Chapter Text
Step back. Lean on your right foot. Are you ready?
-
June 21st. Year 2000.
A screaming child opens his willfully innocent, ignorant, brown eyes to the harsh brightness of the hospital lights. For a second, Aimi Hinata- still wincing and groaning, childbirth no simple thing- swore she saw baby Shouyou take in everything around him, bringing blissful silence to his screams for a second.
Just a second.
But enough for Aimi to take her screaming baby, already sprouting a tuft of bright orange hair, in her arms and tearfully swear at the doctors that he would be a star.
They’d smiled at her, with the ugly placating grin she’d seen when she told her parents that she’d make it on her own, when she’d entered Nagoya Community College and promised she’d be rich and famous one day, when she’d told Shouyou’s father Takashi that she trusted him. Most terrible of grins.
But she looked down at baby Shouyou’s pudgy white face- and she knew .
-
There is little you know when you are three.
There is his mom. There is sometimes his father. There is never food.
What else is there to it?
Mama thinks Shouyou is a gifted baby. He starts walking a month early and starts running almost immediately with it. They buy a baby leash ( ‘they’ being his mother and father in a rare good spell-) because they can never keep track of him.
All the doctors say that doesn’t matter in the end if he doesn’t get enough to eat. ‘It’ll stunt his growth,’ they say. ‘He’ll have health complications for a lifetime, Aimi-san,’. Mama always watches with a pinched face, until Shouyou starts complaining, and the doctor gives him a bright cherry red lollipop and sends them on their way with a warning looking at mama.
There was one time- when mama came into his little room with little toys with red-rimmed eyes, a purpling bruise and held him for the whole night. Even though she was trying to get Shouyou to sleep in his own room, by then, she doesn’t let go and sobs into his tiny shoulder that she really is trying, that she never meant to get pregnant so young but she loves him with all she is and she’s trying.
He is small and does not understand.
He wakes up, and mama is already at work. He wakes up, and he is hungry.
-
Five is a pleasant age to be.
What do we know, really know, before the world filters its opinions and reasons through our developing young minds? What do we know before our elders think we are old enough to agree yet too young to disagree? What do we know before the dirt encompasses us and we become another unhappy middle-aged being, sore from sitting a boring 9-5, ready to return to an unfulfilling yet ‘good enough’ marriage?
You know what you see.
Hinata Shouyou is five and he rolls in the mud and tracks dirt across the tiny hut of a place they call home. He is five and he knows that he sees all the other kids scream as they push each other in the lake, and he is five and knows that vegetables taste bad and his mama is mean for not letting him have the last bit of chocolate before bed.
He knows this- and more.
He knows that Father and mama don’t get along- and that Father doesn’t really like him all that much either. He knows that Ito at the park laughs at him because he has holes in his shoes and only one thread-bare jacket, and he knows that Nakamura-sensei, his teacher, secretly pays for him to get lunch on the days mama doesn’t have enough. He knows that there are people like him, and people like Takeru, who everyone likes more because even though he can burp the alphabet, Takeru has the new Nintendo and that’s so much cooler.
He knows Takeru isn’t allowed to talk to him, because Father and mama aren’t married. He knows Ito’s parents cast him concerned glances when he shows up in the same pants as yesterday, splattered with mud because mama came home really late and couldn’t wash them.
But when you are five, it doesn’t matter. Simple problems have simple solutions.
He goes to Saito’s house when Father is home. He gives Nakamura-sensei a really, really big hug when he leaves kindergarten, and he thinks he feels her tear up. Ito makes fun of his clothes, so he makes fun of her short hair and stupid face, and they push each other really high on the swings. He plays with Takeru anyways, because they both don’t care, and his Nintendo is really cool. He jumps in the river with his muddy clothes and goes to class sopping wet and everyone laughs and he gets to wear someone else’s clothes for the day. He smiles, big and wide, summoning the sun with him to blind all those near.
Pleasant. Simple.
-
He goes to Nagoya Elementary school, and his favorite subject is gym class.
It’s a dirty place- bathrooms cracked and broken, textbooks old, filled with obscene drawings and smelling of must and sweat- but the gym.
She’s gorgeous.
Long, glimmering hardwood, squeaky even when your feet are dry, blinding you with the reflections of lights in its premium stage- yeah. She’s gorgeous.
