The Moon and the Earth (Familial NiChu)

The Moon and the Earth

If the earth should collapse one day, the moon would gaze on in silence.

"That's what I've always thought," Yao used to say. He'd recline against a dark green wall in their dark green balcony and raise an arm, his fingers splayed as though he were trying to balance the moon on his palm. "It won't look away – no matter what happens, the moon will always be there." The moonlight was cool on their faces; the night sighed, and wisps of winds tugged at their hair and kissed their cheeks. "Do you see the rabbit, Kiku?" Yao would turn then, his eyes bright, his smile gentle. "It's pounding medicine on the moon."

Even back then, Kiku hadn't agreed with his elder brother. "They're making mochi," he'd said quietly. "Not medicine."

Yao had always laughed softly. Then he'd turned to gaze up again – "But it'll always be there, watching over us, high in the sky." A wistful expression had lingered on Yao's slim face, wavered there, and carefully folded back into the depths of his mind. "Just like how I'll always be there for you, little brother."

The kindness on Yao's face concealed a thousand words that had been left unsaid.

If the moon never faded from the sky, Yao would never let Kiku escape from his careful watch.

"We'll always be a family, Kiku," Yao had said – those words, so simple in their meaning, seemed to contain hundreds of hidden implications, thousands of words and actions and expectations –

And Kiku hated it.

---

His phone buzzed loudly in the middle of a meeting.

Kiku frowned. Perhaps he'd forgotten to mute its volume. He'd have to ignore it for now, since there was an important presentation going on and –

His phone buzzed again. Then again. A few seconds later, it buzzed once more.

The presenter, Ludwig Beilschmidt, looked at him sharply and said, "Perhaps you'd like to take care of that, Mr Honda."

Heat flooded into Kiku's cheeks. When he fumbled for his phone and the screen burst to life he checked the notifications –

But it was only Yao, yet again, rambling about the Lunar New Year. "So, I'm thinking of... Make sure you come back... We need to plan early... Why aren't you respon..."

Nothing important; there was no harm in setting his phone to silent mode.

Kiku slipped it back into his pocket.

---

He hadn't been born into the Wang family.

Kiku was an orphan, born to a poor Japanese couple, abandoned at birth. His surname bore the only hint to his identity, the only lingering trace of the world he'd been born into – but there were so many Hondas in existence and searching for his parents was like seeking a single bamboo tree in a glittering grove.

He'd spent his early childhood in a Japanese family, before several distressing events that he didn't remember well occurred and the Wang family adopted him at nine years old. He became their second child, their second son – after him they'd have Wang Jialong, and Wang Xiaomei. Yet the Wangs were always drifting around the western world, attending business conferences, earning the money that Yao received every month to pay for his siblings' education – and they were never home.

Sometimes Kiku wondered why they'd taken him in. As the seasons shifted and the years flashed by, he slowly realised that he'd never find out. The memory of their faces was fading quickly; photographs of them hung quietly around the house, endlessly dusted by their filial eldest – but already they seemed to be receding into the walls, silently, without a whisper or a sigh. They had to have been around more often in the past, for they couldn't have adopted him otherwise, but they were gone now. And Kiku doubted that they were ever coming back.