Work Text:
2013.01.08
04.46 AM
Ittetsu finally looked at his phone early in the morning the next day, when Keishin still slept next to him in the hotel.
> Hey, Brother.
> Call me when you see this, if you have the time.
He really didn’t want to, but he couldn’t break the things promised to Kaname by the previous version of himself. So he typed back
> If you’re awake, I do now.
Kaname didn’t usually go out to the workshop before school, but what he watched the previous day was getting at him. He’d mostly been at the drafting board, but had taken a break and was sending sparks flying when he heard the eerie, haunting chimes from some 90s horror anime soundtrack emanating from his phone, the kind of sound that would’ve scared anyone else in a workshed on a hill behind dormant orchards. He sets down the cutting torch, strips off his PPE and sits down before answering. He knows his brother was no doubt impatiently fiddling, tapping his fingers, something like that.
“Good morning, big brother.”
“You’re up early.”
“I’m in the workshop.” A rattly tin-sided building, it used to hold farm equipment, and still did in one corner, but aside from a few empty bottles of Calpico and cans of Sapporo that he kicked out the way to sit and stretch, it was fairly organized.
“You have something due?”
“No, not really. I just –” The silence hung between rural Miyagi and downtown Tokyo for a moment before he spoke.
“My juniors were watching the match yesterday, together. I had it on, too, as I worked.” Ittetsu bristled, silently, as Kaname continued. “Saw what happened. #10. Aone-kun and Koganegawa-kun said that he texted them back and said he was okay.”
“Hinata-kun is recovering. I think it's the flu. Is that why you called?” He questioned. Kaname answered with his own.
“Are you doing okay, brother?”
“What,” Ittetsu said, flatly.
“I asked how you are.”
“What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”
“The wha–”
“Never mind. It’s an expression.” Kaname rolled his eyes. Ittetsu knew he was rolling his eyes.
“How are you doing, big brother?”
“Fine.”
“... Sure.”
“What? What kind of question is that? Why would you ask after me ?”
Kaname had a patience that made Ittetsu proud of him. It could also be very irritating.
“Because I know you’re not making how you feel anyone else’s problem, so I’m giving you a chance to make it mine for a few minutes.”
“Kaname, you –”
“Have been a captain, am friends with your captain, and I know you. And I’ve seen some bad things happen on a court. I’ve been watching your #10 – Hinata-kun – since Karasuno knocked me into retirement.” Ittetsu had tried to offer an apology when he came to visit the family house one day during the summer festivals. Kaname told him apologizing for a job well done wasn’t better than an insult.
“I didn’t mean to insult you, little brother –”
“Not to me. To your team. They did what you wanted them to be able to do.”
It was not often that his brother left him speechless, yet at that Ittetsu could only nod before hearing their mother call to them to pray at the butsudan for their grandparents, and Uncle. He finally speaks now, into the phone.
“... Did someone in your club ever have something like that happen?”
“Not on a national stage.”
“So yes.” Kaname laughed, a little dryly.
“Yeah, brother. Once or twice. Oiwake-san isn’t the best at talking to a team like this one in that kind of situation. If someone was pushing themself too hard, it was on me, maybe Mai-chan. They’re stubborn as mules, and hate feeling weak. I may be smaller and weaker than most of the team, but I could still ride herd on them.”
You’re not weak , Ittetsu thinks. Not only on the level of leadership, emotional intelligence, any of that, but his brother easily had more physical strength since junior high than Ittetsu had now. But everything about oneself is measured against others. Hinata will always be small, because Hinata lives for volleyball and because of the nature of volleyball. Of course his brother thinks of himself as weak, without a hint of self-deprecation. It is the way it is. Ittetsu exhaled.
“I don’t know if what I said to him was right.” He started to say.
“No, that's not it. I don’t know how I failed him by not noticing, even as the match went on, and then he –” Kaname played with a Rubix cube he’s never had the inclination to solve as he sits, listening with his phone on speaker. It’s a still January morning, the sun in bed for a while still.
