Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Say hello to Teru-kun from us, won’t you? You’ve got money for lunch? Money for the bike rentals?”

“We’ve got everything,” Ritsu assures their mother, buttoning up his coat in the kitchen doorway. “Nii-san, are you—”

“Done,” Mob announces, turning off the tap; he screws the cap onto both water bottles and offers one to Ritsu. “I’ll say hello to Hanazawa-kun,” he promises their mother – which is true, technically, because Mob will say hello to Teru at some point in the future; he’s hardly going to go through all the rest of his life never saying hello to Teru again.

“Enjoy yourselves, then,” their mother says, looking them over fondly in all their piles of winter clothes. “Make sure you wear helmets. Let us know what time you’ll be back. Look after your brother, both of you.”

“Yes,” says Mob, with a great strong feeling of determination flexing inside him like the results of a workout in fast-forward: his heart is the most active and powerful muscle in his body, thanks to Ritsu.

So early on a Saturday morning, the city is quiet and chilly with mist. High-rise buildings with windows all the way up seem to shimmer and blur at the edges as they rise: glass, and thin cloud, and the white flat colour of the morning sky all overlapping together. Teru lives a long way in the opposite direction from the way they’re going; Teru is still probably sleeping, considering that it’s six thirty on a Saturday morning, and Teru is most definitely not taking Mob and Ritsu out to rent bikes for a day of bracing winter cycling in the cold quiet rural roads of the nearby foothills, considering that Ritsu himself invented that story and told it to their parents with the sort of clear and earnest confidence that Mob can’t manage even when he isn’t lying – clever Ritsu, talented Ritsu: he’s as good at telling lies as he is at being good.

“Platform three,” Ritsu says quietly as they go inside the city central train station, looking up at the big electronic display boards. “I checked online... Platform three,” he says again, more confidently, and points up at the board which says the same, to prove it: as if Mob would ever doubt him.

Below the station’s high grey ceiling, everything feels still; everything feels calm. With their tickets they pass through the gates for platform three and find a bench to sit and wait together, eating the chocolate bread they brought along for breakfast in sleepy silence, listening to the loud smooth rhythms of trains coming and going, pigeons sitting up high in the ceiling cooing together, suitcases dragging on the floor, ticket barriers chirping...

“Maybe we should have had a different breakfast,” Mob says.

“What’s wrong with chocolate bread?” Ritsu says.

“I don’t know,” Mob says, considering the crumpled plastic wrapper in his hand. “It’s not very... romantic. Maybe we should have had a romantic breakfast.”

The platform sign above them flashes red: train approaching. “It’s romantic if it’s with you,” Ritsu says, taking both their wrappers and putting them inside a plastic bag and tying it shut, neatly, pretending to be casual, pretending with his scarf pulled up across his mouth that he isn’t really saying it at all. “If it’s us. Then it doesn’t matter what we’re doing, because it’s always romantic.”

And saying something as romantic as that is more than enough to balance out any inherent lack of romance in eating convenience store breakfast while sitting on a train platform: Mob’s promptly soothed all the way to his heart.

Their train pulls in. Lots of people get off and not many people get on. They find seats in a carriage with no one else in it, and push their backpacks under their seats as the station begins moving steadily away from the windows. All the rest of the city is moving away from them too, faster and faster. The backs of buildings are turned to them, like they’re being ignored; the city isn’t watching them leave.

Mob watches until he catches the smeary feelings of early-stage queasiness stirring in his stomach, and then he shuts his eyes in a hurry and sits back. “How long?” he asks in a whisper.

“An hour and a half,” Ritsu whispers back. There’s no risk of anyone else in their empty carriage overhearing them, but even talking about travel times feels secretive, on a day when everything else is as secretive as it is today. “You can sleep if you want, nii-san. I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

Mob gives a firm shake of his head – he wants to stay awake, and keep Ritsu company – but his eyes are closed, and the motion of the train is racing onwards, and sometimes he’s surprised to realise he’s awake so that means he must have slept anyway, accidentally, dozing off with his weight on Ritsu’s shoulder; once he startles awake again and realises that the sound of the carriage door opening was what woke him – the conductor is standing beside his seat, speaking across him to Ritsu in a soft respectful whisper as Ritsu shows their tickets, and the conductor says hello to Mob when he sees him stirring and apologises for waking him, and moves on again, all of it so hushed that once it’s over Mob isn’t sure that he really woke up for it at all.

Again, he opens his eyes and realises he must have been sleeping. Beyond the windows no trace of the city remains. A clutch of houses set deep in greenery passes by and then there’s only more greenery, and another clutch of houses and then farmland and, beyond it, low mountains mottled in brown and dark green: the trees are wearing their winter colours.

“Still feeling okay?” Ritsu asks him, as he sits up again.

Mob nods, rubbing his eyes. The train is passing across a bridge; below it lies a wide expanse of water which could be a lake or a river or even a very large pond and which shines coldly silver in the morning sunlight – and the train keeps moving and the water is gone, and the land all around is green again.

“No one else knows where we are,” Ritsu says after a while, looking out the window too.

“No,” Mob agrees.

“No one,” Ritsu says again, in a funny voice; he looks away from the window and at Mob again, and his expression is funny too – but funny in a familiar way, a way which Mob understands: Ritsu is always full of dozens of different feelings all at once, and sometimes Ritsu is so very full of feelings that he finds it hard to decide which one is the most important one; the main feeling, the feeling which he should focus on above all others. “That’s what I was thinking about, while you were asleep... No one else in the world knows where we are.”

“Just us,” Mob says, contentedly – and the blockage in Ritsu’s expression dissolves at once and clears away; one emotion out of all his many crammed-in emotions has overcome the rest, and made things simple: he’s bright with happiness. The world is vast and crammed full with people, and not a single one of them but Mob knows where Ritsu is; not a single one of them but Ritsu knows where Mob is. Neither Mob nor Ritsu knows where anyone else is, either: they’re only with each other. He and Ritsu are leading their lives amongst millions of billions of others who are doing just the same, minding their own business and not minding that no one else knows what sort of business it is they’re minding: it’s comforting to think of that way, because it’s ordinary. It’s ordinary to be ordinary: it means that they’re just like everyone else.

“Just us,” Ritsu says happily. He touches Mob’s hand, bravely, and smiles at him; then he takes his hand quickly away again and puts it in his lap, in case someone sees.

When you expand the scope wide enough, so wide that the whole vast rest of the world fits into it, then nothing about Mob and Ritsu stands out at all. When you consider the bigger picture, the really big picture, the biggest picture of all, then they’re as normal as can be; they’re as happily, contentedly unremarkable as any two people have ever been.

The world is so huge and so full of people that, overall, it makes them insignificant – but when they’re insignificant then it’s much easier for them to be together: together, in secret, they become significant.

-

White Radish Station is a small old station which looks old even in the places where it’s new: its ticket office has a wooden peak above its sleek glass window. Outside in the main street, the shops are all new-built but with pretend old-fashioned fronts; their automatic sliding doors have had their frames made up to look like wood. A wooden railing separates one side of the street from wide open parkland: Mob takes off his glove to touch it, and finds it isn’t wooden at all – it’s plain ordinary metal, wrapped in wooden-look plastic covering.

“I though there’d be more visitors than this,” Ritsu says, gazing around with a wide uncertain stare at the shops and the misty green chill of the park; his voice is as hushed as though it’s night-time and he doesn’t want their parents to hear.

“Maybe we’re too early,” Mob offers, running his hand along the wooden-look railing. “It’s not nine yet... Maybe no one else wanted to get up early enough for the first train.”

“Well, then they should have planned better,” says Ritsu, more confident again: they should have planned as well as Ritsu did.

The town around them smells cold and green; it smells like a town which has far more trees than it has exhaust fumes. No high-rise buildings stand out above the rooftops – only trees, and even more trees, and then before long in the near distance the town gives way entirely to the forests, and beyond that the mountains rise up around the edges of the town to keep it securely where it is: held tight between the foothills.

“Deer come into the town sometimes,” Mob says, studying the shadows between a small patch of brittle winter trees. On the other side of the railing the parkland is quiet, all of its grass turned ghostly pale with the morning mist. “Into the streets... I heard about that. I saw some photos. Deer going to the shops.”

“That’s a rabbit,” Ritsu says; he stops alertly and points, his hand outstretched in his dark blue glove. “No – a weasel? Maybe it was just the wind...”

“But usually they’re very shy,” Mob says. “Deer. So we probably won’t see any. Unless they think we smell friendly.”

“We can go and look for deer properly, in the future,” Ritsu says to him. “We can go to a deer park. To the forests. Forests where deer are, we’ll find out which forests, we’ll go there. We can do that, in the future – on a date.”

The air is cold but Mob’s face is hot, and there’s a light, queasy movement in his stomach which still hasn’t settled even though he’s had his breakfast and he’s no longer on the train. On a date: the thought of it alone sends all his insides reeling.

“Nii-san...?”

