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Yosuke Hanamura was good at a lot of things. Self-deprecating humor and reading the room were fine arts that had to be mastered, and he’d had months to work out the kinks of his now reputable craft to make sure that his presence was palatable to people around him. But he excelled the most at one specific achievement, and that was tuning out what he didn’t want to hear.
To live in a town that thrived off of being a rumor mill necessitated the unconscious effort of plugging his ears to the hearsay that eclipsed his daily life. He had to be able to ignore people talking about him, or talking about his family, or talking about Junes and any of the people who might fall under that umbrella of a topic. If he allowed routine to be any other way, it would drive him insane; he’d always had the misfortune of being the type to get hung up on pointless drivel. So he let bad-mouthing slide off his back as water under the bridge, content to focus on more important activities like shouldering an impromptu and doubtlessly illicit murder investigation.
There were limits, obviously. Anything less was a mere pipe-dream, an unattainable fantasy of idealization that was consistently shattered by the gossip that he saw as prohibited. He snapped at anyone who spoke ill of Saki, and he was willing to square up with those who were stupid enough to put the integrity of his friends into question. But never did he extend that vindication for himself.
And maybe that was a problem, because when people started whispering his name a little more than usual, he didn’t look into it right away.
He had a lot of reasons to leave things be. He didn’t want to pick fights if it could be helped, and the periodic nature of being the new critter for cliques of highschool girls to pick apart while he was within earshot numbed him to such occurrences. His thick skin, however, was irrelevant to the sensitive nature of the secret he was keeping in his back pocket, and that alone should have convinced him to be a little more aware of what people were saying about him.
Hiding skeletons in the closest might qualify as a double entendre if the skeleton that he was hiding made him a little gayer than he would prefer being.
It was difficult for him to keep up with everything that had happened in recent months. So many life-changing events were packaged tightly into this single year to form an overflowing library, and trying to parse through the catalogue to figure out how he had gotten to this point – which was swapping spit with Naoto Shirogane, of all people, behind the entrance to the school roof on the regular – required a certain procedure. He had to walk down memory lane in chronological order for him to remember things correctly.
Yu had inserted himself into his life and twisted everything out of control in March. Then the prestigious Detective Prince had shown up in May to do the same, albeit at a slower pace. Of course, being pulled aside between classes to receive a confession was no small matter, but it was the reality that Yosuke found himself living in. Naoto like liked him. And though he would benefit from bowing his head and considering himself lucky that anyone would even be interested in the first place, there was just one problem: Naoto was a guy.
Well, he was. But he also wasn’t. Bigender was the word that had been whispered to the team on a rainy day, where all of them had been under the table umbrellas at the Junes food court. Sometimes she felt more like a girl, other times he felt more like a boy, and Yosuke wasn’t that much of a stick in the mud to try questioning the logistics of it all. If that was how Naoto felt about himself, that was fine.
What wasn’t fine was how this truth put Yosuke’s hesitantly unquestionable straightness into jeopardy.
He knew it was a long time coming, in all honesty. His propensity for Freudian slips was a cruel gift from the universe, designed to ensure that he had to face the stew of ambiguity that bubbled in the pit of his stomach with every instance of experiencing even the mildest of spoony thoughts about his male friends. Foresight took the liberty of retroactively rubbing salt in the wound, too, with the realization that several of the flustering things he had said before were about Naoto herself. It would be foolish (and fruitless) of him to contest the prospect of being anything other than one hundred percent heterosexual.
He used to see a little bit of himself in Kanji every time they hung out together. Now it was more of a constant likeness.
The real problem, then, was other people finding out. To admit to himself that he probably had a thing for both sexes was one thing. Admitting it to other people was another entirely, and one that frankly did not bode well for his immediate future. Word spread around school fast. Word spread around Inaba even faster, if that was possible. If someone caught him slacking in his efforts to keep his romantic entanglement behind closed and locked doors, he’d only last a day before the whole countryside caught wind of the queer boy in their midst – and backwater towns weren’t exactly reputable for their opinions on that which veered from the norm, if Naoto’s staunch resolve to be regarded as wholly masculine on school grounds was any indication.
