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It was really only after she had received her first paycheck that Gin noticed it.
She had spent almost twenty minutes just staring at the zeros on the little slip of paper she had been given before Hirotsu had gotten her attention again with a sharp little cough that always managed to call her to attention.
Hirotsu frowned at her when she did finally look at him, “It is simply an incentive check. Save it.” He tells her with his usual style of speech before something came over him, “But you may treat yourself to something small if you wish, as long as you promise something small.”
Gin bobbed her head enthusically, clutching the check close to her chest. Hirotsu didn’t exactly smile, but his lips twitched, “You’re a good kid, Gin.”
She rushed off home as fast as she could, pulling off her usual Port Mafia getup as fast as she could.
Don’t wear it when you’re coming home, Ryuu’s voice reverberated through her head, You’ll be tracked.
Her brother was so knowledgeable sometimes.
Gin arrived at the apartment complex that she and Ryuu called home. It was nothing special, according to the man who had led them there on day Ryuu had bought it, Only one bedroom and bathroom with a small living room, but to the Akutagawa siblings, it was perfect.
She knocked on the door three times, a signal to Ryuu, and bounced on her heels until he opened it a crack, quietly checking if it was really her before opening the door all the way. Gin practically shoved herself through the opening, hearing the violent crackling of her brother’s ability behind her as he closed the door. She spun around to face him, hands still desperately clutching at her check, “Nii-san, look what I got!”
Her brother’s face was wrapped in several thick bandages, one of his eyes covered all the way. His remaining one brightened when he saw the check in her hands, “Ah, you got paid!”
“I did!” Gin can’t help her overwhelming happiness and pride at her own accomplishment. It’s a feeling that had been so rare when she was younger, and every time it decided to grace her presence she couldn’t help but be enthused, “What should I do with it?”
And there it is, the slightest hesitation in her brother’s half-covered face.
He twitched, almost flinched at her words, and if it wasn’t for Gin’s training she would have missed it. The moment it was there, it left though. Ryuu reached his hand out and gingerly took the check from her, reading it over to himself.
“We should probably get you access to your Port Mafia bank account,” He muttered aloud, a habit he only found himself doing with her “I’ll ask Dazai-san about it later.”
Gin can’t help but be surprised at the mention of bank accounts. Her brother had never mentioned his own before, but she supposed that they did have one. After all, they did have enough money to afford all of the items in their apartment.
Still, she would assume Ryuu would have mentioned it to her before. He was older than her and was paid more and had been paid longer. If it was her, she would’ve been throwing money at Ryuu faster than a strike of Rashomon.
Her train of thought was interrupted when he handed her back the check. His one eye gleamed strangely in the dimness of the lights, “Keep it safe until we can put it in your account.”
Gin nodded, more instinctual than actual comprehension, and clutched the check to her chest even harder. Ryuu, satisfied with his brotherly lecture, limped back to their couch and crashed on top of it, Rashomon fluttering behind him. Even after he’s seemingly gone, Gin found herself watching him for a second, before darting to her room to hide the check.
When she got back out into the living room, Ryuu was tapping out something on his phone, something she had never seen him do before. Intrigued, she walked over to him, only for him to look over at her, “What do you want?”
His tone was way different from his words, Gin tilted her head at him, “Nii-san?”
He pushed his phone into her hands, showing her a small menu for a place that she had never heard of before “For food.”
Shocked and touched to her core by her brother’s gesture, Gin randomly tapped something on the menu and handed it back to him, “That’s fine for now.”
“Good,” Ryuu drummed his fingers across the keyboard rapidly before sighing, “Don’t get used to it.”
Gin only rolled her eyes at him before throwing herself over the head of the couch and directly next to him, “I won’t.”
They curled up together on the couch for almost thirty minutes, just enjoying each other’s presence before their doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of their food. Gin rushed to the door, followed slightly by her ever-cautious brother, and practically yanked it open, much to the surprise of the young women with the bags in her hands.
Gin thanked her profusely and slipped her some extra cash for her trouble before shutting the door on her and turning back to Ryuu, who had settled down on their small kitchen island.
What was odd was her brother’s one-eyed stare on the bags in her arms, his eyes still gleaming oddly in the light and the desperate look on his face that she hadn’t seen since their final night in the slums. It made her stomach churn, but she tried to ignore it in favor of the celebration of their future, not of their past.
Still, she couldn’t help but worry as Ryuu shoveled the food into his mouth as though she would take it away from him.
It was the first hint really of the many things to come.
But Gin ignored it in favor of celebration, hoping against all the hints in her face that she was wrong….
Over the years it became a sort of unspoken thing in the Akutagawa household that Ryuu would not eat unless prompted too. Gin didn’t actually know why. She would later begin to understand that not even Ryuu understood it himself. But as with most of the dark truths of the Akutagawas, it remained understood and never spoken of.
Instead, Gin would make more food than was necessary and leave it on the table in hope that Ryuu would take the hint and eat it. Sometimes she would make food in front of him, to make sure he couldn’t refuse it and would drop hints to Higuchi to take her brother out on lunches if she thought that she would be away for multiple weeks.
Her biggest scare came during a deep infiltration mission that lasted for two whole months. The entire time all she could think about was Ryuu and when Hirotsu finally handed her the largest paycheck yet, she ran all the way back home as fast as her feet could take her.
