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It’s unfair, Taichi thinks. So incredibly unfair – the look on Chihaya’s face, the pink of her cheeks and the fact that when she turns away with her phone clasped in her hands, everything around her stops. That at times like those, it’s just Chihaya and karuta and the boy she never sees and doesn’t seem to know she loves.
It’s unfair that Taichi can’t help the jealousy. They should all be celebrating victory, talking and planning and laughing. Taichi should be walking around with a silent lump in his throat. He should be ignoring it until it disappears.
(It works, it really does. There’s always the tug of that old tether, but the wounds aren’t usually fresh.)
It’s unfair, and Taichi is unfair because he knows that thinking it doesn’t do any good. It’s just another way of admitting that he’s bitter and tired and scared of losing.
“Maybe I already have,” he dares to whisper, and the frigid air around him thins instantly. The pain in his chest sharpens as his breath catches in his throat. He doesn’t stop running.
It was a team match, hard-fought and hard-won. Chihaya had been ecstatic, and Taichi knew she’d been thinking about Arata because he had, too. He’d seen it coming, but that hadn’t prevented him from reacting the way he had.
Yelling, hands fisting at his sides, cheeks burning, and he’d actually dared to remind her that Arata hadn’t come – again, that he wasn’t there and that he’s never there. We are, though, he’d announced with eyes closed, chest hurting. We’re here.
I’m here.
He’s so selfish. He can’t ask Chihaya to value her team somehow more than she pines for Arata. He can’t tell her to pretend that she’s not in love.
(That’s his job.)
Chihaya’s clueless. She’s kind and clumsy and she doesn’t understand the effect she has on people – Taichi, mostly – but she seemed to have realized something in the midst of Taichi’s outburst. She’d been more than surprised, after all – stunned, wordless, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes – and she’d apologized quietly as her long-time friend stormed right out of the room.
Like a kid.
Stupid. She’s done nothing wrong. It’s not her fault that Taichi always feels like he’s playing in the shadow of his old friend, like no matter how hard he tries he’ll never be able to compete with him.
“You should go look for her,” Porky had suggested. He wasn’t blaming Taichi, and if Kanade was angry there’s a good chance that it was because she wanted to intervene more than she was able to. She doesn’t like discord, doesn’t like knowing that there are darker undercurrents and tensions between certain club members.
Still, Taichi thinks with a wry smile. Still, it’s funny that he had to be the one to expose them.
He doesn’t know where he is, now. He’s been running for nearly fifteen minutes, the unfamiliar town and the occasional flood of headlights blurring together before a backdrop of feet smacking pavement – thud, thud, thud, and the jarring impacts are actually starting to hurt a little by the time that Taichi finally catches a glimpse of an off-red coat and pale hand.
“Chihaya!” He stumbles, once, but still manages to pick up his pace. “Chihaya, wait!”
“Taichi?”
“Hey,” he pants, one hand pressed to his knee as he struggles to catch his breath and collect his thoughts.
He’s a bad loser. He’s scared of losing, of making an effort at any endeavor that presents a good chance of failure.
“Sorry, was I gone too long?” Chihaya reaches up to rub gingerly at her eyes. Her cheeks are flushed, her nose redder than the cold can truly account for. “Where’s everyone else?”
She looks dazedly around, hands still held defensively close to her chest, and Taichi has to bite back a short sigh. “They went on ahead.”
“Oh!”
Taichi forces a smile, knowing all too well that his discomfort shows plainly. “Don’t sound too happy…”
“Ah – no, I didn’t mean –”
“It’s fine. It was my fault, anyway.”
Chihaya looks away, her gaze probably tracing the dark outlines of skeletal trees and buildings against the deep black-blue of the night sky. “Does it really bother you?”
“No,” Taichi says quickly. “No. Arata’s my friend, too – remember?”
Chihaya smiles, looking reassured.
(What is Taichi working so hard for? Hasn’t he been trying to change?)
“Don’t worry,” she says suddenly. “You might actually be able to beat Arata in a match!”
“What?” Taichi wonders aloud. He hadn’t expected that now. He’d been thinking more about Chihaya, his fruitless love and the damned frustration. He hadn’t been thinking about karuta. He hadn’t been thinking about the game that matters more to Chihaya than one-sided rivalries and unrequited love.
(Does it mean he’s lost sight of more than one important thing, or is he just a little distracted?)
