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The skies over Okinawa were the kind of soft gray that never quite decided whether to cry or shine.
Reki sat under the overhang of Dope Sketch, his fingers idly spinning a small screw he’d dropped from a custom truck he was working on. His headphones rested around his neck, silent. Music didn’t help today. Neither did skating. Not really.
“Hey,” came Langa’s voice, quiet, almost breathless from skating over.
Reki glanced up. “Yo.”
Langa dropped his board beside Reki’s and sat beside him. They didn’t talk for a while. Just listened to the world hum — tires rolling by, seagulls screaming toward the coast, the hiss of wind brushing past the alley.
“You didn’t show up to the ramp this morning,” Langa said after a long pause, voice hesitant.
“Didn’t feel like it,” Reki muttered. He couldn’t look at him.
He felt it again — that ache, right behind his ribs. The same one that bloomed during that stretch of time when everything between them had cracked like ice under pressure. When Langa had soared and Reki had drowned in his own insecurities.
“I waited.”
Reki’s throat tightened. Of course he did. Langa always waited.
Reki still remembered that night — standing under rain, fists clenched, yelling things he regretted the second they left his mouth. Telling Langa he was sick of being left behind. Of being less.
But Langa had stayed.
Langa always stayed.
“You mad?” Reki asked softly.
Langa blinked, confused. “Why would I be mad?”
“You know,” Reki mumbled. “That I’m pulling away again.”
“I’m not mad,” Langa said, and then, after a pause, “but I’m… worried.”
That word cut deeper.
Worried.
Langa, the boy who fell from snow into sunshine, who didn’t blink at danger or fall apart at pressure, was worried.
About him.
Reki swallowed hard. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I should be happy, right? We’re skating together again, no beef, no tournaments. Just… skating. But it’s like—I don’t know. I feel heavy.”
“You don’t have to always be okay,” Langa said, like it was the simplest thing in the world.
Reki huffed. “Yeah, well, tell that to my brain. It won’t shut up.”
They sat with that.
The air smelled like salt and rubber and maybe a storm.
“You know I’m not good with words,” Langa said finally, voice low, gaze on the street.
“You’re doing fine.”
Langa’s shoulder brushed Reki’s. Not on purpose — or maybe it was. Reki didn’t move away.
“You remember when I first started skating?” Langa asked, voice softer now, almost fragile.
“Yeah,” Reki smiled faintly. “You sucked.”
Langa chuckled. “I sucked. You didn’t give up on me, even when I fell every five seconds. You said, ‘Skating’s not about being perfect. It’s about getting back up.’”
Reki swallowed thickly.
“I think you forgot that,” Langa added, not unkindly.
“Maybe I did.”
Another silence. But it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was full. Like a space waiting to be filled with something unspoken.
“You know, I used to be scared of snow,” Reki said suddenly.
Langa looked at him, brows raised.
“When I was a kid, we visited family in Hokkaido. First time I saw snow, I panicked. I thought the sky was falling. My mom laughed and told me, ‘Not everything that falls is bad.’”
Langa smiled. “You never told me that.”
“Guess I forgot,” Reki muttered.
More silence.
And then, with no warning, Reki whispered, “I don’t think I’m okay, Langa.”
It hung there.
Langa didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached out and curled his fingers around Reki’s hand.
Reki stiffened. Then… relaxed.
His voice trembled. “I keep thinking I’ll be fine if I just work harder. Skate harder. Be stronger. But I’m still scared. That I’ll get left behind again. That… you’ll outgrow me.”
Langa squeezed his hand. “That’s never going to happen.”
“You say that now.”
“I’ll say it again. Every time. I’m not going anywhere.”
Reki finally looked at him.
Langa’s eyes were the same shade of sky as always — calm, steady, honest.
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Then I’ll help you believe it.”
Reki let out a shaky breath. He hated crying. But right now, it felt like trying not to breathe. So he let his head drop to Langa’s shoulder and just… let it go.
No sobs. Just tears. Quiet, tired ones.
Langa didn’t move. He just stayed. Hand in hand.
☁️
Later that day, the rain finally came.
Not hard. Not angry. Just light, soft drizzle — the kind that made everything smell like earth and fresh air.
Reki stood on the edge of a quiet slope, his board beside him.
“I haven’t done this in rain since… forever,” he said.
Langa stepped beside him. “You up for it?”
“I think so.”
Langa nodded. Then grinned. “Race you.”
Reki laughed — really laughed — for the first time in weeks. “You’re on.”
They pushed off together, rain misting across their cheeks as they sped down the slick path. It wasn’t about winning. It never was. Not with Langa.
Reki remembered now.
He remembered why he loved this.
Not the tricks. Not the speed. But the feeling.
The rush of air in his lungs. The freedom in every turn. The closeness of the one person who made him feel like falling wasn’t failing — it was flying.
They reached the bottom together, breathless.
Langa turned to him, drenched and smiling, hair stuck to his forehead.
“Still scared?” he asked.
Reki looked at him — at the rain, the sky, the boy who never gave up on him.
“Yeah,” he said, honest. “But not as much.”
They sat side by side again, under another overhang. Reki leaned his head against Langa’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he said after a moment. “Do you think…”
“Hmm?”
“Do you think maybe… I like you?”
Langa turned to look at him.
“I mean, more than just skate-bros,” Reki added, face flushing. “Like… actually like you.”
Langa blinked. “I was waiting for you to say it.”
Reki’s heart skipped. “Wait—you—?”
“I like you too.”
Reki looked at him, stunned.
Langa smiled. “I think I have for a while.”
And that was that.
No dramatic kiss in the rain. No fireworks.
Just two boys who learned how to fall, and finally figured out how to land — not just on their boards, but into something deeper. Something real.
☀️
Weeks later, the Okinawan sky turned blue again.
Reki woke up to the sound of Langa knocking on his window, grinning with a smoothie in one hand and their boards propped against the fence.
“You ready?” Langa asked.
Reki stretched. Smiled. Nodded.
“Let’s go.”
The storm had passed. But he knew there’d be more — more hard days, more doubts. That was life.
But now, he didn’t have to face them alone.
Langa was his balance.
And together, they were unstoppable. They were infinite.