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Kojiro is sixteen and his heart is breaking.
There are two elephants in the room that Kojiro could not help but stare at. One is a rich blue man with the flair for life. The other is a pink-hued fool he never thought would get bitten by the lovebug. Kojiro does not like the former but Kaoru likes that elephant a lot more than he originally thinks he would.
Because Kaoru is a prude. He is stingy with the pieces of himself—so very selfish with giving himself away. But maybe only to Kojiro. It hurts him to admit it even to himself. Kaoru and he had known each other for the last ten years and he barely managed to scrape the surface, he had to beg to be let in. And Adam (that damn bastard) skates himself into the front gate, pried it open without a sweat, and grasped a hold of Kaoru’s piece—the one that matters most to Kojiro—and took it for himself.
That was supposed to be his. Supposedly. Probably. If Kaoru allowed him to.
“What are you looking at?”
Kojiro loves Kaoru’s eyes. They look like stardust, the springtime sun over their heads, the gerbera daisy in his room, the golden button sewn in one of his suits, the yellow paint in their childhood drawings. Kojiro likes to think that the whole universe conspired to make the most beautiful eyes and they gave it to Kaoru because Kaoru is pretty as is and they have to make him prettier for the world to see and—
“Will we meet Adam today too?”
Kojiro loves them (so, so, so much) even if they shine for someone else.
“Of course, we would. Why even ask?”
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Adam is great. The kind of great that unknowingly steals precious things from people, the kind of great that Kojiro can’t see himself become, the kind of great Kojiro wishes to become.
And he is especially great with his skating, with people, and with making Kaoru feel things, that Kojiro would hang back a little, a small distance so unnoticeable that he won’t intrude in the world that somehow appears whenever Adam and Kaoru are together. Kojiro would skate a little slower, a little quieter, until he is half a meter or two away (not that Adam and Kaoru would notice anyway) and extends his hands to the direction of his friend—best friend because that’s the only line Kaoru allows him to.
One meter. Two meters. Right, Kojiro sneers at his hands. What use is reaching out to a boy who seems to be miles away? It’s probably his fault. Of course, it is. For all his bravado, he’s a coward, a liar, a pathetic loser who keeps getting scared of the if’s and but’s that drags him down every time he hopes.
He shouldn’t hope. Hope is a four-letter word that spells disaster for him. Hope is a sweet honey trap that whispers lies in his ears at three in the morning when his mind is singing anthems for Kaoru to fill up the silence next to his empty bed. If he hopes for more than what he can have, he does not know what he will do with the ugly-shaped organ in his chest that aches and aches and aches.
One of his friends told him once that he moved on from his first love because he gained clarity. But what can clarity help him with? It’s very clear to his eyes that Kaoru loves Adam. It’s very clear that between him and Adam, Kaoru would choose the latter. It has always been so awfully, terribly, wretchedly clear to him. And yet—
“Kojiro!”
Kojiro blinks and sees Adam and Kaoru skating back to him. Four meters. Three meters. Two meters. The distance is getting smaller and smaller. If he reaches out, he can pull Kaoru from Adam’s side.
But he doesn’t.
“Wow. I spaced out for a bit.” He laughs. Kaoru looks at him with a strange expression that Kojiro can’t decipher. He doesn’t dwell on it. Instead, when the two is a meter away from him, he pushes with all his might and skates past them with great speed.
“You cheater!”
Adam will catch up to him and surpass him. So will Kaoru. But for now, they’re behind him and the horizon in front of him is wide and vast, empty of his ache, of Adam’s presence, of the reason why he needs to keep moving forward or else he might have to lie to them that a speck of dust entered his vision somehow.
He can already hear Kaoru’s you’re so clumsy, you gorilla and Adam’s be more careful, Joe.
He hates it.
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Kojiro isn’t popular with girls.
He’s friendly to both sex but there were not many who would come to him and confess their feelings. Kaoru, on the other hand, has to write back rejection letters every other day. Kojiro laughs at his effort to reply but it’s probably one of the reasons he still keeps getting more than Kojiro did in middle school and in high school. So, when he did receive one—a serious blunt letter with undecorated and unperfumed paper, Kojiro can’t help but be intrigued.
