following up with the fushiguros - Chapter 36 - khaosNotRefundable - 呪術廻戦 (2024)

Chapter Text

It all started with one stubborn tangle.

With her trusty hair brush by her side, Tsumiki perched her elbows on the couch seats jumbled with misplaced pillows, stuffies, and one of Satoru-nii’s blankets that had migrated over. Megumi’s forgotten Nintendo DS stuck out between the seats, but her attention was glued to the front camera of Suguru-nii’s strategically balanced smartphone. Clean-up wasn’t as important even for her when the apartment was full with everyone for once.

Mornings after weekend movie nights were precious. Not so rare now that Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii had a touch fewer missions in exchange for TA classroom and field work, but tall bubbly clouds over the balcony railing, shaved ice on the table, and wailing cicadas in the park trees were creeping ever closer, so they were just that more precious.

“Suguru.”

And busy. Very busy.

A battalion of construction paper, glue bottles, packets of pipe cleaners, and other supplies jostled in Megumi’s arms as he stamped past, his head hiked high and his dark spikes still dripping on his towel slung over his school shirt.

Those weren’t suds above his ear, right? No way. Tsumiki kept her eyes on her makeshift mirror and kept up her fast weave with her fingers, her braid elastics stashed in a short donut stack on her pinkie just like the way Suguru-nii did it. She had only two braids left to go, each supposed to run back from her temples and wrap around at the back like a crown, the rest of the small bright-tailed braids scattered through her free hair.

Only just. Just two. She was this close to finishing the new style she’d been working hard at all week. Ponytails and pigtails were fun, but she’d promised Mimiko-chan and Nanako-chan she’d do not just her own hair, but theirs too, in new styles.

“Suguru!”

Megumi banged into all four kitchen chairs before making it to the messy counter, bowls, plates, and measuring cups marking the edge of Suguru-nii’s forbidden frying zone next to the stove. The rice cooker was boiling up something fierce, its soft but mouth-watering smell kicking up a louder grumble in Tsumiki’s stomach. Breakfast was going to be late. The clock already read too many minutes past half past seven, but both their bento boxes were sitting ready to go.

“Suguru, I can’t find my colouring set. The 36 pencil one from Greece.” A box of chalks tumbled out and spilt, powdery greens and yellows rolling to a stop by the balcony door cranked open for some heat relief. “It’s gone. Vaporized. I think someone stole it. Gohan and I have a list of suspects, starting with—”

“Have you checked under the bed?” Suguru-nii’s voice rose over the crackle of pan oil and the whir of the fan at full blast. Well, it actually was at full blast, but it’d been kind of clogged lately. “ Please tell me you’re not suspecting the sink drain. I told you washing your paint supplies out in the classroom would be better.”

“No, everyone always ogles because they’re French or whatever.” More items raining from his arms, Megumi spun and sank prone to scan the bottom of the couch. He popped up with an annoyed scrub of his hair when the umpire in the TV cried out a loud strike. “...damn, Jomei probably has them. At the Downtown—I mean, his house. He borrowed them. Again.”

“Language. What about the 24 set?” A brisk whisk of egg yolk, the bowl tucked under Suguru-nii’s arm in the background of the smartphone camera as he nudged aside a mop and bucket. That had come from Megumi knocking over an entire carton of milk earlier while trying to rummage inside the fridge. “And I did tell you not to leave off your project for too long.”

“The Italy one?” Megumi was now flinging the couch seats around. Suguru-nii’s smartphone almost toppled, caught just in time by Tsumiki’s darting hand. “Hoshi has it.”

“You’ve been giving away several thousand yen supplies with no guarantee of return…? That’s especially generous of you.”

“It’s not my fault they don’t understand quality.” Megumi stepped over Tsumiki’s ankles before twisting around, hands planted on her shoulders, and stuck his head upside-down in front of her face. “Hey, Tsumiki, have you seen my—”

“Nope! I’m in the middle of a crucial operation here! Ask Satoru-nii!”

Leaning out of the way, Tsumiki snagged her hair brush again and attacked the tangle head-on this time. Or more like…awkwardly twisted herself around, eyes trained on the back of her head in the smartphone camera, and tried again. Playing it slow had only brought it into an even bigger mess at the end of her braid, the rest of her hair tauntingly knot-free and silky from the conditioner Suguru-nii had let her borrow.

She yanked it. The tangle held fast. She sighed.

“That useless guy’s still showering.” As if Megumi’s towel wasn’t almost soaked through at the shoulders. And those were suds on his hair. “But I can’t rule out the chance he might’ve ground them up and snorted them.”

There was a small but distinct pause in the rhythmic clamour of Suguru-nii moving around the kitchen, the tap rushing on and off and dishes being shifted around. “...sorry, what TV programs have you been watching at your friends’ houses?”

Abandoning the couch search, Megumi ducked under the kitchen table to plunk down his boxy behemoth—it was supposed to be Howl’s castle; Tsumiki herself had fashioned a very detailed broom for Kiki’s Delivery Service complete with a little handheld radio made from coloured cardboard—before scampering out the other end.

“Megumi-kun?”

“Normal ones. Obviously.” One drawer thudded shut no sooner had another been wrenched open in a metallic storm, each one overflowing with all kinds of utensils, including the dessert forks Satoru-nii had taken as ‘souvenirs’ from restaurants. Megumi chucked a forgotten bag of custard spoons over his shoulder, sidling along the counter. “Jiro-niisan’s room has some pretty good recs.”

“Uh-huh.” Another pan was prodded at, this one full of the bouncy omelette packed with fried rice and ready to be slid along the cluttered countertop. “...Megumi-kun, I see you. Put the melon bread down. Put the—”

“What bread?” A packet of melon bread, abandoned by the blender still sadly waiting to be washed from last night’s smoothies, was slowly torn open. The rice cooker went off in a sharp click. The pitcher in the TV landed a dead ball and the batter trotted along to first base, the stadium announcers sighing and lamenting.

Tsumiki hung her hair tangle in front of her nose, frowning. She raised her hair brush: blocky, wooden, and a thin crack running down the old, smooth handle. One…more…try...!

Suguru-nii dropped a measuring cup into the crowded sink, the clatter punctuating his sentence. “That bread, Megumi-kun.”

“...what bread?” The packet popped open fully.

Suguru-nii sucked on his teeth slowly. Megumi raised his chin a little.

Down the very short hall, Satoru-nii’s shower blasted onwards. He’d declared he was going to cook himself in three thousand degree temperatures to work out some muscle kinks from throwing the students he was supervising halfway across the mountains and warping free falls to train their reaction time. Tsumiki wasn’t allowed to talk too much to the new Jujutsu Tech students or watch any of the supervising sessions—she happily kept to Megumi’s training dojo anyway—but apparently Satoru-nii was a funny jujutsu TA like that.

Shoko-neesan said he was deranged, of course, and just wanted attention from Suguru-nii down the hall.

“...Suguru-nii, I think I’m stuck on the crown.” Tsumiki finally admitted solemn defeat, her shoulders shrinking when the hair brush hung freely from the back of her head like a stubborn crab. She tried and failed to yank it free with some finger tugs. Ouch. “Suguru-nii…?”

“This is breakfast,” Megumi was now countering by the dish rack precariously piled to cupboard height when she twisted around, holding the melon bread up high. “It gives me energy and it’s the morning. Therefore, it’s breakfast and I need energy to solve my problems.” He scrambled onto a chair just as Suguru-nii darted to nab him, neon pink apron tails flying, and stuffed a piece in his mouth. “Shoko-neesan said I’m growing like a weed now too.”

“She is a licensed doctor, she also knows what a healthy breakfast is and isn’t.”

Tsumiki’s head ping-ponged between Suguru-nii and her brother, towel flaps tucked behind his crossed arms, as he challenged Suguru-nii’s height for once. “So Satoru gets to order tempura, but when I want ginger meatballs, the drive-through suddenly isn’t working.”

“Satoru is a grown adult and is responsible for ruining his own digestive system.” Out came the warning smile, paired with Suguru-nii’s own folded arms and a ladle. “You, however, are under our guardianship alongside your sister.”

“I know.” The smile didn’t work on Megumi anymore. “But if I learn reverse cursed technique and hit age twenty, I can order ginger meatballs. Right?”

Suguru-nii gave him a crescent-eyed smile. That smile always worked.

Megumi blinked aside his damp bangs and held up two fingers, glancing away with a defeated frown. “...double the omurice, please.”

“Are you politely ordering in?”

“Yeah.” Megumi jumped down, Suguru-nii’s phone jolted again, and Tsumiki dove just in time, her feet toppling up once she caught it in a relieved puff.

“Megumi,” she finally burst in a sharp chid, overlapping with the Megumi-kun Suguru-nii’s final rebuke started with.

“—tell me that before I put away the eggs.” The fridge door swung open to scatter two faulty magnets and one outdated weekly meal planner. The carton slid along the top of Suguru-nii’s arm like a conveyor belt, the bottom of his half-bun spilling out as he turned distractedly, looking over her, her sheepish smile, and the trapped hair brush. His eyes widened. “Tsumiki-chan, sorry, did you need—what is happening to your—Megumi-kun, can you—”

“I tried my best to make it even,” Tsumiki offered as Suguru-nii all but flew over. Megumi traded places at the snatched loss of his melon bread to poke at the tempura and try his messy hand at cracking an egg with one hand. “But it keeps tangling at the end where I can’t see it right.”

She had done her best work on her bangs, but her temple hair looked like lightning had struck it and turned it somewhere between seaweed straight and octopus wavy. Tsumiki tugged on a braid tied off with a bright blue elastic and sighed, her head and Suguru-nii’s head tipping at the same time, his thumb ribbing the edge of his smartphone in thought.

“Maybe it looked nicer on Obasan…” Tsumiki mused with a chin scrub.

“No, no, you’re doing great. Did you thoroughly comb out the ends before you started?” The hair brush was pried free in one of Suguru-nii’s miraculous saves as he settled behind her on his knees, his fingers teasing the tangle out before brushing the rest of it in gentle motions.

The smell of all the food on him tickled Tsumiki’s nose. She let herself get turned into a hairdresser’s customers, the pair of braids whipped into neat shape, and helpfully turned up the TV volume to combat the shower noise.

“The longer it grows,” Suguru-nii took the elastics she passed him to tie the braids off, “the more care you’ll need to take so it won’t…there, nice and perfect.”

He held up his smartphone, the camera switched to the back, and waited until Tsumiki held up a cheery peace sign to snap a photo and show her.

“See? You’re perfect, Tsumiki-chan.”

A warm glow filled Tsumiki’s cheeks looking at herself. Her loose red bow tie, her pleated skirt, her smooth buttons. All the mini braids and their soft ridges ran something rhythmic under her fingers, her chin tucked proudly for a moment, and—

The hard wood of the hair brush still in her hand gave a sudden thundersnap of deja vu.

A morning as sunny as this one, just as cramped and messy. Her, much smaller, on her knees, chubby lips pursed in impatience while someone with a pencil skirt knelt behind her, thin purse jangling, and fastened her hair into four messy pigtails.

Tsumiki, if you don’t sit still, it won’t look good.

But your hair brush tickles, Okaasan!

The TV crowd’s roar evaporated the hazy memory, leaving just the shape of a name Tsumiki tucked into the corner of her cheek.

“Are you going to make it your wallpaper,” she teased instead, tucking her—Okaasan’s, once upon a time—hair brush against the folds of her school skirt. “You said you’d change it soon!”

“Who knows, Satoru might get jealous again…” Suguru-nii put on a great show of contemplation, absently wiping his hands on his apron and half-turning at Megumi’s sudden sharp inhale.

“I’m a genius. Suguru, your dad,” there was a loud oil pop, her brother carelessly spinning his back to the stovetop without a care, “Ojisan bought me that mixing set the other weekend, didn’t he? I can use that. It’ll be Plan B.”

“Ah, but Otousan has ridiculous ideas for what the average skill curve for water colours is, I don’t think—it should be in the closet though—” The pan crackled again and Suguru-nii was off, banging his shin into the kitchen table and shifting it a good half metre with a hopping wince. Megumi was swiftly arranged out of position, Suguru-nii absently patting his spikes and giving him a small push. He plucked out the first batch of deep golden-orange tempura and did a double-take. “Are those dish soap suds!? I keep telling you, you’re not Satoru, your scalp’s going to erode itself—”

“You and Tsumiki always take forever anyway.” Megumi was already thumping down the hall, his towel flapping like a cape. “It’s efficient. I’m being efficient.”

“That kid, I swear, it’s like Satoru’s genes actually…” Suguru-nii ground the heel of his palm against his temple in a tightly released sigh, plucking and pocketing his smartphone. “Tsumiki-chan, do you mind?”

“I’ll wrangle our rogue Agent Gumi,” she promised in a jumping salute. “Miki the loyal agent is at your service in your hour of need!”

“Thanks. Maybe you can start by hiding all the dish detergent bottles from Satoru and his influence, hmm?”

“Will do!” Tsumiki scooped up the forgotten blanket on the couch in a big fluffy cloud and cupped her mouth to shout against the bathroom door as she ran past. “Satoru-nii, did you hear that!? You’re on tight watch starting today!”

“Don’t tempt him,” Suguru-nii called after her. “It’s too early to explain perfect karaoke to the neighbours.”

She found Megumi with his arms folded in a glare up at the closet, melon bread crumbs licked from his lips as stoically as Gama.

“It’s stuck again,” came the annoyed conclusion after a solid kick at the bottom, right after the umpire roared out two strikes in a roar. Megumi planted his feet against one end of the sliding door and jerked his head. “You pull, I’ll push.”

“On three!” Tsumiki ran to the other end and latched on, digging her heels in. “One…two…”

The umpire cried out it was three outs and the inning half ended. There was a sound like someone hitting their head on the showerhead. Suguru-nii was fighting with the sink tap, muttering about reorganizing the armada of sugary cereal boxes Satoru-nii insisted on getting for himself that didn’t fit anywhere.

The closet door let out a mighty creak, which was all the warning Tsumiki got before it wrenched sideways and an avalanche of boxes, old toys, books, and at least one uninflated bath ring buried her in a startled shriek. Megumi clambered on top, fanning and coughing, and pulled out a sleek, plastic-wrapped box from the mess.

“Bingo,” he proclaimed, using a fuzzy bathrobe that had to be Satoru-nii’s from all the game monsters decorating it as a slide. Tsumiki was left to claw her way out with kicking legs and hope her hair hadn’t snagged on anything. “I just need water for these to work, right? I’ll do the dishes—”

“Not so fast!” Tsumiki snatched his arm, planting her hands seriously on his shoulders. “Agent Megumi, do you know what kind of power you’re wielding right now? If you’re not careful, Howl’s castle could be ruined forever!” She ran back to the kitchen table, grabbed the boxy castle, and flipped open the tiny door that revealed a red-and-orange cut-out of the little fire demon. “Think of Calcifer inside! He’ll be drenched!”

“I’ll draw him a wetsuit,” her brother deadpanned, lifting up the watercolour pencil set. He shook it. Too many things rattled around inside. “...plan C, half-and-half. I’m gonna have to grind up our old crayon stumps and dilute them to make up for the learning curve.” He flicked the castle door shut. “I’ll do the dishes for extra efficiency.”

Suguru-nii’s voice broke in from the kitchen. “No one is grinding up or diluting anything, we’ll just stop by a stationary store on the way. And a healthy breakfast,” he tilted into the tiny hallway, ladle pointed half-threateningly at Megumi, “is ready. Dishes after.”

“Plan D: we’re going to Greece,” Megumi said so seriously it might’ve been genuine as he all but threw himself into his seat, leaping over the spilt chalk Tsumiki bent to clear up first. “I want a phyllo pie. Tsumiki, you can have baklava.”

“No, a normal stationary store—” Suguru-nii shaded his eyes at the mess behind them, a smear of flour across his chin and his apron splattered with drying tempura batter. “What did you do to the closet?”

“It exploded as a sacrifice for bringing in our rogue agent,” Tsumiki chimed in when another mighty crash sounded.

This one shook the entire apartment, plunged Megumi’s spoon too deep into his omurice, made Suguru-nii’s eyes as big as saucers, and sent a skip of worry in Tsumiki’s heart.

It had come from behind the bathroom door.

“Strike! Batter out! That’s both the leadoff and the two-hole down, can the defense keep the momentum going in the top of the fourth—” The TV announcers didn’t care.

A caterwaul-like squawk rose up, followed by the rattling plastic flails of the shower curtain. Then the sounds of that ripping. The echoing bonk of the rod coming down.

Suguru-nii lunged into action fast enough he skidded right past the bathroom, tripped over a patterned beach towel from Okinawa, and had to tap-dance over the closet avalanche, Megumi taking point by his arm. Tsumiki flocked to Suguru-nii’s other side, and together the three of them took up a triangle formation: baffled, concerned, and uncaring, from left to right.

“Is he dead,” Megumi started to say around his spoon. “B-grade horror movies say you can’t die on sunny mornings.”

“ —the offense’s hope now rests on the shoulders of their three-hole hanging in there long enough to connect it to the cleanup— ”

In a horrible running crescendo, the worst sound of all erupted: a slippery series of thunks, like the seals plunging into the water in Megumi’s documentaries, that wouldn’t stop. Megumi had his omurice spoon sticking out of his mouth, chewing unimpressed, but Tsumiki counted a terrible tally of five before she shrivelled into a wince, daring to look at Suguru-nii, staring into space with his ear co*cked.

“That was my shampoo.” He was motionless one moment and a blur the next. The bathroom door was slammed open so fast the knob fell right off and rolled around in a tight circle. “That was my shampoo—”

Steam hit them all full in the face. Out flooded an entire cloud of bubbles, some bigger than Tsumiki’s fist and others tiny enough to pop on her fingertip. Suds were scattered all over the tiles, the sink edges were crowded with their gargle cups, toothbrushes, dental floss, and tooth brushing timers, and the mirror had fogged up badly enough it was dripping at the bottom. There was also a faint crack from the time Megumi had been so out of it from soccer practice and combat lessons back-to-back he’d shoved cursed energy into the mirror itself while trying to scrub it with a cleaning rag.

No one had told the landlord yet, and no one would, Satoru-nii had crowed, because no one was telling the landlord and therefore the landlord would never know. Their unit was the local oddball of their floor anyway, but Tsumiki loved every bit of it right down to the rubber bands once tied to cupboard handles that they didn’t need anymore, now piled in a box on top of the fridge crammed beside her old stepping stool.

But Suguru-nii’s shampoo? The five thick pumps, along with seven conditioner bottles, six stay-in creams, and three hair masks, all lay scattered on the floor. One had even ended up backflipping into the sink. Another huddled miserably on the mound of Satoru-nii’s clothes on the floor, whose edges were now turning a damp shade of tinted green.

