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The first of the postcards arrives exactly on week after Rin leaves.
Haruka’s hands shake as he picks up the little rectangle of cardstock, tracing the image of a kangaroo and its baby before flipping it over to read the inscription. Before his eyes even land on the familiar, loopy handwriting, he knows that it’s from Rin. Knows because of the boldly written Greetings from Australia! on the front of the card. Knows because out of all of the places Rin had wanted to travel to, Haruka knows that going back to Australia was on the top of his list.
Knows because when Rin had left on his year-long travel trip, when he’d kissed Haruka goodbye at the airport, he’d promised to write.
There’s not much room for any fancy, long-winded messages on the lined half of the card, but Haruka doesn’t mind. He’s glad to hear from Rin, even though it’s only been a few days since they’d last seen each other. He takes a moment to hold the card close to his chest before holding it out again, reading each word on the card with reverence.
Haru, Rin writes, how are things? How’s Iwatobi?
Australia is great, just the way I remember it. I
went to my favorite bookstore from back when I
was a kid. The owner even recognized me! I’ll
write again soon. Love you forever - Rin
All too soon, the loopy, messy scrawl comes to an end. Haruka goes back to read it a second time, and then a third, in the hopes that he missed something between the lines, but each time he reads it, it only seems to get shorter.
He grabs the rest of the mail from on top of the mailbox and pads inside, the postcard clutched closely to his chest. Rin hadn’t left much behind when he’d packed up and gone, so having a piece of him (no matter how small) makes the ache in his heart that much lighter. At least Rin is thinking of him enough to bother sending him a hundred-yen card with a
There’s an old shoebox under his bed where he keeps some of the pictures of him and his friends. There’s the photo from the first relay he’d ever swam with Rin, Makoto, and Nagisa, as well as the photo from the relay at regionals during his second year in high school. He pulls it out, blows off a thin layer of dust from the top, and presses his lips to the postcard before slipping it inside on top of the other photos. He wants to keep it to himself; a part of Rin that he doesn’t have to share with the others.
He stares down at the photo of the kangaroo and pictures Rin stopping in some cheap, tacky Australian gift store to buy it, sitting down in his hotel room and carefully choosing each word on the back of the card to convey the tone he wants. Rin isn’t the kind to do things sloppily, he thinks. He’d go over the message in his head a couple of times before committing to them, maybe write it down on a separate piece of paper just to see the way it looks all laid out in front of him.
Or maybe Haruka is reading too much into it. Maybe a postcard is just a postcard, and a message is just a message. But he lets himself imagine that Rin writes carefully, with purpose, as if he’s hand picking each sentence and carefully crafting them together.
Rin has a way with words, unlike Haruka. He knows what he’s doing.
The second postcard comes sixteen days after the first.
Sixteen days without a call or a text from Rin, without any sort of contact at all. Apparently “finding himself” means that he’s not allowed to contact anyone from his old life, Haruka thinks bitterly. Even his own boyfriend, who doesn’t even know where in the world he is, who misses him and worries about him and can’t quite find the right words to tell him.
Haruka had tried to tell him the very moment the idea had left Rin’s mouth, tried to meet his “I want to take a gap year” with a “What about swimming?” or a “What about me ?”
But he hadn’t been able to. So instead he’d asked, “What will you do?”
“I want to travel,” Rin had said, staring off into the sunset as if he was already gone. “My whole life, I’ve only ever lived two places. I want to see the rest of the world before I lock myself down here in Iwatobi.”
What’s so bad about Iwatobi? Haruka had wanted to know. “Where will you go?” is what he’d asked instead.
“Everywhere,” Rin had said, and then he’d smiled so brightly, so confidently, that Haruka hadn’t had the heart to discourage him. Now, almost a month later and with no word from Rin aside from a couple of pieces of paper, he wishes that he had.
He stares down at the card in his hand, melancholy overtaking him as he reads the words Fiordland National Park . So Rin is in New Zealand. If his memory of geography classes in middle school serves to be correct, New Zealand is close to Australia, which means Rin hasn’t moved around much. He’s still too far away for Haruka’s liking (although honestly, Rin is always too far away when he isn’t by Haruka’s side) but knowing where he is at least gives Haruka a sense of distance.
