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13.
January calls for an offensive amount of blankets and cuddling. Kenjirou lies beside his boyfriend in bed, chin tucked against his collarbone. Beyond the window, snow shivers down.
Shirabu Kenjirou and Semi Eita have been dating for four and a half months now. Four and a half months of sharing meals and holding hands under the kotatsu have brushed over them like gild adhesive—fast-drying, gold-flecked. Shirabu Kenjirou has spent four and a half months falling into his quicksilver first love.
Semi Eita is an anomaly of a boy. He is averse to planning events more than four days in advance and vehemently resents pondering his parents’ failed marriage. On his best days, he shares a childhood anecdote or two; on his worst, he’ll only discuss underground indie rock music. His most infuriating skill is being able to take a serious conversation between his teeth, tear, and reassemble it into something humorous. He is what school counselors would deem “not future-oriented.”
Kenjirou, on the other hand, is a planner. He’s a scheduler, a boxing-events-in-with-highlighters type of boy. So, he recites the question weighing down his head: “What are we doing in spring?" This, of course, is another way of asking “What happens to us when you graduate?” which, in turn, is another way of asking “Are we breaking up in three months?”
Dating someone stuck in the present requires such roundabout methods of questioning. Kenjirou knows this by now. But when he opens his mouth, what crumbles out is the sharp-toothed thing he promised to keep back: “Are we breaking up at the end of the school year?”
Eita tenses at the sudden fangs but does not pull away. Dark brows knit together. “I mean, probably?” He says this like a question, but they are both smart enough to know it isn’t one.
This answer does not knock the wind out of Kenjirou. It burns a keyhole in the center of his chest and buries inside his heart. “Oh.”
“That’s why I asked back in summer if you were comfortable dating for this year,” Eita mumbles. He sounds sheepish more than anything else, like a kid caught stealing candy or setting off fireworks. “‘m Sorry.”
If Kenjirou were a good person, he’d say it’s okay. He’d run an expertly manicured hand over the bulk of his boyfriend’s shoulder, or press a chaste kiss to the clavicle that’s jutting against his cheekbone.
But Kenjirou is not a good person. He is seventeen and in love, and you are only seventeen and in love once. So he lets his silly, little tears fall against his boyfriend’s silly, little herringbone sweater (an absurdly ugly anniversary gift). And because Kenjirou is not a good person, he lets Eita whisper sweet nothings against his hair. First, “I love you,” then, “I’m sorry”—over and over again into prescription-grade dandruff shampoo. I love you. I’m sorry.
Kenjirou wonders if they mean the same thing. He thinks they mean the same thing.
The ouroboros lullabies him to sleep before he can press Eita further. When Kenjirou wakes hours later, his boyfriend is still there, chest rising and falling like the Miyagi sun. The snow outside has melted.
12.
“I think that’s everything. I think that’s all. And, I thought about mailing back the letters you wrote me—I really did. But I honestly want to keep them. I like the reminder of what life is like when you love someone, you know?”
11.
In his second year of middle school, Shirabu Kenjirou decides that he will attend Shiratorizawa Academy. There is a story behind every story. This one goes like this:
- At a tournament, Kenjirou sees an olive green-haired boy spike hard enough to crack the gym floor in two.
- Said boy’s name is Ushijima Wakatoshi. He is the ace of Shiratorizawa Academy.
- Kenjirou vows to set for Ushijima in high school.
The previous list is unabridged. Kenjirou sees a left-handed boy king fly through the air like a winged wet dream, and he simply has to go to Shiratorizawa. That’s all there is to it. He has to follow Ushijima, and so he does.
Kenjirou gets into Shiratorizawa Academy by the skin of his teeth and the merit of his academics. It takes him less than a week on the starry men’s volleyball team to learn that he’s the only player there without a sports scholarship. This makes things different for him. The stakes are higher; there is more to prove. Blood sloshing warm below his forearms, Kenjirou prepares to snake his way into the starting lineup.
