Archive of Our Own

Ibara didn’t always grow up at the facility. It’s not like his parents decided to just dump him off in front of an out of bounds army center and call it a day - they had the heart to at least abandon him at an orphanage, at the very least hoping that someone would take their poor newborn in and give him the life that they couldn’t.

That was the extent of the love that they could afford him at the time. Otherwise, he would’ve never been found, left to weep himself to death below a bridge where no one would even turn their heads at the smell of rot and decay.

At least, that’s what they hoped would happen to their newborn.

Reality didn’t turn out that way.

Ibara scared the other kids at the orphanage. They were cordial, sure, timidly asking him for the pepper when he sat closer to it, but he wasn’t being asked to play with their toys together or anything like that. They preferred to scuttle away from him and the corner of the playroom that he’d taken for himself, sitting there with his head in a book that he dug out from the caretakers’ cabinet when no one was looking.

He had a dead eye stare that frightened potential parents away; he could speak when spoken to, but refused to communicate with anyone else the moment he was independent enough to eat and use the toilet.

He was handed glasses not because he needed them (not yet, at that point in his life), but because the caretakers thought it would make him… cuter, to the parents. They could chalk off his emotionless gaze to the glasses, citing that it just didn’t fit well and made him look older and sterner than he should be.

Nothing worked. The adults were scared of the emptiness in the child’s eyes. Those who were kind enough attempted to talk to him, but upon receiving no response, would stroll off in search of another poor orphan to bring home. The caretakers would pull him to the side after the visits and chide him about his lack of friendliness, but he didn’t care, because why should he?

His parents abandoned him the moment he was born and that determined the path he was taking for the rest of his life. He wasn’t going to rely on any other adult for warmth, or love, because he’s seen what these adopters can do: He’s seen them throw his housemates back after a week or two, when they realised that what they wanted was a pet to play catch with, and not a human with whims and wants.

Some of them were adopted again. Others, stuck there with him, the hope of being adopted ever again diminishing as their body grew, losing the baby fat in their cheeks, and they stopped being as cute as they once were.

At 10 years old, Ibara had a plan. He was going to work and save as much money as he could, age out of the system and experience what the world has for him.

Then, a stern looking woman walked in one day, took a quick glance around the room, eyes narrowed, and arrowed down the boy that sat silently in the corner of the playroom, attentive to the other children but uncaring of their childish activities.

She talked to the headmistress, handed over a bag of cash, and the rest was history.

The next day, Ibara was made to pack up his measly possessions and sent on a car to his new home at the army facility.

He later learnt that he was bought there as a companion for her son. A live test subject to experiment with her son's willpower and loyalty.

To satiate that woman’s curiosity, Ibara’s life was suddenly turned upside down, his days going from brain-numbingly mundane in the playroom to living in fear of the battlefields, spending his first few months flinching whenever gunshots sounded in the air with the scent of blood invading his every meal.

But he wasn’t alone. There was always someone by his side, a boy who came a few days earlier than he did.

Yuzuru always stood with him when he fell.

The first time Ibara was handed an actual rifle, he patted Ibara’s back and pulled him back up when the recoil of the gun threw him to the ground.

“Stand strong,” Yuzuru said firmly. “Show any weaknesses, and you’re dead where you stand.”

The first time Ibara was sent to the infirmary after a nasty hand-to-hand combat session with the adults where he was slammed into the ground headfirst and kicked at relentlessly for what felt like an hour, Yuzuru was sent along to accompany him.

“Instructor-dono,” Ibara whispered, staring blankly past Yuzuru and at the eye chart behind him. There’s bandage haphazardly wrapped around his head to stop the bleeding and he could hardly see out of his right eye, his eyelid purple and swollen with busted blood vessels.

The nurse went out for a smoke and left the two boys to their own devices in her room, filled with weapons and medications that could send them off into the deep end.

For the first time in his life, Ibara didn’t see the appeal in living.

