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FRIDAY
Sakusa Kiyoomi’s life changes over the course of exactly one week. It’s a little like going through the five stages of grief with two bonus ones, called Miya Atsumu and 2 Miya 2 Atsumu. Effectively, Miya Atsumu is responsible for both the extra days: he commences the first half of his debacle before midnight on Friday, and concludes the second half just after it on Saturday.
Later, Kiyoomi will confirm again that it did all start with Miya. He will do so privately, so that Miya doesn’t get a head bigger than the one already screwed precariously onto his shoulders. But that will be later, when Kiyoomi is not fighting for his life on this ridiculously-small-even-for-Tokyo balcony, tipping as far back over the rail as he can without toppling over completely.
‘Dude,’ Miya is saying, leaning right into Kiyoomi’s space without the slightest regard for his wellbeing, which is nothing new. ‘That shot was so wild. My nipples just peaked, I swear. Feel.’
‘I will not feel,’ Kiyoomi replies. ‘Get out of my face or I'll knee you.’
Some song by a former One Direction member is blasting through Bokuto’s shitty speakers, no doubt a choice of that hideous boyfriend of his with the hair, the one who just returned from a year abroad and thinks the centimetre-wide tattoo he got on his upper arm in Amsterdam can now be his entire personality. It’s barely eleven in the evening but seven out of the ten people present in the studio are already off their rockers, possibly the world’s most mediocre sampling group. The only sober ones are Kiyoomi, Kuroo the Amsterdam reject, and, unfortunately and improbably, Miya Atsumu.
And later, Kiyoomi will confirm that he should’ve stopped Miya right there when the going was good and he’d only tried to impress Haiba Alisa once. Kiyoomi’s the default supervisor when the Other Miya isn’t around, and as much as he hates the job, he takes it very seriously. However, later, he will also remember that had it not been for the series of highly flammable shots Miya took right before stepping out to impose upon the Shibuya bar scene, Kiyoomi would never have met the love of his life. It’s fifty-fifty, really.
But that will be later. Right now he has to survive the ordeal as it happens in real time: Kuroo pulls out a bottle of something so violently blue that it makes the hair on Kiyoomi’s nape stand up, and before he can so much as begin to voice his dissent, Bokuto is shrieking and frantically rinsing out the mess of tacky plastic shot glasses littering the only table in the room. Kiyoomi wrinkles his nose as Bokuto and Konoha arrange the still-wet glasses out on the black wood, the overhead light catching on all the sticky rings of alcohol already staining it.
‘More shots!’ Miya whoops. ‘Omi, come on, dude. That looks insane. It’s so blue. Look at it. We’re going to get blue tongues.’
‘You’re going to get blue tongues,’ Kiyoomi corrects. ‘I’m not going anywhere near that shit. It looks like moonshine.’
‘It’s not moonshine,’ Kuroo drawls from what should’ve been beyond hearing range, raising a perfectly plucked eyebrow. ‘I didn’t haul this all the way over from—’
Kiyoomi raises a hand in apology. He’s hardly in the mood to get in a who’s more pretentious pissing contest with some guy he only met three hours ago, especially not one whose very return they’re celebrating. Miya, though, apparently is; he gives Kiyoomi a withering look that says sucks to be you, and swaggers back into the room, making sure to cock his hip for Alisa's benefit. Alisa fails to look up from her phone.
This lights every burner of Miya’s on fire. Kiyoomi can see his gears turning.
Sure enough, he draws himself back up to full height, and declares: ’I’m going to do five of these in a row.’
‘My guy,’ Kuroo breathes in awe. ‘You’re already my favourite new friend of Koutarou’s. I see he was in good hands while I was gone.’
Kiyoomi stares at them both for a second, and then, unaware as man often is of the prophecy that dictates his life, rolls his eyes and turns his back to them. Breathing in the summer air, absolutely oblivious to what those five electric blue shots are going to do to him, when he isn't even the one to take them. But that will be later.
✖
SATURDAY
Later has arrived.
Kiyoomi is twenty-two years old, and at this point has more than learned to recognise kindred souls. Kozume Kenma is a kindred soul, for example, while Kuroo Tetsurou with his raisin-sized tattoo is not one. That being said, they’re all around him, surprisingly— the kindred souls— which his twelve-year-old self would never have believed, so determined was he to mistrust the world. No, they’re everywhere. Customers at convenience stores who’ll arrange soup packets in the right order for free. That one girl who sits across from him at the library and wordlessly watches over his things when he goes to photocopy something, or people who understand that touching everything with a pair of gloves on is as good as touching them with their bare hands, and hence only wear one glove, as they should.
Sitting right under the blast of air-conditioning in this white-lit emergency room at 1:30 AM, Kiyoomi looks across the space between two rows of chairs, and spots a kindred soul. Absurdly boyish haircut, strong eyebrows, a face so solidly handsome that it’s bordering on ridiculous. He’s unforgettable, like a film star, or an unfairly hot receptionist. But mostly he’s unforgettable in that he’s staring right back at Kiyoomi, and his arm is around a redhead whose nose is bleeding profusely all over both their dress shirts.
Kindred soul, all right. Kiyoomi doesn’t know whether it should be comforting or pathetic to confirm that there are others whose friends get into bar fights on Saturday mornings like they’re being paid for it, too.
