And like always, writing is an unpredictable journey. You think you will be able to write something short for once and find yourself creating a new story afterwards.
When it comes to this first attempt, I don't really know how many chapters this first part will be made of. I hope I can pull it off with three chapters, maximum four or five, okay, but let's not go further, please. PLEASE, AZZURRA. EH.
I don't want to give any context, to be honest. I will try building the world I've made up as much as possible on the way.
So…Enjoy! And happy end of August to everyone (sarcasm).
XXX
He seriously started wondering what he was going to tell his distant friends once he was allowed to make a videocall…Because for now just asking for something, -in this case for their tablet-, might be quite risky. It was evident in Japan he hadn't happened to find a Doraemon getting him out of his trouble, like he had hoped.
But never, never in his life would he have imagined he would start struggling when it came to his sister too.
On the one hand he tried convincing himself it was understandable if he was feeling like that, if his confidence had disappeared all of a sudden, if his well-known loquacity had abruptly quieted down, afraid of what else might be going to happen. Actually, the difference between him and her, two chatterboxes exasperating people around them more often than rarely, was that he knew when it was better to shut up before their parents, whereas she didn't.
On the other…Whatever justification or reason was behind that dramatic change of attitude, he couldn't just accept that state of things.
He hadn't seen his sister for a while and he had been anticipating that moment for weeks, reassuring himself that if he had always been used to talking to her about dreams and nightmares fading at the first rays of dawn, they could also share tales about ones leaving traces in the morning, such as, well, a broken, indeed, a completely roasted microwave.
Oh and ,of course, icing on the cake, perplexed adults loudly discussing over the dead technological appliance on the table, as he cautiously sneaked out from the kitchen which had suddenly started feeling hotter, having quickly turned into a place in which simply breathing felt like having got harder.
…
"Do me a favour, Takuya: shut up. You were along with him when it happened. Do I have to remind you of that everytime you speak out of turn?"
"And do I have to remind you I have got an injured leg and can't do much?! Moreover, I just thought Kou was going to the toilet. He dashed away from me without saying a word, duh…"
"And then minutes and minutes went away and you didn't go checking?!"
"I did but he was nowhere to be found. Of course he was! He was at the restaurant!"
…
Whenever his father and uncle had one of their passionate arguments, things would easily spin out of control, his father's tone growing louder yet heavier as if it carried along the weight and power of a storm, his uncle's irritation becoming so intense it felt like being able to raise the temperature of the environment from one moment to the next.
And the door, the miserable door of whatever room they might be in, slamming either because one of them had done it out of anger or because the commotion had got to such a level .
…
"Takuya, ma come caz-"
"Junpei, porca put -"
"Hey , voi due!"
...
The funniest part of their bickerings was when his mother intervened with a random object in her grip to stop their curses from ever getting past their mouth. She would rarely hit them, but the sight of her waving the item in their direction would be enough to make them recoil and gulp, adjust their posture and lower their heads like kindergarten kids would after having been yelled at.
That morning she happened to be holding a cat bowl she had just finished washing. Giving a last glance to the chaos unfolding behind his back, he noticed it wasn't one of those which was made of ceramic, painted with lovely birds or paws prints, but another, maybe the only model of that kind they owned, entirely forged in lucid and rigid iron.
Good thing he had managed to seize the moment to escape , though his father had taught him running away from your problems hardly was a solution to them.
Still, that wasn't what he intended to really do, was it? And he wasn't denying it just because the man's unusually-placid lecture had started echoing in his memories like the tolls of thundering bells.
He wasn't going to, no. Not that morning, at least.
There was an urgent matter he would have to deal with as soon as possible, to quiet his frustration down and, most of all, to stop feeling so ashamed without a valid reason.
Because it hadn't been his fault and it was so unfair he had been grounded because of that mess he hadn't been the one causing. He was aware it was important to pay the consequences of your own mischief, but what about those times you are unfairly blamed? That just sounded like a flat-out injustice and he wasn't going to sit down and force himself to bear his mother's disappointed gaze over him throughout the whole day, -if he happened to be lucky enough-.
