Chapter Text
"His name is Tooru."
"Oh? Hello, Tooru-kun, it's certainly nice to meet you."
"And your son?"
"Hajime. Iwaizumi Hajime."
When the two of them are children, the sprawling sort still in their strollers at an amusement park, Oikawa Tooru is the first to climb out from his seat and run off towards the commotion going on by the amphitheater. His mother catches him by the waist, hoists him up with indomitable strength, and presses him against her shoulder, coos whispered softly to stop him from crying. The one and half year old does just so anyway, because children his age should be no where near the howl and horror of an amusement park in summer, and he's wriggling and excited and all sorts of born to run.
"Your son is certainly the adventurous type," another mother tells her, while tending to her own son in his carriage. Iwaizumi Hajime has a habit of dozing off when the blankets are too comfortable, and today is no exception. From his mother's perch, Tooru watches him closely, coy by the shield of his mother's wide-brimmed sun hat.
Tooru's mother laughs and pats her son on the back, his fussiness over before it ever really started. "Oh, sometimes Tooru's just so hard to handle, but I can't fault him for wanting to have his fun here, too." Tooru babbles on her shoulder, almost on the precipice of real words, and reaches for the other child in his bed. Iwaizumi stirs in his sleep but doesn't wake.
"Ah, Hajime darling, do you want to say hi to Tooru-kun?" Iwaizumi's mother asks, wiggling one of her son's toes. He grunts, swatting her hand away, and the two mothers know not to bother him. Tooru reaches for him anyway, whines with tiny hands outstretched, but his mother tries to soothe him away.
"I think they like each other," Tooru's mother giggles. "I've never seen Tooru so grabby over another baby."
Iwaizumi's mother sighs. "I'm sorry my son can't return the sentiment. He's usually so happy to see the summertime. Come on, you sleepyhead!" she jokes. Tooru tries to repeat her words, fists clenched and words not quite formed. The mothers laugh once more, just as Tooru's father and sister come calling from down the lane.
"Ah, looks like they're done at the gift shop," Tooru's mother says, putting her son back in his stroller. "Maybe it wasn't the best idea to bring a baby to an amusement park, after all. Otou-san and his sister are hogging up all the fun, aren't they?" she asks, half-meant for her son.
"I get that for sure," Iwaizumi's mother laughs along with her one last time. "But maybe it was meant to be, you know?" she darts a glance between the two children, like she'd like to build bridges between them.
"Ah yes, the destined meeting between the sleepy prince Hajime-kun and the fussy demon Tooru-kun," Tooru's mother tells her in teasing, ever dramatic.
"May the fates be kind to them." Iwaizumi's mother smiles like she might believe in such things. Much more discerning, Tooru's mother takes in such wishful thinking and presses it, carefully, to her heart.
"Kind as kind can get," she repeats in a whisper.
"Well, you better get going," Iwaizumi's mother says, waving her along. "We're always here in the park, so no need for sad goodbyes."
"All right, then," says Tooru's mother. "Say bye to Iwaizumi-kun, Tooru," she chants into his carriage, back at her son.
With hand held out once more, Tooru reaches for the other boy in his rolling bed, cries of ah! ah! lost under the commotion of the park. He falls back on his pillow when the other baby doesn't respond, mothers parting their ways—one towards the north end, the other south—and starts screaming louder than he ever had in his life.
In the other carriage, a sleeping baby wakes, hands reaching out, too late, in hello, it's nice to meet you.
Lux: the official SI unit of illuminance and luminous emittance.
400 Lux: sunset or sunrise on a clear day.
The first time Tooru sneaks into Sunrise Garden, he is seven, desperate, and looking to steal a stuffed dog.
By the time on his watch, always about five minutes off on the second hand, it is around 9:00pm, seven hours since burying his actual dog, Mikan, the family pet and Tooru's only friend since moving to the city of Sendai. Persistent, he keeps pace down the winding alley of carnival games, glancing into the hollow stands where the prizes should be hung, and only makes out darkness, shivering in the lateness of summer season's past. Even against the breeze, Tooru refuses to let go of the unused ticket stub in his hands and forges on anyway. I'm going to have my day here, he tells himself, because it's been a long one and he's still got nothing to show for it.
