Archive of Our Own

The world’s shifted on its axis.

At least, that’s how it seems to Hifumi today. It’s as if everything, from the seconds of his weekday schedule to the placement of the chairs in the apartment, has moved four centimeters to the right. The glare of the sun is so bright, so off, unlike a Tuesday morning type of sun, the two cups of coffee have gone cold faster than usual on the dining table, and the laundry from last night hasn’t dried yet. Even the seasons four centimeters apart are melding into one another—a slow mix of autumn’s last breaths and the steep cold of winter.

Hifumi makes sure to shut the balcony doors tightly this morning, a nick of dissatisfaction clinging to his mind when he still feels a light, cold draft of air slip from underneath. He tilts his head in an incredulous manner, brows furrowed and a finger on his chin as he tries to figure out why something feels so off. Maybe it’s the fact that they haven’t gone fishing with Sensei in two weeks or that the grocery store was out of tofu yesterday. Or maybe, Hifumi ponders to himself, it’s because Doppo’s been staring blankly out the balcony windows for at least five minutes now.

“You’re going to catch a cold like that, Doppo,” Hifumi pouts, placing both hands on his hips. “Why doncha sit a bit farther away? It’s reaaaally cold today.”

Doppo doesn’t respond, too immersed in whatever imaginative world he’s created for himself in his reflection. Usually, it doesn’t bother Hifumi, because, you know, that’s just Doppo behavior: looking at things that don’t exist and getting lost in the complicated maze of overthinking. But it’s a concern when Doppo’s been at it for so long that he’s sure to be late to work.

Surely, the glass isn’t that interesting, is it? Hifumi cranes his neck at the window, hoping to catch sight of what exactly is capturing Doppo’s attention. His eyes gaze out into the empty seven a.m. streets and the few pedestrians before focusing on the remnants of morning’s foggy sigh against the edges and Doppo’s hazy reflection.

“Whatcha lookin’ at, hm?” Hifumi asks, stepping closer to an unresponsive Doppo. He peers over Doppo’s shoulder, chin nearly touching the collar of the salaryman’s shirt, and is almost immediately blinded by a ray of sunlight that strikes through his vision. Hifumi cringes, blinking rapidly at a blotch of black appearing in his vision. “Uwaaagh! Doppooooo, it’s so bright! My poor eyes…”

It’s then that Doppo seems to be fully aware of Hifumi’s presence, rubbing an arm over his own face before he turns to Hifumi.

“Huh? Wha—? Hifumi? Oh, uh, sorry, I—I didn’t hear you next to me. Sorry—”

Hifumi slaps him on the back, eliciting a loud yelp from the poor soul. He knows Doppo’s prone to fading away from reality, but this was to a whole other level! He’s kinda hurt, not gonna lie.

“Nothing to be sorry for!” Hifumi seizes Doppo’s arm and pulls him up from the couch with a laugh. From Doppo’s throat comes a strangled kind of noise, like the sounds you hear right before you plunge down on a roller coaster, and he nearly trips over his own two feet as Hifumi makes him stand. “You’re gonna be late, ya dummy! Staring off into wonderland, I wonder what’s going on in that little head of yours sometimes. You should tell me sometime!”

“Nothing much…” Doppo mumbles, gnawing his bottom lip as his arm comes to tug at his sleeve. He grips it with such intensity that the perfectly ironed texture of the shirt wrinkles like prunes. Hifumi frowns as Doppo rambles on with, “I don’t know—sometimes I just think and it just goes off on a tangent and I’m not sure what I’m thinking about anymore—” his eyes flicker upward toward Hifumi’s arched eyebrow, mouth wobbling, “—sorry, I’m going off at it again, aren’t I? Haha… I’m so incompetent; I can’t do anything right. I’m just wasting your time when you should be preparing to go to work—Why am I like this—?”

