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Shimizu Kiyoko likes numbers. She likes graphs and polygons; she likes analyzing data and plotting points on Cartesian planes. She can barely draw a stick figure on a good day, but she can sketch a flawless sinusoidal curve like it’s nobody’s business.
She doesn’t like to advertise this tidbit about her. It doesn’t help that upon first meeting her, everyone automatically expects her to be reciting the digits of pi in her free time. (So what if she does. It helps with nerves.) She’s not sure exactly what is about her that provokes these assumptions: her glasses, maybe; her reserved personality and generally quiet demeanor; or the fact that she’s Japanese and currently enrolled in school and a girl and social norms and whatnot.
Certain things are expected of Kiyoko: excel in school. Be a math genius. Fall in love with a boy (eventually) and don’t think about kissing other girls in your class (this, preferably never).
Kiyoko does, in fact, excel in school. She doesn’t want to brag, but she kind of is a math genius. She does not expect to fall in love with a boy anytime in the near future (though she intends to at least try), and sometimes she daydreams about kissing Ayako-chan from class 3-4.
(That’s a lie—she thinks about it all the time. It’s not her fault: Ayako-chan has very plump and very pink lips that look very kissable.)
The first is no secret; the second, she’s realized that everyone other than her teachers could care less about; the third and fourth she intends to take with her to the grave.
When Kiyoko meets Yachi Hitoka, she’s flipped upside down.
Horizontal reflection, multiplied by a negative, her brain supplies unhelpfully. Then, what?
Because this tiny first-year girl with the star-shaped hairclips is listening to her so intently, staring up at her with eyes wide and mouth slightly parted, almost a reverent expression gracing her delicate face, and Kiyoko thinks, oh, wow.
She grasps Hitoka’s tiny hand between her own and looks her in the eyes. “I hope you’ll join us,” she tells her, attempting to convey even a fraction of the hopefulness she feels in her tone. What she means is, I hope you’ll join me. What she doesn’t say is, You are something special, and I would give anything to be your friend.
Hitoka flushes pink and squeaks, like a tiny field mouse, and Kiyoko’s grin is so wide her jaw starts to ache.
Hitoka likes art, Kiyoko learns very early on. Hitoka likes eye-catching designs and vivid color palettes. Hitoka loves drawing but prefers other media because sometimes her hands do this thing where she can’t control them, and it’s okay, it happens a lot, she assures Kiyoko repeatedly. (She doesn’t really understand why, but she thinks of how her own hands flap involuntarily when she gets excited or overstimulated, and she doesn’t say anything.)
Once, outside the gym refilling water bottles, Kiyoko offhandedly mentions that she enjoys yellow tulips. The next day, Hitoka presents her with a sketch of the smallest, most delicate-looking mouse she’s ever seen, peeking its head out of a tulip in full bloom.
“It’s not my best work,” Hitoka stammers, nervously wringing her hands, and Kiyoko wants to wrap her up in her arms, swaddle her in a blanket of soft petals, and never let her go. (She doesn’t. She does, however, hang Hitoka’s work next to her bed to ensure it’s the first thing she sees in the morning.)
This should be the first clue that Kiyoko’s in a little bit over her head. She pushes this aside and goes back to tracing the lines of the drawing with her index finger, worshipping each stroke of Hitoka’s pencil, careful not to smudge the graphite.
(She names the mouse Pi.)
Hitoka doesn’t always listen when Kiyoko is speaking (which, understandable, she’s been there) and Kiyoko can’t decide what she finds more endearing, zoning-out-Hitoka or deeply-engaged-overactive-listener-Hitoka.
She’s especially excited because today she discovered a proof of the second fundamental theorem of calculus, and she just finds it so fascinating; she's been dying to talk about it all day, and Hitoka is always willing to listen no matter how fast her brain is working at the moment.
Her body feels restless and she starts flapping her hands, and Hitoka, being an angel, doesn’t stop her, and Kiyoko realizes far too late that Hitoka’s been awfully quiet for a long time, and she knows her thought process can be pretty incoherent at times, is Hitoka still following along? She looks down, and promptly loses the ability to string together words.