There’s a beautiful photograph of a lush green forest on the front of the card, with winding paths and rivers twisting through it. It looks like the kind of place people go to in the movies when they want to scream their lungs out at the top of a cliff overlooking the rest of the world. He imagines Rin standing at the top of one of the mountains, holding his hand up to the sun and thinking of Haruka as he does.
He’s still standing outside as he flips the letter over, reaching out to trace the address line written in Rin’s pretty handwriting before turning his attention to the message.
Hey! Rin starts. By the time this gets to you I’ll
probably be on my way out of New Zealand. It’s
been great so far, though. I’ve been hiking a lot.
It’s really pretty here, but it’s not as nice as the
beaches back in Iwatobi. Love forever - Rin
The second letter feels even shorter than the first, and Haruka feels his heart sinking as he comes to the end of the last line. It’s nice to know that Rin is thinking about Iwatobi, but he can’t help but feel a bit disappointed that the beaches are the only things Rin talks about missing. Is he not longing for Haruka as much as Haruka is longing for him?
At least he said I love you, Haruka thinks, holding the card delicately between his fingers. Kind of.
It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. Rin loves him, and he must surely miss him. If he doesn’t, he definitely would have let Haruka know before leaving for who-knows-how-long to travel the world by himself. Rin isn’t cruel. He wouldn’t stay with Haruka if he didn’t love him anymore.
But he didn’t stay, Haruka’s brain reminds him unhelpfully. He left you for the world.
He didn’t even ask you to come along.
Once he’s inside, he pulls the shoebox out from under his bed, taking a deep breath before opening the lid. Rin’s younger face stares back at him, peeking out from under the kangaroo postcard. Haruka reaches in and carefully lines them up with the edge of the box until the old photographs are obscured, then lays the Fiordland letter on top of them all. There’s a pang of hurt, of loneliness in his chest, but he doesn’t reach for his phone to call Rin like he wants to. For all he knows, Rin could be on a flight right now, and he wouldn’t be able to contact him at all.
So instead he heads back downstairs, takes some mackerel out of the cooler and starts to prepare lunch. He almost takes two servings’ worth out, but stops himself just in time--thinking of Rin so much must have jogged his muscle memory into preparing a meal for two, he figures.
He puts the other mackerel back and turns towards the stove, gritting his teeth as the loneliness intensifies. Ignore it, he thinks with a shake of his head. It will get better once Rin gets back.
For now, you just need to wait.
Here’s the thing: Haruka knows that Rin wasn’t entirely happy in Iwatobi.
Because how could a small fishing town by the sea possibly be enough for someone as big and bright as Rin? How could he condense himself into something smaller than he is for another second, when the whole wide world is out there, just waiting for his arrival? Rin is too much , he has too much to give in a town that can’t possibly take it all.
So it makes sense that he’d wanted to travel. It makes sense that he wouldn’t want to settle down just yet, wouldn’t want to root himself into a life he’s already known without at least getting a taste of freedom before he does. Australia, New Zealand, the rest of the world… It has so much to offer Rin compared to Iwatobi. And he has so much to offer them. So Haruka should be glad that he’s getting a chance to do so.
It’s just that he’s afraid that Rin will be happier out there than he could ever be back home.
He’s turning the thought over and over in his head as he goes out to collect the mail. It’s been about ten days since Rin’s last letter, one from Spain, and another twenty before that, from Madagascar, so he isn’t expecting another one for a little while, and yet when he opens his mailbox, he’s met with the sight of a rather gray looking landscape with Manchester written across it in equally dull font and color.
Manchester? Haruka thinks bemusedly, sliding the postcard out of his mailbox. He doesn’t know where in the world Manchester is, but it seems to be terribly dull from the looks of it. As small and insignificant as Iwatobi may be to Rin, Manchester almost seems worse.
What are you doing over there, Rin? Haruka wonders, turning around and padding back inside. Part of him feels petty, spiteful that Rin would travel so far away from home and end up in a place that isn’t even that nice, but mostly he just feels sad and empty, the thought of Rin choosing yet another place over him tearing at his heart.
When he flips the card over, he’s surprised to find that the message is longer than usual. Rin had had to make up two more lines beneath the bottom of the last one printed on the card just to cram in his final sentences.
