Chapter Text
French 79 - Between the Buttons
A storm was coming, and they were seven.
They were seven years old, young boys in the making, blossoming in their young age, and Kojiro was turning seven this very day.
Seven, sebun, sette, sept, siete. That is what Kaoru was muttering under his breath. Even at that age, he was obsessed with numbers. With small details. Like the colour of one’s eyes, the deep palette of irises, shifting in the sun, deepening in the dark, sparkling with joy or anger, veiling with tears of pain or sadness.
Kojiro’s irises were his favourite to watch. When he was younger, he would often take his friend’s face between his palms, squeezing his cheeks, and maintain him still just a few seconds, enough to plunge into those crimson wells of his. This colour was shattering his soul even when he was four or five, and he didn’t understand why until very late in his life. At first, he just thought that it was like everything else. He needed to examine, to analyse, and to let himself be overwhelmed by the colours, the texture, the scents, the tastes. His mother was used to saying that Kaoru had always been a curious child. Maybe he was.
He wanted to know everything about the shades of Kojiro’s eyes. He loved to see them when they were lightened in the midday sun, he called that coral red. He was used to seeing them darken when his friend was focused on studying, then they would be velvet red. When they were playing pretend, imagining alternative, wonderful lifes, full of heros, samourais, dragons and other fantastic creatures, the irises would spark with joy and literally glow like a fire was burning in Kojiro’s chest. Kaoru decided it was strawberry red. The rare times when he saw the brave kid cry, the tears would blur the beautiful orbs and Kaoru’s heart would fill with distress because he couldn’t exactly tell what tone of red they were.
However, Kaoru’s favourite shade would show only on rare occasions. He noticed it a few weeks before, noticed that it was a different kind of red than the usual one. That time, they were lying down on the floor of his room, comfortably settled in the pink carpet that Kaoru liked a lot because he could hide his hair in it for it was the exact same colour. They were quietly talking about their future, about what they would like to do when they would be in middle school, and then highschool, and then, later, at that hazy time that was the grown-up age.
Kojiro had decided he would play one of those dumb sports like rugby, and Kaoru said he would continue to try every martial art until he managed to be the best in every single one of them. The green-haired child explained that he would maybe become a pilot, and Kaoru has teased him because usually, he was the one that wanted to discover everything and live dangerous adventures. So they settled on becoming rich to buy a plane that Kojiro would drive and they would do a round-the-world trip together. And then, they fell silent, both of them lost in their contemplation of a potential future. They naturally turned towards each other, unaware of this habit of seeking a closer presence of the other one, and that’s when it happened. When Kaoru saw it, the peculiar tone in Kojiro’s irises. It was a deep, rich red that Kaoru had contemplated before, both in Kojiro’s eyes and in the sweet fruit that grew in his grandparents’ garden. He had never realised he loved it more than other shades. Neither of them knew it at that moment, but it was the specific red with which Kojiro looked at Kaoru and only Kaoru.
Deeply satisfied with it, Kaoru called it Cherry Red.
***
Seven, sebun, sette, sept, siete.
It was the seventh day of the seventh month of the year and Kojiro was turning seven. Such an alignment of numbers was making Kaoru frown, and yet at the same time shiver with excitement.
For his seventh birthday, a few months before, Kaoru’s parents had offered him a skateboard. It was a little bit out of nowhere, for their son had not shown a previous interest in the sport. Yet maybe they had a sixth sense. It was only a matter of days before the young boy couldn’t live without his board. Kojiro, burning with jealousy and envy, had harassed his parents until they gave in and bought one. Since then, they had been practising every single day.
The two kids were already close before that. Kojiro was Kaoru’s best friend, and had always been, as far as his memory could date back. They had bonds before and beyond skateboarding. Nonetheless, riding somehow brought them even closer. It was as if the shared sensations, the thrill of going down a slope, picking up speed until they could feel the wind in their hair and their heart pounding hard, feelings that nobody but them could experience and understand, developed into something intimate. Their world. Their very own world.
Kaoru was not thinking about this as he went down the hill and heard the sound of the wheels against the ground intensifying as they sped up.