The other day, he watched as a couple of sergeants played with one of the dobermans before lights out.

It was older, clearly, running slower than its pack and taking a longer time to sniff out bodies and bombs, but it was still energetic. It would still jump around Ibara and pretend to nip at him before running off to complete its mission.

At the end of an hour, someone took out a gun, patted the dog on its head, and shot it dead, before pointing a finger at Ibara and ordering him to clean up its corpse.

The shot still rang in his ears.

The doberman died in a state of joy, its tongue sticking out and eyes frozen in time as brain matter leaked out of the gaping hole in its head.

He wished he was the damn dog.

Ibara stood up and took a step towards the cabinets to grab more pills before the nurse returned. Yuzuru pulled him back and sat him down on the bed without another word.

“I hate you,” Ibara said.

Yuzuru didn’t say anything in reply, but inclined his head just the slightest to show that he was listening.

“Teach me how to fight.”

Yuzuru managed a smile, for the first time since he had to carry Ibara, all bloody and broken, as he hiked back to the infirmary.

“Gladly.”

Their placement together was a setup, and by some angelic miracle of them being literal children, they were offered their own tiny room, away from the other soldiers in training.

(Ibara ignored the whispers between the officers saying that they were for the children’s safety, and for their convenience because they didn’t want to deal with corpses in their living spaces.)

At night, Yuzuru trained him. He taught Ibara how to defend himself, how to hold a gun - anything that would eventually be attributed to Ibara’s long lasting survival in the facility.

Ibara caught himself smiling sometimes, even as he was held down by the throat with Yuzuru’s strong hands.

It was more fun than he’d ever had at the orphanage, and there was no one to constantly pity him, because there was no use for pity in a hell like this.

This was the pound where abandoned puppies like the both of them were sent to be tamed, and eventually, groomed into vicious, hunting dogs that barked and bit on every command.

Ibara started letting his guard down, and he still can’t tell whether that was his first mistake he’s ever made in his life, because he should’ve known better than to trust the one good thing he had going for him.

It was a night where neither of them had training due to another trip to the infirmary, after an officer nearly broke Yuzuru’s arm during sparring.

His wrist was left in a splint, and they both knew there was no further training to be had for the next few nights.

Ibara couldn’t sleep, so when he thought Yuzuru finally went to sleep, he snuck his hand into the gaps between the bed frame and the wall and pulled out the bag of belongings that he took with him from the orphanage.

He turned on the torch to its lowest setting as he opened his book, prepared to continue reading from where he left off all those months ago at his previous residence.

“What are you reading?” Yuzuru’s voice came suddenly, head hanging upside down from his upper bunk.

Ibara jumped, knocking his head against the roof of the bunk bed. He stared back with widened eyes, the torch in his hand and the book laid flat on the bed, flipped to a random chapter.

He quickly turned off the torch and shoved it behind his back, like it would’ve done him any favours. “Don’t report me,” he whispered softly.

“I won’t,” Yuzuru reassured with a small grin. He tilted his head. “I didn’t know you could bring books in here.”

“They didn’t check my bag when I first arrived,” Ibara muttered, a little peeved that his precious reading time was rudely interrupted by his busybody instructor. “I thought you were asleep. Liar.”

Yuzuru happily ignored the venom in Ibara’s voice. “Can I join you?” he asked. “I haven’t seen or touched a book since I came here.”

“Neither have I,” Ibara replied, moved further against the wall, and patted the bedsheet next to him. “Come down.”

By the time Yuzuru finally made his way down with one hand, Ibara had already found the chapter where he last left off.

“This chapter is about the 52-hertz whale,” Ibara began reading, finger trailing the sentences. “It’s the only one in the world.”

“It must be lonely,” Yuzuru commented, but Ibara shook his head.

“I wish I was the 52-hertz whale,” he sighed, head falling back against the brick walls. “No one would disturb me. I want to be left alone.”

