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To celebrate the seventh anniversary of the founding of the BBA Team, they had decided to go on a trip. The destination had been Hiromi's idea: sunshine, seagulls, and lazy summer days in a small, drowsy boathouse town in rural Kyoto by Wakasa Bay. From their headquarters in Tokyo, it was no one-day trip there and back, but Hiromi was confident that they’d all appreciate it in the end.
Unbeknownst to her – or anyone – at the time, the rainy season was to hang around a little longer than usual that year. Come late July, the team stared at a downpour lashing out at the countryside views as relentless rain pitter-pattered against the roof of their north-bound bus with the melody of a summer storm.
Max was seemingly the only one unbothered by the weather. Water was his element, rains didn’t faze him. Once the bus began to steer towards coastal landscapes, his heart billowed with joy.
They had booked two rooms from a traditional inn, each the size of six tatami mats. Max had agreed to share a room with Hiromi and Kyouju, upon Hiromi’s request, she got to choose such things. He didn’t complain; he figured he had done something right in his life when a lady felt safe enough to sleep in the same room with him.
In the end, however, the arrangement lasted for exactly one night. The following morning, Takao crawled out of bed an hour after everyone else had gotten started with breakfast and complained that their room, on the eastern side of the inn, got too much morning sun and made it difficult to sleep in. He wanted to change rooms.
Max grinned quietly into his miso soup as it was proposed he’d switch places with Takao.
*
Kai had never been to a place like this. A sleepy town on the coast of the Sea of Japan, tranquil once the rains passed. The blanket of clouds, now pushed aside, had revealed a blindingly blue sky underneath. Where the patchy borders of the peninsula ran, mounts and slopes of green padded the horizontal line of the sea that mirrored the sky’s hues above. The waves carried along a faint breeze that smelled of salt and fish.
He didn’t hate it. There weren’t many people here; everything was muted but the singing of cicadas and the multitudes of hues of blue and green anywhere he looked.
Max had taken off his shoes and was splashing his bare feet in the blue waters of a pier, happily eating a sake ice cream sandwich that the vendor of a small brewery shop had thrusted upon him. Kai would never be caught dead eating sweets like this, but Max was different, the round dessert in a cutesy plastic wrapper suited him and his usual perky nonchalance, his boyish charm. His blond hair was radiant under the sun.
“It really does taste like sake!” he said happily. “A little.”
A small yacht glided across the blue waters, headed towards a harbor to their left. Kai wondered if they could ride one during their stay. He’d never been on a yacht before, not a small one like that. He wondered if Max would like to go with him, just the two of them.
He felt a pinch of annoyance when Max rose to his feet after finishing the sandwich and stated that they should start heading back, that the others were probably waiting for them to return. What would they go back for? They weren’t in a hurry anywhere, not in this place. Kai could very well have spent the entire trip exploring the town together with Max. The rest all had each other’s company already.
“Okay,” he replied nevertheless, not contesting the suggestion, and stood up. He grabbed Max’s hand, his hold determined, then began leading the way back to where they’d earlier come from.
* *
This wasn’t going at all how Rei had hoped.
They’d have gone to see the traditional boathouses, then to a small convenience store – the only one in the whole town – and then a teahouse, where they’d made plans for dinner.
The day dragged on slowly, slowly, as if the ever-present history of the place had the passage of time in a chokehold, forcing the hands of the clock to grind to a near halt. Or maybe he was just cursed.
Rei looked down at his hands. He hated his awkward self, his inability to even keep any promises to himself. This was supposed to be it, he had told himself; he had the duration of this three-night trip to confess his feelings to Max. If he didn’t do it now, he knew he never would.
The prospect alone was overwhelming. He could already feel the opportunity slip through those slim fingers of his, and fast. Max had been glued to Kai’s side ever since they began the journey yesterday and, with a lurch in his stomach, Rei now wondered whether the two weren’t already together – as in, together together. Whether he had missed the boat before it even left the harbor. Maybe his intentions had been circling the drain all along.
And to think he’d had all the time in the world to do it. He had been infatuated with Max for what felt like eons, spent far too long denying it, then slowly easing into acceptance, now finally approaching the finish line; he’d been psyching himself up to ask Max out for a couple of months now, just do it, oh my god just do it; and then he hadn’t.
