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The path up the hill is slow, but Seiya won’t let Minato help with the wheelchair.
Minato wouldn’t be able to help anyway, even if Seiya did allow him to. The wound at his side is healing up nicely, according to the doctors, but the pain is still there. The stitches pull with every sudden movement, and the slowly regrowing skin threatens to unravel every time Minato so much as breathes in. The movement he’d have to make to push the wheelchair up — lower his arms at his sides and push the wheels forward — hurts even in his imagination.
But somewhere behind Minato, Seiya gasps and grunts, trying and failing to be silent about the struggle that is pushing the convo of best friend + wheelchair up a steep hill.
Even if this whole trip was Seiya’s idea, Minato still feels bad. “Seiya, we can stop and rest if you want—“
“No! I’m fine. We’re almost there, anyway… Unless you’re in pain? Minato, do you need to stop?”
Of course Seiya redirects the question back to him. He’s getting very good at that; so much so that Minato barely realizes it when he does, anymore. It’s easier to catch him when you can’t get distracted by his smile, though. Seiya has the power to make you breathe easier with a smile, even if what is coming from his mouth is designed to irk your nerves.
“If we’re almost there,” Minato starts, because two can play at the same game. “Does that mean you’re going to tell me where we’re going?”
The terrain gets a little less steep just then, and Seiya lets out a small sigh of relief. The wheelchair glides over the path almost effortlessly now. “I said it was a surprise, didn’t I?” Seiya asks in lieu of another reply, and Minato pouts. “I promise, you’ll like it! Don’t give me that look, Minato.”
‘Then stop babying me!’ Minato wants to say, but bites his lip. Looking over his shoulder carefully, he can see a bit of red on Seiya’s cheeks from the exertion. Maybe Minato is starting to resent the way everyone walks around him as if he was surrounded by eggshells or fine china, but Seiya is trying to do something nice for him.
And it feels even nicer to be out of the house, anyway.
“Almost there,” Seiya reminds him, and makes the wheelchair turn carefully towards the right. The path is completely straight now, no more hills in sight. “Close your eyes, Minato.”
Minato is not going to close his eyes. Mainly because Seiya isn’t exactly the best at driving the wheelchair, but mostly because—there is something in the air that calls to Minato. The sun is setting somewhere beyond the mountains, but the top of the hill is well illuminated with soft, warm lights. The grass moves softly in the breeze, and runaway leaves trace sinuous lines in the air. They seem to come from the low building at the end of the path, and when Minato looks in that direction, a feeling that he hasn’t felt for over a month sets deep in his chest, way before recognizing the structure and the disposition. Even if he’s never been here before, he recognizes this place.
There is a soft tension in the air, the prelude to a cherished sound. The millisecond just before letting an arrow fly towards the target.
And then Seiya pushes Minato closer to the building in question, and Minato finally reads the kanji elegantly scribbled above the front door.
“Here we are,” Seiya proclaims, voice soft and fitting in the silence of the place.
Minato can’t keep the same calm for the life of him. “Kirisaki!?” He exclaims, and then hisses through his teeth. His excitement doesn’t really get on well with his new scar. “You brought me to Kirisaki!?”
Behind him, Seiya laughs softly. Minato can feel his friend’s hands leaving the handlebars of his wheelchair and walk to stand next to him, fingers clasped together behind his back. Like this, Minato has to look up to meet Seiya’s eyes, but not too much. The happy, real smile on his face is luminous, and if Minato wasn’t so confused, he might have cracked a smile of his own. “Yes and no,” Seiya explains, returning his eyes to the low building. Minato imitates him and, together, their eyes brush over the kanji that they both have come to learn so well over the last few months. “It turns out that Kirisaki has a small kyudojo away from the main school, for training camps and things like that. But they also hold intensive Kyudo courses from time to time—just for a weekend each month at most, for future Kirisaki students that might want to try kyudo before enrolling.”
Ah. So that was it, then.
Seiya hadn’t stopped talking about Kirisaki since the accident. Minato still feels warmth in his cheeks when he thinks back to that night in the hospital, the way Seiya had clung to their books as he had promised Minato that they would go together to Kirisaki, that they would shoot together, someday. It had been hard to believe him, at first, more so when the pain flared up, because moving or breathing or even crying hurt too much. What else was there beyond the pain in his side, the pain in his chest?
