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ifyougoillfollow · 2 years

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a song for a song

"Can you sing, senpai?"

Hizashi winces. He hadn't meant to cut Kayama off, even if he hasn't been entirely listening to a word she's said for the past hour or so.

Kayama straightens from her crouch, hands him yet another fistful of dirt-clodded roots to stuff into his increasingly soiled satchel. At this point, he's going to have to wash it. And his robes. And his hair, too, while he's at it. He should have braided it; it's getting kind of long. Now there's probably bugs in it.

Hizashi refuses to cry about it. Plenty of other things to cry about nowadays, and he's yet to cry about any of those, so bugs? Not gonna do it. Not today.

Kayama eyes him a little like she was eyeing those roots on the forest floor a second ago, but in the end she only snorts and says, "You're the bard here, not me."

"And you're the witch, yet here I am with dirty, smelly herbs in my robes."

"No one asked you to come, snotbrain."

Hizashi takes a moment to remind himself that he is not crying today, then says, "Well, fortunately for you, senpai, Aizawa has gotten much better at evading me with his stealthy ninja skills, so looks like you're stuck with my lovely, charmingly clingy self for the foreseeable future."

"Lucky me, indeed," Kayama mutters, even as she's foisting more assorted foliage onto Hizashi's wary arms. She waits until he deems each twig adequately bug-free before setting off again into whatever new direction through the trees her witchy senses are leading her towards.

"Yeah, I can sing," she answers at length, "I guess. Probably not as well as you can, though, if we're being honest. Not exactly my specialty, is it?"

There was a time, not two moons ago, when Hizashi would have preened at his senpai's first-ever admission that she likes his singing. Now, it just serves as a reminder of all the songs he's had caught in his throat since Oboro died.

Kayama is not looking at him, too busy charming her way through previously virgin forest brush in order to allow them easier passage. Hizashi feels her scrutiny regardless. The air is clear and sweet and open. Inviting. Hushed like a sated dinner crowd awaiting the first song of the evening. The absence where Hizashi's song would be if he weren't choking on it rings louder than his voice ever could.

Kayama slows, her shoulders rising gently in what could be a breath or a sigh. Hizashi nearly hightails it out of the forest right then and there – bugs and blushing virgin underbrush be damned – but when Kayama speaks it's only to tell him to keep an eye out for a flower that 'kind of looks like two monkeys fornicating,' and then she's off again about herbs and roots and spices and their many medicinal and decidedly non-medicinal applications.

She has a lovely voice, even when just speaking. Full and rich and with a little too much heat, like smoke from a spitting hearth fire. Hizashi's always wondered what it'd sound like in song, can't stop wondering even as she goes on and on about dirt and leaves and bark, until she finally stops to contemplate a vine unfurling from what might very well be the heavens for all the attention Hizashi's paying to it.

"Sing for me," he says, unable to choke the words down.

Kayama snorts, keeps contemplating her vine. "What, right now?"

Because that wasn't a 'no' and because she's not looking at him and because the clear forest air remains bereft of song, Hizashi asks, "Why not?"

"I don't know many songs, for one."

"Choose whatever. Anything at all."

"What if I choose a terrible song?" she asks, affecting a pout.

"No such thing, senpai!"

She rolls her eyes and bats the vine at him, but it's only a few beats before she caves. "Honestly, I only know lullabies," she says. "You know – for fussy little babies."

Hizashi laughs. "Lullabies are good! Sing me a lullaby, senpai!"

Kayama's answering grin is more teeth than anything, and it's also the first sign that Hizashi has walked into a trap. "All right," she says, voice too-innocent, "if you insist. Follow me." She flashes another snaketooth grin at him and disappears behind a curtain of vines.

At the sight of the lone finger she sticks back through to beckon him forward, Hizashi once again considers taking his chances on a solo sprint back out of the woods. In the end, his curiosity wins out over his meager self-preservation instincts. He follows.

The two-step trek through the vines is harrowing, but what he finds on the other side might be even more so. It's a perfectly picturesque clearing. Suspiciously picturesque. The clearing is warm and bright and cozy, with lush cloud-cover trees surrounding a bed of down-soft grass and wildflowers. There's even a brook babbling quietly to itself off to the side. A far cry from the barely tamed woods two steps behind him.

