Archive of Our Own ^beta

Parties, Tsukasa thought, were all more or less the same. He moved through the room full of strangers, people he’d seen once in an introductory calculous course two years ago, people he vaguely remembered was the ex of a teammate of a friend. Everyone, of course, was a friend of a friend’s, more or less two degrees removed from any other person in the room. Tsukasa was never very impressed with two degrees of removal.

You should switch to stats, Kuroo had said, when Tsukasa once mentioned it. Kuroo double majored in business and media communications, and he was always trying to get people to switch majors.

Tsukasa recognized enough of the apartment to remember how lovely it was. It was Kuroo’s apartment, with a high ceiling and large windows, and lights that hung low and asymmetrical, which they all made fun of when Kuroo first moved in—How posh! He’s made it! High-class apartment deco for the young investment banker!—but Kuroo dimmed them when people came over, and the lights washed the small living room in warmth, made it a place you wanted to linger. Kuroo dimmed them now—had pulled out cushions and beanbags from god knows where and piled them underneath, and people sank in, leaned against one another, did not wish to go. Drunkenness settled low in their bellies like tired warmth and mellowed out everything. Laughter was easy. The music was light, dipping into conversations without lingering. People refilled their drinks in the kitchen and paused by the doorway when they came out, leaning against the wall, content to watch.

Kuroo was good at hosting parties. The wild ones, yes, but these especially. Like a snapshot you didn’t mean to take. A moment that passed before you realized you wanted it to stay.

It was easy enough to find him. People gathered around Kuroo, even if they didn’t mean to. A crowd had congregated around the kitchen bar, pushing and shouting over one another. Kuroo, in the midst, was laughing. He caught Tsukasa’s eyes and waved him over.

“Hello,” he said, “Iizuna, hello!”

“Making new friends?” Tsukasa said.

“Jealous, are you? No need to fear.” He patted a shoulder that had sunken onto the kitchen bar table. It was someone Tsukasa didn’t recognize. Thick dark hair, and a leather jacket on a sweltering August night. The shoulder groaned. “We’re just playing a game.”

“A game?”

“Kiyoomi-kun’s photograph was nominated as a finalist for a contest. We’re guessing which one is his.”

A small phone was thrust into Tsukasa’s hands. Tsukasa dutifully swiped. There were only two photographs in the album. The first was a bleak shot of a seaside, a distant silhouette, black-and-white. The second was a train pulling into a station by the sea in the warm afternoon.

Tsukasa could almost touch it, the sun.

“The second one?” he said, uncertain, looking up.

The crowd erupted in disbelief. Tallies were counted, the outcome of bets were cried, cash was exchanged. Kuroo grinned, pleased by the chaos. Tsukasa stared sullenly at him, then he caught something. The stranger had sat up, the flush high on his cheeks. He was staring unblinkingly at Tsukasa, his pupils blown wide and dark. What was his name again, Tsukasa thought, blankly. How dark his eyes were. How dark his eyes.

The stranger moved his mouth. It was as though he struggled to speak, but when the words came, they were clear, almost easy.

“—kiss me.”

The train coursed silently through the city, chasing the last wisp of dusk.

Tsukasa pressed his forehead to the cold window. He recognized the outline of Tokyo, the skyscrapers against the darkening sky, the lights distant and glimmering. Cities were beautiful when you looked from afar. Buildings began looming past him as the train took him in, in, into the heart.

It was late when he arrived. He hadn’t meant to book a ticket at this hour. Kiyoomi had texted him; he was going to come back late, his last class was running overtime. The spare key is behind the empty pot. Let yourself in. Tsukasa followed the map in his phone, the screen alight in the dark. He passed the convenience store, the neat brick walls, the glowing red lantern in front of the ramen restaurant, freshly lit; heard his own footfall in the quiet neighborhood. Felt strange that he’d never seen any of it, in the entirety of this past year. They’d never met up here. Kiyoomi had always come to Ibaraki, never once mentioned the one hour and seventeen minutes in between.

He found the little pot by the unassuming door, unlocked it. Groped along the wall and flicked on the light.

Blinked.

It was messy. Cluttered, was a closer way to put it. There were things everywhere. Coats on the rack behind the couch, sweaters folded on the arm; books on the floor, books under the window, books on the windowsill and under a neat little glass bottle with a sprig of leaf; a camera on the table, rolls of film next to mugs and pencils, sheets of paper pressed underneath a notebook, opened to a page with a few lines of scribbled pencil. The curtain was half-drawn, the window dark with the night outside.

“Hello,” a voice said.

Tsukasa turned. Kiyoomi was standing behind him, his bag slung over his shoulder. It was a shock to see him, so near and real, touchable if Tsukasa reached out. He wanted to. It was unexpected how much he wanted to—the way he wanted to, like a compass pointing simply where it was due. It had been two weeks since he last saw him.

Kiyoomi unwrapped the scarf around his neck. Tsukasa remembered pressing his nose to skin, slow and—

“Didn’t take you to be a messy person,” he said.

Kiyoomi rolled his eyes and stepped in. He brought the cold of the night with him, shut the door.

“It’s not messy if I know where everything is,” Kiyoomi said.

“Not sure that’s the definition of messy.”

“How was the train?” Kiyoomi dropped his bag into the nook between two wobbly piles of books on the floor with clinical precision. “Are you tired?”

“It was fine. Where can I put my stuff?”

“Anywhere.”

“Anywhere,” Tsukasa repeated, making a show of looking slowly around the living room. Kiyoomi didn’t turn around. He headed to the kitchen to wash his hands.

