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One day, one of the cherry trees in the backyard bursts into full blossom.
This is strange for several reasons: one, it is completely out of season, with the summer sun hot and humid enough to make the delicate flowers wilt nearly as soon as they pull free of the branches; two, that particular tree has been dead for over a year, and they simply haven't had the time (or the money, Youko points out under her breath) to have it cut down and removed. It seems quite healthy now, though, with soft green leaves hidden amongst the flurry of pale pink and snowy white, and Kantarou seems more pleased than anything else by the development. He spends more time playing hooky than usual, though he never goes far: Haruka often finds him napping in the shadow of the miracle tree, a book open in his lap and occasionally with some small creature or other nested in his hair, or balanced on his shoulder. They don't even wake when he approaches. With Kantarou it's not such an unusual thing--the idiot has never really understood worrying about his own safety--but these little youkai, so small and numerous that they had no place in all of the lists in Kantarou's library, these creatures that used to cower and flee from the very mention of his title--now they don't even stir at his approach.
Today, Kantarou sleeps alone. He's slid down the tree enough that he's nearly lying down, his head lolling at an uncomfortable angle. A single blossom rests in his hair, close to his cheek. It is very nearly the same color as his skin, fragile and just barely pink.
There is an unfinished manuscript on his desk that's due in less than a week and Youko has been jealously counting every single yen to make sure they can stretch. Breakfast that morning had been nothing more than rice and pickles.
Kantarou moves and slides down the tree the whole way. He snuggles his own arm like a child with a toy. The cherry blossom on his cheek shifts until it casts a faint ghost of a shadow across his skin. He looks very small and young in the shadow of the tree.
Haruka looks up at the tree, still blooming strong after two weeks. He looks at Kantarou, peacefully asleep.
He leaves him alone.
One evening, Kantarou excuses himself from dinner and goes outside into the warm, grass-scented dusk. Youko tuts and covers his meal to keep it for later; when she retires with her mending, Haruka goes outside as well.
There is a girl in the yard with Kantarou. She's slender and small, just like him, dressed in a white kimono that is belted with a petal-pink obi. Both look plain from a distance; upon closer look, one can see petals embroidered into the fine cloth. Her little feet are bare in the long grass. When she sees him, she looks at him with open curiosity, and that is what makes Kantarou turn and smile at him.
"Haruka!" he calls. "Come meet our guest. She's been the one staying in our tree."
"That much was obvious," he says. He crosses his arms and looks at the girl. She smiles at him, but there's something in her eyes that is old and knowing--she has the same pale skin and hair as Kantarou, and anyone just looking might mistake them for siblings. Haruka knows better. He crosses the yard to stand at Kantarou's shoulder and looks sternly down at her. There are sprigs of cherry blossoms braided into her hair. "The actual question is, what does she want."
She presses her fingertips to her mouth, wide-eyed as a girl. "Ah," she says. "I was telling Kantarou-san--I'm looking for something."
He just raises an eyebrow. "Then look for it yourself," he says. "He's not supposed to be taking jobs that don't pay."
"Haruka!" Kantarou protests immediately; he turns and steps so that he's between Haruka and the cherry-tree spirit. "Don't be rude, she's an honored guest! She saved the tree, and you can't fool me, I know you liked it too!" He crosses his arms and sniffs loudly once for emphasis, then turns back to the girl, his sulk melting away at once. This is a charm that he rarely practices on human women, who are often less than impressed with his slender build, but the cherry-tree girl looks suitably impressed. "You know, you have to tell me more than it was something you lost--I'm not psychic, I have to know what I'm looking for ..."
"It's very important," the girl says. Her voice drops to a whisper; she looks down so that the sweep of her lashes makes elegant shadows upon her cheek. "More important than anything else in the world--someone I want to remember. Someone--" Abruptly her voice wavers, and she begins to dab at her eyes with one snow-white sleeve. Immediately Kantarou is fussing over her, cooing words of comfort, and the sight irritates Haruka more than he wants to admit.
"Just tell him what it is," he says. "That's what he needs to know, right?"
