Archive of Our Own ^beta

[March 4th]

“Have you ever heard of Ouroboros?” 

When Sakura’s voice finally rings through the office after nearly an hour of silence, it does not almost startle Mitsuba Sousuke out of his desk chair. He does not make a desperate grab for his laptop, and he does not almost smash his knee hard against the edge of the table, either. Sakura watches him flail with that calm, measured stare of theirs; then goes to repeat the question.

“I heard you the first time,” waving a dismissive hand, Mitsuba checks his leg for any lasting signs of damage. Feeling for bruises he can use as leverage for another day of free coffee. “Is this the part where I’m forced to listen while you tell me useless facts I’ll have forgotten by tomorrow?”

Sakura’s expression tips from neutral to unimpressed - a subtle quirk of the lips and furrow of the eyebrows that most people would miss. 

“It’s a motif,” the book they collect from the table displays a black and white print of a serpent swallowing its own tail; something cyclical and so downright bizarre that it’s almost enough to make Mitsuba shudder. Sakura leaves the book open on the desk, the snake sitting there like a warning or an omen.

“It represents eternity,” they continue. “the process of destruction and creation. The snake exists in a cycle of beginnings and endings which show no clear start or finish or midpoint- it’s not surprising that it’s a common theme in many mythologies.”

Every ending births a new beginning- they say quietly, as the lights overhead flicker. Heavy with meaning, a stone in Mitsuba’s chest.

Sometimes, he seriously thinks that Sakura might not be human; from the dark jewel-like glint of their eyes to the white noise at the back of their voice. On the page beneath their fingertips, the snake devours itself and is reborn from the same instance, scales flashing monochrome beneath the LEDs.

“It looks creepy,” Mitsuba scoffs. He should be on the train home by now, not hanging around the publishing company office- waiting for photos to download and listening to Sakura’s weird attempt at a trivia show.

“It was often used in Victorian mourning jewelry,” unfazed by Mitsuba’s complaints like usual, a smile tugs at the edges of Sakura’s voice. “So you might be right.” 

Mitsuba has never been more glad to hear the chime of his laptop, signalling that his downloads are finished. Throwing his scarf around his shoulders, his laptop into its bag, his half-empty coffee cup into the bin, he wishes Sakura a hurried goodnight and jogs out of the office before he can be confronted with any more nightmare fuel.

(The horror movie Natsuhiko conned him into watching the week before has nothing on Sakura’s velvet-touch voice, weaving ghost stories through the empty office after hours.)

Though Spring should have arrived by now, it’s still bitterly cold for the time of year- not even the scarf pulled up to Mitsuba’s nose and the thick wool of his coat is enough to fight off the chill. The morning forecast has predicted snow by the end of the month, and Mitsuba already dreads the prospect of digging himself free from his tiny sidestreet apartment- as pretty as the sight of snowflakes over the rooftops would be.

There are things about living alone which nobody ever warned Mitsuba about, after all. Snowed-in doors and trip switches and dodgy wifi. The fact that he can’t spend all of his money on restaurant food and takeaway coffee, because then he won’t have enough to pay the electricity bill. If he’d known that Shibuya city’s glass-sided sprawl would be so unforgiving, then he would have stayed right at home.

Not that home didn’t have it’s own share of bad experiences. (Not that his mom would have let him live it down if he turned down the scholarship that fell into his inbox like a blessing, or the job that came afterwards.)

Shibuya is home now. Mitsuba knows the Harajuku district like the back of his hand, could take the train route blindfolded, and could probably navigate by coffee shops alone if given the chance. He’s grown up a bit- as much as Mitsuba Yukie would argue otherwise- and through all the bitter complaints and bad weather, this is not a beginning he will let come to a close.

Time moves on; a certainty he must learn to live with.

The restaurant he arrives at is a small, cosy place- easy to miss and even easier to overlook- crisscrossed with overhead wires and the periodic rush of the train lines it’s sandwiched between. The Halfway Station; reads the sign beside the door, penned down in some magic ink that changes font every time Mitsuba sees it. Tacky, in a way that’s somehow endearing. (Familiarity of the most dangerous kind.)

Minamoto Kou almost smacks his head against an extractor fan when Mitsuba walks in and deposits his bag onto the ground, hopping onto a mismatched bar stool in a way he hopes indicates his impatience. “Your glasses are on an angle,” Mitsuba points out as an afterthought, jabbing a finger towards the skewed red frames.

“Good evening to you too!” Kou laughs, completely and infuriatingly unshaken. He makes no attempt to fix his glasses, and Mitsuba has half a mind to do it for him.

Kou- that’s the worst thing about the Halfway Station. With his bright grin, bright eyes, bright patterned shirts that only seem to get more terrible by the day. He’s a nightmare at worst and a disaster at best- and Mitsuba hates the way he breezes through all of his walls like a battering ram is what he was born to be.

“Let me guess,” Kou narrows his eyes, rocks back on his heels, forever in motion. “Chicken ramen with an extra egg- hold back on the chili flakes because spicy stuff makes your eyes water.” Like always, like clockwork, he doesn’t wait for a response- ducking back into the kitchen with the confidence of someone who has never guessed wrong in his life.

If Minamoto Kou is the worst part of the Halfway Station; then the blank space where the menu should be is the best.

It’s a gift- in the same way that Mitsuba can’t take a blurry photo if he tries, the way that Sakura will never need a bookmark so long as they’ve seen a page number once. Though not the magic he was born with, and perhaps not the magic he will die with, Kou sees happiness and food as one in the same: and so he can guess. What people need, what flavours will make them grin, what will send them home with warmth in their chest. There’s no need for a menu when your heart is three times too large for your own ribcage, and it can see exactly what meal will send someone out of the door smiling.

The twenty percent discount Kou knocks off his bill- that’s a bonus too.

Mitsuba flicks through the photos on his laptop screen as he waits for his food; a preemptive springtime fashion shoot down by the river, ready for the April edition of the magazine. He swears his hands had almost frozen clean off during the session, cloudless skies making for one of the coldest March days on record. Perfect for a photoshoot, apparently. Mitsuba shudders at the memory, something which Kou raises an eyebrow at when he chooses the worst time to stick his head from the kitchen and greet another customer. 

A train rattles by outside, momentary illumination spilling in through the windows and the clatter of wheels fading into background noise after a few seconds of constant to-and-fro. It’s peaceful in a way that Mitsuba never thought the city could be, wedged between the train lines as the smell of chicken broth drifts out of the kitchen. 

Kou joins him half way through his meal, falling into one of the stools with a sigh and the same satisfied grin he always wears at the end of a long day. He’s got something stuck between his teeth, Mitsuba notices, and he quickly hides a laugh behind his bowl. Some things never change, constant as gravity itself.

Another train passes. “You never used to like beansprouts in highschool,” Kou muses, the lines of his face soft in the dim lighting. Mitsuba pauses, mid-mouthful.

Something about the statement makes him feel almost too defensive, and he swallows so hard that the chicken broth scalds his throat on the way down. “Maybe I’ve changed over time.” He snaps harsher than intended, and, though Kou did as he promised and lightened up on the chilli flakes, he can still feel his eyes watering uncomfortably at the corners.

There’s a brief moment of conflict behind the frames of Kou’s glasses- like he’s torn between fighting back and admitting defeat- but the small smile he settles on is altogether more unexpected.

“Yeah, I think we both have.” Though Kou’s reply is near drowned out by the rush of the train wheels, Mitsuba still hears him loud and clear.

(This Minamoto Kou- who is softer and older and brighter- is a battle which Mitsuba doesn’t know how to fight.)

-

I dreamed about your stupid snake thing last night- Mitsuba texts Sakura from the front carriage of the 8am train, clinging to the overhead beam for dear life. Take responsibility.

Kekule supposedly discovered the chemical structure of benzene after dreaming about ouroboros- Sakura replies ten minutes later. So maybe you’re onto something. Mitsuba can hear their quiet, teasing grin haunting the words on his phone screen.

He doesn’t know what else he expected, really.

[Before]

When Mitsuba first meets Kou, he’s thirteen and he hates him. 

A sense of genuine, unadulterated disgust- the plotting Minamoto Kou’s untimely demise in the margins of his schoolbook kind of hatred. (He finds the books in a drawer years down the line, and feels a whole world of jealousy towards middle-school-Sousuke’s functioning sense of self-preservation.)

They sit neatly in line for their entire first term; Kou’s beaten up indoor shoes toeing the legs of Mitsuba’s chair as he fidgets his way through every maths class and every roll-call. Mitsuba never says a word for the risk of being labelled as loud and moody and intolerable all over again. Fresh starts are not something you come across every day. No matter how much he wants to toss a pencil at the space between Kou’s eyebrows- just to see how far it would bounce off that empty skull of his- he keeps his cool. Let it be known that Mitsuba Sousuke has the patience of a goddamn saint. 

Yokoo and Satou are Kou’s first victims- the golden-retriever boy with the loud voice and the short boy who thinks nobody sees him snacking on pocky beneath his desk. Kou fits right in with them, and Mitsuba watches from a distance as Satou puts a squirming Kou in a headlock over a pack of candy, his shrieks of laughter filling the entire classroom. The cherry blossoms are full and pink and bright beyond the window- and Mitsuba feels distinctly like a side character in a world he should be the protagonist of.

He’s too cute to be anything otherwise.

Then Kou starts inviting him over to his desk for lunch, and that’s when things start going downhill. He’s got a toothy grin that’s far too warm under the fluorescent lights, and Mitsuba feels like he’s wilting under it every time Kou taps him on the shoulder and asks him to hang out.

The grin barely falters even when Mitsuba turns him down with the closest thing to a passive smile he can muster, because Minamoto Kou is the most stubborn person Mitsuba has had the misfortune of meeting, and it takes every last shred of his willpower not to kick him clean out of his chair. 

At the end of spring, Kou slams his bento box down on Mitsuba’s desk, and makes himself at home.

At the beginning of summer, Mitsuba starts eating on the roof. The sun is too warm and the gulls keep trying to pick at his fried chicken, but at least none of them have a tacky earring and a gap-tooth grin.

Two days later, Kou starts eating on the roof, too.

Five days later, Mitsuba calls Kou a tacky-earring bastard, and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a smile quite so radiant before. The laugh that bubbles from Kou’s chest feels like a sledgehammer to his ribcage and Mitsuba wants nothing more than to lock himself in the bathroom and check for sunburn on the bridge of his nose. Kou laughs and laughs and laughs and Mitsuba crushes down the urge to hit him with his schoolbag just to make him be quiet .

“I knew it,” Kou catches his breath, just long enough to speak. “I knew you weren’t really that nice.”

Mitsuba stares, equal parts bemused and horrified.

(When Kou asks to eat lunch with him again, Mitsuba tells him to get lost then pulls up a chair anyway.)

-

Kou calls Mitsuba loud, annoying and intolerable- then buys him peach juice from the school vending machine and carries him to the nurse’s office when he sprains his ankle after falling off the back of Yokoo’s bike. He laughs like there’s a thunderstorm in his lungs, always packs the best lunches, always forgets his homework and falls asleep in class. He thinks traffic safety omamori earrings are a good look, no matter how many times Mitsuba tells him he’s going to rip it clean out if he sees it one more time.

He never walks home with them, no matter how much Yokoo pleads and Satou bribes and Mitsuba insists that it doesn’t bother him either way. 

Satou’s nose scrunches up in the way it always does when he’s pretending not to worry as they leave Kou by the school gate. “Maybe he just lives in the opposite direction.” 

“Maybe his family is on the run from the government and he thinks we’ll sell them out,” Yokoo adds.

“Maybe I don’t care at all,” Mitsuba cuts them off with finality. 

As sure as the train will always pull into the station five minutes late, as sure as it will always rain on school sports day- Mitsuba is fifteen and he still hates Minamoto Kou with every nerve in his body. That’s just how the world works.

( Like and dislike have always been just three letters apart, after all.)

[February 26th]

It’s crunch week at the publishing company; just days until the March issue hits the store, spring fashion season descending with a vengeance from overhead. Mismatched footwear is in this season according to Natsuhiko- stood in the foyer wearing a different brand of shoe on each foot. (Mitsuba knows an excuse for getting dressed with his eyes closed when he sees one.)

He’s spent the whole day finalising his last few photos for submission later that evening- staring at his screen to the point that his eyes sting and his hands have started to go numb. Mitsuba would put in a complaint if he wasn’t the last person left in the office, stuck with only the hum of the broken vending machine for company. 

Besides, the fact that he’s starving is a more pressing issue.

Following the train tracks to the restaurant by the crossing still goes against everything he’s ever stood for- but Mitsuba is desperate. He likes to think that he hasn’t quite sunk to the level of eating fast food on the train home, but at the same time he can’t afford to blow all of his cash on the flashier restaurants that Shibuya has to offer. The Halfway Station is simply the lesser of the two evils. Mitsuba doesn’t find the changing font on the sign endearing, and he doesn’t feel like the air has been knocked out of his chest when he’s reminded that Kou isn’t the same gangly kid with thunderstruck hair any more.

This time, when Mitsuba steps through the doorway, there’s already two customers sitting at the bar.

It takes him all of three seconds to recognise Yokoo’s golden-retriever grin from across the room- eyes just as bright and full of terrible ideas as they’ve always been. Satou’s laugh of disbelief comes next; his hair a little longer though his bangs still look as if he never gave up his habit of cutting them himself in the bathroom mirror. Mitsuba would recognise them anywhere, and his heart does something nauseatingly hopeful inside of his chest.

“Hey!” Yokoo waves him over without a moment of hesitation. “Sousuke! That’s Sousuke, right? What are you doing here?”

“Like you could ever forget about me,” Mitsuba hops onto the stool beside the pair of them, finding Yokoo’s grin just as contagious as ever. “And why do you want to know what I’m doing, huh? Trying to stalk me?”

“Oh, I did not miss you at all, ” The shove which Satou aims past Yokoo at Mitsuba’s shoulder feels like welcome back , and Mitsuba is glad for the chair holding him up. (he thinks he might have been swept to his knees by some embarrassing wave of happiness , otherwise. He crushes it down firmly, because that just wouldn’t do.)

Falling back into conversation with Yokoo and Satou comes as naturally as breathing- like the five year gap that sits between them means nothing at all. Kou works away in the kitchen as they catch up, frying something that smells so criminally delicious it makes Mitsuba’s mouth water embarrassingly. With food and lighthearted conversation filling the restaurant, it almost feels like highschool again: the early days, where they’d hang out in Satou’s kitchen at the weekend and try to stop Yokoo from getting cake batter all over the neatly painted walls.

“I’m working as a pastry chef at a bakery in Meguro City,” Satou explains when Mitsuba pretends he’s not curious. “My dad has just about accepted my choice to drop out of med school. My mom is-” he laughs, lighthearted in a way Mitsuba knows he never could have managed back in highschool. “She’s a work in progress.”

“Satou sends pastries over for the dessert menu, sometimes,” Kou’s shock of blonde hair pops up from the kitchen then, a smear of sauce on his chin. 

“Eyes on the gas fire, lame earring boy,” comfortable with the the chatter, the warmth, the way Kou’s dumb toothy grin feels like highschool again, Mitsuba doesn’t have the time to snap his mouth shut before the old insult slips out. It feels wrong to push and shove in the way used to- like he’s pretending that things are the way they were. It’s still hard to ignore, five years making themselves into a monster with teeth taking up half of the damn restaurant.

There’s silence for a beat too long. And then, infuriating and stupid and absolutely the worst, Kou beams.

“I knew you were acting too nice,” he laughs, then has the decency to retreat into the kitchen before Mitsuba can feel any more like the past has caught up with him and robbed him blind. 

“Sousuke couldn’t act nice if he tried,” Yokoo smiles to himself. He totally deserves the kick which Mitsuba aims at his shin, hard.

When Kou places a bowl of steaming noodles in front of him, Mitsuba feels as if he’s been handed nostalgia on a plate- the cheap mismatch of a stir fry that Kou used to ransack their kitchens for every time he stayed over. No pepper for Yokoo, extra noodles for Satou, half the chili sauce for Mitsuba. It feels like a hollow opening in Mitsuba’s chest when he realises that, even without his magic, Kou had probably remembered their preferences off by heart.

