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“What,” Shin said, “is that?”
He was staring at a plant on Hiyori’s windowsill, a little thing in a pot that was suspiciously close to the color of Shin’s favorite jacket, that looked like something out of a sci-fi horror flick. He couldn’t imagine seeing something like this in real life, but it seemed perfectly at home on the surface of an alien planet—its leaves were spread out like a succulent’s, but they were long and scoop shaped, and each one was covered in red…tendrils? tentacles? that had some kind of shining dewdrop at the end of each one. He’d never seen anything like it in his life.
“It’s an automatic watering system,” Hiyori supplied cheerfully, but unhelpfully. “It’d be a pain to have to maintain the water myself.”
Shin’s gaze shifted slightly from the plant and onto what it was sitting on, a low wooden box that had a wire leading out of it and into the dirt in the pot. There was a glass jar of water sitting to one side in the shade, and a bit of plastic tubing that led from it to the box to the pot. “I meant the plant.”
“Drosera capensis x spatulata.” Hiyori was grinning. He was doing this on purpose. “One of the more popular cultivars for collectors.”
Shin flicked a helpless glance at him. “Please?”
Hiyori laughed brightly. “It’s called a sundew! So named for the pretty dewdrops, as I’m sure you can imagine. It’s a kind of carnivorous plant, so don’t touch the leaves, okay?”
Yeah, that tracked. If Hiyori was going to raise a plant, it was only natural that it was going to be one of the bug-eating ones. Either that, or one of those insanely poisonous ones that could leave a rash just by brushing against it. At least he wasn’t actually crazy enough to try and raise something actually dangerous inside his apartment. “Why’d you pick it up? I didn’t think you were…well, I didn’t think you were the kind of person to raise a plant.” Or anything else, for that matter.
Hiyori turned his chair fully to Shin and propped his head up on his hands. “Because,” he said with the slightest of pouts, “I missed you.”
Shin stared at him blankly. He’d only been gone for three days. His family had gone out of town for the weekend to celebrate his grandmother’s birthday with his grandparents, and he’d warned Hiyori about it weeks in advance. For a guy who up and disappeared without a word every few weeks, he sure hated it when Shin did anything even slightly similar—it was almost to the point where he wanted to ask his parents if he could bring Hiyori with them on family trips, just so his friend would stop being dramatic about it. It wasn’t like either of them was going to spontaneously die or anything silly like that. “...You replaced me with a plant.”
“I didn’t replace you! I know you’ll always come back to me at some point…” Hiyori had looked mock offended for a moment, but now he was grinning that devious grin of his again. “Well, I did decide to name it Tsukimi, though!”
Really, Shin should’ve expected that. No wonder its pot was the same color as his coat. He couldn’t even find it in him to get too worked up about it, when this was so in character for Hiyori that all he felt like doing was sighing. Only someone like Hiyori Sou would think that just because his best friend was gone for a few days, he needed to buy some exotic tropical carnivorous plant and put together an automatic watering system for it so he could pretend his friend was still there. And only he would be able to get all the parts for it together in that short a time period too, much less fully assembled and running perfectly. Of course it was running perfectly, Shin didn’t even have to ask—it was something Hiyori had made, after all.
Hiyori had been observing Shin’s expression during that whole train of thought, his head tilted to one side as he watched him. “Are you upset?”
“Why would I get upset over you getting a plant? I’m not a kid.” Something in Hiyori’s eyes glittered when Shin said that, though, which was always a bad sign. “Just make sure you take proper care of it, alright? Don’t go getting bored and shoving it off on me.”
“Oh, don’t worry! That’s exactly why I put this together!” He turned and tapped the wooden box. “I know I don’t care enough to take care of it properly, so I automated it!”
“Jeez, great to hear you don’t want to take care of something you named after me. Am I too high-maintenance for you?” Shin rolled his eyes, mostly meaning it as a joke, but the look on Hiyori’s face meant he was taking it too seriously, like he always did. Time to change the subject. “How’s that system work, anyways? What did you do?”
“...Well, here!” Hiyori didn’t seem satisfied with that topic change, but he didn’t push it. He never did. Instead, he just carefully lifted the plant off the box and set it to the side, and then popped the lid of the box to show what was inside—a bunch of wires, a motherboard, a connector block, and something that was probably a water pump. “It’s pretty simple, really. This connects to a moisture sensor in the dirt, and whenever it gets too low, it automatically sends water to the pot until it’s the right level again. All it needed was a little bit of code to pull it together, and sundews are pretty needy, so it’s a lot easier to do it this way than trying to maintain it myself, see?”
