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It’s summer. Blindingly bright and chokingly humid with an army of cicadas chirping up a storm. Touya stumbles through empty country roads, barely conscious as another heatwave hits him square in the face, barrelling into him with the force of a wildfire. He sputters out a cough as hot air fills in all the empty spaces inside his lungs.
He could melt like this. The flesh on his bones could slough away like mud down the mountainside, cascading into the void from which nothing escapes. His neck, dripping with sweat, has peeled under the unforgiving scorch of the summer sun. He’s tired, hungry, and sunburnt. Whose bright idea was it to traverse through the countryside in the height of summer?
People gawk as he wanders aimlessly around town. They take in his tired eyes, perpetual scowl, hunched posture, and they think — that’s an outsider. It doesn’t help that he’s wearing a yukata that looks like it’s from the nineteenth century, all thick cotton and sturdy straps baking him like a fresh-caught salmon in the heat. But fuck, do they have to whisper so loudly? He knows he doesn’t belong.
Touya breathes out slowly, the air hissing through his teeth as he searches for some back alley to hide away in. He’s been travelling for what feels like centuries, jumping from train to train and hitching rides on fishing boats until he ended up here, in some nameless Hokkaido town right next to the ocean. After miles of walking to find a place to call home, the soles of his shoes are terribly worn out; he can feel pebbles stabbing his feet with each step. And yet, he still hasn’t found anywhere to rest his weary bones.
Maybe he never will. A creature like him could be cursed to wander the earth for decades, always putting one step in front of the other with no rest or reprieve. It’d be a fitting fate, what with that perpetual heaviness sitting atop his lungs.
Or, the more likely scenario is that he’ll rack up debts and bum around town for a few days before moving on to the next one like a comet in perpetual motion. He doesn’t have much cash left, just a few crumpled bills and loose coins shoved deep into his pockets next to the lint. Once he runs out, he’ll have to pack up and flee.
The minutes continue to tick by. A local high school displays a giant clock above its entrance that reads 7:00. Touya squints up at the sky, lips pursed at the blazing ball of fire that drips red like a bloody egg. It should be evening — it is evening — but the goddamn sun continues to shine brighter than high noon. Which means, unfortunately for him, townsfolk are still out and about, eager to make the most of their daylight hours despite the humidity. Just his luck.
At this rate, he’d be better off checking into a hotel, if those even exist in no-name farm towns. Or, if he’s feeling especially bold, he could knock on one of the doors and beg for help. But probably not.
Listless, Touya ambles past rice paddies and corn fields. The humidity hits him like a sucker punch to the face, and his entire body slumps with absolute dejection. The sea to the east continues to pump moisture into the air as if it weren’t already saturated to a suffocating extent.
He had wanted to escape the city and shake off the chains of his traditional family, but is this shit really any better? Flat farmland as far as the eye can see, and the scent of sweet corn drifting through the air? Well. It’s not like he has anywhere better to be.
“Hey, you!”
Touya stops in the middle of the road and swivels his head around to find the source of the noise.
“Yeah, you!”
Confused, he squints at a figure in the distance. He can just barely make out the shape of a girl sitting on a veranda, swinging her legs.
He points to himself and mouths, “Me?”
You wave your arms, nodding emphatically. “Yeah! Do you see anyone else here?”
Touya looks around, slightly stupefied at the unexpected turn of events. Farmers are weaving through corn fields, but he is alone on the road. He turns back to you, still squinting. Still cautious.
“C’mere!” you shout.
Against his better judgement, Touya veers off the path to approach the house, cutting across the grass and stumbling over hidden grooves in the dirt. By the time he’s standing in front of you, he’s mostly relieved he didn’t trip and fall flat on his face.
“I’m here. Now, what do you want?” He fixes you with a scowl, brows furrowed and nose scrunched with the ghost of a pout on his lips. It’s an attempt at being threatening, but you only pop another slice of cool, juicy watermelon into your mouth and tilt your head at him as if appraising a harmless little animal.
“You’re not from around here,” you declare while chewing. No manners, he notes with disdain.
“Where’s ’here’?”
“Setana. We're a small town, so we don’t usually get many visitors. Where’re ya from?”
“I don’t have to answer that.”
