To Show a Blind Person the Sight of the World Without Using Your Voice

Chapter 5: The MakoHaru Code

Makoto Tachibana

Playing games with my siblings and Haruka actually is pretty much fun.

Okay, Haruka might not be great at most of them and I doubt he actually knows the rules, but at least he amuses Ren and Ran. He also seems pretty nice, also trying to communicate with me through the knocking system we came up with when he was extremely weak and feverous.

It works pretty fine, when I've got Ren and Ran's explanations about what he writes down, but when they decide they want to play a game against Haruka and me it starts getting harder. We're playing a game of Yahtzee, because we've already gone through multiple games of Uno, and we've played Monopoly, we really wanted to play a different game now.

Ren and Ran like playing everything in teams of two, so even a game like Yahtzee which isn't normally played in duos is a team game to them. The twins shake with the cup and roll the five dices onto the table. It's always such a loud sound when the dices bounce over the wood like that.

"Okay, two fives, a four and a one," Ran says after throwing the first time. "What will be do, Ren?"

Ren soon tells her they can go for the fives, which they do; ending up with three fives, and a whopping fifteen points, in their upper section.

"You can throw," I tell Haruka after gathering the dices in the cup. "Maybe it'll grand us luck."

Haruka does as I say, casting the dices out of the plastic cup with so much force that some even land on the floor. I can hear them bouncing around as Ren and Ran giggle.

"You shouldn't throw so hard," Ran laughs, and Ren adds, "Yeah, that way you'll end up having to gather the dices from the floor every single time."

I can practically feel Haruka tensing up beside me when he throws the dices for a second time, really making sure not to have them landing on the ground again. I don't blame him, our coffee table is way too small for Yahtzee, and he will soon see that Ren, Ran and I also throw the dices to the other side of the room regularly; hopefully he won't feel bad anymore after that happens.

"So, what have we got here," I mumble, going in for a feel; Two fours, a three, a two and a one. "Oh, that's a SM Straight, right?"

There's a knock on the table, it's pretty clear that it's a one choice throw, and I'm so glad we can get through this round with no real discussing needed. We try making a LG Straight out of it in the next two throws, but fail, and Haruka writes down the points we got from our SM Straight.

It's when we reach our next turn that we realize that we won't get there with our knocking system; we really need to discuss whether we're going for the fours or the threes, and communicating isn't impossible, but it is annoying since it really slows down the game.

"I know something," Ran says. "What if we come up with a special code for the two of you?"

"That way you can communicate easier and faster," Ren adds, I can practically hear that he's proud.

I shrug and say, "Okay, I don't see why we couldn't do that." After that I ask if Haruka also agrees with my younger siblings' plans.

He knocks on the table once; yes.

"Ran, it's up to us!" Ren says. Ran lets out a happy giggle and shouts, "Gather paper, we have to make up a special MakoHaru code!"

They seem way to enthusiastic about this, but I go along with their little game. Mom is at Haruka's house right now anyway, so whatever they come up with we don't have to use too often after today.

"So, we have the knocking." I hear Ren scribbling something down.

"Once for Yes and twice for No," Ran tells Ren. "Right, Makoto?"