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They had been planning it for the better part of three weeks. Ever since Atobe had sat down after a long day of work, looked at Irie, and declared that it was time.
Irie had understood. It had been coming for a while. They were serious about each other at this point. Irie, for one, had no intentions of letting things end anytime soon. Atobe clearly felt the same.
So they’d go public with their relationship. It was simple.
It was also going to be the most important performance of Irie’s life.
Not that he was nervous. He wasn’t nervous one bit. He’d been performing on stage for years now, and he was good at it. He knew how to be looked at. It was just...
...This was Atobe.
How long had they been keeping this particular thing separate from the part of his life that got photographed? Irie did the math in his head. He was twenty-three now. He’d been seventeen when he first met Atobe, and Atobe had been 15. Six years of circling around each other. Of getting closer and then panicking and pulling apart. Of repeating the process.
Six years of being in each other's lives. Five years of actually being together.
Five years of arriving at events alone and leaving alone and fielding questions about his personal life with the particular practiced ease of someone who had decided a long time ago that some things were his and nobody else's.
Tonight some things were becoming everybody else's.
He looked at Atobe, sitting beside him in the car, eyes on the road. He looked composed, focused, already running through whatever checklist existed in his head. Atobe had made a spreadsheet. Three of them, actually, which Irie had discovered by accident and chosen not to comment on. There was a tab for likely press reactions. A tab for talking points. A tab that Irie suspected was a decision tree for various contingency scenarios and that he had deliberately not opened because some things were better not known in advance.
It was all very Atobe to put so much planning into things. It was how Irie could tell that he was serious.
Atobe was eternally a hard worker when it came to the things he cared about. Irie supposed he was officially on that list.
He looked out the window at Tokyo moving past.
He thought about Kirihara Akaya saying into a journalist's recorder that love was people who showed up and treated you well, and about how that quote had ended up on a t-shirt, and about how he'd screenshotted it without really thinking about it and still hadn't deleted it.
Atobe's hand found his in the dark of the car.
Irie looked down at it.
"Ready?" Atobe said. Not looking at him. Still watching the road ahead with that particular focused composure.
"Yes." Irie said.
He meant it.
The Japan Open after-party was, as it always was, an exercise in controlled chaos.
It was held every year at the same hotel; one of the large ones in Shinjuku with a ballroom that could fit the entire professional tennis circuit and frequently did. Players, coaches, sponsors, press, the particular ecosystem of people who orbited professional tennis without quite being of it. Open bar. Good catering. The kind of event where careers were advanced and relationships were cemented and Atobe had, over the years, done a considerable amount of useful networking.
Tonight he was not here to network.
He stepped through the entrance with Irie beside him and felt the room do what rooms did when he entered them; a slight adjustment, a reorientation, the specific ripple of attention that he had learned to ignore at age twelve and now barely registered.
Except that tonight it was different. Tonight the ripple had a second component. People looking at him and then looking at Irie and then looking back at him with the particular expression of people doing arithmetic.
Good. That was the point.
He scanned the room out of habit, assessing who was watching them and had already taken note of their arrival against those who had yet to catch on.
Hale was near the bar, recorder nowhere visible but notebook in his jacket pocket, talking to a Tezuka Kunimitsu who looked like he was trying to find a polite way to escape.. Hale’s head came up briefly as they entered. He’d noticed.
Byodoin and Tokugawa were in the far corner doing something that three separate people in their immediate vicinity were visibly trying not to look at. Atobe had known Byodoin for years and had never particularly wanted to strangle him until the last eighteen months. He was managing.
Kirihara was somewhere in the middle of the room, loud and luminous, his boyfriends on either side of him, the three of them occupying space with the particular ease of people who had recently stopped pretending about something. Atobe noted this. Moved on.
Then he found Yanagi.
Standing with Yukimura and Sanada near the edge of the room, the three of them in a configuration that was... different. Subtly, specifically, unmistakably different from every other time Atobe had observed this particular triangle over the years. Something had shifted in the geometry of them. The space between them had changed quality.
Atobe allowed himself exactly one moment of satisfaction.
He had voted two weeks in the betting pool that he’d seen fit to organize when Yukimura had started ranting about Yanagi in the captain’s chat.
He had, apparently, overestimated how long it would take.
Well, it wasn’t like he needed the money anyway. And wasn’t it a fortuitous sign that things had worked out well for his friend on the eve of him going public with his own relationship? He was going to choose to believe that it was.
Irie put a hand on his arm, drawing his attention back to them. Atobe smiled, just a bit.
