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Ritsu transfers to a new high school just before the start of his second year.
It’s not the high school Shigeo is going to, but it’s a better decision for Ritsu’s future overall. Cayenne Academy has vibrant opportunities for the field of chemical science and scholarships into a sister college under the same association. He’s going to miss his brother, but he can’t follow Shigeo everywhere. This decision makes the most sense.
He starts at Cayenne as a second year and Shigeo enters his third.
The hierarchy is tilted against him, but it’s nothing unexpected. He knew that it would be and was fine going through with his decision even so. He’s the only transferred second year in this period, he knew it would take time. He was accepted into the chemistry club and the rest of his peers generally leave him alone. Mutual respect isn’t a bad place to start.
“I’m glad it’s going well so far,” Shigeo says when Ritsu gives him the rundown. He’s washing dishes while Ritsu clears the table. “Have you made any friends?”
“Not really,” Ritsu answers, lowering a stack of dinner dishes into the sink. “I joined the chemistry club and everyone there seems chill. I have my first meeting tomorrow with them.”
Shigeo’s smile makes Ritsu feel like he can do anything. “You’ll have to tell me all about it.”
Ritsu rolls his eyes and leans into the counter. “How’s your first month as a third year?”
“Ah.” Shigeo scrubs a plate with excessive force. “The workload is… a lot. But it’s been good.”
“Are you still thinking about going into the medical field?”
Shigeo nods. “I’m meeting with the guidance counselor tomorrow to go over options, but I’d like to be an EMT.”
“I’ll tell you how my club meeting goes and you tell me how your meeting with the counselor goes?”
“I’ll bring Ramune if you supply the pocky.”
“Deal.”
Verdict: he likes his clubmates and his clubmates seem to like him.
Shigeo is happy for him, says he’s relieved that Ritsu found a good club and a good high school with encouraging peers. Privately, Ritsu is relieved, too. His clubmates are dedicated but not pretentious and none of them seem to value their branch of interest over another’s. The group is well-balanced and Ritsu fits right in.
Ritsu is making connections with his teachers, too. A scouting college professor is visiting campus next Monday. Their family has never had a lot of money and Mom and Dad have assured him that they would make whatever career he wanted happen for him, but he can’t do that to them in good conscience. He needs this scholarship.
Shigeo announces over dinner that he has officially decided to pursue a career in the medical field as an EMT. Mom decides a celebration is in order and plans a hotpot dinner for the weekend.
A new student transfers into Ritsu’s class.
It isn’t a big deal.
“Ritsu?” Mom’s head pokes into his bedroom. “Dinner’s ready. Are you hungry?”
“Oh.” Ritsu rubs his face. He’s been staring at his homework for so long, the words have stopped looking like words. “Um. I was actually going to turn in early tonight, if that’s okay. I’m not super hungry.”
“Are you not feeling well?”
“A little. I have a headache.”
Mom steps over the threshold and meets him at his desk, her hand spread over his forehead. “You don’t have a fever,” she says, smoothing his hair out of his face. “Well, get some rest. Take a break from all this.” She tugs the textbook out from under his hands and flips it closed. “You work yourself too hard. We all think so.”
Ritsu forces a tired laugh, rubbing his face again. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll rest.”
“You’d better.” It’s playful, and he strains to keep his smile up and not worry her more.
He can handle this.
Shigeo has Teruki over for a study night. It’s been on the family calendar—everything goes on the family calendar these days, what with everyone’s schedules conflicting and Ritsu and Shigeo having so many places to be—but Ritsu forgot all about it until he ducks out of his room toward the kitchen for PopTarts and finds the two of them sprawled on the floor by the coffee table.
“Oh, hey, lil bro!” Teruki vaults himself up with force that gives Ritsu sympathy whiplash. “Wow, your hair’s all over the place. How’s it going?”
“It.” Ritsu was not prepared to socialize. Shigeo looks concerned, though, so he’s gotta say something. “Sorry, Teruki, I completely forgot you were coming over.”
Teruki laughs, good-natured. For some reason it makes Ritsu’s chest ache. “Don’t worry about it. Shige’s been telling me all about your school, sounds like they’ve really got you burning the candle from both ends over there.”
“Is everything okay, Ritsu?” Shigeo asks.
