"animals like naofumi"
yeah well that shih tzu is a bastard, checkmate
Chapter Three: Stratus
Summer came in hard and fast, sweeping across eastern Japan just as hard as the storms it brought along for the ride. During the long periods of gloom, both Iwatani Emiko and Jun developed a habit of sleeping in on cloudy days, while Iwatani Katai spent his mornings cramming down toast as he groused about how much more crowded the subways were whenever it rained.
On days when the rain was neither too light nor too heavy, Naofumi dragged out his old umbrella and visited the park where he'd spent many a day back in the golden hours of his childhood. The ducks - definitely not the same ones, though - still gathered around the edges of the pond there, happily dabbling for the minnows and bugs that the rain drew to the water's surface, and he found an odd peace squatting by the shore as he watched them.
On this particular Friday, however, a girl's voice broke the steady pitter-patter of raindrops on the grass around him.
"You're gonna catch a cold."
Naofumi whipped around so fast he thought he'd break his own neck, and his unwelcome visitor laughed, light and clear and not unkind. Clutching one hand to his chest, he staggered to his feet, bracing himself as he scrambled to steady the umbrella. "Don't scare me like that," he sighed, deflating a little. "Jeez."
"What are you doing out here in the rain, anyway?" she went on, as Naofumi got a better look at her. Wavy hair, undyed and unbound, flowed past shoulders clad in a smart brown jacket over a high-waisted skirt and blouse, and he knew immediately that she was a college student; the look was too youthful for an office worker, but too mature for a high schooler.
He tilted his chin up just a little, eyes narrowed as he searched her face for some hidden motive. "I'm watching ducks. What's it to you?" Not the kindest response, but it didn't seem to bother her any.
"Watching you watching ducks. In the rain." Her lips twitched like a rabbit's, and he could tell she was joking, but the thought disturbed him.
"Wait, how long have you been standing there?" he asked, scrunching up one side of his face.
She laughed again. "Not that long. Were you worried I'd think you strange? 'Cause it's a little late for that, you know."
Naofumi pinched the bridge of his nose. "Do you enjoy harassing strangers in the park?" he countered.
"I do find it fun sometimes. This place is a little like a safari in the summer - there's always something new and interesting to run across no matter the time or weather."
Naofumi gave her a once-over, thinking a mile a minute. Her speech is pretty proper, he observed. Probably from a wealthier family in a better part of town, but there's a little bit of casual talk in there, too. If I had to guess, I'd say she picked it up once she got out of whatever stuffy private high school she went to and went off to college on her own.
After a moment, he shrugged by way of a response. It was all he could think to do, and frankly, he hoped she'd lose interest in him. She seems like someone who's just out to find something fun to do. If you put the whole 'Shield Hero' thing aside, there's really nothing about me that stands out. Otherwise, I might have actually had a girlfriend before that damn book turned into a shitty interdimensional Dyson.
Unfortunately for Naofumi, she didn't walk away, choosing instead to change tack. "D'you like ducks?" the girl prodded, ever cheerful.
"A bit," he found himself answering. "It's less about the fact that they're ducks than it is that they're not people." Maybe she'll pick up on what I'm putting down here.
"I understand," she said, nodding her head. Then, with zero trace of humor: "I'd be really concerned if I came out here one day and found a bunch of people skimming for small fish with their mouths."
Naofumi's stomach dropped. Never mind. She's a total airhead.
Then, just as this thought crossed his mind, she burst out laughing, and he had absolutely no idea what to think or feel anymore.
"I...you're fucking with me."
"Just a little!" she chirped, both hands clutching her umbrella now - like Naofumi's, it was a pleasant glossy black, but he could make out what appeared to be a cat sticker on it.
He shook his head, running one hand through his hair in much the same way as Jun tended to. Did I pick that up from him, or did he pick it up from me? "Goddamnit," he sighed, looking back at the ducks over his shoulder. "I'm not going to get rid of you, am I?"
"If you'd just ask me directly, you could," she told him. "But you haven't yet, so that's a good sign, right?"
"I…" Shit. He genuinely could not think of what to say to this, but was spared the necessity of formulating a response by the dismal buzz, buzz of a smartphone.
Her smile became a little strained. "Oh...excuse me for just a moment."
