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Ever since Kanata was a little boy, he'd earnestly sought after his older brother's attention. Back then, it had been so willingly given to him. Haruka had indulged him with it and Kanata, so thirsty for love and affection, ate it right up. It was the sustenance that drove him to live, filled him with more energy than any meal cooked by the maids ever did.
Kanata could still remember the very day that it wasn't as freely given to him. That Haruka was busy now. That Haruka was doing things in his school, with other people, and when he finally saw his little brother in the afternoon, there were more things on his mind than giving Kanata what he needed. More and more, Kanata had to ask for it, remind him that it was Wednesday and Haruka was supposed to listen to how much better he'd gotten at playing piano.
As aggrieved as Kanata was then, he could never expect the level that it would drop to. That there would be weeks where Haruka didn't want to talk to him at all, didn't want to even look at him. Kanata scraped on by with substitutes. Classmates and teachers and the foreign-sounding praise of his parents, only making itself known now. He took those vapid words, pretended they were enough even as he felt himself withering more and more inside.
The day Haruka lashed out at him was when that horrible downward slope finally reached its end. Kanata could barely remember what he'd actually done to grant his brother such ire, but he didn't forget the way it felt. The bitterness sinking in as Haruka told him he hated him, wished he'd never been born. No matter how cruel his words and how harsh his glare, Haruka was still looking at him, was giving Kanata a taste of what he had been so desperately craving. Gone was the warmth of the gentle brother from their childhood - a sweltering heat burst in its place. Kanata had been cold for so long, using shallow friendships to ward off the encroaching winter, that the prospect of burning to a crisp was one thousand times more preferable.
But Haruka never dwelt on him long enough for the raging fire in his eyes to overtake him. Kanata was scorched - but it was only skin deep, only enough to take the chill out of the air. But now, Kanata wasn't satisfied being left out in the cold anymore. He pushed, he prodded, he ruined Haruka's hopes, made him suffer - anything to make Haruka direct that intensity toward him. The sharp taste was thin and fleeting, like fresh blood running down the back of his throat and settling in the pit of his stomach.
And Kanata... he could have lived on that forever. He planned to, regularly inciting Haruka, drawing that attention back over him. There were only two potential outcomes in Kanata's mind: Haruka would never give in, always scorning him or he come to realize how much happier he would be (how much happier the both of them were) when he made Kanata his priority. Of course the latter would take a miracle, his big brother was too ridiculously stubborn for anything else. So really, there was just the status quo, changing only in the most irrelevant ways. The "who" or "where" all blurred together, but they all ended up the same. Haruka, alone, angry, bitter. Kanata, complete, gleeful, sated.
Kanata could be happy with that. He was. But then - something changed, suddenly, off in some distant corner while Kanata had averted his gaze for an instant. Haruka met someone new, and unlike the others, Kanata couldn't scare him away. Worse yet, whenever Kanata came around to make things worse between them, that Tsubaki Yamato would say something hard to follow and his brother - would smile at him.
It made Kanata feel sick. He tried stirring up Haruka in all the familiar ways he used to, but even they were less effective. Rather than fighting back or giving Kanata anything, he turned his back away from him. Looking somewhere else, far off, toward a pleasant memory.
How unfair. All of Kanata's pleasant memories involved Haruka. The fear and pain of the days when Haruka abandoned him had never gone away, only faded into the background, temporarily quelled by the weight of his brother's hateful gaze. Now that it wasn't there to hold those negative emotions back - they all came rushing out without a filter.
They nearly bowled him over, but a night of clenched eyes and mantras of self-reassurance pieced Kanata back together. So what if Haruka made a new friend. He'd made friends before. Bakki here was just a little slower on the uptake than all the rest. Kanata took it for granted now, how easy it had become to smile and joke and gain people's confidence, but it didn't used to be so easy, did it? He used to have to work hard for it, setting everything up perfectly before his trap paid off. As long as he could hold on a little longer, he could fix everything back to the way it was supposed to be.
That was the plan. Kanata spent so long being sure of himself that maybe he didn't notice the things he should of, until it was too late. Until he was spying on his brother's meeting with Yamato and finding more than guitar tips being swapped behind the music store. The image of Haruka's hands in Yamato's black hair, their mouths pressed together - burned so brightly in Kanata's mind that everything went blank.
He was six years old again, weak and bedridden. Only this time Kanata knew that when Haruka left for the day, he'd never come back. Every method of making him stay flooded his mind. Even grabbing Haruka's sleeve and begging him, apologizing, saying that he'd do anything he wanted from now on if he'd just stay. If this were back then, Haruka would gently grab Kanata's fingers, pat him on the head, and tell him he'd be home before he knew it.
Now, Haruka only looked at him with disgust and disdain, ripping his arm from Kanata's desperate grip before he could get a word out. The attention should have made him feel something at least, but the copper taste in his mouth was fast fading, dissolving into ash.
He panicked. He was at the end of his line. At the end of his wits. If he waited too long, Haruka would be taken away by someone else. Kanata could already feel the effect that Yamato was having on his older brother. He had to act now if he wanted any chance of keeping Haruka with him.
The method came to him quickly. Kanata always considered Haruka his very lifeblood, more vital than the heart in his chest or red running through his veins. Always wanted to be so close together, fusing back into one - the way they belonged. It was so blessedly simple of a solution that it was a wonder Kanata didn't decide on it before. Perhaps there had been more hope left in him than he thought possible, holding out for a miracle, believing that one day Haruka would realize they were better together than apart, and come back on his own.
If only he'd been smart enough to accept it as an unreachable dream. Then at least he wouldn't have seen Haruka like that - looking happy in a way that he never would with his only brother, as if there was someone else in the world who could make him whole.