Yo! the card reads. Have you noticed how little it
rains in Iwatobi? I didn’t until I left. So far I’ve
been rained on three times, and I’ve only been
here two days! But at night the city lights up like
a Christmas tree. It’s totally worth the rain. Kind
of like the fireworks back at the summer festivals
back in Japan. It’s beautiful! Rei would approve.
Love, Rin
So Rin is thinking about their other friends, too. Haruka should be glad, that he hasn’t forgotten about them all by now, but a tiny, selfish part of him wishes that Rin would somehow show that he misses Haruka especially. That out of all of his friends back in Japan, Makoto and Sousuke and Nagisa and Rei and Ai, Haruka is the one he stays up at night thinking about.
Because out of everyone who’s left to chase their futures, to go their separate ways, the one Haruka finds himself longing for most of all is Rin.
He feels inexplicably angry, which brings with it a sense of guilt. He can’t be angry at Rin for wanting more than Haruka can give him; it’s not fair to either of them. But Rin is gone, probably off on some tour of boring, dull Manchester while Haruka sits at home and waits for him to get back, and he probably doesn’t even miss him, and it’s not fair that he can’t be enough for Rin, not when Rin is more than enough for him.
The card goes in the box, which gets shoved back under his bed with a bit too much force, as if a blow to the old, dusty cardboard will somehow get his feelings across to Rin.
As if he can make Rin understand how much he misses him, all the way on the other side of the world.
Rin sends him a flurry of postcards from America over the span of a month and a half.
One from Oregon, with a photo of what claims to be something called Haystack Rock, which speaks of the wind at the coast and the smell of sea salt in the air. One from Arizona, featuring a picture of the famed Grand Canyon and a message about the importance of safety around said canyon. One from California, with a picture of the Golden Gate bridge and a few scrawled lines about the swimmers he’s met and the way he hopes to be able to compete against them someday.
It’s the card from New York that gets to him.
The wind howls around him as he steps outside, rain pouring down and soaking his hair and his shirt almost instantly. It’s a miserable day out, the only silver lining being that it’s a weekend and Haruka has no need to leave the house aside from getting his mail.
He pulls the bundle of letters to his chest before he can get a good look at them, hunching over to protect his hoard from the rain. He’s expecting a letter from his parents soon, and he wants to be able to read it when it comes, instead of having to stare at tiny, waterlogged ink blotches. It’s been a couple of days since he bothered to check the mail, so there’s a bit more than there usually is. (For some reason, his house is a popular target for junk mail and advertisements, although he can’t fathom why.)
He hurries back inside, for once not enjoying the sensation of water on his skin. It’s cold out, and the weather is only serving to feed the hollow blankness inside of him. He wishes that the sun would come back to drive the rain and clouds and cold away, but today it feels even further away than usual.
Rin feels even further away than usual. Haruka misses him more the less he has to distract himself with, and over the past few days he’s barely had anything to keep him from getting lost in his thoughts. He remembers spending quiet, rainy days inside with Rin, curled up together on the couch with books and homework, enjoying each others’ presences. Now he doesn’t have anyone to waste the day away with anymore.
It had been raining the day Rin had told him he was leaving, too.
They’d been side by side with their legs crammed under one end of the kotatsu, Haruka with his head on Rin’s shoulder, watching as Rin had scrolled aimlessly through page after page on his phone. The sound of the rain against the window had been calming, fading into white noise in the background as Haruka had slipped further and further away from consciousness.
Then Rin’s voice had broken the trance.
“Remember what I said about taking a gap year?” he’d asked quietly, turning his phone so that the screen faced the top of the kotatsu. Haruka had felt his heart drop into his stomach at that, an uneasiness taking over him as he’d nodded against Rin’s shoulder.
“I’ve decided I’m going to do it,” Rin announced, turning to press a kiss into the crown of Haruka’s hair. (Like that will make up for Rin leaving him, Haruka had thought bitterly.)
“You are?” he’d asked in a tight, small voice.
“Yeah,” Rin replied. “I want to see the world. What better time could there be? Soon enough I’m gonna be in college, and then at the Olympics. I won’t have time once my life starts to pick up, and then I’ll want to settle down after that. Now’s the perfect opportunity to go.”
