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Nirei has never really been in love.
He knows what love looks like, though.
He sees it plainly on Sakura’s face, in the anguish that moves through him like slow poison whenever Suo’s name is mentioned, in the way Sakura’s whole body goes still before it breaks apart. He sees it in the crescent moons dug into Sakura’s palms, the skin torn where his nails have bitten too deep, and the dried crimson caught beneath them.
He hears it in Sakura’s choked sobs when he breaks down over the omurice Momijikawa made for him, his feelings spilling out at last, raw and ugly and too large for his chest, uncaring of the audience in front of him. He feels it in the tremors running through Sakura’s body and the wetness on his cheeks when Nirei reaches out, gently, and wipes his tears away.
Nirei has never really been in love, but he knows love can sometimes look, sound, and feel like pain.
So Nirei decides not to add any more to Sakura’s overflowing love for Suo, especially when Sakura himself has yet to realize the emotion he carries has that for a name.
When Sakura finally finishes his meal and slumps into another restless sleep, Nirei quietly cleans up Sakura’s space with Momijikawa and Sugishita. They move carefully around him, lowering their voices even when Sakura is too exhausted to wake, gathering tissues and dishes and empty water bottles, folding the blanket back over Sakura’s shoulders when it slips down. Momijikawa wipes the table. Sugishita takes the trash without a word. Nirei rinses the plate with one hand pressed against the edge of the sink.
They leave the room warm and clean. Nirei wants Sakura to wake up to something kind.
He wants Sakura’s love, which has nowhere to go, to feel even a little less painful than it did today.
“Haruka’s in worse shape than I thought,” Momijikawa mumbles from the doorway.
His voice has gone soft in a way Nirei rarely hears from him. It makes him sound older, somehow.
“It’s a good thing we dropped by,” he continues, glancing between Nirei and Sugishita. “I’m gonna come by again later in the day to keep an eye on him. Maybe cook him some proper food.”
“You’re really nice, Momijikawa-san,” Nirei says gratefully. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can help with.”
Momijikawa nods. “Yeah. For sure.”
He looks once more toward Sakura, half-buried under the blanket, his face still damp and drawn even in sleep. Then he leaves with the kind of reluctance that makes it clear he does not want to, his footsteps heavy on the stairs until the sound disappears below.
In the end, there is only Nirei and Sugishita.
For a while, neither of them speaks.
The silence should feel peaceful after Sakura’s crying, but Nirei finds it worse, somehow. Without the sound of Sakura’s sobbing, without Momijikawa’s steady hands and practical movements, all the worry that Nirei has been holding away comes rushing back into the room.
Sakura is asleep and Suo is still gone.
Sakura is asleep and everything is clean.
Sakura is asleep and nothing is better.
Nirei adjusts the strap of his bag over his shoulder and looks toward Sakura’s futon.
“We should probably tell Umemiya-san that Sakura-san ate something,” Nirei says. “That’s good, right? It’s good that he ate. Even if he cried, crying might have helped a little, and Momijikawa-san said he’ll come back later, so maybe Sakura-san won’t be alone too long, and if we take turns checking on him, then—”
Sugishita says nothing.
Nirei keeps talking.
“Actually, do you think we should ask Tachibana-san too? She might know what food Sakura-san likes when he’s sick, although he’s not sick exactly, except he kind of is, and maybe we should talk to Hiragi-san first because if Sakura-san finds out everyone knows, he might get angry. Well, he’ll definitely get angry, but maybe that’s better than him looking like that. I don’t know. I don’t know what the right thing is.”
Sugishita’s gaze stays fixed on him but Nirei pretends not to notice.
“We also need to think about Bankoku-gai,” Nirei continues. “Because Sakura-san is going to go. I mean, maybe not today, because he’s exhausted, but once he wakes up properly, he’ll definitely think he has to go by himself, and we can’t let him do that. We should probably gather everyone first. Or at least Umemiya-san and Hiragi-san. Maybe Tsubakino-san too, since—”
“Nirei.”
Nirei stops. Perhaps out of nervous habit, he smiles too quickly. “Yes?”
Sugishita’s eyes narrow. “When are you telling them?”
Nirei’s fingers tighten around the strap of his bag. “Telling them what?”
Sugishita’s jaw clenches.
For a second, Nirei thinks he will drop it. Sugishita often does that, after all. He speaks only when something matters enough to drag the words out of him, and even then, he usually leaves the rest for other people to understand.
This time, he doesn’t.
“Your right eye.”
The room goes very still.