Apparently, it was a donation from one of the men who’d made it out of this hell town.
Shouyou doesn’t care, not really. Gym is the place he can absolutely shine, just like mama told him he would when it rained too hard and the thunder was loud and the ceiling leaked, and he’d run to her room to hide. Japanese is confusing, math takes too long, and history is unbearable- but when he enters the room and the stench of sweaty six-year-olds and air salonpas fills his lungs, he feels like he is home. It’s super fun- that’s the word. Fun.
Shouyou runs faster than every other six year old. He jumps higher, and he throws farther, and he can do cartwheels and flips like Ito who’s in gymnastics. People think that he’s cool .
If he could, he’d never leave the track. Running around and around and around is a relief, it’s therapy- it’s release. Like he never has to ever think about anything again.
He’s free.
-
When he is seven, Kugisaki-sensei makes a home visit. Apparently, he needs to do this thing called homework, and bring it back the next day.
He opens the door when she knocks, leading her in to sit on the ratty couch and bringing her a glass of water like mama taught him to do when guests are over. He explains that he doesn’t get homework, and when she offers to have him stay for extra lessons, he explains that ‘No, I don’t understand why we have homework at all, because I already did it in school.’
Kugisaki-sensei laughs, holding the glass between her hands. “Repetition is key, Shouyou. Just because you did it in school doesn’t mean you will remember it at home. Practice, diligence, hard work- they all start now, when you are just a kid.” She ruffles his hair, and he huffs that he is not a kid. He’s seven whole years old, and he’s allowed to buy popsicles by himself, and he’s totally super cool and old.
Kugisaki-sensei narrows her eyes, looking around the dusty room. “Where’s your mom, Shouyou?”
“She won’t be back until later,” he answers earnestly. “She took the day early, but she just called to say something got caught up at work.”
The older woman nods with understanding. “Your father?”
Shouyou shrugs. He feels her eyes fix on him with concern, but he ignores it. His father comes and goes. It’s better to just accept it than wonder why, or where he is. They sit in awkward silence for a few minutes, before she wonders aloud if Shouyou would want to start his homework now, and he goes toddling up the cracked staircase to bring his backpack. Turns out subtracting those big numbers is a lot easier if you take your time.
He does his homework sometimes, now, after Sensei informs his mother he will fail out of his year if he doesn’t do at least some. But why should he? No one stops him if he doesn’t- and it’s boring and stupid and dumb.
Sometimes, sometimes though- he will turn on his little lamp when it’s dark, and Sensei’s words will reverberate through his head. Practice, diligence, hard work- he doesn’t even know what that means. Those words are just as dumb and stupid as this piece of paper asking him what 44 minus 19 is. He will go through the process slowly, carrying the one and counting down from 14. So dumb and stupid.
-
“Betcha can’t make it up that wall.”
Shouyou sticks his tongue out, making a face at Saito. Stupid Saito. Of course, he can. He just watched Spider-man do it, and Shouyou can do anything.
It’s easy to clamber up the trash can beside the store, standing on the flat part right beside the flap. But after that- maybe Saito was a little right. He totally could do it if he had powers like Spider-man, so it’s pretty unfair that he was expected to.
The roof is kinda far up. Just kinda- but Shouyou’s no wimp, he’s no wuss, and he’s gonna make it. If he does this without superpowers he’s basically a superhero now.
He leans back, measuring how far from the edge of the trash can he is. Enough so.
He takes another step back, just a bit so he can get farther because he can make this jump, because he’s gotta-
And his foot slips right off like butter on bread, taking him down to the ground in a heap of limbs. He hisses as his arm catches on a large box beside it.
Saito comes clambering next to him, his concerned face making its way into Shouyou’s vision- which is pretty hazy right now, that’s not good-
“Shou-chan! Are you okay?” His voice comes out more like a whimper, and Shouyou hisses again as a particularly strong breeze hits his wrist.
“Here, let me help ya,” Saito says, gingerly placing a hand on his arm to help him up, and Shouyou feels his entire body turn itself inside out. Ow, ow, ouch , that hurts so bad.
When his vision makes it's way back to him, Saito is sporting large tears, falling straight down his face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he sobs. “I killed Shouyou!”
“Huh?” Comes his intelligent response.
