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The people at university wonder sometimes, if Kozume Kenma talks, or if he can, at all.
Sources have circulated, in regards to Kozume. He graduated from Nekoma. Majoring in computer science. Played volleyball in high school - a setter. Friendly to that Fukunaga in zoology. Doesn’t talk, not even to his professors.
Sometimes three people from three different universities, all sitting comfortably in the national seven - Tohoku, Tokyo, Osaka - visit him and talk to him.
People suspect they talk at him too, judging from the rooster head guy from Tokyo. It’s an impressive picture - a towering 6 foot something, possibly athlete guy with aviator sunglasses standing next to an ombre haired first year student attentively not listening to him, eyes attached to his handheld device. The black haired guy talks, and Kozume doesn’t respond. No speeches, yet within the week, the guy would doubtlessly turn up, sometimes with an arsenal of apple sweets and they would eat at the bench outside the art department, comfortable space between them that doesn’t devolve into touching.
The one from Osaka must be a model in his free time because some people doubt their own placements on the Kinsey scale whenever he visits. He speaks little too, eyelashes curling as he nods his thanks to those who help him navigate the confusing walkways of Tsukuba. He comes bearing music scores and sits by Kozume’s, crafting his own compositions, the two of them never once heard or seen talking, existing in companionable silence. He visits in sparse intervals, Osaka being a distance away, and the campus waits with baited breath whenever Kozume makes his way to the seat under the sakura tree outside the canteen.
Someone cried actual literal tears when the pretty angel from Osaka brought out his violin and started playing OneRepublic on strings. There is a video of it circulating within the music department, ready to loan to the art department whenever they need ‘inspiration’.
The one from Tohoku - that, that is a surprise.
Kozume’s professors collectively have heard snippets of his voice and the memory of it diminishes with time. They doubt, within their frantic gossip circles, if he actually spoke to them at all. Kozume is very proficient in sign language and primarily communicates through various facial expressions and signs to get through his day. The campus had shifted in reading his body language and accepted that hearing Kozume speak would just be a faraway fantasy, riddled with other fantastic viewpoints like penguins can fly and all their favourite characters are alive. White Christmases are more likely than the sound of Kozume talking. The bets on when he’ll speak dwindle and fall away to obscurity as the collective university personnel and students accept the reality of him never speaking, remaining not selectively, but collectively mute to all of them.
Someone mentioned how he’s like Ariel, his voice taken away as soon as he steps on land.
“Yeah then,” another asked, “who’s Eric?”
In comes Tohoku boy.
On a completely different note, Tohoku boy is definitely Ariel, with the bright orange hair and hyperactive personality. His feet do not touch the ground. He leaps and hovers in the air - and he jumps very high. Another athlete, or something similar. Hoodies in abundance. Earrings in both ears. Enough energy to power three universities and all the power plants in the Ibaraki prefecture. Smiles that are bright enough to rival the sun.
He comes sprinting at full speed - and he’s fast, make no mistake on the truth of that statement - no hyperboles can quite manifest in the presence of the Tohoku sunshine - at Kozume.
People who walk at Kozume and make their intentions clear from a building away, face a scowling computer science major. Some days he swerves away from them. Kozume doesn’t do well with people walking his way, let alone sprinting at him. Several onlookers stand to stage an intervention, which never comes.
Sunshine boy skids to a loud and awful stop in front of Kozume, vibrating on the soles of his feet, mouth stretched wide in an ecstatic smile.
Toga from the biology department tuts his tongue in commiseration. Kozume doesn’t do smiles. The girl at the union house had smiled at him once and he looked like she just ran over his favourite PS3 with her car and never gave him back a refund. People nowadays just do the sensible thing and nod at him and actively don’t make eye contact with Kozume whenever they need his help. The poor fool from Tohoku. The poor poor -
Kozume Kenma, the stoic boy of Tsukuba, smiles back.
In the principles of the thing, it barely counts as a smile. His lips make microscopic movements - curving up at the corners, so small and flickering that many missed it - but he reacts! Positively! He hasn’t taken off into the other direction, yet! He even relaxes! That’s unheard of!
