Chapter Text
The first time that Haruka meets the boy with the eyepatch, he’s eight years old and wearing a baseball cap. Sand crumbles underneath his little hands as he sits on one of the wooden beams enclosing the sandbox. He’s past trying to build castles, at this point. The other kids come and knock them down anyway.
He traces a cat in the sand, cartoonish like the picture books he sees on the classroom shelves. Two triangles for the ears, little lines for the whiskers. He passes a house that has a cat when he walks home from school. It’s a black cat, always watching from the window. Haruka likes to think that they might be friends in another life, but, well. That cat lives in its own world, with a loving family.
He draws a pawprint next to the cat's head.
“What are you doing?”
Haruka startles so badly his foot kicks up and wipes away half of the cat’s face, whirling around and pressing his cap down with both hands. It’s another boy, short reddish hair falling over his forehead. He’s wearing a white shirt with a fastener that Haruka can’t help but study, a pristine knot (is it a knot?).
Sitting protectively over one eye is an eyepatch. White, like one you find in hospitals. It sets him apart from the others at school, who might not have freakish two-toned hair or eyes but also definitely don’t have eyepatches.
This boy isn’t in Haruka’s class, or he would have noticed. It’s hard not to notice when people look different. (Is there someone out there like him?) He’s staring at him, smiling. Haruka’s brows draw together and he hunches further into himself, ducking his head.
“Drawing,” he mutters. The boy laughs a little bit, squatting down beside him.
“Is it a fox?”
Haruka eyes the other boy suspiciously. Is he serious? It’s clearly a cat. There’s even a pawprint. Why is his first thought a fox, anyway?
The boy laughs even more at Haruka’s expression. “I’m just joking! It’s a cat, right?”
Haruka nods slowly, watching his lone eye trace the lines he made in the sand like it’s not half destroyed regardless. He’s not going to say anything about the eyepatch. He already knows what it feels like to be asked about things he doesn’t feel like explaining.
He flattens his hands against the sides of his head, trying to hide the tufts of hair that peek out from under his cap. The boy turns to him, eye flitting lightning-quick over his posture before making eye contact.
“I like it.”
What?
Haruka’s face explodes with heat, and he moves his hands from his hair to his cheeks. What?
With perfect timing, his teacher begins to call their class back inside. He stands up abruptly, hands still covering his face, and spins around. As he hurries away, he waves one hand behind him in a vague gesture of goodbye. He pretends not to hear the boy’s laughter all the way inside.
The boy’s name is Suo.
“I’m Suo Hayato,” he says with a smile. He’s always smiling. “What’s your name?”
“Sakura,” Haruka grumbles. He kicks his feet back and forth.
“Pretty!” Suo says, legs crossed even though they’re both on the swings. Haruka looks away in embarrassment, spotting some of his classmates watching the two of them. They’re whispering, he knows.
At Haruka’s silence, Suo starts swinging his legs as well. He looks upward, seemingly thinking, and then turns to look at him once more.
“What do you like to do?” Suo asks, his swing gaining momentum. “I like to do martial arts. My family owns a dojo somewhere kind of far away.”
“Dunno,” Haruka says. He doesn’t really know what a dojo is, but more importantly, what does he like? Cats? Playgrounds?
“Well, you were drawing in the sand, so do you like drawing?” Suo muses. His voice gets louder and then quieter as he swings back and forth – something Haruka notices, for some reason. He considers Suo’s question before shrugging and then nodding.
“I like cats, too,” Haruka says without thinking too much about it. Suo rewards him with another smile, slowing down his swing just a little bit by skimming the tips of his toes against the dirt below.
“Have you ever seen the black cat at the house by the school? It’s always sitting by the window watching me walk home.”
Haruka whips his head up to stare at Suo, then nods again. It must be what Suo was looking for, because he nods back and laughs.
