#and kikyo (bellflower) is for unchanging love

[cheezritsu]

Afterthought (Exit Stage Left) || Akaashi Keiji

Wc: 2.1k

Inspired by this quote that lives rent free in my mind, and by Afterthought by Joji

The scenery that stretches out the window of your train is a blur of orange tinged buildings, the glint of the setting sun catching every window on every skyscraper as you speed through the outer edges of the greater Tokyo Met area. You avert your squinting eyes, choosing to watch your quiet companions. The passengers on your train all sway in a similar manner, like a gif on a constant loop.

Despite this nearly cinematic tableau, there is something missing from this moment—perhaps it’s the fact that you’re on your way back to work after your lunch break and the sun is already setting, but there’s something more bittersweet than an early twilight. Your eyes sweep across the train car, searching the little cracks and crevices as if someone has left clues for this mystery.

But there is nothing out of the ordinary—the salarymen are as shiny-shoed and bored eyed as ever, the junior high girls are still huddled close together and giggling over a phone screen. One of the girls reaches down to pull up her leg warmers, and you think about how long it’s been since your friends wore those. The crest on their uniforms is unfamiliar, yet looking at them feels like a portal to the past.

The feeling in your chest grows exponentially as the train slows to a halt. The girls promptly get off, along with a host of other young, fresh looking passengers. One young man with a college ID on his lanyard walks past you, with something in his arm brushing against you. It makes a crackling sound that garners both of your attention.

“Oh!” He says, turning back to you quickly as the doors start closing. “I’m sorry!” He bows shallowly, and from the motion you catch the bouquet of purple tulips, abundant and bright, tied off with a white ribbon. He doesn’t stay in your sight much longer, running through the doors with the type of urgency only a young person could afford. You frown harder.

Now the train car is full of adults, and the alienation sits like lead in your stomach. You have nowhere else to be but work, yet you feel like you’re forgetting something—a prior engagement? A rendezvous with a friend? A missed call? You check your phone; nothing. A date—?

You remember it now. An entire train stop has come and gone. Your train stop. When you blink out of your stupor you realize you now have to walk blocks—blocks!—to his apartment, with the quickly setting sun making chills creep under a coat not meant for winter. Your fingers are popsicles where they curl around the stems of the bouquet tucked into your arm. Perhaps it’s getting a little too predictable; here you are on a Thursday, in an outfit that’s mostly black, in makeup he’s seen a thousand times. You’re a broken record for sure, but comfort and familiarity were things Akaashi savored more than onigiri.

(Right?)

You like the familiarity too. Walking into his apartment complex gives you a fuzzy warmth, and you barely pay attention as your fingers automatically press the button to his floor. Your reflection in the chrome doors is a haunting type of deja vu that leaves you with a sinking feeling you’re sure isn’t just his janky apartment elevator.

As one foot drags and the other heel clicks against the floor, it feels like you’re marching to a forlorn melody, something non-diegetic that would warn your imaginary audience that something terrible is about to happen, but leaves you clueless. There are layers upon layers of irony that surround the moment you turn the key into Akaashi’s apartment, only to find it dark and near barren.

Tokyo winters are notoriously cruel to apartment complexes. The grey sky matches the towering skyscrapers and colors the world in dismal shadows. Akaashi sits among them, a single desk lamp washing the pages of his newest project in harsh light.

He doesn’t look up when he hears your heels click against his kitchen floor. Silence drapes the room, punctuated only by the furling of pages. It sounds like a library or a study, not like a home with two lovers.

But you like watching him; the intense blue of his eyes as he scans the pages, his white shirt sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He looks handsome and pristine, like a marble statue.

He still looks that way when he finally turns to you, not so much as a smile on his face. “Hey.” He says, like you’re an afterthought.

“Hey,” you say, still possessing the bashfulness of a schoolgirl. You wait patiently for Akaashi like a dutiful kouhai would their senpai. When he does a once over of the flowers in your hand, he sighs.

He closes the magazine then pushes himself up from the desk as if it’s the most difficult task in the world. Akaashi pads over to you, still in his work shoes, and turns your head to look in your eyes.

There is no longer any feverish excitement in his touches. That placid countenance you got a thrill out of breaking never cracked, and it left feeling cold and forgotten. His fingers placed themselves exactly where they were supposed to, robotically so, with little tease, or foreplay, or reverence.

“These are pretty,” he says, and all you do is nod.

You’d heard about loveless marriages before. About people who stay together despite there not being a spark. You didn’t think it’d ever happen to you, for you had enough love for Akaashi to last a lifetime and then some. But here, now, when his lips pressed to your jaw, your neck, your collarbones with precision and no passion, you felt your soul detach from your body and allowed him to continue kissing a corpse.