The one who sent him is a girl with long black hair and dark black eyes. She’s a contrast to her letter because she’s cheerful and stumbles on her words. She fiddles with her fingers in his presence, twirls a lock when she’s embarrassed—and she gets embarrassed a lot of the time.
She’s cute. But she’s not Kaoru.
Kojiro tells Kaoru about her three days after they met.
“I see.” Kaoru’s voice is so quiet that Kojiro has to strain his ears to hear it amongst the noise of the cars passing by. They were at a crossroad, still far away from their usual spot with Adam. Kojiro tries to peek at the inside of Kaoru’s chest with a guilty motive.
He wants and needs him to be jealous, to shout, to be angry. It’s petty but that’s who he is. Kojiro waits with bated breath but Kaoru’s façade remains undisturbed.
“So, will you date her?”
No. Kojiro answers but his tongue seems to fail him. No, I won’t. If you tell me that I shouldn’t, I will do what you please. No, don’t make me date her. No, because you’re the one I like. No, I—
“Well, she’s cute.” But not you. “And she seems nice. She offered to cook for me for lunch the other day and her food is amazing.”
“I think you made up your mind.”
Kaoru turns away from him and heads to their spot, awaiting for Adam to arrive the way he always does.
Well, he’s wrong and inaccurate because his mind is still in a twist. Kojiro can’t help but laugh at himself.
Why do you keep on expecting something from Kaoru, you fool?
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Because Kojiro does not do well with the overflowing affection he holds for Kaoru—because he does not know how to deal with pain, because he is a clumsy idiot with a bad coping mechanism, Kojiro changes.
Not wholly, not in a bad way that cuts him off Kaoru (God knows what he’ll do to himself if he loses Kaoru), not in a way that gets him in trouble with the law. Instead, he pours more of his time in his appearance, he grooms himself into a debonair man (because Adam is suave, he should be too) and avails membership in a gym to get himself out of the house so he can stop moping around (and start becoming as strong as Adam is so he can pull Kaoru when he stumbles).
And, although Kaoru noticeably looks at him more with much annoyance, he began dating girls like changing clothes. He does not date the first girl who was ever serious about him. That’s disrespectful for her and her feelings—he politely turned her down and she accepted kindly. That’s that.
Kojiro is casual and callous with his relationships. They were fun but they never lasted more than two weeks. Kaoru calls him a whore and glares at him prissily and spends more time moodily skating around their spot, but at least, Kaoru pays enough attention to tell him he already dated twelve girls for the last six months.
And if he dates another and Kaoru tells him the exact number, would it be weird to say that he’s happier with that than a girl by his side at night?
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Kaoru is eighteen and his world is falling apart.
Kojiro looks at the stricken expression of his best friend, the little scrunch of his nose, the clenching of his jaw and he knows—because he has always been looking at him—that Kaoru is doing his best not to let himself cry.
Adam is standing above them. The boy he skated with, writhing down below from the fall. There are people shouting for help. Kojiro wonders if Kaoru can hear it. The cherry-haired skater has been standing still for the last few minutes. If Kojiro touches him, would he bend? Would he crumble underneath the fingers Kaoru wishes were Adam’s? Would he brush them off? Or would he do nothing?
Kojiro does not have the luxury to find his answers. Kaoru has swiftly turned his back at Adam with a gritted frown and skates away. Kojiro feels somewhat relieved. He does not want to see Kaoru beg. Not for Adam or anyone. Kaoru should always be above begging.
He follows Kaoru and finds him by their old spot. They don’t exchange words, they don’t exchange stares. They soak in the silence of their youth and wonder if being young and in love should be this excruciating.
Kaoru leans on the rails and he by the walls.
Kojiro lets his eyes wander around the place. There are scratches behind him, marks from their folly, writings of stupidity and if he squints to his left, he can see a crooked heart surrounding K+K written with a red Sharpee, inconspicuous amongst the vandalisms littering the once clean surface. Even if it was discovered, who would think it was him who wrote it and kept rewriting it when it began to fade?
