The soft strokes of calloused fingers against guitar strings floats through the lazy evening air. It had been raining earlier, big wet splatters of water against everything, but now the storm is over and everything is still and smells like dirt. Aoi leans against the window, wiping it with the back of his shirt, as he watches Uruha doze on a towel spread out on the other side of the small boat.

Slowly, he sees Uruha open one large brown eye and he knows there’s going to be a question. He can always see it. The murmured words barely slice through the calm of the weather, but Aoi sucks in a breath, biting his lip nervously and tries to pretend he doesn’t hear it over his music.

Wearily, Uruha raises his head from his arms, raising his voice so it’s loud and clear, like the church bells that toll at the top of every hour and so Aoi can’t ignore him. In his slightly lilted voice, he repeats, “Why are we running away?” Aoi stares at him without a reply, his hands continuing to strum the guitar, the only thought running through his mind is that the sun was barely peeking out from behind the clouds the first time Uruha asked this too.

The oddest thing is that Aoi only remembered the hills drowning in sunflowers the morning he took Uruha away. He doesn’t remember how they ended up so far away from home.

Uruha, on the other hand, could tell you the whole story right down to the way Aoi’s skin smelled (like oiled leather, cigarette smoke, mint gum to try to cover the smoke, and the Davidoff cologne Uruha had given to him for his birthday two years ago). He could tell you exactly how long the train took to get to the next city (two hours and sixteen minutes), the name of all the sappy songs the bus driver played (like Ayumi Hamasaki’s “Jewel”), and why they left.

It wasn’t because they needed to leave Tokyo out of spite or that nobody wanted them there or that life had been miserable in that big city. No, it had been much simpler.

The sunflowers were all there when we arrived. Uruha still remembers that part the most.

________

Aoi had promised to take Uruha out for ice cream on his birthday. Since it was a school day –for Uruha, Aoi dropped out a year ago—Aoi had to sneak past security into the school during lunch to surprise the other boy, but Uruha was already waiting for him at the top of the stairs when he arrived. Aoi would never understand how Uruha managed to predict these things.

“Let’s go to the next city over. Somebody told me the chocolate ice cream there is the best in the whole world!” Uruha laughs, wrapping his arms around Aoi’s neck and tugging them faster back down the stairs.

“How the hell are we going to get there?” Aoi splutters as they clumsily climb over the school gate and stumbled down to the sidewalk. They keep running down the narrow street, the wind in their ears blocking out the shouts of protest of any school official, and turn the corner. On the other side of the main street is the vast parking lot of the train station. Weaving in and out of the rows and rows of parked cars, Uruha peeks over the heads of the crowd and makes a beeline for the ticket office, pulling Aoi along.

Aoi stands idly by, fiddling with the strap of his guitar case as he watches Uruha point wildly at something to the cashier. He would’ve paid, he thinks bitterly, if only he had brought more cash. Once two orange tickets are in his hands, Uruha turns back to Aoi and holds out one, curiously asking, “It’s a two hour train ride. You’ll run away with me for two hours right?”

It was just supposed to be two hours there, two hours spent there, and the two hours to get back. Only six hours, but at the end of the day, when they were standing in front of the train station again getting ready to go back to Tokyo, Uruha looks at him with a small frown on his lips. “I don’t want to go home yet.” He pouts at the return ticket in his hands and Aoi couldn’t find the heart to say no.

They ended up in the next city over, then the next, then the next. It was like Japan never ended.

And Uruha never wanted it to end.

________

It is pouring rain when they decide to leave the tiny countryside they had settled in for a few weeks. Because neither Aoi nor Uruha have much on their backs, it is easy to get up and leave without saying goodbye to all the charitable people they had met along the way. Rude, yes, but it’s the quickest way to get out.

With a leaky black umbrella in hand, they traipse down the only road that led out of the tiny one-street town. The rain settles the dust but soaks through the bottoms of their torn jeans and seeps into Aoi’s shoes when he accidentally walked through a puddle. Though the umbrella lets the rain soak through one shoulder of both their shirts, they keep it. They barely had anything and it would be a shame to not have anything.