He doesn’t set to Ushijima right away, of course. Even if Kenjirou is a solid setter, he’s still a first year. But recognizing that obedience will get him to the top swifter than anything else, he learns to conform. He relinquishes any hope of being a titular character. He sifts his hothead attitude out of his playing. Gradually, the setting flair that Kenjirou broke bones to uphold in middle school ablates. His coaches’ faces screw into smiles more often, and Ushijima gives him higher praise. By the end of his first year, Kenjirou has claimed the title of starting setter.
Shiratorizawa Academy’s former first-string setter is a year older than him. His name is Semi Eita. He has ash blond hair, zero fashion sense, and a recklessly gorgeous face. He plays bass guitar well and the drums even better. On the weekends, he spends time painting his nails the color of coal.
But above all else, what stands out most about Semi is his downright need to give unwanted setting advice.
“You need to put more power behind your fingers,” Semi lectures during a miserably hot weekend practice. “The ball won’t be at the optimal position for your spiker if you just let it float up like that.” He mimes a setting motion, and when he’s finished, he hikes his shirt up to dab at the perspiration dotting his forehead.
Kenjirou does not look at the rivulet of sweat sliding down Semi’s toned stomach. He swallows and snaps, “Why are you giving me setting tips, Semi-san? You’re a pinch server, aren’t you?”
Semi drops his damp shirt. “And you’re just a coward. Is it worth being the starting setter if it means you lose your spark, pretty boy?” He flashes a cocksure grin.
Checkmate.
It’s July, and they banter like this quite often now. It’s July, and Kenjirou wonders if this is the feeling the great love poets of the Edo period tried to capture in seventeen syllables.
Two hours later, once the rest of the team has hobbled back to their rooms, Semi pulls him into a storage closet and kisses him silly.
10.
When they first started dating, Kenjirou hated how loud Eita breathed. It wasn’t offensive in any way, but it made his milky skin bristle. He spoke to his cousin Kimiyo about this issue while on a walk through town. It was October and the leaves were orange beneath their feet.
“Don’t worry,” she told him, her heeled boots crunching like bone against the dry litter. “One day, it’ll stop bugging you.”
Kenjirou tightened his plaid scarf. “I don’t know about that. His breathing sounds like a bear most days, and it isn’t even allergy season yet.”
Kimiyo crept to a stop on the sidewalk. By blood relations, she was technically Kenjirou’s aunt, but due to their proximity in age, she’d always felt like a wise, older cousin. She had the eccentricity and clairvoyance for it, too.
Nebulous as ever, Kimiyo looked up to the lurid leaves. “When you fall in love with someone, Ken-kun, things change.” She smiled at him, then. “Everything you hate about them just becomes—something else about them.”
9.
Finding good friends has always been an enigmatic process to Kenjirou. In preschool, he spent most of his time with classmate Haruno Momo. Momo was a smart girl—far smarter than him—with narrow shoulders and wispy bangs that were always a few centimeters too short. When she walked, her feet would turn inward just slightly. The skin on her hands was cracked.
Momo wasn’t Kenjirou’s best friend, but she listened to his stories, and taught him how to jump double dutch, and offered her hand when he needed something to hold. So, they stayed close all the way through elementary school. Momo made a few more friends; Kenjirou didn’t. They both grew more studious. They both relied on each other more.
Things changed in middle school. Puberty hit like a right hook and the stigma around girl-boy friendships flourished with it. Classmates began needling Kenjirou and Momo about their relationship, insisting it was something more than platonic. And it made sense that they’d assume this because Momo had become beautiful over the years. Ballet fixed her hip alignment. Her wonky bangs grew out.
Only a blind boy—or a gay one—wouldn’t like her. You can tell where things go from here.
There was no formal end to their friendship. One day they were close, and the next day they weren't. There seemed to be a mutual understanding of this decision, so Kenjirou turned his full attention to volleyball, and he didn’t look back.
8.
“Kanon says we’re done.”
Kenjirou and his boyfriend look up from their furious game of footsie and toward the wobbly voice.
