愛のある場所; river of light (that brings me to you) - cosmichorrour - 呪術廻戦 (2024)

i. cornelius - new music machine

“What song are you listening to?”

The worn soles of Suguru’s sneakers scuff the sandy ground cover beneath his feet. Here should be a winding slide or jungle gym a few steps away like the playground back at his old elementary school, but instead, here is a swing set. Just fence and tree and a triangulated steel frame the swing Suguru’s sitting on is suspended from. The chains are rusted and grainy beneath his fingers but he grips them tight despite his lack of momentum. He isn’t doing the one thing swing sets are meant for—swinging. He’s just there, meditatively still, letting dust kick over his shoes as his toes wedge deeper into the soft give of sand, music at two-thirds volume. His foot leaves a divot in its wake.

“Hey.” There’s a poke at Suguru’s shoulder, the voice accompanying it loud and carrying in the singsong-y, can’t take itself seriously sort of way. Loud enough for him to hear through his earbuds. “You know, you should answer when someone talks to you.”

Suguru looks up from the patch of sandboxed earth he’s staring at. Three things: hair, eyes, hands. Hair a sterile white, eyes as clear as crystal, and the hands—they’re waving in a stiff, cartoonish sort of manner, fingers long and splayed. Back and forth, back and forth.

There’s those sunglasses too, so black and dark Suguru doubts any light could possibly shine through. With the lack of sunlight at this hour, there’s no need for sunglasses. The sky isn’t blue anymore—just gold and orange and terracotta. A mosaic you’d find when autumn leaves completely cover the sidewalk, crackling under the weight of steps.

This boy—a whole head taller than Suguru is, probably—has the aura of a dopey mascot. Suguru isn’t sure what ward or city or prefecture he’d belong to, but he’d be one Suguru would probably duck his face away from and speed-walk past to avoid interaction.

He figures now is just as good a time as any to do what he does best—tune out the world.

Except he doesn’t.

Or rather, he can’t.

A curse, just as animated and strange as this boy is, hovers over his shoulder. Suguru gapes at the winged thing with bulging eyes. It looks unsure of where to perch, or whether or not it should perch at all, scoping out its surroundings as if vaguely threatened. Some animals have a certain sixth sense for danger, rabbit’s fright in the way they startle at the suggestion of predators. Maybe curses are the same.

There’s nothing predatory around here. Suguru would be more of a threat if he had any interest in collecting low-levels, but he isn’t a child anymore. He can handle a grade two with relatively little difficulty and a grade one with a bit of craftiness and patience. Tokyo is littered with flyheads and grade fours just as it is insects in mosquito-freckled summer—exorcising this one is as substantial an action as stomping a single ant in a colony.

It isn’t worth the nausea nor the effort, so Suguru decides it’s in his best interest to ignore it.

And to also ignore this boy, but that doesn’t prove to be possible.

“You not the talkative type?” The static sounds of drumbeat and guitar riff from Suguru’s headphones muffle out most of Tokyo’s noise, but this guy’s existence is somehow that much louder, words clear like a megaphoned voice in the back of Suguru’s head. Everything about him screams, Look at me! Talk to me! But Suguru’s never been one to converse with his inner monologue let alone strangers, just lets the voices speak like movie narration in the form of passing thoughts, so Suguru doesn’t think to entertain him. “Hello?”

Static silence. Just the creak of steel chains.

“Hello? Are you there?”

It takes until the end of the song’s chorus for Suguru to register that he should probably give a proper response. “Hi?” It’s barely an attempt. To be fair, he didn’t get enough sleep and isn’t in the best mood, but he offers a quaint smile just as platitude. Bare minimum courtesy.

“Hey,” the mystery mascot-like boy says. How many greetings has that been already? The response Suguru had given him was more like paper clips tossed into the guitar case of a busker than an answer to his questions, but he seems to be airing no complaints. Perhaps to him, even a scowl would be good. He crouches down, halving his height just to reach Suguru’s eye level on the swing. That almost instantaneously pisses Suguru off. “Whatcha listening to?”

It’s a bridge in the form of small talk.

“This album I like,” is the vague disclosure Suguru provides, but at least now he’s offering up spare change, pulling out his left earbud. No more pocket lint or scraps. Mystery boy tilts his head to the side. Suguru turns towards him, takes in his facial features. The way he looks like a doll.

“Wow, how specific!” Mystery boy’s exaggerated voice shimmers mid-air. It takes on the tone of radio announcer instead of middle school boy. It would irk Suguru—and it comes so, so close, new tension gathering at his temples like a hot wire—if the boy didn’t move closer and Suguru’s attention wasn’t diverted to the eyelashes.

Up close, they’re—awfully pretty. Correction-fluid white. Impossibly long. A reminder of something cottony, of pillow polyfill or dandelion parachutes fluttering when the right breeze comes along to sweep them away.

Suguru doesn’t stare at people. The habit was spurned out of him by his mother’s hand panning his face away from strangers. It’s impolite, she would say with a firmness behind her syllables, so he knows it’s something he shouldn’t do. But he does look. And he does so very, very close, glancing away when it teeters on the verge of becoming a stare.

For an impulsive moment, Suguru considers puffing in the boy’s eye as if the white would scatter. Like blowing the plastic shark fins of a pinwheel, making a wish with a weed.

But that would be impolite, so he just asks instead, “How do you bleach them?”

“How do I bleach what?”

“Your eyelashes.”

“Eh. I don’t.” The boy shrugs. The curse behind him keeps flying in circles above him, talons bared. A discount store’s version of a bird of prey. “Wouldn’t they fall right out if I did that?”

“That’s what I was thinking.” Suguru nods to himself. “So you’re just a freak of nature, then.”

A huff. “Rude.”

“Think you’re the one who’s rude,” Suguru quips, pausing his song. He still inserts the stray earbud back in. “Jabbing your finger into the shoulder of someone trying to mind their business is where you first went wrong. Learn some manners.”

Mystery boy blinks again. Once, twice. Those eyes of his must be awfully dry, which is backwards, since they’re the color of sun-drenched ocean in its shallow parts. He scoffs. “You talk like an old man.”

“Do not.”

“Do to.”

Suguru glances at him sidelong, scopes him up and down. “You only think that ‘cause you act like a kid.”

“Do not!” He purses his lips into a pout. Placing his hands at the tops of his knees, he looks pointedly at Suguru the way a child would at a parent when their Game Boy is confiscated before bed, kept up late into the night with eyes glued to the small electric screen, an incriminating blue-lit glow through the fabric of their blanket like a lightning bug caught behind curtains. Denying something so obvious. “The Gojou Satoru does not act like a kid.”

Full name and everything.

Here, Suguru doesn’t think: What a strange guy. Nor does he think of the implications, of why he feels like he should know that name. He just thinks: What an idiot.

So that’s who he is—Gojou Satoru. The name does sound familiar. Maybe he's heard it in passing somewhere from someone important, but Suguru's never been good at remembering people. Not teachers, not neighbors. Always indistinguishable faces that float through the spaces of his world. He remembers his parents and he remembers his friends and that’s all he needs, so he isn’t sure where he had overheard it before, if at all. But it sounds familiar. That much he can tell.

He gives this Gojou Satoru character a thousand-meter stare. Over his shoulder to land at the lightpost a ways behind him. A red pen cap of a traffic cone is parked next to it. “Sure.”

“You don’t sound convinced.” Satoru unfolds himself, standing straight and stretching out his limbs, wrists twisting and fingers interlacing. He really is tall. Tall enough to touch the crossbar overhead if he jumped, rattling the chain of Suguru’s swing. Tall enough for the top of his head to graze the average doorway, if not slam into the frame and leave with welts.

If Suguru were to push him, maybe the weight of his ego would tip him right over. Skyscrapers have fallen before—nothing’s resilient to inertia.

“Because I’m not.” Suguru kicks himself off the ground just for the slightest bit of momentum. Back and forth, back and forth. His feet scuff against the sand on the downswing and create new clouds, a dusty murmur of fog. “Mature people don’t talk about how they’re mature, and strong people don’t talk about how they’re strong.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. I already get nagged plenty by annoying old men.” Satoru’s expression sours in distaste, and in the next moment, it’s gone, like he’s a fruit fly moving on to the next pomelo peel because the last grew boring. “Hey, wait.”

The next, intrigue.

“You saying I’m weak?” he probes, dragging his sunglasses down his nose bridge to make direct eye contact with Suguru, arching a brow in challenge. A true to form idiot, if that’s what he took away from what was said.

Disinterested, Suguru shrugs. “Maybe I am.”

“Hm. I see how it is.”

It’s petty. This whole conversation is, but Suguru still hasn’t pressed the play button on his MP3 player. He figures he should, but something has him feeling like he’ll miss out on something if he does. That’s what happens sometimes, when you pull out your phone mid-movie to check the time and the best action sequence or most plot-critical bit of dialogue drifts by in a forgettable brush of wind past you.

Attention moving between Satoru and the curse, Suguru tries to keep himself from mentally checking out of the conversation. Doesn’t have much to say to this stranger.

“You looking at this li’l guy?” Satoru points to the vague direction behind him with his forefinger.

Blinking, because it takes him a second to connect the dots, Suguru asks, “You can see curses?”

“Of course I can. Figured you could too. That’s why I approached you to begin with.” His expression creases into an eye smile first before the grin comes. He has very straight teeth. Much straighter than Suguru’s. So straight they must be mathematically perfect. Suguru’s broken calculator of a brain has a hard time deciding whether Satoru materialized from a shoujo manga or a robot android fantasy because real people shouldn’t look like that. “Your cursed energy is the highest in the area. Besides me, of course.”

So he’s a shaman. Well, he’s pompous enough to be one, Suguru’s brain supplements. In terms of his presence, however, he feels—normal. Like the average human with the average level of cursed energy, hardly there if at all. Even Suguru couldn’t tell, perceptive as he is.

“Hm. Doesn’t seem like it,” he says. “I wouldn’t have known.”

“I’ve been working on my stealth lately. My residuals are nowhere to be found.” He swipes beneath nose with his index finger, sounding all too proud. “Impressive, right?”

“Sure,” answers Suguru, not at all interested. A skill like that is easier the less power you have to suppress. The difference between whittling down a twig and a tree trunk. Satoru’s cursed energy probably isn’t all he makes it out to be.

“You’re a pretty monotone guy,” he points out, shoving his hands into his pockets in a nonchalant slouch, whistling. The Final Fantasy fanfare, Suguru discerns. The curse floats unassumingly above him. A sway here, a sway there, like it’s dancing along to the tune. It manages to hover in one place. Not in the way hummingbirds do with all their effort, but a condor soaring without a single wingbeat, riding a tailwind only curses can catch, invisible and beyond the comprehension of anything else. “Pretty reserved too.”

“When compared to you, maybe,” murmurs Suguru. His eyes follow the curse as it paces along the width of Satoru’s shoulders. Back and forth, back and forth, before stopping altogether as if held in time.

“That a compliment?”

“Far from it.”

“Eh,” goes Satoru as if it came as a shock to him. “Sure sounded like one.”

“Some of us are normal people who mind their own business,” Suguru says, looking down at his feet where the black leather of his shoes have been sanded brown, his strip of hair falling in front of his face in a delicate inked ribbon.

“Nothing normal about your cursed energy, my man.” Satoru plops down onto the vacant swing with his knees jutting in front of him. He doesn’t swing but rocks. Back and forth, back and forth. “You feel more like a curse than you do a person, you know. Kinda ominous if you ask me.”

Without much thought, Suguru says, “At least I look like a real person.” Then he adds, despite his better judgement, “And I don’t have white hair.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Satoru frowns. “What’s wrong with my hair? I think it’s fashionable, thank you very much.”

Backtracking, Suguru says, “It’s...something.” He keeps his potentially too-abrasive answer to himself. Satoru is, after all, a stranger, even if he’s too given to talking and his mouth is too given to smiling, tips his expectant self too familiarly into Suguru’s space like he’s known him forever.

It’s better for Suguru to keep his opinions to himself. That’s the polite thing to do.

But once again, Suguru has the itch to shove him, flick his forehead, poke him in the rib—anything. Just to see if he’d stir like a column of bamboo in harsh wind. He has better judgement than that however, so he doesn’t. Satoru seems like the type to retaliate in some dumb, petty way, and that’s just too much trouble.

“Funny way to say you don’t like it,” he says anyway, petulant. Pinching a clump of hair along his fringe, he rolls it between his fingers, eyes tilted upwards, maybe checking for knots, before he loses interest and combs it back down in his face again.

The curse—it never left. Just flutters around like a lost moth searching for the brightest lamp to warm its feet with.

“Take it however you want.”

“Then I think I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“Suit yourself.”

From then on, their dialogue is replaced with a prosaic conversation between the swing chains, sentences exchanged in the form of sharp creaks, almost chalkboard-scratch harsh. We’ve both gotten rather rusty, haven’t we? Oh no, you’re in much better shape than me. You still glint in the sun like you did years ago. And another, when Suguru begins to straddle more height. Not as high as he would in elementary school when he could practically float in freefall during an upswing, but a good meter or two off the ground. It’s a lot lonelier now, isn’t it? The kids in this neighborhood have grown up so much! I hardly recognize them. Maybe they’ve forgotten their old memories with us. Maybe that’s what we are. Just memories.

“I used to do backflips off of these,” tells Satoru as if he could listen in on the swing set retrospective too, legs too long and gangly to effectively gain any more height. Watching him attempt makes Suguru want to snort into a laugh, almost. But that’d seem too familiar, too much like something a friend would do.

“How would that even work?” Suguru asks. Not out of wonder, not out of skepticism. Just for the sake of talking.

“You tip backwards when you’re coming down, throw your legs up, let go when your feet are all the way over your head, and just pray you land.”

“That—” Suguru stops pumping, just lets momentum do the work for him. For a moment, he and Satoru are lined up side by side. Back and forth, back and forth, like a pair of drop earrings swaying to the bob of a head. “That sounds stupid.”

“Try it then,” Satoru suggests.

Suguru flattens his lips into a blank, disinterested line. “I don’t think I feel like hurting my tailbone today.”

“Dude, just have a little faith and you’ll be fine.”

Suguru shakes his head. Then, “With an attitude like that, curses will eat you right up.”

It’s an overall inoffensive statement, but Satoru doesn’t take it that way. “No chance I’d lose to some puny little curse.”

“I don’t know.” There is the faintest, slightest trace of taunting in Suguru’s voice. Too little for the average person with an average ego to notice, but just enough for co*cky individuals like Satoru to be bothered by. “That sounds like something a person who’d lose to a puny litle curse would say.”

If they were in an anime with the staple iconography, Suguru would imagine there’d be cruciform red lines for popping veins by Satoru’s forehead. “Okay.” His competitive switch seems to have flipped. “Next time, let’s prove your theory. I’ll borrow a cursed object as a lure and we can see who can take out the most. How’s that sound?”

Next time.

He says it almost like it’s for certain.

Suguru’s inclined to tell him there won’t be a next time. Tokyo is a big place with many streets and many houses and many people. Rarely does Suguru encounter the same passerby twice. One person he’s never seen before at this swing set will turn into another the next day on his next walk home. Then another, and then another, until Suguru mistakes each of them for the person that came before and asks them, You were here yesterday, right? You’re here all the time like I am?

And like the last time, and all the times before, he’d be wrong.

A silhouette of a person beside him will always feel like just that—another shape. No name to a face nor face to a name. And Satoru, while memorable, doesn’t seem to be from this corner of the Jiyugaoka, so he’s a silhouette Suguru figures he won’t see more than once.

“No thanks,” Suguru snipes the offer, tries to form an excuse that wouldn’t sound so blunt. “I don’t think I want to be lectured by the wrinkly old higher-ups. Already listen to enough of that.”

A smirk seems to be something permanently stitched to Satoru’s face. Not something a seam ripper could uproot. “Sounds like you’re too chicken.”

It’s then that Suguru presses play on his MP3 player, his song resuming approximately halfway through a refrain. “Getting scolded is a pain, and I don’t want to trouble anyone,” he says, turning his volume up just enough for Satoru’s voice to be partly washed out if he spoke, but not enough for him to be inaudible completely. Because again—Suguru feels like he’ll miss out on something important if he doesn’t listen.

“Excuses, excuses,” Satoru gibes. Suguru’s thumb hovers over the volume switch.

He shrugs. “Think whatever you wanna think.”

“Guess I will.”

“Great.”

“Cool.”

“Awesome.”

Suguru sighs. This swing set was supposed to be his spot. The place he visited when he couldn’t find some peace and quiet otherwise, when his parents were home early and there was too much disembodied chatter in the school hallways from the students in extracurriculars. Dingy and dilapidated, but good. Always good. It’s quiet here, where there’s no dialogue over his music like there is in movies. But now there’s Satoru, and his presence takes up too much space. Too many lines in the script.

“Next time, let’s have a practice fight,” he says, hopping off his swing with a jog in his step. It follows his old trajectory even without his weight. Back and forth, back and forth. The creases in his gakuran smooth before crinkling back when he stretches again, turning to Suguru, cloud and bruise-purple sky coming around to fold the outline of his body into the blanket of a breaking dusk. “I’ll come out on top, of course.”

“As if.”

Satoru smirks. “Prove me wrong then.”

“Okay,” Suguru agrees just to get Satoru to be quiet. He adjusts his volume. Just one tick above mute as the song shuffles to another. New noise. “If there is a next time.”

“I have a good feeling there will be,” Satoru assures, whatever that’s supposed to mean. His hands are tucked into his pockets, posture relaxed. The perfect picture of casual. “What’s your name, by the way?”

“Getou Suguru.” Cymbals, then bass, then guitar. Satoru’s swing doesn’t stop swinging. Back and forth, back and forth. “Don’t wear it out.”

Before he turns to leave, Satoru hums, gives Suguru another cartoonish wave. He’d genuinely be perfect for the role of a mascot if he wasn’t a shaman, if that doesn’t inevitably send him down the fast-track of responsibility and obligation. Wasted potential, honestly.

“See you around, Suguru,” he says, skipping straight to first-name basis, not bothering with formality. The curse, as if on cue, follows him like a festival balloon tied to his wrist.

“Why are you calling me that,” Suguru deadpans.

“Why not?” Satoru tips his head to the side. At that angle, his sunglasses are a degree away from sliding right off his face. “We’re friends now, aren’t we?”

“Don’t go deciding that on your own.”

Irreverent, “I’ll decide what I wanna decide.”

“Not when it comes to my name, you won’t.”

Suguru scoffs, but it’s closer to a laugh. He can’t put his finger on why, or what’s even funny. Maybe it's the fact that fifteen minutes with Satoru felt more like a year-long friendship on fast-forward. Familiarity and comfort established at double-speed.

A train whirs in the distance as it docks into the station. Honeyed vocals lay over drumsticks rebounding snare. Suguru looks down at his lap to check his MP3 player for the name of this song’s band. By the time he glances back up, the curse tethered to Satoru’s shoulder is gone. Not even an afterimage remains. It’s unclear when or how, but it’s been wiped clean like a stray drop of oil on a ramen counter.

Suguru presses the pause button. He seems to have missed something, and he’ll miss something else if he doesn’t pay attention.

Satoru’s already at the outer edges of his view, disappearing along the rice-bowl curve of the street. When Suguru pulls out his earbuds to listen more closely, he can hear Satoru whistling a victory fanfare—not Final Fantasy this time, but something new—his shadow stretched beneath the power lines in a brushstroke, and then he’s gone too.

But what linger are a sound and a shape and a face. Tokyo is a big place, and rarely do you encounter the same passerby twice. That’s the nature of a vast city in a vast, wide world, but Suguru ends up committing all of Satoru to memory anyway.

ii. junko ohashi - telephone number

“I know you,” is the first thing Satoru says as he adjusts to the new feeling of sitting at a desk in a high school classroom. It isn’t much different from middle school. Maybe higher with more room for his knees, but it doesn’t seem like so since he’s grown taller. Maybe more comfortable with an easier chair to tip backwards, but it doesn’t seem like so since his posture’s worsened. He slouches anyway, of course, crossing his ankles in front of him. Correcting old habits is a house chore he puts off doing.

But this isn’t much of a high school classroom. Sure, he’s in high school. And sure, this is a classroom. But there’s only three desks placed in an easy row in front of the chalkboard, and that in itself is untypical. Everything’s a bit rickety, a bit antiquated, and instead of Random Person A in front of him and Random Person B beside him (in the last seating chart, he was placed in the back corner by the window like an aloof anime protagonist), there’s just Suguru to his right and to his right only. Nothing typical about that.

Suguru gives him the side-eye. The cords of his earbuds sway when he shifts his head downwards towards his lap, MP3 player resting on his thigh like a cellphone beneath a dinner table. It’d be poor manners in the wrong setting, but right now, he owes it to nobody to be polite. “Unfortunately.”

“Don’t be like that, Suguru.” His hand lands in a pat on Suguru’s shoulder. A tune from the morning radio floats through the ravine of his head, melody ricocheting off bedrock. An echo here, an echo there. It wraps around the waft of Suguru’s sigh. “I know you’re glad to see me. Been such a difficult six months without my handsome face, hasn’t it? How’d you manage to cope?”

“We met one time.”

“But it was memorable, right?” Satoru readjusts his posture, propping his arm up on the desk to press his chin into his palm. “I remember you pretty well, and I think you remember me too.”

“You think?”

“I do.” When Satoru winks at him, he presses his lips together, patience thin as a thread pulled taut. “Getou Suguru, the one who’ll soon get comfortable with forever being second place.”

A scoff. “Keep telling yourself that.”

Satoru and his ego do not have to be told twice. “Oh, I will.”

As if to mediate, the door slides open with a clack. Satoru half-expects it to be their homeroom teacher and half-expects it to be the principal, but it’s a girl much too young to be either, her hair short in a blunt brown bob, wearing a variation of their school uniform. He opens his mouth to say something but he’s beaten to the punch by a sigh.

“Just my damn luck. Of course I had to end up being in a class with two sketchy looking dudes,” the girl murmurs, toeing at the floor with her indoor shoes dejectedly before stepping past the threshold of the classroom. “How depressing.”

If he wasn’t thick-skinned from family scoldings and playground teasing growing up, maybe Satoru would take genuine offense to that. “Sketchy? I’m not sketchy.”

“You’re wearing sunglasses indoors,” says new girl. “And this other guy looks like a mobster. You two aren’t exactly regular looking people.”

Suguru, as if a saint, doesn’t stir at the comment in the least. Maybe he hears the remark often, or maybe picks and chooses who he reserves his patience for. Satoru, as demonstrated, doesn’t seem to be one of those people. “A mobster, eh?”

“If you were wearing a suit, I’d think you were a debt collector or some big-shot yakuza boss.”

Satoru snorts. He doesn’t mean to, honest, but it has Suguru shooting him a split-second glare regardless. “I can see it, I can see it. It’s the resting bitch face.”

“And you look like a character from those harem dating simulators.”

New girl says with a thoughtful nod, “I think that’s what he’s going for, looking like that. The haircut and the color? And the sunglasses too. It’s a very try-hard, pop-idol-off-duty sort of look.”

“Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?”

“Not really, but it isn’t an insult either.” The ends of her hair flutter as she shakes her head. She seems awfully comfortable standing in the doorway, hasn’t moved to take a seat this entire time. “You just don’t look like a regular, everyday person trying to blend in. Neither of you do.”

“To be fair, this isn’t your regular, everyday class,” Satoru reasons. “Since we have a mobster and a popstar, what will you be?”

“Oh, nothing in particular.” She shrugs before offering them a customary sort of smile. “Just a girl named Ieiri Shouko. Nice to meet you.”

Suguru’s hand moves in a gesture that’s somewhere between a salute and a wave, glancing up from the ever-interesting landscape of his lap. “Getou Suguru. Please take care of me.”

Satoru tilts his head backwards so he’s less hidden behind Suguru’s silhouette. Not that it’s necessary—he’s a head taller than him anyways, and Shouko already got a good look. Satoru just likes to make sure he’s extra noticeable when he speaks. Bold-fonted signs and megaphones on top of a campaign car sort of noticeable. “I’m Gojou Satoru. ‘s nice to meet you too.”

“Wai—” Shouko’s expression stitches into one of—shock? Awe? Bewilderment? She seems like she’s fighting back the urge to point an accusatory finger at him. “You’re Gojou? Like, from the Gojou family?”

“That’s me.” He throws up a peace sign, waves the two-pronged gesture back and forth. Suguru turns his head to him, then back at Shouko, then back at him again, confusion knitted tight into the crosshatched hairs of his eyebrows. Planets seem to be aligning in his head. First Mercury with Venus, then Earth with Mars, then Jupiter with Saturn. “I’m sort of a celebrity in the jujutsu world, I guess.”

Shouko relaxes, only allowing herself a few seconds of starstricken gaping before moving to her seat next to Suguru, and places her backpack neatly on the desk’s side hook. “Yeah, no kidding. My parents won’t shut up about you.” She holds the back of her skirt to her legs as she sits down. “What’d they say? Something about a kid in the Gojou family being born with both Limitless and, what was it? The—”

“The Six Eyes,” Satoru finishes, adjusting the sunglasses sitting on his nose bridge so they press against the bone of his eyebrow. When he lets go, they inch down his face again.

“Right. The Six Eyes.”

“Is that what the glasses are for?”

“Bingo!” he chimes. “What do you think? Pretty fashionable right?”

“Eh,” Shouko responds, completely neutral. No shock, no awe. A touch of judgement maybe. “Wouldn’t exactly say that.”

Petty, “Hm. I see how it is.”

Somewhere along the line of their cohabited silence, Suguru mutters to himself, quiet enough to be imperceptible even with the lack of school-typical hallway chatter, “Hm. Thought I heard the name somewhere before.” Under the sound of Shouko pulling out her notebook and pouch of multicolored pens, Satoru would miss it completely if he wasn’t paying attention.

He asks, “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“The thing you just said. Something about hearing my name somewhere before?” Satoru probes. Sometimes he just wants to hear someone else talking about him.

Suguru doesn’t say anything. He’s pulling out his earphones, wrapping the cord around his fingers into a tight coil before tucking them into a pocket in his backpack. The plastic of the buds clatter together like tincup change. All he says is, “Just thinking about how obsessed you are with yourself.”

Satoru laughs, but it comes out more like the chuckle of a not-so-evil villain or a superhero with too much bravado. It adds to the effect. Theatrics are important. “If you were me, you’d be obsessed with yourself too.”

“Hmm,” Suguru hums. “I think I’d hate to be you.”

Shouko chimes in, “Seconded. Way too much trouble.”

“And that personality—”

“Hey, hey,” Satoru interjects. He has a vague idea of what Suguru’s about to say, and a vague idea of how long this conversation will continue if he doesn’t stop it in its tracks. “I didn’t know this was supposed to be a Make Fun of Gojou Satoru For No Reason kind of party.”

“But I think it should be.” Suguru gives him a vacant look, not quite a stare. He never holds his gaze on someone for too long. “Idiot like you.”

Shouko splits their silence in two with her muffled laugh, her bright voice a conciliatory arm between two drunk businessmen about to engage in a silly streetside fight. “We just met and you two are already arguing?”

Suguru corrects, “This isn’t arguing.”

“And actually, we’ve met before,” adds Satoru, pointing his finger to himself and then to Suguru, and leaves it to Shouko’s eyes to sew the suggestion of a dashed line stretching between the two of them. Bubbles on a mindmap. “At a swing set. We’re friends!”

Suguru objects immediately, “We aren’t friends.”

For a moment, Satoru considers saying, Actually, we’re dating! But that’s not a joke that would land well so he settles on shaking his head in disapproval instead. “He’s just a tsundere.”

“I’m not,” Suguru insists, glancing over to Shouko as if to tell her, Believe me on this one. I’m right. People so different could never be friends. At least, that’s what Satoru imagines he’d say. It’s something many have said about him before. Someone so blessed can’t fit in with a crowd of everyday people. “Gojou here thinks having one conversation makes two people friends.”

“Hey, you can go ahead and use my first name. I think we’re comfortable enough for that.”

Exasperated, “No we aren’t.”

There’s a companionable instance of eye contact between him and Shouko, an agreement between them to become accomplices in the joke. “Hm.” She presses a skeptical finger to her chin, tapping once and twice. “Yeah, I don’t think I’m convinced. I’m going to side with White Hair-san over there.”

Shaking off the knowing looks they both give him, Suguru gives disinterested wave of his hand, “Whatever.”

After a moment, Satoru thinks to glance at the clock. It says that it’s exactly eight now. Being ahead of schedule is being on time, and each of them were varying degrees of punctual. Shouko with three minutes before eight o’clock, Satoru with seven, Suguru with an undisclosed number. Probably something like fifteen. He seems like the sort of guy to apologize for not being early enough, serious as he is. Satoru’s head lolls as he checks the time on his phone. The stickers on the back of it are peeling, stars and Sanrio characters. Keroppi’s eye has folded over like a dog's ear. “That clock is behind,” he announces. “Yaga-sensei is late.”

“Eh.” Shouko looks up. Then around. “We’re not in the wrong classroom, are we?”

Suguru shakes his head. “It was the only one with desks for the three of us, so no.”

“Maybe he got caught up in something.”

“Maybe, but hey! Before we forget, let’s exchange phone numbers,” Shouko says, grabbing her cell phone from a compartment in her bag. One of many, since it’s covered in zippers and pockets and an entire Akihabara store’s inventory worth of charms. Cute animals on braided polyester string. One for every color of the Super Sentai rangers and then some.

“Oh, good idea.” Satoru stands from his seat, walking over to occupy the space between the other two desks and squatting between them to get eye level. With a few swift presses on his keypad, he pulls up his list of contacts, of which there are many. Mostly family members and notable people in the jujutsu society, a handful of pastry shops he calls ahead of time to ask whether the shortcakes or macarons have sold out yet, and not many friends at all. He’ll be adding some to that list today, so it’ll change from not many to not many, but just enough.

Quietly, Suguru unearths his own phone. Plain and black in contrast to Satoru’s decorated white and Shouko’s pink. He doesn’t show an interest in exchanging contact information, or really any interest at all in either of them, but he punches Satoru’s number in anyways when it’s recited and saves it with no protest. Then Shouko’s, and then he’s flipping his phone shut.

But not before he texts them out of courtesy so they can save him into their contacts as well. Curtly:

[FROM: Unknown Number]

[8:02] this is getou

Satoru affectionately saves him in his contacts with an emoticon and answers him in return.

Unsurprisingly, Suguru doesn’t bother to read it when his text tone chimes.

“Let’s take a photo together to commemorate!” Satoru suggests, the idea sprouting in his head after he exits his text messages and glances at his wallpaper—Koda Kumi, with her blonde-streaked hair from a promotional shoot for her new single. At this point, it’s probably not considered new anymore. Satoru’s been listening to that song for months, and this photo has been his wallpaper for even longer. “And you can’t scowl your way out of it, Suguru.”

“I don’t scowl.” A lie. Maybe he does it without realizing. “And I told you not to call me that.”

All Satoru does is shrug. “I’m still going to.”

Suguru needles him a glare, stitching it right into his side profile when he disinterestedly glances back down at his phone. “You’re so…”

“So what?”

“Obnoxious.”

“Haven’t you said some variation of that already?”

“Are we gonna take the picture now, or what?” Shouko interjects with her camera app already pulled up, arm angled upward to fit everyone into frame. It captures their movements a little slowly, swaying with a lag as Satoru waves his hand and Suguru turns away as if he wants no part of this.

But Satoru yanks him in despite his non-declination, throwing up a peace sign and slinging an arm around his neck. Their heads tip against each other and their hair clings with static. That close, he can smell Suguru. A hit of something fruity and earthy at once—the citrus bite of yuzu and the smoke of incense.

Like clockwork, there’s a defeated sigh, and Suguru offers the camera a smile. Soft, maybe a platitude, but a smile nonetheless.

“Wider.” Satoru pokes him in the cheek.

“Eh?”

“Smile wider.”

It takes a shake to the shoulders before Suguru is doing so. It’s impossible to tell whether he’s weirdly timid or pettily stubborn, but when he grins, eyes creasing, Cupid’s bow hidden over his teeth, Satoru brushes the thought away and figures that the difference doesn’t matter.

Afterwards, Shouko texts the picture to both of them. Satoru makes it his new wallpaper, and with enough pestering and poking fun at the default stockphoto of the ocean his cell phone came with, as if preserving the new state it was in freshly taken out of the box, Suguru makes it his too.

iii. asobi seksu - i’m happy but you don’t like me

They become fast friends.

Of course, Satoru would argue that they already were friends, but as a normal person with social boundaries, Suguru disagrees. You don’t get to decide one day, one random instance, stopping a stranger on the street or at a konbini or at a secluded swing set along a backstreet: Hey! We’re close now! Let’s skip the polite speech even though you don’t know a thing about me at all! Let’s call each other by our first names when we’ve barely had a conversation before! But that’s how Satoru believes friendship works.

Suguru’s understanding is much less optimistic. The bridge that stretches over the proximity between him and someone else, as he’s learned, is a brittle, precarious thing. One misstep and he’s met with that long, steep fall. All too abrupt for him to process.

So he’s careful. Always careful, but these delicate little friendships will just—happen. Shouko and Kento and Yuu, his senpai, the girl at Lawson who dropped out to pursue her dreams of being a wood carver under an artisan’s tutelage, the grandma who runs a hundred-years shop selling senbei rice crackers. His network expands on its own, lights illuminating along his circuit. It began with his house, alone on a little lonely street, and suddenly he has a block. And then a ward. And then a whole city.

He’s come to understand: there’s nothing on the other side of the bridge. You don’t walk or crawl or sprint your way to friendship—you fall into it. It’s at the end of the drop below your feet, happens fast and happens sudden. Without you noticing, without you intending, whether or not you willed it to.

That’s what has Suguru realizing—Satoru has become his friend, fitting against him comfortably as if he’s always been there. Arm slung around his shoulders, head in his lap, body in his space. Those reservations Suguru initially had about being too over-familiar, too friendly? Driftwood in his ocean. No regard for boundaries now that they’ve grown accustomed to each other.

And that’s how it is when they’re in an empty train car on their way back from a mission, bypassing the queue they’d expect from the platforms of Tokyo, their feet touching the anthill raise of the yellow safety strip at some unassuming station in residential Yokohama. An Omiya-bound train will be arriving shortly at Platform 10. Please stand behind the yellow line. Watch your step. The doors are closing, please be careful.

Suguru’s arms are folded neatly over his chest. He could fall asleep right there, feels as if he just might, lethargy licking at his eyelids too early in the evening to be regular for his sleep schedule.

Wedging his ears are his earbuds. They're playing some slow rock music. He never has his volume up high anymore. Or at least, not around Satoru who’s always talking for the sake of talking, eyes searching expectantly for an answer to a question Suguru didn’t hear, and it always has him feeling like he missed something important. He never does—it’s almost always something petty—but he can’t help but believe that he has.

When Suguru tips his head back, head a centimeter away from meeting the glass of the window, Satoru says, “Lend me your shoulder.”

Overworked salarymen never ask for permission before dozing off against a stranger, so Suguru appreciates the heads up. However, in true Satoru fashion, there is no wait for the affirmative. He leans against him anyway, ear against clavicle, forearm against thigh. Nothing pillows the contact besides the fabric of Suguru’s uniform. Its seam pulls in a sharply uncomfortable way he finds difficult to ignore, but the weight is nothing foreign. A lot of bone jut and unnatural angles, but the slots fit.

“Why do you have to lean against me when you have,” Suguru gestures to the rest of the train with an upturned palm, “all this space? Go lie down on the seats over there.”

“Nah, I think I’m good,” Satoru declines, yawning. Somehow he’s tired with how little they’ve done. Today was a whole lot of sitting around, a whole lot of brief walks to the restroom so they can check their hair in the mirror, a whole lot of waiting for Yaga-sensei to finish chatting with the cashier in the Sanrio store with his mountain of plushies (he uses them as references, he claimed). Not a whole lot of anything worthwhile. “You’re way more comfy.”

“You’re way too touchy.”

“And you’re acting like you’re bothered but you never push me off.” Satoru pulls out his cell phone from his pocket and flips it open. It’s strung with a new charm—a white cat with a golden bell; have it wear sunglasses and it’d look just like him—that jingles with the movement. It’s the only sound that permeates the space save for the gentle whir of the train. The cities are seldom this quiet ever let alone at this time of day. A weird anomaly. Suguru should go buy a lottery ticket.

“I’m not acting. You’re too heavy.”

“Deal with it.”

Suguru sighs. He does that a lot when he’s around Satoru, probably extending his lung capacity by a few extra seconds with how much additional breath he manages to fit in one of his long exhales. Often, the shudder is smothered by city noise and disembodied voices, but now it’s freckled by the blips that accompany each press of Satoru’s thumb against his keyboard, arrowing to the mail icon on the screen to open his texts. One chime, two chimes that have Suguru sitting there with an anticipatory feeling, tolls of a temple bell before midnight strikes on New Years.

“Oh!” he exclaims, fingers quick in typing a response. “Looks like Shouko beat us home.”

“What?” Suguru turns to look down at the slant of Satoru’s face, following the line of his nose. Then to his eyelashes. “I thought she wanted to go window shopping down Motomachi instead of getting dinner with us.”

“I guess window shopping for her really is just window shopping.”

If Suguru were to shrug, he could startle Satoru off of him. But he doesn’t—he’s adjusted well to the weight. “Next time, we’ll be the ones to ditch her.”

“Oh, you’re petty. I like it.”

“It’s restorative justice.”

“Not sure what that means,” Satoru says, defaulting to that grin of his, stuck on that smile, “but sure.”

Timelines get knotted when they’re together, but earlier, Suguru had made sure to check the timetables to avoid rush hour. Not that it was necessary—they ended up in a vacant train car anyway, eerily empty, as if the entire city collectively decided to delay their commutes home.

Satoru sits up straight to stretch his arms out. To his right is another seat that feels oddly unoccupied, the outer one closest to the door with a partition to prevent seated passengers from tumbling into those standing. He’s used to seeing an older woman with a cane there. It’s rare for only two seats in the whole car to be occupied by a couple high school students with perfectly strong legs. On a regular day, they would be standing to grasp an overhead handhold, fighting against a crowd that sways and presses them against the doors like a belly that’s swallowed a few too many bites. Instead, they wallow in an empty stomach. “I just wanna sleep. Wake me up before our stop.”

“Hm.” Suguru hums. This close, he can hear Satoru’s breathing. Inhale three seconds, exhale five. “I think I’ll leave you here, actually.”

“You’re too nice for that, I think,” Satoru says, voice already blurring at the edges, the tail end of his syllables coming out in wisps. Suguru pulls out his own phone to check the time. It reads seven twenty-three in the evening. The half-shut eye of the moon is visible when Suguru cranes his neck enough to take a look through the window.

He asks, “I’m nice?”

“Mm,” Satoru voices, an understated noise of affirmation. “You’re a nice guy. To me, at least. And to Shouko.” Another yawn, but this time it’s longer, more sustained, as if his jaw is taking shape around a belted high note. “Sometimes you’re an asshole without actually being an asshole, and sometimes you're just an asshole period, but I think you’re nice in your own way.”

“I thought you said I was ‘the rudest guy ever’, or whatever. Your words.”

Something inclines Suguru to nudge Satoru’s head just slightly. It’s a playful, friendly sort of gesture. Too comfortable—or at least, that’s what it feels like. Suguru has never been one to handle things like touch or proximity with grace, stepping back to disengage from physical contact when his own mother’s palm lingers for too long when patting his head and telling him he’s done well. In those instances, he feels too much like a dog. In this one, he feels too much like a huge stuffed animal cuddled by a child who just won a prize thrice their size at a summer festival.

There’s a pause. An intermediary period for Satoru to deliberate an answer. Suguru expects a sharp-fingered jab to the rib and Satoru’s classic You know I was just joking! Maybe an I said what I meant and I meant what I said to completely contradict what he had said earlier. He does that sometimes.

But instead: “You’re nicer to me than my parents are.”

“Oh,” is all Suguru says. He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, rolls it along the back of his teeth, runs it over his gums. Words are now sticky in his throat. He’s not sure how to respond. “Are they...”

The question can finish with: too strict? Authoritative? Distant and uninvolved and barely even parents? Dead? But no way it's that last thing; there's no past tense, and he wouldn’t hear the end of it from the gossip of other shamans if it were true.

“Yeah,” Satoru affirms, nodding slightly. The sensation of it translates strangely against Suguru’s shoulder, something like a cat turning as it's sleeping on your stomach. The hair at the crown of Satoru’s head tickles his chin. “They’re sh*tty. I don’t like my parents. Or anyone in the family, honestly.”

Huh. That’s vague, but a more mild answer than expected.

“Mm.” Suguru is of the opinion that it’s best to mind one’s own business. It would probably—absolutely?—be inconsiderate to ask probe, even with someone like Satoru, so instead he says, “I won’t ask why.”

