Junpei is a quiet child.
Junpei is a quiet baby.
When he’s delivered, after a surprisingly swift labor, he doesn’t cry. Not immediately. As the nurse holds him in her gloved hands, he blinks up at her and wriggles a little, clearly uncomfortable with the change in scenery.
However, he doesn’t cry or fuss.
When the nurses finish with him – weighing him, checking his thin little chest, and cleaning him off – the fairly disgruntled look on his little face remains. It’s charming. It’s… cute.
Nagi’s older sister, the only member of her family that’d been able to make it when she called to ask for a ride to the hospital earlier in the day, smiles as she watches Nagi cuddle her son to her chest.
“He’s so small,” Nana says, voice pitched low so she doesn’t startle her new nephew. “Smaller than my girls when they were born. I’d be so scared to hold him if I were you.”
Nagi smiles down at the baby resting against her breasts and seemingly staring up at her with cloudy dark eyes. Yes, Junpei is smaller than the average baby, but Nagi wouldn’t change that for the world.
“He’s only this small because he came out a little early,” Nagi says. “He’ll grow. And besides, who else is going to hold him if not me?” The bitterness comes through at the end of her words, Nagi knows, but she deserves to be a little bitter considering how her own husband found himself “too busy” to come to the hospital to see his son’s birth.
Hitching Junpei up a little, Nagi dips her head to press a dry kiss to the soft skin of her newborn son’s tiny forehead right next to a still-damp curl of dark brown hair. He doesn’t smell all that great – which is fine, neither does she – but he smells familiar in a way that eases something tight in Nagi’s chest.
Junpei is a quiet child.
He wakes up on his own and crawls out of their shared bed without making much noise. Even on school days where he goes to the kindergarten down the street for half the day, he gets up early. On weekends, however, he also tends to entertain himself before Nagi pulls herself from her own slumber and comes to check on him.
Usually, Junpei is in the living room of the small apartment Nagi moved them to when he was four years old, sitting in front of the television with a yogurt drink clutched in one tiny hand.
Nagi hates to admit it, but Junpei watches a lot of television.
Way more than a little boy should.
But Nagi can’t help it. She works long hours to make sure that Junpei has a roof over his little head and that means that Junpei spends a lot of time on his own when he’s not at school. There’s an older woman who comes and checks in on him once a day and she always comes back home on her break, but –
Junpei spends most of his days at home alone.
“Good morning,” Nagi says in a quiet singsong voice as she walks out of the bedroom to find Junpei where he usually is, square in front of the television and watching Doraemon. “Did you eat breakfast yet?”
Junpei thrusts one tiny hand into the air in response. Clenched in that small fist is a jelly packet, a little different from his usual first meal.
Nagi muffles a giggle into the palm of her hand. They must be out of yogurt again.
Junpei is a quiet teenager.
Nagi expected as much, but his quietness now is… different. Concerning. She mostly works nights now and sleeps in the mornings so that she can greet Junpei when he comes back from school.
At first, she doesn’t notice that anything is wrong.
Junpei has always been a quiet, self-contained boy. Therefore, it’s normal for him to keep to himself and speak infrequently. He’s always been like that.
However, Junpei is her boy. Her baby. Even when he didn’t want to use his words, he’d speak to her in other ways. He’d bring her a DVD of the latest horror movie he wanted to watch together, doodle in the margins of her grocery list when he was excited about a new recipe they’d be trying. Even when he didn’t want to talk about his day, he’d sit with her on the couch or crawl into bed with her in the middle of the night just to be held.
He shared himself with her for so long that when he stops —
She doesn’t know what to do.
“Junpei,” Nagi calls out, knocking on his bedroom door a few times. “I picked up some chicken on my way home and I got you one of those scary movies you like.”
At the silence that continues to stretch between them, Nagi tries again. “I haven’t seen you in a while, Junpei. Come on, let’s eat something.”
At first, she thinks that Junpei won’t answer the door.
He usually doesn’t.
But —
Junpei’s bedroom door eases open slowly and then, for the first time all week, Nagi finds herself face to face with her son. Her small, quiet son who’s kept to himself more and more since starting high school. He’s not smiling – though she’s used to that these days – but there’s less distance between them than usual.
“What movie did you get?” Junpei asks in a rough tone. He doesn’t meet her eyes, but it’s a good sign that he hasn’t run back into his room.
Nagi smiles. “It’s a Korean movie,” she says. “It’s called Train to Busan. I think it’s about zombies?”
A few weeks after they watched a movie in the cozy darkness of their living room, Junpei introduces Nagi to his new friend, Yuji. There’s a moment where she sees the boys laughing together so brightly that it fills up a living room that’d always felt too big for the two of them.
Nagi sends out a half-tipsy prayer to the universe over the top of her beer can.
I hope Junpei is always this happy.
Stitch Writes Stuff 