“What about the cat that plays by the shed sometimes? The white and black one?” Suo asks, slowing almost to a full stop. Haruka has never seen that cat before. His confusion must show on his face, because Suo hops off of his swing before motioning for Haruka to follow him. “Then let’s go see if he’s there!”
They make their way over to the shed where the basketballs and soccer balls are put away, and Suo turns to make sure Haruka’s following before going around to the little space where the shed doesn’t quite meet the fence. It’s overgrown with weeds and there’s a spider or two weaving a web, but Haruka doesn’t mind.
Suo looks around and frowns, then. “I don’t think it’s here right now. But we can come back another time!”
“Okay,” Haruka agrees easily. They find their way back out from behind the shed, and Haruka’s teacher comes hurrying over to tell him that his class has already gone back inside. As he struggles to keep up with his teacher’s pace back to the school, he turns back just for a moment to glance at Suo. He’s smiling, holding his hand up to say goodbye. Haruka gives him a small wave in return.
The thing about Haruka is that his appearance makes him different. He’s only five years old when he learns that because of this, he’s treated differently.
His aunt and uncle gave him his baseball cap to hide at least some of his hair, but there’s nothing to be done about his eyes (contacts only do so much, and they’re expensive besides) or the stubborn parts that poke out of the bottom of his cap no matter how hard he tries to cover it all. The kids at school don’t care.
“That hat doesn’t hide your weird hair at all,” a boy says to him one day. “We all know what it looks like anyway.”
And that’s just it, isn’t it? Haruka can try all he wants, but there’s no hiding what the others already know. They look at him weirdly no matter what he tries. The teachers don’t really care either, so he keeps his head down and tries not to think about how unfair it feels. If there’s something wrong with him, what is he supposed to do? Why can’t they see that he can’t fix it if nobody tells him what he’s doing wrong?
His classmates all avoid him at recess unless it’s to ask him mean questions. Haruka has learned to not ask anyone to play with him. They don’t want to. Besides, he can play just fine by himself.
And then Suo shows up.
At first, Haruka wonders if Suo doesn’t mind being near him because they both look different. Wonders if the other boy also gets weird looks and mean comments because of the patch covering his eye. But he sees Suo’s class in the cafeteria and he’s not sitting by himself like Haruka is. He’s sitting with a lot of his classmates, talking every now and then.
Not that it matters. If anything, Haruka feels almost relieved that Suo’s classmates like him well enough.
The problem is that he doesn’t know how to deal with Suo. He’s just fine with his classmates, biting out retorts and holding his tongue when he can muster the energy. He’s used to it. But Suo doesn’t make comments, doesn’t get mad, and Haruka finds himself at a loss for words. He doesn’t really know what to do with someone who teases and laughs but never with the sting of a targeted joke. He often wonders why Suo seems so much more like an adult than many of the real ones he knows, despite them being the same age.
“I don’t like that they’re mean to you,” Suo says one day, looking up to the sky. Haruka stares at him in silence for a little bit before shrugging.
“I’m used to it.”
Suo turns to face him, frowning. “It’s not nice.”
“It’s what everyone does,” Haruka says, because it’s true. He lives with a family where he’s an inconvenience at best and an unwanted eyesore at worst. His cousin is a couple of years older than him and goes out of his way to avoid conversation. Haruka is a big boy – eight whole years old. He knows that there is a certain way people treat him, and he knows that it won’t change with age or whatever costume he makes up. He’s used to keeping to himself because usually that means that people leave him alone. The only exception to this rule has been Suo.
“Well it’s not very fair.” Suo mumbles. “What about your parents?”
“I live with my aunt and uncle,” Haruka says instead of answering the question. “And they do it too, so it’s just how it is.”
Suo gives him a look he doesn’t know how to translate, but doesn’t say anything. Haruka shrugs and goes back to drawing in the sand. There are things he knows for sure, and one of them is that there must be something he’s doing wrong to make everyone dislike him. He also knows that he’s tried all kinds of ways to hide his appearance. He just wishes someone would tell him what he’s doing wrong so that he could try to fix it again. He’s tired of hearing the same comments over and over again, no matter how used to it he is.