“Oh-” Saito whirls around, a relieved expression melting onto his red face. “You’re alive! We gotta, I don’t know, take you to a doctor? Should I call your dad?”
Hinata reels back. “No. Don’t- It’s okay.” It’s probably fine. His arm hurts a lot, but it’s probably okay. More okay than calling his dad to come clean up this mess.
“It’s not!” Saito comes sobbing, again. “What if it’s broken and it’s gonna fall off your body and then you only have one arm!”
“I’ll just put it back, I have glue,” Shouyou says. More like his mama has glue- a tiny tube of something she calls Super Glue - if it’s so super it will probably work. Unlike Spider-man who didn’t even come save him.
“So it is gonna fall off?” Saito sniffles.
Shouyou bites on his lip as he struggles to stand. “If it falls off, I totally get your bike. And I’ll be super cool with only one arm.”
Saito snorts wetly, snot definitely fell out of his nose, ewwww , and scrambles away as Shouyou cackles, chasing him (still holding his wrist to his chest).
-
Two days later, he is taken to the hospital, after his wrist has swollen past recognition, resembling a rotting grapefruit. The doctor looks at them with annoying disapproval, tutting to his Father as to why they came in so later. The silent answer is that Shouyou hid his arm until he could no longer bear it. Father says he hadn’t been home.
Father looks downright murderous, as he’d come home for the first time in a week to the sight of a house in ruins- mama hadn’t been home in a day either, and Shouyou’s arm was much more of a useless rubber noodle.
He gets a bright green cast, and his father pulls him aside.
“Next time,” he bites, eyes glinting and breath sour with last night’s alcohol. “Next time, I will break the other one as well. Never again.”
Father cries the next day when Shouyou doesn’t say good night. He says he is sorry for losing his temper. That he’ll never do it again. Shouyou says it’s okay, but he backs away from his father’s trembling form so quick he hits his wrist again on the side of the staircase. Everyone at school signs his cast, and Saito still looks sorry until Shouyou takes his meat buns.
-
Natsu is born in the spring, coming into the world with the April cherry blossoms. His mother swears she is the same gift as he was, and where he will shine she shall as well. ‘Babies that are born under the blossoms are good luck, Shouyou’.
She’s kind of annoying.
He was really excited to have a baby around, first, a real-life baby that would make funny noises and follow him around. Takeru would totally think he’s super, super cool now. You can’t have babies with the Nintendo.
Father and mama get along some more, now. One time, Father even took him to the store, and let him buy this big plastic toy truck that had flames on the side, and laughed as he ran right into Kobayashi’s house to show her just how cool. Shouyou even held his hand as they crossed the street. He’s the one who took Shouyou to see baby Natsu-
Yes. The baby’s name is Natsu, and she’s really loud and kind of a crybaby. Ito would totally make fun of her. Ito thinks all crybabies are lame.
He informs mama of this, hoping that at least she will tell the baby it’s time to stop. Two weeks is far too long for this behavior. He hasn’t cried since like, three whole weeks ago, when he skinned his knee trying out Saito’s bike! So baby Natsu can’t be doing it so often. It’s unbecoming. Mama just laughs and tells him to hold out his arms.
She places the swaddled orange head in his arms, as he sits on the stinky, ratty couch in their small living room.
“Do you see, Shouyou?” Which is a silly, silly question to ask. Of course, he does- he has eyes. “This is your baby sister. Yours . You have to take care of her, no matter what, because you are eight and she is just a baby. She will always be with you, even when everyone else is gone.”
At this, Shouyou looks up in alarm. “Gone?” He whines. “I don’t want everyone else being gone! You’ll always be here, right mama? Right?” He can’t imagine a world without Takeru’s stupid baseball bat they swing around, or Ito’s sneering face as she does the monkey bars faster than him, or Saito’s shiny new red bicycle.
Mama laughs again, breathy and soft. “Not always Shouyou. For a long time, yes. But not always.”
He feels his eyes well up. He doesn’t want mama to ever leave! Not like Father, who had just stormed out last night like he always does, after another loud screaming match. She could never do that.
“No, baby,” Mama coos, wiping at his eyes. “Here- feel her heartbeat.” She presses baby Natsu up a little closer to his face, right against his cheek. Natsu’s skin is soft, her tiny breaths coming out against his ear.
