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A Cicada In Winter	By : roryheadmav Category: +G to L > Haru wo Daiteita Views: 3348 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Haru wo Daiteita, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
This non-profit
work is based on Nitta Youka's Haru Wo Daiteita prequel "Fuyu No Semi".
Original copyright of the HWD characters solely belongs to Nitta Youka
and Biblos. Absolutely no monetary gain was made from this work.
A CICADA IN WINTER

By Rory V. Pascual
CHAPTER FIVE
Akizuki's mouth was contorted in
several variations of a pout. Heaving an exasperated sigh, he plopped down
on the grass to gaze up at the fiery afternoon sky. It has been an hour
since his classes at the academy ended, and still there was no sign of
his pupil.
The Bakushin found himself remembering
the conversation he had with Murayama Yoriko over lunch at the restaurant.
"Don't get your hopes up, Akizuki-san,"
Yoriko had advised him. "Although Oniichan may seem enthusiastic at first,
his interest wanes easily. I thought I'd spare you from the disappointment."
Disappointment� Akizuki
mused wryly as he listened to the gentle lapping of the river against the
bank. That's putting how I feel in the mildest of terms. He laid
his arm over his forehead to shield his eyes from the glare of the red
sun. You are a baka, Kusaka Touma! We have yet to begin your lessons
and you've already given up. Maybe your imoto is right. Maybe I have set
my hopes too high�
"AKIZUKI-SENSEI!"
At that happy cry, Akizuki sat up
in an instant to behold the grinning figure, carrying an armload of books,
standing breathlessly at the top of the embankment.
"Kusaka!" Akizuki waved in undisguised
relief to the Choshu-jin warrior.
That wave was all the invitation
that Kusaka needed as he swiftly ran down the steep slope.
However, before he was halfway down,
Kusaka tripped on a small rock. As Akizuki looked on in horror, the Choshu-jin
soldier tumbled head over heels down the slope. Great was Akizuki's shock
that he was unable to act. All he could do was watch helplessly as Kusaka
rolled down the embankment. Akizuki feared that the younger man had broken
his neck.
But then, to the Bakushin samurai's
even greater surprise, Kusaka came to a halt beside him, and at a sitting
position no less, still carrying his precious books.
Shaking himself like a shaggy dog,
Kusaka turned to a stunned Akizuki and said cheerfully, "Gomen. I didn't
mean to be late, Akizuki-sensei."
Akizuki reacted before he knew he
was doing so. Whipping out a large harisen, he whacked his student at the
back of the head. "Baka! Don't you do that again! Do you know that you
could've broken your neck?"
Rubbing his aching nape, Kusaka groused
resentfully, "I think my neck is broken now. Why did you do that for?"
His eyes narrowed as he gazed at that very familiar heavy fan. "Did Yoriko-chan
give that to you?"
"Hai," Akizuki answered simply, slapping
the fan on the palm of his left hand. "Your imoto thought it would come
in handy, and she was right."
"My duties at the Choshu-han did
not permit me to leave at an earlier time. Besides�" Kusaka brushed off
the dust and blades of grass from his clothes. "I had to be careful. I
couldn't let them find out that I'm meeting you. Even if I tell them that
I only wished to learn English from you, they won't believe me. An enemy
is an enemy after all."
Hearing that last, Akizuki fell silent.
In his eagerness to teach the younger man English, he had forgotten that
Kusaka was a member of the Choshu-han.
Tucking the fan back under his sash,
Akizuki lowered his head and said, "Gomen nasai. I completely forgot how
great the risks are for both of us to meet like this. All I could think
about is that you weren't going to show up."
"You've been listening too much to
Yoriko-chan," Kusaka remarked with a grimace. "Not even a civil war will
stop me from getting the education that I've been longing for."
"Aren't you exaggerating things a
bit?"
"Seriously?" I am so determined to
learn English that, if a war should break out between the Bakuhan and the
Choshu-han, I will risk life and limb to infiltrate the camp where you're
at and get my lessons. That's how important this is to me." A broad grin
formed on the Choshu-jin's lips. "But since we're not at war, this place
would do quite nicely. Anyway, Akizuki-sensei, I'll try my best not to
be late again." He added meaningfully, "I don't want you to worry about
me."
"Me? Worry?" Akizuki declared hotly.
"Why should I worry about a grown man like you? You have responsibilities
after all with the Choshu-han. My only concern is that you might not be
serious about learning English. I don't want my valuable time to be wasted."
