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Yuzuru remembers their father, but the man only exists in those few, transitory flashes when he would stop in their family home after yet another trip or business deal. To Hatsune, the younger of the two siblings, he merely existed as a fairy tale, no different than the parents or anti-heroes in the occasional shounen manga he purchased for her. All Yuzuru remembers of him is the trinkets he would bring home, and his mother's distant glances, which one day turned into packed bags and slammed doors. He often thought her eyes looked prettier before, but he learned not to mention dad when he noticed that each time he did, her weary gaze would glisten with unshed tears and he would be sent to bed early.
Some of the damage healed in the following years, only for a fresh gash in the form of their grandfather's ― his mother's father ― passing. Yuzuru felt he should have cried, but the tears refused to sting at his eyes. Instead, he quietly stood as his mother held his confused sister of three, letting both mother and sister embrace him and only finding that telltale pain in his nose and the warm trickle of his own tears when her tired body held them tightly, racked with sobs. Seeing her cry, on those rare occasions when she would allow herself the luxury, had always made him want to cry too.
Within months, Yuzuru witnessed their mother warp, her habits superficially beginning to mirror their father's. First it was late nights, and the routine sighting of the disheveled silhouette of their mother always stumbling in in the young hours of morning. Then he noticed that her makeup ceased to be effective in hiding her flaws as blues and blacks peeked through the layer of foundation that seemed to grow thicker by night. Only once did he investigate the then routine sound of an unfamiliar man's voice in their home, and only once did it precede a heavy hand against his cheek and a loud crack as calloused skin connected with the baby fat of his lightly freckled face. Two naked adults flashed in front of him, one familiar and one unknown, their exchange bordering violent. The unknown dipped into the shadow, retrieved crumpled clothing and was gone, leaving the familiar figure of his mother to shoo her son away as she sought to cover her bared shame.
Never again did he dare anticipate that a man's voice might be return of their father. Never again did the chorus of men and his mother crying together echo in their home.
"It was a nightmare," she insisted, her stark red hair falling in messy waves around her manic eyes lined with smeared, dark makeup and darker circles beneath them. Yuzuru remembers struggling to discern reality from fiction, while Hatsune believed it without incident.
He began hearing his mother's cries in his dreams. It became the nightmare he tried to believe it had always been, only ever born of those crippling, noisy days full of peers he should have connected with. Loud groups became an inescapable enemy, just like the loud men who had once come and gone by night, always leaving his mother's room a thick haze of humidity. Yuzuru pretended that her sickly sweet perfumes masked reality. When Hatsune asked if she could have nice perfumes like hers, their mother always brought home a new, glittery body spray for her and a game for him.
Both of her children wanted her, not her gifts alone. Most days were punctuated with apologies as she ran out, leaving a confused Hatsune and an embittered Yuzuru. He vowed to be the attentive big brother, unlike their absent father and erratic mother. Once his sister's health began to visibly deteriorate, he doubled his efforts to be that heroic older sibling.
The boy knew heroism and stardom on other people, but could only wear it himself when in the presence of his ailing sister. His own minor ailments seemed so slight compared to the cancer that eroded her weak, clumsy body.
He only wondered if she, too, could form the razor-sharp feathers if she willed it when she bled, but never breathed a word about it. Hatsune took priority as her illness progressed.
For their mother, Asami, the terminal diagnosis was the final pierce the frail armor of her psyche could withstand. She was frequently absent before but became nothing but a vague spirit, only ever darkening their doorways when yielding new paperwork, medications riding on hope alone, and meals for three. Her plate never seemed to change, as if she was intent on preserving it.
Asami Otonashi went from fleeting presence to ghost as her weight and color abandoned her.
Soon, what little remained of her was taken before the apology fully left her lips. Yuzuru, the only child well enough to remain in the house, reached out for her after the men had already dragged her away, too stunned and stupid to realize the finality of it.
Neither child ever saw their mother again. Yuzuru and Hatsune's collaborated notes piled up on their low table, testament to all of their hope and longing, but they went untouched until they toppled to the floor in an avalanche, unread by anyone but the writers. Hatsune's hospital stay, however, was always covered.
