Archive of Our Own

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To begin this story, you all have to know who Hirose Ryo is before any of this makes sense.

Ryo is small. Not in a way anyone lets him forget, but in a way that simply a fact of his daily existence. 

People ruffle his hair, strangers think that he is cute, or either they wonder if he had Thiamine as a child (Like the vitamins for height growth). 

He has one of those faces that hasn’t quite decided it’s done being a kid’s face yet, like he has big eyes and soft features and a mouth that always looks like it’s working up to asking something. 

Tokuno Yushi, his best friend since they were in middle school class arguing over the vending machine options once said Ryo looked like a maltese who just found out the existence of the universe. Ryo told him to drop dead and Yushi just nonchalantly replied, “You are proving my point.”

Aside from being small, he literally defaults to physical nervousness; he often thinks about the Orion constellation when distracted and his leg habitually goes under the desk during class.

Yushi is quiet, mostly. He just loves observing. He sits with his arm crossed and his eyes moving around a conversation and then says one thing… like just one, and it dismantles everything. Ryo has known him for years and is still not fully immune. 

Maeda Riku is the other one, if Yushi observes, Riku talks. He has opinions about everything and he delivers them like he’s been sitting on them for too long and is relieved to finally let them out. He is extremely often right, which makes him slightly insufferable, which he is aware of and he does not adjust for. 

The three of them eat lunch on the rooftop almost everyday and this is where the story starts. One afternoon, Ryo with his lunchbox open and his head tipped back against the railing.

“I just think,” he said, to the sky mostly, “that it would be really nice to have someone. You know? Like just… someone.” 

“You say this every week,” Riku said.

“Because every week it’s still true.” Ryo whined and rolled his eyes after. 

“You know what’s stopping you?” Riku asked. 

“What?” Ryo sits up straight and is seriously waiting for his answer.

“The star facts.” Riku said while smiling, well it was a sarcastic smile. 

Yushi nodded and just deadpan said, “Right.”

Ryo sighed and protested, “My star facts are interesting!”

“You talked to a girl about Betelgeuse until she had to fake a phone call.” 

“She asked about my hobbies!”

“She wanted an interesting hobby, like SOCCER, GAMING, not a fun fact?!”

Yushi, who had been eating quietly this whole time said without looking up, “you made her eyes go somewhere else while she was still looking at you.”

Ryo pointed at him. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

Yushi shrugged. This was not a denial. 

Ryo slumped further down the railing and did the face, you know where he looked like someone had personally offended him during his own birthday? It worked on exactly no one at this table but he did it anyway. 

Here’s the thing though, the thing that Ryo had not told them yet, had been not telling them for longer than he wanted to admit, carrying it around like something he was scared to put down because what if putting it down meant losing it. 

Fujinaga Sakura. さくら in hiragana, soft and easy to read exactly like her. She sat two rows ahead of him in class and she laughed at her own jokes before she finished them and she always had snacks and gave them away without being asked. At some point last year she’d leaned back during a study period, Ryo walked her though a chemistry problem and said you’re really good at explaining things, and he had thought about that sentence every single day since in the way you think about something that got into you before you could stop it. 

Well, he told Riku and Yushi a few weeks later, up on the same rooftop in a careful voice he used for the things that mattered. 

“Okay… so,” He started. 

They both looked up. They knew exactly what that voice was. 

“Fujinaga Sakura. From our class.” 

A pause where everyone started doing math. 

“I think… uhm, I really, really like her. Like a lot. I liked her for a really long time now.”

Riku put his chopstick down dramatically. “How long?”

“Uhm…”

“Ryo, for how long exactly?”

“Just enough to have this feelings.”

“You’ve been walking around with this whole thing and you just kept it in your chest like a little secret from us?”

“I thought it would go away.”

Riku looked at him like he’d said something in a language that didn’t exist. “Apparently, it did not go away. You need to say something to her before the year ends and the class splits.”

Yushi had his chin in his hand, watching Ryo with the particular stillness he got when he was actually paying attention. “You’re scared,” he said. 

“Yes, obviously. This is not just like any other feeling that I’ve felt before.”

“Text her first,” Riku said, already trying to do a problem solving in his head, he sat forward. “So she has time to think before you see each other. Meeting her out of nowhere is too much pressure on both sides, like forcing her on the spot. So send a message, she processes it, you meet the next day. Clean.”

“What if she doesn’t reply?”

“She will.”

“What if she—”

“Ryo, what is the actual worst case scenario running in your pretty little head… tell me.”

“She says no, and I have to look at her everyday in class knowing she said no.”

“And you will survive that,” Riku said. “Because you’re not going to fall apart over a no. You’re going to be a bit sad but you’re going to be fine because you always are. You are Hirose Ryo.”

“It’s heavier to keep carrying it than to put it down.” Yushi said almost a whisper. 

Ryo looked at Yushi and he was looking back at him steady and sure. 

“Tonight,” Riku said. “Send it. Stop waiting.”

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So that night Ryo lay on his bed with his phone in both hands and his heart doing things a normal heart shouldn’t be doing when he is this close to bedtime and he opened his contacts and he typed Fujinaga and two names came up…

藤永さくら. Fujinaga Sakura in Hiragana. His Sakura.

藤永咲哉. Fujinaga Sakuya in full kanji. A completely different person. 

Why was the second name even there? Ah, the sports festival last semester. The cultural committee made different years coordinate with each other and someone did a big group contact shared across the Line group chats. Ryo saved everything because he was trying to be organized and then never cleaned it out afterwards. He had Fujinaga Sakuya’s phone number and had never looked at it once. Except now, because they didn’t exist in the same world, and there’s no exact reason to look at it. 

He tapped the first name he saw and started writing. 

He took a while, he wrote, then deleted, then wrote again, then repeated the same thing, then decided to read it a few times before he could look at it without the feeling like he was going to float off the bed. 

The message that he composed goes like this: Hi, uhm, I’ve had feelings for you for a long time and I know this is probably out of nowhere but I wanted to stop keeping it to myself. If it’s okay with you, can we meet tomorrow, because I really want to say this properly in person

OH, NO SHIT THIS IS EMBARASSING!!!

He stared at it for another full minute. 

Thought about Riku’s face saying stop waiting. 

Thought about Yushi’s voice saying it’s heavier to carry than to put down. 

Hit send. Flipped his phone face down onto the mattress like it had burned him. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling and thought about Orion because he always thought about Orion when he was nervous. There was something about the way it looked solid and fixed even when everything else felt like it was moving. He thought about Betelgeuse on Orion’s shoulder, red and ancient, so large that it would swallow the inner solar system whole. 

He thought about how that fact once made a girl need to be somewhere elsewhere urgently.

He thought about Sakura saying, you’re really good at explaining things. 

A few minutes passed. He picked the phone up. Nothing yet. Put it down. 

More minutes. Picked it up. The checkmarks had gone blue, which meant it had been read?! 

