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02. dead leaves in the mist

02,

dead leaves in the mist.
pre taishō era

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JAPAN, 1909.
(Sendai, Miyagi)

Sendai, as usual, was full of trees. They branch out from the entrance of the city and disappear into the woods at the back where the mountains begin to form.

It was not always like this, of course. Oikawa remembers the time when Sendai was nothing but trees; those that don’t weave their way beside the houses and shy away from the road. Back then, people built their homes in the refuge of the trees, not quite up high, but beside them. The roots were never moved from their place, as it was still a time when people bowed before the trunks and left offerings on the feet of the extending roots on the ground. Sometimes, as a sport, some place prayers on the leaves, and wish, before the time fall rolls around, that they would have already been heard by the wind.

And that, Oikawa notes as he gazes at the place before him, something about the city still familiar but strange all the same, was a long time ago.

He’s been to Sendai at least twice by the last year, visiting it from time-to-time, giving himself ground – a reminder, maybe, to tell him where he’s from. That he came from somewhere and hailed from a place. That he didn’t just come to this world clad with a sword, dried blood on his robes, unable to get out of it ever since.

As Oikawa continues his walk on the streets of Sendai, his eyes fall to a place far north, a spot that’s still full of trees, as the path escapes to the woods. And it’s odd, really, to see a makeshift house built on the mouth of the forest.

He often curses his memory, with how it still remembers that that was where he used to cut up trees in lieu of practice, picking out branches and hurling them in the sky just to mince them before they fall. And he’s always been scolded for that. Once, he recalls, he was caught by his sister with a blade on his hand and sliced wood on the ground. She told him off and pinched his ear, but she never did say anything to their parents. (It’s difficult to tell if this was a memory, or a dream.)

It’s difficult in a sense that his memories were slipping away from his fingers like sand on an hourglass, and he doesn’t know if they’re real, or if they’re just thought up by his mind on too long nights. Most of the people, though, that star in his memories (or dreams—) are faceless. It’s almost like they don a white mask that caves in on their skin, woven into them like threads on fabric. Time has probably taken their features away from his grasp, the way his memories now slip from his fingers.

He was prepared to cast the place he thinks he spent most of his childhood one last glance before he walks away, but then two children approximately the age of ten, bordering on eleven, Oikawa’s not quite sure – are yelling at the distance. They seem to have gathered wood from the forest, he noted, by the logs on their back tied with a rope. He squints his eyes to catch a look, but he doesn’t need to strain his ears to hear what they were talking about, for the wind carries their conversation over.

“Don’t say it like that!” one of them shouts. “That’s too harsh!!”

What could ten-maybe-eleven-year-olds have as a problem nowadays, Oikawa wonders amusedly. Because, really.

“I’m only telling you the truth,” came the reply of the other boy. It passed by his lips almost grittily, even if his voice was calm and smooth. “You’re making too much noise, so shut up. You’ll call a boar here.”

He wasn’t wrong. Even though they were almost at the mouth of the forest, just a few steps in, that excessive shouting would call the attention of wild animals for sure – and, now, Oikawa ponders on why exactly these children are out here on their own, collecting logs that they cut up themselves from the looks of it, along with the knowledge of hunting, it seems.

As these thoughts were passing by his head, the two of them move closer, and now that Oikawa has gotten a good look, he notices that oh, they’re twins.

Both have hair that passes their shoulders, black and inky. They seemed to have stopped talking, as the one in white has his head hung down, and the one in black has a knit to their brows – though subtle.

He wonders what they were arguing about.

Oikawa moves away from where was leaning on a tree, fingers his hilt with a phantom touch, and thinks with a smile as he watches the two enter their house, why not.

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Oikawa knocked on the wooden door where the twins disappeared to twice and waits for the answer.

It doesn’t come.

He knocks again, this time a little more pronounced as his knuckles tapped the wood, but no one comes to answer the door even after minutes. Oikawa wills himself to patience and reminds himself that he’s dealing with children. Children that don’t bother to open doors now, really, but still. Children.

Before he could knock again, the door opens and reveals the twin dressed in white. Oikawa looks down.

“I told you not to open it!” came a voice from inside.

The child who opened the door for him whirls around and shouts back. “What if it was important, then!”

The replying voice clicked their tongue. “We’re eleven, Muichirou! No one needs anything important from us!”

Ah, eleven then, not ten, Oikawa mentally noted. And finally – a name.

“You never know! They could be in need of logs! We’re woodcutters!”

Logs,” the boy drawled. “and they’re going to ask us children in the forest, of course, not just buy one from where we sell them,” the twin in black now steps into Oikawa’s point of view. He locks his gaze with a sneer. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but don’t come back again.” and then he promptly shuts the door in Oikawa’s face.

Well, Oikawa thinks as he processed just what happened, that was something. He didn’t even get a word in.