“I thought I was travel-sick,” Mob says, pressing his hand to more or less where his stomach is, under his coat and sweatshirt and long-sleeved shirt and short-sleeved shirt. “But I still feel sick. And we’re not travelling, so – I think it’s you. From you.”

“You think I’m making you sick?”

“In a nice way,” Mob says reassuringly. “In... a romantic way.” His stomach turns again with that light and queasy movement. “Um – I’m worried, I think... I think I’m worried.”

“Worried?” says Ritsu – quick Ritsu: already a thousand times more worried than Mob himself. “Is something wrong? Did we forget something? Have you—”

“About being romantic,” Mob says. “About romance. About... going on a date.” Ah – there it is; his stomach flips over like he’s in a car being driven fast and the car just went over a bridge, and he feels his face burning hot-cold the way it did the winter he was quarantined at home with influenza. “I haven’t, um. Done it before. Been on one. On a, a date... And it’s really important,” he goes on with rising urgency, thinking so much that he forgets to keep walking and stops where he is, clutching the park railing tightly in his glove. “And when you’re a grown-up you’ll remember the first time you went on a date but I might do it wrong and you might have to remember you had a bad date. And maybe there are lots of things about dates that everyone knows but I don’t. But I should know them. But I don’t. But—”

“Nii-san—”

“—you don’t know that I don’t know them, so you think you’ll have a good date. But you won’t. Or maybe,” says Mob, “maybe...” But his imagination has done more work in the last thirty seconds than it usually does in the average month: its fuel tanks are exhausted already. “Or... maybe I’ve forgotten something...?”

“There’s nothing you could forget that would ruin us going on a date,” Ritsu says firmly.

“Train tickets,” Mob suggests.

“I’ve got them.”

“House keys?”

“Mum and Dad’ll let us in.”

“My phone...?”

“You can borrow mine,” Ritsu says. “Who would you need to call, anyway?”

No one, Mob supposes. And he knows he hasn’t forgotten his phone: he remembers putting it into the phone-shaped inside pocket of his backpack, because he likes that his backpack has a pocket designed in just the shape of a phone. Most likely he hasn’t forgotten anything else, either, because Ritsu’s with him and Ritsu is very organised and would remember anything that Mob was likely to forget, so the reason that Mob’s worried must be something different.

They’re all alone by the park’s edge, where the grass is short and trodden down, probably by people but possibly by deer, who might even now be lurking in the distance and keeping watch, biding their time until Mob and Ritsu can prove themselves friendly and unthreatening. “I’m nervous too, you know,” Ritsu says to him, in a secret private voice for only the two of them to hear.

“You are?”

“Yes – yes, of course. We haven’t done it before. And – in public, and... With people around. And we’re – well,” says Ritsu, with a secret private glance at Mob to match his secret private voice, “you know...”

“Boys,” Mob says, understandingly.

“Brothers,” Ritsu says, at the same time. “Well, yes. But... I think – it’s okay that we’re nervous, but we shouldn’t be. We should try not to be. And especially...” He’s hesitating, pink from cold or embarrassment or romance. “Because – I told you, everything’s romantic anyway. So long as we’re together then it’s romantic, so it’ll be fine. It couldn’t go wrong.”

There’s so much determination in Ritsu’s voice that Mob believes him instantly, and completely, and with relief: believing in Ritsu when Ritsu sounds confident is a natural physical reflex, like shutting his eyes to sneeze.

“And you have to go on a first date before you can go on any other dates, anyway. You have to,” Ritsu says again, earnestly, “everyone has to; that’s how it works. So we just have to do this one, even if we’re nervous, because then they’ll all be much easier afterwards. In the future.”

First suggests second, which suggests lots and lots more after that as well. Mob’s stomach moves again in that light and queasy way – but even that’s romantic, on a date: being on a date is the only reason to be queasy in the first place.

Around the town are large helpful maps showing the way to interesting tourist spots, of which White Radish Town has many: temples of historical note and shrines of historical note and museums with artefacts of historical note, and hiking trails with viewpoints of scenic note, and a shopping district which isn’t really anything of note at all. Together, they follow a meandering route through small old streets of wooden houses with narrow doorways and clusters of pot plants arranged in bushy clumps outside: they’re walking through the streets on a date. Birds make conversation from rooftops and fence-posts and guttering: Mob, on a date, hears their voices while on a date. New Year’s wreaths have been fixed already to some front doors and Mob, on a date, tells himself when he sees them that he’s seeing them on a date – it changes everything, being on a date; he’s wearing his ordinary blue winter coat but now he’s wearing it on a date: even his coat feels new and exciting, now that it’s with him on a date.

The road gets steeper, and narrower, and then abruptly becomes an even steeper flight of stone steps which they climb together in effortful silence, and make it to the top both breathing hard and both bright red in the face – both on a date, as well: the back of Mob’s mind supplies it automatically; this is the first time Mob’s ever been dizzy from lack of oxygen on a date before.

Above them, the huge vermilion shrine gate of White Radish Shrine stands printed against the pale sky and the brownish-green colours of the mountainside. Ritsu’s standing before it, small in front of it, looking up at it – on a date, Mob adds at once: he’s on a date and looking at Ritsu who’s also on a date and looking up at the shrine gate; both of them on a date. Both of them on the same date, together.

They pass below the gate. The footpath climbs steeply through the trees until the long low shapes of the shrine buildings emerge, sitting large and quiet in the middle of a gravel courtyard in the forest.

At the entrance they have to put their shoes into a plastic bag and go inside in their socks, on a date, stepping softly on the old dark wooden floor. A few other people are looking around too, all of them holding their shoes in a bag, all of them slipping and sliding in their socks – some of them might be on a date too, Mob thinks, pleased; it’s a normal thing to do, being on a date, visiting an old shrine on a date, just like he and Ritsu are doing.

The shadows are heavy and the silence is too, and there’s a clean feeling in the atmosphere, like the aftermath of a recent major exorcism. Sometimes old places unknowingly pick up the loyalty of an affectionate stray spirit the way people are adopted by affectionate stray cats, who come to be fed every day but won’t ever consider themselves pets; perhaps this shrine has one of those, a hungry territorial spirit who lurks around and eats every other spirit who tries to settle down, keeping the atmosphere as clean and peaceful as it is today.

Ritsu’s across the hall, standing at a wide-open space in one wall which lets in the wind and the sunlight and looks out over the town not far below. In the future there’ll be lots of times like this, Mob tells himself, coming to stand at Ritsu’s side, folding his gloves over the same wooden ledge as Ritsu and looking out over the same winter landscape as Ritsu. The wood beneath their gloves has become smooth and shiny from the hands of so many other people who have folded their hands over it too and looked out on the same landscape in winter and in every other season too. So many other people have done what they’re doing now: enjoying their own happiness just like he and Ritsu are enjoying theirs, living their own private normal lives just like he and Ritsu are living theirs. In the future they’ll be able to go to visit old shrines on day trips whenever they like, just like everybody else does. Why shouldn’t they? It’s nice to be in love and it’s nice to go on dates, no matter who you are.

“I was looking for deer,” Ritsu says, waving his glove out towards the wintery spread of the town below. “You can’t see any from here, though.”

“Maybe they’re hiding.”

“Maybe they’ve all gone inside for tea to warm up.” Ritsu moves half a step, so that instead of being close to Mob he’s now very close to Mob, and he puts his hand surreptitiously over Mob’s on the shiny wooden ledge. “Are you still feeling sick, nii-san?”

Mob considers it. “No... No. I think – I was thinking. About the future.”

“We can go anywhere we want,” Ritsu says at once, eagerly, picking up the familiar cue. “In the future we can do anything. We can stay overnight, if we want. We can get a hotel room and go on overnight trips together.”

“Like Mum and Dad...?”

“We can do it too,” Ritsu says quickly, as though he mistook it for a complaint and not an observation; Mob was only thinking aloud. “We can do what they do, that’s fine. Lots of other people do it.”

“Then we’ll do it too,” Mob says, with immediate confidence.

What lots of other people do is exactly what he wants to do, too; he wants to do everything that everyone else does. In the next hall of the shrine, a family with three young children are passing through ahead of them, all skidding joyfully across the floorboards in their socks – everything that everyone else does, Mob reminds himself firmly, and he reaches for his camera and steps forwards before his courage can fail him.

“Excuse me...? Would you, um – would it be okay if you take a picture of me and my, um – of me and... Of us?”

Nothing makes them different from anyone else, so nothing should stop them from doing all the same things as everyone else; they should be able to do everything that everyone else can do. He passes his camera over and stands close to Ritsu’s side.

“Three, two—”

“Sorry,” Ritsu says suddenly; he switches his plastic bag with his shoes in it to his other hand, and moves to put his arm behind Mob’s back.

“—one,” says their photographer, “oh, that blurred; I’ll try again. Say cheese!”

No cheese needed: Mob’s smile has brightened on its own already.