"You're scanning." Irie said. Not a criticism. Just an observation, delivered in the mild tone he used when he was noting something Atobe was doing that he found both predictable and faintly endearing.
"Assessing." Atobe corrected.
"Mm." Irie looked out at the room. "Byodoin and Tokugawa are at it again."
"I'm aware."
"Kirihara looks happy."
"He is." Atobe paused. "Yanagi also."
Irie followed his gaze to the corner where Renji stood with Yukimura and Sanada. He was quiet for a moment. “I see. That’s nice.”
"He took long enough."
"Some people do." Irie said, with the specific tone of someone making a point that wasn't entirely about Yanagi Renji.
Atobe looked at him.
Irie looked back with perfect innocence.
"Are you ready?" Atobe said.
"You asked me that in the car."
"I'm asking again."
Irie looked amused. “We’ve already started. Stop stalling, Keigo.”
Atobe's expression did something that only Irie got to see.
Then he straightened, squared his shoulders, and walked them both into the room properly.
The moment, when it came, was not dramatic.
Atobe had, in fact, considered dramatic. He had, in fact, outlined several dramatic options in the third spreadsheet tab, assessed their respective impact-to-dignity ratios, and discarded all of them. He was not Byodoin Houou. He was not going to climb over a barrier on live television.
What he did was far more subtle.
He reached over, without breaking his conversation with a former ATP official who had been congratulating him on some recent business venture, and straightened Irie's collar.
It was a small gesture. Domestic. The specific casual intimacy of someone who had been doing this for years and didn't think about it anymore. His hand lingered for just a moment at Irie's jaw before dropping.
He did not look at Irie when he did it.
He did not need to.
The ATP official's sentence trailed off.
A murmur moved through the crowd. Heads turned, phones came out. Atobe continued his conversation with the ATP official as though nothing of significance had occurred, because as far as he was concerned nothing had. He had simply adjusted his partner's collar at a public event. That was all.
That was everything.
Irie, beside him, said nothing. He looked out at the room with the composed expression of someone watching an audience react to a performance and finding it going exactly as hoped.
Almost exactly.
Because what neither of them had fully accounted for was Hale.
Who had, at some point in the last thirty seconds, closed his notebook, opened it again, and was now writing something with the focused energy of a man who had just had a very significant story drop right in his lap and was not going to waste a single second of it.
The captains chat announced itself with the specific sustained vibration of multiple people messaging simultaneously, which Atobe registered in his jacket pocket and chose to ignore for approximately four minutes while he finished his conversation with the ATP official and accepted congratulations from three separate people who materialized out of nowhere with the speed of individuals who had been waiting for precisely this moment. They probably had.
Then he checked his phone.
Yukimura had sent: [Well. It's about time.]
Shiraishi had sent: [Congratulations. Genuinely.] Short and warm, which was very Shiraishi.
Tachibana had sent nothing yet, which meant he was mid-service somewhere and would surface eventually with something sincere that would arrive forty minutes late and land harder for it.
Kite had sent: [Congratulations.] One word. Followed by nothing. Atobe filed this under suspicious.
And then there was Tezuka.
Tezuka had sent: [I'm glad you did this. Both of you.]
Tezuka Kunimitsu, who expressed warmth the way other people expressed complicated tax returns, was congratulating them. Atobe looked across the room. Tezuka had apparently extracted himself from Hale at some point and was standing with a drink, looking at nothing in particular.
He looked up and met Atobe's eye.
Atobe nodded once.
Tezuka nodded back.
That was, Atobe thought, quite enough of that. He turned his attention back towards the throngs of people who were now moving in to congratulate him and suck up to the man who had just been publicly identified as his partner.
Irie was quite clearly having too much fun with all of this, greeting everyone that approached with a warm smile and holding onto Atobe’s arm and really playing up his new role as partner of the wealthiest man in Japan.
Atobe let him. It was, he supposed, fair. Irie had spent six years not being allowed to do this. He could have a few minutes.
From across the room, Gakuto Mukahi's voice cut through the general noise at a volume that suggested he had either forgotten where he was or simply didn't care.
“THEY’RE GOING PUBLIC!? AND ATOBE DIDN’T FUCKING WARN US!?”
Atobe closed his eyes briefly.
"Gakuto." That was Oshitari Yuushi, in the tone of someone who had been managing this particular situation for years and had developed considerable technique. "We discussed this."
“We discussed it maybe happening someday. Not it happening tonight.” Gakuto complained. “I didn’t want to be around for this media circus.”
