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It isn’t easy, keeping Kakeru.
First, it’s having him stay—Haiji feels Kakeru slip away from his grasp, always elusive, even when he’s right in front of him, freshly showered and comfortably settled in Aotake.
Later, it’s Haiji having to leave, after graduation. Kakeru’s arrival in Haiji’s life is an impact that sends him tumbling off his axis. Now, everything looks slightly different, as if he’s finally cleared a smudge off a lens.
It isn’t easy, keeping someone in your life when they’re constantly running to a place you know you can never reach. But it doesn’t matter to him. Haiji’s willing to fight for the things he wants.
At the market, Haiji watches the butcher cleave a pig’s spine in half. How it lies perfectly still as the blade sinks into its flesh, searching for blood. He asks for a pound of ground pork. The plastic bag sits in his hands, cold and soft, the texture reminding him of a brain.
At home, he peels an apple for a snack while Kakeru chops carrots for the curry they’ll have for dinner. There's a quiet understanding between them now, a certain level of comfort between their moving bodies even when they’re silent. Haiji skins the fruit with the edge of a knife until it gleams under the kitchen’s overhead light, bright and yellow like the moon.
“Fuck!” Haiji hears something clatter to the ground. He turns around and sees Kakeru clutching his hand, face scrunched up in pain. He rushes over the sink, apple long forgotten.
“Are you alright?” Haiji places a reassuring hand on Kakeru’s shoulder and watches the cut on his finger ooze blood.
Haiji slips into the living room and brings back a stack of gauze, a bottle of disinfectant, and a few cotton bandages. He motions for Kakeru to take a seat at the dinner table, and Kakeru reluctantly follows, his other hand still wrapped around the wound. It isn’t too deep, thankfully, and Haiji’s able to staunch the bleeding rather quickly. Before he wraps it up, he dips one last square of gauze into the disinfectant and hovers it above Kakeru’s finger.
“Pain,” Haiji tells him, “can be temporary.”
His hands are firm and patient as he cleans the wound, even as Kakeru tries jerking away.
“Sorry,” Kakeru mumbles.
Haiji hums and starts wrapping the bandage around Kakeru’s finger. “I envy you.”
Kakeru is silent for a moment.
“Why?” His voice is soft, almost shy.
Haiji also wonders, why he’s jealous of a boy that materialized out of nothing and crashed into his life so suddenly. Why he can’t seem to tell if he loves Kakeru or hates him yet, or both.
Haiji snips the bandage and seals the edge shut. He looks into Kakeru's eyes and admires the darkness of them. “Even now," he sighs, "you’re beautiful.”
One night, when they're at Lake Shirakaba, Kakeru asks Haiji why he learned how to drive despite Japan’s public transportation being so efficient.
The sky is clear enough to reveal the moon, round and glowing. The night breeze is cool on Haiji’s skin. It makes him want to tell Kakeru everything.
Instead, he says, “Because it was faster.”
Kakeru doesn’t reply, waiting for Haiji to elaborate. But Haiji doesn’t say anything, relishing in the peace only a night away from the city can offer.
“I think you’re plenty fast, Haiji-san.”
Haiji feels like laughing, because, what the fuck? Kakeru’s everything Haiji’s ever wanted to be and more. Yet here he is, saying these things to Haiji, and he knows he’s supposed to be the optimistic one between them but maybe, just for tonight, he can let Kakeru tell him he’s worth something.
It takes a special kind of self-hatred to run while injured. While Haiji is able to tolerate the pain he puts himself through, he is still deeply afraid of it.
On some days, the pain is all he can think about. It hurts, and Haiji doesn’t want to move, but not moving makes the pain even more intense, until moving becomes physically impossible. So Haiji learns to drag himself out of bed even on bad days, and puts on a smile, because things could always be worse.
Every day there is a different pain to be felt. Every day Haiji must learn how to run again. His steps are tentative, body and brain working overtime to protect him. And what does he do?
He throws caution to the wind, and he runs.