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“... Suguru. Suguru.”
Mmm… Satoru’s… voice?
“Suguru…”
Why does it sound so far away?
But then—the voice was near him. Above him. Breathed on his skin.
“Hey. Hey, sweetheart. Wake up.”
Suguru blinked heavily, his vision gradually becoming sharp. He was leaning on something soft—Satoru’s thighs. They were warm beneath him, but not as warm as Satoru’s hand, which was currently caressing his hair away from his face.
“Satoru…?”
“At your service.”
“W… what are you doing here?”
“I tracked you down. I got here when you were still asleep,” he told him. His voice was so quiet. Why was he whispering?
“N… no, I mean… W…” Suguru felt as though his thoughts were all messed up. It’s been so long since he’d seen Satoru’s eyes so closely. They always reminded him of the ocean, in their depth. The Okinawa ocean. “... I mean, we haven’t been in touch in the past…”
“... Ten years, yes,” Satoru continued, his thumb brushing over Suguru’s cheek. He didn’t hate that. He expected to, but he didn’t. It didn’t surprise him, either. He didn’t know how it made him feel.
Suguru allowed the silence to continue, because he didn’t know what to say. He was immersing himself in that damn beautiful face, the face he had loved and hated all at once, but not really, not from the heart—
“Did you miss me?” Satoru’s low voice broke the silence. And there was that cocky smile, just as Suguru remembered it.
“No. Why would I?”
“Ha. I see right through you, you liar. I’ve got good eyes, you know.”
Another quiet moment fell between them. Satoru’s hand persisted in caressing his hair, and Suguru hasn’t realized until now how much he…
“... Yeah. Of course I missed you, stupid,” he admitted at last.
Satoru’s smile widened a bit into one of those rare smiles that were somehow both genuine and sad. Suguru had no idea how it was even possible to see him like that, but somehow he remembered; he knew there was a side of Satoru that no one else but him could see, and that it was it. That kind of smile.
“You know it’s not going to work.”
“What isn’t?” Suguru looked up at him, examining his expression. Even if he had wanted to get up, his body felt too heavy. Or maybe Satoru used Infinity on him and he was too used to it to notice.
“Your plan. To kill all the monkeys,” he caressed his face a bit more slowly now. “You know I can’t let you.”
The sigh that escaped Suguru’s lips was long. “All I can do is try.”
“And then what?”
“Who knows. Live, I guess. With my family. Utilize the cursed spirits I have, kill the rest… find peace.”
“You won’t. You know you won’t.”
Suguru didn’t know what to say to that.
But before he could say anything, he felt Satoru’s lips on his own, pressing so softly that it felt like kissing cotton.
It made something in him flutter. Shake, even. His heart was doing something, his breath stopped in his throat, and his blood was rushing towards his face—
And it was too damn cold when the kiss was suddenly over. Suguru blinked, gazing up at those impossible ocean-eyes.
“... What did you do that for?”
“To show you.”
“Show me what?”
“What you could have. What you still can. If you don’t go out there and declare war against me… and come back home.”
Suguru frowned, gulping. “You’ve… never spoken like this before.”
It didn’t make any sense. He didn’t declare war—not yet. And Satoru was so…
… How did they get here? Why was everything around them pitch black?
“... You’ve never called them monkeys. You’ve never called me sweetheart.”
Satoru didn’t reply.
“It’s a dream… isn’t it?”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“... It can’t be anything else.”
The next moment, Suguru blinked his eyes open. He was back in his dark room, laying on the tatami mat, a blanket covering his body. Something tickled his cheeks—ah. They were wet.
He looked at his cell-phone, which lay not far from him on the floor. He had an urge to call that number, to hear that voice that he once heard every single day, and that was now only a part of his dreams.
But he couldn’t. He was going to declare war tomorrow.
It was way too late to go back now… Satoru.