osamu & the halves
Jan. 18th, 2022 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
softpunksmiya atsumu & miya osamu // ~3k
> piece for the Miya Twins Zine; Older sibling and younger sibling dynamics.
By the time they turned five, their mother told Osamu that he came into the world crying only because he knew Atsumu was waiting for him. In retrospect, this should’ve been a sign that Osamu’s life would be filled with nothing but misery the moment he realized that being born didn’t just mean coming into the world, but it also meant coming into the world with the knowledge that someone else who was, by all means, exactly like you, was there before you were.
Being younger and being older didn’t really mean much when you were only older or younger by a minute; in the end, they were twins through and through. When they were eight, Aran once showed them a handwritten list of responsibilities his older sister had to take as the eldest of the family even though the difference between her and Aran’s age had just been a year.
A year and a minute were not the same. The twins took one look at the list and acknowledged that Atsumu had none of these responsibilities despite seeing more of the world than Osamu had. A year and a minute, after all, were not the same.
“Aran’s family is weird,” was all Atsumu said, concluding the conversation.
The rules didn’t really apply to Atsumu and Osamu because they were twins, but when their mother saw it, she said, “They can. In their own right. Because you’re twins, nothing is set in stone.”
Neither Atsumu nor Osamu really understood what she meant, but Osamu found himself keeping the list anyway even if it wasn’t for him. Mostly, she was right. It wasn’t set in stone. Atsumu was older by a minute, but for all intents and purposes, Atsumu was not the older sibling.
In the list, it said, the older sibling must guide the younger one towards the right path. There was this time when the twins had to do a blindfold test in class and wander around the school. With the cloth wrapped around Atsumu’s eyes, they ended up in a garden, one that had a huge pond and fish swimming inside. Osamu may have been the younger one, but it was him who instructed Atsumu to walk ten steps to the right until he fell into the water.
In the list, it said, be patient and understanding because your little sibling doesn’t know any better and you know more. But Atsumu cried for two days because he couldn’t understand how to knot his tie for his boy scout uniform. Osamu had no interest in activities like those, but he learned how to do it a month before out of sheer boredom. He ended up teaching Atsumu how the knot worked just to get him to stop sobbing his eyes out.
In the list, it said, whether they like it or not, they’ll follow your lead.
This was the only point that Osamu acquiesced. He may have convinced Atsumu to walk into the pond, but it was because Atsumu insisted they go to the garden anyway. He may have figured out how to do the knot, but he wouldn’t have even thought twice about trying if Atsumu didn’t ever mention it beforehand.
On their second day of preschool, their teacher asked each of them, “What would you like to be when you grow up?”
Atsumu said, “A pirate.”
When the question was turned to Osamu, he said the same thing. The quirk on their teacher’s lips was evident as he gave the twins a knowing look and remarked, “Following in your older brother’s footsteps? That’s cute.”
“No.” Osamu frowned. “We’re twins.”
“Okay,” the teacher said, even if the look on his face meant that he didn’t think it made much of a difference.
Maybe it didn’t. In the list, it said, whether you like it or not, they’ll follow your lead. It was Atsumu who had seen more of the world by a minute and it was him who took that same amount of time to soak everything in and decide to become a memory the universe couldn’t forget. Osamu may have been the one making the first big move, but it was always Atsumu’s lead that he’d be following. They were twins, but Atsumu was older, and so Osamu would always be overshadowed in the face of Atsumu’s sun-like glory.
This, at the very least, was set in stone.
The question would come up every few years, and though it changed each time, there was a recurring pattern.
What do you wanna be when you grow up? Firefighter.
What ‘bout you, Osamu? I guess that too.
What do you wanna be when you grow up? I’ll be a zookeeper!
Me too.
What do you wanna be when you grow up?
Whatever ‘Tsumu’s gonna be.
“Why don’t you wanna be different from your brother?” their father asked once. “Because you’re twins?”
Osamu shrugged in reply. They were twins, but it was because they were also twins with one older one and one younger. It was because Atsumu was the former. Osamu, who was the latter, would follow his lead.
