Chapter Text
Karamatsu’s heart raced as he ran up the stairs. He stopped just short of the door to catch his breath. As he calmed his body he did his best to compose himself. With the boy already on the ledge, he had to be careful not to startle him into falling.
The Blue Matsu quietly opened the door. He tread softly until he was nearly within reach of the boy, then he purposefully made his footsteps louder so that the boy could hear his approach.
The boy turned his tear stained face to look behind himself where Karamatsu was standing.
“Please… Don’t.” Karamatsu held his hands out peacefully as he pleaded in a gentle voice.
The boy’s grip on the railing tightened as his wide eyes studied the unknown adult before him.
“Who... Who are you?” There was the faintest quiver in the boy’s young voice.
“A passing good Samaritan.” Karamatsu said glibly before he said in a more serious voice. “I am just someone that doesn’t want to see someone so young throw his life away.”
“I’m not young, I’m almost sixteen.” The boy said sullenly.
Karamatsu suppressed the smile that came from that statement, he could tell that it was a sore subject. The boy did look a couple years younger, he would have guessed him to be closer to fourteen, after all.
“Is it really so bad?” He asked with a even voice without any pity.
“I don’t deserve to live… not after-” The boy cut himself off, realizing he was speaking to a stranger.
“It’s none of your business!” He said angrily.
Karamatsu held his hands out, trying to placate the boy. “Maybe not, but if you want to talk I’ll listen.”
“It’s not like you’d care…” The boy said stubbornly.
“I do care.” The Blue Matsu stated simply. “My little brother took his own life, so I know what it is like to lose someone to suicide. He did it to save me, though.”
The boy looked up in astonishment. “He killed himself to save you?”
Karamatsu gave a sad smile. “You want to hear my story?”
The boy gave a half-hearted shrug. At which Karamatsu took to mean assent. Despite pretending to be disinterested,the boy listened intently as Karamatsu explained what had happened, holding nothing back.
“So you’ve attempted suicide yourself! You don’t have any right to stop me!” The boy said indignantly.
“That’s true, I don’t.” Karamatsu admitted reluctantly, he had said as much to Homura when he first met her.
“But even still… please!” He pleaded. He didn’t really know why he felt more desperate to save this boy than he had with Homura, perhaps it was because he was so young?
“If I could do it all over again, I would stop him! I would stop my brother. I didn’t want to live at his expense!” After recounting the story, his emotions were running high. Tears formed in his eyes and threatened to spill.
The boy bit his lip as he wrestled with his own demons. “I-I… It should have been me!”
“It’s all my fault! Ichi-nii died to save me!” Karamatsu started slightly at the similar name. What were the odds?
“He was better than me, it would have been better if I had died! Anyone would agree!” The boy continued on.
“Ichi-nii was smart, athletic and popular. Everyone looked up to him. Me on the other hand…”
The boy shook with emotion. “I’m stupid, weak and I’m shit with talking to people. I’m the worst! I’m just garbage! Unburnable garbage!”
“Why? Why did I have to live?” He asked brokenly. “I can’t replace him! I can’t ever be as good as Ichi-nii!”
“No one should expect you to.” Karamatsu spoke up, remembering Jyushimatsu’s words to him.
“You can’t be your brother and no one should expect you to. The only person you need to be… is yourself.” He said earnestly.
“Heh, my brother’s name could be shortened to ‘Ichi’ too.” He gave a small chuckle that held little humor.
The boy blinked at that, surprised. “Huh? Even though he is your younger brother he has ‘Ichi’ in his name?”
“Our parents were… unconventional in their naming choices. They named the oldest ‘Osomatsu’ and the fourth born ‘Ichimatsu’” Karamatsu explained with a rueful smile.
“Just how many brothers do you have? How far apart are you?” The boy asked curiously, and Karamatsu was thankful to see some other emotion on the boy’s face besides sorrow.
“I have five brothers, I am the second born of identical sextuplets.” He said fondly.
The boy’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Sextuplets? Then that means six, right?”
At Karamatsu’s nod, the boy looked straight ahead in contemplation.
“I’m a twin, the younger one.” He admitted, after a long moment of silence.
“His name was actually ‘Yuuichi’, but since we were little, I’ve always called him ‘Ichi-nii’. I think I started doing that around the time that we were learning to count. I thought it was clever that the time, you know ‘Ichi, ni, san…’.” He gave a small laugh at the memory.
“When we were younger, it was like we were one being. Two halves of the same person.” A fond smile spread across the boy’s face as he became lost in his memories. “But as we grew older, he started to stand out more. He had always been more confident and outgoing than me, but when we reached Middle School he really became popular.”
“He got good grades and was the baseball team’s star. He was kind and dependable, everyone looked up to him.” Karamatsu could hear the sense of pride in the boy’s voice at that.
“Me on the other hand… I was always quiet, and it was harder when everyone was comparing me to Ichi-nii. I got flustered when too many people came to me at once, and just had a hard time getting my words out. Eventually people just left me alone, disappointed that I wasn’t more like my brother.” He said bitterly.
