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Normally fighting losers who can’t hold their own just pisses Haruka off, but after the battles they’ve fought lately, knocking down some disorganised thugs feels as light and easy as breathing. Haruka doesn’t have to be afraid for his classmates, for the fate of the town. It’s just bats and idiots who barely know how to use them, leaving themselves open for so long when they wind up for a hit that it’s like they’re moving in slow motion.
Haruka revels in his new sense of the battlefield—how he can hear the swish of Suo’s jacket behind him, Kiryu touching down after a kick, Tsugeura laughing as he breaks a bat in half over his knee.
“This is about as close as we’ll get to training wheels, Nire-kun,” Suo says, sliding neatly out of the way of a guy whose uncoordinated lunge sends him hurtling towards Nirei. Suo’s expression is perfectly relaxed, but Haruka sees the coiled tension in his posture, poised to jump in if required—but Nirei ducks down at the perfect moment, sending the guy rolling onto the floor. He doesn’t get back up.
“You two could handle this whole pack of morons yourselves,” Haruka calls, a savage smile spreading over his face. He’d never have thought a few months ago that the idea of not being involved in a fight could make him feel so happy. Proud.
“Sakura-kun, you underestimate us,” Suo says, effortlessly dodging out the way of another bat. “Nire-kun and I could handle twice this many morons by ourselves.” Catching one of the guy’s wrists, Suo sends him careening into Haruka’s space, Haruka’s body moving automatically to smash the guy’s face into his knee. “Not that it isn’t nice to have your company, of course,” Suo adds, with an obnoxious little bow.
Haruka catches Nirei beaming out of the corner of his eye. In his periphery, Kiryu and Tsugeura are in perfect sync, Kiryu’s apparently leisurely movements hiding a precision that sets up foe after foe for Tsugeura to knock down. Haruka has a strange moment of synchronisation, suddenly sure that they’re all feeling the same thing: the relief of something easy after all that struggle, of knowing they were more than enough to face the challenge ahead.
Even Makochi’s citizens seem to be aware that there’s nothing to fear; most of them haven’t even retreated inside, just hovering in shop doorways further down the street. Haruka scans his eyes over the doorways, checking no one’s close enough that they need to worry about them—and then he’s underwater, all the ease drained out of him in an instant. Dark eyes, close-cropped dark hair, a suit jacket. Something about the expression, the crease in the brow.
No. He can’t be here. Not here, on Market Street. Haruka’s supposed to be…this is his place.
His battle sense is gone, his heart juddering sickeningly in his ears. Noise coalesces through the haze a moment too late: “—kura-san? Sakura!”
A blow across Haruka’s shoulders sends him sprawling on the ground. He’s frozen for a long moment, his fists lying still and useless on the grubby pavement. Over his shoulder a guy with a bloody nose grins, bat held aloft for another strike, before Suo appears out of nowhere and twists his arm behind his back. The rattle of the bat hitting the ground echoes strangely in Haruka’s ears.
The jolt of shame in his gut is strangely muted. Like he’s suspended in the air, a little ways away from it all. Slowly, like something else is moving his body for him, Haruka turns back to the shop doorway.
The man is leaning out further now, the sunlight hitting him, and—oh. It’s not him. The hair’s too light, the set of his jaw all wrong. Older, too. Haruka shudders in a breath, the air strangely cold in his lungs.
“Sakura-san!” Nirei kneels down beside him. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Nirei’s brows are creased, his hands hovering a little away from Haruka’s arm, and all at once the shame is real and close and vivid. If that had been a real battle, one that mattered…a flash of Nirei’s bloodied face, his unfocused eyes.
Haruka froze. So badly Suo had to step in, Suo who’s swivelling back around now, the guy with the bat easily dispatched. Behind him just a couple of fighters remain, no match for Kiryu and Tsugeura. The line across Haruka’s shoulder blades throbs in time with the beat of his heart. It wasn’t even that hard of a hit. Nothing that should have dropped him to the floor.
Haruka struggles into a sitting position; he should get on his feet, but some instinct tells him to hunker down over himself. Like the vice still gripping his chest is a wound he needs to keep covered.
“Oh, you’re bleeding!”
For a second Haruka thinks Nirei means his chest, that there is a real wound after all, until he follows Nirei’s gaze to a graze on his elbow. Stupid. He hadn’t even landed right—should have learned that lesson a long time ago. How to take a fall.
He brushes a hand over the scrape, grit and blood collecting on his fingers. “S’nothing.”
Suo kneels down next to Nirei, a piercing eye assessing him. “That’s not like you to lose focus in the middle of a fight.”
“I know,” Haruka snaps. He blinks hard, and behind his eyelids is that image of Nirei’s bloody face again. How bad this could have been, if this had been a real fight. He slumps over a little further. “You shouldn’t’ve had to…sorry.”
“What happened?” Nirei says again, quieter this time.