Which sent his heart straight up into his throat and he put the phone down and immediately picked it back up because he had absolutely no capacity of patience when something this big is happening. 

He was staring at the ceiling. He was considering calling Riku to describe his symptoms. He was composing a text to Yushi that just said HELP AND THEN DELETING it because what would even that do? Would that even accomplish anything? No apparently. He was actually vibrating a little on the mattress when his phone finally buzzed and he grabbed it so fast he knocked his water bottle off the nightstand entirely. 

HE OPENED THE MESSAGE.

Okay… so i was not expecting to see this tonight. 

Ryo sat up so fast that he got slightly dizzy. 

I’ve read it like three times now making sure i understood what you were saying.

He got up onto his knees on the mattress comically. 

I know who you are actually. i’ve noticed you around, with your friends near the rooftop stairs. you always look like you’re in the middle of explaining something important. you seem really cute and nice. i’ve heard only good things. 

Ryo read that line so many times it stopped looking like words for a moment. She’d noticed him? She said he seemed nice and cute. She heard good things. He did not know what good things were to hear but he was going to retroactively be glad for all of them?!

Honestly? i didn't think you’d ever say something like this to me. but i’m really glad you did. 

Then a short pause. 

Let’s meet. tomorrow after school. the konbini behind the east gate, the one with the broken gachapon in front. i want to hear you say it in person. 

And then another message came after just as Ryo thought it was done, when he was about to exhale because he was holding his breath for too long. 

i mean it. i’ll be there.

He read the whole thread three times top to bottom, then he typed back yes, I’ll be there and hit send and then screamed into his pillow for so long and with such commitment that his mom knocked on his bedroom door and asked if he was okay LMAO 

“I’m FINE,” he said, very muffled. “Studying.” 

He did not sleep until way too late.

He also did not notice, not once during any of this, that the chat icon at the top of the thread looked slightly different from the one he knew. That the contact name, if he had scrolled up even one time, read 藤永咲哉 in full kanji and not the soft hiragana さくらhe had been looking at for so long.

He did not notice that Sakura, in all the time he’d known her, had never once in her life sent a text in lowercase. 

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The next day was a fever dream from start to finish. Ryo sat through every class with his leg going under the desk, not retaining anything from the said classes, and just dissociating while watching the clock.

At lunch he gave Riku and Yushi the full update as if he was doing a presentation in front of the class. Riku said, told you with an amount of satisfaction that was genuinely offensive, and Yushi looked at him in that careful way and said, “she sounds excited” and nodded once like all is well.

Ryo avoided Sakura all day on purpose because he didn’t trust himself to act normal around her and she’d already said yes so he just needed to get through the day without ruining anything by existing near her too soon. He didn’t notice that Sakura was just fine, like completely fine all day. Like perfect as always, like the way a person looks when nothing has happened to them recently.

Ryo was so nervous and was overthinking himself that he was not able to put that together.

After school. He got there early obviously, because of course he did. He stood just to the left of the konbini entrance with both hands on his bag straps, watching every person who came around the corner. 

(A/N: He is so cute, he looks like a penguin let’s be fr 🥹)

Ryo was expecting Sakura, her silhouette, the way she walked on her toes a little…

But what came around the corner made his brain just stop!

Tall enough that he seemed to change the scale of the entrance, the way very tall people just dominate space. And then the hair, which was blonde, really blonde, that the afternoon sun hitting it makes it looks like something out of it that no one asked for and everyone in the vicinity turns their head twice just to look and has to deal with it.

The face was all sharp clean lines with a small scar near the left eyebrow, and sitting above that scar was an eyebrow piercing, just a simple silver bar that catches the light when he moves his head. His uniform was in the condition of someone the school had made peace with, with collar loose and open, sleeves pushed up past his elbows even though it was cold enough that Ryo was wearing his jacket properly. He had one hand in his pocket and the other hung at his side and he walked like someone that decided at some point that the world would wait for him and had proven right enough times to keep believing it.

He looked around in front of the konbini. His gaze landed on Ryo.

He walked over, and Ryo’s brain that has been running on no sleep and all that feeling for someone entirely different did the math… it should have done the night before when he was lying on his bed and staring at his contacts.

Two names. One hiragana, one kanji.

Which one he had tapped? 

藤永咲哉. Fujinaga Sakuya. Third year. Blonde. Eyebrow piercing. The kind of person you know about even without trying just because the school gossip builds mythology around certain people the same way weather builds around mountains. Things had been said about Sakuya. Some of them were probably true and some of them are probably not and Ryo had never thought about it much because it had nothing to do with him. They had never spoken. They did not share the same class, a year, a stairwell, or anything.

The i know who you are. The you seem really cute and nice. The i mean it. All of that had been Sakuya. This very person right in front of him.

“You’re Hirose-kun, right?” Sakuya said, low and unhurried, a voice that had never needed to do any work to fill a space.

The correct response to this situation was:

SORRY, THERE’S BEEN A MISUNDERSTANDING, I SENT IT TO THE WRONG PERSON, PLEASE DISREGARD EVERYTHING.

That was the sentence. The right one Ryo should’ve immediately said before another word happened, but his brain short circuited.

“Yeah,” Ryo said. “That’s me.”

He still couldn’t fully explain why he just said, yeah, that’s me.

Maybe it’s the way Sakuya was looking at him right now, which is far from the gossip that goes around the school. There was no boredom in his eyes, no looking past him, just full and steady attention like Ryo had it all.

Maybe it was the fact that he had been genuine when he wrote that text, whatever name he’d sent it to, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to take the sincerity back.

Sakuya looked at Ryo for a second, and then he smiled.

OH MY GOD he smiled. Like a real smile, like it’s just only for Ryo. Small and warm and like something about this specific moment had sat well with him somewhere.

“Fujinaga,” Ryo said simply. “I know who you are,” he added like he was on autopilot.

One eye brow went up, which made the piercing shift a bit. “Yeah, what do you know?”

“Just. People talk. You’re well known.”

Sakuya held his gaze for a moment, and there was something in how he received that sentence, you know like he’d heard it many times and had made some private decisions about how to carry it.

“Sure.” Sakuya replied easily. Then he tilted his head towards the door. “You eaten?”

“No.”

“Come on then.”

They ended up on the low wall around the building’s side with convenience store sandwiches and canned coffee, and the afternoon going long and gold around them.

Ryo had braced for disaster. Had prepared himself for Sakuya to be exactly the version of himself that got talked about in hallways, careless and a little cold that the way some people are when they’ve never had to try for attention. 

Ryo had prepared to feel stupid for being there.

They sat down and Sakuya handed him the less dented can before Ryo even noticed that there was a dented one, just swapped them out, and said, “You like astronomy.”

Not a question.

“How do you know that?” Ryo asked.

“Heard you explain something about meteor showers once. On the stairwell near the roof. You were telling your friends.” He looked at the street, something carefully neutral about his expression. “It sounded interesting.”

Ryo stared at Sakuya’s face gently. At his scar, the piercing, the late light in his hair.

