Work Text:
“Let’s go see the pigeons, Hei-chan.”
______________________________________
He thinks it odd at first. From his memory, Hajime-jichan was never too fond of pigeons, always shooing them away from his usual spot at the park. Even when they went out as a family, and his lips were split into a large smile, his eyes crinkled ever so slightly with disgust when one or two wandered by his feet.
“There used t’ be more swallows an’ crows when I was a child,” he would say. “But now? Pigeons, everywhere! Lazy, waddling, remnants of th’ west.” Then he would spit-cough onto the ground, before Okan shuffled in to chide his poor manners.
Today seems like a good day for him, though. He didn’t thump his back as much, and his usual barrage of complaints was replaced with a tuneless hum as they walked through the forest. There weren’t a lot of visitors in Osaka at this time of year, so Heiji relishes in the peace while he can.
“Are we gon’ go somewhere, after this?”
Jichan lets out a huff in answer, which could be taken as a sigh or nod of agreement, depending on the situation. Heiji hopes that it’s the latter. He already receives enough looks of disappointment from his father, and he’d rather not mull over negative second thoughts for everything else. It’s a nice day, anyhow. A cool breeze blows through the sun-dappled leaves, and for a moment, the world seems quiet.
“Ah, there it is,” his grandpa finally says, pointing at a worn-down bench. “Sit here, Hei-chan.”
Carefully avoiding the discolored patches, Heiji hops on the seat, and watches as the other man follows with delayed motion. He inwardly scoffs when a knee bone crackles. For all that his grandfather was a kendo master, old age had affected him hard. He used to be a wiry man, but now his hands and legs shake, and his self-esteem was a weathered rock of bygone times. Heiji knows better than to challenge his elders in a fight, but sometimes the thought creeps in the back of his mind -- a gentle push, a hard crack to the head, perhaps, and Jichan would simply die.
It’s a meaningless thought, though. Another gust of air whistles past his ears, and with it, his attention shifts elsewhere: a line of sparrows chittering away upon some telephone wire. Two of them hop about with anxious energy as they sing. Twit, twit, twit. How pleasant! Too bad a new voice is quick to disrupt it.
“Lots of birds out, eh?” Jichan loops an arm over Heiji’s shoulder. “‘S good thing we went out today.”
“Mm.”
“Better than spending the whole summer holed up inside, too.”
“Yeah.”
“Ya know, when I was ‘bout yer age, I’d play in my friend’s chicken farm all day. It’s a shame that kids don’t do that any more.” He snorts loudly, as if he’d just shared an inside joke, and claps Heiji’s back. “Yer brother would’ve loved that if he were younger.”
“Ryo-niichan doesn’t like gettin’ sweaty.”
“That’s why I said if he were younger. Didn’t cha hear me, boy?”
“Oh. Sure, I guess.”
Their exchanges go on like that for a solid half hour, and Heiji tunes out most of it. Conversation isn’t hard to maintain, despite what Yuuka liked to say. It was all about keeping a flow between questions and answers, like a game of catch.
"Are ya doin’ well in yer classes these days?”
A really dull game, in this case.
What’s your favorite class. Are you keeping your grades up. How is kendo practice. What are your siblings doing. Is your father eating well. Do you want some ice cream later. How is your mother.
He’s asking all the right questions, like a good grandfather should, and Heiji almost feels bad about the half-hearted responses he throws back. Still, it was better this way, as he had learned in earlier years. Hajime-Jichan wasn’t exactly a friend, nor was he a complete stranger. Instead, he lied in that grey area of being familiar enough to be sought out for but not enough to confide in. He’d call him ‘Hei-chan’ and take him out on walks like these, but always with the reserved distance of someone being forced to entertain a pet.
Heiji remembers, when he was younger. He had won a game of cards at school -- some forgettable victory he wanted to share with his family. He kept talking, talking, talking, drinking in the attention his parents gave as they nodded with half-smiles. Only Jichan was sitting alone by the coffee table, not listening. That wasn’t enough for a precocious six-year-old, so he had rushed over to hug his leg.
Instead of smiling as well, Jichan’s face stiffened into an unreadable look, and he gently pushed his grandson away. With that, Heiji’s pride suddenly curdled into self-awareness, and he excused himself for the remainder of the night. How stupid. Okan and Oton must have been laughing at him. He should have kept his mouth close instead of yammering on with one-sided joy.
So he keeps it neutral now; he keeps the game going.
Jichan coughs again and leans back to face the sky. He points in the distance. “Remember the other day, when them swifts were flyin’ low? That meant t’was ‘bout to rain soon, ‘cause the humidity weighs ‘em down.”
“Right.” He knows that already.
“An’ the magpies too -- ‘course, they’re not really from here, but they’re funny creatures. I told ya ‘bout my old friend, right? Mmm... the one who got his eyes pecked out.”
“Thought ya said he wasn’t yer friend anymore.”
“Old friend, Hei-chan.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s what he gets fer wearin’ jewelry all the time, anyhow. An’ he’s not even a woman.”
Heiji tugged at the drawstrings of his pants. “You wear jewelry too, though.”
“A wedding ring doesn’t count. Don’t say things you know are stupid.”
