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۞
For as long as either of them could remember, from the time he was a toddler and she was an infant, they were given shelter and cared for by the Kawatani Orphanage.
It was a quaint orphanage. It was small, but homely, inhabited by a number of homeless children from Iwatodai, each of them listed in a different faction and granted a different caretaker. They mingled with one another, yes; they all ate in the same places, played in the same places, and attended the same schools. But they answered to a different adult. It ensured the quality care of the children, and prevented stretching anyone too thin.
Akihiko and Miki had grown up knowing nothing else. The leader of their faction was a young man in his late twenties or so - he was a black-brunette, with deep, stern-looking brown eyes and a relatively tall build. His name was Satoru, but more often than not, the children in the faction called him Sato-san. The two siblings both referred to him as such, but when mentioning him outside of his presence, he was almost always known as Chichi.
Alongside Satoru, there was one child who had spent nearly his whole life growing up in the orphanage, who was the eldest member of the faction and assisted with the care of the younger members. Natsuo was his name. He, too, was a black-brunette, but boasted expressive hazel eyes in contrast to his older counterpart, and was much younger, being in his teens. His younger status made him more influential to the childern in the faction - some of them were more inclined to follow Natsuo by example rather than listen to their self-proclaimed parent. And, on the flip side, Natsuo served as the voice of the faction to Satoru.
The system was well-thought out, and life there was peaceful. The children had a roof over their heads, and they often had two or three meals a day, even if they were unsubstantial meals of warm milk and bread, and often soup. Some of the children were miserable. Others were grateful for what they had. Still others were numbed to the world by their trauma, and the remaining few were plainly happy. They grew up this way.
Akihiko and Miki, orphaned siblings without a clue about life before, were the latter.
Their lives were mundane and simple. They woke up from seven to eight in the mornings, and ate breakfast. On some days, they had to stay inside of the orphanage due to weather, like rain or thunderstorms; most others, they were allowed out, and they spent the majority of their time outdoors. There, they would play a countless number of games, from tag to hide and seek, to kite-flying and fishing. If it wasn't cold, they would swim in the nearby river for which the orphanage was named. And after a long day of playing, they would come back home, eat dinner, and fall asleep in the bedroom assigned to their faction, which they shared with six other children, by nine o' clock.
On less carefree days, the orphanage would necessitate that the children help clean the building. Anyone old enough to pick up a broom or a washrag was required to help with the cleaning - those days were spent scrubbing floors, mirrors, and making quick trips back and forth from the orphanage and the river where they gathered bucketfuls of water. On those days, they took a break mid-day and ate lunch, though it was often a quick meal of very little food in exchange for all the work they did. Regardless, most everyone did their fair share, and the chores were done in record timing, with time for evening play before bed.
Most important to the siblings' lives, however, was the existence of their other. Knowing no family aside from each other, they stuck together like glue, and did next to everything together. You did not see Akihiko without Miki, or vice versa. If you did, chances were that something was gravely wrong - Satoru quickly learned that any time one returned to the orphanage without the other, someone was in serious trouble.
The day in question was exemplary of that.
"Sato-san!" The younger of them burst into the orphanage, her eyes rimmed with red, her hands flailing in a panic. "Nii-chan, nii-chan!"
The black-brunette had been reclined in the sleeping room for his faction - most of the children stayed out of it during the day, and so he used it as a peaceful break room during the very rare occasions where there were no other duties to attend to - when he heard the female's wailing. At it, he jumped up immediately, wired to borderline neuroticism in the face of a crisis after several years of dealing with orphaned children. "W-What? What's wrong, Miki?" When she only sobbed harder and pointed frantically out the door of the building, he crouched near her and touched a hand to her shoulder. "Miki, I need you to calm down and tell me what's going on."
"Akinii-chan!" She was on the verge of hyperventilating, something that the adult was trying to calm as she enacted her explanation with dramatic hand gestures. "He fell, and, and, blood! Help!" Satoru swore under his breath and darted back into the sleeping room, from which he grabbed one of the small emergency first aid kits. The little silver-locked girl stayed bouncing in her place in a frenzy; when the older male stepped back out of the room, he took her hand in his much larger one and the two of them darted off toward the site of the accident. God, not another one-
"Akinii! Akinii!" Miki broke her hand away from Satoru's grip when they neared the area. He could spot the slightly older boy not too far away; she ran up to his side and collapsed next to him, her small hands grabbing at the thin set of clothes that covered his worn body. But the boy, aside from bleeding excessively from one of his temples, looked fine, albeit a bit dazed. At his sister's frantic grabbing, he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her closer, trying to speak over her crying.
