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A call stirs him awake. It’s Yatora.
“Do you want donburi?” His voice is bright, edged with the hum of a crowded space — laughter, footsteps, voices. “They’ve got a ton of options here. Chicken, beef, tofu — what do you want?”
Yotasuke rubs his eyes. The daylight through the curtains makes him squint.
“You know what,” Yatora continues, “I think I’ll get the chicken. You should try it too. I’ll bring it over, okay?”
A pause. A breath. Yotasuke exhales slowly. “…Yeah. Okay.”
“I’ll be there in twenty. Bye.”
“Bye.”
The line clicks off. He lets the phone drop onto the sheets beside him.
The clock on the nightstand blinks at him in blue: 1:04 p.m. Strange. It feels like he hasn’t slept at all. His head is filled with fog and fragments, shapeless images from a dream he can’t hold on to. His head aches. Sleep won’t come back to him now.
With a resigned groan, he swings his legs over the edge of the bed. The floor is cold under his feet. His body feels sluggish, as if wading through water, as though the gravity in his apartment has thickened overnight. He runs a hand through his hair; it’s knotted, stubborn. He pads towards the kitchen.
The table is a mess. Textbooks lie open, pens scattered across a half-finished sketch, left forgotten. Plates stacked in the sink lean precariously, a miniature ruin threatening collapse.
He opens the fridge. A pale, sterile light flickers to life. Nothing but half a lemon, a near-empty bottle of soy sauce and a total of three eggs stare back at him. He closes it with a soft click.
He steps out onto the balcony. The air outside is sharp. It bites at his skin and slides beneath his shirt. The sky is a wash of concrete — layer upon layer of unmoving clouds. Not a sliver of sunlight breaks through. Then, with sudden resolve, the rain comes.
Heavy drops crash onto the railings and pavement below, leaving a disparate sequence of circles. A man in a suit sprints to his car, shielding his head with a leather briefcase, shoes slapping against the wet ground. Behind him, a cat darts through the rain and slips through an open window.
The cold threads its way into Yotasuke, slipping beneath his skin. He starts to shiver. It makes him think. For a moment, he feels awake — alive, even. Still here.
He stands there a moment longer, watching the grey world drip. Behind him, somewhere in the silent kitchen, a clock keeps ticking.
Maybe he should go back to bed. Curl up under the blanket, sink into it, let it swallow him whole. Maybe it will drop him into a black hole. Somewhere else. Anywhere. He doesn’t care where, as long as he can vanish from the surface.
As long as he can just disappear.
Yotasuke is asleep again when Yatora comes home. He’s still asleep when Yatora eats alone beside him, when Yatora sulks over his assignment and flips through his textbooks, when Yatora puts on the crappy sitcom they usually watch together.
He wakes to the muffled laughter from the TV. He’s alone. From the kitchen comes the faint clatter of dishes. His head pounds when he shifts. He feels horrible.
When Yatora comes back in, Yotasuke lifts his head. Yatora kneels in front of him, brushing the damp hair from his forehead, careful and soft.
“What time is it?” Yotasuke croaks, his voice rough from sleep.
“Little past five. You knocked yourself out pretty hard.” Yatora chews on his bottom lip. “I was worried.”
Yotasuke sees the ceiling while Yatora is looking down at him. He exhales, long and tired, and Yatora presses a warm cup into his hands. The liquid inside is an odd colour.
“Here. Drink this. You’ll feel better.”
Without thinking too hard, Yotasuke presses the cup to his lips. It’s bitter, but he swallows anyway.
Yatora gets him to sit at the table later. His body still feels like it might give out at any moment, but he doesn’t feel as awful.
“Eat,” Yatora says simply, pushing the steaming bowl across the table. The smell rises up, warm and salty, almost overwhelming.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You never are.” Yatora snaps the chopsticks apart with a sharp crack, then passes them over without meeting his eyes. “But you should eat anyway.”
Yotasuke stares at the bowl. The broth shimmers under the light. He lifts the chopsticks slowly, almost against his will. The first mouthful burns his tongue, and something inside him aches at the heat.