Tooru had marked his course. If it weren't for Mikan getting hit by a car on the corner, he would've come today to enjoy the rides and eat taiyaki and electric blue cotton candy. He would've touched the sky by the loop of the Ferris wheel or the momentary peak of a roller coaster. He would've gawked at the mascots and clapped at the themed shows. He would've won stuffed animals, lots and lots of them, for Mikan to chew on back at home. He would've...he would've—no. Tooru tells himself to hold his tongue and sweep away the turbulent thoughts, the should-have-beens, but it is a truth universally known that they always come howling back anyway.
"Icelandic sheepdogs live an average of twelve years," Tooru repeats to himself with eyes closed, sniffling back while trying not to trip up on the cobblestone. "And Mikan-chan lived fifteen!" Deep breath, breathe easy. “Fifteen!”
At the constant reassurance, he tells himself to count such blessings, even if they only come as consolation prizes.
(While another half of him—selfish and he knows it—wishes for more to come, too. Blessings, that is, and less of the pitied variety.)
Tooru casts his tears away, wiping them off a sweater sleeve. 9:05PM flashes across his wrist, and he thinks that he should’ve been in bed by now, telling Mikan about the fireworks he saw an hour before closing time, an annual tradition for the last day of the season here at Sunrise Garden.
He takes another deep breath, the millionth since sneaking in through the haunted funhouse by the fences (where he had expertly noticed that the faux-in-shambles fence motif was in fact, just an actual rotting fence motif in dire, dire need of repairs). Given his size, sneaking under the cobwebs was almost too easy, and dodging guards had been like playing a super extensive game of hide-and-seek (which was something Tooru never, ever lost).
“You’re going to do this, Tooru,” Tooru tells himself once more, shaking his head free of clutter, “for Mikan-chan!” With a stiff lip and not another word, he wills himself into believing that trespassing has been one of his better ideas.
Tooru stops in his tracks when he sees one of the stands light up at the end of the lane. Barring the urban legends, the ghosts that might run the park at night, he runs at it homebound, flip-flops clicking behind him and flashlight switched off, and gleams up at the stuffed animals dangling by the awning. None of the them look like his dog, not even in the slightest bit, but Tooru thinks he’ll take what he can at this point, given the trouble it took to run away from home in the first place.
He feels himself hold his breath when the jokey music streams from the booth. Hello, ghosts, Tooru can’t help but snicker to himself, in reply to the bored kids and their classroom tall tales. I’m here to reclaim this day. Chest puffed out, he gives himself one last push and comes upon a shooting gallery. Two fake rifle guns, attached to mounts and ready to shoot, perk towards the targets on the wall, while a few stuffed bears have started a tea party on the highest shelves. That’ll do, Tooru thinks. Taking a hold of one of them to steady himself, Tooru throws his backpack off and leaves it on the ground next to him, perching knees-first on one of the seats before climbing up on the counter. Reaching forward, he groans out a come on when he can’t quite reach, tips grazing the edge of fur. Come on, he wills himself once more. Come on. For Mikan-chan. Teeth gritting, he refuses to let this day end as a complete and utter loss.
“Hey, what the hell are you—”
With a gasp and a squeak, Tooru falls off the edge of the counter and right into the other side of the stand. He stays there for a moment, more embarrassed than hurt, and shuts his eyes closed when tears begin to well in his eyes again. He follows up by burying his face in bent arms, opting to lie amongst the boxed animals and packets of soft pellet ammunition. When he feels the stranger climb up on the counter, feet knocking against the wall, Tooru just peeks up with watery eyes and meets another boy about his age.
He's frowning, and he’s got his sweater sleeves rolled up like all the other tough kids he's seen in movies. Tooru thinks he looks as bristly as his short dark hair, and he knows he’s right when the stranger opens his mouth to probably yell at him, because he’s heard the urban legends, that ghost children are especially naggy, but Oikawa Tooru is no goddamned mood to get chased out today, whether this kid’s a ghost or not—
“Let me have this,” Tooru interrupts the other boy, rubbing at his owned banged-up nose, one that might or might not be broken at this point. “Please, I swear you can haunt me later.”
“What?”
