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But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Sousuke is supposed to be saying something, but he cannot, for the life of him, remember.
“Shima-kun,” Came Mitsumi’s urging voice in a whisper. The summer heat colored her cheeks pink. “What’s next?”
The script that Kanechika wrote contained around eleven thousand-fifty words. As far as Sousuke’s racing mind could recount, none of them contained poetic epithets about Iwakura Mitsumi. Similarly, none of them said anything about the way the breeze brushed against her cheeks, or the color of the hair clips pulling back her bangs, yet the imaginary lines wrote themselves anyway. Her eyes shimmered. Dappled sunlight came down through the gaps in the trees, gentle and soft, dancing on Mitsumi’s hair like a golden crown. Her gaze, curious and open, waited for an answer.
“Shima-kun?”
Right. The line. Well. Just—well—his mind was drawing a blank. Time was ticking, wasn’t it? And yet here Sousuke was, frozen as a marble statue. Was Romeo about to speak right now? He was…or was he not? Have they rehearsed this line before? Which scene was it, anyway? The sixth one or the fifth? How many times have they run this through?
Sousuke coughed. Stupid, stupid. He clapped a hand over his chest in an attempt to chastise his beating heart. Just what was happening? Where did these thoughts come from? And when did that fluttering thing in his chest make a home in his throat?
“Sorry, I just—“ Sousuke swallowed that thrashing feeling. He planted his feet on the ground, steeling what resolve he had left in him. He couldn’t meet Mitsumi’s gaze, but it might not matter; it’s the one that always seemed to see right through him, anyway. “Spaced out. It’s hot, isn’t it?”
Mitsumi broke out into a smile. “Yeah, it really is. But it’s alright. You’re doing great, Shima-kun!”
Against Sousuke’s will, the metaphorical notepad in his mind opened itself again. She had a dimple on her right cheek.
“…Thanks.” Sousuke desperately ignored the heat making its way down his nape. “And–and the same goes to you.”
“Mm-hm!”
“Let’s do it again,” He managed, despite the roar of blood in his ears. “From your line, Mitsumi-chan.”
She nodded and gripped her script. It’s in that fraction of time, Sousuke realizes, that he was about to be swept away again. Not by the heat, or the screaming of cicadas, or the unstoppable freight train in his mind that was his own string of thoughts—but by Mitsumi. By that look in her eyes. The kind of seriousness that could transform dappled sun rays into blinding spotlights, or a small yard at the back of a high school building into the world’s largest stage.
“…Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much.” Mitsumi, even as her voice wobbled, stepped forward; her eyes devoutly trained on the pages in her hand. She lifted her palm to touch Sousuke's own. “Which mannerly devotion shows in this: for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.”
Sousuke took her palm and, in a move far too dangerous for his heart, met Mitsumi in the eye. “Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”
Mitsumi broke out in a half-smile, resolutely raising her head. “Ay, pilgrim, lips they must use in prayer!”
There it was, the scene right before his eyes. It rang a familiar tune in Sousuke’s head. He found himself speaking before he knew it. “O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”
Right now, this was…what’s the word? Déja vu.
Mitsumi’s eyes flicked up from the script. He could see the tense line on her mouth—hesitant, but not unconfident. Sousuke knew that look all too well. Her eyes, still bright, focused on Sousuke’s own.
“Saints…do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.”
Rarely does man ever stop committing folly. Three hundred years ago, William Shakespeare knew of this. It’s what gave way for him to write spectacular play after spectacular play; what breathed life into his utterly lamentable characters. It is also what gave way for Shima Sousuke to realize his shortcomings three hundred years later, standing under the shade of sakura trees yet to blossom and sweating under the sweltering midsummer heat. He’s wondering—seriously wondering, now—if he had hit his head or ingested some brain-altering poison sometime in the last week. What else would urge Sousuke to accept the role of the world’s most tragically lovesick man, then rehearse said love-sicknesses with his own best friend?
Granted, he thought he’d be able to play the character to its fullest, but still. He can see it, in his mind’s eye: his oncoming train of thought and its passengers screaming stupid, stupid! over and over again. At this point, they were right. He was crazy. He is, a thousand times over, the most insane man on earth.
That insane man also happened to remember his line at this very moment. And so Sousuke, seizing his beating heart, wrangled it back into his voice.
“Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.”
Because time is a torturous thing, the moment ends before Sousuke knows it. But here is what he remembers: the breeze whispering against his ears. The slow, slow thumping of his heart in his fingers. The crunch of leaves underneath his worn soles. The thrum of warmth on Mitsumi’s arm, her skin shy of being a bright pink. Mitsumi moving forward. Sousuke’s hand gently circling her wrist. Mitsumi’s breath hitching. Sousuke’s knees, minutes away from collapsing, bending gently. Mitsumi rocking onto the tips of her toes. Here, just a hand’s length away from her, Sousuke could count the gentle curl of her eyelashes, each tiny freckle on the apples of her cheeks.
( The kissing is optional, Kanechika had clarified back then, while editing the script. But, it’s Romeo and Juliet, so—ya know. Do what you’re most comfortable with.)
