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Tomoichi could tell Inu-oh was growing antsy, which was his way of knowing that the sun was setting. He leaned back against the side of the vending machine, feeling the dampness of the rain-covered metal seep slightly into his jacket. He gripped harder onto the soda in his hand, listening to Inu-oh’s long fingers nervously tap at the aluminium that surrounded his own drink.
“Is your face itchy at all? Or your ears?” Inu-oh asked, a low tone in his voice.
Ah. Tomoichi rubbed the parts of his head where his darkened glasses lay against his skin. Inu-oh never wanted to admit that their time together was over for the day, so instead, he found more roundabout ways to alert his friend of the growing nighttime.
“Can I take these off?” Tomoichi asked, pinching at the edges of the frames.
Inu-oh nodded, so subtly Tomoichi could barely hear it.
Tomoichi sighed as he pulled the glasses from his face, folding them up before returning them to his bag. He turned to face his friend, trusting that the night sky had now encroached enough to protect Tomoichi’s unshielded eyes from the sun. However, this protection gave him no comfort.
The two didn’t move for a while, not even sipping their drinks, as when those would be finished, it would be just one more sign of their incoming separation.
Inu-oh took a breath as if he was about to speak, but before he did, a vehicle of some kind rushed by the road beside them, blasting music through its open windows. Inu-oh grabbed onto Tomoichi’s hand and backed away from the street, avoiding the puddle that was splashed in their direction.
“Rude,” Tomoichi scoffed, although the hand wrapped around his own had calmed him. “Why would someone be driving that fast on this road-“
“What song was that?” Inu-oh interrupted.
Tomoichi turned to the direction of where the vehicle had escaped to, hearing the faint yet recognizable sound of an English-speaking woman’s voice. He turned back to his friend. “You don’t know?” he asked, surprised.
Inu-oh huffed and Tomoichi quickly bowed his head and apologized. Being so isolated from outside society for the first twelve years of his life led to some gaps in Inu-oh’s knowledge of culture that others took for granted, and he hated when people drew attention to that.
“It was ‘Those Were the Days’ by Mary Hopkin,” said Tomoichi, informatively and without judgment. “It was really big when it came out. I prefer ‘Fields of St. Etienne’ myself, but it’s a bonus track, so I don’t have it on vinyl yet.”
“Yet?”
“Yeah, I’ve tried to get every Apple record I can get my hands on. Well, the good ones anyway.”
“I don’t know who that is,” said Inu-oh.
Oh, that was shocking. Inu-oh was so fascinated by pop and rock music Tomoichi assumed he would have known at least this much. “It’s the Beatles’ label,” he said.
“Oh, I think I’ve heard the man of the house mention them a few times! Though, I’ve never heard any of it. The only records at the Hieza house is the man’s own music.”
Tomoichi’s heart stopped dead in its tracks. “So… you mean to tell me that the very first music you ever listened to that was actually good was-“
“Yours, yes. That song you played when we met.”
A sudden rush of embarrassment swept across Tomoichi’s entire body, almost making him drop his soda. He took a quick swig of it, trying to hide his shock. This wasn’t right! It wasn’t right at all! His amateurish playing shouldn’t be the only exposure to music a boy as special and wonderful as Inu-oh should have! He needed to fix this immediately.
He reached out, clutching a little too tightly onto Inu-oh’s shoulder. “Meet me in the morning tomorrow,” he said, with intensity deep in his voice, “I need to show you something.”
Inu-oh’s posture shifted as he smiled, now less worried to go home now that he had a promised time of when they would meet again. “Of course!”
—
Tomoichi waited like he normally did by the train station closest to the dormitory building of his school. He pulled on the collar of his uniform, now regretting having worn it on an unexpectedly warm day. However, all of his usual out-of-school clothes were in the laundry, so this was the only way he could look somewhat presentable. He could take the jacket off, but that would just make him look like even more of a delinquent than he was already behaving like, skipping class and all.
“Tomoichi!” Inu-oh shouted from down the sidewalk. Before long the two crashed into one another in a tight embrace, almost sending them careening to the ground.
“Oh, wow!” Inu-oh exclaimed, “Why is your bag so big?”
Tomoichi clutched the tote straps slung over his shoulder. “You’ll see,” he smiled.