Outside again, they put their shoes back on and crunch across the gravel courtyard. At a booth selling souvenir shrine charms Ritsu stops, and searches through the trays intently – innumerable bright embroidered tags, gold and silver thread shining on satin: fortune for health and money and exams, luck and love and prosperity in business... He makes a choice and pays and receives his purchase back again in a little paper bag, which he clutches tightly to himself in both hands, silent and intent, until they’ve followed the footpath back into the trees, where the quiet of the forest becomes heavier around them, and seems more still; and there Ritsu stops and says abruptly, “For you,” pushing his paper bag at Mob like he can’t wait to be rid of it.

It rustles as Mob opens it. He tips it up with careful curiosity, and two charms slide out: one for fortune in love, and one for the fortune of family.

“I wasn’t sure which,” Ritsu says, watching Mob’s hands as he turns them over. “I couldn’t choose. Because it’s both, so...”

“It’s both,” Mob says in grave agreement. Fir trees make the path shadowy but the day is still bright, and narrow spokes of sunshine come down through the gaps like a hundred tiny spotlights all around them. The pair of charms lie shining and neatly stitched and gleaming on his palm – love and family; it is both: it’s comforting to see them so clearly together as a pair. “It’s both,” he says to Ritsu again, and closes his hand happily over them. “Thank you.”

“If it’s not okay,” Ritsu begins, looking worried—

“No – no, it is. It is nice. Really nice,” Mob says strongly, “it’s very kind. It’s...”

Fortune in love: that motion sickness feeling of nervousness sloshes in him again; but it’s a nice feeling, when it’s caused by Ritsu and not by a speeding train – it’s new, and exciting, and if Mob puts that charm on his schoolbag along with the charm for fortune of family then no one will know it was Ritsu who gave him both of them; everyone will probably think Mob bought it for himself, optimistically, or was given it from kind pity by Tsubomi or perhaps Teru, both of whom take control of their own remarkable fortunes in romance every day of the week.

“It’s really nice,” Mob says again, with feeling. He checks quickly both ways up and down the path to make sure that in sight it’s only them, and the trees, and the tiny golden spokes of sunlight through the leaves above; then he takes Ritsu’s shoulders and kisses him quickly on the mouth.

“Here?” Ritsu says afterwards, looking warm and pleased; looking, also, at the miniature pair of shrine gates sitting up on a rock beside them and the footpath stretching away into the trees in both directions.

“Yes,” Mob says stubbornly. “Why not? Lots of other people do. You always see people do it. All the couples... Everyone comes and takes photos. And prays together. Everyone else does it.”

Everyone else does it, so why can’t they? They’re not special; they’re not different. They’re just like everyone else and they’re having a day out together like anyone else would too. They’re having a date together like anyone else could, too. They keep going along the path, walking close together, and against the back of his glove Mob feels Ritsu’s hand brushing against his own more often than before – reminding himself how near they are, Mob thinks; letting Mob know where he wants his hand to be.

The path slopes slowly downwards before them. The trees rise up tall and safe around them. Mob takes a deep preparatory breath, and the next time Ritsu’s hand brushes against his, he moves quickly and takes it in his own; he closes his fingers tight, so that Ritsu can’t pull his hand away from him, and he holds on.

Ritsu looks sharply around.

“It’s a date,” Mob explains – he’s on a date, he’s holding hands: already his face is scorching hot. “We’re on a date, so it’s, um. It’s okay. Holding hands is okay, on dates.”

Ritsu’s still looking at him. He’s going to trip over a rock or walk into a branch if he’s not careful – but they’re holding hands, Mob reminds himself, so if there’s danger ahead then Mob can just yank Ritsu out the way in time himself; he feels better after that, even though his heart is fast with the frenetic fluttering that usually means he’s about to collapse on the clubroom floor if he doesn’t stop doing star-jumps and start taking slow, calming breaths instead. Ritsu can stare as much as he wants and Mob will shoulder the responsibility for making sure Ritsu stays safe while doing it.

They set off again, following the path downwards through the trees, putting their feet down carefully on the mud and stones so as not to skid, ducking under low-slung branches; they’re holding onto each other’s hands tightly and keeping close but not speaking, no longer even looking at each other. The experience is overwhelming enough already without adding the risk of eye contact on top of it.

-

At last the trees begin to clear and the path opens out, and the usual tourist bustle of restaurants and refreshments begins to fill the streets nearest to the shrine – and it’s just sensible not to hold hands in the street, Mob says firmly to himself, as he and Ritsu both hurriedly let go and step away, even more so when the street is busy; it’s got nothing to do with being brothers, or boys: it’s just ordinary, to avoid bumping into people. Anyone would probably let go of someone else’s hand if they stepped out together into a busy street.

And it is busy: lots more people are out and about now. More trains must have arrived; lots of other visitors must have come for their own day trips, too. Lots of other visitors are probably on dates, as well: it’s a normal thing to do, going on a day trip for a date. Mob and Ritsu are doing something which is very normal and romantic, and just like everybody else does too. They’re all alone and nobody is interested in them except each other; nobody is paying them attention except each other; they’re unremarkable together and ordinary together and—

But even Mob’s usual stockpile of all his most comforting thoughts can’t calm his still-frantic heart rate: it’s going to take him a lot longer than this to recover from the most devastatingly romantic experience in all his recent memory.

At least in all his layers of winter clothes no one else can tell how sweaty he is inside them, he consoles himself, and shoves his hands down into his pockets. Inside his pockets he presses them hard against his sides; he can still feel his pulse quivering in his fingertips, like his whole heart moved down into his hand when Ritsu held it.

“We can do that again,” Ritsu says at last, after both of them have pulled themselves together sufficiently to discuss and settle the important, familiar matter of lunch; he’s looking intently at Mob across their plastic table. Both of them are tinted with a strange aquatic shadow, because they’re sitting below the bright blue plastic canopy of a tonkatsu restaurant’s outdoor seating area. “We can hold hands, just – out in the open. Where anyone can see. And – maybe, in the future...”

Mob tucks his plastic chair in nearer and reaches out for Ritsu’s hand again. “Right now,” he says, feeling bold, feeling powerful with his own earlier success.

Ritsu grips his hand tight at once – and Mob feels the tightness of that grip around his own heart as well, immediately: his heart is in his hand and his hand is in Ritsu’s hand, so his heart is in Ritsu’s hand, too; Ritsu is holding both at once.

“And we can do it in the future,” Ritsu says, whispering and holding tight. “And it won’t matter. We can do it whenever we want and we won’t have to care if anyone sees. Maybe people will see. They probably will, they’ll see, maybe they’ll even look, because we’re—”

“—brothers—”

“—boys,” says Ritsu, “well, yes, but they won’t know that. So it won’t matter. They can look all they want but it won’t matter so we can hold hands all we want. Even if people are looking.” The pink colour of Ritsu’s face is getting even pinker: maybe he’s feeling the effects of the outdoor heater radiating warmly in the middle of all the tables, or maybe he’s feeling the effects of holding hands with Mob, or maybe he likes the idea of people looking – of people looking at them, and not knowing. “Do you think about it too, nii-san? About the future...?”

Mob nods vigorously. “We can go anywhere,” he says. “To shrines, or – to the park. We can go shopping. Normal things. We can do them. Just – normal things, anything we want... Things everyone does.”

“We can go on dates all the time,” Ritsu says. “It won’t matter, it won’t be important. We won’t be nervous because we’ll have had lots of practice so we’ll be good at it. We can hold hands on the bus.”

“We can – ah,” Mob says, and hastily lets go and sits back as their lunch arrives steaming on two wide plates – but anyone would have to let go and sit back if their lunch was coming, he reassures himself, snapping apart a pair of chopsticks, because otherwise their linked hands would be in the way and their scarves might get in the food if they were leaning forwards across the table, so having to not hold hands when food arrives isn’t something specific to Mob and Ritsu: it’s what anyone else would have to do, too. It’s normal; it’s the sensible thing to do.

“We can go to festivals,” Ritsu says once they’re alone again, under his breath. “We can do that in the future, too. I know we always go anyway, but...”

“But on a date,” Mob says confidently. “Yes – yes, I get it. I understand.” People always go on dates to festivals: he sees them every year, boys and girls always hand in hand, always paying for more turns at the games to try to win prizes for their date who always stands waiting and giggling by the stall. Mob never wins any prizes and Ritsu never giggles and neither of them is a girl but they can still have a date at a festival, if they want – everyone else does it, after all. They can be as normal as they want, in the future.

“And in the future,” says Ritsu, “if people still keep confessing to me all the time, then I’ll tell them no, because I’m in a relationship. I’ve got a, a—” He stops short, his face changing in confusion. “A boyfriend...?” he says doubtfully.