The line of impact across Haruka’s shoulders throbs. The grit in his elbow nags, itches. Back in the dirt where he belongs. “Nothing,” he says, brushing the blood off his fingertips. “Just…thought I saw something.”
With that sense like someone’s moving his body for him, Haruka looks back over his shoulder. The man is leaning casually against a wall now that the fighting’s died down, chatting with one of the guys from Cactus. The more Haruka looks, the less he can understand how he’d thought it was him. It had been so real, just for a second.
A second was all it took to strip all of that away.
He turns back to find Suo and Nirei exchanging a look. Haruka clenches his teeth. A suit jacket and a hairline isn’t an excuse for letting them down again.
“It won’t happen again,” Haruka says, trying to put some grit into his voice. He’s a member of Bofurin, a grade captain. Not some kid huddling on the ground.
A moment passes, inquisitive worried eyes on Haruka’s face. Then Suo rises smoothly to his feet and holds out a hand. “No harm done.”
“Right,” Nirei agrees, jumping up. “You watch our back, we watch yours.”
They shouldn’t have had to. Haruka should be better than this. He shouldn’t need Suo’s hand to help him back to his feet, but he takes it anyway. Lets himself be dragged back upright, something in his chest still taut and aching.
Suo shows no signs of letting go even once he’s on his feet, his hand squeezing gently. Nirei leans in and starts fussing about his elbow again.
It’s tempting, to stay. To sink into it. Suo’s warm fingers on his wrist, Nirei’s comforting stream of chatter.
Another shiver runs down Haruka’s spine, and he pulls his hand back. Eyes that aren’t really there boring into his back.
That should have been the end of it. A glimpse, a mistake. Stumbling and getting back up. Except it’s like someone’s opened a door, and things Haruka hasn’t thought about in months or years are flooding through it. A strain of music, the fall of someone’s hair, a snatch of voices, and all of a sudden Haruka’s underwater. Too stunned to even claw for the surface.
It doesn’t happen in a fight again, at least, but it’s only a matter of time. Only a matter of time before he fucks up something he can’t fix. Before he lets them all down again.
It’s little things, stupid things. Kiryu orders wonton soup in a restaurant, and Haruka remembers all of a sudden that that was his little brother’s favourite. Long ago hazy memories from when he actually sat at a table with them sometimes: how his brother always ate so slowly, like he had all the time in the world. Haruka getting in trouble for eating too fast, too much. For taking things someone else might have wanted.
He blinks back to himself to worried faces, questions. Why he’s so pale. If he’s getting sick again. If he’s alright.
Haruka snaps, and deflects, and resists the urge to curl up around his chest like a dying animal.
There’s no words for it. Nothing he could say that would make sense, when it doesn’t make sense to him. Why the town is suddenly full of ghosts.
Haruka steps out into the rain, resigned to the fact that he’ll be drenched by the time he makes it to Pothos, then spots a familiar figure under a large umbrella waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
“Sakura-kun!” Suo smiles up at him. “Good morning.”
Haruka shouldn’t be surprised anymore; Suo would do this sometimes before summer break too, when they’d walk to school. Haruka still has no idea where Suo lives, whether his place is even on Suo’s way. His questions are deflected as easily as the umbrella deflects the rain. It’s easier, at this point, to just fall in by his side.
The streams flow through the gutters, agitating litter on the ground. There’s no break in the clouds, no sign it’ll let up anytime soon. Tsugeura will be disappointed—he was talking about training in the park after their breakfast. And, come to think of it, Haruka remembers Nirei’s excited stream of chatter yesterday: “You still gonna be able to train with Nirei later?”
“Absolutely,” Suo says. “We’ll head to Furin and train there. It’s useful to learn how to manoeuvre in enclosed spaces.”
Haruka grunts acknowledgement. He guesses the classrooms can’t get more beat up anyway. “How’s he doing?”
It’s kind of funny, how Suo lights up as he answers. Sometimes it’s hard to get more than a few vague words out of him at a time, but he talks contentedly about Nirei’s progress, his increasing confidence, the power he was building in his punches.
“Make sure he’s building muscle in his legs too,” Haruka says. “When the guys coming at you are all bigger and stronger, you’ve gotta be able to move. No good throwing a decent punch if you can’t dodge one that’ll lay you flat.”
It had taken forever to get that lesson through Haruka’s skull. All he had was his fists, but they weren’t any good without the rest of his body. A stupid kid lashing out and getting knocked down for it, over and over and over.
He remembers waking up in the dirt, dizzy and alone, the itch of drying blood on his face, his knuckles—realising the cash in his jacket was gone, and more than the money itself, it was the sickly drop in his stomach of knowing someone had rifled through his pockets while he lay there helpless.
Nirei didn’t deserve that. Nirei—
“You’re getting wet,” Suo says, snapping Haruka back to the present. He’s drifted a little from Suo’s side, warm summer rain dripping down his arm.
