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Tooru’s first real memory is Iwaizumi. Not the kind of memory that fleshes itself out as people tell you over and over again that it happened until your brain fills in the gaps and makes the time real. Not the kind of memory that is flashes of images and flickers of emotions, and the scent of baking bread that reminds you of sadness for a reason you don’t understand.
No, Tooru’s first memory is when Iwaizumi nearly let him drown.
He had run away from home again. The why and the how are a bit fuzzy, but his feet had pounded the pavement as hard as his little legs had allowed. His face was wet with tears and he remembers the anger, building in his chest and curling his fingers into fists.
He had done this before, the running out the door when no one was watching, but he always turned home when no one chased him down. Not this time. This time, he was going to run forever.
Forever lasted as long as the water. Now, with many years of experience and life behind him, Tooru knows that the water his feet had brought him to was actually the small pond where Iwa-chan’s grandmother cared for her koi fish, but back then, it had been the ocean, stopping him in his tracks and stealing his breath away. The end of the world. He didn’t think he would make it, but he had.
And now, he had no way of getting home.
A flash of something in the water ignited the spark of curiosity that was always dormant within Tooru’s chest. He crept forward, afraid to scare away whatever might be in the depth. With his toes hanging over the edge, he peered in and—
“What are you doing?”
The voice startled Tooru and he jumped back, eyes landing on a boy who looked a lot like him, except his hair was darker and his eyes were smaller. No, not smaller—more focused. Intense.
A wave of shame washed over him, as though he had been caught doing something he knew he shouldn’t be. Instead of giving in, he dug his feet into the sand and let the waves roll through him. “I’m running away from home.”
The boy nodded, slowly, and then increasingly faster. “I don’t think living in the water is a good idea.”
“No?” Tooru asked, although that hadn’t once been his plan.
“No.” The boy moved to the water’s edge, crouching down and dragging his fingers across the surface. Carefully, as not to startle him, Tooru moved down beside him. As the boy disrupted the water with the lightest of touches, something orange fluttered below. Tooru gasped in joy, a small thrill rolling up his spine.
“What was that?!”
“Monsters,” the boy replied, deadly serious. Tooru giggled.
“There’s no such thing as monsters!”
Suddenly, the boy grabbed his hand, holding it so tight that his fingers began to all press together. “Yes,” the boy said, staring so deeply into Tooru’s eyes that he could see himself, and he wondered, for a second, if this is what happened right before two people became one. “There’s always monsters, if you look.”
With nothing else to do, Tooru looked. He yanked his hand back and turned to the water’s front. He stared and stared, but there was nothing, so he thought he would do what the boy had done. He reached his tiny fingers out, letting them brush the cool water underneath. Back and forth, creating ripples that only he, and the boy beside him, and the monster underneath could see.
And then—there it was! He had seen the brush of orange, and he leaned forward, eyes wide because it was so close, and maybe he could touch it, and maybe that could make it real and—
Cold. Everywhere. Silence. Everywhere. And when Tooru inhaled, there was nothing but the coolness rushing in.
His feet kicked and he reached, but there was nothing there but darkness and a flash of orange, retreating, retreating.
A hand, wrapping around his wrist and a pain, deep in his shoulders and he wanted to yell for the hand to let go because it hurt but then he inhaled and it was air, not water, and he was coughing up everything inside of him until he was empty.
When the world came back, Tooru was cold and wet and there was a face above him, staring down and dripping water onto his face.
“Did you see him?” Eyes, wide and deep like the secrets of the forest green, stared back into his. Slowly, Tooru nodded, and a smile split the boy into two.
The boy nodded and leaned back. Tooru sat up to follow him. He was still smiling, but it was one that Tooru wasn’t sure he was allowed to see. Unsure of what followed next, he did the only thing he knew how to do. “It was huge!” He gasped, spreading out his arms. “Almost as big as me! No, bigger! The size of—of my Dad! And he was orange and green and purple too, and he looked at me, and he was going to talk to me too, I think, but I don’t speak monster—”
He cut himself off. The boy had stopped smiling and was now looking at him with his eyebrows low on his face. “I think you should go home now,” he said, and something that felt a lot like disappointment sunk in Tooru’s chest. The boy stood, and Tooru followed. “Gigi can help you home.” He pointed towards a house Tooru hadn’t even known was there, and together, they began walking that way.