He never had the heart to tell his sister that their pleas ended their life in the trash. Feigning ignorance to their fate beyond "unread" suited him fine. When she insisted on continuing to write, always more hopeful than he could be, he etched out the notes and re-used them to learn origami with her.
Being that cool big brother became his purpose in life. Attempts to find his mother always tasted like bitter disappointment and looked like a law enforcement crew too preoccupied with something greater to net any results. "Nothing yet," and "I'm sorry, kid," became tired tales that never brought him rest.
Too young to work officially, Yuzuru sought menial work that paid immediately in cash, ignoring the laughter of peers who thought mother and son should have been a package deal, or how the streets were calling him to take up the helm of his parent. He found solace in few other teenagers, but often friendships with him died young. Yuzuru rarely answered the ring of his cheap, beaten phone, and most misconstrued this as disinterest rather than the crippling exhaustion and lack of confidence that it was.
He never corrected them. Only the most persistent got through to him. To Yuzuru, his true friends were the ones who never mentioned his penchant for petty thievery. Acts of theft afforded him more food and gifts for his sister. It clashed with his morals, but her smile superseded morality.
It took him no time at all to learn that hesitation and second-guessing an attempt at swiping raised suspicion and caused problems. His attempts at lying his way out of being caught never ended smoothly, so instead he learned to move quickly and steal only small objects. Little things raised fewer eyebrows and moved more easily through pawn shops or amongst his peers. The faster he had money, the sooner he ate or could hear his sister's words of gratitude.
When he came of age to work, he began to, but only enough to feed himself and to purchase slightly nicer gifts for Hatsune. Stealing food took priority as his sister's illness worsened and her suffering grew, straining her smiles and weakening the strength of her little heartfelt thank yous. Guilt and mutual loneliness kept him returning to her bedside, always with a gift or an indulgent snack food she could never get in the hospital. Melonpan had been a consistent favorite.
For all his evenings spent there watching her television shows with her, or teaching her how to braid and letting her practice on him because it was always just easier, or singing in a makeshift karaoke competitions that he always let her win, he grew desperate for signs of improvement. His sister loved so deeply and held hopes, dreams, and appreciation for life in ways that Yuzuru could never muster. Her words were warm and optimistic, but her coughs and the quivering in her body when she stood up always betrayed them.
It hurt to watch her suffer. It should have been him, he thought. The world would be no worse for his absence, but Hatsune condemned to a hospital robbed it of one of its most precious treasures.
He began to stay later, though she started to fall asleep earlier and earlier. The light of the unattended television shined dull blue upon him, there he remained until the staff flicked the power off and insisted visiting hours had ended.
Yuzuru still remembers the lulling sound of 'plastic' actors and that lonely blue light.
Hatsune's condition followed the fall leaves as they weakened, beginning to die for the world of cold white. Her smile was always obscured by the hospital mask her nurses asked her to wear.
Yuzuru still remembers earnestly believing his fingers might crack from the cold when he worked outside, and he remembers now wishing he had purchased or stole a camera to capture it while he had the chance.
He should have known her smile would be taken, too. He should have looked harder, smiled more with her, been more of the amazing big brother he wanted to be. With experience of loss and missed connections as his harsh teacher, he should have always known.
He was not such a cool big brother.
As he paced back and forth in her room against the background of those contentedly fake characters on the television, holding one of her fallen pillows in his hands, he reminded himself that he was never the cool big brother she needed. No matter what was paid, it was never enough. She was sick, she was hurting, she never could get to the top of the list to receive the organ donation she needed to replace her failing ones.
If he loved her, it fell on him to do something real for her. The feeling of his hands shaking, leaving behind stains of sweat on the sterile white pillowcase, or of the nausea that wrung at his stomach, or the sense of an ice pick chipping away at his chest stays with him, too vividly.
He remembers, but he wants to forget. He remembers the soft fwap as the stiff pillow slipped out of his hands, and he remembers Hatsune rousing and asking him why he looked so sick and if he needed to visit a doctor. He still does not remember moving to her bedside to hug her, but he remembers her eyes falling closed as he sung her to sleep.
Most of all, he remembers that it was that winter night that inspired him to ask her about Christmas. She replied in a tone that dared not to hope that she had dreamed of seeing the lights in the main stretch of town and innocently asked him what they looked like. Yuzuru only knew them by name or hearsay, not experience, but leaned forward and gave his word that they would see the decorations together.