Suo loops his arm through Haruka’s and pulls him closer, under the protection of the umbrella. Haruka’s about to chide Suo for fussing over him like one of the grannies on Market Street, but there’s a lump in his throat suddenly. Warmth pressed all the way along his side.
“We won’t let that happen,” Suo says. Haruka blinks at him. “To Nire-kun. We’ll be there to step in, until he’s ready to stand on his own.”
Haruka wants to scoff, to say the world isn’t that kind. They’ve both already seen that it isn’t.
But there’s a steel in Suo’s steady gaze. A warm confidence that soothes something in Haruka’s chest.
Nirei has a guide, a teacher. Allies, friends. He doesn’t have to batter himself against a brick wall until he learns to stop feeling the sting.
“Yeah,” Haruka says, trying to make it a promise. Trying to make it real by saying it aloud. “We’ll be there.”
Haruka arrives early to the park, even after breakfast and walking around a while. He’s surprised to see Kiryu already there, sitting under a tree in their usual spot with his console in his hands.
“Sakura-chan!” he calls, with a delighted little smile. Haruka doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to that. People looking happier when they see him. “Come play with me!”
Haruka glares at the console. Kiryu giggles at him. “C’mon, you can’t lose at this one! There’s no score, no points, no nothing.”
Haruka drops down beside him. “What’s the point then?”
“The chill vibes. And making stuff look pretty.”
Haruka’s not good at being chill or making anything pretty, but Kiryu drops the console into his hands anyway. A little avatar dressed in brightly coloured clothing stands on a beach. It’s night-time, the stars twinkling above. A gentle sound effect plays from the little speakers as one of the stars soars through the sky.
“Press this button whenever you see that.” Kiryu leans over and presses down Haruka’s thumb. The avatar on the screen holds their hands together and bows their head, and the star glows brighter before it vanishes.
“…That’s it?”
“Mm-hm!”
The stars twinkle peacefully on the screen, the ocean rolling back and forth with a soft whoosh. It’s so much calmer than the games Haruka played over on Keisei Street.
“What if I miss one?”
“Then you get the next one.” Kiryu leans into Haruka’s side, head resting on his shoulder. His hair smells like peaches. “Like I said, there’s no score. I’ll just get cool stuff tomorrow I can use to make furniture—I’ll show you the kinda stuff once the meteor shower’s over.”
Another star whooshes past on the screen. Haruka presses a couple of wrong buttons before he gets the right one, and the avatar bows their head again.
“Yeah, like that.”
The stars start to come faster. He misses a few, but Kiryu was right: they just keep coming, and he gets the next one. Kiryu stays leant into his side, a warm weight. His hair tickles a little, but somehow Haruka doesn’t mind.
It’s different with Kiryu, since all that with his sister. Since they fought side by side, just the two of them. Not in a way he knows how to explain. Umemiya said a fight could be a conversation; maybe that goes for fighting beside someone as well as fighting against them.
The stars keep diving past, always in the same direction. Haruka wonders if it’s like that in real life too. Separate but in sync.
“There’s supposed to be a meteor shower next weekend,” Haruka says.
“Oh, for real?”
“Mm. Togame told me about it.”
Haruka gets no warning before Togame calls him. No ping-ping-ping of messages like his other friends. Togame just calls, his slow chuckle resonating over the phone, meandering his way to some point or another. Sometimes there’s no point at all, and it takes forever for Haruka to realise, sitting out on his balcony with the phone held between his face and his shoulder, feeling somehow out of time. Like he’s both there at home and by Togame’s side, all at once.
“Nice,” Kiryu says. “Are you guys gonna watch it together?”
“…Maybe.” Three stars go by in quick succession: Haruka gets two, the last one fizzling away. “He said…we’d get a better view if we went a ways outta town. Where there’s less light.”
Togame had named a couple of little towns they could get to on the train. None of them were…Haruka hasn’t been to any of them, but it made him think. The place he grew up probably had brighter stars than Makochi, but Haruka can’t remember it. Just the weight of his hoodie up over his head, the little knot of pain in his neck from staring at the ground.
Back then, Haruka kept his head down. He presses the button, but the star’s already vanished.
“That sounds fun.”
An owl hoots from the little speaker in the console. Even when the stars on the screen are still, they’re bright and twinkling. Pretty. Haruka would like to see something like this for real. He’d like to see it with Togame.
But he’d been noncommittal over the phone. A hint of that gripping in his chest. The water rising.
“I dunno if I wanna leave right now.” His voice sounds small. Childish.
It’s stupid, to be scared of a train ride and a town whose name he’s never heard before. Like Makochi won’t be there when he gets back. Like he’ll never find his way back here again.
Kiryu leans up from Haruka’s shoulder, bright unreadable eyes scanning his face. Haruka has no idea what he’s seeing. “That’s fair,” Kiryu says, smiling gently. “There’s plenty to see right here at home.”