Fighting against the desire to jump back in the kitchen and hug the woman to beg for forgiveness, he brought himself to advance in the penumbra created by a bunch of swollen clouds. Though he couldn't see them, he knew they were there, outside, in a sky that seemed to be always cold, in constant need of thick blankets to cover itself.
Rainy days felt so different in Japan, somehow, but it was a strange thought to have, he had realized when a week before or so he had looked up at the monochrome expanse and had noticed it actually was identical to Venice's: a cloak of greyness punctuated by fading hints of white, roaring thuds audible from an incalculable distance, agitated puffs of air summoned by who knew where to bend trees, sweep leaves and flyers away, make windows creak, push people to go back home or seek shelter.
And yet, he couldn't shake that sensation off his chest…Just like the one of someone observing him from some steps higher; of heels dangling from the empty spaces carved in the railing of the staircase at whose feet he had decided to sit; of badly-repressed giggles.
His inhaler in his hands just to fiddle with it, he half-turned.
"Must have been funny, uh? So funny," Without energy, his comment crawled up the stairs along with his dull honey-coloured eyes, reaching a pair of crouched kids, a small boy and a girl, who were hanging onto white wood columns with their fists. He couldn't conceal his soft shock at finding his sister up there as well. His forced grin loosened its pulling to let him call her with a gasp. "Ran!"
"Buongiorno, fratellone," She chirped, pointing her jades at him and resting a cheek on a knee.
"Or maybe we should say bruttogiorno," The boy, a mirrored reflection of her traits, with the same hue of bright gold in his hair and the same green in his spheres, followed her with his joke. It made both of them laugh, whereas he could just sit still and stare at them with dumbfounded embarrassment.
He was the eldest and they just were his immature younger sibilings, Miranda and Tomoki, or like the whole family preferred, -excluded some exceptions-, Ran and Toto.
"I wouldn't like to wake up early on Sunday to be scolded by Mamma and Papà. No, no, it sucks. I'm happy it wasn't me."
"Is it that bad, tho'? When Mamma and Papà scold me and have just come back from work, they will be more nervous because the day has stressed them, so detention will be stricter," For some reason, Ran was taking the whole discussion seriously. She frowned and her irises floated upwards as she probably recalled her most recent mischief and whatever had come next. Judging from the displeased wince soon taking shape on her face, the way she lowered her head, the whining italian she spat, that hadn't been a nice journey. " Lo so che lo fa per il mio bene, ma a volte non lo sopporto proprio Papà ."
"Ehh, is it that so ?" Toto whistled with emphasis, rapidly diverting his attention from Ran and focusing on him with an amused smirk. "But Papà was very, very angry today. And Mamma too."
"Well, that's simply because Zio Takuya wouldn't let him speak," At that name, Ran regained her composure and allowed herself to gently fall on her backside. She pressed her knees against each other, raised her chin and pouted at the nothingness to add another annoyed remark in italian with a whisper. " Come sempre. "
"Nah, that was just because of Koukou. To-Totalmente."
While they were engaged with their silly, incredibly stupid conversation, the plaster on the bridge of his nose seemed to be growing more and more obnoxious to be kept on there, applying pressure against the skin, itching, terribly itching.
"Ohi, Toto, I wouldn't laugh if I were you," In the end, he couldn't hold that interior, tense silence any longer and shot a glare at the chuckling boy. "Weren't you along with me when that mess happened? And don't call me that. I've told you so many times. Stop it."
"Uh? No, I wasn't," Toto promptly replied, even if that meant interrupting his own fun. Kou hated acknowleding the honesty and clarity shining in his eyes. "You sent me upstairs and said , Tell Mamma you have peed your pants at school. That's what you said, word after word."
Yeah, yeah, he could perfectly remember. Unfortunately. He had given Toto a shove, had seen him dashing away like he had been told, had remained all alone in the restaurant's basement, -or whatever other name it could he given to that place-.
"I-I see," He could only mutter, resigned to embracing the nth failure of the morning. Not that he actually knew what he was trying achieving, though. After all, he had already given up repeating himself once someone asked him to.
Not even his uncle had managed to swallow his skepticism the evening before, when the three adults had found him down there, in the middle of that disaster. While he had been trying explaining them everything, kitting out his frantic speech with as many details as he could, the man had attempted to mask a grimace imbued with confusion and awkwardness.