"Okay! It's not bad, just a little cut! Miki, okay-"
Satoru snorted when crouching near them. Little cut. All right, well, it was pretty small given that Miki was screaming bloody murder over it, but no 'small cut' bled this profusely. "Stay still, Aki. We need to stop the bleeding before you faint."
The boy did as he was told. Although it was apparent by the shock on his face that he was just as surprised as Miki, he handled it much more calmly than his little sister. That was typical. He was more subdued than his younger counterpart. "What caused this?" The male began to question as he applied a firm hand to the injury, his first attempt to stop the flow while he fished out the proper supplies. Akihiko informed him that they had just been playing by the riverbed when he slipped and managed to hit his head on one of the jutting rocks there; Satoru had told them time and time again to be careful when playing in the area, but this had been the first instance of either one of them getting hurt."How many times have I told you- hey. Look at me for a second." The child met Satoru's eyes, which studied his face. "...All right, it doesn't look like you got a concussion."
"Akinii okay?" Miki turned away from crying into her brother's shoulder, sorely rubbing an arm across her tear-soaked face. "He gonna die?"
"Hah," Satoru smiled and shook his head. "No. He's fine. You two just need to be more careful when you run around on the riverbed, okay? He could have been hurt worse."
"Yay!" The girl was returned to her usual bouncy demeanor the next instant, as quickly as if the crisis never happened. Satoru had to tell her to calm down once or twice so that he could finish actually patching the injury, pressing onto it a white, square bandage to pad it and protect it from any invading infection. "Akinii's okay!"
...He was relieved.
Not but a few days ago, one of the children that the orphanage picked up years back - around the same time Akihiko and Miki both came into their custody - had passed away. He was slightly older than both siblings, but they had grown up being closer acquaintances in comparison to their relationship with the rest of the children in their faction, and Satoru had been worried that the loss might have driven Akihiko to recklessness. Did he think it was unlikely? Well, yes. But the child in question, only a few years older than Akihiko, had taken his own life. He had been too young to know it was wrong - it might even have been an accident. But it wasn't unusual for particularly traumatized children in the orphanage to attempt suicide, although they were often, admittedly, much older, and it was just as likely that the drastic act was sometimes emulated by other children.
But Akihiko was fine. In fact, the loss hadn't shaken either of them very much. They were sad, of course, but Miki hadn't shed more than a few tears, and here she was with Akihiko, sobbing like the end of the world was coming when all he had was a cut.
"It's getting late, anyway. You should both come back for dinner."
"Aw!" They both whined at this. Akihiko staggered a little from vertigo when rising back to his feet, but shooed away Satoru's impulsive attempts to help him keep balance in his moment of defiance. "No! We wanna play!"
"Hey. I told you to be careful around the riverbed, and you got hurt anyway. You can come back a little earlier tonight. " He resisted smiling at their pouting faces, "Look at the bright side; you'll get first pick of dinner! At least pretend to look happy!"
Well, Miki had no need for pretending. She was all cheered up again.
۞
They were both seated in the enclosed dining room, which was known to be a starkly empty room outside of the kitchen area padded only by a swath of cushions for the children to seat themselves at. Miki and Akihiko both reclined on a cushion each and watched Satoru as he disappeared into the kitchen to retrieve their meals.
"Akinii," Miki pushed her kinsman's shoulder, pointing to a figure seated alone in the corner of the room. He looked up, his platinum eyes transfixed there. "Who?"
Satoru returned before Akihiko could find words to respond with. Both children returned their eyes to their foster parent, who set down a bowl large enough to fit two or three cups of soup in it accompanied by a glass of milk for each of them. He noticed that the two children had taken notice of the newcomer, however, and swiftly used this as an excuse to introduce the young boy. "Why don't you come on over, Shinjiro?"
The boy, whose disheveled locks veiled his brunneous gaze, said nothing.
Miki nor Akihiko budged from their places. While both were talkative amongst each other - Miki especially - they were both equally shy when it came to other children, and refused to move an inch in the strange boy's direction.
"Come on, you two. You can go over and say hi."
The female started to fidget with her hands, inclined to obey Satoru's commands slightly moreso than Akihiko was. She caved once to nursing at her glass of milk, afterwards standing and grabbing hold of her brother's sleeve to keep him near her for support. Both of them wandered over with utmost caution, with Miki's gaze locked onto her feet.
"Shin-ji-ro-san," She mumbled almost mutely beneath her breath. She afterwards chose the easiest expression of his name and spoke slightly louder, "Hi, Shin-san."
The brunette still didn't budge, but did glance up, slipping his bangs from his eyes.
"He's the latest addition to our faction, you two. Make him feel at home."
