We Blaze Away
Title: We Blaze Away
Rating: PG-13 (but with a mild almost R scene, but not really?)
Characters/Pairings: Matsumoto Jun/Sakurai Sho
Summary: But you / My brother in arms / I'd rather I'd lose my limbs /
Than let you come to harm
Notes/Warnings: For the Drabble-a-thon at sakumoto that wanted one of them to live forever and the other to have one day left. I sort of kind of tweaked this prompt to my satisfaction though. Lyrics and title from 'The Soldiering Life' by The Decemberists.
19 March 1932
Sho,
Today I’m in Marseilles. You told me not to go until after I read The Count of Monte Cristo - took the ferry they have to the Chateau d’If. I’m sure if you were here you’d have a lot more to tell me. My French was a lot stronger before - too much time in England I suppose. Languages have never been my strong suit, contrary to what some might have thought, huh?
Was in Monte Carlo the other day - won plenty at the Baccarat table - at least enough to finance the rest of my little Riviera tour. Taking in the Mediterranean at every opportunity for you. You’ve never seen water this blue before.
--
“A bunch of us. We’re all in Hertford,” Sho is explaining as they wait for rations to be passed down the line. “Ninomiya’s reading French literature. Think he’d be better suited here with the natives. I can’t speak a lick of it. I took Latin and Greek. And then there was that really nasty period where I thought I’d teach myself Coptic. Mistake. But Nino…you’d like him, Jun, I really think you would.”
He snorts. “Why would I like him?”
“You see things similarly. You’re straightforward. You call things as you see them,” Sho says. “Like minded.”
He doesn’t have the heart to tell Sho that he’d read French literature at Oxford too - just…not all that recently. “I just live every day. I just keep living.”
“That’s a good attitude,” Sho mutters, almost as if he expects to hear the crackling noise of the guns in the distance, mentally preparing himself for the rounds to kick up the loose dirt at the top of the trench and rain it down upon them. “Especially here, mind.”
What Sho doesn’t realize, cannot realize, is that Jun has been here before. It hasn’t always been a trench with a clunky helmet and rubber boots. He’s been on a horse here once, and his uniform had been red. He’s been armed with a longbow, and he’d had chainmail rather than a uniform.
“Not like we get much leave to go into town and get ourselves baguettes,” Jun grumbles as he and Sho open up their ration tins with the utility knives in their kits.
“Maybe our German friends will give us a break one of these days.” Sho’s devouring his food. For all that he seems to come from good standing, he isn’t terribly fussy about his meals. Jun supposes three months at the front would change any man’s habits.
--
26 December 1947
Sho,
Today is Boxing Day, although I’m rather far from anyone celebrating it. Okay, well, the locals don’t exactly whoop it up - just the folks in charge. You won’t believe me when I tell you, but I’m in British East Africa. Well, Kenya - they changed the name over twenty years ago, you see.
I’ve found myself a couple local boys who assure me that there’s absolutely no chance I’ll make it to the top, but they’ll lead me anyhow. People suffocate and die all the time in foolhardy expeditions. But the Matterhorn gave me no trouble - Kilimanjaro will take a little longer, but I’ve got a bit of an advantage others don’t, haha.
You told me about the grasslands and the wonderful creatures. I’ve seen them, Sho, and they are remarkable. Zebras and giraffes and elephants, and they aren’t in cages. There’s a big game hunter down here by the name of Masaki. He gets along with the natives far better than anyone I’ve encountered. Took down a rhino last week - you’d have pissed yourself, surely.
Wish you could join me. I’ll plant a flag for you at the summit, how’s that?
--
It’s dark, and even lighting up a cigarette’s a bad idea. Any light’s just asking for the guns to fire. A man the other night had gotten a little stir crazy, clambered out of the trench to light up. He’d been torn to shreds. Jun itches for a smoke, but machine guns hurt, and prying every twisted bit of metal from his flesh takes a horribly painful eternity.
He’ll go without.
Sho is huddled beside him, and much as Jun has never cared to have anyone sit within his personal space, (why bother getting attached?) it’s different with Sho there. Because Sho is intelligent and generous and kind, if a bit strange from time to time. Sho is obsessed with geography and with traveling, although he’s never been away from England until now. Everything Sho knows comes from books, and Jun wants to take him everywhere. Which isn’t the most practical when they have a war to fight.