If among those living on Earth, his uncle himself didn't believe him, then, there was something wrong and probably, he had begun hypothesizing with reluctance, it wasn't about those surrounding him.
"Don't you try doing that." The flow of his consciousness found a well-appreciated obstacle in Toto's offended huff.
"Yeah, I won't…" He gave him a head shook, not that convinced about his meek reaction.
In his opinion, it was fair if he was feeling so disgruntled, lonely as he was on the hook. Having someone by his side with whom he could share his period of detention would have helped him feel less miserable about the whole ordeal, but, whether he liked it or not, it had gone like that and there was nothing he could do to change the course of those events. Thanks to novels borrowed from the library and visits at the restaurant to give his mother a hand, he could definitely put up with some days, -or a week…?- spent without his computer and videogames. As for his distant friends, instead, they were likely going to start thinking he had been abducted by aliens or something, he guessed.
Plunging in those predictions and frail fears, he curled himself up in his chest and allowed an uncomfortable mutism to loom over them. Suspiciously, his sister didn't fill it by changing topic. Whatever she usually came to pick would be fine to her, she wouldn't care that much as long as time got restored to its normal pace, so it was hard for him to persuade himself she didn't even have some idiocy to chat about.
Nevertheless, weird as it was, that time the one who took on the task of breaking the general stillness was a bunch of muffled thumps hitting the floor at a cadenced rhythm.
As they got closer, Toto got more and more nervous, fidgeting and wiggling his fingers with increasing anxiety, until his snarky and witty attitude, -way too snarky and witty, to Kou's tastes-, left room for a very clumsy and coward six-year-old kid to appear.
"I-I'm not doing anything! Honest! I was sleeping!" He stammered in comical panic, tripping in his silly flight and sliding down the steps on his belly, one after the other. He wasted some precious seconds adjusting his pajama and all those silhouettes of trains scattered on its greenish blue fabric, before finally getting to the top and disappearing from their sight to jump back into his bed.
Kou paid no mind to the ruckus provoked by his movements. Too pensive, he also didn't acknowledge the presence of a shadow towering his stout frame. Grabbed his inhaler again and absently weighed it with his palm.
"Yo, campione !" Only a jovial greeting reanimated the dim light flickering in his deep-brown orbs.
Actually, immediately after having heard that voice, he brought himself on his feet with restored enthusiasm, ready to give a high five, but being stopped from doing so by affectionate knuckles ruffling his hair.
"Zio Takuya…!" He gasped in surprise, instinctively backing off and almost falling backwards. Then, once the wave of scratches ended, almost in awe, he analyzed the man in front of him for some seconds and pointed at the crutch his right side was leaning on. "Zio Takuya…Zio Takuya, you're standing! Commozione !"
If Ran had weirdly been so tacit for a while, now she had closed her throat in a totally petrified state, only occasionally allowing herself to free some vexed snorts or some sort of hushed groans of disapproval. That was the only and definite proof he needed to state she was undoubtedly fine. Otherwise, if she had just gone away at the man's arrival without even rolling her eyes at him, he would have grown seriously worried.
"I'm good as new," The man chuckled, an index popping out his gloves rubbing his cheek. "I mean, I can't say it doesn't hurt any more, -hell, in truth it still hurts like mad-, but I couldn't just stand sitting the whole day doing nothing and depending on you all. I feel like a grandpa".
In unison, both couldn't help biting their lips while tracing the soft countours of his knee brace. It nearly covered his entire upper leg, from his fibula up to his thigh, leaving only few patches of tanned skin uncovered here and there.
According to the doctors, indeed, to what he had been able to grasp from phone calls between his parents, it had been a miracle there was no permanent damage to both his bones and nerves.
The goal the man had striken at the absolute last second of the season had made the stadium vibrate with shouts of jubilations and cries of consternation: the saviour of the night, Roma's Fiamma, had abandoned himself on the grass in atrocious pain.
"What are you saying? You're not a grandpa," Kou gave him a strained smile, feeling his heart beating faster at the nth projection of that scene in his recollections. That was certainly a film he would have never liked watching again. The excruciating sufferance, the bitter tears shed like if a new river was being generated, all the misery a single man can go through dominating the screens of thousand and thousand of TVs and then the pages of italian and foreigner newspapers, the timelines of the most disparate social networks. "You're my uncle and , most of all, la Fiamma della Roma , and you will take the field sooner than you believe, trust me!"