“I missed closing day at Sunrise Garden,” Tooru explains, still a ruddy mess, but he doesn’t care, because his auntie’s always told him he was a pretty crier. “It was supposed to be my first visit here, but I didn’t get the chance to come,” he continues to choke out, pulling out his ticket. “See? Unused and everything.”
“That is not my problem," comes the answer.
“Please hear me out, ghost-chan!” Tooru continues on. Upon hearing the unwarranted nickname, boy’s frown deepens into a new spectacle—a grimace, thoroughly disgusted, maybe—and Tooru quickly learns that children can also scowl like middle-aged fathers.
“Okay. What is it, then?” the boy crosses his arms, raising an eyebrow.
Tooru swallows. "My dog...um, he died today."
At the admission, the stranger visibly lightens, shoulders buoyant, face forgetting to furrow. He keeps on the edge of his impromptu seat, still cautious, but Tooru watches the way he leans closer, and the gesture, no matter how miniscule, is enough to let him continue on.
By the corner of his vision, blurred with tears, Tooru recognizes just the smallest admission of warmth.
“It happened this morning, right when I was tying my shoes for the park. My sister was going to take me, but then Mikan-chan got hit by a car and I didn’t have the chance.” Tooru feels the tears well up in his eyes again, but he is resilient enough to battle the grime in his throat. “But you know what?” he asks next, nodding to himself. “I’m still going to have a good day, and I’m going to steal a bunch of stuffed animals and ride on the rides. It’s all for Mikan-chan! And it’s fine—it’s all fine, and I’m fine and—”
Tooru doesn’t get to continue when a stuffed bear hits him on the lap. He peers up, eyes stinging from the urge to cry—and damn, he thinks he might really, really cry—when he sees the other boy perched over, feet curled on the edge of the counter. He’s got something reluctant on his face, glances right on the urge of looking away altogether; but when Tooru holds a hand up, a quiet plea to help him get on his feet, he takes it anyway.
“Come on,” the boy insists. “No need to hide,” he tells Tooru, like he knows anything at all.
“Okay,” Tooru tells him right back, letting him nag on anyway.
And when their hands touch, Tooru really, really does cry for the first time all day. When he finds the will to stand, he tucks his chin downward, embarrassed as all hell, but he keeps himself up nonetheless. He takes the stuffed bear with him, tucked under an arm, and makes it back out on the lane with the stranger.
Tooru lets himself cry, because loss is loss and there’s no point in fighting it, because Mikan-chan was important to him, really, really important to him, but he thinks he might find a way to something happy, too. Because even if he’ll never get to see this boy again, even if ghosts were meant to fade back to unearthly spaces, even if this kid might just be a figment of his imagination, at least he doesn’t have to be alone tonight. This is what he clings onto, body all achy from sobbing, when the park lights up around them and counted blessings might mean more than consolation prizes.
“You’re the nicest ghost I’ve ever met,” Tooru tells the other boy, when their hands unclasp but they don’t go their separate ways. Hands in his pockets, sleeves still glued to the crease of bent arms, the kid stares up, still as cool as the deepening night.
"I don't know where you got that idea, but I'm no ghost."
Tooru's eyes go wide. "You're not? Then you must’ve snuck in too, right?" He tries not to sound too excited when he asks.
"Something like that."
Stifling a smile, a definite failure in being coy, the other boy speeds up, leaves Tooru in the dust, but never strays too far. Feet almost tripping up on the cobblestone, Tooru follows him anyway.
"What's your name, then?" Tooru asks. “You have to tell me now! We’re in this together, ghost-chan!”
“Will you stop calling me ghost-chan if I do?”
Tooru catches up, nods at him with a bit of a laugh, tiny and barely held, but genuine all the same. He kind of likes the way it leaves his mouth. “Of course," he says, only half-lying.
"My name is Iwaizumi Hajime," the boy says, with a name as sturdy as the way he holds his back. He walks on again after that, footfalls heavier than Tooru's, steps neither too rushed or too ambling. Just right. When Tooru gulps down, he sucks in a deep breath and mouths the name to remember it. Iwaizumi Hajime. He thinks, past the fickleness of forgetting names, of all the other kids he’s never thought to keep, that there’s a phenomenon in trying to remember. Iwaizumi Hajime. With tight lips, sealed by mashing, Tooru stops himself from getting too carried away and stops practicing the name.
