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It happened when Junichiro was ten and Naomi was eight. To be specific, it happened after school, when Junichiro and Atsushi were doing their homework together on the roof and Naomi was working on a project with one of her friends from school in their shared bedroom. It happened with a car pulling up and Shachou looking furious and a social worker who Junichiro hadn’t seen since Kyouka was legally adopted talking to him quietly.
Shachou was never loud when he was angry, not like Junichiro’s mom, so he had no idea what was going on.
Atsushi seemed to have come to the same conclusion, though, and was carefully scooting down the roof, apparently dead set on getting close enough to overhear what they were talking about.
“What are you doing?” Junichiro hissed.
“I’m seeing what Shachou and Ms. Kirako are talking about,” Atsushi whispered back.
“How? It’s too dangerous!”
“I’m a good climber, and Shachou is safe. It’ll be fine.” And, because apparently his brother was actually crazy, Atsushi slipped down the drain pipe and ended up in the rafters above Shachou and Ms. Kirako.
Because Junichiro lived in a house full of crazy people, Atsushi was not the only one of his siblings listening in. He knew for a fact that Dazai had bugged the front porch ages ago for this exact reason, and he could see him and Kunikida in their room listening, Kunikida’s face getting redder and redder with anger. He could see Yosano and Ranpo sitting just around the corner, Ranpo looking like his worst suspicions had been confirmed and Yosano looking furious (and after that incident in the park, where she had yelled at an Army vet attacking Mori Ougai to “rip his balls off”, Junichiro did not want to see her get that angry again for a really long time). Even Kyouka was listening in, perched impossibly high in a tree directly above them. How had she even gotten there? Junichiro had some serious concerns, especially since she was a couple years younger than Naomi.
Speaking of Naomi, apparently she, Kenji, and Junichiro were the only sane members of the family, because they weren’t trying to listen in on a clearly private conversation.
And then he heard Atsushi cry out and drop from the rafters, which--ok, good, Shachou had caught him, but he had fallen, and he was clearly in the middle of a panic attack, which…
Fine.
Junichiro was officially joining the ranks of the insane.
He had to find out what Shachou and Ms. Kirako had been talking about.
He carefully climbed down into his and Naomi’s room, where she and her friend were overapplying glitter glue to their poster and hurried down the hall to Kunikida’s and Dazai’s room. The door opened immediately, Kunikida looked furious and worried at the same time, and as soon as he saw it was Junichiro, he swept him up in a big hug, which Junichiro didn’t complain about--Kunikida gave great hugs--but it was odd that it was under these circumstances. Usually he would be upset that he’d allowed Atsushi to climb into a potentially dangerous situation, and then have a panic attack besides--and, if Junichiro was guessing correctly, one so bad that his limited vocabulary had been entirely cut off, which was really bad, because Atsushi hadn’t had a panic attack that terrible for a few years now.
“Everything’s going to be ok, I promise,” Kunikida murmured to him. “We won’t let them take you away.”
What.
“Take--what?! Who’s taking me away?! Kunikida, what’s going on? I just came because--because Atsushi climbed down to the porch roof to listen in on Shachou and Ms. Kirako, and then he fell and now he’s having a really bad panic attack, and I thought you should know...who’s taking me away? What’s going on?”
Kunikida’s arms tightened around him in response. “Your mom, she...got out of jail. And since she never officially gave up her parental rights to you and Naomi, we were never able to officially adopt you, and have legally been fostering you for the past six years. That doesn’t make you any less of our siblings, but it does mean that your mom, she...she wants you guys back.”
“But...you guys are our family,” said Junichiro. “Right? I mean, Naomi doesn’t even remember her, and I hardly do, and what I do remember is...it’s not good. Not like Shachou and you guys.”
Kunikida’s arms tightened around him, and Dazai patted his hair.
“I know,” Dazai said. “That’s why we’re gonna do our best to keep you. And, if we can’t, then you can call us anytime for anything . We aren’t going to just stop being your family just because you aren’t living in the same house as us anymore.”
“Good,” said Junichiro, hugging Kunikida back tightly. Because this was his family, no matter what anyone said, because they took care of him and Naomi and his mom hadn’t done that.