That night, they sleep together. Yatora tucked him under a heavy blanket, and Yotasuke ended up in his oversized sweater. It’s soft against his skin, swallowing him whole. He isn’t shivering anymore. He watches the curve of Yatora’s shoulder rise and fall. He listens to Yatora’s even breathing beside him, steady, and he feels safe. Ridiculously safe.
He wishes to stay like this. It feels like enough.
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Tonight is a full moon — the first in twenty-nine days. It signifies the ending of one synodic cycle, and the beginning of yet another.
Yatora is asleep. And I have a fever.
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On their first date, they went to an aquarium.
It rained the whole day. The sky was flat grey, water streamed down the glass walls as if the building itself were underwater. Inside, the light was dim, tinted blue and green from the tanks. Shadows moved across their faces as fish drifted by.
They walked slowly, shoulders brushing now and then. Neither said much at first. The silence was comfortable.
At the jellyfish tank, Yatora pressed close to the glass. The glow lit his face strangely, so pale and soft.
“They look like… ghosts,” he said, watching one drift past.
Yotasuke ponders. “Or lanterns,” he murmured.
Yatora turned, smiling. “Lanterns, yeah. They probably make it less dark down there.”
In the shark tunnel, they stood side by side. Glass arched above them, a ceiling of moving shadows. A shark slid past overhead, and they both tilt their heads back, following its movement. “Imagine living down here.”
There’s a twitch at the corners of Yotasuke’s mouth, though he didn’t quite smile. “It would be quiet.”
“Too quiet,” Yatora countered. His voice echoed faintly in the hollow tunnel. “I’d go crazy.”
Yotasuke thought: I wouldn’t. But he didn’t say it.
Later, they stopped at the touch tank. Yatora plunged his hand in without hesitation, letting the sand slip through his fingers. He laughed when the water splashed his sleeve. “Cold,” he said, shaking his hand off.
Yotasuke only watched, but Yatora caught his gaze. “You should try.”
He shook his head.
“Come on,” Yatora pressed, voice warm. “It’s just water.”
Hesitant, Yotasuke reached in. The grains slid between his fingers, fine and slippery. His hand felt sluggish. He drew it out quickly, shaking the water off.
Yatora grinned. “See? Not so bad.”
Yotasuke looked at him then, really looked, at the way his grin broke so easily across his face, at the water dripping down his arm. Something inside his chest ached. He looked away.
By the time they stepped outside, it was still pouring.
They ran on their way back, though Yotasuke hates running. Rain pelted down in sharp, cold drops, plastering his hair to his face. Yatora grabbed his hand, pulling him faster, laughing the whole way.
When they finally ducked under a bus stop, they were both drenched, breathless, dripping onto the pavement. Yatora wrung out his sleeve like it’s the funniest thing in the world. It felt childish.
Yotasuke watched him, chest heaving, heart hammering not from the running but from the feeling of Yatora’s hand still tangled with his.
He didn’t let go. Not yet.
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I lie awake and wonder if the moonlight can slip through the crack and touch me, or if it will only reach Yatora’s face in his dreams. It seemed so blue in the sunlight. But by the night, he was a pale green. I lie awake and want to know which version of him is real, and which belongs to me.
I once asked him how to be funny. He said: “It’s not something you can teach.”
I believe neither is.
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Yotasuke watches the sky.
It is strange in its beauty. The view opens wide above him, an endless wash of blue so clear it feels unreal, as if it has been painted onto the sky. Clouds look oddly dreamlike, the way they shape and reshape and shift — so surreal. The longer he watches, the more he feels as if the sky might collapse onto him.
It was Yatora’s idea to come here. He had insisted the change of scenery would help, that the air would do him good. Maybe it does, but Yotasuke can’t tell. The paper resting on his lap is still blank, the pencil heavy in his hand. He stares at the whiteness until his eyes sting, and all it does is remind him how stupid he feels.