Haruka hears the sound of the star and pushes the button, still looking at Kiryu. Still thinking about that word. Home.
“Damn, pro gamer Sakura-chan,” Kiryu says, his smile turning teasing. “Not even looking at the screen!”
Haruka headbutts him.
“Ow! Dude, no violence in Animal Crossing.”
“Animal what?” Haruka frowns down at the console. “That’s a stupid name. There aren’t any animals in this.”
“Oh, man, lemme show you the animals.” Kiryu wraps his hand around Haruka’s again to direct the little avatar off to the left. “There’s a cranky tiger I think you’ll feel a spiritual kinship with.”
It’s a while later when Tsugeura’s bellowing voice interrupts them. He’s still halfway across the park—damn, that dude can yell—waving his arms in greeting. Kiryu waves back and starts closing down the console.
“You should ask Togame to watch the meteor shower with you here in Makochi,” Kiryu says. “Even if the views are better someplace else. He’ll just be happy to be seeing it with you.”
Haruka blinks at him, but Tsugeura arrives before he can say anything back.
A storm is coming, the first real one of the summer. Haruka ventures out early that morning to find Market Street already bustling with activity. There are ladders up by the Tonpu Market sign, townspeople clustering around them.
Haruka finds Kotoha at the edge of the crowd. “What’s goin’ on?”
She grins at him. “Don’t look so scared! We take them inside whenever the winds are forecast to get too strong. I guess it hasn’t happened since you moved here.”
Oh. The sting of worry melds into something else as Haruka observes the crowd with new eyes. There are hands steadying each ladder, supporting the slow careful untying of the strings from the posts. All these people who have businesses to run, up early to come out and take care of this.
A little girl makes eye contact with him. “The one with the purple flowers is mine,” she says, her expression very serious. “We always take that one in.”
Haruka shrugs defensively. “I’m—I’m not gonna take it from you!”
She nods. “We always take that one,” she repeats contentedly.
Carefully, one by one, the chimes are drawn from each end of the string and passed out. There’s a choreographed rhythm to it, like everyone knows where to pass what. The little girl holds up her hands excitedly to take the purple one.
“Are you holding it tight?” her mother asks.
“Mm-hm! I’ve got it!”
Two chimes are passed into Kotoha’s waiting hands. “Those go to Pothos?” he asks.
“Usually,” she says, holding one out to him.
He takes it automatically, then frowns. “What, you can’t carry two measly wind chimes on your own all of a sudden?” He’s seen her hefting big bags of produce down the street without a problem.
She snorts at him. “You’re gonna carry that one back to your apartment.”
Haruka blinks. The chime in his hands has a simpler design than lots of the others: pale blue glass, with a darker blue wavy line running around it. It makes him think of the shoreline, of their day at the beach.
“What?” he says. “Why?”
There isn’t anyone else from Furin in the crowd. Just townspeople. If this were a Bofurin duty, his classmates would have been all over it.
“Because it’s something we do here on Market Street,” Kotoha says, “and you’re part of the street now too.”
The wind picks up. The tanzaku billows in the breeze, the clapper making a gentler chime than usual, muffled by Haruka’s hands. The glass buzzes under his fingers. When they’re all hanging up in a row beneath the sign, the chimes usually look so sturdy. So complete. But the one in his hands somehow seems smaller now. Delicate.
“Take good care of it.” Kotoha pats his arm as she turns towards Pothos.
“Wha—hey, you’ll make me drop it!”
She laughs at him as she walks away.
The street continues its motion around him. The empty string has been tied back to the posts, people climbing carefully down from the ladders while others hold them steady. Shopkeepers and their kids move off with one or two chimes in their hands.
No one pays Haruka much mind, other than a wave or a nod. No one demands to know what he’s doing with something delicate and precious in his hands.
Walking back home, he’s greeted on his way past by more friendly calls and waves. Haruka nods back so he can keep clutching the chime with both hands, anxiety picking up every time the wind blows, trying to shield the chime with his body as he walks.
Back home, Haruka looks helplessly around his apartment with the chime clutched close to his chest. Eventually, he yanks hard on the rail above his window to make sure it’s sturdy. It doesn’t budge.
He carefully removes one half of the starry curtains Nirei gave him, threads the chime into the centre of the bar, then puts the curtain back.
His stomach growls as he works. This whole thing had made him forget he’d ventured out in the first place for breakfast.
Still, he sits back down on his futon and stays for a while. The blue glass rotates gently, catching the strain of sunlight filtering through the gathering clouds.
It’s as strange having something this beautiful in his apartment as it was to have it in his hands. A mismatch. A mistake.
It doesn’t belong here. Anyone with eyes can see that.
But Haruka likes looking at it anyway. At the way the light shimmers on the glass as it shifts in an imaginary breeze.
