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Haruka wakes up and everything immediately feels off. It may be the texture of his blanket or the far too relaxed feeling of his body under it. Regardless, something makes him sit up to investigate. He’s on his knees, about to stand, when his ears suddenly pop and he hears it. Or rather him?
Someone is in his kitchen, quietly and confidently moving things around. They’re humming softly and something tickles at the back of Haruka’s mind. It’s lost when the door between his room and kitchen slides open suddenly. The person in his kitchen, the source of the humming… it’s Suo.
Abruptly, Haruka’s chest aches. He misses Suo all of a sudden. Misses him with the intensity of a bullet train.
Which doesn’t make any sense. Suo is here. He is here in Haruka’s apartment, likely because he broke in again. He would laugh it off when Haruka yells at him, like always, and tell him it’s not breaking in if the lock is broken, like always. Haruka has no reason to miss him like this.
Except he does.
Suo had smiled at him from the doorway before returning to the kitchen. Not that Haruka could really call that space a kitchen. He didn’t have an oven or anything traditionally kitcheny. Something kept him rooted to the spot, kneeling on his futon. Some unknown and out of place sense of dread.
The humming continues until Suo comes through the door. He has two steaming cups of tea, one in each hand, that he sets down on the little table Haruka got a few months back. Suo hasn’t spoken to him once and that rising dire feeling ratchets itself even higher. Haruka nearly yells at Suo when he steps back through the door. He isn’t sure what he’s so afraid of or why it’s worse when he loses sight of Suo.
When he returns, he doesn’t acknowledge Haruka’s sigh of relief and sets a bowl of persimmons on the table. Suo grins at the confused look on Haruka’s face. There’s a knife in Suo’s hand that Haruka doesn’t notice till he’s started peeling one of the persimmons.
“Did you know,” Suo breaks the silence, his silence, suddenly and startles Haruka. “That persimmons are believed to offer protection from tigers?”
Suo sounds the same as always. Voice smooth and a bit airy, enunciating every word clearly. There’s no mischief or laughter coloring his speech, but he’s always been able to say the wildest crap with a straight face. Haruka doesn’t believe him for a second, but he wants to.
“You makin’ crap up again?” Haruka asks flatly. He watches the knife move around the persimmon, removing the peel with a level of confidence that doesn’t sit right for some reason.
Suo’s laugh is a quiet thing. A soft chuckle that exits his mouth more like a gentle exhale than anything. He doesn’t look up from the persimmon. “No, I’m telling the truth this time. You should look it up if you don’t believe me.”
“Nah. I believe you.” He does. He doesn’t. He does believe that the line is true, but there’s something unbelievable about the whole scenario.
Suo sets the peel aside and reaches across the table to hand Haruka the persimmon. “Thank you, Sakura-kun.” He smiles when he says it. Like he means it.
“Why’re you here?” Haruka asks finally. Several quiet minutes had passed after he’d accepted the persimmon. Suo had started peeling another.
“Persimmons are kind of hard to peel,” Suo says instead of answering. He’s nearly finished peeling the second one. “I used to hate peeling them, even though I always liked eating them.”
Suo doesn’t eat the second persimmon. Instead he swaps it with an unpeeled one in the bowl.
He keeps talking. “I don’t mind peeling them now. It’s easier, I can use a knife. It’s nice to peel them for someone else, ya know?” He swaps them again.
The feeling of wrongness persists, the dread pressing down hard on Haruka’s shoulders. He feels both silenced and transfixed.
“It’s a nice way to show someone you care about them. To do something difficult and let them reap the rewards.” Suo is still talking. He hasn’t looked at Haruka since handing him the first persimmon.
Suo smiles to himself when he grabs the last persimmon. “They have a lot of interesting meanings in different cultures too.” He looks away from his hands and out the window of Haruka’s apartment. Haruka stares at his eye patch. “There’s transformation, good luck, prosperity…”
The knife slips and slides against Suo’s thumb. Blood runs down Suo’s face from under his eye patch and not from his thumb. Haruka suddenly realizes this is a dream.
Suo looks at him, blood on his face and a sad smile on his face. “I’m sorry, Haruka-kun.”
Haruka wakes up. He flings himself up to his feet, hands curled into fists and yelling Suo’s name. His face is wet and it’s still dark outside. Every inch of him is covered in a cold sweat and his skin prickles like he’s a live wire. The pervasive feeling of something wrong still sits in his stomach like a stone.
Haruka was no stranger to nightmares. Though they rarely followed him into the waking world like this. He grabs his phone and turns on the light. Then turns on all the lights. Everything is exactly where and how it should be. Nothing out of place and there’s nowhere for anyone to hide.
A breeze rips around the building and makes the front door rattle. Haruka stares at it as the stone grows heavier. He pulls up Nirei’s contact, just in case. Then approaches the door. He wrenches it open and-
There’s nothing there.
He feels stupid and childish. Unsettled by a nightmare. Until he smells blood. To the left of his door, there is a dark smear from about shoulder height that slides down the wall. The body at the bottom of it sits almost primly on its knees.
Haruka pinches himself- it hurts. He barely remembers how to get his phone to function as a flashlight. When he does, he wants to turn it back off. He wants to go back to bed and pretend none of this night happened.
The head is lolled to the side, resting on the wall, and both arms are wrapped around their stomach. There’s dark blood running from the nose, actively so they’re not dead, and it drips down over their lips, off their chin. Haruka feels eerily reminded of the dream. Though the blood came from Suo’s eye in the dream. Here it’s coming from his nose.
Because the not dead body outside his door was Suo.