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[SIX YEARS OLD]
Shinguuji learns for the first time that his sister will not accept anything less than perfection.
If he is not perfect, then he is not good enough. Simple as that.
It’s not nice being not good enough, though.
Those who are not good enough do not deserve kindness or happiness. Those who are not good enough do not deserve to talk or play or eat.
When he is not being good enough, Sister will take all his toys away, and rip up his books, and snap his pencils and throw his food in the bin. She will make him sit in the corner for hours until he calms down, until he says sorry to her for not being good enough, until he can say sorry without screaming or crying or throwing a fit because she hates, hates, hates the noise.
He’s only six, and he begs to be forgiven, begs for her to hug him and tell him everything is going to be okay, but she is never happy with him because he is not good enough.
His sister is perfect. He is not good enough.
He grabs onto her sleeve with his tiny hands and chases her big steps, swallowing his sobs and doing as he’s told. Be calm. Do not become emotional. Do not waver. Swallow, swallow, swallow. Keep it down. Don’t make a sound. Be quieter. Be smaller. Be more convenient. Easier to manage. Easier to ignore.
She smiles at him, undeservingly kindly.
“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” She says, like he’s done the right thing and his little heart swells.
“Hug me, please?” He asks, reaching his arms up for her, wanting to be closer, wanting to be held. His eyes are bright, open and full of expectation – she is usually quite generous with her affection if he wants it, and he does want it, because it reminds him that she loves him. He may not be enough for her but that is enough for him.
“No,” she says, and sweeps forward again with her big, big steps. Too big for him to do anything but follow, confusion etched all over his face. Her long hair flows pretty behind her as she continues, “Until you can go a day without throwing a tantrum or being so childish, I will not give you any hugs. If you even touch me without asking, I will not give you any hugs. Do I make myself clear?”
He nods his head obediently and walks the whole way home not trying to touch her again.
He is not good enough.
He bumps into her by accident when she’s trying to unlock the door and she leaves him outside to reflect on his mistakes. He curls up on the front step and tries not to cry.
It’s not his fault that he takes the cookie the neighbor offers him to cheer him up.
He’s only a child.
It’s not his fault that he looks up at her with the saddest eyes and she asks why he’s sitting outside his door and he answers her.
He’s just a child.
It’s not his fault he tells her the truth and she gets upset, like big people do when they’re told something they don’t wanna hear.
She knows that he’s only a child.
It’s not his fault that her caring makes him happy, and he thinks that maybe she’d be a nicer sister than his one.
She knows better than he does that children shouldn’t be treated this way.
It’s not his fault that she blares the doorbell until his sister lets him inside the apartment again.
But to his sister, it’s his fault for being born in the first place.
Shinguuji is six years old and he believes it.
He cries into the night and his sister locks him outside again the next day.
[SEVEN YEARS OLD]
At the hospital, he’s coloring with a girl in the waiting room, borrowing her crayons and her coloring book at her insistence. She smiles at him, grin toothy, and he smiles back behind his mask.
“You’re good at coloring,” she tells him.
Shinguuji ducks his head shyly, trading his blue for a green. “I’ve… never done this before.”
“You’ve never colored?”
“No, never,” he says, voice quiet. “Sister doesn’t like it when I make a mess.”
“That’s silly.” The girl replies, shoving more of her crayons towards him. There are so many bright, pretty colors, like red and yellow and purple and orange and pink. “Everyone should do coloring if they want to. Maybe I’ll be your sister instead. I’d let you make a mess.”
“That’s okay.” Shinguuji murmurs, and doesn’t tell her that sounds more beautiful than any of the colors in the pack as he treks a pretty green over the page. “I love my sister. I promised. Forever and ever. Nobody else can be my sister.”
When his sister comes out to fetch him, the other girl is gone. His sister smacks the crayons out of his hands and scrunches up his coloring page and tosses everything out.
“I thought I told you not to make a mess and not to accept things from strangers,” she says, tugging him forward by the wrist as to not touch his colorful hands. “I’m disappointed in you, Korekiyo. I already have enough to deal with, and you’re being so careless. Don’t you love me? If you do, then listen to me. I can’t believe you.”
He feels like he’s going to cry, so he doesn’t look at her as she leads him to the pharmacy. He doesn’t even speak. He does what he’s always told. Be calm. Be quiet. Be a good child.
He only looks at the crayon pack on the counter once, and it’s not for very long at all.
It’s the wrong thing to do.
[EIGHT YEARS OLD]
He wishes his sister was like other sisters. Like the ones in books that go on adventures and gather magical flowers for their siblings and save them from witches and the ones that don’t ignore him when he isn’t good enough and ones that don’t do mean things.
She slaps him ten times for being so ungrateful.
“I give you everything,” she says, tone cold. “I work so hard to keep you alive, Korekiyo. Don’t you understand? I’m sick. There’s only so much I can do. Why isn’t that enough for you? Why are you such a greedy child? You are so selfish, you only ever think about yourself. I suffer for you, Korekiyo. Why can’t you see that? Apologize.”
“I’m… sorry.”
“You don’t sound sorry. Apologize properly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Apologize, I said. What sort of weak excuse of an apology is that? Apologize. Apologize.”
“I’m sorry,” he starts to sniffle. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“You make so much work for me, Korekiyo,” she sighs. “I am doing all that I can. I care for you. I love you. My whole life is dedicated to looking after you and you can’t even appreciate that?”
He feels so guilty that he thinks he’d be better off dead.
[NINE YEARS OLD]
Older sisters are so very admirable, in all that they do.
Older sisters are surrogate mothers, caretakers, teachers. Those that provide more than they’re ever asked for, and know more than anyone else. Those that hurt so much behind closed doors that their impressionable little brothers have to sacrifice their own feelings to heal hers, because she is always trying her best and there is nobody out there willing to reward her for it.
Older sisters are all he reads about, because older sisters are all he knows and it’s truly a terrible thing that there are so many evil older sisters in fairytales when older sisters are so full of grace and goodness.
That’s right, the world should be more loving to older sisters, who give their souls to right her parents’ wrongs, to take care of little brothers who cannot think for themselves.
Older sisters are beautiful.
The librarian that gives him the books his sister asks for is an older sister, too.
He always imagines spending days in the peace of the library reading, but his sister is waiting for him to come back with her books so he can read them to her and doesn’t like it when he takes too long.
“Why don’t you stay a little longer?” The librarian asks, gaze gentle behind her round, pearly glasses. “It’s raining and you don’t have an umbrella. Wouldn’t want you to catch a cold.”
Shinguuji almost takes her up on the offer until he remembers his sister telling him not to be so naïve — nobody really wants him around, they are just being polite because that’s their job, and the librarian is no different. She’s an older sister but she’s not the older sister Shinguuji wants. If she really knew him, she wouldn’t be able to stand him.
His sister is the kindest, the loveliest, and the one who he needs, and he should never want or need anything else.
“At least borrow an umbrella,” the librarian offers, handing him one that’s clear plastic and peach pink and Shinguuji’s hands tremble around it like he’s touching something he shouldn’t.
“Th– thank you,” he mutters quickly.
“You sure you don’t wanna wait for the rain to let up a bit?”
He does, of course he does, he wants to be in a place that’s full of books and full of big sisters that are nice enough to offer umbrellas and nice enough to worry about him catching a cold, but he cannot be here anymore.
Sister is waiting for him, and in his life, nothing matters more than that.
So he runs away from the smiling librarian and doesn’t think about how much he wishes he could stay and listen to her read to the other children as well.
[TEN YEARS OLD]
He wishes he was safe.
Sister tells him he is.
He believes her.
[ELEVEN YEARS OLD]
He’s crying on the bus.
The bus driver lady asks him where his parents are.