“And why are you wearing your uniform?” a strange twinge of disappointment was obvious in Inu-oh’s voice.
“I didn’t have anything else,” Tomoichi muttered.
“Aw, that’s too bad,” Inu-oh groaned as he squeezed his friend a little tighter. “I always see you in your uniform, I was hoping to see something different.”
“What would ‘something different’ be?” Tomoichi asked.
“Something cooler. Or cuter, if you prefer. I mean, that’s what I did.”
Tomoichi felt his cheeks grow hotter as he realized what his friend was saying. He felt Inu-oh’s clothes against his body: a lightweight hoodie and a mid-length skirt, which probably would have gotten them weird looks if Inu-oh’s long hair didn’t already get him frequently mistaken for a girl. It was a simple outfit, not too different from what he normally wore, but the fact that Inu-oh described it as cooler and cuter than his usual clothes filled Tomoichi with an indescribably pleasant feeling. The idea that Inu-oh had dressed up to hang out with him… and wanted him to do the same…
Tomoichi broke the embrace before marching down the stairs of the train station, trying to recollect himself, while Inu-oh followed close behind him. This was not the time to think about that! This was the time to help Inu-oh finally gain what he had been missing his whole life.
They turned up several minutes later a few stops down the line, emerging at a shopping district that would have been busy if it wasn’t a weekday morning. Regardless of the lack of crowds, Inu-oh still held tightly onto Tomoichi’s hand, while Tomoichi tried desperately not to overthink the implications of his friend’s intimate behaviour.
However, before they could get a move on, a voice called out from behind them. “Excuse me,” a man exclaimed, “can I ask you two a few questions?”
Inu-oh leaned in, clinging to Tomoichi’s shoulder, hiding himself behind his friend. “It’s a cop,” he whispered.
“Uh, is there a problem, sir?” Tomoichi asked.
“Do your parents know where you are?” the police officer asked. “Or your teachers? You kids better not be skipping school.”
“Oh, uh,” Tomoichi muttered as he felt Inu-oh cling onto his jacket tighter. “We have permission to be here.”
Tomoichi reached into his pocket, finding a flier someone at school had handed him the other day that he had forgotten to throw out. “Here,” he said, handing it to the officer, “We’re running errands for our club. Our supervising teacher is in the hospital right now, so he’s not able to do it. We got permission from our teachers to be out today.”
Tomoichi frowned deeply and ran his hand up and down his white cane, drawing as much attention to it as he could. He was just a poor little blind boy who couldn’t tell the difference between a flier for the drama club’s play and a permission slip from a teacher. How sad!
The officer cleared his throat awkwardly. “Can I get your teachers’ phone number?”
“It’s a school day, they’d be teaching lessons right now,” Inu-oh interjected.
Awkward silence settled between the three of them.
“Well,” said the cop, “you two better finish your shopping quickly so you can get back to school as soon as you can, alright?”
“Yes, sir,” said Inu-oh and Tomoichi in unison.
Before the police officer could even finish saying “you’re free to go”, the pair was already halfway down the block.
“That was amazing!” said Inu-oh. “I knew you were a rebel!”
Tomoichi laughed as he moved quickly through the streets, his cane tapping against the sidewalk as he trusted his memory to lead him to where he needed to go. Before long, they arrived at Tomoichi’s favourite place in the city, marked by the smell of lavender in pots from the neighboring garden shop and the faint music that could be heard from inside.
“Lost-and-found-re-cords-“ Inu-oh sounded out, reading off the sign. “I don’t get it.”
Tomoichi squeezed Inu-oh’s hand. “Go inside,” he grinned.
Inu-oh reached out, creaking open the old glass door and sending the ring of the door chime through the shop. Some experimental rock song Tomoichi didn’t recognize could be heard through the speakers. Inu-oh tentatively stepped inside, with Tomoichi following behind him, feeling the floor beneath him change from concrete to wooden paneling and a blast of air conditioning hit his face. Inu-oh said nothing, almost as if he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing.
“Every single one of these shelves,” Tomoichi said, “is filled with music.”
The hand that was holding onto Tomoichi’s went limp.
A few seconds passed before Inu-oh choked out, “All of them?”
Tomoichi stepped forward, pulling out the first cardboard-bound disc he could get his hands on. “Some of these are just one or two songs,” he explained, in case it was needed, “but some can be upwards of an hour long.”
