Chapter Text
It feels colder in Japan.
Which is strange, because it’s still summertime. It’s late June, and early July is coming. Summer has not gone by; it has only just started. And yet, although Shidou knows he’s coming back home soon for the summer festival, it feels like summer’s over, because Sae is not here anymore, and that’s the part that feels weird.
Last night, Sae walked him back to his hotel and helped him pack his bags. Along the way, they hadn’t talked about their past, but they talked about their now. Shidou talks about how Rin’s been doing recently, and Sae talks about his own struggles in Spain. It’s strange, talking like this. Not because they’ve never spoken like this before, but because it feels just like before, but different.
Morning comes faster after Sae stays over at their hotel. Sae walks him as far as he can to the airport. There’s a pause at the gate, the kind where something should be said.
But instead, Sae looks at him softly and composed, ever the same.
“Go,” he says.
And Shidou does.
On the plane, he expects it all to hit him. The sadness of leaving Spain, and consequently Sae, behind. He’s tried not to imagine this part of the trip too often to save him from the pain of hollowness, of regret, the feeling that he’s leaving something that will be forever unfinished. But that feeling never comes to him. He remembers the way Sae sits on the chair, long legs stretched out and how he had spoken about Spain without an ounce of bitterness. The way he decided that he was willing to try. With you. About how they would figure things out, slowly, but together.
And thinking about all of this doesn’t make him feel unfinished. It makes him feel,
strangely at peace.
So when he’s back in Japan, standing in front of Rin’s house– Sae’s house, technically too–,
He knows exactly what to tell him.
____________________________________
When Shidou knocks on the door, footsteps approach almost immediately.
The door swings open. It’s Saturday, Shidou thinks, meaning that Rin should be home. And he is– standing there, staring at Shidou, face twisted as if he were a piece of dog shit at his doorstep. For a second, he just stands there, not saying anything.
“Shidou,” Rin finally says flatly, “Why are you here.”
Shidou grins. “Miss me?”
“Get the hell off our porch.”
“Wow. This is how you greet world-famous rockstars?”
“You’re not even regional.”
“I am world famous though.”
“No.”
Shidou laughs at that and doesn’t argue more. It’s only been two weeks since he’d last seen Rin, and yet he somehow seems taller. All of a sudden, he realizes how much Rin really does look like his older brother–the same annoyed, unbothered look and the same striking teal eyes (like the bejeweled heart of a stone lion).
“You just landed,” Rin says, still standing in the doorway.
Shidou clicks his tongue. “Wow. Stalking my flight information now?”
Rin crosses his arms. “You posted from the airport, idiot.”
Oh. Right.
There’s a beat of silence as Rin’s eyes flick over him once, then another. He silently assesses Shidou in front of him, then, with a sigh, steps aside and lets Shidou in.
Shidou quickly slips past him before he can change his mind.
The house is the same as he remembered it to be. Even as a child, too. Shidou, by now, was familiar with Sae’s house, but he hadn’t visited it since fifteen, probably to avoid feeling the teenage ache of heartbreak and regret all over again. Now, though, he takes in his surroundings: the smell of old rain-soaked wood and incense wafting into his nose as he slides off his shoes and steps into the house.
Rin shuts the door immediately behind them.
“You better not be staying for long,” Rin warns as he walks towards his own room, assuming Shidou would follow.
“Yeah, yeah. Relax.”
Rin drops onto his bed, and instead of turning on his computer, looks at Shidou as if expecting something out of him. Obviously, Shidou doesn’t know what he’s expecting, so Shidou just stands there awkwardly.
There’s a silence that fills the air.
Shidou rocks back and forth on his heels, hands in his pockets.
Rin’s jaw tightens. “Well?”
Shidou tilts his head. “Well what?”
He narrows his eyes. “Did you see him?”
There it was. The question everyone had been waiting for, and Shidou feels a smirk spread across his face. Rin’s stare grows more full of annoyance in response, and Shidou ignores it. Looks like Rin cares anyway. Good for him.
And yet, the question he asked was something that didn’t call for a yes or a no answer. It’s far too complicated to summarize everything that has happened for the past few days with one word. Shidou doesn’t answer immediately: instead, his eyes roam around Rin’s room. The Banana Fish posters on his wall, his computer, a photo frame of him and Sae as kids, each holding an ice cream bar and smiling at the camera. Shidou’s smile softens without realizing.
“Yeah,” he says finally.
