Chapter Text
i.
Yushi stood on his tippy toes to look over the glass of the newborn nursery.
On the other side of it there were rows of newborn babies — in little uniform bassinets with name cards taped to the ends, wrapped so tight they looked like the sweets grandma bought at New Year's. He didn't know which one he was supposed to be looking at, so his eyes flitted across the rows and rows of babies, breath fogging the window, until grandma's hand came warm around his shoulder and she leaned down close to his ear and pointed.
"That one," she said. "There, with the round cheeks. That's your little brother."
At three years old, the word brother did not mean much to Yushi. He understood it in the abstract way that he understood any other word like astronaut or octopus — things that coexisted with him in this world, but not concrete enough that he could relate it to a thing or a place. Nobody had even told him one was coming. He didn't see his mom often enough to notice any change with her, and then suddenly one day his grandma had helped him put on a sensible pea coat and brought him here — hospital, he'd been told — to meet this so-called brother of his.
He found the cot she pointed at: there was a baby with a scrunched red face, eyes shut, mouth open and shut. There was no material difference between this baby and the one next to it.
And yet his heart was filled with a feeling he didn't quite have the words for — and wouldn't understand for years. He pressed his palm flat to the glass, trying to close the distance between him and the baby. He looked at the baby's unopened eyes and thought:
Brother. My brother.
Yushi's eyes stayed bright as he took in the sight of his brother, and he and his grandma stood there in silence for a while. Yushi didn't know what it meant to be a brother, but he was filled with the conviction that he would do whatever it took to be the best one there is.
Then grandma said it was time to go, buttoned his coat back to the chin, and took his hand.
"My brother is not coming?" Yushi said, looking up to his grandma with big, questioning eyes.
His grandmother sighed, pulled him closer and said, "The baby needs to stay with mama."
Yushi accepted this, and walked to the car with her in silence. Maybe I will see mama more often now, he thought.
But alas, the next time he saw his mother, and his brother, would be as rare as always — only on New Year's, some festivals, or the occasional brunch.
ii.
The way school taught it, your family was supposed to consist of two parents and your siblings, if you had any.
Yushi had to draw his family tree for class once — a box for the mother, a box for the father, lines coming down for the child, but if you had a brother or a sister you were supposed to prepare another box to the side, all of it joined up with clean straight lines.
But for Yushi, that wasn't how family looked. There was his dad, technically — but he was just a voice on the telephone from far, far away where it was always the wrong time to call, and a name on packages with expensive things Yushi didn't know what to do with. Yushi studied his father's face on his rare visits to the house, because he knew there would be a long gap before the next chance to look at his face again.
At the house, there was his grandfather, who sat at the head of very long tables and whom everyone spoke to with a care and reverence that Yushi, too, had learnt to adopt.
There was also grandma, who at least cut his apples into rabbits, skins-on for the ears, and stood them up on the plate all facing the same direction like they were a little troop hopping off somewhere together. She sang to him at night, old songs in a comforting voice, and she left his bedroom door open exactly a hand's width when she said goodnight — so that a stripe of hallway light could lie across the floor and find him if he woke up scared.
But mother never stepped foot in the house — Yushi always met her in a different house, only as often as the cherry blossoms bloomed, with the baby. With his brother.
The last time they met was the baby's — Sakuya's — Kamioki and third birthday, as they fell on the same weekend. Sakuya's cheeks were red from the November cold and from running around the shrine grounds shrieking, cheerful laughter coming out of him, whole and easy as his father tried to catch him.
Eventually, Yushi was set down next to him, and he observed that Sakuya got a little bigger and a little longer each time he saw him. Someone said smile!, and they'd both smile for a picture, and then Yushi went to find his grandma's hand again.
So Yushi sat in his kindergarten classroom, staring at the paper, wondering where exactly he was supposed to slot Sakuya into the diagram.
His teacher, passing between the desks, noticed something else entirely. She stopped at his shoulder and looked at his tree — at the way he'd put the grandfather and grandmother in their own boxes above his father, all on his own, without being told to.
"Ah — I'd expect nothing less from you." She smiled, pleased, and gave his hair a light pat. "So brilliant, Tokuno-kun."
She moved on down the row. Yushi kept his eyes on the empty space beside his own box — the one that was supposed to be the easiest to fill — and he was left with a now-familiar hollowness: that he could never quite fit his family into the same boxes as everyone else's.
iii.