The cherry-tree girl blinks at him with wide, tear-dewed eyes. "Mm, you're right," she breathes. "As expected from the Oni-Eater. My apologies."
"That's not the point," he says again, long-suffering. "Just spit it out, because it's late and the idiot has a manuscript due this weekend."
"Haruka," Kantarou says, "you need to get your priorities straight."
"I need to--"
"What is it?" Kantarou goes on, ignoring Haruka's strangled start. He smiles sweetly, and here his youthful face is his greatest ally: he looks young and friendly and utterly trustworthy. "Please tell me."
She nods, still damp-eyed, and reaches into the neck of her kimono. From under the layers of silk, she tugs free a long black cord draped around her neck. She holds it up, letting them see the fragment of glazed pottery strung on the cord: there's half of a seal painted on the piece. "Please," she says. "The other half of this. That's what I'm looking for."
Kantarou holds out his hand. "May I?" he asks gently, then holds it delicately between his fingertips when she nods. His expression is gentle and focused as he studies it; there is a concentration that he only saves for situations like this--never his actual work, never the things he gets paid for. Haruka watches him.
"It was a present, wasn't it," Kantarou says. "From that someone you want to remember."
Again she nods, and when Kantarou lets go of the pendant, she tucks it back under her kimono, back against her skin. She says, "I just had to keep this safe--but my tree was--and then I--" She buries her face in her hands and begins to cry, very small and pretty. Kantarou is immediately charmed, hovering and crooning comfort; Haruka is less impressed.
"So it's a necklace," he says. "How do you plan on finding it? It's not like you can even find your own shoes sometimes, when you leave them in the genkan."
Kantarou reaches and plucks out a twig of cherry blossoms from behind the spirit's ear; he twirls them with surprising deftness. "What are you talking about, Haruka," he says. "You're underestimating me again. I'll show you." He glances slyly sidelong and his smile is the exact demon smirk that has made both of his bonded youkai nervous in the past. "Now! It's late. I'm going to sleep. Haruka, don't stay up too late!" He brushes past lightly, easily, humming to himself--Sakura, of all things--and heads inside.
There is silence for a long moment. The cherry-tree girl dabs at her eyes one more time and smiles.
"How lucky, Oni-Eater," she says. "What you're looking for is already right here."
"Don't be stupid," Haruka says. "The idiot just needs a keeper."
He looks at the house, watching as the light in Kantarou's room flickers on, then flickers off. When he turns back, the cherry-tree spirit is already faded back into her tree.
The next morning, when Haruka wakes and comes downstairs, he finds that Kantarou has taken over the kitchen with books and scrolls--most of them are old, yellowed at the edges and worn. There are ink smudges on Kantarou's fingers and a smaller solitary one on his lip, where he's been chewing on the pen. His breakfast is left on a wrapped tray with an apologetic note from Youko, already long-gone to her job. Haruka sits across from Kantarou, and finds himself ignored.
"Kantarou," he says.
"Did you know, Haruka," Kantarou says, not looking up, "cherry trees are sacred? Haha, I'm sure you did--but there are so many stories. Even if the tree dies, as long as the spirit remains, she can revive it for a time." He pulls out another book, balancing the pen on his upper lip, flipping through the pages. "The real trick is figuring out out who she's looking for. Her tree used to be in Kyoto, near a temple. So! That narrows some things down. Here." Still not looking at Haruka, he pushes a slip of paper over; on it, he's sketched the half-symbol that was on the cherry-tree girl's pendant.
"You're taking this very seriously," he says.
"We've talked for a while," Kantarou replies. "She's been our guest all summer, Haruka. You could say I have an investment in this."
"You?" Haruka examines the breakfast left for him: rice and pickles yet again. There are fewer pickles than there were yesterday. "All it takes is a story like that to get you going? Why aren't you richer, then?"
Kantarou laughs; it's a distracted sound. "I'm very rich, Haruka," he says. He gets to his feet, and there's something peculiar in his smile that Haruka can't quite identify. "Come on! We've got to get to Kyoto by this afternoon."
