Chapter Text
Chihaya’s still in the middle of what she’s pretty certain is a hangover when Sudo messages her to inform her that he’s told Taichi, as she asked.
To: Sudo
ty
It’s about all her brain can handle writing at this point, given how much it’s hurting. Chitose had recommended water and painkillers, but they really don’t seem to be doing anything much so far, so she’s in the kitchen getting her third glass of water.
She looks at her other notifications – 5 missed calls from Taichi, and a single text, asking if they can talk. But talking to him is the last thing she wants to do after her display last night. How could she have been so stupid? She knew, theoretically, that alcohol lowered your inhibitions, but she thought she’d be able to control the feelings of wanting to kiss Taichi that she’s been trying to supress for a while.
But that first, innocent kiss had been like a gateway drug, or rather, the soft pressure of Taichi’s mouth on hers and the look of his face after she’d pulled away, mystified, breathless. She’d never seen that expression on him before and she knew that she would do anything to be the cause of it again.
It was no excuse though. She’d worked so hard to make Taichi feel comfortable again and then ruined it with a split-second decision. It had contravened all their agreements, both unspoken and otherwise.
Chihaya puts her head in her hands. The darkness of her palms is oddly soothing. She wonders if she should just crawl back into her bed and pull the covers over her head.
Still, she thinks to herself, Taichi had been nice enough to walk her home. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d just left her there, again. But he’d made sure she’d got back okay and lent her the jacket which is currently hanging on the back of the chair she’s sat at, and she’s pretty sure they’d even had a conversation, though the details of it were fuzzy. And that’s what makes it even worse - how kind and polite he’d been, despite her breaking a cardinal rule.
She groans. Obviously, she won’t be able to avoid Taichi forever. Even when he’d been ignoring her himself, they’d still seen each other at karuta tournaments and social occasions. But the most important difference is that instead of gradually ghosting him, Chihaya had put an end to their relationship abruptly.
She really needs to talk to someone about this. Even she knows that her interpersonal relationship skills aren’t the best, and the complexities and nuances of this particularly case feel overwhelming.
She thinks of her options – Kana, her usual default, is clearly out of the question, given that she doesn’t know about Sudo’s bet. The people who do know are…Sudo, Taichi…and Arata. With the first two out of the running for obvious reasons, it leaves her with only one choice.
To: Arata
hey
i need some advice
Surprisingly, Arata (who is usually the slowest person ever to text back) replies before she’s halfway through her next glass of water.
From: Arata
About the cross-sweep? I told you we could practice next week
To: Arata
it’s about taichi
From: Arata
OK
Chihaya phones him immediately, sitting down at the kitchen table as she does so.
“Chihaya,” Arata says, and she can hear the half-question in his voice, despite the tinny quality of his mobile.
“I’m an idiot,” she says. She would wail if she didn’t think it would hurt her head far more to do so.
There’s silence on the phone line for a second, and she can imagine Arata desperately trying to figure out what to say. “What happened?” He ultimately asks.
It’s awful having to explain to someone else what she did, but she describes the kiss and her request to Sudo in as few words as possible. “Now I have no idea what I should even say to him.”
“I’m not good with these things, Chihaya,” says Arata. “But you can’t ignore him forever.”
She squeezes her eyes shut, miserably. “I know.”
“Taichi will realise that something is up, and then he’ll worry himself sick over it. He’ll probably want to talk to you, face to face.”
She shakes her head, even though Arata can’t see her. “I know his schedule. Even if he wanted to, he’s busy until this evening. And he’s got an exam next week.”
Arata snorts down the line. “You think he’d prioritise his exam over you?”
She doesn’t respond. The Taichi of six months ago would – he’d prioritise anything over Chihaya. And that was probably for the best, given all the pain and embarrassment she’s caused him over the years. But the Taichi of three, four years ago hadn’t, he’d put Chihaya and all her selfish desires first. And the Taichi of last night had gone along with her mad plan even to the point of destruction.
“Maybe you should just tell him how you feel, Chihaya.”
Chihaya opens one eye tentatively. “How I feel?”
“Well. Didn’t you kiss him because you –”
“Yes, I get it!” She says hurriedly, cutting him off. She knows exactly why she kissed him, but surely, it’s a horrible idea to tell him how she feels? He deserves so much better than someone who didn’t even begin to understand her feelings until it was too late.
Arata sighs, in a way that makes her sure that even he is nearing the end of his patience. “I think it’s always best to be honest when it comes to…um…things like this.”
Honest. It reminds her of Taichi lying on tatami mats, his words unfurling between them, and the bravery he must have had to open himself up like that. He couldn’t have known how she would have reacted and yet he exposed everything to her.
“Yeah,” she says, because maybe Arata is right and she just needs to have an ounce of Taichi’s courage, to make her ready to accept the outcome no matter what it is.
He raps on the door until his knuckles feel like they’re about to hurt and he can hear movement from inside. The door swings open to reveal Chitose, whose look of surprise is so Chihaya-like that he can actually see the family resemblance for once. Still, Chitose seems to be faster at processing new information than Chihaya is, as she quickly turns around, away from him.
