Protect Yourself First

She thought she was strong enough to get by now that she is old enough. But one look at Taiga-kyōfu and she realises you can never be too old to protect yourself first. She just took a longer time than needed, to get the lesson across.

Companion Fic to ‘Use Me’.

Notes:

The long awaited (or maybe not) companion fic to 'Use Me'! The first half is pretty much what I wrote Use Me from (I wrote this first and then Use Me, but as usual, Use Me came out better formed). The second half...well...it ends? Yea, we'll go with that.
First up, warnings! Not many things people already did not know. Maybe vague spoilers but not specific ones.
Since it is in Chinatsu’s perspective, you’ll see how her growing up changes the way she refers to people or how she views them. I tried to not delve on that aspect too much, but it gave the story a better flair I felt.
Second, since I had to post this through my mobile device, I may have skimped on the editing and proofreading. If there is anything--big or small--please don't hesitate to blast me (that is, if you remember it by the end of this monstrosity).
Um...happy(?) reading!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The tiger was beautiful.

Magnificent and proud, and like the only tabby cat that grew so large that it was the king of a jungle!

Chinatsu frowns. Or was it the lion?

She forgets the proper saying, so she ignores it, looking at the cat in her hands and then remembers something else.

“Chi chi,” she calls out, and said dark skinned male stops watching the television to look at her, mouth hanging open as he stuffs his face with more food. “What’s a jungle?”

“Eh?” Her father looks a little confused. “A bunch of trees. Why?”

Unimpressed, she cradles the crystal figurine she is admiring, holding it up and saying, “Because the tiger is the king of the jungle, right? So what’s a jungle?” She glances around the living room, then to the kitchen where all the delicious smells are coming from. “Is the kitchen also called a jungle? I can’t see any trees though,” she gazes at her father with narrowed eyes, “You’re lying to me, right?”

Before she gets her answer, her father laughs loud and long, that it echoes in the apartment of her Big Kyōfu. Her Small Kyōfu lives in a house with his mother who is so old she does not move much from her bed. And she has to be quiet all the time there, so she does not like to be at his place. Here, in Taiga-Kyōfu’s house, she can run and scream and shout, and still get yummy food without asking—though she can do without the heavy frown the elder seems to always bestow upon her being—and add to all that, her mother is not around to tell her to act like a lady. Score!

“Taiga, you heard that?” Her father asks of her Big Kyōfu.

“What?” comes the growl from the kitchen.

“Chi-chan thinks the kitchen is also called the jungle, where the Tiger rules,” her father starts chuckling at his own words.

She does not get the joke.

“Stop teaching her rubbish, you useless man,” Big Kyōfu snaps, clanging noises following his statement.

Sounds of him moving in the kitchen closer to the door alert her that he is coming out, and scared to be caught holding the tiger crystal—she was always reminded to not touch other people’s things before asking—she rushes to place it back on the ledge it had been proudly occupying. Chinatsu knows that if she asks her Big Kyōfu, he will allow her to see it, provided she was being very careful.

“Chinatsu,” her Big Kyōfu starts, and it is a passing thought about why he does not call her Chi-chan like everybody else does, “Your father is not very smart. A jungle is not the same thing as a kitchen, even if I spend so much time in there feeding the man you call father. A jungle allows many more different trees and animals to—”

She is not fast enough. The tiger and the cub figurine slips from her nervous fingers and drops to the floor, but unfortunately makes sure to ricochet on the lower shelves, and then the low-lying cabinet just under it, and then to the wooden floor. In that descent, Chinatsu watches with wide eyes, as the tiger loses parts of its head, and the cub loses its appendages.

The shadow falling on her and the broken pieces is enough to tell her she is in over her head.

Chinatsu risks a glance either way, peeking through slit eyes, only to be shocked at the raw emotion on her Big Kyōfu’s face. She does not recognise it—a cross between wanting to scream and shout, and another just brushing the surface like he wants to cry—and scared that she is the one responsible for making him look like that, she bursts out into her own tears and cries out in shame and guilt. She wants to apologise, to get that look off his face, but her throat clenches on her words making it almost impossible to even breathe through all the crying.

She sees through her tears as her father abandons his television watching and her brother comes to the kitchen doorway, but remains there, observing. Her father comes to her side, to ask if she was hurt; ‘Did you get cut, Chi-chan? Are you bleeding anywhere? Chi-chi’s sorry he wasn’t watching you. Chi-chan, are you okay? Answer me, Chi!’; and both of them watch Big Kyōfu collect the pieces off the floor with quivering fingers.

Solemn and quiet, Big Kyōfu stares at the pieces in the palm of his large warm hand, before he jerkily lays them to rest on the shelf the figurine had remained a full king, not the broken king it was now. Big Kyōfu moved away from her father’s horrible look, walking a little funny, like he was too stiff to really move his hands and legs, but managed to enter his room and close the door. She half expected it to be slammed angrily like he was always moving around when their father was present.

This quiet side, however, scared her.

Taichi came out a few minutes later, fidgeting with his fingers, looking up through his eyelashes, before he went on his tiptoes and collected all the broken pieces he could, taking them over carefully to the kitchen island. He makes several trips, and in the time she is watching him and father is patting her dark blue head, she calms down to see Taichi try to reassemble the figurine. Instantly she wants to help because if it was not for her carelessness and disobedience, her Big Kyōfu would not have made that face, and her father would not be shaking with what she thinks is that ugly anger.

It might have been ages before Big Kyōfu stumbled out, weary and fatigued, eyes red rimmed and looking so pale, he almost looked like Small Kyōfu with his deathly pallor. Her father still had that horrible look on his face, like when he was angry or when the team he was shouting at did something bad on television, like mother told him no fried food for two weeks. Big Kyōfu ignored it all.

It seemed that the sight of her Big Kyōfu’s confused, shocked and weak face caused her to resume snivelling, and it hurt even more when the normally warm Big Kyōfu did not come to her side and tell her that everything is going to be alright. Since he does not, Chinatsu already knows that she is hated.

She cries more, a chorus to the song that Taichi is singing as he shows Big Kyōfu with his tiny steady hands the glass figurine in its magnificence renewed.

And then Taichi asks, with his shoulders drawn to his ears, “Is it okay if I put it back?”

Big Kyōfu laid one his big palms on Taichi’s head, a slowly ruffled his dark brown hair, a familiar kind smile on his face as he nodded to Taichi’s request. Silently everyone watched at her brother struggled to keep the figurine safe as he placed it back on its rightful place.

Then Big Kyōfu’s voice broke as he mumbled out a “Thank you”, making Taichi blush at the attention he was receiving from the large male looking so happy that Chinatsu was a little angry. She wanted to make up for her mistake but as usual Taichi always knew what to do first.

Big Kyōfu remained aloof for the rest of the time they were at his place until her mother arrived with Suki-Kyōbo, loudly proclaiming they had gifts to distribute. She watches as Suki-Kyōbo side-steps Big Kyōfu as she places the bags on the coffee table, not looking at him, rushing to Taichi and picking up to hug him. As the pink haired woman comes to her, Chinatsu watches Big Kyōfu glance at them before turning away.

Chinatsu’s stomach tightens and feels weird so she does not eat the cake her mother bough for her. Minutes bore down to hours and she sat quietly next to her father who did not move much either. Through the reflection of the glasses on the coffee table, she sees a bobbing red move from one side of the room to another, sometimes stopping to pet a nearly there brown blob. She curls into herself and lays her head on a muscled thigh. A large hand covers her head, interlacing with her dark blue tresses, fingers almost covering her sight.

No one mentioned the mishap so Chinatsu was saved from her mother’s timeouts and never-ending lectures, but also no one else made Big Kyōfu smile that day.

The teacher comes back to her table when she sees exactly what she has drawn on the paper. Frowning at first, the female teacher easily smiles sweetly as she stops Chinatsu from drawing, causing her to glare at her before pulling away.

“What is it?” She does not like the teacher; she is always calling home and complaining to her mother that she does not eat the food set before her. No one needs green vegies; we don’t eat light to grow. Unless we’re like Midori-sensei, she recalls the towering, bespectacled green haired man who sometimes drops in for occasions, and sometimes she has to visit him at the clinic for check-ups. Midori-sensei had a mean face going for him, and Chinatsu never understood why no one stopped him from coming into contact with children as cute as her. Though, she concedes hesitantly, the doctor was surprisingly very gentle and always gave her a lollipop, so she did not mind going back. Unlike the teacher kneeling near her table, who is for sure going to say something about the picture she is drawing.

“Aomine-chan,” she huffs at the name, “Today’s theme is animals. Didn’t you say you were drawing a tiger?”

Four year old Chinatsu harrumphed at her teacher. “I am. Can’t you see I’m drawing Taiga-kyōfu?”

There is a confused furrow on her face. “Um, Aomine-chan, that’s tora, say it after me?”

“Taiga!” she shouted back. When the teacher did not back off, Chinatsu looked around for her brother, forgetting that he was not in the same class as her. Angry and annoyed, she burst into tears. “Taiga! It’s Taiga!”

“Yes, yes, Aomine-chan. In English it is tiger but in Japanese, which we are speaking, it is tora.” The teacher picked up a crayon from her set and wrote the two characters neatly and spaced out. She pointed at each character and said the word again, “To ra.”

Chinatsu did not stop crying.

In the end, Chinatsu was being sent to the principal’s office, made to wait out for someone to pick her up. She almost wished her father would come rather than her mother, because she knows what the woman would say:

“You’re a big girl now, so why did you start crying in front of everyone? I told you to listen to sensei, right?”

Pouting, she waited for what felt like an age and forever, before her father’s lumbering form appeared, dressed in his sports outfit, huffing and out of breath as though he was playing basketball just a while back. Her father had a flush on his face, a gleam of sweat on his skin, and the same confused expression on his face. One of the pretty ladies sitting behind the desks in the office offered to call the principal and her teacher while her father reached her side.

Squatting, he held both her tiny hands in his. “So what’s this I hear about you crying in class? Was someone being mean?”

Chinatsu shook her head, glad that it really was her father coming to see to her. A movement at the side made her turn to look, a little distracted, and then her eyes widened at seeing the redhead. “Kyōfu?!”

Big Kyōfu had a deep frown on his face, looking at the stuttering ladies and then at her father before his red eyes stopped on her. He did not look angry, that was for sure, but he did not look pleased either. For some reason, it was even more scary dealing with Big Kyōfu than her mother.

“Aomine-san?” The principal and her teacher arrived, standing formally next to each other and bowing shortly in greeting. As usual, her father just nodded, though Big Kyōfu greeted them with a quick short bow of his head. Chinatsu held her breath, knowing what the teachers would say about her behaviour now that the brief introductions were over and everyone was sitting in the office, doors closed, and talking about her. She liked being the centre of attention but not like this.

A familiar paper was pushed to the side she sat on, her father and Big Kyōfu glancing down at it in confusion.

“I’m not too sure what has happened here, but I think Chinatsu-kun here is confused about what animals and humans are,” the tone her principal uses seems to annoy her Big Kyōfu, who curls the fist on his lap closest to her. She blinks at it then turns to look up at his face. It is slack and calm. She takes the same look at her father to see the splitting of his lips and the curling of his mouth into a smile, his eyes never leaving the paper.

“No, I think she knows what the difference here is very well,” her father informs, that playful tone in his voice. She likes the sound because it usually means that the other person is wrong. Well, she darts her eyes at Big Kyōfu, usually.

Big Kyōfu easily reaches over to the paper and taps in once. “This is here is me,” he answers the unvoiced question even she seemed to hear. “I’m Kagami Taiga and she just learnt that my name sounds like the English word for tiger.” Big Kyōfu glances down at her, gleaming red eyes soft, and he smiles. “Chinatsu is a very smart girl. She’s not confused over something like that.” The same hand that tapped at the picture came to rest on her head, ruffling her hair, and she beamed up at him.

“So is that all?” Her father asks in that bored tone of his, digging his ear with his pinkie finger the way her mother warned him not to do. Big Kyōfu’s leg reaches across where she stands in between them to kick her father’s leg, jostling him. Her father glares in front, bit does not say anything. Instead he places his hands under her armpits and pulls her up to make her sit on his lap, forcing Big Kyōfu’s hand off her head. She is almost manhandled as she is placed on his lap, but her focus is on the narrowing of Big Kyōfu’s eyes.

Before the principal can say anything more to make her feel inferior to her superior being, Big Kyōfu interrupts. “Just a second, I think we need to clear up something.” He looks towards her. “Chinatsu has to apologise for making a fuss which got her kicked—ah, not that—pulled out of her class, so Chinatsu, if you please,” he gestures with a couple of waves towards the teachers.