He never said a word.

And when he did, it’s just: “What are they for?”

And this is where you come out of your comfort zone with him. “They’re for you. It’s a goodbye present.”

‘So that’s what it takes,’ you think as Akaashi’s eyes widen impossibly large. You’d laugh if you didn’t feel so hollow.

“Wh-“ he flounders, pushing the bouquet of purple asters back into your arms. “What are you talking about.”

“I can’t do this anymore, Keiji.”

He spares you the theatrics. Keiji was a literature major; he excels at context clues.

Yet he looks between the flowers and you, like it’s an incomplete puzzle. “What exactly is it you can’t do?”

Akaashi watches as you shuffle back and forth on your heels. Sometimes he can see the person he fell in love with back in high school: your nervous habits have stayed the same. But still, you’ve undeniably grown since then. Aged, like wine; becoming bolder, harder to swallow.

He can’t really be impressed anymore when you look him in the eye and say, “I can’t keep putting you first when I’m second place for you. I can’t be your afterthought anymore.”

“You’re not an afterthought.” It’s the lame reply of someone who can’t think of what else to say. You know it too.

“Ji,” you apply his coveted nickname, and it makes it all the worse. “You’re just keeping me around because you’re used to me.”

Something blooms across his face. It prickles with heat as a protective bubble of anger bursts in his chest. “What’s wrong with me being comfortable with you?”

Your stare goes level, lids dropping so the light in your eyes vanishes. The wings of your eyeliner make you look dangerous, ethereal. He really has always liked the way you looked. Your beauty is no longer subjective to him, it doesn’t steal his breath. It’s just an emotionless fact.

“Being comfortable is something friends are. We can be friends if that’s what you want.”

His brow raises. “Is that what you want?”

You shrug. The nonchalance is what gets him—the action is unhurried, comical, almost, in how lackadaisical you’re making this moment. (Although, he admits to himself that his anger is redirected guilt for not feeling too torn up about this himself.)

“That’s up to you,” is your only reply.

He heel turns, groaning and rubbing his twitching hands down his face. “Y/n what does that mean?” He says, voice finally rising. There’s no longer the thrill of getting him riled up. Only a dull throb where adrenaline should be. “Why are you making this harder than it has to be?”

“I-!” You laugh hollowly, and Akaashi stares at you with pinched brows. “Me? I said I can’t do this anymore. Clean and simple! You’re the one dragging this out when you don’t love me anymore!”

The anger ebbs like receding waves, and its wake is the wreckage he’s been waiting to appear. Akaashi is stunned by your violence, and nothing more.

And perhaps it’s his refusal to do anything about it that makes you turn your head as you swallow down the bitter acceptance he’s spoon fed you. “I mean,” you sniff, not even attempting to salvage anything. “I’ve always loved you more than you love me.”

The crooked smile you give pushes him over the edge.

“That’s not true,” he scolds quickly. “I just don’t show it the way you do.”

“Because you never wanted to.”

(Does it feel like he’s been shot in the chest because it’s true, or because he’s been caught?)

The flowers land on the table unceremoniously, punctuated by your heavy sigh. “So what,” Akaashi says, looking down at you. He never held his height over you condescendingly, but he’s scowling at you now. You give him a look that’s not quite defeated, but definitely not unbothered, waiting for him to finish.

“So you just knew I’d fallen out of love and you stayed with me the whole time? And now you walk in here, dressed up, with..with goodbye flowers? What kind of plan is that?”

“It wasn’t a plan, Ji.” You give a pitiful excuse for a laugh, somewhere between a scoff and a sob. ‘I just...I stayed because I still love you.”

Under his bewildered gaze you deteriorate faster than paper in water, crumbling into soggy remains as you give a wobbly smile. “But I suppose that’s not enough, is it?”

Your middle finger and thumb rub circles into your temple, like this conversation is giving you a headache. In the grey evening light of mid-winter, Akaashi can see a tear twinkle down the contour of your face like a Renaissance painting. And then it hits him all of a sudden that he’s the cause of all your wretched pain, and it winds him like a spin kick to the chest.

“I’m sorry,” he says, but never says what for. It can’t leave his lips (and why should it? You both know what for, why should he make it harder than it has to be?)

You don’t say you accept it. You don’t cry either. You simply scoot the chair back with a grating noise, and to this day, the sound still haunts Akaashi, teleporting him back to this moment, when you walked out the door and never came back.

Akaashi stares at the now unoccupied chair, his eyes lost and something pricking in the corner of his eyes.

“Akaashi.”

No, Akaashi scrunches his brow. Panic bubbles in his chest this isn’t right. You never called for him. Why didn’t you call for him?