“Also, please stop doing your homework on the roof. It isn’t safe, and one of you could fall off if you don’t have an older sibling with you.”
“ Technically Atsushi’s two months older than me,” Junichiro pointed out.
“You’re both ten,” Kunikida pointed out. “That doesn’t count.”
“Actually, when I was ten, I would--”
“Not helping, Dazai,” Kunikida said through gritted teeth.
“Come on, it’s a fun story!”
“Yeah, for when he’s old enough to know that’s something ten year olds should absolutely not be doing,” Kunikida said.
“What is it?” Junichiro asked.
“Well, when I was thirteen I ate a live fish.”
Junichiro wrinkled his nose. “That’s disgusting.”
“And that’s why you should never follow Dazai’s example. Come on, I think we’re going to have a family meeting in a few minutes.”
Junichiro nodded. “I’ll go get Naomi. Um, about her friend…”
“Oh, right.” Kunikida paused.
“Actually,” Dazai jumped in, “we’ll probably wait until after she’s gone anyways, so that Atsushi’s in better shape when we talk about it, so you don’t have to get her right now. If you want, one of us could help you with your homework--after all, you’re allowed on the roof when you have an older sibling with you.” He grinned and winked at him, and Junichiro grinned back, somewhat shakily.
“Ok. Um, can Ranpo do it? He’s really good with, um, math. And stuff.”
“Uh, Ranpo’s not really…”
“Sure thing!” Dazai said. He hurried out of their room and over to the stairs. “Hey! Ranpo ! You’re on homework duty!”
“What?”
“Homework duty! With the Tanizakis!”
“Naomi banned me from going near her friends!” Ranpo hollered back.
“Well, Junichiro called dibs on you, so you guys can go on the roof or something!”
“I don’t know how to climb!” shouted Ranpo, who Junichiro was fairly certain he had seen up there with the older kids several nights, doing whatever it is teenagers did.
(“Tax evasion,” Dazai had said with a grin, and Kunikida had smacked him.
“Don’t set a bad example for the kids!”)
“Well, learn then! Junichiro asked for you specifically!”
Ranpo groaned and headed upstairs. Junichiro could see Shachou downstairs, holding onto Atsushi, and Yosano and Ms. Kirako discussing something in angry whispers. When Ranpo got up the stairs, Dazai didn’t waste any time hurtling down them. Kunikida waited to give them both a lecture on doing your homework properly and academic dishonesty and all the different ways you could die falling off the roof before finally letting them go. Junichrou was so distracted by the fervent desire not to be lectured that he forgot entirely about Atsushi’s panic attack and the woman coming to take them away, and on the roof he and Ranpo bickered over sweets and played a game where Junichiro would tell him what the answer was and Ranpo would guess the question. And after dinner, where Atsushi was pale and shaky and quiet but pressed up against Junichiro anyway and quietly teased him about getting homework answers from Ranpo all the time, and Junichiro laughed and joked back and thought about all the different ways you could die from falling off the roof, they waved Naomi’s friend home and all gathered together in the living room for a family meeting.
Shachou was sitting in his armchair with Kyouka and Kenji on his lap. Ranpo was on the floor next to him, and Dazai, Yosano, Kunikida, and Atsushi had claimed the couch, Atsushi sandwiched between Dazai and Kunikida, Dazai’s head on Yosano’s shoulder. Junichiro wanted to join them, but due to everyone congregating near each other and on the couch, the good chair was open and Naomi had claimed half of it, and she was his sister, his biological one, and even if Kunikida didn’t believe in blood ties, and even if he didn’t want anything to do with the woman who had birthed and then abandoned them, Naomi was his sister . His favorite of his siblings, his precious little sister, and probably the only sibling he’d have left, soon.
He took the other half of the good armchair.
Ms. Kirako stood off to the side. Usually, when they had a family meeting, she sat next to Shachou, because after all the years she had worked with their family, she had basically become part of it. But now she did not. Naomi glanced at her position for a moment and shrugged it off. Junichiro hugged his knees. Shachou cleared his throat.
“Exactly how many of you already know what this meeting is about?” he asked, and Ranpo, Yosano, Kunikida, Dazai, Atsushi, and Kyouka’s hands all shot up. Junichiro hesitated for a moment before raising his, too.
