Work Text:
The true signature and perhaps even the miracle of human love
is helplessness, and all the more miraculous because it is a helplessness
which we wittingly or unwittingly choose.
—David Whyte, Consolations
Summer
If there was one thing Rin Matsuoka was good at, it was denial. Well, it was probably swimming, but he was pretty good at denial, too.
It is the summer of his third year at university, and Rin was presently denying three things. One, that it was actually winter—stupid hemispheres—where he sat driving away from the Nanase house as the sun set behind him. Two, that this was the happiest he had been in a long time. Three, that happy was all he was.
“Alright, spill.”
“What?” Rin stills his hands, suddenly aware he’d been drumming his fingers on the wheel.
“I know that face. That’s your thinking face. I know it because for someone who shouldn’t be allowed to think and drive, you sure pull that face a lot.”
“Fuck you.”
“Tell me what’s up and maybe I’ll let you.”
“Oh my god, Sousuke, I am going to pull over and let you walk the rest of the way home.”
“Hey, you were the one who instated our no-secrets policy.”
Rin keeps his eyes—pointedly—on the road, but a quick glance in the mirror told him Sousuke had his face turned towards him at the slightest angle, just enough to gauge his reactions. His gaze doesn’t waver.
“You’ll never believe what my professor said today.”
It’s the spring term of Sousuke’s first year at university, and it’s a testament to their friendship that Rin doesn’t miss a beat. “Is this one of your normal professors, or the one who teaches the creative writing elective you were forced to take because you enrolled the day before term started and whom you therefore resentfully imagine as Robin Williams from The Dead Poets’ Society?”
“Williams. Anyway, for our first assignment he said ‘your characters cannot, under any circumstances, say what they mean.’ What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I don’t know how to write that! Talking is so hard already, I’m not having conversations thinking about whether or not everything I say is true.”
The line goes quiet, then, and they both know they’re thinking about his shoulder.
Rin sighs. “I don’t know. I’m happy to see everyone, I really am. But every time I see any of you it’s like I’m confronted with the fact that all of this is a novelty. It’s so great because we can’t do it often, which sucks.”
The hot water stung, even through the Hangyodon cleaning gloves Rin had gotten Haru last Christmas. He’d announced he was washing the dishes with a huff after Nagisa had called him a babaa one too many times (which was once, but he was still a little tender from being made to watch Love Actually in front of the others— with the others—at Rei’s behest; apparently, his classmates in London would not shut up about it).
The truth was, they never did much, when they got together. But getting together at all this year had felt like a stroke of inconceivable luck. While some of them (Rin) had two months off, some of them (Rei) only had a couple of weeks, and still others (everyone else) had a measly week and a half.
It was an insane amount of pressure, albeit one that no one had imposed on Rin but himself. In a desperate bid to maximize their time, he’d ended up moderating the conversation and talking way too much about himself (“can you believe my friend Joe didn’t notice my teeth until after a semester of knowing each other?”). He’d asked weird questions (“what do you guys think is your most toxic trait?”) and accidentally insulted his friends when he’d meant to show genuine pride (“even Haru looks great now!”). He’d felt guilty about leaving to do the dishes, and guilty about staying to talk.
“When I’m alone, I can just… not expect things. Like, just because you and I used to see each other all the time doesn’t mean I can expect you to be constantly talking to me now, what with time zones and your busy schedule and you not being very good at texting.”
“Uh huh.”
“Sorry. Anyway, I know life doesn’t make narrative sense and I shouldn’t have all these expectations—I don’t know if those guys are forever,” are you forever? “It’s just sad when things inevitably fail to meet expectations.” When you do. When I do.
“True, but the nice thing about not having expectations is you can also be pleasantly surprised.”
A beat passes.
“Okay, now can you say the thing about life not making narrative sense again so I can record it? Because the irony of that coming from a literature major is fantastic.”
For the first time that week, Rin laughs, and there’s not a trace of melancholy in it.
Autumn
Rin’s phone glared at him, defying its dark mode setting, upturned on the dining table. Eight green bubbles clung to the right, each with a different time stamp, not a single grey one in sight.
“Dude, save some for the rest of us,” Khanh swatted Rin’s hand away from the ladle, just as he was about to spoon himself a third serving. “I get that Jess’ gamjatang is orgasmically good, but Jesus.”
Rin looked at his roommate. His hand was wrapped defensively around his bowl, which was near overflowing with side dishes—he had snatched a bit from each plate (including the two types of kimchi) before Rin could finish everything.
