His father had died before he was born, swallowed up in the fire and noise of the war and his mama had followed after him four years later, her already ailing health pushed to breaking both grief and the pressures that came from raising a child on her own.
Still he has the memory of his mama's stories the man his father had been and her dying request that he be a kind, gentle, boy, as guide for his life and, for all that it is not so very much, he learns swift to appreciate even that much.
So many others had been left with nothing, after all.
It makes him hate the war and he channels that into doing what he can to be helpful around the orphanage, to fix with softness and kindness everything its hatred had broken.
He's always understood that that's why he'd focused so intently on Nageki even...before...that there'd been some wild thought somewhere there in his hind brain that if he could make the boys life even a little better, it would be like throwing a middle finger up to everyone who still felt violence the only way out.
Somehow he'd ended up with a family through the effort and he'd started to believe it divine apology for everything, started to truly let himself be happy and then...
Mouth thick the taste of gun-smoke and the hot iron of fresh blood there'd been no anger, no grief, just a numb coldness that'd settled deep into his marrow.
If not for Nageki he knows that he would have been lost to that numbness, that that would have been the moment he took a life without hesitation or even regret and perhaps everything would have been better somehow.
Because of Nageki he'd pretended the chill wasn't there, done what had needed to be done and taken their lives back up as though nothing had happened.
As though there wasn't a night that passed undisturbed by nightmares of...that day...or that he hadn't made a point of not only insuring their names were never mentioned in reports of...the incident...but also that they re-located to an area of the city where they would be complete strangers.
Hiding had kept them free the last death throws of the war, free also the use of their personal tragedy as ammo for the political wrangling that'd followed and yet, this time, he had not been so foolish as to believe it an end.
It means he's at least able to be sensible when he learns how far his brother's health had actually degenerated, that for all that he's still a cocktail of dark, unpleasant, emotions, he has strength enough to push them away before there's even a threat of being swallowed by them.
Means that they're talking to doctors and then specialists swiftly enough that, for a while, it seems that, perhaps, even this had not been as much blow as it could have been.
His deepest wish is that he might have stayed cynical a moment more and seen the fear in the specialists eye as she'd talked of Dr Iwamine, or that he'd done more than accept the fragile explanation he'd been given for why his brother would no longer be talking phone calls, or even that he'd picked up on how unlike himself his brother sounded in each and every letter after this just a little faster.
Perhaps it would not have made any difference, perhaps standing in the way of Iwamine Shuu would have proved as deadly certainty then as it was now and yet...
Desperation had made him blind, made him trust and Nageki had burned for the negligence.
He'd made a promise to himself then that he'd do what he could to make it right, to insure his brother buried and the man at the heart of his death brought to sure and swift justice.
Promised that all that Hitori Uzune was, all that he might have been, had burned away with Nageki.
Oh but then that chance meeting in the rain; eyes and hair that seem almost to capture the essence of summer one tiny, trembling, form; stumbling, clumsy Japanese, edged an accent that remains, as much about the other, complete mystery.
He'd never truly believed in the idea of a soul mate even before...everything...and afterwords bitter cynicism means he'd have laughed outright the notion that anything touched fate's hands could prove a pure and positive life influence.
Yet every evening he'd spent tangled tight at Nanaki's side, listening quiet and unobtrusive as the other tearfully recounted the indignities of the day, there'd been more and more the sure and warm sense that this is where he belonged.
That perhaps fate had cut him so that he might fit even better this strange and broken soul next to him.
He'd daydream constantly of what it would be to use his savings to take Nanaki far away from Japan, of buying them a little house somewhere isolated, of living and dying in a world built large enough only for the two of them.
Reality would always drift in eventually, the ceaseless nightmares of broken, bloodied, bodies there beneath his feet and the tattered rag-doll corpse of Nageki there at his side placing voice to the poison of his guilt.
He stops sleeping, begins popping stimulants two or three at time and begins to work his way through every energy drink on the market all to keep up the appearance of normality.
To keep Nanaki from worrying.
Inevitably he snaps, twists so much in on himself that when he comes back, Nanaki gasping and writhing at his side, hands clawing clear desperate want to hurt him somehow in return, he thinks himself lost some fresh new nightmare.
It's the sharp smell of bile in his nose that tells this real, has him one panicked moment trying desperate to pry the pills from the others lips no matter that it's far, far, too late for that.
No matter if there is now nothing but stillness and quiet where but moments previous there had been life.
A cold distance he removes all traces another their apartment, wraps his old red scarf about Nanaki's corpse, exchanges their wallets and then, the softest of kisses cold, cold, lips, he does what has to be done.
Moves on because he must.
T
He has a promise to keep, after all.