Work Text:
It’s strange to be two people. Or is he three, now? Kira, Josefumi, Josuke.
He knows so little about them. Kira was a ship doctor, a man of the sea. Josefumi was a horticulture student, a man of the land. Josuke...well, Josuke feels like a man of nothing at all.
A collection of lost puzzle pieces from different boxes, jammed together to form a picture that doesn’t make sense, that nobody asked for.
Are the two of them dead - is this death, for them? Do they haunt him like ghosts? Do they watch from within his mind, from some place inaccessible to him? Do they control him together, one operating his right side and one his left, and the consciousness known as “Josuke” is just some strange emergent phenomenon?
If he thinks about it too much, he starts to feel distant from himself, like he isn’t quite real. Like his mind - his whole sense of self - is something fragile, like a bubble, that could pop at any time. He thinks about it all the time.
It occurs to him that Soft & Wet is an amalgamation of two Stands (if his Stand counts as a person, as part of him, does that make him four people now? Six, with Kira and Josefumi’s Stands?). He summons it alone, once, and looks into its strange blank eyes, split down the middle like his.
“Do you know who you are? Do you remember? Do you care?” He asks, not accusingly. He has no idea what to expect from a Stand.
Soft & Wet doesn’t move. Josuke gets the sense that it doesn’t know how to answer. He’s not even sure if it can speak, other than a battle cry. He doesn’t know if the others’ Stands could speak, either.
He doesn’t try asking Soft & Wet again.
Even forgetting them all - Kira and Josefumi, Soft & Wet and Killer Queen - he’s a stranger to himself as well. He’s only been - only known - the man called Josuke Higashikata for a matter of weeks. Every time he looks in a mirror, he thinks Is this me? This is me?
Every time he learns something new about himself (which is often, since he’s starting from nothing), he wonders where it came from. He likes grapes, he learns, but not bananas. He feels most comfortable with weight on top of him when he sleeps. He’s good at math.
Does he get each of those from Josefumi, or from Kira? Or is it something all his own?
Is anything all his own?
Yasuho is the only one who doesn’t make him feel lost, despite always seeming to know exactly where and who she is. It might be natural to feel even more adrift in contrast, but her presence somehow anchors him.
She dragged him out of the sand and named him. She seems to be committed to helping him find himself, despite having no connection with anyone he’d known or been. She wants nothing in return but to know him - just him , just Josuke. She is fierce, determined, reliable.
What can a person who has nothing - who is nothing - offer to someone like that?
Besides, she’s the first person he’s ever known, but from her perspective, she’s known him for such a small percentage of her life. It’s different when you know someone for a long time. Like old friends, like family. He doesn’t have a family, and he doesn’t know how to articulate why that’s so important to him.
He can never forget about it, the concept of family and the fact that he doesn’t have one. The Higashikata family is not the closest a family can be (or so he thinks; or so Yasuho says; or so Yasuho says she thinks). They live together, but they all seem to have separate lives going on, separate goals. They have Stands, but don’t discuss them with each other, and for all Norisuke’s strange analogies, Josuke still doesn’t quite understand why. They are hesitant to talk about anything painful, anything deep.
But still, they are a family. They’ve known each other for all their lives. They know exactly how to tease and annoy each other without touching too raw a nerve. They know what makes each other laugh, and can sometimes even predict how they’ll react to things. They tell stories about each other that are years old, stories they’ve heard and told over and over. They reference inside jokes that have clearly morphed through various iterations over the years, jokes that make them collapse laughing and make no sense to Josuke at all.
They know each other better than Josuke knows himself.
One day, he sees Daiya with a packet of assorted gummy candies. She seems to be committed to finishing them all at once, but before she does she carefully squints at the colors of each wrapper and sets some number of each flavor aside. When Josuke asks, she explains that she’s saving one piece for everyone else, in their favorite flavors. She knows everyone’s favorite but his.
“Which one’s your favorite flavor, Josuke? Strawberry, lychee, or mango?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he says.
