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Hierophant Green stalls at the edges of Noriaki’s vision, flickering in and out of sight like a half-dead lightbulb. In front of him, his mother kneels carefully, skirt pressed and hair done, a hand gentle on his shoulder. “Noriaki,” she starts, and there’s a thin veneer of patience over the grating nerves of her voice, “you should try harder to get along with the other boys at school. They’re the same as you, you know; you could be friends.”
Noriaki sees green at the backs of his eyes and feels the difference under his skin and says nothing.
—
He doesn't hate the other kids in his grade because there is nothing in them to hate. Before he’d known better, he’d searched harder, thinking to himself that surely someone, there must be someone — but when Hierophant creeps out from under his desk to steal pens and tap shoulders, no one fights back. When it huddles in front of the class to flicker the lights, no one looks at Noriaki at all.
It’s not that he’s disappointed; it’s only that nobody sees him. There’s a high in that for a little while, because if he wanted to, he could do anything: steal from convenience stores and cheat on exams, have everything he ever wanted without needing to move a muscle. Alone in his room, belly-up on the floor and surrounded by guides for testing into good middle schools, he considers the opportunity that he has, precious and unique, to float through his life freeloading and never work a day.
“But why would I do that?” he asks his ceiling. At his side, Hierophant buzzes faintly and grabs a pencil from his backpack.
—
Energy sparks under his skin, almost painful, urging him to do something, something, anything. Light crackles behind his eyes and he thinks to himself that there must be a meaning to this: unique people aren't born to just get along. There must be a reason for the isolation, the potential; there must be something that he’s meant to be doing.
In that way, he fancies himself a sort of protagonist, if not a hero, and models himself accordingly, makes sure to become opinionated and dignified and gracious and certain. Noriaki picks apart novels and manga and drowns himself in it, imagines worlds where he would be needed and necessary but in the same breath acknowledges that he isn't in those worlds — he’s in this one. And in this world, he has been given a gift.
Exams come and go. In his free time, Noriaki takes up art.
—
Noriaki sells his quietness as a sort of kind gentleness, pretends that there’s something good in him worth seeing behind his clipped statements and closed posture. It works, sometimes; for every one person that calls him a stuck-up brat whenever his back is turned, there’s at least one to think fondly of him. He plays nice and smiles when he should and speaks when he must, entertains idle conversations at his desk when they come his way.
It isn't much of a burden in that there is no substance to it, and even when the interactions are tiring and useless and grating, he knows it to be the easier option. Noriaki feels like he is walking between two roads, not involved enough to be normal or to free himself of his mother’s worries, but not distant enough to be fully ostracized. He’s unique, and being unique means that he is, inherently, alone — but if he is to be alone, it will be on his own terms. And so he plays nice.
He walks home with the boy he sits next to in math. He discusses study methods over lunch with a girl from the next class. On Valentine’s Day, he receives chocolates from someone whose name he can hardly remember.
“It’s so easy,” he laments into his pillow; Hierophant hums at his side in a way that Noriaki might interpret as sympathetic if it weren't a part of his own soul. Something burns in his chest and up his throat and Noriaki tastes it in the back of his mouth: something like superiority, something like anger, something just tangential to loneliness. People are easy and school is easy and life is easy, and there’s nothing fun in “easy”.
At school the next day, his words feel empty and lifeless. Noriaki stares down at his hands in his lap and thinks: not this.
—
There is, he thinks, a power in art. Art lets him take something, anything, from his head or his heart or from something completely outside of himself, and immortalize it. His mother worries when she’s home that he is becoming obsessed with it, but she couldn't understand the way that thoughts have always itched under his skin, and the way that art, for the first time, lets him dig his nails in deep and rip those thoughts out.
He doodles on his notes and binders, the backs of his exams, digs his pen into the wood of his desk or the skin of his wrist where the ink can rest hidden under his uniform. Little things, at first, when he starts out: roses, letters, a stray pair of shoes. He draws isolated pieces of people, ears and eyes and hands, spreads his fingers across the pages of his sketchbook and feels somehow closer to humanity than he ever has before in his life.
Then at home, he paints, and it goes horribly. He gives up and then gives up on giving up, and it goes horribly again. Somehow, he can’t keep himself from being frustrated at the glass wall between his ability and what he wants to make, the way that there is something untouchable to the idea in his head.
Time passes and he improves, wasted paint and ripped-out pages underfoot. His mother delights in the hobby in the way that it diverts some of the stranger facets of his personality into something more palatable: not weird, just quiet. An artist. He sees the world differently.
“You are so special, Noriaki,” she tells him warmly, holding one of his more agreeable works in her hands. There is so much pride in her voice that it makes his heart sting, and he doesn't think about the drawings he has hidden from her in his dresser drawers, not once.
Noriaki sees green at the backs of his eyes and feels the difference under his skin and says nothing.
—
He doesn't care about Jotaro Kujo because there’s nothing special about Jotaro Kujo. Noriaki enters his third year of high school and doesn't glance at the boy who sits in front of him longer than it takes to make a snide internal remark about his unfortunately customized uniform. He is completely, one hundred percent certain that he doesn't care about Jotaro Kujo at all.