Naturally, he’s cagey. He doesn’t know you; you’re just some snot-nosed kid butting into his business, and said business is a closely guarded secret. Who knows what would happen if you figured out his identity? The Todoroki name is known far and wide thanks to his fucking father.
“Well,” you say, smacking your lips annoyingly. “You must’ve come a long way.”
Touya slaps on a frown and stands up straighter, if only to cast a long shadow over your form. “What makes you think that?”
“I mean, it’s kinda obvious.” You nod your chin at his mismatched attire and beat-up running shoes, the whites of them dyed brown with dirt. “You look like a runaway noh actor. Couldn’t shell out for a new pair?”
“Shut up,” he snaps. He shuffles in place, but there’s no hiding his feet.
You take another big bite of watermelon as you stare at him with giant, curious eyes. Those goddamn eyes study him like an insect under a microscope, and it makes Touya’s skin break out in goosebumps.
He’s forced to avert his gaze; he never was one for staring contests. Instead, he locks in on the plate of watermelon next to you, where three slices remain. He can smell the fresh scent of it from where he stands. Unbidden, his mouth begins to water.
Seeing his unwavering gaze on the fruit, you offer him the plate. “Want a piece?”
“No.” But at that exact moment, his traitorous stomach makes it known that he hasn’t eaten since morning. It growls, and Touya’s cheeks, already reddened from the sun, turn an even darker shade of pink.
“Are you sure?” you ask hesitantly. “You seem kinda… hungry.”
“Shut the hell up.” He snatches a slice from the plate and shoves the thing into his mouth, jaw practically unhinging with how desperate he is for a morsel of food. The sweet relief of watermelon juices floods his tongue and quenches his parched throat like rain after a drought. Red liquid travels from his palm down his wrist and soaks into his sleeve, with some dribbling from his chin onto the ground.
“You’re a messy eater.” You put the plate down on the veranda. “Wait here, I’ll be right back. And you can have the rest.”
Touya watches your fading silhouette as you disappear into the traditional Japanese house, just like all the other houses in town. He waits three seconds before diving after another piece and devouring it in several quick bites. The rush of cool fruit feels like a balm on his sunburnt body.
By the time he has swallowed the last bit of watermelon, you reemerge with a towel and spare clothes. He eyes you suspiciously, his walls coming back up now that he’s no longer starving and parched.
You thrust the towel at him with little grace. “Here, use this to wipe your face. You’ve got watermelon juices everywhere. And I found some old clothes you can borrow, if you want. It must be hot as hell in that yukata.”
He grunts and rips the towel from you, methodically drying his hands, dabbing his damp sleeves, and wiping his face clean. Then he tosses the soiled towel at your feet without so much as a thank-you, exchanging it for the clothes.
“Got somewhere I can change?”
“Yeah, follow me.” You pick up the towel and now-empty plate and lead him to the bathroom around the corner. “I’ll be somewhere if you need anything.”
Touya lifts a brow, clutching the ball of clothes to his chest tightly. “Somewhere?”
“You know, like… somewhere in this house,” you shrug. “Just look around until you find me, it’s not that hard.”
“Yeah, yeah. Alright.” Already, Touya’s turning to lock himself away. Your logic makes very little sense to him, and he has no patience left to spare on senseless conversations.
In the bathroom, he strips off his dirty, sweat-stained yukata and stands naked in front of the mirror, just staring at his body in the garish yellow light. He’s lean in the way young boys often are, with long limbs that don’t fit quite right and faint muscle definition not yet hidden under a layer of fat. In the back of his mind, he wonders if he’ll ever end up looking like his father — muscle on muscle on muscle. Not that he cares.
To chase away his unruly thoughts, he busies himself with ripping open the doors to the cabinet above the sink. Inside, he sees tubes of toothpaste, bottles of soap, and neatly folded towels. He grabs a fresh towel from the pile and begins to scrub away the dirt and grime that has all but inked itself onto his skin from countless days of travelling.
When his skin is more or less clean, he dunks his head under the tap to rinse his hair. It doesn’t help much — it can’t without shampoo for his itchy scalp — but beggars can’t be choosers. After that, he methodically scrubs between his fingers, under his nails, and rinses out his mouth.