Memories are strange, because Tooru doesn’t remember what happens next, and he’s too scared to ask Iwaizumi in case it’s not the same, but he does remember being in bed that night and staring, in the light of his Neptune nightlight, at a beaded bracelet in his hand, composed of beads with painted on symbols that when he asked his mom, she told him spelled Hajime.
2
Iwa-chan will tell him he doesn’t believe in fate, whenever Tooru asks. Not even when Tooru pulls out the bracelet, kanji long faded or erased. Iwaizumi stares for so long Tooru wonders if he remembers, if maybe he had fabricated or embellished the story with dreams of time, but then his voice breaks through the tension and Tooru finally breaths. “I can’t believe you kept that.”
He curls the bracelet in his fist, now much too small for his wrist, and presses it against his chest. “Of course I have!” He teases, pulling his lips into a pout he knows is cute. “It’s the first present Iwa-chan gave me! From the day we met!”
Iwaizumi frowns at the nickname—like he always does, as if he doesn’t love it—and tsks with his tongue. “You nearly drowned that day.”
“But you saved me.”
Despite the years between them, Iwaizumi still doesn’t understand how true those words ring.
It was his first day of school and he was in his yellow raincoat he loved so much and he was ready to sprint and play and run.
He let go of his mother’s hand in a quick goodbye and he ran toward all the other kids, but he was too excited, and he didn’t see the body in front of him. Instead of swerving around, he screeched to halt because despite having only seen those eyes once before, he knew them.
“Hajime!” he yelled and threw his arms around the other boy’s neck.
He didn’t even get to enjoy the warmth of a hug before the boy was pushing him back. “What are you doing here?” the boy asked, a frown on his face. “I thought you went home.”
“I did!” Tooru pointed back towards his mother, but she had already left. With a shrug, he turned back. “And now I’m going to school so I never have to go home again if I don’t want to.”
And he hadn’t said anything funny, but Hajime laughed, so bright that it caused Tooru to blink. “You still have to go home!” Hajime replied, and then they were both laughing, and when Tooru grabbed Hajime’s hand, he didn’t pull away. Instead, his fingers clasped around his, and they walked together, as if they had done this every day, as if they had known each other for years, as if there was nothing else they would rather be doing.
It was so easy back then, Tooru thinks with a sigh, his eyes sliding over to his best friend, like they always do. Like instead of being the sun, Iwa-chan is the moon, and Tooru is nothing more than a moth. He doesn’t know what he likes better: when Iwa catches him, either with a smile or a bemused frown, or when he doesn’t, and Tooru can absorb the curves of his jaw, the point of his nose, the way the world shines through his eyes.
He wishes it could be like then again: where Tooru could reach over and wrap their fingers together and never let go. Because they hadn’t that day. That day, when they were kids and Tooru wanted nothing more than to be free, he had held Iwa-chan’s (or Hajime, as he had called him until his mother scolded him and told him how embarrassing that could be) hand as they took their seats and at lunch and on the way home, when he convinced Mom it was okay to bring his new friend with him.
He wonders, briefly, what Iwa would do if he took his hand now. Would he let him, or would he pull away, or would he bring their hands to his lips like Tooru so desperately wanted him to do?
Tooru slides his face against his hand, letting the heel of his palm smush his cheek into his eye. “Iwa-chan?” he asks, waiting for those forest eyes to meet his own. “Do you like me?”
Iwaizumi laughs.
3
“Do you like me?”
Tears should be able to create puddles, Tooru thought, instead of fall and disappear into the ground below. What did the ground need tears for? At least if they created puddles, then you would know you cried for something, that there was something there to show for it.
Iwaizumi blinked, and the tears clutch onto his eyelashes. Tooru had known Iwaizumi for over five years now, and this was the first time he had seen him cry.
While Tooru knew that a good cry was all you needed to get what you want, Iwaizumi was stubborn, hoarding his tears away for a day he would really need them. A day like today, where electricity stings in the air and the dark clouds roll above them, waiting for their signal to burst.
The wind picked up, pushing Iwaizumi’s hair across his temples and cheeks.
He was waiting, as tears continued to drip, a broken faucet rather than a flowing stream. At least, Tooru thought, faucets can be fixed. At least he might be able to find the right tools.