Satoru laughs and for once it sounds—genuine. Nothing animated or dramatized about it, as he tends to be. “It isn’t anything serious. They’re just stuck in their ways,” he explains, locking his fingers together and pressing down on his knuckles, plates crashing together at fault lines before parting into a mid-ocean ridge, his phone held between his palms. Maybe it’s a nervous habit of his, if he’s even the type to get apprehensive to begin with. “Plus, they’re weak.”

“A very Gojou Satoru type of answer.”

Satoru corrects, “An honest one.”

“Well, if they’re weak,” Suguru uncrosses his arms, an ache in his elbows from holding that position for too long, “then you should consider yourself lucky to be strong.”

“I don’t. ” A wince of distaste, a child’s face after tasting hand soap that came in a pretty, citrus-jeweled color, only to be met with chemical bitterness. “What’s lucky about everyone relying on you?”

It’s a simple thing, really. “You’re believed in,” Suguru says. He doesn’t stare at people, but right then, he’s staring at Satoru, who seems to sense his gaze on him and tilts his face away, focusing on the light rectangle of his phone screen like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “There’s nothing more motivating than being believed in.”

Every ounce of tension lifts with the noise Satoru makes, more snort than scoff with laughter in between. “So lame,” he says, flipping his phone shut and tucking it away into the pocket of his jacket. He keeps his hand there as if shielding it from a winter that hasn’t yet come. They’ve got over half an orbit left before then; spring is still here. “You really do talk like an old man.”

“And I’m the one who’s rude.”

Another snort-scoff-laugh. Satoru shrugs as if to say, Obviously. Suguru should’ve expected as much.

“What about yours?”

“My what?”

“Your parents.”

“I have pretty normal parents,” is Suguru’s brief disclosure. Normalcy isn’t something he can gauge well, but he thinks they’re normal like their neighbors and normal like the families depicted on TV. “Averagely Japanese,” he says. “I think everything about me is pretty average.”

It’s true. His grades are what they are because of the excess hours he spends holed up in his room before exams, and he’s only somewhat in shape because of the martial arts classes he took and occasionally practices now. Judo, aikido, karate—the whole works. Nothing gifted and god-touched about him in the way Satoru is.

Except for maybe the curse manipulation thing.

That’s what he adds, more of a footnote, or maybe an addendum, than a proud assertion, “Besides my curse manipulation.”

Satoru says anyway, “I’m kinda jealous.” Light refracts through the windows and cuts a sharp edge into shadow, falling over his lap. His knuckles still meet in peaks of a mountain range. They part before coming back together, and part again before coming back together, fissures that can’t decide if they want to remain split. “Of people who have normal parents and normal lives.”

He seems to be holding something behind his teeth, words that hang unspoken. Of you, especially.

“I wouldn’t say my life is exactly normal,” Suguru says. “I’m still a special grade.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Drowsiness seems to be wrapping its tender arms around Satoru, catching on the lilt of his voice. His words wade. This uncharacteristic calm from him is a heavy storm too quiet, completely lacking thunder or windhowl, eerie in the wrong setting or the wrong time of day, but serene now. “It sucks. We won’t be able to have a normal high school life. ” A five-second inhale and a sigh that’s more yawn and round vowel than anything else. “We won’t even have our own cultural festival.”

“What’s the point when there’s only, like, three people in a class?”

“Exactly.” Satoru slow-blinks, eyes sticky with sleep. “I hate that.”

“But that’s just how it is. Jujutsu society doesn’t care if we don’t like it,” Suguru says, fixing his gaze on the birds sitting on the power lines as the train begins to slow, black blips on the cords like points plotted on a number line, stations on a subway map.

The Shonan-Shinjuku line has five stops between Yokohama and Shibuya. They’ve languidly reached the second. The jingle that plays as the doors open and close and the clean, pristine voice on the intercom tell them so. This train is bound for Omiya. The next station is Nishi-Oui. Nishi-Oui. The door on the right side will open. Please be careful not to leave your belongings on the train. Thank you for riding the Shonan-Shinjuku line.

“Hey Suguru,” Satoru says when the announcement finishes, rising for air after swimming across a pool’s length of stagnant evening lethargy. He’s more alert now, but he doesn’t budge from his position on Suguru’s shoulder. The train stutters as it begins to move again. “Let’s go do some stupid high school sh*t together.”

“And what kind of sh*t would that be?”

“Dunno,” Satoru answers vaguely, eyeing some crows also as they spread their inky underwings, the movement of the train a mechanical force that startles them into flight. They’re a different flock from the last. Fewer. “Just whatever people our age do for fun.”

“Take this up with Shouko,” is Suguru’s veto. He knows how Satoru is. When one favor is accepted, another will greet you, and another, and there’ll be no end to it.

“But she’s too occupied with her own Shouko stuff. That’s why she left us for dead today at Family Mart and we had to get fried chicken on our own,” argues Satoru, sweetener in his voice now that he’s asking for something. “So please?”

“Hm. I guess,” Suguru responds. The train falls silent just as his mind does, botanical garden’s tranquility, as if it belongs to a secluded pond on the outskirts of human life instead of the sea. No waves or surges; just stillness and ducks. Maybe lily pads for frogs to sit. Irises overhanging the waterline.

“And honestly, I enjoy your company,” Satoru says, words all wistful and airy at the corners of their consonants.

There are these moments where Suguru realizes he’s dropped into a pitfall, like the very first moment he turned to find Satoru there beside him. Friendships are strange in how they happen. Oh, you’re here next to me now. Our shoulders are grazing. Touch is a thing now welcomed. Then, familiarity. Oh, we’re around each other constantly, have the same interests, patronize the same places. We even buy our peaches from the same supermarket. Then, camaraderie. Oh, we aren’t strangers anymore. Not acquaintances either. We’re something more than that. We’re—

Satoru stirs again, lets more of his weight levy onto Suguru, the sort of proximity where two heartbeats could be felt behind their ribcages if their chests were pressed together. The music from his earphones is easy and slow, and with the sound of his pulse behind his ears, Suguru can barely hear it anymore. Outperformed by Satoru’s voice. “You feel the same way, don’t you?”

“Mm.” Suguru doesn’t offer any further response. A simple affirmation like that should be enough. Should be plenty.

Friendship is the building of a nest, one snapped twig and wilted blade of grass at a time. When you find yourself stuck in a canyon, a hollow in the land too steep to climb back up, you learn to make a home out of it.

The comfortable safety of that bridge? Its suspension snapped a long time ago.

“Then that’s all that matters.”

iv. ryusenkei - tokyo sniper

There’s a certain vulnerability in welcoming someone into your bedroom.

That’s what Satoru learns when Suguru first lets him enter his room, nervous scratching at the back of his neck like he doesn’t know what else he should do with his hands. Satoru is not one to feel self-conscious about anything, especially something as trivial as letting others into his personal space, so when Suguru’s eyes search his face for reactions, he doesn’t quite understand why.

Humility—a concept as alien as the pseudo-philosophy you tend to overhear old people ramble about while playing shogi at the public tables of a boulevard, lined with cherry blossom trees and the bent necks of street lamps. Something something the yagura castle, despite being the strongest defensive position, still comes with weakness, something something the key to conquering the castle is often the simplest method. In shogi, just as there are in all disciplines, are lessons for life. Stuff of that realm.

Suguru’s giving him one of his sidelong glances as he enters, sneakers slanted next to the neat placement of Suguru’s school shoes. They had come from the basketball courts a few blocks away, shirts still clinging to their backs from light perspiration. Suguru had just suffered a crushing loss in a game of cursed spirit basketball, dunked on by Satoru’s inhumanly long arms with a grade four. A persimmon-skin orange thing almost perfectly spherical when rolled like putty between a palm and a table surface.

Suguru had protested the idea at first—he hated the ear-raking sounds it made and asked in a careful voice, Doesn't this kind of seem like—I don’t know, animal cruelty or something? Satoru laughed and reminded him then: it’s just a curse. A thing of negative emotion. As weak as it was, it didn’t think or feel.

One of the things Satoru has discovered about Suguru: he’s too quick to compassion and too quick to remorse by extension.

He also tends to ask about everything, and asks often, a question for all he’s never received a concrete answer for. Why do birds tend to perch on the powerlines? Why’s there construction for a road that was a road just fine? Satoru, were you never taught how to be quiet? Do you come with a mute button? Often not talkative, but always with something to wonder about.

“Don’t you have any hobbies?” is his question now as Satoru’s gaze turns over each corner of the room. There are movie posters plastered on one side and band posters on another, the sleeved records of every Black Flag album on the wall space by his window, a guitar and a bass and an amplifier next to his desk. As expected, despite the sheer amount of stuff, the space is furniture-catalogue neat. Not a single poster in the room is skewed. The bed is perfectly made and each surface lacks any and all clutter. No chaos, no entropy, no disorder. It’s completely unlike Satoru’s own.

“Hm,” is his non-answer as his gaze glides over the fine print in Suguru’s band tour posters. Taking a deep breath, Satoru takes in the scent. This place smells of—incense, sandalwood, yuzu detergent. Homey and ordinary.

Suguru changes into a fresh t-shirt. An older one this time, worn and frayed the way indoor clothes usually are. It has some band logo with English words Satoru doesn’t recognize and a whole list of cities on the back. Probably some tour merchandise. “You’ve gotta be into something.”

“Dunno.” Satoru shrugs. He’s filing through his memories as if thumbing through the pages of a backlog. What does he enjoy? He isn’t so sure himself. The first thing that comes to mind is a small, shiny memory of his days spent at Nakano Broadway with his hands pressed against the glass display case of an Agumon figurine. An apple picked from the orchard of his childhood. So that’s what he goes with. “I like Digimon, I guess.”

“You guess?” Suguru parrots, sitting down at a corner of his bed, elbows meeting his knees in the way he leans forward. There’s that one French sculpture—The Thinker, was it called? Satoru has seen pictures. He’d liken him with that. “Do you really not have hobbies?”

Odd how close they’ve gotten recently and this is a conversation they’ve never had.

True to form, Satoru says, “Nothing’s fun when you’re good at everything.” Suguru scoffs. As if Satoru would never pass up the opportunity to gloat. He does it so often he doesn’t understand why Suguru still looks at him in disbelief each time. “Well, I wouldn’t say nothing. I think messing with you counts as a hobby, right?”

Incredulity turns into full-fledged scowling, and at that, Satoru’s the one scoffing. “Does your personality revolve around being as obnoxious as possible?”

“Pestering someone is what you do when you like them.”

“You have such a warped perception of 'like'.”

“Well I think it’s fun, and I think you’re fun.” Taking a couple strides forward to sit down next to Suguru, his weight adding to the dip in the bed, he leans in close in the way he knows Suguru hates. His nose nearly grazes Suguru’s cheek and he’s met with an immediate hand to his chest pushing him away. “Don’t you feel that way about me too? I know you do.”

Suguru turns away fast, face pointed towards a far corner of the room. Dayglow pours in from the window in yolks, backlight rimming the crown of his head in gold. Never pulling his punches, Satoru reaches to squeeze the tight black curl of Suguru’s bun, and like clockwork, he’s twisting Satoru’s arm.

Another thing Satoru’s discovered about Suguru: he’s bothered too easily.

“Honestly,” he says, off-beat to the natural rhythm of conversation, measures too late. His hold is as unrelenting as an embarrassed mother’s on the back of a child’s collar, trying her utmost to save face. “You’re a f*cking pain, more like. Nothing fun about being around you at all.”

Satoru shoots him a knowing look, laughing. Even with the pretzel twist of his arm, he isn’t at all uncomfortable. Add contortionist to his list of viable career prospects, disregarding the iron guarantee of shaman or one of the strongest. “Liar.”

“How am I lying?”

With a smirk, Satoru says, “I always catch you hiding a smile from me.”

Suguru raises a hand in front of him in defense. Instead of confirming or denying any accusations, too clever to self-incriminate, he says, “See? Why would I want to be around a smug asshole like you,” and all it does is make Satoru laugh.

There’s a special calm about this room. Something of a sequestered house in the countryside, windows open and curtains dancing a pas des deux with the breeze, graceful as a twirl on pointe shoes. The way it feels is nothing like the way it looks, angry fonts of vintage punk flyers and amplifiers with their net of cords along the floor, but somehow still tranquil. Maybe it’s the quiet in here. Maybe it’s the effect of the afternoon. Maybe it’s because everything has a trace of Suguru in them.

Parallel to the window is a sprawl of blue sticky notes littering the wall like tarps spread over the grass of Yoyogi Park during cherry blossom season. They’re probably scribbled with little reminders like the ones Suguru writes on his palm with marker. Satoru’s had glimpses of them before. There’s ¥820 left on your Suica card. The lines at Tsukemen Enji are shortest at 4PM on Sundays. The elderly lady running the tonkatsu stall at the Toyosu fish market gives high school students an extra cutlet when ordering a four-piece set. Full sentences, no shorthand, because that’s the kind of person he is. There might even be song lyrics; he’s always murmuring a tune under his breath when he thinks others aren’t listening. Satoru doesn’t look long or close enough to confirm those suspicions—he just knows.

“Since I’m supposed to have hobbies, or whatever,” Satoru says, realigning the topic of conversation back on its old rails, “what do you think I should get into?”

“Whatever you want. I shouldn’t have to tell you what to like.”

“Well you should tell me anyway.”

“Hm.” After walking over to his dresser where his record player is, Suguru flips through a neat stack of records beside it. The cardboard of their sleeves all have bumped corners, wrinkled into little kneecaps, worn from use. He must have more somewhere, has to, in one of the drawers or something. The ones he’s carding through must be the ones he listens to most. “Music. You look like you’d be good at piano.”

“No way. Sounds boring.”

“Visual arts then? Painting?”

“Also boring.” Satoru shakes his head, watching Suguru as he fits the record he picked out into the player, placing the stylus strategically somewhere in the middle of the album. First, the crackle of static. Then, the thump of a snare drum. “My uncles are into that stuff. Seems way too traditional.”

Defeatedly, Suguru’s shoulders droop. “Then why ask to begin with?”

“Because it’s fun listening to you talk about stuff you like.” One long, shimmering pause that’s sliced to ribbons by the sound of electric guitar, sticky and kinetic in the air. “You don’t do it often.”

On his too-lengthy legs, Satoru migrates to a different side of Suguru’s room. His desk, where his imagination seems to sing when the rest of him is dusk-sleepy. There’s a pile of what seems to be sketch pads and spiral notebooks, each meticulously flagged with index tabs and dog ears. One would assume they’re notes, and while Suguru’s always been the studious type, Satoru’s intuition tells him there’s something more interesting than lecture summaries to unearth.

Despite knowing better, sometimes Satoru feels the compulsion to reach his hands into places they don’t belong. He’d done so at the pond of a garden once, palms dragging through the forming algae and petting an unsuspecting koi swimming by. If he had food on him, maybe he would’ve fed them despite a sign's robotic lettering asking otherwise. Please do not feed the fish! it had said, and he would’ve pretended not to see it.

For neither the first nor last time, Satoru lets his curiosity lead him. He slides a three-ring binder sandwiching loose-leaf paper into his hands, the one sitting precariously at the top of a pile of notebooks. And all at once, because Satoru snatches it too quickly, paper spills everywhere. Over the desk, into the chair, before traveling to the floor like a toppled house of cards.

At first, there’s mild panic. But that leaves him as soon as it comes when he sees—everything. The contents. All of it.

There’s drawings. So many drawings, he observes. Words too. They litter graph paper and pages neatly torn out of notebooks. A sketch here, a sentence there, a jotting everywhere. His eyes can’t tell where he should begin. When he leans in closer, lowering his glass to the tip of his nose to get a clearer look, he realizes the sentences are not mere sentences but lines of—

“God, what’re you doing in someone else’s—” Suguru turns abruptly, attention pried away from his ream of favorite records, fingers no longer drumming on the wood of the turntable but fisting at the sleeve of Satoru’s t-shirt instead. His eyes race from the desk, then to the chair, then to the ground, doing laps. “Idiot.”

His ears redden, shy as a sweep of corals. Satoru’s the king of observational learning. Another thing: Suguru is too easily embarrassed.

“Suguru,” he says. This is the first time he’s completely pardoned Suguru for the name-calling and the first time it doesn’t cross his mind period. A grin works its way on his face. “Since when did you write poetry?”

“Since, well—uh,” Suguru stammers, stumbling over his words as if hitting speed bumps in a road, a vehicle unable to absorb all the shock. This is when each of his nervous habits clock in for their busiest shift of the week—running a hand through his hair, scratching at an elbow, picking away at a hangnail. Silence is a waiting customer. It hasn’t been served the words it had ordered.

Then, “I started recently, I guess.”

“Eh,” Satoru says. Not surprise, not a question, but a neutral reaction. Oh, really? So that’s how it is. Huh, how interesting.

Suguru’s scoping out his reaction. “Yeah.”

When Satoru bends down to pick up the stray pages, he doesn’t let himself read too closely. Just a polite skim despite the great, great urge. Nosiness is one of the worst traits you have, Shouko had told him before, wringing him out when she was fed up by the way he kept peering over her shoulder to read her texts. If people want you to know something, they’d tell you.

“Can I,” he prefaces, dipping a toe in the water to check the temperature, “read some of it?”

With immediacy, Suguru answers, “No.”

Expression scrunching like a finger-flicked rubber band, Satoru sulks. “Why not?”

“Because you’re—you.”

Satoru blinks, but it feels longer than just a blink. An intermission for stagehands to ready the lights for the next scene. He parrots, “Because I’m me.”

“Right.” Suguru crouches down at the foot of the desk, gathering the papers. A few of them had fluttered halfway across the room like leaves peeling off the branches of a tree, landing into a storm drain on the other side of the street to make friends with the sakura petals. “You’re free to take that however you want.”

“Come on.” Satoru pouts, all lower lip and puppy eyes. He bats his eyelashes for extra effect. “Please?”

“I said no.”

“I’ll buy you a luxury set the next time we get yakiniku.”

Suguru pauses. Then, predictably, he sighs in defeat. “Okay fine.”

Satoru grins at the easy victory.

They gather the rest of the papers in relative silence. Satoru looks at each up close the way you look at seashells you find on the beach, turning them around in your palm to observe the way their grooves catch the light. The pages are filled with lines and pictures and words, a drawing in every open space with poems far from easy to understand. There’s writing that isn’t even poetry, just paragraphs of rambling, that hardly makes sense either. Words about the breaks of dawn, the speed at which cherry blossoms fall, the songbird tunes of dew-flecked morning (Suguru's such a sappy, poetic guy). Some are just—thoughts.

The visible arm of our galaxy, as observed in a moonless night sky, is known as the River of Heaven. A silver stream bending along the horizon, too far and vast for us to ever swim across.

I’d like to see it someday.

In the corner of a poem about the human body, from what Satoru’s able to parse from it, there’s a sketch of an eye, another of a hand, and another of a classroom. What looks to be theirs, complete with the scratched chalkboard and the front desk. All that's left is the stony figure of Yaga-sensei and it’ll be complete.

When Satoru flips to the next sheet, there’s a full illustration. A person from their back side, pen slicing dark over the remains of erased pencil marks, cut by rules of blue on white paper like marker on delftware. Hands tucked into pockets, shoulders slouched, the perfect picture of everything relaxed and casual, and there’s—

A resemblance to him. The proportions, the height, the shoulders. Unshaded hair that’s all lines without shadow and doesn’t reach further than the hairline of the nape.

Satoru gapes.

The realization dawns slow the way the sun does, pulling into a visible corner of sky.

Suguru drew him. He really did.

“Hey, is this supposed to be me?”

That startles Suguru. He glances over at Satoru, and then at his hands, and then realizes the evidence. Proof of his involvement in the crime in a court trial.

“No.” A total lie, bald-faced with pink-tinged ears. “It isn’t.”

“Right,” Satoru says, emphasizing the syllable so his disbelief is obvious. “Looks just like me though, doesn’t it?”

Suguru pretends to be occupied with picking up the papers in his corner of the room, but Satoru knows—he’s shuffling them in his hands like a flustered secretary whose files have spilled onto the floor in front of their boss, turning them over so the rustle masks an awkward silence. “You’re just too obsessed with yourself,” he says, defaulting to his usual half-baked criticism as a means for an excuse.

“Who else do you know with white hair? This doesn’t even look like any anime characters.” Satoru points to the feet in the drawing, penciled in soft, near-black graphite, lines smudged where the soles find the ground beneath them. That’s the point where it’s always darkest—the occlusion shadow, the place where two things meet. “See! You even drew the shoes I wear with my uniform.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, man.” Suguru taps his papers into alignment on the desk. Once, twice, thrice and they fall into place. “Anybody could wear those. And what if I just didn’t get around to coloring the hair in?”

“Right.”

Pestered by Satoru’s scrutiny, Suguru emphasizes, “Seriously.”

“But with the hair and the clothes? That looks like my uniform.” Satoru wears his most smug grin, like that Cheshire Cat character in the western movie he had watched just last week. Suguru scowls at him, face tight. It’s mild though, lingers for only a split second before his expression is back to being as neutral as can be. His facial muscles really do work so, so hard. “I thought you were an honest guy, Suguru.”

“I am,” he says as he attempts to snatch Satoru’s stack of papers away. It takes him a couple swipes; Satoru pulls away just centimeters out of his reach like a cat toy on a string. “And I’m saying it’s not you.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say,” Satoru singsongs, grabbing one of Suguru’s notebooks to flip through now that his hands are empty. In a place filled with so many things, he feels like he should always be doing something with them, fiddling with some trinket or object. This one is full of poetry margin to margin. He still doesn’t understand a thing. “I think you like me a lot more than you let on.”

“You’re making some wild conclusions.”

“But you haven’t kicked me out yet,” reasons Satoru, thumbing at each tissue-thin page with the precise corner where his fingernail meets tender skin. “We hang out whenever we’re free, and you let me rest my head on your shoulder that one time on the train.”

“First of all,” Suguru says with a deep breath, readying himself to argue. “You pestered me for thirty minutes during lunch because you wanted to see my room, and it isn’t like I want to hang out with you all the time. You’re the one that follows me around. Constantly. It’s always ‘Hey Suguru!’ this, ‘Hey Suguru!’ that.” He moves to the other side of the room and places the stack of papers on top of his nightstand. The lamp casts half of it in shadow. Suguru switches it on, its light freckled by floating motes of dust like snow falling in reverse. His rant keeps Satoru thoroughly entertained. “And as for the time on the train—you slept on me without asking.”

Disregarding most of what he said, Satoru simply responds with, “But you didn’t shove me off.”

“Because you wouldn’t move.”

“But you didn’t even try to shove me off.”

That’s all it takes for Suguru’s shoulders to slouch, a stopgap for a white flag of surrender. He doesn’t bother arguing anymore, just moves to scrabble for a box of incense in the seafloor of a drawer, fingers like lobsters scavenging for clams. He places a stick over the bamboo catcher beside his record player and lights it. In seconds, everything smells of sandalwood. A soft burning, coal charring in a sunken hearth.

“Why are you lighting incense?”

“Because you stress me out,” Suguru says, nursing a matchstick flame in the curl of his palm. A different song is playing now, a slow ballad of acoustic guitar and falsetto. “And sometimes it just feels right to.”

“You’re such a weird guy.”

“And you’re a persistent asshole.”

“I wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t so stubborn.” The point of Suguru’s gaze is aimed at a whorl in the floorboards. Sometimes, all it takes to snap him back to attention is a bit of taunting. “Besides, you make it so easy. It’s like you’re asking me to bother you.”

Suguru doesn’t return any wisecracks though. He just sits back down at a corner of his bed and slumps backwards, splaying his arms on either side of him as if taking up the posture of a starfish, pressed to kelp and sand. He sighs. The room turns from yellow-gold to red-orange somewhere in the silence. Wooden floorboards and their swirls become strips of tangerine peel with blotch-brown citrus scars. White-bright afternoon changes to sunwarm evening like a switch of backdrop at a movie set.

Many things in the universe shift at once at any given moment, but all Satoru watches is the way Suguru’s eyelashes dust the tops of his cheeks. That’s something that doesn’t change, like the fin of a fish accustomed to only one method of swimming.

In this moment, here and now, Satoru thinks for a flighty moment that he—

“Sometimes you make me regret being friends with you.”

Satoru’s hearing tunes to the quiet sound of Suguru’s breathing. Inhale in, exhale out, the way the sea undulates nonstop, breaking over a shore. Then he laughs.

“You’re such a liar.”

v. sweet trip - chocolate matter

When caught up in noise and sound and Tokyo clamor, Suguru’s ears can trace music in everything. The mumble of road construction outside, the tapping of Satoru’s pencil against a desk, the windwhistle when a breeze carries its murmur through an open doorway. Melody and drumbeat, rhythm and tune. It’s there when he listens close enough.

When they pass by a record shop, somewhere along a walk through the Shibuya backstreets, a track of some idol group dancing with clacking heels over city buzz, music is in a shopkeeper’s bell. A second song making his head turn, his eyes following. He finds himself tugging at the sleeve of Satoru’s jacket on instinct, nudging him towards the door swinging closed as someone steps inside.

Satoru groans. It’s the one that prefaces most of his complaints, of which he has about many, many things. “Of course you’d wanna stop by here.”

“Obviously,” Suguru says. His hand moves from the hem of Satoru’s sleeve to the skin of his wrist. It fits comfortably there. He reads the printed text on the windows, strips of characters and exclamation points, big and bold to catch the attention of passersby. Used items on sale! Records are fifty yen each if you buy ten! New seven-inch records now in stock!

“But I don’t wanna. You know how many hours I’ve spent waiting for you to look at guitar picks?”

“They don’t even sell guitar picks here. This is a record store,” corrects Suguru, but regardless he receives a shrug that says, So what? Is there supposed to be a difference? Flippant, of course. Stamped with Satoru’s branding. “And you’ve dragged me to every frilly café and bakery on this side of Tokyo just because they’re trendy or whatever. A little time in a record store won’t kill you.”

“It’ll kill me.” A shake of the head, a dramatic palm to the chest. “So much of my time is gone. Poof. Hours of my life lost to little dumb pieces of plastic. Soon it’ll be months, and then years, and then—”

“Keep talking and I’ll shorten your life myself,” Suguru threatens, short on his fuse already. “Not like you do much with your time besides taking pictures of food and watching those weird game shows anyway.”

Despite his fussiness, Satoru faces his body to the storefront. Grumbling to himself first something Suguru can’t clearly hear, and then, “Those weird game shows are quality entertainment.” Afterwards, a glare, the mock-intimidation of a kitten whose claws haven’t yet grown in. “You wouldn’t understand.”

He follows Suguru into the store anyways.

The owner of the shop greets them on their way in, wouldn’t feel right without the overexcited, “Welcome to the store!” Suguru regards him politely with a nod. His attention then after fixes a treasure map’s path to the corner of the store with the shelves of records, packed so tightly there’s hardly any give when he weans one out with a wiggle maneuver.

It smells old in here the way libraries do with their aged wood and acid-decayed books. There’s rows of boxes on tables ordered alphabetically and marked by genre. In one direction, progressive. Another, jazz (piano and organ). And another, psychedelic. On smaller tabs are the names of notable artists. Some boxes are dated by the decade—seventies, eighties, nineties, all located at different tables by region. Suguru admires the meticulous organization of places like this. They bear no responsibility to be this neat or disciplined—alphabetical order is enough—but they are anyway.

Satoru leans over his shoulder, watching him turn a record around in his hands to look at the tracklist. “Who the hell is, uh, this Prince dude?”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead.” Satoru nods and brings his hands up in a gesture of defense when Suguru levels him an accusatory look. “I’m not joking, I’m not joking. Why would I know about overseas artists, anyway? Japanese idols are plenty.”

“Because their music is good. That’s all there is to it. You should look into these things—might find something you like.” Without him noticing, too focused on reading the production credits of the album, their arms seemed to have looped together like rubber bands in a thrifty jump rope. Satoru leans in close to look at what Suguru could possibly be so interested in, shadow casting over the gloss of cellophane. “On your own time, of course,” Suguru remembers to add. Satoru tugs at the sleeve of his uniform in protest with his free hand and their rubber link stretches thin.

“But you said you’d show me,” says Satoru in a half-whine, bumping his chin to Suguru’s shoulder, who knows better than to turn and give him the time of day. The dedication to keep up the whining, by anyone else’s standards, is impressively needy and desperate. By Suguru’s standards, just another one of Satoru’s usual antics.

“I didn’t say I’d do anything.” A shrug is implied in the way Suguru turns back to the front cover of the record, its protective plastic sleeve crinkling, slotting it back into the shelf.

“You did! Something about how I should have hobbies.” For a moment, Satoru’s brushing the back of a hand against his cheek. It’s probably thoughtless—touch to Satoru is a thing of instinct, draping himself over Suguru like he’s a blanket and Suguru’s a shivering stray kitten found in a box during a rainy night. Regardless, Suguru pries himself away, their arms unhooking. “Come on, give me some recommendations.”

“What music do you even like?”

“Hm.” Satoru hums, seriously hums in thought for what will be a short, easy response, while the question would take Suguru two seconds to form an answer and two hours to finish. “Besides Koda Kumi, I like Utada Hikaru. Automatic is the greatest song ever. They’re objectively the best singer out there, I’d say.”

“The best?” Suguru says, incredulous. “Hard disagree.”

“Then who?”

“Kawase Tomoko. Easy.”

Satoru shakes his head with his palm to his chest like he’s just been slandered, losing face in front of their audience of plastic and old cardboard and indexes printed in bolded fonts. “Absolutely no way.”

“You just have sh*t taste.”

“How could you f*cking say that about Utada Hikaru,” says Satoru, a few notches above a polite volume. They’re in a music shop—a place for listening. There’s no need to infringe on that, even when only a couple other customers are patronizing the store. Suguru glares at him. From then, Satoru lowers his voice. “sh*t taste? Your favorite band is some noisy ass overseas artist. Black Flag, or whatever, right? Punk music is terrible.”

Knowing better than to take offense to Satoru’s opinions, Suguru just says, “You don’t even have a favorite band.”

“I don’t need to have one to know that yelling over noisy banging doesn’t sound good.”

Suguru pulls out another record from another corner of the shelf, ignoring that remark. The file reads ‘shoegaze’, and the artist is Sweet Trip. Not a clue is had about the words in the title, but that’s okay. No need to understand the language to appreciate the art.

“This album,” he says instead of returning Satoru’s abrasive remarks, eyes following the patterns on the cover, dropped in vivid colors. Rainbows and neons against ballpoint-ink blue. “I’ve never had the chance to listen to it before.”

“You wanna do that right now?” Satoru asks, busy trying to decipher the song titles on the tracklist of a random album. Still standing beside Suguru, arm pressed against his, shoulder centimeters higher like a sharp drop of a precipice. “They have those listening booths here.”

“Yeah.” Nodding, Suguru looks over at him. “Let’s.”

They migrate to the very back of the store where there’s a alcove of record players. They’re free to use—it says so on the chalkboard hung above them—with accompanying headphones. Suguru wastes little time, pulling the sleeve out of the film and the record out of the sleeve and fixing it into the turntable.

“This doesn’t quite work,” Satoru points out as Suguru toys with the settings, fingertips gentle against the vinyl as he adjusts the needle of the tonearm to its starting position.

“What doesn’t work?”

“Only one set of headphones for each record player.”

“Oh,” he says, blinking at Satoru before turning his gaze back to the singular audio jack. “How about I wear them and I hold one side out so you can hear too.”

“No way that’s fair.”

“Well that’s how we’re gonna do it.” Plugging in the headphones, Suguru presses the plush cushion of worn leather over the shells of his ears. “This is the only copy in the store.”

Grumbling a grievance to himself, something along the lines of you’re such a selfish asshole—which is ironic, really—Satoru bends down to lean into the left side. Even like this, there’s no chance he'd be able to hear properly with the awkward angle, but he’ll have to live with it.

Making do with what he has, Satoru shifts until his cheek is pressing up against Suguru’s. Even closer, maybe too close, maybe much too close, for a better listen. They’ve made all sorts of physical contact before—at the wrists, around the shoulders, along their sides. Satoru has hugged him from every angle with every amount of arm and touch possible, but not this. Never his face against Satoru’s, skin impossibly smooth. Sometimes, he finds himself convinced again that Satoru really is a doll.

The logistics of this arrangement don't particularly work. It’s just—awkward, but Satoru insists.

With his thoughts trying to regroup themselves into neat order again, realizing there’s no music, Suguru presses play. There’s the familiar, well-acquainted shiver of static before an electric beat is introduced, and in companionable silence, they listen.

The music is what Suguru imagines watercolor would sound like. Liquid, glittering, shimmering with a soft voice filtered and fuzzy. The album is everything the reviews said it’d be—a sonic overload, glitchy drums almost scratchy, distorted synths like he dipped his head in a noisebox of melodic TV static.

Surprising to him, and probably surprising to everyone they know, Satoru remains quiet, the only sound from him the hush-humming of his breathing and the tap-tapping of his foot. So he can turn his chatter functions off when he wants to. This entire time, Suguru thought the switch was broken.

Then, as if Satoru could hear his thoughts, telling him he’s thinking too soon, there’s a hand placed on his shoulder. Fingers press into his collarbone when he doesn’t offer an immediate reaction. “Hey, Suguru.”

“Hm?”

“Look over here.”

“Eh? Why?” Turning unassumingly, just barely separating Satoru’s voice from the audio of the track, during the transition to what Suguru believes is the tenth song, he takes the headphones off. Lets them fall around his neck as the record keeps spinning spinning spinning, guitar faint in the background, and then—

Oh.

They’re kissing. Satoru surging forward, eyes closed and head tilted. The whole works.

It’s chaste. Clean, the way everyone’s dream first kiss is imagined to be. So textbook perfect it could be an episode-ending still-frame of a romance drama, or a screentoned page of a shoujo manga. A full-color spread in an otherwise sepia backdrop. The warm glow of traveling sunlight turns their shadows on the wood into smears of red bean over a pastry.

Suguru’s blinking, blinking so fast as the world swims around him, doesn’t think he has any other reaction but to blink. He pulls away eventually when he processes that he should. Synapses firing, cheeks burning like ceramics fired in a kiln. Drop him and he’s shattering into a thousand scattered pieces no amount of glue could fix. “Satoru, what are you—”

The silence is a cracked porcelain bowl. “I just wanted to try it,” he says, filling in its gaps with gold. “What’s high school without a first kiss, right?”

“That’s—” Suguru’s pulse drums behind his ears, clattering like a shopping cart into a door sliding open too slow. Heart murmurs, they call it—when you can hear the sound of your body keeping you alive. “That’s something you should do with someone you like.”

“Well you’re someone I like.”

And Suguru knows—words like that don’t mean anything. Satoru doesn’t lend himself to sincerity, says jarring things of that sort to stir him up all the time. Leaning into his spaces, letting touch linger too long, staring when there’s a dozen other things to fix his gaze on instead. That’s how he is. A born flirt, someone who’s not receptive to boundaries. Or maybe someone who is, but ignores them altogether.

Shaking his head, unable to bring himself to look Satoru in the eyes, Suguru mutters with his sand dune of a throat, “Not like that, idiot.”

“Then like what?”

No answer. No viable answer. Suguru trains his gaze on the toecap of his shoes, realigning his feet so they meet at a gap in the floorboards, so quiet and vapid he’s nothing but a humid smother of warmth in an unairconditioned apartment. The slight tickle of pollen under the nose, not enough to make someone sneeze. But in his head, there’s a firework show. Burning hot and colorful, visible from kilometers away, beneath bridges and atop skyscrapers. So loud he could deafen himself with the noise of his thinking.

Satoru’s hand finds his wrist, strange as touch in a dream. It should be a familiar thing by now, a comfortable stroke of thumbpad against skin, but it feels—newborn. Juvenile, like learning to crawl. Then learning to stand. Then learning to walk.

And then, in bizarrely natural progression, they’re holding hands. Fingers laced in the back of a record shop with Suguru’s heart clanging every drum and cymbal in the kit of his ribs. Something tells him to pull away, that this is wrong. All wrong. That friends don’t do this. That they shouldn’t kiss and press their cheeks together to share headphones and hold hands in a place where someone could see.

Everything around him is tactile, but everything within him is slack. Suguru doesn’t flex his fingers, or let his knuckles press against Satoru’s, or do anything. He’s just there letting happenings around him happen. The song on the album registers as distant noise with the headphones hanging at his neck, like listening to a neighbor playing their keyboard late at night through the walls. It’s there, Suguru can decipher the melody, but can’t hear the phrasing. Whether or not they’re using the damper pedal, just if they’re hitting the right notes.

But then Satoru’s whistling a tune, a song Suguru had played for him once back at the dorms, and music to him is clear again. The world’s still swimming, hasn’t stopped to tread in one place for even a moment, but now in shallower waters where ripples are visible at the surface. It’s less dizzying when there’s something telling you what’s up and what’s down. A little more and he’ll be able to take a breath.

Maybe the album ends sometime as Suguru collects his thoughts, tea-ceremony still. He doesn’t know, isn’t sure when, no longer listening for the music in the headphones. The tonearm has traversed from black vinyl to the orange label around the spindle hole. It must be over, by now. Suguru didn’t get to hear how it ended. He’ll have to give it a relisten later during a calmer, less turbulent slot of free time. Preferably without Satoru to fracture his composure.

“Should we go? We’ll be able to beat rush hour if we leave right now.”

Normalcy again. Suguru’s heart is back to the pattern of a standard backbeat. A simple groove, his foot the high-hats on the eighths, his fingers the kicks on one and three, his pulse the snare on two and four.

Satoru keeps whistling, moving into the chorus. Everything about him is—normal. A default setting like a shiny new game console right out of the box, or the ocean landscape in the wallpaper of Suguru's phone he never bothered to change until recently. So unaffected it disturbs Suguru in turn.

But when Satoru rubs circles over his knuckles, thumb running a lap around a mountain for its daily jog, and doesn’t let go even as they pass the shopkeeper at the cash register, Suguru’s heart is slamming every piece of his rib set again. Drums rolling, a trash can ending that never truly ends.

vi. masaki matsubara - silly crush

None of the backstreets in Japan seem to have names—that’s what Satoru decides is his ultimate gripe as he’s walking laps around this unfamiliar area. It’s Hachiman Bridge here, f*ckagawa Park there. Family Mart on one corner, 7-Eleven on another. The assigned numbers of each block have been lost track of long ago. Any more of this meandering and he might scream and startle someone’s small, combative little dog.

For some reason, bridges all seem to have names no matter the shape or size. Larger than life architectural structures or a meager thing of stone to pass over a creek. Satoru learned this during an assignment once. There’s a curse, or maybe multiple curses, bothering the locals in Itabashi ward. There’s been sightings near Shakujii River and other bodies of water. Here’s a list of places it’s been spotted at. Take care of it, will you? He spun himself dizzy that day trying to differentiate one red bridge from another. But when it comes to streets, nomenclature is not something they know.

In a perfect world, this process would be much more streamlined. Satoru could just fly in the sky as he sometimes does to scope for targets during missions, but that requires a barrier to be thrown up. If the higher-ups were to discover that he used his powers without one, he’d be lectured by Yaga-sensei into the next week with his calves folded beneath his thighs, weight pressing back against his ankles in that nightmarish formal sitting position. That’s too much trouble. He could terraform the entire area with Red, but that would be excessive, and impractical, and would make him seem too much like a comic book villain. There are civilians around. The only person likely to be left standing would be Suguru. Also too much trouble.

So instead, he’s winding around the streets with barely any sense of what he’s searching for, could be diving for a lost diamond ring on a wide expanse of rocky seafloor and still feel just as hopeless.

Suguru told him to search for a phoenix-shaped hand washer near the reception of a shrine. Why that, of all things, Satoru doesn’t know. They could’ve gone with something easy for the rendezvous, like the Hachiko statue or the Roppongi spider and spared a little pocket change for the extra fare, but Suguru’s a specific guy. He likes it when things are efficient and proper, takes the scenic route only when there’s time to kill. All this confusion just to tag along with him to a used bookstore that probably smells like old people and aged, acid-decayed paper.

The lengths Satoru goes to spend time with him.

Doing a three-sixty spin, Satoru thinks he’s back to where he started. The streets of Tokyo are beginning to smell a lot like regret.

[FROM: suguru!! ✧〜٩(^▿^)۶〜✧]

[6:57] it’s literally one of the most noticeable things in the area

After doing a few to a dozen laps around the block, somewhere along the front of an elementary school, Satoru spots Suguru crouched to the ground in front of a wall of green gates, knees to his chest and his palm outstretched, the cord of earbuds a contrail of white cutting through the black storm of his hair.

He’s feeding kittens.

Three stray calicos, no collar around any of their necks, faces freckled with round patches of black fur like watermelon seeds. Suguru’s breaking up pieces off of a konbini onigiri to offer to them, fingers clinging with starch as if they’re covered in the melt of heated candy coating. Sticky as fairy floss warmed dark on his skin.

