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It’s been a bad day from the start.
Yuuto was already running late for practice after the alarm they thought they set the night before never went off, and while they were calling the team captain and frantically apologizing for being late, they accidentally burned their eggs in the frying pan. In the end, they ended up skipping breakfast - something that would definitely garner them another lecture from the team captain if he found out - and, after taking ten minutes to find their misplaced car keys, Yuuto was finally off on what was their worst morning in a long time.
In hindsight, it was no wonder they’d been way too distracted, caught up in their thoughts of I wouldn’t get kicked off the team for this, would I? and oh no I’m absolutely going to get kicked off the team for this, and that their subsequent mental spiral had resulted in them being abruptly jolted back to the present by the loud scraping of metal on metal, followed by the car veering sideways from the force of the collision.
The impact jars Yuuto’s hands through the steering wheel like lightning, and their first thought is well, I’m definitely going to get kicked off the team now when Captain hears I hit someone with my car.
Then reality sets in and Yuuto slams down on the brakes before throwing the car into park, hurriedly clicking off their seatbelt and pushing the door open as fast as their shaking fingers will allow. The air is crystal clear with no clouds in sight, the perfect weather for bike riding, and Yuuto desperately wishes they were enjoying it at the race track right now instead of worrying they’re going to find a dead body outside their car and possibly be the first nationally ranked cyclist to get arrested for vehicular manslaughter.
“Hello?” they call out, rushing to the front of their car and nearly slipping on the smooth asphalt. “I’m so sorry, are you okay…”
Their voice trails off, lost somewhere between their throat and heart, and it takes Yuuto what feels like several days to find it again.
“...Manami-san?”
It may have been five years since Yuuto’s last seen their former senpai, but there’s no mistaking that tuft of blue hair, nor the sheepish grin that spreads over Manami’s face - the exact one he used to sport whenever Yuuto caught him skipping class to take a nap outside. “Ohhh, hi Yuuto-kun!” Manami says cheerfully, as if they’d just reunited at a housewarming party rather than the aftermath of a car accident. He tries to sit up, and his grin falters slightly as he winces and falls back down. “Owie, that hurts. Guess I really should’ve listened to Iinchou whenever she told me to watch where I was going, huh...”
Yuuto splutters incoherently, the unexpected appearance of Manami having completely fried their remaining brain cells. “Wha - you can’t just show up out of nowhere and ‘ohhh, hi Yuuto-kun!’ me! Where the hell have you been? Why do you never answer anyone’s calls or texts? When -” Their gaze snags on Manami’s ripped T-shirt and bloodied shorts, and they freeze. “Shit. You’re injured and I’m yelling at you. Um, let me just call an ambulance and I’ll -”
“No.”
Yuuto’s hand stops mid-motion, hovering over the pocket where their cell phone is. “No what?”
“...Don’t call an ambulance.”
Yuuto gapes at him. “Are you serious? Manami-san, this isn’t the time for joking around. You’re clearly badly injured and need to get checked by a doctor. I’m not a medical professional, and even if you’re not feeling too badly right now, some of those injuries could be really serious!”
“Yuuto-kun.” Manami wets his lips, one hand twisted into the front of his shirt. “Please. I don’t want to go to the hospital.”
Their next rebuke dies in Yuuto’s mouth. Has Manami ever said ‘please’ to them in his life? Actually, has Manami ever said it to anyone? Or have Yuuto’s memories of him become so faded that the sepia version of the Manami he thought he remembered from high school is nothing like the one before him now, bloody and smiling in a way that wrenches at Yuuto’s heart with how utterly out of place it is? It’s more than a little unnerving. Whenever Yuuto dared to hope and pictured their eventual reunion, they imagined themselves demanding a thorough explanation for Manami’s disappearance, refusing to budge until they got the answers they wanted - answers that they and the whole Hakogaku cycling team deserved - and clinging onto Manami tightly before he could vanish from their grasp again.
This is nowhere near the situation they imagined, but Yuuto will take it. They’d take anything if it means the slightest chance of wrangling some sort of explanation out of Manami before he disappears again.
Yuuto sends a mental apology to their cycling captain, and drops their hand. “Fine. I won’t call an ambulance. But in exchange, you have to let me treat your wounds as best as I can. I only know basic first aid, but it wouldn’t be right if I just left you here.”
Manami’s smile doesn’t change, but Yuuto can sense the relief emanating from him. “Okay.”
