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It starts, as it tends to, with Saki.
Tsukasa is only 8, and Saki is gone, and Mama and Papa are gonna be home late. It’s like every other day of the week. He reheats his leftovers, and grows bored at the hum of their microwave.
But, everything is fine. Tsukasa is a good boy. Mama told him so. He’ll smile through the boredom, and the loneliness, and the silence, because that’s what he promised his parents he’d do. Even when there’s not much to smile about, and he can’t hear Mama laughing as Saki bashes the piano keys from her lap. Even when Saki’s bed is made methodically, untussled, just how she dislikes it.
Smiling is hard. The hum gets too much, so he avoids the mirrors as he walks to his little sister’s room.
Untouched. There is dust on her favorite doll. Her closet door is still open, like she left it before she left for school that day. A fond smile ghosts over Tsukasa’s lips as he sees the clothes strewn on the floor.
Idly, he bends down to put them away as he always does. His chest aches a little as he holds them, soft, pink, in his arms.
He misses her. Nothing else.
(I wish Papa bought me clothes like this.)
—
And then one day, Saki comes home. Her vitals are stable, she has energy, Mama is smiling as she sets down her bags.
Everything is right. Good.
And Saki, as she tends to do, starts parading around Tsukasa, asking him to play with her. Tsukasa, as he tends to do, agrees emphatically. She smiles, that gap-laden grin she always gives him, and she runs them to her room.
Mama’s laughter trails behind them. He fixes his gaze firmly on her hand on his sleeve, watching the fabric shift under her fingers. She’s actually home. She’s okay.
(He says to himself, like he isn’t avoiding the mirrors again. He’s fine. That coiling in his gut is merely relief.)
Saki bounds over to her closet and pulls out enough clothing to make a theater curtain twice over (Mama is teaching him to sew—trust him, he can tell it’s enough), and her eyes crinkle when she tells him they’re putting on a fashion show.
Tsukasa smiles at her. It feels slimy on his face. “I’ll make this the best fashion show ever seen, ‘kay?”
His heart seems to settle in his stomach like a peach pit as she lights up. She hands him a frilly pink shirt that was too big for her, and a skirt that Mama claims she’d ‘grow into’. He takes them, but he feels far away. The fabric is almost silky on his fingers, the lace flopping onto his wrist limply. It’s soft, and yet it hurts.
“Hehe, go get changed, brother! We have to show Mama and Papa!” Saki says, chiding falling flat in her smiling voice, and he nods absently.
… Brother. Right. (You promised, ‘kasa.)
He steps into the bathroom and changes into his sister-appointed outfit methodically. As he straightens the lace cuff of his sleeve, the glint of the sun on the mirror catches his attention. For the first time in months, he looks into its reflection.
He sees a boy in a lacy blouse that’s too tight at the collar, and a skirt that’s about ready to slide off his hips. He, for once, sees a boy that looks mildly happy. He sees himself.
—
Tsukasa walks to the living room hand in hand with Saki, shifting nervously. He fiddles with the hem of his the blouse, waiting for his sister’s go-ahead.
When he walks in, his Mama smiles at him. She calls him pretty, and something in his chest loosens. He never knew it was possible to feel so happy.
—
When Tsukasa reaches 12, Saki’s health takes a sharp nosedive. It’s a flurry of wristbands, and surgeries, and admittance papers, and many a tear he himself doesn’t recall shedding.
It feels like the gods have reached down and tilted their idyllic little world terribly off-kilter.
Obviously, the Tenmas are no strangers to illness, what with both Saki and even Tsukasa himself being prone to bouts in their infancy. But this is so, so different. The house feels dull the whole way through.
And his mother looks at him one day, as she passes him in the silent hallway, seeming to have aged about ten years in the week he hadn’t seen her. She places a hand gingerly on his head, shoulders sagging with exhaustion.
“Remember your promise, okay baby? I think..” she pauses, lips pursing, fingers twitching where they rest on his head. “I think your little sister needs you now more than ever, hm?”