“And what’s yours?” Iwaizumi asks next. Tooru beams up, wipes the rest of his tears away, and catches up to him.
“Oikawa Tooru!” he shouts out, when he decides to maybe enjoy the worst day of his life instead.
By the time morning comes, all hazy orange and glinting golden, the park fades with the new day and lets Tooru breathe easy. After a night of wandering sunrise garden, of stealing from gift shops and cutting non-existent lines, of riding the Ferris wheel about ten thousand times and climbing fences to sit on the artificial shore of an artificial lake, the two of them have found peace at the foot of an abandoned amphitheater stage—one of the biggest in all of Japan, by Tooru’s prior research—slumped against the hardwood and ready to sleep the rest of the day away. But Tooru makes himself sit up, examines the light in all of its splendor, and finds the will to laugh. He feels himself tear up again, just by the tiniest gulp, and swallows it down without a hitch this time.
“Mikan-chan was this color, sorta. Like, all bright and soft,” Tooru muses about the sunrise, climbing up back on his feet and looking towards daybreak. Iwaizumi just nods with all the other miscellaneous facts Tooru’s presented, ones teetering on the edge of importance but never delving too deep; he just finds the most interesting things about himself, because he thinks that what people like to hear—interesting—and maybe it’ll distract from the fact he’s cried more often than not in Iwaizumi’s company so far. He imagines it, the other boy sitting at the table, or huddled around with the tons of friends he must have back at home. I met this kid, Oikawa Tooru—if he's even bothered to remember Tooru’s name in the first place—and he’s been in three TV commercials. For toothpaste, melon pops, and cat food, pretty enough for every spotlight under the sun. He likes milk bread and aliens and doesn’t cry when he gets shots, and he’s really decent at mathematics and getting his homework in on time. Tooru imagines this, finds himself satisfied, and comes slinking back into his seat.
He’s not the best kid, but a good kid, and boy, does he try hard.
“I have to get going soon,” says Iwaizumi, neither in relief or fear of parting. Oikawa pretends he doesn’t feel the latter. “You should too, or else your mother might worry,” he recommends further.
Tooru shrugs. “I guess so.” He remembers Iwaizumi telling him about coming from the north end of the park, how he himself had snuck in through the south, and that the amphitheater lay perfectly in the middle of it all, like the reassurance of some perfectly made equator.
“Five more minutes,” Iwaizumi says, looking away, voice all hushed.
“You must really like me, Iwa-chan,” Tooru teases him, still trying the name out on his tongue. He decides he likes it.
“Don’t call me that,” Iwaizumi insists for the hundredth time, but he seems too tired to protest things further. Oikawa takes this as some sort of tacit acceptance, and he gleams up at him like he doesn’t want any of this to end. Selfishly, he thinks again of all the other kids Iwaizumi Hajime might be playing with, his world outside this one, and decides that maybe he can’t see him as a stranger. Maybe he doesn’t want him to be. It’s a strange feeling, wandering into territory like potential friendship, the adventure of it. I’d like to see you again. I’d like to be your friend. Oikawa stops himself from such forthright things, sentiment seeping through his closed mouth anyway. He thinks it builds up, aches to the point of blushing bright red, and lets Iwaizumi know everything anyway.
To this, Iwaizumi merely blinks, eyes narrowed and certainly skeptical, but he doesn't run or push himself away. He stays, and Tooru gets the sense that some things don't have to be said.
"We should play again sometime," Tooru reaches forward to say instead, so tired he's lost at least some of his natural inhibition, and Iwaizumi just flinches in his seat but doesn't quake any further.
Iwaizumi shrugs. "Um." He frowns, eyeing Tooru up and down. He’s used that, maybe, because the other kids do that to him, too. He's gotten too good at reading their expressions, the people who pass judgment, their ugly, ugly questions, right on their tongues but never said: do I really want to play with that weird kid in the cat food commercials? Isn’t he obsessed with aliens? When he remembers the looks on the other kids’ faces, Tooru shrinks back, thinks that maybe he’s gone too far again this time, and comes to the verge of telling Iwaizumi, ah, just forget it, you don’t have to—
“Sure,” Iwaizumi finishes. “I mean...you’re kind of weird, and you cry kinda ugly, but why not?” He peers back at Tooru, all grimaces, but there's something relenting about them this time, and they come out almost comical.
