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When Mudano opened his eyes, he thought he was having a dream, and the first person he saw was Kyouya, standing not far away with his back to him.
Dressed in his school uniform, Kyouya stood next to a boy with black hair who was also in uniform. They looked a little thinner than the two man he knew so well. They must still be students. In front of them was that forest near their school, with tall trees swaying in the wind.
When Mudano was looking at them, a student walked past him, but he could barely hear the footsteps. The wind blew from the forest, lifting their hair, and it smelled like earth.
Mudano caught the scent in the wind and he thought of those flowers and trees in the forest, and of everything that was about to happen. But, he quickly stopped thinking about it. Kyouya was standing there, not far from him. Then he thought the boy next to him must have been Masumi.
Looked like it was a dream about the first day of school, and their teacher was dividing the students into groups. Their class test was about to begin.
But, to Mudano, all the talking sounded like noise, making it a little annoying. Just then, he heard someone calling Kyouya’s name.
At almost the same time, that young boy with pink hair raised his hand and answered. The sound of his voice made Mudano look toward him immediately. The sunlight was so bright, but he could clearly see his face as he turned around.
It was some day when they were sixteen, but also the first day he, Kyouya, and Masumi had met. Back then, Mudano never imagined the three of them would be best friends for more than ten years, and he now believed it was on that day that he truly started to live.
The teacher was still talking about the test, but Kyouya was already walking toward him with a smile. He looked so happy that even Mudano wanted to smile with him.
"Hi! My name is Oiranzaka Kyouya! We're in the same group from now on!"
Mudano was about to tell him his name when he saw Kyouya had put his hand on Masumi’s shoulder, and the boy looked a bit upset.
Now that he thought about it, it was actually quite unexpected that they had become friends. Kyouya was always so warm and expressive, so different from the two of them, though it turned out that they liked him a lot.
The boys, who had only known each other for maybe ten minutes, were soon hiding together behind the tall tree. Kyouya didn’t stop talking, he just lowered his voice a little, as if he had endless things to share.
Mudano quietly began to listen as Kyouya talked about those small things, meanwhile observing the surroundings. He had gotten used to listening whenever he started to speak.
In his school days, Mudano had never been one for words or making friends, but Kyouya had never seemed to mind. Now, back on that day in this dream, he suddenly realized just how much he had changed him. After all these years they spend together, he could no longer imagine a life without him. He always longed to hear his voice whenever he came back, and Kyouya would always catch his attention.
Masumi seemed distracted, as if he was thinking about something even higher than the sky, but that wasn’t something Mudano wanted to know about. Now, he should have left his classmates and gone alone. The test wasn't difficult, and so he could handle it by himself.
Mudano stood quietly by the tall tree, watching, and soon spotted something strange. That’s it. From what he remembered, that weird thing would attack Masumi, then he would get hurt, and Kyouya would panic. Somehow, he found himself always remembered these seemingly unimportant things.
As Mudano was thinking about it, it got closer and closer to them. It was time. He did not hesitate and slit his finger, then blood welled out. His power was only at the level of a sixteen-year-old boy, but it was more than enough for the test. Though, to the one having this dream, everything that just happened seemed like a joke, yet he suddenly felt nostalgic for those long gone days.
Kyouya was stunned as he watched him defeat their enemy easily beside him, and so Mudano saw the look of surprise on his face. Shadows from the leaves fell across his face, and a few glints of light suddenly caught his eye. He was wearing jewelry on one ear. Was it an earring?
Mudano wiped the blood off his fingers and looked at his smiling face. Masumi squatted there with an expressionless face, but he was looking straight at him. No one was hurt, and the three of them would pass the test.
In the silence, Mudano wanted to say something. That wasn’t really like him for he hardly spoke when he was a teenager, but he still wanted to.
What exactly had they said when they were sixteen?
Mudano couldn’t believe that he’d forgotten something so important to him. He only heard Kyouya began to talk. About the test, about the academy, even about their future. It’s like that his voice had never changed, he then thought.
The wind started to blow again, and the leaves rustled above them. Mudano finally decided not to say something, but, at that moment, Kyouya seemed to become a bit curious about him.
Mudano watched his smiling face, which would always reminded him of the precious morning sun he had seen at dawn. Maybe Kyouya had been someone really interesting when he was still human, right? He possessed so many qualities that drew his gaze. He knew how to make people laugh, while he himself was always kind and lively, and you could hardly be such a person in a life filled with so much pressure to survive.