In the deep dark ocean, where no one will find him and take his freedom away from him. It’s not the universe or the skies, but the seas are as hauntingly big as the land is, and he’ll be free.

“You don’t have to be,” Yuzuru replied. “You have me.”

“Don’t make empty promises now, Yuzuru,” Ibara muttered, hands fisting his pants absentmindedly. “Lying is bad.”

“I’m not lying,” Yuzuru continued, eyes falling onto the page of the imageless 52-hertz whale. “It probably has a friend out there somewhere, looking for him too.”

He turned and looked at Ibara and Ibara looked away quickly.

He’d never heard Yuzuru being this…positive, about anything in their little hellhole before.

It gave him the creeps.

“The scientists wrote here that these whales use frequencies to contact each other, and they couldn’t detect any other sounds at that frequency,” Ibara huffed. “He’s probably alone and happier, without someone bothering him.”

“The sea is big and bottomless,” Yuzuru hummed, ignoring Ibara’s words.

It had annoyed Ibara a little, to see Yuzuru so persistent on this.

Ibara flipped to the next page in response, and they soon forgot about the 52-hertz whale as the chapter moved onto other, never seen before animals.

It was his only chance to learn about animals other than Dobermans anyway.

-

The days soon became mundane, as one would’ve expected from an army facility.

Ibara stopped being thrown to the ground as often. He needed the infirmary less now, and could actually hold up against the stronger, bulkier men who overestimated their strength against his tiny body.

He was often thrown to cleaning duty with Yuzuru because they were the youngest, but that was fine, because it meant less opportunities for the officers to pick on them, and more time for the both of them to talk without being eavesdropped.

Ibara found himself thinking that the army facility wasn’t so bad after all, as long as he had Yuzuru by his side and above him on their bunk bed, another kid who was trapped in the same awful situation as he was.

And then Yuzuru told him that he’s leaving, and the world came crashing down on Ibara.

Ibara was mad.

More than that, he felt betrayed, so he reacted in the only way he knew how to in the pettiest way possible.

He went on a silent strike for days, refusing to acknowledge Yuzuru whatsoever. Any attempt at communication was met with tense silence and an indignant tilt of his head away.

“You can’t keep acting like this, Ibara,” Yuzuru sighed on day 5. “It won’t benefit either of us.”

“What’s the point?” Ibara finally spat, trying to wipe the hurt from his expression. He refused to meet Yuzuru’s eyes in fear of what he would see there. “You’re leaving.”

Without me.

Yuzuru got to go out and experience the world beyond empty grass fields, and Ibara was stuck here and left behind without any consequences again.

To make matters worse, Yuzuru was being released from the camp to become another child’s butler.

A glorified dog, if Ibara had any say in it.

Yuzuru frowned, looking a little miffed. “Stop being childish. We both know that I had no say in this.”

When did either of them ever have any say in anything in their lives?

“You’re a liar,” Ibara instead said, crossing his arms. “At least I get the whole room to myself now. I won’t miss you at all.”

“No, I’m sure you won’t,” Yuzuru replied calmly, and that was the end of Ibara’s strike, because they had dessert provided for some minor celebration or another that Ibara didn’t care enough to understand, and Yuzuru slid his extra cup of pudding over when no one was watching them.

Somehow, Yuzuru’s cup tasted sweeter than his own.

-

That night before Yuzuru left, Ibara had left for their bunk first as Yuzuru was busy speaking to the officers in their cozy little office, tying up some loose ends that he refused to tell Ibara about.

Ibara sat on the floor in silence for an hour before he pulled out the book from where he’s hidden it and tore out the section on the 52-hertz whale.

He stared at the page for a few seconds, absorbing every last detail of it, followed by crumpling into a ball and tossing into the waste bin at their door.

When Yuzuru came back in, Ibara pretended to be asleep, forcing his breaths to come slow and steady, even though the both of them knew that he was well awake.

Yuzuru left in the middle of the night, when an officer knocked on their door and Yuzuru dutifully called out in response.

