Chapter Text
Feelings are strange things.
Not quite things.
Feelings are like living beings. A separate life form.
A small cloud of thought tugs at your cardiac muscles, so softly that you might not even register it as a sensation. The cloud gets denser and denser. It condenses into a tide of feelings that suddenly floods the atriums of your heart, flowing out through the veins into your lungs until it takes control of your breaths, gushing into the crevices of your skull.
You think the brain is strong enough to halt this storm? Ha! The very synapses of your brain are what give birth to that tiny cloud of thought in the first place, something that is so insignificant that it snakes past the nerves. Even if it does get detected, the nerves are never clever enough to decipher the intricate code of love from the vapor of feelings. Those codes can be misread, misinterpreted.
And something like that is what happened to the older of the Kashima brothers.
The flood of emotions that was filling his lungs and surrounding his neurons was of pure love. That part was true.
It was love and fondness for his little brother.
Love and sorrow for his dead parents.
Love and gratitude for Obaa-san.
Love and gratitude for Saikawa-san.
Love for the little ones at the Babysitter's club.
Some part of it was even for Usaida-san!
He had such a big heart that it could contain his love for the whole humankind and still reserve some special parts for his favorite people among them.
Favorite people. Such as his classmates at school. Such as the older of the Kamitani brothers.
The interpretation is correct up to this point.
But the love his heart reserved for this special person was different from the love his heart reserved for the other special persons.