Then, Kyouya began saying something to Masumi, but Mudano found he could no longer hear his voice. In the wind, he looked so beautiful that he somewhat felt like a stranger to him. His lips were red, his eyes dark, his earrings silver, and his pink hair danced wildly in the wind as he gestured excitedly.
Like a damaged tape, the dream came to a stop. And still Kyouya spoke, probably introducing himself or just chatting away, but Mudano suddenly felt that he was growing unreal, and all the memories about him surfaced before his eyes, bit by bit.
In his memories, he could always find Kyouya among the students, and the other one could always find him in the loneliest corners of the school. They seemed like total opposites, yet always found reasons to stay together, like magnets, drawn to each other with an unshakable pull.
From that day on, the two of them had been together for more than a decade. Before attending the school, Mudano had always lived alone, so it was rather amazing to him that someone would spend such a long time by his side. When he realized it, they had already been through so much with each other, sharing countless sorrows and joys.
Over all these years, they had both changed a lot. When they were still young, they would be uncertain about their fate and wondered if the war would end soon. As they stayed together, Kyouya loved talking about his dreams of future, even if he wasn’t sure whether it would ever come true. But as they grew older, they were no longer teenagers. Besides going to the front lines, they had to take care of those younger than themselves.
Something like "wait until the war ends" suddenly felt impossibly distant when the daily bloodshed and conflict continued, just as distant as a beautiful fairy tale. But, in an adult's life, there was barely any room left for fairy tales, maybe only in dreams, or at those rare nights when they could be together, sharing the same dream about love and peace.
All in a sudden, Mudano realized he was thinking too far ahead. Maybe it’s better to just stay lost in this dream of being sixteen. He stood there motionless, saying nothing at all, yet Kyouya stayed by his side, still talking away.
At that moment, Mudano began to feel confused, wondering if this was only a dream, or if he had really travelled through time, back to this day, so many years ago. It was the time when Kyouya had never shown him the things that would break his heart, like his sorrowful expression or his tears. The boy looked carefree and happy, and he is so close that he could almost touch him.
Just then, Mudano finally realized how badly he wanted to touch him. Kyouya had always filled his teenage dreams, and now, he was there.
When he touched his face, Mudano felt the warmth beneath his fingers. If this was only a dream, it felt so real that it somewhat frightened him a little.
Kyouya finally fell silent. He didn’t look surprised at all. Instead, he smiled at him, and that was the smile he knew so well, the one he missed on the battlefield. He then thought to himself that after all he’d lived through, what his smile brought him must be what people called “happiness” , so he found himself smile too.
In a dream like this, he was surely allowed to smile.
“Danocchi?”
When Kyouya called his name, the wind seemed to stop at once. His voice echoed through the woods, and also in his ears. It was the name that belonged to him alone. In this cruel world, only he called him that, and Mudano let no one else use such an intimate name.
Kyouya had called him that ever since they were students. Even as adults, he never changed, yet the meaning behind it had slowly, quietly changed.
Mudano closed his eyes and listened intently as Kyouya called him. He never called him by his real name directly anymore, not even in public, as if he’d carved his own name into him, claiming this silent man as his, just an ordinary person who belonged to him.
As time went on, Mudano felt his own heart began to waver when Kyouya called him with that name. It looked like that the man other people knew as “Mudano” was him, and the man his leaders knew as “Naito” was him too, but the one Kyouya called by “Danocchi” felt like a stranger entirely to him. Or perhaps, when he said it, he could finally lay down his heavy burdens, if only for a moment, and became just ordinary.
Sometimes Mudano even found that the he created by Kyouya felt more like a human being, and not the god everyone else thought he was. He could have the emotions that only a human being possessed. He could grieve, even be vulnerable. When faced with death, he could cling to the unbearable pain and almost got cry. And when Kyouya held him close, his face pressing against his shoulder, he could allow himself to feel nervous or even wished to kiss him.
But Mudano didn’t know why. As time went by, he grew more and more confused, and yet he still didn’t understand. Then, when they reached their late twenties, he could no longer stay calm when Kyouya held him tightly, and only then did he wonder.
Could this be what people called love? And further still, would the bond between them, someday, turn into exactly that?
After graduation and starting to work, Mudano met many people. There were families with fathers and mothers, and also quite a few young couples. But none were like the two of them, impossible to label with any simple word. Even after years of separation, when Kyouya finally returned to him, he would still slip his arm around his shoulder while he was talking to the students. He caught the scent of his perfume, listening as he picked up right where he’d left off, thinking he may had no idea how cold and distant he appeared to everyone else.