"I trust you, but I need to trust myself first of all," Another bless Kou was sure that had kissed the man was the fact the accident had never robbed him of his explosive personality.
Aching and troubled, he still incredibly had enough stubborness to juggle a soccer ball with his feet. He made the ball roll closer to his ankle, tapped its base with his toe and…Up it went, bouncing on his slipper which had begun looking so ridiculous, dangling and sliding back and forth as he put his skills on display.
"Ehy! You mustn't play football inside the house! You might break a vase or hurt the cats!" As soon as the ball jumped in an agape Kou's embrace, Ran found back her shrill register. Having placed herself by his side to bark at Takuya, Kou felt like his eardrums were about to shatter.
"You're right, Ran-Chan. We'd better play outside before it starts raining," Kou could swear one of the man's eyebrows twitched for an instant. "You do have good ideas sometimes, eh, biondina? After all, I haven't got back Kou's ball for nothing."
"How did you do that?" He limited himself to ask, not managing to genuinely externalize the joy he was expected to. Since it had landed in his arms at an angle in which a flashy signature was well-visible on its surface, he had identified his ball, that one his father had confiscated the evening before, -along with so much other stuff of his-, in a jiffy.
"Ehy, your father is all smoke, no fire. Or ,maybe, it's better to say he's no smoke, no fire," Takuya bursted in a spontaneous attack of laughters, before an audience that was listening to him stockstill and puzzled. " He acts all stern and serious, but can't keep up the act for that long. I know how to deal with boon J.P. He's not like your mother. She is…Oh well, she is…"
Exploiting that wavering moment, Ran took the floor, a bit indignant, or so Kou could tell, at least: it was a feat to understand what was going on in her mind.
"You don't know my parents as well as I do. Papà is not like that".
"I don't?" A persistent scratching down his scalp, which was making his little low ponytail sway from a side to the other, was joined by the jingling of his red and black jacket's zip as he bent towards the girl. "I'm sorry to inform you I have known them for ages."
"And so?"
"And so, you weren't even born back when I met them. Calculate the gap with your fingers."
Slightly sweating, a relieved Kou relaxed. Without needing to take a look at her intensifying blush, at the way she was strumming her lillac suspenders, he just knew Ran had already been cornered by the man's brief yet efficient remark.
Besides fights between his uncle and father, there actually was something else that would make him feel like their house was about to explode very soon: ones between the former and his sister. Cats and dogs, Pisani and Livornesi, fire and water. For some reason, probably mostly because of Ran's skittish behaviour, those two couldn't just go along with each other.
Fortunately, Ran was too impulsive to ponder the right words to use during a tiff, so she herself would become the cause of her foreseeable defeats.
"Now…" The man loudly sighed, his hand messing with his chestnut-coloured locks once more to tame his crackling personality. He couldn't keep himself from closing his eyes in the process, hearing that nagging rustling until, perhaps, that part of his neck started scorching. "Kou, get changed. I'll get that medicine in the meanwhile. I forgot, damn."
As if he had been got caught unprepared, Kou hesitantly exchanged the adult's irises. They were so similar to his and his father's nobody would question they weren't relatives in the true sense of the term.
"E-Eh?"
"Get changed," Takuya echoed his previous bland order, nonplussed. "You aren't seriously going to play football with pajama on? Our principessina can join too, if she wants to."
" No, grazie, " She didn't flinch in her reply, despite the scarce performance from before. Her puffy facial traits, highlighted by a hairstyle that was pulling all her bangs back through a butterfly-shaped hairpin, had retained no hint or shadow of embarrassment.
"But wouldn't a ballerina like you benefit from a good match training your legs?"
"I've said, No, grazie," And, like that, with that stress meticulously put on each letter of her statement, the message was conveyed successfully and Takuya finally gave up.
" Va bene, va bene . I appreciate the politeness, girl. Grazie mille. "
Kou wasn't afraid the nth scuffle between the pair could make the whole house blow up, but he still found himself slowly climbing one step after the other, a hand pressing his soccer ball against his side tighter and tighter, the other prudently gliding across the banister.
