Work Text:
Choromatsu stands as the unwilling test subject in the science of a good dare.
Choromatsu was standing at the precipice of the world when he surmised, quite accurately, that he was doomed. Doomed like a frog suddenly waking up in the hot tub it had knowingly dived into by itself, like a helpless brother finding himself at the mercy of his supposed family and blood.
He shuffled towards the edge and peered down into the abyss. Felt his ribcage grip his heart to a standstill and felt the rumble down below when his stomach started to plunge. He gulped, tasted the sting of alcohol still grossly lingering there, and verbalized his thoughts out loud for the world to hear: “I’m doomed.”
It was then Choromatsu knew, deep in his heart, that Osomatsu was to blame.
Because of course this was all his stupid shitty fault, wasn’t it? His fault for even suggesting he climb up in the first place to do God knows what… It must have been some trick of fate to have him, obviously the smartest of their merry band of six, be subject to all the whims and fancies of their stupid shitty eldest.
Because that was all it ever was, wasn’t it? That was all their sorry lives would ever amount to: doomed to march like stupid ducks to their eldest brother's out-of-tune beat without ever trying to see what the world was like for themselves. Following him around like ants, only because Osomatsu was the first and most brazen of them to start leaving his shit slime behind for everyone else to follow.
Didn’t they see then, Choromatsu desperately rationalized, that he had no other choice but to do as he was told? With a hazy will and the endless, nagging chatter of Osomatsu in his ear, egging him on with the stupidest, most preposterous dare in the world, Choromatsu had hoisted himself up on a tree in a bizarre show of force which lasted for about three minutes until he realized he no longer remembered how to get down.
Finding himself trapped in a situation that was entirely of his own doing, Choromatsu fell back on familiar habits, which was to look outward and blame the world for creating the situation in the first place.
In this case – in this sickening, ironic case – the world was his brothers, the stupidest animals to ever exist on account of having to rely on each other like… like leeches!
“You’re all leeches!” he screamed into the void for emphasis, whining louder when he heard the jeers come up at him from below. He wasn’t surprised to hear Osomatsu’s infuriating cackle riding over everyone else’s, as if his cries were enough to boost Choromatsu’s morale.
His brothers. His stupid shitty brothers. Oh, how Choromatsu loved them all.
How he loathed them all! Loathed them all for forcing him to latch on to them for all of his life because – news flash! It turned out Choromatsu was just as big a leech as the rest of them.
Take his brothers away and what did that leave him? A shivering, sniveling mess that’s what. Can’t stand to be with them, can’t live without them when they’re gone. Some sick sorry excuse of an existence he sure had!
“I’m a fucking leech!” Choromatsu declared.
Was Choromatsu Matsuno a shitty virgin NEET like his brothers?
Of course he was!
Was Choromatsu Matsuno also a coward who chickened out when things got too hard for his cock?
Choromatsu whimpered and left that one unanswered for now.
Beneath him, the darkness swelled and expanded. It shrunk, until it embiggened itself all over again. Choromatsu nearly vomited from the sheer spectacle of it all. He wobbled slightly on his feet, very piss-his-pants afraid of making one wrong move and toppling into the yawning vacant blackness below.
Below him, his brothers continued to laugh merrily, blissfully unaware of the mounting crisis in his mind.
“Gross, Karamatsu! Put your shirt back on!”
What an inconsiderate, gross pack of animals they were! At least some things were still normal down there.
Down there, where he was supposed to have been minutes ago.
Choromatsu remained on the tree branch, petrified and still. Just your regular coward Matsuno brother, doing what he did best which was a grand total of nothing. Too scared to move, too scared to sit still, too. That was why he’d climbed the stupid tree on a dare in the first place and that was why he was finding it so hard to come down now.
“I’ll show him,” Choromatsu swore under his breath. He fidgeted and tried to make himself more comfortable before taking off. “I’m gonna do it!” he continued to yell, even as he remained completely unwilling to fulfill his promise.
