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There are certain things on certain days that Kazuya will commit to memory.
Kazuya only has snapshots of his earliest memories: four baby blue walls, a twinkling laugh, the smell of chocolate cake wafting from the kitchen and through the gap under his bedroom door, a mole below the right eye. Sometime before his tenth birthday, he’d held a baseball bat for the first time.
(On a summer night, hours after the sun had kissed his shoulders red, Kazuya had fallen in love with how the metal soothed his fingertips.)
He keeps the rest of his childhood locked in a wooden chest, tucked away in a corner of his mind where his drifting thoughts don’t reach. There are fractures where the wood is worn and the strongest memories leak out. If Kazuya listened closer, he might remember the glass shattering, the three words whispered in his ear right before dawn, the door clicking shut behind his mother. If Kazuya peeked, he’d see himself learning to cook, to tie his own shoes, to do his own bandages, to hate chocolate cake.
(In Kazuya’s dreams, the chest is sealed silent. In his nightmares, the same three words escape the cracks.)
Kazuya lets himself remember Seidou. Some things he struggles to recall, like the pain in his ribs one spring or summer or the look on Rei’s face when he’d told her he’d slept through the first day of practice. Other memories are imprinted like footsteps on the moon. Kazuya can name what was playing on the TV when his father slid him a new glove, unwrapped and unexpected, across the dining table. Kazuya can picture the indent between Kuramochi’s eyebrows while they bandaged each other, warmly and without judgment, in the shade of the dugout.
(He’ll need photographs and newspapers to remind him of every Koushien match, but the feeling of Youichi’s laugh against his lips is something Kazuya couldn’t forget if he tried.)
Kazuya doesn’t remember much about the past few months. After Seidou, all his waking moments had been consumed by baseball — anything else had been slacking off, and any time taken away from practice had Kazuya scared of plateauing. The constant, frenzied uphill climb hadn’t allowed him time to look back.
(Still, his life is more than a dream: he’s on better-than-usual terms with his father, has a job anyone would kill for, and he has a sorta-boyfriend he’s loved for years.)
Dining with his father is pleasant in a way Kazuya isn’t used to yet, even though they’ve been eating together at least once every month. It’s silent, like always, but Kazuya finds his father’s words in everything else but sound, like the pattern on the dress shirt his father had worn because he’d thought Youichi would join them, or the extra piece of tempura his father had snuck onto Kazuya’s plate.
(It’s not uneventful, but he’s certain he’ll forget everything about it in a week.)
At six-fifty-two that evening, the doorbell rings.
(There are certain things on certain days that Kazuya will commit to memory.)
She doesn’t introduce herself as his mother, but the mole below her right eye is exactly where Kazuya remembers it to be.
(There are certain days with certain things that Kazuya would do anything to forget.)
/////
“Hello,” she says, a stack of papers clutched to her chest. Her hair is silver at the root and much shorter than it is in the only picture Kazuya’s father has kept. When she looks up at Kazuya, she purses her lips to bite back a smile. “You’re shorter than I thought you would be.”
Kazuya still has one hand on the doorknob and the other clenched in a fist, so tightly he feels the crescents of his fingernails dig into his palm. An alarm goes off in his head. His blood runs cold. Every bone in his body is telling him to run.
“Do you know who I am?” she asks.
Kazuya doesn’t. Not really. He swallows the lump in his throat. “What should I call you?”
“It’s Okamoto, now,” she replies. She lets her lips stretch into a small, shy smile. It's telltale pity, like Kazuya is still ten years old and easy to crack.
“Okamoto-san,” Kazuya repeats. “How can I help you?”
His mother blinks owlishly at him. If Kazuya didn’t know any better, he’d think, for a moment, that she’s surprised.
“It’s time we all moved on,” she finally tells him. She flips over the stack of paper, and holds it in front of her so Kazuya can see the first page. “Officially.”
Kazuya reads the top line once. His heart leaps up to his throat.