All in all, there was a solid case to be made in favor of him approaching those who had decided to commit to the role of busybody this time around. Instead, Yosuke found himself engaged in that classic tango of drifting from place to place, never lingering long enough to be tempted by eavesdropping. It was not his responsibility to ensure that people pruned the grapevine, and he couldn’t suffer from what he didn’t let affect him.
As the students of Class-2 filed out of the door with the end of their final period, he watched the downpour from the comfort of his desk as it pattered against the window, a heavy drumbeat that had been pouring ever since his alarm went off in the morning. It made sleeping during lectures impractical, and while he had at first been concerned with how that put an abrupt end to his plans to share lunch with Yu on the rooftop, now he was more worried about finding a way home without getting his socks drenched.
He overheard the high-pitched muttering in the corner of the room before he actually saw the gaggle of girls who were dawdling there, making a disorganized circle as they spoke to themselves in hushed tones. One of them looked up at Yosuke, expression pinching into a nasty little smirk before she could hide it behind a hand. That had him hoisting his school bag over his shoulder and scurrying through the exit as though someone had dumped hot coals into his shoes. If there had been any inkling of doubt before, it had been snuffed out in an instant. He was definitely being talked about.
It was whatever. It. Was. Whatever. A mantra he repeated to himself as he trudged along the well-beaten path to the school’s entrance, tense as ever. Even though the investigation was starting to wind down, he still had plenty of homework to worry about. Distractions from the world around him were always at hand.
He tottered blindly towards the doors, too busy trying to pop his umbrella open half-way to pay attention to where he was going. There was a sizable throng of people loitering around the entrance hall in clusters, expecting the storm to diminish enough to traverse under without protective covering.
“Yosuke-senpai?”
A startled yelp shredded out of his mouth with the recognition of his own name, and his hand jerked open the metal frame in full, much to the chagrin of the few bystanders who had the misfortune of nearly being smacked in the face with nylon. His muttered apologies to them before did little to quell the fires in their glares as they walked away.
He scuffed his heel against the floor of the building before turning to face the culprit of his stunt. Naoto peered back up at him, the exceptionally guilty look on his face easing away Yosuke’s own vexation. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to startle you like that.”
“Nah, it’s fine.” His gaze wandered, dawdling around Naoto’s occupied hands. His own umbrella. “You miss your cab or something? You’re usually the first one to get the hell outta here.” Something about the withdrawing congregation always being too loud for her to withstand, which was something he could sympathize with. Naoto didn’t carry around headphones, though.
“Cab?” the other echoed quizzically, but understanding clicked together like magnets drawn together in a split-second. “You mean Yakushiji-san. No, I haven’t missed him. Rarely does he ever wait for me near school grounds in the first place...but that’s not really my predicament right now.”
He held up his parasol, and Yosuke leaned over to squint down at it. A lengthy tear was in the fabric, rendering the poor thing pretty much useless. It wasn’t going to be sparing any backpacks or suitcases from being swamped, that was for sure. “How’d you do that?” he asked, trying not to snicker.
Naoto fussed with the loose piece of fabric that was still attached to the hole, all sad and floppy between his fingers. “It was far more windy this morning, and I lost it to an exceptionally strong gale before it got stuck in a tree. Needless to say, I won’t be able to walk back home with this if the rain continues pouring as it is.”
“Wanna borrow mine?” Yosuke offered immediately, holding it out to him. He couldn’t suggest they both use it – Naoto would find a way to make fun of him for making a whole song and dance with Kanji about doing the same thing a few weeks ago.
“Actually,” the detective said under her breath, “I was wondering if I could accompany you back to your house? So we could study together.”
Oh, god. He had promised to study with him a while back, hadn’t he? His grades had started slipping ever since the midterms in October, and bad marks were certain to result in a docked paycheck if they sunk any lower. The fact that he couldn’t clearly pinpoint when they’d made the arrangement, though, told him that it had definitely been long enough for Naoto to assume that he had forgotten. Which was true. But he wasn’t going to say that part out loud.
Absently, he snapped the umbrella back to his side. “I, um.” Pause for breath. “That’s cool. I don’t have work today.”
“Then shall we go?”
