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Kimochi had already been outside when Koharu found him. He had learned very early on that he could rarely tell what Koharu wanted from him based on invitation. Unlike Kouchi, who phrased his overtures like a request, Koharu's was always a demand. He would bid that you come with him and sometimes start walking away before you'd even given your answer, so assured that he knew what response he was likely to receive. It could be that he wanted to spend time with you, needed a favor, or wanted to use you in one of his schemes and he would approach them all in the same way.
Though with Koharu, he supposed that they all amounted to the same thing. He was the most esoteric of Kimochi's siblings. Koharu had been poorly trained by the rest of his siblings, so he rarely said what he meant.
Kimochi never turned Koharu down. He never had to, as Koharu had never asked for his time when he was particularly occupied. He suspected that Koharu hadn't worked out how much Kimochi liked him and didn't want to put it to the test just yet. He didn't look forward to when Koharu felt comfortable enough to test Kimochi's placement of him. The thought made him squirm in discomfort, but he was also fairly sure that it was inevitable. That's just how Koharu was. If Kimochi looked closely enough, he was fairly sure he could peel back the layers of his brother and find strings of code where there should be flesh and blood.
He was pretty sure that, on some level, Koharu thought that, too.
Today seemed to be one of the rare days that Koharu was having a human experience. Kimochi didn't know why Koharu picked him as a companion for the day, but he was pleased by it. Koharu seemed happy. Kimochi liked that.
They were nestled in a secluded area of the park. Koharu enjoyed seclusion for his human moments, though there was always a moment when he first followed Koharu into an isolated area that he wondered if Koharu would kill him. Kimochi had made this observation out loud once and Koharu had been offended at the thought that he would waste their blood so fruitlessly. Kokichi had been annoyed by the sentiment when he'd overheard it, but Kimochi had held it close to his heart like a treasure. It had done the job it was meant to, reassuring Kimochi that he was valuable in the way Koharu cared to measure such things.
Koharu was often gravely misunderstood by their siblings, but sometimes he was rightly seen and harshly judged for it. Kimochi didn't want to do that to Koharu. He had enough people to scold him and not enough to love him in a way that he understood. So Kimochi was trying and soft moments like this made him think that he was succeeding.
Koharu was standing particularly still, a handful of seeds being offered to the open air. It would make a nice picture for Kokichi to draw if he ever saw it. After a few moments of this stillness a bird had perched on Koharu's palm, accepting the offering of seeds and picking at them. Koharu smiled, something between smug and genuinely pleased.
Kimochi himself was sitting down a few steps away, hand brushing over the fur of a small black cat that had followed them here. His eyes were mostly on Koharu, watching as his brother emerged from the cloak of coldness that he often wrapped himself, peeking out from behind the mask to talk to Kimochi.
"--of course, it will take time for them to trust you like this, but it is very simple to get to this point. They know what they want, they just need some repetition to learn you are the embodiment of it."
Kimochi enjoyed moments like this, where Koharu let himself seep out unfiltered. It was like seeing Kokichi's soft smile or the expression Kouchi wore when he pulled back someone's shell and helped them. Small, private, and true. Kimochi wanted to swallow these moments whole and hoarded them in his chest like a vault.
"So simple in craving affection, craving food, truly easy to understand and easy to bring to hand."
Kimochi smiled at Koharu, laughing quietly. Kimochi didn't understand how his siblings could misunderstand Koharu sometimes, when he always said what he was thinking so clearly. Though perhaps some weight should be given to the fact that they just disliked the thinking and not that they misunderstood it. (Though they did misunderstand, that could not be understated.)
"It'd be easy to abuse this," Koharu went on. "To coax a bird into your hand just to suddenly squeeze and never let go. Easy to bring them close and pluck those feathers that would mean they would never fly off."
"You would never do that," Kimochi said softly. "Because you don't want to hurt them."
Koharu looked at him then, meeting his eyes and holding the look for longer than Kimochi thought was necessary. Kimochi let him though. He had no problem being watched, being stared at, like some people did. Koharu frowned at him, just a bit. "Wouldn't it be better for them? Comfort, safety, all under the watchful gaze of a kind and generous superior predator? All they would need to lose is something small but dangerous."
