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The first time Akari's brother told her of Arashi Narukami, the afternoon sun had reached its peak after a lazy Saturday morning. Kuro had slept through the entire morning, as still as the dead when Akari had snuck into his room to check if he was alive. He lay on his stomach, his legs fallen off the bed and bent towards the floor, still wearing his school uniform. Instead of piles of neglected school work, Akari had found a blouse on his desk.
What a beautiful thing it was! The silk Kuro used glittered even in the dim morning sun, more precious than anything the siblings own combined. The front placket was lined with layers of ruffles, artfully arranged to shuffle with the breeze that crept in through the open window. It was so beautiful that Akari almost forgot she wasn't supposed to loiter around Kuro's room. As she left, she wondered just who it could be for.
When Kuro finally crept downstairs, his hair unstyled and tumbling with every step, Akari was eating lunch. She turned from where she sat, hunched over the island counter, and glared at him.
"I told ya not t' stay up too late."
Instead of answering, Kuro yawned, and moved towards the fridge. When he opened it and found it near empty, he frowned. It wasn't anything close to a glare, but stretched across a face so hard-set, it was practically menacing.
"Where's Dad?" Kuro grumbled as he settled for a bowl of cereal. He used to be fine with cereal, until he started taking school more seriously. That was when he became anal about everything.
"Out workin'."
"Hm."
Kuro scooped a bite of cereal into his spoon, and fell silent.
"Why were ya up so late las' night?"
"Busy. Had stuff ta do," Kuro answered curtly.
"Was it that shirt? Looked real fancy."
"'S a blouse. And ya ain't supposed to go through my stuff."
Akari ignored him. "Who's it for?"
Kuro didn't answer immediately, and his hand paused midway between his mouth and the bowl. His brows furrowed downwards, casting a harsh shadow over his eyes, his lips set straight as an arrow.
"...An underclassmen," he settles on, after a long minute of thought.
"Do I know 'em?"
"Pro'ly."
"What's their name?"
"Narukami."
"From Knights ?"
"Yeah."
Their conversation lapsed into silence, a simmering tension as the question danced between them.
"What'd she want with you ? Ain't there less scary people who know how to sew?" Akari asked, giving it a voice.
Kuro considered this. "I'd say Itsuki's pretty scary. But Itsuki's kid — Kagehira? — he ain't intimidatin' at all. And she's friends with him, anyhow."
"Then why you?"
Kuro shrugged silently. His lips, pulled tight, felt like a secret.
"She yer friend, or somethin'?"
Kuro's brows had lower further, so much that his brow bone completely eclipsed his eyelids. It was a funny sight, to see her brother so deep in thought over such a simple question; Akari had to stifle a chuckle.
Finally, Kuro answered. He didn't look quite sure of what he said — why, he looked almost as unsure as he had when Akari asked if that glasses guy from yer unit was his friend. Finally, he said:
"I don’t know."
The second time Akari heard of Arashi Narukami from her brother, it was a Sunday evening. Kuro was lounging on the couch, chuckling into his phone's receiver, his eyes alight with quiet mirth. The person he was talking to — Tetora, it was definitely Tetora, no one else Kuro talked to was that loud — must have been telling a story, his voice animated even muffled by the speaker.
When the call ended with a beep , Kuro lowered his phone to rest in his lap. He bent his head back, staring at the ceiling with a look of heavy concentration.
"What was Tetsu tellin' ya?" Akari asked, because the conversation she was having with her friends had hit a lull, and if there was one thing Kuro hadn't taught her, it was how to carry a compelling conversation.
"Don't go callin' him by a nickname. He's older than ya."
"Tetsu-senpai," Akari corrected, closing her phone and turning her head fully. She made eye contact with him, a silent urging for him to answer. Kuro frowned, just slightly, before sighing and acquiescing.
"He went out with Narukami today. Was tellin' me 'bout."
"Did somethin' happen?" If it'd been, say, Keito on the phone with Kuro, Akari wouldn't have asked. But Tetora, even though he'd modeled himself after the ideal manly man (read: Kuro), shared none of the taciturnity her brother did, and would go on for ages about everything and nothing all at once.
"Narukami put 'im in girl's clothes and he ran 'round the city. I dunno, he wasn't makin' a lot of sense. Mikejima found 'im so they went to get Narukami and… heh." His eyes drifted back to the ceiling, and a smile played at his lips. "Some ruffians were makin' a scene, so Narukami scared them off. 'pparently Narukami punched the buildin' so hard the cement cracked."
"Seriously?"
"Has Tetsu ever lied?" The more accurate question would have been, is Tetsu capable of lying?
"That's… unexpected. I always Narukami-san was, like, pretty delicate. No, that's not it…"
"Refined?"
"Yeah, refined. She doesn't seem like the type to punch things, at least not on stage she doesn't."
"Doesn't really suit her big sister thing, does it? I was surprised, too."