“Akaashi,”

You leave his life as simply as stage directions—Y/n: exit stage left. The door stays open, because you’re not petty enough to slam it. Considerate, even when smashing your own heart to pieces.

“Akaaaashi.”

And his.

“Akaashi!”

He blinks once, twice. There are no more flowers, no open door, no dim grey lighting. Just the clean, white tile of Onigiri Miya, still empty during its dedicated lunch break. Orange light spills in and grants the store a golden look. From where he stood after scooting back his chair, Atsumu Miya raises a brow, his concern shadowed by the sun at his back.

“Are you okay?” He passed his hand in front of Akaashi’s face, somewhat teasingly. His handsome smile is small. “Lost ya for a sec.”

Atsumu’s left hand is still gripping the back of his seat. The other occupants of the table are seated, their curious eyes squinted at Akaashi as if they could possibly discern what was going on on the other side of his eyes.

“Sorry,” he finally says, fixing the blond with an apologetic smile. “It’s just,” he looks in the middle of the table, where sticking up from a small glass vase was a single purple kikyo flower, its head hung low and mournfully. He can’t keep his eyes off of it. For someone who’s supposed to be an afterthought, you’re always at the forefront of his mind; like the fraying anxiety of leaving the stove on, or the person one sees from their peripheral vision. If only he’d said all that when it mattered. Then maybe you wouldn’t be—

“It’s nothing. Just a memory.”

[jaakunxkaze]

She picked up the flower, looking in the book so see if she could find it. Running back to the Assassin, she showed it off to him. "Do you know what this is? I can't find it." So much for books being the answer to everything.

 ✦  ─ ━ Ѕһɩɴоβɩ   The Assassin knows a little bit of floral knowledge due to living in a village with a few flowers back in his era so he knows what is what by the color and scent. When the young Caster ran up to him holding the flower up to him, he looked at it carefully and hum in return.❝It’s a Kikyo also known as a Bellflower. The flower meaning behind it is unchanging love, honesty, and obedience but you want to know where’s the perfect place to put it? It’s behind your ear so you can show it off to everyone. ❞

@nursedrhymes

[reborn-imagines-redux]

Soulmate Series #21 - Kikyo

Dedicated to both @ayuki-drawing-land and @nerumline,

@ayuki-drawing-land because I can’t think of Kikyo without thinking of all her wonderful art of him!  (that has given me so much inspiration, tbh)

and @nerumline because I will never be able to tell her how grateful I am that she gave me that chance to do all that writing for him last summer

Soulmate AU where you have a tattoo of a plant that represents the soulmate.

The lovely purplish-blue flower that marked your forearm was known as the Chinese bellflower, symbolizing unchanging love, honesty and obedience, you figured that your soulmate was definitely a good one.  You had known people with soulmarks meaning fickleness, rejection, hopelessness and despair among others.  

Yours might not symbolize the most passionate. But at least you’re heart probably wasn’t going to be broken.  And then you met your soulmate, and realized that all your expectations of a mild-mannered man, who was perfectly ordinary were completely off the mark.

You had noticed the man with the long teal hair almost as soon as you walked into the small café.  Most people probably did, with hair like that you thought to yourself. But there was just something about him. The way he walked with a commanding air, he was used to being obeyed, though he treated the other tall white haired man next to him with no small amount of deference.  

You tried to tear your eyes away, not wanting to be caught staring.  Besides being rude, it’d be rather embarrassing.  But still, you couldn’t stop looking at him.  He was beautiful and so obviously unconcerned with people’s opinions – at least, he seemed that way, judging by the rather feminine touch of make-up (not that it detracted from his masculinity at all, you thought with no small amount of attraction).

You might have thought that he was beautiful – but there was still that subtle masculinity about him.  The juxtaposition entrancing.  

And then he turned.  And before you could even be embarrassed about the staring, you felt that electric shock that raced through your body.  The tell-tale sign that was the highlight of every romance movie of this day and age.  You had met your soulmate.  

His teal eyes widened a bit in surprise but he then he turned to the white haired man to say something.  The white haired man didn’t look shocked at all as he turned you way, grinning and waving at you before saying something to your soulmate, then turning to look back at the menu written on the café’s wall.  

Your soulmate however, approached you.  You weren’t going to be ashamed later when you admitted that your breath had definitely caught in your throat.   Your soulmate was nothing you had imagined and everything you could have wanted.  Ordinary was not what you would use to describe him.

“My name’s Kikyo.”  He introduced himself.

The name in his smooth accent clicked with something in your brain and it was with an amused smile that you showed him the mark on your arm.  “Never expected this to be quite so literal.” %