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His smile makes your mind spin.
People usually associate him with headaches, and you don’t doubt he’s made your mind ache with overwhelming confusion, spurring the burning annoyance in your gut you’ve come to know too well.
Most of the time–and you hate to admit it– you feel a familiar fondness that swells up in your chest like the sudden growth of tulips, filling you to the brim until the urge to embrace him becomes harder and harder to ignore.
Times where every joke he makes is painfully corny, yet his enthusiastic delivery brings a smile that you try to suppress. His wide eyes and spread limbs, acting out every person in the scenario as if he were doing a one man show. He was on a stage of only one person watching, but he performed with every bit of fiber and emotion in his heart, his unabashed absurdity on display, even in spite of the onlookers. You love it.
( And then he smirks and does it again and again, upon hearing a laugh you couldn’t contain. He has a lot of nerve for someone so small. )
Times where the sky turns dark, and the room goes with it. The both of you laid next to each other, staring at the ceiling as you air your thoughts to each other, as if you were the only solace to be found in the evening’s abyss. Occasional glances to each other just to verify that the vulnerability was real, that you had understood his messages beyond the cryptic exteriors. That you saw him, looked into and through him, if only for a few moments.
You seem so easy to him, it hardly seems fair. You crave to return the affection he’s made you fumble with time and time again. Not even out of a need to embarrass him, as tempting as it is. You want to love him.
If he sees love as a match to win, a king grinning with the power that he holds over his pieces as he moves closer to you, before pulling away, you simply need to play with him to keep up. To catch him, as impossible and daunting of a task it seems.
And yet, giving up felt like simply handing the man a win in and of itself. Your pride wouldn’t stand for it. You will manage to surprise him, somehow.
Or at least, you thought you could.
You try hiding behind the door to his room to slap him with a face full of whipped cream. The door hits you as soon as he opens it, and you’re the one whose vision is overtaken by white by sheer reflex. His laughter fills your ears as he reminds you of the thin walls. He offers to lick it off, as compensation, giggling as you shove him aside to wash away the confection, and your shame.
You try setting up a broom for him to step on when he tries to sneak by the vending machines. You hit someone, but Miu, who’d been rambling to an invested Kiibo, cusses you out as you profusely apologize. Your robotic friend simply looks with a raised eyebrow, asking about the mechanism and why you’d set it up on the side of the vending machine, missing the point of the obscurity. You swear you see Kokichi from the corner of your eye, his usual smug smile that ignites that familiar irritation you’d come to associate with him.
You even try the classic hand buzzing trick, only for him to clearly avoid your hands the entire time you’d spent in and out of school. Even after classes ended, he simply claimed he was preserving his delicate hands for his one true love when they’d propose. Unfortunately, there’d been a bit of a breeze that day, and as you try to hug yourself to keep warm, a brief shock shoots you out of your residual morning fatigue. He then chases you around, insisting on giving you a high five for your efforts, as you nearly trip over yourself and yell at him.
( You suppose someone so small had to salvage any method they needed to retain their status as a Professional Threat. He’s more of a Public Menace, but your heart spins along with your mind nonetheless. )
Letting out a sigh as you collapsed into bed that evening, a sigh escapes the confines of your chest. Yet the aches you’d typically associated with playful, if begrudging affection, stung something bitter.
What was the point in a chase when you know he’d never intended to look back, once he outran you? If you had to stop to catch your breath, would he stop running? Or would he disappear around the corner, racing heart in his hands as your body turns cold and sluggish?
Did he even see you? Or just another heart he could suck dry of whatever love permeated through its veins, keeping your arteries at work as your stomach twisted with the wings of the insatiable butterflies? What point was there to waste your energy on a game with no rewards?
You tuck the dilemma away into a corner of your mind, apathy spilling from the sting in your chest.
Yet, the internal wound doesn’t seem to know when to scab over. Become something you could pluck and pull away until it was out of sight, out of mind. Dispose of it in the waste bin, and watch as the light color fades into the rest of your skin, like it’d never existed in the first place.
Or chew on something else to satisfy with a scent that you feel in your nose, yet can’t taste in your mouth. A pack of gum that you’d bought for him, that he’d turned away, wanting to save his appetite for something else. You miss the wink he gives, looking away to prevent your wound from reopening.
But well, you’d made the mistake of falling for Kokichi Ouma, of everyone in your class. He wouldn’t stand for this apathy, not when his darling’s mind is focused on anything but him. His words only earn a hum from you, instead of a usual nod, your usual “yes, but-” that he’d partially sustained on.
“Hellooooo? Anyone home?” He knocks on the side of your head, trying to reboot your brain as he pokes. “Is that gum rotting your brain or something?”
“Hm?” You perk up, and you curse yourself for it.
The warmth emitting from his palms feels like the first taste of oxygen you’d been allowed since you’d tripped and fallen into an ocean, limbs flailing for some sense of security. The only hint you’d get as to if you’d simply fall out of his digits like the wind that skipped by. Resisting the will to lean into his heat that you’d thought was mere myth, takes every last bit of energy in you.
“What’s so interesting in that mind of yours that you’re ignoring me, huh?” He pouts, eyes watering as his bottom lip juts out. “You couldn’t even spare time to listen to me talk about cryptids being remnants of dinosaurs? How heartless!”
“N-No, you idiot! It’s just,” you try to search for an answer, something that won’t drive him away. You hate feeling weak, and yet all you crave would flinch if you stepped too close. “Thinking about things.”
“What things are so important that they’re stealing my beloved from me, hmm?”
You avert your eyes, as he tries to look into you. Unease makes your stomach curdle, and yet feeling as though you meant so little makes you feel worse. Nobody spares sympathy for a sore loser, you suppose.
“Just thinking about what to snack on, later. Not sure if we wanted to-to get something from around here or at home.” You gulp. “My place, that is.”
He resets to his default, a carefree beam as he relaxes.
“Good, ‘cause I’m hungry! If you’re not going to spill what’s on your mind, at least gimme some of your gum!”
“I’m already chewing the last piece.”
“Too bad, I wanna have some!”
You narrow your eyes. “What, you want me to just give you my saliva-covered gum? You’re gross.”
“Ew, I don’t want you to take it out! It’ll get all cold!”
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
Your voice falters just as you finish, feeling the tap of a callus finger on your lips.
“Either open your mouth, or buy me a new one.”
His eyes become lidded with suggestion, as he stands on the tips of his shoes. Like he’d already known what’d been tugging at the strings on your mind and heart, only desiring you voice it yourself, not wanting what should be your words in his mouth.
The world stops as you feel his breath ghost along the tip of your nose, his untamed strands of violet shielding you from the last rays of the setting sun. Seconds, minutes, it all blurs into meaningless gibberish as your head goes quiet. Your wound pauses, hope flooding through your skin as if you’d been heard.
“Okay.” Is all you can muster, parting your lips.
You feel his warmth, holding your flushed cheeks in his hands as he closes that distance between the two of you. He lets you sample him for only a moment, and yet you feel your limbs turn to light. Glowing, your questions answered without a single word, only the sensation of a softness reserved for you, underneath nature’s shadows. Hidden from the leering eyes of the world, a darkness that protected lingering innocence, baby’s breath blooming in spite of the bleak horizon.
A darkness that preserved tenderness. A darkness that knew and whispered love.
He smiles, infecting you–chewing on your gum as he pulls away. “There’s still a little bit of flavor left, but my beloved doesn’t taste too bad.”
“You’re not too terrible, either.”