Sometimes, time wasn’t always kind to people like them. I could give and give, but it could take and take. For someone as short-lived as himself, Itto had the barest idea of the sort of trials and tribulations that Naoki had gone through, but there was enough knowledge there to possess an idea. Though ideas didn’t know everything, that was the beauty of them: they could keep germinating until something grew, something deep and verdant as the forests that yokai like them called home. So, when the day of Naoki’s birthday came, Itto had worked closely with Onibaba to brainstorm ideas until it came to him: a collage.
Life was a long journey through memory, and though theirs together was still limited, Itto hadn’t lived long enough to dream of creating something monumental but it didn’t need to be. In a simple, leatherbound book had Itto devised a collage, filling it with pressed flowers his aunt helped him to create, a technique that was well-loved by him. From there, Itto found as much as he could fill it with: ukiyo-e prints, brochures and advertisements from events they’d attended, columns of scripts that contained nonsensical poems he’d written, otherwise overflowing with thoughts about them, or Naoki, the past... Anything and everything he could think of.
“Happy birthday, Mori-sama,” came the teasing nickname borne from his own birthday just a week or so before, wrapping the kitsune from behind to present the wrapped collage for him to open while Itto comfortably perched his jawline atop Naoki’s head, warm with contentment.