Work Text:
and I try without even knowing where
it's okay to keep running
and my dream life—
that difference space and reality
—I'll accept it all
/
The first thing that Kiyose Haiji learns about Fujioka Kazuma isn’t his name, the runner he will grow into, or the man he will become. They meet on the first day of high school track practice, lined up before the coach, and he waits his turn to introduce himself. He’s tall for a first-year, taller than Haiji is, and has a face that might be able to pass for a third-year’s, if not for the telltale awkwardness of the first day of practice and a boy who hasn’t quite grown into his own body yet.
No, the first thing Haiji learns is his smile, small but sincere, before he begins to speak.
“I’m Fujioka Kazuma,” he says. “I love running.”
Fujioka’s smile is the setting sun, a blanket of warmth cast over the sky, before dark comes, the kind of beautiful that one would frame to save forever. At fifteen years old, Haiji doesn’t yet know that it’s the type of thing that he should hold on to lest he lose it.
He’s fast, but he’s not as fast as Haiji.
They don’t have a proper conversation until almost two months later when he approaches Fujioka on a Tuesday as they walk back to change after practice.
“You know,” Haiji says, “you’re really talented.”
“Thank you,” Fujioka replies, untying the laces of his running shoes. “You are, too.”
“Well, it helps when your dad is the coach,” he says, and Fujioka laughs.
“That’s true.” And then, a little wistfully, he adds, “It must be different, learning how to run properly from the start.”
“I could help you with your form sometime,” Haiji says. “I mean—if you’d like me to.”
“Would you?” he asks, leaning forward in attention. His eyes are bright, sparkling, even, with excitement and for a second, Haiji’s heart gets caught somewhere in his throat.
“Of course,” Haiji says. “What else are teammates for?”
“Only if it’s not a bother,” he says, with the same small smile as always, but this time, it looks like it’s threatening to burst at the seams, and even after he’s gone home, Haiji can’t help but think that he wants to see it again.
First year trickles through Haiji’s fingers in between early-morning runs and afternoon stretches, and somewhere along the way, he finds a friend in the first-year with a smile like the sun. Fujioka joined the team with a wealth of natural talent and without much experience at all, but as he passes their teammates, passes Haiji, he knows it to be a product of tireless practice, a limitless ambition to do better, train smarter.
Haiji watches as Fujioka catches up to him, and then passes him, and then Haiji can only see the back of a teammate he has learned to rely on. Fujioka rises and rises, seemingly without a fear of ever falling, and every time he records a new personal best, it only encourages him to push himself harder.
“He’s so fast,” one of the other first-years says in the locker room one day. “I wish I was that talented. I haven’t improved my time since September. You just have to be born with it, I guess.”
You’re wrong, Haiji thinks.
But in a way, he has learned that Fujioka is indeed predestined for success, and it has less to do with luck or genetics and more to do with the quiet, burning passion with which he practices. Any innate athletic ability pales in the face of his single-minded persistence to always improve, always strive for something bigger and better than what he is. He’s not racing anyone else, Haiji has come to realize, but himself—and it makes Haiji wonder what he himself is doing here. When Fujioka runs, he does it because he adores it. He could practice until his legs collapse and he will love every moment of it, because he loves it for the simple sake of loving it. Haiji runs for the sake of running, and he can only run for so long without asking why, without a bitter taste of resentment on his tongue every time his father tells him to take another lap.
“Why can’t you be more like Fujioka?” his father says to him one night, and Haiji tells himself that it’s just because he’s had one too many drinks, but really—Haiji wonders, too.
He walks home with Fujioka on some days—sometimes running, sometimes jogging, sometimes dragging worn muscles.
“You said you love running,” Haiji says, and when Fujioka turns to look at him, he clarifies, “On the first day of practice.”
“Oh,” Fujioka says. “Yeah, I did. Don’t you?”
I don’t know.
Fujioka only pauses for a beat before continuing. “I love the feeling of the wind on my face,” he says. “I love crossing the finish line and knowing that all the hours of practice were for something. I love that I can never really win—I can only beat my own time, but even then in the next meet, I’m competing against myself again.”
He speaks of running reverently, without the hardened practicality of Haiji’s father. He is a boy telling his friend of his first love, and Haiji hangs on to every word, fully captivated. He wants to love running the way Fujioka does, wants to love it so much that all of the sweat and ache is worth it.
