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The Japan Open party had been lively, for sure.
Mouri Jusaburo had other words for it too. Chaotic, warm, slightly overwhelming in that way that occurred when too many things happened all at once and you came away feeling like you'd witnessed something without quite being able to say what.
Atobe had gone public with Irie, which had caused the immediate and predictable eruption of Mukahi Gakuto at a volume that suggested he had forgotten the concept of indoor voices. Kirihara had been luminous in the middle of the room with his boyfriends on either side of him. Yanagi had been standing with Yukimura and Sanada in a way that was different from how he'd ever stood with them before, and Mouri had noticed that immediately because Mouri noticed things, it was just that the things he noticed tended to be people rather than data.
He'd noticed Ochi too.
The man stood beside him all evening in the way he always did, and Mouri had thought for a moment- just a moment- about what it would look like from the outside. Whether it looked like anything at all.
Well, half the world thought they were dating, so Mouri supposed it must look like something to people.
Now they were back in the hotel room and the party was over and Mouri was tired in a way that wasn't entirely physical.
He stretched out across his bed, not unlike a cat, and stared at the ceiling.
"That party was pretty lively, huh?"
"Atobe certainly likes to make events all about himself." Tsukimitsu said, loosening his tie with the efficient movements of someone who had worn formal clothes enough times to have made peace with them.
Mouri laughed. "He really does. But I'm happy for them." He was. Genuinely. Irie and Atobe had something real; you could see it in the collar adjustment, in the way Irie had looked at Atobe afterward, in the specific quality of Atobe's composure when he thought nobody was watching him watching Irie.
Tsukimitsu nodded. "Yanagi seems to be doing well too."
"He does." Mouri said fondly. The way Renji had been standing with Yukimura and Sanada... settled into it, finally, like something that had been slightly off-center for years had clicked into place. "I'm glad everyone is so happy."
"I wouldn't be surprised if there are more weddings in the future."
Mouri nodded. He thought about Kirihara saying into a journalist's recorder that love was people who showed up and treated you well. He'd read that article three times.
What could he say? Michael Hale could write a good article.
He took off his tie.
"Does it ever make you jealous?"
The question came out quieter than he'd intended. He wasn't sure he'd meant to say it at all.
Tsukimitsu paused in the middle of folding his shirt. "Not really. Seems like a pain in the ass, really."
Mouri laughed. "Yeah, you're right."
He wasn't sure he believed that. He wasn't sure Tsukimitsu did either, entirely. But it was the kind of thing you said when you weren't ready to say the other thing, and Mouri understood that.
He understood Tsukimitsu, mostly. Six years of doubles had given him a working vocabulary for the man; the silences, the frowns, the specific economy of his expressions. He knew what Tsukimitsu meant when he didn't say something almost as well as when he did.
He shrugged his shirt off.
"Being loved unconditionally sounds nice." He said, to the air in front of him.
"You are, though." Tsukimitsu said. "Your siblings. Your father."
"Isn't the condition there that we're family?"
A pause.
"What about me, then?" Tsukimitsu said. "Last I checked we aren't family."
Mouri looked at him. "Are you saying you love me, Tsuki-san?"
Tsukimitsu shrugged. "I've spent the last six years playing doubles with you. Traveling the world with you. It would be stranger if I didn't like you at this point."
"I know you like me!" Mouri laughed. "I don't think we're talking about the same thing."
Tsukimitsu frowned. "I know. But I do love you as well. You're an important person to me."
Mouri smiled. The smile sat on his face and felt true and felt like not quite enough at the same time. "You're important to me too. If you ever do find someone, I hope you won't forget me."
He meant it as a joke. It came out slightly wrong.
Tsukimitsu's frown deepened. "If I was going to find someone I wouldn't be traveling around with you."
"We're doubles partners. Of course you would, at least for tournaments."
"Yeah." Tsukimitsu said. "We're partners. For now."
Mouri looked at him. "What does that mean?"
A pause. Tsukimitsu lay down on his bed, legs hanging off the end in the way they always did because the beds were never quite long enough. He looked at the ceiling.