“Begged Keishin –” Kaname remembers Keishin. He’s the coach, and the man about whom his brother speaks more softly than the snow drifts onto the roof of the shed. Ittetsu has stepped out of the hotel room to not wake Keishin, only to find himself lost in the dictionary, wordless. Kaname prompts what his brother cannot quite say.
“I know this part. Hinata-kun insisted it was ok. Barely able to stand up right and begging for it. I’m sure.” Kaname pauses. “I did that once, in second year interhigh qualifiers. My teammate overshot the pass, so I was lunging to set it. Suddenly my ankle feels like an electric shock. I’d accidentally collided with the steel pole that holds up the net. I kept trying to stand up and not cry, floundering like a fish on a boat until Oiwake and my captain had two juniors walk me off. They won, though, but of course cousin Issei’s team ultimately knocked us out. I was so angry at myself, because I wanted to be angry at myself. And then, a week later, still humiliated after that, I get told I’m the new Captain. That the whole team thought I was the only choice.” Kaname laughed a little, recalling that. Ittetsu can’t admit he only slightly remembers the couple weeks in 2011 Kaname had an injured leg, and doesn’t laugh.
“What did you do when they told you that?” Ittetsu asks.
“I waited to stand back up and then I did. Then we won, then we lost, then we won, then lost again, and then, finally, I sat down, and Kenji-kun stood on the same foundations. And he's won,and he's lost, and he will stand again.”
“Hinata –”
“Knows he has as many opponents waiting for him as he does teammates waiting for him. You weren’t in a club in high school, were you?”
“I was there for you in high school. Mother couldn’t afford a preschool program, and Natsuo –”
“I know, Ittetsu. I remember,” Kaname said softly. Ittetsu shut up. They didn’t talk about their father, because neither really knew the version of him who raised the other. Someday, they would. Maybe in time the pieces they carried with them could be assembled, like a puzzle, and they would know their father. Maybe some pieces would be left over, unable to fit. Kaname broke this contemplation first.
“It’s never really just a club, you know. Hinata-kun knows that. The sun doesn’t set forever, brother.”
Ittetsu glanced at his watch, pacing in the hallway, and muttered, “Feels like it does at this time of year.” Kaname was right. Hinata would rise and stand again.
“Maybe. Nobody can will it to rise. And sometimes it’s walled off by the clouds.” Especially , Ittetsu thought, at this time of year , as Kaname continued.
“But the garden and field grows when given the opportunity, in the right season. You know, Sasaya-kun’s grandmother once said your personality suited your season of birth. When you were younger, I mean. You know, it’s coming up. Thursday.”
“I know. It’s never been a day I particularly commemorated for my own sake.” Well, mostly. When Keishin asked him if he wanted to spend that night together after work, he immediately answered yes, of course. Kaname didn’t need to know that though.
“Can I stop by your apartment to bring you something?”
“ – I guess, yeah.”
“I figured you didn’t want to come by after work. It’s just a gift.”
“You don’t have t–”
“I know.”
“... I suppose I’ll see you then."
"Be safe coming back north."
"Of course we will,"Ittetsu emphasized."I have more than a dozen people to return safely."
"Yeah. I know. But you know our haha would say that. So I figured I'd say it, for her."
"You're right. You’re right to say it.”
It wasn’t a bad birthday. It wasn’t a remarkable birthday. In Ittetsu’s opinion, that makes it the ideal birthday.
Well, there was one remarkable thing. It’d been years since he spent his birthday with someone, and he and Keishin were getting much closer. Keishin had cooked for him. Ittetsu thanked him once already and had plans to thank him a bit more thoroughly later. They weren’t on his mind at the moment, however, because his brother had finally shown up, later than anticipated, in a, very specifically, older winter coat with a few conspicuously fresh tears in it.
“Hey. Brother.”