Ibara didn’t dare move, or alter his breathing patterns. He listened to the last time Yuzuru folded his blanket and arranged his pillow neatly before he climbed down the ladder, the wood creaking for the final time in a long while as his feet hit the floor.

Ibara heard the footsteps grow louder as a figure stopped above him.

Yuzuru leaned down and gently ran a hand through Ibara’s hair, landing a light kiss to his forehead.

“I’m sorry, Ibara,” was whispered sadly, and Ibara couldn't bring himself to respond.

His breathing stuttered, but Yuzuru didn’t need that to know that he was well awake and listening.

“I can’t promise that I’ll see you again.”

His voice was choked up, the most emotion that Ibara had ever heard from him.

More footsteps, fading away from him.

Ibara was alone once again, in the sea of darkness in a facility where he was now the owner of a room with two beds;

one left empty for the rest of his time there, and the other, occupied by a bitter child that no longer had anything to hold onto but revenge.

-

It’s a lonely battle in the fight to the top.

It’s only by luck that Ibara managed to buy his way out of the facility and back into civilization, but he had no time to appreciate the world, before he was, ironically, thrown into a pit of snakes once more, all desperate for his rightful inheritance.

He didn't even give himself a good night of sleep in a fancy hotel somewhere in the city before he began scheming. He chose the idol industry to work with because it seemed most convenient with Godfather’s connections, and he already had the right physique and voice to be one.

He’ll make a name of himself and prove everyone wrong.

He’ll make a name of himself and find Yuzuru and laugh at his stupid instructor for resigning himself to a life of becoming Himemiya’s silly dog, fated to forever follow that young master of his around while Ibara is freer than he’ll ever be.

-

He didn’t expect to grow so attached to them.

They were meant to be his means to an end, and now they’re not, and Ibara doesn’t know what to do with himself and these sickening emotions that have worked their way into his core.

It started with Nagisa.

Nagisa, so confused about his identity and the mess that had to do with the Godfather legacy and Yumebosaki, grew on Ibara’s selfish little heart so fast that he, with all his proposals and emergency plans, couldn’t see it coming.

He was going to keep Eden at arm’s length.

Keyword: was.

Maybe it started when Ibara was stressed about a concert venue, pacing around the room when Nagisa pulled him down onto the couch and nudged his hands towards his hair, and asked Ibara to braid it for him.

Of course, Ibara did.

And of course, it happened again and again, until it was no longer Nagisa offering his hair up, but Ibara’s hands subconsciously moving towards Nagisa’s when he was stressed.

Nagisa always looked extremely pleased.

It became natural to seek Nagisa out when he was stressed and overwhelmed, and Nagisa would sit there and either talk about his day as a wonderful distraction, or remain silent and prompt Ibara to vent about his struggles with whichever idol or director gave him a massive headache at that point in time.

And then Nagisa just kept getting kidnapped over and over again, and it would be hilarious if not for the fact that Ibara’s mind would start sprinting in circles for fear of Nagisa coming to harm in any way whatsoever, and he quickly realises these instances might’ve been one of the only few times where he was worried for someone else’s life, above his very own.

Then, Jun.

Ibara had called the man his soulmate as a joke. A term coined with no genuine intent behind it, meant to sarcastically poke fun at their seniors for fucking with his plans once again.

He still doesn’t know what spurred him to pull that all-nighter and rewrite the lyrics to Exceed to prove the man’s self-worth to himself, but it worked, and things just kept happening and somehow Ibara started to see Jun as a confidant, rather than another student that just happened to be dragged into their unit on Hiyori’s whims.

He was just doing anything to ensure that Eden was operating at its best, and now it’s become frequent reminders to eat his meals, and messages exchanged about their seniors’ shenanigans that neither of them had the patience for, but still tolerated regardless, because they were still their unitmates in the end.

And finally… Hiyori.

Hiyori was an enigma as much as Ibara was.

