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Nakatsu is no deep thinker. He places more emphasis on action and gut feeling. Life is simple: he likes soccer, food, and hanging out with his friends. He dislikes homework and being pressured into things he doesn’t want to do.
He expects his future to be pretty simple, too. A house with kids and a steady job like his dad - after he retires from the soccer pro-leagues, of course. He hasn’t given up that dream despite family gripping.
There’s a nagging voice in the back of his head reminding him of responsibility and roles in society. He’s never really listened to it, it sounds too much like his dad, but it’s still there.
Life isn’t decided for him. It’s just how it is.
And then he meets Mizuki.
---
Mizuki’s charming. Mizuki’s friendly and cute. Mizuki’s stubborn and opinionated and cares about his friends fiercely. He’s also frail and delicate and pushes himself too far.
Ten out of ten of Nakatsu’s friends would describe him as friendly, outgoing, and kind of a dumbass. Most of those friends are from sports teams, sure, but it isn’t any less true.
They’re not that different, but something about Mizuki makes Nakatsu want to get closer and protect him.
He’s intuitively drawn to his side.
Their first real interaction didn’t end well. He’s been stewing in dread the whole day, remembering Mizuki collapsing, hurt after Nakatsu challenged him to a soccer game. Sprinting ahead to the nurse’s office, shouting in a panic while Izumi brought their friend, seeing him unconscious and pale against the bedsheets.
Seeking the invalid out after classes makes his heart pound and his palms sweaty, shame twisting his stomach.
He apologizes with as perfect a 90 degree bow as he can manage. But, like a saintly Buddah, Mizuki forgives him. It makes Nakatsu tear up and speak his mind. “We’re best friends, man!”
---
He sings his praises with the passion of a bird chirping at the start of spring.
Mizuki is compassionate.
Mizuki is kind.
His smile is like the sun. If Nakatsu were a flower, he’d turn to follow that light all day.
But he’s not girly enough to admit to calling himself that. It’s more like: an unstoppable inferno explodes in his mind every time Mizuki’s face lights up. Two cars in an action movie careening towards each other and BOOM. Explosion! Jumping out at the last second!
Part of Nakatsu’s consciousness doesn’t make it, though. Part of him is stuck to the seat with shrapnel and caught up in the blast because he can’t pull himself away from this feeling.
He gets excited over almost sipping from the same soda can. That’s almost their lips touching, a second hand kiss…
Which doesn’t happen. Nakatsu is not a shoujo manga heroine. He’s an average boy in a boy’s school surrounded by other boys.
How cares about a secondhand kiss?!
He does. He definitely does, by the way his heart is thumping and his mind doesn’t make sense anymore.
What is this feeling? Completely focused on Mizuki whenever he’s around. Thinking about him when he’s not there. Wondering about the next time they’ll be together.
Being more aware of him than any other person Nakatsu has met.
Being hypervigilant about his interactions with other people, including Mizuki’s relationship with Izumi, which is close and friendly and maybe… something else?
“It’s LOVE, isn’t it?” whispers a voice in his ear.
His body spasms in a visceral reaction of bone deep denial.
Umeda-sensei, origin of the voice and dedicated brownnoser, returns his panicked expression with a flat look. The school nurse can see right through him.
Goosebumps cover his arms and Nakatsu denies it again, out loud. “NO WAY!”
The naked feeling of Umeda’s knowing gaze stays with him. What if he’s right? What if he is in l- l---likes a guy?
---
With the understanding of a student who barely passed science class, Nakatsu decides to covertly test his hypothesis.
‘Do I feel anything for guys?’
Case 1: Nakao-chan
Idol of the school, surrounded by adoring fans, cute as a girl but definitely a dude.
Nakatsu stares at him long and hard as he’s doted on and fussed over. Nakao is good at smiling, but there’s something demanding about him even while he’s the center of all of that. Like, he expects all attention.
Nakatsu checks his heart rate; kind of fast. Butterflies? Sweaty palms? Check and check. He writes it off as nerves, starting to feel like a creepy stalker standing in the corner staring at them like this.
Okay, he has to walk by to check on Mizuki’s room. Just focus on Nakao-chan.