"I'll have to stop, sooner than later." He said. "My joints aren't going to hold up long term."
Mouri drew in a slow breath. He'd known. He'd been watching Tsukimitsu slow slightly for months, watching him favor certain movements, watching him manage himself with the careful attention of someone who understood his body's limits better than he wanted to. He'd known and he hadn't said anything because some things were easier not to say.
"You have been slowing down a little." He said.
"This should probably be our last season." Tsukimitsu said. "Let's make it a good one."
Mouri didn't fuss. That wasn't what Tsukimitsu needed. He just nodded and lay down, turning onto his side so his back was to the room.
"Yeah." He said. "Let's do that."
The ceiling. The sound of the city outside. The particular quiet of a hotel room that had heard too many things tonight.
"You should look for a new doubles partner." Tsukimitsu said.
Mouri's whole body went rigid.
"No."
"You have too much skill to stop now."
"I'm nothing without you."
"That's not true at all."
Mouri didn't argue. He was too tired and too sad and too aware that arguing would require him to explain why it was true, and he wasn't ready to do that. He wasn't sure he'd ever be ready.
"I don't want to keep playing if you aren't." He said instead.
"...I'm sorry." Tsukimitsu said.
"Don't be. It's better to quit before your body gives in." Mouri said. "We can even stop now, if you're done."
"I want to finish the season out properly."
"Okay." Mouri said. "We'll do that, then."
A silence.
"And we can stay friends." Tsukimitsu said. "Even when it's over."
"Of course." Mouri said.
He heard Tsukimitsu go still on the other side of the room. He stared at the wall and was grateful, for once, that he could fall asleep easily, because he desperately wanted to stop being awake inside this conversation.
He closed his eyes.
And so they slept in the same hotel room on separate beds. Like always.
The hotel had a breakfast buffet that was, objectively, better than it needed to be for a venue of this size. Mouri knew this because he had stayed here before, every Japan Open, for four years running.
He was sitting with a plate he wasn't particularly eating from when he spotted Yanagi Renji in the lobby.
Renji was nursing a coffee, watching Yukimura and Sanada at the buffet with the specific expression of someone who had recently acquired the right to look at something and was still slightly amazed by it. Sanada was moving with a very particular quality that made Mouri look away quickly and focus on his own plate.
"Morning." He said, arriving at Renji's table.
"Senpai." Renji nodded.
"Sleep well?"
"It was an eye-opening experience." Renji said serenely, watching Sanada with what Mouri could only describe as data-brain fondness. "We properly celebrated Seiichi's win."
Mouri looked at Sanada. Looked away. "Is that so."
"My dataset has expanded significantly."
Mouri laughed despite himself. Leave it to Yanagi Renji to describe a significant personal development in those terms.
"I'm happy for you." He said. And he was. He was genuinely happy for all of them; Renji and Yukimura and Sanada, Kirihara and his boyfriends, Atobe and Irie. He was happy for all of them the way you could be happy for people while also sitting with something heavy that had nothing to do with them.
"I'm relieved I didn't allow myself to miss out on all this." Renji said. He set down his coffee and looked at Mouri with the calm directness that had always made him slightly unnerving to be around. "What about you, Mouri-senpai?"
Mouri's smile slipped. Just slightly. "I'm alright."
Renji noted this. Mouri could see him note it, the specific quality of attention that meant Renji was filing something away.
He was always filing something away.
"You don't seem alright." He said. "Are you having a disagreement with Ochi?"
"Not a disagreement." Mouri said. "Just... a conversation that went somewhere I wasn't expecting."
Renji nodded. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Mouri looked at his plate. He thought about the hotel room and the separate beds and of course and the ocean he'd felt between them when he said it. He thought about Tsukimitsu's legs hanging off the end of a bed that wasn't long enough, looking at the ceiling, saying and we can stay friends.
"I don't want to interrupt your time with Yukimura and Sanada." He said.