Megumi’s spoon clattered to the floor, his voice lashing out in a disbelieving hiss.

“My science experiment!?”

His jar of pond algae stashed in the corner had been tipped and spilt everywhere, frothy water with bits of sediment and plant matter and live bacteria washing up to Tsumiki’s socks.

She squealed.

“My socks!”

Suguru-nii scooped her up before she could fully make out the gangly, steaming figure sprawled in the tub. The showerhead was still running, the curtain shredded into pieces. Satoru-nii’s ankle was hiked up on the curtain rod that had dropped at an angle, his other red hot leg flopping like a fish over the lip of the tub. All she made out was the flattened white of his hair and too many soap bubbles before Suguru-nii’s fingers sealed shut, his voice rising in uncanny, spluttering horror.

Tsumiki yanked on his cheek. “Su-gu-ru-nii, focus! Is Satoru-nii okay?”

“No,” came the strangled whisper. “I’m going to kill him this time. The night when we were gutting fish doesn’t even come close and I’m going to kill him —”

“My science experiment,” Megumi repeated numbly like he’d been nailed in the stomach with a ball at soccer practice. There was the thump of his knees sinking down and the tinny scrape of his spoon trying to scoop a tiny bit of pond water. Suguru-nii slapped it clattering out of his hand. “My algae.”

“You know, Suguru…” Satoru-nii’s dim voice was the closest flavour of vaguely apologetic under the shower still working at full blast. The fallen bottles started slowly clunking around, bumping the sink and toilet, and she guessed Limitless was doing a cleanup job. “I was crunching the numbers and if you shaved off ju-ust four point eight percent from the payment to your parents, you’d actually have ten percent more money to blow on your fifteen step hair routine—”

“Shut. Up. Satoru. Did you—did you use Blue on the curtain!?” Suguru-nii sounded a little shy of both shrill and hysterical, so Tsumiki relegated herself to some more cheek pulls.

“Did you even evacuate my rubber duck first!?” Megumi threw in bitterly, Tsumiki narrowly dodging his vicious leg kicks as Suguru-nii held him back by the scruff of his shirt.

More of the shredded curtain came tumbling down in a loud splash. “I used the water to pull myself up first! Turns out Limitless doesn’t like streamlined liquids very much outside of Infinity’s neutral state—oh, but Gumi, your ducky’s just fine, just a lil inside-out. Beak’s where his tail was.”

“What about my windup plesiosaur!? I was gonna give that to Juri, it’d better not be broken—”

“And that’s a strike! Three up, three down, what a comeback from the opposite team in the nick of time, their captain’s left stranded on third base…!”

The smoke alarm went off. The pan of tempura back in the kitchen was splattering and popping and crackling like someone had set off a firework. Tsumiki fanned her nose absently, coughing at the faint smoke, and hoped the omurice hadn’t gotten too cold.

The neighbour who’d moved a few units down from them last month creaked open their door, took a few steps, and scuttled back inside under the harsh whispers of several other voices. The hallway outside went quiet again.

The smoke alarm continued cawing out its harsh beeps.

“My algae,” Megumi muttered in the tone of voice of someone who’d lost everything.

“That’s it,” Suguru-nii suddenly said, calm enough they both froze. “No more watching baseball TV in the shower with Six Eyes to pull one over Utahime-san, no more pond water next to the toilet, no more overflowing death traps in the coat closet. I’m making an executive—stay in the goddamn tub , Satoru, you’re in timeout, drop that pout right now—family decision. No ands, buts, ors, or ifs allowed.”

“That makes the score neck-and-neck with the latest run—”

“Megumi-kun, shut that thing up.”

Suguru-nii yanked the door shut hard enough the frame shook. His smile was dark and serene as he whirled in a typhoon of apron tails, tangled bangs shadowing his face. He circled his wrists behind his back to face Tsumiki, cringing in sympathy, and Megumi, who’d fetched the remote from what sounded like Gyokuken’s panting jaws and ripped out the battery, still muttering about his plesiosaur and lanky white-haired orangutans.

“Thank you. As of this moment, we’re officially,” Suguru-nii’s smile crescented his eyes, veins popping around them and disappearing into his temples, “enacting Plan E.”

…plan…E?

They were moving out.

Slumped on the floor, hands buried in her hair, and cheeks blotchy from the heat, Tsumiki stared in a daze at the mess around her.

Her and Megumi’s bedroom looked like a wild animal had run through it.

She covered her eyes. Uncovered them. The room stayed the same.

Erasers, pencils, rulers, notebooks. That was the usual scattered stuff from homework, plus her latest take-home origami project. The real problem was all the boxes full of stuffed animals, plastic dinosaurs, yarn balls, washi tape rolls, embroidery floss bags, bead packets, dolls, trains, planes, rockets, dump trucks, nature books, DVDs, and a half-finished model castle Megumi had abandoned. Tsumiki’s dollhouse, teacup party set, and carousel music box took up a box all on their own and hadn’t been sealed yet.

Moving. They were actually moving out.

The TV in the living room had been packed right away, to prevent distractions. Satoru-nii had switched to hovering in a local laundromat to keep up with baseball season, struck up something with the old ladies who lived on the first floor, and pranced back with special details on where the best moving boxes were sold.

He bought fifty boxes.

Suguru-nii had shoved Satoru-nii’s self-pleased face away from the salad bowl he was carrying and kept explaining.

“Once there’s some space between missions and TA lessons in a couple days,” a marker was cleanly uncapped by his teeth and circled in a large but precise circle on the calendar, an underscore made across several days, “Satoru and I will start on our room. I’ll drop off all the boxes and supplies we’ll need tomorrow though, so Tsumiki-chan, Megumi-kun, you can get a head start by making a list of leave and leave-nots for your bedroom. The closet’s also going to need to be sorted out from top to bottom, so leave aside the unsorted stuff for when one of us is around, alright?”

Point form tasks were jotted down on each squared day.

“Living room we’ll do together since a certain someone combined all the video game and movie stacks by the couch.” Suguru-nii had aimed the uncapped marker at Satoru-nii’s nose, his smile lethal as his wrist slap. A successfully sneaked lettuce leaf slurped up into Satoru-nii’s mouth like a rabbit anyway. “Laundry room shouldn’t be much of a problem; it’s time we got a new washing machine anyway. As for the kitchen…”

The bathroom had been preserved as “an archaeological nuke zone”, as Megumi had put it, once all scrunchies, elastics, and other hair products had been evacuated. Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii had been banned from the bathtub—Suguru-nii’s doing—and did all their showering at Jujutsu Tech now, but that meant Ijichi-niisan had stopped by twice to anxiously drop off towels or socks forgotten in his car.

That had been a week ago. Tsumiki had been in a daze then and in a daze now. Moving out of this cozy, crammed, cluttered, lovely oddball of an apartment unit still felt unreal. Too unreal.

At least…she could bring all her plants along, including the new watermelon seedling Suguru-nii’s mom had given her she’d been strictly monitoring and watering. Nanako had watched her sourly but attentively at the gate and made a bottlecap bet with Megumi it wouldn’t grow any fruit.

“Of course they can come,” Suguru-nii had said with a smile when Tsumiki asked with big eyes at breakfast. “We won’t be taking a taxi back and forth this time, so we’re not as limited with transport space. Just make sure the watering can’s empty first.”

“Are we hiring a moving company!?” She’d perked up fast enough she almost choked on her miso soup and had to be patted on the back. “Like on TV? The men in blue overalls and caps? Can I stamp the clipboard with your hanko?”

Suguru-nii had hesitated bringing his spoon to his mouth, then laughed. “No, no. We’re doing this the DIY way. It’ll be more hands-on. And unlike last time,” his smile grew softer, “Satoru and I will be there all the way. Promise.”

“Oh. Okay.” Tsumiki had slid back into her seat. A moving truck, ramps and trolleys and everything, would be perfect for something to draw for social studies class; they were talking city jobs lately and Megumi had already picked the emergency services. Yet she somehow felt relieved. A truck would make it too official. And even more unreal.

“But you and Satoru can’t drive,” Megumi had pointed out.

“And that, Megumi-kun, is where the beauty of connections comes in handy.”

“You’re going to make our family doctor drive.”

“Only because Ijichi-kun’s fully booked outside your combat lessons.”

“Because you can’t drive.” Megumi’s next question had been his last. “...do we have to switch schools?”

“Of course not. The morning commute might be a little different though.”

Her brother had leaned over the table. “You sure?”

“Mhm. No schedule changes. Since we don’t have to worry about cover stories anymore,” and there was an old term, because they were a real family signed off back at the start of the year, “there’s no point in transferring, right?”

“...right.” And that was that, Megumi plopping back down to eat and muttering something about another map redraw. “I got my own plans, you know.”

In the present, her cool, calm, and studious little brother had turned into a studious anti-trash warden.

“—don’t even need this either. Stop hoarding already.” Tsumiki plugged her ears as Megumi thundered past the doorway for the fifth time, his hair tinged indigo from the sunlight and a mighty stegosaurus swinging its tail on his tank top. He ruthlessly soccer-kicked a fat cardboard box out from Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii’s room towards the balcony doors. “This one’s going into the junk river. Permanently.”

The mighty junk river, dubbed as such from all the peeling movie posters, ripped magazines, and other odd ends that made it up, spilled past both bedrooms inside a pair of yellow tape lines Megumi had slapped down as traffic guidelines. The genkan wasn’t big enough to fit all of their trash, too busy holding collapsible boxes, bubble wrap, disposable bags, and packing peanuts.

As her first priority once the packing craze had taken over, Tsumiki had made sure to painstakingly take down all of their kindergarten drawings. Especially the cute one Megumi had once made of them all as a stick figure family before he could mistakenly soccer kick his old drawing book into the junk river—wait, no. The drawing book had been salvaged whole, she remembered chiding him about that over science homework, but the drawing itself had already been torn out but not hung up, so then…

Tsumiki sat up with a gasp, shaking out a few sticky tape balls from her toes, and skidded over to their desk crowded with homework. There was a loud thud by the genkan.

“Megumi,” she called over her shoulder, rummaging through the drawers. “Don’t run everywhere or you’ll trip again! Seriously!”

There was a muffled groan and the sound of a trash bag being used as a prop-up.

Where was that drawing of his? She’d been sure it’d been tucked away, safe and sound, but she’d last seen the original drawing book somewhere in…right, the back of their closet. It was a bit easier to rifle through with most of their clothes packed already, but their bookshelf stuff had been packed in boxes and moved inside for space. Megumi kept stressing something called “Tetris economics” whenever Satoru-nii wasn’t around to hear him repeat the exact same made-up words.

To Tsumiki, it just meant everything lovely and colourful was turning into drab boxes before her eyes.

Snagging some scissors, she cut the flaps open to flip through used notebooks, drawing books, and picture books. Another sense of deja vu wound like curling vines at the back of her neck. She and Megumi had done something like this when they were brainstorming for what to use their pocket money on. Dollhouses and tea party sets were a given for her now —Megumi had blown half of his this month on getting a telescope he’d bundled out the door, his eyes bright, and never returned with—but it was silly looking back on it.

“No, wait, Guuumi, this one’s full of memories! Fond memories of youth!” Outside, the box was being dragged past again all by itself, Megumi bolting in a chase with his fingers snapping into the sign for Gama.

“Who the hell’s interested in your stupid memories, Suguru made me throw out my beluga towel and I’ve had that since I was a baby.” An invisible, squelchy tongue latched onto the box and started hauling it back, Satoru-nii’s bare heels skidding along as he threw his head back and laughed at Megumi’s stormy teeth-grinding. “You can’t keep your old stuff if I can’t keep mine!”

“Ah-ah, language, my little danger bear!”

“I’ll danger you! ”

Tsumiki’s hands slowed at the bottom of a box. This one wasn’t any of the new ones, its frayed corners sagging and its smell extra musty. There were forgotten dusty beads and dyed cotton ball fluff, but Megumi’s drawing was there, tucked inside the front flap of his old drawing book, and Tsumiki blew out a sigh of relief. Mission: success.

This drawing of them as a family had been solidified and made real on official, serious papers. Her brightly blushing little brother who’d hid in the bathroom after she’d proudly shown off his family drawing was now way taller, meaner, and rowdier, but he couldn’t have known it’d turn into reality when he unscrewed his crayons and set to work that chilly, cozy winter afternoon in kindergarten.

Beaming softly, Tsumiki smoothed out the crinkled drawing, its four stick figures—round glasses, bun hair, ponytail, and spiky hair—just as she remembered. But below the drawing book was something she didn’t recognize, no matter how much she turned it over and peered at it from all angles. Buttercup wrapping paper gave away a book-like shape, but it was only as thin as one of her school notebooks. And it smelt like…

Okaasan, look at this! I tied the knots real good! That okay?

Her own voice echoed in her ears, her fingers clutching the package tight in soft awe under the panes and dust motes of the window. Oh. It smelt like the home before this home: her mom’s old danchi half the size of this apartment unit.

The tug-of-war outside spilled backwards, a tide of packing peanuts and tape balls coming to shore and Gama’s throaty ribbit bouncing off the walls.

“Miki, you doing okay in here?” Satoru-nii stuck his head in, all lavender-touched hair and his shirt sleeves messily rolled up to his elbows. The ribbons hung on the open windowsill threw shadows on his face, his cat ear headband and 3D movie glasses stacked with his blackouts completing the look. He plucked a stray packing peanut from his collar, squeezing the little thing like a marshmallow. “Want me to wrangle any dolls with Limitless?”

Startling out of her stupor, Tsumiki spun to give a thumbs-up, hugging the odd package to her chest one-armed. “All good! I already packed them yesterday! The matryoshka ones too!”

“See, she’s way more organized than you.” Megumi leapt off an invisible launchpad that had to be Gama’s head and wrapped his legs around Satoru-nii’s broad shoulders, driving a fist into Infinity and snatching a dull coupon weaved between his other fingers. He had an animal headband jammed on too, this one with puppy ears. “You liar, this one expired three years ago. Junk river. Now.”

“It’s about the nostalgia, Gumi, you’ll understand when you’re older!” A fluttering wave and Satoru-nii was off again, Megumi hanging from his arm like a monkey bar, Tsumiki gigglingly waving them off.

She and the door half-ajar were left alone. She unwrapped the yellow paper carefully and set it aside with Megumi’s family drawing. In her lap, her hands curiously turned over a cover tied with frayed yarn bows. The title was framed by glued pieces of fabric, surrounded by lopsided flowers, and scrawled in crayon cheap enough it was still leaving smears on her fingers.

TSUMIKI’S FRST FIRST SCRAPBOOK

Each page turn revealed something different: a pressed gingko leaf, a set of cat stickers arranged in a paw shape, a yellowed train ticket that looked like it’d come from one of the countryside booths in Mimiko-chan and Nanako-chan’s picture-to-word books. A piece of string, a rough patch of crayon rubbings in faded colours.

Tsumiki turned the pages slower and slower.

She didn’t remember much of these, but Little Tsumiki had put a lot of work into it. Everything was helpfully labelled in handwriting that looked like…Okaasan’s, probably. It was too neat to be her own. There was even a paper stain of curry and a tiny garden of pop-up flowers that spread across both pages. One page was entirely slapped with what looked like scavenged scraps of washi tape in solid colour, so plain compared to the polka dots, stripes, stars, and petals she’d loved to decorate with in arts and crafts class.

The cardboard witch broomstick she’d made that was now lying against the bedpost would probably have looked like it came straight out of a storybook in the eyes of Little Tsumiki. Big Tsumiki, though, was entranced by a page near the end of the scrapbook. It was labeled in Okaasan’s handwriting too, a small scrawl in the top right corner.

“That boy,” she read, “made this.”

Okaasan, Megumi made this! Another memory played like a blurry movie: her bare feet thundering into the kitchen, her pinched fingertips triumphantly holding up a blotchy piece of paper. Megumi had been a ways behind her in his booted onesie, a button missing at his collar, his outstretched hands and lower face splattered with vibrant wet yellows, blues, and greens.

Pa. His mouth had opened. Root.

He says it’s a parrot! Look, look!

Under Tsumiki’s inspecting eye, a pair of blotchy dried handprints had warped the coarse paper. The chubby shape of Megumi’s fingers were meant to be the wings, she guessed, but the parrot didn’t have a proper head or a body. Just wings. She couldn’t remember what Okaasan had thought of it. There’d definitely been a lot of clean-up involved…it was a good thing the fingerpaint had been taste-safe. Megumi’s chin had been blue for a while. It’d been hard proving to Okaasan she’d brushed it all off his teeth because he never smiled.

My brother is soooo smart! It looks just like the one in the picture book! He made a tiger too!

Now that same brother had a winged shikigami with a human face and deadly talons, Nue’s giant sun-brimmed wings flaring behind his tiny, teeth-bared smirk that only Suguru-nii could bring out in their lessons. That miraculous change had happened right here, in this apartment. These walls had watched him grow up the same way she no longer wore her hair in messy quarter pigtails or needed her smiley face sticker stool.

Thanks to Tsumiki’s own hands, those walls were empty. Only paler spots where the tape for their drawings had been.

The front door unlocked and swung open, earning a fresh stampede of footsteps over the soft jingle of the key being pocketed and the beginning huff of Suguru-nii’s laughter. Her head jerked up.

“Suguru, tell Satoru he doesn’t need this movie projector reel, it’s practically decomposing—”

“Suguru, Suguru, you have got to tell Gumi all about your cringe classic mystery novel phase back when we were first-years—”

“First of all, it wasn’t cringe and it wasn’t a phase, I still have Edogawa-sensei’s best works back in Ibaraki and a signed hand-me-down copy of Yokomizo-sensei’s The Honjin Murders—and second of all, look at me, you are not getting this other popsicle, I’m sharing with Tsumiki-chan—Megumi-kun, yes, you can throw the projector reel…”

Suguru-nii’s amused footsteps circled into the kitchen once he’d shaken off his two tails that thundered back into the other bedroom, the light rasp of the project reel slithering on their heels through the half-closed door.

Tsumiki hesitated to run out and show them all her new discovery. The scrapbook open on her lap had traces of Okaasan all over it. Okaasan was a…strange topic in the fact she wasn’t a topic at all.

No one had brought her up since that fateful, important family day in February. No one needed to either; Tsumiki had been certain of that. But when Suguru-nii had gently shown her and Megumi two files, two photos of their moms, they’d looked so different side to side. Soft, perky spikes like blackberries and a hint of a barely controlled grin. A neat low bob cut, thin lips, and serious, attentive eyes.

It had been the first time she’d ever seen what Megumi’s mom had looked like, but Tsumiki had only had eyes for Okaasan and her serious eyes that had looked a little tired, a little sad, under the glossy glint of the photo Tsumiki had tilted in the car window’s sun.

Had she always looked like that? Tsumiki didn’t know. As of that day, where they’d dressed up like a mafia and eaten out fancy, Okaasan was no longer family, all because she’d never shown up—no matter how busy she might have been—so she could keep being family.

