Archive of Our Own

There are times when he doesn’t really mind people or the noise they bring - times like now, when their chatter rolls like merciful thunder through the room and brings a downpour of warmth. Itaru soaks all of this in, unable to help the smile when he realises he can distinguish one voice from the other in the incongruous mixture of them like they’re an extension of him. He feels each person on his radar like a light, blinking with their different pulses. 

The heat of summer drips on the glass windows of the cafe, and the condensation dances as it rolls down from floor to ceiling, drawing staggered trails that cast their shadows cut out of sickly yellow streetlight. Despite the warm weather and the lethargy it normally brings, Itaru has never felt more energised in this room full of people he loves. 

It’s a charming Friday night, which he would usually spend gaming but today, the entirety of their theatre is gathered at the Settsus’ cafe, upon their own insistence to help Banri on his sister’s birthday. Banri didn’t complain at the proposition, because he was already struggling with pulling things together and drawing her out of her shift to get the Autumn troupe to set everything up. 

The cafe is small and squeezed between the other larger and more glamorous shophouses but it doesn’t lack anything else. There’s nice music, free Wi-Fi (which Itaru depends on for his calls if he’s working here), and the permanent smell of something like cookie dough that warms his whole body inside and out. Not to mention the benevolent owner, Yua Settsu, who always has her doors open to anyone from Mankai even after closing hours.

Itaru has recently found himself spending more time here on the days he doesn’t travel to work. Every once a week or so, especially on Thursdays, he makes it a point to come down here, take the seat tucked into the corner next to the glass where he can watch the street and drink their hot chocolate. He doesn’t speak to Yua much unless he stays behind to wait for Banri to finish closing up on the days he works shifts after college.

This small place feels like an extension of home. 

“I feel like we should call for a toast or something,” Tsumugi offers. 

“The Spring troupe’s performances this year were a success, and we have the Summer troupe’s lap coming up this season,” Tasuku extends. 

Behind them, Banri materialises out of thin air, irritation flitting across his features. “Yeah, not to mention, it’s my sister’s birthday… you know, the reason we’re all gathered here in the first place?” He folds his arms and glares even harder, if possible and even though Itaru knows he doesn’t intend on throwing hands or anything, he feels a nervous laugh bubble up from within him. 

Yua appears out of the kitchen, a nervous smile on her face as she approaches Banri. She tugs him into something of a placating embrace, flour-dusted fingers squeezing his arms as she rests her cheek on his shoulder. 

“It’s okay, we can toast to everything, if we want. There are always a number of reasons to celebrate, right?” 

Banri just huffs impatiently, but melts anyway and sits down, the picture of calm all of a sudden. Tsumugi smiles that characteristic nervous smile and Tasuku frowns as he always does, obviously apologetic and a little embarrassed at Yua’s generous response to his slip-up. 

Itaru finds himself unconsciously watching the Settsus a lot recently. They feel like the paragon of loving brother-sister relationships even though Banri still, at best, earns a pinch or two for his smartassery. It’s still refreshing to see this different side of Banri - he’s a little kinder now, and more obedient when it comes to Yua. 

Itaru thinks of this as a pretty humorous detail. Banri acts all tough but he’s still all soft. A classic. He’s a piece of work. 

Sakyo must be dying to have Yua work with them if it meant having this version of Banri around all the time. 

They each take turns toasting to something, buying Banri and his sister some time to bring the desserts around as the evening reaches its conclusion. Itaru listens to them toasting to one thing or the other, their wishes ranging from theatre, work, college and to family. His heart twinges at the last one as he breathes in the sight of his friends and simultaneously breaks as he recalls his own sister and parents, whom he hasn’t really heard from in a while.

He tells himself it doesn’t really matter because he’s beyond that now. He’s on his own feet. He’s an adult and he’s managing just fine. He will still see them in the holidays and he still has the entirety of Mankai to fill his days and the foreseeable future with their noise and singular heartbeat. A part of him thinks he sacrificed one family for another, but another whispers, “Why does any new feeling have to feel like something else from the past?” 

Because it’s the truth - this is something different. He’s not here with these people because they have legal obligations to care for his needs. He’s here because they care about him, despite his bad habits and his shortcomings and his terrible history with making or keeping friends. They look at him and see more than just his gaming addiction and irresponsibility. He doesn’t know what it is, yet, or if there’s a word for it but at least he feels like he’s wanted around. 

That’s new to him. Being wanted. His family wasn’t that great at making him feel that. 

He stamps down this thought and washes everything else down when he sips from his sickeningly sweet coffee. He’s a designated driver so he can’t drink tonight, and it’s not like he wants to. He saves the alcohol mostly for people at work because there’s nothing like booze that forges necessary connections.

His nerves feel like they’re coated in syrup as he watches everything and everyone around him, realising that it will always feel like the first time. No matter how many times he does this or is found in this situation it will always be a new experience to be a part of something bigger, and not just remain an outlier. 

There are things you wish you could experience for the first time again and this would be one of those things, but being included is such a foreign experience that Itaru doesn’t have to wish for it. It’s equally jarring each time, and every time he feels that sense of belonging trying to take root, he quickly crushes it. Out of habit. He will have to grow out of it, but it’s not so easy. 

He feels the night turn sour in his mouth as they’re cleaning up. His body is beginning to register the end of their social gathering and his bones are starting to feel heavy like someone has replaced them with dense metal shafts.

Yua hands Sakyo and the Director with bags of goodies, as is the tradition whenever anyone from the company visits. She gives Juza his own separate bag of the blueberry scones that he absolutely adores, hugging him tightly before he can even process the gesture. Itaru watches the big guy go red in the face as he hugs her back, hunching a little to put his chin on her head, because he’s about a head taller than her, a grateful smile softening his usually hard-set features. 

She hugs as many people as she can when she says her “Thank you for coming”s and “Goodbye”s but it still comes as a surprise when she pulls Itaru in for a hug anyway, her flushed cheek warm against his when she tiptoes to reach his height. She is warm and soft and when she places her hand on his hair to cradle his head, she feels exactly like his mother’s hugs do. 

He feels his heart twirl in his chest, nervously as the ringing grows louder in his ears and he clings to her, the ghost of feelings crashing on him from all sides. His mother’s voice whispering “My sweet gumdrop” over and over again, her words incensed with alcohol, echoes in his ears and shatters his walls. In Yua’s embrace, he feels like a child again, unsure what to do with his hands or his legs and uncertain if this is even his own body. Like he’s waking up in it for the first time.

Like she can sense the tumult tearing through him, Yua hugs him tighter for a split second and then pulls away, patting his cheek and whispering a “Take care”. He nods dumbly, unable to say anything else, and follows the rest of them out. There are no words left in him when he casts one last glance at Yua, who hugs her brother last and for the longest time. He wonders what it feels like to see a sister and a mother in one person. 

He wonders about that a lot. He wonders about a lot of things and thinks that he wonders a little too much for an adult. The cruelty of Fate is such that it doesn’t pick and choose whom to bypass and whom to afflict. There are cracks in himself that Itaru can practically feel but can’t see and knows that’s where this cruelty has touched him exactly, like fingerprints. He can feel where his breath leaves him through the fissures. 

Everyone splits up from there, taking various means of transportation to get back home. Itaru finds his hands shaking as he grips the steering wheel, his mother’s words still hissing against his neck, growing colder and sharper and crueler. Even the drone of the engine can’t block her out and rather, it harmonises with her in his head. 

“Everything okay?” 

Itaru turns to Tsumugi, who’s riding shotgun, and takes in the open kindness of his face. This is another thing that Itaru experiences for the first time again and again - the genuine concern that draws gentle lines into Tsumugi’s delicate features, the smile that reminds him of sunshine falling on fresh snow, and his voice that could draw out warmth from a blizzard. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Itaru says, but grips the steering wheel harder to keep it from sliding out of his grasp because of the sweat. 

He’s fine. Everything’s fine. Tsumugi doesn’t seem convinced but it’s fine. Everything is fine. 

They pull into the lot just as Itaru’s phone rings and pulls him out of his stupor. He looks at the number, watches it ring twice, not sure if he’s seeing right. The others are already ambling into the building, wishing one another good night and as Itaru watches them go, he feels very much like a protagonist in a horror movie. The world is far away and it’s getting really hot inside the car. 

“Itaru, is everything alright?” Tsumugi asks again and reaches out to take his hand, prying it from the steering wheel. His knuckles are white and his fingers are numb but Itaru still recognises Tsumugi’s fingers when they wrap around his own, his cold and soft palm in Itaru’s like a balm against the hot weather and increasing temperature in the car. 

The heat has taken him in a chokehold and wrestled out his breath. The phone is ringing a little too loud and the numbers on the screen are a little too big. His mother is still whispering in his ears and he still smells alcohol that he’s certain he didn’t touch all night. Oh, god, he needs to get out of here .  

“Give me a second,” Itaru tells Tsumugi, snatching his phone off the dashboard. He throws open the car door and steps out of its heat, sweat plastering his t-shirt to his body like a second skin or a very flimsy exoskeleton. He certainly feels like Jell-o, losing his shape as he melts in the summer evening from the temperature and the explosions on his nerves that are cratering him from the inside. 

The phone rings a third time and he picks up without another moment’s hesitation. “What do you want?” He asks, unable to hold back his displeasure. 

“Hey,” His sister whispers and he hears the plea in her voice before she even says anything else. 

This voice doesn’t sound like hers though he recognises the tone and the general feel of it. It sounds breathy and thin and empty of its usual lustre that he once admired and then came to fear as he grew up. That trepidation from his childhood and all the hours under her care flares up in him again. 

He takes a deep breath and tries on a more neutral tone. “What do you want?”

“And you’ll be gone… for how long?” 

Tsumugi attempts to mask his dread, but hears it seep the slightest into his voice as he pushes the trolley behind Itaru. His eyes are attached to the back of Itaru’s head because his friend hasn’t even turned and looked at him since he offered to follow him for a little housekeeping. Matter of fact is, Itaru hasn’t looked anyone in the eye since the phone call from his sister yesterday. 

