Chapter Text
The apartment smelled like old wood and lemon-scented floor cleaner.
Sawamura Eijun dropped his last moving box with a grunt, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and flopped down on the floorboards with a loud exhale. The ceiling fan above him made a lazy rotation, the blades clicking every few seconds like it wasn’t sure it wanted to keep going. It was a small, slightly run-down unit—barely big enough for one person—but for the first time in a long while, it was quiet.
Too quiet.
He stared at the cracked ceiling paint, still panting, letting the silence press against his ribs. Tokyo buzzed beyond the window, but in here, it was like time stopped.
Eijun didn’t mind the loneliness. That’s what he told himself.
He was here for a fresh start. That’s all.
No expectations. No failures. No memories of the person he couldn’t save.
The building was old, but not in a falling-apart way. More like it had character. He’d chosen it on a whim. Cheap rent, close to the university, and not too far from the train line. It had a rooftop, too. The landlord said no one really used it anymore, but Eijun liked the sound of that. A hidden place. Somewhere to think.
Somewhere to breathe.
He spent the rest of the day unpacking. Stacking sketchpads in drawers. Lining pencils beside drafting rulers. Hanging a faded photo of his high school design team on a thumbtack by the fridge, he almost took it back down but left it anyway.
It was past midnight when it happened.
A sharp thud. Then a rattling crash against the glass window.
Eijun jolted upright, heart in his throat.
Another thud. This time more deliberate. He rushed to the window and slid it open just as something round rolled to a stop on his tiny balcony.
A baseball.
He stared at it.
A moment later, a head popped over the ledge from the rooftop above.
Messy brown hair. Glasses. Sharp, foxlike grin.
“Ah-- sorry,” the stranger said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Eijun blinked. “...You threw a ball at my window?”
“Technically, I threw it at the wall. The wall didn’t cooperate.”
The guy held up a peace sign. “Rooftop batting practice. Kinda my coping mechanism.”
Eijun stared at him for another long second, then stepped out and picked up the ball. “You could’ve broken my window.”
“You could’ve dodged faster.”
“Dude, I was inside.”
A laugh. Light and careless. “Fair point.”
The stranger hopped down onto the emergency ladder like he’d done it a hundred times, boots clanging against the metal before landing softly on Eijun’s balcony. He stuck out a hand.
“Miyuki Kazuya. Unit 504.”
Eijun hesitated, then shook it. “Sawamura. 403.”
“Welcome to the building, Sawamura 403.” Miyuki gave him a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. “You looked like someone who could use a little noise.”
Eijun raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think that?”
“You didn’t flinch when I showed up out of nowhere,” Miyuki said, retrieving the baseball and spinning it between his fingers. “Most people shut the window.”
Eijun leaned against the railing, arms crossed. “Maybe I’m not most people.”
Miyuki smirked, but this time, it flickered briefly into something softer. Curious.
“Good,” he said, then passed him a can of iced coffee from his hoodie pocket like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And just like that, he was gone. Up the ladder. Disappearing into the rooftop shadows like a ghost who’d learned to smile.
Eijun stood there for a long moment, the unopened can cold in his hand.
The silence had shifted.
Not gone. Just… not as heavy.
He looked up at the rooftop, then at the empty space where Miyuki had been. And even though he didn’t know anything about him, didn’t know his story, his damage, or why he looked so tired beneath the glasses, Eijun felt something settle in his chest.
Not comfort.
But maybe curiosity.
Maybe something a little more dangerous.
The first thing Eijun learned about the building: the walls were thin.
Not just sound-through-the-walls thin but life-thin. You could hear the shape of someone’s day through them: the soft pad of footsteps, the clatter of dishes, the sighs. You could tell if someone was crying, even if they tried to muffle it with a pillow.
Especially at night.
Eijun wasn’t trying to listen. But sometimes when the city quieted and the hum of trains faded into the distance he could hear Miyuki.
Never words. Just murmurs. Sometimes a thump. One time, a muffled groan, low and ragged, like something was being torn from inside.
And sometimes… silence so loud it made Eijun’s stomach twist.
He wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge. So he did what he always did when he didn’t know how to fix something.
He waited.
And then he climbed the stairs to the rooftop.
It became a habit. Not planned, not discussed just something they started doing. Eijun would find himself drawn upward after midnight, and Miyuki would already be there, or would arrive not long after. No dramatic hellos. No apologies for the intrusion.
Just two people occupying the same quiet space.
Sometimes Miyuki brought beer. Sometimes Eijun brought bread or milk tea or one of those awful microwave burritos. They’d sit cross-legged on the cold cement, shoulder to shoulder but never touching, the city stretching out beneath them like a giant, glittering secret neither of them trusted.
“I used to hate silence,” Eijun admitted one night, peeling the wrapper off a convenience store rice ball.
Miyuki was lying flat on his back, eyes closed, hands folded on his stomach like he was listening to a funeral in his own head.
“Used to?”
Eijun bit into the rice ball. “I still do sometimes. But this is... different.”
“Because I’m here?”
“Because you’re not talking.”
Miyuki cracked one eye open. “Ouch.”
Eijun smirked, but it faded quickly. “I mean it. I used to think silence meant something was wrong. Like... if things got quiet, I’d start spiraling. But here, with you? It’s... bearable.”
Miyuki didn’t answer right away. Just rolled his baseball between his fingers, slow and deliberate.
“I dream in silence,” he said finally. “It’s the only time I don’t hear anything. Not the crowd. Not my dad. Not the sound of a glove snapping shut.”
Eijun looked at him then. Really looked.
“You were a catcher, weren’t you?”
Miyuki didn’t respond. He didn’t have to. His grip on the ball tightened, his knuckles going white.
Eijun sat back, unsure if he should’ve said it.
“I don’t play anymore,” Miyuki said eventually. “Quit after university. Haven’t touched the gear in years.”
“Why?”
A sharp breath. Not quite a laugh.
“Why does anyone quit something they’re good at?”
Eijun wanted to push. He always did. But he remembered the way Miyuki had shown up the night they met grinning like armor, eyes haunted. So instead, he offered something first.
“My best friend he called me a coward before I left home.”
Miyuki turned his head slightly.
“He said I ran away when things got hard. When people needed me.”
“Did you?”
Eijun looked down at his hands. “Yeah. I think I did.”
Silence stretched again, but it wasn’t empty. It buzzed with something fragile, like a wire pulled too tight.
Then, softly:
“You stayed long enough to hear him say that,” Miyuki said. “So maybe you didn’t run as fast as you think.”
Eijun swallowed hard. The cold night air felt thick in his lungs.
He didn’t thank him. Didn’t know how.
Instead, he took the ball from Miyuki’s hand and rolled it between his palms.
“You know,” Eijun said quietly, “most people practice coping with journaling or therapy or running. You choose rooftop baseball.”
Miyuki smirked. “Gotta keep the reflexes sharp.”
“You almost broke my window again yesterday.”
“Then you should be flattered. It means I think your apartment can handle impact.”
Eijun laughed. It surprised both of them.
For the first time, Miyuki looked genuinely at ease less like someone on the edge of a joke and more like someone resting.
A gust of wind blew through. Eijun pulled his hoodie tighter, teeth chattering. Without a word, Miyuki shrugged off his own jacket and draped it across Eijun’s shoulders.
“You don’t have to do that,” Eijun muttered.
Miyuki stared straight ahead. “Didn’t say I had to.”
The jacket was warm. It smelled like cedar soap and something sharper underneath maybe cologne, maybe memory.
The rooftop remained quiet. But neither of them felt alone.
And below them, through paper-thin walls and the hushed hum of lives being lived, the world kept turning.