Suddenly Yushi was eight, and he was standing at his grandmother's funeral.
He couldn't remember the days around it, nor how he'd gotten there — just the abrupt fact of being inside the hall in formal black clothes he'd never seen before with no clear sense of how the world had gone from your grandmother is in the hospital to this.
The incense was so thick near the front that it got into his collar and his hair, and for the rest of his life the smell of it would cause his heart to drop before he knew why.
Somehow, Yushi understood the finality of it instinctively although no one bothered to explain it to him. Grandma had gone in and not come out. There was a photograph of her up at the front, a black ribbon across one corner, and in it she looked younger than he'd ever seen her. He didn't understand the low chanting, or why people went up one at a time, or what he was supposed to do with the pinch of powder when his turn came — someone folded their hand over his and moved it for him, and he couldn't tell afterward whether he'd done it right. What he understood was why grown-ups who never acknowledged him much in the past kept crouching to his height and telling him they were sorry, so sorry, with a somber expression.
He looked up once, during the chanting, at his grandfather. His grandfather's face was set in a stormy expression he'd never seen on his stoic face. He looked away fast.
Then it was over, and he was escorted back into the pouring rain. Someone held a black umbrella over him across the wet ground to the car — long and dark, the rain sliding down it in the grey afternoon. He watched the water come off the edge of the umbrella in a bright unbroken string, and then someone opened the door and he climbed in and sat in the middle of the wide back seat. His grandfather was in the passenger's seat as always, and two caretakers flanked Yushi on both sides, one replacing his grandmother's usual spot.
The door swung shut, and Yushi realised then that his grandma was the one source of warmth in the large, imposing Tokuno estate — in the form of cut fruits, warm lullabies, and naps on her lap.
As the car's air conditioner roared and seeped into his tiny bones, he understood then that he would never feel that kind of familial warmth again.
iv.
If you asked Sakuya when was the first time he met Yushi, he would relay the story that he was told — that Yushi was brought to meet his newborn self at the hospital the day that he was born.
But the first concrete, vivid memory he had of his older brother was the day he arrived at the Fujinaga house, in clothes far too formal for an eight-year-old, suitcases upon suitcases of his things in tow.
Frankly, Sakuya didn't see Yushi enough to remember much about him. The last time was probably New Year's — but every time they did meet, Sakuya was always surprised by how calm and cool Yushi seemed, especially in contrast to the rowdy older boys that he'd sometimes encounter at the playground. Before this, his best friend Ryo, who lived in the big house a few streets over, was probably the coolest person that Sakuya knew. But now, watching Yushi stand in the entryway — a good few inches taller than last winter and wearing a blank expression — Sakuya felt a sudden wave of awe. A big boy like Yushi was actually going to live under the same roof as his permanent playmate.
Sakuya's (well, their) mother placed a hand on Yushi's back and guided him towards Sakuya. "Sakuya. You remember your big brother Yushi? He's going to live with us now. For good."
Sakuya beamed up at him. "Hi!"
Yushi looked at him, not saying anything back. He just bowed slightly, and moved to the side of the hallway, watching the men that came with him carry the rest of his many suitcases upstairs, presumably to his room. Sakuya's dad, usually the first to offer help and do the manual labour around the house, was also just observing.
Sakuya waited, but Yushi didn't make a move. Sakuya was taught that he shouldn't ignore other people, but he just filed it under the enormous pile of things big kids did that made no sense, and moved on. If Yushi didn't want to talk now, maybe Yushi would want to talk later.
So Sakuya kept trying. The entire day.
He trailed Yushi around the house. He tried to show Yushi his favourite toys and relayed random facts that he learnt that day in school. He narrated his entire day at Yushi in punishing detail, and for the most part Yushi would respond in grunts and silent nods. That should've deterred him from trying, but there was something about Yushi that made Sakuya determined to impress him. And Sakuya, for better or for worse, was a very stubborn child.
Thankfully, he encountered a breakthrough before dinner time. "Do you like soccer?" Sakuya asked, bringing a ball to Yushi's face.
Yushi was sitting on the edge of the bed in what was going to be his room. At the word soccer, his eyes widened — and Sakuya brightened at the flicker of interest in Yushi's eyes.
"…A little," Yushi said.
It was the first whole thing he'd said to Sakuya. His voice was softer than Sakuya expected, and quieter.
