* * *
"Carve your name on hearts and not marble."
* * *
"Thank
you for coming," Ichijouji Michiru murmured solemnly, tying a
malachite-colored scarf around her neck in consideration of the gloaming's
chill outside. Daisuke noticed she looked twenty years older than she
actually was. He wondered how old he looked. She went on,
also tugging a pair of marigold lady's gloves over worn, wrinkled hands.
Calmly, so calmly; she must still be in shock, he thought. "He would
have appreciated it. You know the way to his room -- of course you do . .
. you can take whatever you like. It's a tradition, sort of . . .
loved ones take a momento to let those who've passed away live on in their
hearts. Ken . . . he -- he always delighted in the idea."
He didn't know what to say, so he nodded. Ichijouji . . .
"Mareo and I are going to the Daioh Temple in Kyoto for a few days,"
the woman provided, fishing around in her jacket. The premature silver in
her brunette hair caught the light and shimmered while she searched. She
withdrew her fingers in a jingle of metal clinking against metal; took off one
particular key on the ring to press into Daisuke's unresisting palm.
"This is a spare to the apartment. Lock up for us, please?"
"Okay," he affirmed, russet eyes flickering down toward the warm
piece of metal he held.
"You . . . can keep it if you like, too," she said, hesitating
slightly. The leftover keys were placed back into the lapelled
coat. "So if you ever want to come over . . ."
"Ichijouji-san?" he requested softly, not looking up.
"Yes?"
". . . Have the others stopped by yet?" he asked, gaze seeking out
hers in that moment. She was thunderstruck with how despondent he looked;
how dim his maple eyes were. Hadn't he always been so full of life, every
time she saw him? But -- but that was before . . .
"They did," she responded, tending to a very pale smile.
"None of them took anything. They didn't want to. Hikari-san
and her brother brought a nice batch of cookies. A few also inquired
about Wormmon, but I said that he --"
"-- is with Veemon," Daisuke finished for her, unable to maintain eye
contact any longer. His fingers closed tightly over the key, imprinting
the ridges into his awaiting skin for a brief bite of pain. The image of
his partner desperately trying to console the dismantled jasper centipede came
unbidden. There was nothing he could do to help. He'd lost
his chance already. "He's better off there, I think."
"Me too. Thank you again, Daisuke-san . . ."
And they were gone. Daisuke didn't remember seeing Ken's father walk by.
Shrugging this off blandly, he turned and went to the end of the living area;
the first door on the right, across from a furbished side-table and potted
bird's-nest fern. The domicile was completely silent, save for the
auricular hum of the venting units and the incessant whirring of something
beyond the door he stopped in front of. Unconcerned, Daisuke pushed it
ajar readily and finished his journey. He slid the gift (of sorts) into
the pocket of his somber slacks.
The door clicked shut somewhere behind him as he cast a glance around the room,
still just as he remembered it from the many, many times he visited for a
multitude of reasons. Ken sitting at the desk, lecturing him over how pi
didn't fundamentally mean that there were fruit-fillings involved; Ken
pointing out to him the lesser-known constellations from the balcony; Ken
kicking his ass -- he admitted it now -- at the video games he had guardedly
kept away in his closet with their consoles . . . at least until Daisuke found
them one very silly afternoon of rummaging through Ken's things.
("Even your boxers are gray!" Daisuke exclaimed, brandishing
the underwear. Their owner blushed garnet to the roots of his hair.)
Wrinkling his nose, he smelled something that had definitely not been
there the last he dropped in. The air was heavy with diluted bleach and
other ammonia-like solvents. An old fan, wheezing and whirring as it
undulated slowly, had been set down beside an antediluvian floor-mirror.
It was directing what noxious fumes it could towards the open sliding glass
doors and much more pleasantly scented air beyond. The carpet was dry and
unsoiled; Daisuke could tell. The odor lingered, allowing him to make his
own conclusions . . .
"Was this where it happened?" he queried aloud, almost not
recognizing his own voice. He took a few steps in the direction of the
mirror, uncharacteristically staggered and unconfident. His voice rose in
pitch as he settled to a stop a foot from the foul-smelling patch of thistle
carpeting and its only observer prior to his arrival. "How . . . how
could you do this . . ."
No one replied save for the squeaky rotary blades of the fan at his feet.
