She greets the morning sun with clumsy strides into the open kitchen before observing breakfast.
Raw eggs mixed into rice, with goats' milk in a glass. Her nose wrinkles uncomfortably at the combination, but before she can chirp in a complaint, a warm hand brushes against her forehead to check her temperature, leaving her much warmer than she had been before.
He wishes her a good morning before commenting on her appearance, suggesting that she slept well.
When, on the contrary, she looks as if she's been smashed in the face by a bull a million times, then by an elephant's trunk a million more. Rin congratulates herself for being able to stand on both feet even when the world has turnt her upside-down.
"Want to have something to eat?" The young man wonders, without any regards to her reddening complexion.
"Not that," She gagged at the idea of anything currently laid across the table. "I don't."
Her dainty fingers gestured for him to put their breakfast out of her sight. He doesn't do as he's told.
Now he knows where their daughter gets her fussiness from.
A sigh leaves him, but Len doesn't bother to start another argument. "It can't be helped, we've run out of anything else."
She glowers even after being ushered towards a stool, and coaxingly offered a plate. Whenever Rin pushes the dish forwards, opposite her, he would push it back.
Eventually she recedes, and the young lady has no choice but to poke the glutinous rice with a fork several times, churning her insides everytime she holds back from gagging at the smell.
It's a relatively mild reaction considering how she's meant to swallow uncooked yolk when it strings across the bowl similarly to rotten slime out of a shell. She comes to the conclusion that this is punishment, how he continues to hold a grudge against her for the unresolved case with his mother, and he won't be satisfied until he gets her feeling as horrible as she possibly could.
That accusation is crushed the moment he swipes a spoonful off his plate and swallows it without a single show of hesitance. Her stomach lurches, and she has to clasp a palm over her mouth, restricting the urge to spew out everything she had the night before.
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When he left the bed to take a phone call, he'd mistakenly assumed the miniature, impish version of Kagamine Rin would stay nuzzled against her mother's chest until dawn. He hadn't thought she'd clamber on her own hands and feet to follow him outside the door and into the large hall, like a baby chick trailing the footsteps of their mother hen.
... except, evidently, he's very much male.
"No, Dad, I can handle it." Idly watching her movements, his foot taps against the carpet, allowing soft wool to sink between his toes. "You don't have to come home." Len paused, for good measure, "Not now, at least."
The windows are all open, allowing summer breeze to waft in. He has to hold a finger up to his lips to hush any noises from his daughter, whose whining comes endlessly as she insists on burying her face in his leg. Her fists yank his trousers lower, as if that would provide her any leverage into the air, while her entire body is towered by his shadow.
She wants to be picked up.
He has no choice but to ignore her.
Len patiently waits for the voice on the other end of the line to finish speaking, although it's hardly audible as the older man's walking in a crowd.
Being in public, in the middle of a big city, isn't the best time to call your son.. especially when you're both standing on the opposite ends of the world.
One of his fingers absently trail the line of one capital to another, across the decorative globe on the desk. He dreads the telephone bill.
"It's only exams. It's not like I haven't gone through them before." This is not the first time, and it certainly won't be the last. Yet, upon hearing the recommend of having his brother take a week off university all the way from the other end of the country to look after him, the young man's lungs nearly leap out of his chest. He turns several shades of pale, then at his neck, a strange auburn. "No! Hasn't he got his own things to worry about?"
Good god, he's exhausted.
Eventually he gets tired enough to sink to the floor, crossing his legs to allow Mirai a happy spot on his lap. She drowsily rubs her eyes, and when her pacifier drops from her lips, he doesn't hesitate even for a second to pick the object up ー popping the potentially incriminating device back into her mouth. She's never quiet without it, at least, not as of recent, and he'd rather be safe than sorry.
If his father hears anything out of the ordinary, he'd have to think up an excuse that doesn't put them at risk while the odds of doubt stack against him.