“Africa,” Sho tells the filthy sleeve of Jun’s uniform jacket. “I think I’d like to go to Africa.”
“Why don’t you then?” he shoots back, hoping that the man isn’t drooling on him in his half-sleeping, half-waking state. They have patrol in an hour.
Sho tells him everything he knows about Africa, and as a hard rain falls on their heads, Jun breaks his self-imposed rules and reaches for the man’s hand in the darkness. Sho tells him about mountains and elevations and topography. Jun has had a hundred lifetimes to learn, and he hasn’t made much effort - Sho is changing him.
“We’ll climb that mountain. Kilimanjaro. We’ll climb it together.”
Sho laughs, quieter than he probably would have liked. “I think not. You know how high that is?”
Jun chuckles too, squeezing Sho’s fingers, finding warmth there that he doesn’t think he’s ever known. “Afraid of heights?”
Sho nods, and their helmets bop one another. “You won’t hold it against me?”
They survived the charge that morning and the one before it. Sho’s brave - he’s able to clamber over the top and race at the enemy’s guns when the order’s called down the line. And unlike Jun, each charge might be Sho’s last. He lifts Sho’s hand to his lips, tasting the all-too familiar dirt of their trench as he brushes a kiss to Sho’s knuckles.
“No, I won’t hold it against you.”
--
6 June 1967
Sho,
I don’t like fishing. Maybe I just don’t have the patience for it, and they say there’s going to be a typhoon one of these days, and so we’re heading back for Kuala Lumpur once we pull in the next catch. I remember the first time you told me that name that I laughed and didn’t believe you. I’ve had time to come here, a lot of time, but there was no need to before.
I’m earning money so I can get up to Japan. The captain’s from there, and he says that the fishing here is more fun than up there. He’s an interesting guy. His English is about as passable as my Japanese, so we don’t talk much. But still, he’s a good teacher, patient with me even though I ruined one of his nicest reels trying to pull in something I wasn’t ready for. I think he’s just happy to have someone out with him.
You won’t believe me, but I wake up every day and I say “Japan!” because that’s where I need to be. I need to be there for you, and I don’t care how much these damn fish stink, but I’m going to get there.
--
Jun’s surprised that he’s not the one to initiate their first kiss. They’re dragging a few fallen men through the trenches, getting them out of the way, the bodies leaking life as they get them off to the ambulance ranks so they can be buried.
Sho has blood on his chapped, cracked hands when they grasp Jun's face to join their mouths. They’re just out of sight, on the other side of the Red Cross ambulance before they head back to their positions. He wants this, more than he’s ever wanted anything. Just before they put on their gas masks that afternoon, Sho had been telling him about Japan and how they eat raw fish there and call it a delicacy.
Jun can smell the ambulance's motor oil, can smell blood and death all around, but he can taste Sho, can feel Sho’s chilly skin under his fingers as he desperately reaches under the man’s jacket. “I don’t know what I’d do if you died,” Sho’s panting. “I can’t bear this much longer, I can’t.”
He moans as Sho’s reaching for his belt, into his uniform trousers. There’ll be more men on stretchers, men being carried, and they’ll be there in moments, but Sho won’t stop, can’t stop, and Jun can’t control his hips, bucking against Sho’s hand.
“Don’t know what I’d do,” Sho’s crying. “Please, Jun, we have to go together.”
“We will…I…” But he can’t finish his sentence, gasping as he comes in Sho’s palm. He’s shuddering, losing his breaths in Sho’s mouth. He lets it slip. “I can’t die, Sho.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” and he feels Sho’s tears on his own face.
“You don’t understand,” he says, grasping Sho by his shoulders, desperate to stay upright. “I can’t die.”
Sho just stares at him until the next bunch of dead are brought ‘round, and they have to break apart.
Sho believes in Machu Picchu and giant heads on Easter Island and the holy river Ganges in India, but Jun is not something Sho could have learned in one of his books back home in Leicester. Sho leads the way back to the line and their rifles and their ration tins, and Jun can only follow.
--
2 September 1991
Sho,
You’d be impressed with how quickly I’m picking up the language here. No amount of eating raw fish is going to make me like it here though. It’s so cramped. There are people everywhere, the walls are thin in this apartment block, and I get the distinct impression that the landlady despises me on account of being foreign.