“No... No. I don’t think so,” Mob says, doubtful too. He knows about boyfriends: they’re what happen when people at school start going out; a boyfriend is someone you go to the arcades with, and sometimes you ride to school laughing on the back of his bicycle, and you post pictures of you and your boyfriend’s café snacks together on social media, and then you break up and all your friends gather around you in the classroom before morning registration to say kind shocked things about your sudden new lack of a boyfriend. “That’s not... I don’t know. It should be more, um... More—”

It should be more: more of everything. It should be more serious and less ordinary and it should have the same firm feeling of absolute permanent irrevocable importance as Ritsu himself.

“Partner?” Ritsu says, and makes another face as soon as he’s said it. “That’s like a businessman. That doesn’t sound like I even like you. ...Significant other?”

“Significant brother,” says Mob, and beams across the table.

“But that’s as bad as partner, really,” Ritsu goes on, deep in thought. “It sounds like I’m filling in a form. Doing my taxes. ...What else is there?”

“Lover,” suggests Mob.

“No,” says Ritsu, very severely and without any sort of explanation whatsoever.

They’re both quiet, eating their lunch and thinking hard.

“Brother,” Mob says, finally. “That’s it, really... I think that’s best. There isn’t any other word. That one’s strong enough.”

“I can’t really turn down confessions by telling people I’ve already got a brother.”

“Tell them you’re married,” Mob offers. “That’s sort of the same.”

“Married,” Ritsu says; he’s laughing about it, and then he’s smiling about it; he returns to eating his lunch and he’s still smiling about it, looking down at his food and still thinking about it. “Maybe,” he says after a while, when his plate is empty, “maybe, in the future... We could go on holiday and have one room, and – when the hotel wants our ID, we could say we’re married. They couldn’t prove we’re not. Maybe we got married overseas, and came back; they wouldn’t know. We could just – say it.”

“Same name,” Mob says wisely.

Ritsu nods, looking down at his empty plate. “I’d want it anyway,” he says to his plate. “Your name, if – even if it wasn’t the same. Even if we weren’t already brothers. I’d want it anyway, to – to make us the same. To make sure we’re the same.”

His hands are nowhere near Mob’s hands as he says it, but Mob feels the tightness of Ritsu’s grip anyway: fastened around Mob’s heart, keeping it held safe and tight for him even while they’re not touching, even when they’re not together – always, always.

“That’s important,” he says to Ritsu seriously. “Being the same. It’s important, I think... It’s—” But whatever it is, it’s hard to explain. He fits the fingers of one hand through the fingers of his other hand. “Like that,” Mob says, considering his own linked hands. “The same. Together. Sort of – connected... So it’s better that we’re brothers.”

Ritsu looks at his linked hands and keeps looking. “Much better,” he says at last, looking and looking and looking; his voice is quiet and deadly serious, to make sure both of them know that neither of them is joking at all, anymore. “Everyone else – everyone who thinks bad things, everyone with all their bad ideas about it... They don’t get it. They don’t think about it properly, they just assume, they don’t think. And it is better,” he says vehemently. “It wouldn’t be the same, only being boyfriends, or – partners, or... Being brothers is better.”

“Significant brothers,” says Mob.

“You said that before,” says Ritsu.

“But you didn’t laugh,” says Mob. “It’s a good joke. I thought maybe you didn’t hear it, before. Significant brothers. Because—”

“I get it,” Ritsu says hastily, “nii-san, I get it—”

“—we’re brothers,” says Mob, “and also—”

Ritsu doesn’t laugh even after he’s had the joke fully explained to him, but Ritsu tends towards seriousness just by his nature; he’ll probably laugh later, once the joke has had time to sink in. It is a good joke: Mob intends to remember it for future use.

His spirits are still high after they’ve finished their lunch and set back out into the cold afternoon and the narrow old streets of the town. Ritsu’s happy, too: every time Mob looks at him, checking on him, he sees that Ritsu’s happy, and that keeps Mob happy too – and going on a date is something which should make people happy, so that means they must be doing it right so far: and Mob’s happier still when he thinks of that, so the happiness they’ve made goes around and happily around between them, keeping them warm even though the day is so cold that patches of frost still cling to the glass fronts of all the tourist information boards.

“Which one?” Ritsu says, stopping at the window of a confectionary shop and putting his glove against the glass. “Not that it’s much of a choice. Pink, or white, or pink and white.”

“We could ask for one in a different colour,” Mob says. “In the future – if we have one. If we buy a Christmas cake.”

“The fanciest Christmas cake,” Ritsu says happily. “We can find out the best place to get one and then we’ll get one from there.” He’s looking in at the cakes in the window and not at Mob, but Mob can feel the warmth of his bright happiness just the same: their happiness is the same happiness, recycling itself endlessly back and forth between them.

Perhaps Ritsu knows where they’re going, but Mob doesn’t: he’s only wandering, content to wander, away from the crowds and away from the roads which are meant for cars, and down the narrow quiet pedestrian streets and alleyways instead. Together they wander from shop to shop, looking at souvenir figurines and boxes of souvenir sweets and souvenir keychains with pictures of jovial white radishes printed on their tags; together they wander away from the shops, and down even older streets where nothing is open and every shopfront seems to be made of softened ancient wood, with plants climbing in tangles across their façades. Mob watches Ritsu’s hands in his dark blue gloves, moving as he picks things up and turns them over and puts them down again; he watches Ritsu rubbing his cold nose every time they step outside again after being inside; he watches Ritsu watching him back with the same surreptitious closeness as Mob’s watching him – Ritsu meeting Mob’s stare with his own stare, his own secret happiness which is the same as Mob’s, and isn’t as secret as usual, anymore.

It is different, going out together on a date. It’s different from going out together but not being on a date, because calling it a date means that both of them are thinking of it as a date; and thinking of it as a date means thinking about their feelings, and both of them know it, and both of them know that both of them know it. Ritsu stops to look at a display of postcards, and he knows as he does it that he’s on a date, and Mob knows as he stands beside him that Ritsu knows, and that Ritsu knows Mob knows: on a date.

“We can’t get any, anyway,” Ritsu says – he’s talking about the postcards, stepping away from the display. “We’re not supposed to be here. We can’t send postcards from somewhere everyone thinks we’ve never been to.”

“We know we’ve been here,” Mob says. “We can keep them – just for us, so we can look at them... And remember. Private souvenirs,” he explains, and spends a few satisfying minutes selecting all the cards he can find which show deer roaming the streets of White Radish Town. Ritsu can have his later, once Mob’s written on them, and then after that they can keep their postcards secret and every time they look at them again in future they’ll remember how it felt: on a date.

It’s like a bare electrical wire running underneath everything they do. Every time Mob thinks of it, dares himself to touch it bare-handed, then it shocks him head to toe and charges him all over again with its huge fizzing power. Everything becomes different, when it happens on a date.

They keep walking, and Ritsu keeps looking often at Mob: Mob knows, because he keeps looking often at Ritsu, too – they keep catching each other’s quick careful sideways glances.

“Are we going somewhere?” Ritsu says, after a while.

“Are we?” Mob says, interested.

“I don’t know, I just thought – you’re walking like you’re going somewhere,” Ritsu says. “I thought maybe you were going somewhere.”

“I thought you were going somewhere,” Mob says, and they stop in the middle of the narrow quiet street. A faded curtain hangs down over the door of a tiny closed restaurant. Further down, an elderly man is sitting on a folding stool outside the open front of a second-hand junk shop, polishing a piece of metal. Mob hasn’t been going anywhere at all; he’s only been walking, with Ritsu, next to Ritsu, thinking of Ritsu, aware of Ritsu being quiet beside him and the quiet sound of Ritsu’s footsteps and the quiet sound of Ritsu’s breathing; Ritsu muffled and buried in all of his clothes, still just the same Ritsu as the other, more secret kind of Ritsu without any of his clothes – Ritsu is still Ritsu no matter where he is, or what he’s doing, or who else is around to know he’s doing it.

Ritsu does lots of things which no one else except Mob knows about; Mob knows much more about Ritsu than anyone else does. Nearly no one else is around to know about them doing anything now, either: he takes Ritsu’s hand and holds it tight.

“Nii-san—”

“We did it before,” Mob says to him, trying to sound brave and like his own heart isn’t racing so fast that it feels like it’s hardly beating at all; like it’s only a thrumming vibration inside his ribs. “We’ve already done it once, so – it’s okay. We can do it again.”

“People might notice,” Ritsu says. He squeezes Mob’s fingers, looking at him above his scarf with wide serious eyes. “We’re in the street. They might look.”

“No one ever looks at me,” Mob says comfortingly. “No one’ll notice you if you’re with me.”

“I notice you,” Ritsu says, but he turns away to face bravely down the street again, gripping so tightly that he’s probably printing the pattern of his fingerprints onto Mob’s hand through the fabric of both of their gloves.

The nervous fast vibration of Mob’s heartbeat feels like it’s everywhere inside him. With his hand held so tightly he can feel his heartbeat in his hand, too, which makes his own heartbeat feel like it belongs to Ritsu. It does belong to Ritsu, really. And scientifically, being brothers, maybe their heartbeats are more or less the same anyway – does it work like that...? Ritsu would know, if Mob asked – but he won’t ask, Mob decides; he’d rather not know. He’d rather just believe it.