“A month,” Itaru says, shrugging like it isn’t a big deal but the tightness of the gesture suggests he truly feels otherwise. “I’ll show up for practice, but I’ll need to be back before night time.” 

A month . Tsumugi already feels bruised from Itaru’s absence. It’s not like Itaru makes his presence felt once he’s done with practice but there’s still something characteristic about his being holed up all night that Tsumugi finds intensely endearing. Maybe it’s a little strange because Itaru isn’t really the picture (or sound) of class when he’s gaming, but knowing his friend has a place to come back to and be himself is an assurance in itself.

He’s not very familiar with Itaru’s family aside from his very strict sister and even stricter parents. It doesn’t seem like Itaru will be having very much private time like he requires to keep functioning. 

“Well, if you need any help, feel free to ask,” Tsumugi offers, though he’s not sure what he can really do. 

Itaru sighs through clenched teeth, and manages an uncomfortable smile. “Yeah, I’ll… I’ll let you know. Thanks, Tsumugi.” 

Itaru keeps everyone at arm’s length, and Tsumugi is no exception. It’s hard to read him when he only expresses what he wants you to know and Itaru is not well-versed in feelings. He treats himself like an island, dealing with everything on his own through his personal belief of self-sufficiency and Tsumugi often wishes to remind him that every once in a while, it’s okay to build a bride and let people in. 

“So, I heard you’ve got a new part time job at Veludo Arts.” Itaru expertly steers the conversation away from himself, thumbing the boxes of milk formula sitting on the shelf, and Tsumugi takes the cue. 

“Yeah, it’s just this side project to mentor their graduating theatre class until they put up their performance at the arts’ festival showcase at the end of the year,” Tsumugi says.  

“Big responsibility,” Itaru comments, his voice catching on the last word. Tsumugi suppresses a smile. 

“Yeah, it is. It’s their last chance to get scouted for jobs after graduation… If not, they’ll probably have to struggle a bit more.” 

Tsumugi distinctly recalls his own senior year at college, writing his Psychology thesis. The weight of adulthood didn’t really hit him until he collected his degree and realised he was responsible for himself. Like many other people, he’s now doing something with his life that had almost nothing to do with his studies in university. 

As soon as he graduated, he and Tasuku decided to audition for God troupe - 

His breath stutters and he halts in his tracks, the items crashing against the slim metal bars of the trolley’s body. His stomach still tumbles nervously at the memory and the scars of regret burn tauntingly. He doesn’t think he will ever really get over the humiliation of walking off stage after being told he wasn’t good enough. He doesn’t think he’s completely shed off that self-doubt either. 

Tsumugi has yet to find words that can possibly cut deeper than those. There are feelings you don’t forget, and experiences you can’t move on from. He realises this is one of those that underlay everything he is now. Like patches of the wrong paint - you can’t see them at one glance, but you feel their texture when you touch the canvas through its thin coating of paint. Tsumugi feels extremely textured under his skin. 

On the worst days, he feels like anyone can touch him and feel the bumps of these fault lines that run deeper than his skin, or feel the friction between his planes that are going in two opposite directions to run away from something unseen.  The fear is palpable and he can feel it like pulp in his blood, as if he’s overripe and ready to burst under the slightest pressure. 

He doesn’t want, or need, anyone to read these lines or follow where they lead, right off the edge of his sensibilities into this chasm that’s full of nothing but unconfronted nightmares and discarded wishes. There are too many truths you can realise from the worst parts of someone and Tsumugi hasn’t even faced his own. He doesn’t want to. The unknown is scary - scarier than the darkness that it hides in, and Tsumugi is a coward.

“You good?” Itaru tosses the conversation to him again, casually and Tsumugi steadies his steps to follow him. 

“I’m fine,” He lies, just like he knows Itaru did that evening. Because all he knows about growing up is pretending to be fine and dealing with it himself. 

“Sure.” Itaru is unconvinced, but doesn’t probe him any further. 

Their silences are companionable and their conversation is easy. There’s this certain current it follows that Tsumugi trusts to ride out by instinct and never tip off into a rock bottom. In that sense, Itaru is grounded and weaves their conversation on his own loom, fingers working fast and deftly but not so much that his friend can’t keep up. Tsumugi experimentally tries the same and it doesn’t come out as he thinks it should - a little uneven here because of his words that fall flat, and sometimes desperately in need of redoing but Itaru waits for him nonetheless; his patience fills Tsumugi with the confidence he needs to keep going. 

“Do you want to stop by my grandmother’s store on the way home?” Tsumugi asks when they leave the department store. “You can buy some flowers for your sister.” 

“Sure.” 

It seems that Itaru has used up his day’s quote of full-sentence responses. But Tsumugi doesn’t care. He really likes the sound of Itaru’s voice. Whether it’s grainy from exhaustion, hoarse from vocal practices and late nights, it’s still balmy and sinks right through his fissures. His body recognises its many different tones like it’s been a part of him all along and he stitches it into his memory with hands that shake due to the euphoria of knowing Itaru is real. 

Tsumugi walks behind Itaru all the way to the florist, nervous fingers clutching the plastic bag and his brain trying to memorise his friend, from the shape of his body to the gentle sway in his feet and the casual grace of his arms. He knows that Itaru is the best part of this reality where he feels like the world is rough against him in this grand puzzle of his life. 

The bell dings and plastic rustles, flanked by the motley aroma of an entire garden of flowers crammed into a small wood-and-glass store. Tsumugi greets his grandmother, taking in the lines on her face and the smell of jasmine tea that always clings to her like an olfactory means of identification. 

The room is full of colours, including (but not limited to) the explosions of red from the hibiscus in full bloom, the bunches of violet lilacs and multi-coloured rings of flower crowns. The temperature in the room fights off the outside climate, gusts of air-conditioning licking at the sweat on their necks and leaving patches of cold that spread across their skin. Tsumugi notices the creases between Itaru’s eyebrows smoothen out for the first time in 2 days, and smiles to himself. 

“These are pretty sick,” Itaru says, gently thumbing the wreaths that hang on the back wall. Tsumugi deduces that his meaning of ‘sick’ probably means ‘cool’. Itaru has his way of talking that is a little strange on the ears but somehow still endearing. 

“No, they’re perfectly healthy,” Tsumugi’s grandma counters, tugging Itaru’s hand away from her handiwork. “Freshly bloomed, you know. From here - “ 

She hobbles over to the pots that line the glass windows, towers of green growing out from damp mud and obscuring the view of the street. Tsumugi shoots Itaru an apologetic smile once her back is turned and she’s fussing with the plants. 

“Do you want one?” Tsumugi asks, picking a crown off its hook and placing it experimentally on his own head. 

“You can make these?” He hears the ‘Yes’ in Itaru’s awe.

He smiles. “Of course.” 

Tsumugi reads the flowers according to their colours and names now, and knows their language like it’s a sixth sense. Growing up, he spent a lot of time at his grandmother’s and spent even more in her garden, following the bees from flower to flower and watching the blooms change according to season. In a sense, he’d learnt to speak to plants before he even said his first words, deciphering colours of the earth and its soundless children before he knew what words even were. 

He remembers vaguely grabbing fistfuls of them in his tiny chubby hands, acquainting himself with their sticky nectar or dry pollen. The world seemed so beautiful then, ripe with the spring of creation and life that he wanted to drown and breathe in until it became a part of his body and blood. Before he grew up and began to realise that part of ageing means having to recognise the ugliness and deal with it, too. It’s not that the world gets meaner; you just start seeing it for what it is. 

An entire childhood is best summed up by resisting things that are out of your control and surrounding yourself with those that are. Adolescence is realising you’re losing control of the latter, and growing out of your old shoes and into a place in the world that’s carved out for you. Adulthood… Tsumugi doesn’t know what adulthood really is or what it means for him. He’s still figuring it out.

For now, adulthood feels like racing against time and running out of it. 

Itaru sits down on the stool for him, and Tsumugi begins to slowly and gently braid the flowers into the plastic frame that circles his friend’s head. Peace trickles down his nerves like sweet nectar, gelling the fault lines together and tempering the storm in his chest as he begins to braid the peonies into place. He feels Itaru’s breath, hot and searing on his flushed skin, bouncing off his collarbone and leaving behind patches of blush where his blood rushes to greet it, as if drawn by gravity.

Up close, Tsumugi can calmly take in the colour of Itaru’s thick lashes that are a shade darker than the roots of his hair when they brush against his skin and kiss their own shadows. Itaru’s skin is rough in places because of acne scars from staying up too late, leaving behind little smudges of pigmentation, but the planes of his face are smooth and tranquil - all the way from the crown of his head and under the skin of his cheeks that Tsumugi has wanted to kiss for the longest time. 

He sees the little imperfections and the pores and the fading dark circles under Itaru’s eyes and thinks about his fault lines - because everyone has their own. The world breaks each person in different places, their cracks reading like stories to others and bad dreams to them. Tsumugi doesn’t know Itaru’s fault lines but thinks he can feel them like his own, except their texture is lost to all the lustre Itaru falsely paints on himself like armour. 

Tsumugi tucks and weaves the flowers, fingers stinging where they brush Itaru’s skin and his heart doing pirouettes when his eyes find Itaru’s, who looks at him sometimes but keeps his eyes closed for the majority of the time. Tsumugi notes the delicate pinkness that dusts his ears when he reaches behind his head to pin the lilacs, and breathes in that cologne that seems to permanently cling to his clothes from the hours he spends as a regular salaryman with the desperate need to impress. 

Under all that, he smells vaguely of smoke from too many burnt bridges and Tsumugi thinks it a shame for someone so kind and charming to be locked under all that pretense. He thinks Itaru still carries his childhood with him, baring it to himself in the confines of his own room at night when the world is silent and the darkness is his companion that keeps his bad habits camouflaged from everyone else. 

Tsumugi thinks a lot, feels too much - for himself and for everyone - and breaks his own heart.  