Sakuya shrieked and slung the ball on one arm, tugging Yushi away from his room with the other. They went out to the house's sizable backyard and kicked the ball back and forth until sundown. Yushi still didn't talk much, but soccer brought out some energy and life from him that was clearly missing the rest of the day. Sakuya didn't realise then, but Yushi was better than him — a lot better — and slowed himself down so Sakuya could keep up. He wouldn't have known if his mom didn't make it a point to share this sweet fact about her two dear boys every time she reminisced about this fateful day, and how it reassured her that their little family was going to be alright.
But Sakuya did know, that day, that he liked Yushi a lot. And he hoped that Yushi liked his family a lot, too, so that he would stay in their house forever.
v.
They got close after that. Some would say it was inevitable after living in the same house for so many years, but Sakuya believed that above all else, Yushi and him just got along well naturally. Sure, they fought and bickered and teased each other all the time. They fought over the thermostat, over who ate the last pudding in the fridge, over who got to play as Kirby whenever they played Super Smash Bros. But they also lived in their own world, carefully crafted by the two boys — they made up a language out of nonsense syllables and inside jokes and used it loudly in public for their own private entertainment. Yushi taught him things and terrorized him and let Sakuya hang off his arm like a monkey, and somewhere along the way Sakuya forgot the five years he spent being an only child and Yushi stopped being his half-brother that was dropped at their entryway one night. Now, he was just Yushi — Sakuya's big brother, who Sakuya could no longer picture the house without.
But there were seams, if you knew where to look. And Sakuya — cheerful, easy, the last person you'd expect to notice the small things — took note of the subtle wrong moments. They lodged somewhere in his heart and stayed far longer than they deserved.
Like the day in fourth grade he'd been bragging about Yushi to his friends.
Sakuya was good at bragging, just one of the perks of having astronomically high self confidence. His Yushi-niichan had just made the soccer club at his middle school, and first-years almost never got picked, so Sakuya had been telling anyone who'd listen, his homeroom teacher included. She smiled and nodded along until she came to a sudden thought.
"A Yushi who's good at soccer..." The teacher's brow furrowed, then cleared. "Wait — are you referring to Tokuno Yushi? The handsome, quiet one?" She was half to herself now, fitting it together. "I taught him. Two, three years ago." She was silent for a beat, and said quietly, "...Huh. I didn't know he had a little brother."
Sakuya kept smiling, because he didn't know what else to do with his face — but something must have slipped, some small wrong thing pulling at the corners of it, because the teacher caught it and softened at once.
"Ah — no wonder you're so handsome too, Fujinaga-kun." She said it warmly, trying to salvage the situation. "I see the resemblance now."
Which wasn't the problem at all. But Sakuya said thank you, and tried his best to school his face back to a bright, happy expression. Despite that, the encounter kept swirling in his mind throughout the rest of the day. It wasn't just the stark reminder that Yushi was his half-brother, technically, but also the fact that the people around Yushi didn't even know that he had a younger brother.
Because he talked about Yushi all the time. All the time — Yushi-niichan this, my brother that. Yushi was one of Sakuya's favorite subjects to talk about in the entire world. And this teacher had had him in her class for a whole year, and had never once heard that Sakuya existed.
Does niichan not talk about me at all?
Maybe he just doesn't like talking to his teachers. Yeah, that has to be it — I didn't even know Nitta-sensei was also his homeroom teacher.
It was a weak consolation, and Sakuya didn't know, even now, why he could never quite bring himself to ask Yushi about it — when he could ask his brother almost anything else in the world.
----
But the worst reminder of the chasm between their warm Fujinaga household and the world Yushi came from had to be his sudden, irregular summons to the Tokuno estate.
Every so often — never on any schedule Sakuya could work out — a long black car would come for Yushi. It wasn't that it was expensive that made it stand out. Their Saitama suburb was a nice enough neighborhood — the Korean family that had just moved in next door had a Lexus and also a sedan sitting in their driveway. The limousine arrived with little to no warning, and planted itself on the street in front of the Fujinaga house. And it would wait for Yushi — engine idling, going nowhere — it was only when Yushi stepped out of the house that the driver came around to escort him in.
Over the years Sakuya watched Yushi take longer and longer to go down to it. He used to be ready before it even came — buttoned into a stiff good shirt, waiting at the door. But somewhere along the way he started to stall. One afternoon they were sprawled in Sakuya's room watching a match on Yushi's iPad when the car pulled up outside, and Yushi sighed with his whole body. He stared at the ceiling for a good two minutes, the game still going, before he let out a breath and rolled off the bed to go change.