They still aren’t going anywhere, but both of them are paying more attention now to where exactly it is that they aren’t going. Faced with a choice between a street with a group of adults standing around together smoking in a doorway and a street which is empty, they go quickly down the empty street, walking so close together that Mob keeps occasionally kicking Ritsu’s foot and apologising, and having his apologies refused.

“Do you think,” Ritsu starts a while later, calmer as time passes and they still haven’t been arrested, or booed, or accosted by any Spice City acquaintances springing out of nowhere to accuse them of behaviour of which they’d certainly be guilty, “do you ever think, nii-san – that we’ve done things... in a strange order?”

Mob looks around at him, curious and not understanding.

“Because I was thinking,” Ritsu says. “About us both being nervous – about going on a date, a first date... But usually people go on a first date first of all, and don’t do anything else until later. Usually people haven’t even kissed before they go on a first date. But we’ve done everything except going on a date, so we’ve done it all the wrong way round.”

“We could pretend,” Mob offers. “We could... imagine. I’ll forget about kissing you. We could do it the right way round instead, if you want.”

“No – no, I didn’t mean wrong,” Ritsu says, amending swiftly, “not the wrong way round, that was the wrong word, it’s not wrong, we didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just... different. Unusual. The opposite way round... I mean, most people don’t start living together for years and years,” he says, picking up new energy – familiar energy; the same energy he always picks up when he’s trying earnestly to help Mob understand. “They have to have a really serious relationship before they live together. And it takes them ages to have a really serious relationship, too; they have to say they love each other, and decide they trust each other, and... Lots of things,” Ritsu says, with the confidence of someone who watches serialised dramas keenly enough never to have trouble remembering every detail of the characters’ interpersonal entanglements from week to week. “It takes ages. Everyone always says it takes ages. But we’d already done all of that before – well, before everything. As soon as I could talk, probably.”

“Before that,” Mob says confidently. “I loved you when you were born. Before that,” he corrects himself, “as soon as I knew about you. As soon as Mum and Dad told me. Well – I don’t remember that far back, really... But I know I loved you. Of course I did.”

“That’s just what I mean,” Ritsu says, looking happy enough as he says it that Mob can feel it too; it’s the same happiness again, cycling around between them. “We’d already done all of that before we ever tried kissing. And then – other things... And—”

“Sex things,” Mob says helpfully.

“Sex things,” Ritsu agrees. “So it’s just... sort of funny, I suppose – us being worried about going on a date, when usually that’s the first step and we’ve already done everything that everyone else gets worried about, anyway. It all seems sort of back-to-front.”

Mob considers this. They’re still walking while he’s considering, but it doesn’t matter where they’re walking: the only important part is that they’re holding hands. It doesn’t matter where they go so long as that’s what they’re doing while they go there. “No,” Mob says at last, reflectively. “No, um... I think – maybe everyone else does it the wrong way. They do it back-to-front. Not us. Because – all of those other things are easier, I think... Sex is just sex. But holding hands...” He looks down so he can see it as he says it: one green glove and one dark blue glove, the colours mixed up between each other where their fingers overlap. “That’s romantic,” Mob says, addressing their hands with hushed respect. “That’s much harder.”

“Sex can be romantic,” Ritsu says. “I think it’s romantic. I think it’s very romantic, actually.”

“Yes, but – it’s different. It’s for fun. I think it’s for fun. So that’s different.”

“Everything we do is fun,” Ritsu objects.

“Yes, but – different fun,” Mob says, persevering; he’s trying so hard to work out what he means that when Ritsu gives an urgent surreptitious tug on his hand to pull them down another side street and out of the path of an oncoming stranger, Mob goes with him without noticing, lost deep in concentration. “It is different. Because...”

Sex things are romantic because they’re with Ritsu, and everything with Ritsu is romantic: Ritsu said so himself. But there are all kinds of good and exciting things to do with Ritsu, and sex is only one of them: a secret, ordinary way of having fun, like tiptoeing downstairs together after dark to play video games with the sound turned off. They do all kinds of other enjoyable things together too so it doesn’t seem right to single out sex, when it isn’t any more difficult or out of the ordinary than anything else they like to do to pass the time together – and everything they do to pass the time together becomes romantic, by the fact it’s done together.

But holding hands is romantic, no matter whose hand you’re holding. Going on a date is very romantic, no matter who’s going with you on the date. Those things are already romantic, and doing those things with Ritsu makes them a thousand times more romantic still – critically romantic, overwhelmingly romantic; so romantic that even now, hours after waking up at home in the grey gloom before sunrise, it’s still hard for Mob to believe that his alarm isn’t going to ring again at any moment and startle him, dishevelled and confused, from a very absorbing dream of Ritsu and romance and holding hands.

“Because... I always love you,” Mob tries again eventually, speaking slowly because he’s still thinking hard, and it’s difficult enough to think hard even when he isn’t trying to speak at the same time. “We can do sex things, and I love you. We can go to the post office and I love you. I always love you, so that’s just normal... But – if we go on a date, that’s because I love you. That’s one thing. It’s the same thing. So – it’s more pressure, because it’s the same. It’s important.”

“And sex isn’t important?” says Ritsu, who’s only trying to be difficult and doesn’t deserve an answer, and shouldn’t expect one.

“So you have to be braver on a date,” Mob says, pressing determinedly on. “It’s romantic. It’s all about love. So you have to think about love, you can’t stop thinking about it, you’re always thinking about it... Being on a date with you. That I love you. There’s more to be nervous about. But—”

The noisy ring of a bicycle bell interrupts him: Ritsu yanks them both hurriedly aside into the doorway of a shuttered shop.

“But if it’s just sex then you don’t have to think about it,” Mob says, once the cyclist has gone speeding past. “You can just do it. So – I think... Going on a date should be the last thing you do,” he says all in a rush, buoyed by the triumphant relief of having struggled through to a conclusion. “After you’ve already done everything else. Because it’s very romantic, and you’ll be braver by then.”

In the cramped space of the doorway Ritsu is looking at him very seriously, from very close-up. It’s strange to feel him pressed so close and not to really feel him at all: their coats and jumpers and warm clothes making a squashy layer between them, front to front but not even properly touching. He isn’t saying anything and he isn’t making an expression that’s easy to read, either.

“We didn’t do it in a strange order,” Mob tells him, reassuringly. “We did it the right way round. We did it the proper way. Everyone else does it back-to-front.”

Ritsu’s still quiet for a while afterwards, walking at Mob’s side with his hands in his own pockets; they’re touching now only when their coats brush against each other. Midwinter limits out its daylight in very strict rations, and today’s allowance is already running out: the afternoon is growing grey around the edges, fading the colours from everything except the festive lights which are beginning to twinkle here and there in the gloom – a shooting star on a lamppost, a string of lights wound around a tree hidden mostly away behind a fence, a reindeer in a shop window with only one of his antlers flashing.

At length, Ritsu breaks his silence. “Nii-san – do you really not think about sex?”

“No. Yes. What?” says Mob, expressing his feelings on the matter more or less accurately. “I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did. You said sex is just sex, so you don’t have to think about it. I think about it,” Ritsu says meaningfully.

“Ah – no, I meant... Not at the same time,” Mob says, relieved to be able to explain himself so easily. “I think about sex things if we’re not doing them. But if we are, then I don’t.”

“You don’t think about sex during sex?”

“No,” says Mob. “No, because – then we’re having sex. So I don’t think about it.”

“Then what do you think about?”

“I don’t,” Mob says, bewildered. “It’s sex. Why would I be thinking about things?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Ritsu says. “You don’t? Really, nii-san? You really don’t?”

“No... No. Never. I don’t think about sit-ups if I’m doing sit-ups, either,” Mob offers, trying to be helpful. “Or push-ups if I’m doing push-ups. Or bicep curls if I’m doing bicep curls. Or tricep dips if I’m—”

“—doing tricep dips,” says Ritsu, “yes, I get it.”

They both keep silent as they pass a long line of people waiting outside a restaurant. An intriguing possibility suggests itself to Mob: “Do you think about things?”

“Yes,” Ritsu says, and forcibly yanks his voice back down to a heartfelt whisper instead. “Yes, of course! I thought everyone did!”

“I didn’t think anyone did,” Mob says with interest. “Because you’re so clever, probably. Do you think about school?”

“School?” Clever Ritsu, studious Ritsu: he never usually speaks with that sort of scornful derision about school. “I think about you.”

Mob falls quiet to consider this with the attention it deserves, which is the same attention that everything involving Ritsu always deserves: which is all the attention Mob possesses. “I can try and think about you, too,” Mob says at last, seriously. “It might be hard, because I’ll get distracted... But I’ll do my best. You can remind me.”