Todomatsu ruminates on the heartwarming essence of brotherhood.
Truthfully, Todomatsu hadn’t exactly known what to think when Osomatsu, in all his obnoxious big brother glory, had loudly pronounced the night’s festivities “ – open, you shitbag little brothers of mine!” before slamming crates of beer on the table.
At the same time, it wasn’t totally surprising to hear this come out of his fat mouth, mainly because Osomatsu was always the one to blame for starting shit like this. It was his birthright as eldest, Todomatsu feared, that he be the initiator of all the things they did while those further down the totem pole would have no choice but to follow.
And if there was anyone lower than low on that godforsaken pole, it was Todomatsu Matsuno himself, man of the shriveled heart and thus was not beholden to giving a good goddamn about anything his brothers did.
Yet here he was anyway like the slimy hanger-on he was, all out of options after his New Year’s Eve mixer was canceled without prior notice. Or maybe the group had just moved on and neglected to tell poor ol’ Totty. He still wasn’t sure. But spend five hours waiting by yourself in one of those big-time expensive coffee shops and even the densest of the dense would get the hint.
Todomatsu sighed. Scrolled through his online feed again like he gave a shit, only taking his eyes off it when reaching for his glass or asking for a refill.
And then instinct told him to duck. So that’s exactly what Todomatsu did, his thumb still firmly pressed down on the Like button like the social media hellspawn he was.
“Jyushimatsu-niisan, please put your bat away,” he said, miffed that he now had an excuse to put his phone away.
Jyushimatsu stood beside him, swinging his bat in wild circular motions as if he meant to use it to help him fly off the ground. But he was nothing if not a dutiful older brother, so he nodded with a hearty “Okay!” before flinging his bat out of the room.
A crash was heard immediately, prompting a properly sloshed Osomatsu to shout, “Steee-rike!”
“Batter out, thank you and goodbye!” Jyushimatsu said next.
This, for some reason, struck everyone as hilarious so they burst out laughing. Todomatsu realized he must have been a little drunk too, since he’d caught himself laughing along with the rest of them.
He hated to do it when the sun was high and all the world could see them act like idiotic numbskulls, but Todomatsu knew that the minute he stepped out of all their shadows, he would melt away and dissolve, incomplete and undefined and cursed to live like any ordinary person.
Which was not theoretically bad. What a concept that was for him, being normal and doing normal things.
But normal people didn’t hang out with their brothers like this, at least not all the time. And not especially now on New Year’s Eve, when the night was just begging for people to get out of the house and roam the streets in drunken stupors.
That was normal.
This… Todomatsu glanced at the wall across him, trying to find his words. But there was nothing there so he shrugged and refilled his glass. Whatever it was, it was free beer and a night no one was going to remember tomorrow morning anyway.
Hence, the dare.
Because it was a really stupid kind of dare, wasn’t it? That much was clear to everyone with more than two working brain cells, which very obviously meant just Todomatsu.
Go climb a tree, he scoffed. Of all the stupidest, most unoriginal dares…!
Now look where that’s landed them: back in the house with a grand total of nothing to show for Choromatsu-niisan’s dumb fucking decision to take a swan dive off the tree and into mom’s garden.
“Owww, I think I broke something,” Choromatsu moaned.
“No duh,” Todomatsu answered. “Make sure that teaches you something, you dumbass.”
“Totty!” Karamatsu gasped, offended for his brother. “That’s no way to speak to someone who’s dying.”
“Yeah, To – wait a minute, I’m not dying!”
“You’re not?”
“I could make ‘im dying!” Jyushimatsu suggested.
“Absolutely not!”
But Todomatsu had heard enough. “What I hope we’ve all learned here,” he said, “is that we should never trust anything our shitty eldest says to us ever again. Especially if he tells us to climb a tree.”