The group in the lounge barely notice him pass. Which says how captivating Nakao is; Nakatsu’s so stiff he’s basically doing the robot with his head on a swivel, focused on the heart of the group.
He… doesn’t really feel anything looking at that guy.
Good? Good!
Case 2: Mizuki
His relief is short-lived when, after entering Izumi and Mizuki’s room, blood thunders in his ears at the feast before him. Mizuki’s sleeping face, unguarded on the floor, with his shirt riding up to show a sliver of pale stomach.
That’s not right. He’ll catch a cold sleeping uncovered like that. He should be in bed.
Nakatsu takes his experiment seriously, though, as much as Mizuki’s safety and comfort. That’s why he peers closer at that sleeping face. Reaches out to brush a stray hair away. Catches sight and can’t stop looking at his pink lips, gently parted with soft breathes that flutters across his palm.
Deaf to anything but the blood thumping in his ears, Nakatsu’s hand travels down.
“Nakatsu?”
Izumi’s here?!
“I-I came to borrow your English 1 book!” Nakatsu stutters out an excuse, scrambling to stand and escape. He stumbles and tries to catch himself on the bedframe, but instead barely scraping the edge and falling hard with his back up against the wall.
Case 3: Izumi
Steam billows behind Izumi as he exits the bathroom, shirtless in low riding sweats. His dark gaze stares directly at Nakatsu. An icy bead of sweat drips down the back of his neck, but all he can focus on is the water droplet on Izumi's collarbone. Does it drip the same cold way down his skin? No it’s probably warm from the bath.
“English 1? Ah, are notes okay?”
Izumi’s coming closer??
And walks past his crumpled body to get to the desk, where his notes are.
Nakatsu feels cornered and lost. Very, very lost.
“Geez,” Izumi mutters, “that Ashiya. He’s whipped out from doing so much today.”
The mention of Mizuki is enough to spur Nakatsu into gear. Maybe too suddenly, too fast, because he’s out of the room and down the hall before Izumi finishes his sentence.
Experiment? Inconclusive.
---
As far as Nakatsu is concerned, he’s sick. He’s really very, very sick. Like, seriously ill.
He keeps replaying the image of Mizuki’s sleeping face and Izumi’s steamy chest (literally, alright??) like a broken newsreel.
It brings back another memory he thought he’d block out: the first time his friends drank together. Nakatsu had had one beer at that point, tipsy enough to join his rowdy friends in a few games. He was getting snacks between games when he noticed the odd one out. Izumi was the only one sitting quietly by himself. Concerned that his friend might be one of those so-called ‘sad drunks’, Nakatsu went over to check on him. Izumi didn’t respond verbally to his greeting. He stared at Nakatsu with limpid eyes, hypnotising enough to keep Nakatsu in place, get in close, and planted one on him. Right on the lips. That infamous night cemented Izumi’s notoriety as the ‘Kissing Monster’.
That had been his first kiss! Not that he’d tell anyone that, but still! Give it back, Izumi! He wanted to give that to Mizuki!
…
….wait.
Nakatsu screamed into his pillow and begged for forgiveness.
That night, Nakatsu dreamed of things that made it hard to look Mizuki in the eye. For the next few days, he ran away in tears.
‘St-stop looking at me with those pure, clean eyes! Don’t read my thoughts!’
He avoided Izumi, too. But only because he and Mizuki were always together.
No other reason.
---
“Okay, it’s been a week,” Nakatsu reasoned to himself. He made a small loop, back and forth, in front of Mizuki and Izumi’s room. The rest of the dorm walked past him, used to his self-talk by now. Sometimes it wasn’t too bad to have a reputation of someone not to be taken seriously. “And I’m here for a reason.”
Reason, or rather excuse, being: his family had sent a care package with goodies he was willing to share with his friends.
“Nakatsu?” called out Mizuki’s melodious voice, like a choir of angels opening the gates of heaven.
Or not. Because that would only happen if he l-liked Mizuki like that. Like, like-liked him.
Nakatsu fumbled his package and tried to play it cool.
Kind of hard, with the pain in his chest. But indigestion could be overcome by sheer force of will!
“Ey, cough, hey Mizuki!” He spoke at the upper far corner of the ceiling.
“Do you need something from my room?”
“No, just, um. My folks sent some pastries, so I thought I’d come share.”
