Chapter Text
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His pencil feels heavy in his hand.
Making art hasn’t felt the same, ever since Niibashi entered his third year, and the worst thing about it is that he can’t put a finger on why. It doesn't make any sense; art has always been his forte for the longest time. It's his element. It’s what he came to this school for. Art to him is what water is to fish.
And yet, he sits still on his stool, the joints in his hands screaming in agony with every stroke of his pencil. The lines are unsteady. The shading is a joke. The entire piece is so offensively mediocre; a toddler can probably do exponentially better than him now. Niibashi has never wanted to chuck his easel out a window before, but if he keeps this up, so help him he’s going to set aside all courtesy and do exactly that.
“Alright, guys, time’s up!” the club captain, a fellow third year by the name of Higashiyama, announces, turning off his stopwatch. “Let’s take a quick break before we start the peer evaluation.”
The club room collectively sags in relief. Still sitting, Niibashi stretches his arms over his head. Puts his hands on his sides and arches his back, suddenly made aware of how stiff his entire body is when he honest to god hears something pop—was he this tense this whole time?
He stands up and takes a few steps back, putting some space between him and his work as he wills himself to take in the sad excuse of art that he can’t believe was just born out of his own trained hands. The temptation to tell himself that it’s ‘not as bad as you think it is’ is overwhelming, but lying to himself isn’t going to do him any favors, seeing how he can point out every single one of his sins on that canvas.
Niibashi clicks his tongue—what even is this. He has always taken pride in how dedicated he is to his craft, and right now, his work cannot be farther removed from the concept of dedication. It’s lazy, sloppy, unrefined. It’s a nightmare made of everything he diligently strives not to be.
Despite the room being sparsely occupied, somehow, Niibashi feels suffocated, as though the walls are closing in around him. He needs to get out of there, and fast.
“Um…Niibashi-senpai?”
“Hmm?” he quickly rips his gaze away from his work, turning to look at the person who called his name, who happens to be one of their first-year members. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”
“Uh, well, I was going to ask you if you’d like something from the vending machine?” the underclassman clarifies. His name is Kaname, Niibashi recalls. He’s built like a 2-meter-tall brick wall and soft-spoken to a fault. “I’m taking everyone’s orders.”
“Oh,” Niibashi says curtly before an idea pops into his head. “Can I go instead?”
Kaname blinks. “Huh?”
“What do you mean, 'huh'?" He knits his eyebrows at the boy. "What, you think I can't take a few drink orders?"
The poor kid flinches, shrinking into himself like he has a shell on his back, and Niibashi's stomach drops.
"Ah, sorry, Kaname," he quickly says, keeping his tone calm and collected. "I said something unnecessary."
"Oh! Uh, um...i-it's alright, senpai. You have nothing to apologize for," the first-year stumbles through his words, nervously wringing his hands and looking down at his shoelaces. He knows it’s an inappropriate thought, but Niibashi finds it quite amusing that a boy as big as Kaname would be wary of him, who doesn’t even clear the student body’s average height.
“Okay, look, just stay here, alright?” Niibashi tells him. “I’ll go. I need some fresh air, anyway. It’s pretty stuffy here today.”
“Oh, you’re going out, Niibashi?” Higashiyama perks up. “Can you get me a black coffee? Make sure it’s hot.”
“I want a matcha latte!”
“Make that two!”
“I’ll have—”
“Alright, settle down!” Niibashi raises his voice, almost shouting, and the entire room falls silent at the drop of a hat. He huffs out a sigh and gets his phone out of his pocket before saying, “if you talk over each other like geese, I won’t know what you want. One by one, starting from Higashiyama. Go.”
Once he lists everyone’s orders, he excuses himself and steps outside. The school building is relatively empty, as conveyed by the vacant hallways and lifeless classrooms. Not counting him and the rest of the art club, only a handful of students would remain at this hour, like the kids from the soccer and track and field clubs, whose shouts can be heard by Niibashi all the way on the third floor.
