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Almost dying is a strange experience.
First, darkness creeps up on him. His field of vision narrows, little by little, like embers licking at the edges of a photograph until it turns ashen black. He thinks he sees the flutter of a white cloak against the pale blue November sky and hopes that it, too, will not catch fire. The last thing he sees before the world disappears is the swinging motion of pink hair.
Later, Fushimi learns that it has been days, but it feels like hours and years all at once.
The world comes back slowly, first in sound. A cacophony, at the beginning; then the rhythmic beeping of machines, squeaky footsteps, and murmurs of conversation make themselves discernible. Somebody yells. A curtain rustles. The ground rumbles, only once.
The next thing he knows, a tube is pulled out of his throat. He gags and coughs, tears welling up, but even through blurry vision it is impossible to miss the two people in blue scrubs at his bedside sighing in palpable relief. “Where,” he rasps, voice alien to his own ears, “Where’s Uruha-san?”
He opens his eyes to blinding lights and deafening silence, and for a moment wishes for the darkness’s return.
Fushimi hands in his resignation to the Kamunabi branch in Shizuoka.
It feels like a full-circle moment. He grew up in this prefecture, survived the Seitei War, enlisted as a rookie agent to this office at eighteen, and now he will be putting an end to that part of his life at the very same place. He decides on it in the days after Soga Akemura burrowed a sinkhole into the ground where Tokyo Headquarters once stood and called himself great leader of the wreckage. He has seen it on television, and has been halfway out the door before he remembered the sorry state of himself – all he might accomplish would be to become a body for his parents to bury for good.
He gave his life, once, when the mission was clear as day. Now, he is not even sure whose war he would be fighting.
The day Fushimi visits for the last time, the Shizuoka branch is in complete disarray. No one even looks twice when he wades through the office and returns his keys and badge to the locker where they belong. The convenient excuse is that he needs time to recover from his injuries and to be closer to his aging parents, but he knows deep down the reason is that the Kamunabi under Soga Akemura is not the Kamunabi he signed up for. Or perhaps the Kamunabi he signed up for never existed at all.
He tells himself that it does not matter anymore. He was the captain who failed his men, the bodyguard who failed his charge. There are moments when he is alone with his own thoughts that he wonders if surviving is a cruel joke; to be the last one standing, watching the world move on from the ruins of his failure. Maybe he would become another Hagiwara Ikuto, once a fellow bright-eyed recruit, now wasting away with nothing but ghosts for company.
By some miracle, he does not end up like Hagiwara, no thanks to his own doing. Upon his return, his parents put him into physiotherapy with the same fervor that they used to put him in after-school sports. You’ll do it and you’ll come to like it, is the idea. Fushimi is old enough now to acknowledge, however begrudgingly, that they have been right about something. It keeps him focused on an attainable goal when everything else feels devoid of meaning.
In the meantime, outside his window, the world barrels ahead with reckless abandon.
The country is bewildered by the reappearance of its greatest hero, who has unilaterally declared a new future for the masses. Using the ultimate weapons to bring order to a nation in chaos - it is the kind of vision that divides the Kamunabi itself, not to mention the populace. Even his father wonders out loud once, over the dinner table, “Would Soga Akemura really do it? Bring peace to this country, I mean.”
It is undoubtedly the sort of question that would get Uruha animated, the passion in the man never waning even nearly twenty years after the end of the Seitei War. The great Rokuhira Kunishige and his enchanted blades; Fushimi remembers those stories well, and remembers Uruha most of all – bright green eyes, wild hand gestures and a beaming smile, instantly endearing and completely disarming. Uruha Youji, then seventeen and proud to have fought in the war, but also more than willing to return his blade to be kept away under lock and key with the others, because he understood the danger of them existing in the world.
Sometimes Fushimi catches himself thinking, What would Uruha do, and bites back a bitter laugh. He would never know, now. His squad was gone, Uruha was dead, and he has no mission anymore.
In February, Fushimi's parents revive an old family tradition they have not done since he enlisted – taking the train out to the fireworks festival at Atami Beach. He wraps himself up warm, his bandana traded for a beanie knitted by his mother, the three of them huddling close together as they approach the sandy shore.
The atmosphere seems a bit subdued, this time. The crowd is thinner than Fushimi remembers it to be, scattering across the muted beige sand like handfuls of little ants. Windchill blows through the gaps between them, biting into exposed bits of skin. He rests his head on his knees as flowers of light dazzle and glimmer in the night sky, and feels a new ache burrowing beneath his jagged scars, deep inside his bones, where it curls up and makes itself at home.
