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The first jangle of keys in the door called Sushi out from the comfort of the blankets he’d been curled comfortably inside, a yawn stretching him across the edge of the futon before he was trotting attentively into the hall to peer hopeful for his mother. The moment his eyes settled on her, a purr followed him quickly to her legs, tangling around them, rubbing a pleased welcome home across her boots as she bent to take them off.
“Hey, kitten,” she whispered, voice hoarse. Her nails scratched a path down his spine before she plucked her shoes loose one at a time, gently nudging him out of the way in the process. He slunk aside, nosing at her bag for hints of fish as he waited for her attention–
“Sushi!”
That pulled his ears and attention towards the door, eyes bright at the call of a voice he knew, rarer to hear outside of the face-filled screen Nemuri flashed at him at least once a day. Oboro was crouching, hand outstretched, and though Sushi tried to dart past it to rub a possessive greeting against his legs Oboro was blocking with speedy pets before he got there. Sushi had to settle for rubbing up against his cool palm instead.
Nemuri finally got her boots undone, letting them slump empty to the floor with a quiet sniff as she gazed down at them. There was dust on the leather, drops of rain. She reached and brushed a finger through the grey, hiccuping and turning her face away to shove her glasses up and scrub the ball of her palm against her eyes.
Oboro’s good scritching nails had reached behind Sushi’s ear, drawing a contented purr rumbling up his little body. It didn’t distract Oboro from the hopeful smile he was giving Nemuri, brightly murmuring, “it’s been a weird day for everyone, you know? It’s okay! You should get an early night and let it settle down.”
Nemuri ignored him, grasping the wall to get herself upright and staggering across to the couch so she could collapse onto it, knocking one of Sushi’s mice onto the floor with a sad squeak. A muffled sob slipped out from between the arms hiding her face, then another; she was shaking with them as they built to an ugly, constant wail.
Curiosity led Sushi closer even before Oboro stepped past him, settling awkwardly on the end of the couch beside her, shoes still on and turned sheepishly inwards at their tip. His hands hovered, uncertain, foolishly leaving his lap entirely unguarded. Sushi wiggled low in a crouch, leaping gracefully up with every intent to settle between those thighs.
The spring of the couch cushion set his fur on end, no warm thighs to greet him, just the sudden chill of an early morning and the bounce of fabric. His affronted meow was silenced by Nemuri scooping him up in her arms, squeezing him up to her chest with an uncontained sob and tears dripping messy down her chin to dampen his coat.
Sushi didn’t have time to be insulted like that when his gaze was still on Oboro, on the lap very much there, the one that had betrayed him by not being solid beneath his paws.
Oboro laughed, reaching to slide a hand through Nemuri’s grasp so he could ruffle Sushi’s head.
“Yeah,” he repeated, voice and smile strained, “it’s been a really weird day.”
Oboro didn’t leave after the single plate of dinner Nemuri made, but didn’t take his shoes off for staying. Sushi followed him around the house until he grew enough of a fixture that Sushi could trust him to still be there, letting Sushi relax back into his own normal routine with small adjustments for the extra body he had to slink around from time to time.
Their new guest would show up in odd places. He’d lean through a wall, or appear where Sushi knew he hadn’t been a moment before. Sometimes Sushi would jump and hiss and Nemuri would pet him better, never responding to how brightly Oboro laughed in seeings the reaction his antics had earned.
One time, Sushi found Oboro in the bath, curled up as tight as the space would hold him. Sushi’s tail swished over the side of the tub as he stared, silently observing Oboro’s trembling back with pupils wide to cut through the dark.
“I think He’s coming for me,” Oboro croaked finally, not lifting his head from where it was tucked in close to his chest. “I think Death knows I’m here. I-I keep seeing him, when I close my eyes. He’s awful, Sushi, all pale and teeth and–”
He shuddered, fingers clawed amongst his breaking clouds.
“His eyes,” he whispered, feral terror that Sushi understood.