For all his ridiculous singing, his teaching, his gift-giving, and his storytelling, nothing else had elicited the same bright, wholehearted thank you. Only now does he realize he should have been asking about her dreams and desires all along. She appreciated everything, but the lights and the outside world were things she longed for. She was a caged bird, and the promise of even a moment of freedom made her heart sing.
Her doctor's order to leave her in the hospital would not deter him. The month he had to make preparations crawled at an agonizing pace and left him without the energy or time to make his daily visits. He dropped school completely despite the protest of his few friends, using the freed time to take on more work and to scope out the glint of easily missed valuables. His sister's dreams meant more than the dirty, crumpled paper of money. Its value outweighed rings or necklaces or even the nice buttons on the purses of wealthy ladies and the cuffs of working businessmen.
It was early December when the band of misfits seeking justice, the SSS, found him blackened in an alley, in the midst of a beating for the misjudgement in a theft attempt. Trying to take the custard-filled bread off of a peer's plate landed him in deeper danger than he anticipated. He had been aware and alert one minute, and still recalls his surprise when he heard the crack of a boot connecting with his head and the time it took for his mind to process that the blood dripping off his nose was his own.
It was just an error in judgement. He got overzealous.
'Hey, he's the one with that whore for a mother, I remember!'
Hatsune's imprisonment protected her from the harsh words of bitter children. The SSS protected Yuzuru from taking a knee to the gut as he struggled uselessly in another boy's grasp, held into submission by his bangs. The rest happens in blurred flashes of color rushing in and out of his swimming vision. A figure with deep magenta hair and dark clothes came between him and the assailant. Still, he remembers the colorful language and heads of hair rushing around, and a familiar face with shaggy blue hair kneeling down beside him to help him up.
He always let that blue-haired boy's calls and texts ring indefinitely, but there he stood, ragged and thinner than he ever recalled. Yuzuru caught a glimpse of a beaten and worn pocket in his friend's hand, knowing he had seen it but not knowing from where. He only realized later that it had been a wallet, lifted from one of the assailants.
Yuri, known to some of her boys as "Yurippe," mostly accepted him. Yuzuru himself refused the name; Yuri introduced herself as Yuri, and for all of their disputes and bickering, he fully intended to respect her preference. He hesitated, but their platform of acceptance along with protection from a broken status quo and justice system appealed to him.
Nobody within the system had ever reported back on the whereabouts of his mother. He allied himself with them despite his criticism of the gang's initiatives.
He never breathed a word about it to Hatsune and told himself he did it to protect her from further pain, ignoring that what he truly feared more than her eyes glassed over with tears was her bowing her head in disappointment. Yuzuru had handled tears. The memories of their mother's coffee-colored eyes, glassy and bright with tears, had never left him; he had grown used to them, disgustingly numb but equipped to weather that particular storm. His little sister's disappointment and disapproval was another fight entirely: one he was not armed for nor trained to handle.
December 25th was spent entirely in the hospital, visiting Hatsune by day and avoiding staff once they began to sweep visitors out to settle for the night. Passing so many long days within its sterile walls afforded him the confidence to know the layout like second nature. He snuck into her room, offering her the pink coat he had her pick out from a magazine weeks before. Her tiny, frail body disappeared easily within it, the size incorrect, but she eagerly appreciated it and held onto her brother's back without a word of complaint. Her grip felt too delicate and feather light: truly the captured bird he always imagined her to be.
Knowing the course and with a goal in reach, he fled to the square with her. The lights captivated even him, and his only regret then was the presence of that medical mask which erased her smile from view. Yuzuru promises her the all the happiness and presents in the world while the padding of two winter coats obscures the feeling of two heartbeats tapering down to one. He took her last thank you and continued to walk, stopping at none of the shops he had planned and never bothering to cancel their dinner reservation.
Yuzuru chatted to no one until he reached the bench outside the hospital. He remembers laying her in the snow, met with confused hospital staff as the sobs tore from his chest. He remembers reaching for her as they pried him away from her, fingernails digging into her coat and chilled fingers brushing past her lifeless hand, too numb to feel it.
