Archive of Our Own ^beta

The fire happened on a perfect day, without any warning signs. The sky had been a bit too blue, the sun had shone a bit too bright, the birds had sang a bit too carefree, the kids had ran around a bit too joyfully — and the flames decided to punish the soil for its happiness. It was sudden, like how rain falls straight on the ground in autumn, unexpected and absolute. 

It takes around a hundred years for a forest to grow to maturity. In the first five years, seedlings have to fight against droughts and pests to establish themselves as a solid base for a forest. The following twenty years sees the trees growing, slowly but sturdy, shadowing the grass and bushes. After more than fifty years — once birds and animals, and the entire ecosystem needed for a forest to last has joined the branches and the leaves and their protective shades — the forest reaches maturity.

Forests are time, and memories. Witness of the world and its life, witness of what has been and what will come. Giants immortal if left alone, outliving even what cannot be outlived — taller than what cannot be outgrow. It takes almost a century for a forest to grow enough to be called one, but in the chronology of a tree, a century is nothing. 

The farm on the hill, with its barn and the house — the big deep green barn, which resembled the green of the leaves, built next to the bright red brick house, turned maroon-ish through time, wind and rain — the cows’ enclosure where the sheep sometimes wandered off, and everything else around, had taken a few years to be built. The people had been living there for more than one century. They put everything together through time and generations, brick after brick, green paint strokes after green paint strokes, building a home and a family. Building memories that stained even the mere soil. It could never forget the traces of life and nature living somewhat in harmony, the earth marked forever by the existence of someone and something. 

The grain of the ground turned a specific colour through the years because of the coming and going of humans and animals, both from the farm or wild and free. The trees grew a certain way, facing a certain way, in a specific angle, to protect the farm from the forest and the forest from the farm. Nature learned to live with them the same way they learned to live with her. It formed a complex harmony. 

The fire had burned it all in five minutes and twenty seven seconds — the firemen had declared to the guy from the insurance company. 

Probably a century for the forest, more than a decade for the farm, a few months for the brand new cows enclosure, and only five minutes and thirty seconds to burn it all to nothing. Only ashes and blurry memories now remained.

Maki grew up in the forest. He grew up mixing the colours from the barn with the one of the forest. He grew up being taught about plants and their benefits, about cows and sheep, about what one should do when taking care of a farm. On his first day of school, which had come later for him than for the other kids, he already knew how to milk a cow while minding its tail and legs, how to shear a sheep when summer came. He had been showed how to labour the earth, how to plant and nurture, how to harvest and when, how to care and love the soil and what it could kindly gift. He knew everything about life in a farm, while the other kids knew how to read and count and even write.

He loved the farm more than anything. It had been passed from his grandmother to his mother, and should have one day be passed to him. When he became old enough to leave home and, maybe, try going to university, Maki did not bothered. He stayed at the farm, waking up early to feed the animals, tending to the fields and the barn during the day, and listening eagerly to his grandmother’s stories in the evening. He had never dreamed of grand things and felt the most contempt with the existence he had been given. 

Until the fire happened, and took away what felt like his whole life. 

He cried for it the most, when he was the one who had lived in the farm the less. His grandmother did not scream, did not try to fight, did not even attempt to put out the fire. She was old and tired, and liked better to accept what Nature had planned for them than to lose her energy in things that could not be undone. 

The cause of the fire was natural. The scorching heat from summer and maybe anger from Earth itself had started it. The wind had made it worse, breathing strength and vigour to the flames. The wood from the forest and the barn were the last ingredient for the conflagration to reach its peak and destroy everything. 

The insurance did the best they could, but nothing was salvageable, and finding another place to stay instead of rebuilding on a now infertile soil, was the only solution Maki’s family had been met with. They moved down the road, in the city. The insurance company was good to them, and found them a house they barely had to pay. A big one, green as deep as the barn, beautiful and full of light. Maki was grateful, but it was not their barn, and it felt like a weak comfort compared to what had been lost. 

His grandmother took the house as the solution for her grief, and gave it the love she intended to give to her farm for years more. But, to Maki, nothing could replace the place he had grew up in. More than the barn, the house, the enclosure and everything human built, he missed the forest terribly. His mother had advise him against going up the hill again, as the landscape of burnt trees and decaying soil would only make him sadder — but all he wanted to do was run there and hide in the scorched branches of the trees. 

Instead, Maki attended the group therapy session organised by the city for all the victims of the fire. They sold it as group therapy, but to Maki it felt more like the same boring lecture about how all hopes were not lost, over and over again, told by the same lethargic woman who looked like she wanted to be anywhere else than with them. His mother pushed him to go there and talk, share his emotions and explain how it had felt to watch the flames lick his house and his forest in the night, but he had nothing to say. If the lethargic woman would even let them talk, he would have not know how to put words on the whole experience. 

Grief can be a tricky emotion. It contains multiple other emotions, and acts more like a box in which one can hide away everything one does not want to think about, nor feel. For Maki, grief felt  like a hole in his chest. Something hollow and gaping, who sucked everything else inside. His heart, his lungs, his bones and muscles, his blood, his thoughts and emotions — everything that made him ‘him’ — would eventually disappear in the cavity. The same way a black hole has no choice but to swallow stars and galaxies in its thirsty belly, the pit in his heart sucked him dry of everything. 

The forest kept calling out his name, desperately begging him to come back, to help it grow back to its full splendour. Maki knew it would never happen. The soil would need another decade or two to grow fertile again, and from there another fifty to seventy years for the trees to grow back, for the animals to come back, for life to start again. And even if he was lucky and the earth grew sprouts earlier than expected, he would never be able to replant an entire forest just by himself. He knew himself helpless, and it felt like pure agony. How is one supposed to save life that is entirely different from one’s own ?

The forest had held memories for him and the generations before him since decades and decades, and now he would have to be the one remembering the forest. When night came, he lied in his bed, the dark bleeding into his room, his eyes closed. He would try to engrave in his mind the way he had knew the forest when it was vigorous and beautiful. Its trees green and giant, offering gentle and cooling shade in summer, and bare and eager to offer its own wood to keep the family warm in winter. The birds — hawks, doves, crows, cuckoo, owls and woodpeckers — their gentle chirping, the sound of their feathers in the wind. The animals — deers, wild cats and pigs, some wolves and foxes — their offspring innocently following them in spring, the traces of their foot in the mud, the smell of their animal body heat. The forest had always been full of life from all the forms it contained. 

But he was made to die too, one day, and the few years of reminiscence he could gift the forest felt stupidly short compared to the centuries it had remembered for him and the ones before him. In the chronology of a tree, a century is nothing, and a human life is only dust — a single insignificant second in their unending time. 

𖧧

That morning, Maki skipped the supposedly group therapy. He did not tell his mother, avoided his father altogether and only kissed his grandmother goodbye. The forest had called one too many time, and he needed to go back. He needed to see the damage and the state of its soil. 

Walking up the hill felt like a punishment, like he was marching straight to his own death gallows. His feet were heavy and slow, invisible shackles trying to keep him away from the haunted place. Haunted by ghost of his old life, haunted by the memories of happier days. The ground, dry and decaying, threatened to crumble after each of the steps he took. The forest had become sadder than what he had anticipated. The despair that overtook him was overwhelming — so strong he almost collapsed on the ground, all tears and limbs. He walked on still, following the path which had been half erased by the fire and the abandonment of the land. 

