Work Text:
Scene: Fifteen years ago. Seven o’clock on some Wednesday during the winter. The air is harsh and sharp like something out of a horror movie, like there’s just been something there that isn’t there anymore, that’s vanished through a wall without a trace and is beckoning you to follow. Kenya has just missed something vital. He isn’t sure what, but he knows he’s missed it, and it litters the margins of his English textbook until they’re stained blue with the ink that his left-handed penmanship keeps leaving behind.
His father doesn’t bother calling most nights when he’s away, but tonight the house phone is fried for the blizzard, and he hightails it home early from work because Sachiko Fujinoma calls him at his office number to ask where her son is, and he swore to her up and down he’d check every inch of Kenya’s bedroom until he was certain Satoru was nowhere to be found. His father isn’t home often but when he is he reminds Kenya of the fact that a man is as good as his word; Shogi matches stained with lectures about playing to your honor, being truthful behind it all. Lectures later on about finding loopholes, but only when necessary; a small lie to find a whole truth. So, true to his word, Mr Kobayashi comes in through the front door and asks to see Satoru, asks Kenya if he’s taken to hiding friends in his bedroom nowadays, but Kenya can’t say yes. In fact, he can hardly say anything. It’s been a long three hours since Satoru went off to watch Osamu skate at the rink; a long three hours since Kenya knew better than to let him wander off alone, and now he stares up at his father in his snow-wet trenchcoat and wonders how to tell him he’s made such a heinous mistake.
His eyes go very wide when his father asks where Saturo is hiding. A booming, commanding voice -- still, love, always love -- but startling, now, as Kenya is putting together the pieces. The pen drops from his hand as his father stands at the doorway to the living room, question hanging in the air, and his shoulders tighten like a reflex, throat tightens like a vice.
He runs the thought over in his mind a few times while the snow flitters outside the window and his father stands there, waiting. There are so many textbooks and conjunctions and factor-in-phrases, but not enough real words, he thinks. So many vowels in the English language and not enough in his own. Not enough in either one to even begin to say what he knows he must. His breath catches unsteadily as he turns to face his father, and he knows. He shouldn’t have left Satoru alone. Wasn’t that the plan from the start? Never to be alone?
A pause. “Kenya?”
His father’s eyebrows come down at the sight of Kenya’s too-pale face. “Kenya,” he says, like a man trying to reason with some kind of nervous animal. “What is it? What has he done?”
The sink stops in the room over, and Mother comes out from the kitchen in her green apron with her blond hair tied back, looks longly across the living room as Kenya tries and fails to make sense. He swallows hard on air. A noise is stuck there. He’s trying to speak but he can’t because there’s something in the way, and he stares over the back of his desk chair at his father’s expectant face, hands almost shaking as they grip the backrest.
“Kenya?” says his mother.
He needs to breathe but it’s suddenly very difficult. The pieces are coming together. The plot is rearranging and Satoru is at the center and Kenya let him leave alone. He let him leave alone.
His mother tosses her dishrag over her shoulder and crosses her arms very hard. “Say something, Kenya,” she tells him, and his father takes a step forward, slow and careful. It is the most careful he has ever looked outside of protecting his King. Kenya will not cry, of course, but still he is close to it. Something is stuck in his throat and he is close to it. The words won’t come.
His father has shed the coat since he’s come in, draped it over his own arm in the way he usually does before he hangs it on the rack by the door to dry. But it’s different this time. Kenya stares with blank fear as his father slowly drapes his coat across the back of his armchair, another cautious step closer as his son makes a very slow show of turning in his seat until his body can match his gaze. And from there it’s painful, it’s hard to watch; the way the logician of the Kobayashi children begins to deteriorate, legs uneasy like a lamb’s first steps as he rises from his chair. (Satoru. Alone. Missing. Three hours now. How long is that? How much can happen in that time? An average person could bleed to death in less than five minutes. He read that in a book once. He wishes he hadn’t.) Kenya stands there another long moment, hands at his sides and stained with blue ink as his father watches him very carefully, anticipating the movement. Any other day, and Kenya would play it well; move a knight to 1B, call it even. But he is shaking. And Satoru is alone. And it is his fault.
When he takes two more steps forward and almost collapses, his father catches him in the woven basket of his arms. He lets him shake.