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​jin’s love language centering around how others interact w ai and makoto, and everyone else he cares abt bc he can’t handle people expressing their love to him directly [starts punching the ground w my bare fists].

Haruo on the other hand needing to hear people explicitly express their love and care for him to his face otherwise he won’t believe it [my knuckles start to bleed].

I’ve been playing around w the idea that both of them have very different needs to see what sort of conflict comes up from that… u know the ship getting srs when I start placing the doom and despair backdrop behind them. le sigh.

I think haruo catches on quicker that he needs to b “slower” w jin otherwise he’ll shut like a clam. but jin… the stupid idiot—I don’t think he’ll understand that haruo needs to hear things like “I love you” until haruo’s feelings get hurt and THEN it hits him like ohhhh…. But even in that moment I don’t think he can say it back.

It sorta feels like. imagining how much watering a plant needs (???). Jin doesn’t need a lot of watering + requires indirect sunlight otherwise he’ll burn up or drown; on the flip side, haruo needs direct sunlight + watering more often otherwise he’ll dry up and die. Idk how plants work guys. I’m feeling very guy who is talking to himself in his padded room right now but idc. [playing w my touys].

Also I’m not sure who I see “falling first” so these scenarios are just little moments I came up w under the idea of when feelings start to shift abt the other. I’m finding I enjoy being more elastic with how I imagine these two..? Like it’s fun to think abt what it would b like if they met when they were younger vs older. But ig that’s just what shipping is for LOL.

yeah so you can't just leave this in the tags and expect me to not go completely insane and not think abt it for days on end @ tumblr user haruokuroya. If you see this just know I'm in your walls and will not be paying rent.

anyways.

this moment in chapter 29 has always stuck out to me bc it feels like the most informal haruo ever gets with jin. or maybe the most personal? it's hard to articulate. this whole scene being prefaced with hikaru talking abt how he writes his characters to be more human by making them "wobble and waver" OGGGHHH... Arakawa you will be dealt with one day I swear to god.

also not to glaze my goat but looking at these panels for way too many hours while drawing this comic made me realize how effective arakawa's panelling is in this section like GAWLLY….!!! just looking at the way jin's face is hidden away in so many of these panels is so mesmerizing to me… even the objective tone he takes towards the situation before aligning himself in that final "we" statement… guh…

that panel of their feet gets me esp bad (which is why I just copied it verbatim lawl) and the panel below it too... jin just feels so far away and detached here ohhhh I hate him I hate him so much.

ugh and then jin's expression reveal… and we DON’T get to see haruo’s reaction to this like GOD— [bashing my head into the wall]

“There's no way—” and yet he finds a way by taking himself and his father out of the equation, which of course is exactly what ends up getting them fucked in the end like just kill me man just take the SHOTTTT. jin “bleeding heart” kagemori indeed. le sigh...

in regards to the added flashback stuff (which I hope was obvious enough to be read as a flashback...?!???!), that's just some fun hc stuff I've been messing around with lately.

in this scenario I'm imagining haruo begging to be taken on one of their missions + idk maybe his tsugai are needed for smth so jin allows him to come one time. but from this point on, haruo continually tries to accompany them "for fun" until they encounter a situation where someone has to die and haruo sees a side of jin he’s never seen before and he’s terrified.

it's very important to me that haruo states that he's never killed someone before. although maybe now he has in some indirect way since jin is--[anvil falls on my head before I can finish].

btw I drew him to be around 15 in the flashback but he came out looking so baby...!! curse these moe-driven hands... chalking this up to me projecting my chronic baby face syndrome onto haruo bc I refuse to suffer thru this alone. (one of my neighbours legit asked if I graduated hs the other day and I had to break out the classic "yeah so I have a master's degree" and she gasped. kmskmskms).

I hc jin as being around five years older than haruo so he'd be like 20 here. in terms of the harujin timeline, in the scenario that they meet as kids (thank u to oomf again for putting that image in my head w their comic) I imagine the two of them hanging out when they're young, growing apart due to their maturity gap during haruo's teens + bc jin starts working full-time, then reconnecting again when haruo starts working solo w/ akio + jin.

and yes that is implied short hair big sister natsuki in that one panel. I hope the single stray strand was enough to convey that LOL. I picture her as being like eeehh 22 here?? maybe?? I think it's funny to imagine her being a year or two older than jin.

god I hope we get an anime character guide with official ages and heights soon bc I rlly just b bullshitting over here man.

mini fuyuki cameo in the bg too ofc... I like to imagine that during the early part of jin's career as the family custodian, it was fuyuki + natsuki who accompanied him on missions at first until haruo + akio got old enough to work (LMFAO?).