He feels weight on his hip bones and stills at the heat of Itaru’s palms through his t-shirt. His friend’s eyes are still closed but he mumbles, “Just stand there. The sun’s kinda bright from this angle.” 

Sunlight still spills around Tsumugi anyway, catching the blond highlights in Itaru’s hair and making them shimmer like liquid gold. Ribbons of sunshine unspool across the floor, stopping dead behind Tsumugi as his shadow stands in their way like a dark wall. There’s light in Itaru’s hair, summer is melting onto his skin, sunlight turning blotchy on his pigmentation like gold pollen and Tsumugi feels the throbbing pulse of all the flowers and his own heartbeat sing in unison at the sight. 

Itaru feels lightning crack against his walls when his sister opens the door for him that evening, her lush light brown hair falling in a mess over her face and red painful-looking patches of acne breaking out over her otherwise smooth skin. From the exhaustion-carved lines on her gaunt face, to the cracks mapping out over her paling lips and a suspicious stain on her sleeve, she looks nothing like the Konomi Chigasaki he watched growing up. 

Usually, Konomi is a picture of class, cut out to fit the exact mold her parents threw her into. Kneaded like dough, coiled clay in some places with her hard unfavourable edges blended together to hold her in place, she’s this pristine piece of work and the whole family’s pride and joy. Her medical degree and successful marriage being the appropriate garnish, Itaru has no doubts she’s a high-functioning and well-respected member of society.

So, that makes one of them. 

But the contrast is jarring and the smile she casts him is even more so. He shoulders past her, feeling the walls of their old home vaulting around him into skyscrapers or something out of a gigantic maze. The heat outside is unbearable but everything inside is stifling. He breathes in the memories and they hit his senses like chloroform. Sweet on his nose and then scratchy down his throat, like his body fights out their existence and rejects them vengefully. 

This has nothing to do with him anymore. Why is he here? 

A wail sobers him up completely and glaciers melt into his blood as he watches his sister shuffle to the cradle in the front room and lift up a noisy bundle. She gestures him over and the gravity of anticipation stirring with horror in his body drags him to where she stands, cradling her son. The baby is a pill-shaped work of a delicate pink nose, soft red cheeks and an open crying mouth that takes up half its tiny face.

Oh, god. This is a nightmare . This is Itaru’s first thought.

Oh, fuck. What is she doing? This is Itaru’s next thought, when Konomi turns and hands him the baby. 

His heart climbs up his throat and beats against the roof of his mouth as he holds his nephew in his pair of shaking and extremely inexperienced hands. The baby is small, petal-skinned, soft-jointed with a head that fits snugly into Itaru’s palms. And he’s overcome by this rush of fear and wonder all at once because he has never seen anything quite so small and delicate make a sound so defiant and angry. 

“Nice lungs,” He comments dumbly. 

Konomi smiles, tracing a finger along the crown of her baby’s head. “Haru,” She introduces. 

Spring .

Itaru starts and glances up at her, where she’s looking back at him, her smile hiding a million things but expressing a million more that he can’t even begin to name. His heart grows wings in his chest and flutters against the bars of his rib cage as he whispers the name to himself, warmth soaking his bones, and every wingbeat sends tremors of elation throughout his body despite the rot of memory that begins at the end of every nerve. 

And he looks at her, his sister, and remembers fear and in that, a certain level of companionship. A fractured family held together by a lot of creaking, rusted chains. When he glances at the baby again, that seems to be crying louder now, he sees everything he hopes she wants him to. The miracle of creation and birth into a body so small and soft-boned and fragile that will one day grow into a world that’s a little too big and very much scary. 

Unconsciously, he cradles the baby closer to his chest.

He gently presses his forefinger against Haru’s open crying lips and watches his nephew take it into his toothless mouth up to his nails in a gum-filled bite. The crying fades until he’s just chewing experimentally on Itaru’s finger. Itaru feels some uneven stubs of teeth sinking into his teeth and feels his heart swell. 

“He has your eyes,” Itaru whispers to Konomi, awe thinning his breath. 

“He reminds me of you,” Konomi responds, fondly. “The first time I came to see you after Mother’s delivery. You were smaller than most babies when they’re born and when I came to kiss you, you tried to eat my hair.” Itaru recalls being told this many times and remembers 5-year-old Konomi from their pictures, with her pigtails and hideous bangs. He smiles, despite himself and how much he hates this house.

Itaru is horrible with children and the baby weighs an extra pound of responsibility when the reason for the summons sinks in once and for all. With an empty but heavy stomach, he turns to his sister. “Shouldn’t Mother be helping you look after him while you’re working?” 

Konomi's expression hardens even though her smile doesn’t waver. “Yeah. Mother and Father are out of town to visit our ancestral land in the country - you know, the farm. They had to go to settle some property-related matters. They’re going to be gone for three weeks, if I’m lucky.” She clicks her tongue, unable to completely lock out her dissatisfaction as she takes Haru from Itaru and holds him to herself. 

“And the hubby?” 

Itaru hasn’t met her husband since the engagement party but he doesn’t like him very much. He seems to always have a metal pole shoved up his ass. 

“Business trip,” Konomi says, but doesn’t elaborate. 

Business trip , Itaru thinks, while leaving his working wife to care for the baby all alone? Jackass . He’s going to kill that man. 

“You just need to handle the nights,” She tells him. “I’m at home in the mornings. I requested the hospital for more time off but I can’t take any more paid leave. If I’m running late or on call, you can just drop him off at my neighbour’s - Don’t worry! It won’t happen but that’s in case it does. All you have to do is handle the night shift...” 

Itaru feels this ghostly rub of iron cuffs around his wrists getting heavier with every word she speaks. She must have noticed it behind his unchanging expression because she reaches out and squeezes his shoulder.

Her touch sends a shock of unpleasant electricity through him, fraying his nerves and exploding like firecrackers under his skin. He flinches like he grew up doing around her, and she retracts her hand immediately, having felt it too. In this dry land of their relationship, there is nothing but dunes upon dunes of history full of growing up in a house full of people but being lonely at the same time. 

Her touch burns and his skin tingles unpleasantly in places out of memory and that’s the unforgiving truth that he’s grown up with. He remembers her from the times he felt her nails in his forearm, remembers the sounds of this house as those of slamming doors and metal on skin on the worst days, blame like bullets and fleshwounds of regrets. Parents that didn’t know how to raise kids and didn’t bother trying to learn, a mother who only expressed love for her son by tearing up her daughter and a father who was never around to fix it.

Wounds touched by alcohol but left bare and undressed, their family is just misshapen pieces of people glued together clumsily by his and Konomi childish, clumsy hands. Even then, the companionship is incomparable to the enmity they shared growing up - Konomi's born out of jealousy because their parents treated their son better for being a boy, and his because their parents seemed to always trust her more than him. 

There is too much in between them. And yet, he showed up because he knows she needs him. 

“When do you have to leave for work?” Itaru asks, resigned to this for the next three weeks. 

“In an hour,” Konomi says, switching to her no-nonsense mode as she hands him Haru and gets up. She rummages in the drawers under the TV console and pulls out a file full of papers. “I’ve written down everything here, and he’s already got his own personal routine so it should be virtually no problem.” 

Itaru suppresses a scoff. There is nothing about parenting, responsibility and looking after a child that reads like “No problem”. 

When Konomi has disappeared into the bathroom for a shower and Haru’s face contorts to prepare for another wail, Itaru lets the baby bite his finger instead and walks idly around the house. The apartment is spacious and exactly how he remembers it from his childhood - the worn out bookshelves with the whorls dancing across their wooden bodies with the same old books, the glass showcase of empty alcohol bottles, the marble kitchen surface with all its stains. 

It’s all the same, pausing Itaru in a time he was so sure he moved on from. 

When he walks into his own room and sees it bare, he sighs. And Haru begins to scream again. 

“Yeah, kid, I know,” Itaru says, rocking him gently. “This is going to suck for you as much as it is for me.” 

Veludo Arts University’s theatre is one to rival Shakespeare’s Globe. The yellow lights spill honey across the floor and the stage lights cast their columns of silver on a shiny well-maintained and lacquered wooden platform that stretches along the entire length of the room. The rest of the place curves and hosts multiple levels of velvet seats, balconies lined with lamps as well that make them glitter like rhinestone belts. 

Tsumugi feels incredibly small in the middle of it, but also full of dreams when he notices the seats full of candidates for audition. They turn to look at him when they hear the doors creak open and Tsumugi blames it on their nerves when they don’t smile back at him.

The faculty has left him and another outsourced actor in charge of their graduating batch of actors, and he feels the weight of their expectations as he passes their row of chairs. Their gazes slide over him like oil, and he resists the urge to squirm uncomfortably. His copy of Hamlet, borrowed from an overly enthusiastic Homare when he informed him of the play, weighs a ton in his bag. 

The students are put in rows according to the characters they’re playing and the row for Hamlet is the longest. It makes Tsumugi dizzy to span his gaze from one end of it to the other. He’s never going to get through this.

Where is that other mentor?  

As if in response, a pair of voices wafts through the door to the theatre and Tsumugi feels a sheet of ice grow over his face as he makes eye contact with Haruto, who catches his eyes as well but doesn’t falter in his steps despite the obvious discomfort. His smile twists into a sneer for half a second before it’s gone and he’s back into the conversation with the drama teacher.

Tsumugi clutches his satchel a little tighter, shifting on his feet as the three of them convene for a short briefing regarding the audition. Things are still really awkward with the God troupe, and even if Tsumugi were to forgive, there’s no forgiving Reni just yet. 

He and Haruto are what constitutes the panel of judges responsible for casting and mentors when all that has been finalised. Which means they have to get along and Tsumugi thinks he’s a rather agreeable person but Haruto is a stick of dynamite, turning the theatre into some sort of huge fire hazard. 

“Let’s just get this over with,” Haruto says, ignoring Tsumugi’s bow of greeting and then blowing off his handshake. Tsumugi grits his teeth, pulling out his chair and sitting down in front of the table stationed before the stage. 