Hitoka isn’t paying attention, she immediately recognizes, but something in her expression makes Kiyoko’s brain come to a screeching halt. She looks mesmerized—riveted, even. And she’s staring. Right. At. Kiyoko’s. Face.
Kiyoko can easily recognize a number of facial expressions. She catalogs each of them—Sawamura’s eyes crinkling at the edges means I’m proud of you; Azumane’s slightly widened eyes and tight mouth mean the nerves are kicking in, and his furrowed brow and pursed lips mean he’s currently regretting all his life choices. Sugawara’s narrowed eyes mean you should probably get yourself out of his line of sight if you value your dignity and also the safety of all your limbs. Years of silent observation have been good to her—she has it down to a science.
But Kiyoko has never seen this expression that Hitoka’s wearing before, on anyone—at least, not directed at her. Which explains her brief moment of confusion, but does not explain why her lungs suddenly feel constricted, and she can literally hear her heartbeat in her chest.
Later that night, before falling asleep in the privacy of her darkened bedroom, Kiyoko does what she knows best: imagines a two-dimensional plane and constructs a scatterplot.
Point A: today, seeing Hitoka’s zoning-out-yet-strangely-enraptured face and her entire body seemingly forgetting how to function.
Point B: the churning in her stomach when she hears Hitoka’s laugh from across the gym, shrill and intoxicating and so Hitoka, and she seriously contemplates recording it to set as her ringtone.
Point C: the tingling sensation in her fingertips when Hitoka bows her head and a single strand of honeyed hair falls out from behind her ear, and a voice inside her says, I want to touch.
Point D: the way her chest tends to ache whenever Hitoka beams at her, and it feels like basking in a patch of sunlight, and it’s everything and nowhere near enough at the same time.
And so on and so forth.
She spends hours mulling over this, calculating correlation coefficients and analyzing patterns, and comes to the same conclusion every time.
Before drifting off, she makes a pact with herself: Hitoka can never know.
Hitoka, bless her heart, hesitantly comments on the dark circles under her eyes while they’re watching the team do receiving drills.
She reaches up on her tiptoes, her tiny frame elongated by the few inches between them (vertical dilation, she thinks, which is—not now, brain), and swipes the pad of her index finger ever so gently across the skin under her eyelashes. Kiyoko quietly astral projects.
“Are you getting enough sleep, Shimizu senpai?” Hitoka looks worried, her beautiful features screwed up in concern, and Kiyoko desperately wants to kiss the frown off her face. (She does not.)
Instead, she coughs in an attempt to mask the frantic thump-thump of her heart going haywire. (Hitoka can’t actually hear it, right? Surely that’s impossible.)
“I’m fine, Hitoka-chan, just not a morning person.” Hitoka hums agreeably before returning to frantically scribbling in her notebook. It should be distracting, but Kiyoko finds herself strangely placated when she’s standing next to Hitoka: something about her frenetic energy seems to balance out Kiyoko’s own quiet pensiveness. She gets too far inside her own head sometimes, but Hitoka is always there to pull her out: a gentle touch of a tiny hand, a reassuring grin, softly spoken words of encouragement.
And oh, Kiyoko is in so, so far over her head.
She sighs, careful not to disturb Hitoka’s note-taking (is she doodling Yamaguchi? And Tsukishima?), and pushes the less-than-welcome thoughts down, down, down. There’s a time and place for mooning over cute girls who wear star barrettes and carry sunshine in their pockets and look at Kiyoko like she personally hung the moon.
That time and place, she decides, is a) long after everyone has gone to sleep and b) hidden in a cocoon of blankets, away from prying eyes.
Here, she lets herself get caught up in daydreams of grounding touches and the steady press of delicate fingertips. She’s long past denial, long past the stage of digging crescent moons into her palms and praying for something, anything, to will the unwanted feelings away. Here, she pines, quietly and secretly, for a star-like girl who once tilted her entire world on its axis and never stopped.
She and Hitoka are like intersecting lines, she believes. They collide, run alongside each other for some time, but they were always heading in separate directions. Soon, she’ll be at university, Hitoka will take over as manager, and they won’t have an excuse to spend time together, let alone all of it.