They eat together around the bar, Kou tidying things away in the kitchen before plating some food for himself. Extra chilli flakes, no mushrooms, exactly the way he likes it.

“It’s nice.” Kou says once they’re all finished and Yokoo openly debates with himself about getting seconds. Kou doesn’t elaborate further, but still. Mitsuba gets it.

Because they’ve all grown up in their own ways. It’s strange seeing a Satou who no longer treats being a good son like it’s a full-time job. A Yokoo who has finally decided what he wants to dedicate his life to. A Kou who has eyes that are bright for only the correct reasons. But they still react the same when Mitsuba accuses Kou of being a pervert and steals bits of carrot off Satou’s plate, because they haven’t grown up entirely. 

“I can’t believe I’m agreeing with you on something,” a train passes by outside, and Mitsuba looks at Kou in a way that feels like muscle memory- eyebrows raised, teeth on display. “But it is nice.”

Yokoo nods in agreement, his hair brassy in the dim light. “It’s good being able to catch up and eat something other than sailing club cafeteria food for once.”

“Don’t lie,” Kou elbows him good-naturedly. “I know you only come here for the discount I always knock off your bill.”

“Hey,” forcing as much indignance into his voice as he can manage, Mitsuba spins on his stool to glare at Kou. “How come they get discounts and I don’t?”

Blinking wide and confused, Kou looks almost as if he’s forgotten how to put words in order. 

“You’re going to keep coming back, then?” He manages to string together eventually, and Mitsuba is reminded jarringly that more things have changed than not. They aren’t the same kids, joined at the hip and trying to push each other into the lake in the park while Satou yells at them and pretends he’s not filming the whole thing.

“Wow, you really are desperate to see me,” Mitsuba rests his head against his arms. He hopes that, if nothing else, Kou can still read him like his entire heart stands on display. 

(From the way Kou’s eyes go all bright and glassy in the lowlight, Mitsuba thinks he might be in luck.)

-

It’s only on the train back home, as the four-way crossing and the lights of the Halfway Station disappear into the distance, that Mitsuba wonders just how many things he’s missed.

[Before]

The beach is Satou’s idea.

He’s the only one of them organised enough to handle the logistics of a long train journey to the coast, laying out a strict itinerary which Kou ruins at step one by showing up to the station fifteen minutes late. His hair is flyaway as he runs up to the platform with a cooler-bag tucked under one arm, out of breath, apologising profusely.

Mitsuba would be mad at him for making them miss their train, if it wasn’t too warm to even bother thinking.

They sit in a neat row of four on a bench built for three, Mitsuba half in Yokoo’s lap in an attempt to monopolise his tiny handheld fan. Summer has swept in with a vengeance, all dazzling blue skies, dusty air and enough bugs to almost make Mitsuba wish he stayed home. ( Almost, because he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been looking forward to this ever since Satou proposed the idea on the day of their maths midterm.) 

“If I die of heatstroke, it’s Satou’s fault,” Letting his head fall back against the station wall, Mitsuba stares forlornly at the train departures board. Ten minutes left.

From where he’s sitting two seats down, Satou prods him with a stick of pocky. “If Sousuke dies of heatstroke, then that’s his own fault for wearing a long-sleeved shirt in July.”

“There’s a vending machine just outside,” Kou offers. “I can run out and grab us some drinks.”

“Don’t even think about it, Minamoto.” As tempting as the offer is, Mitsuba likes to think he knows better by now. “The moment you leave, the train will show up and we’ll miss it again.”

Kou pinches him in the leg hard, but doesn’t attempt to argue back.  

Two hours of train journey fly past as quickly as the landscape on either side, cutting through rice fields and small towns on their way to the beach. There’s plenty for highschool students on summer vacation to talk about- Yokoo complains about how he bombed his chemistry exam, Kou shows off Tiara’s messy attempt at painting his nails blue for him, Mitsuba snaps photos of the passing scenery and elbows Kou for getting his big, dumb head in the way. Satou pillows his head against Yokoo’s shoulder as he complains about the trip his family has planned to visit relatives across the country- two weeks of how are your grades and study hard. 

Mitsuba resists the urge to roll his eyes, when Yokoo pats calmly at Satou’s hair and tells him he’s always welcome to spend summer by the coast with him and his grandparents. Mitsuba Sousuke does not have time for romance. Mitsuba Sousuke has even less time for Satou’s insistence that whatever he feels for Yokoo only goes one way.

He steals the last of Satou’s pocky, just to lift the mood. (Mitsuba doesn’t even like the matcha flavour. The things he does for them.)

The weather on the other end of the line is no less sweltering, but the sea breeze makes a slight dent in the humidity, all salt-fresh and summer blue. Mitsuba steps out of the station- and immediately regrets his lack of short-sleeved shirts. At least he looks cute- striped sleeves, denim shorts with a heart on the pocket, platform shoes to ensure nobody forgets the millimeter of height he has on Kou.

“Why hasn’t anyone told me I’m cute yet,” he frowns on the walk down to the beach, kicking at the sand-speckled pavement.

“Because you’d call us perverts if we did,” Satou quips back without even looking up from his phone screen.

“You got embarrassed and hit me the last time I said your outfit was nice,” Yokoo adds on, grinning in that easygoing way of his.

“You’re always cute,” Kou shrugs- like it’s a fact. The sky is blue, sand gets everywhere, Mitsuba Sousuke is cute.

Mitsuba goes to retort that of course he’s always cute, anyone with eyes could tell- but the words get caught in his throat. Because Kou is tugging on that godawful earring in the way he always does when he’s embarrassed, and they definitely haven’t been out in the sun long enough to explain the way his ears have gone traffic light red, and-

“Ew, has the lame earring boy fallen in love with me?” Mitsuba shoves his hands in his pockets and picks up the pace, so he can’t see Satou positively smirking at him from the corner of his vision. Minamoto Kou knocking him clean out of the water was not part of Mitsuba’s itinerary. He has better things to do that don’t involve bright eyes and light freckles and flyaway hair.

Better things- like sinking his feet into the warm sand, sinking his teeth into the bento boxes Kou packed for them in advance, sinking the beach ball Yokoo brought somewhere out at sea. (They try to bury him up to his waist in the sand for that one.) 

The beach is far from empty; summer vacation and warm weather luring families out towards the seafront, but Yokoo works his own form of magic and finds them a spot that he predicts will be out of the wind for the entire day. A small, quiet alcove, tucked to the side with just enough room for their picnic blanket and Satou’s small banquet of miniature pastries.

It’s the sort of day Mitsuba could have only imagined years ago, back when he schooled away his sharp outbursts and insults out of fear, before he found people who will wave him off with a smile, and know that he’ll be following anyway. Mitsuba watches Yokoo toweling sea-spray out of his hair, Kou and Satou exchanging recipes across a paper plate of choux buns, the seagulls wheeling overhead.

He smiles to himself, hidden behind his sleeve.

If he could reach back into the past, he’d tell the boy who thought he had to change that soon he’ll find his place- whether he likes it or not. That soon he’ll find Yokoo, who can predict the weather and always falls asleep on long car journeys. That soon he’ll find Satou, who can memorise any recipe and pretends he doesn’t see the rest of them copying his homework answers. That soon he’ll find Kou, who is- well- Kou .

(The boy with a firecracker laugh, buried up to his shins in the sand, choux bun cream smeared on the tip of his nose. Who breaks through every wall Mitsuba has ever tried to build, before he’s even had the chance to lay the foundations. Who is loud and obnoxious and too much- with no sense of personal space and no sense full stop. Mitsuba hates him.)

(What he hates most: the way Kou fills his lungs with radio static every time he grins.)

Yokoo interrupts with the preposition of a convenience store run, before Mitsuba can let his thoughts spiral further into dangerous territory.

“I’ll come with,” he volunteers quickly, unearthing his shoes from beneath their pile of belongings. “Anything to get away from all this sand.”

Really, the sand is the least of Mitsuba’s problems.

Yokoo walks way too fast along the seafront for the midday heat, barely even breaking a sweat. You get used to it when you’ve been sailing for most of your life- he explains, when Mitsuba calls him a demon from hell and threatens to call an exorcist. The convenience store feels as if it’s a mile away, summer stretching the distance long and slow.

Mitsuba makes a beeline straight for the fridge aisle once he’s inside, squashing a cheek up against the glass and slumping like a rag doll against the sliding door- going boneless with relief. Yokoo grins at the sight, sunny and warm in a way that doesn’t leave moths fluttering around in Mitsuba’s stomach.

“You’re so dramatic, Sousuke,” prodding him gently as he passes, Yokoo heads for the fridge of chilled drinks at the end of the aisle.

“This is bullying,” Mitsuba sniffs back, but there’s no bite behind it. He peels himself off the glass to grab a bottle of peach tea for himself, only to find that Yokoo has already added some to his basket without needing to be asked. Little things, making Mitsuba’s heart swell embarrassingly. (He still puts the extra bottle in, just to see how long it takes for Yokoo to notice.)

“Will Kou want cola or lemonade?” Yokoo speaks up after a moment of deliberation, voice muffled by the interior of the fridge.

Mitsuba narrows his eyes. “Since when was I the resident Minamoto Kou expert?”

“I mean,” the laugh Yokoo lets out is not unkind, but not innocent either. “You do spend pretty much every waking hour together.”

“I do not ,” Mitsuba glares across the fridge aisle. Sure he always eats lunch with Kou, and they hang out together after school, and Kou sometimes waits like a ghost in the back of the dark room until the sun has set outside and Mitsuba is ready to leave- but that’s not exactly spending every waking hour together. They don’t eat breakfast together. Not always, at least.

“Cola or lemonade?” Yokoo repeats, with a smile on his face that verges close to evil .

Mitsuba starts to regret leaving the beach.

(“Lemonade,” he replies, anyway.)

It’s a small mercy that Yokoo knows when to drop a subject, so they talk about meaningless things on the way back to where Kou and Satou wait; arms full of soda and peach gummies that Mitsuba insisted Yokoo bought for him. Payback for the interrogation in the fridge aisle. They establish a sort of equivalent exchange by the time Kou spots them and calls them over- Mitsuba rambles about photography and Yokoo doesn’t understand a word, then Yokoo rambles about sailing and Mitsuba pretends he knows what any of it means.

Midday fades into mid-afternoon, and, having tired himself out chasing a golden retriever around the beach, Yokoo passes out with his head in Mitsuba’s lap, his salt-stiff curls tickling his knees as he snores quietly. Mitsuba takes so many photos.

“He’s almost cute when he’s asleep,” he muses out loud, balancing a peach gummy on Yokoo’s nose, then another. “You know, when he’s not talking.”

Satou scoffs to himself. “He even finds a way to talk in his sleep sometimes. Whatever you do, never agree to a sleepover with him.”

Mitsuba adds a third gummy to the pile. “I will actually pay you to film it next time it happens.”

“He won’t pay you,” Kou chooses the worst moment to tuck his phone back into his pocket. His nose is red with sunburn in a way that Mitsuba doesn’t find endearing at all. “Sousuke owes me a whole year's worth of lunches by now.”

Sousuke- is all Mitsuba hears. That’s new. That’s very, very new.

They’ve always been Minamoto and Mitsuba- side by side at roll-call, forever sat in the same corner of the classroom, never changing regardless of how long they’ve known each other. And now this. Now Sousuke . 

Yokoo and Satou call him Sousuke. His mom calls him Sousuke. Sousuke is his name- but Kou saying it so casually makes Mitsuba feel as if the world has been tipped off its axis.

Realisation seems to catch up to Kou slowly, bleeding into his expression piece by agonising piece. The peach gummy tower topples sideways off Yokoo’s nose.

“I-” Kou’s words come through on a ten second time delay, as he goes to offer something like an apology or worse. 

“Kou is awful- ” Mitsuba cuts him off firmly, naturally. Maybe change isn’t such a bad thing after all. “Accusing a cute boy like me of scamming him out of his money.”

Sitting across the picnic blanket, his hair speckled with sun and sand and salt crystals, Kou looks positively starstruck.

(The worst part is; Mitsuba thinks he might just like it.)

[February 20th]

Mitsuba didn’t see the scar on Kou’s cheek at first.

It’s only as another train passes by and lights spill in through the window that he spots it, the yellow glow illuminating all the new unfamiliar angles of Kou’s face. The scar is a small, pale thing- something which would be easily hidden if he let his hair down from the band holding it out of his eyes. Faint, easy to miss. 

Unfortunately, Mitsuba has started noticing things. Kou has glasses now; red frames which compensate for the out-of-focus look in his left eye- something which almost got him disowned, Kou had laughed hollowly, because eyes are everything to a Minamoto. He’s acquired even more ear piercings. He doesn’t call him Sousuke any more. (Mitsuba doesn’t know how he’d feel if that old habit resurfaced so soon.)

And, Kou has a scar on his cheek. Fixed there, just below his eye.

Mitsuba knows exactly where it came from.

(If he wasn’t about to starve to death, the sight might have put him off his dinner entirely.)

[March 11th]

Coffee runs are the best part of Mitsuba’s day- no questions asked.

He gets to step away from his laptop, breathe in the fresh spring air, and it’s hilariously easy to convince Natsuhiko to pay for him. An earnest smile, a bit of a prod at his ego, and he’s won over in no time. Sakura raises an eyebrow as Mitsuba graciously accepts the vanilla latte that Natsuhiko passes to him, all expenses covered.

(“Think of it as payment,” Mitsuba whispers to them later, while Natsuhiko fusses over the small crowd of cats that his magic has attracted. “My company is priceless, so I’m letting him off lightly.”)

Natsuhiko is the collateral damage of a friendship with Nanamine Sakura- star of the fashion magazine’s journalism department. He’s both a model who frequently collaborates with the company, and Sakura’s self-proclaimed platonic soulmate- joined at the hip since their days as the only two members of their highschool broadcasting club. As much as Mitsuba hates to admit it, Natsuhiko is not hard to get along with; laid back and carefree in a way that makes him easy to tease with very few repercussions.

His magic is a bonus too. Mitsuba has never pet so many cats in his life.

Their lunch break takes them just outside of the Harajuku district, to a small cafe they’ve been frequenting at for the previous month. Mitsuba pulls his scarf closer around his neck, and feels the sudden urge to sink through the pavement as Minamoto Kou steps out of the supermarket across the road.

It’s not the first time Mitsuba has run into him outside of the Halfway Station; for all that the city sprawl covers a huge area, Kou has an uncanny talent of showing up wherever Mitsuba goes. The bridge across the river, the back of the bus Mitsuba took to check out an art gallery last weekend, a bright smile as they passed each other on a crossing at the height of rush-hour. 

The issue this time: Mitsuba is not alone.

He ducks behind Natsuhiko, almost spilling his latte as he goes. “Hide me, quick.”

“Mitsuba, is that you?” Kou shouts across the street, loud enough to turn heads. Too late . 

Mitsuba winces visibly and gives a bemused Natsuhiko a hard shove, ushering him quickly in the opposite direction.

“Wrong person!” He calls back towards Kou and his bag of vegetables as an afterthought, earning an electric-bright laugh and a cheery wave, undeterred as usual.

“Who was that?” Natsuhiko asks, once they’re out of earshot. One of the cats is still following him, a grey tabby that weaves between his ankles as he walks. Mitsuba lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“Just a guy I used to go to school with,” Downing half of his coffee fast enough to scald his tongue, Mitsuba tries to force nonchalance into his voice. “Nobody important.”

[Before]

As Kou sleeps still and silent against his shoulder, all Mitsuba can think is that he doesn’t know how important he is.

The bus jostles them on their ride back from the hospital, Kou’s hair tickling Mitsuba’s neck as he shifts gently and tries not to disturb the gauze taped over his left eye.  He’d never let Kou know what he feels out loud- the statement would come out all wrong and lose its meaning- but he’s always been told his actions speak louder than his words do.