I’m teaching English at a school in sight of Tokyo Tower. You probably don’t know what that is - they built that in the 50’s after all. It’s really quite impressive - slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower. Do you remember when I was in Paris? That seems like ages ago - I think de Gaulle had just been elected. I kind of like Tokyo Tower better.
I may not like Japan especially much, but I think you would. If you could see all the lights and the traffic and the cherry blossoms in the spring, I think you’d be happy here.
--
They’re in Belgium. It’s October 1917, and they’re fighting in swampland, marshland, whatever it is, he feels the mud in his boots. They aren’t making any headway - they’ve been fighting over this patch of marsh for months, and this morning starts as any other.
He’s running, bayonet affixed to the end of his rifle, and he hears the shots and he knows he’s been hit, can see the holes smoking in his jacket. But he’s still running and screaming just like the others until he sees Sho fall just ahead of him. They’ve been fighting side by side for two years. Sho can’t fall. Jun doesn’t know how to process what he’s seeing. The rest keep charging forward, but Jun stops, hauling Sho behind what might have been a tree at some point.
“No,” he’s sputtering as he sees the holes in Sho’s own jacket. “No, Jesus, no.”
Sho’s lips are quivering, and there’s already blood trickling at the corner of his mouth. “Jun? Jun, I…I can’t move my legs, Jun.”
There’s a mortar fired, and it lands close, and he throws himself over Sho with a frustrated scream as the dirt flies.
“Sho…Sho, I can’t do this without you. Sho, please,” he’s begging, he’s crying as Sho’s eyes start to get hazy. “Talk to me. Tell me something, tell me anything. Tell me where I need to go. Tell me where we’re going together. Tell me about the pyramids again, won’t you?”
He reaches for Sho’s field dressing, gets his own out, but when he pulls open Sho’s jacket, he knows there’s not enough bandaging. He’s been in battles for centuries since he had nothing better to occupy his time. He knows when a man won’t make it back to the line, no matter what year it is.
“Jun? Jun, you’re still here?”
“I’m here. I’m here with you,” he says, still trying to patch up the holes. There’s too many holes, too many wounds marring the body he’s been next to for so long.
--
11 November 2010
Sho,
It’s Remembrance Day today. You’re impossible to forget.
I don’t know why it took me so long to come here. Did you know that the house you grew up in might become an English Heritage site now? I bet you’d like that. They’d print it in books (or on the internet!) and future generations would know about it. Your family’s still living here - I think you’ve got great-great nieces and nephews? I didn’t really pry. How could I introduce myself, right?
--
Sho’s bleeding out, and there’s nothing Jun can do. He can get up and live. He can live forever, but he can’t have Sho. He has to let Sho go.
He’s holding Sho’s hand as he’s slipping away, going somewhere without pain, without trenches, without mustard gas. Sho’s going somewhere that Jun can never go.
“I’m going to visit them all,” he tells Sho. “Every single place you mentioned.”
“It hurts.”
“I know it does,” he says, not sure if Sho can even hear him over the sound of gunfire.
--
England’s different, but I’ve seen it change. I fought with the House of Lancaster you know. Well, you probably didn’t know. I don’t think you ever believed me, did you? Don’t worry, I’m not offended. I never have been.
--
“Tell me,” he begs Sho, begs him to stay for just a second longer. “Tell me where I should go. Where do you want to go? I’ll go in your place. I’ll go to them all, I promise. I swear to you.”
Sho’s crying. “I want to go home.”
--
I’m going to Belgium tomorrow, to Passchendaele - taking a train through the Channel Tunnel. You remember me telling you they built a tunnel under there, right? I figure it’s busy today, so tomorrow I can drop some flowers off for you properly.
--
He has Sho’s life in his hands, all over his hands. “Don’t go,” Jun says, knowing it’s completely selfish and futile of him to beg this from Sho. “Please don’t go without me.”
Maybe if he charges the German line, the guns will tear his body apart. Leave nothing left that can keep going. Make it so it’s impossible.
“Promise me you’ll live forever,” Sho manages to gasp out, almost laughing. “You say you can’t die. So don’t, alright?”
The one request Jun doesn’t want - the one request he has no choice but to fulfill. “I promise…Sho, I promise you I…”
But he’s already gone as the airplanes fly overhead, raining down .
--
5 February 2317
I miss you every day, Sho. I love you.
And I’m keeping my promise.
