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When one had grown so accustomed to shrouding themselves in darkness, it was easy to forget the warmth of light.
As the moon lit the sky and winter night painted the streets blue, a small light flickered behind a closed window, illuminating only a tiny stack of papers on a wooden desk, and the face of a young boy. The candlelight was a warm contrast to the cold colours that filled the room, and brought light where there was none. A power outage hit the entire neighbourhood, so everyone was managing with what they had on hand to stay comfortable.
“I’ve got some snacks from downstairs,” Hibiki walked into Daichi’s room with a bag of chips in his arms, a box of cookies, and two tall glasses of water in hand. When the power was out, he often called Hibiki over so they could spend the night together. Even if it was rare, ever since the world was restored he had trouble sleeping. Hibiki was there for him as a reliable friend through his hardships, but Daichi felt like he was bugging him by constantly requesting his company.
He did not want to get called a coward for being paranoid Polaris would send another ordeal, or be called useless for not preparing himself beforehand in case anything similar does happen. No, what Daichi wanted to focus on was making sure nothing like it ever happened again. The task was impossible to see through till the end simply because of how skewed humanity was when it came to morals and ethics. No matter how Daichi thought about it, it almost seemed inevitable for something like Nicea to rise up again whenever they stray from their path- whatever path that may be. They were not given any clues. All the cards were stacked against them from the very start, but they somehow pulled through.
“You gonna help me carry all this to the desk or?”
Sometimes, he wondered if keeping Polaris alive was the right choice. If they took the other route, would that have made a difference? Was the world simply doomed without a God or an administrator to run it? The smack of items against his desk snapped him out of his daydreaming, and he slid off his chair in surprise.
“D-Dude! What the hell! Knock or something!” Hibiki glared at Daichi with a look that told him he did everything in his power to gain his attention, and that it was not his fault someone had a hard time paying attention to their surroundings.
Daichi got back up on his feet, and Hibiki pulled his chair closer to the desk so he could sit next to his friend. The candlelight did not reach far, but it gave them enough room to see each other if they remained close enough. Daichi shifted his knee slightly not to bump it against Hibiki, before his fingers ripped open the bag of chips so they could start eating. Hibiki dove in right away, but Daichi hesitated, and tried to return to what it was he was thinking about before Hibiki scared the hell out of him. The rustling of plastic was the only noise in an otherwise quiet room, and it did little to disrupt Daichi’s thought-process.
“Ah, we… really had an adventure back way when…” He spoke out loud, soft and forlorn, as if their mission to get the world back had been unsuccessful. Hibiki wiped his hand on his shirt and stopped eating so he could hold a conversation.
“An adventure?” Daichi furrowed his brows, but gave Hibiki an amused look.
“Man, you’re way too casual about all this.” He chuckled, and nudged Hibiki’s upper-arm playfully with his fist. “C’mon! You’re making me look like a wuss! At least pretend you were scared.” Hibiki flashed him that same confident smile that helped Daichi get through those hellish seven days he so desperately tried to forget. No matter how much thought he put into it, one thing was for certain, and that thing was that Hibiki was a consistent stream of support. In truth, that was the only good that came out of that week. It managed to bring the two of them closer together as friends.
“I… said a lot of weird things back then, huh? No wonder. Thinking you might die does something to your brain, doesn’t it?” Hibiki rested his forearms on his knees and leaned closer to hear him out.
“Weird stuff? Like what?”
“Oh, um… I dunno. Stuff. Yep. Pretty sure it was just. Stuff in general.” Hibiki tilted his head slightly, his eyes reflected the flame that moved like a wave in the darkness.
“You mean when you told Joe he had the mind of a hyperactive goldfish,” Daichi bit his lip to keep himself from laughing.
“Yeah, that wasn’t really nice of m-” Hibiki interrupted before he had a time to complete his sentence.
“-or, the time you told me you loved me?”
The silence in the room was now a lot heavier, and a lot more noticeable. Daichi swallowed thickly, hoping his nervousness could be masked and swallowed by the darkness. He remembered looking for intel on Trumpeter, remembered arguing with Jungo for saying something embarrassing in front of Hibiki, and he definitely remembered blurting out something he should not have said in the midst of it all purely because he felt proud to have been useful to the team.
“...O-oh. You remembered… Wow, uh… Yeah. You. You have a pretty good memory, um…” Instead of turn it into a big deal, he waved it off as if it was nothing. “Haha, so? Don’t back me into a corner when you know exactly what I meant!” Hibiki was the one who brought it up, so Daichi expected the teasing to continue, but Hibiki looked far too serious to be playing with him.