It’s too late to be out, dark even though summer is well on its way, bringing with it bright evenings and warm nights. Mitsuba is missing his mom’s promise of a takeaway dinner to celebrate the photography competition he made the finals of. He even let Kou slump exhaustedly against his shoulder without complaining about the weight of his big, stupid head once. He cares in different ways.

(He still feels sick to his stomach at the memory of Kou walking back into the waiting room with his eye swaddled in gauze. They said I’m lucky I didn’t lose it- he’d admitted, smiling like it was no big deal.)

Kou shifts in his sleep. Mitsuba calls him an idiot, and hopes they make it home soon.

[March 13th]

Inviting Sakura and Natsuhiko to the Halfway Station is a leap of faith that has Mitsuba jittery with nerves and caffeine in the hours before he finishes work for the day. If he deliberately stays back replying to emails that could easily wait till tomorrow, then he’d never mention it out loud.

Mitsuba’s reasoning is this; it’s his turn to pay for their monthly friendship-mandated night out. Natsuhiko eats like a black hole and his wallet still hasn’t recovered from the ramen place they visited back in December. Kou gives him a hefty discount whenever he visits, which has, embarrassingly, become more than a weekly occurrence. The pieces all fit into place.

The issue; Mitsuba feels as if he’s invoking a planetary collision. The world of before and the world of now, meeting in some uncertain midpoint.

(He’s not sure which outcome he’d prefer- for the planets to align perfect and permanent, or for his whole solar system to be rocked in the process.)

There’s only so many times that Mitsuba can refresh his inbox and reorganise his desktop, so he eventually packs up his things and heads to meet Sakura and Natsuhiko at the station, dragging his feet to show up fashionably late. 

It’s the coldest March Mitsuba can remember, but he still rolls his eyes at the sight of Natsuhiko swaddled up like a caterpillar in a floor-length coat, the sweep of gold eyeshadow under the street lamps the only indicator that he’d been at a photoshoot all afternoon. Sakura’s day off turned into a shopping trip if the bags hanging off their arms are anything to go by- and the elegant lace details of their skirt are enough to make Mitsuba feel painfully underdressed. 

“Why are we standing around outside?” As soon as they notice him approaching, Mitsuba schools his face into a frown. “Are you trying to make me freeze to death?”

“You’re the one that was late, Mitsuba,” Sakura replies gently, and Mitsuba pretends he can’t hear over the city traffic.

The restaurant is only a short walk away so Mitsuba spends the whole ten minutes trying to school his face into something neutral, planning out his excuses for when Kou inevitably says something embarrassing and makes a fool of himself. Natsuhiko voices his curiosity as they wait at the crossing for a train to pass by, petting absentmindedly at the small black cat curled up in his arms that he picked up just down the road.

Mitsuba doesn’t believe in fate, but he thanks his lucky stars that the signage to the Halfway Station has made itself presentable for once, shifting into looping calligraphy that Sakura nods in appreciation towards as they step inside. As far as first impressions go, it’s not a bad one. (Mitsuba isn’t sure why he suddenly cares so much. It’s just stupid Kou and his stupid restaurant. Nothing more, nothing less.)

“Welcome! I’ll be with you in- ” Kou shouts from his usual spot in the kitchen, his expression growing embarrassingly bright when he finally takes the time to look up. “Mitsuba! You don’t usually show up this early.”

With a roll of his eyes, Mitsuba ushers Sakura and Natsuhiko towards the bar overlooking the kitchen, pretending he doesn’t see the knowing looks they’re giving him.

“Lame earring boy, these are my coworkers. Don’t embarrass yourself in front of them,” even the motion of hopping up onto the wobbly bar stools is familiar by now. Mitsuba hates it with everything he’s got. “Sakura, Natsuhiko, this is Minamoto Kou- don’t believe anything he says about me because it’s wrong.” 

“Mitsuba Sousuke is a delight to be around,” Kou reels off immediately, earning a laugh from Natsuhiko. “He definitely is not exploiting my friendship as a way of getting cheap food.”

When Mitsuba takes a swing at Kou with one of the placemats, it’s because he deserves it.

Sakura takes in the mix-match interior of the restaurant before they climb onto a stool of their own, the round frames of their glasses flashing gold as a train clatters by outside. “Nanamine Sakura,” they introduce themselves with a quiet dip of their head. “I remember seeing you the other day.”

Kou nods brightly at that. “I’m Minamoto Kou- I was friends with Mitsuba when we were younger.” 

( Friends- Mitsuba would scoff, if it was just the two of them. When has a word so small ever been able to describe them? )

Natsuhiko goes next, reeling off his usual opening line about karaoke, fishing and pretty people. Kou looks positively starstruck. Mitsuba wants to bury his head in the floorboards.

It’s Sakura who notices the absence of any menus first, frowning in confusion as they peer around the restaurant. Kou’s grin grows all the more brilliant when they ask, in the way it always does before he gets to show off his magic for the first time. Mitsuba hates how he finds himself grinning too. Something about Kou’s smiles are dangerously contagious, even now.

“No need for a menu,” he claps his hands together, then points in Natsuhiko’s direction. “You want tofu yakisoba that’s spicy enough to make your eyes water,” Natsuhiko makes no effort to hide his surprise when Kou moves onto Sakura. “You want braised fish. And Mitsuba, you want-” Kou raises an eyebrow in a way that makes Mitsuba feel as if his every movement is being judged. “You want omurice. For a fancy dinner date.”

Mitsuba knew he shouldn’t have spent a whole hour reminiscing on his mom’s attempts at cooking earlier- days when the worst of his worries was Yukie’s chronic inability to get the consistency of the omelette just right. He feels his face flush embarrassingly red. “You’d better make it the best omurice I’ve ever tasted.”

Kou flashes a wicked grin, all sharp teeth and challenge accepted. “You’re never gonna look at omurice the same after this.”

Perched on their own seat, Sakura’s smile turns knowing, always too wise for their own good. Mitsuba swears that they can predict the future, and aims a futile kick under the table before they can attempt to haunt the Halfway Station with their velvet voice and jewel-dark eyes. 

“That’s some pretty useful magic you’ve got,” Natsuhiko keeps the conversation going while Kou prepares dinner, alternating between small-talk and the long process of wiping glitter off his eyelids- squinting into a pocket mirror he pulled from one of Sakura’s bags. “Mine just makes cats like me.”

“He’s got four at home,” Sakura pipes in. “He treats them like they’re his kids.”

“Already a crazy old cat lady at twenty six,” Mitsuba shakes his head sadly. “How depressing.”

“Hey-” Natsuhiko tries to put Mitsuba in a headlock, lunging past Sakura and almost toppling off his own stool in the process. Years spent facing Satou’s punishment of choice has trained Mitsuba well, so he dodges the attack effortlessly.

“So,” Kou chooses the worst moment to re-emerge from the kitchen, looking like a porcupine with his hair spiked up from the humidity. “How did you three meet each other?” His gaze jumps from Natsuhiko (half falling out of his chair) to Sakura (drink lifted above their head to save it from becoming collateral damage) to Mitsuba (holding a placemat like a shield) as he speaks, confusion written plainly across his face. He’s obviously never seen a romantic goth, a guy in a sequin shirt, and the fashion equivalent of a marshmallow who know each other on a first-name basis before.

Mitsuba opens his mouth to explain how he was accosted into a friendship against his will, but Natsuhiko beats him to the chase.

“We all work at the same magazine publishing company. Sakura is a fashion journalist, I’m a model and this kid is the new star of the photography department.” This time, Natsuhiko does succeed with putting Mitsuba in a headlock, tugging cheerily on his ponytail. “Got the job straight out of university and everything- I’m, like, the world’s proudest big brother.” He sniffs dramatically. Mitsuba takes the opportunity to call him a creep and squirm out of arms reach, relocating himself two stools down.

“He’s not actually my brother,” Mitsuba clarifies, before Kou can stare any harder. He’s never been quick on the uptake. “He has five siblings at home and he’s experiencing withdrawal symptoms.”

The laugh that follows Kou as he ducks back into the kitchen is good-humoured, but there’s something hollow about it- something which Mitsuba hates that he can still recognise like it’s second nature. 

“I’ve missed a lot, clearly.” Kou says the next time he reappears, and a train rushes past outside before Mitsuba can even think of what to say.

-

“It’s good to see you with new friends.” Kou tells him later, in the storage room as the nighttime trains cut intermittent shadows out of the shelves. Natsuhiko and Sakura have long since headed home, and the Halfway Station is quiet as it ever can be. 

“What- did you think I was incapable of getting along with people?” Mitsuba turns up his nose in contempt, so he doesn’t have to acknowledge the nostalgic tone at the back of Kou’s voice. If he closes his eyes, then he can pretend it never existed in the first place. That’s how he’s always dealt with things when Minamoto Kou is concerned- another detail that not even time can change.

“Absolutely- you’re a nightmare.” Kou laughs, and graciously accepts the shove aimed down at his shoulder. He’s shorter than Mitsuba now, noticeably so, and it’s strange in all the wrong ways. Then, because he’s always been far too attuned to people’s thoughts, Kou let’s his smile fade- sitting down heavily on an empty crate and inviting Mitsuba to join him. “I just never realised how many things could change in five years. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never be able to catch up with it all.”

Always stealing the words from Mitsuba’s chest, bringing them to life in the worst ways possible. For someone so oblivious, Kou has never failed to read between Mitsuba’s shallow insults and purposeful actions- pulling out meaning as if it’s a second language only he is fluent in. Turning Mitsuba’s entire chest into a display case; ribs made of glass, heart beating inside. (Satou used to claim that it was his Magic, back in highschool; before they stopped joking about things like that.) 

When Mitsuba heaves out a sigh and shoves him again- he clings to the hope that Kou can still read his actions, louder than the trains clattering by outside.

“Lame earring boy is just jealous that I have friends and he doesn’t.” He says out loud. 

( We’ll figure it out somehow- he replies underneath; without saying a word. You worry too much.)

[Before]

He always has done- carrying the world on his shoulders, then having the nerve to act surprised when he finally crashes under the weight of it. It’s just another infuriating piece that makes him Minamoto Kou ; putting on a brave face and grinning like his spine isn’t about to snap in half from the pressure. 

Mitsuba wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until it gets through his thick skull that he has to think about himself sometimes. That if he comes into school with a cold because he doesn’t want his siblings to worry, then he’s just going to infect the whole class- Mitsuba included. That if he gives away his lunch then his stomach is just going to growl until hometime, and Mitsuba won’t be able to get any work done. That- by their third year of highschool- everyone can see his eyes have started to look tired more often than not, and people keep asking Mitsuba about it like they expect him to know everything.

It’s all self-preservation, Mitsuba tells himself in the bathroom mirror, through a mouthful of toothpaste. He doesn’t actually care about Kou’s wellbeing in the slightest.

(Then his mom knocks on the bathroom door, tells him to stop mumbling creepily to himself, and Mitsuba almost chokes to death on his toothbrush. She lords that one over him for weeks .)

If Kou was worried about school, then Mitsuba could probably deal with it. But it’s been clear from the start that things are far more complicated- Kou is scraping by in most of his classes and he’s never seemed bothered by that, and it’s not like Mitsuba is clueless about what the Minamoto family name means, what Kou was supposed to inherit.

Most magic is useful only to the person who wields it. Sometimes it’s inherited, sometimes it’s spontaneous, sometimes it even changes over a person’s lifetime. Mitsuba himself was not born with his inability to take a blurry photo, and perhaps he will not die with that gift either. Magic is the product of time and circumstance- it grows and transforms and can even be forced to change, although not without consequence. 

But, if magic is useful only to its owners, then Mitsuba wants to know just how many people the Minamoto family has pissed off.

The Eyes- that’s what the presenter called it when Mitsuba first saw Kou’s face on the local news, stood behind a solemn man with eyes so bright they looked like pieces of the sky were trapped within them. The power to see, the power to know ; a family gifted with bright eyes that stare through anything.

“Creepy.” Mitsuba had told his mom, like she’d been paying attention to anything aside from their cat’s attempt to climb up the curtains.

In middle school, the Eyes had never been an issue. Kou’s blue stare has always been bright, but never all-seeing. Minamoto Teru from two years above seemed to have the family legacy covered, answering questions in morning assembly before anyone could raise a hand to ask them.

Then, the week before midterms, Mitsuba ducks behind a shoe locker and catches the tail-end of Kou’s voice whispering something hushed and ashamed into his phone. It’s not eavesdropping if Mitsuba just happens to overhear the response- talking about expectations and legacy and not trying hard enough. The voice on the other end of the line sounds angry, and Mitsuba doesn’t think he’s ever seen Kou look so defeated.

Mitsuba tells himself that the call was probably just exam pressure- because really, Kou has always been terrible at studying- but the shuddering sigh that escapes him after he hangs up says otherwise.

It’s clearly something heavier, a weight larger than Mitsuba can fix with a few well-placed kicks and loud complaints.

And so, he ignores it instead.

[March 18th]

Once again, it’s Satou’s idea to organise a day at the beach- for old times sake.

The weather isn’t appropriate in the slightest- a long-predicted snowstorm sweeping in overnight and continuing well into the morning, heavy wind tossing snowflakes into Mitsuba’s eyes as he waits outside the station. When he finally arrives, Satou is bundled up to his nose in knitwear. Yokoo is wearing shorts. Mitsuba takes one for the team and calls him a freak of nature.

Five years feels like barely any time at all, as Kou shows up late in a thin windbreaker that’s already soaked through, and Satou pulls a spare scarf from his bag without saying a word. Consistently more prepared than the rest of them put together. Something about the familiarity of it sends Mitsuba into a fit of giddy laughter, which he turns into a cough half-way through. 

“What are we even gonna do when we get to the beach?” Kou asks once he’s stopped shivering, peering down the train tracks at snowfall that gets heavier by the minute.

Yokoo shrugs. “Build snowmen, maybe?”

“Let’s bury Minamoto and see how long it takes for him to freeze.” Mitsuba suggests.

Satou breathes warm air into his gloved hands. “Sounds fun.”

(Mitsuba supposes that they kind of deserve it when Kou hurls an armful of powdery snow in their direction, but that’s never stopped him from complaining before.)

The train is late and the journey that follows is painfully slow- Mitsuba is embarrassingly accustomed to the fast-paced trains of the city centre, and doesn’t hesitate to make it known that he’s bored out of his mind. With a roll of his eyes, Satou just hands him a pastry, tells him to be quiet, then continues his story about weird customers and extortionately large cake orders.

Even now, they have plenty to talk about. 

Kou mentions that Tiara is now captain of her highschool track team. Yokoo manages to spend five minutes enthusing about the new coffee machine in the sailing club cafeteria. Satou admits that he spoke to his mother for the first time in months, and almost gets swept off his feet by the intensity of the hug Kou throws at him. Talking about grown-up business with his childhood friends is a strange experience, but Mitsuba quickly finds that he doesn’t hate it as much as he thought he would. Because they’re still Yokoo and Satou. Kou is still Kou (although he’s much less happy about that fact). 

And, Mitsuba supposes, he’s still Mitsuba too.

He’s about to launch into a dramatic retelling of the time Natsuhiko tripped on a loose paving stone and fell into a fountain, when the intercom announces in total monotone that the train will be terminating at the next station. A fallen tree on the line, the voice explains. Sincere apologies and thank you for your patience.

“Bet I could move it.” Yokoo proclaims, then almost falls out of his seat when Satou hits him on the head and calls him stupid.

With homeward-bound trains suspended until the tracks can be cleared, Satou sits down heavily on a station bench and declares them well and truly stranded. Mitsuba doesn’t know what else he expected. Things rarely go to plan when the four of them are involved- and no amount of time could possibly change that. 

Though sheltering in a tiny village train station from the worst snowstorm of the year is far from the beach trip they had planned, Kou insists that they should make the most of it. Sweeping them all up in one of his trademark kilowatt grins- almost bright enough that they can pretend it’s summer already. Because Kou’s enthusiasm is contagious, they lay out their picnic blanket on the platform, snack on homemade pastries and cold pasta out of tupperware boxes, pass an inflatable beachball around in a circle- Satou almost suffering a heart attack when it slips out of his hands and goes rolling toward the tracks. 

