[FIC] NewS - Like a Family
Title: Like a Family
Fandom: NewS
Pairing: Gen fic; no pairings
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, and as far as I know, none of this actually happened.
Summary: Yamapi is actually the last person to join their little family.
A/N: AU foster family!NewS fic. This is dedicated to every person that's joined my fic community; thank you for giving me 90 members, and hopefully, 90 readers. Proofread but not beta'd; feedback is encouraged!
Yamapi is actually the last person to join their little family. Ryo beat him by six months, even though the papers were all filled out on the same date and they were handled by the same case worker. But Ryo has a record as being a bit of a troublemaker, so he gets rushed through the paperwork stage because most of the social workers really just want him gone.
Yamapi, whose record is spotless and has words like patient and calm and mature in his file, is not so lucky, and he has to wait half a year before he finally gets released into the custody of his new foster family.
He’s 12 when he comes home for the first time, trailing behind the Kitagawas with nothing but a tattered bag containing his few belongings. Inwardly, he’s apprehensive and uncertain. Outwardly, he’s cold.
That isn’t enough to stop a hyper nine year old from pouncing on him the instant he steps foot in the door, shrieking excitedly about having a new big brother.
Sitting on the couch in the living room of the western style home, Ryo grins at him in a way that hints that he was the one to get the younger boy excited. Yamapi makes a mental note to strangle him in his sleep as he attempts to carefully pry the boy’s arms from around his neck.
~***~
Koyama is the oldest of the group, and by default is labeled as the leader, even though he’s too soft of heart to really be able to lead anyone to anything that’s not a hug. So when Yamapi arrives and demonstrates a level headedness previously unheard of in their home, the oldest immediately pushes the title onto the newcomer.
The announcement of such leads to a bit of a brawl in the basement, more vocal than physical, and neither Yamapi nor Koyama are actually involved in it. Instead, it’s Shige and Ryo, head to head and lead by a certain amount of stubbornness that can only be attained by a pair of almost-teenage boys.
It lasts up until Tegoshi starts to get upset over it. He’s not so young that he could get away with actually crying over it, but he’s nestled in between Massu and Yamapi on the couch, and when things start to get out of hand, he curls a little bit closer to Yamapi and makes a noise that suggests he’s actually thinking about it, if it’ll make the other two stop.
And Yamapi thinks it’s a little bit ridiculous, because he’s only been here for two days and he barely even knows these people. But Tegoshi’s half-hiding against him and Massu is looking at him for guidance and Koyama looks dangerously close to putting Ryo and Shige in a corner together and making them hug until they agree to get along, and Yamapi realizes all at once that this ragtag group is his family now, and clearly none of them are capable of taking care of themselves.
So he heaves a sigh, dislodges Tegoshi and manhandles him over to Massu, and then stands up and physically pulls the arguing pair apart.
“Stop it,” he says, his tone disapproving but startlingly adult-like, even to his own ears. “You sound like a pair of two year olds.” Ryo huffs and crosses him arms, going sulky. Shige actually glares. Yamapi takes it in stride. “Knock it off, before one of you ends up killing the other.”
“It’s just a title,” Massu pipes up from where he’s sitting. He’s been quiet up until this point, only talking in small doses, and Yamapi was starting to wonder if he was even aware any of them existed. Tegoshi nods from where he’s practically draped over the older boy, apparently agreeing. “It doesn’t matter.”
Ryo looks like he wants to contradict that statement, but Yamapi gives him a look that tells him not to. Shige just storms off, and Yamapi doesn’t really understand what the big deal is.
~***~
Koyama explains it later, when the younger ones have gone to bed and Ryo is nodding off on Yamapi’s shoulder, trying to be one of the big kids even though they all know he gets cranky if he doesn’t get enough sleep. It’s not about who’s the ‘leader’, it’s about change.
“He’s been acting up ever since Ryo-chan showed up,” Koyama says simply, shrugging to himself. “He’s a pessimist. He's worried that two more people are going to ruin the family.”