“All this talk about demons and Polaris is still fresh in my memory… It’s kind of hard to let this go.” His friend hummed softly, and got up on his feet to walk over to the window and make sure it was closed. The house was already incredibly cold, so they had to make sure everything was tightly shut not to let the heat out. Daichi tried to shift the topic elsewhere, but jerked slightly when he felt two arms drape themselves over his chest from behind. He turned his head only slightly to try and look Hibiki in the eye.
“H-hey there buddy, what are you doing?” Hibiki leaned closer, and let out a soft sigh.
“Hugging.” Daichi bit his cheek to stop himself from grinning.
“Why so touchy all of a sudden?”
“You sounded like you needed comfort.”
“As always, I can’t hide anything from you, haha.” It was definitely from lack of trying. There was an aura about Hibiki that made him bare his soul and share all of his worries. It was a presence that helped him lean back and close his eyes to embrace the moment. The serenity and calm imbued in Hibiki’s touch was relaxing, and helped ease his anxiety. It was so hard to find the time to indulge in moments like these when the world was collapsing. Daichi still felt guilty for taking so much enjoyment in Hibiki’s presence, but he did nothing to stop it.
“Daichi, nothing’s going to happen to our world.” Hibiki could really read him like an open book. He was glad to have him as his best friend. No matter what the world turned into, he knew he could always count on Hibiki, just as Hibiki could always count on him.
“You say that but… we almost lost so many people. Keita, Jungo, Io… Even I almost… Hadn’t it been for you, I-” If it was not for Hibiki, all of them would have met an unfortunate end. “-I don’t know how you could handle something like that.” He always wondered how Hibiki reacted to seeing his death video. Sometimes, he wondered if Hibiki even reacted at all. His friend was so calm and collected whenever he found him staring at one of those videos. It was hard to imagine Hibiki losing his cool over one, even if it was someone close to him.
There was something about his death video that did not make sense to Daichi.
Right after Hibiki came to his rescue, and Daichi addressed him as if nothing had changed, Hibiki apologized. Io began talking soon afterwards, explaining the death video, and from that point on, his attention was fixed on how he escaped his own death. He still never forgot how Hibiki had uncharacteristically stepped out of his element to apologize; something that he did very scarcely. To this day, Daichi wanted to ask Hibiki exactly why he felt the need to apologize to him, and what response he was expecting to get back. The only thing stopping him was knowing that Hibiki probably forgot all about it. It was a long time ago, but Daichi could still hear the echoes of demons if he focused hard enough. It felt like another ordeal was just around the corner, and the thought of seeing his best friend die before his eyes made him shiver.
“H-Honestly, if I ever got a death video of you, I’d probably…” He had no clue what he would do. It was hard to imagine now when everything had calmed down, but he vaguely remembered how he reacted when he saw everyone else’s death videos. Keita’s was surprising, but he was not attached to him emotionally by any means, so they saved him with little trouble. Io’s was intense on his psyche, and he remembered losing it when he first saw her video. Imagining Hibiki in a similar way was making his chest ache just from the thought alone.
“-I-I just wouldn’t have handled that very well…” Io was a classmate he saw often, but he had no connection to her other than a wild crush that went absolutely nowhere. She seemed interested in someone else entirely. Not that Daichi blamed her.
Hibiki was easily more desirable.
He’d be an idiot not to see it, and as much as he would like to play the role of the useless moron everyone seemed to think he was, it was clear that Io did not like him romantically.
“I understand.” Hibiki’s arms tightened around him, and he tensed up.
“You do?” He got so swept up in the past that he hardly recalled why Hibiki had hugged him to begin with.
“I didn’t handle your death videos well either.” Daichi opened his eyes to catch a glimpse of Hibiki’s expression, and to remind himself that he was in a calm Tokyo. A Tokyo without Gods, demons, or Septentriones.
“Video...s? Plural?”
“The first was near the shrine, the second was with the truck. You also appeared in Jungo’s death video. It might not count, but I was worried they would kill you, too,” Daichi noticed the pitch drop in Hibiki’s tone, and how his hands were digging into the yellow scarf wrapped around his neck. “-I really should have stayed with you.”
“Hibiki…” Daichi turned his head, but pulled back a little when he noticed just how close he was to Hibiki’s face. “Oh, um, sorry,” He mumbled, and tried to distance himself even further not to bump their noses together. “-didn’t think you were that close.” Hibiki seemed to have the opposite idea, and either gave him an eskimo kiss by accident, or purely to show him it was not necessary to shy away. Daichi laughed nervously, and tried to gear the conversation to a more positive note, but his mind was stuck fixating on the darkness that felt so disturbingly familiar to nights at JP’s, and to the nights spent fighting Septentriones.