Doppo clutches his wrist so hard that Hifumi’s sure he’s going to leave finger-shaped bruises on the skin. But he can’t have that happening to Doppo, can he? So what Hifumi does instead is duck under the oval of Doppo’s linked arms and clasp his hands together at the small of the other’s back, dragging Doppo into his embrace.

“Keep your arms there,” Hifumi tells him when he feels Doppo’s hold go slack and weaken in surprise. “Let me hold you tight for a while, aight?”

Sensei did tell him hugs had the capacity to release oxytocin or something related to happy chemicals in the brain, so maybe if Hifumi did it enough, he could flip that frown on Doppo’s face upside down. Except Doppo, in his sullen demeanor, won’t look him in the eyes, probably still thinking overtime about what he thinks he’s done wrong. He hangs his head slightly, bangs cascading down his forehead in a bunch of unkempt strands.

Hifumi takes the chance and reaches to brush them away, planting a light kiss on Doppo’s exposed forehead, grinning into it all. He relishes in the funny little sound Doppo makes as he raises his head hastily and—ah—finally, he looks Hifumi straight in the eyes.

“You’re gonna be late,” is what Hifumi chooses to say, mentioning nothing about the forehead kiss (because why mention it again when Doppo was going to be just as speechless? Besides, it’s not the first time that he’s done this). “C’mon Doppo! Hustle, hustle! Oh! And don’t forget your necklace!”

Hifumi loops the necklace adorned with a droplet of ruby—a present he’d given his friend days prior to uplift his mood—around Doppo’s neck and swings Doppo toward the door, already missing the weight of his friend’s wrists around his waist. Light spills through the crack in the opened entrance, languidly throwing itself over the tops of his feet as Hifumi tosses Doppo’s briefcase at him.

“Have a good day at work!” Hifumi calls after him, waving in a wild gesture filled with exuberance he hopes can transfer over to Doppo’s worn-out body. “Love you!”

Doppo freezes at the door, hand on the knob as his lips part in what Hifumi thinks is a reply. He closes his mouth, though, as if he never wanted to say anything at all, and leaves with a slight nod.

A pang strikes Hifumi in the chest, but, alas, giving only modest indications of recognition is typical Doppo behavior. As long as he knew of Hifumi’s affection for him, Hifumi was content with not receiving anything in return.

He was soon to eat those words, however, because had it not been for the shifted beam of sun that fell upon Doppo’s seemingly blank visage during the moment they both stood glancing out the balcony doors, maybe Hifumi could have seen the tears collecting at the corners of Doppo’s eyes.

And then, perhaps, maybe he could have acknowledged the presage of a delayed denouement.

“What is disturbing you so, Hifumi-kun?” Jakurai asks, snapping Hifumi out of his short daze. They’re out grocery shopping today because what better for Hifumi to spend his time than looking for new ingredients used in tonight’s dinner? He’d hit up Sensei to see if he was free (a hit or miss, really, due to it being a weekday), and most surprisingly, the doctor was off work for a couple of hours.

Hifumi blinks, nearly dropping the grocery bag in his hands. “Whaddya mean, Sensei?”

“You seem to be a bit preoccupied. Is there something weighing on your mind?” Jakurai tilts his head to the side. Hifumi can’t help the apologetic chortle that escapes his mouth. He stops abruptly in the aisle, tugging the hood of his jacket closer over his head.

This is a thought he’s been turning over and over in his head, having told not a single soul yet. It might be impulsive, a Hifumin-style type of hasty move, but considering the amount of time that has passed, Hifumi’s become more than certain that what he wants can be real.

“Well, there’s just a little itty bit of somethin’ on my mind… Sensei,” he starts, slowly, in the way he would when cautiously flipping an egg over in a pan, “what if I proposed to Doppo?”

Hifumi looks bashfully at Jakurai, raising an arm to his neck to rub at it sheepishly. It’s a funny idea he meant to share with Sensei for quite a while; the slight millimeter of doubt held him back, though. But now the cat’s out of the bag, he supposes.

