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Where the sky kissed down onto the horizon, Midori could see it had already started fading to black on the other side. The school’s insides would soon be swept into a dull silence, only broken by the shaking glass against strong, winter winds, and the lights would flicker out as he would follow his breadcrumb trail home. The broken stop sign. The tagged wall. The tree that leaned a little too far left. Unexciting landmarks pinned on his local globe.
But this was a good thing. Home was comfortable and warm, offering all the things school liked to pretend it did. Even when he’d sit for long hours, carelessly arranging new produce from the local farms, there was no element of pressure that his teachers so strictly enforced. He could stand at the till, watching customer after boring customer struggle to find exact change, and only have to pretend that he knew what each and every button on the cash machine actually did. His parents never scolded him either, instead opting to show him such grating familial love that he stood no chance in trying to pull away from.
School was the opposite. With all the excitement, perhaps they were polarised.
His friends were always pumped full of adrenaline, basking in what must be the carelessness of teenage hormones. He wasn’t quite sure why Shinobu had started talking to him in the first place- choosing Midori out of all of the other, far more eye-catching, students to drop every word that came out of his giant mouth onto- but he wasn’t about to complain. If his parents saw him leaving for one road, while Shinobu the other, maybe they’d stop asking him such repetitive questions about his social status. He was tall. And no one bullies the tallest kid in the grade- no matter how much he might beg for it- so there was nothing for them to worry about anyway.
Really, this was the best solution. Sit with Shinobu at lunch; learn how to put out fires when no one was looking, physical or otherwise. It was a simple enough plan not to collapse in on itself, and Midori watched as it came to coil around him into his daily routine. They’d eat together and they’d walk home together, and he had no protests. School was school, no better and no worse than it always was.
Other groups were welcoming enough as well. He stopped telling them that he’d accidentally signed up for the course after Wataru, an upperclassman, had told him that it was fate at work. “Like how once, I took the part of the antagonist in the summer play, I- too- found myself in those stars! There is nothing to fear about the unknown, for it is better than you and I, and even he who claims eternal life..!”
‘He’ being Rei, who came in only to complain about the loud noise against his so-called ‘ageing’ ears. When Wataru saw him approach, he presented Midori s though he were a peculiar looking rock a child picked up from the beach, and Rei commented something that the other two could only pretend to vaguely understand. “Young man…” something, “you must understand,” something, “destiny does not play around,” something else, regurgitated lines from those cartoons they all used to watch when they were younger, but no one said anything. Midori left as clueless as he had come, vowing to stay as far away from the third years as he could get.
That is, bar two of them. Neither of whom he particularly wanted to be around, but Kanata and Chiaki were in his group, and therefore impossible to ignore. He turned a blind eyes to their weird ways, and never told either of them his home address- until Chiaki found it himself.
But it was late in the year now, and winter had already grown on the thermometers, dragging the mercury down to its icy grave. For him, this season only meant his knitting aunt would sent him another scarf, and less customers would come in- and those that did came his mother’s coffee in the quiet hours. School days became quieter, students desperate to rush home and lie in their warm beds. The sun would rise and fall early, and he, in a reminiscent daze, would take five times longer to get home.
But this year, winter also meant he would have officially been a member of the idol course for eight months now.
Eight long, tiring months that he didn’t care to look back on much.
But when winter break was over, there had been a rupture in his routine; the cogs in Shinobu’s mind spinning rapidly as he now decided it was simply imperative for him to retain his ‘peak physical condition’ and focus more with his martial arts for a month, at least. “You never know what risks could jump out on us, Midori-kun!” he told him over lunch, their boxes sitting before them on the edge of the practice stage. “I need to be able to protect us.”
Overhearing this, Chiaki leapt to chip into their conversation. He’d taken it upon himself to sort out the wires that someone had tangled- Midori imagined it was probably his own doing, but he didn’t want to get involved in that. “If you’re looking for physical fitness, you should definitely join the basketball club! We do all that… jumping stuff!” The cords he’d been fumbling with had withered to defeat in his hands but tightened around his ankles.
“I can’t do that! We have specialist skills, those that only history and heritage pass down. Basketball may be good when you’re fighting with a rubber ball, but only education and patience can win on the real battle field!”
Midori angled his head up, closing his eyes and sighing quietly as Shinobu continued on. Being a ninja, if it could really be considered that, seemed like the worst type of lifestyle to have.