“Iwa-chan,” Tooru answered, voice as soft as he dared to let it be. “Of course I do.”
He didn’t dare touch him. Sometime between then and now, Iwaizumi had shied away from his touch. Tooru figured that is what happens when you turn ten and start to sprout into men. He didn’t see many men hugging around him, or holding hands on TV, or putting their faces in that sweet curve where neck meets shoulder and always smells like grass and home and clean.
“If I didn’t like you,” Tooru continued, not understanding why his heart began to thump louder or why his palms had begun to sweat, “I wouldn’t be your friend.”
People always said how hard it was to make Iwaizumi laugh. Girls in their class would say the silliest (or dumbest) things, grinning amongst each other, and boys would make rude noises, and sometimes, but rarely, would Iwaizumi crack a tiny grin.
Those people were stupid.
It was easy to make Iwaizumi laugh, if you knew how.
Which is why it had been no surprise when, through the tears that both of them were pretending weren’t there, Iwaizumi let his grin grow and the sun pushed through the clouds and he laughed and Tooru felt the entire world crash down around them.
“You’re stupid,” he sniffled, his sleeve against his left eye as he pushed Tooru with his right hand.
“Guess that makes you stupid too,” Tooru answered, bringing his own sleeve against Iwaizumi’s other eye. He waited for the push-back but it didn’t come, “since you’re the one who sticks around with me, baaaaaaaaka.”
He blew a raspberry, and Iwaizumi laughed again, turning away from Tooru to wipe the rest of his face. “Gross.”
Tooru slung his arm around Iwa-chan’s shoulder, the only bit of affection he always seemed to be allowed.
He couldn’t remember if Iwaizumi had reached back, slinging his own arm around him so that they were linked as close as was acceptable for two men to be, but he liked to think he had. He liked to think that that was how they returned to school, or wherever it was they had been, and they had let the world stare and whisper because who cared. They had each other, and maybe that wasn’t a lot, but it was enough.
When Iwaizumi’s laughter dies, the ghost of a smile remains on his lips. “No,” he deadpans, and even though the question was entirely genuine, Tooru finds himself laughing along. “I just hang around you because you’re that much fun.”
“Mean Iwa. Didn’t your mother tell you to be nice?”
Iwaizumi spins to fully face Tooru, legs crossed and hands folded in his lap. “She’s more of the ‘punch them and run fast as you can’ type.”
“Ah, that explains so much.”
They share their secret smile that to anyone else would probably look like an involuntary facial flinch. From years of looking, Tooru prizes himself from knowing one flinch from another. A flinch between the eyes: irritation. Left eye: glee. Right eye: anger. Around the lips: the pull of sadness.
“Why do you ask?”
Tooru shuts his eyes and lets out a huff of air. A simple question that can only evoke confusing answers. Because I like you? Because I want you to like me? Because when I look at you, I don’t see Iwaizumi Hajime, but I see you, and I see me, and I don’t know what I’ll do when the day comes when I look at you and don’t see me at all. Or maybe, even worse, when I look at you and all I see is how you see me.
He sighs again, because he can. “Do you remember when you asked me that? Do you remember what I said?”
When an answer doesn’t come, Tooru opens his eyes. Iwaizumi is no longer looking at him, but the space behind him, where maybe they had once been or maybe they could someday be.
Instead of answering, Iwaizumi poses his own question, “Do you remember what I was asking?”
4
Tooru hated Kageyama Tobio and the entire world knew it. He hated his wide, glowing face with those cheeks so round and high it looks like someone had drawn them on. He hated the noise the ball made when it slapped against Kageyama’s hand, as though it had been waiting for him the entire time. But most of all, he hated the way the kid followed him around with starry eyes, repeating “Oikawa-senpai, Oikawa-senpai.”
Most of his memories of middle school blur into one, especially when it comes to Tobio, but there was one that stands out, shimmering in the past and making all others look dull. Like most of his memories, this one isn’t really about Tobio at all.
Tooru missed the ball and he groaned in a mixture of annoyance and embarrassment as its bounce echoed throughout the gym. He grabbed another ball and tossed it high. This time, he made contact, and the ball soared—right into the net. Another groan, this one louder and aggressive enough to make Tooru pull at his hair until it stung at the roots.
He should have said yes to Tobio when he had asked, all innocent and eager, if Tooru wanted to toss balls with him.