In spite of this, the universe seems determined to make him learn about Jotaro Kujo. In no particular order, here are some things Noriaki finds out about the other boy:
1) He’s very popular. Girls follow him to his desk and boys talk to him during breaks. At his back, Noriaki feels somehow tiny, invisible. Jotaro seems to attract people effortlessly in a way that Noriaki is wholeheartedly unfamiliar with.
2) He doesn't play nice. Jotaro rarely speaks and when he does it is not with charity: abrupt would, Noriaki thinks, be a kind way to put it. While Noriaki puts his hands up and smiles and apologizes when he’s trying to avoid people, Jotaro just leans on an elbow on his desk and says what he wants. Maybe a kinder thing to say is that he’s honest.
3) He doesn't notice him at all. Noriaki prides himself on his people-watching, and he has never seen Jotaro approach someone, not once. Every interaction he has is given to him, and if Noriaki were to speak to him, he is certain that he would have to initiate.
Noriaki has no interest in doing that. While he’s sure that he could care less about Jotaro Kujo, he can’t deny being put on edge by him; there is something disconcerting about Jotaro’s pull, the way that Noriaki has to fight so hard to stay out of his orbit.
And yet through his active efforts to not to let Jotaro change his routine, he changes his routine. Noriaki goes to school and goes home and finds himself still thinking about the other boy. He’s aware of Jotaro in a way that he isn't entirely comfortable with, and a low rage simmers in his gut: he’s above this.
Noriaki does not bother with other people. He doesn't care about Jotaro Kujo.
—
On the walk home, Hierophant wraps around his back and hums around his ears like a light left on. Noriaki curls his scarf tighter around his neck and thinks about heroes.
His lack of engagement comes less from apathy as acceptance: Noriaki is in the light, and that means that he can see what the others cannot see. There is a facet of his heart entirely separate from everyone else’s, and not only does he know it — he carries it with him. There is a facet of himself that he is forced always to carry, locked and loaded and so, so heavy.
Noriaki is alone because he must be. He knows that. He knows that he knows that. Unique people aren't born just to get along.
The wind brushes through his hair and against the high ridges of his cheekbones. In his pockets, his hands feel cold.
—
Jotaro Kujo is a delinquent, maybe. His uniform doesn't fit school standards and he wears a hat in class, kicks his feet up on his desk and speaks informally to teachers. He’s so rude, always and all the time, not a drop of grace or graciousness in his body; his voice is rough, words few and harsh. He’d once come into class just before the bell with bleeding knuckles and a dark smear of red under his nose, and Noriaki can’t get it out of his head.
Jotaro Kujo has perfect attendance and scores higher than him on their next exam.
In class, Noriaki catches himself sketching the broad stretch of Jotaro’s back and nearly snaps his pencil in half when he realizes. Jotaro turns in his seat at the sound, just a touch; his blue-green eyes meet Noriaki’s over his shoulder, brow just slightly raised, before turning back to the lecture that Noriaki hasn't been hearing for the last several minutes.
Noriaki hates him so much in that moment that he forgets that he doesn't care about him at all. He hates him so much that he forgets that he has never seen Jotaro initiate an interaction with someone else, not ever. He hates him all the way home.
—
The first thing is that he can’t focus. The second is that he doesn't see himself anymore: not in his books, not in his art, not in the light. The third is that his graphite smudges horribly when he accidentally drags his arm across the page, and he’s frustrated and self-loathing at the loss of his clean lines before he recognizes the sharp jaw and dark rush of hair he’d been sketching.
Hierophant curls around his ankles like a cat or a snake, like the book bag and shiny shoes abandoned on his floor. Interactions mean nothing because there’s no substance to them — and he knows that, he knows that, he knows that. It’s been years, now; he’s seventeen, now. Noriaki knows all there is to know by now about being outside, being apart; everything he has that speaks secrets and power, he carries with him under his skin. Maybe that is the first thing.
Wait, no. The first is that he can’t focus.
The second is that he’s supposed to be untouchable in his own story, and this is his story; Noriaki has been painfully, blindingly certain ever since he first felt a hum in his veins that he’s the protagonist here. He knows he is. He has to be. No one has ever been able to get close to Noriaki, understand Noriaki, see Noriaki. He knows that, and he knows that he knows that. He’s unique, and being unique means that he is, inherently, alone.
The third is that he doesn't know what to do with this. Noriaki is good at this; he knows how to play nice. He knows how to smile and shake hands, say good morning, walk the line between involved and distant. He’s good at this, and people are so easy.
Jotaro Kujo is not easy.
—
“How is your art coming, honey?” his mother asks over dinner. The noise of the restaurant is a low, insistent pulse, like the beating of his heart.
Noriaki’d finished his midsize sketchbook not a full 24 hours ago; it sits heavy and guilty in his bag, full of figures and shapes that he’d rather not consider too hard, stony faces and bright eyes. He’d locked his latest painting away in his closet before the last coat could even dry, clumpy smears of yellow-gold getting onto the sleeve of his favorite shirt. He’d been using it to consider light.