“Really?”
He had to look at Mizuki’s face with that soft, happy gasp. It was absolutely glowing.
“”Yay!”” sounded a real choir of voices, this time from the friends he’d overlooked.
Nakatsu couldn’t even get angry at them for interrupting their moment. Mizuki was so excited to try the Japanese sweets.
‘Ugh, he’s just so cute,’ Nakatsu thought.
Wait.
Nakatsu looked at Mizuki’s glowing eyes once again.
No. He couldn’t continue to deny it. Something shifted in his gut, and he admitted it, ‘Mizuki really is cute.’
“Hey,” a hand tugged at his sleeve, “where are ours?”
Nakatsu had been holding out the box to Mizuki the whole time.
“Wait, you two are still here?” He snickered at their disappointed looks.
Nakatsu offered up the reward as soon as they were settled, invited, in Mizuki’s room.
“Fine! I’ve got the goods, so here.”
Their grins lasted a minute before falling in disappointment at the contents. “Just rice cakes?”
“If you don’t want them, then don’t eat them.”
Turned out Nakatsu wasn’t the only one with a care package from this week’s mail drop. Mizuki also had a box from home full of much more exciting things.
Snacks from America! The motherload! And Mizuki, the saint, shared them with everyone.
Nakatsu couldn’t enjoy them right away, though. Something else had his attention. Mizuki had dropped a photo from his letter home and the contents shook Nakatsu to the core.
It was a hot babe! Absolute dynomite! Arm in arm with Mizuki!
A lump lodged itself in his throat. He asked past it, fixated on the blonde ponytail and huge grin, “Hey, who’s this girl in the picture?”
“Her name’s Julia!” Mizuki’s smile was pure happiness. “Cute, huh?”
The photo crinkled in Nakatsu’s hand.
“Is she your girlfriend?” He couldn’t look away long enough to see Mizuki’s reaction to the question.
Luckily, it was instantaneous: Mizuki burst out laughing. “No, no. My best friend!”
“Yeah, Nakatsu,” one of the others elbowed him. “Don’t be jealous because you don’t have one.”
“Oh, yeah, haha, right…” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly and handed the photo back to Mizuki.
Jealous of Mizuki for being with Julia? Yeah, maybe for a second, but he wasn’t nervous, here. He was elated! Ecstatic! Jumping for joy on the inside!
Why, you ask?
His heart thumped for Julia too.
---
In the same way that adolescence and love were like a roller coaster, riding the high of his heart pounding confirmation was interrupted the next day by Mizuki's crying face.
Events went like this: Nakatsu heard shouting and a thud in Mizuki’s dormroom -> he runs to investigate -> Mizuki tries to explain how he made Izumi angry -> Mizuki cries.
This makes his heart thump, too, but in a very different way.
‘I want to hug him,’ Nakatsu realized with a heat in his belly, reaching out to comfort him. ‘Even his crying face is cute. I want to hug him and make it better.’
He clenched his fist. ‘No, what the hell am I thinking. He probably wants space.’
His hand hovered, fingers clenching and unclenching, but eventually Nakatsu went for it and patted Mizuki’s head. This is comforting, right? This is okay, this is enough. This is something a friend would do.
It took a while, but Mizuki’s tears stopped. He rubbed his eyes even redder, apologizing. Nakatsu reassured him that it was okay. He didn’t have a full picture of what was going on, but he understood enough. Mizuki wasn’t a bother; Mizuki’s feelings mattered.
They sat side by side in silence.
“If you ever need a shoulder to cry on.” Nakatsu soaked up the warmth of Mizuki’s arm against his. “I’m here for yah.”
Watching Mizuki’s crying face. Listening to him make excuses for the situation. Hearing Izumi’s name as the cause. The fire in his belly exploded into anger.
‘I don’t care if it makes me gay. If I can keep Mizuki from crying like that, I’ll do whatever it takes!’
It takes him a half hour of searching to find Izumi. Dragged bodily to the roof for a confrontation, Izumi barely reacts while Nakatsu lays into him.
His only response: “It’s none of your business.”
Nakatsu grabs him by the collar and drags their faces close enough to notice Izumi’s long lashes and, underneath, his shifting eyes. Not even caring enough to keep focused?