Tomoichi faced Inu-oh’s direction as his friend stood motionless.
“I think I’m feeling lightheaded,” said Inu-oh.
“Ah!” Tomoichi put the vinyl back in place before rushing in to hold his friend, “Don’t do that, you haven’t even seen the rest of it!”
“The rest?”
“This is one floor out of three.”
Inu-oh’s arm clasped tightly around his friend, burying Tomoichi’s face against his shoulder almost painfully, making his glasses go crooked. Wordless noises escaped Inu-oh’s mouth and his feet began to shuffle around, as though the mere act of being excited was enough to inspire him to start dancing.
“Thank you!” Inu-oh shrieked, far too loudly for being inside.
“Here,” Tomoichi pulled the large tote bag from his shoulder. “Put anything you want in here. I’ll pay for it.”
“Really!?” Inu-oh held tightly onto both of Tomoichi’s hands at once.
Frankly, Tomoichi only had so much money to his name, but he couldn’t think of anything he’d prefer to spend it on.
“There’s a record player downstairs to test things out before you buy them,” Tomoichi continued, “and the upstairs has more open floor space if you need to dance. This place closes in ten hours. Do what you want.”
“I mean it, thank you!” Inu-oh said, sounding as if he was trying to catch his breath, “all of this, all of this, it’s the second most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”
Second.
Inu-oh ran off before he could explain what that meant.
Tomoichi touched across his jacket’s front, feeling his heart beating beneath it. Could his friend not tell just what he was doing to him!?
—
When Tomoichi said the shop closed in ten hours, saying it out loud made it seem as though they had all the time they could ever need. However, now, halfway through the day, it became clear that Inu-oh would not be satisfied by just that.
The clerk that was there that morning had clocked out, and been replaced by someone new, as announced by the shift in genre playing throughout the shop. A poppier song with a bouncy rhythm and catchy chorus began to pour through the speakers, and Tomoichi could hear Inu-oh’s sneaker-covered footsteps rush up the stairs. Tomoichi followed him, finding him taking full advantage of the wider floors of the second story.
“This new lady has great taste!” said Inu-oh, dancing through the aisles. “If I ask her to play something, do you think she will?”
Tomoichi smiled. “Probably. Depends on what you suggest. She’s very picky.”
“Oh, you know her?”
“Yeah,” said Tomoichi, nodding, “Before I started hanging out with you, I came here every day after school. I know all the staff here by now.”
“Here,” said Inu-oh as he shoved the record stack he had been holding into Tomoichi’s arms, “do you think she’d like these?”
Inu-oh read down the titles of the stack as Tomoichi laid them out on top of the shelf in front of them. He was quite impressed! There was jazz, rock, folk, classical, pop, and more, some in languages Inu-oh didn’t even know how to read. They made their way downstairs to give the clerk the record Inu-oh had deemed the most “danceable”, and soon that could be heard throughout the store. After that, Tomoichi took what records Inu-oh had grabbed that he had recognized, and began scribbling down a recommendations list from there.
“Woah, this list is long!” Inu-oh exclaimed.
“Too long? I can make a smaller one.”
“No, it’s great. Do you already have all of these?” Inu-oh asked.
Tomoichi grew bashful, realizing how big his collection must seem to others. “Yeah,” he muttered, “and a lot more.”
Inu-oh said nothing for a moment, before asking, “Do you not have friends?”
“Huh!?”
“I’m not trying to be mean, but, do you not have friends besides me? You don’t hang out with other people our age, and despite music being your whole life, you seem so weird about it. Like this is your first time really getting to share it with someone.”
Tomoichi wasn’t sure what to say. He had barely told Inu-oh anything about his life before they met. It was the same way Inu-oh barely told anything about his own life to him. Tomoichi hadn't spoken about his parents’ deaths, or him having to attend a school for the blind in Shimonoseki, or him bonding so heavily with his music teacher that he got a scholarship and moved to Kyoto when said teacher was transferred to a boarding school here, or the loneliness that he had experienced in an unfamiliar city almost every day since until he met Inu-oh.
“No, not really,” said Tomoichi.
Inu-oh only huffed in response. “We gotta fix that soon. Both of us. Not that I don’t adore you, but we gotta have more than just each other, don’t we?”