Do I love running?
Haiji is dedicated to running. He takes it seriously, he puts his full effort into practices, he runs hard during meets. He’s doing everything right, as well as he can, and yet—he doesn’t love the wind on his face or crossing the finish line, and it feels a bit like practice is for nothing because his times still haven’t improved as much as the coach wants, and if this is love, Haiji isn’t sure he wants it.
If Fujioka notices that Haiji never answers his question, he says nothing, instead asking if he’s started the reading yet for literature class, and Haiji is thankful.
Some days turn into most days, and Haiji learns to love, too.
/
Running begins to feel different, like he’s cracked the code, a glorious secret that only he and Fujioka know. For a golden moment, it feels like just the two of them against the world. Something inside of Haiji has shifted, and when he runs on the track, he feels like he’s flying. He starts showing up earlier in the morning, staying later after evening practice. Haiji runs, against himself, and the exhaustion becomes exhilarating, his soreness a badge of honor for his work.
He begins his second year by beating his personal record for the first time in months, and Fujioka smiles for him, broad and proud.
Haiji thinks he could run forever if he could live in that warmth.
They stop at the convenience store to celebrate with ice cream on the way home, and when Fujioka smiles at his jokes, laugh quiet but sincere, Haiji forgets the ache in his knee. A block before they reach Haiji’s house, they bump shoulders, casually enough that it could very well have been an accident, and Haiji, for a moment, lets himself hope a little higher than he has before.
He learns to love the morning air waking him up as he races against time itself, and every time he sheds a second from his times, he becomes more addicted. He loves the sound of footsteps behind him and the steady back ahead, and he swears that one day, he’s going to catch up.
Run with me, Fujioka, he says every time, and Fujioka shakes his head with a smile, but joins him anyway.
It’s a high that he never wants to come down from, and he’s too young, too in love to dare entertain the idea that it won’t last forever if he’s not more careful.
Love isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to succeed, it isn’t enough to even scratch the surface of his dreams. It isn’t enough for anything at all, he thinks bitterly, staring at the ceiling as he lies in the hospital bed after his surgery.
He feels like he has exhausted all of his emotions already: panic, fear, anger, shame. He feels everything and nothing, and before he falls back asleep, a singular thought enters his mind:
I wish I didn’t love running.
It has become all-consuming, and to chase—to chase what, exactly? A better time? A medal? His father’s pride? Everything comes to nothing: weeks’, months’, years’ worth of hard work gone in an instant because Haiji was too stupid to slow down for once. He had learned to love running from Fujioka but failed to nurture it carefully, instead filled with an increasingly reckless passion that has brought him here.
Fujioka knocks on the door before he enters—gently, as with everything he does. Haiji thinks he might love that about him. Even when he runs, mere seconds ahead of Haiji, his steps seem so light upon the earth, as though it is the wind and not his feet which carries him.
He brings Haiji a book from the library, homework from the teacher, dinner from his mother, and a smile, only a little bit sad, from himself. He settles down in the chair at Haiji’s bedside, asks how he feels, and doesn’t look at Haiji’s leg, not even once.
Gently, Haiji thinks again. Fujioka treats everything in his life with care, and Haiji is no different.
“I don’t feel anything,” Haiji says. He means it.
They stay there, for a while, just like that. Fujioka makes small talk and even tries a few jokes, and Haiji laughs because they’re really not funny at all. And when that small, proud little smile sneaks its way onto Fujioka’s face, a little more restrained than usual, Haiji wants to laugh and cry at the same time.
The end of visiting hours is nearing when Haiji admits that he’s sleepy, and as soon as he says it he wishes he could take it back, because this visit has been the first time since the procedure that he feels even half like himself, and he doesn’t want Fujioka to leave yet, not really.
“I’ll stay,” Fujioka says. “Until you fall asleep.”
Haiji scoffs. “You don’t have to do that, Fujioka.”
“No,” he agrees, and gives his hand a squeeze. “But I want to.”
It’s filled with a sincerity that Haiji isn’t prepared to face, so he just says “Okay,” and closes his eyes. It’s minutes, maybe hours, after he hears footsteps leaving and the click of the door closing, but Haiji lies awake, eyes closed, mind still stuck on the feeling of a hand holding his own.
