Happiness
Title: Happiness
Rating: G
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Word Count: 2100
Disclaimer: Owning humans are illegal in most parts of the world (and I can't afford their fabulousness)
Pairings: AibaxJun (Ohmiya mentioned in passing)
Summary: Masaki finds a genie in his grandma's attic
Notes: This was written for the junbaday contest a while back. I've finally remembered to put it up. orz This has been edited.
Masaki loves rummaging around his grandparents' attic. There is just something magical about the paradox of finding something so old, it becomes new. Nothing in the attic is short of absolutely amazing. He could find so many things hidden underneath the dust and cobwebs.
This time he finds a small, round mirror carefully tucked in a piece of cloth inside his grandma's old jewelry chest. The mirror is smaller than the size of his fist, but it is oh so finely detailed. While the front of the ebony accessory is quite plain, the back is decorated with an etched in cherry blossom branch. On the branch was a single flowered blossom among a bunch of closed buds.
Masaki lightly blows the dust covering the mirror and uses his fingers to rub the rest away. When he looks in the mirror he finds that it is not his face being reflected back at him. He knows those eyebrows are definitely not his. Masaki slowly turns around and suddenly, in his grandmother's apartment, there is another man he's never seen before in his entire life in the room in a grey kimono.
Masaki does the only thing he could think of doing. Masaki screams.
"AHHHHH!!"
"So...you're a genie?" Masaki asks after three minutes of screaming, grandpa calling up asking everything is alright, and Masaki replying he saw a spider, but everything is okay. Masaki is sitting on the floor with the man from the mirror kneeling next to him. He is wrapping a strip of cloth from his kimono around Masaki's arm, which is bleeding from when he crawled backwards on the floor and smashed into his grandpa's unused guitar.
"I guess you can say that," the man replied. Masaki notices his lips quirks in an odd way when he talks but it's sort of cute. "I'm hardly smokeless fire or blue."
"Do I still get my three wishes?" asks Masaki excitedly. The man ties the knot a little too tight, he winces.
"No. Just one wish."
"Oh," Masaki says disappointingly.
"Yeah, sorry about that. It can't be helped."
Masaki becomes silent for moment before asking, "And then what?"
"Excuse me?"
"What happens when you grant my wish?"
"I go back in the mirror."
"Oh." Masaki stares at the floor for a while, thinking.
"What happens before my wish? Like do you disappear into the mirror until I call you?"
"No. I'll be by your side until you make a wish."
Masaki smiles and the "genie" smiles too, a little against his will.
The next day, Masaki wakes up hungry and insists that his new friend go with him for a quick snack. (The night before he managed to sneak the genie out of his grandparent's house by showing them the scratch on his arm. His grandmother scolded him for a while, telling Masaki he better not have used the kimono in the attic to bandage himself and to go put something on the wound.)
The genie reminds Masaki that he doesn't have much of a choice in the matter. He is bound to his master and will follow Masaki wherever he goes.
"Anyway," the genie says. "I don't need to eat."
Masaki ignores him anyway. His grandpa always told him to ask guests if they would like to eat.
They walk down to a small takoyaki stand close to the park run by an old schoolmate of Masaki and his classmate's "boyfriend." The two of them have pretty much been together for years but ever stubborn, Nino refuses to put a label on their relationship. He reasons that Ohno (the other half of the couple) probably would not even realize they are in a relationship unless Nino tells him to his face, so there is no point. Nino wants Ohno to say something about the two of them for once.
"What do you mean he is your genie?" asks Nino after Masaki introduces the man. He just finished turning over half of the little octopus balls and started on the next pan.
"He's my genie. I rubbed a mirror at grandma's and he came out and told me I have three wishes-"
"One wish," the genie interrupts.
"One wish."
"And you believe him?" Nino asks.
"Where else would he come from Nino?" says Masaki as if he could not believe how silly Nino is being. "He hardly came from my grandma's old lamb."
"I'm not going to dignify that with an answer."
"Besides, he's in a kimono right? Who wears that casually nowadays except old people or genies?" Masaki says, ignoring Nino.
Nino sighs deeply at Masaki's naivete. "Does your genie have a name?"
That stopped Masaki dead in his tracks. So much for manners.