Yamapi tilts his head, curious. “And you aren’t?”
Koyama just smiles, warm and accepting, and Yamapi is starting to understand why he didn’t want to be the leader. “Big families mean more love,” the oldest says cheerfully, and just like that, Yamapi realizes that this time around he might’ve just found a home.
~***~
Ryo has known Yamapi since they were 8 and 7 respectively, and even though he’s the older of the two, Yamapi has always been the one leading them both. They ended up in the same orphanage early, neither of them suiting any of the foster homes they’d been shipped off to, and forming a pact had been easy, albeit mostly Jin’s fault. They’ve stuck together ever since, more comrades than real friends. They’ve been watching each other’s backs for so long that it’s second nature.
Despite all this, the Kitagawa house is the first one they’ve ever ended up in together.
Yamapi is reserved about it. He’s a cynic at heart, and he always approaches a new home with trepidation, expecting the other shoe to drop at any time. He comes off as cold, emotionless, because of this attitude. And in a way, it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the end, his foster parents will give up, stop trying to make a connection, ship him back to the orphanage. He’s really just holding out until he turns 16 and can rent a place himself.
Ryo is the same in some respects. But instead of clamming up, he explodes. His short fuse is cut in half in new environments, and his patience is nearly nonexistent. Arguments break out early, defiance bubbles up. Eventually whatever family that took him in will break under the pressure he puts on them. But unlike Pi, Ryo does it not because he doesn’t want it, but because he wants it too much.
Rejection is easier if you set yourself up for it.
But the Kitagawa house is different. Ryo sees it right away. The Kitagawas are friendly people, Johnny and his wife, and even though they’re absent a great deal of the time, leaving the boys to themselves and their own devices, there’s a lot of love pumped into the household.
And it shows.
Ryo actually likes it here. The others weren’t scared away on his first few nights, when he’d picked a fight with Koyama, snapped at Tegoshi, insulted Massu, and threatened Shige with bodily harm. Instead, Koyama had swooped in and hugged him tight (against his own will, nonetheless), Tegoshi had looked so crushed that Ryo had ended up relenting and apologizing, Massu had forgotten about it within an hour and offered to share his lunch, and Shige…
…well, Shige argues with him at every turn, but most days it’s good natured.
It’s different from the other foster homes. The other kids aren’t perfect like at all the other places; they don’t get straight As and look presentable at all times and talk politely to every adult in the room. It makes Ryo feel a little less self-conscious about himself, a little more comfortable, a little less defensive.
He wouldn’t mind staying for a while.
~***~
Shige, regardless of what anyone (Koyama) says, is not a pessimist. He’s simply pragmatic. He’s not stupid enough to believe that two new people in the household aren’t going to change the group dynamic; a dynamic that, up until this point, has worked quite nicely for them.
Shige knows how the world works, and not just the good parts.
Before being put in the system, he’d lived with his grandmother. His parents have been dead since he was two, so they never came into the equation. And his grandmother, she was a nice old woman, but eccentric. And those eccentricities had only gotten worse over the years. By the time he was 8, she couldn’t care for herself anymore.
It had taken a year longer before anyone had noticed anything. And when they did, they’d torn him away from her, sent her to a home and him to an orphanage. Uncompassionate, uncaring about what happened to him, or about what he wanted; simply following regulations.
So no, Shige’s not an idealist. He’s a realist, and he refuses to accept the idea that changing a good thing can actually make it better. Koyama can insist all he wants, but Shige knows better.
~***~
Shige caves two weeks later when Yamapi actually scolds Tegoshi for putting purple dye in Shige’s hand sanitizer. Anyone that can make Tegoshi apologize, even reluctantly, is a welcomed addition to the family.
The jury’s still out on Ryo.
~***~
Even though he’s the baby of the group, Tegoshi has actually been with the Kitagawas the longest. Put up for adoption at the age of two, he was snatched up almost immediately by the kind couple, and has lived with them ever since. He also happens to be the only one of them who ever got to experience life as an only child, however brief that had been, and Shige insists that this has led to him being spoiled.