Some apologized, others scolded, but he heard none of it. He watched their mouths move, some softly and paired with sympathetic, worried eyes, while the lips of others moved more quickly and harshly. Yuzuru took their pity and criticism and turned his back on it all, wanting none of it.
His morale and success in the SSS slipped, but they accepted him when no one else would. He suspected they knew, but with a leader who knew too well the pain of losing innocent young siblings, nobody dared approach him with any more acknowledgement than an apology or an offer to spend time with him. Whether she told them to be gentle or they acted on their own will, he never knew.
>
The New Year opens with a funeral and a chance hesitation outside of the hospital he once considered a home away from home. A minute passes, now 11:14 in the afternoon, and though he knows his task is to meet with the SSS, he cannot will his feet to move. A little girl, holding a bouquet of flowers, gets released from the hospital with a smile on her face. 11:15, Yuzuru watches the nurse wave her off for the final time. The young girl walks off with her parents, leaving only the most heartfelt thank you and the sound of innocent laughter behind.
The time is 11:16, and Yuzuru makes the decision to live the rest of his life in Hatsune's memory. Where his healing could not touch her, maybe his determination can reach others who need it. He can start with the SSS, he thinks, and his hand grips tightly on the strap on his bag, his legs finally resolving to carry him. He has to stop to catch his breath, and at 11:35 he sees the flashing blue and red lights up ahead and the chatter of bystanders who praised the officers.
At 11:37, someone drops the name SSS in conversation, and not another minute ticks by before he finds himself dashing into the fray himself, determined to stop fate's course. The many near-misses with the police force run wildly through his mind, and he notices the sweat on his palms despite the dry, frigid January air.
It is 11:59 P.M. when the door to the undercover police van slams beside him, the sound deafening him to the screams of the outside. It is the last moment Yuzuru spends as a free civilian and not a criminal charged with multiple counts of theft, premeditated murder, and gang violence, complete with proof on all counts and camera footage of his "heist" in stealing Hatsune away to end her life. The footage of him pacing about the room with a pillow in hand would only strengthen the case, so he heard, but had no response but to spit defiantly at the divider between the driver and himself.
By 12:00, the engine roars on startup, and Yuzuru catches a glimpse of the man who walked out so long ago, standing pretty underneath the sleek uniform of someone too far removed from his family and too important to do more than look back and shrug.
Yuzuru remembers his father. He only ever appeared in those few, transitory flashes, and Hatsune never knew him.
Some of the damage healed in the following years, only for a fresh gash in the form of their grandfather's ― his mother's father ― passing. Yuzuru felt he should have cried, but the tears refused to sting at his eyes. Instead, he quietly stood as his mother held his confused sister of three, letting both mother and sister embrace him and only finding that telltale pain in his nose and the warm trickle of his own tears when her tired body held them tightly, racked with sobs. Seeing her cry, on those rare occasions when she would allow herself the luxury, had always made him want to cry too.
Within months, Yuzuru witnessed their mother warp, her habits superficially beginning to mirror their father's. First it was late nights, and the routine sighting of the disheveled silhouette of their mother always stumbling in in the young hours of morning. Then he noticed that her makeup ceased to be effective in hiding her flaws as blues and blacks peeked through the layer of foundation that seemed to grow thicker by night. Only once did he investigate the then routine sound of an unfamiliar man's voice in their home, and only once did it precede a heavy hand against his cheek and a loud crack as calloused skin connected with the baby fat of his lightly freckled face. Two naked adults flashed in front of him, one familiar and one unknown, their exchange bordering violent. The unknown dipped into the shadow, retrieved crumpled clothing and was gone, leaving the familiar figure of his mother to shoo her son away as she sought to cover her bared shame.
Never again did he dare anticipate that a man's voice might be return of their father. Never again did the chorus of men and his mother crying together echo in their home.
"It was a nightmare," she insisted, her stark red hair falling in messy waves around her manic eyes lined with smeared, dark makeup and darker circles beneath them. Yuzuru remembers struggling to discern reality from fiction, while Hatsune believed it without incident.