“Anywhere,” he repeated. “I’ll make space for you.”

The first time Tsukasa received a text from Kiyoomi was one week after the party.

I have your jacket, the unknown number said.

Memories: the cry of the crowd, Kuroo’s brows raised, not quite managing to hide his disbelief in his tipsiness, Kiyoomi’s fancy leather jacket disappearing into the depths of the ruckus, Tsukasa draping his bomber around his shoulders before he stumbled out, the night smelling warm, warmer than he remembered.

They met by the front door of Tsukasa’s apartment. Kiyoomi handed Tsukasa his jacket, which was clean and folded more neatly than Tsukasa had ever folded it himself. Kiyoomi looked like he had a headache. His face was gaunt, his eyes dark, though he, too, looked clean.

“Still hungover?” Tsukasa said, amused. “Did you really drink that much?”

“I’m never going out with Kuroo again.”

“Ah. First time?”

“Second.” Darkly, “He played nice the first time.”

Tsukasa patted his shoulder, sympathetic. Kiyoomi stared strangely at his hand.

“I wanted to apologize,” he said, still staring, “for what happened.”

“Ah. The kiss?”

Kiyoomi turned sharply to him, choked.

“You remember!” Tsukasa said happily. “So you weren’t that drunk, after all.”

Kiyoomi looked half murderous and half like he was going to throw up. Tsukasa put his hands up placatingly.

“What about it?”

“Shouldn’t have happened. Shouldn’t have done it.”

“Of course,” Tsukasa said, puzzled. “You were drunk.”

Kiyoomi stared at him, careful, as though he had expected something long and excruciating and had now been let off easy, and was unsure why.

“Tea?” Tsukasa offered.

“No, thank you.” Still wary, “I have to catch the train back to Tokyo.”

“You cleaned my jacket,” Tsukasa said. “You didn’t have to. And you came all the way here.”

“It was the least—I kissed you.”

It sounded so out of place that Tsukasa laughed. Kiyoomi blinked. He stared blankly at Tsukasa.

“Take the tea,” Tsukasa said, “as thank you.”

“I don’t drink from other people’s bottles.”

“Fine. Do you have your own bottle?”

Kiyoomi took a bottle out of his bag, looking lost.

The first thing Kiyoomi taught him was how to wash the dishes.

Standing in front of the sink in the pale dark morning. The kitchen was a narrow strip of space, the opposite wall pushing close to the counters, and it barely fit the two of them. Tsukasa couldn’t move without bumping his hip against the counter. He couldn’t move without touching Kiyoomi. A small window was hinged between the two opposite walls, soft with light.

“Turn to the left for warm water,” Kiyoomi said.

“Thanks,” Tsukasa said. “It’s my first time seeing a faucet.”

Kiyoomi rolled his eyes. He looked soft like this, his hair tousled from sleep, standing in his kitchen in an old t-shirt. It was hard not to stare. Tsukasa fixed his eyes on the wall in front of him.

“Three different sponges,” Kiyoomi said.

“Three different—”

Kiyoomi ignored him and reached for a sponge. Last night, brushing his teeth in the bathroom, Tsukasa wondered whether they would sleep in the same bed. He returned to the bedroom to find Kiyoomi rolling out a futon. The floor had been cleared—the books removed, the laundry basket relocated under the bed—and the futon fit, just so, unfurled beautifully half a meter from the bed.

Three sponges and a handful of oddly shaped brushes and scrubbers later, Tsukasa washed the plates while Kiyoomi moved the dishes from the rack to the cabinet. No class until the afternoon today, Kiyoomi had said. The semester was ending, and the workload ceased before it would pick up.

“Not that you would know,” Kiyoomi added. Tsukasa was an athlete student, and his semester had ended earlier.

“Hey, I take classes too,” Tsukasa said. “What do you guys have—film projects? Make a movie for the final?”

“Portfolios, mostly, for photographs. But yes, I have a film due this semester, too.”

“Oh. What’s it about?”

“Love,” Kiyoomi said.

Tsukasa stilled.

Beneath the sound of the running water, the syllable landed softly in the kitchen, settled in the nooks and crevices between the plates and mugs.

“It’s a tacky prompt,” Kiyoomi said. He stretched to put a glass in the overhead cabinet. “I don’t know what I’m doing with it yet.”

“Tacky?”

“Cliché, generic, overdone.”

“Doesn’t sound tacky to me,” Tsukasa said. Remembering the word in Kiyoomi’s voice, the soft syllable, though he hadn’t forgotten it yet. A rehearsal. “It’s just difficult to be honest.”

Kiyoomi glanced at him, the way he did, sometimes, when he was surprised.

“Yes,” he said.

They went to the ramen restaurant, once.

Tsukasa hadn’t expected to see Kiyoomi that day. They had a home game, which they did badly in the first half and better in the second, though their better hadn’t been enough. Tsukasa took a long shower. When he stepped out of the stadium, Kiyoomi was there, waiting.

Tsukasa blinked. His hand went, self-consciously, to his wet hair, which he hadn’t bothered to dry. Kiyoomi’s glance followed.

“You’ll get a cold,” he said.

“Were you here the whole time?”

“I missed the first ten minutes.”

He saw everything, then. Tsukasa wondered how much Kiyoomi knew about volleyball. He ran through the game in his mind, blurry and sharply vivid—everything he did right, everything he could have done better. It was a strangely miserable thought, that the first time Kiyoomi saw him play was when he lost.

They were walking; Tsukasa hadn’t noticed. He wasn’t sure where they were going. It happened, sometimes, when he was with Kiyoomi. Things were easy. He didn’t think about the details, the pointless mundanities.

