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His lip stings and everything smells like coins, sharply metallic. The train rumbles beneath him, wheels clacking along like nothing had changed. Except it had. This is the last time he would take the train home from Makochi, from Furin. After tonight, he wouldn’t carry secrets in his pockets like loose change and pretend that tomorrow he will show up like nothing is wrong.
Like nothing is ever wrong.
Saying goodbye hasn’t been part of the plan, returning tonight and seeing Nirei hasn’t been part of the plan. Everyone blowing up his phone with calls and messages of concern and with care hadn’t been part of the plan. The time they’d spent together was barely a blip in the grand time tables of their lives. So why do they care? They don’t know him.
He doesn’t even know himself.
There’s a burning, prickling sensation in his eyes. He shoves it all away when the train announces the encroaching arrival of his station. His mouth tastes like iron when he bites his lip and he realizes too late that he never cleaned the blood off his face. Bacchus nearly bowls him over when he sees him, barely off the train and both of them completely in the way. It’s a small mercy to have his attention pulled outward to focus on his brother.
Out of the way of the train car’s doors, he finds himself being held by one shoulder and his chin by his elder. The taller boy is grumbling and growling under his breath like he has always done whenever Hayato - no, he’s not Suo Hayato anymore, is he - Sun Fei got injured. Everything from a skinned knee or light bruises from playing to cuts and scrapes from scuffles gone wrong… Bacchus had always been the one to hold him still, fussing and grumbling while he looked them over before inevitably turning Sun Fei over to their master or other brother, Ratka, to be bandaged. The attention and presence of the louder of his brothers was a temporary balm across the bubbling, ugly grief sitting unhappily in his chest.
“Alright FeiFei,” Bacchus had leaned back with his hands on his hips and that stupid grin he always wore when he was worried but didn’t want anyone to know, “let’s get you home.”
He always saw through it. “Don’t call me that,” he grumbled, half hearted and tired.
Predictably, Ratka takes over from Bacchus nearly the minute they slip into the compound. His tallest brother stomps away with children at his heels and their jeers filling his ears. They should be studying academics like normal children, not fighting forms. His eye throbs under the patch.
Gentle fingers prod the tender, still forming bruise on his cheek. Probing for anything worse lurking beneath Sun Fei’s skin, poking for answers. He gives Ratka nothing.
His own broken heart clogs his throat.
His eldest brother just watches him with dark, expectant eyes. It would be easy. To spill his guts here, tell Ratka everything. To lay all his hurts out between them, neat and pretty like the broken glass of a mosaic. Except he can’t. The words don’t come, his teeth stay stubbornly clenched together. Everything he is, has become, is caged.
Between his elder brothers and the children, he’s never left alone. Even at night, he ends up forced to sleep in Bacchus’s room with him the first night. Then with Ratka the next, then the children catch on. It’s nearly two weeks later when he’s finally allowed to sleep in his own room. When he’s finally allowed the privacy to grieve.
It hurts, nearly as bad as when he’d had the accident, and yet somehow it’s worse. There is a huge, yawning cavern opening wide within his chest. It sucks everything else in like black hole and doesn’t miss anything. Sharp teeth along its edges rip and tear at his fingers whenever he tries to keep something from it. The stinging hurt and heavy, swelling grief choke him.
He is past the childish whining for his master to come back, the grief borne wishing to have that steady presence to lean on again. Yet, it still lingers in the back of his mind. This isn’t what he’d wanted when he’d stupidly said he wanted to grow up faster. Blankly, he stares at his darkened room dimly lit by the waning moon.
In the dim light, his Furin uniform looks as pitch black as the hole in his chest feels.
The sight of it, thrown neatly over the back of his desk chair, causes that ridiculous prickling, stinging in his eyes to come back. He sits at the edge, inches from falling into the growing pit inside him. Maybe he’d lose himself there forever, if he fell. He can’t. There’s too much resting on his shoulders, waiting for his approval. He turns away from the specter to go through the motions of getting ready for bed. Shower, pajamas, eye drops, and so on until there’s nothing left to do but lay down.
Except sleep eludes him, not for lack of presence. He’s exhausted, physically so tired that it’s actually a wonder he’s not already peacefully asleep. It’s undeserved, the comfort he derives from pulling the uniform coat off the chair. The fabric is soft, unwrinkled, and cold under his fingers. He feels like scum of the earth, desperately wanting forgiveness from people he’d long sworn didn’t matter and that he’d leave in the past. That he’d forget about.
His eyes burn, but tears never come. No matter how shaky his breathing becomes nor how hard he begs himself. The relief of grieving his broken heart properly is not granted. He hates it. That he can’t even cry over the remains of his shattered friendships. There is some comfort in the knowledge that while they all likely hate him now, they’re at least safe in Makochi. Protected by the hurt Hayato inflicted on them with his secrets and then his actions, and now his distance, from the rot that’s taken root in this city and these people. They were nothing like Makochi and yet, he couldn’t stop himself from loving this place.
It feels strange, but not incorrect to lay on his side. Curled around the jacket like it can absolve him of his sins. Sleep comes easier with the ridges of the Furin emblem under his thumb. Nothing else comes with ease. Not the smile he wears in the morning to mask his hurts. Not the ache at how his master’s coat is still too big, just like the responsibilities he took over. Not the hole in his chest, yawning ever wider with his steadily building frustration and grief.
Maybe, after all this is over, he’ll find his relief with the river.