The bruise on Shinji's ribs turns purple-black over three days.
He discovers it, having stayed late at school to avoid going home. The mark spreads across his left side like spilled ink, tender enough that breathing deeply makes him wince. His father's boot, two nights ago, when Shinji had been too slow picking up broken glass from another dropped bottle.
Each movement was deliberate. Mirrors shows him a stranger—fourteen years old but with eyes that have seen too much, a split lip healing into a scar, shoulders permanently hunched as if expecting impact.
The rain starts while he's washing his hands from the stained blood from another one of his fathers beatings. He watches it through the frosted window, listens to it drum against the roof, and feels that familiar pull in his stomach. The garden. Hakurage. Safety.
His phone shows 6:47 PM. His mother's shift at the grocery store doesn't end until ten. His father is—somewhere. Drunk probably. Or finding new ways to fail.
Shinji gathers his things and leaves school through the back entrance, where no one will ask why he's still here, why his bag contains more art supplies than textbooks, why he flinches when doors slam.
The garden has changed in the week since the storm.
Not repaired exactly—there's still too much damage for that—but stabilized. The greenhouse has new plastic sheeting secured over the broken panels. The pavilion's collapsed corner is propped up with salvaged wood. The paths are cleared of debris, though the fountain remains a pile of broken stone and that decapitated crane sculpture.
Shinji finds Hakurage in the eastern section, digging in the mud despite the rain. His hands are still bandaged, the white gauze already brown with soil. He's planting something—winter flowers, their purple and yellow faces bright against the gray afternoon.
"You're going to get infected," Shinji calls out.
Hakurage looks up, and his face does something complicated when he sees Shinji. Relief and worry and something softer, something that might be joy if joy wasn't so careful.
"I'm being careful," Hakurage says, but Shinji can see the blood seeping through the bandages on his right hand.
"No, you're not." Shinji drops his bag under the pavilion's shelter and walks through the rain to where Hakurage kneels. "You're never careful with yourself."
"These needed to be planted today. The weather won't hold much longer." "The weather is literally rain right now."
"Heavier rain. Storm rain." Hakurage returns to his planting, pressing soil around the flower roots with gentle precision. "These are hardy. They'll survive winter if they establish now. But they need time."
Shinji kneels beside him, mud soaking into his uniform pants. "Then let me help. Four hands are better than two. Even if two of them are injured."
They work in silence for a while, the rain a steady rhythm around them. Hakurage shows Shinji how to plant properly—deep enough for the roots to anchor, loose enough for water to drain. How to press the soil firmly but not crush the delicate stems. How to give each flower space to breathe.
"My mother used to say that planting flowers is an act of faith," Hakurage says quietly. "You're putting something fragile into the ground and trusting it will survive what comes next. Trusting winter won't kill it. Trusting spring will come eventually."
"Do you have that kind of faith?"
Hakurage's hands pause in the soil. "I don't know. Sometimes I think I'm just going through the motions. Planting because my parents did. Maintaining because I don't know what else to do."
"That's still faith," Shinji says. "Just a tired kind."
They finish the row in shared quiet, then move to the pavilion to wash their hands in a bucket of collected rainwater. Hakurage's bandages are thoroughly ruined, brown and pink with mud and blood.
"We need to change those," Shinji says. "I don't have more bandages." "The clinic gave us extras. Don't you remember?" "I used them already. On other cuts."
Shinji feels frustration rise in his throat. "You can't keep hurting yourself and not treating it properly. Your hands need to heal." "They'll heal when they heal. The garden can't wait."
"The garden has waited six years. It can wait another week while your hands close properly."
"The garden is dying!" Hakurage's voice rises, raw and breaking. "Every day I delay is another day it falls further apart. Another day closer to losing everything. I can't—" He stops, breathing hard, rain and maybe tears on his face. "I can't lose this too. I can't."
Shinji understands then. The garden isn't just his parents' legacy. It's Hakurage's proof that he exists, that his survival meant something, that the six years of loneliness weren't pointless. If the garden dies, then what was the point of any of it?
"You won't lose it," Shinji says firmly. "Because you're not alone anymore. I'm here. We're doing this together. Which means you don't have to destroy yourself to save it."