Niibashi shivers—it’s amazing and somehow deranged of those sports-club people to still have energy left to go through with practice on a Monday afternoon.
While he makes his way to the vending machines, Niibashi looks out the windows along the hallway. The day is nearing its end; the setting sun paints the world outside in orange and gold, streaks of pinkish clouds adorn the otherwise clear skies. He volunteers to play errand boy for a day so he can breathe, even if it’s just for a while, but the longer he stares at that late afternoon sky, an invisible hand reaches inside his chest, wraps itself around his heart and squeezes at it harder and harder, until the ache gradually becomes borderline unbearable that it renders his feet unable to take another step forward. He stops in his tracks.
What the hell is going on with me.
He looks down at his open palms. This is an uneasiness all too novel for him. Not once did he cease to believe that those very hands of his were incompetent, and not without justification. Even now that he's thrown into a funk for god knows whatever reason, he can remember it still; the muscle memory of him binding any and every tool of creation in hand to his every command, the distinctive joy that can only be derived from creating, the overwhelming pride that washes over him once he steps back and reveres it in its entirety.
Maybe it's just a slump, he assures himself. It'll sort itself out eventually.
How rude of the slump to make a home out of him during his final year of high school.
Nonetheless, Niibashi balls his right hand into a fist and takes a deep breath. He decides not to dwell on it any longer...for now, at least. He'll deal with it again once he's at home—all he has to do now is get the drinks, so he can come back to the club room, do what he needs to do, move on with cram school, and call it a day.
Alas, his plan to complete his errand as quickly as possible is immediately tanked, when he sees that a fellow student has somehow gotten his arm stuck in the vending machine.
Niibashi doesn't know what chain of events transpired that can lead to someone getting their hand stuck in a perfectly functional vending machine, but he can't, for the life of him, think of why anyone with even a modicum of self-respect would do that to themselves.
Still and all, Niibashi approaches the person in question, just to make sure if he needs any help—and to sort it out quickly if it turns out that he does, so Niibashi can get his errand over with.
Upon closer inspection, he can vaguely recall seeing the student in question walking around the halls of the third-year building, although he's quite certain that they don't have any classes together. Judging from the basketball shorts he's wearing, Niibashi concludes that he must be one of Kagiura's teammates. Said person has one side of his face pressed against the metal surface of the machine, butt on the ground, mumbling a string of curse words while he shimmies and shakes his trapped arm.
"Excuse me," Niibashi starts, "are you okay?"
"What?" the boy makes eye contact with him, and—
A few things flutter in this world, like butterflies, or birds. Hearts and eyelids, if poetry is involved. And as far as Niibashi knows, stomachs don't usually flutter.
But his own just did.
He doesn't have time to process what that means, however, as the other boy continues, "oh, it's all good. I'm good down here. Just...I need a moment."
So Niibashi gives him a moment. Two moments. Three moments. Four—
—alright. This is getting ridiculous.
Niibashi takes a step closer and bends down to look at the pick-up box. "How'd you get your arm stuck in there in the first place?"
"This thing won't give me my juice box, so I figured I'd get it out myself."
"And you didn't think that you'd get stuck, too?"
"I did not," he says matter-of-factly. Niibashi doesn't think he's ever come across anyone who proudly admits to doing something that they didn't think through. "Look, I paid for my juice box, I'm getting my juice box."
Niibashi straightens himself. "That's fair and all, but can't you just...I don't know, leave it, and buy a new one?"
"I used the last of today’s pocket money for that." He lets out a tired sigh. "I dunno, man, things have been tough for me lately. I've been taking Ls left and right this whole week. Flunked some quizzes, the coach said if I get one more failing grade I'd be off the team, got disinvited from this mixer 'cause this dude from the baseball team suddenly had free time, I'm going nowhere with Mio-chan, and now this. Honestly, I just need a win."
