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By his third year of UA, Hizashi could deny it no longer - he was in love with his best friend. He didn’t know when, exactly, feelings of causal kinship for Shota had evolved into something much deeper, but that didn’t matter to him. What mattered was that he had fallen in love, and had no idea how to fall out of it.
So one day, Hizashi decided to confess his feelings to Shota. Copying what he had seen many classmates do, he wrote a letter. It was rather plain-looking for a love letter - just black pen on notebook paper. No colorful inks or stickers, no pretty stationery. Shota didn’t care for those things, anyway.
As for the letter itself, it went a little something like this...
-----
Hey Grumpy Cat,
So... I like you, and I want to be with you.
Before you say ‘no,’ hear me out. We’ve known each other forever. I know what makes you happy, I know all your hobbies and habits, and you know all of mine. We have totally different tastes in kit-kat flavors, so we’ll never fight over snacks, and not fighting is the key to a happy relationship. Unless we’re fighting villains together, which would be awesome.
Speaking of hero work, we still haven’t confessed to my mom that WE stole that bottle of shochu, not my sister. Gotta do that soon, dude. Can’t exactly be heroes if we’re partners in crime.
Anywho, is there any possibility that you might feel the same way? If you’re leaning towards ‘no,’ consider the following: I’d be down to own up to six seven eight nine cats.
By the way, this is Hizashi.
-----
Admittedly, the letter wasn’t perfect. But Hizashi had tried his very best.
After reading through the letter a few times to make sure that his chicken scratch was legible, he briefly wondered if he should’ve typed up the letter instead. But it was too late for that - he was determined to get the confession over with.
“It’s now or never,” Hizashi told himself sternly, because he had already put it off for far too long. “Either you come out of this with Shota as your boyfriend, or you move on, once and for all. You got this. You GOT this.”
Somewhere in the back of his head, his internal DJ began playing Europe’s “The Final Countdown,” which, oddly enough, alleviated some of his nervousness.
He folded the letter neatly, slipped it into his backpack, and then headed towards school. His plan was to get to school early and put the letter on Shota’s desk. Not exactly a grand, romantic gesture, which would’ve been more his style, but the letter itself had already cost him every last ounce of courage.
By 7:30 am, Hizashi was in his seat at school, waiting anxiously for Shota to arrive. He knew Shota liked to get to school early too - usually because he wanted to take a quick fifteen-minute power nap before classes began. Hizashi’s letter rested quietly on Shota’s desk, just waiting to fulfill its destiny.
At 7:34, lo and behold, the familiar voices of Hizashi’s two best friends approached the classroom. Shota stepped through the door first, looking exhausted and red-eyed and adorable as always, followed by a cheerier-than usual Oboro. They each gave Hizashi a nod when they saw him (dear heavens , Shota nodded sexy), before resuming their conversation.
“I’m just saying,” Oboro said lazily as he swung his backpack over his desk chair. “It would be so unfortunate for certain people if mosquitos and vampires had the same taste in blood types. Like if the gods created different types of blood-sucking monsters, wouldn’t it be more fair for different blood-suckers to go for different people?”
“I’m not disagreeing with that,” Shota sighed, sounding slightly irritated as he took a seat as well. “It would be terrible for those people. But even if mosquitos and vampires had completely different tastes, like if mosquitos preferred AB and vampires preferred O, it still wouldn’t be fair.”
“Why not?”
“Well, mosquitos can’t really do the same amount of damage as vampires.”
“Yes, but there would be way more mosquitos than vampires in the world. Like, what if it took a thousand mosquitos to drink the same amount of blood as one vampire, and the mosquito population to vampire population ratio just happened to be thousand to one? Then people with AB blood and people with O would be equally cursed.”
“It would not take a thousand mosquitos to drink the same amount of blood as one vampire.”
“Alright dude, I’m looking up the average meal size of a mosquito. You get your calculator.”
Shota scoffed, and began to rummage through his backpack for his calculator. Oboro, on the other hand, frantically patted his pockets to find his phone. “Ah, found it!” Oboro exclaimed after a few seconds, waving his phone in the air triumphantly, like he was King Arthur wielding Excalibur.
