Chapter Text
My name is Kawamura Hifumi. I attend Hoshimi High School, first year. I’m shy, have a small group of friends, and I love Boy’s Love!
A soft, spring breeze flew through the air around Hoshimi High School as Kawamura walked by the long, open windows that lined the classroom halls. Outside, leaves fluttered down from the treetops, casting a light and airy mood that traveled through not only the school, but the student body as a whole. The chatter in the halls was commonplace, but there was a certain calmness to it that made Kawamura at ease.
It was quite often where the noise and loudness of her peers would give her anxiety, or heighten her nerves high enough for her to go into a panic. As she neared her seat in class, though, she felt at peace. It was almost a shame the school year was nearing its completion, and the next year would be filled with the uncertainty of classes and classmates all over again. She had just gotten into the rhythm of it all!
“Good morning, Kawamura-chan!” Hamaoka says with a bright smile, moving aside for her. Kawamura greets her with a kind smile and a wave in return, taking her seat in-between her and Okuda.
Not only were Hamaoka and Okuda her closest friends, but they equally shared a love for Boy’s Love and gossip just as much, if not sometimes more, than Kawamura. A love that they discussed almost every morning before class, this one being no different. Hamaoka began the gossip train, and Kawamura propped her sketchbook open. The outline of various male figures became visible, mostly half-finished line arts, but some sketches that had more detail and features. That’s when Kawamura tuned into the conversation fully.
“-- oh Kawamura-chan! You’ll love this, I swear,” Hamaoka says, grinning behind her hand almost mischievously, making a show of play whispering to her. “I heard that Hirose Aiki and Sakamoto Hana broke up last Friday!”
Kawamura’s gaze naturally turns to the opposite side of the room, where Hirose Aiki was sitting, smiling as another one of their classmates - Takeuchi - was happily chattering his ear off with a broad grin. She tilts her head, studying him for a brief moment before turning back to the group. She didn’t really know Hirose very well, truthfully. She knew he was popular, had a lot of friends, and was usually nice to her.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Kawamura supplies to the conversation, giving a look of confusion when Hamaoka’s only response is a huff.
“No it isn’t!” Hamaoka replies, but then she ducks down when her cheeks turn pink. “I mean, yes, it’s awful, but now Hirose is on the market again~”
Kawamura’s eyes gleam as she nods enthusiastically, already opening to another page of her sketchbook and grabbing her pen. She had already started sketching the outline of Hirose’s profile into the book when Hamaoka continued to talk again.
“So, who do you think he’d be good with?” she asks, an even brighter shine in her eyes then Kawamura had.
“... I think him and Takeuchi-kun are the obvious pick, hm?” Okuda says, her fingers steepling and her chin resting at the crux of them, staring across the room now. “But… Don’t you have a thing with him, Yuuka-chan?”
Hamaoka simply waves her hand in dismissal, a grin spreading on her face that she tries to hide blatantly behind her hand and a quick swish of her hair.
“Oh, he’d do anything for me if it meant we would hang out more…” she says with an evil tone, which makes both Okuda and Kawamura sigh.
“... Even date another guy?” Kawamura asks, tilting her head as Hamaoka shakes her head in somewhat defeat. But then she lights up again, slamming her hand on the poor desktop.
“Wait! Doesn’t he have some other friend in a different class! That guy-- Wasn’t his name like, Oomori?”
Okuda nods sagely, a soft smile forming on her lips.
“Yeah. I think it’s his childhood friend from middle school. So… Friends to lovers? That would be cute.”
Both Okuda and Hamaoka turn to Kawamura, who had the tip of her pencil stuck in her mouth, deep in thought as she stared at the rough sketch in front of her. Their gazes both intensify, causing her to look up, smiling softly.
“What about… Nakamura-kun?” she says, turning to the side once more to stare at the boy from across the room.
