By the time Akihiko finally began to stir again, he never, ever recalled having a headache as bad as the one he had now. He almost wished he could plop his head back onto the pillow he lifted it from and go back to sleep, just to escape the throbbing pain. The light that rushed past his eyelids at the first given opportunity only worsened his plight. He winced and his hands went up to clutch blindly at the air, to block his face from the rays of sun and overhanging light that so assaulted him. This movement was enough to evoke a string of cheerful gasps and chatter; "He's awake! Akinii-chan!"
Oh! ...Hah, there was Miki! With considerable effort, he forced his eyes open, blinking once or twice to clear the haze and bring his sister into focus. He stretched his arms toward her, which she immediately bounded forward to meet. "We were so worried! The doctors said you were okay, but you just kept sleeping and sleeping..."
He blinked a few more times, casting his view around. He didn't recognize anything around him, and it clicked then; he must have been in a hospital. He didn't remember ever seeing the inside of one before. So he'd gotten hurt that bad, huh? Everything that happened was a huge blur... he just remembered being afraid for Miki, pushing her away from something - a... car? - and his memory blanked out right after that. He remembered a lot of pain, and a lot of red, but otherwise, nothing. He probably just fell unconscious.
"Hey." Shinji's voice returned his drifting thoughts. The brunette turned to a small rolling tray, presumably the one that his food was on. What time was it, anyway? He squinted, searching around for a clock. "We went back to the dorm for a few hours, and I helped Riyeko make pancakes. She thought you might like some."
Akihiko's eyes were back on him at 'pancakes'.
"You made me pancakes?" The gasp that followed these words was dramatic, but he thrust his hands forward nonetheless, "Wow! You guys are the best!"
"Yeah, yeah. Eat your pancakes."
He didn't have to be asked twice.
The weird slidey-tray thing was pretty convenient. It was kind of like a rolling stand, but it extended a small counter over an empty space which permitted him to pull it near him while when sitting in his bed. He straightened himself upright, focused only on getting the fork in his hands and the delicious pancakes in his mouth, when Miki intercepted him. "Niiii-chan," She cooed and held up a large glass of his favorite drink, "I got you some milk!"
"Aw, thanks, Miki," He grinned and ruffled her hair some with a hand. Of course, it was only then that he noticed the multitude of cords - no, tubes - that followed his arm, and so he gave it a passing glance, only to near-faint at the sight of needles imbedded in his flesh.
"Oh! You're awake." Satoru popped through the doorway just then. Akihiko would have smiled if not rather taken with the issue of having needles stuck in his arm. "The doctor said it might be a few more hours... what's with that face?"
Akihiko was horrified. "They stuck needles in my arm!"
"They had to do that to administer you nourishment and fluids. And pain medicine." The little platinum boy disapproved of Satoru's complete lack of urgency. "What? Look, can you feel anything? If it's not hurting you, don't think about it."
He was still quite dissatisfied, but Akihiko did as he was told and tried to put it out of mind. With difficulty, yes. Since he was awake and able to test out his dexterity, he moved his left hand swiftly back and forth, down to his plate of food, wherever he directed it, all at his mind's silent command; his right arm, however, was more difficult to make use of. Of course, being left-handed, this didn't bother him as much as it puzzled him. Still, he looked down, drawing a hand over the fabric of the clothes he found himself in - which... were unrecognizable to him. Where did his clothes go? And why did they put him in... was this a...?
Akihiko lifted the sterile bedsheets, underneath which was his warm body, and assessed that, yes. For some reason or another, the hospital had stuck him in a dress. Where in the world were his clothes? Was he allowed to change back into them?
...Well, that could wait. He had pancakes to eat.
After the third or fourth bite had been popped into his mouth - or was it the fifth? He didn't bother keeping count - Satoru stood up, and beckoned Shinji and Miki over to him. "I'll tell the doctor that you're awake. After you eat breakfast, he's going to talk to you about what happened and what you'll need to do as you get better, all right?"
Since his mouth was full, he nodded his understanding.
"Do you have any questions before I go, or-?"
Akihiko made an eager sound and waved his hand to indicate that, yes, he did have an urgent question. He swallowed the mouthful of syrup-slandered pancakes with a few gulps of milk, "Are there any pancakes left at the orphanage?"
Each of them laughed a little. He grinned hopefully.
"Yes, yes, I think so. And if there aren't, we can ask Riyeko to make you another plate, just for you." Satoru ushered the two others out the door. "Okay?"
Akihiko's mouth was already full again, so gave the adult a thumbs up.
