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i. 18/18
It's his eighteenth birthday, and he's alone with a cupcake he bought for himself and a number 40 candle his friends gave him jokingly, the early dark of winter making the flame shine brighter.
I wish for -
Daichi blows out the candle.
And when a voice tells him, "Happy birthday," soft and dusty like it hasn't been used in a long while, Daichi feels so alone and unsure and not-eighteen that he forgets to panic like he should.
Instead, he asks, "Do you like chocolate?" and goes to split his cupcake in two.
"What - wait - who - what are you?" Daichi asks frantically, as the reality of his half a cupcake hits him. He wonders if he's hallucinating.
"I'm Suga," the voice answers, and Daichi chances a glance at it. It's a young man, around his age, nonchalantly eating his half of the cupcake. It's hard to see his features in the dark, but Daichi can just make out the shape of his face and the curl of his hair.
Daichi narrows his eyes. "Which is?"
The man chuckles. "My name," he says teasingly, voice tilting like a question but falling like an answer. It's smooth and honey-sweet, and Daichi stops wondering if he's hallucinating, because he wouldn't be able to come up with a voice so pretty. Or a personality that cheeky.
"Okay," Daichi breathes, in some odd mixture of awe and acceptance. "I'm Daichi."
"I know." And Suga vanishes.
"I can't believe we're graduating in a month's time," Asahi comments, blinking against the wind on the walk home.
"Yeah," Daichi says, without any real meaning or conviction. It sits in the air in front of them for a moment, just to be washed away by another gust of wind. It makes Daichi feel cold.
Asahi doesn't elaborate or add anything more, so Daichi doesn't see any reason to either. They walk in near silence until they reach the part of the road where they usually split. Daichi is about to raise his hand in farewell, but Asahi opens his mouth to start talking before he can.
"Do you know what you want to do after graduation?" Asahi asks, and Daichi doesn't know how to answer.
It's not that he doesn't know what he wants to do. He wants to go to university. He wants to get a job. He wants to move out at some point, maybe live somewhere outside of Miyagi in a nice little apartment where the space isn't so big that there doesn't seem to be enough air to fill it. He would like that, he thinks, this life he doesn't have planned - but while Daichi knows what he wants to do, he doesn't know where or how to do it, doesn't know what plan in particular he wants to carry out. So instead of answering, he echoes back, "Do you know what you want to do?" and prays Asahi won't bring attention to his obvious evasion.
Asahi never disappoints, but he does surprise, sometimes. "I want to be an artist," he says, and looking down, he adds: "Though I'll probably end up having an office job alongside it."
Daichi almost doesn't hear it through his probable staring. To be fair, he never thought he'd see the day that Asahi was surer about himself than Daichi. Eventually, he shakes himself out of his stupor and mumbles an indistinct oh in response.
"That's nice," he makes sure to say, because not commenting about a person's future is usually considered a bad comment. And also because it really is nice, to have something you want to do, to pave a path for.
Daichi raises his hand in farewell once again, and Asahi doesn't interrupt this time as he walks down his side of the road.
ii. 18/19
When Daichi wakes up at the beginning of summer, the local university's break just starting, he doesn't expect to see someone sitting on his covers.
He scrambles back from the familiar face, slams his elbow into the headboard, and blurts out, "Happy birthday," though he's not sure why.
Suga chuckles at that, says, "Oh, really?" Somehow he manages not to sound mocking at all, only amused and curious.
"Yeah," Daichi replies, and is surprised at the certainty of it - it's definitely Suga's birthday today, and he's definitely turning nineteen. "Yeah," Daichi repeats, and marvels at the fact it's the first time Suga's showed up since December, and although Daichi should be concerned and wary, all he feels is calm. "Okay."
Suga smiles, and Daichi is caught off-guard by the simplicity of it all.
Suga stays even though Daichi feels he should go (I thought it was only birthdays, he had said, and Suga had replied, I thought so too), so on the way back from practice with the neighborhood team he picks up a vanilla cake for a late celebration and, on a whim, the spiciest takeout food he can find.
"How'd you know I like spicy food?" Suga asks with a laugh, cross-legged on the floor. He continues to sit there, amused, as Daichi struggles to swallow his meal, nearly crying.
Daichi shrugs. "It was a feeling, I guess," he says, and coughs through the heat at the back of his tongue and the start of his throat.
Suga continues to laugh.
"Hey, Asahi," Daichi says into the phone, "Anything new?" He puts the phone between his ear and shoulder, one hand occupied with an ice pop and the other batting Suga's hand away from it. The blue of the melting ice pop drips past his fingers and onto the porch.