Naomi shot him a betrayed look. “Why didn’t you ask me along?” she hissed.
“I didn’t listen in--Kunikida told me, and I didn’t have enough time to tell you, ‘cause you were with Sayaka!” Junichiro whispered back.
“Ugh, fine,” she muttered. “But I wish you’d told me Ms. Kirako was coming. I would’ve wanted to listen in.”
“What’s going on?” piped up Kenji, the only sane member of the family. Junichiro missed the days when he could count himself as another, but he had gone and figured out what Shachou and Ms. Kirako were talking about and now he was seated firmly with the crazies.
“Ms. Tanizaki has been released from jail, and she is demanding that Junichiro and Naomi be returned to her,” said Ms. Kirako, her voice clear and steady and slightly apologetic. Junichiro saw Shachou’s arms tighten around the youngest kids and realized that his lap was probably open to him and Naomi, too, but he didn’t move. Part of being an older brother was comforting your younger siblings, and another part was standing by so that your dad could do so.
Junichiro had never quite realized that he, like Atsushi, Naomi, Kyouka, and Kenji, was not at all counted among the older siblings, and never would be. He refused to consider that he could be among the comforted, rather than just the comforter.
“Wait, you mean our mom ?” asked Naomi, and she sounded weirdly excited, for some reason.
“Yes,” said Shachou.
“She...she actually wants us?”
“She does.”
Junichiro balled his hands into his sweater. She didn’t want them. If she had, she would’ve chosen them over the drugs and over the men. They were taken by CPS months before she was arrested, he had convinced Dazai to hack into the records to see. And she hadn’t done anything to get them back after they were taken. Why should she get to do it now?
“Do we have a choice about going back to her?” Junichiro asked.
Naomi looked over at Junichiro, slightly confused. “She’s our mom ,” she said.
“I guess,” he said, even though he would really rather stay here, if he had a choice in the matter. But he wasn’t going to let Naomi go in there alone, and anyway she was his favorite sibling.
A week later, everything was packed away, Junichiro’s and Naomi’s bedroom stood empty, and they were exchanging tearful goodbyes with the rest of their family. Naomi was, Junichiro could tell, excited and only slightly nervous.
Junichiro was terrified .
What little he remembered of his mother wasn’t good, and that contrasted extremely with living with Shachou, which was really, really good, and when it wasn’t--when people fought and got in trouble, he never, never feared Shachou hurting them, even if Kunikida flinched at loud noises and Dazai always kept himself in front of the others when any one of them was in trouble and Yosano made her anger known high and loud and shrill. Shachou was never angry, always disappointed, and quiet, and calm, and made sure everyone could see where his hands were going. And he gave the best hugs, even if someone had done something dumb, like...maybe...make a parachute so that their sister could skydive off the roof and, when she had broken her leg, jump down after her, sans parachute, to make sure she was ok and break their own leg and end up grounded for a month.
...Not that Junichiro and Naomi had ever done that, that was just stupid.
But the point was, their mom wasn’t like that, not that he remembered, anyway. And he remembered once, when he was seven or eight, hearing Kunikida yelling about fathers and jail and how it didn’t change anything at all, really, and made them worse, and how people in jail should never, ever be allowed children.
Junichiro didn’t know where Kunikida had gotten that information, but he was fairly certain it applied to mothers, too.
After hugging everyone for a third time and doing his best not to cry, Junichiro got into the backseat of their mother’s car with Naomi and his suitcase and played with his sweater--his favorite one, with a green dog on the front. Kunikida and Yosano had dressed them all up in their nicest clothes that morning, and put Naomi’s hair into two nice braids. Ranpo had given them each a large bag of sweets for the car, and Dazai had given them a list of phone numbers in case they ever needed help, revenge, or pranks, each one carefully labeled with what sort of help they would provide. Atsushi and Kenji each gave them a stuffed animal (an octopus and a spotted cow for Junichiro, and a chinchilla and a brown cow for Naomi) and Kyouka gave them each a knife. Junichiro did not want to know where the knives came from, or why she thought it was a proper going-away present, but he assumed it was safer not to ask.