And, okay, maybe he’s right. Tegoshi is a little bit spoiled. He grew up surrounded by an affectionate family, and was too young when he was brought into the household to remember his life before this.
But no matter how much the others tease him over it, none of them would take him any other way. Tegoshi is the heart of their little group, the sweetheart, and the fact that he’s so untainted, lacking any form of bitterness, adds a brightness to the home that might’ve otherwise not existed. He keeps them close, Tegoshi; gives them a common source of happiness that makes them all feel a little bit better about themselves.
So they let him be spoiled, and contribute it to a bit themselves. Even Ryo and Yamapi, new as they are, fall into the same pattern as the others. Before long they’re just as wrapped around his finger as the rest of them, but oddly enough, neither mind so much.
He only uses his powers for good, anyway.
(Except when it comes to pranks. Those are too good to give up.)
~***~
Massu, out of all of them, is probably the most stable. He’s also the only one whose parents are not dead, in prison, or just general flakes who have restraining orders keeping them away from their kid. So that might have something to do with it.
He grew up in the house next door, with a single mother who had too much on her plate and a father and sister on the opposite side of the country that he only knew through phone calls and emails. When his mother fell sick, a few years ago, the Kitagawas had taken him in, in lieu of foster care, and since then, Massu has stayed with them and the other boys that have joined the family. He misses his mother quite a bit, but he doesn’t really mind living like this.
He likes having brothers.
He and Tegoshi are closest. This comes from growing up around each other; Massu has known Tegoshi since he was two, after all, and at that time, the only people around under the age of 20 had been a bunch of teenagers down the street, so the two had ended up as playmates more often than not. At the time, Massu had thought of it as a bit of a pain - Tegoshi was a baby compared to him, after all - but these days he’s glad for it, because even though Tegoshi is still a little kid, it’s nice to have someone around that he knows well. Koyama and Shige are nice, but neither of them can touch the bond he and Tegoshi have formed.
At 11 years old, Massu has the world figured out. It all comes down to a pack of brothers, a warm dinner, and a best friend to curl up to at bed time.
As far as he’s concerned, two more faces in the mix can’t hurt at all.
~***~
Koyama’s been with the Kitagawas for about a year when Yamapi and Ryo show up. His other three brothers were there first, but he fits in nicely, befriending Shige rather quickly, earning Tegoshi’s favor soon after and, by proxy, Massu’s as well. He’s known as the optimist, the confident. He’s the emotional support of the group, the one that everyone goes to when they need a shoulder to lean on.
What most of the others don’t know is that, before the Kitagawas took him in, Koyama was living on the streets. He’d made a small career out of picking pockets and street gambling; a regular street urchin, raised on his own terms, only himself to rely on.
But all of that is exactly why he believes so strongly in the good side of the world. Because he was picked up off the streets in the middle of the coldest winter in years, without a jacket, his shoes stolen by a homeless man while he was sleeping. A police officer had found him near frozen to death, and the next thing he knew, he was in a group shelter.
And then the Kitagawas came, and even though he was too old for a foster home - 12 years old, no one wants a kid that old - they took him in, made him family, gave him a roof and food and clothes and brothers on top of it all.
So yes, Koyama had a hard life. But that’s precisely while he’s so hopeful. Because he’s seen first hand how easily miracles can happen.
~***~
There have been other boys in the household, but none of them have stayed.
Moriuchi had been a problem child. The family had tried, so very hard, to help him, but he’d been too damaged, too broken, unwilling to try to fix himself. He’d acted out, caused problems, set a couple of fires. The final straw had snapped when Massu had woken up one night to find Tegoshi shrieking, Moriuchi trying to force a pillow over his face.
None of them knew what happened to him after that, or even if he ever got help.
