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Hajime Hinata thinks he was born into the wrong family sometimes.
His twin seemed to be a literal reincarnation of a god, and his parents spent more time on him than anyone else. It's amusing.
It really wasn't.
He grew up watching his brother take the spotlight, get scholarships, win awards. Hinata stood on the podium behind his brother, always. He was the most painfully ordinary person in the world. He couldn't cure cancer like his brother could, he couldn't win the karate championships like his brother, he couldn't even fold origami properly without screwing up.
Yet, he couldn't find it in himself to hate his brother.
To Kamukura, he was the sole light in his life.
"Hajime," Kamukura stands at his door at night, red eyes bleeding through the darkness.
"What's wrong?" Hinata sits up. It's strange. The two of them are in high school, yet every time Kamukura stood at his doorway, it felt like the two of them were nothing more than children again. No matter how old Kamukura was, he always looked two, back when he was nothing more than a bundle of nerves and an overworked baby.
Kamukura sits at the edge of the bed, walking silently, gracefully, perfectly. It's always how he's been. It's never been anything but.
"Trouble at school?"
"No," even Kamukura sits down perfectly.
"What's wrong?" Hinata turns his lamp on, blinking slowly at Kamukura. He's holding a stuffed animal. The same one he got when he was a baby.
"My class is strange. Boring..." Kamukura speaks. His thoughts and words are articulated, perfectly written, perfectly said. Kamukura was the epitome of everything that everyone wanted to be. Hinata no longer had a bone to be jealous of his brother anymore. No matter how perfect his brother was, he was still his brother. "... which is why I think you should transfer to my class."
"That'd be impossible," Hinata shakes his head. "I wasn't scouted, you were."
"I can make anything happen. You said you hated the reserve course and wanted to be in the main course to dad the other day." Kamukura doesn't blink. He never does. It's one of the few things that creep the rest of Kamukura's class out. Hinata's grown used to it. "They also think I am weird."
"Really?" Hinata pulls a box from underneath his bed, opening the flaps to hand Kamukura a snack. "That's safe, right?"
Kamukura nods, opening the package. It even opens perfectly. Hinata wonders how Kamukura hasn't gone insane yet. Some people are driven into madness with perfection. Yet, Kamukura held onto that perfection as if his life depended on it. It was almost as if it were the only thing he was good at.
"Feeling better?"
"I still wish for you to enter my class." Kamukura deadpans.
"I can't," Hinata opens a pack of crisps for himself. "I'm not an ultimate."
"You do not need to be." Kamukura tilts his head, choco pie in his mouth. "You can be the ultimate average."
Hinata nearly chokes at how straightforward his brother is. "hack, yes, but that still doesn't count."
Kamukura looks down. "Boring."
"Yes, but that's just how society is structured," Hinata sighs.
The chirp of birds sounds behind him, and he stares at Kamukura.
The boy sleeps in his uniform because he despises the feeling of his bedsheets. The boy never got sick. Not once. The boy played seventeen instruments and spoke a hundred languages. It was something that Hinata couldn't understand, but he supposes it wasn't something he would ever be able to. He feared the day that his brother would come to find him boring.
"I already find you boring, Hajime," Kamukura stands up, staring at Hinata. "In fact, you are the most boring of people."
Hinata sighs. "I know."
"I stay with you." Kamukura sits on the bed next to him. "because you are my brother."
"You took all the talent in the womb," Hinata seals the box again, sliding it under his bed.
"I did." Kamukura pauses. "I would not know. I was not conscious at the time."
"I wouldn't be surprised if you were," Hinata stands up to walk across the room, pulling a mattress from the closet. "Do you want to sleep here tonight?" He pauses. "Did you walk all the way from your dorm?"
"No one caught me."
"that's not the point," Hinata sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Sneak out before mother catches us."
"Of course," Kamukura places his plush to the side, helping Hinata pump the mattress. It's quiet.
Kamukura doesn't remember much, but he always finds himself in Hinata's room when he returns to himself. He catches himself blinking when the bed is finished, and he helps Hinata fluff the blanket also in the closet. He had moved out so that his brother could have a bigger room. Had he known that the abuse would have gotten worse, he might have just stayed behind with his brother.
"Why are you thinking about that? Hurry up and go to bed. You know you work less smoothly when you've only slept for four hours." Hinata rolls his eyes, throwing a pillow at Kamukura. The pillow is followed by his stuffed animal, and Kamukura lies down on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. It's boring again.
"Do you want me to read you a story?" Hinata slips into his bed, pulling open his nightstand drawer to look at the books.
"Can you make one up?"
"Once upon a time-"
"That is the lamest start to a story-"
"There was a boy," Hinata turns to stare at Kamukura, his red eyes less scary. They've never been scary to him whatsoever. "He was just a boy."
Kamukura stares at Hinata, closing his eyes.
"But the boy had a friend," Hinata continues, turning the light off. "He was a god."
"Was he nice?"
"He was."
All of a sudden, the two are five years old again. Kamukura's tucked into Hinata's bed while Hinata sits on the ground, thinking of a story to tell the boy. The two are holding hands in the dark, green and red eyes shining from the moon. The stars spill past the curtains, and the story spills from Hinata's lips like muscle memory. Kamukura's heard this story more than a million times by now, but the story is the sole thing that puts him at peace.
"The god was also a boy." Hinata hums. "His brother. The god was young, and the god did everything possible to keep the boy safe, while the boy did everything he could to keep the god entertained. The two were best friends. They would sleep together, eat together, and they would fall asleep under the stars together. However, one day, the god left without a word."
Kamukura's breathing slows, but Hinata continues anyway.
"The boy searched for the god, praying, sacrificing, and offering everything possible." Hinata closes his eyes, ignoring the reminder that he would have to go back to pretending not to know Kamukura at school the next day. "And the boy turned into a man, but the god never returned." Hinata exhales. "Eventually, the boy passed, but the god remained, sitting at the boy's tomb in the form of a flower. The flower bled whenever someone tried cutting it, and it bled whenever someone tried removing the tomb." Hinata feels his own body grow heavy. "One day, the boy returned. A gust of breeze in the air, the form of a smaller flower next to the big one. They were identical in every way, and their roots twisted together, and the two were together again. Now, whenever someone goes to visit the tomb, they would find two flowers."
Hinata feels himself fall asleep, but his last words ring out.
"The two brothers were together again at last."
Kamukura reaches his hand out for Hinata's, lacing his fingers between his.
"Goodnight, Hajime."
"Sleep well."