Good Enough
1ncest (Takayuki/Honoka) ; a handful of chronological snapshots featuring the two siblings, 'T' for themes and implications
'Your brother didn't want a little sister you know?,' her mother conversationally begins, carefully wrapping the bandage around her sobbing daughter's arm. It's not broken, not even bruised, but the little girl insists that the wrappings make things feel better.
'I know, I know,' she says, crying her heart out. That's why her older brother is so mean all the time; that's why he never lets her do anything fun.
'But you don't know,' her mother replies, smiling the smile that all mothers seem to have. 'Because your brother takes being a big brother very seriously.' She motions to the other room, where her husband is no doubt tending to their son's minor burn wounds.
'I just wanted to bake something yummy,' Honoka cries.
'I'm sure your brother knows that too,' her mother reassures, smoothing down her daughter's soft hair.
Her parents never say anything, but she knows, knows how quietly proud they are to have such a stellar son.
'Look at Takayuki-kun, all grown up,' the neighbors chatter to one another. He is smart, he is clever, he is kind. And he is her brother and he takes her to the nursery school when their parents cannot, holding her hand all the way.
'Nii-chan,' she calls, and he turns towards her immediately. She says nothing though, just hangs on tight and grins, and he squeezes back in-return and they share a joke without words.
She is proud too, she realizes, to have a brother like him.
One day, he comes home with a bleeding scrape that runs from his ankle to his knee.
She asks what happened, of course, but he won't say anything - just grins first and grimaces second. She helps him apply bandages and tries to stick up for him throughout their parents naturally concerned interrogation, but even then, he says nothing.
The next day, he comes home even later with even more scrapes and bruises. Nothing so bad as the one from the day before, but the edges of his shirt are still tattered nonetheless.
She asks what happened again, with a greater sense of insistency and urgency, and again he says nothing. She wants to threaten to tell their parents but that would happen anyways. She helps apply salve to the places his hands can't reach and he bites his bottom lip and bears with the pain.
Her older brother has always been nothing short of an honor student, Honoka knows this full well. She asks and asks, up until the point when she receives the phone call that both their parents will be working late and her brother really lucked out this time, and he doesn't give any answer. He doesn't even bite back though, just tries to distract her with video games with homework help (the latter of which she grudgingly accepts).
The day after that, her brother brings a friend home. This isn't the first time he's brought friends home, but this new face is different. Wild black hair and wild black eyes greet her, lips curving into a manic smile upon first meeting. She shrieks and dives behind her brother, who smacks the other boy upside of the head, grumbling 'don't freak my little sister out!'.
Oga, as he's introduced as, looks between the brother and sister and ponders this relation for a moment. Then he cracks up for no discernible reason (or at least, not one that Honoka can see) and she releases her brother, letting him put away his schoolbag and shoes. Oga stays for an afternoon snack, swinging his legs impatiently while her brother helps her with the english exercises. She shrinks into herself, shame doubled by the feeling of a stranger being in their home, and Takayuki immediately notices.
'Oi Oga, go start a new game of Dragon Quest will you?' her older brother asks, jabbing a thumb at the unoccupied Playstation. She visibly relaxes and he turns to her, speaking in English, 'That's not so hard, right?' She laughs and they continue with her homework. Afterwards, Takayuki fixes them an after-afternoon snack and the three of them sit in front of the Playstation with her brother and his friend trading off on the RPG.
It's not so bad, she thinks when Oga leaves as soon as their parents get home. He might have a scary grin, but he's just like all the other older kids.
Honoka learns that her older brother's best friend is not like the other kids - not like them in any way - when she takes a detour through a café one afternoon. The small shop sits opposite to the riverbank, inviting a gentle breeze and with it, deafening howls for mercy. She knows it's not her business, knows instinctively that those sounds are dangerous. Still, she quickly pays for her cake and tiptoes out to peer meekly out the side of the fence.
There, she recognizes a familiar figure indeed and her shock gets the better of her.
"Oga-kun...?" she asks, and the middle-school boy turns around, grinning the devil's grin. She scuttles back just in time to hear and a thump on the back of the fence and whirls her head up just in time to see -
Her older brother land an overhead kick to the madly-grinning boy perched on top of the fence.
"Ow!" Oga grumbles, standing up and working his jaw. "That really... well, no, I barely felt it, but still. What the fuck was that for?!"
"You were about to attack my sister, you idiot!"
"No I wasn't! And who are you calling an idiot, idiot?!"
She must be more shaken up than she feels; her older brother actually ignores the brewing quarrel in-favor of kneeling down by her side. "Honoka," he says, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Honoka, are you okay?"
To her eternal humiliation, she starts crying right then and there, big globs of snot and tears, oozing down her face. Her brother panics, wildly waving his hands, and she manages to get a couple hysterical phrases out. "I don't - I don't want - I don't think he's a good friend!" she sobs, wildly pointing her finger, fear for her brother overtaking self-preservation. With effort, Takayuki manages to scoop her up, backpack and all. He has the nerve to say 'See you tomorrow' to Oga though.
She cries some more - cries all the way back home and then some, really - and he doesn't ever complain about her dirtying his uniform. He unlocks the door with one hand and sits them both down on the couch, heating up milk and honey despite it being the afternoon. Still, it's her favorite drink and he knows it and he knows how to make her laugh and she is laughing soon enough. And then, because-because, she apologizes.
"I'm sorry," she laugh-cries, maintaining eye contact with the bottom of the mug.
"I'm not the one you're supposed to be apologizing to," her brother quietly says.