"My name is Matsumoto," the genie answers. "Matsumoto Jun."
The two walk around the park to give Nino some space as well "get to know each other" as Masaki says.
"Sorry, I forgot to ask for your name earlier," Masaki says and gives a sheepish smile behind his takoyaki.
Matsumoto waves his hand in dismissal. "You're not the first. The last one that released me just called me "YOU!" before wishing for a group of boys to perform for him."
Masaki laughs heartily at this. "Did you grant it?"
"I had no choice," Jun becomes strangely pensive after saying this and Masaki takes this chance to carefully look at Jun's face. Jun's face is small, with very distinct features, and overwhelmingly beautiful from the moles round his lips to his high cheeks. Sure it isn't hard to find beautiful men in Japan, Masaki just had to turn on the TV. But Jun is a different kind of beauty. His beauty did not match his station as a servant. No, Masaki thought, he seems better suited to be served than to serve.
All of a sudden, Masaki feels a rain drop on his head and soon the raindrops become torrential. Crap! He forgot the futon again. He pulls Jun through the rain back into his apartment. Masaki runs through the streets, cold from the rain hitting his face, but at the same time warm from Jun's hand in his and the soggy takoyaki in the other.
Masaki did not realize he and Jun are laughing until they hide under an awning of the flower shop. Looking at each other all wet and hair sticking everywhere, they laugh even harder at how ridiculous the other looks.
In a stroke of good luck the rain lets up in a few minutes and the sun shines out not too soon after. They walk back to the apartment slowly and more calmly. They still have stupid smiles on their faces.
"Crazy huh Matsujun?"
"Matsujun?"
"Yeah. Matsumoto Jun is a little long, don't you think?"
"No."
"Whatever you say Matsujun."
Masaki does not realize that he never let go of Jun's hand until they reach the apartment complex.
"What are you anyway?" Masaki whispers in the still night. Jun has been with him for two weeks now and every night when Masaki comes home from working at the zoo, they would sit by the balcony doors to drink Masaki's cheap beer and talk.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you're not a genie or my fairy god mother. But you grant wishes. So what are you?"
Jun visibly twitches and Masaki hastily takes back his question.
"No, you deserve to know," Jun begins. "I am human. Or at least I was. I used to be the son of a lord. I mistakenly fell in love with a man. He was the brother of one of the servant girls, who happened to dabble in witchcraft and was insanely possessive. She felt that I would not be able to understand her brother. She thought that unless I understood what it is like to serve other people, our love could not be. So she cursed me into her favorite mirror to serve others forever."
"What was his name?"
"Who?"
"The man you fell in love with."
"I...I actually don't think I remember clearly," Jun looks away from Masaki, as if to push himself out the present and back into the past to remember. "It's been such a long time. I hardly think of him now anyway."
"I'm sorry-" but before Masaki could continue, Jun interrupts as if he never heard Masaki say anything.
"I remember his name having the characters for cherry blossoms," Jun says slowly. "Yes. It did. Cherry blossoms. It had to have cherry blossoms because I thought it was so beautiful."
"You are the beautiful," Masaki whispers a little too loudly. Either Jun is lost in his thoughts or didn't hear him, but he made now comment. Masaki's secret is safe for now.
Jun looks irritated today and Masaki is unsure why. He is only sure that after five months of being with Jun, this is what his irritated face looks like.
"What's wrong?" he asks tentatively. Jun is sitting on the sofa, clutching at a pillow rather tightly and his eyebrows furrowed. Usually Jun would be running around the house, doing this and that and correcting whatever else Masaki did wrong if something upset him.
Masaki is trying to remember if he did something wrong that day. He remembers he properly beat the futon. He did not touch the stove. He even bought Jun's favorite salted fish from the market early in the morning, even though it was a little expensive.
"Why don't you make your wish?" says Jun, breaking Masaki's thoughts.
"Huh?"
"Make your wish now. Wish for anything. Money, power, fame, anything. Just make a wish!" Jun yells. He is not looking at Masaki though, so he could not see Masaki's sadness.
"Why?"
"Because I want you to! I'm sick of being here!" Jun throws the pillow on the floor, but did not get up from the couch. Masaki knows better than to approach him when he's like this.
