A/N: Since Taiki's mother is unnamed, I'm called her Miyuki here. And at the moment I'm still working out whether I'm going to wind up with all six POVs or not… (Taiki's not one of them, btw). I may, but that means each character's getting an average of three chapters, so we'll see what happens. Next chapter's either Akari or Zenjirou, in any case.

This chapter's using prompt #001 – reading.

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Dripping Water
Chapter 2 – old moulds (Miyuki)

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Something had changed after Marine Day with Taiki, Miyuki thought. And with Akari too. There was a sudden flurry of study, as though they'd forgotten all about their exams – and while her son would might such a thing in the whirlwind of assisting club teams, Akari would be quick to remind him.

Maybe it was their new friend from their Marine Day adventure, the one that had Taiki sprouting some story about monsters and another world that had made her laugh at the time… but now she recalled how odd that was, because Taiki and Akari were both quite pragmatic and didn't care very much for fantasy.

Neither did Tsurugi-kun, for what little Miyuki knew of her – but he'd fit seamlessly into her son's life and she had no concerns about him.

In truth, she didn't have any new concerns at all. There was just a change she couldn't quite put her finger on. Taiki always did his studying late at night and it was always with coffee or fruit or sport juices, because he was usually helping out at sports clubs in the afternoons. And he often came up more banged than she preferred and always more tired than she preferred – but at least there was Akari to look out for him, to make sure he didn't injure himself in any way. Aside from that… what else could she do? She couldn't forbid him from assisting the sports clubs. She couldn't withhold the extra drinks in the hopes that Taiki will listen to his body a little more (because that method was just as likely to land him in the hospital as stopping him a little earlier). She could only support him in her own way, and that meant high calorie meals to balance out all the energy her burned, making sure both he and Akari were well supplied with sugar and electrolytes when they were out of her reach. And maybe she did over-indulge him, but sometimes it took somebody else's touch and Taiki was still waiting for that.

Well, as long as he didn't get into anything dangerous, anyway. In that sense Akari, who had enough younger brothers to be on hyper-alert, was a godsend. Stopping Taiki from doing things was another matter, but she kept a sharp eye and Miyuki could breathe a little easier knowing that Akari knew where to draw the line and wouldn't let Taiki inch a toe over it.

It was Taiki who'd pushed that line back further than either of them were comfortable with, but that was their compromise, she supposed. And that was all a part of parenting, and friendships too. Any relationship, really.

Even if, sometimes, she wished she hadn't agreed to some compromises. She hadn't gotten a call from a hospital yet and that was a blessing in itself but that didn't mean it was healthy or good for her heart for Taiki to be pushing himself to the point of collapsing. And then he'd come home and do his schoolwork until late at night, and Miyuki wound wonder if trading this sort of thing in for the typical teenager problems would be a worthwhile trade or not.

That part hasn't changed, but there's a fragile balance in there somewhere and it's still maintained. Zenjirou Tsurugi doesn't shift it either way – at least not now. And, from Miyuki's perspective, that's one more person to keep an eye on Taiki, and one more person he could learn selfishness with, and after he'd been friendly and yet had only Akari for a friend for so long…

But he'd still go to school and help out with the clubs approaching their final competitions, and then study for exams and squeeze hanging out with his friends somewhere in there and it made her, an adult's, head spin sometimes. And she should put a stop to it, somehow. Or his body would put a stop to it.

It was just a matter of time, really.

Maybe it was the part of her who didn't want to say "no" to her child when there wasn't a clear line in the sand to be drawn.

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Taiki was up early on Sunday.

That wasn't unusual, per say. Sometimes, he slept in. Sometimes, he didn't.

What was odd was that he seemed to have company in his room before Miyuki was quite out of bed herself. He was talking to someone, anyway, and Miyuki could hear a voice – male – talking back as well. Was it Tsurugi-kun?

But only Taiki emerged from his bedroom for breakfast. 'Is Tsurugi-kun over?' she asked, over the soft sizzle of pancakes. 'I didn't hear him come on.' Or leave, for that matter.

He blinked at her slowly, before an "ah" slipped from his lips. 'That… nobody's over.'

'I thought I heard you talking to someone,' she said, confused. It was pretty hard to mistake the sound of her son's voice.

He put an odd-looking device on the table. It seemed to be switched off for the moment. A toy of some sort? A walkie-talkie? It seemed like an odd thing to have when he already had a mobile phone, but maybe it worked out cheaper than a pre-paid plan. 'They're here,' said Taiki, and that was an odd way of phrasing it. One didn't typically say the person on the other end of the line was, in fact, inside the line.

But Taiki seemed to have worded it like that deliberately.

What was it that Taiki felt he couldn't explain to her in words?

For a moment, she was reminded of the tale he'd told a week ago – but she brushed it off. It had been an odd day, Marine Day, with how a car had rammed into the tenth floor of a skyscraper without touching the other nine, amongst other things. That her practical Taiki was telling her a fictional tale was another odd thing, but he had made a new friend that day so she'd just assumed it was related to that.

Though she could, in passing, wish Taiki was the sort who could settle down with a book he wasn't studying out of.

'What's the plan for today?' she asked, dismissing the thoughts. Like the story, she wasn't quite sure where that odd-looking device had come from, but Taiki could, within reason, do what he liked with his allowance.

'Judo practice, and then meeting up with Zenjirou and Akari.' Taiki chewed his pancakes slowly. 'We'll study, mostly.'

'Exams are soon,' she agreed, sympathetic. 'You're taking breaks?'

'Judo is a break,' Taiki replied, after a pause.

They both knew it wasn't, though most of the time Taiki managed to convince himself it was.

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Taiki left and the house seemed even emptier than before. Miyuki wasn't sure why that was, because her husband came home once every three months or so, and thus it was fairly typical for there to be only her or Taiki or even neither of them at home. Except it seemed to echo strangely, like Taiki had had friends over (which was another oddity, because it was usually only Akari, and now recently Tsurugi-kun) and he'd taken them all with him.

Maybe that new device of his had some background noise she hadn't picked up on. Her ears were almost ringing in the silence. Or maybe she was having one of those rare bouts of loneliness, when Taiki seemed to take a little too much after his father and she wished he'd spend a little more time at home instead of running off after other people…

She sighed and started on the dishes. That was silly of her, because it was her fault, not her husband's, that Taiki had started helping everyone in trouble like he did. Because he'd come to her, crying, that day, and she'd done what any mother would do and tried to comfort him and show him how to become stronger for it all…

But that was the power of retrospection. She'd misspoken to a child who'd taken her words too literally and when silence had brought his tears, and now the sentiment was practically a gospel he abided by. She wondered if he remembered her exact words (because she didn't), or even that she'd been the one to speak them. It didn't matter anyway. Taiki had made a decision that defined the axis of his life from that point, and only something just as dramatic was going to tilt it anew. Maybe he would learn balance. Maybe he had found his balance and it was simply maternal anxiety on her part. Or maybe something would happen to tilt that axis anew and, if it did, she could only hope it be something good and that it leads to something better…

And she wondered why she worried now. It wasn't like she had any new tangible concerns, since Marine Day. There was just something: an odd feeling. She was missing at least one piece of the puzzle and it was a crucial piece, but where would she find it?