Apparently they were going to a city about five hours away by car, which meant that it would be really hard to visit Shachou and their siblings. This seemed to sink in for Naomi about three hours into the car ride, and after a quick, whispered conference they decided not to make use of Dazai’s phone numbers to try and convince their mother to move closer to Shachou, but they would keep the list on hand in case they wanted to go visit one day. Then they decided to amuse themselves by memorizing the numbers and their designations ( hitman--hacker--politician--banker-- ), since they hadn’t really been allowed to take much of their things with them (apparently there was some dumb law about what foster children were and weren’t allowed to have, and no matter how much Shachou argued and Kunikida yelled and Dazai did...whatever creepy things he did to people who pissed him off, that hadn’t changed. Sure, a bunch of stuff had been hidden in their suitcases--Atsushi and Kyouka had been going at it with a seam ripper and a lot of questionable things--but it wasn’t stuff they could get to at the moment (which was a read tragedy, since he thought he’d seen them carefully stitching a DS into an old sweatshirt of Yosano’s that had been worn enough that they had been able to convince the social worker had belonged to them when they came to the house. Even if there wasn’t a DS sequestered inside, Junichiro was glad they had it; after all, something of an older sibling was good thing to keep around, for comfort, and anyway it wasn’t babyish, since Dazai--who was sixteen--slept every night with a faded red hoodie.) because it was in their suitcases, in the trunk. So possibly-illegally-acquired phone-number memorization it was.
Living with their mother wasn’t horrible, Junichiro reflected a few weeks later, DSes found and hidden (and there had been two! And somehow--he did not want to know how--Atsushi and Kyouka and presumably Dazai, since he was the most likely of the siblings to break the law, had acquired two brand-new DSes, one in blue and the other pink, and sewed several DS games into the lining of the suitcases--and they had definitely broken the law in some way to get their hands on them (child labor laws, at the very least) because the games were many and the games were good and video games were expensive .) and played with when their mother wasn’t paying attention--which she so rarely was. Naomi tried her hardest to change this, and get at least some of the attention that they were accustomed to from Shachou (and wasn’t that something, Junichiro thought, that a man with nine children could somehow bestow more attention on each individual one in a day than a woman with two could in two weeks.
He had, in his ten year old wisdom, decided that if she wasn’t going to pay attention to him, and wasn’t going to pay attention to Naomi, he didn’t have to pay attention in school or do his homework or anything really except play with his sister (who was, conversely, overperforming in their new school in an effort to get their mother’s attention) when she wanted to and wrap himself in Yosano’s hoodie and sit next to her and lay on his DS when she didn’t.
Naturally, his teachers were horrified that such a bright young boy had suddenly gone off the rails after transferring, and tried to help him adjust for a grand total of one week before they, too, gave up on him.
It was almost a relief, because the only adult whose comfort he wanted was six hours away by car, but it wasn’t quite, because that was one less person who cared. And Naomi was still trying hard in school, and their mother still wasn’t noticing, and, even though Junichiro had no experience with this kind of thing, he was fairly certain she was back on drugs.
Three months later her boyfriend moved in with them.
Junichiro did not know if this was the same boyfriend he and Naomi had come from--or even if they’d come from the same boyfriend in the first place--but he did know that he didn’t like him, at all. As soon as it had been revealed that Junichiro and Naomi were going to be taken away, Yosano had sat them both down and drilled them on Creep 101, and the boyfriend checked several boxes.
At least he was only a creep towards their mother, who Junichiro very decidedly did not care about. If he was being a creep towards Naomi, Junichiro thought, he probably would have called the number labeled “hitman” and called a hit on the boyfriend before calling up Shachou and begging him to take them home.
Although Junichiro had been on the verge of doing the latter since they had gotten out of the car and into the cheap apartment, and had never quite managed to go through with it, because...they had left, and he hadn’t said he wanted to stay, and after all, it had been months since they were home and they hadn’t been allowed to call and say hello or even write letters, so Shachou would probably be pretty mad if one day Junichiro called him out of the blue and said, “All my teachers and also my mother hate me, please come and take us home.”