“Yeah, man,” chimed Kevin with his mouth full. “Don’t be a dick. Draw.”
Rin pulled a red card from the center of the table. “What do you need right now?” he read aloud. My stupid boyfriend to text me back. “More gamjatang, obviously.”
Since coming to Australia, these dinners had become a constant in Rin’s routine. He’d met his friends in his first year, in the cafeteria of his student accommodation, through a shared table at mealtimes. It had made him feel less alone in a year of otherwise insurmountable change, to have other international students who, for the most part, felt the same. Later that year, the six of them moved to share a student house, where they had since shared a communal kitchen and a rotating cooking schedule (though it was just the four of them tonight). Recently, the ritual had come to include a game of We’re Not Really Strangers, a gift Jess had received for Christmas.
Sousuke Yamazaki [21:35]
>sorry, nao-senpai was introducing me to one of his profs
“There he goes, getting all moony-eyed at his phone again.”
“When are my church aunties gonna find me someone like that?”
“For the last time, Khanh, leave him alone. And the answer is never, Kevin.”
He’d gotten up now, phone propped up on his desk. He starts pacing. “Do you know how many times I apologized for talking too much this week? Three times. In as many days.”
It had been four months since Rin left for Australia for the third time. He had been optimistic, when he left, that staying together would be a breeze. Just communicate, he’d thought. That’s how it goes.
From day one, he’d sent photos of campus, the people he’d met at orientation, fun facts from his earliest lectures. Later, the messages morphed into “Jess took me to eat Dutch pancakes,” “Sarah performed with the musical theater society,” and “Joe drove us out to see penguins.” He’d said, “let’s call,” the messages coming earlier and earlier in advance of the intended date. On this particular day, Sousuke had finally picked up, after three weeks of asking for a rain check.
“I never asked you to do that.”
“No, but when I’ve sent six long messages telling you about my day and you send back ‘oh, wow’ or ‘cool, nice’, all it does is scream that I’m too much. Too talkative. Too excitable. Too opinionated. I feel guilty about my personality.”
“Rin, I don’t mind it when you talk.”
“But you never talk back! It takes five, ten, fifteen follow-up questions to squeeze a measly amount of information from you!”
“Christ. What do you think I’m doing out here, Rin? Throwing knives? Secretly healing my shoulder with spiritual magic? I am out here slogging over the same stovetop for the same fucking customers every single day and doing nothing else. My life isn’t like yours—it’s boring, and I’m not busy, actually, I just have nothing to say! You think it’s easy living that while you’re off making new friends on another fucking continent? You think I don’t feel left behind?”
Rin’s vision blurs. He feels like he’d been slapped in the face.
“Fuck. I’m sorry, I—”
“I don’t care!” Rin’s shouting now. “I want to know! I want to know that you did your laundry, or burnt your eggs, or the old lady who always orders chawanmushi told you to keep the change. I want to know when you look up another university, or when you see your fucking doctor. Fuck. Isn’t that the whole point of—of sharing a life? Together?”
A beat passes. Rin turns to look at the screen again, and Sousuke’s expression is still pained, still remorseful, but the flash of anger was gone, and had been replaced with a looseness that looked—perhaps—like understanding.
“Rin—”
“I know,” Rin sobs. “I know lo—love—doesn’t just fall out of the sky. I know relationships take work. But,” he sniffs, “it shouldn’t have to be this hard.”
A sigh, tortured. “God, I wish I could hug you right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Rin hiccups, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I know you don’t like talking. That’s one of the reasons I’m always feeling like this—like I’m asking too much." Like I’m too much.
“Rin, you are not too much. I mean it.”
“It just—talking is all we have now.”
“I know. You’re right. I’ll do better.”
“But I don’t want you to feel like I’m forcing you.”
“You’re not. This is important. You’re important. If me talking more is what it takes for you to feel loved, then that’s what I have to do.”
Rin snorts. The corners of his mouth turn upwards, against his will. “I wouldn’t hurt for you to tell me that more often, either.”
“Stop apologizing for talking to me and it’s a deal.”
“Done.”
Rin hadn’t even finished chewing when he locked himself in his room to open the message.
Rin Matsuoka [21:36]
Yeah? How was it?
Sousuke Yamazaki
> great, nao-senpai really wanted me to meet her because she was the one who arranged some work placements for him
What did she say?