“Yeah, sorry,” Ritsu lies. He hates lying to Shigeo, but there's no reason why Shigeo needs to get involved. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.” Shigeo stares at him, unsatisfied, and Ritsu pretends not to notice. “How’s studying?”
“We were actually gonna call it a night and put on a movie,” Teruki answers. “You can join us if you want. It’s one of those flicks that’s only fun if you’re watching with a group. The more the merrier.”
Great, so neither of them believed the lie. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass tonight. I’ve got a book review due tomorrow and I want to proof-read one more time.”
“Ah, gotcha. Bummer. Well, join us next time, then. We’ll even let you pick the movie.”
Ritsu grabs his PopTarts from the kitchen, bids them both goodnight and leaves before Shigeo can pry again.
Mom and Dad are setting the table when Ritsu comes home. His shoes are soaked and the bruises underneath his ribs throb. He shuts the door silently behind him, peels off his shoes and then his socks. He powerwalks from the genkan to his bedroom, then from his bedroom to his bathroom.
He wrestles himself out of his school uniform into a fresh change of clothes, shakes the dirt out of his hair and rinses the scrape in his side just in time to meet Shigeo in the kitchen for dinner.
Shigeo is surprised that Ritsu is home, since he hadn’t heard him come in. Mom was about to text him. Ritsu brushes it off with a nonsense reason and sprints for the kitchen to ask Mom how he can help with dinner.
He can handle this.
Shigeo has spooled himself between the couch and the coffee table, flopped over his arms and surrounded by textbooks and gel pens.
“Studying hard?” Ritsu asks.
Shigeo lifts his head. He has eyebags like someone who accidentally placed a bulk order for 50,000 sticky hands and had to zoink through half a dozen third-party sites to cancel it. That happened to Shou once.
Ritsu missed Shou. He chose a high school so he could be closer to his mother, which means that outside of summer vacation and occasional weekend visits, he doesn’t see his best friend often. It doesn’t help the steadily growing pit of isolation in his stomach.
No—he isn’t isolated. He’s handling this fine.
“I normally like anatomy,” Shigeo sighs. “The way this textbook phrases things is… confusing.”
“Do you want cup ramen? I was going to make one for myself, I can boil some extra water.”
“If you don’t mind. Thank you, Ritsu.”
Ritsu reaches for the top shelf in the pantry. The bruising on his shoulder aches, but he snags two ramens before the pain is unbearable. He sets the kettle to boil.
“How was school?” Shigeo calls from the living room.
“It was good. Nothing special. What about you?”
“The same. We had a substitute today, so our quiz got pushed back a week.”
“Nice.”
“Sort of. I was looking forward to getting it over with.”
“I guess now you have more time to prepare for it?”
“Yeah.”
The kettle whistles. Ritsu pours water into both cups, grabs an extra pair of chopsticks for Shigeo and heads back into the living room.
“Oh, thank you,” Shigeo says, taking the cup from him.
Ritsu nods. “Mom is gonna be upset if she finds out we’re eating this late.”
“She understands.” Shigeo pins the flimsy lid over the cup with his chopsticks. He pauses, long enough that Ritsu realizes he wants to say something. He wants to talk.
“… Well, I’m going back to my room,” Ritsu says, moving toward the hall. “Don’t stay up too late.”
“Ritsu.”
Ritsu waits.
“... You would tell me if something was wrong,” Shigeo says quietly. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
He shuts the door of his room behind him.
Cayenne Academy has a large fountain in the plaza behind the school.
The water is very cold.
Mom and Dad are out of town to help Dad’s parents with a moving sale. It’s early November and it’s cold and Ritsu steps through the barrier Shigeo keeps subconsciously over their home, over the porch and through the front door. His feet hurt. His hands are cold. Shigeo’s aura rumbles like a fireplace, warmhearted and familiar. Ritsu’s eyes sting.
Ritsu’s aura curdles in his chest like over-microwaved milk. His blood vibrates under his skin until he’s sick to his stomach—except he hasn’t eaten anything today, so there’d be nothing to throw up if he tried.
“Ritsu?”
Of course Shigeo can tell something is wrong. Ritsu should have thought about that before he came home like—like this. He hears Shigeo’s footsteps, slow at first then fast when Ritsu doesn’t answer. When Shigeo turns the corner from the kitchen to the entryway, all of Ritsu’s fabricated dispositions break apart and a traitorous sob catches in his throat.
