Chapter Text
After school, after club practice, after dawdling while changing back into his uniform and then pulling on his coat and digging out his hat from inside his bag and wrapping his scarf warmly around himself too; after gazing absently out of the window for a while at nothing in particular, enjoying the peace of the quiet school inside, enjoying the peace of the still grey afternoon outside – after catching himself and checking the time and grabbing his bags together in a hurry and rushing out, Mob leaves school at last.
The schoolyard is empty and cold. Loitering all on his own inside the front gates is Ritsu, stark in far-off silhouette: black and white and grey in his coat and uniform.
He takes a hand from his pocket and waves as Mob comes hurrying over. “My council meeting ended a little late, so I thought I might as well wait,” Ritsu explains. “I thought we could walk home together, if you want.”
“Yes,” Mob says immediately, pleased. “Yes, okay.”
Above, the sky is pale grey and as seamless as though it’s never been any other colour. The streets are quiet and cold and the wind comes through the town in a sharp, snapping way, lashing out at them suddenly from the gaps between buildings, biting at them suddenly from around corners.
Ritsu’s quiet as they walk along, but it’s nice to be quiet, sometimes; it’s nice to walk along with someone who understands as well as Mob himself that it’s nice to be quiet sometimes. When Mob slows down because he wants to look at something or he’s forgotten he’s supposed to walk faster then Ritsu slows down too, instead of hurrying him up, even though Ritsu could get both of them home and much warmer much sooner by telling Mob to get a move on and stop looking at every interesting thing he sees – but Ritsu’s too kind to hurry him; Ritsu knows him, and doesn’t mind him.
This time, it’s Ritsu who stops without warning. “We could go home this way, if you’d like,” he offers.
A single cast-iron gate stands propped open to their left: a side entrance to the park. “It takes longer to get home that way,” Mob says with a shake of his head, and keeps going.
“Not as a shortcut,” Ritsu says, staying stubbornly where he is. “Just – we could go a different way. Through the park. Just for a change.”
“But it’s cold,” Mob says. “Aren’t you cold too, Ritsu...? We’ll warm up once we get home.”
“It won’t take us that much longer if we go through the park,” Ritsu persists. “Just for a change, nii-san. That’s all. We can see the flowers.”
“They’ll all be dead,” Mob says in confusion, but Ritsu stays where he is and pretends obstinately not to have heard him; he puts one hand on the ironwork patterns of the gate, as though he’s naturally drawn to it.
It’s December: all the flowers will be dead – but if Ritsu wants to go the long way home through the park today, then Mob doesn’t mind the extra ten minutes’ walk; if Ritsu’s feeling shy today and won’t admit that that’s what he wants, then Mob won’t prod too hard at his excuses. He wants Ritsu to have what Ritsu wants, even when Ritsu is reluctant to admit to wanting anything at all: they go into the park.
The cold has made the dirt paths hard beneath their feet. The grass is brittle and shivery in the chill. The bushes lucky enough to still be green and plump with winter leaves look healthier than ever, now that all the trees which surround them are bare; their berries gleam red and black and purple, with such a glossy shine that they look healthy and delicious, and not at all as poisonous as they probably are.
There’s no one else in sight. “Too cold,” Mob says wisely, explaining aloud to himself; he’s staring around with interest, impressed by the endlessly empty paths. “Probably. So – no one wants to be outside... But it’s nice like this. Just for us.”
“Good,” Ritsu says vehemently. “That you like it, I mean, it’s good that – that you, um... I’m glad we could walk home together today.”
The wind is rustling the sparse leaves left for it to rustle. Their footsteps make firm, steady sounds on the hard ground. Mob says nothing; he doesn’t need to. He feels just as glad as Ritsu, and he’s comfortably certain that both of them already know it.
“And I think – it’ll be good if you can remember this,” Ritsu says suddenly. “In the future. If things are, if they’re different, or... If you can look back and think that it was nice today. Us walking home. If you remember you enjoyed it.”
“Yes,” Mob says, looking at him sideways, curiously: Ritsu’s staring intently straight ahead; he’s concentrating hard. “I always like it, anyway... I like walking home with you. It’s kind that you waited.”
Ritsu says nothing. Maybe it’s only because the sky itself is such a pale and lifeless grey this afternoon, but Ritsu doesn’t seem to have his own usual healthy colour either, now that Mob’s studying him so closely. Is he catching a cold...? They shouldn’t have taken the long way home; they should have hurried back to their warm house as quickly as possible, Mob thinks remorsefully, and he puts on speed, just to be safe.
They’re following a gravel path between low bushes arranged in a pattern. At the centre of the pattern stands a white bench, with flowerpots on either side of it – both empty, in winter – and they pass the bench and keep going, wandering on through the pattern of the bushes and out the other side.
“And we probably don’t have many chances left,” Mob says, still keeping a careful, supervisory eye on Ritsu, quiet Ritsu, just in case he shivers, or sneezes, or collapses unconscious to the ground. “For walking home. Together, I mean. Because...”
“I know,” Ritsu says. “I know, I was thinking the same thing. We should make the most of it.”