> well there are a couple options
> she works as a physiotherapist and researcher at the college clinic but also runs a volunteer-based program at the local high school
> so i can work with kids again or maybe some older people
!!!
> if i can shadow people at the clinic i’ll do that, since i’ve sort of worked with high schoolers before and it’d be nice to broaden my experience
> also not to go off topic but i finished the invisible hand, i can’t believe you made me read a romance that was also an economics lecture
> anyway i’m really out of the books you lent me now so i might reread some trashy YA
> should i read the maze runner or i am no4
Sousuke Yamazaki [01:25]
>ok i will take the uncharacteristic silence to mean ur asleep
>good night
>love you
Winter
Rin was seconds away from giving up. It was four in the afternoon on a Saturday, and the stationery store was about to close. The air was oppressive, the floor-to-ceiling shelves overflowing with colored paper and ribbons, the rotating shelves cramming him into corners, though he was the only customer there. Long shadows, cast through the two glass walls.
Sighing, Rin shifted so his shopping bags slid down to the crooks of his arms. It was his turn to make dinner tomorrow, so he’d commuted to the Asian supermarket across town for supplies. Since the stationery store was at the train station, he’d thought to stop by on his way home.
He had not anticipated staying at the supermarket for more than an hour, on account of offering to translate for an elderly woman he found haltingly attempting to describe her request, repeating the word yamaimo, to the politely confused Indonesian couple who owned the store. Her delight at finding someone who spoke her language was so palpable, Rin hadn’t been able to tear himself away when she began chatting with him outside (she had immigrated from Miyagi, and her son, after several years of working abroad, was finally coming home; she had wanted the yamaimo to make his childhood favorite: tororo steak).
He hadn’t wanted to tear himself away. Listening to her talk, Rin had felt a strange but not unpleasant pang of homesickness—the elderly neighbors had known him, growing up, too.
Now, though, he was impatient. He’d spent the last hour staring at rows upon rows of greeting cards, none of which seemed right for his purposes. They were either too cliched, (“you’re JAWsome”), too nice (‘you’re FINtastic”), or just flat out wrong (“let’s get hammered!” said by a hammer-head shark).
“Excuse me, sir?” said the girl at the counter. “We’re closing in five minutes. Can I help you with anything?”
Rin considered the two options in his hands. One, he wasn’t sure Sousuke would get; the other, a little too vulnerable for his liking.
“I’ll take both of these.”
“Is that tororo steak?”
Into a bowl, Rin cracked two eggs, diced spring onions and chili peppers, and the sticky paste of grated mountain yam.
“Ah, yeah, talking to the lady at the store yesterday made me want to make some. I figured the guys might not like it for dinner, so lunch it is. How did you know?”
“Hey, just because I suck at cooking doesn’t mean I haven’t eaten stuff. I know what goes in food!”
“What goes in food, Makoto?”
“Uh, more food?” Rin could practically see the cartoon drops of sweat materializing at his temple. Makoto laughs sheepishly. “Ah, Haru is always saying I should learn how to cook, so I’ve been… watching some cooking programs.”
“Watching cooking programs? What about actually cooking?”
“Well, I’m calling you from my not-burnt-down apartment, aren’t I?”
They both laugh at that.
Rin takes the stone plate off the stove. He pours in the mixture, stirring it lightly with his chopsticks. It sets, piping hot, and he tops it off with bonito flakes.
“Speaking of the fish-brain, how is he, anyway?”
“Oh,” Makoto averts his eyes, blowing on his tea. “You know. Good.”
“Makoto,” Rin presses. “You don’t have to do that. What’s up?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, really. It’s just that he’s away for another three weeks to train, and I get all… you know.”
“Lonely? Sad? Insecure? All of the above, despite your perfectly active social and academic life, and the fact that Haru would probably die for you?”
“Yep. You get it.”
He did. An unfortunate side effect of the internet—and, he supposed, distance—was that in order to be spending time with people, one had to be talking. This was a problem when your personal ship dynamic could effectively be summarized as “loudmouth” and “listener.”
Makoto wasn’t a loudmouth, but everyone and their mother knew how Makoto and Haru walked—Makoto’s voice, talking endlessly about nothing, the equivalent of a comforting hand entwined with another (not that they didn’t do the other thing, too, the adorable bastards). In the last few years, Rin had found something of a kindred spirit in Makoto, his eager and attentive replies a refreshing change of pace from Sousuke’s sometimes unreadable calm.