What’s next? Mitsumi had asked earlier, eyes shining bright. That memory of her felt like ages ago, when she was only standing three feet away from him. When did that feel so far? Now, Sousuke closed his eyes. He could feel Mitsumi’s pulse right under his fingers. He swallowed his trepidation, his beating heart. What’s next is…
“Hey, Shima-kun, we’ve been looking all over for— oh my days.”
… Sousuke understanding why exactly Shakespeare’s characters murdered one another in cold blood.
He and Mitsumi recoil from each other, stepping back like wrong ends of a magnet. Sousuke couldn’t open his eyes, so he breathed in. He breathed out. In the time it took to do four breaths, he heard a loud smack! and Kanechika’s louder yelp, followed by the voice of someone—who Sousuke hoped was Mukai—chewing Kanechika out with a string of curses. Somewhere in front of him, he could hear Mitsumi audibly coughing, not unlike a cat hacking up a furball.
“What the hell is wrong with you, man!” Hopefully-Mukai accentuated every word with a smack on Kanechika’s shoulder. Sousuke knew because the sound resonated throughout the open field. “Are you blind or dumb as rocks? Couldn’t you see they were—”
“Ow, ow, I did, I did! Alright? Now will you please stop—Sorry, Shima-kun, Mitsumi-kun, we’ll be on our way! Happy practicing! I’ll— stop beating me up for the love of god, man!”
At least it was Kanechika that went in. Thank god it was Kanechika, and by extension, Mukai, who would probably rather burn his eyebrows off before he would ever tell anyone about what they saw. When their bickering faded to a tolerable background noise, Sousuke sighed. He ran a palm over his face. He needed to burrow in a hole and hide. For the next three hundred years, preferably.
Mitsumi puffed out her cheeks like a very angry hamster, meanwhile. “Huh. I think I need to have a nice, long chat with Kanechika-senpai really soon,” she murmured, lip curling. But the glint in her eyes left shortly after, replaced by a worried gaze that Sousuke decidedly cannot meet right now, unless he burst into flames on the spot. “Hey, Shima-kun. Are you alright?”
“Huh? Y-yeah,” he choked out. This is it, he thought, feeling sweat run down his temple as Mitsumi peered up at him. I’m done for. “Sorry. Just got—startled, I guess.”
Mitsumi laughed, bright as the midday sky. There’s the unmistakable crunch of leaves as she took a step forward again. “That’s good. It’s just…” She tried to stifle a giggle behind her fist, yet they spilled out of her like rising bubbles anyway. “You were red as apples the entire time, you know!”
As if following a set of instructions, Sousuke’s face flared even more on the spot. “I wasn’t!” Wait, why was he protesting? “Was I…?”
“Yeah. Super red,” Mitsumi’s voice was low, like she was sharing a secret. “But that makes two of us, so we’re even.”
“A-ah…” It’s like being put through an oven, Shima thinks. That’s how he felt as Mitsumi gazed back at him with an amused smile. Had Shakespeare predicted this kind of misery too? All he could do, at this point, was gulp down the clogging of poetic lines and nervous heartbeats in his throat. “Well. Thanks, Mitsumi-chan. If you’d like to—rest, we could take five, or grab some drinks, or…”
Mitsumi grinned. There she went again, looking at Sousuke with eyes that seemed like they could see right through him. She took his hand, gentle and firm, and spoke in a voice equally steady, like the summer breeze that swept through trees.
“We haven’t finished practicing, Shima-kun," she began, before clearing her throat and parroring the lofty speech they’d use when in character. “It is for this reason that I thusly believe, with all confidence, that we shall see this scene to the end, my good gentleman.”
Sousuke can’t help the laugh that bubbled out of him. Well…even with his twitching fingers and his sweating palms, the hammering in his chest, even with himself , he found it in him to grasp Mitsumi’s warm hand in his own.
“Oh, then—" he cleared his throat (and his mind with it), and mirrored Mitsumi's tone. "Fair lady, if you wish to do as such,” Sousuke gently took Mitsumi’s other hand, “then it would be my pleasure to honor thine request.”
It’s with a laugh that Mitsumi falls into step with him again, and with a laugh that they draw closer together. Time, ever the fleeting thing, ends the moment before Sousuke could anchor himself in it; but there is a poem that writes itself in his mind, a record of a memory he could hold onto.
So here is what he remembers: the breeze whispering against his ears. The slow, slow thumping of his heart under his skin, as Mitsumi smoothed soft fingers over his wrist. Sousuke’s breath hitching. Mitsumi rocking onto the tips of her toes. Sousuke bending forward. The tip of her nose, pink as a summer peach, bumping into his own. Here, just a breath’s length away from her, Sousuke could feel the way she smiled into his skin.
At the Capulets’ Ball, Romeo and Juliet shared their first kiss. The small yard behind West Tsubame High’s main building is no ballroom, but—this was Iwakura Mitsumi, who could pry the magic from a centuries-old story and plant it here and now, shaking the whole world, shaping it anew. Of course their first kiss is no less magical. Of course.
Sun rays into spotlights. Schoolyards into stages. This is the kind of enthrallment, Sousuke thinks, that only lovers like Romeo have had the privilege of experiencing.
And if their rehearsal goes on for longer than planned, well…that would be a secret only the cicadas and swaying trees would know.