“Are you okay?” Kojiro says when the silence becomes too deafening for him. Kaoru sighs and shakes his head. Oh, Kojiro swallows, that’s a first. His hands tremble at his side at the vulnerability showing across Kaoru’s face.
Something that only Adam could provoke from Kaoru.
“Adam has changed.”
So did I. So did you. Kojiro snarls in his head. Kaoru must have seen his expression because he grimaces when he looks at him. It’s probably twisted so Kojiro schools his façade to a near blankness—never as good as Kaoru is with his poker face.
“What’s with that look?”
“I’m angry.” Kojiro admits.
There’s a fire burning in his throat, a lead weighing in the pit of his belly, and water in his lungs. He feels like burning and drowning at the same time. Kojiro wants to shout why Adam? I was the first one here—why that bastard? Why him?
He feels like a goddamn child having his toy taken from him. And yet, even while he pulls his thoughts to hell and back, throws curses at Adam since discovering how Kaoru’s eyes shine brighter when he looks at him, tortures himself with the comfort of empty giggles and slippery fleeting joy, Kojiro deals with it accordingly so Kaoru will never know.
Kaoru nods, “I’m mad too at Adam for doing such a thing. It was dangerous. How could he hurt them like that? And he could have been hurt as well—what if he—Kojiro, he’s not the Adam we used to know.”
But it never occurred to Kojiro that perhaps Kaoru will unravel him and he can’t run fast enough to hide himself away. So, he snaps like a taut string breaking sharply.
“Adam this. Adam that. Fuck, Kaoru. Is he all you talk about? Do you—” like him?
Kojiro bites his tongue.
Kaoru is looking at him with a peculiar assessing gerbera daisy eyes, peering at him like he knows his secrets and the sappy love letters hidden in the second drawer of his bedside table. Kojiro looks away before he is found out. He feels his face heat up despite the frustration boiling in his vein.
“Are you angry at Adam? Or me?”
“At Adam.”
Because it’s the easiest one to explain. If he tells him that he is mad at him too, Kaoru would get angry as well and this, whatever this is now, won’t go anywhere until Kojiro comes running back (because Kaoru never runs for anyone and that’s how it should always be).
“It feels like you have something more to say to me than to Adam.”
Kaoru is as precise as ever. Kojiro chuckles at the face of revelation and spits at it, “No. I was just… I don’t know.”
The words run dry in his chest before they ever crawl out of his mouth. He doesn’t let them crawl out of him.
He shakes his head and sighs, walking straight to Kaoru and, before his cowardice gets to him, before his mind whirs out the worst scenarios, and before he second-guesses himself, wraps Kaoru in a tight embrace.
Kaoru struggles, as he would, but settles five seconds later. Kojiro knows because he counted, all the air in his lungs suspended until Kaoru presses himself into his warmth.
“I’m sorry.” Kaoru says in a low voice, Kojiro almost misses it.
“For what?”
“For not considering your feelings.”
Kojiro stiffens at this but masks his nervousness with a strangled laugh, “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I don’t know what feelings you’re talking about.”
Kaoru does not reply, only tightens his hold around him.
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Kaoru’s warmth lingers long after they part. And when Kojiro tries to hold someone else, he is disgusted with how cold he is with them.
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They see Adam leaves a month before their graduation. There were no farewells, no good wishes—they all stood facing each other the way soldiers face dawning wars. With icy cold resolve and the shattering of the glue keeping Adam together, Adam left and the loose ends that Adam made stayed loose thereafter.
Despite Kojiro expecting Kaoru to cry or to be moody after Adam’s absence, he does not. Kaoru acts like nothing extraordinary happened, like his first love did not break his heart by changing into a complicated work of art, too complex for anyone to understand.
They go to school, eat lunch together, talk about mundane things, go to parks to skate around until midnight, and often sleep at each other’s home. A mind-numbing routine that Kojiro holds dear while counting his luck.
Today, Kaoru wants to go to his house. And Kojiro breaks up with his latest conquest coincidentally. (Time, all of them he will give if Kaoru asks.)
He cooks for Kaoru because his parents are often away and he needs the skill to survive living alone and Kaoru can’t cook for shit so he needs to keep him alive too. It’s a simple Italian dish that he learns from watching some cooking show.