“You are so lucky that I didn’t end up hitting you that hard,” Yuuto mutters under their breath as they head back to the front of the car and reach below the passenger to grab their emergency first-aid kit. When they straighten and return to Manami’s side, they find Manami successfully sitting up, albeit hunched over in pain, and attempting to drag his mangled bike out from beneath the tires of Yuuto’s car.
Yuuto’s face heats in shame. Until then, it hadn’t yet sunk in that Manami had been riding a bike when they hit him, even though the helmet on his head should have been a dead giveaway. Hitting a cyclist? As a cyclist themselves, there’s no worse crime. Maybe it’s a good thing they’re likely going to miss the whole race today, because at the rate their luck today is turning out, Yuuto will end up driving into a wall or flipping into a river before ever arriving at the circuit.
Before their negative thoughts can descend to an even darker place, Yuuto drops to their knees in front of Manami. “Hey, forget about the bike for now. You’re going to make your injuries worse. We’ll rescue your bike later.”
A strangely uncertain look flashes across Manami’s face, so quick Yuuto nearly misses it, but Manami blinks once and it’s gone, replaced with his usual blithe expression. “If you say so. I’ll be in your care, Doctor Yuuto-kun!”
“I already said I’m not a doctor.” Yuuto scans Manami’s body. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be anything broken or sprained, and to Yuuto’s untrained eye, most of his injuries appear superficial. Whatever they can’t treat now, time should be able to heal. “Where do you want me to start?”
The corner of Manami’s mouth quirks up. “You’re the doctor here. Shouldn’t you be the one to tell me that?”
“I just said I’m not a doctor!” Yuuto snaps. “I only know enough to make sure you don’t bleed out in the middle of the road! Just tell me where it hurts the most!”
“Yes, Doctor Yuuto-kun,” Manami says in a sing-song voice that instantly fills Yuuto with the desire to strangle him. They swallow the urge, because they’re pretty sure ‘he was being annoying’ isn’t a good enough excuse to strangle someone whom one already hit with a car, and take a moment to blow out a long, exasperated breath before flipping open the top of the first-aid kit.
Manami’s clothing rustles as he adjusts his position on the asphalt. “My left side took most of the impact when I fell off my bike and hit the road,” he says, finally a tad more serious as Yuuto rifles through the kit. “It’s sore, but apart from the cuts I got from my arm and leg scraping against the ground, it’s fine. It doesn’t feel like anything is broken.”
“Be thankful for that, or I would’ve insisted you go to the hospital,” Yuuto mutters. “I’m nowhere near qualified to deal with broken limbs.”
At the bottom of the kit, Yuuto finds the clean cloth they were searching for and tugs it out from underneath the other supplies. After uncapping their water bottle and pouring a bit of water over the cloth, they instinctively reach out for Manami’s leg, then pause. The action was impulsive, borne from the months they spent as teammates and friends slowly dissolving the formal boundaries between them, but they’re not that close anymore.
On their worst nights, the ones where Yuuto can’t control the path their thoughts take and almost drowns under their weight of their past mistakes and surging insecurities, they wonder if they were ever as close as they’d believed they were.
Yuuto swallows. “May I?”
Manami meets their gaze. A charged tension settles between them, crackling with something Yuuto doesn’t dare to name, and their breath leaves them as if stolen by the force of Manami’s presence. Without a word, Manami extends his leg and stretches it out, laying it over Yuuto’s lap.
Yuuto breathes out, balling the cloth in one hand, and wills themselves to calm their fluttering nerves. “Okay. I’ll clean your cuts first and check to make sure none of them are too serious for me to deal with, and then see if we need to treat them later.”
Manami nods.
Tucking a strand of hair behind their ear, Yuuto gently presses the cloth to the largest of Manami’s wounds, a jagged red line on the side of his left knee. They half expect Manami to vanish when they touch him, like a phantom in a fairy tale, but Manami remains solid, silent under their fingers as Yuuto holds the cloth there until the bleeding stops, then wipes away the lingering trails of red running down his skin.
“Yuuto-kun,” Manami says finally, after they’ve cleaned a half-dozen cuts in similar fashion with the suspended silence hanging over them. “I’m not made of glass. I won’t break if you handle me too roughly.”
Yuuto grabs their water bottle and dumps the rest of its contents over the cloth, tossing the bottle aside once it’s empty and wringing the cloth dry. There’s still a few spots of red left on the white fabric, but they simply pray it’ll come out in the wash and tuck it back into the first-aid kit. They rummage through the rest of the kit and pull out a pair of tweezers.
