Chapter Text
The problem with living as if you were invisible, thought Komori Yuhi, is that sooner or later, someone might come along who decides to try and see you.
That morning, the university hallway seemed longer than usual. Hyui counted his steps — thirty-two to the first water fountain, forty-seven to the classroom door — and still he couldn't slow down. The folder he held against his chest pressed into his ribs every time someone bumped into him, but he didn't tighten his grip. Losing the folder would mean losing the entire project, or at least that's what his mind insisted as the other students passed by as if he were made of the same air they breathed: invisible, untouchable, non-existent.
The hallway light was cold, fluorescent, the kind that gives everyone dark circles even after a good night's sleep. Hyui liked that. The light didn't distinguish anyone — it left everyone equally gray, equally tired, equally invisible. It was safer that way.
Inside the classroom, his spot was empty. It always was. Hyui sat in the second row, near the window, where the morning light cut the room in two: light on his desk, shadow over the rest. He liked to think that there, on the border between the two worlds, he could choose which way to tilt his face. When he wanted to be seen, he let the light hit his eyes. When he didn't, he pulled back a few inches and the shadow swallowed him.
Today, he pulled back.
He placed the folder on the desk, opened it to the right page, aligned his pen beside his notebook. Everything in its place. The six poems waited for him, arranged in an order that only Hyui understood: the first was about silence, the second about the fear of speaking, the third about someone he'd seen in the hallways and never had the courage to approach. That third one was stained — he had spilled coffee on it by accident, or maybe he had spilled it on purpose, to have an excuse to rewrite it and, by rewriting, postpone the decision to show those words to anyone.
The fourth poem was about loneliness. Hyui didn't like the fourth one. He skipped to the fifth, which was about the sea, even though he had never actually seen the sea. The sixth poem was about Uemura Tomoya.
No, it wasn't. Hyui struck down the thought before it could fully form. The sixth was about no one. About an idea. About the feeling of someone taking up too much space.
The pen slid to the upper right corner of the page, where Hyui had a habit of drawing small spirals while he thought. One loop. Two. Three. The tighter the spiral, the more anxious he became. That morning, the spiral already took up half the margin.
That was when he heard the door.
It wasn't the professor. No professor opened doors like that, as if kicking them in, as if the door were a personal obstacle and they were winning a fight against it. The sound echoed through the room and Hyui felt, even before seeing, who it was.
Tomoya entered like someone coming home after an exhausting day — relieved to have arrived, but in no hurry to settle in. His dark brown hair was disheveled in a way that on anyone else would be sloppy, but on him seemed intentional, as if he had woken up knowing exactly the look he wanted and achieved it effortlessly. The loose t-shirt had a paint stain near the shoulder — blue, the color Tomoya used in the drawings Hyui caught glimpses of when he passed him in the hallways. Jeans torn at the right knee. Sneakers worn down at the left heel, from so much dragging.
His backpack hung from one shoulder, balanced by sheer stubbornness of gravity. Tomoya let it drop anyway, deliberately, a dull thud on the floor, and ran his hand through his hair as if that would fix something — but it didn't, it just messed it up more, and he smiled as if that was exactly what he wanted.
His eyes met Hyui's for a second. Just one second. Then Hyui looked away, and Tomoya went to find a seat. Hyui felt the air return to his lungs, without even realizing he had been holding his breath. The spirals in the margin gained three more loops.
Tomoya, now, was sitting two rows behind, on the other side of the room. Far enough for Hyui to pretend such a large presence wasn't so close. Close enough for Hyui to hear when he started whistling softly, a tune Hyui didn't know, but one that was already lodged in his head against his will.
Hyui returned to the poems. Or tried to. The words blurred, the verses that yesterday had seemed ready today sounded childish. He crossed out a section of the third poem — the coffee one — and wrote "revise" beside it, knowing that "revise" meant "erase" in the private language he used to deceive himself.
"Partner project," the professor announced upon entering, and the room groaned in unison. Hyui didn't groan. He already knew, had already prepared himself, had already imagined the worst possible scenarios so that none of them would catch him off guard.
What he hadn't imagined was hearing his own name followed by Tomoya's.
The pen slipped from his fingers, hit the edge of the desk, and fell to the floor with a clink that seemed louder than it was. Hyui bent to pick it up too quickly, hit his head on the corner of the desk, and when he straightened up, his face burned — from shame, from pain, from everything all at once. He ran his hand over his forehead as if he could erase what had happened.