Shin made a face at hearing the plant named after him get called needy. “I…guess that makes sense. I feel like you’re the only person who’d think of trying to raise one like this, though.”
“Oh, not at all!” Hiyori put his setup back together, and gently set the plant back where it was supposed to go. The dewdrops on its leaves glittered in the sunlight, and Shin did have to admit that now that he was over how weird it looked, it was rather pretty. Even if he was talking about it flippantly, Hiyori was treating it very gently. “I’m hardly the first person to think of doing this! It’s only people who think there’s a point in watering things themselves that wouldn’t do this, that’s what I think.”
“...Well, I’ve never tried to raise a plant myself, so I wouldn’t know.” Shin shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Aww, did you hear that, Tsukimi?” Hiyori was baby-talking to the plant, not to Shin, but it still made his cheeks start burning. “Sounds like you won’t be getting a sibling!”
That…made it worse. “Do you have to talk about it like that?”
“Heehee, what’s wrong?” Hiyori’s eyes were sparkling the same way the sundew did. “Something come to mind?”
Shin glowered at his friend, who was left completely unaffected by what Shin thought was a respectably murderous glare. “What would I even call it if I got one? I mean, I already call you Hiyori, so… I guess the plant would have to be Sou.”
Hiyori blinked at him, and Shin raised his eyebrows. Was he pouting? “You’re going to be on a first name basis with the plant before me?”
This was a perfect chance to turn Hiyori’s own words against him. “What, are you upset?”
“Yes!” He was so pouting. Not even with a joking tilt to it, like he had been earlier. It was kind of an odd expression on a guy who was both taller and stronger than Shin was, but it wasn’t very often he got one over Hiyori, and he was going to enjoy it for all it was worth. “Come on, we’ve known each other for so long, and it’s still Hiyori, Hiyori… You have to call me Sou, and the plant Hiyori!”
“Hmm…” Shin grinned. He honestly hadn’t realized it was all that big of a deal to Hiyori, but he supposed that made sense—Hiyori was the kind of person who had, well, gotten a plant to name after him just because Shin had been gone for a few days. But on the other hand, he was always making these sorts of overblown gestures, and this was probably just another one. “Maybe. I bet the plant would be nicer to me than you, so I dunno if you’ve earned it…”
“I’m plenty nice to you! C’mon, remind me who helped you put your computer together again?”
Shin laughed. “Okay, true. I guess a plant would probably have trouble with that one. And thanks again for that…Sou.”
It sounded weird out of his mouth. Embarrassing. Hiyori looked a little embarrassed about it too, and that was a completely new expression Shin had never seen on him before—he really hadn’t realized what a big deal it was to him. It was almost an expression of…fascination, a childlike wonder, one that was actually kind of off-putting in how innocent it was on the face of someone who could cheerfully talk about the most stomach-turning morbid topics Shin had ever heard anyone bring up in casual conversation. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see this expression ever again, not directed at him, at least.
And then the look softened into a gentle, sly smile. “Heehee. You’re more devious than you seem, Shin! I think you’ve earned a reward!”
Oh, that was never good. “Like what?”
“Well,” Hiyori said, pulling himself and then grabbing one of Shin’s hands, “since I’ve only just gotten this sundew, I haven’t had the chance to feed it yet!”
For a split second, a bolt of fear ran through Shin’s body—the way Hiyori was looking at him, with that over-excited look, that smile that was definitely planning something bad, the way his grip was tightening around Shin’s hand, all of it was bad. For a moment, just a moment, Shin felt like he was the prey that Hiyori was going to feed to that plant, until he realized the next moment that that was dumb as hell. First of all, he was way too big for that unless Hiyori was planning on cutting him up, and second of all, Hiyori wasn’t actually a dangerous person; he’d been the person that Shin had always ended up hiding behind when he got bullied in school, and Hiyori’d never given a reason to doubt him about that. Even if he was a creepy weirdo most of the time. Shin closed his grip around Hiyori’s hand. “...What, you want to let me feed it first?”
“Yep!” Hiyori cheerfully started dragging him out to the kitchen. “The only reason I got a carnivorous plant in the first place was so I could enjoy feeding it, so I hope you appreciate just how much I’m giving up for you right now!”
“I mean, we can both feed it.” Hiyori’s hand was big and warm. “It’s not that big of a deal, is it?”
