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Something was off about Kota that morning, Usagi thought. He was sluggish and he kept his head down, he dragged his feet all the way from his bedroom to the bathroom and then to the kitchen, and he wouldn't meet Usagi's eyes.
"Are you feeling alright?", Usagi asked before she placed her hand against his forehead. His temperature seemed fine, and his voice wasn't scratchy, so he probably didn't have a cold, but she was worried, nonetheless.
When it became clear that Kota was very reluctant to leave for school, she kept him back at the breakfast table and looked at him with a serious expression on her face.
"Kota. Tell me what's wrong, please."
Kota looked away from her and to her immense concern, she could see tears glistening in his eyes.
"I don't think I want to go to school today", Kota finally whispered.
"Did you have a fight at school?"
Kota shook his head.
"Did some of the teachers say anything? Do anything?"
Another shake of his head.
"Then what's wrong?"
"I don't know", Kota said, his voice wet and shaky, like a sob. "I don't know what's wrong. It just feels like I can't today."
Oh.
"Do you feel sad?", Usagi asked carefully.
Kota nodded. "But I don't know why", he added, and he finally turned to look at her. A first tear had started running down his left cheek. "I've got no reason to."
"Oh Kota", Usagi sighed and pulled him into her arms. "Shh, it's fine. It's okay, sometimes people are just sad."
He pressed his face into her shoulder, and she could feel the first wet spots appear on the fabric of her shirt. "Really?" He sounded so scared and unsure it made her heart break into a million tiny pieces.
"Yeah. There's nothing wrong, baby. It's fine, you can stay here today, I'm not making you go to school if you don't feel like it."
She felt him sag against her even more, felt the tension leave his small body, and decided that it was time for him to experience what her father used to call ‘a proper metal health day.’
♡
A blanket, a bunch of pillows, a big tub of ice cream and her favorite shows on TV. That's what her own mental health days had consisted of for most of her childhood, and that's what she went back to now that she had her own child clearly in need of a break.
She placed Kota on the couch, wrapped into his favorite soft blanket and with the remote in hand. He looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time, clearly confused about how he was allowed to do all the things she normally only let him do on special occasions or when he was sick. But she merely smiled, pressed a kiss to his head and left the room to call in at work, explaining that her son wasn't feeling well and that she couldn't come in today.
She was glad that people at work were always very understanding of her. After the meteor, and after she had decided to adopt Kota when she realized that he had no living relatives left, they'd always been very supportive when she had to call in sick or whenever she needed to leave early. That really came in handy now as well.
After she'd made that call, she scrolled down her contact list until she found the one person she felt was best equipped for getting that small confused boy in her living room to understand what was happening to him.
♡
"Hey, Buddy", Chota said as he entered the living room and spotted Kota curled up on the couch. Kota's face lit up instantly. He adored Chota, which was one of the reasons Usagi had been so relieved when he'd agreed to come almost immediately. "I hear you're having a bit of a cloudy day today?"
Usagi had to suppress a smile as she watched Kota tilt his head and wrinkle his nose in confusion. "Cloudy day?"
"Yeah, that's what I like to call them", Chota said before plopping down next to Kota on the couch, pulling his legs up and placing them into Kota's lap. It made Kota giggle and Usagi's heart sing. She hated seeing him sad, and she was glad Chota not only related to what Kota was probably going through but was also a natural with children.
"Why do you call them that?"
"Cause that's what they feel like to me. I wake up to a cloud pressing down on me with all its might. It doesn't leave, it doesn't get lighter by raining down on me, it’s just there, and it makes everything feel empty and grey."
Kota looked at him with big eyes. "That's what today feels like to me, too!", he finally said. "Everything feels sad and like I can never be happy again." He turned quiet, before admitting: "I thought crying would help. But it didn't."
Chota only nodded. "Yeah, I cry during those days, too", he said. "It does help, sometimes. But sometimes it doesn't. And that's okay."
Usagi knew that Chota had days where he didn't leave the bed at all. Where you could speak to him but never get an answer. Where he stared at the wall for hours, unresponsive and far, far away, deep in his own mind. Knew that what Kota was experiencing didn't even come close to what Chota had been living with for years.
She also knew that she herself had lived through more than one depressive episode during her younger years, especially after her father disappeared, but she felt like Chota would be much better at making Kota understand. Understand that it was fine to not only experience those episodes from time to time, but to live with depression your whole life, and that you could be happy and excited regardless.
She watched them share ice cream and laugh at the cartoon characters on screen. She watched them goof around and be comfortable around each other. She watched Kota laugh one minute and be quiet and subdued another, and watched Chota just letting him, watched him be quietly supportive and there for him if Kota wanted to talk.
"What helps?", Kota finally asked. "On cloudy days?"
Chota looked at him, with his legs pulled to his chest and his arms resting on his knees. "My friends, sometimes. Seeing them, having them around, keeping me from thinking bad thoughts that only make those clouds get bigger and heavier. Other times it's just being alone, though. Having a blanket around me that keeps the world away, listening to music, allowing myself to be sad. Because there's nothing wrong with it, you know. I think that's the really important part. Understanding that it's okay to be sad."
Usagi watched him, really watched him, and found those tiny wrinkles that were permanently edged into his face, found the first grey hairs at his temples, even though he was only twenty-six, and realized that she'd never been able to grasp him like this, never found him more real than she was finding him now.
"And it's hard, you know? Sometimes, it's the hardest thing you have to do. Not believing that it will get any better. But it always has. Sometimes, it takes a few hours, sometimes, it takes a few days, but at some point, there's always the sun shining through those clouds. And that's something I try to trust in, even when it's hard."
His gaze met Usagi's for a second and he smiled at her, soft and vulnerable, before turning to Kota again. "But, you know, sometimes, my friends take me to the zoo, and that's enough to make the clouds disappear again. The chipmunks and the red pandas are especially good at that."
"Ohhh, can we go to the zoo?", Kota asked, suddenly excited, and Usagi couldn't help but laugh.
"Sure, we can do that."
"Can Chota come with us? Can we go together?"
Usagi raised an eyebrow. "You'll have to ask him if he wants to."
Chota smiled at the boy's enthusiasm. "Sure, I'll go to the zoo with you", he said and laughed when he suddenly had the weight of a ten-year old in his lap.
"Come on, put on some clothes", Usagi said over Kota's pearls of laughter. "I'm not taking you to the zoo in your pajamas."
They both watched him jump down the hallway and into his room, excitedly talking to himself about pandas and lions and panthers, livelier and a lot more enthusiastic than he had been all day.
"Thank you", Usagi said. "That really helped him. I don't think I would have handled that as well as you did."
The smile Chota sent her was warm and it made something wriggle sleepily in her stomach, something she hadn't felt in a really long time.
"It's easier if you live with it", he agreed. "But Usagi, I think people don't tell you enough what a terrific job you're actually doing. Raising him alone, being there for him, making sure he's doing alright. A lot of people would have just sent him to school anyway. We as a society are notoriously bad at dealing with anything concerning mental health, and that reflects in how we raise our children. You did something not many parents would have today, and you deserve to be recognized for that. You're a wonderful mother."
It was very fortunate that Kota returned to the living room at that very moment, wrapped in his favorite yellow hoodie and with his small camera in hand, because Usagi wasn't sure if she would have been able to swallow the "You'd make a very good father" otherwise.