Hakurage stares at him, and something in his expression cracks open—the careful control fracturing to show the frightened person underneath. "What if together isn't enough?" he whispers.
"Then at least we tried. At least we weren't alone when we failed." Shinji reaches out, takes Hakurage's damaged hands carefully. "But I don't think we'll fail. I think we're stronger than we know."
"How can you believe that?"
"Because I'm still here. Because you're still here. Because we've survived things that should have killed us, and we're still planting flowers in the rain." Shinji squeezes gently. "That's not weakness, Haku. That's the strongest thing I've ever seen."
The nickname slips out naturally, and Hakurage's eyes go wide with emotion. No one has called him that in six years. No one has said his name with affection instead of pity or indifference.
"Say it again," he asks, voice small.
"Haku." Shinji smiles, and it hurts his healing lip but he doesn't care. "That's who you are to me. Not Hakurage. Not some stranger I hired to paint for. Haku. My friend. My—" He pauses, searching for the word. "My family."
Hakurage pulls his hands free, but only to cover his face as he cries. Real crying, not the silent tears from before but full sobbing, the kind that shakes through the entire body. Six years of loneliness and grief and exhaustion pouring out in the rain.
Shinji moves closer, wraps his arms around Hakurage's shoulders, and just holds him. Lets him break. Lets him be weak. Because this is what family does—witnesses the falling apart and stays anyway.
They sit together under the pavilion as afternoon fades toward evening, wrapped in emergency blankets Hakurage keeps stored there. The rain continues its steady drumming, and they share a thermos of tea that's gone lukewarm but still provides comfort.
"Tell me about them," Shinji says. "Your parents. What were they like?"
Hakurage is quiet for a long moment, hands wrapped around the thermos. "They were brilliant. Passionate. Kind of obsessive, the way scientists get when they find something fascinating." He smiles, small and sad. "My mother could spend hours studying a single petal structure. My father would forget to eat when he was documenting bloom cycles. They loved each other in this obvious, embarrassing way that made me roll my eyes as a kid."
"Do you remember a lot about them?"
"Everything. I remember everything." Hakurage's voice goes soft. "That's the problem, maybe. You forgot to protect yourself. I remember too much, and it won't let me heal."
"What's your favorite memory?"
"Favorite?" Hakurage considers. "There's this one—I was seven, maybe. Early winter, first snow. Most of the plants had gone dormant, but my mother found a single camellia blooming despite the cold. She called us all outside—me, my father, even your dad who was working late—and we stood around this one perfect red flower in the snow. My mother was crying, she was so happy. She said 'This is why we do this. This is proof that life fights back.'"
Shinji listens, and something stirs in his memory. Not complete, but present. The feeling of cold. Red against white. Adults standing together, their breath visible in winter air.
"I was there," he says suddenly. "I was there for that. I remember the cold. I remember thinking the flower looked like a heart." Hakurage turns to him, eyes wide. "You do remember."
"Pieces. Fragments. Like looking at photographs through fog." Shinji touches his temple, frustrated. "Why can't I remember clearly? Why is it all so broken?"
"Because you were eight when everything fell apart. Your brain didn't understand. Trauma at that age—it can scatter memories, make them inaccessible." Hakurage sets down the thermos. "The mind protects people by forgetting. It's not your fault."
"It feels like my fault. Like I abandoned you twice—once when I left, and again by forgetting you existed."
"You didn't abandon me. You were a child whose world collapsed. You survived the only way you could." Hakurage touches Shinji's hand. "I never blamed you. Not once. I just—I missed you. Every day. Every rain. I missed you."
Something painful lodges through Shinji's heart. "I'm sorry you were alone." "I'm sorry you forgot you weren't."
They look at each other in the fading light, two people rebuilding a foundation from fragments, and Shinji realizes this is what healing feels like. Not fixing. Not forgetting. Just slowly, painfully, putting pieces back together in a new configuration.
"Tell me more," Shinji says. "About us. About who we were."
So Hakurage tells stories as the rain continues. About how they met when Shinji's father started working for the facility. How Shinji had walked right up to six-year-old Hakurage and declared "You look lonely. I'll be your friend." How they spent entire summers in the garden, making up games, naming plants, building forts from bamboo stakes. How Shinji would bring his sketchbook and draw everything while Hakurage identified species and explained their biology.
