Chapter Text
The process of moving to college had been cathartic for Nakamura for a many number of reasons, not least of which being the effervescent and exploding desire in him for a blank slate new start. He was always set on going to college in America, even if it meant a less prestigious name brand, so to get into, not just any school, but Harvard University for Integrative Biology? It was more than a dream come true.
Every high school misery sloughed away like a frog shedding skin. All his many woes were now like shadows as he was off to a strange land he hoped he would never return from. Of course he would miss his home, his mother, his sister, and the loose array of people he could call his friends, but—in being honest to himself—he couldn't bring himself beyond more than a day's worth of care.
In his hometown—in all Japan, he figured—all he could be was himself: that quiet Nakamura who would never be much of anything, never get married, never do anything of significance. Abroad, he could be anyone, be anyone, be with someone. Wouldn't it be nice to be with someone, he wondered to himself as he ay flat on his bed wide awake after his Harvard acceptance, instead of just dreaming of it?
Even as his heart twisted itself into increasingly tighter knots for one boy in particular, Nakamura began to think on glittering futures instead of glittering eyes. Thinking of classes. Syllabi. meeting his new roommate. Would he be cute? No, that would be bad, he thought to himself. That would be a worst-case scenario. Even in his deepest fantasies, roomcest was still a no-go.
Nevertheless, his heart persisted in its joy. When he broke the news to his aforementioned loose array of friends, they all responded with joy and excitement for him the way he responded with joy and excitement to their results; most joyous and excited out of all the array, however—and of course he couldn't help but notice—was the glittering-eyed chestnut-haired rosy-cheeked everything Aiki Hirose.
He still remembered what Hirose had said that day. "You're crazy! That's crazy! You—wow! And here I thought I was something, and you're going to Harvard? I can't believe it! I—" It was the closest to speechless he had ever made Hirose, and he remembered wishing right then and there that his radiant expression would be frozen forever inside a picture. As it fell out, it didn't need to; Nakamura still had not forgotten it.
The summer moved on; Nakamura continued working the same odd jobs, part-times, and research ventures that he had figured got him into Harvard, finding himself with very few people to see throughout it all, and Hirose ended up working at a local convenience store, rotating through friends and faces with a regularity that might've driven a less lovesick boy to jealousy.
By summer's fading glow, Nakamura remembered making one final choice after he had finished packing; did he go to the convenience store where he knew Hirose would be, or would he prepare for a good night's sleep before he got on that one-way plane to Boston, Massachusetts? What would've been a simple question to him years or even a year ago now left him rife with doubt.
On one hand, the entirety of Nakamura's non-academic life had been dominated by Hirose—at every moment he wasn't there Nakamura would wish his return and every moment he was he would wish for even more. Every act he had taken up, every facade he had delicately painted around the truth to his being, was all in service of Hirose Aiki. There's something pathetic to say about that, Nakamura thought, but I'm not smart enough for it.
Why wouldn't he go see the Earth around which he orbited? Why wouldn't he go see the axis upon which he spun?
On the other hand, if Nakamura was thinking logically, there were two things he prioritized above all else and, while one of them was indeed that chestnut-haired brilliant-smiled Hirose Aiki, the other was a clean break. If he was to go to to America, start anew, be someone completely new, then he needed it to be complete.
No one else from his school got into Harvard or even a school in Boston. It was a good start for him, but to call that "not enough" would be laughable. No. From all the years, all the soul-crushing years filled with soul-crushing months filled with soul-crushing days, he needed to be gone in body and spirit both. And part of that meant departing from Hirose, too, no?
It was the question he spun about inside his mind, examined from every angle, and, in the end, decided upon; he would go to sleep. He looked at Hirose's instagram—Nakamura had, at some point throughout the years, somehow accumulated enough acquaintances such as would require one—and, giving it one final scroll as if he hadn't poured over it before in endless scrutiny a thousand times before, decided it would be over.
He did not see Hirose that final night, and, though he waited for a message the next day both at the airport and on the plane, he received none. It was the last specter of hope, now fading in the morning light: that he might be wished a farewell.
In the end, it was what he needed; a clean break. He set his eyes on the future and, with his parents salivating at the sight of Harvard, he decided to join in their enthusiasm.
Nakamura's first year was a dream come true for him. His roommate was a nice boy from New York City named Phillipe who was thankfully not his type, and faster than he had expected he found a steady group of people he was truly confident he could call his friends.
And above all else, the most shocking part was how quick he felt it fine to be himself; he thought it would take longer, but after only a month Nakamura considered himself to be the type of person his high school self would look up to, throwing himself into whatever he could and even finding his way into the scariest room of his life: a Queer Students Association general meeting with only 8 other people. He made friends fast and confidently with other people unsimilar and similar to him in every way that mattered faster than he could think to write home.
Running the gamut from undergraduate journals through freelance newspaper writings, various society meetings, the Japanese student union, and even a BL/QueerLit club he ended up founding with one of his friends that grew to a terrifying 27-member club and weekly commitment, it was safe to say that Nakamura was thriving.