How unlike him, Satoru thinks.

Suguru has so many different sides. Prickly sides, friendly sides, sides soft as the crumb of fresh milk bread at the bakeries. In these moments, when Satoru is given a glimpse, he finds that his chest feels—full.

How cute of him, Satoru’s brain then corrects.

But this isn’t the time for that. He brings both palms to his cheeks and shakes the thought away. Saves it for another day when he isn’t channeling his energy into trying to sound pissed instead. As Suguru’s curling salmon roe and rice grain into a torn piece of seaweed, he near shouts, “There isn’t a phoenix around here, you stupid f*cking liar!”

Suguru startles, looking around quick and fast like a squirrel at sudden construction noise. All three cats do the same, a glow to their eyes in the evening sun. Green to gold, dilated circles to slits. “It’s you,” is all he says, as if disappointed that he turned for nothing.

“It’s me.” Satoru raises an accusatory finger, probably too far away for Suguru to tell that he’s pointing, but close enough to appear discernibly upset. “Now meeting face-to-face with a phony! A cheat!”

“Stop being so damn dramatic,” Suguru drones. A paw is pressing at his knuckles once the last bite of onigiri is finished. His attention is averted in an instant, moving to pet each cat with impossibly gentle touch. The same hands Satoru had watched knead curses like dough for swallowing, over and over, also have the capability to be so, so tender. Scratching the kittens on the tops of their heads, behind their ears, along their chins.

“Shouldn’t you be like, I don’t know, meeting me by the dumb hand washer like we agreed?” The scraping of heels against concrete and he’s a meter away from Suguru. From a distance, this must seem to be a confrontation between delinquents. Which, even Satoru could admit, is vaguely true. They don’t exactly fit the image of normal, respectable teenagers, even if Suguru always acts the part. A pop idol and a mobster, like Shouko had said. “Or does it really not exist like I suspect and you’re just f*cking with me.”

“It’s right across from the shrine,” answers Suguru as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. It isn’t, because otherwise, Satoru wouldn’t have done laps around the vicinity like a dizzy little pomeranian on an agility course.

“You tell nothing but lies.”

Monotone, “No, seriously. I’m telling the truth.”

Satoru is not convinced. Sometimes, Suguru does this thing where he smiles to himself, leaning more towards smirk than grin, when he thinks nobody will catch him. Like clockwork, Satoru catches him.

This asshole.

“What are you even doing all the way over here?”

“I saw these three guys on my way,” Suguru explains. It’s reasonable. If Satoru walked by some kittens, as excited for scraps as feeding baby birds, he would’ve stopped too. “They seem like siblings, don’t they? I was hungry and bought a couple of onigiri but I ended up not eating either of them. But that’s alright. These guys are the ones who ended up getting full instead.”

“Money well spent, if you ask me.”

“Right?” Suguru smiles with both eyes and teeth, the strip of his bangs falling against his cheek like a streamer down the face of a living room wall. Except there’s no glitter or cake or party hats—just sunglow. Feet planted on sidewalk. Five-petaled plum blossoms flowered and cheery. Tufts of overgrown fur shedding with each brush of fingertips. In moments like these, Suguru looks so—pretty.

Satoru’s stomach does the thing. The backflipping, cartwheeling, somersaulting thing. A whole gymnast’s routine.

One of the kittens, the smallest one with a patch of brown around its left eye, nuzzles Suguru’s palm, pressing its ears into the bends of his fate lines. Satoru crouches down next to him and reaches out to one of them too, hands open and unassuming the way they say you should approach animals. No malice. The halves of its face are split in two colors, syrupy orange-brown and black as dark as carbon, freckled in small splotches of white. It stares at him, slowly wincing. Up at his face and down at his hand, deliberating whether it should reach out its paw.

In this moment, the cat is not the one at risk in the face of a threat—Satoru is. Animals don’t take well to him for some mystical, unknown reason, but that never stops him from approaching them regardless. “Let’s shake hands, yeah? C’mon little guy.” He makes small, beckoning motions with his fingers. Five little friends in a welcoming invitation. Hey, you can trust us! We won’t do anything to harm you. Hands are for making others feel safe.

It lifts up a front leg eventually. Suguru turns over to watch the exchange, fingers still working diligently in scratching the other two cats behind their ears with both hands. Satoru’s new acquaintance seems to be making the proverbial leap of trust, pressing its paw into his palm like taking the first step into fickle ocean waters at the threshold of the shore. Unsure and precarious, but doing it anyway.

The cat is so, so cute, such a sweet thing. Really. His heart soars. The gumdrop pink of its tongue, its little whiskers, how it blinks the full moons of its eyes, almost reminding him of—

—and then he’s scratched.

“Ouch!” He yanks his hand away like he burned himself. “What the f*ck.”

Suguru turns away to hide his laugh. It’s poorly stifled, his breath coming out of his nose with every giggle in his throat. Irritated, Satoru shoves him with his unmarred hand, just barely forceful, but it nearly has him toppling over. He’s fighting the slight slant of his smile. His face just might start cramping from how difficult it seems for him to try to keep his expression neutral. It works so hard around the clock to maintain the resting bitch face—maybe it’s time for the break that its due.

For once, Satoru doesn’t have to consciously will himself to sulk for the sake of their dumb, friendly banter—he does so on his own. “‘s not funny.”

“You’re right. It’s hilarious.”

“You’re a f*cking asshole,” he grumbles. Holding up his palm, he shows Suguru the line running parallel to the crease of his joint that shouldn’t be there. “Look! I’m bleeding.”

He’s not actually bleeding. Just a sliver of red.

“They sell My Melody bandages at the Lawson nearby,” Suguru says once he seems to have finished laughing, dead serious. He could narrate a slapstick game show, so incomprehensible it could entertain Satoru for a few mindless hours, with a straight face. “I’ll buy you some.”

Satoru shakes his head. “Get me Pikachu.”

“The pink would suit you better,” disagrees Suguru. “You and your gravitation towards cutesy things. The flower boy image too.”

“But I want Pikachu,” he says, still indignant. Not like Suguru is wrong. Pink is his favorite color and Sanrio is his favorite character franchise, his phone plastered with the stickers that come in those translucent sheets at train station kiosks. He’s scratched so many of them off there might as well be permanent adhesive under his fingernails, a halo of residue in the shape of Hello Kitty on the back of his phone. A My Melody bandage would not be uncharacteristic of him. He's just staunch about his right to pick and choose.

As if delivering terrible news, Suguru places a hand on his shoulder. “But you’re not going to get Pikachu.”

Satoru huffs. “Well if you’re gonna buy them for me, we should go before it gets too late.”

For once, Suguru’s the one writing off the importance of time. “It’s only around seven. The place closes at nine,” he reasons, hands empty with a lack of onigiri bits to offer to the kittens. Just little flecks of seaweed remain on his fingers, and he lets the last bits be licked away too by their shy tongues.

“I don’t wanna be the guy that hangs around at a bookstore ‘til closing.” As the cats traipse around in circles, aimlessly searching for new subjects of interest, Satoru checks the analog clock on his phone for confirmation. The estimate was exactly right—seven on the dot. “I’m not a nerd like you are.”

That makes Suguru wince. “Who’re you calling a nerd?”

“You’re into film study,” Satoru snipes. “That’s a nerd pastime.”

“Don’t wanna hear that from someone who doesn’t have any hobbies.”

“I have hobbies!”

“Like what?” Suguru stands up, straightening himself out after his body had long settled into the squatting position, limbs an origami lotus unfolding as he smooths out his creases. “Watching dramas all day doesn’t count.”

“It can be! Anything can be a hobby, can’t it? Grandmas go to the mountainside to weed wild plants for fun. People make hobbies out of anything.” Similarly, Satoru stands up as well. He’s much more flexible and his joints aren’t as stiff—another reason why he believes Suguru is actually an old man wearing a teenager’s skin—and shrugs instead of doing any stretching. “I’ve decided that mine are being the strongest and the handsomest and the smartest. The things I’m best at doing.”

Suguru makes a sour face.

“I’ve also gotten into collecting Digimon figurines and Pokémon cards,” he adds. “I’ve been talking with Yuu lately. He has the holographic first-edition Charizard. I’m so damn jealous.”

“Hm.” A sidelong glance. “Yuu’s definitely a nerd. Wouldn’t that make you a nerd too?”

Opening his mouth, before closing it, before opening it again, Satoru says, “I don’t write out an analysis on my favorite, I don’t know—Ghibli movies and how deep and profound the damn color schemes of the films are.” To supplement his point, Satoru flips through the Fun Facts About Suguru department of his brain, memories well-catalogued. “Or write poetry!”

Something rises in Suguru’s expression, so subtle Satoru almost misses it. Embarrassment, maybe? Probably irritation. It’s an emotion he really takes to. “Yeah, whatever.”

Satoru whistles his fanfare in triumph. “Look at that! No denial for once.”

Suguru gives him the exasperated look of someone working customer service and swats the dust off his knees. The only thing he ever allows to touch the ground are the outsoles of his shoes, so Satoru doesn’t understand why he bothers with such a thing. Force of habit, probably. Satoru’s watched him clean up after invisible messes in the school cafeteria dozens of times. The way he stacks their plates and arranges their bowls, the way his pockets are a bottomless pit of Satoru’s candy wrappers until they run into a rare trash bin later in the wild. He even separates the caps from empty PET bottles instinctively, long before the trip is made to the recycling area of a konbini to deposit them.

Thoughtful, attentive Suguru who feeds stray cats before he feeds himself and hangs on to others’ scraps so they don’t have to. The crackle of onigiri wrappers are audible when he tucks his hands into his pockets.

There are these things that make Satoru wonder: how does Suguru find the room and space to be considerate, all at his own expense, without wearing himself out?

It’s magic Satoru has yet to learn the incantation for.

“Should we go?”

“Hm.”

Satoru flips his phone open to check for the time. It reads four minutes after seven. The digits hover over Suguru’s forehead in his wallpaper—it’s a different photo, this time. One of Suguru sleeping with his head in his lap. He tucks it back into his pocket quickly before Suguru can catch a glimpse. Maybe he should change it back to the old photo with Shouko in it; that way, they can at least match, and he wouldn’t have to be so stealthy when he pulls out his phone.

But it’s cute though. Part of him doesn’t want to.

“Point me toward this elusive phoenix on our way there.”

“The walk will take us longer then,” says Suguru, still affectionately observing the cats. One of them paws at the rubber toecap of his sneaker as if it knows he's about to leave and is asking him not to.

“Don’t care.” Satoru shrugs. The cord of his earbuds hangs over the kittens like the loose thread of yarn of a sweater. In harmonized curiosity, all three of them reach to claw at it. He pulls away just in time for them not to. “If I don’t find it, I won’t be able to sleep at night.”

Suguru laughs again. He’s been doing that a lot lately, slowly unraveling in front of Satoru layer by layer, petal by petal. He began as a gated apartment building, top floor with tight security. Now, he’s an unassuming home in a welcoming neighborhood with only its screen door left shut, letting in a draft and any visitors.

It’s nice. He likes this candid side of Suguru.

By then, Satoru’s forgotten that he’s supposed to be wounded. He’s had more painful paper cuts, if he were being honest, but when he remembers, he still thinks to press down on the scratch and wince to pretend it hurts. Just so Suguru can buy him something, something he can keep, be it as silly as some cheap My Melody band-aids with weak adhesive that’ll peel immediately under running water.

Suguru leans in closer to eye the scratch, hands light as he pokes at the fleshy heel of his palm. Satoru has the sudden wild urge to grab and hold them. “Does it actually hurt?”

“Of course it does.”

“Hm. Maybe you’re not as strong as you say.”

Because he's himself, Satoru takes that as a challenge. “You trying to pick a fight?”

Suguru laughs, brushing him off. “Hey, you’re the one who said we should go.”

That quells him immediately. That damn laugh. The way Suguru’s eyes seem to glitter when he smiles.

God, it makes Satoru want to—

He shakes the thought away. A different time, a different time.

“Bye bye!” He waves at the cats before they leave. They’re each doing their own thing now. One stretches with its tail curling midair like a fishhook. The second is grooming itself with licks at its fur, residual food stuck to its paws. The third is walking away, but before it gets too far, it’s shifting back around to mewl at the other two like an eldest child responsible for their little siblings when their mother isn’t there to keep watch.

Not long before night will fall. Suguru turns in the direction Satoru came from, an arrowhead of a GPS pointing west. “Okay. Let’s go,” he says. Satoru lets him lead and shortens his strides to trace his eyes along the square of his shoulders, the pretty nape of his neck, the neat curl of his bun. Everything is so warm. The colors and the flush.

The bookstore is keyed in as their destination, but Suguru seems to be chasing the sunset instead.

vii. slowdive - some velvet morning

Fish, fish, fish.

Golden Week arrives in the form of crowded boutiques and carp steamers. The entire city is in frenzy, only a notch lower in volume than the Laforet building during its annual July sale, girls standing on cardboard boxes nasal screeching into a megaphone about their seventy-five percent off deals! Don’t miss out! Even the lines at the supermarket stretch to the store’s aisles, two poor cashiers manning the registers by themselves, scrambling to check out patrons as quickly and efficiently as possible. They both go through the same exact dialogue: Next in line, please! Do you have a point card? Would you like a bag? Will you need chopsticks? It’s the same mundanity no matter what time of year. Suguru tries to ignore the earworm tune of the fish song wafting from the seafood department.

When you eat fish.

Suguru wants to rip his hair out. Spending a substantial amount of time at Seiyu, or any supermarket, tends to do that to a person.

He’s third in line now, his red and rickety shopping basket dangling from the hanghooks of his fingers. It contains his few contributions to the hotpot party they’re throwing at Shouko’s place—tofu, kombu for stock, shirataki noodles. Satoru’s somewhere with the meats in his basket because he’s the rich boy, and Kento’s in the produce section trying to decide which clingwrapped tray of enoki mushrooms would be most worth his money. Yuu’s already outside waiting with the smallest package of prawns he could find because that’s the most substantial thing he had cash for.

Shouko, by process of elimination, is the host. Also because it turns out that she’s the only one with a working pot and burner at their house, so she’s spared from making any shopping trips. Lucky. She doesn’t have to listen to three different choruses of three different supermarket jingles playing at once.

Smart smart smart.

Suguru’s never regretted leaving without his earbuds and MP3 player as much as he does now. He pulls out his phone to check his texts.

[FROM: idiot]

[10:42] so do we want salmon or do we want cod
[10:43] also do we want chicken meatballs or pork
[10:43] i already grabbed the beef

You’ll get smarter.

Satoru’s response is instantaneous. Texting with a flip phone’s keypad is another one of his strange talents.

[FROM: idiot]

[10:49] damn ur right
[10:50] maybe i should grab some clams too

Making sure to greet the cashier and worker stocking the display of cabbages at the storefront when he exits, Suguru's finally free from the drone of poor speaker-quality music and the cacophony of crackling plastic. He has just a few bags. Their contents bounce off his thigh, fruits in a basket from an orchard. Yuu swallows a shot of konjac jelly whole and waves at Suguru approaching when he looks up from the screen of his Game Boy, the new model that opens and closes. He brings that thing everywhere, plays it any chance he gets. Satoru, by way of his ridiculous luck, gets in line during a break in shopper traffic and meets them outside by the automatic doors. Kento is the last to finish with the most cargo, hauling multiple bagfuls at the bends of his arms. They don’t at all affect the poise of his walk.

“So where does Ieiri-senpai live?” Yuu asks halfway through a chew of another jelly shot. He shuts his Game Boy but doesn’t turn it off. Probably hasn’t reached a checkpoint to save his progress on Final Fantasy V yet.

“Ebisu,” Suguru says, swatting away a fly that threatens to land on his bangs. This hairstyle comes with its share of grief. “Five minute walk from the station.”

“Oh!” Satoru lights up like a Shibuya billboard. “Let’s go to the garden later. The museum too. I wanna take a photo next to one of the giant beers.”

“Absolutely not,” Kento interjects, immediately shooting down the suggestion. “It will be too busy for us to go. And you’re very obviously a high school student. How would that look, taking a photo with an alcoholic beverage?”

“But it’s a supersized fake one.”

"And it's still alcohol."

Suguru nods in agreement. “He’s right, though. It’d be too busy.”

“Eh.” Satoru makes a sour expression. “That’s no fun.”

“We’re about to have a party, dude.”

“But the beers.” Road construction beside them is lined with signs in the shape of little men with helmets in blues and greens—the colors real people don’t come in. Satoru usually loves to point them out but now still wears his frown. “And what fun will a party be if Utahime isn’t there for me to make fun of.”

“Iori-senpai, you mean,” Suguru corrects. “Don’t be rude.”

Pursing his lips, not quite a pout but more of a look of stubborn displeasure, Satoru pushes up the bridge of his sunglasses. The skip in his step is lost, much less enthusiastic. “I still want to go to the garden.”

“Next time. On a day off or something,” Suguru compromises, half to bate the complaining and half in genuine promise because he knows—even if he would never admit it—that he can never really say no to Satoru.

The entire entourage arrives at the threshold of Shouko’s house a little before noon. She welcomes them exaggeratedly like a news anchor reporting a crime with too much pep, police lexicon dotted with emphasized pauses in between. Door swinging open, daytime television grin in her voice. Part of the job is to entertain, and part of being a host is to be hospitable, be it stiff and inappropriate or not. She loses that facade quickly enough though.

“It’s all ready on the table.” Pointing over her shoulder at the pot and burner, her eyes run visual laps around the kitchen to recall anything that might be missing.

They set their bags down one by one, Kento’s armfuls sliding off the racks of his arms. Conversely, Yuu places his bag at the corner of a table in the way a waiter would a napkin when there’s hardly any free space, too cluttered with cups and plates and steaming bowls of rice to fit anything otherwise. Each of them unearth their contributions like farmers comparing harvests at the open-air markets.

“I think we might’ve gotten too much,” Satoru says, looking at the full spread of raw foods shared between them.

“I think you’re the only one who got too much. There’s not enough of everything else for all the meat we have,” points out Suguru. Then, he shifts his gaze from Satoru’s haul to Kento’s on the opposite side of the table, to the hefty loot from an especially lucrative raid on the produce section. “Nanami too.”

“Who cares!” Shouko pats Suguru’s shoulder on her way to sit down. “Let’s eat it all anyways. Cooking lots of meat in a hotpot makes it extra delicious.”

Satoru works at picking off the clingwrap over the shiny gold trays the fillets of salmon are packaged with, little tufts of fake leafa*ge for decorative purposes as impossibly green as the grass on shiny new toy sets. Suguru sits across from him and cuts a tofu block into cubes. Kento works on unwrapping what could be a heap of marine plastics for an entire corner of the ocean, the kind of lug gathered from nets in shallow surface waters where plankton feed on sun. Yuu opens up his Game Boy that surprisingly has battery life left. Its power light has yet to turn from green to red. He keeps his eyes on its stoplight.

It's harmonious. Shouko prepares the broth as Suguru moves on to cut four-pointed stars onto the caps of shiitake mushrooms. They’re each assigned with their own kitchen knife, all varied in size. Shouko has the largest, and somehow it feels like a hazard when in her hands.

“The five of us work better together cooking than we do in missions,” she says, breaking open the package of kombu before tossing a sheet into the water to simmer over medium heat. “If Yaga-sensei saw this, he’d shed a tear.”

“It’s better this way,” Kento says, chopping the ends off of a bundle of enoki over its plastic wrapper so as to not scratch the table. Satoru has monopolized the single bamboo cutting board in the house, slicing a salmon fillet into neat cubes. Suguru is left to midair knifework to trim out mushroom stems. “Cooperating with Gojou-senpai during a mission is a migraine waiting to happen.”

“You’re telling me,” Suguru agrees, recalling every single instance Satoru skipped out on deploying a curtain. Or every single instance Satoru abandoned his post because he was bored. “I’m the one who’s always partnered with him.”

“Why are you guys bad-mouthing me when I’m right here.”

“Because we want you to listen.”

“This is harassment.”

“It isn’t,” Suguru replies, shaking his head without glancing upward from his task of cutting geometric shapes into the mushrooms. He’s comfortable enough with cooking to not be worried about splicing his finger open. “But I can show you harassment if you want.”

A brow is arched in challenge. “That a threat?”

“And what if it was?”

“You two,” Shouko interjects, pointing her wide, rectangular blade in their general direction. Vegetable knives are not the most viable weapon in a kitchen drawer, but she treats hers like it is. “You need to stop getting into fights for once.”

“We’re not fighting.” Suguru’s gaze is still trained on his hands.

“I think our definitions of fighting are different from their definitions of fighting, Ieiri-senpai,” Yuu says, pressing away at buttons as he selects which attacks he wants his party members to lay on the Mythril Dragon just randomly encountered. The prawns have been washed and cleaned—Kento doesn’t trust him to cut things—and the base of the broth has already been prepared, so he keeps playing his game while listening in on passing conversation, freckled by sixteen-bit music. “This is small talk to them.”

Fervently, Satoru nods. “Right. Suguru and I love each other very much.”

“Love isn't the right word. It’s more like thinly-veiled, polite dislike,” Suguru corrects, at which Satoru frowns. “Maybe indifference on a good day.”

“Funny thing to say about someone you don’t seem to have a problem ki—”

This time, in the form of a glare, Suguru’s the one holding up a knife. Sharp and cautioning Satoru to not complete the sentence. It works. “Another word out of you and I’m ripping up your new Koda Kumi poster.”

An ultimatum like that, judging from the look of disbelief working onto Satoru’s face, is effective. Suguru has access to scissors and a copy of his room key—Satoru gave him one as a testament to their friendship and probably now regrets it—so it has weight to it too. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“It’s limited edition.”

“Am I supposed to care?”

“You’re f*cking evil, man.”

Shouko interrupts, “What the hell are you two even talking about?”

In unison: “Nothing.”

The others give them both scrutinizing looks, but no matter—it’d be much more humiliating if they discovered that he and Satoru make out sometimes when they’re bored and lazing around in their rooms. This is damage control. The dodging of some particularly damning bullets.

They finish with preparations. Shouko is readjusting the heat of the burner now that the broth has reached a boil. Suguru and Kento arrange the vegetables on a platter once they’ve finished washing them. The fish has been cut into neat cubes and the pork has been sliced to perfect ribbons; Satoru is disconcertingly good with a knife. And Yuu—he doesn’t look up from playing Final Fantasy, knees folded to his chest on his chair in undisturbed focus.

All that’s left is to cook, and even that is a collaborative effort. They each drop fistfuls of vegetables into the broth—daikon and carrots first to soften. After waiting a few minutes and brushing off scraps of stray potato skins littering the table, the shiitake and enoki mushrooms follow. Then the greens after—Shouko winces when some of the boil splatters onto her hands. Only a few droplets, but she yanks her hand away in recoil anyways. A small area to the side is where Satoru stirs different meats around in the broth. Hotpots have their own special kind of peaceful harmony—this is a bonding exorcise completely unlike the team missions assigned to them at school.

“Here. This part is good. Have some,” is what Suguru says as he’s dropping a particularly fatty cut of beef the right shade of grey-brown onto Yuu’s plate before grabbing his own.

“Ah, thank you, Getou-senpai!” Yuu beams. He’s saving his game now that he’s reached a checkpoint, flipping his Game Boy closed and setting it to the side too close to the edge of the table for Suguru’s comfort. One swipe of the elbow and it’s nosediving onto varnished hardwood, corners scuffing as it flips and clatters onto the floor. Attentively, Suguru moves it to a safer place on the table. “No need to trouble yourself.”

“No, it’s nothing,” he insists. Suguru fosters fondness for Yuu—just as everyone does towards his puppy-like demeanor, even when stiff individuals like Kento would never admit it.

Just because he feels eyes on him, Suguru briefly glances over at Satoru, who’s leveling him with the sort of look one wears when unwillingly bearing witness to something they wish they hadn't. “That was the slice of meat I was saving for myself,” he says, dejected.

“Okay, and?” Suguru shrugs. A thin line cuts across Satoru’s face—the press of lips together in irritation. “I beat you to it. Any longer and it would’ve overcooked.”

“I’m the one who paid for it.”

And now he’s pouting. He’s so f*cking dramatic.

“Sorry, Gojou-senpai,” apologizes Yuu, clapping both palms in front of him in a miniature bow. “I’ll give you part of my red bean roll when we have lunch together next time.”

“That’s totally not a fair exchange.”

“The whole thing, then?”

"Get me two."

Suguru cuts in, “Quit picking on your juniors.” If it weren’t poor table manners to do so, he’d accusingly point his chopsticks in Satoru’s face. Instead, he settles on reaching over the width of the table and flicking him in the forehead. There was plenty of time for him to dodge it, grab Suguru’s wrist and pry it away, but Satoru does nothing to intercept. Just drops another slice of beef of a slightly less delicious cut into the hotpot and watches it turn.

He keeps pouting.

Sighing, Suguru makes an offer just to get him to stop. “I’ll pay next time we get sukiyaki.”

He’ll come to regret that statement, he realizes belatedly, because right then, as if it were bait all along, Satoru smiles triumphantly. “That a promise?”

Irritation gathers quickly at Suguru’s temples. Another blow to his wallet; it’s already riddled with Satoru-inflicted bullet holes, when he’s not even the one from the great and venerable Gojou family. “You’re insufferable.”

“It’s a yes or no question.”

A long, exhausted sigh. “Sure.”

Shouko wears a stern look, concern thick in the knit of her eyebrows. “Suguru,” she says, adding potato into the hotpot for starch. They’ve dented a third of the overall amount of food so far—Satoru is reaching in for a fillet of salmon and crosses chopsticks with Suguru who’s going for more veggies. “You shouldn’t give in that easily to him.”

“I thought you didn’t want us to keep arguing.”

“I don’t.” Shouko raises a finger like a teacher would when emphasizing something especially important in a lecture. This would seem to be a call towards topics or questions covered on entrance exams to the average student. To them, a finger means Yaga-sensei nagging them about the importance of following orders. “Just have some backbone. I can’t believe you have such a huge soft spot for this total idiot.”

“Soft spot? That’s not—”

“If Gojou-senpai were to be kidnapped for ransom and a note was nailed to Getou-senpai’s door,” says Kento after chewing a drooping leaf of napa cabbage, “he would give up all his worldly belongings, probably. The kidnappers would end up asking for more.”

“Eh, so Gojou-senpai is your weakness?” Yuu nudges him in the side with his elbow, smiling.

“He very obviously is.”

Suguru rapidly shakes his head. “No. He isn’t.”

“Aren’t these two so stupid?” Shouko disapprovingly shakes her head like a tired mother of four, too weary to chide her too-rowdy children and instead mumbles grievances to herself, wondering where she went wrong. “Suguru’s the tsundere to end all tsundere. He’d give Daikuuji Ayu a run for her money.”

An insult if he’s ever heard one. They don’t give him room to speak.

Snarkiness is a permanent character flaw of Satoru’s. That should be obvious by now, synonymous with him like poor physical attack powers in a roleplaying video game. In Final Fantasy V, the main character has the lowest magic stat and the most painfully easy-going personality in the party. Suguru learned as much by proxy of Yuu’s narration as he played, summarizing the plot after every major event in the game. If Satoru were in a video game, he’d have the highest magic stat, the lowest likeability, and be the smuggest asshole in the entire cast. Even more so than the villain.

Oh, Suguru would give anything to wipe that dumb smile off his face.

“I said so before, didn’t I? Suguru loves me very much.” Plucking daikon and pork belly and pouring a ladle of soup over them in his bowl, Satoru takes a bite, grinning. Once he finishes chewing, he says, “He loves me so much he can never say no.” He turns to Suguru, crowdsourcing for an answer, nudging his calf under the table. “Isn’t that right?”

Suguru wants to land an uppercut on his chin. Too bad Infinity wouldn’t allow for that.

“You know,” says Shouko, a slice of meat held with her chopsticks. It leaves traces of ponzu sauce on the table after she dips it, a smattering between two plates like the trail of a thought bubble. The preemptive contemplating before you speak. “You’ve opened up a lot more, Suguru. When we first met, you were way more reserved. Kind of like you didn’t have interest in anyone, just in general. Now, the way I see it, you seem pretty friendly with even strangers.”

“Mhm.” Yuu nods, thoroughly chewing his mouthful before chiming, “Ieiri-senpai is right! I’ve noticed it too. Gojou-senpai really rubbed off on you, I think.”

He’ll have to say—Suguru doesn’t like this whole psychoanalysis bit. In complete disregard to the way he pokes his food with his chopsticks, a couple cubes of tofu swimming in broth in his small bowl, not looking up because these kinds of conversations are just plain dreadful, the talk still carries on.

“Yeah. Definitely Satoru’s influence,” Shouko affirms, and the thought of becoming anything like Satoru at all has him wanting to burrow in the ground and hibernate forever.

Satoru?

Of all people?

That’s just—embarrassing to hear out loud.

“Uhm, not really?” he responds, unsure of how to deflect the conversation. He didn’t notice that change in himself at all, simply thought he acted as he always did. Spoke as he would, acted as he would, existed as he would. Was it really so obvious?

Was it?

No way it could've been.

But that's the thing. Change is subtle, not a pulpy heartbeat behind the ears but something faint. Breathing while you sleep. The pulling of clouds over sky and that shimmering moment when something around you shifts—at first undiscerned, doused in light one minute before glancing up to see you’re now under grey-white shade, clothes still sunwarm from just moments ago.

That’s how Satoru befriended him, and now, that’s how Satoru changed him. Still changes him, one small subtlety at a time. Awareness of that makes Suguru’s cheeks burn.

Their eyes meet. Unintentional on Suguru’s part, innocently glancing ahead out of the assumption that Satoru wasn't looking. Unfortunately he was, still is, because he always does the things Suguru hopes he doesn’t do, catches him fumbling when Suguru wishes he wouldn’t. Non-verbal attrition is not an easily won pixel-man battle out of one of Yuu’s video games. No amount of strategizing will soften the blow of that blue, blue gaze.

“See? Even the others noticed.”

They eat in quaint laughter. As a means of distraction, the supermarket fish song works its way back into Suguru’s head. He bites into a block of potato, considers how to best embarrass Satoru next time, and says nothing in protest.

viii. anri - windy summer

Paper lanterns.

Those are what’s lining the edges of Satoru’s vision as he walks with the crowd through the food stands, accompanied by the affable clack of wooden sandals and carrying drift of fry smoke. No matter where he turns, there’s people. Tenugui towels wrapped around heads, omen masks, plastic trays of street food steaming the air, white winter breath in midsummer. So many signs and disembodied voices he could lose himself in them.

Satoru figures he should start his food crawl somewhere in this corner of the festival, but there are far too many options for him to choose from. Fish cake, taiyaki, beef yakitori. Decisions. With each step he takes, he’s making another owlish turn at a stand he passes by. Grilled shellfish, tamagoyaki in neat rectangles, octopus. All the frying and grilling on hot iron plates does nothing but add to the cloying summer heat. He keeps walking.

His phone chimes, a three-step ringtone that pierces the crowd noise like an arrow through a chest.

[FROM: suguru!! ♡ (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)]

[7:55] where are you?

They’re here on assignment. Watch the large gatherings at the festivals, the higher-ups said. Curses thrive most in crowds of people. The more negative energy is concentrated in one area, the stronger they become. An over-complicated way to tell them they’re festival security, but that’s the last thing on Satoru’s mind—missions. Responsibilities. The greater good of mankind.

Who cares about sh*t like that on a day like this? It’s Obon.

Not a single curse has appeared during the entirety of Satoru’s time here so far, which has amounted to a whole twenty-eight minutes. That’s a good sign at least, and all he hopes is for the trend to continue so he can focus his efforts on more worthwhile endeavors. For example, consuming as many sweets as possible or wasting away the rest of his cash on games instead.

[FROM: suguru!! ♡ (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)]

[7:57] shouko went off with iori-senpai
[7:57] i ended up losing the others too

Children stare as he walks by. They tend to do that wherever he goes. One girl waves at him as they pass, her hands clinging to the floral fabric of her mother’s yukata, tripping over her own feet with each step in her too-big sandals. Around her wrist is a pouch with a goldfish, a little orange slice trimmed white with pith. Gossamer for fins. “You’re really tall, mister!” she distantly shouts.

Satoru giggles. After all, he towers over everyone by a head or two, lucky to smell the drifting scent of fried food instead of the breaths of each passerby. It's a privileged life. “I guess I am!”

She waves at him again, her pouch swaying with each swivel of her arm. Back and forth, back and forth, like the beckoning cat that welcomes you from the front desk of an old shop, a place you’d completely miss if you weren’t looking for it, selling incense or archaic porcelain wares. The poor fish gets shaken in its bag. Satoru scurries sideways in a crab walk to not lose sight of her. “Hey, careful with that little guy. Don’t drop him!”

Before long, she disappears into the sea of bodies. He stops in place for a moment. The crowd splits around him like a school of mackerel making way for the rogue that wishes to swim against the current. Satoru can still see the back of her mother’s head and her hair ornament, a snowdrop of florals falling past her ear. Or maybe that isn’t her mother—maybe that’s someone else altogether. There are so many people here. Blink for a second and there’ll be a shift on the chessboard, all the pieces in new positions. A drunk old man will now be meters downward by the stall selling grilled sea bream and a group of children will have moved on to the next festival game, water balloon yoyoing to cork gun shooting.

Turning, he glances upwards towards the banners, the signs varying in fonts and colors, cartoon octopuses on the faces of takoyaki stalls. Gyoza here! Beef bowls! Freshly-made okonomiyaki! If he listens closely enough, he can separate the voices in each repetition of Thank you! and Would you like mayonnaise with that?

Among the stalls, only half the width as the those flanking it, is one for yakisoba buns with a line that stretches the length of an early-morning pachinko queue, a file of patrons scrambling for the first pick of their preferred machine. Satoru scratches his nape as he gets in line, vexed at sheer number. He proceeds to adjust the overfold of his yukata, patterned loudly with waves and koi fish in a contrast of black and white. It fits him a bit strangely, too short in some places with too much fabric in others, but it's good enough.

As he’s bringing up his hand fan to his face to cool himself down, there’s someone tugging on the back of his collar. Suguru with grilled squid held between his teeth, fingers tight around the bamboo skewer as he tugs it downwards to supplement his bite. No earbuds. The yukata he’s wearing—blue with white dragonflies, similar to one Satoru wore in his childhood—is a bit too big on him, too loose altogether. It’s probably his fathers in the way Satoru’s is his uncle’s, ill-fitting but passable. It's been far too long since Satoru last cared to dress the way the rest of his family does, and regular, average people like Suguru don't have any reason to bother tying an obi every morning.

But over anything else, Satoru notices—Suguru is wearing his hair down. In public. Where people can see. So rare it could be an open seat on the Yamanote line during rush hour or the final custard bun at his favorite bakery past ten o’clock. That’s how this sight makes Satoru feel, like he’s experiencing some sort of lucky streak. Suguru never wears his hair down unless he plans to stay indoors, lazing around with Satoru at the dorms with it spidery and loose on the pillows. Today, Satoru gets the pleasure of seeing his hair properly combed out and parted, coupled with festival clothing and a summer evening glow. A blessing, truly. Satoru loves his hair like this. It falls in black curtains over his shoulders.

His greeting is simple: “Yo.”

“It’s down,” Satoru says, reaching for Suguru’s wrist to pull his hand away, but his grip is too firm and he yanks it again. It makes Satoru stumble backwards a step, legs too long to maintain steady footing. His tightrope walker’s balance is only in effect when his guard is up.

“Is that how you greet someone?”

“I’m just happy to see that it’s down.”

Blinking up at him in wonder, Suguru asks, “What’s down?”

“Your hair.”

Suguru brings his hand up to swipe at the ends, rolling a clump between his fingers as if feeling up the fabric of a soft blanket. Then he smiles. “It is. Is it weird? Kind of is, isn’t it?”

Shaking his head so profusely it could give him whiplash, Satoru objects, “No. Not at all actually.” And it’s then that Satoru finds himself smiling softly, fond. “I like it.”

“Mm, thanks.”

“I didn’t expect you to find me so fast.”

“I walked past Nakamise and saw how packed it was. Figured I didn’t want to stand around and wait for you for a millennium,” Suguru says, scanning the area as if on a reconnaissance mission. In Satoru’s opinion, those are the most boring of their assignments, but Suguru carries them out by default anyway, over-cautious. Satoru almost forgets that they’re supposed to be hunting for curses right now, but that doesn’t seem to be the reason why Suguru is scoping the crowd so closely. He just seems annoyed. “God, it’s so busy.”

“When is it not busy in Asakusa.” The bamboo spokes of Satoru’s fan appear to bend when he waves it quickly. Its so hot. Suguru doesn’t seem to be sweating a drop. “But it’s fun, isn't it? Way more lively than sitting around in a classroom in those tiny desks.”

“I guess.” A shrug. Nonchalant and neutral. “Just not a fan of huge gatherings.”

“Then do you not go to festivals often?”

“I do,” Suguru says in between each chew of squid. “I usually go with my parents, but we end up just staying for the fireworks.”

“I have some.”

“Have what?”

“Fireworks.” Satoru turns his shoulder to gesture Suguru’s eyes toward his tote bag. “I’ve got ‘em in here. They’re just sparklers, though. Bought some at Lawson before I came.”

“I don’t think I trust you with fire. Especially fire that’s flickering.”

“Oh, shut up.” Fanning himself with a flick in his wrist, Satoru adjusts the fold of his yukata again. A little more open so the draft hits more of his skin. “Nothing in the world I can’t handle.”

“You sure?” Suguru raises a pensive eyebrow. He’s been chewing that same bite of squid at the side of his cheek for a while. It might’ve been overcooked, but Suguru’s never been one to complain about the food prepared for him or the things given to him by others, whether or not he paid and whether or not it was worth the money. The exception to this rule is Satoru, of course; he isn’t grouped into the category of others even in the extension of Suguru’s politeness. “Last time I checked, you can’t even handle washing your own dishes without shattering a bowl in the sink.”

“Hey, even a guy like me makes mistakes sometimes,” says Satoru. The slow inch forward of the queue makes him feel as if he’s watching a thousand-meter fuse burn. Suguru’s concentrated on getting another mouthful of squid like a puppy learning to use its new teeth, attention on a chew toy and nothing or nobody else. “That bowl of Shouko’s was totally old anyway.”

The line steadily shortens, one guaranteed step with each passing minute. It went from thirty, to twenty, to ten. But that’s only Satoru’s approximation, too occupied with counting each bead of perspiration running past his temples to keep track of time. The current tally is nine on the left, thirteen on the right. “It’s so f*cking hot.”

Suguru slides the final bite of squid along the length of the skewer, slipping it into his mouth in a single fluid motion. “Summer in July. That’s just how it is.”

“After this, let’s get something cold,” Satoru suggests, eyeing servings of karumeyaki cooking in their miniature frying pans. “And sweet.” There are so many possibilities—melon bread with vanilla ice cream sandwiched in the middle, shaved ice. Anything sugary and refreshing would do.

Suguru moves to stow his skewer away into the plastic trash bag inside of Satoru’s tote. For once, he’s the one who showed up empty-handed. This morning, Satoru had talked him out of bringing along an entire outdoors survival kit worth of supplies with him. His water bottle, a package of cooling towels, salt candies for water retention. Asked Satoru if there was anything he was forgetting. Over the phone, Satoru had made fun of him relentlessly for being too excessive—he doesn’t even get bothered that easily in the heat—and said he’s too motherly with the way he worries. Annoyed, Suguru proclaimed he wouldn’t bring anything at all, told Satoru he should be the one who comes prepared for once, and hung up.

He says, “I have no idea how you do it.”

“How I do what?”

“Eat so much sugar.” After tearing open a package of wet wipes and wiping his hands down, Suguru adds after a thoughtful pause, “But I guess I have no clue about most things you do.”

“It’s part of the magic.” Satoru shimmies his hands to gesture for sparkle effects. All he’s missing is the silk scarf and the top hat. “The Gojou Satoru magic.”

In a half-scoff, Suguru laughs. A three-beat chuckle. “Of course.”

They’re almost to the front. A measly three people away from the fry of oil and grease-golden noodles. Each clack of wooden geta sandals marks another step closer. Bows and apologies are offered by the people weaving between the line to pass through. Folding his arms over his chest, Satoru asks, “What do you wanna do after this?”

“No idea, to be honest.”

“I saw a girl with a goldfish,” he then mentions, less to supplement a suggestion but more to contextualize his certainty, pretending he doesn’t have an agenda. “I wanna go scoop some.”

“Oh.” Suguru’s brows knit in wonder, the expression one makes when trying to recall the first name of a friend they haven’t spoken to since early childhood, or trying to remember the street of an obscure restaurant they vaguely think they’ve eaten at. “I haven’t done that since—the fifth? Sixth year of elementary school?”