“When they thought of us twins, there was just Yuuichi, and ‘not Yuuichi’, eventually they started calling me his shadow ‘Yuu-kage*’.” The boy clenched his fists in anger at the memory. “Some people that didn’t like Ichi-nii would try to bully me, but Ichi-nii would find out and get back at them. It was really the only thing that Ichi-nii would get in trouble for.”
(*Kage means 'shadow', so Yuu-kage would be a play on Yuuichi's name, Yuu's shadow)
“There was talk of suspending him from the Baseball team if he got into one more fight. I didn’t want that! I was only bringing him down, so I started being cold to him. I wanted him to think that I could take care of myself.”
The boy trailed off, lost in thought.
“It was so stupid, we were arguing… well, more like I was just yelling at him. I told him ‘I hate you’... And then he saved me.”
Tears spilled down the boy’s face as he looked up.
“Even though I was so horrible to him, he still saved me!”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
“Nakamura-kun… Ano… Do you have an answer?”
Jun stared at the pretty girl who looked up at him with hopeful eyes. He didn’t think that she even knew he existed! Fukuyama Kiyoko was what he considered to be the pinnacle of beauty. Not only that, but she was smart, kind and talented. He had harbored a crush on her since the beginning of the school year. But she wasn’t even in his class, and she was in the girl's tennis club, whereas he was in the light music club.
His mind went blank for a moment while she fidgeted in front of him.
“Answer?” He asked dumbly.
“Yes, I-I really like you! So will you… I mean do you…” She looked extremely cute when flustered.
His heart pounded as he processed her words. This couldn’t possibly be real, right?
He blurted out. “I-I like you too! Will you-”
It was at that moment that Yuuichi burst into the room, blushing with a red face and holding a letter.
Kiyoko looked between the two brothers, bringing her hands to her mouth as she realized her mistake. She was horrified that she had confused one brother for the other.
There was an awkward moment that passed as Jun realized what he had just admitted in response to the misplaced confession.
Red faced, he angrily fled from the room, shoving his brother aside as he left.
Of course it wasn’t real! Who would want him? ‘Yuu-kage*’ they called him! Always in his brother’s shadow. It wasn’t enough that he was smart, athletic and popular. No. He had to take this too!
“Jun! Wait!” His brother called out, but he ignored him. Running as fast as possible away from the mortifying encounter.
It was only as he reached the main street that his brother caught up to him.
“Jun!” Yuuichi said as he grabbed Jun’s arm.
Jun shrugged off his brother’s grip as he turned to face him. “Leave me alone! I HATE YOU, Yuuichi!”
He spat out his brother’s name as if it were a swear word, purposefully leaving off any honorific.
Yuuichi reared back as if slapped. The pain in his eyes made Jun feel vindicated even as his heart ached.
In his haze of anger, Jun turned to run away, it was only when he heard the screeching of tires that he looked up. He stood frozen with fear as a car sped toward him, desperately trying to break.
“JUN!”
In a flash, he found himself thrown to the ground. When he picked himself off from the ground and looked up, he saw a sight that would haunt him for the rest of his days.
“I-Ichi-nii?”
There, sprawled on the street was the limp form of his older brother in rapidly grown pool of blood.
“ICHI-NII!” Jun rushed to his brother’s side. There was so much blood!
Yuuichi turned to his brother and managed a smile. “I’m glad you’re safe.” He managed out weakly.
“Ichi-nii! H-hang on!” Jun cried out in a panic. “Someone! Please! Call an ambulance!”
Yuuichi reached up to wipe away his little brother’s tears. “Don’t… cry.”
“Ichi-nii! Hang on! D-don’t- Don’t leave me!” Jun cried out desperately.
Yuuichi gave a small, regretful smile. “Gomen…”
And then he lost all strength, his hand dropped and his eyes closed for the final time.
“ICHI-NII!!!!!!”
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
“The ambulance took only eight minutes to arrive, but it was already too late. It was all my fault!” Jun said with self hatred. “I was such a shitty little brother. I don’t deserve to live!”
“And yet, here you are. Alive while your brother is dead.” Karamatsu said, simply stating the bald truth.
The boy flinched violently, the words cutting deeply into his heart.
“What a way to honor his sacrifice.” The man scoffed.
“Will you throw away your life here? The life that your brother so desperately tried to save?” Karamatsu stared into the boy's eyes until he looked away, ashamed. “You know, from now on what you do with your life can be attributed to your brother. If you grow up to be a doctor or police man or something, every life you save you can give the credit to your brother who saved your life.”
“I know that… Even though I know all that… I-I just… I can’t do it! I’m a weak coward! I hurt so much without Ichi-nii! I feel like I have lost half of myself! I can’t live with that pain!”
“Shonen*, if the positions were reversed… If you could go back in time, would you take his place? Would you prevent your brother from dying and instead die yourself?” Karamatsu asked, with a more gentle voice.
(*means young man, or boy)
“Of course!” Jun said without hesitation.
“If it were your brother here on the ledge after you had died, what would you wish to tell him? That you saved him so that he could take his own life later? Would you want him to die so that he could join you? Or would you want him to live?” Karamatsu was realizing just how much this could apply to himself. Now when he looked at the boy, he didn't just see a stranger. It was as if he was looking at his past self.