Kirisaki, Seiya had promised, blue eyes shining behind his big, big glasses. Kyudo. You and me.
Lately, it had become easier to believe Seiya. With each studying session in the hospital, with each one now back at home, always at Minato’s house— because Kuma has the tendency to get on his front paws and nose at Minato’s side. He’s only been out of the hospital for about two weeks, and still the routine is there: study, read on Kyudo, talk about Kirisaki.
Minato just hadn’t expected to do something beyond talk about Kirisaki just yet.
“I thought it would be nice to try,” Seiya is saying now, voice soft. Both of his hands are on his front now, as he looks down at Minato. Minato can see his fingers twisting and untwisting together.
But it only lasts a second. Minato looks away, snapping his head to the other side as something heavy settles in his chest and his right arm finds its way around his own body. It hurts, but not more than the weight on his lungs. “But I can’t shoot anymore,” Minato whispers, feeling the words dry up his throat. It hurts to admit out loud too, but at least he can admit it now.
Seiya moves around the wheelchair with quick steps, coming to stand before it, so Minato has no option but to see his friend from the corner of his eye. “You can’t shoot yet,” Seiya reminds him, expression set. “But you will soon. That’s why I—I wanted to catch up. So I won’t make you wait when you come back.”
“…Huh?”
Minato can’t help but look back at Seiya, trying to blink his surprise away. Seiya looks determined, hands no longer playing with each other but still at his sides. It’s then that Minato realizes—there is a tote bag hanging from Seiya’s shoulder, but whatever is in there doesn’t seem to be too heavy. Minato forces his eyes to move from the bag back to Seiya’s own, just as he starts to feel a frown forming between his eyebrows. “You’ve… been taking Kyudo classes?”
“This month’s course was last weekend,” Seiya explains, smiling softly. He moves around once again, and soon Minato finds himself being pushed towards the entrance of Kirisaki’s kyudojo. The smell of wood and newly cut grass is as inviting as it is familiar. “I wasn’t able to make the whole weekend because of our study session on Sunday, so I wasn’t really able to shoot, but—“
“You’ve been taking Kyudo classes!?” Minato exclaims, then immediately pushes his hands against his own mouth. Raising his voice inside the kyudojo feels sacrilegious, even when it’s been so long since he last stepped into one, but he can’t help it. He’s wanted Seiya to join him in Kyudo for so long, and suddenly they’re here, and Minato—
Minato—
“I’m nowhere near your level, yet,” Seiya says, and Minato can’t help but blush at that because this, coming from top of the class Takehaya Seiya— “But…”
The small hallway they had been pushing through ends in soft, shiny wood. It reflects the lights of the sunset until the whole place acquires the color of warm honey. They’re by the door, but Minato’s breath catches in his chest at the sight of the expanse of green grass right in front of the wooden floor and, beyond, the place where Minato can already imagine a perfect row of targets set, waiting to be pierced. There are no targets there right now, but it doesn’t matter.
He’s back in a kyudojo.
Minato is back home.
But Seiya pushes him forward and his wound throbs. It feels like it’s unraveling at the seams again, and Minato presses his arm closer to the wound, even if that only makes things worse. He wants to shoot an arm to the side and halt the movement of his wheelchair, but he can’t. He’s frozen in his seat, watching the opening of the kyudojo getting closer and closer.
He can’t shoot. Not like this, not—
“Minato?” Seiya asks from above, and Minato shakes his head.
“—The wheels,” Minato says, the first thing that comes to his mind that isn’t a lie, but not the truth either. “It—we’ll leave marks on the wood if you push the wheelchair in…”
“Ah, it’s alright,” Seiya reassures him. A second later, he’s gently positioning Minato’s wheelchair so he can have a good sight of the whole kyudojo without being stuck right in the middle of it. “I promised I would clean after me, once we’re done. I’ll make sure any marks of the chair are cleaned as well.”
“W-wait, wait,” Minato stammers, because he can see where this is going now. “You’re…going to shoot?”
There it is again, Seiya’s sweet smile. Just this time, Minato is almost completely sure Seiya isn’t hiding anything behind it. Maybe just… a little bit of excitement. But that’s it. “I’m not allowed to shoot an actual arrow yet. Firstly because we’re alone right now, but also because I did miss my Sunday class. So I don’t even know how to shoot just yet.”