Haruka hadn’t said anything in response. Instead he’d wrapped his arms around Rin and held him as tightly as possible, hoping that he’d be able to keep him there if he never let go.
“Haru,” Rin had half-laughed, half-sighed. “I won’t be gone forever, you know. A few months at most, and then I’ll come back to you.”
“I know,” Haruka had said, turning his head into Rin’s shoulder. The thought didn’t bring him any comfort.
“It’ll be great,” Rin said, turning slightly to stare out the window. Haruka hadn’t turned to look with him. He hadn’t cared about the world outside of Iwatobi.
His world is far smaller, and far more important.
Haruka shakes rain water from his hair as he steps into the hallway, carefully toeing off his shoes. He flips through the various advertisements and letters as he makes his way inside, until a small rectangle of cardstock flutters out from the bottom of the stack.
Fornwing, he bends down to pick it up, but he pauses before he can. The upside of the card is a photo of Times Square at night, the city aglow with electronic advertisement boards and faraway windows in insanely tall buildings and headlights from a million different taxis. Even Haruka has to admit that it’s entrancing, the light and color and glow from every angle casting beautiful reflective light shows on every surface available. But that’s not what gives him pause, not what causes his heart to stop, not what makes his eyes widen and his hands shake.
It’s Rin.
He’s smiling at the camera, holding up one of his favored peace signs. The headlights from yet another taxi from behind him make it look like he’s stepping out of the sun itself. And if Haruka thought the scenery behind him was beautiful, it’s nothing at all compared to his boyfriend.
And then he notices Rin’s hair.
It’s just a little bit shorter than it had been when he’d left, just a couple of inches, barely enough to draw Haruka’s attention. But it is enough. Rin had gotten his hair cut--when? A day ago? A week ago? Or a month? When was the last time he’d seen Rin?
Has it really been that long?
Haruka reaches down for the card, intent on getting a better look, but his hands start to shake and clench as soon as he’s picked it up. An ugly wrinkle creases its way across the card, going diagonal across Rin’s face as his nails dig into the paper, unsteady and upset and angry and all of a sudden he’s balling the postcard into a little clump of bent, creased paper and hurling it across the room with all his strength, turning before it even hits the ground and sprinting towards his bedroom.
He swings the door shut and collapses against the wall, sinking to the ground and hugging his knees to his chest, face buried between them and breath coming in short, shallow gasps. He hasn’t seen Rin at all, not in nearly five months. How can it have been so long? How can he have gotten so used to not seeing Rin’s face, to not hearing his voice every day?
He feels the tears start to come before he can stop them, welling up in his eyes and dripping softly down the front of his shirt. He wants Rin back. He wants Rin to come in and wipe the wetness from his cheeks and kiss his lips and promise that everything will be okay, that he’s here now and he’s never leaving again.
But that’s not going to happen. Rin is all the way on the other side of the world right now, and he has no idea how Haruka is feeling. He’s not going to come and make everything better.
For now, at least, Haruka is on his own.
It occurs to Haruka that Rin hasn’t referred to Iwatobi as home since before he left.
Which is strange, because where else would Rin’s home be? Australia? Samezuka? None of that makes sense. Shouldn’t his home be here, the place he grew up? The place his mother and sister live, where his father had lived before the typhoon? Where he’d made friends, fallen in love? That makes the most sense to Haruka, but what if Rin doesn’t feel the same way? What if his home really isn’t Iwatobi?
Haru, the card in his hand reads. I’m coming back.
I’ve seen a lot of amazing stuff while I was trave-
ling, and I’m really glad that I took the time to go
out and see the world, but it’s time to head back
to Iwatobi now. I’ll see you soon. Love, Rin
The card is from Rio de Janeiro this time, not that Haruka knows where that is, either. There are pictures of colorfully dressed people in feathers and glitter and tassels on the front, no photo of Rin to break down over this time. Haruka traces the lines of his boyfriend’s handwriting, the ups and downs of the characters in his name, then the ones in Rin’s. I’ll see you soon, he repeats, the words echoing throughout his mind.
How soon is soon?
He tucks the card under his arm and grabs the groceries he’d set down before, pushing the door open and stepping inside. He takes off his shoes and lays them by the door, then drops the bags in the kitchen, leaving the card on the counter as he goes about putting them away. Rin’s words loop through his head as he opens and shuts various cupboards and sets fresh mackerel inside the fridge. He can’t even say “I’m coming home,” he thinks with a hint of bitterness, shaking his head as if he can dispel the thought with enough force.
