Chapter Text
The bell marks the end of class, and the noise feels sharp and shrill, one that he used to not notice. His heart is heavy, thumping in his chest, his neck is sore, and he can feel the pull of skin on his arm where a small cut hasn’t fully healed yet. These things are happening to him lately still, less so than when it first started, when it first happened, everything. He’s still getting used to having it inside of him, this mundane hurricane that everyone already seems to know how to deal with, like it’s not so unbelievably huge.
Turning his head, he shifts to look at the source of it, of his lack and gain, the cause and culprit, the girl who shook the world long after she shook his world to the ground. Nori is at Nico’s desk talking with the girl, who seems to be offering her some of her homemade candy. Nori takes one and makes a face. Too sweet , he can see her mouthing, even from across the classroom.
He gets up to join them, noticing Tenga and Chidori move to do the same. All of them have been getting better at doing it shamelessly nowadays, gravitating to each other without any pretenses. In the corner of Katsuhira’s eye, Yuta says a few words to the girls sitting behind him and heads to them as well.
The candies are animal-shaped, he notices when he gets there. His friend takes a squid from the box and bites its head off.
“Hehe, tentacles.”
“You shouldn’t eat too much sugar, it’s not healthy,” Chidori tells her, ignoring Tenga, who is digging through the box. He draws out a lion.
“Look, it’s you!” He holds the candy against Chidori’s squinting face.
“What?”
On the side of him, Nori gives Katsuhira a small, knowing smile, and laces their fingers together as soon as he’s close enough to reach. Yuta is politely shaking his hand at Nico’s offered box and expectantly tilted head.
“A lion, lion! You know?” Tenga grins, pops it into his mouth; chews. “You told me you’re a Leo the other day, right?”
Chidori snorts. “That’s so dumb."
He can hear some commotion as Tenga retorts and Honoka joins them, hips slowly swaying as she stops at the desk. He tunes out what they’re saying, exactly, but she and Yuta are grinning at each other and Tenga is exclaiming something while grabbing Chidori’s hand, and Nico has her arms high up in the air as they all quickly fall into the by now familiar routine.
Katsuhira is somewhat aware of Hisomu’s absence as he idly scans the classroom with his eyes. It’s not exactly usual for him: Hisomu has been coming to school more regularly these days, showing up to most classes even though he already knows he won’t be graduating to the next year together with the rest of them. Katsuhira wonders how he’s doing.
“...I'm just saying, it's important,” he blinks into focus at Chidori’s words, the topic having shifted elsewhere during the time he spent spaced out. “Our whole lives are affected by it, you know?”
“Of course they are.” Honoka nods, impatient, as if there’s no need for this. Yuta attempts to catch her eyes, while she avoids his. “But there’s still time to decide and change our minds, if we will.”
“I think you should go into creative writing, if not manga-making,” Yuta says at last. “You’re too good at it to let it go to waste.”
“We’re not having this conversation.” There’s a sense of finality in her voice.
It takes Katsuhira a few moments to understand that they’re talking about next year and graduating high school, and it’s after a few more that he remembers that his girlfriend won’t be doing it together with them either. She’s been on too many sick leaves to be able to, and has decidedly refused all offers of paperwork falsification that she got from her former employees. It simply would not be fair , she said.
“Hey, relax,” Nico says, most likely to cheer Honoka up. “It’s true, we’ve got a whole ‘nother year! And don’t worry about the grades - if you don’t know something, Nico can explain.”
“Man, I always forget Nico’s the best student out of all of us. Feels weird,” Tenga says, and no one can stop themselves from flinching when the tiny girl kicks his shin. It’s been a few months now, but they still sometimes have residues of this Pavlovian response and anticipating shared pain. Everyone else relaxes, while Tenga doubles over and spouts out some colorful not-swears.
“Thanks, Nico,” Honoka says, and this feels final too.
Chidori leans over to take a turtle out of the box, holds it to her lips in thought. “A year isn’t that long, though.