It's the closest he's ever come to reprimanding her, she realizes.
She does apologize at the next opportunity which turns out to be the next day. Her brother and his best friend come over to play Dragon Quest like usual and she sits in seiza and bows fully and says sorry like they do on television. Oga finds this hilarious apparently, as he falls off the couch laughing and, somehow, everything is forgiven.
"You don't need to be good though," he tells her when Takayuki goes to the bathroom. "Just good enough." She mulls over the words and, without even realizing it, comes to accept them herself.
Her older brother takes her out shopping sometimes. He says that it's less embarrassing than going with their mother (who, admittedly, has an thing for wool) and after a while, she grows tired of watching her try on shirt after shirt and throws on a couple herself.
'That one looks really good!' her brother says, seeming to materialize out of nowhere as she was in mid-twirl. She hides her face and scurries back into the dressing room, frantically wondering how many outfits he had seen her try on and why it felt so embarrassing. Still, she dredges up enough of her savings to buy the skirt, only for him to lightly bat the bills away, insisting that he would be the one to pay.
Of course he had done it for the sake of the pretty manager but she treasures the inadvertent gift nonetheless. He has terrible taste in clothing though, as he tries to bribe her with the most hideous of shirts and dresses later on.
It was only a matter of time before the rumors spread full circle: that there was a middle school kid capable of taking on high school delinquents; that that kid went to middle school somewhere around Ishiyama; that that kid had a book-smart best friend; that that book-smart best friend had a little sister.
She regrets desperately ignoring the bullying attempts on a girl in her previous class. Her classmates can be quite cruel, she realizes first-hand. There is a group of four girls who harrass her at every opportunity, with the rest of the class - and the teacher too, at times - looking the other way. It's little things in the beginning: misplaced pencils, ripped books, and stolen shoes. They call her a baby ogre (and worse names) but they don't deface her desk and they don't physically hurt her and they don't affect her grades.
So Honoka tries to keep her head low, hopes that they'll go away, go away, go away, and ends up with bubblegum in her hair. It might have been an accident; it might have been bad luck. Either way, she thinks it was on purpose and that the whole universe is out to get her and she runs straight home after the school bell, hat shamefully pulled over her face. Her brother isn't at home though (of course, middle schoolers got out later) so she's stuck waiting and pacing and waiting and pacing.
Finally, she grows sick of doing nothing and wrenches off the hat (painfully yanking a couple strands of hair along with it) and grabs a pair of scissors. She has enough sense to move to a mirror, but not enough sense to realize the difficulty of the task.
Snip, snip; this is the sound Takayuki is welcomed home by. His ears perk up and he walks over to the bathroom, expression curious at first and then immediately horrified.
"Honoka - what are you doing?!" he screams, grabbing the scissors. She cries, blubbers through some explanation, and by then, he's already got the peanut butter out and she's the one screaming as he slathers a liberal amount over her hair. It works though - of course it works - and when she inevitably asks how he knew this kind of stuff, he just grinned, answering that it was part and parcel of being an older brother.
She hugs him tightly then, tears of joy and all, and when their mother comes home, she helps trim her daughter's hair.
"Yukari said boys don't like girls with short hair," Honoka pouts over the dinner table.
Her mother sighs, pressing a hand to her cheek. Her father chokes on his rice and her brother spits out his drink.
"Honoka-chan, you're too young to be thinking of that..." her father starts, right as her brother launches into:
"Don't be ridiculous! True men can enjoy hair of all sizes, shapes, and lengths!"
The two men of the house look at one another awkwardly then, and the matriarch bursts into laughter.
Honoka laughs too, more out of relief than humor, but reassured nonetheless.
Her older brother is not the violent type - not at all. Which is why it's so surprising to see him fly into a rage when one of the boys in the upper class tries to push her down a flight of stairs. It's incredibly uncool and utterly humiliating, watching him attempt to punch a delinquent a whole head taller (and probably twice his width).
"...The fuck?" the blond-haired boy mutters, rubbing at his cheek. "Trying to look cool in front of your girlfriend, huh?"
"That's not my girlfriend, it's my sis - " her brother manages to get out before being thrown down the flight of stairs himself. She screams and runs to his aid, looking up to see the delinquent turning heel and leaving - leaving because they're not even worth his time - and her upper lip curls and before she knows it, the first syllable of his name is at the edge of her tongue and -
"Honoka - don't," Takayuki warns, extricating himself from the floor and lightly touching her cheek. She turns away, frowning, and realizes vaguely that he only ever chastises her when his best friend is concerned. There's the obvious question on her lips and he stands up, limping back up the stairs to retrieve his bag.
The walk home is in absolute silence; she pretends she can't hear the stifled drip of blood.
"Ah, Honoka?" her older brother hesitantly calls half an hour after reaching home. Reluctantly, she goes downstairs, finding him in the bathroom with a roll of bandages and sauve. He motions to a still-blossoming bruise on the small of his back and smiles helplessly. "Uh, could you help your big brother a bit?"
"You don't need to ask," she mutters, getting on her knees and helping. There is a smattering of welts and cuts - some of them dealt by her, no doubt - but a notable absence of scars. A small relief is a relief nonetheless, she thinks, dabbing at the bruise.
He winces and, in the heat of pain, accidentally clutches at her hand.
"You have to fight your battles," he tells her sometime later, a roundabout sort of answer.
"Isn't it the same for me then?" she slowly retorts.
He blinks and then laughs, ruffling her now-short hair.
"I guess," he says.
It's a good enough answer, Honoka comes to realize. And he is a good enough brother.