He feels the nervous energy of the candidates behind him swell to fill the stadium and pushes down the surging hostility. They’re counting on this, on him (...and Haruto), and he can’t let them down. 

They decide to clear the Hamlets first, upon the teacher’s recommendation because the judging period for a role that big is rightfully needed to be longer. When the students walk on the stage, stumbling with nerves or striding with the weight of their dreams on their back, Tsumugi feels the ghost of his past on stage, moving with the candidates and feeling the heartbeat of the theatre ring in his body. He reads their nervousness and smiles appreciatively wherever he can even at the ones who aren’t that great.

It takes a lot of courage to stand up on stage, so walking up the steps is half the battle won. He sees them in a manner that equates to touching, in a way, because he can feel the sweat on their collars or the lumps in their throats when they swallow. He smiles at them and wishes them well, acutely aware of Haruto who is making no effort to hide his disdain or favouritism next to him. 

During the interval, he turns and glares. “Do you even want to be here?” 

Haruto levels him with a glare of his own. “Listen. You’re the good cop. I’m the bad cop here. It’s working just fine. Focus on smiling at all of them. You’re not exactly the picture of assertive criticism.” 

The words enter and leave Tsumugi’s body like lead pellets, hot-punching holes through him and melting his flesh. His words sit like stones on his tongue, heavy and rough and unpleasant, so he knows he doesn’t want to speak and say something he’ll hate himself for. 

“Fine. Let’s just get this over with.” 

Tap. Tap. Tap.  

“Would you please stop that?” 

Tsumugi continues to tap his pen against the wood, ignoring Haruto completely. He’s going cross-eyed from all the audition tapes he’s watched and the ones he’s rewatched because they deserved another review. They’re sitting on the stage in the empty theatre, application forms strewn everywhere and laptops with dying batteries shouldering folders of recorded auditions. 

Tap. Tap. T - 

Haruto snatches his pen away and Tsumugi feels a flare of irritation spark up in his chest as he turns to look at his now-colleague, who slides a form over to him. “This guy,” Haruto says before Tsumugi can say anything else, “for Hamlet. Video 36. What do you think?” 

“He’s too much voice and not enough feeling,” Tsumugi comments, scrolling on his laptop and pulling up the video. He shifts the screen so Haruto can follow when he drops his feedback. “His projection is good and so is his elocution but his expressions are a little too rehearsed… they’re kind of mechanical here. And when he makes eye contact with the audience, he’s not really seeing them. It’s Hamlet’s soliloquy, and he’s speaking to the audience. You don’t get that sort of connection here…”

He trails off when he notices the look on Haruto’s face. There’s something there that evens out that permanent scowl and makes the corners of his lips twitch.

“Fine,” Haruto says. “I’ll keep looking. Tell me if you find a good Ophelia.” 

Tsumugi hurriedly slides out another application sheet and hands it over. “What about her?” 

“She didn’t audition for Oph - “ 

“Not for Ophelia,” Tsumugi interjects. “I’m thinking of her for Hamlet.” 

Haruto’s eyebrows reach his hairline but he casts a glance too many at the application and roots of hope wrestle deeper into Tsumugi’s gut. 

Candidate 47, as they’ve come to know her just from her number, was among the few girls that auditioned for the part of Hamlet. It’s not just her stage presence that snagged Tsumugi when she walked on stage, boot-soled feet clicking like sledgehammers on the wood, but her gravity when she started speaking. 

“Now, I am alone… Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! It is not monstrous that this player here…”  

Tsumugi mouths along as he and Haruto watch the video, and the two of them lean forward, caught in the same gravity as they watch her eyes and the bounce of those tight ringlets of dark hair that curl against her skin. She is nervous and the fright is evident in the thick sheen of sweat on her neck, glistening with the stage light but she wears it like a pair of wings. 

Where she lacks in confidence, she makes up for in courage and Tsumugi knows that the bravest ones are those that do it despite their fear. 

He knows because it’s something he missed before. He knows because he’s wished for that kind of strength every day he spent away from Veludo Way, putting together his scaffolding and trying to plaster the too-small pieces together until he can look at himself and vaguely see what he wants to. Until he feels like it’s strong enough and he’s strong enough because he’s spent all his time thinking that he was everything less. 

He’s so many “not enough”s. 

But he wants this role for her - this student. Because she’s more than enough, leagues more than just really good, and she may be scared but she’s brave, which makes her an infinitely better actor than Tsumugi. She deserves this. 

“I’ll bring it up with the teacher,” Haruto promises and Tsumugi is pleasantly surprised by the civil certainty in his voice. “She’s good. I think maybe one of the best we’ve had so far.” 

“I’ll handle Claudius and Ophelia’s roles over the weekend,” Tsumugi says as they begin to pack up. “I’ll get back to you on Mond - “ 

“Email me or something,” Haruto interrupts. “We need to start rehearsals as soon as possible. These kids don’t have a lot of time until the festival.” Then, without another word, he rushes off, leaving Tsumugi blinking rapidly to fight back a bitter scowl. 

Haru won’t stop crying, Konomi isn’t home yet and Itaru is late for work. He’s holding his wailing nephew who shows no signs of being satisfied and spits out the milk he’s fed. His crying knocks hammers against Itaru’s skull and shakes the entire house, threatening to take its foundation and his babysitter’s resolve with it if it crashes. Itaru feels like a pile of rubble already, ash-coated and grey-washed with ruin. 

His phone rings again and it’s Chikage, asking him where the hell he is and can he come down quick because there’s a meeting for logistics today and they need his management . Itaru can’t get a word out in between the screaming and his own trembling heart that’s wracked with irritation that sends seismic waves of anger throughout his tired, internet-deprived self. 

He rocks Haru as much as he can, walking around the house idly, already in his suit and cursing his family with each photo he passes on the wall. The frames are grainy and the glass is dusty on each of them, but he can see himself as a child, a teenager, a college graduate with a smile on his face but never looking quite happy. Neither do the rest of his family. 

A little too airbrushed here and there, they’re just one another’s company in misery. 

“I know, I know,” Itaru tries through gritted teeth as the crying gets louder. “This place sucks. I’m sorry you were born into this, little man.” 

There is so much to hate about being in this house and this family. 

He hears the front door click open and practically glides into the living room, words like hot coals on his tongue when his sister finally walks in, still in her scrubs and smelling morgue-pungent with a hint of disinfectant that makes his stomach churn. 

“You’re late,” He tells her, still holding her baby. 

She hums, not quite here as she slips out of her shoes and floats toward the kitchen. Her movements are weird and out-of-body, like she’s here but only in flesh and things of physical matter. But Itaru is angry, and wired and suffering from a bad case of game withdrawal for the past week so he doesn’t notice the fog in her eyes and the vague coppery stink of blood that clings to her clothes and has followed her from the surgery room. 

“Are you even listening to me?” 

She doesn’t answer but Itaru knows that she isn’t. Because she never does. Because he grew up in her shadow, tending to the bitemarks of being “too much” and “not enough” for his parents all at once. When he’s not inadequate, he’s redundant. Now, even as an adult, he’s dispensable. He’s sick of her, and of them, and of everyone under this roof except for Haru, who did nothing and got dealt the worst cards as a baby.

Fate doesn’t spare children and sometimes, it strikes early. Sometimes, a little too early and misfortune loves to run its course through childhoods until the mountain ranges of their lifetimes are filled with more valleys than peaks, the sky out of reach and full of storms that darken dreams.

Itaru holds Haru, still crying, closer to himself still as he glares at his sister. 

She just stays at the sink as she clutches the platform, her lips chapped, eyes glittering with the pallor on her face glowing like gossamer film, haunting even in the daylight. 

Everything is too real. He wants to lock himself in his room, turn on the computer and turn everything else off until he can shed this faux skin and let the wind slide over the reality of his self. He wears this fake personality like an extra suit and the past week without his console has left him feeling stuffy in the pretense of it all. Wired and sparking at every nerve end, with grievances lighting a fire on his skin that brings his blood to a boil, Itaru promises he’s never sacrificing that for anyone even in any of the next lifetimes to come. 

“I have to get to work,” Itaru repeats with finality, hardening his words. He moves to hand over Haru to Konomi. “Can you - “ 

“No,” She cuts in, as if he’s stabbed her out of the blue. Hot, unbridled fear flashes across her eyes and lights up their pink into orange. “Just - I don’t know, just put him down in the cradle.” She turns on the tap and the dishes clink in the sink as she puts her hands under it and begins to clean something crusted under her fingernails. 

“He’s crying . I don’t know why. You need to - “

“No!” 

Something explodes on the metal sides of the basin and ceramic shards ascend from the sink in a shower and pelt around her like missiles. Itaru flinches, jerking away and instinctively bringing his hand to cover Haru’s face as Konomi clutches the edges of the sink, her hand still holding the handle of the broken mug like a lifeline, chest rising and falling heavily under the blue cotton of her scrubs. 

He looks at her, feeling the bile in his throat and the wounds of his childhood open up. He feels 7 years old again, and while she doesn’t change shape, the thick veil of inherited cruelty distorts her into something wicked and otherworldly. The air feels thick and his bones feel like liquid, malleable - like he was treated growing up. There’s nothing traditionally horrific but it’s the insidious nature of this suffering that permeates him every now and then even when he’s older.

“Just… no,” She repeats, dropping the handle back into the sink. “Put him down in the cradle. Keep him away from me for a while.” 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Itaru doesn’t recognise his voice. Everything around him shimmers slightly with the simmering heat of his words. “He’s your son, for fuck’s sake.”

Haru screams louder in his arms, hating the world, hating his embrace, hating his own mother and hating everything. 

Konomi looks at him through her curtain of sweaty hair, and Itaru sees it so clearly written on her face he wonders why he didn’t see it before. The Chigasaki siblings clearly don’t get their acting from their parents who couldn’t even adequately pretend to be happily married for the cameras. 

