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i don't care how far
somehow i'll be strong

──● hercules
HERCULES

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✦

Keitaro misses her.

Misses her in that way that almost slips through your fingertips. She's a phone call away. He could text her, and she would respond immediately, but the warmth would be fleeting. He'd sit, and count the seconds that the feeling lingered, until it dripped like ichor onto the floor, and vanished from existence entirely.

Misses her in the way that for a brief moment, you forget what happiness tastes like. It's that summery morning feeling on your tongue, that pause of a memory that seems to freeze time for only a second, basking it in that perfect, eternal light. An immortal memory. A perfect moment.

Misses her in a way that only poetry can describe. The kind that reaches into your very being and pulls it up in handfuls, ripping away the parts of you that have been forced to hide whatever humans might really be deep, deep down. The kind that tears you up inside, and forces cracks that you didn't know you had open.

Misses her in a way that feels like something unfathomably lost. There's this feeling, just on the brink of despair, of loneliness, that tips you back and forth over the edge, waiting for the one thing to push you over so you might tumble in that familiar void of emptiness.

Misses her in much more than a friend way.

But Kei is a poet at heart. And simply saying he has a crush feels ultimately anti-climatic for the hopeless romantic that he portrays himself to be.

Absently, he wonders if this is how Jasari felt when Calvin left for France for the school year. She'd seemed alright now with it, perhaps Lars was helping. Jas didn't want him to meet them all yet officially, as her boyfriend, because it might overwhelm him.

In Kei's opinion, if he couldn't handle all twelve of them, he couldn't handle Jas, who valued her family above most anything else. Her love was shown with a vibrant desperation, a passion to hold on, and never let them go, because it would simply hurt too bad to watch another person leave.

She'd hidden her devastation at Calvin's absence well, but not well enough for it to go unnoticed entirely. Sometimes Kei wonders if she knows what he's feeling. That distance that is too far to count, even if it is only a matter of hours on a flight to see their faces again. 

Maybe she doesn't feel it anymore. 

Maybe it gets better.

Well, one can hope.

He should be asleep by now, but his mind is awake. His soul feels full, if that makes any sense. It feels dense with too many feelings and emotions and thoughts and yet summoning them seems to take energy he simply does not have. His thoughts are mindless, eyes and attention turned to the starry night sky that he can see in the glass skylight that covers the majority of the music room. It's cold here, as it usually is, but the thrum of automatic heaters is a comfort to his absent mind. The piano keys beneath his fingers are chilled, but he can feel the silent call to play something. To set something echoing into this hollowed out room, letting the vibration of music roll goosebumps up his skin. Temptation touches the tip of his tongue as he forces his eyes from the bright, bold moon that hangs above them. 

He misses her voice the most.

Maybe it's because that's what made him fall for her in the first place.

Warmth penetrates the muddled feelings that reside in the pit of chest, spreading in rapid, quick motions, eating away at the overwhelming feeling of anxiety and loss with the recollection of the memory. It's one that is painted in that same sweet-hearted light, gilded with silvery hues and golden scars. Kei feels a smile raise to his face at the thought.

He'd been cornered by the theater club, there was absolutely no getting around that, because they needed a pianist to play for them after their own decided to elope with her boyfriend and drop out of college entirely. Keitaro had his own thoughts about that particular situation that he'd kept to himself. Regardless, he'd been coroced into playing for them in rehersals, at least until they found a replacement. 

His fingers move without him telling them too, playing that same first song he now knows by heart, that he heard her voice glide along too. It's a wonderful lyrical peace, soft and fluid. A French play by someone he'd never heard of before, but the pieces were lovely, and he'd enjoyed playing them so vibrantly, that'd he still played them now, by heart and memory and ear, until he felt caught in that moment again. Playing as the story of life and music and tragedy unfolded before him.

The first day he heard her sing, she gave him goosebumps. He'd felt the hair on his skin rise as she hit her pitch. It had echoed across the theater, effectively silencing everything else that had been happening around him. For a moment, Kei almost didn't want to force the song to continue, wanting the moment to paint itself in that lovely eternal light. 

Perfect.

Kei can almost hear it now. The phantom voice of his memory reminding him of what she sounded like. He's smiling now, and he knows it, but he doesn't really care. This room, where the music echoes over each and every curve and crevice is his safe place, his cacophony of something he can't really describe at all. Some things have that indescribable feeling where it wouldn't matter if the world was ending, because right here was safe. 

Safe. 