On cue, the friendly old lady on Kiyoomi’s left, whose equally friendly granddaughter was wheeled in with a broken toe a while ago, leans over him in a cloud of octogenarian concern and lavender fabric softener. She holds out a bottle of Pocari sweat to Miya. ‘Sweetheart, do you want some?’
‘Nah, thanks,’ Miya replies pleasantly, as the slit where his eyebrow used to be continues to leak blood like a faulty tap. ‘I don’t drink water.’
He isn’t even lying. If he did drink water like Kiyoomi had instructed him to before leaving the apartment, they wouldn’t be sitting here right now, waiting for Bokuto and Kuroo to step out— Kiyoomi spent ten entire minutes trying to visualise how they’d bandage Kuroo’s ear — all because some sorry idiot thought he’d get away with manhandling Bokuto on his way to the washroom. At least it’s not a busy night; having to deal with some wailing, snotty kid would really have been the last straw. And— had the waiting room contained more than five people, he wouldn’t have noticed the kindred soul, who, upon further reflection, is so hot that Kiyoomi’s this close to taking off his mask to reassure him that he isn’t wasting his time staring back.
He gets his chance soon enough, when a poor, harried resident pops into the room and reads out Miya Atsumu and Tendou Satori together. Miya follows her with a one-fingered salute to Kiyoomi, who glares at him hard enough for his eyebrow to stitch itself together in shame. But then the redhead is following her too, and suddenly the only people in the room are Kiyoomi, the lavender-smelling old lady, and the kindred soul.
The kindred soul is still staring at him, and Kiyoomi has to admit that the vivid bloodstain on his white shirt does add to the charm of it all. Kiyoomi, despite what the masks and hand gel might suggest, does not so much balk at the sight of blood as he bites his thumb at it— this is the twenty-first century, people should know better than to accidentally slice their fingers off on mandolins or get into bar fights to defend the honour of Bokuto Koutarou, who can crush ten men with a fist if so inclined— and the sight of it on an otherwise pristine swathe of fabric makes him feel a little like a seventeenth-century nun. A sinful one.
Besides, this way he gets to shock the lights out of everyone else by telling them he befriended some guy with blood all over his clothes. Kiyoomi’s a little rebellious like that, which is useful to no one, especially not himself. So he waits a minute longer before bowing his head in acknowledgement, the solemn kind you can only have with the only other schmuck unfortunate enough to be in the emergency room the first weekend of the summer holidays.
‘Bar fight?’ the kindred soul asks. His voice is nonsensically deep, and only makes everything worse. Kiyoomi’s definitely going to have to take his mask off now, but not in here.
‘Bar fight,’ he says. ‘What was yours about?’
‘I am not proud of myself,’ the soul says. ‘But it appears that a man had been quite persistently propositioning me, and I was ignoring him— unwittingly, of course.’ Who says unwittingly in real life? ‘Satori—’ He clears his throat gruffly. ‘Intervened, let us say.’
Kiyoomi makes some kind of sound of understanding. The lavender lady speaks up.
‘I once got into a bar fight when I was your age,’ she warbles happily. ‘I ripped a handful of the other girl’s hair straight out of her skull. Banned from the bar all my life!’
Kiyoomi blinks at her. She looks to be about thirty centimetres tall, white hair done up in a prim little bun, and those are not natural teeth. He doesn’t doubt her anecdote for a second.
The kindred soul summarises all potential reactions aptly and solemnly: ‘Oh, my goodness.’
‘That’s right!’ She beams, then waves them off. ‘But don’t let me interrupt you. The masked young man hasn’t told us his bar fight story yet.’
Indeed, Kiyoomi hasn’t. He wasn’t really planning to lay Miya’s ass bare in front of strangers— at least, not any more than the man has already done himself— but he supposes an exception could be made. It’s only fair payment, after all, for having had to haul seventy kilograms of unadulterated bleeding idiot to the hospital in the first place. Besides, what Miya doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
But just as he opens his mouth to reply, Kuroo bursts out of one of the treatment rooms, shadowed by a frantic Bokuto, already rolling his shoulder and cracking his neck, a thick white bandage wrapped around his head, snarling now let me back at him, and it all goes to shit all over again. Kiyoomi and the kindred soul leap out of their seats to help Bokuto stop his boyfriend who resembles an alley cat like which hell hath no fury— Kuroo demonstrates strength which confirms why Bokuto chose him as a bedwarmer as he pushes both Kiyoomi and the kindred soul out of the way— his flailing elbow catches on Kiyoomi’s nose, nearly destroying it and ripping his mask down to his chin— the kindred soul blinks in wonder as if he somehow didn’t expect Kiyoomi to have lips and a jawline— I’m going to actually murder him, the alley cat hisses—
The lavender lady sticks one stockinged leg out from her seat without looking up from her phone, and Kuroo trips over it, crashing to the floor with a certain Baroque grace.
Kiyoomi stares at his sprawled form on what is possibly the city’s second-most infected floor after the bathroom of the bar they were at, then decides that this is beyond his paygrade.
Instead he removes his now-useless mask completely, and looks up right into the kindred soul's eyes, which are still taking his full face in.
‘Do you want to get some air?’ Kiyoomi asks.
The kindred soul blinks, and while anyone else would’ve missed it, Kiyoomi catches the minuscule smile on his lips. To their left, the little old lady hums a little old tune to herself, her wonders performed.