She pouts, clearly not happy at the change of pace. Scarlet eyes do not quiver away or grim mouth does not move to say anything more. Chinatsu is a very smart girl, echoes in her head, so petulantly, she glares into the table for a few more milliseconds before mustering her pride and announcing, “Chinatsu is sorry that she made a fuss and was pulled out of her class.”

The sound of laughter echoes right out of the office and down the empty silent corridor. It is also the last time the elementary school calls her father to the office.

As they are leaving, Taichi clutching Big Kyōfu’s large hand and Chinatsu being carried high on her father’s arm, Big Kyōfu stopped them from going further by tugging the end of her father’s t-shirt. Her father looks through the gap between her small body and his shoulder, mouth twitched upwards to one side. “What is it?”

“Stop calling me Tiger in front of the kids. Today is one thing, but soon, it’ll be another thing. We were lucky we can laugh off today’s misunderstanding.”

Her father’s lazy slouch stiffens. “What misunderstanding?” he goes to move again, but this time, Big Kyōfu grabs his arm. Her father tries to pull away, not looking back, but another tug stops him. Chinatsu, curious, glances across her father’s back and sees the large wide hand of Big Kyōfu’s interlocked with dark long fingers. It is the first time she sees two adult men hold hands, but she does not think anything of it. The colour differences is cute, so she giggles, rubbing her cheek into her father’s shoulder and keeps staring at it.

“Please, Daiki.”

Chinatsu darts her eyes at Big Kyōfu.

“Daiki, please,” and her father clenches Big Kyōfu’s before releasing them, a simple, “Aa” escaping between barely parting lips.

Chinatsu and her big godfather do not have much in common at six years of age. But there is one thing they do: her mother.

“She is cruel,” she pouts one evening as she sits and waits for the food they ordered to arrive. Taichi does not agree, so she ignores him. Taiga-kyōfu, on the other hand, does.

“Yes, she is.” He sighs, sitting back into his fake-leather upholstery and gazes out the window. “I could be stuffing my face silly with burgers around now, but Natsumi-san told me that you guys can’t eat junk food.” He glowers to himself silently. “Wonder how that aho takes it.”

Taiga-kyōfu is also very different from Tetsu-kyōfu. For one, he never really coddled them. Not to say that Tetsu-kyōfu did, but he just always had this energy about him to not do anything wrong for fear of being rejected with his version of blank indifference, while the other male was intense with just one look. Chinatsu can act as tomboyish as she likes in front of Taiga-kyōfu without the ever-present fear of being told to act like a lady and only has to listen to any of the commands that he does lay out for them.

And he never really censored himself in front of them.

They already knew that repeating his words were not allowed. In fact, Chinatsu can recall the time that Taiga-kyōfu had sat them down when they were barely turning six and made them stay still until they were done.

“You guys are now old enough to understand certain things,” he had said one day, when the two were alone at his apartment.

“What things?” Taichi had asked dutifully.

Kyōfu nodded. “Things like what you can do and what you can’t do.” Chinatsu knew he was talking to both of them, but this comment hurt her deeply. “Like, you have to ask to use certain items before you can use them.”

“Okay,” Taichi agreed, instantly. She frowned.

“Can I have an example?” Chinatsu tried her luck.

The corner of his lip quirked up. He sat back on the coffee table before the couch they were sitting on, and hummed. “Scissors, for example. Or if you want to make something hot in the microwave.” He nodded to himself, feeling thorough, then suddenly looked at them. “Or what cartoons you want to watch.”

“Cartoons?” she asked, dreading this. “Even Adventure Time?”

Kyōfu grimaced. His eyes drifted up and to the side, recalling an argument he probably had with father, and acquiesces, “Even Adventure Time. Honestly, I don’t like it. But I don’t like most stuff. So depending on what else is on, we’ll discuss this.” He waves a hand between the three of them. “Like how we are discussing things now. At least then we each know what the other thinks about, right?”

Chinatsu feels as if Taiga-kyōfu is pushing himself to voice out these thoughts. He has the same expression father makes when mother forces him to reprimand them—her especially—and she finds it altogether funny and cute.

“What else?” she asks, because even if kyōfu has a problem with Adventure Time, he’s agreeing to let them watch it sometimes. Probably. She should make sure later today, when the program is doing re-runs.

“Um, things like you should help me when I’m cooking and cleaning.” This he says happily enough. This, she does not like. “The faster I finish those chores, the more time we can spend doing things you actually like to do.”

Chinatsu thinks about how she can utilise this. Her mother always reminded her to make sure she gets something in return for doing something the other person hates. She is quite surprised, though, that Taiga-kyōfu does not like to cook and clean; it seemed to be the only activities he did when they were around him.

Oh, and also moving homes.

“Like riding a bicycle?”

Taichi turns to face her, frowning. She ignores him like she usually does, staring intently at the furrow building on their kyōfu’s face. “You’re going to start bringing your cycles here, too?” He is exasperated. “Might as well live her—” he stops short, holding his breath, turning to look at the window. He gulps down slowly, at the same time facing her again. “Sure, we can go on your bicycle.” Then at Taichi, he asks, “What about you?”

Taichi is still looking at her by the time kyōfu asks his question. “We don’t know how to cycle.”

And mass sputtering occurs. “What?!” She shivers at the livid look on his face, split eyebrows scrunching. “Why?!”

Taichi shrugs. “Mother can’t really look at both of us while we’re out, and father’s usually…more into teaching and playing with us basketball.”

“Oh, for the love of—” kyōfu rubs down his face as if ashamed and tired all at one go. “I’ll get that idiot settled. He’s such a useless father.”

Taichi giggles while she scowls. “He’s not useless.”

Red eyes peek at her through thick fingers. She is almost certain he is going to dismiss her defence, shoulders stiff, but he replaces his palm on his knee, and kindly smiles at her. She stiffens all over. “If you say so, Chinatsu.”

They continue on, then, discussing things they would rather do than what he actually wants them to do. Negotiations break down easily enough, and on the way home, Chinatsu is too excited to sleep knowing that she can finally ask for that mountain bike she saw in the mall the other day. Grinning, she keeps her silence to pounce on her unsuspecting parents the next morning.

Taichi runs away from home at seven. More as though he runs away from Taiga-kyōfu’s new house that is more like her elder twin’s second home, so Chinatsu has no trouble excitedly regaling the story to Tetsu-kyōfu.

“He did what?” comes the incredulous tone sounding so far away on the phone. Chinatsu giggles.

“I know! He like, ran away crying from Taiga-kyōfu’s place and everyone’s gone looking for him.”

“…Chi-chan, why are you happy that Tai-chan ran away from home?” The voice drops to an eerie light sound, and shivers run up and down her spine. Chinatsu gulps. “Chi-chan,” he says again, “Do you know where Tai-chan is?”

Hesitating, she looks around the room even though she knows her parents are not present, eyes lingering on the cupboard of the kitchen she can see from the living room.

“Um, Tacchan’s here with me,” she ends up confessing, which was not so hard to do if she recalls the blank look Tetsu-kyōfu is capable of sending her, even by a mere phone call. She is already wishing she had cooler godparents to call and cheer with, because everyone she knows is as stiff as Taiga-kyōfu. She could have joined forces with her father, but he was the first one to jolt up and run when Taiga-kyōfu’s call came in.

“He’s with you? Didn’t you say you were at home, Chinatsu?” And the dreaded use of her full name came to play. Pursing her lips, she walks closer to the kitchen.

“Yes,” she answers simply. The least amount of words she uses, the easier she can reject any assumptions made about what she said, or so her father keeps telling her.

The loudest sigh she has ever heard her small godfather use afore his words caught her attention. “I’ll call your father. Stay put, you hear me? We’re going to talk about this later.”

Chinatsu does not get a chance to say anything before the line disconnects.

She moves to the kitchen and sits with her legs pulled to her chest near the cabinet her brother has hidden himself in. “You still haven’t told me what happened.” The silence that follows it does not surprise her, but she remains seated until her parents come home, a harried looking Taiga-kyōfu following them.

“Chinatsu, get into your room now!” Her father bellows, fuming. She scrambles fluidly off the floor and makes a run for it. She might not get hit, but an angry father is a scary father. When he does use that face, Taichi always knows to expect her to crawl into her bed, unable to sleep at night. Come morning, and her father will take one look at her sleepy, scared face and apologise.

Instead of closing the door, she kneels on the floor keeping the door agape, and peers carefully to see her father wrench open the cabinet doors. Taichi stumbles out, shocked at the suddenness, screeching slightly. Chinatsu is surprised at the sound, hitting her head on the door edge. She muffles her sound of pain, blinking out the little tears to continue watching.

Her mother has moved away, warning her father not to be so rough, but her father is furious and does not listen. He raises a hand, as though he was going to smack some sense into her wimpy brother, and she is almost afraid, before a large hand clamps around his wrist and suspends all motion. Taichi’s hiccups through his crying, a quiet noise against the harsh breathing of their father.

“Idiot, move aside,” is the calm controlled voice of Taiga-kyōfu. She ducks her head a bit, wanting to see around her mother’s stranded form, but from the distance and angle, she cannot see his face or hear him clearly. Whatever he does say is the least of her concern when he himself sharply smacks Taichi. “Don’t ever do that again. You aren’t old enough to stomp off in anger, and you aren’t old enough to give us lip.”

Taichi says something, and Chinatsu frowns because she cannot hear him. She wonders if this is her elder brother’s way of growing a spine.

“I thought one smack was enough to remove the stupid shit from you, but I guess not,” he says, gruff, but his hand does not rise up again. “Get up and go to your room. You’re lucky no one grabbed you when you were outside. You’re lucky your father did not get his hands on you, either.”

As Taichi dislodges himself from Taiga-kyōfu, he stumbles his way haphazardly towards his room. His door shutting softly is enough for the adults outside to release huge sighs of relief.

Her mother speaks first, “I was so scared.” Chinatsu is surprised; her mother never really showed fright so her admission was something to remember. It made Chinatsu being scared of both her father’s angry side and Taiga-kyōfu feel better.

“I’m sorry,” Taiga-kyōfu’s voice was mellowed and subdued. Gone was the rough nature he spoke to Taichi with. She almost felt sorry for her brother. “I didn’t…I didn’t know he ran away until later.” He rubs his face with his hands and moves away from her line of sight. Her mother’s back follows and their voices become less pronounced.

“Nah, it’s not your fault,” her father starts but Taiga-kyōfu appears to not finish beating himself over Taichi’s first daring act of his life.

“No, it is. I can’t even look after a child.”

Chinatsu frowns. This does not sound like Taiga-kyōfu.

“Shut up, Bakagami. I said it wasn’t your fault, so it wasn’t your fault,” her father’s commanding tone did not even let a second settle before he jumped onto Taiga-kyōfu’s confession. “’Sides, I guess this is fate’s retribution.”

Retribution? What’s that? Chinatsu wonders as Taiga-kyōfu’s weak chuckles follow through.

“Yea, I know. I should probably go and make amends with my family when I get home.” Taiga-kyōfu sighs, and again she can see his back, only this time, the shoulders are drooped. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yea, light a stick for me too,” her father calls out even as her mother sees Taiga-kyōfu out the door. As he turns one final time, Taiga-kyōfu freezes, looking over her mother’s lingering figure straight at her. Chinatsu has no time to scramble back and shut the door, because Taiga-kyōfu smirks as he calls out.

“Thanks for letting us know, Chinatsu!” He waves and leaves, and her mother shuts the door after him.

Her father rounds the corner to the passage, peering down at her from across the way, “You little shit, come here and let’s have that talk Tetsu wants to have with you.” He reaches into his pocket for the phone and Chinatsu gulps.

She is never helping Taichi again, that wimp.

As if prompted, Taichi should ask in that wimpy voice of his to visit Taiga-kyōfu, and then, cue the dramatics of Taichi does not love father as much will occur, and everyone will laugh at how needy the older twin is, and all those things Chinatsu cannot stand, so she waits patiently for The Thing to happen.

Frowning and wondering if she got the count wrong, she tries again.

When nothing happens, she looks at the brooding boy who makes neigh a sound while their parents decide what to do for their vacation this year round.

Later, when father proudly calls his travel agent—someone Chinatsu has never seen on their travels, but whatever—and tells him to book four, yes four, I know how to count, Makishiba, Chinatsu hurries after her brother to demand an explanation.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says instead, his voice a different quiet. “I just wanted to go to…” he pauses, like she knows he would, considering he was not paying attention to where they were going, “To wherever Tou-san wanted to take us this year.”