He looks up at his mother, worn and weary, through his bangs. He nods. “Okay, mom. You know I don’t break my promises.” His mother merely strokes his hair, before continuing to her room, gait sluggish. He stares after her, stock-still where he stood.
His promise. Right. He’d promised his mama, at a tender 5, that he’d be the best big brother the world had ever seen.
(‘I’m gonna be the best big brother ever! And- and my baby sister will never have to be alone! And I’ll always make her smile, okay Mama?’)
He’s never gone back on that promise. Day in and day out, his world revolves around the joy of his kid sister. If Saki is the Sun, then Tsukasa Tenma is her most dedicated planet.
So he walks to her room, head bowed, and he picks her favorite plush bunny off of her pillow. He brushes it clean of the minimal dust that had settled on its nearly-matted fur, and he resolves to never lose sight of his longest-held determination.
He has a duty to his family, first and foremost. That bubbling in his chest is unimportant. It can wait.
(No matter how his eyes glass over, how his heart batter his chest like a warning, an alarm, a plea—)
(If it kills him. It can wait.)
—
A couple years into this, Tsukasa comes across an old memento while cleaning out the bookshelves.
It was purely happenstance. He pulled down an old box, and his parents weren’t picking up, and he had no clue whether it was too important to throw (Saki’s old drawings, the ornaments she’d made at school, her first time writing her name, her last school assignment—)
He opened the box, to be sure. For no other reason.
And as he pulled polaroid after polaroid, he found it. Happenstance.
Right at the bottom of the box was a framed picture of him, at maybe 8 or so. Saki is next to him, and she looks so healthy. Her smile is jubilant. She still had some milk teeth in this one.
And him? God. Tsukasa had never seen himself look so happy.
He remembers, faintly, a show of some kind Saki had had them both do. She’d stuck him in a skirt that looked more like a frock of its own and a shirt that had felt like a choking hazard. The collar peeks up at him from the very bottom of the frame.
His face tightens as he drinks the details in. The dimple, only on his left cheek. The smudge of his father’s thumb in the right corner. The ruddy, gleeful flush of his cheeks as they stretched in a grin.
It makes him feel kind of sick. So, he does what he does best, and packs it up tightly in its original box and never speaks of seeing it again.
He had no right to look so happy when he knew now that Saki was rushed back to the hospital just two days after this photo was taken.
(What a failure of an older brother.)
(... He hopes Saki doesn’t remember that day. It’s hard to keep things from her.)
—
It’s on an ordinary Friday that the weight in his chest starts growing again.
He’s 17 now, in a troupe that forgives him his oddities as he does theirs. It’s a nice little group, with good people. Friends.
To be honest, he’s still surprised they forgave him for everything. He could’ve never dreamed of meeting such good people.
All four of them had been practicing for this specific show for a couple weeks now. A one-off run of some obscure folktale, with Nene taking center-stage as the princess, Tsukasa at her side as a knight. It was meant to be simple.
That is, until Nene calls that morning, voice laden with sickness. That changes everything, really.
“It’s–” she pauses to cough “–just the flu, my mom thinks. I’m sorry, everyone..” Rui frowns.
“There’s no need to apologise, Nene. The flu tends to show itself at the most inopportune of times.” He says, though his eyebrows furrow.
“Ohhh, feel better soon Nene-chan! We’ll miss you today!” Emu chimes in from her place ahead, props in hand. A weak ‘thank you’ crackles out of the phone speakers.
“Rui, what are we going to do about the show? Could Emu take Nene’s role?” Tsukasa asked, costume boxes stacked high in his hands. “Or– no, Emu’s role is pivotal later on… drat.”
Rui seems to ponder over this for a minute, before shooting a sly little smile over at him. “Ah, would Tsukasa-kun be adverse to taking on the role himself?” He asks, eyes narrowing in a way that’s almost feline.
Everything seems to pause, before both Emu and Nene exclaim in shocked unison.
Tsukasa himself tightens his grip on the boxes, warring with himself. He’s sure there’s a discussion happening around him, but it’s all white noise to him.