Haiji had known that things would be different when he returned to attending practice, but all the same, nothing could have prepared him for it, either. He watches Fujioka lead the pack, faster than he had been the last time they had run together, and Haiji wonders just how much he’s grown without him.
It leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, and he hates that he ever even thought it.
In their third year, Haiji’s father names Fujioka the team captain, and Haiji doesn’t oppose.
“It should have been you,” Fujioka says when they’re walking home. Haiji can sense the passion when he says it, that Fujioka really would rather it be Haiji than himself. “You deserve it.”
“I deserve it?” He can’t help but laugh, just light enough to pass as good humor rather than bitter resentment. “I’m not going to be running, and they need a leader they can look up to on the track.”
“But you’re better than me,” he insists. “You have more experience, and you—you understand people. You make them want to do well for you.”
“And I’m never going to run again, Fujioka,” Haiji says, and Fujioka stops walking.
He looks like he wants to say something—something like you don’t know that or you will run again, because he has too much faith in Haiji, and he always has.
“You’re going to be a good captain,” Haiji says, a little more softly. “They’re lucky to have you.”
They are. They’re lucky to have Fujioka, and Haiji is lucky to have Fujioka, and all of them are damn lucky to still have running.
Rikudo is all that Fujioka talks about these days.
“—and we’ll be able to run together,” he says, not for the first time, and Haiji sighs.
“I told you that I’m not going.” And then: “I already put down a deposit for Kansei University.”
They walk home as the sun sets, the two of them on the same road that they’ve walked every day for two years. Haiji tries not to let his mind wander, not to let himself wish for things that he knows he can’t have anymore. He might be halfway there, he thinks, when Fujioka breaks the silence.
“I’m not going to let you give up,” he says. “Not like this.”
“Fujioka—” Haiji sighs again. “I’m never going to be able to run again. My career is over, unless you can perform miracles.”
Neither of them speaks until they reach Haiji’s house, and Fujioka bids him a good night.
Haiji leans against the door behind him after he closes it, closing his eyes, wondering if he’s really ready to give up on that dream, either, despite what he tells himself.
Believe in yourself, Fujioka had told him, but he doesn’t.
If only he did, he thinks. If he could believe in himself half as much as Fujioka did—then, maybe, things might be different.
If Fujioka can tell that Haiji is avoiding him—and he would have to truly be a fool not to—then he says nothing of it, and just like that, Haiji eases himself out of Fujioka’s life as quickly as he had entered it. Daily walks home together dwindle down to weekly ones and then to nothing at all, and before he knows it, they’re back where they started not too long ago, strangers wearing the same uniform.
Haiji hates it.
He hates his knee, and he hates that he can’t run, and he hates running, too. He hates that he’s lost his best friend and even more, he hates that it’s all his own doing. He counts down the days to graduation because it’s easier that way, easier to just resign yourself to waiting for the end when you’ve already given up on all of your goals.
When he passes Fujioka in the hallway, he smiles at Haiji, warm as ever, and Haiji wills himself to resent it so that he might stop longing so desperately for it.
Fujioka finds him on graduation day.
“Kiyose,” he calls out, and Haiji turns to face him. One last time, Haiji thinks. That’s all, and then it is over, and Fujioka will go and become a force to be reckoned with in the collegiate running world, and Haiji will settle down with his literature and just as he learned to love a life of running, he will force himself to learn to love a life without it, too.
“Fujioka,” Haiji says, and he manages to find it within himself to look him in the eye.
“I hope to see Kansei at the Hakone Ekiden,” he says.
He doesn’t smile, this time. He’s serious, as serious as he has ever been, and it’s almost enough to make Haiji believe it’s possible.
There’s nothing to say, Haiji thinks, so he just nods, and turns away when Fujioka is swept away to take pictures with some classmates.
He will unlearn the things, people, which he has come to love, and he doesn’t want to look back, not to where he no longer has a place.
/
Haiji doesn’t watch the first race.
Maybe if he had more time to think about it, he would have made the conscious choice not to, but the reality is that first-year Kiyose Haiji is far too busy settling into life as a Kansei University student to stream his (former, he reminds himself) best friend’s races. Chikusei-so, old and ratty as it is, needs more than a little loving, and, as it works out, Haiji is in dire need of a project.
