Work Text:
Miyuki almost ends up playing pro baseball.
His high school team is good, is noteworthy, is on a level such that pro scouts sometimes come to watch their games. In Miyuki's last year of high school, his team manages to almost — but not quite — make it to Koshien. But then again, they have a history of almost — but not quite — pulling out the win in games whenever it really matters.
He thinks the scout has seen enough of him. He thinks he has a shot at the professional leagues all the same.
But the offer never comes, and Miyuki hasn't applied to any universities.
Miyuki has stubbornly doubled down on the long shot of playing pro, and when he almost — but doesn't quite — succeed in that, it's a gap year he sees looming wide in his future. His peers are all heading off to the futures they planned for and Miyuki doesn't intend to stay where he's been moored. He's spent three long years in the city. He's ready for a change.
Miyuki finds a pamphlet on work-study, and Miyuki decides to do that instead.
A series of trains take Miyuki as far as Sapporo, before he switches to a local line and finds his way farther into Hokkaido. Each train station looks much like the ones he's seen back home, with the same sorts of signs, the same sorts of warnings. Every time he switches trains he's a little bit farther from everything he's always known, but the scenery hardly seems to change. It's almost disappointing.
When Miyuki exits the final station and walks out into the town, there's a scent on the air which he cannot quite place. That's what finally strikes him as different — the warm brown smell that hovers around him, sharp with the underlying scent of growing things lurking underneath. Even with the grass and the dirt he knows from baseball fields, nothing he's ever been around has smelled so fresh and green as this.
There's a map in Miyuki's pocket, gifted to him by the program he's signed up for and with notable locations around the town marked off for his convenience. He's taken it upon himself to memorize its contents. He's not about to be caught staring at it like a tourist. The farm he's been assigned to work at is also marked off on the map, but it's several miles outside town and that's farther than Miyuki plans to walk.
He won't have to. His eyes track about the outside of the train station and quickly land upon the smiling face of a middle-aged woman, a simple paper sign held in her hands. It reads: "Miyuki-san, welcome to Hokkaido!"
So Miyuki makes his way over.
"Miyuki-san!" the woman says, immediately latching onto him. "We thought we might not be able to find you coming off the train."
The "we," Miyuki realizes, refers to herself and the young man standing just a step or two behind her. He's tall and broad-shouldered, a somber shadow who hovers in her wake without smiling, without making much of any kind of expression at all. His face is perfectly, peacefully blank, overshadowed by a fringe of bangs grown just long enough to begin falling into his eyes. Though his gaze appears unfocused, Miyuki thinks the man shifts to watching him, once he's made himself apparent.
"Guess not," Miyuki says, as he draws up short before the pair. "I found you both just fine."
"Good, good," the woman says. "I'm Mrs. Furuya, although I think you know that. And this is my son, Satoru. Satoru-kun, this is Miyuki Kazuya, the one who's been sent to help out with the farm."
Furuya's eyes laser in on him, his gaze sharpening like he means to pick a puzzle apart. The intensity is greater than Miyuki thought to expect. But when Furuya speaks, the only words he has to offer are a diffident, "It's nice to meet you."
"Yeah, same," Miyuki says, shrugging off the strangeness of Furuya Satoru's scrutiny.
"Anyway!" Furuya's mother says. "Now that we've gotten introductions underway, come along, let's get back to the truck. I'm sure you'd like to unpack your things, and I've left dinner warming. Satoru, get Miyuki-kun's bags, there's a dear."
Furuya glances down toward Miyuki's suitcase, resting at his side. Miyuki follows the line of his gaze, then looks back up to meet Furuya's eyes. He doesn't release his hold on the handle, saying instead, "I don't mind."
Furuya hesitates, visibly torn between his mother's request and Miyuki's resistance. But she's already walking away and after another moment, Furuya turns instead to follow her. Miyuki walks after them both, taking up the rear. There's no reason he doesn't want Furuya to carry his bag, but... He's contrary by nature, and couldn't help giving him a hard time.
When they get to the truck, an old, beat-up pickup with a cab large enough that there's space behind the driver's seat, Mrs. Furuya withdraws her keys, handing them to her son and allowing Furuya to climb in on the driver's side. When she sees Miyuki watching the exchange, she shrugs it off.
"I don't like driving," she explains. Her hand is on the passenger door, though she draws to one side so there's room for Miyuki to climb into the cab behind her. "Do you need a hand?"
"Don't worry," Miyuki says, grinning easily enough despite the unfamiliarity of the whole situation, despite how strange it is to accept hospitality from two people he's never met before in his life. "I'll manage."
He shoves his bag into the space behind the front seats first, then follows it up with his own body. The narrow seat in the back is hard and cramped, but Miyuki isn't fussed about it. He's ridden in buses to practice games that made for a bumpier ride and a less comfortable seat than this one. Mrs. Furuya's truck is nothing.
Furuya is a remarkably good driver, though he takes the few turns in the road up to the farm with unexpected sharpness. Then the truck slows, and Miyuki has arrived.
At the farmhouse, everything becomes motion and chaos. Miyuki is whisked inside, successfully divested of his bag, shuffled between several strangers until he finally shores up in the kitchen and is allowed to stop. Besides Mrs. Furuya and her son the house seems to play host to her husband and his father, as well as to several other farmhands whom Miyuki discovers are living in neighboring houses, though they don't have land of their own.
Dinner is ladled out to everyone amidst cheerful bustle, bowls passed between guests and family alike with brisk efficiency. The kitchen is one of the largest rooms in the house, outfitted with handsome new appliances that are juxtaposed sharply against the aging state of the house itself and with a vast table taking up a significant chunk of the room's real estate. The table is where they all sit around, eating their dinners and talking.
For once, Miyuki doesn't do much of the conversing. He bites his tongue and fills his mouth, feeling like he's a first year in high school all over again, staying silent through his struggles to get three bowls of rice down in one meal. Mrs. Furuya doesn't serve him quite so much, though the food is filling and delicious, and he is unable to refuse a second helping when it's offered.
