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Maybe he didn’t think about him. Maybe he never expected his arrival. Maybe he just wanted him to stand outside all by himself waiting for the wind to eventually topple him over.
No, actually. He watched from the hospital room window; it was probably hot as hell out there. But nothing was melting. He couldn’t physically feel the intense heat, he didn’t feel the sunlight burning into his skin, he didn’t know how it felt like to be standing on the deforming road.
His eyes trailed down the street as he thought about it. There were all kinds of people down there, there were people waiting for their nieces to be born, waiting for their new brothers and sisters. Listening to the good news about their mothers, perhaps.
Maybe he didn’t expect his arrival. But he was right there.
Standing among the visitors, the nurses, the doctors, standing between the frames of the door.
“Kou?”
He could barely stop his own hands from shaking— and he meant it literally. His hands went numb and started vibrating. It seemed like the world lit up, the sores disappeared, all his problems had an answer, with Kou’s presence, just standing a few meters away from the hospital bed which he’d might as well consider his home.
Mitsuba had sort of been camping here since… then. Wait, he didn’t really remember. If his hand wasn’t numb, he would run it through his pink bangs, all the way up his scalp— his hair had already been grown so long since he was first admitted.
Admission. Just when did he come here?
What happened to his memory? He was doing well remembering what road was. What heat was. Who Kou was.
Kou… Kou was his friend. Best friend, best classmate, best seat-buddy, and maybe who he would consider his best love. First love?
Just that— Kou never knew, never found out, never completed his heart hands, unrequited love. Or maybe he did. But their ends never met.
By “their ends never met”, Mitsuba sort of meant that they were probably never supposed to meet. He didn’t remember how he got into the hospital, or why Kou had a lunchbox drooping on his shoulder, sweat cascading down his neck, his exorcist’s sword-fighting-thing behind him— or why he had a roundup of about three roses crumpled in his hand.
What he had remembered were the troubles that Kou had to be brought through because of him. A vague memory of him fighting evil occurred at the back of his mind. Shadows. Myths. Supernaturals. Mitsuba always getting into some form of trouble, Kou always managing to save him. Weird, it always seemed like it was some kind of hero-villain trope. Just… Mitsuba was not the hero, nor the villain. He was the damsel in distress.
And it was this subtle thought that had led him to trust Kou with his life— though he didn’t believe that Kou would trust his with him. He believed they shouldn’t have met. So he wouldn’t have hurt him. So he didn’t have to be hurt because of him.
“Are you okay?” Kou stabled himself with the doorframe. It was one of the few times he’d run out of breath— running up the stairs must’ve been really tricky for him, huh?
And it was strange to hear someone ask whether he was okay instead of the typical “Mitsuba?” just like how he went “Kou?”
His arm. Right. It was still… well, numb. Immobile. Frozen. “Uh, no.” And he wasn’t in the mood to say he was alright, either. “What are you here for?”
It probably sounded a bit rude; it wasn’t really how he’d wanted it to come off. He was about to correct himself— he just didn’t know how. Especially so when Kou approached the hospital bed after hanging his sword-fighting-thing on a rack. Well, it wasn’t really a rack, was it? It was half broken and the bottom half of it was falling off.
He shook his head lightly as he placed his things around the room— whose room was this? Mitsuba’s, right? Why was he placing his things in Mitsuba’s room?
Mitsuba didn’t quite want to find out what kind of war Kou brought himself through to save Mitsuba which granted him the rights to Mitsuba’s hospital room. “What are you doing?”
Kou was surprisingly very patient with Mitsuba’s questioning. Maybe this happened for a while. Maybe it happened yesterday. But he didn’t remember yesterday. Or the day before.
“Kou?” It felt like he was talking to a wall.
The blue eyes that turned to him were rather soft. So soft that Mitsuba forgot how it used to feel when he stared into those eyes. He didn’t think he should fantasise too much about Kou’s eyes, but goddammit, they were beautiful. As if he’d swallowed the ocean with his eyes, and there were a million glowing fish swimming in his irises; or maybe he’d swallowed the sky, where it was cloudless and sunny, and not hot as hell, instead, it birthed some sort of chilliness.
They were so mesmerising.
Maybe too mesmerising. He’d completely missed what he’d said.
A hand waved in front of his face. “Mitsuba? Earth to Mitsuba?” As his vision cleared, he saw the neat eyebrows which rode above those blue eyes arching and relaxing. “ You asked me what I was doing. I was telling you. Has your soul left your body?”
He could see pink strands lightly swinging across his eyes when he shook his head. “Please repeat, sorry.”
A sigh from Kou signalled Mitsuba to a realisation. He’d, unfortunately, disappointed Kou. And it hadn’t been fifteen minutes since he entered.