“Kanon says we’re done,” Semi Emiko repeats, “And I don’t know what to do.” Eita’s little sister is crushing the cup of taro bubble tea in her hand, causing the lavender liquid to dribble out from the perforated lid. More than anything else, she looks confused.
“Did you two have a fight?” Kenjirou asks, fraught. He’s always had a soft spot for Emiko—reminds him of his little brother, maybe.
“No, and that’s the weird part,” Emiko groans. “We went out for get bubble tea like usual, and halfway through, Kanon just said, ‘I don’t think we can be friends anymore.’” The youngest member of the Semi family lumbers over, plops herself in between Kenjirou and Eita. “No explanation, no nothing.”
“Well, something must have caused it,” Kenjirou points out. He doesn’t say this to be rude; he says this to be honest, and because everyone is thinking it but no one is saying it.
Tears prick the corners of Emiko’s eyes. “I know, but we promised to always be best friends.” She sniffles. “I must have jinxed it.”
The couch shifts. At last, Eita joins the conversation.
“Hey, kid,” he begins, ruffling his sister’s silver-spun hair, “there’s no such thing as jinxing. People just grow out of each other.”
A gentle, suffocating feeling envelops Kenjirou, like when the hood of his sweatshirt is so heavy it chokes the collar against his neck. He thinks about the abrupt end of his strongest friendship. He thinks about Haruno Momo: how her grown-out bangs framed her once-round cheeks, how she held his grubby little hand in her peeling own. He thinks about how he never took the time to mourn what he lost.
He goes home from the Semi household an hour later, and he spends twilight grieving.
7.
These were the things I knew about you: your favorite sweatshirt, how you looked when you were sleeping, the way you put your sheets on your bed.
6.
The lips against Kenjirou’s neck are rough like nettle. A terrible whine escapes when Eita’s canine brushes his Adam’s apple—a threat, promise, or something in between. Slim hands slither under his shirt, trail up his abdomen and lazily trace his pecs.
There’s a pull against the hem of Kenjirou’s shirt.
“Off?” Eita asks, tongue darting out to wet his lips. His hair is slowly becoming more and more disheveled. His eyes are half-lidded in an impossibly attractive way.
“Off,” Kenjirou wheezes.
There is a good deal of wiggling required to get the shirt off, but from there, they find their stride again. They kiss, and then they kiss some more, and then some more. And it’s wonderful because Eita’s tongue in his mouth is always a joy, but there is a glaring issue that Kenjirou cannot overlook: Eita’s shirt.
It’s ugly, obviously, because Eita’s shirts are always ugly, but that’s fine. The problem is that it’s still on. And it’s always like this for them. Kenjirou ends up half-naked halfway through their first make out session, and Eita remains bundled up like he’s by the fire in the dead of winter.
Even though he knows they’re unrealistic, Kenjirou can still have wants. He can still dream about feeling the warm skin of Eita’s chest under his fingertips. He’s seventeen, after all. So he paws at the stretched out collar of his boyfriend’s horrendous top and stutters out, “Off for you too.”
“Mm, later, baby,” Eita says, in between pressing kisses to his firm stomach. “Later, I promise.”
He butterflies back up to the column of Kenjirou’s throat and begins to suck, just hard enough to bruise. And as Kenjirou wonders if his pulse is loud enough to hear, Eita noses at the mottling skin.
He smacks his boyfriend’s shoulder lightly. “What are you, some kind of dog?”
“I’d bark if you asked me,” Eita simpers, parting his lips to growl.
Kenjirou catches Eita’s sharp jaw in his hand. “Please don’t,” he murmurs, then kisses him.
It’s a sweet press of the mouth, all quiet intimacy. Eita keeps his tongue at bay and lets his hand curl in the short hairs at the back of Kenjirou’s head. They pull apart only when their lungs are begging for air.
Sticky-sweet and melted like soft serve, Kenjirou whispers, “You know I love you, right?”
Eita inhales. He counts to eight below his breath. Then, finally, he cups Kenjirou’s cheek in his battered hand and murmurs, “I know.”