Now, once again, he found himself standing in Kai’s shadow. Anything he did, he was always too many steps behind. He didn’t blame Kai for it, per se – it wasn’t Kai's fault that Rei was so spectacularly terrible at being honest with his feelings…
Then again, Kai didn’t have to be so darn forceful. For that, Rei did blame him a little.
He sighed at the thought and let it pass. Just another petty voice of jealousy in his heart, wishing he had an ounce of Kai’s aloof brazenness in him. The truth was, even if Kai had no interest in Max whatsoever, it wouldn’t have made a difference; Rei didn’t have it in him to talk about his feelings to Max, plain and simple.
He remained laconic as their dinner was served. It was a traditional Japanese set of raw and grilled fish, and though he had little appetite, focusing on the makings of the food that was served on ceramic dishes shaped like various plants caused Rei's thoughts to gradually disperse, drift away with the waves that lapped against the coast somewhere below the window that their restaurant seats provided a view out of. A belt of traditional wooden boathouses on the opposite shore, all built side-by-side, looked like they were floating atop the aquamarine waters, as weightless as they were ageless.
The never-ending seesaw of the waves cooled him down, helped him reach the calm place in his mind where he felt most at home.
Come sunset, the rains suddenly threatened a return. The team hurried back to their lodging in another inn for the night. Takao suggested card games, he had brought a deck; Hiromi’s idea of card games was to do Tarot readings for everyone. They swarmed one of the rooms to all hang out together and eat snacks they’d bought from the convenience store earlier while the rain began drumming its dull rhythm outside once more.
As he sat there with the rest, watching the drizzle outside, Rei fiddled with the tip of his ponytail and, for just a moment, entertained an idea of a late-night stroll in the rain with Max, always vocally unfazed by such weather… but, seeing how the blond was making merry with the rest, Rei didn’t have the heart to distract him. Instead, he quietly withdrew into the other room on the eastern side, alone.
He felt foolish while setting down his futon for the night. Everyone else was enjoying this seaside getaway, what was he sulking for, day and night? He shouldn’t rely on Max to fix his mood for him.
Later, when the door slid open and a pair of whispering voices entered the room, Rei clutched his covers to his chest and pretended to be asleep. He didn’t stir as Max and Kai settled down on the floor next to him. He hardly dared to breathe, his own anxiety strangling him.
Once the only sound in the room was the pins and needles of the rain on the roof, he slowly rolled over to his other side and opened one eye.
Max was on the middle futon, sandwiched between the other two. He had bundled the covers in his arms, hugging the fabric against himself. His eyes were closed.
Over the team’s past travels during the world tours, they had shared lodgings like this many times. It had been one of Rei’s favorite things about the travels, apart from blading itself. The were nights that held a special place in his memory, rare occasions of him staying up uncharacteristically late just to enjoy Max’s company. Sharing stories with each other, joking around, chitchatting about the silliest of things in the musty darkness of some hotel room in an unknown city. His heart had been so light on those nights.
Rei inched a little closer to the crevice between his and Max’s futons. Then a little closer still. He only stopped once he could make out the dark lines of Max’s eyelashes, curtained shut over his freckled cheeks.
He set his head on the very edge of Max’s pillow. His forehead brushed against Max’s, just barely. The touch was light as a feather; Rei’s heart, on the other hand, beat hard like a hammer.
Then he noticed something moving in the corner of his eye. It was a hand, an arm that slid into view from behind Max, from his other side. Once Rei raised his startled eyes from the stray arm again, he met the deadly glare of a pair of dark eyes from behind Max’s head.
For one silent moment, Rei and Kai only stared at each other.
There was more movement. Max was pulling away from Rei – or rather, he was being dragged away by the arm now wrapped around his waist. Kai yanked Max back, pulled him into a spoon against himself, now completely disregarding Rei’s irrelevant existence next to them. He set his head back down next to Max’s and didn’t stir anymore.
For a fleeting second, Rei’s heart sparked with vindicative rage. He wanted to reach out and grab Max’s shoulder, arm, leg, any part of him and snatch him away from Kai… but didn’t. He couldn’t. The thought of laying his hands on the sleeping Max without any form of consent warded him off from even trying.
He leaned in and pecked the smallest, briefest of kisses on the side of Max’s eyebrow, then quickly retreated to his futon, flipped over to his other side, and resolutely kept his back turned to the other two for the remainder of the night, his heart pounding restlessly in rhythm with the rain.
