The noose around my neck. I know that it's there, even if I don't feel it. It's a rope, a bond, between Kaoru and I. Sometimes it's suffocating. Sometimes I'm suffocating him, I know. There's nothing that I can do about it. We are tied together. There is nothing we can do.
...I don't want to be set loose.
I just thought about it this way: Although Hikaru and Kaoru are together because they are siblings, they are also together because they were forced to be together. Not necessarily bound together literally, but the way that people treated them caused them to find no other recourse than to internalize their interactions with people rather than actually attempt to have them. Therefore, in a way, they are forced. And as time passed, they were expected to be together. Of course, this is because of the childhood trauma that they've both suffered, but the point is that they are together for various reasons, not all of them willing.