Archive of Our Own

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chatoyance
(noun)

cha·​toy·​an·​cy ; /shə-ˈtȯi-ən(t)-sē/ (or chatoyance)

A mineral property; an optical phenomenon where a material displays a luminous, shimmering band of reflected light that shifts as the viewing angle or light moves. Derived from the French word chatoyer ("to shine like a cat's eye").

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Nagi doesn’t mean to get a girlfriend.

It kind of just—happens. The way things always happen to him—like tripping over a controller cord and discovering a new favorite game. Passive momentum. Low-effort luck.

Reo is in London for a semester abroad, studying political science and economic warfare at some obscenely prestigious university. He leaves with a hug, two suitcases full of designer clothes and two winter coats, and a casual, “Don’t become a shut-in again.”

“Mm,” Nagi says, which Reo interprets as a yes.

It’s not.

Three weeks in, Nagi runs out of convenience store curry and Wi-Fi bandwidth on the same day. This somehow leads him to drag himself to a networking event on campus, lured by the promise of free food and a quiet corner. 

He’s halfway through a plate of karaage when someone sits across from him, uninvited.

He blinks. She has long, glossy purple hair. An expensive-looking cream coat, feline eyes, sharp cheekbones, a slouched designer bag, and the kind of diamond earrings that cost more than a year and a half worth of tuition. Her face—something is unsettling about it, like—looking in a funhouse mirror. Not of himself, rather, but of—

Still, Nagi is a pacifist at heart. And both speaking and confrontation are hassles, so he lets it go, setting his phone up against his untouched soda can to watch a new episode of an anime that he got into recently. 

He ignores the weird, creepy prickle up his neck that he can’t quite put his finger on.

It is weird. So, so weird. Because Nagi doesn’t feel like this normally. Or this strongly. What is this? This sensation? It’s weird. The only thing Nagi really feels strongly about is—huh.

Am I attracted to her? Nagi sneaks a glance up through his thick bangs (Reo hasn't been around to cut them, and Nagi fears he might accidentally blind himself if he tries to pick up the scissors himself). Results are inconclusive. It feels more like repulsion than attraction. But hey, what does he know about attaching visceral sensation to emotional labels?

“I’ve seen you before,” she says, casually, breaking the silence. “You’re Nagi Seishirou. Computer science, second year?”

Nagi stares at her for a beat too long. He tilts his head, faintly wary. “Yeah.” Then: “Do I know you?”

“Not yet.”

Her tone is familiar. Not the timbre, nor the pitch, not just in the I’ve-heard-this-before way, but in the this-feels-like-a-glitch-in-my-brain way. Something about her posture, the lopsided smirk, the way her fingers drum against her thigh—it’s all ringing bells in his head, and while not alarm bells, none of them are subtle.

“I’m Motoike Raihou,” she says, extending a hand. Her nails are perfectly manicured and painted. “International relations major. You might know me. My family’s in precious stones. You know, rubies, diamonds, Paraíba tourmalines. That sort of thing. Jewelry diplomacy. Trade work.”

Nagi stares at her hand as if it might bite him. It might, for all Nagi knows. She’s not like the girls he’s used to interacting with, the ones who used to tease him in high school, nor the ones who typically just ignore him now. Then, he slowly shakes it. It’s cool and dry and confident, like she’s not trying to impress anyone or find anything—just confirm something she already knows. Something she knows, and Nagi doesn’t, yet. 

“D’you remember everyone you see once?” Nagi asks.

She lets go. “Only people I want to meet.”

Nagi blinks owlishly, increasingly confused by this whole situation. “Oh. Okay.”

“I like people I don’t have to decipher,” she adds. “It saves time.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. But luckily, she doesn’t seem bothered by the silence.

She moves closer—not enough to touch, but enough that her perfume reaches him. It’s subtle, citrus, and expensive. Sweeter in a way he dislikes—the sugar is overwhelming and makes his nose itch. He can’t name it. It doesn’t feel like a smell so much as a memory he can’t place. A punchline from the universe dangled in front of his nose. 

“I’m glad I found you first,” she says after a moment. “I don’t like competing.”

You didn’t find me first, Nagi wants to clarify; Reo found me first, but the words die in his throat. “Competing for what?”

Her smile widens, almost imperceptibly. “You’ll figure it out.”

It starts right there.

When Raihou asks him out, his lips form the words ‘okay’ before his brain can even register the question. He doesn’t know why. He's no stranger to saying no and bluntly ignoring attempts to drag him into effortful endeavors. Even Reo, at the beginning, had to push and prod a bit to get Nagi out of his cavity of apathy. He rejected a classmate's dinner invitation yesterday. He could easily reject Raihou. But deep down, part of it is desperation to fill the bottomless ocean sinkhole in his chest that's been sucking away at his blood supply since he left. It won’t work. He doesn’t expect it to. But saying yes and getting distracted by hassles is less of a pain than saying no and sitting with the emptiness he feels. 

On their first date, Raihou takes him to a movie. And proceeds to spend the entire two hours critiquing the poorly rendered CGI effects. Nagi chews his popcorn and listens to her quietly. It’s familiar. The cadence, the energy of it all. Because someone very, very important to Nagi, who is notably across the ocean right now, does the exact same thing. Nagi pretends it doesn’t bother him. He pretends it’s not weird. 

On their second date, she takes him to an art gallery. It’s apparently a formal event, as she picks him up with her dark purple hair pulled into a high knot, with silver pins that catch the light like tiny stars. She’s wearing a high-necked black dress, long sleeves, simple jewelry—but the way she wears it makes her look like the room was made for her, not the other way around.

