Chapter Text
I.
His voice was always a strange thing.
It felt weird, to Chuuya. It felt like his throat wasn't supposed to make any sounds besides vague noises that spoke the language of long-dead gods.
Chuuya didn't like words— especially when he first startled awake and found himself half-drowning in a pool of black blood.
But through his voice, it brought him knowledge of things that were never meant to be known.
Stories, songs, melodies— Chuuya listened, and he learned.
In those weeks after he clawed himself outside the giant crater filled with upturned debris, he heard things through the wind, through birds, through murmurs from people that gossiped about the dirtied child that had more wounds than skin.
They were just noise. But he liked them, back when they held no meaning to him but being sounds that giggled in his ears.
Chuuya hummed and copied tunes before he ever learned his first word.
Eventually, after weeks of wandering, he met two other children. Somehow, they decided he was their friend now, like the way all little children claimed their favorite toy.
They took one look at him and decided he was theirs.
Chuuya was confused, but he followed them.
He met the others too. All inside a warehouse that was dingy and rather small, but very loved.
They talked about him, talked to him, talked for him. Chuuya was a growly, scowly little thing back then, and they all laughed and learned to speak to him in grunts and growls.
Kind of like how people meow at cats to speak to them. In those years, words and the language the kids made at him weren't any different from how stray dogs bark and how birds at the park tweeted, at least to Chuuya.
Then, eventually, he realized they repeated some noises, over and over.
Eventually, he noticed they repeated those noises at certain people.
Eventually, he sees how those sounds grabbed the attention of those that were associated with them.
One day, one of the two kids that found him— the smaller one with flower-colored hair— had a bag of snacks, and he wanted some.
Chuuya skipped up to her, like a cat that knew what he wanted. She didn't notice him coming, as she was talking to the other kid that found him.
So he made that noise that everyone used to call her.
It was odd and sounded wrong, but the sounds were rather coherent, then she whipped her head around and started jumping up and down.
The other kid that brought him here— the one with spiky, cloudy hair— was squawking in a way that sounded offended.
Then the two started arguing, started making more noise that didn't make sense, and Chuuya still wanted his snack so he called them again— the two-noise for the spring flower girl, and the three-to-two-noise for the cloud boy.
They looked at him again, with bright grins and beaming faces, and he pointed to the girl's snacks.
Chuuya was given the whole bag that day.
The next day, the two and the other kids came to him, and made excited noises at him.
They seemed rather insistent about something, something Chuuya didn't understand, but they were so carried away that he made their sounds to bring their attention to that.
“Y-yua.”
“See-rease.”
“Aja-ajami.”
“Taje-oh.”
“Gaju-toh.”
But then they made happy noises at him, and Chuuya realized they wanted him to make their noises. So when the little ones ran up to him and made the same excited murmurs, Chuuya pointed to each of them, and said their sounds.
“Jirimo.”
“Magicha.”
“Ah-majo.”
“Jai-toh.”
“Ah-woi.”
“Jiriwa.”
“Hi-mi-koh.”
He pointed at them and said their sounds, and they all smiled like it was the best thing ever.
They would later tell him his pronunciation wasn't right at first, but they all repeated it so much that it became a nickname for all of them.
When the others are frustrated with Yuan’s teasing, they'd snark back and call her Yua, much to her delight.
When Shirase procured a temper from the smallest of problems, somebody would get Chuuya to point and call him See-rease.
Akari would punch someone if they called her Ajami— she only allowed Chuuya to call her that. Takeo blushes in embarrassment when strangers look at him when the kids call him Tajeo, but he'd curse at anyone who dared to make fun of him for that. Hakuto signed his artwork as Gajuto when he submitted it to Suribachi City's Exhibition Hall anonymously during the city's annual seasonal art gallery.
Kirino cheekily writes Jirimo on her homework assignments that a kind librarian managed to procure for her. After witnessing a robbery, Nagisa had confidently told the officers who asked for his statement that his name was Magicha. Anako asked the kind librarian to teach her how to write Ah-majo in kanji.
Kaito spray paints Jaitoh on alley walls underneath his graffiti pieces. Little Aoi would insist that her name was pronounced Ah-woi, not A-oi. Kiriya would painstakingly repeat his name to Chuuya, and became extremely smug when the Jiriwas became Jiriyas. Himiko was all giggly when they tease about her nickname, voice marinated in spicy honey when she reminds them that Chuuya was only one tongue-curl off from correctly pronouncing her name.
