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“Huh, I thought I lost this,” Rantaro’s voice is wistful, and it’s not a weird thing to hear from him per se, but Shuichi still finds himself looking up from the pile of clothes he’s trying to sort through and quirking his eyebrows, wondering what it is that his boyfriend has found. It’s a bit difficult to see him around the half-packed boxes and stacks of mess that they’ve encountered trying to clean Rantaro’s room, but Shuichi spots him curled up beside his dresser with what looks like a thick photo album in his hands. Shuichi has never seen any pictures from Rantaro’s childhood, except the ones of his sisters that he carries around on trips to help find them, so his interest is piqued. Enough, at least, to justify taking a short break from the sorting.
“You have too much clothes,” Shuichi mutters, nudging a beige sweater with a socked foot as he gets to his feet. “I’ve never even seen you wear this,” he adds, frowning distastefully at the sweater in question. He likes sweaters, just darker coloured ones. Wearing beige is like skinning a white person and wearing them as a shirt. Not ideal.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Rantaro smiles, flipping through the album without looking up. “I have a lot of clothing that I never wear.”
“Heathen,” Shuichi grasps a pair of pants and throws it across the room at his boyfriend. Rantaro ducks, laughing, and tears his gaze away, meeting Shuichi’s eyes. “You’re a stereotypical rich boy. First world filth,” he’s just joking, of course; Rantaro likely has all of this clothing because it’s been gifted to him, or else it’s just piled up over the years. “We should figure out which clothing you want to keep and what I can steal from you and give to the thrift shop near Uncle Akifumi’s-- or to Kokichi,” Shuichi hums.
Rantaro chuckles. “I guess Kokichi does need some clothing, since there isn’t a surplus of things that he can steal from Kiibo,” he looks back down at his photo album a moment later, focusing hard on one of the pages. “Want to see? I figure it’s only fair since Mei blessed me with all of those bath pictures.” Shuichi groans, but walks over anyway-- he was already planning on doing so, after all-- hopping over something of a blockade of boxes before he reaches Rantaro’s side. Rantaro scoots in against the dresser to allow him space against the wall, but when Shuichi sits, he ends up leaning against Rantaro’s shoulder anyway.
The picture he’s looking at, currently, features a very young version of Rantaro (maybe three or four years old) with a butterfly perched on his nose. His hair is a bit longer than it is now-- no undercut or anything, clearly; that’d look kind of stupid on a three year old-- and curlier, his eyes wide and sparkling with amazement. Shuichi lets out a surprised laugh, leaning in to look closer at the picture. “You’re so cute,” he beams, and Rantaro scoffs, pushing him back from the album with a gentle hand.
“I don’t need to hear this after you called me first world filth,” Rantaro grumbles, but when he turns his face to the side, it’s clear that his cheeks are reddening, and Shuichi can’t help smiling wider. “Don’t make that face, I can’t be annoyed with you when you’re smiling like that,” Rantaro messes up his hair, as though in retaliation, but Shuichi only hums, looking down at the album. There are pictures of Rantaro’s other biological sisters on the same page; Kikuko, holding a matryoshka doll in both hands, Mina finger painting, Rui reading a book that’s bigger than her own head. They all have the same green hair, though Shuichi notices that there are subtle variations in their eye colours.
“Is this just pictures of your biological sisters, Rantaro?” Shuichi asks, reaching out to flip the page and revealing more photos of Rui. Her hair is so straight, it’s hard to believe she’s related to Rantaro (and Mina, who is downstairs right now, having just been brought home from San Francisco) with his wavy locks. But their smiles are similar. Slightly lopsided and full of energy. Rui was more of the quiet type, Shuichi heard, but in the pictures she seems delightful to be around.
“Nah, I think there are photos of everybody,” Rantaro hums, flipping through a couple pages. “See, here are Aki and Kei-- haha, Aki hated it when people took pictures of her,” he smiles, a fond, nostalgic look settling over his features, and Shuichi follows his gaze, laughing softly at Aki’s indignant look, her tongue sticking out at the camera. She’s around five or six in this picture, it seems, and Kei is at her side, her mouth covered with a hand as though to muffle her laughter. They both have identical shoulder-length blue hair in the photo, though Shuichi understands that Aki got a haircut when she was eleven, right before getting lost in New York.
