The apartment was quiet, just the rice cooker doing its thing and grey light easing in through the kitchen window.
He liked mornings like this, no crowd, no announcer, nobody sizing up his face like it owed them a headline. He rolled the tamagoyaki in the pan, one fold at a time, the same way their mother used to do it, back when she'd still had the energy to stand at a stove this early.
The roll came out clean. He slid it onto the board and reached for the knife.
Quiet like this never lasted. Might as well enjoy it before the house clocked in.
Footsteps came down the stairs, slow, dragging on the last few steps like whoever it was hadn't fully committed to being awake yet. Right on schedule.
"Smells good. What'd you make?"
She leaned in the doorway in an oversized sleep shirt, hair static-charged from the pillow, one hand rubbing at an eye that hadn't opened all the way, looking like she'd lost a fight with her own bed and hadn't noticed yet. A sketchbook came with her, tucked under one arm out of habit more than intention, corner worn soft from getting carried everywhere.
She was Tsukiko, second sister, twenty-three, and looked like she'd pulled another all-nighter at her easel again, which, knowing her, she probably had. Quiet by nature, she didn't say much, never had; she just noticed things and sat on them instead, which was probably why she had permanent circles under her eyes and nails bitten down past where a person should let them get.
"Tamagoyaki and rice." He nodded at the pan. "Same as always. Figured you'd want something easy this early."
She made a sound somewhere between approval and barely-awake, and dragged herself onto the stool at the counter.
"You stay up all night again? You look like you haven't slept in a week."
"Yeah. Had a piece due for critique Thursday and I wasn't even close." She dropped onto the stool, sketchbook landing on the counter like it weighed more than it looked. "Figured I'd rather show up tired than show up with nothing."
"You say that every time, though. You're never close."
"I know. I'm working on it. Or not working on it fast enough, apparently."
Suddenly, two more sets of footsteps came thundering down after that, one heavy and impatient, one dragging like it belonged to somebody who hadn't decided to be a person yet either.
"Move it already. You've had twenty minutes since I told you to get up, and you're still not dressed."
"I am moving. Technically. Walking counts as moving."
"You're standing in the hallway looking at your phone. That's not walking, that's stalling."
"Same thing if you squint."
They rounded the corner still going at it, Akemi with one hand planted flat between Kirara's shoulder blades, steering her the last few steps into the kitchen like a shopping cart with a mind of its own.
Kirara was the youngest at twenty, still half in her school blazer with the top button undone, hair a mess of dyed streaks she clearly hadn't bothered to brush, both ears carrying three piercings each, for whatever that was worth this early, since her eyes hadn't left her phone screen once since she'd shown up.
She dropped into a seat at the low table without looking up from it.
Once everyone had a bowl in front of them, hands came together.
"Itadakimasu."
Akemi and Hikaru ate like the meal was the whole point of the morning.
Tsukiko didn't touch her chopsticks, pencil already moving across the sketchbook instead. Kirara ate one-handed, thumb scrolling with the other, food disappearing like it wasn't even her doing it.
Akemi's eyes flicked between the two of them.
"Sketchbook down. Phone down. Both of you. We're eating as a family for once, I'd like everyone actually present for it."
Neither of them moved. Tsukiko's pencil kept going. Kirara's thumb kept scrolling.
"Did you two hear me, or is this one of those mornings where I'm talking to myself again?"
"I heard you," Tsukiko said, eyes still on the page, which wasn't quite the same thing as listening.
Kirara didn't even bother with that much. She turned the phone toward Hikaru instead, screen lit up with a video looping over and over, a cat wearing a tiny cardboard hat, falling off a couch in exactly the same spot every few seconds.
"Look at this, though. He does it every single time. Forty minutes and he still hasn't learned."
Hikaru glanced at it despite himself. The cat fell off the couch again.
"That's not funny. That's just sad at this point."
"It's extremely funny. You have no soul~"
"PUT. THE PHONE. DOWN. Now. I mean it this time."
Akemi's voice dropped an octave the kitchen hadn't heard all morning. Even the rice cooker seemed to hold still.
Kirara's thumb stopped mid-scroll. Tsukiko's pencil froze half a stroke into a line. Both of them looked up at once, the way a couple of soldiers might look up at a drill sergeant who'd finally had enough.
Akemi held the silence exactly as long as she needed to, then relaxed, like she'd just successfully defused an argument before it started.
"Good. Now eat. Actual food, not phone light and pencil dust." Her eyes landed on Hikaru. "You especially. You're healing from last night, you need real calories, not whatever you've been picking at all week."
"I'm eating, Akemi. I've been eating this whole time."
"Eat more anyway. It won't hurt you."
Breakfast wound down eventually, bowls emptying, Akemi halfway out of her seat, clearing them before anyone else had finished.