“You should build a restaurant, Kojiro.” Kaoru suggests when he finishes the dish, wiping his mouth elegantly. Kojiro snorts, “That’s too much for me. I only learned to keep me afloat, after all.”
“But you cook well. Despite your brute appearance, you have such delicate hands when you cook. And I like your Italian dishes.”
Kojiro grins, “Is Kaoru-chan praising me? Well, I might as well go to Italy and learn culinary there for you.”
Kaoru huffs at him, the light in the kitchen bar giving his cheeks a healthy pinkish glow, and then he says, “Will you really? Um, go to Italy, I mean, if you decide to. That’s going to be four years out of Japan.”
Kojiro pauses. There’s a timbre in Kaoru’s voice that he is unfamiliar with. A lilt that he doesn’t often hear or rather never heard. Kaoru is drumming his fingers on the counter, eyes away from him. Kojiro can almost delude himself.
“You’re going to Tokyo for university, right?” Kaoru confirms it with a small nod. Kojiro takes the empty plates and washes them in the kitchen, “Didn’t we submit applications to the same colleges?”
“Oh.” Kaoru says breathily, “I forgot.”
“That’s strange. You never forget though.” Kojiro faces Kaoru but Kaoru is only staring past him, boring a hole in the cabinet behind him.
“I do sometimes. I’m human, after all. Anyway, should we head up after we both shower?”
Kojiro does not prod. Instead, he takes the wording and spins it into a joke. Kaoru flips him off and sticks his tongue at him while he laughs at his flushed face.
Kojiro smiles gently after Kaoru left to shower, savoring the moment when it feels like one of his illusions came to life.
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Kojiro, hopeful and stupid, stops trying to fill his night with the warmth of strangers. All because of that one delusional moment of his with Kaoru that he relives every night in his sleep, manipulates in his favor, and imagines what could have been if he reaches out that time and pulls Kaoru against his chest.
Would Kaoru like the sound of fast heartbeats after an Italian dinner? Would he turn around, run his fingers through his forest hair, and kiss him back if Kojiro kisses him? Would Kaoru be his that night?
Because it was his dreams, the answers were all yes.
(He does not listen to the part of his mind that sneers at his ideals.)
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With some painstaking begging of his life, Kojiro manages to snag an apartment with Kaoru for college. A bit exaggerated considering how it really went down. Kojiro asked Kaoru to split the rent with him and, for the five minutes that Kaoru has stayed quiet, purses his lips, glances at him then to the inky horizon of Okinawa, Kojiro felt like he was waiting for his execution more than a simple answer of yes or no. The noose around his neck loosened when Kaoru shrugs and tells him that he was thinking of asking him too—for practicality purposes, Kojiro, not because of your food!
It was large enough for two people who value privacy but small enough that Kojiro has to constantly find the floor interesting whenever Kaoru finishes showering or wears something that is just too unsettling for his heart to stay still.
Don’t get him wrong. He’s not virtuous—not anymore anyway. And he had seen Kaoru naked plenty of times in the context of bathing when they were kids or when they went to hot springs.
But this is somehow different.
Something has shifted. Between the moment in the kitchen one moonless night to this point where Kaoru breathes next to him as they watch an old movie, his head on Kojiro’s shoulder, Kojiro recognizes the change. And perhaps his disgusting hope warps every moment thereafter to something that resembles closely to what Kojiro desires most. Perhaps, it was desperation. Whatever it is, Kojiro lets himself for the first time in many years desire even more.
He shifts closer until one of his arms has wrapped itself around Kaoru, his whole body tensing along with Kaoru’s shoulders before becoming undone when Kaoru only merely glances at him with the strange expression Kojiro had seen sometimes over the years they were together.
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The only thing that remained the same is their love for skateboarding.
Tokyo is a much different world from the warmth of Okinawa. There are far too many buildings, far too many cars, far too many somethings that make them miss home. And when they miss home, they skate in streets that have lesser crowds or abandoned areas that are accessible by climbing over the rusty old fences.
