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King dropped into the last seat at the table and immediately started waving at the waitress. “Did you hear? They’re saying this summer is going to break more temperature records. Hottest since 2018,” he told the others over the clatter of the bar in lieu of a greeting.
“Sure feels like it,” Nico grunted as he took another sip of his beer, his other hand twitching towards his sweat-ringed collar. Yuki didn’t even look up from his phone as he smacked Nico’s hand away with a muttered comment about stretching out more of his shirts.
Haiji’s wide smile encompassed everyone at the table. It was the first time the four had gathered in months, their lives interrupted after graduation with inconsequential things like moving out, finding jobs, and, for one of them, finally buckling down to finish their degree. “Glad you could make it, King. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? How’s the job?”
“No work talk,” Yuki cut in sharply before King could even open his mouth, continuing to type away at his phone. “If I have to think about my job in the next hour, I’ll drown myself in the biggest glass of beer. And I mean that literally.”
“Aren’t you doing a work email right now?” Nico asked incredulously with a raised eyebrow as he peered over Yuki’s shoulder. “Ohira can wait. He’s just gonna respond with more tasks that you shouldn’t have to do.” Yuki groused when Nico plucked the phone out of his hands, though he didn’t fight back as hard as he could have. King and Haiji shared an amusedly exasperated look before all four gave their attention to the waitress who slid into place next to their table.
Once orders for food and more cold drinks had been placed, Haiji leaned forward eagerly, his own phone dancing in between his fingers as wickedness peeked out from the upturned corners of his mouth. “If we’re not allowed to talk about work, then how about embarrassing photos of our favorite underclassmen?”
King, Nico, and Yuki all scooted closer despite the heat while Haiji pulled up the photos. He spun his phone around and flashed the screen towards his friends. They instantly started snickering at the pictures and reaching forward to swipe through the collection, rowdily squawking at each other to go back or to zoom in on particular photos. Haiji had to jerk his cellphone out of the way from a jostled wave of beer more than once with a scolding word.
“What the heck are they doing?” King snorted as he tugged the phone closer to him to look at the picture of Musa, Shindou, and Prince.
Haiji didn’t even have to look at the photo to know which one he was talking about. “Someone apparently told them to pose like they were on the cover of a music album,” he explained innocently, his gaze slanted across the table towards Yuki.
Yuki had chosen that moment to take a sip of his drink and immediately began to choke. Haiji’s innocent smile never faded, even as Nico whumped Yuki on the back. After a few seconds he wheezed out, “What kind of music are they listening to? You know what, nevermind, I don’t want to know. Give me back my phone, Nico-chan, I need to text Shindou.”
“Not gonna happen,” Nico replied, jerking out of the way of Yuki’s lunge. “Who raised you?!”
After long moments of their squabbling, during which Haiji and King used the distraction to slide the best pieces of food onto their individual plates, Haiji laughingly called out across the battlefield, “Nico!” The older man looked over while keeping Yuki in a neat headlock, despite his struggling. “Do you regret not sticking around for another year? That could’ve been you posing like a knockoff B’z album and prepping for the Ekiden.”
Rolling his eyes, Nico released Yuki, dug his phone out of his pocket, and begrudgingly placed it in pale, waiting hands. Yuki, smirking in victory, slumped back into his own seat and began typing one-handedly while the other curled around his drink and absentmindedly raised it to his lips. Nico copied him, sipping slowly from his whiskey.
“Nope,” he eventually answered with confidence and a clear countenance. “I did what I set out to do, and now I’ve gotta focus on graduating. Some people are getting impatient with me, after all.”
“Damn right,” Yuki muttered as his fingers flew, but his mouth flicked up at the corner.
“And I’m still running, but just for me now,” Nico added casually. His grin turned sly, and Yuki jumped like he'd been kicked, dropping his phone to the table with a clatter. “Yuki comes with me sometimes. You wanna join in on the fun, King? Make it a whole production?”
King immediately started barraging them with questions about routes and days while Yuki hissed in the background, “I will sue you for defamation.” None of them noticed Haiji casually leaning back in his seat, smiling as pointed the camera towards them and quickly sending the captured image in a chat message.
After the excitement finally waned and a tentative peace settled over the table, they flicked through the rest of the pictures. There were a few artistically-attempted solitary shots of the lake included in the album, though it generally played a mere backdrop to their underclassmen, now second, third, and fourth years. Interspersed throughout were the new first years and Hana, now in her final year of high school.
“Someone should pay that poor girl for putting up with their antics,” Yuki muttered after seeing the series of pictures showcasing a kitchen disaster starring Kakeru and Prince with a horrified Hana in the foreground. They were followed by images of an increasingly agitated Musa and Kakeru as some apparent first-years carried a fellow teammate to the lakeside and threw him in. Shindou was half-bent in laughter in the background, appearing delightfully unhelpful.