“Chihaya,” she yells back into the house. “Your boyfriend’s here.”
Taichi’s momentarily torn between saying ‘we’re not’ and ‘we’ve broken up’, but as both answers would require a lot of explanation and would probably give Chitose good reason to bar him from ever stepping foot in the Ayase house ever again, he refrains from either.
Then, before he can say anything else at all, Chitose turns back to him.
“Come in,” she says with a shrug.
Whilst he removes his shoes, Chitose vanishes. He guesses she’s trying to give the two of them some space, which is surprisingly considerate of her.
The living room is empty when he enters it, but soon enough he hears the creak of the stairs and Chihaya appears in the doorway.
“Hi,” Chihaya says, in an impossibly faint voice.
She looks tired, her face pale and drawn, which is no surprise given last night.
“Did you come to get your jacket?” She asks, looking over at the kitchen chair it’s draped over.
“Huh?” Taichi hadn’t even remembered that he’d left his jacket with her. But before he can formulate a response in his brain, she’s already moving to pick it up, clearly in a hurry to get rid of him.
“Chihaya –” he starts, but she’s already shoving his jacket back into his hands. He takes it, tucking it under an arm. “You don’t have to tell me why you forfeited. I just wanted to check if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” she says, in a robotic way which is decidedly not-Chihaya-like and makes him sure that she’s not fine at all.
She makes to turn away from him, but he can’t stand it – the not knowing, the evident misery simmering just under her surface, the thought that somehow he did this to her again. He reaches out to stop her, placing a hand on her shoulder. The jacket falls to the ground.
“Chihaya, please,” he says, and he hates the note of desperation he can hear in his voice and the way it wobbles slightly. “You know you can tell me what’s going on.”
She takes a deep breath in and exhales shakily, before she faces him properly, squaring herself up to him. “I love you, Taichi. That’s why I called it off, because I know that it’s unfair of you for me to do this to you.”
He blinks. “What?”
“To pretend we’re in a relationship when you don’t want to be,” Chihaya continues, as if it clarifies anything. “I know that I’m just a burden to you…”
“No, no, the first thing you said.”
“Oh. I love you?”
His heart feels like it’s going hummingbird-fast as she says those three words for a second time. “You do?”
She nods, and it’s small and a bit nervous and the most glorious thing he’s ever seen.
“I was scared to tell you before,” she says, her eyes not quite meeting his though he wants them to, wants desperately to read whatever emotion is in them. “I thought that you were probably over me by now and I’d missed my chance. I thought it was better not to let you know that I’d realised it too late.
“But,” she continues, looking at him directly now. “I love you, Taichi. I love your laughter in ramen shops at 10pm, I love the sound of your voice reading in karuta, I love the frown on your face when you’re studying. And I know that you almost definitely don’t love me back anymore, but I guess I had to tell you anyway.”
He never thought he’d hear her say it.
Over the past year and a bit, he’d tried to kill any hope he might have, to stifle it before he let it hurt himself again. He knew – he’d thought that Chihaya returning his feelings was an impossibility. She’d rejected him once before and he didn’t see how anything could change. Even whilst they’d been dating, he’d refused to believe that anything Chihaya did could possibly be motivated by love. He’d preferred to write it all off to the weird situation that they were in.
And yet, he’d been wrong this whole time, because here Chihaya is, standing in front of him and declaring her feelings so straightforwardly. Though she seems to be under some misapprehension that he is undoubtedly to blame for.
“Chihaya, I’m not – I still love you too.” And the addition of that tiny last word is somehow the best feeling. Taichi can’t help himself as he reaches out to grab her hand, his fingers curling around hers into her palm.
For a moment, Chihaya doesn’t react or a say a word. Going by her number of blinks per second, she’s clearly trying to process this herself.
“Do you remember your birthday?” Taichi asks. Maybe elaborating might help her out.
She winces, and he can tell she’s thinking about the kiss from the pained expression alone.
“I meant, what I said that night,” he clarifies. “That the reason I’d been staying away from you was ‘self-preservation’.” There’s a flicker of something like remembrance in her eyes.
“Maybe it was cowardly of me, but I didn’t want to hurt myself – or you – when I thought that you, well…
“What I mean to say is – I did that precisely because I love you. I’m still in love with you.”
“Oh,” she says, sounding a bit dazed at his ramblings. And then her dark eyes widen and her grip on his fingers tightens. Chihaya laughs and it somehow sounds like pure, unadulterated joy to him. “I can’t believe both of us – we were both so stupid!”
Taichi would usually protest at this, defaulting back to their usual banter, but he can’t help but agree, given the emotional honesty they have both opened themselves up to. In truth, he’d spent so long building up the idea of her not loving him, that he’d missed all the obvious signs in favour of any evidence that would support his argument.