"Seiichi has decided to stay another week in Kanagawa." Renji said. "So I would be happy to lend you my attention for a while. You look like you might benefit from an outside viewpoint."
Mouri looked at him.
Renji looked back with the patient steadiness of someone who had recently learned something important about the cost of not saying things and was applying that lesson with deliberate care.
"I would appreciate that." Mouri said.
Renji stood, nodding toward Yukimura to signal he'd be a while. Yukimura looked over, looked at Mouri, and his expression did something small and knowing before he turned back to his food.
Mouri fell into step beside Renji as they headed somewhere quieter.
He didn't know what he was going to say. He wasn't sure he had the words for it yet.
But it was a start.
They found a quiet corner of the hotel restaurant, away from the breakfast crowd, and Renji set down his coffee and waited.
Mouri looked at the table.
“This is going to be our last season playing. Me and Tsuki-san. I was kind of avoiding it." He said. "The retirement thing. I kept not bringing it up because-" He stopped. "Because I don't want our time together to end."
Saying it out loud made it all feel more real. Mouri hated it.
Renji nodded. "That's understandable. But your entire relationship doesn't have to end." He said it simply, the way he said most things. Cutting right to the heart of the problem.
In this case that problem was literally Mouri’s heart.
"Most people already believe you have a deeper relationship. It wouldn't be odd for the two of you to make that real." Renji continued.
Mouri shook his head. "Tsuki-san doesn't want that."
Renji raised an eyebrow. "You've asked him?"
"Not outright. But he's not interested in romance. He said so."
"People say things they don't mean." Renji said. "Just last week I told a reporter there was nothing between Seiichi, Genichirou and I."
Mouri smiled despite himself. "Yeah, but Tsuki-san doesn't beat around the bush like that."
"He does always say what he thinks you want to hear, however." Renji said.
Mouri blinked. "...What?"
Renji looked at him steadily. "You should talk to him."
"I still don't-"
"The data indicates that Ochi Tsukimitsu is as in love with you as you are with him." Renji said, with the calm directness of someone reading a conclusion from a spreadsheet. "I could be wrong. But if I'm not, you'd be doing both of you a disservice by not having a conversation."
Mouri felt something shift in his chest. Something uncomfortable and hopeful and terrifying all at once. "I feel like I'm going to lose him no matter what."
"If you don't say anything and he doesn't know," Renji said quietly, "he might decide to leave anyway. Thinking that's what you want."
The thought of that sat between them for a moment.
"I guess we should talk." Mouri said finally. "I just don't know if it's the right time."
Renji patted his back, an unexpectedly gentle gesture from someone who expressed most things through analysis. "You can wait if you need to. There's still plenty of season left."
"Thanks, Renji."
"I want you to be happy." Renji said. Simply. Like it was data.
Mouri felt his eyes do something embarrassing.
Renji, to his credit, pretended not to notice. "Did you want to join us for lunch? I'm sure Seiichi would be glad to see you. You could help me tease Genichirou."
Mouri laughed. A real one, this time. "No, I should go. I was thinking about visiting my dad."
"Family grounds us." Renji nodded. "Have a safe trip to Shanghai. Message me from time to time."
"I won't forget." Mouri said.
He watched Renji head back to his people- back to Yukimura and Sanada and the new configuration of them that had clicked into place- and felt something settle.
Not resolved. Not fixed. But something.
A direction, maybe.
The Mouri family home in Kanagawa smelled like it always did, cooking and old wood and the particular warmth of a house that had been lived in thoroughly for a long time.
His father was in the kitchen when Mouri arrived. His sister Hanako was already there, sitting at the table with tea, and his brother Keisuke was stretched out in the living room making noise about something on television. Everything exactly as it always was.
Mouri felt something unknot in his chest just from walking through the door.
"Jusaburo!" His father looked up from the stove. "You didn't say you were coming."
"Surprise visit." Mouri said, dropping his bag and accepting the pat on the shoulder that was his father's version of a hug.
His father had to reach up high for it.
