Chapter Text
In the morning, Fukuzawa feels so well-rested that he mistakes his unintentional discovery of Ranpo and Chuuya’s midnight swim—or soak, rather—as little more than a dream. And it clearly was, given the way Ranpo chatters away at breakfast like he is just as well-rested, responds to all of Yosano’s playful comments with his usual level of wit and whining, and other than Chuuya holding his hand at one point, they keep their flirting to a minimum—smiles and snickers and a few whispered words, but nothing indecent. Nothing like dinner last night.
In that moment, Fukuzawa believes he imagined the whole thing, or else dreamed it up as some odd sign of anxiety or progress through his own life. Pondering over its meaning, he deems the entire thing some odd balance of anxiety and acceptance, a holding on while letting go. He trusted Chuuya to look after Ranpo in that dream, even if he was and still is scared to let him go. Awake, though, there’s no letting go happening, not even when they’re holding onto each other. They’re just two people with mutual feelings for each other at a family breakfast, nothing more.
It couldn’t have just been a dream… Fukuzawa eats another nibble of his fish. Could it?
That question goes deep. Far deeper than any should the morning after the potential event in question.
After breakfast, Yosano stretches and walks to the glass door.
“What’s the matter, sensei?”
Covering a yawn, she turns and observes, “Just wondering about the footprints.”
Fukuzawa joins her at the door and folds his arms. Sure enough, there are two lines of footprints in the snow, one a pair of unevenly covered steps towards the bath, one an evenly covered air back towards the door. He studies the size of them for far too long. They’re too small to be his, a little too wide to be Yosano’s… he recalls seeing Ranpo sneaking out and wonders if he missed Chuuya joining him, or maybe Chuuya was the first to enter the bath and Ranpo followed after overcoming his uncertainty. While pondering the order of events, he turns to glance at Chuuya and Ranpo, who are definitely whisper-arguing about whether or not their late night soak was a bad idea.
“I fucking told you we’d get caught,” Chuuya growls.
“And I told you, Mr. Fancy Hat…” Ranpo smirks and leans until their noses almost touch. “There’s no evidence it was us.”
“And I told you—” Chuuya cups his face. “To quit being so fucking cute.”
Fukuzawa returns to studying the footprints. It would be odd to stare at anyone’s feet, especially Chuuya’s given how enamored they seem to be with one another.
“Ranpo-kun, you always walk on your toes when you’re excited or anxious about something.”
“Hmm? So?”
Fukuzawa turns to see him frowning. Chuuya looks displeased that they’ve been interrupted or discovered… maybe both.
“So…” Yosano turns with a smile. “Doesn’t that make you the culprit?”
“No way! Why the hell would I go outside and take my clothes off when it’s snowing?”
She gestures to Chuuya. “To soak with him?”
Ranpo sends her a pout, and Chuuya pats his arm as if to console him. Eventually, he murmurs, “It seemed romantic.”
“And?” she asks.
Passing Chuuya a glance, Ranpo adds, “So what if it was? Are you fishing for ideas or something?”
Yosano covers her laugh. “I have no shortage of ideas, Ranpo-kun. I’m just curious why you lied about it.”
“Because I deduced you’d tease me about it!”
Fukuzawa gets the feeling that’s not all it is, but now, Yosano is laughing, Ranpo is declaring that laughter is forbidden, and Chuuya is leaning against Ranpo’s arm snickering. Staring at the footprints in the snow, a more peaceful scene than the chaos unfolding behind him, Fukuzawa smiles at the glass before pushing it open.
Instantly, the room behind him falls silent.
“I find it troubling that the only one in this room who hasn’t enjoyed the bath is the one who has paid for it.” He carefully treads across the snow, indifferent to the cold, and slides the door shut behind him. Walking through the gate and listening to it shut behind him, he sheds his clothes, stores them in the little cabinet behind him, and after showering in the little outdoor building, he steps into the steaming water, which almost stings given how cold the air around him is. A blue sky dotted with clouds hangs overhead, portending good weather for today and threatening the white snow cover. Tipping his head back, Fukuzawa exhales and lets the water begin to work the tension out of him.
He sees how this could be romantic, especially under a night sky scattered with snow. More than anything, he’s grateful Ranpo has someone in his life who can share those moments. He never has, personally. Looking back, there’s really no one he’d even want to do this with. It has nothing to do with his parenting duties and everything to do with personal preference. Fukuzawa is, simply, a private man. He prefers his peace and quiet and has ever since he stumbled across the two teenagers.
