dedication: to the best friend and big brother I lost, I miss you everyday. hug your loved ones y'all, please.
notes: yoshimori is my smol bean and this anime NEEDS A SECOND SEASON WTF, and the manga more attention

title: the weight of the world
summary: "I just thought you and Yoshimori would get along," — Gen, Yoshi

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There are times, even after Kokuboro, that Yoshimori thinks of him.

His eyes flutter past the trees and Gen is sitting there, Yoshimori is breathless on an onslaught to catch an ayakashi too fast and through his frustrated, relentless shouts of "KETS!" his mind plays dirty tricks on him and he almost anticipates Gen stealing the show, claws gleaming under the moonlight. He almost wants it now, craves the certainty that Gen is there.

It's not as if he and Gen stayed up on the rooftop talking hours into the day about trivialities and secrets like giggling little schoolgirls, but Gen was there. He was by Yoshimori's side, a presence that came to be associated with a sense of peacefulness.

He was beside Yoshimori, and now he isn't.

So Yoshimori carries that with him—in the grit on his toes when an enemy drags him through the ground, in the heaving in his lungs when he won't give up, in the strength of his kekkai when he casts it out, becaue it was paper thin to Gen.

Yoshimori is almost paper thin without Gen.

He can still see him so vividly clear, hear his voice. Remember the anger that stole through his bones when Gen walked away from clean-up, the trust in Gen's gut, all the unsaid and undiscovered about the boy that he could have fucking had—Kaguro's words had iron in their swing, because Yoshi didn't know everything. But that—but that—was because the same bastard took Gen away.

Strength. Yoshi thinks he only knows it because of Gen (because of Tokine, and even Sen).

Strength. It is going on without a friend because it would be an insult to his memory to give up now, to ever give in.

Yoshimori carries the weight on the world on his shoulders. His power, his destiny, his responsibility, his promises (Karasumori, Tokine's castle of cake), and the shadow of Gen's memory. He grips tight in his shaking, human fingers, and bites hard to go on.

(But, you know, that doesn't mean he doesn't still cry. But, then again, he smiles too.)

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