۞
Following several minutes of munching and clinking silverware, Akihiko found himself warm and pleasantly filled with the delicacy that was pancakes. He drank a few more swigs of his milk before setting the glass down, in which remained a gulp or two, and absently rubbed an arm over his mouth to free from it the milk and syrup that lingered there. He straightened the blankets over his body again and permitted himself to freely fall back, his head cushioned quite comfortably by the pillows behind him. So, now what? The doctor hadn't arrived yet. He couldn't leave, not with these needles in his arms - he followed each one and saw that they were all connected to varying apparatuses, none of which he had a single clue what they did - and even if he could, he wasn't sure what there was to do.
Hospitals, Akihiko then decided, were boring.
The door clicked open. He turned his head just enough to witness the approaching stranger, a man garbed completely in white, with a clipboard in hand.
He took a wild guess. "Are you the doctor?"
"Why, yes, I am," The man smiled at him before returning his eyes to the clipboard. Akihiko sat himself up straight again. "Akihiko, right? How are you feeling?"
He paused, assessing his overall condition. "...My head hurts."
"I'm not surprised." The man set down the clipboard and walked over to his bedside, where he took his hands to the young male's head. Akihiko hadn't noticed before, but the majority of his temples and forehead were completely bound in secure wrappings. When he lifted a hand, he could feel his hair sticking out from between these bandages in several places, but in these few places he could feel that the injury to his head had matted some of his hair together with blood. He cringed a little - he probably wasn't a comforting sight.
The doctor moved around the younger male's hands. He took a utensil off one of the nearby tables and cut the bandage away from his head with a single snip, unraveling the full extent of his wounds to the cold and sanitized air. Feeling the chill against his scalp made him shiver uncomfortably, the sting of it only adding to the intensity of his headache.
"Do you need some pain medication?"
Did he want some foreign substance squirted into his veins through a needle?
No, he could do without that, thanks.
The doctor accepted this polite refusal at face value and continued assessing whatever wounds had scored the child's body. He had a few deep gashes here and there, but they were so well-patched and cared for that he hadn't noticed them much - aside from a minor sting - and none of them bothered him quite as much as his head did. The doctor set aside the blood-stained bandages next to his now-empty plate of food, and touched a single, plastic-gloved finger to a spot that charged agony through the patient.
"Ow!" Akihiko's whole body seized with the second of pain. "That hurts!"
"It's still very tender, I see." The doctor stepped back. "Alas, I can't complain. You've done a much better job so far than any of us expected."
The child sniffled to withhold the tears that the pain evoked in him. "What... what do you mean by that?" He tried to lift a hand to touch at the wound, but thought better of it.
"Considering your head got the brunt of the impact in a car accident, you're a very lucky boy to have survived with as little repercussions as you did." The doctor smiled. "Nothing less than a miracle. Most people would have died under the same circumstances."
His face became slightly wane at this. "...I was the only one hurt, right?"
"Yes. Your sister and your friend were clear of the wreckage."
"That's good." Akihiko provided an absent-minded nod. "...So, um, everything is clear?" Some hope crept into his voice, "Do I get to go home now?"
"Well, aside from your head hurting, how do you feel?"
He paused and moved his arms again. Again, he was reminded how moving his right arm had become slightly more difficult, and told this to his doctor.
"That's probably because the left side of your cranium got the worst of the impact. ...You can still move it, though, right? I didn't detect any serious damage to your brain, but if it's too difficult or painful to move your arm, that could mean we missed something."
"O-Oh, it's not too hard." He smiled sheepishly, "I'm left-handed, anyway." The man inspected his expression for a moment, then nodded and removed his gloves, returning to his clipboard; Akihiko swallowed, then mustered the will to ask, "Could I have a mirror?"
"A mirror? ...Ah, you want to see your face. I think I've got one over here."
He moved to the opposite end of the room, opening a sliding drawer, from which he retrieved a small mirror and passed it over to Akihiko. Taking a small breath, the boy aligned the reflective surface in front of himself and located the point of his head that had been hurt.
...He bit his lip when he saw it. The laceration started across his left temple, just under his hairline, and extended a few inches into his scalp. His hair probably would have concealed it if not for the way it was matted and pushed aside, held still by the dried blood that encrusted the wound. Along the line of injury itself, there was no blood. It was simply discolored there, and he thought it was safe to assume that it had been cleaned when the doctors were patching the wound. What bothered him most of all was how gruesome the cut was, and how they patched it with something that looked disturbingly akin to barbed wire.
"W-What is..." He lifted a hand, just barely touching one of the pointed surfaces.
The doctor was busy with his paperwork, but looked back just long enough to see what it was Akihiko was so stunned by. "Like I said, your head got the worst of the impact. It had cut open your scalp, and you were losing a lot of blood. We had to patch it up. It took a few stitches." When the child's fingers held fast at one of the tiny wires, the doctor frowned and shooed his hand away. "Don't pick at them. It'll reopen your wound."
Miki... hadn't seen this, had she?