Ba-thump.
Ba-thump.
Mama must catch the recognition in his wide eyes because she leans closer and wraps the both of them in a tight hug. “That’s her heartbeat, Shouyou. She’s so fragile and tiny- but you’re big and strong. That’s why you gotta always take care of her, so she can also take care of you.”
The words ring in his ears, and he gently pulls the swaddled baby from his face, holding her neck up just as mama showed him. ‘Your baby sister,’ ricochets around his brain like a bullet in a chamber, clanging against every little crevice.
Your baby sister.
Natsu stirs, and without even opening an eye starts wailing, thrashing around in Shouyou’s arms. Mama tuts, immediately scooping her up to check her diaper, then pulling away with a pulled expression.
The warmth of the baby stings against Shouyou’s arms, like her absence has somehow intensified it.
He feels his heart glow.
-
He used to lie.
Silly little things, really.
He’d snipe candies from the corner store, stare down at the shopkeeper's shiny shoes and swear up and down he had nothing under his shirt. When he broke the gear on Saito’s then-new (but now, the novelty’s worn off) bike, he promised him it wasn’t because he tried it in the grass when he wasn’t supposed to, but because a bird flew through it and he had to stop super quick. He’d tell his mom it wasn’t him who ate the last cookie out of the jar, wiping away the last crumbs with the back of his hand as her too-bright smile seemed to cut him.
He doesn’t know when it starts- that’s a lie. He knows exactly when he bit the inside of his cheek and told his third-grade teacher that the reason the side of his face is bruised and turning yellow is because he ran into a door, and not because his father Takashi drank a little too much.
To tell a lie is to craft a beautiful world, really. There is a feeling so sacred, a feeling so beautiful about having something you want to protect so bad you’d kill yourself a little for it.
So Hinata Shouyou, all of nine years, skinned knees, and bright eyes leaves a trail of lies behind him, hissing like serpents when someone comes too close.
It’s not a problem.
It’s not!
Even though he misses school a lot, to watch baby Natsu who blabbers the day away, his teachers call him a pleasure to have in class. He has all his friends who love to play tag with him because he’s always the fastest. He has the frogs at the pond who jump into his waiting hands and his mama who always kisses him goodnight. You can’t have problems when it’s all so good.
One day, when his father Takashi is mad again and has left again, he sits on the stinky, ratty couch next to mama quietly. It’s a new thing, for the two of them- they are never really quiet.
“Mama,” he whispers. “Do you love Father?”
He feels his mama still next to him, and exhales loud and long, before pulling him into her lap and holding him back by the shoulders, to look her in the eye- rimmed red with hour-long tears. “Why do you ask that, Shouyou?”
He shrugs. He doesn’t know.
Mama quirks an eyebrow and sighs heavily. “I do.” She finally answers.
“Why?”
Mama breathes out a laugh. “Shouyou, baby,” she whispers. “There’s never been a reason for love. If someone asked me why I loved you, the only answer I’d have is that you’re you.”
Shouyou doesn’t really understand all that. Of course, he’s him. Who else could he possibly be? There’s a reason he loves his things- he loves to run because it’s fun, and he loves food because it tastes good and there’s never enough.
“He’s mean, mama,” Shouyou whispers softly.
She stops, inhaling sharply, and kisses the top of his head- gentle and soft. “Let’s go to sleep, baby. Any more questions?”
Shouyou nods his head ‘no’, then stops- imperceptibly, and he untangles himself from his mother’s limbs. “One more.”
“Fine.”
“What’s love?”
Mama looks stunned for the tenth time that night. She chuckles. “You just asked me if I love, and you didn’t know what it was?”
Shouyou nods.
She blinks, then turns away, carefully, standing up and taking his hand as they head up to the beds.
She tucks him in, soft, caring, and presses another kiss to his cheek. Just as she swings the rotting door shut, she stops, and Shouyou looks at the glimmer of light between his wall and door with one wide eye.
“Love is a lie,” She whispers. “And a beautiful truth.”
-
The truth.
The truth.
What is that? What can we define as ‘the truth’? Of our world and its terrors, of its beauties- who is true?
There only Is, as far as Shouyou knows. There Is good and bad, there Is strong and weak. No truth to it.