“Are you –”
“Oh, this. Kamasaki and I were… on a borrowing expedition from the Kitakura recycling center. Sorry. It’s why I’m later than I meant to be. We had to drop the stuff off at the shed, and Dad says Kamasaki-kun scares the chickens, so I couldn’t just give him the key. I don’t even know how, but it’s like they sense him,” Kaname verges on babbling.
“Borrowing…” Ittetsu began to prompt, before thinking better of it. “Please come in. Do you want anything to drink?”
“Actually, that old espresso machine I replaced some of the fixtures on, is that still working? I know it’s late but –” Ittetsu raised a hand and gestured to him to hang up his coat.
“I’ll make you something. Come, you look half-frozen. The kotatsu is hot,” he adds, seeing his little brother rubbing his hands together, like he’s trying to spark their circulation.
“I’ll be fine,” he says, raising his hands with such specific sets of calluses, blowing on them, the ruddiness fading. His brother never taped his fingers when he’d played volleyball, and Ittetsu asked him about it, not long after he became the club advisor. Kaname hadn’t really given him any particular insight on that occasion – just that he’d never felt the need to, once he’d sharply curbed a bad habit of biting his nails.
“I didn’t know you had a problem with that. Is it academic stress?” Kaname had shook his head.
“No, it’s… it was just something to do,” he tried to explain. “I got a little in a habit, when I was anxious, and kept doing it more –” He had thought of his relatives’ neuroses and tics; Issei’s mother had a tendency to twist her hair until she split a strand or entangled it like rope. Her partner would undo the damage each night, combing it gently. Keiji’s mother had to fiddle with something, and if she didn’t have one of the complex pieces of equipment that she manipulated into capturing single perfect moments, she tended to have a poorly concealed cigarette tucked between her fingers.
It took their father nine years for a single can of beer to not turn into nine more. Because he got a little in a habit, when he was anxious, and kept doing it more, and it was just something to do. Kaname isn’t sure if his brother can see that thought in the shadows of his face.
“Besides, I’ve been playing since before junior high. I’m not the best at setting, but my hands at least are used to being treated like that,” he’d said, smiling at the tools at the end of his wrists, turning them over.
Ittetsu thinks about that exchange as he sets about with the hacked-together espresso machine, considering what he’d make Kaname. He settled on a latte – something in a cup big enough to serve as a handheld heater. The flush from the cold and winds biting at Kaname's cheeks briefly reminded Ittetsu of Hinata the week prior, and he couldn’t bear the idea of Kaname getting sick. He was sure Keishin would be willing to give Kaname a ride back up to the family house. The two of them seemed to get on, somewhat, though when feeling awkward they both tended to miss the same social cues, and that could begat greater awkwardness. Right now, though, they seemed to be managing.
“... so I’m making the skeleton of the project using the reclaimed steel we… requisitioned tonight, using the models Sasaya-kun put together from my sketches. He’s the best at AutoCAD – the computer stuff.”
“Huh, interesting. Y’know, maybe I wouldn’t have acted up as much in high school if I’d had an outlet like that.”
“Oh, you’ve seen my old teammates, techweek only gives them more opportunities to cause trouble,” Kaname laughs at that and Keishin follows, a half-beat behind, and Ittetsu feels something in his heart, light and floating for the first time in the last week.
“ – And my junior – Koganegawa-kun? You remember him, I’m sure,” Kaname prompts, which makes Keishin laugh again.
“Trust me, I couldn’t forget that kid if I tried. Oh, no, I can see where this is going,” Keishin says with a certain well-humored dread in his tone. Ittetsu turns as he puts the milk back in the fridge, catching his brother’s sharp, mischievous smile on the corner of his eye. The hiss of the siphon steaming the milk punctuates an amusing set of anecdotes about the always-eager teammate, and Ittetsu joins them at the kotatsu, setting the cup in front of Kaname on a saucer, smiling at both of them.
“Ah, thank you, Itte-nii.” It’s rare to hear Kaname use a diminutive, especially around anyone else, but Keishin is unfazed by it; Ittetsu has come to understand that the Sakanoshitas and the Ukais had big, blunt, informal emotions, very unlike Kaname and Ittetsu’s highly calculated, sharp, subtle tools, utilized to cut their lives so they continued to be family-shaped.
