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By the time Haru was five years old, he knew nobody loved him. He's not really sure what love is, but his teacher read a book in class once about parents who loved their child and Haru knows his parents don't care for him like that. Sometimes they forget he exists at all. Haruka hates those times because it means they're going to forget to feed him too, like on the nights they throw parties. He hides in his room, sometimes even in the closet, where it's safe and listens to the music pounding through the walls. There's lost of people talking downstairs and they're loud and annoying and he hates every second of it. He hates it even more when the talking starts to die down, then the moaning and the banging starts. Every once in a while, his father stumbles into his room with a woman who is not his mother. They play around naked on his bed, doing things he doesn't understand.
One time his father, smelling like the sticky stuff that coats the tables after the parties, stumbled into his room with a strange woman and spotted him playing with his dolphin plush. His father made him play with them, made him touch the woman's naked breasts, and his father's penis. He hated it. It made him feel gross and he didn't know why. When he started crying, his father slapped him and threw him into the closet. He listened to the banging and the moaning and covered his ears to block out the noise. It didn't work. Now when the talking dies down, he hides in the closet on his own.
When Haru is six years old, he isn't surprised when he wakes up all alone. When he goes downstairs and pours himself a bowl of cereal, he's not surprised no one is home. And when his parents never come back, that doesn't really surprise him either.
It's a week before anybody notices he's all alone. His teacher eventually calls it in. He knows she's worried about him, but Haru also knows she doesn't love him. Neither does his first foster mother. He's quiet, shy, and withdrawn under her care. She yells a lot, sometimes at him, but he doesn't really know for sure because he never listens to the things she says. He's learned to tune people out, and he's grateful for that. She locks him in the basement a lot and asks 'why aren't you crying, kid?' when she lets him out. He doesn't tell her it's because he was dreaming of the ocean and the freedom it provides.
One day a rat bites him in the basement. He doesn't tell his foster mother, because really what's the point? He knows something is wrong with the bite, the skin around it is red and swollen and pus oozes from the punctures marks. He feels awful, sick and feverish. When he passes out at school and wakes up in the hospital, his social worker demands to know what happened. He tells her, he never saw the point in lying. He's moved to a new foster home and at 8 years old, Haru finally learns what love is.
Love comes in the form of a green eyed angel, who's really just a boy no older than him.
His foster brother makes him lunch to take to school with him, when Haru isn't even used to eating lunch let alone someone making it for him. Makoto actually talks to him, asks Haru how his day went, and even wants to play with him. Haru's never had a friend before.
Makoto does the things the mother in the book his teacher read to him when he was five did for her kid. He makes sure Haru brushes his teeth, and lets Haru have a longer bath than him, and makes all their meals, and cleans the house, and he smiles at Haru like no one ever has before. He even covers for Haru so that he can sneak away from the house and swim in the ocean. It's the only thing besides Makoto that really makes his life worth living.
He doesn't know how Makoto can be so nice all the time, especially when the their foster mother is so mean to him. The woman says nasty things to the both of them, things like you're useless, and pathetic, and no one loves you. She asks why there is still dust on the tv in the living room, or why is breakfast burnt, and can't you do anything right?
The words bounce right off Haruka, because he doesn't put much stock in what adults have to say. He stares at her with a blank expression every time she starts on one of her tirades, until eventually she leaves him alone. But Makoto is an easy target. He cries and stutters out apologies and says he'll do better next time. Makoto shouldn't care what this woman thinks of him, and when he tells his foster brother that, Makoto just shrugs and looks away. He makes it a point to never be far from Makoto when the woman is around.
A lot of men come and go from the house. He thinks the woman might be a prostitute. In a fit of rage, after she screamed at Makoto for hours for breaking a plate, Haru calls her a whore. Her eyes narrow at him, nostrils flaring. Then she grabs Makoto by the wrist and drags him into the kitchen. Haru tries to follow, his heart thundering in his chest, but she slams the door in his face. She must put a chair under the handle because he can't get in, no matter how hard he tries.
Haru spends the next hour sitting beside that door, crying silent tears as the women beats Makoto. She knows that'll hurt Haru worse than getting beaten himself. He hears something slapping across Makoto's skin. He doesn't know what, and that makes him panic. He hears his foster brother crying out in pain in between sobs, but he doesn't hear him beg her to stop. He thinks this might not be the first time this has happened.
Haru does beg her to stop. He pounds on the door, screaming 'please don't hurt him. I'll do anything.' And when all he hears is Makoto crying, he adds 'I'm sorry,' apologzing for the first time in his life. He isn't sorry he called the woman a whore. He is sorry Makoto is paying for it.
When she finally stops, and the door finally opens, the woman looms over him, smirking at the tears still running from his eyes, and says, "I hope you learned your lesson." Haru knows he has.
He finds Makoto crouched on the kitchen floor, knees pulled to his chest, arms wrapped around them, sobbing. A wooden spoon lies discarded on the floor next to him. Tentatively, he places a gentle hand on his foster brother's shoulder, but snatches his hand back when Makoto hisses in pain and flinches away. He pulls the other boy's shirt up and clenches his fist in anger when see the bruises blossoming across his back.
Makoto says it's not Haru's fault and doesn't hate him afterwards. Haru hates himself. He does all of Makoto's chores, makes all the meals, and cleans until the welts decorating his body disappear. He even lets Makoto sleep in his bed with him, cuddled up under the blankets as the younger boy shakes and cries himself to sleep. It doesn't make Haru hate himself any less.
Neither say anything to anyone about what happened because they don't know that it's wrong.
The woman has a way to control Haru now and they both know it. One mention of the wooden spoon and he folds, doing whatever she wants. She takes advantage of it alot. Makoto protests, says he shouldn't do anything he doesn't want to, he can handle getting beaten again. Haruka doesn't want him to have to deal with it. But it happens more often than he would like, sometimes for no reason at all.