Hitoka is sixteen; Kiyoko is almost eighteen. Hitoka has two more years of high school ahead of her and a million possibilities after that—who’s to say she’ll even want to see Kiyoko after a few months apart, let alone need her?
Hitoka is growing so fast, she muses. She sees it in the way the other first years turn to her for advice, the determined slope of her shoulders when she berates them for goofing off with a tone that feels too fond to come off as chiding. She sees it in the way Azumane seeks her out for comfort, the ease at which she gently maneuvers a six-foot-tall giant who is constantly on the verge of tears. She watches Ukai-san continuously put all of his faith in her, notices the lack of hesitancy in her voice when she speaks to him, and Kiyoko feels an unmistakable sense of pride.
Hitoka may look like a tiny field mouse, adorably small and non-threatening, but Kiyoko has come to see her as a sunflower: tall and radiant, always outstretched towards the sun. And Kiyoko, well—Kiyoko doesn’t want to be a shadow blocking her way.
For Hitoka, Spring tournament brings a new sense of responsibility and a promise of beginnings; for Kiyoko, it brings the sudden anticipation of one single, looming deadline.
She tells Hitoka, “You’re the first person I’ve been able to talk to like this,” and what she means is, I think you’re my person. I think we were meant to be. She doesn’t say this, because Kiyoko may be eighteen now, but she’s still a child at heart—what could she possibly know about fate and meant to be? Sometimes her own brain terrifies herself.
When she ran track, she used to calculate the ideal angle to approach a hurdle. She carefully measured the length of each step, the timing of each jump. She had formulas and diagrams aplenty; in theory, there should have been no margin for error.
But Kiyoko isn’t a genius like Kageyama, doesn’t have complete control over every muscle in her body, and sometimes the threads of fate get tangled up. No matter the odds, success is never guaranteed—so she learns to take each hurdle in stride, and continues to brace herself for the inevitable collapse.
All good things must eventually come to an end, she’s reminded of by the resounding smack of a ball hitting the floor with all the finality of an ending.
Hitoka cries openly, which was expected: Hitoka wears her heart on her sleeve and is generally terrible at disguising her emotions. Kiyoko also sheds a few tears, hidden behind the smudged lenses of her glasses that restless hands kept fiddling with during the final set, which was not expected. Luckily this goes relatively unnoticed as she’s ignored in favor of consoling the six boys on the court.
She takes this time to collect herself, gathering thoughts of they did so well, and I’m proud of them, and I’m going to miss them so much. Then she looks at Hitoka, who’s sobbing uncontrollably and clinging to a desolate Yamaguchi like a lifeline, and she thinks, I’m not ready for this to end.
She spends their last night in Tokyo in a daze, going through practiced motions on autopilot. She sits next to Hitoka on the bus, who promptly falls asleep, head lolling dangerously close to her shoulder, and Kiyoko wills her tired eyes to stay open and preserve this moment of close proximity that very well may be the last of its kind. But her brain is whirring at half its normal speed and she can feel the exhaustion settling in her bones, and Hitoka is so warm and so close and the whole scene feels so disgustingly domestic that she readily admits defeat.
She can be brave another day. For now, she forces her eyes closed and revels in the presence of the girl she loves, who is literally sleeping on her shoulder, and drifts off.
Tonight, huddled under the covers with her phone’s flashlight illuminating a fresh page of graphing paper, Kiyoko sketches two separate curves: one in a bright golden yellow, the other in a muted violet. She plots the point of intersection and labels it in careful, neat print, Beginning.
(She pointedly does not think about pesky domain restrictions or troublesome asymptotes; she does not want to think about the future and the challenges it holds.)
Somehow in her months-long collection of data and subsequent analysis of said data, Kiyoko forgot to account for one variable: namely, does Hitoka love her back?
There’s no formula for this, no trick to isolate x, and Hitoka’s own feelings were not within the parameters of the study so all she can do is extrapolate (read: guess). Kiyoko, ever the dedicated statistician, never extrapolates.