The cold tap water shocks his gums. He uses his pinky to lift his upper lip and prod at the tender pockets above his canines. Damn, he should’ve scheduled a dental appointment before he ran away. It would’ve been smarter to put that Todoroki money to good use, but alas, he only left with a stack of stolen bills and the very clothes on his back. He does, technically, have a bank account, but he won’t be touching that with a ten-foot pole, lest his father learn his whereabouts. It’ll take more than a few rough days on the road to get him crawling back home with his tail between his legs.
Before he can study his reflection any longer, he hears footsteps and then a knock.
“Hey, are you almost done in there? You’re taking a long time.”
In a rush, Touya grabs the borrowed shirt he left on the floor and yanks it over his head. He does the same with the pants, zipping them up and doing the button, but it promptly pools on the floor around his ankles.
He checks his reflection in the mirror and finds that the short-sleeved shirt hangs like a rag over his shoulders, its collar so loose that his collarbones are on clear display. Annoyed, he clicks his tongue and pulls the shorts back up, bunching the waistband around the back to keep them from falling.
“Yo, these pants are too big,” he gripes as he opens the door to face you.
You eye him up and down, noting the way he’s dwarfed by the clothes despite not being terribly small to begin with. “Oh, damn. They're my dad’s, that’s probably why. Lemme get a safety pin for now.”
As you run off to find something to hold his pants up, he waddles after you awkwardly. Not like he has anywhere else he has to be.
A few minutes of grumbling later, you have his pants pinned tightly around his waist. They won’t fall, but he’ll have one hell of a time using the toilet.
“This sucks,” Touya whines with no effort to hide his displeasure. He grew up with housekeepers and personal drivers and name-brand clothes, so this? This is peasant work.
But you have the nerve to roll your eyes. “You complain a lot.”
“Is it too much to ask for clothes that fit?”
“What happened to ‘beggars can’t be choosers?’”
When he fixes you with an unimpressed stare, you give in, albeit with a heavy sigh as if he had asked you to move mountains.
“Ugh, fine. What time is it? 7:30?” You glance at an old analog clock mounted on the wall to confirm your suspicions. “We can go to Tamaki’s place, he’ll probably have something in your size.”
Without waiting for an answer, you march right out the open back doors, through the veranda, and walk a short distance to the neighbouring house. Then you proceed to pound on the wood while Touya rushes after you, one hand holding fast to the safety pin — just in case.
“Tamaki! Tamaki, open up, I know you’re in there!”
After a few seconds, the shoji doors slide open, and a sullen-looking boy with a mess of spiky black hair pokes his head out. His eyes flicker between you and Touya as a nervous energy begins to pool around him in a heavy cloak.
“Y-yeah?”
“I need your pants,” you demand.
“Huh?!”
“Your pants! I need something for him.” You point a thumb in Touya’s direction without even turning your head, and Touya stares silently, unsure of what to do or say in this situation he has unexpectedly found himself in.
The boy named Tamaki turns his gaze toward Touya and the safety pin embedded in Touya’s waistband. After a moment, understanding dawns on him. “Oh, you mean… a new pair?”
As if slapped, you flinch. “What?! Of course, a new pair! Did you think I wanted the pair you have on?!”
“N-no, I… never mind. Give me a minute.”
Tamaki scuttles into the house, leaving the door slightly open. You bounce on your heels as you await Tamaki’s return, oblivious to the deep furrow of Touya’s brows.
“Who was that?” he demands, stalking closer. “Some kinda boyfriend?”
At his question, you stick your tongue out to mimic a gagging motion. “Ew, what? Tamaki?”
“Why not? You’re already borrowing clothes from him.”
“Because he’s my cousin, you idiot!”
Silence is all that follows. Touya blinks, caught off guard by this sudden revelation, until Tamaki, the cousin, returns holding out a faded pair of cargo shorts. It’s only Tamaki’s insistent proffering that snaps Touya back to the present.
“Cool,” he mutters under his breath as he snatches the shorts. No sooner does he turn his back than he hears the sound of shoji doors slamming shut.
In a few steps, you catch up and match his rhythm. “Don’t mind him, he doesn’t like meeting new people. We can buy you some clothes tomorrow after I do my morning rounds.”
“Morning rounds?”
“Yeah, in the rice fields.”
Touya stares at you blankly as you swing yourself onto the veranda. It was obvious from the moment he’d arrived that this was an agricultural town, but something in his head just wasn’t clicking.
“Where?” he asks.
