The last Memory of Red piece. The original text is provided by .
K ~ Seven Stories: 24 Pieces
Piece 20: Kusanagi Izumo (Things on Hold)
by Raikaku Rei
Kusanagi was no good at letting himself go.
The bigger an incident was, or the graver the situation turned as a result of such a incident, the calmer Kusanagi would become.
Come to think of it, it was the same when Suoh awakened as the Red king, too.
His friend had suddenly become a supernatural king. But Kusanagi didn’t freak out. He only pointed at the enormous Sword of Damocles that had materialized over Suoh’s head and said in a tone that sounded almost joking, “Hey, there’s a sword floating above your head, you know?”
When he thought about it now, he should have been more shocked, but what drove him at the time was the wish to put Suoh at ease as much as he could.
But the turbulent days still continued. Kusanagi franticly tried to ride out their suddenly changed situation, and it was about a month later that things finally calmed down sufficiently, and his life returned to normal enough for him to start thinking about remodeling bar HOMRA and opening it again.
“Haa…. it sure had me freaked out.” Having just finished a major cleanup of the bar with the help of Suoh and Totsuka he enlisted for the task, Kusanagi listlessly sunk into the couch, and, perhaps due to exhaustion, the feeling of shock, very delayed though it was, welled up in him, making the words fall out of his mouth unchecked.
Totsuka cocked his head to the side in question, “What did?”
“The fact that Mikoto is the Red king now? Which makes us his clansmen. Like, actual retainers of the king that can manipulate flames…. Talk about being blown away…”
“Huh?! You’re being blown away only now?!” Totsuka’s eyes were wide in amazement. “You sure took your sweet time, Kusanagi-san,” he laughed. “You have this tendency to overreact to the smallest things, but when something really big happens, the first thing you do is putting your feelings on hold for the time being, huh. And then, you only let them out when your guard relaxes once again,” Totsuka stated his observation, intrigued; Kusanagi of the present recalled this talk because he had concluded from the objective point of view that at the moment he was too composed.
Kusanagi was walking, listening to the sound of waves breaking on the shore and retreating. The sprawling ocean was beautiful and, by some irony, calm.
Apparently, at the moment, Kusanagi’s feelings were still, as Totsuka put it, “on hold” - in order to allow him to do what needed to be done, so that he wouldn’t become a toy to the raw emotions.
In Kusanagi’s path, there was the form of Suoh sitting on a rock by himself and puffing out purple smoke. The man who burned his friend’s dead body to nothing just earlier so no blood, no bone and no even ash remained, was quietly gazing out at the ocean.
Mulling over the question of when his still contained emotions would finally turn loose, Kusanagi slowly started on his approach to Suoh.