"I'm sick of being around you," Jun continues. Masaki's heart breaks a little. "You make me so sick. I feel like my heart is about to burst out of my chest when I see you. I feel like my stomach is being swallowed by my intestine. I feel like if you aren't around the world will implode. God just make a wish and end my suffering!"
Masaki could not say a word.
"Why did you let me fall in love with you before you made your wish?" Jun whispers softly. Masaki couldn't take it any longer and throws himself at Jun. He holds him tightly as Jun tries to escape.
"Can I make my wish now?" asks Masaki into Jun's hair when the man finally calms down. He feels the other man move his head a little and took that as a nod.
"I wish," he begins, "for you to no longer be bound by your curse. I wish for you to live the life you want to live. I wish for you to be happy."
There is no puff of smoke. No shinning light or loud boom. Nothing. Instead, Masaki got a lightly crying Jun who was trying not to at the same time.
"Does this mean you're happy with me?"
"Don't be stupid!"
"Aw. Don't cry Matsujun."
"I'm not crying!" Jun swats him lightly over the head. There. Now that was the Jun Masaki fell in love with.
Jun later criticizes Masaki for asking for three wishes. Masaki answers that it was all one wish that was really a plea for Jun to stay with him. Jun hits him over the head and then kisses him firmly.
"MASAKI!" Jun yells from the other room. Oh boy. The sprinklers turn on in their little apartment from the smoke coming from the stove. Jun rushes out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to help Masaki with the small fire. There goes breakfast.
"Sorry," he apologizes with a sheepish smile. Jun smacks him lightly with his rings on.
"Can't you wait?"
"I wanted to surprise you on our first year anniversary."
"This is certainly a surprise!"
"Not like that." Masaki frowns.
Jun tsks and brings Masaki closer to his face for a sweet, slow, I-love-you-honey kiss.
"You don't need to surprise me to make me happy," Jun says.
"You don't need to be surprised for me to be happy either."
The sprinklers are still on, Nino still hasn't told Ohno how much he loves him, and the couch cover needed another cleaning. Still Jun is happy which means Masaki is happy and everything in the world doesn't matter except those two and their missing breakfast.
Masaki could not wish for more.
Rating: G
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Word Count: 2100
Disclaimer: Owning humans are illegal in most parts of the world (and I can't afford their fabulousness)
Pairings: AibaxJun (Ohmiya mentioned in passing)
Summary: Masaki finds a genie in his grandma's attic
Notes: This was written for the junbaday contest a while back. I've finally remembered to put it up. orz This has been edited.
Masaki loves rummaging around his grandparents' attic. There is just something magical about the paradox of finding something so old, it becomes new. Nothing in the attic is short of absolutely amazing. He could find so many things hidden underneath the dust and cobwebs.
This time he finds a small, round mirror carefully tucked in a piece of cloth inside his grandma's old jewelry chest. The mirror is smaller than the size of his fist, but it is oh so finely detailed. While the front of the ebony accessory is quite plain, the back is decorated with an etched in cherry blossom branch. On the branch was a single flowered blossom among a bunch of closed buds.
Masaki lightly blows the dust covering the mirror and uses his fingers to rub the rest away. When he looks in the mirror he finds that it is not his face being reflected back at him. He knows those eyebrows are definitely not his. Masaki slowly turns around and suddenly, in his grandmother's apartment, there is another man he's never seen before in his entire life in the room in a grey kimono.
Masaki does the only thing he could think of doing. Masaki screams.
"AHHHHH!!"
"So...you're a genie?" Masaki asks after three minutes of screaming, grandpa calling up asking everything is alright, and Masaki replying he saw a spider, but everything is okay. Masaki is sitting on the floor with the man from the mirror kneeling next to him. He is wrapping a strip of cloth from his kimono around Masaki's arm, which is bleeding from when he crawled backwards on the floor and smashed into his grandpa's unused guitar.
"I guess you can say that," the man replied. Masaki notices his lips quirks in an odd way when he talks but it's sort of cute. "I'm hardly smokeless fire or blue."
"Do I still get my three wishes?" asks Masaki excitedly. The man ties the knot a little too tight, he winces.
"No. Just one wish."
"Oh," Masaki says disappointingly.
"Yeah, sorry about that. It can't be helped."