It had confused Tsumiki. And saddened her. But it hadn’t really disappointed her as much as she thought. Okaasan had always had so many different sides to her: there was the nice side whose handwriting had been kept right here in this scrapbook, then there was the distant side who hadn’t even left a letter or a note to anyone when she’d disappeared. There was the smiling side who came home late with a fat envelope and said they could eat something other than curry for a week. There was the quiet side who lay in her bed all weekend while Tsumiki stood on her stool and poked at the laundry machine.

Tsumiki shook her head hard, shut the scrapbook fast, and stuffed it under her heart-shaped pillow nestled up against the wall. The paper wrapping she crumpled up in the trash just before Suguru-nii knocked on the doorframe with a shallow bow, his hair down free by his ribs falling dramatically. It smelt a little like mountain grass. His uniform jacket was tied loose around his waist, and she bet Ijichi-niisan’s car was waiting downstairs.

“Requesting the audience of my lady.” One eye flickered open with a sun-touched smile. “May I enter, ojou-chan?”

Shaking off her thoughts, Tsumiki pinched her skirt like it was a poofy gown and curtseyed. “You may, but you got back too early! We haven’t gotten to cleaning up yet. Guess whose fault that is?”

Suguru-nii hummed, tying off his hair cord loosely around his wrist in a quick wrap. “Well, a little birdie told me two hooligans were goofing around while a certain princess was hard at work. I thought I’d spring a surprise inspector visit and,” he revealed a packet of two Garigari-kun popsicles from behind his back, “bestow the greatest prize of all on the best worker. Satoru was whining until I gave him a ramune bottle.”

“Another for the collection.” Tsumiki’s heart rose a little when she was passed a pale blue popsicle that made her tongue shiver. “Is it extra hot over in the mountains this week?”

“Cooler than the city, actually, but we were doing quite a bit of combat drills earlier.” Suguru-nii leaned against the wall and tucked his tabi socks up, his bontan sinking on the mattress and his head co*cked invitingly. “What about you? How’s it going juggling being in charge, doing the last wave of homework before summer vacation, and surviving the urban heat island?”

Sinking with each article listed out on Suguru-nii’s fingers, Tsumiki took a solemn lick of her popsicle. “A very, very difficult task.”

“Hm, you suddenly switched to talking like you’re in a historical drama.”

“Yes. I may have underestimated Satoru-nii’s barbarianism.” That came out a little too gloomy, she added perkily, “Megumi is now his own daimyo.”

“Oh my. How dire.”

“Indeed, indeed.” They shared a giggle. “Seriously, come back from all these supervising day missions and wrangle them both already! I have to do everything! Laundry’s in a couple days too and Megumi always leaves his sweaty stuff and socks everywhere. I have to chase him like crazy…”

And now there were those tiny memories of the home before this one that were popping up like foam bubbles on seashore waves. When she tried to put her finger on them, they vanished. They weren’t at all like how clear and pretty she remembered Megumi’s wide eyes and heated cheeks when Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii had given him his randoseru as a happy birthday present.

That lovely memory was tied to their poor, lumpy couch that was used more for storing things than being sat on lately, but they might not be able to bring it along. It had dusty Doraemon stickers on the back from Satoru-nii’s slapping fingertips and a fading doodle on the armrest from when Shoko-neesan had tested out a leaky new pen during one of their check-ups, but one of its legs had cracked and they’d been using bottle caps and paper wads to prop it up instead.

The walls. The genkan. The couch. So many unbringable things.

“Congratulations, this is the Jujutsu Tech dorm experience with Satoru, dated 2005.” Suguru-nii swirled his popsicle about in a circle and Tsumiki pinched herself into the moment again. “I guess I’ll have to be your Shoko after all?”

“You can never be a Shoko, Suguru-nii. It’s not in your blood. You thrive on,” Tsumiki rocked forward on her chair, brandishing her popsicle, “thinly veiled chaos. That’s why we don’t have a proper moving date yet and why you’re not stopping that.”

That was the sounds of Satoru-nii and Megumi through the wall: the sharp zips of tape rolls being stretched and the ching of the boxcutter knife Megumi liked playing around with a little too much.

“Got me there.” Suguru-nii slid down like a half-melted, leisurely puddle and shut his eyes, the window framing him in sunlight. “But it gives you plenty of time for going down memory lane, doesn’t it? And sort out all the odds and ends you didn’t know you didn’t need anymore.”

Didn’t…need anymore…? But she wanted to keep the walls! And the genkan! And the couch! The fridge too, even if it whined and clunked a little suspiciously at times…

Tsumiki shoved her whole popsicle into her mouth to block her tiny noise of protest, shivering at the brain freeze.

“Y-Yeah! Actually, I found a whole bunch of Megumi and I’s old clothes! Wanna see?” She hopped off her chair and raced to the closet, hauling a heavy box over and tossing open the flaps. “They make us look so big—look, here’s the first sundress Satoru-nii ever got for me.” She held the golden gingkos and orange slices up for Suguru-nii’s closer inspection, a hat with a thick sun-stained ribbon that used to be creamy white perched on her finger. “It’s so cute, isn’t it? If we could super-size it, I’d wear it again!”

That was just the start. There was Megumi’s tiny stegosaurus bag that matched with her bunny-shaped one, his blue-rimmed baby bottle that still smelled faintly of milk when she held her curious nose to it, his tiny bright yellow Pikachu earmuffs, his fuzzy frog onesie…

And now she’d made herself glum again. Every item was tied to a memory as sharp as the geometric rose pink, silver-framed glasses Satoru-nii had brought back last month purely as a nightlife accessory. Memories that were super-glued to the inside and outside of this apartment unit. The parking lot had seen so many slushy snowball fights.

“They are cute.” Suguru-nii’s eyes curiously flitted between each item passed to him. “Satoru still has those Raichi earmuffs, you know. I think I lost my Phanpy ones sometime though.”

“And I lost mine running late to school last winter!” Tsumiki’s arms were swallowed up by the box as she pulled out a thick spiral pokemon notebook, digging into the past faster and faster to try and escape the rain cloud chasing her. “So we’re even…”

She was hit with a lightning bolt of nostalgia instead.

The notebook’s blocky title was still neater than that of her scrapbook just about peeking from the heart pillow behind Suguru-nii. He leaned over with his elbows on his knees, his hair tickling her shoulders, their tucked popsicles cooling the inside of their cheeks.

“Tsumiki’s jujutsu trainer notebook. Number one,” Suguru-nii read over her protests, breaking into a chuckle. The pages were a little crusty in spots from water stains, but all the scribbled pencil writing was clear. “Ah, why do you write so cutely? It’s like you’re in a storybook.”

“I was excited…” Tsumiki sloughed off the gritty bits of her popsicle. “I remember thinking ‘Suguru-nii gave me an important task, so I have to do well’.” She giggled before trailing off.

Three different worlds were overlapping. She could imagine Little Tsumiki’s pigtailed head popping up in the corner of her eye, wondering what they were looking at and where they were going.

Away was the answer. Far away again. She, like Okaasan, was going somewhere and leaving behind memories spilling out like a broken hourglass.

“And in this folder is…aha, these photos are from Okinawa, right? You’ve got a good eye.” Suguru-nii’s face had lit up almost child-like as he flicked through Polaroid photo after Polaroid photo, right up until his fingers froze. Tsumiki climbed over his knee and stiffened too, her shoulders hiding her ears.

There was a different February memory here. A shot of everyone crowded around the remains of a party in candle-lit dark, peace signs and reluctant poses and bright grins. A birthday party.

“...I was wondering where this went.” Suguru-nii rubbed the smooth finish before pocketing it, the action petering off with his thumb twisting a loop of his hair cord.

Tsumiki fiddled with her empty popsicle stick, the top stained a damp blue. “Sorry. I must’ve mixed it up after we got back from Naha.”

“Don’t be.” Her hair was petted, fast then slow, Suguru-nii’s jaw a little tight despite his smile as he looked at the ribbons dancing in the window, fingertips rapping the floor. “I already packed his snowglobe. First priority.”

That was right. Haibara-niisan had been in this apartment too. As well as Nanami-niisan. There were so many things she’d forgotten but shouldn’t have. Like, for example, Nanami-niisan’s birthday had definitely passed.

Leaning on Suguru-nii’s thigh, Tsumiki cast a quiet glance around. There were three medium boxes, Megumi’s name scrawled in thick Sharpie on the side, stacked under the window. Three for Tsumiki. One big box that was in the middle of assembly before her brother had run off to grab a cold can of anmitsu from the kitchen and never came back except to viciously snatch a borrowed copy of Slam Dunk he’d got from Hino-kun, because Satoru-nii had the full boxed set hidden somewhere and never told him.

As if a magical spell had been lifted, the bedroom looked so, so lonely with empty corners and walls in full view, their cluttered desk and shared bed the only spots of remaining colour. Their tiny closet she was so used to seeing jam-packed every morning was full of hangers, Megumi’s soccer uniform hanging on like a stubborn string of play-dough. She tried to picture it with only her stuff and not all his hoodies and tank tops and shorts she tirelessly neatened up for him. The idea of sleeping in different rooms had been running circles in her head too.

…this place was too small for them all now, sure, but she’d never imagined a day would come where it would be. It would belong to someone else after them too. It’d change skins like the chameleons in Megumi’s nature books and shed all her—their—precious times. Playing. Reading. Doing homework. Staying up a little late guessing where Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii were.

Her eyelids prickled hot all of a sudden. Tsumiki blinked hard enough to make the room disappear.

“Suguru-nii,” she mumbled eventually, weaving a small loose braid into his hair, “is Nanami-niisan doing okay as a grownup by himself? Even though he’s not a sorcerer anymore like you and Satoru-nii?”

A slight pause. Satoru-nii and Megumi were still going at it behind the wall, the sounds suddenly distant compared to the soft sigh Suguru-nii gave, then the reflexive smile he offered. “Yes. We and Shoko still have his number, you know. And Satoru wrangled his address.”

“Did he get birthday presents?”

“That…I’m not so sure about. He likes,” Suguru-nii’s shoulders drew back softly, the scratch of his cheek half-hidden by his bangs, “not being fussed over. You know?”

“Right.” She tucked her popsicle stick in the corner of her mouth. Once they moved out of here, she’d lose the kitchen counter where Nanami-niisan had stood for hours and mixed cookie dough and knelt briefly, his face impassive but his fingers awkward, to wipe vanilla extract off her cheek. She’d lose Haibara-niisan’s silly grins left like dust motes falling down, down, down, onto someone else’s futon laid out where the bed was.

That new person, that different tenant, wouldn’t understand how important that promise for Tomorrowland had been. How it got broken. How even if Haibara-niisan came back—something just as impossible as Okaasan coming back—he’d come back to a totally different apartment unit.

“If he calls sometime, I’ll tell him you asked after him.” Suguru-nii rose and started gathering up his hair into a high ponytail, the hair cord held by his teeth. When he spoke again, the conversation had picked itself up and carried on. “Just make sure to leave space for new things, alright? We’ll get you two big closets. Bigger than this one. Then Satoru can buy you all the dresses in the world.”

“Do you still have old things?” Glad for a different topic, Tsumiki gathered up her memory gallery and layered them back inside the box with care. She snipped off the right length of tape and sealed the flaps. “From when you were small.”

“Mhm. Just ask Okaasan about my old things anytime. I think she still has the birdhouse I made in third…no, fourth grade.” There was a weighty, considerate pause. Suguru-nii’s fingers slowed before securing a tight knot, the cord tails dangling as he turned. She could feel him looking at her very nicely, very delicately, like he was piecing together a quilt from all the random scraps she liked collecting from her sewing clubmates to make cute patchwork handkerchiefs.

Tsumiki scratched out a few air bubbles under the tape.

Suguru-nii knew her too well.

“Your lady,” she sighed, finally caving, and hugged her knee, “thinks she might be sick.”

“Sick how?” Suguru-nii slipped back into motion, stooping to pick up all the tape balls and drop them in the trash can. He was a black and gold cat under the window’s sunlight, all long strides and gentle pawfalls of his tabi socks.

“Homesick. But she hasn’t gone away yet.” Tsumiki glanced at her heart pillow, giving the now heavy crush to her heart a name as fitting as the mighty junk river. “Maybe she wants our packing plan to go on forever.”

“Oh, forever and ever?”

“Yeah. Maybe she wouldn’t mind if Satoru-nii flew off and came back with fifty more boxes.”

“And she doesn’t want to get rid of anything at all, does she?”

“Sort of. She wants to bring other stuff.” Walls, genkan, couch, kitchen counter. “Stuff that can’t be put into boxes.”

“I see. That’s a problem. We won’t be able to work around a schedule that runs on forever..”

“We wouldn’t,” Tsumiki agreed, nibbling on her bare popsicle stick. She wrinkled her nose at the taste of slick cheap wood. “I think…a birthday party would cheer her up. With balloons and bows and cupcakes. Lots of presents too.”

“Precisely why we’re going to move before your birthday so you can celebrate it somewhere new,” came the gentle reply, her chin chucked playfully to meet Suguru-nii’s eyes. “We’ll have plenty of space to do whatever you want for it too. Maybe a movie and a gaming night, and…”

Tsumiki reached up and squeezed Suguru-nii’s hand, bringing him down to her level as she looked him seriously in the eyes. He slid on one of his summer gloves—open-backed against the heat—without looking away, his gaze soft but firm.

“And?” she repeated, letting him pull on the other glove and brush her cheek with his knuckles. Oh, she’d gone and let a tiny tear escape.

“You’re not the first person in the wide, wide world who’s gotten awfully sick like this too.” Suguru-nii pulled her to her feet, turning her in a small spin to take in the room again, hands resting on her shoulders. “Ibaraki’s nearly one hundred kilometres from Tokyo. Did you think I wasn’t just a little homesick with only a few boxes and a duffel bag of clothes and a bento from Okaasan? I technically have two houses. Here,” his gloved finger pointed down, “and over there.”

It flicked in a direction Tsumiki instinctively knew had to be right where the little gate outside Nanako-chan and Mimiko-chan’s house was.

“When I’m in one place for too long, I usually end up missing the other. I can’t split myself in half either.” There came the most reassuring smile in the world. “So your heart’s not wrong for feeling that way, Tsumiki-chan. It’s fine.”

“It’s fine?”

“It’s fine.” He stroked her head, thumbs slipping flyaways behind her ears. “Promise.”

Then, why did it have to weigh down so miserably on her like the time she’d regretfully offered to carry her and two friends’ randoseru while running late? The frail corner of the scrapbook gazed back at her. Megumi was no longer a tiny toddler with finger paint on his face, Okaasan had left, and they had to move again.

“Our new place,” Tsumiki murmured, letting Suguru-nii lean her against the cool row of buttons running up to his stomach, her voice muffled under the soothing stroke of his fingers. “It can’t be one hundred kilometres from here, can it?”

Suguru-nii’s calm, unreadable face gazed down at her. He hummed.

“...can it?”

Exactly where and what the new home would be was yet another secret as sweet as the slushies Satoru-nii dropped off lately. But it was also because summer was coming and summer was busy, so everything was thrown into reverse motion before their feet even landed. All four of them were leaving for a big, fat question mark in the sunset. Maybe that was bothering her too, deep down.

But Suguru-nii was mysteriously quiet for so long it startled her when he burst into a sharp chuckle, his tears swiped at by the heel of his palm and her back tickled by the laughter running up and down his stomach. Suguru-nii laughed easily these days.

That caught her off guard. “What? Our new place is in Tokyo, right? Right? Don’t tell me we’re going to the inaka after all! You promised Megumi we won’t need to change schools…!”

Suguru-nii pretended to hum and haw in retaliation long enough Tsumiki puffed up her cheeks, his teasing smile frozen when someone banged right into the wall. He hammered back with a fist and the other bedroom went quiet.

“Sorry, sorry, you’re just as intense as your brother sometimes,” he yielded with a raise of his hands. “Honestly? I have no idea where we’re going either, but it will have two bathrooms. Last week’s incident is all water under the bridge, of course.” A vein coursed up his neck from below his compression turtleneck. “I just made an unbiased, family-wide consideration given our different schedules.”

Tsumiki doubted that just a little given how pouty and putty-like Satoru-nii was ever since he’d been banished to a permanent turn sleeping on the futon.

“You really don’t know?” she pressed instead. “Satoru-nii isn’t in cahoots with you? For the first time ever?”

“Promise.” A hand on his heart. “I’m as blind as a bat.”

“Megumi says bats have good eyesight.”

“Then a mole rat. Satoru’s sense of real estate gives most prestigious agents a run for their money, so I have full confidence we’ll land somewhere pretty nice. And yes, in Tokyo. I can’t make him leave the heart of all his crepe shops, now can I?” Suguru-nii slung his jacket over his shoulder. He paused in the doorway, his finger pressed to his lips. “Don’t tell him I said that, though. He’s still on thin ice.”

Oh, this conversation would become a memory of this place too, wouldn’t it? She didn’t realize her chin had tipped down, more wet burn behind her eyelids. It reminded her of a fuzzy time in the single light of the genkan at night, her on her tip-toes desperately reaching for Okaasan’s hands that had turned away. No fat envelope this time.

I like eating curry all the time! It’s okay! Megumi will eat his potatoes!

There would be no tears with Suguru-nii around. Here he was making this goodbye into something warm and fluffy, his fox eyes smiling down at her and her rowdy brother just across the wall who chased his friends to eat their veggies.

Tsumiki swallowed the pearls of her tears and scrubbed her eyes a defiant red, drawing in a determined breath.

“Futon life,” she agreed with a clenched fist.

“Wherever we go, we’ll do it all together, one step at a time. You can say goodbye slowly.” A quick reassuring kiss was dropped on her forehead before Tsumiki was ushered out into the hall, Suguru-nii’s voice picking up in a sharp tick of annoyance. “Satoru, what are you doing with that inflatable hot dog outfit? Shoko said we burned it, I distinctly remember us burning it—”

Here was another person who was saying goodbye, just in a different way. Like the breeze skipping over the grass, feeling every blade but never staying for long. Except the breeze was dumping an inflatable hot dog outfit with a horrific wiggly strip of mustard from head to toe and had a Mario hat wedged on his head. His two pairs of glasses were still stacked.

Tsumiki clapped a hand over her mouth and spat out a hideous giggle.

“S-Satoru-nii, what’s that…what’s that supposed to be…!”

“What can I say?” Satoru-nii tossed a wink, stretching high enough on the balls of his feet his hands almost brushed the ceiling. “Miraculous finds from a miraculous man. Gumi has to know the right way to start off initiation once he’s a senpai himself, you know.”