Satoru hasn’t either, but that doesn't matter. “And you’re gonna do it again as a first year in high school.” His voice comes out shimmery as loose glitter. “Exciting, right?”

Suguru does not appear to be excited. “The paper scoops make it way too hard, though.”

A dismissive wave of the hand. “It’ll be no problem for me.”

“Hm. That’s what you always say.”

Satoru asks for two yakisoba buns when it’s their turn to order. The wired, tired uncle manning the iron griddle with two steel spatulas efficiently scoops and stirs noodles with a feigned smile. He’s probably done this all morning, his white headband damp with sweat. It takes not even a minute before two steaming buns are passed over to them with a bow and two hands. Suguru makes sure to thank him thoroughly for his hard work. As to not seem rude in comparison, Satoru does the same, though much less eloquently.

“Man, this reminds me of middle school,” he says, passing one over to Suguru with quick fingers. The wax paper that holds the bread is hot enough to scald. He blows on it, the scent of fried carbs washing him in the face with steam. The first bite punches him with nostalgia. “Or a cultural festival, or those crazy high school cafeteria lines you see in anime where everyone fights to the death for the last anpan.”

“They’re like that in real life too,” Suguru corrects, walking steps ahead of Satoru to make way for those behind them to order. “Without the death part.”

It takes them minutes to scarf down their buns, sweet-savory comfort in every chew. True to form, Suguru eats it slow and appreciatingly. Takes smaller, more thoughtful bites. Satoru is faster about it, in a rush to find the fabled tub of goldfish somewhere on these festival grounds haloed by laughter and gentle swishes in water.

“I’m pretty sure the fish scooping is somewhere over there.” He points westward—or maybe it’s east, or maybe it’s north—makes no real difference. All he knows is that it’s to their left, the direction most people are heading. Towards the central tower, probably.

“Don’t forget—we need to keep our guard up,” reminds Suguru, always remembering his job is to be the serious one in their partnership. “Curses don’t care if it’s Obon.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Satoru picks off a corner of his bun and pops it into his mouth. “We can exorcise whatever we see, but we haven’t seen anything. So for now, let’s not mention it, yeah?”

“We’re still in the middle of an assignment. What kind of partner would I be if I didn’t keep you in che—”

Satoru holds a stiff palm to Suguru’s face. A thrifty stop sign of sorts, the gesture trafficmen offer to cars before signaling at pedestrians to cross. “Okay, okay. That’s enough out of you.”

An exhausted sigh follows, but at least Suguru realizes he’s fighting a pointless fight. “You can lower your hand now.”

“Will you stop nagging?”

Another sigh. “I will.”

Satoru brings his arm back down to his side. “Good, good.”

“Are you sure you wanna go that way though? The shrine is always the most busy.” Suguru’s gaze shifts to the waft of smoke in the distance, likely from the incense burners, a wide column of white rising into the sky in the shape of a plume. “What’s even over there?”

“Who knows.” At every possible degree of a flat circle, Satoru turns to examine the facets of their surroundings. The people, the booths, whether or not there are little fish dancing in lukewarm pockets of water poking out of yukata sleeves. “Let’s just look for—”

Before long, he sees it out of the corner of his eye. The wooden sign and the characters and the swarm of school-age kids gathered around a white tub. They do so with the curious wonder of flightless animals peering over the precipice of a cliff, tentative, just enough to gauge the threat of falling. An accidental shove and one of them would trip right into the basin, splashing those surrounding them.

“Suguru, Suguru,” he chants, turning backwards to tug at Suguru’s sleeve. He almost grabs onto a stranger, a rickety old man looking too disgruntled to be bothered with a couple of troublesome teenagers. Satoru would’ve easily yanked him over, pulling him downward face to bricked path, if Suguru wasn’t standing where he was. But he's way too excited to care. “Right over there. Let’s go, let’s go!”

Without much preamble, they’re running, Satoru leading Suguru by the wrist as he picks up speed. He feels like he’s six years old again scurrying through the forest with a bug net in search of beetles. Not a stumble run, not an awkward speedwalk run, but a sprint. Full strides, the valleys between his toes reddening from straining against the straps of his sandals. The threat of tripping grows with each wobble of wood, but Satoru’s balance, when he tries, is as faultless as can be. “Hey, slow the f*ck down. It’s not gonna disappear.”

“But I wanna beat others to it,” Satoru insists, pointing forward with the free hand he’s not hauling Suguru with. “Look—someone else just got in line.” He frowns. “See! This is why we hurry.”

Unexpectedly, Suguru laughs. He cracks up at the most random things—still has the leftover breath to do so despite his earlier complaints about the running. “You’re such a kid.”

“Hey, this is important business.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

They arrive winded, Suguru heaving as he pries his arm away from Satoru’s grip to place both hands on his knees. He’s the type to get tired only in the home stretch, exhaustion hitting him all at once moments before reaching the finish. The cotton of his yukata creases under the grip of his fingers.

“You’re tired from that?” Satoru asks even though he’s worn out too. There’s just an itch for competition he has to scratch.

“Are you a machine?” gasps Suguru, less breathy than before. The air seems to be returning to him. “Who runs that fast?”

With a shrug, he explains, “I used to be on the track team.” Satoru leans over the flock of kids gathered around the water. There’s lots of fish, so many fish. Too many for him to count without mistakes. They’re mostly orange, little squirming darts spreading before coming together again, but there are some anomalies. Some dark as ink, others tie-dyed with white, but one, just one, is freckled like the shell of a quail egg. A smatter of black and orange on shimmering white scales.

“I want that one,” Satoru says, announcing the firmest decision he’s ever made. “The one with the dark spots.”

As ever, Suguru scrutinizes him. “Why would you make it harder for yourself by going for one specific fish? There are probably hundreds of them.”

“I don’t settle." Of course not. That would feel cheap.

So the spotted fish is the one he goes for after a group of six kids have their turn, short fingers clutching the wiry handles of the scoops as they try to coax something, anything out of the water and into a plastic bag to bring home. The older, more experienced children have a much wider margin for success. The three to four-year-olds have yet to learn how to use their hands, but they still giggle at the sight of goldfish scattering with every rake of the water. Eventually, their paper scoops break, wilt like plucked chrysanthemum petals in one of Suguru's cups of tea, and their parents tug them away.

Satoru spends nearly ten minutes agonizing over catching that one fish, too shrewd for its own good (kind of how Suguru is), dodging his every careful attempt and swimming underneath the throng of its companions. In one of the only moments of performance difficulty in his life, and the absolute most devastating, his scoop tears.

The paper on these things is so, so brittle, Satoru laments. More so than he remembers from years ago, weak to just a few dips in water. Drop it in the sea and it’ll disintegrate like sugar. That’s how these stands make their money. Customers, especially children, will keep making attempts until they’re successful. One hundred-yen try after another until the stallkeeper walks away with enough to cover their basic expenses for the next week. Meanwhile, the patrons walk away with one paltry little fish that’s more of a participation trophy than any sort of prize. Kind of like how gambling works.

“I thought you were good at everything,” Suguru smugly says. A missed chance to make a jab to him is like a missed chance to catch a rare bug to Satoru. Regrets of letting a rhinoceros beetle slip away, or letting a bell cricket hop into a tree’s undergrowth, carrying its trillsong with it. Instead of searching sappy oak trees where insects tend to feed, Suguru scrabbles for opportunities to taunt. “Damn, what did you say? It’ll be no problem for me, or something like that, right?”

Satoru scowls. The stallkeeper acts as an accomplice to the joke. “Oh, c’mon. It can’t be that hard to catch just one tiny little guy. Even a kid can do it.”

It takes everything in Satoru to not reply with, f*ck off, old man. But Suguru advised him to mind his manners, as did Shouko in the classic, disinterested drone of her voice when they had visited a bathhouse during their break, Suguru acting as damage control while Satoru made too-casual conversation with reception. Afterwards, they both were bewailing how embarrassing the whole interaction was, how they never want Satoru to do the talking again. Since then, he stands behind them and keeps his mouth amicably shut.

After some deliberation, ignoring the stallkeeper’s remark, he turns to Suguru. “It’s your turn. You can’t make fun of me if you can’t catch it either.”

“Sounds like a challenge.”

“It is.”

“Hm, okay. I accept.”

The stallkeeper hands Suguru a scoop without having to be asked. Suguru trades him for it with two fifty-yen coins and crouches down next to a kid with too-eager hands. They’re sloshing the water around and scattering the goldfish gathered at the walls of the hard-plastic tub. The ripples carry to the other edge and the groups follow.

Satoru hovers over him. The spotted one is hidden somewhere beneath an overlay of its friends like a koi ducking under the bridge stretching over its pond, hiding from visitors as if it knows how to be shy. Suguru doesn’t wet his scoop just yet, his free arm curling around the width of his knees, pressed to his chest in a tight squat. The children, old enough to be somewhat mindful of others, withdraw their arms to watch him watching like a camera crew anticipating a stunt artist to somersault off a roof of a building, theorizing on how they’ll make the landing.

Not a word from him.

Sparrowhawks wait from the branches to swoop for rodents. In due course, the fish pokes its head out from beneath the canopy, no longer shy with the lack of nets casted.

Suguru goes for it, scoop diving into the water.

It happens swiftly. One try and ten seconds and Suguru’s spooning it into the plastic baggie the stallkeeper holds open for him. “Here,” he passes the pouch to Satoru once it’s tied with an overhand knot and a piece of string, hanging delicately off his finger like a charm. A pure, lucky looking thing like a talisman at a doorway or paper streamers on a sacred rope.

“What the f*ck,” Satoru says, impressed and doing nothing to hide it. Holding the pouch in front of him to get a better look, the captive fish stirs and warps through the looking glass of the water. It’s tied by a loop of red cord and has good weight to it on Satoru’s forefinger. Flick the membrane too hard and it’ll be a puddle at his feet. “How’d you do that?”

Suguru takes an inhale through his teeth and performs a practiced tilt of his head. Air-supping in the way people do before they offer a cushioned rejection. Ah, I’m not too sure if that’s the best idea. I think I need to think about that one. Oh, maybe next time, yeah? Perhaps a joke is thrown in there for better, more efficient evasion.

In Suguru’s usage, it’s for satirical performance. He smiles, mild. “It was nothing.”

Asshole.

“I can’t stand you.”

An affirmative nod. “Feeling’s mutual.”

Satoru decides to take the loss for what it is. He knows well what it’s like to outclass someone, and how it should look and feel to be outclassed himself. Quiet defeat is dignified defeat, as his family always told him, so he for once doesn’t protest.

But it’s odd to him, the way Suguru doesn’t even seem satisfied with his success. He never does when he beats Satoru at something, only makes a few smug remarks before shrugging it off altogether.

Satoru asks again, “How’d you do it?”

“You have to level the paper with the water and scoop from the head,” Suguru explains. “Heard someone talking about the technique in some TV program once.”

At another time, months ago, maybe Satoru would make a snide comment about Suguru’s strange choice of shows and entertainment. When he has the focus, he’s the type to gravitate towards arthouse films and B-movie horror for the kitschy aesthetics. Sometimes a mingle of both, like Suspiria with the pinkglow and the geometry. The old Satoru would exclusively consume saccharine romance flicks and resort to Sailor Moon reruns just to waste time when he’s caught up, but the Satoru now is halfway through a Blue Planet marathon, eyes tired from scanning the flick-book change of subtitles. Episodes on polar ice caps and the depth sperm whales can dive and the seabeds of coral that multiply into reefs.

He’s been curious about animals lately. After learning that Suguru loves them to the great extent he does, Satoru figures he should learn to love them too.

But advice on fish scooping? That’s new.

Satoru makes note of the information for next time. He won’t lose the same game twice, always comes back to Pokémon gyms with a vengeance and a different team arrangement after fainting in battle to win the second attempt without fail. That’s the law under which Satoru’s world operates. Suguru’s no Koga with a level forty-three Koffing that knows Toxic, so it’ll be a breeze. It’ll be nothing. It’ll be floating in a pool with a lifejacket on.

“What should we name him?” Satoru asks as they wander the festival grounds. A slow, quiet click to their steps instead of the pelt of running like before.

Suguru shrugs, perusing the nearby food stands the way Satoru's watched him flip through a Jump volume at a konbini magazine stand—thoughtfully, and hungry again also with the wafting scent of pork buns. “You decide. I caught it because you wanted it, after all.”

“Hm.” Satoru contemplates. There’s an aroma coming from somewhere—it’s impossible to separate anything with how the scents come together in collective smoke. But there’s something that carries above the rest, and then it hits him. A lightbulb flickers on in his head with its white-hot filament; they call this an epiphany. “I’m thinking Goma.”

“Goma? Like…sesame?”

Nodding, Satoru holds the baggie up. “It’s ‘cause his little spots look like black sesame,” he says, the air around him thick with the scent of sesame oil. The parallels were right there. “And I kinda want black sesame ice cream.”

“Always sweets on the mind,” says Suguru, trying to lift himself on his toes to see further past heads in front of them. It’s a paltry attempt, really, since he's only offered a few centimeters at best with how difficult it is to balance in geta sandals. “Goma it is, then.”

Satoru hums, fond. “Our son.”

“Son? You’re the last person on earth who should be responsible for a child.”

“I said ours, didn’t I?” Goma turns in the bag, doing a stationary somersault. “We can be pet parents!” Passersby begin to stare because his voice borders on a shout, which makes Suguru shifty, but Satoru's never been one to mind attention. “Fish fathers!”

Suguru laughs, right then. “You’re totally f*cking losing it.”

Following the movement of the crowd, they funnel into another densely packed area, squeezing through the undulating throng of bodies, too dense to offer personal space. Suguru issues enough apologies for stepping on people’s toes for a lifetime, and Satoru knows someone behind him is contemplating murder in broad daylight because he’s blocking their view. Such is the fate of being tall; he’s lucky he’s practically unkillable. Eventually, they’re spat out somewhere by the yagura tower, strings of paper lanterns splitting away in every which direction like siphonophores glowing goldsoft in the daylight

Somewhere along the way, they both find themselves with plastic clamshell trays of food. Suguru with vegetable tempura in light batter and cottonseed oil and Satoru with skewered dango glazed with sweet soy sauce. A drunk man passes by, fingers syrupy with beer, and Satoru watches the rounded corners of his steps as he attempts to dance.

“We’re pretty far from Nakamise, aren't we?” Suguru’s holding a slice of fried lotus root to his mouth. “Getting back to the river is gonna be a pain in the ass.”

“It’s okay, we have time,” Satoru assures, biting little enough out of a ball of dango so it doesn't fall off the stick, but enough for a satisfying chew. “Remind me to buy melon bread later when we’re back.” He goes for the finishing bite. Goma’s in the hand he’s holding his container with so he’s cautious not to fumble. “Oh, and fried manju. The custard ones are really good.”

“We should make our way over there soon.” Suguru drops a cube of kabocha squash in tentsuyu sauce before bringing it to his mouth. “We have a lot to do. Lines to stand in, potential curses to exorcise, food to find.”

“It’s only five.” Satoru watches the circuit of people dancing around the central tower, a cyclical thing. The other teenagers are awkward and unconfident in their steps, and the aunties and uncles are off-beat altogether. The routine’s nothing difficult. Arms swaying in front, side to side, back on the right, repeat. Easy mode on Dance Dance Revolution would require twice the effort. “We’ve got time.”

“It’s not five but five thirty.”

“So what?”

“So there’s gonna be a million people at Sumida River.” Another fried vegetable, unidentifiable through the thick batter, is pierced through the center with Suguru’s toothpick. “It’ll take at least an hour or two to even buy a lantern.”

“Still a ways until nighttime,” Satoru says, inhaling the final dango after rolling it around in its sweet-sticky sauce. He taps his foot to the rhythmic beat of taiko drums, the repetitious melody of shakuhachi flutes. “We should join in on the dancing over here.”

“I don’t dance,” objects Suguru near immediately.

This has Satoru smirking. “You mean you never learned how.”

“No, I said I don’t—”

Satoru places a hand on his shoulder, plucks his empty container from his hands to tuck it inside his tote bag. Does the same with his own. “Today’s as good a day to start as any, isn’t it?”

Suguru looks at him sidelong like he always does, eyes narrowed. It makes Satoru break out into a laugh.

They dance.

Suguru’s once again forced by Satoru’s iron grip around his wrist, caught somewhere in the steady orbit around the central tower. A racketing back and forth of It’s easy, it’s easy, don’t think about it too hard and No the f*ck it isn’t, Satoru, you know I’m awful at those dumb dancing arcade games you always want to play. When Suguru messes up the steps, he turns to Satoru for reference, watches his movements instead of the dancers leading from the tower’s stage, disgruntled the entire time. Satoru keeps his arms close and tight to his body. Swing them too much and Goma would startle, maybe knock against the sides of the bag like a bird flying head-first into a window it didn’t know was there. That’d be distressing for both of them. Do fish get concussions? They probably do.

“I hate this,” Suguru announces after a few more repetitions of the steps, nearly tripping over a stray pebble on the ground. Satoru moves to steady him by the shoulders, saves both Suguru and his pretty face from the displeasure of meeting asphalt. Tripping is a very, very real threat when wearing these sandals. “My feet f*cking hurt.”

“You’re fine, you’re fine.”

“I’m not,” he emphasizes. If they were to stop in their tracks, they’d instigate a domino collapse. One body tipped over means the next, and then the next after. Suguru diligently keeps moving one bumbling step at a time. “My toes hurt, dude. My arms are tired too.” In the way he does when Satoru takes too long to preen himself in a bathroom mirror, he groans. “This music is also giving me a f*cking headache.” His eye is rubbed with the back of his hand as if feigning sleepiness. Turns out, he’s just trying to brush a stray eyelash away. “Can we just go already?”

“This is the most I’ve ever heard you complain.”

“The most?” Suguru snaps back to attention. It's all dramatic, quick and abrupt as if they’re in a courtroom and Satoru’s a prosecutor making an objection in an Ace Attorney game. “No way. I complain about you more than anything else.”

Satoru laughs, clapping in rhythm as everyone collectively grows weary from the slow, wafty fanning of their arms. “So you can admit it.”

They wean their way out of the crowd when the next song is finished, trying their utmost to be as polite as able while they pry themselves away. Satoru bumps shoulders and backs with so many festival goers he might wake up in the morning with strange, faintly violet patches in places he didn’t think he could bruise, splotchy and flecked like the flesh of a purple yam.

During a sudden surge of the crowd as many prepare to leave, a boy just barely in his tender years thumps against the backs of his calves, the weight of his chocolate banana tipping to the side with the movement. Satoru nearly drops Goma from the sudden force. It startles the breath right out of him, heart in his throat as his reflexes urge his hands outward for the save.

"God, what the fu—"

The boy looks upward, peers at him the way people do at skyscrapers, like he didn’t expect a person to be there but one large, brooding monolith. Above him, Satoru’s arms come together to cradle Goma’s bag in his palms, casting a bending shadow over the boy’s face. Satoru doesn’t want to be the sort of person who scowls at random kids, but for a wild moment, he wants to. Right now, there could be a splash of water on the ground and a fish floundering with nowhere to swim. A crime scene.

That was a tragedy narrowly avoided. Satoru could be in mourning right now.

As if nothing happened, without even offering an apology, the boy turns to look for his parents and disappears between a shuffle of legs.

“Let’s,” Satoru murmurs just loud enough for Suguru to hear, wrapping the string of Goma’s bag tighter around his forefinger, close enough so as to not dangle loosely like a single house key on the rungs of a keychain anymore, “go to the river now.”

“Sick of festivities already?” Suguru jabs him in the chest, which is more rib than anything in a spot that’s beginning to bruise, flesh tender right by his breastbone. A large man had elbowed him earlier by accident, hard and sudden enough for him to flinch, and the area bloomed sore. In hindsight, he should’ve kept his Infinity up, but it’d seem strange to automatically repel someone the second they’re about to bump into him. Satoru would have to do a lot of awkward maneuvering to avoid getting close with anyone, or avoid coming here altogether. Close contact is inevitable in places such as these.

“Yeah,” he answers, sighing. “I think I am.”

“You're the one who wanted to participate to begin with, asshole. Made me do all that dancing and for what?”

“Hey, it was fun before I had that mini heart attack.” Shaking his head to himself. “Now, I’m totally over it.”

Suguru lets out a vague echo of a laugh. He walks ahead with a little stumble. It’s clear he has no clue where he’s going. This place is too busy for them to navigate here on the ground, but Suguru tries to parse the directions and faces where he thinks the river is regardless. “Yeah, I think I’ve had enough too.”

It takes them approximately thirty-six minutes to reach the bank of Sumida River and at least another ten to find where they should be standing. Efficiently navigating the area is impossible. They’d have better luck catching an eel barehanded even with staff there to show them in the right direction.

When they reach what seems to be the tail of a line, Satoru folds his arms over his chest in vague annoyance. More surprise than anything. A queue for the newest, trendiest crepe stand on Takesh*ta Street would probably move faster. “We’re gonna be here f*cking forever, aren’t we?”

“This is why I suggested we come earlier.” Suguru doesn’t seem bothered, his patience saintly, until he says, “But instead you wanted to dance.”

“Oh, come on.” The smack of Satoru’s hand on his shoulder blade is audible. “You had fun and we both know it.”

“I’m about to have more fun waiting.”

“Those are some famous last words,” Satoru says, shifting his weight onto his other foot. “Let’s see who lasts the longest without getting blisters from these sandals.”

When Suguru takes a step forward, he flinches. Maybe it’s just a trick of timing, or Suguru playing it up, but it really seems like he’s hurting. “Have some already because you made me run earlier.” Then a stir, discomfort visible in the way he chews on his lower lip.

“Oh.” Like some type of buffering process, Satoru blinks a handful of times before he looks down. It’s true—there are red welts and the beginnings of a vesicle in the valley of Suguru’s left toes, blooming red the way a mosquito bite would. He glances around; there isn’t a single open seat for him to sit in sight. “Guess that’s kinda my fault, isn’t it?”

At that, Suguru’s expression flips through the entire possible spectrum of confused emotion before settling on something that says, What are you saying? Are you sick? You feeling alright?

“Huh.” Tipping his head to the side, he examines Satoru in the way you would an imposter. “I can’t believe I lived to see the day you honestly admitted the blame for something.”

“Hey, I right wrongs when they’re my own,” reasons Satoru. “Thing is, they never are.”

In his usual fashion, Suguru scoffs. “Right. There it is, your ego. Thought it was missing in action for a moment.”

“You want me to carry you? I’d be fine if you piggyback.”

Immediately, Suguru pulls a displeased face. Satoru blinks.

“I think I’d rather die,” is Suguru’s over-dramatic response. With the accompanying grimace too, of course. No way he’d skimp out on that. “Or get pantsed in front of an entire panel of jujutsu higher-ups. Hell, throw in the members of the three great families too—it’d still be less humiliating.”

“Oh, come on. You’re so dramatic. Nobody’s gonna think that hard about it,” Satoru assures. “It’s just piggybacking. Besides, you hurt your foot. You’ve got an excuse.” The line moves in its gradual inch forward. People scatter from the reception desks, sitting at the tables to write wishes and thoughtful prayers for passed family members on thick cardstock. “It’s no big deal.”

“Like I said,” Suguru repeats, expression steeled, but only until he takes another step and winces. After that, his facade crumbles like limestone. The stubbornness still stays however, which is more of a Satoru-branded trait than it is Suguru’s. “I’d rather die.”

“Suit yourself, I guess.”

For the rest of the hour, Satoru grumbles about how he’d rather be shooting prizes with a cork gun or inhaling a smear of blue and pink cotton candy off his fingers instead of standing in line. Suguru tries to cope with blisters. A girl sits at a table not far from their view with a mound of shaved ice so tall it could rival the highest, snowiest peaks in the continent. White with condensed milk and moss green with syrup, a spoonful of red bean to top it off. It looks like one big, glistening ornament. Satoru watches her eat it gracefully without a stray drop of melt anywhere, her chin or her clothes or her spot at the table. Suguru swats him in the arm as he always does and tells him it’s rude to stare.

Give or take, forty-five minutes pass before they make three-fourths of their way to the front of the line. Suguru’s wincing has turned to blanching, pale in the face as he shifts from leg to leg. Comparatively, Satoru is fine. The bottoms of his feet are numb and uncomfortable, the sort of ache he feels after sprinting laps around Tokyo running errands, but manageable.

So he offers, “You want me to carry you now?”

Combined with the heat and discomfort, Suguru looks particularly miserable. He closes his eyes as if keeping them open expends too much of his energy. Then a sigh in defeat. “Okay.”

“Really?”

“Don’t sound so happy about it,” says Suguru, but that’s unreasonable. Satoru is—excited. Weirdly so. Aren’t you supposed to have some qualms about carrying your relatively tall best friend on your back in molten August temperatures? Probably, but Satoru doesn’t concern himself with that at all.

“Well, I am happy,” Satoru says. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Staring at him with narrowed eyes as he grins, much too satisfied, Suguru sighs.

“God, this is the worst,” is the first thing he grumbles into Satoru’s ear as hands hook under his thighs to hoist him upward. Arms are clutching tightly around Satoru’s neck in a heat-heavy embrace. The sound of Suguru’s breathing is audible even with the din of everyone around them.

Piggybacking your relatively tall best friend in cloudburst-humid summer should be a thing of nightmares. Instead, Satoru could be lazing around at home in air-conditioned comfort or eating his fill of samples in the basem*nt of a department store. In theory, he should hate everything about this. In practice, he feels nothing of the sort.

It should be obvious: Suguru makes all the difference. Suguru with his heartbeat pressed up against Satoru’s back, Suguru clinging to him close in fear of falling, Suguru with the low timbre of his voice. Just Suguru. That’s all it takes. Suguru’s touch and Suguru’s warmth and Suguru’s everything. And—well.

How could Satoru possibly be upset about that?

This is great. He’s having the time of his life.

Grumbling, Suguru gripes with his mouth against Satoru’s clothed shoulder, “Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to this.”

“You’re not the one carrying a human being on your back.” Satoru wobbles forward when the queue proceeds but regains his balance quickly. Goma has been entrusted to Suguru, tied to his forefinger in double knots for extra security. Right now, all the little guy should be able to see is a fleet of backs and the skin of Satoru’s chest where Suguru’s hand presses him. “No more complaints.”

“I think I’ve earned my right.”

“By what? Being a killjoy?”

“By being friends with an idiot like you.” In a weak attempt of their usual play-fighting, Suguru swats him in the chest instead of the upper arm.

As a means to startle him, Satoru pretends to trip. Immediately, he catches himself before he really does. “Remember that this idiot can drop you anytime he wants.”

“That a threat?”

“It can be,” Satoru says. His bag begins to slip on his shoulder, its bulk at his hip with Suguru’s sandals inside. Its weight drags it down the length of Satoru's upper arm when Suguru shifts to poke him in a place more rib than hip where he knows he’s most ticklish. He flinches. “Dude, don’t f*cking do that or I really will drop you. Remember, you’re deadweight right now. Something happens, a curse pops up or whatever, and I’m dumping you in the river like a dead body.”

“Eh? What was that?” Satoru writhes when Suguru does it again, instinctively trying to shimmy away. A fruitless effort. “Deadweight? You’re talking like I’m not the competent one of the two of us.”

“As if.”

“You left that creepy ass cursed doll you were supposed to recover at Sunshine 60 for hours.”

“But I took out the special grade that was there!”

“And you forgot the objective,” Suguru argues. With the arm that isn’t clutched tightly around Satoru’s neck, his hand moves to flick him in the cheek. For a moment, Satoru seriously considers shaking him off. “And guess who had to clean up after the curses that gathered in the area because of you? I did, you dick.”

“At least I’m never assigned to do boring sh*t like guard duty, loser.”

“That’s what we’re supposed to be doing right now, dumbass. Guard duty. Just because you haven’t seen anything doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to be keeping lookout.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Satoru dismisses. “Some useful security you are when you can’t even stand.”

“Finishing our objective is way more important than any minor pain I feel,” says Suguru, resting his head along the curve of Satoru’s shoulder. Get too comfortable and he might doze off in the same way Satoru does on a quiet train during their commutes back home. “And hey, I don’t need to stand to fight. Even without my feet, my curses still kick ass.”

The warmth of July summer is not gentle—that sort of kindness is reserved for autumn and spring. This weather has Satoru feeling as if his skin is melting in puddles, a popsicle in sunshine, which is only heightened with Suguru’s high, high body heat against him. Just a bit longer and Satoru could douse his entire head with a chilled water bottle. The thought of such is the only thing that keeps him going.

That, and the way Suguru pulls himself closer. Presses himself tighter against Satoru’s back.

They reach the reception desk, finally, after Satoru’s had his fill listening to Suguru air his grievances about onlookers in quiet, lamenting grumbles. God, are they staring? I hope they’re not f*cking staring. This is the worst. If you hadn’t made me run and dance, I’d be living embarrassment-free right about now, asshole. It took the rest of Satoru’s strength to stifle a laugh every time Suguru hid his face away in his neck, breath kissing his nape like an oriole tucking its beak into the folds of a flower for nectar.

They purchase their lanterns like that, Suguru ducking away from the mild customer service smiles of the receptionists. For once, Satoru does the talking. An easy, friendly transaction of a thousand-yen bill on a plastic money tray and Suguru’s sanity for a couple of soon-to-be-capsized paper boats.

“Oh my god, finally,” says Suguru, colored pink with a sigh of relief when they find a couple of vacant chairs at the tables, the sort of satisfaction felt post-marathon in how he slumps in his seat. “No more, dude. I’ve been mortified enough for a lifetime.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

Suguru raises his head just to shake it. “It totally was.”

Satoru sets Goma down in front of him, placed in the plastic cup he asked for from the stand serving beverages nearby. The fabric of the tablecloth shifts as Suguru crosses his arms and adjusts to a more comfortable position. A handful of colored pens begin their roll away with the movement—Satoru is diligent in grabbing a few, red and green and black. He leaves the rest for everyone else before Suguru can nag him about being considerate of others and taking only what you need. He can already hear it, see it, the mouth around the shape of, It’s the polite thing to do.

The lanterns come pre-folded and attached to paper boats. They’re rather flimsy in their hold, bend a bit too easily under the press of Satoru’s fingertips as he tries to draw something on the first of four panels—a bunny in black marker. Brows knitted in concentration, Suguru is to his left writing kanji with perfect strokes. Careful as if to avoid tarnishing an expensive silk scroll, the marker a brush dipped with ink.

As a child of the Gojou clan, calligraphy is a practice Satoru’s learned in. Not particularly well—whatever his family made him do growing up felt more like chores than anything else. It's too by-the-book, too tied to tradition. The structure of it, the balance of it, the rhythm of it—the years of discipline found in the hands. Not Satoru’s style. And things such as the shape of the characters, the angles of the turns and corners, the stroke orders—they made his head hurt. Too complicated.

Instead, he opts for drawing more pictures on his lantern. A cat, a dog, a bear. Leaves, bamboo-shoot green. Flowers, radish-pickle red.

Suguru turns to him, gives his masterpiece a once-over. Then he asks, “Don’t you have any wishes?”

“No.” One blink, two blinks. He glances down toward his artwork. “Was I supposed to?”

“I mean, you don’t have to,” Suguru says, the two characters for ‘prosperity’ neatly finished and perfectly centered on one face of his lantern. They switch markers—Suguru’s red for Satoru’s black. “Just wondering, since most people write one.”

“What did you wish for?”

“Good health for my family.”

“Boring.” Satoru pens in a mouth for his cat drawing with upturned corners. After, he colors a dark spot around its eye and turns it into a calico. “Don’t you have anything more creative than that?”

“Huh?” Leveling him with a look, Suguru asks, “Why does it matter if it’s boring?”

“It doesn’t.” A shrug as Satoru’s detailing the fur of a puppy’s ears. “But don’t you want like—bigger, grander things? Money or fame or whatever people bend themselves backwards over.”

“Simple is best,” answers Suguru, moving on to writing out sentences in neat columns. Always tidy, always proper. “I don’t have anything big and lofty I want, anyways. Do what I can, protect who I can.” Then he’s looking up, not at anything in particular. Gaze trained over the river in a vague direction forward, as if a second sun would materialize if he stared hard and long enough. Then back at Satoru. “I think I’m pretty happy with what I have, so the most I can hope for is the well-being of my parents.”

Satoru hums. “Another old man's monologue.”

“Quiet,” Suguru snipes so quick it’s a thing of practiced habit. If he were to go through all of the motions, a smack would meet the familiar acquaintance of Satoru’s upper arm. He can already feel the phantom sensation of it.

“You gonna make me?”

“My fist will if you keep talking.”

“You’re so unthreatening, it’s hilarious.”

The dust of their miniature non-argument settles. The needle prick of Suguru’s concentration doesn’t wane on the sentence he’s writing, careful in the precision stitch of each swipe. It looks as if it was printed, store-bought, done by the hands of a professional. When asked about whether he had taken calligraphy before, he tells Satoru he hasn’t. It’s one of those things he practiced because he appreciated the art of it. A very Suguru reason.

Satoru’s animal faces are much less sophisticated in comparison, but that’s alright—they’re charming. Endearing. Have a youthful appeal. The cat kind of looks like Suguru with the accidental way he drew it with an eye smile.

“I think I have a wish I wanna make,” he announces, one panel of his lantern now covered with sketches and dialogue bubbles and manga-esque crosshatches for shading.

“What is it?”

“What if it doesn’t come true if I tell you?”

“That’s only a rule with stars and shrines.” In adamant focus, Suguru’s hand keeps moving in neat strokes even as he briefly turns to look at Satoru’s drawings. “We’re writing our wishes down anyway, so it shouldn’t matter.”

“Hm.”

Suguru sighs. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“No, I want to.” He smiles. For some reason, Suguru appears defeated. Really, he was only saying that in jest. “I just want us to stay together.”

Suguru’s eye twitches. Not out of annoyance, just out of confusion. “Eh?”

Then, Satoru lays it on thick. Leaning in, serious this time. “That I can be by your side, or however that stuff is supposed to go.” It’s hushed, loud enough for Suguru to catch but not for the others at their table to eavesdrop. Satoru adds in an even lower whisper, “As long as time lets me.”

“Satoru…”

It’s returned to him. “Suguru.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“Just what I mean.”

Evasive as he is, Suguru faces away. A stroke in the character he was writing turns into a thin, black rivulet running outward. Inland bodies of water were all once mistakes of nature—glaciers pockmarking soil into lakes, currents carving slopes into creeks. “Then—what do you mean?”

“Exactly what it sounded like,” he answers. Pink is the back of Suguru’s neck and pink are his ears. “See the world with you, do stupid sh*t with you.” A pause. He hasn’t begun writing yet, feels like he has to say it first before he can make it real. “Be with you. That sort of thing.”

The words he knows he should say in a moment like this are stuck in his throat. That’s fine, though. He can save them for a better, quieter time.

Par for the course, Suguru falls silent.

After watching the way his complexion turns from a heat-kissed flush to something else, something shy and small and nearly missed altogether, Satoru’s eyes follow his marker. The ink stream, the accident, and the way it flows and flows with Suguru’s hand until it becomes a river is all the response Satoru needs.

Eight o’clock comes as daylight goes. Asakusa at night is as it’s always been, wreathed in neons and fluorescent shimmer. Light from skyscraper windows, shop signs, street lamps come together to paint paths in the dark. Things in Tokyo love to glow.

The process of lighting their lanterns is streamlined enough, holding out their paper ships as staff members reach their arms inside with their utility lighters. Suguru’s back on his feet now, only flinches from pain every dozen or so steps, and shoots down every suggestion Satoru makes to carry him princess style. Wants to keep his pride intact, or whatever.

Dignity is sometimes such a cheap thing, Satoru thinks.

They’re standing at the platform, crouched low, the shimmer of the city reflecting watery and wrinkled in front of them. Shoulders graze. They huddle close to allow room for others to walk. Like a perfect picture of poise, Suguru’s as still as can be in his posture. He doesn’t stir. Not when knees knock up against his back or when a powerful gust of wind blows hard enough to smother his hair into his face either, peaceful as a bonsai tree. Satoru nudges his side to get his attention, to see if he’d move, averting his eyes away from the horizon line. No dice—Suguru simply hugs his knees to his chest with his ankles crossing and keeps staring into the distance, the flame of his lantern blinking in an alleyway flicker beside him. One big, immovable stone, lost in a brown study.

At turbulent times like this, with so much inertia around him, Suguru can somehow be the only object at complete rest. This inclines Satoru to put his world on pause too.

“How much paper’s been carried to the sea in ceremonies like this, do you think?” he eventually asks, a floating thought.

“A ton. You see how many people there are?” Suguru turns his head, finally refocused on the immediate world around him and not something vague and distant, shouldering a gesture to the gathering of everyone on the boardwalk. “They sell thousands of these things each year.”

“Where does it end?” Crouching closer to the water in a precarious tip forward, Satoru makes eye contact with his mirrored self, face distorted by the ripples from the lanterns being dropped into the water beside him. One miniature sun at a time. A scene like this would be a spectacle in those cross-continental travel documentaries. But for them, two Tokyo-born kids with their Tokyo-born parents, a sight like this is a core childhood memory.

“Where does what end?”

“The journey.” In the gently illuminated night, Suguru is an echo. “If the light dies when they reach the ocean, do the spirits just stop? Where do they go after that?”

“Save those questions for the spirits, not me.”

Right. Spirits.

Ghosts.

That’s what this discussion is about—ghosts. Not the semi-translucent, haunting images of a person from horror movies but something someone prays is there next to them. Says they can feel in the right rooms. “This folklore stuff is so confusing.” Satoru scrunches his nose as if it’ll help him parse the topic. “Like—is that where the afterlife is? The ocean?”

There’s a gummy moment of silence, but it’s stifled by background conversation like acrylic smeared on thick. Blank canvas now freckled with smatterings of oranges and golds and whites, high-color voices admiring how pretty the sights look. An impasto painting in the form of lightshow narration.

“Maybe. It might be above, below, or right in front of us.” Suguru’s unraveling himself, standing up slow with his lantern in hand, flushed dim and flaxen like a dying lightbulb. “Nobody really knows. They only write stories about it.”

Satoru stands too, and they’re two watchtowers looking over a sea. “That’s not much of an answer.”

“But that's all we can say for sure.”

For a moment, everything around them seems to still. Even those chattering amongst themselves in sparkling excitement go quiet, watching as the next file of lanterns are handed gently to the welcoming hold of the river. The process feels almost sacred, suddenly. Ritualistic.

“Hey, when we…” Satoru starts, a tentative pause as he buffers his next thought, not sure how to say what he wants to say, or what he’s even saying at all, “become spirits one day, which you know, everyone will eventually if this stuff is even real, and spirits are a thing, and for some reason we stick around to haunt everyone we used to know and do all those things that spirits do, well—then.” It takes a moment for his mouth to catch up with his thoughts. “Let’s meet here, yeah?”

Suguru looks at him, really looks at him in full, attention undivided even with the constant shift in their surroundings. Not the chatter, not the foot traffic, not the stream. Not at an ambiguous place in the distance either. Then, he says, “This doesn’t seem like a conversation I’d be having with you at all.”

Suddenly, all the sedateness in Satoru’s thoughts dissipates at once. Dandelion scatter. “The hell's that supposed to mean?”

“Means you’re saying sh*t that’s unlike you.”

“God, nevermind then,” Satoru says. He doesn’t begin to sulk per se, but annoyance does come over him. But when he looks closer, he sees the small half-smile Suguru’s mouth is in.

For a wild, silly moment, Satoru not only wants to wipe it away like sauce and oil with the back of his hand, he wants to—kiss it better. Kiss it into something wider.

The world goes tactile. The fabric of his yukata feels rougher underneath his fingers and an itch flowers at his nape. He moves to scratch it and realizes right then how warm his skin feels, how warm all of him feels. He turns to his left. There, a gust is lifting away the drape of Suguru’s hair like a sudden visit from an old friend, rustling his yukata in a brush to the shoulder as if to say, I’m over here. My, it’s been so long since we’ve last seen each other. Tuck some of that hair behind your ear so I can see how you’ve changed.

Foolishly, Satoru wants to cradle his face in his palm and kiss him. In front of an audience of all these people and all these lights. In front of the discerning wind too.

After a lengthy, lingering stretch of silence: “Sure.”

“Sure what?” In his hand, Goma stirs in his bag as if longing for the water.

“Sure,” repeats Suguru, bending to gingerly place his lantern away from any high ripples. It buoys as soon as it touches the river, tipping precariously side to side as if it can’t decide which angle feels closest to being upright, learning to surf a whitewater wave. “When both of us are half-transparent and can walk through walls, let’s meet here.”

Warm, warm. Everywhere, Satoru is warm.

“And let’s haunt Shouko first.”