“Hey, I didn’t tell him to climb a tree.” Osomatsu snorted. “I dared him to. There’s a real subtle difference to it, y’know. A real art!”
“Yeah, the art of the dipshit,” Ichimatsu muttered.
“You’re lucky I love you, Ichimachu!”
And round and round they would all continue to go. Nothing resolved. Nothing gained. Next year would just be more and more of the same, so much that it made Todomatsu want to scream.
Maybe normal was overrated.
But normal never had to live with five other splitting images of itself; five other goons and hyenas laughing dumbly at the world spinning around them.
Todomatsu felt very much like pulling all the hair off his head to scream and have the most wonderful meltdown. But it was easier to laugh with the rest of his brothers so that was what he did instead.
Wasn’t that what being a dutiful baby brother meant?
Osomatsu demonstrates the highs of excessive alcohol compunc... conjunc... intake. Excessive alcohol intake.
It started, as things have historically and traditionally been with the Matsunos, with Osomatsu. In this case, it started with his stupid shitty idea to get everyone absolutely shit-faced smashed; yank-the-junk-too-hard-Choromatsu-style blind; incredibly and indubitably dead-on drunk.
Which, if you were anyone who knew them at all, was something that happened on a daily basis. It was just that this time, it was different. This time, they were celebrating the end of the year and welcoming a new one with all the cheer they could muster.
That meant the drinking was serious. It was a party for 36 condensed into just six stomachs; six individual brothers, six useless bags of waste that happened to breathe the same air as the rest of their more productive Japanese brethren.
It was, if anything, the celebration of a people who had not achieved anything significant that was worth such a ruckus.
Yessir, they were having a party now, right here at House Matsuno. Party, italicized just so, so you could almost hear the extra “a” tacked in between the “t” and “y” for extra pizzazz. Just six of the same, oh so different faces having a heck of a time, sloshing their drinks around and indulging in a fair bit of general debauchery.
If anyone worried about the noise, then they weren’t around to say so. Matsuno Senior and the Missus were out on a holiday trip bought and paid for by none of their six sons. Meanwhile, the rest of the neighborhood had long made their own adjustments by investing in soundproof walls or by spending on their own holiday trips.
As for where the drinks came from… well, maybe Matsuno Senior and the Missus had left some holiday allowance for their six boys. Maybe they’d meant for their sons to invest the money, use it wisely and watch it grow, just as they had done when they were but babes.
But the Matsuno sextuplets were a rowdy bunch, one that was infinitely more interested in the solid experiences of the present than the hazy promises of the future.
“Man, fuck the future!” Osomatsu said. That he’d been the one to initiate the conversation was part and parcel of his birthright. He was the oldest, after all. He deserved to be heard first.
“Fuck you!” Todomatsu replied. “Why are we talking about this all of a sudden?”
“It’s New Year’s Eve, isn’t it?” Osomatsu said. “What better time to talk about the future than right now? Besides, I wanna know – what’s the future ever done for us that we need to celebrate it every time it comes, huh?”
“You’re celebrating it right now, dumbass,” Choromatsu retorted.
“Ah, but that’s because there’s alcohol!” Osomatsu said. “What kind of man would I be if I made up excuses to turn down alcohol?”
Soft fingers strummed a nostalgic chord on an old guitar. The scent of cheap cologne wafted through and assaulted everyone’s sense of smell. For some reason, they all got the vague vision of rose petals gently descending from the skies.
Everyone turned as one to Karamatsu because who else would it be if not Karamatsu, he of the cheap-o shades and cheaper sense of style?
“Heh,” Karamatsu said, and that was all. He stared off into the distance, hoping his soft strumming would get his feelings across.
“Shut the hell up, Shittymatsu,” Ichimatsu said.
“Nobody,” Osomatsu slurred into his drink, “ain’t nobody remembers any of the dates between Christmas and New Year.” He looked around at his semi-captive audience and hiccuped louder than he’d meant to so that they might come alive and help him prove his point. “Am I right or am I right? I mean, what even is the point?”