"Don't call Yuudai." If that person came over he'd make things worse. Len sidles against the foot of the table, while Mirai's hand fumbles with the land-line cord. He lightly yanks her grasp away. "I know. Dad, it's three in the morning here. Could you call me when you get back from your meeting?"
There are a few words that come in response. He can't decipher any of them.
"I can barely hear you anyways... there's too much noise on your end." Which works in his favour.
Eventually he does receive permission to drop the call, after promising another conversation once he gets back from school and stays home by night. His toddler doesn't break her desperation to play with the phone, which is normally out of her reach, and he has to mockingly bite her cheeks (or rather, the air beside it) before placing her back in bed.
Upon his return, the blankets aren't as warm as before, and he finds he has to wound both arms tightly around Kagamine Rin to get anywhere close to the comfort he had prior. He tries to prevent a nightmare, while in her rest, she smiles sweetly, none the wiser, to float in a dream.
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Unrestrained dissatisfaction is voiced towards allowing a toddler to use a smartphone at so young of an age, but he pleads innocence by saying no matter how the issue was handled, the device will end up in those sticky hands one way or another.
It's either to let her watch cartoons or have the screen be licked up by a grumpy tongue. The only difference is whether he's given it up voluntarily, or wakes up suddenly to find it missing.
Rin glares at her partner through the open doorframe, keeping her eyes focused on his movements even as he goes to leave the plate in the sink and wipe the remaining fruit off his daughter's cheeks (he took a break from dusting duties to feed Mirai breakfast, while she's out here breaking sweat like a mile).
When he has no choice but to return to the job he had before, he sits the little girl on the empty drawer, keeping her out of their way so they can empty the floor.
Squinting, ocean eyes remain glued to the moving pixels on screen. They can hear vile penguin noises leaving the speakers from a video off animal planet, and Rin's trying her best not to let too much irritation show.
Len doubts the kid can even register half of what she's watching.
"We're cleaning up this room so that you can sleep here," He explains, at the notice of Rin's attitude heading sour. "Not because I find it pleasant to watch you exercise instead of sitting on a couch all day, reading your stupid gossip magazines. Heaven knows you need it," He's not even mentioning that those stupid gossip magazines had been his mother's belongings, previously left untouched on the dirty bookshelf, and the majority of articles are dated from the beginning of the nineties. "But because it's suffocating to sleep in one crammed space."
The blonde feathers dust off a windowsill, grumbling curses beneath her breath as if she believed he had a hearing impairment and wouldn't be able to hear a single word she says.
There isn't anything wrong with the place itself; it used to be his brother's old bedroom, spacious and much more cleanly, a visible mark of the bedframe that used to be in the corner until he moved out.
There also aren't any scattered piano sheets on the floor, or a keyboard crammed against the nearest wall where it certainly shouldn't fit. All in all, it was large, airy, and not a danger to move around in.
They could actually fit an entire futon here.
The prospect of changing their current sleeping arrangement into a drastically more comfortable one is exhilarating: lately , they've interchanged every night on whoever gets to sleeps on a proper mattress, while the other rests on the floor with a baby held tightly against the safe spot of a wall.
Rin's silent for all of ten seconds, but serenity never stays long. "I want to sleep with you." She argues, bursting the bubble of his hopeful thinking.
Sometimes the younger blonde makes it extremely difficult not to get angry with her.
Taken aback, and wondering whether he should be infuriated or not, allows time for Kagamine Rin to shoot him the nastiest look he's ever seen in all his seventeen years of life. "I am sleeping with you. I don't want us to be in different rooms."
Frustration building up, his own scowl directs towards this young lady, and her attitude. She's outrightly disrespectful, as if having him nearly five months her senior in age made no change in the manner she should speak. Len brought his other arm up to ruffle his own fringe, releasing a deep breath to release the tension he'd been holding in.
Often he can't help but wonder whether he has two children to take care of rather than only one.
Most of the time, she likely feels the same.