“You…” His voice is above a whisper when he speaks, he’s painfully aware of Haru’s tiny head against his sternum, soaking in his raging heartbeat and his words. “You weren’t expecting him. You didn’t - you never even wanted him, did you?” 

“No, I didn’t.” There’s no hesitation in her voice when she says it. “We didn’t plan for it - “ (This is the first time, He notes, that she even mentioned herself and her husband as ‘We’). 

“ - and I didn’t want a child.” (She didn’t say ‘We’ this time, he observes again.)

A pregnant silence descends upon them as the horror stirs in him, morphing into a whirlpool - like his own Charybdis, swallowing pieces of him and leaving behind nothing but his bones that have grown heavy and velvety with acrimony and weeds of his tattered childhood. 

“What do you want me to say?” She breaks the silence first, her voice thin and trembling like it’s lost all its scaffolding, left without a foundation. “That I want to do everything I can and sacrifice everything for my child because my husband wants to leave me? Make the noble decision of keeping shut and taking everything because I grew up taking shit from our parents and I’m used to it? I’m not pathetic enough for that one, yet.” 

The scars on her skin, little streaks of white embedded in her otherwise pristine skin, glint as she says this. Itaru’s words crumble in his throat and their ashes fill not just his lungs but his whole body. 

“I’m sick of this place,” She says. “And I’m sick of myself. You know the worst part?” Her voice cracks and Itaru watches tears cut across her acne-scarred cheeks. “It’s not that I didn’t want him. I didn’t want this for him. I want better for him and I do want him now but those two aren’t mutually exclusive, which is the absolute worst part.”  

“Where is he?” Itaru asks. “Your husband?” I’m going to kill that bastard , he thinks to himself.

“Running away. Leaving,” Konomi says, her voice a mere corpse of itself. “Like everyone does when they meet any one of us. Probably realised I’m not that pretty aside from my face, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” 

“I’m going to kill him,” Itaru promises. She doesn’t say anything.

When she finally gives an indication of taking Haru in her arms, Itaru pulls away reflexively, hating himself the slightest when he watches the glass in her eyes crack. He hears it too, and feels the shards in his skin, but it’s nothing painful enough to have him drop Haru. 

“Whatever.” She leaves and he hears her door slam and the lock click. Classic. 15 years and nothing has changed. Their house is nothing if not a music box of slamming doors, breaking glass, wine sloshing on marble countertops and manicured nails clicking clumsily on baby-soft skin thanks to their inexperienced sinews. 

He feels them on his forearms even now as he lowers Haru into the cradle and tugs the tie out of his nephew’s mouth, smiling tiredly and apologetically. “Sorry about that. We don’t really have any good parents in our family.” 

He knows he’s terrible with children and they’re just extra responsibilities (another thing he’s bad at) and also a lot of money but Itaru genuinely wishes Haru were his child instead. There is so much he wishes to spare this baby from. 

Their family has too much history of hurting instead of caring for each other and too many “I’m sorry”s that don’t begin to cover half the wrongs they did. All this that he walked away from still lingers around the corners in his house, memories turned shadows that stick to walls and darkness that fills the house when it’s night. 

“I’ll be back,” He says, letting Haru bite on his finger. “I promise. I won’t leave you here alone.” He means it. “But I’m just going to ask a friend to drop by to look after you while I’m gone, okay? Be a good boy.” 

The sun is a blister and the horizon is glowing red like a sore in the evening. Tsumugi turns everywhere and sees nothing but motifs of pain - the peeling shades of twilight giving way to bruise-coloured dusk sky, the branches of trees doubled over the walkway and their wooden limbs creaking under some unseen weight of grief or heartbreak. He rubs the sides of his fingers with his thumb nervously, eyes flitting to his phone screen that he turns on and off like a distress signal.

theyre not budging

its a missionary college i don’t think it will be that easy

Youre just going to hv to let it go

He clenches his teeth as he reads his last messages from Haruto. He’s let a lot of things go within the short span of his lifetime under pressure and even without it. This is something he wants to cling onto, if not for himself then the student. 

The casting for Hamlet ended with him and Haruto in the teacher’s office, red-faced and feather-nerved. The school board got in touch with them in the morning before their rehearsals, claiming to have ‘vetted’ their casting choices, only for them to find out that the role of Hamlet had been taken from their 47th candidate and given it to some other subpar male actor who already voiced his disdain over being granted a major role. 

“Females can’t play the role of male characters,” were the exact words.

Which is, honestly, bullshit because Hamlet has been played by a woman even in the 19th century and it was claimed to illustrate a refinement of his character that male actors could never accomplish. (Contrary to belief, Tsumugi actually listens really intently to Homare’s drunken discourse.)

The student got handed Gertrude instead. That’s not enough verbal space to rightfully flaunt her phenomenal acting. 

He can’t just let this one slide. He doesn’t know what he’s doing about it, yet, but he knows he’s going to do something. 

“Earth to Tsumugi.” 

A pair of hands wrench his phone out of his grip. “I thought the rule tonight was no phones,” Itaru reminds him and guilt twinges like a guitar string along Tsumugi’s spine. 

They met on the way back, Tsumugi from campus and Itaru from work. His friend looks as weighed down as the tree branches around him, the earthy shade of his suit rendering him nearly camouflaged in the dim evening and vaulting shadows when he walks ahead of Tsumugi. And Tsumugi feels quite terrible himself after the rough day. Seems like people with bad days gravitate towards each other. 

“I’m sorry I dragged you out here. You must be tired,” Tsumugi says. 

“It’s fine,” Itaru assures him, reaching over the rail of the skywalk and touching the swaying branches that grow up to this height. “Misery loves company, and you look just as miserable as me. It checks out.” He says it like he’s reading off a grocery list, as if his eye circles aren’t worse, and his fingers don’t twitch out of the blue every thirty seconds and his nerves don’t practically jump out against his skin, casting rivers of shadows. 

“What’s wrong?” Tsumugi asks, resisting the urge to take his hand and smooth over his skin. 

“Zilch,” Itaru replies, obviously lying. “But what’s going on with you?” 

Tsumugi takes a moment to breathe in that question - a moment full of contemplative silence that submerges the both of them into a mind-numbing depth of vacuum and he realises that Itaru is a master at deflecting, but he’s not being all that subtle about it today. Like his gears are a little rusty and not clicking quite right. But Tsumugi takes the lead anyway because Itaru doesn’t fancy being the first to bare his thoughts and they know.

He’s an island, as it is, and Tsumugi will build the bridge to him, if he will allow it. 

“Just this play,” He says. “They won’t let a girl play Hamlet, though she’d do a phenomenal job at it.”

“Well, that’s crap. Hamlet has been played by women before and… aren’t artists supposed to be a bit more liberal or something?” 

“Yeah, they got some subpar male actor to replace her without asking us about it. They sound like they’re pretty upset, but it makes no sense interfering like that - “ Tsumugi breathes deep, and feels the chlorophyll-stained air settle like syrup over the rest of his body. His heart drums a rhythm of indignation and he reaches over the glistening metal railing to pinch off the leaves on the tree. 

“This means a lot to you,” Itaru says, leaning against the railing and watches Tsumugi pluck one tiny leaf after the other. 

“Yeah, I mean - she’s good enough - better, in fact. Lots better than the rest and even Haruto agrees with me - don’t look so surprised. I just… As an acting mentor, it’s kind of my job to make sure the actors can flaunt what they have. And they’re graduating too, so the festival is their last chance - “

“I remember my graduation day,” Itaru begins, ruminatively. “Best day of my life. Leaving all that behind.  Never wanted to see any of my classmates or coursemates ever again - kind of impossible, but at the time, it made me happy. Then, I realised what graduating meant and was scared shitless.”

Tsumugi smiles, watching the years appear on Itaru in the frown lines of his face. “I remember feeling excited to grow up as a kid.” 

“Everyone wants to grow up when they’re kids. Now, we all just want to be children again because the world is pretty ugly in reality.” 

“Children get away with avoiding things that are out of their control. Adults are responsible for having things under control. The world is bigger and that’s why it’s scarier.” 

“And we’re not any braver or wiser. In fact, I think I’ve grown into my Coward skin.” 

“That’s not true.”

Silence. Tsumugi feels the wind whisper into his skin, sending a shiver trickling down his body despite the streets soaked with heat. 

“I think you’re… enough,” Itaru says and sends a shockwave throughout Tsumugi’s body that crushes his bones to ash. “I don’t know what anyone is supposed to be when they’re older that makes them better at this adulting shit, but whatever it is, you’ve got enough of it. And… other good things - I don’t know. I can’t explain it.” 

He’s turned away, so Tsumugi can’t see the expression on his face but a cool draft blows through his body, kissing all his hot sores away and washing out the chaff in the shelves of his flesh to make room for Itaru’s words. The world is fuzzy around them, colours like balls of cotton and patches of car headlights streaking like scars through the darkening evening. The wind dances up to where they’re standing on the overhead bridge. 

He turns to Tsumugi and his smile sends another whip of electricity shearing through his fragile, melting body. 

“I like watching you act,” Itaru says, and before Tsumugi can feel the heat bloom on his cheeks, his friend reaches out and gently presses a finger against his throat. “You have a little magic here, you know… and a nice voice. You fill the audience with it when you speak. And…” His finger trails down until it’s on Tsumugi’s sternum, above his heart that’s beating bullets into his sternum. “...a little magic here, too.” 

They stare at each other, lashes like little black petals where they clump because of residual sweat and Tsumugi feels his heart tumbling with gravity right into Itaru’s clumsy but soft hands. He doesn’t dare to breathe, afraid that even the slightest miscalculated brush of air could push them light-years apart. 

But Itaru turns away first with a sigh, sliding his hands into his pocket and walking away, unruffled. “I’ve gotta head back for babysitting duty. Tell the others I said hi. I’ll be there for afternoon and evening rehearsals tomorrow.” He throws his hand aside in a half-wave goodbye. 

The walls are back up and Tsumugi can practically hear the bolts slide in place behind the door. 