“What’s the point of anything, really?” Ichimatsu said, raising his glass in a toast to the air. Nobody was able to tell if he genuinely agreed with Osomatsu’s sentiment or not.
Osomatsu did as he always did when met with an overwhelming lack of support for his bullshit: he spoke louder. “Who really even remembers – ” He hiccuped again. “– fuckin’ remembers 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 31? Am I right? Like, what poor sucker would?”
And here, Karamatsu was moved to speak, if only to try and get a word in to help Osomatsu move his gag along. “I remember them!” he said with as much dramatic flourish as he could drum up. “I remember them all. I remember all my – heh – dates.”
“What dates?” Choromatsu couldn’t help himself from asking.
“That’s not important,” Karamatsu said.
“You’re important?” Todomatsu couldn’t help himself from asking either.
Somewhere off to the side, Ichimatsu snorted.
Osomatsu took a large gulp of his beer.
Karamatsu laughed loudly to mask his wounded pride. “It was hypothetical, Totty!”
Jyushimatsu tilted his head to the side. “What’s hypothetical?”
“Like I said – ” Osomatsu chuckled and jerked a thumb towards Karamatsu. “What poor sucker?”
Their gag now complete, Karamatsu curtsied and made a bow.
Ichimatsu scowled and hissed, then flung a rolled-up ball of tissue towards Osomatsu, thinking he’d been referring to Jyushimatsu with that last remark.
“Boo, lame,” Todomatsu droned, never once looking up from his phone.
But Karamatsu wasn’t finished yet. “I remember dates just fine!” he continued to protest. “For instance, I remember all your birthdays.”
Jyushimatsu clapped his hands, extremely impressed. “Woah, that’s so cool, nii-san!”
“Idiot, we all have the same birthday.” Choromatsu rolled his eyes.
“Yes!” Karamatsu beamed. “But the point is, I remember.”
Ichimatsu had heard enough. “Oi, Shittymatsu,” he said. “Didn’t the news just say there was a virus going around?”
Karamatsu blinked at him, equal parts unsure and terrified to ask if this, too, was to be part of their gag skit. “Um… yes?”
“So why – ” Ichimatsu slammed his glass back down on the table. “Why the hell are you still talking and flapping your lips, spreading your shitty Shittymatsu germs all over the goddamn place?!”
Nobody dared make a move, not even Jyushimatsu who had just now decided that this was a good time to stop clapping his hands.
Choromatsu winced. “Ichimatsu,” he started.
“Holy shit, fine,” Ichimatsu growled. “I’m sorry for bringing up the stupid coronavirus.”
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
“See? We’re all good now,” Osomatsu said. “And it only proves my point. Everyone remembers the stupid virus, but nobody remembers the dates after Christmas.”
“You dumbfuck eldest,” Choromatsu seethed, instantly triggered by anything that came out of Osomatsu’s pea brain. “That doesn’t even make sense. What the hell kind of logic is that?”
Todomatsu looked at his third eldest brother with some pity. “I don’t know why you’re still even surprised.”
“I got it!” Jyushimatsu said. “Jyushimatsu got it!”
“What’d you get?” Ichimatsu answered. “What’d Jyushimatsu get?”
Jyushimatsu turned to Ichimatsu, mouth wide open in a great show of pride. “I don’t remember!”
“Go to hell, all of you!” Choromatsu said.
Karamatsu put on his shades. “Not right now, my dear brother,” he said. “People would forget to mourn us if we left now.”
“Nobody’s mourning shit, you egotistical maniac!”
Featuring: everybody else. Or something.
For the night was dark and full of terrors until Osomatsu squinted further into the absence of light and realized it was only his brothers.
He squinted into his glass also and realized with a start: “Oh! Look, that’s me.”