As they get older, both of them grow taller than the woman, especially Makoto who towers over both of them. Makoto never learns to use his height and never learns to stand up for himself. He hides behind Haru when he's scared, which is all the time, and grasps Haru's shirt between his fingers. Haru's kind of glad he does, because this way he can protect Makoto from anything, though he wishes Makoto would protect himself.
Everything is far from fine considering how often the woman yells at Makoto, calling him names and telling him how worthless he is, but nobody hits them anymore, so things are at least okay. Then the incident happens and everything falls apart.
The woman brings home a man who is even more terrible than she is. He hurls horrible insults at the both of them and the looks the man tosses in their direction makes him shiver. Then one day he comes home from his part-time job and there's a broken beer bottle on the floor that Makoto has not picked up yet. Instantly, he knows something is wrong. He runs through every room in the house until he finds Makoto sitting on the bathroom floor, a towel pressed to his arm that is quickly soaking through with blood.
"It was an accident," Makoto says, averting his gaze.
Haru knows that's bullshit. He slowly sits next to his foster brother and lifts up the blood splattered shirt. There are welts covering Makoto's chest and back. "Did you beat yourself with a belt, too?"
Makoto flinches and pulls away, but Haru wraps him in a hug and doesn't let go.
The man sticks around longer than the others. Haru tries to make sure Makoto is never at the house without him. If he's at his job, working hard to make money to get them out of their foster home, then he insists Makoto stay at the library or school, or Hell, hang out at the store Haru works at. Any place, but the house. It works for awhile, until one day the library closes early because of a fire in the next building. Makoto doesn't want to be a bother. He goes home alone.
Haru runs the 10 blocks home from work, terrified to find the library closed and Makoto nowhere in sight. He finds them in the kitchen. Makoto is pressed against the wall, his shirt gone and eyes wide open in terror. The man is pressed against him, a knee between Makoto's leg, a hand wrapped around his throat, and kissing his neck. Haru can see the bruises across his chest that wrap around his sides. He wonders how many more are on his back.
"Oh Haru," the man says. "Do you want a turn?"
His fists shake in anger and for a moment, his vision blacks out. He comes too just as he is pushing the man away from his foster brother
"What the fuck -" the man starts, but is cut off when Haru's fist connects with his nose. Haru grabs Makoto and they run.
The police find them a few days later and Haru is sent to a juvenile detention center. He doesn't know what happens to Makoto, but he's grateful he's not here with him. He tells everyone with a straight face that he murdered his foster father with a rusty spoon. No one bothers him after that and when he passes by others in the lunch hall, he hears people whisper, "That's the psychopath."
It comes as a surprise when he's released less than a week later and taken straight to his social worker's office. Makoto is there and a weight is lifted form his chest when he's crushed to his foster brother's chest. Haru returns the hug.
"I told them everything that happened," Makoto whispers in his hair. "Cherrie's been working hard to get you out."
Haru may be out of juvy, but they won't let him be with Makoto. His mind gets stuck on 'separate you two,' and he doesn't hear much else besides he's going to the orphanage and Makoto's going to another foster family. Despite how much Makoto begs to go with him, they are literally dragged away from each other. He worries that he'll never see the only person who's ever loved him again.
He meets Rin at the orphanage, and he cares about Rin, but he isn't sure if their friendship counts as love, not the kind of love he shared with Makoto, or the love Rin shared with Sousuke and Gou. Then one day, Rin introduces him to Aiichirou and that is when he knows for sure it isn't the same.
Rin talks a lot of nonsense. He says him and Sousuke are working hard and that everyone is going to leave the orphanage and live together in their own apartment. He's going to take Haru with him. Haru doesn't believe him, but he's still waiting for a Makoto that never comes, so he's not really one to talk.
But one day Rin and Sousuke do disappear and they don't come back. He tries to talk to Gou and Aiichirou, but all he gets in response is tears. He blacks out again, just like he did the day he punched out the man who hurt Makoto, and comes to it ten blocks away from the orphanage. He doesn't go back.
Makoto won't be able to find him if he never returns to the orphanage, but that strangely doesn't bother him. He sleeps on park benches, finds food when he feels like it, which is almost never, and tries to drown himself in the ocean. It doesn't work.
A man called Atsushi saves him, drags him from the clutches of the sea. Atsushi brings him home, buys him clothes, feeds him, but it's only a matter of time before he abandons Haru too. It turns out much worse than that.
Haru thought he knew despair, but Atsushi teaches him the real meaning with hands that burn into his flesh and a violence that steals what's left of his innocence. Haru doesn't cry, but only because he doesn't know how. He's property now, Atsushi says so and soon he will belong to a man named Hachiro. He can't be sold if he isn't alive, so Haru heads to the ocean.
But Rin is there with words as soft as the petals of flowers. Haru lashes out with acid that burns the flowers to ashes.
"I didn't abandon you, Haru, I swear," Rin says, sad and defeated without a hint of the anger he expected. "Sousuke...he got hurt pretty bad. He was in the hospital. We came back, but you weren't there."
Haru stays silent, confused and hurt. Everyone leaves, but no one ever really comes back. That's the way it's always been. Haru turns back to the ocean.
"Makoto's been looking everywhere for you," Rin admits and that stops his descent.
"What?"
"Makoto, my boss. He came to the orphanage looking for you, but you were already gone."
Not sure what to believe, not daring to hope, Haru stutters, "Take me to him."
Seeing Makoto again fills the empty parts of him. Makoto takes the shattered pieces and patiently puts them back together. Some don't fit quite right, others are missing entirely, but Makoto tries and that's all Haru really needs.
If only he could do the same for Makoto.