He wipes his hands on the front of his shirt carelessly, then grabs the postcard and trudges upstairs. His shoebox is about half-full with postcards from all over the world, the extra space at the other end occupied by the balled-up New York postcard he’d gone back and collected once he’d calmed down.
Haruka slides the Rio postcard on top of the rest of them, admiring his collection sadly before he closes the lid. He’s taken to pulling the cards out and holding them to his chest when he gets too lonely to bear, but he doesn’t need to do that anymore.
Rin is coming back. He may not be coming home , but he’s coming back.
And that’s enough.
Rin arrives quite unexpectedly a week later.
Haruka is grilling mackerel yet again when he hears the doorbell ring from outside. He frowns, wondering if he’d forgotten to unlock it before Makoto visits, but Makoto isn’t supposed to come over for a while yet. He’s still puzzling over it as he pads into the main hallway, wondering if he should take the time to change out of his apron before he goes and eventually deciding against it. Everyone who visits him knows him well enough not to judge him by the way he’s dressed.
The door slides open with a click, and Haruka’s eyes widen. The breath is stolen from his lungs.
Rin is standing on the other side.
His first thought isn’t one of relief, of joy or of happiness. It’s of a strange sense of misplacement, as if Rin is somewhere he shouldn’t be, and it sends a chill up Haruka’s spine.
“Yo,” Rin says, pulling the familiar traveling cap off of his head and letting his hand fall to his side. His hair is back to its normal length, spilling over his ears and down to touch his shoulders. Out of every strange thing that’s happening, at least that’s stayed the same.
“Rin,” Haruka says blankly, unsure of what to do. “Welcome back.”
“Welcome back?” Rin repeats, raising an eyebrow. “Gee, thanks, Haru. I thought you’d be happier to see me.”
“I would have been,” Haruka says, feeling just a bit more normal. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Didn’t you get my postcard?” Rin asks, frowning. “I thought I told you I was coming back.”
Haruka sighs, shaking his head in annoyance. “You didn’t say a time,” he says, a bitter edge to his voice. “You were… vague .”
“Well, five lines isn’t exactly enough to write specifics on,” Rin chuckles. “I would have called, but-”
“You didn’t,” Haruka interrupts, gritting his teeth. “You call, or text, or email, either.”
“I was busy…”
“Too busy for your own boyfriend?” Haruka continues, feeling anger build up within him. “Too busy to let me know when you had a flight, or where you were going next? Sure, Rin.”
“I was !” Rin protests. “And besides, what did you want me to say? Dear Haru, I’m on my third layover in forty-eight hours, literally nothing interesting is happening here, hope things are going okay back in Iwatobi?”
“That would have been better than nothing,” Haruka snaps. “ Anything would have been better than nothing! But instead of texting, all you did was send me those stupid postcards, like that makes up for leaving me behind for six months!”
“Haru…”
“Five lines isn’t enough , Rin,” Haruka growls, glaring. “It doesn’t tell me anything. I didn’t know where you were, or if you were doing okay… I didn’t know anything !”
“I’m sorry, okay?” Rin retorts, eyebrows drawing together. “I didn’t mean to leave you in the dark. It was just- It was hard.”
“Hard?” Haruka repeats, incredulous. “You don’t get to decide what’s hard. I’ve been here, by myself , for half a year , all because you wanted to ‘find yourself’! I thought about you every day , just hoping that you would give in and call me. I dreamed that you would come back every night , that you would call or text or anything ! And you never did!”
“You think I didn’t want to?” Rin asks, throwing his hands in the air. “You think I wanted to leave you?”
“Of course I think so,” Haruka retorts, crossing his arms. “It was your decision, after all.”
“Haru, of course I didn’t want to leave you!” Rin cries. “If it were up to me, I’d never leave you again!”
“So why did you?” Haruka hisses, and to his horror, tears begin to bud in his eyes. “Why didn’t you stay ?”
“I told you,” Rin says desperately. “After this, I won’t have another chance to travel. I’ll be too busy with training and college. That doesn’t mean I didn’t miss you every day, or- or that I didn’t think about you all the time. Of course I did.”