“The first time I lost a volleyball game, I was seven,” Kiyoomi said.

Tsukasa blinked.

“You play—?”

“My cousin was also there. It was a short game. It wasn’t fair, when I thought about it later, twelve-year-olds against seven-year-olds, but it was a loss still. I wanted to go to the gym and practice, afterwards, but Komori was crying so hard that we went back home instead. On the way, he got distracted by a stray dog and followed it into the fields, and we found a bush of wild strawberries. Komori forgot all about the game and ate so much he was sick the day after. It was quite a sight.” Kiyoomi tipped his head towards the sky. “When I lose a game, after, I remember that afternoon sometimes. How the strawberries were sweet. How they’re still sweet even when a game is lost.”

Tsukasa looked at Kiyoomi. He wanted to make light of the moment, to be humorous, but the memory was so lovely that he couldn’t quite.

“I didn’t know you played,” he said.

“Until high school.” Kiyoomi looked at him. “You were very good.”

“Am I?”

Kiyoomi rolled his eyes. Tsukasa laughed.

“Where are we going, by the way?”

“Ramen place. You’re hungry.”

At the restaurant, Kiyoomi disinfected the table and the chopsticks and then the ramen arrived, and Tsukasa took a bite and realized that yes, he was hungry. He was starving. Across, Kiyoomi dipped his spoon into the broth. The lights were low, half of his face brought sharply into relief in the golden light.

“That day, at the party,” he said, “why did you pick that photo?”

Tsukasa looked up.

“Have you been thinking about it,” he said, amused, “this whole time?”

“Not the whole time,” Kiyoomi said.

An old song was playing on the radio, slow and grainy and soft. Tsukasa couldn’t name it if he was asked, but he recognized it nonetheless, as though he’d always known it. Outside, a distant rumble. It was going to rain.

“I liked the photograph,” Tsukasa said. “It was a quiet way to look at the world.”

Kiyoomi stared at his broth. He’d leaned casually on one shoulder, but he was holding himself very still.

“No one else picked it,” he said. “You were the only one.”

“It was beautiful.”

Kiyoomi looked up, suddenly, and their gazes caught—Kiyoomi’s eyes dark and wide before he looked quickly away, as though he hadn’t expected it. He shifted, placed one hand on the inside of his elbow, the other on the table—pale and thin, like a bird that landed only briefly here and there—a touch, a lingering.

Tsukasa placed his hand on the table, too, centimeters away.

On the radio, the woman whispered: une part de bonheur dont je connais la cause…

“Ah,” Kuroo said, when he picked up the call. “The suitor! How is Tokyo?”

Tsukasa didn’t call Kuroo often. For all his parties and half-joking schemes of matchmaking, Kuroo saw everyone piercingly. It was unnerving to realize that you were known more intimately than you had expected.

“You are in his apartment as we speak,” Kuroo said, twenty minutes later. “You realize that you are literally sitting on his bed?”

The apartment was empty. Kiyoomi had gone to class. Tsukasa pulled his knee to his chest. The bed was the only blank space in the bedroom, the covers folded neatly at the feet, the pillow tidied. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed on here. Kiyoomi never said anything.

“We’re not even sleeping in the same bed,” Tsukasa said. “I’ve been sleeping in the futon. On the floor.”

“So he wants to take it slow. What’s so bad about that?”

“I don’t know what he wants,” Tsukasa said. “I don’t know if he wants—what I want.”

Kuroo stared blankly at him. Tsukasa hid his face behind his knee, feeling ridiculous in the naked silence, and looked away.

“You can’t be serious,” Kuroo said. “You think it’s casual.”

“What do I know—”

“You can’t think it’s casual, Tsukasa, or you’re more of an idiot than I thought you were.”

“What do I know,” Tsukasa said again, stubborn. Kuroo leaned back in his chair.

“I’m guessing Kiyoomi’s never said anything.”

“He’s not the kind to say things.”

“So you know,” Kuroo said. Tsukasa lifted a brow, incredulous. Kuroo smiled a little and threw his hands up. When he spoke again, it was gentle.

“Tsukasa. He takes a train for an hour and a half to see you and never mentioned it once. He invited you to stay at his place. He asked. Sakusa Kiyoomi who keeps a five-meter radius from everyone wants you in his space. It’s not casual.”

The bedroom, quiet again. Kuroo had to leave for his business management class. Tsukasa stayed on the bed and let the sun climb slowly and warmly up his arm. A little piece of oasis, he thought to himself in jest, but the truth was he’d grown to be fond of the apartment: its cluttering mess, its nooks and crevices exactly the size of a folded umbrella or a water bottle, its rhythm, this went here and that went there, its elaborate routine of dish-washing armed with a collection of three different sponges, the slow hours spent on weekends carefully scrubbing the bathroom clean. It had taken him in, folded him into the space. He’d learned to recognize this quiet, this warmth. The pipes in the wall humming when someone upstairs flushed the toilet. He would recognize it anywhere.

The lock turned. Minutes later, Kiyoomi walked in. He stopped by the door when he saw Tsukasa sitting on the bed.

“It’s way more comfortable than the floor,” Tsukasa said.

“Are you a cat,” Kiyoomi said, and dropped his bag onto the chair. Tsukasa laughed, and Kiyoomi smiled a little. He looked exhausted.

“Long day?” Tsukasa asked.