"You're already around for it." Oshitari observed, with the particular patience of someone who had long since made peace with Gakuto's relationship with volume and forethought.
“That’s not the point!” Gakuto spun around to find Atobe, approaching him with very little restraint. “Hey, asshole, were you planning to warn us you’d be dragging us into a media circus tonight?”
Atobe rolled his eyes. “I didn’t think I needed your approval to go public with my partner.”
“YOU DO WHEN YOU’RE INVOLVING US IN IT-”
"Gakuto." Oshitari put a hand on his shoulder. "Perhaps slightly quieter."
"I didn't want to be around for this media circus." Gakuto repeated. "I had plans tonight."
"You didn't have plans tonight." Oshitari said.
"I had potential plans."
"Gakuto." Atobe said. "You've known about Irie for years."
"That's not the point!" Gakuto said. "The point is I'm going to be in every photo taken tonight because I'm standing right here and now my face is going to be all over the internet tomorrow and I didn't even do my hair properly-"
A beat of silence.
"Your hair looks fine." Irie offered.
Gakuto pointed at him. "You. I like you. You've always been my favourite."
Atobe rolled his eyes. “I’m glad you approve of my boyfriend.”
Gakuto crossed his arms. “He’s better than you deserve.” It was said with animosity that wasn’t actually there. If you knew how to read Mukahi Gakuto the message was clear. He approved of his friend’s relationship. He might even be happy for Atobe. "Fine. Congratulations. It's about time, frankly. We've been watching you pine for six years."
"I have not been pining."
"You absolutely have." Gakuto said, not looking up from his phone. "Yuushi tell him."
"You've been pining." Oshitari confirmed, with the serene confidence of someone stating an established fact.
"I have been..." Atobe stopped. Collected himself. "I have been conducting a long term relationship with appropriate discretion."
"You brought him to my birthday party four years ago and introduced him as an uninvited guest." Gakuto said, getting his phone out to check on the hair situation. "And then spent the entire evening making sure nobody talked to him for too long. While he had a hickey on his neck that we all knew you’d left there."
“That was-”
"And then at Jirou's thing last year you-"
"Gakuto." Oshitari said pleasantly.
"I'm providing context." Gakuto said. He finally looked up from his phone, apparently satisfied with whatever he'd found there, and looked between Atobe and Irie with an expression that had shed most of its outrage and arrived somewhere considerably warmer. "I'm happy for you. Both of you. Even if you are an asshole who didn't warn me."
"Noted." Atobe said.
Something passed between Oshitari and Gakuto again; that quick private thing that belonged entirely to them. Gakuto looked away first, back at his phone.
Hiyoshi had materialized at some point during this, standing slightly apart in the way he always did. He looked at Atobe for a long moment.
"Gekokujou." He said simply, and raised his glass.
Atobe raised his in return.
Hiyoshi nodded once. His eyes drifted briefly, almost imperceptibly, to where Gakuto and Oshitari stood before returning to neutral.
Atobe filed that away for later.
Then Byodoin appeared.
He arrived without fanfare, detached from Tokugawa for the first time all evening, and looked at Atobe with the specific expression of someone paying a debt they'd been carrying for a while.
Atobe braced himself.
"About time." Byodoin said.
"So I've been told." Atobe said.
Byodoin looked at Irie. Then back at Atobe. Something moved across his expression that was not quite warmth but was in the general vicinity of it, which from Byodoin was practically a declaration.
"You're an idiot." He said. "You’ve been in each other's orbit for six years."
"Thank you for that assessment."
"I'm not finished." Byodoin said. "You're an idiot, and I say that as someone who spent six months pretending to date someone before admitting I was in love with them, so I have some standing." He paused. "But you did it. So."
A silence that was almost companionable.
"So." Atobe agreed.
Irie pretended to be moved by Byodoin’s congratulations, swooning dramatically. “Boss! I had no idea you cared so much about me!”
“I don’t. Wasn’t the whole fake dating thing your dumb ass idea?” Byodoin pointed out dryly. “Kazuya said that Atobe helped him figure some things out when we were on the rocks, though, so I’m willing to congratulate him.”
Irie rolled his eyes. “Asshole.”
"Houou." Tokugawa said, appearing at his elbow with the patient timing of someone who had been monitoring this conversation from a distance and had decided to intervene.
Byodoin huffed. “I wasn’t saying anything untrue.”
“He’s just being his usual pleasant self.” Irie responded cheerfully. “Nothing unusual about it at all.”