“Toku!” his mother calls out, peering over Kazuya’s shoulder and into the apartment, where his father is at his usual dining seat facing the door. Kazuya doesn’t want to turn and look at him; he doesn’t want his own expression reflected like shattered glass. “I tried to email, but I don’t think it went through.”
She sounds excited, eager, even as his father says nothing in return. Kazuya skims the same line at the top of the document two, three more times, and lets his mother inside the apartment.
There’s the alarm again: blaring and unforgiving, telling him to run out, run home, run anywhere, but his feet remain fastened to the linoleum. Kazuya drags his legs across the living room like there are magnets under the floorboards keeping him in place. His mother glides past him, gently dropping the papers onto the dining table, right between his father and the stew they’d just eaten together.
Kazuya still can’t look at his father’s face. He watches his mother’s fingertips instead as they flip to the third page in the stack and point at a line at the very end. Kazuya watches her hand offer up a pen, and another hand take it. Kazuya doesn’t hear anything, but he feels the words traded back and forth, the sense of finality in their exchange.
Kazuya’s father’s hand drifts to the line on the paper. The hand seems perfectly steady as it scrawls his father’s signature, but Kazuya can see the tremors in the way the last stroke of their family name breaks.
It’s almost comical, watching his father’s hand shake and hearing his own pulse in his head. It’s even funnier when Kazuya spares a glance at his mother, and her smile is up to her ears.
Kazuya looks down. He wills himself to focus on the foot of one chair, at the scratches on the edge of its heel where it’s been dragged along for years. He focuses on the dog barking outside, and the soft titters of the cicadas. If he concentrates, it almost feels like nothing is out of the ordinary.
Almost. “Have you had dinner, Kazuya?” his mother calls out to him, saccharine sweet and entirely oblivious to the noise in Kazuya’s head. “I’d like it if we caught up.”
The invite feels like they’re going to a high school reunion, maybe to giggle about how some of their classmates have children or never went to college, or how one of them almost won the lottery and were off by one number. She says it like they can make up fifteen years of radio silence over stew.
“I don’t know if I have anything to say to you,” he replies, looking up at her. His voice scrapes out of his throat, but he’s surprised he sounds so sure, confident. Clear.
His mother winces. Kazuya knows it’s a reflex, a human instinct at Kazuya’s blatant rejection, but the smaller, weaker valve in his heart wants to believe it’s regret.
“I’m sure we can find something for you to talk about,” she prods. “What did you do for your birthday?”
“Which birthday?” he asks, just to spite her.
“The one that happened five days ago.”
“Four days ago,” he disputes. His mother responds by raising an eyebrow, and Kazuya wonders if she knows he’s lying.
Five days ago: Kazuya and Youichi had the whole movie theater to themselves for a rom-com zombie movie that had come out three weeks ago. They’d walked by the bay on a rare, clear night when they could make out a few stars. He’d held Youichi’s hand in the pocket of his hoodie.
“I had practice,” Kazuya says, instead. “I play for a baseball team.”
“Oh, right,” his mother hums, nodding. She lets out a chuckle. “I know you play, Kazuya. You’re on the billboard outside my hotel room. Did you know that?”
“I don’t know where your hotel room is.”
She nods her head again. She looks more relaxed, like Kazuya’s half-assed responses are encouraging her somehow. “I crashed right after that four hour shinkansen ride from Hokkaido, so I haven’t seen it with all the lights, but imagine my surprise when I woke up and pulled back the curtains to see my son -”
“Hokkaido?” Kazuya interrupts. In the corner of his vision, his father’s hands freeze over the papers. “You left Tokyo?”
“Of course I did,” his mother tells him, punctuating with a giggle. “Why did you think I would stay?”
Kazuya recoils. His mother’s eyes widen, and her mouth goes slack, still hanging off the last word of her question.
“That’s… that’s not what I meant,” she stammers. “I like the cold, and there’s just too many people in Tokyo. Hokkaido was - I feel like I can breathe there.”