When finally he reached the top of the hill, the burnt spot where only the foundation of his old house now remained, his cheeks were stained with tears and his shirt stuck to his torso, drenched in sweat. The image of the fire a few months ago infiltrated his mind and would not leave. At this exact same spot, it ate away at everything it could reach. In front of him the burnt trees’ branches desperately tried to reach for the sky still, but all Maki could see was the red of the fire, all he could feel and smell was the scorching hot air and the disgusting scent of blazing wood. 

Tears threatened to fall again, he wiped his face with the hem of his damp shirt and grimaced at the sensation of wet on wet. He closed his eyes but the fire was still there, the big and tall flames engraved forever in his mind, licking his every thoughts and filling his lungs with smoke. It felt so real he almost wanted to cough, to try and expel the imaginary bad air out of him. His head started spinning and he had to open his eyes again, trying to find back his footing on the ground, reaching for the trunk of a tree nearby. 

Maki looked up and frowned. The world around kept whirling, making it hard for him to discern between what was real and what was the pure product of his grieving mind. There was something in the tree. There’s always something in the trees, his granny would have said. Maki squinted, holding the rim of the cap he was wearing. To his surprise, something — or more so someone — looked back at him, up there in the trees. A boy, probably not much older than him, sat on a charred bare branch. His blonde hair glowed in the daylight, and even from where Maki was, standing below the sun and the tree, he could see his black roots growing back. 

“Hi there.” Maki blurted out — loud enough for the boy to hear but low enough as to not scare the remaining birds away. “Were you living in the forest before the fire ? Did your house burn down too ?” The boy did not answer, squinting at him with barely concealed interest. Maki felt his cheeks grow warm, redder than the old burnt bricks on the ground. 

It had been around four months since the fire happened, and no one came around the shrivelled forest anymore. The leaves were forgotten, the soil became grey and dull, sterile for another decade if not more, the houses around emptied of everything which could remind the land of the life that had prospered there. What was the point for one to remember a forest who no longer was one ? Everything had died and, in the orders of things, had started the slow descension to oblivion. 

Maki’s family had moved the week right after the fire — his parents and grandmother to the city, and his aunts and cousins all to different places. Some had found farms in which new hands were needed, others had chosen to change their career path entirely. No one had come back, not even his grandmother. Maki was the only one left roaming the ground on which his family had thrived for years, and even then, it had took him days to come back. The ghosts were everywhere, but this boy was no ghost, and curiosity itched Maki’s epidermis.  

“Actually, I am new here. My house did burn down, my forest too, but it was not this one. I come from a few cities away, down the large concrete road in your town.” The boy finally answered, carefully coming down the trees he was perched on. He jumped from the lowest branch, right in front of Maki. “My name is Harua. Yours ?”

It took a few minutes for Maki to answer. Harua was a bit smaller than him, his eyes big — beautiful and bright with kindness. Burnt tree bark had gotten stuck in his hair while he had came down the trunk, and Maki almost reached to take them out. It looked softer than the baby sheep’s fur. The boy was incredibly pretty, drawn with the thinest of paint strokes, and it made Maki loose his words. The fire in his mind had disappeared, shoved to the back of his head by the sweet scent of honey lingering around Harua. 

“Maki.” He breathed out an answer in the end, barely loud enough to be heard, feeling like a fool.

“Nice to meet you, Maki. Do you come here a lot ?” Harua asked, looking around. He pointed at the remaining of bricks from the house and the foundation that stood still even after the devouring flames, and before Maki could answer, “Do you live here ?” he asked again. 

Maki adverted his gaze, feeling weird all over. He knew he was starring too much but he could not help it. Harua was prettier to look at than his forest — even when it was still full of life and vigour. “Used to live here, yes. This was, well …” His voice stayed stuck in his throat, dry and sad. “This was my house.” He finally said, after a few seconds of silence. 

Harua nodded, a sympathetic look on his face, a compassionate smile on his lips. He took a few steps, looking at the bricks, the missing wood of the barn, the enclosure which had fell on the ground, then the forest, the trees, the missing birds, the missing plants, the missing life. Maki guessed he was taking in the landscape with a new perspective now, probably imagining the people who had lived there, imagining Maki, younger, growing up between the trees and the farm animals. “It looks like mine.” He said, low and soft, more to himself than for Maki to hear. 

“Do you miss your home ?” Maki asked, unsure on what could be the best way to question the other boy without making him sad, or at least sadder. If anyone asked him whether or not he missed his house, the barn and the forest, Maki would probably cry uncontrollably.

Harua did not cry. He stopped in his steps, his back turned to Maki, his shoulder tense. Maki regretted asking the question, but the words had already left his lips and it was too late. He thought Harua would not answer, maybe he would change the subject, or maybe he would just walk away and never address a word to Maki again. Harua did nothing of that. 

“More than my home, it is the forest i miss the most. Dearly so.” He replied in a sigh, infinite pain mixed in his words. He tried to laugh, to hide his agony in a joke, but the sound came out strangled, broken. His shoulders shook in what appeared like a mix of laughter and cries. Maki’s heart clenched. The boy was just like him, he had lost everything the same way as him, and their sorrow was identical. He looked at Harua and felt his own image uncomfortably reflected back to him. 

“There is this talking group in town if you want.” Maki took a step forward, tentatively reaching towards Harua. He himself knew how unhelpful the therapy group was, but it was the only comfort he could try an offer to Harua. “We gather every Fridays. I cannot promise you it will help with your pain, but if you succeed in actually getting a word in, it can be a good excuse to just talk and let it all out.” 

If he could, Maki would have told the boy to let it all out on him. To scream his sorrow at him for they shared the same wound — to grieve with Maki and let Maki embrace his grief with his own. He could feel an almost palpable bond between them, weaved in ache and torment, in the purest of sadness. But Harua was a stranger, and they had met but a few minutes ago, and the string he so surely felt tying his wrist to Harua’s could hardly be reality. They knew of each other’s only their names and the mere cause of their pain, and no bond can be made from suffering. 

Eventually Harua slowly turned back to him, and to his surprise, he looked interested in the awful talking group. “Every Fridays, right. Will I find you there ?” He asked, wiping away tears which had yet to fall, stuck in the corner of his beautiful eyes. 

If Maki’s visage could grow even more vermillion, it would. He nodded coyly. “I attend every session, more or less, so I guess yes.” 

Harua smiled — a full and gorgeous smile, tainted with sadness, but bright nonetheless — and it felt like the forest had never gone, like the sun peeked through the leaves and the birds still sang between the branches. “Alright. See you on Friday, then.” 

The boy left Maki behind, alone in the ashes of the forest who was no longer one, and like how pain strikes after a bandaid is ripped, he felt his heart shatter. Harua was like that, a bandage who had hid the sorrow away for a few minutes of conversation, leaving the wound merely sore and forgotten. The pain came back throbbing as soon as he went down the hill. 

