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Kei, even at age seven, was a precocious kid. Taller than his classmates and smarter than was good for him, Akiteru had difficulty engaging his little brother the way his mom told him to. Drawing was dumb, the anime Akiteru liked was boring, volleyball was no fun for his lanky, uncoordinated limbs — every olive branch of shared interest was rejected. Six years was hard to overcome, he’d admit, and if not for the fact that his mom had said it was his responsibility now that their dad was gone, he’d probably have done what all his friends with much-younger siblings said: wait till Kei got older.
But the look in Kei’s eyes right now, in the natural history museum, staring at the giant stegosaurus skeleton where it was posed, mouth open in what would be a prehistoric roar. Did dinosaurs roar? Maybe it was a hiss. Dinosaurs were reptiles, after all, and all the reptiles he knew hissed, if they made sounds at all.
“Nii-chan” — Kei tugged on Akiteru’s sleeve, eyes still glued to the giant beast in front of him — “Nii-chan do you see it? It’s huge!”
“Yeah, it really is!” Akiteru laughed. “Bet you’ll be that tall one day!” Kei looked at him then, eyes wide in alarm. “Just kidding!” he backtracked, scratching the back of his head.
They wandered the rest of the room, stopping in front of every skeleton, each larger than the last, it seemed.
“Are they real?” Kei asked, having chewed on his thumbnail over the question for the past minute.
“Real? Like, did they exist?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, they’re real, but they lived a really really long time ago. Like before humans were around.”
Akiteru watched the thoughts flash over Kei’s face — that there was a time before humans existed obviously not having occurred to him yet.
“Probably for the best, if they’re so big and we’re so small,” he eventually concluded.
“Yeah,” Akiteru chuckled. “Probably for the best. But c’mon, Kaa-san will be here soon, so we gotta hit up the gift shop before she gets here."
Kei had the same look in his eyes when he saw the stegosaurus model as when he was standing in front of the dinosaur itself so, even though it ate up more of his allowance than Akiteru would have liked, he pulled the box down and made his way to the cash register.
Kei’s enthusiasm was worth every yen.
“Nii-chan?” Kei called, closer than Akiteru expected. He hadn’t heard his younger brother — not little, no, Kei hadn’t been his little brother for years now — approach, caught up in memories as he was.
The stegosaurus in his hands looked basically the same as it had when they first brought it home. Akiteru wasn’t aware Kei had kept it all these years, even though his ‘dino phase’ had ended when he got his first mp3 player at age 9, diving into music instead of Jurassic Park. Seeing it here, among the things Kei had packed to move to his apartment in Sendai, hit him harder than he expected.
Kei gently took the model from him, looking down on it with less wide-eyed wonder than he had ten years ago but no less reverence. He smiled — the barest lift at the corner of his mouth, but a real smile. Akiteru couldn’t resist.
He pressed his finger into Kei’s cheek.
“Can’t believe you kept that all this time,” he teased.
“What, and throw out my favorite present from Kaa-san?” Kei shot right back.
Betrayal shot through Akiteru’s body, shock tinged with sadness.
“From Kaa-san?” he cried, covering his reaction with dramatics.
Kei shot him a flat, unamused look. “She gave you the allowance money, didn’t she? I don’t remember you having a job when you were in middle school.”
The tension that had crept into his shoulders released. Kei knew. Kei knew it was from Akiteru and had still kept it. Had kept it even after Akiteru had lied, even during the period of time when they barely talked. Had kept it until now, had loved it and treasured it enough to bring it to his university apartment with him.
“Oh my god are you crying?”
“NO!” Akiteru wailed, blatantly denying the tears dripping down his cheeks and the congestion in his nose.
“It’s just a model dinosaur! What are you even crying about!?” Kei sounded alarmed, mortified and amused all at once.
“It’s just — you kept it!” he answered, burying his face in the crook of his arm as he wiped at his face, willing the waterworks to stop.
“Of course I kept it,” Kei answered, softly. “Dinosaurs were…they were a thing we had in common. We both liked them — at least, I think we both liked them—”
“I liked them too!” Akiteru cut in.
“We both liked them, and that was really...I liked that my nii-chan also liked something I thought was cool.” Kei bit his lip. At least, Akiteru thought he did — his vision was still a little blurry. “I was…elementary school wasn’t the easiest for me. I didn’t get along with a lot of the other kids in my grade, so having something in common with you meant a lot back then. And it meant a lot, even during everything else. So of course I kept it.”
Akiteru started crying all over again.
“Oh my god you’re so embarrassing. C’mon, stop. I still need help unpacking.” Kei turned, heading back to the boxes stacked by the apartment door.
On the way, though, he put the stegosaurus down, gently, lovingly, in the middle of his desk.