You weren’t even close. Kazuya reels from her admission. His heart drums against his ribcage; he feels his bones cracking at the pressure, like at any moment his heartache will spill out his chest. You were nowhere near me.
“Are you...” his mother croaks. “Do you live here, with your father?”
“No.”
“Do you live alone?”
No. “Yes.”
She doesn’t prod for anything further. Kazuya lets the silence stretch out like a charged cloud in between them, simmering like thunder could strike at any moment. The stack of papers dwindles to the last two pages. The dog outside has stopped barking, but the cicadas hum to ground Kazuya’s thoughts.
“Ah.” The sound cuts through the clouds, and Kazuya finds himself staring at the screen of his mother’s phone, when she shoves it centimeters from his face. “So that’s why~”
Kazuya doesn’t respond; he can barely see the text on the screen, and the words he does make out don’t make sense. There are two pictures on the screen, the left of him and the right of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, bony-cheeked girl.
His mother takes his silence as admission of… something, Kazuya doesn’t understand yet. “Now, I’m not much of a tabloid girl,” she starts. “But who’s this girl you’ve been seeing, Kazuya? She’s a supermodel, isn’t she? She must be.”
His mother has a smirk on her face, identical to the one Kazuya sees in the mirror. Kazuya bites the inside of his cheek. “What?” he breathes.
Her eyebrows knot, but her smile doesn’t falter too much while she keeps the phone level to his face. “You’d think I’d be invited to the wedding, at least,” she whines, splitting mid-sentence to feign a huff, “but I guess you wouldn’t know where to send the invitation.”
The soles of his feet feel charged, and his legs feel stiff. All of the blood in his body rushes to his head. “What do you think you know about me?” he says, voice high and incredulous, almost cracking. His mother steps back, an apology already flooding her features. Kazuya wants to run. “I don’t need to be here.”
“Kazuya.”
He looks at his father for the first time since his mother arrived, when he stands up to call out to him. In his eyes, Kazuya finds nothing. Not panic, not pain, not relief, just emptiness and resignation. Kazuya doesn’t know what he looks like right now, if he’ll look anything like his father when everyone eventually leaves him behind.
Kazuya wants to run away from him, too.
“I put leftovers in the fridge,” Kazuya tells him.
“Kazuya -” His mother holds a hand out to him, but it doesn’t quite reach.
“Youichi’s doctor says drinking something with ginger should help with the arthritis,” Kazuya continues. His feet tap restlessly against the floor. “And don’t drink too much medicine for your headaches, it’ll affect your digestion.”
His father nods. One more step, and Kazuya can walk out the door.
“Kazuya,” his mother pleads. She exhales, exasperated, like she’s losing a battle she never intended on winning. “Give your mother a hug before you go, at least.”
Kazuya doesn’t move, but in two paces, she has him in her arms.
It’s so deceptively warm.
He wants nothing more than to run, run, run.
“I’m proud of you,” his mother whispers into his shoulder. Please. Get me away from here. “It must have been hard without me.”
Her voice is soft. The wooden chest in the back of Kazuya’s mind rattles and shakes, and it screams the three words that had haunted his nightmares for so long, over and over and over.
Kazuya holds his breath, acutely aware of everywhere their skin is touching. Run. Run. Run. His mother muffles her words in his t-shirt. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Every day I wish I took you with me.”
“Stop,” Kazuya snaps. “You don’t get to say that.”
She lets go of him, looking up at him with sad, honest eyes. “Don’t forgive me.”
Kazuya doesn’t feel anything.
“It was nice to meet you,” he says. The second the door clicks behind him, he runs.
/////
All Kazuya can do is throw one foot in front of the other. The night is hungry, chasing him deeper into the darkness with every step he takes. He can’t hear anything. Are the cicadas in hibernation, or is all the blood rushing to his head?
