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He didn’t say it on purpose.
Did he mean it? Hiroaki refuses to ponder that, even though he already knows. If he stopped to ask himself, that would mean acknowledging it, and everything would be over. As soon as the words slipped out, he’d closed his eyes, afraid of Takeshi’s reaction, even though it wouldn’t be enough to block it out completely. But completely or not, it’s plaguing his mind for the rest of the day.
It’s their thirty-fifth day here, and something’s about to break, he can feel it. That fact looms over him all morning. Talking to Wada was a welcome respite from his torrent of an internal monologue, but still, something very, very bad is going to happen soon. He doesn’t know what, but he knows it’ll be bad.
Every now and then, reading Sasaki’s journals is a temporary escape of its own. Seeing the world through her eyes and hearing about it in her own words sometimes makes Hiroaki feel like he really did meet her somewhere else, somewhere normal where they can be seventeen and not afraid for their own lives and could maybe even salvage whatever good they had left in them. Maybe in this hypothetical reality, he really could change himself. Maybe he could’ve even been the kind of person who she’d tolerate. They had a lot in common, after all. If only he wasn’t so fucked in the head, and if only she didn’t die knowing only Hiroaki at his worst. He has so much he wants to ask her. He has so much he wants to tell her, now that it’s too late.
If he has no friends here, at least he has the imprint of Sasaki, written into the annotations she left in the margins of her story before it met an abrupt end. If she’s watching him now, would she be angry? Would she feel disgraced and outraged that he has the audacity to want to know her? Or would she reluctantly forgive him, the way he wishes? He hopes, foolishly, he can make it up to her somehow. But the imprint of Sasaki can only keep him company for so long.
Because Sasaki is no longer here. Sasaki is not and never was his friend. Hiroaki only conjured this image of her on his own, this version he believes was the real one before all this. Sasaki is not and never was his friend, meaning Takeshi is his only true friend left. And that poses another problem, too.
Even if he didn’t say it on purpose, he said it, half asleep and weary and so, so tired of being Hiroaki, and god dammit, he knows Takeshi heard it. The awkward stutter, the hitch of breath— even if he closed his eyes to hide from the consequences of his weakness, to hide from his feelings, from Takeshi himself, it wasn’t enough. It never is. He always fucks up, and it always catches up to him before long. Always.
Somehow, he knows that Sasaki would laugh at him for this.
Lying is one of the things Hiroaki does best, right? It’s all he’s ever done, so of course it should come naturally, right? He lies to his social media following, his “friends”, everyone— even himself. But why can’t he believe it when it matters most? He can’t be in love with the only person who’s ever seen him— really seen him— and wasn’t repulsed with what they saw. He can’t be painfully, pathetically, helplessly, head over heels in love with the only person who still believes in him, the only one who’s ever needed him half as much as he needed them, so… he isn’t.
He isn’t. He has to believe that. He isn’t.
So when Takeshi says it back that evening, inebriated and oversharing, he ignores the shiver in his spine. When he calls him out for his slip up that morning, he denies it. Because he didn’t say it on purpose. He didn’t say it on purpose. He isn’t in love with Takeshi. He isn’t in love with Takeshi.
Hiroaki refocuses on his reading, but Sasaki offers no solace this time. He can almost hear her over Takeshi’s sighing and rambling and his own inner turmoil. Seriously? She’d say. You’re somehow even more incompetent than I gave you credit for.
Shut up, he thinks back at her. You wouldn’t get it. You couldn’t.
That’s unfair of you, y’know. He imagines she’d scoff, roll her eyes. But she’d be right. As fucked up as Sasaki was, she was right about a lot of things.
Hiroaki is a coward. He’s a coward, a deceiver, and an egotistical prick. He only attached himself to Takeshi in the beginning for— what, appearances? Some frivolous, trivial bullshit like fucking aesthetic purposes? It didn’t matter at the time. It was surface level, that’s all. He’d be as clingy and dramatic as he wanted back then, because it was still a part of his lie.
Hiroaki is hardly one to live anywhere but the moment, never planning, never thinking ahead, but this was never supposed to happen. Takeshi was only supposed to tolerate him at most. He wasn’t supposed to like him. He wasn’t supposed to want him. He wasn’t supposed to need him. Hiroaki wasn’t supposed to need Takeshi, either.
He doesn’t, he reminds himself. He scolds his own inner child as if he’s to blame for anything he feels, though Hiroaki never got to be him in the first place. He doesn’t need Takeshi. He isn’t in love with Takeshi.
But Takeshi is still right next to him, mumbling something incomprehensible as Hiroaki stares blankly at the space between Sasaki’s neatly penned paragraphs, and something in him aches distantly. Muffled the way the music sounds outside the club, and dull the way colorless walls appear when he takes off his sunglasses. It’s a pain he’s long since suppressed, yet still it writhes and thrashes and claws up his throat, threatening to tumble from his lips all over again when Takeshi is out of it enough to doubtlessly believe it.
And the worst part is he’s sure Takeshi already knows. Hiroaki Nakamigawa is a great many things, but subtle is not, never has been, and never will be one of them.
This isn’t the time or place to be languishing over relationship drama, fucking obviously, but why does everything have to hurt? Why is he fucking terrified of his feelings being acknowledged, but fucking terrified of dying tomorrow having never said anything at the same time?
So he takes Takeshi to the kitchen to get some coffee. He pretends he’s not seconds from a breakdown at any moment. He tells himself to focus on the here and now, and he’ll be okay.
He lies, because that’s all he knows how to do.