“Last year felt like forever,” Katsuhira says to no one in particular. Chidori’s eyes soften at that.
“I can’t believe we’ve only got that much before we’re done. There goes my rosy high school life...” Yuta shakes his head. “All spent on you lot,” he continues, and Katsuhira knows that he wouldn’t ever have it another way; none of them would.
“I can’t wait, honest,” Tenga adds, stretching his arms over his head. Katsuhira hears his joints pop. “Looking forward to not having to wear these shitty uniforms anymore.”
“As if you ever wear them,” Chidori tells him flatly, but he just grins back at her.
“Well, of course! I‘m spending as much time out of them as I can, baby!”
Honoka groans. “Does he… even realize,” but then just shakes her head in resignation. Yuta joins her after a moment. Realize what , Katsuhira wants to ask but decides not to.
It might have had something to do with that , he thinks to himself a couple of hours later, after Nori’s dragged him by the hand into the corridor after hours and pressed his back against the wall, kissing him sweetly. She’s been mentioning the taking off of their clothes a lot lately, and he never knows what to reply.
“One of these days I might push you down, not the other way around,” she tells him, out of breath. “If we’re not careful.”
Her cheeks are flushed and her mouth slightly parted, and Katsuhira loves her. He still doesn’t know what to say, or what this means of him. His friends would react differently, most likely, and he isn’t sure if his not being sure is because all of this is new to him, or something else; because it’s new, he doesn’t have anything to compare it to, find the right answer through analysis. The only way left is trial and error.
He leans in again to meet Nori halfway and hears her sigh, clutching at his shoulders. Everything else is so different, interesting, and this is too, but not in the way he expected. He doesn’t know what he expected.
There’s the sound of a door opening behind them and then quickly closing, the person who noticed them allowing them some discretion. The counselor's office , he notes absently, his eyes half-lidded as Nori is leaving trails of kisses up his neck, jaw, mouth. Urushii?
“Let’s go somewhere else?” Nori asks him slowly, breaking their kiss with reluctance.
“Sure.”
“Or… I would come over, later this afternoon,” she says after a second of silence. “After I leave my things at home. If you want me to.”
He nods. “I’d like that.”
After, he goes to the restroom and she goes home, and Katsuhira tries to think about things. Finishing up, he doesn’t quite flinch when someone’s hands cover his eyes, leaving him in complete darkness. The faucet water is still running.
When the hands let go, his vision is now full of a dark violet nest of hair, vibrant, recently dyed. The lip piercing tilts upwards as it does with every smile he gives him, and Hisomu waves at him, characteristically cheerful. “Heya.”
“Hoy,” he says back. “You weren’t in class today.”
“I slept in,” Hisomu tells him, and doesn’t mention why he’s bothered to show now, when all of the classes ended already. Maybe he got bored. “Saw you with Sonozaki earlier.”
“Yeah.” Katsuhira doesn’t know how he didn’t notice him, after an entire day of waiting for him to show.
“She’s coming over today, yeah?”
He nods in unnecessary confirmation.
“I guess I’ll find another place to sleep,” Hisomu says then, grin crooked but sincere, hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans. “Give you two some privacy.”
Katsuhira doesn’t remind him that it’s not his apartment, because he doesn’t much mind Hisomu’s constant company. He also doesn’t, because there’s Hisomu’s toothbrush in the blue plastic cup in his bathroom, tattered shirts and trousers that aren’t Katsuhira’s lie rumpled in the drawers together with his own clothes, Hisomu even has a favorite mug at the place, and really, at this point it kind of is.
He doesn’t ask him why he would go somewhere else, either. Couples kiss in the park and he says nothing. Chidori and Tenga kissed once, out on the balcony when they thought no one was looking, and he had no problems with witnessing this. None of them did, though all of them pretended they didn’t notice, including Chidori and Tenga. But, he guesses that this is different.
