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Among other students, five out of six identical brothers were sitting in the same classroom. They were being assigned different cleaning chores as part of a daily afternoon routine. The teacher had feigned to do the siblings a courtesy by situating them “at random” throughout the classroom, despite the general rule of sitting students in rows by surname, but the intentionality of it was so obvious that it seemed to draw more attention to their sameness rather than detracting from it. Moreover, despite telling them otherwise, the teacher had positioned them in this way so that she could more easily keep track of their name by location, rather than through sincere effort to tell them apart. This, inevitably, led to some instances of one brother swapping out for the other; by the middle of the year, the teacher was getting paranoid enough of it that she’d considered asking the principal to make an exception regarding school uniforms, but it hadn’t come to that yet.
There was one she could almost always tell apart from the others, though, due to his exceptionally sprightly disposition: Jyuushimatsu, the very one who hadn’t returned from recess after lunch. There was an empty desk in the front row where he usually sat, with an open notebook and pencil still on the table, and an unfastened backpack on the ground. She frowned to herself; it wasn’t like him to avoid the daily cleanup. In fact, he generally went at it with a gusto she had personally never seen another student possess.
Having finished giving out chore assignments, the students dispersed–some went to the halls to fetch brooms, others wiped the chalkboards down with a cloth, others cleaned the desks’ and tables’ surfaces. The teacher had assigned the task of striking the chalkboard erasers together to remove the dust—a task always given to Jyuushimatsu, since he did a rather-loud-but-exceptionally-good job of it—to another student.
Weighing her options for a minute, she decided the most expedient route would be to try and ask one of his brothers about his whereabouts, before having to make the highly-formal, somewhat-enervating exchange with the head teacher or the principal. Surveying the room, she saw one of the sextuplets leaning over a desk, halfheartedly picking at a spot on the varnish. She took one step forward before noticing the half-liddedness of his eyes and the unruly hair he was often reprimanded for: it was Ichimatsu, and she knew he wouldn’t talk.
Looking right, she saw one of them scrubbing at a spot on the window with considerably more vitality. Taking a breath in, then out, she walked over to him, and kept her voice low when she spoke.
“…Choromatsu?” she said, with a prim smile.
The boy’s eyes grew a little wide when he realized she was standing over him; he’d clearly been spacing out. He seemed uncertain as to whether he should continue scrubbing or not while he talked. His uncertainty was also from debating what to say next, as she realized once he falteringly spoke: “I’m… Osomatsu.”
Her smile had never been so prim in her life. A silent understanding of the futility of trying to memorize who was who had settled between her and the Matsuno sons over the course of the academic year, but something about it still made the vein on her forehead pop out ever so slightly.
“Osomatsu. Do you know where Jyuushimatsu is?”
He seemed flabbergasted by the question.
“What? He’s not here?”
Neither noticing the empty desk, nor noticing one of his brother’s names hadn’t been called during chore assignments… he really was spacey, the teacher thought.
Osomatsu didn’t look concerned, only a little thoughtful, wiping his nose with his index finger.
“Karamatsu, where’s Jyuushimatsu?” He called across the room, at one of the brothers. The teacher had to wonder how it was possible Osomatsu knew who it was, considering the other had his back turned to them.
“What? He’s not here?” Karamatsu replied, turning to face them with furrowed eyebrows. He looked from side to side a couple times, as though Jyuushimatsu might just be in some corner if he surveyed the room enough. Then, he leaned back a little bit in the direction of the open doorway to the hall.
“Todomatsu! Where’s Jyuushimatsu?”
“What? He’s not here?” The three of them heard a reply from the hallway, followed by the stop of sweeping sounds. Todomatsu then appeared in the doorframe, wielding a broom, and looked around the room. He made a little “huh” sound.
A brief silence followed. Todomatsu then turned to call further down the hallway:
“Choromatsu! Where’s–“
“Okay,” the teacher cut in loudly, “Okay, that’s enough.”