Nirei’s smile remains on his face because he has practiced keeping it there. He has practiced at school, in class, on the walk home, in front of mirrors, in front of Sakura. He has practiced turning his whole head when someone approaches from the right. He has practiced laughing when he bumps into desks. He has practiced apologizing before anyone can ask why he did not see them.
He has practiced being fine until it becomes second nature. A muscle memory he makes sure he will never forget.
“Oh,” he says.
Sugishita stares at him. Nirei looks away first. He turns too far to the left, overcorrecting again, and hates that Sugishita probably notices that too.
“It’s okay,” Nirei says. “I’m okay.”
“It’s not,” Sugishita frowns. Annoyed. Nirei can tell he’s annoyed at him. “You can’t see.”
Nire feels his throat tightening.
From the futon, Sakura makes a small sound in his sleep, a broken inhale that cuts through the room like a blade. Both of them look toward him immediately. Sakura shifts, fingers curling around the blanket, his brows drawing together as if even unconsciousness cannot spare him from whatever he is seeing.
Nirei waits until Sakura settles again. Then, quietly, he says, “Keep your voice down.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Sugishita takes one step toward him, his annoyance now slipping into something like fury. “Especially if you’re lying to me.”
Nirei shakes his head. “Sakura-san—”
“He isn’t the only one suffering, Nirei.”
The words hit harder than they should.
Nirei looks down at his shoes. There is a scuff on the toe of the left one. He remembers seeing it this morning and thinking he should clean it. He remembers missing the edge of the step outside Sakura’s building and Sugishita’s hand closing around the back of his collar before he could fall.
He had laughed then, thinking it was a little funny. Sugishita didn’t share the sentiment.
“I know,” Nirei says. “I know Sakura-san isn’t the only one.”
“Then tell them.”
Nirei grits his teeth. “I can’t.”
“Why?” Sugishia asks, frustrated.
Nirei turns to look him right in the eye, like he’s trying to get Sugishita to understand without needing to say anything. He doesn’t want to say anything. Not the words so painful they feel like spikes in his chest.
Because it hurts seeing Sakura drowning in love he does not understand.
It hurts that Suo is gone, and everyone is trying to find him with whatever clues they can grasp, no matter how vague, no matter how impossible.
It hurts that when, before Suo left, Nirei asked too many questions, he saw the briefest hesitation on the boy’s soft, unreadable face, and then the world burst white with pain.
It hurts that Suo had said, with as much cruelty as he could to push Nirei away, “We aren’t anything.”
It hurts that Nirei had been foolish enough, or perhaps smart enough, to refuse to believe him because the punch right in his eye did not feel like it was done with real hatred.
Instead, it had been precise and controlled. Merciful and kind.
Suo could have done worse. Nirei knows that more clearly than anyone.
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts—
“At first, I thought it would heal,” Nirei says.
Sugishita doesn’t move so Nirei takes it as a sign to continue, swallowing hard before pushing the words past his lips.
“It was swollen and bruised, and everything was blurry, but that’s normal after getting hit, right? I thought it was normal. I looked it up and scared myself, so then I stopped looking it up. I told myself I’d go to a doctor if it got worse.”
It did, in fact, get worse.
Nirei’s fingers dig deeper into his bag strap, laughing weakly, nervously. “I went after the flashes started. And the floaters. And after the dark spot got bigger. They told me it was serious.”
Sugishita’s face goes pale beneath his usual scowl. The reaction makes something inside Nirei twist.
“They said there were options,” Nirei continues, each word careful. “There were things they could try. I did some of them. I was supposed to go back. I was supposed to tell my parents more. I was supposed to tell everyone, probably.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Nirei’s mouth opens yet nothing comes out.
The truth is too heavy to carry properly, and too ugly to set down in front of Sugishita, who loves Umemiya with the simplicity of a blade pointed in one direction, and who values Sakura even if it’s disguised with fists to the face.
And who would get really angry if Nirei is cowardly enough to lie straight to face.
“There wasn’t time,” he ends up whispering instead.
Sugishita’s hand closes around the doorframe hard enough that the wood creaks. “There was time. We could have done something.”
“Like what, Sugishita-san?” Nirei snaps, then looks up, his eyes wide and surprised at his own anger.
An awkward silence descends. It lasts for a few seconds before Nirei grits his teeth and lets out a shaky breath.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I…I didn’t mean to sound so angry.”
When Sugishita looks stricken instead of angry, Nirei feels a sudden surge of hatred.
He hates all of this. He hates the dark on his right side and the way people vanish into it if he forgets to turn his head. He hates the headaches that come when he tries to read too long. He hates waking up and opening both eyes and needing one terrible second to remember why the world has become uneven. He hates that he is getting better at moving through it.