Delayed realization notwithstanding, there was still this: that if there was anything still worth admiring about Osomatsu in this day and age, it was his incredible single-mindedness to always, always have the last word. By virtue of his being eldest, the first word was already something granted to him by default. Him still wanting to have the last word was just a byproduct of his staggering insecurity issues.
So Osomatsu continued to talk, continued to pursue this inane theory of his about those forgettable dates that chained the new year to the old. “Well, fine, maybe January 30 and 31 aren’t so forgettable,” he said. “But I still dunno why they had to cram dates in there, in between! It’s useless, isn’t it? Really and honestly: who gives a fuck?”
“Karamatsu does,” Choromatsu said.
“That’s because he gives a fuck about everything,” Todomatsu added.
Karamatsu nodded and grinned, like they’d just expressed their undying admiration for his aesthetics. “Karamatsu gives way too many fucks,” he affirmed.
Ichimatsu wondered about that; about Osomatsu and whatever he was saying. He wondered about it out loud. “Just because you don’t think anyone gives a fuck about them doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to exist,” he said somberly.
He hadn’t realized he’d said that last part out loud until he saw the rest of his brothers looking back at him with wide eyes and sad expressions.
“What?” he said.
“We give a fuck about you, Ichimatsu.”
Ichimatsu’s answer shot out like a reflex. “Shut the hell up, Shittymatsu.”
Then Osomatsu laughed. “Nah, Ichimacchan’s right,” he said. “Dates got a right to exist! Even the unlucky bastards that get caught between Christmas and the New Year.”
“Still,” Todomatsu said. “Christmas and New Year are pretty special dates. Can you really blame people for forgetting everything in between?”
“It’d sure be nice if we all ended the year with Christmas,” Jyushimatsu said. “Maybe we can even get twice the gifts!”
Choromatsu was quick to rebut this. “Yeah, not happening.”
“Y’guys, I just noticed there’s six of those dates,” Osomatsu said, a faraway, contemplating sort of look starting to shine in his eyes. He lifted his fingers to count them out loud. “26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31. Six of ‘em.”
“Hey!” Karamatsu said, yanking Choromatsu’s fingers to count. “There’s six of us, too!”
“That’s what I’m saying!”
“Ahaha! Great minds indeed think alike, brother!”
Choromatsu yanked his hands out of Karamatsu’s clammy grip. “What the fuck are you two even talking about?”
“Say, Fappymacchu,” Osomatsu said. “If you had to pick a date from December 26 to 31, which one would you be?”
Todomatsu snorted. “What the heck are you, some Buzzfeed quiz?”
“I wanna be Number 5!” Jyushimatsu said, waving a hand.
“You’re missing the point, nii-san,” Todomatsu said. “You’ve gotta choose from 26 to 31.”
Jyushimatsu deflated. “I still wanna be Number 5!”
“Jyushimatsu can be whatever the hell he wants to be,” Ichimatsu said.
“Okay, you can be December 30,” Osomatsu allowed.
“Yeah! 30!” Jyushimatsu cheered, perking right back up again.
“This is a stupid waste of time.” Choromatsu snorted. “Look, has it occurred to any of you that this whole – this whole… avoidance tactic to stay where we are’s just a huge, pathetic excuse to not evolve? Not… not progress? I mean – what are we, some kind of… of amoeba not wanting to… to – ”
“Man, what the hell is wrong with the Fapster today?” Osomatsu said, effectively derailing his brother’s depressing train of thought. “What’s the matter, huh? Drink too much? Fapped too little? Come on, tell your big bro allll about it, maybe I can kiss it better again!”
But Choromatsu was not amused. “Shut up, Osomatsu! I’m serious!”
Somewhere to the side, Karamatsu was still trying to put some of the pieces together. “Kiss what better again…?”
“So am I! What’s wrong, Fapmeister, let’s talk this out so you don’t accidentally give anyone the wrong idea.”
