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It is three in the afternoon and the window is left partly open, letting the light winter breeze trickle in through the gap. A fire burns softly across the room, warm hues of orange and yellow dancing and twisting with the passing breeze.
Kawanishi peeks out the window with narrowed eyes, hands clasped around a mustard yellow mug. He watches snow fall daintily onto the window sill, piling up into clumps of dirty whites that remind him of the matted fur of a cat he saw the other day.
Tiny bells tinkle from just above the window, and a bubbling laughter, all sweet and bright, chimes in.
“What’re you doing?” Yamagata asks, making his presence known as he settles down the couch just a few inches too close, and a thousand miles too far from touching the boy in front of him.
He is met with silence, and Yamagata lets out a wistful sigh, leaning back against the couch, eyes wandering to the fogged-up window from across the room. His fingers twitch, badly longing for something – someone – he couldn’t reach. Maybe in another world, comes the automatic response. And even though he’s heard it countless times, and even though he has told himself that on numerous occasions, the words never get softer or less bitter.
“Watching.” The response is sudden, short, drawn-out, and almost static-y, and the older male tears his eyes away from the glass and pulls his mind out of the fog just in time to see Kawanishi regard him for a moment before turning his attention back to the window.
Look at me, Yamagata’s traitorous mind would screech, and although the words are threatening to tumble from his lips, he swallows them back again, feels the bitter sting against his throat, and tries again.
“I can see that,” The words came out too forced and hurried, and all Yamagata wants to do is disappear into the sink because, oh god, oh god, what if he knows? What if he finds out?
But Kawanishi does not respond so he tries to busy himself instead, trying to keep his mind occupied on anything else, and almost instantaneously, his eyes wander to the middle blocker’s hands. God, I want to hold – “You should set that down before you spill some,” the words, this time as well, come out too fast, too shaky, too fake and suddenly, Yamagata wants to disappear again.
The younger male makes no move and Yamagata does not know if that is a good thing or not, and the older boy closes his eyes and silently stews in his seat, thoughts going haywire from the lack of response.
Suddenly –
“I hate the snow.” The older brunette opens his eyes, gently watches the younger from the corner of his gaze. He forms his words tentatively and maybe waits for some sort of elaboration. “It’s cold and wet and dirty.”
Yamagata laughs, and he is hit with a feeling of nostalgia because at the back of his mind, he knows.
He knows that on this very same day, years and years ago, when the snow was piling knee-high and the cold was threatening to freeze their limbs, he knows that they had this exact same conversation. And maybe it happened the year after, and the year after next, and then the following one too and maybe it happens every year and maybe the words keep repeating too, but one thing’s for sure: Yamagata will never get tired of hearing his voice.
“Yamagata-san?” The former libero is brought back to reality, and he can’t help the smile threatening to spill across his face because it’s happening again, here it goes again. “Are you listening?” The younger brunette’s tone is just as flat as it was before, but years of training and getting accustomed to him allows the older to pick up the slight hint annoyance hidden among his words.
“I’m listening!” He remarks, eyes shifting to fully see the other and he belatedly notes that the mug is out of sight now and oh, that’s new.
Kawanishi seems to have caught his gaze because he speaks again, “I placed it on the floor.” And seeing the older male’s questioning gaze, he elaborates, “For a change, or something.” The last part was added as an afterthought, words garbled and murmured in a rush.
There was something in Kawanishi’s eyes, something different in his tone of voice. And maybe, just maybe, the younger boy knows as well.
“Anyway,” Yamagata stretches his words, trying to rack his brain for something, just something that might somehow change things, because if Kawanishi is trying to put in some effort, so should he, “You said something about a cat?”
And he immediately wants to swallow his tongue back, because there it is again. It’s happening again, and despite knowing where it leads, how it leads to things, and how it will end, he still ends up running to the same things, over and over again. Because you’re afraid, a voice in his mind calls out, something might change and you’re afraid of that.
Yamagata closes his eyes, grits his teeth, and tries to will the voice away, because he will not admit that maybe, just maybe, the voice held an inkling of the truth. Maybe he was really just running away, maybe he was just afraid.
But –
He opens his eyes again, discretely watches the boy before him lazily recounting the same tales over and over again, a hazy glint of amusement reflected in his eyes, and although this could have been something more, he decides that for now that this is enough.
It is one in the morning and the window is shut tight, the chilly winter breeze brushing against fogged-up glass. A lone candle flickers softly in a corner, bright yellow and orange flames casting tall shadows across the walls.
Wrapped up in heavy layers of thick blankets, Yamagata stares. His eyes seem to twinkle as they reflect in them the blinking of fairy lights strung up all over the room.
“Don’t you have too much?” Kawanishi asks out of the blue, eyes curiously studding a particular string of lights hanging above the older male’s bed.
Yamagata blinks slowly, lazily, “Huh?” He turns, trying to follow the other’s gaze. “Oh. They’re pretty, I guess.” He says, fingers grazing the surface of the bright bulbs.
“But you hate it when it’s too bright,” The younger brunette counters, resting his chin on the palm of his hand as he continues to survey what is available for him to see.