"Not really," Asahi tells him, though he always tells him that, so Daichi waits for him to say more. Daichi holds his ice pop higher in the air as Suga leans over to grab it. "Tokyo's hot in summer," he adds eventually, which Daichi doesn't think is all that important, but Asahi gets nervous on the phone, so he'll take what he can get.
Suga's practically in his lap now, and Daichi has to push his face away with his free hand. "It's hot in Miyagi, too, you know. Hot in most places in Japan this time of year."
"What about Hokkaido?"
Daichi sighs dramatically. "I said most places, okay, stop being smart with me. I thought artist types didn't pull that kind of stuff." Suga's still grabbing for his ice pop, and Daichi stretches his arm out further, but ends up falling back onto the wood of the porch. Suga giggles as he takes the ice pop, holding it up in victory.
"I'm not an artist type," Asahi's saying, but Daichi's so busy being exasperated that he forgets his usual retort. "Daichi?"
"Ah, sorry, Asahi. You were saying?"
It's Asahi's turn to sigh. "Nothing important," A pause. "You sound happy." Daichi is ready to question Asahi, or maybe even deny the notion that he wasn't happy before, but Daichi thinks about it and realizes that yeah, I am happy.
"I guess so," Daichi tells him, "I'm with a friend right now." He smiles down at Suga as he says it, who's absorbed in eating Daichi's ice pop as obnoxiously as possible.
"Really?" Asahi comments, sounding surprised. Daichi's not sure whether to be offended or not.
Daichi looks over at Suga again. "Really," he says. "Didn't you hear him before?"
Asahi takes a breath. "Uh, no. Was he really that loud?"
Oh. "Oh. Guess not." Suga has stopped giggling, and is looking at Daichi with a sad mixture of resignation and concern. "I've got to go, Asahi. It was good talking to you. Keep it up in Tokyo."
"Yeah. Good talking to you too, Daichi."
He's not sure who hangs up first. It was probably me, he thinks, putting the phone in his pocket.
Suga vanishes with the heat of summer, and Daichi is left to the mercy of university.
It's colder, and the autumn winds are starting up again. The buckle of his bag is broken, so he has to hold it shut and hope his papers don't fly out like they did in the spring.
And he walks.
University is less of an experience and more of a routine, a day-to-day thing that he appreciates and tolerates in equal measures. Most of his classes are standards, the ones required to graduate, as his major is still left undecided. Daichi wonders sometimes why he didn't take an off year, then remembers his not-plan: to go to university and get a job and his own little apartment somewhere outside of Miyagi.
Unbidden, a new image forms in his head. It's after graduation, and he has a job (he's not sure what job, but it pays well enough and Daichi doesn't hate it, not in this fantasy), and every day when he comes home from work there's someone waiting, someone who can welcome him back and giggle at his state of dress while Daichi protests, even though he knows he can't keep his clothes neat for shit.
And the voice that calls out to him is soft, and his smile familiar, and it's Suga who's standing there, it's Suga who's welcoming him back, and Daichi's only seen him a summer and a night but he's comfortable to be around, so much that Daichi aches for it.
The image doesn't melt so much as it shatters. He's in class now, and his major is still undecided and graduation feels too far to even reach for.
An apartment, Daichi thinks, as the professor strides in. Our own little apartment, somewhere outside of Miyagi.
iii. 19/19
The heart of winter arrives like air and Suga like snow. But maybe that isn't a fair comparison.
Daichi's nose is stuffy and bitten red, but Suga looks like he grew up out of the cold, making a home under the early stars and freezing rain, with the winter-blossoming plants and bare trees. Daichi finds himself ushering him inside, anyway.
It's not all that much warmer but it's dry, and while Daichi shakes out his umbrella, Suga darts around in search of a towel. Daichi takes the opportunity to grab him a change of clothes.
"No cupcake this year?" Suga comments as Daichi heats up two containers of cup noodles. He'll have to see if there are spicier options, next time he's in the store. "I thought it was a tradition, or something."
"Nah," Daichi says, both to the cupcake and the tradition, "I usually don't buy anything. I don't know why I did last year, honestly." The microwave beeps, and Daichi opens the door, grabs the cups.
Suga hums, a contemplative sort of sound, though not nearly as serious, and says, "We should make one."
Daichi wrinkles his nose. "A single cupcake? Can you even do – "
"Not a single cupcake," Suga interrupts suddenly, like Daichi's said something stupid. He probably has. "A cake. Like, an actual cake."
"I don't have ingredients, though." Daichi is almost positive of this. He's not sure what goes into a cake, exactly, but it's more than likely he doesn't have it.
Suga sighs. "We'll buy some tomorrow. Your birthday's tomorrow, right? Perfect timing." Suga's smiling pleasantly, familiarly, but his eyes are determined, like the relentless rain created a backdrop behind them, and Daichi can't say no to that, doesn't bother trying.
