Work Text:
It was Fujisake Nozomi’s thirty-fifth birthday.
Adachi, her male best friend, stood on one side of her while his husband...and their mutual coworker...Kurosawa, stood on the other. To celebrate, they had bought her favorite cake from that same bakery where she and Adachi had shared their first heartfelt discussion about love, relationships, and family expectations. Then the couple sang the birthday song to her.
Nozomi was not married and had no children...things that her mother had insisted that she needed in life to feel complete. Yet, the woman could honestly say that she was happier in that moment than she had almost ever been.
She was only disappointed that it had taken until she was thirty-five years old to figure out exactly why that was and what it took for her to stop pretending and to finally feel normal.
Nozomi had long understood that she was somehow different from the people around her.
It had really started in middle school, though. After puberty struck her and all her friends with the characteristic force of a tsunami, everyone suddenly became obsessed with relationships. Everyone but Nozomi, it seemed.
However, even then, she realized that it would have been social suicide to resist, to be labeled as weird - just because she did not care about such things. Therefore, in order to please her friends and classmates, she made confessions that she did not really mean and accepted confessions that she did not really want.
Fortunately, since it was just middle school, those early relationships were not really serious for anybody involved and quickly fizzled out as everyone matured and moved on.
Nevertheless, that pattern...the desire to please...the pretending...continued as Nozomi got older, as well. The stakes became higher then, but so were the consequences if she admitted the truth.
Therefore, she did not.
Instead, she continued to pretend.
In order to please her parents, who desperately wanted to see her settled with a family, she agreed to date and allow herself to be part of relationships that she would have much rather kept as simple friendships.
To please her partners in those reluctant relationships, she agreed to sex when she would have much rather preferred that things between them remain platonic in nature.
Unfortunately, even if though those kinds of acts themselves had not been completely terrible for the most part, she still had not enjoyed them. She went through the motions, but to her, it all just seemed awkward, messy, and extremely unnecessary.
Therefore, it was easy for her to figure out that she did not want it. She did not need it. Most of all, she did not like it that everyone seemed to think that sex was some mandatory part of being an adult...or that a successful romantic relationship that led to marriage was supposed to be the ultimate goal in life.
That is was all part of being normal.
To her, that was such an arbitrary position to take when...in truth...there were so many other things in life that Nozomi enjoyed far more and that she thought were much more important.
Consequently, even after all the years that had passed since she had recognized that core difference in herself back in middle school, she still could not summon any real interest in any of it. She just could not bring herself to care about romantic love or dating or any of the physical aspects that most people accepted went with them.
Therefore, her adult relationships...much like her middle school ones...never lasted, either.
However, she knew that...even as an adult...admitting otherwise would have been the equivalent of being singled out as the weird one in middle school.
Therefore, she did not. She kept her opinions to herself, even as she kept people-pleasing and pretending.
It was exhausting, however...both physically and mentally. There were even times when Nozomi wondered how much she could take...how long she could keep up the pretense of being normal before people no longer cared about how she lived her own life and she could finally be free.
~~~~~
Then Adachi happened. Her quiet coworker suddenly became one of her best friends when he was the first one who ever really seemed to understand that she did not need romance to feel truly happy and fulfilled. He even volunteered to tell her mother that, as well – if Nozomi ever needed him, too.
She never took him up on that offer, even though she really appreciated it. She was also thankful for the friendship of Kurosawa, as well, when he and Adachi stopped carefully orbiting each other...and their own ideas of what was normal...before they were finally able to start their own unconventional relationship.
Best of all, since they had eyes and hearts only for each other after that, they did not expect anything from her other than companionship. Therefore, she was free to be herself with them – no pleasing or pretending required.
Consequently, just by being themselves, they helped to change the way she viewed her life...and her concept of love...completely.
Through their happiness, they taught her that it was okay to be different, to stop worrying so much about what others think, and that her personal peace was most important. After all, she was the only one who had to live her life.
Most of all, they taught her that the people to whom she was really important would accept her exactly the way she was – even if they were not personally thrilled about the choices she made or the lines she drew when she finally stopped pretending.
That new fresh outlook on life is what brought her to her thirty-fifth birthday and why she celebrated it with her friends in the city rather than her family in the country. After all, her mother, in particular, had taken the news rather hard when Nozomi...bolstered by Adachi and Kurosawa's strength...finally told her the plain and unvarnished truth. She simply explained would no longer be accepting photographs of eligible bachelors in the village or going on arranged blind dates because she was just not interested in having that sort of relationship with anybody...male or female...not at the current time and maybe not ever.
Even though her mother was upset and obviously needed time to process the declaration...and mourn the loss of her future hypothetical grandchildren...Nozomi had still received her usual "Happy Birthday" text and emojis from her father. Therefore, the fallout had not been nearly as completely devastating as she had feared. No matter what, though, whether her mother ever fully accepted it or not, the truth was still the truth...and now they all knew it and could set their expectations accordingly.
~~~~~
After they had finished their slightly off-key version of the birthday serenade, Adachi leaned in from one side and Kurosawa from the other as they both kissed Nozomi’s cheek with platonic affection and wished her not just a Happy Birthday, but a Happy Life, as well.
The woman knew then in her heart and soul, that the gift of true friendship...where she was seen and accepted for exactly who she was...was the only kind of relationship she wanted and the only kind she truly needed to be happy. As long as she had friends like Adachi and Kurosawa by her side, she would have somewhere she belonged and could finally feel normal.
In fact, it was the absolute end of pretend for her and she was finally free to live and love (or not!) on her own terms.