Flowers

Over the next few days, the four of them tried what they could to help, but as expected, the task wasn’t an easy one.

Only half of them could read, and of that group, only half could do so fluently. Tatsuko and Ryuji mainly existed as an idea generator, but they were a great help nonetheless. In fact, it was Ryuji who suggested that they should look through books about flowers to see if they could identify the flower on Altair’s head.

This area fell into Yoruhi’s expertise, and he gladly poured into that research. It had been a while since he felt so excited about picking up an encyclopedia, and his enthusiasm was so great, it caught the attention of the rest of the group.

They became sidetracked as Yoruhi flipped through the pages, explaining the flowers he knew and exploring the ones he didn’t. There were a few of them that existed in this world but not in the world that he came from, such as the noonblossom; a type of gold and blue flower that would bloom every day at noon, and the mistlobe; four-petalled green flowers that trapped mist in an orb-like shape.

There were also a few flowers that Yoruhi knew from his old world but had entries that were missing from the book, to which he assumed implied that they didn’t exist in this world. These flowers included the common asters, the hairy bittercresses, and most shockingly to him, the carnations.

Carnations don’t exist? He wondered, both offended that his favorite flowers weren’t written in the book, but also confused because he could’ve sworn that those were the flowers he saw when he was first born into the world.

He flipped back and forth between the ‘ka’ section of the encyclopedia as if in doing so the flower would appear, but it didn’t. Confused, his friends who were trying to read the book along with him asked what he was doing.

“Can you stop flipping the page!” Tatsuko shouted, “I can’t see the pictures!”

“What’s wrong Yoruhi?” Ryuji asked.

Yoruhi sighed.

“There’s supposed to be a flower here called a carnation,” he explained, “have you guys heard of it?”

Everyone shook their heads no.

He turned to Tatsuko.

“You’ve seen it before right?” he asked, “remember the blue flowers on the day we first met?”

“Hmm… I remember seeing blue flowers but I don’t remember what they look like,” she admitted.

Yoruhi was frustrated and felt schizophrenic, and so he grabbed a nearby paper and pencil and began sketching out the flower.

“This,” he said once he finished, “is a carnation.”

The group stared at the drawing with strange looks on their faces.

“I’ve never seen it before,” Ryuji said.

“Me neither,” Altair murmured. “And this is the city of flowers, so that’s weird.”

“Are you sure you’re not just making stuff up?” Tatsuko added.

Yoruhi let out a big sigh, wishing he remembered the exact location of where he was born. Then maybe he could navigate his way back and prove that carnations existed. Deciding that it wasn’t worth thinking about, he returned to the task at hand, but each of them eventually got distracted again.

Every so often someone would see a flower they found the prettiest and ask either Yoruhi or Altair about it. By the time they finished the book, each child’s favorite flower became apparent.

Altair liked the edelweiss, Ryuji liked the gladioli, and Tatsuko liked the marigolds. As for Yoruhi, he remained adamantly favorable towards the carnations, even if they weren’t in the book.

The encyclopedia, although improving their bond together, eventually resulted in them getting nowhere, for they weren’t able to spot a single flower that was even remotely similar to the one on Alter’s head.

The days would pass by with the group tirelessly working together, and eventually the third day of the Solstice Festival arrived: the Day of Shopping.

Tatsuko and Yoruhi were given a handful of bronze and silver coins to go buy presents around town. The coins were known as ‘noxes’—the currency in this world—and their worth varied depending on their size and metal. Copper was the cheapest, and represented 1 nox, with the bigger counterpart representing 10. Then came bronze, worth 100 and 1,000 noxes respectively; silver worth 2,000 and 10,000 each; gold worth 100,000 each, and 1,000,000 each; and lastly, platinum, which didn’t have a bigger counterpart and was worth 10,000,000 each.

Yoruhi went around town for the first time alone, gazing upon the pretty lights that decorated the snow-covered streets. It was just like Christmas Eve back in his old world, but this time it was different. This time he didn’t feel so alone.

As he looked through the window of a store offering katana services, he had to stop himself from crying. It was the first ‘Christmas’ where he felt truly happy.

He entered the store, preparing to buy a gift for Ryuji. He remembered how the boy liked katanas, recalling how he told him that it felt just right in his hands, and had asked his father, who was an expert on them, what kind of gift would be right. Hayate suggested buying the boy a decorative guard, as they tended to last longer and didn’t have to be salvaged if the blade wore down. It was this reason that Yoruhi entered the store to look for a guard that Ryuji might like.

The store was filled with boxed displays of various katanas and signs indicating the services the store offered, from sharpening, to repairs, to design commissions. Yoruhi had originally wanted to commission a guard design specifically for him, but all the available slots had been booked many weeks prior. He decided to settle down on a guard that was on display: a green and black, clover-shaped, guard. He didn’t know what colors the boy preferred, so he settled down on one that matched the colors of his hair and eyes: black and green.

Next on the list was for his sister Tatsuko. Her gift was easy, for he knew that she wanted to be an assassin, and so he settled down on buying a cloak for her. The color he picked out was based on the color of Fukuro’s wings. Although the owl’s wings were a dark iridescent and were therefore made out of a myriad of colors, he chose a cloak that had the colors that stood out the most: a shade of dark navy blue, a vivid iris purple, and a deep sea-green.

After leaving the local tailor store, he came to his biggest challenge yet: getting a present for Altair. He wanted to buy her a book, but he wasn’t familiar with the series that existed in this world, nor did he know which books she had or hadn’t read yet.

Maybe I can give her a special pen, he thought as he walked along the streets, watching as children ran by him with gift bags in hand, or maybe a bookmark…

Just as he was about to settle on something stupid, the sight of a new store caught his attention. It was a store that sold small accessories such as bracelets, wallets, and keychains, but most notably, it sold hair ribbons. The one that had caught his attention was a black one, and its centerpiece was a white flower: the edelweiss.

Altair hadn’t explicitly stated it, but she was very self-conscious about the flower that stuck out in her hair. Yoruhi had noticed it however, because he saw how she would often try to hide that part of herself when confronted with someone new. He wanted her to feel more confident about herself and so he decided to buy her a flowered ribbon to help fix her insecurities. If she had another flower on her head, the ugly one that was permanently stuck there wouldn’t stick out as much.

With all three presents bought and his funds running low, he spent the rest of the day trying to find his way back home.