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Kakeru runs.
The sky is blue, the grass is green, the sun rises from the east and sets in the west and Kakeru runs.
There are at least five hundred people present at the finish line of the Hakone Ekiden. He doesn’t hear their voices and he’s blind to their faces. If Ouji-san is still panting and complaining beside him, Kakeru is deaf to his voice too.
The entirety of his presence is anticipation mixed with agitation and concern.
Hey, do you like running?
Haiji had never looked so small; he does now, when he appears at the tip of the road like the first morning star upon Kakeru’s horizon.
“I don’t want it.” Haiji takes one look at the bag of dorayaki in Kakeru’s hand and turns his head away. It hurts to look at Haiji’s face and his eyes and see the crescent of his lips, turned downwards in apprehension that he rarely ever allows himself to express. Kakeru nods his head tightly and looks down at his thighs as he sits in a chair next to his bed, letting his hair fall into his eyes.
“Your mother said—”
“I don’t want to hear it either, Kakeru.” It’s absurd how final he is even like this, especially like this— how unbreakable and obstinate as always. Why , thinks Kakeru with relish, why do you behave so foolishly— why do you think it’s so lowly to be human?
“I’m going to keep it here anyway.”
Does it hurt , Kakeru would have asked if it were anyone else, how bad is the pain, but it’s not anyone else. It’s Haiji. Haiji will only smile an enigmatic smile and lead the conversation to Aotake, to Kakeru, to the weather, to anything.
He looks tired. Too tired to mask the detest in his eyes as he casts a sideway glance at the bag of dorayaki from that one corner shop which he loved in high school.
“He won’t see me,” Haiji’s mother was as frail as Haiji pretended not to be, wrapped up in a big coat to protect her from the cold, windy morning. She was shivering still, standing at the door of Aotake. “Please give him this from me. Tell him— tell him that his father and I are very proud.” Kakeru had pretended not to notice the waver in her voice as she said his father .
He looks at Haiji and sees yet another sleepless night on his face.
It’s hard to stay mad at him like this, when he catches Kakeru’s eye and smiles a wan smile. Kakeru is angry— so, so angry. It hurts to see him smile.
“Kakeru, you’re becoming more like me every day.” Haiji says it like a tragedy poorly wrapped in comedic words. Kakeru looks at him, looks at him. Tries to, anyway.
Haiji is still smiling. It hurts.
The three days that Haiji spends in the hospital last longer than three eternities.
Kakeru wakes up at the crack of dawn and runs. None of the others follow him on the first day. It’s oddly liberating, running alone after such a long time. He rushes past closed shops and flickering lamps, eyes the horizon and looks for the first morning star on Tokyo’s smog covered skyline. The world narrows down to singular, infinitesimal moments- the next patch of asphalt, the next step, the next breath.
He stops near the river, hands on his knees and sniffles a little, nose numb with cold. The sky is peachy, grey and blue at the same time. If Kakeru lingers there a minute more than usual and thinks about how the brown of Haiji’s hair would stand out against today’s skies, then he can pretend later that the thought has already been lost in the wind.
It’s the aftermath that feels alien.
Kakeru returns to Aotake. Breakfast isn’t ready. He has to cook for everyone. Nico-chan senpai keeps him company, the familiar scent of cigarettes filling the kitchen. Kakeru doesn’t mind. Breakfast turns out to be okay-ish but not good, but no one complains— not even Jota and Joji. Shindo helps him with the dishes later, despite being sick. King pats his back.
He returns to his room and stares at the still ceiling while lying on his futon. Tries to read a textbook. Fails. Reads a manga that Ouji-san lent him instead.
Somewhere from the yard, Nira barks.
Same , Kakeru thinks helplessly.
The next day, he doesn’t go to the river.
Haiji looks angelic while asleep. Fragile and finite, real. It hurts less that day. Quietly, quietly, Kakeru lays down the dark green hanten on the small nightstand beside his bed. Sneaks out of the hospital room just as quietly.
He goes home and dreads the next day but yearns for it all the same.
Haiji returns. Aotake breathes. Kakeru runs.
