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Sunohara Momose’s parents died when he was ten years old, and he very rapidly realized the dangers of being dead weight. His sister was twelve, and capable enough to take care of them both, and, more importantly, a girl, which meant that she had learned skills that were necessary and important for the survival of the village, such as cooking and cleaning and weaving and sewing, and that the risks of her death would cause problems that couldn’t be solved by having one less mouth to feed. Momose was a boy, so he didn’t get to learn women’s work and even if he did nobody would care to have him do it. He had yet to be apprenticed, and nobody in the village had any use for him, and he realized at the funeral that nearly everyone wished that he had been the one to die instead. In their village, deep in the heart of a forest ruled by a demon, your worth was tied to your use, and Momose’s use, he realized, was far less than that of all the other boys who still had parents. If he was older—if he’d been born a girl instead—
But it was useless to wish such things, and so he turned to survival instead. He and Ruri couldn’t stay in their parents’ home, because other villagers could put it to better use, and so every night Ruri smuggled Momose into the one-room schoolhouse she studied at, because she was a girl and older and was going to make a good wife one day even if she was a penniless orphan, so she was allowed to continue taking classes with the other children. The teacher had rightly clocked that continuing to educate Momose would be a waste, but at night Ruri would whisper to him the lessons from the day, in between stories of the time she spent with her friends and occasional meetings with the mayor’s son, who studied in the same schoolhouse, whom everyone adored. Momose was not the exception to this rule, and he loved those stories best of all and made his sister tell them over and over, even on days when the mayor’s son didn’t deign to give Ruri anything other than a polite smile and a greeting. Momose spent his days chopping wood in the forest, now. He didn’t get anything like that.
A year passed in this way. Boys stopped attending school once they were twelve, because that was when they were apprenticed, and men weren’t expected to be able to do more than reading and writing and basic arithmetic, usually. It was the women who managed the household, and so it was girls who continued attending afternoon lessons right up through adulthood. The men performed the much-less-important tasks—usually. There was one exception, and that was Mayor Ogami, and so one day a week his son still came to the schoolhouse for lessons, and one day a week Momose had the hope of getting more stories about him. He was still kind to Ruri, the way he was kind to everyone. He was still at the top of the class, despite coming in only one day a week. He was still perfect, in every one of Ruri’s accounts of him, and that was what made it so strange when, one afternoon when the sunlight was golden through the leaves of the trees, he came across the older boy tucked tight between the roots of an ancient tree, his head between his knees and his shoulders shaking. Momose let out a sharp gasp; the mayor’s son’s head snapped up, his swollen puffy eyes meeting Momose’s own dry ones.
“Sunohara-kun,” he said, quickly standing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that you would be…here.”
“Oh—no—I’m sorry—I—I—I—I didn’t know—” Had the mayor’s son, the perfect beloved Ogami Banri, been crying out here alone in the forest? The very thought was impossible—for one, he was supposed to be at school today, with Ruri watching him like a hawk instead of listening to the teacher—and yet here he was, standing in the woods, tears wet on his cheeks. “You don’t have to—I’m sorry.”
Nobody liked unexpectedly meeting Momose. He kind of suspected they pretended he was dead when he wasn’t around. He definitely knew that some of the villagers pretended he was dead when he was around. But the mayor’s son smiled at him anyway, standing there at the beginning of his thirteen-year-old growth spurt, at home amidst the roots of the trees still marked with signs of the long-ago battle against the demon who had ruled these woods for a thousand years.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Sunohara-kun,” he said. “We both know that I’m the one who’s not supposed to be here.”
Mortification sunk its roots deeper into Momose’s spine and lungs and heart. “No—that’s not—you don’t have to—” be nice to me, was how he meant to, you don’t have to call me by my family name, you don’t have to respect me. I’m just Momose. I’m a nobody, I’m not special like you. You don’t have to be so nice to me. “—I—I mean just—I’m just—I—you don’t have to—I—c-call me—just—just—Mo—Momo—Mo—Momo—”
He cut himself off, swallowed, tried to breathe, tried to calm himself down to speak in any coherent order whatsoever, or at least get out his name right. Seriously, was he that useless that he was wasting so much of the mayor’s son’s time simply telling him that he didn’t need to pay any attention to Momose at all, actually? What was his problem?
Before he could gather himself, though, the mayor’s son smiled a little wider, a touch of light entering his eyes, clearly mistaking the pause for the end of the statement entirely.
“Alright, Momo-kun,” he said simply, and Momose was gone. Simply destroyed. Rewritten. He’d never had a nickname before—his given name was enough for family and what friends he’d used to have—but suddenly he realized that he really, really, really wanted one, or, at least, really wanted one if it was coming from the lips of Ogami Banri, the mayor’s son, the most perfect and beloved and popular and wanted child in the town. And as though this death-blow wasn’t enough, the mayor’s son continued, “I’m honored that I’m allowed to call you that. Thank you.”
A perfect response from a perfect boy; if Momo had been any less shocked, he probably would have collapsed by now. As it was, he was entirely paralyzed, and shaking head to toe like an overexcited Chihuahua. Somewhere within his deep animal brain, Momo was aware that, with a few short words, the person standing in front of him had rewired his entire existence, become the star that Momo would orbit for the rest of forever; the rest of his mind was occupied with figuring out how to keep Ogami Banri from ever, ever finding out that nobody had ever referred to Sunohara Momose as ‘Momo’ before in his life. Technically this would only be a danger coming from Ruri—everyone else in town only referred to Momo as ‘boy’, these days—but he didn’t know if Ruri would understand how vitally important it was that the mayor’s son never ever ever realized where this new nickname had really come from.
