Chapter Text
One of the earliest memories Yuga carries with him is of his father, Gao Mikado: staring up into a sky dauntingly packed with rainclouds, picnic basket in hand and a frown on his face.
“Sorry, buddy. I think we might have to pack up and go home.”
“No,” Yuga had whined, sending one foot into the sand, already trying to get his way at barely one metre tall. “I wanna stay! I want a picnic now!”
Disappointment. It was his first encounter with the complex emotion. The only solace he’d received then was from his father sweeping him up with a chuckle and carrying him to the car with one hand.
“We’ll get to have a picnic some other day, my dear,” Gao had consoled him, a strong gust of wind ruffling his hair. “I know you’re disappointed, but it’s a good thing we’re going back.”
“Why?”
“If we stayed here, the rain would get you sick! Trust me, okay? It may seem bad to you now, but it’s actually a blessing in disguise.”
“I’m not coming back,” Ranma says with perfectly cold intonation, stopping Yuga dead in his tracks.
His head is spinning.
Eyes boring into his with a familiar, solidifying hatred, Ranma is now a foe - again. Yuga is no stranger to that reproachful glimmer in his gaze. The first time of many, they had been hunched over on a scratched wooden desk, opening card packs with a camera in their faces for the RanGa channel, and Subaru and Masato had walked over and placed a sticker of a cockroach onto his back to scare him. Just Yuga - Yuga alone, who’d flailed his arms in shock and fear, who’d thrown his head back in laughter from the embarrassment two seconds later, and not Ranma who had been sitting cross-legged and watching them silently.
Yuga has always been praised for his empathy. His father had joked he could tell when even an animal was in pain. Perhaps by some heartwarming coincidence, Garga would come to him for hugs after every lost battle. A laugh, and then his mother’s gentle voice - your smile could save anyone, and not just from the niceties.
It’s a sweet thing to say; for a while he’d genuinely believed it. And then Ranma, who he’d been inseparable from, turned to the darkness once after, swung a cape over his back like it was nobody’s business and waited for some unspoken saviour to pull it away from him. And Yuga had to coax him back out of his self-inflicted shell, don that wide smile over and over and pretend his sudden departure had never hurt him in the slightest. The humble friend, the forgiving friend. In most cases it serves as good praise, but not when the anti-testimony is staring back at you like an intangible slap to the face.
Not when his intuition has been wronged twice.
Why do you do this to me? The question festers as a lump in his throat.
Outwardly, Yuga shrugs once. “Okay,” he says monotonously, choosing to spare the boy before him of any sentiments. “Be safe out there.”
A conveniently-timed fit of thunder befalls upon them from overhead, and a tremor rolls across the ground from the impact in nearly comical fashion. Ranma’s feet are shaking, eyes suddenly more bloodshot than they seemed prior, and there it is again, the tear in his voice, the high-pitched, shrilly cry: “I’m leaving, Yuga! Aren’t you going to ask why?”
They haven’t touched that card game in a while; Yuga’s fairly sure the whole branch of players has already lost their powers, and he’s of no exception. Yet, for a moment he’s hit with a spike of fear that Ranma will reach into his pocket and try to summon Vanity again. Thankfully the only foolish things suited to arrive next are more words from his mouth.
“I hate you,” Ranma sobs. Ranma, forever chained to the past, forever reliant on his cloak and its blades digging into his back. Ranma, deeply immersed in a world that had gradually faded to grey, by nothing but his own means and the thorns in his chest that he’d never bothered to let Yuga near. “You’re not going to chase after me? You really, really don’t care about fighting for me?”
For the first time in his life, Yuga’s empathy fails him.
He looks at Ranma and feels nothing at all, save for the numbness in his veins.
Of course, he’ll be blamed for every little thing. Ranma will vanish after this, just like the first time - into smoky ash, into faerie dust - and leave him to hug to his chest the fragments of their rose-stained adventures alone once more. It is of no use.
“What, you want me to succumb to your sad, dark regime again?” Yuga folds his arms and fixes him with a disdainful look. “And do that whole you’re-my-best-friend thing again? We’re not twelve anymore, Ranma. Fuck you.”
There is darkness encroaching every corner of Yuga’s vision as he is sitting in Subaru’s living room. One arm is draped over his face, and somewhere beneath his ribs lies a reopened void from god-knows-where. This emotion he has always failed to name, stashed under the floor of his tongue for years. It only ever resurfaced when Ranma wasn’t around.
“Yikes,” Subaru drawls out, voice shaking slightly towards the end as if he is stifling laughter. “I thought he would’ve outgrown that kind of thing by now.”
“Anyone would’ve thought that.” Shame burns beneath Yuga’s eyelids, the way foreign residue is often found clinging onto the underside of an abandoned lamp. “I thought that.”
He is not surprised they are still friends today. Despite the loss of their powers, Subaru has always remained the rational one out of the bunch. It’s funny, really - how Yuga’s secretly mounted him as the voice of reason in his head, but never felt the need to talk to him about anything serious at all.
Until now.
The sound of running water disorients him. Subaru hums in response. “Well, you didn’t seem so affected by it the first time.” He turns his head and shoots Yuga a quizzical look, hands still busy scrubbing the dishes. “What changed?”
Yuga nearly shrinks under the weight of that raised eyebrow.
“You know what changed,” he says dryly and then grimaces. It comes out more bitter than he would have liked: almost like some facts he’s ashamed of have finally been flung into the grasp of broad daylight, or mauled and then washed ashore.
Subaru only offers him a scoff before twisting the tap to the side rather audibly. At an instant the water begins to run much louder.
It has been two days since Ranma left. Yuga cannot yet decide whether he has started to loathe himself.