𝐏𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐓. narumiya mei

Chapter One: Deliberate Aid

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄:
Deliberate Aid

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Narumiya Mei, that afternoon, welcomes a wolf and his pup into his home.

Strident wails of an ambulance impale the quiet corner where his building stands tall; Mei imagines what sort of urgency the zooming van would need to attend to so early in the afternoon. A traffic accident, perhaps, or a dying mother. He tries not to think about it, and instead centres his focus on the two figures, standing awkward and fiddly, behind his now opened door.

Las has never looked more like Las: he wears a dark grey shirt with a blue flannel hanging on the blades of his shoulder, and the thin bridge between the two round lenses adorning his face is broken. Mei immediately notices the tape holding them together. He doesn't say anything about it, though, and lets his eyes travel to the small child that stands between them, fingers gripping the door frame, struggling to untie the laces on his shoes as Mei holds the door open for him.

Surendra.

Though Mei has never called him by birth name, still, it is the name that he thinks of every time he sees him. Surendra is much harder to say, so he prefers Ren. Surendra is what Ara would call him, so he prefers Ren.

What an odd, foreign name. It's name that he wouldn't have known existed if he hadn't met Ara.

It was seven years ago that he first heard the name. Mei can picture the scenery so vividly still, clear as the boy that stands before him. She was healthy, but she was lying on a hospital bed. The doctors insisted that she change into a hospital gown the moment she settled in, but she stubbornly kept the loose pair of maternity pants Mei had gotten her a few weeks prior. "Surendra," Ara was speaking in tongues he wasn't familiar with. He tried to repeat her words as his fingers fiddled with a button beside her bed, and she laughed at the mistaken accent. "It's my uncle's name—the one we met in high school, remember? That passed away four months ago. Ah, yes, Uncle Muji, the one who speaks in Nagoya-ben, remember? His full name was Muji Surendra, may he rest in peace—I think there has been no one more kind to me." Mei cuts her off, whining about how kind he is to her. "You're supposed to be kind to me, Mei, but he has every right to throw me out in the dirt, and he chose to be kind, still. I think I'll name my little boy Surendra, what do you think? I was told that it means 'handsome', or 'charming', I think it would fit this little guy, huh?"

Personally, Mei doesn't know about handsome, and he doesn't know about charming.

But he knows about how Ren is growing more and more into the mould that was his mother with each passing day—it takes everything in him to suppress the aching gasp in his throat when he sees Ren turning to place his shoes on the shelf beside the doorway. He then looks at him with stars twinkling in his eyes, head tilted to one side as he politely greets Uncle Mei.