Chapter Text
The sensory room was Megumi’s favorite place in the house. Not because it was quiet, because sometimes it wasn't, especially with three sisters and one hyperactive father. Sometimes, it was filled with his humming, soft and repetitive, bouncing off the slightly padded walls while a blue bubble tube sat beside him. Sometimes music played from a speaker in the corner, low enough that it didn't hurt. Sometimes, he flapped so hard his sleeves slid down his wrists.
But it was alright, it was his kind of noise.
The room sat at the end of the hallway, small and modest where the light strips glowed blue and green, where no one complained when he rocked back and forth on the giant bean bag with a weighted blanket until dinner.
Now, seven-year-old Megumi was sprawled across the floor, lining magnetic tiles into neat color coded rows. Blue, blue, green, green, yellow.
“Hm-hm-hm-hm,” he hummed under his breath. Then louder. “Hm-hm-hm-hmmmm.”
His fingers flicked rapidly near his face while he worked. Outside the room, chaos.
“I think Megumi stole my charger!” Mimiko yelled.
“I borrowed it!” Her twin yelled back.
Tsumiki passed by, carrying nail polish. “Can you two stop shouting?”
Megumi pressed his hands over his ears. The shouting wasn’t inside the room, but it still crawled through the crack under the door.
Blue, blue, green– he hummed louder.
Dinner was usually harder. Everyone sat together, which meant chairs scraping, chopsticks clinking, voices overlapping, and Suguru reminding everyone not to feed Megumi’s dogs under the table.
Megumi bounced his leg under the table. Tap, tap, tap, tap. His fingers twisted the hem of his oversized hoodie. Suguru placed a small weighted lap pad across Megumi's knees without saying anything. Megumi relaxed a little, starting to hum a low tune, his feelings regulating.
“Oh my god.”
Megumi looked up, Nanako was rubbing her temples. “Can you stop making noises for, like, five minutes.”
Megumi blinked, not even noticing that he was humming again, it was so usual, so automatic he didn't notice it anymore. He stopped. Three seconds later, his fingers started flicking. Tap, tap. Hum, tiny, quiet.
Nanako slammed her chopsticks against her plate. “Megumi, stop!”
Everything felt strange after that. The sound processed first, too loud, too sharp. Chopsticks clicking against plates. The dog started to bark and suddenly the light overhead was buzzing. His chest squeezed.
Megumi clapped both hands over his ears. “No no no no—”
“You didn't have to yell,” Tsumiki snapped.
“I’m tired of it!” Nanako shouted back. “Hes always moving or humming or making sounds and I’m—
Too many words and too many voices.
Megumi slid off the chair, the floor felt wrong, the collar on his hoodie felt wrong, the light was wrong, everything was wrong. His breathing came too fast.
“Megumi?” Suguru's voice was soft and calm like he usually was when dealing with his son.
Megumi couldn't answer. His body had already decided for him. He hit his palms against his ears harder. Rocking forward, rocking back. Tsumiki got off her chair to move closer to her brother. It was unusual for Megumi to accept any sort of physical contact during a meltdown, but there was something about Tsumiki that always seemed to calm him down. It could be their relationship before they were adopted, and what they went through together, Tsumiki having to learn how to deal with a brother on the spectrum when they were alone and she was a kid herself. Megumi always lets her in.
Noise burst out of him, high, strained sounds he couldn't seem to stop or control. “I want room— I want my room— I want to leave—”
Satoru moved fast. “Give him some space,” he said firmly to the kids, seeing them slowly itching closer to where Tsumiki was crouched near their agitated brother, hand slowly making circles between his shoulder blades.
The room quieted, mostly. Nanako looked pale. “I didn't—"
“Later,” Suguru gently reassured her, knowing he wouldn't be able to comfort her properly if she could still hear Megumi distressed.
Satoru crouched beside Megumi rather than touching him, knowing what would happen if he did. He had made that mistake plenty of times. “Room?”
Megumi nodded so hard it hurt, hands still clasped tightly around his ears.
“Okay. Sensory room.”
Not calm down, not you’re okay, just the usual routine they had learned to form after several years of learning experience. Tsumiki opened up a path for them to freely step through while Mimiko turned off the light near the doorway Megumi was in. Megumi kept flapping his hands while Satoru walked beside him. Not touching him, just being there and sharing his presence.
Twenty minutes later, in the safety of his sensory room, the blue tube glowed softly. Megumi laid buried under two weighted blankets, staring at the soft glowing tube in a daze. His breathing had finally slowed, but his fingers still occasionally twitched. Suguru sat beside the blanket pile.
“Can I come closer?”
The small head that was peeking out gave a small nod. Suguru moved closer.
“You got overwhelmed.”
Megumi stared at the bubbles that continued to slowly rise upwards to merge, becoming a big bubble altogether. “Nanako was loud.”
“She was.”
Megumi swallowed. “Am I bad?”
Suguru immediately answered, never wanting his children to feel bad or embarrassed for their feelings, and then showing those emotions, which were often hard to control. “No.”
Megumi picked at the blanket seam. “I make noise.”
“You do. Your noises and movements help you. Sometimes other people get overwhelmed too, and that's okay, we’ll just solve it together.”
Megumi thought about it, not fixing him, but helping him.