By the time he retires for the night, he's exhausted, between hours and hours on bullet trains during the day and the whirlwind of introductions the evening has become. He's shown to his room with little fanfare. He finds that the house isn't large enough for him to be afforded space of his own — the program pamphlet said nothing about sharing, but the space he's given is in the same room where Furuya sleeps.
Miyuki can't complain. It isn't as if he hadn't lived for three years in a boy's dormitory at a public high school, sharing rooms during every year he was there. Furuya is a quiet sleeper, out like a light near as soon as his head hits the pillow. Miyuki is tired enough that he follows suit in short order.
The new day dawns too early.
Miyuki wakes up alone, Furuya already gone from the room and the emptiness becoming chilly in the absence of the space heater's sputtering warmth. Before he can so much as contemplate the reality of his new existence, Mrs. Furuya pops her head in, like she's never so much as considered the possibility of privacy in a young man's room. Miyuki wonders how old Furuya is, still living with a mother like that.
"Breakfast is on the table, dear," she tells Miyuki. "And your uniform is hung up just over there. We like to get started early, so hurry out as soon as you're able."
Miyuki hadn't given much thought to clothing meant to be worn on a farm, not when he doesn't own anything so precious he wouldn't be willing to grind a little more dirt into it. He dons the cover-alls that have been provided to him all the same, and ventures out to the kitchen.
Breakfast is a more subdued affair than dinner the night before. The aging patriarch of the family eats with his head down and his jaw working steadily, like an old workhorse too stubborn to be retired from the fields. His son — son in law — Miyuki isn't really sure which, eats with the newspaper in front of him, devouring the business section with his eyes just as voraciously as he devours the food that has been placed before him.
The lady of the house is whisking back and forth across the room, cleaning up the relics left behind from their breakfast's preparation with brisk efficiency. Miyuki assumes she's already eaten.
The youngest Furuya is eating slowly, seated just across from Miyuki at his end of the table. Though Miyuki feigns focus on his food, he can feel the heavy weight of eyes lingering on him, watching him. He can't help but watch Furuya in return with an appraising eye, sizing up this person with whom he'll be sharing space and work for the next six months. He's opaque, surprisingly hard to read. Miyuki watches the steady, unhurried way he puts away his food and isn't sure what to think of him.
Furuya's mother, he likes. She's practical and efficient, very obviously the heart of her household and filled with a warmth that can't be faked. A little overbearing, maybe, but Miyuki would be lying if he said he didn't know how it felt to be that way. She covers her commands in sugar and kindness and Miyuki understands that, too, knows that people are more likely to do what you want of them if you ask them in a way they understand, in a way they can't see a reason to object to.
He won't mind doing what she asks of him so much — it's damn certain she knows more than he does about farming, at any rate.
"Let's go, boys," she says, as she dries her hands on a dishtowel. "There's working to be done."
And so Miyuki does, following the family out to the fields.
He thinks he'll find the way of things fairly quick. It's physical labor first and foremost, and baseball has always gotten its pound of flesh from him. Miyuki is no stranger to hard work and physical exertion, and translating those skills into a different context is only a matter of adjustment. Or so he thinks.
As it turns out, it's harder work than he expects to haul twenty-kilo bags of fertilizer one by one onto the back of the truck, to remove all the stones in a field one after the other by hand alone. Furuya hefts the bags of fertilizer one-armed, like it's nothing, and Miyuki swears that he isn't jealous of that sort of simple ease.
He's a sweaty mess by the mid-morning break.
He also isn't expecting a break, when the sun hasn't yet reached peak height in the sky and it cannot possibly be late enough in the morning for lunch. But as one the family halts in their working, beckoning him over to lean against the back of the truck or to sit in its bed. Cups of tea are poured and passed around, followed by onigiri that Miyuki discovers are stuffed with salty, shiitake-mushroom filling.
"Miyuki-san," Furuya says, surprising him with the low, thoughtful timbre of his voice. "Are you alright?"
Miyuki glances down at himself, searching for visible signs of some flaw, some defect, some reason why Furuya might think he's anything other than perfectly content with the work he's been doing. But all he finds are dirt stains on his coveralls, clumping around his knees, and a few crumbs of rice sticking to his thighs from where he'd been messier than he realized in his eating.
He shrugs his shoulders, a loose roll back that he segues into a stretch to release some of the tension that's begun to settle into his muscles. Maybe he's less alright than he thinks, with the morning's exertion already taking its toll, but he isn't so damaged he'd expect a stranger to notice. "Yeah, I'm doing okay."
Furuya continues to watch him, with a single-minded scrutiny that smacks of disbelief. Miyuki smiles guilelessly at him, wide and toothy, in an effort to wave the concern off. It's kind of cute.
"You aren't very good at carrying things," Furuya finally says, and turns away.
It's so unexpected that for a full thirty seconds, it doesn't even occur to Miyuki to be insulted. By the time the slight sinks in, it's too late to take Furuya to task for doubting him. All the same, Miyuki can't help but utter a small, wounded, "Hey."
Furuya gives no sign of even having heard him.
After that, it's back to work until lunchtime, the tea cups collected and the remains of their snack put away. Miyuki's back is aching by the time they stop again to eat, and is positively screaming protest of its treatment by the time they stop for good in the late afternoon and return to the farmhouse for dinner.
Miyuki has most definitely underestimated the rigors of the farming lifestyle.
The intensity of the labor doesn't get better as spring wears on.
It's April when Miyuki starts at the farm, when spring has come and the cherry blossoms are blooming elsewhere in Japan. As far north as Hokkaido, though, it's still gray and chilly. Many of the days are overcast, and even when it rains the entire family — as well as the neighboring farmhands — are all out in the fields performing their usual toil.
Miyuki wonders, in the vague sort of way he gets when he's assessing his performance at something less important than baseball, when he's going over immutable facts that are beyond his power to change, why he'd thought a work-study program would be a good idea at all. He could have had a proper gap year, could have frittered away his time in Tokyo going to every Giants game he could catch, or he could have traveled around the country, seeing all manner of places he'd never been to before.
