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Isagi Yoichi can look at one thing and see the basic parts that make it up. It’s like a puzzle and its individual pieces. He uses this to, for example, learn the ingredients to new dishes or see the simplest form of a fraction or equation in Math. But he doesn’t see the process, only the building blocks. And it only works with objects and not living beings.
Isagi Yoichi as a person is someone pretty average. He’s not the kind who stands out from a crowd. He has black hair, blue eyes, and often wears the most comfortable clothes he has in his wardrobe, which usually means he goes out wearing a shirt and pants. And the black rubber shoes he’s had for three years. One notable thing about him is his talent for baking. He helps out at his family’s bakery as the one who makes the desserts. Learning new recipes was never difficult thanks to his magic. That, along with his natural talent in fast learning, makes baking really fun and his favorite hobby.
One time, he’s walking to the cafeteria when he witnesses three of his batchmates bullying someone he recognizes as his classmate. Isagi stops in his tracks long enough to see his classmate violently being pushed back onto the concrete floor. Next thing he knows, he finds himself standing in front of the three bullies, panting slightly.
“Oooooh, who’s this? Your boyfriend?” the first of them mockingly asks, the others laughing in the background. “Ha, as if. There’s no way you have a partner when you don’t even have any friends. You know, other than that monster of yours.”
They dissolve into laughter as well after the statement. It’s a repulsive sight. Isagi’s classmate, from what he could see from his peripheral vision, is already standing up to fight back. He holds out an arm to stop them and glares at the bullies, an intense look in his eyes.
“Yeah, I’m his boyfriend, what about it?” he spits out before really thinking about it. He hears the sharp inhale from his classmate after the statement and promises to apologize later. Unfortunately, the bullies hear the gasp as well.
“If you’re actually his boyfriend, then why is he so surprised?” the second one points out with a dangerous smile.
“That’s because it’s supposed to be a secret,” Isagi makes up on the spot. He hears the soft sound of agreement from his classmate and straightens up.
The third of the bullies was about to retort when the bell signaling the end of lunch rang. “Saved by the bell,” they scoff instead, then start walking back to the classrooms. Isagi’s face twists. That was such a cliché line.
He turns back to properly look at his classmate. They seem at ease now, if the wide but perplexed smile was something to go by. “Sooo, you’re my boyfriend now?” they ask playfully. Isagi crouches down, buries his head in his knees, and groans.
Bachira Meguru is a living, breathing 3D pen.
“You make me sound so uncool,” Bachira whines. “My magic’s not that boring.”
Bachira Meguru can actually draw anything in mid-air using any of the 7 colors of the rainbow. He’s an artist and paints just like his mom. Often, he uses his magic to doodle whenever he’s bored or needs reminders and doesn’t have a pen. In fact, he’s currently sketching out a blue circle with two dots (which were probably supposed to be eyes) that looks suspiciously like Isagi.
They’re sitting beside each other on a bench outside the school building. School hours ended just a few minutes ago. Clearly, based off the events from earlier that day, they need to talk.
“I apologize for my outburst earlier,” Isagi says, not quite meeting the other’s eyes. “I panicked and it just came out so suddenly. I didn’t mean to say that, really.”
“It’s okay!” Bachira cheerfully replies, finishing the doodle by drawing its hair and a tiny smile. “I understand. I was surprised someone even came to help me.”
“Of course I did. I couldn’t just leave you alone now, could I?”
His classmate doesn’t answer, but the emotions in his eyes speak for him. It wouldn’t be the first time.
There’s a pause, neither wishing to aggravate the quite down atmosphere.
After a while, Isagi opens his mouth again. “So, about this whole boyfriend thing…”
They come up with an arrangement to help Bachira with the bullies. They couldn’t exactly deny it now that it was said out loud, so they devised a fake dating plan. This includes when they met for the first time (which wasn’t just in school a few hours ago, because they’ve supposedly been in a secret relationship before that day), why they’ve come to like each other, and other important details.
“Are you sure you’re all right with this?” Isagi asks before they part ways to return home. Bachira sends a wide smile his way.
“I can’t say I expected this to happen today,” he replies. “But it’s a nice surprise. I’m looking forward to this fake dating thing with you, partner!”
With that, Bachira turns away and walks home. “Yeah,” Isagi murmurs, startled at the words that were spoken, watching as his classmate walks away.
The following day, Bachira bounds to him as soon as he enters the classroom. “Good morning!” the enthusiastic boy greets, following him to his seat beside the window. “What do we do today? Oooh, do you want to eat together in the cafeteria later? Or maybe outside on the field? Do you want to go study somewhere after school? Or-”
Isagi sets down his backpack and interrupts him before he could go on. “How about we actually get to know each other first?” he suggests with a tiny smile. If possible, Bachira’s grin grows wider.