Niibashi blinks at him. He doesn't have the faintest idea on how to react to some random guy pouring out all of his troubles to him unprompted (including the fact that he was going to go to a mixer even though he was already pursuing a girl? This guy's an ass, Niibashi thinks), but what he does know is that his break time is running out, and he needs to do something fast.
"If you can get your arm out of there, I'll buy you a new one."
The boy furrows his eyebrows at him, perplexed. "You're...gonna buy me a new arm?"
"What? No." Niibashi has a lingering suspicion now that the reason this boy is stuck in this predicament is that he's possibly not that bright. "I mean I'll buy you a new juicebox."
"Ooooh," the boy drags out. "Yeah, that makes more sense." A split second passes before he does a double-take and says, "wait, seriously? For real?"
Niibashi scoffs. "Of course. It's just loose change for me, anyway."
And I need you to leave ASAP.
"Damn." He shakes his head. "I wanna be able to say that someday."
"Uh-huh. Now get that arm out."
"...right."
That arm does not come out.
Niibashi watches as the boy desperately struggles against the machine, each pull and tug an effort that bears futile fruit. Niibashi, as magnanimous of a soul he is, has a threshold to his patience. This is dangerously approaching the end of it.
"At this rate, even until snakes start growing legs, you'll never get out of there," Niibashi gripes, holding back the urge to massage his temples as he feels an imminent headache. "Let's just call someone for help."
"Don't!" the boy exclaims quickly. "I sneaked out of practice for this. And I have a reputation."
Niibashi raises an eyebrow. "A reputation for getting arms stuck in vending machines?"
"I was gonna say 'brooding and mysterious'."
The corner of Niibashi’s mouth twitches. "Don't know about the brooding part, but I guess you are pretty mysterious since I have no idea who you are."
If he can watch the boy's face in slow motion, he'd get to take in every moment of his expression going from confusion, to surprise, then to looking like Niibashi just stomped all over his ancestors' graves.
"Hold up," he says, "you don't know who I am?"
"Well, I don't don't know you," Niibashi answers. "I've seen you around, but other than that? I really don't know who you are."
"I'm Shirahama,” he says, like it’s something Niibashi should have obviously known. “From Class B. The class right next to yours.”
“Yeah…no,” Niibashi says flatly. “Does not ring a bell. Sorry.”
“Guess Kagiura doesn’t talk to you about me, then.” Shirahama shifts his weight to his right, arm still stuck. “Because he talks to me about you. You guys are pretty tight, right? I know who you are.”
“Oh, really?” Niibashi folds his arms, impressed by the fact that Kagiura actually talks about him to other people. He just assumes—nay, knows—that his friend blabbers about, and only about, his beloved 'Hirano-san', to anyone who would listen (and that 'anyone' is, unfortunately, almost always Niibashi).
“Yeah, you’re…uhh…" Shirahama trails off. "Dammit. I forgot your name."
He rolls his eyeballs. "It's—"
"Wait, no, don't tell me." He holds a hand up. "It's Nii-something, right? So...Niiyama? Or is it Niifuji? Niimura?"
Niibashi says nothing and just looks at him, utterly unamused.
"...please tell me if I got it right."
"It's Niibashi," he says with a snap. He's had it. He's finally had it. This guy is already getting under his skin and they just learned each other's names (in the case of Shirahama, re-learning). He takes his phone out of his pocket to check the time; sure enough, his break should've ended minutes ago. "And I just wasted my entire break having this conversation."
"You should've just said you were in a hurry, you know," Shirahama says coolly, before he frowns and asks, "wait. Why are you here?"
Niibashi's left eye starts twitching. He wonders if he can get away with violence on school grounds in his final year, but his family did not raise a boor. So, instead of succumbing to the primitive urge to bust Shirahama's kneecaps, Niibashi takes a breath, and says, "I'm on an errand. I was supposed to get drinks for the art club." He vaguely gestures at the vending machine. "But you got your arm jammed in there, so...yeah."