“No,” Tooru had said, barely sparring him a glance. He hated looking at Tobio the most, because the raw determination in his eyes was a fire that he knew would only burn him. While Tooru’s fire was steady and stable in its hearth, the one in Tobio’s eyes was a forest blaze that didn’t even know yet what it was capable of.
“Why don’t you go play with someone of your own skill level,” Tooru had continued, choosing to be cruel just because he could, “I heard the grade schoolers are looking for a setter.”
The satisfaction of his insult was short-lived. A tongue clicked behind him, right by his left shoulder, and Tooru had spun around, but he hadn't had to because he would know that sound everywhere. Something dark twisted in his stomach as the frown on Iwaizumi's face. It was a frown of disappointment, one Tooru had seen before, but never towards him.
"Kageyama-kun, I think Shinji was looking for someone to toss with him," Iwaizumi said, entirely ignoring Tooru's existence. Tobio's eyes widened and the two of them ran off like old chums, leaving Tooru alone, smacking at volleyballs that refused to land.
“You’re a real dick, Shittykawa.”
The voice messed up his jump (on purpose, he was sure) so his hand swung at empty air. His feet landed with a slide, and he turned to flash the bright smile he was only just starting to learn the power of.
“Iwa-chan, you should watch your tongue. That kind of language is unbecoming for someone like you.”
The problem with Iwaizumi was that he knew him too well.
“And what you said to Kageyama-kun wasn’t?”
Tooru shrugged, picking up the ball that rolled around his feet. “He deserves it.”
“What has he done to you?”
There were many reasons Tooru kept Iwaizumi by his side for all of these years. He was thoughtful, but he wasn’t sentimental, and he was kind, but he was never nice, and he didn’t let Tooru push him around, even when he tried his hardest too. In fact, the older they became, the more Tooru was starting to realize that maybe he wasn’t the fearless leader he had thought himself to be; maybe, just maybe, he was comfortable following exactly one step behind.
Up until this moment, he thought Iwaizumi had gotten that. He thought that when they were together, he didn’t have to say anything because Iwa-chan already knew. So how could he not know this?
The flames in his chest threatened the hearth with the promise that they could burn it all down.
Tooru stormed over, getting much closer than he needed to be. “What has he done to me?! He’s an annoying brat who—just look at him! Everything about him is an offence against me!”
Iwaizumi frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. Another flame of anger enveloped Tooru: why wasn’t he on his side?
“Is it such a bad thing for someone to want to be like you?” Iwaizumi snapped back, and something inside Tooru broke.
Because yes, it was. Yes, it was probably the worst thing for anyone to be like Tooru, for anyone to ever want to be like him, because Tooru was Tooru and nothing else. Tooru is the water crashing against rocks in the flowing river, and he is irreversible and beautiful and too threatening for most to care, and when most people think he needs a dam, all he really needs is someone to ride the stream to the end. If Tooru is a stream, then Kageyama leads into the ocean, and that’s the real problem: who is going to want to deal with the calamity of the river when the ocean is right there?
If someone was to be like Tooru, then what does he have that would make Iwaizumi stay?
So Tooru pushed him, a shove at the shoulders that wasn’t meant to hurt but was meant to make him stop. Iwaizumi blinked, then shoved Tooru right back, causing his feet to stumble.
“Stop being such an asshole!”
“Then—then you stop being such a Kageyama sympathizer!”
And that was when everything fell into shambles.
Tooru’s memory weakens here, and he’s not sure if he grabbed Iwaizumi’s hair first, or if Iwaizumi’s fingers curled into his shirt first, or if maybe they grabbed for each other at the exact same moment, knowing that that was what the other was about to do. But Tooru pulled, and Iwaizumi pulled back, and they pushed and yanked and yelled things at each other that neither truly meant. Iwaizumi punched his fist into Tooru’s abdomen, and Tooru responded by shoving his hand into Iwaizumi’s face and pushing, until Iwaizumi bit down on his palm and Tooru kicked at his knees.
As quickly as it started, it ended, with pushes and shoves growing weaker as their breathing increased until both of them were lying on the gymnasium floor, side-by-side, staring up at the burning ceiling lights.
“You’re a jerk,” Tooru said.
“You’re worse,” Iwaizumi replied.
