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“Please go out with me!” He presses his palms together and bows and soda dribbles out of Shintaro’s mouth at the exact same time yakisoba comes flying out of Takane’s. They both stare at Haruka incredulously.
“What,” Shintaro deadpans, as if there isn’t soft drink dribbling down his chin. “I think you meant to ask this loser over here—shitfuckow.” Takane hisses and slams her heel into his shin, face aflame and she’s looking a little wild-eyed, as if she has no idea what to do except resort to some form of physical altercation. “Why the hell did you hit me?”
“Why the hell are you saying stupid rubbish?”
“But that’s the problem,” Haruka wails, and the position he’s in is already starting to make his back ache. “If I don’t pretend that I’m not interested in girls at all, then they’ll just ask me again!”
“What,” Shintaro deadpans, bemused, and this time Takane just buries her head in her hands and screams.
His mother doesn’t hold very high hopes for him since the very beginning. She’s held her husband’s hand as they sat through rounds of doctor’s consultations and hospital visits and therapy sessions, and even when the incense has been blown out and the flowers have already started to droop she’s back in the sterile white waiting room again, son’s tiny hand in hers. So he can’t blame her for not daring to have very much hope left.
Haruka also doesn’t blame her (or he tries not to) when she decides that Haruka’s lack of a romantic life is an issue that needs to be resolved quickly and efficiently. “Find yourself someone nice,” she tells him, and it’s the unspoken before it’s too late that prevents him from protesting wholeheartedly.
On hindsight, that was a horrible, horrible mistake. He should have protested while he could have.
It’s various failed attempts at study dates, bowling dates, and lunch dates later when he decides, okay, he’s had enough of wasted Saturday afternoons and Takane’s suspiciously bitter glares. He’s finally going to put his foot down and tell his mother, in no uncertain terms, exactly what he thought of her trying to set him up.
It goes as well as could be expected of any form of conflict involving Kokonose Haruka, and he finds himself coming out to his unsuspecting mother before he can stop the nervous babble of words that escape his mouth.
To her credit, she takes the news well. Very well. Which is why he is currently in front of Shintaro, still bowing, back getting incredibly achy and he really doesn’t want to entertain the thought of standing up straight ever again.
“Don’t you have anyone else to ask?” Shintaro is getting flustered now. Haruka knows that voice; it’s the voice Shintaro has when he just wants to hightail it out of there, and he feels like wailing again.
“Like who? I don’t have any other friends.” It’s a sad statement and Takane winces a bit but it’s true. He can envision Shintaro’s mental cogs turning, trying to find an exception to that, any at all.
“Kenjirou?” He tries tentatively.
The reply comes out as something akin to a desperate sob. “Statutory rape.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about—wait, did you actually consider it?”
“Oh my god, this is like some bad yaoi manga.” Takane looks genuinely horrified and slightly scared, like she wants to cry, and Haruka totally knows the feeling.
He’s going to need surgery for his back if this keeps up. “Please. I’ll pay you.” Shintaro looks sceptical and yup, Haruka totally knows the feeling. His eyes latch onto the red and white can in Shintaro’s hand. “In soda. I’ll pay you in soda. I’ll buy you soda. I’ll draw you soda. You want to swim in the soda and I will make it happen. Just pleasepleaseplease go out with me until this dies down.”
There’s a pause. Takane actually howls and kicks a nearby trashcan.
And then it’s kinda pathetic when Shintaro agrees, but Haruka’s too busy trying to stand back up without killing himself to really care.
Ayano takes the news with a laugh. “Sounds like fun.” She tilts her head to the side and smiles. Haruka attempts to return it with one of his own, but no one misses the way his pencil is moving in long, miserably broad strokes.
“Besides,” she continues, and this time there’s an honest to god glint in her eyes, a glint of danger and horrible final boss battles and fights to the death. She does this little clap with her hands. “I’m sure this will open up lots of wonderful opportunities for you!”
Haruka knows full well that he’s supposed to be the naïve, sweet guy who eats way too much and is way too innocent for his own good. So he deems it too out of character for him to fling his sketchbook through the window in a moment of utter frustration, but it doesn’t stop him from considering it.
“What do people do on dates?” Shintaro asks him helplessly. His eyes flicker upwards for a brief moment and he thinks of the daughter of the cousin of the friend of his mother’s colleague, an awfully nice girl who managed to drop a bowling ball on his foot thrice in half an hour.