Daiya generously lets him try one of each. He learns, of those three, that his favorite is lychee.
The next time Daiya gets gummy candies, she doesn’t remember which one is his favorite and has to ask him again. He doesn’t blame her - she’s only learned it once. At least he has an answer this time.
At least he’s not the only outsider in the household. He doesn’t often talk to Kyo - he feels some strange guilt, some strange pressure when he talks to her. Like it’s his fault that her brother is gone, or that she feels it is. But perhaps that’s not quite fair - Kyo is more reasonable than that. And if she felt that way, she’d never try to make him answer for it. But still - he doesn’t like the searching way she stares at him.
But it can be nice to spend time with her every once in a while. Kyo is kind enough to show him where in the house he can be alone, when he wants to be. One afternoon they share a snack on the roof, staring out across the Higashikata family grounds to the cerulean sliver of the sea. Other than herself, only Hato ever comes up here, Kyo tells him, and she’s rarely home.
Josuke has learned that Kyo is comfortable with companionable silences - prefers them, in fact. That's perfectly fine with him. Normally they don’t talk much, but a question is burning on his tongue. Part of him doesn’t want to ask, but not asking it would feel like giving up.
“What was your brother like?” He keeps his eyes fixed on the sea, so he can pretend not to notice Kyo turning to look at him.
She is silent for long enough that he thinks she might not answer at all, but after a few minutes she begins to speak. “He loved to swim. He only liked eating green foods, no matter the taste. He didn’t like when things were ambiguous, or when people were indecisive. He could be cold, and he didn’t care about a lot of things. But he always cared about mom and me. Whenever he set out to do something, he’d get really determined to see it through, no matter what.”
Kyo wraps her arms around her legs. “You’re pretty determined, too, Josuke.”
She knew all along what he was really asking, and this is the closest answer she’ll give him. Maybe this is everything she can give him.
Josuke doesn’t know what he’d hoped for, other than some vague sense of clarity. In the end, he doesn’t think he’s gotten any of it.
Of course, if he asks about one, he has to ask about the other, too.
Josuke doesn’t particularly like spending time with Karera. If Kyo privately feels like he’s just a very-altered Kira, Karera quite publicly feels like he’s a slightly-altered Josefumi. He still can’t get her to even call him Josuke with any regularity, despite all her claims about “living in the present”.
He gets the sense that, other than Josefumi, Karera wasn't particularly close with that many people. But Josuke isn’t particularly close with Karera. Despite all this, his presence never seems to upset her (unlike with Kyo), or at least she doesn’t let on if it does. She’s easy to find around town, and is eager to accept his invitation to chat.
They walk along the pier. Karera always fills silences with chatter, even inventing her own silences to fill inside the gaps of Josuke’s speech, if he makes the mistake of pausing for too long.
When she stops talking long enough to take a bite of her sandwich, Josuke finally has the opportunity to ask: “Karera, what was Josefumi like?”
Karera finishes chewing, takes a deep breath, begins to describe Josefumi, and doesn’t stop for a very long time. Josuke tries frantically to remember every fact she drops, to think about whether it applies to himself or not, to try not to think about whether it even matters.
Josefumi was afraid of turtles (Josuke is indifferent). Josefumi liked sleeping with a weighted blanket (Josuke is delighted to hear that those exist, and resolves to get one). Josefumi liked playing video games (Josuke doesn’t know if he likes video games - he’s never played one). Josefumi disliked lychee flavored things. Josefumi was afraid of swimming. Josefumi kept houseplants, and gave every one its own name.
Josefumi was, according to Karera, funny but shy, deeply earnest, and very, very handsome.
“I wouldn’t say this to anyone, but you’re kind of him so it’s not like I’m gossiping here,” says Karera, “But his mom was pretty distant and he didn’t have any sisters or brothers. He didn’t talk about it, but I don’t think he knew his dad, either. He always had this weird chip on his shoulder about not really having a family.”
Josuke frowns.
“I don’t get it,” she adds. “My family sucks. It’s better not to have one than to have one that sucks. All you need is yourself, maybe some friends...and a true love!” she bats her eyelashes at him for effect.