Maki fled the burnt forest and its ghosts, running home and longing for Friday to come faster. 

𖧧

When slow and lazy Friday arrived at last, Maki’s mother was surprised to see him up and eager to join the talking group for once. She wanted to question him on what could possibly have given him the motivation to suddenly go there, but did nothing of it. Maki felt grateful for her mothering senses, because he himself felt trouble explaining the unexpected enthusiasm for the group he usually wished to avoid like the plague. 

He knew the chances of seeing Harua again were quite frankly weak — the only promise he gave Maki was his words, and words can be hard to trust — but Maki was determined to take the risk. At worst he would just have to go through another one of the unending sessions where the lethargic woman spoke for hours. 

A part of him, taking more and more space as the hours passed, believed talking to Harua would do him more good than the therapy sessions. The people usually attending the group did not live to see all their life gone in a few seconds, caught in a destructive fire. They were all victims of flames, but all the loss they had went through were not as finale and absolute as Maki’s. Most of them lived in their intact houses and could make use of the rest of land they had still — Maki could not. Every time he sat on the chair which had been designated as his, he felt a distance between him and the rest of the room. The fact that none of them could actually talk during those times did not help, but the biggest difference was the grief. No one else grieved like he did. No one else, except Harua. 

He thought that, maybe, there would be no distance between him and Harua — if they ever were to talk. Harua came from another city, but had lost his house and the forest next to it the same way Maki had. In the pit of his stomach, Maki felt the sadness weighting him down, like a rock of everything bad he had swallowed by inadvertence. The hopes that Harua probably swallowed the same stone, that Harua would understand him the best, pushed him to try and meet the boy again. 

It had been all Maki had wished for the past few months, to be understood. His mother tried really hard to share his sorrow, but the new job she had found at the town library erased her own grief. His father never really liked the farm, and the insurance money gave him the occasion to care about their new house, the garden, the shelves and tables and chairs he would choose to furnish it. His grandmother probably would have been the most eligible to share his pain and agony, but she had not let herself cry. When Maki had asked her why, she had replied that she felt to old to cry over a house who had stopped being hers years ago. It had made him confused, as she was the sole owner the house as long as she lived, but did not question her further. 

He pushed the heavy door of the town’s gymnasium where the talking groups where held, holding his breath. Harua’s sad and beautiful eyes were the first thing to greet him, and when he smiled — his two front teeth a bit more prominent, the way rabbit ones do — Maki felt the air coming back to him. Harua was a hopeful breeze, sad but announcing spring, announcing regrowth. 

They sat next to each other in silence, unsure on what to say. The context was different, the scene entirely too, and Maki felt out of place. His forest, as burnt as it was, was the only place where he felt like he belonged, for he had seen his first morning there, and had grew up in between its wood. Harua’s chair scratched the ground in a strident noise when he came closer, dragging his seat along. Their knees could almost touch now, and Maki felt his face heat up. Red grew from his chest, running along his neck and jaw up to his cheeks. The honeyed scent of the boy next to him filled his nose and the entire space around them. 

“Hi.” Harua talked first, looking at his shoes, his hands tucked under his knees. “You remember me ? Harua, from the forest, a few days ago.” 

Maki only managed to nod energetically, as earnestly as he could. His throat felt too dry to use and the words did not come. Like the last time in the forest — when Harua came too close and had messed with his senses — Maki forgot how to speak, like the honey smelled lingering in the air around the blonde boy had coated the inside of his brain and it could no longer work properly, stuck in golden molasses. 

The remaining people in the gymnasium sat on the chairs forming a circle in the middle of the room. One was a bit farther than the others, facing everyone, and the lethargic psychiatrist came to take her spot on it. As soon as she was seated, her mouth opened almost automatically to declaim her usual lecture. Her voice was low and monotonous as always. Sometimes, it felt more like Maki was sat for a burial, her lecture an obituary about death and despair instead of a hopeful breathe the group therapy was supposed to be. 

“I’m glad you came, Maki. I would probably have felt too intimidated to be here if you had not come. Thank you.” The words were whispered to his ears, so soft and low they could have been lost in the flow of phrases coming out of the lethargic woman’s mouth — but Maki did not miss a single one of them, and the hot puff of air against his ear made him shiver like a leaf under the rain. 

The hopeful breathe came from Harua, blowing on Maki like the spring wind full of regrowth and burgeons. The lethargic woman’s voice got lost in the sound of Harua’s heartbeat he was sure he could hear — or maybe it was his own. The steady music made by the filling and emptying of Harua’s lungs felt louder than anything else coming from the inside and the outside of the place they were in. 

It seized Maki by the throat, like he had inhaled too much pollen from the joy of seeing the trees in bloom, and breathing had became complicated. Tears rushed to his eyes but he did not let them fall for he did not want the sad, monotonous woman to go more in depth about what she thought grieving should be like. Hearing the melody of life coming from Harua ignited in him more optimism and expectations for what could come after the fire than months in the pretended therapy group. 

Maki’s body moved almost by itself, and he had to physically restrain himself from lunging to Harua and pressing his ear against his ribcage. He felt the irresistible itch to listen, to harmonise his own breathing and heartbeat to the one coming from Harua’s chest. The forest had died, making it impossible to live, breathe, run and scream in sync with it. But Harua was alive — flesh, blood, organs and all. Alive and real, so real Maki could feel his palpable presence next to him without even having to turn his eyes to his. Harua was haunted too, but haunted by life itself. Harua was life. 

He said nothing, kept quiet for the entire hour the group session lasted, and Harua shared the silence with him. At some point, Harua had gotten closer again, and their knees touched eventually. Maki did nothing to move away or break the physical contact, so Harua kept his leg there, a small smile on his lips. 

The minutes flew by, and for the first time in the three and a half months Maki had attended the group therapy, he did not feel time passing. Before he could realise it, the woman was getting up from her seat, ready to leave and thanking everyone for the time they had accorded her today. Suddenly, he could no longer feel Harua’s leg against his, and turned his face towards him. Harua had gotten up too, sliding his arms through the straps of his pale blue backpack. 

He smiled at Maki. “Do you have anything planned after ?” 

Maki got up in a hurry, stumbling to get his own bag on the back of his chair. “No, nothing at all. I am completely free. What about you ?”

A fond and sweet giggle escaped Harua’s lips. “I am also very much free. Do you want to show me around the city ? I’ve only moved a few days ago you know, I am still quite unfamiliar with the town.” 

With a strong enthusiastic nod Maki followed Harua to the door, adjusting awkwardly his bag on his back and rearranging his disheveled hair under his cap. The rusty door to the old gymnasium closed behind them in a loud thud, leaving inside the pain, the grief, the lethargic woman and her useless words. Maki fought back the gigantic smile pulling his lips all the way to his ears. 

Any other day, if Maki were to be alone, his first thought would have went to the forest, and his feet would have taken him there without any guidance from his brain, like muscle memory. But today, Maki had left the ghosts inside the gymnasium, with the lethargic woman and her false vision of what grief was. He did not take Harua to the forest, the idea did not even brush his mind. 