To take on the role of a princess.. For his troupe, he’d do anything. Nothing is too embarrassing, or dangerous, or outlandish. If his friends want it so, it shall be done. His duty extends to them, as it does to Toya.
So why does he feel like he’s been struck by something? The thought of going up there, infront of an audience, in a dress and frolicking across the stage like he’d seen Nene do only a few days prior makes him feel kind of fluttery. His heart races, and he can’t tell why.
(They’d see. All of them would see. There’d be no excuse; no sister asking him into a skirt, no butchered attempts at theater makeup, nothing to defend himself. His stomach churns.)
(But he’d had so much fun during that fashion show. Modelling his mother’s skirt like he was born in it, laughing uproariously when his father ruffled his hair, hearing Mama call him ‘so pretty’...)
A tap on the shoulder breaks him out of his internal conflict. He peers around the boxes to see worried pink eyes shining at him like spinels.
Rui pipes up from beside him. “I can think of something else if not, Tsukasa-kun-”
“No!” Tsukasa exclaims, catching himself and clearing his throat. “It’s okay. I was the only one consistently practicing with Nene, so I know her lines as well as I do my own. It’s… no trouble for a star, you see?” He’s aware he’s rambling, but he has a duty.
(And, shamefully, a want. One that he’d shoved deep down.)
Rui nods, but his eyes narrow thoughtfully as he looks at Tsukasa. The star’s palms grow clammy.
—
The show, fortunately, goes off without a hitch.
He’d twirled on the right counts, feeling the air whip through his short hair. He’d recited Nene’s lines perfectly, he’d added emotion where it felt necessary. His smiles were genuine, as were his tears. It was exhilarating. His heart had felt so light up there, merely a feather in his chest. It was a happiness he hadn’t felt in years.
(It wouldn’t last for long, he knows. It never does anymore.)
And of course the audience had eaten it right up, giving a raucous applause as Tsukasa bowed. It was perfect. He’d even overheard a boy telling his sister that she wanted to come see them perform again.
Less fortunately, though, is the unavoidable fact that it was the happiest Tsukasa had been in years.
This shouldn’t be a problem anymore. He was doing just fine, skating by on the glee of finally having his own people and needing no more. This was supposed to have faded into obscurity, this bubbling in his chest, like a pot set to simmer for too long.
But it had returned with a vengeance as soon as Tsukasa had stepped backstage, and he felt his glee quickly dwindle into nothing. The feelings that had kept him going before wouldn’t be enough anymore. He felt distinctly ghost-like as he folded the gown he’d worn.
(He had slipped into Nene’s role seamlessly, Rui had told him backstage. It made his stomach roll something fierce.)
(.. The gown was really nice, he thinks.)
(Unbeknownst to its progenitor, the Wonderland SEKAI darkens. Kaito looks to the sky with a frown.)
—
In early November, Tsukasa hears some whispers in the hall.
It isn’t unusual, per se. Kamiyama has a gossip mill that works tirelessly, and many students subscribe to the ebbs and flows of the usual drama within its walls. No, what’s unusual is who the whispers are about.
Because it’s one of his beloved underclassmen. Akiyama, to be precise.
Now, he’s heard people talk about Akiyama in the halls before. He’s been content merely scolding the gossips and giving repeat offenders detentions, but the whispers are.. different, this time.
At the culture festival, they start. On the rooftop. A tear-stained face, running through the halls. Being chased by a night student, they murmur. Yelling and crying for a minute, before everything goes silent. Akiyama walking out alone, they say. No one has been able to reach her.
Tsukasa frowns. He hopes Akiyama is alright..
Planning to scold his peers for spreading rumors, he pauses as another train of conversation catches his attention.
“... and then they both just stormed off. Like, dude. He didn’t tell her, or what?” A familiar voice says, and Tsukasa’s fingers twitch at his sides. This boy, he knows. A repeat offender. “I mean, god forbid we call Akiyama a dude. That’s what he is, no?”
Tsukasa’s heart freezes. He pauses in his stride.