It’s not stupid. You’re stupid for telling the same stories all the time, you miserable geezer.
“Oh, is that so.”
“Huh?” Wait. Wait, he wasn’t supposed to hear that.
Thankfully, Jichan lets the disrespect slip by without further comment. “You’ll have to forgive my poor memory -- an old man just loves to reminisce, after all. Suppose I’ll spare ya the ramblings now and get to the point.”
Heiji shivers when his grandfather leans over to whisper in his ear. “Y’see, Hei-chan, you can actually learn a lot just from observing birds. You’ll understand once yer a bit older, of course, but,” Jichan pauses to scan the area, “that’s exactly what we came here for.”
Jichan makes an odd clicking noise, and some grain materializes from his sleeve. Within seconds, he has a nearby pigeon coaxed into his palms. It coos contently, stupidly -- a round blob of a creature that’s clearly grown slow and complacent from years of passers-by offering sugary snacks and leftover crumbs. Jichan’s hand clasps over his own as he guides it over the bird’s face. “There, jus’ along the cheeks. See how soft it is?”
It is soft. Not like any of Kazuha’s toys -- plush cats and bears filled with cotton. No, nothing at all like that. Heiji could feel how its muscles twitched and slid just under the skin. The steady thrum of a heartbeat reaches his fingers, and his chest squeezes at the feeling. Grey head feathers puff up to cover most of its features, but when Heiji catches a glimpse of those beady eyes, he finds it admittedly cute.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Jichan murmurs. “So soft, this one.”
Even as he says that, Jichan handles the bird quite roughly, turning it about over and over like stuffed toy. The touches start to linger over other parts of the body, and the bird startles a little at the invasiveness. It’s not like Heiji can blame him, though. He squeezed it a bit hard too, just to feel more of the silky down on the underbelly. Only, this feels like too much.
“So soft, so soft.”
“Hey, Jichan...”
Pat pat pat.
“Hajime-jichan, yer petting ‘m a bit hard.”
His grandpa pays him no attention, however, and gives it another stroke along the wing. He scratches here and there on the plumage, up and down. On the legs too. Then up and down along the chest he goes, until his hand stops to engulf the head.
The neck snaps.
Heiji jumps out of his seat in alarm, but Hajime-jichan’s grip tightens, and he hovers in a half-stand as the older man continues with a level voice.
“Shhh, shhh, don’t be shy,” he says. “Have another touch.” He shoves the bird into Heiji’s hand, and Heiji nearly drops it.
Theoretically, Heiji knows what dead bodies look like. Once the heart stops pumping, the blood pools down and mixes with everything else that was soft. It bloats into a putrid mush. Like spoiled pork in the fridge. The body in his hand isn’t rotten yet, but it still sags down with the same weight of something expired. It feels silent.
“You killed it,” he says. He swallows hard and repeats. Then once more, as if saying it out loud enough times would summon a punishment from some higher power. Nothing happens, of course, and Heiji sits heavy-handed in an empty park as Jichan keeps talking.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Keep touching it. It’s not so bad, you’ll see.”
“Ah...ah.”
Rigor mortis hasn’t taken effect yet, so the body was still malleable enough. This was okay, right? Not too different from finding a cicada husk or piece of roadkill on the way to school. Okan butchered plenty of chickens for dinner, too.
Sensing his hesitation, his grandfather lets go of his wrists to take ahold of the wings instead, and splays them out to their full length.
“This,” he says, tracing along the shoulder, “is the humerus. That’s where ya find the wing socket, held in place by muscle and other soft tissue. Ya learned some anatomy at school, right?”
Heiji nods wordlessly.
“Good, good. Those tissues are like duct tape. Target the joints first, and the rest of the body falls apart easy.” In demonstration, he whips out a pocket knife, and starts stripping away at flesh. Sternum, trachea, esophagus, ribs, cervical vertebra, pancreas, among others.
Time slips by in a moment’s notice, as Jichan rattles off names and keeps cutting. (And no, Heiji does not flinch when he twists the wings back with another sickening crack.) Soon the sun is standing at its peak. The sparrows are gone. They had fled to the forest long ago when heat started creeping into the morning air.
With a final squelch and grunt, Jichan puts the knife aside and dusts off his slick-covered hands.
“It’s done-- take a look,” he says. Heiji doesn’t turn to face him, though, and the older man sighs. “Hope yer payin’ attention Heiji. Seems scary at first, but there are worse things out there once ya grow up.”
He hacks up a gob of saliva and settles into the bench with renewed disinterest.
“Just know,” he mutters. “You’ll be glad to know how to do the job cleanly when yer dealin’ with things bigger than birds.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know, Hajime-jichan.” He pursed his lips. “I...Are we gonna bury ‘m at least?”
Jichan fondles the bird again and observes the mess like an afterthought. “Mm. We didn’t bring a shovel though.”
“Just a small one.”
“Eh.”
“It doesn’t need ta be fancy!” Heiji tries grabbing ahold of the bird (what’s left of it, at least), but Jichan is faster, and flings it deep into the forest, where it’s swallowed by the bushes.
.
.
.
“Tell ya what, I’ll let you try next time, burial ‘n all.”