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He's seven years old the first time a friend asks to come over. Tokio is a wide-eyed lanky shadow that looks at Azuma like he's the sun and all the stars, and Azuma sort of hates him for it. It's a complicated feeling, too big for his chest, sort of hate and sort of admiration and he doesn't know what to do about it. He especially doesn't know what to do about Tokio on the climbing bars, holding on like he doesn't know how not to fall, and asking "Can we go over to your house after school?"
There's a pit in his stomach. He clings to the edge of it like he doesn't know how not to fall, and Tokio asks something impossible like it's the most normal thing in the entire world, like if Azuma had been the one to ask Tokio would have said "of course" and pulled out his smart card to call his parents and ask. Or maybe he wouldn't have even thought to call home and ask, maybe Azuma would have just showed up on Tokio's doorstep and come right in like he's supposed to say "I'm home".
What Azuma says instead is "No, sorry."
And then, even though Tokio doesn't ask, "My dad doesn't like visitors."
"Oh. Okay." Tokio says, and falls backwards through the bars to hang upside down next to Azuma, their knees both hooked over scratchy metal, the world a dizzying mirror around them.
(for years, Tokio stands outside of the gates of the Higashi residence, but never passes through)
Tokio's mother is pretty, with long dark hair and a different sort of face than Tokio has. She looks a little bit like Tokio, like Tokio's sister looks a little bit like him, like Tokio's father looks a little bit like him. Azuma feels like he's been watching her for a minute or two too long as she stirs something in a pan on the stove.
"Do you want to help?" She asks, and something in Azuma aches. His mother lets him help, of course. His mother stands at the stove and stirs something in a pan and asks him if he wants to help. But still, he's jealous. He's so jealous of Tokio at every moment, and he's jealous of Tokio right now.
"Yes, ma'am." He says, and his voice is small. In the other room, Tokio and his sister are scuffling over the game controller, noisy but careful not to do anything that would damage the old system. Tokio yelps, and his sister growls something that Azuma doesn't quite listen to. An older sister who scuffles with you, who pushes you around, is very different than a younger sister who you carry through the woods on a long walk.
He climbs up on a stool that Tokio's mother pulls out of a cabinet. Tokio might not need it anymore to stand next to his mother at the counter, but Azuma certainly does. He doesn't need much instruction though, he's good at peeling carrots and carefully slicing them into chunks just the right size. He always feels like he's done this a thousand times, it's easy for him.
Tokio's mother smiles at him, tells him he's doing a good job, and he thinks that he's going to remember this moment for the rest of his life.
(three months later, he doesn't attend her funeral)
Azuma is waiting. Azuma's teacher is waiting. His teacher is waiting for an arrival, and Azuma is waiting for his teacher to realize that there isn't going to be one. There's a feeling in the air that Azuma hates, the feeling of a joke being played on him, the feeling of someone about to pity him.
"Your parents must be very busy people." His teacher says, and Azuma considers his response.
"My father wasn't feeling well this morning." He says. His father is rarely feeling well, between the injury and the pain and the medications. His father's mood hangs over their whole house, and the heaviness of it has been clinging to Azuma all day.
But one of his parents should show. One of them should, at some point in his life, show up for something. Sports competitions aren't important enough, judo competitions aren't either. Elementary school hadn't been. Middle school apparently isn't important enough either.
"I've already decided on the school I'll be attending." He says, and his teacher glances at him. Azuma continues. "And after high school, I'll attend the police academy and join the force."
A fork in the path, railroad tracks off into the distance, he knows which ones his father took him down, he knows the exhaustion and the blisters and the inability to refuse.
"Would you like me to call them?"
Inside Azuma there's an empty pit, and inside the empty pit is a terror he can't look towards.
"No." He says, quickly. Too quickly. His teacher's eyes widen, just for a fraction of a second but Azuma has always noticed the fractions of seconds. He wonders what his teacher thinks she's noticed.
"All right."
(his parents never come)
"Shit, shit, shit" Tokio is muttering, like a prayer, like repeating it will make something have happened differently. His big hands flutter uselessly, like he wants to reach out, like he wants to grab something, like he's pretending to want to be someone with less deliberate incompetence than he has. "Your face, Azuma."
"It's fine."
"It's not fine, Azuma. Your parents are gonna freak."
They won't. Azuma knows this. They'll look at him, at the cut on his cheek, and tell him to go get himself cleaned up. But maybe Tokio's dad would freak, maybe his sister would, maybe Azuma's parents should be upset at him for getting injured, for this whole stupid desperate after-school illegal nighttime vigilante shit.
Tokio finally digs his first aid kit out of his backpack, pops open the rusty latch of the old metal box and digs around to find a gauze pad and the little bottle of shochu he'd siphoned from his father's stash. The alcohol burns against the cut on Azuma's face, as Tokio finally starts being helpful. That helpfulness stings worse than the medicine.
