last second and bring them all back to square one again. In response Izuminokami scowled at his traitorous little partner. He’d prove that wakizashi wrong for once!
Hachisuka, of course, just glared at Izuminokami with about half the vehemence he usually reserved for Nagasone. This one Izuminokami couldn’t really scowl at, mostly because it would be like scowling at Nosada, and he knew how that usually ended.
But anyway, they had been the last two to break away from them, leaving Izuminokami finally — finally! — alone together with Nari. On top of a grassy hill a perfect distance away from the crowd, with a perfect view of the night sky where the fireworks will be released, with the perfect speech Izuminokami had been practicing in his head for the past month. If he still screwed this up, he might as well save himself the trouble of returning to the citadel and just commit seppuku on the spot.
“Why would you even think that?” Izuminokami huffs, in some attempt at being more believable.
Nari tilts her head in thought. “So you can eat all the takoyaki without having to share?”
“Aruji, do I look like a takoyaki monster to you? And we shared!”
“Oh, right,” she muses, then grins. “Wasn’t it just because you were too busy burning your tongue to notice if I had a bite or two?”
“No, it was ’cause I know you’re a real takoyaki monster who’ll go crazy if she smells good food she can’t have.”
“You’re the worst,” Nari says, but she does so through a breathless laugh, so Izuminokami can’t really be offended. “But really, where did they go? I hope they didn’t get lost… You know how modern streets still confuse them.”
Izuminokami groans. “They’ll be fine.” Maybe Mutsunokami will get confused enough to walk off into the sea. Yeah, that’d be great. “Forget about others for a sec, will you? We went out to give you a break.”
Nari tugs at a loose thread on her yukata, which of course sets off all sorts of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thoughts in Izuminokami’s head before he can rein them in. “Hm… Sure, but I want you all to have fun too,” she protests, weakly. “It’s not everyday we all get to go to the summer festival together.”
At the back of Izuminokami’s mind, his combat instincts — often repurposed for use as Nari instincts these days — detect a low hum of anticipation in the waiting crowd at the base of the hill, and he picks up the faintest hint of sulfur in the air. It’s time. Now or never. All or nothing. Dead or alive! Literally! Come on, Izuminokami! It’s this or seppuku! “W-Well, it’s not everyday we get to be alone together, either!”
Okay. That had come out a little louder than he intended. And way less cool, too.
Nari blinks. “But we work together all the ti…” She trails off. Stares. Flushes bright, candied-apple red. “O-Oh. You mean… oh.”
Izuminokami can feel his own face going warm, but now that he’s at least gotten the first line out, there’s no going back from here. “Yes. I do mean. Like this,” he manages, trying to remember how the rest of his speech had gone. Naturally, his brain turns up woefully blank. A man’s gotta get by on his own out here. “Um. Aruji, I… You probably already know what I’m trying to say, right.”
In the distance: a spark, a catch, a whizz and fwoosh. Right before him: Nari, close enough to touch, the tips of her fingers a scant few inches away from his own atop the dew-damp blades of grass. She averts her trembling gaze, her voice equal parts nervous and confused: “I-I don’t… I’m not sure…”
Now would be a really good time for Izuminokami’s speech to miraculously reappear in his memory bank. Naturally, it does nothing of the sort.
Damn it, screw words — what kind of sword ever got anywhere just by talking? “Then—” Izuminokami shifts closer, closer, until they’re shoulder-to-shoulder, thigh-to-thigh. He half-expects Nari to look anywhere but at him, since that’s exactly what he wants to do before his nerves eat him alive, but instead she seems to steel herself before meeting his gaze with her own. “Is this okay?”
Nari’s blush has now reached down to her neck. “S… Sure…”
He takes her hand in his before he can give himself time to hesitate; her skin is warm to the touch, palm soft against the rough calluses on his own hand. “And this?”
She swallows. Izuminokami follows the movement of her throat with almost jealous attention. “Y—Yes.”
Before Izuminokami can work up the courage to lean in and actually follow through with easily the craziest thing he’s ever done in his admittedly, relatively short life, Nari glances down then looks up again, bright blue eyes framed beneath her lashes. “Was this what Hachisuka-san meant…?”
Now why on Earth is she bringing up another man right now? “What?”
“He, um, told me to look my best.” Nari pauses. “For the fireworks.”
Izuminokami stares down at her for a second. Then he raises his other hand to cup her cheek, savoring both the feel of her skin on his and the flustered look on her face. “Kunihiro told me not to mess up either,” he offers, just as the first shimmer of brilliant golden lights fly up to illuminate the night sky. “In front of the fireworks.”
He pretty much completely misses the fireworks show entirely. In exchange he gets to know how it feels to kiss Nari mid-laugh, how the lights make her eyes look like an ocean full of stars, and how it feels to wrap an arm around her and pull her close to his chest — so it’s not a bad trade-off, all in all.