Minato flinches. Seiya had skipped that class because he had come to study with Minato. “Sorry.”
But Seiya is already shaking his head before the word has fully dropped from Minato’s mouth. “I brought you here today because I wanted to show you, Minato,” Seiya says, and his gaze is so clear that, for a moment, Minato can even forget about the pain in his side. “I wanted to show you that I’m training to stand with you. Because I want us both to go to Kirisaki in the Spring.”
Seiya looks so mature, standing in the lights of the setting sun, in the middle of the empty kyudojo. He always has been the oddity in the classroom, the child that preferred to read instead of running behind a ball, the kid who always did homework and scored top marks in the tests. Minato appreciated all of those qualities, because Seiya was his best friend, and he thought Seiya to be cool because of all that.
But here — socked feet firmly planted in the floorboards, his hair moving softly in the breeze that swipes over the green grass… Here, Seiya looks like he finally belongs. Like this is his place, just as much as Minato’s.
The thought makes Minato itch for a bow, to have his glove —his treasure— firmly wrapped around his hand and wrist.
It makes him pull his arm away from his side, letting the wound breathe.
“Because I want to shoot with you, Minato,” Seiya finally says.
It’s an echo of what Minato is thinking inside.
“…Show me, then,” Minato replies, mustering a small, encouraging smile just for Seiya. “Show me what you’ve learned!”
Seiya smiles blindly, and runs to disappear down the hallway, tote bag bumping his hip as he moves. Minato doesn’t move from where he’s been parked, but he can hear Seiya moving around in the other room.
He’s only gone for a few seconds, but by the time Seiya returns, Minato is buzzing with excitement too. There is a small bow in Seiya’s hand — very similar to the one Saionji-sensei let Minato borrow on their last class, but nowhere near as high quality as the one Shuu uses. It still sits nicely in Seiya’s hand, the perfect size for him, and the way Seiya holds it proudly as if presenting it to Minato makes it look even better than it is.
On his other hand, Seiya’s yugake is pristine new, still a bit tight from not being used, but perfectly tied around his wrist.
“I memorized the steps of the hassetsu too,” Seiya says from the door. “Do you want to see?”
Minato is nodding before he can stop himself. “Sure!”
Of course Seiya moves perfectly. Minato can imagine the drawings in his books as Seiya steps forward, then to the side, and of course, they match perfectly to his friend’s movements. Seiya doesn’t hesitate even once, and that makes his movements even more precise; he’s not fluid like Shuu, Minato can see him thinking of the next move instead of concentrating on the one at hand, but it’s alright.
Seiya’s execution is text-book perfect, and Minato’s chest feels tight.
There is only a moment of stillness when Seiya finds himself kneeling on the floor, bow ready before him but no arrow to fit in the string just yet. Minato takes the opportunity to giggle softly onto his own shoulder, but Seiya hears it just the same, and his gaze is just a tad nervous when he turns towards Minato.
The tip of the bow trembles in Seiya’s suddenly loose grip. “What?”
Minato giggles again. “It’s so weird to see someone do this in jeans .”
Seiya pouts; he’s not one to pout, so the gesture makes Minato think he’s maybe hurt his friend’s feelings, and guilt starts to pool inside Minato’s tummy, right beneath the scar. But Seiya shakes his head and says, “well, they wouldn’t let me wear kyudogi yet!”
At that, Minato smiles. “It’s okay, Seiya. I didn’t get to wear it until thought I was ready, either.”
There is interest in Seiya’s eyes as he turns towards him. “Why? Shouldn’t you get used to the equipment before shooting?”
It’s a good question. But, most importantly, it’s an honest question. Seiya isn’t asking for Minato’s sake, to have him talk about something both of them know makes Minato happy; he’s asking because he wants to know. He wants to learn. Minato never realized it, but with so many people coming to visit him to the hospital room, well-meaning family members that asked about Kyudo to pull more than two words out of Minato’s mouth, Minato finally knows the difference between politeness and interest.
He doesn’t know if Seiya’s ever asked to be polite in the past, but Minato wants to believe he never did.