He’d been noticed…

Not by Sakura, but by this person right here, who had been somewhere on the stairwell listening to Ryo’s explanations about meteor showers to Riku and Yushi, and had kept it.

“Yeah, I— I like astronomy,” Ryo said, a little dazed.

“Tell me something then.”

So Ryo talked, he talked about how starlight is old by the time it reaches you — like actually thousands of years old, not a metaphor, the light genuinely left before any of this existed. He was using his hands a little, which he always did when he was explaining something he cared about. At some point mid-sentence Sakuya reached over and tucked a piece of his hair back from his forehead, slowly without a comment, just moved it to the side of his ear and left his hand there for a second before dropping it. Ryo lost the thread briefly and then found it again.

He continued and talked more about the stars and how you can see on a clear night sky that burned out before humans existed, and nobody told them what to do about their light, so it kept going because what else was it going to do?

“And Betelgeuse” — he said, and then he said, “Wait, okay so Betelgeuse is this star on Orion’s shoulder, right, it’s enormous, like super big like if you put it where the sun is, it would swallow everything out of Jupiter, the whole inner solar system will be gone—“ and he was mid sentence still going, “And the only way we’d even know it exploded is when the light finally —”

Sakuya touched Ryo’s cheeks suddenly, just the back of the two fingers, barely there, turning Ryo’s face toward him. Ryo stopped.

“Tell me that again later,” Sakuya said, quiet, and there was something in the way that he was looking at Ryo, warm and completely unhurried, like Ryo had just handed him something he intended to keep. “All of it. Later.”

“I hadn’t finished —”

“I know.” Sakuya looked faintly unrepentant about it. “Tell me again later.”

Ryo stared at him. Something was happening to his face and he had no control over it. He looked away and cleared his throat, “Anyway, the only way we’d know it exploded is when the light from the explosion finally gets here. It could have already happened. We just wouldn’t know yet.”

Sakuya listened to what was left of it and Ryo had told this stuff enough to know the difference between being put up with and being actually listened to… and Sakuya was listening, following every word, right there with him.

When Ryo finished talking about astronomy, Sakuya said gently and easily, “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve heard.”

“Ehhh? About what? The Supernovas?”

“The light that keeps going after the source is gone. It traveled all that way to reach something.” He turned the can in his hands. “That’s romantic.”

Ryo looked at him, “I — meant what I sent you,” Ryo said. It was almost a whisper but it felt true and important regardless of the misdirection. The feeling behind the text had been real. He wanted that to be known. “Every word of it. I mean it sincerely.”

Sakuya turned and looked at him. And something moved through his eyes that Ryo couldn’t name yet but it felt like it mattered. “I know,” he replied. “That’s why I’m here.”

They stayed until it was getting dark. The street got quieter around them and Ryo talked and Sakuya just listened, he asked questions that were actually good that followed Ryo’s thread of topics, and that meant that he was paying attention.

At some point Ryo realized he’d stop being scared and being something else, something warm and faintly terrifying that he didn’t have a language for yet.

He walked home alone in the dark. Got inside. Took his shoes off. His mom had left dinner on the table and she was in the living room watching something and Ryo sat down at the table by himself and picked up his chopsticks.

 He looked at his rice.

Said to no one in the voice of a person who had left their body sometime that afternoon and had not yet found their way back into it.

“I got myself a boyfriend…”

He took a bite.

Sat with that.

Took another bite.

He didn’t move from that chair for a long time.

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Riku found out the intimate date that happened to Ryo and Sakuya the next day at lunch and of course, immediately he had his opinions ready. 

“Okay, so let me understand this,” he said and the way he said it meant he already understood the scenario and the dilemma that Ryo has and was working up to his verdict. “There are two Fujinagas in your contacts. One is in Hiragana and one is in Kanji… and you… tapped the wrong one, and of course, YOU SENT THE CONFESSION. He replied, you met him, then realized on the spot and didn’t say anything.”

“Correct.” 

“And now what? Like you are… dating him?”

“It seems like it.”

“HIROSE RYO!” Riku said, and the full name thing meant this was so serious, “You accidentally started dating THE FUJINAGA SAKUYA and didn’t even have the guts to reject him?”

“The Third year.”

“Yes.”

“The one that everyone talks about.”

“Yes, Riku, I am fully aware—”

“I have thoughts,” Riku said.

“Of course, you do, Riku, Of course you do.”

“He’s a delinquent, Ryo.”

“No, He’s not—”

“The whole school talks about him. I’ve heard things. He’s been in fights. There are teachers who’ve basically stopped writing him up because they’ve run out of patience, and you’re just what? You’re just going to date him because you texted the wrong person?”

“It was an accident—”

“I know it was an accident. That IS exactly my point. You didn’t choose this on purpose and now you’re in it and I’m worried about you.”

Ryo looked at him. Riku’s face had nothing mean in it. Just the expression of being worried about one of the people that matters to him the most. 

“You’re sure that he’s not just fooling around?” Riku asked. “He’s dramatic and interesting, and you panicked and now you think this is love or something real.”

“Well, I guess not. He is really serious about this.”

“And how do you know that mister?”

“Because if he was just fooling around it would have worn off by the end of the first afternoon, and surprisingly, it didn’t.” He picked at his rice. “It got into something more…”

A pause. Riku was turning this over. His face was doing the thing where he was revising his position but not ready to say it out loud yet.

Yushi who had been sitting quietly all through all of this with his chin in his hand said, “so what was he like?” 

Ryo looked at him, “What?”

“Actually, like. Like up close, what was he like?”

Ryo opened his mouth to say something casual and non committal, and what came out instead was…

“He remembered the things I said, like right away. He listened to the astronomy stuff without glazing over, and when he thought something was interesting he just said so, he didn’t make it a whole thing.” He paused. “And he switched my can to the less dented one without saying anything. He was gentle and his voice — he speaks to me nicely with a low tone which I’m really happy with.”

Yushi nodded slowly, like this confirmed something he’d been thinking. 

“You already like him…” Riku said. 

“No, like wait, I barely know him?!”

“Ryo.” 

“I don’t— it’s been one afternoon!”

“Geez, so defensive,” Riku said. “I know that very fond voice of yours. I’ve heard that voice for ages when you talk about Sakura, before we even knew that you liked her and it’s coming out of your face right now about an entirely different person.” 

Yushi said nothing, he just smiled a little, just at the corner looking at his food. 

“Guys, like come one, it was one afternoon,” Ryo said, with much less conviction than he’d intended. 

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

And then they kept having those afternoons. 

It was the konbini wall first, always the konbini wall, and the one day Sakuya showed up on the rooftop after school sat down next to Ryo like he’d been there before, like it was already his spot too, and before Ryo knew it was already both places. It never felt like a decision, it just happened in away that comfortable things happen, without any grand announcement. 

Ryo started noticing things, like he wants to notice everything about him but it’s the way that you’re paying attention to someone that you see past their surface over enough afternoons of being together. 

