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Nagi sometimes felt like a shape-shifter. Perhaps many people like him did. People who never fit a single culture or spoke a single language. People who could never fit into one exact mold. He slid between them all freely, formless and shifting. He had things that bounded him to an identity. His mother, his friends, his music, his café exclusive Magikona acrylic stands. But before IDOLiSH7, he seemed to move between what he really was, and how people chose to define him. Until he got lost in the shuffle, and couldn’t place himself on a map at all.
He had gone to Japan in hopes of achieving something for the sake of someone else, as if it would give him purpose. And in many ways, it did. But he never expected to find form there. He never expected to find a mold he wanted to fill, and he never expected a reason to want to stay forever.
He never really expected Mitsuki Izumi.
The older man shifted against him, as if sensing his restless thoughts in the middle of the night. Mitsuki flopped over onto his stomach, grumbling something that Nagi couldn’t quite understand, and reached out a hand to slap onto Nagi’s back. He left his hand there, as if just to make sure the other was still next to him. As if he wanted to be sure he wouldn’t try sneaking off in the middle of the night.
It would be hard to leave if he kept that up, Nagi decided with a sigh.
Still, leaving was inevitable. He felt the tune of Sakura Message bubble up through his chest, unbidden, and came out in a choked hum. Mitsuki stirred again, one eye open in warning.
“Sorry, Mitsuki,” Nagi said with a gentle smile and an insistent whisper. “I’ll try to get to sleep, I will!”
“Liar,” Mitsuki grunted, burying his head into the pillow, his right hand gripping into Nagi’s shirt. A silent warning for him not to get any funny ideas. Or perhaps, a plea from a man too proud to ever beg.
They were onto him. Both he and Yamato. They had shifted too, Nagi realized. Before, perhaps they would have never noticed that anything was wrong. But now they could hear it as easily as their own thoughts; they could feel it as fiercely as their own heartbeat.
They’ve become wiser, older, and more sensitive. They’ve grown stronger and brighter and even more beautiful than the first day Nagi laid eyes on them. They’ve shifted from strangers to friends, and finally to a best friend and a lover. And soon they’d be woven so close to him that he wouldn’t be able to hide anything at all.
Perhaps it was best to fade quietly into the night. Perhaps that way he could change once again, to a form no one would recognize. And perhaps someday they’d forget him in way that no longer hurt.
Nagi had that thought a lot.
He moved his hand upwards, gently pushing back the hair on Mitsuki’s face. Even in the moonlight, it was bright. His hair, his skin, all of him. He lit up corners of Nagi’s life that he didn’t even realize were dark. He filled in colors to the lines of Nagi’s form, solidifying him into what he’s become.
Nagi liked to think he had done the same. For Mitsuki, and for all of IDOLiSH7. It might have been selfish to think so, but he was almost sure of it. He had found a place, and a person he wanted to be. And he had worked hard to become that person, and to give back to the people who shaped him.
Soon, he’d have to shift back.
He wasn’t sure what kind of person he would turn into. Because even if he tried to go back to how things were, the imprints of what IDOLiSH7 had done to him would be left all over his mind. All over his memories. And all over his heart.
He had a mission to fulfill. He always had. But now his body was tied to the roots of IDOLiSH7, and he was finding his loyalty harder and harder to split each day. The memories of Haruki were getting further away from him, and he knew he needed to go back before they were gone completely.
After all, Haruki had helped shape him too. In strange and immeasurable ways. It was about time he found a way to give back.
His hand had fallen, onto Mitsuki’s face. And before he knew it, he was tracing the lines around his cheeks, his nose, and his mouth. He was memorizing them. He was imagining that smile, letting his fingers dart around his lips again and again until the smaller man’s face furrowed and twitched. He wondered if he could recreate the feeling, when he was alone again.
He leaned over, shifting in the bed. Shifting into a language that Mitsuki had never spoken, and would never understand even if he were awake to hear it.
“I love you. The mountains are going to be cold without you.”