“I don’t know,” Minato replies with a wince. It never mattered why. Only when. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Seiya says with a shake of his head. The lens of his glasses reflect the evening sun, but Minato can see cogs turning inside his friend’s head just the same. “I’ll search it up when we get back home.”
“…Well?” Minato asks after a moment of Seiya deep in thought on the floor. “Show me your shooting form!”
“Ah, mmhm!”
Seiya doesn’t jump immediately to his feet. Instead, he returns to his position on his knees, bow perfectly aligned with his body, and only rises when the imaginary archer in front of him gives him the silent cue. The movement of his arms, of the bow coming to stand in front of his chest, is perfect too. His arms shake when Seiya pushes the string back though, unused to the tension the bow offers back.
He holds on for a long while, and then lets go.
The sound the string makes is wobbly, and a little bit empty, but Minato smiles.
“That was great, Seiya!” Minato exclaims, leaning forward slightly. He wishes he could move the wheelchair forward, sit right in front of Seiya. Like this, the space between the back of the room and the shai feels enormous.
“You think so?” Seiya asks back, smiling softly. He looks pleased.
“Yeah! You looked very natural! But…” At that, Minato bites down on his lower lip. There is something at the tip of his tongue, something that has been drilled by Saionji-sensei into his brain by now, but he doesn’t know if telling Seiya would be good or not. Seiya has just started, and he seems to have fun—
“Tell me,” Seiya says, reading Minato’s mind and making him look back at him sharply. Seiya is smiling still, bow gently pressed against his chest. “I want to learn.”
Something warm curls around Minato’s chest, making him smile. “Okay! So… First of all, you need to push with your bow hand too. It’s not just pushing the string back, but… you have to push towards the targets with your other hand, too.”
“…Push with my bow hand—“ he starts to say, and before Minato can add anything else, Seiya is returning to his shooting position again, carefully pushing the bow forward as he pulls the string back. “Like this?”
Minato nods quickly before realizing Seiya can’t really see him in this position. “Yeah, just like that! Maybe a little bit more—Perfect!”
Seiya nods too. “It feels better like this already.”
“Right? Oh, you might want to move your string hand a little bit closer to your mouth—it helps to hold on to the arrow, and keep your arm in a good position.”
“Mm… like this?”
Minato blinks. “I… think so? It’s a bit difficult to see from here, sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” Seiya says, relaxing his arms. But it only lasts a second; soon, he’s lifting his arms again, ready to fake-shoot one more time. “Let me try it.”
“Sure!”
The moment stretches like the string on Seiya’s bow. Minato can feel his palms prickling with the need to get up, grab a bow of his own, and join Seiya at the front. There is a fire in Minato’s chest that hasn’t been there since the accident, a fire that Minato had thought would never burn again—but here he is, watching Seiya lift a bow for the first time, and Minato doesn’t want to simply watch.
He wants to shoot too.
He wants to shoot so badly—
But then Seiya lets go of the string, and many things happen at once.
Seiya lets his right hand fall back, and the string snaps forward. But Seiya’s hand had been too close to his face; it scrapes against the skin of his cheek, the space right beneath his right eye — and Seiya’s glasses go flying off his face, a black blur colliding against the hard wooden floor.
Minato, who watches everything happen in slow motion, from the string scrapping Seiya’s cheek to his glasses flying away, moves without thinking. His feet slide off the holders to rest on the ground as he shouts a warning, his whole body moving forward, knees bending to support his weight and arms pushing down on the armrests to get up faster—
The pain takes a second to catch up to the movement, but it still makes Minato scream.
He falls back onto the seat as fat tears start to roll down his cheeks, his hands flying to his side, as if protecting the wound would make it stop hurting. The pressure makes everything worse but he can’t stop; he needs to hold his side tight or he’ll be cut open again, the wound burning like there’s fire licking at the seams, pain mounting and mounting and mounting…
“Minato— Minato!”
Seiya’s voice cuts through the haze of the pain. Minato opens his eyes to find him kneeling in front of the wheelchair, worry clear in his eyes now that the glasses don’t obscure them. He’s fuzzy at the edges but that’s only Minato’s fault; the tears keep coming, sliding down his cheeks as Minato whimpers.
“Minato, I need to see the wound,” Seiya says. He sounds composed, almost serene, but his hands shake when he reaches for Minato. “I need to see if you’re bleeding.”