Maybe he could lie to her and say their parents used to use it, in private? Maybe, if he spun it right, she would believe that?
Realizing he’d been quiet too long, and with a new purpose in his deception, Momo said quickly, “So why are you—so far out in the woods? Aren’t you afraid of the demon?” and then, remembering how Ruri had memorized and then instilled in him the mayor’s son’s schedule, added, “I thought you still went to the schoolhouse.”
The mayor’s son flushed, and even the embarrassed pink of his cheeks was captivating. “I do, it’s just…I needed a moment to myself, today. Nobody will notice if I don’t show up…or, well, nobody except for you, I guess.”
This was patently untrue; both Sunohara siblings waited for the days the mayor’s son went to the schoolhouse like it was the first budding growth of spring, like it was the third day of the festival celebrating when the demon was sealed away in this forest, and all the children were getting presents. Ruri dug her nails into their scant interactions like a lifeline, and Momo had built her stories of that lifeline into a kind of mythos. Certainly they weren’t the only ones who noticed the mayor’s son’s presence, either—Momo already knew that he and Ruri ate better on days when the mayor’s son spoke to her, because people were more willing to sell them food, because the mayor’s son saw something in them worth being nice to. The glow of his presence could stick around for days; everyone was a little more liked, a little better treated, when they were seen to be on the mayor’s son’s good side.
“What about your friends?” Momo asked, and the mayor’s son laughed.
“What friends?” he said. “I don’t have friends—”
Because we’re all beneath you, Momo thought complacently, as comfortable with that fact as he was with the warmth of the sun on his shoulders.
“—except for maybe you. Really, Momo-kun, nobody will care that I’m not there one day. The schoolmaster will think I have extra work to do for my father—that happens often enough, it’s not like it’s really a lie—and my father just thinks I’m at the schoolhouse. Nobody’s going to notice anything amiss. Nobody ever does.”
The only part of this statement that stuck in Momo’s head was the I don’t have friends, except for maybe you. He blinked owlishly at the boy in front of him, the perfect boy, whom everyone loved, whom nobody hurt, and he said, voice cracking, “You want to be friends with me ?”
The mayor’s son blanched, and his eyes widened a little. “I thought—you were offering,” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep—”
“No, nonononono, I–I would love to be friends, really I would I just—didn’t think—you’d want—someone like me. ”
The mayor’s son tilted his head, confused. “Someone like you…?”
“Someone who doesn’t matter,” Momo explained. “Who gets sent to the forest to get firewood even though the demon might get me. Because it’s okay if I die, because the only person who would miss me is Nee-chan.”
“I would miss you,” the mayor’s son said softly, his brow furrowed in concern.
“Because we’re friends?” Momo asked, his heart leaping into his throat, and he was rewarded for the leap by another warm smile from the mayor’s son.
“Yeah,” he said. “Because we’re friends. And—hey,” he added, jumping off of his tree root and making his way over to Momo’s side, “you don’t have to worry about the demon when I’m here. I’ve got a blessed knife, from the city. It’ll injure any demon—maybe even kill one, if I strike it in the right place.”
“Cool!” said Momo, blissfully unaware that in a few years’ time the idea of anyone carrying around such a knife would be repulsive to him, that the thought of the mayor’s son driving it in to just the right place to kill the demon for good would terrify him more than any other. For now, the thought was an exciting one—it would be awesome if the mayor’s son got rid of the demon for good. He was just the right sort of hero to do it, too—perfect, noble, handsome, beloved by all he met. Of course he could accomplish what the heroes of old never could, and kill the demon, this demon, sealed in the forest by ancient magic and shielded from harm by the long-ago death of the only other one of its kind. Of course the mayor’s son could break through that sacrifice and end the demon for good. There was no doubt about it. Momo was so lucky to get the chance to see his glory. “What would be the right place on this demon? Ours, I mean.”
The mayor’s son’s mouth formed the shape of the word ours silently, as though savoring its taste in his mouth, and then he said, “I don’t know. I…I’ve never seen it before…I don’t think.” The faraway look in his perfect blue eyes deepened, and then he added, apropos of nothing, “Since we’re friends…you could call me Ban, if you wanted.”
“Okay, Ban-san!” Momo chirped. “Is that what your family calls you?”
“No,” Ban-san said. “It—I’m sure it did come from family. Some other family, maybe. I don’t know. Nobody calls me that now, though. Except for you. Because we’re friends.”
Momo glowed at this. This, here, was a piece of the mayor’s son—a piece of Ban-san— that was entirely, utterly his, his and no one else’s. Out of literally everyone in the village, everyone who adored Ban-san, everyone who worshipped the ground he walked on, Ban-san had chosen Momo, the unwanted useless orphan whom everyone hated. It was like something out of a dream, out of a fairytale. It was everything he’d ever wished for and more. It was wild, incredible, magical, amazing. While everyone Momo knew scrambled for and fixated on scraps of Ban-san’s attention, Momo had the real person all to himself, because they were friends now. Because neither of them had any other friends at all. Because Ban-san liked him, somehow, and would miss him if he died.
Looking back on this moment down the line, he wouldn’t call it falling in love. He had been too young for it, and his feelings that day were far closer to adoration and to hero-worship than they had been to anything so steadfast and sure as love. But that day certainly was where everything began, and it was where the love would grow out of, eventually. And when another love grew just as strong and steady and sure beside it, it was a day he would bless and curse in equal measure, because of the joy that had grown out of it, and the pain that grew from that joy’s curse.
But in the afternoon sunlight, running through the forest with his new friend, Momo was sure down to his bones that he’d never, ever regret this—and even in years to come, with all the pain and the anger and the rot that would set in between the two of them, he never, ever did.