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When Koushi is a boy, he wears a crown on his head. It is not made of gold or silver or even bronze, accented with extravagant jewels that gleam in the sunlight; it is made of royal blue construction paper and staples and Koushi is a king. Koushi is a king and like all kings, he has his most loyal knight, steadfast and brave, outfitted with his broadsword— the longest and thickest stick he can find that same morning (more often than not the same one he keeps in his backyard for that very purpose, but every once in a while they will go missing as all valuables do). Koushi is a king and Daichi, the boy who lives down the street, is his most loyal knight, bound to Koushi’s side like the staples that attach one end of Koushi’s construction paper crown to the other.
Like any boy king and his knight, they go on the greatest of adventures together, slaying dragons and monsters alike, exploring fantastical kingdoms while defending their own from great evil.
Koushi wears a crown on his head and his world is contained to Daichi and Daichi’s backyard, sometimes the nearest playground if they have adult supervision.
Daichi is in Koushi’s class at school, he has the last birthday on the birthday chart their teacher made them, but Daichi says he doesn’t mind because that means that he never has to go to school on his birthday like Koushi does.
Daichi’s family always sits two pews behind Koushi’s at Sunday mass. Koushi’s mother always scolds him for turning around to make silly faces at Daichi during mass, reminding him that church is where you behave, and that you always have to face forwards and listen to what the pastor is saying. It’s alright, Koushi knows that once he’s home and changed out of his nice Sunday shirt, his world will go back to revolving around kinghood and Daichi.
Daichi is a nice boy, he is a knight and he is good, he cares for Koushi and Koushi cares right back.
Koushi doesn’t know much about the world at his young age, but he knows that people get married when they love each other and that his parents tell him that he’s going to get married someday too. Koushi thinks that being married to Daichi wouldn’t be too bad.
So Koushi grows up a king and Daichi grows up his knight. There are never any princesses or queens involved, but if either of them notice that fact, they don’t seem to mind. The world is just Koushi and Daichi, and to them, nothing could be any better.
The boy king grows up, his knight alongside him, but he does not grow into a proper king like the boy kings of the myths and fables he grew up on. Koushi grows up and sheds his crown. Likewise, Daichi lays down his sword.
There are no more dragons.
There are no more adventures and fantastical kingdoms.
But there is still Koushi and Daichi.
Even if the knight has laid down his sword and the boy king is no longer a boy, the two young men remain, taking the shape of their shedded symbols.
Koushi still stares at Daichi during Sunday mass, and if he’s lucky, Daichi will stare back, the stained glass and skylights drawing out the honey and molasses in Daichi’s eyes as Koushi wonders how a place so beautiful can have so many rules.
The boy king knew no shame. He was unapologetic, bold, brave.
Koushi thinks that he is mostly comprised of shame and guilt. Koushi thinks that if he were to do an artist’s rendition of the pieces that form himself as a whole, shame would not be a piece, rather the chains that connect everything together, as if he could not be who he is without an ever-permeating sense of guilt.
There was a time when the boy king was joined at the hip by his most trusted knight, one who could make him feel safe and loved unlike any other. When the rusty swingset in Koushi’s backyard that would eventually succumb to a storm in his teenage years was a pair of pegasi.
Daichi remains, he is steadfast after all. He still makes Koushi feel safe, loved, but shame has found itself a home in between the two of them, sinking its teeth into Koushi’s hammering heart.
Koushi doesn’t know how long he and Daichi have been doing this, loving each other so quietly that no one else notices, even though it is all that exists between the two of them. He supposes that it must have started when he was still king.
Koushi still is that king, he has forgone his construction paper crown, but his knight remains, steadfast and brave, and maybe it was never the crown that made Koushi feel invincible but the boy beside him when he wore it.
So Koushi and Daichi hold hands under the blanket of night, laying in grass damp with the early morning air, not labelling what lies between them and why shame has sunk its teeth into it. Because if they never speak of it aloud it is not real, and if it is not real it won’t have consequences.
Koushi is staring at Daichi’s lips like they have him under a thrall, appreciating their regality, the rosy curves and slopes. He’s kissed Daichi before, but he’s scared to do it again. Maybe a part of him will always be scared.