Hizashi watched this all with a wrinkled brow.
Any other time, Hizashi would’ve leapt at the opportunity to join the debate. At that particular moment, however, he was more concerned by the fact that Shota hadn’t seemed to notice the letter - he had dropped his books right on top of it, leaving only a corner peeking out from under the stack. Hizashi waited a minute for Shota to notice - a whole minute as Oboro and Shota did their calculations - before he finally lost his patience. “Hey Sho,” he said, interrupting Oboro’s rambling. “What’s that on your desk?”
Oboro, bless his heart, paused his research to tug the letter out from under the books. He gasped excitedly, immediately recognizing what it could be. “Bro, is this a love letter? Holy mackerel , somebody’s finally taken a liking to our resident grumpy cat! Didn’t think this day would ever come.” Oboro feigned a sniffle as he dramatically wiped away an imaginary tear.
“How nice,” Shota replied, looking like he couldn’t possibly care less about the mysterious letter. “But five microliters of blood per meal... microliters... ‘Zashi, how many microliters are in a liter?”
Hizashi felt the corner of his eye twitch, ever so slightly. He was not going to miss his opportunity to confess because of some stupid mosquito/vampire math problem. “Hey Sho,” he said through gritted teeth, and Shota finally looked up at him. “Don’t you want to read that letter? That’s what people usually do when they receive letters, right? They read them.”
“Yeah, dude.” Oboro piped up. “C’mon. At least see who it’s from. We can save mosquitos and vampires for later.”
Under the eager gazes of both his friends, Shota caved. He straightened his posture with a slightly irritated sigh, snatched the letter from Oboro, and finally, finally opened the damn thing.
Hizashi’s heart nearly came to a stop when Shota’s gaze momentarily flickered up to meet his. He knew Shota would recognize his handwriting immediately - they had copied each other’s homework for years, after all. With bated breath, he watched as Shota slowly turned his attention back onto the letter.
And for what felt like an eternity, the classroom was dreadfully, dreadfully quiet. So quiet, Hizashi could almost hear the crickets.
“But...” Shota finally said, breaking the silence. “What if I wanted... ten cats?” Judging by the look on his face, he was dead serious (although to be fair, Shota hardly ever looked not dead serious).
Hizashi let out a shaky breath of relief. That’s not a ‘no,’ he thought blissfully, but he also reminded himself not to get his hopes up just yet. “The number of cats is definitely negotiable. Though... I was really hoping that your takeaway from the letter would be more than just... cats. You did read the rest of it, right? Like, the uh... like the other stuff I mentioned?”
Oboro’s eyes widened at a certain realization. “What the...” he stuttered, gaping at his two best friends. “I’m... I’m just gonna... run to the bathroom for a sec... you guys... yeah.” He practically knocked over his desk as he scrambled away, muttering under his breath something along the lines of, “Does not compute... does not compute... does not compute...”
Once the two were alone in the classroom, Shota slowly folded the letter up once more.
Hizashi suddenly noticed that the tips of Shota’s ears had turned quite red. Cute , he thought, not for the first time nor for the last.
“So... um...” Shota said, fumbling over his words a bit, which was very unlike him. “Did you have anything else to say?”
Hizashi’s brain instantly short-circuited. Crap crap crap, wasn’t expecting a pop quiz , he thought, panicked. Think, Hizashi, think! You’ve seen all those sappy romantic movies. What’s a line you can use? Or maybe quote a song? But which song? Think, goddammit!
But in that moment when it mattered the most, Hizashi’s memory failed him. So instead of using a line already written and used by somebody else, Hizashi composed his own on the spot. He blurted out, very eloquently, “Be the udon to my tempura?”
After a moment of stunned silence, Shota burst into laughter. “Oh, you did not just say that.”
“Oh yes, I did. Apparently.”
“That was... so terrible.”
“But a terrible line is only terrible if it doesn’t work,” Hizashi said, very defensive of his line.
Shota laughed some more.
And Hizashi was so mesmerized by the musical sound that he nearly missed it when Shota said, in between giggles, “Yeah, alright. Let’s be udon and tempura.”