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It had been exactly three weeks since Souji left for the city. Yosuke’s calendar indicated that Golden Week should be coming up quickly, but that didn’t feel like the case. The days seemed to stretch longer than usual now that his best friend couldn’t provide an intermission between classes or shifts at Junes. He didn’t realize how much he’d looked forward to those until all of a sudden he was spending a good number of breaks sipping sodas alone in the food court.
Now don’t get him wrong, it wasn’t as if the rest of his friends weren’t there or weren’t enough. They were, and he felt like he belonged more now than he could ever recall, even stretching back into elementary school. There was always a place for him whenever they would sit around and talk, and if there wasn’t a space free already, someone would make room for him before he even had to ask. He didn’t always have to be the one to initiate a hangout. He didn’t feel like he had to crack a joke every time there was a silence to fill. He didn’t have to try and win anybody over, because he already had. They were a team, even though they no longer had a goal, so he didn’t have to prove himself; he’d already made the cut.
That being said, there were still times they all knew something was missing, like when they bought an 8-pack of topsicles and had one left over. Everyone had stared at it, allowing themselves to sink into their memories, until Teddie volunteered to eat that one too and not just because he could put food away like he was still an empty suit. He was “self-sacrificing” enough to distract them from the fact that while they were all closer than ever, they were missing the hub of their wheel.
They all missed Souji, that was a no-brainer. But when Yosuke headed out into the food court on break with a reflexive smile on his face, expecting to see Souji reading a book at their usual table and waiting for him, Yosuke wondered if anyone missed his partner more than he did. He knew he could call up Kanji or Chie or one of the others to come and pay him a visit during his lunch hour, because that’s exactly the sort of thing friends do, and he did invite them over sometimes. But he still hadn’t quite gotten used to the break in routine, the fact that Souji wouldn’t naturally be there to greet him and listen to his weird customer-of-the-day stories and help him relax, sometimes without even being asked or reminded to stop by.
There were a surprising number of habits he had to break now that Souji was gone, like the way he used to rythmically tap his foot against the chair in front of him during class to keep both himself and Souji awake. He forgot a couple times that it wasn’t Souji sitting there anymore after the new school year started, but rather a more nondescript student with a reluctance to speak up and say “Hey, can you please stop that?”. Poor Takuya-san probably thought Yosuke was more annoying than ever by now.
Speaking of the new year, it had been a little hard to know that while he was getting his new third year pins to put on his uniform jackets, his partner was doing the same at a different school with different uniforms, hundreds of kilometers away. Souji’s Yasogami uniform jackets would always have second year pins on them, as if suspended in the past. If only they could all be that lucky.
Those three weeks dragged on, without much out of the ordinary besides what was most obviously out of the ordinary, until Yosuke’s mother handed him a letter from that day’s pile of mail. “This came for you.”
“For me?” Yosuke never got mail, unless it was a package of something he’d ordered online, and this certainly wasn’t a package. He flipped the envelope over and his chest hitched with more excitement than he’d like to admit when he saw the return address.
His mother chuckled as his eyes widened. “I didn’t know Souji-kun was the type to write letters. You two seem to talk on the phone enough as it is.”
“Yeah, he… I mean, you never know with him. I’m not really surprised.” His fingers were itching to rip it open and see the contents, but somehow he felt strange about doing that in front of someone else, his mother no less. “I’m gonna go upstairs now. Thanks.”
He bounded up the steps two at a time and closed the door behind him as soon as he reached his room. He tore into the envelope as quickly as he could while still ensuring that whatever was inside wouldn’t get ripped, and in a matter of seconds a compact bundle of green paper slipped out into his hand. Confused, he turned it over until it was upright and could easily be identified as an origami frog. The folds were precise and crisp, almost like the work of a professional. It was official: Souji really was good at everything. Yosuke unfurled its delicate legs so it was posed like it was ready to leap and then set it down on his desk, a huge smile stuck on his face. When he looked back inside the envelope and noticed there was a note included, it grew even more.
The note was also folded in half despite being tightly sealed in the envelope, as if taking further measures to reserve its message for Yosuke and Yosuke alone. Seeing Souji’s clean and delicate handwriting again made him pause for a moment. Even though it had only been three weeks, he realized then that there were few things he’d wanted more than a note from his partner, like the ones Souji used to pass back to him while feigning a stretch in class. For a moment, he could feel like all the distance between them wasn’t an obstacle; they were passing notes just like old times, only now through the postal system and not just over Souji’s shoulder.
In careful black pen, it read:
“I promised Nanako I’d send her some paper animals, so I figured I would send you one too. Maybe some day I’ll get good enough to make one that looks just like Jiraiya, but this is all I can do for now. I hope it didn’t get crushed in the mail…”
There was a cutesy doodle of Jiraiya’s head in the margin, with arrows pointing toward the disk-like circles on top along with the caption “eyes? ears???” Yosuke snorted out loud and then read the rest.
“I know I said this on the phone, but best of luck with the new year. Keep everybody together for me. I’m counting on you, partner.
—Souji”
Yosuke stared at the last couple sentences for a while, practically tracing the stroke order with his eyes. He’d heard things like that from Souji a few times before, all of which were proud moments for Yosuke if that mattered, but seeing it in print was still different. He folded the note in half again and slipped it under the paper frog, giving it a suitably paper platform to stand on. Grabbing his cell phone and pulling their correspondence back into the 21st century, Yosuke replied with a text message.
“jst leave it 2 me, partner. i wont let u down”