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A lazy spring breeze rolls in through a pair of open windows, three figures sitting at a low table amid a family room. A woman sits across from two young boys, her blonde hair pulled back in a high ponytail, curls haphazardly falling over her shoulders. Lying to her side, another child stirs. Blonde like her mother, in a deep sleep, head in the woman’s lap.
“... under, then over, then pull,” she says, hazel eyes watching the children before her to make sure they’re paying attention to her teachings, dragging the needle through the cloth in her hands as slow as possible to ensure they understand, “You try now.”
Shu has already picked up on how to do it, immediately replicating the stitch, but it takes Kuro a few tries to get it exactly right. Nevertheless, the woman shows a soft smile at them for the efforts.
“Look at how fast I did it!” Shu exclaims, the pieces of stitched fabric before him shown off to the woman across the table.
Kuro groans in response, running a hand through his dark locks and nudging the other boy. He pushes his pieces of fabric in front of the other’s. “Hey, I did it too!”
“It’s not always about you, Ryu-kun.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one saying that?!”
This banter causes a small chuckle from the mother.
From the other room, the smell of dinner and the dull noises of kitchen appliances clinking against each other sound, the scene feeling all too domestic and perfect.
Kuro’s father appears in the doorway, making a gesture towards his wife to signal that dinner’s ready. Eyes find the clock on the wall, then the creeping purples in the setting sun outside. “Won’t you stay for dinner, Shu-kun?” the woman asks, fingers running through her daughter’s hair absently, “You might not like eating, but I won’t let you leave the Kiryu home hungry.” When Shu blushes, shifts, looks like he’s about to decline, she makes a claw-like motion with her free hand. “Even if I have to force you to!~”
Both of the boys jump up from their cushions as the woman urges her daughter awake, kisses her on the forehead, and stands up alongside them-- a bit wobbly, lightheaded.
As they make their way to the kitchen, the woman has to take a moment to pause, steadying herself with a hand against a wall. Her entire body shakes with coughs, elbow coming up to cover her mouth and mask just how truly awful they sound.
“What’s wrong, kaa-chan?” a young Kuro asks his mother, pulling at the hem of her skirt and looking up at her curiously, “Do you have a cold? We can close the windows! Icchan!”
The boys make a move to run to the windows, but the blonde stops them in their tracks. “Kaa-chan is fine,” she says, “Just a little cough. Nothing to worry your cute little head about.” She ruffles both of their hair, pulling them close to her for a hug. “Now, go and help your father.”
The man and woman share a concerned look before he makes his way into the kitchen with his son and friend, the blonde leaning against the wall and catching her breath.
Those peaceful, domestic days are numbered. They both know it.
It’s only a matter of time until the children do, as well.
The bustle of the hospital falls deaf to his ears, replaced only by the squeaking of his sneakers against the tile as he bounds down the hallways against the protesting of staff. He doesn’t care. He’s concentrating on those lines on the floor and repeating the room number in his head over and over again.
When he gets to the room, his breath gets caught in his throat. Kuro presses his palm to the glass, watching as a doctor shakes his head while glancing at his wristwatch. Two nurses are pulling a sheet over a curly mass of blonde hair.
His hand bunches into a fist. He’s going to be sick.
“She asked for you.”
The voice comes from beside him, something familiar in the oppressive silence in the air. It doesn’t change the copper taste in his mouth. When he glances to the side he can see the figure of the boy he hadn’t seen for years, arms crossed over his chest, dusty rose hair kept short and amethyst eyes on the sheet.
“She asked for you, and you weren’t here.”
Kuro’s feeling too much, too little, moves without thinking. He grabs the collar of Shu’s stupid private school uniform, pulling him up aggressively to bring them face to face.
Shu’s eyes look him up and down, calm, knowing the other won’t do anything to actually hurt him. No, it’d go against everything he’d promised. And yet, for a moment, Kuro considers it. “You disgust me, Kiryu,” he says, nodding his head towards the side of the other boy’s mouth, “Is that why you weren’t here? You valued a fight more than your mother’s life?”
The redhead’s free arm comes up to wipe at the corner of his mouth, realizing that copper he’d been tasting in his mouth hadn’t all been from the world crushing feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He hasn’t said anything. There’s nothing to be said, as far as he’s concerned.
The grip on the other’s uniform is released, Kuro pushing Shu back with a force that makes the other stumble. There’s too many thoughts going through his head at once. He’s lost. He feels sick. He needs to do something, anything.