Shigeo leaps toward him, panicked. “What happened?” Shigeo says, stopping just in front of him and thumbing at his hairline. He nicks a bruise and Ritsu doesn’t have the energy not to wince. “Are you hurt? You’re hurt. What happened?”
Ritsu didn’t plan this. He hardly remembers making the decision to walk home without changing out of his uniform or cleaning out the scratches or washing the grime out from under his fingernails. His aura grits down on itself like a meat grinder on glass, strung-up and shivery. He can feel it affect his brother’s aura but can’t reel it in. The lights flicker.
Shigeo’s palms flatten on either one of his cheeks. Ritsu meets his brother’s crimson eyes. Shigeo looks furious and devastated and sad.
“Did someone do this? Ritsu?”
Ritsu can’t take it.
“There was a new student,” Ritsu says. His voice is the only part of him that isn’t shaking violently. “H-He transferred a c… a couple months after I did. He wasn’t good at sports, or academics, or… But he was nice. He was really nice. He just wanted to fit in, and…”
Shigeo is listening, patiently still while his aura seizes. Ritsu tries to gather his thoughts but his thoughts wrangle into emotion and his ribs claw at his heart.
“Everyone turned against him,” Ritsu whispers. “For— no reason, and… I—”
Ritsu’s club gradually stopped talking to him. His good grades went from points of respect to points of jealousy. He’d never been called a teacher’s pet before. One day he was pulling the new kid’s books out of the school fountain and the next day it was his books.
“Why?” Ritsu gasps. “He didn’t do anything wrong, Nii-san. I said so, but they weren’t going to listen to me. Even he told me to stop, but what else was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just watch, not…”
He reminded Ritsu of middle-school Shigeo, living under his own thumb. Loneliness and the feeling of being ‘other’ cut his brother deeply through the years.
“I thought they’d all snap out of it once I called them out, but they didn’t. Then I thought if I could just explain the situation to a teacher something would change. But it didn’t.”
Speaking up made it worse. Speaking up shifted the target off of that student’s back and onto Ritsu’s.
“H-His parents transferred him to another school,” Ritsu chokes. His breaths come short and fast but he doesn’t have the willpower to keep himself from hyperventilating. “Today was his last day, and tomorrow, I—”
Their punches were as sharp as their words. The fountain was so, so cold.
“I’ll be alone.”
Shigeo grabs his arm. “Rits—”
“But.” Ritsu’s voice shatters. He tears out of Shigeo’s grip, clutches at his chest and loathes the trilling note of his aura high in the air. “I won’t regret this,” Ritsu snaps, angry and ashamed at the well of it already stewing in his gut. He’s angry that he could regret this. Angry that he’s afraid.
A teacher’s pet and a coward and a goody-two-shoes. He thought he was fitting in when in reality he just wasn’t standing out.
Once he started standing up, then his peers shut him out and the bullies tried to shut him up.
“I won’t regret this,” Ritsu heaves, tears clotting in his throat, “because—because what I did wasn’t wrong.”
“That’s right,” Shigeo says. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t…”
Shigeo’s arms bind around Ritsu’s shoulders and pull him against his chest. “I’m really, really proud of you.”
Ritsu clutches his brother and lets the storm take him. Shigeo’s aura secures a barrier over Ritsu’s and creates a pocket of space where there exists only the two of them. The steadfast warmth of Shigeo’s aura is an overpowering solace and Ritsu chokes on his sobs.
“Why?” Ritsu smothers himself in his brother’s shoulder. He doesn’t know whether or not he wants to be heard. “H-He never did anything wrong— I never did anything wrong. Why would they turn on—” Him. Me. “I thought they liked me,” Ritsu chokes. “B-But they all turned on me so fast—”
Shigeo squeezes him. Ritsu cries.
Gradually, Shigeo guides him toward the couch without loosening his hold. A blanket wraps around Ritsu’s shoulders. Shigeo lowers them both to the couch and hugs Ritsu tight. Ritsu curls his knees against his brother’s chest and the pressure on his lungs makes it nearly impossible to breathe.
Growing up, Ritsu thought for sure that if he only had psychic powers he would never be scared again. Why did he ever think that?