The two of them filtered through the crowd as inconspicuously as either of them could manage, slotting together like poorly connected puzzle pieces under Yosuke’s portable canopy. Naoto was forced so close to his side in order to be spared from the rain that they might as well have been glued together, and their feet constantly knocked against each other with awkwardly paced strides. But they didn’t mind all that much, laughing at every collision of their shoes all while they linked their arms together after making sure no one else was around to watch.
Cringing at the splash of a puddle underfoot, the shorter of them tucked her unoccupied hand into her pocket, eyes affixed to the pavement beneath them. “You never did tell me what subject you were struggling with.”
Embarrassment curdled in Yosuke’s gut, but he swallowed down the shame that would have otherwise clammed him up. He had nothing to hide that couldn’t be easily sleuthed out. “There’s a few.”
“I see.” There was a twinge of judgement to be found, buried underneath the surface. “Why don’t we start with whatever it is that you’re doing the worst in?”
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “That’d be history.”
Naoto blinked, like some sort of shrewd owl. “I can help with that. Truthfully, I was expecting you to say that you were doing poorly in an area I wouldn’t be much better off with. Like math.”
“Oh, I’m actually pretty good at math,” Yosuke grinned, puffing out his chest. “We should trade notes! You can help me with my history lessons, and I’ll help you with math. They’ve got us doing a bunch of trigonometry stuff right before finals, so I’ll probably already know whatever it is they’re teaching the first years.”
The Detective Prince offered up his own faint smile. “That sounds efficient.” Concern then shadowed over his countenance. The house was within view. “Are your parents home? I didn’t mean to arrive uninvited.”
“Nah, they’re at work. Teddie is, too, so we’ve got the place to ourselves.”
Time began slipping through Yosuke’s grasp as soon as they mounted the steps to the front porch. He could recall fetching the key from under the flower pot, but after passing through the door, everything else in between felt like blur. They were upstairs in his room now, and while he at first tried to listen to the lecturing in earnest, it fell out of favor quickly. He couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t pay attention. The exact same problems that he had in class were not satisfied with remaining there to leave him be, imaginary shackles chained to his ankles and weighing him down.
It wasn’t as though he was to blame. It seemed like a cruelty to expect them to shoulder so much at a time – between school and work and Midnight Channel excursions, the time they had to do anything unrelated to obligations was becoming slimmer with each week.
Admittedly, it was exhausting, and admittedly, he might have been able to shirk some of his responsibilities if he could just. Tell his parents. Perhaps not tell them about the specifics of their routine TV dives, but about the strain that kept piling up on his lap.
He couldn’t do that, though. Not without having to explain more than he could afford to say.
Yosuke groaned loudly, flopping over on his futon with one of his history textbooks placed over his face. Life had to get easier at some point, but it felt so far away from him. Was concentrating on finding the killer really so much to ask? Or maybe it was just his particular curse to struggle and get left behind. That seemed to be a repeat pattern in his life, too.
While he couldn’t see past the pages of printed ink, he heard many things at once. Rustling paper and the creak of his desk’s swivel chair moving around. “Do you want to take a break?”
“I want a hole in my head,” he shot back, but it came out muffled by the book and entirely more serious than he wanted. “And a beef bowl.”
A non-committal hum rose in reply. “In what order?”
He smiled under the book, peeling it off and tossing it aside. “Surprise me,” he insisted, rolling over on his side to look towards the pint-sized detective making leisurely circles with the flimsy, plastic seat.
“Then I would treat you to a single beef bowl before putting you out of your misery,” Naoto quipped all too dryly. Then he glanced towards the flip phone that had been haphazardly tossed near Yosuke’s closed laptop. “It’s not too late to order take out. If you were being serious, that is.”
“Sure, why the hell not,” the brunet said towards the wall as he forced himself to sit up. “I want a treat.” He waved for her to toss the mobile in his direction, only barely avoiding an unfortunate reality in which he let it smack him directly between the eyes before punching in the numbers.
They did try to fill in the wait with important things, like going over some old lecture transcriptions and making flashcards with items that the teachers had off-handedly mentioned would be on their finals. By the time their order had arrived by delivery, it was late enough in the day for Yosuke’s parents to finally return home with Teddie. None of them seemed to care that Naoto was with him (and had been alone in the house, to boot), at least. The bear was wise enough to stay far away from upstairs, too.
