They didn't get to go back to the pool. The rest of their time spent in Tokyo was dedicated to packing up the rest of his belongings and finding a moving company to drive all of his stuff to Iwatobi.

That was across two or three days, give or take, and then they met Nagisa, Rei, Kisumi, and Asahi at the Shinkansen station to ride back to their hometown together. The rest of his friends had promised to meet with them in a couple days — they were all going to fly in. So they started their very long train ride across the country, and it was fine for the most part. Nagisa made sure it never got boring. Though, Rei did have a hard time of keeping him in his seat, until he pulled out a large bag of snacks to keep him satiated with. And it was amusing to watch Kisumi and Asahi bicker about silly things, especially when, only moments later — after they'd spent a long while in silence, stiffly looking away from each other — Asahi dropped his head on Kisumi's shoulder and Kisumi conceded to pat his hair, rolling his eyes at Makoto who chuckled.

Haru stared out the window the whole time, watching the passing landscapes, probably trying to ignore all of the commotion around him, and Makoto didn't blame him for that. He seemed much less anxious about the train, but it was obviously still a lot for him, as he was constantly scratching. Makoto noticed at one point that he'd actually managed to break the skin in the crook of his elbow, and he immediately took his hand to stop him. Haru glanced back over his shoulder and they held each other's gaze for just a second, but then he turned back to looking out of the window and permitted Makoto to keep his arms apart.

Makoto held his hand in his lap and frowned when he brushed his thumb across the back of it, dropping his gaze to examine Haru's skin. It was dry — a disconcerting kind of dry, to the point that it was ashen and the color was off, but in a weird way that he might not have expected to see. It was as though it had gotten more translucent. He could see the veins in the back of his hand, where he knew that hadn't been the case before.

He closed Haru's hand in both of his quietly and stared down at the floor, very aware of the way his pulse changed, and he felt a small knot form in the corner of his gut.

He didn't say anything about it, not just now, because there was nothing that could be done, and Kisumi and Asahi were sitting directly across from them. So he and Haru didn't speak on the train, nor did they really get the chance to once they pulled into Iwatobi and everyone piled into his childhood home.

It was late and everyone was tired, but it was still somehow chaotic, moving things around and plotting out sleeping arrangements, and trying to make sure everyone got something to eat, and Haru was trying to keep as away from all the voices as possible, and at some point disappeared, only for Makoto to find him asleep in his old bedroom an hour or so later. He sighed to himself, analyzing him, watching him closely, trying to decide if he was crazy or if it looked like Haru's breathing was unusually shallow. In the end, he curled up next to him and pulled the blanket over them both, because Haru seemed too at peace to disturb, but he continued to study his face in the dark until his own eyes slid close, and he had a dreamless night.

The next day brought even more chaos, and most everything that wasn't particular to that specific day and all of the parts moving around it got swept inadvertently out of his mind. The door was constantly opening and closing. There were a lot of bodies moving around and hiking up the heat, so they kept all of the windows open. Rei very graciously took charge of instructing the movers where to put things when they arrived bright and early in the morning. Kisumi listened closely to all of Makoto's wishes for how he wanted the bedrooms rearranged, and he put Asahi to work moving bedframes, and nightstands, and lamps, and boxes from one room to the other. Nagisa stayed busy making a mess in the kitchen, but he put food into everyone's hands at least every couple of hours, so no one complained about it — except for Rei, who insisted that Nagisa was disturbing the flow of everything by leaving bowls and pots and pans all over the counter spaces and table.

Between confirming or relaying instructions on what he wanted to be done with his stuff, Makoto spent most of his time moving all of his family's belongings into the attic, which was difficult, but he insisted to Kisumi that he wanted to be the one to do it — simply because he wanted to make sure everything was there and accounted for. There was a constant knot in his throat, thinking that a chunk of Ren's manga collection might go missing, or that his mother's jewelry would fall to the floor and get stepped on, or that his sister's pottery work might break. All of his family's treasures needed to be in one place, because he didn't want to lose any other pieces of them or the very fragile picture that they'd left behind. He hated that their stuff had to be moved at all, but since it was necessary for chugging forward, he wanted to be the one giving everything a new spot to sit in, because he knew he would be the only one that would cherish everything he picked up.