“Did you and Taiga-kyōfu have a fight again? What did he shout at you for?” Well, it was a legitimate question considering she was always shouted at, even by his mere stare. She shuddered in remembrance. “Just apologise already and get it over with,” she gave him sound advice.

But Taichi shook his head. “I didn’t do anything to ask for forgiveness.” And snidely, almost depreciatively, “I was just born.”

Chinatsu does not understand that phrase, so she lets it slide. When their Big Kyōfu calls, she will ask him what happened.

It is ten days and Taiga-kyōfu does not call.

They go for their trip, uninterrupted.

When her father hands the phone to Taichi later in the evening once he comes home, Taichi is confused, just as she is, watching the period drama with their mother. Mother looks over, concerned, but does not verbally question father about it, especially since the look on his face is the ‘I will not hear anything about it, so just do as I say’ one, which he rarely uses on them; he leaves those things to mother, Tetsu-kyōfu and sometimes Suki-kyōbo (father is scared of Azami-kyōbo as well, she feels, but will never voice it out loud).

“Moshi moshi?” Taichi hesitantly answers. His face, though, drains of all colour.

Curious, she leans over the back of the couch, causing her mother to frown at her and remind her that young girls don’t sit like that, Chi. She ignores her for the time being because, despite her brother being a wimpy-kind of guy, he rarely showed it on his face. Like that, Taichi was similar to father.

“I’m fine,” he replied, stiff. Then a few heartbeats later, he asked, “And how do you do, kyōfu?”

And Chinatsu would rather be grounded for the next month than to miss this interaction.

Unlike what she thinks will happen—wherein her brother will snivel up and plead to be forgiven for crimes he had not known he committed (Chinatsu knows the idiot cannot do any wrong)—she is surprised, confused and thrown for a loop so large, the conversation ends within minutes of not saying anything but “Good bye, Taiga-kyōfu.”

“What,” she mumbled, more to herself than anybody around, “just happened here?”

Taichi quietly places the phone on the dining table and returns to his room, chin dropped down to his chest.

Before she can get up and ask him what was going on, her mother quickly grabs her hand and says, “I told you to sit properly!”

Scowling, she settles herself on her rump, grumpily staring blankly at the television screen. She soon forgets to ask about the phone call, as usual.

Chinatsu watches, over the next two years, as clockwork the phone will ring on Friday, signalling Taiga-kyōfu has called to speak to Taichi. She sometimes talks to their kyōfu, but otherwise, she gestures to everyone to say she is busy. If her mother does not lie for her, she hurries to actually do things, just to get away from the loaded question: Are you listening to your parents?

She hates that new concern.

She hates this new method of communication.

Gone are the days where she can jump on expensive leather couches and not be reprimanded, because gone are the days Taichi even begs to see Taiga-kyōfu practice at the street courts with father.

She hates it, but she hates that lonely look on Taichi’s face as well.

In return, Taichi stops talking to her if she asks and she would rather hate the situation than not be allowed to speak to him. A boiling in her stomach makes her refuse talking to Taiga-kyōfu sometimes, but her father does not push it. He is more concerned by the way Taichi retreats into himself. Father sometimes has this look on his face, forlorn and defeated, and every time he cannot stand Taichi being this new Taichi, he would either smack a basketball in his chest and demand a game, or he would thrust an open call to Taiga-kyōfu.

Taichi, having found a certain distaste to playing basketball with their father, resorted to resume their game time so that he could avoid speaking to Taiga-kyōfu.

Chinatsu hates this, and wishes things could go back to normal.

Her wish, it seems, does not come true until one hazy afternoon, when summer was around the corner but still so far away. People at school were annoying her as usual, calling her Aomine-imōto or even sometimes Taichi no imōto. She growls and snaps at them, and so her nickname changes to Taichi no chisana dōbutsu. Taichi, however, ignores everything around them like a breeze so soft that it hardly ruffles his hair.

So when the call from Taiga-kyōfu comes about, Taichi is already well into the perfunctory answers until a breath later he scowls into the phone, derisively, “What’s it to you?” Chinatsu blinks, thinking, Ah, the ‘are you listening to your parents?’ question.

A second goes, probably Taiga-kyōfu taking longer at the surprising answer, and then Taichi monotonously retorts, “I’ll never be older than you.”

Chinatsu edges of her seat. She makes one clever decision by looking out the door to see where her parents are before she closes the door shut softly and nears Taichi. There is a second before her elder brother uses a tone she does not recognise; he challenges Taiga-kyōfu.

“You’re the one who doesn’t respect me! You’re the one who’s only nice to me because I’m Daiki’s son!”

Chinatsu jerks in surprise. Is that what this was all about? Suddenly, she was not simply curious. She wanted to hear both sides of this conversation, but Taichi heedlessly puts a hand on her head to keep her away as he listens to whatever Taiga-kyōfu tells him. She is almost cursing the elder man for not having a loud voice like Ryōta-jisan.

“But you aren’t me!” Taichi snaps.

Having no other choice, Chinatsu observes Taichi’s tense shoulders, stiff back and glaring eyes. He looks so different angry since she hardly sees any sight of it. Taichi is always so… Chinatsu has no words to describe her brother, because he was so different from her that is was difficult to categorise him. He was not like father and he was not like mother. Now, snarling at Taiga-kyōfu, he sounded so angry but at the same time wretched, his face scrunched as though he was just words away from crying. “You care enough to bother but you don’t care about me. I bet dad told you to keep in touch even if you really don’t want to. I know I’m supposed to keep my 10 o’clock free so that you can call on Fridays.”

Chinatsu curls into herself on Taichi’s bed, holding onto her toes. She tries to breathe calmly, wondering if Taiga-kyōfu thinks the same way about her.

Taichi breathes heavily too, listening intently to Taiga-kyōfu. It makes Chinatsu even more eager to listen in.

It is such a long time before a quiet Taichi asks, voice so low, Chinatsu holds her breath and wills her painfully thudding heart to stop please, I want to hear this, “And is this a life lesson for you to? Force conversation with someone, a child, you don’t like.”

Chinatsu hiccups first, her tears following second. She does not know why it feels so painful to be thought of as such when she knows truthfully that she is a child and that Taiga-kyōfu really does not have any reason to like them.

She glances up at Taichi and in the silence of the room, the take a breath together, holding still.

“…I don’t want to keep talking anymore,” he says with a faraway voice even though he is so close to her, grasping her hair as he continues this farce of a conversation with the one adult she thought—she reaches out her own hand and grips Taichi’s shirt, tugging him closer. Resting her forehead on his stomach, she listens to the lub dub noise echoing meaninglessly inside his chest.

Then Taichi gasps, clenching her hair so tightly, she mewls at the pain. It takes him a second to realise it, drawing away and bringing a clenched fist to his heaving chest, looking as though he has run a marathon for a warm-up with their father.

Taichi’s eyes dart all over the place. Chinatsu, in confusion follows his glances, trying to figure out what her elder twin is looking for, hand uselessly grabbing at his chest, holding on, before making such a sad face. “Why?” he asks in a tiny voice, “Why can’t it be something we have together?”

Chinatsu wants to grab the phone away now, finding it torturous enough that she does not understand what is going on and what they are talking about, and why is Tacchan looking like that? What is Taiga-kyōfu saying to him? Why is he being so cruel? Why— “But I am his son.”

Chinatsu looks up. Taichi is quiet for a very long time.

And then, like a breath of fresh air, or a new spring of water, Taichi’s frown lines disappear and his mouth straightens into a line. He is breathing slowly now, softly, and his fist lets go of his shirt to pat her on the head. As she moves into the touch, Taichi’s childish, hopeful, tiny voice says, “I’d like that.”

And Chinatsu feels Taichi animate vivaciously again.

Chinatsu hears the voice on the other end of the call so clearly, she does not have to be the person who is answering the call.

“Yea?” Her father’s drawl is the most unsatisfying greeting one could expect and it probably worsens the caller’s mood.

Especially if it was Taiga-kyōfu.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Father brings the phone away from his ear and groans softly, as if any louder will bring undue wrath on his person. Chinatsu cannot agree more, being the one who was usually subjugated to heated glares and towering stares. She shivers just imagining the glowering, hulking form of her godfather standing dead centre of this room as he continues to insult her father. For what, she has no clue (it does not take much for people to really do so, but she loves her father no less).

“What is it now?”

“Don’t give me that!” Taiga-kyōfu snaps back. “Why the fuck haven’t you taught them to swim?! What did you do in Hawaii?! Taichi almost died!”

Chinatsu startled, glancing over from where she was doing her summer homework, pencil fisted tightly at the thoughts now swirling around her head. Taichi almost died?! The word ‘almost’ makes no difference to her and she is pushing back the chair so that she can demand from her godfather why he was trying to kill her elder brother.

“Huh? Swim?” is her father’s first words in the face of utmost distress. Chinatsu’s eyes go wide with disbelief. “And there are other things in Hawaii to do than to swim you know.”

“You fuck; I just said he almost died!!!” For once Chinatsu agrees with her kyōfu; her father is severely lacking common sense and she was nine.

“Yea, yea,” the lacklustre reply makes her blood boil—and probably Taiga-kyōfu’s as well—“You said almost. I know you won’t really let him die. Um,” her father pauses to scratch his head, yawning, “Unless he deserves it.” He starts turning, stretching his upper muscular body, and catches her staring at him. He grins in that placating manner of his, but she is not appeased. “And you did tell me you were taking him surfing right? So it’s not like I was completely unaware that I’d receive a call like this.” Chinatsu knows that look; her father was completely unaware. “So don’t get your panties in a snit, Taiga. I know my son’s in good hands.”

Chinatsu wants to scream at her father, her fists balling at her thighs and her muscles going stiff. Hot fat tears are already making their way down heated cheeks. One look at her, and her father’s eyes narrow decisively.

“Put Taichi on the phone though. Maybe he’ll feel better about you drowning him after he speaks to his little sister,” and promptly, her father hands her the phone.

Hiccupping, she takes the device and asks in a soft voice, “Tacchan?”

“Ah, wait one second, okay, Chinatsu?” her godfather’s gruff voice fills her head. Hearing him makes her a little angrier, so she bites at him.

“How can you be so irresponsible?! Why didn’t you ask him if he knew how to swim?!” She is screaming, and in the corner of her eyes she can vaguely see her father’s disapproving expression, but she knows he will not stop her from expressing herself in the state she is. It is just the feeling she gets. Maybe he will say something after, but not now. Now, she is allowed to scream and vent until she hears her brother’s wimpy voice.

“I’m sorry, Chinatsu,” Taiga-kyōfu sounds so solemn and guilt-ridden. “I assumed wrongly that your father would take you guys out and about during summer to learn these things. At least that’s what he told me he would do, being the summer children you three are.”

“But you should have asked him! Aren’t you an adult?!” Chinatsu feels high and mighty, lecturing said adult.

“Yes I am, and I failed to do so,” he replies, that gruffness smoothening out so that it becomes a small voice. It tickles her chest in this uncomfortable feeling, but she does not let up just yet. She still has to hear Taichi. “I’m sorry, Chinatsu, that I let your brother get hurt. I will do my best to never let it happen again.”

Hearing him say that, for some reason, is enough for Chinatsu. It is rare that she feels good after talking with her gruff godfather, but it has happened. This is one time that she will forever remember, more so because of what her father tells her later.

After a brief confirmation that her idiot, girly elder brother is alive and safe, if not a little rough at the voice, but that is okay—he needs to man up a bit too—her father grabs hold of her wrist gently to reel her in close. She follows because she knows that he is a little angry with her too.

“Chi-chan,” he says gravely, like it is the last thing he wants to do but he has to, “You know what you said to your kyōfu is wrong, right? Even if he made a mistake?”

Frowning, she nods.

“Tou-chan trusts him to be able to take care of you, no matter the circumstance, which is why I even let him teach Tai-chan how to surf,” he sighs, long and drawn out, “Like, if Ryōta-jisan said he’d take you guys skiing,” he had this horror-stricken look pass over his face, “I’d be standing just there waiting to murder him if one of you so much as had to fall on your knees.”

Chinatsu imagines this.

And totally agrees with the sentiment.

For some reason she cannot fathom, her father allows the blond man to generally take care of them, but does not really let him take care of them.

“Like, only when he has children of his own, will Tou-chan really trust him,” her father was rambling now, but she did not care for that; she sort of liked her flamboyant uncle. He flew a jet! How cool was that?!