Uruha can see his breath in the air when he pants, white plumes against the gray sky. Aoi can see his own too. It reminds him of the times he passed by Uruha’s house on the way home from work and saw the chimney smoke from dinner cooking on the stove as Uruha waved to him from the window in an apron.

After two hours of sloshing on the unpaved road, the downpour fades into a light drizzle. Uruha wanders away from under the umbrella, leaping over puddles like a little kid, and throws his head back to catch the rain on his tongue. A few drops get stuck to his eyelashes. Aoi watches him from behind, carrying Uruha’s worn backpack and his own guitar, pacing steadily forward. Except for the music from a delivery truck passing by, he could only hear the rain and Uruha’s wheezy breaths as he laughed. It was nice to feel like they were the only two people in the world.

They pass by a number of towns that don’t have train stations and Aoi vaguely wonders what they could’ve possibly been thinking when they trekked for four hours to find the small town tucked into the hills behind fields of oats and corn.

Aoi loses Uruha for a second when the blonde steps off the road into a yellow field of sunflowers so tall that they swallow everything else’s presence. The rain had stopped so Aoi folds the umbrella and uses it to push apart the thick green stems so he could see where Uruha is.

“Do you think there’ll be sunflowers like this where we go next?” Uruha asks, curiously trailing his finger up the fuzzy stem to the velvet goldenrod petals in awe. Aoi just shrugs nonchalantly, more focused on how the gray sunlight highlights the firm bone of Uruha’s pale cheek than Uruha’s question because he doesn’t know where they will end up next. Uruha quirks his lips to one side at the silence and steps back onto the road.

The sun just started peek over the sad clouds and it finally starts looking like it’s an afternoon when Uruha suddenly stops mid-step, grabbing Aoi’s hand, his childish eyes widening in realization. “Why are we running away?” he points out in a soft tone. Biting his lip, Aoi can only smile half-heartedly because he never has proper answers to any of Uruha’s questions.

________

At the train station, Uruha reads the schedule billboard behind the ticket window. His fingers clench harder at the bills and he swallows the disappointment that gathers in his throat. Quickly choosing a number, he gets two tickets again, blue this time, and scampers to where Aoi is leaning against the wall with their backpack. Aoi immediately reaches out to touch the side of his face worriedly.

“We don’t have enough money to get another ticket somewhere after this,” Uruha says, but through the frustration in his tone, Aoi hears hope because now they have to stop. They’ll have a home to go to again after work or school and they won’t have to play magic tricks on people, appearing and disappearing. Holding hands, they begin to look for the blue platform.

_______

The gentle clunking of the train wheels over the metal track lulls Uruha into a daze. Aoi is sleeping on his shoulder, his lips parted in such a delicate way that Uruha wants to wake him up just to kiss him. As he wraps the train blanket around Aoi’s slouching shoulders—it was an overnight trip to some city up north—he feels his cell phone shift uncomfortably in his pocket. It hasn’t been on since he shut it off four months ago.

He thinks silently of his panicked mother and father and his sisters and his friends, all desperately searching for him in places he wouldn’t be. He thinks of their empty, frozen bank accounts and sifts through the frail number of bills in his other pocket. For a moment, he feels guilty, but he has Aoi. That’s enough for the time being.

Leaning against the window, Uruha stares at the blurred dark landscape running past with a hopeful smile tugging at the corners of his lips before falling asleep. He hopes that in the morning they’ll be somewhere pretty.

_________

Aoi spends a good five minutes shaking Uruha awake. The train’s still rolling along but he can see a splotch of yellow outside of the window and he knows that Uruha will want to see it. Groggy, Uruha blinks with an unappreciative grumble, trying to focus on what Aoi’s pointing at so early in the morning. In every direction that his heavy eyes can see, there are hundreds and hundreds of sunflowers, bright and yellow in the dawn light. Uruha presses his face closer to the window, awed at how many there are.

Minutes later, all Uruha can see is a metal wall because the train has reached its destination. The intercom announces overhead that they have arrived in Yokohama—the first city name that Aoi bothers to even listen to. “We’ve found it, Aoi. We’ve found it,” Uruha keeps whispering excitedly under his breath, shuffling behind Aoi as they hop down onto the concrete platform and breathe in the city air.

