[fic] Matsumiya - Remember You Always (part2)
And part2 of Remember You Always, because apparently the post is too big~
Remember You Always
Pairings: Ninomiya Kazunari/Matsumoto Jun, Aiba Masaki/Matsumoto Jun (one-sided)
Rating: PG
Genre: AU, Romance, Friendship
Word count: 5.606
Summary: He will always remember him, always and forever.
“Who are you?”
Jun would ask me the same question everyday when I came to visit him at the hospital and I had to keep myself from crying and breaking down in front of him. I didn’t want to scare him more than he already was. Jun was scared enough that he couldn’t remember anything, I didn’t want to add to his burden.
“I’m nobody.” I would answer everytime. “Just someone who cares about you.”
Jun would look at me with confused eyes and I would smile reassuringly at him. I would introduce myself like how I did before when we first met fifteen years ago. I couldn’t cry just because Jun didn’t remember me. I had to be strong for him, to be there for him always, telling him to keep on fighting for his life, telling him that I’m always there if he ever needed me and that he would always have me by his side. Jun might not remember me but I remembered him and that’s enough. It had to be enough.
That morning everything was unusually silent. No nurses coming to Jun’s room to check on him, Sakurai-sensei didn’t show up that day also. I wondered why.
I chuckled to myself as I watched Jun’s sleeping form in front of me.
Of course I knew. I just didn’t want to admit the truth, because when I admitted it that means I had to admit that I’m going to lose Jun soon. It’s been four long months since Jun forgot everything, his parents wouldn’t come because they were afraid that their son wouldn’t recognize them so they left Jun on my care, and Jun’s fight finally came to an end.
Last night, Jun had another panic attack and he almost lost his life and I almost lost the chance to say my last greeting to him. As if it was a miracle, Jun managed to survive. We all knew that the miracle would not last long though. Jun had struggle long enough to live, his brain had deteriorated to a state that no one could ever imagine, his skin had turned so pale, his eyes lost their light and his body was growing weaker and weaker each day.
I touched Jun’s cheek fondly, lovingly, willing him to wake up so that I could see him for the last time before he was taken away from me. Jun did wake up and I smiled at him.
“Kazu?”
I froze. It’s the first time I heard my name coming out of his mouth after so long. I never told him my name because it hurt when the next day he would ask me the same question again and again, “Who are you?”, and I couldn’t take the blow so I refused to tell him my name. He never remembered anyway.
But this time he called my name like how he used to and I willed myself to look at him in the eyes and found the recognition there. He knew who I was.
“Jun.” I said. And he smiled, such a beautiful smile that was full of love and understanding.
“Kazu, I’m sorry.” He was still smiling and I couldn’t help but smile back despite the tears flowing down my cheeks. “And I love you.”
“I love you too, Jun.” I said back to him. I stood up from the chair I previously seated on to give him a kiss on the forehead. “And now you can go back to sleep. Your fight is over, Jun. You don’t have to suffer anymore.”
Jun closed his eyes forever at the age of 28 with a smile on his face. And in the end what kept me holding on was that he remembered me before he let out his last breath. He remembered me before he closed his eyes forever.
It was three years after I lost Jun that I could finally go back to my normal routine life. I dated girls and went out to have some fun because I knew Jun would hate me if I kept on being sad. I tried to be happy as hard as I could before I decided that it was enough. I went back to Chiba to open another flower shop because Jun loved Chiba and flowers, though he would have never admitted it out loud.
Maybe because I used the same name of my previous flower shop that made Aiba come to visit men at the shop. (“The name would be ‘Arashi’ and it’s final”, Jun had said before when we were still deciding on the name for our flower shop back then when we first moved to Chiba and I couldn’t change it because it was Jun who chose the name).
I greeted him, and when he asked whether he remembered me I answered, with a little bit of sarcasm, “How could I forget?”, which made him flinched. I wanted to add “I would never forget the man who broke Jun’s heart that make me lost him in the end” but decided against it. That was too cruel. Aiba didn’t know about Jun’s illness and I shouldn’t be lashing out my anger at him. So with a smile I invited him inside the flower shop.