The next morning, Haruka wakes to clear skies and a text from Kotoha saying they’re hanging the chimes back up. As he threads the wind chime back off the rail, he wonders if he could get something else to hang up in here. Something that’d turn and catch the light. Something…nice.
He puts the thought away and starts his strange pilgrimage in reverse. He’s only made it a couple of streets when a house opens its doors, a remnant of breeze blowing through, and his nose is filled with the citrusy chemical smell that hit him like a wave every time he went into the shed.
Bracing his foot against the base of the door and jiggling the handle to get it to open, then it juddering forward with that specific thunk-thud, and the wave of that smell. The things that made it long gone, lingering past their time. The ever-present burn in his sinuses.
He’d heard people say that no one noticed what their own home smelled like after a while, that you just got used to it, but Haruka never had. Like the room knew he wasn’t supposed to be there.
Haruka’s hands go slack, then he catches the chime a second after it drops. He stays hunched over, breath coming in furious gasps, rage so vivid and alive inside him that he almost chokes on it.
He couldn’t even do this right. This one simple thing. All that meticulous care he’d witnessed yesterday, that practised ritual of strings untied and tied again, ladders raised and lowered, glass parcelled out and sheltered from the storm, and Haruka almost ruined it. He almost let it smash on the ground.
Haruka walks fast back to Market Street, one hand clasped tight over the other. He’s greeted warmly again, smiles and waves that prompt a sinking in his stomach. He’s glad he wasn’t here yet when he’d let the chime drop, glad they hadn’t seen—except they should see, shouldn’t they? If he can’t do one simple thing right, people should know. They should test him the way he’d tested the shoddy rail above his window, to make sure it can really hold any weight.
Filtering in with the group handing off chimes, Haruka passes over his own with hands that still aren’t steady, blue glass finding its place again among the others.
“Still in one piece, then?” Kotoha’s voice is light, but her smile fades when she sees his face. “Sakura?”
“What?” he snaps. He wants to yell at her. Tell her this was her fault for giving him anything. Her fault for trusting him.
The anger’s gone before he can even really grasp onto it, leaving something cold and lonely in its wake.
“Come to Pothos,” she says. “I’ll make you breakfast.”
“You’re not open yet,” he mumbles, hearing how he sounds like a petulant child. Petulant, ungrateful, disappointing. He can still hear the shed door shuddering open. Still smell the remnants of the things that place had held before it held him.
She scoffs at him, knocking her shoulder gently into his. “And you care about that, all of a sudden? The guy who’s almost beat my door down?”
Pothos smells like green first thing in the morning. Haruka doesn’t know a better word for it, or why the plants smell stronger for a while after Kotoha waters them, but it’s all around him before he even crosses the threshold.
He sits at the bar while Kotoha cooks, the kitchen smell melding with the green. It makes him feel like he could curl up, head resting on folded arms on the counter, and sleep.
A plate is pushed in front of him sooner than it seems like it should be. He mutters a thanks without looking at her and shovels it down.
Kotoha continues her prep, moving around the kitchen in practised motions. She’d cooked for him first, before doing all that. The things she needs to do to start her day. Haruka swallows the last bite of his egg sandwich, more comforting than it has any right to be.
He wishes he’d eaten slower, for once. That he’d given himself more of a reason to stay.
“Is…is Natsuki okay?”
Kotoha huffs a laugh. “Funny, this morning I had her asking me how Sakura’s doing, if he’s coming to visit again soon.”
Haruka has no idea how to feel about that. It shifts uneasily around in his stomach, an image of the rail in his room snapping in half, the chime smashing on the ground. What the hell is wrong with him today?
“Anyway, in the three days since you last saw her, she’s still doing well. Really coming out of her shell.”
That’s a good word for it, Haruka thinks. A defensive shell, being gradually left behind. Natsuki’s joy is the biggest thing in the room, whenever it happens. Everyone stops to look at it.
Kotoha starts making coffee, pouring out beans from a jar. The smell that rises as they’re ground joins the familiar jumble of the kitchen.
“At her party,” Haruka says, without knowing he was going to say it, “when she…knocked food onto the floor.” He swallows hard. “No one…got mad or anything.”
They were worried, but they weren’t…No one punished her. No one told her she was bad inside.
Haruka’s been replaying it ever since: the crash of the plate, the quiet afterwards. The lull, like a missing step, until he stepped in and told her to stop.
She did something wrong, and they all still looked for her when she ran off. Like it still mattered whether she came back.
Kotoha’s hands have fallen still. “That wouldn’t have helped anything,” she says. The music of the chimes drifts on the breeze. “What you did when you found her helped.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Kotoha ignores that. The water starts to bubble. “No one there would blame her for being angry. They wouldn’t take that away from her.”
Even if she broke the rules again, Haruka wonders. Even if she broke them over and over and over. If she started to feel like she only knew who she was in that moment of pushing and pushing and finding the point where something shatters. Where you prove them all right again.