"You could've talked to me!" he cried, pausing to listen to his words
reverberate off of the walls of the empty room. His seething countenance
was flashed to the mirror on a vagary, fuscous eyes dwindling into choleric
slits. He was positively gaunt, and appeared to be very exhausted and
fatigued on top of that; the reflective surface exposed this and his anger
soared to new heights. His hands became shaky fists. "You
could have, if -- if something was bothering you, Ichijouji! So
why? Why did you do it?"
. . . whirrrr . . . squeak . . . whirrrr . . . squeak . . .
"Why did you leave everyone -- leave me?! WHY?!"
Crack.
A tracery of chrome lines, intersecting and breaking with one another in a
pattern not unlike an intricate spider's web, corkscrewed outward across the
mirror from the epicenter: Daisuke's fist planted firmly at the midpoint.
The glass fissures gleamed like the profiles of curved tacks, pricking his
white knuckles where each edge had been made lethally razor-sharp. He
withdrew his hand, only glancing indifferently to its surface. The skin
was torn in places; already ruby egressed into view in attenuate
rivulets. Experimenting, he flexed his fingers slowly; the cuts darkened
with fresh blood.
Shards of the mirror, broken away, collapsed in a cascade of shining silver at
his feet; splintered further twice more. The dissonance almost drowned
his observation: "So . . . is this what you felt, Ichijouji . . .
?"
He shook himself, looking away from the schism of his reflection and ignoring
the pain and wound entirely. His very first impulse was to collect Ken's
crest and other Chosen ornaments. He went to the nearby computer desk and
opened the northernmost drawer, as this was where he had last seen the
media-acclaimed prodigy tuck them away orderly. There was a lot more in
there than he thought. He disturbed black-and-white composition
notebooks, on the brink of falling apart from immoderate use; a lump of tea
candles (pinkhazelolive!) tied up in plastic wrap followed, which held no
meaning to him. Stray pencils, wood shavings . . . and finally, a puce
rectangle inscribed with a rose, the dark D-3, and a uniform D-Terminal.
Kindness. Ken is -- was Kindness . . .
Biting back a scream, Daisuke took all three items and shut the top-drawer
stridently. Its other contents rattled.
He looked up after taking a step back to settle his nerves. His breath
caught. He surely hadn't seen this before: a frame of eggshell
white had been used to hem a mat with four individual "compartments,"
all marked off by thick black lines. This was hanging on the wall as
though just another painting. (It certainly wasn't.) Each carefully
measured "box" contained one item: an insect with its beauty
presentable because of pins that skewered the tips of unfurled wings. Butterflies.
Four different species with their ephemeral lives on display for Daisuke's
eyes, taunting him with an unwelcome pondering . . .
Ken was only a fledgling butterfly, emerging from his cocoon in a natural
process of life . . . to be caught in a downpour five minutes after taking to
the skies. He the pristine being, dying from the most impossible to grasp
and violent manner . . . the wrong place at the wrong time . . . when the
flight-granting powdery sheen was washed away permanently . . . sending him
plummeting to the wet ground while the angels cried selfishly above.
Before he even really understood what he was doing, Daisuke set down the
digital devices and tore the thin case from its place above the desk. The
balcony door was already open. He quickly strode out to the steel
railings that prevented him from falling and peered over the edge, the
portrait-sized canvas held parallel to his position.
He didn't know the names of any of them. He didn't need to.
Suspiring inaudibly, his fingers wrapped clumsily about the head of the pins,
and then extracted every last one from the material they were stuck into.
He prudently lifted the wholly brittle butterflies from their place -- God
knows how long they had been there -- and let each spiral off the side, one by
one, lifeless despite their illusion of flight upon a lenient breeze . . .
"There . . ."
The Blue Metalmark went first, royal sapphire blue scales refracting the sun's
rays and scintillating majestically, before being blown rather forcefully out
of sight. His hair.
"Now you all . . ."
A Sickle-Winged Skipper lasted much longer, despite the blotchy spots of
ash-gray that marred otherwise iridescent magenta. Daisuke watched until
it too was gone. His eyes . . .
"You'll all be free . . ."
Despite its commonplace misgivings, the Giant White was very exquisite.
It was much larger than its companions, and tumbled downward over milky wings
rather than floated, but still maintained its natural dignity while doing
so. His . . . his skin.