“Yes,” Mob says, pleased; there’s no need to say anything else because Ritsu already said it as well as anyone could. Once school breaks up for the New Year’s holiday then there’ll only be a few short months after that until it breaks up for the end of the whole school year, and then when school resumes after that Mob will be off to Seven-Spice Pepper High, assuming he doesn’t stumble too badly on the hurdle of his upcoming entrance exams, and Ritsu will continue at Salt Mid for one more year – and after that, Ritsu surely won’t be following along behind Mob to Seven-Spice Pepper High: Ritsu will be going somewhere much better, much harder to get into, full of much cleverer students. And whichever school Ritsu ends up at, their chances of ever having these sorts of easy, casual opportunities to walk home together at the end of the day will be limited, from April onwards – so it is best to make the most of it, while it lasts.
“I’ve – actually, I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” Ritsu says. He says it in a strange sudden way, like he’d planned to say it a few seconds later and hadn’t expected to hear his own voice come out so soon – like a sprinter so tense for the beginning of his race that he’s jumped the gun, and embarrassed himself; Mob looks at him curiously. “Making the most of things. And – things like that. And—” He stops where he is, so Mob stops too. “Can I,” Ritsu says, in that sudden way again, “I mean, I want to, to talk to you about something. I have something to talk to you about.”
“Okay,” Mob says agreeably. “Are you sleeping enough, Ritsu? You look tired. You’ve got...” He draws a line beneath both of his own eyes, mimicking the places where Ritsu’s are dark. “Maybe you’re catching a cold.”
“It’s something serious,” Ritsu says.
“Oh,” Mob says, and puts his hands hurriedly down again, trying to be serious too. “Okay, that’s okay.”
Ritsu doesn’t say anything. He opens his mouth and moves it, then closes it; he looks away at a bush with shiny leaves and shiny small black berries which wouldn’t be safe to eat. His expression is tense and painful like he can’t breathe, but he can: he’s breathing very quickly; Mob can tell from how rapidly his shoulders are moving.
“Ritsu...?”
“Yes,” Ritsu says. “Yes, it’s – hard to say. To talk about it. Sorry, I’m – I’m trying, I’m...”
“I get it,” Mob says to him, comforting. “Sometimes talking is hard, so... That’s okay. You can tell me another time, if you like. If that’s easier,” he adds, still looking at Ritsu, whose strange tense expression looks like he’s suffering: like Mob just stepped on his toe, or like he’s been dealing with a very bad toothache and hasn’t wanted to let anyone know. Worry stirs inside him, and he says, “Ritsu—”
“No,” Ritsu says loudly. He makes one hand into a fist and presses it hard against his own chest, which isn’t a gesture Mob recognises from his ever-growing mental inventory of significant gestures Ritsu tends to make; he isn’t entirely sure what sort of feelings it might mean that Ritsu's feeling. “No, it’s okay,” Ritsu says, with his eyes closed too now. “I’m okay. I can say it. It’ll be—I need to. I just...”
Mob waits. More worry is stirring in him, coming to life like something that’s been sleeping soundly, and for a very long time – but he waits; Ritsu wants him to wait and so Mob waits.
Ritsu opens his eyes again. He puts his hand down at his side again. “I like you,” he says to the patch of air just next to Mob, speaking calmly now.
“I like y—”
“I love you,” Ritsu says, not even raising his voice, speaking over Mob in that same flat calm tone. “I love you. I’m—” But then his voice switches off while he’s still using it, because no words come out when he moves his mouth.
“I love you, too,” Mob says, and touches Ritsu’s arm in concern. “Ritsu, are you okay? We can go home. It’s really cold out. We can talk at home, if you’re sick, if—”
“I love you,” Ritsu says, louder, louder, “I’m – nii-san, listen, please, I know you love me, I mean not like that. I mean—”
“Ritsu—”
“Listen,” Ritsu says, still louder, and higher and then not higher; his voice is wobbling like a person about to collapse, unsteady as an earthquake. “Nii-san, please, listen to me. I love you. I’m in love with you. In love,” he says again; now he’s said it once he can’t stop saying it, “romantically, I love you, I’m in love with you, I have – those are the feelings I have. That’s how I feel for you. I love you like that.”
The sky above them is huge and pale grey and empty from side to side and all the way around. Bare branches stretch up towards it and don’t move. It’s a cold day, a quiet afternoon; soon the light will leave the sky. After that it’ll be dark. It’s always better to get home before it’s dark. Mob shouldn’t have dawdled so long at school and they shouldn’t have come the long way through the park.
“Oh,” says Mob.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Ritsu says, speaking very fast, “or, or do anything, I know you won’t be—I just wanted to tell you. I had to tell you. To, to get it out, not to hide it anymore, to—”
But again his mouth keeps moving and his voice doesn’t come out. His shoulders are moving up and down even faster, like he’s only pretending to breathe and isn’t really breathing at all or like he’s about to cry, or both; he still isn’t looking straight at Mob.
“Oh,” Mob says, again. Inside, his worries have gone quiet. Everything’s gone quiet. He’s not really feeling anything other than a familiar monotonous dullness; he feels as grey as the sky. “I don’t... Is it – a joke...?”
