Chapter Text
Goro bumps into him on the street.
The boy looks a little younger than him, all starry eyed and bright and happy. Goro doesn’t weigh much, he’s always been told he’s small for his age, so he’s surprised when he actually knocks the boy over.
He hits the ground pretty hard, and looks up at Goro with these big blue eyes.
“Sorry,” he murmurs.
Normally he’d just keep walking, but the boy is bigger than him and Goro thinks if he tried to run he wouldn’t get very far. He doesn’t really want to start a fight right now.
But then the boy is sitting there, and he’s bleeding a lot. And he starts crying.
“Oh...are you okay?”
He’s probably not okay, but that’s what Goro thinks you’re supposed to ask when people cry. Sometimes his mom asks him that, when she doesn’t just beg him to stop.
When the boy doesn’t respond, Goro shifts on his feet and considers running away. It would be the much easier thing to do.
But he helps him up instead, and he does the only thing he can think to do...bring him to his mom. He knows they have things to make the bleeding stop, and the boy won’t talk to him.
He can think up some explanation.
“Mama!” he calls inside. “I have...a friend!”
The boy is still crying his eyes out, and he’s still bleeding a lot even though Goro couldn’t have run into him that hard. He doesn’t think he’s capable of causing that much damage to someone who’s bigger than him.
His mom comes around the corner quickly, blinking as she looks at him and then the boy. Her confusion melts into concern within a moment.
“Hello dear,” she greets quietly. “Let’s get that fixed up, okay? Come with me.”
His mom, in true superhero fashion, takes the boy into the bathroom to bandage him up. He stops crying almost immediately when she talks to him gently and presses a bandaid over each of the scrapes on his knees.
“Goro, who’s your friend?” she asks.
It’s an interrogation. She knows his friends are few and far between, and they never last long. More often than not the “friend” excuse is a lie.
He hides a little more around the doorway, and looks down. He didn’t mean to lie this time, it just...came out. He wanted his mom to help the boy he hurt without needing to explain what happened. He didn’t want to get in trouble, so he thought this would be the easiest way to get help.
“I’m Kitagawa Yusuke,” the boy answers for him.
“He’s Yusuke. You know, Yusuke,” Goro says sheepishly.
Exactly, Yusuke.
Yusuke is the type to cover for him, and right now that’s all Goro needs to know about him to decide he likes him.
“Well, Yusuke, are you staying for dinner?”
“I shouldn’t...Sensei will want me home. If he’s there, I don’t know.”
“No worries. You don’t have to,” she assures him.
“Do you want to come over tomorrow?” Goro blurts.
He isn’t sure if he’s trying to convince his mom this is really his friend, or if he just wants to make a friend. The opportunities he gets to make them aren’t very common, and maybe this is a good chance for him.
Once he gets over how tall Yusuke is, he actually doesn’t seem too intimidating. Thinking now, Goro could take him in a fight if he had to.
“Okay,” Yusuke says.
And that’s that.
Yusuke can be a weird kid a lot of the time. It’s probably why they get along, but it still makes Goro look at him weird when he asks what was on the bandaid Goro’s mom gave him. Apparently, Yusuke has never even seen a single episode of Phoenix Ranger Featherman. That’s just ridiculous.
Madarame, Yusuke’s “Sensei” who is definitely a fraud, is never home on Saturdays. So every Saturday, Yusuke spends the whole day with Goro, and when they manage to make big enough puppy dog eyes at Goro’s mom, they have sleepovers.
They go out in the mornings sometimes, but usually they sit in the living room and watch TV while Goro’s mom makes them breakfast. She doesn’t usually cook so much, but she always does when Yusuke is over.
She still makes them go to the bathhouse when it gets late though. But it’s much more fun with Yusuke there, and they stay longer than they probably even need to most nights.
Goro’s mom likes Yusuke a lot. She smiles when he compliments her cooking, and whenever he makes those scribbles that are better than Goro’s she compliments him. His art is up on the fridge next to Goro’s, like he’s part of the family.
Goro expected it to make him jealous, but he can’t make himself be. He can’t help it all the time, thinking that Yusuke is taking her attention away from him. Every once in a while that still makes him so angry he can barely breathe.
But he endures it. He can’t be mad at Yusuke for it. Not knowing that Yusuke’s sad excuse of a mentor is raising him and probably gives him even less than Goro gets.
Goro doesn’t mind sharing his small space in his mom’s life if it makes Yusuke smile a little more. Goro likes his smile, even though he’s missing some teeth and he pokes his tongue through the gaps more often than not. It should be ugly, Goro would think it was ugly on anyone else. It’s pretty on Yusuke.
Yusuke is a good playmate too, he’s pretty willing to go along with anything Goro does. He always lets Goro be the superhero, the leader, the hider, and whatever else Goro wants to be. Yusuke’s favorite sentence seems to be, “Whatever you want.”