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Kagamine Rin's voice, loud and insistent as ever, is the only thing that breaks the noise of a quiet apartment building on a Tuesday morning.
Give daddy a good luck kiss. No, a good luck kiss, right across his face.
No, kiss him like you do with Mummy.
As if he needed that.
At least she's generous enough not to hoard up all the affection to herself. Rin wasn't greedy, she is never greedy, and that's one thing he will always appreciate.. even if her need to share concerns about a kiss from a child rather than a bounty of gold.
On the other hand, Mirai simply isn't interested; her mother stretches her towards him with all the strength she has to hoist the toddler in the air ー yet the most expressive response they receive is his golden curls being snatched into a grip with the power of a raging bull, aiming to yank his entire head out from the socket of his neck.
Eventually Rin does set Mirai down, letting the child wander off on her own, while the young lady herself remains rooted to the same spot. She's tilted on her tiptoes, eyes closed, a single hand gripping the sling of his bag to lure him downwards.
The reason why no longer occurs to him as a question. After a moment of confusion, her actions, her needs, even when she doesn't voice them out, comes clear as day. Len laces his grip around her waist, drawing smooth circles of his fingers through the dip of her spine before bringing chapped lips down to meet softer ones.
For a moment, life stops only for him.
The flavour of honey and the feeling of silk overwhelms him. Lemon and limes and lilies, the scent of the summer sun, everything that reminds him of her.
She keeps him rooted in the spot, and he sinks deeper into the ground. She has that certain, special charm, the type that a woman has when she locks you in and makes sure you never want to leave.
Len rescinds eventually, albeit with the greatest show of reluctance. He manages a smile at her whisper of that being a good luck kiss, from her to him, and he has to refrain from asking for more. Today will be, perhaps, one of the most important days of his life. Despite his wishes against it, this morning is one he simply could not afford to waste. She promises to be waiting for him, and he promises to return.
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But oftentimes the world doesn't work out the way you hope. A week passes, the deadline is met. The weather worsens day by day, an onslaught of constant rain, and each night he has to return to that suffocating little apartment with a smile plastered on his face, as if there was nothing that could ever go wrong.
He accepts the arms that wrap so affectionately around his body, struggling not to show off any slightest signs of guilt.
But it overwhelms him, knowing that there's someone who would willingly leave every ounce of trust she has left in the world into his hands, all the while he goes behind her back, taking that same faith and flinging it away as if it's nothing more stray pebbles by the bank across a lake.
The honey kisses he's privileged to have, is something he might never be able to taste again.
A cold hand strokes through his hair, interrupting his thoughts of the moment, that instance where his pen had scratched paper, and he couldn't find a single word to place down. He had one chance, one paper, and all those months he spent studying are proven to be useless in the face of a question he'd never prepared for.
But he has nobody to blame but himself.
Fingers; nimble, gentle, weak, comforts him, even as he trembles pathetically into the owner's lap. "I fucked up."
He could've studied better. He could've broadened the topics he was reading up on. He could've done anything, but instead he dug his own grave, and he has to dirty his own hands in soil before he lies in it.
"You didn't fuck up, Len."
"I fucked up."
Poor, poor, Piko. Not only does he have to share the burden, but he's also sworn not to tell Fukase an inch of what's happened today.
"You don't even know how well you did yet." His friend insists. Except he does, and he knows he might as well never have gone to school rather than waste half the years of his life endlessly sitting in classrooms only for failure to come of it. "Besides, we took seven subjects, you're hardly going to fail in all of them."
As if. You don't blank out in the middle of an exam, lose grip of yourself, and still be hopeful you didn't fail. The world doesn't work that way.
It wasn't even one day. He kept being the same, brainless idiot for two weeks.
When results will be coming out are now irrelevant. It doesn't matter that his years of studying have finally come to an end, all that matters is how poorly he had it handled, and how he absolutely failed to keep something so simple in his own grasp.
Now he doesn't know how he'll be able to face his family. Not just his Dad... but Rin.