"Oh," Shirahama says plainly...then nothing else comes out of his mouth. What's this guy's deal? Niibashi thinks, but at the same time, he doesn't say anything, either—because there's really nothing there to say. He doesn't know what to do at that moment other than stand there and stew in the awkwardness that's fallen between them.
Shirahama breaks the silence by twisting and turning his arm again.
"Hey, are you sure you should be doing that?" On instinct, Niibashi reaches out so he can hold him by the shoulder, before retracting his hand in the same breath since he decides that it would be weird for him to start touching someone who is virtually a stranger. Still, as much as this guy annoys him at first encounter, he would hate for him to hurt himself.
Shirahama doesn't seem to heed his question. Instead, he asks, "so, uh...you're still gonna buy me that juicebox, right?"
"...huh?"
"Because this arm's getting out in three...two…"
With a wince and one final grunt, Shirahama triumphantly, miraculously, yanks his arm out, still in one piece.
For a moment, none of them says a word. Niibashi's eyes widen at the sight, and Shirahama looks no less astounded at what he just did as he stares at his liberated arm like it's divine providence.
Slowly, he turns to Niibashi and says, “...I can’t believe that worked.”
“You…you got it out.”
“I got it out!”
“You got it out!”
Shirahama subsequently bursts into laughter, the kind that echoes throughout the empty spaces around them. He's snorting and laughing so hard that he bends forward, wrapping his arms around his stomach.
Niibashi would've joined him in breaking into hysterics, too, if not for his stomach fluttering again.
“Well, that’s that,” Shirahama says once his mirth dies down. He picks himself up, and nothing prepares Niibashi for the blow that’s going to be dealt to him when Shirahama rises to his full height.
He’s used to being around tall people (heck, Kagiura is a full head and shoulders taller than him), but looking up at Shirahama, tracing his eyes over the soft amber light of the afternoon sun that hits his face just so, somehow feels…like something else.
Then he mentally kicks himself for thinking that about a guy who was dumb enough to shove a whole arm inside a vending machine.
Shirahama pats the dust off of his shorts. “You can get the drinks for your friends now, right?”
“What?” Niibashi snaps out of staring at the other boy’s arms. “Oh. Yeah. Sure.”
“Good. I’m gonna head back now. Sorry I ruined your errand.”
It wasn’t fine, and frankly, he was a nuisance, but Niibashi says it anyway. “It’s fine.”
“By the way, if I’m not around tomorrow, that’s probably because the coach offed me and hid my body somewhere. He’s gonna kill me, for sure.” Shirahama says all of this in a deadpan manner that Niibashi honestly can’t tell whether he’s being serious or just joking.
“See ya, Niibashi.”
And with that, he turns around and walks away.
Niibashi follows his back with his eyes until he can no longer see him when he turns right and disappears behind a wall.
He didn’t even wait to get his juice.
“Niibashi-senpai!”
He looks over his shoulder and sees a familiar figure bounding towards him. “Kaname?”
“Niibashi…senpai,” his underclassman manages in between his shallow pants, “are…are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine— okay, Kaname, you need to breathe.” He puts a hand on Kaname’s shoulder. The poor kid is bent down with his hands on his knees, winded and wheezing like he just raced a horse. “What’s with you?”
“Well…you took so long that…we got worried…something happened…to you. So I…came…to get you.”
Hearing that, the faintest smile creeps up to his lips. “What’s that all about? Nothing happened to me. I was just talking to someone, that’s all.”
“Oh…thank goodness.” Now that Kaname’s breathing has somewhat steadied, his words have come out clearer as well. “You’re alright.”
“Of course I’m alright,” Niibashi says. “We’re in a school building. What bad thing could possibly happen to me?”
His junior shows him a sheepish grin.
They get the drinks from the vending machine and traverse the hallways to the club room. It takes Niibashi one flight of stairs to realize that he hasn’t thought back to the insecurity he felt earlier. He was too busy being both annoyed and amused by Shirahama’s weird stunt with the vending machine, that he didn’t have space in his head to feel like absolute trash about his art.