He stops wearing the cap.
Haruka is nine years old when he first punches someone.
It’s one of his classmates, a boy that’s always been particularly nasty to him. He’s gotten good at ignoring it, but this time is a little different.
“Does Suo hang out with you because you both look like freaks?” Haruka stands up so quickly that the boy flinches back a little before grinning. “Two freaks hanging out during recess?”
He’s swinging before he even really realizes it, fist clenched and teeth gritted. It hits the boy right in the cheek, snapping his head to the side and throwing him to the ground. The classroom goes completely silent. The boy’s hand comes up to his cheek before he makes eye contact with Haruka, glaring through tears. Scrambling upward, he lunges at Haruka. “Freak!”
They go down again in a flurry of limbs. Haruka may not be a seasoned fighter, but he’s scrappy and he’s angry. The other boy has clearly never even thought about real fighting, and it shows in the way Haruka is the least injured of the two in the infirmary. He keeps his head down and nods at the nurse’s questions, but he can only think of how much trouble he’ll be in when he gets back to the house. He doesn’t go to recess that day, and as he makes his way to his aunt and uncle’s house, he’s already dreading the conversation he’s about to have. The cat in the window isn’t even there, like it’s sensed Haruka’s in trouble and is retreating into the warmth of other living areas.
He barely closes the front door to his aunt and uncle’s house before all three of them are in front of him. The genkan makes him even smaller compared to them, and he lowers his head before they even start speaking, keeping his eyes on the bottom row of the shoe rack next to them.
“Being this much isn’t enough, and now you’re picking fights,” his uncle snaps, folding his arms. “Do you know how much we sacrificed to bring you into our home and give you a roof over your head? How hard we worked to make sure you could even go to school?”
Haruka says nothing.
“You of all people should be careful about what you do at school,” his aunt adds. “Our reputation is suffering because of your foolish decisions. Not only can you not look like a normal child, but now you’re acting out like a delinquent? Your actions affect us too, and more than you can probably even conceive. Do you have no respect for your family and elders?”
“You know what you did, so go to your room,” Haruka’s uncle orders. His cousin stares at him from behind the two adults, not saying anything. “Unless you have anything to say for yourself.”
What can he possibly say? What could he possibly say to assuage their anger, to make them understand him?
Jaw clenched and eyes burning, Haruka turns around and heads right back out the door. It’s not long, walking the small distance to his shed, but he has enough time to will away his tears and take some deep breaths. He grips the straps of his backpack tightly, opens the door that never locks and toes off his shoes, tossing his bag on the floor. Laying down on his futon, he curls up on his side and covers himself with his blanket. He’s used to it. He is. It’s just different when it’s coming from adults, especially people that are related to him. Aren’t they supposed to be family? Is this what family acts like? Well, whatever.
He doesn’t want to go back to school tomorrow. Never really does, but the thought of facing his classmates almost makes him nauseous. Can’t they just leave him alone? Let him exist alone? They don’t even need to talk to him. Just let him be, like a ghost in the classroom.
He thinks about seeing Suo, who always smiles and is never mean. Thinks about drawing more animals in the sandbox with him, crouched down where it’s just the two of them in their little bubble. He’s come to look forward to being outside on the playground, where he and Suo can talk and play and nobody bothers them. It’s not like he’s not used to being alone, but it’s. Nice. Having somebody else.
“Does Suo hang out with you because you both look like freaks?”
Frowning, Haruka stares at the wall of the shed before closing his eyes. Sleep always chases away hunger, at least until he wakes up. His aunt and uncle will have something small at the very least for him to eat in the morning, since he didn’t eat dinner tonight. Surely. Listening to the sounds of outside, he falls asleep like that, cars passing by and animals rustling in the woods.
He’ll talk to Suo about what happened tomorrow, he decides. Hopes, despite everything, that the other won’t be mad.