✖
SUNDAY
His name is Ushijima Wakatoshi. He doesn’t drink but greatly enjoys having a good time with good friends, apparently, which is the opposite of Kiyoomi’s entire praxis. This first fact, Kiyoomi learns about him outside the emergency room. The rest of it, he learns right after learning his second ever fact about Ushijima Wakatoshi: that he, too, is unhinged enough to wake up at seven in the morning the day after a harrowing party for no reason other than to maintain his flawless (if unhinged) daily routine.
This second fact presents itself to Kiyoomi in the form of Ushijima himself, bending stately and poised over the middle shelf of the tea aisle in the campus’ smallest convenience store, inspecting a shady-looking bright green box in his hands. The sun streaming through the soap-streaked doors is lighting him up from the back, and for a second he looks exactly like the kind of hallucination saints had in the middle ages when they squinted at stained-glass windows in cathedrals for too long. Immaculate shoes, shorts that throw his calves into Michelangelo-relief, a pure white T-shirt. A jacket wrapped around his waist— he’s been jogging, good God.
Kiyoomi, decreeing that seven in the morning is too early to be visited by a jogging angel of the lord, promptly does an about turn and walks into the next aisle even though he desperately needs a box of tea too. Motoya, while an acceptable roommate, believes that iced tea is real tea, and Kiyoomi has been suffering for four days straight since his pantry ran out. Still, he can suffer a little longer— nothing is worth being caught looking like this by Ushijima Wakatoshi.
And— Kiyoomi isn’t all that vain. If he was he wouldn’t voluntarily cover half his face most of the time when he’s out in public, because— as he’s been told by an ex-girlfriend, Motoya, and on one occasion an extremely drunk Bokuto— he apparently has nice lips, and a nicer smile, when he deigns to bestow it upon others. Which, there isn’t much to smile about in Kiyoomi’s life—
‘Sakusa-san?’
Fuck.
Kiyoomi isn’t vain, but this isn’t so much a question of vanity as it is of dignity. Last night— or, well, five hours ago— he was presentable. Hair coiled, watch on his wrist. A loose black shirt and extremely flattering jeans, which, while not the pinnacle of haute couture, was a far cry from what the neon green sweatpants he’s wearing right now. Angels of the lord don’t trouble themselves with things like that, though, apparently. Because then, even as Kiyoomi cringes under his mask and tries to will his half-gelled half-fluffy hair into submission through mental anguish alone, Ushijima is stepping close enough for him to smell the same clean-laundry smell he’d caught last night, and speaking again.
‘Good morning,’ he says. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’
Of course he didn’t. He probably never expected to see Kiyoomi again at all, much less dressed like a banana, sleep-deprived, and generally in lack of anything resembling charisma. But the chips have fallen as it is, and so Kiyoomi turns around, clutching miserably at the only thing he’s managed to pick up so far— one single matcha KitKat. Ushijima’s eyes go right to it, and Kiyoomi can see the decision not to judge play out in his sharp eyes, and promises himself he will never step foot outside his apartment again.
‘Good morning,’ Kiyoomi croaks, and suppresses the wild urge to justify the KitKat. Ushijima does look like the type of person to have a protein shake right out of bed, which he follows up with a stalk of celery. ‘I was just picking up some things.’
‘Of course,’ Ushijima rumbles. He has this way, Kiyoomi’s noticed, of being so deathly serious about every single thing that doing groceries now feels like a UNESCO mission. ‘Likewise. How are your friends? Miya and Kuroo, if I’m not wrong?’
He isn’t. What is he, a computer? ‘They’ll live, thank you. How is Satori-kun?’
‘His nose has set well,’ Ushijima nods. ‘Though the bruising is somewhat appalling. It’s quite a sight to walk into the kitchen at sunrise and see an entirely purple face drinking from a can of XS.’
‘I can imagine.’ So they live— Kiyoomi blinks. ‘Wait, XS? The energy drink? At…’ Sunrise?
Ushijima’s lips tighten a little, and for a second Kiyoomi’s worried that he’s offended him. But upon further subtle squinting, he realises that it’s…a smile. A very, very small one— even Kiyoomi has a wider one, that’s why all the muscles of his body hurt after his annual three-second smiling event— but a smile all the same, giving an amused tilt to his eyes. He really is film-star, unforgettable-receptionist, jogging-angel-of-the-lord attractive. Kiyoomi laments, for the first time, not having bothered to expand his social circle beyond the people he was saddled with in his first-year dorms, because he has no idea how to start or maintain a conversation. That works just fine with self-absorbed bitch-peacocks like Kuroo or Miya who can and do host TED talks about themselves unprompted, but it’s difficult with a man of words as few as those Ushijima seems to have. Plus, he can’t remember the last time he actually wanted to have a conversation with a new person. Kiyoomi subscribes to a school of thought along the lines of decide if you like me or not and then shut the hell up forever.
He doesn’t want Ushijima to shut the hell up, as it is. In fact, he’d give anything to hear more of his voice.
‘Yes, at sunrise,’ Ushijima says on cue, and that’s a little laugh in there. Kiyoomi almost wants to pick up three more KitKats. Maybe even a sakura one. ‘Satori operates on an average of five hours of sleep. I tell him seven is a strict minimum, but he’s never really listened to me.’
