[oneshot] Friendship

[dreamweavernyx]

Title: Friendship

Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )

Pairing: TaigaYuta

Genre: Friendship/Fluff

Summary: Taiga has always been able to see ghosts. But this time, this new ghost is different from those he's seen before.

Notes: Chibi. Please note that Uekusa's parent do not, in fact, own a grocery.

Request for Alice (aliciaswr ).

~


Ever since he can remember, Taiga has been able to see ghosts.

It never bothered him, because he ignored them, and for the most part they left him alone.

It all changed after a relatively young ghost came along and helped him solve the Math homework he’d been having difficulties with. Ever since, he learned that every ghost has a different story to tell, different things to share, and he became their listening ear until they disappeared.

But this new ghost was different.

Taiga knew from previous experiences that ghosts were generally very sad and quiet, unwilling to accept their deaths and unable to move on into the afterlife. They would share their unhappiness with him, the only person who could hear and see them, but they were never friends. Merely acquaintances, but never friends.

This new ghost was so different in so many ways.

~

“You can see me?”

Taiga looked up from his book into the face of the new ghost, a boy who looked to be about his age with eyes shining with honesty. Surprisingly young for a ghost, and looking surprisingly happy for one too.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Awesome! I’m Yuta,” said the ghost excitedly, beaming at him. “Let’s be friends.”

Taiga stared at Yuta for a while.

“You do realize that you’re going to go to the afterlife after a while.”

“I doubt that,” Yuta replied, shrugging. “I’ve been floating around for four years. I have no idea what’s tying me here, and I may be here for a while more. You’re the first who can see me, so let’s be friends! At least, until I can find out how to get to the afterlife.”

Taiga blinked a couple of times, before drawing himself solemnly to his full nine-year-old height.

“Friends,” he repeated, and grasped the ghostly hand, pretending it was a real one.

Yuta smiled.

~

Yuta, he learned, was not tied to any particular place, but just to the living realm in general. He learned this the hard way when Yuta poked his face through the bathroom mirror in school, causing Taiga to yelp in surprise and splash water everywhere.

But he could drag Yuta along with him to wander around the town, and poke around at the greenery and sights.

‘Yuta,” he asked quietly, as they sat watching the stars come out one week later, “if you don’t mind me asking, how did you die?”

There was silence for a while, and Taiga turned his head to look at the young ghost’s face, fearing that he had offended the boy.

Yuta’s lips were curved in a small, wistful smile, and his eyes held a faraway look for a moment.

“It was when I was five,” he began softly. “There was this armed robber who broke into my family’s grocery store. He was going to aim at my mother because she wouldn’t tell him where our valuables were. But the moment he fired, I tried to push her out of harm’s way, and ended up taking the bullet instead.”

Another soft silence fell, and Taiga risked a quick glance at his newfound friend’s face. To his surprise, Yuta did not look sad or regretful in the least. Instead, the ghost boy was smiling softly, and actually looked very happy for someone reminiscing his death.

The silence stretched for a while. Don’t you feel sad for dying? Taiga wanted to ask, but before he could gather up the courage to ask, Yuta seemed to have read his mind.

“My mother…she was six months pregnant at the time,” he murmured. “If I could exchange my life to save two others, I would gladly do so.”

Taiga didn’t reply, perhaps out of pity. Instead, he reached out his hand, and tried his best to imagine that the ghostly hand he was clutching was a real one, that he could comfort his friend this way.

~

Several weeks later, Taiga was walking from karate practice when he noticed a grocery store he’d never seen before. Uekusa Grocery, it read, and he saw a young child of about four run out the door and play around the fruit stands.

Yuta said he died four years ago, Taiga suddenly thought. His mother was pregnant with his sibling when he died. Could it be…?

“Ne, Yuta, what was your surname when you were still alive?” He asked after dinner that night.

Curious translucent eyes turned to him.

“…It was…Uekusa,” he replied hesitantly. “Why?”

Taiga didn’t hear the question, and his pen dropped from his hand as he stared straight ahead in sudden shock.

Uekusa…

Was it just a coincidence? Or was it something else?

“Yuta,” he said slowly. “I think…I may have found something that’s of great relevance to you.”

~

The next day, the both of them retraced Taiga’s steps to find the grocery.