Byodoin's mouth curved. Just slightly. Then he looked at Atobe with the expression of someone who had one more thing to say and was going to say it regardless.
"He's good." Byodoin said. Simply. Meaning Irie. Meaning: don't mess this up. Meaning approximately fifteen other things that Byodoin would never say out loud in a room full of people and possibly not ever. "Don't be an idiot about it."
"I'll do my best." Atobe said.
Tokugawa looked at Atobe over Byodoin's shoulder. His expression was warm and quiet and said, without words, something along the lines of: he means it. He's just constitutionally incapable of saying it plainly.
Atobe nodded once.
Tokugawa nodded back. Then steered Byodoin away before the moment could become any more sincere than either of them could comfortably manage.
Irie watched them go. "I genuinely cannot tell if he likes me or not."
"He likes you." Atobe said. "He just also finds you irritating."
"Ah." Irie considered this. "That does sound like him."
His phone buzzed. Tachibana, arriving exactly when expected: [Heard the news. Happy for you both. You deserve this.] Then, a moment later: [Sorry, mid service. Will call later.]
Atobe smiled at his phone. Just slightly.
Irie had been watching Atobe manage the chaos with the particular composed energy he brought to everything, and had been content to stay at his side and let him do it.
Then he spotted Kimijima Ikuto making his way across the room toward them.
His mood dropped a few degrees. He recognized that look on Kimijima’s face. That was the same cocky expression he wore at the wedding, when Kimijima had collected his winnings from the betting pool with the energy of a man receiving a long-overdue debt.
Irie smiled with all the pleasantness he could muster.
"Kimijima." He said, as the man arrived.
"Irie." Kimijima looked between them with the specific satisfaction of someone surveying the results of a prediction they'd made a long time ago and had never stopped being smug about. "Atobe." He paused for effect. "I believe I'm owed an acknowledgment."
"Of what." Atobe said flatly.
"I called this." Kimijima said. "At the wedding. I said it would happen. I voted for it in the pool." He looked at Irie. "I was right."
"You were right." Irie agreed pleasantly.
Kimijima blinked. He had clearly been prepared for more resistance. "...Yes. I was."
"Congratulations on that." Irie said. "How is Toono, by the way?"
A pause.
The specific quality of that pause was interesting. Kimijima was good at composure; he was a public figure, he'd been one for years, he knew how to manage his expression. But something moved across his face in the half second before he got it back under control.
"Fine." He said carefully.
"Good." Irie said warmly. The four of us should get together sometime. Properly. It would be nice to spend some time with you both as a couple."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"...As a couple." Kimijima repeated.
"Mm." Irie smiled. "You and Toono. Us. A double date of sorts." He tilted his head. "Unless that's not the right word for what you two are? I wouldn't want to presume."
Kimijima looked at him for a long moment.
Irie looked back with perfect innocence.
"A double date." Kimijima said finally, in the tone of a man who had just understood the terms of a negotiation he hadn't realized he'd entered. "Yes. That would be... nice."
"Wonderful." Irie said. "We'll arrange something."
Kimijima excused himself with slightly less swagger than he'd arrived with and disappeared back into the crowd.
Atobe, who had been watching this exchange with the expression of a man witnessing something both impressive and slightly alarming, looked at Irie.
"Did you just neutralize Kimijima Ikuto with the threat of a double date." He said.
"I suggested getting together." Irie said. "That's not a threat."
"It sounded like a threat."
"Did it?" Irie picked up his drink. "How strange."
Atobe looked at him for a moment with the expression Irie had been collecting for six years.
"You're terrifying." He said.
"I know." Irie agreed. "You love it."
“I love not being made to go on a double date with Kimijima and Toono.”
“Don’t worry, it won’t happen.” Irie replied calmly. “It was a threat, not a promise. The double date exists as a concept. A deterrent. As long as it exists as a concept, Kimijima will be considerably less smug about the betting pool."
Atobe snorted. “Diabolical.”
“Also effective.” Irie bragged.
Atobe looked at him for another moment. Then, apparently deciding there was nothing useful to add to this, turned back to the room. Irie chuckled and followed his gaze. Everything seemed to be calming down, the room adapting to the new reality of Atobe dating him with remarkable ease.
He felt, he realized, very calm.
Five years of keeping this particular thing carefully his and nobody else's, and now it was everybody's, and he was standing here in this room holding a drink and feeling calm about it.
He looked at Atobe. Still managing. Still composed. Still running whatever calculations existed in his head about how the evening was proceeding against how he had modeled it.
