#its sad for me that others dont necessarily feel the same way about Luca

[unbreakmyhead]

everyday i fight the urge to watch Luca for the 625301927369376228939th time

[kristie-rp]

[2018] Michael & Lucas: Origins

When Michael is born, his parents name him Mizushima Miko. He is their second son: his older brother is Mizushima Juuki. Juuki immediately adores Miko; he’s fascinated and spends as much time as he can watching over his little brother. It’s actually a considerable amount of time: he is still too young to go to school, and his parents are too paranoid to trust a sitter – but they are also far too busy to make time to actually look after their children. 

Juuki is primarily alive at this point thanks to an aunt that visits at least once a week, a woman who claims to be their mothers sister and who looks absolutely nothing like either of their parents. Tamie, the woman he calls aunt, teaches him everything he can grasp to make baby Miko’s life easier. 

It’s enough, in many ways. Miko grows up both easier and harder than Juuki. The youngest boy is not comfortable around his parents, is quiet and watchful whenever possible. He learns young that it is more effective to babble at Juuki after prolonged periods of quiet than it is to cry, because if he cries, one of his parents may come in. 

One of Miko’s earliest memories – certainly the first to involve either of his parents – is of his mother leaning down into his crib. She is wearing all black, with a scarf of sorts around her neck, and something protruding from her back, held in place by a strap. In the memory, he stares first at the tail end of a military-issue machine gun that is on his mothers back as she kisses his tiny cheek, and then at her face as she pulls the scarf up to cover everything except for her eyes. “Sleep well, my precious baby,” she says in the memory, and then disappears into the night. 

They grow up in a house that is big and empty, surprisingly so considering Aunt Tamie and their parents and their parents co-workers are coming and going all the time. Juuki continues to do everything he can to raise Miko without attracting their parents attention, and they never talk about it. To Miko, this is normal; to Juuki, this is better. Tamie especially expresses her pride in him, over and over again, and tells them in her own gruff way that she is there for them before either of their parents. 

It is not until Miko is old enough to be sort-of independent that the two boys are sent away to a boarding school outside the city their parents house is in. Tamie tells them it is an international school, and that it is for the best. Their parents say it is in their own best interests to go without complaint, and Juuki doesn’t complain, because he knows by now that having an armoury as an accepted norm in his childhood is not a good thing, and he’d rather Miko escape it. Miko doesn’t complain because he takes too many cues from Juuki, and doesn’t feel enough attachment to either of his parents to protest. It’s not that they’re negligent (though they are) or distant, exactly; it’s just that Juuki is a better caregiver than them, and his brother is only three years older. 

Juuki takes to math and socialising with absolutely anyone who will talk to him. He finds it impossible to be consistent: to his desk partner in math, he is intelligent and quick-witted, to the girl who sits with him at lunch, he is quiet and sarcastic. There are more personalities that he tries on the same way others try on clothes, and the only one that sticks is the caring older brother. 

Miko takes to school in general, but he does not get flawless grades. He averages B’s and C’s and to Juuki he seems quietly content, though he worries that his little brother is having trouble interacting with other people. It’s not a baseless concern, it’s a fair one: Miko did not know other people when they lived in their parents house, and was always content to depend on Juuki for whatever company he wanted. That continues as months turn into years at the international school, and for all Juuki wishes Miko would learn to do more, he seems perfectly satisfied with offering shy smiles to whoever Juuki forces him to hang around with. 

Juuki resolves to do something to help Miko, because this can’t be healthy – except before anything can change, Tamie appears to pick them up from school. She does not explain to the headmaster or teachers or to Miko and Juuki, instead bundling them into her car. It’s black and inconspicuous. Juuki finds a pistol in the glovebox when he reaches for the gum she used to keep there, and stares at her with wide eyes, weapon limp in his hands. “Auntie?” 

“I have some bad news,” she says as lightly as she can. 

From the backseat, Miko clears his throat. “Did our parents get executed for betraying Yakuza?” 

