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Late. Yoshiki was always late, and yet never used that extra time to be more organised. Where the heck was his phone? He never even used it that much, so it was always either in his pocket, or in his locke--
The desk. He'd left it on his desk. He must have.
Yoshiki slammed his locker shut and made his way swiftly back to classroom 2-9.
He felt like such an idiot at times like this. He liked to view himself as a fairly responsible person, supporting himself and his own living space with a job and managing to attend school a fair amount, considering the circumstances. And yet, he'd managed to misplace his phone of all things - which he'd never put down temporarily enough to do so - as he was running late for work.
If it wasn't in the classroom, he didn't know what he was going to do. He couldn't contact the store, and if he showed up and needed an excuse, he figured that "I lost my phone" wasn't going to cut it. He wasn't the best employee there for sure, and he was cutting things fine as it is. But he needed the job. And if he lost it because of his stupid phone--
As he ran through the doorway of classroom 2-9, Yoshiki was suddenly stopped in his tracks by an obstacle. Said obstacle toppled backwards before his eyes, making a sound of distress.
"Ah - sorry.. Morishige- ah..." he stuttered, feeling guilty upon finding the person he'd knocked over was indeed one of his friends.
Morishige huffed in response, mustering a glare at him. It was difficult - he'd felt his glasses get knocked off from the impact of Kishinuma, and his vision was all blurred and askew, as if he were dizzy. Sakutaro wondered if he'd hit his head.
"Jeez, Kishinuma-" he cut himself off abruptly, staring in shock at his bleach-blond classmate. It... still looked kind of white, much like his uniform shirt. His gakuran and pants were grey, as were his eyes. But what caught Sakutaro right off guard was the skin. There was definitely a different tinge to the usual light-grey he saw. Still on the floor, he surveyed Kishinuma from head to toe.
Blue. His socks were blue. And he knew that only because it was a similar colour to the toes of his uwatobi slippers, which he had been told the colour of when he'd first joined Kisaragi Senior High. He also knew for a fact that the small blur that he assumed was the embroidered square on his gakuran's collar and what must have been his ID card were blue from this same instance. And between the two blue strips of card was a different colour. He had no idea what it was, or where else it would be, and could only describe it to himself as the opposite of blue. It stood out so much in comparison to blue.
"Morishige?" Yoshiki called out. He'd been trying to apologise, only to find that Morishige's focus was most definitely not on what he was saying. The taller boy was more looking around him in confusion. Yoshiki almost slapped himself at the realisation that there was a clear reason for this behaviour.
"Oh, your glasses are gone. You must have had them on before, right?"
"Y... Y-Yes..."
"Right. Well, they should be here somewhere." Yoshiki laughed at Morishige's completely lost expression. "Hey, come on. I know you can't see anything, but there's no need to look so shocked. You can't be that blind."
Yoshiki was about to ask what Morishige what he was even doing in the classroom so late after school (he doubted he had a detention like him) as he began to search for the glasses, but, upon hearing a high-pitched crunching sound, figured that he'd already finished the search, and he was about to have a conversation much different from discussing Morishige's presence.
"Kishinuma... you did not just do what I think you did."
"U-uh..." Yoshiki was done for.
"You idiot. You absolute idiot." Morishige stared at his shoes, and Yoshiki's skin grew hot as the guilt crept up his neck.
"I'm so sorry, Morishige, I didn't mean it. I'll- I'll pay for another pair. They were just--"
"Yes, I'm fairly aware of what happened, though I couldn't see it." His tone wasn't quite as sharp as what Yoshiki expected it to be. "How am I supposed to get home now?"
"My phone!" Yoshiki suddenly remembered, and, sure enough, when he ran over to his desk and opened up the compartment, it was sitting there. "Stupid piece of shit..."
"Kishinuma, do not run back out of this classroom. I'm going to need your eyes."
...
"Huh?"
"I can't get home like this. You're going to have to help me."
He really didn't have time. This was the worst case scenario. He was going to be so god damn late that he could already hear his manager lecturing him. But this was his mistake. He didn't really have much of a choice.
"Fine." And with that, Morishige walked slowly into the corridor, dragging Yoshiki out with him.
And put his arm around his shoulder. Tightly. Yoshiki's eyes almost popped out of his skull. They were way too close for his liking.
"M-Morishige! Don't you think this is too close? And it's hot today, dammit."
"Just man up and deal with it. It can't be avoided."
"You're clinging to me like..."
"Kishinuma, I can't fucking see. Do you wish to carry me instead?"
But when they finally got out of the entrance, it was Sakutaro that suddenly felt very out of place.
Blue was the only colour he was able to identify up until now. And sure enough, the sky was bright blue. It was amazing. But he could now see a whole arrangement of blurred blots around him. A few steps later, there was much of a more vibrant and rich colour in comparison to blue. He guessed that he was passing trees, and therefore the colour he was seeing was green.
