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Natsuki stared at the almost faded “Shirakai Dojo” hanging by the entrance, the elegant calligraphy being the only thing that made it look presentable. It’s been a couple of years since he had last stepped into this infamous place, barely leaving with his life intact after a whole training with Shirakai-sensei himself.
Now he returned, donned in an official uniform with a specific goal in mind. He steeled his resolve, preparing himself mentally for a person he would most definitely encounter.
“Meow~”
Natsuki’s keen hearing picked up on a cat nearby.
He quietly walked towards the source of the sound, around a thicket not too far from the dojo’s entrance. Suddenly, a cat with white and gray coat and uncannily blue eyes emerged from behind a tree, staring up at him warily, tail and fur raised. Natsuki raised his arms as if to surrender and crouched, making himself less hostile.
Then, he noticed something peculiar – on the cat’s face, there was a faint line of scar right on the middle of its nose. Natsuki’s hand went to his own face in reflex. Weren’t they kind of similar?
“Did you get that in a fight, too?” Natsuki asked in amusement.
To his surprise, the cat purred back. Maybe that was a yes?
“Natsukiiii!”
Huh? Natsuki’s head whipped around. Did he know he was coming?
“Natsuki! Where are you? That damned…ah, can’t believe he’s doing this again. Your food is ready!”
Food seemed to be the magic word.
“Meow!”
“Natsu—”
Just as Uruha reached the bottom of the dojo steps, Natsuki the cat pounced forward and clung onto his robes, and Natsuki the human came face to face with Uruha himself.
“—ki?”
The cat wrapped itself around Uruha’s leg as Uruha filled the water bowl next to the cat food, rubbing his head relentlessly as if urging him to hurry up.
“Here, Nacchan, eat up.”
With a satisfied meow, the cat happily gobbled his food.
To the side, Natsuki observed in awkward silence.
“Sorry about that,” Uruha finally turned his attention to him. “I have to give him food right now or his eating schedule will be all messed up and he’s going to wake me at dawn for breakfast. Uh anyway, what were you here for again?”
Natsuki’s eyes darted between the cat and its owner. He had some things to say, but he reminded himself that he was here today for business.
“Samura-san. I need to discuss some things with him. I come for Kamunabi matters.”
“He should be in his room; I’ll call him for you. Why don’t you wait here for a bit?”
As Uruha went to fetch Samura, Natsuki settled himself on the nearby bench, observing as the cat noisily chewed on its food. It wasn’t difficult to guess why Uruha would think of his own name for this cat. After all, even Natsuki himself recognized that their hair color and facial scar were eerily similar. The question was why? Was he mocking this cat everyday and was thinking of Natsuki’s face while doing so? Or worse, tortured? It’s bad enough they have some unresolved history.
The cat emptied its bowl in no time at all. After a few licks of water, it looked around the room, searching for its owner. Finally, its eyes landed on Natsuki and decided to settle for him instead, crossing the distance between him and the food bowl in a languid prance, rubbing its head on Natsuki’s leg. Natsuki took it as a cue to pet it, which the cat obviously enjoyed.
“Are you being taken care of here? Seems so. You’re so fat.”
To his surprise, the cat hissed. It must not be the first time it had heard itself being described as big. Nevertheless, it seemed to only be a short tantrum, and the cat proceeded to jump on his lap, snuggling right next to his stomach.
The pair of master and disciple finally returned to the hall and caught Natsuki the human stroking Natsuki the cat.
“Oh, I can smell two Natsukis here.” Samura remarked rather loudly, coyly turning his head towards Uruha. “So they have met – Hey, Natsuki, it’s been a while.”
“Samura-san.” As much as he wanted to be formal and greet Samura properly, Natsuki didn’t want to disturb the cat who was just quietly staring up at the other two. “It’s good seeing you again.”
Uruha suddenly stepped forward, seemingly having sensed his hesitation and carefully scooped out the cat. “Come on, Nacchan, we’ve got some serious business here.”
Nacchan. Natsuki almost shivered from hearing that moniker of his own name.
“Warmed up to a stranger already? That’s a first!” Samura commented. “It’s been what, five years? What brings you to our humble dojo?”
“Kamunabi business.”
“Of course, why did I expect anything different? Would you mind having Uruha around? He’s also a senior of the dojo, after all.”
Natsuki and Uruha briefly exchanged glances. Was there any valid reason for Uruha not to involve himself in the dojo’s affairs? Of course not. And it’s not like Natsuki cared. Really. They’re both adults, and whatever happened in the past was a thing of the past. He had long since moved forward.
“That’s no issue at all.”
As it was, if you did good with your job, you’re more likely to get even more tasks. The higher ups were highly satisfied that Natsuki’s meeting with Samura went so smoothly that they unofficially made him the liaison officer between the Kamunabi and the Shirakai dojo.
Well, it did look smooth on the surface. Underneath, years’ worth of unresolved history enveloped all his interactions with the only licensed practitioners of Iai White Purity.
Personally, he didn’t have an actual issue against Samura. But he knew what Natsuki and Uruha had been, and he did not hold back on insinuating on it. For the next two months that Natsuki had to conduct business with them, there wasn’t a single moment where Samura wouldn’t say something.
“Oh, there’s Uruha’s friend!”
“Remember when you smelled like each other for some time? What was that about?”
“Uruha told me you look much better now, I wish I could see that face he always talks about.”
And he would say all of these with Uruha around.
Natsuki wasn’t a kid anymore, if there were issues to be addressed, then he should be dealing with them as soon as possible, especially when it’s starting to interfere with his job. On a day off, he finally decided to go to the dojo on his own volition with the goal of settling whatever unresolved issues he and Uruha had.