From across the bench, Yatora eyes him; he’s felt his stares for a while now. Yotasuke doesn’t look up, he only hears the rustle of movement when Yatora begins packing his pencils.
“Come on,” Yatora says, voice casual. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat somewhere.” He is already rising to his feet, as though he’s been preparing to say those words for a while.
Yotasuke hesitates. His hand lingers over the sketchbook, the faint urge to try again pulling at him. He reaches for his bag, when something flickers at the edge of his vision — a flash of colour darting through the air. He startles, head tilting back. Something big, something blue.
It circles once above them before drifting down in a slow, spiraling fall. He blinks up at it, caught off guard by how beautiful it is. The wings open and close with fragile rhythm, the blue so vivid it seems out of place.
“Look. A butterfly,” Yatora murmurs. He stretches out his hand, and the creature hovers, then settles lightly on his skin. Sunlight threads through the wings, veins glinting like fine glass. The blue spills across Yatora’s hand, shifting with each small movement.
Yatora laughs under his breath, so softly. The sound makes him feel light.
Yotasuke’s chest tightens. It is moments like this he wants to hold onto forever — to carve into memory with every detail intact. The glint of light through fragile wings. The curve of Yatora’s hand. The warm sound of his laughter. He wants to paint it all, to trap the feeling before it slips away. Before it shatters under the weight of the sunlight.
His finger taps on the sketchbook. The paper doesn’t seem so cruel anymore.
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Even though butterflies completely dissolve in their cocoon, they remember their life as a caterpillar. They remember crawling around through leaves and grass, having to experience everything from the ground, what now looks so different in the air.
If I roll up in my blanket, it could become my own cocoon. Maybe I could come out as a butterfly too. Memories are all the butterfly has left of its life as a caterpillar.
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They went on their second date three months later. By then, they had known each other for almost a year, yet Yotasuke still found himself tugging restlessly at the ends of his sleeves.
He watched the first snow of the season drift down from a white sky, the flakes dissolving as they touched the wet ground, gathering into a shallow puddle in front of his feet. Some of them landed on Yatora’s jacket, tracing the line of his shoulders in white. White — steady, quiet, unchanging. Yatora’s breath moved slowly and even, like the snow around them. His hands rested in his pockets. Yotasuke wondered if he ever felt nervous too, when they were together. He lowered his head, sinking deeper into his scarf. The fabric was warm around his frozen cheeks.
The gallery Yatora chose was crowded, voices echoing faintly against white walls. Yotasuke drifted from one canvas to another, eyes tracing brushstrokes, lines, textures. He lingered too long at one painting — heavy strokes of red, layered until the canvas seemed to bleed. His breath hitched.
The painting wouldn’t stop moving. A sea of red strokes shifted as he stared at it, swallowing shapes that could be flowers, or mouths, or open wounds.
“It’s powerful, right?” Yatora’s voice came from behind him.
Yotasuke wanted to say yes. But what he felt wasn’t power — it was drowning. He wanted to step into the canvas, disappear into its layers of oil and paint, let the brushstrokes consume him until he is only colour; no body, no weight.
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When I look at you, your face starts losing its contours. It morphs with everything around you. Your mouth, your nose, your eyes lose their shape and melt into one broth in the middle of your face. Your skin colour fades, it turns white and red and then blue. Your arms become long and twisted; they turn into a stringing of knots. You become edgy and angular, uneven and screwed, just like the expressionist paintings we saw at the exhibition.
When the light goes out, you are no longer blue. All that is left is a pale green, and I start to feel like I don’t know you at all.
But then I blink, and it’s gone. Your face shapes back. The blue on your skin fades. You look like you always do. Brows furrowed, a concern showing in your face.
“Everything okay?”
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Look them in the eyes. Hold out your weapon. Aim it.
“You never tell me."
It's a stab. Now stab in return.
“You never ask."
It’s always the same. It starts with nothing. Something small, meaningless — a shrug, his eyes averting, a question left unanswered. And suddenly it fills the space between them.
