Chapter Text
Mari brings it up over dinner.
“Coach wants us stayin’ at the team lodge in Yamanashi. The whole squad, for four days.” She doesn’t look up from her rice when she says it. “Figured I’d just go with everybody instead of havin’ Dad drive me separate.”
Lara sets her chopsticks down. “Oh. Makoto-san can’t take you?”
“No, not that.” Mari shrugs, too quick and practiced. “The bus leaves earlier than Dad wants to drive, and it’s cheaper for everybody if I just…you know. Go with the team.”
It’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. It is also, Lara has learned over the past several months, exactly the kind of explanation Mari gives when the real reason is something she doesn’t want to say out loud, because saying it out loud would mean admitting it matters.
“You want to stay with them?” Lara asks.
Mari’s chopsticks pause over her bowl for half a second. Half a second is all it ever takes with her.
“I mean- yeah, I guess.” She finally looks up, a little defensive, like she’s bracing for Lara to make something of it. “I dunno. It sounds like a dumb idea.”
“It’s not dumb.”
“I didn’t say it was smart, either.”
“I mean…it’s not dumb that you want to go with them.” Lara picks her chopsticks back up, keeps her voice even, the way she’s found works best when Mari’s guard is up like this; press too hard and she’ll retreat, say it plainly and let it sit and sometimes she’ll come the rest of the way on her own. “You said it yourself. It’d be cheaper, and it sounds more convenient for everyone.”
Mari pokes at a piece of chicken. “It’s four days,” she says. “I’m gonna have to share a room with people. And there’s gonna be team dinners. The last time I was at one of those, Coach made everybody do this stupid mandatory bonding circle thing, where you gotta say somethin’ nice about the person next to you.” She makes a face. “I skipped that part. Faked a headache.”
“Are you going to skip it this time if he makes everyone do it again?”
A pause.
“...Probably not,” Mari admits, her voice small, her eyes refusing to meet Lara’s. “Figured I’d just…see how it goes.”
Lara doesn’t smile, but something in her chest goes warm and full in a way she still isn’t fully used to; this understated pride in watching Mari choose the harder, braver thing in such a small way that nobody else would even notice it happening. Nobody throws a parade for a girl deciding to finally, properly socialize with the people in her after-school club. Lara thinks maybe somebody should.
“I’m proud of you, Mari,” she says instead.
Mari’s ears go pink immediately. “Save it for when I win the tournament.”
“Well, I’m proud of you now, so I might as well say it, right?”
“Whatever. You’re cheesy.” Mari shoves a too-large bite of rice into her mouth like it’ll end the conversation. It doesn’t, but Lara lets her have the illusion of it, watching her chew with badly hidden satisfaction, already thinking about how big she’s allowed to make the sign this time.
Lara still has the smell of vanilla extract in her hair when she drops her bag by the door and goes straight for the art supplies.
She’s gotten better at this. The poster board she bought is the good kind, the one that doesn’t buckle when the paint goes on too thick, and the paint itself is an actual set now instead of the four-color kit she cobbled together back in summer. She’s learned, since then, that letters look more impressive with a shadow behind them. She’s learned that glitter glue dries shinier if you let it sit overnight instead of rushing it with the hair dryer, a lesson that cost her one ruined bath towel and earned her a scolding from Grandma at breakfast the next morning.
She lays the board out on the living room floor and writes it out in pencil first, testing the spacing.
OMI’S LIGHTNING
It’s what the local paper started calling Mari back when she was steamrolling everyone in her division back in middle school, after a match where she’d made her opponent’s corner threw the towel in the second round before the crowd had properly settled into their seats. Mari pretends to hate the nickname. Lara has seen her read the article it came from at least six times.
She’s halfway through outlining the letters in paint when Yoshiya wanders in, still in his work coveralls, smelling faintly of motor oil, and leans over her shoulder uninvited.
“Whatchu got there?”
Lara almost draws out of line from how startled she is. She almost reached a flow state that she forgot she’s not the only one living in that house.
“Welcome home, Yoshiya-san,” she says, looking up. “How was work?”
“Fine.” He drops onto the arm of the couch, still watching the board, squinting. “You makin’ an art project?”
“It’s a banner for Mari’s tournament,” she chimes, unable to hide her delight. “I’m making a new one.”
“Ohh.” Yoshiya leans forward to get a closer look at it. “Don’t we still got the one you made last summer?”
“I’m trying to make this one better.”
“Better how?”
“Better lettering with more paint. And glitter.” She holds up the glitter glue like evidence. “Ema-san has requested I keep it away from the good towels this time.”
“Yeah, that tracks.” He leans in further, studying her pencil outline. “Your kernin’s off on the second kanji.”
Lara blinks at him. “My…what?”
“Kernin’. Spacing between letters.” He points. “See how this one is crammed right up on the next one? Gonna look weird once you paint over it. You want it even, or people are gonna read it wrong from the cheap seats.”
“...How do you know that word?”
“Auto shop’s got a sign out front. I helped repaint it last week.” He shrugs, like this is a completely normal skill for an eighteen-year-old who fixes transmissions to have. “You want some help? I ain’t got nothin’ to do after this, anyway.”
Lara looks at him. Then at the sign. Then back at him.
“Sure,” she says. “That would be great.”