“It is! You’re only supposed to feed it about once a month.” Honestly, Shin didn’t want to have to let go. “Sundews are like flytraps. Their traps involve movement, and since plants really aren’t designed to do that, they can die if you overfeed them.”
Shin wouldn’t have cared if a teacher in high school had been telling him about how carnivorous plants worked, but everything was more interesting hearing it in Hiyori’s voice. “...Huh. I didn’t know that.”
“Yep!” They stopped in front of the fridge, and Hiyori let go of Shin’s hand. It was…a little disappointing, not that he wanted to say that out loud. “But I guess since this is a special occasion, we can both feed it. Heehee, it’s like we’re taking care of a pet together!”
He pulled open the fridge and, after rummaging around in it for something in the back, past the rows of Shin’s energy drinks and leftover food he was definitely going to get around to eating someday even if was maybe a little suspect by now, pulled out a plastic bag of minced meat. “We’ll be feeding it this!”
“...Hamburger?” Shin peered at it. On second thought, it didn’t look quite like ground beef. He was pretty sure beef and really every kind of meat he’d seen at the supermarket didn’t have that much fat in it. “I thought they were supposed to eat bugs.”
“It’s not hamburger,” Hiyori said, smiling wide. “It’s fine for them to eat bits of real meat, as long as the pieces are kept small enough. I prepared this just for my dear Tsukimi. Only the best for him!”
It was…still embarrassing hearing Hiyori talk about something with his name like that, especially while he was staring at him with those shining eyes. It was conjuring images that Shin wasn’t sure if he wanted to shove away or dwell on for a little bit longer. “What, are you going to prepare the rest of this for dinner, or something?”
“It’s not for eating, either.” Hiyori’s smile didn’t budge an inch. This was…kind of weird. Hiyori’s fingers were covering it a bit, but it looked like there was a name written on the front of the bag in permanent marker, scrawled in Hiyori’s messy handwriting. “Unless you’re a plant, of course. Or do you really want to give it a try?”
“...I think I’ll pass.” Knowing Hiyori, no matter what it was, if Shin said he wanted to try it, he’d make it for him. The fact that Hiyori wasn’t telling him what it was definitely wasn’t inspiring a lot of confidence that it was safe for human consumption, regardless of what it was, although that did beg the question of what it was doing in his fridge. Looked hand-packaged and everything. Shin didn’t need to think about this. “So, um, we’re just taking a little bit of it, right?”
“Yep!” Now that the topic had changed, it felt like the ominous air had faded away with it. “Feel free to take the honor, now!”
Shin swallowed. He didn’t…really want to touch meat he didn’t know the origin of. But Hiyori was looking at him with that expectant expression, and…he couldn’t bear to let his friend down. Hiyori’d already told him he wanted to be the one feeding this thing, and he was giving that position to Shin, just this once. It was important to him. He couldn’t turn him down like that.
Ignoring the lump that had started forming in his throat, Shin reached his hand into the bag of meat and dug his fingers into it. It was soft and cold and clung to his skin just enough to feel unpleasant, and he grimaced—he hated having anything on his hands, and raw meat felt awful. Stifling the nausea that was welling up in his stomach, he dug out a small chunk of meat, Hiyori watching his every motion with the same attentive eyes he gave everything, as if he were observing a particularly fascinating science experiment. “This is…enough, right?”
“Oh, more than enough!” Hiyori sealed the bag and carefully stored it back in his fridge, far enough back that no one would be able to grab it by accident. There was definitely a name on it, but it was out of view before Shin could actually make out whose. “A little too much, actually. You got enough for both of us!”
Great. “Um, should I just…try to separate it for both of us, then?”
“If you wouldn’t mind!”
Hiyori made no move to do it for him, of course. He practically reveled in it when Shin was obviously uncomfortable—sometimes he’d reach out and fix the problem as if it were the simplest thing in the world after enjoying his discomfort, but other times, like right now, he’d just sit back and watch while Shin did something he hated. Shin just took a deep breath and did what he said he’d do, using both hands to separate the chunk of meat, squishing disgustingly under his fingernails. He was already thinking longingly of scrubbing his hands clean.
Little bits of meat stuck to his palms and fingertips as he tried to shape them into something easier to put in the plant’s leaves, the fat making his hands gross and sticky. This was just the worst, on a lot of levels, but when he offered one of his pathetic little mystery meatballs to Hiyori, the smile that lit up his face made it feel like it’d been worth it, somehow.