(It would be months before Chuuya could say their names correctly, but they didn't mind.
Not one bit.)
Chuuya learned that those sounds are called names. And everyone has one.
They said they wanted to know his sound— name, too.
Well, not in those words. They just pointed at him and made their noises at him until he got it.
Chuuya never actually thought about what his name is. But somehow, in the back of his head, a string of sounds rang through his mind.
They sounded right. They sounded like his.
So he made those sounds, and pointed at his chest.
His name is Na-ka-ha-ra Chuu-ya.
And they started to call him that— they started to make the latter two syllables whenever they made noises at him.
For a while, the only noises that held any meaning to Chuuya was a very short list of sounds that refer to certain people. He certainly had no use for the strange way the others bent the cords in their throats to make exact notes that string together into something that apparently held sense.
Who needs language when just looking at people's bodies would tell you all you need?
Chuuya looks at Shirase's temperamental frame, and reads the natural carvings of ‘protective’ and ‘ram’ that’s etched in the cloudy boy's bones. He looks at Yuan's lithe figure and sees ‘mischievous’ and ‘curious’ all over it. He walks down the back alley streets, eyes drifting past a swarm of figures that broadcast ‘threat’, ‘nervous’ and ‘scared’.
Words were nothing different than the rustling of trees during a windy day or a particularly harsh slam of a door. They were background noises, and Chuuya had other things to care about than shaping his mouth and turning his tongue to sound out characters that he couldn't read.
But then one day, the bearded, salty old sailor that runs the pawn shop near the Ports— on the tiny strip of land that doesn’t belong to the Mafia but instead the naitive fishermen— turns on his radio, while Chuuya was handing off some acquired goods for him to grade.
At first, there was a buzz of static. Quite uninteresting.
Then the box made noises that vaguely sounded like ones everyone made— but it was different, somehow.
Suddenly it made a string of sounds that tickled against Chuuya's ears pleasantly, thrumming and humming similar-to-everyday-noises-everyone-makes into something rather pleasurable.
He found himself enraptured, listening and catching onto the melody.
Before long, he was using his throat to move his cords and make those sounds, a line of underlying notes that were repeated over, and over, and over.
Chuuya loved it. He hummed that tune day in and day out, causing Yuan to throw a pillow at him at night and Shirase to make louder sounds than usual.
But humming the tune wasn't enough. Chuuya realized the static box made noises— the ones with uses similar to the sounds the kids would use— on top of the tune.
The latter half consists of the same sounds, repeated over and over. But the first halves of the repeats were always different— the noises were different.
Before he knew it, Chuuya started to form consonants and vowels overtop the catchy melody, and his throat got used to singing actual words, over and over.
It was a while before he started wondering just why the noises were changed in the first halves of the repeating tune, and why the second halves stayed the same. He eventually concluded that they held some sort of meaning, like how the sounds he made at the kids meant that he was referring to them.
Naturally curious, Chuuya started searching for that meaning.
It was a long, trial-and-error-filled, hard and laborious process. It took Chuuya a little over two months of squatting day in and day out in multiple city libraries for him to finally gain some coherent understanding of human noises— which he learned was actually called language.
The one the tune was sung in was called English, so naturally, Chuuya endeavored to learn that, too.
Because (not that he knew it at the time) he was in reality a mortal vessel for a long-thought-to-be-dead god named Arahabaki who, unbeknownst to humanity, was actually conscious enough to be very picky on who they reside in, and somehow likes Chuuya enough not to reduce him into subatomic particles when the scientists stuffed them inside him and also gave him some extra god-vessel benefits to boot.
Which means unlike how normal eight-year-olds with little to no knowledge of their mother tongue would take at least a decade of learning a foreign language to achieve some semblance of academic literacy— Chuuya managed this feat in about ten months.
Very unfair to those of us who continuously struggle with the trenchcoat-wearing intricacies of the English lexicon, but good for Chuuya, nonetheless.
By the time April rolled around, he was skipping through the streets, humming ‘Wellerman’ like a sea longing whale hunter that was stranded ashore.
“No line was cut, no whale was freed—”
He jumped over a little puddle on the sidewalk.
“And the captain’s mind was not of greed—”
Chuuya bumped into a few people, apologized, pickpocketed some wallets and watches and continued on his way.