The bubbling on the stove gets faster, more frantic. Kotoha is still frozen in place, her eyes seeming…far away, somehow.
Haruka digs his nails into his palms. He shouldn’t forget so often: that Kotoha grew up there too. In that place you only lived if you’d lost something.
“It’s…it’s okay there,” Haruka says. “Right? I mean…you and Umemiya wouldn’t let it be shitty, anyway. But it seemed…it seems alright.”
He shuffles in his seat, hating the sound of his own fumbling voice. But Kotoha lifts the pot off the stove, the familiar sound of water pouring. “Yeah, Sakura,” she says, the warmth back in her voice again. “It’s a really good place.”
A good place. The kind you only get after you lose something.
Haruka wants to ask suddenly, if Kotoha thinks it’ll be enough. If Natsuki is young enough and strong enough, the people there good and warm and kind enough, that all the rest of it will fade away someday. Whether she’ll be so consumed with all this new goodness that she’ll forget about her mom altogether. Forget that the person who was supposed to want her thought she wasn’t worth looking after. If all the fear would lift up out of her one day, all at once like a bird taking off from a wire.
He wants to ask, but he can’t even open his mouth.
“Sakura,” Kotoha says, suddenly on his side of the counter. “I’m going to put my arm around you now.”
It’s so unexpected, the act and the announcement of it, that Haruka just sits there mute as Kotoha moves into his space as easy and unafraid as she had been the first day they met, when she’d leaned in and said his eye was like a marble. She wraps her arm around him, her hand warm and solid on his shoulder, and it’s only then that he realises he’s shaking. Trying to tamp down on the tremor only makes it worse. He wants to tell Kotoha that he has no idea what the fuck is wrong with him, but there’s no breath to say it suddenly.
Haruka bows his head and shudders in air. Breathes in Pothos’ warm medley. Kotoha’s grip is so strong; her strong hands that carry bags from the market and make the best food he’s ever tasted.
Natsuki will be okay, Haruka thinks. She’s young, and she’s good, and she’s in a place with Umemiya and Kotoha. Umemiya who can make people feel safe even if they had no idea what safety was supposed to feel like. Kotoha who can make people feel at home—who can conjure up a half-dreamt idea of home as something good, something you can hang a weight on that won’t break, and then hand it to you all in one breath.
Natsuki will be alright now that she’s with them. She’s a good kid, in a good place.
Kotoha doesn’t ask him any questions. When he moves away, she lets him go after one last squeeze of her hand on his shoulder. “Come back tomorrow,” she says. “I’m gonna try a new recipe I think you’ll like.”
Haruka doesn’t get her. He doesn’t get how she can…he doesn’t get any of it. How the idea of a meal tomorrow can make it all feel so different. Being asked. Being wanted.
“Okay,” he mutters. “...Thanks, Kotoha.”
He leaves before he can see her expression.
Haruka’s had a shitty night and a great day. He woke up over and over through the night: from dreams of drowning, dreams of Umemiya’s garden in flames, dreams he couldn’t even remember but woke from with the sound of snowfall landing on the shed roof in his ears. It felt wrong, waking up warm.
He gave up at around 4am, sitting out on the balcony and imagining he could hear the distant ringing of wind chimes.
It takes a while to persuade the others to spar with him like they’d planned, like him being a little tired is a good enough reason to hold off. Once they start, though, it all melts away. A second wind surges through him, the same way it had facing Endo for the second time. Adrenaline sings in his blood, his body moving how he wants it to. It goes exactly where he tells it to go.
It’s good. It’s perfect. Until he’s trailing along behind everyone on their way to the mall afterwards and can barely keep his eyes open.
“Sakura-san, are you sure you don’t need sleep more than you need boba?” Nirei asks. “Not that I’m telling you what to do—”
“Oh, are we telling Sakura-kun what to do?” Suo asks. “Go home. You’re dead on your feet.”
“Screw you. I’m getting boba.”
Suo shakes his head sadly. “Even his insults feel tired.”
Haruka lunges at him half-heartedly, Nirei stepping in to hold him back with the smoothness of a choreographed routine.
“Stop fighting!” Kiryu calls over his shoulder. “If you guys get us kicked out of the boba place, I’m gonna lose it.”
Haruka peels off to go to the bathrooms. Splashing water on his face, he can admit that Nirei might be right—Suo, despite saying the same thing, somehow isn’t. Maybe he’ll get his drink to-go, he thinks, walking back through the mall—and then his heart is in his throat, because that’s his mother’s bag. Worn purple leather, hanging over the back of the chair. He can hear the sound of the zip. He can smell her perfume.
Except it isn’t, of course. Some girl in her twenties is wearing it, and the zip isn’t in the right place. But he’s still frozen, unmoored, hands shaking with adrenaline that has nowhere to go.