Rating: PG-13 (but with a mild almost R scene, but not really?)
Characters/Pairings: Matsumoto Jun/Sakurai Sho
Summary: But you / My brother in arms / I'd rather I'd lose my limbs /
Than let you come to harm
Notes/Warnings: For the Drabble-a-thon at sakumoto that wanted one of them to live forever and the other to have one day left. I sort of kind of tweaked this prompt to my satisfaction though. Lyrics and title from 'The Soldiering Life' by The Decemberists.
19 March 1932
Sho,
Today I’m in Marseilles. You told me not to go until after I read The Count of Monte Cristo - took the ferry they have to the Chateau d’If. I’m sure if you were here you’d have a lot more to tell me. My French was a lot stronger before - too much time in England I suppose. Languages have never been my strong suit, contrary to what some might have thought, huh?
Was in Monte Carlo the other day - won plenty at the Baccarat table - at least enough to finance the rest of my little Riviera tour. Taking in the Mediterranean at every opportunity for you. You’ve never seen water this blue before.
--
“A bunch of us. We’re all in Hertford,” Sho is explaining as they wait for rations to be passed down the line. “Ninomiya’s reading French literature. Think he’d be better suited here with the natives. I can’t speak a lick of it. I took Latin and Greek. And then there was that really nasty period where I thought I’d teach myself Coptic. Mistake. But Nino…you’d like him, Jun, I really think you would.”
He snorts. “Why would I like him?”
“You see things similarly. You’re straightforward. You call things as you see them,” Sho says. “Like minded.”
He doesn’t have the heart to tell Sho that he’d read French literature at Oxford too - just…not all that recently. “I just live every day. I just keep living.”
“That’s a good attitude,” Sho mutters, almost as if he expects to hear the crackling noise of the guns in the distance, mentally preparing himself for the rounds to kick up the loose dirt at the top of the trench and rain it down upon them. “Especially here, mind.”
What Sho doesn’t realize, cannot realize, is that Jun has been here before. It hasn’t always been a trench with a clunky helmet and rubber boots. He’s been on a horse here once, and his uniform had been red. He’s been armed with a longbow, and he’d had chainmail rather than a uniform.
“Not like we get much leave to go into town and get ourselves baguettes,” Jun grumbles as he and Sho open up their ration tins with the utility knives in their kits.
“Maybe our German friends will give us a break one of these days.” Sho’s devouring his food. For all that he seems to come from good standing, he isn’t terribly fussy about his meals. Jun supposes three months at the front would change any man’s habits.
--
26 December 1947
Sho,
Today is Boxing Day, although I’m rather far from anyone celebrating it. Okay, well, the locals don’t exactly whoop it up - just the folks in charge. You won’t believe me when I tell you, but I’m in British East Africa. Well, Kenya - they changed the name over twenty years ago, you see.
I’ve found myself a couple local boys who assure me that there’s absolutely no chance I’ll make it to the top, but they’ll lead me anyhow. People suffocate and die all the time in foolhardy expeditions. But the Matterhorn gave me no trouble - Kilimanjaro will take a little longer, but I’ve got a bit of an advantage others don’t, haha.
You told me about the grasslands and the wonderful creatures. I’ve seen them, Sho, and they are remarkable. Zebras and giraffes and elephants, and they aren’t in cages. There’s a big game hunter down here by the name of Masaki. He gets along with the natives far better than anyone I’ve encountered. Took down a rhino last week - you’d have pissed yourself, surely.
Wish you could join me. I’ll plant a flag for you at the summit, how’s that?
--
It’s dark, and even lighting up a cigarette’s a bad idea. Any light’s just asking for the guns to fire. A man the other night had gotten a little stir crazy, clambered out of the trench to light up. He’d been torn to shreds. Jun itches for a smoke, but machine guns hurt, and prying every twisted bit of metal from his flesh takes a horribly painful eternity.
He’ll go without.
Sho is huddled beside him, and much as Jun has never cared to have anyone sit within his personal space, (why bother getting attached?) it’s different with Sho there. Because Sho is intelligent and generous and kind, if a bit strange from time to time. Sho is obsessed with geography and with traveling, although he’s never been away from England until now. Everything Sho knows comes from books, and Jun wants to take him everywhere. Which isn’t the most practical when they have a war to fight.