“You’re nine years too early and it is this close to being an actual cursed object—did you finish taking down all your ramune marbles?” Suguru-nii was off like a nagging hen, his jacket wheeling to smack against Infinity as he ducked into his and Satoru-nii’s room and snapped open a fresh trash bag. The hot dog outfit was viciously side kicked out of the way without a single glance, letting out a crinkly wheeze. “What about my futon?”

“Beat, air-dried, and folded.” Satoru-nii half-swung after him, his thumbs pocketed. The soft icy strands of his hair brushed the top of the doorframe. “But who’s still mad? Suguru! Suguru’s still mad! Make sure you fix your face before you scare all your students, okay? I’m taking mine to Shinjuku tonight. We’ll squash two grade 3s and party like animals.”

“It’s a way bigger problem than his face.” Shouldering on his crossbody bag with megalodons and mosasaurs, Megumi hopped on a box in the genkan and finished off his anmitsu can, his legs swinging. “Tsumiki, did you know Satoru once left sixty-three bottles of ranch in the Jujutsu Tech classrooms and Suguru put in one mayonnaise bottle so when the staff—”

Tsumiki emptied more giggles into her fist, shaking her head when Megumi frowned.

“What?”

“Nothing!” There was no way he remembered finger painting that parrot. But he was part of this goodbye too, him atop a throne of boxes and the heartbeat his stirrup socked heels made.

…she’d miss this genkan. So, so much. The fuzzy animal welcome mat was gone already.

“Whatever. Me and Satoru are going ahead.” Megumi chucked the can in a perfect shot to the kitchen trash can, Satoru-nii’s foot keeping the front door open long enough for him to dart through, his voice calling from the hallway. “And I’m taking the front seat. Satoru always puts it way too far back.”

“Nice try, but no.” Suguru-nii tied off the trash bag and fastened up his jika-tabi. “As your combat instructor, I prefer you without a face smushed into airbags. Satoru, either sardine can yourself or sit in the back with him.”

“Tch. That’s lame.”

“I totally agree. Suguruuu, let our kid spread his wings, will you? Ijichi’s allergic to vehicle manslaughter accidents anyway. And don’t you want to check out your old Game Boy scores with me? Look, look, it still boots up. Remember when we made the penalty swallowing raw eggs and you choked on one just as Yaga-gakucho walked in?”

“Yes, and you didn’t know what the Heimlich manuevre was so you punched me in the solar plexus. ” Suguru-nii cast a glance purposefully opposite the tiny pixelated screen Satoru-nii’s arm was waving about before the door swung shut. But not for long; his smile broke out and he held out his hand to Tsumiki at the edge of the genkan. “Come on, your brother’s doing aerials today. You wouldn’t want to miss it for the world.”

Megumi’s muffled voice shoved itself through the front door. “Conjunction strikes with Nue.”

Suguru-nii leaned against the door as Tsumiki snapped her hair up into a quick ponytail, the elastic nipping at her fingers. “So sorry, I forgot you’re very specific with attack names these days. Must be all that action manga you’re inhaling.”

“It’s better than those boring bound-pocket novels you keep bringing. They look like they came out of a samurai movie.” There was a soft thump, and she realized her hot-and-cold brother was leaning against the door too. Waiting. “...Tsumiki, hurry up. Satoru’s got choco pies in the trunk cooler.”

“Coming, coming!”

Tightening her shoelaces, Tsumiki grabbed her jujutsu notebook and let Suguru-nii lead her through the door whose friendly croak she achingly knew she’d miss.

The day of the move landed on the muggiest morning yet.

“ —we can expect a significant weather system over the coming days, with monthly temperatures reaching new highs. Please be sure to hydrate plenty if engaging in intense outdoor activities… ”

Bubbly clouds were growing fatter than cotton candy inside the van windshield. Tsumiki’s eyes strained under the floppy rim of Satoru-nii’s borrowed straw hat.

A handheld electric fan on the dashboard blew weakly side to side, but the air was just as hot and sticky as when she’d shot upright, bleary and bed-headed, from the futon she’d shared with Suguru-nii. The beds had been dismantled already. Left behind too, because they’d measured and Megumi’s feet touched the footpost when he wasn’t curled up like a yarn ball. Tsumiki’s heels only had a few centimetres of space.

Suguru-nii had slowly cupped his chin, Satoru-nii’s blackout glasses completing the blank look they shared when the measurements came in for their own bed. Then they’d both spun on their heels, sunk to their knees, clasped Tsumiki and Megumi’s hands, and asked them not to let Shoko-neesan know they hadn’t thought about getting bunk beds for all four of them for the past two years.

Tsumiki had pinkie-sworn. Megumi had just looked like he wanted to go back to wherever he ran off with Hino-kun and Kasai-kun after school with empty soda cans and slingshots.

Either way, yesterday, once classes had let out, they’d both had to come back early and finish packing up. Megumi’s combat lesson had been skipped. Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii had arrived in the evening to tally up last minute list checks. They’d eaten dinner on styrofoam plates with disposable forks and spoons since the dishes had all been packed.

“The elderly, those with sensitive health conditions, and parents accompanied by small children,” the radio recited under Tsumiki’s fingers fine-tuning the knob, “should take care to stay in areas with available shade or air conditioning…”

If she flattened herself upside-down on the back seats like Megumi, his feet hooked on the headrest and his Nintendo hovering over his face, she’d get a good view of the parking lot and the simmering heat waves outside the van door opened wide to help the wheezing, slightly broken AC they’d all spent too long trying to figure out.

The towel-wrapped ice pack pressed to her cheek stopped her from trying. A back tooth had picked a sudden bad time to start poking through and forced them to unpack a kitchen box, the drab flaps cut open for chilled miso soup to be whipped up on the fly, the chop of cucumbers echoing in the now empty kitchen.

Okaasan…had never done anything like that when Tsumiki had gotten a cavity. The breakfast menu of leftovers hadn’t changed before she’d hurried off to work, Megumi clutching his plastic slinky in the genkan as the door shut on them both.

Ah, he’d said in his penguin onesie, copying her mouth opening and closing with a frozen veggie bag squished against her puffy jaw. Ah. Ice.

The radio hit a patch of static. Tsumiki switched it off and pried herself out between the front seats, squeezing herself down on the rubber mats to watch everything from seat level, like she was an ant, from where it was a little cooler.

“Shoko-neesan,” she called in a loud mumble to the trunk, the chilly bulk of the towel numbing her jaw, “does everything from the kitchen fit now?”

“Yeah. Well, nothing’ll dent the van enough to make it look like it’s suffering from a trapped explosion anymore. Much.” The faded AC manual was still sticking out of Shoko-neesan’s pocket from where she was prodding at the trunk, her hand lazily hooked on the top lid. Her sunglasses were gigantic. “Hey, Geto!”

A distracted hum of acknowledgement by the open van door. “What?”

“You do realize this is my first time driving with a) passengers and b) passengers I care about, right?” Shoko-neesan twisted the messy end of her even messier ponytail, burnt-brown ends spilling over the shoulders of her crop top lazily tied above her shorts, and thumbed at Satoru-nii’s vibrant surfboard strapped to the roof. Despite their best efforts, it jutted out just a little above the tailgate. “Racking up any more demerit points would somewhat suck. The people at the rent depo were already looking at me like I was holding them at knifepoint.”

“I’m so sorry, who was the responsible doctor who decided picking up the white van while wearing a baseball cap and paying in cash was a good idea?” Suguru-nii’s shadow fell across the seats as he circled to the back of the van, his flip phone out and his hair cord threaded through the belt hoops of his cargo shorts. “I told you to let Satoru pay.”

“Yeah, no thanks. He already reserved the thing, that'd just be even shadier.”

“Didn’t you have any summer clothing that isn’t shady?”

“Nope.”

“What are you wearing right now?”

“Thrift store sale from yesterday. You’re the one wearing thrift cargo shorts.”

“Because I packed everything else.”

“So we’re even. Fantastic.” They shared the sweatiest, most unmotivated high-five Tsumiki had ever seen. “You want to crack open a soda in solidarity or something?”

“No. I just think,” Suguru-nii braced his fingers together between his brows, “we’re seriously lacking in the capable adult appearance department.”

Even with her ice pack helping her toothache, Tsumiki was getting dizzy watching them go back and forth, her arms wrapped around the frilly knees and marine ribbons of her sundress. It’d been fun watching Suguru-nii do up his hair in a complex crown braid, but he’d been pacing for two hours now: up and down their apartment hallway, through the short trip from the lobby to the parking lot, around the van to load boxes with Shoko-neesan’s help.

“Wow, since when did you care about that? Parenthood really does change a person.”

“Please shut up.”

“Hey, I got paid last week, I’m budgeting for a me night. That requires lead-up sacrifices and an overall dip in brain-to-mouth filter courtesy of overtime. It’s all uphill from here once those nicotine gum packs I ordered come in…are you meditating?”

“Yes.” Suguru-nii held out his hand, his other still held vertically in front of his face, eyes closed, and Shoko-neesan passed him a soda can anyway.

“Hey. Meditate for me too.”

“Do it yourself.”

“Can’t. I’m too shady to follow the path of a monk. I’m also sweaty as hell.”

Satoru-nii was conspicuously missing from the entire operation. He, Tsumiki’s plants, and the couch had all vanished when she woke up, which meant he’d used up his singular group warp card (“Teleporting everything’s kinda suspicious, Miki, so we’ve got keep the convenient jujutsu hacks on the down-low”) some time in the night.

All she knew about their new home was a laundry list of requests—closet size, kitchen details, room size—they’d all put in over Satoru-nii’s shoulders at dinner over the course of the past several days, fighting to turn magazine pages and the couch creaking under their combined weight.

Tsumiki hadn’t had the heart to put in too many requests. Her old scrapbook had been stuffed somewhere in her bedroom boxes Suguru-nii was inspecting. From a packed swamp of sealed cardboard flaps, it was easy to pretend Little Tsumiki had to be watching her, so she had to do her best to show how a moving job was done, with or without homesick heartache. That was what Suguru-nii had suggested to take her mind off things, anyway.

A smaller box suddenly toppled right over the back seats, Megumi lifting up a foot to shove it back without looking away from the chimes and bloops of his Nintendo.

Shoko-neesan was on her fourth lollipop now and Suguru-nii had finished meditating. Or going through mental exercises of putting Satoru-nii into a lot of painful body trapping moves. Maybe both. They were still going at it.

“—so ultimately, you’re looking at the same person who got called out this early. All non-medical services come at the price of road law malpractice. I had only one cup of coffee. I need ten to function.” Shoko-neesan slammed the trunk shut for good, clambered into the driver’s seat, and flicked open her phone, the muggy breeze toying with the ends of her hair. “...it’s going to rain later. Damn, I should’ve rented a convertible after all.”

“First of all, ten a.m. is not early.” Suguru-nii looped around again for yet another full van inspection, rolling up the already rolled shoulders of his T-shirt plastered to his back. “Second, you can’t have a convertible van. We’ll get struck by lightning from all of Satoru’s 90s electronics we have in here—Megumi-kun, can you move the vacuum a bit more to the right? It might get stuck at a turn.” He gave his phone a small shake with a smile, a vein crawling up the side of his jaw. “Actually, I think I’ll go off and give our missing man a call.”

Shoko-neesan cast her lollipop skyward without looking up from her phone. “Finally.”

“If it goes to voicemail, he’s dead,” Megumi muttered to no one in particular, like he hadn’t been totally engrossed in the walkman Satoru-nii spent half of dinner last night showing off until they were both herded by Suguru-nii into last minute vacuum sweeps around the apartment, Satoru-nii pretending to suck up Tsumiki’s toes and Megumi trying to tie his legs up slowly with the cord.

That same vacuum now stood posted behind the seat belt anchor by her brother’s ankles. The back of the van was an intricate jigsaw swamp of boxes, appliances, and disassembled furniture wherever Tsumiki looked, her chin hovering over the fuzzy headrests before she slid down at a fresh pang in her mouth and fanned herself.

“So hot…”

The apartment lingered in the window, fifteen floors she’d never see again, but it was too boiling to get all melancholic like she’d worried about last night. Her elbows were sticking to the seat arms.

“If you keep saying it’s hot, it’s gonna get hotter.” Megumi finally pocketed his Nintendo. He’d made a beeline for the van’s shelter as soon as they finished breakfast—the dishes were the last to be sealed and packed—and all but flung his randoseru inside the van bulging with all kinds of things, Gohan’s furry head peeking out. Now he was pulling out a monocular scope with a Power Rangers sticker—probably Hino-kun’s—and was twisting the zoom. “...hey, I’ll give you my Pocky racecar box if you guess how many kids are watching us.”

“Not that many? It’s mostly the moms. They’ll go away once it gets hotter.” Flipping her ice pack to its cooler side, Tsumiki carefully fixed Satoru-nii’s hat she’d borrowed with a soft jingle of the orange fishing float from her bracelets; she and Megumi wore them as an Okinawan summer pact. She didn’t want them to lose the souvenirs in the messy back-and-forthing either. Two of her scrunchies had already vanished. “Anyway, we should have faith in Satoru-nii. He’ll come and take us away! We just need to wait a little bit longer…”

Megumi lowered his scope. They both twisted to look off by the curb, where Suguru-nii was holding his flip phone a few centimetres from his mouth to record a short voicemail while his flip flop drilled a miniature sinkhole into the tarmac.

“Faith,” Tsumiki repeated a little quieter. She fought a yawn; the medicine Suguru-nii had gotten from a run down to the convenience store was kicking in. “And endure, um…sacrifice.”

“Yeah, no thanks.” Megumi aimed his scope up, a cloud passing tall enough to throw the entire apartment into shadow. “In the time we’ve packed the trunk twice and rearranged it three times, the fifth, seventh, and ninth floor balconies all got at least three more obasans. An ojisan showed up to read a newspaper but he hasn’t turned the page in five minutes. And we’ve just got…” He cranked the zoom a little more. “Yeah, two more snot-nosed toddlers on 12F and a couple first graders on 11F. One of them dropped his ice cream. He’s crying. He’s—”

“What’s with the running report?” Giggles spilling out, Tsumiki scrambled to squeeze beside him and scout for herself the crowd of onlookers conveniently dotting the apartment balconies, laundry clips in disapproving mouths and laundry baskets hiked under arms. It was practically an outdoor movie theatre, but she slapped Megumi’s arm when he started winding down the window, fighting another yawn. “Stop, you’ll get us in trouble…!”

He gave her a look Okaasan could never have imagined. Faint mischief. It was probably the heat and the candy and the excitement, but her brother was chatty today.

“They started it.” Megumi leaned around the driver’s headrest and handed his scope over, Shoko-neesan glancing up from her phone. “Hey, Shoko-neesan, that woman up there on the fifteenth floor, isn’t she the one Suguru said used to fuss over whether we were getting our greens when we first moved—”

“She only looks like that because you’ve turned into a terrifying gremlin,” came the dry reply. “Under whose influence, it’s a real mystery. Tsumiki, how’s your tooth? Need me to run down to the store around the corner and get some fresh ice?”

“I’m good! Really!” Tsumiki opened her mouth for a quick inspection before Suguru-nii’s hand reached across the open seats and tipped her hat for a check-up.

“Just pretty drowsy, I bet. The label did say it was fast-acting.” Despite his reassuring smile, he had one hand casually slung on his hip while the other speed-typed the biggest text block Tsumiki had ever seen. It was sent with an audible smack. “Shoko, Satoru’s phone isn’t on for some unfathomable reason given he's a cellular addict, so we’re leaving without him. I don’t have the keys to the new place yet, but the paper work's all done, so,” out came the menacing fox eyes, “we should pretty much be able to bully our way in.”

“Uh-oh,” Tsumiki whispered. Megumi nonchalantly screwed up his scope in a jam against his palm.

“Sure, I’ll just drive into the lobby elevator. Megumi-kun says we’re being watched, by the way. By that fifteenth floor woman you don’t like.” Shoko-neesan stretched her hands all the way against the roof, making Tsumiki fight a yawn again.

“Oh, she’s not special. Safety first,” her brother was corralled into finally buckling up, “there’s a microwave right behind your head and I don’t want it launching through the windshield.” Suguru-nii’s eyes had turned into permanent crescents. “I’m sure all our onlookers can see you’re all fit and healthy as long as we don’t get into a standing still car accident—”

“Did you hear that,” Megumi suddenly asked and sat up, everyone’s sudden silence breaking up the hoarse moan of the AC.

“Thunder?” Tsumiki guessed, glancing up at the next playground of clouds. It was still too sunny.

Megumi’s eyes landed on something behind her. His face darkened. “Worse.”

The faint clacks of something wooden and rapidly accelerating hit Tsumiki’s ears. A speedy figure rounded the side of the apartment, one arm whipping back and forth like a marathon sprinter and the other tucking a round melon by a hip.

“HEYYYYYY! SHOKO, YOU MADE IT!”

The figure got closer, a whale blue haori streaming behind with artful coastal foam on wide, silky sleeves, geta sandals deafeningly click-clacking, and a rectangular pair of blockout glasses perched low on a nose in a way only Limitless could keep up, the clouds casting blue sunshine on windswept hair like shaved ice. The balcony crowd all leaned out and craned their heads in a harsh wave of murmurs and whispers. At least one bucket of laundry clips was knocked over.

Satoru-nii didn’t have anything on under the haori, after all.

Just like that, everything burst into hazy, sun-brimmed life.

Shoko-neesan threw her head back and barked out a laugh loud enough to make a few first and second floor balconies jump, her sunglasses hitching up by the heel of her palm.

“I’ve been here since last night, I’m the only girl who gets to crash on your couch,” she called scandalously loud over the splutter of the engine starting up. Smoke bellowed out the back, not the front, and Megumi lurched over Tsumiki to grab the van door and start ferociously hauling it shut in stilted yanks. Another bucket of laundry clips clattered in shock from a fourth floor balcony.

Juggling her ice pack between her cheek and shoulder, Tsumiki scrambled to buckle herself in. “Come on, Megumi, let him in!” Laughing made her mouth hurt, but she did it anyway.

“Satoru , I swear, I told you leaving me on read is the second worst thing to happen since—” Suguru-nii paused midway through yanking his seatbelt out, his tone falling dead flat. “What the HELL are you wearing.”

“This? This is ‘I just busted out of a spontaneous overnight clan meeting with a few old coots who caught wind of their now-no-longer-a-minor clan heir swapping residences and appropriately had to force their moving-back-into-the-compound mindset on him’ style.” Rolling the melon up to heft it in a palm, Satoru-nii gestured to his ripped jeans cut off at the knee in a single up-down move before switching audiences. “Gumi, you miss your one-stop shop real estate agent and infotainment system, huh? Miki, how are we doing?”

“Boiling like the rest of us,” Shoko-neesan drawled from the front. Tsumiki shook her head in achy, grinning denial and found a Yubari King melon in her lap for her efforts.

