The first-aid kit in Hakurage's small living quarters is mostly empty.
Shinji finds it in the bathroom cabinet—a white metal box with rust bleeding through the corners, containing three expired bandages, a mostly empty bottle of antiseptic, and cotton swabs yellowed with age. He stares at the meager contents, then at Hakurage who sits on the edge of the bathtub, still cradling his injured hands.
"This is all you have?" Shinji asks. "I don't get hurt often enough to need more." "You're hurt now."
Hakurage doesn't respond, just watches as Shinji wets a clean washcloth—the cleanest he can find in the sparse bathroom—and kneels in front of him. Up close, the cuts look worse. Glass glitters in the wounds, embedded too deep for amateur extraction.
"This needs a hospital," Shinji says quietly. "These need stitches. Professional cleaning." "Can't afford it." "What about insurance? Don't you have—"
"I'm fifteen and living alone in a property I'll lose in four months. What insurance do you think I have?" Hakurage's voice is flat, matter-of-fact. "I make it work. I always make it work."
Shinji feels anger rise in his throat—not at Hakurage, but at a world that abandons children, that lets them bleed alone in houses they can't afford, tending gardens that won't save them.
"Then I'm taking you to the free clinic in Shibuya," Shinji says. "They don't ask questions. They just help." "How do you know about—" Hakurage stops, understanding crossing his face. "Your father."
"My father," Shinji confirms. "I've been there three times. They're good. They're kind. They won't report anything if you don't want them to." Something passes between them—shared recognition of survival strategies learned too young, knowledge of systems designed to fail them.
"Okay," Hakurage says quietly. "Okay."
Shinji helps him up, and they walk through the small living space that Hakurage calls home. It's sparse in a way that goes beyond minimalism into deprivation. A futon in one corner, folded neatly. A low table with research journals stacked precisely. A single photograph on the wall—the only decoration—showing two people in lab coats, smiling, arms around each other. Hakurage's parents.
"You live here alone," Shinji says. Not a question. "I told you. Everyone left." "What about social services? Guardians?"
"A distant aunt in Osaka has legal custody. She sends minimum support and never visits. As long as I don't cause problems, the system pretends I don't exist." Hakurage pulls on a jacket with his wrapped hands, wincing. "It's better than foster care. At least here, I have the garden."
They leave through the front door, and Shinji sees the full extent of storm damage in daylight. Trees down across paths. The western wall partially collapsed. The fountain completely destroyed, its crane sculpture decapitated, lying in pieces among scattered stones.
Six years of solitary work, and one storm erased so much of it. "We'll fix it," Shinji says. "Together. After we fix your hands." Hakurage looks at him with an expression that might be hope if hope hadn't learned to be careful. "You mean that?"
"I remember the swings now," Shinji says. The memory is hazy, incomplete, but present. "I remember you pushing me. I remember screaming 'higher, Haku, higher' until you got scared I'd fly off. I remember feeling safe here in a way I've never felt anywhere else."
Hakurage stops walking. His eyes are bright with unshed tears. "You called me Haku because Hakurage was too hard to say when you were six. You decided shortening names made us brothers."
"Did I talk a lot?"
"Constantly. You never stopped talking. Filled every silence with stories and observations and questions." Hakurage smiles, small and sad. "I was the quiet one. You were the one who made everything brighter."
Shinji tries to imagine himself as that person—bright, talkative, fearless—and can't. Somewhere between six and fourteen, that person died. Or went into hiding so deep he forgot he existed.
"What happened to me?" Shinji asks quietly as they walk. "How did I become this?"
"Your father broke," Hakurage says. "Lost his job, got blamed for the embezzlement, couldn't find work. Your family went from comfortable to desperate in months. He started drinking. Got angry. And you—" He pauses. "You learned to disappear. To take up less space. To be quiet so he wouldn't notice you."
"When did you last see me? Before I came back to the garden?"
"Six years ago. Two months after my parents died. Your father came to collect some personal items from the old office. You came with him. You were eight. You looked at me like you wanted to say something, but your father kept rushing you. You left without speaking." Hakurage's voice goes soft. "I tried to follow you. To say goodbye. But by the time I got to the gate, you were already gone. I never saw you again. Until the rain brought you back."
