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They’re alone in the clubroom. She’s slowly but steadily making her way through one of the stories submitted for their next anthology. Personally, she’s finding it rather boring, but it is her duty as Vice President to read everything that gets sent to the club.
Mirai is getting very, very tired of waking up from a dream being the big twist of a story. And a certain someone sitting across the table is making it quite difficult to focus.
“You’re being unpleasant,” she says tartly, throwing a quick glance up from the page just to see Kanbara’s face turn red.
“What brought this on!?” he says, slamming the book he was pretending to read down into his lap.
“I can tell when you’re staring.”
He looks like he’s about to say something, his eyes flaring as his mouth opens as if bracing for an argument, when he suddenly slumps down in his chair. His cheeks redden even further, but he doesn’t take his eyes off of her. She squirms a little under his gaze.
“Sorry, I—” he starts, hesitant. “Sometimes I just need to make sure that you’re still there. Or appreciate that you’re here, maybe.”
Mirai feels her own cheeks heat up. “Well,” she sputters, “try to be less obvious about it.”
He chuckles a little, and the sound makes something in her chest settle.
They both go back to their books, Kanbara actually reading now that he’s done staring at Mirai, but she still feels oddly warm inside. Kanbara so easily admits how important she is to him, confesses his affections casually and more often than she does.
When they’ve both finished reading, it’s dawn outside the windows and dark blue is creeping steadily across the sky. Kanbara pulls on his jacket and Mirai tugs on a scarf on top of her cardigan.
“You ready?” Kanbara asks. Mirai burrows into her scarf and nods. He holds the door open for her, and she walks out with her eyes trained on the floor. She knows he’s going to follow her home — it’s what he always does, and with his little speech today he’s probably going to hold her hand the whole way, too.
Sure enough, he reaches his right hand out for her left as soon as they exit the school building. She takes it, feeling warmth spread from her palm and fill her whole body at the contact. Being with Kanbara makes her feel safe, makes her feel whole.
He is, in many ways, perhaps all the ones that matter, her better half. She needs him, and he needs her. She squeezes his hand, and when he looks at her questioningly, she just smiles. He smiles back.
The only time he lets go of her hand for the whole walk home is when the wind picks up and he has to button his coat, but even then he grabs her hand as soon as he’s finished.
The evening air is cold, but the places where his skin brushes hers stay warm.
Eventually, they find themselves outside Mirai’s apartment. They both look down at their hands, in favour of looking at each other’s faces and having to admit that their time together for the day has ended.
“Senpai—” she starts, but is stopped short when Kanbara tugs on her hand and pulls her into his arms.
At first, her arms hang limp by her sides, her brain still processing her new location. Her cheek is smushed into what little of Kanbara’s sweater vest is poking out from underneath his coat. His arms are wrapped around her, one over her shoulders and the other around her head. The proximity makes her head rush, but her heart stills in her chest and she brings her arms up to grab at his coat.
She wants to be close to him like this all the time, she thinks as he burrows his nose into her hair. If she could somehow be glued or fused to Kanbara Akihito, she would do it in a heartbeat. Anything to feel the heady warmth that fills her from head to toe, the safety that envelops her in the exact same way his arms do.
“Still real,” he mumbles. She has a feeling she wasn’t supposed to hear it, but his mouth is very close to her ear.
“What else would I be?” she asks.
He twitches, as if he wants to let her go and get a look at her face, but the urge to be close to her is apparently stronger, because his arms tighten around her further. The hand in her hair brushes down a few strokes. She thinks she might fall asleep standing up.
“I don’t know,” he confesses. She knows what has happened between them, has been told the story by Akihito himself, and regained some hazy sort of memory of the experiences. He isn’t afraid to reveal her past to her anymore, but she knows the memories are painful for him as well.
Probably more painful for him than the lack of them ever was for her. She wraps her arms around him fully, as far as she can. Her face is pressed so tightly to his chest that she can barely breathe, and the hand in her hair is pulling at the roots just a little. There’s nowhere else she’d rather be.
Because of their proximity, Mirai can feel the precise moment his chest hitches and his breaths become soft sobs. She tries to wrangle out of his arms to look at him, maybe touch his face and wipe away the tears.
“No, please, just…” His voice cracks painfully, and Mirai’s chest aches for him. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I’m not leaving, senpai.” She turns her head, squishing her nose and breathing into his chest. “I… there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here.”
His whole body shakes as he releases a sound that’s somewhere between a breath of relief and a sharp cry. Mirai doesn’t like it when he cries. It’s happened a few times, all higher stakes situations than this, but he’s crying harder than she’s ever experienced before. He makes a high keening sound, and Mirai finally manages to wrestle loose. It tears at her insides to see how much pain he’s in, how untethered the loss of contact seems to make him.
She grabs his hand immediately.
“Akihito,” she says softly. “Let’s go inside.”
Her cheeks flush with the implications of what she just said, but the object of her affections is currently holding back violent sobs and has tears running down his face, so she manages to push her embarrassment down.
She opens the door, then pulls him inside. She locks the door, removes her shoes, and he toes off his own, all without letting go of his hand.
He’s calmed down a little bit, but he’s still crying as she sits him down on her bed. She sits next to him, leaning into his side and wiping at the tears that escape her own eyes with her free hand.
Suddenly, she’s laying on her side on the duvet, Akihito’s arms around her again, his lips pressed to her ear as he mumbles softly.
“I love you, I love you, I love you.”
Her face feels incredibly hot, but once again her racing heart is calmed by Akihito’s presence. She dredges up every last bit of courage in her body, takes a deep breath, then…
“I love you. I'm here.”
He takes a deep breath, and it finally seems like he’s stopped crying. She can’t see his face. She brings her arms up, snakes one between the mattress and his waist, and the other up so her hand is on his shoulder blade.
They fall asleep not ten minutes later, still tangled around each other and lying awkwardly across the bed.