Kimochi thought of saying, "You're not superior," as Kokichi might, but it would be an unproductive sentiment. He thought of trying to explain how that might hurt them, as Kouchi might, but Koharu would think the ends justify the means. None of those sentiments were his own though. Just the echoes of his siblings that he knew well enough to have absorbed, to predict, to pluck out of the air between them because he couldn't pull the right answer out of Koharu himself.
He thought the right answer might be to debate and define the meaning of comfort and safety, but Kimochi didn't have any interest in that. That was an argument for Kouchi and Koharu. Kimochi wasn't interested in trying to take a hammer to Koharu's mentality. Kimochi wasn't a hammer.
Kimochi's silence emboldened Koharu and he smiled like he thought he was winning. Perhaps that’s what silence meant when it came from others. He looked puffed up and proud when he continued. "Really, they should be thankful that I'm satisfied with these small moments. They owe us their very lives every time they leave unharmed. It would be completely in our rights to bring our teeth and claws down on them like any other predator."
Kimochi thought, when his siblings feared Koharu, this was probably what they saw. Someone waiting to consume them, to feast on their weakness and swallow them whole. They weren't wrong to fear it, Kimochi knew that. But he understood Koharu in a way that Koharu could never understand himself, because Kimochi was like that, too. He devoured pieces of their siblings all the time; softly, slowly, he had stored every part of them away inside him. The two of them were greedy, they were just greedy for different things.
The others didn't know that if Koharu could love them the way that they wanted him to, he'd be more dangerous, not less.
"It is only our mercy that spares them," Koharu said. "Is it so wrong to ask for recognition?"
"I recognize you, Ruru," Kimochi said.
Koharu's tongue seemed to trip over the air as his mouth opened and words failed to come out. He didn't do anything so obvious as sputter, but the way his eyes subtly did a double take over Kimochi amounted to the same thing, he thought.
Kimochi watched as Koharu took his words and whatever thoughts they inspired, and shoved them out of the way. They didn't fit the narrative, so there was no room for them now. Kimochi wondered where they went. If Koharu put them in his pocket for later or if they were crushed outright. Would he pull them out later and study them from all sides or would they just evaporate, unneeded and unused?
Koharu was no longer looking at him as he asked, "If some stroking is the cost for food and safety, why not take it? Animals understand there is always a cost, something to appease, and do not hesitate. Simple and effective."
There were more birds in Koharu's hand now. Even as he spoke, he kept himself mostly still and the birds remained settled. Kimochi wondered, if he held out his hand and a bird came to him, would that ruin the metaphor or prove Koharu right?
This time when Kimochi stayed quiet, he didn't think Koharu was taking it as a victory so much as permission. Permission to take a rest, perhaps. Even when he relaxed around their siblings, Koharu spent a fair amount of time biting his tongue. He wasn't doing that now. Koharu wore so many masks, Kimochi didn't think he could ever learn just how many, but here he was slipping another one off. Taking off another layer and letting a neglected part of himself breathe. Kimochi wondered if this was how Kouchi felt when someone finally let out something they were bursting to confess.
"People need to learn it, too. How to bow their heads and take what is so generously offered, to learn they could be stronger in the hands of someone that knows how to bring out their full potential." Koharu was gently stroking the birds and they preened beneath the attention. His face softened as well and his words were smooth like silk as he continued speaking. "They fall so easily into the same repetition. An animal will happily admit that you are their better so they may reap the rewards you give, but people recoil and lash out. Even if they would be better under the thumb of one smarter, one who could bring out their best selves, they bite and claw for dominance they cannot possibly earn nor do they even want. Then they dare pout when the hand holding them drops them back into the dark. As if everything gained wasn't a gift that they had rejected."
Kimochi crawled closer to Koharu, leaning against his legs and pulling the cat in his lap close enough to cuddle. His brother was in so much pain and he didn't even know. So wounded from the rejection of his siblings that he was poised to lash out and smother them all for their own good. Did Koharu realize that he was ready to pop? That the pressure of his own mindstate could snap if he kept stretching it so thin?