He stares at smudges for three hours. The painting in front of him? Oil, maybe, or digital pretending to be oil. Abstract. Blue smudges. A horse? A storm? He doesn’t care. He feels deja vu. He ignores it. The sterile gallery-taste of intellectualism and Windex makes his tongue feel numb. Everything is strange.

She kisses him on the drive back. She stops to coyly joke with her driver and shuts the tinted glass partition between the front and back seat, then continues to kiss Nagi until they pull up to his dorm. Her lips are creepily smooth and grossly sweet. Strawberry lip gloss. Artificial and sticky. Her eyes are closed. He stares at the brick walls of his dorm over the shell of her ear like a finish line. He closes his eyes and bears with it. It's not her; Raihou's teeth are white, and her breath is minty fresh, but her saliva feels like acid on his skin, and her tongue prodding at his lips makes him want to scrub himself with a steel wire sponge.

He retches and dry heaves into the toilet for an hour after getting home. The scent of fake strawberries clings to his shirt. Nagi puts it through four wash cycles until it fades. He falls asleep in the floor-shared laundry room while waiting for a dryer to open up. A bewildered custodian wakes him after dark and frowns after him worriedly when he nearly trips over the bucket of mop water on his way out. 

On their third date, she takes him to an expensive restaurant. There, she formally becomes his girlfriend. More like, she appoints herself as such. In her defense, Nagi doesn’t say anything to stop her. Despite it all, Nagi doesn’t mind her company. That, and it would be a hassle to say no and be asked to explain why, etc.

“You’re weird,” he tells her bluntly.

“I get that a lot.” She plucks a skewer of gold sheet flake-sprinkled takoyaki from her plate and chews it with elegant disinterest. Then, she flutters her lashes with a teasing, exaggeratedly flirtatious smirk, “But you’re the one gawking at me like I grew out of your favorite daydream.”

It’s not gawking, Nagi slumps in his chair a little, feeling that same swell of nausea again. It’s more like I don’t know how I got here, and the sight of your face makes me feel like sticking my head in a toilet. 

“This feels like a side quest.”

“Then let’s see where it goes,” she answers easily, smiling with teeth. “I like interesting NPCs.”

She doesn’t blink when she says it. She just watches him.

Nagi looks down at his untouched plate, then back at her. “Okay.”

(She looks like Reo. Shut up, Nagi isn’t fucking blind, he knows she looks like Reo. She looks like Reo, sometimes acts like Reo, she crosses her legs and smirks like Reo; she silences people and dominates rooms like Reo. But Nagi pushes all the observations and implications down like swallowing a ball of dry paper because—he can’t, can’t think about what that means, and what a fucking freak he is for indulging in—whatever the fuck this fantasy is—right now.)

It’s fine. Their “relationship” is lowkey—until it’s not.

It becomes a campus-wide phenomenon.

Motoike Raihou, the people's princess of the International Affairs department, with her diamond-cored diplomacy and eerily silky voice, is dating Nagi Seishirou—the sleepiest guy in Compsci and Media Studies, who once submitted a slideshow of anime screenshots as a film critique.

Chigiri is the first one with the guts to bring it up to Nagi. “So. Reo’s gone for one semester and the withdrawal is so bad you’re actually dating his doppelgänger?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nagi lies through his fucking teeth, as if Chigiri would buy it. Useless effort. Unnecessary centripetal force. Wasted kinetic energy, because after Reo, it's Chigiri that knows him best. And he's not as kind as Reo would be to not call him out on an obvious bluff. Chigiri gives him a long stare, one saying you know I know you better than that. 

Raihou is not Reo. That’s what Nagi tells himself.

She doesn’t like soccer. Or being outside for long periods of time. She plays badminton and watches tennis. She prefers sapphires and pearls to moonstone and tanzanite. She likes video games and movies but hates violent ones (which makes up most of what Nagi plays). She wears four-inch heels semi-regularly (and therefore cannot piggyback Nagi). She predominantly listens to classical music and designs high-end jewelry in her spare time. She calls him Sei-kun and daintily holds onto his elbow when they walk side-by-side. 

But she does grin with sharp teeth. She does cut down inflated egos with her tongue. She does walk with the posture of a god and shine with pure determination. She does yawn on purpose when she’s bored, and she does reach for things like they’re already hers. She does lean into his space like Reo used to before he left, all glittering attention and sly smiles.

“You’re interesting,” she says one afternoon, lounging across his couch like a perched feline. “Like a cat pretending to be a person.”

Nagi does not point out the irony of the statement. He does not joke. Maybe he would, if she were someone else, but she’s not, and so it feels wrong to. He blinks. “Okay.”

“I mean it as a compliment.” She reaches out to brush his hair behind his ear. It tickles. “You’re so—unconcerned. It’s fascinating. Most guys our age are so pathetically desperate to be seen.”

“I don’t care about being seen,” he says. (The people who don’t see me don’t matter. And the people who see me too late won’t be able to reach me. Reo would tell him that, sometimes. The best pirates never followed a map. They could sense where the greatest treasure hid under ordinary sand. Reo’s not particularly good with metaphors. But Nagi finds it stupidly endearing.)

“I know,” she laughs. “That’s why I like you.”

Raihou is—fine. She’s fine, so why does this whole thing sit in his chest like a heavy chunk of stone at the edge of a lakebed, heavy and off-center?

— 𖢻 —

He’s been dating Raihou for a little over two months by the time Reo finally returns from London.