“Oblivious,” he says, nodding. “Who would have thought that it would take a silly bet from Sudo to -”
He stops himself, feeling the realisation creeping up on him. Sudo had been the one who’d demanded that it was Taichi that Chihaya dated, Sudo had been the one requesting that they were physically affectionate with each other, Sudo had checked up on them, in his slightly disconcerting way. He’d even told Suo about their situation.
He remembers his words at the tournament: There’s more to it than that. More than just getting Taichi to be honest with himself, he’d schemed to get the two of them together.
“It was him all along,” Taichi says, feeling slightly stunned. The thought that there was something, especially something this huge and life-changing, that he had to thank Sudo for was terrifying. But his machiavellian matchmaking had worked in the end, hadn’t it?
Taichi would rather die than admit that to his face though.
Chihaya hmms in a way which makes him think that maybe she’d figured out the truth to it sooner than he had – perhaps when she’d called off the bet this morning and he’d taken no action against either of them.
Another thought occurs to him. “Hang on. What about Arata?”
A puzzled look crosses her face. “What about him?”
He repeats what Arata had told him about their dates, that Chihaya had said she just wanted to be friends for now.
She grimaces when she hears him say it. “Oh, that. I only really went on one date with him, when I thought it might distract me from you. But that was ages ago now.”
“Then why did you insist that we told Arata about Sudo’s bet?”
“I thought that maybe you could talk to him about it, if you didn’t want to talk to me…”
Taichi privately thinks that there is no one he’d less rather talk to about his awkward scenario with Chihaya than Arata, but it was a thoughtful suggestion from her, so he demurs from saying so out loud.
“Though,” she adds, “I was the one who ended up complaining to him about everything.”
“You told him you love me?”
She shrugs a little. “He already knew.”
Well, isn’t that embarrassing? That Taichi was seemingly the very last person to know how Chihaya felt about him. Then again, it still doesn’t quite explain why Arata said ‘for now’. Though – perhaps Arata, like Sudo, was trying to goad him into some kind of action regarding his feelings for Chihaya.
Suddenly, a wonderful thought seizes him. “Can I kiss you now?” he asks.
Chihaya squeezes her eyes shut and nods. “Oh, yes please.”
And so he does.
QUEEN Ayase Chihaya ✓ @ayasechihaya
Image Description: A selfie of Taichi and Chihaya, in Chihaya’s bedroom. Chihaya is looking directly at the camera, grinning widely, and Taichi is kissing her on the cheek.
Caption: ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
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Comments
Kanade Oe @kanadeoeclothing
Awww!
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Wataya Arata @watayarata
I’m happy for you 😊
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MAKO @makoumehara
you guys are gross
-
Sudo pauses, his thumb hovering over the “like” button. Given that Ayase had totally called things off with Mashima, this Instagram post can only mean one thing. On the one hand, he wants to give some indication that he’s seen it and that he knows, but on the other hand, a heart gives the completely wrong idea about his feelings towards this development.
As he weighs up his options, he notices a message notification in the top right-hand corner of the app. He clicks on it to see a message from Ayase herself.
It’s another picture, which must have been taken around the same time as her Instagram post, going by the background and the lighting. It’s a little wonky, clearly taken by someone with an unstable hand decidedly not looking at the phone. In it, Mashima is kissing Ayase, but this time on the lips instead of her cheek. Despite how forced the setup is, there’s a laughter on Ayase’s face that looks entirely real. Ayase hasn’t edited the photo, choosing instead just to write “thank you” in the default font, which floats somewhere around her head.
He's certain that he’s the only person she sent it to. The thank you is directed at him and him alone, which clearly means that Mashima finally stopped moping in his misery and figured out the answer.
“You’re smiling,” Suo notes from the doorway.
Sudo quickly schools his expression into his usual frown. “Nope.”
Suo pads over to behind the sofa and leans over to see what’s on his phone screen. Because of his eyesight, he has to practically rest his head on Sudo’s shoulder to get a good look at it.
“So, all your hard work paid off then,” Suo says, not at all shocked by the outcome. Really, it was a little bit annoying that he wasn’t the slightest bit surprised, but maybe it meant that he had trusted in Sudo’s plan implicitly.
“Now that Mashima has a girlfriend, he won’t be as much of a threat for the title,” Sudo sniffs. “He’s easily distracted.”
“If you say so,” Suo says. Sudo can practically feel his muscles contort into a grin from here, and it’s rather disconcerting.
“What about you?” He retorts back. “You were more than happy to help me out. You were positively begging to be of use.”
Suo finally lifts his head from its resting place. “I want nothing more than my disciple’s happiness.”
“Hmph.”
The other man leans back on the back of the sofa in a way that somehow accentuates his gangliness, arms messily folded. “Did you want dinner, then?” He asks. “Or are you going to stare at those two all night?”
“Definitely dinner,” Sudo decides, to which Suo nods and retreats back into the kitchen.
After considering it for one more moment, he likes the message that Ayase sent to him. Maybe he’s going soft in his old age, but he finds it harder these days to begrudge other people their happiness. And really, they ought to interpret his like as a moment of self-congratulations to a plan well-executed. Nothing more, nothing less.