— safe harbour ⌜ tetsuo⌟

Romi remue ses épaules et s’affaisse dans son siège.
Elle a travaillé sur les docks tous ces derniers jours, survivant grâce à une tasse de cloud tea qui ne se vide jamais et des caramels beurres salés. Le hangar est minuscule. II fuit de partout, les volets claquent, et ses voisins sont des poivrots mais il est haut de plafond, a une mezzanine, une cave secrète où elle store toutes ses frasques, et surtout : il est tout à elle. Or almost, well, close enough. She tries really hard not to think about the money she still owns – and probably always will – to Surgito for that. La règle est appliquée généralement. Elle évite de songer à toutes ces petites choses insolites (et illégales) qui peuplent son nouveau quotidien. Nothing is the way it used to be. Elle le sait, elle le sent et elle le dénie catégoriquement. De ses péchés, Romi a fissuré la voûte céleste de son destin ; elle s’approprie maintenant l’ecstasy des astres hérétiques, attendant patiemment qu’ils la déchiquettent.
Finalement, la bâtisseuse amatrice se lève, les mains tendues au plafond et tout son corps craque et grogne. A ses pieds, une pancarte où les mots Nimai & Co : Auctions & Art s’étalent fièrement. Un coup d’œil aux grandes fenêtres, elle n’est pas sûre de l’heure, ni du jour ; la seule chose qu’elle ne questionne pas est la faim qui ravage ses entrailles. Si Tetsuo était là, il lui ferait un festin. Et si Tetsuo venait là ? La grande sœur l’a tenu à l’écart du projet, l’envie de l’épater une fois fini, mais ça faisait déjà des mois et Romi n’était pas connue pour sa patience.  
Le savon efface sous l’évier les traces de peinture qui s’étaient nichés jusqu’à sous ses ongles. Alors elle sort son portable et tape frénétiquement : Got a surprise, you free tonight? Promise I’ll buy you a drink!
Un quart de cadran plus tard, Romi envoie l’adresse d’où elle se tient.
Elle savait sans le savoir qu’il viendrait. Huit mois depuis son retour, huit mois qu’elle tâchait de recoudre les pans de sa vie qu’elle a laissé se déchiqueter au fil des années. Comme huit mois sans glaner des idées sur les noms de la gare aux port-au-loin, frontière tracée du fait de sa propre dictature, pour rester. Rester pour lui.  

De la fenêtre ouverte, l’air frais fouette sa nuque et Romi inspire pour mieux profiter de la fraîcheur de ce début de soirée. À cette heure où la nuit ne faisait plus qu’un avec l’infini, seuls les cœurs endoloris et anesthésiés partagent le flambeau d’un anonymat sacré par la lune. D’un côté, la mer s’engouffre sous les pilotis de son cabinet en devenir. De l’autre, les devantures sont bercées par les ombres donnant des airs lugubres à un quai autrement désert. Quelques ivrognes riaient aux éclats, tristes cœurs échoués cherchant dans les ambres la force de sustenter une faim sans limites.  
Puis, elle l’aperçoit descendre la rue, accompagné du dernier pourpre du soleil.
Quelques secondes plus tard, elle pousse les lourdes portes coulissantes et pose dramatiquement devant sa nouvelle propriété -- un pied calé contre la rouille et la main sur la hanche, le menton levé et Gérard le perroquet sur l’épaule lui grignote le lobe. A ses côtés, l’enseigne à son nom qu’elle vient de finir est accrochée.
❝ So, what do you think? Should I have used bigger letters? Maybe some neons! How about – and hear me out here – little forever fireworks? ❞
Elle s’enquiert sans laisser le moindre doute de ce dont elle parle, son regard passant sans cesse entre son frère et l’enseigne.

❝ What’s the ‘Co’ for ? An old lady like ya has friends ? Or that’s for the bird ?  Without missing a beat, the parrot screamed in approval, then flied away on Tetsuo's shoulder to give him kisses - the very thing he was adamant to reserve only to the youngest Nimai. His mistress rolled her eyes in desperation - it happened everytime.
— Shut up, it sounds more professional that way..! Romi riposted, frowning as if she was offended by the question. Yet, she immediately broke in a smile, her mischief sparkling in her eyes, and finally stepped down to properly welcome her little brother. Her perfectlly imperfect little brother, that somehow felt like a stranger, in the way that only the people one have known the most deeply, then took a brief step away, may feel like strangers - they were not. They were far from it. She still knew all she had ever known of him, and more. She still loved him, and she knew he still loved her. Even then, as her eyes fell on his silhouette, Romi was consumed by the knowledge that she would protect him no matter what. However, she had never really quite known how. She never really figured out if she had made more damage by her attempts to shield him (from herself, maybe) or by her ghost-like presence in his life. Now, it was her disappearances that awakened the uneasiness she was hiding away. No, actually, it was guilt, burried, and yet on the surface. So then, with her shiny smile, Romi hugged Tetsuo like she did everytime they saw eachother: burrying her nose for a minute in his neck, hoping to drown away all memories of all her past silences.