Rin’s expression stays the same, but his fingertips curl over the mattress cushion.
“And?”
“We talked,” Shidou adds thoughtfully, “For real, this time. We’re going to figure things out slowly. Together.”
The words still feel weird on his tongue when saying them, but above all, they give him a sense of relief. That he wouldn’t have to do all of this alone.
Rin’s shoulders relax, and for the first time, looking at his face reminds Shidou of back when Rin was eleven. Innocent, unsure of the future or what’s to come: he was the one who had laughed and cried the most when Sae had left at thirteen.
“Is he coming back?” Rin asks quietly.
Shidou nods. “Soon. For the summer festival.”
The past few summer festivals had been just them two of them. Shidou would still always buy the takoyaki out of habit, but he could only share the paper boat with Rin, and sometimes a few of the younger boy’s school friends. For the past five years, he’s really missed watching the way Sae’s eyes would sparkle at seeing something as simple as fireworks in the sky.
“Maybe this summer, we could eat takoyaki and watch the fireworks together,” Shidou suggests after Rin doesn’t respond for a while.
“I mean…it’s been, what, ten summers since?”
Rin looks down at his hands and mumbles something incoherent under his breath. Maybe that unsureness is being replaced with something more calming; beneath everything, maybe Rin is put to ease that he’ll finally see his brother again.
After a moment of silence, he stands up abruptly.
“Move. You’re in the way.”
Shidou smirks. “Oh? Where are you heading to next?”
“If you make one more comment, I’ll throw you out myself.”
Sae’s door hasn’t changed. Shidou remembers it closely from back when they would head home after Sae’s soccer practice. There’s a quiet click when they open it to reveal the room behind.
It feels like nothing has changed, at all. Golden sunlight filters through the windowsills, stretching across the floor like a lazy cat. Dust drifts lazily in the air, lying in sheets, especially on the shelves filled with books and photo frames. Shidou catches a glimpse of a frame with a picture that they had taken together a few months prior to him moving to Spain, but Shidou’s face is draped over by the curtain. The curtains look untouched. In fact, the entire room looks untouched.
Rin doesn’t step into the room. He lingers by the doorframe instead.
“I remember he would always talk about you after school,” he recalls, “They were mostly complaints about how loud you were, but he always knew what you were doing.”
The sunlight shifts across the floor as a cloud passes.
Rin pauses for a moment. “I don’t remember him talking about you that much after he left, when we called,” he recalls neutrally. “But when he did…he got strangely annoyed.”
Shidou huffs. “That’s just his face. He’s always annoyed.”
Rin shrugs faintly. “He kept all of his old stuff when he left for Spain. He didn’t let Mom throw anything away. He’d get mad if anyone moved his room around. He always said he didn’t like change.”
“But he moved to Spain.”
Rin lets out a slow breath. “Yeah. He did.”
Shidou swallows.
“I have to get something downstairs,” Rin says. He pushes himself off the doorframe and steps back. “Don’t touch anything. Or do anything stupid.”
“No promises,”
Rin gives him one long look, a little bit unreadable, then leaves. His footsteps echo across the emptiness and quiet of the house and fade down the hallway, then down the stairs.
Shidou exhales.
Tentatively, he steps into the room. It feels as if he’s intruding on something personal, but he keeps going, moving towards the bed and sitting down. He examines the quilt on the bed: a handwoven, patched quilt with sewn-on soccer imprints as a pattern. Sae had gotten the quilt from Shidou’s grandmother for his eighth birthday. Shidou remembers bragging about it all week because he had helped– and those patches that he had sewn on were all crooked.
One of them is half peeled at the corner. Shidou, absentmindedly, presses his thumb against it to smooth it down.
The room is smaller than he remembers. Shidou’s eyes dart towards the dusty shelf on the wall above him. There are rows of books stacked up on there, books that Sae had organized neatly by height and grade level. There’s a faint circular scratch carved into its wood. Shidou knows exactly where it came from: Sae, in fourth grade, had tried to carve a compass into it, but had given up halfway because the circle wasn’t even enough.
Dust coats the top layer of everything, but nothing is displaced. It feels not abandoned, but rather preserved.
Shidou’s eyes absentmindedly tilt downwards at the closet door in front of him. There’s a little dent in it, from when they had tried playing the soccer ball indoors and Sae had shoved him so violently off the bed that they had both fallen to the ground, laughing.