You tilt your head, surprised and befuddled. Then you jab a thumb to the empty space behind your shoulder. “You don’t… see the rice paddies like, all around us?”
Only then does Touya realize that what he thought was the back porch is actually the main entrance, facing the street. The backyard he assumed was present is, in fact, acres and acres of flooded rice fields. There’s endless green as far as the eye can see.
“Of course I saw it,” he snaps as a blush climbs up his neck and into the tips of his fucking ears. “I meant— aren’t you like, twelve years old? Don’t you have school or some shit?”
Touya sees the slight dip of your brows and knows that was the wrong thing to say. He doesn’t have much experience fraternizing with regular civilians; he was, up until very recently, content to stay sheltered behind golden gates.
“I’m seventeen,” you tell him. “And it’s summer break. Isn’t it the same for you? Or are you actually a middle-aged creep masquerading as a teenage boy?”
“I’m only eighteen, stupid. And I’m—” What was that word again? Ah, right. “I’m homeschooled.”
The word sounds foreign on his tongue, but you accept it with a sigh, shaking your head solemnly. “City boys… Anyway, I’m assuming you don’t have a place to crash tonight? You can stay here; my parents probably won’t mind.”
He hesitates, lingering by the threshold, recalling Enji’s numerous glares of disapproval. “Probably?”
“Yeah, probably. Just come in, it’s fine. I’ll get the futon out for you later.”
And just like that, you turn away without sparing him another glance. He waits another three seconds before hopping inside and making a beeline for the bathroom to change into his new pair of shorts. The scratchy cotton makes for uncomfortable pajamas, and it rubs his skin the wrong way, but he can’t very well sleep half naked in a stranger’s house, so he grits his teeth and tries to ignore it.
Minutes later, he exits the bathroom only to run headfirst into a pair of middle-aged adults. Your parents, he presumes, considering their sweat-soaked clothes and rubber working gloves. His body stiffens of its own accord.
“Ah, welcome!” Your mother greets him warmly with gentle touches on his arm that send electricity shooting through his muscles. Her glove is wet, and it leaves damp patches on his skin. “My daughter mentioned a visitor. She didn’t say you were so handsome!”
Your father nods approvingly even as you hiss a warning under your breath. “It’s rare for her to bring a friend over. What’s your name, son?”
“Uh. Touya.” Fuck. Caught off guard by the unexpected entrance of your parents, he offered his real name instead of an alias.
“What a lovely name,” your mother gushes. “Please, you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. Have you already eaten?”
“We haven’t, Mom.” You cut in both verbally and physically, positioning yourself between Touya and your parents whilst subtly ushering your parents through the hall. “Can you make that egg and tomato thing I like?”
“Of course, dear. I’ll use the tomatoes Sayuri dropped off yesterday. They’re big this year!”
Once they’ve gone, you turn your attention back to Touya with a sheepish grin that he finds both endearing and infuriating. What the hell do you have to be embarrassed about?
“Sorry about them,” you apologize with a slight dip of your head. “I thought they’d be out for another hour, or else I would’ve warned you. So… Touya, huh?”
For some inexplicable reason, Touya straightens his shoulders and puffs out his chest. “Yeah, and what of it?”
“Nothing, nothing!” You raise your hands in surrender and flash him a smile. “It’s a cool name.”
You and Touya stand there in the hallway staring holes into each other, bouncing on the balls of your feet until the silence becomes palpable.
“What—”
“Do you—”
Both of you start and stop, and then you break out into muffled laughter. “Do you wanna see the fields? Take a quick tour before dinner?”
“I…” Touya searches his brain for an excuse but comes up empty. “Yeah. Sure.”
You lead him outside for a short loop around the perimeter. There’s rice — miles and miles of rice, planted in neat little lines with shallow pools between them. The red and yellow sunset dances off the water and transforms it into a river of pure, shimmering gold. He gets dizzy just looking at it.
And then his foot slips.
It’s just the smallest stumble, but your hand whips out to grab his wrist, fingers curling tight around the bone. Heat winds through his arm and into his cheeks before he can take another breath.
“Be careful,” you warn, eyes trained on his now-soaked shoe. “It can get a little slippery here.”
Touya, not trusting his voice, can only grunt. Your hand slips lower to loosely entwine with his, just testing the waters. He should pull away, should maintain his personal space and hold fast to his boundaries — but he won’t. Not yet. It feels nice to cradle something soft.