"Good luck with that," Haruka says.
"Haruka," Kantarou says, his voice sweet. Haruka twitches at the sound of his name and the particular emphasis. "We've got to get to Kyoto. It's faster if we fly, you know." He holds out a hand expectantly; the gesture is a promise that he'll wait at least a minute before making it an explicit command. Haruka eats a pickle and gets to his feet.
"You're lazy and irresponsible," he says. "It's amazing how you've had everyone fooled for years."
Kantarou just laughs. He tucks a book into his sleeve. "Come on, Haruka! Let's get going!"
To his surprise, Kantarou directs him explicitly as they approach the city; he leans in close to Haruka's ear and tells him, voice pitched low under the whistle of the wind, to find a temple surrounded by cherry trees with a single empty patch--that is the place to land. Haruka calls him irresponsible again--the city is full of this sort of thing; wouldn't it be easier to simply land and do their search on foot?
Kantarou's fingers dig into Haruka's shoulders for a moment at that. He says, almost completely unheard, "There'll be only one. And we'll find it."
And, amazingly, they do: it's a smaller temple, looking more like a family-run shrine. Kantarou tells Haruka to land where the empty space is, where the stump of a tree slumps by itself. Kantarou barely glances at it, heading through the trees towards the building itself. Haruka trails more slowly behind; he can hear whispering in the tree branches overhead--the sleepy murmurs of the native spirits, stirring to wakefulness at his passing.
A young man is sweeping the steps of the temple. He looks up at their approach, and his round young face is surprised. "Where did you--"
"Hello!" Kantarou chirps. "We're here to see the head of the temple! If that's not too much trouble!"
The young man blinks hard a few times. He shakes his head. "That'd be my grandfather," he says slowly, "but there's not--I'm sorry, who are you?"
"I just need to ask something," Kantarou says brightly, ignoring the question. He pulls the book from his sleeve and holds it up. "I was asked this as a favor for a friend of mine. I don't suppose you'd recognize this--" He flips through a few pages of the book, then holds the open book up; Haruka sees that he's sketched the symbol from the cherry-tree girl's pendant on the page. The boy looks blank for a moment before recognition dawns; he looks past Kantarou, past Haruka, to the trees behind them. He grips the handle of his broom tightly.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "My grandfather passed away last night."
Kantarou blinks. He looks genuinely taken aback, more so than Haruka can ever remember seeing him. "He what?"
"He'd been sick for a long time," says the young man. "And then, last night ..." He trails off suggestively, and neither he nor Kantarou will look at each other directly.
"Well," Kantarou says eventually. "You still recognized the design, right? So your grandfather did have something that matched." He looks past the young man and at the temple itself, thoughtful. "I think that this friend of mine must have known your grandfather, as well. He's no longer here, but if she is ..."
"Please," the young man says. He is frowning now, staring at Kantarou with something like outright disapproval. "Who are you? You can't just expect to show up out of nowhere and start talking like you have any sort of authority here--who are you, anyway? What do you even want--"
"Haruka," Kantarou says.
And Haruka, well-used to Kantarou's displays and what he likes to use when showing off, sighs and unfurls his wings. He stretches them to their fullest width, shedding feathers carelessly. The young man falls back, his eyes wide and startled, his mouth open in an o. The broom clatters from his hand down the steps. Kantarou crosses his arms and smirks, proud for someone (Haruka thinks) who has done nothing terribly impressive. Still, he stands there, waiting for the young man to finish gaping, and then Kantarou says again, "Do you think you can take a look at what your grandfather kept?"
It turns out to be another necklace, with a matching ceramic pendant, resting upon the breast of the dead man. Kantarou takes it and tucks it away without asking; the young man is still too busy staring at Haruka (who retracts his wings when they go inside--the doorway is too narrow and it's too much trouble to deal with them otherwise) to really protest much.
"You'll get in trouble, taking things from the dead," Haruka says, since the dead man's grandson is too busy gaping to say otherwise. "Don't you know not to take things from the dead?"