Ranpo led him on a wild goose chase looking for his parents only to learn they were dead. His lack of reaction spoke loudly enough on his own, but Ranpo simply said, “I deduced as much,” in a voice too grim to belong to someone who was fourteen years old. “It was fun, going on a case with you like this,” he eventually added, lowering his head. Fukuzawa, at the time, felt it odd that someone who smiled as constantly as Ranpo would suddenly frown, but then, the boy sagged against him and cried. Incoherent wails of grief, barely coherent apologies… after that, Fukuzawa couldn’t leave him alone.
Yosano’s situation was a bit grimmer and came shortly after: she ran right into Ranpo, stumbled, and would have kept going had Fukuzawa not drawn his weapon. She had the look of someone who had watched death in a continuous loop for some time, a look he knew well from his own past. Her smile asked to die, but her eyes asked to live. The way she cried after he took her home still reminds him of Ranpo, who he guessed would be jealous from this new development. Instead, the young boy with a sharp wit and a sweet tooth just said, “You pick up children in dire circumstances like stray dogs, old man.”
There was one he didn’t pick up, one who pointed a gun in his face and then thought better of it. He couldn’t have been much older than Ranpo at the time. Fukuzawa still thinks of that boy from time to time and wonders if he could have given that one the same chance he gave Ranpo and Yosano once he secured a Skilled Business Permit from Natsume. That piece of paper cemented their family bonds better than any adoption certificate could. Moreover, it promised him the very thing he’d wished for since he first picked up a sword: peace. He still enjoys the blade. He’s just happy he doesn’t have to use it on people anymore.
Ranpo probably knows what he did before they crossed paths, and considering how close he and Yosano are, it’s likely Yosano knows, too. Either of them could say it out loud. Instead, Ranpo insists, “You’re just the owner of a bookstore,” like that’s all Fukuzawa has ever done.
I wonder… He inhales and peers at the sky again. At some point in my life, surely, there was someone I would have eventually wanted to sit in this bath with. Remembering Ranpo and Chuuya’s closeness earlier, he grimaces. I pray to whatever gods exist I wouldn’t be half as sentimental or sappy. Still, who would wish to be here with me? My friend from that government facility that trained us to kill? The odd doctor Natsume-sensei tried to get me to play bodyguard for who acted so surprised that I refused? If there were stars overhead, he would count them. Since there aren’t, he counts the clouds instead. He misses both people in that moment, even if the one he knew well left him behind to pursue bigger dreams and he chose not to get involved with the other, who was a total stranger. If he’d made different choices, his life would probably look entirely different now. Before the now impossible possibilities consume him, he tells himself, I don’t believe I want a different life. A partner would make it better in some ways, perhaps, but since that’s something I don't want and have never wanted… Feeling his head grow light, Fukuzawa rests his arms on the edge of the tub. It would be more bane than blessing at that point, he decides.
For the rest of his time in the tub, he thinks only of the blessings he has now: his family, his bookstore, a pair of eyes still good enough to read without help, and the peace he longed after as only a dream until his early thirties.
Every now and then, a question emerges about Yosano or Ranpo. Has Ranpo told Chuuya anything about how Fukuzawa came to be his old man? Has Yosano mentioned anything to the people she has romantically involved herself with? If either is true, what has the person on the receiving end of that information thought of it? Would Chuuya’s opinions of him change? Would his former moniker, the silver wolf, even be recognizable today? Would it protect Ranpo? Would it protect Yosano? Would it destroy them all?
Like the practice of using the sword on people, that moniker is something he set down indefinitely when Natsume offered him an out.
That reminds me, Yosano said he came by that one time… the fact that he hasn’t come back tells me he probably just passed by to check on business and pet Bancha.
Finding he has had enough of the bath, Fukuzawa slowly rises and rests on the edge of the tub. His head is still spinning a little, but the sharp difference in temperature soon forces his equilibrium to even out. He dries himself off, dresses, and returns inside to find Yosano making tea.
“Please let me make you a cup, too, Fukuzawa-sensei.”
He accepts, mostly because he doesn’t want to put her in a situation where she would start to insist. Yosano always was firm about the things she wanted in life. Ranpo, in some ways, is her foil in that sense: he always was blase about future schooling and careers. That’s how he wound up at the bookshop, after all. “Ah. Where is Ranpo-kun?”