He wasn't sure he could stomach facing her, not with this horrible injury scarring his face. He remembered the many times he had gotten himself hurt, one way or another, when they were young kids; every cut warranted a hysterical fretting and crying that plagued him with a terrible guilt. Why he was so prone to injuries, he hadn't a clue, but if there was one thing he hated about them, it was the fact that they always brought his little sister to cry.
He didn't want her to cry. He didn't want her to see this.
The doctor began to depart just then. Akihiko's heart skipped with urgency and he blurted out, "Wait! Ah- this is going to sound... weird... but could I have a band-aid?"
The quizzical look given to him made him stop and falter.
"It's just, my little sister... I don't want her to see me like this."
His expression warmed. He nodded. "Sure, I'll have the nurse cover it up for you."
۞
And, just several minutes later, so she did. Akihiko asked her to help him clean up before she covered the injury, and the two of them endeavored to wash the blood from his hair and scalp in the nearby sink built into his room, handling the wound itself with utmost care. He did irritate it once or twice, and the stitches liked to prick him, too, but it all worked out in the end, and the nurse concluded the affair by patching a small square-shaped bandage onto his temple, just underneath his hairline. It didn't cover the part of the injury that snaked into his scalp, but his newly-cleaned and fluffed hair was sufficient to cover the rest of it. He washed his face off to wake himself up and tried to get used to walking around again - the nurse had bandaged his arm, too, after taking the needles out, something that would have triggered his gag reflex if she hadn't craftily distracted him with an ice cream cone she brought into the room just earlier - and, when coming past the mirror again, he double-checked the appearance of his new scar.
Yup. He looked as good as new! In fact, the bandage, placed where it was, was a nice touch. The wound was so nicely covered that he would probably pass it off as something as mundane as a cut. Then Miki won't have to worry about it.
The nurse left again after that. Satoru, Shinji, and Miki had all been awaiting their next opportunity to visit; as soon as they were given the okay, they were right back in there. Akihiko greeted them cheerfully and shared elated hugs with all of them - except Shinji, who refused to do so until he was back in proper clothes.
After a long chat with the doctors and staff, Satoru herded the children off to the train station, where they would finally be able to return to their home in Iwatodai. At least, this would be the first time Akihiko saw it since the accident. Miki, who had been kept up the entire night with her fretting over the boy, fell asleep almost immediately after they boarded the train; Shinji was more attentive and asked how he felt from time to time, whereas Satoru was surprisingly dark-faced the entire way back.
When they were just pulling into the station, the fact that Satoru's mood had been so quickly soured had started to bother him, and Akihiko asked, "What's wrong, Sato-san?"
"Huh?" He looked up, then turned his eyes away again, shaking his head. "Oh, it's nothing, Aki." The man's gaze flickered to the paperwork the hospital gave him just prior to their departure. "...Yeah, it's nothing. Don't worry about it..."
The bustle of people made it difficult for them to stick together, but Satoru held fast to Akihiko's hand, who led Miki close behind him the same way. Shinji just made sure to stick close by them, even if it meant having to shove or squeeze around a few people.
Before long, they had endured the tiring trip from the Iwatodai station to the plains outside of it, where the orphanage lied. Miki was falling asleep again and so Akihiko gave her a piggy-back ride part of the way there, until carrying the extra weight started to make him dizzy, and Shinji insisted that he take over. They gently transferred the girl from one back to the other so efficiently that they managed to avoid waking her up. Satoru brightened a little and congratulated their effective methods and teamwork for handling Miki.
Climbing the three wooden stairs that introduced them to Kawatani's front door step, Satoru knocked a few times and stepped inside, holding the door for the children following him. To his bafflement, Akihiko was greeted by some of the others in his faction - and even some in factions completely separate from his own - who were all worried about his welfare, asking him how things were and how he was feeling. He answered all of their questions as much as he could, all sheepishly, afterward trying to tell them to quiet down so that Miki didn't wake up. Shinji had already slipped past the crowd and into the sleeping room, though. He popped back out less than a minute later after retiring the girl to bed.
"Some dog showed up while you guys were gone," Natsuo was just telling him. "He was real friendly. The kids in Rikuto's group chased it off, though."
Shinji trotted over to stand juxtaposed to Akihiko. "A dog? What kind of dog?"
"Er, I'm not sure what breed it was. I'm not big on dogs or anything..." He was unable to help grinning a little, "Oh, I forgot, Shinji's our resident wild animal-tamer."
The brunette passed off that remark. "Why did they chase it off? Was it a stray?"
"Probably. It looked a little underfed. They were trying to play with it, but it was skittish around too many people. I imagine it's probably been on it's own for a while. I think they found it behind the building... it ran off toward Iwatodai."
Akihiko quickly picked up on Shinji's antsiness. "Why don't we go look for it?"