He screws his eyes tight shut and still sees a worn leather strap behind his eyelids. He’s so tired of it, the endless fear. There’s always more of it, always. Nothing he can fight. Nothing he can do. Stockstill as people weave around him. Alone.
Haruka doesn’t want to be alone anymore.
He crosses the mall at a pace just barely short of a run, hands curled into fists in his pockets, almost running into his friends where they’re waiting in the line at the boba place.
“What happened?” Suo asks, looking over Haruka’s shoulder like he can see the ghosts trailing after him.
“Nothing.”
“Are you—” Nirei starts.
“Just—” Haruka interrupts. “Don’t.”
Hot vivid shame melds with the fear still alive in his lungs. Yelling at them, when they haven’t…He can’t look at any of their faces, but he can feel their eyes on him. Worried, wondering. If they keep asking, he’s gonna…and he just can’t. He can’t bear it.
“Don’t what?” Nirei asks, quiet, earnest. Like he really wants to know.
Stop asking, stop looking, stop…Haruka wants to be with them, but just with them. No spectres following after him. He wants Kotoha’s arm around his shoulders. The quiet. Kiryu, after Haruka said…after he talked about it, and then Kiryu let him change the subject. Let him stop.
“I can’t…talk about it,” Haruka chokes out. He’s hunching over himself again, head bowed, shoulders buckling. Like the first day he came here. Like nothing’s changed. “Not…not yet.”
A beat passes.
“Alright,” Nirei says. It’s so startling Haruka looks up to face him. His hesitant kind eyes. “That’s okay.”
A gentle hand pats between Haruka’s shoulder blades; he’s surprised to see it belongs to Tsugeura. Haruka hadn’t thought he knew how to be gentle like that.
“C’mon, dude,” Tsugeura says. “The line’s moving forward.”
Suo glances up at the menu board. “I think they’ve added more flavours since we were last here.”
Like magic, all eyes leave Haruka and go to the board. They start talking about drink options, the familiar rhythm of conversation Haruka’s been surrounded by all summer. His heart slows, his shoulders lift. How can it be that easy? To just…ask, and have them stop.
The more the fear ebbs, the less steady Haruka is on his feet. Like it was the only thing keeping him standing.
Kiryu’s shoulder knocks gently into his. “Man, it’s getting kinda busy in here. Can you snag us a booth? I’ll get you something good.”
“D’you guys think they have protein powder, or should I just mix it in myself?” Tsugeura asks, squinting at the menu.
“I’ll get you something good with zero contributions from Tsuge-chan,” Kiryu adds.
Haruka opens his mouth to insist he can stand in a line for a few minutes, then closes it again. He hates ordering in places that have so many choices anyway. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s let Kiryu choose for him; Tsugeura has weird tastes, Suo can’t be trusted, and Nirei takes long enough trying to choose what he wants without trying to pick for Haruka too.
He nods stiffly, heading off to flop down in an open booth. Leaning his head back against the seat, he keeps his eyes open just enough to keep watch around him. His friends’ voices are far enough away that the words blur together, but the rhythm of it is still there. The vice in Haruka’s chest loosens, beat by beat, and his own words echo inside his head. The ones that had come out of his mouth without him even really thinking about them. Not yet.
They come back with drinks. Being first in the booth means he’s right in the middle, and the others push easily into his space. A dark pink drink is pushed Haruka’s way, and he takes a hesitant sip. It’s sweet, but not too sweet. He’s expecting the chewy kind of bubbles he’d tried last time, everyone laughing at his confused expression, but instead they burst into juice in his mouth.
Kiryu’s sitting on the other side of Tsugeura, who’s talking animatedly to Nirei about something Haruka can’t follow, but he peers around Tsugeura’s gesturing arms and waits for Haruka’s verdict.
“It’s good.”
Kiryu gives him a grin and a little thumbs up. Kiryu’s good at this kind of stuff: he doesn’t have the encyclopaedic knowledge of everyone’s favourite things that Nirei has, but he’s good at figuring out what people will like.
It’s one of the things Haruka knows now, that he hadn’t before this long summer by their sides. Days when no one told them they had to be together, had to be with Haruka, but they chose to anyway. The group chat going ping-ping-ping. Endless debates about food and movies and where to go and what to do, even though no one seems to actually mind what they end up with.
He knows what Kiryu’s room looks like. Who likes to go in the sea at the beach and who likes to sit back. All the little details filling in.
With an ache nestled between his lungs, Haruka wonders how much he’d know after another break like this. What could happen if he got to just keep knowing them. If it just went on and on and on.
Not yet. But someday.
Haruka loses the thread of the chatter, but the rise and fall of it is comforting. He hears that rhythm when he’s trying to fall asleep sometimes, after a long day with his friends. Like how he’d felt the rocking of waves the night after they went to the beach. The ache in his chest softens out, diffuses like ink in water.
Haruka wakes up warm, soft fabric pressed into his face. Blinking his eyes open, he groans at the light.
“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty.”