“I haven't been doing much of it lately,” he responds, takes a drink from his glass to swallow the lie down.
—
See, the thing is that Noriaki prides himself on his people-watching, and that Jotaro is not hard to read. Noriaki doesn't care about the other boy — couldn’t, not when he’s so normal, so completely far away — but he notices him. It can’t be helped, since Noriaki sits behind him.
Jotaro tenses up when a girl in their class touches his shoulder. He ducks his head when a classmate calls his name. When the bell rings, he’s gone, and he only speaks when spoken to. Noriaki notices all of these things.
He catches himself thinking of Jotaro Kujo as a kindred spirit, certainties and uncertainties and a self-made, carefully maintained isolation. He catches Jotaro looking at him when he walks into the classroom and thinks: maybe.
Which is why it’s such a surprise that it takes him until winter to notice that Jotaro Kujo might be haunted.
There’s nothing big, nothing especially noticeable — but sometimes the other boy’s hair moves in the wind when the window isn't open, and sometimes his textbook pages seem to turn all on their own. Sometimes, Noriaki looks up and sees a smudge of purple, only just, only barely, that’s gone when he blinks.
So Jotaro is haunted, and Noriaki is haunted with the idea of Jotaro being haunted. It’s too much for him to hope, and it’s been so long since he’s tried using Hierophant to get attention, and he knows better now, but. But.
But Noriaki is impulsive and Jotaro is here, and when Hierophant creeps out buzzing from under his desk, Jotaro’s turned to face it before it can even touch him.
Noriaki’s heart stops. Jotaro shudders to standing. Behind him is all muddy purples and diamond eyes, a full figure of something that lacks any coherent lines or shape; none of this makes sense, this isn't supposed to happen — Noriaki is the protagonist of his own story, and that means that he is alone.
The window is closed, but Jotaro’s hair ruffles anyway — and Noriaki realizes, Hierophant at his back and a pounding in his head, that Jotaro is seeing him.
“Kujo,” their teacher calls out; her voice is more baffled than angry. “Are you alright?”
Jotaro won’t stop looking at him, until very suddenly, he does. “I’m leaving,” he announces lowly, and before Noriaki can even open his mouth, he’s out the door.
Noriaki stares at the broad stretch of Jotaro’s back and thinks about his blue-green eyes. He considers, for a moment, the light. When he rushes to standing, his chair screeches harsh against the floor, and distantly, he hears his teacher call out his name.
He finds Jotaro in the nurse’s office.
“Leave,” Jotaro tells him gruffly, before Noriaki can even get the curtain open. He doesn't hesitate at all, throws the curtain so fast the metal rings screech — and is half disappointed to see no stretch of purple, no distortion in the air. Half relieved, somehow, to just see Jotaro.
The other boy lies on his back, jacket and hat and everything still on, like he’d collapsed there boneless. Noriaki holds his breath, waits; but Jotaro’s eyes don’t even flicker to him, not even once.
A sharp kick of anger bursts under his lungs. “No,” he says, and is rewarded with a downward twitch of Jotaro’s mouth. “No, I — you have to explain. Explain this to me.”
The other boy doesn't answer verbally, but he draws himself slowly into sitting. Noriaki looks at this and thinks: an invitation.
Blood rushes in his ears. “Have you ever considered,” he blurts and he’s stumbling, oh god he’s stumbling, but he had never considered, he had just never thought, “about using it, for — to steal, or to cheat on exams, or — ”
The other boy doesn't interrupt him but he does cut him off, blank face cracking into a pulled mouth and furrowed brow. “Why would I do that?” he asks, and Noriaki thinks that maybe he was wrong about this all along.
Jotaro rushes into focus like looking at a light from a dark room.
Noriaki’s knees feel weak. “We need to talk,” he starts, “about this. We need to talk.”
Something deep and uncertain flashes across Jotaro’s face. He doesn't say anything. His head jerks down haltingly into a nod.
When the two of them walk home, Hierophant and Jotaro’s ghost follow and bob and tangle in the wind behind them like balloons tied to their wrists.
—
“I think that you and I are all alone in the world,” Noriaki says, months later and still tangled together, Jotaro’s head ducked under Noriaki’s chin and his hands resting warm and heavy on his back. Their homework lies scattered around them, pencils lost in the swell of Noriaki’s comforter.
Jotaro’s eyelashes tickle against Noriaki’s chin when he blinks. He hums noncommittally, sleepy and open-ended and something close to warm, and Noriaki thinks it, again: that there is something disconcerting about Jotaro’s pull, the way that Noriaki has to fight so hard to stay out of his orbit.
He’s not going to stop fighting it, not entirely; but for now he lets himself be dragged in, just a little, his nose ducked into Jotaro’s hair, his leg falling asleep under Jotaro’s waist. The setting sun lets rosy washes of color into his room, and Noriaki thinks about how maybe it isn't so bad, to share your story. His chest aches with the admittance, but it isn't just his world, now — and in this world, he has been given a gift.
He falls asleep with a weight in his arms and a light at the backs of his eyes.