“Why can’t you just sit in the back with the boxes or something?” Megumi plastered himself below the far window as Satoru-nii crammed himself in. “You’re embarrassing us in front of the obasans.”

“Wha-at?” Satoru-nii flourished his sleeves, the blues and greys and whites all fading into each other. “I’m rocking the bathhouse look! Here,” Tsumiki’s slipping ice pack was caught and pressed against her cheek as he leaned over, “inhale this incense! Isn’t it great? Makes you want to play skip rope with your lungs. I almost caught fire on the way out, by the way. Hazardous candle placement.”

Megumi choked out something that sounded like a no. The melon in Tsumiki’s lap was nearly kicked right off, her brother’s legs lashing out horizontally, and she was sandwiched between him and Satoru-nii going at it again.

“Wrong, Satoru is not rocking anything,” Suguru-nii cut in from where he’d twisted impossibly between the front seats, yanking Satoru-nii’s haori shut over his chest and whipping out his hair cord to cinch it. Megumi went vertical again, still coughing. “The cover plan was a beach hangout, Satoru, people don’t wear denim and haori to the bathhouse—”

“So—huh, that is some incense.” Shoko-neesan rolled down her window. The van fumes came in. She rolled it back up. “So, pre-drive checks. Does everyone who’s not Gojo have their seats belted or whatever?”

“Yes!” Tsumiki clicked in hers smartly, hugging the melon before it could roll off. Megumi let out another weak wheeze. She clicked his seatbelt in for him.

“I’m a path blazer, Suguru, I make my own style. Same way I’ve got a whole group of the best realtor contacts scouring Tokyo right now to put together the Twenty Best Spots Gojo Satoru And Co. Will Never Live In.” Satoru-nii ruffled Megumi’s hair despite his coughing fit and fixed Tsumiki’s hat. “Cat and mouse, Gumi, cat and mouse. I’ll teach you the ropes when you’re older.”

“I’ll bring popcorn and a screen projector.” Shoko-neesan arched both thick brows in the rearview mirror, shifting the gear stick that made a slightly worrisome creak and spinning the wheel one-handed while unwrapping another lollipop. They jostled past the curb. “And you went to a clan meeting dressed like that? ”

“Nah, I was basically accosted into hakama. Very disruptive when I was only trying to bribe my ex-personal financial consultant. The audacity, right? I had to warp in the middle of the servants getting me changed just to escape.” Sighing, Satoru-nii ran his seatbelt under his thumb in a sharp zip once the van finally pulled out of the lot. “I don’t know whose geta these are though. Oh, Suguru, our Rokudo-sensei sends his regards, he’s been so worried about your health and well-being in the new year and blah blah something blah—quiz time, Miki, what do you think it means when someone says condolences for a person who isn't dead?”

“It means they don’t like you,” she recited faithfully, leaning her head against his warm arm, haori sleeve wrapping her up like a blanket.

“Well, I haven’t thought about him once since last year either.” Finally sitting back with a pent-up sigh, Suguru-nii adjusted the rearview mirror to make direct eye contact. The beginnings of a sharp smile betrayed him as he eyed up Tsumiki’s new lap passenger. “...did you steal that melon from his kitchen?”

“I stole that melon,” Satoru-nii triumphantly leaned back with an arm behind Tsumiki and Megumi’s seats, “from his kitchen.”

Suguru-nii kicked the inside of his cheek with his tongue, turning to face forward again as they pulled into traffic, and Tsumiki knew those two sweltering hours of waiting were long, long gone.

Just like the apartment disappearing down the lane behind them.

There hadn’t been any neighbours she’d known or paid attention to when she and Megumi had left Okaasan’s place. Her entire world was just the tiny cramped unit she’d lived in until Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii led her down the clanging metal steps and into a taxi. She hadn’t looked back.

Holding onto Satoru-nii’s borrowed hat, Tsumiki leaned over his lap and out the window Shoko-neesan lowered to let in the friendly roar of traffic up ahead, the breeze whipping flyaways from her bangs.

The apartment grew smaller, smaller, and smaller still. Shoko-neesan took a turn and it vanished behind a corner store.

When they emerged onto a different road and turned again, Tsumiki couldn’t find it anymore.

Her eyes fluttered shut.

“...we’ll need three trips at most to move everything over, so it’s not like we’re doing this in one shot. You said gas shouldn’t be a problem with a model of this type, and…”

She woke up to the sunlight spilling between the buildings behind Satoru-nii’s reflection, her head nestled on his lap and a plastic bag full of snacks hooked on his arm resting on the windowsill. Megumi was slouching on her other side, his Nintendo muted and his knees trapping the melon against his stomach. His window had been rolled down just a little, the city smells piggybacking on a cool breeze that ruffled his hair.

Shoko-neesan was chewing bubblegum. Suguru-nii’s voice was a gentle murmur over the rolling hum of the engine.

“—that said, how long can we expect to be on the road? I want to get everything done before night at the latest so the kids’ll have enough time to get ready for school tomorrow.”

“Eh, half an hour give or take at most—hey, look which princess decided to join us.” Satoru-nii swiped his hat back and let Tsumiki groggily sit up, his haori sleeves whispering, and twisted two fingers at the dashboard. The radio’s newscasters were cut off, its knob spun to the perfect volume, and out trickled a crackling, bouncy song. “Of course, we’re taking the scenic route. Shoko, straight on!”

“Where are we?” Tsumiki mumbled, rubbing an eye. Another yawn forced its way out. Her toothache was gone.

“Tokyo.” Megumi dodged her pinch. “We stopped to get snacks. Oh, and the AC broke permanently. Haven’t gotten pulled over yet.” He handed her an ice cream sandwich, settling back into his game once she took a few bites and gave him a thumbs-up. “We got lost twice though.”

“Make that almost three times if Gojo hadn’t stopped trying to outshine the GPS.” Shoko-neesan tapped the steering wheel. “Who knows, we might turn off at the wrong junction and get lost in Sendai all day…” She trailed off. “Geto, you’ve never gotten carsick before.”

Suguru-nii had his fingertips pressed to his temple, a blank look plastered on his face. “Sorry, I just had an extremely traumatic recollection from our youth.”

“Oh, good. You’d better not get heat stroke, I’m not licensed to handle that.”

“You’re a doctor.”

“Yeah, I cheated. Now would also be a great time to mention I’ve never driven on main roads before.” Shoko-neesan paused to amend at Suguru-nii’s stare as she pulled onto an overpass, trains thundering below in silver and gold. “I can drive on main roads, I just haven’t bothered.”

“First time for everything,” Satoru-nii sing-sang from where he’d crooked forward between them, swirling a set of pristine-looking keys around one finger and one-handedly tweaking the GPS screen. “Everyone, since you’re all sick of Shiritori—Miki, you slept through your brother’s sweeping battle royale against Shoko, it was a real neck-and-neck nail-biter—guess where we’re going to live without peeking at the complex name on the keys I’m throwing around like a typhoon on purpose right now! You too Suguru, close your eyes, come on. Shoko, you’re not me so…don’t close your eyes. Oh, and take a left here. Construction ahead, detour’s faster.”

“Again with the detour.”

“My detours are special, Shoko.”

“We almost drove into an open sewer maintenance site.”

“My detours are special, Suguru.”

The radio filled the lapse in silence, and Tsumiki realized they were waiting for her to have the first guess, sunlight-splashed seats and bubbly grey clouds overhead the roof and seat creases on her cheek and all.

“I think we’re going to live somewhere magical,” she guessed, leaning to wind down the window on Satoru-nii’s side some more to mix the faint tang of rain with the cold strawberry of her ice cream. Her Okinawan bracelets jingled in the wind—sea glass and seashells, twine and a fishing float—and threw little orange rays on the Yubari King melon nestled like a fifth passenger between her and Megumi. Her brother’s own bracelet speckled his own wrist in indigo. “I mean, everytime Satoru-nii takes us somewhere, it’s even better than the last!”

“Right, right, the perks of being the filthy elite.”

“Shoko, I think you mean filthy rich.”

“My bad. The filthy elite.”

“I think,” Megumi raised his voice pointedly, “it’ll be somewhere high. Where we can see a lot of things. Vantage points are good.”

“Ohhhhh, that’s my accurate blueberry for you.” Satoru-nii tossed and caught the keys, grinning. “Suguru?”

“Hmm…well, anywhere you are will do. Preferably in strangleable distance.”

Megumi made a faint retching sound in the back of his throat and Tsumiki kicked her feet in a laugh, hugging the wide brim of Satoru-nii’s hat and finishing off her ice cream sandwich.

This, this was extra nice: cruising along with all the pieces of their apartment on the move, like they could go anywhere and everywhere across the blazing skyline darkened by the promise of rain and still say they had pieces of home packed in the trunk. Because they did.

Seeing Suguru-nii and Satoru-nii try to jab each other in their sides through the gaps between the front seat and the door, Shoko-neesan rolling her eyes in amusem*nt, made this all strangely…familiar. Like a cozy place Tsumiki could sleep in even if the trip ran into the night, like Suguru-nii could somehow bring out a pitcher of chilled barley tea and Satoru-nii would get steaming hot yakisoba buns and Megumi would bluntly ask for half of Shoko-neesan’s. A van picnic of sorts.

Her heart beat away softly under Satoru-nii’s hat, a small flash at the side of her vision tearing her gaze up. It was lightning, not Megumi’s Nintendo screen he’d also glanced from to worm his hand through the window crack, palm up, and feel for a moment.

“Rain?” she mouthed, and he shook his head.

This wasn’t deja vu. She hadn’t ridden in a van since the trip to Tsukuba-san in winter last year, even though she wasn’t getting along too well with Nanako-chan and Mimiko-chan then. The van couldn’t be a real home, though. It’d need a good genkan and strong walls and a familiar kitchen that felt like midnight warmth with only its lights on in the whole house, and…

Her heartache wasn’t as bad as before. There was still a rock on her chest, but—

“My turn. It’ll probably be somewhere expensive as hell but cozier than a memory foam mattress.” Shoko-neesan pulled out her lollipop stick and unwrapped another, cranking up the radio and listening for a moment, the sunlight tracing her grin as she twisted. If Megumi had been chatty today, she was cracking up more, her usual eye bags pulling away nothing from her wry smirk aimed at Tsumiki. “Hey, Geto, Gojo, remember this one? You set it to Yaga-gakucho’s ringtone and had to sweep the courtyard for two weeks.”

“We were cleansing the sullied grounds of the school, Shoko, it was totally worth it—”

“You whined for three hours. At the dorms. And stole my hot water bottle.”

“I’m sorry, Satoru, did you just refer to sakura petals as sullying? Your national citizenship card’s been revoked.”

“But Suguru, who else is going to backseat drive!”

“Then sing.” Suguru-nii’s smile was lethal. “For old times’ sake.”

“Pscht, that’s not even a penalty. Gumi, kick back and listen to pure talent.” Without missing a beat, Satoru-nii swallowed the shards of his jawbreaker, laced and cracked his fingers, and grabbed Megumi’s Nintendo to use a stand-in mic, timing himself to the radio’s beat with a drum on Suguru-nii’s headrest.

He sang for three traffic lights. Megumi took his fingers out of his ears by the fourth and had his head used as an elbow rest for the sweeping finale, Shoko-neesan rolling up the windows a little.

“We’ll get a pop agency scout pull up next to us in a minute otherwise,” she informed them all. “Geto, get in on this. I’m feeling kinda nostalgic today.”

“Is that Sober Shoko Off Her Caffeine Influx talking?”

“It’s the one cup of coffee and the general monotonous stress of life. Sing.”

The next few songs turned out to be more high school ones they all recognized, and Suguru-nii did join in with his eyes half-shut in a wistful smile, his fingers absently tapping the side of the van over the windowsill and Tsumiki clapping along. Shoko-neesan was good at humming in the background. Megumi fought off the invites until his ears reddened like they always did.

“Fine, me and Tsumiki’ll do…one from music class. Tanabata-sama.” He wrestled free, shaking his hair out, and rummaged in his randoseru to pull out a tab-marked, crumpled lyric sheet against the wave of oohs and ahs and ohos Satoru-nii washed him with. “Don’t expect an encore, okay? Tsumiki, I’ll lead. Your tooth good?”

“Actually…” She plopped Satoru-nii’s hat back on and stuck her tongue out. “It’s still a little achy, so you’ll have to solo it!”

It was half true. She wanted to savour this lovely feeling as much as she had the ice cream sandwich, leaning against the warm press of the seats as the van pulled into a long, long turn.

“Seriously?” Megumi looked away, the paper sheet snapping flat against the bottom half of his frown. “Forget it then.”

Suguru-nii’s teasing smile rested against the headrest, his bangs catching a little on the coarse fabric. “Ohhh? This’ll be interesting. It’s not like we get to sit in on music class very often.”

“We hung up paper slips everywhere,” Tsumiki assured him, holding up the melon as a shield when Megumi swatted at her. “Our classroom made one hundred total and—”

“You can’t guilt-trip me.”

This feeling, like maybe her heart could take the messy wings of his parrot painting and make herself a little blue-green nest, but only right here with everyone barrelling down the highway forever away from the apartment. It’d be pointless to twist and guess which direction it was in, nowhere as easy as Suguru-nii’s gloved thumb flicking over his shoulder towards Ibaraki.

“And Megumi had so many wishes so he and Hino-kun and Kasai-kun together had more paper strips than anyone else—”

“Tsumiki—” The melon was getting a hard beating, whisking up and down, left and right, behind Tsumiki’s gummy grin.

“And he helped everyone with theirs and Sensei was so happy—” She broke off, victorious, at Megumi’s scowl. “It’s true, though?”

“...you’re as bad as Suguru.” He folded his arms.

“Why thank you,” came the reply up front. “Sing for us, Megumi-kun?”

Up above, the sky knitted lazy thunderheads together. Blowing out a sigh, her brother began with a scrunched nose and a low but steady voice, the van hitching softly on bumps in the asphalt.

The leaves of the bamboo are soothing…

He glared pointedly at Satoru-nii, going all sparkly and dramatically wet-eyed behind a fist pressed to his mouth, but softened a bit under Shoko-neesan’s tiny head tip of encouragement.

Sway to the edge of the eaves

Tsumiki mouthed the next part eagerly, watching the van roll into a brand new district. They were rarely in this part of Tokyo except for eating out at the fancier restaurants. The buildings were so much taller, the billboard ads bigger, the vertical sign colours brighter, the sidewalks sleeker and the streets packed full of huge crosswalks, light-up signs, and dazzling stores.

The stars are sparkling again and again

Little by little, Megumi stopped hiding behind the lyric sheet as much, his slow voice weaving the words louder and bolder, eyes fixed to his own window that had begun to gather wet droplets, the street turning a blue-grey and the van dashboard lighting up.

Gold and silver and their fine powder

But there was a certain spark to his gaze, his flip-flops dangling from his feet swinging back and forth, his head absently tipping side to side with the tune.

Five coloured strips

Besides that I wrote a wish

Tokyo Tower speared up like a white and red mountain just a few streets away. If they lived near here, it’d do that every morning by her window.

The stars are sparkling again and again

Megumi was easily carrying the rest now, his fingers twisting together and his shoulders relaxing a little under Satoru-nii’s absolute grin Tsumiki could see reflected in the window beside her own mouthing along, Suguru-nii’s eyes filled with so much delicate wonder.

They are

Thinking about it, they both always got like this whenever she and Megumi showed them things from school. As if popsicle houses and soccer clubs were almost as precious as the jujutsu caught in the lenses of her special seeing glasses was for her.

Watching me

The rain came sweeping down in spotlights of sun. The windows, as it turned out, didn’t close all the way, and Tsumiki stuck her hand out this time to feel the droplets race by. Megumi twisted his bracelet’s fishing float in the blue dark, his cheeks faintly flushed as he finished at the sweet titter of the van’s turning indicator.

From the sky

The rain came down hard like the sky begging for an encore.

Unfortunately, before everyone’s applause could turn her brother’s face redder than the sun on the national flag, the van choked, spluttered, and clattered to a halt by the side of the rain slick road.

Shoko-neesan looked up from the dash.

“Out of gas. Gojo, I guess the fuel gauge was broken after all—”

Megumi crumpled up the lyric sheet for Tanabata-sama and hurled it at Satoru-nii’s face before he could start defending the authentic experience of ups and downs on a road trip.

They had an early lunch from a drive-through.

Megumi ordered ginger meatballs. Tsumiki blew on her hot burger. Satoru-nii won a competition against himself for the longest cheese string.

Suguru-nii stabbed a styrofoam container of takoyaki with his head in his hands and a toothpick that moved a little too vehemently in Satoru-nii’s pizza-nomming direction.

Slurping noisily on her iced coffee, legs stretched out sideways from her seat, Shoko-neesan read out road accident statistics to them over the sweating mechanic’s head.

The hello to their new place felt like a dream Tsumiki would remember for all the days that made up forever.

Freshly fuelled and smelling like a restaurant, their van left the busy main roads behind for tall, tall streets full of rich green, polished silver-blue, and elegant black. The raindrops trickled down golden between the wipers sliding back and forth. The air smelt like clean asphalt, crisp garden fertilizer, and fresh rain when they finally rolled to a stop and Shoko-neesan confirmed they had successfully caused no traffic incidents.

“Alright, everyone out in pairs! One, two! One, two! Great form!”

The van door slammed open in a breezy bang, Satoru-nii climbing out first with Megumi hot on his heels. Tsumiki followed in a careful hop, pushing up her floppy hat rim with both hands and instinctively flocking to Suguru-nii’s side when she gawked and looked up…and up…and up.

All their complaints and endless rounds of shiritori were forgotten.

“Forty floors.” Megumi’s voice was filled with pure disbelief, his scope wrangled from his randoseru hanging off his shoulders. “It’s got forty floors, Tsumiki.”

Tsumiki clapped her hands over her mouth. She squeaked.

“Forty?”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone follow the leader,” Satoru-nii called, his geta sandals casually tapping out a path and his thumb hooked over his shoulder, pairing with a wink over his glasses that glinted a promise in the sun rays. “Underground parking’s that way, by the way. Three levels.”

If their apartment was a live-in garden, this…this was like stepping into a forest in a fantasy.

The row of deep green trees spaced with black benches and lampposts. The inlaid stonework on the sidewalk. The bubbling fountain with tall grasses and blooming flowers beside the condo complex’s name in stylish gold offset against a pale aquamarine glass plaque.

The first floor wasn’t a lobby, the lobby was only part of the first floor divided with marble columns and pristine tiles speckled with silver pot lights, creased leather couches, and magazine-stocked lounge chairs. The AC was like diving into a refreshing bowl of shaved ice. The wall to the left of the front desk, stationed by three different people in neat uniforms and gloves, wasn’t a wall. It was a rich, glistening aquarium tank Megumi had to be dragged away from, dumbstruck enough not to protest when Shoko-neesan steered him by the shoulders before he walked into something or someone.