_________

Aoi can tell that they’re not far from Tokyo because of the prices. Everything in Yokohama is expensive and he worries over how they’re to survive on the little money they have left. There won’t be any charitable people here, he’s sure of it.

Uruha glances behind him to make sure Aoi’s following him before darting forward to see what’s ahead. The air smells of salt and metal because they’re walking along the muddy industrial shore, searching for any sort of abandoned establishment. Uruha’s figure disappears behind a pile of rubble and he gives a shout of joy, running back to where Aoi is lazily walking along and tugs on his wrist.

Situated five, maybe six, meters away from the green ocean is a shack. They’ve spent months zigzagging from one side of Japan to the other and this was what it came down to. Neither of them feels disappointed at all. There’s even a small rusted fishing boat tied to the rotten wood dock.

Half of it is falling apart, the wooden plants having bent and snapped from the humidity, so they only plan to fix up the good half. The next morning, after sleeping on the ratty twin bed with a broken spring, Uruha insists on going into town to buy some paint and brushes. As they’re lugging gallons of paint down the street in plastic bags, Aoi catches sight of a help wanted flyer and tells Uruha to wait outside while he goes in and produces a wrinkled resume from out of nowhere.

Uruha cocks his head to the side in question when the bells on the door jingle happily. “I got the job! We’ll have lots of money in two weeks!” Aoi explains, completely out of breath, the smile on his face stretching so wide that Uruha thinks that his lips might never go back to the way they were. For the first time since they left, Aoi is the one rambling without end instead of Uruha.

Aoi is adamant about painting the walls sea-foam green (oh, but Uruha so wished for the walls to be blue-violet like the ocean instead of the sea) and gets his way only once he agrees to let Uruha paint the doors white. The bright paint makes the place seem not so dead. It’s their half-alive haven. No rent to pay, fully furnished with a moth-eaten couch, a creaky mattress, and a broken television, and the inner city was only five minutes away by foot. It seems too good to be true. Uruha thinks it’s perfect despite the constant noise.

But that’s okay because Aoi has no problem drowning out the irritating ship horns blaring at five in the morning by making the blood rush in his ears (“put a pillow over your head!” was nothing compared to putting it between Uruha’s legs). There’s no running water or electricity in their house so they have to take their showers down at the gym where Aoi works and try to live off convenience store food. Uruha doesn’t mind though because if he’s in a good mood, Aoi even lets him get ice cream from the freezer.

________

Out of all the months they spend in Yokohama, Uruha remembers December the most. He remembers how happy he was when he woke up and found the white and purple striped jacket (with the fuzzy hood!) he had wanted from a department store so many weeks ago folded on the bed next to him. Then, he felt lame for only buying Aoi a random t-shirt because he didn’t know what Aoi wanted for Christmas at all.

The biggest thing of all, though, was the huge storm that rattled the weak windows on Christmas day, and he has to kiss away Aoi’s fear of thunder. He hadn’t even known Aoi was afraid of anything until the other man yelped and tried to hide in the closet at the deafening crack that splits the sky. As Aoi trembled in his arms huddled underneath layers of their filched train blankets, Uruha realized that the other man isn’t very tough at all underneath his veil of maturity. They’re both still just kids.

________

Half a year already, Uruha thinks when April rolls smoothly around the corner, does that make a home? Six months was the longest time Aoi had let them stay anywhere. In an industrial city like Yokohama, he had said, they could be like everybody else and nobody would recognize them if they just pulled their hoods down a little further.

Though Aoi doesn’t allow Uruha to work, the blond finds a job down at one of the restaurants as a waiter out of restlessness. He didn’t even have to show an I.D. because they were so desperate for somebody to help during the busy lunchtime hours. All he had to do was smile at the customers, give them menus, and serve their food on piping hot plates. It is nothing to him, but he doesn’t know that the friendly beam he gives everyone make the people come to the restaurant more often. They like his innocence.

