#madarai

First off, I think he would know the basics of sign language already. Him and his brothers would likely practice their own secret variant, based off the original sign language in their area- they’d use it on missions where they needed to signal wordlessly to one another.

If you do know how to/practice lip reading, it probably won’t work with him or his brothers. In other words, that long tongue they stick out all the time sorta blocks their lips and makes it hard to see how their mouth is moving.

Isshiki! Likes! Sewing! He has big hands, but him and his brothers all practiced it to improve their dexterity and focus. He took it up as a bit of a hobby. So he’s probably going to make you scarfs, maybe find a cardigan or turtleneck sweater and use his sewing skills to add poorly constructed hands that form some sort of jokes in sign language. (Like those sweaters with messages on them, basically, but with sign language hands forming the message.)

It’s sort of an inside joke for you at this point. He might try to sew you a woollen sweater from scratch once- it didn’t turn out too pretty, but it’s semi-comfy and you treasure it anyways.

You’d think with all of eight of his brothers being around, they would end up talking over each other. Nope. They take turns and sign whatever they spoke. Some of them are a bit rusty at it, but they get back into the habit of practicing, for communication with you and among themselves. Always a good skill to have, they think. Sometimes they don’t even speak out loud in these group conversations.

Whether they always speak one at a time and wait for each other to finish is unknown, but around you they do. Maybe they just have a lot of self control. Maybe they just don’t speak over each other or argue like common siblings.

If you’re ever overwhelmed somewhere, or don’t understand what’s going on- if you lip read, Isshiki will often ask people to talk one at a time or repeat what they said a bit slower. If you don’t lip read, or just prefer sign language, he’ll sign out all the interesting or important bits of the conversation to you, or a summary, since some times people talk too fast for him to translate the whole thing. Or they just repeat weird slang Isshiki doesn’t quite understand.

Alright, have you even seen The Bureau of Magical Things? Well, Isshiki is going to be like the sentient ladder in there.

No seriously. He's 8'1, and super fast. He can probably reach the highest shelves, or just scale the walls to reach them.

So if you ask him to fetch a book from the library shelves from you, he's off like the flash to find and retrieve it.

He'd probably get his brothers to help him during some of your working hours if they have nothing to do, so...

Eight human ladders.

He's not quite sure how to bring it up or admit it, but he'd really love if you'd sit on a beanbag chair, let him lay his head in your lap, pet his hair and read him a story.

His brothers come crawling through the woodwork to join in, standing or sitting in a ring around you two to listen to the story as well.

None of them had much experience with personal space and stuff. Their parents also probably never bothered trying to get them all in the same place for a story, or they just didn't bother with stories.