There was an accident a week ago and then Hiro was gone. It’s not as simple as that but Akio still misses him, draws him in places where he would normally be, brings him up in just about every conversation. And this, Yuki is tired of but can tell how bad it must be to have Hiro up and leave, knowing the way he can be. Impulsive, emo to the point it ruins other people's moods (these are Yuki’s words), and a whole lot of self-loathing. Things that Akio could usually balance out with his bright and far more optimistic attitude but it’s must be hard for them to balance each other out when they are separated and have been for over a week.

But now the days are bleak, the sun is often shadowed by rain clouds or a simple overcast sky that leaves a lot to be desired. And Yuki doesn’t know what it is that’s really hurting Akio, even after watching him from afar all week. Even now, as he sits by the window looking out as the sun sets. Waiting, perhaps for Hiro to come back. Probably, for Hiro to come back.  It’s really dramatic and something right out of a drama and if Akio didn’t have amnesia he’d know that Hiro did this often and came back every time but even then he worried. Stupidly, to Yuki anyways.

“Uhm, Aki-” Yuki begins and is cut off when entering Hiro’s room where Akio seems to spend most of his days. He startles at the first vestige of sound making his sketchbook fall off his lap with a loud slap in the otherwise silent room. Apparently he was asleep but Yuki couldn’t tell from the way he was leaning against his hand, his unkempt hair hid his face just too well. “Are you okay?” She tries again, hands pressed nervously against the pleats on her dress. Akio is still blinking sleep away, looking at her, around her but his shoulders fall as if he’s expecting something. Like he has been all week.

Yuki can tell he understood her, from the way his expression shifts, calculating and forming an answer where one begins, he stops himself. And starts again. “I….I’ve been better.” Without even hiding the pain that he’s feeling, he leans over to pick up up the fallen sketch book as Yuki crosses the room, making sure not to let her eyes wander. There are countless paper roses covering Hiro’s bed, she doesn’t know if Akio made them but it’s a lot.

“You, uh, we can talk if you want? Dinner is ready.” This was -- sigh  -- hard. Yelling at Hiro for upsetting Akio was always easier because he didn’t remember some of the crazy stuff Hiro did but it wasn’t like Hiro had any trouble practically recreating those memories, even as going as far as injuring Akio, again. Of course not on purpose, never on purpose. Hiro wasn’t like that.

“How’s your arm?” Yuki tries as they transition to the dining area, Akio is so quiet behind her that she has to turn and look to make sure he’s actually following. The arm held up in a sling is a grim reminder in itself of both things weighing heavily on his mind. One, his wrist is broken...because of Hiro and second, that Hiro is gone.

And some point during this Yuki expects Akio to get fed up with her, tell her to leave him alone and just blow up because everything wasn’t going to be okay and that some things just can’t be fixed. At least that’s what Hiro always did and it would go on like that until Hiro left. But Akio’s voice is soft and level when he answers, the quiver of his voice when he first woke up is gone as if by putting his guard up again that could hide all of the other signs showing that he wasn’t okay.

“It’s fine, thanks.” There is a hint of a smile trying to make it’s way onto his face but funny how even that has become difficult.

In all honesty, Yuki doesn’t entirely know what has shifted between Akio and her brother since Akio’s memory loss. Sure they’re best friends, grew up together but Akio doesn’t remember that and things are the same but very different. And it wasn’t Yuki’s fujoshi side speaking here, it was the calculated, and observing sister who begrudgedly admits that Hiro didn’t try to change anything between them. He wanted to have his relationship with Akio remain as similar to when he remembered they were best friends and that was good of him. But he couldn’t help that something in Akio’s own heart resurfaced or blossomed like rose bud in spring but the familiarity of it all made her think it was the former.

Akio ate, as much as his mood would allow him and Yuki just wanted to slam her face into her bowl the entire time, this was getting really sad. Goddammit Hiro, you’re still being a selfish prick.

Later when washing dishes and putting them away, there is a distant sound of one bedroom door opening and another closing. Yuki can’t tell if it was from Akio leaving his room and going into Hiro’s or the other way around.

❦  ❦  ❦  ❦  ❦

The fourteenth day that Hiro has been gone, it starts tame and quiet. Just as bleak and dreary as the days before. Yuki is outside, just to take a break from the heavy atmosphere of the house. Somehow it’s even seeped outside or perhaps it just clings, heavy and suffocating. Just enough that it’s always on your mind and when you find one spare moment to not think about it you end up being grateful that you’re not thinking about it. But in that same moment of thanks you realize, you’re thinking about it all over again.