The great irony of it was that Atsumu would start everything, but Osamu would be the one who was better at it. It was Atsumu who insisted on buying butterfly nets to catch bugs, but it was Osamu who caught more than him. It was Atsumu who borrowed their neighbor’s skateboard, even though it was Osamu who could perform more tricks to show off to their friends by the skatepark.
It was Atsumu who first saw the volleyball, sitting innocuously underneath one of the benches of the park. It was Osamu who turned out to be the more well-rounded in terms of skill for the sport between the two of them.
“Bitter ‘bout it?” Osamu asked Atsumu once, after a particularly rough match. They were in their last year of middle school and this was their last game before high school. The Coach said both of them did well, but Osamu in particular played better. Just a little bit, because they were still twins.
“I hate you,” Atsumu replied, and this wasn’t like all the other times Atsumu said he hated Osamu, because this time, he actually meant it. “What are you, some little pipsqueak? Stop followin’ me ‘round with everythin’ I do! Learn to be your own damn person!”
Osamu narrowed his eyes. “Don’t pull that ‘stop followin’ me ‘round’ bullshit on me when you’re the one who keeps on draggin’ me to it since you’re too chicken to do anythin’ alone!”
“I’m not!”
“You are!” Osamu hissed. “And I am my own damn person. It ain’t my damn fault if you never saw it ‘cause you were born with your head buried up your ass! You probably would’ve stayed that way if I never came along!”
Atsumu didn’t have any retort to that, evident in how he decided to jump on Osamu instead of replying. They wrestled to the ground, throwing impulsive hits and grabbing each other in the most random places just to gain leverage over one another. The only reason they pulled away was because their teammates finally had enough and yanked them apart.
Before Osamu could stand up, Atsumu had stalked off to cool down.
“It’ll be fine,” one of their teammates reassured Osamu, but he ignored him because he didn’t need comfort and that guy didn’t know any better.
Volleyball was different from everything else the two shared and competed over because Atsumu actually stuck with it, saw it as something more than just another fleeting way to kill time and burn out their restless energy. Osamu understood why Atsumu was so angry. They lost their last match as third-year middle school students. Atsumu was not that recognized for his efforts as much as Osamu was even though they’d been training for the same amount of hours. In light of Osamu’s skill, people forgot that it wouldn’t have even been discovered if Atsumu never annoyed him to play in the first place.
Osamu understood why Atsumu was so angry. Osamu may have followed his lead, but he was also stepping out of his shadow and replacing his shine with his own light. Just because they were twins didn’t mean they had to share everything; just because Atsumu was first to have something didn’t mean Osamu had to have it right after.
Being younger did not always mean following in the older’s footsteps, especially because they were different—they were twins—but Osamu did it anyway.
The next day, their homeroom teacher asked Osamu what he wanted to do when he was older. It was a question teachers had to ask because Atsumu and Osamu were about to enter high school, one step closer to figuring out their future. The idea was daunting when Osamu spent most of his days prioritizing thoughts on what could offset Atsumu into another squabble, or what would be the best way to make himself a good meal and enjoy good food.
It did not help that their argument from the day before hadn’t been resolved, so it was all Osamu could still think about.
He was tired of having to put up with Atsumu’s shit. He didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. It was not his responsibility, because he was not the eldest between them, and therefore didn’t have to shoulder that older sibling burden.
During their one-on-one session, his homeroom teacher asked, “So, what do you wanna be when you grow up?”
Osamu glanced down at the desk where the papers containing records of his previous answers throughout the years were untidily scattered. He figured, right then and there, that maybe part of the reason why teachers always asked this question was because they were hoping for a different answer each time.
He felt stupid, not realizing this sooner.
“Definitely not whatever ‘Tsumu’s gonna be,” Osamu offered.
It was a different answer, but it wasn’t what his teacher had been hoping for. Her lips curled in slight disappointment. Osamu continued staring down at the papers. In the past, the teachers would always switch his and Atsumu’s documents. Even during the one-on-one interviews themselves, their identities would often get exchanged. It annoyed the twins, but it didn’t really make much of a difference when they had the same answers anyway.