“You’ve sure got a strange way of showing it,” Haruka huffs, frowning down at the ground. He doesn’t want to fight; he wants to curl up next to Rin, listen to him talk about anything and everything and never let him go. But he can’t forget the way Rin left him, can’t forgive just like that. Six months of hurting, of loneliness, don’t go away within one afternoon.
“Haru…” Rin says again, eyes sad and clear. “I couldn’t… I just knew that if I reached out to you, I wouldn’t be able to stay away any longer. I know that’s a shitty excuse to leave you behind, I know , but it’s the truth.”
Haruka grits his teeth, a firey comment on the tip of his tongue, but before he can say anything he might regret later, Rin is reaching into his backpack and pulling out a stack of papers, messily held together with a rubber band and holding it out to him.
“Look,” he says, his voice soft. “This is how much I missed you.”
Haruka eyes him suspiciously, reaching out to take the stack. He glances down, surprised to see the same kangaroo postcard he’d first gotten all those months ago staring him in the face. He’s sure that his kangaroo postcard is still up in his room, buried under the rest of them, and yet here it is.
“Read it,” Rin breathes, reaching up to pull the card out from under the rubber band and flipping it over on top of the others. Haruka blinks at the words, different than the ones he’d read over and over again until he’d memorized them by heart. Once again, the words spill out from the bottom printed line and cram together at the bottom like raindrops on a window.
Haru, the card reads, I miss you. I know that that’s
super uncool to say, especially since I’ve only been
away from you for three days. I wish I could have
asked you to come with me, but I didn’t want you
to have to put your life on hold for me. I love you
and I miss you more than anything.
- Rin
Haruka frowns, reaching up to trace the lines of Rin’s name against the card.
“Read the next one,” Rin urges, taking a step closer. Obediently, Haruka slides the second card out of the stack, recognizing it as the the Fiordland National Park one with the pretty scenery on the front. He flips it over and takes in the second message.
Haru, by the time you get this, I’ll probably be on
a plane to New Zealand. I wish I was going back
to Japan instead. I miss you so much, but I know
I have to see this whole traveling thing through
before I can come back. Doesn’t mean I don’t
miss your pretty face every second of every day,
though. I hope you’re doing well.
- Rin
“Here,” Rin says, pulling a card from the bottom this time. Haruka recognizes the bright, colorful costumes as the ones from Rio de Janeiro, the last postcard Rin had sent him before he’d come back to Iwatobi.
He flips it over with shaky hands, eyes darting to the few words on the lined side. It’s shorter than the others, only a few sentences long, but as he reads through the message he finds that it doesn’t matter at all.
Haru, the card starts, the same as all of the others.
I’m coming home. It’s time for me to return to
Iwatobi. I can’t stay away any longer, so I’ll see
you soon. Please wait for me just a bit longer.
- Rin
“You called it home, ” Haruka breathes, tearing his attention away from the card to look up at Rin. His eyes are shining with unshed tears, and his hands shake ever so slightly, moving the postcard up and down with them. “You called Iwatobi home .”
“No, I didn’t,” Rin says, his hand coming up to steady Haruka’s. “Iwatobi isn’t my home, Haru. You are.”
The stack of postcards goes tumbling out of Haruka’s hands, spilling onto the floor and spreading all around them. He takes a step forward, drops his head onto Rin’s chest, and lets his hands come up to tangle in the back of Rin’s shirt.
“You idiot…” he whispers, fighting back tears. Crying has always been Rin’s thing, not his, and yet he can’t help but get a little misty-eyed.
“I know,” Rin says gently, his hands coming up to rest against the back of Haruka’s head. “I’m sorry, Haru. I know what I did was wrong, and I won’t do it again. I’m home now, for good.”
“Good,” Haruka chokes out, pulling Rin even closer. “Don’t leave me, Rin.”
“I won’t,” Rin says, reverent. “I promise. I’ll always stay with you.”
They’ve still got a lot to work out, a lot to catch up on. Six months can change a person, Haruka knows, and it can change a relationship. They need to talk about their future, need to accept that they won’t always be able to be near each other, that some things will take them apart. But Rin is back, he’s here , and for now, Haruka thinks, that is enough.