“Where is he?”, was the first thing that came out of his mouth when he stepped into the flower shop and didn’t see Jun sitting on the counter like usual.
“He’s no longer here.” I said to him as I guided him to sit on the chair near the counter.
“What do you mean he’s no longer here? He works here with you, right?”
I could detect a slight panic in his voice and I decided to take pity on him.
“Jun’s no longer working here.” I said as I sipped my tea. It’s hot. I put it back on the table to cool it down as I explained everything to him. “He was dead three years ago.”
I saw him froze as he stared at me. “What- What do you mean?”
I sighed. How many times should I explain this to him before he could understand? “Jun was dead, Aiba-san. He went to somewhere far away that both of us couldn’t reach.”
There was silence following my statement and I was content enough with the silence. I blew at my tea and sipped it little by little. It’s still a bit hot but it’s nothing that I couldn’t endure. I had endured the greatest pain - losing my most important person in my life, and I was still alive, so enduring a little bit pain from sipping a too hot tea was nothing to me.
I was taking another sip of my tea when Aiba finally decided to speak again.
“What happen?”
“Alzheimer.” I shrugged nonchalantly as if it was nothing. “He suffered from brain’s damage that caused him to lose his memory and also the control of his body. He died smiling though, so you don’t have to feel guilty. He didn’t remember you after all, or the fact that you had rejected him so cruelly through the phone.”
“I didn’t mean to reject him.” He said softly, his voice was just above whisper but I could hear it nonetheless. “I was jealous and I was hurt, so I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt me.”
“What does that mean?”
Aiba laughed, but he didn’t seem happy at all. “All he talked about when we were together was you. It was always about you. Kazu this or Kazu that. You are so important to him to the point that he couldn’t live without you. He loved you but he didn’t even realize it.”
My breath hitched. Jun was always talking about me? Jun loved me?
“But I didn’t tell him what I’ve discovered because I didn’t want to lose him either.” Aiba continued. “That’s why I asked him to go on a date. I was planning to confess to him and then take him away from you. Maybe that way he would forget about you. But then, I saw you two hugging and kissing from outside the flower shop when I wanted to give him a surprise by picking him up for our date.”
“It was our ritual.” I answered automatically. My brain was still fuzzy from the information I’ve just heard. Jun loved me? And I didn’t know that? “It meant nothing.”
Aiba laughed again, bitterly this time. “If it means nothing then he wouldn’t look at you with longing in his eyes when you kissed him, like he wanted you to never let him go. That was when I knew that I wouldn’t stand a chance. My heart hurt, it hurt so much I couldn’t bear it I had to hurt him back.”
I had to grip on the table to steady myself. Jun loved me, and I never suspected anything all this time. Jun himself might not have been conscious about it but I should have known about it, I should have seen it.
I remembered how Jun would always say that he wouldn’t want to forget me no matter what, after his first panic attack that caused him to lose some of his memory. He remembered me in the end, he always remembered me, and that was his vow to me from the very first day when I told him that I would always be there for him.
“You are the only one who I would always remember Kazu. I might forget a little, but in the end, I will always remember you. I’ll remember you always.”
And how stupid I was to never take Jun’s vow seriously?
I sent Aiba out of the shop with the promise that I would take him to visit Jun’s grave the next time I went there. After that I closed the shop and let myself break down and cry. Just this time, only for this one time, until all I could see was Jun and his smile.
I was standing in front of Jun’s grave long after Aiba had gone home. He brought his friend with him, a quiet and nice man named Ohno Satoshi, and told me that he had tried to build a relationship with his friend after he realized that Ohno had a feeling for him. I cheered him, I wanted him to take every chance he got so that he wouldn’t regret anything. He smiled at me and said that he would, and he said his last goodbye to Jun.
I turned to look at Jun’s smiling face on the photo that I put on his grave. He was so beautiful smiling like that and Aiba had said that he would never forget Jun for the rest of his life. He carried the guilt over what he had done to Jun forever with him, for taking the smile from Jun’s face. I had said to him that he shouldn’t think much about it, we had to move on, but Aiba only smiled at me with that sad face that told me he could never forgive himself even if Jun had forgiven him.
