His shoulders were slumped, begging to have a friendly arm slung around them and Sorata was happy to oblige.
"Hey Kamui, how was class?"
"It's over at least."
"Aw, come on, it can't have been that bad, right?" Sorata gave the boy a gentle shake.
"It really wasn't great." He stared sullenly at the sidewalk beneath his shoes as though debating whether or not it was worth continuing down a path that never looked any different.
Sorata's heart skipped a beat as Arashi silently joined them. Of course her walk home was the same, but she didn't actually have to fall into step with him and Kamui. Even if she did maintain a good meter or so distance between them, she clearly was offering her own quiet support with her mere presence. Of course, she brightened the scenery considerably as well as far as Sorata was concerned. Before he could cheerfully remark, Yuzuriha bounded up on the other side of Kamui. He couldn't help but notice that she had specifically chosen not to get between him and Arashi despite obviously having plenty of room and made a mental note not to underestimate her perceptiveness.
"Hey Sorata! Can I ask you something?" She leaned past Kamui to face him and all three other heads present turned to her in curiosity.
"Of course! You can ask me anything." He briefly tightened his grip on Kamui's shoulder just to remind the boy that he had not been forgotten in the arrival of their companions.
"So in class we got to talking about monasteries."
"Ah, and you wanted to hear some of my sage wisdom learned therein." Sorata gave a humorously solemn nod.
"Oh no, I was just wondering if you ever fooled around with any of the other guys there!"
Without thinking, Sorata's arm flew out from around Kamui, though the younger boy seemed too shocked by the question to notice. Even Arashi's face, he noticed out of the corner of his eye, had gone stony as though she had frozen herself before she could show reaction.
"Um…" he quickly adjusted his baseball cap just to have something to do with the suddenly freed arm. "What?"
"Yeah, it came up that homosexual encounters are really common in monasteries. I was just wondering if you'd ever done anything like that!"
"Uh, well all of the other monks in Kyouya were older…"
"But isn't pederasty common?" She stared up at him with guileless eyes.
"I don't know about in other places but all of the monks I knew were like grandfathers to me." Sorata gave an awkward laugh. "So no, it would have been just too weird."
"Oh." Yuzuriha considered this information. "Okay."
An uncomfortable silence fell between the four of them until a thought struck him.
"Hey, Onee-san. You were raised with other shrine maidens, right? Did you ever…"
He obviously wasn't the only one to notice the murderous glare he got as Yuzuriha cut him off to flit between he and Arashi and pull her away to look at some window display.
Kamui snorted.
"Damn, I really wanted to know." Sorata stared over his shoulder at the girls, slowly disappearing behind them.
"Is that really a thing?"
"Oh I've heard of it happening before. I even think two of our older monks had once been… lovers I guess." Sorata gave a faint shrug and laugh. "Or maybe they still were, I don't know, I never really thought on it much because like I said, they were too much like grandfathers to me."
Kamui glanced at him then averted his gaze quickly to the sidewalk again and as much as he would have liked to change the subject, Sorata decided to wait patiently for whatever question the subject had raised.
"If- if there had been someone younger though, do you think anything would have happened then?" The words tumbled out strangely, as though Kamui had somewhat disassociated his mind from his mouth, just to avoid really thinking about them.
"Nah." At least it was a pretty easy answer. "That's really just never been my thing. 'Gonna die for a pretty girl' and all, you know?"
Kamui nodded silently, staring even more intently at the concrete. Sorata decided now wasn't really the time to address the real source of the question and instead shifted the topic enough to not brush too close to some things Kamui still had to work out for himself.
"It would have been great though, having someone else my age." He stretched. "I always wanted a brother."
Kamui glanced up again, with a faint smile. "Yeah?"
"It would have been awesome to have someone else to blame whenever I stole extra food."
A mild chuckle.
Kamui had been through so much, he realized, had had so much misery laid out for all the world to see, it was pretty understandable that there were still things he would want and need to keep private. It seemed unfair somehow, that everyone else, some total strangers, should already know so much about him, about his destiny, about his mother, his best friend, the death of his childhood sweetheart… Sorata sighed.
"You know, I used to actually imagine that I had brothers somewhere. I mean I hadn't seen my biological family since I was pretty little, so I had this whole fantasy that I had like eight brothers who would all decide to come join the monastery too and we'd run around and get into all kinds of crazy mischief like little forest spirits. And then one day, I'd grow up, meet whatever beautiful woman I was supposed to die for, but first I would get a chance to marry her and when I did I would have eight groomsmen at my wedding because all of my brothers would be there."
"Have you ever thought of looking your family up, to see if you do actually have any siblings? You still could."
Sorata shook his head slowly. "It seems like all of the Seal's families… end badly." He gingerly remarked, hoping not to trigger any bad memories of Kamui's. "I wouldn't want to drag them into the chaos that is my- our lives right now."
Kamui nodded but looked pained and at first Sorata thought that he was thinking of the deaths of his mother and aunt, before he realized that the boy's sadness wasn't stemming from his own loss, but from a sympathetic loneliness.
"Oh, but it's okay!" He quickly backtracked. "Really, it is!" Sorata gave him a huge grin that was somewhat forced, but not false. "I feel like I actually got a brother! Two even!" Confusion registered on Kamui's face. "You and Sumeragi-san are pretty awesome!"
Kamui stared at him in surprise. "You… think of me and Subaru as brothers?"
"Can't you just see it?" Sorata pointed so emphatically at Kamui that the younger boy had to duck to avoid having an eye poked out. "You're like the youngest brother who gets the most attention and Subaru is the super serious older brother who's busy being all mature and whatnot." He mimicked a solemn face that was so foreign to his features that Kamui laughed.
"And you are?"
"The middle child who gets along with everybody of course!"
"Of course." Kamui's smile could be so warm at times, such a striking contrast to his usual gloom.
"But you really are like family to me." Sorata sobered slightly. "I don't know how to better explain how much I want to look out for you, you know? It's like wanting to beat up bullies for picking on your baby brother. There is this instinctive protective older brother in me that keeps coming out lately. It's... not really what I expected actually."
"What you expected?"
"Yeah. You know, Gramps always said that I would know the Kamui when I saw him, that all the dragons would be drawn to him in some way. I never really thought I would think of you as a brother though."
Kamui stared at the ground. "What did you think you'd see me as?"
"I don't know actually. A god maybe? Something… not human." At Kamui's look of dismay Sorata hastily backtracked. "I mean not that I thought you'd be like a demon or something bad, just that you'd be so far above everyone else, and I just-" He sighed. "I expected to respect you, but not to love you."
Kamui stared at him in shock for a moment before breaking out into a grin. "So about those monasteries…"
"Oh shut up, you know what I mean." Sorata knocked shoulders with him as Kamui laughed.