"Ain't that bad for her image, or somethin'? I mean, yer always sayin' I shouldn't be punchin' things, I'd think that's more important for an idol."
"Pro'lly. But…" Kuro's face scrunched up again — Akari really needed to get him to stop that. "I don't think it mattered to her. What was important was protectin' that girl."
"Oh. That's…"
"Huh?"
Akari hesitates. "That's… pretty cool. How she wanted to protect that girl. Reminds me of you. Kind of."
Kuro's face un-scrunched so his eyebrows could raise into his forehead, then re-scrunched so he could adopt that real pedantic look again. He always got that look when they talked about Arashi Narukami.
"Guess so," he said, as nonchalantly as he could with such a serious face. Then, as if he hadn't been thinking at all, his face melted into a lazy grin.
" What ?" Akari griped.
"Ya called me cool."
"No I didn't," Akari insisted, even though she had.
"Yes, you did. Comparin' me to somethin' that's cool is the same thing as callin' me cool."
"Well…" Akari thought on this for a moment, but held her ground. "Yer not."
"Sure," Kuro acquiesced, but that stupid smile was still plastered on his face. He straightened up just to say. "Don't ya go punchin' walls. A respectable lady shouldn't do that."
"Is Narukami-san not a 'respectable lady' to ya?"
Kuro's brows knit, and the corner of his lips curved down. "I didn't say that. 'S different if it's Narukami."
"How so?"
Kuro thought long and hard on this, but in the end, the only answer he could think up was:
"I don't know."
Kuro told Akari of Arashi Narukami for the third time as they huddled together in their bathroom after school one afternoon. It was too cramped for them to stand comfortable, so Kuro had to prop himself up on the sink as Akari treated his wounds. His face remained unflinching stoic throughout, even as Akari haphazardly took a towel, damp with alcohol to his knee. It kind of pissed Akari off.
Absently, Akari wondered what this was about — who he'd fought, and why, especially after he'd made a point of getting into less fights. But if Kuro was good at anything, it was silence, unrelenting silence even as question after question surged over him. So, Akari kept her mouth shut, and saved them the headache.
Kuro, when Akari looked up, was staring at the ceiling, his brows hinting at a furrow even as his lips remained set in a straight line. Somehow, that half-scrunched face seemed to be the perfect midpoint between a look of absent-mindedness, and a look of deep concentration.
(Well, it was Kuro, so she certainly couldn't deny the possibility. No one else could think as hard as he does only to produce no thoughts at all.)
Akari tossed the paper towel into the wastebasket haphazardly, almost uncaring as to where it landed. The way she tore the gauze off its role — more aggressively than she'd ought to, the way Kuro taught her to scratch any scary-looking men that approach her — did nothing to disprove that idea. She had little mind to care, anyway, when Kuro had gone out and gotten himself into a fight even after countless scoldings from countless people, and even with the title of idol saddled across his back.
After the bandage was in place, the job clearly sloppy but fine enough for what it was worth, Akari rose to her feet with a huff. Wordlessly, she held out her hand to him, trying to match his resting bitch face with a glare of her own (she was getting there, some of the girls at school had called her scary.) He didn't falter as he extended his own hand, so large and rough to the touch, covered in callouses. Upon the very tips of his fingers, Akari could see the tiny, circular marks of repeated stabbings, and groused internally that the fool still hadn't gotten himself a thimble.
More interesting than that, anyway, were the patterned band-aids stretched across each of his fingers, obscuring the bruises that were certainly marring his knuckles. They were all different, in one way or another, a rainbow of pastels sporting an array of different animals — bunnies, kittens, puppies, chipmunks, and the like. Akari almost wanted to laugh.
"We should take these off and clean yer bruises properly."
Kuro's lips pulled downwards, breaching that perfect ambiguity his expression had had before. With almost a pout, he spoke, "I think it's fine to keep 'em."
Akari raised one eyebrow. "What? D'ya like 'em, or somethin'?"
Akari would've sworn, then, that if she squinted, she would see that Kuro's ears were red.
"...Yer not good at this. They're fine as they are."
"Fine," Akari grumbled, because she really didn't care what happened to the bastard's knuckles. "But who gave 'em to ya?"
Kuro bit his lip. Through it, he mumbled, "Narukami."
"Eh? What was Narukami-san doin' there?"
"She… nothin'. She just happened to be there."
"Oh, really ."
"Don't use that tone," Kuro sighed, as if he was getting a headache, but it also sounded like he didn't really care. Not like it made a difference to Akari — listening to him lie through his teeth gave her a headache. "I dunno, she gave me these bandaids, and…"
"And?"
Kuro scowled, he must have not meant to let that last word slip. "She wanted to take me somewhere to patch the rest of this mess up, but I told 'er not to bother."
Akari was silent for a long minute, thinking, staring down at the cute band-aids on her brother's hand. "D'ya think she woulda considered it a bother?"