They spend the day and the rest of the week telling each other everything two people in a relationship should be aware of. They’re together at every possible opportunity, sharing stories about themselves and their powers.
That Thursday, Isagi learns how Bachira discovered his powers as a child. “I actually wanted to try painting, but my mom had a limited number of brushes. So, I tried fingerpainting instead,” Bachira smiles fondly. The sunlight shines on them and the rest of the school garden, emphasizing the brown of his hair. “The thing is, I didn’t know I needed paint for fingerpainting. I just kept seeing people move their finger along the canvas, so what was I supposed to think? So I just – stop laughing at me! I was three, okay?” Bachira moves to grab at Isagi, but he was laughing, too.
Later, he continues narrating how his mother caught him painting on a long bond paper on the floor, no paint containers in sight. She knelt down beside him and watched him draw random shapes and scribbles. Both discovered Bachira’s magic when he retracted his hands from the paper and there was no trace of paint on his fingers.
That Friday, Isagi tells Bachira about his family’s business. “We run a bakery near our house,” he says. “My dad makes and serves all the coffee. My mom works at the cashier. I’m the one who bakes.”
“Isn’t that tiring though?” his classmate asks, leaning over and making him more aware of the curiosity in his yellow eyes. “You baking everything? I don’t know much about baking, but I do know it’s not something you can rush.”
“Ah,” Isagi sighs, smiling. “Don’t worry, my mom helps me prepare the food in advanced. Since we already have an estimated number of customers, we can program how much we bake before we open the store. Plus, I don’t bake everything, especially when it’s a school day. We have people who help us in the bakery too, you know.”
The end of lunch bell rings. He opens his mouth again to tell Bachira they should start walking back to the classroom when a hand closes around his left wrist. He looks down at the hand and then at Bachira’s eyes in confusion, face slowly turning into a tomato. “Maybe I should visit your bakery sometime,” was all his classmate said before he was dragged outside the library and back to the classroom.
The next week brings back the bullies. At first, the two avoided them. There’s no bullying if there’s no encounter, but they couldn’t avoid them forever. Three weeks later, Bachira bumps into them on the way to the art room.
“Guess who it is,” the first of them starts. The other two fan out to block Bachira’s possible escape routes. “I see you and your boyfriend are spending more time with each other now that your relationship is no longer a secret.”
“Am I the only one who still doesn’t believe it?” the second asks with their arms crossed and an eyeroll.
“Nah, dude, it’s too sudden to actually be true,” the third adds with a smirk and a nod.
If the encounter happened a few weeks earlier, Bachira may not have had the courage he finds himself with now. In the span of a month, he learned more about Isagi than he ever did about any of his friends. He also discovered how fun it was to be in Isagi’s presence, no matter how unassuming the other boy looks at first.
“My boyfriend is as real as can be, thank you very much,” he replies with an unaffected smile. “Really, it’s thanks to you three that we’re even able to hang out freely. Bye-bye now.”
Bachira calmly resumes walking to the art room, using the momentary surprise to his advantage. Before he gets very far, though, a hand clamps around his wrist roughly. One of the bullies was saying a lot of things, but the only words that register in his head was an insult to Isagi.
“Get off me,” Bachira spits out, freeing his wrist from the grip in one swift motion. He levels the three bullies with a glare, each of them wilting from the venom in his electric yellow eyes. “Never, ever, talk about my boyfriend like that, you hear? Or else.”
This time, when he walks away, they don’t follow. In fact, they never showed their faces anywhere near Bachira nor Isagi ever again.
(“You did that? You really did that?” Isagi asks in disbelief as they were walking home later that day. His expression is a mostly startled one, but there was enough of a smile to let Bachira know his fake boyfriend was proud of him.
Though there was no longer any need for it, they don’t talk about the fake dating plan after Bachira got rid of the bullies. They don’t talk about it for a long, long time.)
Another month passes before Bachira invites Isagi to paint with him in his room. Isagi arrives at the other’s house with his face tinged pink and a few minutes late, sweater collar askew and bangs ruffled. His classmate’s mom welcomes him with a warm hug, then leads him to Bachira’s room. The house wasn’t very big, nor did it have a lot of furniture, but in a single glance, he could tell it holds a lot of happy memories.
Bachira’s room is like a makeshift studio. His bed is beside the wall in the far corner, the rest of the room filled with canvases and paint tubes and paintbrushes. There are two easels beside each other in the middle of it all, Bachira standing in front of the one nearest the window. As soon as he sees Isagi, his serious expression breaks out into a large grin.
“Isagi! You’re here!” he exclaims, charging forward to hug him too. Isagi lets out a tiny oof, then hugs him back.