“It must be hard, being twins. It makes sense for you to wanna be completely different from him, especially when for the longest time, you’ve been trying to be the same,” she started, like she understood what this was about. But it was not because they were twins; it was because Atsumu was older and Osamu followed his lead. The twins thing just justified things. Because they looked the same, it seemed like everything else about them had to be the same. Osamu never clarified that it wasn’t really because of that; it would just make Atsumu angrier, and it wasn’t like Osamu wasn’t sick of doing it anyway. “But even if you try not to revolve yourself ‘round your brother by doing what he wouldn’t do, you’re still making it all ‘bout him.”
He decided to be honest. “It’s ‘cause he’s the older one.”
“You’re twins,” she pointed out. “There is no older or younger. Those responsibilities don’t apply to you two. It’s not set in stone.”
Their mother likely said something similar, but it wasn’t a memory he could easily pick from his mind. To be older meant knowing more, and though Osamu prided himself in being ahead of Atsumu despite being the younger one, what did it matter? What had he seen that Atsumu hadn't? What had he learned that Atusmu couldn’t? Nothing.
All his life, he only knew Atsumu. When he entered the world, it was with the knowledge that there was someone else with him too—not to guide him as he stumbled in his journey to life, experienced and all-knowing, but someone to endure that journey with him, just as naively and stubbornly.
“Probably,” he allowed instead. “I dunno.”
He didn’t say this because the conversation was getting too personal and intrusive for his liking and because he wanted to dismiss it; that was an Atsumu thing to do, his mind supplied, to immediately disregard every little thing he didn’t like. Osamu said this because he genuinely didn’t know.
He thought about it, but not too much. It never seemed important. It was just a fact in life, like knowing you couldn’t walk around with your shoelaces untied or knowing to keep quiet when a movie starts to play.
Osamu would always do things better as if he’d be setting an example, but Atsumu was always the reason he did it, because Osamu followed his brother’s trail. No matter how much it seemed like that he would one day outshine Atsumu, he never did it for any other reason but to stick close to him. It was because Osamu was his younger brother, and it was because Osamu was his twin. One may have been before the other, but at its core, they were born together.
But they could not be together forever. Atsumu didn’t want that, even if Osamu knew he only meant it in the heat of the moment. At this very moment, Osamu realized that he didn’t want it either. Whether it was because he was the younger brother who wanted to step out of his older sibling’s shadow, or because he was the twin who decided he had to be more than that—it did not matter.
“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” his teacher asked again, right before Osamu walked out the door, as if a few minutes would be enough for him to suddenly figure out the answer when he just said he didn’t know.
Still, he thought about what he told her and realized that he hadn’t regretted what he said, just the fact that he said it with Atsumu in the picture, like they were a package deal, forever and always. He thought of his teacher’s words and turned them over his hands and over his head, breaking them down into fragments he could grasp onto and do something with.
She pressed. “Do you really just not wanna be whatever your brother’s gonna be?”
“No,” admitted Osamu. All he knew was that whatever Atsumu was going to be, it wasn’t what Osamu was going to want to be. He didn’t know anything outside of Atsumu, but he could come to learn it. They could never have and be the same despite being siblings and despite being twins. Even though he spent most of his life following Atsumu every step of the way, it was inevitable they’d diverge paths at some point. They were two people, not a single one. “I just wanna be my own person.”
It was another way of saying he wanted to be different. Not just a younger brother, not just a twin, not just someone who had the same face and goals as someone else. It was still in relation to Atsumu, because no matter how far they’d separate, something would always tie them together, but to Osamu, this was okay.
After all, this wasn’t actually about Atsumu. At least, not anymore.
It wasn’t really a proper answer, not the kind you could write down on a form and it would make sense to others. But his teacher smiled anyway, like she liked what she was hearing. “That’s good.”
Osamu looked down at the paper in her hands as she scribbled something down. For once, on top of the form was his name. Miya Osamu. Nothing more, nothing less.
> piece for the Miya Twins Zine; Older sibling and younger sibling dynamics.