Kayama, perched on the grass below a swaying willow, laughs at whatever expression is on Hizashi's face. "Welcome to my den of decadence," she all but purrs, "where I bring all my... conquests."

Hizashi tries not to balk. Tries.

Kayama cackles. "Oh, don't flatter yourself. You wanted me to sing you a lullaby, so I'm going to sing you a lullaby. Properly." She pats a spot on the ground right next to her. "Come here."

Hizashi, forever hapless in the face of his senpai's schemes, does as he's told. Once he's seated, Kayama roots around in her bag for some incense to light ("For the bugs," she informs him with a roll of her eyes) and a stoppered vial filled with an unidentified lavender-colored liquid.

"For you," she says expectantly.

Hizashi downs the contents of the vial without question. It tastes like too-sweet perfume, but he's had worse tonics from Chiyo-sensei, so he doesn't complain.

"It's a new sleep potion I'm working on," Kayama explains, even though he hadn't asked. "I've been meaning to test it, but I haven't had any willing volunteers due to what happened last time – which wasn't even my fault, if anyone's asking – and Chiyo-sensei says slipping potions into other people's food is unethical because she's no fun, so here we are."

For his own peace of mind, Hizashi elects not to ask what happened last time. "How long will it take to work," he asks instead, "and how long will I stay asleep?"

"No idea, that's why we're testing it. Now lay back, unless you want to crack your skull if it takes effect suddenly."

Hizashi eyes the grassy ground warily. "How effective is this fancy incense of yours at keeping bugs away again?"

"Oh, come here, you big baby." She tugs at him until he's laying down with his head pillowed on her lap. Hizashi does his level best to not perish on the spot. She flicks him on the forehead. "Relax, already. I won't bite unless you ask me to."

"Not helping," Hizashi grumbles, willfully ignoring his fever-hot face.

Kayama's thigh is warm under his cheek, and she smells like twigs and earth and wildflowers, and Hizashi is not crushing on his senpai – he is not – but suddenly he understands all too clearly why Oboro had once badgered him for weeks to serenade Kayama on his behalf, until Hizashi had agreed on the condition that Oboro write the lyrics himself (and make that fact clear to all present witnesses), which he did, happily, and the lyrics had been terrible and mortifying and damned near impossible to put to melody, but Hizashi had put his bardly reputation on the line and done it, and Kayama had, of course, laughed like he's never heard her laugh before or since, but had also been so obviously charmed by it that Oboro didn't stop smiling for the rest of the week. If all of Hizashi's songs hadn't died with Oboro, he'd be singing that one right now.

"Sing for me, senpai," he says, because his eyes are starting to burn and because she promised and because this moment calls for song. Every moment calls for song.

"You're the bard here," says Kayama, fingers tugging knots from his hair, "not me."

"Please..."

"A song for a song, then."

"Sleepy..." he mumbles, and it's an excuse, but it's also the truth, his limbs heavy as sun-warmed sand.

"When you wake up."

He shakes his head.

"Why not?"

"Can't," he whispers, too tired to scream.

"Sure you can. You're a bard."

Is that what he is? Kayama-senpai sure seems to think so. She keeps saying it. Why does she have to keep saying it?

"I'm not singing until you say it."

No. That's not fair. She promised.

"Yamada." She smacks his sleep-numb cheek until he looks up at her blearily. "You're a bard. Aren't you?"

"I'm a bard," says Hizashi, because if there's one thing he's good at, it's telling people what they need to hear.

"Good boy," says his senpai, and she's not smiling any kind of smile, but she does finally – finally – start to sing.

Her voice is as lovely and Hizashi knew it would be, and the song – well, the song is lovely, too, in the way that all songs are lovely, even though this particular song is about a busy baby bee winding down for bedtime. Hizashi lets the lyrics wash over and through him, but the melody – the melody he soaks up along with Kayama's voice, lets it seep into the very core of him, into the sun-spooled place nestled deep behind his rib-cage from where his songs and his soul and his spells flow and flourish, and he knows without a doubt that he will never be without song again, because if nothing else, he'll always have this one simple melody, soft and whole and true.

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