Chapter Text
Touma is four years old, and has only been with his new family for a few weeks when Airi, his sister, gets sick.
(He's still not used to being able to call her his sister, so he keeps doing it in his head to try and get used to it)
When she gets sick, her parents--their parents, their mom and dad--put her to bed in her room. They bring her medicine and soup, they take her temperature and cuddle with her in bed, and say they'll take her to the doctor if she doesn't feel better. Which Airi doesn't seem to like, Touma can hear her coughing or making sad noises sometimes, a high little whine like she's hurting, so he knows she's upset.
He doesn't get to see her, though, because as soon as she starts to feel bad, and their parents feel her forehead and see that she too hot, they put her to bed in her room, and tell Touma to stay outside for a while.
"We don't need two sick kids," his dad says, closing Airi's door while Touma looks anxiously up at him. "So stay out here until Airi's feeling better, alright?"
Touma opens his mouth, but is too scared to say anything. He's only been here for a little while, and isn't sure yet whether he's really allowed to argue. It hasn't been long enough for him to be sure they're not going to send him back if he's bad. "Uh," he says, twisting his fingers nervously. "Mmm hmm."
"I know you want to play with her," his dad says. "But you could get sick too."
Touma remembers getting sick in the foster home before he came here. There was a room they used to put all the sick kids in together, and he'd hated it. It never felt good to be stuck in the sick room with other kids crying and sniffling and throwing up. and they hadn't had anyone taking care of them like Airi has her (their) parents. So since Touma doesn't want to get sick and be stuck in a room to be miserable all by himself, he should listen. He doesn't want to get sick.
...he doesn't want Airi to be sick, either.
His dad takes him downstairs and tries to keep him busy with a card game. But Touma doesn't want to match cards, and he has a hard time paying attention. Then he tries to color, but he just gets distracted and scribbles some lines with the crayons. His dad leaves him at the table so he can make dinner. Touma sits there, swinging his legs on the chair, worrying about Airi, until he starts to think that maybe no one's paying attention to him right now. Maybe no one will notice if he goes back upstairs.
He takes the crayons, and the coloring book, and lays on his stomach outside Airi's room. He's not actually in her room, he decides. He's not breaking any rules.
His mom comes up to check on Airi around dinnertime, and to bring Touma downstairs to eat, but Touma determinedly keeps coloring and says, "I'm not hungry."
"Are you sure?" she asks. "Airi's going to be okay even if you aren't here to watch her room. She's sleeping anyway."
"Not hungry," Touma repeats, coloring with all of his attention very firmly on his crayons.
"You're not feeling sick too, are you?" his mom asks, bending down to feel his forehead with the back of her hand.
Touma doesn't feel sick at all, but he thinks about it before he answers. His parents don't want him to go and see Airi because she's sick and he's not, and they don't want her to get him sick. So maybe, if he's already sick, it won't matter.
"Yes," he says, and then coughs on purpose to make himself sound more sick.
"Hmm." His mom looks confused as she pulls her hand back, so Touma coughs again in case that's going to help. It doesn't, and she just says, "I don't think you are. Why are you pretending?"
Touma freezes, wondering if he's about to get in trouble. But there's just quiet between him and his mom, so he thinks maybe he's okay if he just stops pretending and does what she wants, which is to go and eat dinner. He shrugs his shoulders and mumbles something, then abandons his coloring book and crayons to go downstairs and eat dinner.
On his way past Airi's room, he reaches out and puts his hand on her door. Just rests his palm flat on the wood for a few seconds before he trudges down the hall.
(He misses Airi)
(He's still not used to being here, and sometimes it feels pretty weird. But not when he's with her, because he's learning from watching her how to be part of their family)
Touma doesn't eat much dinner. After he's eaten enough to make his parents happy, he goes back up to the hallway outside Airi's room and spends more time watching her door. Maybe there's a good reason he's not supposed to be in her room. Maybe he really will get sick. But he wants to go inside and be with Airi anyway! He wants his sister. It's lonely without her.
His dad puts him to bed in his own room. Touma doesn't want his dad to read him a story, or talk, or any of the other things his dad tries to help him fall asleep. He just wants to see Airi, but he's already been told he can't, so he doesn't ask. He just lays in bed and pretends to be asleep until eventually it stops being pretending and starts being real.