“So your father married Miss Hagiwara first?” Shuichi reaches out to turn the page and Rantaro doesn’t stop him. Shuichi looks at a picture of Aki holding an infant Kikuko in her lap, a storybook open in front of them.
Quietly, Rantaro replies, “Yeah, that’s right,” and Shuichi glances back at him to see if he’s alright, but it seems like his softer tone is just because he’s distracted. His lip is curled, as though he’s remembering something. “Miss Nakamura next-- Tsubaki and Maemi’s mother,” he specifies, and Shuichi wracks his memory. Tsubaki was lost in Spain and Maemi was lost in Mexico City. “And then Miss Akamine, Hikaru and Satsuki’s mom, and Miss Hamada last, Kasumi, Koharu, and Mahoko’s mother.”
“It must have been rough with your father remarrying all the time,” Shuichi says. He looks down at the pages as Rantaro turns them, sees a picture of who he assumes is Maemi-- though, the picture gives him pause. “Uhm, Rantaro--”
“Maemi is AMAB,” Rantaro explains quickly. “I don’t know why we still have these pictures of her pre-transition-- well, I say pre-transition, there’s really not a lot you can do when they’re so young, but we were talking about hormone blockers-- really I mean before she grew her hair out and all that, but,” he shrugs. “She’d probably hate that we have these pictures now. Or maybe not.”
“Mm. We’ll have to ask when we find her, then,” Shuichi muses, smiling at a photo of Rantaro carrying Tsubaki on his back. It looks as though he’s complaining in the photograph, an annoyed look on his face, and the expression is really cute-- though nowadays if someone wants a piggyback ride Rantaro usually just smiles and lets it happen. The thought makes Shuichi sad. Rantaro isn’t a doormat, necessarily, but he definitely lets people get away with a lot. It had never occurred to him that it might not always have been that way. “Ah,” Shuichi notes the presence of Hikaru and Satsuki (Hikaru was lost in Vietnam, Satsuki in Germany), both with steely grey eyes and blonde hair. “Satsuki’s so little!”
“She was the second youngest after Kikuko,” Rantaro explains with another fond smile. “She really acted like it after Kikuko disappeared, too, the little brat,” despite his words, it’s evident that Rantaro doesn’t really think so. That’s how Satsuki got lost, too, if Shuichi recalls the story correctly. Everyone was really soft on her after Kikuko got lost-- Koharu especially, and Satsuki, a little troublemaker, somehow convinced her to sneak out. Poor Koharu. Shuichi notes the presence of Kasumi and her sisters in the next few photographs, meaning that Miss Hamada has been married at this point in time, and then Rantaro pauses.
“Ah,” Shuichi bites his lip. “This is the trip when Kikuko got lost, right?” He recognises the beach as Puerto Princesa because they’ve been there several times before. There’s a spattering of pictures of Rantaro’s sisters playing in the water-- though, noticeably, Rantaro and Kikuko aren’t present in any of them. “Who put this album together, Rantaro?”
“My father,” Rantaro’s voice is quiet. Shuichi thinks that this explains a fair amount, though; Rantaro wouldn’t put pictures from that trip in the album if he was the one who made it. As they move through the pictures, Rantaro’s sisters slowly disappear from them. Aki, Rui, Maemi, Kasumi… more and more of the photographs begin to feature Rantaro, though as the years pass, that sadness that always lingers in Rantaro’s gaze starts to appear more and more. (Whether or not this is something that Rantaro is picking up on, Shuichi can’t really tell. He’s not saying anything, just wordlessly turning the pages.)
On the second to last page, Shuichi sees a picture of Rantaro and Kei, standing together in San Francisco. This must be the trip when Mina got lost-- perhaps even right after it happened, because Mina isn’t present in the photograph, and Rantaro’s face is pressed into the top of Kei’s head. Kei’s face has that very same sadness woven into it, which is jarring on a fourteen-year-old… who even took this photograph? Shuichi stares at it for a long moment, wondering why Rantaro isn’t turning to the last page.