Four pairs of matching eyes (plus those of other students, startled by the tone of her voice) turned to look at the teacher. Feeling a little disheveled, she decided it was high time to just suck it up and head to administration to find out if another adult on the campus knew of his whereabouts. She had resigned herself to making the walk when a familiar individual from next door–the teacher of the next grade up–appeared in the doorway. Most of the students had already resumed their chores as was expected of them; only the brothers lingered, sensing something not quite right. She told them to get back what they were doing, and they reluctantly did, as the other teacher—a Mr. Ueda—made his way across the classroom.
“Ms. Nishijima, please excuse me for the interruption—“
“Not at all, not at all, but what brings you here?”
She was walking across the classroom, steering them to a corner of the room away from Osomatsu, who she was very well aware was trying to hear the conversation, which he was attempting to hide, and failing.
“Oh, it’s concerning one of your students… Matsuno?”
“Oh, really?” She replied, relieved that the context was enough to determine which one he was referring to, thus sparing her the explanation she’d had to give many times to disbelieving staff.
The two continued to converse, speaking in very hushed tones, low enough and far away enough that the other Matsunos who had just been involved couldn’t possibly hear.
It was true, the brothers who had spoken were out of range. However, the one she’d bypassed, the one she’d given little mind to, just so happened to be close enough to catch a few words, silently listening.
“is he…” “……” “…ver…” “…unruly behavior, and…” “oh…” “…strange…” “…sent home…”
The spot on the desk Ichimatsu had been scrubbing at was, in fact, the same spot he’d scrubbed at yesterday, and the day before. He was fairly certain it was made out of something permanent at this point. It was a black, smudgy mark that didn’t budge no matter how hard he pressed. Not that he pressed that hard. What a metaphor for my life, he mused halfheartedly.
The teacher hadn’t caught on yet that it was the same desk. He figured once she finally got suspicious, he could just find another smudge somewhere, or make one if it came to that. She never assigned him anything different, never spoke to him since he didn’t speak back. His brothers sensed the stubborn silence between him and her, and generally didn’t try to get him to talk when she was in the vicinity.
Jyuushimatsu had been sent home for the day, then… several feelings came to Ichimatsu at once. The first was that it was fine, Jyuushimatsu knows the way home well enough to walk it backwards, which he had in fact done before. The second was a sense of indignation that neither he nor his other brothers had been told first; it felt off to him to have something unusual happen to one of his siblings without him also experiencing it, or at least being aware of it; he knew it was irrational, and was in fact counterintuitive to getting others to consider them individuals, but the feeling occurred nevertheless. The third was, concern: concern because Jyuushimatsu was the most vulnerable of the six of them, concern because he didn’t know exactly what had happened, and concern because the last time Jyuushimatsu had been sent home was for something pretty bad.
His grip tightened on the cloth in his hand, feeling irked that he couldn’t pick up more of what they were saying. Then the conversation was over, the teachers bowing, and Mr. Whoever hastily making his way back to his classroom. There were only five minutes left before class began again. Ichimatsu knew what he was going to do.
“Cover for me.” Ichimatsu clipped at Todomatsu, striding down the hallway. He had to look like he’d been given permission to leave for this to work, keeping his hands in his pockets as though he had a pass in one of them. Todomatsu, ever the curious one, pouted at the lack of explanation; and also pouted because he knew he owed Ichimatsu, but didn’t want to get marked down today. Sweeping in the direction of the class doorway, Todomatsu kept sweeping right into the room, until he was by Karamatsu’s side.
“Hey, cover for me for the rest of today?”
Karamatsu looked at Todomatsu incredulously. “What, first Jyuushi’s ditching, now you–“
“Pleeaaaase big bro, you’re so cool, it’d be so cool of you to cover for meeee…”
Karamatsu scoffed, then agreed. Clapping his hands together, Todomatsu returned to sweeping cheerily. Having already finished with the window-wiping, Karamatsu moseyed on over to Osomatsu’s post.
“Hey… would you cover for me covering for Todomatsu?”
Osomatsu sniffed a little. “Wait, so… I cover for Todomatsu?”
“No! …Well, actually, that would be fine, but… someone’s covering for me and someone’s covering for Todomatsu.”
“Why not just cover for yourself?”
“I’m covering for Todomatsu!”