Nico snagged a piece of karaage off a plate and drawled, “If she was smart, she’d earn a salary using some of these as blackmail. I’m sure she’s half the reason these photos even exist.”
“Oh, I caught her at the shop and asked her to send some to me before they left,” Haiji admitted without shame. “I think she, Musa, and one of the first years are taking most of the photos. It’s a shame we didn’t get quite as many when we went last year.”
“Like you needed more extortion methods,” King muttered, Nico and Yuki aggressively nodding their agreement.
Before Haiji could defend himself, his phone buzzed in his hand. He turned it back around and lit up at the notification. “Kakeru just sent me some more photos. He said they’re almost back to Tokyo.” Haiji began happily typing away at a response, either willfully or obliviously ignoring the shared look of amusement and understanding that was passed around among the other three.
It wasn’t long before he flipped the phone around so it faced his friends. The first photo was an awkward selfie with just Kakeru’s eyes and the top of his head appearing in the bottom corner of the image, while the rest of the team appeared passed out and utterly dead to the world in the small bus they’d ended up renting for the summer training camp. The four men chuckled over the picture, pointing out Prince and Shindou slumped against each other and clearly drooling.
The second photo had clearly been taken earlier. The first had all the runners lined up outside the cabin, naked except for running shorts. Each team member, wearing a variety of expressions that indicated varying amounts of enthusiasm, had gripped the bottom of their shorts and hiked them up their thighs an extra inch or two. The resulting image was a blinding display of stunningly awful tan lines.
Haiji finally erupted with the laughter he’d been trying to contain, and the other three were close behind.
“Those are horrendous!” King howled. “You’ve gotta send that to me Haiji, I need to print it out and hang it in my office for when I need a pick-me-up.”
Nico flung himself back in his chair with an uncontrolled bawling laugh, narrowly missing another customer who watched their hysterics with concern and gave the table as wide a berth as they could as they scuttled by. “Look at Kakeru’s feet. It looks like he’s wearing white socks, the skin is so pale by comparison!”
“Disgusting,” Yuki added gleefully, zooming the photo in even closer.
Haiji took a few sips of beer to clear his throat before he was able to speak. “Apparently,” he said, just on the cusp of breathlessness, “Hana-chan told Joji and Jota that their tans are a sign of their hard work and that she really admired them.”
The three other men leaned in, eyes wide and mouths twitching in anticipation.
Haiji inhaled sharply through his nose. His voice was a notch higher as he spoke. “Apparently, the twins have somehow gotten it into their heads that this makes them incredibly cool. And they keep saying their tan lines are ‘almost like getting a tattoo.’ Kakeru told me Prince got so annoyed, he threatened to muzzle them and give them real tattoos since they were repeating it so much.”
The four men found themselves in tears from cackling so hard, flopped over the table and leaning into each other, sharing in their loving mockery of their former teammates.
“King, do you know any TV producers that are looking to hire? I feel like they’re missing out on a golden opportunity here. Just have the cameras follow them around and they’ll get hours of entertainment,” Yuki croaked out, slipping his glasses off to wipe at his eyes.
“Forget TV producers, I think the zoo is missing two of it’s orangutans,” Nico smirked as he stretched his neck out. His smile grew when Yuki snorted and blatantly stole his drink. “Hey.”
“I finished mine,” Yuki said by way of explanation, taking a sip of the whiskey with a wrinkled nose. “You two shouldn’t be making fun of them too much, you know,” he remarked, nodding towards King and Nico with a wicked gleam in his gaze. “I remember our training camp, you two tanned like crazy. It looked like you’d been training in Okinawa rather than Nagano.”
Haiji quickly interjected, scooting his chair in closer to the table and catching Yuki’s eyes with a raised eyebrow. “It’s funny, but for whatever reason you reminded me about how a certain someone went through more sunscreen than the rest of the entire team combined during the training camp.” He smiled brightly at Yuki’s glare. “I wonder who that was? King, Nico-chan senpai? Any thoughts?”
Yuki snarled a retort about sun burns and cancer that was nearly silenced by the verbal jabs sent his way by the others. The conversation drifted, the laughter and the jokes quickly turning away from their underclassmen and onto each other, woven between the memories of living together for so many years and the unforgettable experience of running together in their final year. The heat of the day was slowly replaced by the warmth shared between them, and time was only measured in the empty plates and glassware the waitress silently whisked away.
Eventually, King stretched out in his seat and took a passing glance at his watch. His face went slack and he quickly straightened up. “It can’t be that late already.”
The others checked their phones or their watches and surprise colored all their expressions. Each bemoaned the late hour and half-heartedly began to finish the drinks in front of them, suddenly aware of the exhaustion riding on their shoulders but resisting the urge to call it a night. Reluctantly, Haiji waved for the bill.