Beachball no longer an option, Kou claims that he’s had the most brilliant idea- reappearing fifteen minutes later with four cups of vending machine hot chocolate. “Could you do this at the beach?” He presents them with a flourish, then almost drops them on the ground. 

“Cafes exist, Kou.” Satou teases, but accepts a drink graciously all the same.

“How did it take you a quarter of an hour to operate a vending machine?” After sticking his tongue out, Mitsuba relaxes into the warmth of his cup. A wordless thank you beneath the insults that Kou returns with a sunburst of a smile.

“Yokoo, you have hot chocolate on your nose.” Satou offers a long-suffering sigh, and then leans in to kiss it off.

Mitsuba stares hard enough to burn a hole through the station wall.

Because this is Satou. ‘Mutually pining after my best friend but if I make a move I’ll die’ Satou. ‘Made Mitsuba pull his own hair out in frustration for the entire duration of highschool’ Satou. Mitsuba jabs Kou in the side, hard. “Excuse me, when did this happen?”

He gestures at Satou, curled up very non-platonically into Yokoo’s space, laughing together like a scene out of every bad romcom Mitsuba’s mom has ever made him sit through. Kou shrugs. “A while ago- maybe a year after graduation?”

Mitsuba hopes the wind doesn’t change any time soon, because he’s pretty certain the expression he’s making is not a pretty one. “I spent years giving Satou relationship advice, and then he goes and makes a move as soon as I’m gone?” 

“I mean, if you were the one giving Satou dating advice, then it’s no wonder it took them so long to get together.” Kou barely manages to duck out of the way when Mitsuba makes a grab for his earring. Fingers closing around cold, empty air, he topples into Yokoo instead, his head ending up in his lap. He lies there, staring at the sky like he used to when they were dumb teenagers huddling for warmth on the school rooftop. 

Yokoo barely even bats an eyelid. “Hello down there.” He smiles with hot chocolate stained teeth, then rearranges his legs so Mitsuba can fit more comfortably. 

“How come you didn’t tell me that you and Satou started dating,” Mitsuba turns up the drama, trying to drown out the ridiculous, giddy smile that threatens to appear on his face. (You can’t spend multiple years watching someone’s embarrassing crush and not end up rooting for them at least a little. Mitsuba still remembers the middle school playing field in autumn, Yokoo kicking through piles of golden leaves as Satou turned to Mitsuba and asked; is it strange to look at your best friend and want to be something more? )

“I thought we were friends. ” For now, though, Mitsuba turns on the fake tears. He’s got to keep them all on their toes somehow. “I thought you cared about me.”

“We tried to tell you,” Tugging on Mitsuba’s ponytail good-naturedly, Satou leans into the conversation too. “You kept cutting us off because- and I quote- we’re so boring your brain was about to leak out of your ears. ”

Mitsuba opens his mouth to complain, then snaps it shut again when he remembers that- okay- maybe he did say that.

“We got together not long after you and Kou broke up,” Satou then explains, and Mitsuba’s entire body does not go bowstring tense at the mention of that. He doesn’t freeze up and Yokoo doesn’t start patting quietly at his hair like he’s trying to soothe a scared animal. 

It’s just a fact. Just like Mitsuba and Kou used to sit next to each other in class, Mitsuba and Kou used to partner up for group projects, Mitsuba and Kou used to throw balled-up paper at each other’s heads in assembly- Mitsuba and Kou also broke up. Five years have passed since then. There’s no point in crying over wounds that have long since closed. (The scar on the back of his neck still hurts during cold mornings and warm nights. Sometimes, Mitsuba catches sight of it in the bathroom mirror and wonders if it ever truly healed.)

“We would have messaged you about it, but you were kind of hard to contact back then.” Satou continues, in that gentle, cautious tone which Mitsuba hates more than anything. “It felt like a bad time too, so-”

“Anyway,” Before he can make things any worse, Mitsuba scrambles upright and cuts Satou off. “Which one of you confessed first? I need details .”

Yokoo and Satou share a single glance that holds a whole conversation within it. 

“Satou did.” Yokoo admits, wearing a smile so fond that Mitsuba is going to tease him about it for weeks . (Only afterwards will he admit that he’s beyond happy for them, because he has a reputation to uphold.)

Then, before Mitsuba can even think of a response, Kou announces his presence by dropping an entire armful of snow down the back of Mitsuba’s jacket. It’s in his hair and in his eyelashes and Kou is laughing like a damn banshee above his head, clutching at his ribs as if he’s broken them.

“You-” Mitsuba splutters, too incredulous to even speak.

Caught in the collateral, Yokoo scoops up a handful of snow and throws it right back at him with a vengeance. Kou blinks snow out of his eyes dazedly- then his expression turns fire-bright, wicked enough to chase the storm away. You’re on- his grin says, and Mitsuba is still not quite grown-up enough to refuse a challenge.

By the time a train back home finally pulls into the station, all four of them are soaked, shivering and laughing too hard to stand, completely ignoring the judgemental looks shot their way by the other passengers. They might not be kids any more- but they’re still allowed to have fun.

“We should do this again.” Kou announces, after they’ve all taken turns in Satou’s shower to thaw their frozen limbs, huddled around the TV in too-small borrowed t-shirts. There’s a movie playing in the background, snow spiralling down outside the window, and Mitsuba hates having to agree with Kou for once.

“Not the getting stranded and almost catching hypothermia part though, I hope.” Satou laughs, reaching over to steal popcorn from Yokoo’s bowl.

“Yeah, I’m suing you all if I end up with a cold after this.” Mitsuba concedes, and the chorus of sure, why not he receives in response is more familiar than ever.

[March 19th]

Shoelaces trailing through half-melted snow, Mitsuba swears the cold weather must be turning him delirious when he finds himself back at the train station just a day later. He curses yesterday-Mitsuba’s bad choices; whispering conspiratory to Kou on the train home about a secret trip back to the beach- just the two of them. They’d planned the whole thing out late that night, then Mitsuba had forgotten all about it until a text from Kou had lit up his phone screen in the middle of his lunch.

The temptation to cancel on him had been overwhelming- yet, for reasons he can’t quite bring himself to face, Mitsuba had still gotten ready in record timing.

At the very least Kou is dressed appropriately this time, decked out in brightly patterned knitwear that looks lumpy enough to be home-made. He also has coffee, extending a warm cup of what looks and smells like pure sugar as a peace offering. Mitsuba decides that he can keep his insults to himself for a little while longer.

Although the snow is no longer falling thick and heavy, the train to the beach is almost deserted, giving Mitsuba the opportunity to snap photos of the scenery rushing by, making the most of the bright-white light spilling in through the windows. It feels like winter has come back for round two in the middle of March, lighting up Kou’s hair in shades of cool-gold. (Mitsuba waits until he’s distracted by the view, before snapping a single photo. Spun gold in the foreground, white snow beyond. As much as he knows he should, he can’t bring himself to delete it.)

They make it all the way to the beach this time, shaking out travel-stiff legs on the platform then following the path down to the sea. The air is cold enough to burn every time Mitsuba breathes, and somewhere along the way it starts to drizzle- snow melting into slush beneath his boots.

It’s freezing, damp, and yet Kou still laughs like an overgrown kid when the sea finally stretches out in front of them. Kilowatt grin fracturing the clouds in two, he takes Mitsuba’s gloved hand in his own and pulls- dragging them both onto the sand. And, because Minamoto Kou’s boundless enthusiasm is contagious in the worst possible way, Mitsuba chases right after him.

They’re the only ones stupid enough to venture onto the beach in the terrible weather, so they almost have the whole place to themselves. A miserable stretch of wet beach and grey, rolling sea, the silence split only by the sound of Kou slipping and falling on his face in the sand. It’s awful. (Mitsuba can’t remember the last time he laughed so hard.)

“This isn’t as great as I thought it’d be.” Kou admits sheepishly, trying to shake wet sand off his legs.

Mitsuba raises his camera to snap a photo of him, catching that chipped-tooth smile flawlessly as ever. (Sometimes he hates that none of his photos will ever turn out blurry, because Kou’s bright laugh is caught clear and perfect in every single one.) 

He stares at him over the viewfinder, then calls him an idiot.

“Your insults are getting weak.” Kou retorts, still grinning. 

“I’m too cold to think right now,” Mitsuba forces a shiver for good measure. “Buy me hot chocolate.”

Kou protests- something about how he’s being shamelessly exploited as a source of free drinks- but Mitsuba gets his hot chocolate anyway.  

They stand shoulder to shoulder on the beach with their takeaway cups- fending off seagulls, getting soaked through by the rain, playing the world's least exciting game of I-spy- and it’s terrible. By far the worst not-a-date that Mitsuba has ever been on; cold and rainy and the company leaves much to be desired too. As if determined to prove his point, Kou verbally threatens the seagulls making a beeline for the packet of cookies in his coat pocket. 

Time hasn’t changed him much- he’s still stupid and brilliant and- 

And- Mitsuba thinks he might be falling in love with him all over again.

(To his horror, he finds that he’s not sure if he ever truly fell out of it in the first place.)

[Before]

Mitsuba hates the school rooftop.

The world has a terrible habit of tilting on its axis up there, moving too fast as summer rolls in and exams creep closer by the day. They’re not even supposed to be up there- watching the clouds was never part of the study camp itinerary- but they’ve dragged each other into worse situations before, and will probably keep dragging each other into worse situations for many months to come.

Kou tosses birdseed to the flock of doves that roost on the old school building every evening, luring them in for Mitsuba to capture photos of the pink-stained sunset. Wingbeats and white feathers flutter around their heads, caught in perfect quality on the screen of Mitsuba’s camera.

He avoids taking photos of Kou, because the bandage wrapped around his eye is something he doesn’t want to immortalise.

( It’s not as bad as it looks- Kou had said to him with a sheepish laugh, touching fingertips to white gauze. I almost managed to use the Eyes this time, though. Isn’t that great? )

Kou fumbles with the bag because his depth perception is screwed, and Mitsuba swears his heart breaks into tiny, awful pieces. 

He’s supposed to tell Kou this; I got an offer to study photography in Tokyo and I’m going to accept it.

Instead, he lowers his camera and tells him; “You’re too selfless for your own good.”

One tired, blue eye blinks in response. “What do you mean?”

Hopeless, like always. It’s a universal constant- sure as gravity- that Minamoto Kou will never have the foresight to turn around and finally see the damage he leaves in his wake. If Mitsuba could find the right words, he would take him by the shoulders and tell him that nobody cares if he inherits his family’s magic, so he shouldn’t force himself to be someone he’s not. That, in his attempts to put on a bright smile, he’s just dragging everyone else down with him. That his complete, overwhelming need to carry the whole world on his shoulders is selfish in its own right.

But Mitsuba never has the correct words- a fact that’s constant as Kou’s own selflessness. 

So he hides his eyes behind his camera lens, and doesn’t say anything at all.

[February 28th]

Mitsuba often dreams about falling.

One second he’s tumbling off the side of the school building- breath caught in his lungs, shattered glass and twisted metal raining down on all sides- and then the next he’s gasping awake, clutching at the chair below him like it’s a lifeline.

Recollection comes in pieces; he’s at the Halfway Station, there’s tears clinging embarrassingly to his eyelashes, and Kou is standing over him. 

That’s what snaps Mitsuba into motion, hiding his face and wiping angrily at his eyes with the sleeve of his cardigan. The scar on the back of his neck feels as if it’s burning, phantom pains that never quite healed alongside the rest of him. He hears Kou’s breath hitch when he catches sight of it- an awful, guilt-ridden sound that Mitsuba never wants him to make again.

“Stop staring, you’ll catch flies in your mouth.” Mitsuba snaps, but the bite in his voice gets lost half-way up his throat. 

Instead of complaining like Mitsuba expects, Kou just quietly settles down into the booth opposite him. Up close, the cloudy appearance of a left eye that’ll never see perfectly again is all too noticeable, and Mitsuba turns away pointedly. For a long while they sit in silence, punctuated only by the movement of trains outside, then-

“I dream about it too,” Kou admits, painfully honest and more quiet than Mitsuba has heard him speak in a long while. “If it makes you feel any better.”

“How d’you know what I was dreaming about, huh?” Mitsuba kicks at his ankle beneath the table lightly, fondly. It feels like the first time they’ve properly spoken, since Mitsuba first stumbled into the Halfway Station just weeks ago. “I thought cooking was your magic, not mind-reading.”

(Though, perhaps they’re one in the same. Kou sees food as a form of happiness- a way to bring people together, making meals out of memories and feelings and all things inbetween. Magic works in strange ways- and Mitsuba sometimes wonders if Kou did inherit the Eyes after all; as his own, kinder form of knowing .)

Kou smiles, and tells Mitsuba that he missed him. Hair lit up cornfield gold by a train passing outside.

(Mitsuba kicks him under the table, dries the last of his tears, and hopes Kou knows that he missed him too.)

[March 23rd]

The last time Mitsuba watched the cherry blossoms in full bloom with Kou, Yokoo and Satou was their first year of highschool. The following year Yokoo was visiting family, the year after that Kou came down with a stomach bug- and there was no point in going if they couldn’t do it together. 

Now, Mitsuba supposes, is as good a day as any to make up for lost time.

Winter has almost melted away from the city by the time sakura season arrives, the ever-busy streets lined in pink as Mitsuba hurries to meet Kou, Yokoo and Satou by a tiny park that Yokoo found nestled between the buildings. He snaps a photo as he goes- pink petals against bright blue sky- then saves it as his lockscreen. A promise of spring days soon to come.

“Nice of you to finally show up,” Satou quips when Mitsuba meets him by the gate, his nose red from the cold. “Even Kou made it here before you.”

Mitsuba aims a sweeping gesture at his outfit- pink for the occasion, scarf wrapped around his neck, held in place by the bunny pin that Yokoo gave him for his seventeenth birthday. “This sort of perfection takes time. ”

Satou huffs something under his breath that Mitsuba is too cold to complain about. From his spot by the gate, Kou is staring right at Mitsuba like he’s trying to carve a hole straight through him- intense and thoughtful and Mitsuba hates the way his ears turn cherry-blossom pink beneath it. Then Kou’s expression lights up, as if he’s just uncovered the mysteries of the universe, hidden somewhere in the lapels of Mitsuba’s coat.

“Your hair!” He points. “What did you do to it?”

Ah. That . 

Mitsuba tugs at the hideous blue stripe dyed into the front of his hair- the product of a late night at the company building and Natsuhiko’s godawful lack of impulse control. Sakura had stepped into the bathroom to find them half-way through a bottle of blue dye, and had walked right back out again. (Mitsuba spent the rest of the night with a caffeine-induced headache and a number of regrets.)

“It’s fashion, you wouldn’t get it.” He replies defensively, then makes a tug at Kou’s awful earring for good measure. Exactly why he’s still wearing that thing, Mitsuba will never understand.

The cherry blossom trees are in full bloom throughout the park and some idiot has waved magic over the petals, freezing them mid-fall like a sky full of tiny pink stars. Mitsuba pokes one with a curious finger, sending it spiralling through the air as if trapped in liquid. Yokoo almost swallows one by accident.

It’s almost too cold to be outside, but they settle on the grass and pull out a whole banquet of snack food to eat amongst the petals. That’s the best thing about having two friends with food-based magic- the picnics are incredible.

(It fills Mitsuba with an unreasonable amount of joy to call Yokoo and Satou and Kou friends again. Though five years have stretched long and slow between them, their separate circles reconverged effortlessly- fitting key in lock as if they’d never even been apart. Telling them out loud would just make the sentiment lose all its meaning, however, so Mitsuba settles for stealing their food instead.)

Preoccupied with his attempts to photograph the petals, Mitsuba opens his mouth in the hopes that someone will feed him- and winds up with a mouthful of something gross and spicy that he’s never going to get out of his teeth. Kou grins wickedly across the picnic blanket, asking for trouble. When Mitsuba lunges to stick a bony elbow into his side, he goes down like a fallen tree, a laugh caught in his throat.