Azuma grabs the gauze from him. "I can do it."
"But seriously, Azuma. You can't go home like that."
"It's not that bad."
"He had a knife."
"And?"
It's true, they both know it. Azuma has the knife now, tucked into the bottom of his backpack. When he gets home it will go in the drawer with the others. When the mugger gets home all he'll have to show for his evening out is a broken wrist and a concussion.
Tokio has another gauze pad now, he's squeezing the nearly-empty tube of antiseptic cream onto it. He doesn't try to put it on Azuma's face, but he holds it out.
"Let me tape it," Tokio says, and if it weren't somewhere Azuma couldn't see, he'd do it himself. But he doesn't want to accidentally get tape on the wound, so he takes off his glasses and turns his cheek towards Tokio.
(the cut heals up without a scar)
"Did ya tell 'em?" Otta asks.
Tokio had been complaining about his sister and his dad, in a way that's familiar background noise to Azuma, the same "can't they go to the store for themselves for once? She had me go buy that new rpg that came out and she won't even let me play it. He left the bathroom a mess again." sort of list that Tokio sometimes pulls out when he's reached that artificial breaking point that Tokio sometimes gets to with his family. Otta's question pulls him up short.
"... did I tell them?" He asks, like there's a question about what Tokio could have told his family.
"Yeah. Ya know, did ya tell 'em yer a choujin now? I ain't told anybody back home, but my grandpappy prolly won't mind too much. Gaga ain't like Yamato, choujin don't really mess things up there like they done here, so people ain't as skittish."
"... no." Tokio says, after a moment. Azuma can't blame him. "They wouldn't... um... I'm not gonna tell them."
Otta doesn't know about Tokio's mom, about the subway collapse, about another news story about choujin causing destruction and another televised list of the dead.
"'n what about you, Higashi? You tell yers yet?"
"... no." Azuma says, after a moment. "They're not... fond of choujin."
"What?" Otta asks, "They'd throw ya out?"
"Maybe." But it's a lie. Somehow, he knows they wouldn't. Somehow, he knows it would be easier if they did.
"Well, if they did you could always come live with me." Tokio says, like it's an actual offer, like there's space in his family's tiny apartment for Azuma, when there's barely space for Tokio.
"I'd rather live in the dorms. I've heard your sister snores."
"Ugh, she snores so loud!" Tokio takes the bait. Azuma wonders if he does it intentionally.
(even after everything comes out, after his face is in the papers, his parents never mention it)
There's dappled light on the ceiling and walls, slicing through burnt out staircases and reflecting off windows. Azuma doesn't have to open his eyes to know that.
There's something looming over him, dark and watchful and hungry. Azuma doesn't have to open his eyes to know that either.
It's a good thing, probably, that he's sort of half aware without really waking up. He's in a lot of pain, but it's a distant pain, muffled. Not quite outside of him, he's in his body in a way he wasn't before, when he stood and watched destruction happen with something that wasn't him, with--
There's a gaping chasm he doesn't want to look at.
"Tokio?" He says. Maybe. He can't tell if his voice works, if the muscles in his throat move, if there's air leaving his lungs.
A hand presses against his, familiar. The looming darkness presses against his soul, looking at him like he's the sun and every star. Azuma has always been a supernova, right at the edge of destruction.
"Azuma?" The voice is distant. Familiar.
More real than--
Azuma can't breathe. He shouldn't be able to, there's cloth around his head and a collar around his throat, chains and it's never been iron it's always been--
"Azuma! Hey! Azuma!"
There's a darkness looming over him. There's a darkness underneath him. Hands press against his shoulders and Tokio's voice is desperate and Azuma opens his eyes, gasps against clear air.
Tokio's wings are out, like he's blocking an attack. Black and white feathers arching over them both, Tokio's hands on his shoulders and dark eyes wide and worried behind the fall of his hair. Azuma reaches up, grabs his arms. There are chains on his wrists. He'd thought it was his parent's expectations, his own expectations, the expectations and assumptions of everyone around him that chained a knight down when it couldn't have ever been a lion.
It wasn't. It wasn't ever that.
There never were any parental expectations. There never were any silent glances, any quiet dinners, any passing by his parents in the hallways of their empty house. What does it mean, that when he dreamed up a family he dreamed up one that hated him? He's never been someone destined to be all right. He's never been someone destined to be. He's always been clinging to the edge of absolutely nothing at all, desperate because if he falls there's nothing left, because he's never really existed.
"Hey. You with me?" Tokio asks. His hands are on Azuma's shoulders. His wings are arched over them like he's blocking out the entire world.
Azuma nods.