Juuki whips around to stare at his little brother, wide eyed. He knows his parents aren’t the best people, aren’t necessarily nice, but they aren’t abusive. But Miko sounds so certain, so matter of fact, that he’s inclined to believe it. After all, Miko is the observant one. He’s the one who would know. 

Tamie’s hands are white where they grip the steering wheel, and she directs Juuki to dig through the glovebox to find the papers she actually meant for him to find. There is a passport there for each of them, and plane tickets. They are Japanese passports, which makes sense, considering they are Japanese – but the names are written in English characters, not Kanji or Hiragana or Katakana. Juuki squints at it, interpreting the Romanized characters only thanks to the past few years of English classes. “Lucas?” he asks slowly, reading the name from alongside his own face. “And – Michael?” 

“Your idiot parents,” Tamie starts. She pauses to clear her throat. “Your brother is correct. Your parents are – were – Yakuza, and they made mistakes. Their superiors found out.” She softens her voice to say, “I’m sorry, Juuki, but your parents are dead.” 

He stops for a moment then, processing. “But then – what? I want to see them.” 

“No, you don’t,” Miko says quietly. Still in the backseat, he does not move. “It’ll be better if you remember them alive. Then you – we – get to pretend. Right?”

Tamie nods once, sharply – slowly. For all she isn’t really their aunt, at least not biologically, she does care for them. That is part of why she is here now. “I want you both to know that lying to you has been difficult.” 

Miko swallows, Juuki rubs at his eyes. He doesn’t want to be sad that his parents are gone – they really, really haven’t ever been that great – but he can’t help it. They were more attentive with him than they were with Miko; that’s just a fact, a consequence of him being an only child for a few years. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Juuki asks. His voice has risen an octave. 

And Tamie talks and talks and talks, explaining everything. How their parents are, were, high ranking Yakuza, high enough to be a problem, but not high enough to be on top. About how their home has been a base of operations for much longer than Juuki has been alive, that it has only been a permanent residence for just that long. How their parents are too proud to split custody, about how it took Tamie most of Miko’s life to convince them that it would be best to send them to an international school to learn, to pick up skills and contacts that would make them useful to them in the long run. And she talks about how her name really is Tamie, and no, she isn’t really related to them. She is Japanese-Filipino, which explains why Juuki always believed that she wasn’t their biological aunt, and she was chosen to be one of three undercover Interpol agents infiltrating the Yakuza. It just so happened that Tamie’s in was their parents. She explains in great detail how she has never precisely cared for their parents except in the way you might care for a distant cousin, but that she has always loved Juuki, and always loved Miko, as long as they’ve been alive. This has been her mission for as long as Juuki has been alive, if not a little longer – she is vague on the details – but when the higherups got word that there was a leak within the Yakuza, and investigated enough to pick up the one that existed between Tamie and their parents, well – she is absolutely certain that twisting the arm of her handler until she had a way out of the country for the boys she loves like her own is the right thing to do. And that’s why she did it. 

“So,” she finishes awkwardly, “I, um. If you want, they’ve agreed to let me have sole custody of the two of you. But we cannot stay here, or anywhere in Japan – there is too much risk that the Yakuza will track you. Which is why your passports have American names on them.” She pauses and bites her lip, and it’s such an unusual show of uncertainty on her that Juuki almost smiles. “You wouldn’t be able to be Miko and Juuki any more, except when you are absolutely certain you’re in private. And I can’t guarantee your safety forever, but I know – I will do everything in my power to give you normal lives. As much as can be expected.” 

Juuki – Lucas, now, he supposes – listens, and he wonders if it would be cruel to point out that she has not given them much of a choice. It is no choice, really, when their options are either to reject her and end up alone in a foreign country where Miko – Michael – does not speak the language, and Lucas can barely read it – or they can accept her offer, and get something like a trusted relative out of this. 

It’s no offer at all, really. 

“We want whatever you can provide,” Miko says – Michael says. Lucas pinches himself. Michael, Michael, Michael.

He resolves then that he will do anything to keep his little brother out of trouble, no matter what level of his own integrity it challenges. He can do this one thing for him, be there for him in a way their parents never were. 

It’s the least he could do, really – or at least as he sees it.