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A stallion gallops out from the towering palace doors, reins gripped tight by Shisui as he leads it downhill, heading towards the open sea. The first thing his eyes catch is the glittering sun; the orb of gold hangs above the horizon, surrounded by clouds tinted lustrous-yellow as it makes its steady descent—a grand gesture to end the day.
Knowing that he hasn’t missed the most beautiful moment of the day makes Shisui urge his horse to hasten, click-clack ing down the sand-dusted road until its hooves sink into finegrain sand and the air brings a dearly-missed, sweeter than sweet scent of wine-blue sea. He yanks at the reins, slides off the steed before it can completely settle, and stumbles into a jog down the bejewelled strand.
The view all but entices Shisui into a lulling trance as he hurries his way to the shoreline, each footfall prominent with the soft crunch of diamond shingles sprayed across the sand, each shift of the eyes caught by scattered sparkles and flecks of silvered multicolour, each anticipation wavered by the gentle roar of bubbling waves ahead. The greatest temptation of all lies in the midst: the sun rested amongst its sky throne like a deity, claiming everything in all its golden glory.
It’s a view meant to let guards down, lead thoughts astray, perhaps one that brings down with it the most precious of memories as it sinks from sight. But Shisui stows away safely the treasure chest of his recollections in a place not even the most bewitching of spectacles can reach:
His heart.
So as sunlight seems to cup its featherweight fingers beneath his chin, teasing his eyes forward, Shisui’s thoughts lie elsewhere, jet-set on a constant rhythm of searching, searching, searching…
Where are you?
Almost instantly, his thoughts are answered.
“Shisui?”
Shisui’s ears perk up at the gilded yet rusty voice that calls out amongst the lulling scenery, breathy and nearly melded into the gold if not for the ounce of familiarity in its unpolished softness. The voice lost in past years hooks itself onto the tips of memory, waves of recognition rising and crashing throughout the vast waters of his soul.
He swivels around in disbelief to meet a distant figure that nears him with reluctance, and though all he sees is a lean silhouette with vague features Shisui’s heart begins to pound, ba-dump, ba-dumps reaching the nape of his neck and his tingling ears as he mimics the figure, slowly closing the distance between them with a certain hesitance.
Haruno Sakura… is that really—
After all these years, you still remember—
Haruno Sakura, wide-eyed and out-of-breath, greets him when he gets close enough to discern every inch of the missing princessss, and Shisui’s head is so full of thousand-word greetings and scenarios so unthinkable that he doesn’t know what to say or do—
Wherehaveyoubeen?
Wheredidyougo?
I’ve missed you,
so,
so,
much.
— dumbly staggering in his footfalls, knees collapsing on the diamond-filled shore as he watches in silent awe the Sakura he hasn’t laid his eyes on for an unimaginable time run towards him, arms open in beckoning.
But Shisui has always greeted the princess in the only way he knows (and was ordered to), and like clockwork, he finds his hands buried in the sand, head hastily descending into a deep bow, mimicking the sunset as the day-long words he wishes to speak come out as an emotionally-devoid “Your Highness”, the tremble in his lips expertly hidden, just as he’s been trained to do so.
But when he rises from his bow the princess instantly tackles him onto the bejewelled sand; Shisui is met with his back hitting the shore, and—when he looks up—the widest starry eyes that seem to fill his entire vision.
“Shisui,” Sakura murmurs so close it dulls the sound of crashing waves, “is it really you?”
Shisui’s heart pulses so loud he’s probably created sea critter earthquakes. He hasn’t faced the princess for far too long, and the almost invisible space between them all but adds to the tremble in his nerves and the pounding skips in his heated heart, lighting his carefully crafted thoughts ablaze, and suddenly all Shisui can think of is how he wants the princess to close the distance between them and kiss him senseless, and eventually it snaps him out of his incredulous trance. Immediately he pushes Sakura to the side, scrambling up to lend a helping hand to the princess who now lies with a posture of awkwardly sprawled legs on the sand.
“It has been a while, Your Highness,” Shisui mumbles, flustered with his hand still held out and empty. He watches the princess stare at his gesture and after what seems like hours, accept it. Sakura finally stands up, but her hand lingers still on Shisui’s.
“Shisui- senpai… it’s been six years. Don’t you… miss me?” asks the princess.
All it takes is his pained words and a gentle caress of her thumb running over the back of Shisui’s hand to have him give completely into her touch, and Shisui knows that he’s lost control over himself when he decides to tug sharply on the princess’s arm and bring her closer into his arms, wrapping Sakura in a long-desired embrace.
“I…” the words struggle their way out his lips, “Of course I’ve missed you, Sakura, I’ve missed you so… much…”
Shisui buries the words he’s been wishing to say all along into the princess’s coat, hiding the tears that have begun to fill his eyes as he says the truth masked behind formal sayings.
“Ah... there’s the senpai I know.” Voice crackling, Sakura chuckles lightly, and when Shisui pulls the hug slightly apart and meets familiar tearful eyes from six years ago he no longer sees the Kingdom’s crown princess, but a mere youth once under his carefree, immature tutelage. “Did you think I wouldn’t miss you even more?”