“If it’s going to rain just rain, get these gross clouds out of here.” Mumbling on her way back into the house where Akio is disappearing behind a door. They don’t see much of each other lately, Yuki tries. Akio doesn’t. He’s probably drawing again but Yuki can’t imagine there being anything left for him to draw, unless he’s drawing the same thing over and over. The thought alone worries Yuki enough to follow Akio behind said door. It’s quiet when she approaches and maybe he’s fallen asleep again but once at the door she hears it. The faint sound that only resembles paper tearing, it’s fast and frantic almost. Yuki pushes open the door to see Akio huddled over on the floor with his back facing the door and he’s pulling apart the paper roses scattered around the room. Pieces of white are raining down around him, in bits that almost resembles snow. They’re all around him, on him even.

Yuki steps in and her bracelet hits the wood on the door and Akio turns around, face wet with tears. Yuki runs over to kneel besides him, suddenly scared because it’s been this long and she expected him to snap days ago. But he picks up another paper rose from the floor and tears it apart, screaming as he goes.

“He thinks he’s nothing, can’t be good, can’t be anything!” Yuki goes to grab the paper from Akio’s trembling hands but he drops it and picks up another to repeat the process. Worrying Yuki that he’ll do something to his cast, he’s only been without his cast for two days and it’s completely possible for him to make his wrist worse. “He just thinks he’s a monster or something stupid. It’s why he always treats me like im easy to break and tear apart.”

Rip.

“I’m not!”

Rip.

“It’s not fair! I’m not- Ah! What are you-”

“Stop it, Akio!” Yuki has finally had enough and grabs the rose from his hand and sweeps all others around him away, feeling her own tears want to break surface but she blinks them away and helps Akio stand. Giving him a once over she can’t help but be disappointed in herself in letting him get like this, he should at least look better than he feels. She doesn’t have the words to comfort him right now because she knows he just wants Hiro to come back.

“Let me fix your hair,” Looping her arm gently around his as she pulls him out of the room, making sure to shut the door behind them.

And about ten minutes later Akio’s hair and pulled back tamely in a ponytail almost longer than Yuki’s but it’s her hand that hovers where she usually places a flower. Hesitant because it’s a yellow rose that she holds and she wants Akio to wear for all the thing it symbolizes. Joy, gladness, friendship, delight, and promises of a new beginning. Because if Hiro doesn’t come back this time they’ll have to move anyways. So she tucks it behind his ear gently and she watches how his eyes lift in the mirror to look at it and regardless of how he must be feeling, he smiles. It’s the most genuine one she’s seen in awhile.

❦  ❦  ❦  ❦  ❦

Thirty-two days and counting. Well, maybe not counting. Akio smiles on a regular basis now, doesn’t draw Hiro in the places he would have been, doesn’t bring him up in every conversation or at all really. But Yuki knows he still thinks about him, how can he not?

“We’ve already watched this one.”

“Yeah well, we’re watching it again. It’s one of my favorites.” Yuki sits down next to Akio as the movie starts to play. They’ve been watching plenty of fantasy movies because it’s the next best thing being as far away from reality as possible aside from sleeping. So they’ll take the dragons, the fairies, witches and wizards and imagine they don’t live in the world that they do. In a world where it’s actually been over a month and Hiro hasn’t come back.

They don’t talk much during the movie, movie etiquette of course. But Akio pipes up just halfway through. “Is it supposed to rain today?”

Yuki is squinting her eyes and looking around because why would he suddenly ask- Oh. There’s the window just beyond them that shows the front yard of the house. And to think that Akio would give himself away so easily, through a mundane question about the sky that was growing darker the passing moments.

But she won’t mention it, there’s no need. “I’m not sure but it looks like it.” Answering honestly, she looks over at Akio to see how he’ll react. His hair is shorter (he finally let her cut it) and he’s now traded out the cast for a brace. He really does look better, he even acted like he felt better and it actually fooled Yuki.

All Akio does is hum a reply, sad eyes downcast to his lap but he does what he must’ve been doing these past weeks to fool her. He looks up and gives her a bright smile and gestures towards the screen where the movie still plays. “Are you watching? You’ll miss your favorite part.”

She already did.

Sometime after lunch and just before dinner, Yuki tells Akio she’ll make them a snack because yeah they’re hungry but not enough to eat a full meal. Yuki also felt like it was a good idea to eat something before the rain put them to sleep.

Standing on her tippy toes to reach into the counters for a bowl, usually she recruit Hiro for this kind of stuff but not anymore. It’s not that things had to change because Hiro left it’s because Hiro left that things became changed. He was a vital part to their everyday lives, even if Yuki gave him so much grief, that’s her brother and that couldn’t be sullied by any childish animosity she had towards him.

