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Chapter Text

The next time Tooru is at Sunrise Garden, it isn't to sneak in, or partake in opening day. It is a Saturday night on the precipice of full-blown spring, and he's sitting in a trailer for an upcoming episode for Opposites Attract, picking from a bento box his mother packed him and pretending to care about the script in his hands. He doesn't have many lines this time around (in fact, he's only been tasked with what the directors called a true look of victory, all for when he's caught his brother on a secret date at the park), so he's been told to sit tight and wait for his time to film.

Innocently, Tooru peers up from his dinner, watches the way the tiny production assistant paces back and forth in the tiny box of his trailer, and strikes a tiny hallelujah when he goes outside to fume further over his walkie talkie. Ever vigilant, it takes less than Tooru a second to set down his meal, straighten his shirt collar, and run out of the trailer and past the spotlights, the cameras that watch him. He has to find Iwaizumi, let him know about all the things that mean to separate them, how he'd like to be friends anyway— 

"Oikawa-kun!" The production assistant tries calling after him. "Stay in the trailer! Apparently someone's snuck into the park and it's not safe being out—"

"I'll be okay!" Tooru shouts back, already too far to be caught. Feet carrying him up the main cobblestone path, he stops when he thinks he's completely out of sight, nothing but the blue haze of an-almost dark to guide him. Already drawn, Tooru peers towards the north end of the park and pictures Iwaizumi waiting at the other side, sleeves rolled up and shoes all scuffed. Back down the path, voices call for Tooru to come back to reality, to stop running so far ahead.

Do you really think you'll get to keep him this time? doubt calls, resounding.

But the thing is, Tooru's not sure how to stop. It's never been in him to give up anything, even in the face of doubt and the people telling him there's no way in hell. So Tooru keeps going, despite the chase behind him, the darkness up ahead, because I'm going to see Iwa-chan. I'm going to see him and he's gonna be sorry for being away for so long. He looks at doubt in the face, recognizes it better than anyone else, and abandons it once more with kokkuri-san and the other fates. 

"Iwa-chan!"

Tooru hits a loose cobblestone on the road and ends up tripping on his face. From the ground, he stares up at the looming silhouettes, the shadows of upcoming attractions and towering rides, and searches for any sort of signal that Iwaizumi's even here tonight. When they don't offer any sort of light, he feels his jaw fold into a deep grimace.

Doubt rises back up, because it always does, and Tooru reluctantly opens the door to welcome the worst sort of old friend. 

"Iwa-chan," he calls, quieter. He might have swallowed gravel down, from the way it gnashes on his teeth.

When Tooru begins to feel his chest sink by the worst amounts, a line of light opens itself up to lead the way. Overhead, hung from stand to empty stand, coiled around shop banisters and bare flagpoles, a single strand of yellowed string lights blink awake, winding and never ending like a river's view at an Obon Festival. Picking himself up from the gravel, tiny prayers made, blessings tentatively counted, Tooru wobbles onto his feet and follows it through the dark, further into the depths of Sunrise Garden.

"Iwa-chan!" Tooru calls, past concession stands and tea cup spinners, the looping roller coaster tracks and endless gift shops. "Iwa-chan, I know you're here!" 

"Shh!"

"Iwa-chan!" Tooru calls once more.

"Why do you have to be so loud?" 

Tooru turns around, letting out a tiny scoff. "Look who's talking," he shouts back, somewhat offended, but hardly able to hold back his excitement. "Iwa-chan, where are you?"

He doesn't have the time to ask further when he feels someone yank him away from the main road and right behind the game stands. Hands scrunched together, knowing the sensation all too well, Tooru doesn't even have to look up to know it's him. Hell, he's not even sure he wants to look up—for all the smiles he's learned to feign, the ones he's stifled for a scene's sake, sometimes he finds it hard to let the honest ones stay on his mouth.

"Just look at you," Iwaizumi calls out to him, clicking his tongue. "You're a mess."

Tooru only manages to hide a part of it away before Iwaizumi tips his face up for him, thumb skirting the edges of what stings like a scrape. Tooru winces at the touch, but not because it hurts, particularly; he just lets the heat bubble in his chest, tells himself this is all just the result of running too fast and too hard, and settles down with a shaky exhale. He even finds the will to laugh at the end of it, all in disbelief and more candor than he's willing to admit himself to. At this, Iwaizumi just shakes his head and flicks his finger up to jab at Tooru's cheek.

"Iwa-chan, you found me," Tooru tells him, but Iwaizumi doesn't stop to humor him. Tugging his hand forward, he just leads Tooru out from behind the stands, up the secret paths past the personnel only signs, and just grumbles the entire time on their walk. Again, Tooru ends up a couple of steps behind him, and he just takes that as an opportunity to beam without abandon. Iwaizumi's grown even more, shoulders more filled out than just those couple of months ago, taller but not more than Tooru.

"See, I hate it when people come to Sunset Garden at night, because some of you have no respect for the park whatsoever, and that means a bigger cleanup in the morning..." 

Iwaizumi trails off—and, well, literally comes off the trail—when he reaches what looks like a cabin, a tiny wooden shed hidden amongst the planted lilac trees. Tooru watches him take out a charm bracelet worth of keys, flip to the right one, and unlock it for the both of them, hopping up to get the light on overhead. Resting on a neatly-made cot is a first-aid kit, along with other amenities like toothpaste, a few washcloths, and a couple of notepads with a handful of matching black pens.

Iwaizumi motions for Tooru to sit down on the cot. "The gash isn't bleeding anymore, but I'm not sending you back with that open on your face," he insists, unlatching the box. "I mean, the rest of your film crew or whatever already thinks I'm some kind of madman, and I don't need them thinking I've tried to murder the next great child actor Oikawa Tooru..."

When Iwaizumi tries sticking a bandage—the fun kind, all glow in the dark and patterned with stars—on Tooru's face, the latter can't help but tune out and examine the bunker around him. It's small, just a tad bigger than a walk-in-closet, but it might as well be a whole new world to Tooru: he makes out the green coil of string lights again, wrapped around the tops of four wood-lined walls, the tiny shelf on the wall, with stacked manuals and brochures from years past, along with a small radio resting against a bookend. On the window sill, barely enough to see through, Iwaizumi's let a potted something (some kind of purple flower? Lavender, maybe? A fern?) take shelter on the ledge. Pinned against the walls, posters hang and show off the world's manmade attractions. In a guest's reverence, Tooru says a quiet hello to the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Unisphere in New York City, to all the Ferris wheel postcards and the dusty family Polaroids lined on the walls.

"Iwa-chan, what is this place?" Tooru asks with wonder, when Iwaizumi pats the band-aid down to seal it for good. "Do you live here?"

"What?"

"Do you live here?" Tooru repeats himself.

"Did you just ask if I live in an amusement park?" Iwaizumi inquires right back, unsheathing more bandages for the scrapes alongside Tooru's arms and knees. 

"What else would I think? You have a bed here and everything!" By accident, Tooru kicks a plastic bag full of convenience store fare on the ground. "You even have snacks," he adds, like that makes all the world's difference.

Iwaizumi shrugs. "It's just my clubhouse. I come here when I want to be alone," he says, all a matter-of-fact, but he's found a way to avoid Tooru by the eyes, wiping his face by the smudge of his shoulder like the grumpiest house cat the other boy's ever seen.

"So you do sneak in at night, then." Tooru's smile spreads wide, but Iwaizumi just stares up at him once more, incredulous.

"I don't sneak in. I don't know how many times I've tried to tell you, but it's not like that with me. I...it's different. I don't have to."

Tooru still doesn't understand. "What is it, then? Did you win some kind of contest?" He lets his eyes grow wide. "Like, one that lets you camp out whenever you want? Spar with the mascots on your free time?"

Iwaizumi's face shrinks, all sour.

"That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard." He proclaims, and he looks like he'd like to stick another band-aid right over Tooru's mouth. The latter conjures up a small and mumbling laugh. 

"When you spend more time with me, you'll learn that I have a very big imagination," Tooru tells him right back, voice wasting away into a sigh. He knows he's testing Iwaizumi in some small way, for motives he can't quite place, or understand. But it's not like he falls prey to it either way; Tooru knows by the way Iwaizumi's face settles into a frown, slow like the change of tide.

Because merely annoyed looks like something sudden, he observes, like the quick twitch of a grimace and a growl to go with it.

Grave, Tooru decides, is much quieter, and a gentle shift into a very visible strain. 

"If you really don't get it," Iwaizumi asks quietly, "think back to those tickets I left you. How do you think I got them?" 

Tooru thinks for a moment, ponders, once more, why Iwaizumi gave him two of them instead of just that single voucher, because wouldn't he need one too, to get in, and they must've cost him a fortune so three of those tickets must be out the—oh. Eyes wide, Tooru doesn't say a single word, but he thinks he might understand.