Tsukiko drifted to the low table in the living room, sketchbook still open, folding herself down cross-legged the way she always did. Kirara flopped onto the floor cushions after her, a bag of shrimp chips pulled from the pantry on the way past, phone back in her hand again.
The TV murmured in the background, tuned to nothing in particular, the way it always was on a slow morning.
He'd taken a beating in a fight the night before. His shoulder still ached under his shirt, and training started soon, a new simulator cycle dropping Monday he didn't want to walk into cold.
Hikaru stretched his shoulder out, half-listening to none of it, until Tsukiko spoke up again, quieter this time.
"Actually. I've been meaning to ask you something. It's kind of been on my mind, and I don't really know how to..."
"OH MY GOD, IS THAT THE FESTIVAL SPECIAL?"
Suddenly, Kirara's whole body twisted toward the TV, phone forgotten, shrimp chip bag crinkling as she lunged for the remote and cranked the volume up over Tsukiko's last word entirely.
Tsukiko blinked. Her mouth closed. Whatever she'd been circling toward folded back up and disappeared behind her usual quiet, and she picked her chopsticks back up like nothing had been sitting on the tip of her tongue a second ago.
Hikaru caught it anyway, the half-beat of stillness before she looked away. He didn't know what to do with it. Nobody ever did. So he let the moment pass, same as everyone else always did.
The TV lit up with lantern light and taiko drums, a summer festival broadcast out of Chiba, fireworks blooming behind a shrine gate.
Akemi kept folding laundry at a speed that had nothing to do with the show, towels stacking into rectangles sharp enough to cut paper.
"Oh, that one. Bon Odori in Asakusa, third weekend. We're going."
Hikaru kept his attention on his protein bar. He could feel this one coming a mile off.
"I'm not."
"Excuse me?"
"Got training that weekend. New simulator cycle drops Monday. I'm not walking in cold."
Kirara snorted from the floor, legs kicked up on the coffee table.
"Since when do you skip a festival? You love the yakisoba stands. You ranked them last year. In a spreadsheet."
"It wasn't a spreadsheet. It was a tactical assessment."
"It had columns. It had a rating scale. It had footnotes, Hikaru."
"Shut up."
Akemi kept folding, gaze fixed on the towels, which was somehow worse than if she'd met his eyes.
"We could match. Four yukata, coordinated colors. The photographer from the community paper always sets up by the torii gate. Last time he said we looked like..."
"No."
"...four beautiful maidens, turning heads..."
"I said no."
"...everywhere we walked, just like when you were little..."
"I'm not putting on the dress."
The protein bar wrapper crinkled in his fist. Hikaru stood, chair scraping hard against the floor, hair falling across his face in a golden curtain he hadn't bothered to tie back.
"It's a yukata," Akemi said, "not a..."
"I don't care what it's called. I'm not wearing it, and I'm not doing the photo. I'm not one of your maidens, I'm your brother. How many times do I have to say it?!"
The room went still for a beat. The TV kept playing under it, cheerful and oblivious.
Akemi's hands stilled on a half-folded towel, fabric bunching in her fist, though her voice stayed level.
"I know that."
"Then stop with the yukata."
"I just wanted..." She stopped herself, set the towel down instead of finishing. "Never mind. Forget the yukata."
Hikaru grabbed his duffel off the hook, still packed with gym clothes he hadn't gotten around to unpacking.
"Training starts soon. I'm heading out."
"You just sat down five minutes ago."
"I finished. Not sticking around all morning."
Two figures peeled off the couch before he made it three steps. Akemi's grip found his left arm, gentle but immovable, the same hold she'd used on a toddler through fevers and scraped knees, years before any of this. Kirara grabbed the right, sloppier, already laughing.
"Nuh-uh. You're not storming out before we've even cleared the table. Group hug tax. Pay up."
"Get off."
"Hahaha, never."
Hikaru didn't pull. He exploded instead, hips dropping, weight shifting, the kumihimo cord snapping off his wrist into his fingers in one motion.
His hair flew up, the cord looping and cinching his ponytail tight in the same breath.
Free of their grip, his arms came apart like they'd never been held at all.
Palms up, Akemi stumbled back a step.
Kirara hit the floor laughing, the full-body kind.
Tsukiko watched from the table, sketchbook open now, pencil finally moving across the page, the ghost of a smile she didn't bother to hide, though whatever she'd almost said earlier was still sitting somewhere behind her eyes, unfinished.
Hikaru was already at the window, sizing up the drop to the bicycle rack below the way he did every single time this happened.
"HIKARU, IT'S A THIRD FLOOR WINDOW."
"THE WINDOW IS NOT A DOOR."
"THAT'S THE POINT OF A WINDOW."
"WATCH ME."
He vaulted the sill into the morning air, laughter and the TV's fireworks chasing him down.
He found the vine, then the brick, the same rhythm from every time he'd scaled this building as a kid, pretending to be a ninja.
His sisters watched from the balcony, calling him back. He didn't once look back.
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