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In the early days, there is sunshine.
It filters through the window in five different tones, bathing the room in a warm glow while he is wrapped in his mother’s arms. Daiki and Hina would come later, one sibling quiet and reserved—the other a bundle of energy that couldn’t be confined in paper-thin walls. And when Mao creeps into their lives, she adds new color to the walls, her smile radiating a kindness she won’t admit to.
They are happy, and then they aren’t.
Dad stays out too late.
Mom cries on the phone.
And when he begs his mother to help, to make things right, she looks into his face, holds his tiny cheeks in her hands, and promises him the world.
She promises them the world.
And she makes dreams come true at the wave of her hand, carving a home for them out of nothing, and she holds her hands behind her back to hide the splinters.
Hiro doesn’t remember it happening, but the color seeps through his fingers when he isn’t looking.
Watercolor laughter doesn’t splash across the atmosphere—doesn’t bubble underneath the surface. Their parents took it with them when they left, took with them a chunk of their souls. Seeing Daiki and Hina leave is one of the most painful feelings he’s ever experienced, and he tells them, earnestly, desperately, that it won’t be the end.
That it can’t be the end.
And so he builds his dream the way his mother built hers, bricks slotted together after careful consideration and perseverance. He fights tooth and nail to keep the house, argues for hours with his relatives, sees their faces and the lines in their foreheads telling him we know, we know, we know.
But they don’t.
His skin turns pale, and his fingers bony. And everywhere he turns, there is an omnipresent anxiety looming over him, waiting to take everything from him the way rain took their parents from them, waiting to drag him into nothingness—to drag them into nothingness, and—
In the middle of the night he wakes up, skin sweat-soaked and muscles aching.
He feels his eyes burn.
But he tells himself it’s the burn of the moonlight hitting his face, and falls into a dreamless sleep.
He runs into Mao occasionally.
Never too often, but never enough.
He’s too busy working part-time jobs and paying for the house to know where anyone is at all times—the least of all childhood friends. And it eats away at him. Daiki saw it in him before he left to live with their aunt. Hina knew before she left with their uncle. And Mao doesn’t stick around long enough to watch.
Hiro becomes hollow to protect himself.
He scrapes away at the insides, little by little, so it’s not as painful, leaving behind friends in high school, dropping conversations with his family, knowing that he might be the only one left.
One day, everything stops.
He stops feeling numb and starts feeling lonely, the same protective hollowness becoming a blooming ache in his chest.
But it’s too late, Hiro thinks, and looking at his phone becomes a chore, not knowing whether the only people he wants in his life feel the same way.
And it nearly destroys him.
He finds Mao on the streets on night, eating a store-bought bento—he knows because she always eats it by herself.
She’s in her pajamas, her pants loose around her hips, her hair a mess and her eyes red. Seeing someone like that—seeing her like that—breaks something in him, chips away at the lining in his stomach, and he drags her to the nearest food establishment.
And he lets her cry in the booth, her shoulders shaking, not knowing what he’s thinking when he tells her to stay.
She brings the sunshine with her, but also the storm.
It’s been so long since he’s lived with someone that he’s forgotten how to interact informally, but Mao rips him out of his reverie faster than he can clamber back into it.
Having someone—anyone—take up space in an empty house seems to bring back a bit of color, her presence a sigh of relief spreading through the spaces he hasn’t touched in years. He knows that it’s a problem, her living here with him, knows that soon she’ll be back in her own house with her own family. That she’ll be happier where she belongs, not with a lonely bachelor longing for the company of family, vying for someone to paint his life different shades of blue.
He sees Mao reach out with open hands, palms soft and vulnerable.
Hiro sees them with paper-cuts from her father’s words, the slits red and painful—barely noticeable, but still there.
And his heart aches for her the same way it aches for himself, knowing that the only comfort she has is herself.
He catches himself thinking of her during his breaks at work.
And then he catches himself thinking of her during work.
At first, Hiro’s bothered by it, but convinces himself that it’s normal to be worried about what to say to her when he gets home—about how he notices the way she looks at him from an angle, her head tilted slightly to one side.
But suddenly it’s not about her burning down the kitchen, scorching the pans, overflowing the bathroom. It’s not about the way she forces herself into his daily life, fretting but at the same time pausing two steps behind him, distancing herself at the same time he tries to close the space between them.
And when she tells him, the black paint flaking off of his insides suddenly dissipates.
He feels something expand inside of him, filling a hole that he didn’t know was there, and even though he wants to tell her his mouth runs dry and he knows.
He knows that he can’t.
When Hiro finds her on the couch one day, sleeping, her hair falling to one side and obscuring her face, he can’t help but the brush it to the side. His fingers linger for two seconds too long, and her face twitches as her hair tickles her cheek.
In that moment, he knows he’s as good as dead.
Daiki isn’t comfortable with her staying with them, and he’s made that clear, but somehow Hiro doesn’t care. The feelings building inside of him demand attention, pressing against the confines of his lungs, making it hard to breathe.
He can’t tell anyone—not for now.
He can’t talk about something that’s as delicate as a bird’s bone, something that not even he understands himself. Without a doubt, he’s scared of hurting her, but he’s also afraid that he won’t make a home for her out of the house he’s built around himself, with walls built out of his shoddy dreams.
But he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know the way she loves him.
So instead he steels himself for disappointment, convincing himself that even though he knows what it is, he won’t say until she’s ready—until she’s happy.
Hiro leans over to pull a blanket over her, and he hears her mumble in her sleep. He knows he shouldn’t, but he does it anyway, leaning in to press a firm kiss to her brow, trying to convey his thanks—he already knows that she's his saving grace.