The girl took a step away, her hands still on his shoulders. I like the idea of people thinking I have an army of lawyers behind me, ready to burry them in trials. She carried on with her jest - Romi never knew when to stop and you could tell she made herself laugh.So, if i were you, I wouldn't piss off your sister or she might unleash them on you." As she talked, she was leading Tetsuo inside.
— Take that, stole it earlier. Ya like peach, right ?  On the way, he gave her a bottle that she held up under her nose to read the label.
— Sure do, but ... Should I be worried about the cops coming around here? Considering what she hiding in the basement, the forger should always be worried about the cops coming around here. As for Tetsuo, his big sister had learned not to put it past him. However, he also knew too well how to distract her by their mutual anarchic and pyromaniac predispositions.
— Fireworks rule. Ya need to get those - oh fuck,  Although she was fully ready to indulge in the idea of turning her entrance into a never ending fourth of july, Romi had to stop and close her mouth at the swear.
— What? She asked, completely innocent.
— Oneechan ! I’m not fixin’ stuff tonight. He sounded so distressed that Romi painfully strangled a laugh between her sealed lips.
— Alright, alright, I was gonna bribe you with cheap beer but since you already brought the drinks... The doors closed behind her, she got a couple of glasses for the famous bottle she was still holding and put them down on the small table by the old yellow couch. It was the only place in the whole warehouse that wasn't filled with boxes, paintings or pieces of furnitures asking to be put together. It also had a perfect view on the sea though the windows. While she moved, she kept talking. No, I actually wanted to show you what mom send me a few days ago. Said she find it in her old cooking book, I have no idea how it ended up there. From her pocket, she gets an old piece of paper out and handed it to him. On it: a childish drawing of a little boy on a porch, full of automnal colors, and on the bottom an R for T. It was the first time I draw you. It was supposed to be your fourth birthday present but I lost it and - well, I guess, Instead, she had giving him a frog she had found in the river. Happy late birthday?❞

❝Don’t worry, we’ll just hide behind those big windows and have an’ old fashion shoutout like yakuzas in movies ❞ She smiles, she can't help to, she probably should scold him and remind him to be a good boy, to stay out of trouble - she used to be like that with him, always trying to catch that glimpse of trouble in his eyes, and part of her still looks for it because, who knows, if she catches it before it becomes a fire, she might just have to step on it like a light cigarette and put it out before anything bad happened - but now, she smiles. Romi just realizes, as he jokes and she doesn't flinch, how much more trust she has in him and how she barely felt it sneak in. There was no point in denying it now: Tetsuo had grown and Romi had little more to teach him about being responsible, not as much she felt like she had to before, whether she was right or not. Maybe she was the one who had changed, maybe her confidence had gone so low she no longer felt the right to tell him what to do. For now, Romi smiles.
A couch, some beers, the siblings quickly fall back on their feet and old habits. Eventually, after a few laughs, Romi gets a piece of paper out of their sweet verdant childhood. What she gives him, she does not really know. It feels more like asking him something, repairing a bond, a past sin forgotten and unspoke of. As he inspects the drawing, the softness of his features takes the sister back to this day when he should have gotten it with a mix of guilt and nostalgia. That beats cheap beer anyday. Some sort of relief eased her breathe. Good. I'm glad you think so. I was scarred you might not like it. I mean, we don't talk about ... home, that often, and I don't want to force it on you. Even mentioning it seem strange.
— But ya new place, that mean ya staying for good ? No more postcards ? Suo left once, but Romi left a thousand times, as if she was looking for that epineprhine, that reason he did it, that need to escape and to find freedom somewhere no one knows you the way you do. Everytime, the high was less, and the anchor heavier. She wishes she could promise him she will stay forever, but nothing scares her more than forever.
— No, there will still be postcards, only now i'll send them from here! I thought it was time to come home, try to buld something, stick around the people I love - if you don't mind me, of course... She's almost fidgety on her seat, taking a zip of the beer, sounding like she's joking but they both know she means it.
— Ya miss out a lot. She did. She missed his whole worlds. The beloved ones are always hiding. The beloved ones are always wrong. When you love somoene, you find a way to stay.
— I know, I'm sorry. But I'm here now, if you want to talk about anything, we have the whole night for that. So what have been up to lately?" Can you erase years of mispoken distance with a what's up? But is there any other way at all?