Kusano and Uchi hadn’t been so extreme. They’d fit in well enough, but both were too independent to really last in a foster home. The structured home life hadn’t suited either of them, and while they’d gotten into a bit of trouble, in the end, they both left of their own accord, preferring the orphanage, where they could live on their own terms.
Ryo still keeps in contact with Uchi, even years later, and occasionally they all get spontaneous emails from Kusano. Usually chain letters, but always with a personal note attached.
None of them can ever bring themselves to feel sorry over their departure, however. Because in the end, the six of them feel more whole as a family than any of them have ever felt before. Adding anyone else just feels wrong, like the balance is tipping in the wrong direction. Shige is the one who voices this analogy, and even though Koyama is quick to point out that he said the same thing about Yamapi and Ryo, inwardly he agrees.
This is family; the sixth of them, absent foster parents aside. Nothing else feels right.
~***~
A few years later and Yamapi finds himself doing something he’d never thought he’d ever actually do: filling out college applications. He’s 17 now, older, smarter, smoother, still with the Kitagawas, still the leader of a ragtag bunch of orphans who somehow manage to make up a family with all their odd parts and quirks.
Behind him, Massu and Ryo are playing a video game, Ryo snapping out curses because he’s losing, even though Massu has a squirming Tegoshi draped over his lap to distract him. On the other end of the couch, Shige is shrieking over the fact that he doesn’t want his chemistry text book to smell like Tego-feet.
Koyama is in the kitchen, making them lunch. He’s almost twenty, barely a month away, and he’s got a nice job as a manager at a small café in town. He could strike it out on his own now, move out of the cramped house and maybe learn to live without having five others to take care of. But he won’t, and they all know it, because Koyama needs them as much as they need him.
Yamapi wonders how they’re going to handle it when he leaves for college. Koyama attends classes on a local campus, but Yamapi has his eyes set high, one of the best colleges in the region, and even though he knows they expect nothing less from their leader, he still doesn’t think it’s properly set in yet.
But in the end, it won’t matter. He could attend college in America, or Europe, or some other country millions of miles away, but in the end, he’ll still find his way home.
Because that’s what family is about.
Fandom: NewS
Pairing: Gen fic; no pairings
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, and as far as I know, none of this actually happened.
Summary: Yamapi is actually the last person to join their little family.
A/N: AU foster family!NewS fic. This is dedicated to every person that's joined my fic community; thank you for giving me 90 members, and hopefully, 90 readers. Proofread but not beta'd; feedback is encouraged!
Yamapi is actually the last person to join their little family. Ryo beat him by six months, even though the papers were all filled out on the same date and they were handled by the same case worker. But Ryo has a record as being a bit of a troublemaker, so he gets rushed through the paperwork stage because most of the social workers really just want him gone.
Yamapi, whose record is spotless and has words like patient and calm and mature in his file, is not so lucky, and he has to wait half a year before he finally gets released into the custody of his new foster family.
He’s 12 when he comes home for the first time, trailing behind the Kitagawas with nothing but a tattered bag containing his few belongings. Inwardly, he’s apprehensive and uncertain. Outwardly, he’s cold.
That isn’t enough to stop a hyper nine year old from pouncing on him the instant he steps foot in the door, shrieking excitedly about having a new big brother.
Sitting on the couch in the living room of the western style home, Ryo grins at him in a way that hints that he was the one to get the younger boy excited. Yamapi makes a mental note to strangle him in his sleep as he attempts to carefully pry the boy’s arms from around his neck.
~***~
Koyama is the oldest of the group, and by default is labeled as the leader, even though he’s too soft of heart to really be able to lead anyone to anything that’s not a hug. So when Yamapi arrives and demonstrates a level headedness previously unheard of in their home, the oldest immediately pushes the title onto the newcomer.
The announcement of such leads to a bit of a brawl in the basement, more vocal than physical, and neither Yamapi nor Koyama are actually involved in it. Instead, it’s Shige and Ryo, head to head and lead by a certain amount of stubbornness that can only be attained by a pair of almost-teenage boys.
