I liked walking.

I knew it didn't suit me, really. When I was hanging out with someone and they stopped at the bus station to wait for a bus, I turned to them.

"Can we walk?" I'd ask.

They would look at me with a surprised expression.

"Walk? You?"

"What?" I would ask, irritated, even then. Even Before Everything Happened.

"You just don't seem the type."

I didn't care what type I seemed. I walked anyway. Now, I walked with my hands in my coat pockets, my shoulder bag with my gym clothes slung over my left shoulder. When I was a boy, my mother had always begged me to stop wearing my rucksack only on my right shoulder or my back would become twisted, she said. She also believed basketball players were tall because they played basketball, because they stretched their arms up to goal, which was why I'd never taken her seriously about the rucksack thing. I had shifted rucksack shoulder from time to time anyway, just to keep her happy, a habit that had persisted even if I had stopped growing a long, long time ago and thus my back could not get twisted.

I changed shoulder.

Mother...

As I became older, my understanding about how much she'd suffered had deepened. We had a good relationship, especially now when she had broken contact with my father since he...

I used the tag to unlock the front door of the apartment complex where I lived, the steel plate that read the tag a strange detail on the old, beautiful building, took the stairs up. I just dropped my gym bag in my hallway, then immediately went out again. The wind was pleasant against my face, whispering the promises of the spring to come.

I hoped the wind would keep its promise.

I walked through the bursting streets of Paris, past restaurants and shops and art galleries, past elegant people in their twenties on shopping trips and elderly couples celebrating ruby weddings, further and further, until I reached an area with picturesque little houses with gardens lined by a small leaf forest. My shoes echoed against the tarmac, lonely. At the end of the street, I reached a little path that went to the cemetery.

I felt my entire body relax as I entered the large but beautiful cemetery, that was more of a garden. I didn't feel anxiety, only relief and of course a deep, deep sadness. But that sadness followed me wherever I went. The cemetery was not to blame.

I walked to the end which took a good ten minutes, walking along beautiful headstones and lanterns on urn graves and bushes that would be beautiful in spring the wind was so pleasantly talking about. At the end was the memorial grove where me and my mother had decided to spread his, later her, ashes.

It had been a tough decision. We had wanted a grave at first, something that we could gather around to remember her and talk about her, but at the last second decided against it. We both knew she wouldn't be able to stand the thought of us standing over her remains to cry. A memorial grove was much better. There, her soul was free to escape if she couldn't stand our sorrow that day. If she got enough of our shit. I smiled, imagining her spirit chastising us.

"I've gotten enough of your shit!" her spirit said, turning around with a flick of her long hair, walking away.

I stood at the memorial grove, looked at the beautiful statue of the angel watching over all the dead that had been spread there, turned into angel dust. The angel statue was surrounded by a wide, half-circle stone bench, and behind it was a beautiful little garden that was breath-taking in summer. Out of my pocket I took out a small candle that was grape scented, her favourite, and placed it on the back of the stone bench, where others had already placed their gifts for their dead beloved. I took the box of matches I usually had behind my curtain, next to my cigarettes, out of my pocket, and lit it. That was enough. No flowers. No lantern.

Just this single grape candle.

Just this single grape candle for Izuna Uchiha. 

Izuna had been my little brother to begin with. And we had loved each other endlessly. Even if it was only five years between us, we had never fought, never even bantered. I loved him from the start and would do anything for him. And he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, I remembered thinking the day my parents brought him home from the hospital after he was born; I had been in awe. And that had remained until the end. His face was painfully pretty, his hair long and pitch-black and perfect even if he never did anything with it other than wash it with whatever shampoo he found in the shower. He was short and his body small and soft after a whole life of absolutely no physical exercise at all (Izuna hated movement), and his skin was fresh and dewy.

I had been a different man then. A caring one. A calm one. My element, Izuna once said we, was water. He said I could be calm and soothing as balm to the soul, or I could be a raging ocean protecting what I loved. I could be warming or cooling depending on what you needed. And I adapted to my surroundings, just like water did.