Something that seems like such a rare feeling with each and every passing day. 

He knows the song is reaching the end, and his smile slowly fades as he plunks out the remaining few chords, watching his fingers linger and stall as the vibration of music softens in the room. He holds down the last notes for longer than he should, letting the sound fade all on its own, sinking into the silence that the night always seems to provide. 

"It's a lovely song, Kei."

The voice makes him tense almost immediately, caught off guard as he snaps to the direction of the sound. At the dim sight of his twin sister he relaxes almost immediately, managing a tired, albiet snarky glance in her direction before looking back at the keys. "Well, I know that Yu, that's why I played it."

"Oh, right, you wouldn't be playing that particular song for any other reason." Yume snickers, and Kei rolls his eyes in a fond response. Obliging her by scooting over on the piano bench, his sister sits beside him, looking over the keys before putting her own delicate hand on a simple chord. The sound rolls through the room, bright and bubbly, a mirror of his sister in complete honesty. 

"I don't know what you're implying." His own eyes scour the keys, as if looking for something that wasn't there before again raising his eyes to meet his twin's. Yume's eyes are analyzing. She's eagle-eyed. She really doesn't miss a thing when it comes to her siblings, even if she mostly keeps it to herself. Yu knows how much Kei misses Arietta Trym.

She's the only one in the family that does. 

Yume once told him that he was the most apathetic empath she'd ever met. He's inclined to believe her, especially considering Yume's met quite a few people in her lifetime. Even if he wanted to argue with her, which in all cases is a bad idea, he wouldn't have much of an argument. Yume and Kei both feel a lot, Yume is just much easier to read than he is. It's not a bad thing per-se, and it's certainly helpful when their siblings need someone more responsive than he is, but the thing about Yume is that she'll reflect someone's feelings; Keitaro will take them apart.

"You know exactly what I'm implying, Kei." Her hand draws back from the piano, clasping it with the other in her lap as he head tilts towards him. 

The words are thick on his tongue, and for a moment he debates on saying it outloud. He has before, it's not like he hasn't, but it still makes it difficult to admit each time. Yume is safe, though. He can tell her things that are difficult to even voice. It's easier to say them when Yume already knows. She's the only person who can read them like a book. She does that to everyone.

Maybe that's why she became a writer. 

"Keitaro." Yume's voice is soft again, quiet enough that it doesn't hit the echo of the room around them. Her head is tilted up to the sky instead, eyes alight with the stars that gleam above them. "The stars are bright tonight."

"I miss her."

"I know." As always, her response is without hesitation. Without so much as a break in her absolute admiration of the night sky above them. She tilts her head back to look up at him, a ghost of a smile flickering over her face. It's not the bright one she usually has, it's something lighter, something reassuring as she reaches over and takes his hand.

Kei, biting his cheek to avoid smiling sends her some form of an annoyed glare, "You're so sentimental."

"Can you blame me?" She lets out a childish huff, but holds onto his hand tighter. "It's just like when we were younger."

"You're so old, can you even remember that long ago?"

"Kei! We're the same age!" 

Keitaro does laugh then, it's a soft kind of thing, shaking his head slightly. He doesn't let go of her hand. It is something sentimental Yume does, and even if Kei does think it is a bit silly, and slightly childish, he also finds some sort of comfort in knowing that it makes Yume feel safe. 

She does a lot to make everyone of them feel safe. So he can do this one thing for her.

He does it because he knows why she saves a seat at the kitchen table in the mornings for the last sibling to sit by her. He knows that deep down it terrifies her to think that one of her siblings feels forgotten, feels unloved and outcasted. 

Because she felt like that once too.

It's not a secret that Kei was favored by their mother far more than Yume ever was exactly, but there are very few people who actually know about it. He remembers it far less than Yu does, but he doesn't pry. He doesn't think she has much memory of it either, just some sickening recollection of the memory of it all. 

More than anything, Kei wants someone to love Yume the way she loves other people. 

The thing is about love, is that everyone loves differently. Some people love sparingly, and others simply have so much adoration in them, it can't be refined to a couple of living beings. Some love like the moon, with lavender-scented lullabies, and a pure desperation to hold on and never let go. Some love like the sun, with all the glory in the world at their hands, with beaming smiles and the taste of adventure. Or like the stars, with dusted kisses, and skinny-dipping under a night sky. Love like a sunrise, with home-baked cookies, and painted hearts. Like a sunset; long drives home, and a bursting melody of some song you grew up with as a kid. 

There are so many ways to love a person.