Kuro made a show being deep in thought when he heard that, scrunching his face up and all, but for nothing — his answer was clearly a lie.
"I don't know."
Kuro had already graduated by the time Akari met Arashi Narukami for the first time. Even though it was summer, Kuro'd been busy for weeks on end, constantly taking on small jobs and getting commissions for outfits. There was never a moment of rest for him, constantly jumping from one thing to another. He told Akari that he liked it, that it was fulfilling to always have something to do, but even from the outside looking in it was exhausting.
…And lonely.
Summer was already reaching its tail-end by the time Kuro managed to tear himself away from it all. He'd dressed up that afternoon — well, 'dressing up' is relative — and his steps were just that bit lighter as he descended down the stairs.
"Goin' somewhere?" Akari had called from the living room, watching her brother run his fingers through his hair, as if combing it into place.
"Was invited somewhere." Subconsciously, Akari pouted. The one day Kuro wasn't working and he was still busy. Seeing this Kuro paused, scrunched his face up, and asked, "Wanna come with?"
"Is that okay?" Akari asked, though she'd already pushed herself off the couch.
"'S fine."
Akari didn't bother questioning him any further, except to ask, "Who're ya goin' out with?"
Kuro looked away, squinting. "You'll see when we get there."
Akari puffed her cheek, but said nothing more.
She didn't think to inquire about their destination their entire train ride, nor their walk; the question didn't occur to her until the ocean was edging into her sight, and the air she inhaled felt like summer itself.
"Shouldn't ya have worn a bathin' suit if ya were gonna swim?"
"We're not swimmin', just gonna walk around the boardwalk for a bit."
"Why go to the beach if ya ain't gonna swim?"
"Shush."
And that was that.
They'd found a vacant bench near the edge of the boardwalk and sat down. Kuro, leaning up against the what to do in the event of a rip current sign, was staring at his phone, evidently texting someone. He'd started tapping his foot against the concrete, most likely unconsciously, with such a rhythm that it was almost troubling. Akari was about to reach over and slap him when a cheery voice rang out in the distance.
"Kuro-chan!" There were approaching footsteps, and the voice was much closer as it continued, "And… little Kuro-chan?"
"Narukami. Hey," Kuro greeted, curt as though his leg hadn't been drumming a storm just moments before. "This is my lil sister, Akari. Sorry if you wanted us to be alone, 's just… I haven't really been able to spend time with her."
"No, no, no, it's totally fine! I'm glad I finally get to meet her!" Arashi spoke with her hands as much as she did with her words, waving them in dramatic gestures that said more than anything oral ever could. She turned to Akari, "Akari-chan, was it? Nice to meet you! My name's Arashi!"
"...From Knights, right?" Why was she asking for confirmation when she clearly recognized the girl before her!?
"Yep! I'm flattered that you recognize me!"
"...Sure."
There were surely better places to be than there, stuck with two of the most socially awkward siblings on the planet, but nothing about Arashi's laugh signaled discomfort — no, when she giggled, she sounded genuinely joyous, ecstatic to be there with them.
"So you're like your brother, huh?" She chuckled, turning her head to look at Kuro. "It's cute that you're both shy."
Kuro's skin flushed red right down to his neck, and he averted his eyes towards the crash of the waves against the shore. His expression did this weird fluttering thing, caught between a rock and a hard place with the coupling of him and his sister.
"For Akari, yeah…" he finally settled upon, still looking conflicted. "But I ain't cute at all."
Arashi laughed, "Sure you are!", but left it at that.
Later, after they'd walked the entire length of the boardwalk, and Akari had had plenty of time to listen to Arashi ramble about every topic under the sun — darting from one conversation to the next with such startling skill — they'd departed from her, watching as her receding figure stopped to turn and waved. She almost looked like an angel, steeped in the golden hues of sunset.
As they walked back to the station, Akari felt that something was different about her brother. His entire aura was different, lighter, somehow, and he was smiling! She'd thought, watching his smiling softly at the passing clouds, that such a smitten face didn't fit a delinquent.
"Does spendin' time with Naruka— I mean, Arashi-san make you feel…" she wasn't sure what she meant to say here, and so continued, "less sad?"
Happy. The word she was looking for was happy, but in the shock of seeing her older brother, perpetually tormented by guilt and anger, smile without seemingly a single care, she'd forgotten how to fit it through her lips. Certainly, such an inarticulate question as that deserves an answer equal in its lack of eloquence; surely, a shrug would suffice.
Still, Akari could not help but shudder at the thought his answer may be just that: a shrug, another I don't know, as if whatever Arashi Narukami made him feel was just a tepid contentedness. She'd fear, then, that if Kuro could not express his happiness for this, he'd never truly smile at all.
It was fortunate, then, that Kuro's face didn't scrunch up, that he didn't shrug. Instead, he puffed his chest up, smiling openly, and answered resolutely:
"Yes."