"Oh, no you don't," Natsuo pointed a scolding finger in the cinerious boy's direction, "If there's anywhere you should be going, it's to bed. Satoru says you shouldn't leave the orphanage for anything other than school until your injury is healed up."
"Wha-?" He blustered with indignance, "That's totally unfair! It's going to take forever to heal! It won't hurt it one bit for me to go outside!"
"Do you honestly think we haven't known you long enough to tell how reckless you are?" Natsuo crossed his arms with a look of skepticism. "You'd have that thing reopened before you even made it off the front porch."
"I am not reckless!"
"How many times have you managed to skin yourself in the riverbed?"
"Hey, that's not...!"
"And you've fallen out of a tree... how many times?"
"O-Okay, I... I'll stay out of the trees."
"And you just got hit by a car. I rest my case."
"The car totally wasn't my fault!"
"Was it the tree's fault for not catching you, too?"
Akihiko folded his arms and glared daggers at his senior. "...Maybe!"
Granted, this didn't phase Natsuo, who just folded his arms and pouted back. "It'll be over before you know it, I promise. We don't want you getting hurt worse."
Growling, the little one collapsed on the floor, arms folded, and refused to move when Natsuo nudged him with a foot. "This place is boring!"
"You'll still get to go to school in two days!" Natsuo threw his hands up with an exaggerated enthusiasm, "I know you're excited! Yayyy!"
Akihiko stuck his tongue out. "School is boring, too!"
At this childish display, Shinji finally committed the palm-to-face movement. "For Christ's sake, Aki, you're not three years old."
The silver-haired boy stuck his tongue out at him, too. This warranted an eyeroll.
"All right, well, I'm going to get you into bed." Akihiko whined a protest to this, but when further prompted, he gave in and picked himself back up to a stand. "You all managed to get out of going to school today, but you'll be going back on the 24th, since tomorrow is a holiday. Rest up and try to feel better before then." The older black-brunette turned his eyes then onto Shinji, the only one of the trio who had yet to retire. "What about you, Shinji? Are you going to get some rest, too? I know you didn't sleep much last night."
"Nah, I'll pass. Is Riyeko in the kitchen? Dinner is soon."
"Yeah, I think so." He and Akihiko headed toward the faction's sleeping room, where Miki had already been put to bed early. "Make sure to get some sleep later."
۞
Without his conscious thinking on it, his footsteps took him straight there. Through the dining room, around the various padded cushions there that were laid out for the children later, Shinji stepped barefoot over the cold floors and eased his way through the door to the kitchen, his gaze swiftly coming upon the familiar dark-brunette form of Riyeko. She turned her gaze onto him for just a second. She brightened, then, and gestured to the open counter next to her. "Gonna help me again tonight?"
"What are you cooking?" The brunette paused and tasted the air. "It smells like pork."
"It is! You're getting good at that." She brought a delicate hand onto the other side of the counter and slid across it a cookbook, which Shinji approached and peered just above the counter in order to see. "We're making ginger pork. I thought we could use a treat."
"Weren't you planning to make the treat on the holiday?" She looked back at the smirk that the brunette was giving her and giggled.
"Well, I got excited to make it! Don't complain!"
The boy pulled the cookbook just enough off the edge of the counter to pull it down and flip it so that he could read the pages, then let it slap back onto the flat surface while he departed for the nearby pantry. As usual, it was uncomfortably empty, save for much rice and various broths. If there was anything Shinji was tired of, it was soup, but more often than not, that was all the orphanage could afford to feed them.
He was into the motions of cooking again before long. After picking out all the ingredients that the recipe called for, all of which was bought recently with their limited funding, he sat next to the girl on a stool he pulled up and watched her work over the stove. She asked him to read the cookbook instructions to her from time to time, which he did. In fact, it was likely because of that task that he had learned to pick up reading faster than some of the other kids his age. Riyeko had found it helpful of him.
When they were done preparing the food - which was shortly after the brunette arrived, as the meal didn't take much prepping - they had to make more, enough to feed all the hungry mouths of the orphanage. He helped prepare some of the other ingredients this time, such as cutting the pork or trying his hand at concocting the marinade. Dinner was soon finished. Permitting Shinji to take a bite or two extra from what was prepared, a privilege offered to him only because he was such a superb helper, the others were called in for dinner and everyone was seated in the dining room. Shinji took his place in the corner, empty where Aki and Miki usually occupied the cushions closest to him. He looked down at his tauntingly small serving of the meal he had helped toil to create, heard his stomach growl, and slouched a little under the temptation to consume it.
But he didn't. He couldn't. There was someone else who needed this food more than he did. And he couldn't take Aki or Miki's servings - just because they weren't there, he would never think to deny them food as thoughtlessly as he would himself. They would need something to eat later, and he wanted them to wake up with a serving ready.
Natsuo quickly noticed his apparent loss of appetite. "Aren't you hungry, Shinji?"