Tomoichi felt like he had just been punched in the stomach. Adore. What did he ever do to deserve being adored? Sure, he hung out with Inu-oh every day that he could, and was apparently the one to introduce his friend to real music, both then and now, but that wasn’t special. He shouldn’t have been the first one to do that, it was just bad luck on Inu-oh’s part. He wasn’t even brave enough to dress the way he wanted to, let alone confess his real feelings.
—-
The shifts had changed again as the day grew closer to evening, and now a new person was behind the cashier’s desk. The speakers throughout the shop stood dormant as the cashier preferred to use his headphones instead. Who knows what music he was into.
Tomoichi made his way downstairs, having not found Inu-oh on the other two floors. He had felt like his stomach wanted to leap out of his mouth after what Inu-oh had told him last, so he had gone out to grab dinner for them while Inu-oh had continued to explore.
“Oh, Tomoichi, over here!”
Tomoichi followed the sound of his friend’s voice, finding him inside of the glass closet where the test record player was.
“I think I narrowed it down to these ten records,” said Inu-oh, “I wanted to show them to you.”
Tomoichi waited for Inu-oh to step out but instead he was pulled inside the narrow doors. The space was only barely big enough for one person, let alone two. Tomoichi tried to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, as the far less difficult chest-to-chest would have been completely unbearable for his fragile heart. Inu-oh held the headset in the space between their ears; the volume high enough to allow them to hear the music through the tiny speakers. However, Tomoichi couldn’t focus on the sound, instead, the direct contact from head to toe with his best friend was far more overwhelming.
“This is what I wanna make,” Inu-oh smiled, “music like this. All of this. Music that sounds so familiar and lovable, but unlike anything anyone has ever heard.”
Tomoichi leaned his head onto Inu-oh’s shoulder in an attempt to hide his growing smile. Inu-oh responded by pulling the headset away and wrapping his long arm around his friend’s back.
“Is something wrong?” Inu-oh asked.
“Not at all,” Tomoichi giggled. Inu-oh’s ambition wasn’t the first thing Tomoichi fell in love with, but it was definitely one of his greatest attributes.
“Tomoichi, do you believe in destiny?”
Tomoichi shook his head.
“I do,” Inu-oh said, firmly. “I mean, why did we meet in the first place?”
“We were on the same bridge at the same time.”
“Yes, but why?”
Tomoichi shrugged. “It’s a major bridge. Everyone in this city crosses it eventually.”
“Yeah, but I could have arrived after you left or vice versa, but that didn’t happen! The person who eventually became my best friend in the whole world just so happened to be in the same place at the same time as me on my very first day outside of my home. A boy just as lost as me who loves everything that I love.”
Tomoichi didn’t know what to say.
“I need you,” Inu-oh whispered. “I can’t make the music I want to on my own. And I know that you want to make music too. I’ve seen you perform so many times now and it’s like, the moment you get your hands on a guitar, it’s…”
Inu-oh lifted his head so the pair faced towards each other. Tomoichi could hear the way his breath was so close to Inu-oh’s face. If it wasn’t for his friend’s mask then their lips would be…
“Do you remember how I said the record store was the second most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen?”
Tomoichi squeezed his eyes shut. “You don’t need to say any more.”
“Ah,” Inu-oh backed away as much as he could in the cramped space. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”
“You know, you can’t just go saying that,” said Tomoichi. “There are words… There are things that friends can say to each other and things they can’t.”
“I know that. And I know all the words I’m ‘supposed’ to call you, but what I feel doesn’t match them. So, I say that you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I say I adore you. Because it’s true. I don’t care if that means I’ve broken some rule of friendship. It’s what I feel.”
Tomoichi swallowed and nodded as best he could. “I brought us dinner,” he said, changing the subject. “There was a takeout place down the road.”
“Oh,” said Inu-oh, before going quiet. Eventually, the glass door popped open and Inu-oh swung it outwards. “You know, I think we should leave.”
“Really?” Tomoichi asked, backing away, “we’ve still got another two hours left.”
“I know I’m just… I’m sorry. I’ve been acting weird today, haven’t I? You’ve been all different since this morning, and I know it’s my fault.”