“Taking a nap with Nakahara,” she answers, smiling. “The boys were up way too late last night.”
“Ah.” Fukuzawa bows his head slightly. “I hope they weren’t too disruptive. I’m afraid the sake—”
But Yosano interrupts him with a laugh. “I don’t mean they were up to anything like that, Fukuzawa-sensei.” She sets the teapot down and smiles. “I was up studying, so I just happened to hear them come in from the bath.” Yosanos slides the cup across the table, and Fukuzawa takes it. The tea tastes fresh like spring or early summer counter to the glimmering snow outside. “They were just… talking for the longest time.”
Fukuzawa peers up at her and sees the smile on her face fading.
“For a while, it was just them laughing keeping me up. Every time, they’d shush each other, then start up again. When it got really quiet and all I could hear was their muffled voices, I set my textbook down and put my ear against the wall. I was worried about Ranpo-kun.” She shakes her head. “I still don’t know what they were talking about, but I get the idea that whatever it was was serious.”
He lifts his tea.
“And painful.”
Instantly, he sets it down again. He wouldn’t have guessed that by the way Ranpo was smiling this morning, or the way he called out Yosano for teasing him. That’s their reality as ability users: even if there’s so little pain in their lives now that they’ve found each other, the remnants of loneliness and agony and trauma from before linger, sometimes loudly, sometimes in little ways that just… hurt. “I’ll check on them later,” Fukuzawa murmurs. It’s the best he can offer, faced with his own past, a road lined with blood and bodies.
“I think he’d appreciate that,” Yosano answers, staring at some blank part of the room as if she, too, is thinking of all the ghosts she raised only for them to die again.
He raises his teacup again. “I don’t believe he’s the only one.” After a few sips, he sets the cup aside again. “Right, Yosano?”
With a smile that whispers of sadness, Yosano wraps her hands around her own cup.
“I feel I’ve hardly spoken to you lately.”
“Med school can be quite rigorous,” she notes.
Humming, he takes another sip. “Am I permitted to ask whether that’s all it is?”
The way Yosano blinks at him says she’s startled. The way she glances away says there’s more. Her silence says she’s not ready to talk about it.
“Well,” he murmurs. “If and when you’re ready, I’d like to—”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to say anything,” he states. Across the table, her look hardens, like she’s ready to fight him off if need be. “It’s an invitation,” he concludes. “The same one I extended to Ranpo-kun. Nothing more.” After another drink, he sets his tea down. “You’re under no obligation to take it, and you never will be.”
“But you’d be honored if I did?”
A single syllable of Fukuzawa’s chuckle slips out. Over the years, perhaps he’s not the only one who has learned to listen for the unspoken. Perhaps that, too, is what real family is.
They finish their tea. Before Yosano departs to the public baths, she hugs him. It’s a rarity that she does. It’s rarer still that she holds on for as long as she does that day. “I’m glad of all the people in this world who could have caught me running away, it was you.”
Softly, Fukuzawa hugs her back. It’s true that in some sense, Fukuzawa saved Yosano and Ranpo, but in some strange way, they saved him, too. He’ll be able to explain it one day. Until then, he lets Yosano go and pretends not to see her wipe her eye as she departs.
He knows only the bare bones of what sort of life she lived before he found her. All the details came from Natsume. “She was exploited and shunned for her ability,” he had said one night when the two of them were alone at the bookshop. “Unless she was using it the way they wanted her to, she was a monster. She has yet to realize their intentions were far more monstrous than her desires.”
“What desires were those?” Fukuzawa asked.
Natsume leaned on his cane and dipped his head until his bowler hid his whole face except his smile. “To help people.”
He wishes he could say his intentions were the same when he picked up his sword for the government.
Fukuzawa decides to make another cup of tea. Outside, the snow is starting to melt. Too soon, he thinks. It’s beautiful.
As the kettle boils, Fukuzawa pokes his head into Ranpo’s room and stays to watch for a minute. He and Chuuya are laying askew on the same futon. Chuuya is on his back, limbs akimbo, yukata open farther than is decent, snoring quietly. Ranpo rests on his arm, taking steady breaths until Chuuya’s face scrunches up in his sleep and he whimpers. Without waking up, Ranpo sticks an arm out and snuggles closer. Immediately, Chuuya falls still again, as if somehow conscious of the comfort without waking up. In the process, the blanket comes off. Although he promised not to interfere, he bends to straighten it out, making sure both of them are covered before rising. He thinks he catches a smile on the still sleeping Ranpo’s face as he rises, but with the kettle announcing that the water is ready with a shrill beep, he rises before he can really tell.
