2. Overflowing
The beeping is so loud, why is it so loud?
Osamu doesn't really pay the doctors much attention. He knows better. They'll say a lot of jargon that doesn't really mean anything even if he explains it to himself, which he can't, because he doesn't speak medical yet (he will after this, he swears it, he'll learn Latin and Greek and English and anything he has to to make it through so long as his brother survives). He'd only be translating for the sake of his distraught parents and he doesn't want to deal with the distress, he just wants the sane Japanese to tell him what's wrong.
He doesn't get even close to that. Instead he gets a kid who looks like a giant blob of brown rushing in and then rushing out. He runs to grab the other's shirt but his athletics have never been the best and so he's too busy wheezing to get very far. Instead he hears a sharp intake of breath from the left open door and his brother is awake.
Perhaps it's the unconsciousness, the long sleeping period but Osamu doesn't like Ken's eyes. They're too cloudy. Though he still smiles like he knows the adults might eat him, thin and tremulous, the eyes are still too off putting. His brother is observant, even when he's not the smartest in the room, he notices things.
This Ken's eyes slide about like always but they're a little too sluggish.
Mom weeps with something like guilt. He touches Ken's face and gets baffled looks and their father just looks defeated at his shoes. Osamu asks questions and gets blank stares and watery ones. He's worried yes but he needs answers.
Osamu notices the device, still clutched tight in Ken's fist. They had never managed to pry it away, not even during surgery.
He tells his brother he is in the hospital. Ken nods but there is something there, there is something long lost that should be there and he can't identify it. He's not good with emotions either.
'You can do it because you're gentle.'
Yeah that had been reassurance for a likely swelling inferiority complex.
Ken just smiles at him, mouths an apology.
Osamu feels his throat tighten.
Invasion of privacy does not mean you deserve to be in the hospital. He wants to say that, but he can't. He just nods and asks if he can take the device insead.
Ken, puzzled, agrees and says, "Sure, but be careful. Wormmon's really shy."
Osamu promises, not entirely sure what he's promising to begin with.