So time marched on, undeterred. So did Yosuke’s patience.
He sighed, crumpling up the sheet of chicken scratch on his desk and throwing it into the bin. “This is so dumb. Why do we even need to know the name of some random ass guy who got buried in some random ass pyramid in Egypt?” He slumped in his chair, neck digging uncomfortably into the backrest as he leaned rearwards as far as he could. “I’m never gonna be able to remember any of this for finals.”
“Your defeatist attitude is certainly going to make it difficult, yes,” Naoto touched upon with a sharp point of his own pen, aimed towards the second year like a dagger. “You just need to pace yourself a little better. Attempting to cover all of the recent material in a single day is an effort in futility.”
“But December is just around the corner.” And his most recent notes were a miserable little heap in the trash, so moot point there. Besides, what was he arguing with a detective for? She clearly knew best. His top-notch scores on the midterm exam board spoke volumes of that matter.
The habitual click of the ballpoint’s thrust device under her thumb rang in the room above all else, a back and forth mimicry of a party popper going off right in Yosuke’s ears in spite of the distance between them. It stopped abruptly, and Naoto looked up from the futon on the floor. “Come sit with me for a little bit?” she sought to offer, scooting over and patting the newly vacant spot next to him. “With the notes you threw away.”
Barely suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, Yosuke dug around in the container underneath his desk and snatched up the crinkled ball before flattening it back out. He rose from the seat, stretching some before flumping down next to his cram partner. “As you wish, your majesty,” he huffed, light-hearted as he handed her the paper.
“The most effective way to retain information like this is spaced repetition,” she said, glossing over what could be made out between the crease lines and the abysmal state of the handwriting etched into the parchment with ink. “So we should keep going over the answers to these questions across the week so you have a better chance at recalling them.”
“Okayyyyy,” Yosuke exhaled in what was little more than a whine, moving around to lie down over Naoto’s legs so he could look up at the ceiling while being catechized.
It didn’t last forever – that was another bad habit of his, constantly getting distracted by other things. In his defense, he was never stopped from pulling out his computer to look something up, only to be reminded of the CD copy of a movie he had rented a few days back and practically begging that they watch it together.
With the lights of the bedroom dimmed, the covers of the futon snuggly wrapped around them, and the distant drone of the film playing through the earbuds they shared, it was inevitable that Yosuke’s brain would start wandering around. Half-way in and the images on the screen lost his interest, blocked out by his past and current frustrations. It would be so much easier if they could commit to their duties to the Midnight Channel. Everything seemed superfluous in comparison, paltry burdens for people who didn’t have magic powers and Personas.
Absently, he held Naoto’s hand in his lap, tracing over the lines of her palm. Her head was propped against his shoulder, eyes locked on the screen as the sci-fi movie it played. All else was silent.
“Are we ever going to be able to tell anyone about us?”
He wasn’t sure who said it until he realized how dry his mouth was, parted slightly. He ran his tongue over his teeth behind his lips, squinting away from the light that seemed so bright now. What a way to kill the mood.
He could feel the body against him tense. “I don’t know.” Too curt of an answer.
“I just...I feel kind of bad, I guess,” he went on, rambly. “We haven’t even told anyone else on the team. But shouldn’t we? We can trust them. I think they deserve to know.”
Naoto’s irises darted up to him for a brief second before shying away again, incapable of maintaining any sort of prolonged contact. He didn’t respond for a long time, deliberating with a misty look that was pinned to the wall directly in front of them. “I do want to tell them. But I’m not ready.”
Yosuke interlocked their fingers together, chuckling airily. “I’m scared, too, but we can’t keep this under wraps forever. I don’t think it’s possible, ‘cause I feel like I’m gonna explode otherwise.”
Their eyes meet at last, and they hold that connection. “Maybe when the investigation is finally put to an end. What do you think?”
“That sounds so cheesy,” he snorted. “But I like it.”
It became a cycle of sorts, much like many other aspects of Yosuke’s life: ignore the gossip. Walk home with Naoto. Go over their notes. Rinse and repeat, like thoroughly greased clockwork.