"My family took down this exhibit at the park a couple of years ago, but they let me keep this part of the property," he explains. "They thought it was a good idea, you know, to groom me for taking it over one day, or something." Iwaizumi peers out the window, and the both of them can hear a bunch of muffled voices come through the walls. "But I've always wanted a clubhouse, so I've been taking my time, turning this first aid station into one."

"You made this?"

Iwaizumi nods. "I like to work with my hands, and I thought I'd practice before I take on bigger projects."

Tooru stands up, does a quick twirl around the little house; he swears it feels bigger somehow, after getting to soak it in a little more.

"And the string lights outside? You did that, too?" Tooru asks.

Iwaizumi shrugs it off, all modest. "You can do a lot with a floor plan and a ladder. It just goes from the north to the...um," he breathes out. "Never mind."

"The south," Tooru finishes for him, with a cheeky little smile. Where I come from, he thinks, because you were looking for me too, but he knows it's too presumptuous to say. 

"Listen, it's not just for you, or anything, because it gets really dark without the lights on, and I'd rather not make a mess of things like you did out there," Iwaizumi explains just a little too well, flicking a finger over a band-aid on Tooru's knee.

Tooru just laughs, so light he could consider it a giggle. "Whatever you say, Iwa-chan. I just have another question."

"What?"

"How about the bigger ones? The kind you can see from the next town over?"

Iwaizumi opens his mouth to say something, but he decides to keep himself shut. When the voices loom closer, muffled outside Iwaizumi's clubhouse, the two of them look at each other and nod just once, a mutual agreement to escape.

"They're going to find us here, Iwa-chan," Tooru insists with a gulp."I mean, if we could just turn off the lights and hide for a little while, we could—"

"You should go," Iwaizumi tells him, all soft, but sudden. "You came here to do a job." He does turn off the lights, leaving them just in the shadows, but he still has the skill to find Tooru and prod him out of the door.

"But Iwa-chan." Separated by a doorway threshold, Tooru stares up, eyes so wide they’re on the verge of stinging. He blinks it away, tries to see Iwaizumi, but the night only allows him to make out the darkness of his friend, black on the darkest cobalt hues.

"You're not getting into any more trouble tonight, Oikawa."

“But—”

“We can meet again soon, on opening day.”

In the flash of recent memory, Tooru just thinks back to kokkuri-san and its prophecies, how trouble tends to follow someone close on the paths they want to pursue. He might’ve gotten to see Iwaizumi again, just like the spirits said, but he thinks of everything else that could go wrong, the widening gulf of space and time and whole dimensions; it was kind of the fates to bring them together, to allow two completely different boys this one defined place, but he thinks again of Iwaizumi’s filled-out back, how their throats crack when they try to talk, and wanders into new territory because of it, one of inevitable change (of all the things that could be, might not be, will never be) and wonders, once more, if it’s really worth it to hold on at all. 

“But Iwa-chan.”

“What?”

Tooru swallows back. He knows he’s over-thinking, like usual. He’s always been attracted to the drama of things, whether he means to be in the spotlight or not, and he knows that things can be simpler, if he puts his mind to it. He doesn’t have to think about every possible route, the weedling paths of roots not yet grown. He knows, he knows, he knows—he knows he has to take a deep breath, to stop flying over lands he cannot survey, over places he has not yet reached.

“Iwa-chan,” Tooru starts up again, voice nothing but a tremble, like leaves in a frisky breeze. He wants to tell him at the very least, what kokkuri-san told him yesterday. We’re not from the same dimension. The park is all we got. You leave by the north, and I go by to the south. Sunrise Garden, Sunset Garden—

But he doesn’t get the chance, when a few security guards come up behind Tooru and hoist him up by the underarms. Another couple of them apprehend Iwaizumi too, but he only swipes them away and sighs, like he’s been caught like this before. 

“Let me go!” Tooru shouts, trying to wriggle free. One of the guards just speaks into his walkie talkie, says that they’ve found the actor kid by the west end of the park. Another scolds Iwaizumi by the wall of his shed, pointing a flashlight in his face and making him squint.

"Again, kid? Really?"

Carried farther and farther away, right back down the lane of lilac trees and away from that little box of a house, Tooru hears them reprimand. You are going to own this place one day. Act like it. Don't waste your time chasing pests.

Tooru's chest contracts into uncomfortable weight.

"Oikawa!"

But with a shout that rustles the underbrush, the nesting birds on the branches, Iwaizumi shouts back, I'll see you on opening day, past the guards and their what were you thinking’s, past the night. To Tooru.

"So, just how much do you want this?"

"Huh?" Tooru glances up from his paperwork, lets it turn into full-blown eye contact with the casting director, a woman named Tanaka Saeko, and swallows down a stutter. "What do you mean?" he asks her, staring back down at the test shot Polaroids, the sheen of a practiced smile a lot more composed than the shaky one on his face.

"Well, to put this gently, I don't think we're going to choose you for this role," Saeko puts it gently, mouth tactfully hidden behind a steaming cup of tea, "but you are so talented, Oikawa-kun. A natural. You'll get more roles in no time, but you have to consider if you really want this. It's long and hard road out there."

Tooru cringes at the word natural. He thinks of all the hours at night, huddled in his room, all spent researching the world's greatest actors, all of the world's undeniable classics. Samurai films like Rashoman and Yojimbo became favorites for when he was feeling restless in the early morning, and silent films like Ozu's A Straightforward Boy let him practice the art of practiced expression. Because when he wasn't thinking of ways to see Iwaizumi, or running the occult club at school, he was practicing in the mirror, or watching anything he could get his hands on on the Internet. Names like Hepburn and Hitchcock became just as synonymous as the people in his history books. The scripts have piled up on his desk, right next to neglected homework.

So Tooru could hardly call any of this natural. He resents such simplifications. He knows about the merit of hard work, sometimes more than anyone, and natural just isn't the word for it. 

"So Oikawa-kun, what do think?" 

"Of what?"

"Letting the world see you," Saeko answers in something sacred, and Tooru's eyes go wide. That is not something most middle schoolers can readily answer, but he knows what he wants. With every commercial or small part done for the television, Tooru knows that will only lead to bigger and better things. He imagines top billing, or the lead role on a stage. History's longest running evening drama. A variety show in his twilight years. Spotlights and champagne, for every single one of his award wins, from the first to one for lifetime achievement. He imagines, then imagines some more, right until the point where he feels his fingers drum violently over the Polaroids, over the feigned faces that'll get him to the very top. That is what he'll let the world see, he thinks, for better or worse, but mostly better.

Tooru peers back up. "I think I'd like that," he answers modestly, just brimming to say more. Saeko just smiles, like they've come to some sort of mutual understanding. When she slides a business card across the table, Tooru hopes the falter in her grin isn't pity.

"Even though it didn't work out this time, free to audition for any projects I'm helming in the future. Our productions are bigger than just Sendai, or even Tokyo, for that matter," Saeko says. "With us, you'll go everywhere. The whole world will be your home."

Tooru stares down at the card, pictures all the cities, the high plains, the seas. He takes it all to heart, thinks of all the reading he's ever done about haunted castles, bewitched interstate roads; he doesn't want to miss any of it, he'd decided long ago, infamous or not, and this was going to help him realize that. He swallows down when he realizes how close and far all of this might be, how much harder he'd need to work, all the jobs he'd need to book, and wonders about everything else in his life. He thinks about kokkuri-san sessions, homework, rerun nights with Eiko, and occult club on his free days after school. A particular Matsukawa Issei and his breezy lilts. The sunsets in Miyagi (and how nothing else could ever, ever compare), the amusement park and its fickle opening times, Iwaizumi's clubhouse amongst the lilac trees. Iwa-chan himself. 

Tooru sees all of these things like pages from a pop-up book, chapters coming to life and folding back into memory. 1. His first commercial. 2. Moving to Miyagi. 3. Losing Mikan-chan. 4. Sunrise Garden. Breath held, he thinks of all the places he might go in the future, the pages already flipped over, and wonders when he'll have to go on to the next. Tooru knows he can't stop to think about the oddities of a world's he already read about, but it's what he does, anyway. He dog-ears the parts worth keeping, folds the corner of his favorite pages. Memories replay, all vivid like a child asking his mother to read his favorite story at bedtime. 

But Tooru, I've read this to you a million times, his mother used to say in the evenings. You're going to get sick of the story. 

Maybe someday, Tooru tries to tell himself, back to the park and occult club and Iwa-chan. But deep down, he hopes he can carry it at least some of it with him, flying up those new roads at record pace, worn copy of his history warming his hands. 

"Oikawa-kun?"

"Ah—yeah?" Tooru looks back up, letting a heavy gust come downwind in his stomach; when it settles, all thunderous in its drop, the hollowness reminds him of losing Mikan-chan all over again, like...like something he can't quite explain, all teasing on the tip of his tongue. Tooru might call it loss, but he refuses, because such feelings only come from thinking too much. Don't be so overzealous, his mother used to tell him, when Tooru's eyes glazed over into something stinging, and his head wandered too far down the rabbit hole.