Shinguuji doesn’t lie, so he tells her he doesn’t have any and that he is supposed to be going to find his sister but he got on the wrong bus and now he’s crying even harder and the bus driver lady stops the bus and gets out of her seat and lowers herself to his height and talks with a calm voice.
While he’s taking the breaths she’s instructing him to take, he imagines the bus driver lady driving him far, far away, somewhere where he will live another life and it will be safe for good and he will see many beautiful sights.
While he’s wiping his tears, he imagines living on the bus with her, where she will drive him in familiar loops and he’d count all the convenience stores along the way and she would be so proud of him. She would let him sit in the front seat and she would bring him home where it’s warm and cozy and she’d tell her parents, “This is my new little brother. Please look after him with me from now on.”
He’s still crying on the bus when he decides that he likes buses more than he likes home.
[TWELVE YEARS OLD]
He loves his sister.
His sister is beautiful and kind.
All of humanity is beautiful.
Their new neighbors fight all the time, and that is beautiful.
His sister makes his clothes and dresses him up, and that is beautiful.
His sister is bedridden now, and does new things like sing to him and make promises to him that they both know she cannot keep, and that is beautiful.
He promises her he’ll be good for her forever as long as she never leaves him, and that is beautiful.
He cannot live without her, and that is beautiful.
[THIRTEEN YEARS OLD]
“You went outside?”
“Y– yes.”
“Where I can’t go?” She asks hollowly. “You went somewhere where I couldn’t be with you?”
Shinguuji loses control of himself at her tone of voice and bursts into a broken fit of tears. He clambers into bed with her and his fingers cling tight to her gown as he sobs, and her paper-white hand is cold against his cheek.
“Don’t cry, sweet Korekiyo,” she tells him. “It’s not going to solve anything, is it? You went outside and didn’t think about me at all. You must apologize for being so inconsiderate.”
His guilt is almost insufferable. He holds her and cries openly, and she doesn’t hold him back.
“Apologize,” she says as he continues sobbing. “Apologize to me, Korekiyo. Apologize. Apologize. Apologize.”
He says sorry until his throat goes hoarse, and whispers it until she falls asleep. At her wish, he retreats to the chair at her bedside when she drifts off, knowing she would not appreciate the weight on her as she slumbers. He brings his knees to his chest as he watches her, shivering slightly with the cool air of the hospital room.
The nurse comes in and it’s late already, but she drapes a blanket over his shoulders and hands him a cup of water before she goes to check his sister’s vitals.
He is suddenly burning with want, a greedy desire for the nurse to turn around and look after him instead. He drinks all his water so quickly he chokes and she pats his back and he wants to lean into her touch forever, so he forces himself to keep choking until she encourages him to keep coughing until his throat is clear and praises him for breathing clearly again.
Finally, when she asks him if he’s okay, he nods and shrinks into his chair and feels overwhelmingly guilty all over again.
She cannot stay but he never forgets the way her gaze lingered in the doorway, as if to make sure he would be safe. To make sure he would be okay.
When his sister wakes up, he starts thinking of how many ways he can choke himself so she’ll care about him just like the nurse did.
He wants his sister to hold him.
He wants to feel loved again.
[FOURTEEN YEARS OLD]
She’s dead.
He cries, tears pouring relentlessly like flash floods until he’s broken and dry, and he keeps sobbing silently into the bedsheets she used to lie in as though his splitting, agonizing grief could bring her back.
She’s dead.
He locks himself in the bathroom with the sheets crumpled in his hands, pale and trembling as he wraps them around him and begs and begs and begs with all his worthless, stupid might for her warmth to return.
She’s dead.
He sleeps in the bathtub like it’s her casket and he wishes he was in it with her. There he lies, head beneath the dry faucet, wrapped up in her sheets as he shakes with indescribable pain well into the dark of night – cold, starving and screaming for her so loudly no sound comes out.
He claws at the sides of the tub in fits. He retches into the air, sweating and gasping in hopes he’ll wake up and it’ll all just be a bad dream.
As though his soul is trying to escape his body to find her, he slams his head against the bathroom tiles and stays like that for hours.
She’s dead, and not for the first time in his life, he wishes he was, too.
[FIFTEEN YEARS OLD]
She’s here.
His consciousness slips, gaze hazy as lacerations burn red into his skin, but nothing matters more than having her here. He finally did it. He’s done it. He can see her again.
She’s here.
His sister’s ghost is his own, and his body is hers, and they are one.
She’s here.
They are one.
She’s here.
Theoretically, it should be painful, more painful than anything he’s felt in his life, but he doesn’t feel anything. It’s like he’s hovering outside his body, watching himself absorb the hurt with a morbid fascination, quivering under the beauty of it all, of a reunion like no other.
She’s here.
He is no longer alone.
He isn’t unlovable when she’s here.
He will endure anything for her happiness.
That’s all that matters.
His sister isn’t death in a cold room anymore, ripping his heart from his chest and letting him rot alone in the bathtub as he clings to her memory like he’d cease to exist without it. She’s death that is warm and radiant as the sun, burning in his body and making matchsticks with his bones and gasoline with his blood.
One day, he will go up in flames for her.
He is so glad he has a sister.
[SIXTEEN YEARS OLD]
“Wanna join my group?”
He’s curious about Akamatsu as she approaches him, class president confidence and with the determined eyes of a girl that has not yet lost everything. A girl that would be pleasing to break, beautiful and soul-crushing to break, but Shinguuji has only ever been good at hurting himself, and cannot bear to imagine the vibrance of life leaving her just yet.
Distantly, he wonders why the first thing he sees in people is how they’d fall apart.
He tips his hat at her neutrally, and asks, “Why? You have a vast many options, and I am certain that I am not your first.”
She only looks a little put out by his response as she shrugs. “You looked like you didn’t have a group, and we have a spot open. If you’re cool with dealing with, you know, them,” she gestures with her head towards their resident class clown Ouma Kokichi and crass noisemaker Iruma Miu, then grimaces only slightly. “I mean… they didn’t have groups either, and I’m all for the bonding experience. We’re all friends, aren’t we?”
Quietly, Shinguuji chuckles. “Do you pity me, Akamatsu-san? Are you poking into the drywall to scoop out the termites in hopes a gentle coercion will eradicate them from the source? Kehehe, that aspect of your humanity is beautiful too, but I have no need for your pity. I would not wish to make any more work for you than is strictly necessary, of course.”
“Oh, it’s not that,” Akamatsu shakes her head. “I don’t know where the termites came from, but it is a group project, so I figured if you wanted to join us… you could. Offer’s open!”
“No, it’s not,” Ouma grouses but is silenced by the pianist’s flimsy pink notebook landing on his face.
“How about it? Let’s buddy up?” She asks again, bright and eager, and Shinguuji nods because he doesn’t think he can bear to disappoint her, especially since such a wonderful personality would make such a lovely friend for his sister.
And isn’t it sad, he muses quietly, that he loves all humans living and dead, but his sister prevails over every other possible life.
Isn’t it sad, he thinks, that he loves a ghost with his reflection enough to make a murderer of himself?
Isn’t it sad? Isn’t it sad? Isn’t it sad?
When Akamatsu writes his name on their poster with a steady hand, he wishes that he had her name instead. Had he been born an Akamatsu, with a piano prodigy of a sister who smiles with her eyes and pumps her fists with encouragement and walks like there’s music in her step, maybe he would have been happy.
His sister’s ghost does not appreciate these thoughts. They sound ugly and ungrateful, and Shinguuji is a thoughtful and kind younger brother.
If he allows her to live, it will be the deepest betrayal, but it will only be one.
Akamatsu grins at the teacher when she passes, and points to him, “This guy’s a whiz,” she says. “Ask him anything and he’ll have an answer. It’s almost scary how smart he is.”