He didn’t mind the circular nature of it all, but he did mind the parts of it that put things into jeopardy. He wished people would learn to stop sticking their noses into the business of others. He wished that trips to the Midnight Channel weren’t as frequent as Yu was hellbent on making them. He wished, perhaps most of all, that he and Naoto didn’t have to hide their relationship.
But such was the way the world worked, in which Yosuke was a primordial nobody next to the spotlight in which the Detective Prince stood within at all times, and being anything but discreet about their romance would only invite strangers to pry. Present year was not so nice to boys being together, even if one of them wasn’t all boy. That didn’t matter to people looking from the outside.
He breathed out quietly, propping an elbow against his school desk as he bore holes into the messy chalkboard. He’d given up trying to stomach Kashiwagi’s lesson today, attentiveness trained solely on the murmurs coming from the very back of the classroom. It was the same coterie of girls that had undoubtedly been spreading rumors about him again, their heads lowered as they tried to speak without the teacher noticing. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it was fun to listen in to see if they’d finally be caught red-handed. Unfortunately, they did not.
The bell rang. The other students filtered out. And he somehow found himself alone with those classmates, pinned in a corner with nowhere to hide.
Their names were completely lost to him, but he could tell that the shortest of them, hair twisted into dyed braids, was the ringleader. She stood at the forefront of the group, an expensive looking cellphone in her hands. “So, when were you going to tell everyone about Shirogane-kun?”
His heart dropped.
“What?” he said with a resounding lack of intelligence, a reactionary return that was also authentic in every way. He was clueless to what they were referring to, because there was just no way that they meant what he was thinking about. Nobody else knew. Nobody else was going to know until the killer was caught. That might as well be an iron-tight declaration in his mind.
One of the other girls placed a hand over her mouth, fingers parted enough for the snort that escaped her lips to be heard. “Geez, he really doesn’t know! Isn’t that funny?”
The first nodded in agreement, her smile razor sharp as she held up her phone before Yosuke. The picture embedded into the top screen was simply unmistakable. Him and Naoto, on the school roof, kissing right next to the entrance. The quality wasn’t the best, taken from an awkward angle that was positioned from behind the door to the stairwell, but it was clear enough to make out both parties involved. And that was all it really needed to do to solidify all of his fears.
“...where did you get that from?” he asked carefully, trying to mitigate the hostility that was attempting to edge his pitch.
“Dunno.” The phone snapped shut. “Someone posted it online anonymously, but now the entire school knows how much of a faggot you are. Not like that was a secret to begin with.”
The group broke out into shrill giggling, some louder than others, and it took all of Yosuke’s willpower to shove himself between them to stumble out of the classroom. He could hear them jeering after him, most likely to continue putting forth insults, but he threw his headphones on and started breaking into a full on sprint for the front doors. The entire school knew. The entire school knew. And it wouldn’t be long before that information leaked out elsewhere, spiraling out of his grasp and landing him in the exact position he had been afraid of the most. His parents were going to find out.
If Yu had been expecting them to go into the Midnight Channel today, it didn’t matter. Yosuke didn’t wait for him. He let his legs carry him across the well-worn path home, his sprint slowing into a cumbrous saunter once he started to break down into tears. It blurred his vision and his feet kept hitting the awkward indents in the sidewalk, all while some old rock song he didn’t recognize hammered against his ears.
All it had taken was one slip-up for everything to crumble beyond his control. Because, really, he could handle it. He could tolerate being singled out by his peers. He’d done it so many times before, though the difference in this instance was the undeniability of the truth. But he wasn’t alone in sharing this kind of humiliation, and he didn’t want Naoto to have to endure what he was already accustomed to just for the sake of it.
Yosuke hadn’t seen him on campus today. It was likely, then, that she already knew.
His hands were numb as he fumbled with the knob to his house’s front door, wiping his face clean with the sleeve of his uniform last second before entering. He said nothing to Teddie, who was sitting on the living room couch and watching television, and he said nothing to his mother, who was already busying herself in the kitchen. He climbed up the stairs to the second floor in mute silence, entering his room with the reluctance of an old peasant breaking into the hallowed grounds of a derelict church in search of peace and protection.