But isn't it better to think things through? Tooru would ask his mother right back. Because he really might lose all those things soon, faster than he'd expected, like Mikan-chan and the speeding car, or the break of words at the end of a chapter, or how all amusement parks have closing times, closing days—

"Oikawa-kuuuun," Saeko calls out once more, pleasantly annoyed. 

"I'm sorry," Tooru says, trying to clear his head of the end.

"What a daydreamer you are," she remarks, "but that's okay. Just keep going at it, whenever you can, wherever you can," Saeko tells him next, going into her purse for something.

Tooru really snaps out of his haze when she hands over a letter, plain but pressed with the Sunrise Garden's official letterhead.

"Did you hear about this?" she asks him, painted nails rapping along the creases.

"About what?" Tooru asks, feeling his head swell into a rumbling ache.

Saeko smiles. "You might be too young to remember it—hell, even I barely do, but they used to hold a series of summer plays at the amphitheater in the middle of the park," she explains. "Everything from Kabuki to fairy tale adaptations. Even Waiting for Godot that one time, but I heard that was a bummer."

Tooru lights up, but dims himself to stifle any chance of over-excitement. "What does this have to do with me?" 

"Well, some really bright stars once stood on that stage. Pop idols and thespians alike...it's truly one our industry's best known secrets. There's just something about that place that's like magic, you know?" Saeko sighs, and Tooru nods in understanding.

"Magic," Tooru repeats back to her.

Saeko nods along. "And I mean, you might be too young to get a season-long role for yourself right now, but there is something I'd like you to try out for."

"Yeah?" 

"Yeah." Saeko grins wide. "It used to be tradition for the park to hold a special production during the summer season, just for one week during break, starring an actor under the age of thirteen. It's usually a very small affair, an adapted version of some shorter work, but...wow. There's just nothing like the taste of that stage, and seeing young talent light up because of it."

"Are you telling me to try out for this?" Tooru asks, and he can't help but be grave about it. At this, he thinks about the matter of magic and liminal space once more, how Sunrise Garden always felt more than its wooden facades and strung up lights, and hopes to do that particular world proud.

"I'm just saying that it's an opportunity to look out for," Saeko says, leaving it at that. "But it never hurts to try, doesn't it?" 

Tooru knows that better than anyone. 

"Never," he tells her, more determined than ever.

"That's the spirit."

"I haven't seen you at meetings for the past week," Matsukawa says one day with a curious bouquet of half-flowered weeds in his grip, all loosely bound by an unraveled hair ribbon. Tucking a dandelion behind his ear, he presents it to Tooru in a mocking curtsey before settling down next to him on the bus stop seat, examining the stacks of dialogue on the former's lap and reading some of the lines out loud. In all honesty, Tooru usually hates it when Matsukawa reads over his shoulder like this, but lately he's been so focused on balancing both Opposites Attract and the upcoming audition for Sunrise Garden that it's hard for him to get even the tiniest bit riled up. He merely waves Matsukawa off, continues mouthing his leading role lines, and lets Matsukawa weave stems into his hair.

"Why the plants?" Tooru asks after he's read the same lines a million times, and he's got a particularly sharp thistle poking him in the cheek. "And stop! You're messing up my hair."

Matsukawa scoffs a bit. "One of your fangirls was picking a bouquet for you in the school greenhouse after our ghost hunt in there this afternoon." He picks out a few leaves like Tooru's become the centerpiece for an avant garde ikebana piece, as if any of them know anything about flower arrangement. "I'm baffled," he says, "because everyone in our grade swears it's haunted, but it's nothing but a bunch of overgrown shrubs and some ugly weeds. But Okada-chan in class four swears by it. Matsukawa-kun, someone's been planting vegetables and taping up glass panes! Maybe the school just hired a secret groundskeeper, or something."

"M-hm," Tooru says back, half-listening. "I suspect poltergeists."

"You always say poltergeists when you're not paying attention. It's not always going to be poltergeists, Oikawa."

Tooru shrugs. "Well, you never know. And besides, if you didn't believe her, you wouldn't have gone to investigate yourself."

"Hey, I was just in it for the free vegetables," Matsukawa corrects him. "But they're still growing, I think, so I got nothing out of the trip. It doesn't stop the other kids from going into that hellhole, though...if you were around at school more, you'd know that it's become quite a hotspot for after class adventurers." Matsukawa sighs, brushing all the shrubbery out of Tooru's hair. "We should start charging for tours."

Tooru just laughs, bringing the scripts up to his his mouth. "I promise I'll be more into things once this audition's over. We could even charge double with me at the helm, Mattsun."

"Well, I seriously doubt you'll even be around after your audition," Matsukawa insists with a small nod, watching the bus rumbling coming down the road from up the hill. "Because you're the only one I know who'd try so hard for a goddamned one-time child's play. In an amusement park. You're going to get it, Oikawa, even if you might as well be a park mascot."

You're going to get it. Tooru likes the sound of that. But in feigned modesty, Tooru squirms on his bench seat and shakes his head. "You just don't understand, Mattsun! It's one of the country's most prestigious shows for up and coming talent, Cannes for kids, an arena for future academy prize winners and Hollywood imports—"

"All right, all right, settle down now," Matsukawa insists when Tooru just bounces out of his seat, too exuberant to keep in one place. "Just listen to me. All I'm saying is that even if you don't get this part, or even the one after that, you're too annoying not to land one eventually. You're gonna be bigger than this place, and when that day comes I'm going to sell your autographs on the internet."

"Excuse me?" Tooru asks, honestly offended.

"That's how you'll make it up to me for skipping occult club meetings," Matsukawa just jokes back, and the two of them sit in an easy silence.

When the bus stops for them to get on, they climb on and watch that certain stretch of town melt away. Taking his seat, Tooru smiles out a cracked window, all hidden behind the palm of his hand, and clutches a rolled-up script for an adaptation of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan in the other. Matsukawa's words ring clear, like the sort of truth he'd like to realize sooner rather than later. You're going to get it, he imagines Matsukawa saying again, and Tooru tells himself the same thing by the mouthing of words.

"It's going to happen," Tooru reassures himself out loud this time, and Matsukawa turns toward him. In return, he gives a knowing smile, and nothing more is said. 

Things were supposed to go according to plan. On opening day, Tooru would put on his best suit, come to auditions at Sunrise Garden right after a fidgety day at school, and see Iwaizumi right after with a few hours to spare to spend time with him. He was going to ask about the clubhouse, and whether or not the lilac trees has bloomed yet, and about all the upcoming attractions the summer had to offer them. He'd laugh and hum and buy Iwaizumi some oden at closing time, then chirp about how sure he was about getting the part for that summer show spectacular.

"Next up...Oikawa Tooru."

But such things never go according to plan. Delays turn into lost minutes, lost minutes fuel the need to rush, and rushing just means an inevitable, irredeemable mess. 

"I am so happy to be here." Smiles are forced both ways. Tooru feels it all sting when he comes into his audition an hour late, suit soaked through by downpour and the heel of tight dress shoe ready to come off. He slicks his hair back, pretends the sopping wet look is intentional, and stifles the urge to break into tears. He wills himself into apologetic bows for the panel of judges in front of him, launches himself into his best impression of Peter Pan before realizing he's blanked on all of his lines. When he remembers them, he stumbles through them nevertheless, and ends up more like a hesitant visitor to neverland instead of its ruler.

Naturally, no one seems impressed, but Tooru forges on anyway. He ends with a good bye, Peter Pan’s last line to the now-grown Wendy before going back to neverland, a place too far away, a different dimension, and takes a deep breath when he delivers the lines.

"Good bye," Tooru repeats once more, nothing but a whisper. He stops himself from reaching out, and this is when he thinks he’s messed up the most: because in that instance those words leave his mouth, he pictures someone he shouldn’t have to say farewell to just yet. Good bye, Iwa-chan, he almost says, stopping the name short on his tongue, his usual feints betrayed by the quivering muscles in his face. Tooru almost wants to die right then and there, but stands still, a smiling shell. 

At once, the judges twitch in their seats, probably just as uncomfortable as Tooru is, their eyebrows raising before settling once more. All of them whisper and nod and scribble something down on their clipboards before offering polite grins, telling him they’ll be in touch.

"T-thank you." Tooru just bows once more (he thinks this is the most he’s ever bowed in a single setting actually, sans the family funerals and other forms of filial piety) and rushes out of the back of the amphitheater.

Over the intercom, still sturdy in the wind and the rain, a harbinger of the worst kind says the park will close in fifteen minutes.