Chinatsu remembers the time Taiga-kyōfu enabled Taichi to run away from home without knowing, remembering the words he had said that night. “But Taiga-kyōfu doesn’t have a child of his own, either. So why?” She gripped the grey muscle tank he wore, sharply contrasting his dark skin. She always found it so funny that her father was a different colour than what she was used to seeing—no matter how tanned they got, father was always darker.

“No, he doesn’t,” his voice was weird here, sad, but still firm. As if he knew why—maybe his girlfriend died so he will never love another woman that is not her or something like that? (She squealed at the romantic thoughts)—and looking into his dark blue eyes, swirling, “But I know Taiga very well, and I know he will never let anything happen to my children. That means you and Taichi, okay?”

Chinatsu nods because it is expected of her. But she still does not understand.

Why would Taiga-kyōfu never let anything happen to them?

Like any other mystery, Chinatsu holds a firm grip on it, waiting to solve it.

She frowns at the plate before her.

“Are you sure it’s supposed to look like this?”

Taichi scowls from the stool he is standing on over at the stove, a little away from the surface, and trying desperately not to look into the frying pan as he continues cooking. “Yes…or at least rounder.” It takes a stabbing motion to get the dark misshapen object out and into the plate sitting at the edge of the counter closest to the stove. Chinatsu heads over to carefully transfer it into the plate she was assembling.

“Because, you know, it doesn’t look like something even he would eat,” she appraises. Their godfather was a glutton, that was no secret, but even he had taste. “Tacchan, it doesn’t look like pancakes.”

“I know!” comes the mumbled aggravation. She rolls her eyes; as if that was going to stop her.

The two had decided, for this year’s birthday (the first ever they were going to celebrate with the actual person), they would crash at his place with breakfast, get him all fed and happy (so that he would not find reason to glare at her) and then take him out to play. Since basketball was out of the question, they would cajole him into visiting the batting centre, or even just go to the park and make him take a break from all his running around.

Their mother hovered just outside the kitchen, frowning prettily, hands held up at her sides, almost like a T-Rex, unable to sit still.

“Let them be,” their father’s voice sounded, calm and lazy as usual. She turned to see him appear at the doorway, behind their mother, pressing his cheek on top of her head, laying a kiss as he said, “You’ve taught them how to be careful in the kitchen, right? So no one’s going to get hurt.”

Her mother scowled up at him. “Not like you teach them anything but to make a mess.”

Chinatsu cringes; it looked like her mother was still angry about the trail of clothes she left lying in her room.

“I’m done,” Taichi calls out, finally, putting off the gas, getting down from his stool. He moves the pan to an unused burner to cool and replaces the stool under the table left to the side of the kitchen. As Taichi goes about collecting more Tupperware, Chinatsu gears up to help, and soon, the two have finished packing up the huge breakfast to trot to their godfather’s home.

“Tou-chan, c’mon, get dressed already!” She orders him for the fifth time since Taichi had started on the pancakes. “This will all be pointless if the food goes cold!”

“Yea, yea,” he says, detaching from their mother with a pout. Mother chuckles softly, and sharing a smile, she pushes her husband faster into the bedroom.

“Geez!” she pouts.

Taichi laughs softly, very like their mother, and the two of them head to their own rooms to get their belongings for the day.

Unlike heading straight to the hotel Taiga-kyōfu was residing, father takes them to a place that appears to have a lot of play areas. There is even a series of basketball courts lined to their left, separating tennis courts and some version of a tennis court with a wall. Chinatsu has never seen it before, but she guesses that tennis players might find some purpose in that uselessly standing wall at the back.

She gets distracted though, when they reach one of the end courts, to see Taiga-kyōfu smashing the dark grey and blue ball into the basket after soaring high into the sky. The image is amazing—and something she is sure she will never forget—as if he had wings suspending him high in the sky for a bit longer than most players she has seen do almost the same move. Her kyōfu’s hair is pushed upwards by the rush of air he moves against, and as gravity brings him down, like a fallen angel, he lets out a long stream of breath. Fluidly, he races after the ball that rolls away to the corner after the forceful dunk he administered.

Childishly she wonders if the ball is trying to run away.

She tilts her head to face her father, who in the beginning was dragging his feet, eyes hooded, was now tightly corded with suppressed energy as his eyes widened enough to take in the sight she too was mesmerised by. Knowing how her father is, she ignores him, to look past at her brother.

And pauses.

Taichi has an unfathomable expression on. Like he wants to say something, but does not; like he wants to cheer, but does not. His free fist is lightly clenched at his side, the other turned into a death grip around the shoulder strap of his bag. He wears a blank face; nevertheless she can read the look in his eyes even more closely than she can her father’s.

“Tacchan?” she whispers. Taichi snaps his head to face her, stunned, but mutely reigns in whatever thoughts were passing onto the surface.

“Tou-san,” he calls instead. “We should probably wait until he’s done.”

“Nonsense,” their father proclaims, leading the way to the court’s entrance. They follow behind, trotting worriedly. They know how their godfather reacts when they see him play basketball, and it is not a pleasant feeling when his happy, content face falls into a despondent one. Almost worried to see it again, Chinatsu is surprised by what her father calls out to the redhead on court: “Yo, Bakagami, one-on-one!”

Their kyōfu is surprised at the call, and almost expecting him to deny it, a grin she has never seen in all her ten years of life, blooms and takes over his face. “You’re on!” Even the pitch of his voice makes her backpedal.

So they end up sitting on the bench courtside, a little daunted, both in awe and fright. Awe in the performance of the two players that they usually saw at each other’s necks or lazing about or cooking or hogging or making fun of; and then the fright that, who is this person, smiling so carefree? Playing so magnificently?

And Chinatsu remembers the tiger and cub figurine she had brought to its demise (no matter that Taichi, as usual, cleaned up after her mess), and cannot help but wonder—she looks to Taichi, then to Taiga-kyōfu—Why doesn’t kyōfu play basketball with Tacchan? What did he say to him last year?

The growling of her stomach distracts her again, and she calls out to the two players: “We’ve not had breakfast either, you know!”

Chinatsu is hardly near the genkan before her father’s voice drifts back at her.

“You are not wearing that outside.”

It does not take much for them to get into fights nowadays, so she is surprised he was ill prepared for her snivelling and theatrics. It usually worked, especially if her mother was not at home, and her brother was preoccupied entertaining Taiga-kyōfu, so at the moment, she only needs to take care of her easily guilt-ridden father to slip out the door and back before nightfall.

Chinatsu almost finds it funny—if not exasperating—that he father falls to defeat by her tears, that while she is thinking this, she is looking down at his bowed head and the door opens up from behind her. she inwardly curses; her mother has arrived.

“Why is there so much noise? You’re disturbi— Daiki, what are you doing?”

Her mother’s incredulous tone brings out a frowning redhead who slaps his hand on his face. The way his hand is placed, Chinatsu almost wonders if it is to block the ridiculous sight of the man begging her with his head on the floor to be listened to.

“Man up, you loser. She’s your child,” Taiga-kyōfu tells her bent father, arms akimbo. “She has no other choice but to listen to you.”

Chinatsu as well as her parents look at him, as though he would spring into a song and dance, and maybe also wave around a Mary Poppins’ umbrella. “What?” he asks in a confused manly pout. She would have called him on it, but now hardly seemed to be the right moment.

“Oh, let him deal with it,” her mother says, pushing past them all. “Maybe you can learn something from him, dear,” she looks straight at her father, still on the floor.

“From Taiga?” Confused, father’s eyebrows scrunch up unpleasantly, as if her mother just insinuated that he was less of a man and the father figure he was supposed to be around here. Looking at him now, even she would refer him to the only standing male species in the area. Too bad it was Taiga-kyōfu. Behind the male, Taichi is hovering, expression deeming the outcome of the scenario in his head was doomed from the moment their godfather showed his face. Glancing down, or maybe when their father lost face.

Her mother smiles at Taiga-kyōfu, saying in a gentle voice Chinatsu knows is not really gentle, “Daiki has to learn the ropes some time, right?”

Her mother, Chinatsu affirms, is definitely smart; if a fight has to brew, let it be between them and not the elder woman.

Chinatsu father moves, giving Taiga-kyōfu enough room before her, stays on his knees. She too keeps her stance not because of anything but the apprehensive look on Taiga-kyōfu’s face. She might be a lot of things, but a part of her always ends up staying put to listen to his gruff voice commanding her to listen.

Taiga-kyōfu starts with “You’re too young to wear that outside, is all your father is saying, Chinatsu,” He shrugs one shoulder as her mouth moves. “Maybe when you are older, sure.”

Chinatsu’s mouth drops into a frown. She hates this when you are older, crap. “Yea, and how old is that supposed to be?” Using all her thirteen year old spite, she places her arms on her hips, a part of her wondering if what she is wearing is really that bad.

“Old enough to defend yourself.”

The words are enough to cause another furrow to be added to her forehead. “I’m old enough to defend myself now,” she says in a tone that shows she is mature enough to be trusted to take care of herself.

She almost wants to say so what if I’m a girl, I can still—

“Yea?” the tone is lazy, but Taiga-kyōfu’s eyes speak volumes of what he does not say. She hardly has time to see the reactions on the other’s face as her kyōfu spreads his arms wide before him, stepping closer, until mere feet away. “Try to take me on.”

Chinatsu glowers first in confusion. How was she supposed to take him on she does not understand but Taiga-kyōfudoes not stop moving closer, and involuntarily, she does not move because one by one, her limbs freeze. The mere feet that distanced them was now down to a viewable three. One gulp later, Chinatsu all but breaks down, quivering unconsciously, eyes wide with fright.

She sees Taiga-kyōfu’s eyebrows shoot up in silence, and she darts her eyes down, realising she is freaking crying over nothing, you idiot girl Chi!

Her father shoots up in what seems like slow motion, back rigid as he tugs her into his body, Chinatsu’s face hidden from her kyōfu’s sight.

She feels cold in the warm embrace, fearing more to come.

“You can’t even look me in the eye for more than a few seconds,” Taiga-kyōfu continues in a voice that is still loud enough to hear, but not as soft as a whisper. “Will this be the same reaction when someone comes to you with force?” She jerks in the warm arms, thinking about a shadowed man rushing to her, arms wide at his sides. “Holding a weapon?” The same man, this time with a wicked looking dagger.

She is shaking so much, her father holds her tighter to his chest, muffling her cries.

“Enough,” he says.

“I care about you and I have never once laid a finger on you, but you still burst into tears,” Taiga-kyōfu relentlessly continued on.

“I said, enough.”

As though not hearing her father’s soft command—or was that a plea? – Taiga-kyōfu resumes, “You’re mistaken if you think anyone besides your father will stop from hurting you if you shed those tea—“

“Kagami!!”

Taiga-kyōfu stops mid-word at her father’s loud voice that surrounds them in a roar, shaking in Chinatsu’s chest and head. The house is stomped with silence so loud that nothing but the chill of her heartbeat makes noise. She holds her breath for a moment, hiccups and cries, and she does not know what she is scared of anymore.

“…I’ll leave now. I might have over stayed my welcome.” She wants to stop him and apologise, because the way he said those words, they sounded like a lifetime was ending, and nothing was starting back up. she tries to move, but her father’s hold is so tight, she has to keep her arms in between them to breathe or else suffocate. It is a distant thought that her father is more upset than she is, and as Taiga-kyōfu slips aside them, she squiggles one arm free to grasp onto the passing man, but he is already too quick.

From the corner of her eye, she sees his back, almost similar to years ago when Taichi ran away. Only this time, he does not turn to cheekily smile at her.

This time, he just leaves.

Her father releases her, dropping his arms heavily against his sides, staring at the closed door with a blank expression. His eyes though, she categorises, is swirling and a mess, and there are no words she can think up in her thirteen year old mind to better explain the warring emotions, just that this man before her is not her father.

He turns then, moving past a flinching Taichi who no doubt still cannot get over a frightful male, and their father heads to the bathroom. A few minutes later, the shower can be heard.

Her father stops talking about Taiga-kyōfu on the regular.

Chinatsu stops going out with her friends.

Chinatsu remains on edge then, whenever a tall boy comes close to her. She knows it is foolhardy and stupid to be scared of someone not her kyōfu, but it is difficult to calm her heart down and stop the buckets of sweat she seems to be made up of when her male classmates come to hand her notes or request for her homework or generally pass by her desk.

She has never been so afraid of other people and it, frankly, makes her sick.

It is a few weeks then, when she has P.E. duty to return the hurdles they were using back into the storeroom, when she stops to see a building with its large wooden doors shuttered. She has seen the building before—many times—but she has never really thought about its existence until now. She does not know why it calls for attention, but she disregards it when the other two helpers follow her.

