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Abe watches sunlight stream in through the crack in his drapes, hit his shoes. He ties them with the patience and fine motor skills of a toddler who learnt how to only days ago, and thinks.
Mihashi sings. Of course he does. Everyone does sometimes. For class or for fun, just because. Even Abe has, though mostly mumbling his way through. The thing is, Mihashi just has a million different ways of doing it.
Mihashi sings in the club shower, while they walk home, and when doing chores. He sing-whispers softly under his breath when they’re in the library for a desperate studying session that won’t get them anywhere at all, much less away from their failing grades, like he doesn’t realise he’s doing it because it’s so ingrained in him.
Abe is so preoccupied thinking of Mihashi's voice bouncing slightly off the table between them he doesn't hear his mother calling him down until her voice is tinged with the slight annoyance of someone who's had to more than thrice.
While walking to school, he thinks of Mihashi singing softly to himself and thinks he’d like to find out what songs Mihashi knows better than he does, what lyrics Mihashi doesn’t know and has to mumble through.
They’re practising for a game they have with a school they barely know. Some new upcoming team they’re being firmly told not to underestimate. It’s not that they do, really, it’s just that they think they’re better. That’s not a bad thing, Abe reasons. Confidence isn’t arrogance.
They still practise until their arms feel like overcooked, soggy noodles and their legs tremble under the strain of trying to hold their bodies up through a shower and a trip home.
“Mihashi,” Abe yells across the field and then, when Mihashi startles like what came out of his mouth was a gunshot instead, lowers his voice a little. “Walk home with me?”
Mihashi nods fervently, makes an okay sign with his thumb and pointer finger, and even from this far away Abe’s neck twinges in sympathy.
While they walk, Mihashi sings quietly, something Abe doesn’t know he assumes is originally accompanied by an acoustic guitar. He swings his arms slightly and Abe finds his own moving along without realising.
When they part, Mihashi going straight ahead, Abe going left, Abe feels lighter and imagines Mihashi’s voice like little bells in his head. His mom comments on his good mood almost immediately. He touches his forehead, almost to check if his perpetual frown is still there. It is, but she just smiles and piles rice onto his bowl until it won’t go any higher.
Mihashi sings on his turn when they’re on a team run, their feet all beating down on the asphalt in punishing rhythm. He sings loudly with a desperate conviction that’s more to motivate himself than anyone else, his voice trembling from how much his lungs struggle to push air through his body.
When they’re sitting outside, parked underneath a tree in the schoolyard with their lunch boxes on their laps, Tajima plays a song on his phone that makes Mihashi straighten up in recognition. His singing that time is barely anything but little pleased huffs under his breath while he fawns over his rolled egg. Abe catalogues them like he’s studying for a test and gives them the same importance.
Their game is on a Wednesday, on a day that’s almost too hot for it. They pile out in front of the bus, stow their bags, crawl into a bus that’s blissfully cool despite the clear summer sky outside reminding them to hydrate or face the consequences.
He suggests Mihashi sit closer to the front of the bus, mostly to prevent him getting sick, give him the ability to stare ahead through the driver’s window and hopefully feel better. It works. The Nishiura baseball team begins a singing chant, one originally about winning and climbing up ranks that Tajima manages to turn into a ballad about really wanting beef stew.
Abe manages against all odds to stay quiet, holding out water for Mihashi to take. Mihashi, though, sings along loudly, barely hiccuping through the second verse of modified lyrics. Abe stares, briefly stunned, feeling like he missed a step climbing down a staircase, and then presses the water into Mihashi’s slack hands.
They lose.
Not badly; they work hard, they do everything right, they’re in form and hit well. They score and cheer whenever they do and keep their heads up for the entirety of it. They still lose.
The bus takes them back to the front of their school, and they stumble out like a satellite hit them. Like their legs got freshly attached and they don’t know the muscle workings just yet.
The sun is lowering but the sky is still clear, no clouds or blemishes. It doesn’t match what today was, it doesn’t make sense, and it grates on Abe like sand in his shoes.
Mihashi’s jaw is clenched firmly shut when Abe turns to look, and Abe suddenly feels like his arms ought to do something other than dangle limply by his sides clutching his bag. They don’t.
Coach Momoe tells them to go home, to rest, they’ll brief tomorrow, she has everything on tape, and Mihashi and Abe fall into step next to each other without saying anything at all.
They’re silent. Abe’s tongue feels like it’s too big inside his mouth, pressing uselessly at his teeth while he tries to figure out anything that’ll make this easier. He opens his mouth, fumbles for anything, anything at all, and then begins singing.
He doesn’t know many songs. Abe mostly fills up his silences with nothing, comfortable with them existing, but he tries for something he heard on the radio. Something soft, with a guitar and a trumpet and an easy refrain; repeatable, memorable.
Mihashi is so shocked by it he stops, and Abe does too like there’s a thread connecting them and he doesn’t want it to snap with distance. Abe keeps singing, unable to stop now that he’s started. He’s close to pulling the emergency stop on his vocal cords in embarrassment when Mihashi finally joins in. He sounds hoarse, something caught in his throat that doesn’t want to come out. They slowly begin walking again.
Halfway through the second chorus, Mihashi begins crying. Not noticeably, so much, but it’s audible in the way his voice hiccups, cracks just that bit more. Abe reaches over and takes his hand on an impulse he didn’t know he had. Abe doesn’t go left but keeps walking with Mihashi till they reach his house and Mihashi’s hiccups are less frequent. They finish the song twice and when they’re by Mihashi’s door, they quiet again.
Abe’s limbs feel loose, slightly off their structure, when he reaches over to pull Mihashi into a hug. Mihashi responds like his are the same, arms folded around Abe’s back clumsily.
“See you tomorrow,” Abe says. And then, “we did well.”
“Yeah,” Mihashi says after leaving tears on Abe’s shirt shoulder. “We did.”
The admission rings in his brain long after he’s gone home, mixes with the songs that already live there. It’s good, he thinks, Mihashi knows so many more songs than he does.