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He was tired.
The kind of tired that buried its way deep into his bones and clouded his mind. Being exhausted wasn’t unusual for Yoshiki — at this point getting a full night’s sleep was a luxury. If it wasn’t his parents arguing, it was his stomach or dread over an upcoming exam keeping him up.
This felt different, though. He was standing in the small classroom he was all too familiar with, but he couldn’t remember the events of the day at all. Vaguely, he was aware of the fact that he was supposed to be waiting for Hikaru. He had told Yoshiki that he wanted to talk to him about something. Why they couldn’t just talk about it on the way home was a bit weird, but Hikaru probably had his reasons.
The sound of wooden classroom door sliding open pulled him from his hazy thoughts. Looking past his overgrown bangs, his eyes landed on the familiar face of his childhood friend. The orange light filtering through the large classroom windows reflected off Hikaru’s pale hair and skin and made him look as if he was a small sun of his own, lighting up the empty classroom for just the two of them. Yoshiki’s heart clenched painfully with something. He knew what that something was, but he wasn’t ready to acknowledge it.
No, he was perfectly fine with the way things were now. If he gave a name to it, if he acknowledged what it was, it felt as though a torrent of thoughts would suddenly burst from the levee of his skull and drown him. But that was just Yoshiki. A minor casualty. His real fear was what would happen to Hikaru. That he would be made the next target for every nosey housewife’s gossip. Yoshiki’s own family problems were already regular topics of conversation, so one more thing wouldn’t be much different from how it was now, but if it was Hikaru… Yoshiki wouldn’t be able to live with himself for subjecting him to that.
“Oh, yer here!”
Hikaru’s voice pulled him from his quickly spiraling thoughts. The big, goofy smile plastered on his face rivaled the sun itself in its radiance.
“Of course I am. Ya told me ta wait here, didn’t ya?”
“Well, yeah, but…” an unusually bashful expression crossed Hikaru’s face, “I jus’ thought, I dunno, maybe you’d get tired of waitin’ an’ head home… or somethin’.”
“Well, spit it out already. What’s so important that ya had ta say it here?”
Yoshiki watched as his friend approached him while he spoke.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get ta it.”
Hikaru seemed to be lacking some of his usual confidence. Seeing him fidget, rubbing the back of his neck as he spoke, made it feel like they were making up after a big fight or something.
“Jus’ hear me out, an’ don’t, uh… freak out or nothin’.”
Yoshiki didn’t miss how the other boy’s eyebrows momentarily knitted in worry as he moved closer, and his heart dropped. Did something happen? It sounded like whatever he was going to say next was pretty serious.
A breath. A pause.
“I’ve been thinkin’ fer a while now, that I— uh… that I really like hangin’ out with ya, and…”
A shaky exhale.
“Wait, lemme start over. Yer really smart, an’ ya make me laugh, and ya always kick my ass at Smash, an’…”
As Hikaru rambled and stumbled through his words, it felt like time was slowing down. The chorus of cicada screeches and the croaks of distant toads all faded into the background, like the whole world was being silenced just so he could hear what was coming next.
“…what I’m sayin’ is that I like ya, an’… an’ I want ya ta date me!”
By this point Hikaru’s face was completely red, a nervous sweat beading on his face.
This wasn’t good.
More than anything, Yoshiki knew that this small village would strangle every last breath out of them if he said yes. He knew it, but still, he wanted to be selfish.
“I— m-me too,” was all Yoshiki could respond with. His palms were clammy, soaked in sweat, and he couldn’t bring himself to make proper eye contact with the other boy.
“Then close yer eyes, an’ don’t open ‘em.”
“Huh? Uh— okay,” Yoshiki muttered and let his eyes slip shut for a moment. With all visual input suddenly cut, he was all the more aware of the pounding of his own heart.
It was probably just a second or two, but the wait seemed to stretch on forever. Yoshiki cracked an eye open, just enough to peek at Hikaru, his face scrunched up and his own eyes closed as he leaned in for a kiss. Yoshiki let his eyes slip shut again. Hikaru was close enough that he could smell the laundry detergent his mom used on his uniform, mixed with just a little bit of sweat. The anticipation of Hikaru’s soft, warm lips against his own had Yoshiki’s pulse fluttering.
But that warmth never came.
The cries of bugs and toads began to sound more and more like pouring rain, as the familiar scent of the boy in front of him gave way to the sickening smell of wet soil and rain. The lips against his own were cold and stiff.
Like he’d pressed them against a stone.
A stone.
A stone.
A stone?
Cracking his eyes open, he was faced with it again.
Hikaru, laid out in the wet grass. The bright orange of his jacket stood out even in the stormy night. His body was broken and twisted, skin sallow as the rain soaked the two of them.
Wasn’t he cold?
Yoshiki would have shrugged off his raincoat, if only to place another layer between Hikaru and the freezing rain, but he found himself unable to move.
Hikaru wasn’t moving, either.
.
Gasping for breath, soaked in a cold sweat, Yoshiki’s eyes snapped open. Rather than the ghastly image of his friend’s cold body, all he could see was the claustrophobic darkness of his room. He trembled in place. He could barely move his body enough to turn over. Weakly tapping the screen of his smartphone where it sat on his bed, charging next to a nearly empty blister pack of stomach medicine, he glanced at the time before curling in on himself.
He couldn’t stop the hot tears from pouring down his cheeks, his throat burning as he replayed every moment in his mind. Every moment he’d had to say what he really wanted to. He could have stopped him. He should have stopped him.
But he couldn’t, because he was a coward.