A soft knock on the door brought Megumi’s attention elsewhere. Nanako stood there, twisting her sleeves. She looked strange when she was guilty, smaller.
“Can I come in?”
Megumi shrugged, which was usually code for yes, usually. Nanako slid down the wall next to the door instead of coming closer.
“I shouldn't have yelled.”
Megumi continued to pick at the seam.
“I was frustrated,” she continued quietly. “But I yelled because I was overwhelmed, and then I overwhelmed you.”
A thread came loose from the seam, Megumi pulled his knees closer. “Do you hate when I hum?”
Nanako's face crumpled a little. “No.”
He looked unconvinced. She sighed.
“Sometimes my brain gets tired from sounds too.”
Megumi processed that, it was easy to understand because it was something he could relate to. How his clothes started to itch and feel wrong against his skin. How drained he got after getting through a whole school day, having to reign back his stimming, not because he has to, but because he doesn't want to be even more different. How he sometimes wants to remove his ears so that he doesn't have to get overwhelmed by the smallest noise.
“Oh.”
“I shouldn't have screamed.”
He hummed once, tiny, testing the waters. Nanako didn't flinch this time.
After a minute she asked, “Could we maybe make a signal or say something for when I need quiet instead of me screaming at you? It made me feel bad and sad seeing how I made you feel like that. I never want to make you feel like that again.”
Megumi thought hard before he realized something he had practiced with Satoru and Suguru. He pointed towards a small container of colored cards near the wall. There were different colors and meanings. Green meant okay, yellow meant careful, red meant too much.
It had taken years for his parents to understand what Megumi was trying to say, or even recognize what he was feeling. Before that, everything had been a guessing game, they misread expressions, questions went unanswered. There was tons of frustration from both sides. They had learned eventually, slowly piecing together and realizing patterns that made up Megumi's way to communicate, but it had taken them far longer than it should have.
Satoru approached it the only way he knew how; through trial and error. He watched his son closely, memorizing the smallest shifts in Megumi’s expression or posture, tried different approaches, and learned from every success and every mistake.
Suguru, on the other hand, buried himself in research.
Late at night, after the kids had gone to bed, he'd spend hours reading articles and personal blogs written by either autistic adults, parents, teachers or therapists. He skipped over anything that treated autism like something that needed to be fixed or changed. Instead he searched for people who spoke about understanding rather than changing. Eventually, he found a blog, written by a mother documenting her daughter’s everyday life.
One post, in particular, caught his attention.
She explained how her daughter thrived after they introduced communication cards. Simple cards with words, pictures, and emotions that gave her a way to express herself when speaking became too difficult.
The rest of the blog was filled with practical advice; why routines matter, how to recognize signs of sensory overload before they turn into meltdowns, and little adjustments in their everyday lives that would make it easier for their family.
Suguru read every entry.
Together he and Tsumiki spread colored papers, markers, scissors and a laminator across their dining table. She insisted that the cards should be cheerful without being too overwhelming. She drew neat little illustrations beside the words; a bed, a book, headphones, a quiet corner, sensory room, smiling and frowning faces and numbers to help Megumi rate how he was feeling.
Suguru carefully wrote the labels beneath each picture while Tsumiki cut and laminated every card, making sure the corners were rounded. By the end of the evening, they had a small stack organized into various categories; needs, emotions, activities, places, and simple yes-or-no responses.
Neither of them knew if the cards would work for Megumi.
But if they could make it even a little easier for him to be understood, then every hour spent researching, drawing, cutting, and laminating would be worth it.
Nanako smiled weakly, well aware of the color system. “Yeah. That works.”
Megumi, satisfied, reached for his magnetic tiles. Blue, blue, green. His fingers fluttered near his face. Nobody stopped him, the bubble tube kept blowing, and eventually, Nanako crept closer and started lining up tiles beside him, instantly recognizing the pattern.
───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────
After the incident with Nanako, everyone got better at noticing, it wasn't always perfect but it was considerably better. They used the color cards more often, they were not exclusively to Megumi anymore, Nanako used them too to communicate with her brother, like their agreement. It was going well.
Most days, the cards worked, but dinner parties were different. They were disasters disguised as ‘fun’. Because dinner parties meant more chairs scraping against floors, more voices, unusual perfumes and new food smells, people staying too long.
Tonight his fathers were hosting a dinner party, Megumi knew because the house already smelled wrong. Too much food, Satoru smelled like perfume and he could identify footsteps rushing to get ready.
He sat cross-legged in the sensory room before everyone arrived, pressing his hands against a small vibrating cushion. He liked how his whole body vibrated with it, and how his voice sounded silly when he hummed.
“We have guests today,” Suguru delivered the news gently from the doorway.
Megumi nodded without looking up. “Who?”
“Shoko, Nanami and Haibara. You know them so it probably won't be too terrible.”
Megumi knew them. Shoko was the one that always got a little louder when she kept drinking the stuff that smelled strong and weird, her cheeks rosy while smoking cigarettes. Nanami was the calm one, he liked Nanami, he would always sit with Megumi and help come up with different patterns and ways to sort his colored magnets. And Haibara was similar to his dad, so it’s probably fine.
It helped a little that he knew them, knew what to expect but it wasn't nearly enough. Dinner parties were always unpredictable, anything could happen. But in the safety of his home, he could be himself where no one would question him.