His bag slid off from his shoulder and hit the ground with a thud, and he collapsed over the length of his futon. When people said that life was unfair, they usually meant it in the way of equality and justice. But life was more unfair because of its unrelenting cruelty, a facet of existence that Yosuke seemed strongly incapable of avoiding. Nothing ever wanted to cut him some slack, no matter how hard he bent the knee. It kept pushing and prodding, seeing how far he could wind himself up before finally accepting defeat. Or maybe he was always due for some kind of horrible, unavoidable disaster threatening all of his relationships. Just another aspect of his group gimmick.
Shucking off his school jacket felt as though he was shedding off the outermost layer of his skin, leaving him vulnerable and raw as he slithered under the quilt of his bed. He had to be able to tune this out. He had to ignore it. If he thought about it any longer than necessary, the waterworks were going to come out faster than – well, he was already starting to cry again. The metaphor was lost to him.
With his face buried firmly into his pillow, he was prepared to consider the rest of the afternoon a bust and relinquish the rest of his time to rotting in bed. Attempting to salvage what he could right now would be a wasted effort. But the phone tucked into his back pocket started to go off, and his hopes of being left alone were dashed as he scrambled to answer it. It had to be Yu, wondering where he had gone after skipping out on whatever plans they had made together that he’d forgotten about. “Hello?”
There was a breath that passed through the speaker before any comprehensible reply was made. “It’s me.”
His heart skipped a beat with nothing but panic. Naoto had called him. The absolute worst was about to happen, and there was nothing he could do about it. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“...are you crying?”
Wedging the phone between his ear and the headrest underneath him, he pushed himself around onto his side and stared at the flat of his wall. “No,” he lied. Blatantly so. The gauche hiccup following the single word made that more than apparent.
“I’m not mad,” the other said softly, just above the decimal of a whisper. No honorific, no off-kilter nicknames. He was being genuine. “I, um. I heard about what happened before class today. That’s why I didn’t go.”
Yosuke snuffled, disregarding the thought of being more inconspicuous now that he had been caught red handed. “How?” he questioned, wincing at the rasp of his voice. “I didn’t know until after. I don’t really keep up with stuff that people in school talk about online anymore.”
The line was deathly still for a moment, and he wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. He seemed to be doing an exceptional job at that as of late. But a loud shuffle ended the tentative quiet, almost like Naoto was turning around underneath her own sheets. “This is embarrassing to talk about, but there is an online forum dedicated to me. I saw it there. Someone posted it around midnight yesterday.”
Despite the precarious nature of this conversation, a tiny snicker slipped past Yosuke’s clenched teeth. Unadulterated dread curled around behind his ribcage like a treacherous miasma as soon as he heard it, and the only way he could back-pedal on it was by talking more. “R-really? That’s, uh, wow. You frequent forums a lot?”
If the detective could tell that he was procrastinating on the topic – and he didn’t doubt for a second that he absolutely could tell – he was generous enough not to call him out on it. In fact, he went so far as to humor him on the sudden change in direction. “I have a sizable presence on certain fan forums that are related to my interests.” She stopped for a moment, veering back on track when she presumably decided that there was no other way to toe around the issue. “I used to lurk on the one dedicated to me, but I had to start posting there as myself today. For...damage control.”
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have-God, I’m so stupid.” Yosuke curled in on himself, half-aware of the distance he was making between him and the phone but powerless to course correct as hyperventilation began to tickle the interior of his lungs. Running his mouth wasn’t doing much to help anyway. He could afford to stop for a while.
“Don’t. Don’t say that,” Naoto insisted, though his voice was farther away now. “It’s not your fault. This was always a possibility. We both knew that.”
“But what happens when you start going back to class?” the brunet argued, a burst of indignation lighting up his veins with adrenaline as he scrambled to sit up. He snatched the phone and raised it back against the side of his head. “Don’t you remember what happened to Kanji when everyone was talking about him? They’re gonna start calling you awful shit.” And he might have deserved it for being culpable in the bad-mouthing, but Naoto didn’t.
“I know.” Something testy was buried in her intonation, each syllable pronounced with discretion. “You don’t need to lecture me with what I am already familiar with.”
The fire boiling his blood cooled in an instant, and regret pulled back his lips in a private grimace. “Oh,” he responded plainly. What was he supposed to say to that? Was he supposed to apologize? For what? The fact that he’d apparently been through a song and dance that Yosuke had only seen from afar, or the fact that it had been brought up at all? He kept swinging and missing.