“No, it’s not that at all!” Tomoichi declared, “I’m just not used to all this. You’re the right amount of friendly for me, I’m just not used to it yet.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
“Ok,” said Inu-oh, his voice tinged with disbelief.
—-
Tomoichi paid for Inu-oh’s records and they made their way back to the train station, eating their dinner at a nearby park first. Bizarrely, Inu-oh wasn’t stalling this time, rushing through his dinner and avoiding conversation for the first time ever.
“You know…” Tomoichi began, before shaking his head and taking another bite of his gyoza, dropping the idea. He knew he messed up. Trying to run away from these feelings Inu-oh inspired in him had come across as unintentionally unfriendly, and there was nothing he could think of that would fix this. Now, Inu-oh was so apologetic that he wanted to return as quickly as possible to the home Tomoichi knew he hated, that he knew had no good dance or music within its imposing walls. How could Tomoichi be so cruel to put such feelings into his friend?
Better yet… how could he be so cruel to let him go to that home at all? Every night, parting ways, he left Inu-oh at the mercy of people who were so backwards that they considered his body to be ugly and his art to be unworthy of praise.
“You know, you can head back to my dorm if you want,” said Tomoichi with more confidence.
Inu-oh did not reply.
“I mean,” Tomoichi clarified, “you only got to test out those records, right? You didn’t listen to them all the way through. And you wanted to hear my recommendations for you from my collection. The night is still young, you can stay for as long as you need.”
Inu-oh hesitated. “Are you sure that’s ok?”
To be fair, it probably wasn’t. Tomoichi did not know the dorm’s policy for allowing guests since he had never had one over before. He also didn’t know if the people at Inu-oh’s house had curfew rules for him that Tomoichi wasn’t aware of.
“Of course it’s ok!” he replied regardless. Inu-oh accepted.
—-
After they made their way into the front door, Inu-oh letting Tomoichi know when the dorm manager wasn’t looking in their direction, the pair made a mad dash to the stairs and up to Tomoichi’s solo room.
“Oh wow, did you not just rob an entire store?” Inu-oh said, staring at Tomoichi’s record shelf. “How did you get all this in here? How do you expect to move this all at the end of the school year?”
“Well,” said Tomoichi, embarrassed, “I’ll have you know the fourth shelf is all rentals.”
“Still!”
Tomoichi gave Inu-oh a set of lounge clothes to change into as he pushed his furniture up to the walls, clearing the way for as much floor space as possible. They wouldn’t be able to dance like Inu-oh normally wanted to, otherwise they’d get complaints from the neighbors, but enough space to shuffle around was a necessity.
“So,” Tomoichi said, shaking off his jacket and unbuttoning the top few buttons on his shirt. “Which do you wanna start with?”
“Are you not mad at me anymore?” asked Inu-oh, ignoring Tomoichi’s question.
Tomoichi let out a deep breath, before leaning in to wrap Inu-oh in a hug around his shoulders. “Of course I’m not. I meant what I said; you’re perfect for me. I’m just not used to having someone as outwardly affectionate as you are.”
Inu-oh let out his own sigh as his arm found its way to Tomoichi’s back, as if he had been holding his breath ever since they were at the shop. “That’s nice to hear,” he said.
They stood there for a few moments more, reveling in one another’s presence, holding back words that were not yet ready to be shared.
“Anyway-“ Tomoichi eventually said, before being interrupted by Inu-oh handing a record over to him. “Ah, that’s what I was just about to ask for,” Tomoichi smiled.
As Tomoichi put the disc onto the machine, he noticed his own braille labeling spelling out “side A” in the center. “This is one of mine?” he asked. “Why not one of yours?”
“I want you to tell me all about this album,” said Inu-oh. “You accidentally put it on your recommendations list three times, so I assume you really like it. I want you to have someone you can finally talk to about this stuff.”
Tomoichi’s hands shook with joy and nervousness as he set the needle onto the disc. A familiar strumming of guitar began to spill from the speakers.
“And besides,” Inu-oh giggled, “whenever you recognized a song playing at the store, you always mouthed along to the words. You should try singing! You kept making these fun expressions and I just loved watching you.”
“Ah-“ Tomoichi yelped as he covered his mouth. He once overheard someone at the store call his mouthing along “weird” so he had vowed to stop, but perhaps Inu-oh’s presence had a strange affect on him.