“Hey, answer me!”
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You’re just an outsider.”
Izumi shoves him and runs off after that remark.
Keeping track of events with emotions high is hard for Nakatsu. There’s chasing Izumi down, enraged, and almost falling down the stairs. Flashes of Izumi pulling someone out of the bushes; Nakatsu barely catching a body thrown at him. Being whacked in the stomach with a camera as the other student grasps for it reflectively. Izumi shouting “Deal with him” and “weird picture” and “Ashiya”. A sharp refocusing as Nakatsu’s rage finds a new target.
He’s so caught dealing with this new threat he almost lets it go. But Izumi comes back to the dorm later with Mizuki grinning and hanging off his arm as if no fight had ever happened.
It feels like falling into a pit and trying to get out blindly.
He doesn’t understand what’s happening between them. Like, they’re in their own world and the rest of the dorm is just catching a glimpse.
He doesn’t understand. But they’re his friends, and he’s going to protect Mizuki’s happiness whatever it takes.
He vows not to let anything get in the way.
---
That promise isn’t easy to keep. It takes a hell of a lot because his brain starts getting in his way in new and interesting ways.
He wants to spend as much time as possible with Mizuki. Being around Mizuki also means being around Izumi. Those two are attached at the hip.
Every time Mizuki smiles, every time their fingers brush sharing snacks. Every dry comment Izumi makes makes Mizuki laugh. It all starts appearing in his dreams.
Dreams featuring Mizuki’s face. Nightmares focused on Izumi’s eyelashes. Thoughts that keep him up at night.
It was easier over winter break, while he stayed in a half empty dorm and his roommate was gone. But the next semester starts and he’s worried.
What if he’s making… noises while…
‘Ughhh.’
His bed springs creek under his nightly ritual of embarrassed thrash.
His roommate in the bottom bunk rolls over and sighs.
---
‘It’s not so bad,’ Nakatsu tells himself. ‘It’s really not so bad.’
His attention follows Mizuki like a beacon. Izumi is always together with Mizuki, so of course he notices him too.
It’s not a big deal. Izumi’s face is objectively nice to look at. He’s fit from exercise, just like Nakatsu. He picks things up with his hands. Very long fingered, very well structured hands. He looks good in a turtleneck.
He’s not totally gay, okay. He admits he likes Mizuki. Hell, he would do anything for that guy’s smile, so he might as well call it love! If anything, he’s a one-guy kind of gay!
Mizuki makes him feel bubbly inside. His grin is infectious. He’s gentle and kind and protective of his friends. Nakatsu admires him and wants to show him he’s cared for, too.
The way Mizuki makes him feel is precious. Izumi’s personality isn’t that interesting for Nakatsu even if his body is kind of okay.
Wait.
Shit.
He didn’t mean to admit that!
---
“I like girls,” Nakatsu says determinedly into his ramen.
“I like girls,” muttered while stabbing his pencil furiously at his notes.
“I like girls,” panted between breaths at practice.
“I like girls,” grumbled repeatedly in bed with a death grip on his pillow.
“You can like whoever you want,” deadpanned his tired roommate, who had been disturbed right before drifting off to sleep on one of his less insomniac nights. “Just go to sleep.”
---
Thing is, Nakatsu did like girls. They were hot. They were feminine. They were completely different then boys in all the right ways to get his heart thumping.
From passion, not fear, okay? He was not scared of girls!
Even though he’d never really talked to one.
---
He waved Mizuki off after class for once and went straight to the library.
Nakatsu was studying determinedly when he heard footsteps walk past his desk, pause, then turn back. A presence loomed over the table, casting a foreboding shadow over him and his carefully upright textbook.
“I didn’t expect you’d be in here.” Umeda-sensei, peered at him over his glasses, unimpressed.
Nakatsu’s fingers went lax in shock; the large tome went down with a heavy thud, leaving him no cover for the much thinner volume he’d been diligently pouring over.
“ ‘How to Talk to Girls: Be a Charming Ladies Man in 10 Easy Steps,’ ” read Umeda-sensei out loud.
Nakatsu flushed.
Umeda-sensei snorted. “I think you might need more help than that.”
He smirked in conspiratorial good humor, as all those adults who understood the pains of adolescence and don’t miss the experience can do, and waved his own book in a mocking goodbye.