Sakura’s words tighten Shisui’s hold on him, and in the moment, Sakura is the only one he wishes to hold on tight for perhaps, eternity.
Here they finally are, in the arms of each other: the persons they aren’t afraid to weep in front of, to reveal their bare, unmasked selves before.
“Let me look at you, please,” murmurs Shisui as he frames Sakura’s face with his fingers, eyeing the princess slowly, feature-by-feature, to notice how she’s grown to fit her forehead and ears, but her eyes are just as doe-like as ever. “You’ve grown so much, my little one.”
The princess laughs, and the sound rings brighter than the diamonds sprinkled across the shore — not even the sun could light Shisui’s spirits up as vividly as she did. Sakura reaches up to wipe a stray tear off Shisui’s cheek.
“You scared me, with that solemn tone of yours,” she admits. “I felt as if you’ve forgotten all about me, as if...”
As if my father were still alive.
Sakura never finishes her sentence, but Shisui does it for her in his head, fully aware of every remaining word she’s decided to keep within her thoughts. He pretends to brush off the princess’s trailing off in fear of bringing up unwanted reminiscences.
“Oh, how you’ve grown so much. Where have you been all this time?” Shisui asks, begs for a long-awaited story as he settles down quickly on the sand, motioning the princess to sit alongside him and fill the six-year space between them, if he could, within hours.
Sakura spills her tales of adventures and voyages of orbiting the world, stories of exploration and discoveries gushing out like roaring waterfalls with twists and turns of surprises and adversities, and Shisui basks in them all, always content with listening to her and awing when she exclaims with pride about having rescued an old witch in distress, slayed the majestic but vile beast, or earned a prize of valour. Shisui adores it, the way Sakura always tries to entertain him with her own chronicles and no matter how many lessons she’s learnt from them as she grows six years older, she remains still little under Shisui’s eyes.
Sakura abruptly stops her storytelling and gasps, pointing at the sea. “Shisui, look!”
Shisui who hasn’t taken his eyes off her since the moment they met finally does as he follows Sakura’s finger, and he lets out a small gasp when he sees it.
The final glint of the sun glows gently mid-horizon, and the two fixate their eyes upon the evanescing gold as the cold night begins to approach. Shisui faces the ocean, but the rest of his body startles silently at the warmth growing from Sakura’s palm pressed onto the back of his hand, and all he can only think of is this, and the girl sitting dangerously close beside him.
And his heart goes ba-bump, ba-bump again, pounding ceaselessly into the night.
When Sakura finally lets go, the relief he feels is short-lived; he instantly misses the warmth.
Shisui watches as the princess shifts to make some space between them and begins to run her cupped palms over the ground, bringing the sand together into a growing mound of minerals.
What is she doing? the question repeats itself over and over again like a child with a four-word vocabulary, and it becomes the only thing Shisui’s thoughts form when the mound rises into a small hill of diamond shards dusted with sand and gravel. Somehow the ongoing gesture instills a rising memory in him and he struggles to remember until the mound is big enough to shape into a sandcastle, and lightning strikes into his mind.
“Are you building—”
“Our sandcastle, yes.” Sakura finishes his sentence for him, beaming as she grows his work-in-progress.
Shisui can only eye the princess, startled. “You still remember, after all these years,” he says with slight surprise, memories of their youthful playdates on the beach flashing through his head.
“I haven’t grown old enough to forget,” replies Sakura wistfully.
Shisui stares at the shapeless mound. When he was younger, it used to be the most enchanting castle in his eight-year-old eyes. Now that he was older…
“Hmm, it seems less majestic than I remembered.”
Sakura laughs, ha-ha-ha ’s tinkling in the air.
“Forgive me, it seems my craftsmanship isn’t as outstanding as before,” she excuses himself jokingly.
Sakura moulds her handprints onto the hill until it forms the slightest silhouette of a ruined palace: broken windows and fragile foundation, and then he stops, sand-coated fingers slowly finding their way back into Shisui’s as he slowly rises from the ground, Shisui following after, their hands intertwined beneath the darkening sky with the ‘sandcastle’ nestled between their feet.
“Do… do you still remember...” Sakura pauses, lips wavering as she looks down at her simple creation, “what it meant to us?”
Her eyes then shift to face Shisui, who feels the ba-bump, ba-bumps return, rushing into his chest, the reason being the hands rested over his palms and wide eyes aglow with brightness that meet his. He instantly knows the answer.
A palace free from the abuse of a vile tyrant. An escape from this cruel, shimmering kingdom.
“Our dull, wonderful home for two.” Bravery finds Shisui as he raises his arm to bring the back of Sakura’s hand against his lips, kissing it softly before pressing it onto the princess’s cold cheek—his form of soothing. “Of course, I still remember, from the day we first built
it.”