Ritsu shakes his head violently.
“Oh,” Mob says again, vaguely. “Someone confessed to me as a joke before, so I thought...”
“I’d never joke about it,” Ritsu says. His voice is small and screwed up tight, and he starts crying as he says it. “Never. Never. I love you, I love you so much, more than anything, nii-san, you’re my, my—I love you,” he says, and then he starts crying even harder, too hard to talk, or breathe, or keep his eyes open. He presses both hands to his face to hide.
“Okay,” Mob says. He hears the dullness of his own voice. It’s been a while since he felt inside the way he feels inside now: this flat tranquil nothingness. “Okay. I’m your brother.”
“I know,” says Ritsu, in a voice which is also a sob.
“Okay,” Mob says again. He looks around. No one else is here. The pale grey sky is getting darker and the light is changing in that slow way which means soon it’ll be dark before they’ve noticed it getting dark. His hands at his sides are warm inside his gloves. He’s carrying his school bag and gym bag. Ritsu is carrying his own school bag and crying. He’s crying a lot. Mob feels – how does he feel? Does he feel...? Does he feel anything at all, particularly...?
Not really, Mob thinks; he remembers that he doesn’t want to think and so he stops thinking and feels calm again. “Okay,” he says, more firmly, not thinking. “Ah – do you want a tissue...? I have some in my bag—”
“I know it’s bad,” Ritsu says, in a wet voice filled with snot and tears and muffled by his hands, “I know it’s wrong, and – sick, and—I know I must be sick in the head, crazy, something’s wrong with me, I know, I know, but I mean it, I love you, I love you so much it feels like – like—” Nothing: Ritsu seizes his breath and then keeps crying harder. “You don’t have to do anything. Or say anything. It’s disgusting, you can tell me I’m disgusting, or just think it, that’s okay, you can—anything you want. That’s fine. I know there’s something wrong with me. But I had to tell you. To – to get it out. And maybe I’ll stop now, I won’t feel it anymore, I’ll have got it out and got rid of it, and, and—”
Mob nods. Ritsu won’t see it, because his hands are over his eyes and he’s crying. Something’s moving inside Mob again – a vague, restless feeling which he knows means that something else is causing the restlessness; something too big to recognise it, to allow himself to feel it properly. Some kind of vast, dormant feeling which shouldn’t be stirred awake. “I don’t know what to say,” he says eventually. “I don’t know. You’re my brother. Of course I love you. I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Ritsu says. “That’s okay, I don’t – it’s my fault, I’m the one who’s messed up, it’s my problem. It’s not yours. It’s not your fault. I didn’t – didn’t mean to cry, I’m sorry, I’ll...” He breathes in deeply, harshly, a few times, trying to calm down and not succeeding.
Mob moves his gym bag from one hand to the other. He moves it back again. Maybe he should hug Ritsu; maybe Ritsu wouldn’t want that. Maybe Ritsu would want that. Mob doesn’t want to think and so he doesn’t: he shuts his thoughts off again. “We’ll be late home,” he says at last.
“Go without me,” Ritsu says.
“I don’t want to go without you.”
“Don’t wait for me, I’ll just – I’ll come on my own. Don’t be late, nii-san. Don’t miss dinner. I’ll come later.”
“But,” Mob says, and then he stops because he can’t decide what to say next. He stands uncertainly, watching Ritsu; then he moves decisively, and rummages in his schoolbag for his pack of tissues and tries to give it to Ritsu. Ritsu won’t lift his hands from his face to take it. Mob pulls a single tissue from the pack and tries to give Ritsu that instead, touching it to the back of Ritsu’s hand so Ritsu will feel the thin papery feeling of the tissue and know what it is without seeing it – and eventually, reluctantly, Ritsu accepts it.
At once, optimistically, Mob says, “Ritsu—”
“It’s fine,” Ritsu says in a brave wet voice. “I’ll be fine, I promise. I’m sorry for everything. Please don’t wait for me, nii-san.”
Mob stays where he is.
“Please,” Ritsu says again, more frantic this time.
Mob always wants to give Ritsu what he wants, even when Mob thinks that what Ritsu wants isn’t what would be best for Ritsu: he will go, if Ritsu really wants him to. He steps nearer and touches Ritsu’s shoulder, experimentally, seeing if he might like a goodbye hug for comfort, or to help him change his mind about staying alone in the park and the cold and the gloom – but Ritsu twists sharply away and says, “Please don’t,” in a loud wild voice Mob doesn’t remember having heard before, so Mob doesn’t hug him, either: he goes past him on the path, and stops and says, “Ritsu—”
“It’s okay,” Ritsu says loudly. “I promise. I’m sorry. I won’t be long.”
Mob trudges the rest of the way home alone. It’s dark before he gets back. His mother wants to know where he was, and he tells her he was in the park with Ritsu.
“Well, then where on earth is Ritsu?” demands their mother.
“He’s in the park,” Mob says.
“You left him there?”
“He asked me to. He wanted to look at the flowers.”
“But it’s winter,” says their mother, too taken aback to be cross about it. “All the flowers are dead.”