Yatora exhales sharply, his composure cracking. “Why do you always shut me out?” His voice trembles, louder than usual. “I’m not asking for explanations, I just… I want to know what you’re thinking. I want to know you.”
Yotasuke flinches. The words scrape like sandpaper. His throat tightens. His head floods with thoughts, but it’s impossible to shape them into a sentence. He keeps staring at the patterns on the floor until he feels them staring back.
Yatora steps closer, frustration rising. “Do you know how hard it is, living like this? I try, I try to get through to you, and you just-” His voice breaks, unexpectedly soft. “You make me feel like none of it matters.”
Yotasuke stiffens, he feels his mouth go dry. Say something. He tries to gather the words in his head but all that comes out is wrong, only a flat, defensive: “Why do you even care?”
Yatora stares at him, stunned. The mask drops completely, hurt rushing to the surface. “Why do I care? What- what do you mean? Is that all you have to say to me?”
His nails dig into his palms. No. You have to say something.
He wishes he hadn’t cut them so short. You’ll make it worse, if you stay silent.
His knuckles whiten. Why can’t you just speak? It’s not hard. Just say something. Just speak, just speak, just speak, speak, speak, speak–
His palm burns. “You don’t understand,” he mutters, desperately. That’s all he says.
The silence that follows is thick. Yatora’s face is tight, hurt. Yotasuke hates himself for that — hates that Yatora cares enough to feel hurt at all.
“Maybe I do more than you think,” Yatora says, voice suddenly low. And there it is, Yotasuke sees it; it's twisted and evil and blue. Almost blue. Like looking through a pale green, starting to resemble all his fears.
He watches Yatora turn and leave.
Yotasuke looks over to the muted television in the corner, only now noticing that it has been on this whole time. A news editor is reporting on wildfires in Iwate Prefecture. He flinches as he hears the front door slam shut.
There are sickle moons all over his palm. Each one is red.
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Do you ever think about it?
About what?
To end everything.
The demons are watching. Cackling in the corner, loud.
My inner voice is a real devil.
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Yotasuke finds himself sitting on the low stone wall outside the convenience store. The night buzzes faintly with cicadas, though the street itself is quiet, halos of yellow light stretching across the pavement. Haruka swings his legs idly, slurping his soda far too loud, the straw rattling against the plastic cup.
Yotasuke stares ahead, hands pressed flat against the stone at his sides. He doesn’t know why he even agreed to come out. Maybe because Haruka didn’t give him a chance to say no. Maybe because the apartment felt too sharp and empty after Yatora left.
“You look like hell,” Haruka says finally, grinning over the straw. “Did our Yaguchi-kun break your heart?”
Yotasuke glares. Haruka laughs, unbothered. “So you did.” He looks far too amused. Yotasuke regrets coming here. He exhales, sharp through his nose. He hates talking, hates the way words feel clumsy in his mouth, but the pressure sitting in his chest needs somewhere to go. “We fought.”
“Well, obviously.” Haruka slurps again, the sound exaggerated. “You called me and wanted to talk, Sekai-kun. Did you ever do that before?”
“This is different.” Yotasuke’s jaw tightens. “He… he said I shut him out.”
“Do you?”
Yotasuke doesn’t answer. He pulls at the edge of his sleeve instead.
Haruka leans closer, eyes gleaming. “Not everyone gets that side of him, you know that, right? He doesn’t go around begging just anyone to open up.”
“I didn’t ask him to beg.” The words snap out, sharper than he intended.
“No,” Haruka says lightly, “but you didn’t ask him to stay, either.”
Yotasuke’s hand flinches. For a moment, an unusual seriousness settles on Haruka's face. “Talk to him. Whatever it is, you can sort it out.”
Silence presses in. A car engine starts somewhere, the sound carrying through the empty streets.
Haruka studies him for a long moment, then smirks faintly, softer than usual. “You’re lucky, you know. Having someone who actually wants to be let in.”
Yotasuke presses his palms into his knees, nails biting into fabric. He doesn’t look at Haruka. He doesn’t answer. But the words stick, whether he wants them to or not.