Maybe that uneasiness will haunt him again tomorrow.
…
“Niibashi-senpai, did you pick your schools already?”
Hanazono, one of the club’s second years, asks him while they’re cleaning up the club room. Most of the members have gone home, leaving Niibashi, Hanazono, Kaname, and Higashiyama on cleaning duty.
The peer evaluation was not so bad after all, though Niibashi suspects that the younger members were holding back their critiques for him out of courtesy, even though he already told them that they should be as honest as they can so he would know what mistakes he made and improve from there. Somehow, them being considerate irks him—he knows it’s not true, but it feels as though they’re being nice because they know he did poorly and didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
But Niibashi manages to set aside that bile, and remains composed as he answers his underclassman’s question. “Tokyo University of the Arts...and Musashino, I think."
Hanazono lets out a long whistle. "Has anyone from our school ever gotten accepted to TUA? That's, like, the best art school in the country, right?"
"'The best art school in the country' is pretty subjective, but it is the only national arts university here, and in some ways, it's even harder to get into than Tokyo U," Higashiyama further elaborates. "The last time someone from Fujisawa got into TUA was five years ago, for music. There hasn't been anyone else since then."
"Niibashi-senpai will be the next!" Kaname pipes as he sweeps the floor. "I just know it. He's so talented."
"Talent has nothing to do with that." There's a certain defensiveness to Higashiyama's tone when he says that, and Niibashi silently thanks his fellow third year. He knows that Kaname genuinely means to praise him, but something about being called 'talented' in regards to him as an artist just rubs him the wrong way. "But yes, I think TUA wouldn't be a problem for our Niibashi here. He works harder than anyone else, after all."
"What about you, captain?" Hanazono extends his earlier question. "You're going to do conservation, right?"
"That's the plan," Higashiyama nods. "I’m aiming for Kyoto Arts. They have a conservation and art history program that I'm really interested in, so it would be nice if I can go there."
"Have you decided on schools yet, Hanazono-senpai?"
"Well, I still don't know if I'm gonna go to art school, but I checked out…"
Niibashi tunes out the conversation after that, partly because he’s busy packing up his things and mostly because he checks his phone again and sees that he only has an hour left to get to his cram school. He’s seriously considering skipping today, something he’s never considered doing since he first started going there because Niibashi Juuya holds himself to a standard; it’s beyond him to skip out on things just because it’s an ‘off day’.
If he was upset earlier, now he’s tired. Drained. It’s only been two weeks since he became a third-year student, and he’s genuinely never felt this exhausted before; his eyelids feel as though they’re holding up paperweights, his bones and every fiber of his are begging for him to lay them to rest. It’s like a vampire has sucked the blood and life force out of him, and now all he wants to do is go home and crash onto his bed and fall asleep in his uniform.
If he’s going to be like this for the remainder of his last year, how will I cope? he wonders.
“I’ll be heading out first,” Niibashi says to his fellow members as he shoulders the strap of his bag.
“Oh, be careful on your way out, senpai!”
“Good job today, Niibashi.”
“See you tomorrow, senpai! Be careful!”
Niibashi floats through the now-vacant hallways of the school on autopilot, lost in thoughts of ditching cram school and his warm bed that awaits him at home and what he’ll explain to his parents once the cram school calls the house to notify them of their son’s absence.
He’s on the verge of collapsing and crying, but maybe he shouldn’t ditch, after all. It’s his final year; it’s supposed to be hard, and he can’t afford to make careless decisions that will affect his future. Not to mention this art slump that he’s in. There's a possibility that it will sort itself out, but something tells him that if he doesn’t do anything about it, he’ll never get out of it. And what better way to get out of an art slump than doing more of it?
….Niibashi’s actually not sure if that will solve his problem, but he needs to do something.
“Niibashi!”
He’s at the front gate when he sees a familiar face approaching him.
Actually…make that two.