“Get Choromatsu to do that.”
“You get Choromatsu to cover for you covering for me covering for Todomatsu!”
“……”
Ichimatsu didn’t know if his youngest brother would actually cover for him, nor did he really care. He had already made it off the school grounds, and was now on the path home. He hadn’t brought his backpack with him; he actually could count on Choromatsu to bring his things back at the end of the day, a reliability that was rare among the sextuplets, contrary to popular belief.
He knew his brothers would be annoyed with him when they found out he’d left to find Jyuushimatsu without saying anything to them, but really, there was no other option. If he’d said something, at least two of them would want to tag along, if not all four. Their predictability and desire to not be left out made it easy to anticipate outcomes at times like this.
Ichimatsu also knew that his second-youngest brother would not be at home, and that he himself would probably be out searching for a little while. It might have been a matter of simply waiting if it were one of the days Jyuushimatsu had baseball practice after school, since it took an awful lot to not get him to go to that. Today was a Friday, though, and that meant his brother’s whereabouts were a wild card.
Jyuushimatsu didn’t go out of his way to hide or intentionally avoid people like Ichimatsu did, so Ichimatsu knew a few places to check first. The other side of the hill a little ways away from the school that students raced to the top of during recess, the backlot behind the konbini, this one particular dried-out patch of dirt by the gutter where clovers grew, and so forth. Now that Ichimatsu knew he was going to systematically check each place they hung out, he realized there were quite a few.
He spent over an hour and a half looking from place to place, which was fine by him. He was good at long walks, good at being by himself. He didn’t pay any mind to the others on the street who gave him disapproving or strange looks, since it was clearly a time of day at which someone in a school uniform shouldn’t be wandering around alone. Avoiding their gaze was easy enough, since he was looking for one person and one person only, and the floor was always there if he had nowhere else to look. He was coming up to the north side of the outskirts of the city now, only a few places further left to check.
He found his missing brother under a tree. It was a big cedar that the six of them had carved their names in a couple of years ago. It had actually proved an unexpectedly difficult endeavor, pulling that off: Ichimatsu sneaking the knife out of the kitchen, the six of them making their way across town, and, upon initial attempts, realizing kitchen knives are surprisingly hard to wield, which resulted in three of them suffering cuts on their hands. Ichimatsu remembered feeling quietly relieved that the first two syllables of all their names were relatively simple to write; they had lined those characters up side by side on the top. Choromatsu, having the steadiest hand, had then carved the character for ‘matsu’ beneath. It hadn’t been their original intention, but no one felt dissatisfied with the end result, either. At least, until they returned and Ichimatsu was grounded for the stealing of the knife and its blunted, dirtied edge, and none of his brothers stood up for him. Then he had been dissatisfied.
The tree was a ways off the road, its base not visible from a distance due to other trees and brush. Under that painstakingly carved bark, Jyuushimatsu sat with his back against the trunk. He was facing away from the road, bouncing one of his knees. He was never one to keep completely still, but he seemed particularly restless now. Ichimatsu quietly observed him for a moment, then said, “Hey, Jyuushi.”
Startled, Jyuushimatsu turned to face the voice that he had already identified as Ichimatsu’s. He wasn’t sure if his mental processes had kept up with his reflexes in that moment, wasn’t sure if he’d started smiling before he’d turned like he’d intended to.
Quickly, he chirped, “Ichi! Hi! School’s not over yet, it’s only… I don’t know what time it is but what are you doing here!”
Ichimatsu levelly met his brother’s grin. Then he looked at his brother’s cheek, and his hands, and his knees, which were all deep pink, scuffed or scratched.
“I overheard you got sent home, figured I’d join you.” I know something bad happened, and that you wouldn’t want to feel like a bother to any of us about it.
“Is someone covering for you?”
“Well… I asked Todomatsu to.”
Jyuushimatsu’s smile widened a bit. “He’ll do it, I know he will.”
Ichimatsu didn’t feel so sure himself, but wasn’t about to say as much. “What happened, Jyuushi?” He said, walking over to the tree, and took a seat adjacent to his younger brother.
