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Over the years, Sojiro Sakura has gotten used to noises in his house at random hours. It comes with having a daughter with an irregular sleep schedule, a girl up at all hours of the night who would rarely venture down to the kitchen for snacks while Sojiro was sleeping.
What he hasn’t gotten used to, though, is the sound of tears.
The sun is setting, and it’s not quite nighttime yet, but it’s been years since Futaba properly slept at night. Sojiro’s pretty sure she’s been asleep for a few hours, ever since she got back from another outing with her friends.
(And how strange it is, to talk about Futaba going out with friends, when it took years for her to even leave her room with him around.)
That doesn’t change the noise he can hear now, though. He’s sure she’s in her room, crying quietly.
Sojiro still doesn’t quite know how he’s supposed to treat his kid. He loves her, yes, but he doesn’t have the years of experience raising her that her mom did. At the same time, he’s trying his damn hardest, because if there’s anything he won’t let happen again it’s Futaba going back into her shell.
He knows exactly where the creaky floorboards are in the hallway, and he makes sure not to avoid them. She’d never liked surprises. At the same time, though, he hears her trying to quiet down, realizing he’s outside.
Poking his head through the door, which she’d started leaving open more and more, he finds his daughter still in bed, glasses not even on, eyes red.
“Futaba?” he says quietly, and watches as she turns to look at him, wiping her eyes.
Here is what Sojiro is good at: making coffee, keeping secrets, running his café, being passively mean enough to annoying customers that they don’t come back.
Here is what Sojiro is not that good at, in his own opinion: emotions.
“Sorry,” says Futaba, so quietly he has to focus to hear her. “Didn’t realize you were awake. You can go back to bed, I’m fine. Just had a bit of a nightmare.”
Here is what Sojiro is trying to be better at, for Futaba’s sake and for his own, and for the boy currently living in the attic of his café: being comforting.
“It’s not that late, Futaba, I wasn’t in bed yet,” says Sojiro; Futaba’s blinds are fully blackout but if they weren’t he was sure he would still see the last rays of sunlight peeking over the horizon. “Would you, uh… want to talk about it?”
She doesn’t immediately say no, which he takes as enough of a sign that he can step inside and not lean on the edge of the doorway. Standing at her bedside feels like he’s too oppressive; borrowing the chair from her desk feels like a violation of her personal belongings. He settles for the corner of her bed instead.
Futaba seems to realize looking at all normal is a fruitless endeavor, dropping her arms to drape over her knees. “It was about Mom. For a second I thought I was back there, stuck in my room, listening to her tell me her death was my fault all over again, like nothing happened. Then I woke up, and I was still here.” She pauses for a moment, just breathing, and he notices she’s shaking slightly, just trembling like a leaf in the wind. “But I realized the floor is too clean, and I didn’t fall asleep in my chair, and I remembered to take my glasses off. None of that would have happened back then. So everything’s fine, right?” She looks up at Sojiro like she’s waiting for him to agree, eyes rimmed red, and it makes his heart hurt. It had been two years of this for her, two years of hoping things would get better, and he’d never done anything.
In return, he scoots closer along the edge of her bed and spreads his arms open wide.
Futaba nearly launches herself at him, and if he hadn’t been ready for that exact scenario when he offered he might have been knocked over. Sojiro’s spent enough time manning Leblanc while she was in there with her friends that he knows what she usually wants, though. Her arms wrap around him, squeezing tight while she buries her head into her chest, and he lowers his arms again to hug her back.
The past couldn’t be changed, and Sojiro knew that perhaps better than most. What he could change, though, was the present.
And if the present moment was holding his daughter tight, telling her it would be alright, being there for her as long as she needed him… well. He wouldn’t complain about that.