Like Sakuya would hold doors for him. Not dramatically, not in a see-what-im-doing way, just as reflex, the kind of thing that got learned something and stayed. One afternoon near the school entrance, a first year dropped everything they were carrying and everyone stepped on it, and Sakuya mid conversation just stopped and helped, then handled it all back. Didn’t comment and just kept talking. 

Ryo watched that happen and felt something shift inside him somewhere.

Like, in all the time they spent together Sakuya never said a bad word about anyone. Not a single person. Even when Ryo brought up the rumors, even when they talked around it, Sakuya would just sort of let it not be a thing he engaged with. It was a kind of control that most people never bothered to use. 

Like, the third years who actually knew him look at him the way you looked at someone with respect and trust. Easy and familiar, safe. 

A few weeks in, on the wall one afternoon, Ryo just asked. 

“Can I say something kind of direct?” 

Sakuya glanced at him sideways. 

“Is that different from how you normally talk? You’re kind, like genuinely kind. I’ve been watching and you’re always kind to the people around you all the time, and everyone talks about you like you’re a fire hazard.”

Sakuya looked at the street, he then turned the can in his hands, which was what he did when he was actually thinking about something. 

“Why do you just let them?” Ryo asked. “The rumors. You know what people say. Why don’t you correct any of it?”

The quiet that followed was long enough that he felt that he overstepped into some boundaries, but Sakuya didn’t look closed off, just like he was deciding which part of something real to say out loud. 

“What am I gonna do?” He said finally. “Tell people that I’m actually very nice? Go around explaining myself?” The corner of his mouth moved into a distasteful grin. “That sounds really exhausting.”

“Doesn’t it bother you though?”

“... yeah, sometimes.”

Ryo looked at him, like really looked at him. Sakuya was still watching the street. The evening light made him look younger than his reputation, and more tired than he’d let on before.

“Some people know,” he said, quieter. “The people who matter, and maybe that’s enough.”

“That’s a really really lonely way to love,” Ryo said. 

Sakuya turned and looked at him, and the look lasted a beat too long that something in his expression got complicated before he smoothed it back out, and then he reached over and fixed the collar of Ryo’s jacket that had folded in wrong. His fingers are light, completely matter of fact about it like he’d just noticed and taken care of it the way you’d straighten a picture on the wall. 

“You’re a lot.” He said with a smile, no intentions of being mean. The way you say something when you’re so fond of someone genuinely. 

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Sakuya said, flat and certain. “It’s one of the things that I like about you.”

Ryo looked down at where Sakuya’s hand had just been, at his own collar now sitting flat, and did not say anything for a moment.

“One of the things,” he repeated. 

Sakuya picked up his drink back up, “Yeah.” like it was the most obvious thing in the whole world. 

Ryo decided very firmly that he was fine, that his heart didn’t stop for a moment, and jumped somewhere.

Well, HE WAS NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY FINE! 

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

Okay. So about their first kiss. 

They were on the rooftop after school, and the city is going orange below them, Ryo was saying something about the Andromeda galaxy and mid sentence he turned to check if Sakuya was following, which he did most of the time, and it became a habit that Sakuya was looking at him fondly, like more of with a loving gaze. 

Not at the city, but at Ryo, right there, closer than the distance Ryo had been tracking. 

Ryo lost every word that he’d been saying. 

“Sorry, can I—” Sakuya asked hesitantly.

“Yeah,” he replied with a dazed loss in the blonde boy’s eyes, he said yes before the question was even done. No pause, no deliberation, just yes immediately, like some parts of him had been screaming yes before his brain even decided. 

Sakuya kissed him. One hand came up to the side of Ryo’s jaw, tilting his face up to close the height difference, and it was so slow and careful like he’d been thinking about how to do this right, and had decided careful was the way. Ryo’s brain went somewhere very quiet. 

The afternoon is still orange and the roof smelled like new beginnings like spring, and Sakuya’s hand was warm against Ryo’s cheeks and the other hand tightening on his waist, and it lasted long enough for Ryo to stop being surprised and start actually being present for it, to feel the very presence right in front of him. 

It ended very slowly like how they started, enough for them to catch their breaths. Sakuya pulled back just enough to look at him, “Was that good?”

Ryo’s brain short circuited all of a sudden when he saw Sakuya’s handsome face, flushed with red, his entire vocabulary was somewhere else. “Yeah,” he said. “It was good. Better than I expected…”

Sakuya gently touched Ryo’s cheeks again and a smile settled in his expression. Something satisfied and relieved in equal measure, like he’d been holding a breath for a while. He leaned back against the ledge and looked at the city and said nothing else about it while Ryo sat there and felt like the top of his head might come off anytime.

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

The thing is after that, Sakuya could not help himself, and Ryo clocked this pretty fast. 

It wasn’t overwhelming or pressuring. More like he’d simply made a decision and kept making it warmly, with no regrets, like completely sure of himself in a way that should have been annoying and was instead making Ryo completely undone on a daily basis. 

A few days after the rooftop they were walking back from the konbini and Sakuya just stopped. Ryo walked ahead a step and turned back and Sakuya was standing there looking at him with that focused look, the one felt being the only one in the room, and before Ryo could even ask what, Sakuya stepped forward and kissed him right there on the sidewalk. Just like that. Like he’d been thinking about it for the last block and had come to a conclusion. Ryo made a sound that he was not proud of and Sakuya made a quiet sound against his mouth that was definitely amused and Ryo would’ve been annoyed about that if he was capable of being annoyed about anything in that moment but he wasn’t. 

In the library, they were across from each other, Ryo was pretending to study, and he looked up at some point and Sakuya was watching him across the table with the still look, the full attention one, and Ryo said what? And Sakuya reached across the table and pushed a piece of Ryo’s hair back from his forehead, slowly, like he would spend the rest of his life doing that, and then said, nothing. Just went to whatever he was reading like he hadn’t just made Ryo blushed and reread the same paragraph nine times. 

Walking to the shoe lockers one morning Sakuya fell into step beside him and put his hand on the back of Ryo’s neck for just a moment, warm and light, fingers just resting there while they walked, and then his hand dropped and he kept going, casual, like that was the most normal thing ever. Ryo stood at his locker afterwards and did nothing for a full 30 seconds. Just stood there, processing. 

Then it started raining one afternoon while they were at the wall, light enough that neither of them move, and Sakuya leaned over and got of his hoodie and put it up on Ryo without being asked, adjusted it properly so it actually covered the smaller boy’s head, and his thumb gently caressed Ryo’s jaw for just a second before he pulled back, the whole thing took a quite a few minutes. Sakuya went right back to looking at the streets like nothing and Ryo sat there with the rain on Sakuya’s hoodie and his heart in actual pieces. 

The thing about Sakuya that Ryo was slowly understanding is that he never does things partway or half done. When he paid attention he gave it all of it. When he decides to take care of someone he just did it naturally, with no announcement, like just evident care no checking if it was noticed, and when he kissed Ryo it was like he’d been wanting to do it his whole life and relieved that he finally done it every single time, like he didn’t want any rest in between. 