Most of all, he hates that some part of him still remembers Suo’s touch before the blow, steady and warm, as if he had been making sure Nirei would fall safely.
“Since a few days ago,” Nirei says. “It’s been completely gone since then.”
The moment he says those words, the room tilts a little. Or maybe Nirei does.
Sugishita reaches out before Nirei can pretend he does not need help, his hand catching Nirei’s elbow with surprising care.
“Don’t,” Nirei whispers.
Sugishita freezes. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t be nice to me right now.”
“What the fuck are you even saying—”
“I mean it.” Nirei’s voice cracks. “If you’re nice to me, I’ll cry, and if I cry, Sakura-san might wake up, and he’s finally sleeping a little more peacefully.”
For a while, there is only Sakura’s uneven breathing and the distant noise of the street below.
Then Sugishita says, “Suo did this.”
Nirei closes his eyes. The left one sees darkness because he tells it to. The right one sees nothing because it has no choice.
“Suo-san hit me,” Nirei says carefully.
Sugishita’s grip tightens.
“Suo did this,” he says again.
Nirei knows what Sugishita is asking him to admit. He knows because the same sentence has been circling inside his own head for days, wearing grooves into every thought until there is no place left that does not hurt.
Suo did this.
Suo laughed, said cruel words, and did this.
Suo left Sakura behind and did this.
Suo, who had taught Nirei to flinch less in the face of fear. Suo, who occupied Sakura’s thoughts even in his sleep.
Suo, who everyone thought would never leave.
Nirei presses a hand over his right eye. There is no pain there now, though he almost wishes there was.
“He had a reason,” Nirei says.
Sugishita’s expression turns dangerous. “Don’t defend him.”
“I’m not,” Nirei tries but Sugishita cuts him off, his words hurt and angry.
“He blinded you.”
The word lands between them so violently that Nirei almost looks toward Sakura again, terrified it has woken him.
Sakura sleeps on, his face still twisted with grief.
Nirei drops his hand from his eye.
“He loves Sakura-san,” he says.
Sugishita goes still. Nirei smiles at his reaction, and this time it hurts enough to feel honest.
“I think he does,” he continues. “I think he loves him so much he didn’t know what to do with it. Or maybe he knew exactly what to do and chose wrong anyway. I don’t know. I keep trying to write it down in my head like one of my notes, but people aren’t like that, are they? You can’t organize them into neat little sections and understand them completely.”
“Sakura-san loves him too,” Nirei murmurs when Sugishita continues to say nothing. “He doesn’t know that yet. Maybe he wouldn’t call it that. Maybe he’d get angry if anyone tried. But he does. It’s all over his face.”
His voice softens as he looks at Sugishita. “You can tell too, right? Sakura-san isn’t really the best when it comes to hiding his feelings.”
Nirei looks toward Sakura, making sure to turn his head fully.
Sakura is small under the blanket in a way he never looks at school. At school, he has sharp edges and raised fists and eyes that refuse to look away. Here, in the dim warmth of his room, he returns to being the boy who has been left alone too many times.
Nirei’s chest aches at the sight of him.
“I won’t add to that,” he says. “I can’t.”
Sugishita’s brows draw together. “By telling him you’re hurt? He’ll find out eventually, Nirei.”
“Maybe.” Nirei’s smile flickers. “But not like this. You won’t tell him, right, Sugishita-san?”
Sugishita looks at him as if he is trying very hard to understand and hating every second of it.
Nirei wonders if Sugishita knows what it is like to love someone who does not look back. Maybe he does. Maybe everyone does, in their own way. Maybe that is why the room feels so full of things no one wants to say.
“I know it sounds stupid,” Nirei says.
Sugishita clicks his tongue. “It is stupid.”
“Yes.” A small laugh slips out of him. Then quietly, softly, Nirei’s lips move again. “I love him too.”
Another silence.
“I love Suo-san,” Nirei says, because if he is going to be honest, he should be honest all the way. “I think I have for a while. I didn’t know what to call it either. I just knew I wanted to stand beside him. I wanted to be useful to him.”
His fingers tremble as he whispers. “How embarrassing. Even now, I’m still thinking about whether I was useful.”
Sugishita looks away. Nirei keeps going before he loses the courage.
“And maybe this is my punishment for it. For feeling this way. For believing that if I understood enough, wrote down enough, cared enough, he might let me follow.”
His hand rises again, hovering near his right eye without touching it.
“He loves someone else,” Nirei says. “And that someone else loves him back, even if he doesn’t know it yet.”
Sugishita’s voice is rough when he finally speaks.
“That’s not punishment.”
Sugishita’s eyes are fierce when Nirei looks at him.
