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Sometimes, Riku thinks about the people he has loved. The way they arrived like seasons and leaving behind traces that still hum beneath his ribs. Each name feels like a weather pattern. Some came with storms that left him gasping, others with calm that made him stay still. But Yushi, he thinks, is neither storm nor calm. He is the air between. He came gently, not to change anything, but to remind Riku what tenderness sounds like. It’s in the pauses between sentences. In the hesitation before a smile. And somehow Riku realized that Yushi had quietly become the shape of home.
Yushi moves through the world as if it might bruise under his touch. He rolls up his sleeves before doing his work. He looks down when he smiles like his happiness is something private. Every time Riku catches his eyes, Yushi looks away too quickly, cheeks pink, hands fumbling with the nearest thing. That small shyness pulls Riku closer to tease and to understand. It’s strange how a single person can make silence feel full. Riku wonders if love has always been this quiet or if it only becomes gentle when it’s Yushi.
Loving Yushi feels like standing near sunlight you’re not supposed to touch. There’s warmth, a soft ache, and the instinct to reach out anyway. But Riku holds himself still. He’s to afraid to startle the peace they’ve built. Sometimes, he thinks it’s enough just to watch Yushi laugh with the wind. Other times, he wants to break the silence and tell him everything. How love, in Riku’s chest, feels like a small bird refusing to rest. He knows Yushi is fragile in ways the world doesn’t notice. So Riku stays, close enough to see, far enough not to harm.
One afternoon, when the classroom was half-empty and the rain whispered against the windows, Riku found Yushi gathering brushes. The light was dim, gold melting into gray. “You always wait for the rain to stop,” Riku said. His voice is so soft that Yushi looked up with hesitant and eyes searching for something safe. “I don’t like to look like I’m rushing,” he said with half-smiling. Riku almost laughed, because if only Yushi knew how fast his heart was running. Every second near him felt like running toward something beautiful and never reaching it. And still, Riku stayed, because even longing had its own kind of peace.
Days unfolded like quiet pages turned by wind. Riku began to memorize the rhythm of Yushi’s shyness. The way his laughter rose and disappeared too soon. Once, Yushi whispered, “You shouldn’t look at me like that,” and his voice almost broke in the middle. “Then stop being so easy to look at,” Riku answered and the room fell still. The silence that followed was thick with everything they didn’t say. Yushi laughed softly after that, embarrassed, his face hidden behind his hand. Riku wished he could keep that moment forever. He believe that fragile laughter sounded like the beginning of something.
He started writing about Yushi in places no one would ever find. Small notes between shopping lists, words hidden in the folds of his journal. Not declarations and it just records of presence. How Yushi’s voice lowers when he speaks of something he loves. How his hands tremble slightly when he write, as if every line costs him a piece of his heart. Riku wondered if love was meant to be this peace, not grand, but persistent. Maybe it’s simply the act of paying attention and calling it devotion.
Riku realized then that love was not about confession or possession. It was about staying through hesitations, through silence, through the trembling of being known. In Yushi’s quietness, he heard something like a promise. In his shyness, a small kind of courage that bloomed without asking for light. In his stillness, Riku learned that presence could be louder than words. In Yushi’s hesitation, he saw honesty like the kind that trembles but stays. In his gentleness, Riku felt the world slow down, as if time wanted to listen too. In Yushi’s gaze, fleeting yet certain, he recognized the ache of something meant to be. And in his silence, Riku understood love does not always need to arrive, sometimes, it only needs to remain. So Riku stayed loving Yushi the way one holds a light.