No matter. He’s lived for centuries and has been through worse than an eleven-year-old shutting a door in his face. What’s a few grumpy words from a child who barely even reaches his middle, really. And so, with a thick face, Oikawa knocks again. No one answers, predictably. He knocks again.

A violent opening of the door greeted him, and the twin in black, the unnamed one, faces him with a pissed off expression. “What do you want.”

That stops Oikawa in his tracks – he doesn’t even know what he wants to say to them, now that he thinks about it. He plants a smile on his face nonetheless, and made something up. “Logs.”

The boy in white, Muichirou, he remembers, lightens up at his answer, and crowed at his twin. “See!”

His twin just glared at him and motioned for him to shut up. He turned his glare on Oikawa this time, and said with the most disbelieving tone he could muster, “Logs. From us.”

“Yes,” Oikawa answered with a too-bright smile.

“Why,” the boy in black questioned – and Oikawa really needed to learn his name – his fingers twitching on the door, as if he were one step from slamming it again.

“Because I like asking it from children in the forest, of course,” Oikawa said, just because he can. And maybe he liked pissing people off. Children, included.

The door shuts in his face again.

Admittedly, he deserved that. Oikawa knocks again.

The door quickly opened this time, and the child who slammed the door in his face was carrying a pail of water – Oikawa connects the dots, and his reflexes save him as he swerves to the side. The ground where he was just standing on seconds ago was now pelted. Silence lingers for seconds as they just both stare at the soil.

It’s broken by a cry from Muichirou. “Nii-san! That was rude!”

The older of the twins was still staring at the wet soil with a curl of his mouth. “Pity.”

Oikawa just blinked. The words that go past his mouth were: “I just want to talk?”

He’s not even fully sure.

The grumpier, admittedly less-cute twin just pinned him with a stare (maybe a glower). “Talk,” he drawled. Oikawa noted that he liked doing that. Drawling. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

And, partially, he was right. There really was nothing to talk about. Oikawa’s just stubborn. And annoying. And bored, maybe. Curious, sure. Can he pass off as concerned?

“I’m concerned,” his smart mouth said before he could think about it. Concerned. Yes, that’s what he was.

“And what about,” Now not just admittedly but factually less-cute twin gritted out.

“Your—” Oikawa scrambles for words. “—lifestyle.”

The door twitches with a squeak. Oikawa elaborates. “I noticed you didn’t have parents, and you live in the middle of the forest by yourselves. I think that raises concern,” and it wasn’t exactly a shot in the dark – he’s scanned the small house by what the creak on the door tells him, and they’re living a pretty simple, poor, if granted, home life given the lack of furnishings and the absence of adults in the house to supply the logs. Plus, the phrase “they’re going to ask us children in the forest” before did imply that they lived here on their own.

“We don’t need your concern.”

Before the door shuts in his face again, he catches a glimpse of the boy’s eyes – there’s a glass-like quality to them, and to any other child, that would have been a give away for their fragility. On this boy, though, it just seemed like polished steel.

He stares at the wooden door, and turns on his heel.

He’ll come back one day.

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JAPAN, 1904.
(Kanazawa Inn)

Oikawa wakes alone.

It’s night, and his chest now hosts a new heart sealed in his flesh, one he felt molded by his tissues. The windows were still open, and he curses Kuroo for leaving them as such. (He focuses, instead, on those windows left open rather than his chest shut closed. He focuses on how Kuroo has no decency whatsoever, instead of the fact that he woke up again, breathing, solid, alive.)

The wind is a cheat. Mother mercy is the wind’s myth. He curses them both too, as he rolls over his side and curls in on himself. He curses the wind and mother mercy and the windows left open and he does it again and again and again. He doesn’t tire of flinging his anguish to nothing but his sheets covered in dried blood and his unfolded haori. He doesn’t tire of it even as his legs cramp with the way they’re curled pressed to his thighs.

He falls asleep, then, with curses on the corners of his lips.

When he comes to, it’s daylight.

The windows are still open, so the sun arrests his eyesight the moment he wakes.

Glimpses of last night comes back to him in clips: the windows flying open, a red kimono billowing, a hand in and out of his chest, his breath thinning out, dying, fading, then waking, still

A bitter laugh lodges itself in his throat.

He’s still not dead, yet he feels so hollowed out, so shallow, like he’s got nothing else left to give. (The hole in his chest is closed yet it feels like it’s still void of a heart. It feels like a chasm stuck to Oikawa’s skin.)

Oikawa wakes. The wind and mother mercy are still deaf to his calls.

He breathes out and stretches his limbs. He still has no purpose.

Nothing new.

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JAPAN, 1909.
(Sendai, Miyagi)

Spring rolls around and Oikawa finds himself setting foot on the soil of Sendai, still being greeted with its rows of trees. He travels his gaze to the forest up ahead, and his feet takes him north.