They were the same. Two sides to the same rotten coin, unwanted and abandoned at the side of the road.

Maybe Hiyori got the better end of the stick, but the baseline was this: Their parents never wanted them, and their existence was merely a burden that they had to deal with for the most of their lives.

Maybe that’s why it took so long for Ibara to warm up to Hiyori, because it felt like staring at a mirror that reflected the worst of himself.

Avoidant at best, downright abhorrent to deal with emotionally, both capable of dodging questions and answers that they knew the answers to but didn’t want to say out loud.

Hiyori, who coped by intending to make sure his love was made obvious to those he loved and stuffing everything else that was unsightly under a mask, and Ibara, who would die before he would ever confess to caring for anyone.

Where the other two of Eden pushes, Ibara instead takes a step back from Hiyori and lets the man be.

Let him get over his pride, before he approaches any of them for help.

He’ll eventually approach them. Ibara knows this well enough, because they’ve done the same to him many times now, and it’s somehow never failed.

It sickens Ibara how much trust he’s in his unitmates nowadays, even as he wishes to keep them at an arm’s length.

They were supposed to be colleagues, perhaps acquaintances at best. Not whatever this whirlpool of a mess his head has become when he stresses about whatever bad decisions they’re about to come up with.

He cares for them, and the last time he cared for someone, it was rudely snatched out of his grasp by forces that he had no power against, and now he does, and it occurs to him that

maybe, the only good thing about being at the top is the ability to protect the people he’s reluctantly let into his heart.

-

Ibara hasn’t thought about the book that entertained him from the orphanage to the military, until he decided to clean his side of the room on a rare day off and found it shoved haphazardly into the bottom of the closet.

On instinct, he immediately flips open the book to the page where the tears are uneven with the corpse of a page once there, done with the desperation of a child’s tiny, bitter hands.

His fingers trail the edge of the tears, running them down the zigzag patterns as he thinks about Yuzuru and Eden and the fucking whale, haunting the very recesses of his mind.

Later, when the book is shoved deeper into the closet and covered with even more layers of folded clothes, Ibara searches up the 52-hertz whale after a decade of ignoring its existence, and sees that it’s found a friend.

He closes the tab immediately and refuses to let the whale plague his mind any further.

Good god, even the world’s loneliest whale has found a friend.

This does not bode well for Ibara.

-

He didn’t expect himself to have to spend so much time with a kid.

A kid of a different company, in fact, forced together with him by the whims of Nice for their silly, childish event.

A kid that he is now tutoring, because he doesn’t seem to know how to read a lick of kanji, because every adult in his life has seemingly failed him.

Ibara ignores the nagging voice at the back of his head and instead turns to watch as Raika attempts to write out the kanji to his own name on their scrap paper, currently filled with hundreds of other basic kanjis and its accompanying furigana that a 14 year old kid should know.

He still doesn’t know why he offered to stay back and teach Raika. He doesn’t understand why watching the child fumble with a pen invokes the same feelings as reading the letters from the children of the orphanage he donates to.

Is this the urge to protect? The urge to shield these children from the rest of the world in ways that society has failed to do so, leaving more lookalikes of his to rot in the darkness of unsightly alleyways that no one will ever want to look at?

“Your unitmates must care about you a lot,” Ibara comments, watching as their other teammates rehearse their lines. Raika looks up curiously.

Ibara coughs into his fist. “They read out all your lyrics for you, don’t they?”

Which is what led them to this teacher-student situation in the first place, since the other children clearly didn’t think to resolve the issue directly by simply teaching him how to read kanji.

Perhaps NewDi should’ve hired a tutor for their idols. He will see to it that his roommate back at Starmony does something about this oversight.

Raika nods in understanding. “Aren’t I lucky!” he says, turning to Ibara with a bright grin. “I’m a bird-brain and a burden, but ya still willing to teach me how to write!”

It’s unnerving, even to Ibara, to see a kid talk down on himself with such a happy tone.