Always Rin. He doesn't want to go home. He doesn't want to see her. He doesn't want to see her look at him expectantly, wait for him to tell her that it went well with a lie between his teeth, only so he can keep her as cheery she is.
Utatane Piko, as gentle as ever, gives him a hand to hold.
Everybody else in the younger boy's household is just as attending as he is. Len takes a sip of hot chocolate offered by a loving mother, and the father comes over to ruffle his hair in front of the fireplace, telling him there was no need to cry. He tries not to think of the embarrassment, of how shameful it is to be nearly an adult ー not even a year away from turning eighteen, but sobbing miserably in front of people that might as well be strangers to him.
Like a kindergartener who had his favourite toy ripped away at the playground.
Scarred fingers, wounded by rose thorns rubs against the skin of his forehead, rescinds with a laugh only after he has to wince.
It must be nice, Len can't help but dwell, to have a household like this.
He wonders if once upon a time his own had been like this too. Or if he would be able to make one someday, where he'd be able to hold another person in his hands and leave his heart in theirs.
"Don't worry yourself too much, dear." A hot palm cups his face, stroking his cheeks with her thumbs. A beautiful woman is found to be in front of him, ushering him to take another sip of the warm drink. "Piko here has probably scored much lower than you ever could have.. there isn't any pressure.."
"Mum."
Except Piko's perfect. Except Piko has everything he doesn't have. It's the worst possible time for envy to rear it's angry, green, head, in the middle of his chest, but right now he faces another struggle in stifling the flames that begin to rise.
"If you fall, all you have to do is get up again."
Easy for her to say. Easy for Piko to do, the other boy doesn't have another fragile life flickering like a dying flame in the palm of his hands. Piko is only living for himself, he isn't living for anybody else.
Piko has a family.
Their situations are different.
Much too different, and there's nobody in the world that he can explain it to.
When sunlight falls, bitter, furious tears are the only thing that follows, darkening his eyes. He imagines spring valleys leading to a deep waterfall, wondering how deep the drop will be, and how long it would take for him to drown.
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Midnight walks: in the end, they keep awake long past bedtime. She expressed a need to go outside: no distractions, no four walls consuming their every word. Only the lamps above them, and on the side, the moon and tides.
His daughter has hands curled into little fists, bumping against his back with every step he takes. She's fast asleep, soft, tender breathing, warm against his neck as her arms are thrown over his shoulders to keep her safe from falling. Her hair reminds him of sweet lilac flowers, skin like the clouds. When he brushes his lips across a cherub cheek, he imagines the rising of one of her rare smiles.
Rin walks several feet behind him, kicking at the gravel beneath her sandals with each step she takes. 'You know. I should be more afraid of you leaving me, than you should of me leaving you."
But the thing is he won't. And she knows that he won't.
(Although right now he believes she should.)
They've proven it time and time again; he'd run around, trying to keep her by his side. But days have passed, and then months, followed by years, yet he can't think of a single situation where their roles have been reversed. The reminder is bitter, such a strong smell of salt from the ocean to their side does nothing to help.
She could chain him to an anchor, lock his arms, push him to the bottom of the sea and throw away the key while he sits idly by, allowing it to happen.
The blonde quickens her pace enough that they're finally walking side by side.
Though it's not that he knows why she's suddenly bringing this up... They've settled it ways back, as far as he's aware.
She takes the time to analyse every feature that stands out from the older boy's facial structure. The shape of his jawline, the smooth skin at his eyes, a raw lip, bloodied from a gnaw from his own teeth. There is even a birthmark beneath his chin that she'd never really noticed before.
He doesn't look exactly like the same person he was when they met, but there are few enough changes for it to be endearing. Not to mention the way he doesn't realise, even for a second, how desperately her eyes are trying to take every little piece of him, forcing it to be burnt in her memory.
A windy breeze floats past, cold and biting, and he hastily covers up whatever he can of their daughter before a whine follows tow.