Then, as if feeling the attention, Atobe glanced over.
Something in his expression shifted. Just slightly. The composed managing giving way for one unguarded moment to something underneath it that was quieter and more real.
Irie recognized it. He'd been collecting it for six years.
"Ochi is heading this way." Atobe said.
Irie watched the form of Ochi, towering above everyone else in the room as he and Mouri headed in their direction. Impossible to miss.
He chuckled. “Maybe I should actually arrange a double date with them...”
Atobe rolled his eyes. “My neck hurts just thinking about that.”
Ochi arrived quietly, efficiently, without taking up more space than necessary, which was impressive given that he was the tallest person in the room. Mouri was beside him, close in the specific way of someone who had long since stopped thinking about how close they were standing.
It was Mouri that finally greeted them, in his distinct Hyogo accent.
“Atobe! Irie! We wanted to come congratulate you!” He was grinning, relaxed and approachable as ever. Ochi loomed over him like an impassive pet dog, just watching. Looking menacing without really meaning to.
Irie smiled and took Atobe’s hand. “Thank you, Mouri-kun. Congratulations on placing so well in the doubles division.”
“Thanks, thanks!” Mouri grinned, patting Ochi on the back in a manner that couldn’t be described as anything but intimate, though between them it just seemed normal. “I couldn’t have done it without Tsuki-san!”
“That is how doubles works.” Atobe agreed, bemused. He wondered how the hell these two had avoided the public eye when they were clearly all over each other.
Ochi, who had been standing with the particular stillness of someone waiting for the right moment, looked at Atobe.
"Congratulations." He said. Simply. The word carried more weight than its three syllables suggested, delivered in the tone of someone who understood exactly what they were congratulating.
Atobe received it. "Thank you."
Ochi remained silent, satisfied with his one word of congratulations, but Mouri remained smiling and grinning and willing to carry the full conversation for both of them.
"Hey." He said, with the energy of someone who had just remembered something important. "Is that Yanagi over there with Yukimura and Sanada?"
Irie followed his gaze. Renji was standing with Yukimura and Sanada near the edge of the room, the three of them in that configuration that had shifted so specifically since the dinner earlier in the week.
"It is." Irie said.
"They look..." Mouri tilted his head. "Different."
"They do." Irie agreed.
Mouri looked at him. Irie looked back. A beat of shared understanding passed between them with the efficiency of two people who had both been paying attention.
"No." Mouri said, delighted.
"I think so." Irie said.
"When did that-"
"Recently, I'd guess." Irie said. "Very recently."
Mouri made a sound that was barely contained. "Oh that's- that's so good. Good for them." He turned to Ochi. "Tsuki-san, did you know about this?"
"I had suspicions." Ochi said.
"You always have suspicions." Mouri said fondly. He turned back to Irie. "Okay but how long has this been-"
"Mouri." Atobe said, in the tone of a man who had been standing quietly through this exchange and had reached the limit of his patience. "You're gossiping at my going public party."
“I thought this party was to celebrate the Japan open?”
Atobe looked very put upon, staring Mouri down with a total lack of amusement. “You know what I meant.”
Mouri held his gaze for approximately two seconds before breaking into a grin. "Right, right, sorry. Congratulations again, genuinely, it's really great." He was already turning, already reaching for Ochi's arm. "Come on Tsuki-san, let's go find the snacks and I'll tell you my theories about Yanagi."
Irie watched them go, still smiling.
"I like him." He said.
"He's a menace." Atobe said.
"I like him." Irie said again.
Atobe made a sound that was not quite agreement and not quite disagreement and contained within it the specific resignation of a man who had known Mouri Jusaburo for years and had long since accepted that liking him and finding him a menace were not mutually exclusive.
Then Hale appeared.
He arrived with his notebook open and the expression of a man who had been waiting for a tactically appropriate moment and had decided this was it.
"Atobe." He said. Then: "Irie." A beat. "I don't suppose either of you would be open to a brief comment for HALEstorm Nation."
Atobe looked at Irie.
Irie looked at Atobe.
This was, in fact, in the spreadsheet. Tab two. Talking points. Atobe had prepared for this exact moment with the thoroughness he brought to everything.
"Ask your question, Hale." He said.
Hale asked his question.
It was, objectively, a reasonable question. Straightforward. How long, when did they know, what did going public mean for them going forward. The kind of question Atobe had modeled responses to. He had three prepared answers of varying lengths for exactly this scenario.
He gave the shortest one. Composed. Controlled. Exactly as planned.