They don’t look at Manami.
“You say that now, Manami-san, but isn't that what happened before?"
“...Eh?”
"You left Hakone Gakuen without a single word, let alone any sort of goodbye." Yuuto hopes Manami can't feel their fingers shaking when they touch the tweezers to Manami's skin. The cold metal makes Manami flinch. "You didn't even stay for the whole graduation ceremony. We tried to find you after the lunch intermission, but you were - gone. Like you'd vanished into thin air. When we called your home, your mother wouldn't tell us where you were. What were we supposed to think?"
"Yuuto-kun -"
"I didn't know - no, I still don't know." Their voice cracks embarrassingly, and Yuuto knows they're rambling, but it's like the dam they've been keeping tightly closed has shattered, and like hell they're going to shut it again when Manami is here and real and finally listening to them unleash the storm of feelings they’ve been bottling up for five long years. "I don't know if you left because you were hurt and we couldn't help you. Or if we hurt you and you couldn't face us. Or - shit, I don't know, maybe something happened and you tried to tell us but we pushed you away. What other reason could there be for you to cut off all ties with us when you left to go wherever? Did we do something so horrible that you couldn’t even let us know that you were alive? For all I knew you were scared, or injured, or dead, and I didn’t know! I wouldn’t have been able to help you if you needed me!”
Spoken aloud, their fears sound kind of stupid, especially with a mostly healthy and safe Manami right in front of him, but Yuuto doesn’t care. They need Manami to understand how his disappearance wrecked his team like a loose string pulled until the entire doll came unravelled. That Manami, for all that everyone complained about his flighty personality and inability to pay attention to anything that wasn’t related to cycling, was still the heart of their team. That he left behind unresolved questions and painful memories and fractured regrets that drifted unbidden in Yuuto’s mind from time to time, wondering if they could have stopped Manami from leaving that day. If they could have saved him. If they even had the right to try.
Yuuto angrily pushes at the tears they can feel beading in their eyes, because they absolutely refuse to cry in front of Manami, and concentrates on picking out the tiny gravel bits embedded in the cuts littered over Manami’s skin.
“Yuuto-kun.” For the first time since their conversation started, Manami’s voice is quiet, uncertain. “I don’t think I have the answers you’re looking for, and even if I did, it’s probably too late for them to mean anything. But if it’s okay with you...I’ll try to explain while you heal me. You don’t - you can keep working on what you’re doing. You don’t have to look at me if you don’t want to.”
Yuuto’s first impulse is to reassure Manami that it’s okay, that they don’t want to do anything that’ll worsen the kicked puppy look that’s no doubt on Manami’s face now, but truthfully he’s right that they really don’t want to have to face Manami right now. So they offer a jerky nod, squeeze their eyes shut for a second, then open them and wait for the blurring to ease before putting the tweezers back to Manami’s leg.
Manami’s leg shifts as he leans back, arms extended and hands braced against the hot pavement. “I wasn’t planning on leaving without telling anyone. Actually, I initially wasn’t planning on leaving at all. I loved cycling at Hakogaku, I loved our team, and I loved competing in the Interhigh with everyone. It might’ve been troublesome sometimes, and it was a bit annoying that Doubashi was always yelling at me for skipping class, but I was happy. I didn’t want anything to change.”
“But, of course, all things change whether we want them to or not, right? Time moved forward. We had to fill out our career forms in class, and all my classmates knew what they wanted to do and where they wanted to go, but I didn’t. I just wanted to cycle, and I couldn’t even write that down because -” Manami hesitates briefly, before forging on - “because my doctor said it’d eventually kill me.”
Yuuto’s hand stutters to a stop. They know a little about Manami’s past from tidbits dropped by his teammates and hints given to him by Manami himself, and had once overheard their senpais discussing how to adapt their more rigorous training schedules in a way that wouldn’t endanger Manami’s health, but the picture they’d pieced together back then didn’t have the abrupt severity that drops a loaded weight in their gut when they hear Manami casually mention, in a starkly blank voice, that continued cycling will eventually kill him.
Please. I don’t want to go to the hospital. How bad did a person’s experience with hospitals have to be for them to get hit by a car ,and still choose not to go? To judge those two options, and decide the risk was worth more than the possibility of reliving the trauma?
