"Ramen, laundry detergent, a marker... Are you sure you're grocery shopping, Yamato?" The words are punctuated with beeps and electronic clicks as numbers flash in green across a monitor. "Doesn't your mother shop for your family?"
"I don't have a mother," Yamato says automatically.
Next to him at the counter, Takeru's face jerks with sorrow – the corners of his lips fall and turns his mouth into a pale rainbow of unaccepted fate. Resentment crawls up his spine at the vague memories that rush back: his parents arguing, Yamato playing the harmonica to tune them out. A sour candy-like surge of his family's harsh reality hits him. The past still hurts him so deeply, but all Takeru can do to express it is grunt.
"I mean, she doesn't live with me," Yamato fixes.
Miyako (who thinks her apron is ghastly, that the responsibility of operating the family convenience store is wrongly trusted in the hands of a thirteen-year-old) looks at the brothers and nods awkwardly.