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It takes you exactly four tries before you get it right.
Not that you’ve only tried to tell him four times of course—there have been many moments where you could have, more little missed opportunities than there are days in the year. Lying shoulder to shoulder in that too-small tent at the school camping trip. Studying together late at night over the phone. Cutting down shadows back-to-back in the worlds inside the TV, each more absurd than the next—castle, onsen, strip club, laboratory—wondering all the while what the hell you’re doing there, how you’ll know which time is the last time.
To say nothing of innumerable hours sitting across from him in the food court at Junes, shoulders bumping gently in the hallway, the rare Sunday afternoon. As if you needed any more reason to feel like a crushing disappointment. You could have said something then. But it was really only those four times, you think, that mattered.
It’s always felt like the same conversation, anyway. He can look at you, and the sight of his eyes trained on your face with such kind attention will make you chatter on for hours about almost nothing—and he’ll give you the smallest smile, to show you he’s listening, and say nothing at all.
The first time is in your room, surprisingly early on in your friendship—not long after Saki, not long before the adventure goes into full swing. You hear your phone ring in the middle of the night and against your better judgment reach through the small pool of tear- and snot-soaked tissue balls forming on your bed toward it, hit the answer button, are surprised to find him on the other end of the line.
“Hey.” He doesn’t talk much at this point—still doesn’t, actually—but somehow every word manages to warm you right through. “I was just wondering if you were doing okay.”
“Uh, yeah.” You try to hide a sniffle by turning it instead into a cough. “It really isn’t bad. I’m just kind of under the weather, that’s all. Rain, and stuff.”
“Oh.” He sounds unconvinced, but gracious. Easy. Everything is easy for him, it seems. “You should get some rest, then. And drink some paracetamol, okay?”
You almost want to laugh. Paracetamol. For the raw, jagged hole in your heart, yes. “I will.”
“I’ll call again,” he says, and you almost answer, “Please do.”
Even at this point, you know—there’s something special about this new boy. The city boy. Even after less than a week of hearing his voice every day there’s something about it that makes you want to hide in it, to reach through the mess of telephone wires and grab on to it like a lifeline.
The second time is in that club on Port Island, during the school trip. The King’s Game seems to give you a perfect cover-up, the state of faux-inebriation everyone’s in. Everything around you is fluorescent, pulsing, thumping with a heavy bass line, and you have to shout to hear each other, but as far as the others are concerned, that’s part of the fun.
You have a headache and want to go home, because you think they’re being ridiculous. Most especially him, leaning back against the squishy red leatherette, shirt half-unbuttoned, smirking down his kingly nose at you.
“Number four,” he says, staring straight at you as if he already knows the number on the chopstick you hold. He knows everything, the bastard. “Tell the King a secret.”
A cold trickle runs down the back of your neck. You’ve never thought yourself particularly courageous, so you lean in close to him, close enough to see that his bangs are just a little bit long, maybe the two of you can go get your hair trimmed together or something, and oh god that little razor-sharp sliver of collarbone peeking out from under his loose collar—
“I’m—” You cup your hands around the shell of his ear. You feel your friends’ eyes burning into you like lasers—probably less because they want to know what you’re actually saying, probably more because you’ve brought your mouth so close to his face. As luck would have it, the music dies around you—a lull between songs, no longer than a few seconds. For you it feels like forever, like a hole in the earth is opening up beneath you, and if you don’t say something to him right this second you’ll fall into it and die, splat against the ground.
“I’m wearing purple underwear,” you mutter, just loud enough for him to catch. You immediately scoot away from him, all the way to the other side of the couch, face burning, but it’s worth the crippling embarrassment to see him burst out laughing.
The third time is at the riverbed—you and he lying side by side in the dirt, arms spread wide so that the tips of your fingers nearly touch, drinking up the sky with your eyes. Your hands open and close restlessly; there’s an ache in your knuckles that won’t go away, from contact, from his skin and bones, and you’re still kind of seeing stars. They whirl in front of your eyes, little pinpricks of light that bloomed into being when his fist smashed into your jaw, and goddamn it if that’s the only salient memory you’ll ever have of him touching you.
You want to explain, to tell him what you really meant when you said he was special, but when you turn your head and look at him you can’t help but fixate on the little trickle of blood drying at the corner of his lips. The thought lances through your mind before you can stop it, fast and bright as those pain-stars—how would it feel, do you think, if you put your mouth there?
You don’t think you’ve wanted to put your mouth on anyone’s anything before, not even Saki. So you fish a gauze bandage out of your pocket and toss it at him, try to laugh as you normally would when it hits him square on the nose.
“You can have this,” you say, to give your lips something to do, something else to concentrate on. “If you start bleeding, put it on.”
The fourth time is the night before he leaves for the city. You’ve volunteered—perhaps foolishly, but what are buddies for—to stay on and help him clean up what remains of his going-away party, take out the trash, wash dishes. You’re standing at the sink now in his kitchen, drying the plates he passes to you one at a time, looking for some peace in the circular sliding motions and the water singing quietly as it gushes out of the faucet, because it’s all noise in your head now.
“Looking forward to going home?” you ask, and it makes you feel like a faker because you may both be city boys but of course home is here, in this backwater little town, with everyone. “Say hi to all the, uh, all the tall buildings for me.”
It’s only been a year, but every year that came before seems to have receded into the distance, lost its color, stepped back to make way for him walking tall and strong and sure and smiling into all of your lives. Into your life.
“I’m going to miss you.” It’s not an answer to your question. You can’t even tell if he meansyou singular or you plural, and that alone is so frustrating it makes you want to drop the rag, shake him, yell What the hell, man right in his face. But he might drop the plates.
“So don’t leave.” It’s meant to be a joke, but you know it doesn’t sound like one. He’s gone still, holding the plate, even if the water’s still on, and you know he knows it too. “Stay here.”
He doesn’t answer—it’s been a year, but he still doesn’t talk much. Instead, he puts the plate down, so gently it doesn’t make a sound. When his fingers close tight around your upper arm and pull you toward him, all you hear is the water.
You wonder if he’s ever put his mouth on anyone else’s before. One of the girls, maybe. They were all making googly eyes at him—even Naoto, for all her grade-A poker face. You wonder if any of them know what you know—that kissing is warm and wet and kind of gross but also kind of nice, honestly. That if your teeth hit against each other you can feel it rattling like a little earthquake through your whole head.
When he draws away from you it’s slow, so slow it’s like the air has thickened, pressing down on you like fog, impossible to move through. In your ears, the water. Before your eyes, stars.
“We can Skype or something,” he says, smiling, and goes back to washing the plates.