It lasts up until Tegoshi starts to get upset over it. He’s not so young that he could get away with actually crying over it, but he’s nestled in between Massu and Yamapi on the couch, and when things start to get out of hand, he curls a little bit closer to Yamapi and makes a noise that suggests he’s actually thinking about it, if it’ll make the other two stop.
And Yamapi thinks it’s a little bit ridiculous, because he’s only been here for two days and he barely even knows these people. But Tegoshi’s half-hiding against him and Massu is looking at him for guidance and Koyama looks dangerously close to putting Ryo and Shige in a corner together and making them hug until they agree to get along, and Yamapi realizes all at once that this ragtag group is his family now, and clearly none of them are capable of taking care of themselves.
So he heaves a sigh, dislodges Tegoshi and manhandles him over to Massu, and then stands up and physically pulls the arguing pair apart.
“Stop it,” he says, his tone disapproving but startlingly adult-like, even to his own ears. “You sound like a pair of two year olds.” Ryo huffs and crosses him arms, going sulky. Shige actually glares. Yamapi takes it in stride. “Knock it off, before one of you ends up killing the other.”
“It’s just a title,” Massu pipes up from where he’s sitting. He’s been quiet up until this point, only talking in small doses, and Yamapi was starting to wonder if he was even aware any of them existed. Tegoshi nods from where he’s practically draped over the older boy, apparently agreeing. “It doesn’t matter.”
Ryo looks like he wants to contradict that statement, but Yamapi gives him a look that tells him not to. Shige just storms off, and Yamapi doesn’t really understand what the big deal is.
~***~
Koyama explains it later, when the younger ones have gone to bed and Ryo is nodding off on Yamapi’s shoulder, trying to be one of the big kids even though they all know he gets cranky if he doesn’t get enough sleep. It’s not about who’s the ‘leader’, it’s about change.
“He’s been acting up ever since Ryo-chan showed up,” Koyama says simply, shrugging to himself. “He’s a pessimist. He's worried that two more people are going to ruin the family.”
Yamapi tilts his head, curious. “And you aren’t?”
Koyama just smiles, warm and accepting, and Yamapi is starting to understand why he didn’t want to be the leader. “Big families mean more love,” the oldest says cheerfully, and just like that, Yamapi realizes that this time around he might’ve just found a home.
~***~
Ryo has known Yamapi since they were 8 and 7 respectively, and even though he’s the older of the two, Yamapi has always been the one leading them both. They ended up in the same orphanage early, neither of them suiting any of the foster homes they’d been shipped off to, and forming a pact had been easy, albeit mostly Jin’s fault. They’ve stuck together ever since, more comrades than real friends. They’ve been watching each other’s backs for so long that it’s second nature.
Despite all this, the Kitagawa house is the first one they’ve ever ended up in together.
Yamapi is reserved about it. He’s a cynic at heart, and he always approaches a new home with trepidation, expecting the other shoe to drop at any time. He comes off as cold, emotionless, because of this attitude. And in a way, it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the end, his foster parents will give up, stop trying to make a connection, ship him back to the orphanage. He’s really just holding out until he turns 16 and can rent a place himself.
Ryo is the same in some respects. But instead of clamming up, he explodes. His short fuse is cut in half in new environments, and his patience is nearly nonexistent. Arguments break out early, defiance bubbles up. Eventually whatever family that took him in will break under the pressure he puts on them. But unlike Pi, Ryo does it not because he doesn’t want it, but because he wants it too much.
Rejection is easier if you set yourself up for it.
But the Kitagawa house is different. Ryo sees it right away. The Kitagawas are friendly people, Johnny and his wife, and even though they’re absent a great deal of the time, leaving the boys to themselves and their own devices, there’s a lot of love pumped into the household.
And it shows.
