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They always found themselves waiting for spring to arrive.
Winters didn’t use to be this harsh, it felt like. They were always cold, and there were harder days, but for the past few years, winters have gotten heavier in the air.
Winters would get lonely a lot. The dark nights and breath visible under the street lights. Of course, those days would always just feel longer and longer.
Especially if you had less people to send it with.
Nature ached for the first breath of spring, but not as much as they ached for Godai Yuusuke.
Winters were bad, but winters were bad for a reason.
Winters chilled one to the bone, winters made everything harsher, and winters made the brightest smile look fake.
And that was the cruelest thing winter had done - taking away that smile, however briefly, was a crime.
And sometimes, the smile went away first, before the one who couldn’t fake that smile at that point also disappeared.
It had been years now, but the wait for spring to arrive never got any easier.
“He comes back. He always comes back.”
Sakurako’s voice was so full of conviction and Shuichi just pulled a face, leaning back on his chair in the coffee shop they were sitting at.
“What if one day, he doesn’t?”
“He will.”
Complete conviction in her voice, and Shuichi sighed, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“We always, always put so much of our expectations on him. We relied on him to sort everything else out. And now we are relying on him to keep coming back, even when the memories become unbearable.”
“You are overthinking it as always.”
“That is my job,” Shuichi jabbed a finger towards Sakurako. “You are there to be in his corner. Kaoru is there glued to his side all the time, pointing him in directions. Me? I’m the one who is telling all of you to please apply some critical thinking skills.”
“You talk a lot, but you also are waiting for him. Admit it.”
He didn’t actually have to admit anything.
He didn’t have to admit the way he always checked if the spare key was in its usual spot still, or had been moved. Because he never took a spare key with himself. He’d always laugh and say oh he forgot to take it along, but Tsubaki Shuichi thought at this point, that it most definitely had to be on purpose.
Maybe that was his way of checking that he was still always welcome in Shuichi’s home.
As long as the key was there, he could let himself in.
It was a foolish thing.
Because as if Tsubaki Shuichi would have moved it from there.
Ichijou Kaoru every spring started to get antsy, as if waiting.
…then again, weren’t they all?
The weather started to get better, and with it, the smile was bound to return, the smile that brightened all of their days, just like the sun would stay around longer and longer each day.
“You are being distracted.”
“I wish he would get used to calling,” Kaoru sighed, staring at the door of Polé Polé, as if willing to open it. “That would make this period easier.”
Spring was slowly arriving, the ice melting, nature was waking up.
Any day now.
“But he’d do that, he wouldn’t be himself, would he?”
And Ichijou Kaoru smiled, that usual smile of his in the corner of his mouth twisting, a glint in his eye, and if the only thing that stopped Tsubaki Shuichi from kissing that smile off from his face was that they were in public.
And a public display of affection like that would have qualified as a murder attempt against Ichijou Kaoru.
“You are acting the most pessimistic about all of us.”
“...I don’t like bad surprises, is all. And there is still so much we don’t know.”
There were so many question marks - there were no studies to turn to, to figure out what the long-term consequences of being Kuuga were. The previous Kuuga— Well.
Shuichi figured that he didn’t live with this power for too long.
“Stop waiting for the worst to happen. He defied the odds over and over again, didn’t he?”
“I’m a coroner,” Shuichi said in a dry tone. “I always am faced with the worst possible options.”
“And I’m a police officer. So do I. Maybe both of us need to ease up a little.”
“Are you hitting on me, officer?”
Smirking at him made Kaoru seem embarrassed, but at least that took his mind off from poking at Shuichi for the time being.
Truth to be told, it was easy to be swept up of the optimism of all, especially when he recognized spring’s first sprouts on the trees.
And also, up on the tree, a very familiar figure climbing up, to retrieve a ball that some kids kicked up there.
Because when the spring came he would always come back.
And maybe Shuichi just imagined it, but when the figure’s feet landed on the ground, he felt like spring’s first warm breeze caressed his face, and he couldn’t help but smile a little.
“You really can never help it, can you?”
“It was not a big deal! It is one of my skills to be able to quickly climb any tree. And none of this was any trouble.”
It never was, with him, as Godai Yuusuke just beamed at him, walking closer, with a spring in his step.
He didn’t change much. His smile deepened, and his hair was shorter than it was back then, but his hair was also slightly curling, framing his face. Shuichi sighed, reaching out a hand to take out a twig from Yuusuke’s hair.
“Did you know I was going to be here?”
“You usually take this way home so I was hoping I’d run into you. We could go and surprise Sakurako together, and then all of us could go to Nagano—”
“I don’t think we need to. Our favourite police officer will be here as soon as he catches a whiff of you being here.”
“I wouldn’t want to cause trouble at his job though—”
“You wouldn’t,” Shuichi walked on Yuusuke’s side, and he realised they really turned in the direction of the university. “You know he is a workaholic. He’d still do his job well and come over here to see you quickly.”
Wouldn’t they all?
Shuichi reached out, briefly taking Yuusuke’s hand, giving it a small squeeze before letting him go - his hand still cold, from winter’s last breath, but arrived with spring’s smile on his face and in his steps.
He didn’t want any of them to see him, when the winters got the coldest, Shuichi figured.
(Especially not Ichijou Kaoru, who had seen him on that snowy place back then, something neither of them talked a lot about, but clearly carried with themselves. But Godai Yuusuke never wanted any of them to see the scars that left on him, and all three of them decided to grant him that grace.)
And he got a bright smile as a response, and a thumbs up as always - and Shuichi couldn’t help but return both gestures.
Spring truly had arrived.