It was insanity for Ryo, like in the best way possible, in the most convenient way, like that man got his heart in a chokehold and he can’t even win against him at all. 

Also Fujinaga Sakura was still part of the equation, well it was not meant to be like that but it happened one day, that caused Ryo to think for about a long time afterward for entirely different reasons. 

Well they are still classmates after all, so he can’t just dismiss the pretty girls presence in any way possible, so one time she stopped him in the hallway after chemistry to ask him about the last unit— she missed a day and needed someone to walk her through it, and Ryo was the first person she saw who wasn’t visibly in a hurry. So they stood near the window at the end of the hall and he talked her through the reaction equations and she laughed about something he said, a real laugh that she forgot to even cover her mouth and Ryo laughed too because it was contagious and the afternoon was warm and it was nothing. IT WAS GENUINELY NOTHING. Two classmates in a hallway just completely normal. 

He didn’t notice Sakuya until Sakura had already said her thanks and headed off. He was standing at the far end of the hall. Ryo didn’t know how long he’d been there. Long enough to see the laughing, probably. Long enough for his face to be doing something that was very careful and very still in the way Sakuya’s face got when he was working to keep something in place. 

Sakuya turned and walked away. 

Ryo blinked. Looked at the end of the hallway where Sakuya had just been standing. Looked at the corner he’d gone around. 

Oh. 

Ryo went after him. 

He had to actually jog to catch up which he was not expecting because Sakuya was moving so fast and Ryo’s legs were notably shorter. He caught him near the stairwell at the end of the building, grabbed the back of his jacket, and said, “Hey wait —” and Sakuya stopped. Let himself be stopped, and he then turned around slowly. 

His face was doing the neutral thing, the full school version, every wall up, but underneath it, just barely something was doing something else. 

“That’s Fujinaga Sakura,” Ryo said. “She’s from my class and she missed a lecture, and just needed some quick help with the equations.”

There was a shift in Sakuya’s expression but it was almost nothing, Ryo would have missed it a month ago. 

“Sakura…” Sakuya said, his voice was even, his voice is doing some work to stay that way. 

“Sakuya,” Ryo said and there’s some weight to saying his name right now, but he also wants to laugh even though this was not a laughing situation. “Look at me.”

Sakuya obeyed like the good boy that he is and looked at Ryo. 

“It’s just chemistry homework,” Ryo tried to be convincing at this point. “She needed help with the equations, that’s it. That’s all it was.”

Sakuya was somehow convinced and answered almost like a whisper, “I know.”

“Then why are you walking away like I offended you or something?”

A long pause. Sakuya looked at the wall. His jaw moved, “The way you called her name…”

Ryo stared at him, then he started laughing. He tried not to but it came out anyway, quiet and helpless, almost tearing up, then he covered his mouth with his hand and Sakuya looked absolutely pained. “It’s not funny,” Sakuya said. 

“It’s a little funny,” Ryo said. “It sounds like you’re jealous…”

Sakuya said nothing. Which meant yes. 

Ryo stopped laughing and looked up at Sakuya. At the tight line of his jaw and the way he was still not quite looking at Ryo and the whole careful front of someone who had just been thoroughly caught feeling something they didn’t want to feel. 

And Ryo thought he ran after me. Or … no. He walked away, and I ran after him, but the part before that, standing in the hallway watching, the face doing something under the neutral— that was him not being able to stop himself. That was him caring enough about me to be an idiot about it. 

Ryo reached out on a tiptoe and patted Sakuya’s head as if he did a great job or something. Sakuya went still and he still did it anyway. 

“It’s just homework,” Ryo said quietly. “She’s just Sakura, my classmate… and You’re my— you’re Sakuya. Those are very different things to me and have been for a while now.”

Sakuya looked at him for a long moment, his walls came down finally, just enough, “Yeah…” He answered, it was almost a whisper. 

“Good,” Ryo said. He smiled at him, still patting the blonde boy’s head gently. “Rooftop in twenty, don’t be jealous anymore, okay?” 

He walked off. He did not look back. Behind him he heard Sakuya exhale, a short breath, and the sound of the following footsteps. Which was an enough answer that they are now on good footing in whatever their situation was earlier. 

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

One night Ryo was lying on his bed and he thought about the first time they’d walked home in the same direction and Sakuya had said, hey, your bag is open and zipped it for him without slowing down. Just noticed and fixed it. Ryo had thought about that on and off for days, and the other things that Sakuya was doing for him… It was such small things, but it was all the kind of small things that truly matter.

He texted Riku and Yushi, and his text was: “Do you think that you can fall for someone really fast?”

Black Nekochan

Yes, obviously why? 

Short King

no reason

Black Nekochan

Ryo…

You already know the answer to your question lmao

Go to sleep

Orange Nekochan 

yeah , you can. goodnight. 

Short King

thank you for answering. goodnight.

Ryo put his phone down and looked up, he felt like the ceiling had a lot of answers for him, but it didn’t. Apparently, it didn’t have the answer to his loud thoughts in the middle of the night. 

Then, it hit him. Guilt. 

Not loud at first, just a low hum sitting under the warmth of everything else. Getting a little louder every time him and Sakuya did something real, like every careful gesture, every time they looked at each other, Ryo would be reminded how this was not supposed to happen, like all of what he was doing was meant originally for someone, but it feels natural when he just let Sakuya in. 

Because when everytime that he breaks his walls for him, Sakuya pays real attention, Sakuya keeps showing up, remembering things, he is touching Ryo like he was the most precious thing in the world and he is worth handling carefully, and Ryo… he was carrying a secret that meant none of this started the way Sakuya thought it did. 

The wrong name still flashes in his memory. Fujinaga Sakura, still perfectly fine, and completely unaware, and Ryo was here with this person who was nothing like the rumors, Fujinaga Sakuya.

He knew he had to come clean after all. 

The difference was just the timing, the order in which they both decided to sit on the same piece of information, but he just couldn’t figure out how to hold both things at once, needing to tell him and not wanting to lose him.

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

He almost told Sakuya one afternoon. It was on the Konbini wall. Sakuya had handed over the melon bread, the one Ryo always looked at in the case and never actually bought, he just put it in Ryo’s hand when he came out. Ryo turned it over and stared at the packaging and thought, I should do it and tell him today. 

“You okay?” Sakuya said, looking at him worriedly. 

“Yeah, actually there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, I think I need to just—”

Sakuya's gaze shifted from being worried to a fond gaze, very willing to listen to everything he had to say. That was the problem. Specifically and exactly that was the problem. Sakuya looks at him like they are the only people in the whole world, like just the two of them, and there was something open and waiting in his expression, not guarded, just there, just present, and Ryo lost the sentence completely. 

“What is it?” Sakuya asked, still patiently waiting for Ryo to finish his sentence. 