The brunette sighed, and shook his head. "I don't know. I can't stand the thought of eating all of a sudden." He further improvised and added, "I've got a lot on my mind, is all. ...You think I could take it outside with me?"
"You want to eat outside?" The black-brunette gave him a puzzled look.
Shinji deliberately turned his head away. "I think I need some air, that's all."
"Well, I don't see why not. Make sure you come back before nightfall. We have enough to worry about with Aki being hurt," The teen took in another bite of his meal, which he swallowed just as quickly. "Try to be careful. I'll come find you if you don't come back."
"Heh, I don't need you to come find me. I'll be back before dark, I promise." The brunette heaved himself to his feet, taking his bowl and spoon with him. "I'm not a kid. I can take care of myself better than Aki can."
"How is that supposed to be an accomplishment?"
...Right. Good point. "Shut up. You know what I mean."
Natsuo suppressed a bought of laughter, knowing that it would mean the loss of his present mouthful of food. "Yeah, yeah. Try not to get into any trouble."
۞
Shinji stepped down the flight of concrete stairs, feeling the dirt and grass cushion underneath his feet, pressing on his sore heels. They were calloused and worn from the amount of walking he was used to - walking into the woods, walking to school, walking back from school, walking to the beach - but they had yet to completely desensitize. The aroma of the food in his hands was a constant reminder of his own hunger, sending his stomach into fits of growling demands which he attempted to quiet by clenching his fingers over it.
He knew he was hungry, damn it. He didn't get a lot of food to eat to begin with. But as hungry as he was, he kept reminding himself that it was not nearly as much as that dog must have already gone through. Someone else needed this food more than he did.
Now... if he was a dog, where would he go from here?
The brunette's mind clicked. Natsuo said it was behind the orphanage. I'll follow the footprints. Turning, he immediately started off to the back of the building, maintaining some degree of nonchalance. He didn't want anyone thinking that he was trying to help the dog. If they did, they would probably deny him the opportunity to feed it. He had always resented that about some of the others he lived with, their constant attempts to enforce the idea in his brain that he was more important than any other animal in need. It was bullshit, if you asked him. A dog was as much of a living thing as any person. Hell, the dog was probably more loyal and well-meaning than some of the scumbag humans out there, anyway.
The back of the orphanage was rather dusty. That was where they kept their trash, and so there was a door from the end of the kitchen that led out here; aside from the garbage cans and miscellaneous litter was a dirt path, and a bench that rested on the far side, a place to sit and rest their tired and overworked feet. Here, Shinji could decipher many scuffs in the dirt from human footprints, but it took him a while to locate any modeling a canine's. He did eventually, encrusted with mud from the mutt's foot. He sank a little inwardly when imagining how far the dog must have been forced to walk to get here.
Seeing that the blurred pawprints did, in fact, point in the direction of Iwatodai, Shinji held his bowl of food close and proceeded to follow them across the plains. Fortunately, seeing as the outskirts of Iwatodai weren't too far from the orphanage, the dog would have probably fled into the urban area in order to escape notice. But once Shinji arrived there as well, he would be completely clueless as to the dog's whereabouts. Should he try visiting the pound? He felt his heart sink at the thought. That dog had no hope of survival if it had been taken into the pound. He sourly recalled the time that Satoru had told Shinji that he had to take one of his rescue dogs to the pound, and so he did... but little did he know, the pound would euthanize him within the next week.
The memory was so embittering that he forced it away from his mind.
If the Earth under his feet in the plains had added to the consistent soreness of his feet, the concrete only worsened their plight. Still, Shinji pushed on, walking the cement pathways with his eyes in constant movement, in search for the mutt that had so recently been in the area. He hoped it was still nearby, he honestly did. The food in his bowl had long since gotten cold, and the sun was beginning to set, stretching its blanket of reds and oranges over the blue-indigo sky. The scent of it would be enough to attract the dog, wouldn't it? ...The brunette bit his lip, and unknowing of what else to do, he started to call out for the animal. Anyone who passed by and questioned him with a puzzled glance was rewarded with a defensive glare, which often sufficed to keep them away.
Hours later, and he had yet to see a single dog.
"Here, boy!" The brunette stifled a cough, his voice becoming hoarse with overuse and his inevitable fatigue. "I... I brought food..."
Still, nothing. Shinji sat himself on the edge of the street, setting down the bowl next to him and resting his head on his hands. I guess they chased him off pretty far. The brunette released a frustrated sigh, permitting his insisting eyes a minute to close. He was tired... but he had to walk all the way back to the orphanage, empty-handed, before he could sleep...
The street lights were beginning to flicker by now. Shinji opened his eyes again and watched as they each came to life, their illumination so weak in comparison to the sun that would soon have completely retreated beyond the horizon. He yawned and admired it for a few minutes - it really was pretty, all the vivid colors, albeit the sun itself was a little hard on his eyes - before he felt something brush against his back.