“Africa,” Sho tells the filthy sleeve of Jun’s uniform jacket. “I think I’d like to go to Africa.”
“Why don’t you then?” he shoots back, hoping that the man isn’t drooling on him in his half-sleeping, half-waking state. They have patrol in an hour.
Sho tells him everything he knows about Africa, and as a hard rain falls on their heads, Jun breaks his self-imposed rules and reaches for the man’s hand in the darkness. Sho tells him about mountains and elevations and topography. Jun has had a hundred lifetimes to learn, and he hasn’t made much effort - Sho is changing him.
“We’ll climb that mountain. Kilimanjaro. We’ll climb it together.”
Sho laughs, quieter than he probably would have liked. “I think not. You know how high that is?”
Jun chuckles too, squeezing Sho’s fingers, finding warmth there that he doesn’t think he’s ever known. “Afraid of heights?”
Sho nods, and their helmets bop one another. “You won’t hold it against me?”
They survived the charge that morning and the one before it. Sho’s brave - he’s able to clamber over the top and race at the enemy’s guns when the order’s called down the line. And unlike Jun, each charge might be Sho’s last. He lifts Sho’s hand to his lips, tasting the all-too familiar dirt of their trench as he brushes a kiss to Sho’s knuckles.
“No, I won’t hold it against you.”
--
6 June 1967
Sho,
I don’t like fishing. Maybe I just don’t have the patience for it, and they say there’s going to be a typhoon one of these days, and so we’re heading back for Kuala Lumpur once we pull in the next catch. I remember the first time you told me that name that I laughed and didn’t believe you. I’ve had time to come here, a lot of time, but there was no need to before.
I’m earning money so I can get up to Japan. The captain’s from there, and he says that the fishing here is more fun than up there. He’s an interesting guy. His English is about as passable as my Japanese, so we don’t talk much. But still, he’s a good teacher, patient with me even though I ruined one of his nicest reels trying to pull in something I wasn’t ready for. I think he’s just happy to have someone out with him.
You won’t believe me, but I wake up every day and I say “Japan!” because that’s where I need to be. I need to be there for you, and I don’t care how much these damn fish stink, but I’m going to get there.
--
Jun’s surprised that he’s not the one to initiate their first kiss. They’re dragging a few fallen men through the trenches, getting them out of the way, the bodies leaking life as they get them off to the ambulance ranks so they can be buried.
Sho has blood on his chapped, cracked hands when they grasp Jun's face to join their mouths. They’re just out of sight, on the other side of the Red Cross ambulance before they head back to their positions. He wants this, more than he’s ever wanted anything. Just before they put on their gas masks that afternoon, Sho had been telling him about Japan and how they eat raw fish there and call it a delicacy.
Jun can smell the ambulance's motor oil, can smell blood and death all around, but he can taste Sho, can feel Sho’s chilly skin under his fingers as he desperately reaches under the man’s jacket. “I don’t know what I’d do if you died,” Sho’s panting. “I can’t bear this much longer, I can’t.”
He moans as Sho’s reaching for his belt, into his uniform trousers. There’ll be more men on stretchers, men being carried, and they’ll be there in moments, but Sho won’t stop, can’t stop, and Jun can’t control his hips, bucking against Sho’s hand.
“Don’t know what I’d do,” Sho’s crying. “Please, Jun, we have to go together.”
“We will…I…” But he can’t finish his sentence, gasping as he comes in Sho’s palm. He’s shuddering, losing his breaths in Sho’s mouth. He lets it slip. “I can’t die, Sho.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” and he feels Sho’s tears on his own face.
“You don’t understand,” he says, grasping Sho by his shoulders, desperate to stay upright. “I can’t die.”
Sho just stares at him until the next bunch of dead are brought ‘round, and they have to break apart.
Sho believes in Machu Picchu and giant heads on Easter Island and the holy river Ganges in India, but Jun is not something Sho could have learned in one of his books back home in Leicester. Sho leads the way back to the line and their rifles and their ration tins, and Jun can only follow.
--
2 September 1991
Sho,
You’d be impressed with how quickly I’m picking up the language here. No amount of eating raw fish is going to make me like it here though. It’s so cramped. There are people everywhere, the walls are thin in this apartment block, and I get the distinct impression that the landlady despises me on account of being foreign.