"You used to say you'd be a famous artist and I'd be a famous botanist, and we'd have a joint exhibition called 'Science and Soul,'" Hakurage says, smiling at the memory. "You had our whole lives planned out."
"What happened to that plan?" "Life happened. Debt. Scandal. Death. The things that destroy plans." "Maybe we can still do it," Shinji says. "Different version. Smaller scale. But still—something."
"An exhibition of a destroyed garden?"
"An exhibition about survival. About things that bloom in winter. About friendship that survives forgetting." Shinji pulls out his sketchbook, opens to a clean page. "Start now. Tell me what to draw."
"Shinji, it's getting dark—" "I don't care. Tell me what to draw."
Hakurage looks around the garden, thinking. "The western corner. Where the wisteria used to climb the wall. It's dead now, but there are new shoots coming up at the base. Draw that. Death and reincarnation in the same frame."
Shinji begins sketching, his pencil moving across the page in the failing light. Hakurage watches, and the expression on his face is so tender it makes Shinji's heart ache for his sorrow he has to live with—the bruised ones and the ones protecting his heart.
"You draw the same way you did as a kid," Hakurage says softly. "Same focused expression. Same way of tilting your head. Some things don't change, even when everything else does."
"Is that good or bad?" "It's good. It means some part of you stayed whole. Stayed yourself."
They work together as darkness falls—Shinji drawing, Hakurage describing, both building something new from old materials. When it's too dark to see the page anymore, Shinji wraps the sketch carefully and looks at Hakurage.
"I should go home. My mother will worry." "Will your father be there?" Shinji's stomach tightens. "I don't know. Maybe." "Stay here." It's not quite a question. "Stay here where it's safe. Your father is causing you trouble after all."
"Haku—"
"Please. Just tonight. Let me know you're safe for one night." Hakurage's voice is quiet but desperate. "I've spent six years not knowing if you were okay. Now that you're back, I can't—I can't stand the thought of you going somewhere that hurts you entirely."
Shinji thinks about the empty apartment, his father's potential return, the fear that lives in his heart like a permanent resident. Then thinks about staying here, in the garden, with someone who actually wants him safe.
"Okay," he says. "I'll stay." Relief floods Hakurage's face. "Thank you."
They walk together through the rain-soaked garden to the small living quarters. Inside, it's still sparse but somehow less lonely with two people. Hakurage makes instant curry rice on the portable burner while Shinji texts his mother: Staying at a friend's house. I'm safe. I'll see you tomorrow.
She responds immediately: Okay. Be careful. I love you. It's the first time she's said that in months. Shinji stares at the words until they blur.
They eat sitting on the floor, sharing the meal from mismatched bowls, and talk about nothing important—school, weather, a documentary about deep sea creatures that Hakurage watched once. Normal things. Safe things. The kind of conversation that isn't about survival for once.
When exhaustion finally wins, Hakurage offers Shinji his futon. "Where will you sleep?" Shinji asks. "I have blankets. I'll be fine on the floor." "That's stupid. It's big enough for both of us." Shinji lies down on one side, leaving space. "See? Plenty of room."
Hakurage hesitates, then carefully lies down on the other side, they lie in darkness, listening to rain on the roof. "Haku?" Shinji says into the quiet. "Yeah?" "Thank you for not giving up on me. For waiting all this time." "Thank you for coming back." Hakurage's voice is thick with emotion. "For remembering. For staying."
Outside, the rain continues. Inside, two pieces of a broken whole rest together, healing in ways that have no words, only presence. Only the simple, profound knowledge that they're not alone anymore. Two friends becoming close friends once again. But the father was still the real danger to Shinji. And that was preventing them the real trouble of being good friends and hanging out and all that.
Tomorrow will bring new struggles. His father will still exist. The garden will still be dying. Poverty and pain will still wait like patient predators. But tonight, in this moment, they're safe. They're together. They're home. And that's enough. For now, it's enough. Two friends have begun to reunite, and become close friends once more. Just like in their childhood days.
TO BE CONTINUED...