At the back of the room, someone laughed. It wasn't Tomoya — just some random classmate, one of those who laughs at everything. But Hyui didn't know that. He only heard the laughter and thought: he's laughing at me. Of course he is. Why wouldn't he be?
He lowered his head, pretending to jot something down, while his heart hammered against his ribs in a rhythm that refused to calm. The spirals in the margin grew, swallowing the space where the poem should have been, and Hyui let them. At that moment, spirals felt safer than words.
— Hey, poet.
The voice came from behind, low enough not to draw the professor's attention, but loud enough to cross the two rows and hit Hyui square in the back. He didn't turn around. He couldn't. Hyui knew exactly who it was without even looking.
— Save one of those poems for me. Maybe I'll draw something over it.
And Tomoya winked, mischief in his eyes.
Hyui held his breath. His fingers tightened on the pen until it hurt.
He's laughing at me, he thought again. He's making fun of me.
But Tomoya's voice held no laughter. It held something Hyui couldn't name — and because he couldn't, it hurt even more.
Tomoya.
The same Tomoya who was always laughing too loudly in the hallways with that strange laugh that was his alone, who answered professors with jokes and got away with it, who slept through class and still got good grades. The same Tomoya who occupied spaces as if he were born for it, as if the whole world were a stage waiting just for him.
The kind of person who made Hyui wonder how it was possible for someone to fit so completely inside themselves.
Last week, he had stopped next to Hyui at the water fountain.
Hyui remembered every detail of that moment: Tomoya's hand reaching out to press the fountain button at the same time as his, the quick brush of fingers, the automatic "sorry" Hyui murmured — and then Tomoya's voice. Different from what he imagined. Closer. Warmer. More real.
— Is that notebook yours?
Hyui looked up.
Tomoya was leaning toward him, just a little, just enough to invade the space Hyui considered safe. His dark hair was messy, as if he'd run a hand through it distractedly. A strand fell across his forehead, but Hyui barely noticed.
Because he was looking at Tomoya's mouth.
Tomoya's lips moved as he spoke, and Hyui should have been paying attention to the words, but he could only think about what they looked like — full, in a way that felt exactly right, the kind of lips that seem soft even when the person is just talking about notebooks. The lower lip was fuller than the upper, and when Tomoya finished the question, it stayed slightly parted for a second, just a second, waiting for the answer.
Hyui didn't answer.
He has a pretty mouth.
A really pretty mouth.
Is this what I should be thinking right now? Seriously?
In the middle of his daze, Hyui managed to shake his head. A small movement, almost imperceptible. It was the most he could manage.
— Oh. — Tomoya stood still for a moment, letting the water run wasted from the fountain. — So you're the poem guy.
And he left without saying another word.
Hyui thought about it all week. About the tone of his voice. About the "poem guy." About the fact that Tomoya knew who he was — knew he wrote. And about how Tomoya had called him "the poem guy" instead of "the guy in the second row" or "the quiet guy" or anything else that might better define the invisible existence Hyui led.
Poem guy.
He knows I exist.
And he has a mouth that...
No. I'm not finishing that thought.
I'm going to drink water. Ice water. Lots of ice water.
At the back of the room, Tomoya raised his arm and gestured toward Hyui with his chin, in a motion that could have been acknowledgment or provocation. Hyui didn't have time to decide. He turned his face to the window, where the morning light now bothered him more than he cared to admit, and waited for his heart to calm down.
It didn't.
Outside, the sun rose slowly, pushing the shadows into the corners of the classroom. The light that before had only touched Hyui's desk now spread, reaching the floor, the chair legs, Tomoya's feet. Hyui watched from the corner of his eye as the brightness advanced, slowly, until it found the other's worn sneakers.
For a moment — just one moment — the light hit them both at the same time.
Hyui pulled back a few inches into the shadow.
The professor kept explaining the project, the room kept groaning and complaining, and Tomoya kept softly whistling that song, the one Hyui already knew he wouldn't be able to shake anytime soon.
He drew another spiral in the margin. Then another. Then stopped, because there was no more space.
— Alright, class — the professor clapped once, a sharp sound, to get their attention —, you have fifteen minutes to meet with your partners and start sketching out ideas. I want to see concepts, directions, anything that shows me you're alive.