“Yes,” Mob says ruefully. “Yes, I told him that. He didn’t mind.”
“Strange boy,” says their mother, giving up with good humour. “Two strange boys, both of you. Don’t forget to bring your gym kit down for the laundry basket, Shige, please; I don’t want to have to remind you another three times tonight.”
-
Ritsu comes home not too much later. From upstairs Mob hears him apologising to their parents, explaining himself; he comes up the stairs and Mob hears his footsteps and then hears, “Nii-san?”
“Welcome home,” Mob says from inside his room.
“You too,” Ritsu says from the hallway, sounding like normal Ritsu, and Mob hears the open and shut of his bedroom door beside Mob’s own.
Defrosting now in the warmth of home, Mob changes clothes and takes his gym kit downstairs. At dinner Ritsu sits beside him and seems normal: he eats everything he’s served and smiles at what Mob supposes are probably all the right times – Ritsu’s always been a much better judge of that than Mob himself; if Ritsu’s smiling, then it probably is the right time to be smiling, because Ritsu knows about these things – and talks to their parents when their parents talk to him. Mob gets distracted looking at his own plate and forgetting everything else in the world until their father reaches across the table and taps him on the hand, and then Mob jumps, startled to be reminded that everything else still exists, and realises that his spoon beside his plate is rolling over and over in place with a small rattling sound every time it bumps the table.
“Sorry,” Mob says, hastily pressing his hand down over it, flattening it to the table, “sorry, I was distracted.”
“Daydreaming,” says his father. “Worlds away, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Mob says. “Maybe. I mean, I don’t know. Ah...”
“Still not listening,” his father says regretfully, then laughs. No one minds his daydreaming. Ritsu’s sitting next to him and he’s quiet; Mob doesn’t look at him but he can see Ritsu’s reflection in the serving pan on the table, shiny and stretched sideways, and Ritsu isn’t looking at Mob, either. Tomorrow is Friday. Science first thing, Mob thinks. Science homework first thing after dinner, he thinks. That’s all.
-
Lying in his futon in the dark that night, Mob wonders if maybe now is when he’s going to start to think about it. He wonders it to himself with a sense of peaceful resignation, accepting that now might be the time, and he waits, patient and quiet, looking at the dark ceiling, for his thoughts to start moving towards Ritsu.
Instead, he falls asleep.
-
“Mum left the cereal out for me, so I left it out for you,” Ritsu says the next morning, fully dressed in the kitchen and already about to leave for his early council meeting when Mob comes down in his dressing gown and slippers. “I didn’t get it specially out, or anything. Mum left it out for me, so – that’s all.”
“Okay,” Mob says. “Thank you.” Ritsu always leaves the cereal out for him when Ritsu’s the one who gets up first. Mob sits down and pours the box.
“That’s all,” Ritsu says again. He’s standing in the doorway, looking light on his feet in the same anxious way as a wild rabbit that’s noticed it’s been noticed by a passing hiker; if someone unexpectedly clapped their hands right now then probably Ritsu would spring a foot in the air and turn and race away in fright.
“Thank you,” Mob says, again. “Won’t you be late?”
“I’ll go,” Ritsu concedes at once, “I’ll go, I should go.” He doesn’t go. Instead, in a small voice, he says, “Have, um. Have a good day at school, nii-san.”
“You too,” Mob says peaceably, reaching for the milk.
Ritsu nods and nods and nods. At last he goes. After a while Mob goes as well, dressed and brushed and with his mouth tasting fresh with toothpaste, trudging alone through the cold dim morning.
Like with Tsubomi, he thinks to himself, trudging, and then: Ah – now I’m thinking about it...
But he doesn’t think about it any more directly than that. A sturdy mental blockade is separating it from all the rest of his thoughts, keeping it tidily sorted away in its own private compartment where it won’t get lost or diluted or mixed up confusingly with other things, and won’t flood out and overwhelm everything else in his mind, either; but that blockade isn’t solid – it’s more like a sponge, a very thick sponge, which means that everything shut away on the other side will be able to get through to Mob, eventually: but only slowly, and steadily. It’ll soak through in a measured drip-drip-drip of awareness, to make sure he isn’t overwhelmed by having too many thoughts in his head at the same time.
It’s more natural to think about it like this. Safer, too: he can absorb it all at his own preferred careful rate, instead of getting washed away in the deluge of all of it at once.
Like with Tsubomi, Mob thinks to himself again, more deliberately this time. It’s like with Tsubomi, because... because – he confessed to Tsubomi, didn’t he? And he had hoped she’d accept, but thought she probably wouldn’t, but still he’d hoped...
What else? Why else? All his hopes aside, Mob had wanted to know for sure what she’d say. And besides knowing for sure, he’d wanted to... what? To act, Mob thinks, vaguely, thinking vaguely on purpose, making sure he’s thinking only of Tsubomi; he’d wanted to put a stop to always only pining from afar, and not ever doing or feeling anything new. He’d known he could move on in a new way after confessing, even though he couldn’t have known before confessing just what kind of new way it would end up being: romantic, or heartbroken, or some sort of unexpected alternative which wasn’t exactly either... Maybe lots of other people like to confess for reasons like that, to put their feelings out into the world so that if their feelings aren’t returned then it’s easier to break away from those unwanted feelings and move on afterwards without them. Maybe it’s always better to find out, either way, so that you can decide to set the weight of your feelings carefully down and find better feelings to grow within yourself in future instead.