Alone with a cup of tea in the room’s shared living space, Fukuzawa feels the peace he sought all over again, one he could never find in the sword, one that he found instead through two children he hadn’t initially planned to keep. There’s nothing keeping them together, no blood ties or legal obligation. He can’t imagine life without them now. Even if they’re grown, their lives continue to touch. As Ranpo becomes deeper entwined in his relationship with Chuuya and Yosano pursues a medical degree and whoever she’s seeing, he hopes they continue to, even if their contact grows less frequent.
He nearly jolts as Ranpo drops down on the pillow beside him and flops against his arm. Relaxing, he turns to see whether his tea has suffered as a result, but a single word interrupts his scrutiny.
“Thanks.”
Fukuzawa draws a breath and turns to Ranpo. “For what?”
“For tucking me back in earlier, for pretending you didn’t hear me last night, for—”
“Stop.” Fukuzawa sets his cup down and sets his hands on his knees instead. After a moment of gathering his emotions, he begins, “What you’re thanking me for doesn’t require…” Finding those words don’t seem right, he stops and tries again. “I don’t need—”
“I’m not thanking you because you need it.” Ranpo’s emerald eyes appear, and he smirks. “But you’ve really done a lot for me over the years. And Yosano-sensei. It’s only natural I’d thank you for that.”
He allows Ranpo’s weight to remain against his arm.
“Chuuya has nightmares sometimes,” he says out of nowhere. “Bad ones.”
That’s the first time Fukuzawa has heard Ranpo call Chuuya by name. “About?”
“Whatever happened before he came to Yokohama,” Ranpo offers. After a pause, he adds, “Dazai-kun abandoning him.”
He recognizes the name.
“Don’t think I’m dating him just because Dazai-kun did in high school,” Ranpo says. “Sure, we’ve bonded over the hurt he caused, but I like him independent of that. He buys me snacks and tells me I’m pretty, and even if he yells sometimes, it’s never at me.” Ranpo goes back to leaning. “I might even love him.”
Fukuzawa reaches for the tea he just made. “You might?”
Ranpo’s brief laugh, giddy, cuts through the room. “There’s nothing else that would make me want to soak in the snow, not even all the candy in the world.”
He sips the liquid and sighs into it as he lowers the cup. “You’re growing up,” he remarks.
Ranpo hums and looks up at him. “Aren’t we always?”
Fukuzawa takes another drink.
“You have complicated feelings about that,” Ranpo states. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve already deduced all parents do.”
“You’re right.” Fukuzawa sets his tea down. “I suppose I should start mentally preparing myself for when you and Nakahara start picking up stray children.”
“Huh?” Ranpo leaps up. “What’s that about? We haven’t even talked about kids, old man! What the hell—”
“Kids?”
Fukuzawa tries not to snicker as Ranpo whips to Chuuya. “It’s nothing! My old man’s just got a screw loose! I—”
Completely unfazed, Chuuya drops down and instantly flops against Ranpo’s chest. “The bed’s not the fucking same without you. Let me sleep here for another twenty minutes…”
“But—”
“When I wake up…” Chuuya snuggles closer. “We can talk about… it…” Instantly, Chuuya starts to snore again.
LIfting his tea again, Fukuzawa murmurs, “He has an incredible ability to fall asleep.”
He expects Ranpo to shout some kind of objection. Instead, he turns to find Ranpo is the color of a tomato.
“Let me get a blanket,” Fukuzawa offers.
Instead, Ranpo carefully removes his haori and drapes it over Chuuya’s shoulders.
“Or there’s that.”
“I learned it from you,” Ranpo grumbles.
“Then I’ve taught you well.” As Fukuzawa takes another sip, he realizes that the boundaries of this family have long been out of his control. Without him being prepared, with Ranpo dating Chuuya like this, things will change inevitably and unpredictably.
And yet, he tells himself, turning to watch Ranpo smooth a snoozing Chuuya’s hair out of his face. I wouldn’t have it any other way.