Kiyoomi shrugged. Tsukasa opened his arms before he could think, and froze. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed it, this casual intimacy, but Kiyoomi walked over—cautious, like an animal—and sank against him, slowly at first then surely, the movement pushing Tsukasa back against the wall so that his neck craned, Kiyoomi’s chin tucked at his shoulder. He put, lightly, a hand on the small of Kiyoomi’s back.

“Something happened?” he asked.

Kiyoomi let out a breath.

“Stupid film,” he muttered.

“Something went wrong?”

“No. The professor doesn’t like it.”

“Ah. How dare she.”

Kiyoomi snorted. He turned his face to Tsukasa’s neck.

“We can watch it together, if you’d like.”

“—the film?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not finished yet.”

“I know.”

“It’s very rough.”

“Okay.”

Kiyoomi pulled away and stared at him. Tsukasa held his gaze. He tried to keep his hand there, lightly, on the small of Kiyoomi’s back.

“Only if you want,” he said.

It was hard to read Kiyoomi’s face, so close, his eyes dark in the afternoon light. Finally he rolled off Tsukasa and onto the bed.

“Fine,” he said to the ceiling.

Tsukasa missed his warmth, the weight of him, but he pushed himself up from the bed.

“Okay. We can do it after we eat.”

“We’re eating?”

“You’re hungry,” Tsukasa said. “I’ll cook.”

Kuroo had thrown another party two days before Christmas.

Tsukasa had spotted Kiyoomi early, from the other side of the living room, talking to someone he thought he vaguely recognized—one twin, or the other—before Tsukasa himself was pulled into another conversation. The evening had begun early. Kuroo had lit some vintage lamps, here and there, warm and golden, had taken out an old recorder, and everyone around the apartment took turns ordering songs to be played, slow and tacky and romantic, songs that whispered love. The heater hummed in the walls. People nestled into the cushions on the floor, leaned against the wall, pulled their knees to their chests. Every now and then someone sang along to the music, and the crowd followed before dissolving back into conversations.

It was a long night, like a memory that didn’t quite want to end. Tsukasa saw Kiyoomi in glimpses: putting the plastic cup down on the table across the room, turning when his name was called, bringing the drink to his mouth, leaving the kitchen, saying something to his friend. All night long Tsukasa lost him in the crowd and then found him again, watching from a distance, lingering, not quite wanting to leave, pulled away nonetheless by one more conversation, one more drink.

They found each other, in the end, in the kitchen. Tsukasa was watching the party, leaning against the counter, when Kiyoomi walked in. Their gazes caught when Tsukasa turned, and Kiyoomi hesitated, briefly, a hand on the wall, before he continued his way over. He came next to him and leaned, too, against the counter. Their elbows almost touched. The quiet between them like a breath one didn’t know one was holding.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Kiyoomi said, voice low.

Tsukasa turned, caught off-guard. In this light he couldn’t tell if Kiyoomi was drunk, though he knew he had been drinking, had watched him drink—in the blur of the crowd, across the room, framed between a door left ajar. The plastic cup sat, now, on the other end of the sink. The lip glistened in the dim lights, the ghost of the print of a mouth.

“Have you,” Tsukasa said.

“Why are you hiding here?”

“I don’t always like crowds very much.”

“Mm. Me neither.”

“I thought you liked people.”

“Only sometimes. Not always. Especially not when they’re all together.”

Tsukasa laughed. Kiyoomi turned, a small smile on his lips. His gaze dropped quickly to Tsukasa’s mouth—back up—down again. The laugh died in Tsukasa’s throat. His mouth parted.

Someone cleared their throat. They quickly looked up. Kuroo was standing at the threshold of the kitchen, holding two empty bottles.

“Ah,” he said. “Excuse me.”

Kiyoomi slipped away. Tsukasa grabbed around the sink and found his own cup, took a long sip. Kuroo came to stand next to him, rinsing the bottles under the tap.

“I believe you just won me twenty dollars,” Kuroo said.

Tsukasa choked on the sharpness in the back of his throat. “What was the bet?”

Kuroo smiled and said nothing. He shook the water off the bottles in the sink.

“You were pretty close just then, hm?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Sakusa Kiyoomi keeps his distance around people. Not a big fan of physical proximity. Usually, at least. Not always, it looks like.”

Later, someone suggested they all went to McDonald’s for midnight snacks, and everyone filed out of the door and into the night, into the cold, into the open, the crowd spreading out into clusters of people here and there, the laughter from the front so distant it echoed on the streets. The stars seemed so far. Tsukasa lingered in the back, watched as people drifted apart and towards one another. He watched Kiyoomi, caught up in quiet conversation, and the crowd growing as people joined, and Hinata laughed, Bokuto attempted a bear hug, which Kiyoomi dodged, only to stumble into another pair of forceful arms and bristled, struggling to free himself. Two degrees of removal, Tsukasa remembered. These were Kiyoomi’s two-degrees-of-removal—the party a constellation of people connected to Kiyoomi in this way or that, through this person or that someone. He was content to be a part of it all, then. The crowd, these people, which was nothing more, really, than a question of semantics. Wanted to linger here, to watch the way Kiyoomi carried himself as he moved through the world.

“Iizuna!”

Suddenly Motoya crashed into him. An arm slung around Tsukasa’s shoulder, he followed Tsukasa’s line of sight and landed on Kiyoomi. His brows lifted, and clarity dawned in his eyes.

“Ah,” he said.

“Whatever you’re thinking—”

“It hasn’t been easy, has it?” Motoya patted him, sympathetic. “Kiyoomi can be difficult sometimes. But don’t worry, you’re doing great.”

