#chuuaya

He was the one who’d found her on the streets as a tiny and helpless six year old, looking at him with those honest, trusting eyes of hers, as though trusting that he would help her.

And he had.

He’d convinced the Sheep to take her in, had found her clean clothes and taught her how to throw a punch.

And in return, she’d freely given him her love, seeing him as more than just the hard-hitter of the Sheep. Aya clung to his side, calling him big brother and seeking out his affection, slipping into his bed at night and demanding a bedtime story.

“Aya,” Chuuya says, running his hands over her hair, her face, trying to find the source of her distress. A gunshot wound, maybe? It’s not him she’s scared of, where others had looked at him in fear, she’d always looked at him with eyes round in wonder, as though he’d hung the stars in the sky for her. “Where does it hurt? What’s wrong? Were you scared? It’s over now, no one’s going to hurt you.”

Shaking her head in response to his rapid-fire questions, Aya points a trembling finger just over his shoulder - Chuuya turns and sees - Oh. Her beloved sheep stuffed animal, affectionately nicknamed Mr Sheep, lying face-down on the ground, riddled with bullet-holes and soaked with blood, barely recognisable to its owner.

Aya’s bottom lip trembles. Chuuya recognises the signs of an incoming onslaught of tears. It’s probably best to stop her before the waterworks begin in earnest.

Chuuya bends, wipes away the beginnings of tears with the pad of his thumb, cupping her cheeks and forcing the little girl to look up at him. “Aya, I’ll get you a new one. I promise.”

The old one had been stolen, but Aya doesn’t need to know that.

“Which one do you want?”

The question takes Aya by surprise; seated upon a stool next to Chuuya, Aya amuses herself by swinging her short legs about, knocking her heels in their brightly polished Mary Janes against the rungs of the chair. The flashing screens and Chuuya’s animated expressions had held her attention for a while. Now, Aya stares down at her empty arms, remembering how Mr Sheep had met an untimely end.

She tilts her head, a silent question written all over her face.

The bandaged man gestures at the claw machines, and repeats his question. “Which one do you want? Get Chibi over there to win you one.”

Chuuya levels a nasty glare his way, but smiles at how Aya, predictably, lights up. Aya takes hold of Chuuya’s hand and practically drags him over to the machines, pointing out a yellow bunny holding a sheep in between its front paws. Her excitement is palpable as she jumps up and down on the balls of her heels, pointing over and over again at the toy that she’s set her sights on.

“Just wait, Aya! I’ll win you that toy for sure!”

Chuuya’s declaration does nothing to aid him. After spending an obscene amount of spare change on his unsuccessful attempts, and being forced to watch how Aya’s face changes from excited expectation to a slow resignation, all the while resisting the urge to slam a fist through the glass, it’s Dazai who steps in and takes matters into his own hands. In disbelief, Chuuya watches how Dazai accomplishes the task in a minute, completely disregarding how he’d struggled to maneuver the machine for half an hour.

The suspicious look in Chuuya’s eyes softens ever so slightly as he watches how Dazai carefully hands the stuffed animal over to Aya, who gasps and smiles and blooms , clutching tightly onto her prize.

“Thank you!” Aya says, high and clear like the chime of a bell.

Chuuya stares.

Never before had he assumed that she could talk; he’d always assumed that she’d been unable to.

Cheerfully, she takes hold of his hand, apparently unconcerned that she’d seen him pump a gun full of bullets into a dead body just moments prior to their coming to the arcade. Although Dazai stares down at their joined hands, perplexed and maybe even disgusted, he lets her hand remain in his.

“Aya -” Chuuya starts, shaking his head in a quick motion. “It’s - He’s from the Port Mafia, don’t -”

“It’s alright,” Aya says, serene. “He won’t hurt me.”

Exasperated, Chuuya asks, “How do you know that?”

Chuuya scents the water generously with the soap that’s been arranged by the sink; he chooses a strong lavender scented one, and swirls his hands around in the water to create bubbles and foam. Aya kicks up her heels and helps by splashing her feet about. Chuuya levels a glare at her when some of it gets on his face.

Wiping it off with his sleeve, he says, a tad sarcastically, “Thanks, Aya.”

He’d christened her as Aya after finding her on the street in pieces: half-wild, bloodshot eyes, a rapidly healing cut on her forehead, tears streaming down her dirt-stained cheeks. She’d been accepted into their group instantly at Chuuya’s request, and was now fond of toddling on unsteady legs behind him, her hand twined firmly about the hem of his leather jacket.

Dimpling, Aya reaches up a damp hand and pats him on the cheek, pushing an image into her mind: Chuuya soaking in a tub full of bubbles with a rubber duck for company, a question in her thoughts.

“I’ll bathe in the morning,” He says, replying to her unasked question, a smile twitching at his lips. “You first.”