“N-no,” Minato quickly shakes his head. He wants to curl in on himself, hide away from the word and the pain, but even that hurts too much. Even the sobs that rack his body are too much. “You’ll make it worse…”
“Dad told me what to do if you were in pain,” Seiya replies ever so patiently. His hands are still close, but he won’t touch Minato until he’s allowed to. “If you’re bleeding, I have to take you to the hospital right away. So please, Minato, can I see?”
No. No, no, no, Minato doesn’t want Seiya to see. He wants to be back home, in his room, where the incense of his mother’s altar doesn’t reach him and he can pretend the stitches at his side don’t pull when he lies down in his bed. He wants to forget about Kirisaki, about Kyudo, about—
About Seiya, is what he almost thinks. But the thought stops abruptly the moment Minato sees the scratch on Seiya’s cheek, the way his eyes look so big and so blue without his glasses. Seiya is here because he wants to shoot with him. He’s picked up a bow, gone to intensive Kyudo courses, pushed Minato’s wheelchair up a hill just so Minato can see how hard he’s trying.
And Minato has repaid his patience with fear and a shallow cut.
It’s not fair.
So, very slowly, Minato nods. It takes him a moment to uncoil his body from around his wound; the wheelchair doesn’t really give him much space, but he had still managed to curl his arms around his middle, protecting the stitches from inexistent danger. The moment Minato’s arms fall away Seiya sighs with relief, gentle hands moving to push Minato’s shirt up and expose the bandages that wrap around Minato’s abdomen.
They’re pristine white, if albeit a bit wrinkled.
“You’re fine,” Seiya sighs, head hanging so low that he almost rest his forehead on Minato’s lap. But he moves up before they can even brush, and the smile Seiya dedicates him is shaky but soothing. “You’re fine, Minato.”
He is. The pain is abating, now only the echo of what it was a few moments ago. He can still feel the wound throb in tandem with his heart, but it doesn’t feel like it’s burning anymore.
The tear tracks on his cheeks make Minato feel uncomfortable. He moves his hands to scrub at his face, hiding behind the palms when he says: “Sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for? Everything’s fine.”
Minato opens his eyes. Seiya is still kneeling in front of him, looking up with a gentle smile. The scratch on his cheek is superficial, but the skin around it is an angry red, and it’s so close to Seiya’s eye that it’s almost scary. The bow rest by his side, very close to the wheelchair. He must have run to Minato, with no time to even let the bow fall.
Beyond, almost at the edge where the wood gives way to the grass, there’s a black lump. It looks twisted and wrong even in the distance, and Minato feels guilt rise up to his throat, becoming a tight knot that won’t let him even swallow.
It’s only luck that he manages to push his next words out, barely louder than a whisper. “Your glasses…”
“—Oh,” Seiya mutters, following Minato’s gaze to the black lump. He gets up on quick feet, leaving Minato and the bow behind, and crosses the distance in two steps to pick up his glasses, looking down at them curiously. He doesn’t look mad, but Minato can see a frown forming between his eyebrows. “I think…” Seiya keeps saying, and the frown deepens. “I think I stepped on them.”
He moves his fingers, and the clack is so loud in the room that Minato winces. When he looks again, Seiya is holding two separate pieces instead of one, one in each hand.
“Seiya…”
Seiya says nothing. The pieces are uneven; he’s holding the frame in one hand, and a piece of one of the sides in the other. He tries to push them back together, but the plastic doesn’t stick and Seiya sighs.
Minato looks down at his lap, fingers wringing together. “I’m sorry, Seiya.”
That grabs his friend’s attention once again, who turns to look at him with surprised eyes. “What? I told you everything’s fine, Minato, you don’t have to apologize.”
“But… you’re glasses…”
There is a second of silence, and then Seiya’s socked feet slide closer to Minato again, barely making any noise. The kyudojo is getting darker now, but not enough to make them feel like it’s too late. The light still pours over the wooden floors, the honey color still shines invitingly.
Seiya’s smile is sweeter. “It’s not so bad,” he says, coming to kneel before Minato again. He shows the broken glasses in his palms, lifting them so Minato can take a look. “See? The side is broken, but the lenses are intact. I’ll just get a similar frame and have these lens put in the new frame. Everything’s fine.”