The silver-locked female made a brief, thoughtful noise, and bounded back away at that prompting; Akihiko, then, found himself close to the male, although was stiffly quiet while observing the unfamiliar boy. Satoru sighed, figuring that was to be expected. They were both far too cripplingly shy around the other children. Being the older of the two, Akihiko might have been the slightest bit more comfortable interacting with strangers, but he was even less talkative than his sister by default.
Satoru watched this anxious weaving that Akihiko committed when approaching, his platinum eyes always fixed deliberately on the brunette, watching his every movement. That stopped after a minute. He reached the corner in which Shinjiro was situated and paused to brace himself. "...Hello, Shinji-san." He held out a timid hand.
The strange boy who was slightly larger than himself finally moved, though it was to push himself further in the corner he had chosen to occupy. Akihiko faltered and stepped back, confused by the brunette's rejection of his advances.
"Now, Shinji." The only adult in the vicinity stepped up. "It's all right. They're only trying to be friendly. Why don't you open up to them a little?"
The brunette hugged himself closer, his face softening slightly from its glare. "...Hi."
Miki returned about that time, holding the bowl of soup she had been given by Satoru. In her efforts toward making a friendly gesture, she set the bowl down between herself and Shinji, pushing it gently forward to him. "Hungry?"
Shinji swallowed and looked from the food to the small girl. Satoru frowned; he wasn't usually allowed to give more than one bowl of soup to each child, but Miki still needed to eat. He almost considered giving the bowl back to her, but the little brunette sat up straight afterwards and began to consume the soup without use of a utensil as Miki had forgotten to bring it as well. Both siblings watched with relative wonder as the boy pried food from the concoction with his fingers and then picked up the bowl to press it against his lips, swallowing the broth in ravenous gulps with no heed to manners.
Satoru pitied the boy, really. He, like some others they had received before, had been picked up off the streets. He didn't know what happened to his parents. He had been living on his own with limited assistance from some older females who were in the area - the promise of food and a place to sleep had been sufficient to coax him from the rundown area of Iwatodai he was in and to the Kawatani orphanage. Most kids as young as him would have already died on the streets. They were lucky to rescue him.
The brunette declined coming with the siblings when they offered to let him sit with them, so they both departed back to their original place, sharing Akihiko's soup between the two of them in compensation for Miki's sacrifice. They did steal glances at the brunette from time to time, but the shyness of all three children sufficed to prevent them from interacting any more than what meager exchanges they already had.
۞
The following few days, both Satoru and Natsuo kept watch over the newest addition. Shinji, like many of the other children already present there, tended to keep to himself; he slept in his own specific corner of the sleeping room, ate by himself, and wandered around the premises in his free time. Without motivation to go 'make friends', Shinji took an explicit interest in the kitchen.
Riyeko, the orphanage's female cook, tried several times to shoo him out. "It's not mealtime. Go and play with the other children."
But if there was anything Shinji had a problem doing, it was obeying.
He wasn't an obnoxious kid, no. On the contrary, he was usually polite and noticeably quiet - not to say he was softspoken, because when he talked it was for a reason, and you heard him. But regardless of the many times he was persistently ushered out the kitchen, he turned right around walked back inside. Unlike other children, he didn't ask for food, nor did he try and steal it off the counter. He just lingered inoffensively and watched Riyeko work with the food she had to ready for that evening's dinner.
It became routine for the week following his adoption into the orphanage. He would wake up, follow through the habitual teeth-brushing and head-counting, follow the rest of his faction into the dining room for breakfast, and then slipped into the kitchen just after to meander around and look at all the ingredients that Riyeko must have used to prepare their food. She would arrive not long after, make sure that he hadn't snuck any ingredients - which he never did, who could tell why? - and then proceed with making lunch, which he would watch and assist with as much as he could by transporting goods and observing, perching on one of the few stools inside so that he was high enough to see. When she left the kitchen, he would, too, and linger around just outside of the orphanage building, always on his own; he came back inside to eat lunch, then returned to the kitchen before dinner, following this schedule until he was put to bed for the night.
It was that way that Shinji just so happened to befriend the residential cook before he got to know any of his fellow children in the orphanage.
Eventually Riyeko refused to continue letting him use the kitchen as an excuse to hide away from the other children. Once she had finished preparing that evening's dinner in a slow-cooking pot, that day being almost a week after Shinji's first arrival, she topped the dish with a lid and departed the kitchen while taking the brunette's hand to lead him outside.
"I still have to clean up and put back the ingredients," The dark-brunette had told him. "You go and meet some new friends, all right?"
He wasn't very inclined to the idea. He felt misplaced around other children his age, and tended to avoid them regardless of how friendly they were. So he redirected his footsteps toward the wooded area from which the Kawatani river flowed out toward the ocean; he preferred the isolation of the forest and had a penchant for climbing.