Although Goro is sure he could take Yusuke in a fight he also thinks Yusuke could and would beat up weaker people for Goro. He seems like that kind of person. Maybe not in general, but almost definitely when it comes to Goro.
Goro thinks he might be...special, to Yusuke. He doesn’t want to embarrass himself and call them best friends if they aren’t, but he thinks they are.
Yusuke is a surprisingly angry person once you get down to it, although that side of him only comes out in extreme circumstances. Goro has only seen it when he told Yusuke about his father. Yusuke’s eyes are usually a rather cool and dull blue, but as he’d heard about the way Goro’s mom was used and abandoned...they’d gotten so much colder. When things are so cold they’re hot, Yusuke’s eyes had been burning .
And like a switch, he’d calmed and offered sympathies for it instead. It was the first time Goro saw his own anger mirrored in another person.
It’s why Goro feels like their bond is special. He can understand Yusuke, and he thinks Yusuke understands him.
It’s a Tuesday night. Goro’s hair is dripping steadily wet onto his shoulders and down his back, cold because it’s the middle of winter and he just walked back from the bathhouse. He listens for noise before he walks back inside, but it’s quiet and the man’s shoes are gone.
“Mama?” Goro calls inside. “Mom?”
He doesn’t hear a response, but he doesn’t really expect to. Usually she falls asleep right after, or she doesn’t feel like talking anyway.
He scuffs his feet outside her bedroom door, wondering if she’d allow him inside. She doesn’t usually like him to go in her room after she has the men over, but the people at the bathhouse were weird and Goro doesn’t want to go back to his room. He just wants to see her.
He knocks first, then opens the door. It’s not locked, and that registers to him as a little weird. But it doesn’t never happen.
“Mom?” he calls again.
The room is empty anyway. That’s why the door was unlocked, she’s not even in here. The lights are still on, and it smells bad. Goro backs out and shuts the door behind him.
She must be in the bathroom, but he didn’t hear the water running. And she didn’t answer him. Both of those are way out of routine for her.
“Mom?”
He knocks on the door. Nothing still.
Their bathroom door does have a lock, but it doesn’t work anymore. Not since…
Goro opens the door slowly, ready to beg for forgiveness later rather than ask for her again. And then he sees red.
Their bathroom is a white that normally hurts Goro’s eyes, and the lights are way too bright and they make this awful buzzing noise. They’re flickering now, that buzzing the only sound Goro can hear alongside the rushing in his own ears.
There’s red everywhere .
Goro calls the police, he manages to do his best to step around the blood when he grabs his mom’s old phone from the top of the toilet and dial 110. He tells them about the blood, and he answers all of the questions they ask him as he sits on the floor in the bathroom and tries not to get any blood on him. The questions are easy, like what his name is and how old he is. He tells them his name is Goro and he’s eight and he didn’t hit his head or anything, he’s fine .
Mostly he stares. He waits for his mom to stir, to get up and tell him she’s fine and she’ll clean up the mess and it’s alright. It’s fine, she’s going to get up any second now. He waits for her to get up.
When the police arrive, they pull him away and take his mom somewhere away from him.
They ask if he has anywhere to go and he nods even though he doesn’t. He doesn’t want them to make him stay and talk to them more. They must think he’s stupid, with all the easy questions they’re asking him.
They keep him at the station for a while anyway, they wrap him in this bright blanket that doesn’t do anything and ask him about what he saw even though he can barely remember anymore. When he tries to think about it all his memory serves to show him is red.
He lies more than he tells them the truth. He fills in the gaps with vague things they can’t disprove.
His mom told him never to trust cops.
He has them bring him to Madarame, and it’s worth it just for the look on his face when he opens the door and sees him with the police.
Goro walks directly inside, past him, to look for Yusuke.
Miraculously, Madarame lets him stay for a while. Probably because of the police talking to him.
Goro sleeps crammed on Yusuke’s futon with him, and eats and speaks less than a mouse. Madarame barely sees him, he tries his hardest to be not even as much of a nuisance as a ghost so maybe Madarame will forget he’s there. Maybe he can stay.
He can’t actually. Once his mom passes away, he has to go.
The last night before Goro is taken into foster care, he can’t sleep.
“It’s not fair,” he whispers to Yusuke.
“I know.”
“I hate her.”
“You don’t.”
Goro’s lip wobbles. He won’t cry, he can’t cry. He can’t be weak anymore. He can’t afford it.
Yusuke is holding his hand. He won’t have anyone to hold his hand once he’s in foster care. He doesn’t think it’ll be as kind to him as his social worker tells him it will.
She thinks he’ll love it, being around other kids and having more than a mom who’s barely around to look after him.
It wasn’t always the best at home, but he thinks this will be downright bad .
“I do. She didn’t want me,” he insists. “She left me all alone and now I have to go away.”
“She wanted you.”
“No she didn’t. At least your mother didn’t choose to leave you, you wouldn’t understand.”
It’s mean, it’s harsh. It’s not something Goro actually means, but he doesn’t want to miss Yusuke. He can’t have something to come back to, or he doesn’t know if he can do this.