I’m teaching English at a school in sight of Tokyo Tower. You probably don’t know what that is - they built that in the 50’s after all. It’s really quite impressive - slightly taller than the Eiffel Tower. Do you remember when I was in Paris? That seems like ages ago - I think de Gaulle had just been elected. I kind of like Tokyo Tower better.
I may not like Japan especially much, but I think you would. If you could see all the lights and the traffic and the cherry blossoms in the spring, I think you’d be happy here.
--
They’re in Belgium. It’s October 1917, and they’re fighting in swampland, marshland, whatever it is, he feels the mud in his boots. They aren’t making any headway - they’ve been fighting over this patch of marsh for months, and this morning starts as any other.
He’s running, bayonet affixed to the end of his rifle, and he hears the shots and he knows he’s been hit, can see the holes smoking in his jacket. But he’s still running and screaming just like the others until he sees Sho fall just ahead of him. They’ve been fighting side by side for two years. Sho can’t fall. Jun doesn’t know how to process what he’s seeing. The rest keep charging forward, but Jun stops, hauling Sho behind what might have been a tree at some point.
“No,” he’s sputtering as he sees the holes in Sho’s own jacket. “No, Jesus, no.”
Sho’s lips are quivering, and there’s already blood trickling at the corner of his mouth. “Jun? Jun, I…I can’t move my legs, Jun.”
There’s a mortar fired, and it lands close, and he throws himself over Sho with a frustrated scream as the dirt flies.
“Sho…Sho, I can’t do this without you. Sho, please,” he’s begging, he’s crying as Sho’s eyes start to get hazy. “Talk to me. Tell me something, tell me anything. Tell me where I need to go. Tell me where we’re going together. Tell me about the pyramids again, won’t you?”
He reaches for Sho’s field dressing, gets his own out, but when he pulls open Sho’s jacket, he knows there’s not enough bandaging. He’s been in battles for centuries since he had nothing better to occupy his time. He knows when a man won’t make it back to the line, no matter what year it is.
“Jun? Jun, you’re still here?”
“I’m here. I’m here with you,” he says, still trying to patch up the holes. There’s too many holes, too many wounds marring the body he’s been next to for so long.
--
11 November 2010
Sho,
It’s Remembrance Day today. You’re impossible to forget.
I don’t know why it took me so long to come here. Did you know that the house you grew up in might become an English Heritage site now? I bet you’d like that. They’d print it in books (or on the internet!) and future generations would know about it. Your family’s still living here - I think you’ve got great-great nieces and nephews? I didn’t really pry. How could I introduce myself, right?
--
Sho’s bleeding out, and there’s nothing Jun can do. He can get up and live. He can live forever, but he can’t have Sho. He has to let Sho go.
He’s holding Sho’s hand as he’s slipping away, going somewhere without pain, without trenches, without mustard gas. Sho’s going somewhere that Jun can never go.
“I’m going to visit them all,” he tells Sho. “Every single place you mentioned.”
“It hurts.”
“I know it does,” he says, not sure if Sho can even hear him over the sound of gunfire.
--
England’s different, but I’ve seen it change. I fought with the House of Lancaster you know. Well, you probably didn’t know. I don’t think you ever believed me, did you? Don’t worry, I’m not offended. I never have been.
--
“Tell me,” he begs Sho, begs him to stay for just a second longer. “Tell me where I should go. Where do you want to go? I’ll go in your place. I’ll go to them all, I promise. I swear to you.”
Sho’s crying. “I want to go home.”
--
I’m going to Belgium tomorrow, to Passchendaele - taking a train through the Channel Tunnel. You remember me telling you they built a tunnel under there, right? I figure it’s busy today, so tomorrow I can drop some flowers off for you properly.
--
He has Sho’s life in his hands, all over his hands. “Don’t go,” Jun says, knowing it’s completely selfish and futile of him to beg this from Sho. “Please don’t go without me.”
Maybe if he charges the German line, the guns will tear his body apart. Leave nothing left that can keep going. Make it so it’s impossible.
“Promise me you’ll live forever,” Sho manages to gasp out, almost laughing. “You say you can’t die. So don’t, alright?”
The one request Jun doesn’t want - the one request he has no choice but to fulfill. “I promise…Sho, I promise you I…”
But he’s already gone as the airplanes fly overhead, raining down .
--
5 February 2317
I miss you every day, Sho. I love you.
And I’m keeping my promise.