Tooru wipes his face, sniffles back any sort of weakness, and sets towards the northern end of the park again. He pushes past the stream of people going towards the south, follows the people he cannot chase towards the north. He ducks under umbrellas and ignores all the grey haze up ahead, all the pitter and patter of the oncoming rain. When he sees the northern exit, five sets of toll booths not unlike the ones in the south, he stops short, watches the people stream through, and knows, instantly, that he cannot do the same. Anger builds in his temple like something about to pop, and he remembers the day he lost Mikan-chan. I will have my way, he thinks like he did back then, because no bad day can be just so. Let me find good in it, he thinks, past the propensity to downpour. Let me find Iwa-chan, he doesn't mean to mutter under his breath, right into his sopping sleeve.

Tooru edges himself towards the northern exit, going shoulder to shoulder with the faceless crowd. He wonders what it'd be like, to pass through just this once, to actually see the world Iwaizumi sees. That could certainly make up for things, he thinks, but the questions loom heavy in Tooru's head, every single one he couldn't ask the spirit board: What was it like on the other side? Were movie screens bigger? Did the spotlights shine brighter? Was there another Tooru there, waiting for Iwa-chan? One that didn't mess up his lines and wowed the crowds? One that didn't rely on kokkuri-san or nights alone with his scripts and DVDs? One that was a natural, a real and bona fide natural at things? Did Iwa-chan find that version of him today? Was he going to leave this one behind?

Under this made weight, Tooru just inches forward, reaching in a way he couldn't during the audition, determined to defy. He leans over the turnstile, pusing and pushing to make it budge, and keeps on it like a heavy stone. Tooru gasps when it moves—the motion of it fights him like a magnet repelling another, never quite meant to knock him back completely, but the force remains resilient, quiet in keeping the boy in his place. Over the rail, Tooru bears down on it once more, tears sneaking out over his cheeks, growls made low so no one can hear him.

On Sunrise Garden's opening day, the rain comes down cold, like tiny claws digging into the back of Tooru's neck.

Another set of hands, firm but not meant to hurt, hook onto the collar of Tooru's blazer and pull him back into the park. 

"Where do you think you're going?" Iwaizumi's voice sounds harried under the rain, deeper than before. Tooru finds the will to face him, and watches the rushed way he breathes in, wincing just to keep eye contact.

"Have you been running after me?" Tooru asks, swallowing down hard.

"Don't be so conceited," Iwaizumi gruffs right back. "How could you think of leaving without this?" He digs into his pocket and presents Tooru with a plain sealed envelope, name scrawled across the middle. Peering, Tooru just grimaces at it without taking the letter into his hands, already knowing what it entails. We're very sorry, Oikawa-kun, but we've decided to go in a different direction. He meets Iwaizumi back in the eyes, watches how his hope never abandons him.

(And at least they've had the courtesy to tell Tooru so swiftly this time, and with a messenger he'd never have the heart to kill.)

"There's no need for that," Tooru just tells him. "I know what it says." 

"You should open it anyway," Iwaizumi insists. "It could be good news, for all you know—"

"Well, I know it isn't," Tooru accidentally raises his voice. In turn, Iwaizumi doesn't yell at him back (even though he huffs like he might holding the urge in), and drags Tooru away from the gate. A security guard stops the both of them when they try to make it up the cobblestone, mumbles something about curfews and Iwaizumi-kun you're already in huge trouble with your mother, but the boy just holds up five fingers and insists he'll be out soon. Behind him, Tooru follows along, right into an empty game booth half-closed for the day.

"I'm not opening it," Tooru says, settling in with a wall of overstuffed Tikachus. "I've been through a billion auditions, Iwa-chan, and I always know when I've done bad on them. I just feel it." 

"What, and trying to get past that gate's gonna make it better? All by hurting yourself? You dumbass." 

Tooru feels himself go into a deeper frown than before. "What do you mean by that, Iwa-chan?"

Iwaizumi fiddles with his jacket sleeve, one usually rolled up to his elbow crease, and Tooru makes out the sight of wrapped gauze.

"Iwa-chan? What happened?" Tooru asks. "Is it...does it..." he doesn't finish, opting to reach out instead, but Iwaizumi just hides it away, as tough as ever.

"It's just a sprain," Iwaizumi reassures him, shrugs included. "But it's a warning, too, I think," he explains, "about crossing into the sides that aren't yours. I was working on some lights by a southern fence yesterday when I fell off a ladder. And you know, I've been reckless as a kid, whatever, but...damn, it felt like I got pushed off this time."

Tooru nods along. "So you understand, then? What this all is?" Discreetly, he takes the letter from the counter when Iwaizumi isn't looking and hides it away on his lap, just so he can't get back to nagging him about it.

Iwaizumi stares back from the window, and shrugs back. "I still don't, I guess, but I'd rather not place all my faith in weird stuff like that. It's just...I get a bad feeling about the south, and I'm sure you feel the same towards the other end."

Outside, the two of them watch the rain let up, like they've hit the eye of a tempest. "I'd just stay clear of my side, Oikawa. God knows you'll cry a storm if you bust that face of yours."

Tooru relents a tiny grin. "So you were looking for me, then," he says with the most confidence he's mustered all afternoon.

"Think whatever you'd like," Iwaizumi retorts right back, and the two of them let their world fall into near-silence. Under the static of a rescinding storm, Tooru paces his own breathing, finds a small calm, and remembers that silences can be comfortable.

It's funny, being with Iwaizumi. For someone he doesn't get to see as much as he'd like, for someone as otherworldly as another dimension itself, his heart reads homier than anyone he's ever known, like a sun-dusted hill, or a dusk at the end of a Miyagi day. He's just Iwaizumi, just Iwa-chan, and with him Tooru feels no need to fill the quiet with the pleasantries, or the falsities he does with the others. I can be whatever I want to be, Tooru tells himself, but, still upset from a blown audition and with Iwaizumi around, he knows it's important—that it's okay, maybe—to be me. 

"I know you took the envelope, Oikawa," Iwaizumi tells him, a scold by the softest means. "You can build all the suspense you'd like, but you're going to have to find out sooner or later." 

Tooru keeps his hands gripped over the letter, fingers pressed against the paper in utmost stubbornness.

"But what if it's bad news?"

"And what if it's good?" Iwaizumi answers him quite simply. 

From there, Tooru says nothing at first. He just takes the liberty of raising the barricade over them, to let in the last of the storm in around them. Glances thrown behind him, Tooru watches Iwaizumi take in the skyline of the park, his sights never wonder-filled, or heavy with wanderlust; more than anything, his eyes are sure, surer than anything, and it is here where Tooru must remember who Iwaizumi Hajime is. 

"Iwa-chan," Tooru calls out, all grave with gusto gone.

"Yeah?"

"Your family owns this park," Tooru remarks. "Which means reviving the shows at the amphitheater was their idea, right?"

Iwaizumi squirms, his arms folded in front of him. "So?" 

"Iwa-chan."

"What?"

"Are you certain that it's good news...because you asked those casting directors to give me the part?" Tooru asks in all horror.

Iwaizumi tears himself away from the sky, eyes shifting into something offended. Outside the shelter of their game stand, the rain has stopped completely, taking the clouds away with them, too, only to leave the two boys in unhindered clarity. By the newfound light, just enough for the end of the day, Tooru shrinks back against it, like doubting Iwaizumi could be the worse thing he could do. 

"It would be the easiest way, just handing you the part," Iwaizumi tells him. "But I didn't, because you're better than that, aren't you?"

Tooru swallows down hard. He squints at the incoming sun, and how it always gets to close out the day.

"Iwa-chan," Tooru whispers out. He feels his system heave heavy and prickly, like he's swallowed a bunch of thumbtacks, and Iwaizumi shakes his head to ward him off once more.

"Don't get sentimental on me, Oikawa." 

"But—"

"But nothing. Just because I'm going to run this park one day means I'm going to hand you anything. Because you can stand on your own two feet, right? No matter what happens."

"No matter what?" Tooru dares to ask back.

"No matter what," Iwaizumi tells him. 

Tooru's eyes go wide and he relents a few hurried nods. He takes a deep breath and unearths the envelope from his lap, presses it against his palms on the counter, and looks back to his friend. Iwaizumi nods, gestures his head back to the letter, and waits for Tooru's next course of action.

When Tooru rips the seal, he finds no more than a few lines worth of an answer.

We are pleased to offer you the role of Peter Pan as the second understudy, in the event that the main actor cannot perform his duties.

"Understudy."

"What?"

"I'm a second understudy for a show that's only playing once," Tooru repeats out to Iwaizumi, still trying to take the news in. He feels ache pool at the back of this throat. 

Iwaizumi nods along. "We can...we can work with that." 

"I'm not going to be in the show, Iwa-chan."

"You don't know that!"

Tooru knows that he should be thankful, considering just how terrible the audition went in the first place, but gratitude is not what washes over him, nor relief; he thinks about the last line of his read-through, that good bye, one that might've taken a few years off his life just to deliver, one that he had put all his heart into, if he had to be honest with himself, and—god, what good am I, why am I even doing this, what are you doing Tooru, and swallows back second place with little civility.

"Oikawa, come on, this isn't the end of the world."