It had been Makoto’s idea to start sending letters. If it was about quality time, and time meant communication, then they needed to find a way of communicating that was informative enough for Rin, but low effort enough for Sousuke. At the time, Makoto had meant emails, or long text messages, but Rin had taken his advice at face value and wrote a hand-written card. It was painted black, with a cartoon illustration of a shark saying, “don’t worry, I only eat shitty people.” He’d shoved it into Sousuke’s hands right before hopping on his flight back to Sydney the summer of his second year. I don’t want to watch you read it, he’d said. And you can’t contact me during the flight. No emotional repercussions.
Sousuke Yamazaki [07:01]
>i know for a fact that you eat other things ;)
>jk, thank you
>hope you got back ok
Rin Matsuoka [09:30]
🤮
Sousuke had mailed him back, at first, but they’d quickly discovered the letters took too long to ship. In the end, they’d reverted somewhat to Makoto’s original idea: the letters, exchanged weekly, were written by hand, sometimes on stationery as plain as copy paper, but were sent digitally as photographs. When able to meet in person, they would swap the physical copies of accumulated notes, each one filled with an anecdote, a musing, a book or movie review. Rin kept Sousuke’s letters in the top drawer of his bedside table. It was locked, not because he didn’t want people to read them, but because he couldn’t bear to lose them. It was poetic, he thought, to uphold their relationship with the practice where his own failure had separated them for years.
“Speaking of getting it, do you think Sousuke will get this?” Rin held up a card with a silhouette of a cartoon shark with a crown on its head. Emblazoned in white on its body were the words, “fin-king of you.” He didn’t show Makoto the other card. That was too embarrassing, even for Makoto.
“Is it… the king of fins? Because it’s a shark? I don’t know, Rin, you know I’m not the best at English.”
“It’s a pun. Like, thinking of you.”
“Ohhh,” Makoto nods sagely. “Yeah, if I didn’t get it, Sousuke definitely won’t, but it doesn’t matter, does it? He’ll love it anyway. He even wore that shirt you gave him.”
“Wait, what shirt?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t get him shirts with English on it knowing he won’t understand. He wore that one with the Nike logo except where Nike had been replaced with daddy, and just tolerated the awkward looks on campus until Kisumi told him what it meant. Even then, he didn’t bother changing out of it.”
Rin snorted. He remembered that one. Sousuke had sent him a photo of himself wearing it with the caption, “so… daddy, huh?” Rin had needed to get his phone screen replaced after that.
“Okay. Thanks, Makoto.”
They both know he’s not just talking about the card.
“Of course.”
Spring
Two weeks. That was how long Rin had to sell off the bulk of his furniture. He’d planned it out perfectly: graduation was in three weeks, so he’d wanted to get rid of as much stuff as possible before spending the last week packing (disorderly living spaces made him feel uncomfortably in-limbo, so he had wanted to organize his belongings properly). On his list: couch, desk, chair, floor lamp, vacuum, clothes rack. His Vitamix, he had decided to leave to Jess, who would be leaving the house last, and who had heroically taken up the task of being the one to sell his bed. Presently, he was struggling to find buyers for the couch, which, at $120, had yet to have any takers.
MatsuOK [13:57]
Yes it’s available
Pick up in Camperdown
yams0914 [14:08]
>$50
Rin swore.
“What happened?” Kevin looked up from where he sat, cross-legged in front of the floor fan, a video open on his phone and lunch in his mouth (white rice, fried eggs, and spam, served with sweet soy sauce). He crawled over to where Rin sat on the offending couch. “Give me your phone.”
MatsuOK [14:08]
If you want to fuck someone, here is not the place for it. You’d have better luck on Tinder.
Rin felt his jaw drop. “Fucking hell, why’d you have to go so hard on them? They’re never gonna buy the couch now.” He cringed. “Ugh, and you used a line, too. You couldn’t even be original?”
“You literally just used the same swear word at me,” Kevin replied. Rin was about to strangle him when he received a reply.
yams0914 [14:08]
>$20
Kevin smirked. “I think they like you.”
“I hate you.”
You have blocked yams0914.
Rin was helping Sarah shell the shrimp for her char kwey teow when the doorbell rang, barely audible over the hiss of the rice noodles Sarah had in the wok. Joe, who was decidedly less messy from only being in charge of chopping vegetables, volunteered to get it.
He had a strange look on his face when he returned, like he was trying not to laugh. “Hey, uh, I think you should go check on your room, man.”