“Kou—”
He paused himself when he felt warm contact on the back of his head. Kou threaded fingers in his hair, he could clearly see the words ‘ wow your hair is so long now ’ scribbled across his forehead. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Kou, I thought you never liked me. You never knew how much I liked you.” To be honest, Mitsuba didn’t expect his thoughts to be spoken in a whisper, but he continued. “You have completely hidden yourself from my feelings. I thought you rejected me. Stop leading me on, I’m sick of—”
His lips to his forehead. He felt it. It happened. For sure. He had to pinch himself in the thigh to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. And he wasn’t. Kou , his first love, his best friend, his first visitor of the day, he kissed Mitsuba’s forehead .
Luckily for him, Mitsuba didn’t scream on top of his lungs nor launched himself into space.
Kou’s voice was soft; it could drift him to sleep. “I’m not leading you on, Mitsuba. Neither am I hidden from your feelings. Have you forgotten already…” he trailed off.
Yes, Mitsuba had forgotten already. No, Mitsuba didn’t remember, and neither was he remembering anything at all.
“I—” his other hand flew up to cover his rosy cheek— “already told you I liked you…”
It was a whisper. If Mitsuba was any more deaf, he wouldn’t have heard it. But look , it was Kou , his first love, his best friend, his first visitor of the day, he said he liked him. He liked Mitsuba .
Was this real? Mitsuba wanted to question when exactly did this very event he was speaking of happen?
“I don’t remember.” There were a million more ways to be less blunt, Mitsuba believed, but he already said it.
Kou and his arched eyebrows stared at him again. “Really?”
Mitsuba blinked twice. Did he seem like he was joking? His mind was blank. He was about to prompt Kou into exploring his mind to prove it was blank.
Kou hummed as he dug his brain for memory. “You fell down the stairs, Mitsuba. And you hit your head.”
“ And I lost my memories? And potentially my arm?” What was this? A teenage love story? A horror movie? Great Mother Earth, why did it have to happen to him, specifically?
Kou literally resembled the frowning emoji. “Yeah, it was somewhere in school. Maybe your elbow hit the floor, but you’d hit your forehead.”
“Was that why you kissed it?” Mitsuba was getting answers now. Look at him go.
Pink rose to his cheeks, he looked away. Why was he always reacting like this? “No…?” It came off more like a question.
Mitsuba was, undoubtedly, a little confused.
When Kou turned back to him with a small smile, it allegedly cut through Mitsuba’s heart— metaphorically. He didn’t die. He was just “ slightly attacked ” by Kou’s smile. A smile that pressed his cheeks against the bottom of his eyes, which made his eyes squeeze into thin curved lines— Were his eyelashes always like this? It looked like he groomed it.
“I’m kidding!”
Mitsuba couldn’t help but let out a smile. “I knew it.” He liked watching Kou happily leap around on the spot like a little kid. All he did was convince Mitsuba he fell off some stairs. What a kid.
“I was actually, well, fighting a supernatural.” He scratched his head. Yeah, Mitsuba knew it. “It got inside your head—” to emphasise that, Kou pointed to his temple— “and removed some of your memories.”
Surprisingly, he knew a lot. Emphasis on surprisingly.
“And I guess it took away a few days or months.”
“How did you know?”
“I confessed to you last week.”
“You did?” Wait, Kou… he confessed? Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way round? It was supposed to be Mitsuba who held the flowers, who held Kou’s hands and told him how much he meant to him, how important he was to him. Hold on, Kou liked him? That was so hard to digest.
Kou stuttered while mumbling yes. “And I also… screamed ‘ because I like you ’— I mean, expressed my fondness when you asked why I wanted to save you.”
Kou … He didn’t have the energy to even say his name. His mind was running, his heart was racing.
“Mitsuba.” His tone suddenly turned so serious, it scared him a bit. “I like you. And I will always, in every lifetime we meet, save you. I will save you and keep you by my side— because I like you.”
Was this real? A lukewarm tear streamed down his cheek. He didn’t remember the last time he cried. Hopefully he did the first time Kou confessed.
If it was always this serious, he’d take it.
Mitsuba tilted his head and tried to drop his tears off his face. He hoped to smile so brightly at the confession that he would be able to hide the teary eyes. He knew why Kou kissed his forehead now. He knew why he brought three crumpled roses. He knew why he was here. He knew why they were facing each other right now. And he knew why he was in the hospital, why Kou saved him.
“Well, then… I hope in all the times you confessed… I would—” He could barely speak, or swallow the boulder in his throat. He’d never said this kind of thing before. And adding fuel to the fire, he was sobbing.
And Kou was, too.
He could only hope Kou could hear him murmur:
“I hope I’d said ‘ me, too ’ to all of them.”