Across the road a girl from another third-year class waves at him, and Mob waves back without realising he’s doing it, wrapped up deep in thought and the warmly muffling weight of half a dozen layers of winter clothing. Confessing to Tsubomi allowed him a new start afterwards, and he’d wanted that new start, even though the new start he ended up receiving was different from the new start he’d thought he wanted. And if this is like that, then Mob is the one in Tsubomi’s place: he’s the one whose reaction will make or break the new start for the person confessing to him. For—
But here are the school gates, and here are all the rest of Salt Mid’s cold noisy students crowding in through the gates, and the slow, careful filter in Mob’s thoughts has already allowed through as much as he’s ready to allow for one morning: he goes in to start his day.
-
Ritsu makes conversation nicely with their parents over dinner again that evening, but he doesn’t eat much. He says he’s sure he isn’t coming down with anything, but their parents are concerned about him anyway and he’s sent to bed early. Probably he won’t really go to sleep any earlier than usual; probably he’ll stay up studying or reading or doing whatever it is that Ritsu does when his light stays on for hours after Mob’s, so that a crack of light still shines out from beneath his closed door when Mob goes shuffling blearily to the toilet in the dark of night; but Ritsu goes to bed when he’s told, and all of them hear his footsteps trudging up the stairs.
“Do you think he seems a bit under the weather?” their mother asks Mob. “Didn’t you say he wanted to stay late in the park last night? No wonder he’s sick today, if he insisted on staying out yesterday – when it’s as cold as this...!”
“I think he’s just thinking,” Mob says.
“Thinking?” says their father.
“Thinking about things,” Mob explains. “I think he’s okay.”
“Sometimes I think he thinks too much, that boy,” their mother says, looking worriedly up at the ceiling as though she can hear the fast whirring noise of Ritsu’s thoughts all the way from here in the living room.
“Better than a boy not thinking enough,” says their father, cheerfully. “Speaking from personal experience – you and me, eh, Shigeo?”
“I think,” Mob says with dignity, not minding that he’s being teased. “I think lots, sometimes.”
“If he tries to get up early tomorrow morning I’ll send him back to bed,” decides their mother. “More sleep, more rest, less wandering out in the cold – that’s what he needs. Shige, have you packed your bag for tomorrow yet?”
“Sort of,” Mob says, which isn’t true: he hasn’t packed it at all. He goes dutifully upstairs too and unpacks his school books and repacks his cram school books, and discovers in the process that he hasn’t yet finished his Japanese homework so he stops repacking and does that instead, and then finishes packing and by then he’s ready for bed and once he’s in bed he lies quietly again, expectant, waiting to see if he’ll think about it more.
He thinks of Tsubomi, first. She drifts into his mind on her own, a stray thought passing by as aimlessly as a cut balloon, and he’s embarrassed to think of her only because he’s still always a bit embarrassed to think of her: Mob’s romantic feelings for Tsubomi may have changed, but his feelings of overwhelming awe for her remain just as intimidatingly strong as ever.
He had liked Tsubomi, though – but what had that meant, liking her? What had it meant to him? What had he wanted, before confessing...?
To be with her, to spend time with her; to talk to her and listen to her and look at her, always be allowed to gaze adoringly upon her, to follow her around and admire her. To hold her hand, and walk with her. To hold her hand and not even walk with her – just to hold her hand and sit with her, holding hands, for no reason other than that they wanted to hold hands. Even to kiss her, maybe, eventually—
But in the darkness of his bedroom Mob’s face is scalding hot, even knowing that he doesn’t really want to kiss her anymore, anyway – it’s still embarrassing just to think about it. Much better to think about kissing vague, non-specific fantasy girls than real ones who he knows, who he has to see at school, who he has to speak to in class sometimes; much better just to think about girls in general as a nice idea, when he wants to think about girls in private in his dark bedroom, than to think of any particular girl he knows.
To be together, to hold hands, to kiss: maybe everyone wants to share those things with the person they like. Maybe liking someone automatically means that that’s what you want. Maybe that means even Ritsu—
Maybe it would be better just to fall asleep, Mob thinks, and promptly follows his own suggestion.
-
The next morning he trudges to cram school and spends five hours trying hard not to doze off at his desk, and then he trudges home again through the cold grey afternoon. Back at home he washes out his lunchbox and trudges upstairs, to change his books over again before he forgets; he’s sitting on the floor stacking textbooks when Ritsu taps, and waits.
Mob waits, too. Ritsu usually comes in straight away, once he’s tapped: Ritsu knows he never needs an invitation to come and spend his time with Mob.
“Nii-san?” Ritsu says, at length.
“Yes?”
“Can I come in?”
“Yes,” Mob says confidently, and looks up to make sure he sees it happen.