Naofumi turned back to the ducks, hand back in his pocket. One of the hens gave a vicious nip to the tail of another, and the resulting cacophony of quacking and splashing drowned out the girl's lowered voice; when it subsided, he glanced over his shoulder at her to see if she'd finished with the call. The moment she noticed his gaze, she jumped, pocketed her phone, and offered a brief bow.
"Sorry about that - looks like I've gotta go now. I'll catch you around, duck boy!" she called, and with one last wave, she turned to hurry off through the rain.
Duck...boy?
Then, for some infernal reason, he yelled after her: "What's your name?"
She gave him one last grin from under her umbrella. "Kaori!"
And then she was gone, out of earshot and then out of sight, and all Naofumi could do was stare after her like he'd just been visited by the wandering spirit of a social butterfly.
When Naofumi returned home, he was greeted with the sight of his parents at the kitchen table, sorting through the mail. Jun, leaning against the wall between the kitchen and living room, pored over a letter with a can of iced coffee in the other hand.
"Who's all this from?" Naofumi asked, hanging up his umbrella by the front door. Evidently surprised, Katai looked up at his son with a start, but his composure returned in full within half a second.
"Ah - Naofumi. Just some paperwork the company sent in. That - " and here he pointed to an unopened letter on the edge of the table " - is for you."
I see you're as talkative as ever. "Thanks," Naofumi grunted, kneeling to remove his drenched trainers. "I'm sure it's from my adoring fans."
Ignoring the confusion on his parents' faces, he got to his feet, snagged the envelope, and took it upstairs without looking back.
It was fairly obvious who had sent it. His university's logo was printed right there, on the top left, and the sight of it sent a thrill of fear through his body. He almost didn't want to open it, but if being the Shield Hero had taught him even one thing, it was that the unknown tended to fester; as such, it was often better to dive in headfirst and take whatever pain came his way in full force rather than letting uncertainty seep through a bandage fix over the course of weeks.
Naofumi tore open the envelope.
It wasn't immediately clear what the letter was trying to say - Mr Iwatani, we are writing to inform you, blah blah blah - and for a moment, his heart sank. The saying "no news is good news" was, in his opinion, complete and utter bullshit; he couldn't think of a single good reason for there to be no news in any scenario, and this letter read as if the person writing it were doing their utmost to get their money's worth of stationery as they waffled around an outright rejection.
Then, at the very bottom of the second page, someone had placed a red wax seal on a line marked approval, with the words we look forward to seeing you in the fall semester written directly above it.
There was no sense of overwhelming joy, or joy from despair, or any joy at all for that matter. The fact that the thing he'd been worrying about since the previous Monday had turned out for the best did not fill him with any positive emotion, only a vague sense of finality.
Anticlimactic. Just like everything else since I've gotten back. Even watching myself disappear off the face of the planet was dull.
With a sigh, Naofumi let the letter fall onto his bed, followed by his own suddenly-heavy body. So...what now? he had to wonder, cheek squished against his pillow and the red glare of his alarm clock burning into his eyes. That was the only thing I could think of to feel like I was getting anywhere. Now all there is to do is...register for classes and wait.
...Great.
He turned his head, buried his whole face in the pillow, and dozed off to the hammering of the rain on his window.
"You're going to try and finish your business degree?"
Jun had never quite broken his old habit of chewing on his eraser.
"Mm." Naofumi, for his part, chewed his lip instead. "Why not, right? I'm already 23. I need to get my affairs in order, or whatever the hell it is otou-san used to say." What he's probably still saying when I'm out of earshot. "Finishing a degree I was already most of the way through with...that's the fastest way to do that."
"But is it what you want to do?" Jun pressed, scribbling something in his notebook and flipping the page. Across the street, a delivery truck pulled up to the curb, wipers flashing back and forth at full tilt as the harassed-looking driver burst from the cabin into the unrelenting rain. Naofumi watched, disinterested, as the man jogged for the shelter of the trailer.
"Eat tonkatsu," he deadpanned.
Jun frowned, stern as a mother hen. "That's not the kind of answer I was looking for."
A half-hearted shrug. "You never specified."
The younger Iwatani groaned with exasperation. "Naofumi."
"I registered already. Don't worry about it."