“It’s getting cold,” he says instead.
Hisomu tilts his head and looks at him, long and meaningful, before he replies. “Don’t worry, I’ll bundle up. You have fun with her, alright?
Nori comes over later in the afternoon, walks in grinning under the dripping hood. She leaves her shoes neatly at the doorway and hangs her raincoat to dry and kisses Katsuhira with tongue and then turns away, goes to the kitchen to make tea.
Katsuhira sits on the white sofa in the living room while she makes noises in the kitchen: the clanking of mugs, a quiet beep, hot water being poured over tea leaves. It’s pouring outside, too.
The next time Nori kisses him, her mouth is hot from the tea and the mugs sit next to each other half-finished on the table, and he doesn’t mention that they shouldn’t keep the leaves in any longer or else it’ll get too bitter and stale. Nori’s legs slide to either side of him, straddling him, and then she pushes him down like she said she would, his back against the sofa cushion, the palms of her hands on his shoulders, then cupping his face. Her breath is mixed with his own and he can feel her tongue gliding against his, wet and curious. He thinks about how interesting her face looks from up close.
She leans back just a bit and starts unbuttoning his shirt, slowly, then pauses, fiddles with the buttons as if uncertain. You’ve done this before, though , he doesn’t say, opened my shirt without much ado and no embarrassment , because it’s about context, perhaps; because it’s not the same at all.
She pulls his shirt open, splays warmed hands against his chest, down the rim of his jeans and just above his zipper. Making a small sound in the back of her throat, she continues touching him, Katsuhira’s hands unmoving on her sides. He wants to hug her. He’s glad that she’s enjoying this, even though it’s a little uncomfortable to him, personally.
It takes her a few moments to stop.
He looks at her, surprised, and she stares back with a strange kind of intensity which he doesn’t know the source of.
“Do you want this?” She asks. She’s looking at his eyes, blue pools of dark and naive certainty, mirrors for his own face, then at his unbuttoned shirt, unaroused body underneath.
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly.
“Tell me the truth.”
He considers this; tries again. “I don't really care about this, so I’m not sure.”
Nori gives him another long look before nodding and scrambling off him and to the other end of the sofa. He follows, ending up sitting in the position they started off in, sitting on the opposite ends, with their mugs on the coffee table beside them. The tea must be too strong and lukewarm by now.
She seems - angry, disappointed, hurt, everything that she must’ve seen in his own face months ago, after their first half-hearted fight, even though this isn’t a fight. He thinks about the huge room and the empty notes on the piano bigger than the girl he thought he didn’t know. Is this a fight? Katsuhira doesn’t know what to do.
“What’s wrong?”
“I knew this.” She shakes her head. “I was aware of your reactions. I was just too selfish to confront you.”
“About what?”
“You are not returning my feelings.”
“I love you,” he says immediately, a fact that he knows without stopping to think.
“I know,” she confirms. “But you do not want me.”
Katsuhira isn’t sure what to say to that. Any reassurance would be a lie.
“Should we put an end to being ‘a thing’?” she asks.
It sounds strange, clinical but clumsy, dissonant, like she’s giving him a formal document to fill out with crayons. She switches so quickly between slang and professional tone, and this is so like her. He loves her, all the silly details about her, the way she talks, laughs, eats, how she twists her fingers when unhooking her choker and always puts exactly one sugar cube in her drink. How she feels so strongly about so many things, dwelves on them longer than anyone would, even though it so rarely shows.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he tries again, “I want to be with you, always.” He raises his hand to touch her cheek, but then she flinches and he realizes that maybe he shouldn’t; lets it fall back to his lap.
“But you would not be sad if we stopped doing this.” The same tone, cold and detached even when she isn’t, and Katsuhira doesn’t answer.
She gets up and he feels helpless. Her eyes are glossy, wet, threatening to spill over at any moment. “I would like some time to gather my thoughts, if that is okay with you.”