He began hearing his mother's cries in his dreams. It became the nightmare he tried to believe it had always been, only ever born of those crippling, noisy days full of peers he should have connected with. Loud groups became an inescapable enemy, just like the loud men who had once come and gone by night, always leaving his mother's room a thick haze of humidity. Yuzuru pretended that her sickly sweet perfumes masked reality. When Hatsune asked if she could have nice perfumes like hers, their mother always brought home a new, glittery body spray for her and a game for him.
Both of her children wanted her, not her gifts alone. Most days were punctuated with apologies as she ran out, leaving a confused Hatsune and an embittered Yuzuru. He vowed to be the attentive big brother, unlike their absent father and erratic mother. Once his sister's health began to visibly deteriorate, he doubled his efforts to be that heroic older sibling.
The boy knew heroism and stardom on other people, but could only wear it himself when in the presence of his ailing sister. His own minor ailments seemed so slight compared to the cancer that eroded her weak, clumsy body.
He only wondered if she, too, could form the razor-sharp feathers if she willed it when she bled, but never breathed a word about it. Hatsune took priority as her illness progressed.
For their mother, Asami, the terminal diagnosis was the final pierce the frail armor of her psyche could withstand. She was frequently absent before but became nothing but a vague spirit, only ever darkening their doorways when yielding new paperwork, medications riding on hope alone, and meals for three. Her plate never seemed to change, as if she was intent on preserving it.
Asami Otonashi went from fleeting presence to ghost as her weight and color abandoned her.
Soon, what little remained of her was taken before the apology fully left her lips. Yuzuru, the only child well enough to remain in the house, reached out for her after the men had already dragged her away, too stunned and stupid to realize the finality of it.
Neither child ever saw their mother again. Yuzuru and Hatsune's collaborated notes piled up on their low table, testament to all of their hope and longing, but they went untouched until they toppled to the floor in an avalanche, unread by anyone but the writers. Hatsune's hospital stay, however, was always covered.
He never had the heart to tell his sister that their pleas ended their life in the trash. Feigning ignorance to their fate beyond "unread" suited him fine. When she insisted on continuing to write, always more hopeful than he could be, he etched out the notes and re-used them to learn origami with her.
Being that cool big brother became his purpose in life. Attempts to find his mother always tasted like bitter disappointment and looked like a law enforcement crew too preoccupied with something greater to net any results. "Nothing yet," and "I'm sorry, kid," became tired tales that never brought him rest.
Too young to work officially, Yuzuru sought menial work that paid immediately in cash, ignoring the laughter of peers who thought mother and son should have been a package deal, or how the streets were calling him to take up the helm of his parent. He found solace in few other teenagers, but often friendships with him died young. Yuzuru rarely answered the ring of his cheap, beaten phone, and most misconstrued this as disinterest rather than the crippling exhaustion and lack of confidence that it was.
He never corrected them. Only the most persistent got through to him. To Yuzuru, his true friends were the ones who never mentioned his penchant for petty thievery. Acts of theft afforded him more food and gifts for his sister. It clashed with his morals, but her smile superseded morality.
It took him no time at all to learn that hesitation and second-guessing an attempt at swiping raised suspicion and caused problems. His attempts at lying his way out of being caught never ended smoothly, so instead he learned to move quickly and steal only small objects. Little things raised fewer eyebrows and moved more easily through pawn shops or amongst his peers. The faster he had money, the sooner he ate or could hear his sister's words of gratitude.
When he came of age to work, he began to, but only enough to feed himself and to purchase slightly nicer gifts for Hatsune. Stealing food took priority as his sister's illness worsened and her suffering grew, straining her smiles and weakening the strength of her little heartfelt thank yous. Guilt and mutual loneliness kept him returning to her bedside, always with a gift or an indulgent snack food she could never get in the hospital. Melonpan had been a consistent favorite.
For all his evenings spent there watching her television shows with her, or teaching her how to braid and letting her practice on him because it was always just easier, or singing in a makeshift karaoke competitions that he always let her win, he grew desperate for signs of improvement. His sister loved so deeply and held hopes, dreams, and appreciation for life in ways that Yuzuru could never muster. Her words were warm and optimistic, but her coughs and the quivering in her body when she stood up always betrayed them.
It hurt to watch her suffer. It should have been him, he thought. The world would be no worse for his absence, but Hatsune condemned to a hospital robbed it of one of its most precious treasures.