Naofumi's tone made it clear that the subject was no longer up for discussion, and when his brother wasn't looking, a frustrated Jun bit his eraser clean off and spat it into his trash can. Outside, the delivery man dropped one of his packages into the two inches of water at the side of the street, and as another three boxes tumbled from the back of the truck, Naofumi watched him run his fingers through his hair, clearly distraught.
"Do you think we should go help him?" Jun asked, leaning sideways to peer out of the window.
"He's going to have to deal with that the whole way down his route," Naofumi countered. "If he can't handle it, maybe he shouldn't be a delivery driver."
Jun didn't respond immediately, and Naofumi glanced sidelong at him to be met with a look of complete and utter disappointment. "That's cold," the blonde argued. "Weren't you the one who told me when you came back that I should take any help I could get? Wouldn't you want even a little help?"
He opened his mouth. Thought for a second. Closed it again.
Jun's got a point, he knew. I'm sure that guy would appreciate the help. It'd make his day a little better just knowing someone thought enough about him to offer some assistance. Then, as another five boxes tumbled from the vehicle: Yeah, for sure.
"Alright, fine," he conceded, nostrils flaring. "Come on."
The delivery man, as it turned out, was grateful for their help, and Naofumi helped him load the fallen, soggy packages back into the truck as an irritated Jun rearranged those already inside to make sure everything fit.
As it turned out, this was the driver's first delivery of the day. The people responsible for loading the truck had been replaced by temporary workers, who'd crammed boxes pell-mell into whatever space was available until the trailer barely closed and called it good.
"Well, that's lazy of them," Jun commented, grunting with effort as he shoved a particularly large box against a pile of smaller ones. "Is there no supervisor there to make sure this stuff doesn't happen?"
"Layoffs," the driver puffed, tossing Naofumi a waterlogged package from the gutter. "I bet you anything I'm next after this. Half of these are ruined."
Jun was indignant. "But it's not your fault the truck was packed over capacity!" he cried, arms out and palms open as he waited for Naofumi to throw him another box. "Why would they fire you?"
"You think that matters to them?" the man chuckled, dry and cynical. "It's just an excuse. They want to cut costs by cutting out people and forcing whoever's left to work harder."
"So why're you sticking around?" Naofumi spoke up now, meeting the delivery man's eyes - dull, tired eyes.
"Pays better than working at the supermarket or a convenience store. At least I'm not actually in the distribution center."
Naofumi grunted his acknowledgement. From within the truck, Jun gave the man an actual reply. "I'm really sorry you have to put up with that," he apologized, with a shallow bow. "I hope things get better for you soon. Is there anything else we can do for you?"
"Uh...nah, I should be good now. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to help out." The driver smiled then, and for just a moment, Naofumi caught a glimpse of someone younger, happier, brighter. "Especially rearranging this stuff - I'd have struggled with it the rest of my shift otherwise."
"Of course!" Jun beamed right back, and Naofumi knew the happiness on his face was genuine. "Good luck with the rest of your day! Hopefully you don't get too much flak for this."
"Yeah, me too. Alright, I'd better get going now - I'm already behind schedule."
The two Iwatanis made for the cover of their front porch and waved goodbye until the truck was out of sight. When even the sound of its engine had faded into the distance, Jun gave Naofumi a friendly slug on the arm. "That wasn't so bad, right?"
"You took care of the talking for me. That helped a lot."
Jun's eyes narrowed playfully. "Is that a thank you I hear?"
"Mm." With a grimace, Naofumi avoided his gaze, but Jun just stepped in front of him, a devilish grin on his face now.
"Sorry, what was that? I can't hear you over all that tsun."
He really did just go there, didn't he? "Thanks," Naofumi muttered, still refusing to meet Jun's eyes. "You know I've had a hard time talking to people since I got back."
"You're going to have to learn how to open up a little once the semester starts up, you know," Jun went on, as they headed back inside, and Naofumi felt something inside of him close up like an oyster.
"Mm." I thought I'd agreed to move on, so why does the thought of the future still bother me so much?
As they passed the kitchen, Jun paused."You wanna have lunch now, before we head back upstairs?" he asked, and Naofumi stopped on the second stair to think about it.
