a.n. i love giotto a little too much for it to be healthy...

also, nana is like my spirit animal lol

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Wish Not
Want Not

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Prologue

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Sometimes, Giotto wondered if his parents were a little slow on the uptake.

Okay, so maybe slow wasn't the best word for it. Sluggish might be better. Sedate. Unhurried. It didn't really matter; none of them could describe Giotto's frustration as he tried to take in what exactly was going on.

When he had told his parents he wanted a younger sibling for Christmas, he didn't mean the Christmas ten years later!

But here he was anyway, standing in front of his front door, unable to tear his eyes off the sleeping baby that rested in the crook of Nana's arms. It couldn't have been older than a couple of months, though it was obvious that it was far from a newborn. Tufts of fluffy-looking brown hair grew in a wild mess all over its head, a few shades darker than Giotto's own golden locks.

"Isn't he cute?" Nana cooed, looking down at it—him, Giotto mentally corrected—with a loving expression. "Your papa and I wanted to keep it a surprise!"

"Mom," Giotto said, trying to keep his tone even and failing. He was beginning to hyperventilate, something he hadn't done in ten years and wanted to keep that way. "That's not something you keep a secret."

Nana ignored him. "We know that you've always wanted a little brother," she continued, "but your papa is always so busy, so we've never had a chance to make him." Giotto was now old enough to know how babies were made, so the implications of her words finally began to sink in. "But then, your papa finally got a few days off, and then came along Tsu-kun!"

"You named him Tsukkun?" Giotto said, unable to keep an expression of horror off his face. And here he had thought Ieyasu was a bad name; all of his classmates had made fun of him in elementary school, singing tanuki, tanuki, Ieyasu the tanuki during the recesses. It had been partly because of that that he had finally changed his name to Giotto, per G's suggestion, and never looked back on that black part of his history. Tsukkun was infinitely worse than anything Giotto had ever heard—it sounded like a name a child would give to a fish they won from Tanabata or some other frivolous pet.

Nana laughed. "Oh, no, his name Tsunayoshi," she said, and Giotto breathed a small sigh of relief. Tsunayoshi was an extraordinarily traditional name, but it didn't carry around as much notoriety as Ieyasu, or as much ridiculousness as Tsukkun. The worst somebody could call his younger brother was a dog, but at least being a dog was much better than being a tanuki.

"Tsunayoshi, huh?" Giotto asked himself, staring at his brother's tiny face. He looked a lot like Giotto already; both of them took mostly after their mother in features, only it was evident that Giotto alone had inherited their father's Italian colouring.

"Your papa thought it was a very lucky name," Nana nodded sagely. "He'll be a very smart boy when he grows up, just like his older brother." She smiled at him, freeing one arm to cup Giotto's cheek. "Both your papa and I are very proud of you right now, Ieyasu."

Giotto couldn't help but smile back. His mother, for all her obliviousness, did try her best for him when he was growing up, and he supposed he owed it to her that he was here now, living in one of the most expensive areas in developing Tokyo.

The moment was ruined when Nana suddenly glanced at the clock that hung over the hallway across from the door. "Oh, would you look at the time! Your papa and I are going on a five-year cruise starting today. He won the tickets from a raffle at his work yesterday. It was very exciting."

"Five years...?" Giotto muttered, furrowing his eyebrows. Never mind how expensive it must have been to buy the tickets for a trip like that, what about his little brother? He was still an infant, for heaven's sake! They weren't supposed to spend long times on ships! "What about Tsunayoshi?"

His mother smiled, as dense as ever. "Oh, did I forget to mention it? He'll be staying with you from now on, of course." She offered Tsunayoshi to Giotto, and Giotto, blanking out, held his hands out reflexively. "I'm sure you'll be a wonderful big brother."

Giotto's resounding "WHAT!?" echoed throughout the building a few minutes later.

Tsunayoshi, the lucky thing he was, stayed asleep.

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notes

Ieyasu (家康) and Tsunayoshi (綱吉) were the names of two famous Japanese shogunates of the Tokugawa (徳川) family. Ieyasu was known for his resemblance to a badger and/or tanuki in his later years, especially due to his large potbelly and chubby cheeks. Tsunayoshi was known as the 'dog shogun' because he established a great deal of animal protection laws during his rule, particularly for dogs.