His feet fly him to the harsh lights of the subway station. Kazuya manages to squeeze in the first train car he sees, planting the soles of his shoes firmly on the floor. He tries to stamp down his restlessness, but he lets his feet tap out of sync when it starts getting harder to breathe.
There is a child, with his head on another woman’s shoulder, her pointer finger clasped tightly in his hand. The child squeezes hard and without concern. Kazuya doesn’t imagine it to be a pleasant experience, but when the woman kisses the child atop his head, it’s like the child’s hands dig deep in Kazuya’s chest and squeeze. He looks away.
There is a man with his arm around a woman, whispering something in her ear that makes the woman giggle uncontrollably. Their pinky fingers are wrapped around each other like a chain of daisies. Kazuya looks away.
His eyes try to settle on something they won’t spit out. Kazuya lets his head fall, gaze landing on the seat directly in front of him. There is a boy looking up at Kazuya like he’s untouchable. The boy clutches his magazine tighter, and Kazuya’s eyes dart to the cover. There he is, below layers of editing. He looks away from the photograph on the magazine pretending to be him: Miyuki Kazuya, star catcher, bright smile, perfect life.
Kazuya looks up, out the window. The train flits past the lights so fast they blend into a steady, endless line. If Kazuya stands still and keeps his eyes forward, it’s almost like time has stopped.
He allows his eyes to linger.
The illusion shatters when the train car doors open at a stop. Across the tracks, Kazuya watches a crowd of people rush into the other car, towards the stop Kazuya came from.
You won’t find anything there. No one hears him. There’s nothing there for us anymore. No one spares him a glance.
He runs.
It doesn’t feel like a conscious choice when his feet take him up the subway steps and into the bright Tokyo lights.
Maybe the only right direction is away.
/////
Kuramochi Youichi
8:24 PM
your dad asked me if i knew where you were
i thought you were with him
he won't tell me what happened
please call
/////
Two thousand, one hundred and ninety-four square kilometers.
“How the hell do you know that?” Kuramochi is looking at him like he’s trying to decide whether it’s strange in a funny way or strange in a concerning way. “That doesn’t sound like obscure baseball knowledge to me.”
Kazuya doesn’t realize he’s been talking out loud. He quirks his mouth in a smirk. “What can I say? Some of us do our homework.”
They’re sitting on the bench by the vending machine, watching Sawamura drag himself to the cafeteria after his nightly laps around the field. At this rate, Kazuya had said, Coach is going to make him run all around Tokyo.
Kuramochi had snickered. How many baseball fields would even fit in Tokyo? If Tokyo is about... fifteen thousand square kilometers? That’s gotta be at least a hundred football fields. Wait, fifteen thousand sounds... so -
“Pretty sure that’s never come up in homework, dumbass.”
“Calling me smart and a dumbass in the same sentence,” he says, ending his sentence in a lilt. “Japanese is failing you, Kuramochi~”
“Not calling you smart, I'm calling you a tight-lipped loser.” Kuramochi is still looking at him like he wants to ask him something else, but then seems to decide against it. He whistles instead, turning away from him. “Is there a marathon for that? Running around Tokyo.”
“What, you think you’ll win?” Kazuya snorts. “With your short legs?”
“Oi! The shorter my legs are, the less weight to slow me down!” He puffs up his chest. Kazuya flushes at how endearing it is. “Bet I could finish in maybe. A week.”
Five days. He could do it in five.
Kuramochi whips his lead to look at him. Kazuya had spoken out loud, again. “Whose ass did you pull that number out of this time?”
Kazuya’s smirk widens. “I’m just that good at math.”
Why do I know this, Kuramochi? Ask me, ask me, ask me.
“Says the guy who cheats off me every exam!” Kuramochi counters, and doesn’t ask.
He’d been able to convince himself, when he was younger and much more naïve, that his mother was just… traveling. Kazuya had only ever seen her in the apartment: on the couch skimming through channels, in the kitchen making dinner, even by the windowsill trying to revive the poppies Kazuya always ended up killing somehow. His mother had only ever left to go to the market. If his mother had wanted to see more, Kazuya wouldn’t stop her. She hadn’t even seen him play yet!