Shisui remembers it sharp as a glinting blade, when the sun had shone gloriously across the sparkling beach, and beneath her luminescent rays lay two youths weeping amidst the beguiling scenery—one of insufferable agony, and the other scorching outrage. Their sole comfort had been built between their sand-dusted bodies, one that formed the attachment they’ve latched onto for years of togetherness and separation.
The slight reminder of it is enough to rekindle the anger in his heart, but Shisui stills himself quickly. He had sworn never to let that day repeat in the whole of his life, and he will not let his emotions slip to break the vow at this moment.
“Well, there’s something I’ve been wishing to say for you to hear, after all these years,” continues Sakura.
“Why have you waited this long to say them, then?” Shisui questions.
“Because… I know now for certain that this moment—is the right time to tell you that I’ve left this sandcastle of ours, and it’s time you left, too.”
It does not take Shisui long to realise what the princess meant.
“...You know of the King’s death, don’t you?”
That’s why you dared to return.
Sakura nods fiercely. “Because I knew then that meant I could immediately see you.” She explains with ferventness, tensing her hold on Shisui, as if fearing that her senpai would vanish if she didn’t do so. “I’ve longed to see you like this—at peace, free , ever since we parted, and I was so… afraid that it would only occur… in our deaths.”
The princess trails off, and Shisui shudders at the sound of her words. The mere thought of it hurts the core of his heart, that they have shared the possibility of reuniting only in their final moments, had the heartless King not been served rightful justice at all. Tears start to prick his eyes, ones of joy and gratefulness that he could not bear to retain.
Shisui stands far too absorbed in his bliss to notice that Sakura had crushed the mound of sand and diamonds with the soles of her shoes, only realizing when the princess catches his eyes with soft, soft ones that stand out from the rest of her features, and he can barely catch his breath with Sakura now one inch taller, but most visibly one step closer to him in which Shisui feels that much wouldn’t need to be done until the space between them erodes into entirely nothing, and that feeling all but fuels the incessant beating that is his poor, panicked heart.
“But I can assure you, I’m no longer afraid of that.” Sakura’s words come out in a soft murmur this time, and Shisui can only freeze in shock when the princess suddenly slides her hands around his neck, leans upwards and lands a gentle but very much present peck onto the middle of his forehead.
“I’ve always wondered… how my lips would reach the tip of your head. I know now that it’s possible, with a little help from our old home.” Drawing back slightly, Sakura giggles promptly, scrunched eyes, the biggest smile, rosy cheeks and all, seemingly proud of her swift attack that has Shisui stuck standing dumbly, processing in his own time what had just happened. The spot where Sakura kissed him burns like some otherworldly presence that strikes goosebumps down his skin, and…
… he wants to feel this way, for the rest of the night.
Bewitched by his heart’s instincts, Shisui cups his hands around Sakura’s neck and pulls her close for a kiss he’s waited far too long for.
Eyes squeezed shut, the explosion he feels in his chest is tremendously hard to miss, and Shisui’s heart leaps over lengths of its rhythm when Sakura presses her lips onto his, deepening their kiss to the point it falls lost into their thoughts: how longing they must have been to crave for this moment, the hunger for the taste of each other’s lips so apparent as their torsos enfold one another in this breathtaking kiss of theirs.
They pull back swiftly only when Shisui struggles to hold his breath. Sakura cranes her neck to face the moon; her eyes seem to be struck by stars bubbling across the vast ocean sky.
“Shisui,” he manages to pant out, “di-did you just… or did I...”
Out of breath, Shisui breathes out his confession, “Haruno Sakura, I have loved you ever since we’ve hidden in this sandcastle of ours.” His hands shift the princess’s face to lock their stares.
“And I wish for time to wait for my beckoning so that I can love you more than eternally.”
Before Sakura could respond, the moment is shattered by the threatening click-clack s of an incoming herd.
“There she is! The runaway princess!” yells the herd’s commander as they approach the shore.
A chorus of outraged voices follow behind. “ Halt, traitor! ”
Shisui and Sakura turn their heads calmly at the direction of the noise, too accustomed to their frequent history of being chased down by palace officials.
“Ah, it seems we’ve both confessed too late,” sighs the former in dismay.
“Seems so.” The latter agrees, regretful. But their disappointment is temporary—grinning wider when they quickly realize how identical their knowing smiles are, the couple with clasped hands sprints to where Shisui’s steed settles, grazing on the field before the sea.
“After you, Your Highness.” Shisui brings his hands around Sakura’s waist and heaves her onto his horse, and after he himself settles onto the saddle, he wastes no time to drive his stallion into an instant gallop, away from the herd after them.
“Hold on tight!” Shisui shouts into the darkness, hoping the moon reflects his words onto the ears of the one sat behind him.
“Promise I’ll never let go!” Sakura shouts back, a whoop of exhilaration then following her words.
Lovely. With royal guards hot on their trail, the two career through the night—one has his arms wound tight around the love of her life, and the other smiles a true smile, heart racing with elation he hasn’t felt in ages.
This time, Shisui will take however long he pleases with Sakura right by his side, and never let his beloved out of sight again.
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