She likes to think she knows Hitoka pretty well after nearly a year of spending every waking moment together. She knows her nervous habits and her tics; she knows that she has six different versions of her signature hairclips and coordinates them to match her outfit every day. She knows her favorite color (sky blue, but she’s also partial to bubblegum pink); her favorite treat (matcha pancakes, which Kiyoko tried to make once for her birthday and nearly burned the kitchen down in the process); her favorite classmate (Yamaguchi-kun, though Hinata-kun is a close second, don’t tell him). She knows that Hitoka listens to K-pop, and her favorite idol is a girl group member named Myoui Mina. She keeps fidget toys in her bag in case Hitoka needs them and an extra pen for when Hitoka either a) drops her pencil or b) accidentally flings it across the room, both of which have become regular occurrences.
She knows that Hitoka’s scared of boys, and a little scared of girls, too, but for a different reason. She knows that Hitoka thinks she’s pretty and doesn’t find it weird that Kiyoko spent all of her second year daydreaming about kissing Ayako-chan to the point where she almost failed a class. (I think about that too, Shimizu-senpai! I think it would be nicer to kiss a girl than a boy because their lips are softer, right? But you should pay attention in class!) She doesn’t, however, know if Hitoka would be opposed to kissing her in particular. She’s never asked or dropped any hints beyond discreetly applying chapstick every hour or so (honey flavored, Hitoka’s favorite).
She sees the way Hitoka looks at her sometimes—the same way she looks at old paintings in French museums that she spends hours poring over but Kiyoko doesn’t see the appeal of—and it’s with unmistakable admiration, almost awe. But infatuation isn’t love, and Kiyoko doesn’t want to exploit what might be a fleeting crush on an upperclassman at best.
For girls like Kiyoko, the likelihood of requited feelings has always been slim. The odds have never been in her favor before. But with Hitoka, Kiyoko suspects. She looks at Hitoka and identifies something in her that feels eerily familiar.
Kiyoko, she reminds herself, has two extra years of experience dealing with this. At sixteen, she remembers floundering, an all-consuming feeling of helplessness that rapidly transitioned into misplaced anger and shame. At eighteen, she’s still wildly unsure of herself.
She will kiss Yachi Hitoka, she decides, when the time is right. Only then will she allow herself to love and be loved.
The third years officially leave the club in early February. Sawamura passes the reins onto a determined Ennoshita, and Kiyoko onto a terrified Hitoka.
They graduate in March. Students and family members crowd the courtyard in front of the school for a brief but emotional ceremony. There's a soft breeze that carries cherry blossom petals from their perch up high to the ground, where they're brushed aside and trod over by hundreds of feet.
“Congratulations!” Hitoka chirps. She looks like she would rather be anywhere but here, in the bustling courtyard surrounded by her upperclassmen, but there’s genuine excitement in the beam she’s directed at Kiyoko. She’s holding a bouquet of tulips.
Kiyoko loves her so, so much.
She smiles and prays her eyes don’t look as disgustingly fond as she feels. “Thank you, Hitoka-chan.”
“Oh!” Hitoka exclaims, bouncing in her spot. Kiyoko’s heart does a little dance. “These are for you,” she adds, handing over the flowers.
(Their hands don’t brush, because this isn’t a shoujo manga. In a moment of weakness, Kiyoko wishes it was.)
“Thank you. They’re beautiful, Hitoka-chan.” Kiyoko is two seconds away from melting into the pavement. You’re too sweet, she almost adds.
“Um, Kiyoko-senpai,” Hitoka starts. She’s fiddling with her now-empty hands and looks visibly anxious, and Kiyoko wishes she had brought a fidget toy with her. She tries for an encouraging nod, waiting patiently.
Hitoka tilts her head up so she’s looking Kiyoko in the eye, and woah, this is a lot. Hitoka seems to sense that she feels overwhelmed by the direct eye contact and averts her eyes slightly lower.
Now she’s staring at Kiyoko’s lips, which is a different kind of overwhelming, but, well, some sacrifices must be made.
Hitoka gulps. Kiyoko watches it travel down her throat. She’s loosened her collar, and the soft skin on her neck looks so inviting, Kiyoko desperately wants to press her lips there. (She does not.)