Ryo actually likes it here. The others weren’t scared away on his first few nights, when he’d picked a fight with Koyama, snapped at Tegoshi, insulted Massu, and threatened Shige with bodily harm. Instead, Koyama had swooped in and hugged him tight (against his own will, nonetheless), Tegoshi had looked so crushed that Ryo had ended up relenting and apologizing, Massu had forgotten about it within an hour and offered to share his lunch, and Shige…
…well, Shige argues with him at every turn, but most days it’s good natured.
It’s different from the other foster homes. The other kids aren’t perfect like at all the other places; they don’t get straight As and look presentable at all times and talk politely to every adult in the room. It makes Ryo feel a little less self-conscious about himself, a little more comfortable, a little less defensive.
He wouldn’t mind staying for a while.
~***~
Shige, regardless of what anyone (Koyama) says, is not a pessimist. He’s simply pragmatic. He’s not stupid enough to believe that two new people in the household aren’t going to change the group dynamic; a dynamic that, up until this point, has worked quite nicely for them.
Shige knows how the world works, and not just the good parts.
Before being put in the system, he’d lived with his grandmother. His parents have been dead since he was two, so they never came into the equation. And his grandmother, she was a nice old woman, but eccentric. And those eccentricities had only gotten worse over the years. By the time he was 8, she couldn’t care for herself anymore.
It had taken a year longer before anyone had noticed anything. And when they did, they’d torn him away from her, sent her to a home and him to an orphanage. Uncompassionate, uncaring about what happened to him, or about what he wanted; simply following regulations.
So no, Shige’s not an idealist. He’s a realist, and he refuses to accept the idea that changing a good thing can actually make it better. Koyama can insist all he wants, but Shige knows better.
~***~
Shige caves two weeks later when Yamapi actually scolds Tegoshi for putting purple dye in Shige’s hand sanitizer. Anyone that can make Tegoshi apologize, even reluctantly, is a welcomed addition to the family.
The jury’s still out on Ryo.
~***~
Even though he’s the baby of the group, Tegoshi has actually been with the Kitagawas the longest. Put up for adoption at the age of two, he was snatched up almost immediately by the kind couple, and has lived with them ever since. He also happens to be the only one of them who ever got to experience life as an only child, however brief that had been, and Shige insists that this has led to him being spoiled.
And, okay, maybe he’s right. Tegoshi is a little bit spoiled. He grew up surrounded by an affectionate family, and was too young when he was brought into the household to remember his life before this.
But no matter how much the others tease him over it, none of them would take him any other way. Tegoshi is the heart of their little group, the sweetheart, and the fact that he’s so untainted, lacking any form of bitterness, adds a brightness to the home that might’ve otherwise not existed. He keeps them close, Tegoshi; gives them a common source of happiness that makes them all feel a little bit better about themselves.
So they let him be spoiled, and contribute it to a bit themselves. Even Ryo and Yamapi, new as they are, fall into the same pattern as the others. Before long they’re just as wrapped around his finger as the rest of them, but oddly enough, neither mind so much.
He only uses his powers for good, anyway.
(Except when it comes to pranks. Those are too good to give up.)
~***~
Massu, out of all of them, is probably the most stable. He’s also the only one whose parents are not dead, in prison, or just general flakes who have restraining orders keeping them away from their kid. So that might have something to do with it.
He grew up in the house next door, with a single mother who had too much on her plate and a father and sister on the opposite side of the country that he only knew through phone calls and emails. When his mother fell sick, a few years ago, the Kitagawas had taken him in, in lieu of foster care, and since then, Massu has stayed with them and the other boys that have joined the family. He misses his mother quite a bit, but he doesn’t really mind living like this.
He likes having brothers.
He and Tegoshi are closest. This comes from growing up around each other; Massu has known Tegoshi since he was two, after all, and at that time, the only people around under the age of 20 had been a bunch of teenagers down the street, so the two had ended up as playmates more often than not. At the time, Massu had thought of it as a bit of a pain - Tegoshi was a baby compared to him, after all - but these days he’s glad for it, because even though Tegoshi is still a little kid, it’s nice to have someone around that he knows well. Koyama and Shige are nice, but neither of them can touch the bond he and Tegoshi have formed.