But some adjustments had to be made. Pulling up a chair from the kitchen table she test it’s stability before climbing up to open a cabinet and pull out a bowl. Yuki is younger than them both and tip toeing around Akio’s feelings has become a bit troublesome for her but it wouldn’t be fair to take it out on someone else.

“Akio, what was it that you wanted again?” She calls back to him in the other room but doesn’t get a reply. “Akio?” Calling out again, putting the bowl in her hand down on the counter just as she see’s him run past her, bumping the kitchen table and she can’t get down from the chair fast enough to keep the vase from falling over. It’s a loud crash that she covers her ears to block but it doesn’t matter now. The front door is hanging wide open and the loud pour of rain barges into the house. Leaping over the mess of water, glass, and flowers she follows Akio to the door but stops when she see’s him crash into a figure wearing a white t-shirt some ways out. And hand comes to her mouth and there are a myriad of emotions that flooding her. She wants to run out into the rain too, but also to fall to her knees and cry because she’s missed him but this moment isn’t for her.

The rocks hurt when they stab the bottoms of his feet, they tell him to slow down and take his time but it’s Hiro. It’s Hiro who stopped walking when he saw Akio come out of the house, barrelling towards him like a frieght train. And there is an impact when Akio finally reaches him, it’s cold and wet and feels very much like the rain. But Akio is solid, he’s actually here. It’s Akio who embraces him before words start spilling and he seems entirely okay that Hiro hasn’t hugged him back. But Hiro isn’t at all okay that he knows that the tears on Akio’s face are because of him, holding him just an arm's length away so he can see and hear everything Akio has to say.

The first thing he noticed before he even reached Hiro was that he was wearing different clothes from when he left and didn’t at all look as disheveled as he could have been and that makes Akio curious as to where he went but now, with him fully here in his arms, he doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to hear about what he’s been up to when he wasn’t here. None of that matters.

Akio tries not to cry but his heart doesn’t have the capacity to hold back these feelings anymore. “Why would you leave, Hiro? What good does that do?” He knows Hiro isn’t going to answer. “I’ve already told you that I’m not scared of you but you keep acting like you want to be a monster. Look at this Hiro!” Lifting the arm to show Hiro the brace on his wrist. “It’s healing, Hiro. Wounds heal, you can’t act like I’m broken forever. And you definitely can’t leave like that because it hurts far worse than any broken wrist, arm, or bone would!” And because Hiro hasn’t responded, Akio feels like hitting him for the first time ever.

Hiro’s head falls lower to avoid eye contact. “You act like I didn’t hurt you, it could’ve been worse. That’s what you don’t get, Akio.”

“No, Hiro,” His tone is soft again but loud enough to be heard above the rain. “You did hurt me, I get it but I know for a fact you didn’t do it on purpose so I have no reason to be scared of you or to want you gone. And I will never want those things because I know you’d never hurt me on purpose.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t?”

“Because I’d like to think I know you, Hiro. This has nothing to do with any other accident before.” A warning, to keep Hiro from saying what he knows he’s going to. “I’m fine, okay? It isn’t fair for you to just leave because you think it’s the right thing to do. Not having you here was unbearable and you fooling yourself into thinking that I don’t want to see you is unnecessary. No matter what it is, neither of us deserves to hurt as badly as we have.” Akio brings him in again, hoping maybe he’ll hug him back this time.

Yuki is still standing in the doorway with a hand over her mouth, unable to hear anything Akio is saying above the rain. She’d feel like she were intruding if she did but she could tell Akio was angry or whatever that emotion was to him. A moment after Akio hugs Hiro again and he doesn’t respond, Yuki’s heart sinks, assuming the worst, that Hiro has surely convinced himself he can’t be forgiven for what he’s done. But he wouldn’t come back if that were the case.

Akio is going to have a cold for sure tomorrow and it’ll all be dumbass Hiro’s fault. She’s just about to yell for him to come back but Akio moves his head where his forehead rest against Hiro shoulders and this way she can’t tell if he’s saying anything at all. But whatever happened did something amazing. As slow as they may be moving, Hiro’s arm come up around Akio smaller waist and squeeze as though he’d never want to let go. Yuki takes a step back into the house to hide behind the door frame, feeling like she’s peeping from a hundred feet away. When she can see them again Akio is smiling, a smile she’s seen countless times. Both real and fake but this was clearly real. Her own smile that has showed itself few and far between the past month radiates through the stormy weather.