I kneeled down in front of Jun’s grave and touched Jun’s face on the photo. When was this taken? When we graduated from high school? How long had that been?
I smiled as I lost myself in the memories of our past days. I looked at Jun’s smiling face and I knew that I could never forget this smile.
“I’ll remember you always too, Jun.” I vowed. “I’ll remember you always, even in our next life.”
That’s my vow, for now and forever.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
“I’m Ninomiya Kazunari.” I greeted the boy cheerily. “And this boy next to me is my brother.” I dragged the unwilling junior boy that I knew in Johnny’s Jimusho to stand beside me.
The boy in front of me frowned cutely as he stared at me and the junior beside me, clearly not believing what I told him. He was searching for the resemblance between me and the junior next to me but gave up a moment later when he couldn’t find any at all. He shrugged his shoulder.
“Oh.”
I grinned. The boy obviously didn’t believe me but that’s not the point. My point was to talk to him and my plan worked. I had this stupid urge to talk to this boy when I saw him from across the practice room as he stood awkwardly at the corner of the room watching the other practicing their dance move. So I made up lies so that I could talk to him. I knew it’s really silly but it didn’t occur to me at that time. I wanted to talk to him and I’d do anything to accomplish my goal, even if I had to lie to him. In the future he would mock me about it, about me lying to him and then completely forgetting about my own lie the next day we talked.
“I’m Ninomiya Kazunari.” I repeated my introduction as I realized that he hadn’t given me his name. “You can call me Kazu, though.”
The boy smiled at me and at that time I felt something in my chest that I ignored until way later when we had grown up and when I finally understand why my heart was always beating so fast whenever he was near.
“I’m Matsumoto Jun. Nice to meet you.”
I smiled back at him. “Nice to meet you too, Jun.”
“I’ll never forget about you, Kazu. Just you that I would never forget.”
“Really? Then I guess I have to stay by your side forever, huh?”
“I guess so. You are stuck with me.”
“You don’t see me complaining.”
He laughed, and it was music to my ears. “I love you, Kazu. And I’ll remember you always.”
“I love you too, Jun.” I said. “And I’ll remember you always too.”
Remember You Always
Pairings: Ninomiya Kazunari/Matsumoto Jun, Aiba Masaki/Matsumoto Jun (one-sided)
Rating: PG
Genre: AU, Romance, Friendship
Word count: 5.606
Summary: He will always remember him, always and forever.
“Who are you?”
Jun would ask me the same question everyday when I came to visit him at the hospital and I had to keep myself from crying and breaking down in front of him. I didn’t want to scare him more than he already was. Jun was scared enough that he couldn’t remember anything, I didn’t want to add to his burden.
“I’m nobody.” I would answer everytime. “Just someone who cares about you.”
Jun would look at me with confused eyes and I would smile reassuringly at him. I would introduce myself like how I did before when we first met fifteen years ago. I couldn’t cry just because Jun didn’t remember me. I had to be strong for him, to be there for him always, telling him to keep on fighting for his life, telling him that I’m always there if he ever needed me and that he would always have me by his side. Jun might not remember me but I remembered him and that’s enough. It had to be enough.
That morning everything was unusually silent. No nurses coming to Jun’s room to check on him, Sakurai-sensei didn’t show up that day also. I wondered why.
I chuckled to myself as I watched Jun’s sleeping form in front of me.
Of course I knew. I just didn’t want to admit the truth, because when I admitted it that means I had to admit that I’m going to lose Jun soon. It’s been four long months since Jun forgot everything, his parents wouldn’t come because they were afraid that their son wouldn’t recognize them so they left Jun on my care, and Jun’s fight finally came to an end.
Last night, Jun had another panic attack and he almost lost his life and I almost lost the chance to say my last greeting to him. As if it was a miracle, Jun managed to survive. We all knew that the miracle would not last long though. Jun had struggle long enough to live, his brain had deteriorated to a state that no one could ever imagine, his skin had turned so pale, his eyes lost their light and his body was growing weaker and weaker each day.
I touched Jun’s cheek fondly, lovingly, willing him to wake up so that I could see him for the last time before he was taken away from me. Jun did wake up and I smiled at him.