* * *
Certainly, Max was a bit spoiled. He had never denied it, nor had he ever tried to hide it, not really. What could he say? He enjoyed being pampered, loved being the center of attention.
This was likely the main reason he let the situation develop as far as it had, now.
It had all started off innocuously enough. He wasn’t stupid, he’d noticed the looks from Rei – looks that Rei had likely not noticed he was giving, or at least didn’t realize everyone else could see as well. Adorable in its transparency, Rei sometimes wore a particular silly smile that lingered for just a bit too long; and he was uncannily swift and alert to offer his help in anything Max needed and didn’t need, his gentlemanly antics more redundant than genuinely practical most of the time. He didn’t need to be doing this all for Max.
But did Max ever tell him to stop? Well, no, of course he didn’t, because he enjoyed all the attention from Rei.
He had to admit, the more gradual, more recent development in Kai’s behavior, in turn, had come as a surprise. Kai was more intimate with his actions, he knew how to be subtle yet let his affections show when it actually mattered. Small touches here and there; his fingers brushing against Max’s hair with apparent brevity every now and then. He’d always been frugal with his smile – or any expression of strong emotion, for that matter – but Max had been catching plenty lately. Dangerously plenty, perhaps. It was a bit strange.
A bit exciting, also.
Hiromi was of the opinion that Max let the two go loose with their antics for far too long; the mood among their team was fast growing too weird to her liking. Even worse, Takao was hopelessly oblivious to all of it, and Kyouju just didn’t seem to care. And if they did notice something during the trip to coastal Kyoto, neither said a thing about it.
“So,” she began while having some chocolate cake and iced coffee in a small café with Max the next day, “which do you like more, anyway?”
Max hummed thoughtfully, a smirk on his face, while shoveling whipped cream to his forkful of cake. Sweets shops like this were their getaway from the rest of the team whose fragile egos couldn’t handle such feminine delicacies.
“Well,” he drawled the answer, “honestly, the way I see it, Kai is probably the one that’s better in bed… but Rei is way more boyfriend material. You know? So they balance it out. Best of both worlds and all that.”
“I’m amazed you can say stuff like that with a straight face,” Hiromi mumbled, staring out of the window at some sailboat in the bay. When Max only shrugged, she continued: “But best of both or whatever, you really should say something to Rei. He’s been one sad cat, I don’t know what to tell him anymore if he comes whining to me again. It’s not enough for me to tell him you do like him if you keep eloping with Kai instead. You gotta do something about this mess, man, I’m serious.”
Max laughed and said something dismissive in response, the way he always did, but knew that she was right. Kai was so straightforward, when he wanted something, he took it, and Max wasn’t sure anymore whether Kai much respected the fact that Max never had agreed to dating him; Rei, on the other hand, was way too polite for his own good, and Max knew that he’d never get anything out of him without taking the initiative.
And it was kind of troublesome how cute they both were while at it.
“Fine,” he then said and planted his emptied glass on the table with zest, “I’ll come up with something. But – I need your help with it.”
*
In hindsight, Kai had known from the beginning that something was odd about the way things lined up that day.
Instead of agreeing to a boat trip with him, Max had proposed a sightseeing cruise to a nearby island with the whole team, but then Hiromi had very pointedly reminded them of Kyouju’s proneness to seasickness and said it wouldn’t be fair to leave him behind. Somehow, she’d then managed to persuade Takao to also stay behind to explore some temples in the area, or something such. Hence, Kai did find himself aboard a ferry with Max, but also with a certain third wheel tagging along.
The fifteen-minute ferry ride was uneventful. They stood on the deck staring at the blue boundary of the sky and the sea, as well as a colony of seagulls terrorizing – or entertaining – another tourist boat passing by. Patches of snow-white clouds flecked the sky, no remainders of last night’s rains anywhere to be seen. It was the first bona fide summer day of their trip, hot and humid. The breeze on the deck made breathing easier.
Kai hadn’t much paid attention to Rei’s demeanor during the trip until now, but he could tell that last night had generated notable tension, a chord out of tune pulled taught between them. Rei kept his distance, with Max as buffer between them at all times, but Kai could sense him seething under the calm surface. Troubled with his emotions as usual. Well, that was certainly not Kai’s problem.