“What’s wrong?” Erizawa-san asks her, leaning against the hurdles she was carrying to take a short break. “Is it too heavy, Aomine-chan?”

Chinatsu ignores the name as usual—she hated being called Aomine-imōto even more—and jerks her head towards the double doors. “What’s this place?”

“Hm? The Archery dōjō.”

Chinatsu’s heart dies down, suddenly not interested anymore. “Oh.”

The other girl, Date-san, shares a look with Erizawa-san and they shrug. “Were you looking for something else?”

“I thought it could have been a storeroom, or something. Or maybe another dōjō; like for martial arts.”

Date-san snickers, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth despite the monstrous strength she portrays holding the hurdles with one hand. “That’s on the other side, doofus.”

Chinatsu looks surprised.

Throughout the rest of the day, she spends looking out her window, imagining what a martial arts dōjō looks like, or what they spend doing during club time, that she gets pulled up in two classes for daydreaming. Making up her mind, she thinks she will observe this mysteriously appearing dōjō and see for herself what kind of martial arts they do.

It takes her another week before she manages to peek into one of their practices. Since it is middle school, they still have common club room for both sexes, so Chinatsu does not feel awkward staring into the slightly ajar shoji doors. Ad minutes add up, there is nothing she likes about the sport and her previous energy dissipates into a hollow pit in her stomach.

Sighing, she straightens and turns to move away, planning to wander back to her basketball club and feign having stomach cramps like some of the girls have already started complaining about. She figures that it probably has something to do with what they were calling menstrual cycles and cramps and all that, but she was told her mother was to help her with it. Chinatsu mentally shrugs off the thoughts like she does on a regular basis.

On turning, thought, she stops short at the lean body of a boy she does not recognise, casually panting against the water taps, dousing his head in water. When he straightens to his full height though, Chinatsu almost replaces him with a shadowed figure, holding a knife and hearing her kyōfu’s voice. The minute the sound registers, she shakes her head.

That is not real, she thinks to herself, forcing her eyes to concentrate on the lanky boy who has noticed her.

“Yo,” he greets in what appears to be a cool manner. Since her father sometimes resorts to this greeting, she cannot help but think, so old! “Taichi’s little sis, right?”

“What gives?” she asks, because they do not look alike. Heck, we don’t even act anything like each other!

The boy shrugs. “Seen you around. Sometimes you guys head back together.” It is a reasonable explanation, but the same could be said if the two of them were dating. She narrows her eyes at him. “Some of the guys in class asked if you were his girlfriend and he only said to keep away.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

“Yea, kind of difficult to see it, right?” he laughs, and while it is a pleasant sound, she cannot help the chills on her arms and the cold sweat trickling her body. She tried to breathe in calmly when she noticed she was panicking. “Aren’t you supposed to be in club now?”

Chinatsu frowns, wondering how much the boy knew. She could point out every friend Taichi had and those were unsurprisingly so few in number, that she could even tell where they placed in the school—nerd that Taichi was hung around with only the nerds. This boy before her, though, she does not recognise. Glancing at the white gi he is wearing, she also estimates that no, he’s not in the basketball club either.

The boy jerks towards the dōjō she was snooping around. “Waiting for someone?” she shakes her head in the negative. “Browsing?” He grins and she frowns back.

“No.”

“Oh well, it was nice chatting with you, little sis,” he says, realising the conversation would not go anywhere if she could help it. She watches as he bend down to untie his sneakers, walks over to the entrance, pulls them off and places them as neatly as he can to the side with the rest of the others. As he fully enters, a calls out a greeting.

An instructor who notices him, calls him over with a wave of his arm, and the boy jogs to him. They exchange a few words, and Chinatsu does not know why the air around them seems more electrifying than otherwise, before the instructor calls forth another boy.

A thrum of energy passes through her body as she watches, breath bated, the two boys bow in greeting, and then face off.

The hollow pit in her stomach fills up with nervous, energised butterflies and as the moments pass, Chinatsu forgets to even hide herself completely, staring as the boy she spoke with completely owns the other boy. Strangely piqued at the end of the match, she moves away from the dōjō.

She is restless even when she goes home, demanding a basketball match with her brother who ploughs her down numerous times. Even then she is unsatisfied, going to sleep in frustration that keeps her up until there is nothing on her mind to make her stay awake.

She sleeps and dreams of throwing a boy over her shoulder and kneeing him in the solar plexus, a wide grin on her face, and she has never woken up completely happy to be a girl.

So it comes to pass that Chinatsu drops out of the girls’ basketball club and enters the Jujitsu dōjō as a newbie. The teacher is surprised at her decision—she was their only centre in the basketball team—but allows for her to resign. The instructor, however, has mixed feelings but quickly changes his mind when Chinatsu shows him how agile and quick-witted she was.

And how easily she soon outdoes her male senpai that have been training for two years more than she has.

But Chinatsu does one thing that makes her feel like she is the worst daughter in the world; she hides the fact that she has dropped basketball from her father, knowing it would break his heart. She also does not tell Taichi, believing that there are some secrets to be kept from the other twin.

She cannot even confide in her mother because she was a tattletale, so she has three other options: Tetsu-kyōfu, who is just as scary as both her parents; Suki-kyōbo, who has her days; and Azami-kyōbo who, frankly, scares Chinatsu for her boisterous nature.

The only one left is Taiga-kyōfu, but that is beyond an option for her; she is technically the reason her father has remained in a sour mood for more than a few days that it has become an unvarying occurrence for mother to say at every meal: “Have you called Taiga-san today?”

Her father has even stopped growling at the utterance of his name.

Steeling herself to the inevitable, she rushes home to finally tell her father. If it worsens things at home, she will get Taichi to help her apologise to Taiga-kyōfu, as she has started to miss the big ruffian.

The first thing her father asks is “Are you happy?”

Chinatsu wonders if it is a trick question.

He continues to stare at her, blue eyes dark and hard, frown lines on his face suspiciously smoothened out.

“Well, Chinatsu?”

The utterance of her full name causes her to jolt a bit, wondering if her ‘coming out’ was the icing on the cake for her father’s temper and bad mood to blow up in everyone’s faces. She steels herself for the inevitable tongue-lashing and—even the frightful no you can’t take up martial arts—Taichi’s confused expression somewhat eases her enough to take a deep breath.

“Yes, father,” while her voice is soft, her conviction is strong. “But I did not mean to hide it from you.” Taking a leaf from Taiga-kyōfu’s book never hurt anybody but himself, apparently, so she is surprised when a rueful smile filters on her father’s grim lips.

“Then you’re a martial arts baka, what’s the harm?” He spreads his arms wide and hesitantly, she walks in between them. Her father hugs her tight, placing his chin on the crown of her head as he holds her flat against his chest. She can hear the uneven beating of his heart, slow but steady, and to her it sounds more forlorn than she thought it would be. Maybe her decision was wrong for the family, she thought, but as they pulled away, a large grin that lit her father’s blue eyes took over.

“So when’s your first match?!” He demanded.

Chinatsu becomes a shodan by the time she has to start High School. All through the end of middle school, she focuses on the martial art afterschool club, attends extra classes at a dōjō near to the house, and it is only a shock to those around who were always waiting for her to fail one day and come home saying she was quitting, when she proclaims she wants to become a professional martial artist.

Her father’s quips of joy are the only vocal exclamations she gets for her news. Taichi had laughed, shaking his head, but had patted her head as he passed her by to start packing to leave for his spring break before High School officially starts. Her mother keeps her frown on her face throughout.

“We will discuss this further,” she says finally.

Chinatsu wants to scowl and snap and say words, but she does not. Instead she stuffs her mouth with breakfast, and rushes to bother her brother before he leaves.

She still has not built up the resolve to face her Big Kyōfu.

The year is slightly awkward for a lot of reasons.

Taichi’s growth spurt hit an all new high when he reaches close to father’s height and his voice changes to that of father’s mellow and nasally pitch. Because Taichi hardly drawls out the way father speaks, he sounds sinfully pleasant that her classmates always line up beside her to get his attention.

Unlucky for them, the twins had decided before High School started that they were going to not interact more than necessary. This way, Taichi had a reason to deny his male classmates from putting in a good word for them, and Chinatsu could glare at the girl who bothered asking her to play messenger. It works, but it is still uncomfortable to hear why their sibling was to die for!

Barring that, Chinatsu is one of the ten girls in their club, and it makes her sad that she does better than her senpai to the point where she is the best practitioner they have. They do not have an instructor, so she suggests going to the dōjō she uses. Without noticing, she is dubbed the captain of the club, and the club advisor calls on her to relay club news.

Taichi, though, hardly cares if there is no one to fight him for ace position or not, single-mindedly practicing day in and day out even if he was better than everyone in the team. He gets put on the team as a starting player by the time first term finishes, and the games are going to start. Their father is the only one who jokingly says it was God’s gift for their birthdays, and they pretend that his dad jokes will wear off sooner rather than later before one of them says something sardonic to him.

It is in this spirit, they wait for phone calls from family as their birthday rolls around, and remain waiting with a confused disposition when the usual first caller has not done his deed of the year.

Chinatsu checks with her brother first, wondering if maybe they were still yapping away to find said twin staring at his phone as though waiting for it to sprout wings and fly away. She clutches her own phone, understanding the situation without really needing to ask. What surprises her though, is that Taichi tries to let the disappointment roll off his shoulders.

“He might be sick,” he says.

Chinatsu frowns.

The best way to really know is their father who, despite always being in some form of argument with their Big kyōfu, knew exactly where he was at all times of the day, at all times of the year.

So it went to show that something was up when her father looked back in surprise at her.

“He didn’t call yet?”

She shook her head.

And father’s face turned into an ugly scowl. She hates when he does that.

“I’ll see why,” he dismisses her, getting off his back and looking for his phone. Instead of calling at home, he heads for the closet near the genkan, pulls out a sleeveless hoodie and storms out of the house.

Three hours later, he informs them that they can head on early to California this summer around. Chinatsu does not need to hear the unsaid because your godfather is a fucking ass.

Despite this, she does not go, intimidated to see her Big kyōfu for such a reason as missing her birthday. For Taichi, she can understand, but her stomach clenches weirdly and she is afraid that he will push her away. So she fabricates a training camp, packs her bags and head out on the same day her father and brother leave. She comes home and informs her mother that the inn they were heading to double booked, so they changed venues to school itself.

Her mother does not question her, shoulder stiff, back still facing Chinatsu.

Two weeks after, Taichi is a little apprehensive with the details, but he says Taiga-kyōfu was under the weather. She believes him because Taichi cannot lie to save himself.

The next year, kyōfu does not forget; she wakes up blearily to receive his call and has an almost stunted conversation with him. Taichi, though, does not stop talking even when she loudly hollers that it’s three in the morning, Tacchan! Don’t make me come there!!

“Shut up! You’re being noisy!” comes through her walls.

“You’re the noisy one! I need to wake up early tomorrow, oh wait, it’s already tomorrow!!”

Instead of Taichi’s raised husky voice, all she gets in return is her father yelling, “The fuck is wrong with you two?! Go to sleep!”

Chinatsu does not get a chance to apologise for being the difficult child everyone tells her she is until after she watches, wide-eyed and mouth agape, Taiga-kyōfu tell the world he was sorry that he did not meet the expectations of his fans and that he would retire from professional basketball as a player of any kind. Her heart stops because—she never really got to see him in action since all those years ago, and now it seems that she never will.

Heart in pain, she turns to see her brother jadedly scribble more answers into his worksheets without questioning the contents of the interview.

She is brought out of her confusion when a loud noise of glass breaking fills the air besides the television and the reporter, and Taiga-kyōfu replying to questions with ‘It’s more of a personal matter rather than a health issue. I am perfectly able, but there are other things that I have to do which basketball—and you have no idea how hard this is for me to admit—has stopped me from being able to do.’

Chinatsu glances from the two-dimensional, pinched smile kyōfu has on to the (possibly) dying look on her father’s face. It is positively alarming, and she wishes her mother was there to attend to this bizarre, almost waking nightmare, and father falls to his knees, clenching his chest like his heart is giving up on him.

Chinatsu hardly realises how true her thoughts are until months later, but that is a different story for a different time.

“Father?” She cries, rushing to his side. But the man hardly bats an eyelid at her as he continues to pay rapt attention to the stern-faced kyōfu on television, glassy-eyed and jaw useless, that it feels like she is ten years old all over again and hating her kyōfu for trying to kill her family member by being so careless.