Nagi waits just past the automatic doors, hands shoved in his pockets, hood up like it’ll protect him from the noise. It’s winter, and it’s cold outside, but Nagi never bothers to wear his coat. The terminal’s loud in a low, rolling way—shoes scuffing linoleum, wheels on tile, voices echoing off the high ceilings. He hates crowds. He hates the eggshell fluorescent lights. He hates waiting.

He hasn’t been able to sit still all morning. He didn’t even sleep last night. He had been counting down hours all week. He had been restlessly checking Reo’s flight status for the last two hours. 

And it all fucking sucks, until, finally, finally, Nagi sees him.

Reo.

Reo, as expected, has that casual upper-class airport energy—clean, refreshed, brisk, phone in hand, too composed to look rushed but clearly searching for something. Same long brown coat, same luggage with the stupid seal-holding-a-coffee keychain from an arts festival Nagi gave him last year (Nagi has the matching pair for it). His hair’s a little longer, silken violet flowing over his nape and stopping at the top of his trapezius. His skin is a little tanner, honeyed and warm. He looks like life—gorgeous, lovely, like a jewel pierced through by sun rays, sparkling with light. The sky is cloudy, but Reo is all sunlight.

Nagi moves without thinking. Without even registering he’s doing it. Maybe he teleports. Maybe he runs. But he’s across the gate in seconds. 

Reo looks up just in time. And his eyes meet him exactly where he is. Because Reo always knows, has always known, on the field, off the field, in a crowd, across an ocean, exactly where to find him. Because Reo knows him.

“Nagi.”

Reo drops his duffel bag mid-step and jumps, arms winding around Nagi’s shoulders. And then they’re hugging. Nagi catches him like a stagnant lake catches a waterfall; his arms lock around his waist like he’s been drowning for eternities and finally reached shore. The warmth hits first—Reo’s yuzu shampoo, that woodsy cologne, the subtle scent of home, home, home.

He’s home.

Reo doesn’t pull away. Not that he can, with Nagi holding him off the ground. His fingers slide into the fabric at Nagi’s back, bunching slightly. It feels like forgiveness, even though Nagi doesn’t know what for.

It’s stupid. He’s hugged Reo a thousand times. After matches, after goals, after fights, in cars, in airports, in elevators, on muddy grass, on walks, on late nights with leftover food between them. But this is different. This is a doctor calling clear and shocking him back to life; this is waking up in tandem with the sunrise; this is the silence after a goal before the crowd starts to scream. He feels alive. The world resets. He’s returned to his chosen spawn point.

For the first time in months, Nagi feels like he’s back inside his own skin.

He breathes in, lungs expanding all the way. He can breathe in all the way, like a stone weight has been taken out of his lungs. Full, deep.

Their bodies press together, skin to skin beneath too many layers. The faint scent of Reo—citrus and soft downy—fills Nagi’s senses. It’s a smell he feared he’d forget, but it’s been waiting for him, like he’s been waiting for it.

Reo’s breath is warm against Nagi’s neck. His fingers dig in, gentle but strong, like he’s missed him, like Reo’s missed him too. The hug stretches longer than it should—longer than normal friends would hold on. But right now, Nagi doesn’t care. Reo’s home. Nagi closes his eyes, letting the steady beat of Reo’s heart calm the wild chaos inside him. For months, he’s been adrift—empty and numb—and he hardly even realized; he put himself on autopilot. But here, now, he can finally breathe. 

Reo finally pulls back just enough to rest his forehead against Nagi’s. Their breaths mingle in the thin space between them. 

“Welcome home,” Nagi whispers. You’re back. You’ve come back to me.

Reo smiles softly. “Missed you.”

I missed you so much. You don’t even know. And the nausea he’s been carrying with him—like motion sickness in slow motion, like homesickness in reverse—just vanishes.

Baya’s car is waiting outside, sleek and running smooth and quiet. The drive home is a slow drift through fading city lights and crisp winter air.

Reo sits close beside Nagi in the backseat. As usual, as usual. Baya drives with practiced calm, the hum of the engine like a steady heartbeat beneath their conversation.

After a long, peaceful, content silence, Reo speaks. “I heard from Chigiri that you got a girlfriend.”

Oh. Right. Nagi’s throat tightens. Raihou. He nearly forgot. He swallows.

“Yeah,” he says, voice low, cautious. He scans Reo’s face, searching for—well, he doesn’t really know what.

Reo’s gaze flickers to Nagi, careful and unreadable. He laughs, but Nagi can hear something tight under the playfulness. “You—didn’t think to tell me?”

There’s a soft edge—hurt? Confusion? It’s a sting under the casual tone. Nagi averts his eyes. He doesn’t want to have this conversation now. 

“I—didn’t know how,” Nagi admits eventually, singed by a sense of embarrassment that’s entirely new to him. “I’m sorry.”

Reo exhales slowly, “Why not?”

Nagi wants to say it’s because he was lost without Reo, that he was trying to fill the space left empty. But the words stick, tangled and clumsy.

Nagi opens his mouth, then closes it.

He doesn’t know how to say because you were gone, or because I couldn’t breathe, or because she looked like you and I didn’t know why that made me want to be near her or far away from her at the same time.

He doesn’t know how to explain the weightless, empty days or the way he kept trying to fill the space where Reo had been. Or how to say she makes me want to throw up but I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know how to make it stop, I let it happen, but I don’t know why, I swear.

So he just repeats, “I—don’t know.”

Reo exhales through his nose. Then—quickly, like a cover-up—he nudges Nagi’s knee with his own. “Well, you better introduce us soon. Can’t let your girlfriend think you’re hiding her from your friends.”