The boy looked up with tears streaming down his face, his inner conflict was reflected in his expression. “I-I… I’d want him to live!”
With that, the boy broke down into sobs. He offered no resistance when Karamatsu pulled him from the ledge and into an embrace. The boy cried out his guilt, sorrow and grief.
oOoOoOoOoOo
“It’s late, do you have anyone at home waiting for you?” Karamatsu asked in a concerned voice. The boy had long since stopped crying and they were simply sitting in companionable silence. As the chill started to set in, Karamatsu looked around him and realized how dark it was.
“My parents are out of town, but I think my Neesan is home…” The boy took a moment to think. He was curled up in a ball, hugging his knees, he looked smaller and younger somehow.
He looked up and gave a sidelong glance to Karamatsu. “Ano… Oniisan? We, uh, we never introduced ourselves…”
“Well, we should fix that!” Karamatsu said brightly. “I am Matsuno Karamatsu! Second born son of the Matsuno sextuplets! The coolest and most handsome one too!”
The boy snorted at that and rolled his eyes at the elder’s antics, he was well aware that they all shared the same face.
“Nakamura Jun, the younger of the Nakamura twins.” Jun, bit his lip in consideration before he gave a deep bow. “Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”
Karamatsu blinked, surprised at the formal words. Jun hadn’t struck him as being one for social niceties.
“Well, why don’t you call your Neesan? Let her know you are safe. Us older siblings worry about the little ones, you know.”
Jun fished his cell phone from his jacket pocket. He cringed a bit as he saw the missed call log. Ugh, he was going to get an earful for sure.
After getting a long (and loud) lecture, he assured his sister that he was on his way home. She firmly ordered him to come straight home, she would have a warm meal ready for him to eat and then he would go straight to bed.
With a sigh, he ended the conversation and then looked up to his amused companion.
“C’mon, I’ll walk you home.” Karamatsu said with an easy smile.
Jun flushed at that. “I’m not a baby! I can make my way home in the dark!”
The man chuckled as he mussed the boy’s hair. “I know that! I believe in you! I’d just like to be in your company for a little longer.”
“Oh… Uh, okay then.” The boy reddened even more from his outburst at the assumption.
The two made their way down from the roof and away from the school in silence. They were half-way towards Jun’s home when Karamatsu broke the ice.
“Jun-kun, I do know what it is like to be where you are at. Our circumstances may have been different, but we have both lost someone dear to us. If you ever need anyone to talk to… please give me a call.”
The man looked hesitant as he offered his business card. It was strange to see, since he seemed so confident before.
“Don’t you have line?” Jun asked, confused. Who called each other anymore?
“Ah, no… my dear younger brother Todomatsu was trying to teach me how to use it, but I’m afraid I still don’t understand it. Besides, I don’t have any friends who use it, so I would only be messaging my brother.” Karamatsu admitted sheepishly.
“I’ll give you my line username so that we can keep in touch, Kara-nii.” Jun smiled for what seemed like the first time in ages.
“Kara-nii?” Karamatsu asked with amused astonishment.
“Ah! Gomen! I didn’t mean to be so familiar… It just slipped out!” Jun babbled, so very flustered. Karamatsu just reminded him so much of what he saw in an older brother.
Karamatsu ruffled the boy’s hair. “I don’t mind, none of my other little brothers call me that. It’s kinda cute!” He said with a smile.
Jun didn’t miss how Karamatsu easily included him as one of his little brothers. Embarrassed, he hid his face as he pushed off the elder’s hand and fixed his hair.
“Don’t call me cute!” Jun said with a pout. He was too old for that, and besides that, he was a boy to boot! Boys should not be happy to be called cute!
The Blue Matsu gave an easy laugh at Jun’s flustered look. It would be fun to have a little brother that was actually younger than him. The boy was so easy to tease.
It didn’t take long for the duo to reach the Nakamura home. Jun stopped at the gate and turned toward Karamatsu awkwardly.
“Uh, this is my house…” He said in a stilted voice. “Thank you… for you know…”
Karamatsu smiled, in a way, Jun reminded him of Ichimatsu. Awkward with words and having difficulty expressing himself.
“Jun… Can you make a promise to me?” Karamatsu’s voice took a solemn note to it.
“I don’t think I really have the right to ask you not to try again, but at least could you promise to contact me if you are thinking of it again?” He looked intently into the boy’s eyes.
Jun held his gaze and then said with a small smile. “Only if you promise to do the same, Kara-nii.”
“Then it’s a pact.” Very seriously, Karamatsu held up his pinky.
Jun rolled his eyes even as he linked his pinky to Karamatsu’s.
“Pinky promise
If you tell a lie
I'll make you drink a thousand needles
Now pinky promise made”
They both sang. Feeling like children again in spite of the seriousness of the promise.
It was after Karamatsu had watched the boy retreat into his home that he looked up to the stars.
“That was a life that you saved, brother.”
With that, he whistled a happy tune as he headed home.