Shachou would be so disappointed, and if Dazai or Yosano picked up, he’d probably be laughed off the phone, especially since Dazai seemed to have taken a specific pride in failing each and every one of his classes until he was put in the same grade as Kunikida. He wouldn’t think there was any problems in failing out of fifth grade, and if Junichiro wanted to be like his brother when he grew up, he had to get ok with it too.
(Of Junichiro’s three older brothers, only one of them (Kunikida) had consistently gotten straight A’s--or even straight passing grades--throughout their school careers. Ranpo didn’t care about things that bored him, like schoolwork, and Dazai seemed to find each failing grade a point of pride, because it meant that he was that much closer to being in Kunikida’s class, because apparently at some point in his past he had skipped a frankly insane number of grades.)
So he couldn’t call Shachou in case something really bad happened, like, for instance, calling a hit on his mother’s creepy boyfriend. Which he wasn’t going to do unless he hurt Naomi, which the creepy boyfriend didn’t seem very interested in doing. In fact, he liked Naomi quite a lot, and, when their mother wasn’t around, gave her attention and candies and things, and Junichiro was glad that this one adult in their new life didn’t turn out to be an objectively terrible person.
This was a stance he revised a few days later, when the boyfriend got drunk or high or something and hit Junichiro after another note bemoaning his abysmal school performance was sent home.
Naomi was righteously angry and sat with Junichiro in their little shared room and talked about all the different ways Yosano was going to teach her to disembowel the boyfriend (Junichiro wasn’t sure if the fact that they were never seeing their siblings and Shachou ever again had actually not sunk in yet or if she was just in denial--one of the five stages of grief, according to Kunikida, although Junichiro wasn’t quite sure which one--but he wasn’t going to dissuade her of this idea. He missed them too, and he didn’t want to make his sister sad) while Junichiro decided that instead of being the one adult in their new life who wasn’t objectively terrible, he was the one adult in their new life who wasn’t objectively terrible to Naomi , and so he really couldn’t complain. As long as Naomi was safe. As long as Naomi was happy. As long as those things were true, he would be ok with anything .
Even as the boyfriend got worse. Even as his teachers stopped being angry and became worried again, because Junichiro had black eyes and bruised cheeks and arms, but even though he patently didn’t care enough to make an effort in most other areas of his life, he did care enough to lie about where the bruises came from, because if he and Naomi were put back in the system, they would most likely not go back to Shachou, since after six years he hadn’t been allowed to adopt them, and most likely would be split up. Neither of them wanted that, and so both agreed to remain quiet about the abuse. And so seven more months passed, and it had been almost a year since they’d left home.
And then, one night at around 2 AM, things got almost unimaginably worse.
Junichiro was only awake because he’d had a nightmare and needed to use the restroom and was lying in bed trying half-heartedly to fall back asleep. Naomi was asleep in the other bed, so he was staying as still and as quiet as possible when the door creaked open.
The boyfriend stood there for a minute before stepping inside, and standing over Junichiro’s sleeping little sister and just staring at her.
Creep 101 , Yosano’s voice echoed in his memory, creeps like to go after little girls and little boys, because it’s hard for little girls and little boys to say anything and be believed. Little girls and little boys have a harder time fighting back, and a lot of the time the creeps have power over them. If you meet a creep like that, you have to…
The boyfriend--the creep --reached down for Naomi, and Junichiro, in a fit of eleven-year-old brave idiocy, launched himself out of his bed onto him.
“Don’t touch my sister, you--you evil creep!” he shouted, and the evil creep shouted, and hit him, and Junichiro tried to hit him back and failed, and Naomi woke up and started screaming, and their mother came in and started yelling, and it all culminated in, as the mother and the evil creep screamed at each other, Junichiro grabbing Naomi and Yosano’s sweatshirt and the DS and bolting out the door and into the night.
This was quite possibly not the smartest thing the two siblings had ever done, but they did it anyway, and they didn’t even consider going back, especially after Junichiro filled Naomi in on the boyfriend’s status of an Evil Creep who did Really Bad Things to little girls.
And that was that. They couldn’t go back to their mother, and Shachou probably wouldn’t want them back, and so they were on their own, just the two of them. Just the way it would always be.