He will live, or he will die with the fact that he saved her because she is summer sunshine and she is brimming with positivity and determination and she is a steadfast light that he cannot put out, not even as a cure for loneliness – not even for his sister, because –
“I think that even though you come off as sorta weird, you’re actually a nice person, aren’t you, Shinguuji-kun?”
He tells himself it’s okay and doesn’t imagine her tapered fingers gliding soft piano melodies to lull him to sleep, half-sister half-songbird, and maybe, he convinces himself, maybe saving her is fine, because there are no pianos in heaven or hell, and when she plays, Akamatsu is more piano than she is girl.
Maybe it’s okay, he convinces himself, but the guilt he owes his sister eats him up so severely that he wonders if he should just kill himself already. He’s already disappointed her enough.
Don’t say no to me, Korekiyo, she commands him. You’ve never said no. You can’t say no. Take her if you love me. Kill her, if you love me.
When Akamatsu asks if he would like to learn piano, he wants to so badly that he fractures both wrists and comes up with empty excuses until she leaves him alone. In fact, he’s so upset with himself for wanting things that he isolates himself to the shadows, vowing he will not make an attempt to befriend anyone until he can behave himself and do what his sister tells him to without making any more foolish mistakes.
He doesn’t kill Akamatsu Kaede.
Instead, he kills their almost-friendship and mourns it. He kills all his foolish almost-friendships and mourns. It is not enough. He is not good enough. But he’s only ever been good at hurting himself so it doesn’t matter if he breaks again.
It doesn’t matter if he’s hurting, it doesn’t matter, as long as he’s the one that’s in pain, it doesn’t matter, even though it would be beautiful to witness pain, he will not be the one that causes it.
Not here. Not now. He’s a nice person. She said so. She said so.
Akamatsu thinks he’s a nice person. She said so.
Isn’t she beautiful, Korekiyo? Kill her, if you love me.
And she’s dead to him if he does not acknowledge her living, they’re all dead to him if he sticks to the walls and never says another word and it’s not good enough but it hurts too much, he can’t find a way for it to stop hurting, but at least when he hurts now, he will not bother anyone, and he will be alone.
He is left alone, and it feels like there’s a gaping hole in his chest that plays residence to an abandoned home longing to be used again.
He is alone, but with his sister, he will never be lonely.
[SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD]
He is sad, but has long stopped dealing with such emotions in that kind of destructive way.
Quietly, he observes Amami and Toujou’s riveting conversation about their childhoods at the other end of the table, and the seasoned maid is setting out lace table mats when she invites him to join them.
Amami talks about his sisters – lists all twelve of them, in fact, in as vivid yet vague detail as has come to be expected from the adventurer – and Shinguuji can feel an ugly jealousy churning in his stomach. He bites it down viciously, hearing his sister’s ghost whisper disapprovingly in his ear, but the way the boy’s face lights up when he speaks is almost too much to handle.
He laughs during a particularly wild story, love for his family in every raw facet of his expression and voice, and truthfully, Amami would do anything for his siblings, and Shinguuji understands but feels even more ill with envy in ways he could not even comprehend.
Amami talks about sisters that have his eyes and a temper and an energy that’s too hard to keep up with, how they’d pin his hair back with bows and make him paint their nails all different colors and with that exasperated fondness, Shinguuji wonders if sisters were supposed to sound so joyous, so lively and kind. He imagines a household that’s rowdy but safe, where everyone has a place and everyone is loved and hugged and full of light and laughter and it makes him even sadder.
Toujou, mercifully, does not have any siblings to speak of, but she has taken care of so many people that had her motherly tendencies not stuck out so much, she would have liked to have been seen as more of an elder sister. With her, he imagines a household that is quiet but well tended to, where every detail is meticulously placed with kindness and respect and every meal is home cooked with a tender attentiveness and it makes him even sadder.
He is sad, but Amami is telling him about sisters that are fun and loving and free and Toujou is pouring him tea with a gentle gaze, and he wishes, wishes, wishes he could be in the forests running away with a troupe of giggling green-eyed girls and their caring big brother, and wishes, wishes, wishes Toujou would tuck him tight into bed and ask him what he needs and stay by his side when he is sick until he gets all better again.
What’s worse is that he feels like a child for wanting these things, feels like a monster for wanting Amami’s sisters for himself and Toujou’s graciousness to himself, feels like an outcast for being in the same room as them and wanting so much he can’t have – feels so immature around two very emotionally mature people, but wanting to bury his face in Amami’s shoulder and let him paint his nails and wanting Toujou to comb out his hair and sing him lullabies until he falls asleep all the same.
He thinks about wanting them for him, and not for his sister, even though his sister’s ghost always tells him to only make friends that will be useful to her, but he is selfish and Amami can’t be hers because he’d be a better brother than Shinguuji ever was, and Toujou can’t be hers because she is so perfectly selfless that having her would be the most selfish act of all and—
Excuses! All excuses!
He takes a tiny sip of his tea and trembles. It is so warm. So beautiful.
When you meet the best kinds of people, it is only natural that they become my friends, Korekiyo, his sister tells him. Do I not deserve only the best?
He wants to plead with her, tell her they’re not good enough for her because he’s going to be enough. He’s going to be everything she needs, he promises, and it only ignites her fury. He apologizes profusely, for he had never defied her like this before but he wants so desperately to have so many siblings he’d never feel lonely again and he wants so desperately to have a sister he can talk to about anything he wants — one that will listen to him, and share in his interests instead of forcing him to adopt hers.
Most of all, he looks out at them as they speak and wants nothing more than a hug, a gentle touch, a kiss on the cheek, on his temples, on his forehead, because everything has always been so hard and rough and painful and he wants to be held, god, he wants so badly to be held. He wants to feel a selfless love from selfless people and he wants it so much he’d get on the floor and beg for it.
He’d lie by their feet, sad and lost and broken, and beg for it.
He’s so embarrassed by these thoughts that he drops his teacup and rushes out of the room, face burning.
He avoids them both for the rest of the year.
(At seventeen, he also finds out what pansexual means, but he won’t be touching that landmine for a long time coming.)
[EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD]
He tells Iruma things he’s never told anybody. He doesn’t know what possesses him to do it.
She’s not particularly trustworthy and she’s a mouthy one, too, but maybe that’s why — maybe he’s finally feeling so self-destructive that he doesn’t care anymore.
He tells Iruma and her smug smile slides right off her face.
They were never close, not in the slightest, so he doesn’t know what to do when she leaps at him mid-sentence and pulls him into a hug.
Before he knows it, she’s crying.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” she sobs, and nobody — not a single person — has ever said those words to him before. “I’m so, so fucking sorry.”
He doesn’t know what to do. Her tears spill everywhere, she’s shaking her head and he’s stiff and uncertain and wondering if this hug is going on for too long, because he doesn’t understand why she’s reacting like this.
He tells Iruma the same sentiment and she cries so hard that he starts crying too, breathing coming out in short spurts as she whispers, “I’m sorry. You were only a child. I was, too. You didn’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that.”
He had long wanted to be held but her grip is so crushing at first that he wants to be free of it, until he realizes that she’s hugging him like she’s scared he’d shatter if she didn’t. He stands frozen as she collapses into him, and suddenly he is the foundation and she is the building that’s demolishing itself and he holds her as his chest racks with how hard he’s crying, and she shakes her head over and over and keeps whispering, “fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m so sorry” like they’re the only words she knows.
“Iruma-san,” he starts to whisper back, voice strained. “I can’t breathe.”
She releases him slowly, but doesn’t let go.
Relaxing, her touch is gentler than he could ever imagine, and her lips twist a certain way, and she rocks him like a mother would rock her baby. He presses into her embrace, only for a moment, before retracting and shaking his head and saying, “This isn’t necessary… I apologize, I didn’t mean to inconvenience you. I’m sorry. I should be able to deal with this myself, and not fall prey to such troublesome emotions. You don’t have to do this.”