"I don't think he'll mind, Haruka," Kantarou says. He turns the pendant over in his hands gently; the edges of the ceramic are well-worn, rubbed down. "It's going to a better place than leaving it behind with his body." He smiles down at the small piece of jewelry, and something in his face is fragile as the blossoms of a cherry tree. "After all, in the end, it's another precious thing to leave to someone important, don't you think?"
Haruka crosses his arms and says nothing. He watches as Kantarou pulls the grandson aside and speaks to him briefly; they leave without any protest from the young man. When they're flying away, leaving the city behind them, he presses his cheek to Haruka's shoulder and his silence is oddly thoughtful.
The cherry-tree girl is waiting for them when they return. Youko is serving her tea (tea-scented water, really, Haruka notes), and looks surprised when she sees them. "Kan-chan! Haruka-chan! Jeeze, where did you two go? Reiko-san came looking, I had to promise her I'd make absolute sure that Kan-chan actually got his work done this time--"
"Oh," says the spirit of the cherry tree. She stares at the pendant that Kantarou produces while Youko is lecturing. She gets to her feet, one hand pressed to her throat and the other outstretched; gently, Kantarou pours the item into her palm. With trembling fingers she pulls the ceramic piece out from under her kimono, and fits the two pieces together. They connect with a soft click.
"I'm sorry," Kantarou says. "By the time we got there, he'd already ..."
She shakes her head. "No," she murmurs. She presses the two connected pieces to her mouth, eyes closed. There are tears on her pale face, but she smiles quietly, beautifully. She was lovely before, Haruka thinks, but now there is an immediacy to her looks; now she looks like a cherry tree that has come into full bloom. It's the sort of beauty that one reads about, rather than ever witnesses directly. "No, it's all right. He kept it--that person always was the impatient sort ..."
"I think he wanted to wait," Kantarou says gently. He reaches out and takes the girl's wrists in his slim hands; there is something that passes between them that Haruka cannot quite decipher. "He tried so hard--I want you to know that. Even knowing that he couldn't stay forever, he--"
She pulls a hand free and lays her finger across his lips. All she says, when he falls silent, is, "Good luck."
A wind picks up out of nowhere, hard enough that even Haruka has to turn his head for a moment. It smells of cherry blossoms.
Something touches his cheek, like cool fingers moving across the rise of bone. In his ear, the cherry-tree spirit whispers.
It's not always such a terrible thing. Even humans, as fleeting as they are, may be treasured like flowers. I regret none of it.
He turns and he looks, and the tree is still blooming, but the girl is gone. Youko and Kantarou are both covered in blossoms; Kantarou is laughing, tucking a twig behind Youko's ear and saying sweet things until she squawks and stomps a foot, blushing red as her furisode. There is a spill of flowers in his pale hair like a crown, and one that is resting in the curl of hair by his cheek, and it reminds Haruka of a scene from weeks before. He is not attractive--he is too small and too pale and too thin, with eyes that are too large and dark with secrets. He is a liar and a cheat and very rarely ever comes clear to anything Haruka asks.
But he is there, and he is warm and breathing and alive--he is there, and he is somehow lovely for it.
Haruka does not look away.
That evening, as Kantarou works on his manuscript (whining and complaining the whole time, though Youko is firm in marching him to his study straight after dinner and hovering until he actually starts putting pen to paper), Haruka brings him tea. Kantarou mumbles a distracted thanks, then pauses when he smells the tea.
"Haruka," he says. "Eh, I thought we didn't have the money for anything new--"
Haruka shrugs. "Youko brought it home with her from work," he says. "If you don't want it, give it to me."
Kantarou takes his cup and almost cuddles it to his chest, protective. He smiles at his reflection, and at the cherry petals that float and flavor the tea. Through the moonlight that streams in through his study's window, he is again that strangely lovely creature he was before. When he looks up to catch Haruka's eyes, his expression is clear and only brightens when Haruka continues to hold his gaze.
"I like it," he says. "Thank you, Haruka."