Manami lets out a hollow laugh. “Cycling was my life, but soon I couldn’t even do that anymore. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t even remember what I ended up putting on my career form - probably the first random jobs that came to mind. My mom tried to stop me from going to club practice, and I ignored her, but every time I got on my bike, it felt like I was riding with a ticking time bomb above my head. Like something bad would happen if I didn’t keep pedalling. So I kept going, and I kept cycling, but eventually...it was too much. I was keeping myself alive, but I was - so tired. I didn’t have the energy to move anymore. So I stopped. I don’t know if you noticed, but that was -”
“In mid-March,” Yuuto supplies. “Five weeks before the graduation ceremony. You started skipping all our club practices and riding the bus with Miyahara to school.”
Even without looking up, they can feel Manami’s surprise at their words. Either they didn’t expect Yuuto to speak, or thought they didn’t care enough to notice when one of the team’s most important members quit riding his bike. Sighing, Yuuto clicks their tongue. “Come on. I know I was a brat most of the time, but I still knew my teammates. Do you know how often Doubashi-san sent me to drag your ass out of the mountains so Hakogaku’s famous wayward climber wouldn’t get kicked off the team for skipping too many classes? I know better than anyone that cycling is more than just something you enjoy for the fun of it. It’s a part of you that you can’t live without. Of course I noticed when you suddenly stopped.”
Yuuto fiddles with the tweezers. Looking back on it, that should have been the first sign that something was seriously wrong with Manami. But they’d dismissed it as just another one of Manami’s weird moods, and since the rest of the club hadn’t seemed worried about him, Yuuto had set their private concerns aside. Maybe -
“You’re thinking that maybe you could have helped me back when you first noticed, aren’t you?” asks Manami, and it’s Yuuto’s turn to be surprised. They raise their head, finally meeting Manami’s gaze again and blinking at the gentle amusement they see in Manami’s blue eyes. “That’s admirable, Yuuto-kun, but you don’t have to worry about it. I wasn’t opening up to anyone at the time. Miyahara knew I was only pretending to act like my usual self, but no matter how much she pestered me I wouldn’t say anything. She was busy studying for her university entrance exams - I didn’t want to bother her with my own problems.”
Yuuto plucks out a splinter from one of Manami’s cuts, observing Manami’s minute wince, and wonders how it is that Manami doesn’t realize how loved he is. How Miyahara, and his other friends, and Yuuto especially, would drop everything in a heartbeat if Manami asked, would move the earth if that was what Manami wished for.
“I wasn’t talking to anyone. I powered through it as much as I could by myself, but by the end I barely had enough motivation to attend enough classes to make sure I graduated. Once I stopped cycling, starting it up again seemed like an insurmountable task. I wanted to do it, I knew it was the only thing that could possibly make me happy again, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Not when it was causing not only me, but the people around me, pain. So I sold my bike at the local bike shop, saved what money I could, and I...I did want to talk to guys, one last time, before the graduation ceremony finished, but…” Manami trails off.
From everything they’ve heard Manami say so far, it’s not difficult for Yuuto to deduce the rest. “You didn’t know what to say to us.”
A snort that’s suspiciously close to a sob escapes Manami. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Heck, I don’t even know what I’m saying to you now. But I guess, looking back on everything...I was probably afraid. That you guys would somehow figure out that I was leaving and stop me. And that was the last thing I wanted. I was suffocating there, and I knew I couldn’t stay near Hakogaku, or even in Kanagawa. I had to go, even if it meant I might not see any of you guys again.”
Yuuto yanks out another splinter from Manami, ignoring his subsequent high-pitched yelp, and lets it fall to the ground. There’s a million thoughts racing through their head, ranging from sympathy to grudging understanding to idiot, you’re a complete idiot, Manami-san!, but they only say, as calmly as they can when there’s still molten gold adrenaline thrumming in their veins, “So where did you go?”
Manami hums an absentminded note. “As much as I’d like to tell you, it looks like we’re out of time.”
“Huh?”
“The condition was that I’d talk while you fixed me up, right?” says Manami. “But it looks like you’re done now."
Yuuto looks down at their hands, which had automatically begun packing the tweezers back into the first-aid kit after pulling the last pieces of debris from Manami’s cuts. A cold spike of panic grips their heart and Yuuto scrambles to sit up, a protest forming in their mouth, but before they can speak Manami exhales loudly and stands up.
“Ahhh, that was cathartic! I haven’t talked that much about anything in years, let alone stuff about myself.” Manami stretches his arms out. “I feel much better. Physically, too - thanks, Yuuto-kun! You might not be a medical professional, but you definitely helped me out here!”