“Get him!” Mitsuba commands, and Yokoo is more than happy to help.

They scuffle like children, arms flailing, Satou trying his hardest to save the food from becoming collateral while still attempting to record the whole thing on his phone. As Kou pulls on his scarf and tries to drop a can of soda down the back of his coat, Mitsuba wants to climb into the past and tell the Mitsuba Sousuke of middle school that friends to last a lifetime are waiting just around the corner- the Mitsuba Sousuke of five years ago that endings are never as final as they might seem.

Ouroboros - Sakura called it beneath the flickering office lights. Every ending is also a beginning, as certain as the sun will rise each morning and set each night. Mitsuba jabs Kou in the side and laughs hard enough that his ribs ache right down to the marrow, in the realisation that the world has truly come full circle. Everything ended, and yet here they are, making themselves new again.

Then Kou lashes out with his foot, and spills blackcurrant squash all over Mitsuba’s brand new picnic blanket.

Four pairs of eyes stare helplessly at the bright purple stain, creeping slowly across the blanket.

“There’s a cafe across the road- we’ll go and get napkins.” Satou offers eventually, ever the practical one- looping an arm around Yokoo’s shoulder and dragging him off with a sense of urgency. It leaves Kou and Mitsuba alone, with nothing but a still-growing stain and freeze-fall petals for company. 

For a long while, the world holds its breath. (The heavy silence- that’s one thing Mitsuba will never get used to.)

“Sorry about the blanket,” Kou starts, tucking his knees close to his chest, and Mitsuba can see the scar on his cheek from where he’s sitting. It takes all of his willpower to stop himself from looking away, because guilt is not a sensation that fades overnight- still a ghost that follows him five years later. 

“And,” looking up, Kou offers a shy excuse of a smile. “I’m sorry about everything else too. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say that enough.”

Mitsuba stares, and finds himself quite suddenly lost for words. (Guilt is a ghost that follows him five years later- but he’s not the only one being haunted.)

Overhead, the enchantment reaches its end- and petals rain down like the first storm of spring.

[April 17th]

When Mitsuba heads out for his lunch break, Minamoto Teru is standing in the doorway of the company building.

He does a double-take when he spots him- he’s somehow even taller than he was back in highschool, an imposing figure commanding the attention of everyone in the foyer despite his amiable smile. All long limbs, sharp angles, eyes like fractured pieces of summer sky. Secretly, Mitsuba is glad Kou never inherited that knife-edge stare; he’d never be able to look him in the eye otherwise.

Regardless, Teru has always looked a little too much like Kou for comfort, and so Mitsuba does the sensible thing; holds his camera bag shield-like in front of his face, and tries to run out of the building before anyone can see him.

Perhaps it’s his own fault for messing with a fully-fledged user of the Eyes. Teru’s intuition had been terrifying back in highschool- and now Mitsuba feels goosebumps rising down the back of his neck when a lightning-filled gaze sears directly into him. (Mitsuba thinks, distantly, that this is how the models he works with must feel under the glare of his camera flash. His fingers twitch below his sleeves.)

“Mitsuba,” Teru greets him with a neat dip of the head and a brief mention of a partnership between the Minamoto family business and the publishing company. There’s a new ring through the cartilage of Teru’s ear, a flash of gold that Mitsuba is uncharacteristically delighted by. ( Small acts of rebellion- Kou had mentioned years ago, tugging at his own half-healed piercings. We take what we can get. ) “Kou mentioned that you worked in the area, but I didn’t expect it to be here.”

“Minamoto’s been talking about me?” Mitsuba replies, before he can stop himself. Through some miracle, the question manages to drag a sharp, disbelieving laugh out of Teru.

“I don’t think he knows how to stop,” As he speaks, something that’s almost a nostalgic smile slips onto Teru’s face. Mitsuba freezes, genuinely unsure of what to make of it; because this Teru is clearly worlds different to the one he learned to avoid in the school hallways years ago. “Somehow, he’s been a lot happier ever since you showed up again.”

“What can I say,” An awkward giggle slips out of Mitsuba’s mouth, hanging embarrassingly around the light fittings. If any of his coworkers happened to eavesdrop, they’d probably die laughing at the spectacle. “I’m just a delight to be around.”

Teru’s stare turns sharp-edged again, jarring enough to silence him. “I still don’t understand why he likes you so much,” if looks could kill, then Mitsuba is pretty certain he would be half-dead on the spot. “You’re a bad influence, and even if Kou’s forgiven you for what happened back then, I definitely haven’t.”

Unwilling as he is to admit that Teru is right, Mitsuba makes no attempt to argue. (Both out of fear that those eyes will deconstruct him from the inside out, and in the knowledge that Teru has every right to hate him. If he didn’t have a heart made of gold, Kou would have every right to hate him too.)

“But-” Teru starts again, that strange nostalgic expression slipping back into place. “For some reason, you visiting the Halfway Station makes him happy- and that’s good enough for me.”

Mitsuba takes a full step backwards, dumbstruck, and almost knocks over a display case containing an expensive pair of shoes. “Teru-nii’s approval? Now that’s- ”

“It’s still Minamoto-san to you.” Teru snaps. (But, if Mitsuba didn’t know better, he’d almost say that he was smiling.)

[Before]

Speaking to Teru always feels like waving a flag during a thunderstorm; asking to get struck by lightning.

Mitsuba avoids him as much as it’s possible to avoid your maybe-more-than-best-friend’s protective older brother. He becomes an expert in dodging situations- taking the long way to class, excusing himself to the bathroom every time Teru wanders sleepily into the Minamoto family kitchen, even using Kou as a meat shield on the most desperate of occasions.

(He’s always been a coward; scared of wasps and hairless cats and trees that look like they’ve got faces. He’s not about to start acting brave now.)

But, sometimes, desperate times call for desperate measures. Desperate times being Kou doubled over the bathroom sink, blood clinging to his eyelashes, swearing that he’s fine even though he can barely get through a word without his voice shattering. Mitsuba doesn’t think he’s ever been more scared in his life.

(It’s not the first time either- Kou’s eyes are often bloodshot nowadays, wrecked through countless attempts to harness magic he was not made to wield. Mitsuba knows what it’s like to force yourself to become something that you’re not. It’s impossible to emerge from the other side unharmed.) 

And so, come autumn, Mitsuba makes up an excuse about some photos he left in the darkroom, then runs off to corner Minamoto Teru behind the school Tennis courts. 

Beside them, a ball rattles against the chainlink fence, and Mitsuba waits for the echo to subside before he speaks. Any excuse to delay the inevitable. Then, finally, he gathers up the courage to ask; “How do I stop Kou from inheriting the Eyes?”

Teru’s own shattered-sky gaze widens, just noticeable beneath the fading sunlight. Evening comes early with the arrival of autumn, staining the tennis courts rose gold.

“That’s not your decision to make.” Teru replies, then, his voice as cold as the evening chill creeping in.

Anger curls white hot in the back of Mitsuba’s throat- for reasons he doesn’t understand. Because Kou can do what he wants; his birthright, heirloom, family legacy is none of Mitsuba’s business. Yet, still, Teru’s stern indifference feels like a kick to the teeth. 

“It’s hurting him though!” He insists. “Every time he tries to force it, it just gets worse!”

“I know that!” Teru’s voice is an explosion of thunder; receding just as fast as it arrived, leaving the bitter taste of ozone in its wake. “I know that. I don’t want him to inherit them either, but there is nothing that can stop that boy once he’s made up his mind. It’s his choice, not anyone else's.”

Digging his feet into the grass, Mitsuba forces down the feeling that he’s stumbled into something he wasn’t supposed to see. Standing up to his elbows in Minamoto family troubles- the one thing he always swore he couldn’t care less about. 

Still, no matter how out of his depth he feels, Mitsuba does what he does best and digs the hole deeper. “Why does he even want the Eyes so badly? Shouldn't it be good enough if you have them?”

“That’s the sort of thing you should be asking him yourself.” Teru cautions, unimpressed.

“I’ve tried !” Every time Mitsuba asks, all he gets in response is an awkward laugh and a dismissive don’t worry about it. The only thing worse than Minamoto Kou’s sense of fashion is his ability to accept help when it’s offered to him on a silver platter. “He likes to stick his big dumb nose into all of my problems, then acts like I’ve spat in his food when I try to return the favour.”

Teru’s silence is a long, uncomfortable thing. 

“He’s always been like that; giving away more than he’s willing to take in return.” He admits after an eternity has passed, staring through the chainlink. The tennis club is packing up for the evening, distant chatter that fades into white noise before it reaches the two of them standing unnoticed at the outskirts. “That’s why I hoped he’d never want to inherit the Eyes.”

There, in the lowlight of autumn, Mitsuba is reminded painfully that Teru isn’t all that much older than him. Just a teenager, with the weight of an entire family on his shoulders. If he wasn't one part condescending and two parts terrifying most of the time, Mitsuba might almost feel bad for him.

“It’d break him.” Still looking into the distance with eyes that don’t see the same world as anyone else, Teru continues. “Knowing that people are lying to him all the time. Being able to see that everyone needs help and that he can’t do anything about it. He’d give so much of his heart away to people who didn’t even ask for it that there wouldn’t be anything left for himself.”

He does that already- Mitsuba doesn’t say out loud.

“The Eyes are not something just anyone can handle. It was too much even for me at the start.” Teru lifts a hand to press two fingers against a tiny, pale scar below his eye; something Mitsuba has always been too scared to wonder about. Now, as Teru’s fingers brush the sole reminder of some distant, awful memory, Mitsuba doesn’t think he wants to know. 

(Kou mentioned, a long while ago, that his mother kept a padlock on the knife drawer for most of his childhood. An involuntary shudder passes down the entire length of Mitsuba’s spine, and he’s suddenly glad he declined Satou’s offer of a post-school snack before walking home.)

Mitsuba shoves those thoughts deep, deep down, and looks at anything but Minamoto Teru and the tiny scar that sits too-close to his ridiculous magical eyes. “So, what can I do then?”

For a long while, Teru doesn’t move- giving no indication that he even heard at all. Staring through the fence, hand still lingering by his cheek.

Then, finally, he asks; “Do you care about him?”

(Too much. Impossibly so. For reasons Mitsuba will never truly be able to fathom. Kou is too-loud and too-bright and too-much but still- still- Mitsuba cares so much that it sometimes hurts.)

He doesn’t reply- but Teru’s eyes light up like dying stars, and Mitsuba can tell he sees his answer loud and clear as thunder.

[April 17th]

Nowadays, Kou’s eyes are just blue.

Teru’s look like pieces of the stratosphere got lost behind the irises, shards of starlight and lightning and burning magnesium. Impossibly bright eyes burdened with the power to see through anything.

Kou’s eyes smile when he talks. One of them is cloudier than the other and he needs to wear ugly glasses so he doesn’t accidentally stick his hand into the gas fire. He’s got freakishly long eyelashes, premature smile-lines, and Mitsuba likes it more than any form of magic.

(Maybe, one day, he’ll finally find the words to tell him so.)

[Before]

The first time Kou decides to tip the world on its axis, Mitsuba is crying.

Summer break brings heatwave warnings to all the local weather reports, and the air-conditioned corridors of the shopping centre become the safest place to hide- sheltering indoors from the sweltering heat of midday. The sun beating down from above casts a shimmering haze over the car park, hot enough that Kou almost burns his hand when Mitsuba dares him to touch the side of an idling jeep by the doorway.  

Yokoo and Satou are off holidaying by the beach so it’s just the two of them for once- stuck at home with only broken fans and humid air for company. (Mitsuba makes sure it’s blatantly clear that he’s not happy about being stuck alone with one Fashion Disaster Minamoto Kou- kicking up a fuss every five minutes. Kou takes it all in stride, unshaken as ever.)

Their first destination is the arcade, where Mitsuba wins a Jolteon keychain from the claw machine and gives it to Kou because they look the same. Then Kou blows most of his money trying to beat the DDR high score- the winning smile on his face when he soars into second place lighting up the whole damn room. Mitsuba has to practically wrestle him off the machine before he keels over from heat exhaustion, after that. 

Window shopping is another essential- staring at clothes they’ll never be able to afford in the fashion stores, testing neon coloured gel pens in the stationary store, collecting as many stupid trinkets as they can find in the 100 yen store. The jolteon keychain hangs off the back of Kou’s bag, and Mitsuba hates that he doesn’t even mind when Kou tries to talk him through the entire plot of the second gen Pokemon games.

No summer shopping trip is complete without ice cream, so they pool their remaining money together to buy a sickeningly large sundae- more than enough for two to share, but Mitsuba insists on stealing from Kou’s side of the glass anyway. It’s comfortable; the back and forth, the silly smiles, calling Kou a pervert for knocking their knees together under the table. So natural that it’s almost scary. 

(It’s no secret that Mitsuba likes Kou more than he ever should. For all that he’s clumsy and competitive and thinks that omamori earrings are a fashion statement, Mitsuba can’t help but feel lighter than air when he’s around.)

Kou tips his head to the side in a wordless question, a dessert spoon sticking out of his mouth, and Mitsuba curses his horrible sense of self preservation.

Because it didn’t have to be Kou.

Yokoo is bright, tall, and the star of the school sports scene. Satou is smart, attentive, and bakes the best pastries he’s ever tasted. Mitsuba might have incredibly high standards, but there’s plenty of other fish in the sea. 

Yet, for some terrible reason, Kou’s chipped-tooth grin is the only thing he can think about. Kou- who eats food so fast it gives him indigestion, who Mitsuba once saw stick his entire hand into a toilet to fish out a bracelet someone had lost, who was apparently dropped on his head as a child and has a weird-shaped scar at his hairline to prove it. (Who sees the meaning behind every one of Mitsuba’s flippant statements. Who carried him after they fell off Yokoo’s bike, even though his own leg was bleeding. Who sat down beside him on the rooftop all those years ago, told him I knew you weren’t really that nice, and then never left his side again.)

“Do I have something on my face?” Kou asks around the spoon. 

Pulled jarringly out of his thoughts, Mitsuba almost chokes on his ice cream. “You’re just ugly.” He replies, as soon as he’s recovered enough to speak.

Kou wrinkles up his nose, then slingshots a cherry at him for good measure. 

Mitsuba is about to respond with equal force, when his phone rings in his pocket.

The next hour finds Mitsuba locked in the second floor bathroom, muffling sobs into his knees because his mom just broke the news that his cat had passed away. Luna was old and sick and he’d known for the longest time that it could happen any day, but no amount of preparation could have softened the blow. He thinks, lightheaded, that he’s picked a terrible place to cry too- a grimy public bathroom with flickering lights, a dripping tap, chipped blue tiles on the wall with marker pen graffiti scribbled in the gaps.

“Do you need me to get you anything?” And, worst of all, Kou is still waiting outside. Through his tears, Mitsuba can see the laces of his shoes beneath the door- standing guard, asking if there’s anything he can do to help whenever there’s a break in Mitsuba’s sobs.

Mitsuba just wants him to leave, so he can let sadness sink its knife-edge teeth into his chest. He doesn’t need Kou’s worry hanging there- a reminder that he would probably claw his way into the afterlife and steal Luna right back if that was what Mitsuba asked for. 

“Sousuke?” Kou tries again, the sound of it so gentle and awful that it only makes Mitsuba cry harder. 

“Go away, lame earring boy.” Mitsuba sniffs, falling back on old, stupid insults. He hates how watery the words come out, echoing in surround-sound through the toilet cubicles.

“You can’t cry in there forever, Sousuke.” A pause, filled only by the steady drip-drip-drip of the tap. “My legs are starting to go to sleep.”

“Leave then, idiot.” All Mitsuba needs is time to himself, to cry ugly tears and press his hands against the spot on his ankle that Luna always bit when she was hungry . “I bet you’re only here ‘cause you’re a creep who secretly likes hearing me cry.”

Kou mutters something to himself, muffled by the door, before he responds. “You’re upset, so I want to help. That’s all.”