5.
It takes four months and seven days for Kenjirou to start understanding Semi Eita. He remembers the date because his bangs kept falling in front of his eyes that week. He remembers because the world had been watercolored in the soapy wash of winter. He remembers because he can.
The epiphany occurs during a morning practice. It goes like this:
“You should work on your jump serve some more,” Semi intones, exhaustion bleeding into his words. He cracks his knuckles as if the noise will rouse him from his stupor.
“I already know that,” Kenjirou returns, polite as ever.
“Still, though. If you know that already, then you should actually do it. I see you getting nervous to practice your serves.”
The comment cuts deep. Kenjirou feels a constellation of varying feelings bloom in his stomach, and put together, they spell out: fuck you. “I’m not a pinch server,” he growls. “Not like some people will be in the near future.”
He realizes the cruelty of his response only once it’s out in the open, but Semi shrugs him off when he tries to apologize. (“Too tired to listen to any bullshit today.”)
Half an hour passes, and Kenjirou thinks the conversation has been swept under the rug. But it’s unburied some time later when Semi takes a seat beside him on the bench. They’re on a water break, having just finished a three-on-three practice match.
Semi brushes a hand through his slick hair. “You know, Shirabu, maybe I will end up being a pinch server.” He leans over to pick up a stray ball from the ground, spins it between his fingers. “But I think, maybe, that’s okay. I think I tried my best while I was the starting setter; I think I took some risks—”
Kenjirou watches Semi’s hands.
“—And I’ll always love setting more than anything else, obviously, but when I’m serving...” Eita sucks in air through his teeth until the sound nears a whistle. "When I'm serving, I’m free.”
The heart in Kenjirou’s pounding chest stutters. He used to think it was pride that prohibited Semi from being the starting setter. That he had an innate need to show off and general issues with authority, that he was selfish. But at 8:22 in the morning on a day below freezing, Kenjirou’s mind changes.
“I get it, Semi-san,” he says slowly, after two beats or twenty. He takes a sip from his water bottle. “I think I get it.”
Semi, in a rare display of vulnerability, replies, “I knew you would.”
4.
“All the stupid things, Ken-kun—you have to do all the stupid things.” Kimiyo beams down at her lukewarm latte. “Before you’re old enough to look back and realize they weren’t that stupid.”
His cousin's words run green. The sky is a faraway blue.
3.
They break up at 2:22 PM. It’s February, a Saturday, and the weather is balmy. Kenjirou thinks it would be more poetic if their final exchange were occurring at night, or under rain from the heavens, but then again, Kenjirou doesn’t read much poetry.
He presses the yearbook against Eita’s heaving chest. He forces out, “Learned my lesson. I guess I have to physically put this in your hands if I don’t want you to forget it.”
“I guess you do.” Eita smiles, and Kenjirou cannot place if he’s sad. “Wouldn’t want to accidentally leave it at your house again. All those memories,” he begins, breath stippling the warm air, “vanishing just like that.”
Kenjirou nods. “You should take better care of the things you hold dear.”
They stand in awkward silence.
Eita stares at his silver-buckled boots; Kenjirou examines the boy who is no longer a boy in front of him. He tries to drink in Semi Eita—the harsh curve of his cheeks, the way the silver chain dips at his collarbone, the gentleness of his hooded eyes.
The hush persists.
He thinks to himself: I wanted to be good for you. I wanted to give you everything; I would have given you everything. Don’t you see how much I needed this to be love, to stay love? Please, don’t you remember? Please, please don’t you?
“I know, Kenjirou,” Eita whispers after some time, unspooling their quiet. He doesn’t meet Kenjirou’s eye. “I know.”
They embrace each other one last time. Eita brings a hand up to ruffle Kenjirou’s tawny hair, and Kenjirou tugs on the hem of Eita’s dark blouse—undoubtedly stolen from Emiko’s closet. Time pools for a minute or so, slow, before the floodgates open again. And then, Eita leaves.
