25052022 - Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle & Horitsuba Gakuen
just how far we’d travel (both you and I know)
Tsubasa Chronicle Month - Day 25 - Crossovers
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“It’s weird,” Kurogane mutters from right next to him, as they both sit side by side at the long lunch table. Fai can barely hear him though, for the drumbeat in his ears.
It is weird, yes. It’s… “That one over there,” Fai can just about see the ninja nod his head from the corner of his eye. “Has your birth name, but is… nothing like you. Too damn polite.” Which, rude, really, but Fai’s tongue feels like lead in his mouth so he can’t voice it. “And the other…” Kurogane takes a drink, and then another. “That one has your chosen name, your brother’s name, but is the you from the start of our travels, with dozens of masks piled one on top of the other. It’s-”
“Weird, yes,” Fai manages to push past his numb lips.
He can feel Kurogane bodily turn to him, can feel his crimson eyes burning into the side of his skull. “It’s not just their personalities, is it?”
Definitely not just their personalities. “It’s the first time.” Fai manages to breathe through the wave of nausea threatening to choke him. “We’ve never met another version of us, Kuro-sama. Of you or me. And it’s…”
Kurogane snorts, but nods. “Disconcerting.”
“Yes.” That’s one word. “And they’re teachers, of all things. They lead such… such normal lives, and they’re happy, and they’re-” He pauses for a second, swallows his tears. Because that’s just it. Both he and his brother are alive in this universe, alive and grown up and together, and not cursed. Not children of misfortune. They’re alive, and they seem happy. And something in Fai’s chest aches and sings at the same time.
He misses his brother something fierce.
“Is it really true you have magic?” Fai-sensei asks, suddenly in Fai’s face, something curious and mischievous gleaming in his blue eyes. Fai startles, blinks at his double, and at his brother’s double just a couple of feet away.
Yuui-sensei (and oh, to hear that name, so casually said, like it’s not been a secret locked in the deepest corners of his tattered heart) shakes his head, something apologetic to the smile on his thin lips. “I’m sorry about him. You’re probably like a puzzle he feels he needs to solve.”
Fai shakes his head, even as Kurogane huffs into his drink next to him. “It’s alright,” he says, elbowing the ninja without looking. “I understand it’s a bit weird.”
Fai-sensei giggles, turns to his brother. “Wait till Kuro-puu-sensei gets here, he’ll jump right out of his skin in shock.”
Over Kurogane’s sputtering (“‘Kuro-puu-sensei’… He’s as bad as you are, oh my god!”), Yuui-sensei hides his own giggle behind his palm. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says, looking at Kurogane, considering. “I think he’d be shocked, at first, certainly, but they’ll be drinking sake somewhere under a tree and complaining about their respective loved ones together by the end of the day.”
Fai laughs, can’t help it. “They won’t make it an hour before they’re grouching about us to each other.” (“Hey!”)
All three Flourites laugh at that, even more so at Kurogane’s annoyed (but not really mad) grumbling, and for the first time since landing in this amiable world, Fai feels the roaring ache in his chest recede, if only just a little.
(“At least you know he got to live, you both did, in a different universe,” Kurogane says later, holding him gently.)
For now, it’s enough.