On the way back home, he is reminded of climbing to the highest balcony with Uruha in their second year at Kokugoku, where the annual summer fireworks at Jinzu River were just visible in the distance. Uruha had wanted to do it, and Fushimi had almost tripped over himself to agree to come with him. If he could hold a personal fireworks show at Kokugoku for Uruha he would have. For Uruha, he would do a lot of things.
Uruha was a little sentimental that night, he thought. He sipped his beer slowly as he stared into the horizon where sparks cascaded like a golden waterfall, quiet and melancholic, reminiscent of the way he had been in those first weeks of coming to Kokugoku. Fushimi had glanced over then, caught the longing written all over Uruha’s face, and blurted out without thinking, “When this is all over, I’ll take you to watch fireworks at Atami Beach.”
Uruha raised an eyebrow with interest. “Where’s that?”
“My hometown, in Shizuoka Prefecture,” said Fushimi. “Best fireworks in the country, year-round. You’ll love it.”
Uruha’s chuckle was warm, like the summer night. “Wouldn’t you be bored, then? You must’ve been there so many times.”
Fushimi must have lost his mind, then. Must have let the beer get him drunk, because he inched just that little bit closer and said in a low voice, “Not with you, Uruha-san.”
Another burst of light exploded in the distance. A spark gleamed in Uruha’s dark eyes, shimmering like dark water at night, and for a wild, reckless moment Fushimi felt like dancing on the razor’s edge of the precipice. There was fire in the sky and fire in his veins, calling out to him to just take the plunge, fall deep into the lake and drown.
Uruha cleared his throat, shattering the tension like it were made of glass. He straightened his posture and took a long swig of beer, staring into the distance as he did. “That sounds like fun,” he said, after a beat. “I look forward to it. One day.”
Uruha Youji was a man of contradictions. He could wear his emotions on his sleeves one moment and cover them up in the next, passion and stoicism all rolled into the shape of a man. At some point during those three years, Fushimi gave up on trying to decode him. It went against all of his training and instincts as an agent who cut his teeth in the underbelly of Japanese society, but he realized that was not what this mission called for. Uruha just needed a friend, so a friend he had become.
Even if––
Fushimi knows he has no right to, but he misses Uruha in ways that have nothing to do with current affairs. The memories come in flashes, without warning, and each time they knock him off balance. Uruha, dozing off in the loungeroom on an autumn afternoon, a book in his lap and the sun in his face. Uruha, sparring with the men and winning, his laughter booming through the halls of the fortress for the first time since the start of his exile. Uruha, glancing out the window at fresh snowfall while bundled up in a thick scarf Fushimi had insisted that he wore, warm breath fogging up in the air and mingling with the steam coming off the cup of tea clutched in his hands.
It is harder, Fushimi thinks, that there was no closure. For his men who lost their lives, he visits their graves and speaks with their families, who hold his hand and shed tears together with him as he stammers out some semblance of condolences and apologies. They were all soldiers. It was cursed luck that he survived, but the families would not begrudge him for it even if he himself does. He has nothing of Uruha except the memories he holds onto the same way an old man holds onto faded photos. Not only because they make him smile, but also because he is afraid that he would wake up one day and realize he has forgotten how Uruha looked in that particular light, a fragment of the past known and mourned by him alone.
Even the thought feels like brazen audacity. Uruha was larger than life; the theater stage feels his absence and the country feels his loss. Who is Fushimi anyway, to grieve for Uruha Youji?
As fate would have it, Uruha crashes his way back into Fushimi’s life like a storm.
The day is a cold, gloomy April afternoon; the season has turned to spring, but it hardly feels like it. Fushimi’s parents are out of town for the weekend, and he has just returned from a physiotherapy appointment. Some days are harder than others – he can usually tell by the tight ache in his legs when he wakes up in the morning, radiating outwards from where his tendons had been torn and stitched back together. So there he is, sprawled on the couch with his feet on the armrest while his old kettle whistles on the kitchen counter and rain rattles outside the windows, when a knock comes at the door.
Despite the disguise, he recognizes Uruha right away. He would recognize Uruha deaf, blind and half-dead, but recognition is about as far as his brain could make it. If life were a cartoon, he would be hearing the sound of the gears in his head creaking and grinding to a stop, because Uruha Youji was supposed to be dead. That was the last thing Fushimi was told before he left the Kamunabi for good.
“How?” he manages, eventually.
