The Golden Pear [YA - Featured]

♫~Notes 113~♫

 Minutes later, the doctor finished examining Kagetsu, finding nothing wrong or out of the ordinary. He was a healthy boy, full of energy, but his body needed to rest and regain the lost nutrition.

"Doctor, why am I in the hospital?" he asked as the man wrote the last notes.

"You were in an accident."

"In which one?" Kagetsu wasn't that dumb to not see people avoided answering his questions.

"That's—"

"Ka!" Rigaku shouted, bursting into the room. Even his eyes wavered with tears.

Freya stepped aside, giving him all the space to half-hug his brother as his arm still hurt.

"Arigatou! I was so worried!"

Aiyoku at the edge of the scene gesticulated with the doctor, prompting him to leave them. Once alone, Aiyoku stood on the other side of the bed.

"Sheesh, what's happening?" Kagetsu asked. "Everything is so confusing! What had happened? Why's your arm bandaged? Why do you look like you saw a ghost? Why my butt hurts?" The barrage of questions continued until he needed to inhale.

Rigaku pulled down his glasses to wipe the tears. "You don't remember?"

"Remember what?" Kagetsu puckered his lips.

The older brothers exchanged looks.

"Please, tell me," he begged, giving them his puppy eyes.

"I don't mean to hide anything from you." Rigaku sat down on a chair, and Freya stood next to him, leaning against the wall. "It's just... I don't want to send you into shock."

Kagetsu parted his lips to ask for more details, but he closed them, letting his brother know he would listen.

"Do you remember what you were doing for the last time?"

Knitting his eyebrows, his youngest brother was thinking. "Reading a book. I remember I loved a certain part so much, I had to reread it again. It kinda"—his eyes trailed to the ceiling—"resonated with me."

'So, it's like I've suspected. That's why this series speaks so much to him.'

Lifting his weakened hand, Kagetsu scratched in his hair. "I think I ventured on my own... kinda."

"Yeah," Aiyoku agreed. "You walked and read at the same time without bumping into anybody. You gotta tell me how you did that."

"I dunno. Guess I'm natural." The youngest sibling shrugged.

"You little!" Aiyoku ruffled his hair into a five-star bird nest.

"So, what happened next?" Rigaku inquired once his youngest brother ironed his hair into a less messy nest.