Suguru bursts into a not-quite-laugh. It’s lighter than laughter. Satoru wants to bottle the noise for safekeeping. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

Following suit, Satoru plops his lantern beside Suguru’s, nudging forward with a push so they’re two ships undocking together in a voyage. Neither of them float ahead of the other, just drift, steady, their words and pictures acting out a play. Rabbit on one face, dog on the next, then the subtitles. Their duskglow begins to fade with distance but Satoru doesn’t lose sight of them, their petering light, getting fainter and fainter until they’ll be nothing but a blip, a faint redshift from lightyears away.

Right now, they are observing a dance of lanterns. A departure of constellations from one corner of a sky chart to another. There could be hundreds, could be thousands of them all moving.

Satoru watches in awe as more are released into the water, following the others before them. It’s almost like—like it’s a night sky in reverse. This must be how it looks in the countryside without the contamination of artificial city lights. Spots of radiance against a deep, deep dark. Satoru had only seen TV specials and photos online, had never left Tokyo long enough at the right time of day for a glimpse, but he’d imagine the experience would be something along the lines of this.

Here, now, with Suguru—glowing.

And suddenly, he can see the words, hear them in Suguru’s voice.

The visible arm of our galaxy, as observed in a moonless night sky, is known as the River of Heaven. A silver stream bending along the horizon, too far and vast for us to ever swim across.

I’d like to see it someday.

Tokyo’s light pollution does not allow for stargazing. The average big-city child’s world does not have a glittery, star-sewn ceiling. But tonight, that proverbial arm of the galaxy shows itself to them anyway, their eyes following the river of light, stars pouring into the universe’s ocean, reaching for the horizon.

This—this must be that someday.

(Later, after more people gather by the river to view the fireworks, they migrate to some modest bridge neither of them know the name of, a little too low to have the most scenic view, holding sparklers between their fingers. They aren’t clamoring for breathing room nor are they pressed against the foreign warmth of strangers anymore. Just Suguru next to him, shoulder to shoulder, leaning against an arm rail, unsure of which lightshow to watch.

Satoru decides that it should be neither, doesn’t care if the grand finale is missed, and kisses him without a care.

When their sparklers die out and the pyrotechnics are over, the show continues in Satoru’s head, and in his stomach, and in his chest. Too much for him to concentrate on, but no matter—fireworks are all the more pretty when they floodlight a night sky at once.)

ix. supercar - cream soda

“What a drag.”

Satoru shakes off the clear plastic of his umbrella, its tip scraping against the pavement with each jostle. He places it into an open slot of the drying rack. As does Suguru with his, except he’s proper about it, and goes out of his way to button the little strap with a click. Suguru’s umbrella is also considerably less wet on the underside, because unlike Satoru, he didn’t flip it inside-out by angling it wrong against the wind and fumble to wrench the elbows of the metallic skeleton frame back into place.

“God, rain is the f*cking worst. It’s not even monsoon season anymore.”

“Agreed,” Suguru says with a sigh. “And when it isn’t raining, we’re baking on the sidewalk in an August heatwave.”

Rainwater has soaked through his jacket. The earthy scent will seem pleasant until it inevitably settles in the remnants of summer warmth and he’ll unmistakably smell like wet dog instead of anything fresh or clean. It’s cruelty, he thinks, that the school didn’t provide them with summer uniforms because they’re supposed to maintain their image as shamans year-round, or whatever. Suguru strips his jacket. His button-up is relatively dry but the sleeves have been soaked through semi-translucent like the papery skins of botan rice candies. Except it wouldn’t dissolve if he placed it on his tongue; he would just get a mouthful of cotton and petrichor.

“I don’t care what anybody thinks—summer is the worst season.” Satoru runs a not-so-tentative hand through his hair, separating his fringe with the valleys of his fingers from where it’s dampened flat on his forehead. Any more forcefully and he’d rip it out in chunks. “The only good thing about summer is watermelon splitting.” He takes off his sunglasses to wipe their lenses with a dry spot on his shirt after unbuttoning his jacket. “And ice cream.”

“And festivals,” Suguru reminds. The memories of goldfish and lanterns and fireworks settling comfortably in his mind. “Obon was fun.”

And also the ki—

Suguru shakes the thought away.

“Oh yeah, for sure.”

They’re standing at the threshold of a 7-Eleven, its doorway sliding open for them in a wordless greeting. “Welcome to the store!” the two cashiers at the front desk chime in unison, one placing a fresh batch of karaage into the hot case with tongs while the other stocks cigarettes behind them. There’s a specific rhythm that they follow, in sync down to the shuffle of their feet to retrieve more merchandise, always in a factory-assembly work cycle until a customer approaches the desk to pay for their things.

“What are we feeling?” Suguru asks with a nudge at Satoru’s side.

Satoru’s foot tap tap taps against the linoleum tile. There’s a song over the loudspeaker; he follows it perfectly as if playing an arcade rhythm game, trying to score a Perfect! with each arrow moving across the imaginary screen in his head. “Nothing you’d wanna eat.”

“That’s because all you consume is sugary sh*t.”

“Because that’s all that’s good, duh,” Satoru replies in his usual Satoru-esque manner, the kind of answer that makes Suguru press his lips into a mildly irritated line and call him insufferable. Scoping out the layout of the shop, Suguru plans the most effective route to collect each component of a makeshift meal.

They part ways. Two different directions to two different regions of the store—Satoru to the frozen section, hovering over the icy continent that is the row of chest freezers, and Suguru on the opposite wall to the readymade meals, arranged as if an invisible worker were there to tend to dropped inventory, gaps in the shelves filled despite the many passing hands picking merchandise up, moving them around, taking them with.

What Suguru grabs: barley tea, a package of white rice, a triple pack of natto, a curry bun from the hot case at the cash register, dried squid. He doesn’t take any longer than five minutes to shop, stacking coins into a miniature silver pagoda on top of a thousand-yen bill in the cash tray.

Satoru takes thrice as long, meandering at the refrigerator of chilled drinks and raking his eyes over a rack of pastries with his armful of goods, picking items off the shelves with awkward leans and stunted maneuvers of the hands. For some odd reason, he still doesn’t bother with a shopping basket.

It’s an uncomfortable sight to see the way Satoru drops everything in a scatter in front of the cashier like a pour of crabs out of a fishing net. One stray package rolls and falls onto the ground behind the counter, a customary apology offered as the cashier fumbles to pick it up as if it were their fault. Satoru’s too chatty the entire transaction, asking an interview’s worth of questions no hourly wage worker is paid enough to answer. Have you tried this flavor before? Is it any good? Do you know when you’re going to have more baked cheesecake out? Oh, you’re out of stock? But it’s only three in the afternoon, how come?

Classic, overbearing Satoru.

When he meets Suguru by the magazine stand thumbing through this week’s issue of Jump, both with plastic bags hanging in the dips of their elbows and crinkled receipts in tow, Suguru levels him with a wince. “You should’ve grabbed a basket.”

A shrug. “You didn’t take one either.”

“I only bought five things.” Suguru closes the magazine after skimming the final page of the new Bleach chapter. He isn’t caught up yet. Having heard spoilers from Satoru when they had argued over who the best character was—Satoru likes Mayuri, the one mad scientist with the weird long nail, and Suguru leans toward Byakuya because of their similar ideals—he doesn’t particularly care to. “What’d you even get anyway?”

“Whatever looked good.” Satoru holds out his bag.

To him, whatever looks good equates to whatever colorful. Suguru sifts through like he's foraging for wild vegetables in the woodlands. The selection isn’t at all surprising. There are milk candies and strawberry gummies among two packages of melon bread and a triple pack of Doraemon dorayaki. Melon cream soda and peach ramune. Morigana baked pudding. Ice cream of many different varieties—a watermelon popsicle, a red bean popsicle, two packages of mochi ice cream, soft-serve. A strawberry sandwich with cream cut into a neat triangle.

Frozen grapes are there too, as if they’re Satoru’s way of balancing everything else out. Slapping a bandaid over the gaping hole in a dam.

“You really do only eat sugar,” says Suguru as he’s turning over the contents of the bag, scavenging for something that could pass as a component of a remotely proper meal. Nothing, as expected. “I can’t believe you live your life like this.”

“I have cravings. Especially for ice cream when it’s hot out,” is Satoru’s poor rationalization. All he has are cravings. Coming from a noble bloodline like the Gojou family, he must’ve been lectured to hell and back about his habits enough times to run a celestial lap around their galaxy. But realistically speaking, if he had the consideration to listen to the reprimanding from anyone in his immediate circles, he wouldn’t have ended up with that personality of his. Still, Suguru’s a good friend, so he tries to right him when he can. Maybe something in Satoru’s subconscious will change with enough persistence.

“But why’d you buy so many? They’re gonna melt by the time we’re back.”

“Whatever.” Satoru shrugs, as if he didn’t just spend a week’s subway fare and then some on tenuous packages of frozen cream that won’t last longer than ten minutes in the outside broil. “I’ll eat them by then.”

“You’re finishing all of that by yourself?”

“Yeah.” Satoru unearths a vanilla cone Suguru had glossed over in his rummaging. Practiced in the art of unpackaging ice cream, he twists off the transparent cap without smearing anything along its sides. “Why not?”

“You’re ridiculous.” Suguru holds out a hand for Satoru to place something in the wicker basket curve of his palm. “Here, hand over the red bean one. I’ll help you out.”

“What? No,” Satoru says, yanking his hand away as if burned. The plastic bag follows, its mouth catching onto Suguru’s wrist when he goes for the steal and coiling like straw rope. It nearly tears. “Get your own.”

“Stingy.” Wriggling his hand out of the bag when it begins to untwist in a rustle, Suguru turns his back indignantly towards Satoru and begins his walk to exit the store. He throws a glare over his shoulder. “A jujutsu society nobleman like you can’t spare a commoner like me some red bean ice cream?”

“God,” gripes Satoru, who easily catches up with his long, long strides. “Fine, you can have it.”

Suguru smiles triumphantly as Satoru fishes out the package and passes it to him. It hasn’t begun to soften yet, and if he eats it quickly, he can avoid getting sugar and ice melt over his knuckles or having to lick the wooden stick like a cat catching spilled cream to remedy that. “You’re the best.”

Outside, there’s a dry spot at the storefront beneath the striped light sign, a canopy of sorts, that shields them from the drizzle. Suguru moves to grab their umbrellas, the clear vinyl membrane of their batwing folds still slicked from earlier rain. He passes one to Satoru, the unbuttoned one, and proceeds to shake off the panels of his own. Not like it matters, since the droplets will freckle them again when he takes a step forward like sunburns redrawing themselves when returning to a frontier of beachy sun. His popsicle is held precariously between his thumb and his forefinger but he's careful not to drop it. Satoru has inhaled the top swirled half of his ice cream, now smoothing it level to the perimeter of the cone with detailed licks.

“Any good?” Satoru asks, watching Suguru bite off a corner of his popsicle and let it sit in his mouth like you would with pellets of konpeito candy. It’s all he can taste—no earth or petrichor on his tongue, just milk and sugar and the skins of red beans. The cold is nice in the humidity.

“Yeah.” Suguru nods, the tip of his umbrella scratching against pockmarked concrete, dampened with rainwater that reached too far. The demarcation between wet and dry draws a stark line in front of their feet. “Really good.”

“Better be.” The first crunch of waffle cone breaking. “It’s free, after all.”

“Thanks,” is the only thing Suguru says.

“That’s all I get?”

“Is that not enough?”

“Of course not.” Another mouthful; Satoru’s smirk is ever-smug. “Favors should be returned.”

Suguru sighs. His popsicle is nearly finished now, down to the last few centimeters closest to his fingers. Angling it in a slant, he paddles the last bite into his mouth with the stick like an oar dipping into a lake. After the melt and the swallow, he says, “Fine. What do you want?”

Suguru’s guesses are: more sweets, a train fare, half the cost of a ticket to see the new romance flick in theaters, coverage for extra toppings the next time they get ramen together, a gacha capsule. Give more than what you receive, his mother always preached.

What Satoru requests instead: “A kiss.”

Chests do this strange thing sometimes, this culmination of heat behind the ribcage like bubbles in a stove boil. Something you didn’t know was rising until it pops, shocks you out of a stupor the way cars do when they drive too quickly through sidewalk-adjacent puddles. When you aren’t looking, don’t know to dodge the spray, you get splashed.

And that’s exactly how Suguru feels right then.

“That’s an unfair trade.”

“A kiss costs zero yen.”

“Exactly,” Suguru says, mochi cling between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He feels as if he just chewed through an entire box, dusted with potato flour and all. Trapping his words in. “That’s why it’s not fair. Ask for something else.”

“But I don’t want anything else,” is the zero-hesitancy answer. Syllables honeyed, the candy-coated gloss of a toffee apple dipped twice. A hand is placed on Suguru’s shoulder when he whips his head away, a reminder that Satoru’s there, that he’s looking. “I think it’s totally fair. We both get what we want.”

Suguru falls silent. If Satoru were to move his hand upward, press a finger beneath his jaw and feel his pulse, his cover would crumble like a sandcastle on the threshold of the ocean.

“Don’t be like that.”

“I’m not being like anything.”

“You are.”

“I’m not.”

It’s their usual banter. They catch this tailwind in every other conversation, the same back and forth, push and pull. Except this time, Suguru’s stomach is a cage of caterpillars.

“You’re blushing,” Satoru says, and it’s perhaps the very, very last thing Suguru wished for him to notice.

“I’m—no I’m not.”

“You are.”

Now, it’s a chrysalis.

“f*ck off.”

“Hm. Don’t think I will.”

“You’re such a pain in the ass.”

“You don’t think that.”

“I do.”

Frustration or irritation or something else, Suguru doesn’t know, but he can feel the warmth carrying to his face. The world finds itself in a pause.

Then, his name is dropping easy from the crest of lips. “Hey Suguru.” It’s so intentional, so sugary. The way it takes shape in Satoru’s mouth, something like a butterfly cradled between two tender palms, careful not to let the wings tear—it makes everything in Suguru flutter. “Turn this way.”

He knows he shouldn’t. He knows it’s probably for the best if he doesn’t, for the peace of his own mind, however—

The storm grows right then, patter to pelt in mere seconds. All is misted with a gust—his clothes, his cheek, his hair. But for once, Suguru doesn’t mind the dampness. Doesn’t open his umbrella nor run for shelter and instead lets everything flood.

He does turn—weak to it. Unarmed to it. Defenseless to it.

The air is full of rainscent. Suguru’s mouth is full of warmth and the linger of red bean. But when Satoru leans down to kiss him, everything is vanilla and milk.

x. bonnie pink - heaven’s kitchen

Satoru meets the Getou family cat before he meets the parents, black as carbon like Suguru’s hair is, walking the edge of the bathtub like a tightrope.

There must be some technique to it. The cat’s tail angled in a peculiar bend to maintain balance, poise perfect as if taking up a practiced kendo stance. Satoru meets its eyes while passing the bathroom doorway, roped into a staring contest he eventually loses. They have the gleam and width of ramune marbles.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” Satoru remembers to say too belatedly. His shoes are already toed off and placed neatly beside Suguru’s at the entryway, his feet already situated in indoor slippers, his body already past the threshold of the genkan. This is Satoru’s first time at Suguru’s apartment. It’s homey, cozy, not the newest or the cleanest but somewhere in the middle of all parameters. An average home for the average family. Satoru knows that a welcome to the place of his not-yet-boyfriend but practically-boyfriend—and if he were to speak with high hopes, his soon-to-be-boyfriend—is a milestone in itself. So the actual experience of visiting has his mind spinning so much he’s lost his sensibilities. It feels as if he’s been launched through a paradox, sucked into a wormhole and spat out from the other end into a different dimension.

This is, in its own way, stepping into someone else’s life.

“That’s Sekitan,” Suguru points out when he realizes what Satoru’s staring at. Like a dutiful son, his first instinct is to reach into the basin of the sink to wash the dirty dishes his parents must’ve left before heading off to work. Brings his weapon to an unarmed fork—a dish-soaped sponge—and starts scrubbing. “But we call him Seki.”

Satoru watches as the new acquaintance hops off his perch and scurries around his feet to curl up by the leg of a chair. Seki’s fur is long, looks soft yet prickly like the porcupined spikes of a pompom on a winter hat. Forgetting the fact that animals tend to hate him—he’s been watching all those nature documentaries to convince himself he has a handle on them now—Satoru crouches to get a feel for himself.

It’s a foolish decision.

When his fingers are centimeters away, unguarded and free of any ill-intent, he’s swatted at. Almost scratched. He’s lived through this before—Satoru’s reflexes are fast enough in the moment to avoid any carnage, but dodging the wound to his heart is impossible.

“Hey! That isn’t very nice, little man.”

Ignoring him, Seki retracts his front paw back to his body, tucking it beneath his belly with the other. He doesn’t bother to look at Satoru, give him any time of day out of his nine lives.

This is the most severe rejection Satoru’s ever received in his life. Pulpy and fragile, he walks away from the scene like he’s the heartbroken second lead of a romance drama. Suguru says after watching the sob story of an episode, a laugh weaved somewhere between his syllables, “I guess you’re just the born enemy of all cats. Seki’s usually nice to everyone.”

“No need to rub it in.” Satoru sighs, disappointment leaving him in huffs. “But it’s okay. At least Goma likes me.”

“That’s what you think.” The sound of running water spews over Suguru’s voice in ripples, distorting every time he angles a plate under the stream. “You can’t tell what a fish is thinking. He might just hate you. I wouldn’t blame him if he did.”

“Hey, Goma likes me just fine, thank you very much.” Satoru purses his lips and turns away, petulant. Not that Suguru’s even looking at him as he does so, but he has eyes on the back of his head. Always catches Satoru when he pitches bunny ears and horns behind him or throws a sneaky thumbs-down in petty retaliation to something he’s saying. Usually some sort of jab at Satoru or a decline to one of his suggestions. As if on cue, a peering of doubt is casted in Satoru's direction. “Especially when I take such good care of him.”

“That’s not a difficult bar to reach.” Suguru squeezes a green pearl of dish soap onto a scouring sponge. There’s a scrape of steel wool against glass. “Fish are the most low-maintenance pets ever.”

Seki shifts and Satoru can no longer discern where his ears or eyes or tail are supposed to be. If he were to maintain the ball shape he’s wound into, Satoru could turn him around and still not find where he’s supposed to begin and end. Much like the eternal strife of finding the edge on a roll of packaging tape or the indiscernible perforation in a bottle’s shrink wrap. Black hides lines and shadows. “That’s what you think. You’ve watched me change his water before.” Satoru points at the nondescript knot of fur on the floor when Suguru tosses him a disbelieving look. Furrow in his brow, lips pulling at the corner into an almost-glower—it’s one of his most reliable. “Pets like that dude over there are probably lower-maintenance.”

“That’s a completely subjective evaluation.”

“Stop talking like a teacher, you old man.” Satoru scrunches his nose. “Acting like you aren’t the deadbeat dad in the relationship while I’m the poor single mother.”

“Huh?” Suguru whips his head around to give Satoru the dirtiest look he can muster. It’s an expression Satoru has to work for, like a cheer for an encore at the end of a concert. “We’re talking about a fish here.”

“Fish fatherhood is a serious matter.” Satoru shrugs. “And Goma seems to be a happy son.”

This isn’t even an instance of Satoru’s misattribution—it’s true. He’s done his research on fish behaviors. Goma spends most of his time hiding, but not once has he been erratic, or glass surfed, or clamped his fins in the months that Satoru’s had him. Maybe he’s a bit lonely without any friends; Satoru’s contemplated a run to the store for a few more goldfish, but there’s no satisfaction in buying them. That would feel cheap. He’d much rather earn them or have Suguru earn them for him. But September isn’t the month to scoop squirming orange darts out of a tub at a festival, so Goma will have to live with only having Satoru as a companion.

But really—Goma’s a privileged guy. Not all fish find themselves in a situation so ideal, and having Satoru around is as storybook-perfect as it gets. Even if Utahime, or Shouko, or Suguru would argue otherwise.

Satoru’s a great fish dad. He knows he is.

No, really. He is.

He’s shown as much with the time he’s spent setting up a livable environment to keep Goma in. Hauled armfuls of supplies home, suffered wet socks with the puddles of water he spilled on himself, proved Suguru wrong in his theory detailing how Goma would only survive for a maximum of one month under his watch. Suguru had miscalculated one thing—Satoru cares. He tries to, at least, and he thinks he’s doing a decent job at it.

Why does he care? Well, it's because Suguru won the little guy for him.

(“You know,” he had said, caught in the turbulence of pet parenthood, new encyclopedia of random animal facts printed fresh in his brain from the nature documentaries he’s been watching. “Goma needs a big, wide space in order to be happy. Fish get depressed when they don’t have room to swim.”

“Eh? Didn’t know that.” Suguru watched as Satoru poured neon gravel into the fish tank. Clumsy and too-hasty, stray electric blue and hot pink pebbles skipping on the floorboards and situating themselves in the cracks. There were also rainbow starfish decals and orange ferns the hue of grapefruit peel and a pineapple in painted ceramic—the latter of which Satoru likened with a western cartoon he had watched, the one with the sponge living under the sea. Lots of greenery. All the colors for an oil spill. Something a fish wouldn’t want to swim in, he can acknowledge, but bought anyway. Suguru had made sure to thoroughly make fun of him for his taste in decorations back at the shop, but no matter. His room needed more color.

“There’s a lot to learn about aquatic life,” Satoru said, stepping on the neck of a water conditioner bottle. If he’d put any more of his weight on it, into the spread of his whole foot instead of the more tactful press of his toes, it would’ve snapped, and Suguru would’ve grumbled about how he’s left to clean another one of Satoru’s messes. He’d do it before Satoru had the chance to stand and fetch a washcloth, before he even processed the spillage. Suguru handles everything when it comes to Satoru in that manner—complain, but do it anyway.

“Since when did you care so much about animals?” Suguru asked, flipping through the instruction manual for the filtration system. Technical things like that are better assigned to him to figure out. “You know, since they hate you and all.”

What Satoru didn’t say was: Since the day I watched you feed those stray cats.

Because that’s embarrassing even for him.

What he said instead: “Since always.”)

As observed through months of being around Suguru almost daily, the expertise of Animal Planet subtitles and Wikipedia articles enables Satoru to conclude: Suguru is a creature of habit.

There’s a regimen he tends to follow—meticulous and in lockstep, yet so comfortable in the switch from one task to the next that even the transitions seem practiced. One moment, he’s placing dinnerware onto the drying rack in perfect uniformity. The next, he’s pouring a braid of milk into a bowl and placing it next to Seki’s food dish. No breaks or pauses to deliberate what task comes next. Military routine.

And he’s removed his hair tie. Small things like such are signs he’s let his guard down. Satoru’s witnessing him in his natural habitat, a rescued dolphin released back into the wild, no longer expected to flip or jump through hoops for an audience of filled bleachers.

These sights make Satoru’s chest warm, a thing that starts at his breastbone and spreads shoulder to shoulder.

“My parents are both at work,” Suguru says, now at the balcony, tending to his laundry as soon as he finishes wiping down the kitchen counters. He folds his sheets with his arms outstretched, face cut by the clothesline’s shadow. Satoru leans against the armrest of the couch and unwraps the lollipop he almost forgot about in his pocket. “You’d have to stick around for a few more hours if you wanna meet them.”

“That’s cool.” Satoru rolls his lollipop around in his mouth, toeing at the glossy wood beneath his feet. A mirror finish. Every inch of every room back at his home is covered by tatami mats, and the dorms are laid with aged floorboards, so Satoru isn’t accustomed to seeing himself under his own feet. Save for maybe the reflections of puddles or the river he used to pass on his way to middle school, but neither come with the lack of ripples. No such clarity.

“Don’t be rude to them though,” Suguru warns, but he’s not at all threatening while doing house chores. Fangless, lacking any sternness or authority as he clinches socks between the plastic teeth of one of those square hangers, a choir of clips dangling like jewels off the arms of a crystal chandelier. Once that menial task is complete, he moves on to the next—hanging t-shirts on the railing. This is about the riskiest jujutsu-unrelated activity Suguru would ever partake in (without Satoru’s influence, of course). Come a strong breeze and the asphalt will have new clothes to wear. “I know how you are.”

“What? I’m not rude,” Satoru protests, bringing his hand to his chest like he’s been deeply disgraced.

“Dude.” Suguru needles a glare at him, beginning first at the seam of his hairline and working downwards to his eyes. Again, not at all threatening, because he’s holding a damp Tarepanda shirt with fraying seams. A well-worn, single-stitched thing that looks to be from a decade ago. The tone of his voice does not match the image presented. “Have you heard the way you speak?”

Satoru lolls his head to play coy. His tongue is sweetened red with the artificial taste of cherry. “Yeah? Can’t everyone hear themselves when they’re talking?”

“Well everyone but your dumb ass can tell when they’re being impolite.”

“You weren’t even polite to me when we first met.”

Suguru readies to argue and near drops the pair of baggy jeans he’s flipping inside-out to dry, saved only by the arm inverting the left pant leg. It’s bunched along the inseam in a way that makes it look like a gauntlet the villain in a superhero movie would wear. “Because you spoke to me like that first. And on top of that, we’re the same age.”

“Whatever man,” Satoru dismisses, his squirrel-like attention span now refocusing around the room, scoping out acorns in this unfamiliar forest. His tongue darts between his lips; the stick of his lollipop now juts out, the candy weathering away with each swipe of his tongue. “Do you have anything to eat?”

“Probably. I can make something.” Suguru is down to the final tufts of fabric in his laundry basket. All that’s left are athletic shorts and boxers and a blouse that’s much, much too small to be his. A stray that’s taken refuge in his load. “I would’ve offered you tea earlier like we do when guests are over but you pretty much only drink soda so...no luck in that department. But go ahead and check what we have.”

Satoru wastes no spare seconds to do so, completely unlike his missions, during which he spends most of the time meandering. There’s a sound of rubber unsticking and the door of the refrigerator swings open with a clatter of glass and plastic. Ponzu, yuzupon, soy sauce, tonkatsu sauce, rice vinegar. A march of soldiers in a troop of condiments. The artificial light is almost blue in how sterile it seems—like a dentist’s office, washing the color out of the sauce complexions into blanched faces.

Suguru’s fridge is full of tea. Green tea, oolong tea, jasmine tea, barley tea—the bottled kind. They take up an entire shelf in the body and the lowest rung in the door. No milk tea in sight; Satoru deflates. Glances at the cupboard aren’t needed to know there’s a store’s worth of loose tea in jars, probably the instant kind in those stringed bags somewhere too. It’s obvious where Suguru’s love for it comes from, why leaf water is his caffeine source of choice.

“You have eggs,” Satoru announces, crouching his head to peruse the selection. There are bowls covered in a lamination of clingfilm, their membrane stretched so taut they’d pop like bubbles in a soft drink if Satoru pressed them enough. Sheets of dried seaweed and bonito flakes. Tubes of pastes rattle in their holder—wasabi, ginger, mustard, garlic, plum—arranged in color order by the hue of their labels. Eye drops and a jar of Oronine ointment sit in a rack next to them. Satoru ignores what’s irrelevant to him at the moment. “And tofu. There are tons of vegetables too, but that green stuff is pretty boring.” There’s lots left for him to remark. There’s lots in general. “I don’t see any meat in here, but that’s probably in the freezer, right?”

“Meat’s expensive so we don’t buy it often.”

“Ah.”

“If we have eggs, I could make you tamagoyaki,” Suguru suggests, depositing the empty laundry basket in the closet on top of the washing machine. A shudder of feet on wood and he’s briskly making his way over to the kitchen, peering at the contents of the fridge over Satoru’s shoulder. “You’re probably the type that prefers the sweet kind, aren’t you?”

Satoru gasps. He’s watched enough soap operas to nail the acting. “You know me so well. I’m touched.”

“Hm.” Ignoring Satoru’s dramatics, Suguru glances at an empty space in the center top shelf of the door. Satoru moves out of the way with a stumble so Suguru can get a better look. “We don’t have ketchup.”

“Bleh.” Satoru sticks out his tongue and winces. “Ketchup? On sweet eggs?”

The predictable swat at Satoru’s upper arm. “For me, not for you.” He’s grabbing ingredients out of the cooler in the lockstep manner of muscle memory. Four eggs, mirin rice wine, cooking sake—unloading them on the counter before crouching down to a cabinet and fetching a rectangular pan.

“Ketchup in general is gross.”

Suguru salvages a pair of long chopsticks from a drawer, charred black at the tips from frequent use. “Then do you not like omurice?”

“I do, but without ketchup.”

”Not even seasoned into the rice?”

“Nope.”

Out of a lack of something to do, Satoru leans over Suguru’s shoulder to observe the process. Not a fascinating sight in particular, but Suguru always has a certain way of doing things. He douses a folded square of paper towel into a small bowl with canola oil, typical technique, and from there, proceeds to spread it over every centimeter in the pan symmetrically. Around the edges first—top left corner to right, top right to bottom, bottom right to left and back again. Sketching an outline before coloring, and from there, he covers the rest of the skillet with strokes from one edge to the other like a paint roller methodically striping a wall.

The skill shows. Suguru seems well-adjusted to cooking. Satoru is nudged by his elbow when he rests a chin on his shoulder, knowing it’d bother him. “Be helpful and prepare the eggs for me.”

Satoru doesn’t cook. He’d probably be good at it if he did, but he’s never once had to prepare anything the full way through before. However, he has all the experience he needs in cracking eggs from poaching them in hotpots. As Suguru waits for the oil to get hot enough on the low flame it’s warmed over, Satoru begins his task with two bowls. One crunch of a shell, then two, and a third in a separate bowl—all perfect. On the fourth, Satoru’s too forceful and a shard of eggshell lands into the whites. He scoops it out with a deft finger before Suguru notices and uses that as a reason to rag on him.

Suguru pushes him to the side with his hip and pours in an uncertain amount of mirin and sake over each of the four heads of yellow, floating stagnantly in the two mixing bowls like a friend group of lily pads in a pond. Salt is tossed in as well with a total lack of measurement, a bit extra in his before adding sugar in Satoru’s. In some ways Suguru’s fussy, in others he isn’t. Approximation and intuitive feeling seem to be good enough here; maybe he has a honed sixth sense for this.

Without looking, he slides open a drawer and passes Satoru his own pair of chopsticks. “Whisk them for me.”

This seems to be a very sacred process. From adjusting the flame to the exact tick to how blended he wants the eggs to be—Suguru treats it like a purification ritual at a shrine. Greasing pans like rinsing hands with purified water, readying the egg mixture like preparing an offering, chiding Satoru for not whisking fast enough like performing a chant with a liturgy. An entire ceremony just to roll sheets into a yellow pillow, like overly-neat futon folding just for closet storage.

“You’re taking this very seriously,” Satoru says, providing useless commentary the way guests would in one of those cooking shows with a celebrity chef, incessantly repeating each instruction as if the viewers aren’t trusted to pay attention. This is a very simple step! Ah, yes. Make sure not to forget salt. So what’s next? Oh, the garnish. And the preparation is complete!

Suguru’s too concentrated on what he’s doing to entertain him. He pours the first layer, a thin coating he evens out by quickly tilting the skillet, pops the blisters that bubble in the egg with the tips of his chopsticks to make the layers even, and begins to flip. Pushing the roll to the top edge of the pan, he repeats the process. Once, twice, thrice before the first strip of tamagoyaki is finished.

“Yours is done,” Suguru announces as he’s plating it on a dish. Cuts it neatly into slices with a knife. Satoru happily swipes his steaming rolled omelette and places it on the table at a seat opposite to the window. He chooses this spot for one reason and one reason only—Suguru, framed by a sunset, looks pretty. He wants another image to burn into the back of his mind. Not yet touching his food, he nearly kicks Seki by accident as he pulls out the chair.

“Not a single dark spot,” Satoru remarks, impressed. “You’re good.”

“I used to cook for myself a lot since my parents are always working,” Suguru explains, quick to start making his own eggs. “I’m out of practice though. The one I made for you turned out lopsided.”

“Lopsided?” Satoru presses the omelette with a testing finger. “You have such high standards.”

“There’s no such thing as good work without standards.”

“There you go again, talking like—”

“An old man,” Suguru finishes, exasperation laid thick over his voice. His focus on flipping the egg in the skillet doesn’t sway. “I get it already. You’ve mentioned it a million times. It’s all you ever f*cking say.” He looks over at Satoru, who’s leaning against the counter with the spread of ingredients still sitting out. Thoughtfully, Satoru tosses the eggshells away. “Shut up and microwave some rice, will you? There should be some in the fridge.”

“Of course, Getou-sama!” Satoru answers sarcastically. His slippers shuffle against hardwood to the refrigerator, but only before pecking Suguru on the cheek on his way there. “Anything for you.”

Endeared, Satoru watches his ears. Always his ears, since his face works so hard in moments like these to subdue any emotional output. Perfectly punctual, no corners cut. It’s been named employee of the month for its entire career.

Suguru just keeps frying.

They eat together with Satoru’s socked foot nudging Suguru’s calf, receiving the food with a clap in unison and saying their thanks for the meal with another. The entire time, Satoru rants about how Suguru’s so much better at cooking than the lunch ladies of the school cafeteria and how each bite of egg has the texture of clouds. Festival-level good, a place where everything tastes more delicious with a toothpick and a plastic clamshell container. Suguru tells him to stop with the flattery and that he’s never tasted a cloud before so he can’t draw the comparison. Satoru argues that he’s being honest and that he could, that maybe next time he’s floating in the sky after throwing up a barrier, he’ll do just that so he can say the same thing when he inevitably pesters Suguru into cooking for him again.

They eat with laughter between chews.

Seki has now relocated from the leg of the table to the couch, fast asleep on an arm rest in his sea urchin furl.

The door clicks open.

“We’re back!” an unfamiliar voice and the sound of two pairs of footsteps waft inside from the hallway.

“Welcome home,” Suguru says in routine, placing his chopsticks over his finished bowl of rice. “You’re back so early.”

“We both skipped out on drinking with our coworkers today,” a lady says. Suguru’s mother, Satoru assumes, with her perfectly applied makeup and clean bun, as neat as a flight attendant’s. It’s clear now who Suguru got his trademark hairstyle from. “Thought there was something more important waiting for us at home.”

His father gingerly walks in behind her after toeing out of his work shoes. A tall man, not taller than Satoru though, clutching a leather briefcase with wide-knuckled fingers. “You told us you were having a friend over, after all! And you never invite people over.”

“There was no need for that.” Suguru scratches his nape. “Seriously. There was no reason for skipping out on—”

“All you do is worry,” his father says, shaking him by the shoulders as the brim of his water glass touches his lips. It sloshes, but Suguru rarely loses his poise and catches himself before he spills anything. “We eat and drink at an izakaya every other night. There’s only so much yakitori you can have before you’re sick of it.”

“But that’s still—”

“Ah, you must be Gojou-kun!” his mother exclaims before Suguru can finish his sentence. Her lipstick is so perfectly applied, Satoru can’t spot a bump past the lines of her lips, her Cupid’s bow flattened as she speaks with a smile. Those are both things Suguru got from her too; the neatness and the grin. “My, you’re such a handsome young man! I didn’t think you’d be this good-looking.” Even her words seem like they’re grinning; Satoru’s ego is being petted like a cat being beckoned.

“Yes, I’m Gojou Satoru,” he says, respectful as Suguru advised him to be. He gets out of his chair to give both parents one low bow each. “Nice to meet you both.”

“Suguru told us so much about you, which is surprising, since he never tells us much about his school life.” Suguru’s chewing on his bottom lip. The kind of apprehension one sits in before an IV needle pierces a vein at the bend of an elbow before surgery. “He’s a nice, agreeable kid, but he’s not the type to keep a bunch of friends around.” She pauses, glances at Suguru lowering his face. Probably contemplating how he should put a stop to this conversation before his secrets are exposed. This is a courtroom and his mother is the plaintiff. “Yet he mentions you in every phone call home.”

Oh, this is critical information.

“Does he?”

“Yeah.” She nods, and now her eyes are smiling, and Satoru notes, Wow. Suguru got that from her too. “He talks about you as much as he would a girlfri—”

“Mom!” Suguru’s ears—they’re pink, almost red in the gold kitchen lighting. Satoru should thank his mother later with the deepest bow he can muster when he leaves for letting him witness this sight. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Saying so much.” Satoru thinks he sees the beginnings of a pout—a sight so rare from Suguru it might as well be a grand astronomical event. A blue moon, the transit of Venus, planetary alignment.

“I raised such a fussy son.” His mother ruffles his hair. The strands are rearranged and stick out at unnatural angles. Suguru scrambles to smooth them back down.

“Always embarrassed, always fretting,” his father adds, placing his bag by the leg of the table and sitting down in the open seat beside Satoru. His mother sits down next to Suguru, pushing shocks of his hair behind his ears, her red-painted nails against a murmur of black like paints for a lacquered bowl.

They’re very—normal. Just as expected. Friendly and comfortable in a way a close family should be. It’s nice. Satoru isn’t familiar with this, doesn’t have this at home. He watches with fascination, and if he were to be truthful, mild envy too.

“Suguru here absorbs all the stress and worry in the family on his own. Sometimes, he’s the one nagging us. Isn’t that so backwards?”

Satoru knows exactly what his mother means. He’s like air freshener, baking soda at the back of a refrigerator to rid the odors, attentively trying to make the environment around him more pleasant. Leaves everything prettier and cleaner and nicer than how he found them—like earlier, when he shifted gears on instinct the moment he stepped through the door. Washed the dishes that weren’t his, hung the forgotten laundry when skies were still cloudy, whipped up a meal without any obligation to during Satoru’s casual visit.

But that’s just how it is with him, isn’t it? Suguru feels obliged even with a lack of pressure or expectations.

Satoru kneads his fingers into his palms just to do something with his hands. He’s always using his hands, supplementing each of his conversations the way an interpreter forms words in sign language. But they don’t carry any words today. Just a feeling.

Just a—warmth?

It seems like it at least, the tingle you feel when holding fingers to a space heater after they’ve been bitten by bitter cold. But unlike the butterfly wingbeat, crane migration that permeated in his chest during his first kiss with Suguru, during all his subsequent kisses with Suguru—this heat is tamer. More undercurrent than tsunami. Calm tides reaching for the moon.

“I think that’s what’s great about him,” he says, and only afterwards does he realize he’s smiling a smile he doesn’t think to, and only then does Satoru begin to understand the feeling he feels. Something gentle and soft and understated, sunlight puddles on spring afternoons when the sun is half-swathed in its cloudy comfort blanket. He’s saying something embarrassing, and he’s about to say something even more so, but he’s all confetti cannon and glitter and the words are threatening to spill out of him like streamers. So he opens his mouth and lets the colors fly. “That’s why I like him.”

Suguru’s parents interpret the statement in the platonic way. “How nice,” is what his mother says, Cupid’s bow still hidden over her teeth. “It’s such a great feeling to hear someone praise your son.” His father is as neutral about it as can be, giving a nod of acknowledgement as if to a cup of standard, makeshift coffee he’s sipping as he’s reading the morning newspaper. A placeholder of a gesture.

Eventually, Satoru thinks to unclurl his hands, rest them on his knees under the table after they've inched along his thighs. From there he clenches, and then he unclenches, and then he clenches all over again. Using himself as a stress ball. Maybe he'll call it a calming exercise, clutching the lane divider in a pool when you're not tall enough for your toes to touch the bottom without submerging. After all, nothing’s more comforting than a stable handhold when learning to swim, and to think like this, to speak like this, to give a name to this—for Satoru, are also ways of learning. With practice, maybe he'll be able to say what he really wishes to say. Tell Suguru what he really wishes to tell. Maybe he'll be able to stand in this pool without his head going under.

The conversation derails to another topic. Suguru’s parents are much, much more talkative than he is, and Satoru's sure they're saying something interesting because he finds them to be interesting people, but he just isn't listening anymore. Instead, he's focused on Suguru. The way he keeps quietly to himself. The way his face is turned to the window where the sun is doing its nightly routine before bedtime, tucking itself into the duvet of the horizon. He does a lot of hiding when he's embarrassed, like a rabbit in a forest that ducks away into its burrow at the sight of predators, retreating back to safety. Except now he’s in the open playing peek-a-boo with his hands tied. There’s no tree or foliage to duck behind and Satoru’s still there and watching.

Pretending you don’t see the bear doesn’t mean it won’t find you.

And Suguru’s ears, the weakness he doesn’t know to cover, the singular fault in his otherwise perfect camouflage—they’re red.

xi. my bloody valentine - off your face

Shinjuku is about two-in-the-morning street gossip and foam sloshing over the brims of beer mugs, but Shinjuku on Christmas is about lights.

Granted, there’s always been lights lining these streets, neon-faced buildings and signs tripped with whips of color. But their dance today, Suguru notes, is especially festive. Little blinking stars, off before on before off again. Satoru admires them with a tilted chin and moonwide eyes, illuminated in every corner of their periphery as they walk with shoulders grazing, weaving past the oncoming couples as if they’re playing a game of Frogger with a half-sensitive joystick. One poorly-timed step in the wrong direction and it'd be game over.