“They have butterflyfish,” he kept muttering, his fingers twisting together excitedly. “They’ve got butterflyfish.”

Satoru-nii led them along like baby chicks and unfurled an unimaginable reality at his fingertips, his black pearl bracelet clinking softly with every gesture and flare.

“Complete CCTV, security office is down the hall, intercom for every unit, we can order in-house laundry and catering services, the indoor pool and gym are that way—”

A silver-rimmed key card flitted out between his fingers as Satoru-nii spun to walk backward into one of three elevators they took up, the button panel outlined in a gentle pulse of hypnotic blues.

“And yes, there’s music on weekends,” he informed Megumi with a hair-tousling smirk.

Tsumiki let out a small squeal.

Her heart skipped at the tap of the card, her gaze glued to the floor number that wouldn’t stop flying up. Shoko-neesan’s brows had disappeared into her hair, her nails faintly chewed on and a rare grin twitching her lips like a bad joke half-completed in her head. Suguru-nii was rubbing the hem of his shirt—when had he gotten his summer gloves and a loose hoodie on?—and watching the tiny round camera in the corner, but there was a spark in his eye every time he caught Satoru-nii’s.

The elevator dinged open. The short corridor was carpeted, an angled skylight shining on a cozy corner with a bamboo plant, and the front door flew open in a jingling twist of keys.

The fantasy forest clearing turned into a lakeside meadow with Satoru-nii’s crow of “Home sweet home!” that echoed.

This time, Tsumiki forgot to breathe.

His geta sandals clacking casually ahead, Satoru-nii was saying something about “heated floorboards but we won’t get to show those off until winter, it’s mostly bare bones except for some basic furnishing but we can basically put in anything—owner privileges, Suguru, I’m something of a landlord myself now”. Shoko-neesan had stepped inside a shoe closet that had something the magazines called an accordion door. Suguru-nii came to a breathless standstill, gazing across one massive connected space. Living, dining, and kitchen.

“Bare bones,” he repeated semi-incredulously, twisting his own pearl bracelet. He was laughing now, his eyes alive as they swept over everything. “Bare bones my—Satoru, you’d call a Michelin star restaurant plain. ”

“It’s called having a super extra refined palette! You likey?”

Suguru-nii turned to look him dead in the eye as he pulled out the fish grilling drawer from the stovetop, counting the burners. “Induction?”

“Induction.”

“Oh, I very, very much likey.”

“Yay!”

It was so much more than ‘yay’ could ever encompass. There were white cupboards and marble counters and enough drawers for all the dessert fork souvenirs ever . Megumi darted ahead to check the tops of the backsplash for two sinks and twisted to shout something about dimmable underglow strips , his randoseru bouncing.

And yet…and yet Tsumiki found herself balking from running to join them all right away her eyes suddenly prickling from enough awe she was grateful her bangs hid them the more she looked around.

No tears. She wouldn’t cry. Her heartache couldn’t win.

But there was no denying Little Tsumiki would have thought they were in a movie set. The magazines didn’t do anything justice. There really was so much space . Maybe double or even triple their apartment unit’s, not counting the short first floor corridor past the shoe closet. And like the unit they’d left behind, everything echoed from a lack of anything. No couch, no TV, no chairs, no table. No boxes that would never return.

This place, Tsumiki realized in a soft intake of breath, was empty too.

It was a place meant for people taller, fancier, and richer than her, though nothing like the way Satoru-nii was rich enough to have his own island and be so Satoru-nii-like at the same time: cool haori flowing over jagged denim that matched the rich forest of Suguru-nii’s cargo shorts, his hands pocketed with a grin Satoru-nii shared as he spread an arm like a wand and crowed about a baking revolution.

The penthouse was foreign. Cold. All alone. It had never experienced the scent of rice made in the morning, the splash of reflected colour from a movie night.

Tsumiki hugged the Yubari King melon tighter, her bare feet exploring the cool press of the floor tiles on a slight rise above the dipped living room, the far wall ready for a mounted TV set-up, a half-square of couches, a low shelf for all of their video games, anything at all.

What could be was what wasn’t right now. It warmed the thump of her heart and sent chilly goosebumps up her arms at the same time. This wasn’t the sunny beaches, splendid corals, and cold delicious noodles of Satoruland for two weeks. This was supposed to be theirs from now on, and it was already becoming theirs before her very eyes.

It was warmed with the snap of Suguru-nii’s phone as he took five different photos of a pasta faucet and said with cheeks flushed like freshly made dumplings he’d be sending them to his mother. It was warmed by the thump of Shoko-neesan’s feet as she craned her neck up a spiralling set of glass-panelled stairs that led to a whole other floor with a smooth banister overlooking the kitchen like some kind of top-down restaurant. It was warmed by the silky song of Satoru-nii’s sleeve as he slung an arm over Suguru-nii’s shoulders, casually yanked out a faucet head, and set it to a light spray like Obasan’s garden hose, the water teasing Suguru-nii’s hand half-lifted to his face.

“Sooooo, does this mean I’m forgiven now? Both showers upstairs have detachable faucets just like these ones!”

Suguru-nii screwed the faucet off, pushing Satoru-nii’s glasses up with a single, smile-backed finger. “I’m thinking about it. Verdict is you’re back on very, very thick, unmeltable ice.”

“Can I borrow your shampoo for—”

“No.”

“Phooey.”

Shoko-neesan’s voice echoed from what sounded like another storage closet. “Soft-close cupboards are the deal breaker for you two now?”

“You’ll understand when you have your own kitchen one day, Shoko.” Suguru-nii kept opening and closing drawers, sinking to watch them slowly thunk shut with a fluttery smile like the pleased fat stray cat at Kasai-kun’s place.

“Nah, I’ll freeload off the school grounds forever, thanks.”

“We can fit a fridge the size of two fridges.” Megumi was standing in an empty spot beside the stove, spreading his arms to touch either side before running to cycle through the living room pot lights with a sliding switch. His face was speckled in gold, purple, green, then blue as he whipped around intensely, his soccer keychain jingling. “Suguru, I want a fridge with an ice dispenser. We can make our own lemonade and bring it to Ibaraki. Nanako and I started a bet since she and Mimiko started growing limes—” He didn’t even finish before he was bolting up the spiral stairs, his footsteps thudding to the tune of countless doors swinging open.

This was just the first trip. She would still get to see their old empty apartment a couple more times, stray packing peanuts scattered and old kitchen appliances stacked to be thrown out. The genkan wouldn’t have their welcome mat, nor their getabako wouldn’t have Suguru-nii’s tell-tale jika-tabi or Satoru-nii’s polished shoes.

But she liked this place. She hadn’t seen all of it yet, but she already liked it.

Setting down Satoru-nii’s hat and the melon on the counter, Tsumiki slipped past everyone, letting their voices echo behind her. She went to a lakeside that wasn’t a lakeside, but a pair of glass frames that slid open not to a balcony, but to the rooftop of the condo.

A rooftop terrace. She’d wanted somewhere to put her plants and Satoru-nii had given her a rooftop terrace.

Out here, there was nothing except for her, the overhang of a patio roof—all her plants that had been warped over in a neat row—and the skyline watered with sunlight. The weather system was stepping back with a curtsey, taking its sunshower across the city below.

In the distance, Tsumiki could just about make out the snowy crown of a distant mountain. It was achingly beautiful. The most beautiful view in the world after Satoru-nii’s eyes, Suguru-nii’s smile, Megumi’s cheeks tinged the palest pink of fabric softeners.

Nodding firmly, she scooped up her stone-heavy heart and ran back inside, her voice a little muffled from her swollen gum, her feet slapping the floorboards.

“Megumi, pass me your scope! I think you can see Fujisan from here!”

The homesickness, as Suguru-nii had assured her, didn’t really go away after the first day.

Not the second either, or the third, fourth, fifth…

The perfect voice of a brand new, very human alarm clock blasted through the penthouse.

I wanna be the very best

Tsumiki’s eyes sprung open.

Like no one ever was

No, it went away after around a week.

She gave her grogginess a little time to get banished by the new lighting before flinging up and squishing her cheeks, ruddy and creased from her futon—they all had separate ones now for the mornings before all the bedding and furnishing could get sorted out. A morning just like this one: her bed head drizzled in honeyed sunlight, her window cracked open to breathe on the beaded charm string she’d made yesterday and throw colours across her mostly barren floor.

The faint breeze kissed Tsumiki’s heels as she threw up her futon blanket and leapt over the boxes she’d pushed together as a makeshift footpost and low wall, rooting through her closet—all her clothes didn’t even take up half—to snag a peachy frill-edged skirt and shorts.

“Megumi!” she whisper-shouted, toeing her slippers on. “Megumi, wake up!”

The song kept going over the brisk chopping of knives, rapidfire whisking, and the solid thunk of the fridge door. Sharp sizzles of what her twitching nose told her was pancake batter whispered invitingly.

To catch them is my new test

To train them is my caaaause!

“Megumi! He’s not going to stop if you don’t get up! We all agreed, remember?”

Still nothing. A quick poke of her head inside Megumi’s room nestled next to hers revealed blinds drawn tight and a few dark tufts sticking out over the top of her brother’s futon, the fortress wall of his half-unopened boxes shielding him from the doorway. He did his homework the same way she did: sitting cross-legged on flattened boxes, fresh walls eagerly watching their wagging pencils and scrubbing erasers.

But that was for weekdays. Today was a week end , highlighted on the calendar pinned up on the new fridge Satoru-nii had ordered in—and set up himself with rolled sleeves and a spinning wrench he didn’t need, according to the manual Suguru-nii had read in between attacking him with a flower sweep when he tried doing a trick shot over the banister—had flipped deeper into summer.

Vacation started soon. Tsumiki was sleeping under a ceiling whose colour she’d memorized, her smile soaring whenever the sun set spectacularly on their forty floor tall island and she could eat ice cream on the terrace, Megumi’s hair edged in rusty gold as he paced around listing to her the different fish in the lobby aquarium.

The tattered scrapbook was still nestled under her heart pillow every night, and in the evenings she used homework as a cover to tape up some old rips and tears now that she had a room all to herself, though she could hear Megumi through the wall in the quieter moments if she tried hard enough. She couldn't put away the thing, its wrinkled pages and soft crayon dashes kept close. Not yet. Not when Little Tsumiki was still showing up in the corner of her eye at breakfast and dinner, round-mouthed and curious and confused.

Big Tsumiki had lots of work to do. To make this new home more…well, home. Megumi seemed to think blazing through homework, running off after school with a tape-garnished crayon map in his pocket, and leaving manga all over his floor was the answer. Suguru-nii probably had good ideas, but he and Satoru-nii had been swamped with more TA work since the big move.

Pushing off the doorframe, Tsumiki chased the leaps and bounds of the alarm clock’s voice into the cool blue hallway.

I will travel across the laaands

Sear-ching far and wiiiiide

The new hallway wasn’t much longer than their old one, but just that much fuller: Megumi’s room was nestled to her right and Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii’s to her left, their doors sporting coloured name cards she had made.

Teach Pokemon to understand

The power that’s insiiiideee

So far, they’d only ever accidentally opened their doors in unison once. Satoru-nii had snapped a morning selfie to commemorate: Megumi’s groggy face trapped in the crook of Satoru-nii’s blindingly yellow shirt arm, Tsumiki crowding with her hair messy around her shoulders, and Suguru-nii holding up a peace sign as he disappeared into one of the second floor bathrooms.

The first bathroom was right across Suguru-nii’s door, and the second—an on-suite with a deep soak traditional tub—backed right up next to it inside Satoru-nii’s room, paired with the walk-in closet he’d unloaded all his clothes into and still had more room. Both bathrooms looked like they came right out of a hotel: flush backsplash, shiny faucets, neat towel bars, toilets with buttons that chimed.

It reminded her a bit of the hotel they’d stayed in Naha, Okinawa. Except it was theirs now.

Hers.

Tsumiki ran right past both bathrooms into a victory slide, throwing her arms up above the banister running above the kitchen wall. Without fail, it gave her a cozy top-down view without stampeding down the gentle spiral stairs a few metres ahead. She already had plans to wrap paper vines around it and tape some origami flowers, if only to make it seem less like it belonged to a stiff boardroom.

“I’m here!” Her knees hit the cool wooden panels, her fist pumped. “Agent Miki, reporting for active duty!”

“It’s you and me, I know it’s my destinyyyyyy—yay, Miki, you’re in first place! Have a seat!” Looking up from pulling out a pot and wooden spoon, Satoru-nii was surrounded by a cloud of butter knives speckled with blueberry and strawberry juice. “Gumi’s still in the clutches of dreamland, huh?”

“Yep! Are those waffles? ” Tsumiki leaned over the banister, glad for once to leave her glasses behind.

A Limitless contrail of used spatulas, measuring spoons, ladles, and the odd saucer wove like a bridge to where Suguru-nii was expertly pan-flipping a fluffy souffle pancake. The freshly completed stack jiggled as he slid the platter right off the counter without looking, Satoru-nii whisking it in a two-fingered move through the air and down to the picnic placemat—it still had a few stains from last year’s hanami—laid out with glasses, pitchers, and cutlery on the living room floor.

Their old table…had broken during their second moving trip. Shoko-neesan had held a five minute funeral with her lighter as a gravestone candle by the roadside, passing traffic giving them all weird looks, before they’d thrown out the pieces. The couch had been successfully transported, though, and now stood as lumpy and three-legged as ever in the far corner, kept company by some of Tsumiki’s smaller plants that didn’t mind the indoors.

It wasn’t much against the gargantuan living space, but it was a start. Satoru-nii’s array of Doraemon stickers had survived too, peeling a little from some rain that had gotten it. That made Tsumiki almost happier than seeing the actual couch arrive in one piece, although Satoru-nii had had to pull off a few Satoru-nii moves to get it into the lobby and up the elevator without security—real guards with neat outfits and curly loops over their ears, much to Megumi’s intense staring—getting too roped in.

Suguru-nii had taken forty flights of stairs to avoid the chaos. Shoko-neesan had gone ahead to pass everyone water bottles in the penthouse entrance, taking a picture or two. Satoru-nii stole her phone and took selfies until the couch was brought up and he’d sent off at least two of the security guards with a promise for a lavish dinner sometime. Once they’d gone, he’d wheeled to shoot them all a confident grin and peace sign, saying—

“Extra incentive never hurts, you know.” Flashing Tsumiki a smile, Suguru-nii repeated the exact same words and turned to pour another sizzling ladleful into the pan, his hair up in its usual messy half-bun. His head was tipped to sing along at a softer pitch backing Satoru-nii’s high spirits as he spun to snatch two waffles up from the toaster. “Ohhhhh, you’re my best friend in a world we must defend…ah, Satoru, it looks like you’ll have to step things up again after all.”

“Right? And here I hoped he’d know better by now.” A paring knife following him around to shear ribbons off the apple he bit into like a horse—just a snack for himself, then—Satoru-nii sucked in a breath and started banging the pot, his hollering reaching a new level of sync with Suguru-nii leaning to hold out the spatula as a mic for him. “A HEART SO TRUE, OUR COURAGE WILL P-U-L-L US THROUGHHHHH—”

“Through,” Suguru-nii added in a heartfelt echo.

“Through,” Tsumiki chimed in faithfully.

One, two, three…

Right on cue, a pair of thunderstorming footsteps burst out behind her, Megumi leaping off the banister in his star PJs with gnashed teeth, messy hair, and eyes lit with morning seaglass fire.

“Will you SHUT UP ALREADY—”

“You teach me and I’ll teach you,” Satoru-nii sang, spinning to catch him under his arms and twirl him around, Suguru-nii flipping the spatula microphone over his wrist in the background with a hand pressed to his heart with pure passion.

Tsumiki cupped her mouth. “Poke-monnnn…!”

“And now for the finishing touch granted by the second place’s penalty!” Satoru-nii thrusted Megumi high up, grinning devilishly against the foot that swung up to slam repeatedly against Infinity, her brother’s face a hideous stormcloud.

Tsumiki drummed the banister eagerly. “Come on, Megumi! Just one line! You can do it! You sang for everyone on all three and a half moving trips—”

“That was different— ” Ears red from the terrace’s morning glow, Megumi whipped his head to the side, bristled, and sighed, still suspended by Satoru-nii’s hands. Shoulders slumped, he glanced back reluctantly and muttered in a small sing-song, “Gotta catch ‘em all.”

“POKEMON!” came the thunderous bounceback, Satoru-nii slapping his thigh and Suguru-nii doing light applause while dodging the leg sweep Megumi attempted once he was set down.

“Good work, everyone! Our performance has definitely skyrocketed! Soon, we might be able to hit the top record charts! I’ll get pear ice cream from Tottori to celebrate!”

“Ha, as if you haven’t already bought out all the summer treat stalls, Satoru.”

“This face and this wallet come with a heavy, heavy burden. Someday I might even have to turn down idol contracts and a life prospect with concerts and world tours…oh wait.”

“You already have. Twice. Autumn of our first year. Grab the fruit bowls already.”

“Sure, sure~. Miki, can you get our grumpy blueberry something to scarf down before he gnaws on his fork or something?”

Tsumiki slid the platter of waffles off the counter, made her wobbling way to the placemat, and set it down in a flourish. “No fork gnawing allowed!”

“I said I’m awake.” Her grumpy brother stopped rubbing his eye to glare at her in a half-squint, but his arm slid around his plate in an instinctive guard against Satoru-nii flopping down beach recliner style beside him. “...can’t we sleep in just this once? It’s the weekend.”

“Nope! You’re the one who went all out in the soccer game yesterday. Reap what you sow!” Sticking her tongue out, Tsumiki waited eagerly for Suguru-nii to fold his apron on the peninsula and come sit with them. He was wearing his bontan pants and tabi socks already, which meant breakfast would likely be cut short, but his fingers went to fix her flyaways like always.

“Now, now that everyone’s here, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed…” Satoru-nii cheerfully tossed sugar spoonfuls and whipped cream over his waffles, talking as he went. “Hold on, hold on, Suguru, you have first speaker honours. These souffles would make Roku-chan clench his tea cup.”

“So now that we’ve all gathered here in a timely, organized, and responsible manner—don’t glare, Megumi-kun, I told you the walls are thicker here—we as a family,” Suguru-nii gave Satoru-nii leaning over like a crooked telephone pole a bite of his pancake, “have an important discussion to address. First, any immediate thoughts or concerns?”

“The new front loader works pretty good.” Megumi was already halfway through his first pancake. “It sings instead of beeps when it’s done. And the dash lights up.”

Before Suguru-nii had speedily selected a new washer and dryer combo, they’d been sending their laundry to the condo cleaner staff, which made Tsumiki feel even more like she was in some kind of castle. Their clothing racks, ironing board, and iron were all neatly arranged in the laundry room’s spacious cupboards and closet.