No response for a long moment. “I got in a disagreement, it’s fine though! They didn’t get in trouble, and—“
“Disagreed about what?”
Another long moment. “Something not good, but I’m alright! I’m sure we’ll all get along some day, it’s—“
“Jyuushi.”
Another long moment.
Ichimatsu knew by now to keep his voice as soft and as level as he could manage. He’d tried getting angry at Jyuushimatsu’s avoidant tendencies many times before. Bitterness came easily to Ichimatsu, and his brother’s way of dealing with things was so wildly different from his that it frustrated and perplexed him. But, through painful trial and error, Ichimatsu had learned how to best speak with Jyuushimatsu; it felt a bit like he was playing catch-up, since Jyuushimatsu seemed to have always known how to help him.
Still, Jyuushimatsu was staying quiet. His words seemed almost physically stuck in his throat; Ichimatsu couldn’t hear him breathing. He knew his brother really disliked talking about some bad things, the same way he disliked thinking about them, and disliked that they happened.
He did seem really at a loss for words, though, and Ichimatsu began to wonder if he shouldn’t press it. He did know his brother would feel better talking about something, though… Ichimatsu wasn’t much for conversation, but he racked his brain anyway. He turned to look at the trunk they’d been leaning on.
“……Hey, the bark’s regrown some.” Not the most interesting subject, perhaps.
Turning to look as well, Jyuushimatsu perked up a little. “Oh! It’s keeping our names in it!”
Upon closer inspection, Ichimatsu saw what he meant. Rather than bark growing over and filling in the cuts they’d carved years back, the tree seemed to be retaining the marks well, scabbing over their outlines. It looked more permanent than it had when Ichimatsu had gone back to check on it last year.
Jyuushimatsu seemed happy with this, even standing up to run his fingers over the texture of some of the marks. “You got off so easy with your name, huh?”
It was a single horizontal line, Ichimatsu couldn’t really argue there. “Didn’t get off easy with the getting grounded, though,” he quipped, before feeling a little bad about it; he didn’t want to make his brother feel guilty.
Jyuushimatsu’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly, but he quickly retorted, “It was only three days!”
“Three days and two of them were the weekend,” Ichimatsu informed him.
“If you’d stolen a smaller knife it wouldn’t have gotten blunt and… and we wouldn’t’ve gotten cut, definitely! Probably.”
“Okay, okay, it’s all my fault, definitely probably,” Ichimatsu sighed, throwing his arms up in faux-defeat.
“Yeah!!” Jyuushimatsu replied in his usual too-loud voice, and then let out a little laugh at the knowing look his brother was giving him. He looked at the tree carvings one more time, then sat back down.
A moment of comfortable silence fell on them, the sort of silence between people who have spent years by each others’ sides. A rabbit darted past them a little ways off, and something about that made Jyuushimatsu sit up straighter.
“There were three guys, and” he pointed after the creature as it ran, “a rabbit like that, but the rabbit couldn’t run.”
Ichimatsu stayed quiet, not sure if his brother was launching into a story or what. It was sometimes difficult to know what he was referring to, he lacked a sense of conversational finesse, not that Ichimatsu was one to talk. Still, more often that not there was sense in what he was saying.
Jyuushimatsu hesitated one more moment before making himself say, “It couldn’t get away, was the. Disagreement.”
The older brother’s eyebrows raised ever so slightly, realizing what he was referring to: what had happened earlier, what the teacher’s confusing whispers over a dead rodent had meant. He’d figured he’d misheard.
“…People from the other classroom were hurting an injured rabbit,” Ichimatsu tried.
“Yeah. I thought they must be helping it so I came over to see, but they weren’t. And I told them to stop, but they didn’t.”
Ichimatsu felt his throat tighten. He remembered the horrible expression frozen over Jyuushimatsu’s face when, on the way home, they’d overheard another kid saying they knew someone who’d put a hamster in the microwave to see what would happen. Jyuushimatsu had stopped dead in his tracks. Ichimatsu had thought he didn’t look angry, or disgusted, just… very, very confused, and afraid. After a moment of his other brothers telling him to hurry up, their eldest brother going so far as to say “It was just a hamster,” Jyuushimatsu had turned and ran back the way he came, and didn’t come home. Todomatsu told their mother that he’d gone to Totoko’s to study, and the others backed him up, despite the improbability of it.