“Nothing special,” Haruka says. They walk leisurely to Shintaro’s house, stopping at two different vending machines on the way, and then they spend the afternoon doing homework and eating snacks and playing with Shintaro’s pet bunny. It’s relaxing and they don’t talk much and there are no bowling balls involved, and for the first time Haruka thinks they actually have a chance of getting out of this intact.
Shintaro flings a soda can at him and smacks him in the face the next day, and he’d really thought they were going swell.
“Er.” The can lands on his sketchbook and crumples the paper a bit. He tries smoothing it out, but it’s unsalvageable. He briefly considers just throwing the drink back in Shintaro’s face to see how he likes that, but he’s a good, kind person who refrains from violent actions. “I’m sorry?”
Shintaro scratches the back of his head and tries not to look like he’s trying not to look embarrassed. “Ayano told me that you’re supposed to give presents to the person you’re dating.” His face is just the slightest bit pink and Haruka doesn’t have the heart to remind him that he’s taking all this way too seriously, because he’s starting to realise just how much more of a better person Shintaro is than he will ever be, and it’s making him feel awful.
Instead, he sighs and rubs his nose, taking the can and placing it in between them. Shintaro stares at him blankly, and he grins and gives him a thumbs up. “Try again. Gently, this time.”
Shintaro makes some vaguely reluctant noises, but he finally picks the can up and proffers it out properly, and Haruka can’t help but beam.
“Invite him over for dinner,” his mother says as she spoons rice into a bowl, and Haruka acts as if she just asked him to jump into a spitting pit of hellfire—which is to say, he gives her a look of bemused horror and shakes his head firmly. She rolls her eyes. “Well, I’d like to see him at least once.”
“That…might not be…a very good idea at the moment,” he starts, and then stops when she looks decidedly unimpressed.
“Tomorrow. Six o’clock. We’re having stew,” she says, folding her arms with the deafening sort of finality only a mother could muster up and Haruka wilts under it.
Later, he heads out to the convenience store and buys a six-pack of coke and hopes for the best.
Evidently, the best fails to occur, because Ayano’s still laughing at them a week later. “Can you stop,” Shintaro groans, and it just makes her laugh harder. Haruka stuffs one whole tuna sandwich into his mouth and tries not to exist.
“I-I’m sorry.” Ayano takes a few shaky breaths and rubs her eyes. “It’s just—I—”, and then she’s back to laughing again.
“Okay, enough!” Takane, who has until then spent the whole conversation slowly and sullenly chewing on her food, slams her chopsticks down onto the lid of the bento box. “Let’s just stop talking about this idiot who can’t even handle two hours of social interaction!”
“I interact! Socially! You asshole!”
“Yeah, with who? Your shitty pet rabbit?”
Haruka stands up before the bickering can proceed any further. “I think Mum liked you. Kinda. Even after you spilled all that soup.” Takane lets go of the front of his shirt and splutters and Shintaro’s face goes a bright cherry red; Ayano’s laughing harder than ever but he swears he sees her mouth good luck in between gasps of air and this situation is the stupidest thing he’s ever gotten into but somehow, just somehow, maybe he could find something good at the end of it.
Shintaro visits him in the hospital almost every day; on the good days he brings chocolate and biscuits and ridiculous amounts of soft drink and just sits there, doing algebra and chatting and watching Haruka draw; on the bad days, when Haruka only opens his mouth to retch into a plastic bag, he doesn’t bother talking, so he sits and adjusts the wires of his drip when it accidentally gets tangled and pats his hand tentatively ever so often.
“You don’t have to visit every day,” he tells him, and Shintaro just shuffles his feet and fiddles with his protractor.
“Ayano says it’s only polite,” he mumbles. Haruka raises an eyebrow and he shrugs, shoulders tensing up in defence. “What? We’re dating, aren’t we?”
“I don’t think it matters at this point,” he laughs, chewing at the end of his pencil and pointedly not making eye-contact. “We weren’t ever really dating anyway, right? So it’s fine.” He’d gone for another test the day before, and though nobody was telling him the results he knew his condition wasn’t looking good. For his mother, that sort of romantic life had been a pleasant distraction, a nice little reminder that things could be normal if they tried, but now it was probably the furthest thing from her mind.