“You’re sure this will work?” 

Haruto frowns at the revised list of roles and cast when they meet next Monday. They’re at the gates of the college, where grass stretches out into a massive and manicured front lawn, a strip of road looping near the front door. Tsumugi is pacing nervously along the steps, while Haruto watches him. 

“Yes, it will,” Tsumugi affirms. “You just take care of the teacher supervisor and brief the actors. I’ll handle the dean, and then the board.” Haruto makes his disbelief very obvious, casting at least three glances Tsumugi’s way before disappearing into the building. 

It’s a pretty old college, and it shows in the sepia scheme of colour that clings to the entire land area of the campus. Very set in their ways, which is ironic given their Vision is literally to “raise the next generation of leaders”. 

The sunlight catches in the dew on the grass and trees, beads of gold clinging to everything like fairy lights. Every time he doubles back to begin his pacing, the light bounces in different ways until the pulse of light follows his footsteps, its steady rhythm enough to untie all the knots in his nerves. He’s not usually one to pull strings, but the situation called for it and Tsumugi thinks that he can finally pin that “brave enough” badge onto himself.

Homare arrives within the next 15 minutes, dismissing the cab and they waste no time in beginning the walk to the dean’s office. 

“Sorry for calling you down like this,” Tsumugi says. 

“No harm done,” Homare assures him. “I’ve actually had to go around to a couple of the participating schools recently for problems just like this. Teachers trying to control students’ autonomy and artistic liberty isn’t an anomalous occurrence actually. It’s alarmingly consistent.” 

Tsumugi winces. Homare sounds incredibly displeased even though his expression is characteristically pleasant. He’s in this black suit and white button-down that make the colour of his hair pop comically, but the expression on his face is no laughing matter. The eyes-only glare behind his glasses is chilling. 

Homare is the chairman on the panel of artists responsible for managing the festival this year, so any and every school registered to perform has to go through him for referral in terms of logistics, scheduling, casting and even funding. He was talking about it two weeks prior to Tsumugi’s offer letter, and the probability that, with students taking charge of their own performances, it will mean intervention on certain occasions. 

Such as this one. It’s a little outrageous since the agreement was that the performance was an extracurricular and autonomous activity, which… usually meant the teachers were to stay out of it. 

They’re ushered into the dean’s office by a flustered receptionist. They all offer nothing but a curt greeting and Homare helps himself to the chair opposite the desk, Tsumugi lowering himself into the one next to his friend. The dean watches them with friendly confusion, clearly unaware of the reason for Homare's visit. 

“Good morning, sir, I’ll make it quick.” Homare pounces on the agenda immediately. His temper and irritation are controlled and stitch his words together with ferocity. No matter what, he always seems to have the right and rational words to say. “It’s regarding your festival entry, actually and the fact that you vetoed the previously chosen cast, despite agreeing to grant the students and mentors freedom to stage the production as per their will as long as it didn’t violate any of the usual regulations.” 

“Well, that was the agreement, yes but - “ 

“And it’s clearly stated in the oath, specifically for stage productions, that you aren’t to deny a student of their role regardless of their gender, sexuality and social class if they were judged capable of handling it by the mentors. On the registration form, which you signed .” 

Homare is machine-gunning his way through the conversation, leaving no room for the dean to speak up or for Tsumugi to join in and express his own discontent. 

“I don’t think the decision was based on the matter of gender or restrictions of such sort,” The dean finally interjects. “Rather, it was a consideration of our actors’ schedules. The previous - “ 

“I know,” Tsumugi cuts in. “I know about our previous candidate for Hamlet. She’s in charge of costume design and oversees the committee for stage management as well. She brought up the issue with scheduling conflicts because of rehearsals and assignments and preparation but that was already taken care of, so I don’t see why she’s being denied the role. My mentoring partner and I agreed on it, too.“

“It’s silly that this even needs any kind of intervention but I think the actors would appreciate being granted their desired roles if they’ve worked for it,” Homare continues. “A number of women have played Hamlet even in the past centuries, so I don’t see why a school in the 21st century claiming to raise next generation leaders has a problem with letting their female student take the role.” 

Tsumugi flinches as the words sink in, words hot and incisive as freshly fired bullets. When Homare smiles, his teeth flash like gunmetal, the edges of his lips sharp as knives. It must have been a gesture of the placating variety, but there is no remorse in it - just outrage. For a fleeting second, Tsumugi is almost scared of his friend but, he’s sure, not as much as the dean is.

“Sir, I’ll let you consider it for a while,” Homare says, pulling back one pressed sleeve to glance at his watch, the motion of his wrist sliding his Cartier gold band out from under his other sleeve. It glints wickedly like a metal smirk over bone. “But considering the students’ futures may very well depend on their performance, I’d prefer if you trusted my friend and his colleague, and the students to do their best.” 

The dean says nothing. 

Tsumugi, with nervous hands, slides the sheet holding the revised casting roles across the desk, concluding the dialogue. “I’d also like assurance that me and my fellow mentor can continue our work uninterrupted.” 

They leave shortly after, bowing their goodbyes because the dean doesn’t look ready to speak.

Homare’s phone rings again just as the door clicks and Tsumugi looks away deliberately when he sees his friend’s eye twitch in irritation and answer the call, hushed and hurried before he promptly hangs up. 

“Was it not important?” 

Homare shakes his head. “No, it’s nothing the other members can’t handle.” 

“Thanks for coming down.” 

“My pleasure.” He doesn’t really sound pleased but Tsumugi blames it on the recent workload. Homare is usually well-tempered and his words are genuine even if they sound roughened by exertion. “I’d also like to meet your cast, actually.” 

The theatre is a hub of activity, more lively and colourful today than it has been the past week of rehearsals. The stage lights are all on, casting pillars of white light that follow the actors on the raised wooden platform. The revised script must have been received well, because the air shimmers with a newfound fervour and scent of inspiration. Their Hamlet - the rightful one - is consulting Haruto, as the supervising teacher watches on, her red face an indication that she wasn’t taking the news as well.

“You’ll teach them well,” Homare states. He is so certain of this fact that warmth blooms in Tsumugi’s chest, and he clutches his hands to himself. This confidence that he persistently lacks seems to always be compensated by his friends’ belief in him. 

“I’ll do my best.” 

Homare’s lips waltz into a smile, exhaustion falling away as a fondness takes over his features and smoothes out all the creases on his skin. “Work your magic, Tsumugi.” 

Tsumugi feels the entire planet come to a standstill, molecules of time suspended in the air in a dazed pause as the words kiss his body like snowflakes - ticklish, little pinpricks of a welcome cold that sink deeper than his skin and hug his heat-soaked sinews. 

There are places where Tsumugi is certain that dreams are born, whether like delicate blooms breaking out from under snow, or emerging from flames like myth and he feels all that searing and honey-sweet glory in this theatre. There is an entire kingdom fitted within the surface area of a single stage, open to him, and home to him. When he looks at these students, he hopes they feel that magic too.

It’s no longer just the hot weather that keeps Itaru tossing and turning in his old room, shirt plastered to his skin. He has perpetual pins and needles in his arms and legs from not quite finding a comfortable position to sleep in, his fingers don’t stop twitching and his anger lies just under the surface, growing like a parasite from the lack of release he’s been experiencing ever since he came to this place. 

The walls are inked with shadows and the moon has lost its shine, so now it’s a tombstone-grey slab hanging in the sky. If tragedy had a smell or feel to it, it would be this - one of wood and bleach from the spotless floors, citrus of soaps in the bathrooms and the dry copper taste of blood from fingers nicked on chipped half-empty wine glasses. It hangs everywhere in this house, like a ghostly entity with a body so languid and fluid, it fills the whole house and makes everyone sick too. 

Itaru is suffering from terrible game withdrawal. The second skin - together with its charm, eloquence and good-naturedness, or whatever it is that the world finds more attractive and better than his usual self - needs shedding. Dry-cleaning, perhaps. It feels heavy, like armour. Extra weight. Suffocating. He needs a break; the house is breaking him. 

He stumbles out of his room, motions jerky with irritation, to get himself a glass of water. The weather is terrible, this place is terrible, his stupid family is terrible. Itaru just wants to be back at the dorms in the comfort of his own room with the promise of another one of Omi’s home cooked meals waiting for him after an arduous day at work. 

Konomi's food tastes too much like their mother’s. It’s haunting. There are too many ghosts here and too many ghosts in him.

He sees her on the balcony, silhouetted against the night-washed world outside. She took a day off from work today, her apology hidden in the gesture because she can’t bring herself to say sorry. He turns to head back, but she turns around like she senses him and smiles. Crescents of shadows cling to the underside of her eyes, the stray corkscrew curls dance with the wind against her scarred cheeks. 

He caves, floating past the dining table in a sweaty and sleepy haze, joining her on the other lawn chair. Because despite their constant fighting, they have always been a team in this war of Kids vs Parents. Children trying to learn things their parents won’t teach them, and trying to succeed where their parents failed. With not much luck. They were neither siblings nor companions by choice - merely circumstance. 

They sit in silence for a while, silently taking in the sight of the lawn that her stocky building and a few others share. The wrinkled reflection of the moon in the pool water snickers at them, like Nature is in on some big joke that the Chigasaki siblings can’t know. Mirth drips from the roofs, treetops and dews the grass like sweat from the heat-soaked city. 

“That day…” Konomi begins and Itaru wishes for her to stop. He doesn’t want an explanation, nor does he care for one. But she doesn’t stop. “That day I stayed late for a surgery, for this baby that got wheeled in. I was just on the team but…” 

He hears the quiver in her voice and even though he’s not looking at her, he can see her gum pink lips tremble, her porcelain face that’s usually the picture of cold beauty shattering under the weight of vulnerability - a sentiment usually associated with an unguarded softness, but in its delicacy, it is also tenacious and soul-crushing. This kind of softness doesn’t necessarily warrant mercy. 

