Fic, Fujicest, "The Key"
Happy birthday, Fuji Yuuta. ♥ For this occasion, I wrote something a little bit different. Yumiko's tale is true; I merely embellished it and utilised it for my own purposes. :3
Aniki's room was peaceful when he wasn't in it, Yuuta thought as he closed the door behind him and just stood, basking in the particular scent, texture and feel of the room as one would in sunlight. Everything looked normal: aniki's cacti were lined up carefully on the window ledge and bookshelves; an LP had been left on top of the gramophone, resting casually atop its cardboard sleeve; a pair of pyjamas was folded neatly beside his pillow. The room looked exactly as it always did, right down to the particular alignment of the cushions on the rocking chair.
Yumiko had told him a story that morning that had made him curious about his brother's room. From anybody else, he would have dismissed the story as ridiculous - but Yumiko was different, and, he might have thought, possibly the same as Shuusuke, if what she had told him was really to be believed.
He was almost prepared to believe in it completely: there was just something he had to check, first. Yumiko had not mentioned it - it was something Yuuta had concluded with his own thoughts - but he knew he had to do it before he believed, and before he acted on that belief. If the story was true and aniki was as he had been described, it was almost inevitable that Yuuta would act. Only those like Shuusuke, who possessed the inner dignity required to withhold from pressing buttons that should not be pressed, could hold themselves back from forces that pulled at them. Yuuta leaked, Yumiko had said, which was why events happened as they did: he was drawn, apparently, to those with the seals and the poise that he did not.
Was he drawn to aniki? Was aniki really what their sister had claimed? Yuuta would find out at this moment, on this quiet, lazy afternoon.
The bed felt normal as he sat down in a manner not far removed from 'gingerly'. He'd expected it to, because this was the easy part, but even aside from his sister's story, this was aniki's bed, and that was a set of worries all its own. Would aniki know he'd been here? Of course he would, even if he covered the traces.
Even if they covered themselves.
He didn't want to rise; he didn't want to have his fears confirmed in any fashion, which would happen once he stood up and turned around. This was ridiculous, though, so he forced himself to stand and turn, and lo, he was met with a depression in the duvet marking where he had just been sitting. Everything was completely normal.
"Do you need some help?"
In his concentration, Yuuta had missed aniki's entrance. He'd thought he was out, but maybe Yumiko was right and he did leak. Aniki didn't leak. Aniki didn't seem surprised to see him, either.
"I... er... I don't know." And he didn't. Did he need help? Yes; but from aniki?
"You can continue what you were doing, if you'd like. Don't let me stop you."
Aniki was completely unruffled. If Yuuta had found him in his room without permission, acting shady, Yuuta would have been as ruffled as a parrot in an unfortunate exploding accident, and twice as loud. Aniki was always calm, though, and always anticipating things. Anticipating Yuuta, anyway. Because he leaked?
"Do I leak?" he blurted out, both answering his own question and embarrassing himself in one time-conserving utterance.
Aniki looked at him out of the corner of his eye, looking surprisingly guarded.
"Did Yumiko tell you a story?" he asked, trying to set his expression back to one of ease and measurement.
"Er, yes." Yuuta didn't know whether to feel foolish for having taken such a story to heart, or gratified for finally knowing what his siblings had known before him. "Is it... true?"
"Perhaps." Aniki crossed over to him and patted the rumpled patch of duvet, inviting him to sit down. As he sat, watching Yuuta dither over whether to sit or not, he said, "Do you think it's true?"
"I could... believe it," Yuuta said slowly, still standing.
"She told it to me a long time ago, and I believed it then."
"Do you still believe it?"
Shuusuke looked up at him, and Yuuta knew at that moment that he believed. This was why aniki's eyes were as they were, and why Yuuta's own were grey and washed out in comparison. This was why everything was as it was.
"I found, after a while, that it did not matter whether I believed or not."
Yuuta tried to think this over, and found he had to sit down as he formulated a reply. Aniki's hand closed over his knee as he began to speak, but it was warm - curiously warm - and Yuuta was surprised to find that he didn't mind it that much. The story had affected him more than Yumiko had perhaps imagined.
"You mean, it's true whether or not you believe it...?"
Shuusuke squeezed Yuuta's knee gently. "No. But you guess well, Yuuta."
Was he meant to be proud of that? Was it wrong that he did feel proud?
Shuusuke leant his head on Yuuta's shoulder and decided to expand on his last remark.
"It does not matter whether or not I believe, because it does not matter whether or not it is true."
"How does it... how does it not matter? If it's true, I leak!" Yuuta was more concerned about leaking than his brother's head on his shoulder. He'd imagined it to be heavier than it was, but there wasn't time then to ponder the inconsistency.
"If you did not leak, you would not be you."
That did make sense. And yet...
"But... there could be a better me who didn't leak! There could be a me like you, couldn't there?"
Shuusuke lifted his head from Yuuta's shoulder, as if waking from a dream in which he had existed for the whole conversation until then, and considered him carefully.
"There could be a you like me, but I would not feel the same, and you would not feel the same."
"I... but..."
"How do I know how you feel?"
Yuuta nodded slowly.
"Because you leak, Yuuta."
*
"Since it's your fourteenth birthday, Yuuta, I'll tell you a story."
Yumiko was graceful even at the kitchen table. It was the way her hair settled itself over her shoulders, maybe. She was like aniki, in a way.
"A long time ago - thousands of years ago - far away in Polynesia, the people there discovered something that would forever change the way they saw the world. They knew that there were spirits in the air and the trees and the rocks upon which they walked, but there were spirits in people also."
"Spirits in people?"
"You'll see." Yumiko smiled at him, amused. "The first time they discovered these spirits, someone died. There was no doubt, then, that there was spirit energy within certain individuals. The person did not mean for their fellow tribesman to die; they just possessed more spirit energy - mana - than anyone else was ever meant to join with. If they were touched, the shock was too great."
"Like sticking your finger in an electric socket?"
"Exactly like that, although more holy. They discovered that some people are born with too much mana - kind of like our ki - and there was nothing that could be done. Those people became taboo - that's how the word originated: those you could not touch were taboo, for you would die. Those who were taboo were revered, for mana was holy."
"How could they tell who had too much mana?"
"If no one accidentally died first, then they could be identified by the intensity of their eyes."
The weight Yumiko had put on that made Yuuta wonder the purpose of the story.
"Like... aniki?"
Yumiko only smiled.
"So aniki has too much mana? How come nobody dies when they touch him?"
"Perhaps he has a balance."
It was amazing how similar aniki and Yumiko sounded sometimes.
"Do I have mana?"
"Everyone has mana."
"How come aniki has too much and I don't...? Did he take some of my share?"
"You give yours away, Yuuta."
"I... give it away?"
"You leak it by accident, and so you're drawn to those who possess the emotional strength and tenacity to keep theirs within. You're different from Shuusuke, you know."
"Yeah, I know. You never know what he's thinking."
Yumiko smiled.
"I do."
*
Yumiko had said that aniki had a balance of some sort, to stop his reserve of mana from being dangerous.
As aniki kissed him, Yuuta realised what it was.