“Midori-kun,” Shinobu announced, interrupting himself. “From now on, while I’m busy with my duties, I would like to request that you walk home with Taichou-dono!” Leaving no space for question or complaint, he nodded to himself keenly, “Danger… is unpredictable!” Then he jumped off the stage, running across the hall to Tetora.
Soon enough, mild talk of their newly developed practice routine flooded into topic. Midori didn’t try to throw the conversation back to where he’d fallen in, feeling the nudges from Chiaki against his side when Kanata attempted to rearrange positions for, at least, the thousandth time. But he had no spine to swing, no sword to unsheathe against the near-future, and so the machine powered itself, as it always did.
Chiaki walked a little further than Shinobu, and Midori wondered why Chiaki had never asked to walk home with them. If anything, Chiaki was far more the person to push his way through the crowd and catch up- but he never had. For what reason, Midori never cared to find out, imagining the conversation that’d they’d have to have before and after. It was the type of suffocating conversation you’d sooner jump off a bridge than be faced with, let alone have it while you’re walking home during the abnormal darkness that was a January 5PM.
What he had found though, was that night was cliché, this awfully embarrassing state of mind where you walk in silence and pray to the powers that may be that nothing interrupts it. Of course, something, no, someone, would, and it was revoltingly obvious that this someone would always be Chiaki, even before he opened his mouth.
During the first week, they had taken their normal route. Chiaki pointed out the sign being crooked, and Midori reassured him that he had seen it many times before. Not just that, he was fairly sure he knew why it was crooked- the local kids probably having kicked a football towards it. Surprisingly, perhaps, Chiaki agreed.
Eventually, as the days went on, Chiaki pulled him into longer conversation and around the block a couple extra times. Thinking back to it after he got home, Midori knew these were pointless conversation topics- random things about uniforms and school layouts, and other miscellaneous topics. Equally, he couldn’t just pull away from Chiaki when his street approached and run off inside. He knew it would be rude, and there was a small part of him offering its hand to Chiaki so that he couldn’t- or wouldn’t- try to stop.
It was during the last week of their first month that Chiaki decided they would take a full detour.
He mentioned something- Midori had stopped listening at some point or another- about how tonight was the clearest night of the whole year, and that they could probably see something or another if they looked hard enough. Not much of a feat, as the new year was still fresh on their calendars, but a feat to the upperclassman all the same. He’d led the other to a knock-off park near the old field, one that used to be dominated by farmers but had since devolved into some kind of public wasteland, benches parked awkwardly around the perimeter. If you had to walk a dog, you’d go there. Likewise, if you had an old washing machine that no one would buy off of you, you’d go there too.
“Y’know, Takamine.” Midori felt the thump from Chiaki’s bag falling to the bench. “It can’t really be that bad, can it?” He held his hands to the back of his head: a pillow to rest on.
Midori didn’t really know what Chiaki was referring to, or trying to at least, so he stayed still. The warm breath from the back of his throat took shape in the open air, water vapour turning into millions upon millions of finite crystals. Winter was well and truly established by now, but it was comfortable to see anyhow.
“The group, I mean.” Reaching over to Midori’s head with one arm, and dropping his other to his side, Chiaki angled Midori’s face towards his own. “If you really don’t want to be here, like you’d seriously rather drop dead than stay another day, don’t force yourself to stay.”
There was a hint of pause in his voice, one that Midori quickly, though diffidently, settled on not looking into. The thought of getting emotionally invested in small details seemed like it’d only exist sustainably in a world heavily governed by paper people, standing on their fold-out podiums as the pages of the book flipped over. And this wasn’t that. This was the real world.
Midori dropped his gaze. Not as though he had met Chiaki’s in the first place, but shifted it enough to cut Chiaki out of his line of sight. “It’s not that,” he muttered, as monotone and quiet as he always had done. “If I drop out now, it’d be a lot of… grief to deal with. Finding a new course to fill the block, catching up with the new one, explaining to people why I dropped out of music…” He trailed off, the backs of Chiaki’s fingers still pushed lightly to the side of his face.
He didn’t pull away, for this all came naturally to Chiaki. Skin on skin contact: footballers slapping each other’s backs, brushing strangers’ hands at concerts, little girls kissing each other good luck, stray cats rubbing themselves to their owners’ leg for reclamation of whatever damned street the fabric their second-hand clothes came from. He paid it no mind with the excuse that it was all merely part of the natural sequence of events, those that made up the very core of Chiaki Morisawa.
As for Midori- not so much. The warmth was a new invader he never quite grew accustomed too, and avoided it at all costs.