Hanako looked at him over her tea with the expression of an older sister who had been reading him accurately since birth. "You look tired."
"I'm fine."
"You look tired." She said again, as if he hadn't spoken.
Keisuke appeared in the doorway. "Hey, little brother. Where's the giant?"
"Shanghai." Mouri said. "Eventually. We had a few days."
"And you didn't bring him?" Keisuke said, with the aggrieved tone of someone who had been personally inconvenienced. "Dad made gyoza."
"I didn't know Dad was making gyoza."
"We always make gyoza when Ochi-kun comes." His father said, from the stove, with complete sincerity.
Mouri stared at the back of his father's head.
"...You make gyoza for Tsuki-san."
"He's a growing boy." His father said.
"He's twenty-three."
"He's still growing." His father said, with the unshakeable conviction of a man who had decided something and was not going to be argued out of it.
Hanako caught Mouri's eye and smiled into her tea.
They lit incense after dinner, the four of them gathered in front of the small altar in the corner of the living room where their mother's photograph sat. It was a quiet ritual, unhurried. His father's hands steady. Keisuke unusually still for once. Hanako with her eyes closed.
Mouri watched the smoke curl upward and thought about his mother, the way he always did here; not with the sharp grief of the early years but with something softer. The shape of her. The way she'd laughed.
He thought about what she would have thought of Tsukimitsu.
She would have loved him immediately, he thought. Seen straight through the composure to whatever was underneath and decided it was worth her time. She'd been like that.
His father put a hand briefly on his shoulder. Said nothing. Just stood beside him for a moment.
Later, when Keisuke had gone back to the television and it was just Mouri and Hanako at the kitchen table, she refilled his tea and looked at him.
"Tell me what's going on." She said.
"Nothing's going on."
"Jusaburo."
He looked at his tea.
"Tsuki-san's joints are going." He said finally. "He's going to retire at the end of this season."
Hanako was quiet for a moment. "And you?"
"I don't want to play without him."
"That's not what I asked." She said, gently.
He looked at the table. The familiar grain of the wood. The chip in the edge that had been there since he was seven.
"I don't know what happens to us when tennis ends." He said. "I don't know if there's an us that exists outside of doubles."
Hanako watched him. "Do you want there to be?"
He didn't answer. He didn't need to.
She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. "You know Dad already considers him family."
"Dad makes gyoza for him."
"Dad has never made gyoza for any of the people Keisuke has dated." Hanako said. "I think that's fairly clear communication."
Mouri laughed despite himself.
From the living room, their father's voice joined in. "Jusaburo. Tell Ochi-kun to come next time. There will be gyoza."
Mouri put his face in his hands.
"I'll tell him." He called back.
Hanako squeezed his hand. "Talk to him." She said quietly. "Whatever happens, you won't lose him. That man has been choosing to stay beside you for six years. That doesn't stop because the tennis does."
Mouri looked at her.
She looked back with the particular steadiness of someone who had been watching her younger brother for a long time and had made her own conclusions.
"Okay." He said.
She nodded, and let go of his hand, and refilled both their teas.
The next morning he said goodbye to his father at the door. His father pressed a container of leftover gyoza into his hands without explanation.
"For Ochi-kun." He said.
"Dad, he's not-"
"For Ochi-kun." His father repeated.
Mouri took the gyoza.
He wasn’t sure how they’d find time to eat them before their international flight but the thought was certainly nice.
The airport was busy in the way airports always were, that organized chaos of people going somewhere, the particular mix of anticipation and exhaustion that lived in departure terminals. Mouri had spent enough time in airports over the last six years that they felt almost like home.
He spotted Tsukimitsu by the check-in counter. Something in his chest that had been unsettled since the hotel room settled slightly, just from seeing him standing there.
"Hey." He said, arriving beside him.
Tsukimitsu looked up. Then at the container Mouri was carrying. "What's that."
"Gyoza." Mouri said. "From my dad. For you."
A pause.
"For me." Tsukimitsu repeated.
"He made them specifically. When I said you weren't coming he made me bring them anyway." Mouri held the container out. "He says you're still growing."