(A dude. A brother, the man of the house, the man, a man, get it into your HEAD-)
“Honestly,” the second boy pipes up, “He can wear what he wants or whatever, but getting mad at us for calling him a guy is crazy. Hey, at least that Shinonome girl knows now, right?”
He’s over there before he realises he’d moved.
“I don’t know what your problem is, Ito, but I’ve told you many times before to cease talking about people like that.” His voice sounds shaky, even to his own ears. Ito tries to plead his case, but Tsukasa merely speaks over him. “Detention after school. Do not let it happen again.”
He walks away, ears ringing. He’s never snapped at someone like that before. His chest feels tight beneath his blazer, and he grapples at it as he slips hastily into an unused classroom. Has it always been so hard to breathe? He can’t remember.
(‘I’m gonna be the best big brother ever!’)
—
Rui catches him at lunch, face pitched in confused concern. He leads Tsukasa by the arm to the rooftop, looking intently at him as they sit down. The blond feels the urge to run.
“I heard of the incident with Ito earlier, Tsukasa-kun.” He starts, steepling his hands where they rest under his chin. “It’s out of character for you, admittedly. What happened?”
Tsukasa looks to his lap, trying to find the words. “I don’t… know, if I’m being honest.” Rui’s frown deepens.
“Surely there’s something that caused it, hm? Did he say anything?”
“He was talking about Akiyama.” Tsukasa blurted before he could stop himself.
He’d been trying to avoid talking about Akiyama with Rui recently, if only because of the pained look it painted on the director’s face. The same look he’s wearing now.
“Ah..” Rui smiles weakly at him, “So it was an upperclassman thing?”
Tsukasa doesn’t quite think that’s right. It was something deep within him that felt wronged by Ito’s comment. There was an overture of righteous anger on Akiyama’s behalf, because she’s his friend, but he was ashamed to admit his main motivation was selfish. That small, wounded part of him, burrowed in his ribcage, lashed out. That was all.
(‘Big brother!’ He shook his head. ‘Saki needs her big brother.’)
But how do you begin to explain that?
“...Mm.” He hummed eventually.
Rui looked at him with an indiscernible glint in his eye. Like he’d begun to figure something out.
“I see.” He said, instead of digging into Tsukasa’s weak response, and that was that.
(..Please, heart. Wait for me a little longer.)
—
It all comes to a head at the beginning of Tsukasa’s final winter at Kamiyama.
He’s brainstorming with Rui at the wonder stage, the sun setting behind them as Emu putters about around Nene a little ways away. It was, all in all, a typical night.
“Mm, while we are good with the typical princess and dragon plotline, we don’t want to overuse it. Comfort is important, but so is spontaniety, hm?” Rui says, scribbling something in the margin of his notebook.
“That’s true…” Tsukasa mutters, brows furrowed.
Thinking up new scripts is difficult, Tsukasa thinks, especially with the competitive nature of the professional theater world. Originality is tough to maintain in such a first-come-first-serve sphere. And for a troupe of high schoolers? Well.
“Unless..” Rui straightens up suddently, mind whirring. His eyes were oddly uneasy in spite of his clear excitement.
This should have been Tsukasa’s sign to leave.
He doesn’t though, which is his first mistake. “Unless..?” He prompts.
Rui looks to Emu and Nene. They’re a ways away now, Tsukasa notes as he follow the director’s gaze. Barely blobs in the distance. He smiles at the pink rushing about.
“Unless,” Rui continues, eyes still on the two, “we have a change in casting.” Tsukasa frowns, looking to the boy beside him.
“Change how?”
Rui keeps his eyes ahead, but his expression is unreadable now. “Perhaps we should let Tsukasa-kun be the princess more often.” He offers, as if it’s simple, and Tsukasa freezes where he’s sitting.
Before he can say anything, Rui continues. “Your performance was beautiful, that one time.” He looked to Tsukasa, eyes terrifyingly gentle, encouraging even. “You made a very compelling princess. Those smiles were genuine.”
For some reason, his kind expression makes Tsukasa feel like a cornered animal. He feels his palms grow clammy.
