"Thanks, Mom!"
Footsteps pounded up the stairs and became muted with the sound of a slamming door. Hysterical laughter followed the clanging as two pre-teens sagged against the door, clinging to each other for support. They calmed, exchanged a glance, and burst into laughter for a second time.
The boy, an orange-haired, dark-eyed being, stumbled over to a sealed case on the floor of the dark-haired girl's room, and sat down heavily in front of it. The girl joined him a minute later, chuckling still. As the boy situated the guitar on his lap, she leaned against his back, her head on his shoulder as their shoulder blades pressed together.
He strummed the guitar a few times, humming as he did so, then scowling in frustration. His eyes snapped to the tuners, which his fingers ran over and turned a little, before he strummed the strings once again. The scowl turned into a look of contentment, and he played harder on the guitar, humming the tune to an old lullaby of their youth. She sang the words, her voice rough and untrained, but clear as a bell.
When the song ended, the sounds fading into silence, his eyes wandered around the room he had practically grown up in, alongside the girl he considered his sister. His gaze landed on the window and the tree outside it, and his eyes lit up. He nudged her roughly, and she grunted in reply, elbowing his side. "Let's go to the roof," he suggested, and she opened her eyes and turned her head to stare at his chin.
"Are you crazy, Ichigo?" she asked, not sounding as if she had an opinion on the matter.
He stood, and she landed on her back with a huff of surprise, before twisting herself and scrambling to see him halfway up the tree to reach the roof. "Ichigo!" she cried, rushing out after him.
By the time she was at the top of the tree, he was already there, his guitar across his lap and staring at the sunset. It was quiet, and she was loath to disrupt it. She climbed quietly onto the roof and settled next to him, entwining their arms and laying her head on his shoulder. The sun continued its decent, uncaring of its audience, uncaring of the turmoil that accompanied them.
A few lone rays stood stark against the purpling sky, peppered with white stars. The music from the guitar started up again, a tune she did not know. She didn't move when he began to sing the words, his voice breaking the vigil of the evening. It sounded like a folk song, which would make sense. His mother had loved old English folk.
Like the song before, the tune eventually died. The foreign words hung in the air, a barrier between them and the conversation that was rapidly approaching.
Ichigo moved, setting aside his beloved guitar and leaning backwards. She moved with him, and their gazes remained fixated on the dark night atmosphere. "Tatsuki?" he said quietly, and she kept silent, but he knew she was listening. "I want to go to a music school when we graduate high school," was the comment she had been waiting for.
"Let me guess," she said easily, "out of Japan, right?"
He huffed a laugh. "Yeah. Out of Japan."
They both knew why. Japan was too harsh a home, the bearer of strong memories, and not necessarily good ones.
His mother had been killed in Japan- at the river that ran hardly a few kilos from the roof where they rested.
His sisters cried in Japan, all the time, and his father wasn't technically a native anyway.
It didn't matter where they went.
"I'm sorry, Ichigo," she muttered for the hundred billionth time, words that held meaning the first time, but became ritual after a while.
He didn't reply. He never did, especially on the anniversary.