Yuuto stares at him, struck speechless in the face of Manami's sincerity. They've always known Manami is kind, and that he's not the type of person to lie about things like that, but they've forgotten how badly affected they are by Manami's brightness, how it draws them in like a black hole to a star. When they finally manage to unstick their jaw long enough to speak, all they can think to say is, “I wasn’t aware you know the word ‘cathartic.’”
“Rude, Yuuto-kun!” Manami sticks out his tongue, and it’s simultaneously so jarring with the heavy atmosphere and yet so oddly reminiscent of the old Manami from high school that Yuuto can’t help the short laugh that bursts out from them.
Cheeks pink, they clear their throat hurriedly and close the lid of the first-aid kit. “You’re welcome, Manami-san. I don’t have any ointment here, so you should get some at home -” the thought that Manami might be homeless floats through their mind - “or somewhere else. Buy it at the pharmacy if you can't find any. If you really can’t get any, petroleum jelly should work fine too. Make sure you spread it over all your cuts, then cover the worst ones with gauze. I know you don’t want to go to the hospital, but if you see any of your wounds getting infected, I’m telling you now to go. You don’t want to wait until it gets worse. Likewise, I know you’re wearing a helmet but if you experience any symptoms of a concussion, then you better get yourself to a hospital or I’ll -”
“Yuuto-kun,” Manami interrupts, “I get it. I’ll be fine.”
Yuuto snaps their mouth shut. “Right. Yeah. Okay.” They clear their throat again and awkwardly stumble to their feet, clutching the first-aid kit to their chest like a lifeline. “In that case, I guess we’re done - oh shit, your bike. I almost forgot about that. Um...I know a good repair shop near here. I can take your bike and get it fixed after the - oh fuck.”
“I’ve never heard you swear so much at one time,” says Manami, curious. “Did you turn to the delinquent lifestyle while I was gone?”
“I’m serious, Manami-san! I was already late for the race and now I’m...” Yuuto fishes their phone from their pocket, their face paling when they see the numerous missed calls and texts from their captain teammates. “I am so dead. I missed the entire morning race and the next one starts in an hour and a half. I am so dead, I’m going to get kicked off the team -”
“...Where’s the race being held?”
“Hm?” Yuuto looks up. “In Yamanashi.”
“That’s not too far! We can make it - we’ll just drive super fast!”
“That’s impossible! There’s not enough time, and…” Yuuto’s brain grinds to a halt. “Wait. We?”
“Well, yeah. I’m coming with you,” Manami says in a tone that suggests it should have been obvious when it very much was not to Yuuto.
“Why?”
Manami cocks his head to one side. “There’s three reasons, I think? First, you have my bike,” he says, ticking off his fingers. “It’s my only mode of transportation and we’re currently in the middle of nowhere, so my only option is to hitch a ride with you. Second, I haven’t seen a bike race in ages! I want to check it out and see how much you’ve improved since I last saw you ride.”
Yuuto rolls their eyes, but internally they’re a little fired up at the prospect of showing off their new skills to their old senpai. There’s no way they’re letting Manami know that, though. “And what’s the third reason?”
Manami grins, but when he speaks, that slightly uncertain edge from earlier is back. “I’ve still got the rest of my story to tell you, don’t I? If I don’t stick around you, how else will you learn it?”
Yuuto stills. Manami’s face is open, trusting, but it’s a little too carefully plastered for Yuuto’s liking. They chew on their bottom lip, deliberating, before saying, “You don’t have to tell me the rest if you don’t want to. It’s your personal business. I just wanted to know why you ran away from us, and...honestly, I’m still trying to process everything you said, but I get that you went through a lot. And I know you said I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to change what happened, but still - for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Manami blinks, clearly taken aback. “Yuuto-kun, you don’t have anything to apologize for! I’m the one who should be saying sorry for the mistakes I made. I shouldn’t have cut you all off like that.”
“Well, yes, but you said it was the only way,” argues Yuuto. “That you couldn’t stay in Kanagawa!”
“...Yuuto-kun, do you realize you’re defending the very things you were yelling at me for earlier? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
“I don’t know!” They yank at their own hair in frustration. “Sure, I blamed you all this time for leaving so suddenly and hurting everyone - hurting me - but I never hated you. You act like an idiot sometimes, but you would never hurt us if you didn’t have a good reason. I know that - I always knew that! But I was scared, too! When you left, I thought it meant you didn’t trust us. That we didn’t mean as much to you as you did to the team. I’m still scared that I’ll wake up and find out this was all a dream, and you’ll vanish in front of my eyes again.” Yuuto’s voice trembles, drops like a stone off a cliff. “And I don’t - I can’t go through that again. I want you to trust me - that if you need to leave, you’ll tell me, and I’ll let you go. That’s what I wanted you to do back then, and it’s what I still want now.”
