Work Text:
Mafuyu does not announce being sick. She does not frame it as anything at all, actually.
Winter is especially unforgiving this year, the cold pressing itself into the apartment through every seam no matter how many times Kanade checks the windows.
It begins with small deviations. Mafuyu sleeps longer, blinks slower, pauses before responses that stretch just past her usual latency. The first cough is dry and carefully suppressed, the kind of sound designed not to inconvenience anyone. The second is wetter, and she turns her head away instinctively, as though illness is something indecent to display.
By the time Mafuyu admits, wordlessly, by the simple act of not getting out of bed, that she can no longer keep up the performance of being fine, the apartment has already reorganized itself around her.
Soup is not Kanade’s idea. Cooking rarely is, really, feeling like a luxury for people who have time and appetite and bodies that don’t forget their own needs. Her meals (when she remembers) tend to be noodles and whatever can be prepared with minimal steps and no attention. Honami sends her the recipe as soon as she mentions the word “fever,” along with a string of gentle reassurances and an emphasis on how difficult it is to mess up, which is both reassuring and faintly insulting in a way Kanade doesn’t resent.
In the other room, Mafuyu hasn’t moved in a while. That knowledge sits in Kanade’s chest with a comfort that borders on shamefully pleasant. She can picture her exactly as she left her, long ponytail dark against the pillowcase, breathing shallow and slightly uneven.
The broth clouds correctly. That is good. The vegetables soften without dissolving. Also good. This should be unpleasant. A person sick like this is not pretty. Sickness comes with saliva and sweat and mucus and the breath that smells like death, something Kanade knows all too well—damp sheets, a trash bag full of dirty tissues. Yet she feels the opposite of repelled.
It reminds her, unwillingly, of her mother.
She remembers being told to stay out of the way, to be good, let the grown-ups handle it, and the resentment that came with being powerless in the face of a body failing. She remembers, too, the days when she was allowed to do something small, like bring water or fetch a blanket, and how those tasks make her feel useful. Kanade never stopped chasing that feeling.
Now, with Mafuyu in the next room, the old reflex clicks into place as if it had been waiting all along.
Kanade turns the heat down and watches the surface of the soup settle. She ladles it into a bowl and immediately regrets the amount. Too much. Mafuyu won’t eat more than a few spoonfuls, not with her throat raw and her stomach likely already queasy from swallowing her own post-nasal drip all night. Well, it can be reheated, she guesses. She picks up the spoon as well, balances both, and walks down the short hallway.
Mafuyu lies exactly how Kanade pictures her, except worse.
Her hair slips loose, purple strands stuck to her temple where sweat has dried and re-wet. Her nose is red at the tip and around the nostrils, raw from wiping. Her lips are parted too, dry at the corners, and there is a faint film of moisture at the inner edge from mouth-breathing.
Sickness makes people ugly. So Kanade’s first thought, immediate and uncharitable, is that Mafuyu looks gross.
Her second, arriving in the same breath, is worse: she looks gross in a way that is almost, uh… cute. Like one of those small dogs inbred into deformity, all wheezy nose and pathetic eyes, too dependent not to let someone help. Kanade tightens her grip on the tray, as if she can physically restrain the thought.
Kanade sets the bowl on the nightstand, careful to avoid the clutter of used tissues, a half-empty bottle of water, and blister packs.
“Asahina-san,” Kanade says quietly.
Mafuyu stirs. Her eyes open a fraction, unfocused at first. It takes a second longer than usual for recognition to settle.
“Oh,” she says, voice hoarse enough that the single syllable scrapes. “You’re… back.”
Kanade sets the bowl down before answering. “I made soup.”
Mafuyu blinks at it, then at Kanade, as if trying to reconcile the effort with some internal expectation. Her brows draw together faintly.
“You didn’t need to—”
“It’s fine. I’ll eat some too, so you don’t need to worry about me missing meals.” Kanade reaches into the pocket of her jacket and pulls out the thermometer. “Hold this under your tongue.”
Mafuyu hesitates for only a moment before complying. Kanade watches her close her lips around the plastic tip, the contact intimate in the ugliest way.
Her cheeks are flushed in blotches that don’t match the rest of her pallor, heat pooling under the skin in a way that looks unnatural, like someone painted color on to mimic life. Kanade shouldn’t be staring this closely. She knows that. The same way she knows she shouldn’t be cataloguing the exact shade of red at the tip of Mafuyu’s nose, or how the skin around it has begun to peel in tiny, painful-looking flakes from too much wiping. She knows she shouldn’t be paying attention to the damp patch on the pillowcase, where sweat has darkened the fabric in a crescent around Mafuyu’s head like a halo turned sour.
But she does. And this is what Mafuyu looks like when she isn’t performing and her body overrides the instructions she’s been given. When she can’t smile on command, can’t modulate her voice into pleasing compliance, can’t make her suffering palatable. Kanade realizes, soberly, that she likes this version better.
