Work Text:
There’s two girls, each standing at one side of a boundary - embroiled in a strange conversation, as far as children go.
“Mom‘n, uh, n-never came home,” stammers the girl at the edge of the forest - short peachy hair with green leaves of summer tangled within, bright blue eyes full of implacable emotion averting to the sidewalk before her. “‘N I didn’t wanna leave. So I didn’t.”
The other girl cocks her head to the side, giving the worn bicycle in her hands a light and thoughtful push, forward, back.
“My mom’s gone too,” she eventually decides on; blows candy-pink hair out of her face with a vaguely shaky breath. “My dad’s mad all the time. Real— real mean. So’m leavin’.”
She sounds almost proud of this - a stick-thin eight year old with a beaten-up red bike a little too tall for her, picking at a fraying band-aid on her elbow. The peach girl considers.
“I don’t got a dad,” she says, softly. “All I got is me.”
“All I got is me, too!”
She grins. Maybe she shouldn’t have, but then the other girl smiles too, so maybe it’s fine.
“Um,” says peachy hair, twirling a lock of it around and around and around a thoughtful pointer finger, “D’you... maybe, wanna see my house?”
It’s sunset, and the world is starting to cool; the breeze from the ocean, far down the hill, is rolling in and setting goosebumps up the pink girl’s arms, bare in her tank top.
”Yeah,” she says, nodding with enthusiasm and a shiver - and that is when the missing Fujioka child disappears forever.
Sayori’s house is pretty good.
The girl with peach hair and no parents is named Sayori, and she’s ten years old. She goes to school down the road, and knows how to build a fire in a stove and the fireplace, and also knows how to climb trees, and she’s very happy that Natsuki (which is what the girl with pink hair is named) has come to her house.
It’s a pretty good house. The roof doesn’t leak, and there’s stairs going up. There’s a room with a couch by a window, and a kitchen, and a bathroom that’s a little messy but doesn’t have any mold in it - and up the stairs are rooms for sleeping in, but Sayori confides that she likes to bring the futons downstairs to the couch room instead. Natsuki thinks that sounds perfectly reasonable.
Sayori and Natsuki make something to eat after Sayori makes a fire, and then they sit and they eat and they talk. Sayori has more food in her house than Natsuki did in hers, and that’s very agreeable. She eats a lot and Sayori eats a lot and they talk about bike riding, since Sayori has a bike too, and eventually it’s late and they’re tired and Sayori pulls out the beds, puts out the fire, and sleeps next to Natsuki in the room with the couch by the window.
Natsuki fits in pretty well, as it turns out. Everyone in town knows Sayori, and Sayori has a happy grin and when she says Natsuki is staying with her, grownups nod like that’s just the way it is now. Maybe that is the way it is now. Natsuki likes that idea.
Sayori goes to school in a small place with six teachers and seven rooms, and a great wide field outside with two nets and a running-track, and Sayori holds Natsuki’s hand and brings her inside and asks her teacher if Natsuki can have a workbook. He glances up and says okay, and Natsuki sits in the desk next to Sayori that day and does math and reading and writing, and she only has to stand up once at the beginning of class, says her name and everyone beams and says it back.
School is nice.
After school, Sayori and Natsuki help clean out the classroom, and then they go outside and ride their bikes even more downhill and Sayori stops her bike outside the market, and they go inside and help the people who work there; a couple and their kid who’s big (sixteen) and their grandma. Sayori and Natsuki help out, put things on shelves and wipe down windows and chase spiders out the door with a wicker broom, and once the sun starts looking low on the ocean, the bigger kid gives Sayori a bag of food and then Sayori takes Natsuki back up the hill to her house.
Then it’s like last night was; dinner and a fire and talking. Natsuki has lots of questions about things and Sayori has lots of answers, because she’s lived here forever and Natsuki only started yesterday. They talk about everything and then Sayori pulls out the beds again like it’s no big deal, and Natsuki sleeps warm and well-fed for the second night in a long time.
It’s about a week before Natsuki figures she’s here to stay, and the sun gets just that much brighter for the thought.