Tsukasa blinked. Motoya departed, making a beeline for Kiyoomi, who turned around just in time for Motoya to ruffle his hair. Kiyoomi cursed. Tsukasa laughed, quietly, to himself. The stars were so far away he was sure he was the only one who heard it.

“Sorry,” Tsukasa said, “I think your professor’s right.”

Kiyoomi scowled. He threw his head back and stared at the ceiling.

“I don’t like you,” he said. Tsukasa almost laughed, surprised.

“I like it, though. It’s quiet, like everything you do. It’s just—” he searched for the words— “missing something.”

Kiyoomi kept staring at the ceiling. Tsukasa looked at him, the hollow of his throat in the waning afternoon light, and remembered kissing him there the night they slept together—the thrum of his heartbeat under his mouth, the low hum of warmth. He wanted to reach out, now, to touch him again, to walk into that memory, and keep it there, maybe. Kiss him, maybe.

Suddenly Kiyoomi turned, and their gazes caught. His eyes were dark in the fading light.

Outside, a sparrow flitted down the lines of telephone pole.

Kiyoomi broke their gaze and turned his head away. Tsukasa breathed in. Gathered their plates and walked into the kitchen as Kiyoomi spread himself across the couch. Tsukasa turned on the tap and placed the plates in the sink.

“What did you do at home today?” Kiyoomi asked from the living room.

“Nothing much. Nothing, actually.”

“Is that what you usually do when you get a day to yourself?”

“Well, what do you do if you have a day to yourself?”

Quiet.

Light filled the kitchen as the sun came out briefly from behind the clouds, then faded again.

“Wake up early in the morning,” Kiyoomi said. His voice was slow and steady, almost as though he was talking to himself. “Make something simple to eat. Wash the dishes the way they are supposed to be washed. Clean the room. Take a walk, eat dinner at the ramen restaurant down the corner, and order what I always order.”

“That sounds lovely,” Tsukasa said, a moment later.

“Yeah.”

“Woah. Now I think my answer was lame.”

Kiyoomi snorted. Soft sounds came as he shifted on the couch. Tsukasa put a plate onto the drying rack.

“You’re the only person who knows how to do my dishes.”

Tsukasa paused.

“No one else ever bothered to learn?” he asked, lightly.

“I never told anyone else how to do it.”

“Not even Motoya?”

“He is not coming anywhere near the dishes.”

Tsukasa laughed. He placed the next plate onto the drying rack, careful. Outside, the sparrow hopped along the line before flying off—dipping once, twice in the air, as though stumbling towards where it was called.

They had met again, at Tsukasa’s place, two days before New Year’s. Kiyoomi had texted him. Tsukasa remembered, then, what Kuroo had said: that Kiyoomi kept his distance around people. Remembered the night of the party, the two of them leaning against the counter next to each other in the kitchen. He’d never noticed it, this closeness between them, never even thought to question it. Kiyoomi had always reached out so easily.

They went to the convenience store two blocks down for karaage and beer, and Tsukasa led them up to the rooftop when they headed back to his place. It was a cold night. The air almost smelt like snow, though it wasn’t forecasted. As they climbed up the steep stairs that snaked up outside the building, past the rusty railing and the pots of plants placed here and there at the turn of the stairs, Tsukasa had the strange feeling that they were walking through the heart of Ibaraki, even though the neighborhood sat quietly at the fringe of the city. These nooks, these crevices, their footfall along the path as though the streets took them along, carrying them towards a destination. He was aware of Kiyoomi behind him, his hand falling on the railing where Tsukasa’s fell a moment ago, following him to a corner he’s never been in a city he’s visited over and over by now. Tsukasa has never shown him the roof before.

Ibaraki unfolded underneath them. It was a quiet fanfare, really: lights connecting brilliantly here, there, and then receding into the dark hills. The wind was strong. Tsukasa hid his face into his bomber jacket. He turned back to Kiyoomi.

“This is colder than I thought it would be,” he said.

Kiyoomi was gazing down. He snorted.

“It’s cold everywhere.”

“Do you want to go back down?”

“This is fine.” He turned to Tsukasa. “Anywhere you want to go.”

Tsukasa forgot the words on his tongue. They sat on the edge of the roof and ate the karaage while it was still hot. For a brief moment it felt like New Year’s Eve, as though any moment something new was going to arrive in its quiet, unexpected way; they had not been keeping track of time, and, lost in the night, they could linger here for however long they wished, this pocket of time where New Year’s was always near, always just coming towards them—then Tsukasa remembered the date, and the night slipped back into its ordinariness. Kiyoomi was gazing down at the city. Tsukasa had talked, at the convenience store, about how lovely the lights were at night, and felt embarrassed about it now—how unassuming it had turned out.

“I guess I didn’t really remember it right,” Tsukasa said.

Kiyoomi turned, surprised.

“What?”

“The lights.”

“What about them?”

“Just—how they are. They’re pretty ordinary.”

Kiyoomi looked at the city again.

“I think it’s beautiful,” he said.

Their gazes caught, and Kiyoomi didn’t turn away, this time. His glance dropped quickly—light as a bird—to Tsukasa’s mouth.

“Kiss me,” he said.

In the distance, the sound of small fireworks exploding. Someone was celebrating early. Tsukasa couldn’t read Kiyoomi’s face in the dark.

“Are you drunk,” he said.

“No.”

The cans of beer sat, unopen, behind them.

Tsukasa touched Kiyoomi’s face. He pressed his thumb to the corner of Kiyoomi’s mouth—traced the curve of it, searching—felt Kiyoomi’s lips part. He leaned in and kissed him. Slowly at first, lightly, then Kiyoomi opened his mouth, and Tsukasa framed his face with both hands, tilting his head as the kiss deepened.

