𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘯.

[unequally]

s h a d o w;
1. a dark area or shape produced by a body coming between rays of light and a surface.
2. used in reference to proximity, ominous oppressiveness, or sadness and gloom.
OTA 25/8 - Action, Texts, Etc.
( art )

Comments

[resignations]

[ a real show of bad attempts at paternal empathy would've been to drag megumi out of the apartment and into a pachinko parlor or a mahjong den, but the fact still remains that toji's idea of 'dealing' is to sequester their grief and hope that it, like most things, dissipates. (and, funnily enough, he of all people should know that that's not how this works.)

sometimes, toji is struck by recollections of the kind of family that his wife had wanted to make. they hit him in nightmares, in the sinking sickness of waking up with his arms pulled sideways over an empty spot on his futon.

he knows what that bright-eyed, strong-willed woman would say if she were here.

god, just hug him already, toji-kun! you're so stupid!

toji swallows. reaches for the colorful weapons on the tabletop and tests his luck.

the pirate remains in his nest. waiting for the inevitable. ]

'Weird'? More like short a few screws in his head. [ a snort. ] Coming from me, that's saying a lot.

[ pot, kettle, etc.

he doesn't want for megumi's turn to impale the plastic barrel again. the poor little doll survives this one, too. ]

[unequally]

[ in a way, weirdly, megumi is the kind of kid who probably needs a hug but wouldn't be able to handle it either. his is a roughly tuned human heart disguised by its pieces that look like machine cogs but really never have been.

easier to talk about gojou, either way.

he picks up another piece of plastic.

this pirate just won't die apparently.

(a joke lost on megumi though it applies to the two primary adults in his life to a sick extent.)

"i bet your mom was really kind," tsumiki said one afternoon while megumi folded the laundry with his always sort of sullen look. and when he asked why she ruffled his hair and said, "'cause megumi is kind."

megumi doesn't think he's kind or good. but maybe tsumiki was half right.

maybe. ]

People 'short a few screws' are usually weird.

[ his kindness, if it exists, doesn't extend to general niceties and certainly not to soft-pedaling opinions about shady adults no matter the benefaction. yet the tone of megumi's voice belies his trust and his familiarity. a self-awareness. ]

This was probably a souvenir.

[ gojou satoru and his habit of buying random things everywhere he goes. megumi mutters this part and it might not be wholly articulate, but given the dead silence of the apartment, maybe it is. it doesn't occur to megumi that gojou would have bought this on purpose not as a spur of the moment souvenir but as something conscious and pointed, part challenge and part lack of faith and part something else totally wordless. some of this is, of course, because of how little he knows about their history; but some things are better left that way of course.

vaguely, megumi is aware that he is sort of tunnel visioning at the little barrel. his eyes are strangely heavy and his body aches hollow and dry except a low level nausea, now that he's still enough to recognize it. an uncatalogued number of hours is, it seems, finally catching up to him. ]

[resignations]

[ the steady click-snap of plastic slotting into plastic is a metronome in the silence of their apartment. without tsumiki to fill its empty corners with the comforting white noise of existing, its four walls are concrete and reinforcement.

toji makes another attempt at inconsequential murder. he thinks he knows why gojou chose this, of all the toys he could've picked, to give to him.

click-snap.

at some point, the pirate will succumb to the inevitable. toji watches megumi out of the corner of his eye, and he knows that megumi wishes it were so easy. that he wishes there was a knife he could put between his own ribs to set a series of cogs in motion, to snap tsumiki out of bed.

click-snap. ]

He was trying [ toji says, with finality, ] to be a nuisance.

[ he gets up after one more knife to wooden plastic. abruptly, as if he's had enough of this— the game, the grief, megumi himself. his past dictates that this is his intent; once again, to leave when things start getting inconvenient. to not explain, to prioritize his own defense above others'.

silent, he goes into the dark of his room. maybe he won't come back. maybe he's left out of the window, out into the streets, leaving his son to sit with the possibility of popping that pirate out of its cradle or to sit in his own loneliness and his mercy.

seconds pass. there's nothing but rustling in the distance— curtains? clothes going in bags?

neither. toji comes back with a roll of blankets that trail against his bare feet, sweeping the length of the journey from his bed to the living room. once back, he looms— not quite indifferent, not quite understanding of his own actions, but still knowing, instinctively, that this is what he can do for megumi's grief.

funny, how he knows gojou would balk at this if he knew. ]

If you need to call him [ gojou, toji means. this is the most he'll ever do for the man who, even despite his own deep-seated dislike for the guy, saved his son from his surname, ] do it in the morning.

[ the blankets are too thick for megumi's frame, but they drop and drape over his shoulders. toji, still standing, nudges the nest around his son with his foot. ]

[unequally]

[ maybe he shouldn't bother, but megumi watches toji the short distance to his room. it's only once he's disappeared inside of it that he returns to the toy on the table. he tries once more. nothing. then he looks back at toji's room, and then almost he looks at tsumiki's room as well before catching himself away from it.

instead he stares down at the pirate and the unused swords.

really what was gojou thinking.

trying to be a nuisance toji had said but megumi thinks that's not exactly shocking or unexpected. isn't that gojou satoru's usual way? even when he's dead serious. megumi doesn't remember what he did yesterday or even when yesterday was — how long ago or if it still is and therefore is today instead still; fickle. but megumi remembers very clearly very keenly very sometimes confusingly: the white haired man in the alley with his sunglasses and his expression of distaste that made megumi judge him from moment one. he remembers tsumiki coming out onto the balcony and saying his name like she was waiting for him because she always was.

before toji comes back out, megumi almost accidentally lets himself have a second, two, three, four, maybe even five.

it hurts it hurts i'm sorry i'm sorry i'll always come back so please wake up i'm so sorry i'm so stupid i'll even tell you that i know that now so please please please —

his tunnel vision from before was just his vision blurring, which he realizes now, spotting with the dark of sleep's insistence as it is. yet he still hears the shift of not the only other living being in the apartment but the blankets he carries. megumi's head is down anyway; it probably doesn't matter the way his expression was but he calms himself down out of habit. almost placid. almost. it doesn't hurt. he can handle this. he'll figure it out.

a see-through lie.

the shoulders that bow beneath the weight of the blankets are rigid and sharp. brittle. toji said something. it came to megumi as if underwater and it takes him a moment to understand. ]

Yeah.

[ it's as if the blankets pull the thread the last bit to unravel in megumi's mind over matter stubbornness, as if he could stay awake forever until tsumiki is too. impossible. he slopes forward against the table, his arms folded there in reflex; and his mouth is partially pressed there so it comes out muffled, maybe barely intelligible when he adds, half awake, ]

Thank you.

[ how to be polite. how to read a situation. how to put one foot in front of the other.

how to be kind.

fushiguro megumi, 14, ten shadows, and a heart whose bleeding would lose all meaning if it didn't run so immortally.

he falls asleep not because he wants to but because he can't help it, and it's probably far too childish for a 14 year-old to wonder if the blankets around him are comforting because they belong to toji — to his father — but that's the last thought he has before slipping into his own shadows all the same. ]