The painting takes Shinji three days to complete.
He works on it between shifts at the convenience store, during lunch periods at school when he should be eating, in the small hours before dawn when the apartment is quiet enough to breathe. His cheap watercolors don't quite capture the exact shade of rust on the swing set's chains, and the hydrangea blues bleed into the reds in ways he can't fully control, but there's something true in the piece. Something that aches.
He doesn't understand why painting an abandoned swing set makes him want to cry.
On the third night, his father comes home early. Shinji hears the apartment door slam at 9 PM—too early, wrong, dangerous—and he's scrambling to hide the painting when his bedroom door crashes open.
"The hell are you doing?" His father sways in the doorway, sake breath preceding him like a warning. His tie is loose, shirt untucked, eyes bloodshot in that particular way that means someone at work said something, did something, reminded him of all his failures.
"Homework," Shinji lies, but the painting is still visible on his desk, the red swings impossibly bright against the dull walls of his room.
His father's eyes lock onto it. For a moment—just one heartbeat—something flickers across his face. Not anger. Something else. Something that might be recognition or pain or both.
Then it's gone, replaced by the familiar contempt.
"Still wasting time on this garbage." His father lunges forward, grabs the painting. The paper crinkles under his grip. "You think this matters? You think anyone cares about your little drawings?"
"Dad, please—" Shinji reaches for it, and that's the mistake.
His father's free hand comes up fast, catches Shinji across the mouth. The taste of copper floods his tongue immediately. He staggers back against his desk, hand to his face, feeling his lip split and swell.
"Don't 'please' me. I'm trying to teach you something, you ungrateful shit for brains." His father holds the painting up, studying it with drunk, unfocused eyes. "This is what's wrong with you. Always showing signs of some stupid. Always thinking you're better than this." He gestures vaguely at the apartment, at himself, at everything. "You're not. You're just like me. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can stop disappointing everyone you ungrateful moron."
He throws the painting at Shinji. It flutters through the air like a wounded bird, lands on the floor face-down. Then his father turns and stumbles out, bedroom door slamming behind him.
Shinji waits until he hears his father collapse onto the living room couch. Waits until the snoring starts. Then he picks up the painting with shaking hands.
There's a footprint across one corner where his father stepped on it. A crease through the middle. But it's intact. Damaged but whole. Like me, Shinji thinks, and has to press his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing or sobbing or both.
His lip throbs. He can feel it swelling, the skin tight and hot. Tomorrow there will be questions at school. Tomorrow he'll have to lie again, invent another story about tripping, running into a door, being clumsy.
But tonight, he carefully flattens the painting, sets it aside to dry, and thinks about the garden. About Hakurage's storm-cloud eyes. About the way he'd said "You come here" like it was a promise and a place and a person all at once.
The forecast says rain tomorrow.
Shinji checks his lip in the mirror. The split is deep, still bleeding sluggishly. He presses tissue to it until it stops, then lies down and with a bandage on his split up lip, staring at his ceiling, counting the hours until he can leave.
The rain starts at dawn, and Shinji is already awake.
His mother notices his lip at breakfast—the first real meal they've shared in a week—and her face does something complicated. Worry and resignation and guilt all fighting for space.
"Shinji—" she starts. "I'm fine, Mom. I just bit it while sleeping." The lie comes out smooth, practiced. He's had years to perfect it.
She reaches across the table, touches his hand once. Her fingers are cold and rough from cleaning chemicals. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "It's okay," he says, and that's a lie too, but it's the kind they both need.
She leaves for work ten minutes later. His father hasn't emerged from the couch. Shinji wraps the damaged painting in plastic, slides it into his bag, and escapes into the rain.
Hakurage is in the greenhouse when Shinji arrives.
The structure is beautiful in its decay—glass panels held together by rust and will, condensation making everything look soft-focus and dreamlike. Inside, temperature and humidity create a microclimate where tropical plants somehow survive Tokyo winters. Orchids cling to tree bark. Ferns drip with moisture. The air tastes green and alive.
Hakurage kneels beside a planting bed, his hands deep in soil, transplanting something with root systems like white veins. He doesn't look up when Shinji enters, but his voice acknowledges the presence.