“That’s okay,” Ritsu says, relenting as he looks around at Mob; he’s losing his distinct colours, becoming greyer all over as the afternoon itself keeps becoming greyer, but he’s still Ritsu, exactly Ritsu. “It’s kind of you, nii-san. But really, it’s okay.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Mob assures him. “If you want me to, it’s okay. You can remind me. You can say, nii-san”—he likes the sound of it, so he says it again, even more severely—“nii-san, stop that, and think about me. You could say that.”

“I wouldn’t want you to stop it, though,” Ritsu says. “Whatever it was.”

“Ah – that’s true... Multitasking,” Mob says, glumly. “That’s difficult.”

“It’s okay,” Ritsu says to him again, more kindly still. He’s smiling now, and though his smile is grey in the greying daylight too that doesn’t make it any less of a smile: his happiness is Mob’s as well, shared between them, recycled around and around between them and never wearing out. “Don’t worry about it, nii-san. You were thoughtful to offer.”

He steps close again, and takes Mob’s hand out of his pocket so he can hold it tight in his own. Other people are moving around them in the street, but neither of them lets go or moves away and even though it’s still very cold, really, the chill doesn’t seem able to reach them anymore; even though the daylight is dissolving ever more quickly into the gloom of evening, it doesn’t seem to be any darker at all.

On a date, and holding hands: Mob’s heart is racing as fast as though it’s trying not to miss its bus.

-

Any deer who might have wandered in the parkland in the early morning are unlikely to be wandering now that the afternoon is turning into evening: in Mob and Ritsu’s absence, the park has been taken over by food stalls and craft stalls and squat portable speakers which are ringing out with the festive jingling of innumerable jolly bells and the whooshing sound effects of a sleigh during take-off.

On the outskirts of the lights and noise, they stop at a stall for hot chocolate. “I’ll pay,” Ritsu says quickly, as soon as they’re in the queue.

“I’ll pay,” Mob corrects him at once. “I’m older. I have a job. You don’t have a job. I’ll pay.”

Ritsu makes a face. “I don’t want to think about you paying for our date with his money.”

“It stops being Reigen-shishou’s money when he pays it to me,” Mob says patiently. “Then it’s mine. That’s what having a job is.”

Ritsu’s expression continues to look like he just took a sip of strong black coffee he’d thought was sweet cocoa.

“Or – we could pay for each other...?”

At once Ritsu brightens up again. They pay separately, and swap their identical drinks afterwards: now, they’ve paid for each other.

Large plywood figures of reindeer and Santa Claus and oversized snowflakes are arranged decoratively around the stalls of the Christmas market. They pass a tall frame with a picture of four faceless deer, so that visitors can stand behind it and put their faces where the deer’s faces should be and have their photos taken, pretending to be deer – which is nice, Mob thinks regretfully, and would appeal to him if only it weren’t taking the place of real deer, which at this rate must have all gone off together somewhere much quieter to spend their evening in peace.

“In the future,” begins Ritsu, surveying a neatly-iced array of gingerbread houses, speaking close and privately, “in the future, nii-san...”

“We can come to other Christmas markets,” Mob says promptly. “Other markets. Valentine’s markets. The ones where they have a big heart with flowers growing around it, roses, sometimes – and a bench underneath, inside the heart. And everyone sits there to get their picture taken, inside the heart.”

“We could do that,” Ritsu says, without much enthusiasm. “I mean, if you want. If that’s really what you want. I suppose we could do that.”

“Yes,” Mob says firmly. “That’s romantic. It’s very romantic.” Usually, everyone else puts up the pictures of themselves and the person they’re in love with and on a date with on social media so that everyone else can see them, and admire them, and tap heart-eyed emoji reactions underneath them, and all of that is probably very romantic too – but that’s romantic in a way which isn’t accessible to him and Ritsu, so Mob doesn’t ever bother thinking too much about those other kinds of romance. They can have their photo taken and keep it private, just for them, and that will be romantic too. Anything is romantic, so long as it’s him and Ritsu. He ducks away through a gap in the crowds to dispose of both their empty cups, and pushes hurriedly back to Ritsu again, who’s standing bereft in the middle of the busy grassy path looking alarmed. “Sorry,” Mob says, and takes his hand.

Ritsu lets go immediately.

“You don’t want to...?”

“No – I do,” Ritsu says strongly, “I do, of course I do, but...”

But what?—both of them must be thinking it; a moment later Ritsu takes Mob’s hand again and holds it tight, and then he looks around at Mob with startled triumph, as though he hadn’t thought it would be so easy – as though he’d thought Mob’s hand would turn to air as soon as he touched it, or he’d miss and would have to try again.

“Okay,” Ritsu says, keeping all his excitement under his breath so that only Mob can hear him, “okay, it’s okay. We’re not at home, so – it’s okay.”

More food stalls: sweet potatoes roasting over a portable charcoal fire, nuts spitting and popping in hot baskets, smoke and steam rising up into the sweaty faces of the attendants working fast behind their stalls... Brisk business is being done at a takoyaki stand which has made no concession to the season but a Santa hat affixed to the big red octopus on the canopy. The light keeps fading from the sky as the lights all around them keep brightening, brightening; the music changes every few steps as they come in and out of range of different sets of speakers, and the crowds are noisy and uninterested in the two of them with their hands in each other’s hands. In all the world no one but them knows where they are, or what they’re doing, and in all the vast world it doesn’t matter to anyone else except them: the familiar thought wraps around Mob with the same warm comfort as a duvet on a cold night. No one knows and no one needs to. Their lives belong to them, and they can do what they like with their lives; their happiness is the only important thing.

The market is getting busier. They’re small and easily overlooked; they slip down the gap between two stalls, picking up their feet to step over a whirring generator and loose tarpaulins, between the canopies and out from the lights and music into the dim quiet calm of the rest of the park.

At the back of the market stalls are vans and cars and piled boxes of supplies, stacked plastic chairs, pieces of spare equipment left to get cold behind the scenes; the long lines of stalls are brightly lit but facing away from them now, showing them their backs and shutting them out. Without people all around them it’s even colder, but Mob lets go of Ritsu’s hand to remove his gloves anyway.

“I want to hold hands,” he says, when Ritsu asks. “Hands. Not gloves.”

“Oh,” says Ritsu, in that funny voice which means he isn’t sure which of his feelings is strongest at the moment; but he yanks off his own gloves too and they wander on, going nowhere, through the flat dim parkland, along the backs of the market stalls, holding hands instead of gloves.

The glow of the market rises above the stalls, shining up into the evening. They find a bench beside a wide path lined with lampposts, where people are meandering in both directions through the park. Nets of tiny shining lights have been strung across the path in an overhead mesh, like all of them are fish about to be caught, underwater and looking up.

“Imagine,” Ritsu says after a while, “in the future, if we go to another Christmas market. And...”

And – but already that’s enough: Mob understands. Imagine it isn’t secret and they don’t have to worry about it and it’s okay to hold hands and wander along together, like everyone else does, doing everything that everyone else does, too: imagine being in love, and on a date.

“I’d like it,” Mob says. “It’d be nice. We’ll do it.” He looks down at their hands: still linked, resting where their legs are pressed together. Linked, connected, fastened – tied together, he thinks absently, looking at their hands and remembering: being brothers is a connection that just holding hands isn’t enough to express.

He takes his other hand from his coat pocket and puts that one over Ritsu’s too, holding it warm between both of his own.

“What are you doing?” Ritsu says curiously.

“Just thinking,” Mob says, which seems to be all the answer Ritsu requires: he puts his own hand over Mob’s, and now no one has any free hands left at all. “In the future... We’ll still live together,” he says decisively. “It’ll be nice. Good. I’ll buy you flowers sometimes,” he says to Ritsu. “I’ll bring them home. And you can put them in a vase on a table.”

“That will be nice,” Ritsu agrees. Their hands are warm together, but although he’s very close his voice is soft and faraway: he’s with Mob, in the future. “We could choose an anniversary, too. And then we can celebrate it, every year... I’ll make us a good dinner.”

“Omelettes,” Mob says. “You can only cook omelettes.”

“I’ll have learned to cook other things by then,” Ritsu says.

“But omelettes are nice,” Mob says contentedly. “Anniversary omelettes... I’ll get you a present. I’ll make you a present.”

“That would be nice, too,” Ritsu says again, in that same fondly distant voice; he’s with Mob still, in the future, looking in on their future, watching themselves in the future eating anniversary omelettes with flowers in a vase on a table. “That will be nice,” he adds, correcting himself, and he stirs beside Mob on their bench as he pulls himself back into the present. “And we’ll have a nice place to live. It’ll stay warm in winter and cool in summer, and it’ll have the right amount of space for us, and our neighbours’ll leave us be; they’ll be busy, they won’t bother trying to get to know us... And—”

Ritsu’s stopped himself short on purpose, leaving the way invitingly open for Mob to take over. “And,” Mob echoes him, thoughtfully. “And – in the future... At Christmas markets, or – anywhere. Visiting shrines. Going anywhere. Living together. If we’re holding hands, if we’re on dates... Then – we’ll have to do all that a long way away from home. We’ll have to.”