“And he belonged to the Whaleman’s creed—” - He did a little twirl here, - “—She took that ship in tow~”
“Soon may— the Wellermen come—” - Without a care in the world Chuuya skipped happily to the pawn shop by the Ports, opening the door with such careless force that the salty sailor behind the counter startled awake from his afternoon doze, - “To bring us sugar and tea and rum—”
“One day— when the toungin’ is done—”
“We’ll take that whale in tow…”
II.
When his friends— Chuuya had a lot of new noises to address things in his life now— discovered this, they were less than impressed.
“You— you—” - Shirase kept cutting himself off with a frustrated growl, but Chuuya's current meager Japanese-understanding skills and good ear lets him hear what the boy was too angry and flabbergasted to say, - “I can't believe you learned English— which is a whOLE NEW LANGUAGE BY THE WAY— just to sing a whale song, but couldn't be bothered to say our names correctly?!”
Correction, Chuuya's meager Japanese-understanding skills only extends to interesting noises that sound funny, like Shirase's chopped-off chokes. But unfortunately, he still heard enough to get the gist of what the other boy was saying.
Chuuya scowled, annoyed. Gah— who needs words when growls would get the point across just fine?
As the great Chuuya interpreters that they both are, Shirase looks three seconds away from strangling him once the meaning of the growl got through; and Yuan, who was shamelessly eavesdropping in the background, was laughing herself sick on the ground.
Unlike Shirase's characteristic hotheaded explosion and Yuan's ungraceful giggle fit at the former's frustration, the little ones took to the news with much more excitement.
“YOU CAN SPEAK ANOTHER LANGUAGE NOW?!” - Kirino's eyes were bright with a scholarly spark, with a maniac gleam that glistened scorchingly through them— a gleam that practically yelled at Chuuya that he better watch out for attempts of social experimentation on his person.
In pure Kirino-fashion, she didn't even let Chuuya breathe before she shot out questions at a speed similar to the way high-production machine guns shoot bullets, - “How did you do it? What textbooks did you use? What exercises did you do? On a scale of 1 to 7,483— how tough would you say your learning journey was? Linguistically, what is the most baffling thing about the English language? Besides Latin, what other languages was English influenced by—”
That blur of rapid-fire Japanese was all he could take before Chuuya let out an angry hisssss and dove underneath the old coffee table they had like a particularly offended cat.
“—oh, right.” - Kirino sheepishly smiles, much to the amused chuckles and giggles of the other kids, - “Too many words.”
Chuuya hissed again.
“Alright, alright. No more words.” - Kirino said, before letting out a much more pleasant and soothingly incoherent grunt that scratched Chuuya's eardrums in all the right spots.
Shamelessly, he came out from under the table, plopped himself onto the couch next to Aoi and Takeo.
“Chuu.” - Aoi's little hand pats his cheek, - “Sing.”
Now, if only other people (looking at you, Kirino) would use such a simple, straightforward, and easy-to-understand method of speaking that doesn't include nonsensical details of how a random sequin dress looks under the sun (looking at you, Yuan).
Like her namesake, Aoi likes all things blue. The ocean, the sky, the flowers, the birds— whales.
So really, it's no surprise that she'd demand he sing a whale song for her.
He nods, and huffed an amused laugh when Aoi all but clamored onto his lap to have a first-row seat of his performance.
Taking a deep breath, Chuuya starts tapping the coffee table with the underside of all his fingers, winding up a rhythm that caught the attention of the other kids scattered throughout the warehouse as well.
“There once was a ship, that’s put to sea—
—The name of the ship was the Billy O’ Tea—”
Aoi was clapping along excitedly, squeezing the life out of her (uncharacteristically) orange goldfish plush (Nagisa had won it at a crane game for her a few months ago) in the process. Takeo was listening attentively, captured by Chuuya’s strong, almost siren-like songvoice.
“The winds blew up, her bow dipped down— Oh blow, my bully boys, blow~”
“HUH!” - Aoi grunted manly, making Chuuya snigger, fond. Of course the girl that’s obsessed with whales would know the cues and words to an English whaler song.
Kirino, who had turned her attention to her new batch self-assigned schoolwork on the coffee table after realizing Chuuya wouldn’t be answering any of her questions, has her ears perked in interest as she diverted some of her focus to listen to Chuuya sing. Next to her, Anako was humming along, appreciatively closing her eyes as she let his voice wash over her.