“Kazu?”
I froze. It’s the first time I heard my name coming out of his mouth after so long. I never told him my name because it hurt when the next day he would ask me the same question again and again, “Who are you?”, and I couldn’t take the blow so I refused to tell him my name. He never remembered anyway.
But this time he called my name like how he used to and I willed myself to look at him in the eyes and found the recognition there. He knew who I was.
“Jun.” I said. And he smiled, such a beautiful smile that was full of love and understanding.
“Kazu, I’m sorry.” He was still smiling and I couldn’t help but smile back despite the tears flowing down my cheeks. “And I love you.”
“I love you too, Jun.” I said back to him. I stood up from the chair I previously seated on to give him a kiss on the forehead. “And now you can go back to sleep. Your fight is over, Jun. You don’t have to suffer anymore.”
Jun closed his eyes forever at the age of 28 with a smile on his face. And in the end what kept me holding on was that he remembered me before he let out his last breath. He remembered me before he closed his eyes forever.
It was three years after I lost Jun that I could finally go back to my normal routine life. I dated girls and went out to have some fun because I knew Jun would hate me if I kept on being sad. I tried to be happy as hard as I could before I decided that it was enough. I went back to Chiba to open another flower shop because Jun loved Chiba and flowers, though he would have never admitted it out loud.
Maybe because I used the same name of my previous flower shop that made Aiba come to visit men at the shop. (“The name would be ‘Arashi’ and it’s final”, Jun had said before when we were still deciding on the name for our flower shop back then when we first moved to Chiba and I couldn’t change it because it was Jun who chose the name).
I greeted him, and when he asked whether he remembered me I answered, with a little bit of sarcasm, “How could I forget?”, which made him flinched. I wanted to add “I would never forget the man who broke Jun’s heart that make me lost him in the end” but decided against it. That was too cruel. Aiba didn’t know about Jun’s illness and I shouldn’t be lashing out my anger at him. So with a smile I invited him inside the flower shop.
“Where is he?”, was the first thing that came out of his mouth when he stepped into the flower shop and didn’t see Jun sitting on the counter like usual.
“He’s no longer here.” I said to him as I guided him to sit on the chair near the counter.
“What do you mean he’s no longer here? He works here with you, right?”
I could detect a slight panic in his voice and I decided to take pity on him.
“Jun’s no longer working here.” I said as I sipped my tea. It’s hot. I put it back on the table to cool it down as I explained everything to him. “He was dead three years ago.”
I saw him froze as he stared at me. “What- What do you mean?”
I sighed. How many times should I explain this to him before he could understand? “Jun was dead, Aiba-san. He went to somewhere far away that both of us couldn’t reach.”
There was silence following my statement and I was content enough with the silence. I blew at my tea and sipped it little by little. It’s still a bit hot but it’s nothing that I couldn’t endure. I had endured the greatest pain - losing my most important person in my life, and I was still alive, so enduring a little bit pain from sipping a too hot tea was nothing to me.
I was taking another sip of my tea when Aiba finally decided to speak again.
“What happen?”
“Alzheimer.” I shrugged nonchalantly as if it was nothing. “He suffered from brain’s damage that caused him to lose his memory and also the control of his body. He died smiling though, so you don’t have to feel guilty. He didn’t remember you after all, or the fact that you had rejected him so cruelly through the phone.”
“I didn’t mean to reject him.” He said softly, his voice was just above whisper but I could hear it nonetheless. “I was jealous and I was hurt, so I wanted to hurt him the way he hurt me.”
“What does that mean?”
Aiba laughed, but he didn’t seem happy at all. “All he talked about when we were together was you. It was always about you. Kazu this or Kazu that. You are so important to him to the point that he couldn’t live without you. He loved you but he didn’t even realize it.”
My breath hitched. Jun was always talking about me? Jun loved me?
“But I didn’t tell him what I’ve discovered because I didn’t want to lose him either.” Aiba continued. “That’s why I asked him to go on a date. I was planning to confess to him and then take him away from you. Maybe that way he would forget about you. But then, I saw you two hugging and kissing from outside the flower shop when I wanted to give him a surprise by picking him up for our date.”