“But I shouldn’t have told you to move your string hand closer to your face,” Minato replies, lowering his eyes even more. “I’m still not good enough to give advice.”
“…I like it when you give me advice, though,” Seiya says, and Minato looks up in time to see him sitting on the floor, legs crossed underneath himself and still facing Minato. He’s cradling his glasses carefully in his hands, but his whole attention is on Minato. “It helps me imagine how you look when you shoot. Because I guess you give me the same advice your sensei gives you, right?”
“Y-yeah.”
“I probably pushed my string hand way too close,” Seiya nods, and one of his own hands moves up to brush against the scratch on his face. He doesn’t even flinch at the contact. “I’ll be careful with that. The Kirisaki instructor warned me something like that could happen, and said I should use contact lenses instead.”
Minato thinks it over. Then sighs, letting some of the guilt go with the sound. “You look weird without your glasses. Un-Seiya like.”
“Hey, I’m more than just my glasses!”
Seiya’s fake indignation makes Minato smile the tiniest bit. A comfortable silence settles between them, and a gentle breeze comes to brush against the back of Minato’s neck. It feels cool there where the sweat from his scare earlier had pooled, and he feels goosebumps rise on his arms.
Seiya looks up at him, familiar blue catching the rays of the sunset. Then, he smiles. “I really want to see you shoot someday, Minato. I want to hear your tsurune.”
His tsurune… Minato has been so obsessed with listening to it for himself, that he’s never thought about others listening to his. What would it mean to Seiya, to listen his tsurune? Not even Minato can explain why the sound is so important to him, why it makes his heart stop and beat wildly at the same time.
He can’t explain it, but—he still wants Seiya to hear it.
His tsurune.
“You will,” Minato promises, and while the words are rushed and sudden, the meaning behind them is real. “When we get into Kirisaki together.”
It’s like dawn breaks in Seiya’s eyes. His smile is blinding then, and the way he leans forward and his shoulders fall back says what his silence doesn’t dare to. Minato smiles back at him shyly, unused to such an expression coming from Seiya, but he’s happy.
Once again, he can’t wait to have a bow in his hand again. To be shooting again.
With Saionji-sensei. With Shuu.
With Seiya.
“Mmh!” With a swift movement, Seiya moves onto his feet and grabs his bow again, holding it carefully. He’s aware of the length of the bow, careful of not moving it too close to Minato as he moves around. It’s funny, how used Seiya is to something he’s only held a couple of times. It speaks volumes of how important this is to him, even if Minato can’t fully comprehend that yet. “But I have to train to be at Kirisaki’s level. So you’ll help me, right Minato?”
Minato curls his arm around his side, even if he feels no pain anymore. The doubt is still there, the fear of upsetting the wound, of not being able to shoot again.
But the fear of not finding motivation again is gone. The fire is burning brightly again inside of him, still going on thanks to Seiya’s own determination. Maybe it’ll take time for Minato to shoot again but he’ll get there.
He will.
“Mm! Let’s do this, Seiya!”
The changing room of Kazemai’s Kyudo club is always a loud one, but Minato has already gotten used to it.
It’d be weird to be in the room and to not hear Ryohei’s childish laughter now. It’d be weird not to listen to Kaito complaining loudly about something, or Nanao chastising him with a jibe. Even Seiya’s methodical reorganizing is irreplaceable, the gentle humming he makes as he puts his things back in his locker adding to the whole. Minato smiles as he puts his yugake in its usual bag, closing the strings carefully.
It’s just one more day of Kyudo practice.
“Oh Prez, that is so cute! I hadn’t seen it before!”
Nanao’s shout turns everyone’s heads in their direction. Even Minato looks over, curiosity making him stop his fingers in their way up the buttons of his uniform shirt. Nanao is pressed closed against Seiya’s side, peering inside his locker. Seiya is closing the lid on his contact lens, but that’s not what Nanao is pointing at.
Instead, Nanao skims his fingers over the glasses case just a little bit further into the locker, holding it softly in his palms at Seiya’s silent nod of permission. The material of the case looks worn —the rich blue that once coated it is now a pale one, only maintaining the original color towards the center—, but it’s still sturdy. The zipper is pulled down a little bit past the middle of it, apparently stuck, and even that’s worn from use, no longer a silvery color but more of a dirty gray.