The old gymnasium had been built on the outsides of the city, on another hill, higher than most houses in the town. The autumn sun shone on the pavements, the day falling slowly, drowning the city in a honey coloured glaze. In spring, when the plants bloom again, one can enjoy the sweet golden colour of canola fields. From afar, the city resembled canola fields, the roofs shining golden. Maki felt hopeful for the first time in a while. Autumn meant the death of plants and the arrival of cold and ice, the cruel ruling of winter. Even in such a terrible season, the Earth found ways to make him remember nature in all its glory. 

He turned to Harua, no longer fighting the blinding smile his lips longed to form. “Are you down for a glass of lemonade? I know a place with the best view on the entire city, even better than from here.” 

𖧧

That glass of lemonade become the first of many. The coffee place Maki had bought Harua to was small and not very frequented. Hidden away in one of the streets that led to the hill, the forest used to stand not far from it. It was not very special, brownish bricks lazily painted white for walls, a few wood tables and chairs scattered in the room, and the old beat up register by the glass door — it had bells on top of it, which jingled every time someone pushed it open. Maki’s mother had grew close with the barista there, getting a few advantages for her and her son, which no one else could enjoy. 

The place in itself was more than banal — it could even be considered a bit tacky — but its charm resided in its roof. Closed for the regular customers, but always opened if Maki asked nicely. Harua had loved it on the spot, and they had stayed on the dusty old plastic chairs until the moon was high up in the sky on top of them. The owner had come up with blankets when she needed to close the shop for the night and went home, not worried Maki would know how to properly lock the doors behind him and bring the keys back to her. 

After that first night, instead of joining the talking group, Harua would meet Maki at the coffee place every Fridays. Maki would show him his favourite spots in the city, pointing to the grey roof of the library where his mother worked, the cinema, his own house, the one and only — but still nice and always peaceful — park in the city, and all the restaurants and coffee shops he had tried and loved. Harua showed him his own house, and the few roofs he remembered from places he had seen and wanted to go to. 

Showing the town to Harua felt like rediscovering it for the first time. All in all, Maki had lived in it for about five months now, his only visits before being for school and sometimes groceries with his mother. He had no need for friends before the fire, because his cousins were always running around with a new game idea when they all used to be kids, and then the farm work had occupied all his spare time and free thoughts. The forest and the farm fulfilled all his needs, and the city with its smoking chimneys and lively streets had never appealed to him. With Harua living in it, it felt different. The entire town seemed fuller, whole and complete, worthy of interest. 

The wait for Fridays to come always felt miserably long. Staying in the deep green house — which did not feel like his still, it could hardly compare with the barn and the forest on the hill — only made him circle back to the same agonising thoughts and memories of the forest. The small square of land behind the house could not rival with the forest and its dense greens and browns. The house was always too empty, the yard and garden had been denied of life and stayed static, unmoved by time and rain. 

When his mother would eventually leave for work every morning, his father and grandmother still fast asleep, Maki would seat in the living room on a orange armchair. It tried to look old — by its vivid colour and the shape which looked way too obviously inspired by chairs manufactured in the seventies — but inevitably appeared too new. Everything in the house was new, bare of stories and memories, empty and soulless objects. He would try and listen for the sounds of life, but nothing and no one breathed loud enough for him to hear. He tried to look for the melodies Harua’s healthy and living body had made, but would only find silence and hidden grief his family shoved behind the freshly new furnitures.

The unbearable silence made him sadder. He had been used to noise for the longest time. The farm had never been quiet. If it was not for the kids screaming and giggling, or the adults reprimanding them loudly — the animals would snort end groan. The forest used to make music, too. The wind in the leaves, the rustling of wild animals, the falling of the snow in winter and the creaking of the branches moving with the summer breeze. Its last noise had been the crackle of the hungry fire, and the loud thud of everything falling apart. 

His house ended up worse than the ghosts of the farm, and to escape the terrible sorrowed stillness of the small building, Maki fled to the burnt woods again. Everyday, he would wait for the sound of his mother’s car to be far away to run towards the hill where he could wait for Fridays to come, almost drowning in his own sorrow and the deathly tranquillity of what once was his home.

The forest, no longer truly one, was never quiet. It was full of ghosts sounds and memories. Maki could still hear the lives that once were, every time he walked up the hill. The leaves were gone and still their rustling echoed in his head. The animals had fled and still their footsteps haunted his mind. The house was but just ruins and still the vivid image of what it looked like standing tall and happy, full of life and people, stuck behind his eyes like gum under a shoe. 

His weekly meetings with Harua became the only moment where Maki could breathe all the way. His lungs were never full the other days of the week, like a stone had gotten stuck in his throat and would only let him inspire and expire by little halves. His chest was always too tight for him to speak or laugh or even respire without huffing painfully. But then Fridays would arrive like salvation, Harua would smile and Maki would live again.

The beautiful melody emanating from Harua whenever he laughed or talked, or even just breathed, would chase away the agonising memories of Maki’s old life. Harua had looked pretty shy and reserved at first, but ended up surprisingly very talkative. Maki was grateful for it, as words still struggled to leave his lips whenever Harua stood too close from him. By their third Friday meeting, Maki could pretty much piece together most of the other boy’s life from the bits he had told him. 

Harua had been born and raised in a farm much similar to the one Maki had lived in all his life. He had come from up north with his father only, and barely ever talked about his mother. He had told Maki about his father now working in another farm, not far from the city, and that the closest house they had found available had been in Maki’s town, about his new house and what he liked in it, about the places he had visited in town and out of town, about his favourite food and drink, about the farm work he liked the most, about what he wanted to do later — but he never talked about his old home, the forest, the fire, what had happened to the rest of his family, and Maki never asked.

Something about the tone of Harua’s voice, the tranquility of his words, the warmth of his smile and the quiet beating of his heart made Maki feel at ease. Their shoulders and knees would touch while they sat in the old plastic chairs, and Harua’s chatter rang in Maki’s mind like the sweetest of songs. Harua reminded him he also needed to live. 

For their seventh Friday meeting on the coffee shop roof, right as they were about to part for another long and gloomy week, Harua asked for more. 

“Are you only free on Fridays ? There is this movie I very much would like to see tomorrow night, are Saturdays fine too or can I only hope for Fridays with you ?” He asked, a slight grin pulling the right corner of his mouth up. 

“Saturdays are more than fine. Sundays, Mondays and all the others, too.” Maki replied, stumbling on his words, feeling the red heat on his cheeks and neck.

Harua smiled bright and big. “Happy to hear that. See you tomorrow, then ? The screening is at 8.” 

He waved goodbye to Maki, who waved back from up on the roof. He looked down at Harua walking away, spring trailing after him even deep in autumn.

𖧧

When Maki pushed the heavy door to the screening room number six the Saturday night after, he did not feel the same dread he did whenever he pushed opened the old and rusty door to the gymnasium. Anticipation turned his stomach around in a delicious way, like billions of butterflies flying around inside him. Harua’s beautiful eyes were the first thing to greet him again. They were full of sadness still, but his bright smile when he saw Maki lit them up, and suddenly he did not look as unconsolable as before. 