“I wanted to say that, um, I’m very thankful that you asked me to join the volleyball club,” Hitoka begins. “I made friends, and, well, I met you.”
She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders as if to steel her nerves. Kiyoko finds it awfully endearing. “I’m going to do my best as manager, and I want you to do your best at university, too!”
Then, softer: “I’m going to miss you a lot. I cherished the time I got to spend with you, and, well…I don’t want it to be over.”
She doesn’t say, I have feelings for you, Kiyoko-senpai. She doesn’t say, I know you’re in love with me, and I want you to know that it’s okay. She doesn’t confess her undying love and swoop Kiyoko into a magnificent kiss. Kiyoko thinks that this is better.
She has both of Hitoka’s tiny hands clutched in her own now, reminiscent of that fateful day in June when she first met her. Her brain suddenly supplies her with images of sloping curves that kiss at the edges.
“I don’t want it to be over, either,” Kiyoko tells her. She vaguely registers a wetness pooling in her eyes, but she ignores it. She’s given up on pretending to be stronger than she is in front of Hitoka.
Hitoka sniffs quietly, and Kiyoko squeezes her hands a little tighter so that she doesn’t do something stupid like cup her face gently and kiss her silly.
“I should let you get back to your family.” Hitoka’s voice wobbles the tiniest bit. Kiyoko nods. “Good luck next year, Kiyoko-senpai.”
“You too, Hitoka-chan,” Kiyoko wishes her.
“So, um…goodbye, I guess?”
“Not a goodbye,” Kiyoko corrects her. “I’ll see you soon, Hitoka-chan.”
Hitoka’s gentle grin in response is enough to make Kiyoko’s heart swell.
(It doesn’t fall apart and break into tiny pieces; instead, Kiyoko can feel a small corner being sectioned off, now belonging to a girl with stars in her eyes and sunshine in her smile.)
Kiyoko groups time in two categories: before Hitoka and after Hitoka.
She isn’t sure how to categorize this in-between period of waiting.
She settles into university life safely, but not quite comfortably. Her roommate is loud and brash but luckily isn’t home very often, so she gets a few hours of the day to herself.
Kiyoko’s an introvert by all means, but it’s a strange transition from spending every waking minute with a rowdy group of teenage boys to little-to-no social interaction outside of lecture halls.
Home is only an hour away by train, but she aches for it nonetheless. Or rather, one person in particular.
Her brain takes it upon itself to remind her of Hitoka at any given time or place. While she’s walking to classes: who will walk Hitoka to the bus stop? When she sidesteps yet another skateboarder with a death wish: who will protect Hitoka from stray volleyballs flying at ungodly speeds? As she expertly dodges the promise of drinks and a good time from yet another faceless boy for the fifth time this week: who will be there to ward off hordes of teenage boys with god complexes?
Hitoka, Hitoka, Hitoka, her brain whirs on a never-ending loop, and Kiyoko absentmindedly wonders how she’s going to survive the semester.
Hitoka calls on a Monday afternoon in mid-June. Kiyoko’s just getting out of her introductory biochemistry lecture when her contact pops up.
She does not freak out, because she’s an adult and adults are unfazed by unexpected calls from cute girls who you haven’t seen or spoken to in two months, and, more imminently, she’s standing in the middle of campus surrounded by dozens of witnesses.
She misses the button three times before hitting accept.
“Hitoka-chan,” she answers, because she only knows one pick-up line, about parabolas, and she’s too mortified to ever try that on anyone, ever.
“Hi, Kiyoko-san. Is now a bad time?” Hitoka’s voice brings a rush of euphoria, even tinny and slightly garbled over the phone.
“No, not at all.” She has another class in fifteen minutes, but that’s not important, education be damned. “Did you need something?” Not, what’s up. Not, it’s nice to hear from you. Very un-suave.
“I wanted to ask you something.”
Yes, I’ll go on a date with you. Yes, I’ll run off to the countryside and adopt a dozen stray cats and tend to our vegetable garden while you bake bread every day.
“Of course,” she says because she’s utterly, depressingly whipped.