—-
The two spent the rest of the evening doing whatever they wanted. Playing record after record, dancing, singing, trying on clothes, making up new melodies on Tomoichi’s guitar, and so much more. That was, until a knocking from the other side of one of the walls broke into the pair’s shared fun.
“It’s one in the morning!” a muffled voice yelled, “I’ve got an exam tomorrow!”
Cold rushed through Tomoichi’s veins before he heard Inu-oh drop to the floor, beginning to gather the discs and slot them back into their cardboard sleeves. “I’m so sorry,” Inu-oh said, reaching out to lower the volume on the speakers, “I didn’t know it had gotten this late. I can walk home, don’t worry-“
“No,” Tomoichi said, firmly.
Inu-oh’s movements grew less frantic. “You’re sure? I don’t want to intrude more than I already am…”
“I’ll be fine, I just-“ Tomoichi paused. “I want you to stay here for just a little longer. At least until this record is finished. Is that ok?”
If the voice of his neighbor was right about the time, then the trains were already out of service, so an extra few minutes would not have made a difference. He heard Inu-oh let out a soft noise as he nodded, turning the volume back up just enough for them to hear it and his neighbours not to.
Every single afternoon they spent together always ended like this: with neither wanting the other to leave. While this was expected between two close friends, Inu-oh always had a sort of desperation for it.
Tomoichi wanted to ease that desperation.
—-
The record had reached its conclusion, with nothing left coming from the speakers but the faint sound of the needle hitting the center on repeat. Inu-oh was curled up on the ground, presumably asleep, no closer to leaving than he was before. While Tomoichi wished they could stay like this all night, he wanted to make absolutely sure this was Inu-oh’s wish as well.
He reached out, laying a hand on Inu-oh’s shoulder. “Hey,” he whispered, “the album is over.”
Inu-oh only bunched up further in on himself, a small whine escaping his throat as he did.
“Inu-oh-“
Tomoichi felt Inu-oh’s body twitch beneath his touch, his breathing growing more heavy. His friend began to murmur in his sleep before reaching out and grabbing onto the hand on his shoulder.
“Please,” he muttered, “don’t make me go.”
Tomoichi’s eyes widened as he froze in place, before suddenly leaning in, clasping tighter onto his friend’s body. “Inu-oh, wake up,” he said, with more vigor than he would have liked.
His friend’s movements shifted as he blinked awake, turning to face Tomoichi. “Oh?” he whispered, “Is the record over already?” Tomoichi could hear a slight twinge of dread in his voice.
“Yes,” Tomoichi responded, “and I wanted to let you know that I’m not letting you leave this room for the rest of the night.”
Inu-oh stared up at him for a moment before quickly trying to get up. “Wait, no,” he said, “I need to-“
“But do you want to?”
Only the scratching of the needle and light breathing filled the air for a few moments.
“No.”
With that confession, the sense of tension seemed to leave the room. Tomoichi reached out, holding onto his friend’s hand. “Then go back to sleep,” he smiled, “I’ll take care of everything.”
Inu-oh hesitated for a second before doing as he was told, leaning back onto the floor, and light snores could be heard only a little bit after.
Tomoichi let out a sigh, realizing how quickly his heart was still racing. However, his righteousness won out over his nervousness, and he was ready to do whatever it took to keep his friend away from that house that deprived him of music and dignity. He grabbed the blanket from his bed and draped it across Inu-oh’s slumbering form. His friend quickly snuggled up tightly into it, his breathing sounding softer and calmer when he did.
Tomoichi tiptoed over to his record shelf, feeling across the labels before he found the oldest one in his collection: a collection of biwa recordings gifted to him by his beloved teacher. He snuck back over, replacing the disc in the record player, and adjusting the volume to be as quiet as possible while still audible.
Then, he gathered a blanket and pillow for himself, finding his own place on the floor right next to his friend. The strumming of the old biwa strings barely entered into his ears as he bundled the blanket around himself, keeping his arms tucked under his chin. It was a self-inflicted agony, forcing himself to spend the night so close to Inu-oh but keeping a noticeable distance between them. That was, until Inu-oh's long arm made its way over, pulling the pair closer together.
“Thank you,” Inu-oh whispered, “I’ll pay you back some day.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Tomoichi whispered. “You’ve already given me enough.”