The clinic is twenty minutes away by foot. They walk in silence, both processing what's been said and unsaid. Rain has stopped temporarily, leaving Tokyo washed and gleaming, the streets reflecting gray sky like mirrors.
The clinic is in a basement below a shuttered pachinko parlor. A hand-painted sign: Community Health Services - No Judgment, No Cost.
Inside, it's cramped but clean. A volunteer nurse—a woman in her fifties with kind eyes and efficient hands—takes one look at Hakurage's wrapped hands and gestures them to a treatment area cordoned off by curtains.
"Glass?" she asks. "Greenhouse accident," Hakurage says. "Uh huh." She doesn't believe him but doesn't press. "This is going to take a while. You—" She looks at Shinji. "Family?"
"Yes," Shinji and Hakurage say simultaneously. The nurse nods. "You can stay. Hold his other hand if he needs it."
She gets to work, cleaning and extracting glass with careful precision. Hakurage goes pale but doesn't make a sound, just grips Shinji's hand tight enough to hurt. Shinji holds on, watching the nurse work, watching Hakurage's face go through careful control and barely suppressed pain.
"You're good at not showing it," the nurse comments as she irrigates a deep cut. "Too good. How long have you been taking care of yourself?" "Six years," Hakurage says.
"And you?" The nurse glances at Shinji. "That lip didn't happen from falling." Shinji's free hand goes automatically to the scabbed split. "I—" "I'm not asking for details," the nurse interrupts gently. "I'm asking if you're safe."
The question lands like a punch. Is he safe? Is anyone safe when home is a warzone? "I'm managing," Shinji says. "That's not what I asked." "He's safe with me," Hakurage says firmly. "He always has been."
The nurse studies them both, then nods slowly. "Okay. But you know where we are. Both of you. If you need help. Real help."
She finishes treating Hakurage's hands—six stitches total, antibiotic ointment, proper bandaging, instructions for care. She gives them supplies to take home, extra bandages and antiseptic, packed in a small bag.
"Come back in a week to check for infection," she says. "No charge. That's what we're here for."
Outside, the rain has started again, lighter this time. Hakurage holds his bandaged hands carefully, and they walk back toward the garden in shared silence.
"Thank you," Hakurage says finally. "For staying. For holding my hand."
"You did the same for me," Shinji says. "When you said I could come to the garden whenever I needed. That was holding my hand. Just in a different way."
They reach the garden gate as the rain intensifies. The broken gate hangs sad and defeated, and beyond it, the garden waits in all its wounded beauty. "It's too much," Hakurage says, staring at the destruction. "Even with both of us. It's too much to fix."
"So we fix what we can," Shinji says. "And we accept what we can't. The garden doesn't need to be perfect to be worth saving." "Doesn't it?" "No. Nothing needs to be perfect to matter." Shinji looks at him. "You taught me that, apparently. When we were kids. You're just teaching me again now."
Something breaks in Hakurage's expression—relief and grief and exhaustion all colliding. He sits heavily on the wet ground beside the broken gate, and Shinji sits beside him. Rain falls around them, but neither moves to seek shelter.
"I'm so tired," Hakurage whispers. "I'm so tired of fighting alone. Of pretending I'm strong enough to carry all of this."
"Then stop pretending." Shinji takes Hakurage's bandaged hand carefully. "Be tired. Be weak. Be whatever you need to be. I'm here now. You don't have to be strong alone anymore."
"What if I fall apart?" "Then I'll help pick up the pieces." Shinji squeezes gently. "The way you're helping me find mine."
They sit in the rain until they're thoroughly soaked, until cold seeps into their bones, until the weight of everything feels slightly more bearable because it's shared.
"Tell me more," Shinji says eventually. "About before. About who I was."
"You were brave," Hakurage says. "Terrifyingly brave. You'd climb trees I was too scared to attempt. You'd talk to anyone—strangers, adults, animals. You believed in impossible things."
"Like what?"
"Like flowers blooming in winter. Like friendships that would last forever. Like gardens that could hold magic if you believed hard enough." Hakurage looks at the ruined garden. "You were right about some of it. Winter flowers do bloom. And this place—it held magic. It still does."