Hiyori reached out and plucked both of them from his fingers. The meat smeared against his skin, his hands no longer as pristinely clean as they normally were. “Let me take those for you. I can’t let you have all the fun!”
Shin shuddered. “Just so you know, having raw meat all over my hands is not my idea of fun.”
“I know.” Hiyori’s voice was suddenly very gentle, as was the expression on his face. “But it’s nice to not have to go through with it alone, isn’t it?”
As far as Shin could tell, Hiyori hated getting his hands dirty, too. Not as much as Shin did, but he kept every part of himself so immaculately clean that seeing him with bits of meat on his hands was, well, definitely out of character for him. It was kind of weird. It was kind of comforting.
“...Yeah,” Shin said, looking at their dirty hands. “It is.”
They returned to Hiyori’s room and then crowded around the windowsill. Now that Shin was getting a closer look at it, he could appreciate its alien look a bit more—it really was pretty, now that he’d gotten over himself. The way the dewdrops caught the light was enough that, if Hiyori hadn’t already told him what a pain this kind of plant was to keep, he might want one of his own. Well, Hiyori was good at convincing him to do just about anything, so he couldn’t say it was completely off the table…
“Shin.” He looked up, and Hiyori was smiling at him. As he always was, of course. “Like I said, I want you to have the honor of the first feeding! Here you go!”
Shin gingerly took one of the balls of meat from Hiyori’s palm, and it felt a little less gross since he still had gunk all over his hands. A small blessing, but a blessing nonetheless. “What should I, um…do?”
Hiyori pointed towards the widest part of a leaf. “Just put it there. The dewdrops are basically nectar. In the wild, that’s how it’d attract insects, since they smell sweet and sugary, but I’d rather kill myself than let any bugs get in here, you know? Even to feed my dear Tsukimi.”
Shin was starting to hate how easy it was for Hiyori to get a rise out of him. What was he even so embarrassed about? It wasn’t like… No. He was not thinking about that, not when Hiyori was so close to him right now. “Okay, so I just…”
Carefully, carefully, he placed the bit of meat against one of the leaves. It didn’t really…react or anything, though.
“You need to make it struggle,” Hiyori said, sounding amused. “Sundews are amazing. They can seemingly tell the difference between live prey and other things that fall on them, so make it a good act, okay?”
Shin rolled his eyes, but obeyed, wiggling the meat a little bit. How would a bit of prey caught in a trap act, he wondered, and his eyes wandered over to Hiyori again. His smile widened when he noticed, and that was embarrassing, too. Shin glanced away, back down at the plant.
It didn’t take long for the sundew’s long leaf to start curling in, wrapping around the meat, like a long scarf tucking around it. The red reminded him of Hiyori’s scarf, actually. Shin wondered if that was another reason he got this thing.
It was Hiyori’s turn now. He followed suit, going through the same motions Shin had. “Plants are amazing,” he said gently. “They’re capable of so much more than the average person thinks they are. But you know better, don’t you, Shin?”
Sometimes…it felt like Hiyori had expectations of him that he was never going to be able to fulfill. Shin just swallowed the words that had been on the tip of his tongue and said nothing.
Hiyori didn’t seem to mind. “For instance, movement. This sundew and the Venus flytrap are both species of plants that can make very obvious motions, but every plant moves, just so slowly humans can’t tell. And even then, there’s poppies and sunflowers, which move in accordance with the sun. Anyone who grows them could tell you that.
“They’re capable of telling when they’ve been planted next to one of their siblings, and will either hoard or give up resources depending. There’s plants that eat other plants—they’re detritivores specifically, but still, you know? And there’s even a species that seems to have developed a kind of rudimentary eyesight, capable of copying plants around it that it has no access to, or even fake ones.” Hiyori’s admiration was clear in his tone. “There’s so much in what an ordinary person would overlook. Even weeds and plants considered nuisances are so much more than that.
“And of course, take carnivorous plants.” Hiyori was staring at the plant in front of him…like it was the most precious thing in the world. A shining gemstone. A valuable antique. A unique masterpiece. For a moment, Shin’s chest ached with the fact that Hiyori had never looked at him like that, and then he smacked that thought away. He was not jealous of a stupid plant. “They’ve all adapted to grow in locales with very little nutrients, which is why they began to eat insects. They adapted so well, in fact, that they can’t live at all in soil that’s too healthy. Fertilizer or even tap water could kill them. Don’t you think the way they can survive is amazing? How remarkable it is that they can adapt to such hardships and continue surviving, even in conditions as precarious as they are?”