"What?" Tooru wasn't expecting that.
“And you know, even if you do look like that when you cry, you should let it all out, I think. Like, your face is all red, and you look like you might explode," Iwaizumi continues on. "So if you need to cry the next time we hang out, don't worry about holding it in."
"Iwa-chan," Tooru calls out, all sorts of choked up.
"How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?"
"S-sorry," Tooru can't help but giggle out, wiping away the snot on his sleeve. "But, really, let's meet again! The cake shop, two blocks away from here, by the south end of Sunrise Garden,” he urges.
"You mean sunset." At this, Iwaizumi frowns. “And what do you mean the south end? That bakery's by the north end, where the entrance is."
"The one called the Velvet Rose?"
"Yeah."
“See, no, I know that's by the south. And I’ve read the map a billion times, Iwa-chan. Is there even an entrance on the north end?”
“That’s the only entrance,” Iwaizumi asserts. "And that's north."
“You need to learn better directions,” Oikawa says, digging his map out of his backpack.
Iwaizumi shakes his head, grabbing for said map. “I don’t, and I know I don’t, because I’m the—”
“Hajime-kun!” At the sound of a woman’s voice, sharp and accusational, Iwaizumi winces and drops the folded paper in his hands. Her heels are sharp against the cobblestone, and she’s got a cup of coffee, steaming, in her hands. “Your father has been worried sick about you! I have not been paid to run after children!”
“Sorry,” Iwaizumi yells out, completely deadpan, linking his own hands together by the fingers and stretching them up to the sky. Definitely cool, Tooru gapes, when Iwaizumi hops off the stage altogether and looks back at him. To Tooru, he says, "seven p.m. tomorrow, by that cake shop you mentioned. We can meet there, because it's easy to spot, right? With the bench in front? We can get milk bread."
Down the lane, the woman spots him and points a painted finger, digging a walkie-talkie out of her blazer pocket and practically spitting into it. He thinks he hears a mix of the words intruder and trespassing, and Iwaizumi just looks like he's got bugs crawling all over his back over the sound of her threats.
"Go! Oikawa, go!"
"Iwa-chan, wait—" Hurriedly, Tooru remembers the gameplan, feet on the ground and ready to run. The Velvet Rose Bakery! 7:00pm! Red bench!
(Iwa-chan remembered I like milk bread!)
(He remembered my name!)
"Go!" Iwaizumi insists again, pulled to his caretaker like he's got no choice. "The cake shop, okay? Blue bench. Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Tooru repeats back, smile stretching across his face with the day's first instance of reckless abandon. Under his arm, the stuffed bear stays safely in his possession, and he thinks about shaking Iwaizumi's hand to seal the pact, tomorrow, I'm going to get to see my friend tomorrow, but he doesn't have the time when the two of them part ways. Held back by a pulled ear, Iwaizumi tells him to keep going, don't stop, and Tooru only listens when the guards chase him down in a sputtering golf cart down the road. He runs, past the lit up stands, up the cobblestone paths, nearly tripping along the way, but he makes sure not to fall this time. Not any time. He knows he can't, when he's got plans to keep, and an Iwa-chan to see.
So Tooru slips away, past the hole in the fence and back to the world he knows, back to booking commercials and a home without Mikan-chan and the friends he's yet to make, because he feels the promise of one forming, his one and very own Iwaizumi Hajime, and he knows persistence is key. Just get through tomorrow. At the mere chance of him, Tooru refuses to let any of this fly by.
"If I let you run off again, I'll never hear the end of it."
"But onee-chan—"
"Please don't start whining on me, Tooru."
With a raised finger, one as sharp as the point of their mother's, Tooru's older sister loosens her tie, bends down to straighten her brother's, and mats his wavy hair back with the brush of a wooden comb. They have a commercial today for a car dealership in Sendai, one that she's missing her high school occult club meeting just to take her brother to, and Tooru knows not to test her patience too much (though he'll do it anyway). Innocently, he just preens up, blinks a few times, and comes to the verge of another pretty please. Eiko, expecting it, conjures up a smirk, almost as if to say, I know what you're doing, you little brat.