It turns out Yoshiya is extremely good at this. He re-marks her spacing with a ruler he produces from his room down the hall, holds the board steady while she outlines, and has strong, oddly specific opinions about which shade of yellow reads best from a distance under gymnasium lighting; apparently gleaned from doing sound and lighting for the school festival two years in a row. They fall into an easy rhythm, with him handling the straight lines because his hands are steadier, and her handling the shading because she’s better with a brush. It feels like hours go by with them not saying much of anything, just the quiet scrape of paint and the song Yoshiya switches on low from his phone.
“She’s gonna cry when she sees this,” he says, eventually, not looking up from the letter he’s filling in.
“She’ll say she’s not crying.”
“Oh, yeah.” He grins. “She’ll say it’s allergies.”
Lara laughs before she can stop herself, and something about the sound seems to please him, because he grins wider and goes back to his line, humming slightly off-key with the radio.
They’ve gotten as far as the first kanji in ‘lightning’ when Lara hears the front door open. “I’m home,” Mari’s voice calls out. The sound of her footsteps travels through the entryway, and she stops when she rounds the corner into the living room.
Mari frowns at them. “What’re you two doin’?”
Lara and Yoshiya look at each other.
“Nothing,” they say, in perfect unison.
Mari still has her gym bag and her gloves slung over her shoulder as she peers at the poster board, the open paint set, the glitter glue, and the general crime scene that used to be the living room floor.
“Uh huh,” she says.
Lara caves first. She always caves first; Mari has some kind of gravitational pull that makes lying to her feel structurally unsound. “I’m making you a new sign for your tournament.”
Mari’s eyebrows go back to their original configurations, and she blinks. “Oh. Really?”
“It’s not finished, but here. Look.” Lara is careful as she turns the board to Mari, a little shy about it now that it’s actually being looked at, some letters still outlined and waiting for paint, glitter only applied to half of the phrase. It’s not done and messy in places, ambitious in a way that’s currently outpacing her execution.
Mari stares at it for a second too long, then she looks up at Lara, wide-eyed. Her dark eyes clear under the living room lamp.
“You didn’t have to do this again,” she says.
“I wanted to.”
“It’s—” Mari crouches down next to it, runs a finger carefully along the edge of the lettering, not touching the wet part. “It’s looks really good. Seriously. I think it’s even better than the last one you made.”
“I had a good teacher.” Lara nods at Yoshiya, who preens visibly. “And I practiced.”
“You’re amazin’, you know that?” Mari says, and Lara’s heart does a whole gymnastics routine. Mari has made heaps of progress at saying things like that out loud instead of burying them in deflection.
“So are you,” Lara says back fondly, and for a second the two of them just look at each other over the half-finished poster board like there’s no one else in the room.
Yoshiya clears his throat. Loudly.
“You ain’t gonna tell me I’m amazin’ too?” he asks Mari.
Mari doesn’t even look at him. “What for? Smellin’ up the place?”
“This little—” He turns to Lara and cocks his chin to Mari's general direction. “Lara-chan. Tell her.”
“Yoshiya-san helped a lot with the banner,” Lara supplies. “The lettering was mostly him.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Yoshiya crosses his arms, looking smug and satisfied. “You’re welcome.”
Mari looks at him like he’s a fly on her food. “I didn’t even ask you to.”
“You didn’t gotta ask, that’s what makes it generous.”
“Generous,” Mari repeats, flat. “You just wanted an excuse to mess around instead of doin’ your homework, don’t even lie.”
“Maybe both things are true.” He shrugs. “Multitaskin’.”
Mari narrows her eyes at him. “Ain’t you got anythin’ better to do than play with glitter?”
That’s the moment Yoshiya’s whole face changes, ecstatic, like she’s just handed him a slam-dunk. “Oh, wait.” He leans back on his hands. “You jealous or somethin’? You don’t like me helpin’ out Lara-chan?”
“Wha—” Mari’s face goes red so fast Lara actually worries for a second. “Shut up!”
“Relax, champ,” he continues to tease. “I ain’t gonna steal your girl.”
“Shut up or I’m gonna make you shut up—”
“Yikes.” He’s already scrambling up off the floor, grinning, clearly enjoying himself far too much to stop now. “Kiss your girlfriend, weirdo, not me—”
“I will END you—”
What happens next involves a couch cushion, Yoshiya calling Mari a ‘pipsqueak’, Mari lunging across the living room with terrifying athleticism, and Yoshiya shrieking in a register Lara didn’t know he had while narrowly avoiding a kick to the kneecaps.
Lara, still sitting cross-legged on the floor next to her half-finished sign, doesn’t attempt to intervene. She isn’t entirely sure intervention is possible, or wanted, or safe. She just watches as Mari tackles Yoshiya down with her to the floor, both of them laughing too hard to actually fight properly anymore.
She goes back to outlining the letters while she waits for them to tire themselves out. Someone has to finish the sign. She allows herself one small private thought underneath the noise of the siblings: that she’s going to make sure this sign is the best one anyone in that gymnasium has ever seen, bigger and brighter than the one from summer, sturdy enough to survive four days of travel in someone else’s hands…because a practical part of her has already done the math on work schedules and probation periods, and already knows, that she isn’t going to be the one holding it.