By the time they turned five, their mother told Osamu that he came into the world crying only because he knew Atsumu was waiting for him. In retrospect, this should’ve been a sign that Osamu’s life would be filled with nothing but misery the moment he realized that being born didn’t just mean coming into the world, but it also meant coming into the world with the knowledge that someone else who was, by all means, exactly like you, was there before you were.
Being younger and being older didn’t really mean much when you were only older or younger by a minute; in the end, they were twins through and through. When they were eight, Aran once showed them a handwritten list of responsibilities his older sister had to take as the eldest of the family even though the difference between her and Aran’s age had just been a year.
A year and a minute were not the same. The twins took one look at the list and acknowledged that Atsumu had none of these responsibilities despite seeing more of the world than Osamu had. A year and a minute, after all, were not the same.
“Aran’s family is weird,” was all Atsumu said, concluding the conversation.
The rules didn’t really apply to Atsumu and Osamu because they were twins, but when their mother saw it, she said, “They can. In their own right. Because you’re twins, nothing is set in stone.”
Neither Atsumu nor Osamu really understood what she meant, but Osamu found himself keeping the list anyway even if it wasn’t for him. Mostly, she was right. It wasn’t set in stone. Atsumu was older by a minute, but for all intents and purposes, Atsumu was not the older sibling.
In the list, it said, the older sibling must guide the younger one towards the right path. There was this time when the twins had to do a blindfold test in class and wander around the school. With the cloth wrapped around Atsumu’s eyes, they ended up in a garden, one that had a huge pond and fish swimming inside. Osamu may have been the younger one, but it was him who instructed Atsumu to walk ten steps to the right until he fell into the water.
In the list, it said, be patient and understanding because your little sibling doesn’t know any better and you know more. But Atsumu cried for two days because he couldn’t understand how to knot his tie for his boy scout uniform. Osamu had no interest in activities like those, but he learned how to do it a month before out of sheer boredom. He ended up teaching Atsumu how the knot worked just to get him to stop sobbing his eyes out.
In the list, it said, whether they like it or not, they’ll follow your lead.
This was the only point that Osamu acquiesced. He may have convinced Atsumu to walk into the pond, but it was because Atsumu insisted they go to the garden anyway. He may have figured out how to do the knot, but he wouldn’t have even thought twice about trying if Atsumu didn’t ever mention it beforehand.
On their second day of preschool, their teacher asked each of them, “What would you like to be when you grow up?”
Atsumu said, “A pirate.”
When the question was turned to Osamu, he said the same thing. The quirk on their teacher’s lips was evident as he gave the twins a knowing look and remarked, “Following in your older brother’s footsteps? That’s cute.”
“No.” Osamu frowned. “We’re twins.”
“Okay,” the teacher said, even if the look on his face meant that he didn’t think it made much of a difference.
Maybe it didn’t. In the list, it said, whether you like it or not, they’ll follow your lead. It was Atsumu who had seen more of the world by a minute and it was him who took that same amount of time to soak everything in and decide to become a memory the universe couldn’t forget. Osamu may have been the one making the first big move, but it was always Atsumu’s lead that he’d be following. They were twins, but Atsumu was older, and so Osamu would always be overshadowed in the face of Atsumu’s sun-like glory.
This, at the very least, was set in stone.
The question would come up every few years, and though it changed each time, there was a recurring pattern.
What do you wanna be when you grow up? Firefighter.
What ‘bout you, Osamu? I guess that too.
What do you wanna be when you grow up? I’ll be a zookeeper!
Me too.
What do you wanna be when you grow up?
Whatever ‘Tsumu’s gonna be.
“Why don’t you wanna be different from your brother?” their father asked once. “Because you’re twins?”
Osamu shrugged in reply. They were twins, but it was because they were also twins with one older one and one younger. It was because Atsumu was the former. Osamu, who was the latter, would follow his lead.