By the time the tour finishes, the sun has dipped beyond the horizon. Chirping grasshoppers and buzzing fireflies have replaced the cicadas and their incessant humming. The air smells damp and faintly earthy. Touya takes a deep inhale to fill his lungs, and the fresh scent fills up all the empty spaces inside of him with its warmth. In the fading twilight, the sky looks brighter than any lights the city has to offer.
“Let’s go back inside, yeah? Mom’s probably got dinner ready by now.”
The moment you cross the threshold, you let go of his hand. A sudden chill crawls up Touya’s spine. He holds his palm out, studying the limb as if it were a foreign entity, and tries to put a name to this strange feeling stuck in the middle of his throat. Why does it feel so unnatural with his hand free?
He must’ve been standing by the door for too long, because your voice, full of concern, cuts through his thoughts. “Touya?”
“Y-yeah,” he stammers, shoving both hands into his pockets. “Coming.”
That evening, he sits around a kitchen table with strangers, chatting and listening and filling his empty stomach with a warm home-cooked meal. And in the back of his mind, he thinks to himself that he has never tasted anything better than this.
A week goes by in that idyllic state. His mornings are spent watching the sunrise paint the sky in amber and gold, and his afternoons are filled with careful treks around rice paddies and corn mazes. But wherever he finds himself, you’re right there next to him, as steady as a lighthouse in the night.
More often than not, he doesn’t speak. He simply listens, allowing you to pour your voice into his memory as you point out the shifting breeze and vibrant damselflies.
There’s an ease to this; to the surrendering. Without prying eyes and the suffocating weight of a thousand expectations, he feels gravity loosen its hold. He floats, weightless, each step a sprint toward the light. And at the end of the tunnel, when he blinks against the blinding dawn, you’re always right there waiting for him with an outstretched hand.
Today, he sits next to you on the damp grass, both shoes off, feet resting atop smooth pebbles in the shallow river that runs through town. The water is chilly even in the summer heat, but he has never feared the cold.
You let out a satisfied sigh and flop down to face the sky, arms stretching above your head. “Ah, another great day.”
“We haven’t done anything today,” Touya rebukes. He doesn’t lie next to you, but his palm glides over the soft dirt and his pinky is only inches away from brushing the hem of your shirt.
“That’s what makes it great.”
A frown twists his features. “But we haven’t done anything. No chores, no fieldwork, nothing. All we did was sleep and eat and take walks. How the hell is that great?”
The wind shifts, bringing with it the scent of moss and earth. Your lips curve into a smile as you inhale deeply. “We rested. That’s something.”
“No, it ain’t,” he scoffs. What would his father think if he heard your words? If he saw you hiding laziness behind the guise of ‘rest’?
“Why not?”
This time, he blows air through his nose, hot and loud against the serenity of the moment. “Because it’s not productive. We wasted the whole day fucking around and have nothing to show for it.”
For several long seconds, you simply breathe, eyes closed and body slack. Sunlight dances over your skin when the clouds shift overhead and the river continues its ceaseless journey downhill to meet the ocean. Peace, it seems, finds you in the most mundane ways.
“Lay down with me, Touya.”
And when you say his name, it’s just his name. No pressure, no loss, no haunted memories of everything he left behind. It’s only Touya and nothing else. When was the last time he liked the sound of it?
He eases himself onto the grass slowly, one careful inch at a time, as if the dull green blades could pierce flesh. The gentler parts of life are still foreign to him, but with each passing day, he’s learning that the world isn’t all gunshots and bullet holes.
“Not every day has to be productive,” you tell him. “Not every day has to be a fight to the death. Sometimes, just existing is enough.”
A cloud passes over the sun, casting shadows over Touya’s face. “But what’s the fucking point of it all if I don’t make something of myself?”
You blink at him with wide eyes, cheek pressed into the dirt. He’s gripped by a bewildering urge to wipe the mud from your face. “Does a tree need witnesses to grow? Does the rose stop smelling nice because the sunflower exists? The point, Touya, is that we’re here.”
“But…” He furrows his brows, still reluctant to accept your truth. “What about success? What about legacy? Don’t you want to do something worthwhile with your life?”
“I lie in the grass. I stroll through the fields. I greet the goldfish and the robin and the grasshopper. What else is there to do but rest?”
