Chapter Text
March 24, 2009. Yoshino's house
The quiet rustling of files and paper is the only sound that breaks the silence for a long time, until his dark green eyes are hooked on the photo of his father.
He knew this man well-he loved him and respected him, really. However, even at the age of eight, he could not help but think about his external differences with the man in the photo.
Gently smoothing out the album page, the child noted all the details of the person who lived with him and his mother for five years, until he died due to a terrible accident at work.
Blue eyes, soft wavy hair, a humpback nose. Even after concentrating and running his childish finger along the entire length of his nose, Junpei could not feel the hump.
Nagi passing by, noticing that the noise had subsided, decided to check what her son was doing.
"What are you doing, honey?" - the woman asked, holding a box of unnecessary things in her hands to throw it away later.
Junpei could even smell her perfume from here, which she loved to use so much.
Shaking his head, the boy got up from his knees and raised the album above his head, allowing his mother to take a closer look.
After putting the box on the floor, Nagi bent down and picked up the album, not quite understanding what her son wanted to say.
"Yes, dear. This is a picture of me and your dad when we celebrated the new year. Why?"
But the child just shook his head, slightly puffing out his cheeks, trying to correctly formulate his thoughts.
Junpei always wondered why his eyes were green when his mother's were brown and in the photos his father's were blue. Why is his hair the darkest in the family and prickly - which is why they have to be combed for a long time - when Naga had wavy and obedient hair.
"He's not my father," the boy finally said, looking up at his mom.
Nagi looked at her child for a while, and then, smiling, nodded, covering the album and putting it aside. Putting her hand on her son's head, the woman ruffled them, much to the boy's displeasure, forcing him to put hair in order with his fingers again.
"Yes, Junpie, he's not your father. But he's your dad, right?" Tilting her head, Mom asked, "When you were almost two years old, he came to our family. I didn't think much about whether you remember this fact or not because of your age."
The kid listened attentively to his mother, absorbing every word. But the woman just smiled and bent down again, picking up a box of unnecessary things from the floor in her hands.
"Let's get back to cleaning. If we finish by lunch, then I'll order pizza," the woman said with a wink and left the room, deftly distracting the child's brain from the previous topic.
"Pizza!" exclaimed Junpei with a newfound sparkle in his eyes, taking an album of family photos and stuffing it back into the closet to continue sorting out old things.
However, even if the child's mind was distracted by a completely different one at the moment, the information that there was another person who had a connection with him was deeply embedded in him.
Someone else
Someone who looks like him
But at the moment, it was just a little boy sorting out old things and thinking about pizza.