“What?” Daichi asks, voice quiet. Daichi knows what, Daichi is staring too. He’s too afraid to admit what “what” is. He may be a knight, brave and steadfast, but even knights get scared.
Koushi scrunches up his nose. “You know what.” His breath ghosts Daichi’s lips.
“Maybe I do,” Daichi whispers. “Maybe I just want to hear you say it.”
“I’m thinking about kissing you. That’s what.”
Daichi hums, “Me too.”
Koushi’s eyes dart up, meeting Daichi’s. They ask a silent question, one that Daichi answers in an instant, steadfast. His gaze slips back to Daichi's mouth, then he closes his eyes.
Daichi’s lips are as soft as they look, maybe they’re a bit dry, maybe Koushi is just nervous. Kissing Daichi is a rush of adrenaline, chilling Koushi’s veins. Kissing Daichi is an unspoken promise between the two of them, it is the confirmation that this is real, that it is happening and that it matters, and it is ‘of course I love you back, you fool.’ Kissing Daichi puts the crown back on Koushi’s head and unhinges shame’s clenched jaw.
Daichi traces Koushi’s skin as he deepens the kiss, trying to commit the details to memory. He keeps breaking into smiles, like he’s just so happy, or like he can’t believe that he’s here, with damp pants and Koushi’s lips tracing his.
When Koushi pulls back for air, Daichi is still smiling, his eyes slightly dazed, like when they got their hands on a two-four during their first year of high school.
“What?” Koushi asks, knowing full well what Daichi is thinking.
“Again,” Daichi murmurs, leaning back in.
Koushi smiles with him.
“Hey, Daichi?”
Daichi hums in response, kicking his feet around, inevitably getting sand in his shoes.
“Do you believe in God?”
They’re at the playground, the very same one they grew up in. It’s well after midnight, most of their sleepy town has turned in for the night, but not the king and his knight. They haunt their old playground like ghosts, remembering what was and wishing for what seems like it could never be. Sitting on the swings, moving enough to feel the disruption of still air, but never enough to make a sound.
“I’m not sure,” Daichi says. “I try not to think about it.”
“Oh,” the ghost king replies.
“Why do you ask?” Daichi prods, slipping his hand into Koushi’s. Steadfast.
“Just curious.” The hand feels strange in Koushi’s palm, wrong but right. Comforting but a source of fear. Familiar yet so unfamiliar.
“It’s hard,” Daichi murmurs, “To believe,” he trails off. “It’s really hard,” he repeats after a stretch of silence, the crickets in the nearby field serving as his accompanying score.
“It’s really hard,” Koushi parrots.
“What do you think?” Daichi asks him.
“I don’t… I don’t know if I do. I can’t say for sure. I think that maybe there is, but I don’t know what He, or I guess they would be like.”
Daichi hums again, his feet coming to a standstill. He looks up at the night sky, it’s easy to see the stars in their sleepy town. “I think it’s okay not to know.”
Koushi huffs, flushing. “Well, obviously.”
“It’s worth stating. It’s okay to not be sure, and to feel alone. I think… we were made like that.”
“Real philosophical, Sawamura.”
“Says the guy asking about God.”
“Touché,” Koushi replies, a smile ghosting his face. “I just… it feels like we’re here without any rhyme or reason. I feel like if there was a plan, we’d know about it. But everything is so big and cold and we’re small.”
“Would you want one?”
Koushi looks at him confusedly.
“Would you want there to be a plan?” Daichi asks. “If everything was predetermined. If we never had a choice.”
“It doesn’t feel like we have much of a choice anyway.”
Daichi sighs, not unkindly. “But we do. And even if it feels like we don’t sometimes, we always have a say in the matter. Even if we’re small and everyone else is big, I have you and you have me, and to me, that’s what matters.”
Koushi feels his face heating up, turning away from Daichi to stare at the ground. Daichi is content to embrace the silence that follows, the fleeting sounds of night punctuating their conversation. Koushi chews his bottom lip and Daichi can tell that he’s mulling something over, used to translating the lexicon of Koushi’s every mannerism and gesture.
“Daichi?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m in love with you. Really really in love. And it scares me.”
“I know,” Daichi murmurs. “Me too. I’m in love with you too.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, Kou.”
