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“Oh? Pressing more flowers again, Handa-kun?”
The new sudden voice from behind him had nearly caused him to jump out of his skin. He thought he had finally gone far enough from school to where nobody would recognize him, to where no one else who knew him would catch him indulging in this unconventional hobby of his, but it seemed like, according to the sound of his voice anyway, that Yukio had stumbled upon him and caught him redhanded.
“N-No of course not! I told you before that pressing flowers is something only girls like to do,” Handa quickly lied as he embarrassingly shoved his artwork back into his black bag, “This is just…! It was just extra work that I was assigned by the teacher to do! It’s nothing more than that, okay?!”
If word got back to school that he actually liked this sort of stuff, that he really enjoyed pressing flowers in his free time like this, then there was no way anyone would not think he was weird! I mean how many guys his age, did you know that were openly into this kind of stuff? He’d be totally iced out by the rest of his peers, even more so than he already was, if this came out about him.
“Right. Yeah. Sure, it is…” Yukio skeptically replied, clearly not believing the other teen at all based on the tone of his voice, “You know, Handa-kun, I really don’t think it’s just a girl thing to enjoy pressing flowers every now and again. I mean tons of guys in our class realized we had fun doing it when we were forced to do it for school work, Reo, Tsutsui, and even Aizawa, who had originally wanted to dissect frogs instead, had ended up having a real good time with it.”
“I know that I especially had a great time doing it with everyone else as well,” Yukio added with a reassuring smile after that, “so I really don’t think it strange at all for anyone to like that sort of thing.”
“You really don’t…?” Handa hesitantly looked back at the other teen and asked, with a slightly hopeful expression on his face.
Was Yukio really saying that he didn’t mind guys who were into stuff like that?
“Yeah, I don't think anyone should feel the need to hide the hobbies they like,” Yukio told him, “I mean if you can’t even be honest about the simple stuff you like with other people then what can you be honest about with them?”
“Thanks, I… I think I really needed to hear that,” Handa responded, after he felt himself release an unconscious breath that he seemed to have been holding in for a long time already.
Hearing someone so easily and bluntly accept him like that without a second thought, well… he didn’t think he had ever felt this suddenly at ease with anyone else like this before.
“It’s no problem at all, happy to help.”
You know, after looking at Handa like he was now, he realized that even though he might not have been nearly as intense as the rest of the Handa Force members were when it came to their natural admiration of him, he could still understand their strong inherent desire to look out for and protect him, because he didn’t think he had ever felt more of that natural desire to help the other teen, then he did right now at this very moment for him.
“Ah! Sorry, we’ve been talking so much about myself that I didn’t realize the bouquet you’ve been carrying,” Handa awkwardly switched the topic and said when he finally noticed the extremely large bouquet of flowers the other teen had been holding in his arms, “Were you on your way to a date or something?”
As much as Yukio’s words may have really brightened his day so far, he really hoped that he hadn’t interrupted him on his way of doing something important and caused him to get into trouble because of it.
“No, actually I came here specifically looking for you so I could… Harass you with flowers…?” Yukio awkwardly looked off to the side and admitted to the other teen.
“Huh?! You did?!” Handa found himself unable to say anymore than that in response to his sudden declaration.
Wait! Wait! Hold Up!
Was Yukio doing a similar thing that he did a few days before to him? Where he pretended to be nice to him before he pulled some mean prank on him, like how he gave him a pressed flower the other day that had the word “emo” smudged across it in ink to make fun of him? Had everything he had said before been a complete lie so he could get his guard down and bully him again?!
“Er… Well, maybe that wasn’t the exact right phrasing, for what I meant to say,” Yukio began to clarify, “I figured that you might need more flowers to press, given how into it you seemed, so I brought some more for you if you wanted them and I was thinking that maybe we could press some flowers together too? Like, you could show me some of your flowing arranging techniques to teach me how you manage to make them look so good together, if that’s not too much of a bother?”
“Y-Yeah, that would be more than fine!” Handa probably way too hurriedly agreed, when it came to the prospect of someone else actually wanting to willingly spend time with him like that, “Just follow me lead and hand the flowers to me when I ask you to give me one okay? I’ll make sure to explain the whole thing to you!”
He couldn’t believe it! He was actually getting to hang out with one of his classmates outside of school that wasn’t just Kawafuji for once! Was this the day his luck was finally turning around for him?!
“Mmhmm. Sounds good,” Yukio casually hummed in response to the other boy’s sudden eagerness, “What flowers were you thinking of using first to press?”
“Well, I was thinking that maybe we could start by laying down some of the sunflowers and chrysanthemums you brought together to make a cool gradient effect on the page and…”
A small smile spread across Yukio’s face once more as he watched the other teen excitedly ramble on after that. Now this was the Handa-kun the rest of the world needed to see, not the one that tried to act tough or hide who he was because he was afraid of what other people thought, no, they deserved to see this happy smiling Handa in all his glory. Each and every person in the world needed to see his pure innocent smile for themselves to truly understand how much one person's smile in particular could easily brighten anyone’s day.