He lost track of Haru again during most of this. He knew he'd been helping Rei unpack the boxes that were coming in from Tokyo, but there was a good stretch of time in which Makoto didn't come across him at all, even when walking through the length of the house.

He ended up on the phone a lot, mostly with distant relatives who were either sharing their condolences with him, or letting him know their plans for flying in to join the burial ceremony.

He hated talking about those things too. He hated being reminded that he was cutting so many corners with his family's services — both because he had to and because there were just certain things he couldn't bring himself to face. They'd already been gone for much too long to give them a wake, or to hold a traditional funeral for them. And where the tradition for cremation was to pick their bones out of the ashes and place them into urns himself, he just simply couldn't do that. Maybe if it had been just his mother, or just his father, he could have bucked up the courage for it, but not for all four of them. Not for his baby brother and sister. So he had to have a long conversation with the crematory about those details, and after that, he spent a long moment out on the deck by himself with his face in his hands.

Kisumi was the one who came out to bring him tea and sit silently with him while he brushed a hand up and down his back.

It wasn't until he'd managed to pull himself together from that and join the commotion back inside, that he found Haru sitting on the floor in the living room, organizing all of his school materials that he'd kept. His movements were slow, his gaze unfocused. Even his lips had started to go chapped.

Makoto gave his teacup to Kisumi, asking if he could bring it to the kitchen for him, and he approached Haru only when Kisumi walked off to do so. He crouched down to sit next to him, and eyed the movers and Rei still moving back and forth, before he deemed that there was enough noise going on that no one would even stop to think about picking up on side conversations.

"Haru," he said quietly, even still, turning his gaze on him. "How are you doing? Are you alright?"

Haru nodded vaguely, continuing with his task. "I'm fine."

Makoto caught a glimpse of that one spot in the crook of his elbow, and took his hand again, forcing him to stop what he was doing, so that he could examine it more closely. His skin was cracked and the scratch marks were bleeding, not terribly, but it was enough.

"Why don't you take a break," he said, squeezing at Haru's hand and looking him straight in the eye. "You should go down to the beach."

Haru looked away from him. "I just took a break."

"Haru, you should go wade in the water for a little bit."

He shook his head. "I'm fine."

Makoto pressed his lips together, trying not to appear desperate about it. "I'll go with you."

"You have enough to do, Makoto."

"… Is that why you're being so stubborn?"

"I'm not being stubborn."

Makoto's thumb tapped on his knee as he bit at his lip and attempted to breathe a calming breath. "What if we go for a walk after you're done with this? Can we do that?"

"Stop worrying about it," was Haru's response, and Makoto puffed up stiffly.

"Haru —"

"Makoto-senpai."

He looked up to Rei, who was leaning over the couch they were sitting next to.

"The probate lawyer is here," he said, nodding toward the front door, where the woman he'd already met with a couple of times within the weeks before they went to Tokyo was standing out of the way of everyone else. She waved with a friendly smile when she saw him looking over at her.

He sighed and pushed himself up to his feet. "Okay. Thank you, Rei."

Rei nodded and walked off, and Makoto glanced back down to Haru, who had already resumed his organizing. For fear of losing his temper, he said nothing, and walked off to greet the woman.

That meeting took up most of the rest of the day. There was nothing extremely complicated about transferring ownership of the house and all of his family's assets to him, seeing as his parents didn't have any outstanding debts that needed to be paid off, and Makoto was literally the only next of kin still living. But his parents had been so young that there were no wills left behind, and it turned out there was a lot of paperwork that needed to be done to account for that.

