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“No.”
Yahaba recoils as if punched, and it’s enough to make Kyoutani want to take it back. Then he remembers the nasty notes left on Yahaba’s desk the other day, hateful slurs written in bold kanji, and the way that the other students had jeered at him this morning. The bruises on his own back from being slammed into the wall, and the faint ringing in his ears from hateful words yelled too loud for his head or his heart to bear. He doesn’t mean to reject Yahaba, but he has no other choice. He won’t let anyone else hurt him.
“It doesn’t bother me that much,” Yahaba tells Watari later, Kyoutani's rejection still ringing in his ears. The lie tastes bitter on his lips. He’s not used to saying things he doesn’t mean.
He sobs for two hours that night, wrapped around the stuffed dog plushie that still reminds him of Kyoutani, a little.
“I don’t give a shit about him,” Kyoutani spits the next day when confronted again. The upperclassman is bigger than him, and stronger too. “If you have a problem with me, that’s one thing. That scrawny shit isn’t worth your time.”
It hurts, talking about Yahaba that way. The punches hurt even more, but they’re worth it when he sees the same upperclassman stalk past Yahaba without giving him a second look.
“He’s probably involved in some sort of gang,” Yahaba scoffs when someone points out Kyoutani’s bruises after class later. He knows Kyoutani isn’t a delinquent, far from it, but it’s easier to say that than wonder who is hurting him life that. Kyoutani, after all, doesn’t want Yahaba worrying about him. He’s made that much clear.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kyoutani tells his mom when he gets home that night. She nods and helps clean him up in silence, and every moment Kyoutani has to restrain himself from sharing everything, if only just to get a little of the weight off his chest. Secrets and feelings, he realizes, are heavy burdens.
“I don’t know where he is,” Yahaba croaks the next morning, a massive upperclassman standing over him. It’s not true. Kyoutani always spends his mornings in the gym now that he’s rejoined the team, hammering serve after serve into the ground. He has to shut down the thought of how admirable it is. Kyoutani doesn’t want him thinking about him that way. He’s so focused on trying to control himself that he almost doesn’t register the way the other boy had grumbled something about them protecting each other.
“I can take you.” The upperclassman stands over him again later that day, and the words sound false as soon as they pass his lips. But Kyoutani won’t budge, not when he’s the only thing standing between Yahaba and a world of violent pain. “Leave him be, he’s not worth your time.”
“I hate you,” Yahaba tells him when the fight is through, pressing a tissue to Kyoutani’s bloodied nose. It’s not true. He may hate what Kyoutani does to him, to his feelings and thoughts, but he could never hate him. “Why do you keep doing all this stupid shit?”
“Better to hurt me than you,” Kyoutani whispers. It’s the first truth that’s passed his lips in days.
“Oh Kyoutani,” Yahaba breathes. “This hurts me too.” It’s painful to admit, but at least the truth doesn’t taste like bitterness and sorrow. Maybe, he thinks, the flavor of truth on his lips may even be sweet.
“Sorry,” Kyoutani says, and for once means it.
For all the blood on Kyoutani’s mouth, Yahaba decides that it still tastes better than insincerity.