==
Despite being the younger one, Osamu excelled in everything a tad bit better than Atsumu did. This was yet another irony in their dynamic, how they defied the list even when they stuck to it for one point that actually mattered. The only reason that it was by a bit was because they were still twins that always meant having as little differences as possible.The great irony of it was that Atsumu would start everything, but Osamu would be the one who was better at it. It was Atsumu who insisted on buying butterfly nets to catch bugs, but it was Osamu who caught more than him. It was Atsumu who borrowed their neighbor’s skateboard, even though it was Osamu who could perform more tricks to show off to their friends by the skatepark.
It was Atsumu who first saw the volleyball, sitting innocuously underneath one of the benches of the park. It was Osamu who turned out to be the more well-rounded in terms of skill for the sport between the two of them.
“Bitter ‘bout it?” Osamu asked Atsumu once, after a particularly rough match. They were in their last year of middle school and this was their last game before high school. The Coach said both of them did well, but Osamu in particular played better. Just a little bit, because they were still twins.
“I hate you,” Atsumu replied, and this wasn’t like all the other times Atsumu said he hated Osamu, because this time, he actually meant it. “What are you, some little pipsqueak? Stop followin’ me ‘round with everythin’ I do! Learn to be your own damn person!”
Osamu narrowed his eyes. “Don’t pull that ‘stop followin’ me ‘round’ bullshit on me when you’re the one who keeps on draggin’ me to it since you’re too chicken to do anythin’ alone!”
“I’m not!”
“You are!” Osamu hissed. “And I am my own damn person. It ain’t my damn fault if you never saw it ‘cause you were born with your head buried up your ass! You probably would’ve stayed that way if I never came along!”
Atsumu didn’t have any retort to that, evident in how he decided to jump on Osamu instead of replying. They wrestled to the ground, throwing impulsive hits and grabbing each other in the most random places just to gain leverage over one another. The only reason they pulled away was because their teammates finally had enough and yanked them apart.
Before Osamu could stand up, Atsumu had stalked off to cool down.
“It’ll be fine,” one of their teammates reassured Osamu, but he ignored him because he didn’t need comfort and that guy didn’t know any better.
Volleyball was different from everything else the two shared and competed over because Atsumu actually stuck with it, saw it as something more than just another fleeting way to kill time and burn out their restless energy. Osamu understood why Atsumu was so angry. They lost their last match as third-year middle school students. Atsumu was not that recognized for his efforts as much as Osamu was even though they’d been training for the same amount of hours. In light of Osamu’s skill, people forgot that it wouldn’t have even been discovered if Atsumu never annoyed him to play in the first place.
Osamu understood why Atsumu was so angry. Osamu may have followed his lead, but he was also stepping out of his shadow and replacing his shine with his own light. Just because they were twins didn’t mean they had to share everything; just because Atsumu was first to have something didn’t mean Osamu had to have it right after.
Being younger did not always mean following in the older’s footsteps, especially because they were different—they were twins—but Osamu did it anyway.
The next day, their homeroom teacher asked Osamu what he wanted to do when he was older. It was a question teachers had to ask because Atsumu and Osamu were about to enter high school, one step closer to figuring out their future. The idea was daunting when Osamu spent most of his days prioritizing thoughts on what could offset Atsumu into another squabble, or what would be the best way to make himself a good meal and enjoy good food.
It did not help that their argument from the day before hadn’t been resolved, so it was all Osamu could still think about.
He was tired of having to put up with Atsumu’s shit. He didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore. It was not his responsibility, because he was not the eldest between them, and therefore didn’t have to shoulder that older sibling burden.
During their one-on-one session, his homeroom teacher asked, “So, what do you wanna be when you grow up?”
Osamu glanced down at the desk where the papers containing records of his previous answers throughout the years were untidily scattered. He figured, right then and there, that maybe part of the reason why teachers always asked this question was because they were hoping for a different answer each time.
He felt stupid, not realizing this sooner.
“Definitely not whatever ‘Tsumu’s gonna be,” Osamu offered.
It was a different answer, but it wasn’t what his teacher had been hoping for. Her lips curled in slight disappointment. Osamu continued staring down at the papers. In the past, the teachers would always switch his and Atsumu’s documents. Even during the one-on-one interviews themselves, their identities would often get exchanged. It annoyed the twins, but it didn’t really make much of a difference when they had the same answers anyway.