“W-wait!” Nakatsu called out before his brain could catch up with the situation. Adult dude! Who probably has experience! And could help!
Umeda-sensei turned back to look at him, nonplussed but willing to humor a student primed to be teased.
“What do you know when you like people,” Nakatsu said in a nonsensical rush.
The adult took in the student’s flushed face, outstretched hand, and general air of desperation. Light washed out the lenses of his glasses, making his expression unreadable. “Is this about Mizuki-kun?”
Nakatsu scrambled to protest but his brain wasn’t equipped for denial right now. “I - not just… Mizuki… it’s…”
Slumping in defeat, he banged his head against the flirting guide on the table.
Umeda-sensei sighed long and hard, looking down at this hopeless kid. He longed for a cigarette.
“Look,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “What are you trying to do?”
Nakatsu bit back a shriek of despair. “I don’t know!”
“When it comes to romance, it’s best not to start with other people. This book isn’t going to help you yet. Not until you know what you’re going in after.” Umeda-sensei offered up uncharacteristically kind and sound advice. “Kid. What is it you want?”
“I want to be able to talk to girls,” came the reply at length, voice muffled by the paper.
“And after that?”
“Get, get a girlfriend!”
Umeda rolled his eyes. “And what then?”
“What?” His flippant reply threw Nakatsu.
“What are you going to do once you’re in a relationship?”
“Do couple stuff.”
Nakatsu’s head swam with scenes of holding hands. Eating together. Going on dates. Laughter. Being cheered for at his soccer games. Bathing together. Maybe sharing a room next year.
Umeda leaned closer to check on him as the kid became unresponsive and increasingly red faced. Nakatsu’s fist unclenching was the only warning the nurse had before the student burst up and slapped himself in the face. Umeda jumped back, heart pounding and clutching at the backrest.
“Yeah,” Nakatsu insisted. “We’d go on dates! Just dates! Meeting up outside and doing things not at school. Total couple stuff.”
Umeda coughed into his fist, absolutely calm and collected and not startled at all. “Alright. You know you want a relationship. But still, think about it, kid. It’s not just what you’re going in for, but it’s what you want. Say, you get a girlfriend but she doesn’t like soccer. What then?
“You have to know what you’re looking for in the person. Compatibility. Or, at least, what you’re attracted to.
“Think about it”
Nakatsu didn’t have an immediate answer to that.
The chair scraped harshly against the laminate floor as Umeda-sensei stood with the effort of a man with no fuck left to give keeping up the facade of a responsible adult.
“Good luck,” he said with less sarcasm than usual and a cheery wave.
Those words echoed in Nakatsu’s ears.
‘You have to know what you’re looking for in a person.’
They swam around in his head as the library volunteer berated him for noise and asked him to leave.
‘Compatibility.’
Put up blinders to any other thoughts, as he made his way back on autopilot, staring vacantly at his closed dorm door until his roommate came back and dragged him bodily inside.
‘What you’re attracted to.’
---
It’s another week of thinking before anything clicks.
What is he attracted to?
He likes Mizuki. What is Mizuki like? Cute, kind, short, stubborn, protective of his friends.
He likes girls. What are girls like? Cute, feminine, smell nice. Shorter than him, long hair, curvy. Those are all classics, but his first crush was on his tomboy neighbor with a bowl cut and scraped knees in preschool, so that can’t be all.
Nakatsu looks at magazines. All the girls are nice looking. What stands out to him most, though, are the smiling ones. Models on the beach in sundresses and hats that hold their hand out to him, inviting him to come with them. Girls with short hair, sitting askew, eyes daringly direct at the camera and grins mischievous.
Nakatsu thinks about the people he knows, the number of crushes he’s had. It’s not a short list. He’s a people person and gets attached easily. When he was younger, there was a girl in the fairy princess dress at the aquarium who helped him when he was lost. He wrote his grade school babysitter’s name in the margins of his notes, imagining her long hair and earrings. The tentative almost hand-hold that happened with his best friend’s younger sister, which turned into outright rivalry when she got tired of being told she couldn’t play ball with them and worked hard to beat them at pick up soccer games for a full summer before she became a seamless part of the group. Then, most recently, Mizuki.