“Hey, Kagiura,” Niibashi greets his friend. He shifts his gaze to the other familiar face standing next to Kagiura, and his stomach does that thing again. “You guys just got done with practice?”
“Yep! We’re aiming for nationals, so we’re putting in extra hours.” Kagiura is all-smiles despite it being already dark outside. Niibashi wishes he has one-tenth of that sports-club brand of pain tolerance.
Kagiura shot up over the summer of their second year. He was already a beanpole to begin with, but now he’s a whole beanstalk, and whenever Niibashi looks at him he feels like he’s Jack about to venture into the giant man’s lair in the sky. No, scratch that—Kagiura is the giant man in the sky. But leagues friendlier, and gay. And does not eat humans. And definitely does not have an enchanted goose that lays golden eggs.
It takes a few seconds for Kagiura to register that Niibashi recognizes his teammate. “Oh! You guys met already?”
“Yeah,” Shirahama says, scratching the back of his neck. “We, uhh…ran into each other at the vending machines earlier.”
Niibashi raises his eyebrows. You got your hand stuck and I was so close to hitting you, he wants to say, but decides against it.
“Well, I better get going,” he says. “I have cram school after this, so I better leave now if I want to get there on time.”
“Right. You’re really hard-working, Niibashi.” Kagiura smiles at him. “Make sure you take care of yourself. See you tomorrow!”
“Ugh, I’m still so not used to you being all captain-y.” Niibashi shivers. “But, yeah. See you tomorrow.”
The evening is warm and cloudless—a typical one during springtime, though the cherry blossoms have bid farewell to the season, and in their stead on the trees are shades of green foliage, their hues overridden by the dark of the evening. Niibashi walks quite a distance before he hears footsteps almost matching his. He stops and turns around to see that Shirahama has been walking behind him, though there’s quite a distance between them.
If he can tie down his stomach to keep it from doing things that it shouldn’t, he would. Because the only thing he should be feeling right now is suspicion. And maybe just a touch of annoyance.
Niibashi frowns at him. “Why are you following me?”
“I walk home this way every day,” Shirahama answers matter-of-factly. “What about you? I don't see you around here much.”
“My cram school is this way.”
“Oh.”
Their conversation immediately hits a wall.
Not my problem. I'm not doing this again. Niibashi turns on his heels and continues walking. And he walks, and walks, and walks—
"Can you NOT?"
Shirahama jolts, his steps coming to a halt. He blinks at Niibashi, confused. "Not what?"
"Walk behind me!" Niibashi snaps. "Just- just walk next to me, dammit! You make me feel like I'm being stalked! God."
"Oh," says Shirahama. "You can just say so. You don't have to scream at me."
"Whatever. Just get over here."
And Shirahama does. In that sense, he reminds Niibashi of Kagiura.
"Can you keep up with me, though?" Shirahama asks once he stands next to him.
Niibashi shoots him a look. "What are you trying to say?"
Whether it’s intentional or instinctual, Shirahama slightly draws back. “Um, well...I mean, you're—"
"—I'm what?"
"Okay, you know what? Forget I said anything," Shirahama backpedals. "I'm sorry for bringing that up."
"Kagiura's taller than you," Niibashi remarks. "I've walked with him a lot. You don't think I haven't had enough practice?"
"Alright, I get it, that makes sense, but did you have to bring up that Kagiura's taller than me?"
"Yeah. Relevant information."
So they walk side-by-side now, with Shirahama walking on the side that's closer to the road. His strides are nothing like Kagiura's, and Niibashi can actually keep up with him without having to almost-jog.
And he finds himself wanting to keep making conversation with him, for absolutely no reason.
"So," Niibashi starts, "I see your coach spared your life today."
"Yeah, but he really let me have it when I got back." Shirahama zips up his previously open jacket. "Told me that if I pulled something like that again, he'd bench me."
"So you're...what, part of the main players, or something?"
"You mean the starting lineup? Yeah." He sounds smug saying that. "Have been since second-year. I play guard."