Haiji appeared like the first morning star upon Kakeru’s horizon, left him breathless with a revelation so ground-breaking that Kakeru couldn’t see anything but the ray of light on which Haiji ran, hear nothing but Haiji’s breaths as he ran towards the finish line, towards Kakeru. Euphoria exploded inside him like a supernova only to be smothered half a moment later. He felt the snap in the marrow of his bones, felt the pain spike up throughout his entire body, emanating from his knee, even if it wasn’t his own knee that shattered. And Haiji kept running. Haiji smiled and Haiji kept running and all Kakeru could do was stand and watch and try not to cry.
He hates the crutches.
They haven’t really done anything wrong, but he still hates them.
Hates the violent glint in Haiji’s eyes when he looks at them.
Haiji looks at those crutches the same way he looks at the texts from his mother (and the non-existent ones from his father). Like he hates it but needs it and hates that he needs it.
Sometimes, sometimes, he looks at Kakeru the same way for a sliver of a moment.
He hates it when Haiji looks at him like that, but thinks it’s the only time Haiji allows himself to be real. So much of him has been pretending to be enough for so long, thinks Kakeru, that he has forgotten how to need. And if Kakeru has to bear with a little bit of hatred to serve as an unwanted reminder, then so be it. He’s used to it, sort of.
Everyone is screaming so loud. Yells and cheers and shouts of joy and congratulations. But all Kakeru feels is Haiji in his arms— shaking harder than an earthquake, basked in sweat and early morning lights smiling, smiling, smiling. Kakeru’s heart is so full— full of happiness and sorrow and anger and exasperation. The weight of the revelation is heavy on his chest— so is the joy of finding the answer.
Kakeru’s heart beats just as hard as Haiji shakes.
“Haiji-san,” Kakeru says and desperately holds back his tears. Haiji, smiling and gasping and panting. Haiji, in Kakeru’s arms. Haiji, Kakeru’s answer. Haiji, Kakeru’s running.
It solidifies a little every day he runs— at first it’s only the thoughts of how Haiji’s hair would stand out against the sky; then the next day, it’s his eyes, then it’s the flush on his cheeks, then the strong set of his shoulders—
One day, it’s all of Haiji in front of Kakeru. Complete with the demonic glint in his eyes and the sharp curve of his grin. He appears slowly as Kakeru starts to run, like the wind is carrying bits and pieces of him and assembling them together for Kakeru’s sake. He dissipates just as slowly, like words and breaths and syllables and sounds dissipate on the wind.
So selfish is Kakeru, clinging to every bit of Haiji-ness he can find.
“Kakeru,” Haiji calls him from his room, “Have you seen my notebook?”
“Kakeru,” he says, “I loved the curry you made tonight.”
“Kakeru,” he chides, eyes glinting, “you haven’t been drinking enough water.”
“Kakeru,” he whispers tauntingly in the velvety night, “aren’t the stars pretty tonight?”
Sometimes, it feels like Kakeru is trying to run away from Haiji and run towards him at the same time.
In the bath, he holds the moon and tries to drown his never-ending dreams about Haiji’s lips against his skin.
“You know, it’s unfair how you read all the mangas with Ouji but never even touch the books I recommend.”
Haiji is sitting at the dining table while Kakeru brews tea for the two of them. It’s 2 a.m. and the rest of Aotake is silent save for an occasional snore drifting through the corridor. Kakeru turns and leans against the counter, folding his arms over his chest. Haiji has not taken his eyes off of the book he’s reading. It’s becoming rarer and rarer to find him without a book in his hands— his finals are approaching along with spring. He has become prone to reading out random things from the book in his hand out of nowhere and startling the daylights out of the Aotake residents.
“I don’t like plain books,” Kakeru answers honestly and Haiji looks up while pointing an accusing finger at him.
“Now, now, no need to lie, Kakeru. You can say that you like Ouji more than me.”
The sheer audacity of him— Kakeru feels a dull stab of anger. “Hmm, maybe I do, after all.”
Fail your exams, Haiji-san, is what he wants to say, stay here for a few more centuries, please.
