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It's a simple thing to tie a scarf. Even simpler to roll the fists up and yank, driving your knee into the opponent's chest until their mouths start to sputter like greedy birds chirping for their mother.
You don't tell Osamu this, obviously.
Instead, you tell him: "I don't feel the cold, you know."
Osamu does know. Which is why he frowns and reaches for you anyway, eyes burning soft like a lamp turned to its lowest setting. His lashes are short and thin. Not the kind to cup the sun or kiss the high apples of his cheeks when he blinks. Just ordinary. Utterly unremarkable and normal to everyone you ask—and you do ask.
Kageura laughed in your face. Kō smiled, but in a different way from how Jin smiled as you sat on the lip of Takamkoma's rooftop at three in the morning.
The echoes of their opinions disappear as Osamu winds the wool around your neck, putting one end under the other, diving down and back up before tucking it underneath itself to lock it down. He runs his palm flat against the fabric.
You wish you could have felt his warmth.
"I know, Kuga." You look up. Osamu twists some of the tassels on the scarf between his fingers, face drawn and complex. "This is more for me than it is for you."
It's shockingly the truth. Less surprising than it was a few months ago, when he would constantly deny altruism for selfishness. Both can be true—so can the thoughts that you think as the corner of his mouth lifts into a tiny smile.
"So please, indulge me this little bit."
It's always been hard to deny your captain anything. You're not about to start now.
—·—
"This happens every year?"
"Autumn will probably be a more dramatic change," Osamu explains, shivering slightly against the early-morning breeze. "The leaves turn from green to red and yellow before falling off the branch."
"But they're pink right now."
Your chest swells when he laughs, sunlight dappling across the frames of his glasses. "They'll turn green soon. Look. There are already some new buds starting to come in."
You walk onto the grass to find what he's talking about. When your foot hits the surface of an innocent root, Osamu makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and, curious, you climb onwards to see if he'll make more.
"Kuga, we're not really supposed to…"
You hum, rolling onto the tips of Konami's old sneakers to get closer to the branches. "I don't see what you're talking about."
Osamu steps onto the grass. It's natural to be so attuned to your captain's movements. To feel yourself roll into motion, clambering up even higher, spurred on by his issuing cry. The branch creaks, but you persevere. This tree is old enough to have weathered the weight of other past children who thought themselves poetic. Right there, in the deep wood, are small hearts scratched in by blunt knives and determined hands holding sharp enough rocks.
It's beautiful.
Petals rain, weaving a thick wall of floral notes and fresh wood chittering with waking insects and arachnids looking to feast.
You look all around you before peering down at your cold-sweat captain below. "Come up here."
"But—" You bounce violently. "Okay! Okay!"
Defeated, Osamu considers the tree. He tests a foot on the same root you used to propel yourself up the trunk and looks up at your dangling ankles before attempting to tackle the trunk.
It takes time.
Osamu was not carved from the same wood as rebellious gremlins who liked to run when their parents looked away or the seasoned veterans who never expected to live past seven. He was raised a normal boy in a once-normal city. Climbing a tree for fun would never cross his mind. He'd only do it to help someone.
(Privately, you think that the number of cats that love to get stuck where they can't get down is a hilarious statistic. You didn't believe Replica when he told you about it. He chirped that it was not his role to tell you what to believe. It was up to you to figure it out for yourself.
"Read about it," Replica suggested, hovering above your chest. You feel his weight make a nest of your sternum, humming with trion. "Or ask any one of your peers. There is a plethora of data around you—you need only reach for it.")
Luckily, Osamu is tall enough, and you are plenty strong with a single Boost.
He takes your hand, submitting himself to being hauled upwards onto the branch that creaks a little more concerningly. You grin to take his mind off it, placing the hand that held his on your lap. Palm up, of course. To preserve the memory of the shape and pressure without anything else diluting it. Your fingers twitch. Wind whistles through the chunks of your stubby, eleven-year-old hand.
An emptiness you are loath to be reminded of.
More petals fall, snapping off the flower every time you move.
"We had something similar in Calvaria," you say, looking out at the calm water of the riverfront just beyond the grass, sidewalk and seawall. "Apparently."
"Apparently?"
"I only heard about it from Izukacha. How the Tsuchigami would make large, beautiful trees with long ribbons made of trion that would dance with the wind."
Osamu frowns. "You were in Calveria for three years. You never saw them make it once?"
"We were at war, Osamu," you say softly. "The Tsuchigami were busy building more important things. The trees were more a peacetime thing, or, as close to peace as a country in the World could get."
If Replica were here, you could have shown him. A parcel of the time you most regret, but time has eased the shadows that festered in your wounds.
Or maybe it's the peace that comes with inevitability. Osamu's autumn sounds fun, but you're not sure you'll even live to see that day.
(But you want to. Gods, you want to.
Once upon a time, Jin told you that you would be having a lot of fun from now on. Your friends at HQ and the shared meals at Tamakoma are a balm to the bleakness that you've lived with since you got your father killed. They drag you outside. Tug and pull at your limp limbs like you are a reckless thing that doesn't know how to keep itself alive.