Slowly, Tooru’s pinkie finger crawled along the floor until he found the curve of another hand. He brushed his pinkie along it once, twice, and then the hand curled into his, and their fingers laced together, as easy and naturally as anything. Tooru exhaled, slow and long and beside him, Iwaizumi did the same.
No matter where they were or what they did, somehow, Tooru always found his hand in his.
Tooru wants to turn Iwaizumi’s head. All it would take is a couple of fingers against his chin, and then Iwa-chan’s eyes would meet his own, and then he could see all the secrets of his universe in there, and they wouldn’t have to say anything at all.
But Iwa’s not looking his way, and he doesn’t know if he deserves to touch him.
He loves touching Iwaizumi. The brush of their hands is enough to light sparks all along his skin. He wonders if he feels it too; he wonders if he knows.
Tooru licks his lips. “You were asking--- you were---”
He tries again, but it’s harder with Iwaizumi looking over him and not into him. Iwaizumi was always the one to make Tooru brave.
“You were asking the same thing I was.”
Iwaizumi’s eyes meet his, and Tooru explodes into fireworks so bright he doesn’t think there will ever be darkness again.
5
The embarrassing part about all of this is that even memories that shouldn’t involve Iwaizumi do.
Tooru learnt he was attractive when he was thirteen and received his first confession. It was also the worst confession, not because the girl wasn’t sweet enough or cute enough, but because as soon as she had stuttered out that she liked him, Tooru had caught Iwaizumi rounding around the corner and had waved to him, his entire face brightening up before he stuck out his tongue and pulled down his eyelid.
He didn’t quite remember, but he’s pretty sure the girl ran off with tears in her eyes and he had felt bad enough to chase after her, but he already couldn’t remember her name.
That was the first one, but it was nowhere near the last one.
By his second year of high school, Tooru had become a pro at rejection. The key was to smile softly and use a gentle voice that wasn’t cloying and to explain, simply and easily, that she was a nice girl and you liked her lots but you didn’t have time for commitment.
Or, alternately, you could just be a flirt.
Either worked fine.
Despite the numerous confessions, it wasn’t until November of his second year that Tooru experienced his first kiss.
It was stupid Hanamaki, making some comment after Tooru complained of yet another confession letter, that he should just date one of them and “get it over with.” Tooru hadn’t missed the way Iwaizumi’s eyes had slid away.
So, when he met the girl by the large tree out behind the school, for once, Tooru said yes.
So, when they went on a date that following Saturday, Tooru smiled and laughed and looked at her in a way that he hoped made her insides melt.
So, Tooru ignored his empty phone, void of replies no matter how many stupid pictures and messages of Iwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa :( he sent.
So, when Tooru told Iwaizumi he was going to be at the park later that day, it might not have been a mistake.
Rika-chan giggled as they walked, but when she went to grab his hand, he tucked it in his pockets. This was their third date, and he knew what he had to do. It would be best to get it over with now, so that he could tell Hanamaki and the others with a smirk that didn’t quite feel real that he had kissed a girl before all of them.
It wasn’t a big deal. It was just a kiss.
Rika pulled him aside first, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket, pulling him deep into the bush, despite the falling and dead leaves. It was cold, but not quite enough for Tooru to see his breath. She didn’t let go of his sleeve when she turned to him. Her eyes flickered shut, dark trails of eyelash against her cheek.
And Tooru kissed her.
Her lips were soft and it was surprisingly wet and all it was was a bit of pressure of soft skin against his, and it wasn’t bad, and he supposed he liked it enough, until he pulled away and his heart dropped into a pile of spikes at his feet.
Forest green eyes, staring back at him from just beyond Rika’s head. He didn’t look sad. He didn’t look disappointed. He looked like someone accepting the fate they had been told they had.
“Sorry,” Tooru mumbled. He tried to move past her, just to reach him for a second, because for the first time that Tooru could remember, he didn’t know how to read that look in Iwaizumi’s eyes.
Rika’s hand tightened in his jacket. “Oikawa-kun?”
“I—” He turned to her and tried to smile, but he didn’t think it was coming out right. “I’m sorry, Rika-chan.” And he probably said something about wrong timing, and how she was sweet, and how he was thankful, but that was just his mouth moving. His mind was already miles away.
And Rika, being nicer than she needed to be, let him go.