The fifteen year old turns, letting out an angered yell and punching the wall just across from the glass that taunts him, showing him a sight he wished he’d never see. He does it once again, worsening the bruising on his knuckles. He can’t feel it. He can’t feel anything.
Kuro slides down, head resting against the wall, elbows on his knees, crouched on the floor. He’s too numb to cry, too numb to feel the hand of a nurse on his shoulder, to numb to feel the disappointed eyes of Shu on him.
Just this morning, she’d mentioned feeling better. Felt well enough to get out of bed after the months she absolutely couldn’t, made a big breakfast with miso soup and tamagoyaki and salmon with rice for the entire family.
The way she smiled and waved goodbye to him had brightened the rest of his day-- gave him hope that maybe, just maybe, she’d be getting better.
She was there for him. She always had been-- even when he came home with a busted nose and bloody knuckles and reeked of smoke and alcohol.
And yet, he wasn’t there for her in her final moments.
What kind of son was he?
There’s no such thing as a calm before a storm.
A storm will come no matter the prediction, the warning, the preparation. It’ll always strike on it’s own time. There’s no way to steel yourself for the unexpected, no way to know what the final calm will be.
Kuro found no amount of foresight would’ve made him ready for seeing his mother’s funeral altar, her still visage hitting him like a wave-- dragging him under the current and threatening to drown.
Her portrait smiles at him when he’s lighting incense for her. Familiar. Calming. Upsetting. A glare from the fluorescent lights above them shines across the glass of the frame, obscuring her eyes, only shadowed by the black ribbon draped atop it. He won’t see that smile again. Not in person.
In the reflection he can see himself-- first time he has in the days since her passing. Black eye, busted lip, scratches along his cheekbones. No wonder his mother’s half of the family had been whispering to themselves whenever he passed. He looked awful.
Shu doesn’t look at him all through the ceremony.
Kuro can’t blame him.
He can’t stay during the wake, doesn’t want to be there when they cremate her tomorrow, can’t even think of it without getting sick to his stomach. Instead he leaves it all to his father and walks out into the biting winter air. Inside is the warmth he’ll forever have to abandon. Maybe he’ll freeze out here.
Maybe he’ll find another fight.
Coming home late hadn’t been that uncommon of an occurrence.
His father could reprimand him all he wanted, but he knew -- they both knew -- this was grief in it’s worst form. The ugly, inevitable coping kind they don’t like to warn you about when you go to therapy before a family member dies, the type they say is easy to avoid as long as you stay on the high road.
Kuro had been skipping class more, drinking more, smoking more, fighting more, becoming more and more reckless. He was ungrateful. He wasn’t hurting, was he?
Tonight he comes home through the back door as he usually does -- to avoid his mother’s shrine out of shame -- stomping out a cigarette on his way in. His face is bad. He can feel it. He doesn’t want to look at it. It’ll go away if he ignores it, won’t it? Nothing a little water can’t wash away.
All of the lights are off, and from upstairs he can hear the faint sounds of his father and sister’s snoring. Feeling his way along the walls, he eventually finds the switch to the bathroom, flicking it on with a click . The mirror’s before him but he refuses to meet his own eyes, looking around for anything he can use to clean himself up with.
He starts easy.
Knuckles and arms first, washing away blood that’s both his and isn’t, picking away dirt and skin and more from underneath his nails. He’s so preoccupied he doesn’t hear the soft footsteps that go down the staircase, doesn’t notice his sister’s awake and that he should’ve shut the door until he glances up and sees those familiar blonde locks of hair in the mirror peaking over the threshold.
It’s why he comes home late. To avoid this. To avoid her seeing this.
He’s about to turn around before realizing that’ll just make matters worse-- his lips are caked with blood, cheek busted open, bruises all along his jaw. Instead he looks at her through the mirror. “I just fell and busted myself up a little. ‘s not as bad as it looks.”
“I don’t want to lose you too, aniki,” she says, moving fully into the doorway now. He should’ve known better than to write her intelligence off-- no, she’s going places. Not like him. She clutches her bear close to her chest, chin resting between its ears.
“You’re not gonna lose me,” he says, leaning down to rinse the crimson reminders of his awful decisions off of his face. He manages to make himself presentable, cheek swelling with blues and purples and a tissue shoved up his nose to stop the momentary bleeding, before turning around fully to look at her. “See? ’m fine.”