"You know, Akizuki-sensei, you really
should stop talking to my imoto. Yoriko-chan never says anything good about
me."
"Maybe your imoto hasn't seen anything
good in you to talk about." The Bakushin playfully rapped Kusaka's head.
"And stop calling me 'sensei'. I told you I'm not a teacher by profession."
Kusaka gave the older man a teasing
wink. "I think I'll be the judge of that. If you can teach someone like
me English, then you are a teacher." Smiling in eagerness at a blushing
Akizuki, he asked, "What are you going to teach me today, Akizuki-san?
I brought some books which we might be able to use."
Akizuki took the books that the Choshu-jin
soldier had brought, putting aside those that would prove too complicated
at this very stage. He was happy to find that one of the books contained
simplified rules on English grammar, something that they could use later.
Unfortunately, none of the tomes contained the information that he wanted
to teach to the younger man.
"Let's use one of my books for now,"
suggested Akizuki, pulling out a thin book with flowers on the cover from
his own bundle.
Kusaka blinked at the book that Akizuki
held in his hands. "What's that?"
"The first thing I have to teach
you is the English alphabet." Akizuki then opened the book to the page
where all the letters were listed. "I want you to memorize and learn all
these letters � how they are written and the sounds they make. The arrows
on each letter show you how to write them. I will explain those pronunciation
symbols later. Much like our hiragana, katakana and kanji, these letters
are the backbone of the English language. Once you know the alphabet, it
will be easy for you to form simple words. From there, simple phrases and
sentences and so on and so forth. I was thinking maybe after you learn
the alphabet and a few words, I'll teach you some common English greetings.
Of course, once you know the rudiments of the language, I will expect you
to speak only English in my presence. This way, I could correct any mistakes
that you make and�"
Noticing the silence of the Choshu-jin,
Akizuki frowned at the younger man, who was grinning with impish delight
at the letters on the page.
"Kusaka?" Akizuki couldn't stop himself
from asking. "Do you see something amusing on the page?"
Seeing the look of suspicion on the
Bakushin samurai's face, Kusaka quickly waved his hands before him. "Oh
no! No! It's not what you think. I was just happy."
"You're happy? About what?"
"Take a good look, Akizuki-san. I
only have to memorize twenty-six English kanji�"
"Letters."
"Retasu?"
"Letters!"
"Whatever. Before, I had to memorize
both the katakana and the hiragana, each consisting of seventy-six characters,
even if they mean the same. Kanji's worse. I had to memorize a thousand�"
"Don't you mean 60,000 kanji?"
There was a shocked expression on
Kusaka's handsome face. "You mean there's more?"
Akizuki slapped his hand to his forehead
in exasperation. And I thought this was going to be easy.

~~~~~~~~~~

Amusement was mirrored on Akizuki's
face as he observed his pupil.
Kusaka was hunched over a sheaf of
papers perched on his lap, humming "The Alphabet Song" as he scribbled
furiously on the paper with a pencil.
"Here, Akizuki-san," the younger
man handed the paper to him.
Akizuki gazed down at what Kusaka
had written, and he beamed. "Very good, Kusaka. You got your B, D, P and
Q right this time. Amazing! I only had to correct you twice. Even I had
difficulty distinguishing the small b and d during my early classes at
the academy. How did you do it?"
Hearing that query, Kusaka scratched
his head sheepishly, an embarrassed grin curling up the right corner of
his mouth. "Actually, it was easy. But I don't think you'd like to hear
how I did it."
Akizuki cupped his chin in his left
hand and looked at the other intently. "Oh, I'm very interested, so let's
hear it."
There was a moment's hesitation,
and a blush rose up Kusaka's cheeks. Sighing, he wrote down the capital
and small forms of the problem letters.
Pointing to capital B and D, he asked,
"What do you see when you look at these?"
Akizuki's brows knitted together
in a dark frown. "Should I be seeing something?"
"Use your imagination," the younger
man suggested. "Capital B looks like a pregnant woman with big breasts.
The big D looks like a very fat man. Now, the small b is a pregnant woman
with a flat chest. On the other hand, small d is also a flat-chested woman,
but with a big behind. Capital P is a woman with a big bosom, but isn't
with child. The big Q is the frontal view of a big fat man with his you-know-what
hanging out. As for the small p and q, those tails remind me of a�gadget�that
a friend told me about that could help enlarge and strengthen a man's endowments.
Those are the spots where those weights are hung from."
