[Osomatsu-san] The Saddest People Smile the Brightest

Chapter 1: "Contrary"

(3rd Person POV)

It was just another uneventful afternoon for the sextuplets. Osomatsu sighed as he slumped to the floor, leaning against the wall in the living room, and he closed his eyes as he listened to every single little noise in the relatively small room. He listened to Todomatsu's thumbnails tapping his phone screen as he was obviously texting away, cats purring and mewing as Ichimatsu gently caressed their fur, Choromatsu flipping through the pages of his magazine, accompanied with occasional sighs of boredom, and Karamatsu, asnooze on the couch next to Osomatsu as he snored softly. These little sounds served as a comforting lullaby for Osomatsu, who was already feeling drowsy at the moment.

But just as he started to drift off to sleep, he woke up with a yelp to a loud noise that was definitely not so pleasant and soothing. It was none other than Jyushimatsu with a baseball bat in hand, who quickly opened the door and practically slammed it shut while bellowing, "I'M HOOOOOME!!!" as if his very entrance was somehow so important that it just had to be announced.

Of course, the heavy-sleeper, Karamatsu, didn't even budge an inch, but all of the other brothers including Osomatsu, shot annoyed grimaces at his raucous entrance. Though, they were pleased to see that their brother had returned, so they all still greeted him nonetheless. As per usual, the very first thing that Jyushimatsu did once he returned was run over to Ichimatsu and play with his cats. He practically could not stand a moment without bounding up and down excitedly, all while having his signature goofy smile constantly plastered on his face. Osomatsu watched the yellow ball of energy with amusement and wonder, pondering about how he always managed to be so happy, nice, and sincere to everyone. All this time, he saw Jyushimatsu as just an innocent kid without a hint of darkness within him. Although, deep down inside, he knew that that was definitely untrue. He especially knew this ever since Jyushimatsu had that huge and unexpected breakdown of tears over his girlfriend leaving him.

Wait, and maybe what happened yesterday really was- No, he didn't even want to think about that.

Anyhow, Ichimatsu once said that no matter how hard he observed Jyushimatsu, he didn't seem to have any sort of darkness inside him and that he was "simply Jyushimatsu from head to toe." Osomatsu secretly did not buy that at all. It didn't make sense to him that a living and breathing person in this cruel world could just always be happy and have absolutely no problems. He believed that every human being had something dark about him, no matter how hard he would try to hide it, and he knew that this was especially the case for the most cheerful-looking ones. That's right, especially them. He figured that the people who smile the brightest are really the saddest, even more so than people like Ichimatsu who in general had their own aura of darkness that resonated about them and no one would dare approach. This gave him the urge to find out more about Jyushimatsu and his true feelings. However, at the same time, it terrified him to do so.

This was why he wasn't so close to him as he was with some of the others. Heck, he even felt more comfortable hanging around Ichimatsu, even though his dark personality was totally different from Osomatsu's. This was because at least Ichimatsu's true pain was much more obvious to see through his facade, unlike in Jyushimatsu's case.

This was why he wouldn't go out for a drink with him alone because he didn't want to talk to him just to discover something terribly heart-wrenching about him that he had absolutely no idea about before. In other words, he didn't want to feel the guilt of not being able to figure out what was troubling his younger brother, and not being able to take care of him as the oldest out of all of the sextuplets. Though, he knew that one day it just had to be done because he couldn't just sit back and do nothing if his younger brother really was suffering internally and wasn't telling anyone else about it.