Even the glow-in-the-dark star stickers were there. Shidou had helped him set them up: he had even marked which ones were which constellations he had pointed out. The UFO to the left, the sleeping cat to the right.
Shidou could map this room blindfolded.
It’s not even his room, but he knows it like it is. Something about that fact feels like someone had lodged a wooden plank into his chest.
Shidou shifts slightly on the ground, tucking his knees inwards to his chest. Something nudges against his fingertips from beneath the bedframe.
He stills.
Slowly, he reaches down to pull the object out.
It’s a box. A cardboard box that seems like something from the corner store. They used to pile this exact kind of thing outside the store, but only recently have they switched to a different design. There are bits of tape scratched off from the outside, and the top of it is cold to the touch. The lid gives away only slightly, teasing Shidou to open it and find out what’s inside.
Shidou stares.
He probably shouldn’t. Rin would actually kick him out if he saw Shidou digging through Sae’s things. There would be a fist to his face before he could even explain. But when has he ever cared about what others think about him?
He pulls the box in front of him. Despite how big it is, it’s lighter than it should be. Cautiously, he unfolds the lid and looks in.
Inside, are rows of folded papers. They aren’t crumpled nor shoved in carelessly, but neatly creased into the same shape, first halved then folded again into a small square, like an envelope. They were neatly arranged in a row, the paper’s edges yellowing the further up it went, but there weren’t many of them. All in all, it looked like there were only five letters.
Shidou stares at the letters. There’s nothing on them, except for Sae’s handwriting in cursive ink on the outside. He gets a strange chill down his spine that he knows what he’s about to read.
He hesitates, and his fingers hover over the top row: the letter closest to him, and also the letter the least worn out by time. It’s folded neatly just like the others.
He feels a tremor go through his body, which annoys him immediately. He flexes his fingers as if he’s about to take a penalty kick. It’s just paper, after all.
He unfolds the first crease, the paper slowly opening in his hands.
And he begins to read.
____________________________________
Ryusei,
I know you kept talking about the stars tonight, but that’s all I’m really sure about. I tried to learn them, but I don’t remember a single name. I only remember you.
I’m only supposed to remember you, right? It’s the last night I’ll see you again, so naturally, I paid more attention to you. But I think I’ve always been paying more attention to you. Whenever I see you, there’s this weird feeling in my chest that hurts. It gets worse when you get close, so when you leaned against me tonight, I tried looking back at the stars. You noticed. I wish you hadn’t noticed. I think I know what this feeling is. I’m not supposed to be like this.
When I leave, I hope this feeling goes away this feeling has to go away.
I don’t know what will happen to this box once I leave. I want to throw it away, but that feels wasteful. I think I’ll keep it he–
–Sae
____________________________________
A strong, guttural feeling comes in a wave through Shidou’s body, and he realizes only now what he’s reading.
The very ending of the letter is smudged, its ink dried into a faint thumbprint at the edge of the paper. There’s something poetic about this, Shidou thinks, but he can’t quite put his finger on why.
He carefully slips the paper back in its original fold. His mind is a mess: he can’t properly organize his thoughts, but all he knows is that he has to read the next letter too.
Listening for any signs of Rin coming back upstairs, Shidou goes ahead and unfurls the second letter.
____________________________________
Ryusei,
I think I told you something I shouldn’t have today. I told you I didn’t like girls, and I know you took it the wrong way. You definitely thought of it as the childish way, but haven’t you heard all the rumors circulating in the town? Don’t you know that I have to like girls?
But you’re my best friend, after all. I feel like I can tell you everything. I feel more vulnerable with you than I feel with anybody, even Rin.
I think I don’t mind.
____________________________________
Immediately, Shidou remembers that night.
He could’ve slapped himself at the stupidity. He himself had heard the rumors circulating through the town: at fifteen, he thought he was the only person there who was ever gay and in love with his best friend. The other parents used to shame kids like him, but Shidou had never cared, because when had he ever? His grandma hadn’t cared at that time, so why would he?
Only now, it finally makes sense why Sae had avoided him all those years in Spain. Maybe he had cared.
There’s something comforting about the letter. Shidou lets the weight of the folded paper settle in his hands quietly, before slipping it back into its box and taking out the third.
____________________________________
Ryusei,
You’ve been starting to get into guitar recently. You always play those notes on the guitar and look at me as you sing them. I don’t get why though. It’s not like I understand music the way you do. I don’t even know if it was good in a technical sense.