Other guests drifted through the house, sometimes through Oboro. Adults Sushi shied away from, delivery men Sushi curiously peered at from afar, younger friends who gave mediocre pets when Nemuri trapped Sushi in her arms for them to reach.
Hizashi was a welcomed change. Most of the times he showed up he was quiet, which wasn’t like him, exchanging a few, muted words with Nemuri before he turned his attention entirely to Sushi. Today had been no different, at first. He was dangling a feather for Sushi to chase, luring Sushi back each time Sushi started sneaking over to the second lap that was right beside him.
“He hasn’t said anything to me,” was a change, his voice closer to the volume Sushi knew, “not since the end of semester. I’ve left messages, yeah? But it’s like he vanished off the face of the earth.”
“He’ll get back to you,” Nemuri promised, sounding relieved to hear him stringing that many words together in one go. She came over with a drink, and the feather fell still long enough for Sushi to pad all the way up to Oboro and meow reproachfully when Oboro’s swiftly petting hand blocked the way and kept his lap once again unfilled.
“I miss us being together,” Oboro said. His fingers slipped down to curl apologies under Sushi’s chin. “I hope it’s not my fault that Shōta-”
His voice wavered out for a moment before he continued, far quieter, “Hah. Who am I kidding, right? All of this is my fault.”
“I’m going to keep trying,” Hizashi announced, between shaky sips of his juice.
“He needs time,” Oboro replied, pointless, smile faltering away and gaze dropping to the only eyes watching him. “They all need time, it’s okay. They’ll find their way back to each other. I know it.”
The distressed curl of his hand was enough of a lapse that Sushi could nip past it, trying to comfort Oboro with a rub to his leg and stumbling bemused through it, shaking his head out and peering up at the upset face he hadn’t managed to soothe at all. No- just one rub, just one brush, just a way to help a little. That’s all he wanted.
Hizashi set his drink down through Oboro’s knee, ignorant of how Oboro jumped and slid sideways to avoid the dissonance.
He plucked idly at the feathered toy. “It’s kinda lonely now it’s just the two of us.”
Oboro opened his mouth to reply. Thought better of it, and petted Sushi instead.
“I think I have somewhere I’m meant to be,” he told Sushi an eternity later, lounging beside the table Nemuri had covered with paperwork for her teaching application. Sushi purred a curious note, tail swaying for him to lazily try and catch in a single, lifted hand. “I’ll get there, probably. I just don’t wanna be there yet.”
Sushi hopped from the table, into the warm sunlight falling through Oboro’s body, sprawling contentedly out in the space where Oboro’s lap should be. Close enough, for now.
Oboro smiled, nudging one of Nemuri’s papers closer with a faint breeze as she searched for it, curling his fingers away when she snatched it out excitedly from under his touch. His hand dropped, curving delicately down the shape of Sushi’s spine.
“You’ll keep me company a bit longer, right?”
The sun was in a better position from the balcony today, and Sushi had stretched himself over the rail in just the right spot to make the most of it, ears turned towards his company.
“I just can’t get over how much you’ve grown. You used to be, ah, this big,” Oboro held his fingers up to demonstrate, “but now you’re this big! It’s extra weird when I’m still the same size, you’re taking up more and more of my lap all the time! You’ll be poking all the way out of my thighs soon… Oh, oh, imagine if I could pick you up. I bet you’d stretch like one of those really long cats, it would be so funny to–”
Whatever he was planning was lost as the door swung open, Nemuri’s excited voice bursting out a second before she did.
“–So I just submitted the recommendation! We both know he’d be great for it, he’s got no excuse for saying no–other than being miserable all on his own, and we’re done letting him get away with that!”
Yeah was faintly audible down the line, volume turned all the way down to deal with Hizashi’s voice. Oboro and Sushi both perked towards it, small as it was.
“I’m sure he’ll fit right in. I’m sure it’ll take time! You know how Aizawa is! But…it would be nice if it works out. I feel like it’s just the sort of environment he needs to get it back together.”