It isn’t as if they don’t constantly hang out. They do a lot of things together—play Lightning at the basketball courts, race laps around the school buildings, exorcise curses with their backs pressed to each other in camaraderie, sit around at the dorms with their limbs molded together like plasticine. Shoulder to shoulder, leg over legs. Everything that could be labeled under the category of friendship without eyebrows raising.

But to hang out on Christmas, just the two of them, when there’s nothing but gift advertisem*nts for romantic partners and hands being held all around them—that’s something different altogether.

“Isn’t it kinda weird that we’re spending Christmas together?” says Suguru, mittened hands in the pockets of his jacket and head tipped upward to look at the trees above them, twined with white fairy lights that reach up to the ends of their branches. His earbuds are in, volume two ticks above absolute silence, quiet guitar backing the sound of his breathing.

“Why would it be?” Satoru adjusts his scarf, breath gushing around his fingers as he exhales. His other arm is wrapped around a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, the one they had placed an order for weeks ahead at the Memory Lane location, too far out of the way when there’s one near their dorms. But reservations were no longer being taken there—typical Christmas chaos—and Satoru had made a dozen phone calls with his knee doing a jackknife bounce in frustration. Suguru had laughed at him the entire time.

But Satoru insisted they follow tradition, so now here he is, hugging a container of greasy food to his chest like a life preserver, warmer than the heat packs Suguru’s wearing in his shoes, its plastic bag bowed neatly at the top to keep it from cooling too much. Satoru blows into his hand to warm it, didn’t care enough to bundle up even with this morning's weather report. If Suguru knew it’d be like this, he would’ve brought a spare pair of gloves. He should've. This is Satoru he's dealing with.

Suguru says before his pause turns into strange, inopportune silence, “Because we aren’t a couple.”

“You don’t have to be dating to hang out on Christmas.”

“But there’s, you know,” he starts, careful with how he treads. All at once the embarrassment hits him, but this is a necessary conversation. Satoru raises an eyebrow to communicate that he doesn’t, in fact, know. “Implications.”

“Implications,” parrots Satoru. Spray paint a streak of neon yellow through the center of his hair and he’d be a co*ckatoo.

“Yeah.” An inhale, tenuous as the gossamer wing of a dragonfly so he can have some draft behind his words. “You should be hanging out with, I don’t know—a girl you like or something.”

“I don’t have a girl I like, dude, otherwise you’d be the first to know.” The flash of a smile flirts on Satoru’s lips, and it turns into a grin behind the magician smoke of winter breath. “The only lady that has my heart is Koda Kumi. Half of its chambers for her, half of its chambers for you.”

Suguru clears his throat two or three times. Maybe three and a half with the way a syllable catches in it. He’ll pretend he didn’t hear that last comment. “Then you shouldn’t be doing this couple sh*t with anyone but your Koda Kumi poster,” he says in lieu of a better response.

“Stop with the protesting already.” Suddenly, genuine exasperation is aimed at Suguru's direction. This is not within range of Satoru’s daily spectrum of emotions—that he conveys, at least—and all too strangely Suguru watches him deflate. “I’m the one who made the plans, and you’re the one who agreed. So stop worrying.” His words are—abrasive. Awfully cranky for a day like this, but Satoru’s moods have always been unpredictable. A loose canon in every sense of the term. “It isn’t like you to care about this kind of thing.” Then a scratch at his nape and he's back to being his offhanded self again. "It's whatever."

Whatever. Satoru loves to say everything is whatever, and it’s a habit they both have. More of a filler word to punctuate a dying conversation than anything else. This, however—this is not just whatever.

This is damage control.

But then, at half the volume and twice the audible frustration, “And you know that I—I think you know how I feel anyway.”

The first thing that comes to Suguru’s mind is, “I do?” More functional, than anything. There to fill in the empty space of conversation the way elevator music stamps out claustrophobic silence, floating flimsily over the jovial idol-pop synths and shop jingles of Shinjuku.

The answer to that is: yes.

Yes he does, in fact. Awareness is his greatest character trait, of himself and of others. Satoru’s made his intentions clear before. Maybe not with The Words, not with an I like you or the other variant too weighty and significant for Suguru’s imagination to entertain, but in other ways. When he lets Suguru catch him looking, lets his hands linger too long when they pass food between each other, lets his eyes tell too much when he cracks a joke and waits for Suguru to laugh.

And he’ll say those things. Unprecedented things, uppercut-to-the-chin things that send Suguru flying through paradoxes. Implications.

I think that’s what’s great about him, goes the ghost of Satoru’s voice. That’s why I like him.

Disappointment, not the comical kind he wears when he pouts, finds home in Satoru’s expression. “Sometimes you’re the clueless one of the two of us.”

A claim so far from the truth it sounds as if it were said to someone else, but you’d catch Suguru dead before he’d incriminate himself. To acknowledge something is to accept it. As he is, and as they are, Suguru doesn’t think he could bring himself to do so.

They both go quiet. It takes no time for warmth to gather in Suguru's chest. Perhaps he didn’t need all these layers. Implications.

After what feels like a miniature eternity, Satoru’s tugging on his sleeve. An innocent gesture on its own. They’ve seen a lot of that today with the children scampering the streets with their tired guardians. But with Satoru, it’s not much of a call for attention as it is an act of skinship. A request for Suguru to stay close, to not walk too far.

“I saw this in a movie,” Satoru prefaces, cheeks smeared in the pinks and reds of a peppermint rose. From the cold or from something else, Suguru can’t tell, but he’s flushed. “In the west, on Christmas, they have this tradition of kissing under mistletoe.”

It’s easy to recognize, with startling clarity, what Satoru is getting at. Something so roundabout can somehow sound so precise. Implications.

Suguru’s voice comes out pale and feverish, realizing too late that the fluster has worked its way to his speech as well. “But there’s no mistletoe around here.”

“But there are lights,” says Satoru. They’ve almost reached the station now. A little more walking until they find shelter from the winter. “I think fairy lights are just as good.”

A dissatisfied hum makes itself known in Suguru’s throat. “But aren’t we supposed to stick to tradition?” It’s only a half-protest. He lets Satoru lead him to the front of some hole-in-the-wall anyways, the restaurant’s warmth trying to beckon them inside when the door slides open for a cluster of drunk uncles to stumble through. They already have food, but at this rate it’ll get cold. For a reckless moment, Suguru considers ordering extra takeout. Not to eat later or anything practical like that—just to stall.

They both stand with their feet together like a couple of window-display dolls. Satoru isn’t holding his wrist anymore but the feel of his grip still lingers. “We can pick and choose which to follow.”

“That’s not how it works.”

Between a pair of steaming exhales into his palms, Satoru says in that blithe way of his, “And who’s gonna stop us? You? Is a curse gonna smite us from the sky?”

“You can’t waste all that time on the phone trying to order some damn fried chicken ‘because it’s tradition’ and then disregard those same traditions later. That makes no sense.”

Nonchalant, “I think I’ll do what I want.”

And that’s how it’s been, up until now, and that’s how it’ll keep being—Satoru roping Suguru into his antics, rattling Suguru’s composure, doing as he wishes. Like a tropical disturbance that Suguru had the misfortune of stepping into, unknowingly tripping into the beginnings of a hurricane, taking too long to determine a reason for the surge and the tides and the rainfall and before he knows it, everything’s flooding.

What is this even? What’s the name for this? What’s this feeling supposed to—

A shivering sigh to accompany the shake of his head, he trains his gaze at a particular gap in the bricked ground. Doesn’t know where he should look besides down, contemplating whether he should say what he's about to say next. He should. He’s done so before, and this—whatever their relationship is—a boundary should be drawn for it eventually. “Besides, that’s something you should do with someone you like.”

Next, it’s Satoru’s turn to sigh. A look of—disappointment again? No, something more vague than that. Maybe sullen. It washes over his face, breaks over the shore of his expression before pulling away. “You’re still saying that?” Implications.

“I’m just being realistic.”

“That so?” Satoru answers, voice in that hum of false wonder. Oh really? You sure?

Suguru’s sure.

They both take time to warm their hands. Suguru peels his gloves off and straightens his fingers out, tender from the rough wool of their yarn. Each of his knuckles are a blushing cheek, enough for an intoxicated party of fourteen. Feet nudging at calves beneath an izakaya table, clinks of glasses. Excuse me, another bottle of sake please! Ah, a few extra plates of yakitori too! Everyone, do you have your beers? He rubs his hands together and his knuckles make a toast.

December is colder this year, not enough to frost their skin or eyelashes nor to really bother Satoru, but enough to leave Suguru shivering in his every limb. He is just as far from a winter person as he is a summer person—prefers the safe, comfortable in-betweens of autumn and spring. More transition than destination, sure, giving way to the extremes of the other two seasons. Whether to be hot or cold, they can’t make up their minds, but their trees are prettier and their weather is milder, and no additional hours of daylight or snow powder scenery would make Suguru reconsider.

A few steps ahead of them is a flowering dogwood without any flowers, all branches with their leaves half-fallen, its arms dressed in vines of white lights. Rows of trees line up uniformly along the streets like hotel receptionists, bowing in a greeting when a particularly powerful gust of wind blows by, pulling stray foliage and the tail of Suguru’s scarf along with.

Satoru finds his wrist again and leads him forward, balmy fingers a trace of summer heat on his skin. Marches of couples pass by without paying them any attention. On a holiday like this, walking the streets with a significant other, your partner is often all you can concentrate on. Their warmth and their glow. Their smile and their hands.

Satoru and Satoru and Satoru and Satoru—

They’re not supposed to be anything. Not a couple, not an item, not a pair. They’re not, but that’s how it feels to stand here with Satoru as the only thing in the foreground, the world swimming in a blur around him.

And that’s still how it feels when they kiss.

Chaste, a few seconds fast, with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken held between them as a gauge of how close their chests should be in public. People look. Of course they do. Gazes aren’t tangible but sometimes they can still be felt, a dozen spotlights overlapping on a single subject at the center stage. Every centimeter of Suguru buzzes with nerves.

Suguru pulls away and it’s all breathfog between them. Even as they part, Suguru’s synapses keep firing. What is this, what am I doing, what are we, hasn’t this gone on for long enough, why am I still—

“Stop breathing,” urges Satoru out of displeasure, swiping at Suguru’s winter-pinched nose. He breaks out into laughter, right then. More people must be looking, and a part of Suguru cares about the attention on him, but he laughs without any care. Instead, he lets it carry loud and easy in the carefree, Satoru-like manner.

“If I did that, I’d die.”

“Then we can hook you up to one of those machines with all those tubes so you don’t have to.”

“I’m not in a coma, idiot.” His laughing comes out soft between his syllables like it’s been weaved into the fabric of his speech. All of the previous unease has left him completely. “And before you threaten to put me in one, just know that I’d still be breathing, conscious or not.”

“Well, you can at least not huff in my face.”

Suguru seriously contemplates it. Déja vu from that one time he thought about blowing in Satoru’s eye at the swing set a year ago when they first met. There are moments like these that make him want to. Even the way Satoru flinches feels more of a recollection of an old, distant memory resurfacing than something real-time. Perhaps a bit of snow can add the effect of dandelion scatter. “I think I’ll do what I want,” he answers, flippant, and the thought that he’s begun to speak like Satoru suddenly hits him.

“I’ll kiss you again,” Satoru says, as if a threat, but he doesn’t end it there. “I’ll kiss you all over your face and shout about how we’re the best couple these streets have ever known and ruffle you so bad you can’t bring yourself to come here anymore.”

Like clockwork, Suguru smacks him in the arm.

“I’d never speak to you again.”

“As if you have the mental strength for that.” Chuckling that’s more of a taunt. Satoru runs the knuckle of his forefinger along Suguru’s chin, a gesture that seems tender and intimate at first, before flicking him in the cheek. It makes Suguru flinch in recoil. “The longest you’ve been able to give me the silent treatment is an hour. Probably less than that, actually. A whole forty-five minutes.”

“Keep talking and I’ll give you the silent treatment right now.”

“No you won’t. You’re such a liar.”

Defensively, Suguru says, “I know you love to accuse me of that sh*t, but I never lie.” There isn't a shred of belief on Satoru’s face. “When have I ever lied?”

Knowing, because Satoru’s always been much sharper than he leads on, he answers, “All the time. Like when you pretend that you don’t wanna kiss when you do.” Ah, Suguru’s being called out right now. He tries to keep his composure afloat. “Just earlier too, even, when you said you didn’t know how I felt.” And suddenly, Suguru’s carefully maintained keel of nerves begins to splinter into a shipwreck. “Has anyone ever told you how easy you are to read?”

Implications.

With little tact, all Suguru has the eloquence to say is, “Maybe that’s what I want you to think.”

“Oh?” A little victory smile. “So you know I like you after all.”

Confessions, as portrayed in films and television and those love songs in which yearning is served vulnerable and raw to someone on a silver platter, usually come with a build before the sudden stop. Pretty scenery, shots at different angles, tender-sweet music with each word weighty and every emotion palpable through the screen. Hitting an apex before tumbling into the steep, steep fall.

Confessions, as executed by Satoru, are nothing of the sort. More of a passing thought spoken in the manner you would when commenting on the weather. What a nice day we’re having, don’t you think? Oh, that cloud over there! Doesn’t it look like a bunny? I heard it’s supposed to rain all of next week, so we better enjoy sunny skies while we can. Just a passing thought, so easy and untroubled Suguru hardly registers it as anything but.

What is this even? What’s the name for this? What’s this feeling supposed to—

Despite asking himself these questions in his head, Suguru knows the answers to all of them. Has always lent himself to mindfulness, perceptiveness, sensitivity to oneself and to others. But there’s just something different about hearing it out loud, hearing it spoken, hearing it dropping from Satoru’s lips that makes all of him sputter, burn like phosphorus meeting air.

“What was that?” he asks just to be sure he isn’t hearing things. Sometimes you need to perceive something twice to confirm it was real. That’s why you make double-takes at those shapes in the corner of your periphery. Could be a person, could be a piece of furniture, could be nothing at all. And that, what Satoru had said earlier—it could’ve been a trick of the wind, his ears trying to make sense of sounds they didn’t quite catch. Mistaking the lyrics of a song for something completely different.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me.”

Shaking his head, Suguru tries to smother the lub-dub of his heartbeat in his ears, flexes his hands to placate the pulse in his fingers. Everywhere, it’s loud. “I really didn’t though. You’ll have to say it again.”

Reaching to pull out Suguru’s earbud with deft fingers, Satoru leans in until his breath ghosts along the shell of his ear, close enough for them to seem like something more than friends.

“I like you.”

Suguru’s stomach flips, begins its compulsory flutter once more. He’s fed himself with so many worries these past few months that it’s multiplied into a thousand little monarch wingbeats. Each turn is a new migration. Too much milkweed in a perennial garden and a belly becomes a congregation of butterflies.

That little victory smile never leaves Satoru’s face.

xii. naoko gushima - candy

When they become second years, nothing really changes.

Suguru still brings his earbuds wherever he goes, he still lets Satoru rest his head on his shoulder on the train, and he still shrugs off Satoru’s advances with strategic changes in topic whenever he says something that hints at too much, too suggestive to be platonic. Cheeks pink and ears pinker, of course—wouldn’t be a Suguru-branded reaction without them.

They hang out everyday, most frequently in their rooms with Suguru’s hair in a tumble of ink over the pillows, tangled like their legs are. He’d be reading, usually, when they sit in companionable silence and the presence of each other is enough. Satoru’s face would be casted with the bluebeam glow of a Nintendo DS, mashing buttons to beat up a boss in Kirby Squeak Squad or drawing circles with the stylus to cook poffins in Pokémon Pearl. He’d probably be chewing through a package of milk candies while he’s at it too.

In the natural progression of things, he would then proceed to ask Suguru to makeout with sugar in his teeth, get rejected nine times out of ten, and hit a lucky streak when he bats his eyelashes and grazes the back of Suguru’s neck to fluster him enough.

On occasion, they go out. They’ve gone to karaoke a dozen times (Suguru always comments on how unrealistically good at singing Satoru is, room lighting dyeing the oil slick of his hair multicolored like an abalone’s shell), been at every Ichiran in the city (Suguru is a creature of habit, catlike in his tendency to eat at regular hours), visited the Yebisu Museum so Satoru could take a photo with the giant beers (he was almost as tall as they were). Never with a plan or agenda, patronizing whatever place that happens to catch their eye.

Recently, Satoru’s formed a list. Things I Need to Do With Suguru Because He’s Cute When Shoved Out of His Comfort Zone, is what it’s tentatively named. An entire catalogue of them like a set of RPG side quests, ever-growing with rewards to reap on completion. A sneak-attack peck on the cheek some days, a cheeky slap to the upper arm on others, and always, always a glimpse of Suguru laughing so hard his eyes curve into crescents.

But Satoru’s a completionist when playing video games so he’s a completionist when it comes to this. There’s too much incentive.

As of right now, the prevailing tasks: kiss Suguru on the Palette Town ferris wheel, kiss Suguru in the Ikebukuro planetarium under the artificial constellations, kiss Suguru in a photobooth last-second before the shutter goes off (which is his current objective), kiss Suguru at—

Through the static vacuum of his thoughts pierces the sound of a groan. All at once he comes back to himself.

“Claw machines cost so f*cking much to play here,” Suguru grumbles, tapping buttons on the console that won’t do a thing until the machine’s belly is fed with a coin, visibly fighting back the urge to kick it. The pacifist is displaying a rare streak of violence. “And I don’t have enough change.”

“Maybe I’ve got some.” Satoru digs both hands into his pockets. One has his wallet with his school ID and a maxed-out credit card, the other has lollipop wrappers and the gacha capsule for a keyblade charm he had pulled, now attached to his phone. Earlier, they had passed one of the many walls of capsule machines in Akihabara, where Satoru had spotted the Kingdom Hearts logo plastered on a marketing poster, and the rest was history. “How much is this one?”

“Three-hundred yen, and it’s the cheapest here.”

After feeling his way through his belongings and disregarding the money he’s set aside for the photobooth later, Satoru announces, “Found some.”

Suguru contemplates the semi-handful of change in Satoru’s presented palm. A fifty, a hundred, a couple tens, seven ones. “Not much though. You forgot your Suica card didn’t you? Don’t you have to pay the fare later?”

“It’s whatever,” assures Satoru, more concerned about current expenses than anything an hour or two in the distant future. “Combined with what you have, we can play once.”

“What the hell did we come to the arcade for anyway?” Suguru’s instinctive rake of fingernails to the back of his neck makes an audible, annoyed scritch. By his hairline, a bit to the right, as if that particular patch of skin always itches when he’s irritated. If Satoru’s memory serves him correctly, he also has a mole there. “And why did you leave without your Suica card?”

“The plushies are cute! I wanted to look,” justifies Satoru. “We can figure out the train stuff later. No big deal.” Worst case scenario, he can go on a very long walk or just fly his way back. Those options are preferably avoided though; he likes the transitional calm of being on a train with Suguru. Even when packed like sardines into a car, flanked by bodies with their chests pressed against the door in the same way starfish cling to the glass of their tank, Suguru’s presence cancels out all discomfort.

Small little joys like that are enough for Satoru to dish out extra cash for.

“You can spot me with your card later, right?”

A nose scrunch in distaste. Another scratch to the neck. “I can, but I don’t particularly want to.”

“Well I’m covering now with the last scraps of my precious money, so I’m gonna take that as a yes.”

“A train fare costs more,” Suguru rationalizes. He’s always been the type to care too much about logic and practicality to ever step back and enjoy the scenery right in front of him. Of course he’s thinking about the future, or whatever. “I’m not the one who wants to play, either. You dragged me here.”

“Okay then.” Satoru presses a hand to the space between Suguru’s shoulder blades, leans down to speak into his ear. “How about I win you something, you pay for my ride, and we kiss and cuddle all you want later. That fair?”

Words tumbling, Suguru says with his syllables snipped into a jagged edges, “Hey, who said I wanted to—”

“It’s written all over your face.”

“No the hell it isn’t.” Suguru shoves him with the force of something barely within the parameters of playful. “That’s what you want to do. Don’t put that on me.”

Messing with him is so, so fun.

“Well if I win you one of these plushies, that’s what we’ll do,” Satoru says, palm upturned to gesture toward the array of stuffed toys swimming in their kiddie pool of glass eyes and synthetic fur. They’re all near-spherical shaped animals. Some of seals, others of corgis, but Satoru had already set his eyes on the calico. Just one, in the distant back corner, like a stray that’s been dropped into a shelter without any of its street friends. “Either way, I’ll need you to cover me.”

“God, fine,” reluctantly agrees Suguru, his hand now moving on to fiddle with an earring. Another one of his small habits. “Only because I know these games are f*cking impossible.”

“For you, maybe. I think I’ll be able to win one just fine.” That enduring confidence of his—if he speaks of it enough, maybe Suguru will place some faith in it too. “It’ll be no problem for me.”

“That’s what you said about fish scooping.”

Satoru doesn’t have much to say to that one. “Well.”

This small giggle bubbles in Suguru’s mouth like a first sip of soda. “Can’t wait to see you get pissy about it all over again.”

“Don’t jinx it. This is my one-and-only chance to prove myself.” He holds out an expecting hand for Suguru to provide his contribution of change. Slotting in the coins, three-hundred yen counting down to a perfect, satisfying zero, he places his palm over the joystick. Gets a feel for it. “And I’ll win because I’ve got you as my cheerleader.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

“But you’re here, aren’t you? If you’re standing next to me,” Satoru says, his mouth splitting into an oyster shell of a smile, grin a whole harvest of pearls, “then I have all the encouragement I need.”

It isn’t flirting nor is it anything intended to fit into the realm of romance, but something like that, as it turns out, is plenty enough to get Suguru flustered.

Another shove meets Satoru’s upper arm as he presses the start button, causing the joystick to follow in a sharp jerk. “Hey! Don’t sabotage me.”

That familiar, familiar shade of pink. Suguru grumbles, “Then quit talking out of your ass.”

Satoru scrambles to get ahold of his focus again, carefully maneuvering the mechanical claw with a concentrated wince. He should probably take his sunglasses off; they have him second-guessing his own superhuman eyesight with how they’re sitting too high on his nose bridge. But that would probably distract him even more.

Somewhere in the back corner, to the right but not in the very back, sits the calico on top of a hill of corgis. This would be poetic if Satoru were a cat person, but he isn’t. That’s Suguru’s role to fill, as careful and self-sufficient and, to Satoru’s dismay, testy as Seki is. It’s unclear whether the owner takes after the cat or the cat takes after the owner, but their likeness is uncanny. The spitting image of each other.

“This looks about right, doesn’t it?” Satoru shuts an eye in the way archers do for accuracy, a slight change in perspective that has him rethinking his maneuvers. They’re probably perfect; his estimates are usually too precise to even be called as such, but there’s something about the stakes here. About Suguru watching him inch the claw forward and backward, left and right, about trying to win something for Suguru that’s giving him—performance anxiety? Is that what they call it? Well, all he knows is that it’s having him experience a rare streak of concern.

Crazy, the effects of harboring feelings for somebody.

“No comment,” is all Suguru says, folding his arms over his chest. “A win with my help wouldn’t feel much like a win to you anyways.”

Ah. Suguru knows him so, so well.

Satoru laughs. More to himself than anything, pleased. “You’re definitely right about that one.”

With the remaining few seconds before the timer runs out, Satoru makes his careful calculations—as in, spinning the joystick around for a few more dizzying, arbitrary circles as if it’ll wind up his luck—before the claw automatically descends, loosely clinging to the round shape of the calico stuffy and successfully lifting it.

“Oh! I did it,” he exclaims, turning to Suguru expectantly to collect his praises.

Suguru points back at the machine, at the claw, as it slowly maneuvers towards the chute in the opposite corner. “Not exactly,” he says like the killjoy he is. “It could fall at any time.”

“Stop jinxing sh*t,” he grumbles after pulling a face.

“I’m just telling you not to be so hasty.”

Turning back to watch with wincing observance, Satoru says, “Don’t care!”

The claw moves damn slow. Agonizingly so, has him feeling the edge-of-the-seat, caught-in-slow motion sort of suspense for the next few moments before it begins its home stretch. One crawling centimeter at a time, the plushie slipping just slightly in its hold along the way. Now Satoru is the one that wants to kick the machine but refrains when it comes to a mechanical, programmed stop after passing over the plastic divider around the chute and—

The calico has been obtained.

“Now you did it,” Suguru says before Satoru has the chance to whistle a victory fanfare. His hands come together in a low-effort clap. “An incredible, show-stopping performance.”

Satoru dips into an overdramatic bow. “Thank you, thank you.” Joy buzzes through him as he crouches to retrieve it from the swing hatch, compressing it from both sides between his hands. He’s so happy he’s soaring. Above the ninth cloud and past the tenth—all over a stuffed animal. This is an updraft he doesn’t catch even after successfully exorcising a special grade.

An announcement: “I want my reward now.”

“And what would that be?”

A victory speech: “Hm. I’d say I deserve a kiss.”

There couldn’t have been a more obvious answer. Not at this point, not this late in the game, when that’s all Satoru ever asks for.

Suguru knows it too, knows it better than he does, because a look that says, God, not this sh*t again, immediately washes over his face. “Is that all you ever want?”

“Yeah. It really is.”

“Fine.” The trademark Suguru Sigh. “Just one though.”

As they’ve established, it’s very much a Satoru thing to waste time. To play things up, to do things leisurely, to conjure up an entire movie’s runtime with a story worth only a few minutes to tell.

But he decides against that when he overhears a drove of voices coming closer. Middle schoolers probably, elementary schoolers potentially—it’s difficult to distinguish sometimes based on pitch alone. They sound young enough to have never had the experience of holding hands with anyone but their family members before, talking about—something. A new anime announced to air this coming winter, or their next-to-impossible math homework.

Stepping the first foot forward in the leg race, he pulls Suguru into a corner at the end of a uniform row of crane games, blinking like blade signs down color-drenched Kabukicho, opening their recharged eyes again at sunset. On off on, off on off. He knows how Suguru gets around spectators, how fussy he always is. The record shop, the storefront of a konbini, the street in Shinjuku under the tree.

But in front of some snot-nosed, middle-slash-elementary schoolers? That might be stretching it.

When Satoru figures they’re hidden enough, he finds that Suguru’s already saved him from the effort of pushing him against the wall, tucked in a slice of shadow away from the light. A strategic maneuver—he can’t see his face properly. But based on past trends and common sense inference, Satoru knows he’s blushing in that delicate, meadowsweet pink. Letting himself get stirred by Satoru’s advances so easily.

This time, it happens in the background. Off-screen where cameras don’t roll. They kiss there, in the only dark place of the bright room, like the whisper of a secret under the din of classroom chatter.

As the group of kids pass—middle schoolers, based on their motley range of heights, some lucky to hit an early growth spurt while others aren’t quite so fortunate—Satoru begins to stroll to a different area of the floor, hands nonchalantly folded into his pockets, undisturbed. Suguru follows him meekly, steps lagging a few seconds behind, looking like his bones are about to rattle out of him. How it should be. Satoru feels all too triumphant.

“Where are you going?” Suguru asks behind him as he makes for a sharp turn at the corner toward the stairs.

“You see the signs don’t you?” He motions toward a banner arrowing them to the basem*nt floor. “I wanna take photos at those cute booths.”

“Neither of us have enough money for that.”

“That’s what you think.” Pausing halfway in his descent, Satoru turns, one foot on a higher step and the other on a lower, reaching into his pocket to unearth three coins, a hundred yen each, sitting shiny in his palms like sea glass found along a shore.

“You’re kidding.” A few surprised blinks and then the voice of reason. “Use that to pay for your fare then.”

“No way,” Satoru objects, shaking his head, his fringe lifting with the movement. When his hair settles into place again, he’s met with a defeated look on Suguru’s face. “I saved it for one reason and one reason only.”

“We both have phones to take photos with, dude. Use the money on something practical like getting home. We don’t need to use a photobooth.”

“You don’t get it,” says Satoru as he hops the last few steps to reach the basem*nt floor, wind in his steps from excitement. He’s been looking forward to this all day, to having another keepsake to tape onto his wall. A piece of Suguru in his wallpaper, a piece of Suguru in his fish tank, a piece of Suguru in his thoughts. Always.

Besides, ever since Suguru expressed his reservations about doing couple-like activities together, that’s all Satoru wants to do. Nudge him in that direction so he realizes.

“You’re right, I don’t get it,” Suguru agrees, tailing closely behind Satoru as they reach the basem*nt. The entire floor is occupied by purikura machines, enough to house every student for a standard-sized high school classroom, dressed in soft pastels. Very much to Satoru’s taste in aesthetics.

Turning to pull at Suguru’s sleeve before deciding to go for it and catch his wrist, Satoru leads him into the first booth, shoulders shrugging past the curtain, the lighting inside bright and harsh in front of a green screen. It’s a little cramped with their heights and builds. Satoru has to brace himself for either the discomfort of hitting his head on the much too low ceiling or maintaining an awkward bend of his knees. He decides on the latter, trying to maintain a perfect balance between staying in frame and not dropping into a full squat. Tight spaces are one of the few things he genuinely can’t stand, but for this, he’ll learn to deal with it.

As he gapes at the console of buttons and the touch panel, Suguru announces, “I have no damn clue how any of this is supposed to work.”

“It isn’t that complicated.” Shrugging, Satoru passes him his change to feed into the coin slot. There’s a clatter and a shimmering chime in acceptance before the screen changes from a supercut of flashing advertisem*nts to text that tells them, Welcome! Touch here to start! Satoru reaches to tap the screen but Suguru beats him to it, fascinated by all the options like a cat discovering its own reflection, wondering who the new companion is in the window. “Which background do you think we should go with?”

“I should not be relied on for a decision like that,” he mumbles, shaking his head to himself. “You’re paying, and you wanted to do this, so you can choose.”

“And I want you to pick one.”

Simply, Suguru says, “I like all of them. I’ve got no preference.”

“Alright, alright.” Satoru’s eyes skim over each of the selections. Sunsets, landscapes, plain color backgrounds. On a whim, he picks a pink one scored with a pattern of strawberries. “This one good?”

“Hm.” A lukewarm reaction, but Suguru’s never been one to have strong opinions about stuff like this. They had gone shopping in Shibuya once, months ago, because Satoru wanted to buy new clothes for the rain-humid summer months. For hours, he tried on outfits from every trendy boutique and the entire time, Suguru simply followed him around with his arms crossed over his chest. Courteously nice and responsive, giving inoffensive answers when Satoru had asked if an item suited him, over-excitedly swinging the curtain of a dressing room aside for him to see. But, being Suguru’s best friend and all, Satoru could tell he was disinterested. Completely indifferent each time he was asked to choose which button-up shirt looked best. “It’s very you.”

“Then I guess it’s perfect,” Satoru chimes, tapping through the following menus. “This machine prints out strips of six photos.”

“So we just do dumb poses for each one?”

“Pretty much.”

“Sounds simple enough.” Suguru points at the lense, a little black eye perpetually unblinking. “Look here, right?”

“Mhm, that’s how taking pictures works,” says Satoru, a touch of sarcasm to his voice. Suguru elbows him as the countdown begins. “Look pretty for the camera, yeah?”

Three, Suguru is looking at himself on the screen, his mouth in his polite, practiced smile, neat as a trimmed bush. Two, that won’t cut it with Satoru, so he steps halfway behind him and reaches around to press the corners of his mouth upwards, tipping his own head to the side so it rests against Suguru’s. One, in an act of rebellion, Suguru forces his smile downwards into a frown. Before Satoru can realize and retract his hands, the shutter goes off.

Satoru laughs when the still photo appears onscreen. He’s grinning in the image, cheek pressed to the silk of Suguru’s hair. “Ha, look how grumpy you look.”

It’s cute. Suguru laughs too.

The next series of shots are similarly silly. In the next, they both pull angry scowls and raise their chins. The delinquent face from the dramas, Satoru calls them. In another, with their hands held up in bared claws. And in the one after, the cat pose with curled fists at their cheeks. The entire time, the cat plushie is held tight to Suguru’s chest with an arm the entire time. Watching him strike each pose is enough happy fuel to keep Satoru going for the next few weeks.

The fifth is more candid with Satoru’s arm thrown around Suguru’s shoulder, pulling him close. They’ve taken hundreds of photos like this, usually framed by some scenic background. Waterfalls, gardens, cityscapes from the tops of buildings tall enough to scratch the sky. Satoru’s phone is filled with them, starting from the very first they took with Shouko in their classroom, the memory clinging around the soft smile Suguru had offered. Citrus and incense.

Now, they’re onto the sixth.

“Suguru, look over here.”

It’s the most predictable set-up every time, but every time Suguru falls for it. For someone as shrewd as he is, Satoru would think the effectiveness would eventually wear away, but.

But.

In Satoru’s head, he’d like to believe that Suguru turns because he’s expecting something. In Satoru’s head, he wants Suguru to expect something, giving him just enough time before the next shutter to tilt his head and press a kiss to his mouth. In Satoru’s head, this is something Suguru lets him do because he wants him to do it.

In Satoru’s head, Suguru will say—

“I like you,” Satoru murmurs. Another shutter of the camera. Words are water striders skimming the surface of a creak.

“Mm,” hums Suguru, and in Satoru’s head, it’s an affirmation. Reciprocation. An I like you too in a shorter, more convenient syllable.

They kiss again, and Suguru does the initiating this next time, small pecks to the corners before one fully on his lips, and the realization punches Satoru square in the face.

Suguru is kissing him back. Doing it in earnest. He’s doing it.

Chest soaring, Satoru smiles into it as if to say, This is what I do with someone I like.

In the capture onscreen, the photo appears. Satoru expected it to look more—awkward? Juvenile? Like two friends that were dared to do it? Like they’re two confused strangers who tripped over the wrong step and turned the wrong way in some contrived kiss scene of a manga pilot? Maybe, but they look normal. Natural.

Like what?

Like lovers.

Satoru adapts Suguru’s usual diligence when he begins editing the photos. It’s left entirely up to him, Suguru watching as he pastes hearts and stars and curly, spiraling English words of love and cute in each open corner. Cat ears on their heads in one of them, smiley faces on another, placing them in the same way he arranges stickers on the back of his phone—excessive and unnecessary. Once he’s satisfied with his work, he taps the button to print, and in due time, a slip drops into the dispenser. Satoru retrieves it and they both lean in to see. He makes sure to bend down extra low to press his head to Suguru’s, has been bending awkwardly this entire time, but the discomfort is forgotten when he takes in Suguru’s scent. Yuzu and sandalwood, filling his whole world the way incense fills a room.

Everything looks so shiny and cute and perfect, their faces glossy in the image from the photo finish. More of Suguru’s smiles immortalized into pictures. It’s everything Satoru could want. He’s so touched he could cry. He just might.

Suguru’s hugging the calico to his chest, tight enough to suffocate any living kitten. They’re both leaving here with keepsakes. A successful excursion, if Satoru says so himself. “Happy?”

“Very.” Heart in a carousel spin, he says, “I think I wanna get these tattooed on me.”

“Don’t do that,” objects Suguru. His returning smile, when it shows itself, has Satoru’s stomach doing gymnastics again. Aerials, vaults, handsprings—the whole works. “Then our faces will get all wrinkly when you age.”

“Who cares.” Satoru finds that he’s smiling too. Of course he is—that’s all he does when he’s with him. “It’ll be like we’re growing old together.”

Then, Suguru laughs. The sound of windbeat, windclap, windsong. “You’re a f*cking idiot.”

xiii. sonic youth - the diamond sea

In such places as aquariums with fish swimming past glass windows like migratory birds, staring is the polite thing to do.

That’s what this oceanic scenery is for. Satoru’s sandals click with each of his steps, running ahead, weaving through the crowd to stand with the children pressing their hands to the acrylic panels of the tank, leaving behind their fingerprints like cats’ paws in wet cement. Today, the world is blue.

“Suguru, look!” he says, pointing to the manta ray drifting by, showing them the whites of its belly, gills like pleats of folded origami paper. “Doesn’t it look like a spaceship from one of those sci-fi movies? Like, I don’t know, the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars or something.”

“Not really?” Suguru dodges a little boy running alongside his sister, facing backwards toward their mother who struggles to catch up with them in her kitten heels, turned away from the path in front of him. A beat too slow and he would’ve slammed against Suguru’s knee. A few meters away, Satoru’s beckoning him over with a hand that says, Hurry! Hurry! Too much movement going on around him at once, and this is supposed to be one of the less busy days of the week. “They’re different shapes.”

“But it’s about the feeling it gives,” Satoru explains, adjusting his sunglasses so they sit at his hairline, bangs pushed out of his face. “Big and majestic and stuff.”

“Dude, it’s a fish.”

Satoru wags a finger. “Not just any fish. A fish that looks like an intergalactic spaceship.”

“Right.”

Satoru turns away from the tank and looks at Suguru, then behind him, then around him. “Where’d Riko go?”

“She went with Kuroi-san to look at the coral exhibits on the third floor.” Suguru faces the direction of the exit, takes the first few steps. “Said she wanted to touch a sea cucumber. We should probably catch up with them.”

“Hmm.” Satoru’s hum raises in an upswing. Suguru knows the sound well—he has objections, and an objection is what he makes when he’s tugging on the collar of Suguru’s floral shirt from behind just enough for him to stop in his tracks. “But I wanna go to the aqua room on this floor.”

Suguru offers him a sidelong glance over the shoulder. “We’re on a mission right now.”

“Just for ten minutes.” Satoru presses his palms together in front of him, eyes closed in a bow. His sunglasses fall lopsided onto the tip of his nose with the movement but somehow don’t fall off. An eye is opened to look up at Suguru, whose shoulders are slouched midway through a tired, tired sigh.

“No.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen in a public place like this in such little time. Plus, there’s sharks!”

“You can see them from here too.”

“But I want to see them up close.” Satoru points to one lingering on the other side of the tank, grey and white-spotted and swarmed with smaller fish swimming alongside it. “That one’s all the way over there.”

Suguru knows he too-easily goes along with Satoru’s antics and even more easily lets him have his way. This is a critical fault in their friendship, he thinks. This is how people get taken advantage of. He knows this well but gives in anyways, scratching the itch behind his ear. “Okay, fine.” Satoru throws an arm around his shoulders with a grin. “You’re way too excited about this.”

“What’s not to be excited about meeting Goma’s brothers and sisters.”

“Goma’s a freshwater fish,” Suguru corrects, swaying as he tries to walk with Satoru draped around him, the difference in their heights making it additionally tricky as if he’s backpacking up a mountain with baggage twice his weight. “He wouldn’t last longer than a few minutes with these guys.”

“Maybe they’re distant cousins? Twice removed? Fish are fish.” Satoru shrugs, watching another manta ray swim along the top of the tank like a kite, its tail following like a string that tethers it to a spool. Suguru’s gaze follows it too, mild wonder.

They walk down to the aqua room with Satoru pulling him close, hand placed at his upper arm. To Suguru’s surprise, it’s much less crowded with far fewer kids. Less noise and more ambience. Satoru nudges him forward when his steps begin to slow, too occupied with trying to count each fish in the school wading by. Five then thirteen then twenty-one, and then he loses count. When he blinks out of his trance, he notices the rope barrier lining the edges of the glass and the strange angle the panel is at, curving above them into a ceiling. Light refracts into ribbons, the kind you’d see when submerged with your eyes open in a pool, not chasing the end of a tunnel but rising to the surface. It’s as if they’re standing on the ocean floor looking upwards.

“Worth it, right?” Satoru nudges him, poking him in the rib with a brow raised, eyes smiling.

They’re standing at a corner near the entrance in a meter or two of shadow. Suguru observes how light hits the ground in front of them, swirls of a tidal map, all warped and liquid. “Feels like we’re underwater.”

“I know right?” Satoru’s arm slides off his shoulders, weight no longer wrapped around him. He pulls at the sleeve of Satoru’s shirt instead. “Look at the guy above us.” Suguru’s eyes follow the path of his finger, pointing ahead to a whale shark, no remoras around to cling to its underbelly, casting a wide shadow over the onlookers.

“It’s big as hell,” he remarks.

Satoru’s fringe falls into his eyes with his nod, but not before laughing first. “f*cking massive.”

“Kinda terrifying actually. I wonder if there are—” Suguru begins to take a step forward, heel grazing the ground before Satoru catches him by the wrist.

With Suguru’s glance aimed at him over his shoulder, Satoru says, “Stay here.”

“Why? Didn’t you wanna look at the fish?”

The answer to Suguru’s question isn’t in words but in movement. Satoru lets him go for a moment before coming forward the way a tossed ball is later caught again. There’s a half-step shuffle of his feet until his chest meets Suguru’s back, arms coming around him like rope bridges laid across the plane of his chest. Everything goes still at once. Even his heartbeat holds onto its exhale.