Uruha’s eyes are wide, the green of his eyes gleaming despite the shadow cast by the baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. “So no one told you,” he says.
Fushimi chuckles, incredulous. “No.” Why would anyone? He is not Kamunabi anymore, and the colleagues whom he was close to back in the day are either dead or probably dealing with more urgent matters at hand, in Soga Akemura’s new world order.
“No one told me, either.” Uruha looks wonderstruck, like he could not believe his eyes. Then he clears his throat and says in a lower voice, “We might want to stay out of view.”
“Right,” Fushimi nods like a robot. He glances around the hallway and steps aside. “Come in, Uruha-san.”
Uruha breathes a sigh of relief as the door closes behind him, keeping out the cold air. Fushimi still cannot stop staring; not just because Uruha Youji was meant to be dead yet is now at his door, but also because of how different he looks without the billowy layers that usually define his silhouette. His hair is loose beneath his cap, the bangs wet with rain and sticking to his temples, partly covering from view the distinctive crimson ovals at the corners of his eyes. The hat comes off along with a long black overcoat, both dripping with water, which Uruha shakes out and hangs carefully on a hook by the door before stepping inside; his sword, umbrella, and a pair of damp, muddy boots are tucked away at the entrance. Right now, dressed in a cozy-looking sweater and an undershirt with a high neck underneath the coat, Uruha does not look like a legendary war hero or famous stage actor. A quick glance and he can effortlessly blend into the tens of thousands of ordinary people who walk the streets of Atami City.
There are too many questions to ask, so Fushimi blurts out the first of them. “How did you find me?”
“You told me once your hometown was here. I thought the Kamunabi branch in Shizuoka Prefecture might have some information,” says Uruha, as if it came so easily to him, to remember an off-handed comment Fushimi made over a year and a half ago. Uruha’s voice softens, “Though, I was expecting I’d be visiting a grave.”
Uruha is smiling now, but he has a pinched look in his eyes that makes Fushimi itch to touch his cheek and smudge it away, somehow. Instead, he settles for a light laugh. “It was a close call.”
His heart is still threatening to jump out of his chest, and Fushimi blames it for the awkwardness he is feeling. At Kokugoku, even with the looming specter of a war with the Hishaku and the indefinite exile, it was so easy to be around Uruha once they had become friends; easy to share meals and train together and draw up grand plans for a future that might never come to pass. In a way, life was simpler back then. Now, Fushimi is unsure whether the person who came out the other side is still himself anymore.
Helpfully, his kettle dings at that moment, breaking the silence. “Tea?” he offers. Uruha nods, leaning over the kitchen counter on his elbows as Fushimi spoons a few scoops of dried tea leaves into a pot. He does not dare look, but he feels Uruha’s gaze boring into the back of his head, as if Uruha still does not quite believe what is happening.
“On the way here, I was prepared to be mad,” says Uruha abruptly. “If you’d known this whole time that I was alive and hadn’t even tried to reach out somehow.”
“How so?”
“Because we’re friends and I’d do the same for you,” comes Uruha’s instant response, but uncertainty tints the words that follow, “Aren’t we?”
Fushimi feels his guts twist. “Of course we are,” he says, hesitating, “It’s just. I wasn’t any good at protecting you.”
He pushes the steaming mug of tea across the counter, like a peace offering. Uruha takes it, cups it in his hands, the same way he often did when the weather was cold. Fushimi files the memory away for later. “You couldn’t have known,” says Uruha with a soft, sad little smile. “I wasn’t any good that day, either. Or maybe ever.”
“That makes two of us.”
Uruha laughs, but it is a brittle thing. “I saw your bodies, you know,” he says quietly. “From the train.”
Fushimi does not remember being brought to Atago Station and bleeding out onto the platform; someone told him that later, in the hospital, when he asked after his men. Their enemies were as grotesque as they were absurd. “I’m sorry you had to see that.” Perhaps it was only fair that he survived to shoulder the guilt.
“I’m the one who should be sorry.” Uruha’s gaze drops to the mug in his hands. “I shouldn’t have left you behind.”
“Uruha-san,” Fushimi says with a hard tone, which immediately draws Uruha’s attention. “I was in charge and it was my decision. Allow me the dignity of my choice, at least.”
He winces as the words come out, afraid that he has hurt Uruha’s feelings. But the truth is the truth, and Uruha of all people would understand. He was a soldier, too – still is. A moment, then, “You’re right,” Uruha says with an air of finality. His gaze shifts to meet Fushimi’s and softens into a smile. “I’m glad we both survived.”
