t-shirt eater

​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?).

nothing deep to say abt this I just think haruo's a little freak ok

fig 1. screenshot from ep 6.

hi welcome to my harujin propaganda post👬 yes I am labelling all my figures bc this is basically an essay.

we got (slight) age-gap, boss-employee, young idiot seme/older inexperienced uke here. also size difference bc Haruo is two apples tall.

I hc the age gap between them being around 5 years give or take with Haruo being in his mid-twenties and Jin being on the cusp of 30. Presently I imagine them being 24 + 29👬

fig 2. screenshot from ep 5.

in terms of relationship dynamics, their personalities contrast less than smth like derajin but it's still strong enough to b silly imo; and their moral obligations definitely diverge enough to create some conflict between them (iykyk).

content wise tho, they're basically together all the time. It rlly seems like Haruo is Jin's tail sometimes bc truly.. why is he always there lol... I dunno if he's supposed to be Jin's designated Kuroya/guard or smth but he always seems to accompany Jin everywhere...

fig 3-4. manga panels from chapter 7.

also this is more specific to the manga's eng translation but I rlly like that Haruo drops the Mr. honorific when trying to boss Jin around lol. This is ofc contrasted against the anime where Haruo whines "Jin-saan" to try and appeal to his authority in a se—I mean, funny way.

This is my way of expressing that I’m a big fan of the manga's translation of "Jin-san" to "Mr. Jin". That little bit of authority Haruo ascribes to Jin is veeery important to me, esp since Jin acts more closely to a coworker or a middle manager than an actual boss to the Kuroya sibs.

fig 5-6. manga panels from chapter 8 and 12.

Bc of how much time they spend together, I think it's easy to assume that the two of them are also very in-tune with each other and have known each other for quite a while at this point.

There's a lot of subtle moments that hint to this such as Haruo stepping up on instinct when they have to "interrogate" a suspect or the silent glance they give each other after Asa lies that she doesn't have any pics of Dera lol.

we don't get the same framing in the anime for that second moment to shine but at least we got that funny two-shot of them...

also!! haruo being the designated driver between them fulfills my hc that he'd be the one to take the lead in their relationship—the main driver if you will HAHAHAHA [anvil falls on my head killing me instantly]—which brings me to Jin's relationship experience: wherein he has NONE.

fig 7. screenshot from ep 5.

my ideal harujin dynamic is the one where Jin is cranky steve carell from the 40 year old virgin VS Haruo who's just tryna get him to relax and see Jin smile at least ONCE before he dies.

I hc Haruo as being way more familiar with dating/relationships than Jin and that in itself bridges the maturity gap there would otherwise b between them.

if u know me u know I am extremely normal about age swaps and any kind of role swapping in general—so ofc I had to beam jin + haruo w it.

to get into it: I'd like to think Haruo's attitude stays mostly the same at an older age. Like he's still loud (lol) but maybe just a bit less eager bc he's matured a bit; and with that maturity, he also acts more homely towards his tsugai since he's had them for longer.

And with Jin being younger.. I think he’d keep his same serious demeanor (if anything I think he’s overcompensate to appear more mature) but he’d have a lot more moments where his knowledge/maturity gap comes out. Him being younger than Haruo + Akio would also bring in a stronger bodyguard-dynamic between them which I think is fun..

(^We already sorta see that dynamic with Asuma during That event arc but I feel like that’s deemphasized with Jin; his relationship with the Kuroya sibs aligns more closely to a middle-manager and his employees/coworkers.)

anyway, I like the idea of a younger Jin still insisting on heading up missions while being a bit less adept with using Ai + Makoto. I think it's neat to imagine wielders needing to get used to deploying their tsugai effectively…!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/72566861/chapters/213003246

Another update gah! Linking chapter 12 here bc that’s the companion chapter to these drawings but we’re on chapter 15 now…! waow….