Throughout his flyingly fast first year, what Nakamura realized more than anything was how incredibly freeing it was to be out of love. His studies were better than ever, he was a well known name in the IntBio program both for faculty and students, on track to already begin devising an Honors thesis by his second year. He was—even as his awkward and anxious heart protested against it—well-liked.
He had fleeting crushes, but nothing so serious as to consume his life the way Hirose had for so many years. It was when he was with friends, all drinking together in his room following a particularly brutal midterm (one that Nakamura was sure he aced but, out of courtesy for his friends, bemoaned all the same), talking on and on about his high school that he realized how beautiful his life was now. And when one the friends he didn't even know was gay began to splay himself across Nakamura's lap freely, and when he felt no terror nor anxiety and simply tousled his hair? He knew he was far away from home.
Nakamura and Alex did not last for longer than a month and everyone but them knew that to be the case from minute one. Retrospectively, it was an insane experience that it even happened in the first place, but it was just another contour line in the painting of his life that made it all the more vivid and beautiful.
And Sophomore year? It started out as more of the same. He lived in a three-person suite with Jun, a gaysian-American from San Francisco who he would often while nights away gossiping, and Daniel, an Engineering major who was perhaps the busiest person on campus, still finding time for drinks and parties. They decorated their room as minimally as they all desired, and turned their suite into perhaps Nakamura's favorite place of all time.
One day a thought bubbled up through Nakamura's brain as he lay in bed, ambulating in that penumbra between sleep and wake. It floated across and impressed his mind until it popped and released itself in all its glory right as he fell asleep.
And who said you had to wake up from dreams?
It took until November for something to go wrong, the way the world had tended to work for Nakamura up until this intoxicating bliss, and it came in the form of a LINE message, an app that Nakamura had hither-to only used to communicate to his parents and sister during his college days and did neither regularly. Every other chat on LINE had been abandoned to the waste of dates encompassing a whole year's breadth. Even Hirose's, until:
Hirose:
Hi Nakamura!
It's been so long!!
You're going to Harvard, right?
Seeing the message from the boy that once sparked so much joy (Joy? Terror? Love?) in him now chilled his heart. He was standing in the middle of checkout at the Harvard Book Store, picking up a textbook for his upcoming oceanography class and a copy of a BL manga he had already read that he would be gifting to his friend Lisa when he read it. It nearly made him drop his phone. He remained composed as all the memories flew in—a difficult task—and he put his phone down. He would respond to it later. He would think about Hirose later. About the life that Nakamura's life had once revolved around. About the boy. Later.
But as he walked from the bookstore to his suite in Randolph Hall, however, now became later sooner than Nakamura appreciated and it was as if no time was passing at all. Even as the sun brought the sky from blue to burning pink, Nakamura could not make rhyme nor reason out of the mystery that was his missing time. He had learned about this in physics long ago: gravitational time dilation. Appropriately massive objects bend and slow down time around themselves. Was this a big thing? It was just a question. Why would it be a big thing?
Too many thoughts overcrowded his brain but one broke through all the noise with all the terror and gravitas that it deserved.
Why am I acting like a high schooler again?
And so the conclusion of this terrifying stupor was, as it so often tended to be, the straightforward path. Nakamura responded to the text.
You:
Ye
Why
Instantly the bubbles prognosticating another text appeared and Nakamura threw his phone across the room. It was all too much and he couldn't bear it and what was worse than not knowing how to bear something was not knowing why it was unbearable in the first place. All he wanted was a clean break and if it were anyone else from his life: if it was Kawamura or even Aokiyama it might have been strange but all the more welcome. They might have even chatted on the phone. But for it to be Hirose, of all people? That Hirose Aiki now infamous in his circles as Nakamura's first virulent crush?
It was all too much and Nakamura ended up missing his first laboratory he'd ever missed that night owing to an overlong nap. In his dreams he was again in high school with the only thing to look forward to being the boy. Always the boy. It had been a while since he'd had a Hirose dream, especially one so vivid, but in this one Hirose took him by the hand and walked with him through the trees of the yard. The world began to warp in the shadow-mottled haze of dream, but Hirose was as cuttingly charming and romantic as he had always been in dream.
Right as he spoke, the world ripped itself to shreds and Nakamura was anew again inside Suite 207 of Randolph Hall, Adams House, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts. Hearing the familiar and dulcet tones of Jun talking loudly on the phone in the common space about something that definitely wasn't as big a deal as he was making it out to be re-centered him and he was once again in the present and ready to grab his phone and read a message from Aiki Hirose.
Hirose:
Well ik it's a bit sudden but the time kinda slipped away LOL
But i'm coming to Harvard!! Transfer for economics
It's a crazy story
But I'm so glad I'll have someone else there I know!!
And the twisting simmer in his gut grew to a boiling storm, and he fell over. The floor slid out from under him. It was like all the world had gone upside-down. A dream had ended.