“Soon may the Wellerman come!—” - Both Aoi and Chuuya shouted out the chorus, one with a heavier Japanese accent than the other, - “To bring us sugar and tea and rum! One day~ when the tonguing is done— We'll take our leave and go~”
Evenings were cautiously calm in Suribachi City, when the Mafia and other gangs’ business hours are still ways away and ordinary people are home from work.
It meant that evenings were the Sheep’s (Chuuya has no clue who’s genius idea was it for them to name themselves after a farm animal, but since sheeps are quite cute, he accepts it) down time, when Shirase and Haruto would argue about their favorite manga series and when Yuan and Akari would huddle together with the sacrificial lamb of the day (Kiriya was today’s unfortunate victim) and use them as a living model for their fashion designer dreams.
Aoi and Takeo would curl on the old couch and read a storybook Anako had borrowed for them from the library, while she and Kirino completed whatever workbook they decided to torture themselves with that day. Himiko, Kaito, and Nagisa do whatever it is they do on a random Tuesday (probably try to rob that weird lemon guy that smells like nitroglycerin again).
“She'd not been two weeks from shore— when down on her a right whale bore!” - Aoi belted the next verse, demonstrating said ‘right whale bore’ by jumping gleefully from the couch in a heart attack inducing stunt.
“Aoi—!” - Takeo shouted in alarm, and Kirino and Anako were halfway up when Chuuya dove to catch her, breathless and giggling at the ridiculousness of it all as he continued singing, - “The captain called all hands and swore—”
“—He'd take that whale in tow!” - Aoi finished, tiny six-year-old arms in the air and waving her goldfish plush around, - “HUH!”
They all heaved a sigh of relief.
By this point, all of the Sheep were paying attention to the mini-pirate-circus the Couch PeopleTM were performing. It was an ordinary day, an ordinary evening, but they felt content and happy seeing two of the shiest ones within their flock uplift each other with no care for the world.
“Soon may the Wellerman come—”
True to a sailor’s tune, the melody caught on, and the others soon hummed and sung along.
“To bring us sugar and tea and rum!”
Chuuya spins Aoi at this part, and the little girl laughed as she belted out the next verse, - “One day, when the toungin’ is done—”
“We’ll take our leave and go…”
III.
True to the nature of street-smart street brats, it didn’t take long for the Sheep to take advantage of Chuuya’s soft spot for songs and music to trick him into learning Japanese.
Chuuya himself knew this, but the ways traditional and non-traditional melodies harmonize throughout different genres, then how each genre differs from language to language— everything was just too alluring not to listen and learn.
While it was an uphill battle forcing Chuuya to actually use the words he stuffed in his brain to verbally communicate like a normal human being, the Sheep’s usage of hisses, growls and vague gestures dropped exponentially. They still do use it, but it’s mostly to confuse and absolutely baffle the older gangs that staked claims on their territory— good fucking luck to the Jackals and Snakes who are trying to decode what a guttural growl made from the chest meant when used with a twisted naval starboard gesture.
However, the day that Chuuya discovers the existence of swears and curses was one worth remembering. Chuuya called it the ‘best day of his life’— but the traumatized and utterly destroyed egos he inflicted on a crowd of unsuspecting bystanders would beg to differ.
Being kids with no adult supervision meant that the Sheep wholeheartedly endorsed his roasting endeavors, with all of them making a competition to see who could teach him the most devastating line to gamely deliver to their rival gangs.
There were ground rules though— set by the ever elegant Himiko. No slurs; no phobic lines about anyone’s culture, beliefs, gender, sex or religion; and absolutely no stereotyping.
(Chuuya was made aware of the existence of such swears and curses, of course, but only ever said them under educational settings. Alongside that, both Kirino and Anako made it a point to educate them all about the history behind the degrading use of terms like ‘bitch’ and ‘harlot’.)
They had no reason not to accept these reasonable parameters, and they all got rather creative with their insults when everyone collectively realized a huge chunk of standard foreign swears were sexist in nature.
(They had to expand their horizons to other languages, because the most degrading Japanese was willing to get was an abbreviation of the word ‘you’ that contextually meant ‘bastard’.)
It was all worth it when Chuuya reduced a fully grown man ten times his size to tears, much to the horrified looks of his fellow gang members and to the Sheep’s utter glee.