“Are you busy this Sunday?” I’m never busy, for you. “I was wondering if you could help me study? I’m having some trouble with, um, math.” Hitoka speaks quickly, and she sounds almost apologetic. “I asked Tsukishima-kun for help, but, um, he has very limited patience? And Yamaguchi-kun is always willing to help, but math is his least favorite subject, so I don’t want to bother him with that. And I thought, Kiyoko-san likes math, and she’s very patient and kind and, well. Yeah.”
“Yes,” Kiyoko blurts out. She’s wiggling her toes now and bouncing in place; her shoes are tapping against the pavement with a satisfying slap-slap-slap. If she sounds—or looks—too excited, well, that’s neither here nor there.
“Oh?” There’s a hint of surprise in her voice, which makes Kiyoko sigh internally—when has she ever willingly denied Hitoka anything?
“I mean, no, I’m not busy on Sunday and yes, I will gladly help you study,” Kiyoko chokes out in one breath.
“Thank you, Kiyoko-san!” Kiyoko can picture Hitoka’s accompanying grin, and she briefly entertains dying. “I’ll message you later to confirm the time, if that works?”
“Great,” Kiyoko supplies weakly. She simultaneously feels like running a marathon and collapsing in her bed head-first, never to be seen again.
“It’s a date, then!” Kiyoko is officially ready to pass on to the afterlife. “Uh, I mean,” Hitoka squeaks, “Not, you know. I’m very grateful for your help!”
You’re welcome, Kiyoko tries to say. It comes out as, uhngh.
“I’ll see you this weekend, Kiyoko-san!”
Kiyoko musters all the strength she has to form words together. “I’ll see then, Hitoka-chan.”
(She slips into her class twenty minutes late and doesn’t hear a word the professor says.)
“Hi,” Hitoka greets her when she slips through the door of Kiyoko’s dorm room and moves to toe off her shoes. Kiyoko’s glad she left the door ajar, because she isn’t sure she trusts her legs to make the trip across the room.
Hitoka’s wearing a thin cardigan over a sleeveless sundress, which would be appropriate given the warm spring-going-on-summer weather—unfortunately, it’s always cold in the dorms, a fact Kiyoko is very familiar with but she evidently forgot to warn Hitoka about.
She’s shivering, and Kiyoko’s brain is hardwired to drop everything when Hitoka is uncomfortable, so she scoots awkwardly across the floor to rummage through an overflowing laundry basket. (She gave up on folding her clothes on week three. She’s a struggling college student, sue her.)
“Here,” she passes the nearest article of clothing, which happens to be her old Karasuno track jacket, into Hitoka’s waiting hands.
She watches as Hitoka sheds her cardigan and shrugs the sweatshirt on; it’s two sizes too big and effectively dwarfs her tiny frame, with the sleeves falling past her fingertips.
I’ve made a mistake, she realizes far too late.
Girlfriend, her monkey brain yells desperately.
“So, what are we working on?” she blurts out, because she’s a one-woman gay disaster who has no game.
Hitoka rattles off a list of calculus theorems, and Kiyoko feels her body relaxing. This is math; math is safe.
Because Kiyoko may be a girl who wants to kiss girls, may be eighteen-going-on-nineteen and helplessly pining for her former classmate and possibly closest friend, but she’s also a math genius. She’d pick integrals over an unrequited crush any day.
She’s totally got this. Muscle memory takes over, and she works through explaining how to take the antiderivative and solve for the area under the curve. This is fine; she can do this.
After that, they fall into a routine.
Kiyoko spends Mondays through Fridays dragging herself to lecture after lecture, bleary-eyed and cursing the gods. Saturdays are for frantic studying and pouring over notes, this time cursing her own illegible chicken scratch. Sundays are for spending time with Hitoka.
They dropped the pretense of studying quickly enough--Kiyoko’s a overworked university student and Hitoka is single handedly the impulse control of a dozen teenage boys.
There’s a coffee shop on campus that they come to frequent, even though neither of them drink coffee—caffeine makes Hitoka anxious, and Kiyoko doesn’t like the taste—where they spend hours curled up in well-worn armchairs, watching strangers rush by and snickering quietly to themselves.