Nagi makes a soft sound—maybe a chuff, maybe just a breath. He doesn’t know how to answer with words. He doesn’t know any string of words that would make up the right answer.

Reo leans into him. Their arms press together from elbow to wrist. Like magnets falling into place. It’s thoughtless, familiar.

“So,” Reo says, already shifting back into rhythm. “Dinner requests? If not, I’ll make miso soup and dumplings. You can nap on the couch while I cook.”

Reo’s probably jetlagged, and you’re going to make him cook? Nagi’s a selfish, selfish creature. He missed being spoiled. Spoiled by Reo. And because he’s selfish, he lets Reo pour into him. He nods, “Yeah.”

“Still like soft tofu?”

“Yeah.”

“Still gonna eat shit when we play Mariokart?”

“Not sure, are you still gonna throw a fit when I confess that I let you win?”

Reo beams. Warm and easy. And just like that, the last three months of living with his eyes closed fall off Nagi like dead skin. 

Baya asks how Reo’s semester was. His eyes light up, oh, and they glow, they shine in that way Nagi’s missed so desperately, as Reo begins to chatter about a TA he worked with who was running a research study on indie video game studios. He grabs Nagi’s sleeve with one hand and scrolls exuberantly through his camera roll with the other. 

They don’t bring up Raihou again.

— 𖢻 —

It’s warm out. That rare, lucky in-between warmth—sunny without being hot, just enough breeze to carry the scent of grass and someone grilling off-campus. They’re on the quad, tucked beneath one of the taller trees, surrounded by half-finished drinks and crumpled wrappers from the campus café.

Nagi lies flat on the grass, hoodie up, headphones half-on. Reo’s sitting beside him, one knee pulled to his chest, squinting at the tree line of sakura blossoms. His other leg is extended—specifically for the purpose of being Nagi’s beautifully comfortable neck-problem-prevention pillow. Chigiri’s scrolling through something on his phone. A few steps away, Isagi and Bachira are kicking an empty plastic bottle back and forth while vaguely discussing the ethics of high-stakes wilderness survival reality TV. 

It’s stupid. Easy. Normal. The world feels like it’s finally starting to reassemble itself.

Nagi closes his eyes for a second, letting Reo’s voice hum somewhere in the background. They’d had lunch, shared fries, and argued briefly about which conbini ice cream was superior. For the first time since Reo left months ago, everything feels simple and real again. The dreamlike, feverish state he’s been in for the last few months has cleared, the haze leaving behind a brilliant indigo sky.

Then—

“Sei-kun!”

Nagi’s eyes snap open, chills running down his spine like a bucket of ice water is dumped over his head. 

Raihou walks toward them with the kind of composure that draws attention without asking for it. She’s in pale blue, breezy, summery, and formal all at once, with her hair pulled back by a silver clip that glints in the sun. Her white platform wedges thunk against the uneven grass, even with her light-footed steps.

Nagi sits up slowly, mechanically, entirely unsure.

He hears Reo shift beside him, leg pulling up and posture straightening instinctively.

She reaches them with a quiet smile and crouches down in her tall platform sandals, brushing a kiss to Nagi’s cheek—light, practiced, elegant. Her perfume hits a beat later, something sticky, sweet, and strongly floral that always makes him slightly dizzy.

Everyone pauses. The silence afterward stretches out like someone forgot to hit "play" on the world again.

Reo’s expression is frozen in place, a conflicted grimace. Chigiri’s eyes flick sharply to Nagi, then Raihou, then Reo. His mouth parts slightly, like he’s about to say something and thinks better of it. Isagi and Bachira stop roughhousing behind them, mid-laugh, mid-motion—like a video buffering at the worst possible moment. Bachira perches quietly on one leg, while Isagi, who lacks both grace and coordination, stumbles and has to use a tree trunk for balance.

There’s no wind. Even the leaves seem to hesitate before falling.

“Hi,” Raihou says brightly. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic near the river’s absolutely awful today.”

Nagi clears his throat. “S’fine. We weren’t really doing anything anyway.”

She smiles and moves to sit beside him, gracefully folding her legs under herself on the grass. She places a hand lightly on his arm as she does.

Reo hasn’t said a word yet. Nagi’s a bit scared to really look over at his face. He can feel his silence like a physical thing beside him. Reo’s shoulders are still, gaze unreadable. His mouth is curved—almost politely—but his eyes are fixed on Raihou’s profile like he’s trying to see through a plaster wall where he expected to see a window.

“Oh,” Raihou says, looking toward Reo. “You must be Mikage Reo-kun. I’ve heard a lot about you!”

Chigiri snorts under his breath. A little too sharp to be completely inaudible. Nagi shoots him a look, irritated. Chigiri, predictably, ignores him.

Meanwhile, Reo blinks like someone just turned the light back on in his brain.

“Yes,” he says, smiling now. It’s his ‘charmer’ smile, the customer service one, practiced. “Likewise. Please, just call me Reo. You must be Raihou.”

She offers her hand. He takes it, of course. A polite and friendly shake, controlled, leaving no room for misinterpretation. It’s seamless—they’re both from the same world, after all. Raihou doesn’t seem to notice the stiffness in Reo’s body. Or, if she does, she doesn’t mention it.

Their handshake lasts a little too long.

From the corner of his eye, Nagi sees Bachira lean toward Isagi, whispering something. Isagi’s eyebrows raise slightly. There’s a quiet ripple that passes between them like a shared shiver, two rivers merging.

“Wow,” Bachira says eventually, stuck between blinking at Raihou and looking to Isagi for help. “You’re, uh, really, uh, very pretty, RaiRai!”