‘I know the type,’ Kiyoomi replies, and he does. Having chosen the misfortune of being a STEM major means he runs into those types by the bucketful, first-years who make it their sole personality to pull all-nighters which wouldn’t be necessary if they didn’t procrastinate on their work all day, third-years who’ve gotten so used to their horrible little lifestyle that they can no longer break out of it. ‘But you’re right. Seven is a minimum. Out at midnight, up at seven.’
‘Even after a party,’ Ushijima says.
‘Even after a party,’ Kiyoomi agrees solemnly. His mental sakura KitKat count is in the twenties. This is objectively the most boring conversation in the history of mankind, and it’s being had in the tea aisle at 7-Eleven, and he couldn’t have come up with a better way to spend his Sunday if he was paid to do it. ‘Do you— is this your usual—’
‘My usual route? Yes. I don’t live very far, and I rather enjoy indulging in the breakfast bentos here occasionally. A guilty pleasure, if you will.’
And well, there’s nothing more horrifying to Kiyoomi than the idea of sitting down at a 7-Eleven counter to eat reheated food, but he has just come up with a way to better his Sunday, and he’s not going to let it go. ‘Were you planning on doing that today, too?’
He was. His bento looks absolutely disgusting when he brings it over, but he pulls out a bottle of sanitiser from his jacket pocket and Kiyoomi feels like the world is doing him a favour, for once. He does a favour right back; pulls out an antiseptic wipe from the packet he just paid for and wipes down the counter for Ushijima, who blinks down at it, then nods at Kiyoomi with a gravity appropriate to civilian award ceremonies. Kiyoomi accepts the nod and settles back in his chair, and carefully unwraps a sakura KitKat.
The third fact he learns about Ushijima is thus that he likes disgusting reheated bentos from 7-Eleven, but only once in a while, because he is well-aware of how disgusting they are. The fourth fact is that he carries sanitiser, and when he has more pocket or bag space, wipes, hand lotion, lip balm, and travel size cologne. This is more than Kiyoomi can say for any other person his age, and naturally catapults Ushijima to the position of the best person he’s ever known. This position is then solidified by the fifth fact he learns about Ushijima, which is that he’s a marathon runner and does not so much believe that his body is a temple as it is an extremely expensive machine that should be treated with practicality and respect.
At this Kiyoomi decides to present a similar fact about himself, and in doing so learns a sixth fact: that when Ushijima listens to you, you feel like like the most important person in the world, even if all you’re saying is that self-care propaganda is actually ruining people’s skin. Ushijima not only listens with rapt attention, but looks very seriously into Kiyoomi’s eyes throughout, and nods like Kiyoomi’s uncovered the universe’s greatest secret.
Then he takes a bite of his disgusting breakfast, swallows, and says every form of soap in his apartment is unscented anyway, and now Kiyoomi has to buy a wholesale bundle of sakura KitKats. In fact, by the time they get around to facts number fourteen and six respectively, he could open up a factory outlet—
Motoya [9:12] kiyoomi?
Motoya [9:12] you’ve been gone two hours should i be calling the police
Shit.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, looking around a little frantically and realising that the position of the sun has very much changed, and that Ushijima’s bento was scraped clean God knows how long ago. ‘I should get going. I’ll—’ See him around? Let fate decide in which unsightly location they’ll run into each other again? He’s going to stop wearing these fucking sweatpants. Now onwards, he’ll only step out of the apartment in his Sunday best—
‘Before you leave, Sakusa-san,’ Ushijima says. ‘Could I ask you for two things?’
The fifteenth fact Kiyoomi learns about Ushijima Wakatoshi is that he is partial to sakura KitKats too. The sixteenth fact is his phone number.
✖
MONDAY
On Monday, Miya makes a great effort to exist, which he usually does not do on Mondays. In fact, he not only exists, but chooses to make his existence Kiyoomi’s problem by dragging his maimed self over a ten-minute metro ride to sprawl on the floor by Kiyoomi’s bed, taking what he probably thinks are sexy selfies of his missing eyebrow. He’s dressed for the occasion too, in that maroon sweatshirt that he thinks makes his hair look good, and a necklace with dog tags, too. No, Kiyoomi could never call himself vain while Miya’s around.
‘What d’you think of this one?’ he says on cue, angling his brick-sized phone sideways to show off his latest shot.
Kiyoomi looks. He’s biting his thumb, eyes narrowed, one brow thick, dark and majestic, and the other nonexistent under all the— well—
Kiyoomi looks away, queasy. ‘You shouldn’t be allowed outside until that thing heals. It’s disgusting.’
‘Mean, Omi! Just for that I’m going to take you off my close friends list. You’ll see then.’
‘Woe is me.’ Kiyoomi’s already back to his textbook, repositioning his ruler to the top of page 644 and resigning himself to an afternoon of organic chemistry and Miya Atsumu. ‘Don’t you have anything else to be doing? Eating a burger? Getting rejected on Tinder?’
‘Nope!’ Miya replies brightly. ‘In fact, you’ll be happy to know that I—’
Kiyoomi’s phone vibrates; he holds up a silencing finger, which does nothing to actually silence Miya, who only shifts mileage, content, and volume to be as annoying as possible. Only after Kiyoomi spends a full minute blinking at his screen does he peter off, straightening up very, very slowly from the floor in the corner of Kiyoomi’s vision.
Ushijima-san [14:34] Hello, Sakusa-san. Would you be free for a 2-minute call? Nothing urgent.