“...and he - the surgery was - it didn’t - “ She falls apart next to him and he feels the shards of her under the soft, exposed skin of his feet as they spill across the tiled floor. Even broken into pieces, she is sharp and dangerous and he is afraid of her like he was afraid of his parents. Her words don’t come out anymore but he gets the vague idea. 

The surgery was unsuccessful. The baby died. She blames herself, because like him, she grew up in an environment of guilt and doesn’t know how to process any negative emotion without the salt of it in her wounds. Feel bad for who you are and then feel bad for who you aren’t because his parents are obnoxiously hard to please.

“And he looked like Haru,” She continues. “And I got so fucking scared.” She doesn’t say what she’s scared of and she doesn’t have to. 

There are so many blanks of each other that the two of them can fill purely from the shared strain of growing up as they did, it’s shameful and quite frankly, alarming that they are normally not on good terms. At some point, Itaru had thought she was the enemy - pushing him away, ganging up on him with his parents. Against their will and knowing, they each possess weapons to hurt the other. This whole damn place is a sick battlefield.

“I got scared, because I’m scared of everything,” Konomi continues. “I got scared that I’d hurt him like Mother and Father hurt us, because we all just keep hurting each other and I want better than this for him and my husband left me by myself at the worst possible time.” 

“It’s not your fault,” Itaru says, despite having grown up blaming her for everything. “It’s just life.” He’s not good at this heart-to-heart shit. He’s the last person she should be coming to with her problems. 

“I just feel so bad for him.” She sniffs, coiling one of her curls around her fingers like she always does when the tumult of emotions are about to sweep her away. Like her own anchor. 

“You didn’t put him up for adoption,” Itaru states. “You said you didn’t want him, but you didn’t give him up.” 

“I didn’t want him until I had him,” Konomi clarifies. Her face is damp, catches the moonlight and shines like it too. “I didn’t want to be a mother with my career, but motherhood crept up on me and post-delivery when my body was a literal warzone, I couldn’t bear to give him away.” She bites her trembling lip, the tails of her sentences caught in between her teeth. “Mother proposed giving him up for adoption but…” 

Itaru doesn’t require her to finish, but he does it for her. “But the foster system isn’t exactly kind to the children, either.” 

They have the “finish each other’s sentences” relationship with none of the trust or understanding. It’s sickeningly funny. 

She nods, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “And I want better for him. I thought I could do better. I didn’t want to put him somewhere I couldn’t be sure he was safe and taken care of.” 

“That’s called having a sense of responsibility.” 

He feels the ground practically tremble with humour, the stars jangling like windchimes with tinkling laughter above his head with the sweltering hysteric wind. Ironies upon ironies are nailing this conversation, and he can feel the rust of it in his mouth - the awareness that’s long overdue, the one that he’s been begged to understand but too selfish to adopt. Itaru doesn’t know why he’s here lecturing his sister on responsibility when he’s never understood or even liked any of it. 

Probably hereditary.

Konomi nods. “I want to be the ‘better’ for him that I wish he’ll have, but…” She turns to him, anguish written in the lines on her face that add at least ten years to her appearance. “I’m sorry for treating you like shit. You deserved better too, and I couldn’t give that to you and now it feels like if I try, I’ll fail again and I don’t want to fail Haru.” 

“You won’t fail. Not this time.” He doesn’t know that. 

He does know that Konomi kept trying to fill in for their parents while he was growing up, trying to salvage all she could from the wreckage. But there was no one to unbreak her anew, teach her how to really do it right. While Itaru realises that makes her a victim, he can’t quite forgive her either. There are pieces of himself he’s still trying to find that he’s sure she tossed out somewhere. 

He really didn’t need her to be his mother; he just wanted a sister. 

But now, Haru needs a mother.

“We’re not really good at being nice to each other,” Konomi says. “I hate Mother and Father because I expected them to be better and they weren’t. I hated you because they treated you better - “ 

“I hated you because they thought you were better,” Itaru interrupts, feeling the windows in himself open. “I hated you because you were everything they kept comparing me to - your grades, your medical degree, your trophies and test papers. And - “ His torrent crashes into a dam as he takes a breath. “I still kind of hate you for it, actually. I hate them and you, and I - ”  

“And you ran away.” She finishes for him, with no ill-intent or malice in her tone but this dynamite blows in his chest. 

“ Walked away,” He corrects her. 

Because running away suggests fear and Itaru hates to admit he was afraid - still is, in fact. Walking away implies courage and knowing what you want - it means making a choice . Itaru so badly wants to believe he did it because he knew he deserved better but he just wanted to get away from them, and from everything. Needed adulthood to keep its promise of “making everything better”.

Bullshit. 

“Sorry,” She whispers, peeling her nail polish. “I’m sorry I was a bitch to you and I’m sorry this family only communicates through pain and I’m sorry we have so many reasons to be sorry to one another.” 

This is the part where he apologises - where they tearfully embrace and make promises to each other to fix this, all of this, and stick together. And it ideally would be, but it’s not. Not this time. 

He’s run into a wall and their history has caught up, tearing open old and new wounds alike until he’s slick with the blood of time. There is too much he hasn’t allowed himself to feel yet, and much more that he can’t bring himself to forgive. An eternity of muchness that he can’t forget because they’re a part of him. All the ugly feelings, all the bad thoughts, and all the heartbreaking memories that break new hairline cracks over him everyday are very much a part of him held together by petulant vengeance and animosity that he can’t just leave behind. He’ll fall apart. 

The universe gives you an infinity the day you’re born with finite time to discover as much of it as you can. 

Itaru has more than enough time to get up wordlessly and walk away. He’s heard the apology he wanted his whole life, but he’ll need another lifetime before he can forgive. He’s waited so long; they can wait longer. He has nothing to say to them.

He feels lighter somehow, like he’s finally cut off dead weight. Not exactly for a possibility of good things, but progress - a little closer, maybe, to the “better” that he deserves. 

The promise of miracle rolls in with the thunder and stains the air with the earthy musk of rain, and the ozone of a storm. For the first time in a month, the clouds tumble over each other across the sky in a sort of haste, eating up all the robin blue bits and spilling into each other sluggishly but smoothly like thick froth. The wind glides in, tangling in the curtains as they reach out to caress Itaru. 

Magic. That’s what he feels and smells in blazing intensity from the helium inside him to the lightning waiting for him in the sky. 

“It’s going to rain,” Tsumugi says, leaving the kitchen and joining Itaru on the balcony. “Do you want to bring the laundry in?” He pulls off the gloves stained with grime from cleaning the sink, his hands reddening on their joints and palms because of the sudden drop in temperature. The blush dusts his nose and his ears like pink powder. 

Konomi has gone to the doctor with Haru for a routine checkup, leaving Itaru alone on his last day of babysitting duty, which Tsumugi took advantage of. He’s here to help clean up the house which, by the look of carelessly strewn baby toys and laundry and takeout boxes, the place desperately needs. 

Itaru has no objections. There are too many skeletons to toss out and demons to exorcise from this place, and Tsumugi has an abundant goodness in him that turns everything divine. Like a Midas touch. 

“I’ll go and throw the trash before it rains,” Itaru says, referring to the huge garbage bag of styrofoam boxes, disposable plates and takeout cases that are all his doing because he still can’t bring himself to eat what Konomi cooks. She seems to be apologising even through her cooking and he wishes she would leave it alone. He doesn’t give a shit.

“I’ll make tea,” Tsumugi says, shuffling back towards the kitchen as Itaru grabs the trash bags and slips into his slides, pausing a moment to take in the mess left in the living room.

They’ve cleaned out the rooms deeper in the house already, but the baby toys are still all over the carpet, there are newspapers in danger of flying across the entire room and out of the kitchen window and the cushions are unkempt. He can smell all the bleach on himself, feel the rawness of cleanliness even on his hands that spent all morning scrubbing at walls and floors. One brush of the mop at a time, he feels like he’s cleared out an entire layer of his lingering bitter childhood already. 

The helium balloon heart of his swells just a little more as he watches Tsumugi, his infectious divinity trailing behind him like a bridal train, touching everything and turning it into something befitting of reverence. 

He watches Tsumugi fiddle with the activity box, sliding the geometric pieces into the hollows of their respective shapes, their plastic bodies clicking together like an unsteady metronome. He thinks for a fleeting second if the shape of his mouth fits Tsumugi’s just as perfectly. 

He quickly leaves through the door before the thought can take root and grow into anything. He still remembers the skin of Tsumugi’s throat under his finger, the beat of his heart under his fingertips, his pulse like bullets and energy like gunpowder entering Itaru’s bloodstream. 

“How’s the play going?” Itaru asks when he comes back, desperate to fill the silence before all these thoughts latch onto the hull of his brain like barnacles. 

Tsumugi’s lips stretch into that sunshine-snow smile as he glances over his shoulder, still dazedly stirring the tea into the cups and Itaru realises this is the happiest he’s seen him in a while. “It’s great, now. Homare settled things quite well. Rehearsals are in full swing.” He taps the spoon on the lip of the cup, shaking off the residual tea and drops it into the now shiny sink.

“That smells good.” 

“It’s my grandmother’s recipe,” He explains and when he speaks, he opens up like a flower, baring all his thoughts like a ripe fragrance. “She makes it when we sit in her garden together. She has this idea that - you know, smelling the flowers while you drink makes the tea taste sweeter.” 

Itaru watches Tsumugi’s mouth change shapes as he speaks, bringing the cup up to take a sip as he watches his friend’s lips, delicate as lilies, pretty as spring and Aphrodite-pink. The tea hits the roof of his mouth and he realises that it does taste sweeter. There’s this lingering sourness of something as he looks away from Tsumugi to the balcony, his heart swelling like a ripening fruit ready to burst. 

This doesn’t mean anything , he reminds himself. If he just ignores it, it will go away. It seems childish to be caught up in this whirlwind of emotions, and entertain them. 

He’s too good for me . Because Itaru is the picture of graceless and messy and “little too much” all the time, grown up in a place where the only way he thought he could be of little inconvenience was to make himself scarce. He shows his love by staying out of the way, but Tsumugi melts that inhibition and puts him dangerously on the edge. 