Piece by piece, he puts a new life together for himself: recipes sent from his mother by e-mail for him to try (“Don’t forget to eat enough protein,” she tells him, as though she doesn’t know that he never broke the habit of eating like an athlete), learning the names of the vendors in town, feeling a little bit lighter on his feet again when he takes Nira on his daily walk. His life at Kansei is not, by any means, bad, and it starts to feel a little more like a home.
He does watch the second race, and Fujioka soars.
Captivated, Haiji rewinds the video, again and again, barely registering the commentators gush over Rikudo’s first-year who blew past the competition in what is only the second meet in his university career.
For a moment, he’s overcome with pride, and then an aching realization:
He misses running. He misses loving running, and he still loves it, and he isn’t sure he can ever be happy without it.
This is nothing new.
What is new is the hope beginning to bloom inside his chest, and he finally accepts the challenge set before him: Kiyose Haiji is going to run in the Hakone Ekiden, and nothing in the world has the power to stop him.
The first time that Haiji sees Fujioka in person again is when he’s home for summer. He’s been out since before the sun had begun to set, walking a familiar town, not particularly eager to return home to a father who met his dreams with incredulity.
It’s the pounding of footsteps that Haiji recognizes first, and then the silhouette, striking and strikingly familiar against the evening sky. Haiji doesn’t call out—doesn’t need to, because Fujioka sees him first, slowing to a stop before him.
“Kiyose,” he says, and Haiji wonders if he has nothing else to say, or is just breathless.
“Fujioka,” Haiji says back. And then: “I’ve been watching you race.”
The shift in his expression is miniscule, perhaps not perceptible to someone who doesn’t know Fujioka as well as Haiji does. But he does, and he sees it as clear as day: surprise. It feels different, satisfying, to see him like this, to finally be one step ahead of Fujioka.
He doesn’t know what to say, Haiji realizes, so he says nothing.
Haiji swallows his doubts.
“Scouting out the competition, you know,” Haiji says. “Since I’ll be running in the Hakone Ekiden. Maybe not this year or next year—I still need seven more runners to make a team, you know—but I’ll be there, and I hope that you’re ready, because I fully intend to catch up to you.”
Fujioka says nothing, still, but he smiles, all full of the sun, and Haiji feels all of his remaining doubts melt away.
It’s Fujioka who reaches out first, not that Haiji is surprised. He’s fresh off of another new victory, running in the Hakone Ekiden in his first year, and has been lavishly rewarded with some time off of practice.
I was thinking of visiting, Fujioka texts him after a modest thanks for Haiji’s congratulations. If you wouldn’t mind showing me around.
Haiji replies, I know just the place.
A week and a half later, Fujioka all but jumps out of the bath, red all over and letting out a small huff of disdain when Haiji laughs.
“You didn’t even last ten seconds,” Haiji says, eyes twinkling. “I thought you were stronger than that, Fujioka.”
“You told me that it would be relaxing,” he bites, but his words hold no real malice. “Is this how you’ve been training for Hakone? By slow-cooking your competition?”
Haiji laughs. “You’ve gotten funnier,” he says, and it’s true. In the time since their graduation, Haiji has begun to blossom into a new, stronger version of himself, and the same is true of Fujioka. He can see it when he watches Fujioka race, in the way that he holds himself and speaks, with a confidence far more refined than it was in high school. He is proud of Fujioka, yes; but more than anything else, he aches to run against this new Fujioka, to show him the new Haiji, as well.
“Kiyose? Kiyose!”
Haiji hears Fujioka before he sees him, and then he sees him: walking with his team, clad in all of their purple-and-white glory. It’s his first seeing him in person like this, in his university’s uniform, a fourth-year leading his team in more ways than one. He is a sight to behold, and for a moment, Haiji marvels at how much he’s grown since they were in high school.
“Fujioka,” he says, with a smile. “It’s been a while.”
They still talk like old friends, even after all this time—after Haiji building a wall between them and Fujioka taking it down patiently every time, brick-by-brick. Part of Haiji had wondered if he’d get to talk to Fujioka at all at the meet, if they’d be able to speak before the race. Maybe part of him hoped to show himself, first.
The last time Haiji had run at a meet, Fujioka had encouraged him before the race then, too. This time is no different, and it puts a part of himself that Haiji hadn’t remembered at peace.
When Yuki asks who he was talking to, he says, “Rikudo University fourth-year Fujioka Kazuma.”