A part of Maki hoped that, the same way Harua had breathed through him a new-found interest for living even through the grief and the despair, he might have instigated the same hopes within Harua. The blonde boy looked slightly more cheerful after each of their meetings, and, maybe, would eventually never feel sad ever again if they continued seeing each other. Maki was convinced he, at least, could go on forever if Harua stayed by his side.

Harua waved to him. He moved away his thick coat and pale blue backpack he had put on the seat next to him, in order to keep a spot for Maki. The latter joined the blonde boy in a few steps, sitting down close to him. 

“Thanks for saving me a seat.” Maki whispered just loud enough for Harua to hear him through the adds already being blasted on the big screen. 

Harua did not reply, only nodded with a smile, a silent ‘you are welcome’, his thigh sliding to Maki’s one. He had told Maki about how he was not a big fan of skin-ship, and did not particularly enjoy being touched or touching people — to Maki’s dismay for he loved feeling the warmth of others when knees would brush or hands would touch — but when it came to Maki, Harua would curiously always try to keep a physical bond between them. 

Most of the time it was knees and thighs touching when they sat next to each others, but a few times he had also pressed his shoulder to Maki’s, or try to reach for his hands. Maki always wanted more but he was also afraid. He did not want to push Harua in a corner where he would not feel comfortable. He kept his hands to himself and would ask the night to let him dream of tangling his limbs with Harua’s if he was not allowed to do it during the day. 

The lights went out once the adds stopped, and the movie started. The opening scene showed a house in the middle of a forest as green as one can be. Bright coloured birds and light butterflies spotted the leaves and branches, the house a contrasting dark brown against all the vivid colours surrounding it. Maki felt his throat tighten and Harua’s hand found his own resting on the arm of his seat. 

Maki turned to Harua and was met by his worried profile, his beautiful eyes fixed on the big screen where images of life and forest rapidly succeeded each other. He turned his hand around to hold Harua’s one, tangling their fingers tight and comforting. “I think this is the wrong room …” Maki heard him mumble, looking more and more distraught as the movie showed a happy family living in harmony with all the greens around them. 

He lowered his head to Harua’s ear, “We don’t have to stay.” he replied in a single shallow breathe. The movie had revived the ghosts in his mind and the fire started taking more and more space, threatening to even run straight to his veins, to his blood. If the movie reopened Harua’s wounds too, Maki thought it best to leave altogether. 

Harua did not reply. He got up in a hurry — squeezing Maki’s hand tighter, pulling him along — and left as fast as he could, muttering sorries as he passed through the people seated in their row. Even in the dark of the cinema room, with barely enough light from the big screen to discern the visages of people around them, Maki saw the tears staining Harua’s cheeks. He left, trailing Maki behind, confused and a bit stunned. He followed the blonde boy still, rushing behind him towards the door.

Maki emerged out of the building right behind Harua, their hands still firmly clasped together. It did not take him long to realise where Harua was headed. The alley he turned to only led up the hill. Even in high spirits, Harua would never find peace in the old gymnasium, and judging by the moon high up in the sky, the coffee place was already closed. It only left one place where Harua could set off for; the forest. 

Running after Harua, Maki felt his chest tighten and his throat close up completely. The night was pitch black and absolute. The moon was only half a quarter full and did not provide a lot of light, the stars merely luminous enough to be considered viable light sources in the dark. Anxiety running up his spine made him shiver. He could almost feel the hands of the ghosts brushing against his skin, the fire burning hot in his mind, his head throbbing with a piercing pain. He followed Harua nonetheless, his limbs heavy and awkward, stumbling on his own feet. He tried to focus on the feeling of Harua right in front of him, his fingers tightly gripping his, the sound of his footsteps and his heavy breathing caused by running — the terror was louder, and little by little, Maki started loosing sense of reality. 

The pain and the tears — which had started falling uncontrollably from his eyes — blurred his vision and made the ascension harder. Once they were high enough up the hill and the streetlight where long gone and forgotten below, Maki could hardly make out Harua’s silhouette in the night. The forest was completely bare, only decaying trunks remaining, making it almost impossible to hide in it, and still Harua found a way to disappear. Suddenly, Maki could not feel the hand of the other boy in his nor discern his frame in the night. He walked on, desperate to find Harua and leave the forest. 

He had seen the forest through a lot of different states; during the four seasons, under the bright light of the sun and the more dull one of the stars. He had never been in it at night since the fire, and it felt like the night used Harua’s loss to shatter the last shield he had painfully held in front of him, a protection against the memories of the flames and the night where everything was destroyed. 

Maki was alone, utterly and inevitably alone, encircled by the rotting trees and what they represented. It felt suffocating. The naked branches reached to him, to keep him detained, stuck with them on a land of despair and desolation forever. His lungs stopped working for good — the butterflies he had felt earlier now moths of mould, scratching his insides and making him hurt and bleed. His thoughts were running too fast as panic took over and his knees gave out. He fell face first in the dirt, feeling it stick to his cheeks because of his tears. 

Maki closed his eyes. His frightened brain convinced him Death was on its way and there was no use trying to fight it off, or even trying to get back up. He stayed there, laying on the burnt soil where once grass had grew so high and full, Maki had begged his parents to let him sleep on it under the stars. The grass had burned, and the stars looked dull and mocking now. The entire universe saw him fall and knew his end was coming, and laughed at how miserable he looked. He brought his legs to his chest, circling them with his trembling arms, struggling to breathe, unable to scream for help, holding his limbs close and tight for a weak warm glimmer of comfort. 

The night of the fire, Maki had been so scared of the giant flames licking the walls of the house he had grew up in, that he ran down the hill to hide somewhere. Nothing had felt as safe as his forest which was being completely destroyed, and he had run for hours before his parents finally caught him. He remembered his fear that night, now panting on the ground where his terror had started months ago. He had never been as scared as that time, because of the fire, because of the danger it represented, but also because the minute he had smelt the smoke and the scent of burning woods, it meant his entire world had starting falling apart. 

Maki had not feared death when the flames came for his home and all he had ever cherished — he was terrified of dying now, even more afraid than the terrible night of the fire. 

He was close to fainting and could hardly discern anything around him when arms pulled him tight against a chest. His ear against the ribcage, he heard the faint sound of a heart, beating fast and frantically — then the sound of lungs filling and emptying at an even more dizzying speed, the person embracing him terribly out of breathe. 

“Maki, can you hear me ? Are you okay Maki ?” The sweet music of Harua’s voice blew on the fear like those strong northern winds coming from the sea. It did not go away entirely, but the gentle harmonies emanating from Harua helped Maki’s lungs to open up again, the moths settling little by little. “I finally found you, I was so scared ! You were here holding my hand and then seconds later you were not. Oh my god, i searched for you like crazy ! Maki, are you okay ?” 

Harua was sobbing uncontrollably, huge tears falling straight from his eyes on Maki’s forehead, pure panic bleeding from his words and actions. Maki struggled to talk still, and could only raise his hand to Harua’s cheek to brush away his tears. He intended for the gesture to be comforting, to show the blonde boy he was okay and just needed a few minutes to calm his nerves down, but it only made the blonde boy cry harder, holding him tighter against his shivering body. 