It’s late when he hears the front door open.
Yatora pauses at the threshold of the room, knocking on the door. The pale moonlight spills through the window, framing his outlines. Yotasuke barely makes him out in the dark — he never keeps the lights on.
He turns away to face the wall opposite to the bed. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. The air is thick, heavy with everything left unsaid. Silence stretches. The floor creaks. Soft footsteps appear. Yatora lowers himself onto the edge of the mattress, the springs dipping under his weight.
“I…” Yatora’s voice is unsteady, almost too quiet. “I’m sorry. For earlier.” He keeps his gaze down, tracing a pattern in his hands. “I shouldn’t have… lost it like that.”
The bedding rustles. “I know… me too,” Yotasuke murmurs back, softer still. His voice sounds fragile. He clears his throat. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.” The words feel heavy on his tongue.
Yatora shifts slightly, edging a little closer, but not touching him. “It’s- it’s okay. We can… figure it out. If you’ll let me.”
Yotasuke shifts towards him, his gaze drops to the corner of the room where shadows gather in the darkness of the room.
“How…” His voice falters, catching in his throat. His hands twist together in his lap. “How are you feeling? I mean, really feeling?”
Silence settles again. Yotasuke swallows hard, pressing his hands against the sheets. He doesn’t know how to explain the churn in his chest, so he says: “Do you remember closing the fridge door slowly as a kid, just to see the light go out?”
Yatora tilts his head, surprised. “Yeah… I used to do that.”
“When it went dark, I’d just stare at it. I don’t know why. I never closed it all the way.” His voice falters. “That’s probably the closest I can get to describing it. I don’t really know if that even makes sense. But I think that’s how I feel. Sometimes.”
Yatora studies him quietly, then asks, “What if the door closes?”
Yotasuke’s eyes flicker toward him before darting away again. “…I don’t know. I never let it.”
He turns onto his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. His throat tightens, but he forces the words out. “How are you, really? Not what you tell everyone else. You.”
Yatora blinks, caught off guard. “Tired. And scared.“ Then whispering, almost inaudible, “Mostly of messing things up with you.” His words tie knots in the air.
Yotasuke is silent. Yatora is too. The room smells faintly of night air drifting through the cracked window.
They stay like this.
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Forests are burning; leaves are falling from trees, exhausted. Everywhere looks like autumn, despite the heat still stifling the city.
But today, there’s a breeze.
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Yotasuke doesn’t notice when the day ends. He works until the room goes dark, until the pencil lines blur and the paper bends beneath his hand. Sometimes he forgets to eat. Sometimes he forgets to turn on the light.
Yotasuke is good at silence. He carries it with him. He likes how it fills the space between footsteps, in corners, how it makes people uneasy. Sometimes, it makes him uneasy too.
He doesn’t smile much. He feels like he’s not really good at talking. He prefers watching. The way pencil strokes cut across paper. The way shadows move across walls. The number of scratches on the seats in the metro he takes every day. The look on Yatora’s face when he’s concentrating.
Yotasuke doesn’t like people. He avoids crowds. Rooms without windows unsettle him.
But here is what he does like:
The shapes moonlight casts across his room at night. The scent of salt water. The sound of trains pulling away in the dark. Reading in the grass. Yatora’s cluster of plants lined up on their kitchen windowsill. The way Yatora sings along to songs when he thinks no one is listening. Yatora’s sweaters.
Yatora. Most of all.
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He steps inside, and the bass hits him before he even reaches the dance floor. The sound presses in on his eardrums, the air is heavy with sweat and smoke. Neon lights flicker overhead, cutting through the haze in sharp fragments, and bodies surge and shift like a wave that threatens to swallow him.
The heat clings to his skin. Shoulders and elbows brush against him, each touch sending a jolt through his chest. He tries to make himself smaller, to shrink into the narrow space between strangers, but the crowd keeps closing in. The strobe lights flicker too fast for his eyes to adjust, slicing the room into bursts of colour and shadow. He blinks, hard, trying to hold on to something steady, but the floor seems to pulse beneath him.