“How are things with your sister?” Tsumugi asks, his breath smelling of jasmine tea and his nose pink as a cherry blossom. 

His eyes are so kind, his words fluttering against Itaru’s ears like the wing beats of a hummingbird and Itaru suddenly feels everything all at once - from each hairline crack on him to the feel of his skin on his bones like the world has come alive around him and inside him all at once . He risks it just once and pulls aside his curtains, cracking his windows open.

“Shitty,” He says, honestly. “Like they’ve always been, really. It’s no different. We didn’t have a good relationship growing up and we get along now because we’re more mature and Haru doesn’t need to see us fighting.” When he swallows, it feels like broken glass in his throat. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tsumugi says. “But it sounds like something of a second chance to get along for Haru… if I’m not wrong.” 

Second chance . Maybe that’s what it is. Itaru can give Konomi a second chance before he learns to forgive. Second chances and forgiveness overlap on a thin margin, but everything about his relationship with his sister lies on the outside of that. 

This is so hard. He squeezes his eyes shut and Tsumugi laughs lightly, the sound of his joy thin as a drizzle but just as benevolent. 

“You know the mother of second chances?” Itaru says suddenly. “Growing up a second time. Redoing life all over, but knowing which choices were the wrong ones.” 

Tsumugi’s face is expressionless but not disapproving. “And would you? Do it all again and choose different?” 

“No,” Itaru responds. “Having choices wasn’t a part of my childhood. If it had been, things would have been better sooner.” 

“I don’t think anyone who wants to go back and do everything over again is ever thinking about the choices they made or want to unmake,” Tsumugi says, his forefinger riding the lip of his empty cup, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I think they just want to relive it again with the knowledge of it getting better. Because what we miss the first time is certainty. We want to do it again with a level of method in the madness of it all.” 

A pause. “Did you just quote Hamlet at me?”

A laugh. “Sorry. I’ve been studying it a lot for the rehearsal.”

“So, essentially,” Itaru muses, “We’re talking about the Chaos Theory? Every small different decision or change leads to an entirely different series of events and…” His voice drops just the slightest as he weaves Tsumugi’s words into his own. “...and the worst part about growing up already was the chaos and not-knowing. Any different choice would mean more uncharted territory - “ 

“Everyone just wants to be safe,” Tsumugi whispers. “Children shouldn’t have to be strong. They have to be safe. Anything else means growing up before you can even live your childhood and… I’m sorry that being strong was the only option you had.” 

“I’m not strong, just stupid,” Itaru says, the words stinging like a scorpion’s tail. “Stupid people are immune to the terrible shit because they don’t really think for themselves anyway. Between being strong and stupid, I chose the second because I’m too scared.” 

“You’re not stupid,” Tsumugi insists. “You don’t see your strength - that’s fine but I do.” He reaches out and places a hand on Itaru’s shoulder, his touch sizzling through the pyjama’s fabric. “Please trust me on this at least, okay? For me, if not yourself.” 

“Alright.” The kitchen is getting stifling and a rain-cool gale floods the house from the open windows, tilting Tsumugi dangerously in Itaru’s direction over the counter. Itaru’s heart skitters and he gets up abruptly. 

“The laundry,” He says stupidly and mindlessly gravitates towards the laundry hanging in the balcony, Tsumugi following close behind. Itaru feels his gravity, drawing him back but he pushes forward. 

He’s so scared of having good things because he keeps ruining them for himself and Tsumugi is too perfect to ruin like that. 

The wind whips the clothes at them like large cloth hands, slapping their bodies vengefully as the storm rolls in, the cymbal of thunder signalling its arrival. The sky cracks open and the first fat drops slosh against the earth, cold pellets dissolving the thick summer heat like hot tea on sugar cubes. The rain unspools in a thick curtain of water that swings right onto the balcony, tasting of lightning and feeling like winter. 

They wrench the clothes off the line and toss them into the dry living room as the floor begins to grow slippery with water, the storm soaking through their jackets and hair. 

Itaru realises that Tsumugi is smiling through it all and blushes when they meet eyes. “Sorry,” Tsumugi says. “It’s just that - summer rain tastes sweeter than any other kind of rain.” 

“What?” 

Without explaining, Tsumugi tugs him by the hand to the railing, closes his eyes, turns up his head and opens his mouth. Itaru watches the rain kiss his face and mouth, sending up rivulets of water that look like bits of crushed diamond, which catch the spark of lightning as it flashes and descend to the floor. The rain crashes into them like a wall, wind carrying it further into the living room as they stand together, getting increasingly drenched and cold by the minute.

Despite that, a furnace burns in Itaru’s chest as he watches Tsumugi.

“Rain in summer,” Tsumugi says, eyes still closed against the rain, “tastes better because it comes during the hottest and driest season, like a mercy. Mercy tastes sweet.” He turns to Itaru finally, his eyelashes petalled and damp, lips shining with fresh water. “My grandmother says it’s Nature’s kindness to us.” 

He turns back out onto the wet street, eyes fluttering close. “You should try it. Promise I won’t laugh. It’s just us, anyways.” It’s just us . Itaru likes the ‘us’ part of the sentence too much - maybe because it’s the only thing that he’s sure he will remember from this conversation. 

“Yeah, it’s us.”

He moves closer to Tsumugi without realising it, their breaths conflating when Tsumugi turns, an entire universe crunching in the space between them with both their infinities - their shares of the universe that came as their birthright. Itaru senses this blackhole-intense gravity in between them, threatening to swallow them in and crush their world as they know it, but he also feels the pull of this universe in uncharted territory. There is fear, but greater than that is this newfound courage that Itaru finds in Tsumugi’s eyes. 

He doesn’t dare to breathe, afraid that even the slightest brush of air could push them light-years apart. 

“Is this…” He starts, words stuck in his throat because he’s scared and he’s not good with saying exactly what he’s feeling. And he’s feeling so much right now. There is no video game jargon for this kind of thing. “Is it okay if - “ He reaches up, fingertips finding Tsumugi’s cheek for the briefest moment, the rest of his question written in his touch. 

Frustration builds. He’s so clumsy like this with words in perpetual need of refinement and correction. Where Tsumugi’s brilliance begins, Itaru’s eloquence fails him. Because Tsumugi is so real - the realest even in the concrete jungles of this world, and painfully but endearingly bright.

“What I mean to say is - Is it okay if I…?” He trails off, reaching out to take Tsumugi’s hands in his, their fingers fitting together between one another effortlessly. He sees the answer on Tsumugi’s face, as Tsumugi waits for him to gather his words - always so patient, always so accommodating and more than Itaru deserves.

“Is this okay with you? You wouldn’t mind if…” 

Tsumugi steps closer, pressing his nose against Itaru’s reassuringly. Their worlds skim, electric fields skidding against each other and sending up a shower of sparks. 

“It’s okay,” Tsumugi whispers into their space of shared breath. “I’m okay with this if you’re okay with it.” 

“Can I kiss you?” Itaru blurts the words out before they scuttle away from him again. His orbit twists right into Tsumugi’s, and the explosion of his world behind him propels him forward. 

“Yes.” Tsumugi manages a one-word reply, before their lips touch.

The shape of their mouths fit perfectly against each other and Itaru feels the sweetness of tea, storm and divinity fill his throat from Tsumugi’s. 

Summer rain does taste incredibly sweet.

Itaru isn’t completely unguarded now, but at least Tsumugi can feel parts of him unfurling, like doors open to at least toss out the stale and stuffy air of everything he keeps under tight locks and ungiving chains. It’s not that Tsumugi has him figured out now, but like eyes adjusting to the darkness he can feel his way around if he has to - find his hand warm and open for him sometimes when he reaches out, leading him through the mess at least. 

Tripping here, stubbing a toe there because vulnerability hurts a little but it’s okay. They’re both clumsy, but they take the falls together - and for each other if they have to. 

Tsumugi brews tea, as is his midnight routine and trudges to Itaru room, holding the tray for two, his book tucked under an arm. Itaru isn’t a big heart-to-heart person, so Tsumugi finds it best to keep him company because he’s patient and a master at waiting for his boyfriend to find the right words. 

This shared space where they have the liberty to be as vulnerable or as guarded as they like without shame or fear of judgement is the most intimate depth in their relationship. Loving someone doesn’t mean being vulnerable with them all the time - it means giving them the choice and not hating them for the decision they make. 

Whether or not it’s an evening that Itaru trusts him, Tsumugi loves him. Loves him like the earth loves rain, and cherry blossoms that love to bloom bright and beautiful just before death. 

Itaru opens the door for him and leans over the tray to kiss him a good evening. He’s in crumpled pyjamas, faintly smelling of sweat and lingering bits of cologne, with the telltale taste of junk food in his mouth. 

“Tea,” Tsumugi says, holding up the tray. “If you’re planning to stay up late. Again.” He steps into the room when Itaru takes a cup and opens the door wider for him in response. 

“Oh, god,” Chikage groans from his bed where he’s reading a book. “It’s the gay people.” But he calmly flips the page, making no motion to leave. 

“Lay off,” Itaru responds good-naturedly, sitting down in front of his computer with his tea. 

“Your pheromones are overwhelming,” Chikage says. 

“How can you smell our pheromones? That’s really messed up.” 

Tsumugi stretches himself across Itaru’s bed as Itaru turns back to his screen without another word, indicating that this is going to be another one of those silent evenings between them, but Tsumugi doesn’t care.

He watches the years fall off from Itaru’s face to give way to a Dorian Gray beauty, restoring this characteristic candor of youth and childlike excitement that fills the room with a brilliant promise of immortality - of childhoods lived even at an age where the world expects you to be anything but full of wonder, truth, and softness. Itaru’s real world - of his truth, life, victories, strengths and spectacular faults - is packed into these four walls and the ceiling seems close to bursting with the timeless vitality of it all. 

Tsumugi smiles. 

Tea tastes sweeter when he drinks it with Itaru.