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Sometimes, Nagisa remembered fondly, feeling his eyes crinkle at the corners, sometimes Haru-chan would glow as bright as Nagisa would ever see and tilt his head towards Mako-chan before looking off into a corner of the school roof gate, huffing.
Makoto would hold his hands tighter in his lap. Or, having finished the bento his mother had prepared for him that morning, he would lean his weight on the hand which had slowly crept to its proper place, nearest to his best friend.
Nagisa had turned to wave good-bye to Makoto and Haruka both that day at the train station where they would drop him and Rei off after classes and cleaning duties ended. But winter approached and by that hour, the sun was already behind the building across the street, its light reaching around the jutting drainpipe and gutter. If Nagisa had developed artistic skills like Haruka, he'd be able to perfectly detail in paint the silhouetted red clay tiling on the left and the green on the right. The tiles gleamed brilliantly on one of these last days when he'd remember to say good-bye to his senior friend for just the day instead of...
For forever, Haruka had said. He had been told by the gods that if he loved, he would fade away, slowly forgotten by his friends and family. And he had loved Makoto for so long, even the stars had for years forgotten to show themselves to him in the night skies.
Nagisa's friend was disappearing.
He shook the thought out of his head and searched for Haruka. However, the sunlight was barely able to illuminate Makoto's light hair and raised, parting hand; Haruka was nowhere to be found.
Nagisa looked over to Rei, who slowly walked ahead of him, as if to wait for Nagisa, but did not turn to look in his direction. Nagisa jogged to Rei's side and away from their friends. Had he known? Had he known that they already would fail to see Haruka? No wonder he hadn't said a word to him since they'd left their schoolgrounds.
"I can't believe Haru-chan's disappearing, huh, Rei-chan?"
Rei glanced down at him before pushing up his glasses.
"I do not understand it myself."
Nagisa smiled to himself, despite the gravity of the situation in which Rei-chan did not know because he knew Rei would try his hardest to understand it for as long as he could remember to do so.
In the distance sounded the coming train.
"Haruka..." Rei spoke suddenly. He paused, inviting Nagisa to look at him as his face grew brighter than any of the scattered streetlights beginning to flicker on. "If it's Haruka-senpai, he will definitely be okay! I know what we can do, Nagisa-kun."
Nagisa loomed closer excitedly as he turned to fully face Rei. He smiled now not only because whatever Rei was about to say was perfect, but also because he would never get over how Rei no longer moved away from him when he burst like he always did.
"Rei-chan, I knew we’d think of something! We have to do it! Let me call Rin-chan right now!"
"I haven't even said—and please don't—wait!" His protests against rudely using the phone in transit were drowned out by the incoming train.
...
When they remembered to think about it again a few days later, Nagisa and Rei bought decorations and gathered any bedding that would make an evening for Haruka and Makoto more comfortable. This was their first step in helping Haruka tick items off his list before he disappeared; to-night, although their older friends still didn’t know it, Haruka would be able to see stars for the first time in years. They had drawn up their plans and then, returning to school, Nagisa had proudly carried his share of the shopping bags, which meant he carried the ones with the string lights. He now worked alongside Rei as they put up the lights around the school’s empty pool.
"I wish we could do more, Nagisa-kun," Rei confessed. Although he had spoken downwards to the box from which he pulled out another set of lights, he turned to look at Nagisa.
"Well, it's not like the stars haven't been doing their best, either, right, Rei-chan?"
"What do you mean?"
Nagisa was silent for a bit, gathering his thoughts as he worked the knots out of some lights.
"I guess, they're really old, right? It takes them millions of years to grow. You said so yourself when you were reading that book!"
"At least 10 million years, yes. A star the size of our Sun takes about five times as long to mature."
"Exactly! So the stars have been shining for a long time so that Haru-chan might see them. Rei-chan's been working really hard, too, to make Haru-chan see the stars on his special night with Mako-chan!"
Nagisa took the remaining string lights from Rei's hands and began to loop them around their arms.
"And we're so small. We're so small that the gods can just make us stop seeing the stars and forget our friends and disappear."
Nagisa looked down at their tied hands. If only the lights were lit, maybe he could imagine himself to look as beautiful to Rei as Rei was to him. As they stood, even though the two of them probably looked absolutely ridiculous, Nagisa wanted to bring their hands together himself; maybe the starlight from the lit stringlights would have been enough to weld them forever so that no mighty gods could separate them.
Heat began filling his cheeks, but Nagisa swallowed whole the nervous bubbles bursting inside him.
"So it's okay, Rei-chan. I'll keep working as hard as I can for Haru-chan and Mako-chan until I... and Rei-chan can--we can, if you want…" Nagisa cast his eyes down, his thoughts unfinished.
"Nagisa-kun," Rei whispered, "we will find the stars and bring them to Haruka-senpai if they haven't found their way to him yet."
Nagisa wondered if the burning inside him was anything like the glowing in Makoto’s eyes when he talked about Haruka.
...
"The density of a vacuum is enough in space to birth stars," Rei told Makoto.
His senior had taken great interest in the string lights Rei said he found in his house. He saw Makoto’s eyes crinkle as he said to Rei that string lights were a perfect way to have little stars. Rei could not have known that Makoto was being helped by the stars to get to Haruka, who no longer lived even in the dim and sparse forgotten memories that refused to resurface for his friends; but the crinkling was familiar to Rei, because Makoto’s eyes always crinkled when he talked about his friend and real stars.
"I thought vacuums were empty?" Makoto asked.
"Almost! You are about right, Makoto-senpai. Does that not make it all the more incredible? Of course, space is more massive than a vacuum and there are relatively a great number of particles in galaxies, so it is not quite impossible to imagine that a star might be born!"
Makoto's brows burrowed and his concentration dipped the corners of his mouth just so.
"What if that matter begins to disappear, Rei? Like memories of someone--do you think a miracle like the creation of a star could still happen?"
Rei smiled at his senior, wondering just who it was that he was trying so hard to find. Was this person anything like Nagisa? He would have thought that, by now, he would be able to meet such an important friend of his, as—well, it had been a while since Makoto last brought him up. However, he and Nagisa could not figure out who Makoto was talking about whenever he mentioned his friend. Besides, too quickly they became immersed in imagining in hushed voices their futures in space before Rei remembered that they were supposed to be studying, despite Nagisa’s protests that it was a Friday night, Rei-chan.
Makoto looked at him expectantly and Rei was prompted to speak his turn, only vaguely aware of Makoto’s nervous bitten lip and hand clenching his knee.
"Makoto-senpai, I think the hope that you have would be enough to bring about any miracle. It makes you shine as brightly as the sun, and it is extremely beautiful."
...
Something like hope always pulled at them, Rei remembered. It was like the hope that he and Nagisa would be accepted to the same university and the certainty that Nagisa would do well on his course exams because he had studied alongside Rei.
Hope later filled his being every time he looked through a telescope or completed beautiful and logical calculations, remembering degrees of magnitude, that would bring both him and Nagisa closer to the stars.
Greater than the beauty and logic of his work, however, was the pixelated star that Nagisa stumbled upon one day. Its appearance was as impossible as the birth of any star, Rei supposed, or as impossible as remembering the day he had promised to reach the stars with Nagisa; for any time he and Nagisa tried to pinpoint the exact moment they had decided on their joint journey, they could only vaguely remember, in the space between their scattered words about him, a friend who shone like the sun and stars himself.
end