Sure enough, Uekusa Grocery stood out big and bold on the store’s signboard, stark black on a white plaque.

“It’s…they moved the store,” whispered Yuta, looking at the signboard like it was his last hope. “But I’d recognize that signboard anywhere.”

The little child Taiga had seen before came running out of the store again, this time followed by a harried-looking woman in an apron, who tried to catch him, while a man walked to the doorway and looked at them amusedly. There must have been no customers in the store.

Taiga heard Yuta gasp softly.

“Mother…” he choked out quietly, voice wobbling. “Father…”

Taiga turned to look at Yuta. He might have been imagining things, but for a moment he thought he saw pearly, ghostly tears swimming in the boy’s eyes. He blinked, and the tears were gone, leaving Yuta smiling wistfully at the happy family.

~

They went back to the grocery the next day. And the day after that. And so on and so forth. Taiga ended up having to hide in a tree to let Yuta look at his family, so as not to be accused of being a stalker.

Yuta stayed with him, behind the bushes or up the tree, as if he were too shy to come out into the open and look at his family. Taiga didn’t see the rationale behind that, because Yuta was, after all, a ghost, and ghosts were invisible to most people.

But one week after that first day, Yuta smiled, almost sadly, at Taiga as he floated down from the tree and turned towards the grocery.

“I think,” he murmured, as he turned, “I know what’s been tying me to Earth. It’s the longing to see my family leading a happy life. I’ve seen that now.”

He began to drift slowly towards the family taking a break outside the store.

“Now, there’s nothing left holding me back,” he continued.

“So this…” whispered Taiga.

“Is goodbye.”

The sentence was uttered in unison, and Yuta looked back one last time. Their eyes met, and a shadow of understanding flickered across Yuta’s eyes.

“Finally,” said Yuta, smiling a little, “I’ll get to go to heaven, ne? And we will meet again, hopefully a long time later.”

“Yeah,” Taiga said, and raised his hand slightly in farewell, keeping his delicate balance on his branch. “See you later.”

Yuta laughed, a light sound like tinkling handbells.

“Yes,” he murmured. “Later.”

He floated away towards the family, and as Taiga watched, his ghostly body slowly began to disappear into the ray of sunlight shining down.

The last to disappear was Yuta’s smile, contented and happy after four years of wandering on Earth.

We’ll meet again.

~

Days later, Taiga was once again walking home from karate practice when he noticed, as he passed by the park, a group of kids bullying a little boy. Enraged, he threw down his bag and charged the bullies.

They jeered at him, but the moment they noticed his karate gi and saw him slide into an offensive position, their faces coloured in fear and the ran away.

“Thanks,” he heard the little boy whisper in a reedy voice.

“No problem,” Taiga said, and turned to face the boy. To his shock and surprise, it was the little kid from the Uekusa Grocery.

“I’m Yuta,” said the boy.

Taiga blinked, stunned.

“…Yuta?”

“Yeah. Mommy named me after my brother. She says my onii-chan was a hero who saved her life and my life. So I want to live up to this name, and be a hero like onii-chan, but I can’t even save a single dog…”

He trailed off and looked to the side sadly. Taiga followed his gaze, and saw the injured, half-drowned dog the child had been trying to protect.

Taiga squatted down to the child’s eye level.

“Don,t worry,” he said reassuringly, “all heroes start small. You don’t have to start saving lives straight away to be a hero. Even helping an old lady cross the road is something heroic.”

The child turned watery, huge eyes on him, and Taiga could see his resemblance to his ghostly friend.

“Really?”

Taiga nodded, smiling and ruffling the boy’s hair gently. In his mind’s eye, he could imagine Yuta-the-ghost smiling just like he used to.

“I’m sure your brother would be proud of your hero’s spirit.”

Big brown eyes creased into a toothy smile.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. I’m sure that he would be so very proud of you.”

He raised his head to the evening sky, where the first star had appeared, twinkling like an eye. Perhaps Yuta’s, looking down at the two of them.

A soft twilight breeze blew around the two of them. Suddenly, for a moment, Taiga thought he could hear a slight whisper of a voice that sounded very much like that of Yuta-the-ghost.

Thank you.

Taiga smiled softly.

No problem, he replied silently.

Because after all, that’s what friends are for.