Raihou tilts her head, laughs in that effortless way that makes all the guys on campus swoon. “Thank you! You’re so sweet.”

Isagi looks between her and Reo. “So, um. Do you guys—maybe, uh. Do you guys know each other?”

“Us?” They ask, in perfect sync. “No.”

Raihou adds, “I would remember if we had.”

Reo agrees, “Definitely.”

Another long beat of silence.

“Cool,” Chigiri mutters, rubbing the back of his neck. “This is—great.”

Isagi mutters something like “it’s uncanny,” and then pretends he didn’t when Nagi mentally shoots him with a precision scope rifle in his stupid face.

Nagi doesn’t speak. Because suddenly the air feels tight in his lungs again. Not like before—this isn’t numbness, or loneliness. It’s pressure. The kind that makes his reactions move slow, like syrup. He glances between them—Reo and Raihou.

Raihou’s hair glints lavender in the sunlight. Reo’s coruscates ultraviolet in the shade of the branch above his head. But it’s—the shape of her eyes. The way she tilts her chin. It’s all there, like some mirror the universe set down between them without asking permission.

She’s smiling. Reo’s smiling.

And Nagi’s stomach churns, slow and deep.

She turns to the group. “I’ve been meaning to meet everyone. You’re all Sei-kun’s friends from the athletics cohort, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Isagi says first, trying to match her smile, but his befuddlement wins out. The idiot always wears his emotions so plainly on his face. Nagi rolls his eyes internally; that’s why no one ever trusts that sprouthead with secrets. The weird shape his mouth is twisted into looks like a modern art piece. One of those neon-colored, super ugly sculpture things people take pictures in front of. 

“Ah, I'm sorry, how rude of me—I haven’t properly introduced myself to everyone. Motoike Raihou,” she offers. “But you can just call me Raihou. It’s nice to meet you all.”

“Bachira Meguru!” Bachira says quickly, wide-eyed and energetic as ever. “I like your earrings.”

“Oh, thank you!” She beams. “They’re from my family’s atelier—we do a lot of gemstone work.”

Isagi makes a noise. “Your family’s the one with the jewelry business, right?”

Raihou nods. “Yes. Diplomacy on one side, diamonds on the other. Makes for—interesting dinner parties.”

That gets a forced, staccato laugh from the group as a collective. But as persistent as her character indicates, she fits herself (albeit clunkily) into the conversation, answering questions with charm and curiosity, asking lighthearted ones back attentively.

“You and Reo-san are close, right?” She asks at one point, tilting her head toward him.

Reo, who’s been silent, finally meets her eyes. “Since first year, yeah.”

“Oh, wow,” she says. “You guys must be so in sync. At least, from what I’ve heard. I’ve only known Sei-kun for a few months, and I still can’t tell what he’s thinking half the time.”

That gets another awkward beat of silence. Reo gives a half-grin.

“Yeah. He can be hard to read,” he returns evenly.

“I think that’s part of the charm,” she says with a light chuckle, gently rubbing her thumb against Nagi’s hand. “I think the quiet ones always have more going on up there.”

Reo’s eyes flick down to their joined hands. Something shifts in his expression. Not anger—nothing that clear. Just a kind of tension, subtle and sharp, like something fragile pressing against glass.

Chigiri watches Reo. Then Nagi. Then Raihou. His brows pinch slightly.

“You and I seem to have a parallel taste in jewelry,” Raihou says next, looking Reo over—ears, wrist, neck, fingers. One of Raihou's habits; she explained it to Nagi one night (at one of those restaurants where the waitstaff regard Nagi's disposition and clothes with poorly concealed disapproval and disgust), she unconsciously catalogues people's accessories. Not for materialistic reasons or price-approximation, but for aesthetic analysis and craftsmanship appreciation. Apparently, the pieces people wear tell Raihou lots about them. Nagi doesn't wear any jewelry. Belatedly, he wonders what Raihou read on his plain wrists and empty fingers. “Clean lines, simple but bold cuts—very modern. I like your style a lot.”

Reo smiles again, barely. “Unfortunately, I’ve always found myself stylistically quite predictable.”

“You’d love our Osaka gallery,” she shakes her head. “I’ve been helping curate this new line of platinum-set water opals—very subdued, but when the light hits them they come alive. Like there's more under the surface.”

Nagi twitches.

The way she said that—the exact phrasing—Reo had used something similar last winter. About a painting. The words overlap in his memory.

“Interesting,” Reo says genuinely. “I like things with depth.”

Isagi blinks between them like he’s watching a glitch in the matrix. Bachira’s eyebrows are basically buried in his hairline.

Chigiri remains impressively poker-faced. “Right.”

Raihou turns to him, completely unbothered. “And you’re Chigiri Hyoma, right? The one with the track scholarship? Your form in that viral race clip was beautiful.”

The poker face breaks. Chigiri hesitates, surprised, a slight blush forming on his cheeks. For all his sass, he really is easy to please. “Thanks. You, uh—you watched that?”

“I like watching athletes,” she says, breezily. “Something about motion and control—like sculpture in real time.”

Fuck. Again, that’s also—

Reo stands. The movement is sudden but smooth, a chord snapping without sound.

“We should get to class,” he says to Chigiri, brushing imaginary dust off his pants. “Didn’t realize the time.”

The redhead looks at him, then down at his watch. “Ah, shit. Right. Right, yeah, let’s go, Reo.”

Raihou blinks. “Oh. Already?”