“Now, I don’t believe you should be calling yourself a burden,” Ibara replies, changing the topic casually as he points to a stroke on the kanji that Raika misplaced. “Here, you should be drawing this stroke a little lower.”

Raika hums as he grabs the eraser and erases the error, tongue sticking out as he tries to meticulously draw the correct line again.

“Don’t ever feel afraid of asking the people around you for help, you hear me?” Ibara adds, feeling something indescribable come over him. He hopes no one is listening to them as he lowers his voice. “That simply wouldn’t be beneficial to anyone. It’s not your fault that you don’t know these things and it’s perfectly fine to ask others for help.”

He’s always been a hypocrite, dishing out advice that he refuses to take himself, but Raika is young and impressionable and Ibara’s words will surely mean something to him.

Raika nods fervently. “I’ll do ma best!”

A shout comes from Leo regarding something about the music and Ibara looks up to see Yume sulking as Aira tries to comfort the boy.

He lets out a tired sigh and considers a backup plan to win the event without the rest of them as he feels a migraine forming, cursing Nice for his existence.

At least Raika will come out of this learning something other than archaic quotes and useless idioms that do nothing for him, even if the teaching process has been a major pain in the ass since he offered to help.

But it melts something in his heart, so he decides right there and then to push through and see to it that by the end of the event, the kid will know how to read basic kanji.

Ibara accidentally locks eyes with Yuzuru as he glances back at the situation, and he looks back at him with a small, knowing smile.

He promptly looks away with a huff and focuses his attention back to Raika’s ongoing attempt at writing Yume’s name.

He clears his throat. “So, your stroke here…”

-

Ibara just wanted some peace from the constant surveillance.

He escaped to the rooftop to avoid the annoying cameras that spied on their every move, and somehow, another more annoying pest made its way there right after he did, ruining any chance at peace.

God, he should’ve just snuck his cigarettes up here.

He doesn’t need to turn his head around to recognise the person. The intruder has made his usually silent footsteps unnaturally loud, intent on announcing his presence.

“Instructor-dono! It’s so kind of you to grace me with your annoying presence!” Ibara says cheerily, his knuckles turning white as his grip tightens on the rails. “What are you here to bother me about, hm?”

“Ibara, it’s not polite to greet someone without looking at them,” Yuzuru replies from behind, amusement evident in his tone. “Where are your manners?”

Manners? He wants to talk about manners?

Ibara turns around, plastering the fakest grin he can muster up on his face. “I just prefer admiring the scenery over staring at your ugly mug! I do hope that’s not too offensive for your fragile little heart, truly!”

“Not at all, I assure you.” Yuzuru walks forward until he’s beside Ibara at the edge of the building, staring down curiously at the same scenery that he was subjecting himself to.

“Don’t bother,” Ibara grumbles, pushing up his glasses. “There’s nothing worth admiring in this dump.”

“I see,” Yuzuru hums, irritatingly refusing to elaborate another word as he continues staring at the dump that Ibara just warned him about.

Another unspoken battle between them, to see who will cave first.

As always, Ibara caves first.

“Did you follow me up here just to bother me, or do you have something else to say?” he says slowly, glaring at Yuzuru.

The man glances over with a quirk in his lips. “My, do you not appreciate my comforting presence?”

“Absolutely not. You are ruining my peace,” Ibara growls. “I should throw you off the roof right now.”

“Do you think you can overpower me now?” Yuzuru laughs loudly, and Ibara feels a blood vessel about to clot and burst. “I didn’t come up here for nothing. Here.”

His hand reaches into his pocket to dig for something, and Ibara takes a cautious step back, furrowing his eyebrows when Yuzuru laughs again at his reaction.

A piece of paper is presented in Yuzuru’s hand. Ibara recognises immediately and his heart stops.

It’s the page he tore out all those years ago in a fit of fury and sorrow at being abandoned, perfectly kept in one piece. There’s creases courtesy of Ibara scrunching the page into a ball, but it’s been very clearly flattened and smoothened out to its new owner’s best abilities, and he supposes even the best butler in the world wouldn’t be able to uncrease an old piece of paper.

