08:43AM

They’re late. Thirteen minutes late to leaving. Sakusa doesn’t make a thing out of it, like he normally would. He doesn’t say anything at all as she climbs into the passenger seat and unceremoniously throws her back into the backseat. Sakusa figures that’s his cue that he’s the one driving. He doesn’t complain about this, like he normally would.

Once he’s settled in the driver’s seat, he takes a moment to wrap a wide hand around her knee, squeezing slightly, even though they’re running late. She doesn’t react. Sakusa looks at her, lips pursed together like he’s waiting for some kind of reaction from her. He’s been waiting for a reaction since the news broke. “You ready?” he asks.

She turns her head to look at him with her eyes dry and decorated with heavy, purple shadows. “Yeah,” she replies, voice devoid of animation, flat and stale. “Let’s go.”

Her grief makes him uncomfortable. Sakusa can only think of how uncomfortable it makes him as he pulls away from their home. He knows this makes him bad person. Or at least, it’s a bad feeling for him to have. He knows that he should be supportive, whatever that means, and that he should be a partner she can rely on.

Whatever that means. Sakusa hasn’t figured it out yet.

It might be easier if she cried. He would at least know what to do then. He could take her in his arms and tell her it’s okay to cry and he would make her some of her favorite food and do things that loving, doting partners do in times of grief and sorrow. But she hasn’t cried. She hasn’t done anything but stare out the window and become a whittled down, blank version of herself.

He feels like all he can do is stare and wait. Just watching as she slowly dissolves, day-by-day.

The car pulls onto a main road. There’s traffic.

09:32AM

She doesn’t play music. None of her aggressive and headache inducing rock music or bubbly and headache inducing pop music. It’s just silence. The wind that sneaks in through the backseat window that never fully closes, and Sakusa’s breathing.

There’s nothing else.

He keeps looking at her, glancing at her for just a second when the road in front of him is clear. He’s taking stock of her expression, checking for slight changes and variations. But each time he looks, her lips are slightly downturned, eyes half-closed, cheek resting in the palm of her hand.

She’s unmoving, statuesque.

Sakusa watched when she got the call. He saw in real time as her mind started to shut down. With her phone pressed against her ear, standing in the kitchen with a half-cooked pot of curry, he watched as any traces of joy or excitement slip off face like melting snow plummeting off a roof. “Oh,” is what she said, “thanks for telling me.” That was all Sakusa heard before she hung up and turned to deliver the news back to him.

“My brother’s dead.”

He took hold of her at once. He whispered condolences into her hair, and he felt her shake but he never heard her sob or cry or anything.

She’s looked the same since then. She looks the same now.

He steals another glance at her, hoping for something different. It’s the same.

10:04AM

 She talks. Sakusa feels like it’s the first time she’s talked in days.

“He used to carry me around the neighborhood on his shoulders,” she says, out of nowhere. It makes him jump, slightly, before he steadies the steering wheel. He glances again. She still hasn’t moved. “His friends used to pick on me a lot but he always defended me. One time I caught him smoking cigarettes behind the house, and I pretended like I was going to tell our mom, but I didn’t. When my mom disappeared, he made sure I still went to school. Packed my lunches and everything. And when I was really little, I remember being confused. Because sometimes he felt like my brother, but a lot of the time he really just felt like my dad.”

Sakusa’s grip on the steering wheel tightens. He thought he would have something to say, but he doesn’t. Nothing feels right.

10:36AM

They’re late. Sakusa has a nervous pit in his stomach about this, but everyone else in her family is later than them.

She hugs her mom, looking stiff as she does, and returns to Sakusa’s side as soon as the awkward embrace is over. He holds onto her hand and doesn’t let it go for the rest of the service.

He listens to people talk about him. Sakusa never met her brother, never knew him personally, but it seems like the him that existed to everyone else didn’t exist to her. They get up there and they talk about him and the dark path he was on and how far he had strayed and how he was so untouchable, unsavable.

She’s stiff beside him the entire time. It seems like she’s holding her breath. Sakusa has to lean down and whisper in her ear, “Breathe.”

Her shoulders rise and fall.

11:49AM

She looks smaller in her childhood home, but she moves around it like she’s too big for the space. Sakusa still won’t let go over her hand.

In her brother’s childhood room, she flicks through piles of CDs and old mangas. There’s posters for bands Sakusa’s never heard of on the wall. There’s a half-full jar of foreign coins and trash that still hasn’t been emptied. Sakusa feels that it is all too intimately human.

Her fingers graze along the spine of a book that’s shoved under small television on his dresser. Love is a Dog from Hell. “He never read this,” she comments, lifting her fingers away. The tips of them are coated in dust. “He stole it from me, and then never gave it back.”

Sakusa watches her carefully. Her shoulders are more relaxed in this space, and there is a ghost of a smile on her face. He doesn’t want to make her leave, but he knows she can’t stay here, surrounded by memories and dust. “Do you want to take anything home?” he asks.

This makes her frown, and he doesn’t know why. “I can’t just take it from him,” she tells him, sounding so small.

She doesn’t need to take anything, anyways. Her mother prepared a small box of belongings that she thought her daughter would appreciate it. She shoves it into her arms on the way out, and it finds itself stuffed into Sakusa’s trunk.

12:59PM

She wanted to leave early, so they left early. She wanted to drive home, so Sakusa let her drive home.

She put in a CD for the drive home. It’s sad. If Sakusa felt like he knew better, he’d tell her that maybe they shouldn’t listen to something so depressing. That maybe they should let the radio play or they could talk about something. But Sakusa doesn’t feel like he knows anything.

He doesn’t feel like he even knows her, right now. Not shrouded in grief, not with this black veil pulled over her eyes. He doesn’t know what’s best for her. He doesn’t know how to help her or how to make anything better, even slightly.

He reaches over the center console and lets his hand rest on her thigh. He leaves it there this time. He doesn’t know if she appreciates it or likes the comfort or if she even notices at all. But he leaves his hand there, and hopes it does something.

03:02PM

They get home. She goes inside without grabbing the box. Sakusa gets it for her, and puts it somewhere where she won’t have to see it, if she doesn’t want to.

05:22PM

Sakusa cooks dinner. Her favorite. Definitely not curry. She eats it in small bites, and then takes a shower that lasts too long. He cleans, and listens for the sounds of her.

07:54PM

She’s in bed already. Funerals take a lot out of you, he figures. He joins her, if for no other reason that he doesn’t want her to be alone. She’s on the let side. He’s on the right.

His arms snake around her middle. He pulls her closer and kisses the side of her face. “I love you,” he tells her, because it’s true, and he wants her to know it. Even if he’s useless. Even if all he can do is watch.

He can almost feel it cracking in her chest. The way it boils over. She inhales sharply, and says, “Kiyoomi,” in a pitch or two higher than she normally speaks, like she’s out of breath. “I really miss him. I miss my brother.”

Sakusa tightens her arms around her as the sobs let loose. It rocks through her violently, and he holds her through it all. “I know,” he whispers back. “I know.”