Not because Mafuyu is suffering—she isn’t that kind of monster. But because in this state Mafuyu cannot belong to anyone else. Not really. Not in the way her mother wants her to belong.
Mafuyu’s mother exists in Kanade’s mind like a presence in the apartment even when she isn’t physically here—an invisible hand shaping Mafuyu’s posture. It would be easy to hate a woman like that in the abstract. Easier to construct her as a villain and be done with it.
That doesn’t matter now. Because part of her (some ugly, childish part she recognizes too well) feels satisfied. Not that Mafuyu is sick. That Mafuyu is here, and not there. That Mafuyu is in Kanade’s bed instead of under her mother’s gaze.
The thermometer beeps. Kanade slides it out of Mafuyu’s mouth and wipes the fogged plastic tip on the edge of a clean tissue with more care than the object deserves. For a second she stares at the faint smear of saliva left behind. Then she turns the screen toward herself. 38.9°C. Higher than she expects, despite everything.
“Asahina-san,” she says, “that’s high.”
Mafuyu’s eyes blink. She makes a small sound that might be agreement if her throat weren’t swollen into uselessness.
“I’m fine,” she lies.
Her mouth moves like she’s going to say something else, but what comes out first is a breath that catches halfway and turns into a cough. It starts small, a dry hitch in her chest, then drags downward and thickens on the way out. She clamps her lips together too late. The cough forces air up through her nose instead, and Kanade hears it—wet and congested, like something being pushed through a narrow, clogged tube.
Mafuyu tries to sniff it back on reflex. It doesn’t work. The effort just pulls the mucus forward. A pale, glossy thread slips from one nostril and clings there. It sways once, twice, then stretches under its own weight until it strings down over her upper lip.
For a second Mafuyu freezes, eyes wide in delayed horror. The thread breaks, smearing across the corner of her mouth. She makes a small, strangled sound of disgust, lifting a hand belatedly to wipe at it with the back of her wrist.
“Don’t. It’s—it’s alright,” Kanade says.
She’s already reaching for the tissues, pulling one free and catching Mafuyu’s hand mid-motion. Up close, she can see everything in awful detail: the shine of the mucus against chapped skin and the faint pink irritation around her nostrils.
Kanade presses the tissue gently under Mafuyu’s nose, folding it over her upper lip to cover the mess. She can feel the warmth of her breath through the thin paper. Mafuyu exhales shakily, compliance immediate, eyes dropping in mortification.
It should be repulsive. Instead, all Kanade can think is that she looks like a bedraggled, miserable thing—pathetic in the most endearing way. Sick and leaking and too tired to protect her own dignity, leaving Kanade to do it for her.
“Now blow,” Kanade murmurs.
Mafuyu does, obedient and thorough, the tissue puffing outward with a wet, thick sound that leaves no room for pretending she isn’t ill. Kanade folds the soiled part away with practiced fingers, hiding the evidence even as she notes, distantly, that she doesn’t actually mind seeing it.
Kanade drops the used tissue into the small trash bag by the bed, then picks up the bowl.
“Eat a little,” she says. “You’ll feel worse if you don’t.”
Mafuyu’s fingers twitch like she might reach for it herself, then think better of it. Her hand retreats halfway, hovering uselessly over the blanket.
“My hands feel heavy,” she admits, barely audible.
“That’s fine. I’ll do it.” Kanade says it quickly, maybe too quickly. “Just sit up a bit.”
She slips an arm behind Mafuyu’s shoulders and helps her shift higher against the pillows. The motion makes Mafuyu’s head loll toward her for a second, limp with fever. Up close like this, Kanade can smell the sour edge of her breath under the steam from the soup—illness and broth mixing into something that should be unpleasant and somehow isn’t.
Kanade balances the bowl in one hand and dips the spoon with the other. The liquid is just thick enough now that it clings to the metal instead of running straight off.
“Open,” she says.
Mafuyu’s eyes flicker, then her mouth obligingly parts. Her lower lip trembles a little, either from fever or from holding still. Kanade guides the spoon in, more careful than she would be with herself. Some of the broth still sloshes up and laps over the edge, wetting the corner of Mafuyu’s mouth before she manages to close around it.
Mafuyu’s throat works around the mouthful. Kanade can almost feel the scrape of heat and salt against raw tissue just from watching her.
“Too hot?” Kanade asks.
Mafuyu swallows again before answering. “No. It just… hurts.”
When she speaks, a bit of the broth escapes with the word, a thin line slipping from the corner of her mouth and trailing back toward her chin. It glistens there obscenely for a moment before getting dragged down. Mafuyu seems to realize a second too late, tongue darting out in an automatic attempt to catch it, only succeeding in smearing it across already chapped skin. Kanade’s chest tightens at that.