Something moved across Tsukimitsu's expression. Something small and not quite his usual composure and gone quickly. He took the container.
"How is your family?" He asked.
"I told them about our retirement." Mouri said.
Tsukimitsu was quiet.
"I told them I didn't want to." Mouri said. "Play with anyone else."
"I know." Tsukimitsu said. He was looking at the check-in counter rather than at Mouri, which meant Tsukimitsu was paying very close attention to something while appearing not to. "I'm sorry I can't stay beside you forever."
"Don't be." Mouri said. "It's better to stop before your body makes you." He paused. "I just don't know what happens after. To us. Whether there's an us that exists outside of doubles."
The airport moved around them. Someone announced a gate change over the intercom. A child was making noise somewhere to Mouri's left.
"There is." Tsukimitsu said.
Mouri looked at him.
Tsukimitsu was still looking at the check-in counter. His jaw was set in the specific way it got when he was saying something that required effort.
"Our tennis is special." He said. "But it's not the only thing. You're not..." A pause. "You're more important to me than the doubles."
Mouri felt something happen in his chest. He wasn't sure he had a word for it.
"Tsuki-san." He said.
"I'd feel the same." Tsukimitsu said, still not looking at him. "If it was the other way around. I want to be clear about that."
"You would feel the same." Mouri repeated slowly.
"Yes."
"About me specifically."
Tsukimitsu finally looked at him. Direct and steady and slightly pained in the way of someone who had said the thing and was now waiting to see what happened next.
"You're a special case." He said.
Mouri looked at him for a long moment. At the set of his jaw and the specific quality of his stillness and six years of knowing exactly what Tsukimitsu meant when he didn't quite say something.
He knew what this was.
"No more separate beds?" He said.
Tsukimitsu looked away. He was not blushing. He was a man who was very deliberately not blushing. "No more separate beds."
"Okay." Mouri said.
Not a big declaration. Not tears. Just okay, standing in a departure terminal with a container of his father's gyoza between them, the gate twenty minutes away, everything quietly rearranging itself into something new.
"I'll message the hotel in Shanghai." Tsukimitsu said. "To change the reservation."
"I know you will." Mouri said.
He did know. That was Tsukimitsu, finding the practical thing and doing it immediately, expressing everything through logistics. Six years of airports and hotel rooms and coffee orders and separate beds that weren't going to be separate anymore.
"I'm going to get us something to drink." Mouri said. "Do you want anything?"
"Coffee." Tsukimitsu said. "Black."
"I know." Mouri said.
He headed toward the airport shop, not quite skipping but close. Behind him Tsukimitsu was already on his phone, presumably already messaging the hotel, already making the change.
Mouri smiled at a display of overpriced airport snacks.
His mother would have loved him, he thought. She would have seen straight through the composure and decided it was worth her time.
She had good taste.
The airport shop was small and overstocked in the way airport shops always were, every available surface covered with things people had forgotten to pack or decided they needed at the last minute. Mouri grabbed a Pocari Sweat refrigerated section and was heading for a display of iced coffee when he nearly walked into someone standing in the drinks aisle with their phone pointed at a row of tea bottles.
Michael Hale. Using Google Lens on Japanese convenience store drinks.
Mouri giggled before he could help it. "Having trouble?"
Hale turned. "Ah, Mouri! You seem to be doing well." He lowered his phone with the expression of a man who had been caught doing something undignified and was choosing to move past it. "I was hoping to find sweetened tea. It all looks the same to me."
"Green or black?" Mouri replied in English honed by years of travel, scanning the shelf. "Milk or no?"
"That's a lot of choices for some iced tea." Hale said. "Black, no milk, I guess."
Mouri selected a bottle and handed it over. Hale headed for the register looking relieved.
"So are you headed to Shanghai too?"
"Of course." Mouri said. "Tsuki-san and I want to get some training in before the Masters."
"I'm sure you'll do great. You're always top performers." Hale smiled. "You two are definitely two of a kind."