“That’s Suo being cruel.”
Nirei breathes in a sharp inhale.
For a moment, he sees it from Sugishita’s side. No beautiful shape. No tragic love. No complicated reasons. Just a boy who was hurt by someone stronger, then left to hide the damage because everyone else was already grieving and he refused to become another source of pain.
It is an ugly picture. It might also be true.
Nirei’s face crumples before he can stop it.
“I just…I don’t want Sakura-san to hate him,” Nirei says brokenly.
The confession comes out barely louder than breath.
“If Sakura-san hates him,” Nirei adds, each word shaking, “then I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the part of me that still doesn’t.”
His vision blurs. Only on the left, now.
That is the shape of his life from now on, he thinks distantly. Half the world in tears. Half the world in darkness.
Sugishita steps closer. Slowly this time, as if approaching something skittish.
“You’re telling Umemiya-san.”
Nirei shakes his head.
Sugishita’s voice hardens. “You are.”
“Please.” Nirei hates how small the word sounds. “Please, Sugishita-san. Not today.”
Sugishita’s expression twists. He looks toward Sakura, then back at Nirei, caught between two hurts he cannot fix with his fists. That helplessness does not suit him. It makes him seem younger, even with all his height and strength and anger.
“When?” he asks.
Nirei wipes his face with his sleeve and tries to smile again.
“Soon.” He lets out a trembling laugh when Sugshita responds with a disbelieving glare. “I mean it. Soon. Just let Sakura-san wake up first. Let him eat again and be stronger and….be in less pain than he is today.”
“And you?”
Nirei blinks. Sugishita looks angry again, but the anger has slowly blurred into something else.
“What about you?” he demands.
Nirei has no answer. He can’t answer.
He thinks of his notebooks. His careful handwriting. His lists of everyone’s strengths, habits, favorite foods, fighting styles, birthdays, weaknesses, dreams. He thinks of all the times he has written other people down so he could remember how to protect them.
He wonders when he became something he forgot to record.
“I’ll be okay,” he says.
Sugishita’s face tells him he has chosen the wrong answer.
Nirei lowers his gaze. “I don’t know how to be anything else.”
For a long moment, Sugishita says nothing.
Then he reaches out and flicks Nirei’s forehead.
Though it is light that Nirei barely feels it, he still yelps on instinct, clapping a hand over the spot. “Ow! Sugishita-san!”
“Stupid.”
“That hurt!”
Sugishita huffs, a sound that might almost be a laugh if it belonged to anyone else. He clearly doesn’t believe him.
From the futon, Sakura shifts again. Thankfully, his eyes don’t open. His hand reaches blindly across the blanket, fingers curling around empty air. His lips move soundlessly at first, then form one broken syllable.
“Suo…”
Sugishita turns his face aside, jaw tight.
Nirei goes to Sakura before he can think better of it. He sits carefully beside the futon and takes Sakura’s searching hand in both of his, mindful of the torn skin on Sakura’s palm. Sakura’s fingers twitch, then close around him with desperate strength.
“I’m here, Sakura-san,” Nirei whispers. “It’s okay. You’re not alone.”
Sakura doesn’t wake.
Nirei bends over their joined hands and breathes through the ache rising in his throat.
There are so many kinds of love in this room.
Sakura’s love is a wound with Suo’s name inside it.
Sugishita’s love stands by the door, silent and furious.
Momijikawa’s love has left food in the kitchen and warmth in the air.
Nirei’s love sits quietly beside a sleeping boy, half-blind and shaking, holding on to a hand that is holding on to someone else.
He thinks, miserably, that maybe love is not always something that saves people. Sometimes, love is just enduring pain.
And still.
When Sakura’s breathing evens out again, Nirei doesn't let go.
Sugishita comes to stand beside him. His shadow falls across Nirei’s right side, swallowed at once by the darkness there. Nirei knows he is there only because the floor creaks beneath his weight.
“You’re also not alone,” Sugishita says.
Nirei closes his eyes. For the first time in days, he lets himself lean, just slightly, toward someone who can still see the whole room.
“Okay,” he whispers.
Sugishita doesn’t tell him it will be fine. Nirei is grateful for that too.
Afternoon light gathers against Sakura’s window, pale and gentle and useless against the dark. Sakura sleeps on, his hand locked around Nirei’s fingers as though even in dreams he is afraid of being left behind.
Nirei stays until his knees ache and until the omurice plate is dry on the rack. He stays until Momijikawa returns with groceries and one look at Nirei’s face makes his smile fade.
He stays because Sakura is hurting. He stays because Suo is gone.
He stays because somewhere inside him, love still has nowhere else to go.