“You know,” she continues, “I think that’s why Josefumi never really loved me back, because I thought that way. He always needed some place to belong. Someone to care for him without expecting anything in return...I guess that wasn’t me,” she admits. “Well? What do you think about that, Jooooooo~suke?” she draws out the word in a sing-song manner, as if he owes her an honest answer in return for the generous gift of her using his own name.
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly.
“You’re no fun,” Karera pouts.
“I’m sorry.”
“Josefumi was never as fun as I wanted him to be, either.”
Josuke can’t - won’t - apologize for Josefumi. He excuses himself and leaves.
He’s learned so much about his past today - he should be satisfied that two simple questions got him so much information in return. But he feels like he hasn’t gotten anywhere at all - it was just a jumble of facts that lead him to no conclusion. In fact, he feels even less like himself than before. Not that he really knows what it’s like to feel like himself.
The sky is darkening now, and he has a date planned with Yasuho. He walks straight from the pier to the ice cream stand where they’ve planned to meet. He chooses a flavor at random, one he hasn’t tried yet, of course (he wonders how long it will be until he can stop methodically gathering data about himself). Yasuho lets him try hers - when he likes it better, she insists on switching with him. They walk along the river until they come across a boulder, perfectly sized and shaped for two people to sit on close together.
They eat in silence, for a while, then Yasuho speaks. “I saw an old lady today at a family reunion in the park. I think she might be the oldest person I’ve ever seen.”
Josuke makes a noncommittal hm , and waits for her to continue.
“Do you know what I think about when I see old people with their families? I think about how all those people around them...when they were my age, they didn’t exist. Their family now is a whole different set of people than it was then .”
“That’s sad,” says Josuke. He’d rather have a family and lose them than never have one at all - but the just the thought of losing family makes his chest ache and his eyes sting.
“Yeah, that’s how I felt, too.” Yasuho fiddles with one of the flowers on her skirt. “But I guess it’s also kind of happy that you can have new family members. You’re not stuck with just...whatever you got when you were born.”
“That’s a nice way to think about it,” Josuke says earnestly. He likes how Yasuho can see the sad and happy side of things at once. He likes the way she talks about how she feels, simply and honestly.
One day, when she’s had more time to get to know him - and when he’s brave enough - he’ll ask her what she thinks Josuke Higashikata is like.
“Maybe, in the end, we all make our own families,” she suggests in a quiet voice.
“I don’t know,” says Josuke. Family seems like something too important for someone to be able to just make however they want. But the idea of one day having some type of family to call his own - his own, even if he doesn’t have one now - makes everything seem a little brighter. “I’ve never heard of people doing that.”
Yasuho is, as always, kind enough not to point out that Josuke hasn’t heard of most things. Instead, she starts humming a tune he sang to her a couple of weeks ago. He still doesn’t know if it was recalled from one of his past lives, or he himself made it up. He’s only sung it once, but she remembers.
“I get it stuck in my head sometimes,” she admits. “Ever since you sang it.”
“I’m sorry,” says Josuke.
“No, I like it. Does it have a name?”
Josuke shakes his head. "I didn't think to give it one."
“How about ‘The Josuke Song’? That’s how I think of it, anyway.” Yasuho tilts her head up, to look at the first stars emerging through the dusk.
“I guess I think of it as ‘The Yasuho Song’. I sang it for you, after all.”
Yasuho makes a pleased little noise that Josuke wishes he could pluck from the air and listen to again and again. “‘The Josuke and Yasuho Song?’” she suggests.
“I like that.”
“...Sing me another?”
“Okay. I call this one: ‘The Josuke and Yasuho Song 2’,” he announces. He makes up another little tune, and silly little words to go along with it. Or maybe he’s remembering it from somewhere before. There’s no way to tell, and maybe he’ll never know.
But here, with Yasuho’s eyes shining brightly at him like that, he feels like it doesn’t matter where it came from. It’s just the song he’s singing.