Work Text:
Koemi Doumeki
As a child she never thought much about Watanuki's presence in her life, it seemed like just another natural part of her routine, going to school, watching television, playing with her friend who lived down the street, visiting her father at university during the break between the classes he gave, going to the shop.
Watanuki always smiled when he saw her coming to the shop accompanied by her mother or father, but there was sadness in his eyes sometimes. These days her father would tell her to go hug her uncle Watanuki, in retrospect she thinks her father would do so because he dared not do it himself as much as he wanted to.
She was the eldest of four siblings, two boys and another girl, children enough to guarantee that a lineage would probably be formed even if one of them died or simply decided not to have children. She was born to love him. Or at least to make sure he would never be alone.
She’s not sure if Watanuki knows about it or not, sometimes he catches her staring at him, smiles and says he would like her to talk more about what she is thinking, what she is feeling. That is unhealthy to keep so many things inside herself. And she thinks he's saying that to the wrong person.
Before telling her parents that she intended to do medicine rather than study folklore as they were surely expecting her to do, she often wondered if they would be disappointed or proud of this decision. When she finally tells them, she realizes it is not a matter of pride or disappointment, it was just a choice she had a right to make about her life just as they had made theirs.
Although still years later during her shift at the hospital she finds herself texting Watanuki asking if he needs anything, and even if he says no later she always ends up going to the shop to see how he is before going back home.
Soraka Doumeki
People always talk about how much he looks like his father. Uncle Watanuki never did that, he said that Soraka looks like his great-grandfather Haruka who sometimes talks to him in his dreams, that his smiles and temperaments are similar and that this was a good thing because his father's personality was a disaster (what even as a child sounded a bit fake since Watanuki had a clear preference for his older sister who was the most similar of all his siblings to his father).
But in fact he was more like his father and older sister than most knew, while they hid what they were thinking with their neutral expressions he hid with a smile. He liked that about himself, because if his emotions showed Watanuki would know that sometimes he hated him. He loved him too, of course, loved him more than he could ever hate, but that didn't change his other feelings and why they were there.
He met the girl who one day is going to become his wife in between the sophomore year classes when for no reason he decided to walk around the university science building and there she was carrying a lot more books than that she could handle when he offered to help her, and even before they reached her class room he was in love. In love in a way that just continued to grow with each day since they met, love that seemed to shape the world around them. In love in a way that his parents were not, at least not with each other.
He thinks he should have noticed this before, but only after that he came to see that the relationship between his parents was affectionate but never passionate, and worse than that they were content but not happy and living like that is okay, but accepting that it would be like this forever seemed too sad for him to even fully understand. And he knows who, even if unintentionally, is to blame for that.
He thinks one day he will get married and have children. And he won't take them to the shop, though it's hard to spend more than three days without going there himself. He hates to think of the face his parents and Watanuki will make when he tells them about that decision. But that won't make he change his mind. He couldn’t change the way he was made, or the things that happened in his heart, but ensuring that his children were not put in the same position, that was at least his choice.
Akane Doumeki
One morning when she was in high school she decided to stop by the shop to ask her father to sign some school permit that she had only remembered existed when she had already left the temple and was on her way to class. She ended up not going to the field trip, or school because when she got there she found that her father didn't spend the night in the guest room but in Watanuki's room. So she left and spent the morning wandering the city full of conflicting thoughts and feelings in her head. And of these feelings the most prominent was envy.
She hoped her feelings for the shopkeeper were just an inappropriate and fleeting crush, or a case of magical attraction as often happened among those with powers in that world. But the pain was too big, too visceral not to be real. As well as the quiet acceptance that followed.
She couldn’t show her love with kisses and caresses after all Watanuki still saw her, as all her siblings, as children and would probably be quite uncomfortable with that, or with words of devotion because these would only bring him guilt.
So she shows her love the way she can, as her father and mother before her she chooses her studies based on what would help Watanuki most.
Like her father and mother before her she goes to the store and talks to him, tries to make him smile and make his life a little less miserable.
Like her father and mother before her she marries and has children to ensure Watanuki will not be alone when she is no longer there.
Although she was one of the youngest, she was the first of her siblings to get married. A few weeks after the birth of her first child she took the boy to meet Watanuki, the baby who was whining and crying for hours calmed down as soon as he was placed in Watanuki's arms.
You will love him too, won't you? she thinks unsure if this should be counted as a blessing or a curse.
Hisaka Doumeki
He had all the powers of both his parents, he could see spirits and repel bad entities without even trying. But he couldn't see the shop, he knew his parents had been quite surprised by it. When they were holding him a few days after his birth and were taking him to be introduced to Watanuki they found only a vacant lot in the place that the shop should be. He can't even imagine the despair his parents must have felt at that moment, or the relief when after leaving him and his siblings with Obaa-san to realize that the shop was still there, that Watanuki was still there.
They tried to get him to meet Watanuki at other times but all he could see as he passed that street were two columns and the empty lot where his parents and siblings appeared and disappeared.
On his birthday his father always brought to him a gift from Watanuki, and even when it wasn’t his birthday sometimes Hisaka got things Watanuki had done especially for him like dishes he liked or gloves and scarves made in his favorite colors, and after he found out his taste for cooking the shopkeeper started sending him a bunch of his favorite recipes and special tips on how to prepare them. He usually thinks the shopkeeper probably does this because feels wrong not treating all his friends' children the same way, other times he thought that as irrational as it was Watanuki loved him even without having met him, loved him simply because he was the son of two people he loved so much.
On days when he is not working at the restaurant he often helps his parents and siblings on missions for shop customers. He meets Ame-Warashi and Zashiki-Warashi. The Oden Fox and Raishuu the god of thunder. But never the shopkeeper who they all know and who seemed to occupy so much space in the lives of those who cross his path. And then Hisaka goes home to his husband and sleeps in peace.
He thinks that one day he might be able to see the shop if he has a wish that only the shopkeeper can fulfill. And he feels a little guilty for hoping that this will never happen.