Then Irie, apparently deciding that composed and controlled was not the energy of the evening, said: "We've been together for five years. We probably should have done this sooner but we're both fairly stubborn."
Hale scribbled something down in his notebook as Atobe’s eyebrow twitched.
“Kanata.” He offered up in a warning tone, even though he knew it was all pointless. Irie was prone to do whatever it was Irie felt like doing at any given time. And right now the plan was apparently to completely disregard the plan.
Lovely.
"He asked." Irie said pleasantly.
Hale, who had the expression of a man receiving a gift he hadn't expected, looked up from his notebook. "Five years." He said. "That's... can I ask what finally made you decide to go public now?"
Atobe opened his mouth to give talking point number two.
"Kirihara." Irie said.
Hale blinked. "Sorry?"
"Kirihara Akaya." Irie said. "Your article about him. About the three of them." He glanced at Atobe, something warm in his expression. "We read it and it seemed like the world was more ready than we'd assumed. And we'd been waiting long enough." He paused. "You made it look possible. I thought you should know that."
Hale stared at him.
Atobe stared at him. That was not talking point number two.
Hale recovered first. He wrote something in his notebook with the focused energy of a man who had just had the best quote of his career handed to him at a party he'd attended to cover tennis.
"Can I... is that on the record?" He asked.
"Yes." Irie said.
"Kanata." Atobe said.
"It's true." Irie said simply. "And Hale deserves to know his work mattered." He looked at Hale. "It did. In case nobody's told you that directly."
Hale looked totally touched. The man really was a sap, on top of being a terrible gossip.
"One more question." He said. "For the record." He looked between them. "Are you happy?"
The question landed simply. No agenda in it. Just Hale, notebook open, asking the thing that was underneath all the other questions.
Atobe looked at Irie.
Irie looked back.
"Yes." Irie said. Simply. Completely.
Atobe said nothing. But he took Irie's hand.
Hale closed his notebook.
"That's enough." He said quietly. "Congratulations. Both of you."
He excused himself and disappeared back toward the bar, presumably to find somewhere quiet to write something that was going to completely derail whatever tennis coverage he'd originally planned for the evening.
The car was quiet.
Tokyo moved past the windows the way it always did; relentless, indifferent, completely unbothered by the fact that Atobe Keigo had just done something he'd been avoiding for six years. The city had seen stranger things. It would see stranger things again.
Irie looked out the window.
He was tired in the specific pleasant way of someone who had done something large and found it had gone well. Not the exhausted tired, the settled tired. The kind that came after.
Atobe was on his phone. Of course he was. The evening's coverage was already trending across every platform that covered entertainment and sport and the particular overlap between them where Atobe and Irie both lived. His PR team had sent seventeen messages. He was reading them with the focused composure of a man who had prepared for this and was finding that preparation had been, mostly, adequate.
Mostly.
"Your talking points." Atobe said, without looking up from his phone.
"Were too short." Irie said.
"They were precisely calibrated."
"They were boring." Irie said. "Five years and a collar adjustment deserved more than precisely calibrated."
Atobe looked at him over his phone.
Irie looked back with perfect innocence.
A beat.
"You told Hale it was because of Kirihara." Atobe said.
"It was partly because of Kirihara."
"That's going to be in the article."
"Good." Irie said. "Kirihara will be delighted."
Atobe made a sound that was not quite agreement and not quite disagreement. He looked back at his phone. Then, after a moment, put it away.
Irie looked at him.
The city moved past. The car was quiet.
"The collar adjustment." Atobe said finally.
"Mm."
"Was it enough?"
Irie considered this. The room adjusting. The ATP official's sentence trailing off. Phones coming out. Gakuto's voice cutting through the noise at a volume that suggested he had forgotten where he was. Byodoin's shoulder clap. Tezuka's six words. Kimijima's slightly deflated exit. Mouri's theories about Yanagi. Hale closing his notebook.
"Yes." He said. "It was enough."
Atobe nodded once. Looked out his own window.
The city moved past.
Irie thought about seventeen years old and not knowing what any of this would become. About arriving at events alone and leaving alone and deciding a long time ago that some things were his and nobody else's. About a quote on a t-shirt he'd screenshotted and never deleted.
He thought about the spreadsheet with three tabs. About a hand finding his in the dark of a car.
"Keigo." He said.
"Mm."
"I'm glad we did it."
Atobe didn't say anything.
But his hand found Irie's in the dark of the car again.
That was, Irie thought, enough of an answer.