Jyuushimatsu had returned home late, after the lights were off, and hadn’t attempted to squeeze into his space on the futon since Choromatsu had rolled over to occupy it. He seemed set on laying on the floor until Ichimatsu silently nudged him, scooting over as far as he could to make a space for Jyuushimatsu on the far right side, which the younger brother took without putting up any resistance. The next day he seemed completely fine, and when their mom asked him how studying went, he said it was wonderful.
“So, you kicked their asses, I’m taking it.”
Jyuushimatsu laughed nervously. “I got mad! I think that they–if someone–that–they deserve to know how it feels too.”
Ichimatsu understood enough. He would have done the same thing, but probably with less success. Jyuushimatsu was absurdly strong at will, and probably stronger when upset, although Ichimatsu hadn’t personally witnessed that in some time. Still, it was clear Jyuushimatsu had taken a couple hits as well.
“…I’m glad I found you,” Ichimatsu said. And I’m sorry you saw that.
“I’m glad you found me! You’re the best older brother.” Jyuushimatsu paused. “One of the best!”
“Because we don’t play favorites, of course.” He was mimicking their mother’s words.
“Of course!”
“You’re the best second-youngest brother in the whole family.”
“Really?!”
“Well. One of the best.”
Jyuushimatsu beamed at Ichimatsu. The older one found that the corners of his mouth had turned up a little bit at some point too. That smile was infectious.
Ichimatsu knew that Jyuushimatsu was trying to lighten the mood, that he wasn’t being entirely sincere. He also knew that, in his own way, that was his sincerity. It was a sincere attempt that he consistently made to make those around him, those he cared about, feel better. Sometimes he wondered how many mental walls his little brother had had to build up to become like this, and then how many of them he scaled in order to still be able to reach out and comfort others. He also knew his brother wouldn’t want him worrying like that, though. Maybe he was reading too much into it. It was hard to tell, sometimes.
The two of them walked around for a while after that, neither of them in any hurry to get back. Jyuushimatsu picked flowers here and there as they walked. School was over by now, and when they did return home there’d be punishment waiting for Jyuushimatsu, since the school would have called and told their mom what happened. They would later discover that Jyuushimatsu had been right, Todomatsu did end up covering for Ichimatsu after much confusion and debate among the four of them still at school. So, Ichimatsu would be spared being reprimanded this time. Of the five brothers that were supposed to be in class, only Karamatsu had been left unaccounted for.
Ichimatsu had assumed they’d been walking mostly aimlessly, only avoiding roads so that strangers who thought they were seeing doubles wouldn’t stare at them. He eventually realized they were heading back in the general direction of the school through a back route, and was about to tell Jyuushimatsu they should probably head a different way, before noticing that his brother was walking forward pretty steadily, as though he had a destination in mind. He kept quiet for a few minutes more, until the younger brother noticed something up ahead and sped up a bit.
The two of them walked up to what was left of the rabbit. It was dead, as he’d overheard the teacher say, meaning that whatever those other three had done to it had been enough to end its life. Jyuushimatsu didn’t look at it past determining it was still there before heading a little further off and beginning to dig in the soil. Ichimatsu joined him, thinking about how the dirt was getting into the scrapes on his brother’s hands. Once the little hole in the earth was deep enough, Jyuushimatsu put a couple large leaves in his hands and carefully picked up the lifeless body to bring it over. They buried the rabbit, quietly wished it better luck the next time around, arranged the flowers Jyuushimatsu had picked the best they could, and then left.
After that, they headed further off the road until they hit a clear expanse, at which point Jyuushimatsu took off running. Ichimatsu watched him sprint across the field, watched him keep going until he was a blurry figure in the distance, until the receding shape became disfigured in the sunlight. Ichimatsu knew that running did his brother good, knew that exhausting himself physically somehow helped wear his grief down too, and knew that he’d come back when he was ready to.