“Iwaizumi!” He pushed through the branches, flinching as one scratched his cheek, but he didn’t have time to worry about that, because his friend was getting further and further away, and for some reason, Tooru felt like if he didn’t find him now, he never would.
“Iwa-chan!”
He saw his back muscles tense, but Iwaizumi kept walking. Tooru sprinted.
“Hajime!”
His fingers wrapped around his bicep, and Iwaizumi spun towards him. Tooru didn’t know where they were anymore, but he knew he wasn’t lost.
He took a second to catch his breath, but his heart refused to still. “You saw that?” Tooru finally asked. Iwaizumi trailed his eyes over his face then nodded.
“Was that your first kiss, then?”
Right then, with Iwaizumi’s eyes burring so deep into his skin that he was afraid that Iwa-chan was seeing everything Tooru didn’t know how to say, something clicked into place.
Tooru licked his lips and his head gave the subtlest of shakes. “It didn’t count.”
Iwaizumi’s brows pulled together. “It didn’t count?”
“No.”
"How could that not count?"
Tooru placed the tips of his fingers against Iwaizumi’s jaw. His touch was so light he couldn’t feel more than the tickle of Iwaizumi’s skin, but that was all he needed to feel the way he sucked his breath in.
This time, Tooru closed his eyes first.
He waited, and he wondered, in those few precious seconds he had, if this was a mistake, if Iwaizumi was going to pull away, if this was the moment the universe imploded on itself and—
Soft skin. Rougher than he imagined, but still so incredibly soft, against his lips. Everything outside of Tooru melted away. All that existed, all that had ever been, was Iwaizumi, Iwaizumi Hajime, his Iwa-chan, and the way his fingers twisted into his hair as their lips parted and Tooru’s entire being was swept away.
They parted slowly, and Tooru wanted to keep his eyes shut so it would never end, but he had to make sure it was real. He blinked his eyes open, and the first thing he noticed was the blush that danced along Iwaizumi’s cheeks.
“That didn’t count either,” Tooru found himself saying, “and neither does this.”
And then he pulled him in again.
That was Tooru’s first kiss. And it was also his last.
“Iwa-chan.” His voice sounds whiny to his own ears, and he hates that. He hates how weak this boy makes him, and how vulnerable, and how he can just take his entire life, his entire experience, every single one of his goddamn memories and make them belong to them. Because even when he’s not there, it’s Hajime, Hajime, Hajime. Even the song of his heart beats him name.
Neither one of them are backing down, and he wonders who is going to break first. It’s a game they like to play, especially Iwaizumi, because Tooru never wins. Tooru just likes it because it means he can stare without being ashamed.
“Answer me.”
Iwaizumi licks his lips. Tooru waits.
+1
Oikawa has always been a terrible liar. This is something Hajime has known from the very first day, when Oikawa was sniffling in his living room, hair dripping wet, and trying to say that he didn’t have any parents to come and fetch him. He sees it nearly daily, the way Oikawa tries to hide what he thinks will hurt himself or others, like when he says he doesn’t like Kageyama despite teaching him everything he knows, or when he says that Iwaizumi is mean, or when he says that love is for the broken.
“It counted, didn’t it?” Iwaizumi says, flicking at one of his nails that is getting too long. Tooru’s eyes are deep pools that Hajime is afraid of falling into in case he forgets how to swim. It’s easier to avoid them, but he can’t help but dip his toes in. Even that little bit of water is enough to douse the fires burning up inside of him.
Oikawa blinks twice, fast. “What didn’t?” he says, but he doesn’t have to. Hajime has always been better at hiding it than him.
Hajime shatters the distance between them. He places his hands on Oikawa’s face and brushes his thumb across the sharp cheekbones. He sees Oikawa shiver, but their eyes don’t break. There is laboured breathing, but he’s not sure whose chest it’s coming from.
“It counted,” Hajime confirms and Oikawa, slowly, nods.
He’s close enough that he can see the tiny zit beneath his eye, and the hairs on his cheek, and he can nearly taste the desire between the two of them, the same one that has always been there and they always tried to call a different name.
Hajime licks his lips. “Tooru.” In that name, he says everything that hasn’t been said, all the words of yesterday, and today, and tomorrow, all in one promise of a breath as he whispers it again. “Tooru.”
When their lips meet, they know it does more than count. It’s a promise. It’s the start of yesterday.