Thing is, he’s never really been friends with the people’s had a crush on. He gets tongue tied when he tries to talk to them, or overthinks it and avoids the subject entirely.
Most of his friends have been boys.
Like his elementary school best friend who loved soccer and manga and slept over every other weekend. They’d been inseparable before he had to move away to the next prefecture. Nakatsu had cried for months afterward. Or, the boy who transferred into his class halfway through first year of middle school with a face made for modeling but standoffish demeanor that had him shy away from being the center of attention. Nakatsu couldn’t look away when he gave his monotone introduction, and swore to be friends with him from day one, working extra hard to get him out of his shell. They were still friends and messaged each other regularly. He even helped screen his now-long-term girlfriend for him, to make sure she was good enough.
Nowadays it’s the same. Maybe to be expected at a boy’s school, but all his friends were guys. All of his teammates from soccer were his buddies. Heck, even Taiki’s a good example. As weird as he is with the seeing-spirits-thing, he’s a solid friend who put up with a lot as a roommate.
Then there’s his regular gang. He meets up with Shinji, the fraidy cat, and Kyoga, the four eyes, almost every day in the dorm. Can’t forget his best friends Mizuki and Izumi.
Alright, so maybe he has one friend who’s also a crush.
Mizuki is special though!
Just look at his smile. At his kind eyes. How he’s always around and doing things together.
Nakatsu sighs dreamily, remembering Mizuki’s soft fluttering hair that just brushes the nape of his delicate neck. How his smile lights up when he approaches his friends. His charming, innocent smile that sparkles in the sun.
What he’s attracted to? What makes his heart skip a beat and stomach flutter?
Mizuki’s smiling face! Nakatsu’s nostril’s flare. Nothing can compare to that radiance!
---
When Nakatsu sees Mizuki the next morning before class, his smile is as bright and exacting as expected.
Certainty balloons in his chest, and pops, settling warm and steady in his bones.
He beams right back at Mizuki instead of turning away.
Sure, he can like Mizuki. He knows what it’s about; nothing can compare to this.
---
Turns out, that’s wrong.
‘What he’s attracted to.’
Soft fluttering hair. Delicate arch of the back of a neck.
‘What makes him feel.’
The curve of a smiling mouth. Bright, innocent laughter.
His heartbeat picks up.
Suddenly, he’s seeing it everywhere.
---
His heart won’t stop racing.
“Are you okay, Nakatsu-kun?” Mizuki leaned in close, concerned over his half-collapsed friend.
“You won’t believe it, Ashiya!” Kyoga, their four eyed friend, slapped his back. “Nakatsu’s got a rival!”
“A rival?” Izumi sounded skeptical.
“It was like a shounen manga,” gushed Shinji, the fifth member of their usual gang.
Kyoga started recounting. “After you two left the game, Nakatsu went up to the other team and demanded to talk to their star player.”
“The one who had been blocking his shots the whole game.” Shinji came in to tag team the explanation.
“So he come over-”
“-short hair with the long side bang over his left eye and earrings-”
“-with the biggest scowl-”
“Who wouldn’t be upset over that last shot? It cost them the game and he almost blocked it.”
“-and got up into Nakatsu’s face!”
Mizuki gasped in shock.
“But our guy here,” Kyoga slapped the unresponsive Nakatsu hard on the back, “wasn’t phased.”
“Right, he said something like, ‘good game, you kept us on our toes, better luck next time’.”
“Other team wasn’t having it, though. Everyone was really tense. Because... Nakatsu challenged him to a one on one match!”
Izumi facepalmed.
“The team manager had to hold him back!”
“Not only that,” Shinji grinned conspiratorially. “He challenged her to a game too!”
Nakatsu couldn’t take it anymore. Without warning, he stood and raced out of the room, making his friends jump out of the way or risk getting bowled over.
Shinji and Kyoga peered out the blown open doorway at his dust cloud. “What’s up with him?”
A shrug. “Constipation?”
---
Umeda-sensei was catching up on his sister's work (under duress) in preparation for an upcoming family meal (additional duress) when his office door was slammed open.
“Unless this is an emergency,” he said, flipping to the next photo spread in the magazine, “you’re on the hook for damage to school property.”
