CHOCOLATES IN MONSOON | HRK

11 | cherry blossoms and rain

CHAPTER ELEVEN ;; JUNKYU
cherry blossoms and rain

He wished he could say that he'd known all along. Honestly.

What would the alternative do ?

What good had the truth ever done him ? The raw, harsh truth. The truth. The only truth that rang in his ears over and over and over again, like his fears gone astray - he felt betrayed. He didn't know why he felt this way - no, not exactly. He thought he had learned to expect too much. That was it. That must be it.

He had learned to expect too much from someone who had just come like a whiff of sweet smelling flowers. Here one moment. Strong and present and dizzying in its glory. Gone the other. Wilted, dry and empty in its sickening demise. No. Not demise. Someone was alive. That someone was alive and breathing and talking and smiling at him. That someone was still here and he hadn't gone - not yet.

He hadn't yet gone. He kept on deepening his marks on Junkyu. Cutting and slicing and digging through his skin and winding around Junkyu like a frail, fading twine. How he wished now that he could cut through them and set themselves loose. But he couldn't. He loved that someone.

"Hey Junkyu ? He called. He is ready", his mother said, softly rapping on his door but not opening it. He murmured something, hearing a sigh from the other side and went back to staring at his art again. It was blood today - just blood. Pools and pools of the liquid stretching from one corner of the canvas to the other. Shaded in orange, vermillion and pink. It was as if the very material was bleeding. Which was strange - nothing could bleed more than Haruto had done that day.

Nothing could bleed more than his heart did everyday. Why did it bleed again ? He did not know. He didn't think he could ever know. Why ? There could be countless reasons. Yet there could be none. There could be reasons so scary and mind numbing and paralyzing he would weep for hours on end. And reasons which sounded so stupid even inside his own head - that he let them pass anyway. What was the point ? All these reasons - stupid and meaningful, countless and unitary all closed in on one prime reality.

Haruto had three months to live. And for all that he was worth - he had three aeons. Which he didn't want. He didn't want to live in a world where the boy wasn't. Again - what was the point ?

After all - and here was something he didn't want to think about at all - Junkyu wasn't the one having cancer.

The older was.

Some cancer. The doctor had rambled on and on and on about some sort of cancer in his body, which had engulfed him whole. Junkyu had been on his knees beside the unconscious boy's bed - crying and shaking and begging and pleading. For someone. For anyone to explain what was happening. Why was Haruto bleeding like that ? Why wasn't he speaking ? Why was blood still coming out of his gently parted lips - why was he so pale ? Was he....was he, could it be...that he was dead ?

And oh how he had screamed when Haruto's head had lolled - weightless and numb onto his chest. That one instant - that one moment in time when he was left alone in Haruto's room, holding the other's bleeding, cold, gaunt face in his arms, cradling it to his chest. It had been enough to bring forth the terrible anxiety he had only dreamed of before. Something he'd only ever heard of. By the time the older's parents had rushed into the room - Junkyu was already falling. Falling and fading - yet sobbing - as he fell to the hard marble floor. Unable to breathe. Unable to scream. Sweating profusely and utterly paralyzed.

"N-no", Junkyu breathed, curled into a small, quivering ball on the long three legged stool in front of his canvas. Hot burning tears fell continuously upon his arms - which were wet and sticky from the past couple of hours' crying anyways. The sense of being tired - lost in a void of infinitesimal darkness - that numb sense of having lost everything and anything that he ever had - ingrained itself deeper into his heart as he peeked up from his folded knees at the canvas again. It was a fiery red now. The blood.