“But that’s okay,” Ritsu says quickly. “Isn’t it, nii-san? Lots of people live a long way away from their hometown.”

“And probably – Mum and Dad can’t come to visit us,” Mob goes on, looking down at their hands all together; he’s thinking slowly, carefully. “Because – in case anyone meets them. Anyone who knows us, who knows about us. Where we live, or...”

“We can visit them instead, then,” Ritsu says. He says it very quickly: he sounds prepared, but quick-thinking Ritsu always sounds prepared. “We’ll come back home to visit. That’ll be okay, won’t it? And we could, um, we could have two beds. Maybe. In – wherever we live, so that if anyone else does come to visit then they’ll see we’ve got another bed. A... decoy bed. And that way...”

He lets his words trail off expectantly and then stays silent, gripping Mob’s hands tight and leaning forward to watch his face, giving him space to find his way around to an answer – but Mob, still thinking hard, says nothing.

Ritsu starts again. “We’d have to think about other things in case a visitor comes, too. We could make a list. A checklist – just in case. And if someone knocks on the door then we can run and do everything on the checklist before we have to open it... Like – it wouldn’t be enough just to have a decoy bed: it’d have to look slept in. And it’d probably have to be in a whole different room, in case someone thought it was weird – us being grown up, sharing a room... So we’d need an extra room to use for that, just for that, and—”

“I think... people shouldn’t come to visit,” Mob says at last, speaking in a thoughtful far-off way because his imagination is still a long way in the future; his voice and his thoughts have to travel a long way to make it out of his mouth, back here in the present. “Not where we live... Not at home. That should be private. Just for us.”

“Yes,” Ritsu says quickly, meekly.

“It should be private,” Mob says again, still too deep in thought to say anything else just yet; his thoughtful silence overlaps with Ritsu’s obedient silence and neither of them says anything at all, sitting quietly together and side-by-side on their bench. Overhead, the mesh of tiny lights twinkles between the lampposts; it shines above the path and people walk along beneath it, like a carpet in reverse. Their home should be private; their home should be a place where they can be comfortable and at peace and ease together, the same as anyone else’s home; it should be a place where they don’t have to worry about pretending anything for anyone. “Because – if it’s private, it’ll be normal,” Mob says at last. “If it’s just us then it can be normal. Not different. So – that’s best, I think...”

“That is best,” Ritsu says at once, eagerly. “Just us, that’s best, that is best, nii-san. You and me. Just us.”

If they keep their own home private, and sealed off to others, then inside it they’ll be safe; they’ll be able to relax, and be happy together. And isn’t that just what a home is for?—a place to be happy together? They deserve to have a home just as much as everyone else does.

“And – it might be better if we don’t tell people where we’ve gone, when we go. As few as we can, just to – to help keep things quiet. To help with staying secret. I don’t mean disappearing,” Ritsu says hurriedly, as though he’s sure Mob’s about to accuse him, “not properly disappearing, I mean, but... It might be sort of disappearing. But not forever. Not faking our deaths or anything. We’ll still be able to, to visit home, or talk to people, or... But it’ll be harder. We’ll have to be really careful. We’ll—”

“It’s okay,” Mob says to him, kindly. He disentangles one hand from Ritsu’s and pats his leg instead, to reassure him: he’s getting that urgent note in his voice like he always does when he’s convinced himself that Mob needs convincing. “Really, Ritsu. I get it. It’s okay.”

A big unfamiliar city filled with people, millions of people, endless crowds of people, people and people and people all with their own lives and problems and happiness, people who don’t know Mob and Ritsu and people whom Mob and Ritsu don’t know... and the two of them together, hand in hand, taking one step forward into that vast city and – sort of disappearing – the crowds closing behind them, accepting them in and absorbing them, swallowing them easily up to become a part of the whole: just two more people among millions of billions of others with their own lives, own problems, own happiness...

Sort of disappearing, but not really. Disappearing, but only just enough to become an anonymous face in the crowd – a background character in the lives of everyone but each other; he and Ritsu will blend in, and be comfortable. A life of ordinary, unremarkable contentment: they have as much right to that kind of life as anyone else does.

“Everything will be more normal, if it’s just us,” Mob says. “Everything will be easier. So it’s better that way – just us.”

Ritsu nods vigorously. He’s still clutching Mob’s hand tight, leaning forwards on their bench so he can see into Mob’s face, his breath puffing out in warm white clouds against Mob’s mouth as he stares, and stares: enraptured, by something or other. “Just us,” he says again. “Do you mean it, nii-san? Just us? You wouldn’t mind? You’d like that?”

“It’ll be easier,” Mob says again, pragmatically. “There might be... fuss, otherwise. So it’s easier.”

“Just us,” Ritsu says. “Okay, okay. Only us. Only me and you and nobody else ever, no one’ll know us, we can do what we want, whatever we want. Just us. We can lock the door and if anyone ever knocks we won’t open it, we—”

“Unless it’s the postman,” Mob says. “Or someone important. A firefighter. If there’s a fire, if something’s on fire. Or—”

“We can keep everyone else out,” Ritsu goes on – it doesn’t seem like he’s ignoring Mob, only that he’s too excited to hear him at all. Under the mesh of tiny lights strung far above, he’s different shades of grey all over with white shining highlights: catching in his hair, in his eyes. He’s very excited, Mob thinks, and as he’s thinking it Ritsu disentangles one of his hands and tugs Mob’s scarf down from his mouth and without stopping puts his hand behind Mob’s neck and kisses him, without hesitation – without nerves or worry or checking to see if they’re being seen; he presses their mouths hard together and then stops to take a single great big breath but still stays where he is, hand behind Mob’s neck, close enough to kiss again.

There wouldn’t have been any point anyway in Ritsu checking to see if they could be seen: of course they can.

“We’re in the park,” Mob says to him, in a serious whisper – he’s just making sure Ritsu remembers, in case he got carried away by staring at Mob for so long and forgot.

“So? Why not?” Ritsu says excitedly. “No one knows us. No one cares. And in the future it’ll be just us and no one will know us so no one will care and we can do anything, it won’t matter, anyone can see, they can look, it won’t matter, it’ll just be us, no one’s going to—”

He’s too excited to keep talking so he kisses Mob again instead, pulling free his other hand to press it against Mob’s face, turning all the way around on the bench to kiss him even more. Ritsu’s hands and mouth are cold but as soon as he parts his lips he’s hot – hotter than anything else; his tongue is the hottest thing inside Mob’s body and Mob’s own enthusiasm doubles instantly: kissing Ritsu, and a new heat source.

It’s rude to kiss in public, of course. Even the smallest kinds of kiss are a little bit rude in public, and medium kinds are most definitely out of the question; so Ritsu kissing him in this sort of way in public must be ruder still: this pushy, hungry sort of way, like there’s a prize for kissing and the more kissing Ritsu can get done all at once then the sooner he’ll get his prize; the kind of kissing that happens usually only when both of them are in one of their beds and comfortable there, and sure they’ll be staying there, warm and undisturbed and with easy access to a box of spare tissues which can be reached by either hand or telekinesis, depending on which of them is the one who’s reaching – Ritsu still frequently gets flustered enough to forget that he’s psychic.

When they feel like that they kiss like this, and now that they’re kissing like this, Mob’s beginning to feel like that: nowhere near as cold as he was, getting hotter from the inside out. Brothers or not, boys or not, it’s still rude to kiss this way in public – but Ritsu wants it, and Ritsu wants it so much that he’s making Mob want it too.

“Everyone can see,” Mob whispers to him seriously, as soon as he can. He could see everyone seeing, if he glanced to the side – but Ritsu is still holding his face tightly between his hands and so Mob’s looking only at Ritsu, instead; he doesn’t want to waste an opportunity to look at Ritsu by looking around at anyone else.

“Yes,” Ritsu says, fierce with excitement. “Yes – yes, I don’t care, yes, they can. They can all look. I don’t care, they don’t matter, it’s only us, I don’t care who sees or if they, if, if—”

Too excited already to keep talking: he’s kissing again.

“They do matter,” Mob says straight away afterwards, running short on breath too, now, “other people, I mean, Ritsu, you said they don’t, but they do matter, they’re—”

“Not to me,” Ritsu says recklessly, and then with immediate repentance: “I mean, to them they matter, of course they matter – but it doesn’t matter if they see. That’s what I mean. I don’t care about them and they don’t care about us so it doesn’t matter if they see, they should see, I want them to see, I don’t care if they all see – me, kissing you, nii-san, I don’t care,” which is louder than it should be, from excitement, but as soon as Ritsu’s said it he does it: kissing his brother with heated enthusiasm, excited by his own excitement at the risk of being seen and not caring.

Kissing in public is rude, but being able to kiss in public with only the silent disapproval of passers-by is normal, probably, Mob thinks, and ordinary, which means it must be romantic, too – wanting to kiss someone so much that you both don’t mind strangers disapproving of you for doing it. It’s a very normal sort of disapproval so that means it’s a very romantic sort of disapproval, too: anyone else would be disapproved of in just the same way if they were kissing here and now in the way that Ritsu’s busy kissing Mob, and the way that Mob’s busy kissing Ritsu back.