“I meant to just drop this off,” he gestures to a bag next to him, “but it was a little colder than I expected.”
“Don’t worry about it. Keishin, can you give him a ride back to the house when he leaves? I don’t want him walking home in the dark, it’s too far in this weather.”
“Yeah, no problem. Hey, did you know about this crazy stuff he’s been telling me?” Keishin gestures, quite entertained. Ittetsu notices his hair beginning to slip free of his headband at the corners.
“Oh, these kinds of… mishaps? Of course. Kaname’s had his share of them, too,” Ittetsu says with an innocent smile that Kaname can see right through.
“Hey, not like these –”
“I’ll remind you, dear little brother, whom it was who usually drove you to the emergency room. And that when I drove into Yamagata and you visited Sasaya-kun’s grandparents and uncle, a quest for a missing socket wrench to fix Takehito’s bike led to your, admittedly, understandable chagrin at having to receive a tetanus post-exposure prophylaxis shot. It was as though you were magnetically attracted to the most rusted-away patch of fence on their land.” Ittetsu was ribbing good-naturedly, but Kaname suddenly took a deep fascination in the foam on top of his cup, while Keishin held back from laughing. Once Kaname spoke again, he burst out laughing.
“Nii-san, it was a torque wrench.”
“Oh, my apologies for the error. The elderly’s memories fade in spots, of course.” This was all good natured, though had Keishin not observed the brothers interact a few times already, it may have been hard to tell.
“Besides, once I hit high school I stopped allowing myself to be careless with these,” Kaname says, looking at his hands again. “I couldn’t let a finger get jammed on a bad set or block, or burnt by solder. Making a mistake in one would cost me the other. Koganegawa will learn that. I hope,” he adds, smiling a little.
“You were quite diligent well before that, Kaname,” Ittetsu says, suddenly very gentle,not so different from the way Keishin overheard him speaking with students with less confidence than their true capabilities held. “We all learn from making mistakes.”
Kaname nods, feeling a shadow of an eclipse hanging from the ceiling lamp, sunshine in a half-burned-through glass balloon.
“Yea, well, tonight’s mistakes were mostly Kamasaki’s. Which I suppose the mistake I learnt from tonight was Kamasaki.” The trio shares a laugh.
“Oh, don’t let me forget,” he hands a wrapped box – did their mother choose the colors, or did Kaname? – to Ittetsu.
“Happy birthday.” Inside is a handsome, tall, rectangular box with a sliding lid. This was certainly made by Kaname.
“I bought a piece of hinoki wood for that. Once I felt confident with my test pieces.” Keishin is impressed.
“It’s quite well made, Kaname,” Ittetsu says, and Keishin sees an expression of pride on the young man’s face, a little shy, hiding in his own scarf. Ittetsu sets the box down and presses one palm against the lid, pushing it open.
Inside is a bottle, resting on a bed of hay and dried stalks and grasses.The liquid inside is a sun-tinged cloud, and it has a hand-written label wheatpaste to it. Not the most elegant script, but legible. Ittetsu chooses to let Kaname speak for it instead, though, looking up to his brother as he cradles the base of the bottle like a baby.
“The – so this year, the Kinoshita brothers had an idea, and sales are still down since the earthquake.” Their father had been selling more of his harvest at the local morning market on the weekend. It was hard work to adapt to, used to planning finances around his regular accounts and he was, to put it mildly, not the most extroverted person in the world. “Especially because the trees were so productive this year. I don’t know why,” Kaname isn’t afraid to admit ignorance. “But so, the Kinoshitas have been brewing sake with part of their yield for a few years. They asked Dad if he’d sell them what he had left after market days wholesale, and they did a bunch of experiments this year infusing it. This one is both persimmon and peach. Dad says this is probably one of the last years those peach trees will produce," Kaname says; Ittetsu feels a part of him calling out from the past, from a porch to the south where he'd left that small part of himself. The house was still there, at least when he last detoured past it, and more surprisingly, occupied. Like himself, it had a new lifetime, and they were not part of each other's existence anymore. But as he passed it, he saw a little piece of Moniwa Ittetsu, right where he left it.