“Dramatic exit. Keeps things interesting,” playfully, with Reo’s typical kind grace, he reassures, “We just have a lecture. Professor Lee is a stickler for punctuality, and all. Getting stuck with the seats of shame means we’ll never hear the end of it.”

She laughs. “Well, thanks for letting me crash your hangout.”

Reo’s gaze shifts to Nagi. “See you later?”

Nagi swallows. “Yeah.”

Reo nods, then turns, walking off. Chigiri pauses just long enough to give Nagi a haggard look that says we’ll have to talk about this eventually, then follows.

Raihou exhales beside Nagi. “They’re cool. A little intense.”

“Yeah,” Nagi says, voice hoarse.

She adjusts her grip on his hand, curling her fingers a little tighter around his. “You okay?”

Nagi doesn’t answer at first. There’s a strange hum in his ears. A faint ache forming behind his eyes.

Isagi and Bachira stare at him furtively like they’re expecting him to explain everything or come out with the grand reveal that this is some stupid prank. Raihou’s long nails tickle where they dance around in his palm. Nagi can’t do either of those things.

“Just tired,” he says eventually. 

— 𖢻 —

Raihou leaves in a flurry of glinting gemstones and long, silky velvet hair that flips and swings behind her as she walks. She had promised to take her girlfriends out to a new boutique cafe that had opened a few streets over.

“Text me later, Sei-kun,” she says brightly, smiling as she leans in to press a goodbye kiss to his cheek. Her lip gloss is slippery but not quite sticky, and her hand lingers at his elbow. “I’ll send you pictures of the cakes we get.”

Nagi mumbles something noncommittal, blinking down at her. Objectively, she’s warm and animated and beautiful, but the second she turns and walks off across the grass in her soft-heeled boots, he feels like he can finally exhale. It’s like—it’s like Nagi can only palate her at certain angles, in certain lighting, dressed in a certain way that blurs and dims the fact that she’s clearly not— 

Reo’s already gone—left with Chigiri for class, earlier than he needed to, under the thinnest excuse Nagi’s ever heard.

The moment Raihou’s out of sight, Isagi and Bachira scamper over, half-crawling, and flank him like wolves.

“So,” Isagi says, clapping a hand to Nagi’s shoulder. “What the hell.”

Bachira leans forward, eyes wide and too gleeful. “You’re dating Reo with long hair.”

Nagi stares flatly at them. “Huh?”

Isagi gestures vaguely in the direction Raihou left. “You don’t see it?”

Obviously, he fucking sees it. But if he says it out loud, he sounds like a complete fucking perv that belongs in an institution.

“She’s nothing like Reo,” Nagi says immediately. For self-preservation more than anything else.

Bachira laughs. “Dude. Her voice. Her face. Her expressions. You basically downloaded a Reo character skin off the internet but toggled female.”

“She’s shorter,” Nagi offers weakly.

Isagi snorts. “By, like, a couple of centimeters when she’s in heels.”

“She’s from a diplomat family,” Nagi mutters.

“Uh-huh? So, she’s rich. Reo’s family owns half the damn city.”

“She wears skirts and dresses.”

Bachira wiggles his fingers, shrugging and giggling like the little shit he is. “So would Reo if you dare him hard enough. Or he lost a bet.”

Nagi wants to say something else, to argue more. But the words don’t come. Because he’s tired. And because he knows it.

He’s known it.

Not right away, maybe. Not consciously. But it hit him the second Reo walked back through the terminal at Narita and looked at him like no time had passed at all. Like they were still them.

The lightness. The ease. The silence that felt full and drenched in sunlight instead of empty and cold.

Raihou is nice, accommodating, and not a total fucking pain—but it’s not the same. It never was. It never will be. And standing here now, in the wake of that strange, loaded afternoon—with Reo’s unreadable look still burned into the back of his skull—Nagi knows denying it isn’t worth the effort.

He slumps. “Maybe.”

Isagi blinks. “What?”

Nagi exhales. “Maybe they’re kinda similar.”

“Kinda?” Bachira howls.

Isagi cackles, stepping back like he needs distance just to process it. “Oh, my god. I thought we were just messing with you but—dude, you actually went and Reo-replaced.”

“I didn’t replace.” Even the insinuation of that makes Nagi want to vomit his guts out. There is no replacing Reo. There's no breathing life-form on the planet that comes close to even the mere shape of him.

“Fine, fine. You—you Reo-supplemented.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Nagi mutters, rubbing the back of his neck. “He was gone. I just—wasn't used to not having him around. I didn’t know how to handle it.”

“And you tried to fix it by—what, dating his doppelgänger?” Bachira’s grinning too wide now, eyes sparkling. Nagi can’t even be angry. To anyone who isn’t Nagi, this whole thing must look fucking ridiculous. “That’s so tragically romantic. Also messy. Ohhhh, you’ve messed up bad, Nagi.”

Nagi doesn’t answer.

Because the truth is: Raihou is kind. Raihou is smart. Raihou makes everything feel less quiet, sometimes. But she’s not Reo. 

Reo? Reo makes him feel like a person. Reo makes him feel like he’s really alive.

— 𖢻 —

They’ve barely moved in the last hour.

The empty soba bowls sit forgotten on the low table. The TV plays quietly in the background, some drama neither of them is paying attention to. Reo is slouched beside Nagi on the couch, half-curled, his socked foot brushing Nagi’s ankle, hand limp near his own knee. His phone is face-down. He hasn’t picked it up in a while.

Nagi sits slumped in the corner, hood drawn up, gaze turned toward the side of Reo’s face.

It’s peaceful. Familiar. But the peace is thin — stretched taut like something about to snap.