“It must be hard, being twins. It makes sense for you to wanna be completely different from him, especially when for the longest time, you’ve been trying to be the same,” she started, like she understood what this was about. But it was not because they were twins; it was because Atsumu was older and Osamu followed his lead. The twins thing just justified things. Because they looked the same, it seemed like everything else about them had to be the same. Osamu never clarified that it wasn’t really because of that; it would just make Atsumu angrier, and it wasn’t like Osamu wasn’t sick of doing it anyway. “But even if you try not to revolve yourself ‘round your brother by doing what he wouldn’t do, you’re still making it all ‘bout him.”
He decided to be honest. “It’s ‘cause he’s the older one.”
“You’re twins,” she pointed out. “There is no older or younger. Those responsibilities don’t apply to you two. It’s not set in stone.”
Their mother likely said something similar, but it wasn’t a memory he could easily pick from his mind. To be older meant knowing more, and though Osamu prided himself in being ahead of Atsumu despite being the younger one, what did it matter? What had he seen that Atsumu hadn't? What had he learned that Atusmu couldn’t? Nothing.
All his life, he only knew Atsumu. When he entered the world, it was with the knowledge that there was someone else with him too—not to guide him as he stumbled in his journey to life, experienced and all-knowing, but someone to endure that journey with him, just as naively and stubbornly.
“Probably,” he allowed instead. “I dunno.”
He didn’t say this because the conversation was getting too personal and intrusive for his liking and because he wanted to dismiss it; that was an Atsumu thing to do, his mind supplied, to immediately disregard every little thing he didn’t like. Osamu said this because he genuinely didn’t know.
He thought about it, but not too much. It never seemed important. It was just a fact in life, like knowing you couldn’t walk around with your shoelaces untied or knowing to keep quiet when a movie starts to play.
Osamu would always do things better as if he’d be setting an example, but Atsumu was always the reason he did it, because Osamu followed his brother’s trail. No matter how much it seemed like that he would one day outshine Atsumu, he never did it for any other reason but to stick close to him. It was because Osamu was his younger brother, and it was because Osamu was his twin. One may have been before the other, but at its core, they were born together.
But they could not be together forever. Atsumu didn’t want that, even if Osamu knew he only meant it in the heat of the moment. At this very moment, Osamu realized that he didn’t want it either. Whether it was because he was the younger brother who wanted to step out of his older sibling’s shadow, or because he was the twin who decided he had to be more than that—it did not matter.
“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” his teacher asked again, right before Osamu walked out the door, as if a few minutes would be enough for him to suddenly figure out the answer when he just said he didn’t know.
Still, he thought about what he told her and realized that he hadn’t regretted what he said, just the fact that he said it with Atsumu in the picture, like they were a package deal, forever and always. He thought of his teacher’s words and turned them over his hands and over his head, breaking them down into fragments he could grasp onto and do something with.
She pressed. “Do you really just not wanna be whatever your brother’s gonna be?”
“No,” admitted Osamu. All he knew was that whatever Atsumu was going to be, it wasn’t what Osamu was going to want to be. He didn’t know anything outside of Atsumu, but he could come to learn it. They could never have and be the same despite being siblings and despite being twins. Even though he spent most of his life following Atsumu every step of the way, it was inevitable they’d diverge paths at some point. They were two people, not a single one. “I just wanna be my own person.”
It was another way of saying he wanted to be different. Not just a younger brother, not just a twin, not just someone who had the same face and goals as someone else. It was still in relation to Atsumu, because no matter how far they’d separate, something would always tie them together, but to Osamu, this was okay.
After all, this wasn’t actually about Atsumu. At least, not anymore.
It wasn’t really a proper answer, not the kind you could write down on a form and it would make sense to others. But his teacher smiled anyway, like she liked what she was hearing. “That’s good.”
Osamu looked down at the paper in her hands as she scribbled something down. For once, on top of the form was his name. Miya Osamu. Nothing more, nothing less.