Kanata embraced the anger inside of him, instead of pushing it to the side. He'd need it. Should he falter at even one step, he'd be right back where he started. And if there was a choice - Kanata would rather die.
It was three weeks before everything was ready. No one ever praised Kanata for his patience, but as long as it came to Haruka, he was able to plan ahead and lie in wait.
When Haruka received the small bottle after class with a note and Yamato's name scribbled on it, a small smile had come to his face. Not at all suspicious that there was anything dissolved in it, that the kana on the note were painstakingly copied by Kanata's hand until they looked identical to the real thing. By the time he made it home, the drug started to set in. Just another day where Haruka was exhausted after school and crawled into his bed for a nap.
He would never wake up.
It was according to Kanata's intentions, yet when confronted with Haruka's sleeping expression, a part of him wavered. He squashed it before it could spread. If Haruka had simply opened his arms to him, it wouldn't have come to this. If Haruka hadn't turned his back on him, Kanata wouldn't need to go to such extremes. They could have been happy, but now...
Now, Haruka was unconscious. Unaware of the ending that Kanata had chosen for him, or that it was coming at all. There was no one else in the condo. Thanks to the overnight trip to Kyoto that Haruka had refused outright, and Kanata had backed out on last minute.
The end of Haruka would also be the end of Epsilon Phi. Of Haruka's guitar playing and singing. Kanata's heart twinged. He soothed it with the knowledge that he would keep them both safe in his mind, just as he did the sound of Haruka's bass (the sound of Haruka's cheerful voice calling his name).
Kanata sat on his brother's stomach. He looked at the chest, breathing deeply even as his expression contorted - and raised the knife.
It did not go in easy.
It was harder than it looked in the movies to slip between the ribs and aim for the heart. Haruka's eyes flew open in shock and pain, he gasped out. His voice rose in a scream when Kanata's knife finally dug deep, piercing through his chest. The noise died, cut short by a sputter of dark red blood. Kanata drank it up. It was thick and sweet. Warming him from the inside out. The outside in where the blood covered his fingers and the handle of the knife.
The surprise - and light - faded slightly in Haruka's eyes, then his face sharpened in recognition and anger and hatred, lips opening in a gasp to gush another mouthful of blood. Kanata didn't know what to say. Didn't know what Haruka wanted to say. No, didn't want to hear it.
Haruka couldn't be trusted anymore, after all. When those whispering breaths finally caught purchase on Haruka's vocal chords, Kanata panicked. The knife was sticking out of Haruka's chest, but Kanata left it there, instead lashing out with teeth against Haruka's tender throat. Never had Haruka seemed so fragile before then, his skin tearing apart as Kanata bore down on him. More blood, pouring down his chin. Haruka's words were lost to the air - through injury or the natural consequence of the red draining out of him, creeping out over the sheets, drenching both of their clothes.
Kanata tried not to think of the waste. Tried not to think about what must be going through Haruka's head - staring at his own twin with his blood on his lips, knowing that it would be the last thing he ever saw. Was he sorry? Did he want to plead for Kanata to call help? Was he grateful to finally be put out of the misery he bemoaned every day?
Kanata didn't look at his face to tell. This wasn't about Haruka any longer. It was about Kanata taking what he needed from him, absorbing every scrap of Haruka's self that he could get his hands on before it was too late. His heart was pounding harder in his chest as he felt Haruka's slow down, he was panting hard as Haruka's breath fluttered like a wounded bird at the bottom of his cage.
Kanata clung to him tightly, hoping that maybe, he'd be able to feel Haruka's spirit pass through him on its journey to the afterlife. That maybe he could trap it here. All the fretting and anxiety over what would happen when Haruka died went silent when his body went limp in Kanata's arms. All that was left was -
The realization that Haruka's very life, so close to being snatched away by someone else, was all Kanata's now. That no one else would ever be able to take him away again. The way it should have always been. And yet it still... it wasn't enough.
The taste of Haruka was thick on his tongue. Kanata wanted more. His teeth continued where they started, biting down hard at Haruka's throat, trying to lick up the welling blood while it was still warm and sweet. Was it actually sweet, Kanata wondered, or did it just seem like it compared to the salty tears flowing down his face?
It didn't matter.
His teeth tore through Haruka's skin. Chewed. Found new places that were easier to bite. The soft meat of his thighs, the underside of his arms - Kanata swallowed down whatever small chunks of flesh he could rend from his body, as though it would sustain him. It would. It would have to.
When his jaw had gotten too weak or the muscles underneath too lean and tough to continue, Kanata resorted to the sharp knife to do the work for him. He gorged himself on Haruka's flesh, slicing away little bits from here and there. Haruka made a gruesome sight already, one that surely only Kanata could look at without averting his eyes. He never had learned his way around a kitchen, so his carving skills were particularly ugly.
All he could rely on was his school knowledge of human anatomy to guide his blade in cutting open Haruka's stomach so he could reach for his final prize.
It was an absolute mess of a thing, punctured more times while freeing it from Haruka's chest than in trying to end his life, but Kanata loved the look of it nonetheless. His older brother's heart, too fitting as a symbol of his love. Jagged and broken. Dead and unmoving. His.
Kanata cut it into slivers, like raw beef tongue, and gulped down them down one by one.
When he'd finally had his fill, Kanata expected the revulsion to set in. The regret. The fear. Instead, there was blessed relief. He would have laughed if his throat weren't so hoarse. Kanata touched the center of his chest. Was it his heart beating out of control - or perhaps, two pulses overlapping?
The wrecked shell of Haruka's body lay before him, but Kanata felt calmer now than he had for so many years. Being discovered, the reaction of their parents, what would happen to him in the end... those were nothing more than idle thoughts, devoid of worry.
Whatever the future held no longer scared him.
"Because... wherever I go, you'll be with me. Right, Haruka?"