But every time he turned his head, it seemed a new array of perspectives hit him all at once. Sakutaro felt a headache coming on, as well as a slight bout of dizziness.
"Hey, are you listening? Don't tell me you've gone deaf now too." Kishinuma poked him him hard in the jaw, and Sakutaro almost lost his balance, swaying and putting almost all of his weight on the boy beside him. "Woah, dude! You okay?"
"I'm... fine."
"Sure thing. But we're not going anywhere else until you tell me the next direction, so maybe you should sit down a while. You sound like you're dazed - God, you better not have hit your head. I've probably got to make a call anyway, so... stay here a minute, okay?"
"You better not leave me here."
"Don't worry, man. I won't. Promise," Kishinuma chuckled.
Soon, Sakutaro was able to familiarise himself with the bench that stood a few metres away from them. He sat down as Kishinuma pulled his phone out, and put his head in his hands to try and calm the dull ache that was threatening to worsen.
Did he really not notice? Sakutaro felt defeated. It was the only feeling he was sure of right now. He could see. And the fact that he had to misplace his glasses to do so was too ironic for his liking. He knew that glasses would stop him from having his vision triggered come the time he met his soulmate. However, he'd never taken his glasses off in public. The concept of having them off as he met his soulmate was never something he thought about, and certainly not in high school.
And certainly not about Kishinuma! He'd spent the good part of half a year around him, and he'd never had a clue. Sakutaro tried to remember when he first met him. Or rather, first made eye contact. There wasn't really an official greeting. Maybe that was the problem?
No. That wouldn't affect whether Kishinuma could see in colours when he first saw Sakutaro or not. He'd given Sakutaro the miserable glare he gave everybody he didn't care about. Nothing out of the ordinary. Kishinuma didn't see him like that.
And Sakutaro didn't even like him that much. It was only tradition and society's pressure to be with who you were supposedly 'chosen' to be with that made him feel defeated. He really was an outcast. It was a one-sided thing. That couldn't be normal. But it wasn't impossible. Sakutaro had seen cases of that precise thing happening. And now he was one.
It shouldn't have bothered him that much.
But then, he was never taught what happened afterwards, what to do if he, by chance was one of society's rejects that had no choice but to spend the rest of their lives forever alone, shunned by all for being out of pla-
Ok, Sakutaro was thinking too much about it. He decided to ignore it, said goodbye to Kishinuma when they finally reached his home in near silence.
And he ignored it for a very long time, once he'd observed the creative abomination that was the style and colour combination of his bedroom, threw out all the clothes that looked terrible to him, and checked online that it was completely normal to have weird dark-coloured (Red? Brown? He hadn't actually looked up the names to the colours he could now see yet) things scattered across the skin of his body. After the initial processes of refamiliarising himself with his surroundings, Sakutaro proceeded to push the experience to the back of his mind.
In fact, he managed to ignore it and keep it undercover for a few months. The curiosity of 'Did he like Kishinuma?' soon wore off after he realised it didn't matter what his opinion was on the matter; the truth was clear. It was not to be debated, nor discussed, until Sakutaro slipped up.
In retrospect, he should have thought about the situation he was in, and how he needed to be careful with his words. It was ironic, how he was such an observant person that chose what he said with a huge amount of weighing the consequences each time, that he, in that one moment, got too excited and indirectly blurted out what he intended to be a secret. But there was something so incredibly infuriating about the poster they were creating in class, and the way that Shinozaki - despite her artistic brilliance - had developed a form of visual display unpopular to the rest of their group, that caused him to verbalise the first thing off the top of his head.
"Besides, those colours don't go together," Sakutaro argued.
"Does it really matt-" Shinozaki was cut off immediately by Shinohara, who slammed her hands down on her desk and stared pointedly at Sakutaro.
"Since when were you able to distinguish which colours would go with what, Morishige?" She half-yelled with an excited gleam in her eyes.
Sakutaro's brain seemed to be screaming 'shit' over and over again.
"Wha- I mean, u-uh..."
"Wait, Shige-nii, you can see colours?" Mayu looked at him with a surprised expression.
"Morishige's met his soulmate!" Shinohara sang in a tasting voice. "Tell us who it is, won't you?"
"What business do you have knowing that?" Sakutaro snapped back defensively. It was cold of him to do so towards Shinohara, but he absolutely could not say who it was, especially since said boy was in the same room as them, glancing at him with both amusement and interest glimmering in his eyes.
"Awh, c'mon, don't be like that! It's not like you're going to be able to hide it from us, is it?"
"Please. I've been hiding i-"
"Oh my God, how long have you been able to do this for?"
"You're very loud," Sakutaro grimaced. He didn't need to look around to know that most of the classroom were now listening to their conversation.
"Is it Suzume? I won't tell, promise!" Shinohara giggled, covering Mayu's ears.
