Chapter Text
The first time Riku sees Yushi, Yushi goes, “Um,” and then, “Um,” again, and then he stares at Riku’s face so unusually long Riku eventually has to ask, “Sorry, are you Sion’s roommate?”
The mention of Sion has Yushi’s neutral— awed?— expression slipping into something displeased, and then he goes to what’s presumably the door to his bedroom and leaves Riku standing there, waiting in confusion at the corridor until Sion appears and drags him across campus for his tour.
The second time Riku sees Yushi, Riku’s struggling to work the library copier, and Yushi pops out of nowhere to hit it with his fist. Bang-bang! The copier spits out the pages Riku’s going to be using for his essay. Grateful, Riku offers a thank you, that Yushi doesn’t catch because he’s already fleeing by the time Riku looks up from the machine.
The third time Riku sees Yushi, Yushi’s circling where Riku’s waiting for Sion’s class to finish in the quad, and takes the entirety of the Haikyuu episode Riku’s been watching before he breaks away from his loop and wordlessly presents Riku with a sign-up sheet.
He’s wearing the tshirt every freshman gets after orientation— Go Foxes! On the left side of his chest is a button pin— ROOKIE: TOKUNO YUSHI— held in place above the electric blue print of the university mascot. The sign-up sheet is for the soccer circle. Riku would say no— he has zero interest in soccer— but Yushi looks so nervous, and Riku feels a little bad, so he takes the piece of paper and politely inquires.
Yushi answers with a five-second delay for every question; yes, Yushi’s on the soccer team; no, membership doesn’t guarantee a spot on the team; yes, Sion’s in the circle; no, he’s not on the soccer team.
“He’s alright,” Yushi says (that Riku laughs at) and then the tips of his ears turn a shade so scarlet Riku semi-expects him to sprint into the distance again.
“I don’t know how to play at all though,” Riku replies. “Is that okay?”
“Do you play other sports?”
“Uh. Volleyball.”
“I think they’re recruiting today, too,” Yushi mumbles. “I could take you to them if you want.”
What Riku wants is to watch the next episode of Haikyuu— the new season’s just been released in full— and also he promised Sion they’d have lunch together— he’s probably on his way right this second— but he also kind of wants to do this, get to know this Escape Route of a boy who keeps ghosting Riku every time they meet like Riku’s done him wrong somehow. (And Riku’s certain he hasn’t done him wrong. He’s still friends with all of his exes.)
So Riku sends Sion a text, and follows Yushi to the volleyball circle. Yushi’s silent the entire walk there, but he also keeps glancing at Riku sneakily when he thinks Riku’s not looking that Riku can’t even be mad he doesn’t respond to Riku’s further questions and just keeps distractedly saying, “...Huh?” Besides when they do find someone from the circle, Yushi negotiates Riku’s way into being accepted even though memberships have been closed a month prior. So clearly, despite being quiet, Yushi gets things done. Riku really, really likes that.
Yushi treats him to lunch after it— doesn’t actually ask, just declares abruptly that he wants ramen. They have a quiet meal in a small shop near campus with two old ladies that know Yushi by name, and Riku spends most of his time there observing Yushi without making it obvious he’s observing him. Yushi, on the other hand, seems to prefer staring at him in the open, only averting his gaze when Riku senses it enough to make him look up from his own tray.
The whole thing’s kind of bizarre when Riku thinks about it. He’d only known Yushi by his association to Sion, didn’t really have any lasting initial impression on him, and absolutely did not understand what sort of mind games Yushi was trying to play with him that lunch. The most concrete read Riku had left with at that point was that this boy was shy, strangely reliable, and seemed to like showing up in places Riku happened to be in.
That’s where they start though. A succession of odd circumstances that don’t make any sense— and in hindsight, had been a bit alarming— like why was Yushi just everywhere?— snowballing into the relationship they have now.
Except Yushi disagrees that this is where they start— and has since made it his mission to prove Riku’s got faulty memory because he doesn’t love him enough.
Apparently, their first time talking hadn’t even been in Yushi and Sion’s shared apartment.
Apparently, Yushi had loved Riku way earlier than that.
The orbit of Riku’s problems forms Saturday night. There’s a full moon out and the weather is perfect. The lodge is alive and in motion; recruits have been sent to bed, only half of the teams have given up and are littered across the floor.