That was bad. Shinji could never accustom himself to having someone behind him; being snuck up on was something he had just instinctively hated his whole life. In school, when he could help it, he kept his back to the wall and chose seats at the end of the classroom. He just didn't trust people - anything, really - behind him. So he jumped up to his feet, his heart racing, and clenched a fist in preparation to retaliate against whoever it was... but his hand fell a moment later when he recognized the wolfish form, and the creature's explicit interest in the bowl rather than him.
It didn't even hesitate. As soon as it located the food, it buried its muzzle into the dish and breathed in the food with a few bites. Shinji paused, dumbfounded, before that fell for a staggering relief and a chuckle. "Well, you're hungry, aren't you?"
The dog stopped eating when his hand touched to its head. He realized that it was probably scared that he would take the bowl away, but as he continued to pat the dog's matted coat, it slowly relaxed, wagging its tail, and continued running is flat tongue against the bottom of the bowl to retrieve anything it might have previously missed.
He took that respite to look over the dog. In all honesty, it looked like it was well-bred. An akita inu, perhaps. Its - his - coat was a vivid mesh of oranges and blacks and whites, a 'brindle' colored coat that gave him the appearance of the autumn season. He, like Natsuo said, looked greatly underfed and was as skittish as he imagined the dog would likely be. But, that said, he seemed more tame than some other dogs Shinji had encountered, too.
The dog lifted his muzzle from the bowl not a moment after he realized that it was completely emptied. The look he gave the brunette seemed to plead, 'Can I have more?' But Shinji had nothing more to give him. In fact, at the mere thought of more food, of the meal he had gotten next to nothing of, the boy's stomach viciously growled and he again clutched his fingers on it. I'll be fine, he insisted to himself. Not like I can't go without one night of dinner. There'll be breakfast in the morning.
This relief was quickly discredited; then, what would the dog eat?
Shinji shut his eyes and slouched, dispirited.
۞
When Akihiko woke up, it was bright and early the following day. Miki was still out cold. She had a tendency to oversleep when permitted, so he rolled out of bed, careful not to wake her, and started his day. Before anything, he reaffirmed Shinji was home by checking for his presence in the bed next to them - once he had, he made his way to the washroom, where he took a much-needed shower. Just before leaving, he dug out another square, white bandage from the medicine cabinet to patch back over his stitched wound to cover it back up and therefore maintain the illusion of near-instant recovery.
From there, he realized he had little to do. A day of complete idleness, spent locked up in the orphanage when he would often make full use of his holidays. ...It was easy to guess, then, that once Miki and Shinji woke up later that morning, that Akihiko conspired with them to sneak out and go to the beach. Miki was concerned for her brother, but upon his insisting that he was fine - a point supported by the fact that he had little visible injury to show for it, and her automatic trust in the boy whom she so greatly looked up to - she was happy to have him along. Shinji openly disagreed but said that as long as Aki thought he was fine, what he did was up to him. Shinji and Miki both agreed to take care of him under the circumstance that anything happened to him, and made him promise to be careful.
Their trip to the decided location went smoothly enough. When reaching Port Island, they all managed to scrounge up enough money to buy an ice cream cone, which was shared between the three of them prior to walking the remaining distance to the beach. When there, they played and swam as they often did when there. Other children and adults were also present, but the trio kept to a mainly deserted strip of the beach that they had more or less claimed as their own after their many visits to the area. Things were fine this way, enjoying the sun and the sand - even grabbing a few slices of watermelon from a nearby friendly beach-goer - until Akihiko tried his hand at swimming for the first time that day. He was hesitant to do it at first, but given how much he enjoyed swimming, he couldn't resist.
As it turned out, he would regret it. When dipping into the ocean water, his wound was irritated by the saline water the minute he sank under the surface. Reduced to a screaming fit of agony on the beach shore, with Miki and Shinji both fretting considerably over his condition, they ran him home as fast as they could. But to make matters worse, Satoru had plunged into a fit at Akihiko's absence. Having told him repeatedly that he was restricted to the orphanage until his injury healed, his sneaking out warranted the first real, verging on violent tongue-lashing that Akihiko - and the other two, for that matter - had ever received in their entire time of living in the orphanage. The boy could not count the amount of cuss words slung at him, nor could he resist succumbing to tears when Satoru went on to say that he had other children to take care of, that Akihiko was becoming a selfish, reckless brat to be so inconsiderate of the others' feelings, and that the medical bill that the orphanage was required to pay to accomodate the care Akihiko had needed might be enough to half-starve everyone in the facility for the next six months. Shinji paled at this. Miki was too busy crying as a result of her brother having fallen into a hysterical mess of sobs himself, and chased after him when he fled the orphanage building to the local riverbed.