"Do you think I can be that person again? That brave?"
"I think you already are. You just express it differently now." Hakurage turns to look at him fully. "You work night shifts to help your mother. You paint memories you don't remember because someone asked you to. You came back to a stranger and offered him company. You're holding the hand of someone whose blood is soaking through bandages because he needs you to." He pauses. "That's not weakness, Shinji. That's courage wearing different clothes."
Something unlocks in Shinji's ribs. Permission to be who he's become instead of mourning who he was. "I want my memories back," Shinji says. "All of them. Even the ones that hurt." "They will hurt. Remembering always hurts."
"I don't care. They're mine. I want them back."
Hakurage nods slowly. "Then I'll help you find them. One at a time. Through the paintings, through the garden, through stories. We'll rebuild your past the way we're rebuilding this place. Slowly. Together."
"Promise?" "Promise."
They stand, finally, dripping and cold but somehow lighter. The garden spreads before them in all its broken beauty, and it doesn't look like an ending anymore. It looks like a beginning.
"Where do we start?" Shinji asks.
Hakurage surveys the damage with eyes that know every corner of this place. "The greenhouse. We need to secure it before more rain gets in. Then the pavilion roof. Then we work our way through everything else."
"We'll need supplies. Money." "I have some saved. And your paintings are selling better than expected. We have enough for immediate repairs."
They walk together into the garden, and Shinji feels something shift—the weight redistributing, dividing, becoming bearable. This is what partnership feels like. What family feels like. What coming home feels like.
At the greenhouse, they survey the damage in daylight. Broken glass everywhere. Overturned tables. Soil scattered across the floor. The destroyed photographs in their ruined box, beyond salvage.
Hakurage picks up the box carefully, holds it like a funeral urn. "I don't even know what to do with these now. They're just trash."
"They're not trash. They're evidence of what was." Shinji thinks for a moment. "We could press the fragments. Preserve them in resin. Make something new from what's broken."
"Make art from ruins?" "Isn't that what we're doing here? Making something beautiful from what's fallen apart?" Hakurage looks at him with an expression so full of emotion it's painful to witness. "When did you get so wise?"
"I learned from someone who teaches gardens to bloom in winter."
They work through the afternoon, clearing glass, securing the broken panels with plastic sheeting, salvaging what can be saved. It's hard work made harder by Hakurage's injured hands, but they manage. Two people moving in sync, learning each other's rhythms, building something that might be called trust or might be called family or might be called both.
As evening approaches and rain intensifies again, they take shelter in the greenhouse under the temporary repairs. Water drums against plastic sheeting, a softer sound than glass but still insistent.
"I should go home," Shinji says, though he doesn't want to. "My mother will worry." "Will she?" "More than she can show. More than she has energy for." "What about your father?"
"Still gone. Maybe for good this time. Maybe just until he sobers up enough to come back and pretend nothing happened." Hakurage is quiet for a moment. Then: "Stay here. Tonight. Just tonight. Your mother can call if she needs you, but stay here where it's safe."
"The garden isn't safe. The greenhouse is half-destroyed." "But I'm here. And you're here. That makes it safer than wherever your father is." The logic is sound in a way that has nothing to do with logic. Shinji nods.
They spend the evening in the small living quarters, sharing instant ramen heated on a portable burner, talking about nothing and everything. Hakurage tells stories about their childhood—how they built forts from fallen branches, how they named every koi in the pond, how they promised to run the garden together when they grew up.
Each story is a piece returned. Each memory is a light turned on in a dark room.
When exhaustion finally wins, they lie on opposite sides of the small space—Hakurage on his futon, Shinji on borrowed blankets. Rain continues outside, steady and eternal. "Haku?" Shinji says into the darkness. "Yeah?" "Thank you for not giving up on me. For waiting six years. For letting me come back."
"Thank you for coming back," Hakurage responds. "For remembering. For staying." Sleep takes them both, two people who thought they were orphans discovering they've had family all along.
Outside, the garden waits. Broken but breathing. Wounded but alive. Winter flowers bloom in the rain, impossible and beautiful, proof that some things survive against all reason.
Proof that some things are worth saving.
TO BE CONTINUED...