Cameras are flying. Stealth modes are activated. Someone had climbed a tree, taking one for the team, to spy on the two boys. Interacting. Like normal, functional humans from a society.
It’s so shocking that a few have fainted.
Maybe next year they’ll dig up some dinosaur bones outside Tsukuba.
Sunshine boy then! In a casual gesture of friends who know each other for many years! Reaches over Kozume’s shoulders! For a hug!
And Kozume returns the embrace.
Once again, clarifications must be made. Kozume doesn’t take off running - which, in Kozume’s language, is the normal human equivalent of I tolerate you and I won’t make my distasteful face at you. His hands curl around the pockets of the boy and slot themselves into the space, resting comfortably and almost leaning into the doubtlessly comfortable warmth of the walking sun.
Sato, on the tree, is frantically trying to get a good camera angle for the joined Skype call to witness this historic moment. They don’t dare to hope, but someone had whispered a few minutes before. Could today be the day The Kozume Kenma speak -?
“Hey Kenma!” Sunshine Boy beams.
His teeth are so white and blinding someone cries out argh, my eyes! and ducks for coverage under a coffee table.
Kozume, for nobody calls him Kenma outside of Tokyo Rooster Head, tips his chin down - he’s taller, only a few inches, than the other - his chin on the padded shoulder. Closing his eyes, he exhales loud enough for the courtyard to hear.
Then.
The miracle.
“Hello, Shouyou,” Kozume murmurs. “You didn’t have to come and visit me.”
“But I wanted to! See you! How are you!”
Kozume opens one golden eye, staring in open exasperation at clicking camera screens from all around him and his ‘Shouyou’. “I’d be better if we move somewhere else. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Tsukuba doesn’t wonder anymore if Kozume Kenma can talk - he can, in fact, though it’s only to a select few. He does in fact talk to his professors, who have just been trolling the collective student body and other staff members since the matter of Can Kozume Communicate blew up into a whole spectacle and there’s too much fun to derive from it.
Tsukuba now wonders if Kenma - for the first time he spoke to them, he had requested that they call him by his given name - is some sort of a boy magnet. Pretty boys from all across Japan flock to visit him, so much that every day, there is at least a Pretty Boy™ by his side. The Bokuto visited once. Someone from Shiratorizawa, mane of shocking red hair, popped by for a visit and bullied Kenma into this wonderful disgusted expression that he carried on for the rest of the week.
His regular three visitors, who are named Kuroo, from Tokyo, Keiji, from Osaka, and of course, the Shouyou, remain regulars. Shouyou even started talking to someone - a fellow volleyball player, probably, from the sports department.
People wonder if Shouyou and Kenma are dating. The answers haven’t been exactly useful or hinting otherwise. Kuroo Tetsurou, the Kuroo who won that national geochemical something something prestigious award and scored a scholarship to Germany, goes into this weird laughing fit whenever people have the nerve enough to ask him.
“Just watch them, kiddos,” he tells them.
People are watching them. Shouyou sits by Kenma’s side, the two of them sharing a pair of earphones, his eyes closed, snoring a little with his mouth open. Kenma sketches, pencil smudging his fingers, bangs pinned back by a hair band, baby hair curling at his hairline. His eyes wander around him, but they always return to Shouyou, peacefully snoring away on his shoulder, head slipping a little onto his arm.
Shouyou mutters under his breath. Kenma smiles and bends his head, obscuring all view. Righting his friend’s head, though friend is a big question mark at any point in time, Kenma leans back, graphite smudging, a real smile on his mouth.
Someone opens their mouth to speak. Kenma catches their eyes, curling a finger to his lips.
Whatever he did and whatever they are, Tsukuba will never know.
But that won’t deter them. They will find out soon.
But for now, they need to vacate, and take their eyes off Kenma, looking at peace for once, under the autumn breeze, Shouyou by his side.
It makes for a good Little Mermaid ending.