He was tossing and turning the digit in his mind. He knew the translation in only five languages, and hated that it wasn’t in seven languages. His mother tongue, japanese: sebun. English, the foreign language they were taught at school: seven. And then, translations he had looked up in books. French, Italian, Spanish. Sept, Sette, Siete.
Slope and slope and hill. The child was going down at an unreasonable speed for his age and level. He was used to this path, a rather smooth road that was going out of the forest in which Kojiro’s parents liked to go, on the rare occasions they were here. Today, it was Kojiro’s birthday - seventh day, seventh month - and the boy had begged his parents to drive them here, so they could practise and have fun. They practised and they had fun. And Kojiro’s eyes were sparkling in the strawberry red, so Kaoru was happy.
Yet, this small inconvenience - he couldn’t tell if it was something that excited him or unsettled him - of the ‘Seven’ Alignment was running up in his mind.
They were seven and a storm was coming.
Kaoru couldn’t tell until he heard a loud, big bang behind his back, like a growling coming from the sky, and his heart stopped. He should have known before. He had an excellent sense of smell. He should have realised what this smell of wet moss, this unnerving hot wind, and this electrifying undertone in the atmosphere meant.
Startled, he stood up straighter on his board, finally focusing on what he was doing, and another loud shriek rang out in the evening sky. And, suddenly, there was rain.
Enormous drops of water, crashing on his scalp and soaking his t-shirt in hardly any time. He heard a shout behind him and turned around to give a look at Kojiro. The younger boy was riding a few metres behind him, and he was obviously trying to say something to Kaoru, but it was useless. The blaring of the storm swallowed his words like they were meaningless.
In no time, flows of water were rushing down the road.
“...ru!!”
Kojiro’s words were so far from him. Not reaching him, even if he wished they could.
“...ful!!... ter!!”
And then, Kaoru lost his balance. The moment slowed. He heard the sound of the wheels slipping and losing their grip on the road even before he understood what was going on. At the exact moment he was toppling over, plunging forward, he understood his best friend’s words. Careful. Water.
They had never skated under the rain.
Kaoru didn’t even know that it was dangerous. But he would remember this day forever. The shriek of the sky, the warm drench, his breath caught in his throat, and the fall.
On his left, a shadow came out of nowhere at an incredible pace and something collided with him. The two bodies flew for a suspended second and then fell hard in the grass on the right side of the road. Kaoru heard a muffled sound of pain, and didn’t know at first if it was coming from him or not. His head was spinning and he didn’t want to open his eyes.
Progressively, his sense returned. The sound of the rain hitting against the leaves. The strong smell of the wet moss, closer than ever. The feeling of his hair sticking against his neck. The pain in his ribs.
The softness of the body under his.
“Ko… Kojiro!?”
Only a growl answered him. Kaoru blinked. Under him, his friend wrinkled his nose and his eyes fluttered. His face was bleeding. Most importantly, he had jumped on Kaoru on purpose .
“Kojiro, you dumbass! Why did you do that?!”
“I… Honestly, ‘ru, I have no idea. I just… stopped to think, and the next thing I knew, I was catching you and falling on the ground.”
If his mate wasn’t already bleeding, Kaoru would probably have hit him. He tried to pull out as best as he could to not hurt the boy, but to his surprise, Kojiro held him back, and then pulled him closer.
“Don’t leave, please.”
“Kojiro, you’re bleeding. You’re probably really hurt now. We need to show your parents. Maybe you need to go to the hospital. And I don’t know where our boards have gone.”
“It’s okay. We don’t need to do that now. Let’s rest a little bit.”
Pink eyebrows shot up. Kojiro must have fell on his head, because this was absolute nonsense. They were soaked in the rain, in the middle of a storm, surrounded by trees. Even at seven, Kaoru could tell this was madness. Yet, when Kojiro opened his eyes to gaze at him, his heart jumped. In front of him, summoning him as strongly as a siren’s song, the deep red irises plunged into his golden ones. For the first time in his life, but not the last, Kaoru understood that he couldn’t resist Kojiro's Cherry Red.
And this was madness, yet, Kaoru relaxed his head against Kojiro’s shoulders, and sighed.
“Okay, let’s rest a little bit.”