“Tsumiki-chan?”

She shot up her hand. “Megumi and I memorized the new route to school. The train station’s a little crowded in the mornings, but the ride’s A-okay. I helped an old lady pick up her flower bouquet!”

“Good. And Megumi-kun, if anyone tries anything with your sister…”

Her brother gulped down his juice and wiped his mouth, shrugging. “I’ll beat them up. Leg sweep and arm twist.”

“Very good. Satoru, you don’t count, so we’ll skip over you. Honestly, I feel,” Suguru-nii took a long draw of barley tea, Satoru-nii raising the chilled container above his head and Infinity blocking a palm hit to the liver, “like we’ve actually accomplished a lot more than you think.”

“Meaning?” Megumi asked, his stuffed cheeks bobbing. It too had ruddy creases from his futon.

“Meaning congrats on surviving the first week of penthouse life!” A party popper flew out from nowhere, Satoru-nii showering the placemat with confetti and streamers. Suguru-nii delicately picked a few glitter pieces from his bangs. “Gumi, let’s turn that frown upside down! Think of the progress we’ve made. You don’t walk into my or Suguru’s rooms anymore thinking it’s the bathroom anymore, for example.”

Her brother bit down on his fork hard enough Tsumiki decided a little cursed energy would have bent the prongs. “You two basically share Suguru’s room anyway.”

“That’s because my room is so bare bones right now it’s awful. I can’t sleep without a chic lamp and a high thread count, you know?” Satoru-nii leaned back on his seat cushion, his fork bobbing between his bared teeth. “I need a lil something-something to fully kick it back and call it my own.”

“So you can survive on a futon,” Megumi muttered around a waffle. Tsumiki giggled into her glass.

“Hino-kun and Kasai-kun keep pestering him about what it’s like being rich,” she explained at Suguru-nii’s amused eyebrow raise, the syrup pitcher swirling in a golden brown waterfall. “So he’s been getting the names of all the fish in the lobby aquarium for them!”

“Don’t look down on cardinal tetra fish.”

Despite all his bellyaching at lunch break and all the times she’d seen him get chased in and out of the library, Megumi was running ahead of her when it came to their new place. They were the same height and saw the same thing, but there was an entirely different glimmer in his eyes struck by the skylight every time they took the elevator down to head to school, a copy of the keys and the special card pocketed away safely in his shorts.

The same glimmer Okinawa had brought. A glimmer even she, his big sister who’d learned how to burp him and led him around on his toddler feet, had never once seen in Okaasan’s place.

It was a look, she realized, that wasn’t exclusive to their old apartment unit either. As long as he was happy, it would appear anywhere.

“—and so, we’ve designated you and Miki for a very, very, very crucial day operation.” Satoru-nii clapped his hands together, pausing. “Miki, you get all that?”

“Satoru has to supervise the students he’s assigned to today for their missions.” She looked up at Suguru-nii tucking her bangs behind her ear. “I’m free between a mission in a few hours and one later at night, so it’ll be up to us three today.”

“Us four,” Satoru-nii added cheerily, holding up his fingers. “Sadly, Ijichi’s still all hooked up—”

“Satoru, your wording.”

“—driving around for a ton of missions, so!” A solid clap. Satoru-nii leaned forward, everyone’s PJ colours playing off his juice glass. “I had the brilliant foresight to call up an old, reliable contact. Someone who leapt at the chance—nay, burst into tears when I rang her up. Suguru, she burst into tears, didn’t she?”

“Definitely. She couldn’t even finish her miso. If I could’ve lent her a hand to thump her back over the vast network of telecommunications,” Suguru-nii raised a sorrowful hand to his brow and took a long sip of his tea, “I would have.”

Megumi narrowed his eyes. “Uh-huh. Is it Shoko-neesan again?”

“No need! After the white van rental incident, she’s blocked me on all my numbers for a month except for emergencies! Besides, we’ll be getting everything delivered to our doorstep.” Satoru-nii splayed his fingers across his chest, his Eyes briefly falling on Suguru-nii for some reason. “We’ll be doing all the assembling and arranging, of course.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Tsumiki waved her hands about. “What are we doing today, exactly…?”

The biggest difference so far between the apartment and the penthouse was the outside quiet even when the terrace doors were wide open. No traffic noises when all the roads were forty floors down.

As a result, it made everyone look incredibly, incredibly ominous.

Megumi actually had a faint smirk. Satoru-nii was spinning a stream of sugar around his fingertip, whistling. Suguru-nii’s sip of tea sounded positively villainous.

“Why, it’s high time for a little interior decoration, don’t you think?”

“A little…?” She co*cked her head.

“A lot.”

Tsumiki gasped.

“Time to get cooler tables and chairs,” Megumi broke in, his fork clattering as he shuffled closer to Suguru-nii swiping on his smartphone. “And another couch. And a bigger TV. We need a PS3 for each of us, and Jomei’s brothers say there’s going to be a new Nintendo console coming next year—”

“Gumiiii, do you really want to sleep on a futon for the rest of your life? Think about the bed potential first! Suguru and I were checking some things out earlier and there’s this sound-activated lamp set I really like.”

“Satoru, today’s not just about you. My first priority’s those accordion blinds for my room—ah, I forgot, did you want an irregular bookcase or a normal cubby?”

“I need three cubbies,” Megumi cut in, “and a bookshelf for manga. And…for a mystery novel or two.”

“Oh? Are you finally opening your eyes to the brilliance of Edogawa-sensei, Megumi-kun?”

“...only if we read it in the dojo. It has to feel atmospheric.”

“Miki.” Tsumiki was turned and taken to the side in the chaos. Satoru-nii raised his hand in a casual half-plead, his voice dropping into a whisper. “I’m counting on you to make sure everything’s the best it can be for this shopping extravaganza, ‘kay? Gumi tells me you’re at the top of arts and crafts class. Go on and give this place your special touch.”

“Everything?” she whispered back, shuffling to snag a blueberry off Megumi’s plate. He didn’t notice. “Even the bedrooms?”

Satoru-nii ruffled her hair, the terrace sun lining his hair with golden floss as he leaned down for them to bump foreheads.

“Especially the bedrooms. Just remember: high thread count for my sheets, there’s got to be a sound activated lamp in there somewhere, Megumi will accept anything you sell to him with a dinosaur on it, and Suguru wouldn’t mind a slice of Ibaraki home.”

“Roger that! Write down all your requests!” Firing off her own wink, Tsumiki rooted around for a pocket notebook in her shorts. “Who’s our amazing fourth agent who cried when you called? I’ll need a trusty partner for the day!”

“It wasn’t just crying, Miki, she was overcome with an ocean of absolute—”

“Resentment. That’s the first and last emotion I was feeling when I woke up this morning actually free from the week’s monstrous workload, hearing his voice, got on the train because he asked me to, and standing here to spend the afternoon doing something he set up like the crazy devil-may-care spirit he is. So…”

Utahime-neesan took a sharp step forward, her glossy ponytail pinned up in a large white bow, and folded her arms, lemonade and punch pink ruffles running up the long side of her skirt. One finger jabbed at Suguru-nii’s chest under his angelic smile, Tsumiki wincing sympathetically and Megumi looking the other way under his bucket hat.

“Why. Does. My conscience. Always have to act up around both of you!?” The hiss turned into a wail at the end, Utahime-neesan burying her face in her hands.

Trusty…partner…was it, Satoru-nii? This was a kind of torture, she was pretty sure. Exclusively tailored and everything.

“It’s fate. The stars aligned and we were destined to meet today. So I have to thank you again for coming on such short notice—oh my.” Suguru-nii held his gloved hand up where it had gone to pat Utahime-neesan’s shoulders, soft sparkles around his generous smile. “Let’s not resort to violence so soon, alright? We have a long lineup of errands to get to today. Megumi-kun?”

Sucking on a drink cup slung around his neck, Megumi snapped out his hand on cue. Out tumbled a folded paper that was as long as he was tall.

“These are the kitchen touch ups, this is the living room essentials, and this is the bedroom makeover details. The backside is everything for the terrace.” Her brother’s face had disappeared behind the list, a black card casually held a little too high before Suguru-nii reached over and tugged his wrist down from public view. “Satoru’s paying for everything, so you can buy something you like on the side.”

Utahime-neesan peered between her fingers skeptically. “Really? That money-throwing numbskull actually said that?”

“No. I made that up. But Satoru’s outside Tokyo, so…” Megumi shrugged. “It’s not like we can make that much of a dent combined.”

“Really!?” Now there were hopeful bubbles and stars around Utahime-neesan’s face, her fists held up to her mouth. “Megumi-kun, so you have turned out alright after all—”

Megumi was already walking off. “Suguru, where’s the game store? It’ll be faster if we split up.”

“We’re not splitting up, actually,” Suguru-nii corrected, hauling Megumi by the back of his shirt and taking Tsumiki by the hand. “Underground shopping complexes are dangerous. There’s no sense of time here, so if we’re not careful…”

“I’ll be forced to spend the whole day with you,” Utahime-neesan finished with a shudder, rubbing her arms. She straightened up, side-eyeing Suguru-nii with a small but begrudging sigh. “Alright then. I’ve faced off worse. Tsumiki-chan, your neesan’s officially committing. Let’s go shopping together!”

“Let’s go shopping together,” Suguru-nii repeated sweetly, and dodged a throat punch.

It had been ages since they’d met Utahime-neesan—she and Shoko-neesan went to baseball games more often than they brought Tsumiki to tag along to malls, and even that was few and far in between—but Suguru-nii always had a childishly mischievous tinge to his smile when he was with her.

It couldn’t be helped! Tsumiki hadn’t brainstormed a cafe-like look that combined the kitchen’s aura, the living room’s space, and the terrace’s sunlight and scribbled down a detailed but retractable wish list for all their rooms while Suguru-nii had been off on his morning mission for nothing. Pulling out her own small notepad, Tsumiki flipped to her point form to-do list. There were three pages below just for their bedrooms.

“We have no time to waste,” she declared sharply, brandishing her pencil and keeping an eye out for all the good brands. Satoru-nii had fed her and Megumi enough magazines while packing for her to recite a good foreign chunk in her sleep, even if she had no idea how to pronounce them. “Onwards!”

“Satoru was right when he said you were overflowing with compassion whenever it comes to Tsumiki-chan, Utahime-san. Isn’t she such a responsible angel?” Suguru-nii leaned away from the iron-claw grab aimed where his neck had been, letting Tsumiki lead the way through the crowds with a flutter of his hair tie. Ruby red and aqua green and lemon yellow today. “Alright, which section should we handle first, Captain Miki?”

Squaring her shoulders, Tsumiki kept a solid pace and referenced the top of her to-do list. “It has to be the kitchen, Sergeant Suguru-nii! It’s the most important. We’re missing a microwave, a sandwich griller, and our rice cooker could use a pressure cooker buddy. Oh, and a hot pot grill for the fall. Ojisan recommended a few good ones.”

“Of course Otousan still can’t live without his shabu-shabu. Lieutenant Megumi-kun?”

“Agreed. But as long as we get a big knife block. Satoru keeps using the fish knife to butter his toast and it’s annoying.” Megumi sucked on his drink and peered over Tsumiki’s shoulder. They took an escalator down into a glittering home furnishing store. “Lights for the peninsula would be good too. We can turn it into a snack bar, so add some hanging lamps.” He paused, then adjusted his bucket hat. “Captain.”

Tsumiki grinned. Suguru-nii’s hands landed on both their heads.

“Anything goes with black, but make sure nothing’s clashes with the underglow lighting of the cupboards. And may I humbly request you to delegate the terrace’s decor to me?”

“Of course, Sergeant! But don’t mess up my plants!”

“Roger that. Oh, Utahime-san, I forgot to include you in the military roleplay. Since you’re new here, you can be…a private.”

Utahime-neesan’s eyelid convulsed at the crisp salute Suguru-nii gave her.

“Sure.”

“Follow my orders when Captain Miki is busy, would you? And be polite.”

“Sure.”

“Sergeant, don’t be mean to the new recruit! I sentence you to buying us all boba later!”

“My apologies, Captain. I’ll be sure to get you the peach strawberry flavour.”

All together, they made an energetic but slightly odd-looking group. Suguru-nii hadn’t changed out of his Jujutsu Tech uniform for some reason, saying he’d already switched to a thinner summer jacket, and kept his open-back gloves on and his hands pocketed even with the AC on everywhere. It didn’t stop him from getting lots of shy looks and flustered faces, Utahime-neesan twitching like she might grind her heel on his jika-tabi when a mall photographer doing discount shoots called them a lovely couple. They were also stopped by more than just a few elbowing lost shoppers, Suguru-nii all but hauling Utahime-neesan along by her arm smilingly after tossing out some delicate but firm directions.

“It’s hard being popular, isn’t it, Private Utahime-san?”

“Let go of my arm right now.”

“No, you’re my protection guarantee. Satoru isn’t here to be my avoidance magnet.”

Tsumiki giggled. Megumi rolled his eyes far enough they looked like they might fall out.

In the end, they did split up, but only in the same store that was big enough to have several mini displays inside it. Tsumiki shooed Suguru-nii and Megumi into the kitchens while she tugged Utahime-neesan to mix, match, and pick out things for the living room. She was elbow-deep in deciding the best ottomans and double-checking whether a round table or a rectangle one would be better, when she noticed her side was empty. Utahime-neesan was having an intense staredown with a coffee table and her smartphone, her arms folded and her sandalled foot tapping out a furious beat under the store’s gentle music.

Again, that wonderful feeling Tsumiki had in the van rose up. Furiously jotting down Satoru-nii’s avalanche of must-haves for his and Suguru-nii’s rooms earlier before he’d windmilled out of the genkan and blew enough kisses to Megumi to get a shoe thrown at the elevator had taken up most of her focus after breakfast, but she was sure of it now. Being with her favourite people was definitely a cure for heartache. Even if they didn’t get along perfectly.

“Sorry for taking up your weekend,” Tsumiki apologized, jotting down the name of the ottoman she decided to go with. Next up was a standalone lamp for reading. She could just about make out Megumi’s hair flitting between the golden and silver lights in the kitchen displays, Suguru-nii drifting behind him. “Satoru-nii said you’d be the best for the job, but you’ve got to be really busy with summer coming up.”

School had flown by, but she hadn’t forgotten Utahime-neesan was supposed to be working to become a jujutsu teacher too, all the way over at Kyoto Jujutsu Tech. Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii had each other, but Utahime-neesan was all by herself. It had to be tough juggling missions.

To her surprise, though, she was given a flustered wave of the hands. “No, no, it’s okay! I don’t mind coming down here with you all, honest. I didn’t have that many plans for today. This is a bit of a secret, but…” Utahime-neesan glanced around and discreetly cupped the side of her mouth, clicking her tongue. “Ever since I became a TA, I’m not allowed to take active missions unless it’s an emergency.”

Tsumiki covered her mouth to whisper too. “Eh? But Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii—”

“My technique’s not very directly offense-oriented, remember? And those two are a whole other ridiculous level anyway. So the folks at Kyoto…” Utahime-neesan stretched her arms over her head and let out a small laugh. “They decided I’d be better off just sticking to one thing instead of juggling. It’s a silly rule, right? But it means I have more free time, actually! To kick back like this and study up more.” Her lower lip twitched in a tiny scowl that’d give Megumi a run for his money. “Though I’d rather not spend it all with Geto. Just to make that clear.”

“Really?” Tsumiki tapped her chin with her pencil. “I think he just likes riling you up because Satoru-nii thinks it’s funny. Don’t mind my silly sergeant.”

“They’re both horrible, aren’t they? Gojo and Geto.”

“Horrible, horrible. But Shoko-neesan says they’re okay at teaching so far.” Tsumiki paused, fingering the pockets of her overall dress. “You really don’t mind shopping with us? I heard there’s a big baseball game this afternoon.”

“Of course I can skip those for you! Shoko gives me updates from time to time. It’s just hard to catch you two since I don’t get to visit the Tokyo branch very often—we’re not exactly full-staffed over in Kyoto—I was surprised when Shoko told me you all had moved out of the blue! You know…sometimes I still think you and Megumi-kun are this tall,” Utahime-neesan lowered her hand down to Tsumiki’s shoulder, “but you’ve both really shot up.” She sank to Tsumiki’s height to squeeze her hands in a bright smile. “I can finally say it face-to-face now! Congrats on moving to a new home.”

“Thanks!”

This friendly rambling like relentless flowerheads and bush thorns shooting up…Tsumiki hadn’t realized how much she missed it. Utahime-neesan had been the one to give Megumi the key to unlocking how to tame Datto two sweltering summers ago, even though she had to have been loaded down with almost as many missions as Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii.

And just now, she might have just made Tsumiki realize something else. It was like the space between the skips of a stone. Suspended and breathless.

Megumi stuck his head around the aisle, his bucket hat hanging slack on its neck string, and Tsumiki startled.

“Sergeant Suguru needs a second opinion on the stools for the snack bar.” His eyes bounced between her and Utahime-neesan. “Private Utahime-neesan, your lieutenant says we need a third opinion.”

“On it! Utahime-neesan, let’s go! I’ll make Sergeant Suguru-nii buy you two whole bobas!”

Utahime-neesan said she wasn’t that busy, but summer was still summer. It was the same for Suguru-nii, running his fingers over a mock countertop display, and Satoru-nii, off somewhere else with a whole bunch of students he had to look out for with his dazzling grin and knowing Eyes. Shoko-neesan too; being a jujutsu doctor was tough.

They were busy, busy, busy. Yet here they all had stubbornly shown up and stuck fast by her and her brother’s like it was nothing. Moving day, the days after, and now today. An obligation to make the penthouse the best it could be.

But they’d all gather together even if the penthouse wasn’t a penthouse. They’d gather, put their hands together, lift the stone off her chest, and…

“Captain Miki, do you want the first honours for your bedroom?”

“Can I!? Megumi said he wanted—wait, let me check your colour squares—”

“I haven’t decided what kind of night light I want, so you can go first. Also, I saw a giant Totoro bean bag back there.”

Let her heart soar.

Their new home could still be a three-floor danchi with a balcony blocked off by a broken broomstick, but Utahime-neesan would still have given up her weekend, Suguru-nii would still be making comparison notes on his phone, and Megumi would still be eyeing up the arcade-style game shops around the corner.

Tsumiki squealed and clasped her hands. “Show me, show me!”

The outside didn’t matter. The inside didn’t matter. Wherever she was happiest—a van, a shopping complex—was what did.

“Can I have fairy lights? I can string them up on a board and pin up all my Polaroid photos and class drawings!”

Suguru-nii measured with his gloved fingertips, his smile cast over his shoulder. “How big do you want it? Wall-sized or half? A third?”