The leaves have started turning red and fluttering, falling from the trees, on the day Sayori and Natsuki are huddled around a little girl sitting and sniffling on the steps of the candy store, other kids milling in and out around them.
“T— T’an’t fin’ m-my mommy,” the girl explains, rubbing at dark purple eyes with the well-worn, floppy ear of a velveteen rabbit. Sayori and Natsuki look at each other, then at the girl, and Sayori reaches out a hand.
They look for the girl’s mommy. They look for a long time. While they’re looking, they find out the girl’s name is “Yuwwi” (Yuri) and that she likes bunnies, which isn’t too surprising considering the design of her soft friend and the pacifier clipped to the bib of her coveralls. They also find out that Yuri falls asleep when she gets carried.
They don’t find Yuri’s mommy.
For once, Sayori doesn’t look like she much knows what to do. She and Natsuki stand at the edge of the town, at the bottom of the hill, while Sayori worries her lip and Natsuki scuffs the ground with her sneaker and Yuri snuffle-snores quietly against Sayori’s shoulder.
Sayori wonders, out loud, if they should bring Yuri to the market.
Natsuki thinks about someone sitting a little girl on the steps of a candy store, and thinks about the twice-weekly train that left town today with a whoosh and a whistle an hour before they heard any whimpering.
And then Natsuki says that it’s cold, and maybe Yuri would be warmer in a bed instead of standing outside.
Natsuki and Yuri and Sayori look for two more days, in between going to school and sleeping at Sayori’s house, until Yuri sits down in the dirt, head drooping tiredly, and points up the hill with the hand not curled around her rabbit.
“‘Anna go ‘ome,” she mumbles, “S’eepy.”
Sayori carries Yuri, Natsuki carries their groceries, and they go home.
It’s harder to ride bikes with a four-year-old, so Sayori and Natsuki figure they’ll just have to get used to walking. Yuri is, probably, four, because that’s how many fingers she held up when Sayori asked. She eats the same food as Sayori and Natsuki and she doesn’t have accidents if someone takes her to go potty, and milk doesn’t give her an upset tummy but she likes orange juice better anyway.
She can also read, and that’s how Sayori and Natsuki come to class with a four-year-old more than content to sit under the desk and look at books from the classroom library. Sometimes the teacher asks Yuri to read a word from the chalkboard, and she does, and everybody in the class looks very impressed.
After class, the teacher comes over and asks Yuri if she likes Sayori. Yuri says she likes Sayori but wishes she had more orange juice. The teacher asks what Yuri’s mommy’s name is and Yuri just says “mommy”, and the teacher pats her on the head and says it’s okay for Yuri to come to class whenever she wants.
(Natsuki hears the teacher talking to the ninth-tenth-grade-teacher when they’re leaving, who says that nobody’s reported any lost children - and despite herself, tears prickle at the corner of Natsuki’s eyes.)
Then Sayori and Natsuki take Yuri to the market, and Yuri helps just like everyone else until she gets tired and goes to sit with grandma at the low table. She colors with crayons until Sayori and Natsuki finish, and then grandma sends her off with “go to your sisters, now,” and the big kid gives Sayori a carton of orange juice with everything else.
Natsuki carries Yuri up the hill this time. She’s heavy and warm when she’s asleep, and Natsuki’s arms ache by the time they get home, but she doesn’t want to put Yuri back down at all.
Sayori tells Natsuki, carefully, in the kitchen while Yuri sleeps in the room with the couch, that the big kid from the market got lost, too.
Natsuki has an inkling of why the grownups don’t truly mind that Yuri’s home is with an orphan and a runaway.
There’s snow on the ground.
Not a whole lot, but enough so it’s colder than the rest of winter. Sayori has a backpack for Yuri, by now, that was a present from the couple at the market - it has holes in the side for Yuri’s legs to go through and one of her favorite things to do is sleep in it after she’s tired out.
It’s really cold. Sayori and Natsuki’s school teaches them when water freezes and becomes ice and snow, so Natsuki knows it’s really cold, not least because she wears a skirt rain or shine. Or snow. Her legs are cold, but she decided a long time ago that just makes it better when they go home at the end of the day and curl up by the fire.