“Uh— Tell you that when you look up at the sky at night, you are literally looking back in time… Because light takes time to travel, the light from distant stars shows us how they looked in the past, meaning every time we observe the universe, we are exploring history.”

Sakuya kept looking at him after he finished the fun fact that was supposed to be a confession of his guiltiness. 

He knows something is up but he didn’t push. He never pushed, “Good to know.” 

The guilt got louder on the walk home.

He almost told him again a few days later and the one was worse because he got close enough to feel the edge of it. 

Rooftop. Shoulders touching, which was their default now, had been for awhile. Ryo had been quiet for a long time enough for Sakuya to notice, which didn’t take long because Sakuya had learned what Ryo’s quiet moods felt like.

“Penny for your thoughts…” Sakuya said, he patted Ryo’s shoulder gently. 

“Yeah…”

“What are you gonna tell me?”

Ryo breathed in, “I like you.” 

Sakuya went still trying to process what Ryo had said. He never got a direct confession from Ryo when they started dating, this was new for him, for both of them.

Then Ryo started rambling, “I meant this with all my heart,” Ryo said to his own hands. “The sincerity of it, the feeling, All of this was real. I just—”

Sakuya gently got his hands and intertwined them together, and before Ryo could react to the other boy’s warmth, Sakuya kissed him. 

Not hard, not to stop him, exactly. Just soft and slow, other hand at the side of Ryo’s face tilting him in the way that made Ryo’s brain melt every single time no matter what and it lasted longer than usual and when it ended, Sakuya rested his forehead against Ryo’s and stayed there, just that, just close, and warm, and real. 

“You can tell me,” he said, low. “Whenever you’re ready. I’m not going anywhere.”

Ryo closed his eyes, felt the warmth of him. The weight of Sakuya’s hands with his and the other on his cheeks, thumb resting light against. 

He said it eventually. At their wall, Ryo held his drink with both hands and looked at the ground and just talked. All of it, from the beginning, the whole details of what happened, how two names on his contact were so similar that he tapped the wrong one. Writing a confession meant for someone and not Sakuya. Realizing the second Sakuya walked towards him on the first day of them meeting each other, how he looked at him and was able to forget what he was supposed to say, and was not able to admit what he did wrong. Every day since being a day he meant to come clean and didn’t. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, at the end, still not looking up. “You put yourself into this honestly, and I didn’t give you the same thing, and I’m sorry.”

The street went around them, but it was indifferent. 

Sakuya was quiet for long enough that Ryo could hear his own heartbeat. Long enough that Ryo started composing a thousand words worth of apologies aside from what he said if ever everything ended badly. 

“Yeah…” Sakuya said. “I know.”

Ryo looked up. Sakuya was looking at the streets. His expression was closed off, the kind he wore when he was holding something steady on purpose. 

“I figured it out pretty fast,” he said. “Your face when you saw me coming, and then you said I know who you are, it surprised you, and you almost corrected yourself three times in the first hour. You’re not hard to read, Ryo.”

Ryo stared at him with a complicated expression, with feelings that he can’t comprehend yet, “So you knew?” 

“Yeah.”

“The whole time.”

“Pretty much from the beginning.”

Ryo turned that over. A month of feeling terrible, a month of almost-saying-it. A month of Sakuya doing everything with full sincerity while knowing. Watching Ryo carry the weight of it. A month of liking the boy that is supposed to be just someone he knows from a rumor. 

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” Ryo asked, and he heard the thing in his own voice, the edge coming in. 

Sakuya went silent again.

“I wanted to see what you were like,” he said. Even. “You sent this message that was so sincere it was almost uncomfortable to read, and I was curious what kind of person would send something like that.” 

“You wanted to see if I was fun?” Ryo said, full of sarcasm. Felt betrayed. As if the world has collapsed beneath him. 

“Something like that.” 

“I spent weeks feeling awful” The edge was sharper now, he couldn’t help it. “I lost sleep, I kept trying to figure out how to tell you and the whole time you already knew, and you were just watching like running an experiment?!”

Sakuya's jaw tightened, “It stopped being like that,” he said, low and serious. “Somewhere in the first conversation, when I heard you explain about the Betelgeuse and the Orion, how you shine when you talk about the things you love, I fell in love with you. Like genuinely, I fell in love with you.” 

And the thing that is infuriating for Ryo is that he still believes in him after all, but he feels betrayed. He looked at Sakuya’s face, not neutral anywhere, just his actual face saying I fell in love with you like he’d decided that honesty was the only currency left.  

Which meant two things were true at the same time. 

“I feel used,” Ryo said. 

Sakuya looked at the ground, “Yeah, that’s fair to say.”

“But,” Ryo continued, and he laughed a little short and dry, “ I came here today to tell you I texted you by mistake and spent a month correcting it because I was scared. So… I guess…”

Sakuya looked back at him. 

“We did the same thing,” Ryo said. “Different directions, different reasons, but we both let it go on while knowing something the other person didn’t.”

“Yeah.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.” 

“No, it doesn’t.”

“I know it doesn’t.”

“I know.” 

Ryo stood up. His hands were steady, which surprised him. “I need to think,” he said.

Sakuya nodded. He didn’t reach for Ryo. Didn’t say wait, don’t go, give me another chance, let’s make this right, he just nodded, like he’d already made peace with whatever he could manage before Ryo even got here, and was going to hold that whether or not it hurt. 

That was the part that kept coming back to Ryo on the walk home. That Sakuya had to let him go cleanly because Ryo needed to go. That even now, caught out, the thing Sakuya did was make it easier for Ryo. 

Ryo walked home and felt like something was sitting on his chest and also like he understood it, which was its own particular kind of terrible. 

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

The week was rough. Not loud about it. Just empty in the places that had been full. No afternoons on the wall. No shoulder on the rooftop. No coffee can. No melon bread, and no one’s fixing anyone’s collar when it’s folded. 

He kept reaching for his phone to send Sakuya something stupid and small, whether it's a star fact or a question about nothing, the kind of texts you send someone because you want them in the room with you, and every time he catches himself he puts the phone down. 

He ran into him in the hallway sometime midweek and it was awful in a quiet way. Sakuya looked at him like he was something he’d been asked not to touch, careful in a way and a little far away, and said, hey and Ryo said hey and they walked past each other and Ryo made it to the bathroom and stood against the wall and breathed for a while. 

The thing was Sakuya looked tired, not dramatically, not like a person falling apart, but there was something in his face that hadn’t been there before, a kind of held stillness that Ryo recognized now as what Sakuya looked like when he was working to keep something steady. The walls were up, all the way, the full school version of his face, and Ryo had gotten enough of the real version by now that the distance of it hurt in a specific way. 

He wanted to fix his collar. That was the stupid thought that he had standing in the bathroom. Sakuya’s collar had been straight but Ryo wanted to fix it anyway because that was their thing, THAT WAS THEIR THING, they did that for each other and now there was a hallway of distance between them and Ryo had no right to cross it. 