“Why,” Ibara utters, staring at the paper with haunted eyes, “do you have that.”

“I found it in the trash before I left,” Yuzuru says, tilting his head. “You didn’t think I wouldn’t notice, did you?”

“Are you a trash raccoon?” Ibara snaps in lieu of a proper answer. His brain flashes with scenes that he’s struggled to bury and lock away for years, of Yuzuru and companionship and soul-crushing loneliness and a half-used bunk bed that was meant for 2 abandoned children.

Yuzuru shrugs. “This chapter was important to you.”

To us.

“Why pass it back to me now?”

“Truthfully, I forgot about it until I saw you with Raika-sama.” His expression softens disgustingly and Ibara wants to rip his face off. “You always did have a soft spot for kids.”

Ibara’s head jerks up. “Excuse me?”

“Did you really think we wouldn’t have found out about Ouroboros? Those kids of yours really admire you,” Yuzuru points out. Ibara looks away, tightening his fingers around his biceps as he shuts his eyes and imagines crushing Yuzuru’s head instead.

“You and His Eminence have been snooping around my business again. I should cut your fingers off for that,” Ibara mutters with a huff.

So what, if he didn’t want to see another kid being sent away because the orphanage ran out of resources?

The children were never supposed to know of his existence, and he would’ve preferred to keep it that way if it went for his meddling unitmates.

He’d rather his kindness not be known at all. It’s too vulnerable and disgusting and it’s his past leaking out of him,

but, well, only one person will ever know the full extent of it.

Yuzuru sighs, and it is gentle and wrong in all the ways that Ibara never wants to hear from him. He stretches out his hand, paper in palm, as an offering. “Watching you and Raika-sama…brought up some memories of our past, perhaps?”

Ibara should strangle him where he stands and throw his body over and fake the man’s longcoming suicide. He should snatch that paper from his hands and tear at it with the fangs of a child who didn’t believe in freedom, but instead, with shaky hands, they reach for the paper.

Ibara snatches it out of his grasp like a desperate dog in search of kibbles to gnaw on and his eyes fall on the paragraphs of words that used to help make the days seem a little less awful and the world a little less confining.

“The whale found a friend, hasn’t it?” Yuzuru comments, staring at the page in Ibara’s hands. “The sea isn’t as wide and empty as we thought it was.”

“…Yes, I suppose not then,” Ibara agrees reluctantly.

His hands unconsciously run across the paper, feeling every bump and fold caused by him below his fingerpads, and tries to pull out the anger that younger him felt at being abandoned.

But there’s no fire to bring out. It was extinguished a long time ago, after years of surrounding himself with people that allowed him to lower his guard and loosen his shoulders and relax, without fear of fired shots or backstabs.

He’s no longer left to face the world alone.

There’s anger, and there’s acceptance, and there’s understanding that they were children with no control over their lives, played and thrown around like dolls in a playground.

“Thank you,” is whispered under his breath, and Yuzuru merely acknowledges it with a raise of an eyebrow that’s quickly smoothed out.

“I don’t make a habit of digging through trash, so try to keep that with you this time.”

He turns around and leaves, returning Ibara to his peace and quiet.

-

Later, Raika jogs up to him with an acorn in his hands, babbling about the weather and the trees and whatnot that Ibara can’t exactly catch.

“I was always told it’s better to share what you have!” Raika beams, dropping the acorn in his hands. “See ya around, Ibara-oniisan!” He waves brightly and sprints in the opposite direction, where his unitmates stand waiting for him.

Ibara stares blankly at the acorn in his hands and rotates them around in his palm.

It seems he’ll have another item for his work desk, whenever he can get back to his office.

For now, it will remain at the bedside table given in Eden’s dorm room, hidden underneath the paper containing the outdated chapter on the 52-hertz whale.