For a little while anyway, but then he wakes up again, and it's not morning yet, it's still the middle of the night, and Touma's first thought is the same as his last one before he fell asleep. He still wants to go and see Airi, to make sure she's okay, and so he won't have to be lonely all the way until morning.
It's very dark, and Touma thinks that probably means it's dark enough for even grown ups to be asleep. That means that if he just goes and checks on Airi now, their mom and dad won't ever know, and he won't get in trouble. He wriggles out from under his blankets and scoots out of bed. He tiptoes through his room, which isn't too hard, but when he gets out to the hallway he realizes all over again that it's still really, really dark. Touma isn't really scared of the dark, but... there's a whole lot of it here. He blinks his eyes hard, but it doesn't help, and he doesn't want to turn on the lights and get caught, so he's kind of out of ideas. In the movies he used to watch at the foster homes before he came here, the ones about the Phantom Thieves, everyone is always trying to sneak around and not get caught. It's about the only thing Touma knows about being sneaky, so he creeps really carefully down the hallway, trying to pretend he's like them. They wouldn't turn the lights on, he thinks. That's how he'd get caught.
He feels better when he finally gets to Airi's room, and forgets about being sneaky when he can finally open the door and go running inside. Airi is asleep, curled up in bed with stuffed animals around her, and Touma can't tell from the doorway if she's still sick. He crosses the room and climbs up onto her bed next to her so he can put his hand on her forehead like their mom had done to him earlier.
...she feels kind of sweaty. It's gross, but Touma doesn't know if that means she's sick.
"Airi," Touma whispers, shaking her shoulder. "Airi, wake up! Are you still sick?"
She rubs her face and coughs, and it sounds worse than when Touma had been pretend coughing earlier. Maybe she's not all the way awake, because she makes a whimpering noise and hugs him, her eyes sliding closed again. Touma hugs her back, and forgets that he was going to go back to bed after checking on her. He's sad that his sister is sad, and he wants to stay with her, so he does. It's easier to fall asleep again next to her, and he feels better than he had all day when he was alone.
-//-
Lavenza gets up earlier than she usually would to go check on Airi. Her fever had broken last night before she went to bed, finally, but Lavenza had been woken up two or three times to the distant sound of Airi making horrible, hacking coughing noises that don't really sound like she's getting better.
Still, the coughing had never lasted too long, so Lavenza had decided it was better to let her sleep and hope that would help than to go wake her up at one or two in the morning. It's closer to when the kids would normally be getting up now, so Lavenza decides she probably won't be making things worse if she accidentally wakes Airi up now.
(She hopes that's the right thing to do)
(Kids this age are a mystery to her, tiny little people whose brains work in ways she doesn't understand--she'd never been a four year old, and she's constantly surprised by the way they act)
Airi's door is open when Lavenza goes to check in on her, and when she pokes her head in to see if maybe Airi's gotten out of bed, she finds Touma has gotten inside overnight, and now both of them are squashed together on the bed with Airi's unnecessarily large stuffed animals collection.
Lavenza's first thought--accompanied by a heavy sigh--is that they're going to have two sick toddlers on their hands now. It was probably inevitable, but it had at least been worth trying to keep Touma away from his sick sister. As sad as it had been to watch him keeping vigil in the hallway outside her room, it's for his own good. He shouldn't have to be sick just because Airi is, Lavenza had imagined.
Her second thought is that--well, maybe she and Akira had been wrong to try and keep the twins apart, even while Airi is sick and Touma isn't. They're both fast asleep, hugging each other, and both of them look happier than they had for the whole previous day.
Touma keeps surprising Lavenza. Seeing him and Airi together keeps reminding her of being Caroline and Justine, and how important it had always felt, from both perspectives, to be with her sister. After being fused back into herself again, she'd assumed this is because she'd never actually been two people, but one person subconsciously trying to make herself whole again. Now she sees her children always wanting to be with each other, and she wonders. Maybe it had been because of the bond in the end, after all.
So they'll have two sick kids on their hands now, more than likely.
Lavenza is less bothered than she'd expected to be.