“This is the last picture,” Rantaro says after a while. “At least, that I can remember. We ran out of space in the album, but also, after this trip Kei and I went alone to Australia to settle a business-deal for my dad, and we were going to head to New York nest to look for Aki, but…” he shrugs, listlessly. “No use taking pictures if I’m the only one who’s going to be in them. I hear I’m not very photogenic.”
“You’re very photogenic,” Shuichi murmurs. “Just sad,” he brushes his thumb over the photograph, in its pocket, as though to reach out to the fifteen-year-old Rantaro of four years ago, attempt to ease his pain. So many losses in five years, every time Shuichi tries to think about it his brain short circuits. Rantaro is such a positive person, it’s easy to forget how tragic it is. “Hey, why don’t we take a break from the packing? We could grab Mina and go get ice cream or something, there’s that really expensive place that you like a couple blocks away, maybe--”
When Shuichi removes his hand from the page, the last page of the album flips, and it shouldn’t be a big deal considering that that picture of Rantaro and Kei is supposedly the last one, but there is… one more picture.
Shuichi doesn’t recognise the subject of it, though. The lighting is kind of bad, but he can still make out details; a woman in a hospital bed with straight brown hair, messy and plastered against her forehead with sweat, holding a bundle of blankets… actually, Shuichi thinks that’s a baby. Her eyes are hazel, and warm. Exhausted for sure, but warm, and bright with love. The baby is difficult to place, since they’re so wrapped in blankets, but they were clearly just born. There is someone else, half-out of the frame, but from the mop of green hair on his head… Shuichi suspects that it’s Rantaro’s father.
“Oh,” Rantaro breathes. Shuichi tears his gaze away from the photograph to look up at his boyfriend, notes the furrow of his brow and the slow, uneven way he’s breathing. His eyes are fixed on the album. “That’s-- I forgot about this picture,” he whispers.
“Is this your mother?” Shuichi asks quietly. Rantaro swallows hard and nods, reaching up to wipe his eyes. He forces a laugh, shaking his head. Shuichi bites his lip.
“Most of the pictures of her that still exist are in my father’s possession. We don’t talk about her a lot-- I think it’s still too painful for him, despite how many times he’s remarried-- but I didn’t think…” his voice quivers. “Sorry, I-- it was a long time ago and I barely even remember her, but…”
“It’s okay,” Shuichi whispers. He reaches out and moves Rantaro’s hand away from his face, lets the tears that have gathered in the corner of his eyes escape. After a moment, Shuichi leans in to kiss him on the forehead, and then near his eyes where the tears are falling, lifting both hands to the sides of his face to brush his hair out of his eyes, and then to cup his cheeks. “You haven’t seen these in a while, have you?”
“I forgot how many of them existed,” Rantaro smiles, an undeniably sad look, and Shuichi kisses him again, on the nose this time. “I’m glad I found this-- I should really reorganise more often, I just don’t have a lot of time to get around to it,” because he’s never really in this room at all, out traveling all the time, and the reason they’re packing things up in the first place is so that they can move into a new apartment, so that’ll mean even less time. Shuichi is… happy, that they have these pictures, though. “I should take this downstairs and show Mina, she’ll probably go wild over the picture of me as a fetus,” he laughs slightly.
“We can do that now,” Shuichi offers. “Or we can sit here for a moment, until you’re ready. I still think we should take an ice cream break, though. The air is so stale in here from all your rotting possessions,” he pouts at a large stack of books that Rantaro confessed to never having read before off by the window, feigning more annoyance than he really feels. “We’re going to have a real field trip to the thrift store when we finish with all this stuff.”
Rantaro tucks his arms around Shuichi from the side, pressing his face into his neck and relaxing against him. Shuichi glances over, but Rantaro’s face is obscured from view, so he can only guess at whatever is running through his head. He hums, opening his mouth to speak, but Rantaro whispers, “Just-- a moment, maybe?”
And so Shuichi presses a kiss to the crown of Rantaro’s head. “Of course, as many as you need, love.”