“It’s fine,” she replies, and her tone trembles. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
He dreams of a childhood where he and Iruma met earlier and they could have been better, could have known safer ways to live with feeling so heavy and tired and – maybe he would not have let trauma silence him into locked boxes and tear-filled bathtubs and maybe she would not have let trauma make her barbed wire and electric fences and maybe they could have learned to run instead of take what they were given because they knew no other way.
Maybe if they had met earlier, they would have learnt that they weren’t supposed to blame themselves for not being able to fight back, and for loving the people that hurt them because that’s the only thing they knew how to do.
Maybe if they had been friends, they wouldn’t have become so irreversibly —
“— fucked in the head,” Iruma murmurs. “They are. We are. It’s– it’s all just getting fucked in the head. A whole, circle-jerking cycle of getting fucked in the head.”
He nods, slowly, because he’s always heard people say that about him but he’s never taken the time to linger on why. “Is that how you see it?”
“We were only children,” she says, ever so softly. “When an adult thought they could do whatever they wanted to us. We were only children. We didn’t know any better. We didn’t stand a fucking chance.”
He’s eighteen when he finally understands what it means to be traumatized.
[NINETEEN YEARS OLD]
It’s his first time in a makeup store where he’s buying his own lipstick in shades his sister doesn’t like.
Shirogane tags along, one of his classmates from high school who absolutely jumped at the opportunity to see him without his mask, and he figures that after the crash and burn of spilling his soul to Iruma Miu, he doesn’t care if it’s one more self-destructive tendency to let her.
She’s decent company, chatty and knowledgeable and happy to listen to him talk about folk tales so long as she could relate it to a show she’s seen based off of it or a series that’s been written with a similar premise.
Well acquainted with the world of makeup, she leads him around for hours, but she lets him make the decisions when he turns pops of color in his hands and wonders how much beauty he can achieve with it.
Uncertainty only leads her to bounce forward with suggestions pouring from her field of expertise, and there’s no personal space to speak of when Shirogane pulls his face close and starts sweeping it with a fluffy brush, accenting his eyes and cheekbones and teaching him how to bring out his best features.
He fantasizes, desperately, of a childhood spent with Shirogane’s slender, practiced fingers expertly applying makeup to his face as her butterfly voice flows like a well of advice. Her words are all angles, contours, lighting, highlights, and she talks more than he’s ever heard her speak in their entire time together in high school, but he’s enthralled by it.
He thinks he might have lost himself when he hands her a palette and tells her he wants something bold, not elegant and traditional and not like his sister’s image, and she points to the colors and he tells her he wants purple.
For the boldness, the luxury, and the symbolism of the color, perhaps, for he wants the power and the dignity that comes with it. The sensuality, the intensity and the extravagance! He wants purple without thinking, and then connects so many thoughts to it that it’s like he can see nothing else.
Shirogane seems to share similar ideas.
“Is it not a little moody?” She inquires, turning the shimmering palette in her hands. “I thought you were after a more… hmm,” she slides her glasses up her nose and peers at him through them. “New look, new you?”
“This is what I want,” he declares, and there’s a giddiness with it that he can’t subdue. “This is what I want.”
She doesn’t push the point, only lets the palette join the rest of the products in the basket and swings it as they walk. Her hair trails long behind her and he averts his eyes. It would not do well to think of her as someone she is not.
“You may have to wear another outfit though,” Shirogane muses, turning back to look at him. “Not that there’s anything wrong with your clothes, but you wanted purple shadow,” she points to the basket. “And purple does not match your outfit at all.”
“I suppose that is an unfortunate assessment of this situation,” He glances down at the uniform his sister had insisted he wear, always, and then looks back at Shirogane’s expectant gaze and tells her, “However, I am afraid I have no other outfits.”
“Hmhm, none at all?”
He mulls it over. “Perhaps sleeping clothes, but none other, no. I have articles of clothing, please don’t misunderstand, but nothing that would make a cohesive ensemble. My sister preferred that I dressed this way. I had no need for anything else.”
“Does your sister buy your clothes for you?”
“Ah, no,” he doesn’t know why he feels so ashamed to admit something he had always been so proud of. “She makes them. My uniform was sewn by her.”
“Would she mind if you wore something else?”
“Quite probably, yes.”
“Would you mind if you wore something else?”
“I would not,” he answers hesitantly. “Rather, I would love to experiment with… no, I shouldn’t. Please, do not concern yourself with such matters. I am overjoyed to witness the beauty of humanity as I always have, and my appearance needn’t change for it.”
“You’re buying new makeup already,” she mentions, and he curls in on himself, clutching his elbows.
“So I am. Perhaps you should return th–”
“No.” She shakes her head, and the basket keeps swinging slowly in her arms. “I may not look like it, but I am stubborn, Shinguuji-kun. You are not wasting mine and Miku-san’s time, not after we came all this way to help you.”
“Um, Miku-san?”
“Miku-san,” She flashes him the keychain of a pretty drawn girl with long teal hair hanging on a lanyard around her neck and huffs. “She says you should get some clothes for yourself, too.”
“I… suppose, if Miku-san says it, I cannot refuse,” he replies tentatively, playing along because he’s too perplexed to question why the keychain is holding weight in their conversation as if she were a human person. He concludes to himself that it doesn’t matter, and that humanity is beautiful in all their chosen forms of companionship, Miku-san included. “That doesn’t mean I have or know what I will wear with it, though.”
Shirogane lights up at that, smiling at him like there are sparkling blue oceans in her eyes. “Would you like to go clothes shopping then?” She doesn’t wait for a response as she grabs onto his sleeve and drags him forward, giggling, “Today, I’ll be your big sister, okay?”
[TWENTY YEARS OLD]
His Coming of Age Day arrives with a blur.
Had it not been for his desire to witness and experience its glory for himself, he doesn’t think he would have gone. Still, he adjusts his kimono sleeves as he stands off to the side, doing his best to stay out of photos as his enthusiastic peers cheer and snap all around him.
It is there where he bumps into a familiar face, recognizable only by the sharpness of her gaze and the beauty mark perched daintily under her left eye.
“Long time no see,” Harukawa greets.
“It certainly has been a while,” he replies, feeling an all too familiar rush of regret to have been spotted by her, but he cannot help the fact that he has always taken up too much space.
Harukawa is the last person he expects to encounter but she tells him she works part time at the best orphanage in their municipality, and the fact that she is surrounded by children only lends favor to her point.
He can barely hear her over the sound of them cooing and cawing at the live performances and the big crowds, but he’s even more surprised when she continues their conversation by asking about his experience and surrounding knowledge of such an event, and how he feels being welcomed into adulthood in such a way.
He doesn’t mention to her that he’s never felt like enough of a child to make the concept of adulthood appealing. Doesn’t mention that he feels out of place here, around people reminiscing about how they’ve grown up now – doesn’t mention that he doesn’t know whether he’s ever grown up or whether he always has been.
He doesn’t tell her any of that, but that is a lie.
In fact, he tells her all of that and more.
And so Harukawa blinks on stoically, and asks, “Does anyone really ever grow up?”
“Perhaps not,” he admits. It’s a solemn and cold agreement. “But there is such a ceremony, and it is of such importance to so many people. It is a national holiday. A celebration of maturity… a commemoration of their life journey to present… one wonders if they are celebrating the culmination of their years or simply not having died up until now. It is interesting, don’t you think? Is it a celebration of life? Survival? Or shall I liken it to a birthday, of the communal sort?”
“It’s just a day,” Harukawa says. “I don’t need to hear the thoughts that keep you up at night.”
“Is this your first, Harukawa-san?” He asks, fidgeting with his sleeve.