Their mom always kissed the top of Yushi's head before sending him off. Mom and dad never came along, so Sakuya never did either.
If watching Yushi go was hard, the return was worse.
Yushi always came back tired, quiet, and disoriented. His mind was clearly somewhere else, like a piece of him had stayed behind at the estate and hadn't caught up yet. He was snappier than normal, and would sometimes avoid Sakuya for days. Sakuya could never tell how long it would take to get his real brother back, and he hated that he couldn't.
He asked his mother about it once, when he was twelve — why exactly did Yushi have to go, and what made him so moody every time he went.
His mother only sighed a tired, complicated sigh and said, "You know what your brother's family is like."
But the thing is, Sakuya didn't exactly know. Not really — he could probably surmise from the bits and pieces of gossip he would hear during family reunions, and the very rare times he saw Yushi's grandfather he could tell that he wasn't a particularly warm man. It also wasn't difficult to do a quick Google deep dive on the Tokunos and realise their wealth was probably close to zaibatsu levels, but nobody ever told Sakuya anything. Hell, Sakuya didn't even know which country Yushi's dad — and, apparently, his second family — had run off to. But mom didn't seem to want to talk about it, much less dad (frankly Sakuya wasn't sure how much his dad actually knew, either), and so, to avoid any unnecessary confrontation, he dropped the topic, and kept wondering.
It wasn't that Yushi kept everything to himself. Sakuya knew part of the reason Yushi would revert back to his regular self sooner or later was the late-night kitchen table talks between him and their mom, voices low, and how their dad would take Yushi out to play golf, just the two of them, after every one of those visits. So there was solace for Yushi, for the heavy feelings he'd carry from those visits.
It just wasn't with Sakuya.
When he confided in Ryo about this, Ryo just said, "Well, my neechan doesn't share her problems with me either…", which helped Sakuya convince himself that this was normal. But he did feel that there was a part of Yushi that his brother was locking away from him — and Sakuya would rather ignore that there was a part of Yushi he didn't have access to than try knocking on the door at all.
But that didn't stop him from wondering. Whether Yushi, after all these years, really felt like he belonged to this house, this family. Or whether some part of him was still the boy in the entryway, in the too-formal clothes, waiting to be sure that he was allowed to stay.
vi.
It was almost poetic that it was spring again, ten years later, the day Yushi finally left home.
But there was no long black car this time, no brand-name luggage waiting at the curb — just the four of them, hauling box after box of Yushi's things into the back of the family SUV. Yushi was moving out for university, and naturally the move was a family affair.
As it happened, Sakuya was the one who ended up carrying the last box out. He stopped a moment in the doorway to look at the room his brother had lived in for the past ten years. The bed was still made. Yushi hadn't taken down his posters — Neymar mid-stride, a Barça scarf pinned above the desk, all the years of him still tacked to the walls. He'd left his desktop where it sat and taken only the new gaming laptop, like he fully intended to come back and use the rest.
It was emptier, sure, and the closet was basically bare — but Sakuya found some comfort in the fact that the room still felt like Yushi's.
Nothing is changing, Sakuya thought, tamping down any melancholic thoughts that threatened to bubble up at the sight of it.
–--
The drive to central Tokyo took less than an hour. It was an uneventful ride, and mom spent the whole time reminding Yushi how to stay safe while living alone. Pretty soon they were surveying the studio apartment that Yushi would be renting for the year. It was roomy, thanks to their parents' generosity, and it was slowly filling up with Yushi's things, resembling the room he left behind at home.
His father brought his camera to document the whole occasion. "Yushi, Yushi — look over here — there, hold the box like that, that's good, you look very grown-up—"
"I'm literally just holding a box—"
"Click. Ah, look at him. Our Yuu-chan's leaving the nest. I can't believe it, it feels like yesterday he was this tall—"
"Dad, I'm begging you to stop narrating my life."
"And now Sakuya's almost as tall as Yushi! Our boys are growing so fast. Come stand next to your niichan, I haven't taken a picture of you both together here."
"Okay, no, Sakuya — stay far far away from me."
His mother had bypassed the unpacking entirely and laid down on the bare mattress, hands folded on her stomach, testing it with the whole of her body. "Mm, it's firm, but not as high quality as the one at home. Yushi, it's still not too late to cancel the lease, you know. I'll even drive you up here sometimes if you're sick of the train."
