Chapter Text
If there was one inconvenience to having been reborn in Japan, it was the calendar. Even if his spoken language skills were good enough to converse and not stand out, Aiolos was way too used to the Gregorian calendar to use anything else.
So when Ikki said they were in the “year 57 of Showa”, Aiolos’ brain short-circuited because when did showa start, did they also count the start of the year with the Gregorian calendar or with the lunar new year?
After a couple hours of trying (and failing) to read a history book, Ikki had offered to sneak him into the directors office to see if he had a calendar or documents that he wrote the date in.
“What are you kids doing here?” The director (a catholic father) asked when he saw Aiolos going through the drawers. Both kids froze, looked at each other for a second, before choosing to tell the truth.
“I wanted to know what year it is,” he confessed. The director frowned.
“Didn’t your brother start school this year?”
“Y-yeah, but I heard that outside Japan they use a different calendar…”
“Ah, western calendar? I think it’s 1982.”
- Five years had passed since his death.
Aiolos forced himself to smile like Shun did, but he probably didn’t quite manage it if the director’s frown was any indication; still, he didn’t feel like trying more.
“Thank you.” The director nodded his assent, and they walked out.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Ikki asked once they were out of earshot.
“I did,” he replied, and allowed himself to lean into Ikki’s half-embrace. “I would have turned twenty in a couple of months.”
“That’s so old,” Ikki murmured with his nose scrunched. “That was mom’s age when Shun was born.”
Ikki’s words sparked some subconscious feelings in Aiolos. Warmth, safety. He could remember his first parents perfectly, but Shun’s mother was only a human-shaped blob that lacked the most basic details.
“Do you want to train?” Aiolos asked.
“Train?” Ikki echoed, a confused frown at his non-sequitur.
“Yeah, I was a professional martial artist in my past life. It’s not like I’ll use that knowledge in practice since Shun doesn’t like fighting, but I think you’d like it.”
Ikki looked at him for a couple of seconds, as if considering the offer. “You mean you’ll teach me to fight in order to protect you?”
“N-not quite,” put like that, his offer sounded a bit too self-serving. “How about um, I teach you to fight and you teach me how to read and write?” He had been having trouble with the kana and kanji, after all.
Ikki huffed, his expression now an offended one. “Don’t be stupid. I’d be teaching you that regardless. I’ll take your classes, but think of something else you want.” Aiolos agreed, but couldn’t, for the life in him, think of something he’d want from Ikki.
It had been easy (a little too easy) to sneak to the garden at night and teach Ikki what he’d taught Aiolia not too long (for him) ago. Soon, Ikki knew how to throw a punch, how to wrestle, how to defeat and knock out most enemies.
At times, unconsciously, Ikki would flare up his cosmo while practicing a move. He tried to be nonchalant about it when he’d set the grass on fire by accident.
He hesitated about whether to also teach him to harness his cosmo for months. He was already teaching Ikki how to fight with less than pure intentions, surely it wasn’t that much worse to teach him about Saints, and Sanctuary and the civil war he (probably) hadn’t quite managed to escape after death.
But at the same time, he had gotten attached to Ikki as a younger brother of sorts, and didn’t want to involve him or Shun in a conflict older than time that was more sure than not to claim their lives.
(He’d been 14 when he died, far too young even for a Saint.)
“I had been part of a group of secret warriors called ‘Saints’ in my past life,” he finally confessed one night after training. “Saints wear the armor of their guardian constellation and use this energy called ‘cosmo’ to protect Athena.”
“Cosmo?” Ikki lowered his fist and frowned, there was suspicion in his expression.
“Y-yeah, the energy you use to light stuff on fire. It’s cosmo…” Ikki nodded, though he still seemed like he didn’t quite understand it. Aiolos took a deep breath, and with his eyes closed, looked into the universe inside him. He flared the energy into an aura, knowing his small body shone gold.
And just as quickly he snuffed it out.
“Athena had just been reincarnated when I died. She comes to Earth every two hundred years or so, and it usually means that the Holy War against Hades is near.” He took another deep breath. He had talked it out with Shun beforehand, and had been able to convince him by telling him about how this knowledge would protect Ikki, in case he chose to accept his saintly training or not. “Your cosmo is almost as strong as that of my little brother’s, who became a Gold Saint. If Sanctuary catches wind of it, they will send a scout to train you for sure.”
Ikki didn’t answer for a long while, and for a moment Aiolos thought maybe the words he used had been too complicated for him to understand. But then he huffed, plomped down on the grass, and laid back into his crossed arms.
“What’s the catch with training with these coworkers of yours? You wouldn’t warn me unless you thought I’d be in danger.”
Aiolos licked his lips. This was it. One last thing to warn him about. “The leader, he killed my master and tried to kill Athena. I managed to escape with her and he sent everyone after me; that’s how I died.” Even if it had been a couple of years already, the memories were fresh in his mind like it had happened just yesterday.
As master Shion’s chosen successor, he wasn’t meant to cling to resentment. But he saw Saga’s face hiding in the shadows again, he saw Athena’s guileless face, he felt all the fear and the anger and desperation of his last minutes. He couldn’t let this go.
“So you want to take revenge?” Ikki asked simply.
“That’s not…!” He was quick to object, but he heard Shun’s voice in his head: isn’t it?
His cheeks flamed, because it was a lie. There was no way it was all for some petty revenge. It was in order to protect Athena.
With another huff, Ikki closed his eyes. “It’s fine if you want revenge. I always tell Shun to stand up to the other kids.”
Aiolos wanted to point out that hitting a bully wasn’t the same as killing his ex-best friend, but… he wanted Ikki’s support, for some reason.
Some days after that training session, a couple of men wearing suits came to the orphanage, and the director told them they had been adopted by Mitsumasa Kido, CEO and founder of Graad Foundation.