He remembered the school’s previous sports day, when Chiaki pushed himself too hard and sprained his right leg, expelling him to the infirmary for the remainder of the day. He remembered how he had come into the infirmary to deliver a message from Tetora, which somehow resulting in him sitting there for ten minutes, an hour, and then some. The last puffs of sun were heaved out as it finished its own marathon, and the two students slept, their chests rising and falling out of sync. Internally, he knew he had not stayed there to avoid running his own race, but he wasn’t about to admit that.
“So—,” Midori looked back to Chiaki, his face contorting with an ugly concoction of confusion streamlined against halfwit determination. “It’s a matter of effort? I can help if you want!” Pulling his hand away, Chiaki leant forwards. “We still need our star player on the basketball team anyway!”
“Well… yes, but…” Midori lost his point in speech, head tilting up to find these rumoured stars.
Now it was Chiaki’s turn to play the game; pretend he didn’t know how to build his sentences or make a coherent point. “Look. I don’t know, really. You’re a good member- a good player too- and I don’t think get how this was really a mistake.” He paused, fully aware that Midori would probably never gather the drive to formally pull out of the idol course, and that his future was mostly set out for him anyway. “I think if you’re really desperate to pull out, they’ll let you.”
Midori stayed quiet. For a minute, they both did.
“You’re really tall,” Chiaki mused. “The girls must love you.” Pause. “Girls love a lot of things, not just looks, but they don’t not love looks.” Pause again. He lifted the same arm he’d used before and wrapped it around Midori’s neck, yanking him over with sudden force to meet his chest. “But I’m totally the same! Looks aren’t everything, but the closer you get to someone, the more you love about them- right?”
“I… really want to die.”
Throwing his head back, Chiaki laughed against the rickety panels of the bench. Though Midori struggled against his hold, morbidly paranoid that the wood could easily snap in two, it was no easy task to break free from someone who actually kept an eye on their muscular physique. Holding Midori still, he commented, “You and Akehoshi are both riots! If only the rest of the basketball club were into singing…” he remarked, throwing a bright smile Midori’s way.
More moments passed, gradually closing to a slow lull in conversation. He wasn’t quite sure how long they had been sitting there quietly, but certainly longer than what should’ve been allowed. In the quiet of the field, Chiaki brought up his other hand, running his fingers through Midori’s hair until the very last echo of half-baked styling was pulled out. He looked bedridden with illness, and Chiaki quietly slipped into a wondrous, internal debate as to whether or not someone with eyes that bright could ever really look that sick. Of course, they could, and he’d seen it himself.
With that, he leant forwards and kissed him on the cheek, the same way doting mothers and protective brothers do, and it was, as all things were to Chiaki Morisawa- the captain of the basketball team, the leader of the Ryuseitai, and an only child- meaningless.
In a gravely childish way, Chiaki was jealous of Midori.
A first year, but perhaps more appropriate than Izumi to be the male model type, yet somehow uncomfortable with the way the bricks of his body had been laid. Then he felt something biting at him, the very edges of that desire he’d caged away so long ago, and he pulled back, hesitantly. Nothing was better than space. He knew that better than anyone, not that he let it show.
Suddenly, his phone jumped with a buzz- a message from a sender Midori couldn’t quite catch, but, as if consolation from God, he saw the time. Chiaki hummed. “It’s getting late- super late even. You might think I’m being silly, but I stayed out way too much as a first year; now I’m basically racing to get my grades up!”
He held out his hand to Midori, pulling him the last length down from cloud-whatever and back to the park bench, the rusting machinery still quietly watching them in ruminative silence.
Looking to him, Midori stood up too. Only a few centimetres difference in height and no one ever noticed things like that. Midori had long legs and Chiaki had back muscles that flexed under his shirt, and he liked taking it off during class because someone always commented.
They walked back in near silence, Chiaki spitting in the can to keep it full. He asked about Midori’s classes, if he had any friends in them, told him how cool it was to live right above where he worked. And when they approached his work-house, as Chiaki had so poorly deemed it, he kept his eyes to the ground in his fair biddings.
His parents had wished him a good night only an hour before, and now he was alone with only street lamp light peering in at the bottoms of the curtains. He hadn’t said a word all evening, as if afraid that, if he did, something unthinkably horrible would happen. Unsure of what it was, he sat quietly at the kitchen table, stood quietly in the storage cupboard, and lay quietly in bed, waiting for God’s final omen.
In the company of himself, Midori recalled the pledge he had made at the start of the year. Oh, how he wished he stuck closer to it, he thought, glancing to the glass cup on his bedside table, shaking as he moved.