"That cute little face of yours might work on the auntie up the block, but not me—"
"Would it work on Minoru-kun?" Tooru continues, eyes narrowing. Checkmate. Eiko goes aghast, but it's hard not to notice the text messages with his name on them, or her head-in-the-stratosphere smiles at dinner time—their parents might be too tired to notice these things after a long day of work and whatnot, but Tooru never, ever misses a beat.
"Are you blackmailing me?" she asks back, practically spitting fire, sputtering, red-faced along the way. "Because I'm not embarrassed by it, they can meet Minoru-kun at any time, tomorrow, for all I care—"
"Then I'll be sure to set an extra bowl at the table—"
"Tooru! Fine! You got me!"
And this is the story of how Tooru got his sister to sit at the Velvet Rose with him after filming at the car dealership. With Eiko's nose pointedly stuck in a ghost stories anthology, Tooru plops down a plate of chocolate cake in front of her, a cup of coffee and fat-free milk, and two sugar packets on the side, just the way she likes it. Eiko lowers herself from the pages, tentatively accepts her brother’s unspoken apology, and sighs away the rest of her resentments. She pats him on the head, mussing his hair back to its natural graces, and when Tooru can’t help but laugh, excited over the prospect of 7:00pm, just ten minutes away, she sighs and tries to pretend she isn’t excited for him, too. She lifts a fork from the tray and offers Tooru the first bite, to which he doesn’t take. He’s too nervous to eat in all honesty, and he thinks he’d rather split some milk bread with Iwaizumi instead.
“You know, the club and I were going to play kokkuri-san today, and I was really looking forward to it,” Eiko muses, “but this isn’t so bad, I guess.” She takes the first bite instead, smiles wide for a taste of heaven. “Especially if it means you won’t be moping around at home. Losing Mikan-kun was hard for me, too, but I know how much you loved him. He helped you through the move, didn't he?"
Tooru can’t deny that. “Mikan-chan would want me to make new friends.”
“We all do,” his sister corrects him. “Anyway, you better make this a good playdate. I was going to ask the spirit board some really cool questions today, and kokkuri-san would’ve given me the answers!”
“Like whether or not you’re going to marry Minoru-kun?” Tooru asks in teasing.
“Oh, quiet.”
Tooru just laughs and checks his watch again. Seven minutes to go, and he can’t help but hate how slowly time moves when he’s waiting for something to happen. “So,” he asks, to distract himself, “what would you have asked?”
Eiko lets a smile spread across her face, getting closer to her little brother from the other end of the table. “Ever heard of liminal space?”
Tooru shakes his head. He can’t say that he has.
“Well,” she continues on, “everyone and their mother thinks that occult club is for hunting ghosts and asking about future husbands. But it’s more than that, I tell the masses. I mean, who’s the one that got you into aliens, huh?”
“You,” Tooru chirps back with eyes rolled. Eiko never fails to get smug about that.
“Well, it’s not just aliens, either. It’s a lot of other stuff, like places you can’t explain, or alternate universes. That’s what I’ve been sort of interested in lately, when we’re not discussing the abundance of poltergeists in Nagano. You know, that’s a very real problem, too, and you’re always welcome to come on hunts with us...but, anyway—I was going to ask kokkuri-san about the best liminal spaces in the prefecture.”
Tooru frowns and stares back down at the time again. Five minutes to go until Iwaizumi comes, and his knees have begun shaking under him. “Okay, then. What is liminal space?” he asks on anyway, half-listening so they can continue to fill the empty air. With a cock of an eyebrow, Eiko seems to understand but chooses to go on.
“Have you ever been somewhere and felt like...you’ve stepped in a whole other world? Some weird in-between where your chest gets all heavy for no reason?” she asks, past the rising steam of espresso, the taunt of a layered chocolate cake. “Like, an empty train platform, or the clearing to a forest on the side of the road? Maybe an empty room during an realtor’s showing?”
Tooru nods. Without explanation, he thinks he might understand what Eiko means. He remembers the dust on the tatami mats, the off-white walls of a three-room house not yet a home. He thinks of bus stops under heavy rain, and desolate shrines on Tuesday afternoons. Even Sunrise Gardenhad something about it, like breathing in something that wasn’t quite air, a denseness that felt like a slow and planetary dance. Like stepping into a whole other world, not quite his, and not quite Iwaizumi’s either, but welcoming guests anyway—so yes, Tooru thinks he might understand, even if it’s only at the very edge of comprehension, or the childish acceptance that things aren’t always as they seem.