Having lunch right now was probably the best course of action considering that he'd most likely spend the rest of the day in his room again - not that he particularly wanted to, but there wasn't much else to do. For the time being, their parents seemed satisfied that he'd found the drive to go back to school so quickly, so at least he didn't have to worry about their judgement for a couple of months. "Alright," he agreed. "Lunch it is."
"Got anything in mind?" Jun pulled open the fridge, scanning its contents in the time-worn fashion of someone truly clueless in the kitchen.
"Udon," Naofumi decided, following his brother into the kitchen and making a beeline for the cabinet where, even after two and a half years in Melromarc, he knew his family kept the noodles. "We've been out in the rain, so some porridge couldn't hurt either if you're feeling under the weather."
"I feel fine," Jun reassured him. "Udon sounds good. I haven't had your cooking in a while, so you better not have gotten rusty in - wherever it was you were."
Naofumi thought back to his kitchen in Melromarc.
"I think it's safe to say I had plenty of opportunities to practice," he said, choosing his words carefully. Jun raised an eyebrow, but Naofumi plowed ahead. "Grab me the dashi, would you?"
Dashi broth, mirin, soy sauce, he reeled off in his head. A little sugar, to balance out the stronger flavors. Some sea salt. That should round off the soup.
"Hey, nii-san. Have you ever thought about culinary school?"
"Huh?" Naofumi, gathering ingredients, was only half-listening. Hmm...then I'll probably just serve some chopped spring onions and ribeye beef with the noodles. Or maybe leeks instead of onions?
"Culinary school," Jun repeated, cracking a smile. "You know, to be a chef? You always get this look while you're cooking that I never see on you any other time." Then, pouring the dashi broth into a saucepan: "It's really intense."
"Culinary school," Naofumi echoed, carefully adding mirin and soy sauce to the saucepan. Actually, yeah. Leek's a little heavier of a vegetable, so it'll be better for a rainy-day type of dish when you just want to relax with a full stomach. On that note, I might boil off a little more water than usual so the dish has proportionately more solids.
"Yes. Culinary school," Jun said again, with the patient air of one explaining to a toddler that the eggs from the store did not, in fact, contain baby chickens.
"Mm." As for toppings, fish cakes sound pretty good right now, and I can top those with some mitsuba - but I'll leave off the shichimi this time. Not in the mood for spicy stuff.
Jun raised an eyebrow. "Never piqued your interest?" he prompted.
Finally, Naofumi's brain managed to process the words. "Oh - not really," he said, still focused on preparing the soup. "I was always afraid I'd burn out if I cooked professionally. Plus, I've only got a year left on my business degree, and it'd take two years to finish a culinary course." A snort. "Imagine what our parents would say."
"It's not as if everyone goes straight from high school to college then graduates without a doubt in their head as to what they want to do with themselves," Jun pointed out. "I'm sure they'd understand if you - "
"If I what?" Naofumi returned, tone suddenly icy, and Jun bit his lip; seeing this, the older Iwatani deflated. "Sorry. You just - I don't think you understand what they think of me. Beef," he added, by way of a command.
"Hit me with it," Jun challenged, fetching a cut of ribeye from the refrigerator.
"Why?"
"Because you've never told me just what exactly your problems with okaa-san and otou-san are."
"Isn't it obvious?" he retorted, trying his best to focus on cooking as he gave the soup one final taste and - deeming it satisfactory - turned the heat down low, leaving it to simmer as he turned his attention to the beef. "I'm the black sheep. I didn't care about being top of my class so long as I could still read light novels. I wasn't ambitious, and that made me the disappointment of the family."
A pause. "And what does that make me?"
"Isn't that obvious, too?"
Silence fell between the two of them, broken only by the rhythmic chop, chop of Naofumi's knife as he sliced the beef into thin, bite-size pieces.
"Do you resent me, nii-san?"
The chopping stopped. Naofumi turned to look at his brother, struggling to comprehend the actual hurt in his chest. "Why would I?" he managed to get out. "I'm not going to hate you for being responsible and ambitious. You've never once held it over my head. It was always other people holding you over my head, and that's not your fault."
Jun hummed, seemingly satisfied with this answer. Then, at length: "It's funny how many new conversations we've had since you got back."
The chopping resumed. "How's that?" Naofumi asked, pushing the beef to the side. "Leek."