It’s still very cold, though: before long Mob has to pull away to wipe his nose surreptitiously in the back of his coat sleeve. “Sorry,” he says humbly, seeing Ritsu watching.

But Ritsu only keeps watching, staring closely, his expression restless and changing. “I want,” he starts, and then draws even further away and looks hotly at Mob’s face, “I want – I don’t want to be in public. I want...”

He’s not finishing his sentence: instead he’s staring, staring. Then, abruptly, he moves close enough that Mob shuts his eyes and waits willingly to be kissed again – but Ritsu puts his hand on Mob’s shoulder and his mouth to Mob’s ear, and whispers something rude, instead.

“Oh,” Mob says, when Ritsu draws back and resumes staring at him. “Oh,” he says again, in a heavy, thoughtful way, buying himself time to think – but really he isn’t thinking at all: Ritsu is staring so Mob is staring back. “The train station,” he suggests at length, whispering too. “The train station toilets...? Or on the train. We could go in the train toilets.”

“Both,” Ritsu says promptly. “Unless – would you be sick, if we do it on the train...? I don’t want to make you sick.”

“We could try,” Mob says optimistically. “We could find out. And then we’ll know, for the future. For when we take a train again.”

Ritsu’s satisfied with that. He sits back and puts his hands in his own lap, looking around at Mob; then he changes his mind and touches Mob’s leg instead, high up on his leg, with a comfortable familiarity that makes Mob think wistfully of the train station toilets. “In the future,” Ritsu says to him, “in the future, nii-san...”

“We can do this whenever we want,” Mob says. “Any time. No one will mind. We’ll just be ordinary, so no one will mind.”

“They would mind,” Ritsu says, with private hot satisfaction. “If they knew, they’d mind.”

“But they won’t know,” Mob says. “So they won’t mind, so it won’t matter.”

“But if they did know,” Ritsu says again, and trails off into a meaningful silence – the meaning of which, as far as Mob can tell, is that Ritsu likes very much the thought of everyone knowing. Or perhaps Ritsu likes very much the thought of everyone looking, and not knowing; perhaps Ritsu likes knowing that he knows what no one else knows.

But Mob much prefers the idea of no one wanting to look at them at all, and no one knowing. No one’s ever usually interested in looking at people who are in love and holding hands, after all; no one ever usually looks at people who are in love and on a date together, at people who are in love and minding their own business together, at people who are in love and doing all the normal, romantic things that people who are in love do together. Mob doesn’t want to be noticed, or be different, or be an exception that stands out and makes other people want to stare; he doesn’t want anything difficult or special or strange. He just wants to be happy, and with Ritsu: two things which are both the same thing.

“We should leave soon, then,” Ritsu says, still touching high up on Mob’s leg. “So we have time to go in the toilets before we have to catch our train.”

To be happy, and to be with Ritsu, and to be securely locked away with Ritsu as soon as possible in the privacy of the train station toilets: three things, Mob revises, which are all more or less the same thing, so long as you don’t focus too closely on the details, and not focusing too closely on the details is one of the very few skills at which Mob has always had a natural talent.

The fact they’re brothers doesn’t matter to them, so why should it matter at all? Other people might think it mattered, if they knew, but other people aren’t in charge of Mob and Ritsu’s lives: Mob and Ritsu are, and that means it doesn’t have to matter. Their lives are their own: nothing has to matter to them unless they want it to matter.

The whole thing is a lot more straightforward than most people would probably think it was, if they knew – which they don’t and never will; everybody in the world has parts of their lives which are private, and Mob and Ritsu, being ordinary, and just like everybody else, are allowed to keep their secrets private too.

-

The evening train heading back to Spice City is much busier than the train which left it this morning. After roaming up and down the aisles for a while they find two seats together at last, tucked in by the luggage rack at the very back of a busy carriage.

“You can sleep, if you want,” Ritsu offers in a whisper. “I can wake you up when we get there. Or I can wake you up sooner and we can, you know. Find the train toilets, too... Ah – sorry, nii-san, what exactly are you—”

“There’s a mark,” Mob says, licking his thumb and rubbing again at the inside seam of Ritsu’s jeans, visible now that both their coats are stashed below their seats. “You can’t go home with a mark. Not that sort.”

Ritsu sits meekly back against his seat and lets Mob rub the mark away; the train station toilets were nice and clean and smelled like deodorising spray, but they weren’t very well-lit – better to take precautions late than never. “Or we could go and find the train toilets right now,” Ritsu suggests after a moment, shifting restlessly in his seat. “Just to, to start the journey off. And maybe we could go again, later. After your nap.”

“I don’t want a nap,” Mob says. “Is it gone now?”

“I think it’s gone.” They’re both looking intently at Ritsu’s lap. “In the future,” Ritsu says after a moment, his voice now so soft that it’s dropped far below a whisper, hardly even a breath, “in the future, we won’t have to do that in train station toilets. We can drive to places ourselves.”

“And – do it in the highway service station toilets...?”

“In the car.”

“Ah – yes. Yes, I see. But we’ll still have to go in the service station toilets to use the toilets,” Mob says wisely. “You can’t do that in a car.”

Ritsu leans over to rummage beneath their seats, and straightens up again with his own winter coat. He lifts it up and shakes it out, and then he spreads it out neatly across both their laps, like a blanket with buttons and pockets, and underneath the cover of his coat he finds Mob’s hand and takes it in his own: no one can see. Even the two of them can’t see. His hand is damp and sweaty, but so is Mob’s, and it’s nice, anyway – it’s reassuring: knowing for sure that this damp hand must be Ritsu’s, and not anybody else’s, because no one else would have such a damp hand and also want to be holding Mob’s own damp hand; there’s no one else this hand could belong to but Ritsu himself.

The view from the train window is dark, black shapes rushing by in blackness. Mob shuts his eyes and lets himself rest against Ritsu’s shoulder and focuses on the fact of Ritsu’s warm hand secretly in his, instead of the fact he’s on a train which is moving very fast – it wouldn’t be fair if he got sick now, when he’s very nearly successfully completed his first ever date and isn’t nervous at all about it anymore.

“We need to tell Mum and Dad what time we’ll be back,” he says drowsily, after a while.

“I already have,” Ritsu says. “While you were sleeping. I had to text left-handed.”

“Ah – thank you... But I wasn’t sleeping,” Mob informs him, in his softest and most secretive whisper. “I was awake. I was thinking. I think – lots of people want to be your brother, probably...”

“Lots of people want to go out with me,” Ritsu corrects – sourly, and also unnecessarily; that’s the same as what Mob himself just said. Lots of people want to be to Ritsu what Mob is to Ritsu, and what Mob is to Ritsu is his brother: therefore, what all those other people want is to be Ritsu’s brother too – though it’s true that most of those people probably don’t realise that. “I don’t want to go out with them,” Ritsu says. “I don’t want to go out with anyone. This is better,” he adds in his own most secretive whisper, squeezing briefly tight under the cover of his coat across their laps. “It’s much better, being brothers... We’re lucky. Luckier than other people.”

“Yes,” Mob says, with immediate and total conviction – they are luckier than other people; that’s a simple fact, rather than an opinion.

Other people have to work hard by themselves to create a bond which will hold them together; other people have to start from nothing, slowly building up more and more love to make their connection stronger and more sturdy, until they’re tied together by a bond they’ve made themselves, and which might not have been properly fastened and might be weaker than it looks, or might fray with time, or might be unexpectedly severed and lost if things change for the worse between them – but he and Ritsu have never had to do that, and never will. What ties them is permanent: it’ll never be any less strong than it’s been ever since the day that Ritsu was born and each of them became a brother to the other.

Even if Ritsu ever did decide he wanted to try going out with any of the many people who mistakenly believe they want to go out with him, even if there really might be lots of other nice people out there who Mob might enjoy being in love with too, for a change, if he tried – even if either of them wanted it, it wouldn’t be the same. The thought of love like that compared to love like this is like a choice between crossing a river using a few worn, slippery stepping stones or crossing a river using a sturdy stone bridge which has stood resolutely for as long as their lifetimes already; the thought of love like that is fragile, and precarious, and riskily impermanent, compared to the unbreakable security of what they already have...

...but it’s been a very long day, and the train is moving fast through the dark evening and their carriage is calm with the quiet of many people dozing or whispering, and it would be much too much work to try explaining any of that to Ritsu. There’s no need, anyway: Ritsu already knows it all perfectly well himself.

“Significant brothers,” Mob says at last, sleepily satisfied.

“Nii-san.”

“It’s a good joke,” Mob says peaceably. “You’ll see. It’ll grow on you.”

“It will not.”

“It will,” Mob says. “Sooner or later... In the future,” he says to Ritsu comfortably. “You’ll see. We’ve got time.”