His eyes dart away from Rui’s on instinct, locking on to the path out of the park. His breath is stuck in his throat.
He needs to get out of here, now.
Rui can tell there’s no going back from here. He rolls on. “Tsukasa-kun. Why are you so against this?” He asks, and Tsukasa knows he can tell, so why is he asking?
(His heart pounds. Finally, finally someone knows. He’s queasy.)
“Rui, I’m-” Tsukasa cuts himself off, lips twisting as his head pounds. “I can’t.”
“You can,” Rui refutes, “but you don’t want to.” The blond feels something ugly and terrified ball up in his throat.
“You’re allowed to-” Rui starts, but that’s as far as he gets before Tsukasa shoots up from the bench.
“Enough!” He yells, glaring at Rui who looks stricken. “I don’t need you to tell me what I can and can’t do! I know my role! I-” he spots Emu and Nene running to them, called back by the racket, and his throat closes up. “I’m not talking about this with you anymore.”
Rui’s eyes are sad where they rest on his furious (terrified, he knows) face. “Tsukasa-kun..”
Before he can continue, Tsukasa is gone. Dispersed into pixels where he stood. Emu and Nene finally reach the bench, shoulders tense with worry.
“Where’d Tsukasa go?” Nene asks, and Rui sighs heavily.
“We should give him a little time.”
(In the SEKAI, a loud rumble of thunder sounds through the overcast sky. MEIKO watches the clouds whirl with something pitying in her eyes.)
—
When Tsukasa was 9, he did something bad.
(It wasn’t bad. You were a kid.)
Mama was out visiting Saki, and Papa was still at work. As kids tend to do, he got bored, and he wasn’t too fond of shows with no audiences anymore.
So he traipsed his way to his parents’ room, head bowed in preemptive guilt. The mirrors he passed on his way called to him, but he kept his head down and kept walking. Avoiding. He did that all the time.
(Listen to me, please-)
He twisted the handle and padded his way inside. No time was wasted snooping— he already felt guilty enough. He pulled open the closet door and scanned its contents eagerly. His feet drummed on the wooden floor as he searched.
Eventually, he found his target.
Mama never wore this shirt anymore. It was a bigger one, back from when she was still pregnant with Saki. He’d seen pictures of her in it. Flowy and white, held by pale yellow ribbons tied into a dainty little bow at the back of her neck.
(It never fit the same once Saki fell ill. Mama was far too busy fretting to eat.)
He had gingerly lifted the shirt off of its hanger, and looked at it bunched in his palms with ache. He’d apologise later, he’d sworn, as he lifted the shirt and slipped it over his own frame.
It didn’t fit. God, not even close. The halter neck went down to his stomach, and the edges of the longer hem reached his calves.
He’d never felt more interested.
Have you ever felt interested and guilty for it in the same breath? That curiosity feels perverse, almost, stomach twisting with the force of it all. Like your heart is trying to break your sternum with its pummeling. It's exhileratingly awful.
Tsukasa had never felt so consumed by such a thing before. Feeling minorly ill, he’d patted the gauzy fabric down his sides, watching it shift with his touch. Experimentally, he twirled his torso to the side, and the hem fanned out like a flower in bloom.
(It was so beautiful. He’d really wanted to keep it.)
Like a bolt, however, a thought struck him where he stood.
What was he doing?
He’d paused, fabric coming to wrap around his legs, and the turning of his stomach had returned with a vengeance. He threw the shirt off of himself as if it would’ve burned to keep it on a second longer. And, like he’d never been there, he hurried out of the room, lips trembling and eyes welling.
By the gods, what was wrong with him?
(Nothing.)
-
And now, he sits alone in a too-bright world made of his too-messy emotions. Tsukasa never felt so terribly alone before.
Not when he had to make himself dinner because his parents would be home late. Not when he’d had to eat alone at the dinner table after a tiring day of junior high, because nobody was there to ask him how his day was. Not on any of the days that the house was devoid of any noise, save the ones he was making.
It was lonely, to be sure, but not like he was now.
(..He never did go back and try that shirt on again, did he?)