Tsukasa’s apartment had never looked so messy, and he’d never cared less.

As the night slipped away, Ibaraki closed her eyes and dreamed of a pair of lovers in a small, cramped bed.

It was raining the next morning.

Tsukasa had woken up early and made himself hot coffee with cheap instant powder. He drank it in the kitchen. The sound of the falling rain filled the house softly. Kiyoomi was still sleeping, the covers tucked between his legs, the morning light soft on his cheek. It was how he had looked the morning after they’d slept together, when Tsukasa woke up in the mess of his bed, disoriented, and stumbled into the closeness of him, the soft slant of his mouth in the dim morning light. He was so deeply, soundly in sleep, as though he was right where he was meant to be.

All this time, Tsukasa carried that night inside him like a fruit growing heavy in the summer sun. How he had stumbled over the closeness of their bodies. He had wanted to press his mouth to the inside of Kiyoomi’s wrist when they’d finished, had held back instead, embarrassed. Sweetness pulled apart at the knees, as though it was easy to unbecome.

Outside, a sparrow chirped twice, the sound soft amidst the falling rain.

Tsukasa put the empty mug into the sink. When he walked back to the bedroom, Kiyoomi had awaken. He’d pulled the covers halfway up his face, was staring at the rain outside the window.

“I was going to shoot today,” he said.

Tsukasa sat down near the bed and folded his legs.

“You get a day to yourself now,” he said.

Kiyoomi shifted his gaze and looked at him.

“You already woke up late,” Tsukasa said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Tsukasa said, laughing a little. “You already began your perfect day.”

Kiyoomi’s hand was on top of the covers in the bed, so near, and Tsukasa gave into the old impulse. Pushing himself forward, he brought Kiyoomi’s hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to the inside of his wrist.

He looked up. Kiyoomi was staring at him, eyes dark.

Tsukasa thought he remembered what it felt like, but he had missed this. It was slower, here in the late morning, clumsier, as though Kiyoomi hadn’t quite awaken—as though he was reaching for Tsukasa on instinct, again and again. Over the past two weeks they had folded each other into their spaces, into the rhythm of their days, and this closeness was new, like the way they’d moved around each other in the small kitchen in those first days, touching carefully when necessary—a hand on the small of the back, a brief finger to the hip—awkward and delicate in its intentionality.

Kiyoomi’s breath hitched as he clutched his hands behind Tsukasa’s neck. Tsukasa hid his face in his hair, overcome with unexpected fondness.

“Close?” he said.

Kiyoomi wound his hands into his hair.

“I don’t like you,” he said, strained. Tsukasa laughed into Kiyoomi’s neck.

The rain grew heavier.

The sound of falling water settled, gently, in the apartment—here, there, like a touch.

They woke up again late in the afternoon, knees tucked between each other’s legs. It was still raining. They cooked something to eat even though it was late, kissed in the kitchen. Tsukasa dozed off on the couch while Kiyoomi edited his photographs. Washed the dishes in the kitchen as Kiyoomi told him about the different ways to interpret the lighting in this one French film.

That night, the futon was left folded up against the wall.

Tsukasa woke up once, in the middle of the night—the dark so pale he wasn’t sure whether it was dawn in his sleepy disorientation. Kiyoomi had sat up on the bed. He had a loose hand around the sole of Tsukasa’s foot, was stroking the arch of it with his thumb—lightly, like an afterthought. He was looking out the window. It was still raining.

The rain is stopping, Tsukasa thought blearily, and sank back into sleep.

They woke up early on the day Kiyoomi was to film.

The beach was an hour and a half away. The train slowly wound through the heart of the city and headed for the coast. Outside the windows, on either side, Tokyo faded as skyscrapers and apartments grew sparse, and then it was left behind, slumbering in the rising sun. The rain had left the air wet, and the light refracted in such a way that softened everything. The streetlamps along the long roads had not yet been dimmed, a string of orange lights in the muteness of the early hour—pointing.

Tsukasa touched Kiyoomi’s knee.

His hand grew warm.

They arrived at a small seaside town. Kiyoomi’s classmates met them by the station. The sun touched here and there, the sloping red roof with peeling paint, the rusty blue door of a convenience store. They headed towards the beach. Tsukasa watched them set up, taking out the camera and testing the microphone. He watched Kiyoomi talk with Hitoka, whom he recognized from a party or two. He watched him thread through the equipment, check the light, give the signal to roll. He knew nothing about filming, was content to linger in the back and watch the way Kiyoomi worked: persistently, taking the same shot again and again. The quiet, comfortable way he talked with Hitoka. It was like looking at his photographs except without the cleanliness of being framed; everything all at once.

The air grew warm in the burgeoning morning.

Tsukasa licked his lips and tasted salt.

When they took a brief break, Tsukasa walked forward and asked, “Does anyone want drinks?”

The crew volunteered answers and cheers. Kiyoomi glanced at him. Tsukasa took down the answers, walked down the street to the convenience store, found that it was closed, and walked further down to another one. He thought about Kiyoomi, washed in gold, cast against the sea as he crouched in front of the camera. The train roared past him as it came down the railroad tracks along the narrow street.

He returned with two heavy plastic bags with bottled drinks. Kiyoomi was rewatching a recording, focused. Tsukasa handed Hitoka’s green tea to her.

“Are you going to be a famous actress one day?” he asked.

Hitoka blushed. “Oh, I don’t act. I usually do set design. I’m just helping Sakusa today.”