Before they start, Bachira shows him some of his old paintings. Many portray a large brown shape with sharp teeth and white eyes, which he learns is the monster who has kept his fake boyfriend company for the past years. Some are of sunflowers, and others are of the sky.
“So, are you ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Painting, as it turns out, is very difficult to do. Isagi knows what he wants to paint. He can already see the image in his head. The thing is, it doesn’t translate well on the canvas. He greatly underestimated himself when it came to paint application. He figured it would be fine because he’s a baker, right? Baking requires precision, exact measurements, and the right ingredients. Apparently, this particular skill of his doesn’t work well when it comes to art.
He keeps accidentally adding too much or too little water to the paint. He doesn’t understand color theory at all, despite Bachira’s explanations and using his magic to break down all the colors the other boy used in his past paintings. His paint strokes were wobbly, and the lines were too thick. What was supposed to be a landscape on canvas turns out looking like a tie-dyed shirt.
At least Bachira, who has been painting what looks like a cinnamon bun and frappe on a coffee table on the other canvas, doesn’t judge him. Instead, he keeps giving him little tips and tricks as he goes through the process.
Bachira’s mom offers them snacks as they wait for the paint to dry. “So, what do you think of my first ever painting?” Isagi asks after he swallows one the pear slices. “You can be as honest as possible; I already know I did terribly.”
Beside him, Bachira laughs. Laughs of all things. “It’s not bad,” he says, earning a disbelieving look from the other. “I can kinda see what it’s supposed to be. Your sky and grass might look like they’re bleeding into each other, that brown shape looks more like an animal than a bench, and the sun might look like something drawn by a 5-year-old, but otherwise, it’s not bad.”
It takes Isagi a few seconds to realize he was being teased. “You-” he starts, but Bachira is already laughing again. “Wow, thanks, I guess,” he continues sarcastically, then joins in on the laughter.
Before he leaves, Bachira manages to convince him to let him keep the painting in the house. As he was walking home, he wonders whether the brunet truly understood the image he was trying to paint onto the canvas.
(With a hum, he recalls that time in the school garden, sunlight bouncing off Bachira’s hair and making it appear golden.)
The week after, it was Bachira’s turn to try baking. He was invited to Isagi’s house that Thursday after school. “We close earlier on Thursdays to prepare for Fridays,” the black-haired boy explains. “A lot of people come to the bakery on Fridays because it’s the last day of the work week. Still, it’s better for you to come on a weekday because we have a lot of customers during the weekends too.”
For the first time, they walk to Isagi’s house together after school hours. Isagi’s parents greet Bachira warmly before going back to their respective responsibilities. The kitchen is large and stocked with baking ingredients and tools. The oven was in the corner nearest them. Isagi retrieves two aprons from a cabinet near the sink and hands a blue one to Bachira.
“Are you ready to bake?”
The grin is wide enough to be heard through his words. “Bring it on.”
Before long, Isagi couldn’t walk a few steps anywhere in the kitchen without bumping into floating, multicolored, doodled reminders. Above the counter were the instructions for the ingredients. Beside the oven were doodles of baked cookies under reminders about the temperature and how long the cookies are supposed to be left to bake. Bachira is scribbling out another set of words at that moment, this time about the use of the electric hand mixer.
It was the most Isagi has seen his classmate use his magic. He almost regrets not having a physical copy of the recipe as he mixed the wet ingredients using his muscle memory. Chocolate chip cookies were the first thing he ever baked as a kid and it became his favorite ever since, so making them soon became second nature to him. Plus, Bachira was here today, and Isagi had to pay extra attention to his surroundings just in case the brunet needs help.
“How many chocolate chips do we put again?” he hears from his classmate after a while. He sets down the dish he was washing, closes the faucet, and sidesteps multiple floating notes to help Bachira with the chocolate chips.
“We don’t usually have a measurement for these if they’re just for personal consumption, but one cup should be enough for now.” With that, he carefully envelops Bachira’s hand with his own and guides him in pouring the chocolate chips into the measuring cup. The physical intimacy doesn’t fully register until the chips were mixed with the dough and Isagi has made his way back to the sink. A red blush blooms on his cheeks, but he says nothing.
Bachira collects all his floating notes and places them in one of his sketchbooks before he cheerfully heads back home with around 10 freshly baked chocolate chip cookies to share with him mom. Isagi sees him off at the gate with his parents watching from the front door.
“You two are quite close,” his dad comments.
“Are you together?” his mom asks.
Isagi turns to look at them so fast he almost gets whiplash. He stutters out an explanation of how he and Bachira met, including the entire fake dating plan.
“We’re not actually together,” he answers, face a bright red. “We started spending time with each other because of the whole bullies and fake dating thing, but we’re just friends.”
Both his parents look at him patiently. “As long as he makes you happy,” his mom gently smiles.