Not good enough

You can't be here, you're not meant to be here, go elsewhere, go elsewhere, go elsewhere 

Not good enough 

Tooru thinks that maybe some days were meant to have no good in them, after all.

Not good enough

"Oikawa!" Iwaizumi reaches out for him when Tooru rips the letter up and hops off the game stand stool. "Oikawa! Come on!" he yells once more, when he follows behind Tooru's mad dash back down the cobblestone. With no sign of new rain, Tooru just keeps on the path undisturbed, head down and steps burning under him, hands clenched until he finds fire in his palms. What a world to be in, the perfect answer to neverland and all the fantastic places he's read about in books, sunrise to sunset, with all of its game stands and secret clubhouses and terrifying amphitheaters, their time-held traditions and hidden sons, sons like Iwaizumi, the one and only Iwa-chan—

"Oikawa!"

—and what a disappointment he must be, to the likes of all of it. To the likes of him. When he hits the southern end, Tooru passes through the exit like he's meant to, homeward bound and without Iwaizumi. He doesn't think of stopping for him. 

"Oikawa!" he yells out anyway, to Tooru. Distance marks the echo of it. "Stop! Come back!" 

I won't stop 

I'm not good enough to come back

To the train station, Tooru runs. When the car pulls up on the tracks, he tells himself to shut out the marathon of voices in his head, to run them under the rumbling and the ruse of its white noise.

When no one shows up for occult club a week later, Tooru keeps his sights on the spirit board, tempted but restrained by Matsukawa's urges to clean up and go the hell home. Tooru complies with a small nod this time, because it's not like he has the questions to ask today anyway—he'd much rather go home to catch some Twilight Zone reruns with his sister this evening, maybe practice his lines for an upcoming scene in Opposites Attract (which was coming to its end by summer, much to Tooru's detriment), so he doesn't consider himself at any sort of loss.

Still at his desk with a finger pressed against a new ten yen coin, Tooru sighs and lets Matsukawa speak on the matter of serendipity. From the way he's positively waltzing with the broom in his hand, Tooru finds it safe to say that his friend has had a much better time with his V.I.P. ticket than Tooru has so far.

"So, because you didn't want to go back with me yesterday, I went to the park alone," Matsukawa starts his story over again. "Man, they've changed a lot about it, you know? I heard some workers call it an improvement phase. Like they've started advertising for the theater revival, even broadcasted free lawn viewings for classic movies, which is more of your thing, but..."

Tooru clicks his tongue. "Hey, no rubbing it in."

"What? Now that you can go anytime you want, you're suddenly not about it?" Matsukawa refutes.

"People grow out of things."

"In a matter of a week?" 

Tooru shrugs. "Sure, one week when I was kid I went from liking banshees to aliens. The mind is fickle and unfocused," Tooru insists, all pleasant like a chant, or a literature teacher too involved in his students' coursework.

"There will be other auditions at Sunrise Park," Matsukawa says with much of the same theatricality, seeing right past Tooru's stints.

To this, Tooru just sticks his tongue out at him.

"Mature." Matsukawa rolls his eyes like he's telling Tooru, all right you big baby, and finds his place back in the story. "As I was saying," he continues, "so I figured I wouldn't stay there so long, since it's kinda weird going by yourself. So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna go to the roller coasters and make fun of the pictures they take when people hit a certain part of the slope."

"That's mean, Mattsun," Tooru teases.

"Well, opinions aside, I was just standing at the booth, watching all the pictures fly by, and man, I saw the funniest picture, funnier than—"

"Can you speed this story up, Mattsun?" 

"I was just getting there! Anyway, this picture came up on the screen, and I laughed harder than I ever have in my life. I swear, I thought I was gonna collapse. Well, lo and behold, this other kid had the right idea, too. So then we just spent the rest of our time at that booth, making fun of folks." Matsukawa sticks his hands in his pockets, sighs like he's met the love of his life (ew), and shakes his head because he can't believe it. "And that is the story of how I met Hanamaki Takahiro."

Tooru frowns. He's never heard of him before. "That's it?"

"What do you mean, that's it? A beautiful friendship was made that day. We're going to meet at the park tomorrow, actually," Matsukawa asserts.

"Wait." Tooru's eyes go wide. "He's not from...you know—"

"Well..."

"Mattsun."

Matsukawa nods all solemn. "He is," he answers Tooru. "I mean, at least I think he is. All that weird opposite north-south stuff—heck, even his version of Kitagawa Daiichi's got rooms in all the wrong places, teachers teaching math instead of history...it's all messed up, but it works, I guess."

"Oh, so now you believe me?" Tooru asks, incredulous, getting up from his desk to retrieve the dustpan in the corner.

"Well now, let's not get so carried away, but...let's just say it's not so impossible." At this, Matsukawa shrugs and leans back against the window. "But imagine all the people we're missing out on, the people were not meant to meet."

Tooru would prefer not to imagine, to dwell on such things. He kneels down by the dust bunnies, pretends to be preoccupied with their demise by bristled brush, but waits for Matsukawa to finish what he has to say. In the darkness of himself, Tooru hides by the hunch of his shoulders. By the light of things he can't help but steal glances from, he peers over the shoulder from his careful shelter.

"But you know what the park is just saying to all that? Screw it," Matsukawa says with a wily sort of grin. "Pardon the sentimental, but...it's special." He nods, as if he's still accepting the idea for himself, and Tooru just dips back to face the ground.

"Special," Tooru repeats, because it's the truth. He just shakes his head, mashes his lips closed, and tries to free himself from such thoughts. "I guess you call it that," he adds, failing miserably.

Matsukawa sighs, and Tooru hears his feet tap on the linoleum below.

"He talked about you, you know," he tells Tooru. "Hanamaki, I mean. I don't think you two have ever met, but he goes to school with that Iwa-chan kid, and he told me to pass a message along."

Tooru perks up from over his shoulder. "What did he want to say?"

"Iwaizumi-kun's been extra grumpy since you ran off and it's all your fault, Oikawa Tooru. Please atone for your sins and report to Sunset Garden immediately," Matsukawa imitates, extra breezy, holding a peace sign up at the end.

Tooru just grimaces. "That's not funny."

"Hey, don't kill the messenger, now." 

"Sorry." 

"Anyway, I'm leaving just in case you decide that you want some alone time with kokkuri-san," Matsukawa says, motioning towards the board. "Just remember to close it, before the ghosts come and haunt you." 

"They would never," Tooru tells him right back, honestly offended. 

"Okay, okay," Matsukawa insists, with one foot out the door. "See you tomorrow, Oikawa." 

"See you." 

And on one of those particular days where alone feels just the slightest bit bad, Matsukawa says goodbye for the day and leaves Tooru to finish cleaning up himself. Feet tapping to keep busy, wandering to the tune of a song he's made in his head, Tooru finds peace at the windowsill, sun on his back and draft cooling the sweat on his neck. It's getting hotter by the day, he thinks, and he begins to wonder what Iwaizumi might think of summer.

With a light smack to his cheeks, he scolds himself for always wandering back to him. 

Still, Tooru keeps down such paths and collects all the pieces; if that Hanamaki guy went to some version of Kitagawa Daiichi, and Iwaizumi was his classmate of all things, that would mean another part of their world was running in parallel. Tooru finds the nerve to scoff about it, because what a joke this is, and peers over his shoulder at the empty room. In some other place, in this very classroom perhaps, Iwaizumi could be finishing up with his own club, or cleaning, or doing homework by himself at a desk in the corner, or chatting with a new girlfriend—

At once, and without finishing his menageries, a strong breeze comes flying from the window, sliding the kokkuri-san coin across the paper beneath it. Tooru watches it move on its own, past any dying draft after that—like kokkuri-san really, really might be here somehow. Inching closer without pressing a finger to the coin, Tooru watches it spell out Iwaizumi's name and waits for the spirits to say something more.

"Kokkuri-san, what...do you want to tell me?" he asks.

(Why don't you ask the right questions, Tooru?) 

"I'm in no mood to play with you today, kokkuri-san," Tooru insists. "I have a lot of lines to practice when I get home, and Eiko's already got some DVDs rented from the library and—"

The coin drifts dangerously close to the drawn torii gate to say goodbye.

"Okay! Okay," Tooru insists with a sigh. "I mean...you spelled out Iwa-chan's name. So I'm guessing the news has to do with him—like...what? Did he get a new girlfriend or something?"

(Don't be so silly, Tooru.) 

"It's hard to know what to ask, kokkuri-san!"

(Fine.) 

“Well?” 

(Try location.) 

"If this is some ploy to get me back to the park, I already told Mattsun—"

(It's not.)

"Okay, then. Where should I be asking about? The twilight zone?" (No.) "Sunset Garden?" (Ha, nice try.) "I don't know! Here?"

(Yes.)

When the coin stops short at the upper right corner, all serious in its claims, Tooru freezes with it and takes his glances around the room. Still alone, with no one but kokkuri-san and the silent breeze of mid-spring at his side, he shakes his head at the notion of Iwaizumi being here on the school grounds, too, because here is everything but that when it comes places outside Sunrise Garden. 