But no, one of Miyuki's teachers had given him a pamphlet on a program that matched recent high school graduates as well as foreigners with host families whose trade was farming, and Miyuki had thought, why not! Going away to Hokkaido to pick azuki beans would be a grand new adventure!
It's genuine hard work, with no adventure to be seen, but Miyuki isn't so certain he regrets it, either. There's a satisfaction to going to bed beaten and sore every night — it's like when he was playing baseball on the first string, practicing hard and playing harder, wearing himself down viciously just to hone his skills. It's something he hasn't experienced in months, not since the team lost their shot at Koshien and he relinquished his spot to the next year's starters. It's something part of him is glad to experience again.
Miyuki makes it three solid weeks into his work-study before Mrs. Furuya takes pity on him and points out, he doesn't have to be working every day. Hasn't he noticed that once or twice, the hands from the neighboring houses aren't with them in the fields? He is allowed his days off.
Miyuki chooses not to admit that the idea hadn't even occurred to him. She and her husband, her son, her father, are in the fields every day. Miyuki was determined to work as hard as any of them.
But if he's allowed his days off, he might as well use them.
"Let's go to a baseball game," Miyuki says.
"Today?" Furuya asks, his voice gone soft-edged with surprise.
It's evening, after they've already worked the entire day and eaten dinner, and Miyuki has just spread his futon out on the floor in preparation to sleep. He therefore feels no guilt in rolling his eyes at Furuya's ridiculous question.
"No, on Tuesday," he clarifies. "That's when the Fighters are having their next home game, and I could still get tickets. But it's no fun going to a baseball game by yourself."
Furuya is silent, considering it. Miyuki has found, in his brief time knowing him, that Furuya does this a lot — this slow contemplation, like every question is worthy of great deliberation. It makes him seem a little slow, but he isn't, not really. He's sharp with the things he wants to pick up. He just can't be bothered with the ones he doesn't.
It drives Miyuki nuts constantly, but he also can't help but almost admire it.
"I think I'd like that," Furuya ends up saying. "But I'll have to ask my mom."
Part of Miyuki wants to tease Furuya for being a mamma's boy, for being unable to make the decision to go out to a baseball game when he's a grown adult without first consulting his mother. A more pragmatic part of Miyuki knows that it isn't about that. What Furuya means is, I need to ask my mother whether it will be okay for the farm to be down two workers on the same day.
Miyuki finds that he really hopes that it is.
"We'll ask her in the morning," he decides. "And then I'll buy the tickets tomorrow evening, if it is. We can pick them up at the stadium."
Furuya nods at that, slowly, but he looks pleased.
Miyuki doesn't know him very well, even after three weeks of living and working together near-constantly. Furuya doesn't talk a lot, coming across at once as being very closed-off and as being an open book which simply has nothing written on its pages. Miyuki gets the sense that neither is true. He just hasn't figured out the knack of reading Furuya yet.
But a baseball game is fun with any sort of company, and Miyuki is looking — however tentatively — forward to it.
Miyuki has been to baseball games at the Tokyo Dome before.
Not often, but he's found the time and scrounged together the money for a ticket on a few occasions during his high school baseball career and he's familiar with the way that stadium looks, cupped inside the swelling shape of its protective shell and four stories tall, looming larger than life when viewed from the street. Going to the Sapporo Dome is different.
For one thing, Miyuki doesn't know exactly where it is. He and Furuya train into the city that Tuesday but Furuya proves to be no additional help, trailing behind Miyuki as he handles all navigation toward the stadium. It turns out Furuya has never been to a pro game before, though he follows the radio broadcasts religiously in the evenings and used to play in middle school, before he graduated and began to work full time at his family's farm.
It turns out, Furuya is a lot more excited for the game than Miyuki realized.
They claim their tickets at the stadium before heading inside to wander around the dome's guts. They're early, but that's better than being late, and the trains into Sapporo only run so often. Furuya is a bundle of restless energy, nerves strung tight and muscles tense, and Miyuki does not begrudge him the time to walk it off striding from one side of the dome to the other. Their tickets are the reserved sort, rather than the extremely cheap gallery seats where they would just cram in wherever they could sit. They can afford to waste some time.
Eventually, Miyuki brings them around to the concession stands, idling in that area until they can settle on what to eat. Miyuki is quick to buy yakitori and curry rice, something simple he can eat quick and something he'll be able to take with him to his seat, but Furuya is slower. After he's hovered indecisively past three food lines, Miyuki weasels the answer out of him: he's looking for a bento with a crab omlette in it.
So Miyuki tracks one down, and they go to take their seats.
There's still time left before the game starts, time Miyuki passes by gnawing on his yakitori and watching Furuya furtively while he eats. Everything else in his bento he samples first, picking at first one thing, then another. At last only the omelette is left and from the first bite alone, he's positively beaming. It's kind of adorable.
"You really wanted that bento, huh?" Miyuki asks him, amused.
Furuya shrugs, feigning unconcern. "Mom doesn't buy things like crab much. I really like crab."
Miyuki can't argue with that, but he can laugh, shaking his head back and forth as he chuckles. "Guess it really is the simple pleasures. Hey, you follow the Fighters, right?"
Furuya nods, and suddenly he's intent, focused. He's fired up almost as if he's the one about to play in the game. "I really like them. All the radio broadcasts when I was young were of the Fighters' games. I always listened to them with my grandfather, ever since I was in elementary school."
Miyuki knows what that's like. The Giants are his team and while they're pretty good, he knows that he follows them in largest part because they're his home team. They're the team he always saw on TV, back when he was maybe six years old and first learning how to play baseball. He didn't know any of the players' names but he saw them with their bold numbers on their backs and he knew, knew that they really were giants.
It's strange, being in Hokkaido. The Fighters aren't part of the Central league, and won't be playing any of the teams Miyuki most often sees. It's a little like entering into a different world — though it isn't as if the two leagues don't play each other. It's just, unfamiliar, being in a different stadium and rooting for a different team. Rooting for Furuya's team.
Once the game starts, Furuya isn't shy about cheering for his team.
