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Riko is lying on her stomach when Iori approaches her this morning, her legs kicked in the air behind her and her chin cushioned on folded arms. She’s already smiling broadly, cheerfully murmuring to Hamu-chan with her nose squished against the front of the cage, but she gasps before Iori’s reached her and pushes herself upright.
“What song is that?” Riko asks, hauling onto her knees. Iori drops into a crouch in front of her and offers the plastic bag that he’d looped around his wrist. At the same time, he stops whistling, frowning as he considers the question. He’d been whistling sort of unconsciously as he came in, and completing the last two notes of the line, he realises he doesn’t recall exactly what the name is, or even the lyrics… Must’ve been one of those songs his mom used to sing him to sleep with, back before everything happened.
“Not sure,” Iori admits. Riko accepts the bag in both hands and sets it gingerly on the floor in front of her. She must be hungry, but she doesn’t rifle through the contents immediately, instead dropping to sit crosslegged. Her hands fold over her ankles. Iori tilts his head, then sits down in front of her, mirroring her position. “...Can you whistle?”
She’s little, so he’s not sure. Iori doesn’t even remember how old he was when he learned, just that his little sister took a while to figure out how you’re supposed to use your tongue. It’s one of those things that’s really hard to get if you don’t know how to do it automatically. Riko’s cheeks puff out and she purses her lips and blows, but the only sound she makes is the standard pfft of a sharp exhalation. No whistle.
Iori smiles despite himself. It might be a little hard for her to do, actually, on account of the teeth that haven’t grown in yet, but he could probably try and teach her… He hasn’t done this in a while, or really, been anyone’s ‘big brother’ or ‘son’ or anyone’s anything since he was taken in by the company, but whistling itself is an unconscious motion like riding a bike, so it’s easy enough to demonstrate for Riko what she should actually be doing with her lips. While he does, he rifles through the bag he brought himself, setting the six-pack of banana milk on the floor and then removing the premade sandwiches he thought Riko might enjoy.
…He’d have liked to grab her something with more protein, but they’d been out of egg salad, and he brought onigiri last time. It would have been fine, probably, to bring the same a second time, but the fact that Riko wouldn’t be picky about it is all the more reason why Iori would like to give her options. It feels… mean, maybe, or inconsiderate of her, to do the same thing every time when she doesn’t get to choose herself. If anyone should give her a little bit of variety…
He figures it’ll be fine, anyway. Riko is a little girl, and like most of them, she likes sweets. Her eyes brighten at the sight of the strawberries and cream sando Iori selected and she picks up the package while she tries again to whistle.
“...You have to,” Iori furrows his brow, again, this is something that gets harder to do once you start analysing it to try and instruct, “um, with your tongue, I guess I,” he repeats the motion to be sure, “keep it on the bottom of my mouth…”
Riko’s brow furrows with concentration as she tries. Iori realises he doesn’t know much of the ‘science’ behind whistling. It feels like one of those things that seems intuitive but must have some really complicated science behind it, right? That’s never been his specialty… Not that he’s even particularly good at what he’s doing now, but it’s somewhere he can be useful, at the very least. In any case, he’s sure that it has something to do with your teeth when you’re blowing air out and is starting to think that this really might not be possible for Riko to do right now. Maybe Iori will have to try and teach her again in a couple months.
That’s all right. He files the thought away for later. Riko isn’t the peppiest kid—not extraordinarily optimistic—but she is a kid and just like most other kids Iori has known, she doesn’t take very long to bounce back from her disappointment at not being able to whistle. The sandwich seems to help with that too. She bites off a corner and gets whipped cream all over her upper lip, and when she can’t get it all off with her tongue, Iori digs a napkin out of the bag and leans over to wipe it for her.
Riko grins as he pulls back. “Can you whistle some more, nii-chan? The song earlier was pretty.”
“Is that okay?” Iori will more or less do anything she wants him to, if she asks, and if he’s capable. He just wonders if it won’t make her sad to listen to him do something that she can’t… but maybe it’s not like that for kids. It’s been such a long time since Iori was her age he has a hard time remembering exactly what he might have felt like. He never really wanted for anything before his dad died, though, so he never had much of a reason to feel jealous of other kids growing up in the area… He supposes he never spent a whole lot of time comparing himself to others at all.
It’s not really something that’s in his nature even now. It must be kind of pointless to compare a ‘nothing’ to a ‘something’, after all, although even that reason, Iori isn’t sure is entirely accurate to how he feels about it. He’s not good with emotional things when it comes to how other people are feeling, but also when it comes to identifying his own. If he ‘wants’ something, then it’s nice to think about… but if it isn’t possible, he leaves it alone before long. That’s the only way to live, isn’t it? You focus on what’s achievable, whatever is in your grasp to change or help, and you keep going. Iori thinks something like that sounds admirable enough, at any rate.
Riko is within arm’s reach, right now. Sometimes looking at her he still feels completely lost as to how he’s going to save her, but he knows that he wants to. And he wants to keep making her smile and doing the things she asks because nobody else will, and he wants to be there to wipe a bit of food off her face so she won’t get her hands all sticky. He wants to teach her how to whistle once her teeth have grown back in.
“It is,” Riko says, and Iori realises he’d spaced off, but it only takes him a moment to remember what he’d asked her. So he nods and thinks. Now that he’s conscious of it, it does take him a moment to remember, but… It’s as easy as thinking about his mom, which is always a comfort, now more than ever since he’s no longer a burden on her, and then he can find the old melody again.
Making Riko happy… is easy. So Iori can keep doing it, no matter what. He spears a box of milk for her too, when she asks, even though she could do so just as easily herself, because like coming here to see her, it just feels natural and easy like taking an intake of breath. Wanting things when he comes here is easy, too, in a way that Iori doesn’t know how to analyse, so he… doesn’t. Like whistling, it’s second nature to focus on what he knows he can do for the moment, and leave the rest to be dealt with later on.
And when Riko gets bored and wants to do something else, Iori will oblige her then too.