Take your pick of ideas

I imagine Byakuya patiently waiting by the door for his son, only for Senku to come home after his first day of kindergarten with an irritable scowl on his face and another kid clinging onto him. Please, he was crying tears of joy once he found out that his stern son actually made a friend. His first friend!

PersonA probably squeezed their way in into every experiment and reading session. There was a day when Senku went home on his own (which he thought was suspicious and lonesome without a certain person clinging onto him and annoying him) and was greeted by a grinning Byakuya (which he also found suspicious). All the skepticism soon made sense once he opened the door to his room and found the very person who wasn’t there to bother him a few minutes ago. Surprised and huffing out, he slams the door shut and makes his way towards his father who was startled by the noise.

As his son rambled on and on about what PersonA could possibly be doing in his room without his knowledge, Byakuya couldn’t help but grin even wider than he ever did when he noticed his son’s relieved expression. It probably wasn’t obvious to anybody else but him at the time, but the child was clearly disappointed upon his return home alone.

Senku doesn’t know it yet and won’t know about it until years and years later, but the child upstairs was worth tens of billions and meant so much more than his son could possibly imagine. He just hopes his son won’t take them for granted.

I envision Senku labelling PersonA as an annoying and persistent hinderance (with a few other quirks that he’s noticed over the years) but would still treat fairly…somewhat well. Someone who he occasionally pays special care and attention to only because “my old man likes them a lot and would give me an earful and take my equipment away if he hears I don’t treat them good enough.”

Maybe he can reminisce about PersonA during and after the petrifaction since in all his years of knowing that ‘bothersome’ person, this was probably the furthest and longest time they’ve been apart. Now that he’s given the space that he’d always wanted, he starts to wonder if it was always this quiet. When was the last time he had such a thick, deafening silence? He never really noticed it in the first few years he’s been in the darkness of the petrification—he was too busy counting every passing second and thinking of what could’ve possibly lead to this situation to have such thoughts.

He had always fantasized about complete, utter silence to ‘focus better’, but was soon disappointed that it wasn’t as great as he’d expected. It wasn’t until 3,700 years of counting that he finally broke out of the stone. As he’s roasting his dinner one night, his mind drifts off. Now that he thinks about it, he never once had a thought of PersonA within the first month he escaped that stone prison. Survival was the priority, but to not think about the person who’s been with you the most in your entire life was…strange? He picked up the skewer and stares at his meal. They used to always insist on making his meals. Ever since Byakuya left Japan, they’d constantly check up on him to make sure he’s eating anything aside from ramen…or just eating anything at all.

Who knew doing all this on his own could be so different? He used to believe that his life would still flow the way it did whether or not they were there by his side, but now, even eating felt odd without a certain someone talking and filling in the silence.

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