They talk for hours, exchanging comments and snide remarks and possibly some flirting on Kojiro’s side. It’s a shameless cowardice when Kojiro tells Kaoru how pretty he is tonight and adds with a laugh: pretty weak I mean. His laugh used to be awkward when he delivered those lines but with rigorous practice on girls he barely cares about, he was able to twist his words so Kaoru won’t notice that he meant the first string of syllables before he lied his way to the next.
Kaoru would only huff at him, throws him a flushed angry frown, and does his accurately beautiful flip that leaves Kojiro even more breathless. Those were the normal days for them.
On some occasions, when Kojiro lets his demons get the best of him, Kojiro would bring up Adam just for the knack of it, testing the water to see if it’s okay to dive in. If Kaoru would look crestfallen, Kojiro would take half a step back from the ocean of uncertainties he so dreadfully wants to know the answer to but he does not back down. (What a pitiful man he is.)
“I heard Adam is going to return soon in Japan.” Kojiro comments on a stormy afternoon, stuck in their apartment with nowhere to go. Kaoru flips the page of the book he was reading on the sofa next to him. He doesn’t reply to Kojiro’s inquisitive poking.
“That’s great, right? We can ask for a beef against him and win.” Kaoru snorts at his optimism but Kojiro plows on, fueled by the reaction he invoked, “And when we win, he has to do something for us. We can order him around. Make him run errands for us. Or… or ask him to plan a date, you know?”
“Why would you want to plan a date with him?” Kaoru snaps his book shut. Kojiro recoils at the annoyance in Kaoru’s voice and waves his arms. Right, oftentimes when Kojiro brings Adam into their lives again, he would be the one disappointed. Kojiro grins gracelessly, “Not me! God, no. No. Just… (if you like to). I mean maybe not with him, just for him to plan and pay for it. That guy is loaded and you can impress anyone you like if you bring them to a five-star hotel. And—”
He is blabbering, clumsy noise leaking out of his loose mouth. The noise dies only when Kojiro pauses to breathe. Kaoru purses his lips and lightly hits him on the head with his book.
“Your cooking is enough. No need for a five-star hotel, you damn fool.”
Hearing that, Kojiro’s chest expands with the beating of the ugly-shaped organ in it, his vocal cord strumming a cross between falsetto and bass, his stomach doing a somersault.
“Close your mouth. It looks like some flytrap. Disgusting.”
Kojiro does not hear the insult though. He is busy trying to stop himself from hyperventilating by forcing himself to stand and leave the room to go to their veranda. He glances at Kaoru who has the audacity to continue with his life as if he just did not make an attempt on Kojiro’s life—the one dedicated to him. He feels like shouting and cursing and squealing like a lovesick preteen.
So, he pretends to jab his toe on one of the expensive vases Kaoru likes and yells his throat sore.
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Adam returns two years into college.
He has grown taller and crazier. Kojiro and Kaoru know because they accidentally invited themselves into Adam’s conversation one autumn evening. There were not many words exchanged and Kaoru did most of the talking, his voice a scolding tone. Adam deflected them all with a cynical laugh and an even more cynical glare.
“Do you think I care about you two?”
Kaoru looks absolutely wounded with Adam’s words that Kojiro stops himself with all the fiber in his body from punching Adam. They both could not answer the question because Kaoru is afraid of the answer he already knows and Kojiro finds himself realizing that he does not hate Adam as much as he thinks so—because if he does, would he feel hurt with being cast aside by a friend?
Once, Kojiro thought Adam was only going through puberty. But now, maybe, it was a different story after all. But he was so busy chasing after Kaoru that he did not notice when Adam fell apart by himself.
“You know, Adam, you’re a dipshit.” Kojiro bids when they leave, in an attempt to save face.
In the comfort of their home, at two in the morning, Kojiro sees Kaoru leaning against the rails of their balcony with a forlorn frown and thinks that he really should have mutilated Adam back there.
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Kaoru takes his piercings off when winter comes and cuts his hair a little bit shorter that Kojiro wonders if Kaoru did this to move on. It hangs behind him like a curtain sewn with cherry blossoms and frames his delicate face in a sophisticated manner, even more so when he starts wearing glasses.