He asks Kobayashi when she splays out in the mud next to him after they are worn out from trying to climb up the slippery green slide of the rusty old playground. The night sky blankets their small faces, a smattering of stars peeking from behind a large, fluffy cloud. It’s a little chilly out, and it’s late, but Takashi is home today and he is angry, and Kobayashi’s parents are never home anyway. He may sleep out here today.
“Koba,” he starts. “What do you think the truth is?”
Kobayashi wrinkles her nose, turning to look at him. “What the heck, Shouyou.” She pans. “That makes like, no sense.”
Shouyou blows out a raspberry. “Whaaat. Yes, it does!”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Shouyou rolls his eyes and throws a pebble. “Whatever,” he pouts. “You just don’t know.”
“I do!” She protests, sitting up on her elbows. Kobayashi just turned 10, hitting double digits before everyone else in their class, so she thinks she knows everything and tries to make them all call her ‘Senpai’.
She bites her cheek, scrunching her eyes up and waving her feet behind her. “ Okayyyy ,” she drawls. “The truth is like… a thing.”
Shouyou snorts. “Now who makes no sense?”
“Shut up!” She waves her tiny fist at him. “You asked me, and I’m way better at Japanese than you.” She sticks out her tongue, and Shouyou blows another raspberry. She’s not wrong.
“It’s like... a thing where you gotta not lie.” She finally finishes, looking proud.
Shouyou groans, pulling himself up to sit on his butt. “My mama said that the truth is love. Or that love is the truth. I don’t know.”
Kobayashi squints. “I don’t get it. They’re two different things, though.”
Shouyou shrugs. “I don’t know,” he repeats, feeling small under the vast expense of the sky.
Kobayashi juts her lip out. “Sometimes your mama is weird, Shou.”
Shouyou grabs a tuft of grass, throwing it at her. “She is not !”
Kobayashi squeals with delight, hopping to her feet to run off, leaving Shouyou to chase after her, childish giggles ringing through the field.
-
Childhood, my friend- it is a rambling, uncontainable thing. He plays, he hungers, he sleeps, he cries- he is happy, he is sad- though he doesn’t quite understand that yet. He understands very little, but he knows very much.
It is easy for us to sit here, wondering what in the world Aimi Hinata thought when she brought a child she couldn’t truly care for to fruition. To wonder what makes Takashi lose his temper so quickly, that he’d throw the bottle of beer he cannot breathe without, slamming his fist into the nearest surface- breathing or still. To wonder why Nakamoto-sensei never informed an authority, to wonder where Kobayashi’s parents had been, to wonder why Saito never asked about what kind of bird had flown into his bike, to wonder what God above had arranged the events just so, so to leave a child confused and heartbroken.
It is easy for us, to define truth, to speak on love- what is good, what is bad.
But we- we have our childhood, within us, always. And in our childhood, we do not know. We only see.
Shouyou sees the good days, when Takashi holds Aimi to his chest and dances to the tune of the recorder Shouyou has, squeaky and inconsistent. When he finally learns how to divide, even before Kobayashi who is better at Japanese than him. When Aimi who is still young and free, even with two children and a lifetime of debt, rolls down the tumbling hills of Nagoya parks and grabs Shouyou who is just a kid, spinning him around.
He sees that he doesn’t need to care because he has people who do that for him. Care for the home, care for Natsu, care for him, and care for themselves. But he chooses to. He sees, and he chooses.
Ah , the fresh freedom of childhood. We see we breathe, we care. But we play.
-
Shouyou is 10 and hasn’t been to school in two days. He spends more days home from school, tottering around with Natsu in his arms, learning to use the rice cooker well enough to make dinner when mama has to stay even later at work now.
It’s okay. It is what it is- he tells himself. The truth. He ignores the burning in his stomach when Kobayashi knocks on the door and asks why he couldn’t come to Saito’s playdate yesterday, because he got a kite and they used it. He ignores the flaming in his cheeks when the rice comes out burnt, day after day, and Natsu’s cries when the milk bottle is too hot. He ignores the sting in his eyes when Kugisaki-sensei fixes him with disappointment and pity when he comes into school after a week-long absence- with none of his homework done. Now everyone knows how to divide three digits (everyone but him ).
Takashi has not been home in 3 months.
Shouyou learns the truth of hate.
-
Are you ready?
-
The house in Miyagi is nice.