You could just go back, he tells himself like a constant itch. You don't have to make this so hard. If you could just let go, just accept things for what they are—

Tooru bites the inside of his cheek until he comes across just the right amount of ache. To kokkuri-san, he prepares one more question.

“Where?” 

Kokkuri-san does not answer right away, and the coin drags across the paper, slow in its trip across the hiragana. Tooru waits, putting the characters together to get two words. Garden and house. Never the most straightforward, kokkuri-san just moves to a blank space between strokes, waiting for Tooru’s next question, but it doesn’t take him too long to figure things out. Without saying anything else, Tooru says his proper goodbyes to the board (“you’re not as mean as they say, kokkuri-san!” he says into thin air), lifts the coin off the page to spend later, and folds the paper board back into his pocket to end things. He leaves the floors unswept, the desks disordered, all the windows half-opened, half-closed. He lets his feet take him down the hallway, even though he's not sure he wants them carrying him at all.

"Iwa-chan?"

The greenhouse is in shambles, but Tooru convinces himself that it could be home. With a small and careful touch, Tooru traces his hands over taped cracked glass while he walks, and observes how the adhesive will never stand up to inevitable fissures; still, with hands off the pane, in the jungle of tipped-over pots and curtains of thick ivy, he looks on like he could tame it. He flinches when a few birds rustle in the branches of a few ruling trees, how the song of them sounds nothing like the ones he usually hears in his Miyagi, and decides that kokkuri-san has not led him astray this afternoon, either.

When the last fragments of sunlight peek in the spaces between foliage, all sorts of gold and coral and kaleidoscopic in effort, Tooru squints through it and grazes his fingertips over the long land of a wooden work table. Eyes kept all around, darting from the climbing vines to the obscuring cover, the violet wildflowers growing on shelf crevices and cracks in the cement under him, he recoils when he thinks he's contracted a splinter. Tooru brings the edge of his hand to his mouth in a light bite, but finds no pain, and glances back down on the tabletop. Another set of fingers flit across from him, and at once, Tooru recognizes the bandaids. They're the same ones Iwaizumi used to patch him up at his clubhouse, now wrapped around the soft part of his best friend's palm, and Tooru feels the need to ask about it.

"What happened to you?" he inquires, like he knows that Iwaizumi is on the other side of the ivy. Tooru swallows down the weird dryness in his throat, because it's not like they were meant to be apart for so long. This is what he tells himself, when he catches all the little fragments of Iwaizumi between leaves and the sleeping morning glories. He spots the tip of his nose, the deep brown of an eye, a ruddy cheek—and wonders if liminal spaces were meant to run this much interference. 

 "I was building sets," Iwaizumi answers Tooru all a-matter-of-fact. "Part of a pirate ship and a hanging crescent moon."

"Oh?" Tooru asks. "Tell me more about that. How's Peter Pan going?"

"Didn't you run away just to avoid hearing about it extensively?"

"Well, you brought it up," Tooru pouts.

"That's because I'm proud of my crescent moon," Iwaizumi admits. "But I'll say nothing more on the matter."

In the resulting silence, Tooru watches Iwaizumi's hands work on the table, how his eyes cloud over a ceramic pot he wants to glue back together. He guesses that Iwaizumi comes here on the days he's not at Sunset Garden, and he laughs when he thinks of him as some florist's ghost. 

"Iwa-chan?" When Tooru gleams back up, Iwaizumi does no such thing in return. Back at their hands, Tooru wraps one around his own wrist, to keep from reaching forward past the vines. But like he knows, Iwaizumi puts the pot shards down and breathes out a huffy sigh.

"Why haven't you come back yet?" the other boy asks, and this is when Tooru spots it: a glint of hurt flashes by Iwaizumi's eye, all in a second of strain before finding strength once more. 

Tooru straightens his back and turns his cheek up. "What is the point of having dead weight around the theatre when you have your hands so full already?" he asks, stopping short of a gasp when he hears a pot break on the other side.

"Are you giving up, then?" Iwaizumi asks right back, and it is clear that he has worked himself up.

"I'm not. I didn't like that stage anyway, I mean the acoustics were just all wrong—"

"Oikawa."

Tooru bites his tongue and eats up every white lie. Overhead, the birds flap their wings and squawk at glass ceilings.

"I wasn't good enough, Iwa-chan," Tooru says in earnest. "I can blame the rain from that day, or difficult lines, but there's just nothing else to it. I wasn't good enough. And that place...that place only wants the best. I can feel it. It knows."

Iwaizumi finds the nerve to scoff. "Like hell it does."

Tooru does reach over this time, and Iwaizumi doesn't move his hand away. Even with fingertips barely touching, Tooru feels the heat sear up his back anyway, and a draft come in through the doors on either end. When it rustles through the ivy leaves, Tooru gets better glimpses at Iwaizumi's face, though the new sight of cheek and a bit of a frown still doesn't feel like anything complete. 

"Then what do you think I should I do, Iwa-chan?" Tooru asks. "Come back when I'm better? When I can land all those leading parts with my eyes closed?"

"No," Iwaizumi tells him. 

"Then maybe I shouldn't come back at all—"

"Are you really going to make me say it, Oikawa?" 

Tooru inches his hand away until it is off the table, and he shifts away until he cannot see Iwaizumi at all. "Maybe," he squeaks out, meaning to flirt, meaning for it to be mindless, just a reprieve from gravity and truth and falling, but it comes out like an accidental plead, a real loss for words. "Yes," he ends up saying, barely in any real voice at all. "Yes."

"Oikawa—"

"Iwa-chan."

Iwaizumi breathes out, all huffy and annoyed but still willing to stay. Under the brush of foliage, his hands clench into patient fists.

"Fine, then. I'll say it. So what if you weren't good enough this time?"

"But you don't understand, Iwa-chan," Tooru says, feeling his voice rising. "That was an important show, and it should've been mine!" He gulps down, remembering the last delivery once more, that goodbye, like it was really meant to be something parting. Because maybe the park had known all along—you're good, Tooru, but just not good enough, we don't take anything less than the absolute best.

"That doesn't mean you should just lock yourself away!"

Tooru leans in closer, all without meaning to. "Acting isn't exactly a group activity, Iwa-chan," he answers Iwaizumi, and once more Tooru knows he is testing him, always testing for the day that Iwaizumi will wise up and leave, because he cannot possibly be this good to him, because everyone has their limits, their inevitable ends, and Tooru cannot fathom being at his.

"But does going at it alone make anything better?" Iwaizumi asks, right on the verge of yelling. "I will make the amphitheater better, the entire park better, and by the time you land that leading role, you'll have a place that's bright enough for you. For the both of us! So just keep working at it. Take the time to grow."

Iwaizumi clicks his tongue, and Tooru feels his face heat up on his side. He suppresses a tiny smile, but feels it wipe away when he hears Iwaizumi Hajime say the words, more honest than Tooru could ever be:

"Come back, Oikawa."

At the words, Tooru claws at the ivy. He knows he'll never reach Iwaizumi here, but he'll still try to call it home. Never mind about the amphitheater, or the clubhouse amongst lilac trees.

Never mind, never mind about the likes of Sunrise Garden.

"Come back," Iwaizumi says, voice all sturdy like stone.

For the next seven days Tooru spends in the greenhouse with Iwaizumi, he coins it the quiet week, determines that they've found a suitable place to meet for lunch and after school run-ins, and spends much of it convincing Iwaizumi of the same. And despite his rebuttals—"I'm telling you, Oikawa, this roof will cave in by the next big storm"—the two of them fall into a sort of routine, unspoken and unplanned in their encounters, where tiny meals, painting projects, and practiced lines take precedence over the necessity to gab.

Sunday is beaming and casual, and Tooru keeps his gakuran jacket slung over a wooden chair. With temperatures at soaring highs, the hottest since a Miyagi swelter in 1986, he pretends the greenhouse isn't totally insulating them in this misplaced summer. Reminding himself that spring is still in session, keeping cool only to maintain his feints with Iwaizumi, he realizes that is harder said than done when the latter's got the nerve to hum in this damned heat.

"Oh, isn't it just lovely in here, Iwa-chan?" Tooru sighs out like a dream. "The greenhouse really lets the sun in, don't you think?"

Iwaizumi scoffs—much to Tooru's chagrin—and continues spray-painting a few fixtures for a pirate ship. "I'm liking it, but you can stop pretending now. You're panting like a dog. Did you learn that from Mikan-chan?"

 "Mikan-chan did not do gross things like pant!"

"All dogs pant, Oikawa."

"Yeah, but he was graceful about it."

After that, Tooru pretends to be angry at Iwaizumi. On his side of the ivy, he picks blooming flowers off the leaves, collects them in leftover mason jars, and slides them under the vines to his best friend's side.