But what has gotten Nanao’s attention is the faded print all over the case: tiny heads of Bernese dogs winking at whoever is looking at it, rolling out their tongue, pretending to be asleep.
It used to be cuter when it was in full color, but the charm remains in that old glasses case.
“You hadn’t?” Seiya asks back to Nanao, taking the case carefully from him. “That’s strange. I always have it with me.”
“Probably because you’re so organized, Seiya!” Ryohei supplies, half of his head poking through the neck of his shirt. “It’s impossible to find your stuff outside of your locker, so we never saw it before.”
Seiya smiles at that, turning toward his locker. “That makes sense.”
“Your dog is a Bernese dog, right? Kuma?” Nanao asks, tilting his head to the side. “It fits so well! Cute!”
“I think so too,” Seiya says, and reaches through the opening of the case to pull out his glasses, without touching the zipper at all, pulling the sides open with his fingers instead.
The zipper must really be stuck, then.
“Oi, Nanao!” Kaito suddenly shouts, already at the door. The sound of the rain filters through the opening, gently reaching Kaito’s stretched arm. “I’m not waiting for you, so hurry up!”
“Eh!? But you know I forgot my umbrella! Kacchan, wait!”
“Man, is it raining already!?” Ryohei pouts as the door closes behind Nanao. “But it wasn’t supposed to rain for another hour…”
“Didn’t you forget your umbrella too, Ryohei?” Minato asks, watching Ryohei push everything into his bag and dash towards the door. “Do you want me to—?”
“My dad is coming to pick me up today, so it’s fine!” Ryohei shouts before pushing the door open, following after Kaito and Nanao with a blinding smile. “See you tomorrow, Minato and Seiya!”
The door closes once again behind the other two have the chance to say goodbye. Seiya laughs softly, but otherwise the room falls into a comfortable silence. There is no rush for Minato or Seiya to be done changing; the pitter-patter of the rain is soft, closer to a summer’s shower than a storm.
They’re going to walk home together anyway, so it’s not like they have to hurry.
“…I didn’t know you still had that old thing,” Minato says, keeping his eyes on his own locker. He’s done changing, but he’s being slow putting his things safely in his bag.
“Mm. I must be really organized, then,” Seiya jokes, looking at Minato from the corner of his eye. “If not even you saw it.”
A soft blush rises to make the tips of Minato’s ears a deep red. “I-it’s not like I go looking into other people’s lockers…”
Seiya giggles at that, pushing his glasses higher up his face. He seems to have finished changing as well, but he’s not moving from his spot in front of his locker and by Minato’s side. The Kuma case is still in his hand, held carefully by lithe fingers. “I meant, since you were the one who gifted it to me, I thought you would have recognized it sooner.”
Minato smiles softly at that, remembering. He remembers still the guilt he had felt over Seiya’s broken glasses from that day in Kirisaki’s kyudojo, even when Seiya had returned with a pair almost exactly the same as the last a few days later. They had agreed that wearing glasses wasn’t the best when practicing Kyudo — Minato had researched it in his Kyudo books, Seiya had asked an actual optomestrist —, and so that Spring at Kirisaki Middle School, Seiya had started to wear contact lenses around the kyudojo.
But his glasses had stayed naked and unprotected inside his locker, and Minato felt guilt still every time he saw the black frame next to any piece of Kyudo equipment.
So he had grabbed some of his allowances and gone to the mall to find a case for Seiya, finding the perfect one without meaning to.
The Kuma heads had been too cute to resist.
If Minato had worn glasses, he would have gotten a matching one for himself.
“But the zipper is broken,” Minato says in the present, not at Kirisaki but at Kazemai, and Seiya’s smile slides a bit from the corners of his mouth. “Shouldn’t you get a new one?”
“No,” is Seiya’s immediate answer, eyes never leaving the blue of the case. His thumb brushes over a Kuma head that winks at him. “I like it. It’s important to me.”
At that, Minato blushes. It’s obvious the thing is important to Seiya — everything else Seiya owns is as pristine as he can keep it. The case is probably the most worn thing on Seiya right now. But that doesn’t mean hearing Seiya admit it doesn’t affect Minato. His ears go red, a match to his own cheeks, and he turns his head to hide the evidence.