“I have the ring already,” he blabbers, rummaging through his knapsack for a velvet-covered box he opens to show the doctor. Inside lies an engagement ring whose diamond sits at the center of a rose, its gold leaves acting as the band. Hifumi knows how much Doppo dislikes elaborate, fancy things, especially jewelry, but he couldn’t help it. The ring called out to him, and the thought of Doppo wearing it turned his ears red with infatuation. “But y’know, what if Doppo doesn’t like it? He usually likes the stuff I buy him, like that rubber duckie for the bathtub and those glow-in-the-dark stars for his room, because, have you seen how gloomy his room is? Anyway, I just—” Hifumi stops, tongue curling in his mouth. He swallows dryly, closing the lid of the box. “What if he says no?”

Hifumi had lain in bed awake for more nights than possible, watching the moonlight bleed through his curtains and draw striped patterns on his bedroom floor, reminding him endlessly, second by second, of Doppo. He’d thumbed the ring in his fingers before he went to sleep, mind brainstorming the different ways his best friend could react. Because this is Doppo they were talking about—the sad, gloomy, catastrophic-minded Doppo who somehow found a way to turn all the positives into negatives.

It wouldn’t be a shocker if he denied Hifumi’s request to be engaged. Hifumi could already picture the other’s face in his head—a pure, devastated expression that finds residence on Doppo’s features as he pushes Hifumi away like he always does with the word “no” falling off the tip of his tongue. He’d go on to think that he wasn’t enough, or that Hifumi was only proposing to him out of pity, ‘cause let’s face it—they’re already twenty-nine and counting. Unmarried. Single. Doppo wouldn’t think out of love but instead of external factors such as that.

They’d never shared a kiss before, let alone established a solid foundation of what exactly their relationship was due to the unspoken boundaries Doppo had that Hifumi didn’t quite want to intrude upon. Nevertheless, there is still an influx of hope latent in Hifumi’s chest, tucked in the scores of the beating of his heart. A hope that all the times Hifumi pressed his lips to Doppo’s forehead, massaged his shoulders after a long day of work, and brewed him coffee and jasmine tea to soothe his nerves, would convert themselves in Doppo’s brain as one simple message: Hifumi loves him.

Had loved him ever since they were kids in the elementary school park, ever since Doppo saved him from the despair that sought to pull him under the waves, ever since they rented an apartment together, ever since they started living together, ever since… well, ever since forever.

The amount of love Hifumi holds for Doppo is ineffable. All he can say is that it’s akin to the rush of fresh air in the first days of spring, the scent of freshly washed laundry hanging off the clothesline, the warmth of home, and the sight of sunset over the stretch of ocean. The affection he has is so genuine, so pure, it can’t be compared to any tangible element on this earth.

Hifumi loves Doppo.

It’s not rocket science or music theory; it’s just three words to go by. Surely, that can’t be too hard for Doppo to comprehend, right? Hifumi can only hope so.

“We must always prepare for the unexpected,” Jakurai says after a moment’s silence. He folds his arms across his chest sagely, looking at Hifumi’s worried expression with a kind smile. “But if that is what your heart tells you to do, though, then do it. With the friendship, and possibly beyond that, that you and Doppo-kun have, it is in my deepest confidence that Doppo-kun will not reject you.”

Hifumi huffs out a peal of laughter. “You always know what to say, Sensei. I was thinking I’d do it soon, before, y’know, the chance slips away.” He inhales sharply, tucking the box into his bag again.

“Whatever happens, I hope that you and Doppo-kun continue to foster a promising relationship.” Jakurai places a reassuring hand on Hifumi’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Hifumi breathes out, the ring a gentle heaviness at the side of his leg. “Me too.”

As the afternoon fades into dusk, Hifumi finds himself staring at the ring more.

Once after he came home from grocery shopping with Sensei, another time after he mopped the floors to distract himself, and then one more time as the clock struck ten at night. It occupies his mind even as he’s cooking, almost accidentally slicing a finger off with how his mind wanders into fantasy.

