Masamune Saga stared at his reflection in the turned-off TV.

He was like a dried up cracked beach in the middle of nowhere, with no visitors, too much sun, and no paradise in the cool night. The water waves break against the beach. Droplets glint as they scatter like cracked pieces of glass.

There's all this room… no one to share with it…. Saga would have shared it with Oda, but he had no way to call out to him across all this empty white nothing.

"I want a divorce."

For people who'd always had to take care of things on paper- the paper mattered- Saga's parents had finalized the divorce with a few brisk statements that existed nowhere but in the air. It was legitimate. They meant it. Saga heard the proceedings from his bedroom.

He didn't understand.

He didn't understand what was wrong. His thoughts felt like sand and his sanity was breaking, but he wasn't aware. He patted his pocket, where his phone was, but remembered that he didn't have Oda's phone number. Didn't matter; he didn't need it. He watched a couple of movies and read some books, until 4 AM. The alarm clock glowed back at his pale face. His parents were still arguing downstairs. Deciding he was thirsty, he went downstairs to get a glass of water and when he got down there, his bare feet cold against the floor, his mother glanced at him. His father was gone.

"Why are you up? Go to sleep. You're father and I were just talking," she said, as if she honestly thought he hadn't been able to hear them, and he stared at her blankly.

She let her hair loose from its bun. "He's left."

Looking at her and picturing himself as her, with her emotionless eyes, terrified him. He would never have kids. Did his eyes look like that? Did he frown like that? Did his voice sound like that?

It didn't matter. He'd never spawn poor souls to break against walls.

She tried to touch him. He flinched away.

Slowly, he got a water glass from the cabinet, shuffling through these unsaid words hanging in the air. His skin felt so numb against the glass, and he worried he might accidentally drop it and break it. He touched his dry throat and filled the glass water cup. His fingers, wrapped around it, clenched tight, knuckles white.

His mother was watching his back. He should be screaming, shouldn't he? Would Oda say that he should be upset? He did feel upset, sort of.

"… Does that also mean….You and Dad don't love each other anymore…."

He said it like a statement, not a question. The truth was written all over the air but no one wanted to say it, even if the two of them knew it. His mother blinked.

"We've been over this, Masamune," she sighed. "Your father and I don't have to love each other."

"I guess…. Wait," he said, but she couldn't or wouldn't hear him. She turned around and left the room, leaving her son standing there. He stared at blank space as the faucet made his cup overflow. The water ran down and through his fingers.

He opened his mouth. His tongue felt numb even as he made it move. But it seemed like he'd forgotten how to talk. The words were stuck like peanut butter to the base of his throat, like flypaper catching bugs, only the bugs were his thoughts and his thoughts were too grainy and incoherent to say. His arms shook. He covered his mouth, scared of his own self. It had been a while since he'd been hurt like this and now that it was writhing in his chest, yet again, he was scared. He didn't know how to handle it, after all this time.

The cup fell from his hand. It shattered in the sink.

"… you both don't love me either, huh?!" He suddenly screamed, loudly and with a dark voice. He started to cry.

"Masamune!" His mother came running back. He stared at her, his façade broken, and she stared at him back, shocked.

He wanted to pull those unsaid words from the atmosphere and scream them at her just as she'd screamed them to his father. This was why parents were there, right? In his life? To listen to him? To comfort him? To be with him? To speak to him? To understand him? To-

To-

To-

To-

As the faucet still ran over the broken glass pieces, Saga sunk to his knees. "To to to to…" he muttered.

After spectating this, his mother made an uncomfortable whine, walking back out and going to her room. Her disappearing footsteps were deafening. He looked up. She wasn't there. Didn't matter. She was gone she was gone. His tears fell in straight lines to the floor. They were small, and glinted like pieces of broken glass as they fell against his ivory face and broke against the dirty and smudged tiles.

She was gone. They were.