"I accept the gifts you give me," Kimochi told him. "And I won't bite you for doing your best."
Trembling. Koharu was trembling. Kimochi could tell by the way he became stiffer, stood straighter, that he was anything but. The same way that Kokichi's face went blank when you caught him off guard, Koharu became still when he was off balance. It was an assumption on Kimochi's part, but he felt confident in making it. Confident in the way that Koharu refused to look at him, that there must be something loose in his eyes. Some expression that would tell Kimochi what he wanted to know if only Koharu would let him see it.
He never would if he could help it. Kimochi knew that. He wouldn't prey on his brother by trying.
Koharu let out a heavy breath. "Better to keep such confused and anxious creatures ignorant and dazed of what you truly want. Better to hide the hand they rest in. Never realizing the debt your mercy has given them, ignorant to the gift of not being hunted and devoured. So content and pliant that they'll never even notice how you tug them along to repay the debt."
Kimochi watched as Koharu pulled himself together in real time. Forcing his shoulder to relax, adjusting his stance, picking out a smile. Kimochi watched his brother pick up a mask and put it on his face before looking down at him, and Kimochi admired it, just a bit. He wished could draw a map of all the ways that Koharu was so very weak and so incredibly strong, but Koharu would see that as an attack or a betrayal, so the beauty of what he was seeing had to remain only in his mind. He smiled at his brother, even though Koharu would never understand what a smile meant from him.
"It's the kind thing to do, for someone superior to take charge and think for them," Koharu explained. "Why do they need to know anything? This sparrow doesn't. That cat doesn't. They are happy, so why should a human be any different? The sooner you understand what you want, Little Prince, the sooner you can also move seamlessly through the anxious masses, bringing hope and peace to those lost and cold souls practically begging for someone to take the hard choices out of their hands. No matter how much they think they want that choice. So if they're going to put their life on your shoulders, rely on you to think for them, then it's only right that you get to decide what is best for that life. What that life can give you. It's simply natural to take what is given. Whether it be birdseed or the right to exist. If they didn’t want to do the things I ask for in return for this aid, they could simply try to take their lives back. They never do though, and they never will."
Kimochi placed the cat on the ground as he got to his feet. His rise startled the birds out of Koharu's hand, but the way his eyes remained on Kimochi, he didn't think Koharu is too upset about that. Kimochi decided early on that the easiest way to deal with Koharu was on his terms, so he would do just that now and become the hand that guides him. Just for a moment. Koharu would never let himself be led for long, but Kimochi thought he would benefit from a rest in someone else's palm for once.
"Would you like to get a pet, Ruru?" Kimochi poses it as a question because Koharu would bristle at an order. And he smiles because his brother thinks he understands those, even though he does not.
Koharu looked at him strangely, but Kimochi didn't bother trying to puzzle it out. Koharu's thoughts didn't really matter right now, because Kimiochi had already decided that they were going to go to the pet store and Koharu was going to be happy and that was all there was to it.
"I... suppose that we can."
Kimochi took his hand as he led the way.
Koharu was terrible at holding hands. He's stiff and his pace falters as Kimochi tugs him along. Normally, Kimochi would match his pace to that of his companions, but if Kimochi stopped moving right now, he's fairly sure that Koharu wouldn't take another step. He didn't mind so much that his palm was sweaty. Koharu probably didn't do this often and everyone was nervous the first time they held hands. That was okay. Kimochi laced their fingers together and Koharu's twitched like he wanted to pull away. But he didn't and Kimochi considers that a victory.
There was a long moment of silence between them that was peaceful for Kimochi but he suspected it might be awkwardness or confusion for Koharu. Eventually, Koharu cleared his throat and spoke. "I did not think you wanted a pet."
Kimochi didn't know if it was meant to be a statement or a leading question.
"Ruru should have a pet," he answered. "I think it will make him happy."
Koharu didn't say anything more the rest of the walk.