Maybe he should propose today, he thinks. But would that be too impulsive? What if he needed more time before he proposed? He was entirely committed to the action, though. Should he follow through with it? Is he really ready, mentally ready, for Doppo to reject him? What if Doppo didn’t reject him? He hadn’t thought that through yet; what would he do after Doppo accepted?

Hifumi lets out a deep sigh at the dining table. Eventually, he tucks the ring into the inner pocket of his host vest, keeping it next to his heart. And he decides: tonight, maybe.

Maybe tonight he will propose to Doppo, depending on how he walks through the apartment door. Maybe Hifumi will find the courage within him—the fear he possesses, beaten by the tenderness of his yearning—to get on one knee like those movies they watched together, and say those four words he’s been practicing on a loop in his head since last month.

He sits in silence with the ticking of the clock as the only sound breaking through the tepid quietness, head in his hands and chest throbbing in excitement. Clasping his hands together, Hifumi stands up with a screech of his chair legs and opts to pace around the room while he waits.

It’s not unusual for Doppo to be this late, given how his boss always manages to force more work upon him, like how the mountains are supposed to hold the burden of the sky. But it’s a Friday night, and it’s nearing eleven p.m. Hifumi wonders how Doppo’s doing at this time of the day. More work? Was he possibly thinking about Hifumi the same way Hifumi thought about him? He blows a little raspberry at the thought, bringing his hands up to his face to slap his cheeks at the embarrassing idea.

Ah, but what if Doppo was overworking himself again? Hifumi should pay him a visit, so Doppo doesn’t blow his fuse at the office again like he did last time. And then perhaps he could convince him to leave so that Hifumi could carry out his mission.

Yeppers, that’s a solid plan! He’s so smart sometimes it amazes him.

Tossing on his shoes, Hifumi hums as he makes his way out the door, tasting the chilly winter air on the roof of his mouth. Shinjuku’s awake by now, its high-rising buildings glimmering a myriad of colorful lights against the swirls of dark gray and black background. Pedestrians scatter themselves between these lights, walking alongside the roads and across crosswalks as the steady stream of late-night cars pass them by in a low rumble of their engines. The train station is even more crowded, overtime workers filling the cars to the brim so much that Hifumi has to squeeze in between a couple. It doesn’t matter, though, since his stop is only a couple of minutes away.

Hifumi puts a little skip to his step once he departs the train, making his way to the foot of Doppo’s office building. However, immediately as he nears the place, his eyes make out the silhouette of a crowd and the vivid red and blue of police cars clustered near the doors. Between the huddled figures, he sees the shape of a body lying motionless on the ground.

Oh, no.

A million thoughts shoot through his head all at once, forcing his throat to seize up and his hands to sweat. Hifumi pushes through the crowd to the front, where the perimeter has been marked off with police tape. His irises constrict, the ground morphs into a vortex before him, he suddenly isn’t able to breathe.

On the concrete lies a corpse covered with a white sheet, wherein red has begun to bleed into one of its sides. Although Hifumi can’t perceive much under the veil, he sees the tuft of dull red hair and the shining droplet of ruby he’d given Doppo, blending in seamlessly with the drying puddle of burgundy.

Hifumi doesn’t know what happens next.

He might have fallen to his knees or stumbled backward into the group of murmuring people, he doesn’t know. All he remembers is how the street lamps had turned into swirling whirlpools slicing into his eyes, how his organs were wrenched from his body, how he’d lost every sense in his limbs. There was only ice to be felt, a severe permafrost that devoured his soul.

Hifumi only notices reality crashing into his being when two hands stained with the colors of sirens take him by the shoulders at the back of an ambulance. Without looking through the onslaught of tears that wrecked his body, his distorted mind recalls their name.