He began to stay later, though she started to fall asleep earlier and earlier. The light of the unattended television shined dull blue upon him, there he remained until the staff flicked the power off and insisted visiting hours had ended.
Yuzuru still remembers the lulling sound of 'plastic' actors and that lonely blue light.
Hatsune's condition followed the fall leaves as they weakened, beginning to die for the world of cold white. Her smile was always obscured by the hospital mask her nurses asked her to wear.
Yuzuru still remembers earnestly believing his fingers might crack from the cold when he worked outside, and he remembers now wishing he had purchased or stole a camera to capture it while he had the chance.
He should have known her smile would be taken, too. He should have looked harder, smiled more with her, been more of the amazing big brother he wanted to be. With experience of loss and missed connections as his harsh teacher, he should have always known.
He was not such a cool big brother.
As he paced back and forth in her room against the background of those contentedly fake characters on the television, holding one of her fallen pillows in his hands, he reminded himself that he was never the cool big brother she needed. No matter what was paid, it was never enough. She was sick, she was hurting, she never could get to the top of the list to receive the organ donation she needed to replace her failing ones.
If he loved her, it fell on him to do something real for her. The feeling of his hands shaking, leaving behind stains of sweat on the sterile white pillowcase, or of the nausea that wrung at his stomach, or the sense of an ice pick chipping away at his chest stays with him, too vividly.
He remembers, but he wants to forget. He remembers the soft fwap as the stiff pillow slipped out of his hands, and he remembers Hatsune rousing and asking him why he looked so sick and if he needed to visit a doctor. He still does not remember moving to her bedside to hug her, but he remembers her eyes falling closed as he sung her to sleep.
Most of all, he remembers that it was that winter night that inspired him to ask her about Christmas. She replied in a tone that dared not to hope that she had dreamed of seeing the lights in the main stretch of town and innocently asked him what they looked like. Yuzuru only knew them by name or hearsay, not experience, but leaned forward and gave his word that they would see the decorations together.
For all his ridiculous singing, his teaching, his gift-giving, and his storytelling, nothing else had elicited the same bright, wholehearted thank you. Only now does he realize he should have been asking about her dreams and desires all along. She appreciated everything, but the lights and the outside world were things she longed for. She was a caged bird, and the promise of even a moment of freedom made her heart sing.
Her doctor's order to leave her in the hospital would not deter him. The month he had to make preparations crawled at an agonizing pace and left him without the energy or time to make his daily visits. He dropped school completely despite the protest of his few friends, using the freed time to take on more work and to scope out the glint of easily missed valuables. His sister's dreams meant more than the dirty, crumpled paper of money. Its value outweighed rings or necklaces or even the nice buttons on the purses of wealthy ladies and the cuffs of working businessmen.
It was early December when the band of misfits seeking justice, the SSS, found him blackened in an alley, in the midst of a beating for the misjudgement in a theft attempt. Trying to take the custard-filled bread off of a peer's plate landed him in deeper danger than he anticipated. He had been aware and alert one minute, and still recalls his surprise when he heard the crack of a boot connecting with his head and the time it took for his mind to process that the blood dripping off his nose was his own.
It was just an error in judgement. He got overzealous.
'Hey, he's the one with that whore for a mother, I remember!'
Hatsune's imprisonment protected her from the harsh words of bitter children. The SSS protected Yuzuru from taking a knee to the gut as he struggled uselessly in another boy's grasp, held into submission by his bangs. The rest happens in blurred flashes of color rushing in and out of his swimming vision. A figure with deep magenta hair and dark clothes came between him and the assailant. Still, he remembers the colorful language and heads of hair rushing around, and a familiar face with shaggy blue hair kneeling down beside him to help him up.
He always let that blue-haired boy's calls and texts ring indefinitely, but there he stood, ragged and thinner than he ever recalled. Yuzuru caught a glimpse of a beaten and worn pocket in his friend's hand, knowing he had seen it but not knowing from where. He only realized later that it had been a wallet, lifted from one of the assailants.
Yuri, known to some of her boys as "Yurippe," mostly accepted him. Yuzuru himself refused the name; Yuri introduced herself as Yuri, and for all of their disputes and bickering, he fully intended to respect her preference. He hesitated, but their platform of acceptance along with protection from a broken status quo and justice system appealed to him.