“I’ll buy you another one, then,” Minato offers, nothing more than an embarrassed mumble.
Seiya smiles; Minato can’t see it directly, but he can hear it in his voice. “You don’t have to spend your money on me. I told you, I don’t want a replacement.” There is a beat of silence, almost a hesitation. Then Seiya says: “No other case would remind me of my reason for shooting.”
“—Huh?”
His curiosity gets the best of him, and Minato turns back towards Seiya. Seiya is standing in the middle of the room now, bag on his shoulder ready to go, but his eyes are fixed on the ground between his feet. He looks pensive as he regards his shoes; the glasses case is still in his hand, resting softly at his side.
“Maybe you don’t remember anymore,” Seiya starts saying, a gentle smile playing on his lips. “But you gave it to me after that day we were together in a kyudojo for the first time. You were still in your wheelchair, but you spent all evening teaching me how to correctly hold a bow anyway.”
“…We remember that evening differently, then,” Minato says, making Seiya’s eyes snap up. He too is ready to leave, but neither of them takes a step towards the door. “You took me to Kirisaki’s kyudojo to cheer me up. And I kind of broke your glasses.”
“I took you there because I wanted you to see me holding the bow,” Seiya says, a dust of pink reaching his cheeks. “I wanted you to think I was so cool…”
It’s a testament to how far they’ve come that Seiya is admitting this now, with only a little bit of reticence. They’ve moved on past the secret intentions and the pain to something better. Something Minato wouldn’t change for the world.
…Maybe he could do without the painful tugs at his heartstrings, or the warmth in his cheeks, but he guesses that’s part of the package now.
“I always thought you were cool,” Minato admits, looking away. And he did. Top of the class Seiya, who was always the first to cheer him forward, and the first to patch him up when Minato inevitably stumbled. It had always been like that, and it still was. “…You know, what I said last time was the truth, in more ways than one. You brought me back.”
Seiya had. Maybe not after middle school, not when Minato got his target panic, but way before—when the smell of antiseptic had burned his nostrils and the pain was only muffled by the strongest painkillers. When it had felt like Minato would unravel at the seams with the wrong word, the wrong movement, Seiya had held him together.
When Minato hadn’t been able to hold a bow, Seiya had held it for him, and allowed him to guide his hands.
“…You would have come back on your own,” Seiya says softly, shaking his head. He walks past Minato then, opening the door slightly to let the fresh breeze the rain brings with itself wash over them, over the silence in the room. Seiya’s words sound hollow, but no less true. “I know that now.”
Minato purses his lips, coming to join Seiya at the door. They don’t go out, because the gentle shower might be light, but it’s still enough to chill someone to the bone. They’re content with watching it fall from the door, shoulder against shoulder.
Minato uses that closeness to let his fingers move against Seiya’s knuckles, just once. “Maybe,” Minato admits, because the fire of Kyudo had never really left its hearth inside Minato’s chest. It had needed to be rekindled at times, but it had never died completely. And still—Minato thinks of Shuu of all things, the way he stands with everyone’s eyes on him, posture elegant and perfect, and how lonely he always looks right before shooting. Minato hasn’t felt like that since he joined Kazemai. “But it wouldn’t have been this fun.”
Seiya’s head whips towards him, the movement so fast that his glasses slide a bit down his nose, sitting askew beneath his bangs. Minato looks at him and giggles softly, amused by Seiya’s flustered face.
Seiya pouts and pushes his glasses up his face, looking away. “You’re so mean, Minato.”
“Eh!? What did I do now!?”
But Seiya only shakes his head. Taking a step forward, Seiya walks out into the rain and opens his umbrella, turning around to face Minato as rain falls around him. The blue hues of the evening shower suit him.
There it goes again, that painful tug at Minato’s heartstrings.
The warm feeling that pools in his stomach soothes the pain though.
“Come on,” Seiya says, smiling softly. “We have to get home.”
Minato has his own umbrella in his bag, but he doesn’t reach for it. Instead, he takes two quick steps and hides under Seiya’s umbrella, snuggly pressed against his side.
Seiya’s elbow brushes against Minato’s scar, but it’s been a long while since it’s bothered him.
“I’m ready,” Minato says.
The door to the kyudojo closes slowly behind them, but the laughter follows them in their way back home, keeping them warm in the rain.