It was beautifully said.

I didn't believe in elements. But I did believe in Izuna.

That water, however, had been burned away to fume when his death lit up a fire within me that still burned, and I feared always would.

We had been a happy family. Everything was so sickeningly perfect you could make a movie out of us. Mother and father were happily married, even after so many years, to the degree that we could still find them dancing in the kitchen. They still held hands. As a child, it had caused me great discomfort, but later, as an adult, I'd come to honour it. I would find myself looking at them, deep in thought, thinking 'That's what I want." They had been a huge inspiration.

Even if I wanted what they had, I still always noticed that there was something nagging me whenever I looked at them. I didn't want exactly what they had. It had taken me until I was twenty years old to realise that what I didn't want was a heterosexual relationship. I had realised when I slept with my first boy and I had run home to come out to Izuna immediately.

"Sorry, I need to go", I'd said to the poor boy who'd just taken me, jumped out of the bed, put on my trousers and ran out of his room while struggling to put on my T-shirt, leaving him confused and hurt (he would be fine; I would text him later and he became my first boyfriend).

I'd run home and burst into Izuna's room.

"Izuna, I'm gay!! I finally figured myself out!!"

Izuna had thrown his arms around me.

I had told my mother the same night, and she'd hugged me and said she was proud.

"I already knew", she'd said with a smile.

It was then I got the first tiny hint of something not being quite entirely right. Because then, she'd said...

"Madara..." My mother had looked away and twisted her hands nervously. It didn't suit her. Her paper skin, her short, plump body hidden in an apron, her thin, shoulder-length hair dyed a soft black to hide the white I loved so much. Being nervous didn't suit that person. "Don't tell your dad yet, okay?"

I had frowned.

"Why?" I'd asked.

"Just... Trust me. Please."

Her look was so pleading that I'd accepted, sparing her any further questions, but I couldn't stop thinking about why she wanted me to keep quiet.

Until one day, I found out.

I was twenty-one and was just going back to culinary school for the autumn semester, when I walked past my parents' bedroom where he was on the phone with a colleague.

"I don't believe it... A faggot! On our team! No, no conversion therapy. Why waste our tax money on that? They should go fuck themselves. Preferably in prison." Where does dad think prison money come from, trees? I thought in my shocked state in the madness of it all. "Death penalty, more like."

Just by this conversation alone, it was impossible to know how serious the situation was. What followed, however, gave me another clue. Because my father went on to tell the person he was on the phone with a story about how he and a colleague had beaten up two drag queens when they were out last week.

I couldn't breathe. It was as if my surroundings were filled with water. My father... My hero, my role model, the main provider of our family.

I ran to the bathroom and vomited.

I told my mother, told her I knew. She sighed, took my hands, sat me down on the kitchen table. With her small, frail, papery hands around mine, she told me everything. She told me of years of emotional abuse directed towards her, and of anger directed towards homosexuals, especially men who loved men. She told me about the time my father had taken her to a restaurant, and there had been a couple there, both men, and that he'd walked over, spilled his glass of champagne on them, kicked one of them in the shin so hard, my mother could hear the crack, then pulled my mother with him so forcefully to leave that she'd had a bruised arm for a week. I just gaped. I just gaped as the image of perfection that was my parents' marriage crumbled up before my eyes.

"Why do you stay?" I asked, but immediately regretted it, ashamed I was blaming her for not leaving, and not my father for giving her a reason to leave in the first place.

But my mother didn't seem to be offended, just smiled sadly.

"He always made it clear that if I left, he would take you two from me, and he can afford much better lawyers so I knew he was right. I wanted to stay with him until you two could provide for yourselves." I opened my mouth to protest, but mother held up a hand. "Don't blame yourself, Madara. It was my choice." I remained silent. "But as you came of age, I realised you were in danger so I couldn't leave. I'm your mother. I knew. Even if you didn't. Not yet."

