Shiro and Hikaru's Ridiculous Adventure
By Abbigail Nutter
Shiro Amonae considered himself to be perfectly normal for a Japanese boy of seventeen. He went to school, earned high marks on all of his tests and was near the top of his class of two hundred. He respected his parents (while also whining about them to his friends), he walked the dogs of his neighbors for pocket money, and spent his Friday evenings at Kyo Shojin’s house for nights of cheesy horror flick goodness.
Yes, Shiro Amonae was incredibly average.
Or he would be, if not for Hikaru.
Two inches tall, the little fairy refused to leave him be for a even a moment, even if that meant crawling into Shiro’s school bag only to be discovered sleeping among the textbooks that he had wedged himself between. At home, Hikaru would sit atop Shiro’s formidable pile of schoolwork as he poured over arithmetic, flitting gossamer wings that were as pink as his hair.
Hikaru had been by Shiro's side since he was small, since the only thing he wanted was to find the perfect bunch of wildflowers to set on his mother’s tombstone.
Hikaru was always there, sitting atop his shoulder like a tiny conscious, until suddenly, he wasn’t.
Hikaru vanished on a Thursday morning in early May, and as much as Shiro hated the way that the little sprite had called him Shi-chan and had constantly braided flowers into his unruly mop of hair, Shiro missed him.
Without Hikaru, Shiro’s world had turned bland and colorless.
And so Shiro Amonae went on a quest to find the pink hued boy who had been as graceful as a butterfly and as loyal as a young child.
Or, he at least tried.
A week passed, then two.
Shiro had been swept into a rigorous routine of schoolwork and searching for fairies, which his father had deemed as “odd” and “a waste of time”. He was right, in one aspect. Shiro had never heard of anyone stumbling upon a fairy that didn’t want to be found.
He was beginning to suspect that Hikaru had developed this mindset,even as he chased after every butterfly that happened to catch the the sun and stare at every male with pink hair that he passed in the streets.
The tissue box in which the fairy had slept had been left untouched, even though Shiro’s father had made many attempts at throwing it away.
After all, without Hikaru needing it, it was just trash anyway.
The congestion in the hallways grew less and less bearable until Shiro found himself lingering in classrooms to avoid the stampede of determined feet.
Until one day, when he finally saw a familiar head of pixie-pink hair turning around the bend of a corridor.
Shiro drew in a breath.
The boy at the end of the hallway had to be Hikaru.
Before he could force himself to think through his most recent “sighting” of the the fairy and process what he was doing, Shiro was running towards the fluff of hair floating past the bodies of the other people in the hall like an ethereal god.
He stopped in his tracks as the boy’s hair turned back to platinum that it had been before the red tint of the dying lights had caught it.
This graceful boy wasn’t the clumsy little fairy that could barely keep his balance while walking along Shiro’s unmoving shoulders.He wasn’t even close.
Shiro huffed, feeling as though he’d been made a fool of.
Perhaps he was the fool, and there was not one that could be made.
Hikaru was gone, and despite all of his efforts, Shiro was beginning to feel that there was nothing to be done about it.
His day went on in the same dull blur that had become his norm in Hikaru’s absence, whatever elation that the near reunion with Hikaru wiped from his mood. Shiro’s head had become a monotone of wonderings that centered around a fairy that no one else seemed to notice.
He lingered in his foreign language class, watching as the crowd of students slowly thinned, only tearing his attention from the hall when his teacher yelped from her desk in the corner as a familiar voice filled his ears
“Shi-chan! Shi-chan! Look! I’m all big and tall now!” As the words left the pink haired boy’s lips, he ran towards Shiro, all five foot one inches that was now Hikaru slamming into the taller boy with the miniscule amount of velocity that his body could muster.
Even so, the breath left Shiro’s body as Hikaru’s small frame slammed into his.
“How-how are you-” A thousand thoughts ran through Shiro Amonae’s head once, creating a swirling vortex of confusion that made him sway on his feet.
“Taka-san.” Shiro hoped that the sigh that escaped his lips wasn’t as audible to Hikaru as it was to him.
“Taka-san did this to you?” Hikaru nodded eagerly, as though this new change to his body mass was the most spectacular thing that had ever happened to him.
“Yes! He said that he thought it unfair that I must sit upon your shoulder, watching the chaos of your world, while also being unable to participate in the wonderful atmosphere around me-”
“Hikaru, have you ever seen The Little Mermaid ?”
“No, but it sounds fascinating.”
Shiro sighed, he hated Disney movies with a fiery passion- he found them to be unrealistic and full of contradictions. Unfortunately for him, he suspected that the song filled fluff would be the only way to get through to someone who was practically a Disney character himself. “Hikaru, there is something very important that you would have learned from-”
“Can we watch it later then?”
“What? No- what I’m saying is-”
“Shi-chan,” Hikaru whined, “Your eyebrows are all scrunched again. They look like angry caterpillars.”
“My eyebrows are scrunched, Hikaru-” Shiro tried to keep the grating irritation out of his voice. “Because you just let a trickster manipulate you into the trap of humanity.”
“I don’t understand-how can humanity be a trap if you all flourish?”
“We don’t, Hikaru. We really don’t. Let me show you how brown the seaweed is in this lake.”
“I don’t understand that reference,Shi-chan-”
"I didn't think you would. Come on."
And so Shiro ended up in the section of Tokyo that he had promised his mother that he would never find himself in at night. Kabukicho.
Hikaru was mesmerized, looking around at the ramshackle shops and karaoke bars like a child in a sweet shop.