Osamu doesn't spend every second of every day wrapped up in your death, but he thinks about it. Has been given a 'curse', as Chika calls it, to give you a reason to keep living.
It's different to the glue that the others are to your broken shards of a person. Osamu is your light, shining in the distance like a flame calling her moth home.
You aren't greedy by nature. You'd be content with even just an hour more to spend with him and his gentle hands that had callouses building on the side of his forefinger from all the notes he'd been taking on the combat logs. Maybe they could drift towards you. To your collar, to fix a button or a rumpled lapel. Or maybe higher. To your neck, almost human-soft.)
"Do you miss it?"
You don't. You never had those peaceful privileges, after all. Then, Osamu clarifies, "The Neighbourhood. Your World."
That's a little more complicated. "I don't know," you answer honestly, surprising even yourself. The you from a few months ago, when you were carrying your father in a casket wrapped around your finger and the fragile hope that maybe your death could actually mean something if it meant he would walk this world again—that Yūma would have lied without any hesitation. You don't. Not to Osamu. Not when Osamu looks at your Side Effect and acknowledges it instead of skirting around the issue, forcing himself to be honest even if he doesn't know how to be true to himself just yet. "I don't really see the point in missing it or not. I'm here, not there."
Osamu shifts on the branch. You're aware of the hairsbreadth he moved closer. Like you're aware of the feeling of your own skin stretched atop a hollow body that bleeds in mist and cracks at the tiniest of impacts. The fall here wouldn't shatter you, but you don't want to let Osamu see how easy it is to crack through your walls. You want him to remember you as strong.
Your captain's eyes refuse to look away. "Are you happy here?" Osamu asks. His lashes aren't even long enough to flutter, but you feel the wind and the scent of pollen on the vine.
"I could probably be happier," you say, finding yourself matching his distance forward and dropping your eyes to his lips to see his answer better. "But that's not to say I'm unhappy, either. I'm here," you re-affirm, wrapping something painful in a sakura-coloured bow and handing it to him, "—that's all I need right now."
"You'd tell me if that changes, right?" He's so close. He's never been this close before. "If I could do something for you, if I could—"
"You're already trying to get Replica back." There is something in your heart—a stutter where hope should be. "Jin told me about it. You made him feel awful, you know. I think he has difficulty with truly good guys."
Osamu flinches. You think it's enough to distract from the fact that you could never answer that question. Not without fog spewing out of your own mouth and covering up the beautiful picture this boy sitting beside you makes.
His head turns, and the supple curve of his cheek is all you can see of his face. It's ample time to admire the brush of hair at the base of his neck. The silver ends on his glasses that don't fit quite perfectly around the ear.
"I'll do it, you know." The entirety of Osamu's body tenses with barely restrained fury. "I'll get him back. All of them. Everyone."
"You already made that promise on national TV," you point out, letting your smile colour your voice so he could hear it and turn back. "I was there, remember, Osamu?"
The pragmatist in you would hate to follow someone as reckless as your captain, but you are still your father's son. Even if you didn't understand him in the end, Osamu can do it for you. Just like he can carry yours, Chika's, Hyuse and Jin's hopes in a heart where they will learn to blossom.
"I'm counting on you," you say—no, pray. So gentle as not to disturb another leaf on this tree. Finally, he turns back to face you, cheeks as pink as the canopy. "So count on me too, okay? Let me know next time you decide to play hero. I'm here to help you, Captain."
Then you kiss him.
The shock kicks you both out of the tree and onto the illegal cushion of grass and petal graves. You cushion his fall like it's the most natural thing in the world, protecting every place where that devil woman stabbed him so that no new hurts dare invite themselves upon his precious body.
You stare at each other, stunned. Osamu above, and you, below.
Then he huffs and pushes his glasses up with a shaky hand before grabbing you by the scarf and hauling you up.
—·—
(The thing about kissing Mikumo Osamu is that he has never kissed anyone before. This is true of you as well, but you are a soldier. You know how to move your body, and somehow, this includes precise articulation with your lips.
So you don't kiss him. You communicate with him. You tell him everything you're too cowardly to say out loud, and he gets the gist. Takes a back foot to the experience, accepting everything you're willing to give until your body feels scooped clean of your pumpkin guts and Halloween soul.
Another thing Osamu promised to introduce to you later. October—Gods, that's half a year away in the depths of his autumn.
Then, Osamu tilts his head.
It's a revelation. You move much faster. Much better. Reaching a flow state where everything depends on the feeling of his lip against yours and the shy tongue that darts across your trion shell before diving deep to touch the recreation of teeth and gum.
"We'll talk about this," Osamu mumbles into your cavity.
"We're talking right now."
Osamu is not very impressed. "This isn't—"
Rolling your eyes, you kiss him again. He makes a strangled noise, and you practically beam with feline satisfaction, delighted to confirm that these noises are heavenly and you're going to nab every single variation of them for yourself until you're satisfied.
And so you do. And he does too. Kissing you back until the day melts away into a pleasant memory that makes you smile every time you think about it.)
—·—
Later, Osamu asks you if you ever saw the buds of green on the sakura tree in the end.
You laugh until he laughs too, then you start laughing for real when his peridot eyes sparkle under the sun, flush with life.