“But they’re pretty,” The former libero stresses, hands wildly gesturing to all the lights strung up around him. “Pretty.” And then, as sort of an afterthought and retort, he adds, “Besides, you said you hated snow but you kept on watching them. What about that?” The word hypocrite was left out, but both of them knew it was there.
And had he not been observing the younger closely, Yamagata would’ve missed the tiny upward twitch of Kawanishi’s mouth. “Because, in the words of those before me,” The taller brunette starts, eyes shifting to meet the older boy’s directly, “they’re pretty.”
“You little shit,” Yamagata grins, eyes twinkling with amusement. “But really, why?”
“Because they really are pretty,” Kawanishi smiles a bit, eyes wandering over to behind him where the window gave a blurry view of his neighborhood street dusted with a continuously growing blanket of snow.
But you’re prettier, the thought rolls in his mind almost immediately, and, as Yamagata watches the younger boy gaze out the window, he knows it is something he couldn’t deny.
“What did you say?” Oh, he said that aloud, didn’t he? The older boy curses himself inwardly for such a stupid mistake.
He closes his eyes and lets out a deep sigh, “Nothing.” He laughs, trying to play it off, and he cringes, because the sound came out too forced and awkward, and it made it seem like it was more of him trying to convince himself that it was just as he had said. And, meeting Kawanishi’s narrowed eyes, it seems that the boy didn’t buy it as well.
“If you say so…” The words were full of doubt, and Yamagata prays that he gets swallowed up, because oh fuck, he heard, he definitely heard. And maybe there’s a tiny voice inside his head saying that this is his chance to turn things around, this is your chance to change things, but Yamagata is a coward as much as he is stubborn and he shoves the voice back into the recesses of his mind.
“You know…” He starts all of a sudden, and again, the former libero wants to kick himself because it sounds like he’s confessing, which he is not, which he cannot do. Maybe in another world, the voice starts again and Yamagata has to bite back a groan, you had the courage.
The silence that follows is awkward, suffocating, and when it seemed like Yamagata isn’t going to speak again anytime soon, Kawanishi pipes up in that deadpan voice of his, “Is this the part where you confess your undying love for me?”
Maybe, Yamagata thinks wistfully, just maybe.
Kawanishi laughs and the other boy looks up in shock, “You’re weird, Yamagata-san.”
And it is then that Yamagata realizes he said that aloud. But he couldn’t even be bothered to worry, because there is a small smile on the younger boy’s face, and a slight wrinkle at the corner of his eyes, and it makes the boy think that maybe, just maybe, there is still hope. This is where you could change things, the voice haunts him again, for the better. Yamagata gulps, or for the worse.
This is the part where he is supposed to take a step forward, but –
“You’re lucky you’re far from here or else you would’ve been dead.” Yamagata cowers and treads back to the path of familiarity. Here, it is safe, the boy tries to convince himself, here, I know how it ends.
But it seems that with every step Yamagata takes back, Kawanishi was keen to counter it with a brave step forward, “But haven’t I always been in your heart?” There was a teasing lilt to his voice and Yamagata chokes on air, because this has never happened, this has never come up, so what was he supposed to say?
“I – ” The former libero cuts off his words, afraid that whatever he says might give something away. And he does not want that, not when he isn’t ready yet. Because his mind goes a mile a second with his thoughts – god, what if I mess up, what if I mess things up, what if I scare him off, what if we can’t be more – and although the pesky voice inside his head has been yelling at him to swallow his fears, to take a risk for once, to break routines, the words fall on deaf ears and are promptly brushed off because not yet, not just yet, because he was a coward, he was a coward who was afraid to lose whatever he had now to some outcome he was uncertain of happening.
The silence goes on for a moment longer and the younger boy is the first one to break it once more, “Just kidding.” The words, unlike the ones before, sounded a bit too fake, a bit too unnatural, on the older male’s ears and he does not know whether it is just because of the connection or for some other reason.
Shaking off the concerns as just the static making the other boy’s voice sound more robotic, Yamagata manages a small smile, “You’re weird, Taichi.” He throws back, watching with amusement as the other boy’s face scrunches up and makes way for a small scowl.
It disappears just as fast as it came though, and the taller male sends back a quip of his own, “You’re weirder,” and the brunette lets the tiniest hint of a smile fall on his lips, “ Besides, I learned from the best.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Yamagata laughs, and maybe he realizes this has been the first time he laughed genuinely, freely, in a while, and maybe Kawanishi noticed it too, because when the older brunette met the other’s eyes, he sees in them a bright glint and he sees in him a warm smile, and he realizes that maybe, Kawanishi saw through him.
And his thoughts are confirmed as well when the younger boy speaks again, “You finally smiled again.” Yamagata found his words soft and warm, punctuated with the tiniest upturn of his lips, and he couldn’t help the huge smile spilling across his face because he finally realizes that Kawanishi did this just so Yamagata would smile, and he couldn’t be happier with that bit of information.
And now, maybe the voice in his head is telling him again that this was where he can change things, that this is where he could take a step forward. Because he admits, maybe it can become something more, and maybe there could have been something more, but right now, even though they are miles apart, even though everything seemed a little bit static and repetitive, just seeing the boy happy is already enough.
Yes, this could have been something more, they could have been something more, but right now –
This is enough.