“My first and last.” The determination in her voice is unwavering. “There’s too many people, and it’s loud and stuffy. I hate this. I can’t believe they do this every year, it’s insufferable.”
“It isn’t ideal,” he agrees, “however, all aspects of humanity are beautiful.”
She mumbles something under her breath but it’s drowned out by the noise. Clearing her throat, she asks, “Is this your first?”
He was at his sister’s Coming of Age, but he regretfully holds little memory of it besides how beautiful it all was, and when the children brag about Harukawa’s elaborate and beautiful kimono, he can very well see why.
“It is not. Though I must admit, seeing you like this is a first. I didn’t take you as quite the type to dress up,” he tells her sincerely.
“I’m not,” she replies. “The kids wanted to come see the festivities though, and insisted. It’s mostly for them.”
“I see. Do forgive me if this is an unwanted comment, however,” he smiles at her behind his mask, “That kimono suits you well.”
“Yours too,” she replies, and he’s mildly surprised it isn’t the cutting response he’s accustomed to. “Your obi is bothering me though. Turn around so I can fix it?”
The day is just full of surprises, he thinks, but acquiesces because his heart is starting to hurt that he is accepting graces from Harukawa Maki at twenty, when once he had seen her as an unloved and lonely little girl. When once he had seen her make friends even though she constantly batted them away, friends that loved her persistently and unconditionally and he wanted to pull his heart from his body and smash it to pieces in his jealousy.
Once upon a time, he almost couldn’t stand a girl named Harukawa Maki for getting what he couldn’t, but now, it all just seems distant.
She ties his obi with efficient movements, tucking the fabric neatly in place, and he’s glad that she can’t see his face because being tended to like this – like he’s a child, like someone’s looking after him – is making him want to tear up. He’s at his Coming of Age and feeling the youngest he’s ever felt, under the hand of a woman that barely reaches his shoulder in height.
“Done,” she announces, and spins him back around, hands firm on him, not letting him fall.
For a brief moment, he wonders what it would have been like at the orphanage with her, in a place where she’s everyone’s older sister, and the children, oh, the children love her. She must be kind, he laments and his obi burns where she touched it. She must keep them safe. She must care for them. She must love them. She must be a good sister.
The children watch him in awe as he stands up taller again, posture straight and gaze skittish.
“You’re beautiful,” one of them say, and the others burst into a flurry of agreement. Harukawa doesn’t say anything, but she looks pleased. It’s such a slight gesture, yet he feels his confidence lift, and his fondness for the children’s youthful admiration soaring.
Shinguuji pulls down his mask to show them his genuine smile for a fleeting second, before he pulls it back up again. “Thank you.”
[TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD]
He wants his sister to have loved him.
He wants that more than anything.
He wants to believe that he didn’t spend his entire life chipping off pieces of himself to patch up her broken parts.
He wants to believe that some part of him exists that wasn’t ruined by her, that doesn’t scream at the thought of losing her again. Wants to believe that he is still allowed to live without thinking of how much she’d loathe him for the choices he makes, wants to believe that he’s not still longing for her embrace, wanting to be reminded that she loves him even though he was never enough.
He wants the pain to stop so that not every woman he meets need only to show him an ounce of kindness for him to yearn for her to be his new sister, be his new sister, be his new sister, love him, love him like his sister should have, love him more than she could have, please love him, please love him, please, please, please, even a little bit would be fine, please, he doesn’t want to cry over everything he lost to her, bring it back, just a little bit, please –
His sister is still with him but her voice is quieter nowadays.
It’s like she knows.
She knows he’s learning. She knows that he’s old enough to acknowledge that what she did to him was wrong. She knows that he’s old enough to realize that no matter how hard he tried to believe it, she was not perfect and she was so beautiful but she was not what a sister should have been.
She knows, and yet he still tells her, “I love you,” because he needs her to realize that she can repent, and be forgiven, too, if she tries.
She doesn’t try.
He wants a sister that loves him.
He wants his sister to love him.
He wants it so badly it hurts and he doesn’t know if it’ll ever hurt any less, even when she’s been seven years dead.
[TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD]
He stops thinking.
He stops feeling like he needs to exist so heavily. He reconnects with familiar faces, rips off his mask to let Shirogane cover up his scars with concealer and make him pretty, becomes a hurricane of impulses where he’s moving too fast to be reasonable, but he’s collapsed under the pressure of knowing he still misses his sister and he can’t cope in the same ways.
He has more time to figure out what he likes for himself again.
At twenty-two, he’s openly pansexual and probably not entirely a man. He likes feeling aesthetically beautiful, spends hours tending to his hair and yet fixes up his makeup in minutes now thanks to Shirogane’s speedy cosplay-learned guidance, and without a word to his sister’s ghost, steps out of the house wearing a black dress and fishnets.
He’s stopped thinking. He doesn’t care. He convinces himself that he doesn’t care.
Iruma drags him to a club like his sister would never have allowed, and they stay out all night, getting – in colloquial terms – completely plastered, and Shinguuji smudges his lipstick all over anonymous faces in the pulsing energy of the dark, heated room. Gender has no place here, he will kiss who he wants and he will be he/she/they if he wants, they can call him what they want, he’ll be here only for him and he’ll stop fucking thinking so hard and live for once.
“Woooo!” Iruma hollers, sloshing her drink all over her bright pink dress. She doesn’t seem to care one bit. Clearly drunk, she swings her arm over his shoulder and shouts, far too loudly, “Get it, Kiyo! I’m proud of ya! Get in, get in! Grab another!”
“You certainly needn’t remind me,” he laughs, and he doesn’t even know the name of who’s got their lips on his neck, but he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. He’s going to be whoever the hell he wants to be and nobody is going to stop him.
“Fuckin’ oath!” Iruma yells, clambering onto the table and pointing at him with her glass, “Y’all! That’s my shithead over there! Buy him a fuckin’ drink, he’s gonna need all the confidence money can buy to get through tonight!”
And Shinguuji just keeps laughing and kissing strangers and not giving a damn.
At twenty-two, he’s openly pansexual and probably not entirely a man and maybe-possibly has someone better to call a sister.
This is as far as he cares to figure out.
He’s too drunk to feel guilty about it, and it feels so good.
[TWENTY-THREE YEARS OLD]
It’s dawn and he’s run all the aching way to Chabashira’s apartment because he knows – no, no, he knows nothing. He expects nothing. He almost wishes she wouldn’t be there to greet him but she opens the door anyway, eyes sharp and posture guarded.
“What do you want?” She asks, and she sounds so affronted by his presence that it takes everything not to run the other way.
“I don’t know,” he whispers. Retracting, his fingers curl to his chest, he’s always taken up too much space, he shouldn’t be here, he isn’t wanted here – his breath stutters. He can’t look at her. He looks everywhere except at her. “I- I don’t know what I want. I don’t deserve to want things. I don’t know why I came. I shouldn’t have come. Goodbye, Chabashira-san.”
Chabashira’s gaze softens a fraction and she grabs onto his sleeve before he can turn away. “It was pretty bold of you to show up here, degenerate male.”
“I’m not–” his words get caught in his throat. “I’m – I’m not a– I don’t think that I am a–” –man, he doesn’t say. He can’t. But she seems to understand all the same.
Of all the people to admit this to, he muses bitterly. This feels like the worst possible scenario.
(But he’s not a man, and he’s never felt like anything but a leaking soul forced into the mould of a man to make her happy.)
“Oh.” Chabashira says gently. “You are… a woman?”
(And he’s not a woman either because he can’t imagine being any more like her, or anything after her image without making himself sick.)
He shakes his head, but doesn’t elaborate. Cannot elaborate. He can feel her eyes burning into him and it feels like he’s spoken too much. He wants to run, but her grip is tight.
Chabashira blinks, the intensity of her expression relaxing again, and only tries harder to clear up the confusion. “Do you have something you identify as, Shinguuji-san?”