“Mom and Dad can’t know,” Ritsu blurts. The fountain, bruising, their hits and their words— “Th-They can’t know, they… they’re g-gonna be so upset.”
“I won’t tell them,” Shigeo says, sounding torn. “But they have to know, Ritsu. They’ll be more upset if you don’t tell them and they can’t figure out what’s wrong.”
Ritsu can handle the concept of his family being angry. He can’t handle the concept of his family being disappointed.
“What am I going to do tomorrow?” Ritsu whimpers.
“Nothing.” Shigeo rests his chin on the top of Ritsu’s head and his aura cinches around Ritsu’s, stubborn. “You aren’t going anywhere tomorrow.”
“But—”
“If you don’t wanna tell Mom and Dad right away, I’ll tell them you can’t go. You never ask to take time off school. They might make you talk to them instead, but they won’t make you go.”
“I don’t want to disappoint them.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Tears bring heat to Ritsu’s eyes. He grips his brother’s sleeve and lets himself feel small. “Are you disappointed?”
“No. I’m mad, but. Not at you.”
He knew that, but he had to hear it.
Shigeo’s aura bears down on his again abruptly. The suddenness of it chokes the air out of Ritsu’s throat. “Stop doing that.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Shigeo says, “you just—you keep getting more upset.”
“You aren’t going to be able to take it away,” Ritsu snaps. “This is plenty. Alright?” Shigeo’s aura is nice, but even if they weren’t psychics and all Shigeo did was hug him, that would be enough. “It’s—It’s too much when you do that.”
“Sorry.”
Ritsu presses his temple to Shigeo’s chest. His brother’s heartbeat is fast. “It’s okay.”
Shigeo’s aura remains, but stops fussing. It reminds him of a time back in elementary school when he had a fever and Mom wouldn’t stop hovering. The comfort of her concern conflicted with the overstimulation of words and presence. He doesn’t want Shigeo to leave but he needs him to not freak out.
Ritsu loosens the chokehold on his own aura. Its presence sits mutely in the base of his chest, but now it can move if it wants to and his lungs expand easier. Shigeo’s heartbeat draws to a steadier pace.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner,” Ritsu manages. “I—I thought I could handle it.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you said something now.”
Ritsu closes his eyes.
He missed his brother.
Hushed voices dance over his head when Ritsu starts to wake up. He’s too exhausted to consider moving, the haze of sleep thick behind his eyes and his chest comfortably weighted. A familiar hand smooths his hair out of his face.
“Is everything okay?”
“Not really. Ritsu can’t go to school tomorrow.”
Mom’s hand lingers at the bruise. The sleep is too thick for Ritsu to consider opening his eyes. “What happened?”
“Ritsu doesn’t want me to tell you, but he agreed to tell you himself when he’s ready.”
“No school tomorrow?”
“I can go, but he can’t.”
The hand lifts from Ritsu’s head. “You’ve been just as bad about pushing yourself too hard, Shige. If he’s going to call in sick, I’ll call in for both of you.”
“You don’t—”
“It sounds like Ritsu needs you. It’s basically the weekend anyway. Your father would say the same thing.”
“I’d say the same thing about what?”
Mom and Dad… he must have been asleep for hours if they’re home. Has Shigeo been here this whole time?
“Ritsu’s having a hard time.”
“What’s going on?”
“He’ll tell us himself when he’s ready, but I’m keeping him and Shige home from school tomorrow.
“Sounds like a plan to me. You boys never take time off these days, what kind of teenagers are you?”
“... I guess we have been busy recently, but…”
“It’ll be good for both of you,” Mom decides. She kisses Ritsu’s forehead first, and then he assumes Shigeo’s. “I’ll bring out some extra blankets.”
“You’re good kids,” Dad says. “Thanks for looking after him, Shige.”
Ritsu feels Shigeo’s arm tighten against his back. “Of course.”
Shigeo is the best brother.
The kitchen light flicks back off. Blankets drape over both of them and Mom tucks the corners in. Ritsu’s eyes are sticky from crying and from sleep, and his throat hurts, but the unrest in his chest has settled. He feels okay.
He’ll talk to Mom and Dad in the morning. For now he relaxes into his brother and slips back under the warmth of sleep.