Go after her , he can almost hear Tenga’s voice in his head, but he does nothing as she walks over to the door, puts her shoes on and buttons up her raincoat, unlocks and pushes the door quietly behind herself.
Just before the second click of the lock, he hears a sob.
[5:14] Kacchon
[5:15] Hey, Kacchon
[5:19] I heard her leave
[5:37] Is everything okay?
[6:01] we just broke up. i think
[6:02] ??????
[6:33] Bro
[6:35] Chidori told me
[6:42] I asked Nori what.you did but she says its fine
[6:43] I dont gotta pound you after all LOL
Hisomu shows up sometime in the middle of the night; moves quietly around the apartment as to not wake him, as always on his tiptoes. It never fails to freak Chidori and some of the rest of their friend group out, his soundless movements, showing up without warning. Katsuhira doesn’t always notice him, but never jumps or jolts in surprise when he eventually does.
He can hear him rummaging in the kitchen, and he gets up from the sofa where he stayed lying, not having slept. He walks on his tiptoes as well, even though there’s no one to wake or be careful around.
Hisomu is standing there, holding something in his hand, and he nods cheerfully at Katsuhira when he notices him approaching. When he gets close enough he identifies that something as several ice cubes in a small pile, dripping onto the floor through Hisomu’s fingers.
“Hiya!”
“Heya.” Katsuhira gives him a small smile. Outside, there’s a thunder. “What is that?”
“I’m trying out less destructive ways to feel pain,” Hisomu tells him proudly. “This is nice. Like burning, even though it’s cold. Doesn’t really work, though. Not even close to getting punched in the face out of the blue, or knocked off my feet by a careless driver or something, but it’s something.”
“I see. That’s good,” Katsuhira adds, “that you’re healthy,” which makes Hisomu smile at him, eyebrows raised.
“You care about my health?”
“Yes.” Of course .
“I heard what happened,” Hisomu says then, and there’s no way he can think of to respond to that, other than look. He doesn’t know what their friends said, since even he himself doesn’t know what happened - but that’s a lie, because he does, even despite there being far too many shades of love and like and closeness for any of this to be simple, easy.
Hisomu takes one of the ice cubes and pops it between his lips, rolls it over in his mouth before he swallows. “Want one?”
He’s not trying to talk it through, and a part of Katsuhira is grateful, because he still doesn’t know if whatever he’d say would be true, all of his claims irrevocable when out in the open, and he doesn’t want to lie. He’d rather be silent until he understands. He takes an ice cube out of Hisomu’s cupped palm and puts it into his mouth, feels it cold against his tongue.
“Really is nice,” he says then, his letters mumbled out in between the still melting cube.
“Told you.”
He nods, lets Hisomu put another one in his mouth, then his own; then, hands empty, he picks up the still half-full plastic pack and holds Katsuhira’s hand in his free one, starts pulling him towards the living room. It’s wet and cold.
Katsuhira lets himself be sat back down on the white couch and leans against his friend’s shoulder as he opens the pack again. Hisomu drags the remaining ice along his own arms, collarbones, the bare part of his thigh exposed through ripped skinny jeans, and it’s soothing, even if not even touching his own skin.
Gradually, their breathing becomes even and steady, but Katsuhira doesn’t think either of the two of them dozes off until morning.
Time crawls slowly through the window, brings light into the apartment several hours later, and leaves them like this, awaiting the dawn awake. The room is light gray and the rain has stopped, though the forecast and the season both warn that there’ll be more of it later in the day.
“Getting through school today is gonna be hell,” Hisomu says as they sit upwards, squeezes his shoulder one more time.
Katsuhira blinks slowly, shakes his head. It hurts, behind his eyes, his forehead throbbing. He feels so awake but so strangely washed out, emptied, like a squeezed sponge. Like he cried a lot, even though he didn’t, not at all.
Hisomu chuckles at him, says: “You have sleep lines on your cheek.”