“S-Sensei,” Hifumi gasps out with the voice of a collapsing star, “it isn’t— he— Sensei—” He seizes Jakurai by the collar of the doctor’s lab coat, hands a deathly pale white, “Doppo—”

The sagging of Jakurai’s shoulders and his downcast gaze are enough to affirm Hifumi’s words. Hifumi shakes his head, slowly, then rapidly in denial. In a fit, he releases Jakurai, shoving him backward harshly as he scrambles to the dead body carried away by a stretcher.

He stumbles, he yells, he screams, he lunges, his arms thrash wildly in the air when hands grip him from behind, tearing at his jacket and shirt, shouting at him to calm down, pulling him away from Doppo— Doppo, Doppo, Doppo, Doppo—

A blunt force slams into Hifumi’s back, pinning his entirety to the wet pavement, knocking his head onto the asphalt with a blow that stills him, and then—

His world goes black.

The door shuts with a click.

When Hifumi enters the apartment, the only thing that greets his sight is his faded outline’s reflection in the glass of the balcony doors, tainted by shivering droplets of rain and illuminated with a glow akin to a dying candle. There seems to be an empty space in the room that something should have filled—a hollow gaping cavity whose maw has been unhinged. A sharp ringing etches itself into Hifumi’s ears in a crescendo.

His mirror image raises a limp arm to kill the lights.

The remnants of its shadow collapse to the floor, deluged by an overbearing darkness.

This is what Doppo sees in the time he takes to gaze into the mirror hung from two bolted nails in the company’s bathroom wall:

1. A half-dead corpse on its feet;
2. Sunken eyes carved by pools of restlessness;
3. Parched lips cracking like the faults in the earth;
4. Skin that blends into the hue of fluorescent lights until it wipes all features of his face, and he loses all identity of who he is.

Which is a question he’s been mulling over for the past few days: What even is he? A human or a cog in the machine of society? Compelled to fit in with the others around him, turning and turning even when he turns rusty. It’s like the clunk, clunk, clunk of his feet against the stairs up to the office when the elevator breaks, his gears crunching against the pressure of stress and grating away with time. Like so, Doppo wonders bluntly, is he a machine?

Forced to repeat the same actions again and again in a cycle—Hello, yes, this is Doppo Kannonzaka representing E. L. Medical wondering if you would wish to try out our medical products—abstaining from completely collapsing into a heap of eroded hardware at the foot of his desk—Hello, yes, this is Doppo Kannonzaka representing E. L. Medical imploring you not to hang up on me—fighting the urge to throw himself ten flights down the stairs, so he doesn’t have to suffer anymore—Hello, yes, this is Doppo Kannonzaka, tired and ready to quit E. L. Medical.

But, of course, even if he quits, the status quo would remain the same. The conditions presented to him on a daily basis would be equivalent to the ones he faces now—an inexplicable, unadulterated tiredness brewing from the twenty-nine years of degraded bone and misfortunes pitched at the velocity of light into his chest until they fill him up with such muck he implodes like a black hole.

So why not continue to stay at this godforsaken job in this damned chair where he’ll rot away eventually? Nothing he could do could change his trajectory. It would be like those excel sheet charts he makes—an exponential curve downward into the nadir.

A bottomless pit, starting with how Doppo walks out of the bathroom into a dark office, lit only by Shinjuku’s blinking neon lights.

He lets out a guttural sigh. The company must have forgotten that he went to use the bathroom before they clocked out for the night. What an incompetent loser he was, thinking that even one of them would retain his presence in their feeble minds dependent on the thought of work.

It is no matter, he supposes. It’s better like this. He alone, as it always will be, in the expanse of a prodigious dullness that the city’s luminescence attempts to eat away near the uncurtained windows. It was probably merely his own distorted consciousness, but Doppo thinks that Shinjuku is brighter than ever tonight.