At 11 years old, Massu has the world figured out. It all comes down to a pack of brothers, a warm dinner, and a best friend to curl up to at bed time.
As far as he’s concerned, two more faces in the mix can’t hurt at all.
~***~
Koyama’s been with the Kitagawas for about a year when Yamapi and Ryo show up. His other three brothers were there first, but he fits in nicely, befriending Shige rather quickly, earning Tegoshi’s favor soon after and, by proxy, Massu’s as well. He’s known as the optimist, the confident. He’s the emotional support of the group, the one that everyone goes to when they need a shoulder to lean on.
What most of the others don’t know is that, before the Kitagawas took him in, Koyama was living on the streets. He’d made a small career out of picking pockets and street gambling; a regular street urchin, raised on his own terms, only himself to rely on.
But all of that is exactly why he believes so strongly in the good side of the world. Because he was picked up off the streets in the middle of the coldest winter in years, without a jacket, his shoes stolen by a homeless man while he was sleeping. A police officer had found him near frozen to death, and the next thing he knew, he was in a group shelter.
And then the Kitagawas came, and even though he was too old for a foster home - 12 years old, no one wants a kid that old - they took him in, made him family, gave him a roof and food and clothes and brothers on top of it all.
So yes, Koyama had a hard life. But that’s precisely while he’s so hopeful. Because he’s seen first hand how easily miracles can happen.
~***~
There have been other boys in the household, but none of them have stayed.
Moriuchi had been a problem child. The family had tried, so very hard, to help him, but he’d been too damaged, too broken, unwilling to try to fix himself. He’d acted out, caused problems, set a couple of fires. The final straw had snapped when Massu had woken up one night to find Tegoshi shrieking, Moriuchi trying to force a pillow over his face.
None of them knew what happened to him after that, or even if he ever got help.
Kusano and Uchi hadn’t been so extreme. They’d fit in well enough, but both were too independent to really last in a foster home. The structured home life hadn’t suited either of them, and while they’d gotten into a bit of trouble, in the end, they both left of their own accord, preferring the orphanage, where they could live on their own terms.
Ryo still keeps in contact with Uchi, even years later, and occasionally they all get spontaneous emails from Kusano. Usually chain letters, but always with a personal note attached.
None of them can ever bring themselves to feel sorry over their departure, however. Because in the end, the six of them feel more whole as a family than any of them have ever felt before. Adding anyone else just feels wrong, like the balance is tipping in the wrong direction. Shige is the one who voices this analogy, and even though Koyama is quick to point out that he said the same thing about Yamapi and Ryo, inwardly he agrees.
This is family; the sixth of them, absent foster parents aside. Nothing else feels right.
~***~
A few years later and Yamapi finds himself doing something he’d never thought he’d ever actually do: filling out college applications. He’s 17 now, older, smarter, smoother, still with the Kitagawas, still the leader of a ragtag bunch of orphans who somehow manage to make up a family with all their odd parts and quirks.
Behind him, Massu and Ryo are playing a video game, Ryo snapping out curses because he’s losing, even though Massu has a squirming Tegoshi draped over his lap to distract him. On the other end of the couch, Shige is shrieking over the fact that he doesn’t want his chemistry text book to smell like Tego-feet.
Koyama is in the kitchen, making them lunch. He’s almost twenty, barely a month away, and he’s got a nice job as a manager at a small café in town. He could strike it out on his own now, move out of the cramped house and maybe learn to live without having five others to take care of. But he won’t, and they all know it, because Koyama needs them as much as they need him.
Yamapi wonders how they’re going to handle it when he leaves for college. Koyama attends classes on a local campus, but Yamapi has his eyes set high, one of the best colleges in the region, and even though he knows they expect nothing less from their leader, he still doesn’t think it’s properly set in yet.
But in the end, it won’t matter. He could attend college in America, or Europe, or some other country millions of miles away, but in the end, he’ll still find his way home.
Because that’s what family is about.