"Don't know what that means, but okay."
"Well, guards are—"
"Oh, that wasn't an invitation for you to start explaining things," Niibashi interjects. "I don't care for basketball."
Shirahama is quiet for a beat, then he says, "but you're friends with Kagiura."
"Yeah. Doesn't mean I'm interested in basketball."
"Then...how are you guys friends?"
"We just get along," Niibashi shrugs. "And we keep our interests to ourselves. Kagiura knows nothing about art, and I don't know anything about basketball. It works for us."
They pass by a convenience store; the blaring fluorescent lights from its interior serve as a contrast to the dark.
"Wait, so what do you guys do when you hang out?" Shirahama asks, incredulous. "You know, 'cause you have nothing in common?"
"Well, that's not exactly the case," Niibashi responds, "we have pretty similar tastes in food, and he talks to me about—"
Then it hits him: he doesn't know if Kagiura's teammates are aware of his relationship with a guy, or that Kagiura likes guys to begin with. Niibashi is glad that he manages to stop himself, because if he didn't, he would have outed Kagiura.
"—a lot of stuff." If erring on the side of caution means being as vague as possible, Niibashi figures: so be it. He's spent all this time supporting Kagiura through the most frustrating relationship developments he's ever had the misfortune to witness, and he's not going to get caught slipping now.
"Like his boyfriend?"
The moment he hears that, Niibashi turns to look at Shirahama faster than he can take a breath. "I beg your pardon?"
"Kagiura talks to me about his boyfriend a lot," Shirahama says as casually as one might bring up the weather. "Figured that if he talks about that to someone else, it's you."
Suddenly, Niibashi sees Shirahama in a new light. Literally; since they're passing under a street lamp, but figuratively as well.
He's a comrade.
"He does!" Niibashi says—a little too fast and a little too eager and maybe a little too loud, judging from the look of surprise on Shirahama's face. Then again, Niibashi can't help it. It makes no sense, but there's a sense of relief and dare he say, camaraderie, in knowing that he's not the only one who's subjected to Kagiura's 'Hirano-san brainrot'.
Elation touches him only briefly, however, because his sensibilities refuse to be cast away like that. He clears his throat and collects himself, walking as he looks straight ahead. "Does everyone on the team know? Or is it just you?"
"I think it's just me," Shirahama says. "Kagiura's kind of vague about it with the other guys, but not with me. For some reason. I'll get back to you when I find that reason in, like, a hundred years from now."
Niibashi laughs at that, without knowing why he does. He feels ten times lighter, too, somehow. It's peculiar. "Once Kagiura starts talking about him, he doesn't stop, huh?"
He doesn't hear Shirahama say anything back, but that might be because, when Niibashi turns to Shirahama again, he finds the other boy staring at him with an unreadable expression.
It lasts not for long. As if he's snapped out of a trance, Shirahama blinks a couple of times before turning away, looking ahead.
"Right," he says, though it’s closer to a mumble. "Yeah, he...doesn't stop."
Either Niibashi catches that faint pink on Shirahama's face, or he's so tired that he's seeing colors where they're not supposed to be. Regardless of what it is, the beating in his chest progresses into a steady thump. There's a warmth that spreads from his ribcage, but his hands are tingling to the point that they’re numb.
Oh, for fuck’s sake! He screams at his brain. Are you fucking kidding me??
“Well.” Niibashi tries to keep the ball rolling, or to put it more accurately, he’s trying to spin out time until they get to his cram school and he can remove himself from this situation entirely. He can sense the awkwardness that’s about to loom over them, and like hell is he going to endure that kind of inconvenience while walking with this guy, especially with his body doing things it’s not supposed to be doing, dammit. Tragic that someone as cute as him has to go through so much. “It’s annoying sometimes when Kagiura comes to me just so he can gush about his boyfriend, but I’m genuinely happy for him.”