"Please get up, mom. And as I've told you, I'm pretty sure I'll be fine on my own."
She sighed, getting up. "Alright. I'm just saying, you can come home anytime."
Yushi scrunched his brow in exasperation, but there was a small, appreciative smile on his face.
"When I imagined this—" their mom said, folding down a corner of the sheet Yushi hadn't even put on yet, straightening a bed that wasn't made "—sending my boys off. I thought I'd feel like I was losing something." She reached up and patted his cheek. He let her, which was its own small event. "And I just feel full instead. Isn't that funny?"
Sakuya watched as Yushi leaned into her touch subconsciously, and took in his brother's calm expression. Ah, Sakuya thought. I guess I really didn't have to worry.
"Niichan. Your ears are red."
Yushi flushed harder. "They're not."
"They're soooo red. Dad, you should take a picture of this."
"Do not get a picture."
His father, betraying him instantly, was already lifting the camera. "Of course! One, two…"
"Stop! We're not going to finish unpacking today at this rate…"
–--
They left at dusk, after all the boxes were unpacked and stowed away.
"Now text me the second you've eaten something," his mother said at the door. "Not tomorrow, not 'I'll eat later', okay? And try to make sure it’s a proper meal."
"Yes mom, I'm going to dinner with Sion and his uni friends, remember?"
"And if the plumbing does anything strange, you call us," his father said gravely. "I mean, there's building maintenance, but you never really know the quality in these newer developments…"
"What can you do that the maintenance team can't, dad?"
"You just video call us. We'll talk it through."
When Sakuya went in for a hug, his brother submitted to it like a cat being bathed. But Yushi held on tight, and muttered into the top of his head — low, so only Sakuya could hear it — "I just know you're not going to text, so at least stop hiding your stories from me on Instagram, okay?"
Sakuya pulled back, grinning. "Aw. Niichan. Are you going to miss—"
"Bye, brat." Yushi opened the car door, and shoved him into the vehicle.
"Hey!"
The car pulled out, his father driving slowly, his mother's hand up and waving before they'd cleared the lot — at a boy getting smaller in the rear window, alone now outside the too-big building, waving back unenthusiastically.
And if Sakuya twisted all the way around in his seat, seatbelt undone, and kept his eyes on his brother's shrinking shape until the corner took him out of sight, that was between him and God.
–--
The house felt too big and too quiet when they got back. His parents got ready for bed in a quiet, subdued manner — but they still wished Sakuya good night, and left him at the kitchen table drinking his usual glass of hot milk before bed.
After washing up, Sakuya walked back to the second floor lost in thought. Without thinking, he stopped at Yushi's door and went in.
He stopped dead in the doorway.
It felt strange not having to knock. Every single time he'd ever walked into this room, his brother had been here. On the bed, at the desk, headphones on and pretending not to hear, a scowl already forming at the interruption — what do you want, get out, I'm busy — but he was there. Always there.
But illuminated by just the streetlights outside coming in through the window, the room felt emptier than ever before.
He stood there a while, in the doorway of the too-quiet room.
Then, inexplicably, he climbed into his brother's bed, bedsheets still intact because it wasn't laundry day yet, and burrowed himself in the blankets to soothe the strange ache in his heart.
He took a quick picture and sent it over to Yushi.
[Sakuya, 11:40 PM]: look. im in ur huge ass bed
[Sakuya, 11:40 PM]: havent even showered tbh but what r u gna do
[Sakuya, 11:41 PM]: what's it like downsizing to a super single
The reply took a while. He could picture Yushi’s annoyed face as he opened the text.
[Yushi, 11:51 PM]: not ass
[Yushi, 11:51 PM]: mind ur language
[Yushi, 11:51 PM]: and get off my bed u pig
Yushi sent a selfie back — scowling in his dimmed room, one prefecture away. Sakuya grinned up at the ceiling that used to be his brother's ceiling and replied, before placing his phone on the night stand.
[Sakuya, 11:52 PM]: who do u think i learned that from :)
(Their mom found Sakuya the next morning, sleeping soundly in Yushi's bed. After a long night worrying about her eldest son — having him away from the house again stirred up the long, buried anxiety from eons ago — it was a comforting sight. Seeing her other baby boy seek out the comfort of his brother in such a guileless way — well, who can blame her for taking a picture?)
Chapter Title from Blood Bros - Hayley Williams