#i wanted to do something more ambitious but this is all i could manage fjdskljlk

[ink-inkonstantin]

Another year passed, another year ending. This had been the eleventh since Toji had died.

The next day, another year was beginning. It would be the twelfth since Toji had died.

The fireworks lit the sky. The entire world was celebrating.

“Happy birthday, Toji-kun.”

Down below, there was the festival, everyone was happy, having fun, dressed in their decorative yukatas and masks. Naoya used to walk those crowded alleys between the booths holding on to Toji’s yukata sleeve, a kitsune mask on his head. An oni mask on Toji’s. Playing the games, eating the street food, milling with the crowds.

When the fireworks were about to start, they’d find a tall building nearby, go up onto the roof, like where Naoya was standing now, after walking through the festival alone, partaking in nothing. But still he walked the crowded alleyways between the booths, holding on to the sleeve of a ghost.

The fireworks were stunning, as always. But Naoya missed the way the light had played on Toji’s scarred face, danced on the surfaces of his dark eyes.

“It’s like the entire world is celebrating your birthday. A festival and fireworks just for you. With your birthday, the entire year, for everyone, is starting anew.”

“Naoya,” Toji’s hand on his head, ruffling his hair, fireworks blossoming above them, whistling, exploding, colorful thunder in the clouds, rainshowers of laughing sparks, “the only one who celebrates my birthday is you.”

Naoya watched the fireworks, felt the sizzling lights on the backs of his retina, an entire symphony of lurid color and sound in his head, but he was the only one who heard it playing for Toji. He didn’t think even Toji had heard it.

Thank you for existing.

Naoya had tapped it with his fingers on the back of Toji’s hand, had hummed it with his breaths, had danced it with his buoyant feet, had held the shape of it in his grinning teeth. He didn’t know, though, if Toji had ever realized the words that were caught in his throat like a cloud dragon that had swallowed too many stars.

They stung in Naoya’s eyes with the fireworks, now.

Thank you for having existed.

It had been eleven years since Toji had died, seventeen since Toji had left the Zen’in clan, and Naoya never had seen him again. Toji always had been leagues ahead of him. Naoya had always run after him, but Toji had always easily outpaced him. Naoya was still chasing, but he hadn’t caught up to him yet.

“The only one who celebrates my birthday is you, Naoya.”

Toji-kun, don’t say that like that’s nothing. When I die, nobody will celebrate my birthday at all. Nobody will be glad that </i>I<i> existed.

Toji-kun, why didn’t you realize that you meant something to </i>me?

You’re not truly dead, Toji-kun. Not when I’m haunted by your ghost.

The fireworks were in their finale, a grand crescendo of bangs and glittery, shivery flashes of radiant flowers raining—and then all dissipated to smoke, streaking dirty across the sky, ghost images faded and blown gently to smears in the air.

All beautiful things came to an end. Toji’s life was no exception. Toji had been like a living god, but not even the immortal were forever.

The old year was over. It was the start of a new year. The eighteenth since Naoya had seen Toji, the twelfth since Toji had died. Naoya would be turning twenty-seven. When he was a kid the entire Zen’in clan had celebrated it, but it had been mostly a political affair, the clan showing off for the other sorcerer clans, the entire shebang. He was an adult now, and his birthday wasn’t celebrated anymore. Not even he celebrated it. Not when, with Toji gone, there was no one he wanted to celebrate his life with. He didn’t tell himself “Happy birthday, Naoya,” on that date; he told himself, “You survived another year. Good for you. Congrats on still being too proud to kill yourself.”

He hoped that that wasn’t the kind of thing that Toji had told himself on his birthday, when he’d watched the fireworks with subdued eyes while Naoya held onto his sleeve and watched not the fire blossoms in the sky, but their warm light that bathed Toji’s face and the scar through the corner of his lips that Naoya just wanted to see smiling.

Toji-kun, hey, Toji-kun.

Happy birthday.

Thank you for existing.