Of course, Aoi gets mad when he finds out, but they need the money badly. The little Aoi makes is barely enough to live off of so Uruha refuses to quit no matter how much Aoi tries to convince him to. Aoi doesn’t know it, but Uruha has a dream of buying an actual home with running water and electricity and living together with Aoi and a Labrador puppy he hasn’t told anyone about yet.

________

Someone left a Polaroid camera underneath a pile of rubble in one of the broken rooms for Aoi to discover. He takes the entire day snapping away the rest of the film, and when he looks back at that little stack of random photos, he notices that Uruha’s in every single one. A strand of hair, a hand, a foot, even a smile every now and then. Aoi loves Uruha’s smile, perhaps maybe even more than the other boy himself.

One day Aoi comes home to a frustrated Uruha poking at the dusty buttons of the broken television. “I’m trying to make it work, but it’s being stubborn,” Uruha petulantly growls, poking the ‘on’ button so hard that it dents in too far on the right. Frowning, he leans back and looks hopefully to Aoi. “Can you fix it?”

Uruha doesn’t realize that Aoi can’t fix absolutely everything he wants or breaks. The only way Aoi can think of to fix the television is to buy a new one. He sighs, picking up the Polaroids from the three-legged table with a heavy heart.

Chewing the inside of his cheek in thought—we don’t have enough money for a new television—Aoi picks up the first photo and scribbles something on the back of the thick white paper before carefully folding it into a crane. Maybe if he makes enough cranes, a thousand like the old legend says, the cranes will bring them luck.

The next day Aoi pawns the camera and with some of the emergency money he’s put aside, he brings back a small television that runs on batteries. Uruha is so happy that he even lets Aoi choose which channel they should watch first.

________

The fishing boat tips almost too far to the left when Uruha stands up, stumbling clumsily across the miniscule deck because of the bit of alcohol Aoi let him consume, and he gently pries the guitar from Aoi’s grasp. It clatters noisily behind them, the strings making a harsh tinny sound as the wood meets the metal ridges of the boat. Aoi says nothing in protest at all, only allows Uruha to crawl into his lap and the blond hair to tickle his neck. Uruha opens his mouth to repeat his question but quickly shuts it when he realizes that he won’t get an answer.

“Let’s go look for those sunflowers tomorrow,” he finally murmurs against Aoi’s jaw, his fingers sliding underneath the other boy’s shirt to feel the heartbeat special to him more clearly.

“Okay,” Aoi replies blankly, knowing that the sunflowers will only be green nubs and leafy stems. They don’t bloom until late summer and he’s sure that Uruha knows that so he keeps this bit of information to himself. He closes his eyes and all he can dream of are those yellow sunflowers and Uruha peeking out from behind one at him.

_________

Gravel crunches underneath their scuffed soles, disturbed by rare human presences. It’s usually just miles and miles of train tracks as the eye can see and broken rocks by themselves. Uruha jumps over to the other side of a track from the broken rung in the station gate, motioning for Aoi to follow him and starts going in the direction their train had come from.

Half an hour later, Uruha catches sight of something yellow and starts to run towards it. A train horn ruins it all by making both Aoi and Uruha wait for what seems like forever for it to pass. Uruha almost runs into the caboose in his impatience. Ducking underneath the frame of the bridge, they scamper across the rock until they’re met with a chain-link fence that hadn’t been there before. Where the sunflowers are supposed to be are the wooden skeletons of buildings and artificially yellow Komatsu cranes.

“But the sunflowers were all right here and they went on and on and on…” Uruha breathes in disbelief, his fingers clutching at the fence and shaking his head sharply at the metal contraptions that had eaten the blooms. Aoi kicks at the fence in a disheartened manner.

“They were,” he mutters, picking up part of a tender baby stem and wanting to jump the fence just so he could tamper with the screws on all the equipment.

Even an ice cream cone doesn’t cheer Uruha up at all. If only Aoi had could’ve known. He might’ve been able to save all those hundreds of vulnerable flowers and make Uruha happy. Kissing Uruha goodnight halfheartedly, he closes his eyes and finally can put a name to what Uruha always smells like: bleached sunshine and sunflowers.