Yuuto drags a hand down their face and whispers, “I just want you to be happy. That’s all.”
There’s a long moment of silence, broken only by the faint whistling of the wind. Slowly, Yuuto lowers their hand, curiosity overcoming their embarrassment over their tirade, and peeks out at Manami, who’s frozen and looking back at Yuuto with wide eyes. Yuuto doesn’t move, caught in the strange spell of the moment, until Manami finally breathes out, tilting his head toward the sky, and says something too softly for Yuuto to catch.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s nothing.” He smiles. “Those were your true feelings, right, Yuuto? Thank you for telling them to me. I’m grateful.”
Yuuto’s face flushes red. “It’s nothing,” they mutter. “Just make sure you don’t disappear anymore. And contact the rest of our old team - they’ll kill us both if they find out I met you and didn’t tell them. And -”
“Yes, yes,” Manami says, waving his hand in a way that Yuuto know means I’m not really listening to you but I’ll acknowledge you so you think I am, and they’re about to start yelling at him again when Manami says abruptly, “We should get going to your race.”
The abrupt change of subject knocks Yuuto off-guard. “Huh? There’s no point. I already said we won’t make it in time.”
“You can’t say that for sure unless we try,” Manami says easily, bending down to pull his bike out from under Yuuto’s car tires. Yuuto is too bewildered to reprimand him for potentially exacerbating his injuries. “It’s better to try and fail than to regret something you never tried, right?”
“I suppose,” Yuuto admits reluctantly, “but -”
“And like I said, I still have the rest of my story to tell you,” says Manami. “It’s not the best story, and it doesn’t even have an ending yet, but if you’ll let me, I’d like to share it with you anyway.”
Yuuto’s breath feels like it’s been punched out of their chest. “Are you sure?”
“Yep!” Manami turns his smile on them, and it’s like being showered with a thousand dazzling lights. “Because I do trust you. I guess it wasn’t obvious back then, and I’m sorry for that, so now I’m making sure you know.”
“I - I see.” Yuuto coughs and turns away to hide their flaming cheeks, but they know Manami spotted the unrestrained, joyful grin across their face. They can’t say they mind that, either. “Thank you, Manami.”
They wonder if Manami really understands what they’re thanking him for.
“Ah!” Manami yells, and at Yuuto’s inquiring raised eyebrow, he gestures at Yuuto’s car and shouts, “Your race!”
Yuuto blinks.
Then they swear, running to kick open the trunk of their car and tossing the first-aid kit inside. They can’t believe they spent so much time worrying over being late that they accidentally struck Manami with their car, only to get so caught up in treating his injuries and reflecting on past hurts that they kept forgetting why they were running so late in the first place. “If I drive all the way to Yamanashi only to miss the race, or I get arrested for speeding,” they yell over their shoulder, “you owe me dinner!”
“Okay,” Manami chirps. “It’s a date.”
Yuuto’s knees give out and they nearly trip over nothing. “That’s not what I said!” they splutter out as Manami carefully places his bike in their trunk. “And you shouldn’t be trying to lose your side of this deal, anyway!”
Manami slams the trunk shut and turns to him with that familiar, annoyingly smug smile Yuuto can’t decide if they love or hate. “Are you saying you don’t want it to be a date?”
“I - That’s not - Look, can we please talk about this later?” Yuuto’s already stressing over whether they’ll be able to make it to the race site in only an hour and a half, and if they also have to think about whether Manami is serious about his offer or just falling back on his usual jokes, they’re sure they’ll combust on the spot. “Now is really not the time! We’re going to get sidetracked again and then it’ll really be impossible for me to make it to the race!”
“It’ll be impossible for us,” corrects Manami, frowning, as Yuuto throws themselves into the car and starts up the engine. “If I didn’t know better, Yuuto, I’d think you were trying to get rid of me.”
Yuuto scoffs as they lean over the centre console and push open the passenger door for Manami. “I just got you back. It’s a bit early for me to try to get rid of you already.”
Manami laughs, light and carefree, and Yuuto spares a moment to drink in the sound, memorize its shape and texture so they never forget it again.
“You’re right.” He slides into place beside them, and as Yuuto drives off, Manami relaxes into the seat and closes his eyes. "It's only the beginning."