#eichia

I always thought Eichi and Chiaki having been friends with each other seemed a really weird pair.

Eichi and Chiaki in high school and ES kinda seem too different to have been close friends, But I can definitely see how they would've been similar as kids.

They both have a sort of socially inept quality (sorry I don't have a less harsh-sounding word for it at the moment) partly due to being in the hospital so often as kids and not getting to socialize enough, chiaki being overbearing because of it and eichi sometimes misunderstanding relationships and friendships because of it.

Chiaki's social ineptitude led him to learn to be friendly with everyone because he didn't see why not to be friendly with them, He wanted to be a "Hero", not realizing that a Hero is more of a trope and an ideal than an actual personality type.

The kind of hero that exists in fiction isn't meant to be something to become, it's in imaginary type of person meant to inspire you when you need it but not meant to be a goal.

He didn't realize being a hero all the time in all parts of your life is detrimental to yourself and practically impossible to keep up. You're not meant to be that way all the time. But nobody told him that (or maybe they did it didn't get through to him. I dont know.)

It makes sense that a kid would think you can act that way 24/7 if no one told them otherwise, which, if Chiaki had only 1 or 2 other close friends, could've been the case.

Eichi's social ineptitude led him to see relationships in a black and white way, where he seemed to think there's a purpose for every friendship, connection, and probably even romantic relationships, maybe like the businessmen/women and beneficiaries in his family. Which would make sense if that were true because he probably got way more exposure to them than other kids his age.

Eichi's story is so damn sad, man, and it's not just all he's been through in the war and with his chronic illness, it's also the way him not being able to hang out with kids his age and was unable to build friendships with more than a few people that his ability to build friendships and understand social cues was affected forever. Chiaki isn't perfect at it either, but his ability to find pure hearted people and connect emotionally pretty easily has made it a bit easier for him in this area.

(But I headcanon that Eichi also has autism. So to me this isn't the only reason he struggles to grasp some ideas or seems "dense" or "clueless", and some other things which I explain in another post in the future, but the deficit of socialization as a kid definitely didn't help his difficultly understanding people emotionally.)

And the adults around him with all their resources didn't even seem to think he could possibly be seriously affected by not meeting more kids each time he went to the hospital/having new friendships dissove and dissappear each time he was re-admitted could be a possibility, or think to do something to get him more time with the other kids. Even if it was like, video calls or something. It makes me angry.

Or maybe he didn't want to be around that many people, idk.

But he definitely seems to have grown a lonely heart now, and has a conflicting urge to put all his friends in some position of obligation or service to him, either to help him classify the relationship and make it less ambiguous to him, or to soothe his Eichi Ego and make sure nobody around him can be his equal because it intrudes on his idea of his self worth. Or its both! Or because they're less likely to dissappear from his life in they're indebted to him somehow.

This leaves him with no true peers except Wataru, who even HE doesn't understand sometimes. (And even Wataru had a compartmentalized relation to Eichi in the beginning as his idolized goal/star/superior, but Wataru managed to break that down by showing Eichi more of his true strange self)

Anyways, I think both Chiaki and Eichi felt out of tune with their peers in a way and were on a similar level because of it, I can see how they would have felt connected to each other.

day 5~ beach/family

how he feels ‘inferior’ to chiaki in a sense since he eventually got somewhat healthier while he hasn’t to the extent he has. not wanting to be treated like he’s fragile and beneath him esp but to chiaki they’re still the same :((

also love how leo was practically a child the whole way through