Conversations on Cold Beige Tiles

"Look, Onii-san!"

Aiko pointed into a bright, glittering river. "Little fish!"

Lachlan laughed, crouching next to her, tiny flitting shapes barely visible past the eye-watering glare. The whole river looked like it'd turned to glimmer in the noon-day sun. "So there are. How many, d'you think?"

Tobira splashed in the water, trying to reach for them as she hmmed. "Ichi, ni, san, yon, go, and... roku! Like you, Onii-san!"

He laughed as she poked at the river of glimmering scales, singing, "Roku roku roku— Rokie rokie Lockie Lockie~"

Lockie Lockie....

A hard swallow caught in his throat, a chime ringing shrilly in the distance—the sound of glass shattering. "Don't call the names of the dead."

"Lockie Lockie Lockie," she sang, and he wanted to cover his ears, her singing cutting off with a gasp as he grabbed her wrist, trying to shush her. There was a shadow prowling back through the house, glinting eyes looking through the windows. When had it gone dark? "Lockie?"

"Stop it," he hissed, her wide brown eyes blending with a freckled face and auburn hair tied in a braid.

"O-Onii-chan?" She stumbled back from him, Tobira in her arms, the sun shining off a white floor.

It glinted off the blade of a sword in his hand, red spots dripping onto the lino, and his heart tangled somewhere in his lungs. The shadow breathed at the back of his neck.

"Onii-chan—" Her wide eyes filled with tears, the toddler with Tobira's face squirming in her arms, crying. Blood dripped onto the floor. She was about to take a step back, a black void behind her, black-gloved hands reaching out like the stench of burnt flesh rising to meet him. Her bare foot brushed back.

"No stop!"

His teeth crunched into her throat, and warm blood filled his mouth.

Lachlan jerked awake clutching a phantom pain clamped like a vice around his own neck, the taste of very real blood stinging his tongue, the smell of burning tingling in his nose. Hell—

His aching stomach clenched tight. Oh hell.

He didn't really remember the flight to the bathroom, but he came to violently tossing last night's dinner into a blinding white bowl in a claustrophobically-small stall, acid burning an already-raw throat as dinner turned to watery bile and something darker his blurry vision could've classified as blood. Blood on a pristine white floor.

His stomach clenched again, more sweat than anything else dribbling in, his heart pounding a mile a minute. Felt like he'd been kicked straight in the middle again, and he fought down the urge to retch with the choking, violently trembling desperation of knowing that nothing else would come up if he did, shuddering like a cat with a hairball.

"Sh-shite." He dragged in air, swallowing the bitter, stinging taste and wincing. Still better than blood. He clenched his eyes shut against the burning light, swallowing hard and pressing knuckles against his teeth and the vision of red-on-white, not daring to breathe. Better not to think about blood, or the burning stench still lurking behind the disgusting smell of his own vomit. "G-god...."

It-it'd been years... since he'd woken up like this. To a version of the same dream. Some variant of this. Never... really tossed his dinner like this before, though. Made him abruptly and deeply sympathise with Ariake.

Nausea still swirled in the pit of his stomach, a pounding pressure dragging up behind his eyes, and he leaned his forehead on the rim of the bowl, still gasping in air, fighting back against the sensation of his teeth tearing in through skin—

He clenched his eyelids tighter. Not going there. God his stomach hurt.

"Gaijin?"

Apparently he was also hallucinating. He could've sworn that was Hirano's voice. It couldn't be, because if it was, he'd have to stick his head into the bowl and drown himself, and that'd be a terrible way to die.

Couldn't be worse than mauled to death by a crazy obake barely older than you, though. Barely older than his little sister had been—

The sound of a choked-off gag probably gave him away, if the ragged gasping for air bouncing around his ears hadn't already.

"Should I call the nurse?" Hirano's hallucinatory voice had moved to mildly inquiring at the door. He wasn't sure if it was closed, and he wasn't going to check.

He shook his head, and the hum that responded was as good as damning.

A faint shuffle reached him past the pounding in his ears and the oddly-tinny sound of canned hyperventilating. If this was a stomach-bug, he hoped his lordship caught it for daring to pee at midnight. "At first I thought it was Ari-kun, then I thought it was one of the girls, and now I see it's you."

He could and did manage a snort. In absolute misery, and now insulted, too. Pain and suffering.

"Did you pull your yuurei after we fought?" Mild curiosity probed at his exhaustion.

Wasn't worth it for a few bruises. He didn't have the energy to rasp that out loud.

"If not, you should. You could have internal injuries."

The sharp pain still sitting in his gut, that'd followed him as mostly an ache all day, did tend to agree with that assessment. It'd heal eventually. Hadn't been why he'd thrown up in the first place, in any case. Yuurei couldn't heal everything.

Besides, if he did, he had a feeling it wouldn't be pleasant.

Instead of doing that, he gathered together his strength, spat out a mouthful of bile, and rasped, "I don't get you, Hirano. Whatever happened... to rivals? Thought you'd want to shove my head in this toilet."

Thought he heard a faint, amused huff. "A rival isn't an enemy, gaijin. A rival is an edge to sharpen your blade. A whetstone needs taking care of, as well, no matter how much its roughness grates."

Someone liked to speak in metaphors. "Ah, you do return my feelings, honoured Blond-san."

"The harsher your surface, the sharper my blade." Hirano's voice held a smirk. "I thought you wouldn't make it when we started, gaijin, but you keep surprising me. Perhaps if you can keep up until the end, you'll even win."

He shook a trembling finger in the general vicinity of the blond's voice. "I'm not cracking under the pressure. A bastard just burst my appendix earlier today."

Hirano did his amused huff again. What a nice little heart-to-heart they were having. "You have spirit. Maybe enough to make a great Samurai. You don't give in, and that I can resonate with."

He shifted his head on the cold surface of the bowl, catching a glimpse of a sleeve next to the half-open stall door where Hirano leaned against the outside, out of sight. "Mustn't be easy growing up half-gaijin."

"My heart is Nihonjin, regardless of the blood my mother gave me. I wouldn't change my parentage for all the acceptance of my countrymen. Even with the pain it's caused me. I'm stronger for it."

He hummed. "Stronger than pure lazy gaijin, eh?"

A glimpse of Hirano's smirk turned to him, one blue eye looking down. "I have to fight for the respect I've gained."

"That so." He let his eyes close. "So, if you come at the top, no one can doubt how loyally Nihonjin you are?"

"You misunderstand me, Buronnewan. I fight because of my loyalty. I will change things in Nihon—in the world for Nihon." The sound of Hirano's fist striking his chest punctuated his words. "And I'll gladly fight for it every step."

Lachlan puffed out an amused half-snort. Lofty goals, said to a half-dead foreigner in a bathroom filled with the stench of vomit and clammy sweat at some unearthly hour in the morning. The kid deserved his own marching band to give his speech a rousing crescendo. Sadly, he only earned a tired wave. "Good. Happy for you."

"And your goal?"

He considered the sealant between the light-beige tiles, and sighed. "Get this over with, and go back to bed. Hope desperately I don't throw up again on the trail run in the morning if this sticks. That sort of thing."

Hirano huff-laughed at that. Maybe he did have a sense of humour.

Lachlan managed a little smile, himself, closing his eyes. "You know, you're good kids. You and Ariake and the rest. Bit stiff, but you're alright once you loosen up a bit."

He pulled himself up with an effort, wincing at the stabbing protest in his middle, and threw out the world's shakiest, palest-faced salute. "Whichever way the wind blows, I'll be proud to serve alongside you."