It was also incredibly hilarious to later see the Jackal's leader’s (who showed up to meet the punk that dared to cause his second in command inhuman amounts of grief) reaction to being called, - “The living, air-wasting, unfortunately mobile ape-shaped conglomeration of dearly detested expired coupons stuffed inside an easy bake oven crafted by an overgrown ass of a movie director trying to make the ever-hated, unnecessary sequel of Your Mom Wishes She Married Me while high on the stinky shit barrel of Osmo laundry detergent that’s been sitting outside to rot in the crusty depths of your parent’s broken condom.”
(And yes, the poor bastard cried himself to sleep that night, or so the livid venting the indignant subordinates of said leader bestowed upon the cheekily grinning children had said.)
Chuuya’s impressive growth and ever-amazing linguistic journey aside, the world continues to turn and life goes on.
Kirino and Anako still haunt the local library in a similar manner to how the dead ghosts of medieval scholars would haunt centuries-old universities. Shirase and Haruto’s ongoing, seemingly never ending feud about their disagreement over their favorite manga series is still going strong. Yuan and Akari’s aspiring dreams to co-run a luxury boutique together wouldn’t fade any time soon. Himiko, Kaito and Nagisa are still engaging in the silent cold war between them and the sole provider of Yokohama’s lemon bomb supply. Kiriya still periodically hangs around with Aoi and Takeo on the couch, and constructs Broadway-worthy musicals of classic storybooks with them.
As for him, Chuuya likes to participate in whatever his mood fancies. Sometimes he’d let Yuan and Akari doll him up and walk around on sparkly DIY heels feeling like the silliest and most empowered person in the world. Sometimes he’d sit back and enjoy watching the diss-match between Shirase and Haruto, adding fuel to the flame just to see what happens. Sometimes he’d curl up on the couch, content to let Takeo braid his hair and cuddle Aoi as Kiriya reads out loud to them. Sometimes he’d follow Nagisa, Himiko and Kaito into the early evening on the streets of Suribachi, sneaking through the shadows as they debated on their next steps to one up their archnemesis. Sometimes he’d feel like a masochist and would let Kirino and Anako teach him stuff he 'really should know'.
But most of the time, Chuuya’s out and about, jumping from rooftop to rooftop and loving the way the wind lifts him.
It was during one of these ventures that Chuuya met them.
He was rooftop hopping as usual, humming whatever earbug that was currently circulating in his head. He paid attention to the ledges and the rafters, careful to always catch them and hold on. At this height, a slip was all it would take for him to plummet to his death.
Chuuya may not remember much about his life before he fully entered the world— besides the vague, painful hazes of something that hurt him and the ever lasting warmth and happiness from the many memories he formed with the Sheep— but he remembers enough to know that he wasn’t in a rush to go out of it yet.
Chuuya never really spared a thought about life or death otherwise. Never did he seriously think about what will happen once his life ends, never actually thought about whether living was worth all the pain and sorrow he’d endure.
That changed, this night— when Chuuya happily hummed and danced on the rooftop of an office building, only to make eye contact with a figure that stepped off of the apartment building right next to him.
The blurry body of said figure plummeted to the ground, and Chuuya’s entire world view with them.
He doesn’t know what he’s witnessing, doesn’t understand the implications of such an act— but what Chuuya does know is that they’re going to die.
And that person— that kid— was just about his age, no more.
He doesn't know what came over him. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to do, reaching out and jumping after them.
However, the fall feels familiar.
The force that is so violently pulling them both towards the pavement even more so.
It will kill them, and Chuuya knows this with a burning certainty.
Sometime, somewhere along the fall, they’ve made it side by side. And he sees the other person now— a girl, a boy? He can’t tell— wide eyed and surprised, but resigned, and defeated.
They know they’ll die. And they jumped.
Chuuya doesn’t know the why, the suffering, or really even understood the purpose of their jump— logically, yes, he knows they did it to kill themselves, but he couldn’t phantom— but what he does know, is that this won’t be how this ends.
Not on his watch.
The pull wants to kill them, Chuuya gets that much.
And so he pushes back.
He pushes, and pushes, and pushes.
Somehow pulls the other up too.
Usually, mentally pushing back against one of the four fundamental forces of the universe doesn’t work.
Gravity could be kind, could be cruel. It could leave you suffering on this Earth for minutes more or end it with a swift, decisive, crack.
But Chuuya isn’t just anyone— and on the planet that he called his home, its gravity answers to him.