He remains silent. He doesn’t think he has a word for it, and he doesn’t think that even if he did, it would feel right to take. The only thing he should identify with is death. He stopped being too heavy but he’s stopped being too light, too.
He feels more like an empty husk than a human, but he can’t say that out loud.
“You know,” She begins with a little more confidence. “Tenko doesn’t need to know. Only Shinguuji-san needs to know. But she is sorry if she offended you. It’s an old habit,” she makes a slightly uneasy gesture with her hands, “‘Cause Tenko’s master tricked her as a child… anyway, it’s not important. D’you want to come in or something? You came all this way, and you’re...” she smiles again, sympathetically, “... sweating. A lot.”
Suddenly self-conscious, he pulls his sweater sleeves over his hands.
“We’re not– it’s okay, you don’t have to let me in.” He settles with saying, instead of spilling how much he hates himself right then and there on her doorstep. “I know you never really… you were never really fond of me. I don’t know why I came. I’m sorry.”
She shrugs, hands waving about. “Something brought you here, Shinguuji-san. Tenko isn’t going to throw you out. You’re on thin ice, but it’s a beautiful morning and you look like you need some tea, so come in?”
Before he can answer, he hears a dog barking, and a snow white terrier comes rushing between Chabashira’s ankles. He recoils, shying away from the animal, and Chabashira nudges the puppy back inside.
“Come,” she says. “And don’t be afraid of him, he’s just excited to see new people. Tenko will keep him away from you if you don’t like dogs. Nothing to be scared of.”
He stands stiffly in the doorway and doesn’t move.
“Come on, come on, let’s have tea and stop worrying so loudly, Tenko can hear you overthinking from here. I’ll flip you if you don’t hurry up,” Chabashira starts ushering him inside, and her little white dog nips excitedly at her socks. “Hush,” she tells the puppy, “We have company.”
Shinguuji barely utters her name, offering to leave, to let her return to her peaceful life without ever seeing him again, but she shakes her head, smile kind.
“Don’t be so afraid,” she says, and despite the sharpness of her eyes, he can see that her words are kind. Despite this, he wants nothing more than to escape immediately but his legs refuse to listen. “Let’s catch up.”
So they do.
And when she finally lets him leave, he believes he’s given her a lot to think about.
“A woman abused you,” Chabashira had said in a solemnity he had never witnessed from her before. “Tenko didn’t think that was possible.”
He had laughed, then, bitterly, like the years he had taken to recover from it had all come down to nothing.
Like wanting to rip himself to pieces and die a million horrible deaths meant nothing because his abu— his sister was a woman. As though being a woman meant she couldn’t have hurt him. As though being a woman meant she couldn’t be blamed for what she did to him.
“But I believe you,” Chabashira had continued, hands restlessly patting the puppy in her lap. “Tenko… knows that women can do bad things, too. Master always said it was men, but he spent years trying to keep Tenko sheltered from the rest of the world. Tenko knows there are bad women just like there are bad men.”
“She wasn’t bad,” he answered softly. “I don’t believe that there are truly bad people.”
“Maybe there isn’t,” she mused. “But if there is, she’s one of them.”
He doesn’t reply to that. He’s spent too many years loving his sister – needing his sister, living for his sister, sacrificing everything for his sister – to have the heart to reply to that.
“Come see Tenko again some time.” She suggested finally. “She’ll teach you some Neo-Aikido. It’ll help clear your mind and lift your spirits! We don’t have to talk about bad people anymore. You have been holding back for a long time, Tenko can tell. Let Neo-Aikido teach you how to respect yourself first! You will feel better getting your blood pumping! That’s a Tenko guarantee!”
[TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD]
Toujou pours them matching glasses of wine, and adjusts her seat.
“I do appreciate you coming on such short notice,” he says, accepting the wine gratefully and cocking an eyebrow when she raises hers for a toast. Their glasses clink together, and he imitates the way she holds hers, elegant and classy, thumb and forefinger around its stem.
“But of course,” she replies after taking a measured sip. “It is my pleasure to be of any assistance. Moving out is always an experience, and you must have had many memories tied up to this home.”
He nods, amused by the statement but choosing not to bring up his first thoughts that accompanied the phrase ‘tied up’ – it seemed not to be appropriate. “I’ve never lived anywhere else.” He tells her. “It’s all I’ve ever known.”
She smiles softly, black lipstick curving like a perfect stroke of calligraphy on her face. “Tackling many life changes at once, I see.”
He smiles back, though it is hidden behind his mask, and with an aching tenderness, gently clasps the silver ring that hangs on a chain around his neck. Long gone is his sister’s pendant that used to rest in the pocket closest to his heart, taped up in one of the many boxes that surround them. “Many life changes, indeed.”
“I read your poetry while we were cleaning,” Toujou says softly without prelude, and her black ink lips touch the wine again.
“Ah, I see,” he swirls his own wine distractedly, blaming it entirely for the fact that he isn’t at all alarmed by the fact that kind, beautiful Toujou had borne witness to the disgusting machinations of his mind. “Which one?”
“Multiple,” she confesses. “You’re a remarkable writer, and I do apologize sincerely not for asking permission, but I was rather rapt with them. Rest assured, I do not hold any judgment. Only remorse, I suppose, if you’ll accept that.”
“Remorse?” He inquires, mentally running a log of the poems he remembers writing. Those he had showed people, and those he hadn’t – different themes, all heart-wrenching and though he is not one to be embarrassed easily, he almost feels the shame overtake him, thinking about the words she may have seen.
“I should have approached you earlier, when we were younger,” she continues somberly. “I understood the signs of your behavior but I was too naïve of a teenager to pay it due attention. I must apologize for my negligence.”
“It is not your responsibility to tend to your classmates, Toujou-san,” Shinguuji chuckles softly, eager to seize the chance to move the conversation forward. “You were a child, too, though it is difficult to imagine having never known you as one. When did you grow up?” He sighs, “Ah, perhaps, that is too insensitive. Perhaps you were never given the chance to be a child, is that more accurate to say? Beautiful children taught to be beautiful adults before they can be anything else… how cruel. How beautiful. Were you one of them, pray tell?”
She doesn’t reply immediately, tipping the rest of the wine down her throat. “I don’t believe that is important to know, Shinguuji-kun. We were speaking of your poetry.”
“Why did you read it?” He asks, figuring that if she is going to be so blunt, he might as well follow suit.
“Curiosity,” she says in a guessing tone that is not like Toujou at all. “For someone that speaks their mind so openly, there is a lot of you that remains a mystery. Even your expression is kept neutral by your mask, is it not?”
“Should you wish to learn anything about me, all you need to do is ask.” Shinguuji tells her honestly. “I am not as reserved as you seem to assume, though many make similar assumptions. Kehehe, I’d tell you even that which you do not wish to know, if you only dare ask.”
Toujou contemplates this for a moment, and then starts asking.
He tells her everything.
Toujou does not cry, but her hands shake when she whispers, “That’s not right. She was your sister.”
And he holds onto his ring and does not shy away from the truth as he keeps talking until their wine has drained and Toujou is so silently furious that he cannot explain why it is he feels so sickly happy about it. He tells her that too, and she almost cries then, but Toujou is too grown up for tears and Shinguuji feels like a child beside her. He always has.
“I’m sorry,” she says when he stops talking, and if he closes his eyes, he might even be able to imagine the right person handing him the right apology, but he knows that moment will never come. He has heard many apologies since he had started talking about his past, opening his wounds and sharing all his vulnerabilities, but never from the person who should have apologized in the first place.
He’s twenty-four, and it’s been ten years since his sister died and Toujou Kirumi doesn’t give him a day of peace as she helps him sort out his life – everything from his move to throwing out the things that he couldn’t let go of on his own.