Hiyori was…talking about something other than the plant in front of him. It was a little sobering after Shin’s silly thoughts from earlier. “Are you…talking about yourself?”
“No,” Hiyori said, and looked up at Shin with those big, cyan eyes of his, the ones that felt like they could peer somewhere deeper into Shin than he knew himself. “I’m talking about you.”
Shin’s breath caught in his throat. Hiyori’s eyes were almost…reverent. He didn’t know how his friend had gotten this impression of him, and he glanced away, down at the plant that was curling another leaf around its prey. “I… I’m really not that amazing. Not at all. If anything, I’m just barely surviving.”
“No? I think it’s a pretty apt description.” Shin could hear Hiyori grinning. Sometimes, the expectations his friend had of him felt…crushing. He was never going to be able to live up to them. He couldn’t adapt to hardships and survive the way Hiyori said he could. All he could do was keep scraping by. The only thing he got right was that Shin was in precarious conditions. He was probably right about how Shin would shrivel up and die if things got too tough, too.
Hiyori quietly observed him for a few silent moments, as he often did, waiting for him to respond. The film of meat fat on Shin’s hands felt almost painful. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Shin.”
“I–” Shin started moving before his words could get all the way out of his mouth. Hiyori didn’t try to stop him. “I need to go wash my hands.”
“Be sure you clean everything off, okay?”
Shin practically fled into Hiyori’s bathroom, his heart pounding uncomfortably. When Hiyori looked at him like that, Shin couldn’t recognize the person reflected in his eyes. That was even scarier than the way that Hiyori would sometimes look at him in the same way a cat looked at a mouse. At least that assessment of him was one he could actually agree with.
Water. Soap. Rinse. Soap. Rinse. Soap. Rinse. Soap. Rinse. For some reason, no matter how many times he went through the motions, Shin’s hands didn’t feel clean.
Shin stared at himself in the mirror, the sound of running water oddly loud in his ears. He knew the person in front of him was himself. It was his messy hair that he’d let grow a little too long, his eyes that he preferred keeping a little hidden behind his bangs, his baby face that smiled too easily, too timidly, that Hiyori had always said he was cute for. He knew this person. And he was pretty sure the person in front of him was supposed to be more upset about…some part of this.
Maybe he should’ve been more weirded out by the plant, the fact that Hiyori had acquired a stand-in for him after such a short amount of time, that Hiyori had acquired a stand-in for him at all. Maybe he should be more worried about the fact that he was pretty sure a person’s name was on that bag of unidentified meat that had been all over his hands. Maybe he should feel more helpless in the face of Hiyori’s lofty expectations of him. The Shin of a couple years ago would have been. But he knew Hiyori better now—this was just the kind of person he was. He was always that over the top, it wasn’t anything deeper than that. The name on the bag was just his weird and admittedly freaky sense of humor. And his expectations were…
…They were unbearable. Shin was never going to be the person Hiyori thought he was. He hated that he couldn’t be the person Hiyori wanted him to be, and he hated himself for the fact that he never would be. Hiyori probably didn’t even know what a heavy burden he was putting on Shin’s shoulders. He was a creep, sure, definitely not someone Shin would’ve talked to in high school if he’d had any other options, but…the way Hiyori looked at him sometimes was just…
In the past, Shin had wanted someone to look at him the way Hiyori did. He’d thought that maybe having someone look at him like he was special would make him special, but that just simply wasn’t true. No matter what Hiyori thought of him, Shin was still just…Shin. A coward who only took the nice-person route because it was the easy, painless version. How could someone like Hiyori, so effortlessly smart and confident and strong, look at someone like Shin like that?
It was kind of funny, in a way. Before, Shin had decided he was fine coasting through life being a faceless, anonymous loser. But Hiyori’s expectations and the weight they bore had broken that and made Shin hate himself so much for not being that person that he finally, finally wanted to be something better.
He and that stupid plant weren’t much different at all, were they? They were both dependent on Hiyori to survive.
There was knocking on the bathroom door, and that snapped Shin out of his thoughts. “Shin? You okay in there? You didn’t slip and crack your head open, did you…?”
“Oh, uh, I’m fine!” Idiot that he was, he’d just been standing there letting the water run in front of him this whole time. How long had he even been in here for? He turned it off and sheepishly cracked the door open, and was greeted by Hiyori’s ever-smiling face. “I just kind of started thinking about some stuff and lost track of time. You know how it is.”