Satisfied, Aya lets her hand fall back into the water with a splash. Chuuya pumps a handful of lavender scented shampoo into his hand and lathers it into her hair, beginning the arduous task of soaping and washing out her tangled, matted curls. Her burnished amber curls are long, and hang almost to her waist. It takes her ten minutes to wash, and even longer to dry, but Chuuya does it all without ever complaining or suggesting that she cut them off.

“What did you do today?”

Her hand once again finds his cheek, telling him all about her day. A morning breakfast of cold oatmeal – the icky white stuff that she hated, and she’d dumped her bowl into Koji’s. And then her studies with Seichi, one of the few boys in the group with a slender education. Chuuya sees them both poring over books, Aya’s clumsy scrawl filling the pages as she tries to write.

Aya lingers on the word ‘father’, an image of Chuuya’s own face reflected back into his mind. She thinks the word ‘father’ at him, more persistently this time.

Chuuya nearly chokes. “No! Aya, no. I’m not your father.”

Confusion.

Fathers protected and cared and loved. She was happy with him.

He did all that.

“Yeah, I know I took you in . . . But I’m not your father. I’m not.” The last word is said so vehemently that Aya stares at him with wide, hurt eyes.

Disappointment.

“No, Aya, I – Look. I don’t want to be called ‘Dad’. It’s not – ” Unable to properly articulate, Chuuya shoves a hand into his hair, apparently forgetting that his hands are damp and soapy. He exhales a ragged breath through his teeth, tries for a smile. “How about you try calling me something else? How about, uh, ‘Brother’? That’d be better.”

Her father becomes busier as time passes and more and more people arrive. He’s always talking to someone, or being talked to; occasionally he consulted with two or three people at the same time. Activity collects around him from four corners and extends out from him in four directions. Their faces are a blur to her, their words roiling together in a wave of indistinguishable noise and sound.

Her father beckons her over with a wave of his hand, introducing her to “Mori-san”, a long-time family friend come to pay his respects. His hair is long, pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and his eyes glitter almost unpleasantly at her approach. A girl about Aya’s own age clings to his jacket, seeming completely unperturbed by the atmosphere around her, her black skirts swishing around her knees and her bright blonde ringlets bouncing with her every movement. A third person rounds out their party, a well-dressed young man with burnished orange curls, clutching a fedora hat to his chest.

Mori’s tone is gentle as he takes her hand, and says, “I’m sorry for your loss, Aya-kun.”

“ . . . Thank you.” Her voice rusty from disuse, Aya dips her head in acknowledgement, a shiver scurrying down her spine as she takes her hand back, quickly and yet not quick enough to convey disrespect.

The hearse arrives at the main hall. Discreetly, her older sister nudges her; Aya takes the hand of her younger brother, and together, they join the principal mourners and close relatives as they stream into the waiting room. In the stifling heat, confusion and agitation makes the room seem like a whirlpool, and Aya is lost in the midst of the cacophony of noise and sound pressing in on her from all directions.

An announcement summons the mourners to be seated in the main hall. Aya joins her siblings and relatives, silently taking in her surroundings, finally able to distance herself and watch at an arm’s length, feeling strangely detached. She does not look at her sister’s tear-stained face, at the wet handkerchief clutched in her hands, or at her brother’s sullen indifference.

Instead, she looks at the flowers and birds painted on the ceiling, the cypress-coloured canopy, the dark inner chamber, the coffin covered in gold brocade, the Buddhist altar with the image of her mother, bright and vivacious even in her picture. There are offerings, things that her mother had enjoyed in life, profusions of flowers that fill the hall with their sweet, heavy perfume, the mourners overflowing from their seats.

At long last, the sadness of the funeral and the feeling of separation seem to set in, intensified by the sound of the boys’ choir chanting sutras. People cry into well-starched handkerchiefs, the room awash in tears and sobs.

Aya should be the most emotional.

It’s her mother.

But through it all, Aya keeps her gaze trained firmly on her sandals, her eyes strangely dry.

The ceremony ends, and Aya slips outside, away from the four walls that close in on her, from the stifling confines of the hall. She needs a sliver of nature, a space of oxygen. She creeps out the back door and runs down the sloping lawn, towards the back fence.

Someone else is there.

The man - through the haze fogging up her consciousness, Aya vaguely remembers meeting him earlier - turns in the midst of lighting a cigarette. He inclines his head in a greeting of sorts. He remembers her too.

Aya holds her tongue. It seems useless to search for words when there’s nothing to be said.

But the tangled wad of emotions within her forces the words to the surface with a ragged exhale of breath.

“Does it ever stop?”

The man seems unsurprised at the question that tumbles forth from her lips, tinged with desperation and a wide-eyed terror, of eyes that have lost their childhood innocence and would forever be unable to return to a time long since past.

“It . . . Takes time.” He speaks haltingly, the words sounding heavy on his tongue. “But it won’t always be this bad. The first few days are the roughest.”

The concept of loss, it seems, is one that he’s familiar with too.