Ritsu opens the door but doesn’t come in: he stays in the doorway, looking nervous again. “Are you,” he begins, then thinks better of it; he steps in and shuts the door behind him and stands against it, as far from Mob as he can, and says again, “Are you avoiding me?”
“I’ve been at cram school all day,” Mob says.
“Yes,” Ritsu says immediately. “Sorry. That was stupid. You’re just busy, I know you’re busy, I wasn’t... Sorry,” he says again, subdued, looking down at his slippers like they’re the wrong colour or wrong size; just looking at them makes him unhappy.
Mob looks at Ritsu’s slippers too, just in case, but they seem okay: faded and green and slightly tattered with age, but more or less okay, as far as Mob can tell – which means that Ritsu must be unhappy of his own accord. “How do you know?” Mob asks him.
“That I’m sorry?” says Ritsu.
“That you’re in love,” says Mob. “I was thinking about it. I was wondering. How can you tell?”
Ritsu looks up sharply from his slippers to Mob instead, then turns his face away again. “I do,” he says. “I just... do. I can feel it. Sometimes – sometimes I can’t feel anything else. It’s the biggest feeling I have. You don’t have to talk about this, nii-san,” he adds in a rush, looking intently at Mob’s bookshelves, “you can just ignore it, we can just pretend I didn’t—pretend I don’t, that I’m not—”
“It’s important to you,” Mob says. He’s feeling mild; he isn’t feeling much. “I don’t get it. But – you’re Ritsu, you’re my brother, so if it’s important to you... Then it is important. It’s important to me. So I want to get it.”
“It’s bad,” Ritsu says vehemently. “It’s sick, it’s bad. There’s something wrong with me. Don’t try to understand.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Mob tells him firmly.
“There is,” Ritsu says; his voice rises and then abruptly goes down to a whisper, like he’s making extra sure he won’t be overheard. “Nii-san, of course there is, you’re my brother, I’m – messed up. I was probably born wrong. Backwards.”
“Backwards,” Mob echoes, impressed. “I was just born the normal way, I think. Mum never told me if I wasn’t.”
“Not literally,” Ritsu says. “Metaphorically.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Mob says with confidence.
“It means there’s something wrong with me,” Ritsu says. “You shouldn’t even be talking to me. I shouldn’t be talking to you, I shouldn’t be in your room, I should—” His hand is on the door handle again; he’s shaking his head with his own heated disapproval of himself.
“Ritsu,” says Mob, “Ritsu, don’t go, stop it. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’d know, if there was.”
“You should disown me,” Ritsu says, but he isn’t touching the door handle anymore. “You should be sick even looking at me.”
“I’m not going to be sick,” Mob says to him, reassuringly. “I was just... surprised. I didn’t know. I didn’t expect it. So it was a surprise. Maybe – if I could read the mood better, then it wouldn’t have been a surprise. Maybe I just hadn’t noticed, or...”
“No,” Ritsu says, sounding a little calmer now, “no, it’s not your fault. I hid it. I didn’t want you to know about it.”
“But you told me about it,” Mob says.
“Well – I didn’t want you not to know about it, either.”
“Both things,” Mob says.
“Yes.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“It was,” Ritsu says, with feeling. “It is. You’re my brother, so—” His small amount of calm vanishes again as suddenly as it came, and he flings an arm across his face so he can try to hide himself away in the crook of his own elbow. “I had to tell you,” Ritsu explains to his elbow, muffled and passionately distressed, “I couldn’t just—I’d be lying if I didn’t. Tricking you. I don’t want to trick you, you’re my brother, I love you, I – as a brother,” Ritsu blurts, dropping his arm and fixing Mob with a damp and pink-eyed stare, “I mean, because you’re my brother, I can’t lie to you, because I love you as my brother, and brothers shouldn’t do that, they shouldn’t lie, they should, they should – they shouldn’t be in love with their brothers, they should—”
“Ritsu—”
“It’s not fair,” Ritsu bursts out, “it’s not fair, you’re the best brother in the world and you’ve got the worst brother in the world, it’s not fair,” he says with passion, and then he yanks open the door and dodges back out into the hall too fast for Mob to call and stop him, and by the time Mob’s scrambled to his feet and chased him out Ritsu’s gone again – into his own room, probably, or locked into the bathroom to wash his face before he goes downstairs to smile and chat with their parents like nothing’s happened: which it hasn’t, really.
Mob goes back into his own room. He continues packing his schoolbag. It does sound difficult, he thinks, thinking vaguely. And it isn’t fair – not for Ritsu, unhappy Ritsu, unlucky Ritsu, who should have nicer feelings than these ones. Even if for Mob it felt embarrassing and sometimes stressful and eventually a little bit heartbreaking to like Tsubomi, it was still nice to like her; Mob still enjoyed liking her, much more than he was ever made sad by liking her. Liking someone should always be something you can enjoy; it should be a feeling that overwhelms you in a happy way, a good way, not a way that makes you shout and cry and loudly talk about how you’re sick in the head.