Masaki becomes silent for moment before asking, "And then what?"
"Excuse me?"
"What happens when you grant my wish?"
"I go back in the mirror."
"Oh." Masaki stares at the floor for a while, thinking.
"What happens before my wish? Like do you disappear into the mirror until I call you?"
"No. I'll be by your side until you make a wish."
Masaki smiles and the "genie" smiles too, a little against his will.
The next day, Masaki wakes up hungry and insists that his new friend go with him for a quick snack. (The night before he managed to sneak the genie out of his grandparent's house by showing them the scratch on his arm. His grandmother scolded him for a while, telling Masaki he better not have used the kimono in the attic to bandage himself and to go put something on the wound.)
The genie reminds Masaki that he doesn't have much of a choice in the matter. He is bound to his master and will follow Masaki wherever he goes.
"Anyway," the genie says. "I don't need to eat."
Masaki ignores him anyway. His grandpa always told him to ask guests if they would like to eat.
They walk down to a small takoyaki stand close to the park run by an old schoolmate of Masaki and his classmate's "boyfriend." The two of them have pretty much been together for years but ever stubborn, Nino refuses to put a label on their relationship. He reasons that Ohno (the other half of the couple) probably would not even realize they are in a relationship unless Nino tells him to his face, so there is no point. Nino wants Ohno to say something about the two of them for once.
"What do you mean he is your genie?" asks Nino after Masaki introduces the man. He just finished turning over half of the little octopus balls and started on the next pan.
"He's my genie. I rubbed a mirror at grandma's and he came out and told me I have three wishes-"
"One wish," the genie interrupts.
"One wish."
"And you believe him?" Nino asks.
"Where else would he come from Nino?" says Masaki as if he could not believe how silly Nino is being. "He hardly came from my grandma's old lamb."
"I'm not going to dignify that with an answer."
"Besides, he's in a kimono right? Who wears that casually nowadays except old people or genies?" Masaki says, ignoring Nino.
Nino sighs deeply at Masaki's naivete. "Does your genie have a name?"
That stopped Masaki dead in his tracks. So much for manners.
"My name is Matsumoto," the genie answers. "Matsumoto Jun."
The two walk around the park to give Nino some space as well "get to know each other" as Masaki says.
"Sorry, I forgot to ask for your name earlier," Masaki says and gives a sheepish smile behind his takoyaki.
Matsumoto waves his hand in dismissal. "You're not the first. The last one that released me just called me "YOU!" before wishing for a group of boys to perform for him."
Masaki laughs heartily at this. "Did you grant it?"
"I had no choice," Jun becomes strangely pensive after saying this and Masaki takes this chance to carefully look at Jun's face. Jun's face is small, with very distinct features, and overwhelmingly beautiful from the moles round his lips to his high cheeks. Sure it isn't hard to find beautiful men in Japan, Masaki just had to turn on the TV. But Jun is a different kind of beauty. His beauty did not match his station as a servant. No, Masaki thought, he seems better suited to be served than to serve.
All of a sudden, Masaki feels a rain drop on his head and soon the raindrops become torrential. Crap! He forgot the futon again. He pulls Jun through the rain back into his apartment. Masaki runs through the streets, cold from the rain hitting his face, but at the same time warm from Jun's hand in his and the soggy takoyaki in the other.
Masaki did not realize he and Jun are laughing until they hide under an awning of the flower shop. Looking at each other all wet and hair sticking everywhere, they laugh even harder at how ridiculous the other looks.
In a stroke of good luck the rain lets up in a few minutes and the sun shines out not too soon after. They walk back to the apartment slowly and more calmly. They still have stupid smiles on their faces.
"Crazy huh Matsujun?"
"Matsujun?"
"Yeah. Matsumoto Jun is a little long, don't you think?"
"No."
"Whatever you say Matsujun."
Masaki does not realize that he never let go of Jun's hand until they reach the apartment complex.
"What are you anyway?" Masaki whispers in the still night. Jun has been with him for two weeks now and every night when Masaki comes home from working at the zoo, they would sit by the balcony doors to drink Masaki's cheap beer and talk.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you're not a genie or my fairy god mother. But you grant wishes. So what are you?"
Jun visibly twitches and Masaki hastily takes back his question.