Remember that name.
“Congratulations,” Haiji says when Fujioka finishes. “You crushed the competition.”
He replies, “You don’t mean that.” He isn’t wrong.
Haiji knows his team well, knows Kakeru’s abilities, knows that Fujioka’s segment record—the would-be perfect finale to a phenomenal university career—will be short-lived.
“Kiyose,” he says, “how far are we meant to go? Is there even a finish line that lies ahead?”
But Haiji also knows Fujioka, a man whose only limit is himself, and the Hakone Ekiden, like everything else, is no match for him. Fujioka is a winner, through and through; he has crowned himself with victory upon victory over the past four years, made himself the idol of his juniors and the favorite among reporters. It is who he is, to the core, and no record can take that away from him.
Momentarily, Haiji feels like he has returned to high school.
He’s eighteen years old again, with a bad knee and worse prospects, and Fujioka has an endlessly bright future ahead of him.
“But you can’t quit,” Haiji says.
Right again.
“Have fun,” Fujioka tells him, then leaves Haiji to prepare for his own race ahead.
Have fun. The words echo in Haiji’s mind long after the Hakone Ekiden is over, long after Haiji has had to wake up and face reality. Haiji’s dream came to fruition: running at Hakone, making the cutoff for one of the coveted seeded positions for next year.
He couldn’t have run next year, anyway, but that doesn’t make his leg hurt any less.
And yet, despite it all—despite not winning, despite the agonizing pain in his leg, despite his doctor telling him that he would never be able to run competitively, or perhaps at all, again—he had fun.
He couldn’t catch up to Fujioka at Hakone, but he never could have, he thinks. Not in speed. But for Fujioka, running has always been more than a contest to see who is the fastest; for Haiji to reduce it to such a thing would be an insult to Fujioka.
To himself.
Haiji has loved and he’s lost, and he dared to love again and he lost again. But when he was running at Hakone, everything else fell away: it was just him, running, the cold wind stinging his face and his steps light upon the earth, and he will hold on to the memory of it as tight as he possibly can, because it’s all he has left.
/
He’s done this before, and he can do it again, or at least, that’s what Haiji tells himself, because any alternative would be far too devastating. Deep down, he knows the most probable truth: he will not be able to run again, and even if he does, it will not hold a candle to what he was once capable of. Eventually, he will be able to face running again in some shape or form, he’s sure—
But for now, he aches.
He does not regret the Hakone Ekiden. He doesn’t think he ever could. But still, in the days and nights that he recovers from his surgery, he aches for what he’s done and what he’s lost, and everything that he could have had in another life. Maybe, in another universe not too different from this one, he’s running alongside Kakeru for another year; or maybe, he never ended up at Kansei, instead going on to become Rikudo’s star runner.
Kiyose Haiji is a dreamer, and it is a curse as much as it is a blessing.
So he opens his eyes and comes back down to Earth, and he will face reality one physical therapy appointment at a time, shutting out the what-ifs that have become too painful. You have no choice except to take your time, Haiji’s physical therapist had told him, and so finally, he forces himself to slow down, watching the world speed on without him.
They run into each other on a scorching summer day some two and a half years after Haiji’s surgery, the air sticky and suffocating, leaving only fond memories of sakura seasons and time for new beginnings. It’s Fujioka who spots him first, and his familiar call of Kiyose is a breath of fresh air.
“Fujioka,” he greets, smiling, because it’s Fujioka, and somehow, no matter how long Haiji goes without seeing him, he always feels something like relief when they meet again.
“What a coincidence,” Fujioka says, voice as warm and deep as ever. “We haven’t seen each other in so long.”
“No, we haven’t,” Haiji says. And then—because he doesn’t remember how long it’s been since he last did something for the simple sake of self-indulgence, because he’s tired of living this life every day, because it’s Fujioka, who has always been the one reaching out to him first, all these years, and maybe it’s time for Haiji to return the favor—he asks, “Do you have time to get coffee?”
“I would love to,” Fujioka replies, and Haiji knows he means it.
Across from him, Fujioka sips from his mug of genmai-cha, because at age twenty-four, he is an old man trapped in a young runner’s body. He had been back when they were in high school, too—but back then it could be passed off as the simplistic mindset of a teenager, and now it has been refined with leadership and wisdom that make Haiji want to sit up a little straighter in his presence.
