Chapter Text
The table is quiet save for the clinking of cutlery and the booming noise from their TV.
Satoshi Ohno's father asks at the dinner table that night : "so, how's that board game club of yours doing? Getting along with your new friends?"
This is how it usually is. Satoshi lets the piece of karaage dance in his mouth for a bit longer before he finally replies, like usual, a simple 'yeah'. His father smiles placidly, flipping through a fishing magazine.
"Then I'm glad." His father chirps, his mother following as she eats her curry facing the live news stream.
"Then I'm glad too!"
Amidst the awkwardness between the three Ohnos, there's a love that is expressed through silent glances, content smiles, and big bites of food. Satoshi makes a mental note to buy his mom something chihuahua related for her birthday next year, and to spend a weekend out with his father in Tokyo Bay sometime soon.
-
But love is not always quiet. Or so Ohno realizes the next day at Shirokin High School's large indoor greenhouse the moment he buries four little Kyoho grape seeds in the soil. He remembers Aiba's smile, the sweet taste of each berry... and very vividly how he spit all the grape seeds onto a sheet of tissue paper right in front of him. Even then, Aiba had pat him on the back reassuringly and given him a hum of approval. "Glad you like the grapes my mom bought at a discount sale. Unlike Sho, you eat like a normal human being, you know? Anyways, you should probably plant the seeds in the garden later."
Lunch break was far from ending, so he took time to show his interest in Aiba's little jab towards the "smartest" one in their friend group. Not the smartest-in-their-grade smart, but it took real guts for someone to be so deeply interested in such a boring subject like economics, where the angle of two lines on a graph dictated the prices of everything. Ohno had always believed that his odd passion was due to his high level of intelligence, both emotionally and academically, and so had the others.
"You... wanna know?" Aiba's lips let out a high-pitched giggle as he whispered: "about the Sho-chan Grape Seed Eating Incident?"
"I didn't know you gave names to the funny memories in your brain, a bit like how we give file names to cute pictures of baby seals on our computer, don't you thnk?"
"I do it automatically," Aiba explained. "Promise me you won't tell this to anyone else, okay? Even if Nino or Matsujun promises you they'll help you do your homework if you tell them. I don't want Sho to think I'm loose-lipped and blame me when they make fun of him again! Though I'm sure he secretly likes it."
Ohno simply nodded to every word he said, tuning in the boy's tale as he drank in all the words.
Instead of taking the basket of grapes Aiba gave him home, Sho had chosen to eat them all at once with a side of vanilla ice cream he magically pulled out of nowhere. And very persuasively, he had invited Aiba to enjoy the "amazing feast" with him in the classroom for a change of pace. In the painfully dull quiet, and as the wind breeze comfortably cooled them down, Sho devoured the grapes with his usual big apetite for the tasty (as Aiba had exclaimed with confidence) and delicious, before Aiba suddenly noticed that something was very wrong. It was the way he was eating them.
"He just... used the vanilla ice cream as this 'special' dipping sauce, and didn't spit out any seeds, like at all." Aiba's eyes creased into a fine line, and he tried not to evaporate into laughter as his story went on. "I asked him whether or not he was swallowing the seeds, and he replied 'yeah, because I don't want to waste anything'. He looked so disappointed when I told him that the seeds he was swallowing were better off buried in new, nutritious soil instead of ingested by his super sour and weird tummy aicds."
"There was that way, he looked at me, as if I did something amazing. Well, firstly, I did not. But I'm realizing now that this story is less funny than it is very silly."
Ohno thought about what he truly could've meant, and the implied meaning behind Aiba's every word.
"And so I asked him what the grape seeds tasted like 'cause he's been swallowing them right? He said they tasted bitter and vegetable-ey, but still fairly enjoyable. And then..."
"And then?" The answer that escaped rom the small crack between Aiba's pursed lips came as a surprise, though Ohno hadn't swallowed any big bullets as he was acutely aware of their long history together. Friends, since childhood, having drifted apart a bit as they were put in different classrooms, A and B respectively. He figured the more emotionally sensitive one of the two, Sho, would have felt it and made a move, but he hadn't expected that big of a step.
Aiba's reply was quiet, barely audible through his hands that squished his cheeks reddening at an alarming rate. "He kissed me."
"Oh. I see." In the determining moment, all he said was idiotically an 'oh'. But it was maybe all Aiba needed to anchor himself back down from the wave of embarrassing memories that came crashing into his mind as he recalled the romantic tale.
"I think I'm going to reject his confession as well. Then everything can return to the way it always was. Normal."
"Yeah. I support you." He remembers stuttering as he added, "I'm sure he'll accept your answer. He's just a nice guy like that."
Aiba had let out a relieved giggle. "Yeah. Of course he would."
In his own way, Ohno expressed his love to Aiba, supporting him with his words. It was a declaration of his own familial-ey love towards the younger boy, becoming the highlight of his otherwise-would've-been-boring Tuesday. And the Kyoho grapes were delicious.
-
"So, Satoshi," his mother asks during dinner that day, "how was school?"
"Good." He answers, "very good."