“Ah,” Tsukasa said. “Do you do this often? Help people out?”

“Sometimes,” Hitoka said. “If they ask me. Not a lot of people do.”

“Really? I can see why Kiyoomi wanted you.”

Hitoka blushed again. She looked lovely. The wind picked up her hair, and she looked like she belonged in a photograph, like she had walked out from another time.

“Thank you,” she said. “Sakusa put a lot of thought into the project.”

“He always does. Even though he thinks it’s a bit ridiculous.”

Hitoka looked surprised. “Ridiculous?”

“Yeah, the prompt. He thinks it’s tacky.”

Hitoka blinked. She looked at Kiyoomi, who was talking to someone else over the small camera screen.

“It never felt that way,” Hitoka said. “He’s put such care into it ever since we began to work on the film. It felt like he really cared.”

Tsukasa blinked. He looked, too, at Kiyoomi. He’d bought him barley tea, though Kiyoomi hadn’t said anything. He didn’t know how he knew Kiyoomi liked it, only that he did. Kiyoomi looked surprised when Tsukasa handed him the bottle, said thank you quietly—hesitated, as though he wanted to say something else, but decided not to.

“Are you bored?” he asked instead.

Tsukasa wanted to know what he had meant to say.

“No,” he said instead. “This is fun.”

Kiyoomi lifted a brow. Tsukasa hadn’t done anything except watched.

“You don’t have to stay the whole time.”

“I’m not going back to Tokyo first.”

“Not Tokyo,” Kiyoomi said, puzzled—amused. “There are stores around. You don’t have to stay here and watch.”

“I like watching you work,” Tsukasa said.

Kiyoomi blinked and turned away. Tsukasa watched, astonished, as a flush crept up his neck. He wanted to—to pull him close, maybe, or to touch, to press his mouth to his hair—wasn’t sure he was allowed to, here in front of everyone. Ended up touching an awkward hand to his elbow. He wanted Kiyoomi to look at him again.

Kiyoomi glanced quickly at him, and then pulled himself back into the shoot. And it was lovely, too, to watch from the distance—to be the one who was looking. How messily the equipment sprawled out, how Kiyoomi walked back and forth through it all, flitting, like a bird, sure in what he was doing—sure in what he was looking for, in what he wanted. The gentle way he had with Hitoka. How the sun warmed everything on this cold, early spring day. The quiet, and the occasional laugh from the crew. It was what Tsukasa had first fallen in love with, after all: the way Kiyoomi looked at the world.

Yes, he thought.

It was always a lost cause.

They all walked back to the station together when they finished, the small flock of them. Kiyoomi and Tsukasa saw everyone off. Hitoka caught Tsukasa’s eyes through the window and waved him goodbye, smiling.

“You make friends quickly,” Kiyoomi said.

“This is normal friend-making speed,” Tsukasa said. Kiyoomi rolled his eyes. It was early afternoon, and the sun was generous in its light. Faraway, the sea shimmered. “Have you ever been here before?”

“No.”

“Really? I have.”

“…what?”

“When I was little. Just once. There was this shaved ice shop around…”

Kiyoomi stared at him as they walked. There was something quiet in his eyes, as though he couldn’t quite believe it, this little impossible coincidence. They found the shaved ice shop, which was still open. The narrow wooden doors opened to a low ceiling, like Tsukasa remembered. The upper half of the wall facing the coast was knocked out and replaced with windows, which were left open. The breeze waltzed in and fluttered the noren. Tsukasa could almost smell the sea, could almost hear it.

They sat by the bar and ordered shaved ice. The shop was run by an old couple, who had greeted them when they walked in. They were bickering and laughing in the back kitchen, their voices dampened through the wall.

“Is it like you remember?” Kiyoomi asked. “Ten years ago?”

“God, that’s a long time.” Tsukasa poked at the strawberry on top of the shaved ice. “I think so. I remember the strawberry. Odd, isn’t it, the things you end up remembering?”

“Speak for yourself, the things I remember are perfectly normal.”

Tsukasa laughed. Kiyoomi smiled.

“I remember the old couple, too,” Tsukasa said. “Can you imagine? Making shaved ice for ten years.”

“It’s a long time.”

“The same place, the same thing, every day.”

“It’s not a bad place,” Kiyoomi said.

“No. It’s beautiful.”

The glimpse of the sea, the taste of salt, the walls awash in light.

It’s almost like it could be one of your photographs, Tsukasa wanted to say. But Kiyoomi wasn’t looking at him. He was staring at the strawberry on his fork.

“Maybe with the right person,” he said—quietly, a little taut.

“What?”

“I can imagine spending ten years here, with the right person.”

Tsukasa blinked.

Kiyoomi turned and met Tsukasa’s gaze, his eyes bright in the light.

From behind the kitchen, muffled laughter came through the walls, the timbre of a windchime.

The pace of the semester picked up as it neared the end. Kiyoomi was a blur, disappeared from the apartment early and returned late at night. Tsukasa woke up in the dark to the weight of an arm around his waist, to a knee tucked between his legs.

“Watch it again for me,” Kiyoomi said one morning, before he headed out. He’d left a thumb-drive on the desk. Tsukasa nodded, half-awake, knocking the rim of the mug into his teeth when he drank the coffee.

Outside, the sparrows were singing. Tsukasa closed his eyes and almost dozed off.

He had the strangest feeling that he was watching himself.