A first year was frozen, panting, sweaty and pale, in his doorway.
“I’m not writing something for you to skip class,” he continued dryly.
Nakatsu pointed an accusing finger at him. “It - it’s all your fault!”
Umeda sighed loudly and put away the magazine. “What, exactly, are you accusing me of?”
“You put these thoughts in my head!” Nakatsu stomped into the room, but had the grace to close the door more carefully behind him. “I’m sick because, because.”
The student’s eyes were wild and desperate. “You have to fix it.”
‘You have to fix me.’
Umeda took a small box out of his pocket and shook out a cigarette. Gesturing to the chair opposite his desk with it between two fingers, he said, “Take a seat.”
Nakatsu collapsed into it like a marionette with cut strings, head bowed, fingers clenching and unclenching on his knees.
Umeda-sensei took a long, hard look at the kid, recalling him as the student spending so much time with Mizuki and also the would-be casanova researching in the library.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, searching his pocket for a lighter. First-Year Identity Crisis opened his mouth to protest, but was talked over. “What you’re going through, that’s normal.”
Nakatsu snapped his mouth shut.
Umeda paused, long enough to build dramatic tension, and made a show of cupping his hand to light his stick, feeling somewhat vindicated that he had the rapt attention of a student who wouldn’t have given his own teenage self the time of day.
“You found an answer, right?” He took a long drag and made eye contact. “So what about that brought you here, like this, right now?”
‘This had better be good,’ went unsaid.
Nakatsu took a deep shaky breath. “You said this is normal. It’s - it’s normal?”
“Noticing people like that in high school? Sure is. Frankly, you’re a late bloomer compared to most students around here.”
“It’s really normal?”
“Perfectly natural.”
“And it’s always like this? For everyone?!”
“Pretty much.” Umeda flicked off ash in his tray, and let his impatience show. “Now, what exactly is bothering you?”
Nakatsu looked about to pull his hair out despite the repeated reassurance. “I-it’s everywhere. All the time.”
Umeda made a noncommittal noise and gestured for him to continue.
“At the soccer game today, there was this other player. He… he reminded me of Mizu-- someone I’m really close to,” he caught himself, but the reference was picked up on nonetheless. “I couldn’t stop looking at him during the game. But that’s right, because he was blocking me. Catching my shots. Stopping us from scoring. After, though, I… I still couldn’t stop looking at him.”
Hairs on the back of the nurse’s neck started to rise. Well, that sounded familiar.
“And his girlfriend, the team manager, she got between us and I… couldn’t stop looking at her, either,” Nakatsu grew quiet near the end and trailed off.
Umeda stamped out his cigarette harshly in the ashtray and ran a hand across his face. To have misjudged the situation so badly, he’d have to apologize. Someday. When it wouldn’t ruin his credibility.
As much as he wanted to shove a pamphlet at the kid and send him on his way, that dismissal would be worse than what he’d gone through himself: no support at all.
“Nakatsu-kun.” When the school nurse spoke his name with the gravity of a responsible adult, and the student’s head shot up; he’d never heard him use that tone of voice. “Thank you for being comfortable sharing this information with me.”
Nakatsu’s tense shoulders relaxed in shock.
“This is normal, but not everyone goes through it the same way. Before you ask - different people use different words. However, it’s up to you to decide what worlds for you.” Umeda held his gaze. “Do you understand?”
Nakatsu nodded, slowly, face still clouded in confusion.
“Have you talked about this with anyone else yet?”
A negative shake of the head.
Umeda bit back a sigh. Just his luck. “I recommend you think about it, and find someone close to you, someone you trust, to talk with about this. Maybe not all of it, but whatever you’re comfortable sharing.”
He got a slow nod in return.
“You aren’t sick, kid,” Umeda rehashed, tone unwavering but lacking its usual bite. “So you don’t need to be here.”
There followed a few moments of silence that made Nakatsu start to sweat.
“But,” he continued, “you can come back if you need to talk.”
Nakatsu’s brain finally caught up with his ears, something wet leaked out of his eyes and he started to sniffle.
If Umeda had to deal with crying kids throwing themselves at him every time he had this conversation, the nurse considered, trying to pry himself from clingy kid with who grew another arm for every one batted away, he’d never be as nice.