"Just . . . just like Ken . . ."
The Ruddy Daggerwing held true to its name, pigments the color of the same
coagulated maroon that hadn't fallen from Daisuke's hands. The other
sides of its wings were a nutty brow and betrayed its deep red, if only for the
sake of looking like dead leaves the majority of its short-lived airtime.
And his . . . his blood . . .
He dropped the frame. At his left, it clanked woodenly on the
concrete.
He felt lightheaded. What was he doing? Oh yeah. He needed to
take something else, something . . . closer to Ken than a lot of what was
stockpiled in the room behind him.
The closet. Its setup was very inelegant, a tad messy for the usually so
perfectionist Ichijouji, and was full of boxes and clothes on metal hangers he
had never seen Ken wear before. A checkered soccer ball was stuck in one
corner while a jersey bearing the white letters "TFC" on the front
and "#7" on the back mingled with the bleaker formal wear. Its
somber peridot and jet fabric, breathable, stuck out like a sore thumb.
Daisuke immediately grabbed for the ball first.
A piece of paper fluttered the ground, suggestive of the falling butterflies:
Soccer with Motomiya. Six PM.
He hadn't imagined that Ken would have had to remind himself. That note
with its appointment was dictating their plans for today. They were going
to meet at the soccer field. They were going to play soccer; Daisuke was
going to let Ken win because he didn't want his best friend to feel bad (of course,
because that's how it always went), and . . .
He lost his grip on the black-and-white sphere, wondering in the back of his
mind about perhaps building up his hand strength. Before it fell to the
carpet innocuously, however, he reared a foot back in the same breath,
launching all his strength into its connection with the worn two-tone leather
of the ball. TH-WHOCK!
It instantaneously went loose as a reckless blur, making contact with three
different surfaces before Daisuke could blink. After nearly putting a hole
in the wall, it struck the ladder to the raised bed at an angle and made an
unstoppable beeline for his head. Its travels were halted after that
collision, resulting in a migraine and short trip to an adverse sitting
position. The soccer ball landed harmlessly some feet away and rolled to
a standstill.
He felt like the world was laughing at him; he shut his eyes to ward off sour
tears. Ken . . . Ken wouldn't have laughed at me . . . he would have
rushed over, and asked if I was okay or not, and . . .
"Daisuke-kun!"
His lids flew upward like untied sashes. Ken was kneeling beside him,
lips etched just the slightest bit downward; lilac eyes, so crystalline,
defined with the shades of intense distress. A cool palm had been pressed
against the source of his throbbing headache, soothing the unerringly bruised
lump of skin with a chaste touch. His mouth felt dry. He didn't do
anything but stare at the one opposite of him, taking in hitched breaths.
"Ken . . . Ichijouji, I'm fine," he croaked, voice cracking. He
wanted to push Ken's hands away, he wanted to do a lot of things: ask him why,
punish him, hug him and never let go, cry into his shoulder, stroke his hair .
. .
"Are you sure you're all right?" Ken whispered, one hand
slipping down to Daisuke's tense shoulder. He was afraid that if he
looked, he would see only bleeding wrists. "That looked like it
hurt an awful lot. I think you need an ice pack."
He shook his head furiously. This wasn't right. Ken was gone.
"No! I don't want an ice pack. Ken, why did you go? Why
did you do that?"
"Daisuke . . ." the voice that was undeniably his best
friend's trailed, girasol painted eyes dropping downward as they customarily
did whenever he was ashamed of something. Daisuke realized that the
suffocating stench of bleach was almost completely gone. "-- Your
hand!"
"That's from . . . I broke your mirror," he said sheepishly, unable
to prevent himself from slipping back into the mirage that Ken hadn't died; he
wasn't buried next to his brother in the cemetery. "I'm sorry."
"We'll have to get that cleaned up right away," Ken soberly
replied, peering at him closely. "It could get infected.
Come on, Daisuke."
"Ken . . ."
"Yes?"
"Just
don't -- don't -- leave me again . . ." the Motomiya boy stammered, tears
rolling down his cheeks. He raised a hand to touch the silk-spun blue
hair. It never dawned on him from that moment on that Ken wasn't really
there.
Ken ghosted his lips over Daisuke's forehead. The recipient nearly
convulsed.
"I won't."