He isn't the sort to bellow and shout but his intensity turns on from the first moment the Fighters' pitcher steps onto the mound and it doesn't tone down for anything. His eyes track every movement, watch every play, his body tensing up every time someone on his team makes a small fumble, or makes a catch, or gets an out. Just sitting next to him, Miyuki can feel the thrum of the energy radiating off of him, an excitement that warms him as viscerally as does the light of the sun.
He finds that it's catching, and Miyuki is the one who starts yelling encouragements to the players, or groaning in disgust when the Eagles' batters get a hit off the Fighters' pitcher. Everyone around them is just as loyal, and Miyuki's eagerness simply blends into the landscape of the crowd, a tapestry made up of shouts and laughs and moans of defeat, all blended together into an invigorating wash of sound that was no less thrilling for its incomprehensibility. The Fighters play well enough against the Eagles that it's an exciting game, the score remaining close, the chance for loss or for victory remaining equally likely.
When the Fighters secure the win at the bottom of the ninth, Miyuki and Furuya both hop out of their seats to cheer.
As their twin shouts die away, they turn to look at each other, both momentarily sheepish with the awareness of just how demonstrative they're being. But that's what it's like to be at a game, swept up in the tide of enthusiasm that all the other fans all around them are contributing toward. Miyuki laughs first, delighted, exhilarated, and a moment later Furuya joins him. His laughter is softer, lower, almost self-conscious in how it slides out of him. But he's smiling with such genuine pleasure while he does it that Miyuki can't help but think, he really does like the sound.
"C'mon," he says, when the people around them have begun to filter out of the stands and funnel toward the exits. "Let's get out of here."
They've allowed enough other fans to desert their area that the crowd around them is thinning, but as they join the flow of people making their way toward the closest exit the crush of bodies becomes dense and impenetrable. They're pushed in toward each other, before Miyuki feels Furuya's hand closing around his forearm, like Furuya is worried he might lose Miyuki in the crowd.
After a minute, Furuya's grip loosens, and his hand slides down the length of Miyuki's arm. It catches against Miyuki's fingers, lingering, before he closes his hand around Miyuki's with a comfortable, steady grip.
Miyuki looks up at Furuya, surprised by the gesture. But Furuya isn't even looking at him; he's staring off to one side, looking out across the tide of bodies as they wait in their disorganized, slowly shuffling line. Nothing about Furuya's manner seems affectionate, or flirtatious, but after a minute he squeezes Miyuki's hand once, as if in reassurance. Miyuki doesn't bother to take his hand away.
Eventually they filter out of the stadium and back onto the street, where the crowd begins to thin and they can make headway against the tide. Furuya is still holding Miyuki's hand, using it to drag him in Furuya's wake as he cuts his way across the crowd in the direction of the train station. He's taller and broader than Miyuki, with a face that lends itself easily to stern, serious expressions. When he pushes through the crowd, he doesn't have to elbow anyone or squirm around other bodies. He simply makes a path for himself.
It's kind of irritating. But it's faster than Miyuki weaving his way through the crowd, and it leaves him gripping Furuya's hand tight to avoid being left behind. He feels strangely like a child, being dragged by a teacher to another room where he might more appropriately be scolded.
(It doesn't hurt that the vision is a not-inaccurate picture of many events from his childhood, vivid in his memory when Furuya gives him cause to think about them.)
Furuya slows down once they're a couple blocks from the stadium and have space enough to walk at their leisure. Miyuki pulls his hand out of Furuya's grip, tucking both his hands in his pockets like he's forestalling a repeat of the touchy behavior. It feels defensive — it probably is defensive — but his posture is relaxed enough, arms held loose and spine curled in a casual slouch.
"We don't have to leave that fast, do we?" he asks, with a little laugh to show that it's a joke.
"You said you wanted to get out of there," Furuya says. "It was taking too long."
Miyuki looks at him slantwise, surprised by this evidence of Furuya's impatience. Whenever they're working on the farm Furuya is slow and steady, willing to take whatever time necessary to get a job done right — and never requiring more time than Miyuki, when his skills are honed through years of practice and many of the motions are practiced and sure. It's a new little detail Miyuki hadn't thought to anticipate, is interesting, different.
"I just figured we might as well," Miyuki shrugs. "Did you wanna do anything else around here, or just get back to town?"
Furuya's shoulders hunch with uncertainty. He doesn't reply right away and when the words do come, it's with some reluctance, "We should get back before it gets too late. We have work tomorrow."
Miyuki nods amiably enough in patient understanding. "Yeah, guess we should."
They make their way back to the train station, Furuya staring vaguely ahead and occasionally glancing to one side or the other when a passerby or something in a shop window catches his attention, Miyuki noticing that Furuya is walking a bit closer beside him than he thinks Furuya previously would. It's still a bit chilly in Sapporo, even in late April. Miyuki can feel the heat from Furuya's body as a warmth present along his one side. He finds it more reassuring than anything.
The weather grows warmer as April gives way to May, bringing with it a new round of farm chores to replace the ones Miyuki has already grown used to. The fields are cleared and turned and with the possibility of an evening freeze becoming a thing of the past, it comes time to plant those more delicate crops which would not have survived an unexpected dip in temperatures.
It also means the emergence of the family's tractor, a fact Miyuki tries not to appear too excited about.
It's a large, industrial thing; a hulking behemoth of machinery whose cab Furuya climbs up to sit inside. Miyuki helps with stocking it — they fill the tractor up with sugar beet shoots before letting Furuya drive it slowly across the field so that it can inject the plants robotically into the ground. It's only so capable. The machine will miss a spot here, lag for a second there, and it becomes Miyuki's job to help fill in the gaps.
Planting beets is mindless, consuming. It's hauling armfuls of green growing things behind a heaving, shuddering technological beast, inserting them in the soft earth quickly whenever it's necessary lest progress leave him behind. The sun beats down heavy on Miyuki's back and he's warm beneath his work coveralls, crouching down over and over until he can feel it in his thighs. Every so often they need to ask Furuya to stop, to wait for them while they neaten the rows.