Chinatsu wants to cry out a series of questions, but the only one that is voiced out is, “What’s going on, Tou-chan?!”

Father, as usual when pertaining to important things, is tight-lipped and unforthcoming to the details. It makes Chinatsu hate the situation even more.

In the evening, her father has moved even faster than she has seen in his game and is already on a flight heading to see her big blundering kyōfu, Taichi scampering behind like a bodiless shadow, and none of her questions—when finally voiced—were answered.

She is clearing her boxes, sorting it, and finds more embarrassing crap than she ever wanted to see again in this lifetime.

Packing away eighteen years of your life to take away to college was daunting. She almost wanted to refuse to go away, but the thought of commuting for averagely five hours a day stops the thought in its making. She is done with wild mornings, condescending greetings from her mother, and goading her brother into being her sparring partner. The fact that he is becoming good at block her annoys her, but then again, so does many other things about her elder twin.

Chinatsu stands from her crouch near the back of her cupboard, remembering her father telling her about the documents he kept of their younger schooling years in organised boxes at the back of his own closet space, so she drags her feet to do the deed. There is a slight fear that she will end up doing the actual organisation for him instead.

She finds the boxes easily, pulling them open and heaving small stack of papers and books tied together. She snaps open one stack, spilling the papers and frowns at her clumsiness. When she shuffles through the papers, she finds one of her childish writings on it.

“I have three chi chi. One is my chichi, who gave birth to me. The other two are chichi’s really good friends, but they are really so different. One is as big as chichi, so he is daichichi, but he does not like that very much so we call him kyōfu. The other one is small, so he is chisachichi, but he also does not like that very much so we call him kyōfu too.”

Chinatsu laughed at it, rereading the lines she wrote as a child.

Taichi pops his head in, curious.

“You said you would be done soon,” Taichi accuses her, glaring from the doorway.

She ignores the reprimand, waving inside. “Come here.” He does not budge, frowning very similarly to father, and little like Taiga-kyōfu too. It is a daunting mixture and she hopes he gets out of it soon otherwise he will learn how to use that face of his to get her to obey. Chinatsu is infinitely glad they are heading to two different Universities.

“See what father kept of mine.” Taichi obeys at the weird reasoning, entering and kneeling beside her. Then on reading the short script, rather than laughing, he frowns.

Chinatsu, not expecting such a reaction, scowls at him. “Okay, okay! I know it isn’t perfect and there are some glaring katakana mistakes, but I was a child for god’s sake!!”

Taichi scrunches his eyebrows at her, a look that states she is an idiot and the world does not revolve around her. She huffs, turning away with a pout, bringing her arms to her chest in mock indignation. “I was thinking about the time we stopped calling them dai-chichi and chisa-chichi,” he said in a softer tone than was necessary.

Chinatsu brushed it off. “They probably just didn’t want kids harping at them like birds.” She starts to pile the papers up and string them together to be placed back into her father’s storage box, but Taichi does not relinquish the child’s script.

“Where did you get this from again?”

She pats the pile. “Dad’s stuff.” Taichi moves closer and undoes the string she spent a few minutes trying to tie—it was old and needed replacing but she was too lazy to look for more—and he spills the papers on the expanse of the floor.

Chinatsu cries out, stunned. “Idiot! I just cleane—”

“Shut up for a second,” he commanded, not raising his voice. Huffing, she crawled closer to watch Taichi haphazardly gather papers strewn across the floor. “Are these all you found of his?”

“Hmm,” she hummed, looking to her side and then the box that she had not touched yet. “There this and that left,” she pointed dutifully, interested in what the wimp was doing.

Taichi goes about to remove everything. There are a dozens of dozens of their work piled and dated, and little scripts written about their family, all in katakana. She laughs.

“This is Tou-chan’s alright!”

But Taichi does not. If anything, he collects everything in vicinity.

“What are you doing?” It is here that he grins, wide and full, and almost like Taiga-kyōfu that it steals her breath away. Spending so much time with his was making him slowly copy the elder’s mannerisms. Soon she would be worried when he decides to change his name to suit his role model even more.

“I’m going to show this to Taiga-kyōfu!” And forgetting that they had to leave in a few hours, her twin runs out.

“Hey! If they ask me to, I won’t pack your boxes, you hear?!” She scowls, standing up and kicking the closest box away from her.

Chinatsu spits out the drink with such force, it makes her choke and gasp for the suddenness.

“Oh my god, you scared me, I thought it was Taiga-kyōfu.” She accused on passing, turning back to her bottle, before snapping her neck back to see that grin on his face. “Oh my god,” she repeated, discarding her drink and rushing to his side, grasping on the tuffs of hair like it was fake. “What have you done?”

“Looks good?”

“You look like kyōfu!”

“Hehe!”

“Has mother seen this? Has dad?”

“Nope, not yet.” He stretches and grins down at her. She hates that she stopped growing a long time ago. “I’ll be heading to the camp now, though, so they’ll only see me later.”

Chinatsu stops him before he can make his getaway.

“Oh no you don’t!” she grabs a fitful of the jacket he wears and pulls on it, using much more force than she estimated and he stumbles back into her. “Stay,” she coughs out past the weight on her chest, “and let them see your complete fascination with kyōfu.”

“Are you trying to get me killed?” Taichi wheezes out instead, tugging at his collar that chokes him. She releases his jacket, watching the colour come back into his face, and now, upside down, she takes in how the haircut is also very similar.

“This is creepy,” she mutters, hands on her hips. Taichi stands shakily, dusting himself off as he turns to face her, mirroring her stance. “You look like Tou-chan’s and kyōfu’s child, aho.”

Instead of scowling and calling her names, he grins. “Yosh!” he enthuses and her eyes widen again. “So it works. You fell for it, which means it’s convincing enough.” He pulls out his phone and hands it over to her. “Here, take a picture of me.”

“Why?!” she asked, incredulous. “That’s gay, so do it yourself.” She swats his hand away.

“Okay, then I’m leaving,” he threatens, moving quickly around the kitchen isle. She growls, flying over it in one smooth motion, falling into his back and tackles him against the wall. It is also the same exact moment their father calls out, “Tadaima!”

Chinatsu feels Taichi stiffen in her hold.

Her father looked part comical part pitiful with his mouth hung open like that.

Chinatsu had hoped he would laugh and then cry along the lines of him being disregarded as the father since Taichi was so taken up with their godfather. But the man does neither.

Strangely, anger sets into her veins at the lack of reaction. She glances at Taichi and sees a confident stare right at their father who is still motionless. Maybe he broke something? She is almost going to tap him when a shaking arm reaches forward to Taichi and gently strokes his hair from the side. This instantly brings the hair to the front, short bangs before his forehead similar to the old pictures they had around of Taiga-kyōfu.

“You…coloured your hair?” His voice dropped low, stating the obvious, and she almost wants to produce a quip to break the weird mood.

“No,” Taichi says, and Chinatsu feels a laugh bubble in her throat, thinking her twin feels the same, until she notices their father turn pale and Taichi hardly blink. Then, “I went to a professional to get it done. I’d mess up on my own.”

Chinatsu is pretty sure, by now, that she is out of a loop everyone but she is in on.

Their father withdraws his hand and clenches it, before he turns and moves away.

“It looks good,” is his take on it.

Weeks later, when Taichi is subbed in for the first round in a bracket, their mother has a conniption fit that does not end until Taichi comes home months later.

Chinatsu cannot help but really want to know what is happening with this family of hers.

Standing on the tatami of the world stage, she is nervous and sweating, her heart pumping so loud, she cannot even hear if her own name was being called out or not. The only other noise is the shrill sound of the bell, but another match has started parallel to the one she went on her knees to sit at, waiting patiently.

It was not like she could do anything else.

Murmurs surrounded her, no noise of cheers could be voiced, so onlookers remained restrained in their seats, watching with bated breath and withheld energy. She briefly wonders how her father, Suki- and Azami-kyōbo are dealing with this, considering they used to be the most vocal out of everyone around. Ryō-ji could not make it; the baby was sick again and he was such a worrywart despite it being the second time around he was a father. Midori-sensei was sitting far off to the right, with a discoloured flag held in the crook of his elbow. Akashi-san was…

Chinatsu tried not to look at the special seat the smaller redheaded man had with two men in black suits two steps behind him stood. It was a disconcerting sight, so she stopped her neck from turning to meet his.

Her mother, as usual since she had started, was not one of the spectators.

She did not know what her father was thinking when he invited them all, only that it was far from embarrassing and more nerve-wracking. With all of them present it was putting so much pressure on her, she wished she had Taichi’s graces of remaining calm when in dire situations.

Thinking of her brother made her think of the man who would, as apparent to many of their recent functions, absent from the tournament. Chinatsu had long since made amends that Taiga-kyōfu would not show his face to her ever again—he hardly showed his face to anyone these months—and since Taichi could not be here today, there was really no reason for her to wonder about him showing up.

Why would he?

As she waited, the thoughts of the previous years started piling like one great wall, brick after brick, layer over layer. Many may think of puzzles but Chinatsu thought of brick walls that were tall and hard to scale, sometimes with graffiti, and sometimes with chipped bricks and missing pieces. This wall she built today was plain in its glory, fire brick in colour. It stood tall and imposing, so like her kyōfu that she is surprised her mindscape would build something in the likeliness of the man she cannot relate with on the same level.

Just as she was mentally pushing all her unease behind this wall, her eyes caught sight of red on the opponents’ spectator stand.

Chinatsu held her breath.

Sitting taller than anyone in the box, Taiga-kyōfu looks straight at her with a benevolent smile on his face. He raises one hand to place in front of her face, apologising for what she does not know, until he mimes that he is sitting in the wrong side. Instantly, all the muddled thoughts and feelings sweep themselves behind the wall that is now looking more and more like the person sitting high up in the small stand, grinning at her. he brandishes two peace signs, like a child, and a surge of emotion swells up in her, cruising so quickly to her head, she chuckles out and emulates him by sticking out her tongue at him, waving her peace signs before her.

Taiga-kyōfu’s mien is brilliant, haloed in the overhead lights, face taken up with his grin, and Chinatsu cannot help but think it shaves off years on his looks.

The ease she holds in her body carries on with her during the tournament.

Chinatsu is the youngest female qualifier to move onto the next round. The fact does not register with her much, vibrating with energy to be done with the glamour of winning her sets and running away.

There is a man standing shy of the crowd, looking on, and she wants to run up to him and throw her arms around his neck, and the impulse confuses her, but she does not stop from following through.

His surprised laugh resonates with her, and he holds on tighter.

“Congrats!” he beams at her. “You looked amazing there! A small giant indeed!” He uses the nickname everyone has started to give her, normally hating it—there were so many giants in her life, and she was almost saddened she could not point out to Atsushi-ji to them—but from her kyōfu, she will allow him to call her whatever.

“Thank you,” she says, and he tilts his head in confusion. “Thank you. If it weren’t for you, I would have never tried martial arts and never changed. So thank you!” She is crying, she knows, but the redhead smiles, huffs a laugh and squeezes her small body even more in his large hug.

As the others come around to them, she is released, and the first one she really notices is Tetsu-kyōfu who is being poked from behind by Akashi-san. Tetsu-kyōfu has a wry smile on his face.

“Please don’t jump on me. I don’t think I would be able to take you on,” he says, but she rushes him in the midst of him being cajoled and laughed on. “You’re choking me,” he says still, so she releases him with a pout. “You did well,” he also says, but she has a feeling it was not for her, eyes looking past her shoulder.

Chinatsu smiles and feels that her family is slowly coming back together.

They hear from the hospital in such a roundabout way, that Taichi holds her back from assaulting the attending physician. The man hurries off, scared and Taichi frowns down at her.

“Idiot, relax. Go ahead to his room, I’ll call everyone else,” he sighs, narrowing his eyes at her suspiciously before he moves away. Chinatsu glares at the No Mobiles Past This Point sign and harrumphs at it, turning to head to her father’s room.

Just a few hours back, while the man was taking his morning jog around their neighbourhood, a rushing salary man sped his car through narrow roads and almost ran over their father. If it was not for his quick reflexes and agile body, her father would have been dead by now. All he had to show for it was a concussion that required him to stay three days for observation.

“hey, walk quietly,” a nurse whispers harshly to her, and Chinatsu almost snarls at her before she forgets herself. Padding on her toes, she manages to make her way to her father’s room without another jab at her unladylike behaviour; she does not need another disapproving mother.

When she nears the door, she is a heartbeat away from opening the door when her mother, who had gone in earlier, spoke, “You still haven’t said anything to him?”