“I’ve been well,” he says modestly, as though he didn’t take the professional running world by storm after he graduated from Rikudo. He says it as though Haiji hasn’t streamed the races he’s run in lately, hasn’t watched highlight videos of the ones he missed.
Haiji scoffs, all in good humor, “Humble as ever, I see.”
Fujioka laughs quietly, looking down at his tea. When he looks up again and meets Haiji’s gaze, and Haiji is struck with the profound comfort of something so familiar.
“It’s good to see you again, Kiyose,” he says.
They talk until long after Haiji finishes his coffee, and the sun is beginning its descent from the sky when a café worker informs them that they’re closing soon. If he’s a little bit slower than usual when they get up to leave, then, well, no one needs to know that.
The two of them stand on the sidewalk outside of the coffee shop, and Fujioka looks like he’s about to bid him farewell. It occurs to him that he doesn’t want to go home, not now, not yet.
“I was going to head to the river,” he says. “You can come with me. I mean—if you’d like to.”
When they reach the Edogawa, the sun is sinking low in the sky, and Haiji wishes, for the first time in a long time, that the day could be even a little bit longer.
“I never get tired of this,” Fujioka remarks, surveying the view.
“What, never get tired of me slowing you down?” Haiji says, only half joking.
“I would never,” Fujioka says, and if he weren’t such a damn saint, he would probably be affronted.
But Haiji knows he’s right, because of all people, Fujioka has not once been the one who has pitied him, and he never would be. Of this, Haiji is absolutely certain. In high school, after his surgery, no one had believed in him like Fujioka, no one had dreamed for him like Fujioka. Fujioka is a grounded man, one who knows his limits and learns them intimately for the very purpose of stretching them as far as possible. People see him as a superhuman, someone beyond imaginable strength yet he remains down to earth, head firmly on his shoulders. He has a controlled, streamlined passion, and it becomes him.
And yet despite this, it is Fujioka who had held onto the hope, dreams, for Haiji, for all of those years, long after Haiji himself had given up, reality and probability be damned.
Fujioka doesn’t deny that Haiji slows him down, because it is a simple fact that he slows his strides to match Haiji’s, that he always has a watchful eye, always seeking to do something more to help Haiji and never once saying a word about it.
“Jogging, running, walking,” Fujioka says, eyes trained on the setting sun. “Day to day isn’t a race, Kiyose. The speed doesn’t matter to me. It’s the company that makes it worthwhile.”
Something warm blooms deep within Haiji’s soul, untapped for so many years, fighting to come up to the surface. It doesn’t feel the same as it did when he was sixteen.
But then, he isn’t the Kiyose Haiji he was at sixteen, and it occurs to him that he could not earnestly wish for anything except what he has in this particular moment.
Haiji feels whole again, standing before someone who has never seen him as anything less than.
This time when they part, Haiji does not avoid Fujioka, nor does he allow their relationship to lapse into the familiar old oh, we went to high school together. Now, when he watches the races on television, he sends a congratulatory text afterward—or, on the days he’s feeling particularly bold, a phone call.
When Fujioka is in town, they meet again on opposite sides of the same table, Haiji with his coffee and Fujioka with his roasted tea, and things are good. They walk to the river, every time, and Haiji learns to not worry about his own pace, because he knows that Fujioka will match it without any sorrow, silently and steadily, a comfort at his side.
The first time Fujioka offers to walk home with him, he refuses.
“I’m a grown man, you know,” he says, not without mirth. “I can make it home just fine on my own.”
“I know you can. Just…” Fujioka pauses, and Haiji cannot tell whether it is hesitation or restraint. “For old times’ sake.”
Haiji finds that he doesn’t want to refuse.
There is a number of reasons why Haiji is not equipped to handle an intoxicated Fujioka Kazuma alone, the first being that there is no possible way for him to drag a man so large home by himself, and the last being that Fujioka could never be anything less than honest, and there are some truths that Haiji doesn’t think he’ll ever feel prepared to face.
And yet here they are, in a taxi after a night celebrating Fujioka’s most recent victory, a record for both the race and himself.
“You—you say these things, sometimes,” Fujioka says, troubled. “Like you think that if you joke about me being bothered by your knee enough times it’ll come true.”