"I don't know. It just felt like there was a lot we weren't saying back then," Jun admitted, planting a large leek squarely in the middle of the cutting board. "Questions I wanted to ask you. Things I was afraid of."
The leek fell prey to Naofumi's knife, falling to pieces under its relentless onslaught. "Even if you'd asked me stuff like that, I would have just said what you wanted to hear," Naofumi shrugged. "When it comes to resenting you, what you want to hear just so happens to be my honest feelings, but I can't guarantee the same for everything else. I can't laugh and say I'm sure I'll work something out with our parents."
Jun bit his lip. "I just...you do little things sometimes that tell me you do care about them, on some level. That you're grateful."
Another shrug. "I am grateful. I'd be homeless without them right now." That, he reflected, felt very strange to say out loud, even if I've known it's true for a while. "That doesn't mean I don't have my problems with them. Frying pan."
"Like what?" Jun pestered, retrieving their largest frying pan and drizzling olive oil across the bottom.
Naofumi shook his head. "It's between me and them. Don't worry about it. Can you grab the mitsuba?"
"You can have the mitsuba when you answer the question."
"It's times like these when I remember we're related," Naofumi sighed, chuckling just a little in spite of himself. "You're so much nicer than me that I always forget we share the same stubborn streak."
He reached for the vegetable anyway, and Jun pulled it away, holding it over his head as if keeping candy from a child. (This, in spite of the fact that Naofumi was taller than him.) "Did you think I was joking?" Jun asked.
Resigning himself to the (completely unfair) trade, Naofumi took a deep breath. "I've really gotta spell it out to you, huh? You've never noticed the way they look at me compared to how they look at you?"
"Considering you've spent every minute avoiding them, I haven't noticed how they look at you at all, no," Jun admitted.
"They don't like me, Jun."
The blonde frowned. "Have they ever said as much to you?"
"I…." The honest answer was no, but saying as much out loud would make him feel extremely stupid, so he opted to explain the induction behind this conclusion instead. "Jun, back when you were in your...delinquent phase…."
Jun's expression shifted, almost imperceptibly, into something Naofumi had never seen on his brother's face before. It was enough to give the former Shield Hero pause, but when the other didn't say anything, he heaved another breath and continued.
"Well, they blamed me for being a bad influence on you," he confessed. "They told me how lazy I was and how my lack of ambition was corrupting you from the inside."
"That had nothing to do with it!" Jun snapped, and this time it was Naofumi who recoiled, completely taken aback by his normally-gentle brother's outburst. "Shit. I - I'm sorry, nii-san. That's just...it's not something I want to talk about, but please believe me when I say it was absolutely not your fault in any respect."
"Don't worry about it. You just caught me off guard," Naofumi grunted, waving a hand dismissively. "I'm guessing it wasn't something you could talk to them about. Also, start boiling the water"
Jun shook his head, turning to retrieve a pot. "God, no. If they ever found out…anyway, go on. Is that why you think they hate you?"
"That, and the fact that they threatened to kick me out for it."
"You were seventeen, though!"
"Do you think that mattered to them?" Naofumi asked, tone dry as the Mojave. "I was genuinely afraid I'd have to spend my third year of high school couch-surfing. Also, can I have the mitsuba now, or...?"
"Shouldn't you wash your hands and all first? You've been handling raw meat," Jun pointed out, and Naofumi blinked stupidly at him for a second before realizing that he was right.
"Yeah, I should. I must be out of it today."
"You want my honest thoughts on that one?" his brother asked, just as the oil in the pan began to crackle.
Naofumi turned the hot water on full blast to scrub his hands. "As opposed to your dishonest ones? Yeah, I do."
"You've been out of it since you got back two months ago. Even the way you're cooking now is almost robotic."
This did not at all come as a surprise to Naofumi. He'd been dimly aware of it for some time.
"I'm just trying to kill time until I've got a purpose again," he said. This was not a lie; something told him it wasn't the whole truth, either, but even he himself didn't know what that whole truth was.
"I can tell, but I think you should...I don't know." Jun scowled at the parsley as if it had wronged him somehow. "Shouldn't killing time be fun? Relaxing? After everything you must have been through, taking a few months to relax and work through everything on your mind seems like the best course of action."