He stops at the sight of a familiar house in the middle of the forest, fresh cut logs littered around. He senses the presence of the twins, Muichirou – and one still unnamed, behind the door as he closes in. Oikawa raised his fist, pressed his knuckle to the door, and knocked.

The door practically flies open.

The older of the two seems quietly livid, like a calm storm, and his eyes only lighten their glower at the sight of Oikawa. His gaze turns positively fiery when his eyes dropped to Oikawa’s sword. “Are you a colleague of that woman? I’m telling you right here, right now, that I don’t care if we’re descended from some bullshit line of swordsmen. We are not your soldiers. We cannot fight. We’re children, and we’re useless. So get out.

The door slams in his face again.

Oikawa’s not sure of what just transpired – but he knows what he heard. These children, apparently, have been scouted by an Ubuyashiki, that one’s for sure. A particularly interesting bit would be the fact that they were descents – from a distinct line of swordsmen, notably, as the Demon Slayer Corps would not give them a backward glance if not.

He thinks of how absurd it was. That these children he stumbled upon still has ties to his past, to things he has long left behind.

Oikawa grips the pouch of money he has hidden in his robes.

He could walk away now, and avoid getting caught up with anything the Corps has touched, has an eye on.

He could walk away now. (Walk away from these angry, angry children. One step away from holding their own swords themselves. Because what Ubuyashiki wants, Ubuyashiki gets. And clearly, he has a use for these kids.)

Oikawa grips the pouch in his robes again.

He knocks.

He smiles when the door opens, as genuinely as he can.

(Maybe this time he could give something, even if he’s hollowed out.)

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It’s summer. The twins, Muichirou and Yuichirou now, he learns even though he only knew it by the younger’s admittance and without much of a consent from his twin – accept his occasional visits.

According to Muichirou, the woman from last spring still comes by. She gives the usual offer, the usual tirade, then leaves, appearing as unemotional as ever. The younger twin said that her name was Amane, and that he found her beautiful, pretty, even, and Muichirou thought that she was the spirit of a white birch the first time he saw her. Oikawa just raised a brow and told Muichirou he was too much of a poet. (Oikawa, himself, has always thought the Ubuyashiki family eerie. Spirits; sure, that he could agree with, with the way they seem to just float on the surface of the earth. They’ve never seemed grounded. Their eyes always fluttered in a movement that says they knew too much. Oikawa did not like it. Consequently, he did not like them.)

He asked them not to mention his existence to this Ubuyashiki, of course, and he’s started to focus on his surroundings more and more now, as he visited. You never know who they had planted on the trees, stuck in the shadows.

Yuichirou gave him a skeptical look, then, when he asked them that. Thought he was suspicious. He just smiled and said, “I’m just a man who wants logs and pays you for them, of course, nothing more,” and it definitely did not make him look less sketchy.

Muichirou was way more talkative than his brother, and often conversed with Oikawa. They’ve talked about lots of things – about where Oikawa goes; (“Travelling.”) what he does; (“Labor jobs, as the economy demands.”) why he visits; (“Logs, Mui-kun, of course.”) why he has a sword; (“It makes me look cool.”)

The older twin just watches, and quips a sarcastic comment here and there, not masking the fact that he doubts any semblance of truth comes out of Oikawa’s mouth, but sweet Muichirou, of course, believes him.

He holds it over Yuichirou’s head a lot.

(Oikawa still questions himself, every time he pays them a visit. He looks down at his hands, stares at the wind and calls. They also give him no answer.

Kuroo gives him an answer, one night, when he called for him for their usual appointment. Before his hands cut Oikawa’s head off clean, he whispered: “Maybe you’ve been lonely for too long.”

And Oikawa remembers thinking with a hiss, what does that wretched demon know. He was not lonely. He was not seeking for company. He was alright. He’s been on his own for centuries.

He denies Kuroo’s words vehemently, curses it along with the wind and mother mercy.

The lies dry up in his mouth as always.)

It’s still summer. The days are hot and even the nights are humid, but the heat was bearable when the sun has gone down, so he visits the twins by nightfall more and more.

This time, he comes later than usual, rubbing a sore spot in his stomach as Kuroo just took his time spilling his guts out before he came here to drop by, though he has a feeling the twins are already asleep. The cicadas cry loudly just as he steps into the forest, and Oikawa purses his mouth into a thin line with the sound.

A second step in, the air feels different – corrupt and murky and the wind shivers while it passes his skin. Oikawa stills and his hand drops automatically to the hilt of his sword.

A demon. The twins.

Panic settles hot into his veins and he lowers into a crouch. He breathes with the wind, calls for mother mercy, then hopes, desperately, that he isn’t too late.

And with a shift in the air, Oikawa blurs.

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notes! … if i knew where this was going id tell you but sadly i dont. welcome mui bb and yui grumpy bb,,, if the latter is staying that is. idk






















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