“What have you been up to?”
Uruha tells him the gist of it – about Suzaku, about the Hishaku, Soga Akemura, Samura Seiichi. About survivors from the attack on Tokyo Headquarters, pulled out of the rubble in the nick of time by Shiba Tougo, to live and fight another day as part of a resistance, operating in the shadows. That explains the civilian disguise. In a way, not much has changed. Fushimi has always been painfully ordinary, and Uruha has always belonged to a destiny much bigger than his. The thought is almost comforting in its familiarity.
“What about you?” Uruha asks.
Fushimi shrugs and gestures to their surroundings. “As you can see, it’s much less exciting than what you’ve been doing. I move back in with my parents and go to physiotherapy.”
He has meant for it to be self-deprecating, but Uruha looks him in the eye and says with a serious tone, “I’m glad you haven’t been alone. It must’ve been hard.”
Fushimi’s guts do a funny flip. That happened quite often when he was around Uruha Youji nearly all hours of the day, but over time he had gotten used to it, even gotten good at distracting himself with the miscellaneous tasks of running a secret Kamunabi hideout in the middle of nowhere in Toyama Prefecture. Right now, within these four walls that are a far cry from Kokugoku and a new world outside the window, his heartbeat thrums so loud it feels almost deafening; he tries and fails to drown it out by taking a huge gulp of tea, wincing as the hot liquid stings on the way down.
“Don’t worry. Give it a few months, I’ll be strong enough to join the resistance,” Fushimi grins back at Uruha with a confidence he does not quite believe in. It is one thing to mourn lost friends and fallen comrades; nobody ever told him what it would be like to mourn the person he used to be. Elite sorcerer and young upstart Kamunabi captain, struggling up two flights of stairs. Until Uruha Youji showed up at his doorstep, he had almost forgotten how desperately he wanted to be useful again. After all, that was one of the reasons why he enlisted in the Kamunabi in the first place – to devote himself to maintaining the new, fragile peace.
Peace means something different now, in Soga Akemura’s world. Devotion probably means something different to him now, too.
Silence falls between them for a beat. Slowly, Uruha shakes his head. “I’m not here to recruit,” he says. “I just wanted to see you.”
Fushimi swallows hard around the lump in his throat. “Why?”
By then, Uruha has abandoned his tea; he takes a few steps around the kitchen counter, pauses right in front of Fushimi and fixes his eyes on him. All this time, he has never been able to look away from Uruha’s intense, earnest gaze. Even damp from the rain and dressed like every other guy on the street Uruha is magnetic, both unpredictably wild and tightly wound, passionate and stoic, legendary and ordinary all in one. Yet, despite all the contradictions, what Uruha always has been is gentle. It is what makes being his friend so easy and being in love with him inevitable, like physics. Uruha cups Fushimi’s face with both hands as if holding onto something fragile, and leans in to kiss him with the same careful softness. Fushimi winds his fingers into Uruha’s wet hair and kisses him back, just enough for himself to believe this is real.
Uruha parts from him reluctantly. He stays close, however, presses his forehead to Fushimi’s own and sighs, “I should’ve done that a year and a half ago.”
“That makes two of us,” Fushimi says, earning a chuckle from Uruha. “It never seemed like the right time.”
“There’s no such thing as the right time,” Uruha whispers, and kisses him again.
Uruha’s lips are still a little cold from the rain but his tongue is warm, tasting like the black tea he has just been drinking and the heat of the summer years past. When Fushimi closes his eyes he can almost see it, flowers of light bursting in the night sky over Jinzu River beyond the walls of Kokugoku, just a short drive away yet feeling so far out of reach. The future was as uncertain then as it is now, but it seems that Fushimi is not the only one who came out a different person from the other side; there is still a war outside the window, yet Uruha is kissing him like none of it matters, like they are the only two people in the world, the way Fushimi had only ever allowed himself to imagine in bouts of wistful thinking.
“You said you’d take me to Atami Beach to see the fireworks,” Uruha says between kisses, a little breathless. “Did you mean that?”
“Every word.” Every word and all the ones he did not say out loud. “You’re about two weeks early, though. The next show is on the 26th.”
The Hishaku is seeking to kill the remaining wielders and anyone who stands in their way. Soga Akemura is scouring the earth to eliminate the detractors fighting against his vision of order and justice. Kodoku has returned once and could very well happen again. They could all be dead in a week.
“The 26th,” Uruha repeats with a smile. “I look forward to it.”