Rei found it a bit annoying when he was back to waking up Taiyo. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, since it was only one day, but still.
He got up, got dressed, and went to Taiyo’s room. Once again, his knocks were as annoying as he could possibly make them. One of these days, he’d just let his brother sleep in. It was tempting to make that today.
“Come on, Taiyo,” Rei said. He kept on knocking, but he didn’t hear anything on the other side of the door. “I know you’re awake.”
Still no answer. Rei frowned at the door. “Are you feeling that bad that you won’t even talk to me?”
Taiyo was fine yesterday, wasn’t he? He acted like it. Maybe he just finally learned how to sleep through Rei’s knocking.
“One last chance,” Rei warned. He stopped knocking, instead just putting his hand on the door. He waited another second, then sighed. “All right—I’m coming in.”
Taiyo wasn’t in his room. There were a few scattered papers, and the room had little dots of blood towards the one side, leading towards and out the window.
The sight scared him. Rei stood there for a moment, trying to process it, then started looking for little dagger they kept in the used rooms for self-defense. Unless Taiyo moved it beforehand—which was pretty unlikely—the dagger wasn’t where it should be.
It took him another second to fully realize—Taiyo wasn’t there. A few more moments—he must not have left willingly. A full minute—his brother was gone. That last acknowledgement encouraged him to go down to his parents as calmly as he possibly could, closing the door behind him so passing servants wouldn’t see.
——
“The boys are taking longer than usual,” Kyoumi murmured.
Sorai gave her the best reassuring look he could. “It’s still pretty early, and both of them did a lot yesterday. They could be oversleeping—it wouldn’t be the first time one’s forgotten to wake up the other.”
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Fortunately, she nodded and fell silent. He could tell she was trying not to fall into dark places—she still had trouble on some days, but it was a lot better now that they had the twins. Once she had something to focus on other than her troubles, she seemed to be able to move on from her past. He knew she would have trouble again if something happened to the boys, though.
Rei came in after a few minutes, sporting a frown but not readily showing much else. Sorai could recognize the expression fairly quickly; it was the Gin-Fujita way of showing that something happened, but they weren’t sure how.
“Father, can you come with me for a minute?” Rei’s voice matched the expression, at least.
Sorai nodded and stood, glancing at Kyoumi. “Stay here, please,” he said. “I’ll see what the problem is.”
Kyoumi murmured her hesitant agreement, and Sorai managed to give his wife a quick smile before heading towards Rei. As soon as he was close, the boy was walking—Sorai followed behind by a few steps, almost afraid to ask what the problem was.
Rei stopped when they got to Taiyo’s room. Without a word, Rei opened the door and let Sorai look inside.
Empty and spotted with blood. That was a combination Sorai knew wouldn’t go well.
He couldn’t lose face here—he was supposed to be the one to reassure the others. If he was worried, gods only knew what Kyoumi would do. Considering Rei looked a lot like his mother at the moment, Sorai guessed kind words would be beneficial.
It probably didn’t help any that Kyoumi wasn’t exactly one to give assurances if it felt like a promise, so Sorai was just about the only person who was able to help the other two if this turned out to be a problem.
Sorai slowly closed the door again and turned towards Rei. “It was like this when you came to wake him up this morning?”
“Yeah,” Rei replied quietly.
“Did you hear anything last night?”
Rei shook his head. “I…must have slept through it.”
Sorai gave his son the best smile he could muster. “Go ahead and eat with your mother,” he said kindly. “I’ll join you in a few minutes when I sort everything out. If she’s worried, just tell her I’m handling it and I can explain it later.”
He hesitated, but eventually did nod. Sorai patted his shoulder and sent him on his way back to the dining hall, then went to send a few guards out to look around the general area. He couldn’t do much more without Kyoumi knowing, so his mission during breakfast was to figure out how to tell her.
Of course, she didn’t actually give him much time to decide on a delicate way to phrase it, asking after it as soon as Rei had finished eating and left. Sorai had to be blunt—and that meant he also had to see Kyoumi’s expression slipping into something almost entirely blank. For now, all he could do was offer to do her work until she could handle it; he didn’t mind.
There one day, gone the next. Sorai just hoped they could figure out where Taiyo was before he saw how Kyoumi and Rei reacted to news to the younger twin being dead. He didn’t think he could manage to smile through that.