“We have no heat, no food, and no power. As dumb as it sounds, I’m getting chills. I really hope the demons don’t come back…” The setting was very similar, despite the fact they had electricity at JP’s. Hibiki moved his hand over Daichi’s chest soothingly.
“We have some food. We have some charge left in our phones, and as for heat,” Hibiki leaned forward and pressed his cheek against Daichi’s. “-you have me.” Daichi felt his cheeks grow warm with embarrassment, but he pressed back against Hibiki with a smile, relishing in the comfort of his embrace, and the fact he had not let go of him yet.
“Haha, and I still can’t tell if you’re joking or not…” He could. Hibiki was not always difficult to read, but he wondered if he could trust his own judgement when Hibiki was being kind to him. He often felt like he was reading too deep into his friendly compliments, secretly wishing for it to mean more.
“Hey, Hibiki,” Daichi paused to think carefully about his question, and if he was ready to hear the answer. If there even was an answer. “-why did you apologize to me at the shrine?” He expected Hibiki not to remember. The event was not noteworthy by any means. No one died, and no Septentrione showed up at the location, but Hibiki must have remembered it some way, because he had an answer ready.
“For not being there for you.”
“For… dude, we all ran in different directions. Hardly your fault.”
“No, I was never there for you,” Hibiki chuckled, nerves gnawing at his words. “-I’m a very bad best friend.”
“I’m… not really following.”
“I almost lost you at the shrine. I told myself I’d keep watching you after that, but then you drove off in that truck, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. After that, you wanted to help JP’s, and I tried to get you to stay, but…” Daichi lowered his gaze, and watched Hibiki’s fingers entangle themselves in his scarf, curving around the fabric to tug at it softly.
“I was so worried when I saw you in that video with Jungo that I-”
“Went around saying you were the leader of a Daichi Search Party. I know, Airi told me.” Thanks to the coverage of night, the blush on Hibiki’s cheeks was almost impossible to make out. Almost. Seeing Hibiki embarrassed always brought a smile to Daichi’s face. It showed that Hibiki could be humble and shy despite being their oh-so reliable leader.
“That wasn’t the point of the story, Daichi.”
“The story had a point?” Hibiki balled his hand into a fist and punched Daichi’s upper arm lightly. Daichi couldn’t stop himself from laughing, so he leaned his cheek against Hibiki’s for comfort.
“I’m so glad you’re here with me!”
“You say that a lot.”
“Well, I mean it a lot.” Hibiki turned his cheek, and Daichi could feel his friend’s hot breath against his skin.
“Did you mean it when you said you loved me, too?”
His cheeks were rosy for a whole other reason now, and he could not hide the stutter in his voice. Daichi was unsure if he was happy Hibiki brought it up again, or upset he could not let this go and stop teasing him. It ended up being a little bit of both.
“Oh, come on, I’ve already told you! You’re…” Important. Special. Irreplaceable. Those were words sufficient enough to cover how he truly felt, but he was a coward to the bone, and his reply to that question would always remain the same. “-you’re my best friend.”
The word ‘my’ might have been emphasized a little too strongly. He worried Hibiki would notice it and point it out, but his friend looked at him with want in his eyes, as if he sought a different answer.
“Is that all?” He looked disappointed. Far too much so for it to be normal. Daichi put his hands over Hibiki’s to hold him, and averted his eyes to look away.
“No! I m-mean, yes but, no, not… not really.” He let go of Hibiki’s hands when he felt him move to step back, dragging the heat along with him. Daichi got up on his feet, and reached out to wrap his arms around Hibiki to keep himself enveloped in the warmth and comfort of his best friend. No matter how embarrassing it was to say it out loud so seriously, he’d do it if it meant he got to keep Hibiki close to heart.
“I-I love you! I’ll tell you as many times as you want. What now?” It was a little rushed, and made his cheeks flush, but it was honest, and those feelings needed to be expressed properly.
“Can I kiss you?” Hibiki ran his hand through Daichi’s brown locks, combing though it softly with long and drawn out strokes.
There was so much that Daichi wanted to ask. He wanted to ask if Hibiki was sure, and if this was really what he wanted. If he would be happy sharing a kiss or if he was just making fun and teasing him. With the cover of darkness, and only the warmth of a small candlelight, it felt safer to be true to himself. It felt like they were in a dream-like space where the black of night would swallow all secrets just like the black scar had.
When he reconsidered how afraid he was that he would lose Hibiki to the black scar again, he leaned closer, and kissed Hibiki before he had a chance to change his mind.