And Nagi keeps thinking about how quiet Reo had gone this afternoon. How his eyes had locked on their joined hands. How Reo had left early with Chigiri without saying much at all.

The silence now feels heavy. Like there’s something underneath it, waiting.

Finally, Reo breaks it.

“So,” he says, voice casual, “how serious is it?”

Nagi blinks. “What?”

“You and Raihou.”

Nagi shrugs. “Dunno.”

Reo turns his head just enough to glance at him; his eyes flicker with annoyance. “You don’t know?”

Nagi sinks further into the couch. “It just—happened.”

I didn’t mean for it to. Letting it happen was easier than saying no. I missed you. I missed you and wasn’t thinking, not really.

There’s a long pause.

Reo huffs a little. “I feel like I should be more insulted on her behalf.”

“You’re not,” Nagi says. Not with any judgement, just a statement. He knows Reo well enough to know he finds people just as much of a pain as Nagi does, especially people he doesn’t know, he just has more energy and training to be polite about it.

“No, I’m not,” Reo mutters; but it sounds almost guilty, mixed with something frustrated. “Because I’m the one who had to find out from Chigiri. Not even you.”

Nagi feels the weight of that hit. Dull and slow. Ah. They’re back to this conversation again. “I didn’t mean to hide it.”

Reo raises an eyebrow. “Clearly didn’t mean to tell me either.”

Nagi goes quiet. Again. He really can’t get it right with Reo, can’t put together the right words. 

Reo turns back toward the TV, though he still isn’t watching it. The shadows cast by the screen flicker across his profile.

“She’s nice,” Reo says eventually, softly. Forgiving and apologetic in a way Nagi knows he doesn’t deserve. “Really nice. She fits with you, I think. You don’t even have to talk much and she doesn’t seem to mind. She seems to really like you too.”

Nagi shifts. The couch cushion dips under his weight. “Do you like her?”

Reo lets out a faint, breathy scoff. “Why would that matter?” He looks at Nagi, half-joking, with a quirked eyebrow, “Are you gonna break up with her if I say no?”

And before Nagi can even think about it: “Yeah.”

Reo blinks. Looks at him like he’s trying to figure out if it’s a joke. It’s not. Not even remotely. Reo quickly realizes this. His eyes widen, then cloud over.

“Nagi,” he says slowly. “She’s your girlfriend.”

“Yeah. I still would,” Nagi shrugs.

Reo’s face twitches. “What?”

“If you said you didn’t like her,” Nagi repeats. “I’d break up with her.”

The silence afterward isn’t light anymore. It’s solid and strange, like a cliff’s edge no one meant to walk toward. Reo sits up slightly, turning to face him better, frowning now. “You can’t say shit like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Reo exhales sharply. “Because it’s not fair. She’s your girlfriend. You can’t act like I’m more important than she is.”

“You are,” Nagi doubles down. Because he’s only ever been sure about one thing in his life, and that’s Reo. 

Reo jerks back a little, like the words physically burn him. “Nagi.”

“It’s always been you,” Nagi says. “You’ll always be more important than anyone.”

Reo stands suddenly, like he can’t be sitting anymore. He runs a hand through his hair and paces once, twice, then spins back toward the couch.

“You’re so—you can’t say that anymore,” Reo says, voice sharper now. “Not when you’ve got someone else. That’s not how this works.”

“It’s how I feel.”

Reo’s jaw tightens. “Do you think that makes it better?”

Nagi flinches. The words land hard, like an asteroid cutting through a mountain.

Reo swallows hard. His hands shake slightly at his sides. He looks like he’s holding something back—rage, or sadness, or both. He exhales a slow, measured breath and drags a hand through his hair. Nagi watches—he can’t help it—as Reo’s bony, slim fingers weave through the violet strands, tan skin in contrast to royal purple, pushing them out of his face with one fluid motion. 

Something’s wrong with Nagi. Seriously wrong. He must be sick in the head—some kind of emotional rot gnawing at his sense of reality. No, rather, Reo is his sense of reality, and Reo being distressed means Nagi’s earthly senses have been thrown entirely off kilter.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Nagi stares, utterly confused. If blame has a place, it isn’t with Reo. He’s been caught in the crossfire—collateral in a mess that isn’t his making.

“For everything. I’m not,” he says, then stops. Bites the inside of his cheek. Tries again. “I’m sorry. No—I’m sorry, Nagi. I’m being such a baby about this. It’s just—I’m not used to the idea of sharing—of having to share you.”

Nagi stills. The world stills. 

“I thought I could be. I still do—I’m okay with it, I am, I just—I thought—you’d still tell me things. Still—choose me sometimes.” Reo’s voice breaks just a little. And he laughs, weak and wet, “You’re still my greatest treasure, after all.”

Nagi’s eyes catch on the shimmer in Reo’s, the way he suddenly won’t look at him, shoulders curling inward like he’s trying to fold up and disappear.

He’s crying. Well, no. Not yet. Almost.

His lashes flutter rapidly to erase any moisture. That twisty, glassy shine in his eyes. The way his throat bobs when he swallows. The faint shake of his breath.

And Nagi—

Panics.

The deep-bone kind. The kind that brutally rattles the tectonic plates of his reality. 

I’ll break up with her. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. l—

He’s seen Reo cry before. But never like this—with the tears burning, but his fists clenched at his sides like he’s fighting a war not to let them fall.

Reo’s avoiding his gaze now. Nagi doesn’t know what to do. He just knows he wants Reo to look at him again. He just knows he’d choose Reo. Over and over. And he doesn’t know what he said, if it was how he said it, what he did wrong to trigger this but he wants to fix it, he needs to fix it.