Listening with stunned incredulity
to Kusaka's explanation, Akizuki was seized by an urge to pull out Youko's
harisen and bop the younger man again, but he could not bring himself to
do so. Obscene though it may be, Kusaka's explanation certainly made sense.
Facing the Choshu-jin, Akizuki saw
that Kusaka had wrapped his arms over his head in anticipation of the blow
that was to come.
Pulling the soldier's arms back down
his sides, Akizuki tapped his fingertip hard at the point between the younger
man's eyebrows. Dryly, he remarked, "You, Kusaka Touma, have a very dirty
mind!"
"I was influenced, I'm afraid, by
that friend I was telling you about � a boy who's been selling black market
items to the lovely ladies and okama at the brothel," Kusaka replied, remembering
his young admirer Shizuka. Defensively, he added, "However, I may be an
ecchi in mind, but certainly not in deed. I'm still as chaste as a snow
lily."
Inwardly, Akizuki mused, Somehow,
I find that very difficult to believe. With his dashing good looks,
women would instantly jump into Kusaka's arms. He wouldn't be surprised
if there were some men who were attracted to this cheerful soldier in the
same way.
Kusaka stared right back at his teacher.
There was a very strange look on Akizuki's face. He had seen that look
all too often before. To his chagrin, he realized that he was looking at
Akizuki in the same way.
Hoping to steer themselves away from
this troubling topic, Akizuki hastily suggested, "Let's forget about that.
Let's go over the vowel sounds once more."
Just as he said this, the Bakushin
realized his mistake. To his trepidation, Kusaka launched into a series
of facial contortions as he pronounced the short and long sounds of the
five vowels. What Akizuki especially did not like to see was the way Kusaka
pursed his lips whenever he spoke the short and long sounds of o and u.
With the Choshu-jin's face so close
to his, it looked as if Kusaka was about to give him a kiss.
For some inexplicable reason, Akizuki
felt the blood rush up his cheeks. Lest the younger man see him blushing
furiously, he instinctively shoved Kusaka's face away.
"Owww! That hurt!" Kusaka cried out.
"Why did you do that for?"
"Stop making those ugly faces!"
"What ugly faces? You told me to
pronounce those vowels. I just wanted to get them right."
"Well, you don't have to exaggerate!"
Flustered, Akizuki stammered, "Sorry, Kusaka. That's 'Gomen' in English.
Anyway, except for the faces, that was very good. This ends our lesson
for this afternoon."
"So soon?" Kusaka pouted in disappointment.
"It's not enough! I want to learn more!"
"It's already getting dark. It'll
be difficult for you to continue if you can't see what you're reading and
writing. Besides, the Bakushin and the Choshu-jin, not to mention the Shinsengumi,
are on the prowl at night. It'll be dangerous for us to be seen together."
"Demo�demo�I want to learn more!"
At that insistent cry, Akizuki gave
Kusaka a reassuring pat on the head. He's just like a child, or a playful
puppy.
Smiling, he reminded him, "There's
always tomorrow."
Feeling Akizuki's warm palm at the
top of his head, Kusaka found himself blushing. For some strange reason,
he was enjoying the feel of those gentle fingers running through his hair.
Nodding in understanding, he smiled
as well," I suppose you're right. I promise I'll come on time tomorrow.
Your book, Akizuki-san�"
But Akizuki pressed the book back
into the Choshu-jin's hands. "Why don't you bring it home tonight and study
it? There are simple words in there that you can learn. I already taught
you how the consonants and vowels sound, as well as some of the pronunciation
marks. See if you can learn how these words are spoken. I'll correct any
errors you make tomorrow."
"Hai!" Gathering the rest of his
books, Kusaka got to his feet and bowed to his teacher and friend. "Akizuki-san,
arigato!"
"'Hai' means 'Yes' in English," Akizuki
pointed out to him. "And 'Arigato' is 'Thank you'."
"Sank yu?" Kusaka tested the words
on his tongue.
"Don't worry, Kusaka. We'll get to
the diphthongs soon enough. And you are welcome. That is 'Doitashimashite'
in English."
Kusaka scratched his head and grimaced.
"I thought our lessons were over. I'm starting to feel overwhelmed."
"And I thought you wanted to learn
more�" Akizuki gave the younger man a knowing smile. "Believe me, Kusaka,
we've only just begun."

* * * * * * * * * *
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER SIX� (When
I finally feel up to it. Gomen nasai!)
- 4
- 5
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A Cicada In Winter