He doesn’t know how he ended up here. It was Haruka who had insisted they should go out, one thing led to another, and suddenly he was being pulled along. Yatora said it would be fun, that he needed a break, but all he can think about is how unfamiliar everything feels — the taste of alcohol sharp in his mouth, the press of strangers at his sides, the heat sticking to his neck.
The music is so loud it pushes into him, shakes his ribs, steals the rhythm of his breath. He can feel it in his legs, in his arms, in the tips of his fingers. It’s in his blood vessels, moving to his heart. The beat rattles through his bones until he can’t tell where his pulse ends and the bass begins.
He can’t spot Haruka, Maki is gone somewhere too. He turns, searching, but everyone looks the same in the flashing light: faces split into fragments, sweat shining, arms lifting. His stomach tightens. His chest rises too fast, each inhale thin, unsatisfying. He feels misplaced. He feels lost.
A hand touches him.
It’s Yatora, standing suddenly so close, so impossibly close, that he can feel the heat of his body against his own. Warmth spreads, intrusive and alive, and it’s almost too much — so warm their skin could burn, could melt, could merge. The heat startles him, but he doesn’t move away. Their shoulders brush with every beat, as if their bodies are loaded with electricity.
It is addicting. The warmth feels dangerous, like standing too close to fire. But he stays. He stays because it makes him remember himself. It makes him feel real again.
It’s nice to feel his body. It feels nice to have a body. It’s nice how their bodies move in sync.
He notices all these people around them, dancing to the same beat as they are, moving around their bodies the same way.
He thinks about his mother, about his father. About his grandparents. An image comes to his mind, a photo of them he saw when he was younger. He doesn’t even know why he remembered it, but they probably danced like this too: face to face, body against body.
They were probably too, in love.
They climb to the rooftop of their apartment building. The city sprawls beneath them in a lattice of muted lights, distant and soft. The wind brushes against their cheeks, carrying the faint scent of grass and concrete. He feels light. It makes him dizzy.
Tonight, the sky is unusually clear. Pegasus spreads across the heaven, Perseus arcs above. Andromeda glimmers faintly — Yotasuke’s favourite; just like Yatora’s. He knows he sees it too. Their fingers brush, linking briefly, and something in him stirs.
How many nights had they been standing here like this? Yatora holding his hand in his, their fingers moving together as they traced invisible constellations across the sky; Yatora telling him everything he knew about the billions of space above them.
“Andromeda”, he would have said, “has the nickname of the Chained Lady — she was a princess, punished for her parent's pride. So they bound her in iron and left her chained to the rocks by the sea, offered up as a sacrifice for Cerus, the sea monster. She was meant to be devoured for a sin that was never hers to face. Just imagine that. A sorrowful faith, that is."
Yotasuke breaks the silence. “Let’s go somewhere, just the two of us,” he hears himself saying. “Somewhere… where the sea is.”
Yatora turns, surprised. Yotasuke is surprised too. He doesn’t know where those thoughts came from. He is drunk, probably.
“Let’s do that,” Yatora says, and a smile tugs at his lips. He probably is too.
Yatora leans in, wrapping his arms around his body, drawing him close. He responds instinctively, burying his face in Yatora’s ridiculously oversized sweater, inhaling the faint scent of him — clean soap, night air, and something uniquely Yatora.
There is something in the air this night. He couldn’t quite say what it was but when he looks at the city skyline, at all those lights shining in the dark, he feels so... little. So small.
There are thousands, millions of people moving behind those illuminated rectangles, waiting for the same metro as him, passing him every day on crowded streets, living lives he has never heard about. If he squints just hard enough, he can see their silhouettes through the windows, pacing in their homes: A boy hunched over his desk, chasing the last lines of an essay before dawn. A woman loosening her tie, staring into the dark of her apartment as though waiting for an answer that won’t come. A child curled up beside a parent, lulled to sleep by the murmur of a TV in the next room.