“I don’t need it!” Childish as it is, Mitsuba slams a foot into the cubicle door, letting the sound of it echo. “If you want to help, then you can do it by leaving me alone.”

Silence settles again, and for a moment Mitsuba wonders if Kou really has come to his senses and left. (There’s a traitorous piece of his heart that wants him back; so he can unlock the door and cry into his shoulder until there’s tearstains all over the collar of his shirt. Mitsuba squashes those wants deep, deep down. If he doesn’t look at them, then they don’t have to exist.)

“Can’t do that.” When Kou finally speaks up again, there’s something huge and unreadable in the back of his voice.

“Did you forget how to walk?” Mitsuba snaps pathetically.

“Why are you so-” That heavy unknown behind Kou’s words builds and builds and builds, until Mitsuba can barely breathe through it. “I can’t leave because I’m your friend and I want to tell you stupid jokes and let you talk about all the times your cat clawed up your furniture- until you’re laughing too much to be sad any more. You’ve got a great laugh y’know, did I ever tell you that? Or maybe if you just want to cry then we can do that too- somewhere other than the shopping centre toilets-”

He’s rambling in the way he always does when he’s nervous, and even though there’s a cubicle door dividing them, Mitsuba can see the way he’s probably tugging on his earring, pacing awkwardly back and forth. 

“I don’t even care that we wasted half of the ice cream. We’ll go back another day- I won’t even complain when you steal all the cherries off my half of the sundae, I promise!” The laugh that drifts through the door is pitchy with nerves. “You’re not gonna get me to leave, Sousuke.”

Kou’s voice hangs there- an echo, a promise, and something more - and Mitsuba doesn’t know how to deal with it.

So; he doesn’t.

“Bet you’re only saying all that ‘cause you’ve fallen in love with me or something.” It’s a pathetic excuse for an insult, but it’s all Mitsuba has left in his lungs, the only thing he can rescue from beneath the giant, wordless thing that sits either side of the door between them. The pressure is near suffocating, closing in on all four sides, and Kou falls worryingly silent.

Mitsuba has always joked about people falling in love with him. ( How could they resist when he’s this cute, this perfect? ) Normally, he’s met with groans, eye-rolls, Satou dragging him into a killer headlock and squeezing him hard.

This time- Mitsuba is crying, they’re sitting in a grimy shopping mall toilet, and Kou asks him; “So what if I have?”

Weeks down the line, Mitsuba will make Kou redo the whole scene- because getting confessed to in a public bathroom is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. 

Now; Mitsuba finally unlocks the door. 

( Somehow- it says, without speaking a word- I think I have too.)

[June 16th]

The second time Kou decides to tip the world on its axis, Mitsuba is laughing instead.

June has brought warmth to the city in full bloom. Spurred on by the good weather, the publishing company is buzzing with the energy that always arrives alongside summer season- excellent for business, but Mitsuba doesn’t think he remembers what it feels like to have a clear schedule. Berets are in this season, and Mitsuba switches his lockscreen from springtime blossoms to fluffy white clouds, spotted from the window of his apartment.

Despite the chaos, Mitsuba still makes room for the Halfway Station. He has his reasons; if he arrives at just the right time, the perfect lull between the lunchtime and dinnertime rush, then Kou will give him free food. Mitsuba’s mom always taught him that meals taste best when they’re free- alongside other pieces of questionable advice.

The sun crests high above the office buildings and apartment blocks as Mitsuba tucks into a box of convenience store onigiri he didn’t pay a single thing for. Kou sits beside him, face tilted to the sky like a spiky-haired sunflower- eyes closed, rice stuck to his chin. They’re perched on a railing beside the train tracks, the spell of an off-season heatwave making the warmth of the kitchen near unbearable, and Mitsuba can’t help but be grateful for the fresh air. (He’s left the office fewer times than he has fingers on one hand in the past week. Sakura has started comparing him to a vampire, which means a lot coming from someone who often wears a tailcoat to work.)

“I can’t believe you’re making me eat outside like an animal. ” Mitsuba sinks his teeth into a second onigiri, stolen from Kou’s bag while he wasn’t looking. Kou cracks open one eye, and steals one right back.

Somewhere on the other side of the crossing, there’s a kid hanging bubbles in the air like constellations- shimmering in the summertime heat. The sky overhead is so overwhelmingly blue that it feels as if they’re floating underwater, the glass reef of the city rising up on all sides, planes leaving seaspray clouds in their wake.

A bubble settles on Mitsuba’s outstretched fingertip, and it feels like magic.

(The real kind, the natural kind; nothing to do with freaky eyes or perfect photos or pink petals suspended in midair. This is magic as Mitsuba has come to know it, after five long years of searching.)

“Do you ever think about how crazy it is that we ended up in the same place?” Kou starts, skimming the sky with one outstretched hand. “Like- we could’ve gone anywhere in the world, but we still found ourselves right on each other’s doorsteps.”

Ouroboros- says a voice which sounds a little like Sakura’s. Round and round you go.

“Fate won’t let me get rid of you,” Mitsuba laughs, the sound trailing off into something a little quieter and a whole lot more vulnerable. “That night, I swore I was never going to speak to you again.”

Kou finally looks down, levelling his stare to meet Mitsuba’s halfway. “You went off the radar, and then the next thing I knew Satou was telling me you’d left without even saying goodbye. I kind of got the message.”

A train passes by at the crossing, and neither of them speak until the roar has faded into white noise.

“You just-” Curling his fingernails into the fabric of his shorts, Mitsuba sighs. “Wouldn’t tell me anything. Kept getting yourself hurt and acting like it was fine. It made me want to shake you back and forth until you realised you didn’t have to force yourself to be somebody else.”

Kou tugs sheepishly on his earring. “I kind of sucked at being a boyfriend, didn’t I?”

“Definitely,” Mitsuba finds that he can’t quite keep the fondness out of his voice, like it’s taken up permanent residence somewhere at the back of his throat. “You confessed to me in a toilet after my cat died.”

A snort of laughter escapes Kou, followed by a hard shove to Mitsuba’s shoulder. The onigiri almost goes toppling to the ground. “You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you?”

“I’ll still be telling people when you’re all gross and old and wrinkly,” Like always, Mitsuba shoves right back. Then, cupping his hands into a makeshift megaphone, he shouts down the train tracks; “Minamoto Kou is a terrible boyfriend who confesses to people in public bathrooms and never talks about his feelings and-”

Kou clamps a hand over Mitsuba’s mouth. Mitsuba licks him. (He was asking for it.)

“You're terrible! The worst!” Wiping his hand on the railing, Kou’s face turns red in that way it always does when he’s trying to hold back his laughter. “Some of us clearly haven’t grown up at all.”

“I’ve grown up plenty,” Mitsuba retorts, hoping he manages to squash down a grin of his own. “I’m a sensible, accomplished and respectable adult.” 

“You wouldn’t know sensible if it bit you in the ass.”

If Mitsuba tries to shove Kou off the railing for that- like the sensible, accomplished and respectable adult he is- then nobody has to know.

The barriers lower as another train passes by, carriage after carriage sweeping past the two of them, the Halfway Station, the pedestrians waiting patiently on either side. By the time the crossing clears again, Kou isn’t smiling quite so brightly any more. Staring down at the ground where ants have started to pick at the onigiri filling he dropped.

“I really am sorry though,” A tug at his earring, avoiding Mitsuba’s gaze. “You upset me too, back then, but I was the one who-”

“Don’t go all gloomy on me, Minamoto.” Mitsuba cuts him off, hating the way his heart feels as if it’s being crushed between his ribs. “You had way too much drama going on- ‘course you were going to be a terrible boyfriend.”

(Unsaid; I was terrible too. Both just as bad as each other and yet, somehow, here they are. Spending their second chances on convenience store onigiri, bickering back and forth and pretending they’ve grown up. Right back to where they started, yet standing at the precipice of a new beginning all the same. It’s just a question of who will take the first leap.)

For a long while, there’s silence. The city passes them by, unaware.

“Well- what about now?” Kou asks, then. Hopeful and brilliant and his eyes shine like stars. (Not magic- just Kou .)

“What?” Mitsuba stares at him, about as eloquent as a sack of rocks.

“I swear-” the punch he aims at Mitsuba’s shoulder is light, barely even there. “Sometimes you make me wonder why I even like you. Why I never managed to stop liking you.”

The hope grows and grows, stringing itself up alongside the bubbles and the clouds and the train lines. It’s a brilliant blue sort of feeling- and Mitsuba never wants to let it go. Still, he doesn’t want Kou to get the idea that he’s gone soft over time. “If you’re trying to win me over, then you’re not doing a very good job.”

“Let me finish, idiot.” Kou’s face is on its way to becoming as red as his glasses frames, and Mitsuba hates how endearing he still finds it. “Both of us have always had terrible timing- you show up too early, I show up too late, we miss the train and end up sitting around on the platform for hours. But I think, now, we might have timed it right.”

“Sorry, I don’t speak in lame-earring-boy metaphors.” Mitsuba swears his heart has settled in his throat, beating fast and excited and maybe this is it.

“You’re not making this easy for me, Sousuke.” Kou grins, wicked sharp, and it’s still the same . 

His eyes still crease up and disappear, he never fixed his chipped tooth, his canines have always been unnervingly sharp. He’s still the Kou that sat next to him on the rooftop, the Kou that called him Sousuke for the first time by the beach, the Kou whose heart he broke on a second floor balcony, five years ago. But he’s also the Kou that serves him omurice for a fancy dinner date, the Kou that takes him to the beach in the pouring rain, the Kou that wears his name with pride, but in his own way now.

The Kou that turns to face Mitsuba beside the train tracks and asks; “If you had a second chance, would you take it?”

Mitsuba calls him cheesy, kicks him in the ankle, then holds his hand tight.

(Kou looks that new beginning in the eye and takes off to a flying start: the final push Mitsuba needed to chase right alongside him.)

[Before]

Third year of highschool is a downward spiral waiting to happen; impossible to stop and equally impossible to look away from. A year of exams and career choices and blood in the bathroom sink- Kou becoming a frequent flier of the nurses office as he keeps trying to force magic that was never made for him. Mitsuba has a photography scholarship that he hasn’t spoken a word about hanging over his head like a death sentence, counting down the days until he packs his bags and leaves for the city. 

(He feels as if he’s watching a train crash from the side of the platform. The future hurtling up to meet him, and he can’t do anything to hold it back.)

Evening walks through the park are the only thing keeping Mitsuba sane, hand in hand with Kou as an attempt to leech off his body heat. Winter is fast approaching and their breath trails mist into the sky, more than a little mesmerising to look at. The whole park is practically deserted- so near to closing time that they might have to hop the fence on their way out- full to the seams with silence that settles alongside the frost on the tree boughs.

Mitsuba raises his camera with one hand to snap a photo of the stained-glass sky, when Kou’s fingers slip from between his own. He lingers a little way down the path, staring motionlessly at his shoes.

“Did you step in something?” When Mitsuba calls back to him, his voice sounds too loud for the silence.

Then, he notices that Kou is crying.

One thing Mitsuba knows: Kou doesn’t cry about real things often.

It’s no secret that fiction gets to him (scenes where dogs die or long-lost siblings get reunited are off limits on movie night for a reason) but Mitsuba can count the times he’s seen him cry for real on one hand. Unlike everything else in his loud, unmissable existence, Kou cries quietly; like a little kid scared of getting caught. For someone who lives with his entire heart on his sleeve, he’s not very good at being vulnerable.

Mitsuba cries once a day, minimum. He’s always been like that; shedding big, dramatic crocodile tears over the smallest inconveniences, like missing the bus or tripping over his shoelaces. Nothing to phone home about. The most he’ll receive is a pat on the shoulder from Yokoo, or a crumpled tissue from Satou’s back pocket. They’re well accustomed to it by now.

Kou crying is a whole other deal entirely. Mitsuba stands, feet frozen to the path, and he finds quite suddenly that he doesn’t know how to help.

All he can do is watch as Kou crouches low on the pavement, shrinking into himself as if being seen without a bright smile is something he can’t bear the thought of. Small and shaking and Mitsuba doesn’t even remember how to breathe, let alone how to move and help him.

“Sorry,” Kou’s voice is a tiny, sad thing. “We were having such a nice walk.” 

It’s enough to bring the feeling back into Mitsuba’s limbs, just enough for him to run over and drop down beside Kou, puppeteering an awkward arm around his shoulders. It’s the worst hug he’s ever given but Kou melts into it regardless, shaking hands gripping at the sleeves of Mitsuba’s winter coat. He holds on like it’s the only thing keeping him together, and Mitsuba hates that he doesn’t have a single word of comfort to offer.

“It’s my family,” Kou’s voice drifts up shakily, barely even there. “I overheard them talking last night- they don’t think I’m ever going to inherit the Eyes. Even Teru-” 

Just give up then- Mitsuba would tell him, if he knew it would do any good. You always say you like me the way I am, so why can’t you take your own advice for once?

Mitsuba is freezing and his legs are starting to ache, but holding onto Kou is all he can manage. And so, he stays.

After what feels like both an eternity and a fraction of a heartbeat, Kou pulls away without any warning. Fingers uncurling from the back of Mitsuba’s coat, stretching out his legs, wiping away tears with the back of his hands. He offers up a watery smile that doesn’t reach his eyes; Mitsuba doesn’t think he’s ever hated an expression so much in his life.

“Sorry about that,” Kou laughs to himself, because he’s stupid and selfless and Mitsuba wants to shout it from the rooftops that he’s allowed to be upset. That he doesn’t have to be a boy made of summer all year long. “I’m fine now, I promise.”

Anger settles uncomfortably in Mitsuba’s throat; burning and burning until he finds he can barely breathe past it. Like every single stupid, ridiculous, self-sacrificing thing Minamoto Kou has ever done has finally risen to the surface, ready to explode. He wants to scream, to force Kou to turn around and see that the world isn’t his to carry alone. People will like him even if he complains, cries, admits that he doesn’t know how to help- because he’s always done the same for them.

But the storm never breaks.

“It’s getting dark.” Mitsuba says, the taste of ozone on his tongue. “We should go home.”

(He’s always been a coward, after all.)

[June 10th]

“If they find the head of Journalism’s body around the back of the building, then you’re my alibi.” Sakura takes an elegant sip from what appears to be their fourth cup of black coffee, elbows-deep in a horrifyingly tall stack of research notes. From the tone of their voice, it’s clear that they’re far from joking. 

Mitsuba abandons his own work in favour of staring at them in something close to abject horror.

“Nanamine-san,” He starts, cautiously. “No offence, but I think you might be losing it.”

Sakura stares meditatively at their laptop for a moment too long, looking seconds away from snapping it in half. Mitsuba breathes an audible sigh of relief when they announce that they’re taking a break instead. (He still follows them to the water cooler to ensure they don’t actually make good on their previous threat, not wanting to testify as a witness in court during his precious free time.)

Back at their desk, Mitsuba steals snacks from Sakura’s bag, traffic speeding by on the road outside although night has long since fallen; the clear mark of a city which never sleeps. The billboards and car headlights illuminate the office in shades of neon that do nothing to help Mitsuba’s blue-light induced headache. Beyond the rooftops, someone is setting off fireworks- close to the Halfway Station, a traitorous thought reminds him. (He wonders, distantly, if Kou can see them too.)

“Something on your mind?” Notes replaced with a heavy leather-bound novel, Sakura looks all too smug for someone who was close to a breakdown just minutes before.

“I was thinking about how Minamoto’s earring should get him arrested.” Mitsuba stretches, catlike, before he continues. “He’s been wearing that thing since highschool and it never gets any less tacky.”

“For someone you claim to hate, you seem to think about him a lot.” Sakura hums, closing their book. Always looking for a chance to make fun of Mitsuba in that quiet, awful way they’ve long-since perfected. Anyone who says Nanamine Sakura is emotionless has clearly never revealed an embarrassing secret around them. “How are things going with him?” 

Mitsuba’s better judgement tells him that he should shut up and get back to work. 

(Better judgement is not something Mitsuba has a lot of.)