"No, you deserve to know," Jun begins. "I am human. Or at least I was. I used to be the son of a lord. I mistakenly fell in love with a man. He was the brother of one of the servant girls, who happened to dabble in witchcraft and was insanely possessive. She felt that I would not be able to understand her brother. She thought that unless I understood what it is like to serve other people, our love could not be. So she cursed me into her favorite mirror to serve others forever."
"What was his name?"
"Who?"
"The man you fell in love with."
"I...I actually don't think I remember clearly," Jun looks away from Masaki, as if to push himself out the present and back into the past to remember. "It's been such a long time. I hardly think of him now anyway."
"I'm sorry-" but before Masaki could continue, Jun interrupts as if he never heard Masaki say anything.
"I remember his name having the characters for cherry blossoms," Jun says slowly. "Yes. It did. Cherry blossoms. It had to have cherry blossoms because I thought it was so beautiful."
"You are the beautiful," Masaki whispers a little too loudly. Either Jun is lost in his thoughts or didn't hear him, but he made now comment. Masaki's secret is safe for now.
Jun looks irritated today and Masaki is unsure why. He is only sure that after five months of being with Jun, this is what his irritated face looks like.
"What's wrong?" he asks tentatively. Jun is sitting on the sofa, clutching at a pillow rather tightly and his eyebrows furrowed. Usually Jun would be running around the house, doing this and that and correcting whatever else Masaki did wrong if something upset him.
Masaki is trying to remember if he did something wrong that day. He remembers he properly beat the futon. He did not touch the stove. He even bought Jun's favorite salted fish from the market early in the morning, even though it was a little expensive.
"Why don't you make your wish?" says Jun, breaking Masaki's thoughts.
"Huh?"
"Make your wish now. Wish for anything. Money, power, fame, anything. Just make a wish!" Jun yells. He is not looking at Masaki though, so he could not see Masaki's sadness.
"Why?"
"Because I want you to! I'm sick of being here!" Jun throws the pillow on the floor, but did not get up from the couch. Masaki knows better than to approach him when he's like this.
"I'm sick of being around you," Jun continues. Masaki's heart breaks a little. "You make me so sick. I feel like my heart is about to burst out of my chest when I see you. I feel like my stomach is being swallowed by my intestine. I feel like if you aren't around the world will implode. God just make a wish and end my suffering!"
Masaki could not say a word.
"Why did you let me fall in love with you before you made your wish?" Jun whispers softly. Masaki couldn't take it any longer and throws himself at Jun. He holds him tightly as Jun tries to escape.
"Can I make my wish now?" asks Masaki into Jun's hair when the man finally calms down. He feels the other man move his head a little and took that as a nod.
"I wish," he begins, "for you to no longer be bound by your curse. I wish for you to live the life you want to live. I wish for you to be happy."
There is no puff of smoke. No shinning light or loud boom. Nothing. Instead, Masaki got a lightly crying Jun who was trying not to at the same time.
"Does this mean you're happy with me?"
"Don't be stupid!"
"Aw. Don't cry Matsujun."
"I'm not crying!" Jun swats him lightly over the head. There. Now that was the Jun Masaki fell in love with.
Jun later criticizes Masaki for asking for three wishes. Masaki answers that it was all one wish that was really a plea for Jun to stay with him. Jun hits him over the head and then kisses him firmly.
"MASAKI!" Jun yells from the other room. Oh boy. The sprinklers turn on in their little apartment from the smoke coming from the stove. Jun rushes out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to help Masaki with the small fire. There goes breakfast.
"Sorry," he apologizes with a sheepish smile. Jun smacks him lightly with his rings on.
"Can't you wait?"
"I wanted to surprise you on our first year anniversary."
"This is certainly a surprise!"
"Not like that." Masaki frowns.
Jun tsks and brings Masaki closer to his face for a sweet, slow, I-love-you-honey kiss.
"You don't need to surprise me to make me happy," Jun says.
"You don't need to be surprised for me to be happy either."
The sprinklers are still on, Nino still hasn't told Ohno how much he loves him, and the couch cover needed another cleaning. Still Jun is happy which means Masaki is happy and everything in the world doesn't matter except those two and their missing breakfast.
Masaki could not wish for more.