Kojiro has always been an over-thinker, his mind whirring ridiculous scenarios that would hurt him and whirs some more to ensure that the pain would last. He masks this up with humor, a shitty coping mechanism that goes right out of his tongue in defense, only to stab him right back.
He jokes to Kaoru that it’s nice to see him move on from Adam. Kojiro expects him to be gnarly about it, expects him to be a vicious vixen baring his teeth at his careless remark, expects him to punch him for his unnecessary ‘spiteful heartbreak in the clothing of a jest’.
Instead, Kaoru pauses from his writing and wears the same peculiar expression Kojiro can only provoke from him. Kaoru sighs like he is so exhausted of everything and Kojiro flinches from it.
“You’re really stupid, you know.” Kaoru says after a breath to which Kojiro squeaks out an offended ‘hey!’. Kaoru attempts to go back to writing but his brush is suspended in the air. For a moment, he looks like a carving suited for national museums and galleries. Kaoru puts his brush down in the end.
“And you are so stupidly obvious.” Kaoru stands. The mere action activates Kojiro’s fight-or-flight instinct. Kojiro chooses to fight. That’s what they were always good at—bantering. His feet are itching to run but he doesn’t.
“What do you mean by that?” His awkward I’m-so-in-love-with-you laugh makes a comeback in the silence of Kaoru’s answer. His back hits the wall separating the living room and the kitchen.
“And so stupidly, stupidly, stupidly dense.” Kaoru’s frustration seeps out in his voice. There’s a second where Kojiro wonders why but Kaoru does not give him another moment to overthink about it. Kojiro stiffens when Kaoru stops three steps away from him and crosses his arms.
Maybe, he should have chosen to fly when his instinct told him to. His guts have been right most of the time.
“That’s mean.” Kojiro manages to pry out of his dry mouth. Kaoru is too close and his brain always short-circuits whenever the line he has drawn for himself is erased by Kaoru.
“It’s not when it’s the truth.”
Kojiro averts his eyes. He feels guilty more than anything. He’s not so dense to not see how obvious he had gotten over the years, especially when Adam left, his teenage heart clambering for the straw chance of probably, hopefully, wistfully taking the piece that Adam carelessly threw away.
Kojiro tries to avert his eyes but Kaoru captures his chin and turns his attention back to him. The hold isn’t tight but authoritative, gentle in the way Kaoru’s long fingers grasp him.
“Look at me.” Kaoru says softly. Kojiro lets his eyes wander from the top of Kaoru’s pink hair, sees the frames littering the top of their cabinets, the vases of expensive plants out in the balcony, the leather sofa Kojiro bought with his first cheque in his part-time job, the myriad of papers Kaoru uses to finish his project, and then finally when he has swept every corner of the room, his eyes land on Kaoru’s tender stare.
“Do you have something to tell me, Kojiro?” The question hangs like a noose for Kojiro so he stutters out, “No. Of course not. I already said what I have to say. What’s wrong with you, Kaoru? I—”
“Do you have something to tell me, Kojiro? That’s not a request for you to ignore. It’s a question that I demand you answer.”
There is an elephant in the room that Kojiro failed to notice the first time it sneaks in. Nor the length of the time it has been staying so blatantly loud. It’s green and hapless and oh-so obviously in love.
“When did you know?” His breath hitches at his question, feeling like he is sixteen once more, his heart breaking at the tension in his chest, so full of fear and hope and anxious if’s and but’s.
Kaoru smiles, not mockingly the way he usually does with him, “When have I never known?”
Oh. Kojiro thinks but his mind stammers in panic that all he can hear is his mind’s shit, shit, oh no, fuck, shit, he knows? He KNOWS? How the fuck—fuck, shit, Kojiro, oh, oh, oh! Fuck, sorry, Kaoru—I’m sorry—sorry, I—oh!
His mouth loudly mimics the thoughts running devilishly in his brain.
He’s having a meltdown that he can’t control. His cheeks flushing the reddest hue in the whole universe, hands shaking nervously, body as stiff as a rod. Kaoru finally takes pity at him and gives him room to breathe.
“Kojiro.” Or not. Kojiro panics even more at the fingers cupping his hot cheeks. “Kojiro,” Kaoru repeats even gentler with a firmness that pulls him out of the pit he is trying to bury himself in, “Jesus, calm down.”