“Besides,” and here he manages a small little smile. “You don’t have to listen to everything Ayano tells you to do, you know?”
He looks at Shintaro, mussed up hair and crumpled school uniform and wide dark eyes like headlights. “Yeah,” he whispers. “I don’t.” And then he leans forward and presses a kiss to Haruka’s lips, awkward and shaky and unpractised. He can only describe it as unfocused camera lens, eyes widening and hands trembling but there’s no hesitation when he tilts his head forward and kisses back.
It’s only after Shintaro’s picked up his bag and closed the door, leaving Haruka alone in his hospital room, that he touches his barely-swollen lips and shuts his eyes. “You don’t,” he murmurs, soft and tender. “But you do anyway,” and the words crumple into his fingers like paper.
“Do you have some sort of inborn matchmaking instinct?” he asks, and is not surprised when Ayano simply smiles.
“Ha, maybe.” She arranges the flowers artfully on his bedside table, fluffs up the triceratops plush Takane brought last week. “But it’s served you well, hasn’t it?” Ayano winks at him, and he feels a surge of pity because she has no idea, does she, of the looks Shintaro gives her when she doesn’t notice.
He looks down at the back of his palm, where the IV has been connected to his body, needle to flesh. There’s a bruise forming there already. “Why me?”
“Because you’re honest,” she says simply. “And you’re smart about it. Shintaro’s only smart about all the wrong things.” She giggles. “And he likes you. You’ll take care of him well.”
He can’t help but smile along with her. “You could take care of him just as well,” he replies, pressing his thumb into his purpling wrist and it’s not him, but Ayano standing on two legs with heart pumping healthy blood through her veins, but she talks as if she’s heading off to heaven next Wednesday.
The flowers are perfect now, but she still fiddles with them, tugging at the stems. “I know,” she says, and the smile never falters. “I know.”
He kneels down and kisses Shintaro deep, flicks his tongue in slowly, runs his thumbs across his jawline and presses down to imprint spots of blood into pale, pale skin. Shintaro doesn’t struggle immediately, but his eyes are wide and bloodshot and broken cracked glass when he reaches up to grab at his wrist and tug forcefully. “Why,” he gasps. “Would you—?”
Kuroha pulls back to look at him thoughtfully, and there’s a trail of something that still connects their lips together, but whether it’s blood or saliva neither of them can tell. “Hmmm?” He tilts his head to the side; there’s blood smeared on his clothes, red dripping from his eyelashes and splattered across his neck, messy trickles down his razor-blade collarbone and Shintaro’s crying now, tears dripping down and mingling with crimson.
He smiles and nudges Shintaro playfully. “Why? It’s what people do when they’re dating, right?”
He thinks the end’s coming closer, but there’s nothing good there that he can see.
Momo rubs her chin and looks pensive, and maybe he should be glad that for once in her life his sister is actually thinking, but he can’t bring himself to muster up positive feelings because she’s thinking at the expense of himself.
“You,” she declares sternly. “Need to go on a date.”
His phone buzzes abruptly in his pocket, but he’s too busy giving his sister a look to care. “What,” he deadpans (there’s a sense of déjà vu somewhere in that word).
“You have no social skills at all,” she complains loudly, and he can see Kano sitting on the couch nodding sagely. “Maybe if someone agrees to date you, then that will finally change!”
“Errrrr.” There’s no escape. The buzzing in his pocket is growing ever more violent by the second, and as he looks around frantically Konoha and Hibiya step into the room, negima in hand, and he knows he’s found his way out.
Before he can lose his courage, he practically lunges to the side and tugs a bewildered Konoha to him. “See,” he begins. “That won’t work now—” but before he can finish his phone vibrates so hard it actually leaps out of his pocket. He fumbles, catches it, and Ene appears on the screen screaming into his face.
“Noooooooooooo,” she flaps her sleeves around frantically. “Nonononono! Not again!”
“What the heck—” And then he drops the phone and covers his ears because Ene starts playing the unrelenting sound of an electric drill upped by ten octaves right into his shitting ear.
She doesn’t stop for the rest of the day; Kido genuinely gives up all hope and flings the phone against the wall, but only succeeds in increasing the volume up a notch.
Needless to say, none of them sleep that night.