There is an end to every story. This one went like that.
Kenjirou remains static on the front porch for a minute or two. He watches Eita’s bombshell blond hair fade into the distance and thinks that some things will always be, inevitably, far away. After the dust has settled, he circles around his house to the backyard. He pretends like his heart isn’t keeling over in his chest, and he places a hand against the fence for support when pretending stops being enough.
“Kenjirou? Are you okay?”
Shirabu Kouta’s voice has no right to be this deep at only twelve. Growing up is strange like that.
“Ken?” his little brother calls again, and now he’s miraculously appeared by Kenjirou’s side. “Are you okay?” Kouta asks, concern wrinkling his nose. “You look really bad right now.”
Ah, there’s the understated rude streak shining through. They are siblings, after all. But the familiarity of the impertinence is comforting, in an inexplicable way. There is catharsis here; there is healing here.
Because his nails are trimmed, Kenjirou flicks his little brother in the forehead—not enough to hurt, but enough to remind him who’s really in charge. “I’m fine,” he answers. “Just needed some fresh air after Eita left.” The lie feels sour, premorbid as it leaves his mouth.
Kouta winks his right cheek up to his eye, frowns at his brother and tilts his head. “Are you and Eita-san okay, then?”
Kenjirou thinks about meting out criticism, playfully grinding a fist into Kouta’s soft hair and telling him it’s rude to ask such invasive questions. But instead, he mirrors his brother’s stunted visage and explains, “We’re breaking up when he leaves for college.”
“Oh,” Kouta says. He seems a bit dumbstruck. “So now.”
It takes effort to remember the mechanics of a nod.
His little brother crosses his arms, kicks a sandal-clad foot into the blossoms covering the ground. It’s that time of year, again—where the one flowering plant in the Shirabu family’s backyard flourishes. “So you guys didn’t even make it a year?” Kouta asks, not unkindly. He looks as though his mind is wandering.
Against all odds, Kenjirou laughs airly. “No, I suppose we didn’t.”
The wind begins to swell around them, then. Fallen pink petals whirl across the yard and scatter among the shiso plants. Birds warble in the stripping trees. And when Kenjirou looks up at the sky, he sees twice as many clouds. It’s because spring is coming—it must be.
“Isn’t it so wonderful?” Kouta says, out of the blue. He traces the abstract shapes the blossoms form as the current picks them up. “It looks like the world is littering in pink!”
Kenjirou looks back down at the blossoms covering the sparse grass. Rose, magenta, peach, cherry. These flowers are nothing but ephemeral, but right now they are lovely, and Kenjirou thinks that has to count for something.
Dazed, he gestures to the blossoms. “I should show Eita.”
Kouta nods. “They’re going to get more beautiful when he’s gone.”
And that’s right, isn’t it? Kenjirou ruffles his little brother’s hair, then lets his hand linger in the thin strands.
Kouta scrunches his nose but doesn’t shrug him off. “You can send Eita a photo,” he says.
“I could,” Kenjirou responds, knowing he won’t.
He and his little brother hug. And then they stay like that for a long, long while.
2.
“Eita,
A part of me wants you to read this message immediately. It wants you to skim through every page of this book, wants you to desperately trace the few images of me with your eyes, then your fingertips. The other, larger part of me, though, wants you to never find this.
It’s strange—to be writing in your yearbook, I mean. It’s strange because I know this is farewell, even though we didn’t announce it aloud. (We didn’t need to; I knew you well enough to gauge that kind of thing.) Now that I’m here, there are so many things I want to write to you. But where can I start? What should I say, after all of these months? I don’t know. I wish I did.
One time, we lay on the couch together as I read a short story and you scrolled on your phone. When I finished, I tapped your shoulder and told you the story was beautiful. That it was about love.
You looked at me funny. Then, you laughed—throwing back your head the way you always do—and replied, ‘Aren’t they all?’”
1.
Eita blinks his star-caught eyes, parts kiss-swollen lips, and says to Kenjirou, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”