_________

Uruha is walking home from work, ambling nonchalantly along the unpaved road with his uniform apron folded over one arm, when the silence is broken by the loud grinding of a car engine. Frowning, he turns to see who is crazy enough to drive through this abandoned road leading nowhere. Inside of a beaten pick-up truck sits Aoi, who grins down at him and motions for Uruha to climb into the passenger seat.

Opening the heavy door, he hops into the empty seat, immediately noticing a ripped envelope of cash sitting in the cup holders between them. Today must’ve been payday. “Why’d you buy a car?” Uruha asks, running his hands over the dusty dashboard carefully as if he might actually break the car by poking at it.

“I can take you wherever you want to go now. We don’t have to take the trains anymore,” Aoi declares proudly, squaring his shoulders and turning into the dirt lot next to their house. The brakes screech a bit—Aoi makes a mental note to fix that soon—and the car doors squeak when they get out, but it’s the most he’s ever done for anybody and that makes it worth the couple thousand bucks he spent. Uruha suddenly appears next to him, finding Aoi’s cheeks with his lips in thanks.

Sometime later, when they’re lounging on the boat after dinner and laughing quietly at whatever Aoi has to say, Uruha notices the odd quietness. His eyes search the vicinity, not liking the way Aoi’s hands are empty. “Where’s your guitar?” he inquires in a fearful tone. Aoi bites his lip until he can taste metal but says nothing.

________

They left that night at one forty-two in the morning. Uruha had recognized their faces on the new channel and they couldn’t risk staying in a place where a million people were on the lookout for them.

________

Once the sun comes up, Aoi stops the truck on the side of the road to let Uruha clamber into the back with their meager belongings. He opens the scratched back window so he can see what Uruha is doing back there with all the room in the world. Pulling at the sleeves of his purple and white jacket, Uruha leans against the glass and stares at Aoi adoringly for the longest time, a lollipop stick dangling between his lips, and watches Aoi’s eyes flicker towards him in the rearview mirror. It is still early but it is already sunny and lots of cars pass them by on the highway.

“What are you looking at me like that for?” Aoi mutters, so embarrassed by it that he has to lower his lashes and Uruha catches his fleeting smile, the one where the corners of his dark eyes crinkle in the kindest way.

“I can’t believe you left everything and everyone—think of your poor mother!—just for me. You were always so sweet to everybody, even the people you didn’t know, and I can’t believe that you left just because I didn’t want to go back. What the hell were you thinking?” Uruha repeats the last line over and over again until his tongue tires and he quiets down. It sounds like he’s scolding Aoi after all these months, but Aoi can tell that it’s just his heart finally breaking underneath the thoughts of all the good things they left behind.

“Well…” Aoi begins with a heavy sigh. “I suppose I wasn’t really thinking at all. I can’t think around you ‘cos I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll miss something cute you do when we’re being spontaneous. And I can’t have that happening. It’d be a crying shame to see you grow up too fast.”

At that point all Uruha really wants to do is reach in through the back window, grab Aoi’s face and kiss him breathless (but then they would swerve off the road into the highway below them and voila, tragic ending). Instead he leans against the side of the car and scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. If he says anything now, he knows he’s going to ruin the perfect moment with one of his random outbursts.

“Can you get me the bottle of soda out from your backpack?” Aoi says after a driving mile of airy silence. Nodding, Uruha rummages through their clothes for bottles of soda wrapped snugly for insulation in a jacket and opens one, handing it to him through the window. It tastes flat and sticky sweet. As Uruha is zipping the backpack up, his hand brushes past an envelope hiding beneath their cardboard savings box. Curious, he yanks it out carelessly. The envelope rips, sending pieces of white photo paper flying across the back of the truck and Uruha scrambling after them.

Paper cranes, Uruha realizes when he has them organized in a neat pile. He hasn’t seen one since elementary school and the teacher forced thirty tender minds to read the horrors of Sadako and the Paper Cranes and then showed them how to make paper cranes.

Each delicate crane that rests in his palm now has something scribbled across its whiteness. Carefully, he starts to unfold the first one.

_______

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