Haiji doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what there is to say, and he isn’t sure whether to be relieved or not when Fujioka continues.
“It hurts,” Fujioka says. He looks up at Haiji, with none of the restraint he usually has, and all of the earnest. “Of course I still want to walk with you even with your knee. I’d want to walk with you even if you had three knees. You know that, don’t you?”
He does. He does, he does, he does.
“Yeah,” Haiji says, mouth dry. “I do.”
Twice, running was the thing that Haiji loved the most. When he was fifteen, he spent his days chasing the fastest time, the newest record, the thrill of the competition. To be alive was to feel the adrenaline pulsing through his body as he crossed the finish line, to bring pride to his team, to himself.
Again when he was twenty-two, a fully-fledged dreamer once again, striving for a goal that could only be reached with a team, his team, together. Running together. Running for a love of running, a desperate love that can only be learned after it has been lost for the first time.
And both of those brought him to the same place, the place where he stands now: different than before, a little bit weaker and a little bit stronger, and still not alone. Never alone. Even on the days when he aches from of the loss of first love, he doesn’t lose himself, because the presence by his side gives him strength.
Gives him strength, but more than that, reminds him of the strength that he still has.
On worse nights and better nights, Haiji wonders what grand feat he performed in his previous life to deserve Fujioka. Fujioka, who could soar as high as he dreams, but chooses to keep his feet on the ground. Fujioka, who sometimes orders hot water, because he’s trying to watch his caffeine intake for no reason other than sleep is good for you, Kiyose, you should try it sometime, and watches daytime soap operas for the sole sake of discussing them with his mother when he calls home every weekend. Fujioka, who treats the world with gentleness, not because he sees it as fragile, but because he holds its very existence in highest regard.
And Haiji loves those things.
Haiji loves that sometimes, he forgets to answer a message on the day that he receives it, and that his jokes are never funny. Haiji loves that when a Hakone Ekiden-hopeful recognizes him, he thanks them graciously, and that he makes Haiji take their photo, even though his eyes end up closed in most of the pictures. Haiji loves that Fujioka has never seen him as anything less than his highest potential, and Haiji loves his smile, that—
That for the past nine years, he has worn his heart on his sleeve, giving his love unconditionally and endlessly, and that he has done it without once expecting anything in return. That his love is not smothering but freeing, and it has allowed Haiji to walk his own path.
Most of all, Haiji loves that Fujioka has given him a place to come home to, if ever he is ready.
It is, in all other ways, a wholly unremarkable day: their plans for a walk have been thwarted by a rainy afternoon, and they find themselves cross-legged on the floor of Haiji’s apartment. Fujioka has resigned himself politely to instant coffee—the only thing available in Haiji’s kitchen since he has deemed it too early in the day for alcohol—and he drinks it, the whole thing, because of course he doesn’t want to be wasteful.
A variety program runs on the television, but Haiji is only half-watching as he reviews his players’ times while Fujioka reads the newspaper. He only looks up when Fujioka folds the newspaper and sets it on the table in front of him.
“According to the forecast, we won’t be walking to the river this week,” he says.
It doesn’t feel like some spectacular moment, like a grand climax that Haiji has been waiting for. Instead, it just seems like the most natural thing to do, and he says, “I don’t care about walking to the river. I don’t need excuses to want to see you every day.”
For what may be the first time since they graduated high school, Haiji sees Fujioka surprised, eyes widened and lips slightly parted as he takes off his reading glasses.
“Haiji,” he says.
Kazuma.
Kazuma’s love is the break of dawn, the promise that after night will come morning, again and again and again. It wraps Haiji in its warmth, holds him dear and close, and it would let him go, Haiji knows, if he ever wanted. But he doesn’t, and he doesn’t know if he ever could.
When Kazuma kisses him, he does it gently, as with everything he does, and Haiji lets himself savor it. His fingers graze Haiji’s knee, feather-light and delicate, wrought with a kind of tenderness that Haiji has never felt, and he finds himself marveling at Kazuma once again. In his words and his movements, Kazuma manages to be both straightforward and graceful, simple in the most complex ways. Thoughtful and deliberate, and sincere to a fault. He is this way as a runner, as a friend, and, Haiji learns now, as a lover.
Kazuma holds him close and Haiji holds him closer yet, determined to not let go.
/
where the light begins, where I bloom
I cannot make anything alone