Static came from the other side of the call as the closest thing to an expiration that the speakers could replicate. “Are you afraid?”
He chewed at the inside of his cheek. “What if someone in class decides I’m not above getting beat up in the courtyard? What if someone decides you aren’t above that, either? What if my parents find out and they kick me out on the streets?” He forced his eyes to remain dry and his throat to stay unclogged. “I’m not afraid, Nao. I’m terrified.”
“Don’t be. We can work through this.” It wasn’t necessarily a pledge that one made with their hand over their chest. It was a more subtle assurance, one that could be bent if necessary. Those had an easier time weathering storms. “I’d like to think we are both fairly capable of defending ourselves, and if your parents...” She didn’t even go forth with finishing that sentence. “Well, you can stay with me until we figure something out.”
“But then I’d just be mooching off of you. I don’t wanna do that.”
“Yosuke.” It was frankly impressive how a rebuke could be made with his name alone. “For better or for worse, the truth is out there. All we can do now is accept things as they are and make the most of it.”
Gradually, he lowered himself onto the futon, back straightening painfully to accommodate the change in position as he observed the patterns of the upper surface of his room. To a point, she was right. There wasn’t much that could be done to retroactively scrub their dating status from the minds of people who already knew. That was just the Inaba way; once something became the hot topic, it wasn’t going to go away until something else became the replacement.
But this felt different. More delicate, in a way. Like stepping on eggshells, trying to avoid a position in which the knowledge being accessible to the public actively jeopardized their relationship.
“What do you think we should do?” he finally questioned, keeping his eyes trained on a collection of grooves that looked similar to the face of a cat. His foot was starting to spasm underneath the covers, restlessness consuming his legs in the need to move around.
Naoto waited for a moment before putting forward a response. “Are you at home right now?”
“Yeah. I went home as soon as class was over. Why?”
“We should...” He trailed off, wordless for a minute before continuing. “We should tell the rest of the group. Enough time has passed for them to catch wind of things, I would imagine. Like you said, they deserve to know. Properly.”
Yosuke felt something inside of him shrivel up and die as soon as he heard that. Chie was going to dominate the extent of his notifications for the rest of the evening, and if Yu had somehow caught wind of things despite his online activity being strictly delegated to buying weird shit online that he saw on the TV, then he was sure to ask about things as well. He could foresee the obnoxious chain pulling even now, the voices of the Investigation Team clearly replicated in his brain as he thought about how Yukiko would laugh and how Kanji would glare daggers at him from afar.
He shook his head and used the heel of his palm to massage away the headache that was starting to bother the skull space between his eyes. “Okay. Okay, I can do that,” he blathered nervously. “Tomorrow, I mean. Yu’s gonna want us all to meet up at Junes anyway, so.”
“Alright. Promise to go to school before then?”
“Why are you asking me that?” he laughed slightly. “You’re the one who played hooky today. Not very princely, is it?”
Naoto made a disgruntled noise. “I mean it, senpai. I understand that you might harbor reservations on account of...well, even I am not oblivious to how the hierarchy of status at high school treats people who don't conform to the standards of sexuality. But, if nothing else, I’m sure our teammates in your class will stand up for you if something goes awry.”
He chuckled a little harder than before. “Man, way to sound like a total cornball,” he teased. “But thanks. I think-well, I’ll be fine. Probably. I was just startled by how sudden it all was. I’m fine now.”
“I trust your word.”
That sounded dangerously close to a conclusion of their time on the phone, and trepidation started to worm its way under his skin once more. “Wait,” he barked out, more forcefully than intended. “Don’t hang up. Please. Not yet, at least. I want to keep talking with you.”
The ensuing hush didn’t sit well with him at all, but it was eventually cut short when Naoto began to speak again. “Do you want to go over your history notes over the phone? Finals week is getting closer.”
Yosuke smiled bitterly. “Why not? Anything to get my mind off things.”
He wasn’t sure when exactly he fell asleep during the hazy period in between his impromptu quiz session. All he knew when he woke up the next morning is that he had remained on the line the entire time, and that he was lucky his phone wasn’t covered in drool like the rest of his pillow had become.