A red glow slowly envelops the two of them, and steadily, clumsily, it lifts them up, up and up— all the way to the rooftop Chuuya was dancing on, seconds before.
The two children looked at each other— one a slip of a boy with wispy fiery hair and the other a taller, lankier child with too-tired eyes moving in a too-hurt body.
Then the tension broke, and came the screaming.
Really, Chuuya couldn’t make out the words, the sounds that were hurled at him. He heard some curses, some swears, some extremely hurtful stuff but the only thing he could understand was that the other kid was screaming their pain, their soul out to the world.
At the boy that took them from their escape, their peace. On an office rooftop next to the one they jumped from.
It wasn’t aimed at him, not really.
But Chuuya heard it all, and his heart broke for this person, not that older and not that younger than him.
There were tears, big, fat ones, rolling down their cheeks. Their eyes were filled with incomprehensible anguish, a pit of never ending desperation and agony they tried to free themselves from.
They’re hurting so, so bad, and Chuuya wants it to stop.
And he does it the only way he knows how.
Their tears never stop rolling, and their aching body was curled upon themselves while their mouth kept screaming at the boy that denied them their rest.
Then a little body huddled in beside them, a good arms length away— so near, yet so far— with warmth so gentle that it was nearly painful.
And in response to their desperate yells—
—was a soft song, a lullaby that could only be sung from a mother to their child.
“Dear sweet child, no need to cry…”
The words silenced them, accompanied by a harsh sniff that never seemed to stop.
“I…”, - It was the boy, the one with hair like the dawning red skies their mother used to love so much and the one that ripped away their dreams of peace - “Will hold you tight…”
“So sleep all your worries and fears away…”
They could practically see her— their kind, loving mother, carding her hands through their hair while lulling them to sleep.
“No need to be scared, you are out of harm’s way…”
They missed her— they missed her so much.
“Let me sing a lullaby—”
But she died years ago, leaving them with a man that hated who they were and a family that despises their very being.
“—As you close your eyes…”
Calling those years a living hell would be a compliment.
“And as you’re drifting off to sleep, how I hope that he dreams that you find—”
They closed their eyes.
“—are bright…”
The boy never stopped singing. The gentle warmth from his body kept reaching out to them, waiting for them to accept its outstretched hand.
“Love, can we meet again soon in the bluest of skies?”
Tears gathered again in the corner of their eyes, but for an entirely different reason this time.
“Where a tomorrow waits for you and I?”
Small arms snaked around them, and they tensed. But the unfamiliar touch didn’t hurt them— the little circle they were nestled in was inviting, and warm.
“So hold me tight one more time, but don’t kiss me goodbye…”
Their mother would absolutely sing this song, they couldn’t help but think.
“‘Cause I know that I’ll see you on the other side…”
A song that spoke of love, of promises, and of death.
“I will think of our song when the nights are too long…”
They didn't know how it happened— a moment before, they were screaming and cursing and doing everything they could to ensure the entire world knew just how done they were with its bullshit— all aimed at a well meaning boy they knew only wanted to help.
“I’ll dream of you for that's where I belong…”
And now, they were dragged to a warehouse that felt very loved, and introduced to a bunch of kids of varying ages with a single similarity— they all wore cobalt blue somewhere on their bodies.
“Love, can we meet again soon in the bluest of skies?...”
They were asked no questions about their scars, their bandages, or their blooming bruises.
Instead, they were asked about their name, their favorite color, and their hobbies.
They were touched without malice, and were approached without intent to harm.
Instead, they were handled and washed with care by two bickering girls, each making small talk and demanded to know whether they think organza or lace belong on a black silk bodice.
They weren’t left out, weren’t ignored and weren’t bullied for being them.
Instead, they were included, acknowledged, and fully accepted as the person, the human they are, and not treated like a monster they know they aren't.
“Only…” - The boy, who they now know was named Chuuya, ran his hands through their hair as he played with it, mouth softly singing the lullaby he sang on that rooftop, - “In my dreams…”
In this position, curled up on the homely couch, having their hair petted, cuddling probably the softest plush toy they’ve touched, and being lulled by such a loving song— they found it harder and harder to cling to consciousness.
“...do we meet again…”
Their eyes slipped closed.
Chuuya nuzzled their temple and whispered, - “Night night, Yomi.”
And with that, Yomi slept soundly for the first time in a long while.