“Of course! But there are better places to get distracted, you know… Like somewhere I can take pictures of your face lost in thought…”
Hiyori laughed, and Shin rolled his eyes. “No way. That’s like, the worst outcome.”
“You only think that because you haven’t seen how photogenic you are! I bet I could enter some of the pictures I’ve taken of you in a contest and win first prize…” Hiyori held up his fingers, an imaginary frame around Shin’s face. The mere idea was already making Shin embarrassed, and he covered his face with one arm. “Oh, come on, Shin!”
“No!” Shin turned away, and Hiyori just trailed after him. “You better not do that, by the way, or I’ll never let you take pictures of me ever again.”
“I was just joking, of course… I don’t want to share these pictures if I don’t have to.” There it was again. Something about the wording…the tone of voice…shouldn’t Shin have been more worried about it? If anything, he was worried about the fact that he wasn’t worried. “So, what were you thinking about?”
There was literally no way he was going to tell Hiyori he’d been thinking about him in the bathroom. Like, that just crossed all sorts of lines. “None of your business.”
“And now you’re keeping secrets! I’m simply going to cry,” Hiyori said cheerfully, smile still in its place on his face. “Maybe if I ask Tsukimi, it’ll tell me instead!”
Shin couldn’t help grinning too. Maybe Hiyori could tell that he’d tripped over something that had upset him, and was making stupid jokes to try and cheer him up. Hiyori’s sense of humor sucked, so it wasn’t like the jokes themselves were helping, but…it was still nice to have someone care about him like that. “Buy me dinner, and then we’ll talk.”
“Sure! What do you want?”
“...I was joking, you know.” Hiyori’s pockets were deep, and even though his friend was the type to throw gift after expensive gift at Shin, he always felt bad about relying on him like that. “Let’s just make something here.”
“No, I think we should go out.”
“But–”
“We should go out,” Hiyori repeated, eyes bright, smile wide. “There aren’t enough ingredients here right now, anyways.”
That…didn’t sound right. It didn’t sound right, but Hiyori pushing the issue like that probably meant something, and Shin didn’t really want to push it. Maybe Hiyori was just upset that Shin hadn’t cleared his leftovers out of his fridge yet or something. He never complained about it or anything else, but still… Shin would have to do that later, next time Hiyori was out. “Yeah, alright. But I’m paying this time, okay?”
“If you insist!” Hiyori’s smile wasn’t so wide anymore, his eyes no longer so eerily bright. “I’m still making you decide where we go, though.”
Conversation eased back into simple, normal, stupid stuff. It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t very interesting. Shin really was a bit reliant on Hiyori’s constant upbeat energy, his perpetual happiness, the way nothing ever seemed to upset him—it was easy to exist alongside it, even for someone like Tsukimi Shin.
It was at that exact moment that Shin smacked a hand against his forehead and groaned. “God dammit, I just got it.”
“Got what?”
“Why you got a sundew. Your name, right?” Sundews, Hiyori, sunlight. It was just plain obvious in retrospect. “God, I feel like an idiot for not getting that one right away.”
Hiyori laughed, and just like his name said, it was bright and warm like the sun. “I’m a little old for you to be accusing me of still being a chuunibyou, you know. Can’t I just get a plant because I like it?”
Shin paused. “Still?”
“...Wow, Shin, would you look at the time!” Hiyori grabbed Shin by the shoulders and started pushing him towards the door. “We need to start moving, or else we won’t be able to skip the dinner rush!”
“Hey, come on, Hiyori!” Shin was laughing too, now. “If you’re trying to get my secrets, then I wanna hear about yours, too! C’mon, don’t be shy!”
Hiyori dropped his chin onto Shin’s shoulder, finally defeated for the first time Shin had ever seen. Amazing what a single slip of the tongue could lead to. “...Maybe a few secrets are fine, actually. I changed my mind.”
“Gotcha.” Shin grinned, and Hiyori huffed at him. Sometimes his friend could act so childishly it was hard to tell they were the same age. “Let’s get going already.”
“You still haven’t told me where we’re going, you know…”
“What, you only like pulling surprises on me? Can’t take it the other way around?”
“...You’re being awfully mean today,” Hiyori said, but it wasn’t really voiced like a complaint. More in the same way a scientist would record a particularly interesting research note. His hands were still on Shin’s shoulders, and his fingers were pressing into him. Hiyori was warm against his back. “What were you thinking about earlier?”
“It really wasn’t much.” Shin put his hand on the door handle. The metal was icy cold in comparison. “Just about if I should get a plant of my own.”