It’s meant to be a celebratory trip for both the soccer team and the volleyball team, who’ve been forced into collaboration for the university festival. After two months of planning, building props from scratch, ordering and painting and shearing costumes and then managing subsequent inter-team disputes over who has to do boring stuff like manage lights and who actually gets to have fun and scare visitors— they’ve finally finished everything they needed for the haunted house. Or the haunted floors, to be more accurate, the Department of Integrated Sciences being kind enough to allow them to use two levels of the building.
Since the volleyball team had won the league in the middle of preparations, and the soccer team a few days after them, Riku had barged into Yushi’s room last week to tell him about his brilliant idea: a trip to a private cabin not too far from the city so they could all drink and relax. Yushi had shot it down with speed— said he didn’t trust anyone in the soccer team to behave, and several fights have broken out between the players that Yushi believed didn’t fall anywhere under the categories of relaxing— but Riku had whined to him, “But Yuu-chan,” exactly once, and Yushi—
Yushi would never admit it but he’s the easiest person ever. He always calls Riku that— especially when he catches Riku watching romcoms, teases that Riku’s ideal date is probably one with ballad OSTs playing in the background and also sakura petals are mysteriously falling everywhere (which, honestly, doesn’t sound too bad!)— assertions that are to be fair not without reason, Riku is not afraid to admit his heart does flutter at a lot of things, so much so that it may be some kind of health problem— but Yushi is worse. A strong gust of wind would make him giggle. One time, Riku just had to look at him.
“Number 4!” Seunghan declares, the chosen King. The remaining players still conscious enough to play the game, cheer. Seunghan shushes the living room. “Number 4, show yourself!”
Riku groans, drunk and sleepy, and straightens up from where he’s been lying on Yushi’s lap. The chorus turns to him. It doesn’t take a second for them to start hooting and hollering again.
“I command you… to drink a bottle of hot sauce.”
Riku protests, doomed, “This was premeditated!” recalling how they’d told him they wanted to go on a grocery run in the service area only to end up not cooking anything— Riku thought they just got hammered too fast. Evidently he’s been swindled.
“What if— Your Majesty changed the command,” Yushi asks before Riku could get up to procure the hot sauce. “In exchange for me following two?”
“Ooooh.”
Seunghan hums while everyone drums their hands against random surfaces. “Does anyone have a command for Riku? I’ve already thought of one for Yushi.” Yushi folds over, tipsy and miserable. “It can be a question!”
Riku pleads with his eyes and aims them at his own teammates first. And then one of the bedroom doors swings open and out peeks Ryo and Sakuya, who Riku and Yushi have explicitly ordered to go to bed as a rule before they allowed everyone to drink. Riku feels the beginnings of a migraine. Sakuya’s grinning too nefarious for his tastes.
“We have a question,” Sakuya says.
Yushi sits up at the sound of Sakuya’s voice, glaring.
“It’s easy!” Ryo reassures, with Sakuya nodding enthusiastically beside him. “How did Riku-senpai and Yushi-senpai meet?”
Riku blinks, because he’d expected a more challenging question— and so did the rest of the teams, who immediately contest and attempt to dismiss it— but Ryo and Sakuya look extremely like they’re up to something, so Riku reverts slowly back to being nervous.
(Ryo had come to him he thinks yesterday, asking something in a similar line of inquiry. How did you and Yushi-senpai start dating?)
The room seems to have been convinced, fading into an intrigued quiet through the sheer force of Ryo and Sakuya’s palpable insolent energy.
“Well, we—” Riku starts, but he kind of gets stage-fright because not only is everyone watching him, Yushi is next to him scrutinizing. He may look like he’s just sitting quietly but Riku can read his mind, okay? He can read all of Yushi’s little tells. And now Riku’s not only nervous he’s also a little scared.
Needless to say, after suffering through a bottle of hot sauce and the inevitable end of the game, Yushi is pouting and mad at him.
“But we did meet at the apartment,” Riku argues, trailing after Yushi to their room. He’s been arguing for like half an hour now. And he stands on his version of their love story. They met at the apartment, then again at the library, then again at the quad. If he wants, Riku can even tell Yushi how he styled his hair all three days. “Didn’t we? No, I’m sure we did. Didn’t we?”
“You really forgot how we met…” Yushi grumbles, sulking.