Work through everything on your mind.
Had he done that? Had he ever really sat down and done that?
"I'm not a therapist, nii-san," Jun began, and Naofumi snorted.
"I sure hope not. I wanted to punch the last one I saw."
"I can't tell you what's bothering you," he went on, pinching the bridge of his nose, "but I'm - I'm here if you need to talk to someone about it, alright?"
Naofumi thought about it.
"Alright," he agreed. "I can't promise I'll ever take you up on that, though."
"If you happen to not need me to listen, that's fine," Jun shrugged. "Just don't hold back because you're feeling isolated or whatever."
"Mm." Then, as he began to arrange the leeks in the pan: "Y'know, they kept depositing money into my account for a little bit."
"What?"
The aroma of frying leeks rose up from the stovetop. "Okaa-san and otou-san. They gave me a bit of an allowance before, just until I was done college, but for a couple of months after I disappeared, those deposits kept coming in."
Jun was silent for a moment. "Meaning?" he asked, at length, and Naofumi bit his lip.
Here goes, I guess.
"I can't say I hate them. I don't believe they hate me, either. Like I said, I have a lot to be grateful to them for, but just...I don't know, Jun," Naofumi sighed. "How much shit should you accept from someone who's also showing that they care about you in other ways? I can't stand the way things are between us, but I'll feel like an ungrateful asshole if I bring it up."
"Naofumi…"
"In - in the other world," he went on, clenching his fist on the handle of the frying pan, "I didn't take anyone's shit. I didn't care what positives having them around brought - if someone treated me like trash, I'd throw them away like trash. For a little while at the start, I felt like I'd have to take on the entire world myself, and I was willing."
He stirred the leeks, pushed them to the edges of the pan, then laid out the beef in the center of it. Immediately, the rich smell of cooking meat filled the air, and he took a moment to breathe it in, to calm down.
"It's not that simple back home, huh?" Jun guessed, adding the noodles to the now-boiling pot, and Naofumi nodded. "I'm sure you know this, but it's a lot harder to fix things than to just run away. That's probably why you can't decide how to feel."
"Yeah."
For a couple of minutes, the only sounds were the intertwined plink of raindrops on the kitchen window, the soft bubbling of the udon pot, and the periodic sizzling of the meat as Naofumi turned each piece with a pair of tongs.
"I still think you should consider culinary school," Jun told him, at length. "It's not that you're your old self, but...you finally told me what was on your mind. At least a little bit."
"Mm." Jun's been right about an awful lot today, Naofumi had to admit to himself, but I just...I just what? What's holding me back?
Jun switched off the burners beneath the soup and udon, then drained the latter over the sink.
Is it what happened in Melromarc?
Naofumi mixed together a little of the soy sauce and sugar, tasted it, then stirred the mixture into the beef and leeks.
I thought I let go of that already.
The sauce caramelized.
I thought I'd stopped thinking about it.
Naofumi turned the heat off and moved the pan away from the burner.
Didn't I?
Jun portioned out noodles into two serving bowls and filled them partway with the soup.
"Why does it still hurt?"
He didn't realize he'd spoken aloud until Jun responded.
"Why does what still hurt?"
A little taken aback, Naofumi couldn't offer a response right away, but his brother waited patiently as he distributed the cooked meat and leeks into each of their bowls, then garnished each dish with a couple of fish cakes and the mitsuba.
Jun hesitated as Naofumi made for the stairs, bowl in hand. "Let's eat at the table instead," he suggested.
Naofumi thought about it.
"Alright."
It's been a while since I've eaten here, huh? he realized, as Jun switched off the light on the range hood and carried his bowl over to the kitchen table. I've taken every meal upstairs since...before I became the Shield Hero.
Referring to himself as the Shield Hero felt foreign. He hadn't done it in some time, but the phrase struck him somewhere deep inside, and he clenched his jaw, electing to glare at the udon as if it were in some way responsible for his pain.
There was a small clink as Jun, having taken a perfectly-sized bite, replaced his chopsticks perfectly on the edge of the bowl. "It's as good as I remember," he complimented. "I don't know how, but you have this weird ability to turn even perfectly ordinary ingredients into a top class meal. I guarantee you that if I'd been the one doing the cooking, I would have somehow burned the water."
