Promise to Sirius (An Utapri / Uta no Prince-sama Fanfiction)

Chapter 47: Colours

Natsuki Shinomiya

Tiny specks of lights, colours, appeared in the darkness like stars in a nightscape, silently and suddenly, and they grew like flowers, spreading and overwhelming, and blurred over until all that could be seen was white. A pure, blinding white.

Then came a memory, one of the only childhood memories that he had never forgotten.

He was six years old then, and that day, that warm afternoon in a timeless forest in France, he and his father had come across a white rabbit that had been severely wounded, that was bleeding red on the soft green grass surrounded by bushes of white and pink flowers under the pale sunshine...

That was slowly... and painfully... dying.

"Must have been those trespassing kids, the poor thing," Dad mumbled, his green eyes tight with anguish and sympathy as he pressed a handkerchief against the open wound on the stomach. "I don't think it'll be able to make it at this rate... it's been left far too long like this."

As Dad used his free hand to make a call to the local authorities, a quivering Natsuki quietly approached the little rabbit and started to slowly caress the white fur on top of its head. It was soft and somehow... stroking that soft fur as the rabbit trembled and bled made young Natsuki want to cry even more as he already was as warm tears ran down his cheeks. The rabbit whimpered and Natsuki's green eyes widened behind his black-framed glasses. 

"Y-Your... your family...?"

Natsuki whispered, staring down at the white rabbit as it whimpered again, asking where its family was, and more tears fell down onto the grass.

"I wish... I knew too..." he answered quietly, his voice cracking, "so that... you could see them again... I'm so sorry, little one..."

But as Natsuki uttered those words, the light in the rabbit's round black eyes diminished and faded, causing the boy's heart to be paralyzed in sheer anguish and grief. "N-No..." he barely managed to whisper as he felt the rabbit's neck for a pulse. He trembled even more when he could not find a heartbeat, no matter how much he tried to search. "Dad... Mr Rabbit stopped breathing... I can't... I can't feel his heartbeat." Dad, who had just hung up from the call, carefully placed a hand over the neck of the motionless white rabbit and then slowly faced Natsuki with a painful smile in his green eyes. "D-Dad... you can't... feel it either...?" His dad merely shook his head and pulled Natsuki into his arms as the latter cried softly.

"I'm so sorry, son," Dad muttered soothingly, rubbing his back gently. "We couldn't save the little rabbit. It was too late."

"It wanted... to see its family," Natsuki whispered, sniffling as he let out a choked sob and gripped at the fabric of his dad's jacket. "It a-asked me... where its family was."

"I know, Nacchan." Dad's voice was softer.

"Its family will be s-sad too." 

Natsuki hugged Dad even tighter, tears trickling down his cheeks.

"Its family will be crying too... when they find out."

And they had stayed there until the local authorities came, with Natsuki weeping for the rabbit and its family's loss as the warm tears fell down his face and wet his dad's brown jacket. Thinking back to that sunlit yet excruciating afternoon brought tears welling up inside Natsuki all over again as his heart wrenched painfully in his chest. That was when that childhood memory began to fade away like the wind, only for different memories from a different time to come coursing through his mind like an uncontrollable flood, crashing onto him like a tsunami as he began to be brought back to a broken reality.