"You're early. Rain just started twenty minutes ago." "I needed to leave." Shinji sets his bag down carefully. "I have the painting." That makes Hakurage look up. His eyes go immediately to Shinji's split lip, and his entire body goes still.
He looks just like he did then, Hakurage thinks, and the memory cuts like glass. Same expression. Same way of holding pain inside where no one can see it. Except I can see it. I've always been able to see it.
When Hakurage speaks, his voice is very quiet, very controlled. "What happened?" "Nothing. I just—" "Don't lie to me." Hakurage stands, wiping soil from his hands onto his jeans, forcing himself to move slowly, to not reach out like he wants to. Not yet. Not when Shinji doesn't remember why that instinct exists. "Not here. This is the one place where we don't have to lie."
The words hit Shinji harder than his father's fist had. Because they're true. Because this garden, this kid, this strange arrangement—it's the only honest thing in his life right now.
"My dad saw the painting," Shinji says. His voice sounds distant, like it's coming from someone else. "He didn't like it. Things got... physical."
Hakurage crosses the greenhouse in four steps, stands close enough that Shinji can see the gold flecks in his gray eyes, the scar on his chin that must have a story, the way his jaw clenches like he's physically holding back words.
Tell him, a voice screams inside Hakurage's head. Tell him that his father used to be different. Tell him you remember when Takeshi-san would ruffle both their hair and call them "the garden kids." Tell him that violence isn't inevitable, that people break, that his father is drowning too.
But he can't. Not yet. Because how do you tell someone they've forgotten their entire childhood? How do you hand someone that kind of loss? "Let me see it," Hakurage says instead. "The painting."
Shinji pulls it from his bag, unwraps the plastic carefully. The footprint stands out like a bruise. The crease runs through the hydrangeas, splitting them down the middle.
Hakurage takes the painting with reverent hands, and the breath leaves his body.
We painted those swings together once, he remembers. Red, because Shinji said red was the color of happiness. We were six and seven, and his father had just gotten the job here, and my parents were so excited about having another child around for me to play with. "The garden kids," my mother called us. "Thick as thieves."
The swings are still there, rusted and broken, and Shinji painted them without knowing he's been on them a hundred times. Without knowing I pushed him so high he screamed with laughter. Without knowing he promised we'd swing together forever.
"This is perfect," Hakurage breathes, his voice thick. "It's damaged—"
"No. It's perfect." Hakurage traces the crease with one finger, careful not to touch the paint, memorizing the way Shinji's brushstrokes curve, the same way they did when they were children finger-painting in the greenhouse. "You captured exactly what I needed. The abandonment. The way beautiful things fall apart when no one tends to them."
The way we fell apart, he doesn't say. The way you forgot me and I let you because at least forgetting doesn't hurt you. He looks at Shinji, and it takes everything in him not to say: Don't you remember? Don't you remember anything?
"This is worth more than five thousand yen," Hakurage says. "I'm paying you ten." "You don't have to—"
"I want to." Hakurage sets the painting down gently on a workbench, then reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out an envelope. His hands shake slightly as he extends it. "I already sold a painting to a collector in Osaka. You're getting half."
Shinji stares at the envelope. Ten thousand yen. That's groceries for a month. New art supplies. Breathing room. Power. But he doesn't take it immediately. Instead, he asks: "Why are you doing this? Really?"
Hakurage's heart hammers. Because you're my best friend. Because I promised your father I'd look after you before everything fell apart. Because you're the only good memory I have from before the accident, and I'm selfish enough to want you back even if you don't remember me.
"Because you're talented," he says instead. "And because the garden needs it." It's not a lie. But it's not the whole truth either.
Shinji takes the envelope with careful finger. "Does your lip hurt though?" Hakurage asks quietly. "I've had worse." The casualness of it—the acceptance—makes Hakurage's stomach constrict. He walks to the greenhouse wall, presses his palm against the foggy glass, needing something solid to anchor him.
"You shouldn't have to have worse," he says. "You shouldn't have to measure pain in degrees." Shinji is quiet for a moment. Then: "Neither should you." The words land like a benediction. Hakurage closes his eyes.
You always knew, he thinks. Even as kids, you always knew when I was hurting. When my parents fought about funding. When other kids called me weird for preferring plants to people. You knew, and you stayed.