This time, Suguru knows what’s about to come. He can hear the phrase preemptively, has heard it time and time again, both from the Satoru of real life and from the Satoru in his head, the same handful of moments looped. Christmas, the photobooth, and all the little instances after in the quietude of passing, insignificant conversation.

“I like you,” Satoru murmurs into his hair, placing a kiss at the back of his neck. Once, twice, thrice. Faint enough to not be heard by anyone but the two of them.

“I know you do.” Suguru’s endlessly thankful for the dim lighting in here, the bluedeep glow of the tanks color-correcting the redness of his wrists, his neck, his cheeks. This way, Satoru doesn’t catch the way his ears burn. “You’ve said it before.”

“I like you,” Satoru repeats again, this time emphatic. This time with weight. Less of a balcony breeze in dew-speckled morning and more of a tropical hurricane. Suguru’s neatly bricked building topples over, heat spreading in his chest like the most unforgiving of house fires. Ironic when it’s cool in here and so, so blue. When instead of brick or timber, they’re framed in a photo of acrylic and watery light smolder and fish. “Be my boyfriend.”

Suguru’s mouth is sticky. A full gift box of mochi recently chewed sticky. Natto stuck in his teeth since breakfast sticky. “What kind of sh*t are you saying in public.”

“I know you like me back,” Satoru says, voice so even it makes Suguru feel like a leaf peeling off the branches of a gingko tree mid-monsoon. Satoru’s hand is placed against the general area of his pulse, the palm against the thin fabric of Suguru’s shirt a hot coal pressed to his chest. “I know you do.” The words sit strange in Suguru’s ear. All of a sudden, he feels seen. “So let’s date.”

The hug loosens eventually when Suguru stays silent long enough, world swimming again. Suguru’s brain is a squeezed lemon. His nerves are in a citrus smash of pulp, synapses firing all juiced and electric. Every thought is a bullet shot at a paper target, landing everywhere but where he’s aiming.

But Satoru doesn’t let him think. Doesn’t let him play catch-up with his words. As soon as he’s let go of completely, Satoru pulls him in again. Except this time from the front. Except this time with Satoru’s hand on his neck drawing him close. Except this time they kiss, more open and vulnerable than the instances that came before, in the shadowy corner just barely out of sight.

Anybody can see right now, turn and look. People have seen them before, but now they’re kissing with a new bit of context, an extra page of backstory. Be my boyfriend.

Suguru’s heart is in his throat. He can feel his pulse quicken, no longer a backbeat but all the high-hats, each inhale and exhale like the sound of foot drum to snare and back again. His body goes off-time.

Suguru pulls back like he’s up for air, breathing all bated and jagged as he presses his forehead to Satoru’s shoulder. He isn’t allowed time to do that for long, Satoru’s hand moving to cup his chin, tilting his face despite his effort to turn away. He kisses him again, again, again. Pecks to his forehead to his nose to his cheek, the sound of their breathing blotted by the background conversation and the occasional camera shutter.

“I like you, Suguru,” Satoru says again, for finality’s sake, third time’s the charm as if it’ll land on this attempt. Suguru doesn’t need him to say it again, doesn’t want him to say it again, cheeks flushed and warm. He’s too flustered for this, for the way Satoru catches his wrist and squeezes like he’ll lose him to a storm, a kite with its tether cut. Everyone around them busies their eyes with the whale sharks and the rays, slow in their translocation to the other end of the tank, but Suguru’s world has scaled significantly down. Not a widthless, depthless thing too vast for human understanding to estimate, but a meter-by-meter square with just the two of them. In this corner of the universe, in their private galaxy, in his own watery perception of space, there’s him and there’s Satoru.

There’s always been Satoru.

They kiss again. Suguru kisses back, something he doesn’t think he could ever do with full confidence. That’s not what this fervor is, no. It’s a voice in the back of his head telling him to do it, he wants this, he should do it because he wants to. You want this, you want this, you want this.

This is what love is. This is learning to swim.

But even now, he struggles just as he did back then—in the listening booth, at the konbini, under the Christmas fairy lights, and the dozens and dozens of times in between—to take a breath.

xiv. kumi koda - i’ll be there

A lot changes after Riko, after Touji—and a lot doesn’t.

Suguru has this habit of blaming himself. It didn’t take long for Satoru to realize this. The way he lets his mind hover over small mistakes long after missions are completed and resolved, ties them up in a neat little bow as if to announce, This is over with and we’re done here, until he turns back around and lets his worry unravel them again. Not making it to the scene in time, letting a curse slip past his defenses and reach a civilian, holding his classmates back—all things he wears himself thin over. And when things go wrong—broad, sweeping failures that shouldn’t and couldn’t be blamed on a singular person—Suguru always, as if he feels the obligation to, holds himself accountable.

(But even so, Suguru always finds it necessary to say to Satoru after missions with a smile, regardless of the outcome or any blunders he might’ve made, “Good job today. You’ve worked hard.”

Even on that day, with the words “sorry I couldn’t save her” heavy on his tongue, standing in Satoru’s doorway like a husk of a person instead of someone living and breathing, Suguru had told him he did well regardless.

Strange of him, isn’t it?)

It can be assumed: Suguru blames himself for what happened with Riko, what happened with Touji, when everyone else knows it wasn’t the fault of anyone. Just an unlucky turn of events and human foolishness.

He’s normal otherwise. Yaga-sensei says his grades are fine, he finishes his school work properly, he completes all missions as usual. Cleanly and methodically in the Suguru type of way. He’ll speak when spoken to and smile when smiled at. But Satoru can see it, feel it—the growing distance like a fissure splitting beneath their feet, widening too far to step across, then too far to jump across, then too far to build a bridge across.

Satoru’s asked him about it too many times. Are you feeling alright? Is something wrong? What’s up with you recently? You’ve been distant. Is it something I did or, I don’t know—something I didn’t do? Suguru would return with evasive answers. Yeah, I’m feeling fine. No, nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s up with me either. I’m not being distant. No, you didn’t do anything, or failed to do anything you should’ve.

Suguru really does seem fine at the surface, a little out of it in the way you would be when running on little sleep or willing a headache away. Minor changes like that shouldn’t be a cause for concern, and they aren’t, but—he doesn’t banter with Satoru anymore, or return any of his insults, or laugh at his stupid jokes. He hardly even talks. A few seconds delay before he’ll even give one-syllable answers, a sure here and an alright there. Maybe a too-timid thanks when Satoru pulls him by the forearm off the train at their station, or stops him by the shoulders when the white-bright silhouette of a pedestrian signal isn’t illuminated at a crosswalk, prompting them to proceed.

Things like that, at least to Satoru, are not minor changes.

It’s difficult to describe. Suguru’s just—dimmer now. A flame burning the final remnants of a candlewick. It’s disconcerting. Satoru doesn’t know whether he should be concerned or whether Suguru would want him to be concerned, visibly forcing a friendly expression whenever approached by anyone. The others may not have noticed; Suguru knows how to swallow bitterness without letting his recoil show. But even with his admittedly low sensitivity to the emotions of others, Satoru does.

Of course he notices. They’re best friends.

Not quite lovers, no. Suguru hasn’t given him a response to the boyfriend question yet. But they can be.

It’s been months after Riko, after Touji, and Suguru’s still as fatigued as a crackling halogen lamp. Satoru would like to think that things between them haven’t changed, that when this blows over with time, they’ll be back to normal. Him and his best friend—Satoru and Suguru. Him and the person he loves.

He only hopes.

When he hears knocks on the door of his room, hasty and impatient, along with Suguru’s muffled voice carrying from outside, Satoru thinks he’s being spoken to in a dream.

They haven’t had a proper conversation in weeks, not by usual standards, just a few words passed here and there and shoulders grazing as they stand in silence on the subway. This half-reverie Satoru’s submerged in is mostly mist and fog, vague shapes and iced windows. Whatever Suguru’s saying is fuzzy around the edges, more vowel than consonant. They glaze right over when they reach Satoru’s ears until he recognizes the sound of his name.

“Satoru. Hey, Satoru. Open the door. I know you’re in there.”

Lethargy beckons him with its arms spread. He’s treading towards it, back into the warmth. More knocks and he’s pulled out of its grasp completely.

“Open up, Satoru. It’s me.”

Sleep-syrupy with a throbbing headache, Satoru blinks at the wall of his bedroom, layered like filling in a puff pastry beneath three blankets. He barely registers what Suguru is saying, barely registers any noise at all.

Satoru is wholly and completely bedridden, fever like hot coals under his skin. He’s burning all over. Down his arms, up his legs, along his neck. He’s slept since last night. The intended plan of visiting the new café in Harajuku on his Saturday off has now been foiled, daylight halved with the unfortunate procession of time. It must be five or six o’clock.

The doorbell rings; Satoru doesn’t answer. The doorbell rings again; Satoru still doesn’t answer. He has no clue how many times it’s rung before this point. Sitting up and stumbling out of his bed are the uphill climb along the face of a mountain with no hiking gear.

“Satoru?” goes Suguru again. Three polite raps on hardwood and his lack of response persists. If he were to stand up right now, he might just topple over like a flower flattened in heavy rain. He doesn’t even have the strength in his throat to issue a response.

Manners are something Suguru never stops minding, even when entering someone’s space without permission, so there’s an announcement of, “I’m coming in. Sorry for the intrusion,” as the door clicks open. It’s a funny, undoubtedly Suguru kind of courtesy. A graverobber who bows before raiding a tomb.

“Wha...” Satoru coughs. His throat is gravel and his sinuses are full of silt. “What are you—” Another cough, his voice snipping at the end of his sentence. This headache makes him feel like there’s a fissure in his skull. A split right down the middle that makes everywhere around it throb, his pulse pulsing. “What are you doing here?”

“Shouko told me you were sick,” Suguru explains as he steps out of his shoes at the doorway, a too-full Lawson bag held at his side. He holds it up for Satoru to see. “So I brought you stuff.”

Grabbing the chair from Satoru’s desk, he’s pulling up to the side of his bed. Sits down and sets the bag on the nightstand. It sags like a net of supermarket oranges. This feels all too like a hospital visit; Satoru does not want to play the role of a patient.

When Satoru sits up, the world spins with sideways gravity. Without his arms on both sides of him for stability, he’d tip right over into a bowling pin’s roll along the floor. Suguru wastes no time in pressing the back of his hand against his forehead, testing. “You’re burning up.”

A thermos of yuzu tea with honey and ginger is passed into Satoru’s hands, still piping hot as if freshly brewed minutes ago. “I prefer arrowroot tea when I’m sick, but you like sweet and fruity things, so.”

“So,” repeats Satoru, not with the upward lilt of a question. Just something to fill the blank spaces in conversation.

“So I made you some.” Suguru begins to empty the contents of the bag. Rice porridge just recently microwaved in the cafeteria, pickled plums, two bottles of Pocari Sweat, a five pack of Yakult, pudding, fruit cups. Contac is there too—cold medicine, as Satoru recognizes from his very limited trips to the drug store. What Suguru searches for is the box of cool compresses, turning over the items in the bag twice over before he finds it. He nearly tears the cardstock packaging open in haste. Satoru takes a sip of tea, a degree or two away from scalding his tongue. It warms his belly into a hot spring. “That should help your throat.”

“All of this,” Satoru murmurs, sounding unlike himself, “you didn’t have to.” His voice is halfway lost and the shape of his words feel foreign in his mouth. It’s the fever talking.

Suguru responds, sounding all too dutiful, “Who would if I didn’t?”

“I’ve been sick before,” reasons Satoru, taking short breaths between fruitsweet swallows of tea. He uncaps the mug for larger swigs. The liquid glows citrine the way amber fossils do when held up to light. “Would’ve been just fine on my own, dude. No need to risk catching my cold.”

“Idiot.” Deft hands split open a foil package for a cool compress. Suguru peels the backing and brushes Satoru’s hair away from his face, strands between his fingers like handspun silk. The pad is placed squarely at the center of Satoru’s forehead. It’s cold on the skin. He sighs into the sensation. “You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

“No.” Satoru shakes his head, the still-piping remainders of tea steaming his skin as he goes for another sip. His sinuses are clearing little by little. He can smell the yuzu now, the familiar scent of Suguru’s room. All that’s missing is the char of sandalwood. “I’ve been sleeping most of the day. Feel gross.”

“I brought porridge.”

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re sick, so you should eat.” It’s less of a suggestion and more of a demand when Suguru takes the thermos and replaces it with a glass food storage bowl of rice porridge, topped with clingfilm underneath the plastic lid to prevent spillage. It’s very—thoughtful. Neat, careful diligence in the way Suguru peels the wrinkled membrane away and tosses it in the empty plastic bag to dispose of later. “At least some of it, yeah?”

“Did you,” Satoru says, pressing both palms against the sides of the bowl and warming his hands, “make this?”

Suguru doesn’t say anything, just breaks open a small package of pickled plums and places a couple in the center of the whites. They sit like ornamental cherries on a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Satoru interprets the silence as an affirmative.

“You did, didn’t you?” The black soup spoon Suguru passes to him sits on top of the porridge, a little black submarine swimming through a sea of clouds. Satoru takes it and ladles the first sup into his mouth. Plain, but tasting of comfort. Suguru watches him not like a parent would their toddler but—someone would their lover, anticipating the reaction to the meal they’ve cooked for the first time. That’s how this feels. “You went all the way home...just for that?”

“I don’t live that far away,” comes Suguru’s strange humility, a form of denial that’s more of a tiptoe out of the way than a full sidestep. Satoru can’t see his expression clearly. All he can see is his silhouette and the stream of his cursed energy. Sunlight is pale and sickly when it has to shine through the overcast. This room is too dim; they should turn on the light. “It’s no big deal.”

It is. If Satoru had the strength, he’d shake him by the shoulders and shout, Yes. Yes, it absolutely f*cking is. We’ve barely talked in the past month and you suddenly show up to my doorstep with this. All of this, hiding your worry in your mouth like you’re trying to smile with a toothache. But he hardly has the energy to speak so instead they sit in silence. His headache is no longer a split in his skull but a thin hairline crack. Run your fingertips over it and you wouldn’t feel the ridge.

Satoru finishes all of the food. It’d feel wrong if he didn’t, even if he doesn’t care for the starchy liquid taste of rice porridge or the sour of pickled plums. Makes sure he’s thorough about it, combing over the sides of the container, spoon angled to catch any remnants of soup. The way one should always scrape the edges of their rice bowl before asking for seconds. “Was it any good?”

“Dunno,” Satoru says. “I don’t get sick very often, and when I did, I didn’t say anything. It’s not like anyone was there to take care of me anyways, so—” Leaning back against the headboard, an awkward slant to his spine with the position of his pillow behind him, he shrugs. He doesn’t know why he’s disclosing this information. Maybe because it gives a reason for the way he’s feeling. “I haven’t had someone make me sick food before. But it helped me feel better.”

“Good.” When Satoru glances over at him, sunlight streaming soft through the window now that the clouds have shifted, he can make out the outline of a smile. Cupid’s bow unhidden but lip corners upturned. The usual black hair tie he uses to secure his bun in place is red today, blending into their background the way keys do when dropped in the dark. “Now get some rest.”

“So bossy.”

“If I wasn’t, you wouldn’t listen.”

Satoru musters just enough energy to scoff. “I never listen to you anyways.”

“So you can admit it.”

Items are arranged on his nightstand. The pudding and fruit cups are stacked on top of each other, the Yakult is placed behind them, and the cold medicine and the package of compresses lay flat in front. Two bottles of Pocari flank everything between them like a pair of statues guarding either end of a gate. Suguru crunches any stray wrappers in his fist and deposits them in the plastic bag. He leaves the glass container out, probably to wash later.

Suguru fixes his attention on his cellphone, flipping it open and hashing buttons in tone-speckled silence as Satoru shifts to lay down properly. The world begins to swim around him as his mind readjusts to the change in orientation.

“Hello?” Satoru’s ears aren’t quite sharp enough to discern sentences out of the phone speaker static, but he knows it resembles Shouko’s voice. “I’m with Satoru right now. He’s pretty sick, so I think I’ll stick around for a while. Sorry. I’ll help you with our social studies homework later. Yeah, the timelines are a pain in the ass, but there’s a trick to remembering them. Uh-huh. Okay, see you later.”

The call is punctuated by a final blip. Turning to his side to face Suguru, Satoru croaks, “You don’t have to stay, you know.”

“But I should,” says Suguru. Always dutiful, always attentive Suguru. The one who makes things prettier and cleaner and nicer than how he found them. “Who’s gonna make sure you change your cooling pad?”

“Dude, I’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t. I know you.”

“It’s just a cold.”

“Just a cold or not, you’re sick.”

Petulant, “I’m not a kid, man. I’m fine. I can handle it on my—”

And Satoru sees it right then, the concern in his expression. The knit of his eyebrows, the narrowing of his eyes, his frown. Whatever Satoru was about to say is swallowed with another slurp of tea. The thermos feels much heavier in his hands than it did in his lap. Steam dews his cheeks into blushing rose petals post-rain.

“Just be more mindful of your health, okay? I know you think you’re invincible since you’re Gojou Satoru and all that, but—” Suguru remembers to breathe. His inhale is long but precarious, his hard expression unthawing. “You aren’t invincible. And when you’re sick, you need to take care of yourself.”

He looks so visibly concerned.

On a different day, months ago, Satoru would protest. Complain, make indignant remarks about how Suguru worries too much, how he isn’t Satoru’s mother but his best friend with this annoying penchant for nagging. But he doesn’t today. Not after this limbo they’ve been in since Suguru witnessed what happened with Riko, since they were tipped off their carefully maintained balance by Touji, since Satoru carried Riko’s limp body in his arms with an applause surrounding them.

Satoru refrains from saying anything unnecessary. Instead, he reaches out to press his hand against Suguru’s cheek. A knuckle at first before it unfurls into a palm cupping his chin. He didn’t know what he expected, but a rabbit’s trembling was not it. For once, Suguru hasn’t steeled himself.

Then, a tightness in Satoru’s chest.

“Okay, okay,” he murmurs. His throat is hoarse but it comes out easy. “I hear you.”

Suguru doesn’t flinch away like Satoru expected he would. Always used to take steps backward when Satoru takes one forward. His too-aware avoidance policy to each of Satoru’s advances comes in the form of strategic dodges. Turning his head away when Satoru leaned in too close when they’re in public, swatting his wrist when he wanted to hold hands, ignoring Satoru whenever he made proclamations of, I like you, Suguru. Go out with me. But now, he leans into Satoru’s touch just slightly, pressing against the heat of his palm.

This is progress. This is how things get better.

Positive change. That’s what this is, like the halt of rain when Satoru would take a taxi during a storm with earbuds in and his eyes on a phone screen, distracted from the outside world. An outpour so thick the trees seem like they’ve been spliced with diagonal cuts, arrows on a weather map hatching the topography in the direction of the wind. And after—nothing on the windows, nothing on the roof. Nothing at all when he’s turning his gaze upwards, the door of the car swinging open for him to step out into rainbow-trimmed sunshine, disoriented by the new scenery.

That kind of change. Sudden, but good.

Satoru thinks he’s beginning to understand. Why Suguru’s been distant, why he’s here now, why he has the frustrated expression of someone waiting at the doorway late into the night for their lover to come home.

“I like you, Suguru,” asserts Satoru with little resistance. It’s a fragile thing, feels as if it’ll snap the way a twig would if he puts too much wind behind it. The subsequent I love you is caught in his throat with the itch of a cough, but that’s okay. Satoru has all the time in the world to tell him later.

Suguru doesn’t say a thing, just hums a small, “Mm.” An affirmation of some sort, Satoru would like to believe.

“I really like you.”

Suguru punctures the foil in the blister pack of cold medicine and passes a pill to Satoru. Then, softly, “Go to sleep. Give the thermos back when you finish the rest of the tea.”

It’s inaudible but it’s there. Present in the way Suguru reaches for his wrist, feels for his pulse, takes Satoru’s hand in his own when it falls away from his face. Satoru doesn’t have to hear it to know.

I like you too.

Satoru wants nothing more in the world than to kiss him. But he’s sick, so he doesn’t. Instead, he places the tablet of cold medicine on his tongue and swallows it with another sip of tea, citrus and honey washing over the bitter white of the pill.

“Feel better.”

Satoru says, soft as sea mist, “Thanks. I already am with you here.”

“Hm.”

“And what happened with Riko,” Satoru starts when the words come over him, urging him to not leave them out. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Then, silence like an open wound. It’s sewn back up by a sigh once they let it bleed out.

“I know.”

Satoru pulls his comforter over his shoulders, feverish, but in a different way now, facing sideways to steal a glance at Suguru before he lets himself doze off. He looks tired like a favorite shirt worn away, riddled with holes and tears but the seams still holding on. For a sleep-dizzy moment, Satoru wonders what he could do to ever mend them closed again. Not as crisp and new as before, but fixed. Good.

When he wakes up, dawn-softened sunlight from the window falling in long rectangles over his comforter, Suguru is there at his bedside. Head in his folded elbows, still sitting in the desk chair, sound asleep.

There are a few differences from before—Suguru changed into one of his old t-shirts, the plastic bag is now emptied of garbage, one of the Pocari Sweat bottles was opened and finished a third way through. The glass bowl and its lid are washed, sitting on the floor with no room for it on the nightstand. The lamp is switched off.

But what didn’t change was Suguru’s hair, his bun now lopsided to one side, strands flying unruly in every which direction with the same red tie he was wearing before. He didn’t leave at all, Satoru realizes. He slept here.

Checking his phone, Satoru discovers that it’s almost seven in the morning the next day. He slept for a good twelve hours. The headache is gone completely, no longer a fracture in his skull. Such minor colds always blow over for him fast like storms do, no more thunder and no more outpour when the sun decides it wants to shine again.

All it takes is time for rain to pass.

He crawls out of bed, gingerly to not wake Suguru. Scoping out the thermos, now relocated to his desk, he chugs the rest of the tea in one go. It’s room temperature. It doesn’t warm him on the way down like before, but there’s heat in his belly and heat in his chest like the fever never went away, and Satoru wants nothing more than to turn himself inside-out with it.

xv. pasteboard - breakbeats

The shower is a place for thoughts.

Satoru had theorized once that all the greatest ideas—from the newest technological advances in the name of entrepreneurship to the most highly regarded, award-winning novels that find perch on the front shelves of book stores every year—have been conceived in a pocket of steam and soapsuds. It happened all the time for him, he had claimed, when he came up with new implementations for his powers. How to replenish his cursed energy so he’d never run out, how to merge Red and Blue into Purple, how to sort every damn object in the world by mass, energy, shape and repel them automatically. Writes it off as some random epiphany he had when he was separated from being strong and became the strongest.

None of that happens for Suguru.

After all, Satoru is a reminder of everything he could’ve been if he had the resolve. Maybe not as powerful, maybe not untouchable, but something close.

As of late, he has realized: the shower is a place for retrospection, and by extension, a place for regret.

It’s been over a year since Riko, since Touji. The windows have long defrosted and the plum blossoms aren’t flowering anymore. Summer has gone, busy with mosquitoes and beach trips and watermelon smashing. Suguru wants to hate it, the sickwarm season that has his skin crawling when he thinks of the heat on that day, but then he finds himself remembering—Satoru. The Obon festival, the aquarium, their thousand and one walks through mid-monsoon drizzle with a shared umbrella.

His summer was lonelier this year. He barely hung out with Satoru; after all, he’s much too busy now that he can take care of any and all curses on his own. But when he returned from missions, most days, he’d stop by Suguru’s room with a few careful knocks on his door. Ask him how he is, if he’s eaten, if anything exciting happened when he was gone. Worry doesn’t suit him. He fits his usual carefree attitude much better. But regardless, it makes the tired, stammering thing Suguru calls a heart leap to life again, so each time, even if he doesn’t have the energy to hold a proper conversation, he lets Satoru in.

He—he loves him. He won't admit that to anyone but himself, but—

Suguru loves Satoru.

So much. He misses him all the time. Especially here at the dorms where he let himself grow so used to having him around, took the time they still had together for granted months ago when they’d share more than a few hours in class in a day.

It’s September now, the mildest month. Nothing along the extremes of summers hot as crackling oil or winters cold as syrup-sticky shaved ice. Doesn’t mark a season of beginnings like the Marches and Aprils of spring either. Just modest, unobtrusive September. Nothing but lonely train rides, lonely walks to the convenience store, lonely routines.

Suguru misses him.

Fifteen, twenty minutes have passed and Suguru has yet to shampoo his hair. He’s usually good at estimating, knows well how seconds and minutes and hours should feel from the garnered experience of cooking at home. But time has just been addled lately. Passes by too fast or too slow, either sprinting with wind beneath its feet or crawling with its tendons cut. Never just walking.

So that’s what he does—shampoo his hair. Pumping a too-much handful of soap into his palm, he lathers it on, methodically working it into his roots. All too quickly it washes away and all too quickly he portions another smear of it into his hand. It’s a different scent than his usual; the store was out of the neutral-smelling rice water kind he prefers. Instead, this one is pomelo and—yuzu. It’s somewhat similar to his detergent.

The water is cool against his skin. He’s been taking nothing but cold showers lately, finds the humid sauna-like warmth suffocating, so there’s no steam to ice over the mirrors or make him lightheaded. All is limpid here. Without the fog, he sees with crystal clarity the yellowing tiles and the bent neck of the showerhead, the freckled ceiling, but his thoughts swim muddled with the soap swirling down the drain, foam and froth dropping from his shoulders with running water as if clouds were falling from the sky alongside the rain. This is how it’s been when he’s alone recently, spacing out at his feet or a speck on a wall or nothing in particular, gaze far and distant, wondering how things went wrong.

Memories flicker through his head in a highlight reel, choppy and abrupt. His mind has a habit of clinging to the most specific things, the littlest things, piecing the bits together into a jagged image. The glint of Touji’s sword and the silence of his steps. Riko’s body on the tile, the blood sprouting into a spider lily on the ground by her head. His heart pulpy in his stomach when he thought Satoru had died, and his lungs swelled in his throat when he saw Satoru again with Riko in his arms. The tile with her old blood dried over it. The look, the shape, the smell of the tomb. How long and wide it was. How high the ceilings were.

And then—the way the crowd clapped as Satoru turned to him with a two-mooned stare asking, Should we kill these guys?

They could’ve.

I probably won’t feel a thing, goes the ghost of his voice, as if it only knew how to speak that one sentence. It doesn’t matter regardless, because one is all it needs for haunting.

Perhaps they should’ve.

The water runs and runs.

All over again, Suguru envisions himself staring at the ground. How he felt when he said there’d be no meaning in doing that, a lie he told that wasn’t white like Satoru’s complexion was in the unnatural glow of the tomb. Maybe it was just a trick of Suguru’s imagination back then, but there seemed to be a spotlight casted around them. Just three students at the center of a solar system, freshly traumatized, orbited by faceless smiles and the meteoric pelt of applause. Any more pull on Satoru’s nerves, plasma-charged and electric, and he would’ve lashed at them with sunflares.

Suguru can see it. The blue-pale expression on his face, back then. The blue-pale hurt he felt in his chest too. Numb, heavy, toxic algal blooming in fresh waters.

This unkind, unending nightmare.

He blinks.

His skin is cold. There’s no soap in his hair anymore and no soap gathered at the drains either. The sick-sour taste of a swallowed curse still lingers in his mouth. Familiar, that same rote repetition, going down like spoonfuls of grass jelly swallowed whole. But they’re neither herbal nor pleasant; they make him want to lurch. Exorcise, swallow, exorcise, swallow. And again.

And again.

And again.

Like these thoughts.

Suguru turns the water off but the rain in his head continues. He doesn’t immediately get out. Just stares. At something, at anything, at any place. Up at the gunmetal glint of the showerhead, down at the grate of the drain, wherever.

He has a mission tomorrow. One in a village in a neighboring prefecture. Something about a cursed spirit that’s to blame for disappearances and strange deaths in the area, if he recalls correctly. It’s been difficult for him to remember details lately. Missions, homework, obligations—they’ve all been fuzzy, but this assignment should be easy enough. Should go smoothly. What’s there to worry about?

After all, he’s strong.

He’s supposed to be, at least.

Suguru towels himself down and slips on his indoor clothes. One of Satoru’s t-shirts he never asked for back and some old basketball shorts. Dressing himself feels more like dressing a large, gaping wound. For the entire duration, the silence itself seems to hiss.

When he steps out of the showering area completely, the pouring doesn’t stop. Over his head, around his shoulders, down his back—traces of that sensation. He runs hands through his hair and back to his nape, down his arms. For the most part, he’s dry.

He’s dry but it keeps raining.

It’s been raining in his head for the past year now. Prayer, ceremonial dances, weather-warding dolls made of tissue and string—nothing seems to clear the skies.

Each time he blinks, there's clarity. His reflection is lucid in the mirror. He both recognizes himself and doesn’t. Hair down, eyes sunken, complexion somewhere between blued and jaundiced, he can’t tell, looking almost translucent. The others have been showing passing concern for him. Satoru asks all the time if he’s been skipping meals—funny thing coming from him, really. Shouko keeps her worry to herself but gives him these glances with her brows tight with concern. The rest may not have noticed altogether. Not Kento, and most definitely not Yuu because he’s—

As Suguru leaves, a cloud follows him on his way out. It’s dark as soot and disregards all of Suguru’s wishes to see the sun again. That’s how storms are. They don’t care how you feel about them, if you wish them away, whether or not the mess they leave can be fixed.

Suguru drops onto his bed when he returns to his dorm room, semi-wet hair dampening his pillowcase. Another dozen things occupy his mind as he gapes at the ceiling. Voices, this time, now that the fizzle of running water is no longer there to swathe them out. Distant and disembodied. They’re more unsettling that way. Without a face, it’s as if he’s forgotten what the memory looked like.

But the words—the words he won't forget. Lyrics to the hazy recollection of a music video.

His mother, first, with an unnamed shaman sitting at their dining room table: You have a gift, Suguru. My special boy. You have a blessing others don’t have. Do good with it.

Himself, next, as he told Satoru that day on the train: You should consider yourself lucky to be strong.

And after, Touji, because above the other ghosts, he haunts best of all: You guys, with all your blessings, lost to a monkey like me who can’t even use jujutsu.

Suguru has a mission tomorrow. One in a village in a neighboring prefecture. He should probably get some rest, but for the remainder of the night, the voices don’t stop. Neither does the rain.

He lights some incense and stays wide awake. The entire time, he just wishes Satoru were there.

xvi. towa tei - a ring

Suguru is gone now.

He is unmistakably and unquestionably gone. The sloped silhouette of his shoulders, the charcoal smudge of his hair, the lower of his gaze—hazy like scenery from a previous lifetime.

And the eye smile.

That eye smile. The haloed image of Suguru with his Cupid’s bow hidden over his teeth, the thing he got from his mother, distant as a shaken dream, pasted on the corkboard of Satoru’s mind front and center. The bulletin never changes. Even with the flyers and the events, the reminders and the announcements—Satoru just sees Suguru. A single peeling missing poster clinging on with nothing but a few tacks the wind has yet to blow loose. His grin is a bold-faced heading. Have you seen this man?

Satoru hasn’t. He hasn’t seen him in a month since he had watched him disappear into a shifting crowd with his back turned, his voice unlike him. Kill me if you want. There’s meaning in that.

Recently, Satoru began to avoid that particular street in Shinjuku. Memory Lane, it was called. It’s rather twisted, isn’t it? The way most streets don’t have names but they decided to give a title, that title, to that one. It’s too much, really. Satoru now takes a different exit at the station and walks a different route if not steer clear from the area entirely. There’s a lot he doesn’t wish to see there—the signs jutting out of buildings that marked Suguru’s path as he walked away, one glowing checkpoint at a time, or the stairs he cried on with his face in his palms.

Shouko isn’t merciful enough to spare him the anguish of reliving that day again, doesn’t even know that she should. As he follows her past the Mevius shop, then the Sundrug store, then the KFC with a line that stretches out on the sidewalk, the same one he picked up their order at on Christmas—there’s a dryness that stays in his mouth.

Satoru’s in a trance the entire duration, focused on brushing the oncoming thoughts away. He’s shaken back to reality when Shouko tugs on his sleeve to prevent him from walking too far off when they arrive. The restaurant they’re looking for finds shelter on the fourth floor, a sign with its name hanging modestly in the upper windows. Not enough space around you so you build in the space above you—that’s how things work in Tokyo.

Time warps in all dimensions as they make their way up the staircase, sit down at a booth, and watch as an entire tablespread fills out item by item. Satoru barely recalls any of them being ordered. He’ll look up and new plates are there, his glass filled after every few sips of water, fresh napkins appearing like socks you thought you lost to the nebulous void of your bedroom eons ago. The bone broth is as white as his knuckles.

At this hour, the restaurant is dim, a faint glint edging the metallic rim of the pot in front of them, two different soups at low boil separated by a steel partition. They’re loaded with carrots, cubed tofu, shiitake mushrooms, and the slices of beef Shouko’s dropping in with deft work of her chopsticks. There’s an entire variety of meats in the bamboo trays stacked at the end of the table and a full spread of vegetables. Satoru works on cracking eggs into small bowls. One to use as a dip and one to poach later.

“It’s been a while since we’ve had shabu shabu, hasn’t it?” Shouko points out as she delicately places a cut of beef tongue into the sukiyaki portion, swirling it around for ten, fifteen seconds before fishing it back out and catching it on her plate. She’s careful not to get any stray droplets of broth on the table. Thin curls of steam rise. “Or any kind of hot pot.”

“Yeah,” is all Satoru says, spooning grated daikon into his dish of ponzu sauce. The tiny spoon clinks against the glass container like a shopkeeper’s bell, ringing for two customers already inside.

“It’d be nice if Suguru were here.”

“Yeah.”

“It’d be nice if you can cheer up a bit too.”

Satoru sighs, grabbing his chopsticks to whisk an egg in a bowl. The yolk slips away when he tries to first stab it off-center. His attention is beginning to slip too. He should’ve seen this conversation coming. Evidently, his foresight is currently not in service. “That’s a tall order.”

“You can’t be upset about him forever. It’s been a month, Satoru.” Shouko brings her slice of meat to her mouth after rolling it around in sesame sauce. Mid-chew and she’s already moving to dip a slice of pork into the side of the bone broth. “And it’s worrying me to see you this mopey.”

Satoru breaks the yolk on his second try, its membrane splitting and spilling over into the viscous pool of whites. “I’m not moping,” he says. It takes him a few moments to decide which meat to go for first. He’s not particularly in the mood to eat, hasn’t had an appetite as of late, so he doesn’t know why he decided to come to begin with. But Shouko had suggested, Let’s go do something we haven’t in forever, said it’d make him feel better. She’s too visibly concerned about him as of late, has that wince to her look whenever they see each other, so he agreed for her sake. For her peace of mind.

It doesn’t comfort him at all. He appreciates the effort though.

Trying to form a coherent explanation, Satoru opens his mouth. Then closes it. Then opens it again. His words are minced, sliced into decorative little ribbons that just won’t make sense until they’re pieced together again, thin and delicate as julienned vegetables. His tongue an empty platter, he only manages to plate a few. One little bunch. Not enough for a meal, not enough to be fulfilling—just there for the sake of being there. “It isn’t.”

Shouko arches a knowing eyebrow at him, but really, she doesn’t know a thing.

“It isn’t?” she asks, and questions from Shouko always feel so much sharper than questions from anyone else. Almost as if she’s pointing a threatening needle at his eye to assist her interrogation. “Then what is it? I was friends with him too, you know.” Her look softens a bit into one of sympathy. “Still am. At least, that’s how I consider us. I’m sure you feel the same way too.”

“Yeah.” Words are wrenches thrown into the machinery of Satoru’s throat, heavy and stiff as stones. He swallows once; no good. He swallows again; still no good. He has so much to say, but at the same time, has nothing at all. “I do.”

To me, Suguru is—

“I know you were closer with him but,” Shouko says, and her voice right then is so, so kind, “there’s really nothing we could’ve done, so there’s no reason to mull over it too much, yeah?”

It’d be too obvious a recoil if Satoru were to clench his fist. He doesn’t do that, just mutters, “It’s not that simple, Shouko.”

“It can be if you treat it like it is.”

And all at once, the bitterness floods.

“I—I love him, you know,” he admits after a hard swallow. What he doesn’t tell her is: And I hate that I haven’t told him properly. Didn’t tell him properly, and probably won’t get the chance to again. Instead, he holds the sentences in his mouth like breathmints, lets them dissolve.

He loves him. He loves him. Maybe he shouldn't after what he's done, but he loves him anyway.

“Wow.” Shouko whistles as if she heard something remarkable. She didn’t. Satoru’s done much more impressive things before. Admitting that he’s in love with his best friend isn’t in the same realm as his endless, boundless cursed energy, or something left-field and oddly surprising like his ability to hit every low note at karaoke with his higher vocal range. This is nothing of the sort. This is just—this is pathetic. “I mean, everyone can tell. Didn’t expect you to make such a bold proclamation in public though.”

“I’m being serious,” Satoru mutters, not in the mood.

Shouko makes a humming noise in the back of her throat. “Yeah. I know you are,” she answers after a moment of deliberation, plucking a cube of tofu to place on her tongue, covering her mouth with her hand as she chews.

Comparatively, Satoru hasn’t eaten a thing. All of this—it’s like that time over at Shouko’s place with everyone gathered together around the table, legs crossed into pretzels as they fight over who gets to eat what. Except now, there’s just the two of them in a too-dim restaurant, and neither of them are playing chopstick tug-of-war over the last prawn, and Suguru isn’t there.

“If you know, then please,” he says, and even in a murmur, his voice is brittle. “Drop it.”

A waiter passes by to ask if they’d like more meat. Satoru politely brings a hand up to decline, but Shouko beats him to the punch and orders a tray of lamb and three more trays of beef with the highest level of marbling available. Satoru argues that they have too much; Shouko argues that they have too little. When the waiter walks away, Shouko turns to smile at him, her chin propped against her palm and her elbow against a spot clear of any dishes, centimeters away from knocking into a bowl of soy sauce. Poor table manners, something that would bother his parents and Suguru alike, but they’re close enough for it not to matter.

“Eat something,” Shouko says, unfurling a butcher-paper thin cut of ribeye like a rolled map and dropping into the boil. It swims, fluttering in the way the fins of a cuttlefish do. Or the fins of one of the manta rays from the aquarium, Satoru realizes after drawing the parallels, and it’s just so—so f*cking frustrating how everything traces back to the one person he knows he shouldn’t think about.

Him again—Getou Suguru, on the mind like he always is.

Satoru sits in silence. Regret is a soft-boiled yolk pouring thick into broth.

After the handful of seconds it takes for the meat to cook, Shouko places it gingerly onto Satoru’s empty plate. “I invited you out and you agreed, remember. This wagyu is expensive and you know I hate wasting food, everyone hates wasting food,” she reminds, looking at him sternly, inserting a pause for emphasis, “so please eat.”

This—without the insistence of saying, You look awful lately, like you’d ash away into a cloud of dust if the wind blew too hard—is Shouko’s manner of caring.

Satoru sighs. Picking up his chopsticks again and remembering to pass Shouko the other egg he hasn’t whisked, he lifts the beef off his plate. Looks at it long and firm first before bringing it to his mouth, disregarding the need for sauce. It’s tender, melts right on his tongue with how thin it is, but there’s no flavor on his palate. Everything’s been grey and monotone for him recently. Sensations have been registering as numbness. Food has been tasting the same. Nothing new or different the way all things felt new and different when Suguru was around.

Satoru chews and chews and doesn’t say a thing.

xvii. radiohead - no surprises

This makeshift apartment Suguru had leased, afforded only by the money he had gathered from taking on some freelance exorcism jobs, is about the size of his dorm room.

The walls are stark white and it feels too vacant. Even with his belongings filling in the empty spaces, it still seems very impersonal. Too new and different with its layout. But at the very least, it’s at the beginnings of feeling like a place that’s lived in with most of his things unpacked, so Suguru is as content as he can be with it.

His guitar sits idly in a corner next to his boxes of records and notebooks. The sketch of Satoru must be somewhere in there—maybe he should’ve left it with him. On the refrigerator are pictures the girls drew with a new, shiny seventy-two pack of fancy colored pencils he had bought for them during their recent trip to the stationary store. Little rabbits and bears and puppies, looking all too like the faces of a certain lantern drifting along the rivers of his memory, anchored in place by Sanrio magnets. In new changes of scenery sprout little crocuses of familiarity.

“Getou-sama,” says Mimiko. He took the girls out for a haircut the other day so the blunt ends of her bob dance in a curtain flutter. “Where’d you get that from?”

He turns towards what she’s pointing at, and when he realizes, all the components of his beating heart soften. “Oh, that?” The calico plushie is perched on a folded futon in the way Seki tended to, little glass eyeballs glinting like ramune marbles. Suguru misses that fussy cat all the time, hopes he’s happy with Shouko. He finds that he misses a lot of things recently. A lot of places and a lot of people. “I got it from someone I cared for a lot.”