It was Hitoka on the screen, of course. Hitoka ordering ramen at the restaurant, Hitoka laughing at something someone said at a party, Hitoka reading the map on the train. Hitoka washing the dishes, one by one, testing the temperature with the back of her hand. Tsukasa remembered, as though through water: ordering ramen at the restaurant, laughing at something someone said at a party, reading the map on the train. Washing the dishes, one by one. Testing the temperature of the water with the back of his hand.

On the beach, Hitoka walked towards the water. The wind picked up her hair, and she looked like she had walked out from another time. In the distance, the sun rose above the sea, slowly and surely, red turning into gold—the sea shimmering all at once, as though the water had confused itself for light.

Hitoka turned. Looking into the camera, she smiled.

The camera, Tsukasa realized, was never just the camera.

All along it had been the person behind it, watching her.

Then, Kiyoomi’s voice—

“What are you doing tomorrow,” Tsukasa said, into the quiet of the night. The semester had ended without fanfare, when Kiyoomi came home early afternoon one day. It had felt like walking underwater, the past few days. Tsukasa didn’t trust himself to speak, wasn’t sure what would tumble out of his mouth.

He thought Kiyoomi might have fallen asleep. But Kiyoomi shifted, his mouth to his shoulder.

“Nothing.”

“Go somewhere with me, then.”

“Okay.”

A quiet lull. Tsukasa ran his thumb up and down Kiyoomi’s hip, the turn of bone.

“You’re not gonna ask where we’re going?”

“Anywhere you want.”

“Anywhere?”

“Anywhere.”

They left early the next morning.

The train ride to the beach, after all, took one and a half hours.

The cart was empty. Tsukasa looked outside the window, even though there was not much to look at when it was still so dark. A lit window here, a string of lights flying past in the distance. The sky was just beginning to unveil, turning a deep shade of blue at the edges. Tsukasa remembered seeing the moon earlier. He couldn’t see it now, tried to remember whether it was crescent or full.

The train rumbled, swaying like the tide.

Kiyoomi had tilted his head slightly to the side, his face hidden in the dark. Tsukasa couldn’t tell whether he was awake or dozing. They had not spoken this morning, moved around each other in the tiny kitchen as they got ready. The quiet had been easy, like an old habit one forgets about doing.

In the empty cart, Tsukasa reached for Kiyoomi’s hand.

It was only holding hands. Tsukasa felt embarrassed about feeling embarrassed, wasn’t sure if Kiyoomi would pull away. Kiyoomi looked down, his face unreadable in the light that flashed past.

He turned his face away.

Curled his fingers around Tsukasa’s.

Tsukasa sank into the seat, swelling with warmth. He closed his eyes.

The sky was tentative with the burgeoning morning when they stepped out of the train station. The wind was soft. They walked along the bank and found a place not too far away from the station, where they sat down and watched the sea turn blue in the dawning day.

In the distance, a flock of sandpipers dipped in and out of the waves.

“I watched the film,” Tsukasa said.

Kiyoomi breathed in. He nodded. He kept his gaze fixed in the distance, where the waves knocked into one another’s embrace, steering himself.

“I’m not very good with words,” he began.

“Me neither.”

“No, you’re honest. When you need to say things, you say them, and the words mean exactly what you want them to mean. I don’t…”

He stared at his hands. Tsukasa wanted, very badly, to touch him.

“I don’t have your ease, your frankness. I don’t say things out loud, and I don’t expect others to understand what goes unsaid. But I wanted to give you what you offered me, what you want—"

“What do you think I want?”

Kiyoomi turned to him sharply.

“You said you wanted to give me what I wanted,” Tsukasa said. “What do you think that is?”

Kiyoomi was staring at Tsukasa’s hands.

“I wanted to tell you how I felt. In words, clearly, so you know—”

“But I do know,” Tsukasa said. “The film was beautiful.”

Kiyoomi lifted his gaze. Tsukasa touched his hand.

“I want this, however you want to give it to me. The words themselves don’t matter so much. I didn’t understand this earlier, but I do now. I think I was just afraid, that’s all.”

“Afraid?”

“Yeah. Aren’t we all, when we fall in love?”

Kiyoomi looked at him, surprised. Then, quietly,

“You have nothing to be afraid of.”

The wind picked up Kiyoomi’s hair. His face was golden in the light. He had never been nearer, he had never looked more real. He was here, and he was beautiful.

“Kiss me,” Tsukasa said.

Kiyoomi touched the turn of his jaw, hesitant and serious. Tsukasa closed his eyes. The kiss was light—something new and delicate, yet at the same time Tsukasa had always known it, like retracing old footprints in the sand along the shore, step by step. Kiyoomi framed his face and tilted it, drawing the kiss out, lingered. Their noses touched when Tsukasa pulled away.

“See?” Tsukasa whispered. “It’s a perfect day.”

Kiyoomi let out a laugh, off-guard. He ran his hand through Tsukasa’s hair. Gently, awkwardly, he lowered Tsukasa’s face and pressed his mouth to his brow.

In the distance, a sandpiper picked at the sand and lifted its head. Ruffling its feathers, it took flight—its reflection a blur on the wet sand before disappearing into the waves.

KIYOOMI (V.O.)

Wake up early in the morning. Make something simple to eat. Do house chores the way they are supposed to be done. Go to the ramen restaurant, and order what I usually order. This is how I would spend it, if I had a day to myself.

(pause)

Or watch you.

As we take the train. As you talk at a party with someone you mistaken for someone else you took a class together with, two years ago. As we wake up late in bed. As you order at the ramen restaurant, and I guess what your order will be.

As you do the dishes in the kitchen, in my apartment, and we do nothing else at all.

It’s a perfect day, always, when it’s spent with you.