The glow touches his fingertips before he makes it to the window, cradling the edges of his face and gleaming crown gold and lurid reds into his irises. It seeps through the crevices between the farther clustered skyscrapers like dazzling ribbons that draw hexagons on his eyelashes. Even if they cannot be compared to the brilliance of the sun, Doppo feels a comforting warmth overcome his body. Its arms wrap around his exhausted shoulders in an impossible loving embrace, so genuine for something so artificial.

Flecks of rain have begun to smear themselves against the window, slathering their beings over Doppo’s reflection. He presses his hand to the glass, trying to wipe them away with a thumb before they can trail out of his reflection’s eyes. The endeavor is futile, though, and soon enough, the whole window is painted in an onslaught of drizzling rain.

His outline against the glass blurs into a warped silhouette, vanishing completely as the surface begins to fog up. White creeps up to obscure the sight of the city, and Doppo can’t help but frown. Life always has a way of dampening his mood, doesn’t it? Now he’s going to have to go to the roof to continue wasting his time watching something unattainable.

Fortunately for Doppo, the stairway to the roof isn’t barred this time of day, the lock and chain loosened around the cold metal bars of its gate. They’re heavy in his hands as he lifts them to gain access to the outside. He’s immediately hit with the frigid gales of Tuesday night once he opens the backdoor, water droplets running through his hair and over his cheekbones.

Oddly enough, it’s more satisfying than he thought it would be to voluntarily drench himself in a storm. A fulfilling sensation, if you will. Doppo’s heart beats erratically in his chest, fluttering with anxiety or excitement, he can’t quite discern.

Because… he didn’t actually come up here just for the view, did he? No sane person would willingly expose themselves to this harsh weather just to look at the insomnia-driven city.

No, no; something more inveterate—a gut-carving commotion that rattles his ribs—squirms uncomfortably in his chest. It demands to be let out in whistling screams tangent to the winds, only satiated by each step Doppo takes to the fenced edge of the roof.

Controlled by an impulse that drives his very limbs out of their fatigued state, Doppo heaves himself toward the top of the bars, swinging his body with every last effort over the barrier. Water lubricates his hand against the metal, coercing his palms to slide over the material perilously. What a show it is, Doppo laughs to himself, if someone were to see this deranged psychopath settle himself on a border three-hundred-and-fifty meters above the earth’s surface.

There’s barely enough space for him to sit. Doppo’s knees dangle off the margins, his eyes gazing down at the foot of the building. In the black expanse that stretches underneath his shoes, Shinjuku’s roads seem to cave inward in an unending deep hole.

If he were to fall now, would the city consume him whole? Would he sink into the core of this planet, flesh becoming part of its interior? These were questions he would like to have answers to, but in order to do so, Doppo would need to make the leap.

Walk off into nothingness, writing the last sentence of his story. His ending is only a drop’s fall away, splattering on the concrete below like rain. After all he’s been through—all those moments at work saying “yes,” to things that were supposed to be a “no,” chasing after over-occupied trains, walking over their tracks in hope of anything in the evenings, waking up to yet another dreary morning—Doppo believes wholeheartedly that he deserves a prolonged break.

An escape from it all. A permanent one. His eyes make their way to the minuscule cars moving languidly across the streets and the sparks that paint color into the night sky.

It’s a one-second decision, Doppo tells himself, biting his bottom lip. A flit of a thought, and he’ll be free from this relentless drowning.

He digs his fingernails into the concrete. Takes in a deep breath. Drinks in the scent of petrol and overtime lingering in the air. Allows his mind to wander in limits. And this is what it comes up with, even with Doppo’s strenuous efforts of wanting to forget before his finale:

The radiance Shinjuku emits reminds him of Hifumi.

It’s such a digressive thought, one that shouldn’t be there in the first place, but as Doppo comes to realize in that one second, it always has been Hifumi. Maybe that’s why the light earlier had felt so warm. It reminds Doppo of his hugs, the fleeting looks of adoration he sends toward Doppo’s way, the smell of basil in his cooking, the sunlit laundry in his hands on Sunday afternoons. It reminds him of the forehead kisses, every time Hifumi would tuck him into bed at night, each drawn-out touch of his hands on his shoulders, wrists, waist.