Riku quite literally didn’t. “Yuu-chan, I can seriously write papers on it. Like I remember everything—”
“How could you forget how we met?” Yushi cuts in, Riku’s reasonable defense apparently zooming past both ears. He rummages through his bag for his pajamas but he’s so visibly upset Riku can’t even distantly appreciate he’s getting naked. “It’s how we met.”
“Yushi.” Riku had very degenerate plans for tonight. Very degenerate. Now all shot to hell! “Okay. Can you tell me if I’m just misremembering or am I missing something completely?”
Yushi swivels around with just his pajama top on. He looks glorious. “When I opened that door, what were you thinking? When you saw me?”
This is a trap. “That Yuu-chan looked pretty.”
Yushi stares blankly at him.
“I don’t know,” Riku admits, conceding. “I thought, this must be Yushi. Sion had already mentioned you.”
Ironically, honesty just makes Yushi look more devastated. He wordlessly turns again and pulls his pajama pants on. Riku sighs, feeling terrible, sitting on the foot of the bed and waiting for Yushi to finish changing.
When Yushi simply passes by him and slips straight under the blankets, Riku finally accepts his fate and changes into his own sleep clothes.
He feels a tad off-kilter; not to brag but he and Yushi have like, the perfect relationship. Like actually. They don’t really fight. So he’s not exactly sure what to do. Usually with stray arguments they can resolve it with virtually no effort, but what is there to resolve here? Riku remembers vividly when he first saw Yushi. Remembers how the corridor looked on his way there, beige and lifeless. The melodic ring of the bell, the click of the unlocked door. Yushi appearing effectively intimidating up until he began staring at him and stuttered out, “Um.” Is that not what happened? Did something else happen before that?
Now Riku hopes he’s really just getting details wrong, no matter how confident he is. The latter would definitely sting Yushi somewhere more tender.
“I’ll remember it,” Riku says, joining Yushi in bed. “I swear.”
Yushi faces him, contemplative.
“I will!” Riku promises, sidling up to him. “When have I ever let you down?”
Yushi’s mum for a second before he replies, almost begrudgingly, “That’s true…” then he whines, relaxing against Riku, his biggest giveaway that he’s at least a small degree mollified, “But how could you forget it in the first place… And you really had to include in your story that you were looking for Sion!”
Riku understands it would be very rude to laugh. In theory.
“Riku!” Yushi whines harder, but Riku sees him cracking into a tiny smile too, no matter how hard he tries to suppress it. “Even when he’s graduated, you’re both still pissing me the f—”
“Ah!” Riku scolds, wrapping his arms around Yushi. “Language.”
“That was like a one-two knockout,” Yushi grumbles. “You’ve truly outdone yourself tonight. This is worse than when you kept saying our anniversary picture ruined your feed and wondered why I never tagged you in my posts again.”
In Riku’s defense, he’d spent weeks curating his Kuromi-themed aesthetic— even learned how to add stickers and color grade for a more comprehensive look (which he’d never done before, he kind of just used to upload whatever) and then Yushi posted their honestly quite wholesome Fukui visit where Yushi met Riku’s sisters and his mom and Riku’s nine tile composition suddenly turned into a sliding puzzle. Of course Riku had said, “Oh my god, my grid’s ruined,” because that was legitimately what happened. And half of his posts had Yushi in them anyway! Whereas Yushi’s was just a zoomed in shot of Riku’s side profile. Could barely even spot the beach, which was what Yushi claimed he was looking most forward to seeing.
“You know, I do miss—”
“No, I’ll never tag you,” Yushi interrupts, firm. But still smiles when Riku makes a sad noise of defeat and leans in to give Riku a soft kiss.
He does it over and over, a bad habit they share— one peck almost always exclusively leads to making out which is why both teams decided it would be easier for everyone if they just stuck them in the same room for this trip— but unfortunately Riku does love Yushi so much, so so much, so now he can’t escalate because unintentionally making Yushi upset is still lingering in his mind’s backburners.
Is he really missing something? Did he forget an entire event? But Riku forgetting meeting Yushi— Riku forgetting anything in general about his Yuu-chan— that doesn’t even sound like a real sentence.
Yushi pauses, then guides Riku’s head to his chest, idly petting him. He asks after a minute, genuinely curious, all traces of hurt seemingly gone, “...Wouldn’t it be difficult to remember something you didn’t think was important?”
“Who cares?” Riku is racking his brain as they speak. If the day had Yushi, he’s positive he’ll be able to retrieve it. Like with most any lost memory, he just needs a bit of time. “I’ll still do it.”