Musuko (Book Two of the Kakureta Hana series)

V: Go

I walk to Ryuu and Sakura's house after most of the clan have either drunk themselves into a stupor or merely settled down for the night.  I had lost track of Amaya soon after the meal had concluded, likely because she was whisked away by the ever-growing crowd of women around her to start wedding preparations.

I know that I probably should have stayed within my quarters tonight, but the likelihood that someone would notice that I was gone tonight was very low.  And I wanted to talk to the people who had raised me, away from the celebration and the jubilation of the clan.

Again, Ryuu is sitting on the porch when I arrive, but this time Sakura isn't outside with him.  He rises the moment he sees me coming and meets me halfway down the road.  I can barely see his face in the dark even with the lantern that I carry beside my side.

"Sakura is resting," he says, and I frown at his words.  It is unusual for Sakura to be asleep so soon with the sun barely having disappeared behind the horizon, so it concerns me to have him tell me that she is resting.

"Is everything all right?" I ask, glancing towards the house that I grew up in.  The only part of it that I can clearly make out is the porch where Ryuu had left his light, and I wonder if I should have paid more attention when I was here a week ago with them.

He pulls me close, and we begin the walk back to the porch.  "She will be fine.  The excitement has just exhausted her more than normal.  Yori came over this afternoon after Amaya and you talked to her, and they spent hours discussing the marriage.  You have given the two of them plenty to scheme about, but both of them forget that they are not as young as they used to be."

I laugh.  "Neither are you, Igarashi Ryuu, nor as tall as I remember you once were."

"That is because you have grown up, Kazuhiko.  Many things appear different when you are younger than when you are older, and often the world that you believe that you understood when you were young seems much different when you age," Ryuu says.  We settle onto the porch, and he closes his eyes for a moment.  Then he looks at me, and the expression lurking in his amber eyes freezes my blood where it is flowing through my body.

"Sakura and I are very proud of you, more than you ever could know," he whispers.  "Despite the many other paths you could have taken, you have chosen one that we hoped your feet would be firmly planted upon.  I know that it has not always been easy for you especially since Junichi and Rika died before you had a chance to know them, but I hope that you don't think that we have done an inadequate job of raising you in their stead."

I am still looking in his eyes, trying to interpret the emotion painted so clearly there, but his words, spoken so softly, makes my heart ache against my chest.  "You were the best people with the clan to have taken me on.  I do not keep coming back here because I feel some obligation to the two of you because you raised me.  I come back because you are the closest thing to a father and mother that I ever knew, and I love you both for raising me even when it was difficult.  I am the man I am now because of your instruction, and I want to have a relationship with Amaya like Sakura and you have.  I want a love that may flicker when the rains come but will never go out completely, one that will only strength with time."

He reaches over and pulls me into an embrace, one that I willingly return.  I mean every word that I said to him.  I cannot imagine what my life would have been like if someone more like Lord Motome had raised me in lieu of Ryuu and Sakura.

"Amachi Junichi was my dearest friend," Ryuu says when we have broken the embrace.  His hand remains on my shoulder, a comforting presence.  "We grew up together, trained together.  I was in the battle where your grandfather was killed, and I watched as Jun took on a role that many in the clan thought he was perhaps too young and inexperienced for.  I have seen you grow into a young man that Amachi Junichi would have been proud to call son, and regardless of how Rika and he died, I could not find many other people in this world that I am more proud to have counted among my friends.  I like to think that they would have had a love that would have stood the test of time as well, but we will never know how different the story would have been if they had lived.