When they pause for a third time, it occurs to Miyuki that Furuya is a remarkably good driver — that perhaps it is his quick reflexes and steady hand that account for him being given the wheel rather than leaving that task to his father or grandfather.
He sneaks a glance up at Furuya, head craned just slightly back toward everyone working behind him and sweat slicking his flushed face, during those few moments before the tractor again shudders to life and resumes its progress. For Miyuki, farming is a lark — a funny decision he's made about trying something new, about doing something different before he goes off to university to get a "real," modern job — but it occurs to him, for Furuya, this is going to be his whole life.
This is everything he knows, the entirety of his world.
Miyuki stares off across the Furuya family's fields, at the neatly planted rows of crops and the couple of greenhouses off to one side of the property, at the chicken coop that houses the few animals Furuya's family takes the time to raise. He doesn't have time to think on the farm as being its own miniature universe. For the time being, it's his, leaving Miyuki to throw himself again into the business of planting.
"Hey," Miyuki calls out, getting Furuya's attention with a shout and flashing him a grin.
He tosses the ball he's found in Furuya's direction and is gratified when Furuya catches it easily. "Play catch with me. You've got a glove around somewhere, wherever this came from, don't you?"
Furuya looks down at the baseball in his hand, the leather old and weathered but still supple enough to be worth throwing. Miyuki hasn't touched one since leaving his team, but when he found the old ball in the back of a closet, the familiar weight in his hand was too much to ignore. He misses catching.
"I think so," Furuya says. "Right now?"
"There's daylight left, isn't there? Come on."
A little searching turns up an old baseball glove from the bottom of a chest in Furuya's room, while Miyuki pulls his out from the back of his suitcase. It isn't that he thought he'd need it, not really. But when he was packing up the sum total of his belongings important enough to bring halfway across the country, it hadn't felt right to leave a friend like that behind.
They head outside, finding an empty spot to throw in at the front of the house where they won't stumble into the crops.
The sunlight is orange and fading, lighting Furuya up from behind where it's descending in the west. It's late enough in May that the days are long, getting to the longest they'll be all year. Though Miyuki and Furuya have already spent the earlier daylight hours on working, Miyuki isn't so tired that the appeal of a little friendly game of catch becomes lost on him.
He tosses the ball to Furuya underhand, easy, not trying to make a competition of it. Furuya throws it back to him hard and a little bit wild, so that Miyuki has to snap his arm out to catch it before it goes whizzing by. His next throw is overhand, no longer taking pity.
"You've got some kind of arm on you, huh?" he asks.
Furuya fingers the ball before throwing it back, turning it over and over inside his fingers so that Miyuki really sees the moment when he lets it slot neatly between pointer and middle. His next throw is more controlled, doesn't go as wide, and Miyuki catches it easily. He can still feel the force of its impact all the way up his arm.
"I always liked throwing," Furuya says. "But no one who lives around here wants to play baseball with me."
It occurs to Miyuki that while he'd known for some time that Furuya loves baseball, he'd never thought to ask what position Furuya used to play. He doesn't think he needs to ask, not any more.
"I was a catcher," he points out. "When I played in high school."
Furuya's eyes light with interest when he says it, his attention focusing on Miyuki with a weight that's warm, gratifying. He chooses not to think about phrasing his experience in past tense, chooses not to consider that he was a catcher, but isn't any longer. Furuya isn't looking at him like it's over.
They throw a few more times back and forth without either of them saying anything else. Furuya's control improves with each toss, though it starts to drop off again as the toll the day's laboring took on him begins to make itself evident. Even weakened by well-earned exhaustion, there's an obvious power behind Furuya's throws.
Miyuki can feel the itch building in the back of his brain, the familiar urge to graft himself onto that power and harness it into something he can use. Into something his team can use. It feels strange, different, when he remembers he no longer has a team to play for. But oh, the battery he might form if that weren't true. Beneath the farm dirt and the rough edges, he can tell Furuya has something worth polishing.
It's starting to get dark, before Miyuki thinks to stop.
"We should go in," he says, tossing the ball easily up in the air and catching it himself, squeezing it in his hand and flashing Furuya a grin. "Pretty soon we won't be able to see what we're doing at all."
Furuya digs in his heels, his expression darkening in preparation for a protest. Miyuki laughs, pleasantly surprised that when he's the one who suggested a game of catch on a lark, Furuya is the one who wants to play until the very last light dies from the sky, or later still.
"I'll catch with you again," he says. "Some other day, if you want. Come on."
That placates Furuya enough that his posture loosens and he follows Miyuki back into the house at an easy lope. He never hurries, but his long legs catch him up to Miyuki before they're even at the door, and then his fingers are at Miyuki's wrist, trailing lightly over his skin.
For a moment Miyuki remembers their day at the Sapporo stadium, remembers Furuya taking his hand with calm confidence. Then Furuya's fingers curl around the baseball Miyuki had forgotten he was holding, and pluck it out of his hand.
Miyuki pauses, glancing right up into Furuya's face where it's hovering over his shoulder, "What, not gonna trust me to keep a hold of it?"
Furuya doesn't even have the decency to look embarrassed, to show any sign that he realizes he's being teased. He stares back at Miyuki very seriously, like he's looking straight through him to the complicated mechanisms Miyuki holds tangled up with his insides. It's a little bit unsettling.
"I just wanted to hold it a little more," Furuya says.
Miyuki's jaw sets, lips thinning into a thoughtful line before he makes himself smile. He's missing something, but he'll figure it out later. He does like puzzles. "Fine with me. Just put it away somewhere safe, or we won't have a ball for next time."
Furuya's hand squeezes tight around the ball before he nods like he's accepting the trust of something precious. Maybe he really loves baseball that much. Maybe he missed it more than even he had realized. Miyuki can relate to that.
As June arrives, the mid-morning break the family takes becomes all the more vital to Miyuki's survival.
Hokkaido isn't as muggy as the summers he's is used to, but the temperatures do rise as the days go on. Though the mornings may be breezy and comfortable when everyone departs for the fields at seven, by ten the sun has risen high enough in the sky to glare down on them, sending fat beads of sweat to trickling down Miyuki's neck and leaving him steaming beneath his work clothes.