“It should at least be as long as her desk.” Megumi held up his thumb like a mini-ruler. “Actually, forget storage, her desk should be a bit bigger than mine for all her sewing and origami stuff—”

“Hold it, hold it, hold it.” Utahime-neesan barged between them, waving her hands. “Shouldn’t we be focusing on getting her a bed first? Unless it’s a lofted one, spacing might be—”

“Space has never been an issue with Satoru around, Private Utahime-san. Believe me.”

Megumi held up his hand. “I’m not going to be sleeping with her anymore either, so we can get her a lofted bed or whatever and just shove everything else underneath.”

“Didn’t you want a lofted bed, Megumi-kun? After all that fuss you threw up about just going all bare bones style and sticking to your futon—whoops, I’m in trouble.”

“YOU—” Utahime-neesan had snagged Suguru-nii by his jacket and shook him about, her teeth gnashed and her eyes full of lightning as she started all kinds of sentences she didn’t finish. “HOW THE HELL DID YOU MAKE THEM SHARE A ROOM THIS LONG—I KNEW SHOKO’S REPORTS WEREN’T EVERYTHING, WHAT KIND OF INFLUENCE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE HAVING AFTER I LEFT YOU BOTH—”

“There were only two bedrooms and one couch…?”

“THEN YOU AND GOJO COULD’VE SLEPT ON THE DAMN COUCH! ON THE KITCHEN COUNTER! ANYWHERE ELSE! YOU’RE BOTH SIX FOOT STRING BEANS ANYWAY!”

“Tsumiki-chan and Megumi-kun never said they wanted a bunk bed so…?”

“IT’S UP TO THE PARENT TO ACTUALLY NOTICE—”

Suguru-nii held up a noodly hand from where he was being shaken back and forth so badly his back had bent into a C-shape. “Ah, Private Utahime-san, you’re making people draw a lot of different conclusions right now.”

He was dropped faster than Megumi’s good mood over homework did whenever Satoru-nii trapezed in declaring he’d stolen his Nintendo to set a new high score.

Utahime-neesan had to be calmed down with an iced tea. Suguru-nii offered it on bent knee and had it snatched out of his hand fast enough his bangs were whipped by the breeze.

Although…

“After much thought, your princess captain has decided,” Tsumiki silenced everyone with a powerful declaration, her fists on her hips, “she wants a princess bed. This is my royal decree! No more fighting!”

Was it okay to change her mind this fast? Satoru-nii had said the penthouse would be their home from now on. Today, tomorrow, next month, next year, middle school, high school.

Suguru-nii broke into delicate but wild applause, his serene smile surrounded with fresh sparkles. “Perfect, Captain Miki. I couldn’t have recommended something that fit your sweet, wildflower countenance better.”

Meanwhile, their old apartment was still empty. Waiting for someone else to step into that genkan, put posters on those walls, throw a birthday party in that kitchen.

“Are you narrating a fantasy game?” It was Utahime-neesan’s turn to have her face turn ugly.

“That leaves me with the lofted bed.” Megumi was walking off again and had himself hauled back on his heels by Suguru-nii.

She’d have to ask Suguru-nii, her guardian with two houses but one home, about it when they got back later. But she had a feeling he’d say yes.

Until then…she made sure to look long and hard at all the glittering lamps, beaded blind cords, backlit bookshelves, and potted plants they leafed through: Utahime-neesan elbowing for room at the front, Suguru-nii fast-walking to keep up his smiley barbs at her, Megumi rolling his eyes over his cheeks puckered from sucking on his drink straw, and Tsumiki marching with her pencil brandished high and giggles bubbling up like soda pop.

A frosted glass table for the terrace, a dresser with a shapely mirror for her room, a desk with a top row of pull-out cubbies perfect for Megumi…maybe she’d make a scrapbook or a diary to remember this all later.

After all, Little Tsumiki’s dream for a home had been made from crayons.

She remembered: on the edge of the genkan, the morning grey and gold, Okaasan’s flats beside her feet and her lip gloss stick uncapped in a sharp pop over stifled laughter when Little Tsumiki had held up her best crayon scrawl above her short pigtails.

Okaasan, look! I made us a house!

“You did? But,” her hair had been pushed behind her ear, Okaasan’s nails a little uneven on the hand she used to dust off coloured shavings, “we can’t live up that high. It’ll be too cold.”

No, it won’t. It’ll be warm. She’d watched as Okaasan added a big sun, elbowing aside the trash bag to be thrown out, and fixed her lumpy clouds. There’s you, and me. And—

Something moved in the corner of her eye. Megumi’s impossibly big eyes, his short spikes thick and soft against his pajama collar, watched them owlishly from the hushed brown of the tiny hall. He’d waddled out to watch them again, his tatty pocket-sized picture book clutched in his fingers and his big head resting against the doorframe.

My cute baby brother!

Megumi’s face half-disappeared behind the doorway, one eye staring, and she’d giggled and waved.

The lip gloss stick had paused over Okaasan’s lips, her fingertips fidgeting at the edge of her pencil skirt. “All of us in one castle, huh…?”

Yep! Together, Little Tsumiki had continued proudly, we’ll all live waaay up here

A castle

In the sky

“Like the Ghibli movie,” Tsumiki whispered to her ceiling, past the bed’s pink and silver glitter drapes tapering to a frilled dome. Her eyelashes batted away the last of her murky dream, the blanket curdling around her pillows that had gotten pushed about in her sleep. Her ragdolls watched her from around her cream and mint alarm clock with bear ears, the paw-tipped hands ticking away in a tiny blue sea. A little past midnight. “Laputa.”

But in the end, even though it really existed and wasn’t just a city of clouds and fantasies, Laputa had fallen apart.

The penthouse was real life.

“I did it, Okaasan.”

Tsumiki pulled out the scrapbook from under her pillow, tugged on a cord string, and flipped through the pages under the soft butter of the fairy lights strung up over the white cubes of her desk, the cork board Utahime-neesan had picked out framed in paper flowers and leaves full of photos from the Okinawan sea to Tomorrowland’s rides. Haibara-niisan had a special spot all his own, Nanami-niisan’s nestled right beside him. Koizumi-niichan, their spirited native tour guide, had a blurry selfie with his nose taking up half the shot.

Crayons didn’t do a very good job of preserving her mom’s face. The photo Suguru-nii had shown her far back in February had. But she had to do this right to say goodbye properly, the way she had their apartment unit that Megumi had reported from Hino-kun and Kasai-kun now had someone else moving in. A family with a little girl and a yappy puppy.

Tsumiki had her brother’s Gyokuken. She’d never be jealous of dogs her whole life when she had shadow wolves looking out for her.

Rifling through her desk drawers, she pulled out a packed crayon box cobbled together from the remains of hers and Megumi’s from kindergarten, grabbed a fresh sheet of paper, and laid it flat on the scrapbook.

She started to draw. Not from the scrapbook. Not from the Feburary photo. From her fading memories: breakfast in a jungle of tall chair legs, a sink out of reach, and a stovetop full of things that made her mouth water. Quiet afternoons playing by herself and frail dolls, reading to Megumi on her lap, listening to neighbours come and go outside their unit. Dinners under the single ceiling light, Megumi chubby-fisted and quiet-eyed in his high chair, Tsumiki blowing on her spoonful of soup before offering it to him, Okaasan’s hands sudsy and raw from washing dishes.

Tsumiki kept drawing, singing in a whisper, and fought her sleepiness.

The leaves of the bamboo are soothing

Sway to the edge of the eaves

The time for Tanabata had already come and gone. Summer vacation was on the horizon in her hand’s grasp.

The stars are sparkling again and again

Gold and silver and their fine powder

Hair, eyes, mouth.

Five coloured strips

Besides that I wrote a wish

There were so many shades of blue in the crayon box for Satoru-nii’s eyes, but she couldn’t recall the exact brown of Okaasan’s eyes. They weren’t as sharp as Shoko-neesan’s or vibrant like Utahime-neesan’s. So she guessed.

The stars are sparkling again and again

She moved onto the finer details.

They are

The crayon stub slowed to an end.

Watching me

She stopped drawing.

From the sky

Tsumiki held the paper up under the fairy lights and, closing her eyes, tried to picture the February photo.

“Okaasan,” she informed the drawing quietly, “I hope you’re happy wherever you are. If I knew where you went, I’d write you a letter. But I don’t know.” She scrubbed her crayon-stained palm on her knee. “And you didn’t leave one. You didn’t show up to take me or Megumi back. You don’t know where I am now. That’s okay. I’m okay without you.”

Tucking the drawing into the back of the scrapbook, Tsumik rubbed the creases and crinkles for a long time, searching for the right final words.

“Thanks for the scrapbook,” she decided. “You have nice handwriting.”

It had hurt a little, secretly, in the back of Ijichi-niisan’s car. She’d buried that pinpricking ache under the amazing restaurant dinner they’d had all together not to spoil anything. That disappointment, now turning into fragile petals she could blow off her palms, hadn’t been as much as she’d thought it’d be. Once her heartache had been cured, she let herself wonder why Okaasan and the danchi had never been a home sort of home for just a little while.

But no more than that. That was the end of the scrapbook’s world.

Tsumiki perked up at voices coming from downstairs. Very soft, very hushed. Stuffing the scrapbook into the far back of a drawer, she toed her slippers on and tugged on the string cord to switch the fairy lights off.

First, a new habit: she checked on Megumi’s room.

The soft spikes of his hair peeked over the top of his blanket, his ladder leading down to a tiny desk cave of dinosaurs, textbooks, and manga. His new bookshelf was stocked full of documentaries and natural world books. His plush playmats carefully snapped together were biomes where he’d drive all his trucks and plant dinosaurs.

Having a room of her own still felt weird, and it was definitely the same for Satoru-nii and Suguru-nii. Bento-making and coming back from missions at both midnight and dawn woke her up sometimes, her eyes peeking over her blanket to see one or both of them disappear into the same doorway after silent hand-gestured bickering and eyerolls, the opposite person’s colourful name plaque swinging. But the little balcony their side-to-side rooms shared had to mean Satoru-nii was probably finding excuses to bring things into Suguru-nii’s room. Or take things out.

Tonight, though, Tsumiki heard both of them. Her carousel music box tucked under her arm, she padded behind the cut-out banister, sank behind the bars, and peered across the kitchen, sleepiness already slowing her footsteps.

Her breath caught in her throat.

The living room…wasn’t quite a magical fairyland. She wished she had her glasses, but the sight before her was too dazzling—too confusing—to look away from.

Symbols. There were symbols—wriggly, straight, angular, whorly, vaguely hiragana-like—painted all over the place. The ceiling, the walls. The couch and the ottomans and the rugs had been pushed aside, and in the orange gloom of dozens of little bear-shaped lamps, Suguru-nii was squatted by a step ladder, dipping a paint brush into a divided tray of what looked like murky black and red ink. There was a wooden box of yellowed papers by his knee too.

Satoru-nii was hovering upside-down like an astronaut, a paintbrush suspended between his fingers like an artist at whimsical, detailed work as he spun both fast and slow. Six Eyes was burning brightly right now, casting a dim illumination across his cheeks, every little lean shadow of his snowy hair sharpened.

…aha, were they making a horror house set to surprise Megumi again?

“Suguru, the terrace perimeter’ll be covered if we connect it from under our balcony with just the seals. It’s better to go for a slanted balance of unbreachable defense and undetectable surveillance.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m sure. If the outermost border’s crossed and the key doesn’t recognize the print, the second and third layers will ripple back and activate…”

Satoru-nii trailed off, his Eyes snapping to land on Tsumiki behind the banister. Maybe it was her imagination from this distance, but the pupils ringed in bright blue seemed to widen like black holes, the faint skyline light from the terrace reaching his bare feet touching down ghost-quiet.

Then he broke into a grin, tossing a two-fingered wave and cupping his mouth.

“Miki! What’re you doing up so late, huh? School’s tomorrow. You’ve got to be up bright and early for the last few days before summer break, okay~? Put on your best impressions and blow away your teachers! That’s what we did in our first year, right, Suguru?”

“Jujutsu Tech doesn’t schedule regular vacations and even if it did,” Suguru-nii rose up, tapping the paint brush off in the tray, “I’m pretty sure Yaga-gakucho would shed tears to see the back of us.” He crossed the scattered sea of papers in a few smooth strides and met Tsumiki over the kitchen, his smile bearing a teasing tilt. “But you really should be sleeping, Tsumiki-chan. It’s extra messy down here.”

He held up both hands, ink smears to her crayon smudges, and she giggled sleepily.

“You woke me up! The punishment is winding up my music box…are those talismans?” Looking closer after a scrub of her eyes, they were long and a bit smaller than card-sized, with their own faded symbols drawn and ropey tassels in two colours hanging from their tops. It looked a little icky, but her jujutsu theory notes kicked in even now. “Red for auxiliary, black for defensive. And the ink symbols are…”

“Surveillance seals! Together, it’s a glorified automatic home defense system!” Satoru-nii pulled back his sleeve. All along the inside of his forearm were a series of messily painted symbols, some of them matching the larger ones on the walls and ceiling. “We’re testing their strength when woven together in different patterns. See?”

A home defense system…right, being busy TAs all the time meant they couldn’t be around to clear any curses that passed by the area around the penthouse, especially since it was deeper downtown. More people, more cursed energy, more curses.

But the music box started to play once Suguru-nii patiently passed it back to her, the crystal horse turning round and round, and another yawn was coming on. No toothache medicine. Just the voices of her brave knights that made her sleepier and sleepier.

“You’d better get rid of everything come morning,” Tsumiki decided, sweeping her arm at the living room and pillowing her head as she laid down to watch them, “or Megumi’s going to be mad. He doesn’t want any paint jobs.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. It’s a temporary operation and I solemnly promise we’ll move the furniture all two centimetres to the left.” Satoru-nii hiked his feet onto the counter, nearly kicking a utensil holder off, and stacked his arms on the banister. “Here, I’ll break it down into three steps. One!”

His finger flew up, Tsumiki’s eyes concentrating hard despite their lids drooping.

“The seals and talismans work together as a hivemind. Seals are eyes, talismans are the body. Two!”

Another finger. She pillowed her head some more and shut her eyes, nodding along hard.

“The seals look out for any cursed energy prints within a certain radius. If they don’t recognize the print as something that’s been keyed as A-okay—that includes both natural cursed energy signatures and residuals from techniques—they’ll tell the talismans. And then three!”

The third and final finger. In the shrinking space between her eyelashes, Suguru-nii reached up and adjusted which fingers were being raised.

“The talismans go into protection mode! The whole penthouse is more secure than a nuclear bunker! And you and Gumi can eat your way through the whole snack pantry forever…andddd she fell asleep. See, Suguru, I’m so good at putting them to bed these days. Walking, talking lullaby.”

“Sometimes, I think she’s more like you than me, Satoru.”

“...that so? Oh well—”

The music box tinkled softly over the hand that reached between the banister rungs and tucked her hair behind her ears.

“Night, princess.”

It all started with one stubborn tangle.

She focused on the mirror, her fingers twisting with her breath stubbornly held.

Birthday parties were precious. Not so simple now that Satoru-nii had gotten his hands on a hundred twistable balloons and Suguru-nii had just that many new baking recipes to test out. But the skyline was a beckoning blue, the terrace could burst with this much life only once or twice, and the countdown to Ibaraki playdates was ticking away, so they were just that more precious.

“Suguru!”

And busy. Very busy.

Everything was louder in the penthouse. Louder still with her window cracked open just enough to hear all the activity on the terrace: Hino-kun chasing Kasai-kun around with a T-rex balloon, Ran-chan standing on a chair yelling at him, Maeda-chan trying to coax her down. And there were her other new friends too—Yoshida-chan from sewing club, Aoki-chan and Kimura-chan from origami club—who’d been sent origami letter invites and shown up in the lobby, Megumi there to intensely stare them down and Satoru-nii to usher them along like baby penguins.

Suguru-nii stayed in the kitchen long enough it was almost easy to miss the glittery pompom of his party hat and the new, presentable apron he’d donned. He never took off Satoru-nii’s Mimmy oven mitts either, serving all of the party members streaming in from behind the peninsula they’d turned into a snack bar like a smiling, gentlemanly butler.

It was all perfect. Except for the tangle Tsumiki was staring down at the back of her crown braid, the rest brushed smooth and soft past her shoulders. The big buttercup ribbon meant to tie off lay across her dresser, her lips pursed and her brow scrunched as she used her elbow to push around the hair ties, scrunchies, elastics, and combs in the drawers.

Something…was gone.

“Suguru, I can’t find my party hat.” Megumi’s voice downstairs passed from the terrace into the living room.

“Did you check under your bed?”

“Yeah.”

“The couch?”

“Yeah.”

“The other couch?”

“Yeah!”

Satoru-nii announced himself with a rubbery squawk of balloons being twisted, his victory cackle muffled from whatever freshly frosted item he’d snatched. “Under Miki’s bed?”

A pause. Her brother’s footsteps came thundering around the spiral steps and skidded to her door. Three hard knocks, and then it swung open.

“I can’t find my party hat,” came the low hiss, met with Tsumiki twisting on her padded chair, her fingertips pinching off the back of her braid.

“I can’t find my old hair brush!”

They stared at each other.

The only remotely formal thing about Megumi’s outfit was the bow tie he’d knotted his short sleeve hoodie drawstrings into, but he still gave a shallow mock bow and padded over to stare at her reflection. A rose pink skirt in two gauzy layers and a tank top with frilled straps.

“You look pretty.” That was the height of the straight-faced compliments he ever gave her, Nanako-chan, Mimiko-chan, Shoko-neesan, Utahime-neesan, or Suguru-nii’s mom.

“Thanks! But…” Letting him take over holding her braid, Tsumiki rooted through more drawers and grinned sheepishly. “I think I’m in trouble.”

“Do you have to keep the crown braid?”

“Of course! Suguru-nii got me this bow, and—”

“Then…” Megumi let the braid go, ignoring her outraged squeak, and mussed up her hair until it had unravelled on both sides. He planted his hands on her shoulders and spun her around. “He can just give you his hair brush later. He has like, five. But you’re gonna be late at this rate. The birthday girl can’t be late.”

Tsumiki pursed her lips. Glanced at her reflection. “You just want to eat your eight year old big sister’s cake, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Satoru’s getting to all the cupcakes.” Megumi wasn’t fazed, whipping her bow off the desk and tying it around her waist loosely like a sash. He mussed up her bangs even more. “And if we do this…you look like a wild princess who runs with wolves.”

She slapped his hands away, giggling. “Like San from Princess Mononoke? ”

“We could smear something under your eyes too—”

“No thanks!” Slamming her drawers shut, Tsumiki snagged the party hat forgotten under her bed, jammed it on her brother’s head, and raced him out the door, her hair streaming behind in the waves of her laughter. “I’m a princess of the wolves, the sky, and the forest!”

That was where her heart, acheless and free, lay.

The heartbreak would come some time later.