“Don’t get me started- ” he sighs, despairingly. “I’ve been his best friend since middle school and he still won’t let me eat dinner for free at his place, plus he keeps making me do stupid stuff. You know, we got kicked out of the bowling alley yesterday because he tried to toss the damn thing like a basketball.”

Sakura hides a smile behind their hand, then tells him to continue.

“But the worst part is,” some of the fight drains out of Mitsuba’s voice, slipping closer to dismay. “The worst part is that he’s not the same any more. I thought I knew every stupid curveball that Minamoto Kou could throw at me, and then he had to go and change.”

The previous week, Kou received a phonecall from his father which he hung up before Mitsuba could even prepare to play damage control. The day before, they hurled bowling balls as stress relief and cursed to each other about stupid workloads, dodgy wifi, expensive gas bills with every strike they hit. The yelling probably would have gotten them kicked out if Kou’s stunt with the bowling ball hadn’t. 

His fake smiles are a thing of the past. Mitsuba doesn’t know how to cope with how glad it makes him feel.

“Five years is a long time,” Sakura replies sagely. “There’s a lot that can change.”

(They’ve both grown up with time- Mitsuba too, although he’s only just started to realise it. They’re not the same kids they were before.)

“Perhaps,” a firework explodes outside, raining glitter down on the sleepless city Mitsuba has started to call home. “That’s not such a bad thing.”

[Before]

Kou tosses Mitsuba his doorkeys, then asks him what he plans to do after highschool.

They’re on their way to a study date in Mitsuba’s kitchen; because they’re both hopeless at maths and final exams are fast approaching. At Kou’s question, Mitsuba freezes with his keys in the lock, and doesn’t dare to face him. Kou may not have the Eyes, but sometimes he sees right through Mitsuba like he was born with them.

“I’m not sure yet.” Mitsuba lies through his teeth. There’s been a moving date scribbled into his calendar for months now, a scholarship offer in his inbox for just as long. Come spring, he will pack up his bags and move three hours down the train line, and he still hasn’t told anyone yet.

Kou stands behind him, uncharacteristically quiet. Then, in a small voice that doesn’t sound like Minamoto Kou at all, he tells Mitsuba; “You’re lying.”

Mitsuba turns around on reflex towards where Kou stands; hands in his pockets, gold-spun hair washed out beneath the winter sun. The town moves on below them, unaware.

“You’re pretending, Sousuke.” Kou continues, a hollow note at the back of his voice. “Ever since school started again you’ve been doing it.”

The weather forecast that morning predicted snowfall by late afternoon, a heavy chill settling over the rooftops. Mitsuba knows the sensible thing is to admit defeat and head inside, before they start freezing to death. Instead, there’s a breaking point etched into the ground below him, and he crosses it with one flying leap.

“So what if I’m pretending!” Leaving the keys in the door, Mitsuba rounds on Kou, backing him up against the wall of the apartment building. The rush of traffic is clearly audible on the road below, and Kou stares back with wide eyes that Mitsuba doesn’t know how to read any more. “You’re just as bad as I am- forcing yourself to inherit magic, changing just to make other people happy. Don’t be a hypocrite.”

“That’s-” Kou starts. That’s different. That’s because it’s my duty as a Minamoto. That’s what I was raised to do. 

“I don’t want to study any more.” Mitsuba cuts him off, twisting his keys in the lock and stepping inside. “You can go home.”

(He doesn’t know if he recognises the boy standing outside any more. He’s got Kou’s face, Kou’s hair, Kou’s stupid earring- but that secret language they’ve always shared doesn’t form words any more. It hasn’t done for the longest time.) 

Left out in the cold; stupid, self-sacrificing Kou doesn’t say a word. 

“That sounded-” Mitsuba almost jumps a metre in the air when his mom speaks up from her seat at the kitchen table- always choosing the worst days to clock off work early. “-Intense.”

While Mitsuba kicks off his shoes by the door, she pretends to type something into her laptop- doing a terrible job at hiding the way she keeps glancing between Mitsuba, the door and the calendar on the wall. Mitsuba Yukie is many things, but subtle is not one of them. 

Decidedly too tired to deal with any more stress, Mitsuba tries to slope off to his room with the plan of burying himself face-first in his pile of plushies until dinnertime. Yukie catches him on his way out, raising her eyebrows in a silent question- where do you think you’re going? 

Mitsuba curses her uncanny ability to sense when something is wrong- mom powers, she calls it, like it’s her own form of magic- but he still sits himself down at the kitchen table anyway.

“Do you want to talk about it?” His mom asks, after a long stretch of silence filled only by the tick of the living room clock. Mitsuba shakes his head so hard it hurts. 

Yukie stares thoughtfully at the keys of her laptop for a while longer. “Do you want to watch trash TV until our brains start to leak out of our ears?”

That sounds altogether more appealing.

Later, curled up in front of the TV with a half-eaten carton of strawberries beside him, Mitsuba feels his mood improving just a little. Onscreen, the pivotal moment of some terrible drama plays out- three episodes in and Mitsuba still hasn’t figured out what the plot is supposed to be.

“I know you said you didn’t want to talk about it,” Yukie starts, in the lull between episodes three and four. Mitsuba wonders just how fast he can make it from the living room to his bedroom. “But why haven’t you told Kou that you’re moving yet?”

Mitsuba curls up on the sofa and pretends he doesn’t hear. Avoiding a conversation is something he’s become increasingly good at lately. But Mitsuba Yukie is a force of nature who rarely takes no for an answer, fixing him with a stare that’s firm as it is kind. (Yukie might be cool as far as moms go- she lets Mitsuba do what he wants as long as he doesn’t get into too much trouble, celebrated harder than he did when the email for his scholarship fell into his inbox, doesn’t even get mad when he calls her outfits ugly- but she’s still his mom. )

On the TV screen, a character whose name Mitsuba can’t remember befalls a tragically cliche accident. In the living room, the staring match on the sofa reaches a stalemate. 

Mitsuba, like usual, is the first to fold.

“I’m scared,” he admits, hugging his knees close to his chest. “I’m scared that he’s going to be fine with it.”

Yukie frowns. “I’m pretty sure it’s a good thing if he’s happy for you.”

“It’s not, though! I want him to hate it and get mad at me for not telling him sooner, because I know that’s how he’s going to feel.” Mitsuba huddles further into his seat, close to spilling the strawberries all over the living room carpet. “But instead he’s just going to put on a big, stupid smile and tell me that he’s happy, regardless of how he feels. He’s just selfless like that.”

With his heart trying to fight its way between his ribs- moths wings in his chest- Mitsuba turns back to the TV.

“You’re going to have to tell him eventually, Sousuke.” Yukie says. A storm surge on the horizon- just waiting to break.

[June 25th]

Mitsuba might not have been on a proper date in years, but he’s pretty sure it’s supposed to start with his partner showing up at the right train station.

Instead, through some spectacular feat of miscommunication, Mitsuba ends up stood on one platform, while Kou blows up his phone from somewhere across the other side of Shibuya city. Mitsuba isn’t sure what else he expected. He texts Kou to get a move on, checks his hair in the station window, then goes to find a cafe to settle down in.

A whole two hours of bad phone signal, delayed trains and lost routes later, Kou finally arrives- out of breath and looking completely frazzled. He falls into the chair opposite Mitsuba’s; fighting to catch his breath, glasses frames askew.

Mitsuba reaches over his coffee to fix them, then tells Kou that he has half a mind to break up with him for taking so long.

“I’m way too nice to do that, though. You’re lucky that I have the heart of a saint.” He grins, prompting a breathless laugh from Kou.

“Heart of a demon, more like,” Frowning at his reflection in his phone screen, Kou makes a futile attempt to squash his unruly hair flat. “You could’ve easily met me halfway.”

“Imagine making a cute guy like me traipse across the city just to meet you!” Mitsuba puts on his best scandalised expression. “What if I got kidnapped, or harassed, or-”

Kou pops a sugarcube into Mitsuba’s open mouth, effectively silencing him.

By the time they finally start their date, Mitsuba decides that fate must be working against them- because the rest of the day goes so disastrously wrong that it’s equal parts horrifying and hilarious.

They miss their lunch reservation because they spent too long bickering in the cafe, and Mitsuba shrieks loud enough that someone tries to intervene when Kou threatens to push him into the river as payment. (Afterwards, Mitsuba laughs so hard that he forgets how to breathe properly, and when he finally looks up Kou is staring at him like he’s tipped the whole universe off-kilter. An expression so fond that Mitsuba almost wishes he had succeeded in tossing him underwater.)

Then the photography exhibit Mitsuba had been excited about all week is closed due to an electrical fault, and the rest of the gallery is both dull and so overpriced that Kou looks nauseous while paying the entry fee. (Ten minutes in, Kou starts pulling dumb faces to mimic the paintings. It’s endearing as it is stupid, and Mitsuba throws all caution to the wind before joining in.)

Their trip to the park is as poorly timed as it could possibly be; so crowded it’s hard to walk without almost stepping on someone lounging on the grass, the height of summer luring what seems like the entire population of Tokyo out to catch some sunlight. The air is full of children shouting, dogs barking, music blasting from portable speakers- far from the movie-like romantic stroll that Mitsuba had in mind. (While they queue to buy crepes from a pop-up stand by the lake, Kou gets flattened to the ground by thirty kilos of excited golden retriever. Mitsuba takes an unnecessary number of photos, and, if one of them finds itself as Kou’s contact photo in his phone, then nobody has to know.)

The whole day is a veritable trainwreck- everything that could go wrong seemingly hell-bent on doing so. Dropped ice cream followed by unforeseen rainfall followed by wet clothes after a van drove through a roadside puddle and soaked them both.

“Just how much bad karma have you been saving up?” Kou jokes under the awning of the restaurant they were supposed to eat dinner at, closed due to a family emergency. He has the nerve to look offended when Mitsuba pushes him back out into the rain.

Then, just to finish the day off, they get lost on their way back to the Halfway Station. Stuck wandering through some backstreet residential area that Mitsuba has never seen in his life, the pretty colours of sunset lost behind thick layers of cloud.

“Milk tea or lemonade?” Mitsuba crouches in front of an ancient-looking vending machine they’ve already passed three times, its neon lights the only distinctive feature in an area where every street seems to look the same. He can feel Kou watching him from the bench across the road, eyes electric beneath the streetlamps.

“Lemonade.” Kou calls back, fumbling to catch the drink tossed in his direction. He doesn’t open it, setting it down in favour of tugging awkwardly on his earring. “Does it hurt?” He asks, after a moment of silence.

Mitsuba stops trying to wrestle the vending machine into accepting the last of his spare change. “If this is the setup for a bad pickup line, I swear-”

“I mean your scar. The one on the back of your neck.” Kou gestures to where it just peeks above the collar of his shirt. Mitsuba reaches up to cover it instinctively, feeling the strange texture of it beneath his fingers- uncharted territory that they’ve never dared to speak about before.

“It itches sometimes, but I’m used to it now.” Mitsuba admits, after what feels like an eternity has passed. Nothing but flickering streetlamps and the hum of the vending machine to fill the gaps. “I only cover it ‘cause I hate having to explain how I got it.”

“It’s the same for me.” Kou shifts to make room for Mitsuba on the bench, his eyes lit up neon in the dying light. The glow of the vending machine highlights the crooked bridge of his nose and the dash of scar tissue on his cheek. “Telling people you fell off a balcony normally raises some red flags.”

“ Everything about you was a red flag in third year.” The joke falls a little too heavy, and Mitsuba stares down at his shoelaces trailing across the concrete. 

The silence of the backstreets is close and intimate in a way that makes him want to take a leaf out of Kou’s book, to ask something stupid and brave which he will regret in the morning. Mitsuba sighs, then takes his chances. “Why did you stop trying to inherit the Eyes?”

Kou stares up at the darkening sky for a long while before he finally speaks. “I got a lot of wakeup calls. Not just that night, but I think that was definitely the start. It made me realise that I’d spent so long trying to inherit the power to see everything, that I didn’t even notice what was right in front of me.” He turns to face Mitsuba, his half-smile painfully genuine. “My real magic surfaced not long after you left. It always made me sad to think that I’d never get to cook for you.”

“If you were so sad about it, then why haven’t you started giving me free meals yet, huh?” letting out a deep breath and reaching down to slip his fingers between Kou’s own, Mitsuba finds that his hands are just as warm as they’ve always been. “Where are my Boyfriend privileges?”

“So you only like me for the food, I see.” Kou pinches Mitsuba’s earlobe hard, and Mitsuba swivels his head around to try and bite him. “It’s weirdly comforting to know that your personality is still as awful as ever.”

“Speak for yourself, everyone else thinks I’m a delight to be around.”

“Your mom saying that doesn’t count, Sousuke.” Overhead, the streetlamps flicker, and Kou squeezes Mitsuba’s hand tightly. “I mean it, though. I’m glad you’re still the same Sousuke - as terrible as that is for my savings.”

“Not everything is the same, though.” Mitsuba replies, then. Saying exactly what he means for what feels like the first time in his life.

Five years creep up on you like the tide at the beach, the sunset at the end of the day. The world is different, and Mitsuba wasn’t there to see it change. He never caught the moment he grew a whole three centimetres taller than Kou, the day Kou started wearing glasses to correct the eyes he spent years trying to ruin, the point Kou realised that crying is nothing to apologise for. The world hurtles on regardless- without a beginning or a middle or an end.

Mitsuba wonders if Kou looks at him, and sees all the lost time they’ll never get back. Or, if he sees a second chance waiting just up ahead- an opportunity to do things differently this time around.

“Things have changed,” Kou agrees. “But I don’t hate it.”

(Five years creep up on you whether you like it or not. Now, all they have to do is welcome it.)

[Before]

“You know, this isn’t how I thought I’d be spending my birthday.” Yukie says from beside Mitsuba’s bed in the emergency department, smiling through the situation in a way only she could be capable of. Her well-timed humour is the only thing keeping Mitsuba sane through the battery of tests and scans the hospital keeps throwing at him- determined to thwart his efforts to sleep off what’s quickly turning into the worst headache of his life.

All Mitsuba wanted was to buy potatoes for his mom’s favourite curry recipe. Then, a treacherous snow-filled slope, a car skidding off the road and an ambulance ride later, he ended up in the emergency department instead. Lying there with three dislocated fingers and a concussion bad enough that they want to keep him in overnight.

“Why couldn’t you have just ordered takeaway like a normal teenager, huh?” Yukie reaches across like she wants to ruffle her hands through Mitsuba’s untied hair, then remembers the head injury and decides against it. She pokes at his shoulder instead, tugging on the fabric of his ugly blue hospital gown. 

“Why couldn’t you just cry over me like a normal parent instead of being mean?” Mitsuba fires back weakly. He swears he can feel his heartbeat rattling around in his skull. (He doesn’t know why they won’t just let him take a nap.)

Rather than an answer, he receives a visitor instead.

Minamoto Kou stands in the doorway, sticking out like a sore thumb against the sterile white of the hospital corridors- snowflakes in his hair, thin jacket plastered against his arms, visibly shaking from the cold. The nurse at his side mentions something about visiting hours being almost over, then disappears to attend another patient.

“I heard-” Kou starts, pauses to catch his breath, then continues. “I needed to know you were okay.”

Yukie waves her phone in the air sheepishly, Kou’s contact visible on the screen, then excuses herself from the room.

Any other day, Mitsuba would slam the door in Kou’s face. Kicking up a fuss, because he doesn’t want to be seen while his hair is tangled with grit and he’s got friction burns from the tarmac all down one side of his face- decidedly not cute in the slightest. But the snow falls heavier by the second in thick drifts that pile up on the pavement outside, and Kou is shivering so violently that Mitsuba can hear the click of his teeth from across the room.

“I ran over as soon as I could.” Kou explains, taking one hesitant step through the doorway. 

They’re in the middle of the worst snowstorm of the year. Kou ran all the way across town without even putting on a coat because he’s ridiculous, self-sacrificing, and never spares a second to think about his own safety. Mitsuba doesn’t know how to look at him any more, eye to tired eye.