Nakamura Okuto had stopped at Hirose’s desk the moment he walked in, vibrating with anxiety. The tips of his ears were red, barely hidden by the outline of his jet black hair. He shook even harder with nerves as Hirose clapped a shoulder on his shoulder, laughing at something he had said. This only prompted a downright terrified laugh to escape Nakamura’s lips.
The three girls watch in silence, judging the two boys with an intent gaze.
“He… Had me draw him some Boy’s Love. Between him and Hirose-kun,” Kawamura says quietly, only to the two girls in front of her. This catches both of their attention. Hamaoka slams her hands on the desk again, doing the worst whisper yell of her life.
“WHAT?!”
She then glances around to make sure no one was paying attention before tugging Okuda just as close as she was, both of the girls nearly pressing their faces into Kawamura.
“Why didn’t you say anything?!”
Kawamura laughs nervously, rubbing the back of her neck as this turns more into an interrogation of her than a discussion.
“He told me not to… But look!” she says, and points at the two boys.
Nakamura had pulled out a pen to write something down, and all three of their eyes lit up. Save for the color, it was a near identical pen to the one that Hirose had sat on his desk.
“Matching pens…” Okuda points out the unspoken, obvious conclusion, eyes glinting. Hamaoka seemed a few seconds away from yell-whispering again, but held it in, turning her head up.
“But… But! Nakamura is so… Weird?” she says a little lamely. “And Hirose is like a cool guy. It’d never work! Nakamura would just… Be weird all over the place. And ruin it!”
Kawamura was already sketching out the outline of another figure in her sketchbook, though, working on the details of Nakamura’s face as he sat in his seat. His face was bright red, and a dumb smile was plastered on his face. Hamaoka and Okuda spend the next moments of quiet studying him with an intense glare, one strong enough to get him to glance over at them a little nervously.
“Okay… Maybe I see it,” Hamaoka finally concedes. “But! Nakamura is still a weirdo! He’d never make it happen. He’s hopeless.”
“Maybe he needs someone to help him…” Okuda says, now looking away from the boy to look at Kawamura, whose pen had stopped.
“Someone to push him in the right direction…” Kawamura finishes, smiling a little more softly.
“Ladies,” Hamaoka says, grinning widely. “Why don’t we work some magic?”
“... Our magic is hopeless!”
The rest of the day had gone by with little fanfare, and it was in the midst of the other students gathering their things and chatting loudly that the three girls sat in one of the homeroom corners. A dark aura settled over their faces as they conspired, a cloud thick enough around them that seemed to deter most students. Most of them were happier just to steer clear of the plotting girls. And as the last stragglers left, Kawamura cleared her throat.
In her lap, propped open, was a page that was simply titled: “The Hirose-Nakamura BL Project”. Bullet points lined the side of the page, ready for notes to be taken.
… The only problem was that they had hit a wall before they had even started.
“We don’t know anything about either of them!” Hamaoka grumbles, holding her face to her hands as her cheeks were bright red from seething. The other two can only watch as she gets angrier and angrier. “And how are we supposed to get closer to them?!”
“Well… I’m sort of friends with Nakamura-kun. We hang out… Sometimes,” Kawamura says, though her knowledge beyond him also liking Boy’s Love was scarce. “Didn’t they… Both hold that octopus once? And they have octopus pens! So maybe they… Like octopi? Together? Gosh this is so much harder than just speculation…”
“Hirose likes that indie pop band! Aquapet! Maybe they both like music!”
“I’ve never seen them listen to it together though…”
“Do they even… Talk together outside of class?”
Kawamura unhelpfully writes ’music?’ under one of the bullets, sighing as she starts scribbling the points darker and darker.
“Maybe we can go and spy on them…? But that’d just make us weirdos! GAHH!”
As Hamaoka throws her hands up in the air, the three girls are startled when a pair of guys approach them. With his usual grin plastered on his face, Takeuchi Kota approaches, tossing back his hair as he leans against Hamaoka’s desk. A very disapproving Mukai Ryou stands behind him, shaking his hand with his palm in his face.