“How can I be calm?” They both flinch at his volume. Kojiro lowers his voice, “How can I be calm, Kaoru? Fuck. You know? You always knew that I have feelings for you? Since middle school?”
“Middle school?” Kaoru’s answer gives him away. Kojiro backtracks, “You… you have no idea that I like you since middle school at least?”
“I thought you started liking me back around high school!”
“Well, now, don’t go throwing words that catch people off guard to look cool! When have I never known? That’s so misleading. You just—you say things like that and I embarrassed myself even more.” His words are getting jumbled with his throat constricting as the knowledge that Kaoru knows keeps slapping him in the face. At least since high school, he knows—wait.
Kojiro’s thoughts were already a mess, spinning wildly in the hollow of his thick skull and spilling carelessly out of his blabbering mouth, but they all screeches to a halt—picking up the one detail from Kaoru’s remark that makes him feel like he is breathing and breathless at the same time.
“You… you like me back?” Kojiro is unsure of what he looks like to Kaoru right now but Kaoru merely brings his other hand to cup his face with both. “You like me back since high school? Since when? I thought—I thought you like Adam. This whole time, you—”
“Ah.” Kaoru lets out an onomatopoeia that sounds like clarity washing over him, putting all the missing pieces together and finally drawing a big picture that gives him the answer, “I see. Because you are so annoyingly idiotic, you thought that I like Adam that way? You keep looking at me and you never noticed. Wow, I can’t even believe I still like you.”
“Bu-but you always talk about Adam. You are constantly worried about him and—”
“Because he’s our friend!” Kaoru is irritated, Kojiro grimaces at his narrowed glare, “Adam is our friend so I am worried about him. Especially when he suddenly became that person who would hurt other people for their pleasure. Isn’t it our duty as a friend to be worried about him, to try and convince him to stop acting so dangerously silly? Unlike us who have each other, he’s skating by himself. Why won’t I be worried then?”
“But…” Kojiro lowers his eyes, “You always look at him like he’s all that matters every time we skate together.”
Kaoru scrunches his face, a telltale sign that he is even more annoyed.
“You don’t have the right to give meaning to my stare while you despair yourself with your thoughts.” Kaoru says, miffed, “Every action that I did towards Adam is purely platonic. I like Adam. But not in the way you think, not in the way I feel about you.”
“Oh…”
“Oh, indeed.” Kaoru huffs, “Do you have any idea what I have to go through when you start flaunting your floozies in front of me? When you started talking about how you spent the night with them and still have the audacity to look at me like ‘I’m all that matters’? You whore, you son of a bitch. Why couldn’t you just be honest instead of running away?”
“Oh…” Kojiro feels his knees weaken. His chest is bloating with the expansion of his ugly-shaped organ. His left hand raises on its own, trembling, afraid, brave, and reaches out to touch Kaoru’s skin.
“I’m such an idiot.” He says because that’s all he can muster to produce. Words were forming and crumbling on his tongue but his throat could only swallow them all back to his belly where the butterflies are flying madly within.
Kaoru smiles, “You are. And I am so exhausted of it, aren’t you too?”
“I am.” Kajiro agrees, “I am. I am tired. And I am sorry. Kaoru, I—”
His tongue fails him once more. But Kaoru gives him the same peculiar look he kept giving him years ago and for the first time, Kojiro understands what it means.
A breathy laugh spills from his grinning lips.
Because Kojiro is a dumbass who doesn’t do well with his overwhelming affections for Kaoru, he deals with it the way he always does, he jests.
“So, you like me?”
Kaoru gives him a warning stare but Kojiro is just so giddy that he ignores it. Kojiro presses, “You like me, huh. You like me a lot that you followed me to Tokyo for university. You like me a lot that you pretended to split the rent with me so we can be together more often. You like me a lot that—”
Kaoru shuts him off with the very thing he dreams most since he was in second year of middle school, staring at Kaoru as the cherry blossoms flutter around him, and realizing how much he wants to pull him close that very day.
Kojiro closes his eyes to the kiss and melts into it.
(Ah, maybe, he really did need clarity.)
Fin