Chapter Text
At zero four hundred in a small farming village in rural Japan, a baby boy was born to the reclusive Shibusawa family. He was a frail thing, as most newborns are. But his father paid no attention to his newborn son, as his wife had taken her final breath as the boy took his first.
The eldest son looked on at his mother’s cooling body and the cold glare of his father. Then his eyes drifted to the ugly child swaddled in the midwife’s arms, frail and bean-shaped with his eyes screwed shut and a nest of white hair on his head. The eldest Shibusawa son, aged eleven with eyes wine-colored that held constant suspicion, wondered if he had ever been that ugly when he was born. He doubted so, he was a handsome boy with sharp features and an equally sharp mind.
The midwife noticed the eldest son’s penetrative gaze and her smile became fearful. The eleven-year-old was a demanding boy, perhaps he’d want to see the infant drowned?
“...May I hold him?” Is what was asked instead, though he did not look up at the midwife. He only kept staring at the baby, his brother, someone who would share his blood and would know all his life. Right now, the wriggling body was innocent and blind, but soon he’d know all what his brother has lived through as well.
“Ah, of course. Be gentle, Tatsuhiko," came the midwife’s soft reply. She held out the swaddled infant for the boy to take, who took the bundle of life into his arms gently.
The midwife looked on with surprise, for Tatsuhiko was a boy who spent his free time killing insects with sticks and had a morbid sense of humor and has never had gentle hands. But here he was, gazing down at the bundle of warmth that was his infant brother that he held in unusually gentle arms.
“Yukihiko.” He says quietly, and for a moment the midwife was befuddled. Then it dawned upon her that it was this little bundle’s name.
“Is that what you want to name him?” She asks in that indulgent voice usually reserved for younger children. It was expectant, and something like disgust roiled in Tatsuhiko’s stomach.
The infant boy in Tatsuhiko’s arms whined with hunger, and his little eyes opened to look up at his brother. Twin pairs of ruby eyes like their mother’s met, and something in Tatsuhiko’s heart softened.
“Yeah. It fits him. It’s what Mother wanted to name him.” He replied softly as Yukihiko yawned, and then began to cry. Panicked, Tatsuhiko returned his brother to the midwife, though the infant only began to cry harder after leaving his brother’s arms.
“He’s only hungry. Come on, I can show you how to make him a bottle.” Tatsuhiko glanced back at his scowling father who was clutching the cooling hand of his wife, and then followed the midwife out of the room.
As Yukihiko continued to cry, the midwife taught Tatsuhiko how to make a bottle for the baby, who would only suckle quietly on the milk while in the arms of his older brother.
That’s how Tatsuhiko found himself sitting with his brother in his arms, now sleeping with a full tummy. Tatsuhiko, for some reason unbeknownst to anyone, could not stop staring at Yukihiko. Maybe it was because the boy was so little, so new to this world of pain and all he knew was the warmth of his brother. Or maybe it was because Tatsuhiko felt some sense of responsibility for the baby that looked exactly like him.
Or maybe, just maybe, Tatsuhiko loved his brother. Maybe. He’ll have to examine the probability of that theory some other time.