Maybe even like this, too.
The wind tugs at loose strands of their hair. Below is the city, bustling and vibrant. Above them, the sky stretches vast, forgiving, and endless. He feels like they are too.
The air smells good on summer nights.
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We’re like fishes in an aquarium. We keep swimming in circles. From one end to the other, and back again.
Until we eventually jump out of the tank.
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The train rattles beneath his feet. He is pressed against the window, watching the city blur into grey fields, then back into the sprawl of apartments and factories. Inside the glass, his reflection trembles with the motion.
He touches the window and tries to line his face up with his reflection, but it never quite matches. His mouth and his eyes are always just slightly out of place.
Across the aisle, Yatora is asleep, head tilted back, mouth slightly open. He looks peaceful. The sound of the rails swallows the silence between them.
He takes out his sketchbook and looks over to Yatora, his lips curved into a smile.
Yotasuke thinks, maybe this train is carrying us somewhere that matters. Maybe it will never stop.
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He is standing in the middle of a crowded dance floor. Apart from the few bright lights on the ceiling, the room is so dark that he cannot see the outlines of his body. The people around are all moving; moving to the same rhythm, but all their movements are stretched and unnaturally long. Everything seems to be bound to a rhythm but he doesn’t hear any music. He seems to not exist to them. He is just standing there, unable to do anything.
A lamp shines on the other end of the dance floor. There is Yatora. He is moving along with the people. He is dancing. Yotasuke opens his mouth to call him. Yet no sound comes out. He hears nothing. But Yatora turns his head and looks at him, directly in the eyes. And all the people around them suddenly become insignificant, shrinking and disappearing into the ground. The dance floor becomes smaller and narrower, until there is only room for the two of them.
Yatora’s lips are moving. He is speaking. He wonders what Yatora is telling him.
“Touch my body. Touch me tender.”
Yatora has nice shoulders. He always wanted to put his arms around them. If they could just move their bodies around a lot, he would forget that he forgot how to talk.
He presses him close. The feeling makes them weak. Yatora’s shoulders are wet. The snow has already melted. Yotasuke likes the way the white traces them in winter. He leans to his ear and moves his lips to say: “I like how you make me feel. I like who I am when I’m with you.”
He can feel Yatora smiling on the inside.
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The waves slap against the rocks, spraying their legs. Yatora’s shoes are already soaked, but he doesn’t care. He laughs, loud and shameless, as he tugs Yotasuke further down the seawall.
The wind whips at their clothes, filling their mouths with salt.
Yotasuke shields his sketchbook under his arm, though the paper is already dotted with water stains. He looks at Yatora, who is standing there with his arms wide open, hair plastered to his forehead.
“Don’t you feel it?” Yatora shouts over the waves. “Like the world is so big you can barely stand it?”
Yotasuke nods, though what he feels is the opposite: that the sea swallows the world and leaves only the two of them standing here.
He lowers his gaze to the wet paper. The stains look like wings.
At dusk, they sit side by side on the seawall. The sky is streaked with violet and gold, the tide licking at the rocks below. Yatora leans back, arms spread behind him, face tilted toward the horizon.
Yotasuke watches the ocean. It moves endlessly, folding and unfolding, as if it were breathing. Beckoning. After all this time, he finally realises that he is breathing too.
To laugh. To cry. To doubt yourself. To feel nothing, and to feel everything. To fall apart and build yourself back again.
Yotasuke gets it now. It’s all part of a process. It's a cycle.
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The tide drags in, the tide slips away. It isn’t random. The moon pulls, and the ocean follows. Invisible threads tighten, loosen, tighten again.
The sea never rests. Always retreating, always returning.
Maybe people aren’t so different. Always pulled by something they can’t control. Always leaving, always coming back.
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He cannot see his own body. It feels like he doesn’t have one anymore. The water makes it weightless. He wishes it always felt like this.
“The water is so dark. It is black,” Yatora says. Yotasuke knows he feels the same.