When the shop is too crowded, they stay in Kiyoko’s dorm room and share a pair of earbuds, scavenging for snacks and complaining about classes and the nerve of teenage boys (affectionately, in Hitoka’s case). It’s hands-down the best part of Kiyoko’s week, which is fitting, because Hitoka just might be the best part of Kiyoko's life.
The first confession is a surprise, except it isn’t.
Hitoka is a third year now, plagued with college entrance exams and a brand-new batch of overexcited first years. She excels as a manager, dedicated and eager to please in a way Kiyoko never was. She’s so, so proud of her.
Their weekly study dates have dwindled down to two or three times a month due to busy schedules and the general disarray that is a constant in both Kiyoko and Hitoka’s respective brains, which Kiyoko can’t say she isn’t disappointed by. She still gets to see Hitoka semi-regularly, so she’s going to count that as a win.
Third-year Hitoka is passionate as ever, with a newfound air of confidence that Kiyoko both envies and finds incredibly endearing, and she is so, so ridiculously pretty.
She’s especially prettiest here, lounging cross-legged on Kiyoko’s twin bed and bathed in a warm afternoon glow with her sketchbook in her lap. She looks so warm and comfortable and at peace; Kiyoko desperately wants to drape herself over her back and rest her cheek on her shoulder.
Hitoka’s voice startles her out of her reverie. “Can I tell you something, Kiyoko-san?”
Kiyoko blinks, surprised by the bluntness. “Of course.”
“I like girls,” Hitoka tells her. She’s chewing on her lower lip, which inexplicably draws Kiyoko’s gaze to her mouth, pretty, and wait, what did she just say?
“That’s…cool,” Kiyoko says. Internally, she screams at an alarming volume and tone.
Hitoka squints at her. “It is?”
Kiyoko makes a distressed noise that sounds embarrassingly like, hhhngh. Her voice is strained when she tries again. “I…think so?”
Hitoka, seemingly content with her response, hums and returns to her sketchbook. A minute of heightened silence lapses before Kiyoko feels the urge to speak again.
She scoots closer to peer over Hitoka’s shoulder. “What are you drawing?”
“Just some linework. Practicing for a piece I’ve been planning.”
“It looks like my graphs,” Kiyoko notes.
Hitoka hums in acknowledgement. “These lines don’t have to be straight, though. They’re not restricted by equations or whatever. Art doesn’t have rules, really.”
“Functions don’t have to be linear,” Kiyoko huffs, feeling defensive. She doesn’t have a retort for the rest.
“I know, Kiyoko-san.” Hitoka lifts her head, finally, and Kiyoko notices her eyes have softened at the edges. “Do you want to try?”
She offers the pencil, and Kiyoko stares at it like it holds all the secrets to the universe.
Indirect hand-holding! Like an indirect kiss! her brain declares rather stupidly. That might be the worst logic she’s ever come up with, but she’s got the transient property of equality on her side, so.
“What do I do.”
Hitoka giggles at this, freely and unrestrained, and the tingling sensation that spreads across her torso in response is one Kiyoko has become intimately familiar with.
(It doesn’t scare her anymore: why would she ever be scared of Hitoka, or the feelings she evokes?)
Kiyoko ends up holding Hitoka’s hand for real that day, after she breaks the tip of the pencil and Hitoka shrieks like a banshee scorned and effectively bans Kiyoko from using her drawing tools ever again, and Kiyoko fake pouts until Hitoka grabs her hand and squeezes, leaving their intertwined hands resting on the mattress between them and returning to her sketchbook.
(“Hey, Hitoka?”
“Mm-hm?”
“…I do, too. I like girls.”
“That’s cool! Thank you for telling me.”)
Hitoka’s second confession comes only a few months later, though it’s not the dramatic love confession Kiyoko fantasizes about sometimes.
“I got into your school,” Hitoka mentions while they’re hanging out in Kiyoko’s dorm. Kiyoko has a thick biochemistry textbook in her lap, and Hitoka is sketching at the foot of her bed. Her tone is casual, but her fidgeting hands give her away. Kiyoko closes her book and slides off the bed to settle on the floor next to Hitoka.
She should probably respond. “Oh,” Kiyoko says eloquently.