At the riverbed, he was still a mess. A wet, crying, snot-nosed mess, and he found himself wishing that he could run away from Miki, too, whom he knew did not want to see him like this. He was supposed to be the big, strong one, who always did everything right. He was supposed to be the example, the support, the one she could always count on. And yet here he was. He was hurt, he was crying, and felt as though he had just been called the biggest fuck-up of the year by the man who inhabited that place of 'father' in Akihiko's mind.
Nonetheless, Miki was doing all she could to comfort him. "Akinii, he didn't mean all those things. He still loves you. Please, don't cry. He was just mad, you know? He's just... he was just worried about you! You were gone all day, and..."
The platinum boy couldn't stand the thought of Satoru right now. He could hardly stand the thought of Shinji, or Miki, or anyone. The urge to shove his sister off of him and run, even from her, was so strong in his mind, and yet not the most extreme of his moods could ever make him be harsh with her. As she clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder, her shivering body betraying the upset that he had caused her, he knew that she was only doing all she could to make him feel better. She was trying to repay all the times that he had been there for her; she was trying to be the same strong, supportive presence that he had always been when she had needed a shoulder to cry on. She was trying to give back to him what was his job to always give her. He was a mess... and Miki, of all people, was trying to help him mend himself back together. If he had screwed up in everything else, couldn't he at least still be strong for his sister? If nothing else, couldn't he at least keep her safe and happy...?
"I'm... I'm okay, Miki." The redness of his eyes, the tears and the utter wet stickiness of his face all begged to differ, but his voice was returning to a normal pitch. "I'll be okay. You should... um, go back inside. I'm sure they're serving dinner about now."
She held his sleeve, for he wouldn't let her hold his hands, moistened far too much by his tears. "I don't wanna go back inside without you."
"...Maybe I should be by myself for a little while."
"B-But..." The girl bit her lip, standing from her place next to the boy and wandering closer down to the river. There had to be something here that she could use to cheer him up, right? She sifted around the various pebbles and the moss that collected at the bank, locating a long, slender stick. With a smile, she splashed into the shallow, weak current and carved 'I Akinii' in the sand that occupied the bottom. "Hey, Akinii, look!"
He looked over, more or less to humor her. She beamed and looked back down, only to see that the current had swept away part of her message. "W-Wait, I have to redraw it."
By the time she did, he had lost interest.
She sank a little, but went on for the sake of trying to find something else to cheer him up. Wracking her brain for something, anything, she spotted another stick caught in the pebbles on the bank, and when she fished it out, she stuck both twigs up against her head, above her pigtails as though imitating antlers. "Look! I'm a reindeer!"
His eyes went to the ground, and he started crying again.
Miki bit her lip hard enough to make it sting. What was wrong? Why was he crying again? She raced up the bank to him, half-drenched in water from the river, and placed one of the twigs next to him while carving a small pound symbol in the dirt. "L-Look, we can... we can play tic-tac-toe!" She felt her own voice weakening. "Y-You can go first..."
But Akihiko shook his head, hardly able to muster words. "No, Miki."
The look on her face - as if he had just openly rejected her - was horrid, and he couldn't bring himself to look at it. His voice almost cracked under the pressure of speaking after it. "I-I just... I can't... I need some time alone, okay?"
I'm sorry. I can't be happy for you right now. I'm not strong enough...
Admitting such a thing brought such a sense of defeat to the boy that he almost felt himself beginning to cry again. He was... he was so stupid. Satoru was right. He wasn't good for anything. If he couldn't even be strong for Miki, what good was he?
Her fingers slowly slipped away from his sleeve. "...O-Okay, Akinii."
She stood up, disappearing into the void of silence behind him.
۞
Needless to say, Miki herself was crying by the time she got up to the orphanage's front doorstep. She collapsed next to the door of the entrance, burying her face in her knees and smothering whatever sobs might have escaped her lips the best she could when so deeply hurt. It wasn't just that she could do absolutely nothing for her brother - it was all the things Satoru had said; how reckless Akihiko had been, how he wouldn't be worth it if he just ran off and killed himself with all his foolishness, and seeing the anger written on the man's face. How could he be so horrible to Akihiko? Even given what her brother had done, did it really warrant such stinging words, such a frightening anger?
The only thing that interrupted her thoughts was the sound of footsteps amidst the crickets, at which she looked up to see Shinji, of all people.
There was an empty bowl in his hands, likely having contained his dinner.
"...Miki?" His voice was muted in the dark. His brown eyes seemed to blend into the darkness of the night, undetectable. "Are you all right?"
