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He thinks about the previous Hikaru a lot.
Not in any specific way, the way Yoshiki does. He’s not really sad, or frustrated, or anything—he’s just lost, kind of. The feeling’s been a gradual thing over the past few months, building out of all the awareness he’s gained about himself, all the ways he’s different from the other Hikaru, but it’s not a human sort of feeling. It’s more like an observation of all the gaps where he’s not a perfect copy, even when he tries to be. Like feeling the ridges of his teeth with his tongue.
There are things about Hikaru that he just doesn’t understand.
In a way, it makes sense. He didn’t actually know Hikaru, even if it’s still accurate to say he’s met him once. But that moment was like passing a baton in a relay race, or something—swimmers making contact underwater. It’s murky, not the same as sitting in class or biking home and talking to him on a quiet afternoon.
Like what Hikaru is doing with Yoshiki now.
Yoshiki’s hair sticks to his forehead, slicked with sweat in the heat. His eyes are trained on the road as he pushes his bike along—Hikaru’s chain broke, so they’re both walking, on their way back from Mrs. Kurebayashi’s place.
Hikaru watches him and thinks. This is definitely a different way of getting to know someone, way different than having access to all their experiences. He figures he wouldn’t know Yoshiki half as well if he could only know him from memories.
He’s glad he gets to interact with Yoshiki like this.
“Yer starin’ at me,” Yoshiki says without looking up. His bike rolls over a rock, spitting it out from underneath the front tire.
“Sorry,” Hikaru says, not sorry at all. “Want me to quit it?”
“Nah. S’fine.”
Yoshiki still doesn’t look at him, and Hikaru still doesn’t look away. He’s fine with that, if Yoshiki is.
The old Hikaru wouldn’t stare at Yoshiki like this, he knows, and that’s one of those things he just can’t wrap his head around—how Hikaru could stand to look away.
He doesn’t have access to his thoughts, though. Or even his feelings, really, although that’s harder to say for sure, since feelings are complicated, especially when they’re all blurry and piecemeal and unnatural to monsters like Hikaru. He’s pretty sure his sense of self wouldn’t be the same without the original Hikaru’s foundations, but he’s equally sure that his emotions, whatever they are, are his own.
“So Kurebayashi-san’s gonna give us a ride tomorrow, right?” he says, because it’s been silent for too long. “Think I zoned out when she was talkin’ about it.”
The sun’s already casting a yellowy glow, but they’ll make it home before it really starts setting.
Yoshiki pauses.
Only now does the fear worm its way into Hikaru’s gut—Yoshiki’s still not looking at him, and it has to be deliberate. He doesn’t avoid eye contact this much. Something’s off.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Hikaru breathes in, wondering if he should ask did I do something wrong, but before he can, Yoshiki hesitates and adds, “Hey, Hikaru.”
“Yeah?”
“You know what we were talkin’ about earlier? About souls, and—other stuff, like eatin’ and sleepin’?”
Hikaru’s momentary fear morphs into confusion. He remembers. He was telling both Yoshiki and Mrs. Kurebayashi about his—the monster’s—instincts. The way souls feel, to see and to touch and to absorb them. How he doesn’t crave things the way humans do, but he still understands them, more or less.
He’d hoped it would help them conceptualize what souls mean to him. He doesn’t think they got the picture, but at least he tried.
“What about it?” Now that he thinks about it, Yoshiki did go silent after that, didn’t he? Frowning, Hikaru looks down at his grip on his bike. He didn’t mean to make him uncomfortable.
“You said you can still tell when somethin’ seems…” Yoshiki pauses. “Sexual. Right?”
“Right…?” Hikaru can’t help but sound unsure. At least Yoshiki doesn’t sound creeped out or anything.
“Like mixing.” Yoshiki’s voice goes lower. “You made a dumb joke about it, back then. The first time.”
Hikaru nods slowly. The time in the gym. It takes him a moment, but he vaguely remembers how he said something lighthearted, and Yoshiki didn’t like that. He doesn’t like those kinds of jokes, Hikaru came to understand. Jokes about raunchy things, romancey things. So he stopped after that.
It feels like there wasn’t really a punchline, anyway. Maybe the old Hikaru would’ve had one in mind.
“I was wondering.” Yoshiki’s hands grip his bike handle too tightly. “If… Hikaru thought a lot of things were sexual, in that case.”
Hikaru stops in place, holding his own bike still. “I dunno. Why?”
Yoshiki seems agitated by that, eyes darting to the side, but he stops, too, and looks at him from behind his bangs. “’Cause he made jokes like that all the time.”
Oh. Hikaru stares at him, trying to grasp why this is such an important topic—why it’s been clearly eating Yoshiki alive for at least the past hour, or however long it’s been since the conversation with Mrs. Kurebayashi. Maybe it’s been bothering him for longer than that.
Hikaru doesn’t know. This all feels horribly beyond what he can understand.
“Not even just in locker rooms and stuff,” Yoshiki clarifies reluctantly. “Just whenever. In class. At home.”
