Work Text:
When Gin thinks back on childhood, her earliest memories are not of play or laughter, but the sound of her brother coughing.
Not the polite kind of cough a child should have—light, fleeting, cured with warm tea or a mother’s hand on the back. No. Akutagawa’s cough shook through the walls of the cramped one-room apartment, echoing like something trapped in his ribs was trying to claw its way out. It was the sound of a weak body pushed too far, the sound of a boy fighting the world with nothing but bone and stubbornness.
Gin had been five. Barely tall enough to reach the cupboard handle. Barely old enough to understand why her brother’s coughing scared her so much.
But she understood enough to know that no one else was going to help him.
Not their parents—ghosts who drifted in and out of the apartment like unwelcome drafts. Not the neighbours, who shut their doors tighter whenever Akutagawa’s cough worsened. Not the city, which swallowed up children like them without a thought.
So she helped him the only way she knew how.
By stealing cough drops and then move onto medicine.
She started small.
A few cough drops from the corner store where the old man always fell asleep behind the register. She slipped them into her sleeve, her small fingers shaking as she mimicked the way the teenagers did it—eyes down, steps quick, no hesitation. She didn’t steal toys or sweets like other children would have. She stole the ones in the bright red box labelled “Cherry Soothers” because she remembered the way Akutagawa pressed his hand to his chest whenever he coughed.
The first time she handed them to him, he stared at her like she had brought him something sacred.
“…for me?” he whispered, voice raw from coughing.
Gin only nodded. She didn’t know how to explain that she was scared. Scared of waking up one morning and finding the other side of the room silent. Scared of being left alone.
Akutagawa placed a cough drop on his tongue and closed his eyes. She watched his shoulders loosen. She watched him breathe.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Gin didn’t know it then, but that moment was the first time she decided she would protect him—no matter the cost.
As she grew older, she grew bolder.
Pharmacies had better supplies—bottles with labels she couldn’t read but recognized by the colour, boxes of cold tablets that rattled softly when she shook them. She learned which shelves the clerks didn’t pay attention to, which hours were safest, which pockets in her coat hid the bulges best.
Every time she stole something, she did it with the image of her brother in mind:
Hunched over the table, coughing so violently that his shoulders shook.
Hands trembling as he tried to read, breathe, survive.
Eyes dull with exhaustion but still burning with a desperate determination to live.
She didn’t tell him where she got the medicine. She didn’t want him to know.
But Akutagawa knew her better than anyone.
Once, he caught her returning home late, medicine bottle poking out of her pocket. His thin fingers curled around her wrist with surprising strength.
“Gin,” he said, quiet and sharp, “you can’t steal.”
She stared up at him. He was older than her, but still just a boy. Pale. Thin. Sick.
“If you get caught8, what then?” he demanded. “What would I—?”
He stopped himself. His breath hitched. For a moment she thought he would cough again, but he forced it down.
“…What would I do if something happened to you?” he whispered.
Gin’s heart twisted painfully.
“But what would I do,” she said, “if something happened to you first?”
The apartment fell silent.
Akutagawa looked away. His hand, still gripping her wrist, trembled. She felt the warmth of his palm—too warm, fever-warm.
In that moment, something inside him broke and solidified all at once.
“…Just be careful,” he murmured.
Gin nodded.
She would always be careful. For him.
There were nights when she pressed her ear to the thin wall separating their futons, listening.
Counting.
One cough.
Two.
Three—sharp, tearing—
Silence.
A silence that lasted too long.
She sat up, breath held.
“Ryuu?” she whispered.
A quiet inhale. A strained exhale.
Relief washed over her so violently she almost felt dizzy.
On those nights, she curled up smaller under her blanket and prayed in a way children rarely prayed—desperate, selfish, terrified.
Let him live.
Let him make it to morning.
Take anything else, just don’t take him.
Time moved differently for children like them.
By the time they were old enough to fend for themselves, Gin had already learned the rhythm of Akutagawa’s illnesses. When to give him medicine. When to push him to rest. When to sit beside him quietly because he refused to show weakness but couldn’t hide it from her.
She also learned the truth:
Her brother didn’t expect to live long.
That was why she worried enough for the both of them.
Even when they entered the Port Mafia—when Akutagawa gained Rashōmon, when he grew into something sharp and dangerous—Gin still watched him closely, still heard every faint hitch in his breath, still carried cough drops in the inner pocket of her uniform.
She would always see him as the boy who fought death with only his stubbornness and a will that burned hotter than fever.
And to Akutagawa, no matter how many enemies he cut down, no matter how strong he became, Gin remained the only person he allowed to see him vulnerable.
The girl who stole cough drops for him.
The girl who worried so much she shook.
The only person in the world he trusted to keep him alive.
Gin never stopped stealing for him.
The difference was that, as adults, Akutagawa no longer scolded her.
Now, when she pressed a packet of cough drops into his hand, he simply lowered his eyes and said:
“…Thank you.”
Soft. Quiet. More sincere than anyone else ever heard him speak.
Because no matter how strong he became—
Gin would always be the reason he survived his childhood.
And he never forgot it.