Chapter Text
kei was six years old when he first experienced loss. his grandpa, though he hardly knew him, died in his sleep. it was an odd thing to see a parent cry. they weren’t supposed to get sad. they were grownups. his mother had just lost her second father, but kei was six. he sat quietly on the couch while akiteru attempted to sooth their mother’s woes. it felt like earth stopped orbiting, if only for a moment. his dad wasn’t home.
it was less than a year later, age seven, when kei felt the pain of it like his mom had. in hindsight, maybe if he hadn’t demanded to go to the vet with his mother that night, it would have been easier. but probably not, kei figures now. it was quiet without a dog in the house. akiteru felt the worst. his dad came home from work early.
he thought it would become easier the older he got. it didn’t. he lost his grandma at age 10. kei and akiteru sat on their back porch together, looking up at the sky. he clutched the necklace his grandma gave him, a woven basket charm hanging from the chain like an apple from a branch. the boards of the porch grew mold. they faintly heard a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood. akiteru cried. kei didn’t. he didn’t know how to. neither of their parents were home.
kei did learn to cry, eventually. his parents no longer slept in the same bed.
“he snores,” his mom had explained, “i can’t sleep.” his dad usually crashed in kei’s bed. it was bigger than akiterus. eventually, he got used to the warm body opposite his. he didn’t like when akiteru woke their dad up in the middle of the night, claiming a nightmare demanded his comfort. kei pretended not to care, but he had nightmares, too. he woke up mourning the loss of himself in a dream, like a ghost attending its own funeral. the comfortable routine of company in his bed cracked and shattered. akiteru needed it more now.
yamaguchi could keep him grounded. when his ceilings leaked of water damage, yamaguchi would invite kei to play with his cat. when his floorboards peeled up, yamaguchi had sidewalk chalk in his hand and dust in his bangs. when kei tipped off the edge in a dream, when his boat sank or his car crashed, he was luck to wake up to yamaguchi’s room and yamaguchi’s bed and maybe even feel the heat from yamaguchi’s body. he’d be shaken awake to the smell of cinnamon rolls and perhaps he could forget about the water damage, the floorboards, and the nightmares, if only for the day. just the day.
kei didn’t even know why akiteru bothered sometimes. he’d suggest a board game, or a movie, and it always ended in a petty argument. their mom would call their dad dumb for not understanding a rule, or their dad would attack their mom for interpreting the ending of a movie differently. it was like walking on eggshells at the tsukishima house. kei wanted to beg akiteru to put on some shoes every once in a while. he couldn’t understand why his parents got married in the first place. had there ever really been a time where their relationship wasn’t riddled with contradicting lies and opposing views? what did it look like, if there had?
“tokyo is far,” yamaguchi said, absentmindedly tossing a volleyball up and down, “really far.”
“i know. teachers get paid more there. my mom said so.” yamaguchi hummed. kei didn’t want to move, so he wouldn’t. his mom couldn’t make a decision like that anyways. she’d threaten it to prove a point or she’d wish it to live a better life, but she could never take the final step. wasn’t in her coding, or something. kei wasn’t worried about it. it was a sunday afternoon. he was tasked with organizing yamaguchi’s coin collection, since he couldn’t manage it himself.
“what about your dad?” yamaguchi asked.
“what about my dad?”
“would he go, too?”
“i don’t know. probably not,” kei finalized. he finished sorting through the coins and turned his head up to watch the ball fly up and down. towards the ceiling and back into small, weathered hands. it was almost like a pendulum, returning to the same two positions in a monotonous motion. only the volleyball went vertically, so kei guessed it really wasn’t like that at all.
his dad was moving out. kei was surprised it took him this long. most days he was supposedly working from dusk until dawn. kei forgot he still lived there from time to time. his dad’s apartment was small and far from home. it barely fit one person, much less three when kei and akiteru spent the week there. they took turns sleeping on the bed, the floor, and the couch. the couch was moved to the bedroom. kei usually slept on the floor. akiteru needed company at night. the strongest memory kei has of the place was sitting directly in front of the door so his dad couldn’t leave the house to smoke. he’d seen a video about lung cancer at a school assembly. his dad ended up smoking inside the apartment. the worst part of it all, in kei’s opinion, was the simple lack of anything at all. the most personality it had at any given moment was a cloud of smoke from his fathers cigarettes or a box of raw spaghetti in the cabinet. the shower had only cold water. the walk up the stairs was brutal when he carried groceries. kei could understand why the rent was so cheap. he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to live there. he never once invited yamaguchi over.