He’s twenty-four and he’s drinking wine with a woman that acts more like a sister than his sister ever did, and he’s twenty-four when she lets him rest his head on her shoulder as she reads stories to him and he imagines that he’s reliving a better childhood with her instead.
At heart, he feels light as a child, with a sister that is cultured and well-read and indulges his theatrics with a fond sigh – one that can match him in deep conversations about literature, architecture, history, high arts.
With Toujou, he is freely dramatic and doesn’t feel ridiculous for talking about scarred sandpaper skin and broken shoulder blades that couldn’t support the weight of angel’s wings. He talks about grit, about dark alleys of blood, sex and violence and terror, so much terror, and she nods and looks at him with those sad eyes and she combs out his hair and tells him to talk about things he loves instead.
So he obeys and talks about how beautiful it is that people have the potential to regrow the universe at their fingertips, and how lovely it is that there is love in this world, one that does not punish him for being ravenous and longing, how wonderful it is that there are people who can look at him and see something whole. How there is a love in humanity that exists, infinite and forgiving, and that he is so fortunate to be able to bear witness to it.
He’s so caught up in the beauty of it all that he’s found another reason to cry, and Toujou only hands him tissues and promises she’ll teach him how to make that overly complex croquembouche that’s caught his eye if he’ll stop waxing poetic about the caramel threads resembling the glory and beauty of humanity.
He doesn’t deserve her, not really, but with Toujou, he finally feels like he has a real sister again.
[TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD]
“I’m scared,” he says. “I– I don’t– I don’t want to be alone. Not again.”
Angie rubs his back while he cries, and nudges the swing he’s curled up on, gently, gently swaying away.
“Korekiyo is not alone.” She hums. “He has all his friends now. Everyone that is important is here, with him. Only need a phone call or a text! You can even send little smiley faces! Nyahahaha, technology is amazing!”
“I have never known anything,” he whispers. “Without her.”
“Korekiyo’s sister?” Angie jumps onto the swing and starts swinging the two of them on it, ignorant to the fact that his knuckles are white around the chains. Perhaps she knows, but doesn’t find it relevant. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything. “She is always going to be with you, in your heart. Her spirit will be happier when it’s free, don’t you think? You don’t have to be so sad.”
“I’m nothing without her.”
“No, you’re not,” Angie replies assuredly. “You’re Korekiyo.”
He feels a sting at the back of his throat that he can’t swallow. Bitterly, he says, “She named me, you know. I am only Korekiyo because of her.”
“So?”
“So?” He repeats incredulously. “You don’t understand anything, do you? You don’t understand at all.”
“Hmm, Angie understands. Angie is only Angie ‘cause her mama wanted her to be, and Angie doesn’t see her mama anymore,” she chirps. “She is in God’s kingdom now, where she will be happy. Korekiyo’s sister is the same, Angie knows. So there’s no worrying left, okey-dokey?”
“I feel like things should be more difficult than this,” he responds, slouching in exhaustion. “I feel like I haven’t done enough. I feel inadequate. I always have, but now, especially so.”
“You’ve done everything you can, you know,” Angie tells him, and he feels the slack on the swing chains tightening as she leans backwards, precariously. “Angie thinks that Korekiyo is too hard on himself. He’s never gonna be happy if he keeps thinking he’s not good enough. You were made this way for a reason, Korekiyo, and you hafta accept that.”
“I don’t want to.” It sounds pathetic even to him. “Nothing is ever going to be right anymore.”
“We can get ice-cream,” she says, in that bright way she always has. She leaps off the swing to squat in front of him, head lolling from side to side as she tries to catch his gaze. He doesn’t look up. “Ice-cream makes everything better, right?”
He toes at the ground, all hunched up cynicism, not wanting to give in to her but not knowing how not to be grateful that she’s making such an attempt. Not knowing how to look at her without seeing the sister she could have been to him, one which always tried to cheer him up and offer ice cream and swing on the swings with him.
She seems to notice his hesitance, and shines brighter still. Her tiny, warm hands cover his own.
“No need for any bad thoughts! Bad thoughts, go away! Go away!” Angie tells him cheerfully, grabbing onto his wrists and tugging him off the swingset. In the sunset, she dances with him, and he cannot possibly be saddened by the sight. It leaves him breathless. Spinning. He feels like he’s shrunken and Angie is his big sister now and she just wants him to be happy, and he can’t disappoint her. He really can’t. “Come, come!” She exclaims, “We will scare them all away!”
“Are thoughts able to be scared away?” He asks.
“Bad thoughts are!” Angie beams and keeps dancing until he sways with her, reluctantly, and isn’t it beautiful, he thinks, that they’re twenty-five and dancing in a children’s playground like no-one’s watching. “Go away, go away, go away! C’mon, you gotta say it too!”
“Must I?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” She bounces happily, and her many bracelets jingle as she waves their arms up and down, “Say it, say it! Say it with Angie! Bad thoughts, go away! Bad thoughts, go away!”
“I… I really don’t want to.”
“C’moooon, you gotta say it!”
He sighs. “Bad thoughts, go away.”
“Louder, louder! Angie wants the whole neighborhood to hear it!”
“Absolutely not.”
“Bad thoughts, go AWAAAYYYY!” Angie shouts at the top of her lungs.
“Please never do that again,” he tells her, ears ringing. “Please. The bad thoughts are gone now. You scared them away, along with every other living creature in the near vicinity. Please never do that again.”
“One more time,” Angie says, “Just to make sure!”
“W– wait, no! There isn’t anything else to scare away, y-you don’t have to–”
Angie takes a big, big breath and he scrambles to stop her but she’s quick. She darts under his arm and takes off running, cupping her hands over her mouth and screaming, “BAD! THOUGHTS! GO! AWAAAAYYY!”
“Stop that!” He chases after her, yelling. “You’re being a disturbance!”
“AWAAAAAAAAAYYYYY! AWAY AWAY AWAYYYYY!”
“Angie-san! Please! Lower your voice, at least!”
“NOT UNTIL YOU SAY IT WITH ME!”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake…!”
Strangely enough, he feels light again.
[TWENTY-SIX YEARS OLD]
By coincidence, Yumeno is with him in the waiting room to see the therapist.
He’s curious, of course, but doesn’t ask. Stepping foot in here already felt like enough of a leap, and he feels as though if he makes a single wrong move, he’ll never come back here again.
Still, he must have been glancing at her too many times and berates himself for it too, because she raises an eyebrow at him, tired eyes seeming to ask what it is he wants.
“I apologize,” is the first thing he says. “I did not mean to stare.”
“S’okay,” she replies. “Don’t care. Kinda just wanted to know if you’re like, okay. You look… jumpy.”
“I’m fine,” he answers all too quickly.
“You wanna know why I’m here, right?”
“Yes,” he says, then, “No. Yes. No. I mean, certainly, if you’re willing to say.”
“Depression,” Yumeno shrugs languidly, as if she’s just telling the weather. “Never wanna do anything but sleep, and after sleeping, I wake up feeling shitty about wasting the whole day doing nothing so I go back to sleep to forget about it.” She picks at the lint on her sleeves. “Tenko and Angie made me come. Later, we’re getting ice cream. That’s their side of the deal. That’s why I’m here, nyeh…” she smiles sullenly, “Ice-cream. Solves all problems.”
“How wonderful,” he comments, and he wishes he had more words but his throat is a desert dry of them.
“Yumeno-san?” A woman in a blue dress calls from the hallway.
Yumeno groans as she leaves her chair, slow and sluggish, but obedient as the woman leads her down between the white walls and the overblown photos of fruit. Silently, he wishes her well and flips open the magazine on the table so he can pretend to read as his mind races.
There’s not many people here. He could leave at any time. He doesn’t have to be here.
