The first time Nezu got a real reaction out of Tenko was the first time he dared to ask a direct question, as he stood atop his stepladder and stirred ingredients into the broth, their smell stirring in turn into the scentscape of tea, peppermint, human fear, and swollen bruises. “Is there anything you want us to do with our summer vacation? Disneyland, perhaps?” A grin grew as he added with a tempting tone, “We can get to Tokyo by train in a few hours, and heroes and their family get discounts…~”
Tenko’s eyes were alight with thought once again as he hovered just outside the kitchenette, the haze of malaise parting to ponder… and to remember. “Father said he’d take Hana-chan to Disneyland next year, if she did well in first grade,” he said, the words mechanical yet hesitant, as if reciting what he remembered of a grocery list he forgot at home. “Then he’d take both of us the year after, if we both did well in school.”
Nezu restrained his physical reaction to just a twitch of his ear. No Disney paraphernalia had yet been found in the wreckage of the Shimura house, at least not in enough pieces to be recognizable, so he’d placed his bets that Tenko had no memories related to the place, and… lost. “He was going to leave you home?”
Tenko remembered asking the same thing. “Father said that it was going to be her reward for being a good student, so… yeah. I guess. ‘You don’t get rewards for doing nothing,’” he recited without a hint of spite. He hated his father. He hated what his father did, who his father was, who his father continued to be in his brain. But that idea, that principle, just seemed… above his father.
Nezu hummed, tilting his head one way and flicking his tail the other. “It’s true that you don’t get rewards for doing nothing,” he conceded with a nod. He leaned over the saucepan, inspected the broth through half-lidded eyes, sniffed the steam as it streamed over his muzzle, before completing the thought. “But that is because if you did nothing to earn it, it is no longer a reward: it is a gift. Gifts are given out of kindness, to be happy at someone else’s happiness, not out of gratitude or debt. That joy at another’s joy is called ‘mudita,’ a word in Sanskrit that sadly has no direct translation, and it is an emotion I am quite fond of.” Nezu closed his eyes and cast a soft smile Tenko’s way. “You will get rewards when you earn them. You will get gifts when it will make me happy to see you happy. Does that make sense?”
“I don’t deserve either,” the mental mire in Tenko’s brain roiled, recoiled, rejected, but… no. No, irrelevant. He didn’t deserve rewards, so he wouldn’t receive rewards. Gifts… he didn’t deserve those, either, but getting them would make Nezu happy. Nezu was a nice person who deserved nice things, happiness among them, “mudita” among them. It felt like the haze had drawn back to reveal a bridge being built over the mental mire. That place of doubt and dread, of vile and viscous thoughts, was still there, but it felt less… important. Less at-the-center-of-everything.
“Yes, sir,” Tenko said simply while his thoughts whirled, while the gravity in his psyche ever-so-slightly shifted.
—All We Might Have Been, Chapter 4
Art by the lovely @secretgaygenttomura!