“Someone you cared for, eh?” Nanako echoes. She’s spooning at her slice of cake, elbows on the table, with Mimiko beside her sipping green tea. Earlier, Suguru had taken them to this western-style bakery in Harajuku, one Satoru used to drag him to all the time, and because the universe comes back in full circles in little ways, they had picked out both of his favorite items. Strawberry shortcake and a cheery box of colorful macarons. They’re too sugary for him so Suguru saves the sweets for the girls. “Like us?”

“Hm.” Suguru hums. He glances downwards at his reflection in the lacquered floor, gaze distant. “Not quite like you guys. In a different way.”

“Then like what?” Nanako’s always been the curious type. Whipped cream is smeared like peaked egg whites at the corners of her lips. Mimiko, because she’s an ever-attentive sister, moves to wipe it away with a tissue.

“It’s hard to say.” All at once, a supercut of his time spent with Satoru flits through his head. Satoru with his head on his shoulder on the train, Satoru with ice cream in his teeth in front of 7-Eleven, Satoru with a bucket of fried chicken held to his chest in Shinjuku.

“Don’t be embarrassed, Getou-sama,” Mimiko says. It startles him. He’s—what? “You’re blushing.”

Kids really are as perceptive as they say. “No I’m not.”

“Yes you are.” Nanako smiles at him knowingly. Snarky people like her—snarky people like them, he corrects, after drawing the parallels—are the most difficult for him to handle. “Tell us, tell us!”

Mimiko swats at her upper arm. “Don’t be rude.”

“I’m not!”

For the first time in a long time, Suguru discovers himself laughing. In the same way he used to when Satoru would crack his dumb jokes, or make a fool out of himself in day-to-day interactions with strangers, or yank Suguru along with his hand around his wrist, chasing sunsets and children gathering around a tub of goldfish and—

As if a trick of telepathy, both girls stop in their banter to look at him, searching his face for a shudder of emotion. When he wills it, he can keep all of himself as tranquil and undisturbed as the waters of a remote pond, a koi keeping still as the sleeping, sleeping stone beside it.

All but his ears, of course.

To me, Satoru is—

“I think,” Suguru starts, voice impossibly quiet, thin as cellophane, like he’s passing over a secret for them to keep safe. “I think it’s something like love.”

xviii. utada hikaru - time will tell

Dreams are the sorting of memories, new flagged folders in the filing cabinet, only to be forgotten later.

That’s how Satoru experiences them, mind in a fever pitch as he cycles through new scenarios strange and colorful, swathed in the tulle and gauze of sleep. At least, that’s what he thinks. Reality blurs easily; not much feels real to him anymore after Suguru left. Often, these are the only chances Satoru gets to see him, so he tries with all of himself to remember.

They come scattered and fragmented like flotsam along a beach. Ones of the Gojou household, the clack of sliding doors, light filtering through the white paper screens casting a crosshatched shadow over aged wood. Ones of the school, the smell of old cypress and dust, the powdered surface of a chalkboard, their desks. Ones of Shinjuku. It’s less of a binging of all the episodes in a single TV show and more of a movie marathon spanning multiple genres. New plots between each instance his eyes lethargically blink awake, met with shadow and too-low ceiling. Scenes of a record store, another of an arcade, and then an aquarium before darkness again.

In one dream, there’s a sweetdark smell of silken tofu dango in black syrup and kinako flower and a touch warm as browning sugar. Summer once more standing at festival grounds. Suguru in his dragonfly yukata and his blistered feet, his arms wrapped around Satoru’s chest. Fireworks and goldfish. A dance of paper lanterns and a river of light.

This is the sorting of memories, goes the sobering voice in the back of his head. This isn’t real.

The dream he’s having now smells of smolder. Of Suguru’s room, all too familiar. Sandalwood char crumbling over a bamboo catcher, smoke curling like the gossamer of fish tails.

Maybe it’s the smell of a funeral. Satoru’s been to many, so it’s a memory folded well into the creases of his childhood. Here, his hand was swatted away from touching a rippling white tidal wave of lilies. There, he’s sitting in front of a portrait that stares back at him. A photograph is sometimes a replacement for a human being. Grandfather, aunt, someone’s mother—Suguru’s face in his phone’s wallpaper.

Maybe it’s the smell of a wish. Of bathing your face and hands at the Sensoji incense burner to ward off illness. Two claps and a bow at a temple, wooden plaques, a hushed mouth.

Maybe it’s the smell of cursed grounds. Fear has a stench too, and sometimes when they had visited these areas during missions, Suguru had performed purification rituals so the air could clear.

None of that is what this is. Death has the scent of ash, and that’s what this place smells of. This house, in this room, surrounded by these walls.

Satoru knows this scenery.

He turns to see a kitchen he recognizes. To the right is a dining table in front of the balcony with fresh laundry strung on a clothesline, and in another direction is the entrance with a neat order of shoes at a familiar entryway. Down by his feet scurries past a cat, fur dark as carbon, eyes round as fishbowls as it stares up at him. It’s Seki. They’ve met before.

This is all too realistic.

When he turns again, Suguru is there. Hair in a bun and lips in a practiced smile. His Cupid’s bow is visible over his teeth. “Why so dazed?” He’s a glowring in the deep darkness. “It’s just my house. You’ve been here before.”

Even in the night, Satoru can tell how clean it is here. No grime on the surfaces nor object out of place. In the most terrifying horror movies—of which Satoru has braced himself through many at the cinema clutching at Suguru’s wrist like a life preserver—incongruous neatness is the key to making skin crawl. A lack of wind in a perfectly symmetrical forest or an absence of cobwebs in a long-abandoned house. Whatever space Suguru occupies is always polished spotless. That’s what he does, leaves everything prettier and cleaner and nicer than how he found them, but this feels off. This isn’t right.

Something comes over Satoru. “Your parents. Are they here?”

“My parents are at work. Haven’t I told you? They work all the time,” says Suguru, voice sterile as hospital antiseptic.

Satoru glances at the clock. The minute and hour hands overlap like pen over pencil to bolden lineart. Pointed to the twelve, a sharpened pinprick of a time. It could pierce him. “But it’s midnight.”

Back to Suguru, who smiles as if to say, There’s no crime scene here. The mouth: a cleaned gutter. The eyes: a fixed floorboard. The body: a painted wall. No blood splatter on his clothes nor fingerprints on a knife, but the scent of death still lingers.

“Why are you looking for my parents?” A waft of sandalwood washes through the room. Satoru can feel his consciousness drift, floating on its back at sea. Head under the water, head over the water, and part-way through the swim on his journey to shore, he’s capsized. “Aren’t I the one you’re searching for?”

Burning. Funerals. Suguru’s room.

Satoru wakes up with his heartbeat kicking, his pulse a drum kit struck from all angles. Cymbals, snare, tom-toms. A drop of perspiration slides down his temple like a raindrop on a windshield. The vacated concert hall of his room throbs from its own apprehensive silence.

Even in post-nightmare fight-or-flight mode, he can only think about Suguru. Imagines him regardless of adrenaline. As always, laughing with him fondly in some memories and walking away from him in others, the face of a playing card turned over. If he had known that it could hurt like this, that missing someone could hollow him out, maybe he wouldn’t have let himself feel things. Harbor these emotions.

Maybe he wouldn’t have let himself feel altogether.

After growing up, after graduating in the most solemn spring of his life, after solidifying himself as the strongest—Satoru still hasn’t outgrown his teenage foolishness. So caught up on someone who left he doesn’t do a thing but search and chase, waiting for a lover to come home at a lonely doorway late into the night, remembering.

Ah, but they aren’t lovers. They almost were, they could’ve been, if only Satoru had told him when he was still around that he—

As if programmed, the Suguru of that day comes to mind. Not quite himself, skin waxy and jaundiced, as if someone else was speaking in his place. Satoru fills his head with each iteration of him. The meek, prickly Suguru from when they had first met. The Suguru with the incriminating pink ears every time Satoru had kissed him. The Suguru in his dreams with blood on his palms. Suguru changed, Suguru gone. The Suguru who kills, just as real as any, a vapid look in his eyes that makes even Satoru shudder.

That Suguru is the same as the one smiling in Satoru’s wallpaper, the one in the photobooth strip taped to Satoru’s bedroom door, the one that won Satoru a goldfish with the comically serious furrow in his eyebrow. He is a whiteboard scrawled with permanent marker. There’s no buffing the crimes away, no redrawing the landscape in a prettier picture without the old mistakes.

He killed his parents.

He killed his parents and a whole village.

There’s no erasing that. There’s no erasing the smudges, and there’s no erasing how one particular dorm room at the school doesn’t smell like wood smoke and yuzu soap anymore.

It’s been months now and the thought still makes Satoru’s heart drop.

The stillness in his room is disquieting. Satoru sits upright in his bed to stir it with some rustling. He looks over at Goma, the glow of his tank a smear of phosphorescent paint over the night, sleeping motionlessly under the ferns as if playing dead. The sound of the oxygen motor should be comforting. A constant, steady whirr lulling him drowsy again, but instead it makes Satoru feel trapped. Boxed in. Cage animal in a steel prison left to listen to an oscillating fan too far for the breeze to reach. He’d seen them in a documentary about poaching once.

He looks down at his hands, their shape blurred by the darkness. Flexes his fingers and then his toes to check that they still exist.

They do. They don’t seem like it, but they’re there.

Running a finger along the inside of his hand, over his palm lines, he realizes the old scratch from the calico cat is completely healed and gone. A memory long-faded. Of course—years have passed since then. Everything is supposed to wear away with time.

Everything but this stupid, foolish longing of his.

He gets up, tosses his comforter aside in a gluey mess on his bed. Then, feeling too claustrophobic by just sitting around, he starts pacing along the diameter of his room from window to wall. Lines each step with the last like he’s a drunk asked to walk in a straight line along some pavement markings, moments before failing a breathalyzer test, trying to think of something else. Anything else. Back and forth, back and forth. Wasted in his thoughts and what he figures is anxiety. And—well.

It doesn’t work.

Fish get depressed when they don’t have room to swim, so Satoru slips on his shoes, makes sure to shut the door gently on his way out, and goes for a predawn walk.

It’s three-something in the morning. No human sound can be heard at this hour save for his own steps. Artificial city lights smear the sky in rusted bronze, too tired to glow gold. A cat sleeps on a fence.

Satoru cares for none of that. All he wants is to find a swing set, something small and sequestered to a narrow path where cars hardly pass. Maybe a bicycle and a few bodies in the mornings and a drunk or two at night, but hidden otherwise. That’s where Satoru wants to be, in a place where eyes won’t see, out of the window’s view of disgruntled couples woken up by the cries of their newborn or otaku up late building Gundams. It might take him tens of minutes to find, maybe hours, maybe the rest of the night, but he searches anyway.

Everywhere he goes, there’s a stench. The konbini at the turn of a corner smells of old oil from fried chicken sitting too long in an electric heater. The outside smells of rot, compost gathered in semi-translucent bags at a fence like bowls of salt placed at doorsteps to ward off unkind spirits. The backstreets smell of sewage, mild in some areas and rancid in others. After all, it’s Tokyo. Satoru knows better than anyone: this city is filled to the brim with vile things.

He finds a swing set. A different one along a different backstreet, wider and more worn from use, less lonely in some ways and more lonely in others. This one lacks the memory. It’s in a more populated area with more businesses at every turn, but he can’t imagine that familiar shape sitting there, gaze long and far ahead, kicking at the sand cover into ashy clouds.

Suguru wouldn’t belong in this picture. Not at this swing set, but Satoru still finds that something feels amiss without him.

It’s almost eerie, how quiet it is.

Here, it smells of rust. Earth too from freshly laid soil and too-green grass. But his world—that drifting undercurrent that follows him no matter where he goes—still smells of burning, of a dorm room, of something familiar.

And when it all converges, fastens together into the quilt of an old memory, perpetual and enduring and carrying over any other stench of the outside—it only reminds Satoru of just one thing. Just one person. Just—

Suguru.

xix. the brilliant green - there will be love there

The world past midnight, when it’s all cricket-drowsy hums and light pollution, is about as peaceful as it gets for Suguru.

It’s at the same swing set as before that he lets his thoughts unravel, the one that reminds him all too much of lonesome middle school evenings, pondering for hours about mundane, everyday afflictions. Whether he had enough spare change for the coin laundry, what was left in the fridge to cook with, if the supermarket had any soy sauce karaage bento left in stock. It’s at the same swing set as before that Suguru thinks about the more morbid things. Riko, Touji, the village where he rescued Nanako and Mimiko, the smear of flesh on tatami mats.

Suguru doesn’t pump for any momentum. Just remains staff-still, smothering a patch of sand under his foot. He’s grown now—too tall and too tired to do what this swing set is meant to do, but he’s there. The seat feels too small for him now, but he stays.

And all he can do is think and think.

Again: Riko, Touji, the village where he rescued Nanako and Mimiko, the smear of flesh on tatami mats.

Then: the ash-pale hue of Satoru’s face during their confrontation in Shinjuku, a sick man’s complexion, so angry he blanches instead of reddens.

The memory could provoke enough of a reaction out of him to make his blood run cold, skin creeping, but Suguru can’t help but believe it’s better that way. He killed people and left, after all. Satoru should hold on to that anger.

Suguru is out of his robes right now, wearing some long sleeve shirt he didn’t even know he had and some track pants. He must seem like any ordinary person, not fitting the profile of a mass murdering shaman in the slightest. Just a man, maybe a high schooler too gloomy, loitering at a playground to avoid coming back home and breaking some curfew laws in the process. Not like they matter—he’s an adult, and he’s violated so many laws already. One more wouldn’t make a difference on his record.

It’s a bit disquieting here. He doesn’t know what it is, but something’s off. Maybe a curse somewhere. Around him, cicadas are playing their nightshow rock band song, headbanging noise. It’s a shame that he didn’t bring earphones. He could use some different background music.

A dozen or so meters ahead, there’s a construction barrier guarding an empty plot of land. A single-file row of cartoon workers bowing with their helmets, outlined in pink plastic, separated by steel bars. Years ago, there was a specialty shop there selling only cheap penny candies in colorful packaging to elementary and middle schoolers. Suguru used to buy a couple handfuls of sweets whenever he walked this road in high school, botan rice candies for himself and dice caramels for Satoru. Hundred-yen memories. Soft and sweet as kinako sticks.

The whole building is demolished now, grew too lonely as its old neighborhood friends grew up, and was stamped out of the city map entirely. He hopes that never happens to this swing set.

Just as a means of doing something with himself, Suguru kicks the ground cover into a cloud of dust. He’s alone here like he used to be in middle school, just him and the worn chains of the swings, not moving enough for them to have any more passing conversations with each other. What would they even say? Did you hear? That lonely kid that used to spend hours here grew up to become some horrible criminal. One creak, two creaks, like listening to a choir of rusted door hinges singing their song of tarnish and wood decay. Such a shame, isn’t it? And here we thought he seemed like such a good son.

But it’s not as if he wanted to overhear their chatter anyway. His thoughts make enough of a racket in his head already, the din of an izakaya at nine o’clock with all its disarray. All that could make them quiet again is Satoru’s presence, probably, Satoru’s voice ringing with a wind chime’s clarity, Satoru’s head on his shoulder. Not even music anymore.

It’s been—how long now? How long since they’ve last had normal, friendly talk? Exchanged petty insults? Play fought? How long since he last called Satoru an idiot or swatted him in the arm because of something petty? How many months, how many years has it been?

How much has Suguru missed out on?

He drags a foot through the sand again. It gives easily, parting at his heel and unraveling darker, damper layers underneath. Slowly, the sides of the sunken dimple comb back down like skin healing over a sunburn. He stares at the toecap of his shoes. The old ones from high school he wore everywhere to every mission. The grooves on their outsoles have been completely scoured away by the asphalt and concrete they’ve walked on for years, nothing patterning them into something more interesting. Just greyed rubber. Dull and flat as the sky.

Another set of old memories unravel. His final year of middle school like the half-wake, half-sleep during the tail end of a dream. What he would give to be able to push himself on this swing again, earbuds in, and glance up to see Satoru there. Just like back then, greeted by someone new and bright and sunny, asking him what song he’s listening to. He wants to see Satoru framed by a sunset, Satoru traced by high noon, Satoru’s hair against a cloudless, jeweled sky. White sailboat, blue waters.

It’s really so, so lonesome, how the act of remembering can make you feel, but Suguru knows: wishful thinking isn’t powerful enough a force to let him be with Satoru again.

He knows that. He does. He’s hoping for the absolute impossible right now.

But then: “Suguru?”

The sound startles him enough to rattle the breath right out of him, air pickpocketed out of his lungs. He remains perfectly still, apprehension like plastic in a whale’s stomach.

Suguru refuses to look up—doesn’t want to experience the disappointment he’ll inevitably feel when he does. Wishful thinking, a trick of the wind. He might just be hearing things.

Seconds pass in static; he must be.

This is how longing works. Greeting you alone in the night, at a swingset with a wish in your throat when you least want it to creep on you, making you think up voices that aren’t there. It doesn’t care how you feel or if you’re hospitable. You’re forced to host it anyway, let it find shelter in your chest, never kick it out when it overstays its welcome. That’s how longing is for Suguru. He doesn’t know what he would do with himself otherwise, doesn’t know if he could feel like himself without it. Accommodate it for so long and it’ll take permanent residence inside of you, and if it ever moves out, you’re left vacated and empty.

That couldn’t have been Satoru earlier—he was listening to the yearning speak.

But then, once more: “Suguru? Is that you?”

And for some reason, it sounds so real. The way the syllables carry, the lilt of a question. Imagination can be so vivid when you pine for someone enough. He grips the grit-clingy chains of his swing tight, knuckles white as flags of surrender. He wants that voice to be real so bad. So f*cking bad. Feels this crawling itch to confirm it, just to know for sure, just to know whether or not he’s losing his f*cking mind. He probably is. Suguru left months ago, over a year ago, but Satoru's still urged to turn his gaze upward, urged to glance at the street ahead. He doesn't know what to expect anymore, doesn't know if he's allowed to even expect anything, but right in front of him, as if dropped from the sky, there’s—

Satoru.

Satoru with his hands tucked into the front pockets of his hoodie, draping over his wiry frame like clothing too big on a hanger too small. Right there. Appearing almost as if on cue, so stripped down he hardly seems like himself. No sunglasses, no sway in his steps, no default upturn of the lips. Pale as a ghost mid-wander, searching for the right river to follow. Hair so visibly white he could be a beaming headlight in the darkness.

Suguru has to blink a few times to make sure he’s not seeing things. Fatigue and a lack of sleep tend to do that to him.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” goes the tune of a voice, so painfully familiar it makes Suguru’s composure nearly shatter right there. It is him. It is. “Oh my god, yeah. It is. Suguru, it’s really you.”

Suguru blinks a dozen or two times as if it’ll help him buffer. Forming a sentence is a juggle of words with tied wrists. “What are you—”

“What am I doing here?” Satoru interrupts. He used to always beat Suguru to the punch and finish his sentences for him. Even now, it’s a habit he’s yet to grow out of. “That’s the first thing you wanna say to me?” Bitterness, then something more subtle. More sullen. “I was—I was going on a walk.”

“A walk? At two in the f*cking morning?”

“And?” He walks a few steps closer, sneakers scuffing against the grass as he makes his way to the sandbox. Any more rough with his steps and the otherwise white midsoles will be scored with grass stains. “You’re at a swing set at the same two in the f*cking morning.”

Ah. The banter. This is something Suguru had missed. Even when they haven’t spoken in years, things seem to—not be the way they used to, no. But at the very least, they’re picking up again in the general vicinity of where they had left off. Before Riko, before Touji. Maybe the handful of months after too.

It feels normal. This feels like normalcy.

Suguru’s chest tightens.

“I just,” he starts, at a loss of a proper explanation, talking with a mouthful of starch, “wanted some peace.”

“Hm, yeah.” Satoru sits down on the swing beside him. To his left, just like before. “Me too.”

“So.” This conversation grows more difficult to hold as the seconds pass in the same way Suguru’s hair grows more tangled the longer he sleeps. “What have you been up to lately?”

“Not much,” Satoru says. Suguru can’t bear to look at him any longer than he already has. Maybe this is a dream. He should pinch himself, eventually, but not before basking in this moment for a little longer. “I became a teacher at the school recently. Just started this past spring. You?”

“Not much either.” Which is true. He doesn’t do a whole lot outside of his exorcism work. He’d hang out with Nanako and Mimiko sometimes, taking them to all the cute, trendy places they ask to go. And when he’s by himself, or when they’re asleep, he’d be thinking like he had been earlier. The longing is so much louder in his head when he’s alone.

“I think going rogue is totally something you’ve been up to.” The laugh Satoru lets out is so—brittle. Dried over with limescale. “You look…tired.”

Tired? Tired doesn’t even begin to describe the way Suguru feels, but that’s somewhere close.

Satoru looks the same—tired. Would seem worse if not for that lopsided smile of his. The way his eyes widened when he wandered to this place again during his sleepless walk, glanced up from his feet and turned just enough, found Suguru there like a stagnant, decorative stone along his path. His hair is tousled in every which direction, seems to have been tossed over a dozen times on cotton-soft pillowcases, and in some ways, he appears just a bit downcast. Dark in the under eyes, little neglected patches of earth beneath brick where the rain doesn’t reach, and just—tired.

Suguru says, “I’ve been thinking a lot.”

“That’s all you ever do.” For a shivering moment, Satoru sighs. Maybe laughter’s there too, playing peek-a-boo in the shudder of his voice. “Think and think.”

“Yeah,” says Suguru. They sit in relative silence. Not even the chains want to talk. “You know me well.”

This is beginning to sound all too like a conversation between exes. Ridiculous, isn’t it? They weren’t even lovers.

And then Satoru asks, “What do you think about?”

You, again. Like I always do. There’s too much for Suguru to finish, to begin. Us. Our relationship, or whatever this is. How things are going to be from here on out, how things have been going. The words take pause, a break for water mid-marathon, because even thoughts can run out of breath. If we can fix this. If I can fix this, because it started with me so it should end with me. Nothing was your fault. Sorry I made you worry. Sorry I got too comfortable with my world with you in it. That shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have treated you like nothing would change between us, like nothing could ever change. I’m sorry, I’m sorry—

Sprinting, sprinting, sprinting.

He says instead, steady as can be, “Nothing, really.”

Suguru let the seconds pass for so long the question may have timed out, but Satoru still hums his sound of affirmation. “Hm.” And then, by way of question, “All that time spent thinking and you don’t think anything at all.”

“Pretty much.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking a lot too. Thinking so much I barely sleep.” Talking for Satoru seems to be a much easier task than it is for Suguru. “Been taking so many walks in the middle of the night because my room feels too tight and confined, and then I ran into you. Funny, right? I’ve never been a fan of tight spaces.”

Another glistening memory with the gloss-shine of a marble, dropping into Suguru’s hands. “Didn’t seem that way in the photobooth.”

“That’s only ‘cause you were there.”

An aching again. More than anything, Suguru wanted to speak with him, but dialogue like this quickly begins to feel like too much, too soon. Even after a year has gone by.

And it does become too, too much.

“Come back, Suguru.” All at once, his nerves begin to run in reverse, synapses snapping, neurons undoing all their previous processing. Nothing left to think in his thought repository. And then, Satoru adds for good measure, stirring him like a column of bamboo in harsh wind, “I miss you.”

Where should he begin to answer that? How could he even answer at all?

A long breath, shivering and stifled, and Suguru says the only thing he can allow himself to say, “I can’t.” His chest is heavy enough to smother out his own heartbeat. “You know I can’t.”

“You can.” He imagines all things Satoru says to leave him bright and shimmery in the way he’s always tended to speak, but right now he talks much, much quieter than Suguru’s used to. Fainter than he was ever thought capable of. Time can do that to a person. Fizzle them out, choke away their light. “I’ll make sure that you can.”

Suguru’s throat, ever since he was young, has been full of apologies. Sometimes handed out on impulse like tissue-pack marketing on a summer day, sometimes kept later for a more strategic opportunity. Now, he reluctantly passes one over like a final stick of gum in a pack. “Sorry. I really can’t.”

In that moment, Satoru doesn’t ask: How come? Doesn’t ask: Why aren’t you willing to try? Just tells him: “You can trust me. You know that.”

It’s timid. Careful, not at all something the Satoru of last year would say. The Satoru of last year was never one for polite suggestions or reassurances. He’d just wrap his fingers around Suguru’s wrist, glance back at him with a grin as he walks forward, and yank him into the slipstream. Suguru misses the Satoru of last year. Honestly, he misses the Suguru of last year too.

“I know.” He brings his hands together in his lap, twiddles his thumbs, knocks the nodular knobs of his fingers together in a late-night toast. “I still trust you.”

“Then come back, yeah?”

“No.”

“Then let me bring you back.”

Suguru scoffs. It’s the closest thing to laughter he’s felt all day. “You don’t know what you’re f*cking saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Satoru affirms. “I’m serious. Tell me what I gotta do.”

“The lack of sleep is getting to you, dude.” Suguru focuses on the divot he made in the sand again. It’s almost gone. His foot works to make another. “You have better things to worry about. Don’t waste your time chasing me around all your life. Aren’t you a teacher now? You have students.” He finally brings himself to properly turn to Satoru. Meets his eyes, looks at the whispers of his eyelashes. Maybe he’s quivering, but that could just be Suguru’s imagination. “You have obligations.”

A pause stretches for so long it changes from a commercial break to a movie intermission. Satoru leans forward, turning away, his fringe falling in front of him in a thousand silver contrails. “It just hasn’t been right without you here.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Suguru answers. “We both will.”

“I can’t.”

“But you’ll have to.”

“Suguru, I—” he says to the ground, low as the distant hum of a fan in someone’s apartment window. “I.”

Even if Satoru isn’t looking at him right now, even if he’s staring down at his hands instead, the mountains of his knuckles meeting after another parting, Suguru still shakes his head. “You have to.”

“You don’t get it, Suguru.” His thumb rubs nervous circles into his forefinger. Then, “I love you.”

Too much.

“I can’t get used to it. I’ve tried, but it’s been no f*cking good. I haven’t been able to. Tell me what I can do differently for you to come back and I’ll do it, but—I just can’t.”

“You can.” Suguru feels as if he’s kilometers beneath the surface of the ocean, falling into a trench, water pressure too great for him to bear. Chest heavy, he wants to pass this weight over somehow, make a cradle with both hands like two ventricles for a heart, have Satoru take it. It’s too much. Satoru should be the one to hold it now. The longing is too much. “There’s nothing you can do differently.” Because you’re perfect. You’ve done everything you ever needed to do. “And there’s nothing you could’ve done differently.”

Nothing was your fault.

“If that were true,” Satoru starts, and his voice is so thick with guilt Suguru questions for a moment if he’s the one speaking right now instead. That’s unfair. Self-reproach is supposed to be Suguru’s thing. “Then why’d you leave?”

This—this is the topic he wanted to avoid. It requires a long, long inhale for Suguru to piece together an answer.

“Because I’ve already done my share of unforgivable things, Satoru.”

“It’s in the past now. So what?”

“So I’ll keep doing them.” He takes a deep, deep breath again. Forming words is a similar practice to threading a needle, then needling a stitch, then stitching a cloth. The fabric of this conversation. “I’ve lived my whole f*cking life feeling like a fish trapped in an empty fishbowl, watching the people around me live and move while I was stuck swimming in place. Now, I finally have something I can do. I’ve decided already. If I want to make the world better for people like you and I, in my own way, then I—” he answers, foolishly vulnerable, something like clenching his fist while holding a handful of thumbtacks. In a rare instance of undivided attention, Satoru listens, almost as if afraid to miss something if he doesn't. “I can’t come back.”

Hurt is tangible on Satoru’s face. It slices the remains of Suguru’s composure to ribbons.

“You’ve killed people before too,” he says, keeps going. “You know what the feeling’s like, don’t you? Imagine that a hundred times over. A thousand times over. It's not something I can pretend I didn't do. I’ve made up my mind, and I have to keep going. I have to.” Tension leaves him steadily. Maybe this entire time, he just wanted to get that off his back. “That’s all there is to it. I’ll be fine, and so will you.”

Sorry I made you worry.

The silence between them is so stagnant it’s palpable. Suguru stands from his swing, swaying behind him just barely as if the only thing that had disturbed it all night was the occasional breeze that came. “I’ll go now,” he announces, back turned without hesitancy. This scene is one they’ve both seen a million times over in movies. Two lovers at an airport gate, words delayed like a flight until one of them turns to go, a one-way ticket splitting the center pages of their passport.

But Satoru doesn’t allow him to leave so easily. Of course he doesn’t. He’s always had the habit of clinging at Suguru’s sleeve to keep him from wandering, always reaches out before he goes too far, knuckles rice-wine translucent, grabbing his wrist and tugging him back.

There are things in this word that just make sense. An unspoken commitment to silence on the train, a bowl of rice porridge when you’re sick, a popsicle melting sticky over your fingers in midsummer. The way Satoru’s warmth feels around his wrist is somewhere among them, handspan wide and fitting comfortably. Perfectly, as if it were molded to the shape of Suguru's wrist, a chokechain to always keep him tethered. Here, in this moment, to the now. Don't go. Stay, won't you? Nails bitten short, worn raw and edged with the peeling skin of his cuticle. Evidently, Satoru hasn’t been going in for his regular manicures, hangnails like petals of a wilting flower. Suguru knows without seeing him clearly—a lot about him has changed. In better lighting, maybe Suguru could get a glimpse of his face in full. Maybe his eyes are more sunken, maybe he looks more gaunt. Maybe his cheekbones and his jawline are sharper, but maybe he just looks like himself. It’s difficult to tell with all this shadow.

Suguru looks down at their hands, at the vice grip of Satoru’s fingers, constricting and loosening before constricting all over again. Any further and he’ll bruise, hydrangeas blooming into a bracelet around his wrist in blues and violets.

“I don’t have anything left to say to you.”

Satoru shakes his head. He shifts from one leg to the other. “But we’re not done here.”

“Satoru.” Suguru places a hand over the back of his, smoothing his palm over his fingers, feels his radiating warmth for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime. And right then, following the self-same cycle, Suguru remembers the festival, the click of geta sandals as they ran to the goldfish. How their relationship used to be. “I have to go.”

Sorry I got too comfortable with my world with you in it.

As ever, Satoru is an immovable force. No amount of inertia has an effect on him. Suguru tries to pry himself from his hold and shrug him away. This is too much. He came to this place for peace of mind. For reprieve. But nothing, absolutely nothing is peaceful with Satoru here, with his stomach in a twist like this. But his efforts are fruitless. They aren't enough, and maybe Suguru’s subconsciously holding himself back and not putting in the strength to wrench himself away. Maybe he doesn’t want to leave when he knows he has to, taking this one liberty to warm his skin with Satoru’s touch before he never gets the chance to again. He's missed this so much. The physical contact. The comfort of Satoru's fingers around his wrist. After all, hands are for making others feel safe.

Regardless, Satoru doesn’t waver.

Then once more, with feeling, “I miss you.”

Suguru winces at the words. They’re more potent the second time around. He says, more functional than anything, “You don’t.”

He knows he’s wrong, he knows Satoru misses him. They miss each other, learning to swim just to meet at the river.

Satoru says, “I do.” It’s audible. The frustration, the irritation running hot and sudden like a backhand to the face. “So much I can’t sleep, god, you have no f*cking idea—no f*cking idea at all.” After comes a sigh, and if Suguru’s ears aren’t tricking him, it sounds as if he’s crying. “Come back, Suguru.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Yes you can.” He’s stepping forward, leaning down enough for his head to kiss the curve of Suguru’s shoulder. It’s as if he’s pressing there to listen for something, the sound of another life. There’s no point in that; Suguru’s been emptied out now. A little lower and Satoru may not even find a heartbeat. When you bring a seashell to your ear expecting to hear the ocean, all that’s there is the sound of something hollow.

“I already told you I can’t.”

Satoru doesn’t budge. Like the times on the train, Suguru doesn’t shove him off. “Yes you can.”

Wrong.

He can’t.

How many times has he said so already?

“I killed my parents, Satoru.” The sentence comes out jagged like the warped snap of a broken guitar string. “A whole village, even. So many f*cking people I’ve lost count.” This close, he can hear the push-pull of Satoru’s breathing. The cicada song isn't loud enough to drown it out. “And now you want me to come back? Do you even know what you’re f*cking saying?”

“I don’t care,” he rasps, a little too strained to seem to be telling the truth, but his syllables even out with continuity as they regain their foothold. “I know you’ve killed people. That doesn’t change that I—” Suguru winces again as a means to brace himself. “That I love you, Suguru. I love you so much.”

“Stop saying that.”

“I won’t,” he shakes his head, the movement translating strangely on Suguru’s shoulder. “I love you, Suguru. I should’ve said so sooner. I can’t f*cking stand it.” He’s standing beneath Suguru’s storm cloud with him. “I just wanna be with you again. It feels wrong without you around. I wanna do stupid sh*t with you. Make fun of Shouko together, go to record stores, argue about which singer is better than the other. I wanna go to more festivals and win you another stupid stuffed animal at the arcade and—”

Like this, they’re two koi circling each other in a pond, twirling in a rain-making dance.

Fragile, “Come back, Suguru. Please.”

“I can’t do that.” Suguru releases the breath he was holding, sullen. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other in over a year and he spent the whole conversation telling Satoru no. Not even out of jest, not even over something petty. Just cold rejection. He hates it, but this is how things need to be. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Suguru.” The shape of his name again, so right in Satoru’s mouth. Suguru wants to record it, save it, keep it to listen to later on one of his lonely nights. Which isn’t the best distinction, he supposes, because all nights without Satoru are lonely. He’ll reserve it for the lonelier ones. The loneliest. “I love you.”

Satoru lets him go finally, takes a step back. It's in a moment like this that Suguru learns how fragile his own determination is. He can feel the beginnings of a crack splitting. Still, he doesn't let himself be swayed.

“I know you do,” he says this time, so light it’s the first drop before the drizzle. Rain is fine though. Rain is good. Someday, rain will bring flowers. “I know.”

And for a second time, Suguru turns to leave.

In the night, they are two fish swimming in opposite currents, searching for an ocean.

xx. the brilliant green - there will be love there, again

Things never happen as intended.

It’s a cosmic joke, really, how they meet again, two enemies that don’t wish to be, one of them left standing while the other is a smother of blood and robes on flagstone. At the sight, not a sliver of shock is left to be had in Satoru’s whole being. There is no victory here. While it's Christmas Eve, there's no celebration either. Thinking back on the days together at the swings, and exchanging numbers at the classroom, and lounging around with their arms looped like a pair of Suguru’s old hair ties—this isn’t an end that either of them had anticipated when they met, became friends, grew to love each other, but it’s the end that they’re getting.

And it’s an end that Satoru has thought about before. Time and time again after Suguru had left.

Things never happen as intended, and things never work out perfectly.

Satoru’s sand dune throat. “Any last words?”

“Hm,” hums Suguru. That familiar, pleasant tune. “Not much.” His head tips back against the wall, hair spilling over his shoulders in a confused spill of ink. “It’s just that I—that in a world like this, I couldn’t laugh from the very bottom of my heart.”

Somewhere in the lines: Except with you. I always laughed with you.

Satoru doesn’t know what response to give. How could he? Suguru’s telling him something he knows but only realized after he was gone, after Riko and Touji and his parents and the village. How could he? What would he even say?

“Hey Suguru,” he mutters instead. To hell with thinking and deliberation. He’s done enough of that. “I still love you.”

“Huh?” A broken laugh. “What the hell are you even saying at a time like this.”

Not a question. It’s a response for the sake of giving a response.

Satoru doesn’t have the energy for an annoyed sigh anymore. There’s no space left in his lung capacity, years worth of held-back sentiments taking up too much room. Some old, some fresh as a new wound.

“I love you.” A tremble. He tries to work through it slow. “I really do. I’ve loved you for over a f*cking decade now, and I still do, I still will, and—” The tail of his sentence comes to a serrated snip, ragged as the crumbled edge of a split pastry. Suguru’s vision must be fuzzy from his injuries, but part of Satoru still prays his eye for detail doesn’t look too close. His ears must be ringing, but part of Satoru still hopes his hearing doesn’t pick up the shiver in his voice. It already takes everything in him to keep it from breaking; the universe can pay him a small mercy just this once.

Then, when the butterfly knife of longing kisses the space between his ribs, “Let’s—meet at the river one day, yeah? And follow it to the ocean together.”

Satoru doesn’t know what he’s saying. He doesn’t even know what he’s f*cking saying, but he’s saying it anyways.

“Ha.” Suguru is smiling. Somehow, he can still find it in him to laugh with the amount of blood he’s losing. Cupid’s bow hidden over his teeth, eyes curving into crescents—a picture Satoru hasn’t seen in a long, long time. “At least curse me a little at the very end.”

It stings. So much about this stings, and for a prolonged moment, all Satoru can manage is a hard swallow.

Shaky, “Say it back.”

“Eh?”

“You haven’t yet.” Any more of this back and forth, of splitting himself down the sternum and letting his years of fondness flood and puddle at his feet, and Satoru just might start crying. He doesn’t though. It’s too late for that. “I—I wanna hear you say it. Just this once.”

“Hm. That so?” Suguru turns to look ahead of him. A thousand-meter stare in the way he does when he loses himself in thought. Playing a game of hide and seek with the memories in his head.

“Don’t do this, man.”

“Do what?” He shrugs, gaze still far. His cruel habit of acting oblivious has persevered, Satoru sees. “I’m not doing anything.”

There’s a sutured silence, its stitches splitting with the sound of Suguru’s exhales. He turns back to Satoru, smile softer now but still just as good, still makes Satoru’s chest feel full to bursting.

“Satoru,” Suguru says, a preface to the words he’s waited over a decade to hear. His name sounds so right in his mouth, and once again, they’re two koi circling each other. A rainmaking dance; the sky is overcast but it never comes. “I love you.” Tenuous. Soft in the way lovers hold hands. “Let’s meet at the river and follow it to the ocean.”

Satoru swallows the sandstorm in his throat. “Yeah,” he murmurs. He wants nothing more than to reach out to Suguru, touch his cheek, kiss him again, but—

But.

That’s too much. That’s way too much for him to handle, will only make him second-guess himself, have him backtrack on his own resolve. He doesn’t need that. Satoru’s already made up his mind.

Instead, he just says, “I love you too. Thanks for everything. For being my best friend and winning me Goma and loving me back. I’ll—I’ll see you later.”

Suguru still has the energy to smile. He gazes down at his lap and folds his hands together, lets his knuckles meet in little blushing mountains. It’s one of Satoru’s old habits. Maybe that rubbed off on him too. “Yeah.” And then, almost like a promise, “We’ll see each other later.”

A decade without him and Satoru doesn’t know what he’s been doing. Becoming a teacher at Jujutsu High, waiting for him to come back, lingering around the places where their memories were made, keeping the little souvenirs, watching as a whole decade passes him by. Some days, Satoru kneels at his tank and watches Goma hide behind the greenery, reminiscing for too long the lanterns and the dancing and the colors. Wishing, praying that he could have that again.

And now, Satoru is alone with him. Finally. This is what he wanted—to see Suguru, but.

Silence stretches into this inky black shadow between them. Hesitancy along with it, but Satoru has resolved himself. He’s resolved and they made a promise. They’ll find each other again, at the river and the ocean and wherever else they’ll happen to go. They will, and they’ll be free of this jujutsu society and shamanism nonsense, so—

So.

He crouches down beside Suguru, who does nothing but slow blink at the bricked ground. Part of him wants Suguru to call him an idiot again, swat at his arm, compete with him over something insignificant, banter like old times. But he needs none of that. Not right now. Not when all he wants is for this moment between them to last.

A decade. He has waited a decade.

And now he’s left to beg the minutes. One or two, or maybe a dozen, or maybe an eternity. Just a scrap of generosity would do.

Satoru has mere seconds to make up for years of lost time. He can’t stall forever. He has to go back to—to his life without Suguru. It feels wrong, him without his best friend, his one and only. Him without the person he loves like a newborn spring without plum blossoms and a bridge without a name. But that’s how it’ll have to be, no matter if he wants it that way or not. He’s a shaman, after all. They have obligations. Suguru was the one who taught him that.

Gentle as a ripple in the water from a passing spring breeze, against his better judgement, Satoru presses a kiss to Suguru’s temple. Something fragile and petal-soft, both alike and unalike the hundreds, thousands of other kisses they’ve shared. This close, Suguru is citrus and smoke. Yuzu and sandalwood. Familiar.

Satoru remains still next to him. He never stays still—always too restless, always a sweeping wind that rustles everything in its wake, always leaves sakura in the storm drains—but this time he does. Feels Suguru’s warmth, keeps vigil over him as he closes his eyes, serene, and lets the skies clear.

Fish get depressed when they don’t have room to swim, but no need to worry—there is an ocean here.