"It's been over a decade since we brought those up from Fukushima," he says. "You probably don't remember it that well."
Kaname shakes his head. "More than you'd think. Less than I wish I could."
“That’s just how memory works, Kaname,” Keishin points out.
“All the same…” Kaname looks at Ittetsu, who is now studying the characters on the label.
“I suggested the name of this batch. Since it's Kinoshitas' sake, and the peaches and persimmons come from the same orchard… so, 'Dōhō-shu'. The second kanji can refer to a style of container for alcohol, so I thought the wordplay would be amusing to you, Brother."
It is; but again Ittetsu feels that arrhythmia, more touched than he anticipated.
"Kinoshita as in –?" Keishin asked, Ittetsu nodding.
"His father has a twin brother. Their fields are near ours– our father's land," he amends.
"Oh, yea, Hisashi-kun is a 2nd year right? It's been years since we played together as kids. Honestly, even then, he was always even more anxious than I was."
“Well, maybe he didn’t want to get tetanus,” Keishin suggests, and Ittetsu enjoys seeing two of the most important people in his life laughing together, still cradling the bottle of brothers’ wine.
Kaname had not been taught in the ways of etiquette as precisely as Ittetsu, but learnt them by observing him, so after finishing the drink and assuring his brother that he would survive briefly being cold earlier, he excuses himself, accepting the offer of a drive home from Keishin.
The bottle is still chilled, leaving Ittetsu with a dilemma. He had swore he would never drink alone, years ago. Yet he feels like this gift was asking him to taste the brothers’ work, alone, without distraction. He had made that resolution after seeing what lonesome drinking did to his father, and yet he can’t blame the bottle of Ballantine, all those years ago, for that. It was his father’s choice to sin.
He pours a small amount into one of two masu that he’s rarely used. Then, after a moment of consideration, chooses to pour an even smaller amount into the second box.
“For you, Kaname, and also you, Iesada,” he intones quietly. “My brother and my father’s brother.” He wonders how jarring it is to Kaname, that the academic phase of his life has been so strictly delineated by the presence of these aging peach trees, or if it simply feels natural to him – to everything there is a season. Peaches, adolescence, volleyball… The persimmons would last as long as they were tended to, perhaps until after their father was gone. Until long after the reason they migrated north was entirely washed away by time, if not for one son whose name carried the mark of that garden he barely knew.
He wonders if Keishin would want to grow old with him in that house, and care for the persimmons. If his mother would ever retire, and let her children care for her.
The fragrance of the masu felt subdued by the slight chill the liquid still held. Unfiltered, hazy and pure, he’s fascinated by it. He initially thinks to pick up a notepad and pen, treat this intellectually, but they sit on the table, neglected.
It tastes like 12 years in 12 seconds, but also different. It tastes of seasons that he never ate any of the harvest, a harvest he had previously known like another brother. A season of struggle and change, and of beginnings and endings. He starts thinking about what to give his brother, nine months from now. But he also thinks about the ten months he’s known Keishin, the year or so he’s been entrusted with the hopes and hardships of more than a dozen young, earnest, obstinate teens.
He’s tasted peach and persimmon more times than he can remember. But this is the first time he’s really tasted them in the same moment, beautiful side by side – more than that; interwoven. The silvery-golden, almost pearlescent pool in the cup clears once one swallows, and the taste is sunbeams, the brothers preserved. After uncounted moments lost in sips, Kaname sends him a text, telling him he's home safe, and he hopes his brother enjoys the bottle, and he composes himself so that he isn't crying when his lover calls Tadaima from the genkan, and he welcomes Keishin back, Okaeri, and Ittetsu shares the fruits of his roots with Keishin in a kiss that loses nothing between them.