The woman was very kind and patient with him though, explaining everything like she was speaking to a toddler, which he needed, but he was also grateful that she didn't seem annoyed at having to. She made sure he understood everything, including all the next steps and what exactly he was signing. And she didn't seem bothered by all the ruckus they were surrounded by. She thanked Nagisa for offering her cookies, and smiled at Makoto with an understanding "You have a lot going on."

He just wanted all of this to be over.

By the time she left, the movers had long since disappeared, and Nagisa had made an entire feast. So they all sat down to eat it together, and he was comforted by that. Even with as much noise and movement they brought with them, his friends were making all of this so much easier to get through. He couldn't imagine having to handle it all by himself. Those couple of weeks before going to Tokyo had been a nightmare, and while he knew having Haru with him the whole time had been the thing that had kept him from imploding, having even more hands and organized brains to get things in order was relieving in its own way. And being able to sit down with them all and actually manage to laugh in warm conversation, eased out most of the tension in his shoulders and back, and allowed him to breathe a little more freely.

They ended up migrating to the living room at some point, and spent a while sitting around, enjoying more of each other's company, and he didn't realize he'd fallen asleep with his head on Kisumi's shoulder until he was being patted awake.

"Makoto~ Time to wake up, bunny. Haru's going to bring you to bed."

He had no sense of anything at that point. All he could manage to do was stand up and follow the hand that tugged him down the hall, only vaguely aware of all the goodnights that followed him. He was already halfway gone again by the time he fell on the bed in his room, but he could hear his own voice murmuring halfway into the pillow before he was dragged all the way out.

"Haru … we need to go to the beach."

"Not right now, Makoto. Go to sleep," Haru's voice said somewhere above his head.

The blanket settled over his shoulders, and he couldn't manage anything else after that.

The next day was the burial service, and he didn't find it any kind of promising that he started the morning in tears. As unprompted as it seemed, he knew he would have to just get over the fact that it was going to be an all-day thing.

He already felt so heavy, and he dreaded leaving the warmth of the bed, but also, staring at the walls of his childhood bedroom didn't help any either. There were so many memories tucked away in the corners and seams of the room, there was no way to avert his gaze and find a spot that didn't remind him of being woken by one of his parents walking in to tell him he had to get up for school, or by Ren and Ran jumping on top of him on a Saturday morning, begging to be taken to the park.

And what started as silent tears very quickly blossomed into very hurt sobbing, and he was only the smallest bit relieved when Haru tucked himself close to his back and curled his arms around him.

No one rushed him through the day. A lot more people showed up to his house, people he hadn't seen in a very long time, and his eyes stayed red and wet, his nose stayed running, but he started to rely on Kisumi flourishing a new tissue out of his pocket in exactly all the moments he needed one.

Everyone moved as a unit to the family plot. The ceremony was quick. He shook his head when they asked him if he wanted to say anything. They buried most of his family's ashes, and he kept the rest for the butsudan. However, as much as he was relieved that the process didn't drag on, he couldn't find it in him to leave once it was over. And he ended up sitting on the grave, staring at all the way too many names on the stone, and hurting as though the wounds were fresh, as though they'd been torn back open and were threatening never to heal.

His friends stayed with him, though for all the time that he spent there, only Haru sat behind him, leaning against his back — and he was grateful for that.

The sun had set by the time he finally got up, and everyone went back to the house with him. They ate more food, had more conversations, played games, and the house was even more crowded than it had been, and while on a normal day that might have warmed him up and coaxed him into having fun, he couldn't bring himself to smile at all that night. He was grateful for them all, wanted- needed their company, but the comfort of having them there didn't seep into his bones this time. He wished that it would, but he knew he couldn't force it, and they knew that too, so they let him feel whatever he was feeling and didn't try to change it for him. He was grateful for that too.

They decided to all sleep in the living room that night, and that was probably the only reason he was able to sleep.