[HARUKI]
(Seven Days Ago)
"Ta… Tadashi… help," a bleeding Haruki murmured defeatedly as the portal closed right behind him. The one he had created had led him home. To the Avaerim Valley, not the general's quarters in the palace.
He couldn't go there.
Not because he was ashamed of what had happened back on the battlefield, but because this was something that no other knew how to contrarian. This was the one thing that none of them would ever be able to help him with.
Home made things better, and he had handled worse before this, but for the first time in his life, Haruki wasn't sure if home was going to be of any help this time.
"Kira? What happened?" an old man in his late sixties asked, as he rushed to the wounded general on the floor.
"I… Tadashi… Dai…" Haruki mumbled before he lost consciousness. His body ached in ways he had thought he never would feel again, and even though unconscious, the bitter state of his reality did not leave his mouth.
He was breaking, and it should have scared him.
But it didn't.
If anything, it just ripped his heart out countless times and put him back together, like a puppet that fate was not done with yet.
"Gods, this child," the old man, Tadashi, huffed worriedly. He could see the general bleeding profusely, and it was not a familiar sight. At least for as long as he had known this man, which was easily nine years ago.
Haruki never came home hurt. He never walked the Avaerim Valley with blood on him. Because he was untouchable. He was a warrior who knew everything there was to war.
Tadashi had made certain of that because he never wanted a repeat of history.
"What happened?" Tadashi asked himself when he checked Haruki's pulse and felt it weaken by the second.
This was bad. Really bad.
The last time Haruki had been in this state was ten years ago.
And he had stayed in a coma for a year because of his grief.
"No, it can't be that bad," Tadashi shook his head before he began tending to the general.
He had learned the general's body like it was his own; he knew the general's strengths and weaknesses. He knew all his triggers, what broke him, and what made him calm.
He knew whatever there was to know about Haruki Iwata. Yet in that moment, as he used his spiritual energy to keep the general steady so he could clean him up, heal and fix him, Tadashi couldn't help but have questions.
This was something that he could swear had never been expected.
The bruises on Haruki's body were horrifying.
They told a different tale. The man who had never been beaten had rushed home through a portal and was covered in endless wounds.
Almost like he didn't even try to defend himself at all.
"Oh, Haru," Tadashi breathed so slowly it was almost impossible for anyone to hear.
But Haruki heard him, and like a trained response, Haruki's body twitched a bit.
"I told you… never call me that," the general grumbled, before he fell back unconscious.
But old Tadashi wasn't surprised. It had always been like that with this general. The man who denied his name as if it were the reminder of a past he never wanted to face.
The man who acted like he was in charge of his own life and knew what he was doing. When in truth he was just a broken warrior who was desperate to get things done and carve his very own exit.
It was devastating on most days, but then on other days, Tadashi never said a word. Not even when Haruki came home reeling off the worst bouts of manslaughter.
Later that evening, Haruki opened his eyes.
He was in his room in the Avaerim Valley house. The familiar sight of his weapons, now clean, reminded him of what had happened. What he had run away from.
The sword with the crimson tassel was in its sheath, and the other, which didn't have a tassel, was in a makeshift sheath, something that clearly wasn't the sheath for that particular weapon.
But it has always been like that for nine years now. Ever since the day that had ripped his heart to pieces and left him with nothing but the kind of rage that no one had ever been able to quench for him.
Until today, when that rage was so misplaced it hurt to even think of it.
"I see you're awake, general," Tadashi's voice came through.
Haruki snapped out of his horrible memory lane. He asked this old man questions, but he didn't ask about it. It was a rule they had long established from the very first day they met.
"The red helmets are still in battle," Tadashi stated, like he was reporting the obvious to the general who had fought endless battles and won.
The general who had rushed home first before his warriors. Who had broken his own routine of being the very last one on the battlefield because he loved the fire and rubble that the enemies were always trapped in.
"Won't you ask why I came home?" Haruki groaned softly as he sat up in bed.
"If you wanted me to know, you would tell me yourself," Tadashi replied curtly.
"I healed your wounds and replenished your spiritual energy. You are in the perfect condition, if you want to go back."
Haruki looked at Tadashi uncertainly.
Of course, we ask if the man had fixed him up. It was what Tadashi had been doing from the very beginning. Besides, their first meeting years ago wasn't exactly the kindest of meetings.
"Let me train you, before you go back to them. You have spiritual energy that can grow fast if cultivated properly. I can be our guide, and you can decide what to do when the sun comes up," Tadashi had stated.
And Haruki, broken and ruined by the one loss he would never recover from, had kicked Tadashi out. But the old man hadn't left.
In fact, he had challenged Haruki:
"The day you best me, I will leave on my own accord."
Ten years had passed since then, but Haruki had never once bested the old man.
And Tadashi…
He made it his purpose to remind Haruki every passing day that the general had to be better than him if he wanted old Tadashi gone.
"I saw him, Tadashi," Haruki said passively.
Tadashi was sitting on the seat nearest to the door. Not out of concern for his safety, but because it had always been his place.
"King Yuma?" Tadashi asked carefully.
The Craenia king had always been the last on the list of people that Haruki had sworn to burn down.
And given that the battlefield Haruki had just deserted was meant to be his last battlefield before he set down his sword, things had to have gone completely sideways.
Then again, it was no secret that King Yuma was always a cunning man who could manipulate battlefields. But Haruki had been ready for this particular battlefield. He had been ready for around five years now.
It was something even the red helmets who followed him through different battlefields, thinking that it was all conquest for the Jara kingdom, had known.
"No… him," Haruki said, adding the last bit quietly as he stared at the armor on the wall and the two crosswords that settled there waiting for Haruki to pick them up.
Tadashi followed the general's line of sight and saw what Haruki was referring to. The insinuation was clear, but time had taught Tadashi to never believe just about anything.
Life was filled with illusions, and right now, this had to be one.
Even if a part of old Tadashi had always suspected a different truth through and through.
"Kira," Tadashi spoke firmly, as if that was supposed to snap the general from whatever thing he was focusing on now. Because whatever he was thinking was insane.
The insinuation alone was pure madness.
It made no sense whatsoever, yet it was a reality Haruki had run away from. Sure, the odds hadn't always been a hundred percent back then, but there was just no way the final battlefield was what had brought them to that point.
It was all insane.
"I know, I know. I should have focused and finished the battle," Haruki sighed in defeat.
"But I couldn't. He was there. And it was overwhelming. I saw him die, Tadashi. I mourned him. Burned kingdoms for him. Then he showed up… alive," Haruki said frustratedly, running a hand down his face.
Tadashi didn't say a word.
But his eyes….
They held a rage that Haruki could swear he had never seen before.
The old man was always in control. Always in check. He knew what to do and why. He was always strategic. I had no time for emotions.
Yet in that moment, Haruki saw pure, unfiltered rage flash in those eyes. It was only for a fleeting moment, and if faded the mold man sighed.
But Haruki had seen it all.
This was the first real reaction he had seen from Tadashi since the moment he had woken up all those years ago.
And he didn't know what it meant.
"It was your final battlefield… for him. Maybe you hallucinated," Tadashi spoke quietly, but his words were too shallow. They both knew he had trained Haruki to be sharper, almost like him.
He had spent ages teaching warrior cultivation and making sure he was one with his skills. The martial training, the focused intensity. None of that could just disappear in a blink.
And Tadashi knew that too.
"I wish it were just a figment of my brain, Tadashi. But he stabbed me… twice," Haruki reminded.
"Both nonlethal…"