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The last of the guests have gone and Haruka’s living room has descended into a heavy, worn-out silence, as if the air in the room, buzzing with energy only hours ago, has suddenly collapsed, like a wave on a beach, and drained into the ocean.
Rin lies back on the couch, exhausted. The little clock on Haruka’s living room mantelpiece ticks slowly away, loud in the quiet. He can hear Haruka in the entryway, bidding goodbye to Makoto.
“Wish you happiness,” Makoto is saying in his frank, earnest way. Rin feels a little curl of warmth in his chest. The rest of Makoto’s sentence is too soft to hear, but then he says, “I’ll come back in the morning, to help you clean up,”
And Rin cracks open an eye to look at the paper streamers festooned over the living room floor and couches, trampled into little bits all over the carpet. One hangs, forlornly, where the Iwatobi piñata – Nagisa’s idea of a present – hung before it was smashed to pieces. They’d used paper plates, but there are still glasses in the sink, to wash. Rin groans, a little. He is too comfortable to move.
In the doorway, Makoto laughs, suddenly, in response to whatever wisecrack (or dry facial expression, Rin is not sure which) Haruka made. “Ah, fine, I’ll come back in the afternoon – ”
There is a beat, and Rin hears the front door snick shut after him, and Haruka’s footsteps coming up the hall, hollow on the wood floor. Rin can tell when he’s gotten to the living room because there is pause in the sound, and Haruka says,
“Lazy layabout,” but it said with so much affection that Rin feels his heart clench, in the middle of his chest.
Haruka crosses the living room, sits on the floor with his back against the couch. At some point during the evening he’d removed his suitjacket, and is now in his white-dress-shirt, tucked into black trousers. Rin can see the summer-browned skin of his arms through his shirt sleeves, the mile-long span of his trouser-clad legs.
“Rin,” Haruka says, soft, but he does not turn his head in Rin’s direction to look for an answer.
Oh, Rin realizes, he thinks I’m asleep.
“Rin – I’m happy you decided to have it here, instead of some hotel.” His voice is thick with tiredness, slow, like quicksand enveloping Rin and bringing him down with him, and with a jolt, Rin thinks, I get to hear him like this every day.
“You know – I wouldn’t have resisted very much if you’d wanted a giant hall and a thousand guests – but I’m happier this way.” He is silent for a moment, shifting in his seat, and the band on his finger glints, in the half-light. “Rin, I – there aren’t many things I would refuse you. You know this already. You could go to the edge of the world and I would pack up and follow. I guess that makes me as big an idiot as you are.” There is a smile in his voice. “Probably a bigger idiot, actually.”
More silence. Rin opens his eyes – briefly – to see Haruka is fiddling with the remains of a paper streamer, creasing it into a sort of shape, and is struck afresh with a tidal wave of fondness. His feet, Rin notes with some amusement, are now bare, heels on the carpet, long brown toes aloft in the air.
“But I’m glad,” Haruka says, “I am so, so glad, that I didn’t have to tell you.” Another crease, and the sculpture begins to take a pentagon-like shape. Haruka tucks the end of the strip into the pentagon’s flap, and pauses, turning it over in his palm. As Rin watches, he places his fingers at four of its edges, and presses in, and the pentagon inflates under the pressure of his fingers: a lucky star.
“I don’t know why,” Haruka says, as he is turning the star around to fix its last edge, “you need this,” the ring on his finger glints, again, “proof? Substantiation? Triumph, like when you won all of those gold medals? Maybe you wanted something to make up for all the things you think I don’t say.”
The lucky star lies in his palm, fully inflated. Haruka turns his head; Rin hurriedly closes his eyes, evens out his breathing.
“Well, you don’t have to worry on that account,” Haruka says, evidently fooled, “I’m going to make sure to tell you every day, starting now.”
Despite himself, Rin’s heart begins to hammer in his chest. It isn’t as though he hasn’t heard Haruka say this already – but there’s something about being told so like this, the knowledge that Haruka might talk to Rin when he thinks he is asleep, say things he might not otherwise say –
Haruka leans in, close. Rin can smell the perfume at the base of his throat, feel his breath against his skin.
“Rin,” he begins -
- and drops the origami star onto Rin’s chest -
“I know you’re awake. Get up and help me clean up, it’s rude to expect Makoto to come keep house for us.”
end.