"If you plan to... fall in love.. with someone else," He mentions love as if it is a sin, as if anyone is forced to sip on poison for mentioning it. "Do it faster." But Rin's only response is an upset frown, visibly refraining from vocalising her disagreement.
He can understand why she'd be agitated against him.
Every day, he returns home, then heads to bed without another word ー then he sets off early the next morning to the exam centre without even waking her up to say goodbye. He avoids eye contact if she tries to ask him how the evening went, and now he's slugging several feet behind her, purposely keeping them far apart.
The distance between them is larger than the shadow she leaves as the streetlights cast out their silhouette.
A soft sneeze against his neck, and he has to gently shush the infant, lulling her back to sleep. He brings the blanket to cover up more of those tiny shoulders, keeping good dreams from changing into anything other than what they are now; Good dreams.
So that's why that night, with the knowledge that he's finally finished with the last of anything concerning school ー lest the upcoming reminder of results day, then graduation, she's chosen not to prepare the bedspread in the clean room to fit more than their sleeping infant daughter, who, at the moment, remains none the wider as she rests beneath the shimmering night sky.
The constellations are bright tonight; he wonders which star would lead them home.
Rin tries to set off the mood with a timid joke, but when he walks ahead as if he doesn't hear her, she can't help but snap. The young lady believes the cause for this sudden lack of affection remains to be their past conversation about his mother. "I suppose you think I'm stupid for assuming we'd gotten over this."
"Gotten over what?"
The unintentionally condescending tone jumps her to the conclusion that yes, he does consider her stupid.
"You really believe sexual attraction is what keeps me with you when in reality you're lousy at sex." Her ears range from violet to crimson, as if she herself is embarrassed of what she's doing. But once she starts, she can't stop.
Before he can demand an explanation, or at the least, state his disbelief, she drones on and on.
The weather is cold, exhilarating, and it does nothing to make the flurry of words stop. She stands to block their path, showing only dead ends in a maze. "You're the foulest, most self-conceited person I've ever met. You tend to look at what benefits you before anybody else. Your tongue is sharp, you're hardly ever loving, and the only time you ever put your arms around me is when I'm asleep. Even right now," He makes an attempt to sidestep her, but she moves in his way once again, evidently ticked. "You won't notice how I have two hands. Len, I've always had two hands!"
At this point she's upset for no reason.
But suddenly, her courage drops, like a lioness ageing back into a cub. She stretches her fingers out for him to take, forcing him at a corner to hesitate. "We've had about a million walks together. You've never held my hands even once..."
Len let out a scoff. It's as if she's forgotten he's had to carry her on his own back, at least twice to thrice across towns (in her defence, she's hardly conscious every time he's had to do it); he didn't think this was important.
Physical contact.. it's not as if they needed it.
"You're making an issue out of nothing."
Her own values beg to differ. "Hold them."
Although her voice is timid, he can still comprehend the difference between an order and a request.
He manages to balance the baby on one arm, keeping the grip he has tight, before finally moving his other hand downwards to take hold of Miss Kagamine Rin's fragile hand. Her fingers are frozen, like ice, and his own hand nearly bleeds from letting it scald his skin.
She moves her fingers between the gaps of his own, and he doesn't hesitate to shove their interlocked hands into his coat pocket after it's done. Her sigh comes out as a noise of relief, enjoying the warmth. Immediately after, he can feel her entire body leaning against his side, as if that was the only thing she wished for in the world.
Had he known how pleased she would be, he would have done this much sooner.
The moon is shining, nearly enough to trick him that it's day rather than night. The smell of the sea is strong, but for once, it does not lure him towards it.
"I could have had a better lay with someone else," She loosens the scarf around her nose, and although he makes a move to tighten it, both of his arms are already occupied (so he resorts to growling at her to stop talking about sexual intercourse, of all things, under his breath). "But if they're not a fifteen year old boy trying to feed me overcooked, mushy instant noodles from a steamboat boiler, or goes without sleeping weeks for somebody else's sake.. then moves back and forth between cities for two years to look after me, I don't want them."