"We're actually very different." Mouri said.
"Yeah, but in a way that harmonizes well." Hale said. "Good synergy."
"Yeah." Mouri said.
His heart hurt a little.
Hale noticed. Of course he did. Fifteen years of covering this circuit had given him a very finely tuned sense for the thing underneath the thing, and Mouri had never been particularly good at hiding what was on his face.
"Is everything okay with you two?" Hale asked, with the carefully casual tone of a man who had smelled something and was being tactful about it.
Mouri fixed his expression. "Ah, yeah. Great, even. It's just..." He looked through the shop window to where Tsukimitsu was sitting, phone out, presumably dealing with the hotel reservation. "Good things don't last forever."
Hale was quiet for a moment. "Are you hinting that the end is coming for you two?"
"I really shouldn't be telling you this kind of stuff." Mouri said.
"I can keep it off the record for now." Hale said. "Just give me a call when you're ready to go public."
"Most people can already see the changes." Mouri said, almost to himself.
"I'd just like to handle the actual announcement, if you're okay with it." Hale said. "When the time comes."
Mouri frowned. "Tsuki-san's health isn't a news story."
"No." Hale agreed. "But you two calling it quits would be."
Mouri paid for his drinks. He thought about the Kirihara article. About Atobe and Irie. About everyone Hale had covered with care over the years, including people who hadn't asked him to.
"What does it matter who covers it." He said. "It's bad enough it's happening at all."
Hale nodded. He didn't push. That was the thing about Hale — he knew when not to push.
"Will the two of you be moving on to other things, then?" He asked.
"We haven't discussed it." Mouri said. Then, because it was true, "Well. We're starting to."
"Good luck." Hale said simply.
Mouri nodded and headed back out into the terminal.
Tsukimitsu looked up when he arrived. Then at Mouri's face.
"Are you okay?"
"Just Hale-san snooping around." Mouri said, handing him his coffee. Black. He didn't need to ask.
Tsukimitsu accepted it. "Just tell him there's no story. He has to give up eventually."
"He's already figured out we're calling it quits."
Tsukimitsu sighed. It was a short, controlled sound. "Well. There are worse people to have announce it." He looked at his coffee. "Try to keep him away from our personal lives though. The man's a menace."
"I'll try." Mouri said. "My face gives away too much."
Tsukimitsu looked at him. "It's cute though."
Mouri felt his face do something warm and immediate and completely beyond his control. "Ah. Thanks."
Tsukimitsu took his hand. Quietly. Like it was something he'd been meaning to do and had simply decided to do now.
"Relax." He said. "Try not to worry about things."
Mouri looked at their hands. At the departure board above them. At Tsukimitsu, who was watching him with the steady attention of someone who had been paying close attention for a very long time.
"It's the end of our professional career." Tsukimitsu said. "Not the end of us."
"I know." Mouri said. "I just don't know what I'll do afterward."
"I'm thinking of going to university."
Mouri considered this. "That suits you."
"Come with me."
Mouri blinked. "Studying is..."
"Something you can do if you apply yourself." Tsukimitsu said, with the specific tone of someone who had already decided this and was not entertaining counterarguments.
Mouri laughed despite himself. "I suppose you're right."
"We'll get an apartment together." Tsukimitsu said. "Wherever you want to live."
It was the most words Tsukimitsu had said consecutively about the future in the entire six years Mouri had known him. Each sentence landing quietly, one after another, building something.
"Maybe Kanagawa." Mouri said.
"That works for me."
Mouri looked at him. At the set of his jaw and the specific quality of his stillness and the hand still holding his in the middle of a departure terminal.
"I wish we were alone right now." He said.
"We will be soon." Tsukimitsu said.
Mouri sighed and looked at the departure board. Gate 34. Boarding in forty minutes.
"Just have to get through a whole plane ride."
"We're in first class." Tsukimitsu said. "Can you imagine doing this in economy?"
Mouri laughed. It came out slightly watery but mostly real.
It was going to be okay.
He was fairly certain it was going to be okay.