chinatown [prologue]
Chapter 1 →
He’s running. He doesn’t know why he’s running but he is, boots crunching down on freshly fallen snow as noises clash and clang like cymbals forever resonating in his blood, screams of women and children the harmony. Around him he hears the slow crackling of a fire too large, and in the sky the smoke tangles like ribbons, ghostly fingers reaching up for nowhere.
Someone is shouting orders to him, voice gruff and commanding, and as though he hears them, his body acts, pistol in hand and legs moving, one, two, one, two. Don’t think just shoot but he’s sixteen and doesn’t really know how this actually works. Bullets rain and miss targets, and when they don’t he covers his ears to avoid the sickening breaking of bones and tearing of flesh.
Everything around him is a flurry of cries and shrill shrieks, the snow obscuring his view as he treks along. Inside he prays that she, whoever she was, wouldn’t show up, that she would have been long gone by now, far, far away so they wouldn’t have to find her, wouldn’t have to-
“Nakajima-san!” His head turns, and she’s running too, eyes wild with fear and arms thrown out, silently begging him to hold her. When he wants to move, though, his feet won’t, instead they are stilled against ice and snow, his gaze transfixed on her. She looks of death, pale skin against white kimono that didn’t fit right, her dark tresses the only color marring her, preventing her from fading into the backdrop.
The girl runs towards him, while the voice again commands, this time more urgent and demanding. His fingers tremble as he lifts the gun, and she freezes in her steps, lips parting. Her fingers press against her heart, and she screams something he doesn’t understand. “Wait for me.” What he does understand is only that she smiles softly and her eyes blur.
Snow stretches on for miles and his eyes look beyond her, the piece of cold metal shaking against his skin hard and he finds it difficult to hold on. But when he does, the gunshot is louder than any explosion he’s ever heard in his life. Louder than the cries of mothers for their children, louder than the first time in the frontlines, louder than the bombings.
She crumples like a butterfly, white snow staining for her bed of scarlet flowers. Even then she smiles, in a way he’s never seen before. In life she had never looked so at peace as she did, her cheeks as vibrant as they were now, how now, her eyes no longer held universes and are as dark as ink. A voice insists he’s done her a favor, and his country will honor him for her passing.
Colors spin, contorting into grotesque monsters and he can’t stand still, stumbling towards her to fall to his knees, His fingers are cold against her still warm skin, reaching to shut her dark, endless eyes from seeing the world, breathing in deep as air stabs his lungs. It takes his all to not hold her body against his and try to kiss life back into her.
Silence extends for hours and rings in his ears as they drag him away from her, their smiles and congratulations doing nothing to quiet the stillness. There’s wetness to his cheeks even though rain was nowhere to be found. He shudders to remember her words that had burned into his mind deep like scars.
His eyes open wide and he sits up on his bed, wondering if he’s forgotten anything. Instead he slips off the bed and tugs on his uniform. There’s a whole world on the tip of his tongue and a breath beside his ear as he settles down in his desk, chin against the palm of his hand as time trickles away.
When she walks in the classroom his heart is a bullet exploding in his chest. No one tells him why and he doesn’t really want to find out. “My name is Suzuki Airi; I transferred here from Hong Kong. Please take care of me.” His mind screams to remember why she looks familiar but his body aches for her touch. Instead he turns the page of his book and thinks of it no more.
“Wait for me.”
Author’s Note:
For bonkaki. Because I owe her a birthday fic, and because I miss her.
And, why yes, this is a chapter fic. :D
disclaimer: this is purely fictional. any coincidences with things in real life, dead or alive, coincidental or not, are for fictional purposes only.
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