Touya opens his mouth, testing the words on his tongue. “Because we’re here.”
You nod, smiling as if all the stars in the galaxy were yours to command. “Because we’re here and we’re here and we’re here.”
I’m here and I’m here and I’m here.
Some way, somehow, Touya’s days have begun to overflow with you. Was it only a few short weeks ago that the Todoroki name had him in a chokehold? It already feels like a lifetime ago; that name is little more than a distant memory.
“Popsicle?”
Touya takes the red bean popsicle you offer and slowly peels off the plastic. This day is just like the others — sunrise, sunlight, and sunset. Over and over again, in a loop that feels never-ending. If he could stay forever in this summer with you, he’d have no complaints.
The sweetness of the popsicle explodes on his tongue while the iciness chases away the sweat beading on the back of his neck. He perches down cross-legged on your veranda and follows your gaze to the clear blue sky.
“You ever think about leaving this place?” he asks in a quiet voice.
“Mm.” You pull your popsicle out of your mouth. A tiny droplet of melted ice falls onto your thigh, but you make no move to wipe it away. “Yes and no.”
Touya lets three seconds go by before he prods. “Okay? Care to elaborate?”
“There’s nothing much to say,” you shrug. “I think about leaving sometimes, maybe move to Sapporo or something, but I don’t really like the city that much, you know? Too many people and nobody’s nice.”
As a city boy through and through, Touya gawks at your reasoning. “So what, then? You’re just gonna stay here, be a farmer for the rest of your life?”
You shrug again and continue to lick your popsicle as if you don’t notice the holes Touya’s staring into the side of your head. “Nothing wrong with honest work. But, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He squints at you, lips pulled back in abject horror. “You haven’t thought about what you want your life to look like? What you wanna do, what you wanna be?”
From the corner of your eye, you watch him curiously, completely relaxed as he spirals into madness. “Not really. Have you?”
“I’ve been thinking about it since I was seven years old,” he huffs. He takes an aggressive bite of his popsicle only to hiss at the freezing pain that spreads through his gums.
“Alright, what’s your answer then?”
“I wanna be important,” Touya discloses without hesitation. “Someone strong and powerful, and everyone knows my name.”
“Like some kind of big shot CEO?”
Touya thinks about his father sitting in a penthouse office behind a giant oak desk, with sunlight streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows and velvet couches where he entertains billionaires. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”
Now finished with your popsicle, you place the stick down in the three inches of space between your thigh and Touya’s knee. He swallows the remaining bit of his treat in one gulp and does the same with the leftover stick. The two pieces of wood lay side by side, rapidly drying in the afternoon sun.
Your hand lingers, as does his. Your fingers twitch just as Touya shifts to rest his elbows on his knees, and you quickly curl your hand into a fist. Any potential for intimacy burns away under the scorching light of day.
When the silence becomes too heavy to bear, you crack it like an egg. “I think you’re plenty important already.”
He snorts, wholly unamused. Your sappy sentiments do nothing for him. “Yeah, right.”
“We’re important to the people who love us. I’m sure your family’s worried about you.”
“Don’t talk about my family,” he snaps, venom seeping into his tone unbidden. “You don't know shit about them.”
Next to him, he feels your body stiffen. He knows he should’ve held his tongue, but he couldn’t help it. Somehow, he always reverts to a temperamental child when the topic of his family arises, no matter how many miles he puts between his past and his present.
“Well…” You draw your knees up to your chest, hugging them tightly as if curling into yourself could ward off all the bad things in the world. “You’re plenty important to me.”
Touya’s brows knit together as his spine straightens of its own accord. “The fuck? We barely know each other.”
“That doesn’t make you any less important,” you argue with a frown. “I enjoy your company and I’ll miss you when you leave.”
Any words he might’ve said die on his tongue and coalesce into a giant ball in his throat. He stares at his hands if only to avoid looking at your face, and he feels the tips of his ears fill with a burning heat. God, what the hell are you doing to him?
But if you notice his blush, you tastefully ignore it, for once keeping your opinions to yourself. Silence descends like snow meeting the river — softly and gently, until it melts into nothingness.
“I think I know what I wanna be when I grow up.”
Touya peeks at you from the corner of his eye. The crimson tint recedes from his cheeks ever so slowly. “Yeah? And what’s that?”