The voice is close. Very close. Haruka leans back and realises the soft fabric against his face was one of Suo’s pristine silk shirts. That’s…that can’t be…and wait, good morning? “Wha?”
“It’s morning!” Suo says. “You slept the whole night away. It was nice of them to stay open on your account, don’t you think?”
He slept…the whole night? How? What? Haruka rubs at his face and there’s a crease of fabric outlined on his cheek.
“Aww, Suo-chan, don’t be mean to sleepy Sakura-chan.”
The scene coalesces: the booth, the boba place. The window showing the evening sky: darker than when he last looked, but definitely not morning. Haruka tries to kick Suo under the table and misses.
“Not a morning person?” Suo asks mildly.
Haruka kicks out again. How is he dodging in such a small space?
“It’s 9.30pm,” Nirei says, flashing his phone too quickly for Haruka to read the time. “You were out for about an hour—I didn’t think you were the type to be able to fall asleep in public!”
“M’not,” he mutters.
“We all just got some pretty adorable evidence to the contrary, dude,” Kiryu says.
Heat rises in Haruka’s face, and he rubs at it again like he can brush it away with the fabric creases. He slept here for an hour? Sure enough, the cups on the table are all empty now. All five of them.
Wait. Haruka remembers taking a few sips, but definitely not the whole drink. He picks up the empty cup accusingly.
“Ah, yeah,” Tsugeura says anxiously. “We—we took a group vote, and we all decided, well, we could always getcha another once you woke up? Since it was like, sitting out here getting all lukewarm and stuff.”
A thunderous silence follows. Tsugeura quails. “It was a group decision, right guys?”
Suo hums thoughtfully. “That's strange. I don’t recall that at all.”
“Me either,” Kiryu says, leaning his chin innocently on his hand. “I remember we all said we should leave Sakura-chan’s drink alone, and then Tsuge-chan just chugged the whole thing right away. It was kind of fucked up, actually.”
Nirei giggles nervously into his hand.
“That is NOT what happened—”
Haruka throws the empty cup down in disgust. “Every one of you bastards owes me a drink.”
“Cool,” Kiryu agrees. “Next hangout is Sakura-chan chugging four bobas.”
As they’re moving out of the booth, Haruka holds Suo back a moment. “Sorry for…leaning on you.”
Suo had been so annoying in the aftermath, Haruka almost forgot about it. That he’d passed out and drifted onto Suo’s shoulder uninvited. That Suo apparently let him stay there, for who knows how long.
Suo smiles. “Silly Sakura-kun. You're supposed to lean on us, remember?”
It echoes in Haruka’s sleep-fogged brain. Too much to really take in.
Suo’s smile softens. “One step at a time,” he says, an echo of his words in their classroom all those weeks ago, before he slides neatly out of the booth to stand with the others. Waiting for Haruka.
On the walk home, Kiryu ducks in front of him. “Hey, remember when you gave me a piggyback?”
“Sakura-san gave you a piggyback?”
“Let me return the favour,” Kiryu continues. He points a thumb over at Tsugeura. “By proxy, ‘cause it’s hot and I’m sleepy!”
“Hell yeah!” Tsugeura agrees. “I’ve got a really comfy back.”
“That’s kind of a weird thing to brag about, dude,” Nirei says.
Haruka shoves Kiryu aside. “I can walk myself.”
“Sure, but isn’t it nice not to have to when you’re tired?”
“Plus, you can help Tsugeura-san get in some extra strength training,” Nirei chimes in.
The drudge of putting one foot in front of the other is wearing Haruka down. He could keep going. He could make it home himself. But…You're supposed to lean on us, remember? “Fine. Whatever. If you’re gonna keep—”
“Cool, hop on!”
Tsugeura crouches down. Haruka hovers a moment before tentatively wrapping his arms around Tsugeura’s shoulders. He’s barely had time to clasp his hands together when Tsugeura grabs his legs and launches up into the air.
“Hey!” Haruka thwacks at Tsugeura’s chest. “Ya don't haul people up all sudden like that!”
“Sakura-chan would know,” Kiryu says, in a sing-song voice. “He's the piggyback expert.”
“Seriously,” Nirei says, notebook clutched tightly in his hands, “is this a joke, or did Sakura-san actually give you a piggyback?”
Haruka listens enough to get that Kiryu dodges the question, then lets the chatter meld into noise again. Being carried like this is surprisingly comfortable now that he's getting used to the motion of it. His own weight means there's pressure all along his chest, on the side of his face where it's pressed into Tsugeura’s shoulder. Like the pressure he'd woken up to, sleeping on Suo’s shoulder. Like Kotoha’s arm wrapped tight around him. Holding him together.
That wish swells up again, so strong he feels the ache in his teeth, in his bones. To stay here, with them. Even if the past never lets him go all the way. Even if he’ll always be afraid. He can take it, take anything, so long as he gets to stay here.