Maki tried to sit up, his hands finding anchor on the burnt soil, but his head only spun faster. The blurry veil in front of his eyes turned pitch black, thousands of dots invading his vision. Harua softly called his name and his sturdy arms catching him was the last thing Maki could sense before the dark pulled him far down in his own subconscious. 

𖧧

Silence ruled over the room when Maki’s eyelids fluttered open. He looked around, unsure on where he was and what had happened. The room was small and plunged in darkness. Maki could discern thick curtains drawn over a window on the side, a desk with a chair and clothes thrown on it in a corner, bigs shelves with books and framed pictures. It took him a few seconds to recognise the clothes and furnitures and curtains as his. His eyes squinted, trying to look closer at the cover on him — it was his too. Maki had woken up in his own house, the night still absolute and pitch black behind the curtains. Light bled through his door, and once his eyes got used to the darkness, the feeble ray of light helped him discern better the walls and ceiling of his bedroom. The walls had remained bare since his family moved in the new house, he had a hard time seeing the room as his and did not succeed any of his attempt at decorating it.

The images of the burnt forest, Harua anxiously crying and holding him tight, and then the fainting, all came back to Maki in a flash as he tried sitting up. Something blocked him in his movement, a weight on his abdomen and a hand squeezing his. Maki lowered his gaze to meet Harua’s sleeping face half hidden in his blanket, his hand tightly holding Maki’s, fingers intertwined. Even in the darkness of the room, he saw the flush of Harua’s cheeks and the dried traces of the tears he had shed. His heart tightened, Harua would have been better sleeping at home in his own bed, not watching over Maki who had fainted embarrassingly because of the infinite pain his dead forest instigated in him. He felt bad for the blonde boy and the fright he probably had given him, but also terribly ashamed of himself. 

He tried to lay back down without moving Harua even more, but the motion — as slow and careful as it was — was enough for the other boy to slowly raise his head, his free hand rubbing at his eyes. “Maki …?” He mumbled between two yawns, his voice tangled with sleep. “Are you awake ?” 

“Yes.” Maki was surprised by the hoarse sound of his own voice. He coughed a little to clear his throat. “Sorry for waking you up too. Are you okay ?”

Harua nodded, sitting back straight on the chair he had placed next to Maki’s bed while he was still unconscious. He did not let go of Maki’s hand. “I was really scared when you fainted in my arms …” He said, forcing a comforting smile on his lips. “But I am okay, no need to worry. How are you feeling ?” 

“I think I feel somewhat better, thank you.” Maki tried to give him back an assuring smile, but the pain in his head had not fully gone and each movement made it throb a little more. The smile looked more like a wince than anything else. “Can I ask how you got me home ?” 

The blonde boy sighed, lowering his head, eyes fixed on their tangled fingers. “After you fainted i tried to wake you up, but you were not responding at all. I used your phone to call your parents so they could come help me bring you back home. We were all very scared, they are really worried, I should go and get them.” 

Harua got up slowly, conscious of his every movement around Maki. He looked fully awake now, and Maki guessed talking about his parents made the blonde boy remember about them probably anxiously waiting in their own rooms. He smiled fondly at Maki, squeezing his hand once more, before leaving the room in a hurry. 

Maki’s parents pushed his door open a few minutes later, concerned frowns on their faces. His mother hugged him tight, telling him he had been very lucky Harua had been with him. His father suggested they went to the hospital for a checkup, just to be sure Maki was truly all right, but the later assured he was feeling better and that, anyways, him feeling sick had not been because of physical reasons. His body was vigorous and healthy as can be, and after his mother made him stand up and turn around to look him up and down attentively to confirm he was indeed completely fine, they agreed on not bothering the already crowded hospital. What he needed most was rest, and his parents left his room after a while to let him sleep some more. 

Maki went back to his bed, tucking himself in his covers and blanket, trying to find the perfect spot between his pillows. He realised his parents had helped him out of his clothes while he was still unconscious and he was grateful they had dressed him back in his most comfortable pyjamas, cleaning the dirt off is face too. The terror, which had taken all over him in the forest, left him exhausted and weary, his bones tired and heavy. He felt like all his vital energy had been sucked dry out of his body and mind. 

A part of him wondered if the forest had felt like this when it was burned. If the giant flames, bringer of death and despair, had worn out the trees and animals, leaving them only as fatigued bones and trunks, the sad spectacle covering the entire hill — as far as the eye could see, and even farther. Kilometres after kilometres of drained and weary lands, inhospitable and overtired. Maki felt the tears rush to his eyes, and the moulded moths woke up in his stomach. His throat felt dry and arid, like the barren land of his dead forest. 

As he tried to keep his cries muffled by his pillows and covers, the door softly creaked open again, and light footsteps joined his side by the bed. “Are you asleep again ?” Harua whispered close to Maki’s ear, as low as he could. 

He breathed in, bracing himself for Harua’s worried frown once he would see the tears, and turned to him. He tried a smile, to make himself look less miserable, only resulting in a bothered pout and furrowed eyebrows from the blonde boy. Even grimacing anxiously, Harua’s face was beautiful. Even slightly smudged from the darkness of the room, his features were radiating sun and beauty. Maybe spring had birthed him.

“What is going on, Maki ?” Harua asked, sitting back on the chair close to the bed. He went to reach for Maki’s hands, but they were tucked under the blanket, so his own stayed hovering above the bed, suddenly unsure of what they were supposed to do. 

“It is late, let us just sleep.” Maki felt too tired to talk, to even try and explain what he was feeling — even if, deep down, he was sure Harua would understand. Harua probably understood everything, like he always did, without the need for words. “If you look in the big cabinet over there, you will find pyjamas. Take the ones you want, the bathroom is at the end of the corridor. We can share my bed.”

Harua’s pout grew even more concerned, but he said nothing. He stared at Maki for a few seconds — probably weighting his options and the rate of succeeding in making the other talk — then walked to the closet. He picked the first pyjamas he could find without minding much, and Maki held his breathe, his brain flooded with images of Harua wearing his clothes. It had the merit to at least calm the growing hole of despair in his chest. The blonde boy disappeared behind the door, the melody of his footsteps hurrying towards the bathroom softly echoing in the corridor. 

The sound of water running from the shower broke the silence which had ruled over the house since Maki’s parents had gone to sleep. Maki closed his eyes, focusing on the noise coming from the end of the corridor. Two doors separated him from Harua, but the stillness of the night — a specific type of tranquility which belongs only to the depth of the night, to the specific earliest hours of morning — was so quietly loud he could hear every movement coming from the bathroom. It eased his terror a bit, the idea of Harua standing not far from him acting like a healing balm on his inner wounds. If he concentrated hard enough, he could even hear the low melody of Harua singing under the shower. It made him smile fondly. 

After a while he caught other sounds, too. The morning birds singing under his window, perched on a tree planted in front of his house — its branches and leaves shivering in the wind, harmonising with the birds. The twinkling of a street lamp in bad shape, its bulb trying despite everything to light the street. A cat stretching and yawning on the fence of a neighbouring house. A dog barking after maybe a squirrel or a lost pigeon. People coming home after a party which had not wanted to end, muffled laugh and tears of joy. A man whistling happily, on the way to his early shift, his keys jingling in his hands. A few cars passed from time to time, adding another noise, another soul. Winter’s night coloured the outside pitch black even while morning approached with big steps. The joint melody of his house and the outside world screamed to his ears, loud with with life and tranquility. 