"We could just stay here, you know," Tooru remarks through the pressed air, offhanded but not. At this, Iwaizumi says nothing at first, keeping the first of many silences. Through the hiss of a spray paint can, Tooru waits for Iwaizumi's answer, but gets nothing he wants to hear.

"This place won't last, Oikawa," says Iwaizumi, and the two of them leave it at that for the first day of the week.

Monday fends off Sunday's haze by the way of rain. On this particular day, Tooru runs around his side of the greenhouse with his mason jars from yesterday, collecting drops from cracks in the ceiling and wincing away the drizzle caught in his eye. With lunch unattended, he settles down to eat his milk bread after a while, because he tells himself this place isn't going to fall from just a little rain. 

On the other side of the ivy, Iwaizumi is weaving seashells into a fisherman's net. He is the first to  leave on this particular day, because lunch periods on his side end a total seven minutes earlier than Tooru's. "It's fine," Tooru insists, to both Iwaizumi and under his breath, because he will take whatever he can get, and at least I get to see him on a regular basis, because seven minutes a day can't possibly add up that much, so it's fine, really, it's all okay. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine, he tells himself over and over, until he really makes himself believe it, and he falls into same rhythm of rain falling into mason jars.

"It's fine."

And when Tooru looks back on this particular Monday, he learns an important personal truth: trying hard might get you no where sometimes, and that might hurt like none other, but settling in large amounts might come in at a second worst.

"It's fine," Tooru tells himself in between practicing lines for his last scene on Opposites Attract, when Iwaizumi isn't even here on this Tuesday and he's left nothing but a folded note in one of Tooru's mason jars. It reads out like a to-do list more than anything—a doctor's visit for that sprained arm, more set-building, some lighting improvements for his clubhouse, homework—but Tooru likes hearing about these things all the same. They're mundane for someone set to inherit an entire amusement park, but Tooru appreciates the feeling of familiar ground, and the notion that people in the other dimension walk it the same way, too.

Tooru smiles down at the list before realizing how hard it is to hold it. Notes are nice, but they're nothing when the real thing isn't here. With eyes cast out the greenhouse, past the cracked and yellowing glass, he thinks of Sunrise Garden in vague amounts.

"It's fine," Tooru tells himself once more with a frown.

"It's fine," he only says once more on this particular Tuesday, when he finds how much it stings to stay on his tongue, even under his breath.

When Wednesday arrives at the greenhouse, it is barely so at 12:04AM, with all the light of day gone until morning and his sister, Eiko in tow. Tooru ushers her in like they've entered the world's greatest basilica, but she flicks her flashlight up in careful motions and shakes her head in quiet disapproval. "Hm," she hums with a shrug, going deeper into the greenhouse.

To the other side, Tooru tries calling for Iwaizumi, but no one answers. Tooru knew that one would be a long shot, given the midnight hour, but it doesn't stop him from writing notes for him to see in the morning. I have to film something all day today, so I won't be here. Don't miss me too much, Iwa-chan.

"Aw, are you writing a love letter to someone on the other side?" Eiko teases, as Tooru stuffs the note into a mason jar and rolls it under the ivy brush.

"It's for Iwa-chan."

"Like I said—a love letter," she repeats back, distracted.

Tooru says nothing to this and just hops off the work table chair with his flashlight in tow. He flicks the light on a bunch of sleeping wildflowers, the two rustling trees, the overgrown grasses, the splendor of it all—but Eiko only sees the cracked glass and the burdened columns holding the place together. 

"Onee-chan," Tooru tries to start, but it's clear that she's already made up her mind.

"Tooru—this place is lovely," Eiko tells him,  all soft spoken, revering. "But it's not going to last. It's going to break down, like all the others."

 Tooru shakes his head. "Wait, no," he says. "No. What do you mean by that?"

Eiko clicks her flashlight off, and Tooru does the same for the time being. She has always said that ghosts hate the sight of them.

"This is all theory, mind you," she explains, "but I don't think liminal spaces are supposed to last. Whether they're one time deals, like a temple every few years or so, or a reoccurring one, like this greenhouse, the two universes will correct themselves. Think of it like...two finger pads, unsticking themselves from an accidental glueing."

"No, onee-chan. It can't—"

"What's the big deal? You have the park, don't you? Just let this one run its course." Eiko takes another glance at the premises, silhouette its nose up in true Oikawa fashion. "Plus, as your older sister, I'm not sure I'm okay with you playing around here in this rickety house. Having Mikan-chan go was already shocking enough, you know..."

"That's morbid!"

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding...but Tooru, can you tell me something? Honestly?"

Tooru shakes his head. By shadows, Eiko probably pretends not to see.

"Can't you do better than this place?" she asks, and Tooru feels the early morning blow through him like he's not made of anything at all.

"Well, I have theory for you too, Eiko," he starts, composing himself.

"Yeah?"

"What if some liminal spaces are just to sacred to reach? What if it takes someone really special to stay? Maybe some people are meant for it, and others aren't." 

Eiko sighs out. "But special is what you make it, Tooru."

Tooru thinks back to the kid playing Peter Pan in the play, how wonderful he must be. He thinks back to Iwaizumi Hajime and his brilliant hands, mixed in the care of building sets and his base amongst the lilac trees, a builder in the making. But what could Tooru be? The finest character actor his age had ever seen? Teenage heartthrob? Award winning thespian? He thinks back to all the great actors of various golden ages, the characters they played, the people they fooled off screen and in the seats below, and thinks about the shoes to be filled, the houses he still felt too weak to walk into.

"What does special even mean in the long run, Tooru?"

In the darkness, Tooru peers up at the sky and chooses not to answer. Past Kitagawa Daiichi's sports fields, past the streetlights keeping the stars from view, Tooru sees them just fine up above. In the whirr of silence, crickets slow but ready to come out in the passing of seasons, in the wind blowing through both dimensions, Tooru hears the greenhouse creak out, like some interlude before the last song on an album.

On Thursday, Tooru gives Iwaizumi a few helpful suggestions. It is late after school, and the both of them are working on math problems on opposite pages (from Tooru's page seventy-five to Iwaizumi's fifty-seven) and passing erasers back and forth over the ivy. Math happened to be Iwaizumi's best subject, while it had been Tooru's absolute worst, so the last two hours had been littered with jargon about negative numbers and the horrid application of English letters in algebra. Still, through all of Tooru's complaints, Iwaizumi hasn't barked at him once; minus a few grunts or some muttered curses over not being able to solve something, he's been as patient as Tooru could hope to expect.

"Iwa-chan, you've been so helpful today," Tooru giggles out, squinting past the day's high winds. "You know how I should thank you?"

"You don't," Iwaizumi corrects him with a scoff. "I don't want anything you're offering."

"Aw, come on, Iwa-chan," Tooru insists, extending hands under the ivy curtain, all in frenetic, wriggly spirits. "Just hear me out! It's about the greenhouse."

"Not this again."

Under the forming dusk, Tooru peers up at the cracks in the ceiling, hears the foundation creak in echos. Leaning over the table, never able to put on his full weight over the fear it might break, he smiles with something uneasy and put on. In soft bedside coos, the house tells him, this is not the place for you, because this place will be no more.

"Just listen!" Tooru forges on despite it, loud enough to disturb any dying peace. "With my bright ideas, how you like to build, we can really make it work, I think. Picture it like a second clubhouse, we could clear out the weeds and fix the leg chairs—"

"But, Oikawa—"

"And we can even string up curtains! Plant new things! You know, I've always wanted an herb garden, and I love the smell of lavender. Oh, and what about a new bookshelf to keep my scripts? Do you know how to craft a coat rack? What about rigging some lights and—"

"Hey, no—"

"It'll be just a place for us, and none of our Kitagawa Daiichis need to know, right?" Tooru continues on, all spun up whirlwind-style. "It'll be great, because we can make this place great. It's still got a good couple of years left, and if we work hard, we can make it forever!" Tooru raises his hands to the sky.

Up above, squawking birds lift off in droves, done for the day and ready for slumber. The house moans out in protest, and Iwaizumi picks up a bout of silence.

"Iwa-chan?"

Iwaizumi breathes in on his side of the ivy, and a stutter emerges like a croak at the back of his throat.

"Iwa-chan, we could—"

"But I don't want to," Iwaizumi finally tells him, trying not to turn it into a bark. "Whatever it is you want to do here, I don't want any of it."

"And why not?" Tooru asks on the other side.

"Because I've told you time and time again. There's no saving this house. If I had gotten to it a year ago, maybe I could've, but not now. And hell, I don't even like being here," he continues, stopping short with a small fuck, a curse that some of the other kids in his class have picked up, too. "And you know what? We shouldn't have to be here. Fine by me, if you don't want to come back to the park, but there are still better places than this anyway."

Tooru frowns, smacking a cheek to stop it from going redder than it already has. He rewinds back in the conversation, swallows up that I don't even like being here with something heavy—but not necessarily bad, though—and forges on. "So why come to the greenhouse in the first place?" he asks. "If you hate it?" 