“What?” Rin replied intelligently. He shook the poop shoot off his fingers and into the trash. “I’m covered in shrimp. Can it wait?”
Joe was really grinning now. “Nah, man, I think you really need to go.”
Sarah nudged him with her elbow. “Go,” she said. “Joe knows kwey teow. He can take over for you.”
Rin rolls his eyes, but acquiesces. “Fine, but he won’t do as good a job as I did.” He passes Kevin in the living room on his way, who wiggles his eyebrows at him. Weirdo.
Eager to get this over with, Rin wrenches his door open, half shouting, “What—”
“Shh, I’m reading.” Sousuke sits with his back against the wall, his side pressed to Rin’s bedside table. The bottom drawer stood slightly ajar, which explained the copy of Conversations with Friends he was currently thumbing through. “I’m only on the second page, but this is a lot better than I am Number Four.”
Sousuke grinned, dropping all pretense of focus. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Rin sputtered, still rooted to his spot. There he was, standing in front of him now. Rin could hardly believe it. “What are you doing here? I thought you were coming with everyone else in a couple of weeks—”
“Check the date.” November 23. Labor Thanksgiving Day. “I had a long weekend, so I thought I’d finally use my earnings from the restaurant and fly out early. It’d be nice to not have to share you for a bit.”
Rin noted the amusement in Sousuke’s voice, and the rising temperature in his own ears.
“You didn’t get my message?”
“What message?”
Sousuke held up his phone. It was the conversation he’d had with yams0914 about selling his couch.
“That was you?”
“I have to say, I was kind of impressed by how mad you got. I don’t think I’ll have to try Tinder, though, I got perfectly lucky already.”
Oh my god, he is so mouthy. Rin couldn’t decide if he was more embarrassed or thrilled. “Ugh, that was Kevin. I am never going to hear the end of it if he finds out it was you— don’t tell him.”
Rin could feel the glee radiating off of Sousuke’s face. “Maybe,” he says, but they both know he wasn’t going to.
Sousuke feels more that he hears Rin say—into his chest— “thank you.”
Rin wakes up feeling unspeakably warm. He is met with the dry heat of the approaching summer, even with the air conditioner whirring gently above him. Something heavy is draped across his side.
Still half asleep, Rin’s heart starts pounding until he realizes it’s Sousuke’s chest he’s pressed up against, Sousuke’s face resting between his shoulders. Rin pinches himself. It’s real, it’s real, it’s real.
He rolls around to face him. Sousuke is sound asleep, and probably wouldn’t be awake for a few hours. He looks so peaceful, and he is so close and warm and tangible, Rin can’t stop himself from gently brushing the hair away from his face. His chest feels so full it’s seconds away from bursting. He loves their calls, their text messages, their not-quite-letters—but nothing beats this. Not even close.
Rin wants badly to be lulled back to sleep like this, but it’s already half past eight and they have things to do, time to spend—together. He feels giddy at the thought. He brushes his lips lightly against Sousuke’s brow, and slips away.
“Where is everyone?”
“Good morning,” Rin says, setting the food on the table. Breakfast is scrambled eggs, toast, and two mugs of Sarah’s teh tarik. A pot of black coffee, in case Sousuke didn’t want the tea.
“They’re out. Doing things.” Sousuke gives him a look, and Rin sighs in mock reluctance. “I don’t know. Kevin won’t be up ‘til noon, Jess is probably at brunch, and I’m pretty sure Khanh didn’t come home last night. The others are either somewhere in Sydney or they ceased to exist because they stopped interacting with you.”
Sousuke doesn’t dignify his last sentence with a response. “I think they liked me.”
“No, they totally hate you for making me such a drama queen— don’t say I’m doing that on my own,” Rin points his fork at him. “But yeah, I think your first meeting went pretty well.”
It had gone better than that. In fact, it had far exceeded Rin’s expectations. He thanked the gods for Jess, who, as a member of the Arts and Sciences program, had taken Japanese as part of her degree (the program required students advance by three levels in a language). He still had to translate here and there, but he knew having her there must have lifted a huge weight off of Sousuke’s shoulders.
Rin had felt heady all throughout dinner. The collision of his two worlds felt like a surreal crossover episode of the teen dramas Nagisa had forced him to sit through years ago (he’d ended up liking them more than he cared to admit). Sousuke was finally eating his friends’ food, after three years of staring at the photos Rin sent of every meal. Sarah’s face had lit up when Sousuke had asked what was giving the kwey teow its rich, sweet-savory flavor, and had nodded knowingly when she said it was belachan (shrimp paste). The conversation devolved into a review of different rice noodles, and Rin had wanted to cry. Joe handed him a tissue under the table.