“I told Shōta he should teach,” Oboro said, moving his hand up to rub his thumb at Sushi’s ear as he kept petting the back of his head. “He’ll do great! Man. Imagine if I get to see him again? He probably looks so different! And he…” The petting slowed. “Well, it’s not like anybody can see me! So I guess it’s not like he’d be special. It’s just you I can bother now, Sushi!”
Nemuri was laughing on the phone, almost drowning out the soft, pained sound Oboro made before he caught himself. “Haha! I’m just, um. I’m glad you can see me.”
Sushi meowed up at his expression, earning a weak smile and all of Nemuri’s attention. Before Oboro could move his hand Nemuri’s fingers were through it, petting excitedly at Sushi as she chattered happily down the phone about desk-warming gifts and teaching advice, a world outside this house, one for adults who’d grown up long enough to find their places.
Oboro’s arm whipped back, stung. He watched her for a moment longer, and even Sushi’s supportive mewls couldn’t keep him from slipping out of sight.
“Sometimes I have these daydreams. Weird ones. It’s like...I’m really into it, but I don’t even realize, and as soon as I do realize, then…boom!” Oboro spread his hands towards the ceiling, tipping his head to look at where Sushi had curled up beside him on the carpet. “It just fades away, all of a sudden, and I can only remember the smallest things.”
His arms dropped, fingers lacing over his chest. “It’s a world where I got to live. I guess no surprises that’s what I’d think about! But I have, like, a kid. I don’t know if it’s my kid? I get this feeling that I adopted him, maybe… I’m pretty sure he’s a him! I don’t remember much else, though.”
Sushi yawned, peering at him over his paws, tail flicking up from the carpet to encourage him. Oboro’s voice was nice. It had become such a constant part of Sushi’s life that the quiet sounded too empty, now.
“I wonder what it would’ve been like, Sushi. Me, alive, with some terrible kid I’d probably raise in all the wrong ways. Hah, can you imagine? Damn,” his voice softened, “I sure wish that was where I’m meant to be going.”
He looked to the ceiling again, eyes unfocused, unlived lifetimes away.
“I wonder if you’d’ve liked the kid I got to raise.”
“Sushi!” Nemuri leaned over the edge of the balcony, cupping her hand to call again. “Suuushi!”
She sighed, relenting and stepping back towards the apartment, slipping inside with a fading, “Sorry, I don’t know where he went…”
Sushi stayed pressed low to the wall below the balcony until her voice faded, before his own search started, nose low and twitching as he wound his way along the brick towards the chill he’d learned to detect like a scent in the air.
Oboro was hunched in one of the small gardens the walls contained, just as Sushi expected, and when Sushi jumped down and purred a greeting it did little to shift anything but the shapes of his wisping hair. Sushi failed to rub against him, as ever, but one hand lifted to idly pet static along his fur.
“Sorry! Sorry. I’m freaking out. Haha!” Oboro peeked just over his arm, then dropped his head out of sight, forehead pressing firmer to the back of his white-knuckled hand. “I just… I wonder what he looks like now. S’been a long time, right? Even you’re bigger, Sushi. But I’m…”
His petting hand stilled.
“I’m not.”
Oboro gazed at his own fingers, turning them over, before hurriedly tucking both his hands under his arms. He peeked again when Sushi meowed a louder complaint, managing a weak smile.
“You telling me I should go back? Ah, you’re probably right. Have you missed us all being together too?” He laughed, shaky. “You didn’t even know us that long, all together. Not before I messed it up. Isn’t it weird we only got close like this after I-”
He didn’t say it, voice fading off, gaze slipping away. Sushi’s insistent attempt to rub against him left fur meeting brick, but this time Sushi didn’t stop, brushing all the way along the wall in a pointed, demanding swipe.
“I have so much to ask him, y’know? So much to say to him. Just like Nemuri. Just like Hizashi. Ah, fuck. You wanna ask for me?”
The joke in his voice was pained. Sushi meowed a reply anyway, and this time his laugh was more earnest, at least.