"The next painting," Hakurage says, not turning around, his voice carefully steady. "I need something specific again." "What?" "A paper boat. Caught in the hydrangeas near the pond. There's a photo in my parents' archives—I'll give it to you before you leave."
He hears Shinji move closer, senses him standing just behind. "Why these specific things?" Shinji asks. "The swings, now a paper boat. What are they?" Memories, Hakurage thinks. Breadcrumbs. A trail back to who we were.
"They're pieces of the garden's history," he says. "Things that mattered once. Things that should be remembered." "Even if they hurt to remember?"
Hakurage finally turns, and finds Shinji closer. "Especially then," Hakurage says. "Pain means something mattered. Means it was real."
They stand there in the greenhouse warmth, surrounded by impossible life, and something passes between them that feels like recognition. Not complete—not yet—but beginning. Like the first shoot of green pushing through winter soil.
"I feel like I know you," Shinji says suddenly. "Not from these few meetings. From before. Does that sound crazy?" Hakurage's heart stops and restarts. Yes, he wants to scream. You do know me. You knew me better than anyone.
"No," he says softly. "It doesn't sound crazy."
"It's like déjà vu, but deeper. Like my mind remembers even if my brain doesn't." Shinji touches his own temple, frustrated. "I have this gap in my memories. From when I was really young. My parents say it's normal to not remember much before eight or nine, but it feels like something's missing. Something important."
Me, Hakurage thinks. I'm what's missing.
He wants to tell him. Jeez, he wants to tell him everything. But six years of grief and guilt have taught him caution. What if Shinji remembers and realizes Hakurage is the reason everything fell apart? What if he remembers and hates him for surviving when their whole world died?
"Memory is strange," Hakurage says instead. "Sometimes the brain protects us by forgetting. By cutting out the parts that hurt too much." "What if I don't want to be protected? What if I want to remember, even if it hurts?"
Then paint, Hakurage thinks. Paint until you remember. Until the images unlock what words can't. "Then keep coming here," Hakurage says. "Keep painting. Maybe the memories will find you."
Shinji nods slowly, then does something unexpected. He reaches out and adjusts the collar of Hakurage's jacket, smoothing where it had folded wrong. The gesture is casual, familiar, like he's done it a thousand times before.
He has. When they were children, Shinji was always straightening Hakurage's collar, picking leaves from his hair, worrying over him like a parent. Hakurage freezes, and Shinji's hand stops mid-motion.
"Why does it feel like I..." Shinji says, pulling back. "I don't know why I—" "It's okay." Hakurage's voice is rough. "It not like your a murderer or some shit."
They look at each other, and in Shinji's eyes, Hakurage sees confusion and connection warring. Sees the ghost of the kid he knew struggling to surface through years of forced forgetting.
Come back to me, Hakurage thinks desperately. Please. I've been waiting so long. But aloud he just says: "Same time next rain?" "Yeah," Shinji says. "Same time."
As Shinji leaves, Hakurage watches from the greenhouse door. Watches him disappear into the rain-soaked garden, watches him pause briefly at the red swing set—overgrown now, barely visible—and stare at it like it holds answers he can't quite grasp.
When he's gone, Hakurage returns to the workbench, picks up the painting, and traces the damaged crease with gentle fingers.
"I'm sorry," he whispers to the image of the swings, to the ghost of the kid Shinji was, to the friendship they lost. "I'm sorry I couldn't save them. I'm sorry you had to forget. I'm sorry for everything."
The rain drums against the greenhouse roof like it's trying to wash away the past six years. But some stains, Hakurage knows, go too deep for even rain to reach.
He carefully stores the painting in a flat file, then pulls out his mother's old research journal. In it, pressed between pages about winter-blooming camellias, is a photograph: two small kids, arms around each other's shoulders, grinning at the camera. One with teal brown hair and storm-cloud eyes. One with brown eyes that haven't yet learned how to hide pain.
The garden kids. Hakurage touches the photo once, gently, then closes the journal.
One painting at a time, he thinks. One memory at a time. I'll help you remember, Shinji. Even if remembering means you'll hate me. Even if remembering destroys us both. Because I deserve to be faced with that kind of fear. After what I've done after all.
Outside, the rain continues. Inside, a teenager tends to impossible flowers and waits for a friend who doesn't remember him yet. But will. Eventually. He has to believe that.
TO BE CONTINUED...