“So what are we doing today?” Sousuke bumps against him by the sink, and Rin is reminded of where they were almost a year ago. If it had been anyone else, he would have said guests shouldn’t have to do the dishes, but Sousuke wasn’t a guest in his life. He never had been.
“Some guys in white shirts and ties gave me some flyers on my way here yesterday. For some kind of musical? You like those, right?”
“The Book of Mormon?” Rin laughs. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s exactly your speed. The conservatory students usually have weekend concerts, though, maybe we can go to one of those. You like classical music, and we won’t have to talk for a few hours, wouldn’t you like that?”
“I can think of other ways we can not talk for a few hours.”
Rin could feel his face turn red. “Shut up,” he punches Sousuke lightly. “We could eat something. Maybe pavlova or lamingtons? Kangaroo?” Sousuke made a face. “Okay, not kangaroo. But there’s a patisserie downtown you might like.”
Rin puts away the last of the dishes. He is overwhelmed again by how close they are, by Sousuke’s breadth and height and body heat, by the way he has to tilt his head slightly to look at this person in front of him—a flesh and bones and blood person, not just a screen.
“Okay. I trust you.” Sousuke holds his face in both hands, and closes the gap. Rin feels long fingers run through his hair, tugging gently, and there's a jolt of electricity running down his spine.
“So, are we going?” Rin pulls away, dazed.
He feels a hum vibrate against the crook of his neck. “Later.”
They don’t end up going to the concert, because there isn’t one. Instead, they watch the violinists busking on campus (Sousuke identifies the piece as Bach’s andante from Sonata No.2; they linger a little longer when the buskers start playing the Mii Channel song). They stop by the library, and Sousuke is impressed to find that some of the books had been purchased from Kinokuniya, a popular bookstore chain back home.
Later, Sousuke opts for the modest lamingtons, but Rin gets distracted by the cherry sponge cake decorated to look like a miniature castle. He denies it when Sousuke accuses him of wanting a picture, but then Sousuke leaves to use the bathroom—without really needing to, Rin suspects—so he seizes the opportunity, but makes a point of planting his phone face-down on the table when Sousuke returns. He hears Sousuke laugh quietly under his breath when he sees it, and feels his cheeks grow warm.
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You call that not saying anything?"
When Sousuke dissects the lamingtons’ flavor profile, though, he listens anyway.
Rin was nervous. They were home, and Sousuke was in his bed. He was wearing one of the first stupid shirts Rin had gotten him, now faded from many, many washes. In his hands was the copy of Conversations with Friends he’d perused the night before.
Something in his chest constricts at the memory of Sousuke reading on his floor—even after a ten-hour flight, he’d remembered Rin’s rule that outside clothes never touched the bed. He takes in the sight in front of him again—home, huh?—and steels himself. Here goes nothing.
“Mind if I borrow you for a sec?”
“Can’t borrow something that’s yours.”
Rin opens his mouth to chide him for being difficult, but the look on Sousuke’s face is so sincere, he decides against it. Sitting across from him, Rin slides the box and envelope towards Sousuke. “Happy belated birthday.”
Rin is sure Sousuke can hear his heart racing, because he takes the box gingerly in his hands and begins unwrapping it immediately. It feels like an eternity, despite the way Rin’s eyes told him that Sousuke was tearing through the paper. He lifts the lid.
A key, to the apartment the National Team had found when they’d signed him.
“It’s in Tokyo,” he starts, before Sousuke could say anything. “Right by your university. It’s fifteen minutes away from your current place, so you won’t even have to move all that far—if you want to, I mean—you could probably use it as a spare key or something if you don’t, although I’d much rather you— wait, are you crying?”
“No, no,” Sousuke blinks. His eyes betray him. “I mean, yes. Yes, of course I’ll move in with you.”
Sousuke covers Rin’s hand with his own. Through his own tears, Rin sees him use his other hand to pull out the card he’d gotten all those months ago.
Sousuke takes a moment to read it, stare at the front cover, and process the words printed there. He looks up, watery eyes full of affection and promise, and Rin knows: it’s the happiest they’ve been in a long time.
Sousuke smiles. “I chews you, too.”
That’s the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that.
On purpose. I love him on purpose.
—Casey McQuiston