She was hurt because Akihiko had asked her to leave. Because she had not only been unable to do anything to help him, but because for the first time, her presence hadn't been enough to comfort him. Because her being near him hurt her more than it helped. Because her brother was upset, crying, and he couldn't be there to hold her hand and tell her it was okay - not when he was the one who was hurt. It was as if all the dark, hated feelings that she had felt when he was in the hospital, wounded, had all returned, only with a sting that was reinforced moreso by the fact that Akihiko had drawn the blood himself.
But she knew that was selfish. He couldn't always be there for her. Shouldn't she have realized that by now? Shouldn't she have realized that one day, he would grow up, and find a girl that he loved more than her, leaving her behind to fend for herself? Shouldn't she learn to be strong and independent, like him? Shouldn't she be able to walk the world of threats and upsets and danger without her brother always there to hold her hand?
Still, she could not lie to Shinji. "I... I don't know."
"Hey. He'll be all right." The brunette set the bowl down next to himself, reclining at her side. "Satoru-san was just angry. ...He probably said things he didn't mean to say, and he'll probably apologize later. But Aki has always been reckless, and someday he's got to learn that if he doesn't stop to think about shit before he does it, it might get him killed. Maybe getting yelled at is what he needs. Maybe it'll make him think more about what he does, and how it'll affect everyone, instead of just what it'll do to him."
It upset her to think how many times she had verged on tears lately. So many times, recently, that she had seen Akihiko get hurt, physically and emotionally. He was going through so much, and yet she could only think about herself...
She couldn't bring herself to be expansive. "...Yeah."
"I'll talk to him for you, okay?" The brunette stood back up, offering a strong hand which she took and faltered a little when he bounced her up. The breath huffed out of her when she felt his arms fold around her, his head resting on her shoulder, the strength behind his embrace squeezing her in an uncomfortably tight yet wholly warming way. He released her not long after, smiling and ruffling her hair a little.
She was struck silent for a minute. However familiar she and Akihiko were with Shinji, he had... never really hugged her before. At least, not as meaningfully as he did now. He was quiet, almost distant, rough and well-intentioned but awkward in his affection. Such an open display was rare, but the sincerity of it touched her, and made her smile.
"He'll be the same old Aki we know by the end of the night."
Miki sniffled and wiped an arm across her eyes. "...Thanks, Shinii-chan."
"Now, get inside and eat. Dinner is going to get cold."
۞
No more than ten minutes after Miki had left, Akihiko found himself back in the same teary-eyed state that had visited him when he first came to the riverbed. He rewarded himself by pointing out that he wasn't actually crying at this point, but he was sure he looked pitiful enough to discredit whatever pride he had in that, anyway.
The voice he heard soon after was not one he readily expected. "Aki?"
It was Shinji. Of all the times Akihiko had run out to this place on his own - whether it be to escape the orphanage, calm down, or just to do his homework - he had never had Shinji come after him to check on him. He was... surprised.
Embarrassed, he tried wiping the remaining moisture from his face. "Sh-Shinji?" His voice wavered some. "...I wasn't expecting you to come here."
"Well, I know you got pretty upset back there."
Akihiko hugged into himself, sniffling a little and keeping his eyes strictly on the gleaming surface of the river that rushed past them.
"...Chichi - ah, Satoru - said some harsh stuff back there."
"He was right," The younger of them shook his head and tried to wipe his eyes again, hoping to let no tears escape, "Just like all those other kids at school. They always talk about how we don't know how to feel or control ourselves like normal kids just since we don't have parents... maybe they're right. Even Chichi called me a fuck-up."
Shinji's body slouched moreso than it already was. "He didn't mean that, Aki, and you know it. Those kids at school don't know what they're talking about. Just 'cause you don't have parents doesn't mean shit - you do better than lots of kids in our class."
Akihiko didn't say much of anything in reply.
"...I know nothing I say is going to help very much. But sometimes you make mistakes, and people are going to get mad at you for it. Shit happens. All you can really do is pick yourself back up and try not to mess up again, right? So you'll screw up again in the future... it's all about being able to pick yourself back up and learn from it."
He sniffled a little. "...You think so, Shinji?"
"Yeah, I do. Where do you think crying your eyes out is going to get you?"
Akihiko laughed nervously when remembering again how pathetic he must've looked. "You're right..." He tried to restrain another sniffle, "Thanks, Shinji."
"No problem." The brunette stood, and helped his friend to his feet. Granted, he used Akihiko's wrist rather than his soaked hand. "We should get back to the orphanage now. Miki's already inside. Dinner is going to get cold if we don't hurry."
They both nodded agreement to one another, and started on their way back toward the place they knew so fondly as 'home', following the dirt trail paved by past generations from it to the riverbed where they had been. But a final, singular question presented itself in the younger boy's brain. He could not resist asking, "What could I learn from today, Shinji?"
"If you died, who would take care of Miki?"
The realization twinged his heart in his chest. "...I-I didn't realize-"
"Hurting yourself is the same as hurting everyone around you. Remember that."