He looks up at the sky. It is dark too. 'The ocean is merely a reflection of the sky', he wants to say.
He lets himself sink in deeper and dives under. Yatora follows. The world folds gloomy, heavy and still. He can just make out Yatora’s outline beneath the surface — he looks slow and blurred. Their movements are sluggish, drifting. It seems like their bodies don’t belong to them anymore.
But it’s just water.
They have to come up for air eventually. Water drops slide from their wet hair down to their cheeks and neck before vanishing back into the sea. It's as if they mirror each other.
Maybe they could stay here until their bodies get all wrinkled and coarse from the water. Maybe they could stay here and grow old together. Maybe they could stay here forever. Maybe.
Yatora comes close.
“Do you know why I drag you along all the time?” Yatora asks, smiling softly, his hands finding their place on his neck. “It’s because when you’re around, I feel like… I don’t know. Like things matter more. Like I’m not just filling space.”
He freezes, unsure if he is supposed to smile back, or shake his head, or say something clever. But Yatora just looks at him steadily, without flinching. It is unbearable. It is wonderful.
“You matter to me,” Yatora says.
And he understands what Yatora means with those words. He sees it the way his hands shift at times, fidgeting, searching for somewhere to stay. He knows the doubt in his voice, the edge of fear beneath it. He knows because he has felt it too — wanting to disappear, wanting to hold on at the same time.
Yotasuke kissed him right there in the water. His lips taste salty. They have never clung so desperately to each other’s bodies before.
For the first time, he doesn’t feel like he needs to say more.
That night, he cried again after a long time. Yatora holds him close the whole way through. His hands move gently along his back, and he buries his face in Yotasuke’s hair.
He is silent. But he feels Yatora’s body shake, just slightly, almost unnoticeable. He too, cries. They are silent, those tears.
They fall asleep like this, closely, every part of their bodies touching. His body feels alive in a way it hasn’t in a long time. Every breath Yatora takes vibrates through him, steady and constant as a tide, and he clings to it, fisting his shirt like a desperate.
He wants to stay like this forever. Wants to melt into Yatora’s arms, let the ache of all the nights before dissolve into the press of skin and steady heartbeat beneath his fingers.
He wants to mirror Yatora’s body. He wants their bodies to become one. They were never so different anyway.
Yotasuke feels himself shaking. No wonder, he thinks. It’s love, probably.
It’s surrender.
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I love me, and I love you. And you love both of us. Even if the door closes and darkness settles in, you will stand there on the threshold, placing your foot between the frame so the light won’t be swallowed completely. And I know you won’t go anywhere, you will stand there and wait until I’m ready.
And when the time comes, I will reach out my hand, and you will do the same. Together, hand in hand, we will step over the void before me and leave the door behind us.
And even though this won’t be the last time I find myself in there, even though they will still linger inside with me, because they always will, I will be fine. Because I will learn to stand on my own, and walk without fear. I will learn to look them in the eyes, and as I do, I will realise they never looked so scary at all.
I glance back one last time, I will see there were never demons, only pale shadows I created out of my own fears. And maybe, as I turn my back to them, there will be contentment on their faces. I will walk forward with steady steps.
Someday, we will close that door.
In front of me is standing a child — a child with my eyes and my smile, because I am the child, and the child is me. The child will grin at me, and I will return the smile in its gaze, and together we will walk along the path that tickles our feet and warms our bodies.
In the distance, I will see you standing there, waiting for me. And when you see me, you will hold out your arms, and I will start to run. It will feel so easy, because running on sand can be the best feeling in the world. I will run across the shore, and when I reach you, you will embrace me, hold me close, so I can hear your heartbeat and feel the warmth in your body. I will have the same.
In the distance, the child will stand there, watching over us, proud of me. Proud — just like you are.
The ocean stretches before us, and I feel the waves wash over my bare feet.
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Get your body into the water. Take his hand in yours. Move with the rhythm of your hearts. If you don’t sink too deep, you'll make it out fine.
You can’t hold your breath forever.
But still, for quite a long time.