"Quiet. We're not discussing this any further. Do what you want with the damn poster, Shinozaki."
Instead of being offended, the girls simply giggled at Sakutaro's grumpy state and started whispering among themselves. He could feel the eyes of even the boys in the class surveying him, trying to figure out who his soulmate could possibly be. Sakutaro wanted death.
He was still questioned on and off about the incident for about a week, and then on occasion, until most people forgot about it completely. And it wasn't until another few months later that Sakutaro got to the root of the issue.
He was intending to go to Kishinuma's apartment to study overnight (The blond-haired boy had bugged him many-a-day to "Help, for the love of God! I don't know what I'm doing!" until Sakutaro had reluctantly agreed. It wasn't that he was uncharitable to his friends, but by this point he had now identified his excessive thoughts to do with Kishinuma and why he saw the boy as his soulmate. Spending the night with said person sounded absolutely terrifying), and so after several hours of arguing, the two began to get ready to go to bed. Sakutaro had managed to run into the bathroom first, so had the pleasure of both the hot water as well as the opportunity to clear away his things in an orderly fashion before Kishinuma rejoined him. That, and trying to calm himself over the fact that he was spending the night at Kishinuma's. Why did he think this was a good decision?
Not before long, Kishinuma had walked back into the bedroom with a plain grey top and tracksuit bottoms on.
"Nice getup," Sakutaro commented before observing a clear change.
"Sleepwear just seems like a waste of time. Might as well use clothes I'm going to wear outside, too."
"Why are you wearing glasses?"
"Oh," Kishinuma adjusted them upon Sakutaro bringing up the subject, seemingly a little sheepish. "Well, like most people generally do, I wear them because I need them."
Sakutaro looked at him blankly.
"Look, I can't see without them. I wear contacts at school, so I guess that's why you're surprised. That, and... I do get a bit of a kick out of pissing you off every time I mention how you're practically blind."
He wears contacts. It was such an obvious possibility that Sakutaro almost kicked himself in frustration of how naïve he was.
"How blind are you, Kishinuma?"
"I mean, I've had a steadily-worsening prescription since I was a kid," Kishinuma explained. "I wouldn't be able to make my way down the street without something over my eyes-- Hey, what are you doing?"
Morishige had moved closer to Yoshiki and gripped the frames around the lenses.
"As blind as me, apparently." And with that, Yoshiki's vision became blurred and span, trying to adjust to the sudden loss in detail around him.
"Hey, I need those!" Morishige was looking at Yoshiki intently, and it gave him chills. Until he looked into his eyes.
What the heck was that? They looked different. So did Morishige's skin. And the once-light-grey stripes that were on Morishige's pajamas were seemingly lighter, accept they weren't. Yoshiki didn't know how to describe them.
"You look surprised. 'I know you can't see anything, but there's no need to look so shocked.'" Morishige murmured slyly.
"You... You're... what--" Yoshiki snatched his glasses back and stuck them back on. Colours. That's what these differences in visions were. And Morishige's room... it had looked boring before, since all he could see was everything neatly organised and nothing more, but now, he could truly appreciate how everything looked together. He was stunned.
"You bastard. You made me think I was different," Morishige chuckled. Yoshiki gazed at him blankly.
"You're my soulmate?"
"You could care to say it in a less displeased tone," he grumbled, his mood dropping a little.
"S-Sorry, I just... unexpected..."
"I understand. Jesus Christ... You're a prick, Kishinuma."
He made no sense to Yoshiki. This made no sense, and it was probably taking longer than it should for him to actually understand what this all meant.
"You knew when we were in Homegroup, when we made the poster..." he recalled.
"I knew when you ran straight into me and destroyed my glasses."
Oh. Oh. So he'd known all this time. Yoshiki's eyes finally met Morishige's, and he almost squeaked.
"What colour are your eyes?"
"Green."
Like trees and grass. He was tempted to look outside, but was transfixed by the vibrant and calming shades of Morishige's irises. They made him look more humane. And cute. They were cute.
"I wouldn't describe functional body parts as cute," their owner raised an eyebrow at him.
Well, shit.
"I... Sorry, I didn't mean to say that." Morishige rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner.
Yoshiki wondered, upon seeing the relief that seemed to ooze from the other boy at every angle, how much he had worried about it all. If Yoshiki was in his position for that long... he shuddered at the mere idea of it.
Morishige wasn't bad. Though a bit arrogant and mildly intimidating, he was intelligent, and good company, and somewhat attractive. Yoshiki's heart rate spiked, and he double-checked that he wasn't mumbling under his breath, before calming down again.
What was he even supposed to do now? Continue as they were, or just... embrace it? Yoshiki looked once more at Morishige, and quickly made his decision.
"So..." He started. "Do you wanna go to bed?" Morishige grinned at him.