He apologizes before Chihaya can formulate an answer, holds her wrist firmly and turns to stare at the grass and the bench and the playground before them. “Let’s go,” he suggests. “There’s another train coming in a few minutes.” It’s in this direction, he thinks, maybe not even ten minutes away on foot.
Chihaya accepts the apology and the invitation without hesitation. She lets Taichi lead the way, fingers still gripping her wrist as if he expects her to disappear again.
“At least tell someone where you’re going,” he mutters as the lights of the station come into view.
“Sorry,” she responds sheepishly. “I was thinking, and before I knew it there was this little park, and I didn’t exactly know where I was…”
Taichi chuckles. The sound is only slightly hollower than he would have liked it to be. “How careless can you get?”
Chihaya frowns and finally quickens her pace so that she’s walking right beside her companion. “It’s your fault for shouting,” she pouts.
“…I know.”
(He wants to change. He does. He wants to win Chihaya over, and if he can’t do that then he’d at least like to go down trying.)
They reach the station – large heater in the center of the waiting room working hard to dispel the winter cold – and between the ticket counter and the open door of a rickety train there are mere moments of painfully awkward silence. Loaded silence. Chihaya looking absorbed in thought, Taichi dazed and anxious and trying not to show it.
And then the silence persists even beyond that. The train clicks and clatters as it swings into motion with just the two of them confined to a too-spacious car. There’s a dull roaring coming up from the tracks and the ice-cold rails beneath them, but that doesn’t make the wordless space between them any less daunting.
It’s not that they have to speak. It’s not even that speaking would make any of this easier for Taichi – or for Chihaya. It’s just that the silence is only an intermission. He can’t leave things as they are. An apology’s not quite enough.
“Um,” he starts. His right hand is heavy and white-knuckled on his left shoulder. It doesn’t help.
“Taichi?”
It’s not snowing, and it’s not going to. Taichi’s glad, because snow and mostly-empty trains belong in TV dramas and romances. They’re lonely, otherwise, and lonely isn’t what he wants to feel with Chihaya there at his side.
“I should apologize again,” he decides, “but I don’t – you know – really know what else to say.”
Chihaya’s gaze is fixed on her hands in her lap as she stammers something about how it’s really fine and she isn’t the one to ask about the right words and she’s not mad at him, anyway, really.
He could laugh, but the amusement gets caught somewhere in his chest and turns to an additional ache. He hates losing, but he’s starting to hate not trying even more. He hates not knowing what to say, but that might just be because he’s too hesitant to say what he really thinks.
I want to change. I want to move forward, I – “I don’t want to focus so much on what might happen if I fail.”
“E-eh?”
There are clouds obscuring the pale light of the moon as Taichi leans in to press a shy kiss to Chihaya’s cheek – dizzyingly close to her lips, warm and soft and infused with the unmistakable flavor of the opposite sex. She’s light and airy and there’s a flutter in Taichi’s chest to match the physical sensation as he quickly moves away – she’s staring at him even then, the copper of her eyes wide and underscored by a particularly vibrant blush.
She waves her hands around for a moment, mouth opening and closing as she searches for thoughts, syllables, sentences.
“Ah – uh – well –”
“One more time,” Taichi says quickly.
Chihaya lets her hands return to her lap as – no longer on the spot, the unfamiliar territory of love and romance and that-kind-of-thing disrupting her thought pattern – she relaxes her guard.
“What’d you mean?”
“Let me apologize one more time,” he explains, “for not asking. It was rude…”
“N-no, it’s okay,” Chihaya reassures him. “I think -!”
“You think…?”
“I think we – ah, um, you know” – she swallows, hard, then turns to look at him earnestly with both her hands on one of his – “I think we should have early practice tomorrow!”
Taichi stares at her silently for a moment, his eyes wide and caught off guard.
And then he laughs softly, and there’s snow falling past the windows outside and his breath is fogging up the window between them. From a distance, he’s sure the train would be the only bright thing in a dimly-lit rural area – a short snake, a beacon. It’d look so inviting, warm.
He can’t and won’t expect Chihaya to fall in love with him just because he’s there. He may never beat Arata – or maybe he will, but if he doesn’t – he has to work that much harder to satisfy himself that he’s really done all he can. If he loses, he’ll do it gracefully. No more shouting, no more blaming anyone whose fault it’s not.
“Sure,” he agrees. “If the others’ll agree to it.”
He wouldn’t mind a long ride home.