"I'm not." Shirahama kicks a pebble out of his way. Niibashi almost pats himself on the back upon Shirahama’s response; crisis averted. "Every time he talks about his boyfriend, it just feels like he’s rubbing it in my face, and then after that, all I can think about is how much I want a girlfriend."
Crash.
Niibashi's ears ring when he hears the sound of glass shattering, the shards flying everywhere and piercing straight at his heart.
Of course.
Of course.
They all want girlfriends. They all do.
And there was that 'Mio-chan' he mentioned when he told Niibashi all of the stuff that's been going wrong for him.
He hates himself for remembering that particular detail.
But what's more upsetting to him is the fact that he's upset. For what? For a guy he just met? For a guy who was dumb enough to shove his whole arm up a vending machine for a juice box? A guy who made him come back to the club room late?
Still.
The throbbing pain in his chest won't go away.
Niibashi's left hand clenches into a fist on his side. He looks down at his shoes, his steps slowing down until they completely come to a standstill. Shirahama walks a few steps after him before stopping as well when he notices that Niibashi isn't moving.
"Niibashi?" he prompts. "You okay?"
Still hanging his head, Niibashi asks, "aren't you already seeing someone?"
"What?"
"You said it yourself, didn't you?" Niibashi's looking at him now; the sight of Shirahama saying that with that clueless look on his face makes his blood hiss. "When you were blabbering to me about your problems back when you got your arm stuck, and you said you were going nowhere with some girl."
"Look, I don't know what the heck you're talking about." Shirahama frowns at him. "I can't even meet girls. Practice is hard enough already."
"Who's Mio-chan, then?"
"Who even— Oh."
Realization dawns on Shirahama's face. Damn right he better realize, Niibashi says in his head. The fuck does he think he is, playing around with girls' hearts like some clearance sale Casanova?
"Yeah, about that...umm…” Shirahama takes a sudden interest in his sneakers. “She's not real."
Niibashi is convinced that he's in a simulation. That, or this is a really bad fever dream. A horrible, terrible, fever dream. Maybe that's it—maybe the reason why everything feels off today is that he's been sick in bed all along and the medication is making him hallucinate. "Huh?"
Shirahama lets out a sigh. "Y'see, there's this girlie game I've been playing—"
"—alright."
"No, no, I'm telling the truth!" Shirahama insists just as Niibashi is starting to walk away. He swears it's always the cute ones who are weird. "Mio-chan's not real. She's a character in the game and I've been trying to go through her route but it's just not working out. Yet."
Niibashi looks over his shoulder and gives Shirahama the stink eye, but he can tell that he's not lying.
But even if ‘Mio-chan’ is just a game character all along, and Shirahama isn't seeing anyone…
...he still likes girls.
He probably only likes girls.
"Hey, so you're in the art club, right?" Shirahama catches up, returning to walk next to him. "You guys did that mural, then? The one on the east wing?"
Niibashi tries not to look anywhere but front and center. "Yeah. What about it?"
"It's pretty sick. I mean, I don't know anything about art, but it looks really cool. Kind of reminds me of the backgrounds for this game I know."
"Well, we did take inspiration from a bunch of video game concept art."
It's weird; they're back to talking casually like nothing happened, but the ache is still there when Niibashi glances at Shirahama, who's still going on about video game art, and Niibashi would've been more responsive had he not given in and let himself stare at Shirahama's silver hair that reflects illumination from the streetlights.
What am I doing?
"Here's my stop," Niibashi says once they're in front of the three-story building of his cram school. There's a sense of dread bearing down on him now that he's there, and he will be there for the next two hours, but nonetheless, he still has to go.
Shirahama looks up to read the giant neon sign. "'Art' cram school? They have cram schools for art?"
"They have cram schools for everything nowadays," Niibashi remarks offhandedly as he turns towards the stairs in front of the building. "See you."
"Oh. Yeah. See ya."
When he reaches the double doors of the entrance, Shirahama is already nowhere to be seen.
Niibashi takes a deep breath and goes inside.