Doppo wants to be closer to the city. Closer to Hifumi. Closer to all the tiny things that imbue him with life and motivates him to keep going. Unconsciously, Doppo takes the red drop of Hifumi’s necklace in his hand, trailing his fingers over its smooth coldness. It’s just within reach, he knows. Just beyond this fence where he’s at, on a corner of the world.

A small part of him, initiated by that spur of the idea, hesitates. Stops straight in its tracks, obstructing the movement of the other gears in Doppo’s mind. As they grind to a halt with a screech, he remembers:

Because maybe, just a little, he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to end himself. That isn’t the same feeling he had when he stepped onto the roof moments ago. It didn’t stem from his desire to cut himself out of reality.

It’s the fright that stops him then. The cowardice of a man whose soul has been drained, lest it is his fear of death. Doppo is a coward; he can’t possibly follow through with this thought. The overwhelming feeling of seeing nothing, feeling nothing, loving nothing after his flame has been extinguished—it horrifies him.

He’s seen the candles at home burn out before, each time leaving a trail of smoke. And even that smoke, the remains of the fire’s existence, dissolves into the air in a matter of seconds. Will it be like that for Doppo, too? Once he dies, would every evidence that he lived be forgotten?

He doesn’t desire that. Not anything close to the lines of becoming any less than a faded memory.

What Doppo wants instead is something far more terrifying. What he wants is the ability to change, to discover another set of possibilities lying outside his door in his blindspot, to dare shift out of his comfort zone and out of this wretched, stagnant shell of his body.

To think of it now in his mindset is more than petrifying. His legs begin to swirl in his vision, knuckles bleaching themselves white as Doppo clings to the border. He squeezes his eyes shut, feeling ill from the cold and his mind, swallowing thick enough to stop his voice from screaming.

With bleary eyes and a hazy conscience, Doppo digs through his pockets for his phone, flipping it open to the bright screen.

He doesn’t want to be here anymore. He needs to call someone before he does something reckless, as he always does when it comes to his impulsive desires, and then—

No.

Doppo abruptly snaps his phone shut, gripping it with the intensity of a thousand suns in his hand.

He can’t continue depending on Hifumi or Sensei. They are there for him, but they can’t be there for him all the time. He needs to learn, really understand how to carry the weight on his own two shoulders, without relying on the other two every time a trivial problem scurries by.

He’s Doppo Kannonzaka, a salaryman who’s taken all this bullshit for more than twenty years. If he can survive that baldy boss day after day, he can survive climbing back over this fence and going home to Hifumi. It’s not a big feat, Doppo tells himself as he eases himself back onto two wobbly legs.

Amidst the pouring rain, the world shifts four centimeters to the right, a ready alteration in the constellations in the sky and of the ones in his being. Doppo takes one last look at the swaying floor beneath his feet and turns his head away from it.

There will be no more of this lame working-himself-to-death Doppo. He will try again, as many times as it takes, restart his life and construct it as he wants in his own palms.

Yes, that’s right.

Tomorrow, Doppo Kannonzaka will quit his job without a two-week notice. Tomorrow, he’ll wake up early on the weekend and go to the grocery store to buy the first batch of onigiri for the day. Tomorrow, he’ll tell Hifumi that he loves him, has loved him since they were children in the park, over and over again to make up for all those times he left the apartment without doing so, and kiss him full on the lips, tasting nectar on both of their tongues. He will be bold, dare confess, even if Hifumi accepts or rejects him. That will be fine. Either will be fine. It will all be fine because Doppo is going to climb back over this fence, and tomorrow, he will do all the things he’s always wanted to do.

It’s already so late, and he knows Hifumi and Jakurai are calling him home. To home’s calling, he will go, putting himself to sleep, and once daybreak cracks over the horizon in several hours, he will start anew.

Doppo will restart, and this time, things will be right.