Naofumi snorted into his noodles. "Don't ask me how I do it. I don't know either. It just sort of...happens."
He took a bite. In his opinion, it could have been better. Maybe I should have used spring onions after all. The leeks are a little rougher than I was expecting.
"So what still hurts?" Jun asked, bluntly, and Naofumi paused with an udon noodle hanging halfway out of his mouth.
"Eh?"
Jun raised an eyebrow. "You asked why it still hurts," he reminded Naofumi, pointing his chopsticks at him. "You can't just say something like that and pretend it didn't happen."
Oh. So I said that out loud.
Naofumi thought about it for a moment, chewing slowly and listening to the patter of raindrops on the kitchen window.
"I know I said Melro - the other world was shit," he said, at length, "but that doesn't mean everyone in it was shit, too."
"You miss them," Jun interpreted. It wasn't a question, but Naofumi nodded anyway.
"Not just them. I miss...I miss having the power to control my own fate. And I know," he went on, before Jun could interrupt, "that that sounds like something you'd read in a light novel, but...think about it. Everyone wants to control their own fate - it's just that in our world, that power comes in the form of financial independence, or an education, or whatever." A deep breath. "It's not that I miss being the Shield Hero - it's that I miss the people and things that came with it. The purpose, Jun," he added, udon now forgotten. "Do you have any idea what it's like to have your only plans for the day be to binge an anime? When you can't think of anything to do besides nothing? How about what it's like to lose the one person in the world you thought would be there for you no matter what?"
Jun was crying. Not sobbing, not weeping, not even sniffling - just a silent, perfect cry, tears welling in the corners of his eyes and tracing identical paths down his face.
"I know that feeling a lot better than you might think, nii-san," he said, and his voice was soft and kind. "Believe me."
For the first time Naofumi could recall since returning to his own world - to his old home - there was something in Jun's eyes that he couldn't read; it was a deep, knowing sorrow, and with a dull sort of shock, he realized: I really don't know that much about Jun after all, do I?
Jun, he wanted to say, what happened to you? But, knowing his younger brother, the blonde would brush it off with a sad little smile and try to redirect the conversation. "This is about you right now," he'd say, and Naofumi would just go along with it because he'd be damned if he knew what else to do.
"Jun," he tried anyway, but there was no indication the other had heard him.
"All you can really do is keep looking for ways to move forward," Jun continued, and there it was, that sad smile of his that masked everything behind an unspoken I'll be fine. "If you don't have any forward momentum, it'll all catch up to you, so all you have to do is keep moving until it runs out of steam and you can deal with it at your own pace."
"Are you telling me to run away?" Naofumi blurted out, less kindly than he'd intended. Jun broke eye contact.
"In a sense...yeah. I don't think it's wrong to keep something at arm's length until the initial damage has been mitigated."
Both brothers were silent for a minute, with Jun gazing into his udon and Naofumi at Jun. When that silence broke, it was Naofumi who did it. "It's almost funny how many people I've seen die in combat," he said, almost matter-of-factly. "But...it was like watching insects die. There wasn't any grief. Yeah, there's this awful sense of finality to it, but whether or not your side won or lost, you can't afford to stop and think 'Atla's dead', because if you do that - if you stop moving - you fall behind. So you just...put them in a box in the back of your mind and tell yourself you'll open it later, but before you know it, that box is overflowing and you still can't open it." Even back then, he realized, did I really grieve? Or did I just...feed her body to the shield in some vain effort to deny she'd died? What the hell did I even do back there? Was that even fair to Atla? Was she so attached that she'd want to be bound to me like that?
He touched two fingers to his lips, and for a moment, Jun's eyes widened, full of something between hurt and sympathy - then it was gone, and Jun looked away again, this time at the window.
"I don't know how many people you've lost," the blonde admitted. "But...are you - did that work for you? Just...putting them away? Saving their memories for a rainy day?"
"Back then?" Naofumi sighed. "Yeah. There was always something else to put it off for."
"And now?"
A beat.
"What do you think?" Naofumi murmured, lacing his fingers together and resting them on the edge of the table. "When every day's a rainy day, those boxes spring open whether you want them to or not. It's just that I don't know how to do anything other than pretend they're still closed."
