Chapter Text
Year 1581
It all started with blood.
Dripping at her feet, sticky on his hands, the smell encapsulated in his nose. The nauseating sticky texture licking at his skin, drying into rough clots.
The samurai armor fell with a metallic crack to the ground, the red-flecked grass caressed his ankles. Toji curled in on himself, leaning against the bark of a tree. Covering the wound in his side, he coughed and gasped strings of saliva that fell down his chin. Sweat glistened on his face, black hair stuck to his forehead.
Just a few meters away, a bloody battle was still being fought. He could hear the screams, the heartbreaking kiss of a gunshot. Footsteps were approaching quickly, but he didn’t move.
He looked up, exhausted. The boy couldn't have been more than fifteen years old, the wakizashi was too heavy in his hands. The young soldier looked from Toji to the corpse lying on the ground, to the torn off armor, to the body's dead eyes; both, with whom he had shared camaraderie for months. An expression of horror broke through his childlike features as he recognized Toji's katana buried in his companion's chest.
“You… you're a…”
Toji spat on the ground. The boy raised the weapon shakily. As Sun Tzu had said? The entire art of war is based on deception. The gasps turned into a sharp smile. The scar curled at his lips and his green eyes flashed as he uttered a slick response.
“...traitor?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Shinobi,” the young man whispered, taking a step back, fearful.
A harsh laugh spilled from his mouth. A bloody footprint was left stamped on the bark of the tree. The chill of the wound twisted his body to one side. He would be able to withstand another physical fight if he put his mind to it, but he didn't want to risk it. He couldn't let anyone who discovered what he was stay alive.
He had what he wanted, the numbers, the information he had collected after months in that shitty military hole. He needed to return to Iga with his head attached to his body and receive the reward, so he just put one hand in his pocket and quickly covered his mouth.
"Don't move," the boy warned, advancing hesitantly towards him.
Young people were so reckless choosing last words. Toji played with the pins between his teeth and approached him with a huge stride. He grabbed his shoulder and the opposite wrist, deflecting the wakizashi, while spitting fukumibari into his eyes.
The samurai let out a piercing scream, staggering back with his hands raised. Blood and tears flowed from the pins stuck in his globule, falling down his features and staining his lips.
Toji ripped the katana from the corpse and raised it above his head.
━━━━━━
Year 2079
He grabbed the fortune cookie and crushed it in his hand. Crumbs fell from between his fingers onto the rest of the candy wrappers and a shōgi board. He felt the paper against the palm of his hand.
“Crushing Luck? How arrogant." Suguru crossed his arms on the other side of the table. “Someday you’ll need it.”
Satoru was beautiful. Everything about him was incredibly beautiful and impossible. Soft petal edges curved into the shape of his jaw, pale pink lips reminiscent of a young flower. Whitish strands fell down his forehead, freezing his skin to a strikingly light hue.
And those eyes. They looked up at Suguru with a mocking smile, long white eyelashes caressing a clear sky. So blue and cold that you could see the cracked tone of the iris around his black pupils, an ecosystem of its own where the intangible word swam.
He was about to reproach him that he didn’t need luck or fortune, when he realized what he had written was not a prophecy or a teaching at all.
"Oh, just a question," he muttered.
Suguru frowned and extended his arm. Satoru handed him the paper with an absurd pout.
“It's not entirely stupid to think about this.”
"My cookie is defective, Suguru," he complained.
“You really are defective, idiot.”
"Give me another one, come on," Satoru kicked him under the table, hearing him laugh.
Suguru shook the fortune cookie jar and slowly twisted the lid. He took out one more and handed it to his friend.
Satoru took the cookie and crushed it in his hand. As if he had received a whiplash, a stab of pain crawled up his side at his gesture and he jumped in his chair.
He opened his hand immediately, stifling a curse. The paper fluttered to the table as he touched the area, shrinking. His vision blurred with tears, his mouth went dry and he gasped momentarily.
Suguru leaned towards him with a worried grimace.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah… fuck - yes,” he pursed his lips tightly and nodded. His fingertips rubbed his clothes, finding no wound behind the fabric. “I'm fine... shit.”
He closed his eyes, letting out a sigh. The sting pulsed like a screw had been driven into it, sawing through the skin with each turn of the shaft. He searched around the table until he found his glasses, listening to his friend getting up. A hand on his shoulder. He put on his glasses and sniffed.
"It's nothing," he insisted, forcing a smile, but Suguru didn't move away. “Don't you ever dare to complain again I'm spoiled, huh?”
He struggled to sit up straight in his chair, taking a deep breath. A tear slid down his cheek, Suguru looked at him carefully, holding him as if he believed he was going to faint at any moment. So, he must have looked bad enough to not receive an ironic response.
He noticed the paper on the cookie he had just opened. It lay before him, without prophecy or any word, completely empty. He took it and crumpled tightly, cursing. Another fucking defective cookie.
If he hadn’t had the audacity to crush luck, as Suguru had said, perhaps he wouldn’t have died that night.