When she arrived, there was a small bowl of soba on their counter and the faint noise of the shower running.
She almost collapsed to the floor in relief.
Ryuu found her there, minutes later with tears in her eyes and her heart in her throat.
It didn’t really get better though.
Gin learned from Higuchi that she had taken Ryuu out on lunch dates whenever she thought he looked sickly (which was often) and also learned that Chuuya had aggressively interfered when he noticed her brother’s already bad stamina dropping. She couldn’t help but thank everything above that those two had been on his case when she couldn’t be.
And then the were-tiger happened.
Gin honestly had no idea how her brother’s partner got involved. She barely even knew him, despite her brother’s constant angry muttering about him. She had only run into him once, during the terrifying instance involving Higuchi, the nerd from the Agency, and a weird guy in a futon.
Ryuu’s tone had changed on the were-tiger significantly during what Gin liked to call “Pacifist Ryuu Era” the six-month period in which her brother had stupidly decided to not murder anyone, because of a promise… to the were-tiger.
Honestly, Gin didn’t know why she bothered to get involved sometimes.
She ended up running into the were-tiger at four am at a small convince store, around a week after the six-month promise and a couple of days after a battle that Ryuu only described as “eye-opening.”
When they ran into each other, she didn’t even notice it was the were-tiger for a second until he squawked her name.
She stared at him, “Hello were-tiger.”
He’s dressed in the most horrible combination of clothes she’s ever seen, a yellow Hawaiian shirt and bright red shorts. It’s clear he hasn’t been attacked by her brother’s ‘fashion policing’ yet.
“You can call me Atsushi,” He frowns at her, his oddly colored eyes looking her up and down, “It feels weird when you call me that.”
“Alright Atsushi-kun,” She agreed, before eyeing his purchases. A load of tofu and rice as well as a giant box of cheap tea. “What are you doing here?”
He actually considered that, tilting his head in such a way that Gin can almost imagine cat ears sticking out of his head. After detecting no malice in her question, he sheepishly admitted, “Impulse eating.”
Forcing down the brief flash of concern for him to be awake at this hour impulse eating with a 9-5 schedule, Gin nodded as if it all made sense. She lifted her bag to show him, “I suppose I am in the same boat as you.”
Atsushi’s awkward look brightened a bit and he actually laughs, “Guess we’re two of a kind!”
Her hand flashed to her face to hide her smile, “I suppose we are.”
Gin briefly considered outright walking away to a nearby aisle to grab some dried figs for her brother when Atsushi stopped her with a cough, “Gin-san.”
“Yes?”
“Does… does your brother eat often?”
Gin gaped at him, almost smacking her shoulder on the shelf. Atsushi was staring down at his feet but he briefly made eye contact with her, “I know we’ve never been on the best of terms, but he doesn’t seem like he eats often…”
He got suddenly flustered and waved his arms around like a maniac, jostling the stuff in his bag, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!!! He just… doesn’t seem very…” He paused again, trying to figure out the correct words.
“Healthy,” is what he ended with.
Gin doesn’t know what prompted her to reply. Atsushi was clearly overstepping boundaries that weren’t even established, but the change that he had managed to invoke in her brother overruled rationale.
“Nii-san never eats unless he is reminded to,” She said and instantly guilt washed over her. She never talked about stuff like this…
Atsushi blinked at her and then lifted his head, “I suppose I have to remind him then.”
Gin really didn’t know what to say to that. The were-tiger was incredibly persistent, she knew that from Ryuu’s rants about him. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of thing she had started as she left the store, nervously glancing behind her as she did.
It started with Ryuu’s phone buzzing at around 12 two days later. They had a day off and had been simply lounging around the apartment happy to be with each other.
He startled so badly that the book he was reading actually dropped out of his hands. Gin smothered a laugh from the opposite end of the couch as Ryuu glared at her, picking up his sleek black phone to check the text.
Whoever it was, it made him frown at the message, a bewildered expression across his face before he suddenly got up from the couch, typing back furiously.
Gin watched him head over to the kitchen, shocked that he was actively…. Pulling leftovers out of the fridge.
What?
She practically scaled the couch to grab his phone and check who had prompted such a reaction, only to be greeted with a series of messages between her brother and a contact marked simply with a tiger emoji.
🐯 : kyouka and I are getting crepes again!!
Akutagawa: I do not require you to inform me of your daily activities, Jinko.
🐯 : sure… lol
🐯 : what are you having for lunch?
Akutagawa: Why do you need to know?
🐯 : maybe I wanna know?
🐯 : im gonna send you food pics
Akutagawa: I do not want to see the primitive food you are eating Jinko.
🐯 : [CREPE.jpeg] [WEGOTSTRAWBERRY.jpeg]
🐯 : if my food’s so primitive, why don’t you show me how it’s done?
Rashomon swipes the phone away from Gin’s hands as she finished the last sentence. She watched her brother, completely transfixed as he sets up a bowl of curry rice with a dark expression, only to pluck his phone from Rashomon’s grasp to send the Jinko the superior lunch.
It’s the first time she had ever seen her brother actively prepare for his own lunch.
Ryuu finished his angry typing to Atsushi and stared at her, “What?”
“Nothing,” She said with a smile, “I’m just hungry.”