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He's nine years old when his mother asks him, "What do you want, Taichi?"
They're sitting out in the garden, late spring melting into summer green and gold, and Taichi is holding an orange flavored popsicle that's starting to melt. He makes to wipe his hand on his cargo shorts; his mother grabs his wrist. She dries his sticky fingers with a handkerchief, and she asks him again, "What do you want to do with your life?"
"My life?"
"You've always been smart, Taichi. You're going to make something of yourself—you're too smart not to—but I want you to start thinking about it now. You make your own luck. Every choice you make adds up. Life is like a race: you can be the fastest runner ever, but you won't win unless you run steadily toward the goal."
"Like a marathon."
"Exactly."
Earlier that day, Chihaya had won first place in the hundred meter race at school. Most of their class hadn't even tried. Taichi wanted to try, but staying late at school to run practice races would have cut into his homework time.
He'd come in third place, after Chihaya and a boy on the soccer team. They got little plastic medals after the race. Chihaya exclaimed over theirs matching, gold and darker gold. There was no point explaining to her that his was bronze; Chihaya refused to call plastic any kind of metal when it was obviously just plastic with color on it, see, Taichi?
To his mother, Taichi says. "I want to give myself every chance to be the best." Because that's what she's always taught him to be. "I want to be good at school and at sports." Because he doesn't want to be third in anything ever again. He thinks about the boy who came in second. It wasn't a matching color, but it was one step closer. So even though it's probably not what his mother wants to hear, Taichi says,
"I want to play on the soccer team next year."
When he looks up, his mother is smiling. "Good." She smooths his hair back, tucking the longer strands behind his ears. "We'll sign you up for soccer camp this summer."
He's twenty, and Suou asks him, "What do you want, Mashima?"
Taichi puts his hand over the hand pressed against his chest, burning through shirt linen and too close to his drumming heart. The air between them smells like cheap wine and cigarettes. His mouth is dry; when he licks his lips, he can practically taste the other man's aftershave.
"Suou-san. No."
"No because you're not even a little bit interested in men? Or no because you're still hung up on an idea of her?"
"No because you're drunk, and I'm—" Not much better. "I don't think this is a good idea."
"A good idea?" Suou sounds amused. This close, Taichi can hear the little noise that passes for a laugh, even with the rush of blood in his ears. "What do you know about good ideas, hm? Poor little rich boy, never wanted for anything, never had to make a real decision in your life, I bet. Have you ever had an idea that wasn't already pre-approved according to your parents' twenty-point plan for personal success?"
"That's not fair."
"No." Suou releases him. "That's life."
Life—Taichi doesn't know about that. He's twenty, and it's been two years since he saw his friends from high school. Nearly a month since he last spoke to his mother, after a phone call that ended with Taichi hanging up on her for the first time since he's been old enough to know better. Life seems less like a race these days and more like a parade passing by on a parallel street. Suou is the only one who still calls him, and they go out drinking, and then Taichi goes home and falls asleep reviewing his notes for class.
Even if he wanted to go home with someone tonight, he couldn't. He has an exam tomorrow morning at nine and a term paper due in two weeks.
The side street is dark and littered with cobblestone and empty shops. Suou leans against the wall he'd backed Taichi against, their shoulders companionably close. He lights another cigarette.
Taichi declines when Suou offers him a puff. "How'd your consultation go today?"
"They want me back for more tests next week." Suou breathes out, ghost grey in the night. "Not like it's going to result in anything I didn't already know, but I guess even doctors have to make a living."
These days, Suou sometimes looks right past him—when they're talking, drinking, getting in each other's way. They don't play karuta anymore. Suou hasn't played since he retired last year. Suou Hisashi isn't many things, but a man of his word is one of them.
Poor man's heroism, he likes to joke, voice deadpan soft. When you've got nothing, at least you can say your word is gold.
"You talked to Chihaya-chan lately?"
Chihaya is getting her teaching degree. Arata still emails him once in a while, brief updates to which Taichi offers no response, and Arata doesn't pry. Perversely, it makes Taichi want him to do just that.
Out loud he says, "No. You?"
"I would have, but turns out I've been spending my affections on the wrong person this whole time." Suou's lip twitches when Taichi shifts, not uneasy, maybe unsure. "You've been following me around for, what, three years now? Pardon me if I got a wrong idea or two."