She shakes her head, hazel eyes that they both inherited from their mother staring at him. He’s sure if he brings up the fact she’s tearing up, she’ll punch him. Kuro doesn’t need that right now-- not with how sore his ribs already are.
The girl advances, and for a moment he steels himself for a punch that never comes. “Please. Please stop, aniki,” she mumbles into his chest, ignoring the stains that may or may not be blood and forcing her cheek against his chest, trying to act like she’s not openly sobbing into him, “Please. I don’t want to see you hurt anymore.”
The redhead swallows, blinks a few times. Had he really been this inconsiderate? It was one thing to ruin his own life, to send himself on a downward spiral of bad decisions with no end in sight, but when it impacted his family too-- that was another thing entirely.
She needs him, and he needs to be there for her. His time for grieving and dwelling on the past is over-- it’s not about him anymore, it never was ever since the moment his mother died. It’s about her now.
And he’ll become the best damn big brother he can. No matter what.
“Yeah,” he mutters in reply, returning the embrace, holding her close to him, smoothing her hair absently as she attempts to regain her composure, “Alright. I’ll stop. Promise.”
With one final sniffle, she manages to get out, “Good. Now go take a shower, you smell really bad!”
“Hey. Watch it, little lady.”
The fighting becomes less frequent. Less late nights, less bad decisions. Less smoking, less drinking. It still happens, of course, but it’s nothing that would warrant worry. Not anymore.
Slightly better crowd. Slightly better support.
“Come watch this performance with me, aniki!” Kuro’s sister tells him one day, pulling him over to the couch in their family room and throwing him onto it. She tosses Scarlett onto his lap before settling down beside him with her knees up, blonde braids (ones Kuro himself did moments prior) bobbing as she does.
He pushes the stuffed animal back at her while she flips through the stations on the television, finally stopping on a live performance by some idol group he doesn’t recognize. Most of the things he’s dragged into watching don’t really interest him-- usually movies or shows for girls, or something of that nature. Yet, for some reason, the moment the group sings, Kuro feels something he can’t quite place.
“They went to a school near us, you know!” she says excitedly, making exaggerated motions and sitting up on her knees. She grabs the remote and begins to use it as a microphone, and he’s shocked she knows the lyrics as well as she does. “You should totally enroll in it, now that you’re almost done with Junior High!”
Normally he’d be mocking her actions in a true brotherly manner, but something about that sarcasm in her voice makes him want to challenge her.
“What if I did?”
“What if you what?”
“What if I did become an idol at that school?”
She giggles, jumping up and landing on her bottom, legs crossed before her. “You? An idol?! I was just joking, aniki! You so don’t have the image for that kind of thing...”
“Yeah, well, I take that as a challenge, y’know?”
The girl puts the remote against her bottom lip, doing the same look his mother always did whenever she was contemplating the shade of fabric to use for a new piece. “Fine!” she finally shouts, pushing the fake microphone at him, “If you can somehow get into that school, then I’ll be your biggest fan!”
He reaches his pinkie out, holding the remote up and giving her his best idol stare. “Swear by it?”
“Ugh, you’re so embarrassing!” she grumbles before hooking her pinkie in his, “But yeah. I swear!”
It’s not the life he expected he’d have growing up, he realizes.
His sister leaves earlier than him, tells him not to follow her to school today because apparently he’s a big deal now and she has to tell all her friends about her brother that got into “that cool idol school”. His father leaves earlier than him, says he left something for him near his mother’s shrine and wishes him the best of luck.
In the warmth of the morning, mother’s portrait smiling at him, he notes that maybe life isn’t supposed to be what you expect. The gold glint of a wedding ring shines in the daylight, golden chain accompanying it, and Kuro picks it up as if he’s afraid it’ll break in his touch.
He says a prayer to his mother. Hopes she forgives him for all the mistakes he’s made and will make. The beam shining through the window plays tricks on the photograph, makes it seem like she’s smiling for him, like her hair is alight in the yellow-orange of the sun, and he can’t help but smile back.
Carefully he removes the clasp from the necklace his father had left him, placing it around his neck and closing it, holding onto the ring once he’s sure it’s on.
Maybe he won’t make her proud today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in a year. But he’s sure someday he’ll become the son she deserves. He wouldn’t be able to face her again if he didn’t.
As he turns to leave, picking his bag up off the floor and crossing the threshold into the brightness of a new day, he swears in the lazy breeze rolling past him he can hear her wishing him good luck like she always used to.