It’s really, really, cold, and that’s why Natsuki starts crying when she almost trips over a basket half-pushed under the staircase next to - where else - the candy shop. The old woman who owns it is nearly deaf, and Sayori finds Natsuki sniffling, sitting curled in the snow, with something small and cold squirming weakly in her arms.
Sayori knows how to make a fire, and the walk up the hill has never been so long before today.
”’Aby!”
Maybe going home wasn’t really the smartest thing to do, but the fireplace is warm, Natsuki has no complaints with rubbing cold from tiny fingers and toes, and Yuri is enamored by the little girl in Natsuki’s lap, shining green eyes half-obscured by a mop of brown hair.
There was an envelope pinned to the baby’s shirt, which Sayori reads the contents of and frowns over and puts away and comes to sit on the futon with Yuri and Natsuki and,
“Monika,” says Sayori. That’s what was in the envelope, apparently - told to Natsuki after Yuri was fast asleep, snuggled next to the drowsy baby under two blankets.
Monika’s name, and when she was born, and how much she weighed and was tall. It says that she’s Japanese, and that her eyes are green and her hair is brown and it has two tiny footprints stamped on the bottom.
All the other names on the paper are scribbled out with permanent pen.
Natsuki and Sayori sleep on the same futon, Yuri and Monika between them.
“Y— Yuwwi haffa b-baby si... sid’ser!”
Is what Yuri squeals, the moment Sayori and Natsuki walk into the classroom with baby Monika, and it is that exact moment that Natsuki realizes Monika’s home is with Sayori and Natsuki and Yuri, too.
Monika is a very, very, very quiet baby, all things considered - class is mostly uneventful, except for break time where every single other student in the class wants to say hi to Monika. It’s fair. She is a very cute baby.
After class, the teacher talks to Sayori and Natsuki for a long time. Not upset-ly, or mad, or even confused - they just tell Sayori that it’s tough to take care of a baby, and then what she and Natsuki should do to take care of a baby. They talk for so long that the teacher comes with them to the market, and the couple at the market and grandma and the big kid talk to them too. The big kid’s dad takes Monika for exactly one minute, and checks something - Monika whimpers, Natsuki tenses, Sayori frowns and Yuri babbles worriedly that Monika wants carry with Sayonee, and by the time Monika is returned to Sayori’s arms, the big kid is already packing powder formula into the grocery bag.
Then the teacher walks with them to the town doctor, and Natsuki very nearly sits outside in the snow until Yuri clings to her arm and sniffles and Natsuki decides, even though her heart is doing painful jumps, that it’s important for her to go inside too. The town doctor is happy to see all of them, and along with Monika’s check-up, the doctor takes a look at Yuri and Sayori too. Natsuki stays in the corner until the doctor says “booster shots” and then Natsuki couldn’t have been persuaded to let go of shaky whimpery Yuri for seven volumes of the best magical girl comic in the world. Natsuki feels very shaky and whimpery and upset too, but she’s already on the checkup table and after she turns away five times, the doctor only looks at her eyes and ears and mouth and takes one listen to her heart before Natsuki jumps off the table, and the doctor offers two suckers instead of one.
Natsuki lets Yuri have the second, but she says thank you anyway.
The teacher and the town doctor say it’s important to bring Monika to see the doctor once a month, and that if she starts seeming sick - actually, if any of them start feeling sick, accompanied with a bit of a look at a reddened Sayori - that it’s okay to come down and ask for help, because it’s important to be well. Sayori and Natsuki say they understand, and Yuri says “Wowwi’op!” which is good enough.
And then they walk home - Yuri in Natsuki’s arms, Monika in Sayori’s arms, the teacher carefully carrying the double helping of groceries and parting after they’re indoors and settled, with a reminder that homework could be graded on effort for tomorrow.
Sayori and Natsuki and Yuri and Monika sleep the way they slept last night, curled and warm together.
Natsuki thinks she’s never been home before today.