But I liked it. Your voice sounds different when you’re not yelling. I’ve heard it so many times by now that every time I come back from soccer practice, I wait for the melody to play around the block. I don’t know why I’m expecting it. I don’t know if it’s the song, or your voice, but it reminds me of summer.
It reminds me of coming home.
____________________________________
Shidou’s voice feels tight as he seals it back up.
The song had felt like home for him too, back then, but the word home has always had a complicated meaning to him. If you asked Shidou at 8 years old what the word home had meant for him, he would’ve answered Kamakura. He had grown up in Kamakura, and it wasn’t as if he felt nothing for the place, but if you had asked him the same question at fifteen, he would’ve answered that home was Madrid, because that was where Sae was. Kamakura sure didn’t feel like home at fifteen without his best friend by his side. But although that remains true…
Maybe Home doesn’t have a one-meaning answer like this. Maybe Home isn’t just one place. Maybe it isn’t as simple as that.
Because Home is Madrid. Home is playing music with Aiku and Sendou. Home is nights playing soccer at the curbs of Koshigoe Alley. Home is kettle-brewed hojicha and sunlight like glitter. Home is the rooftop, and Home is the UFO and cats of the night sky.
Home is Sae.
The next letter he opens is different. When he opens it, a small cluster of messy pen marks catches his eye first. Tiny dots strewn upon the page connected by scratchy lines: their constellations drawn crudely from memory. The ones they picked out that first summer night they spent at the rooftop are right in the center.
____________________________________
Ryusei,
We kissed today. You asked me if I’ve ever kissed anyone, and I said I had kissed my mom and my brother before, which was true. Then, you kissed me. Your lips tasted like the Ramune from earlier.
But I’ve never kissed anybody like this before. I’m not sure how to describe it.
____________________________________
The letter is slightly shorter. At the bottom of the constellation drawings, there’s a small caption:
I don’t care much for the stars, but you like them, so I’ll try to learn.
Shidou feels a tear trickle down his face and land on the paper in front of him. The wetness blooms across the paper, spilling into the ink.
Shidou puts the letter back into the box. There’s only one letter after that to open.
Slowly, trembling, Shidou reaches forward and unflips the paper.
It’s the class rules paper, back from Class 1b so many years ago. Yamada-Sensei’s name is still written at the very top. The signature line at the very bottom is still empty.
The front page of the paper has nothing written on it, so Shidou flips it to the back. It reads:
____________________________________
Hi. My name is Itoshi Sae.
I have a best friend named Shidou.
I hope we can stay friends forever.
___________________________________
Tears run down his face freely now. He lets the paper lie in the palm of his open hand, and lets himself cry.
He wants to tell Sae back then, at the age of six, so many things now. About every summer that had passed between them: about how they had been separated, and about how they had, despite everything, come back together like destiny. But it felt like something more than destiny, because despite their own push and pull, they had reconciled. Fate had tried to separate them so many times, both internally and externally, and none of it had mattered.
There were still unfinished patches of Sae’s story that Shidou had yet to uncover. Whatever had happened to Sae in Spain, the more concrete reason why things unraveled the way it did, but those patches couldn’t be uncovered all at once. Some stories required time, patience, and care that came from truly wanting to understand a person, and that was exactly what Shidou would do. He would take his time, reread and uncover Sae’s story piece by piece. And in the same, unhurried rhythm, Sae would come to understand him, too.
A simple word like love couldn’t describe all of this, Shidou decides. Because they were soulmates, truly. Sae and Shidou: stability and impulse, opposite ends of the spectrum with the same length of red string tied around each other’s wrists. The red string had been battered, twisted, damaged in all sorts of ways, but it had never been torn.
Like pieces of a tesselation: despite how colorful and how different either of them were, they fit perfectly with each other.
We still are, he thinks to himself simply. In the end, that’s what he wants to tell Sae, back then, at the age of six. It’s what he would’ve wanted to tell himself too. That they still were together.
He feels his phone buzz in his pocket.
He reaches behind him to take it out.
Sae: did you land yet?
Through his tears, Shidou feels himself smile.
His hands curve around his phone, hovering over the keyboard. Outside, the glittery light falls through Sae’s window the same way it always had, refracting, staying, waiting.
This year would be their tenth summer since.
The tenth summer of their halcyon days.
And Shidou, as he types back a yes, knows that stretching out ahead of it, gradual and endless, are many more to come.