The sky rumbled ominously above him, and he simply drew his knees up to his chest where he sat, eyes vacant. He had no reason to fear thunder anymore.
(There’s more to fear than thunder, he thinks. Being known, and so well you cannot hide from it, is a far more terrifying ordeal.)
Faint footsteps sounded from a little ways away, and Tsukasa didn’t bother looking at his visitor. Eventually, they came to sit on the bench next to him. It creaked, and he knew he couldn’t avoid this any longer.
“Tsukasa-kun,” a robotic voice sounded, “There you are.”
He lifted his head, finally, and was greeted by brown eyes.
Huh.. MEIKO?
She smiles at him, gentle in a way that hurts more than he’d expected, and rests a hand gingerly on his back. “You’ve been giving us quite the scare recently.” She starts, voice quiet. “The sky went all grey, and it rained earlier. Rin and Len were worried about you.”
Tsukasa had wondered why there were puddles everywhere. That was him?
“...I’m sorry.” He eventually apologises, and MEIKO shakes her head.
“You’re alright.” she replies, “But, it’s been very overcast. What’s going on?”
God, where does he start?
Haltingly, he begins “I had a… disagreement. With Rui.” Gazing up at the woman, she looks surprised.
“Oh? That’s unexpected.. What was it about?”
“...” Tsukasa’s lips turn. “He wanted me to take on more feminine roles. I refused.”
“Okay… why’s that?-”
“I can’t do that.” He stresses. A hand comes to tug at his hair, but MEIKO swiftly holds it in one of her own. “I can’t do that. I promised my Mom I'd be the older brother that Saki needed. I can’t go back on that!”
The vocaloid hums, thumb sweeping over his knuckles. “Tsukasa-kun,” she says softly, “Ignore alll your promises for a moment, okay?” When he nods, she continues. “What do you want to do? What is your heart telling you, hm?”
(I… really want to wear that shirt again.)
He does. He really, really does. “I… I want to be the princess again.” He says, and the dam breaks.
“I want to be the princess, and I want to wear that shirt again, and I want to… I want to be girly. I don’t..” the star pauses, hot tears streaming down his face.
“I don’t.. like being a boy.” Tsukasa murmurs. “I’m- I’m not– but..” He gulps. “I can’t be.. It isn’t–” He cuts himself off with a shuddery breath.
(Is it not right? Is being myself wrong? Akiyama… no. I don’t think this way about her. So why..)
MEIKO smiles understandingly, the hand on his back coming to wipe his tears where they keep pouring. “No. None of that, okay?” She tilts his head to meet her gaze fully. “Tsukasa, being an older brother isn’t all you are. Please don’t push away the real you for other peoples’ sakes, okay?”
He keens, careening into her shoulder. She rubs his back gently as his hands grip her blazer. “Should we be calling you Tsukasa-chan instead? I’m sure the girls would be ecstatic.” A wet laugh is smothered in her shoulder, and she feels the child nod.
Tsukasa’s sobs taper off eventually. He— she..?
She smiles. It’s crooked, and torn, but it’s real. The same kind of smile she’d had in that picture.
(I’m sorry for ignoring you. I hope you can forgive me.)
Her heart twitches gently, at rest.
—
A few months later, she’s walking to school.
Her hair has been growing out steadily since her chat with MEIKO back in December. It’s now March, and her hair is just about long enough to be tucked behind her ears.
Her father has no clue why that makes her so happy, but he takes a picture of her grinning about it anyway. It’ll get hung on the wall eventually, alongside that picture of her and Saki from the fashion show.
She spots Rui strolling lazily ahead of her, and jogs to meet him. He takes her in beside him, and smiles knowingly at what he sees.
She’s so happy nowadays. Eyes wide and bright, smile toothy and dimpled on the left. He’d never known Tsukasa had dimples, until she’d grinned at one of his jokes at practice. It was nice.
So, he slings an arm haphazardly over her shoulder, and carries on forwards. A whisper is lost to the wind.
“You look happy, Tsukasa. I’m glad.”