The ghost and the flames reluctantly left his brain, pushed away by the music of life he realised could come from even the faintest of sound. Harua came to mind instead, bringing with him an early spring, burgeons and green leaves — a few pear flowers too. Maki smiled to himself, humming along to Harua’s muted song still bleeding through the bathroom walls. It almost lulled him back to sleep, he felt warm and, for once, completely safe. 

The water stopped, and after a few more minutes of silence filled with the sounds of the city and the night, Harua’s fast but soft footsteps echoed in the corridor. He pushed the door carefully, the light turned off, sliding his hands against the walls to direct himself in the darkness. 

“Over here.” Maki whispered, hoping his voice would help Harua reach the bed. 

He heard the blonde boy shuffling slowly through the room, cautious of the big closet and the shelves on his right, the desk on his left, the chair next to the bed, the creaking floor. He discerned his small frame drowning in the clothes he had borrowed from the closet. Red coloured Maki’s face, and probably covered his entire body too. Harua liked baggy clothes, the sight was not too uncommon — but it was Maki’s clothes this time, and not Harua’s own. He liked it slightly too much and bit the inner flesh of his cheeks, forcing his eyes on the ceiling, trying to get the image away from his mind.

Maki eventually felt a weight next to him on the bed. Harua climbed on it, still as careful as possible, his breathe so low Maki wondered if he was holding it back to make as less noise as possible. Harua lifted the covers, sliding under and arranging them back on his and Maki’s tired limbs. 

“Thank you for letting me sleep in your bed.” He whispered, his mint toothpaste smelling breathe blowing gently on Maki’s face with every words. 

Maki only smiled, hoping their proximity — and Harua’s eyes now supposedly used to the darkness — would make the other boy see it. Harua drew closer, his face so close to Maki’s, the latter held his breathe. 

“I know you are tired, It is no wonder you are, but … Can we talk ?” Harua asked, and Maki could hear worries laced in his words. 

Silence answered Harua’s question. Not a straight denial, but not quite an affirmation either. Maki felt too embarrassed to talk, to share his burden with Harua. He knew the other would understand — if anyone could understand it would be him — but the words stayed stuck in his throat nonetheless. He turned to lay on his back, Harua staring at his profile, him staring at the ceiling. 

Minutes passed, and Maki came to the conclusion that Harua had gave up and, probably, ended up falling asleep. He was about to close his eyes, intending to sleep too, when Harua talked again. He did not whisper anymore, but his voice was low nonetheless — so low it could be confused with the songs from the morning birds and the yawning of street cats outside.

“The movie made me so sad, Maki.” Repressed cries could be heard in his voice, a pain he was not ready to freely let out still. Maki turned his face back to him, barely breathing, afraid he would scare away Harua, scared it would make him stop talking. “It made me miss my home. I told you I missed my forest very dearly, but I also miss my home. I miss the forest, my home, but what I miss the most is my mother. My mother who stayed inside when the fire destroyed everything.” 

About two months had passed since their first meeting in the burnt forest. Harua had told Maki about everything during those months, and Maki had done the same, but they never mentioned the fires. Maki’s fire, as well as Harua’s own, which had destroyed his own forest and his own home, and ended up destroying his own family too, had stayed taboo topics. Maki felt stupid and powerless. Words could never be enough to express how sorry he was and how much pain he felt for Harua — actions even less. 

Harua went on; “I miss my life before it all disappeared in the flames. I miss everything. And the worst part is that I am so incredibly far from it now. I dream of my mother, but I cannot even go to where she lived her whole life. I cannot walk the path she walked, I cannot be near the places which now hold memories of her.” his eyes glistened with unshed tears, and he lowered his gaze to the pillows, unable to look Maki in the eyes. “I am sorry,” he said, his hand covering his eyes and the tears who had yet to fall still, “I should not bother you with my grief when you already have yours to deal with. Forgive me, I was trying to make you feel like you could talk to me too, but I feel stupid now. Forget it, morning will be there soon, just sleep.” 

He turned around, his back to Maki, sniffling and shallow breathes filling the room. Maki wanted to hold him close and tight, to dry his tears with the palm of his hand and caress his hair gently. Maybe to kiss his pain away, to love Harua so dearly, it would ease his sorrow and make it disappear. He wanted to tell him he understood, that more than anyone he knew what it felt like to loose everything. But he did not know how Harua would react. This was new; Harua opening up, Harua confiding in him and retracting his hand as fast as he had held it out. 

Maki slid his hand slowly under the blanket, looking for Harua’s wrist. He circled it gently with his fingers, and pulled the other — carefully but surely — to him. “Harua …” He whispered in a breathe. 

He could smell the sweet honeyed scent of the other, and a smile almost bloomed on his face thinking the scent lingered on Harua’s skin even after washing himself with Maki’s soap. Mixed with the honey, the scent of Maki’s house and clothes sticked to the other’s skin. Harua turned back to him, reluctantly. His face was soaked with salty tears, and even through the thick darkness of the night, Maki could see his eyes had turned slightly red. His other hand reached for Harua’s cheek, gently brushing his tears away. 

“The memories of your mother are with you before they are in the places she lived in. The soil remembers, the air, the trees, the animals, it all remembers. But you remember too. You are the most important keeper of her memories. I am glad you told me.” Maki murmured, a gentle smile on his lips. “You can always talk to me. About anything, but mostly about this. I know what it feels like, I understand.” 

“I know.” Harua sobbed, still running from Maki’s gaze. “I know you understand. I am telling you about it because I know you understand.” 

Maki pulled the other boy closer, letting his wrist go to embrace him infinitely gently. “I miss my farm and my forest, and the animals that lived there, and the sound of the branches, and the way the sun shone through the leaves. I miss my mother and her gentle hands, her warm smile and her healing words. I miss how she knew me better than I knew myself, I miss how she would find a solution for everything, I miss everything she ever was. I miss my life when it still felt like the life I always knew and thought I would always have. I am desperate for stability, and for my mother to feel like a constant sturdy pillar i could lean on.” 

He heard a soft whine coming from Harua. He held him tighter, his nose pressed in the blonde hair, Harua’s face tucked in his neck. Hands slowly reached for Maki's back, gripping his shirt like a lifeline.

“I know what it feels like. There are only memories left, and they haunt you like ghosts desperate to take you with them. But you are still alive, so you must live. We cannot remember forever hoping it will make us live. To remember and be remembered, you have to live. You cannot exist just to remember your mother, or only sadness will remain about the both of you. You have to be brave, you have to keep o breathing, you have to keep on hoping it will get better, and you must live.” Maki slid his hand to Harua’s chest, tentatively placing it on top of his heart, the touch featherlight, cautious. “Listen.” 

Maki held his breathe, hoping it would help Harua hear his own heartbeat better. He needed him to feel the harmony Maki had been hearing for days. The melody, he realised a few minutes ago, was everywhere. The song of life itself which made him desperately want to go on and live. A sweet melody which would be the witness and herald of everything alive on the earth and in the vast universe.Harua stayed quiet, not moving, the slow rise and fall of his chest against Maki’s as a sole sign of awareness. 