As if feeling his gaze upon him, Haiji meets his eyes. The razor sharp grin on his face looks all-knowing as always.
I’m going to miss you so much, thinks Kakeru for the first time in his life.
Real Haiji doesn’t dissipate on the wind like the soft cherry blossom petals do, on the day of his graduation, like the running Haiji does after Kakeru’s run gets over. He gets drunk and laughs and yells and has a vice-like grip around Kakeru’s shoulders the entire night, filling his senses with cheap alcohol and sandalwood scented shampoo. Shindo and Musa sob unabashedly, Jota and Joji pass out while crying. Yuki tries to pretend he isn’t and starts yelling when Haiji teases him for wiping off a stray tear.
Kakeru doesn’t cry.
Haiji pokes fun at him and acts wounded, saying it looks as though Kakeru never loved him anyway. The teasing, the teasing, the coyness, Haiji, Haiji— Kakeru tamps down the alcohol-induced urge to press his lips against the flush on Haiji’s cheeks and plays along instead.
Real Haiji starts to leave the same way he exists— unexpectedly and all at once. Makes living in Aotake hell for all the residents as he starts packing his stuff; books, clothes, boxes, gadgets strewn everywhere. Hogs Kakeru’s manga-reading time and makes him sort Haiji’s books instead. Loudly hums songs that are annoying as hell, laughs off Kakeru’s complaints about them.
The humming rings in the hollows of Kakeru’s bones, late in the night.
In the morning, he tries to outrun it.
Kakeru is so, so mad. At the world, for giving him Haiji and taking him away. At the world, for giving Haiji running and taking it away. At the world, for making Kakeru Kakeru and never taking that away.
“So… I suppose that’s about it.”
Haiji’s bedroom is stripped of its belongings completely. Even the curtain. [“I quite like that curtain,” he had mused, “It’s a unique shade, I probably won’t find another one like that. I’m keeping it.”] All of his luggage is in the genkan, his futon bound in a neat roll.
His voice echoes lightly in the empty room, Kakeru feels his knees shake with the force of it. He leans against the doorframe as Haiji stands with his back towards him, both hands on his hips.
“You’re quiet.” Haiji doesn’t turn.
“I’m always quiet.” He turns now and fixes Kakeru with a piercing stare. Kakeru doesn’t like it when Haiji peers into people’s souls like this. Right now, he doubts Haiji will find anything in Kakeru’s anyway— he feels hollow. Like the room. Like Aotake.
Haiji stares at him for a few seconds longer. Then he smiles. “Will our precious Kakeru-kun miss me after all?”
Right now, Kakeru thinks he will give up anything to have him tease Kakeru like that everyday.
“Haiji-san,” he says instead, “you asked me what running was. I found the answer, but I don’t have it.” He looks at the long shadows the afternoon sun casts along Haiji’s cheekbones. How his brown eyes widen slightly at Kakeru’s words. How his eyebrow twitches ever so slightly before stilling again.
“And you’re telling me this now because—?” Bastard, making him say it. So Kakeru does what he does best— stops thinking, behaves impulsively and kisses Haiji.
Haiji is unyielding at first, stiff in shock, as if he still hadn’t quite expected Kakeru to do it despite practically goading him into doing it. Then he relents; how ridiculous is that— Haiji, relenting— and Kakeru tries to savour him and devour him whole at the same time.
“Kakeru,” he whispers against his lips, “Kakeru, absolute moron.”
Kakeru bites his lip in retaliation, then smiles and then laughs. It rings in the empty room.
“It’s you.” He will finally say it, a handful of decades, centuries, millenia or eternities later, words spilled from his heart, etched into Haiji’s skin in the haze of holding the moon and catching the winds and collecting every fraction of Haiji’s breath.
Haiji will kiss him like he wants to carve the words in his own mouth forever.
Haiji leaves in a rush of grunts exhaled from lifting the heavy baggage and swoosh of tires.
Kakeru, quite predictably, runs.
“Are you sure you don’t want to put up any curtains?” Nico-chan senpai asks him skeptically as he drops another box in Kakeru’s new bedroom.
“I’m sure,” Kakeru tells him, “thanks.”