When Saga collected his thoughts into a small pile of fragmentation, he recklessly let the water run in the sink and stayed there. He didn't want to be gone He touched his cell phone, and realized that even if he had called out to Oda, he wouldn't answer. He didn't care either; he'd left.

Saga's eyes snapped open at this new realization. He whined. He didn't exactly scream, but he made some sort of tortured sound. The water, overflowing from the sink, landed on his head in perfect, straight-lined dripping. He felt, so, damn, cold, so damn cold.

He was a lonely, washed up boy, spawned to people who wouldn't grow up.

They were both- no, all three of them were a little broken. Even Takano, who'd taken an hour to get from the 3 AM train to his apartment complex. 4 AM stars faded into pinks and troubling smog.

Onodera followed Rei, swirling his water in the glass. Rei sat in the front room, holding his arms that were lined with goosebumps together as he cracked open another book. He was disappointed. He felt words like wet sand stick to his throat and dry-swallowed them down. Everything was going wrong.

There was so much room on his own beach, but it was emptying into the salty ocean.

Onodera pushed the book down with his free hand and sat right next to him on the couch.

"Rei, what's wrong?" he coaxed, touching Rei's shoulder. "Tell me."

The book was upside-down and Rei's hazel eyes had gone glassy. "... nothing," he said firmly.

Onodera touched Rei's cheek, and Rei's expression broke like a lightning flash. His brow furrowed and his teeth gritted and his eyes broke blue and wet, and quickly, Onodera reached out. He made Rei warm: Rei pressed his fingers into his eyes.

"You hate dad!" he screamed suddenly. His voice scared Onodera. It reminded him of the image of a strong rock broken to bits against a wall, gravel everywhere, sharp and stingy. "You hate dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, you hate daddy... I want dad..."

The book fell, bouncing off the couch, clattering to the ground. Water spilled on Onodera's arm and Rei's back.

"You- you- you," Rei continued to sob. His tears were all over the place.

You-

You-

You-

"You never hug dad, or kiss dad, or tell dad that you love him! You always give him dirty looks and you hit him and you hurt him! You always tell him to leave! You never stay when he's here! You never like it when he smiles at you! You look like you're mad when he touches you! You never hold hands like mommies and daddies do in the TV's!"

Onodera froze. He didn't have anything to say. It was the truth. The unsaid words now exposed nakedly were what he wanted everyone to believe and he should have been relieved that he'd passed it off, but he was staring at the face if a crying child. It was his fault.

"You know, Rei…." His tone was rusty, like he was forcing rubbery, inflated words out through a too-small space. He hastily tried to make up for his web of truth-lies. "Um… Me and Takano don't have to love each other. Takano cares about you and I care about you, separately."

"But daddy loves you 'cause he tells you that stuff all the time..." Rei sat with his face buried into the couch pillows. His own breath was making his face hot and sweaty, but he found that he couldn't begin to try to care.

"...I wish we lived together and I wish daddy came home and I wish you didn't look at him like that all that time and I wish you loved us and I wish, I wish, I… I…. you don't love daddy and it hurts and it makes me want to die, Mr. Onodera..."

Onodera dropped his water glass. It crashed to the floor, water spilling everywhere. The water coated dozens of shiny silver shards as thy glinted at them from the floor.

"What?!"

"I wish we were a family," Rei murmured, rocking. "But we can't... You don't want to. What did I do?"

Onodera stared at the broken mess on the floor, standing up and piercing the bottoms of his feet. A big shard cut into his toe. Onodera was frozen in the midst of all this numb chaos.

The door opened. Onodera had left it unlocked because he'd known this would happen. He knew the minute Takano had called that he'd be here tonight, but he figured they'd be arguing over whose house Rei slept in, not this. Takano walked into the apartment.

Takano began to take off his coat, then paused.

Takano took one look at Rei, swinging the spare apartment key around his finger, and said, "What the fuck did you do to my kid?"