His food tastes like sand.
His senses have been dulling, but it's the first time that he could not taste. The texture fills his mouth, and he remembers it from the faraway time when he once trips and eats a mouthful of it. Grainy, thick with dust that's getting sludge-like by the second where it touches his tongue.
He swallows it and goes to sip his tea. Still no taste.
He leaves the rice crackers in the kitchen drawer and his tea to the drain. He needs to teach his son how to cook, soon. One day his muscle memory will fail him, and his food will be different.
He peers into a nearby mirror, and a serene face greets him. It's rather pretty. Soft hair, soft eyes, delicate jawline. Harry is pretty, in a masculine kind of way, but he's full of sharp edges. Nana seems like a different creature altogether. It's too soft to be him, yet there is something there that makes him pause and think.
It's most likely his eyes. If there is something left of him, other than these thoughts of another life, it is the little soul looking through those eyes. He is not unfeeling, not yet empty... but just almost. Harry wonders if one day he will see the world in grayscale, or even turn blind. These days things keep slipping out of his reach.
Soft footsteps, almost like someone's trying to sneak in, reaches his ears. It's light, and there is a scuffling of shoes at the genkan. Harry smiles. "Welcome back, Tsu-kun. Any request for dinner?" He asks.
His small, fluffy-haired child bursts through the living room in a hurry and almost flies to the stairs. "An-anything's fine, mom!" The high-pitched voice of his child quivers; like he's trying to shout quietly and it's so hoarse. Harry squints at the figure running on the stairs and notices some redness on the knees, and a face hidden and muffled under a favoured orange jacket.
"Tsunayoshi?" The call of his name, with nothing attached, is enough to stop his son in his tracks.
"Please let mommy treat your knees."
Reluctantly, his son comes down. His eyes cast downward, refusing to meet his while Harry gently places him on the sofa.
When Harry kneels to see his face, Tsunayoshi's cheeks are damp and his eyes red, shining with tears. His neck, now that Harry tugs his jacket's hood down to see his face better... is blooming with bruises.
Finger-shaped bruises.
Suddenly his vision comes to clarity, and everything sharpens to a focus. There is a buzzing at the back of his eyes, and something trickles, and then gradually to a deluge fills up the void that is his heart. A familiar rage that has never happened after Sirius.
This is not a daydream, and Harry has woken up.
Yet as he blinks away the afterimages and glares from his vision, his heart lurches. He coughs up blood.