On the island that lay in the embrace of the bay, they disembarked to join other travelers in climbing a set of steep stone stairs in the sweltering heat, the destination a viewing platform at the top. It didn’t take long, however, for the adventurous trio to decide to get off the beaten path to go explore the rugged land that, from afar, looked like mountains of broccoli rising and falling with all the lush greenery surrounding it. This, too, was first and foremost Max’s idea.
From up high, it was evident that only the coastlines of the peninsula were inhabited by people, the rest covered by unrestricted wilderness. There were no human constructions in the mountainy woods, not even shrines. Not much to see, and Kai wasn’t exactly the hiking type, he preferred activities with a definitive goal in mind. Rei was the opposite, his gait and spirits alike visibly lighter up here in the mountains; boonies like this was where he came from, after all.
Max seemed oddly excited about this little excursion as well. Kai couldn’t figure out why and he only followed, a few steps behind on route seemingly nowhere.
And then, with a yelp of surprise and a flash of fair hair, Max was suddenly gone. He had disappeared through the thicket as the underbrush had given in under his feet.
Kai crept in closer with both caution and alarm. He stopped just short of a ledge over what appeared to be a sinkhole, a pit in the ground. He got down to his knees, carefully peeking past the ledge, and saw Max sprawled in the bottom, disoriented. The drop wasn’t terribly deep, perhaps six and a half feet, but deep enough to make an unpleasant surprise fall.
Rei was quick to join Kai, he crouched and stared down in disbelief and horror. “Max! Are you okay?”
“Um, yeah,” Max yelled from the bottom, his tone uncertain. He brushed some sticks and leaves off his hair, shuffling his feet restlessly. “Or not. I think I maybe sprained an ankle or something. I don’t think I can climb on my own.”
“I’ll go get him,” Kai said immediately, so swift in his movements that he was almost on his way down the ledge already when Rei violently grabbed the shoulder of his shirt to pull him back.
“No you won’t. How are you going to get back up? Let’s think about this for a minute first.”
Kai’s answer would have been ‘I’ll figure something out’ – he knew that he would have – but let Rei have his moment this time. And fair enough, as Rei was quick to point out, he was the one of them who’d spent most of his life scaling mountains and caves much deeper than this with his bare hands.
They quickly decided that Rei would go down, grab Max, and bring him up to a point where Kai could lift him the rest of the way. Rei then wasted no time sliding down the side of the hole, making it look awfully easy despite the wall being a near straight line down. Max noted this from the bottom as well, his aquamarine eyes shining bright as he braced for the arrival of his savior.
Fine.
As Kai stared at the two hustling at the bottom, Max climbing on Rei’s back who then began an appallingly easy ascent despite the added weight on his lean frame, he wondered about the supposedly sprained ankle. Even more so as Max a moment later climbed atop Rei’s shoulders and Kai reached down to secure the blond in his grip, easily pulling him the rest of the way back to the surface, and Max showed no signs of shying away from using either foot.
“Whew!” Max sighed in contentment on Kai’s arms. He sported a smile as bright as the afternoon sun behind the forest canopy overhead as he pulled away and sat up on crossed legs. “Now that was exciting.”
“Are you sure you’re alright? That was a long fall,” said a concerned Rei who’d just jumped back over the ledge with the finesse of a cat. His fair clothes were smudged with patches of dust and dirt all over.
“Yes! I’ve never been better!”
“I don’t think he was hurt to begin with,” Kai pointed out, giving Max a deadpan look.
“Does it matter?” Max asked chipperly, and Kai only stared as the blond grabbed one of his hands. Then did the same to the right hand of a very confused Rei on his other side. He brought their hands together in front of him. “You two were very heroic, working together like that. Good job!”
Kai narrowed his eyes. “Did you do the whole thing on purpose?”
Max’s smile didn’t falter. “Well, the fact is…”
Rei tilted his head, puzzled, but remained mute; the next moment, he visibly flinched as Max brought the two hands he was holding over to the sides of his face. He lovingly rubbed the back of Kai’s hand against his soft, freckled cheek.
“I’m in the mood to be spoiled by both of you, that’s all,” he stated with full, heartfelt sincerity.
* *
For a moment, Rei thought he was about to throw his heart up, then swallow it right back.