He can leave. He has an appointment but he’ll just pay the cancellation fee.
He should leave.
Time doesn’t seem to pass as it should, because Yumeno is emerging again before he’s escaped, hands rolled up in fists and eyes red with tears. He doesn’t say a word to her as she sits down next to him and pulls out her phone, tapping away.
He’s frozen in place there, next to the magician he never really knew well enough, but aches for, even fiercer when she starts tearing up as she types into her phone. He doesn’t know what to say. He shouldn’t have come. This is a mistake.
“Shinguuji,” Yumeno addresses him, and he staggers into alertness.
“Yes?”
“You did the right thing, coming here,” she says with a shaky voice. “You know that, right? Acknowledging that you need help… isn’t easy. Asking for it is even harder. You know that, right? Please tell me you know that, and you’re not thinking of giving up before you’ve begun.”
“I… don’t know what to say to that,” he tells her truthfully. “Nor do I know what prompted you to say so.”
She glances at him over her phone, all tired edges.
“Magic,” she says, and doesn’t continue the train of thought as Chabashira and Angie burst through the waiting room doors and scoop her into their arms. They both look surprised to see him there too, and he turns his head away but not before he catches the encouraging smiles on their faces.
His name gets called, and before he stands, Yumeno offers him an awkward thumbs up and murmurs, “Good luck.”
He nods. Silently, he follows his therapist into her office and doesn’t sit properly in the chair.
He hates this. He hates this. He hates this.
His sister always told him to stay away from things like this. Things where people ask questions and pry. Things where he will be judged for his mistakes, where he is with someone he does not yet trust and he will have to spill his soul to her for an hour and a service fee.
He hates this. He hates this. He hates this.
He mumbles his greetings to be polite, but doesn’t sit comfortably, doesn’t settle down. He’s tense and afraid and he has nobody to guide him. He is alone with her and she expects things from him that he may not be able to provide.
Softly, the therapist asks him why he’s there.
He considers not replying. He considers changing his mind, getting up and forgetting that any of this ever happened.
The therapist asks him why he’s there and he remembers Yumeno’s tear-tracked face and the way Chabashira and Angie rushed in to pick her up and how they smiled at him like he was doing the right thing and his heart had swelled.
In the quietest, broken tone he’s ever produced, he answers in all his honesty, words he had never admitted to uttering aloud.
“Childhood trauma and abuse.”
[TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD]
He’s surprised to find that he actually does not mind his therapist.
He hates the act of going, hates the entire process of getting there, but in the therapist’s office, she lets him cry for an hour and that feels more like healing than he’s ever felt in the entire twenty-seven years he’s been alive.
Some sessions, that’s all he does. He cries and cries, and he holds her hand tight and asks her, “Is it safe here? Am I safe? Is this safe? Are you safe?”
She is always calm and gentle with him, stroking his knuckles with her thumb and reassuring him, “Yes. You are safe now. You are safe here. I am safe. I am here to help you. To protect you. I am here to help you get your life back. You’ve been holding on for so long. I’m proud of you. We’re going to get you to a better place.”
“Will she be there?” He asks quietly. “Will she still love me if you keep me safe?”
She smiles, looking him in the eye. “She will, but you won’t need her love to feel safe, anymore.”
“Will you love me instead?”
“I will love you so much, Korekiyo,” she says. “You are so strong, and I will love you for as long as you let me.”
“Will you be my sister and love me?”
“If I could,” she says, and his tears fall anew. “If I could have, I would have found you so much earlier and tucked you into my arms and never let you go. I would have saved you from her, and I would have brought you somewhere where things would never hurt and you would have been–”
“– happy?” He asks.
“Yes,” she answers easily. “You would have been happy.”
“I’m never going to be that happy child,” he tells her. “Is that okay?”
“That’s more than okay.”
“I might not ever be happy now. Is that okay?”
“Of course it’s okay, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to try.” She tightens her grip on his hand. “I want you to be happy. I want to help you find that happy.”
“I don’t know if I’m allowed to be happy.”
“You are.” She tells him and he shakes with a body that has not yet comprehended that he can believe her words. “You are, sweetheart. You are.”
[TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD]
He’s got fists full of tissues when Akamatsu calls to tell him she’s waiting outside.
“Yumeno-san overslept,” she explains when he gets into her car. “New meds. Told me I could come pick you up instead, and I was in the neighborhood so, why not?”
“You really didn’t have to, Akamatsu-san,” he replies, buckling his seatbelt stiffly. “I could have taken public transport, it isn’t right for me to rely on being driven, and I have my subway card on me, so you could have just told me to make my own way back.”
“Okay, come on, throw your address in the GPS, I’m not psychic,” Akamatsu says, instead of letting him talk himself into a spiral of guilt. “Let’s get you home already.”
He does as he’s told, as to not inconvenience her too much, but Akamatsu is clearly not in any hurry as she cycles through the radio stations to find something palatable to listen to. A musician at heart, he observes, as she taps her fingers on the steering wheel in time with the tune blaring through the speakers. He has always admired that about her.
“How’d therapy go?” She asks conversationally.
“Alright,” he says.
“Well, clean yourself up, alright,” she tosses packets of tissues at him. “After you get home, I want you to get changed and then hop back into the car with me, okay? You’re helping me set up the reunion party now that I’ve got you with me, and I’m not gonna let you in unless you knock the socks off of everyone all over again, so you better walk in there looking like a movie star.”
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay.”
There’s a lull as Akamatsu speeds down the freeway, humming along with the radio under her breath. Shinguuji is fidgety the whole time, unable to calm his nerves, and finally, because he cannot help his curiosity, he asks, “Do you know why I go?”
Her humming slows and she shrugs. “You mean to therapy? Sorta. You’ve told most of us bits and pieces, and I’ve heard some things down the grapevine. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, though. I get that it’s personal.”
“I- I apologize,” he whispers, and finds he can’t stop the tears from falling. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I don’t understand why I did. It’s not like you asked. I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve done everything wrong.”
“Okay… um, you didn’t, for a start,” Akamatsu turns into his street and parks by the side of the road. There, she meets his eye and her expression is nothing if not serious. “If it makes you feel better to talk about it, then talk about it. I’m always happy to be a listening ear. You’re making it through some tough times, but you shouldn’t have to do it by yourself.”
“She was sick, you know,” he tells her, and doesn’t know why he can’t stop talking. “My sister was sick, and maybe that’s why it was okay. It was okay for her to hurt me, because she was sick. She loved me, you know. She did. I know she did. So maybe it was okay.”
Akamatsu raises a hand and he flinches, thinking she’s going to hit him with it, but instead, it lands soft on his cheek.
“Listen to me, Shinguuji-kun.” She says with utterly critical determination. “Your sister being sick does not justify her actions. Please don’t ever say that again. Do you hear me? Maybe she did love you, but just because she loved you doesn’t mean that she could have treated you badly. You don’t treat people you love like that.”
Subconsciously, he realizes the words on his tongue feel like they’re trying to split him open the way his own sister wanted all along, but the hand on his cheek is his anchor. He chokes, a fragile and wounded sound, and before he can swallow the mortification, he whispers, “I wish you were my sister instead. I’ve always wished it, you know.”
Akamatsu is quiet for a moment.
“If I was, I would’ve made sure nobody could have hurt you.” She says. “I want you to know though, that none of it was your fault and you didn’t deserve any of it, either. I may not have been with you during it, but I am here for you now. We all are.”
He wipes the last of his tears away and nods. “Thank you. You don’t know how much that means to me. Thank you so much.”
“How are things now, though?” She clicks open the car door and helps him out of the car. “Getting better, you think? Still a ways to go?"
“Getting better,” he says, and he believes it. “Things are getting better. Slowly, but getting there.”
“Good.” She smiles. "I'm glad."
He smiles back. “I am, too.”