Jun tapped one finger to his chin. "One at a time?" he suggested.
"Huh?"
"I'm saying that if you can't handle dealing with everything at once, just take it a little at a time."
In his desperate search for a displacement, Naofumi remembered his udon and took a too-large bite of beef. Even in the middle of such a serious conversation, Jun couldn't resist a snort as he watched Naofumi's vain attempt to remain dignified with one cheek bulging like a chipmunk's; by the time Naofumi had gotten most of it down, however, the moment's mirth had passed.
"A little at a time, huh?" Naofumi repeated, taking a swig of water. How much is a little? How much is there at all? I wouldn't know where to begin or end. The first thing on my mind when I think about Melromarc is…
He paused, glass still raised to his lips.
Raphtalia.
"Thought of something?" Jun asked.
Naofumi put the glass down and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
"...Yeah."
At seven sharp the next morning, Iwatani Naofumi awoke to the crisp chirp of his alarm.
"Fuck," he grumbled into his pillow. This was the universal sound of one dragged from blissful slumber both at their own behest and against their will.
Still, he knew he couldn't give in to the tempting embrace of his comforter, so he forced himself to his feet, shivering a little at the sudden drop in temperature. With a yawn, Naofumi fixed his bleary gaze on his slippers; they seemed impossibly far away, but he knew that if he could just take a single step, they'd be that much closer.
"It's going to be hard, nii-san. But you have to take things one step at a time."
He took the first step.
Breakfast was simple; he wasn't a morning person, appetite included, so he prepared a little miso soup and some dried nori for the sake of having something solid to eat. Not the best meal I've ever eaten, he acknowledged, but far from the worst.
"Naofumi?"
It was his father. Naofumi hesitated for a moment, then greeted the man with a nod. "Ohayo."
"You're up early today. I haven't seen you out of bed before eleven since you were in high school," Katai plowed on, not returning his greeting.
Why do you always have to say things like that? "I got out of bed early in the ward," he returned instead, turning his focus back to the soup. "I've just been sleeping too much since I got home is all." By sleeping too much, he of course meant distracting myself until I'm too tired to think anymore, then collapsing in bed.
"Hm." Katai gave him what he could only assume was meant to be an approving pat on the shoulder, then set about preparing his own meagre breakfast. "Where's Jun?"
"No school today, he said."
"Hm."
Naofumi spooned a little soup into his mouth to mask his discomfort. Shit, this is awkward.
Thankfully, this didn't last much longer; Naofumi finished his breakfast before Katai's was done cooking, and he washed his bowl as quickly as he could before heading back upstairs for a bath.
If Naofumi was honest, the walls in the upstairs bathroom were too close together for his liking. Something about the narrow space made him feel trapped, but it wasn't so much a physical sensation as it was a mental one. In Melromarc's spacious baths, he'd felt almost free; those golden minutes of peace were the few in which he could relax even a little, as if his worries could simply diffuse away through the clouds of steam that hovered above the bath.
Here, it's like they just bounce off the walls and right back into my head.
Still, the water's warm embrace was a welcome one, and so long as he kept his eyes closed, he could pretend for just a moment that he was anywhere else.
When he'd soaked long enough, he took a few minutes to wash up, starting with his hair. Maybe I should have showered, he mused, leaning forward to empty a bucket of water over his head. Oh well. I've made worse mistakes.
By the time he dressed himself, he'd been up for an hour. His father, who'd left for work while Naofumi was in the bath, would refer to this as a "slow morning", but the way Naofumi saw it, Katai's morning routine was too fast. How does he manage to get himself ready to face the world in such a short time? he had to wonder. It takes me half an hour minimum before I'm ready to speak to anyone else in the mornings.
It was around this time that, with nothing set in stone for the day, Naofumi's mind began to wander again - only this time he let it do so. Don't run, he told himself. Find the one thing you're going to deal with today and focus on letting it hurt. That's what Jun was saying, right?
He didn't have to search long, however; what was hurting him most came to the front of his thoughts almost immediately, and he grabbed hold of it, clutching at the front of his shirt as if he could physically pull the pain from his chest.
Yeah. I'll start with this.
A deep, slow breath, and six months after the last time he'd seen her, Naofumi let go of Raphtalia.