‘Who is it?’ Miya asks. He’s in a crouch now, both hands curled in the sheets, as if he thinks Kiyoomi won’t realise he’s trying to climb up on the bed if he does it slowly enough.
But Kiyoomi is so baffled— who the hell texts like that— who makes phone calls in the twenty-first century?— that for once in his life, he lets Miya do whatever the hell he’s doing. Looks up at him, then down at the phone, then up at Miya again. Then he almost considers telling him what it is, and asking him what to do, before he realises just whom he’s about to ask for advice.
But it’s too late. Miya has this deathly serious look on his face that he only gets when he’s fighting someone in Kojima Hideo’s Twitter replies. The next second he’s launching himself on the bed, scrabbling for the phone and dislodging Kiyoomi’s textbook— the ruler digs into his thigh, then snaps— and Kiyoomi finds himself fighting for his life for the fourth time in as many days.
‘Give me that,’ Miya snarls, and Kiyoomi stretches his arm as high as it’ll go, grip on the phone so tight he can’t feel his fingers. ‘Give me the phone , Sakusa.’
‘I will literally wrap your dick around your throat,’ Kiyoomi replies. ‘Get the fuck off me—‘
Miya raises himself up on his knees. The pages of the textbook crinkle, spine bending. Kiyoomi is going to jail for homicide very soon. ‘You give me that fucking phone—‘
Once, when Kiyoomi still had a soul— so when he was nineteen— he and Motoya had settled down on the couch with his laptop on the coffee table and two enormous glasses of pulpy orange juice in their hands, ready to watch some kind of fictional documentary on Pokémon, and Kiyoomi had been genuinely excited. It might just have been the last time he felt a positive emotion, and as if whoever dictated his fate knew that, they’d intervened to cut it short real quick. It really had felt like that— Kiyoomi, the least clumsy person in existence, who had placed the laptop on the coffee table precisely to avoid dropping it or spilling anything on it, reached forward to adjust the volume— and fate itself knocked his orange juice out of his hands and into his keyboard. It really had felt like that. Not like his hand had moved of its own accord, but that someone very clearly pushed that glass out of his hands, consequently destroying his laptop, his afternoon, and his life.
It feels exactly like that right now. One second Kiyoomi’s holding the phone out of Miya’s reach and trying to kill him without hurting his eyebrow, the next, fate loosens his grip and lets the device fall right into Miya’s hands. The next, Kiyoomi makes a most unseemly sound and scrambles to retrieve it, while Miya tries desperately to read the text—
The next, in the confusion, someone's thumb hits the call button.
Squabble dropped for a unanimous moment of horror, they stare at each other wide-eyed, open-mouthed. But it’s too late. The tinny ring of an outgoing call has already sounded thrice, and—
‘Hello?’
To his credit, Miya is not too shocked to stop being an asshole. The moment Ushijima’s voice sounds through the speaker, he jumps off the bed and presses his back to the door in one sweeping move, effectively blocking Kiyoomi’s only exit from the room that won’t result in an untimely demise. He crosses his arms and stares defiantly at Kiyoomi from there. It looks like his eyebrow is bleeding again, actually, going by the squint marring his defiant face.
There’s nothing to be done, so Kiyoomi lifts the phone and steels himself to have this conversation— whatever two minutes of it could entail— in front of the bane of his existence.
To Ushijima’s credit, the call does last only two minutes. He’s a man who likes to keep it simple, after all, and has probably never beaten around the bush a day in his life. As a fellow avoider of beating around the bush, Kiyoomi appreciates it; as a person who is only just now discovering that he can get flustered around other human beings, he does not.
Still, he manages to keep his cool and answer the singular question Ushijima has for him, and even manages not to immediately perish once he puts the phone down.
‘Well?’ Miya asks, as if he didn’t just hear the entire conversation or enough to make a guess.
But Kiyoomi’s too tired to resist. ‘We’re…getting coffee tomorrow.’
‘Like, coffee coffee?’
Not too tired for that. ‘None of your fucking business, you piece of shit.’
Miya only smiles malevolently. ’You’re welcome, by the way,’ he sings. ‘It was an immense sacrifice to have my eyebrow ripped clean off my face just to get you laid, but one I would gladly make again if needed—’
Kiyoomi makes a sweeping move of his own, combining rolling off the bed and throwing a punch. It doesn’t land. With reflexes like those, one really does wonder how Miya ended up in the emergency room. Almost like fate had an orange juice hand in it too.
✖
TUESDAY
‘I could not have asked for a better way to spend summer break,’ Motoya says.
The thing about Motoya is that he says everything with the same amount of smiling sincerity, leading a bystander to believe either that he is a sarcastic asshole twenty-four hours of the day, or that he is, as their grandmother used to say, so daft that it’s a life skill at this point. Kiyoomi wouldn’t know what to tell the bystander, seeing that an entire life spent with this man so far has not led him to any conclusion on the question.
Whatever it is, Motoya sounds like he’s genuinely having a good time, laid out like a thick-browed Greek god on Kiyoomi’s bed, alternating between scrolling through what is no doubt a pretentious thinkpiece on the evolution of the instant noodle, and providing commentary on Kiyoomi’s latest choice of shirt. He’s in the double digits at this point, but Motoya doesn’t seem to have gotten the least bit tired of the whole deal.