"I guess we're making a cake, then."
The edges are burnt, and the icing uneven, but the cake tastes good enough to sneak a few bites before sticking in the obnoxious pink candles Suga insisted on buying. Daichi can't say he minds, even if he pretends to.
The lights go off, and in the moment before Suga turns on the lighter, weight across the room rather than next to him, Daichi finds himself feeling just as unsure as last year, just as not-his-age and nearly as lonely. It's only a moment, though, because almost as soon as he left Suga comes back, turning on the lighter as he settles next to Daichi's hip.
"Daichi," Suga says, face soft in the light of the candles, "Make a wish."
I wish for -
A puff of air, and he's alone in the dark once more.
iv. 19/20
Daichi's half-past nineteen and feels like a kid again; he doesn't feel quite as small but the world feels just as big, and the sun is warm rather than annoyingly hot, and the house his parents own but barely live in feels more open than alone.
He's not sure if it's the summer or Suga that's doing it, making the porch feel like home and the wind another companion, but Daichi can't find it in himself to care when he's comfortable and sun-kissed and happy, happier than he's ever been, even as a kid, and he doesn't want to ruin it, not yet.
Suga's laughing, again, at some silly thing Daichi must've said, and Daichi's laughing now, too, and all the noise blurs together into a fuzzy red at the back of his eyelids as they fall asleep, right there on the porch in the middle of summer.
Daichi's walking out of class, imagining Suga's face as he talks, expressions loud and little but never closed, when he takes his phone out of his pocket with startling efficiency and types how do you know you're in love.
Asahi texts back, what makes you think i know, and when Daichi finishes reading it, his phone rings unexpected in his hand.
"Asahi?" Daichi says, as if he doesn't know who's calling, "We were just texting, you know." He makes his way to a nearby bench. Sits. The air holds an insignificant chill to it, like the leaves of fall that bleed into winter, colors fading into the dirt.
"I know." Asahi's voice sounds hesitant yet determined, more determined than Daichi's ever heard him be on the phone. "I – " He cuts himself off, starts again. "Daichi, I'm aromantic."
Daichi pauses. "Um, okay?"
"It means I don't feel romantic attraction."
"Oh." Daichi feels like there are so many things he could ask, like how long have you known this and why haven't you told me before, but all he says is, "I guess I shouldn't ask you for love advice, then."
Asahi snorts over the phone, and Daichi smiles, because he loves Asahi, he really does, this giant of a friend who's scared of a world that pushes like walls of iron, the same friend who breaks these walls with words and spikes and art. He remembers practices and high fives, and the path home from high school, and suddenly Daichi has the answer to his own question, because there's a difference between Asahi-feelings and Suga-feelings that isn't so much knowledge as it is the type of warmth in his chest.
Suga's lighting the candles on his own delayed-birthday-celebration cake when he asks, "Why don't we ever sing?"
Daichi doesn't think too hard about his answer. "I'm a horrible singer," he states, and Suga giggles over the now-lit candles.
"Aren't we all? But that's what makes it special, don't you think?" Suga stands over the cake, lighter in hand, but his attention is all on Daichi, and Daichi probably shouldn't feel this warm, even in the midst of summer.
"I mean – " Daichi starts, cuts himself off, then continues, "I guess. Multiple off-key voices are endearing, but one is kind of sad. It's almost like singing to yourself. Doesn't fill up the room."
Suga hums, considering, and blows out the candles before the wax has a chance to drip onto the cake. "Happy late birthday to me," he mumbles, rhythmic and quick, but his attention is still on Daichi, like he's making a wish on him rather than the candles.
The cake tastes sweet.
("This cake is too sweet. We should've gotten take out."
"So I can cry over my meal again? No thanks."
"I never said we had to get the super-spicy food again! I just said take out."
"You implied it, though. You and your food preferences."
"Shut up and eat your too sweet cake already.")
v. 20/20
Towards the end of his second year of university, Daichi starts to put his life together little by little. It's not so much progress as it is a start, but Daichi is proud, nonetheless.
He isn't hit by passion, but he chooses a major because he's good at the work it entails, and he thinks he'd probably enjoy it. He isn't hit by sudden motivation, but he finds and takes a job because it's close by, and the boss is lenient and the pay is good enough for him.
He isn't hit by any surge of emotion, but he tells Suga all about it when he shows up in early winter, because his love for Suga is a comfortable thing, a whispered I really, really like you thing, and the way Suga smiles when Daichi talks feels like fondness given form, a warm afternoon in the snow.
Suga isn't real.