"I-I think it will be another time. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, hm," He unwillingly stuttered. "I-I have to help Mamma and Papà at the restaurant."
"What? It's Sunday, are you kidding me? Is this part of your detention or something?"
Of course, his uncle wasn't going to let him do that. He wasn't absolutely going to let him escape from his problems again. Hell, how many problems had he been accumulating since he moved to Japan? And how was it possible a Doraemon hadn't come out from the drawer of his desk yet?
"E-Ehm, yes. I-I mean, no, I just want t-to help them because the restaurant is busy on Sunday. And ,who knows, it could give me some points."
"It does make sense, but we don't know if tomorrow I will feel as energetic as I am now. This evening I'm having injection."
His brain tricked him by making him feel like his lungs had lost strength , out of blue.
Ohi, you're not acting like yourself, He tried snapping out of whatever wanted to turn his own plans against him. He reminded himself that everything was in his head: some day he would harshly wake up in the middle of the night, because he had experienced the way too vivid sensation of falling down a cliff; some other he would begin truly believing he couldn't speak any longer, his voice stranded in his jugular and obstructing the passage of air, maybe right when he needed it the most during a lesson at school. Get a grip, Kou! And not on the banister!"
" Don't worry, Zio Takuya," Touching his inhaler with the tip of a finger took him back to a reality in which he was doing just fine. He was breathing. He was shaking, but he was still breathing and keeping a perfect balance on his legs. "Tomorrow you will feel even better than you are today."
"Yeah, I will," The man wasn't convinced at all, he was aware of that, but the fact he had ceased insisting was already a little victory to him. He grinned at him bringing his thumb up and Kou automatically mirrored his gesture.
"Moreover, I fear it will have already started raining by the time I put my clothes on."
He could state he was right about that matter, judging from how much darker the corridor had become.
He had no doubts he was also when it came about his choice to go away, leaving Takuya and Ran downstairs, staring at each other with tranquility and respect in a scene that could almost be defined paranormal.
Going somewhere else to solve a problem was not the same as running away from another.
There was no such thing in life, but ,again, couldn't he say that about microwaves getting roasted without a logical explanation as well?
XXX
Italian notes (like always muah)
•The curses Junpei and Takuya were going to use -but Izumi fortunately kept them from spitting- were: "ma che cazzo" and "porca puttana." Sort of what the fuck.
• "Hey voi due": Hey, you two.
• Buongiorno, fratellone: Good morning, big brother. YEAH, fratellone is our Onii-San/Onii-Chan lmaooo.
• "Bruttogiorno" is not a real word in italian, but it's a pun we can use to joke to describe a bad day.
• "Lo so che lo fa per il mio bene, ma a volte non lo sopporto proprio Papà." Listen, Ran's sentences are not meant to be translated tbh ahahah. I like her saying things others can't understand, things that have no real weight to the conversation itself. It's the purpose of her character. But , if you want to know, here she is saying, "I know he does it for my sake, but sometimes I can't stand him at all. Papà." Yeah, I have to change the structure because this kind of repetition is not something present in english. It's typical of spoken Italian).
• "Come sempre": Like usual.
• "To-totalmente" : It's a pun about the word Totally and its assonance with "Toto".
• "Campione": Champion. Is this even a thing in other languages? Calling boys that affectionately?
• Roma's Fiamma: Rome's Flame.
• Biondina: Not necessarily little blonde, but it is a teasing name for blonde girls XD. It-s the same term Takuya uses to tease Izumi in the italian dub, in ep 2.
• Principessina: little princess. It's NOT that flattering XD.
• Pisani and Livornesi: So, there is this tradition about the citizens of Pisa and Livorno ( Tuscany) being enemies. I think it's something related to football…? Not sure, but I find it very funny, and if it happened to truly be about football, it would make sense for Kou to know it XD.
Hmmm I think I need to finish this story first before jumping back to others hm? Some kind of new divertissement starting in September all over again like in a rendezvous.
Well, in the meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed yourself with this introduction of the idiots from my Junzumi fams. I had the fun of my life with this ahahah, but I just needed colder temperatures to actually start writing.
Let's see you very soon and take care of yourself, Junzumi adventurers!
-Zura