Kiyoomi, on the other hand, is so tired that he’s contemplating throwing on the neon sweatpants again just to keep the bar low. Pre-date hysteria has him convinced that he’ll never again look as good as he did on Friday night, even though he owns fifteen shirts where that came from. And Kiyoomi isn’t even vain. He can’t imagine what an actual vain person, like Kuroo Tetsurou, would be going through in his place right now.
The commentary does help, though. Because when Kiyoomi throws on shirt number twelve, Motoya says oh, sweet, instead of oh, nice, which is what he’s been saying the past eleven times. It’s good enough a distinction for Kiyoomi to keep the pastel yellow thing on and roll the sleeves up, and finally return to glaring at his hair while Motoya returns to scrolling.
‘You look fine,’ Motoya says on cue, without looking up. He does sound tired now, which is a monumental event. ‘Please just put your shoes on and leave.’
Which, Kiyoomi scarcely believes him, but he’s right. If he doesn’t leave now he won’t reach ten minutes in advance, and he absolutely needs those ten minutes in the café restroom so that Ushijima has no proof, by the time he arrives, that Kiyoomi has functional sweat glands. It’s approximately two hundred degrees outside and he’s not taking any risks.
Sure enough, he manages to keep to the shade the entire way there but he’s disgustingly damp still, and the ten minutes are precious. He’s the one who picked out the place; he’s a regular, and knows that it’s as comfortable as he’ll ever be in a public restroom. Bright and clean if not spacious, which Tokyo will never be anyway. He even manages to give himself a shoujo-protagonist nod in the mirror once he’s done making himself presentable, and feels somewhat like his life is in control by the time he steps back out.
It, of course, promptly spirals out of control. Because just as Kiyoomi reaches the counter, the door to the café slides open and in comes Ushijima Wakatoshi, the blast of the air conditioning ruffling his perfect hair just the slightest bit against the sunglasses perched on it, his skin all golden from the sun slatting through the wide windows. Pale shirt, perfect jeans. A flush is working up Kiyoomi’s neck, and it only gets worse when Ushijima catches his eye, and— smiles. Not a big one but by no means a small one.
Kiyoomi swallows and blinks away from his film star face, and then tries to unlearn the act of breathing when Ushijima falls into line beside him at the counter. He smells like something fictitious, like his cologne was sourced from dragon scales and the Styx, or something, and it’s all Kiyoomi can do to keep his voice neutral as they greet each other.
Then it gets worse. Because Kiyoomi’s always ordered a cheese croissant and lemonade here, but it’s Ushijima’s first time, and he looks positively entranced by all the choices before him. There’s a line between his eyebrows. He’s practically shooting lasers at the chocolate muffins and carrot cake by the time the barista— who seems as fascinated by his face as Kiyoomi— suggests the blueberry cheesecake, which he accepts with grace, gravity, and grapefruit juice.
Then it gets even worse. He pulls Kiyoomi’s chair out for him, helps steady his glass while Kiyoomi sets his phone and wallet aside, and then proceeds to do the same, before folding his sunglasses, leaning forward, and asking— like it’s the most pressing question in the world— if Kiyoomi put on sunscreen before leaving the apartment, because he has a custom travel bottle in his pocket if not, since the sun is falling right over them.
And all right. There’s a slight possibility that Kiyoomi’s obsessed with him, with the precise way he cuts into his cheesecake and focuses on that first bite with the same importance that he gives to every other thing, like ultraviolet rays and his roommate’s ASMR baking obsession and how much sugar should go into a cup of tea (none). Also with how he drinks his grapefruit juice like he’s a diplomat at dinner in Geneva, but still uses the twinkling metal straw, pursing his lips around it with utmost poise before going back to talking about the interview he was watching last night
It keeps getting worse. Because nothing has ever gone quite as well as this date is going. Kiyoomi isn’t a flirt and never has been, but flirting is what’s expected on a first date, and he’s never managed to find any sort of compatibility between expectations before this. He’s always tried to be cordial, but his bluntness gets the better of him— interlocutors’ questions and compliments falling flat because he doesn’t need that kind of attention; his own curiosity never beating the exhaustion of trying to frame a question in a roundabout way. He’s thought about it all many a time, surprising himself with how much his love life actually concerns him.
Maybe you’re aromantic, Motoya had said once a couple of years ago. Or at any rate, the social contracts around dating are too much work for you. Even though that’s the fun bit for me. Maybe it’s just not worth whatever the fun bits are for you?
Kiyoomi hadn’t replied, because he didn’t have an answer that didn’t sound ridiculous. Because I think if I met someone just like me, who didn’t hold back because I’m me, everything would be the fun bit sounded ridiculous, and I really do want to meet someone like that, if only once sounded embarrassing.
And then again, he hadn’t realised that he was looking for someone exactly like Ushijima to have a first date with until the man walked into his life, and now that he knows it’s possible to get along with someone like this, he’s never settling for anyone else. In fact, he isn’t sure whether to be glad or sorry that he didn’t meet Ushijima years ago. On the one hand, he could’ve realised much earlier that he won’t die alone, but on the other hand, he’d never have matched with the Other Miya on Tinder then, and consequently would’ve missed out on the entire circus that is Miya Atsumu et al.
‘Sakusa-san? Do I have something on my face?’
He blinks. There’s nothing on Ushijima’s face but the perfect angle of sunlight, a pair of glowing brown eyes, and a stamp of approval on his forehead.