"We've been spending too much time together, I think."
"Do you not want to see me anymore?"
"I didn't say that."
"No," Suou agrees. He doesn't sound sad, but then, why should he? "You never did say what you wanted from me."
What do you want, Taichi? Chihaya has never asked him, not even once, not even when they were small children and birthday presents were the most important thing you could give.
Chihaya never asked what he wanted for his birthday, not because she never gave him anything, but because she'd always already had it all figured out. A dozen mismatched crayons, because Taichi never used more than two colors on an art assignment if he could help it, and Chihaya thought that was sad. A custom-made card with a photograph of the Shiranami Karuta Society, because Taichi was going to school too far away to come to practice and sensei said he always had a place here, if he wanted to come back. A tournament held in his name and without his permission, because why would anyone need permission to make her best friend happy?
She never asked what would actually make him happy, because she assumed she already knew. In a way, she was right. She made him happier than anything, just the way she was: honest and determined and true, facing life and love with a fire that burned all the brighter for its straightforward simplicity. Chihaya was easy to figure out, so it made sense that she would assume the same for those she knew.
And even if she had asked, even if she'd taken the time to notice and to wonder, Taichi doesn't think he would have been able to answer that question with anything but more questions of his own.
He's twenty-five when Arata asks him, "Taichi, what do you want from me?"
And it's unfair for Arata of all people to ask that when, this whole time, it's never been about what Taichi wants but what Arata needs. At age eleven, Chihaya chose an awkward boy with thick glasses and thicker accent over the friend she'd known her whole life. At age seventeen, Chihaya broke his heart because what about Arata? Because two years before that, Chihaya had dragged him halfway across the country to make sure Arata was okay—though Taichi had gone willingly. He always does.
At least, he always will have now.
He's twenty-five and this is the third time he's met up with Arata this month, always over coffee or a single beer, something that won't linger, the way too many memories between them do. That's just the way of things, he supposes, when you've known someone as long as they've known each other. Even the lapses when they didn't speak, when he didn't return the emails that Arata stubbornly, quietly, insistently sent him. Still, when Taichi said, You free this Friday? Arata showed up.
But that's just the way Arata does things, Taichi knows. He rarely makes gestures, but he doesn't turn away from friends. Those long years in Fukui had been even harder on him than they'd been on Chihaya. It makes sense, that they turned out this way. They're similar, that way.
The difference is that where Chihaya never looked, Arata always saw right through him.
"Nothing," Taichi says, and, "Just thought we should catch up. How's it going with Chihaya?"
"Chihaya?" Arata wipes away a drop of condensation rolling down his beer bottle. "Good. She's good. You know how she is—once she's committed to something, she goes at it one hundred fifty percent. No middle gears." Arata smiles to himself. "She's not going to be satisfied until she gets her rematch with Shinobu, and she's not taking no for an answer. Not that Shinobu's going to be able to stay away for long, if that's even what she wants. Did you watch last year's Queen match?"
"No," Taichi lies. It's only half a lie; he'd caught the end of it, at Suou's place when he stopped by. He hadn't meant to watch. He's made his peace with karuta, but there isn't really a way to make peace with the feeling of giving up where he shouldn't have. It's not even about the game, whatever Harada-sensei might say. Karuta was never what truly mattered.
Arata finishes his beer. It's not late, not yet, but Taichi is about done with his drink as well. He starts to down the rest—and Arata signals the bartender for two more. Taichi stares at him, glass raised halfway to his lips.
"What are you doing?"
That's been their unspoken agreement: one drink, and only one. Enough time to catch up, if not enough time to talk about anything more. Arata doesn't offer information, and Taichi doesn't ask. It's fine, this way.
"Buying some time," Arata says, which makes no sense. "You keep running off on me, and I think you want to talk. Do you want to talk?"
"Do you?"
"You've never trusted me, have you?"
It's been years since Arata has caught him off guard like this. It's been years since Taichi gave him a chance. The bartender sets two beers in front of them. Arata pays.
Taichi finds his voice. "Sure I do. You're my friend." Or something.
Arata makes a humming sound. "You don't sound so sure."
"What?"
"I like you, Taichi. Always have—though sometimes I can't stand you, when you're like that. You get defensive when you get unsure. And it's taken me a long time to figure it out, but you're not sure about a lot of things, are you?"