He’d mapped it out clearly. She had to be somewhere in Tokyo. Leaving Tokyo was unthinkable, so Kazuya ruled out every possibility of otherwise. She couldn’t have gone far. Maybe she’s in Harajuku today. I’ve never been to Harajuku.
She would come back to them. She all but implied it, before she left, more than a year ago.
But it would only take five days to run through Tokyo.
Now, on cold city nights, years later and without innocent hope, he wanders along the streets with music blaring through his headphones. He doesn’t jog; he walks patiently across the cobblestone path between the small, snug shops, imagining sometimes that he’s walked where his mother has walked, too. He imagines his footprints covering hers. He imagines turning the corner and recognizing her instantly when she looks back at him. He imagines walking past, knowing what he’s leaving behind, content with the fact that they will never meet again.
/////
Kuramochi Youichi
2:21 AM
im worried about you
please just let me know you're okay
/////
He knows where he is. He knows where anything leads him, eventually. Or to whom.
Kazuya sinks into the park bench. His legs are numb enough that they don't even sense the cold metal, and Kazuya is exhausted enough that the chill barely raises the hair on his arms.
Their apartment window is probably the only one still lit - Kazuya doesn't turn around to check. The warm yellow light is always an eyesore against the bleak white walls, and Kazuya had always felt remorseful when they had to turn it on at dawn, even for a second.
A light weight settles around his shoulders, warm and secure.
"I could hear your teeth chattering from the third floor, dumbass."
Youichi sits next to him, cocooning Kazuya in the blanket like a scarf. Kazuya's breath comes in short, white bursts - he hadn't realized how cold he really is. "I'm not cold."
He's ignored. “Why are you so stupid?”
Kazuya catches the smallest quiver in his voice, and is reminded, again, of all the reasons Youichi deserves better. Don't waste that on me. It's time. The words rise up in his throat. You take care of me too much.
“Do you know,” Kazuya tries. "That I’m dating a supermodel?”
"Huh." Youichi hums. "That the same one you were dating last month?"
"No idea," Kazuya replies, leaning back on the bench. There are no stars in the sky when he looks up. "They all just come and go."
That earns him a cautious laugh. "Supermodel girlfriend isn't a bad rumor to have," Youichi concedes. "At least it's not... tax fraud."
Kazuya snorts. His hand reaches out of the blanket, finding Youichi's warmth and forming a web of fingers. It's all he allows himself. "I met a reporter the other day," he murmurs. "They called me broody and said I was getting traded."
Without looking at him, he knows Youichi is smiling. "One of those is true."
"They also think I hate you," Kazuya counters.
"Well," Youichi says. "You're jealous of my success."
They lapse into silence. It's nothing like the tranquil they're used to, when it's comforting and intimate. I want you to tell me I'm fine. This quiet weighs down on them, like they want to reach out to each other but can't, like the words they will never be able to say are the same ones that are missing. I want you to tell me I make you happy.
I want you to know that my mom wasn't dead. Kazuya turns his head, resting on his own shoulder to look at the only person he isn't scared of. I want you to know that she's dead to me now.
Youichi is already looking at him. Kazuya doesn't say anything else, but he knows it's his move from the way Youichi rubs circles around his palms, expectant, but patient all the same. Youichi's eyes are half-shut, and his cheek is touching Kazuya's shoulder.
"My -" Kazuya isn't ready. "My feet hurt."
Youichi exhales. "Kazuya," he murmurs, so close Kazuya feels his name on his neck. He runs a thumb along Kazuya's knuckles. "What happened with your dad?"
"He liked the stew," Kazuya deflects immediately. He recalls their conversation before he ran out. "I... I think I told him to get ginger instead of turmeric again. I always get those two mixed up."