Koushi shivers. “I just. Part of me wishes that it didn’t have to be this way. But I want this so much at the same time. I want it so badly. And I think, ‘how could this be a bad thing? To love someone like this?’”
Daichi sniffles, staring at the distant row of houses across from the park.
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this.”
“You are,” Daichi asserts. “You’re stronger than you know.”
Koushi smiles ruefully. “It doesn’t feel that way.”
“Even if it doesn’t. I see it in you every day. It’s one of the reasons why I love you so much. You- you’re strong, and bold, and the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. I would follow you to the ends of the earth.”
“I really love you, Daichi.”
Daichi laughs, tears slipping down his cheeks. “I love you too,” he says the four words like they give him wings, like he is Atlas relieved of his lot for the first time in eons.
Koushi feels scared, he feels exposed raw and vulnerable, like he is forever on a cliff edge, waiting to fall. He doesn’t want to fall. He’s waiting for a gust of wind or a storm or a comically placed butterfly to knock him over the edge. Falling doesn’t have to be the end. Falling will not be his end. “We’re going to have a happy ending, Daichi.”
Daichi’s shoulders shake, choking back sobs. “I know,” he says for the umpteenth time that night. Koushi ponders where Daichi discovered the secrets of the universe. “I know.”
Koushi wonders what direction the trajectory of his life would have gone in if the boy king also happened to be a seer; if he saw some distant vision of him and his trusted knight holding hands and crying in the dead of night.
He supposes that there’s no way of knowing what would have happened, if it would have prevented this standstill that he and Daichi have come to, or delayed it, or if it would have done nothing at all; maybe it would have propelled it, brought the feeling of doom on sooner.
Either way, Koushi sits now, the symphony of night punctuating tears and desperate promises.
I’m not going anywhere. I’ll never leave.
The words that both of them speak don’t surprise Koushi.
What is a knight if not loyal?
What is a king without his convictions?
The boy king loved his kingdom, he marched through it with pride with his knight by his side. He was never afraid when he was in his kingdom, his home. He never had to be.
Now, Koushi dreams of the day he can leave his hometown, the place where he grew up. The minute he has a finalized date it will be circled in red ink on his calendar, each day until then crossed out with the same marker at the point of its completion. The remnants of the boy king that still exist within Koushi lament at this anticipation, this frantic eagerness that Koushi feels. Maybe the boy king was naïve, ignorant even. Maybe he was simply an optimist, worn down over time.
A part of Koushi wonders if he’ll ever truly leave. If that is a possibility when he’s seen so little of the world, confined to his kingdom. The boy king would be intent to stay, but the king himself clings to hope.
Until that day comes, Koushi crosses out completed days, waiting for a milestone, hoping for the best, tip-toeing in a way that a king never should.
The little knight’s favourite fruit is clementines. He appreciates their portability, carrying two in the pockets of his child-size cargo pants, one for himself and one for the king. He chivalrously insists on peeling them himself, pocketing the leftover skins to dispose of later. On good days, he’d bring three and share the final one.
Koushi supposes now that maybe that’s when he fell in love with Daichi. When they were six, sitting on garden stones, a paper crown on Koushi’s head and his heart on his sleeve, watching Daichi peel his clementine before handing it to him with a gentility rarely possessed by children. Maybe it was even earlier. The moment, if any exists, is lost to time and the finite understanding of love Koushi possessed in childhood, not that his understanding of love is any less finite now.
When Daichi pulls two clementines from his pockets, Koushi can’t help but grin. He peels one and hands it to Koushi, gently setting it in the palm of his hand.
They eat in silence, sitting in the front seats of Daichi’s old crappy car. They’ve driven somewhere out of town and parked in some empty forest trail parking lot. Koushi takes in the scenery. Maybe they’ll go for a hike later.
Daichi rubs his hands on his pants when he’s finished eating, smiling softly at Koushi. This moment of peace is a solace, it is proof that the world is not all bad, filed away in Koushi’s mind for when he needs proof of this. It is reminiscent of a time of joy and invincibility, one that sometimes feels like remnants of a prior life instead of the past.
Koushi leans in to kiss the knight, unafraid. Daichi’s breath tastes of clementines and for this, the king smiles.
There are no longer any crowns, or swords, or dragons and adventures, but for the first time in a while, Koushi feels proud.