I was so shocked, I went to my room and stared into nothingness for an hour.

I would never, ever tell my father.

Although I wished I had, because then maybe, he wouldn't... 

Something happened to Izuna the year he turned eighteen.

I turned twenty-three, and had graduated culinary school and was packing my bags to go to Japan to a one year sashimi course. Izuna was hovering around me, in one of my dark grey hoodies that was tight on me, but reached his thighs. His legs were bare. Izuna was the tiniest thing. It made me feel incredibly protective towards him.

Once done packing, I sat him down on my bed.

"Tell me", I said.

"What?" Izuna asked.

"I've noticed this entire spring when we've video called." Izuna and I would video call many days a week and sometimes even sleep next to each other on video. We would sleep in the same bed sometimes when I was home, craving closeness from the other. "I hoped you'd tell me during summer when I was home. You haven't. I leave tomorrow. You tell me now."

He tried hard not to smile, but sat down next to me. I hugged him close to me and planted a kiss on the top of his head. I rarely did that nowadays, but the thought of being so far away from him when I left for Japan hurt.

"I..."

Izuna had a very, very hard time telling me, which was indescribably unusual of him. He made me promise not to be mad at him. He even made me swear not to tell anyone. I was becoming increasingly worried.

"Madara, I'm a woman."

I stared at him. He bit his lip, face set, gaze unwavering. He knew.

Then, I threw myself over her, lifted her up, twirled her around.

"I have a little sister", I whispered in her ear.

When I put her down, I saw she was crying of relief over my reaction.

But then it struck me...

Izuna is in danger.

A sexual orientation could be hidden. It hurt, but it could be hidden. Becoming your true gender, though...

I had asked Izuna not to talk about my sexuality with our father. I had just said I wasn't ready, and she'd accepted, no questions asked. But now...

I told her. I told Izuna everything.

"Shit", she said.

We'd told our mother, and she'd hugged Izuna as well and cried.

"My daughter", she wailed. "My beautiful, beautiful daughter!"

Izuna started hormone therapy. She started dressing more femininely. Me and my father had grown apart since I'd accidentally heard that conversation and even more so since my mother told me the truth about him, but I noticed that caused him great sorrow; to him I was still his oldest son, his joy and pride. He didn't know that I knew. With Izuna, however... There was a coldness emitting from him towards Izuna, I noticed when I visited for Christmas.

"Why do you wear a girl's shirt?" he asked.

"Everything's in the laundry", Izuna had said, nervous. "Erika forgot it here last week so I just took it."

Erika was Izuna's best friend.

"Hmm", father said.

It was the letter that did it.

One summer day when I was home from the sashimi course, my father wanted to surprise his family by turning up at lunch. My mother hadn't fetched the post yet, so he did on his way in, and opened it in the kitchen.

One of them was a letter for Izuna with the date for her facial feminisation surgery on the basis of being a transgender woman.

Izuna had been in her bedroom, blasting music and studying.

Nobody else was home.

Our father had gotten one of my sharpest kitchen knives, walked upstairs and stabbed her to death.

The anger me and my mother had felt towards father was indescribable.

The sadness we felt regarding having lost our sister and daughter, respectively, killing us from the inside.

But nobody would ever know about the guilt I felt regarding Izuna's death.

Or my reason for feeling it...

Standing at her grave, I couldn't help but think about how an interaction between her and that new kitchen porter would unfold. She would be shy at first. He would be polite, asking her questions, maybe offering his arm as they walked. He would be a gentleman, about her age or slightly above, taking care of her. They would become fast friends.

I couldn't help but feel gratitude towards that boy, as if everything I fantasised about had actually happened. I was usually glad we only had one day a week off, since that was my limit of how long I could go without seeing Tobirama. But now, someone else had been added to the list of people that made life bearable.

I gave the grape candle one final look. I could feel it's scent even in the open air.

Then, I turned and left.