The stairs are not cracked and caving in, and it’s really small, but it’s new. It’s nice.
Natsu- four now, and unstoppable- goes barreling right into her ‘ own room now, Shou-chan, look!’ and he sets down the two suitcases with a huff.
Saying goodbye to everyone back in Nagoya hurt, it did- but a lot less than he thought it would. It’s like a weight has been lifted off his chest, a weight of waiting for Takashi to return, or for the tax collectors to come pounding down their door, or for the school to call and inform them that Shouyou was out.
The hardest part was really the philosophy of it, no? Was this… running away?
He’d spent a lot of time running, these past few years. Through the woods behind the school, through the city a few miles away, anywhere and anyplace he could. “Freakish stamina,” the older women would gather and say when he passed them on his fourth time around. The dull ache in his ankles, the sharp pains at his sides, the way he could just barely get enough air in: it was intoxicating. Everything about it. But never away- he’d always be back home by the end of it, huffing his way back up those rickety floorboards.
Miyagi is new. Miyagi is nice.
He’s never been a city kid- his town before small and secluded- but something about the fresh countryside and large mountains are enticing, far more than any open field or ink-black midnight sky. The sky is different here- a little less suffocating. He doesn’t know why.
Mama leans back, hands on her hips, and lets out a loud sigh. “No neighbors, Shou.” She says with a smile. “You can make all the ruckus you want.”
Shouyou cracks a smile. “In a bit. I’m kinda tired, gonna head up-”
“Wait.” Mama waves him over, placing an arm around his shoulders. She points down the road, climbing down past what he can see.
“All of that?” she says. “It’s all ours, now, baby.” Her gaze softens, and she smiles wetly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be enough before. The world bit us, right? And mama couldn’t bite back.”
“But you know- we are Hinatas- my name. And it doesn’t matter if there ain’t anymore- even if it’s just us three, we are keeping this family name going. We are gonna look at this mountain, we are gonna look at Nagoya, and we are gonna love it, and remember it, but this is our home. And we ain’t fuckin’ settling. It’s a change we need, and I’m gonna make it one you love. Okay? You got your mama’s promise on that.”
Hinata bites his lip, blush rising heavy on his cheeks. So much for looking cool, now- he’s positive his face is lit up in every dorky way possible.
Still, he nods his head, and for a second, it’s like the bitter resent of the past two years is gone. Every scream of frustration he let out when Natsu wouldn’t sleep, every silent tear when mama was at the hospital working two nights, three, four- every time someone looked at him and dismissed him for the Bastard child he was- it’s gone.
-
Two months later, Shouyou turns twelve and receives a shiny red bike for a present, Natsu and a few kids he met at the park crowded around him as he blows out the candles on his lemon cake. They play party games and dance to American music and watch half of three different movies. Natsu calls him old and cries when she can’t blow out the candles- mama gets drunk and also cries that they grow up too fast.
It’s the best birthday he’s ever had.
-
His stomach doesn’t growl anymore- he works at a Mom’s friend’s store, and the Miyagi general hospital pays far better for fewer hours than wherever mom was before. They have enough to eat, and Shouyou has shoes that fit.
But he craves something else- something that would make him burn and feel alive, like the bite of his fractured wrist or the sting of his father’s anger. Something that could light a match under him and make him furious .
Life is better now. Miyagi is nice.
-
But Shouyou feels the aching in his bones like an old dog. His mind is ten places at once, and he needs something , desperately , because there are days he cannot breathe without needing to scream. He doesn’t know why, because it’s nice here, it’s enough , finally-
He tries to promise himself little things. If he eats this extra cake, he won’t die, and he will feel better. If he asks mom to come home early so he can hang out with friends, the world won’t collapse, and he will feel better. It’s all okay because he is happy and his friends are happy and Natsu is happy and mama is happy.
It’s all okay. And if he runs up and down the mountain every morning so that he can finally breathe- well, it’s just another reminder it’s fine, right? He knows illness, he knows anger and bitterness and resentment, and those people who are consumed by it aren’t happy.
So he runs a bit more. Yukigaoka is a nice school, with proper chairs and hand soap- he’s okay with it being a bit far. The bike was a good present, the hour-long commute slashed to just a half.
A week later, he finds his fire, and he learns that he doesn’t need to run anymore.
He will fly.