Kiyoomi smiles. ’No, nothing, excuse me.’
And well, this is the absolute worst, all of it; it can only get better from here.
✖
WEDNESDAY
It absolutely does not get better. This is the least better anything has ever gotten, actually, and Kiyoomi isn't one to exaggerate. Usually, when he says his life is ending, he means it. Not only in the pedantic sense of everyone's life is ending from the moment it starts, but quite literally recent events have accelerated my progress towards the great beyond.
To start with, Miya is back in his bedroom, but this time accompanied by Motoya. They're currently performing the world's worst caricature of good cop, bad cop; Miya leaning against the door with his arms crossed again, and Motoya perched on Kiyoomi's minuscule work desk, careful to keep his feet off the chair.
Miya is glaring. Motoya is doing something compassionate with his eyebrows. Kiyoomi wants them both out of his room, but settles for levelling them with a glare that would make rattlesnakes flee.
‘What?’ he hisses testily. ‘I'm fine.’
‘You woke up at eleven because you were listening to the Death Note soundtrack until four,’ Motoya says gently. ‘Then you barked at me for sneezing near the plants, drank an entire can of green apple Fanta in forty seconds, and have been vaporising in your bedroom all day. It is now nine in the evening.’
‘You've lost your mind,’ Miya paraphrases. ‘What's wrong with you? I thought the date went well. You sent me an emoji last night.’
‘It was the middle finger emoji.’
‘Exactly. You were over the fuckin' moon. So what happened?’
And, well, Kiyoom isn't going to tell them. The only thing more stupid than feeling what he's feeling would be putting words to it. What would he say, that he's lost his marbles because the date went so well? Too well? And he's never had one of those, so how the hell is he supposed to follow up to that simple I hope to see you again that Ushijima left him with on his doorstep? It's not like Kiyoomi knows how to text someone he likes, or how to call them. He doesn't even think he wants to, which was the whole point— that he's never wanted to do the things everyone wants to do, but he's only now realising that in the absence of an alternative system of communication, he has to improvise. And Kiyoomi doesn't like to improvise, he likes to be understood without having to make understand, but it's hard to make someone understand I don't want to text you, I just want to live with you or something after a date and a half, and more so if he refuses to use his phone or his words.
‘I,’ Kiyoomi starts, then grits his teeth, takes a breath. ‘I...don't know how to keep this going. I want to see him again already but I don't know how to tell him that. And I know how fucking pathetic that is, so don't try to laugh.’
But neither of them is trying. Motoya's only tilting his head in the sympathy tilt he usually reserves for breaking up with bi-annual girlfriends and scared dogs, and Miya's glaring harder than ever.
‘What?’ Kiyoomi snaps again. ‘Aren't you supposed to be laughing your ass off at how I'm a fool in love or something?’
‘No,’ Miya replies flatly. ‘Because this ain't you, and it ain't cute.’
Kiyoomi stares.
Miya continues, leaning away from the door. ‘If I was in your place I'd feel like I'm one with the cosmos or something right about now. Like, I've been looking for a schmuck to date all my life, and here's a guy who calls instead of texting, keeps it simple, then talks my ear off about a fucking interview he watched about the people who do the announcements for the Shinkansen. I'd be like, oh fuck, I better marry him quick. Instead here you are.’
‘You're not an anxious person,’ Motoya says when Kiyoomi's jaw clenching gets to hazardous levels. ‘Horribly pessimistic, yes. But anxious, no. Why are you anxious about this? This is the best thing that's happened to you all year. You can be as careful as you want about it, but I don't see why you should be worried.’
‘Learn how to enjoy something for fucking once,’ Miya paraphrases. ‘I know your entire worldview depends on thinking the apocalypse is around the corner but fuck, dude.’
Kiyoomi interprets the middle finger emoji live for him, but long after they've both left him alone, he's still thinking about it. They are right— he's been a pessimist all his life, but it's never brought him anxiety or fear. If anything, preparing for the worst is the most neutral emotional plane to exist on; rock bottom, a solid foundation. So what did happen this time?
Maybe he really is a fool in love— because the only thing that happened is that for once, imagining the worst possible outcome isn't a comfort. Not the way it is when he thinks an argument with his mother is going to go south and starts to tally up his bank savings in case she cuts him off, because at the bottom of his heart he knows there's no way it could actually go that bad. Just like when Miya's forehead met the counter last week and Kiyoomi only allowed himself to think this guy is going to die right now once Miya had come back up swinging, eyebrow gone but life otherwise intact.
And no, it's not nice to think that way about Ushijima. The worst possible outcome— that they stop talking after three days of knowing each other because Kiyoomi accidentally proposed— is, well, possible, and bad. But then again, that outcome could very well produce itself if Kiyoomi just never texts, and then Ushijima never texts, and they never text.
No. It takes a couple of hours, by which time the sounds of the world outside his room have changed and settled into either sleep or summer festivities, but once Kiyoomi makes up his mind, he doesn't let a second slip by. He could at least compose the text, send it right in the morning, that way—
Incoming call.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Kiyoomi has half a mind to throw his phone out the window, and his heart just did a very infernal thing that hearts are definitely not supposed to do so he's going to have to get that checked out if he survives the stroke to which Apple's generic ringtone is the soundtrack, and—
The door to his bedroom cracks open. Motoya's disembodied head pokes in.
