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"Aaaaghh, no faiiiirrr..." Osomatsu whines, like he's been doing for the past 10 minutes. Choromatsu flips to the next page in his book.
"It's not like I'm years older than you all! I'm not even hours older than most of you! It's no fair that you treat me like I'm any different!" He reiterates the same point he's been making for probably the 18th time.
"Aren't you the one who parades around calling yourself 'Onii-chan'?" Choromatsu retorts without looking up.
Osomatsu pouts, folding his arms and looking away like a petulant child.
"Well... that's different!" He argues. Choromatsu rolls his eyes, then looks out into the room for one of his other brothers to say something to distract Osomatsu from being so obnoxious.
Karamatsu catches his glance, then quickly pretends to be too enthralled in his own reflection to notice what's going on around him.
Jyushimatsu balances himself on a yoga ball, probably genuinely too enthralled in what he's doing to notice what's going on around him.
Todomatsu makes eye contact over his phone, then blatantly shakes his head and even goes as far as flipping Choromatsu off. Choromatsu makes a slight face at that.
Ichimatsu, meanwhile, looks up from where he's fiddling with a cat toy- when their eyes meet it's like they get locked there. For a moment, Ichimatsu looks uncomfortable at the idea of distracting their older brother, then seems to get an idea.
"Ah. Why don't we switch?" He suggests, sitting up properly- still hunched over with his elbows on the knees of his crossed legs.
"Switch?" Choromatsu and Osomatsu inquire at the same time, doing a similar head tilting motion to the left.
"Mhm. We can draw names or... do rock, paper, scissors... or something. To choose our new 'birth order' for the day. To try it out." He draws his knees up to his chest, resting his arms, then head, atop them.
His suggestion seems to have gotten the attention of the other three brothers in the room- finding something to do was always a priority for a NEET, after all.
"Hmm! What a splendid idea, brother! We can spread the burden more easily, coming out of this understanding the deep plights of each other more tenderly!" Karamatsu announces, flaunting an arm out as he stands up dramatically from the couch. No one even turns an eye to him.
"I'd be a better older brother than all of you combined, even if I only move up one spot." Todomatsu half-deadpans, pushing himself out of his laying position to scoot closer to the forming circle of sextuplets.
Jyushimatsu rolls off of the yoga ball- it shoots into a nearby piece of furniture with a clatter. None of them bat an eye, not even as he bounds over like a dog.
"I want to be Osomatsu-niisan!" He exclaims, waving a hand in the air like he's in a classroom.
"No, Jyushimatsu, we're not being each other. We're swapping birth order." Ichimatsu explains, patting his direct younger brother- for now, at least- on the shoulder.
"Ohhh! That sounds like fun!" Jyushimatsu nods along.
Choromatsu sighs, closing his book and placing it on the floor next to him.
"I guess that's not completely idiotic," He blinks "So; rock, paper, scissors, you said?"
Ignoring the implication that an idea coming from him would be idiotic, Ichimatsu nods.
Their circle forms even more as they huddle up, chanting to count, then throwing out a variety of hand signs.
They eliminate each other one by one, until everyone's position is decided.
"Okay, so, the new order is... Me, Jyushimatsu-nii-... er, Jyushimatsu, Choromatsu, Karamatsu, Ichimatsu... and last is Osomatsu." Todomatsu announces, pointing at each brother as he names them, reading the list off of his phone where he had noted victories and losses. No one made verbal note of his struggle to drop the honorific when referring to them.
Jyushimatsu claps, the sound only barely softened by the sleeves over his palms.
"Isn't this great, Ichimatsu-niisan?" He exclaims with no small amount of excitement, grabbing Ichimatsu by the shoulders and shaking him.
Not reacting much despite being shook, Ichimatsu raises a finger and wags it, shaking his own head back and forth.
"No, Jyushimatsu, I'm younger than you today." He deadpans, his voice hitching repeatedly from the motion put upon him.
Abruptly, Jyushimatsu stops shaking him, eyes narrowing into a catlike shape as he thinks.
They pop back to normal.
"Oh! Right! Shouldn't you be calling me 'Jyushimatsu-niisan', then?" He questions, tilting his head, a relatively quiet chuckle escaping his gaping mouth.
"Ahh. I suppose you're right, Jyushimatsu-niisan." They both ignore how obviously foreign it feels in his mouth.
Despite the fact that all of this was done in an attempt to soothe Osomatsu's complaining, he finally pipes up from where he's been stewing in his frustrations.
"Now I'm the youngest! That's even more unfair! We don't take Totty seriously, now you're not going to take me seriously!" He blindly accuses, jabbing a finger in the general direction of his brothers.
"'We don't take Totty seriously'?" Todomatsu mirrors incredulously.
"You certainly act like the youngest. You're so childish, Osomatsu." Choromatsu chides, folding his arms. The absence of an honorific sounded much like someone's limb being cut off to Osomatsu, even if it wasn't necessarily completely uncommon between him and Choromatsu.
He grimaces.
"Fine! I'll be the youngest! Don't come crying to Onii-chan when being the eldest is difficult, Totty!" Osomatsu folds his own arms, standing up abruptly and facing away from them all, chin held high and pouting. A bad look for a man over twenty.
Todomatsu, unbeknownst to him, looks at him like he's grown a second head. Maybe a third and fourth, too.
"Huhh? Should you really be calling your older brother something as childish as 'Totty'? That's weird Osomatsu. Why are you calling yourself 'Onii-chan' anyways? You're the youngest, aren't you?" He says, eyes blank.
Osomatsu looks over his shoulder with a look that would scare anyone else.
Ichimatsu snickers into the back of his hand.
"Ehh? Aren't you going to reply to Todomatsu-niisan, Osomatsu? It's rude to ignore others." He 'chides', all the smugness in the world condensing into his voice.
Bordering on growling, Osomatsu turns part way back to his brothers.
"...You're right. That was weird... Todomatsu...-niisan." He says, gritting his teeth so strongly that it was a wonder they hadn't shattered in his mouth.
Todomatsu let out a patronizing giggle, striding over to pat his dubbed-'youngest' brother on the head demeaningly.
"Wooww! Good job Osomatsu, you're so good at using your words!"
Kill him. Osomatsu was going to kill him.
Karamatsu clears his throat, tossing an arm around the shoulders of Choromatsu.
"Well, my older brother, how do you fare? Isn't this atmosphere so tense? So dire? Please! My brother! Protect my naivety from further desecration!" He overplays, gripping and ungripping Choromatsu's shoulders in periods as he flails his other arm out dramatically.
"Uh, no, you're a grown man. You can do that." Choromatsu says unbotheredly, pulling Karamatsu off of him like an old bandage.
Karamatsu looks stunned for just a moment, then laughs, adjusting his sunglasses.
"Ah! So harsh, Choromatsu-niisan!" He tries to play it off. Choromatsu doesn't think he's heard him call Osomatsu 'niisan' in the past 7 years, so hearing it directed at him is doubly strange.
"You're being weird. You should really cut that out, you're too old for this." Choromatsu says, mercilessly.
Karamatsu falls to a kneel as if an arrow had been suddenly lodged in his chest, grasping where his heart is underneath.
Considering him disarmed, Choromatsu looks back towards the others.
Ichimatsu and Jyushimatsu were behaving mostly normally (for themselves, anyways), the occasional correcting of 'niisan's between them. Todomatsu and Osomatsu were still arguing, just further away now.
Choromatsu sighs, sitting back down next to the remains of Karamatsu, picking his book back up and beginning to read.
Maybe it was an idiotic idea after all.