"Is anyone?"
"That's what I mean."
He could leave. Arata paid for the drinks, and it would be rude, but he could. Taichi drinks his beer.
Arata says, "You get weird about things when you're not a hundred percent sure you can control how it'll turn out. You played karuta the same way."
"Not everything's about karuta," Taichi bites out, because come on.
Arata laughs. "I know." He doesn't look completely certain himself, fiddling with his beer. "But that's why you won't call Chihaya, isn't it? You called me, because I sent you emails sometimes. So you knew I'd still talk to you. You don't know what Chihaya would do."
"People grow up and drift apart. It happens."
"Only because you let it," Arata says. "She misses you. She blames herself, you know, for letting things get to this point, and she misses you. She's not great at keeping up with people, and you're too good at keeping them away. You've always been her best friend, Taichi. I'm trying, but we're—I'm not her best friend the way you are. I can't always be there for her. I don't know how you did it, thinking back. But I'm glad you were there, when I couldn't be."
I didn't do it for her, Taichi wants to say and doesn't. He's always been selfish like that.
Even when she'd broken his heart, Taichi had never given her a chance to say no. Because he'd never asked, never told her: I want you to look at me and see me, right here, neither first nor bronze nor any color but me. I want you to give me a chance. I want you to look at me and tell me if you could ever see me the way I see you: full gold and crimson red, colors I never used, because they burned the inside of my eyelids even after I went to sleep. I want you to think about what you want, and where I might fit into that. Will you do that for me?
She'd never answered—sorry isn't an answer—because he'd never asked.
"Talk to her, Taichi," Arata tells him, and it's not certainty in his voice but faith. "Even if you're not a hundred percent sure. It's not always about probability. At some point, you have to take a chance and let the other person make up the missing fifty percent."
He's sixteen and Harada-sensei is asking him, "Is that what you want, Matsuge-kun?"
Of course he wants to make A Class. Of course he wants to erase the metallic taste of disappointment, though he's not even sure who he's disappointed this time. Not Chihaya, because Chihaya is never disappointed in him; sometimes, Taichi wonders if it's because she believes in him or because she expects nothing more.
Arata once called him a coward. Chihaya has probably never even thought of Taichi as brave.
And neither has anything to do with what sensei is asking now. Because of course—of course Taichi wants to have something to show for the victories he's won, the losses he's swallowed, the bitter work that he's done. Everything he does, he does with a goal in mind. He studies, so that he can become a doctor. He trains, so that he can be first. He built a karuta club, so that Chihaya would smile at him again.
He wants to be someone who can dedicate his youth to something, like karuta, like winning, like an idea of a dream that belongs to him, and see it through to whatever end. He wants to be someone Harada-sensei can be proud of, the way he is of Chihaya.
Taichi wants many things. But what he wants and what he needs aren't necessarily the same, and at age sixteen he's smart enough to know the difference, but not old enough to put meaning into words. What he wants is to know what it is to want something—wholehearted and true—and what he needs is the courage to say so, out right, the way other children have long since learned to do.
He's twenty-five, and Chihaya asks him, "Taichi? You called and—not that I wasn't happy to get your call! I just didn't expect it." She smiles at him. "But I'm glad. I'm glad to see you. Was there something you wanted?"
It's mid-January and the sky is threatening the winter's first fall of snow. If he counts back, it's been eighteen years since they met on the first day of school, the morning after an unseasonable storm had swept most of the cherry blossoms from the boughs. The crush of pink under their sneakers was almost the same color that her lipstick is today—which is funny, because since when did Chihaya wear makeup?
It's been nine years since he saw her lying in the grass by the athletic fields, that first week of high school, headphones over her ears and eyes tracking the endless sky.
Fourteen years since Arata called him a coward, and four since Taichi finally began to grow out of that word.
Chihaya stands facing him, her cheeks bitten with cold and eyes as honest as he's ever known and never fully understood, until now, how someone can wear their heart on their sleeve and still punch through life with all the strength that fist-sized cord of muscle can hold.
It's been too many years since they've been there for each other always, the way he once fancied they might have been, before Taichi became responsible and forgot what it was to color outside the lines. It's taken however long it's taken, and it is what it is. He's done counting, and he's done playing the odds.
Chihaya is asking him a question he's heard his whole life—and finally, today, Taichi is ready to answer.