“What do you want me to say?” her father’s grumpy voice followed.

“Oh, I don’t know, how about, Taichi go dye your hair again to a normal colour.” Chinatsu would have snorted if the assumption that red hair was not normal meant that she was putting down Taiga-kyōfu’s hair. “He’s even behaving more and more like Taiga-san these days.”

Chinatsu frowned.

“Ah? And how’s that?” Even her father sounded confused. “Taichi’s the same brat you gave birth to.”

Her mother huffs. “Well, it’s not like I wanted to give birth to a son who could not calm down no matter what I did.” Chinatsu remembers the stories Ryōta-ji used to tell them, about how Taichi had been captivated by Taiga-kyōfu’s eyebrows from his birth. Raucous laughter always followed that, but she guesses that had been a witticism hiding the truth for what it was.

Her father sighs loudly, rustles following the sound. “Just be happy that someone was able to shut that wailer. I swear, if it wasn’t for Taiga, we wouldn’t have slept for three years!”

She almost chokes on laughter that is rising up again, going to open the door, but her body freezes when her father questions, “Is that why you never wanted more kids?”

It takes a while for her mother to respond. “I didn’t want to be insulted any more than I already had been for our first child. And now, that boy thinks he’s so funny, dying his hair red and acting like him. Who does he think he is?”

“Stop that,” her father says, trying to change her mood, probably. Chinatsu finds it awkward to enter now, and she curses herself. She does not want to hear anymore, but her feet are stuck strong to their current place, her fingers still curled on the handle. “There’s nothing wrong with Taichi imitating his role model. I’m just glad he chose well.”

“Easy for you to say,” she spits out, and it is the most unwomanly way she has heard her mother speak in. “You’re just happy that he looks to be your child with Taiga-san.”

Chinatsu cocks her head to the side. Huh? Why would dad be happy about that?

“My head hurts, can we stop this please? The children will be coming back any minute now.” Her father sounds tired.

“No!” her mother raises her voice. Chinatsu jerks back, leaving the door, blinking into nothing. “We always stop it. We always do things your way.”

“Well? What do you want to do then?” her father snaps back. This is the first time she hears her father react this way. Sure, he is always fighting with everyone but her mother, and as ugly the emotions are being stirred inside her, she has no backbone to straighten and walk into the room without keeping a straight face.

“I wanted a lot of things, but I didn’t get anything!”

“What?! You have a family you love and children you love, what more do you want? Money? All the money I have and make is yours, you know that! Power? Go fucking ask Akashi for that! There isn’t anything else I can give you!!” And in an almost quiet voice, breaking, “I gave you everything you wanted and now you still say you didn’t get it?”

There is movement inside that makes Chinatsu start up, opting to jump back in pretence that she was just closing in at the door, but nothing happens. Pacing?

“I didn’t want to name them that. Taichi, you imbecile! Chinatsu!! What were you thinking?!”

“I named them appropriately. Taichi after my grandfather, and Chinatsu after you!”

“No and you know it!” Chinatsu thinks of the kanji in their names, knowing that what her father says is true, so why her mother was making such a big deal was worrisome. Did they always fight so inanely like this? “Taichi after your grandfather? He must be rolling in his grave hearing your lie! I wanted to name them Daiya and Yoi, but you wanted to brand them with his name all over. Everyone must be laughing at how pathetic I am, can’t even stop my husband from naming our children after his whore!”

Chinatsu’s body froze at the same time her father’s voice roared out, “Taiga is not a whore!”

Instead, she snaps out of her trance and pulls aside the door, taking in the heaving battle going on inside. Both her parents crank their necks to look at her, both draining of colour.

“What…what are you guys talking about?”

Her mother is the first to regale the story of how a much younger innocent version of her, twenty one years ago, met her much vigorous, still basketball crazy and amazing player of a father in one of the classes that they both took in their final year in college. Chinatsu frowns at the image her head brings up, painting happy trees outside the window, birds chirping in the trees, and her parents as two students sitting on the same row of college, staring blankly at their books.

As her mother explains how they met—her father is nearly failing his course and if he hits the border, he gets pulled off the team no matter how brilliant a player he is, and her mother struggling to attend classes because she is so busy working two jobs to pay for rent—and it seems like a dream when her mother sighs out how she fell in love.

Chinatsu glances at her father. He is looking outside his shuttered window.

“Then, I find out your father…is gay,” the word she said sounded like a crime was committed, cruel and unforgiving, and she almost waits for her father to snap.

He does not.

“At the time, your… Taiga-san and your father were always seen together outside college. Taiga-san never went to ours, you see, and so it was usual for them to be joined at the hip.” Her mother pauses, considering. Chinatsu almost wants to blurt out don’t lie to me, just give it straight, but in the end, her mother sighs out, “And it wasn’t long before Daiki and I met at a drinking party. We became fast friends.”

If the story was going the way she thought it was, she was going to stop it. She really was. Even her father was tense, sitting on his raised bed, clutching the sheet on top, moving it this way and that.

“And one night, Daiki tells me about Taiga-san. And you should have seen him then,” her mother has a pleasant smile on her face, reminiscing. “But then I asked him, what happens after? And he didn’t know how to answer that.”

“After?” Chinatsu echoes.

“See?” Her mother laughs, “Even you don’t know. What comes after two same sex people get together? Nothing. There is nothing to gain from such a joining.”

At this point, her mother rants about how she continues to ask such questions to her father at their get-togethers, and how her father slowly understood that there was no point in continuing a relationship with Taiga-kyōfu because what they both wanted with each other—a family—could not come to fruition. All the while, though, she watches as her father loses hold of his bandaged head held high, turning to face his covered lap, glaring at his hands.

“And then, finally, after months of pursuing him, he asked me to marry him. A year later, you came into the world.” Her mother smile, raising her arms up and wide so as to hug her.

Chinatsu smacked her mother’s arms away, stunned. “W-what?” She stammered.

Her mother moved closer again, as though not computing that Chinatsu had rejected her touch. “You don’t understand everything, Chi-chan,” her mother was trying to pacify. Over her petite figure, Chinatsu caught her father’s distraught face at his little girl finding out truths of their past or whatever they were calling it.

Chinatsu made it obvious that she was not interested in being coddled by stepping back further and crossing her arms, grabbing fistfuls of her shirt in her hands. Clenching them tightly, she tried to beat down the rise of emotion threatening to make her cry, as she pursed her lips in order to look menacing. She did not feel the same though, and may they could tell, but it made her feel more in control of herself.

“You’re right, I don’t understand a thing you just said. I don’t know how you could even think of doing what you guys have done, because that is just not humane!” She snapped her head towards her father, completely ignoring her mother for the moment. “How could you do that to him?!”

“Chi, I, you don’t understand,” he started to say, left hand on top of the sheet curling around the material. Chinatsu had a vague feeling he was using it for support.

“I just said I don’t!” She snapped again. “Exactly what were you thinking when you cheated on kyōfu with mom?! I mean, it isn’t like I don’t know him and yea, sometimes I think he’s a prude and most of the time I thought he was being unusually cruel to Taichi and me, but now—!” Her breath hitched. “Now, it was us being cruel to him.” In that second, her vision blurred. Not realising the burning in her throat and her nose had amplified, trails of hot tears made its way down her equally hot cheeks and down her chin, falling off the edge and onto her bare arms, spattering.

“Chi,” her mother’s soft voice, once having such a soothing effect on her, made her head ache with undue stress. “Chi, it’s okay. See, we’ve all learnt from our past mistakes and moved on. I’ve forgiven your father, and I’m sure Taiga-san has forgiven us too, else why would he become your godparent, right? Now don’t be hysterical and calm down. You’re a girl, so you shouldn’t show such unsig—”

“Will you fucking stop that shit!!” Chinatsu roared out in the confining walls of the hospital room.

Outside, pattering of footfalls echoed until Taichi’s dyed red hair popped through the gap of the door, concerned eyes darting to each person in the room. Chinatsu could see the confusion since everyone was medically alright, but she was crying, her mother had placating arms raised and her father’s head was unnaturally bowed low towards his chest. “What’s happening?”

Chinatsu ignored the question; if she stopped to answer it, she knew that the tension going on in the room would dissolve and she would never be able to touch on this seemingly taboo topic again.

“The only person who should be doling out forgiveness if Taiga-kyōfu. He was the one being cheated on, you stole father away from him when obviously he was weak-kneed and confused,” she directed at the shocked elder female, who withdrew her arms as though burned. “And you, what were you thinking forcing kyōfu to be our guardian, huh? Putting us knowing of what it means to him, dangling the reason he could never be with you, shoving it in his face that Taichi and I will never really be his children?”

Her father did not even twitch. Chinatsu knew he was listening though.

“He comes through on all your requests. He’s there when our great-grandparents and grandparents passed away, he’s there when we don’t know what to do after we’ve made mistakes, he taught us to ride a bicycle, to swim, to cook, to deal with people, to be ourselves, and sometimes…sometimes I wonder,” her voice drops to almost a whisper, “Why isn’t he our parent, you know? He has done so much for us and what exactly have we done for him?”

Taichi moves into the room, closing the door behind him. He rests his entire weight on the surface, looking at her, before he takes in one deep breath and looks to her father. She is surprised by the reaction when Taichi fists his hands and stuffs them into his pant pockets, out of sight.

“I hated kyōfu because I thought he hated me, too. I hated kyōfu when I thought he almost killed Taichi once. I hated kyōfu when he refused to play basketball with Taichi, and then me. I hated kyōfu for making me scared of boys. I hated kyōfu when he stopped talking to Tetsu-kyōfu. I hated kyōfu when he gave up on basketball and I never got to see him play ever again. But what I hate the most,” she sniffed, mouth drawing downwards as she held her voice, “I hate myself the most because I didn’t know anything! I pushed at him, I pushed away his concern and his feelings and treated him like he was just another person in my life that didn’t mean much. Bu-but, but he’s the first person I think of when I need help, surprisingly…”

Taichi’s head nods in agreement, and she huffs a laugh at that; Taichi never really needed a reason to turn to Taiga-kyōfu, not like her when she messed up so many times, and all Taiga-kyōfu did was…hold out his arms and tell her what she did was wrong but not out of the realm of fixing it. How he would look at her disappointingly because he knew she was capable of much more, of how he had stepped in for her father to try teaching her that she was years too early to dress the way she was and now… “There’s something I want to say to him, and I never thought I would have to.”

Her brother looks up, a frown on his face that made him look more and more like Taiga-kyōfu. Internally she giggled, almost wanting to call him Kagami Taichi, but she knew it was stupid and she had worries she had to sort out now, though looking at Taichi…she wants Taiga-kyōfu to be there now.

Chinatsu looks back at her parents, now seeming so small and insignificant. “I- I learnt a lot from you, how to be a daughter, how to be a woman, how to be a family. But Taiga-kyōfu taught me how to be a real person, an individual not defined by my parents and someone who can think for herself, take care of herself. Whoever says that what your parents teach you are more valuable than what anyone else can teach you…they are mistaken. I know, to you, I will never stop being your daughter, your family, but to the world out there, they won’t see me as Aomine Daiki’s child, will they? Even if they do, for how long? They’ll look at me and see me for what I am. And I am what I am now thanks to Taiga-kyōfu’s selflessness. Taichi is Taichi because of Taiga-kyōfu’s selflessness.”

She chuckled hollowly at the distraught expression on her mother’s face. The woman had backed away, legs weak, falling to sit at the edge of the bed, swaying. The look of utter disbelief was apparent on her face—and while Chinatsu thought she might have overdone it a bit by completely writing them off—she was not sad that she caused this effect on her mother. Said woman had lived her life happily for years, unbeknownst to the pain that was building on everyone else’s hearts, the stain that was becoming bigger and blacker on Taiga-kyōfu’s soul.

Her father, though, she wondered when his neck would snap off. Or if he had died in her acclamations of life truths as she had learned them. He was still bent over, looking to be not breathing, left hand clenching the bed sheet so tight, his knuckles were a pasty white. He did not tremble or heave; he did not shake or shiver. There was just no movement.

“I’m sorry if you think I am unbecoming, that I am inconsiderate and insensitive. But the worse ones, I feel from an outsiders perspective, are you two.”

The fisted hand twitched. Her eyes held onto the sight for a second longer.

“I’m going to call Taiga-kyōfu and tell him not to bother to come over. You’re fine as it is. Like you always have been.” She made to move away, thinking she had done enough damage until the deep voice cut through the heavy air.

“Too late, I think,” Chinatsu’s head snapped at Taichi, who weakly chuckled as he moved away. The door opened instantly to show the drawn face of Taiga-kyōfu. The expression he held was foreign and she had never seen anything like it before.