Nobody within the system had ever reported back on the whereabouts of his mother. He allied himself with them despite his criticism of the gang's initiatives.
He never breathed a word about it to Hatsune and told himself he did it to protect her from further pain, ignoring that what he truly feared more than her eyes glassed over with tears was her bowing her head in disappointment. Yuzuru had handled tears. The memories of their mother's coffee-colored eyes, glassy and bright with tears, had never left him; he had grown used to them, disgustingly numb but equipped to weather that particular storm. His little sister's disappointment and disapproval was another fight entirely: one he was not armed for nor trained to handle.
December 25th was spent entirely in the hospital, visiting Hatsune by day and avoiding staff once they began to sweep visitors out to settle for the night. Passing so many long days within its sterile walls afforded him the confidence to know the layout like second nature. He snuck into her room, offering her the pink coat he had her pick out from a magazine weeks before. Her tiny, frail body disappeared easily within it, the size incorrect, but she eagerly appreciated it and held onto her brother's back without a word of complaint. Her grip felt too delicate and feather light: truly the captured bird he always imagined her to be.
Knowing the course and with a goal in reach, he fled to the square with her. The lights captivated even him, and his only regret then was the presence of that medical mask which erased her smile from view. Yuzuru promises her the all the happiness and presents in the world while the padding of two winter coats obscures the feeling of two heartbeats tapering down to one. He took her last thank you and continued to walk, stopping at none of the shops he had planned and never bothering to cancel their dinner reservation.
Yuzuru chatted to no one until he reached the bench outside the hospital. He remembers laying her in the snow, met with confused hospital staff as the sobs tore from his chest. He remembers reaching for her as they pried him away from her, fingernails digging into her coat and chilled fingers brushing past her lifeless hand, too numb to feel it.
Some apologized, others scolded, but he heard none of it. He watched their mouths move, some softly and paired with sympathetic, worried eyes, while the lips of others moved more quickly and harshly. Yuzuru took their pity and criticism and turned his back on it all, wanting none of it.
His morale and success in the SSS slipped, but they accepted him when no one else would. He suspected they knew, but with a leader who knew too well the pain of losing innocent young siblings, nobody dared approach him with any more acknowledgement than an apology or an offer to spend time with him. Whether she told them to be gentle or they acted on their own will, he never knew.
>
The New Year opens with a funeral and a chance hesitation outside of the hospital he once considered a home away from home. A minute passes, now 11:14 in the afternoon, and though he knows his task is to meet with the SSS, he cannot will his feet to move. A little girl, holding a bouquet of flowers, gets released from the hospital with a smile on her face. 11:15, Yuzuru watches the nurse wave her off for the final time. The young girl walks off with her parents, leaving only the most heartfelt thank you and the sound of innocent laughter behind.
The time is 11:16, and Yuzuru makes the decision to live the rest of his life in Hatsune's memory. Where his healing could not touch her, maybe his determination can reach others who need it. He can start with the SSS, he thinks, and his hand grips tightly on the strap on his bag, his legs finally resolving to carry him. He has to stop to catch his breath, and at 11:35 he sees the flashing blue and red lights up ahead and the chatter of bystanders who praised the officers.
At 11:37, someone drops the name SSS in conversation, and not another minute ticks by before he finds himself dashing into the fray himself, determined to stop fate's course. The many near-misses with the police force run wildly through his mind, and he notices the sweat on his palms despite the dry, frigid January air.
It is 11:59 P.M. when the door to the undercover police van slams beside him, the sound deafening him to the screams of the outside. It is the last moment Yuzuru spends as a free civilian and not a criminal charged with multiple counts of theft, premeditated murder, and gang violence, complete with proof on all counts and camera footage of his "heist" in stealing Hatsune away to end her life. The footage of him pacing about the room with a pillow in hand would only strengthen the case, so he heard, but had no response but to spit defiantly at the divider between the driver and himself.
By 12:00, the engine roars on startup, and Yuzuru catches a glimpse of the man who walked out so long ago, standing pretty underneath the sleek uniform of someone too far removed from his family and too important to do more than look back and shrug.
Yuzuru remembers his father. He only ever appeared in those few, transitory flashes, and Hatsune never knew him.
