Gak. I hate this sort of contrived, romantic story. Why the heck am I writing one? I’m just going to blame it on the hour of Focus that I was looping in the background of my Latin homework. I was too lazy to change my MP3s, and was focussing (ha, ha) on Livy anyway. Regardless, there’s only too much ‘Now you are standing in the middle of the light, and I only want to know if I am the focus of your heart’ that a sane person can take before they write pointless fluff like this. So, blame Yamamoto Taisuke for singing Takeru’s image song. Beats me why this isn’t a Takari, though. :P

***

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

“A beautiful flower for a beautiful woman . . . .” Shibayama Junpei bowed gracefully, before producing a perfect rose from his sleeve with a little flourish. Its white petals deepened to a rich lilac in its heart, and its fragrance was as wild and sweet as memory. He shook his head and palmed the flower again, “You’re a sad case, man. You know she’s not coming, so why are you even here?”

He sighed and sat down on one of the benches in the abandoned park, his hands resting on his knees. Above him a cherry tree spread its branches, heavy with soft, pink blossoms. A gentle wind stirred them and sent petals drifting down like confetti. The ground was carpeted with them, turning the park in a spring-time chapel. The question repeated itself in his head, demanding an answer. Why was he here? Why he had he kept a promise made on impulse over five years ago?

“If we haven’t seen each other before then, we’ll meet here beneath the cherry-trees on my twentieth birthday,” he repeated softly, the words coming to his lips as easily as if he had spoken them yesterday.

He remembered every detail of that day: the last one he had spent with Orimoto Izumi before she had returned to Italy with her parents. They had spent the day with their friends - cracking jokes with Takuya and the rest of them as if to laugh away the pain of parting - but they had had the evening all to themselves. It had been growing dark by the time they left their friends in order to make a more private farewell. The stars had just been coming out in the sky, and a slim, white moon had hung over the horizon. Together, they had walked through these cool, dark gardens in silence, unable to speak because there was too much to say. He remembered the pressure of her fingers in his palm, and the way her hand had bumped against his leg as they had moved.

After what felt like hours of walking, she stopped and turned to look at him. When he closed his eyes, he could still see Izumi as she was that day. Her hands had been clasped around his and she had been smiling up at him, although her deep-green eyes had been suspiciously bright. Her fine, golden hair had been loose around her shoulders, surrounding her like a sheath of sunshine. She had been a fairy-tale princess, standing in her chapel of pink blossom, and he had desperately wanted there to be a happily ever after at the end of their story.

“If we haven’t seen each other before then, we’ll meet here beneath the cherry-trees on my twentieth birthday,” he had said to her, “I’ll be waiting for you to return on that day.”

She had tilted her head to look at him skeptically, “Do you promise?”

“I promise,” he had kissed her, “I promise it by . . . by Blitzmon’s spirit.”

Tears in her eyes, Izumi had laughed and returned the kiss, “Then I promise too. . . . by Fairymon’s. If I don’t see you before your twentieth birthday, I’ll meet you beneath these trees on that day.”

At the time, it had seemed so romantic to Junpei. Now, it merely seemed ridiculously naive. Five years were a long time, a lifetime, when you were fifteen, and he had not heard from her for four of those. Never the greatest of correspondants, her letters and e-mails had dried up only months after she had left Japan. He still had the few she had sent him in a box at home, which he would take out in nostalgic moments and read. He always put them back with a strange sense of emptiness and loneliness, as if he had lost her all over again. Did he still love her? It was absurd. He needed to move on with his life, just as she had evidently done. He knew Izumi had forgotten about him long ago, or, if she thought about him at all, it was in the fond, vague way that people think back to their first loves. She would not be coming to the park that day. It was time to let go of the dreams to which he had been clinging since he had been fifteen.

His chest hollow with disappointment, he got to his feet and brushed the dust off his trousers. He set off towards the gate, his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his gaze firmly fixed on the ground. He was so caught up in his own thoughts that he did not notice the woman running down the path towards the bench before it was too late. Before he could move out of her way, she crashed into him. Stocky and solid as he was, she got the worst of their collision. In a confusion of long skirts and honey-blonde hair, she rebounded off him and tumbled to the floor.

Horrified, he held out a hand to help her to her feet, “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

She lifted her head and smiled at him. Her deep-green eyes danced with amusement, “The only way you could have hurt me, Shibayama Junpei, is if you didn’t keep your promise to meet me here on your twentieth birthday.”

“Izumi-chan,” he whispered in shock, “You came.”

For the moment, they did not need to say anything else. He held out his arms to her, and she stepped into them to wrap her own around his waist. She was warm and soft, and her hair smelt like roses and memory. And, although he did not want to think beyond the present moment, Junpei had a feeling they might live happily ever after.

***

Yep, definitely blame Yamamoto Taisuke and too much Latin for this contrived bit o’ fluff. I’m an innocent victim of cute song and boring Livy . . .

Some notes for those who have only seen the dub:

* Izumi = Zoe. Junpei = J.P.

* Junpei does magic in episode 9 of Digimon Frontier.