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Tachihara Michizou befriended Akutagawa Gin when they were eight years old and at a day camp at the YMCA. Gin had been doing his best to sneak onto the big kids’ half of the rock wall, and Tachihara had followed, because his brother had climbed that, back when he was a kid, and had told Tachihara all about it when he’d taken him to see how fun the camp would be, and how much he’d prefer it to staying home all day, with their parents. Kage had absolutely hated staying home with their parents ever since he’d gotten back from the war, although he hadn’t had much choice with his leg and everything, but he was learning how to drive using hand gears and took advantage of this to take Tachihara out on long drives, to ice cream shops and parks and toy stores and the YMCA.
Tachihara had somehow gotten it into his head that if he made it to the top of the big kids’ rock wall, his parents would think he was just as good as his brother at something, and Kage would smile, really smile, in a way he’d only done once since coming back from the war.
Gin was doing it because he had already completed all of the little kid rock walls. Tachihara knew this because, when he asked him, Gin had signed something at him, and then rolled his eyes and pulled a notebook out of his pocket and scribbled that down.
“I’m coming with you,” Tachihara said.
You’re an idiot , Gin wrote.
“You’re more of one!” Tachihara protested.
Gin punched him, and neither of them were allowed on any part of the rock wall for fighting.
The next day, they were at it again, and they made it about a quarter of the way up the big kids’ wall before one of the counselors spotted them and they were bodily lifted down.
Tachihara, who had made his brother teach him certain words in sign, signed, “This is all your fault.”
Gin’s face lit up, and he signed something back rapidly. Tachihara caught the words “stupid”, “idiot”, “no”, and “your fault”.
“It’s your fault,” he signed again.
Gin signed something that he didn’t recognize, but it included the word “no”, so Tachihara signed back, “Yes.”
Gin rolled his eyes and pulled out the notepad again. You barely know any sign language, do you.
“I just started learning last night!” Tachihara yelped.
You’re a fucking idiot .
Tachihara paused. “Does that mean, like, stupid or something?”
It means sex.
“What’s sex?”
It’s what you do with your mom .
“I do a lot of things with my mom,” Tachihara said. (It was mostly fighting and doing what she said, but he didn’t think Gin needed to know that.) “What in particular?”
Ask her.
Tachihara did not ask his mom. Tachihara asked Kage, who nearly crashed the car and told him that he would answer that question once he hit puberty.
“Gin says it’s something I do with Mom, though,” Tachihara said. “Shouldn’t I know already?”
“I’m starting to think Gin’s a bad influence on you,” Kage told him, but he helped him learn more sign language anyway.
By the time camp was over, neither Gin nor Tachihara had made it to the top of the rock wall. However, Tachihara had learned enough sign that he was able to hold a rudimentary conversation with Gin, and so he counted that as a success.
(A rudimentary conversation meant, for them, that they could insult each other in simple terms without Gin tricking Tachihara into insulting himself, although, of course, since Gin was fluent in sign language and Tachihara had just started learning, Gin tricked Tachihara into insulting himself much to often for his comfort.)
Luckily for Tachihara, after spending the summer learning as much sign language as possible, he found that he and Gin were in the same class.
Unluckily for their teacher, they caused no less trouble together than they had at camp.
Seriously, the teacher thought, she deserved a serious pay raise.