He stops walking, so she does, too.
"That's not it..." Her fingers twitch between the gaps of his own. "I.. that's not why I'm avoiding you, at least."
There's a sound somewhere behind them, uncannily similar to those of a man's footsteps. The sudden fear is eased once he spins around, only to discover it's one of the nearby trees with a twig falling from it's branch. Rin shoots him a withering look, and he tries not to seem sheepish about the indiscreet show of paranoia.
It's not unwarranted; she hardly listens to the news, so it's not like she'd understand the real dangers they have to be cautious about.
Soon enough her whimsicality carries on with the conversation, as if nothing had disrupted them at all. "So you do acknowledge that you're avoiding me."
"I've been an arse."
"You've developed a sense of self-awareness, too. Congratulations."
Already-cold features morph into a scowl, and when he snaps his head in order to glare at her, he finds her lips flashing to show all of her teeth. That typical Rin grin, effectively forcing butterflies into his stomach and flowers to grow on his throat in all of five seconds after seeing it.
A normal man will find himself following a siren into the sea, but he finds himself trailing helplessly after this young woman's footsteps
Releasing himself from that consuming rose-tinted reverie, he has half a mind to bring them into another argument. But once he finds the blonde taking a deep breath, no longer walking by his side and her head thrown back to delight in the scent of the midnight ocean breeze, he realises he doesn't have the heart to do so.
Happiness is not synonymous with fragility, but as he gets older, he realises they appear hand-in-hand. These moments come fast, and leave just as quickly.
For the longest time, he's challenged the idea of whether he has anybody he loves. If she isn't what he's looking for, he doesn't think the world should let be.
If she isn't what he's looking for, the tides of the sea will no longer push nor pull, as will the glow of the moon to fade along it
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Len's nearly asleep when the nuzzle of a nose against his own collarbone stirs him back to consciousness.
He can barely tell where she is beneath the shadow of his dark lashes. The form of her body fits with his in the dark, broken puzzle pieces jammed together wrong. It's the complete opposite of Tetris blocks that leave a million spaces in the gapsー but somehow fitting perfectly in all the best ways.
They shouldn't be together, in his opinion, their personalities clash.
They're different people. They're too different. Yet he wouldn't rather have it any other way.
The young man's jawline finds itself with a sudden itch, out of nowhere, and it takes the same time one would need to get up in the morning as it does for him to realise that there are frail, nimble fingers, tickling it carelessly, being the reason behind this newfound irritation.
His body is warm, as if he held the core of a fire, while every single one of her limbs are made of ice.
"I won't... judge you. It's alright if it hurts to keep things to yourself.." One of her arms snake beneath his shirt, massaging the skin of his back to feel the slightest pump of a heartbeat. "You can tell me anything, Len," And with that, he can imagine her brilliantly pale eyes staring up at him, had he been able to see. "You don't have to be alone if you don't want to."
He tries to locate her head ー gripping tightly onto the skirt of her dress, then soon enough trailing all the way up to rest a palm over her cheek.
Blindly, he kisses her forehead, and hums in agreement as her body melts deeper into his own.
what's the point of the ffn captcha if the only thing it keeps out is Me... i swear to god i fail the captcha a million times before getting in, but the site is somehow overrun with bots. this website has been logging me out everytime i manage to get in, and deleted a few chapters (all except the last one) about seven weeks ago so i'm not sure how to deal with this.. reverse-development. Will... have to take some time to rewrite everything from the drafts all over again.. oh god.
if i'm not wrong the review bug happened again sometime in february, (so, last month.) this is a hellsite.
due apology for the two month delay, i hope everyone's well! what a Year. please take care, practice social distancing & stay hydrated!
also this can be thought of as a spoiler but since it'll come up soon anyways: len did considerably well in his exams, but is. needlessly dramatic.