The room erupted into the organized chaos of chairs scraping, backpacks being unzipped, bodies shifting. Hyui stayed still for a second.
Fifteen minutes. With Tomoya. On the other side of the room.
He could pretend he didn't hear. He could gather his things slowly, so slowly that by the time he got there, the time would already be up. He could—
A shadow fell over his desk.
Hyui looked up and came face to face with Tomoya standing beside his table, his backpack slung over one shoulder, his hair even messier up close. The light from the window hit his back, creating a golden outline on the tips of his brown strands, and Hyui blinked twice before he could form a coherent thought.
— You're Hyui, right? — Tomoya asked, and it was strange hearing his own name come out of his mouth. It sounded different. More important. — You can call me Tomoya. I mean, not that you'd call me anything else, right? Unless you've got some creative nickname saved up. I'm open to suggestions.
Hyui blinked again. The third time in ten seconds. A personal record.
— I... — His voice came out strange, too low. He cleared his throat. — I know who you are.
I know who you are.
What a weird response.
That's such a movie villain response. "I know who you are." Like I'm about to reveal some dark secret from his past.
"I know who you are, Tomoya. I know what you did in the summer of '98."
He wasn't even born in '98.
Why am I like this?
Tomoya, however, didn't seem to have noticed anything strange.
— Good to know my reputation precedes me — Tomoya smiled, and it was a wide, easy smile that made his brown eyes shine with something like amusement. — In a good way, I hope. Or have you heard about some embarrassing thing I did that nobody told me about?
Hyui shook his head, too fast. Then stopped, because shaking his head too fast seemed weird. But agreeing would also be weird. Everything was weird.
Tomoya didn't seem to notice the internal conflict. He pulled the chair — not the one in front, not the one behind, but the one beside — and sat down as if it were the most natural thing in the world. His knee brushed against Hyui's leg for a second as he settled in, and Hyui felt the contact like a burn. He pulled back a few inches, but the chair had nowhere to go. The shadow from the window had already swallowed him whole.
— So — Tomoya rested his elbows on the desk, his chin on his hands, and turned his face toward Hyui with an intimacy that didn't belong between two strangers —, what do you got?
Mental problems. Platonic feelings for you and your mouth. An existential crisis about the meaning of the word "platonic" when the person in question is SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO ME. And an escape plan involving the window, even though we're on the third floor. Hyui thought, but obviously didn't say. Instead, he blinked again. Fourth time.
Fifth.
Shit, now he was going to lose count.
Does blinking too much count as a heart attack?
— What do you mean?
— Ideas. Drafts. Poems. The professor said you write well, so I'm assuming you've got something. — Tomoya tilted his head, a strand of hair falling across his forehead. — Or do you want to start from scratch? That works too. But then you'll have to put up with my ideas, and they're kind of...
He made a vague gesture with his hand, a circular motion that could mean everything or nothing.
— Crazy? — Hyui ventured.
— Creative — Tomoya corrected, with a smile that reached his eyes. — Let's call them creative.
Hyui hesitated. The folder was there, between them, containing six poems he'd spent the entire week revising. Six poems that no one had read, aside from the professor in that anonymous exercise last semester. Six poems that, suddenly, felt too exposed, too raw, too much his to be seen by someone like Tomoya.
But Tomoya was waiting.
Hyui opened the folder.
The papers were arranged in order, held by a silver paperclip in the top left corner. He pulled out the stack with fingers that didn't tremble — didn't tremble, he swore they didn't tremble — and held them out to Tomoya.
— I have some — he said, his voice coming out steadier than he expected. — But they're just drafts. Nothing finalized.
Tomoya took the papers like someone handling something fragile. Hyui noticed that: the unexpected care in those large hands, the fingers holding the edges as if the poems might break. For a moment, Tomoya said nothing. He read the first one in silence, his eyes tracing the lines, and Hyui took the opportunity to study his face unnoticed.
The way his full lips moved slightly as he read. The little crease between his eyebrows when he reached a denser part. The way the light from the window — now higher, stronger — hit his nose and created a small shadow beneath it.
Tomoya looked up.
Hyui looked away too fast, pretending to be interested in the texture of the desk.
— This one's about what? — Tomoya asked, waving the first poem.
— About... — Hyui swallowed. — About silence.