He hopes Yume finds the right kind.

He hopes they all do.

"Keitaro." His sister's hand is light on his arm, pulling him from his thoughts as she smiles at him. It takes only a moment for him to realize she's fidgeting on the piano bench, fingers twitching like she has a secret to tell him. 

"What is it?"

"I have a surprise for you."

That was a very broad statement. It could range from just about anything knowing her. From a sleepover in the ballroom with all their siblings, or a cup of hot chocolate with cinnamon and hazelnut creamer. Honestly, when it came to Yume, that narrowed it down about as much as saying your pet is some kind of vertebrae. 

Keitaro opted to stay quiet as Yume's smile widened, proudly looking at the piano keys for a moment before returning her attention to him. "For spring break, father wants to take us somewhere for two weeks. Our colleges line up more than the high school kids too, but he asked the high school if it'd be alright if the kids missed a little bit as long as they completed tests and all before they left."

He doesn't doubt it. The school was very likely ecstatic to do something for the family after what had happened between Jady, and that little prick of a kid, especially since they were such a prominent family in town, and were already suffering the monumental loss of the patriarch of the family name. The family had apologized to them, even if the injury was technically because of the disregard of safety over the stage, and had promptly moved Indigo to another school. Honestly, probably a good call, considering Elijah was one of the most popular, if not the most popular seniors in that high-school. Indigo's relationship with everyone probably would have vanished pretty quickly if she'd stayed.

His attention returned to Yume as she kept talking, his internal monologue momentarily forgotten. "I told him it'd been such a long time that we'd gone to the beach house down in Cali. I mean sure, we rent it out most of the time because everyone wants a beach wedding now adays - honestly I can't believe father kept it, although it was grandmother's favorite, and it's such a beautiful place." She sighed affectionately, "So I suggested we go there."

"Yume."

"He said yes."

Oh.

Oh.

There were some moments in life that Keitaro became overwhelmingly irritated with his family. It's not like his love magically vanished for them, but it became a little bit more dim. Moments when everything was a little bit too loud, and someone knocked his favorite wine glass over. Moments when his door was shut to maintain the peace and quiet, but for some reason, it kept opening over and over again with the arrival of sibling after sibling. Stupid, irritating, little things that pushed him over the edge until he felt like he was falling into a pit of his own anger.

But those moments always seemed to be drowned out by the good ones. By the ones that reminded him that he loved his family. Irrevocably so. Like when ten year old Elijah told him that he was the best big brother he could have asked for. Like when Jasari had gotten her first video camera, and wanted to take a picture with her entire family, and dragged Keitaro in despite his hesitance to be in it in the first place. When Jady came home uncharacteristically quiet, and just asked if she could sit in Kei's room for a little while because his presence was comforting. Like when Merlene asked if he could come and sit outside to watch her practice when she was little, cause it was his reassuring presence that made her feel a little more focused on the target. When Delaney specifically requested him to play at her birthday party when she was a kid because he could play "princess music". Like when Elliot picked a bouquet from his own home garden to give to him on his first college performance night. When Kasumi gifted him with a painting for his birthday, of him at the piano, back facing the artist with shadowed wings on his back - half-translucent. Like when Reysa began practicing color theory with nails, and asked so softly if she could paint his, because with a surety she knew he wouldn't laugh at her. Not even a little. Like when Junpei came to him one night in a breakdown, and just said he needed a hug from his older brother. When Akiho trusted to come out to him first, because without a doubt Kei could keep a secret like his life depended on it. 

Like right now.

Because Yume knows how much he misses Arietta. And she knows how hard it is for him to say it out loud to anyone at all.

He feels a little bit like crying suddenly, but Yume doesn't say a word, and wraps her arms tightly around his neck before pulling away and patting his cheek with a hand. "Get some rest, Kei, dad's telling everyone tommorow." With that she stood, and left the room.

Kei stayed there for a little while, staring at the skies, and thanking whatever may have been up there for the family he was given. It might not be perfect, but things seldom are, and whatever his hodgepodge of a family has managed this far is pretty damn close.

He texts Arietta at around two in the morning.

'you'll never guess where we're going for spring break'

✦

✦ WYN ✦

- okay but i'm so excited for
kei's arc - like ahhhhhhhhh

he's so poetic though
and for what reason??

anygay <3

thx for reading my darlings <3

VictoriaAuthor-chan 's birthday was a couple of
days ago! but don't forget to wish her one !

what kind of love would your character
need the most ? <3

──● answers