Suoh's bad day.

[sakon76]

Suoh couldn't return to the administrative building, not so quickly after seeing Nagisa. He went blindly back to the white rose garden instead, sitting on a marble bench and burying his head in his hands.

Nagisa. Beautiful, delicate Nagisa.

And Nokoru--friend, leader, troublemaker and adventurer.

One he didn't dare touch and the other he couldn't. Nokoru was dead. Even if he'd come back for a time, even if he'd shanghai'd Suoh and Akira into saving the world like it was another treasure hunt, even if Idomu seemed perfectly willing to share his body and life with the youngest of the Imonoyama... even so, Nokoru was still dead.

Nine years and Suoh apparently still hadn't dealt with that.

His fingers tightened in his hair.

Suoh *refused* to have a panic attack. He couldn't afford to fall apart, not now. Not when the future of the entire would would soon be at stake.

Unfortunately, as he didn't even believe in his own future, his drive to protect the rest of the world's was shaky.

Suoh's breathing got away from him and he tried to gasp in air that wouldn't come.

***

"-empai." Someone was shaking his shoulder. "Takamura-sempai."

Suoh opened his eyes, uncurling his arms from around his head, and discovered that he had fallen to lie sideways on his bench. He looked up into Akira's concerned face and slowly sat up.

He'd lost track of time, he realized, looking at the low-slanting angle of the sunlight, its thin golden texture on the white roses. Wordlessly, Akira sat down next to him.

Finally, after several minutes, Akira breathed out half a laugh. "Utako-san yelled at me last night," he offered. "She actually threw a cooking pot at me too."

"Why?" Suoh asked.

"She wasn't too happy that I hadn't told her that Rijichou was back."

Suoh hissed through his teeth in sympathy. He'd been on the wrong end of Utako's temper more that once, and she was one of the few people who could cow him.

Thinking of which fact, he winced. "I think she's not going to be too happy with me either at the moment." He considered further and winced again. "Neither is Rijichou."

Akira's eyes widened questioningly.

"I ran away from Nagisa-san," Suoh said.

Akira's cringe at the pair's predicted reactions was acute. "Maybe we could run away to Hokkaido together?" he suggested.

Suoh sighed. "They'd find us no matter where we ran to, Ijyuin."

Akira nodded, equally serious. "Oh well. It was worth a thought."

They listened to the song of wind in far-off trees for some time before Suoh spoke again. "What's going to happen, Ijyuin?" he asked quietly. "I've never been able to not know that before. I've always had a sense of what the future could, or would, or *should* contain, but... but not anymore."

"I don't know either," Akira replied. "I'm just trusting that Rijichou will make it all right again. I know he can't stay; he's a ghost and Yuudaiji-san needs to live his own life. But he's always looked out for us before, so... so I just have to trust Rijichou."

"Is it really that simple?"

"Yes." Akira's gray eyes, as they caught Suoh's, were determined. If one needed a rock to cling to, Suoh thought, Akira's unshakeable faith might be it.

Comments

[-leareth.livejournal.com]

"Maybe we could run away to Hokkaido together?" he suggested.

That has to be one of the cutest lines I've seen in a while - LOL!