— I figured. — Tomoya read the first verse aloud, softly, as if tasting the sound of the words: — "Silence isn't the absence of sound. It's the sound words would make if someone were listening." — He paused, his eyes on Hyui's. — Heavy.
Hyui couldn't tell if it was a compliment or a critique. He stayed quiet.
— I mean, not just heavy. — He glanced at the paper again, then back at Hyui. — This is... really fucking good, actually.
Hyui felt his face burn. He hadn't been prepared for "really fucking good." He'd been prepared for "weird," "confusing," a continuation of "heavy," maybe a polite "do you actually write this stuff?" But really fucking good wasn't in the script.
— It's... it's about that — he managed, his voice coming out in a thin thread. — About wanting to speak and... not being sure if there's anyone on the other side.
Tomoya was quiet for a second. Just one. Then he tilted his head, a lazy smile appearing.
— Okay — he said. — I'm keeping this one. If you disappear mid-semester, at least I'll have your masterpiece to sell. "Original poem by missing student: fifty dollars."
Hyui's eyes widened.
— You're not selling my poem.
— Forty if you react.
— Tomoya.
— Thirty, but only because you asked nicely.
Hyui sighed. A deep, tired sigh, the kind of sigh from someone who's already accepted their fate.
I'm going to kill him. Or kiss him. Or write a poem about wanting to kill and kiss him at the same time.
Which is worse?
Both. Both are worse. Especially because he'd probably read the poem out loud again, just to watch me blush.
— You went silent again. — Tomoya pointed out, pleased. — The poem is working in real time. Such an immersive experience.
Hyui buried his face in his hands.
— I hate you.
— Liar. If you hated me, you wouldn't be blushing.
— I'm not blushing.
— Yes, you are. It's cute.
I want to kill myself in front of him. Hyui thought, still hiding his warm cheeks behind his palms.
— Okay, twenty-five — Tomoya insisted, poking his shoulder. — Final offer. I'm being generous.
— You're not being generous, you're being insufferable.
Tomoya ignored the attempted insult and flipped through the other poems, too quickly to be actually reading, and stopped at the third one. The stained one. The coffee one. The one Hyui had crossed out a large part of and written "review" beside.
— This one you don't like? — Tomoya pointed at the crossed-out section.
— It's not ready yet.
— Looks ready. You just crossed it out.
— Because it's not good.
— Says who?
Hyui frowned. — Says me.
Tomoya held his gaze for one second, two, three. Then he handed the papers back, arranged in the same order, and rested his chin on his hands again.
— Okay. Your poems are good. Like, really good. Depressing, but good. — He spoke as if commenting on the weather. — Now show me what you're thinking for the illustrations.
Hyui froze.
— Illustrations?
— Of the project. — Tomoya made that circular gesture again. — Poems and illustrations, remember? You do the words part, I do the drawings part. But we need to coordinate things. I can't draw flowers if you're talking about loneliness. Unless they're wilted flowers. That might actually work. Do you want wilted flowers? Because I can draw those. I drew a wilted flower once. It ended up looking like a pumpkin, but that was the intention.
— ...Are you serious? — Hyui managed to ask.
— Completely. — Tomoya seemed offended by the doubt. — The pumpkin looked really realistic. The flower was the problem.
— The flower was supposed to be wilted.
— It was. And it looked wilted. But so did the pumpkin.
Hyui squinted, as if he could force the world to rearrange itself into a version where this conversation wasn't happening.
I'm going to submit a project about the anguish of human existence with pumpkin illustrations.
The professor will think it's conceptual art. Or that I had a breakdown. Or that Tomoya had a breakdown. Or that we both had separate breakdowns that miraculously aligned in pumpkin form.
— Look — Tomoya leaned in, trying to see Hyui's face —, if you don't want the pumpkin, I can try again. But I can't promise it won't look like something else. I tried to draw a bird once, it looked like bread with dental floss.
Hyui slowly lifted his head.
— Bread with dental floss?
— Wings are hard, okay? Show some respect.
Hyui opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
And then, without warning, without permission, without any control over his own existence, he laughed.
A short, muffled laugh that tried to hide behind his hand but couldn't.
Tomoya's eyes widened.
— You laughed.
— No, I didn't.
— Yes, you did. I saw it. It was small, but it was there. — Tomoya pointed at him, triumphant, as if he'd witnessed the most special event in the world. — You should laugh more.
Hyui felt his face warm up.
— Why?
— Because your smile is beautiful.