Stepping around the first few trees that marked the entrance of the woods, the brunette weaved his way around the lower-hanging branches, sticking close to the riverbed as the foliage there was softer against his sore and calloused feet. Most of the children kept out of this area - the youngest of them were sternly advised against wandering out of sight of the building, while the older children and teenagers either stuck near the river or, contrastly, wandered off to the nearby Iwatodai to entertain themselves. But, just his luck, the forest wasn't quite absent today. He had only walked twenty or so steps into the woods when he heard someone yelling from a distance further in.
He approached the voice. Why? Maybe out of curiosity, or because he empathized with the fear that was so apparent there. But when he got close enough to distinguish the voice, the words, he picked up pace and started to run through the tangle of trees in search of the girl who he so swiftly recognized as the same one that had greeted him days ago.
"Akinii! Aki-!" Her shouts were cut off by the gradual snap of wood.
Shinji began to call back to her at that point in his concern. Was she trapped? Was she hurt? She kept calling, and so he found her before long; it was the silver-haired girl from before, as he suspected, and she had somehow found her way up into a tree. She was thereupon left clinging helplessly to a sagging branch that was slowly but surely giving way underneath her weight, crying helplessly for her brother.
Shouting up at her to stay still, the brunette assessed the tree. It couldn't be very hard to climb if the girl, who was younger than him, could accomplish it; he quickly spotted the means by which she did in the form of a dead branch that had already broken off and was lying diagonal against the ground, still limply attached to the trunk. Scaling it with considerable effort, he edged his way around onto the branch that the girl occupied, not thinking that their conjoined weight would only worsen the issue.
While his attentions were focused on touching his hand to the one that the girl outstretched towards him, a step or two onto the branch sufficed to completely break it. She screamed. Shinji gritted his teeth and vaulted backwards against the remaining stub of the branch just wide enough to support him when he collapsed against it, and he squeezed his grip on the girl's hand for all it was worth in his effort to avoid dropping her. The brunette was hardly conscious of the approaching footsteps over the wild drumming of his heart on top of the wailing of the girl he held with a rapidly weakening grip. He shut his eyes against the strain he enforced on his entire body, his breathing taut and forced.
"Miki!" The voice broke through to him that time. The weight of the girl diminished rapidly in that single instant, and when Shinji popped his eyes back open, he could see that the girl's brother had finally arrived underneath her to grab hold of her dangling ankles, thus relieving the brunette of some of her weight. Both siblings looked up at him and his precarious position against the tree; he was kneeled over on it, the bark scratching at the front of his body through the flimsy set of clothes he wore and was in as much risk of falling off as the girl he had endeavored to save was. In addition, she wasn't safely grounded yet.
Shinji realized that submitting the girl to her brother would be her best path to safety at this point. He released her hand; she squealed and only squeezed him tighter.
"Let go," He commanded her gruffly.
She swallowed and looked up at him, but did as she was told. Whether it was because she believed him or because she was too weak to hold on any longer, he didn't know, but in the end she was okay - Shinji watched with a smile of amusement as the entirety of her weight fell down on top of her brother, who frantically scrambled for a grip on her, only to collapse beneath her weight and leave them both in a pile among the cushioning leaves.
Once assessing that her brother was okay, the girl degenerated into a fit of giggles, which were deemably contagious for her brother picked up on it a just after. Shinji, meanwhile, scrabbled for a hold on the tree he was stranded on, managing to bring himself to a woozy stand and holding his body closely to the trunk while he caught his breath and waited for his shaking legs to stabilize underneath him. She was okay. He wasn't sure why, but knowing that did make him sort of happy. He didn't want to see her get hurt.
He made his way back around the weaving branches so absent of leaves at this time of year, and Shinji carefully tread his way down the convenient half-broken branch that had made scaling up the tree so easy. He was met with a tackling hug that knocked the breath out of him, conjoined with a plethora of cheering. "Yayyy, Shin-chan!"
"Miki, careful," Her older brother was close on her heels, bringing his view back up to the brunette who was standing uncomfortably still against the girl's affection. The two boys met made eye contact, and the slightly younger of them bowed his head. "...Thank you."
The brunette remained quiet. He glanced down to the girl, Miki, who released him, but bounced in place and swayed with a hold on one of his hands. "Why you up there?"
"Hide and seek." The girl giggled again, "Play with us!"
Shinji stopped. Hide and seek? He had never heard of it.
"Oh, I'm Akihiko," The brother extended a hand toward him, which Shinji paused momentarily before taking. Watching their palms meet, the brunette took note of how tan he was in comparison to the silver-maned boy, who's skin was much fairer, until they released hands and Akihiko gestured to his younger counterpart. "My sister, Miki."
He tried to smile a little. "I'm... Shinjiro."