As Taichi moved away to the side, giving ample room for taiga-kyōfu to walk in, Chinatsu’s blood froze. How much did he hear?

“You,” his gruff voice was missing the strong overtones that it naturally took, “had something to say to me, Chinatsu?”

Chinatsu gulped, holding the air in her lungs for one painful second before she blurted out, “You keep telling us to take care of ourselves, but I think you should take care of yourself first.”

What atmosphere that had been cut by his entrance to one of stalemate, broke when soft chuckles to full blown laughter erupted from Taiga-kyōfu’s mouth. He laughed long and hard, swiping a tear from the corner of his eye as he muttered out an “It hurts” and she was so confused. Wasn’t he hurt?

“You two,” he spoke, calming down with huffs of air and laughter intermingled, “really are twins. Such similar reactions.”

“Huh?” Chinatsu glance at Taichi who just shook his head as he shrugged, almost saying this is what I go through every time.

“Both you and Taichi, instead of focusing on other things, you worry about an old man like me.” His scarlet blazing eyes were warm and comforting, and even the laugh lines on his face were smooth and sincere; he apparently was not joking about what he was saying.

“You’re not old, daichichi,” Taichi muttered, cheeks puffing and glancing away, slouching his shoulders.

Chinatsu mentally backed up, eyes wide. The thought, when did he revert to calling him daichichi, was already formed before realisation dawned on her. So either Taichi was smarter than her and found out, or Taiga-kyōfu trusted her elder twin more with past knowledge than he did her, or it was Taichi’s own grievances that had made him rethink what Taiga-kyōfu meant and had decided to rightfully call the elder redhead what he was due.

“…you’re not old,” she echoed, and Taiga-kyōfu laughed.

“Don’t you call Daiki oyaji? How am I not old, then?” Chinatsu was flabbergasted at the almost comical turn of events—exactly how was the man able to laugh in this situation. Exactly how well was he hiding his pain.

“Kyōfu?” she called out, confused.

Taiga-kyōfu paused in his mirth to glance at her, eyebrows raised.

“…” Chinatsu was stumped. “Aren’t you…hmm?” She did not know what she wanted to ask anymore. Thoroughly baffled, she did not notice when her father raised his head and was looking at the three of them.

“What is it, Chinatsu?” was asked of her calmly. Her eyes darted to the side, catching clear dark blue eyes for a brief moment, before they resumed watching red eyes staring straight at her.

“I…don’t understand,” she mumbled, clenching the gym pants she wore, bunching it upwards as she balled the material in her hands.

Taiga-kyōfu released a gusting sigh as he walked closer to her, but still in arm’s length. The distance hurt her, but she could not completely blame him since she was partially responsible for it. For most of the reason their relationship was never fostered more than on a cursory level. Even though it was so, kyōfu still came to her, time and time again.

Even when she was such a horrible child.

A heavy hand rested on her head, mussing her straggly hair from side to side. She peeked upwards at the male, breathing shallowly. “You’re so difficult,” he complained, mouth drooping. “I don’t know how you became like this.”

Before she can retort the opposite, fat droplets squirted out of crimson eyes, kamikaze off his laughing cheeks. He blinked, clearly surprised. “Ara?”

With shaky hands, she reached up, wiping away the tears that kept sprouting out of his tear ducts unbidden. His own hands helped in getting rid of them, unsuccessfully, and he laughed, a choked sounding expression if she ever heard one.

“Kyōfu,” she whispered. She glances over at Taichi who is steeling himself from moving closer, and she wonders why. The closest person to his heart is crying, probably finding out for the first time in decades why he was thrown aside by her useless father. Chinatsu tries to beckon him closer, but her twin does not move, instead he is glaring steadfastly before him. At their father.

Angry at the man, though, she does not look over, concentrating solely on Taiga-kyōfu. She does not know what to do or say, and the loss of those reactions are eating her up. before she can decide on one, Taiga-kyōfu smiles brilliantly, huffing out a huge sigh.

“That was better than I expected,” he chuckled, almost sounding wry. He gripped her hands tight. “Every day, I wondered did I do something wrong? Did he tell me something and I ignored it? And the feeling of being not needed anymore…that was horrible.” He says that, Chinatsu thinks, but he still has a smile on his face. “Well what do you know? Your father’s a real aho!”

A surprised burp of laughter emits from her mouth. Behind them, Taichi’s mouth screws up contemptuously. To the side, her mother remains a broken shell, humour failing her. Chinatsu wonders if she not going to help makes her more than the horrible daughter she feels she is on a regular basis. But the hands that are wrapped around her own are warm, soothing and thrumming with energy that she has never felt before so she does not want to let go.

Not now, not ever. She has done it once too many in a lifetime.

“So I wasn’t disposed of.”

The words catch at his throat, and a fresh bout of tears flow. She does not stop these this time but she does smile sadly. Her kyōfu starts to bend downwards, knees weak, and she realises she is not so strong to lift him up herself. This time, Taichi does move, easily helping if not taking more of his weight, and Chinatsu is almost angry at herself for being puny.

“Fucking brat,” the words sound harsh in the silent room, and Chinatsu watches as a dark hand pushes against Taichi’s chest, coming in between her buckling kyōfu and brother. She glances sharply at her father who sends her a chilling glare and that was all she needed to take a measly step away. Another arm wraps in front of the redhead’s chest, and what they both needed to do, was done easily by the brainless concussed man in the room. “I never disposed of you.”

“Don’t call him that,” Taiga-kyōfu snapped weakly first, then mumbled out, clutching the arm before him, “And it sure felt like it.”

“I’ll call him whatever I want to,” her father returns, scowling, eyes trained on the man he holds in his arms like there had not been a day gone where he has not. Chinatsu blinks at the naturalistic image, then glances at her mother who had turned her face away from them. How she was able to stay in the room, Chinatsu does not know, nor can she hazard a guess as to why Taiga-kyōfu does not smack her father for the decades of pain inflicted on his being. “And I told you; I didn’t dispose of you. I fucking named you their godparent. You know what that means? A fucking parent given by god.”

Taichi chokes on air and she would have followed suit if she did not see Taiga-kyōfu’s face turn bright red.

“What the fuck?!” He stammered. “Do you hear yourself?!”

Scowling, her father clicks his tongue. A deep hue of heated skin flashes at her. She brings up her hands and clamps her lips shut. From dad jokes to this? Am I even awake?!

“Doesn’t it sound about right?” Her father asks, clearly confused as to why everyone was hating him. Chinatsu was sure if she put Taichi’s and their redheaded kyōfu’s brains together, a million things would fit on that list, but for now, the absurdity of his comment took the cake. “You were god’s gift to me. And you’re god’s gift to my stupid children.”

“I told you,” Taiga-kyōfu scowled, regaining his energy by dislodging their father and smacking him in the face, “Stop calling them stupid. You’re the only aho here, Ahomine.”

Instead of a retort, the darker male slumps into his stomach, hands reaching up to his face and groaning. “I’m a patient!”

“yea,” Taichi interrupts, “That’s the only thing really saving you at the moment.”

Time seems to freeze for a moment. Chinatsu feels disconnected and disjointed with the turn of events, anxious that she was the only one feeling this way in the room. Her mother must have given up all hope, but she knows her father at least a little more, and he would not ‘dispose’ of her the way Taiga-kyōfu thought he was until mere moments ago.

A sudden pressure on her right hand makes her start silently, looking down. Wearily, she looks at the owner who, despite the smile on his face and the ease of his shoulders, the grip on her fingers were hard and real, and painful. She would have pulled away, complain about the amount of strength used, but she does not. Just as her kyōfu needed to know this was not a dream, she needed to keep in the here and now as well.

“I…could never dispose of you,” her father mumbles, still crouching, head covered by his hands. “You wanted so many things I couldn’t give you then…so different than now. With her, with Natsumi, I could at least get you closer to children, you know?” His pitch is all over the place. “When she asked me what comes after, every day and every night, every time I saw you, I wondered, can I really give him everything we spoke about, dreamed about?”

Taichi looks away from him, but Chinatsu is glued to that bowed bandaged head, squeezing the fingers curled into her palm in pulses, assuring that yes, Tou-chan is really saying this, kyōfu.

“And then I saw you one day, looking at that stupid cooking book of yours, and you asked me, ‘If we had children, how many do you want?’ And I was like, what is this idiot on? Can’t he tell I don’t need any children if it wasn’t with him?”

Taiga-kyōfu drew in a deep breath. “You said five or ten, nothing more and nothing less.”

Her father chuckles. “Yea. I didn’t manage to get past two though,” he wryly informs. “Kind of difficult even though Natsumi tried hella hard.”

Everyone but the married couple frowned at the information.

“Aho…you…” it seemed even Taiga-kyōfu had times when he could not handle their father.

“I’m getting a drink,” Taichi mumbles, turning to leave.

“No!” Chinatsu cried out, surprising everyone, but more herself. She calms down by breathing slower, glancing at the man who looks up at her with dark blue eyes swirling. “Listen to everything now so that we can beat him up later,” she says.

“Stand in line,” their kyōfu quips. “It’s fucking long, but it starts with me.”

“You guys are cruel,” their father whines when Taichi agrees wordless by leaning against the wall, staring down at him. “But there’s really nothing else to say.”

“This…does not really change things much,” Taiga-kyōfu starts, he releases her hand to kneel before father, bringing steady hands up as opposed to those that held hears a few seconds ago, gently cradling their father’s face. Her mother is looking at them from her perch on the bed.

“Yea,” he father agrees, sombre. “I know.”

“I never…never really could stop loving you.”

“Yea,” the grin is all too superior, but his tone was the opposite. “I know.”

“Get well soon, aho,” Taiga-kyōfu almost whispers out, then, resting his forehead on the bandage going around the other’s head. “Cause I’m not going to forgive you so easily.”

“Whatever you want,” is whispered. “Whatever it is that you want.”

In a second, Taiga-kyōfu stands up, picking her father along with him. Wordlessly they move to the bed, and her mother moves off and away, standing at the foot of the furniture, refusing to really move. As he is pushed into the bed and tucked in, her father’s arm shoots out and grabs a hold of him. “Don’t…don’t run away again.”

Taiga-kyōfu swats the hand away, pouting. “I didn’t run. Besides, if I leave, no one can really hit you, now can they? If I don’t start, you’ll be scot-free to do as you please.”

“I’m serious,” Taiga-kyōfu stops chuckling at the tone then turns to face her. Chinatsu draws back in surprise. A large smile creeps onto his face.

“Protect myself first, huh?”

Gingerly, she nods, even though the question was rhetoric.

“Guess you’ll have to teach me some moves soon. We have to unite our fronts and all that,” he turns to face her mother, and the woman shirks back, looking away. “Right, Natsumi-san? Hit him a couple of times for being the naïve asshole he is for falling for tricks like that, and then making everyone suffer because he doesn’t have the balls to admit when he’s scared, will probably save us another decade or two of heartache.”

Her mother looks like she is afraid that Taiga-kyōfu is picking on her, but she can tell that is not the case. Her mother is just too afraid, just like her father probably was, years ago, unable to answer any of her formidable questions. She knows what her mother was like, hitting nerve after nerve, like she had tried to do with Chinatsu and her Jujitsu. Now, she is a thousand times glad that Taiga-kyōfu helped her strengthen herself against such attacks, both physical and emotional, and wonders if she can now give back to the man in the same way he had, devoting his lonesome life to their raising.

Taichi sighed loudly. “Well, thank god I already have a head start with the training,” he said, moving away from the wall. He points at the man on the bed, arrogantly, “You better be ready.”

The gulp is loud and clear.

Chinatsu does not find anything funnier than her father cowering in bed, for once afraid of his children and not the other way around.

She reaches out to grab her kyōfu’s hand in hers, and it is a whining of “Not fair, Chi,” that she gets from her brother. She sticks out her tongue at him, and almost has a skip to her step, and her kyōfu laughs at their childishness, nestled in between them. A hand is already reaching for Taichi’s, bit he is still making a fuss.

Chinatsu glances behind her shoulder and the sight she sees, is the most beautiful image she records in her head, of her father crying with a large grin on his face. It is then that she mentally agrees that Taiga-kyōfu was the parent God gave them in return for dealing with one idiot of a father and one conniving mother.

She grips the hand a little tighter, a smile on her lips.

They still had a long way to go after all.

Notes:

I feel like, I will be explaining/justifying myself a lot for this piece. OTL
Either way, all kinds of reviews and comments are appreciated. :(

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