"Strange space," Tooru coins it for himself. "A bridge," he finds himself blurting out next, all without meaning to.
“Well, what do you think is the other side of such strange spaces? That bridge?” Eiko asks, putting her best fortune teller’s guise back on, usually rehearsed for the likes of class-made cultural festivals and sleepovers. “Have you ever wondered about the places beyond this one?”
beep da beep, beep da beep
The both of them nearly jump out of their seats when they hear the alarm on Tooru’s watch go off. 7:00pm. Pushing his chair back, feet jumping out of the seat, Tooru nearly spills his sister’s coffee and knocks over the cake, but she beckons him to go on anyway, brimming over her brother's insistence to listen.
“Go make a new friend, Tooru,” she urges with a hand under a chin, disregarding all her other talk. “I think it’ll be good for you.” She tells him she’ll be here the whole time, two hours and counting until the bakery closes at nine, and hands Tooru enough money for two loaves of milk bread. He takes it like a well wish, another blessing for good things, and presses a thank you into his sister’s hand with a firm shake.
By the time Tooru’s eaten his share of the milk bread, it’s been twenty minutes and Iwaizumi Hajime is no where to be seen. He runs the pad of his index finger along the chipped red paint of the bench he’s planted himself on, night full on by now, and straightens his tie just in case Iwaizumi’s running late. He tucks his chin downward again, sighs out the fears resting in his belly, and nods to himself that everything will go according to plan.
To pass the time, he takes out his backpack and makes sure he still has everything in order. Today he’s left his new stuffed bear at home in lieu of other things: his favorite martian figurine, with one of the arms bent and chewed, but still the best; a guidebook to the world’s coolest beetles, because he remembers Iwaizumi mentioning hobbies like bug catching; a DVD with all of the commercials he’s done to date, with the cat food one leading the pack; and his favorite picture of Mikan-chan, because he’s sure Iwaizumi might like him, too. Tooru sorts through all of these things, arranges and rearranges them again, and takes another deep and shaking breath when he adds five more minutes to his waiting time.
“Come on Iwa-chan,” he sighs out. His breath streams on like a gust from a passing train, and he hopes it reaches Iwaizumi, wherever he is.
By eight, the streetlights flicker, mean and cackling, and tell Tooru to give up and go home. When his watch touches upon the time, one hour officially passed, the beeps just add to every taunt he’s ever heard, the ones never spoken but written all over faces. Do I really want to play with that weird kid in the cat food commercials? Isn’t he obsessed with aliens? Why should I want to be friends with him? Tooru swallows back something a mix of anxious and angry, but he refuses to admit that this is a lost cause.
“Come on, Iwa-chan,” he whispers, shivering a bit, breath smaller than ever but still seen in the night.
By eight-fifteen, his sister knocks on the display window, face more pained than he’d like to see.
“Do you want to go home, Tooru?” she comes outside to ask him, head peeking out the door.
He shakes his head, determined not to cry, and remembers something his mother once told him, for better or worse and all the bittersweet in between.
Oikawa Toorus are stubborn, and Oikawa Toorus stay.
Past nine, past ten, and until his sister begs for the both of them to go home.
"I'm sorry, Tooru," Eiko tells him later, when he’s buried under a mess of blankets and trying not to cry.
"Maybe it just wasn't meant to be."
(But little does Tooru know that Iwaizumi Hajimes tend to run along the same vein, too. On the other side of things, in another dimension where heads turn into tails, where Sunrise Garden might be called Sunset instead, and bakery benches are blue instead of red, he waits, and waits, and waits, begrudging but anxious and refusing to give up. In his backpack, he keeps a book on aliens he loaned from the library, enough money for two pieces of cake out of courtesy, and a ticket to the opening day of Sunset Garden’s upcoming season. He waits, and waits, and waits, past eight-thirty to nine to ten, until his mother comes down the block, hand outstretched, with the offer to come home.)
(That night, in his bedroom alone, he wonders if meeting Oikawa Tooru was nothing but a passing dream, an anxious ghost by the wayward side.)