He tries to push Yusuke away and all he gets is being pulled closer.
“You don’t mean that,” Yusuke says.
“At least Madarame wants you. He wants to use you, but at least he wants you.”
Yusuke closes his eyes, and he doesn’t say anything to that.
Goro wonders if Yusuke’s cold fire is being directed at him. If he’s closing his eyes to hide that.
Either way, he still stays up and let's Goro cry himself to sleep in his arms.
Goro misses him despite his best efforts.
Goro’s first foster family isn’t the worst. They aren’t good, but he’ll live.
The parents are fine. They’re tired, but they do what they can. It’s the other kids that are bad, and they’re all much bigger and older than Goro. The parents don’t feel like scolding the older kids so they just get rid of Goro instead.
The second family is worse. Much worse. The foster dad is someone who always smells like alcohol and leaves early and gets back halfway into dinner. The foster mom is someone who is always home and always tired, always doing housework and never taking care of the kids. Goro gets stuck taking care of the two year old girl in the house because the previously weak link can beat him in a fight. That’s how the hierarchy works, and he’s known that since he was smaller than he is now.
Goro is angry. He’s tired.
He lies every day now, to the foster parents about being grateful to be there and loving taking care of the baby. To his social worker about being safe and happy and all of that stuff she needs to hear. He’s with them for a year, and every single day he feels like he loses himself a little more in the lies.
He misses Yusuke.
It takes that whole year, but Goro tells his social worker how badly he wants it and Madarame does the paperwork begrudgingly and Yusuke raises hell from what he hears after the fact.
Yusuke tells him he threatened to run away. To do something...bad. Something that could make him not as useful. Break his fingers or hurt his eyes so he can’t be used as a tool anymore.
So Madarame adopts him.
Yusuke has this pleased grin on his face all the way back to the shack. He holds Goro’s hand the whole time.
It takes Goro a week to figure it out after that. Madarame goes out every Saturday, and he comes back looking far too pleased with himself Sunday mornings. Goro can’t find the name of the mistress, he’s too careful for that. But he knows there is one, and he knows Madarame has a second house with her. A nicer one, one with plenty of food and room and luxuries he doesn’t afford for them.
He cracks it because of the cat hair he tracks back to the shack. An expensive breed. Then the credit card bills he reads carefully through the envelopes with a flashlight. Then the quiet and hushed conversations he has with the other students.
It takes much longer to find out how deep things go. Too many pupils commit suicide, and finally Goro breaks into the room that’s always locked and he wants to throw up.
They’re being so manipulated it makes him sick. And Yusuke…
He sees what Madarame does to them, and he knows that’s exactly what Yusuke is being groomed for and can’t do anything but tell him.
“I know,” Yusuke says, a paintbrush loosely held in his hand.
He’d told Goro this piece in specific was about his mother. About the unique anguish of losing everything.
Yusuke is twelve and Goro is thirteen, and they’re both Madarame’s little tools. Yusuke is his little art prodigy, and Goro is like a pet project. He’s smart though, he’s smart and he grew up beautiful and the public likes how he looks standing next to Madarame.
“You know? About the Sayuri too?”
“Of course I know. Believe me, I don’t like it. But where else do we have to go?”
“We can run away,” Goro offers.
“We’d end up back here. Or dead.”
Goro knows that. He’s smart enough and mature enough at this point to know running away is a childish daydream. He may not like what Madarame does to them, but at least they’re alive. At least they’re together. At least they’re the only kids at this point, at least they’re equals.
But he wants it so bad . He wants to get him and Yusuke away from this all, to have their own stupid shack that would be better just for being theirs. He doesn’t need more, he would settle for the same or less if it were just them.
He misses Yusuke’s smile.
“So what do we do?” Goro asks quietly.
“Nothing for now. What can we even do?”
“Oh I’ll find something,” Goro spits. “I swear there’s more we can do than nothing.”
Goro cracks it. He splits his past wide open with a healthy amount of lying and crocodile tears to claw his way to the truth. He gets sharper over time, smarter and more perceptive and much better at manipulation and lying to people. It’s a skill he thinks will keep him alive.
It’s a skill that earns him a name.
Shido Masayoshi.
But he’s already high standing in society, he’s already powerful by the time Goro gets to him. Goro is so furious he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wants to break something, he wants to break his father, but he can’t. He can’t do anything right now, and that realization makes him want to break himself even if it’s just because he’s the only thing in reach.
He’s nearly inconsolable, but Yusuke tries. Yusuke tries as much as he can, and on good days he can make tension drop out of Goro and get him to sleep more than an hour. On bad days, Goro screams back at him and gets them both in trouble. He feels guilty on the bad days. At the end of it Goro can only repeat his promise to himself.
There’s more to do than nothing.
He can do more than nothing. Goro is smart and he’s pretty and he can lie better than anything. He can do something.
It’s still another year, just before Goro turns sixteen, that he finally finds more than nothing.