“The wrong idea of what? ”
“That you’re smarter than the rest of us, man!” Osomatsu chortled. “Come on, live a little! You don’t see Ichimatsu moping around like this, do ya?”
“Wrong, Ichimatsu mopes around plenty,” Ichimatsu said.
Karamatsu grinned an easy grin, thinking it made him look wizened and cool. It did, but nobody wanted to admit this out loud. “Brother, I have always told you you think too much.”
Todomatsu rolled his eyes. “I don’t even know why you do it,” he said. “Acting like you’re so much better than us.” Then he ducked out of the way of Jyushimatsu’s insane bat-swinging. Apparently, he was making it look like he was trying to evolve much quicker than all of them by learning to fly. “Jyushimatsu-niisan, please put your bat away.”
“Okay!” he said, hurling his bat out of the window.
A crash and a bang later, Osomatsu cheered, “Steee-rike!”
“Batter out, thank you and goodbye!” Jyushimatsu said next.
Shit, who was supposed to take next for character POVs?
“What I hope we’ve all learned here,” Todomatsu said, “is that we should never trust anything our shitty eldest says to us ever again. Especially if he tells us to climb a tree.”
“Hey, I didn’t tell him to climb a tree.” Osomatsu snorted, not really very sorry for what he’d done. “I dared him to. There’s a real subtle difference to it, y’know. A real art!”
Ichimatsu rolled his eyes and glared at his glass. “Yeah, the art of the dipshit,” he muttered.
“You’re lucky I love you, Ichimachu!”
“Fuckin’ gross,” Ichimatsu groused. He looked around the room to try and do something mean to distract everyone from the blush on his face. He noticed Karamatsu was still shirtless. “Oi, Shittymatsu,” he began.
But Karamatsu was looking right at him and wagging his eyebrows like he was waiting for Ichimatsu to say something about his state of undress.
Ichimatsu growled and gave it up as a lost cause. No way in hell was he about to give him the satisfaction. “Never mind.”
Karamatsu grinned and winked at him anyway.
“Fuckin’ gross,” Ichimatsu groused again.
“Haha, Ichimatsu-niisan’s blushing!” Jyushimatsu said, pointing and laughing. It was Jyushimatsu though, so Ichimatsu didn’t immediately think of putting him to bed forever for doing that.
“That’s okay!” Osomatsu said. “That’s fine if he blushes! If he’s doing it today, then nobody’s gonna remember!”
But Karamatsu was quick to respond to this. “Non, dear brother!” he said. “Non, non. I shall always remember this. From one older brother to his dear younger sibling.” He yanked the shades from his face to reveal teary eyes. “I love you, my brother!”
“Hey!” Choromatsu said, not wanting to let this story end without at least getting a word in. “What about me? I think I really broke something!”
“I wuv ya, Fappomatsu!”
“Gross! Not you, Osomatsu, god!”
Todomatsu sighed from his corner of the room, watching all of the foolishness unfold without further comment or input. What was the use of that now? He thought about taking a picture to commemorate the occasion because Totty – good old scheming, conniving Totty – was a child of the internet and he knew, more than any of the primitives gathered around him now, that nothing would ever truly stay hidden, it didn’t matter what day of the year it happened.
But Totty – poor old loyal, dependent Totty – was the youngest Matsuno brother as well. This was why he thought better of it and elected to tuck his phone away instead.
He poured some more beer into his glass. Only a few more hours ‘till the new year anyway. Might as well, while he would still be able to remember tonight.
I’m sorry, nobody told me this was going to be all out of order.
“Read a book, Karamatsu,” Choromatsu said, falling back on his habit of insulting the other party’s intelligence if he sensed he was losing the argument.
“With pleasure, brother! Anything you want me to do, brother!”
“And grow a spine while you’re at it, will you?”
“Say, Chorofappy,” Osomatsu said suddenly, wanting to make him feel what it was like to get bossed around. “Why don’t you go climb a tree?”