“Having some trouble, my lady?” Takeuchi says, putting on a face that looked straight out of a cheesy romcom. “There is nothing your boyfriend can’t fix.”
A smile plasters onto Hamaoka’s face, but then her gaze darts back over to Okuda and Kawamura, a much more mischievous grin spreading across her lips.
“Actually…” she says, swooning to the side so that her head rests gently on Takeuchi’s shoulder. This prompts a streak of red to cross his cheeks and he nods enthusiastically for her to continue. “I really, really could use your help…”
“Anything! Anything my precious rose!” Takeuchi shouts, settling his hand on her shoulder with far more bravado than he was ever warranted.
“Well…” Hamaoka continues, almost teasingly slow, to fully draw the boy into her grasp. “You’re close friends with Hirose Aiki, right?”
“Do you want me to ditch him?! I'll throw his butt out of our friend group if he’s causing you trouble!” Takeuchi blusters, causing Mukai to facepalm harder, gritting his teeth in annoyance.
“No~ I want to know about him and Nakamura Okuto…” Hamaoka says, batting her eyelashes. “Do they hang out a whole lot?”
“Nakamura…?” Takeuchi says questioningly, tilting his head. “... I think they went to the movies over the weekend? It’s all Hirose would talk about.”
Takeuchi then steps back, taking the group of girls more seriously. His gaze drifts down to the open sketchbook, particularly where Kawamura has put ’movies’ next to one of the bullets.
“Why do you want to know that…?”
Hamaoka then reaches forward, forcefully closing the sketchbook, causing Kawamura to yelp as her fingers and pen are trapped underneath.
“No reason!” she says sharply, smiling more sweetly at him as she gives him a look. “How about… If you see anything, like, they hang out together, would you be so dear as to tell me?It would mean so much to me~”
Takeuchi’s face goes beat red as she leans against his shoulder again, and he stammers out a quick ‘okay!’ before fleeing, Ryou casting an assessing glance at the girls before walking after him. There is a moment of quiet before Okuda claps a hand appraisingly on a beaming Hamaoka’s shoulder.
“Nicely done,” is her only comment as she turns back to Kawamura, who is nursing her hurt fingers and flipping the sketchbook back open.
“It could’ve done with hurting me less…”
“But~ The less people who actually know the plan, the better, right?” Hamaoka says with a broad grin, holding her arms out. “And now we have spies on the inside!”
Kawamura quickly jots ’spies’ on a separate line, nodding with a growing smile.
Maybe the plan to get Hirose Aiki and Nakamura Okuto was easier than they all thought…
By the time the three girls had left the school and parted ways, Kawamura was feeling a little drained. All the excitement of their scheming had left her with a lot of new ideas, sure, but it also left her brain a little frazzled. She exhaled as she walked, allowing the cool breeze to pass through her hair.
When she passed by the junction near her house that the convenience store sat on, though, her heart nearly leapt out of her skin. Standing in the window, assessing the candy bars along one of the rows, was Hirose! And… Nakamura!
Hirose was leaning closer to Nakamura, talking to him animatedly as his eyes looked over the rows of candies. He looked more casual, the front of his button-down open to reveal a shirt with ‘Aquapet!’ plastered on it in gaudi lettering. The longer he pushed against him, the closer Nakamura seemed to explode, his eyes anywhere but on Hirose.
Kawamura stood there for a few quick moments, trying to take in as much as she could before Nakamura’s eyes lifted to the window, and she fled, her footsteps pounding against the pavement. She didn’t slow until the store was a block behind her, and she huffed quietly, gripping her hands against her sides.
Then she pauses, turning to look behind her with an air of confusion. Because she could’ve sworn, for a moment, it looked like they were….
She shakes her head firmly, face now pink from both the exertion and the thought. There was no way! They hadn’t even really been friends yet. She was just seeing things.
Although when she got home, she wrote ’holding hands’ as one of the bullets, planning to discuss it the next day with the slowly growing shipping fanclub that the two boys had unknowingly created.