Hitoka squints at her from behind her bangs. Her hair is getting long; she’s taken to wearing it in a ponytail at the base of her neck. Her star-shaped hair clips have been replaced by an equally colorful assortment of scrunchies. She looks ridiculously pretty. “It has a good arts program, right?”
Kiyoko clears her throat. “I believe so, yes.” There’s a piece of hair falling loose from Hitoka’s ponytail; Kiyoko digs her nails into her thighs, so she doesn’t do something stupid like reach out and tuck it behind her ear.
“Should I accept?”
Please accept my feelings, Kiyoko thinks. Shut up!
“Do you want to?” Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes.
“I think I might need some convincing,” Hitoka says with a sly smile, and of course, Kiyoko would give her anything she asked for. As if it was even a question, how far gone she is for this girl with sunshine in her smile.
The next time she comes to visit, Hitoka asks her to show her around campus. They spend the day strolling around aimlessly, with Kiyoko pointing out buildings at random intervals. During a lull in the conversation, Hitoka reaches out to take her hand.
This isn’t a date, Kiyoko reminds herself. Then Hitoka’s thumb brushes over her knuckle, and her brain short-circuits completely.
“I think I would like it here,” Hitoka tells her, but she’s looking directly at Kiyoko when she says this.
Me too, Kiyoko thinks. Anywhere, with you.
“I accepted,” Hitoka announces as soon as she’s toed off her shoes by Kiyoko’s door.
It takes a few seconds for Hitoka’s voice to cut through Kiyoko’s calculus-induced haze, and even longer for her brain to register this new information before it all floods in at once: Hitoka. University. With her.
“Oh” is the best she comes up with because she’s running on four hours of sleep and a healthy dose of spite and her brain really, really hurts. Hitoka’s eyes are wide and sparkling, and her mouth parts to form an almost-there grin. Kiyoko recognizes this as her I’m sure in my decision-making, but I wouldn’t mind validation from someone else stance.
She tries again, not wanting to disappoint Hitoka. “That’s great, Hitoka. I’m really excited for you.”
Hitoka’s beautiful face breaks out into a full-fledged grin, and Kiyoko’s long past trying to resist the contagiousness of a smiling Hitoka, cheerfully matching her grin.
(“Hitoka.”
“Yes?”
“What do you think about getting an apartment together?”
“That sounds great, Kiyoko-san! We can start looking after you finish your exams.")
(“Hitoka?”
“Mm?”
“Can I kiss you?”
“Kiyoko! I thought you’d never ask.”)
When Kiyoko kisses Yachi Hitoka for the first time, she’s flipped right-side up.
She’s kissing a girl, albeit in the privacy of her own room, but her roommate could walk in at any moment and Kiyoko was not prepared to have that conversation today. She’s kissing a girl, but that girl is Hitoka, and it’s so easy to slide her eyes shut and will her whirring brain to slow down.
Hitoka is warm and solid pressed up against her, and the press of her lips leaves the lingering taste of rosehip and honey. Her mouth is impossibly soft and opens when she tilts her chin; Kiyoko tries to calculate the probability of death by drowning.
When she pulls back to look at Hitoka, searching her face for any sign of discomfort, she’s met with half-lidded eyes and a self-satisfied smile.
Ah, her brain supplies. This is how it should be.
Hitoka’s right hand reaches up to cradle her jaw, and she swipes her thumb gently against the spot Kiyoko knows she has a beauty mark. “Is this okay?”
In dreams, she recalls free-falling into a pitch-black chasm. She anticipated a rush of shock, a pang of regret, the crushing resolution of remorse. Instead, it feels like stepping through an foreign-yet-strangely-familiar doorway; like coming home to a place you didn’t realize belonged to you.
“Very,” she all but breathes into Hitoka’s mouth, and it’s a level of intimacy that would have terrified her two years ago but she welcomes with open arms now.
So she lets herself get swept up in the embrace of the girl she loves, who’s twined her arms around her neck and is leaning in to capture her lips for a second time, and crosses the threshold.
Love isn’t an algebraic function, Kiyoko realizes, but she’s grown to appreciate it just the same.