He said my smile is beautiful.
I'm never laughing in front of him again.
Or maybe I will.
I don't know.
I don't know anything.
— Shut up. — That was all Hyui managed to say, trying to return to the main subject. He looked at his own poems, then at Tomoya, then at the poems again. — I was thinking of something more... abstract. For the illustrations. Images that would dialogue with the metaphors, not literally illustrate them.
— Abstract. — Tomoya repeated the word as if chewing on it. — Like what?
Hyui wasn't prepared for that question. He had the poems, he had the ideas in his head, but transforming that into words for someone else was like trying to describe a dream after waking up — the images slipped away, the connections dissolved.
— Like... — He gestured, trying to find the shape of what he imagined. — Silence could be... empty space. Lots of empty space, with a small figure in the corner. Or no figure. Just the emptiness.
Tomoya followed the gesture with his eyes, then smiled.
— So you want me to draw what? Nothing?
— Not the nothing, but... — Hyui felt his face warm up. — You misunderstood.
— I didn't understand anything, actually. — Tomoya's smile widened, and suddenly Hyui realized he was being teased. — I'm joking. Go on.
Hyui pressed his lips together. The teasing was light, almost gentle, but still it lit something inside him — a small discomfort, a spark of irritation that coexisted strangely with the relief of not having been taken too seriously.
— The point is — he tried again — that the images don't need to explain the poems. They need to converse with them. As if they were... the answer to a question the poem asked.
Tomoya was quiet for a moment, processing. Then, he straightened up in his chair and pulled his backpack from the floor. He unzipped it with a sharp motion and took out a sketchbook, worn at the edges, full of crease marks and ink stains.
— Look — he said, opening the sketchbook to a random page. — My doodles are more or less like this. Messy, but we manage.
Hyui leaned in to look without realizing he was leaning in. The page showed several quick sketches — faces, hands, objects, all mixed together, as if Tomoya had drawn while thinking about something else. But even in the loose strokes, there was something alive. The eyes of the faces seemed to actually look back. The hands seemed about to move.
— I don't have much patience for planning — Tomoya admitted, flipping through the pages. — I usually just draw whatever comes to mind. That's why I thought we could bounce ideas around first. You tell me what you wrote, I draw what I feel, and we see what happens.
— What you feel? — Hyui repeated, the question coming out softer than he intended.
— Yeah. — Tomoya looked up from the sketchbook, and his gaze was too direct, unguarded. — Your poems made me feel things. The silence one left me kind of... suffocated. The sea one made me want to travel. The little I managed to read of the coffee one...
He stopped.
— The coffee one? — Hyui prompted, before realizing what he was prompting.
— The coffee one made me think of someone. — Tomoya looked away for the first time. — Someone I want to get to know.
Hyui didn't ask who. Didn't ask because his throat closed up, because suddenly the "poem guy" from the water fountain took on a new meaning, because Tomoya remembered him. Remembered him enough to associate a poem with a person.
Tomoya looked back at him. The small smile was still there, but now his brown eyes held a new curiosity, as if he were truly seeing Hyui for the first time.
— Well — he said. — So we've got a start.
Hyui didn't answer. Instead, he looked away toward the window, where the morning light had already become midday light, and realized that at some point, without noticing, he had left the shadow.
He was completely illuminated.
The fifteen minutes ended without him noticing. The professor clapped again, the room rearranged itself, and Tomoya returned to his seat carrying his sketchbook and his smile. Before turning away, though, he stopped.
— Hyui.
Hyui looked up.
— If someday you want to show me the coffee poem, the complete one, without the cross-out… — Tomoya said, his voice low enough that only the two of them could hear. — I'm up for reading it.
He left before Hyui could respond.
Hyui sat still, the folder still open on the desk, the poems exposed, the third one stained and crossed-out screaming in silence. He ran his hand over the paper, feeling the texture of dried coffee, the groove of the pen that had scratched out the words.
He said "someday." Like he had patience. Like he was waiting.
No one has ever waited for me.
His heart beat strangely, off-rhythm, and Hyui placed a hand on his chest without realizing it.
Someone I want to get to know, Tomoya had said.
Is the someone me?
He wants to get to know me?
Uemura Tomoya wants to get to know me?
Hyui pressed his lips together and closed the folder. But not before noticing, in the corner of the page, the spirals he had drawn earlier.
They no longer looked so tight.