“He does,” Isagi smiles back. He has long associated his fake boyfriend with happiness. “Even without trying, somehow, he always manages to make me really, really happy.”
Bachira gets sick and sent home on a Tuesday morning. Isagi helps one of the clinic staff gather his things, feeling numb all the while. For the rest of the day, he’s unable to focus on any of the lessons. All foreign words fly over his head in English. He doesn’t understand how to use the new Algebra formula no matter how many times the teacher explains. He misses the warmth and comfort he gets in Bachira’s presence. He’ll pick boisterous laughter over the unnatural relative silence on any day.
After classes, he sends a quick text that says Hey, I’m coming over. He stops by the convenience store to buy some tea before heading to Bachira’s house. It’s nerve-wracking, but he doesn’t need to provide any sort of explanation before his classmate’s mom accepts him into the house.
“Meguru’s fine,” she gently reassures him. “He’s just resting in his room. The fever has gone down for now.”
“That’s good to hear,” Isagi replies, then retrieves the tea from the plastic bag he was holding. “I brought some tea. Would you like some, Bachira-san?”
Soon, there were two steaming mugs of tea on the counter. Isagi picks up the yellow and black striped one and brings it to Bachira’s room. He opens the door cautiously, careful not to disturb the other in case he was sleeping. Instead, he sees the brunet doodling on the air, every drawing a royal blue. The current figure he is working on looks strangely familiar, as do the smaller figures around it.
“I brought tea,” he says instead of hello. Bachira’s gaze snaps up to him, eyes wide. His surprised expression is frozen the entire time it takes for Isagi to walk to his bedside. Now that he was closer, Isagi realized why all the doodles look so interestingly familiar.
“Is that…me?” he asks in wonder, setting down the mug. He looks over at Bachira, but his fake boyfriend avoids his eyes. He slowly crouches down until he’s eye-level with the top of the bed, determined to get an answer no matter how obvious it was. The other stubbornly turns away and stays quiet.
(Isagi remembers reading something from the internet in the past. The post explained the concept of a muse. It said that the muse of the person who posted it was someone who inspired them every day to keep creating artworks, especially of their muse. He thinks, based on all the tiny doodles and the large, detailed sketch of him smiling surrounding them right now, that at one point, he has become Bachira’s muse.)
Isagi has become an inspiration for Bachira over time, but does Bachira play a similar role in Isagi’s life? He thinks back to all their memories together so far. He remembers once more the bench in the school garden on a sunny day. He remembers when they finally got rid of the bullies. He remembers trying to paint the sunny day in this exact room. He remembers when they first brainstormed the fake dating plan. What happened to that plan? Is there even still a point to this entire thing?
(But Isagi doesn’t want to lose what they have right now, whatever it may be. He doesn’t want to stop experiencing all sorts of things with Bachira. He’ll gladly try painting again, no matter how many times he fails to get the desired result, just to have Bachira tease him again. He’ll gladly let Bachira randomly drag him around by his wrist and jump onto his back any time he wants, just to hear that laughter again and again.)
He wasn’t lying when he told his parents Bachira makes him happy, even when he does nothing at all. Even the thought of Bachira makes him happy. He could recall any interaction with him and automatically smile at the memory.
If Isagi was Bachira’s muse, then what does Bachira mean to Isagi?
“Say, Bachira, what if I told you I like you?” he whispers into the air between them. His heart pounds hard against his chest, but he focuses on the now rigid back of his fake boyfriend.
Slowly, Bachira shifts to face him. “Do you mean it?” he asks, voice rough from the phlegm. His yellow eyes glow under the fluorescent lights as he stares at Isagi’s blue eyes. “You like me? You want to stop fake dating me and actually date me?”
Isagi’s smile was the only answer he needed. The widest grin made its way onto his face. “Oh my gosh, does that mean we’re officially boyfriends now?”
“If you want us to be,” was the reply, Isagi twisting to grab the mug of tea and noticing the liquid already lukewarm. When he turns back to the bed, he’s greeted with a hug.
“Of course I want us to be. I like you too, Isagi.”
Isagi Yoichi can look at one thing and see the basic parts that make it up. It’s like a puzzle and its individual pieces. At this moment though, he doesn’t need magic to understand his and Bachira’s relationship. The puzzle pieces are the trust they had in each other when they told stories about their personal lives, the moments they spent painting and baking in each other’s houses, and the memories they’ve made together since they met on that day. All the pieces make up a puzzle that belong to both Isagi Yoichi and Bachira Meguru.
(“You know, it might’ve been fate when you saw me getting bullied that day and decided to help,” Bachira comments, mug of tea in hand. “Does that mean we’re destined to be together?”
“Sure, Bachira,” Isagi answers with a soft smile. “If you consider me your muse, then I consider you my destiny.”)