Instead, once his nerves calmed down some, what erupted out of him was a flurry of laughter. Not only was Max unharmed, he was clearly his usual whimsical self. The adrenaline from the scare of the fall was washed away by a wave of affection, and Rei cupped his fingers over the cheek his hand was being firmly held against.
The fact that Kai looked so unamused on Max’s other side only made Rei want to laugh more.
“You could just have said so,” he said between gasps for air, “instead of jumping into a hole in the ground.” But Max had always been exceptional at getting his point across by pulling the strangest of stunts.
Max turned to look at him and, under Rei’s mesmerized stare, flipped the hand on his cheek over to brush his lips over Rei’s knuckles. Then he turned to look at Kai, but Rei no longer cared what kind of looks the two might have been exchanging; he was preoccupied with the thunderstrike that had just shot through his heart, his blood growing warm.
But they were done fooling around in the woods. It was time to get on their feet and go back. Rei asked one more time, just in case, if Max really hadn’t hurt himself during the jump.
“No, I’m fine,” he replied confidently. He got up, swept his hands on the blue fabric of his shorts, and straightened his back.
Then, before he managed to take more than one step forward, he took a woozy little side-step, lost both his balance and his consciousness, and fell backwards right into Rei’s arms.
* * *
“Well, that was embarrassing, after putting on such a show.”
When Max had opened his eyes again, he’d found himself lying on the ground. Still in the woods. Still the same afternoon. His head on Rei’s lap, a cheap plastic fan in Kai’s hand blowing cool air to his face.
At first, they had thought he was pretending again – of course they had. As soon as they realized he really had fainted, the two dragged him to shade and began cooling him down, suspecting a heatstroke. Rei had even poured the contents of his water bottle over Max’s head in panic, his hair now dribbling wet.
But everything turned out fine in the end. Max was steady on his feet again after a moment of rest, and the trio traced back their earlier steps to the stone stairs and down to the piers where another tourist ferry picked them up soon enough.
Max had planned it all on a whim, figured that there’d be some convenient creek or crevice or curb over at the hills for him to feign a little accident that the other two would need to save him from. It had been a silly, cheesy, potentially foolish idea, but had worked surprisingly well; as they rode the ferry back to the mainland, the tension between Kai and Rei had dissipated. If anything, they now felt like two bodyguards on duty, standing firm on either side of him, in silent agreement. Max could sense an air of chivalry from them, and it too was silly, and he rather liked it.
Chin cupped in his hands, he leaned his elbows on the railing and took in the coastal sceneries once more, drew in a careful lungful of salt-misted air, savoring the moment. The fluttering winds on the deck had already dried his hair. The breeze felt good against his skin.
It was the final day of their stay. The next morning, they’d hop on the bus to Ama-no-Hashidate and continue back home by rails from there. What a strange little holiday this had been. Max would need to grab a souvenir or two for his family before leaving tomorrow.
But for now, they still had one night.
The whole team reunited at the boathouses and retreated into a small restaurant, to share what they’d done all day while eating sashimi, chawanmushi, and strawberry sorbet, the gradually setting sun keeping them company. Takao, Hiromi, and Kyouju had ended up renting e-bikes and gone to see a small forest shrine at the very southern tip of the peninsula. The other three chose to leave out Max’s deliberate plunge into a void; Max would tell Hiromi all about it later.
The lazy hours drifted by, and the sun sank into the sea. The mild, soft darkness of a summer night engulfed the sleepy seaside town. The waters were still, the scarce lights of the town turning off one by one behind wooden lattice windows by the time the clock struck midnight.
Max lay on his back on the middle futon, he didn’t object as Kai wrapped a toned arm around his upper body again, pressing himself against Max’s back. Kai was tall, Max fit snuggly in his lap. He felt Kai’s steady breath on his skin, calm and warm, his grip confident, protective.
Rei’s eyes reflected the gold of a stray light from outside, he met Max’s gaze in the velvet silence of the room. Max gave him a small nod, raised a hand and beaconed with his fingers.
Come on. It’s fine.
Rei shuffled forward, left his own futon behind. The flush on his skin blended into the night as Max brushed strands of long hair off his face and leaned in to close the distance between their lips. Then Max grabbed his hand and guided it over to his waist, down to the slight curve of his hip, just below where Kai was holding him still. Max’s bare skin felt cool under Rei’s touch.
And so the night drifted quietly along.