Suga isn't real, but he is, is as much of a part of Daichi's world as anything ever was. Suga's presence is one of the realest things he's ever found, but Suga isn't real, and -
(At least not here, Suga had said, when Daichi asked about it, sometime after talking to Asahi, years ago, blue ice pop in one hand and Suga practically in the other. I'm real somewhere, just – not here. You're the real one here.)
- And Daichi knows this, he knows this, knows Suga's as real as mermaids and dragons and nymphs that dance in the trees, or angels that circle the clouds, dropping feathers in the form of snow. He knows this, but all he can think about is birthday cakes and blown-out candles and falling asleep under the summer sun.
"I think this birthday will be our last," Suga says, and Daichi doesn't want to believe it, but the way his heart's been hanging low all morning tells him it's true, it's true, and the new year will mark the end of snow-glass nights and summer mornings.
So Daichi goes out and buys himself a chocolate cupcake, and his own joke of a candle, and when he goes back home Suga's there, waiting, lighter in hand. And Daichi sticks the candle in the cake, and turns off the lights as Suga ignites the little flame, and he blows out the candle without ceremony (they don't sing, they never sing).
"Happy birthday," Suga tells him, voice just as soft as he remembers but not quite as dusty, and Daichi smiles at the novelty of it all.
And as he splits the cupcake in two, he says, "Do you like chocolate?" and manages to hand half of it to Suga before promptly bursting into tears.
Suga looks startled but resigned, and lets Daichi fall into his chest as he rambles don't go, don't go, composure effectively broken. He keeps saying it, even though he knows it's impossible, that no matter what he says or does Suga will leave, and he'll be stuck here crying over half a cupcake.
Suga rubs his back, murmurs, "Don't miss me too much," the silent tears running down his face betraying his teasing tone, because it is too much, it's too early and too late and too much, all at once.
Daichi huffs, then whispers, "I don't think I'm gonna forget you anytime soon," his hands grabbing Suga's arms as he pulls away, touching his elbows, holding his wrists.
And Suga giggles, eyes scrunching over the set of his cheeks, as he slides his wrists back so he can fit his fingers against Daichi's, and tells him, "I sure hope not," and continues to laugh and laugh and laugh until he chokes on the noise in his throat, and it too much for Daichi to take, because Suga's hands are disappearing in his grasp, and his voice is floating away like candle smoke.
And Daichi has nothing to wish for.
vi.
The routine of university pulls him farther and farther away, until Daichi feels like he's floating, head not in the clouds but above them, vision obscured by the endless expanse of gray and white. It takes exams to bring him back down, and while the stress makes his head spin, his feet are now safely on the ground, where crashing down is less of an option and more of a fantasy.
The actual exam period is something else entirely. Asahi calls him daily, to talk out his own nerves, and while Asahi sounds like a jittery mess, Daichi feels like one. And it's more than reassuring to talk to someone more nervous than he is, because now that Daichi's chosen a major, his classes matter to him, and failing is a rather disgusting prospect.
At the end of it all, he celebrates with the spiciest take out he can find, but he quickly realizes how lonely it tastes now, the tears in his eyes as much from the spice as from the weight of loneliness at the back of his chest.
He falls asleep on the floor, food half-finished beside him.
An apartment, somewhere outside of Miyagi.
I wish for –
The door closes, but no one's there to hear it.
Daichi can't draw, but Asahi can, and when Daichi asks him to draw someone, he looks curious but doesn't question, and that's all Daichi could've hoped for, really.
The drawing is startlingly accurate - the way Suga's hair falls and the way his lips slide into the familiar curl of a smile make Daichi's heart clench with the feeling of home - but no artist can ever hope to capture the tilt of Suga's voice or the way Suga shines like winter snow in summer. The drawing is beautiful, though, enough that Daichi feels a little bad about tearing it apart.
He does it in the morning, under the sound of hot water through the coffee pot, and all he can think about is Suga's laughter fading from the air, and Suga's hands going soft and hazy in his grip, and the whispered words of don't go, don't go, and suddenly Daichi's laughing and crying all over again, as the paper drops to the ground in pieces and the coffee turns lukewarm and stale.
When he finally lifts his head and throws out the pieces, it's already the afternoon, and the coffee tastes like smoke and candle wax and the charred edges of a birthday cake eaten in the warmth of a bed, or at least that's what Daichi imagines, because he knows it's just another cup of stale coffee and it tastes just as gross.
And yet, it's the most satisfying cup of coffee Daichi's had in a while.
"I'm home," Daichi calls, and silence greets him.
It isn't really silence, though. There's the sound of the dripping tap he keeps forgetting to get fixed and the voices on the television he accidently left on and the summer wind blowing through one of the open windows.
And Daichi couldn't ask for more.