It was a chilly autumn weekend. The “Shirakai Dojo” plaque had been recently repainted, and the walls also refreshed. The logistics for their collaboration with the Kamunabi were almost done. It was just fitting that Natsuki also tied his own loose ends.
“Meow~” Uruha's cat suddenly appeared from behind the gate as it opened, as if it anticipated his arrival.
“Oi, Nacchan, don’t tell me you’re planning to run outside again.” Natsuki pulled out a cat treat from his jacket as he crouched to pick it up. “Here, be a good boy now. Where’s Uruha?”
The cat happily licked the open end of the treat, letting itself be bribed to go inside. Natsuki effortlessly carried it in his arms and made his way inside the dojo. In retrospect, he didn’t actually know whether Uruha would be here, but for the past few months, he noticed that Uruha was even more focused on improving his Iai. Without his sorcery and the enchanted blade, swordsmanship was all he had left to hone.
So Natsuki took a wild guess, and luckily, he did find Uruha in the main training hall, right on time as he unsheathed a training blade.
The stack of bamboo before him was sliced clean in one stroke. “Tsk, not enough.”
“Meow~”
Before Natsuki could make his presence known, the cat already announced their arrival on his behalf.
“Oh, Natsuki! I didn’t know you were coming. Samura-san isn’t here today.”
“It’s fine, it’s you I wanted to talk to.”
Natsuki the cat finally jumped off from Natsuki the human’s arms and made its way to its owner.
“Me? Now that’s unexpected.” Uruha crouched on the floor to pet the cat which had wrapped itself around his ankle. “Seems like Nacchan really likes you. He didn’t like me the first time, you know. Scratched me here and there. I had to work hard to make him like me. But the moment he saw you, he instantly did! I’m so jealous.”
“Are you not going to address the fact that you named this cat after me?”
“What for?” Uruha answered pointedly, not even denying it a little bit. “I’m not changing Nacchan’s name.”
“So what, giving my name to a cat, was that to mock me?” Natsuki suddenly felt irritated. He came here for a proper talk, and yet here he was starting it all on the wrong foot. But it was already out there and he has to push through.
“Mock you? God, Natsuki, you can be so dumb sometimes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Why do you always assume the worst when it comes to me? Have I not been sincere enough? Didn’t you think maybe I missed you that’s why I named Nacchan like that?” Uruha was almost furious by the end, his prominent brows crossed in a frown. The cat had already leapt to the side, surprised by its owner suddenly snapping. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how indifferent you’ve been towards me every time you’re here.”
Natsuki swallowed back the words that were about to come from his mouth.
Uruha…missed him?
He hated Uruha back then, hated the way he shined and naturally graced the battlefield, the way he made killing look like an intricate performance, and how with the way Natsuki swore through heaven and earth to hate Uruha all his life, he was still captivated.
He also hated how Uruha saw his moment of weakness and kept it like a treasured secret between the two of them – Natsuki was a gifted swordsman, but he wasn’t trained to kill. His first almost broke him, and he flailed through that darkness until the boy he hated quite literally pulled him up from the corner of their shared tent and told him exactly what he needed – he’d forgotten those words now, but it made killing less of a burden.
Most of all, he hated that in the turbulent tides of war, his few moments of peace were shared with Uruha, in the privacy of their own space, skin to skin under the blanket, releasing tension from the war through each other. He hated it because those were among the few good things that he could remember, hated how the guy he’s supposed to dislike took a significant space in his heart. Hated how a small part of him wished it would last beyond the war.
And that scared him. Ibuki had begun distancing himself from Natsuki while the war was at its peak. Natsuki worried that if he let somebody else in, Ibuki wouldn’t have a place to return to eventually. There had only ever been him and Natsuki almost all their lives. If he were to let another person in, it would feel like betraying his own blood.
Prioritizing his brother, Natsuki put any thoughts and feelings regarding Uruha aside. He figured Uruha would do the same, after all, everyone was too eager to move on from the war. So why didn’t he?
“You should have just forgotten about me.” Natsuki muttered, the outburst of anger started ebbing away, replaced by something he had kept underneath for years. “I assumed you did.”
“After Shokoku, I—” Uruha shook his head, as if there were things he couldn’t say. With a more somber tone, he continued, “I can’t erase the war from my mind. I wish I could. But it’s the punishment I carry for being an instrument of destruction. At the very least, I could hold on to our memories together.” Moments when he was just Uruha and not the contracted Kumeyuri wielder. “It keeps me human.”
And the feelings Natsuki had swept aside, they were all just kept safe in a corner of his heart. A corner that he now realized he had been saving just for another person. As it turned out, neither could quite let go, holding on to those shared pieces that made the war more bearable.
Natsuki took a step forward. And then another.
He…missed Uruha, too. How stubborn he was to stay by his side when Natsuki’s pushing everyone away. The warzone was no place to make connections, but with Uruha, he never felt alone. Even when he hated how Uruha took his spot next to his brother, Uruha still didn’t leave him behind.
It was Natsuki who put the distance between the two of them, it was just right that he closed it himself.
Natsuki’s hand wrapped around Uruha’s wrist, his racing pulse drumming against Natsuki’s skin.
“I’ve been a dick, haven’t I?”
“Yes.” Uruha looked up at Natsuki, fighting back the warmth that was starting to pool in his eyes. “All these years.”
“Is it too late to make it up to you?”
(Samura scrunched his nose the moment Uruha appeared for sparring the next day.
“What is it, Samura-san?” Uruha subtly sniffed himself. He made sure to take bathe this morning — There’s no way…
“Why do I smell two Natsukis on you?”)