He's grateful every time their morning halt is called, conditioned into grinning when he sees the little hamper full of drinks and snacks being brought out. They crouch in the dirt as Furuya's mother administers to them, pouring cupfuls of chilled tea and passing around fat slices of early-summer watermelon. Miyuki makes himself eat his with slow, savoring bites, juice trickling down his chin, down over his fingers, down along the insides of his wrists.
He smiles at the taste as much as at the sensation of cool liquid soothing his parched tongue, grins more when he catches sight of Furuya making the same face he is. Furuya eats his watermelon leisurely, a look of utmost contentment spread across his sweaty face. There's a simple joy to good food after hard work. Miyuki feels it all the way down to his bones.
He's gotten used to the work, to the planting and the weeding and the long hours every day. His body adapts to what he asks of it like it adapted to baseball, and he's quicker than he used to be in completing the tasks given to him. He can't help but feel proud of the progress he's made, of the feeling that they're accomplishing something all together.
It turns out that a farming family and its helpers isn't so different from a team.
"Come on," Miyuki says, when the last of the cold tea is drained from his cup and it's just Furuya left licking watermelon juices from the underside of his hand. "Let's get back to it."
Furuya pauses, hand still held up by his mouth, eyes tracking Miyuki over top of the easy curl of his fingers. Miyuki can't help but laugh at the look of him even as he's pushing himself up from the ground. He offers a hand down to Furuya to pull him up, finds that he doesn't even mind the lingering damp stickiness to Furuya's hand.
It's not quite the same as having a battery with someone, not quite like being linked in to that person and their needs and the things that they know, communicating on a nonverbal level that's gut-deep and visceral. But working with Furuya has become easy and familiar; the blank pages of his open book are no longer difficult to read, not when he telegraphs everything he's feeling with signs Miyuki picks up easy as breathing.
They work well together, and get the day's laboring done in good, quick time.
Miyuki cannot remember the last time he ate as much as he does on the summer solstice.
It was never a special day to him before but to Furuya's mother it's the perfect time to host a feast. It's a turning point, the single longest day in the year and a moment past which everything will run downhill, the summer growing season flowing into the autumn harvest flowing into the cold of a Hokkaido winter. The crops for sale might still be growing but there are vegetables planted in the family's personal garden which have already put forth their first offerings. They're delicious in the night's dinner.
Miyuki is sated and more than that he's exhausted, worked so consistently day in and day out that he never has trouble sleeping. This night is different. It's dark and quiet in the room he shares with Furuya, the window cracked and curtains parted so that the faint glow of moonlight cuts across the gloom. Miyuki lies on his back on his futon, and he does not sleep.
There's a shifting in the dimness, and Miyuki sees Furuya roll over toward him out of the corner of his eye.
"You awake?" he murmurs, tilting his head to peer at Furuya slantwise.
Furuya's reply is only a soft mumbling, something Miyuki might have taken for talking in his sleep if he didn't know better. Miyuki's vision is vague and indistinct without his glasses and with the room darkened, but he can feel Furuya's gaze settling over him without having to see Furuya's eyes move.
"Me too," Miyuki says. He rolls over, propping himself up on his elbow. "Don't know why."
"Maybe you aren't trying hard enough," Furuya tells him.
Miyuki snorts. "Then what are you doing up? You always try plenty hard. I didn't think you even knew what sleeplessness was."
Furuya shifts, making a vague shrugging motion where he's still lying down. "Sometimes I lie awake for a while, when it's quiet, and I think about things."
"Uh huh," Miyuki says. "What kind of things do you think about?"
"I think about how the plants are doing, and about how much we're going to have to ship this year. I think about what my mom is going to make for breakfast. Sometimes I think about Sapporo and about going to the baseball game there with you, ever since we did that."
The last admission catches Miyuki off guard, and he bites his tongue before he can blurt out his surprise. Somehow, even after months, he never would have taken Furuya for the introspective type. Thinking about practical things like the farm and breakfast, sure. Thinking about Miyuki dragging him to that game is... It's different.
"What are you thinking about that game for?" Miyuki asks.
"I don't get to do stuff like that very much," Furuya says. "So sometimes I think about it. I thought maybe we could go to another game."
"We could do that," Miyuki says. He does it easily, loftily, but even as he's speaking he can feel himself smiling, a flash of teeth he thinks Furuya catches sight of even in the dark.
Furuya shuffles a bit closer to him, sliding across his futon and pulling the blanket along with him. Usually they sleep a couple feet apart, their futons laid out side by side with a little gap in between. It's too far for Miyuki to see clearly without his glasses. But all too abruptly Furuya is inched close enough that Miyuki can make out all of the specific planes of his face.
"I'm glad you came to help with the farm," Furuya tells him.
Miyuki thinks he's gotten pretty good at reading Furuya over the couple of months he's known him. He doesn't have to stretch his skills to read Furuya's intent this time — the sincerity behind his words rings out bell-clear. His earnestness comes through like a physical pang in Miyuki's chest, a thrum that echoes off the insides of his ribs.
"Yeah," he ends up saying. "It was a pretty good idea, wasn't it?"
This time, with Furuya lying so close, Miyuki can see the easy way he smiles. The expression blossoms across his face, softening his features into a look of the purest contentment. It makes Miyuki feel a little nervous, gives him this funny queasiness in his gut that has to be at the thought of ever giving himself away that easily, just from the look on his face. He couldn't stand being that transparent.
Furuya shifts again, reaching across the slim remaining distance between them. His fingertips skate over the back of Miyuki's hand before turning it over carefully, his eyes on Miyuki's face the entire time. He fits their palms together, then laces his fingers loosely with Miyuki's. Whatever he reads in Miyuki's expression, he's clearly happy with it; the determined look on his face fades again into one of uncomplicated pleasure.
Miyuki realizes, with what he is aware is a delay of days, of weeks, that something is happening which it would not be prudent for him to ignore.