He went to class and sat down and looked at the ceiling for a while and thought about all this all day, then he told Riku and Yushi at lunch the day after. 

“So, he knew the whole time,” Riku said, and the face he made was interesting like not condemnation exactly, more like he was doing the same calculation Ryo had already done. 

“Yeah.”

“And you’re mad?”

“I’m— like okay, something like that. I don’t fully have the standing to be mad about it, and that’s the most annoying part.”

Yushi was just looking at him. Just looking in his way. Then he said, “He let you go…” 

“What?”

“When you said you needed to think, he didn’t fight it, he just let you go.” He said it simply, like he was reading something off a page, “that is what a person does when they actually care about your heart.” 

Ryo looked at his friends with sad eyes, the kind of eyes that’s full of regret and hope to get back with someone who mattered the most in his life.

“He said he fell in love with you,” Riku said, practical, working through it. “Do you believe him?”

Ryo thought about everytime Sakuya looked at him, the starlight thing said with total certainty. The hood in the rain, the coffee can, the melon bread without him asking, the way he kissed Ryo like he'd been relieved to get to every time, like the wanting had been there waiting. 

“Yeah, I believe him.”

“Then what are you actually deciding?” Riku rolled his eyes in annoyance, but gently smiled at Ryo after. 

Ryo gave him a gentle smile as well, like he knew the answer all this time, but he just needs nudging from his friends so he can come to his own senses, then he looked into his lunch, and breathed so heavily… The school festival is in a week and Sakuya and he talked about going together. 

He didn’t answer him, but he already knew in his heart what he should actually do. 

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

The school festival came like so sudden in a way like it always did, like you know how someone flipped a switch overnight and now there were banners everywhere and the whole building smelled food by early morning and everyone was too loud.

Ryo had the morning free, afternoon shift at the takoyaki stand, so he wandered with Riku and Yushi through the food stalls and game booths, eating things, and just his mind wandering somewhere else, well he is not really paying attention to any of it.

“You’re looking,” Riku said, by the second hallway.

“Stop imagining things, I’m absolutely just walking.” 

“You’re looking while you’re walking. I’m not blind. Your head’s been on a swivel since we got inside.”

Yushi said nothing. He handed Ryo the taiyaki and kept walking. 

Ryo ate the taiyaki and thought about what Riku said, Then what are you actually deciding? He’d spent the whole week thinking about it and he kept coming back to the same place, well again, he already knows what to do, but of course he is overthinking about it still. 

They both knew but they both decided to sit on the same piece of information, and everything between those silences had been real. The talking, the listening, their afternoons together, the way Sakuya said he fell in love with Ryo and weighed whether to say it and decided truth was the only thing left. 

All of that was real. None of it was fake, not from either of them.

I don’t know what to say to him,” Ryo said. 

“Well, you don’t need a speech,” Riku said. “You’re already a grown up and you just need to show up.”

Yushi looked at something past Ryo’s shoulder and he tilted his chin, just slightly, and when Ryo turned around, Sakuya was across the hall, standing a little apart from a cluster of third years near a ring toss booth. Hands in his pocket. Not really watching the game, not smiling, like he was somewhere else in his head entirely. The festival light through the windows put his hair in gold, and the silver of his piercing caught it. 

He looked up straight at Ryo, across all people, across all that festival noise. He went still, like completely still, and Ryo felt it across the whole distance between them, like how he always pays attention to every of his moves, like Ryo is his constant. 

The distance is so close but yet so far, and Ryo sighed deeply wanting to be brave, for himself, for them, so he started walking, big steps, not running but just big steps. 

He heard Riku say something supportive behind him, and he wasn’t able to process the word at all, until he stopped in front of Sakuya, and Sakuya looked down at him and said, low and careful, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Ryo said.

Then a beat.

“We had plans,” Ryo carefully said. “For today. Together.”

“Yeah,” Something tightened slightly around Sakuya’s eyes. “I wasn’t sure if that was still up.”

Ryo dragged him away from the cluster of Third years. He already had caused enough drama by just standing right in front of Sakuya, so they went near the stairwell where no one could hear them talk. 

Sakuya held Ryo’s hand tightly like he doesn’t want to let go anymore even after being dragged by the small boy. He doesn’t care anymore, he just wants to feel his warmth, and once they reached the place full of quiet and just their heavy breathing from walking fast, Ryo started speaking. 

“I’ve been thinking all week.”

“Okay…” 

“About what you did and about what I did, and how they’re just the same thing. Different reasons, just the same thing.”

Sakuya’s hand held Ryo’s tighter, he looked at him like he’s about to tear up. Ryo intertwined their hands together, giving that warm assurance, he looked at their hands together and thought, it does perfectly fit with each other and he then looked at Sakuya and smiled. 

“But I’m still annoyed!” Ryo rolled his eyes, still smiling. “I want you to know that. You watched me feel terrible when you could have said something and that’s not nothing. I still get to be annoyed about that.”

“Yeah,” Sakuya said, he couldn't stop his tears streaming from his eyes, “You do.”

“But I also came to you with a confession meant for someone else and didn’t correct it right away because I was scared. So, we both sat on something.”

“Yeah.”

“And the part in between all of it,” Ryo said. “All the actual time we spent. None of that was fake. Right?” 

Sakuya’s really crying now like he is pouring his all heart for Ryo, he hurriedly shook his head, “None of it was fake, not a second.”

“The starlight thing?”

“I mean it.”

“The listening?”

“I always want to listen to you. Like always.”

The tension in Ryo’s eyes melted away, and he gently cupped Sakuya’s face with both hands, brushing away the tears with his thumbs. 

“I missed you this week,” Ryo said. “Well, everyday. Which is annoying.”

Tears continued to wet Sakuya’s cheeks, but a deeply satisfied teasing grin spread across his face anyway, “Yeah?”

“Yeah, don’t be so smug about it.”

“I’m not…”

“You’re a little.” 

“Maybe a little,” Sakuya was looking at Ryo with everything down, no walls anywhere, just his actual face open and a little undone, and hoping. “I missed you too. I looked for you on the rooftop everyday.”

Ryo looked up at him, at that handsome face that had no business looking this genuinely hopeful given everything. He thought about Sakuya just letting him go without a fight because he needed to go, then seeing him cry just because of that same reason makes his heart hurt. 

Ryo reached up and grabbed Sakuya by the front of his collar and pulled him down and kissed him first. He felt Sakuya go still, like half a second of genuine surprise, before both hands came up, one solid at Ryo’s waist pulling him in closer and one cradling the back of his head, and he kissed back with everything. 

Ryo could taste the salt of Sakuya’s crying, the wet tracks on his cheeks slipping right between their lips, but the kiss itself felt warm and deeply completely unhurried. Nothing held back, like this was something he’d been waiting for all week and wasn’t going to rush now that it was happening. Ryo’s hands were fisted in his collar and his heart was doing something insane and somewhere in the general vicinity someone made a high pitched noise that was probably a second year but Ryo was not available to care about that. 