“I’ll be there soon,” Oboro murmured. “I will. I promise.”
“Sushi!”
Nemuri scooped him up from the balcony rail, beaming and pressing kisses between his ears. “There you are! Where did you run off to, hm? Shōta, look-”
She stepped back inside, carrying him over to the table, a third edge finally filled by a body barely recognisable but for the curtain of black framing eyes even more tired than they’d been, back when Sushi had been small and first peered up from cardboard to meet them.
“Look! Isn’t he big now?”
Shōta reached up, slowly, letting Sushi give him sniffed approval before reaching to scratch soft at the scruffy fur beneath his chin.
“...Hello,” Shōta murmured, soft. As gentle as Hizashi was loud, as relieved as Nemuri was content. “Do you remember me? I missed you.”
Sushi meowed back, gaze beside his face, ears twitching alert, concerned.
Oboro sat there, wrapped around him. Hands fisted through his shirt, unfelt and unseen, head down against Shōta’s shoulder and the ugly, wet noises escaping him unheard by the ears so close. A lifetime away.
Oboro spent more time on the balcony as Nemuri spent more time at the school. Sushi would often find him, curling up in the space his lap should’ve been and claiming it all the same.
“I’ve been having dreams lately,” he told the air when it was cold enough his breath should’ve frosted. The stillness lingered. “I didn’t know ghosts could dream.”
His nails raked ice down Sushi’s spine. “Maybe the afterlife looks like a bar. It’s better than it looking like a hospital.”
They were playing one of the games Oboro still sometimes remembered how to play, memories of the first days he’d come to stay where he’d laugh brightly when he peeked from the walls. He didn’t laugh much anymore, not even when he hid beneath the furniture and had Sushi hunt him, rewarding pets replacing the cheerful sounds he might’ve forgotten how to make.
It had been so long now, since those first days. Time had moved on so very far.
Sushi had found him in the bed, beneath the floorboards, in the washer. Had just sniffed him out of the space between the couch cushions when Oboro stopped, hand never reaching for the pet Sushi was owed.
“...I can hear Shōta,” Oboro mumbled, gaze drifting away.
Sushi tipped his head in bemused feline confusion, trailing after Oboro as they went to check the door. Nemuri was out, there’d been no rattle of keys or creak of wood- but they never reached it to see if that mattered.
Oboro’s knees hit the floor soundlessly, fingers driving into his hair, a wordless cry leaving his lips as they twisted into a confused grimace of pain. “Ah-!”
It turned to a more urgent, pleading cry, a shudder all the way through his shoulders as Sushi tried helplessly to rub him, comfort him, to give him something to grasp for that wasn’t his own skull as he choked on agony and turned his wild, frightened eyes down for the only companion he still had.
“I can- Hear- I can hear them- someone- else, something else-” Oboro stuttered to another scream, contained behind grit teeth, gasp bursting his lips back apart. “I think- I think I have to- go I think it’s time to go but I- I don’t know- where-”
Sushi stumbled through empty air.
No image remained to muddle his vision. No boy remained kneeling, screaming.
He sat slowly, peering around in the silence. His meow brought no reply.
“Sushi!” Oboro said, and Sushi uncurled from the same spot where he’d been curled waiting, knowing Oboro didn’t leave for long, knowing his footsteps always came back to fill the halls.
Oboro was bigger now, when he crouched and offered his hand. The cuffs of a school shirt had turned neat, pinned shut and leading up to the sleek black of a waistcoat in the place of a familiar grey jacket.
His hair flickered, shivered. Purple danced amongst white clouds.
“I found out where I’m meant to be going,” he said, fingers finally reaching to run along the greeting curve of Sushi’s back. Sushi pressed up to his leg, and this time- This time it was almost there. Pressing up against water, resistance before it parted, more certain of itself and its place in the world. The closest to life it had been in a decade.
Sushi stumbled, and Oboro laughed, petting him firmer just to watch his fur move.
“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”
He was smiling, and his eyes were gold.
“It’s been a really weird day.”