The former fairy didn’t even notice the policemen in full riot uniforms or the drug pushers lurking in the dark corners of the desolate, abandoned allies that they passed.
Shiro led him to a noodle shop that was stained with graffiti and leaned in the slight breeze that traveled through the narrow street. The faded neon of the signs was dull in the mid-afternoon light, their flickering glow just beginning to tint the cracked pavement under their feet a dangerously vivid assortment of colors.
While Shiro glumly ordered them ramen from the scarred man behind the counter, Hikaru took it upon himself to explore the tiny interior of Kasudon Ramen, pressing his nose against the glass barrier that separated the pink haired idiot from the Katsudon that was cooking on the stove.
Shiro waved him away under the pretext of getting them a table, watching the cook’s face as it reddened in frustration.
Instead of sitting in the disheveling bench like a normal person, Hikaru decides to perch on the edge of the table, his short legs dangling as he cradled his soft drink to his chest.
“Your friend a mental case or something?”
Shiro scowled as he took the two bowls of food. “Just because he’s enjoying life doesn’t make him a mental case, you know.”
The cook put his hands up in surrender. “ Whatever you say.” Shiro sighed, returning to the table that Hikaru had commandeered and half-heartedly picking at his Katsudon. The other boy devoured his bowl, clumsily guiding noodles into his mouth with loud slurping noises. Noodles fell from Hikaru’s chopsticks so often that by the time the wooden sticks reached his lips, there were only a few remaining for him to eat.
“How have you survived this long?”
Hikaru spoke through a mouthful of noodles. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t even use chopsticks correctly, Hikaru.”
“My chopstick wielding abilities are just fine, thanks.”As he said this, of course, a group of three noodles had accumulated on the small boy’s chin.
“That is a matter of opinion, Noodle Beard.” Hikaru rolled his sapphire eyes, waiting not-so-patiently as Shiro finished his bowl.
He watched as Hikaru’s fingers tapped against the table’s soda slicked surface, the sound of skin against cheap plastic pestering Shiro’s ears as he ate.
Before long, Shiro reached over, slamming his hand down against Hikaru’s. “Stop it.”
“I’ll stop tapping when you stop chewing.” Hikaru gave him a shit-eating grin, kicking his feet onto the table.
Shiro sighed, pushing his bowl away. “Fine, baka. Let’s go.” He got up, grabbing Hikaru’s hand and pulling him up after him, tugging the pink haired boy out of the little shop and back onto the crowded street.
“Where are we going, Shi-chan?” Shiro kept a tight grip on the fairy’s hand, afraid of losing the short boy in the considerably taller crowd.
“I don’t know just yet.” He wasn’t lying, he had absolutely no idea where he’d be dragging the poor kid next.
Hikaru shrugged, humming as he swiveled around to look at the scene around them. “Why is that man wearing armor?”
“Hm?” Shiro looked up and nearly laughed. Hikaru had finally noticed the policeman who stood on the corner of an alley and a tobacco store, the one who wore full riot gear to patrol the streets. “Oh. He’s just here because some people become reckless when they have too much sake`.”
“What’s sake`? Can I have some?” Hikaru’s face lit up as he heard the prospect of something new to try.
“ Oh there’s no way in hell I’m letting you drink that crap. You’re such a lightweight that it’d go right to your head and some poor sap would end up cleaning katsudon off an alley wall.”
Hikaru’s lips twisted in a pout, and this time, Shiro did laugh. “Then what will we do, if not try sake`?” Shiro shrugged, shoving his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket in search of the tickets that his father had previously gifted him in the hopes that he would find a nice girl to take to Tokyo Disneyland. Unfortunately for Hiroshi Amonae, the father hadn’t counted on his son’s little fairy becoming human and wanting to experience everything the world had to offer, whether it be wonderful or terrible.
Shiro highly doubted that his father had counted on him using his tickets at all, seeing as he seemed to be the only person his age that had grown out of his love for the cartoon mouse.
He wove through the congested streets, Hikaru on his heels as he took the all too familiar route toward the pastel expanse of horrific fluff and screaming children that claimed to be the happiest place in all of Japan.
Hikaru would love it. Shiro, however, would barely make it through the day without internally combusting.
Nevertheless, Shiro guided Hikaru through the streets until he reached the blinding blue gates to his own personal hell. The fairy gasped in delight, spinning around to get a full view of the complete and utter chaos around them.
Shiro supposed that the scene could be endearing to someone seeing it for the first time, but to him, it was a complete and total madhouse.
“Taka-san lives here, you know. I’ve never visited him because he said that It was dangerous. But it doesn’t look dangerous.” Hikaru began walking straight to the castle, a hopeful look in his eyes.
“Taka-san lives here-? Hikaru- where are you going-”
“To get Takashi to change me back!” Hikaru was running now, tears streaming down his porcelain face. Shiro struggled to keep up with the somehow athletic boy, apologising to passerby as Hikaru elbowed his way through the crowd.
“Hikaru-!” Shiro finally caught up to the pink haired fairy, grabbing onto his arm. “Stop.”
“Why? Shi-chan, I’m no good as a human- I’m absolutely horrid!” Hikaru wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, trying to keep walking.
Shiro shook his head. “That doesn’t matter, Hikaru, you’re still you.” Hikaru didn't move, only staring at the pastel castle wistfully.
The fairy wasn't listening. He never listened.
And there, in the middle of Tokyo Disneyland, Shiro Amonae gave Hikaru one last human experience before letting him go.
His first kiss.