When they finally broke apart, Sakuya didn’t go far. He stayed close, forehead almost against Ryo’s breathing. His eyes were still closed and his expression was wrecked in the best possible way, soft and open, and completely disassembled. 

“We’re doing this honestly from here,” Ryo said, still holding Sakuya’s collar. “Both of us, no more secrets or hiding things from each other. Promise me.” 

“Okay,” Sakuya said. “I promise.” He looked at Ryo’s face like he was memorizing every detail of him. 

“And you owe me melon bread everyday. That’s your punishment.” 

Sakuya finally laughed. The real kind, the one that Ryo had only heard a few times, was short, and warm, and fully unguarded, and it did something to Ryo’s chest that he was going to have to sit with for a long time. “Yes, sir.” Sakuya said. “Easy. everyday. DONE.” 

Ryo let go of the collar and smoothed it down, which struck him as funny, and Sakuya looked at his hands doing that and the expression on his face went soft in a specific way like it hand landed somewhere deeper than the kissing had. 

Sakuya’s hand found Ryo’s hands again, easy and without announcement, and they walked back into the festival. 

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

They went through the whole thing.

Ryo dragged him into a first year haunted house that was genuinely not scary, and they stood in a tiny dark room while a kid in a bed sheet tried his best and Sakuya looked at Ryo with an expression that could only be described as inappropriately fond for the setting. Ryo covered his mouth to keep himself from laughing. Sakuya did not bother.

Ryo ranked every food stall with actual criteria and Sakuya bought everything Ryo pointed at without a question. Oh we love the princess treatment. >< 

Then at the ring toss Sakuya won on his first three throws and handed the prize to a second year who hadn’t won one and then looked faintly embarrassed when he caught Ryo watching him do it.

“You’re really one of a kind, you know that?” Ryo said with a fond gaze.

“Stop.”

“I’m just—”

“I know what you’re doing, just… “ But Sakuya’s hand tightened around his.

There was a photobooth near the third year classrooms. Old kind, with curtains. Ryo stopped in front of it. Looked at Sakuya, and then Sakuya looked at the booth, then at Ryo, and said yeah okay in the voice of someone resigning themselves to something they don’t actually mind. 

Inside they were a catastrophic height mismatch for photobooth purposes and both of them knew it immediately. Ryo was laughing before the first shot went off. Sakuya had to level his height to Ryo for a bit to fit in the frame, and that made Ryo laugh harder, and the first photo was just Ryo mid laugh with his eyes crinkled and Sakuya is just looking at him fondly instead of the camera, an expression that’s just solely for Ryo and nobody else. 

For the second one, Sakuya put his hands on Ryo’s waist and just lifted him casually, like so sure like it just occurred to him and acted on it, and Ryo can’t help but yelped and grabbed Sakuya’s shoulder for balance and they were suddenly at eye level and the photo caught Ryo wide eyed and clutching to his boyfriend’s shoulders and Sakuya looking at the camera this time, for once, just openly and completely happy. 

For the third one Ryo turned and kissed him on the cheek. Sakuya was a little caught somewhere he hadn’t expected and all his composure was gone. 

And for sure, Ryo would keep that photo strip for a long time. Long after high school, long after a lot of things that they have been through. 

While Sakuya folded his half and put it in his pocket, thinking if he would cut out the photo strip and buy a new wallet where he could fit those little pieces of strips together for safe keeping. 

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

They ended up on the rooftop near the end of the afternoon, of course they did. Their rooftop, the one that had accumulated a whole history of them aside from the konbini wall. As always, the sun was going long and warm and the noise of the festival was still going below them. 

Sakuya sat close, shoulder to shoulder, which was always their configuration, and had always meant something in his direction even before Ryo understood it did. Ryo thought about how Sakuya must have been doing this the whole time, sitting shoulder to shoulder on purpose, just wanting to be near him enough to let it go on.

That was the part that had taken Ryo the whole week to understand and think about. Not that Sakuya had played along, but the big question, WHY? Because he was curious  about the kind of person who could send something that sincere into the dark one night without knowing who would catch it. And then, he’d found out, upclose, over afternoons that had no business meaning as much as they did, and somewhere in there the curiosity had become something else entirely and he hadn’t known how to say that either. 

“Remember what I told you the first time we met?” Ryo asked.

“Yeah, always.”

“You told me to tell you the rest of it later,” Ryo said softly. “About Betelgeuse. How the only way we’d know it exploded is when the right from the explosion finally gets here. It could have already happened. We just wouldn’t know yet.”

He paused, letting the memory sit between them. “How the light travelled all that way to reach something, and the arriving what matters.”

Sakuya was quiet.

“It’s like how we met each other,” Ryo continued. “How the text was supposed to be for a different person, but it arrived to you. It was wrong all along, but… the way it feels right.”

Sakuya looked at him with sincere eyes and said, "Sometimes where it lands is better than where it was heading.”

Ryo looked at him, the late light in his hair, those kind eyes, and the sincere expression proving that he always meant everything he said.

“So, romance is not really dead, huh?” 

Sakuya laughed like it was the funniest thing that Ryo has ever said, “Don’t get used to it.”

“Well, I’m already used to it and it’s been thirty seconds.”

Sakuya made a happy content sound and exhaled, slowly. Like he’d been holding that one for a while. 

૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა 

They came back downstairs and found Yushi and Riku near the exit and Yushi took one look at them and smiled, satisfied and quiet. Riku looked at them and then looked specifically at Sakuya like he was about to threaten him seriously.

“If you hurt him,” Riku said, even and direct, “I will be genuinely very disappointed in you.” Then he picked up his remaining takoyaki and went back to eating as if he didn’t make a very impactful best friend speech. 

Sakuya nodded back with absolute seriousness, a silent promise that he would take care of Ryo, then he covered the smaller boy’s hand with his for a moment, warm, certain, then he intertwined their hands and lowered it and kept holding on. 

“Come on,” Sakuya said, with a gentle smile on his face. “The festival is still going.”

“We get it lovebirds, we are going with you.” Riku teasingly said while his arm is on Yushi's shoulder, and Yushi is just so used to getting dragged along, he just didn’t say anything but just nodded in agreement. 

Ryo let himself be pulled back into the light and the nose of the school festival, and thought about the wrong names, right people, and how the light travels in one direction and lands somewhere better, and thought; yeah, i’d do it again. Every single time. 

I would fumble my phone in the dark and tap the wrong name and send my heart in the wrong direction and end up exactly here, next to this infuriating person who noticed me on the stairwell who listened to me from the very beginning and showed up. The same person who let me go and came back when I asked him to. 

Every single time. 

There was nothing else to it, really, and this was the whole story about how a boy likes a girl, texts the wrong person, panics, falls in love sideways, and the person whom he fell in love with had been paying attention long before any of this started. 

Indeed, the light traveled the wrong way, and landed somewhere better. 

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. 

fin.