‘You'd better take that call,’ he says simply, before backing out.
Kiyoomi takes the call, not before wondering if it was Motoya who knocked the orange juice out of his hands that day. Wheezes something resembling hello into his phone, and braces himself for the worst.
‘Good evening, Sakusa-san,’ Ushijima says. ‘Excuse my manners and also my forwardness, but I am at the convenience store by your apartment as we speak, and I was wondering if you were up to a midnight rendez-vous. I would really like to see you.’
✖
THURSDAY
Kiyoomi is up to a midnight rendez-vous. In fact, he is so up to it that he doesn't spare more than a second's glance for the mirror as he whizzes out of his room, and though that second is spent cringing at the fact that he is very much wearing his neon green sweatpants again and his hair is a mess from a full day of thinking about Yagami Light, he has no time for vanity right now. So he slips into his shoes and grabs the keys, and doesn't bother to inform Motoya of his departure.
By the time he reaches the convenience store he's just a little out of breath, because as it turns out, trying to speed-walk instead of running for prideful reasons is actually more difficult on the ribs, especially when one's heart is barely recovering from receiving a phone call unannounced in the twenty-first century. It's not like the convenience store has a brightly-lit freesias-smelling restroom he can get pretty in either, so he resigns himself to looking his absolute, stunning worst as he steps past the doors.
Ushijima is in the condiments aisle, checking the label on a bottle of mayonnaise. He looks up right away, and while Kiyoomi wants to think it's supernatural romantic intuition, it's probably just his stupid sweatpants signalling his presence to everyone in a three kilometre radius.
‘Sakusa-san,’ he says, smiles. He— actually, he doesn't look relieved, like Kiyoomi feels. He just looks pleased, plain and simple, almost as if— ‘I have to admit, I didn't expect you to accept. I'm really glad you did, though. I thought we could eat some ice cream. I remember you saying you like the Milk Vanilla here.’
Almost as if this is just their second date, planned at the last minute but no less complete. Almost as if Ushijima has definitely not been thinking about Yagami Light all day, and that he, when confronted with the desire to see Kiyoomi again, simply made it happen. Almost as if— wait, Ushijima really did want to see him again. Enough to skip right past thinking to just make it happen.
Yeah, Kiyoomi's going to marry this man. Which is why he briefly considers falling into step and pretending that wearing neon green sweatpants to their second date was a choice, and that he, too, has been extremely calm about this all day— after all, it would be embarrassing to ruin things now.
But— Kiyoomi plans to marry this man. Ushijima is holding the lowest-fat mayonnaise available in the archipelago, and Kiyoomi knows that because it's the one he uses. He's also wearing a shirt and jeans like he planned this date an hour ago but only remembered to actually call Kiyoomi once he was already here. He's wearing a shirt and jeans and cologne to 7-Eleven at midnight on a Wednesday night-Thursday morning, and if Kiyoomi wants this to lead to marriage, the least he should do is not start it off on a lie.
‘I have to be honest with you, Wakatoshi-kun,’ he says. If Ushijima's surprised at the name, he doesn't show it— so he isn't. So he is just himself, like this, all the time— like Kiyoomi, who inexplicably decided to take a break from being himself today but will not be repeating the error. ‘I was a little caught up in my head about you today.’
‘Oh,’ Ushijima says. ‘May I ask why?’
‘Because I really wanted to see you again, too,’ he replies. ‘More than you can imagine. But I didn't know if me asking would be a bother. I know it would've been too early if you were someone else, but you're not. But— I still don't know you. Or how this should work.’ He could've trailed off invitingly or imploringly, but he doesn't. He has nothing else to say, and he doesn't have to be polite here, he knows.
On cue, Ushijima smiles, already done considering the words. As if everything really is that simple in his head.
‘I see,’ he says. ‘To be honest too, Kiyoomi, this is the first time I've been romantically interested in someone, so I don't know how it will work either. But I do know that I would like to see you every day, even if it's just here. And if it's all right with you, I would like to hold your hand at some point too.’
Kiyoomi would like to marry him at some point. ‘It's all right with me.'
Ushijima smiles wider. It's the widest he's ever smiled, and he doesn't look like a film star or a receptionist anymore. He looks like some guy who does track and field and runs marathons, who happens to be as hot as he is amazing. The kind of guy who doesn't mind that Kiyoomi's standing right next to him being fluorescent and stupid.
‘I don't think we need to worry about how it should work,’ he continues. ‘I know I certainly have never worried about how I should be doing things, only about how I like to do them. It doesn't seem like you worry either. Let's not start now.’
And Kiyoomi does wish, just a little, that he'd met him earlier. Because he knows a lot of people who're unafraid of being themselves, but he'd never before met one so similar to him— and now that he has, he knows he might meet one again. And if you ask Kiyoomi, that sounds like a kind of positive not even the malevolent Miya-Motoya hand of fate can do anything about.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘In that case, how about getting started on our date right now? And scheduling another one for Saturday?’
‘I will rather miss you on Friday,’ Ushijima replies.
Kiyoomi smiles, and Ushijima smiles back, and no, this is the widest he's ever smiled, and the sharpest, as if they're both in on something, which they are, dressed like a diplomat in Geneva and a Kiyoomi in love.
After all, it's barely the weekend. Summer, and the rest of it all, has yet to begin.