He only hears a hum in response. Youichi's hand stills around Kazuya's fist, and Kazuya makes a decision. "If you don't want to -"
"Do you think I love you?"
He's met with silence again, the same heavy wordlessness Kazuya never thought he would have this much with his best friend. "That's..." Youichi sighs, and a furrow forms between his eyebrows like it pains him to articulate an answer. "I'm worried whatever I say is going to scare you off."
The concern is plastered plainly on Youichi's face, and Kazuya realizes there is nothing he can say that could make Youichi leave him. Youichi's eyes are always an open book, warm and honest and always unlocked for Kazuya.
Please stop looking at me, he pleads, like you're in love.
"My mother isn't dead," Kazuya finally admits, unearthing a secret he doesn't remember why he kept burying. It's more than a weight off his shoulders. It's the wooden chest in the back of his mind, completely splintering before his eyes and overwhelming him with all the memories he's repressed until now.
“I know.”
Kazuya stills.
"You're not exactly the best liar," he continues. He sounds so nonchalant it's jarring, while Kazuya's heartbeat runs laps around the park bench at his admission. Youichi is smiling at him, soft and small, and Kazuya forgets where they are. Almost forgets everything else he wants to say. "Was that all?"
When Kazuya doesn't say anything in return, Youichi offers up his other hand for him to take. "Come back inside," Youichi tells him. "You're going to catch a cold."
“She left, Youichi,” Kazuya breathes. “And then she came back, earlier, with divorce papers.” His voice sounds hollow to his own ears. Confused, and so alone.
Youichi brings up his free hand to Kazuya's cheek. They're warm, and firm, and familiar.
"Fuck."
Despite everything, Kazuya laughs, broken and wet.
“Both of them, my dad, my mom, they just leave -” His hands are shaking on his lap, and his breath comes out in staggered stops. “I don’t know how… why -”
Youichi guides his head onto his shoulder. Kazuya expects to cry, but the tears don't come. He leans against Youichi's neck, eyes wide open, letting the fist around his heart choke him up.
“If it means anything,” Youichi whispers, moments later when Kazuya feels like he can breathe again. “I’m not going to leave unless you ask me to.” He laughs, and it's all Kazuya wants to hear. "Even if you actually end up dating a supermodel.”
“If you leave," Kazuya tells him. He doesn't recognize his own voice. “I won't ever forgive you.”
“Fair," Youichi acquiesces. “I don’t think I would forgive myself either.”
Kazuya lets himself fall silent, timing his breaths to Youichi's heartbeat.
"Come back inside, Kazuya," Youichi repeats. He presses his forehead against Kazuya's lightly, and his lips touch Kazuya's cheek, his nose, his cupid's bow. He whispers like he only wants Kazuya to hear, even when everyone is asleep and a hundred feet away. He stands up, pulling Kazuya's hand with him. "It's fucking cold out here, and I don't know, we can go visit the museum tomorrow and you can pretend to know shit. How does that sound?"
"We can go to an art museum," Kazuya counters, looking up at him. Despite himself, a smile tugs his mouth upwards. "And I'll give you a kiss every time you guess an artist right, hm?"
"I'd rather die."
They walk back to their apartment building, Kazuya's hand in Youichi's and his heart lodged safely in his ribcage. Their intertwined hands sway in between them until Youichi stops walking. Kazuya looks at him and marvels at how the moon rests on Youichi's cheeks, bathing them both in moonlight.
Do you think I love you?
“I can’t tell you how you’ll feel about me now, or later, or tomorrow, or in a month. That’s not something anyone can tell you," Youichi says. He sounds the same way he does before a game, right before they beat all the odds together. "But if we both stay, then we’ll find out eventually, won’t we?”
Kazuya wants to memorize this: the bubble only he and Youichi can enter, where neither of them are alone, the ugly yellow light streaming from their apartment window, the way Youichi closes his eyes when Kazuya tells him the same three words his mother had told him fifteen years ago, laced with an unspoken promise he intends to keep.
“Wait for me.”