If Ritsu was still here then Mob would tell him that. But Ritsu isn’t here, because Ritsu ran away, which means Ritsu wants to be alone and doesn’t want to be followed: so Mob will be doubly kind to him later instead, he promises himself, to make up for not being able to be kind to him now; he’ll be as kind as he can when Ritsu is willing to be around him again.
-
Ambushed by Teru in the convenience store the next morning, Mob finds himself promptly coaxed straight out of the convenience store again with promises of a café which serves unique specialty hot chocolate impressive enough that believing it would be impossible without seeing it – without seeing it right now, in person, at Teru’s own generous expense – which is an offer irresistible in the way so many of Teru’s offers are: by the time Mob’s managed to blink away the dazzling side-effects of Teru’s sudden and effusive arrival at his side and work out what exactly it is that Teru wants to happen, it’s already well on the way to happening.
By now, Mob’s facing down his promised hot chocolate and feeling more or less recovered. The hot chocolate is helping considerably with his recovery: it’s standing before him in a toweringly tall parfait-style glass, with plumes of whipped cream on top which rise up so high that Mob has to move his drink aside in order to see Teru sitting across from him, digging in enthusiastically with a very long spoon.
“Hanazawa-kun,” Mob says.
“Yes,” Teru says at once, putting down his spoon and pushing aside his own towering glass of hot chocolate so he can look at Mob with direct and soulful intensity across the table.
“You go out with lots of people,” Mob says.
“Not at the same time,” Teru says. “Not generally, I mean. Not nowadays. Not often, certainly.”
“But you go on dates,” Mob says. “Lots of them. With lots of people.”
“Well, I suppose you could say that. In a manner of speaking, certainly, I suppose you could put it that way,” Teru allows, and looks modestly down at his hands as he folds them primly on the table’s edge.
“So – people confess to you, don’t they? If you go on dates...? Because, um – I was wondering,” Mob says, yanking himself with determination around to the point. “If someone confessed to you, and – it was a surprise, and... You were surprised. Because it was a surprise. What would you do?”
“In response to a surprise confession?” Teru asks, sitting alertly straight; Mob confirms it, and Teru makes a sound to let Mob and everyone else in earshot know that he’s thinking hard. “Well, I suppose it depends first of all on what aspect of the confession I found surprising. The person, or the place, or the timing, or the manner in which the confession was made, or any of a dozen other variables which might—”
“The person,” Mob says quickly. “If it was someone you thought – you didn’t think they felt that. That they liked you. That’s the surprise.”
Teru makes the serious thinking noise again. “I have to say, I’m rarely surprised to learn that someone likes me. I tend to have my suspicions,” he explains in a tone of apology, “and my suspicions do tend to be correct. But I can certainly imagine that it might be surprising to receive a confession of love from someone I hadn’t thought might feel that way. Someone, perhaps, whom I hadn’t dared hope might feel that way...”
“If it’s a big surprise,” Mob persists, putting his long spoon into his hot chocolate and stirring it, trying to coax the piles of whipped cream into melting more quickly. “Everything about it is. If it’s someone who – you didn’t think they felt that, and you didn’t think they’d say it, you didn’t think they’d... do that. Do something like that. Because they don’t, usually. If you didn’t expect it. It was a surprise. What would you do?”
“What would I do?” Teru echoes gravely back, and he continues gazing at Mob across the table while Mob continues stirring his whipped cream into warmly molten sludge, which is how he likes it best.
“Yes,” Mob says after a while, in case Teru’s forgotten. “What would you do?”
“Is there any particular reason you’re asking, Kageyama-kun?” Teru says. He’s watching Mob with his bright-eyed stare, with his hands still folded primly on the table. “About my response, hypothetically, to a confession made by someone from whom you think I might not have anticipated a confession? Someone you think I wouldn’t have expected to act on such feelings?”
“I don’t know,” Mob says, evasively – not very evasively; he’s not much good at evading. “Maybe. I was just wondering. And you go on lots of dates, so...”
“So you wanted my advice,” Teru says. “Of course, I understand. Well, I suppose in this very hypothetical situation I would listen kindly to the person’s feelings, of course, no matter how surprised I was to learn of them. Being surprised is no reason to be unkind, or disrespectful... Although naturally there never is any reason to be unkind or disrespectful – that goes without saying,” says Teru, saying it anyway, and saying it very importantly too. “But I might be less surprised than you’d think, Kageyama-kun. In fact, you might even find I’m—”
“Then what would you do?” Mob says, in dogged pursuit of the point.
“Then – I would consider my own feelings, I suppose,” Teru says. “Perhaps I might not have considered that person in a romantic light before, if I was surprised to receive their confession... But perhaps I might find myself surprised by the strength of my own romantic feelings once I did consider them, after their confession. Or perhaps, of course, I’d already considered that person in a romantic light for a very long time and was only surprised to learn that my own feelings were reciprocated. Perhaps that would be the case. You never know, do you? Isn’t that just what Reigen-san always says?”
“Probably,” Mob says. “Shishou says a lot of things.” He keeps stirring his hot chocolate. The whipped cream has almost fully melted; he watches closely as the last few lumps melt away, turning the dark brown to a much more appetising pale and milky brown.
