[drabble] Emeralds
Title: Emeralds
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Pairing: Aiba Masaki x OC
Genre: Fluff
Summary: She has captivating eyes of sparkling emerald green, that haunt his memories.
Notes: Request for a_k_k_h_n .
~
Soft brown hair, tossed by a gentle breeze, and a pair of brilliant emerald eyes that sparkled, set in a heart-shaped face as pale as snow.
Her smile, so familiar yet so distant, beamed at him from the small crinkled photograph with the yellowing edges.
“It’s been ten years,” he murmured to the girl in the photograph, “I wonder what you look like now? When are you coming back to Japan again?”
Her smile never wavered, and she never gave him a reply.
~
He still remembered the first time they met.
“Masaki!” his mother called, “Come and greet the new neighbours!”
“Coming~” he called.
Standing at their doorway were a man and a woman, and a tiny girl with huge green eyes clinging to the woman’s skirt.
“Who’re you?” he asked the girl, and her eyes grew even wider (if that was possible) and she squeaked.
“Ha…Haku…fu,” she mumbled, and her mother smiled.
“My name’s Masaki,” he told her, reaching out to cheekily ruffle her hair, “and I shall call you Haku-chan!”
~
“Why do you have such weird green eyes?” he asked her one day when they were playing in the vinyl pool in her garden.
She scrunched up her nose and pouted.
“It’s not weird,” she said petulantly, and half-heartedly dumped a bucket of water on his head.
“Hey!”
“They’re just green because my dad has green eyes. They’re not weird!”
She sniffled as she chucked the empty bucket at him, then whirled around and resolutely began playing by herself.
He sighed.
“I’m sorry, Haku-chan. I didn’t mean to call them weird, I just wanted to know!”
“Stupid excuse, Masa-kun,” she shot back grumpily.
“Forgive meeeeeeeeee?”
She turned around and bonked his head.
“You’re noisy.”
~
“Here!” she said cheerily, handing him some chocolate cookies, “For you!”
“Eh? What for?”
“…I felt like making some,” she said, after giving him a long look, and pushed the small bag of chocolate cookies with rainbow sprinkles into his arms, “Idiot.”
She stalked off back to her house, and he looked up quizzically to his smiling mother.
“Did I do something wrong, kaa-san?”
She laughed.
“No, Masaki, you didn’t.”
It was only much later that he realized that day had been February 14th.
~
The day after his seventh birthday, there was a small package left on his doorstep.
“Masa-kun,” it said, “Tou-san is moving to America for his work. I don’t know when we can come back to Japan. I wanted to give you cookies again for Valentine’s next year, but it looks like I won’t be able to, so happy early Valentine’s, happy belated birthday, and merry Christmas!”
It was not signed, but he knew it was her handwriting.
She had disappeared from his life without a goodbye, leaving behind only a bag of cookies and a small note.
Later, he ate the cookies but kept the note. When he grew older he folded it and kept it as a permanent fixture in his wallet, a small piece of yellowing paper with spidery pencil scribbles, along with a small photograph of her.
Fading memories, so near yet so far.
~
He sighed and looked out of the porthole of his room on the ship.
“Something life-changing has happened to me,” he told the photograph, “Remember that I joined Johnny’s Junior? Well, I’m debuting now as part of an idol group. When you come back, come for our concerts and support us, okay?”
Her green eyes stared straight at him from the photograph, and he smiled a small half-smile as he tucked the photograph back into his wallet.
The door to the room he shared with Ninomiya banged open, and Matsumoto stuck his head inside.
“We’re choosing member colours, so hurry up or you won’t get a choice!”
Nodding, he rolled off his bunk and followed Matsumoto up on deck.
“We’re supposed to each have a colour,” Sakurai explained, “to distinguish us from each other, so they can’t be too similar, got it?”
“Can I have green?” he heard himself ask, and felt Ninomiya’s inquisitive stare bore into his back. Sakurai shrugged, and scribbled it down on a small post-it.
“Any particular reason?” Ohno asked curiously, and he shrugged.
“Just…green holds good memories of a dear childhood friend,” he replied vaguely, and let a wistful smile slip across his face.
Come back soon, ne? Haku-chan. It’s been so long…
I’ll be waiting for the day of your return.