You lie back on the veranda with your legs dangling and scan the cloudless sky. You lift your right arm, palm open and fingers splayed, positioning your shadow to shield your eyes. Then you close your fist as if grasping the sun.
“I just want to be happy.”
That night, you sneak into the yard with Touya in tow. You shouldn’t be awake at midnight; you have an early day tomorrow. And yet, some things are worth the sacrifice.
“I wanna show you something,” you whisper to him as you stealthily slide the shoji doors open and shut.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Touya grumbles. “You couldn't have done this in the morning?”
“Nope.” A few steps away from the house, you lazily sink down onto a patch of relatively clean ground, head fully resting in the dirt. You pat the space next to you in silent invitation. After a moment of deliberation, Touya copies your actions.
“What the hell am I looking at?” Touya huffs as he squints through the dark. All he can make out is the moon, clouds, and a whole lot of nothingness.
“There,” you urge, pointing at all the specks in the sky. “Those are stars. You can’t see them in the city — too much light pollution. But out here? Look how many there are.”
Touya blinks once, and then again. Eventually, he notices the smattering of twinkling stars spread across the sky as far as the eye can see.
“Yeah,” he concedes. “They’re kinda cool, I guess.” He steals a glance at you, and his breath catches at the pure wonder in your eyes. Then you meet his gaze, and the awe turns into something new, something soft and warm at the edges.
“I’ll forgive you for saying it’s only kinda cool because I like how you look like this.”
The corner of Touya’s mouth twitches into an almost-smile. The honesty with which you speak never ceases to amaze him. “Like what?”
You fidget as if trying to meld into the night. “You know… bright.”
“The hell does that mean?”
You’re quiet for several seconds. The silence stretches out into infinity, and on any other day, with anyone else for company, it would be unbearable. But no hurdle is too great when you’re by his side.
“Some things can only be revealed in darkness," you explain. “Shadows bring out all that is hidden by daylight.”
Despite everything, he can’t stop the eyeroll from coming. “You read that in a book or something?”
Annoyed and petulant, you smack his arm harder than you should. “Tsk. Can’t you let me be cool for once?”
“Yeah, yeah, fine.” Although boredom seeps into his tone, a tiny smile still graces his face. “So shadows reveal stuff. Like stars?”
“Like stars… and your eyes.”
Touya’s entire body freezes. He can feel you turning your head toward him, but he remains statuesque, staring wide-eyed at the crescent moon.
When his voice finally returns to him, it’s all he can do to whisper a pathetic, “What?”
You respond in an equally quiet whisper, so low that he has to strain to listen. “When it gets dark like this, it’s hard not to stare. You were made for the night, I think.”
It’s not a confession. It’s not even a compliment, but something inside him shifts all the same, like the final puzzle piece sliding into place. Here, with you, he isn't fighting an uphill battle. You take him as he is, with all the messy, jagged edges, and you never try to glue him back together like he’s something that needs fixing. You simply lay him out under the boundless night sky and let those scattered pieces of him reflect the light of a million stars.
He opens his mouth, but he has no words left to give.
“Sorry,” you suddenly say. You roll onto your back, hands clasped neatly over your stomach. “I didn’t mean to make it weird.”
“No, it’s—” His voice cracks. Heat rushes into his cheeks at the sheer humiliation of it. He clears his throat before trying again. “It’s fine.”
A few breaths go by. Tranquility, guided by shadows, permeates the air.
It’s you who breaks the silence, as it often is. “Put your arm out like this.” You lift your left arm, palm splayed open to the sky. “Doesn’t it look like I can reach the stars?”
Touya knows this is your pitiful attempt at lightening the mood. A little joke here, a little pun there — in just a few short weeks, he has ingrained your entire playbook to memory.
So that’s why he ignores your comment completely. He’s the captain of the ship, and he’s steering himself into uncharted waters. “Ask me what I want to be when I grow up.”
Your hand, still in the air, falters by the smallest measure. “What?”
“Just ask me,” he presses.
“Okay… What do you wanna be when you grow up?”
He mirrors your actions with his right arm. Stars twinkle between his fingers like diamonds and pearls. The side of his hand knocks into your knuckle, and heat spreads across his skin, as warm and welcoming as a hearth. With one last burst of courage, he weaves his pinky over yours.
His heart feels lighter when he answers, “Happy.”