By Kyouya’s side again, Mudano gradually grew accustomed to his presence so close by. Though he had once thought that he had to behave a bit more formally in public, he eventually let him do as he pleased. Yet, someone finally asked the question Mudano had refused to think about and didn’t know how to answer.
Were they lovers? Or would they become lovers someday?
As for Kyouya, he seemed not to care about it at all. On one hand, he was kind to everyone without distinction. On the other, to him, Mudano was simply himself and he was not different from the countless onis living on the edge of survival.
After all, there were no gods and no heavens in this world.
Mudano remembered Masumi once telling him that if he truly wanted to figure this out, he would have to go back to the day everything began. But he never did, as it felt like a waste of time. To him, the day they met at sixteen was utterly ordinary, so ordinary that it was not worth mentioning to a boy who had only ever struggled to survive.
But now, when Mudano finally had the chance to recall that day carefully, he realized that Kyouya had already settled into his soul from that very day. His loneliness, joy, sorrow, and anger, almost all of them carried memories tied to him.
After all the twists and turns, when Kyouya returned to his side, human liked to claim that they had thoroughly studied “love”. Some said that in the end, love became a soulmate connection, and it was similar to love, yet far more noble, eternal and immortal. Others said love and companionship were worth nothing at all. In the end, people said all kinds of things. Humans were truly strange. In a world full of separations, they pursued love at all costs, yet once they settled down, they began to preach letting go.
Love is so complicated and hard to define, so Mudano thought he might not really need an answer at all. After Kyouya started to work at the school, the distance between them grew close once again. They had lived far apart for more than a decade, yet it felt as if nothing had changed, and yet it also felt as if everything had changed. At the very least, Mudano never thought about the closeness between them again. He no longer doubted that he truly needed Kyouya by his side.
Still, Mudano remembered when they led the students back to school from Tokyo. Kyouya walked behind him, murmuring, "I'm really happy." Listening to his voice, he felt a light, joyful emotion that he hadn't known in a long time. Even though he told him to be quiet, he was truly happy in his heart. He thought that must be what happiness felt like, and now he found it back.
At that moment, it was as if they had returned to their school days that had long gone. If the students hadn’t been all around them, Mudano thought he might have followed his heart and embraced Kyouya, or perhaps done it in the way he had wished for long time. Maybe it’s just something like kissing him.
So Mudano really did kiss him. As he began to kiss Kyouya in his dream, he felt for no reason at all that this would be a goodbye kiss. Though it was not real, it still left him somewhat bewildered. In reality, Kyouya had never kissed him goodbye. On the contrary, they had always kissed after returning, to celebrate seeing a new sunrise and another day of survival.
This dream of their youth was, at the same time, coming to an end. It was like an old photograph, slowly fading with the kiss, curling at the edges, and it vanished completely when Mudano opened his eyes again. When he woke up, he was still thinking about the kiss just before the dream ended. He had an overwhelming feeling that he was about to lose him.
Morning sunlight began to stream into the room. Mudano heard the sound of breathing, and remembered going to the hot spring with Kyouya the night before, while the students chased each other and chatted loudly in the corridor.
By the time they made sure all the students had gone back to their rooms, it was already late at night. One by one, stars emerged in the dark night sky, bringing with them secrets that could not be shared in daylight.
There was a square window in the room, open at that moment. Sunlight streamed through it, filling the room with brightness. Mudano lowered his head and gently stroked Kyouya’s hair.
Kyouya closed his eyes, still seemingly asleep, but when he touched his hair, his eyelids flickered. He reached out and covered his hand with his, and murmured something in a very low voice. He leaned closer and heard his ask, as if in a daze, whether he had forgotten to close the curtains the night before.
Mudano touched his face, and whispered softly in his ear.
“It’s all right. We’re on the top floor. No one outside can see us.”
Kyouya smiled soundlessly, fell silent for a moment, then finally opened his eyes. His eyes were beautiful and bright in the sunlight. Mudano gazed at him, and he still looked as if he hadn’t quite left last night’s dreams.
Whether he was still dreaming or already awake, the way Kyouya smiled at him was just like the day they first met, over a decade ago. Mudano couldn’t help but think of his dream about their school days, so he lay down again, embraced him tightly, and they kissed.
He was in love with him. As Kyouya held him back, Mudano thought, with unwavering certainty.