Kanade sets the bowl down long enough to reach for another tissue. For a second she considers being sensible and just handing it over, letting Mafuyu wipe her own face and keep what’s left of her dignity. Instead, she shifts closer.
“Hold still,” she says.
Kanade presses the tissue to the corner of Mafuyu’s mouth and drags it along the line of her jaw, wiping away the streak of broth. Up close, she can see where it’s mixed with the faint shine of mucus still clinging beneath her nose, diluted now into something thin and salty that leaves a tacky residue on the skin.
Mafuyu flinches a little at the contact but doesn’t pull away, eyes skittering off to the side as if the embarrassment might hurt less if she doesn’t have to watch it happen.
“It’s fine,” Kanade says, more to the mess than to her. She uses the edge of the tissue to dab at the place where her lip is starting to split, catching a tiny speck of red where the skin has cracked. Another thing to monitor. “Just a few spoonfuls. Then you can rest, yes?”
Kanade scoops up another spoonful. Her lips part again. She holds it there for a second, almost like she’s forgotten what to do next, then swallows. Kanade watches the movement travel down the line of her throat.
The third mouthful takes more effort. Mafuyu’s hand twitches again on top of the blanket, fingers curling inward.
“That’s enough for now,” Kanade says, before Mafuyu has to ask for mercy. “I’ll reheat it later.”
She takes the bowl back to the kitchen. The broth cools a little, skin forming in a thin film on top. She sets it by the sink and turns on the tap, rinsing the cutlery. The normalcy of it feels strange after the concentrated intimacy of the sickroom.
She only makes it as far as hanging the dish towel back on its hook before she hears it.
A wet, heaving sound from down the hall. The bed frame knocking softly against the wall as Mafuyu jerks forward. The unmistakable choke and splash rhythm of someone losing the little they manage to keep down. Kanade moves before she has fully registered deciding to.
The vomit spreads in an irregular pool on the floorboards beside the bed. It’s mostly soup—thin, yellowish broth with soft, half-dissolved vegetable pieces floating in it, threaded through with streaks of mucus. There’s a thicker, cloudy sludge near the center where it mixes with whatever is already in her stomach, edged in an acidic smell that stings the back of Kanade’s nose. A few strands hang from Mafuyu’s mouth, dripping slowly to rejoin the rest.
“I’m—” Mafuyu’s voice breaks on the word. She swallows hard against the aftertaste, gag reflex shuddering once more. “I’m sorry, Yoisaki-san. I couldn’t—I couldn’t get to the bathroom.” There is a smear of bile at the corner of her mouth, yellowish and shiny against cracked skin.
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’ll call Mochizuki-san to help me clean,” Kanade says automatically, stepping around the mess to reach her. “Don’t move. You’ll slip.”
She reaches for the tissue box, then thinks better of it and grabs the small towel draped over the foot of the bed instead. Tissues will disintegrate in this. Up close, the stench is worse, sour and bile-thick, breath that tastes like stomach acid and broth and night. Mafuyu flinches, eyes glassy with humiliation, but lets Kanade wipe her mouth.
The vegetables look worse now that they are halfway processed by Mafuyu’s stomach, soft and swollen at the edges. Bits of carrot and onion float in the cloudy liquid, slick with mucus that webs between them when the mass shifts. It is ugly. It smells like bile and failure and beef stew left out too long. It is also incontrovertible proof that Mafuyu’s body has stopped obeying her.
Kanade lifts the towel higher, cupping it under Mafuyu’s chin as another dry heave works its way through her, catching a thin spray of spit and acid before it can hit the blankets. Mafuyu’s hand, the one that hovered uselessly before, now curls into Kanade’s sleeve and stays there, clutch weak and damp.
She eases Mafuyu back against the pillows once she is sure there won’t be another wave immediately. Mafuyu goes pliant in her hands, muscles giving up pretense. Her ponytail comes half undone, strands sticking to the side of her face, damp with sweat and tears she probably doesn’t realize are there yet.
Kanade peels herself free gently. Mafuyu’s fingers unclasp with reluctance, as if they would rather stay attached and drag her down with them. The towel is already ruined; she uses it to corral the worst of the mess into one place, gathering the warm, slippery mass with careful, practiced movements. The smell spikes when she lifts it, a concentrated hit of bile and half-digested vegetables and illness that makes her stomach ripple in reflex. She breathes through her mouth until it dulls.
On her way to the kitchen, Kanade glances back once, and feels something settle in the back of her mind.
If Mafuyu ever leaves, if she tries to go back to that house, to that woman, to the perfect daughter version of herself she was before, this will still be true. Mafuyu has already thrown up on Kanade’s floor and let Kanade see her like this, shaking and leaking and sorry.
Kanade thinks she would laugh. She curls her fingers into her own sleeve, feeling the stiff, drying patch where Mafuyu’s vomit has soaked in, and decides not to change yet. She really hopes Mafuyu won’t get better too quickly.