“So?” Teru prompts.
“So what?”
“Was there anything else you wanted to say to me?”
“Ah – not really. No. I don’t think so. But thank you,” Mob says seriously, removing his spoon from the glass. “You’ve been helpful, Hanazawa-kun. Thank you very much.”
Teru’s shoulders sink a long way down, and then he pulls them up again and turns the voltage up on his already radiant smile so that it shines bright enough to dazzle blindingly from the café’s glass-fronted cake cabinet, and the silver paper napkin dispenser on their table, and the gleaming metallic overhead light fixtures as well. “My pleasure entirely, Kageyama-kun. I’m always here if you need to talk: don’t forget that.”
Mob looks doubtfully around them at the busy queues for the café counter. “Always here...?”
“Always here for you,” Teru says, patiently clarifying. “Not always here in this café. I’m not always in this café. But I am always here for you, Kageyama-kun.”
“Ah – yes, I see,” Mob says with relief. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
-
The week goes on, the way weeks generally do: one cold day after another cold day. The grey colour of the sky transforms into a clear, blinding blue on Tuesday but the chill in the air continues to grow colder than ever.
The slow drip-drip-drip of Mob’s thoughts continues; each day he’s able to think about slightly more of what he’s pushed from his mind. What’s the difference between one kind of love and another? Kissing, maybe, Mob thinks – so does Ritsu want that? Does Ritsu want to kiss him...?
It’s a difficult thought to hold onto long enough to properly think about it, because it’s difficult for Mob to imagine anyone at all wanting to kiss him, let alone Ritsu. Sometimes in his secret daydreams it’s nice to think of people wanting to kiss him, but trying to think of it as something which is real, trying to believe it – trying to believe that now, right now, here in Spice City, there might be a person who thinks of kissing him and wants to kiss him – that stretches the limits of Mob’s imagination until his imagination gives up.
And what else makes the difference? Dating, Mob thinks; he’s venturing into even more uncertain territory now. Dating means going to places with your girlfriend. If you go to places with someone who isn’t your girlfriend then that’s not dating: that’s just going to places. He and Ritsu go to lots of places together, but that’s not dating: that’s being brothers.
The difference between going on dates and being brothers has always seemed very clear, but the more Mob thinks about that difference the less clear it becomes; the harder he tries thinking about the difference, the harder it becomes to understand... But he can ask Ritsu, Mob realises with relief; Ritsu will know the difference. He’ll ask Ritsu and Ritsu will explain and make it simple.
Kissing, and dating... And then marriage, Mob supposes, hazily, thinking uncertainly of the usual trajectory of romance: marriage, and babies... But both of them are boys – no babies. Both of them are boys – no marriage, either.
He tries to imagine Ritsu in a wedding dress anyway. He tries to imagine himself in a wedding dress. Maybe no one would be in a wedding dress. Maybe this is something else it would be better for Mob to discuss with Ritsu directly than keep straining his imagination to the point of collapse trying to work it out himself.
And sometimes when his thoughts get too complicated and slip away from under him, Mob resigns himself to it: he settles his stare absent-mindedly on Ritsu from across the room and waits to see what sorts of other thoughts will come to him instead. Often, staring, he finds himself wondering what sorts of thoughts are going on inside Ritsu’s own head. The outside of Ritsu’s head is more or less like Mob’s own, in much the same way as the clay pots they made one year after the other in early elementary school were more or less alike as well: Mob’s clay pot was blobby and half-painted, and even more mystifyingly shapeless than the clay pots made by the rest of his seven-year-old classmates; the clay pot made by Ritsu one year later was smooth and careful, and their mother still uses it to keep pens in. One well-intentioned first attempt, clumsy and round and not much good at anything but praised anyway for the amount of effort put in, and one successful second attempt, with all of the lumps and confusingly useless parts removed, identifiable on first glance to anyone who sees him as exactly what he is: which is outstanding, and faultless from all angles, and talented at everything...
Ritsu, that is – not his clay pot, Mob tells himself belatedly, conscientiously revising his own thoughts; it’s Ritsu who’s talented at everything, not his clay pot... But of course Ritsu’s clay pot was outstanding too, and very talented at holding pens.
He’s still staring, still wondering. The outside of Ritsu’s head is very familiar to Mob – his wild and defiant hair, his serious frown – but the inside of his head is more alien to Mob than Mob ever guessed.
Right now, Ritsu’s kneeling on the living room floor, turning the pages of a newspaper spread open on the floorboards and hunting for an article he wants to tell their father about. On the sofa behind him, Mob’s looking intently at the back of his dark head and wondering: does he want to kiss me? Does Ritsu think about that? Does Ritsu think of me...?
When Mob’s daydreams were full of Tsubomi he’d think of her day or night; he’d show himself imaginary futures where they walked together, smiled together, shyly held hands together – does Ritsu think of that, with Mob? Does Ritsu drift off to sleep at night wrapped in the soft, dreamy comfort of his fantasies with Mob?
It’s sort of nice to think that he might. Sort of – flattering, Mob thinks, thinking hard, searching for the word; like a compliment, sort of.