Iwaizumi doesn't say anything at first. He rolls another click off his tongue, then breathes out a crisp and wavering sigh, like a breeze rolling off a tree bough. 

"Iwa-chan?" Tooru says, peeking through the elusive ivy. Again, he only catches glimpses of Iwaizumi all still on the other side—his blotchy nose, like people really do blush in the strangest places, a big forehead, the sight of scrunched eyebrows—and at once, he thinks he might know the answer. Tooru tears away the moment Iwaizumi finds him in between the cracks, and waits for the words, the affirmation. Between the seconds, he makes he imagines the things that Iwaizumi could say: because you're my best friend. Because things are better when we get to be together. Because you're Oikawa Tooru, that weird kid who does commercials and watches the Twilight Zone with your sister, who plays kokkuri-san on Tuesdays, who still sleeps with that same stuffed bear from Sunrise Garden all those years ago. Because whatever it is we have, magic or not, it's here to stay, and we're not going anywhere.

"Iwa-chan?"

But Tooru never hears Iwaizumi say such things. Because most times, the unspoken will stay that way, remaining the goosebumps on skin, or deep breaths before white lies. Perhaps they'll stay the wrinkles on worried foreheads, or the frowns all too impossible to hide. 

"Because you're here," Iwaizumi answers anyway, because as much as Tooru tries to surprise people, he forgets that his best friend can do the very same. Tooru bites down on his lip and leans over, hands weaving through the other side. Oh, how he might like to see him right now. Past the ivy, all in full.

Overhead, the wind kicks up, almost too violent for the both of them to stay. Dead leaves whir, and the house creaks in an old sort of pain. More glass breaks, and the ivy curtain lifts from their view.

Tooru smiles at Iwaizumi, and it is tinged with something sore. He knows it should feel like getting the world back, but there's something too small about the house to claim any sort of victory. 

"What's wrong now, Oikawa?"

"Nothing," Tooru just proclaims in his white lie, as the winds die back down. "I'm just thinking that it'll all be fine. I'm fine here," he insists, because he's always been good at keeping the other things unsaid.

But oh, how small it really, really feels. Oh, how he might like to see Iwaizumi in full.

By Friday morning, it is all gone.

Iwaizumi was right about things, about the storms that make things clean, and how the greenhouse stood little chance against it. With broken glass at his feet, Tooru kneels down by it and picks out a mason jar, still in tact, and hides it in his bag for later. When the other kids whisper about the ghosts reclaiming what was there's, or how there really was a pinch of magic in its confines, Tooru stiffens and pretends they could've had it all here, and that a pinch's worth was more like a full body shiver. Still, despite all his pretending, his efforts at convincing himself of such great loss, he can hardly muster up the grief. In fact, with eyes kept ahead, light rain still falling over the shambles, Tooru wonders why he's never felt lighter before.

"I heard ghosts were passing love letters to each other in there."

"Folded paper in glass jars?"

"Yeah, that's it! You heard about those, too?"

"Of course! Oh, I hope they get to be together."

Love letters. Tooru scoffs at the notion. Past the chatter, he thinks about Eiko's words and her theories, how liminal spaces all fold over into the next, how they were never meant to last, and thinks that some might stand taller than others. How specific others, maybe, allow for the possibility of forever.

With levity padding his feet, Tooru doesn't feel strange about walking away. During the school day, past workbook assignments and awful chalkboard attempts, he dreams of a certain house under the lilac trees. He remembers the curve of that dreaded amphitheater stage, and the lights strung up above the half-closed game stands. He lets every thought carry, past all the apologies he has to make to Matsukawa, because he knows he's not listening again, and he's caught himself mentioning poltergeists for filler again. Luckily, he never takes offense—Matsukawa just insists on getting to the park before closing time today, because it's never right to keep someone waiting too long for things.

To this, Tooru agrees. He's so antsy he doesn't make it through the rest of the school day, finding himself on a train to Sunrise Garden instead of leading another session of kokkuri-san and the occult club. He keeps a script for Peter Pan all rolled in his hands, breath held over being let back into the play.

When the directors take one look at him and say, you're lucky we like you, Tooru counts his blessings once more. He folds the rehearsal schedule carefully into the mason jar after writing something down on the page and runs out the side of the amphitheater like he once did on opening day. Past all the rides, the game stands, the shouting guards, and five minutes until closing time, he finds the blooming lilac trees in the dusk, the lights strung up overhead to guide him, and a house quite small but strong in its own right. Outside, Iwaizumi is sitting on the roof, ladder on the side, half a sandwich on a napkin, with a hammer busy nailing down new shingles. 

"You were right, Iwa-chan," Tooru tells him, trying too hard not to beam. "The greenhouse fell apart during a storm last night. Did you see?"

"Of course I did." Iwaizumi still doesn't look up. "What did I tell you? The greenhouse wasn't meant to stand."

Tooru takes his place against the front door of Iwaizumi's house, breathes in the smell of full-swing spring and the changes that occur, and clutches the jar in his hands.

"Did you know I'd come back here?" Tooru asks. "Even though I said I wouldn't?"

"No," Iwaizumi answers bluntly, looking out over the park, past the trees. "But it's better than that old place." 

Tooru looks down at his shoes. "I hope so, too," he interjects, and the two of them grow quiet as ever.

After a while, Iwaizumi comes down from the roof, wipes his hands clean of the dirt and the grime, and stands next to Tooru by the door. When the latter puts all his weight against the wood, he finds the hard wall of something that might last.

"Here," Tooru says, handing Iwaizumi the mason jar with the folded schedule inside. With a scribbled permanent marker, the note reads, I'm going to be in the play.

Iwaizumi just scoffs, hands the schedule back to Tooru, and climbs back on the ladder to keep working. "Not hiding anymore?" he asks, picking his hammer back up. The first thump rings all thunderous, like Iwaizumi's put a little more into his swing this time.

"Never for long," Tooru beams right back. "Because I'm going to make it work this time. Just you watch!"

Iwaizumi sighs and shakes his head. A smirk emerges, all light on his face, but Tooru doesn't dare to ask for anything more.

"I'm counting on it," his best friend says anyway, when he throws Tooru a spare key to the house at hand.

"Welcome back, Oikawa."

It is a Saturday when Iwaizumi Hajime takes his seat in the audience for the exclusive summer showing of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, right in the middle row where Oikawa might not be able to see him. He watches the sets come and go, all of his built crescent moons and pirate ship mastheads, the woven nets, and Big Ben clocks, and clutches his bandaged hands at the month's worth of toil.

"Oh, these children are splendid, aren't they?"  a grandmother whispers about Peter Pan and his leading lady, Wendy, their steps buoyant across the stage, harnesses lifting them up to fly. Hajime merely nods back at her, only pretending to understand the dazzle of it. This is something he would never, ever admit to Oikawa, but he still doesn't know much about the craft of acting; when he finds his attention glazing over for the twentieth time in a span of an hour, he starts pinching himself to stay focused.

"It's lovely, watching them transform into all these different characters, all to the point where you can't recognize them."

When another act commences, the sets slide away from tropical forrest to coral cove. Hajime remembers the extensive plaster work needed on the rocks, how he had only gotten to paint the shells for the set, and takes in its splendor for the first time since the show's inception. He watches the stagehands wave metallic blue cloth from across both ends of the stage, how it effortlessly it creates an aquarium's light throughout the amphitheater, and holds his breath when he hears the flirty laughter of the boy who couldn't be Peter Pan. The warmth of its sound floods the entire place, and at once every whisperer is silenced.

Oikawa Tooru emerges from behind a plaster coral rock, gold dust on his cheeks, shells and tiny forget-me-nots woven in his hair. Mermaid number one floats his hands through the air when he teases Wendy, the pretty sheen of his green tail streaming like a brook's modest waterfall. He is mischievous and mean, but all in the right kind of way, and the entire audience laughs with all of his perfect deliveries.

"Just wonderful," the grandmother next to Hajime practically gasps. "This is what I mean."

All sorts of proud, eyes unable to tear themselves away, Hajime just nods. He leans forward just to get a better look, completely entranced. "He's worked hard for this," he can't help but remark.

"Oh? Do you know him, young man?"

Iwaizumi would like to think he does. When he watches Tooru toss his hair back, all to giggle and pretend and preen, he notices the way his eyes flick to the audience—just for that one, fleeting moment—because they both know that afraid is something that never leaves someone. Still, as soon their eyes meet, he lets Oikawa tear away in that instant, because he needs to finish his part of the show. All at once, Oikawa Tooru shows everyone why he is a showstopper, grand and like a god. But Iwaizumi knows he is also a boy hiding in houses, looking up at ceilings he might not be able to break. When he decides that someone can be both, and that this is okay, he squints at the sight of his best friend and answers her in full faith.

"I do."

(And he's sure, at that moment, that Oikawa Tooru is the most beautiful thing he's ever, ever seen.)