“I bet you’re just here to take advantage of me while I’m not able to defend myself.” He sniffs, following the pattern of the snowflakes as they spiral down, down, down. The air is thick with all the things he should say- all the things he can’t find the words for. They circle overhead; dark pressure against clinical white- unspeakable and giant. 

Mitsuba should tell Kou that he’s moving away in less than four months. Mitsuba should tell Kou that he doesn’t have to carry the world alone, because he’s never been anything more than human. Mitsuba should tell Kou to remember his damn jacket, or he’ll catch hypothermia and then neither of them will be healthy enough to take notes for each other in class. Mitsuba should tell Kou that he loves him, but he doesn’t know how to deal with the person he’s forcing himself to become.

“Visiting hours are over soon.” Mitsuba tells Kou, instead.

When Kou walks away, the silence that follows is heavy as snowfall. 

(Mitsuba doesn’t remember the moment the car hit him. Watching Kou’s reflection leave in the hospital window, he thinks it might have felt something like this.)

[July 2nd]

July brings the long days of summer to a crescendo. Under brilliant blue skies and candyfloss clouds, Mitsuba drags Kou across the city on a sightseeing tour poorly disguised as a date; scouting out the locations he’s always wanted to photograph, bullying Kou into paying his railfare for him. 

They each point out places they recognise along the banks of the river, collecting pieces of the five years they both missed amongst the usual rush of the city. The university campus Mitsuba studied at, empty buildings that almost became the site of Kou’s restaurant, cafes and fountains and favourite vending machines tucked out of sight. They stop to get fresh lemonade from a stand in the park, win awful matching keychains in a gacha machine, get lost because Mitsuba ran off down a sidestreet to pet a cat- another disaster of a date, and the most fun Mitsuba has had in ages.

(Down the sidestreet, with a cat purring against his ankles, Mitsuba presses a quick kiss to the scar on Kou’s cheek. A wordless thank you that makes his heartbeat skip embarrassingly.)

They end up on a bridge spanning the river, the sun dipping just low enough in the sky to line the buildings in gold. There’s a guitarist balanced impossibly on the edge of the barrier, defying gravity as the sound of summer and warmth plays out across the shimmering water. 

While he takes photos of the sky, river, sunset; Mitsuba can feel Kou smiling at him from where he’s leaning against the railing, eyes shining with magic of his own accord. A softer kind of smile- the sort that makes Mitsuba forget the world around him for a heartbeat or two.

For a brief moment, it’s just him, and Kou, and summer.

“I think you should kiss me.” Mitsuba tells Kou, before time can restart. He wonders, distantly, if sunlight has always felt this warm.

Kou’s eyes go comically wide behind his glasses. “You sure?”

An ugly snort of laughter escapes Mitsuba, before he can do anything to stop it. “Would I have asked if I wasn’t?”

“I suppose not.” Kou flashes an electric-bright grin- all sharp teeth and new beginnings- before making good on Mitsuba’s request.

“You’re out of practice.” Mitsuba tells him after, failing spectacularly to keep the music out of his voice. 

Kou beams from ear to pierced ear, and doesn’t stop smiling the whole train ride home.

[July 18th]

After hours at the Halfway Station is always a strange experience. With lights dimmed and customers gone for the night, the whole place is comfortingly quiet; a place to relax in the middle of the city lights. The usual chatter of the customers is replaced by the click of Mitsuba’s laptop keys and Kou’s off-beat singing drifting out from the kitchen- humming along to the radio while he cleans. 

Trains pass by outside, rain falls against the sloped roof; all fading into background noise. 

Everyone has left their marks on this place in one way or another. Teru got the magical sign outside made as a gift when the restaurant first opened. There’s a photo Mitsuba took of the train tracks at sundown framed on one of the walls. Yokoo left a tiny doodle of a boat on the board where the menu should go and Kou never wiped it off. Leftover pastries from Satou’s latest delivery sit in a cooler around the back. Sakura penned down a haiku in neat calligraphy which Kou insisted on displaying, despite the way it clashes with the rest of the decor. Natsuhiko made Kou a small, tacky nametag which he refuses to remove from his apron. (Next time she visits, Mitsuba might even risk bringing his mom to the Halfway Station too. The final piece of his own planetary alignment, happening right between the train tracks.)

Kou emerges from the kitchen with a tea towel thrown over his shoulder, before collapsing into the seat beside Mitsuba. “I’m going to sleep for a week.” He announces, with a tired wave of his hand.

They sit side by side in comfortable silence, filled only by the white noise of the trains and the radio station. Both familiar and new all at once.

Then a soft snore rises from where Kou is lying sprawled out against the table, completely shattering the peaceful mood. Mitsuba takes an embarrassing number of photos to tease him about later, then rearranges the tea towel so it’s covering him like a poor excuse for a blanket. 

Later, Mitsuba will inevitably get bored and wake him up. For now, he looks at Kou- really looks at him, from his skewed glasses to his spiked-up hair to the scar on his face that gets a little easier to look at by the day- and decides that he deserves the time to rest.

Another train flies by outside; through the rain, the night, the city skyline he’s learned to call home. 

(This time, Mitsuba thinks, they might just get things right.)

[Before: the end]

Everything ends on the first day of spring.

Graduation day is a sunny affair, perfect for photos taken outside beneath the falling blossoms. With flowers pinned to their lapels, Mitsuba, Kou, Yokoo and Satou say goodbye to the classrooms that brought them together, the rooftops they ate many lunches on, the trees in the yard they got in trouble for climbing. 

It feels like closure when they step through those gates for the last time- the final pages of a long, convoluted novel finally reaching their conclusion.

Then, as they huddle on the sofa and watch movies at Yokoo’s house afterwards, Kou announces sheepishly that he left his phone at school.

Mitsuba supposes that the best time to sneak into the school building is now that they’ve graduated- because it’s not like they can be put in detention any more. (“We could get arrested though.” Satou adds, but still agrees to join when Yokoo says he’s up for the challenge.)

They split off into two groups at the gate- Kou can’t remember where he left his damn phone and, as Yokoo reminds them, it’s easier to escape if they can cover more ground. (Or, at the very least, that’s how these things always work in movies.)

The old school building is dark and looming by nightfall, the corridors seeming to stretch endlessly under the beam of Mitsuba’s phone flashlight. Being alone with Kou only makes the atmosphere heavier too- Mitsuba moves to Tokyo next month, and he still hasn’t mentioned a word about it. He’s told Satou, and Yokoo, and even the advisor for the Kamome Gakuen photography club; but not Kou.

They make meaningless conversation while they search, bickering about Kou’s inability to keep track of his belongings and Mitsuba’s bad habit of startling every time a tap drips or a floorboard creaks. Both of them skirting around an elephant in the room that’s become more like a monster the longer they’ve left it untouched.

Beyond the windows the sky is speckled with starlight, a shooting star streaking past the treeline then fading into nothing as Kou leads them down the corridor to one of the old balconies. He has to strain against the sliding door to push it open- back in first year, the old building balconies were always teaming with plant life, but they’ve long since fallen into disrepair. The door creaks painfully with disuse as Kou opens it, the nighttime breeze sweeping in past long dead leaves that probably belonged to beautiful flowers, once. It’s a sad place, despite the stars and cloudless skies.

“I don’t think your phone will be out here, dumbass.” Mitsuba jokes weakly, picking his way across the balcony to stand beside Kou.

“Satou told me about the scholarship.” Kou replies, and shatters the world in two.

Dread so strong it’s almost nausea-inducing opens up like a hollow pit in Mitsuba’s stomach. The quiet, pathetic oh he manages to breathe out in response is more of a shudder than a word.

“He assumed I already knew, before you go and try to strangle him.” Kou’s joke falls flat, dull-edged and humourless. “Why didn’t you- I mean, did you think I wouldn’t be happy for you?”

Mitsuba didn’t want to have this conversation now. He didn’t want to have this conversation ever- but he supposes that even he can’t run forever. Somewhere downstairs Yokoo and Satou are searching for Kou’s missing phone, they’ve still got their flowers pinned to their lapels, and graduation day is supposed to be a happy event. A chance to say goodbye to the awkward years of highschool, and move on to greater things. 

Here, Mitsuba and Kou meet at a standstill. 

So Mitsuba curls his hands into fists, one a little looser from three dislocations that never healed quite right, and he sets the world in motion again.

“Maybe I didn’t want you to be happy!” His voice splits the sky in two like a knife through paper. Too loud in the silence. “I wanted you to be mad at me for leaving, or to tell me that I’m a terrible friend for keeping secrets, or to say something stupid and self-centered that’ll make me hate you for a week.”

Kou stares, stunned into silence. (Mitsuba hates it, more than anything.)

“So tell me you’re mad at me!” with a hard shove, Mitsuba sends Kou stumbling backwards one step, then two. “Tell me what you really think!” Another shove. “Do something for yourself for once!”

It’s like a dam has broken, the final barricade holding all the words Mitsuba never knew how to say. Normally he’d sooner run around the whole track backwards than face one hurdle head-on- but he doesn’t know if Kou even remembers how to read his real thoughts any more. So, just this once, as spring descends upon them, he’ll wear his heart for the world to hear.

“Do you really want to inherit the Eyes, or do you just want them because you’re trying to make your family happy?” Tears sting at the corners of Mitsuba’s eyes as his fingers dig into the front of Kou’s winter uniform. “Do you actually enjoy struggling to fix everyone’s problems alone, or do you just not realise that people are worried about you?”

Kou does nothing, just stares at Mitsuba with unreadable eyes.

Then, in a final great upheaval, Mitsuba asks him; “Do you actually like me, or did you just say that to make me happy?”

Mitsuba regrets it the moment the words are out in the open. Kou recoils as if he’s been slapped, a terrible expression on his face that Mitsuba never wants to see again; sad and angry and when Mitsuba said he wanted something real, he didn’t mean this . Since the moment they met they’ve fought like little kids, throwing insults and punches back and forth, but there’s always been an invisible line between them that they knew never to cross. Now, Mitsuba clears it in one flying jump.

“Sorry,” Mitsuba offers up a shaking hand as a poor attempt at damage control. Plasters on a fake smile which he hopes can ease the tension. “I didn’t mean-”

Kou slaps his hand away, hard.

“Don’t apologise if you don’t mean it,” he says, with a storm-filled look borrowed from the eyes of his older brother. “I know you’re not really that nice.”

It sounds like first year of middle school, out on that rooftop where it all began. When Mitsuba was thirteen and too busy pretending to be someone he’s not to open his eyes, and realise that there’s people out there who would like him anyway.

Mitsuba stares across the balcony at Kou, and doesn’t know if he can reconcile the boy on the rooftop with the boy who stares back at him. The fake world they’ve been living in for who knows how long- where they pretend and hide and show only the parts of themselves that they want to- shatters to the ground like stars falling from the sky. And, honest as it is, Mitsuba doesn’t know if he’s ready to face the real world yet.

But highschool is over- as is winter, as is Mitsuba’s secret. (What’s one more ending to complete the list?)

“I’m moving away next month,” Mitsuba tells Kou. “And, I don’t think we should be together any more.”

Kou takes one step towards him, Mitsuba takes two steps back. Always a coward, running from consequences.

The balcony railing presses hard against his spine, then breaks in two.

In the single terrifying heartbeat before he falls, Mitsuba thinks about morning assembly. Three months ago, when they announced that they were closing off the balconies for good due to structural damage, and Mitsuba had turned to Yokoo and joked that nobody would be stupid enough to lean against railings that old. Rusted metal creaks and groans and breaks- and Mitsuba could almost laugh at the irony.

In the second terrifying heartbeat before he falls, Kou catches him by the wrist.

His feet scramble against concrete and dead leaves, tipped off balance, staring at Mitsuba with wide, terrified eyes. He’s about to fall himself and they both know it, fighting a losing battle against gravity. Two floors is still a long way down. 

“You’ll fall too,” Mitsuba grits out, past the panic cloying in his throat, past where his hands keep slipping, slipping, slipping. “Let go.”

And Kou- hopeless, self-sacrificing, awful Kou- just shakes his head and hangs on tighter. “Either you’re coming up, or we both go down.”

Mitsuba wants to reach through the past- back to his thirteen year old self sat next to the boy with the bonfire grin on the rooftop- and tell him to avoid Minamoto Kou like his life depends on it. (He will make you irrational and stupid and ridiculous. If you told him to jump off a bridge for you, he would probably do it. He’ll make you want to tear your pretty hair out at the roots. If trouble was a boy, then you’d be looking right at him.) But all the magic in the world can’t turn back time, so Mitsuba does the next best thing.

“If, somehow, we don’t fall to our deaths,” he tells the stupid, self-sacrificing boy on the balcony, determined to hit the ground alongside him. “Then I’m never going to speak to you again.”

His eyes meet Kou’s across the eternity of open space between them. Then, on the first day of spring, they both fall.

-

“I swear you’re determined to give me a heart attack,” Mitsuba’s mom picks him up from the hospital hours later- finding him with crutches under each arm, strict instructions to rest his sprained ankle, and an appointment in a few days to redress the wound on the back of his neck. “I’m starting to get grey hairs from all the stress.” 

Mitsuba just sinks deeper into the car seat, too tired to even respond.

“I can’t tell if I’ve got the most unfortunate kid ever,” Yukie continues, like she can tell silence is the last thing Mitsuba needs. “Or if you’re actually lucky for getting out of all these situations alive.” She turns her attention back to the road, steering off down a dimly-lit sidestreet.

Lucky is something Mitsuba has heard more times than he can count over the past few hours.

Lucky that the bushes below were enough to break the worst of their fall. Lucky that the shower of rubble and dirt and rusted metal hadn’t cut deep enough to need anything more than a few stitches and a tetanus jab. Lucky that Yokoo and Satou had heard them fall and called an ambulance with no time to waste. (Lucky to be alive at all.)

But, bruised and aching all over, Mitsuba doesn’t feel lucky in the slightest.

-

He doesn’t think about Kou. Easier said than done, when there’s pieces of him scattered all around Mitsuba’s room. Photos and post-its and plushies that all get left behind as he leans on his crutches and packages his whole life into five neat boxes.

He doesn’t think about Kou, because he doesn’t know how to face him. When he gets a new phone to replace the one that shattered on hard concrete beneath the balcony, his mom is the only person he gives his number to.

If he doesn’t know how to face Kou, then Mitsuba just has to avoid him instead.

(He stares at the half-healed wound on the back of his neck in the bathroom mirror, and his reflection calls him a coward. A sure truth, that no amount of magic could fix.)

And, when he finally stands in an unfamiliar city with a scarf around his neck and a camera in his hands, Mitsuba tells himself that his world is only just beginning.

( So- the city asks in response- why do you feel like it’s ending instead?)

[February 15th: the beginning]

Five years later, Mitsuba is starving.

Working for a top magazine publishing company has its perks, but the long hours and frequent bouts of overtime are not one of them. It’s freezing, he hasn’t eaten since lunch time, and he thinks he might just pass out from hunger if tries to catch the train home before eating dinner.

To make matters worse, his phone died two hours ago and he’s hopelessly lost- resorting to wandering beside the train lines in search of food or some sort of recognisable landmark. All around him, the sleepless city seems to be laughing down at him. (Mitsuba doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the height of the buildings, the brightness of the lights. He misses being able to look up and see the stars overhead.)

He trips over a loose paving stone, considers lying face-down on the street and waiting for someone to take pity on him- and then Mitsuba spots the restaurant.

It’s sandwiched at an intersection between the train lines, with a tacky sign out front and glow-in-the-dark stars plastered all over the entrance. A small, quaint little place that Mitsuba has never seen before- called the Halfway Station.

Mitsuba shrugs, pushes open the door, and steps inside.

(Weeks later; Nanamine Sakura will tell him about infinity, Ouroboros, the halfway station between beginning and end. Nothing comes to its conclusion without a second chance waiting in the wings, ready to be taken.

Now; a pair of familiar blue eyes meet Mitsuba’s own across the restaurant, and everything begins.)