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"Have you ever gone to a dance?" Kou asks, and Mitsuba immediately wants to strangle the boy for it.
Have you ever gone to a dance?
As if Mitsuba's ever wanted to go to a dance. (He would, actually, but he'd rather die a second time than admit it.)
"I'm dead," Mitsuba replies, sprawling out on the ground. "A school dance isn't my biggest worry right now."
It's a beautiful day in the land between the living and the dead, and Kou felt the need to ruin it by reminding Mitsuba that he's dead, and none of this is real.
"But do you want it to be?"
What an odd question.
"I mean, you're dead," Kou gestures at Mitsuba, with his translucent limbs that fade at the edges, like a waterlogged photo that's been kept long past when it was supposed to be thrown out, or hidden away.
"You've gotten over the biggest hurdle."
"By dying."
"Yeah!" Kou grins at him. "Now you don't have to fear anything!"
(No, Mitsuba thinks. Now I have you to worry about.)
"Anyways. I don't think I would go to the dance, even if I was alive. No one would notice me."
Mitsuba smiled tentatively.
"I don't have any friends, remember? You'd probably be the popular guy - "
And he can already imagine it, this illusion of a life that he can't look at too closely because Mitsuba's scared that it will shatter; fade away in the way that only dreams can - sun-bleached and shining when held to the light of day.
" - you'd be the center of the class, and Hanako-kun would be trying to act all romantic with Nene, but he's hopeless at it and she'd get all flustered, and - "
"You've spent a lot of time thinking about this, haven't you?" Kou's jiggling his knee and pretending that the twitches are out of habit rather than nerves; and Mitsuba knows, suddenly, that he's spoken in too much detail and for too long. It couldn't be more obvious that even before he was a ghost, he was living on the outskirts of the crowd.
"No more than you have, probably." Mitsuba places a hand on Kou's knee, just to stop him from moving so much, and Kou freezes.
"Sorry." Mitsuba quickly pulls away, and how has he managed to fuck this up even worse?
The breeze sways, seeming perfectly content with the situation at hand. "No - I was just shocked," Kou says, grabbing at Mitsuba's hand and placing both of them back on his knee. Kou must realize how strange this looks, and now he's the one stepping back while Mitsuba pulls him forward. It's a useless game of push and pull, of receding like the tide when the other gets too close.
“Tell me more about the dance you were thinking of?”
Kou asks it like a plea, almost like he enjoys hearing Mitsuba's fantasies.
“Why?”
“I’m curious.”
And that is reason enough for Mitsuba to let the walls crumble and speak, and he thinks that he might’ve let them down earlier if all it had taken was a single push.
————————————————————
Two hours later, and the former field is unrecognizable in the night, littered with Christmas lights and shiny wrappers that Kou insisted on “for the atmosphere”.
Mitsuba had opined that it looked like trash, and Kou kept putting up the decorations with that same half-smile on his face.
It’s dark, now, but neither of them moves to change the light.
“Take my hand?”
Mitsuba’s looking up at Kou with wide eyes, and a blush is slowly creeping up the blonde's cheeks.
"Not in a weird way," he clarifies, although that really isn't clearing up any of Mitsuba's questions. "I was just wondering if you wanted to dance."
"..."
"Since you never got one of your own."
Perhaps Mitsuba has this all wrong, because the imaginary Kou that he had laid out in his mind as the golden prince of Kamome is nothing more than a boy asking him to dance by the light of the stars.
"I'm not very good," he says hesitantly, but Kou's already pulling him up by the arm and onto his feet, and it's obvious now that neither of them now how to dance. Kou's trying to lead, but Mitsuba's never been taught how to follow - and like before, it's a breathless, exhilarating game of offending and defending.
"You don't know how to dance!" Mitsuba says, mock annoyed, but it's hard to hide the laughter in his voice.
"You don't either, Mitsu, but it's too late now."
Mitsu - when had that happened? Was it when they were lying in the grass, when Mitsuba had placed their hands together on his knee, that one definable moment when Kou had crossed over into familiar.
————————————————————
Kou and Mitsuba are lying on the ground side-by-side, and the horizon is tinted with faint streaks of pink and orange. Daylight colors, Mitsuba thinks, and then feels a sudden, rising dread in the pit of his stomach. They are not meant to see the sun.
"Don't worry, Mitsu." Kou flashes him a grin. "We can take it as it comes, okay?"
Mitsuba wants to get up right then and there; grab Kou and shake him by the shoulders, tell him that it is not, in fact, fine that this is the last night they'll have together until the moon is full again.
It's a waste of time, though, and he doesn't want to use up even a second of what he has left.
So Mitsuba stretches out a hand, and interlocks his fingers with Kou's.
"I wanted to do this tonight," he says, and that's the part of the fantasy that appealed to him the most. Being walked home by a date after the party's over, the evening dew settling on his skin in a silver sheen. Day and night are reversed; have switched their roles, and the sun signals Mitsuba that it's time to sink into the shadows once more.
"We can do this," Kou replies, squeezing Mitsuba's fingers with his own.
The unspoken for now hangs in the air between them, but it is overshadowed by the hope of a next time, maybe, too.
Next time, we can meet like this again, and dance under the moon.