But Furuya doesn't say anything else, so Miyuki chooses not to bother with talking, either. Furuya's eyes slide closed again. He looks peaceful. Miyuki suspects he has already fallen asleep. It's kind of adorable, that all Furuya wanted was to hold his hand while they whispered to each other in the dark.
Miyuki lets Furuya keep holding it, as he slumps again onto his back. He feels like he missed a calculation somewhere, like he's made a bad call in a game but couldn't pick up on the shift in momentum until it was three innings down the line and too late to change course. Except as far as he knows, nothing's scored a hit off him yet. He still has time to choose his play.
Miyuki doesn't end up doing much of anything different after all.
He continues to rise at dawn for breakfast and depart for the fields by seven, continues to weed crops and mend fences and perform any of an innumerable variety of chores the farm requires of all of them. He works very closely with Furuya, always aware of where Furuya is in the fields, frequently because he's gone and placed himself in acute physical proximity to Miyuki himself.
He's aware of Furuya often watching him, in a manner more unconscious than the way Miyuki has tuned himself like an instrument so he'll pick up on Furuya's presence. Furuya does the same thing thoughtlessly, effortlessly, placing himself in Miyuki's orbit so that whenever he has a second free he can turn toward his idea of north, orienting himself by Miyuki's presence alone.
It's flattering. And a little bit terrifying.
They often sit next to each other for meals, and Miyuki is certain he's caught Furuya's mother eyeing him speculatively from time to time. He can't divine what she's thinking — likely something worse than the reality of fond looks, of playing catch, of Furuya's not entirely subtle attempts to hold Miyuki's hand under the table. He makes himself very busy with eating, and doesn't talk nearly as much as his usual.
He checks the online ticketing websites regularly, eyeing the Fighters' game schedule and the prices and weighing when he and Furuya might both be able to justify a personal day. He wonders if he's becoming a Fighters fan, with how often he tracks their game results when he and Furuya are unable to watch or listen to the games. He isn't sure he's committed to the team. He just likes knowing the numbers, knowing the facts.
When they lay out their futons at night they've gotten in the habit of placing them down side by side, no gap in the middle at all. Sometimes Furuya rolls over onto Miyuki's side of the thing during the night, so that when he wakes up in the early hours of the morning he can feel Furuya's shallow breaths ghosting hot against the back of his neck. He takes his time getting back to sleep.
(Sometimes he thinks of rolling over, of sliding his hands under Furuya's half of the blankets in the dark, but he never does.)
Mostly, Miyuki is mystified by Furuya's contentment with... Whatever fledgling thing it is that they've built. It feels delicate and tenuous, fragile for its lack of definition. Miyuki doesn't particularly want to give it more substance, to name it as something concrete. The idea fills him with a cold, uncomfortable sense of trepidation. Maybe that's part of how Furuya feels — that he should keep what he has, because to do more than that would be greedy.
Miyuki has always been willing to be greedy.
He never spent too much time on the fine print of his work-study contract, and part of him wonders — in a way that only borders on the hysterical — whether being this fond of Furuya constitutes an inappropriate relationship with his boss. He isn't entirely certain who his boss is, under the circumstances. It's Furuya's mother who administers his pay.
He's a little on edge, at times, a little like a spooked cat moving with that bandy-legged gait of a creature who isn't certain when the next spook will come. Mostly, though, he's content with his lot. He works hard and he eats good food and he does it in the company of people who are uncomplicated and warm, who welcomed him into their home despite all the illogical implications of that.
Miyuki could call the next play, but it isn't actually a game he's engaging in, and he doesn't feel the need.
"I'm giving both of you the day off today," Furuya's mother announces over breakfast.
It's a few weeks from the solstice, bringing them into the middle of July and to some of the hottest days of the year. Miyuki hears "day off" and he perks up greedily, quick to hone in on the excuse not to subject himself to the considerable summer heat. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Furuya doing much the same.
"Is there some specific reason for it?" Miyuki asks, trying so hard not to look the gift horse in the mouth but unable to fully deny his curiosity. He adds, teasingly, "Or do you just want us both out of your hair?"
"There's a festival happening in town today, actually," Furuya's mother says. "I thought after working so hard all this time, you boys might like the chance to go out and do something fun."
Miyuki can't argue with that. He already hoards his off days, not knowing anyone much in the area besides the family and their helpers and not relishing going into the city by himself and with nothing to do. He's tried it, spent a day in Sapporo going to the movies and poking around, but once was enough. After that, he's stuck to walking to the town near the farm when he has time for himself. A festival, though...
"The hanabi festival?" Furuya asks. "The one in Makomanai Park?"
There's a light slowly kindling behind his eyes, an eagerness that hasn't fully built but which Miyuki can sense rising inside of him. Furuya's mother smiles at him, fondly, and nods her head.
"The one we used to go to when you were small," she agrees.
"We don't have the clothes for it," Furuya says, glancing regretfully down at himself, like he thinks particular attire will be a prerequisite to get them into the festival grounds.
Immediately Miyuki's head is filled with an image of a more childlike Furuya, maybe of elementary school age, dressed in a tiny yukata and holding onto his mother's hand as they weave through the crowds at a local festival. The picture in his mind is enough to have him grinning outright at his private amusement.
"Don't worry," Furuya's mother says decisively. "I have exactly the thing for both of you."
Miyuki realizes, too late, that perhaps he should have been paying more attention to the conversation at hand.
Furuya's mother disappears into the master bedroom, returning with her arms heaped with cloth and thrusting her offerings into not only Furuya's hands, but Miyuki's as well. He takes what's shoved at him, beginning to unfold the bundle in order to look at the subtle print on the fabric.
"They were my husband's," Furuya's mother says, glancing to the side and to where the man in question is calmly sipping his tea, subtly excusing himself from the proceedings at hand. "But he hasn't worn them in some time, and they should fit both of you. Even you."
She looks Miyuki up and down and he can't help but make an offended little cough that gets caught in his throat, when it sinks in that she's commenting on his height. He isn't that much shorter than Furuya and his father.
"Now go get changed!" she says, shooing them both out of the kitchen. "The trains into the city only leave so often!"
Successfully cowed, Miyuki and Furuya both obey her command.