The memories come to mind in pieces—saying things like oooh, gross, yer in love me, or haha, people’ll think we’re gay for each other, or other things like that. Hikaru can’t remember the context, if there even was any.
And he knows now, more or less, why that stuff bothers Yoshiki. But it feels like that’s not what he’s getting at right now.
Hikaru scratches his neck. “I think he… yeah, he probably called things sexy ‘cause that’s what he was thinking. I mean, you can’t call out things ‘less you notice them, right?”
In the afternoon light, Yoshiki looks unbelievably pale. Maybe it was the wrong thing to say. “S’that why you said things like that?”
“I mean, yeah, I… I was just tryna talk like him.”
It’s what came naturally, back then. Before he understood himself to be meaningfully different from Hikaru, thinking things like, why shouldn’t I be a perfect copy, if he makes you more comfortable? Aren’t I basically him? Why’s it matter if it’s real or not?
Humans can’t see souls, but he’s pretty sure they still matter to humans more than he initially thought.
Yoshiki leans his arms on his bike, closing his eyes.
Hikaru feels like he needs to say more. “He wanted to say that kinda thing a lot, I figure. When he felt like things were gettin’ raunchy. Or flirty, or somethin’.”
He just can’t explain what it says about the old Hikaru. Maybe that’s what Yoshiki’s looking for.
“Flirty,” Yoshiki echoes faintly. It looks like a million awful realizations are cycling through his mind. “Was he thinkin’ those times were… did he know I…?”
“No way,” Hikaru says instantly, then shakes his head, thinking better of it. “I mean, I ain’t sure. Maybe. But I don’t figure he knew you liked him.”
Somehow, he thinks he himself would know if that were true. He feels like there’d be a moment in his memory, something that stands out and would have left him with that knowledge from the outset—but he had to figure Yoshiki out on his own. Which, for a monster, for someone who doesn’t get feelings like that, wasn’t easy.
By that same metric, though, the old Hikaru should have figured it out ages ago.
Maybe he just wasn’t looking.
“I dunno what he was thinkin’,” Hikaru stresses, stepping closer. His lungs feel strange. He just—he wants to calm Yoshiki down, he always does, but he doesn’t know if he can ever be the right person to do that. Because he’s Hikaru in every way except the ones that matter.
He wishes he could know Hikaru the way Yoshiki knew him.
He wishes he could answer all these impossible questions.
“But I feel like it was complicated. I feel like he wasn’t tryna hurt you.” Maybe that’s reaching, but it feels like something innate to the brain he inherited, something foundational. We would never want to hurt Yoshiki. “Maybe he just wanted to make things feel… not so serious, ya know? For himself.”
Like telling a joke at a funeral. Like calling out a cheesy line in a movie to stop getting so invested in it. Hikaru understands the idea, even if he doesn’t get why the old Hikaru would need to act like that in front of Yoshiki. How being close to Yoshiki could ever make him want to turn away.
Maybe he was just scared. Yoshiki gets scared a lot, so maybe it was the same for Hikaru.
Yoshiki lets out a tense, disbelieving noise. “Not so serious, yeah. That’s right. Everything was a joke to him, I just—” He sighs, raising his gaze. Something about his expression is different, like a realization. Not the bad kind. Hikaru feels the eye contact like a wave of relief. “You don’t haveta worry about this stuff. Sorry.”
It’s like Yoshiki’s just realized Hikaru is standing here, hand half-outstretched, floundering to say the right thing. It feels good to be thought of. Kind of warm.
“Nah, it’s fine,” he says. “It’s real important to you. I wanna get it.”
I’m sorry he said things like that all the time, he doesn’t add. I’m sorry he made you feel shitty.
He doesn’t know how Yoshiki’d react to him saying that, but at the very least, unlike Hikaru, Yoshiki’s never deserved to feel shame.
Yoshiki huffs out a sound, closing the distance to bump their shoulders together, and walks on ahead, rolling his bike along beside him. Like always, Hikaru follows. He didn’t do badly with this conversation, he’s pretty sure. Yoshiki seems down, but not as tense as he was. That has to be a good thing.
“I guess I’ll never know what he was thinkin’,” Yoshiki says. “If he was just being Hikaru, or what.”
There’s something unsaid there, but Hikaru doesn’t know how to ask about it. To ask if Yoshiki’s thinking that being Hikaru means just goofing around, or playing some kind of mind games, or something else. Maybe it’s a whole lot of things, all wrapped up into one soul.
“I wish I could tell ya,” he says helplessly.
“It’s fine.” An attempt at a smile lifts the corner of Yoshiki’s mouth. “Let’s go. We gotta get back on time for yer mom’s dinner.”
Not his mom. Hikaru’s mom. But she makes dinner for him either way, and maybe it makes him selfish, ravenous for feelings he can’t explain, but he likes it more than Hikaru ever did.
Hikaru doesn’t think he’ll understand what it means to be him for as long as he lives.