Nico finally broke the awkward silence that had settled over them. “Seeing all those photos really made me realize how fun that training camp was, even if it kind of sucked.” His eyes met Haiji across the worn wooden table. Haiji quirked a small smile and took the metaphorical baton.
“Ahhh, I’m glad to hear it, senpai. It’s definitely a treasured memory of mine, and I’m glad the others get to experience it again.” He waited until they had worked out the bill, arguing over this and that item and trying to one-up each other by paying more than their share in the way that newly-salaried young people are apt to do. Once the dust had settled, Haiji sprung his trap. “Speaking of training camp, Joji and Jota had me thinking. Wouldn’t it be neat if we all got tattoos? To commemorate running the Ekiden together.”
Yuki was already yelling while Nico tiredly sighed, shooting him a look that read, That’s not what I meant. “No, no way, absolutely not. I already graduated, you don’t hold that kind of power over me anymore!” Yuki flung an accusatory finger across the table at Haiji’s nose and seemed seconds from leaping out of his chair.
King snorted and commented dryly, “It doesn’t matter if you graduate or not, the ogre’s curse is forever.” He shrugged then gestured at the staring group. “He got all of us here, didn’t he? Considering our schedules, that’s already something of a miracle. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t already have a tattoo machine tucked away somewhere.” Yuki went rigid, as if fighting off the urge to look around for a tattoo machine or an exit, and Nico took the opportunity to cut things off before anyone blew a casket or ended up walking into a tattoo parlor.
“Thank you for organizing this, Haiji. It was good to see you and King again.”
“Of course. We shouldn’t let so much time go in between this meeting and the next one. When was the last time we all got together like this? Three months ago?”
“Three and a half,” King corrected quietly, looking contemplative with his hands in his lap. “I was glad to see you all.”
Haiji took the admittance and returned it with a broad smile. “Let’s do this again soon then. I’m sure we can all find the time. I’ll even ask Hana-chan to send her most embarrassing photos if any of you need motivation.”
Nico and King chuckled, and Yuki chose that moment to emerge from his muttering to begrudgingly offer up, “Tattoos are definitely out. But, if we wanted to do a commemoration or something, we could do an anniversary reunion. Meet up somewhere and watch the Ekiden instead of running it like lunatics.”
“Be careful,” Nico teased, knocking an elbow into Yuki’s side. “‘Reunion’ sounds an awful lot like ‘run.’”
After long minutes of Yuki’s renewed protests and the last straggling bites of conversation, the four men called out their thanks and stood outside the bar, lingering.
“Well,” King finally grunted, slouched under the weight of the humidity. “Pass my greetings onto the team for us if you see them first.”
“Yeah, say hi to Kakeru for us.” Yuki and Nico wore sharp, matching smiles, and Haiji blithely ignored them.
“Of course. Stay in touch, you three. I’ll let you know about meeting up in the fall, and we can plan our Ekiden party then.” They all nodded, but still shuffled in place. Haiji let out a bark of laughter after a moment and remarked, “What, are you waiting for me to do the cheer?” He waggled his eyebrows and said, “The mountains of Hakone are?...”
“I’m not nearly drunk enough to start screaming in public,” Yuki replied as he quickly spun around and started marching down the street. “Take care, you two!”
Nico clapped a hand to King’s shoulder and then to Haiji’s. “See you,” he told them cheerfully before striding off after Yuki. King and Haiji watched as he quickly caught up to the shorter man and slung an arm around his shoulders. The sweet scene rapidly devolved however, when Nico drew Yuki into another headlock and Yuki proved that he was in fact drunk enough to start hollering in the streets.
“I don’t want to know,” King mumbled, then glanced up at Haiji. “Your knee doing okay? You gonna be okay going back to the station? I saw something about injuries like yours the other day, and they said they can take a while to heal up.”
Haiji stretched out his hips and his legs for a moment before dropping into a squat and popping back up. He would’ve been convincing, had it not been for the stumble at the end and the slight wince. “Almost there,” he laughed, but King still looked at him closely. Whatever he saw was evidently sufficient, and he nodded.
“Alright. Just take care of yourself, and if you need anything…” He jumped when Haiji patted him on the shoulder, much the same way Nico had.
“Thank you, King. I’ll let you know.”
King smiled and straightened a bit. “Good. Well, good night, Haiji.”
“Safe trip,” Haiji replied. He let King walk a few meters away before calling out, “King!”
The dark head immediately whipped around, the overlapping lights of the street and scarce businesses dancing patterns across his face. “Yeah?”
Haiji stretched out his fist towards King and smiled. “The mountains of Hakone are?”
King’s shoulders hunched inward. “You’re ridiculous,” he said with a light laugh. Then, he stuck out his arm, and the words echoed down the street. “The steepest in the world.”
Their fists curled back towards their bodies and turned into waves, and the two men walked their separate ways into the summer’s night, the humidity nearly cool compared to the friendship warm in their hearts.