“It was our ritual.” I answered automatically. My brain was still fuzzy from the information I’ve just heard. Jun loved me? And I didn’t know that? “It meant nothing.”
Aiba laughed again, bitterly this time. “If it means nothing then he wouldn’t look at you with longing in his eyes when you kissed him, like he wanted you to never let him go. That was when I knew that I wouldn’t stand a chance. My heart hurt, it hurt so much I couldn’t bear it I had to hurt him back.”
I had to grip on the table to steady myself. Jun loved me, and I never suspected anything all this time. Jun himself might not have been conscious about it but I should have known about it, I should have seen it.
I remembered how Jun would always say that he wouldn’t want to forget me no matter what, after his first panic attack that caused him to lose some of his memory. He remembered me in the end, he always remembered me, and that was his vow to me from the very first day when I told him that I would always be there for him.
“You are the only one who I would always remember Kazu. I might forget a little, but in the end, I will always remember you. I’ll remember you always.”
And how stupid I was to never take Jun’s vow seriously?
I sent Aiba out of the shop with the promise that I would take him to visit Jun’s grave the next time I went there. After that I closed the shop and let myself break down and cry. Just this time, only for this one time, until all I could see was Jun and his smile.
I was standing in front of Jun’s grave long after Aiba had gone home. He brought his friend with him, a quiet and nice man named Ohno Satoshi, and told me that he had tried to build a relationship with his friend after he realized that Ohno had a feeling for him. I cheered him, I wanted him to take every chance he got so that he wouldn’t regret anything. He smiled at me and said that he would, and he said his last goodbye to Jun.
I turned to look at Jun’s smiling face on the photo that I put on his grave. He was so beautiful smiling like that and Aiba had said that he would never forget Jun for the rest of his life. He carried the guilt over what he had done to Jun forever with him, for taking the smile from Jun’s face. I had said to him that he shouldn’t think much about it, we had to move on, but Aiba only smiled at me with that sad face that told me he could never forgive himself even if Jun had forgiven him.
I kneeled down in front of Jun’s grave and touched Jun’s face on the photo. When was this taken? When we graduated from high school? How long had that been?
I smiled as I lost myself in the memories of our past days. I looked at Jun’s smiling face and I knew that I could never forget this smile.
“I’ll remember you always too, Jun.” I vowed. “I’ll remember you always, even in our next life.”
That’s my vow, for now and forever.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
“I’m Ninomiya Kazunari.” I greeted the boy cheerily. “And this boy next to me is my brother.” I dragged the unwilling junior boy that I knew in Johnny’s Jimusho to stand beside me.
The boy in front of me frowned cutely as he stared at me and the junior beside me, clearly not believing what I told him. He was searching for the resemblance between me and the junior next to me but gave up a moment later when he couldn’t find any at all. He shrugged his shoulder.
“Oh.”
I grinned. The boy obviously didn’t believe me but that’s not the point. My point was to talk to him and my plan worked. I had this stupid urge to talk to this boy when I saw him from across the practice room as he stood awkwardly at the corner of the room watching the other practicing their dance move. So I made up lies so that I could talk to him. I knew it’s really silly but it didn’t occur to me at that time. I wanted to talk to him and I’d do anything to accomplish my goal, even if I had to lie to him. In the future he would mock me about it, about me lying to him and then completely forgetting about my own lie the next day we talked.
“I’m Ninomiya Kazunari.” I repeated my introduction as I realized that he hadn’t given me his name. “You can call me Kazu, though.”
The boy smiled at me and at that time I felt something in my chest that I ignored until way later when we had grown up and when I finally understand why my heart was always beating so fast whenever he was near.
“I’m Matsumoto Jun. Nice to meet you.”
I smiled back at him. “Nice to meet you too, Jun.”
“I’ll never forget about you, Kazu. Just you that I would never forget.”
“Really? Then I guess I have to stay by your side forever, huh?”
“I guess so. You are stuck with me.”
“You don’t see me complaining.”
He laughed, and it was music to my ears. “I love you, Kazu. And I’ll remember you always.”
“I love you too, Jun.” I said. “And I’ll remember you always too.”