Suddenly, Maki felt Harua’s hand on his own chest, right above his ribcage, right above his heart. “I cannot hear mine, but I can hear yours.” Harua’s voice had calmed; no more sob, no more worries. It made Maki smile. 

“I can hear yours too, constantly, and it makes me want to live, Harua. You make me want to create new memories, to hope the forest will one day grow back, to be happy even if it does not grow back. You make me want to do so many things I did not think i could ever want to do again, and things i did not even think of wanting before the fire too. I want to listen to your heart every day, I want to see and hear your lungs full of life, filling and emptying. I want to witness and remember the way you live, and the way I live when standing next to you. I think, in a way, you help my own heart beat more lively, you help my own lungs take their next breathe.”

Harua’s head jolted up, looking Maki in the eyes finally. The night outside grew less and less dark, the morning sun rising slow and lazy. The light bled through the thick curtains, only projecting a few rays on the white walls — not sufficiently bright to illuminate the room, but just enough for Maki to engrave every details from Harua’s face. A few rays danced on his walls, painting shapes of the trees outside his window. It made him want to paint his entire room green and full of leaves. He thought of adding pictures of his forest, the house and the barn, his family, and Harua, somewhere between the fake leaves. A furious need to make this room fully his suddenly birthed inside him.

They had never stood as close before. Harua’s beautiful eyes, his bangs still wet from the earlier shower, the tears stuck in his eyelashes, the moles on his cheeks, the ones going down along his neck — Maki almost wanted to bend just a little, to kiss along the beauty marks, he did nothing of it — the red of his cheeks and nose, the furrow of his eyebrows, the black roots of his golden blond hair. Maki could see it all. 

“What are trying to say ?” Harua asked, visibly confused and unsure of where he was supposed to stand in all Maki had said. 

Maki took a deep breathe, to give himself courage, and loosened his embrace in case Harua would feel too uncomfortable with what he had to say. “I like you, Harua. You ease my grief. You did not do it on purpose, but you showed me I could expect more from life, and it made me like you more than I probably should. More than a friend should.”

Harua said nothing, looking deep into Maki’s eyes. Maki went on.

“I am sorry if it makes you feel uneasy. I cannot take it back, just like I cannot change my feelings for you. But, I can give you space, if space is what you need. I can try being a friend, if a friend is what you want.”

“I do want you to be a friend.” Harua replied. His hand left Maki’s chest to hold his face gently. “It does not mean you cannot be something else, too.” He smiled coyly, his fingers tracing the bones of Maki’s jaw. “I like you too Maki. I thought I made it pretty obvious by asking you on a date to watch that stupid movie. You have made my mourning more bearable.” 

Maki smiled back, a giggled escaped his lips, hope and infinite joy swelling his chest. “Can we try being friends and boyfriends, then ?”

Harua’s answer came in the shape of a kiss. Gentle like the spring breeze, sweet like the honey smell always lingering around him, tender like the brand new burgeons. He joined their lips like a certitude, like a promise, like a vow. Trees with branches full of leaves bloomed inside Maki, growing along the bones of his ribcage and tangling his heart in green. The moulded moths left, his stomach too clean and new for they decaying wings. Maki held Harua closer, his hands sliding along his hips, embracing his waist lovingly. Harua’s fingers followed their route along Maki’s jaw before settling around the back of his neck. Both their earlier tears mixed between their cheeks and their mouth, leaving a salty taste in their kisses.

Maki had never kissed anyone before and his tensed shoulders loosened immediately under Harua’s lead. He pushed Maki on his back against the mattress, gently but sturdy. The gesture, a bit too quick, separated their mouths, but Harua did not leave for too long. Halfway laying on top of Maki, he kissed him again, gentle and passionate. It seemed like he liked it as much as Maki did, and the thought made him feel warm all over. He smiled against Harua’s lips. He felt like laughing, and if he did, Harua would have probably drank his chuckles like a life-giving beverage. 

Their lips parted again, Harua peppering kisses along Maki’s jaw, euphorically giggling in between each of them. His lashes, trailing along Maki’s skin, made the latter laugh too. The forest came to mind, and suddenly, the soil did not appear as cursed, the trees were not doomed, and Maki could even see new sprouts covering the ground in a few years. 

He pulled Harua’s face back to him, quenching his thirst for hope straight from the source of Harua’s mouth. 

𖧧

The following days were ecstatic, the following months were tender, the following years were filled with bliss and love. Never again did the ghosts tried to stop Maki from breathing. 

At first, Maki had thought Harua would be like a bandaid — hiding the wound, hiding the pain, but not erasing it completely. Years later, he understood Harua had never been that. Harua filled the empty hole in his chest. The one caved by grief and sorrow, the one which used to suck him dry of everything. Harua had furnished it with love, mending to the bruised bones around, growing a forest inside Maki. Harua made himself a home in the cavity, taking all of Maki’s heart as his, chasing sadness away. Grief stayed, for grief never leaves, but not as decaying, not as painful. Harua showed it its own spot, a specific place for this melancholic love which had been lost and out of place for too long. 

Through Harua, Maki learned that grief did not always have to be tied with ache and torment, but that it could prosper as fond memories. Instead of drowning in a bottomless well of despair where the walls were plastered with images of the burning forest, he wanted to remember only the way the green leaves had showed him adoration and tenderness. 

The forest never left him, it was a part of who he had been, a part of who he was, and a part of who he would become. On their fifth year anniversary, they visited Harua’s own forest. It looked like a graveyard, souls burned and slowly being forgotten. Maki had feared the sight would crush Harua, but it did not. Harua stood strong, biting his lips and battling the tears which threatened to fall. 

They had spend a few hours there, and before leaving, Harua found a miracle. A patch of green and regrowth, a few sprouts sticking close — freshly new and healthy burgeons. Harua had took one, in its wholeness, roots and all, and brought it home. Maki had tried finding a beautiful vase for Harua’s root. The painful memory of his old life, the optimist trace of what his land could become. Harua declined any vase, he wanted to plant his root in Maki’s own burnt forest. A piece of him intertwined with Maki’s past, with a piece of Maki, forever.

Harua told Maki that if his forest could grow back, could built itself back from the mere foundations, then Maki’s forest could do it too. He insisted that all it needed was a push, a little something to remind the soulless soil what life was. The same way Harua’s beating heart and breathing lungs showed Maki existing, fully and wholeheartedly, could still be possible even through grief, Harua believed his new growing forest — naturally rebuilding itself through the sheer power of biology and a little bit of faith — would show Maki’s dead forest how to reshape itself from its own ashes. 

A few years later, the root he had planted in Maki’s forest on the hill, stood the tallest in the small canopy which had started fiercely growing from the once infertile and decaying ground. The forest would grow back, and Maki would not be alone in the impossible task of remembering and caring for it. The forest would grow back, and stay for centuries more, and people would no longer need to remember it, for it would stand tall and remember for itself. 

Maki, for one, knew he would remember the forest forever, through all its shapes and life cycles. He also knew he would remember Harua for even longer than forever.