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“‘S just a kid. Why are you freaking out about a kid?” Sabito leans around Giyuu. The doorway isn’t big enough for two; Giyuu squeezes up against it, scowling down at Sabito’s head. “Look at her, she’s just hanging out.”
“That’s Kamado’s sister,” Giyuu says.
“Even better, right?” Sabito straightens; his elbow jabs softly into Giyuu’s stomach, and Sabito turns around, laughing. “Sorry, sorry. But you know, it’s not like it’s Kocho’s sister.”
Sabito laughs harder at Giyuu’s frown. Behind him, a few of the first-graders glance up at the sound. Kamado’s sister keeps staring out the window. Her fingers are by her throat, holding her rain jacket closed. Giyuu’s seen her a few times before: she’s always been a pale kid, but in the overcast light she looks more like a ghost than anything alive.
Giyuu sighs. Sabito nudges him, and Giyuu scrunches his nose before going to the teacher to announce that he’ll be taking Nezuko home today.
When Makomo first called and said that Kamado needed someone to walk his sister home, Giyuu said okay because Sabito had been right there. Sabito was supposed to be there the entire time, but by the school gate he says something about a game and rushes off.
Giyuu thinks he’ll never forget the image of Sabito running away, rainwater sparkling around his feet.
Giyuu does know that he’ll never forgive Sabito.
Kamado’s sister sniffs. Giyuu inhales. He does that a few more times, and when his stomach still churns, he glances at her.
Kamado’s a small guy so Giyuu’s not surprised that his sister’s small. Genetics, right? Makomo talks about genetics all the time. But Kamado’s sister is just -- tiny. From here all Giyuu can see of her is the top of her head and a pair of tilted green hair bobbles.
Sabito would’ve asked why green; Makomo would’ve asked if she could straighten them. Giyuu breathes in again, and hacks when the cold air sweeps into his chest.
“Um…”
“Hm?”
She’s looking at him. He’s one thousand percent sure she’s looking at him.
“Are you… okay…”
“Fine.” He cringes. “Peachy,” he says instead, and then cringes again.
“My dad takes medicine,” she offers. “For colds. We have some at home.”
She sounds so earnest that his first thought of 'Yeah, I’ve heard’ dies in seconds and leaves behind it a swell of embarrassment. She’s in first-grade; he’s in high school, and all he needs to do is walk a few blocks to her house where Urokodaki’s already there wrangling the rest of her siblings while her parents are at the hospital.
“I’ll - I’ll think about it.” Her rubber shoes squeak, and he finds her leaning forward to smile at him.
Giyuu blinks. He says, “We should get going, then,” and Kamado’s sister smiles the same smile as her brother.
Genetics, he thinks as they start walking. Maybe Makomo’s picking the best career path out of them all.
Kamado’s house sits between the elementary and middle schools. Giyuu remembers spending time here as a kid, observing from behind Urokodaki’s leg as he talked with Kamado’s parents. It’s an old house, with crumpled gutters that jag out against its silhouette and a groaning front porch. The garden out front creeps toward the street, and Giyuu watches Kamado’s sister hold up her raincoat as she treks through the grass to the front door.
After a beat, he follows. The same bicycle is sprawled in the center of the garden and the same water-worn lawn ornaments huddle by the bush closest to the porch. Kamado’s mom has said for years that one day she’ll redecorate the place.
Giyuu scratches his cheek as Kamado’s sister reaches up to knock on the door. Urokodaki’s said for years that Giyuu and Sabito should help with that, especially now that Kamado’s old enough to pitch in. It’s not charity, he’d said with that obscure look on his face, if their kid’s involved too.
Giyuu doesn’t get it, but as the door swings open to Urokodaki’s scowl, he thinks he should probably ask Sabito about it. Or make Sabito do it, since Sabito abandoned him and all.
“You’re late,” Urokodaki says, barely flinching as Kamado’s sister barrels forward and wraps around Urokodaki’s leg.
“...Mm.”
Urokodaki rolls his eyes and jerks his elbow toward the hallway. “Help me with the others,” he says, neatly turning around with Kamado’s sister burying her face against his leg. “The parents won’t be back for a while.”
Giyuu takes off his shoes by the door, placing them between a pair of light-up sneakers and Kamen Rider sandals. “Is it--” He bites his tongue. “Okay.”
“It’s fine. Just a broken arm,” Urokodaki says. Kamado’s sister peels away long enough for Giyuu to see that, somehow, in the last few minutes she’s started crying. “It’s fine,” he says again, reaching down to pull Kamado’s sister up into his arms. “I’ll need you to help me in the kitchen, Nezuko. Your brothers want pizza again.”
“Brother doesn’t like pizza,” she says, in a voice much smaller than the one she’d had before.
“Your little brothers. Tanjiro’s on a health kick again, right?”
She nods against his collar. Urokodaki talks on as he leads the way to the kitchen, and Giyuu trails behind, idly tugging on his sleeves.