True to her word, the yukata she's given them fit both Miyuki and Furuya suitably enough, though when they reemerge into the main area of the home she can't help but fuss over them. Furuya stands calmly by as his mother straightens his clothing and neatens his hair, flicking his bangs this way and that to get them out of his eyes before darting her hands down again to adjust his obi.
Miyuki looks on in amusement, unable to completely smother his snickers as Furuya's mom grasps him by both cheeks, staring up into his face and giving him a fond, satisfied smile. His enjoyment of the show is premature — as soon as Mrs. Furuya is done with her son she rounds on Miyuki, straightening him out in much the same way and pressing at his unruly hair for far longer than she did with her son.
"This needs cutting," she insists, tugging on the bits hanging down in front of his ears. "If you'll only let me, I have sharp scissors in the other room, and I always have done a fine enough job with Satoru, if I do say so myself..."
Miyuki squirms back out of her hands, panicking and taking a quick step back. "Uh, that's um, you don't have to, it's fine. We need to leave to catch the train, anyway."
For a moment she appears disappointed, before huffing and allowing her expression to soften. "Of course," she says. "You boys have fun. Stay out of trouble."
Miyuki grabs Furuya bodily by the arm and makes only the roughest of attempts not to hurry out of the house. The walk into town is a long one, but it's remarkably comfortable in their breathable summer clothes, and before Miyuki knows it, they're on the train headed for the city. They have to change lines to get to the festival grounds but ultimately are let off at a station easy walking distance from the park.
It's midday when they arrive, the festival area already occupied but not nearly as crowded as it will be come that evening. They wander through, peering at the stalls and games and exhibits set up throughout the park but not lingering more than a few moments in any one place. Miyuki is restless, his body perplexed by being assigned a task so easy as simply walking, rather than the farm chores he's grown used to.
He's aware, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he is on a date. That Furuya's mother has assigned him a date.
Furuya's knuckles brush against the back of his hand and then his fingers are wrapping around it, joining their hands and tethering Miyuki to his side. Miyuki glances around them, peering as innocently as he can at the people walking by them on either side, at the vendors operating the stalls they're passing. No one really seems to notice that there are two young men holding hands as they wander through the festival grounds.
"Let's get something to eat," he says, abruptly, using the hand in his to tow Furuya back the way they had come.
"Miyuki...?" Furuya starts to ask, dragging his heels a bit in reflexive protest.
"We're at this festival," Miyuki says. "C'mon, don't you want to do something?"
But he allows himself to be slowed by Furuya's uncertain pace, aware that he's wandered off the festival's main avenue of attractions, aware that he may have made that last wrong turn entirely on purpose. There are no longer people crowded all around them, passing them on both sides. Miyuki flashes Furuya a guileless grin, but the inside of his palm is slick with perspiration.
It might be three innings in but as far as Miyuki is concerned, until the final score is called it's never too late to change the game. He still has plenty of time to make his play.
(He suspects he's already chosen it, quite a long time ago — weeks and weeks ago — but it was never the most important thing on the table.)
"Do you wanna..." he starts to say, licking over his lips with uncertain thought. Usually words come easy for him, under any circumstance; it makes the times when they don't especially unsettling in how he loses his balance. He waves his free hand vaguely, in indication of the nebulous thing he's trying to communicate. Then he glances down at his other hand, where Furuya is still maintaining his hold. "I mean, really, is that all you wanna do? Nothing but grabbing my hand all the time?"
Furuya stares at him very hard, like he's judging whether it's a trick question. "I also want to play catch with you. And go to another baseball game. And watch the fireworks together at the show tonight. What do you want to do, Miyuki?"
He wants to crawl under Furuya's half of the blankets when they're sleeping together at night, wants to fuck up the neatly-combed hair Furuya's mother went to such lengths in neatening, wants to suck the watermelon juice off Furuya's sticky fingers every time they're sharing a snack together in the fields and he can see the beads of moisture trickling down Furuya's wrists. It's kind of disgusting.
"I wanna get something to eat," Miyuki says, because it's the simplest answer, and it's true. "But I also want you to c'mere, while nobody's gonna be staring at us."
Furuya takes a step in, and the moment when he cottons on is beautiful to behold, his face blossoming with surprise before that's replaced with a look of dawning wonder. "Miyuki, can I kiss you?"
Miyuki rolls his eyes, and reaches his hand up to tuck it against the back of Furuya's neck. He pulls Furuya down until their foreheads touch, tilts his head to the side and lets Furuya meet him there, mouth pressing slowly to Furuya's mouth. It tastes a little bit like victory, kissing Furuya. Miyuki wonders if he really has won his make-believe game.
When they break apart, Furuya is blinking slowly at him, cheeks a little pink and mouth just starting to curve into a smile. He looks utterly content with himself. Miyuki figures, he probably deserves it.
(He still doesn't want to put a name to it, their fledgling thing that's nebulous and new. Maybe, eventually, he'll toss out the word dating like it's been that way all along. In the moment, it's still not the most important thing on the table, and deciding that makes Miyuki's insides feel a lot less knotted up with trepidation.)
"C'mon, then," Miyuki says, making another attempt at pulling Furuya by the hand. "Let's go see if we can find you something with crab in it, and then I want to eat takoyaki."
"Crab omelette," Furuya clarifies. "I want to eat a crab omelette."
"Yeah, yeah," Miyuki says, shaking his head with the begrudging acceptance that Furuya likes what he likes and is willing to be stubborn about it. "If somebody's making it, let's find you a crab omelette."
They walk back onto the main thoroughfare for the festival, looking again at all the stalls they pass by but this time doing it with more renewed purpose. Furuya is still holding Miyuki's hand, and Miyuki periodically squeezes it back, grinning to himself a little every time the simple pressure of Miyuki's fingers around his makes Furuya beam with uncomplicated happiness. It's kind of nice, being able to affect somebody that way.
When night falls, they even watch the fireworks together, just as Furuya had wanted. When Miyuki kisses Furuya then, he tastes like crab and carnival sweets, but Miyuki doesn't like that any less than the first time.