If it’s genetics, he thinks, sounding vaguely morose even in his own head, obviously Giyuu didn’t get anything from Urokodaki. Giyuu couldn’t even tell that a first-grader apparently wanted to cry the entire way home but didn’t because she didn’t want to make him feel bad.
“I’ll help too,” he hears himself saying. Urokodaki twists around, frowning.
“That’s what I said,” Urokodaki says, looking like he’d go over to Giyuu and thwack him on the head if not for Kamado’s sister. “Late and --”
He cuts himself off. His forehead wrinkles, and then he just rolls his eyes again. “Come on, then.”
“Mm.”
After the pizza’s in the oven Urokodaki leaves to take a call on the porch. Giyuu picks at the dried dough on his fingers; Kamado’s brothers are in the next room watching TV, and his sister’s with Giyuu at the table, a wrinkled tissue in her hands.
She’s not looking at him this time: she’s looking at anything but him, and Giyuu contemplates staring at the ceiling until Urokodaki’s back.
Makomo had only talked vaguely about what happened -- something about Kamado trying a karate throw, or someone else trying a karate throw on him, and it going badly enough that Kamado broke his arm. The phone had been on speaker, and Sabito had laughed. Giyuu had too; between him, Sabito and Makomo, they’ve broken about half the bones in a human body. Kamado breaking his arm isn’t a big deal, but…
His skin crawls. To a kid -- to someone’s sister, it’s a big deal. More so, he thinks, when it’s this sister in this family: the word “hospital” probably means all kinds of things in this house.
He steadies himself and opens his mouth to mumble some kind of apology when Kamado’s sister snaps up from her chair.
Giyuu blinks. Kamado’s sister runs into the next room.
Giyuu’s still blinking when she comes back, out of breath and red in the face. Instead of the tissue, she’s holding a little white box.
She sets the box slowly at Giyuu’s elbow, her face scrunched. She says carefully, “It’s oregano oil. My dad takes it to not get sick.” Her eyes brighten, though her eyelashes are still wet. “He’s, um, I think he’s better with it, so you should take it too, so you don’t cough.”
“Ah… Okay.” She sniffs and nods, and climbs back into her seat across him. Giyuu’s heart drums in his ears; a weird heat curls around his neck. “I’ll try it here,” he says, “and if it’s good I’ll get some later. Keep this one for your dad.”
“It’s, um, anti… anti… It’s good,” she says, pulling her knees close to her chin. “I’ll give some to brother too, when he’s back.”
“It’s a good idea.” His heart slowly calming, Giyuu wonders if Kamado’s ever gotten sick in his life. “...Thank you, Nezuko.”
She fishes out another tissue from her pocket and blows her nose into it. But Giyuu can still make out how red her cheeks are, and he hides his mouth behind his hand.
“They’re asleep?”
“In the living room,” Giyuu says, closing the door. He huddles into his sweater as the cold air bites at his cheeks. “Were you on the phone with the parents?”
“Mm. They’ll be home today.” Urokodaki scrubs at his eyes. “Sounds like the biggest problem is that those two friends of Tanjiro’s - the loud one and the louder one - made a ruckus in the hospital, and their families had to come collect them, and Tanjiro wouldn’t stop apologizing long enough to let the doctor set his arm.”
“Sounds familiar,” Giyuu says, and Urokodaki sighs, hand coming down to pinch his nose. “...Why did Makomo ask me to get Nezuko? She could’ve gone too.”
“How would I know,” Urokodaki says. “She probably had something to do.”
He eyes Giyuu then, and Giyuu shifts on his feet, the porch creaking underneath.
“If you want to read into it, she could’ve just wanted you to make a friend.”
“...I have friends.”
Urokodaki snorts. He leans over to ruffle Giyuu’s hair and says over Giyuu’s half-hearted protest, “Now you have another one.” His hand lingers. Urokodaki adds, “Thank you for getting her. She doesn’t act like it - none of them do - but she was scared. You being you helped more than you think.”
“I didn’t do anything, I…” He’d barely made conversation and had taken one smile to mean she was fine. “I probably made things worse until you talked to her.”
“...I think,” Urokodaki says, “that these kids prefer someone who doesn’t lie to them or patronize them.” He pats Giyuu’s head for good measure and nods toward the door. “She wanted to go home to her family, and you brought her home. Take the compliment.”
“...Mm…” The streetlamp across the house flickers, its light glinting off the wheels of the garden’s bicycle. “I’ve been thinking,” Giyuu says, “that this weekend, I could fix up the garden... It’d be a get-well gift for Tanjiro.”
“Oh?” Giyuu winces at the grin in Urokodaki’s voice. “If all Tanjiro had to do was break an arm to get you to help, I would’ve gotten Sanemi to do it years ago.”
“It’s not that,” Giyuu mumbles, ears burning. “I just…”
A first-grader had thought of him while feeling all kinds of miserable. Giyuu can learn from that; he’ll call it inferred genetics.
Giyuu says, “I just have time this weekend, that’s all,” and scrunches his nose at Urokodaki’s laugh.