“Reo,” he chokes out, sounding equal parts horrified and desperate.

Nagi wants to say a hundred things. A thousand. That he’ll break up with her—tonight, tomorrow, it doesn’t matter, because she’s not Reo.

That he loves Reo.

That he’s stupid, crazy, downright sick in the head about him.

That every second apart felt like drowning in silence, and the only reason this mess ever happened is because Nagi was alone and didn’t want to overwhelm Reo with the sheer weight of what he felt. How much he felt. It was too much. He was too much. So he swallowed it down until it poisoned him.

But none of that comes out. Not yet.

Instead, he stands up without a word, walks over to Reo, and wraps his arms around him—like the world’s going to collapse if he doesn’t hold on. His voice is soft, shaking at the edges.

“Please don’t cry,” Nagi begs, he begs. “Please.” I don’t know what to do when you cry like that. It makes me feel like I’m being torn in half.

Reo lets out this small, cracked giggle that sounds like it hurts. And then he’s hugging Nagi back—softer than the hug at the airport, arms tight around his waist, head pressed to his neck, breathing him in like he’s trying to crawl inside him and stay there. Like Nagi means something, like Nagi is a safe place. He mumbles an apology, another one, like it’s all he knows how to say. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m being stupid and immature about this. Obviously, I can’t monopolize you all the time. I know, just. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Nagi whispers, clutching him tighter. Monopolize me more. Take all my time. My everything. It’s all yours, I’ve always been yours. Take it all.

They stay like that for a few minutes. Just two people trying to hold on against the tide, the current.

Then Reo pulls back just enough to look up at him, eyes still glassy but now oddly determined. 

“Are you happy?” He asks. “Tell me you’re happy.”

Nagi meets his gaze. He opens his mouth, then closes it. 

“I’m happy,” he says, because he’s stupid and so, so bad at everything other than listening to Reo’s commands. He obeys, because this is the only way he knows how to make Reo happy. He hopes Reo is happy. 

Reo sniffs and pulls away with an accepting nod, wiping his nose with his sleeve. Determined, again, for reasons Nagi doesn’t know.

He doesn’t get it though—what Nagi means when he says that—what floods through every word, every beat of his heart—is: I’m happy with you. I’m always happy with you. Only you.

— 𖢻 —

The café is small and bright, tucked behind a bookstore near campus. The windows let in hazy sun. The espresso machine hisses now and then. A playlist of soft guitar covers hums gently in the background, mixing with the scent of vanilla syrup and fresh ground beans.

Nagi sits across from Raihou in a daze, stirring his drink without actually drinking it. And Reo isn’t here to laugh at him for it. She’s talking about something—an ambassador’s daughter who flaked on brunch, or a jewelry gala her mother wants her to attend in Seoul next week—but the words drift past him like wind.

He watches the way the sunlight hits her earrings, how they swing when she tilts her head. It’s tourmaline today, light and prismatically clear.

Polished and charming, like her. She smiles at waitstaff and knows what words to use when she wants something. She’s thoughtful, too. She chose this café because she thought Nagi would like the low seats and quiet tables, and she was right.

It technically should be perfect.

But he keeps hearing Reo’s voice—something from years ago, teasing and loud, like “Nagi, you can’t just stare at your food, you have to eat it, don’t give me that look—I’m not fucking feeding you again,” and something about the silence here feels too gentle, too precise.

Too unlike him.

He’s about to finally sip his coffee when Raihou interrupts her own story with a light, almost offhanded question.

“Your friends aren’t very fond of me, are they?”

Nagi’s hand stops mid-lift. He blinks once. “Huh?”

Raihou gives a small shrug and wraps both hands around her porcelain mug, her tone easy. “Just a feeling I got. I mean, they’re polite—but there’s something. I can tell when the vibe isn’t quite right. And they all froze up when I showed up.”

Nagi stares at her. It’s not said bitterly. Not remotely offended. She sounds genuinely curious. (In this moment, she couldn't be further from Reo—his Reo, who's headstrong, impulsive, needlessly stubborn, and easily provoked.)

He doesn’t know what to say. Because he’s not sure she’s wrong.

He thinks about the way Isagi glanced away awkwardly when Raihou laughed at one of Bachira’s jokes. The awkward silence after she first arrived. The way Chigiri kept offering Reo subtle outs, like the group dynamic was a structure that needed defending.

And Reo—Reo hadn’t looked at her so much as through her. As if Raihou was static on a screen, and something was interfering with the signal.

Nagi shifts in his seat, finally lowering his coffee back to the table without drinking it. “They’re—fine. With you.”

Raihou lifts a brow.

“I mean—they’re like that with new people.”

“How long am I considered new?” she asks, not unkindly.

"Uh."

She laughs faintly, but he can see her thumb rubbing at the cup sleeve like a nervous habit.

“I like them,” she says. “Even if they don’t like me. I can tell they’re important to you.”

Nagi exhales through his nose and looks down at the swirled foam of his untouched drink.

They’re important to him. Reo is important to him.

Everyone else comes and goes like weather—but just a few people stay, and Reo is at the center of it all, like the sun, like gravity. He’s air. Every time Nagi gets too far away from him, he realizes he hasn’t been breathing right.

He doesn’t know how to explain that. He doesn’t know how to explain any of this.

Instead, he mumbles, “They’ll come around.”

Raihou hums. “I know.”

The silence stretches. She doesn’t push. She never does. She just sits there, watching the street outside the window, her hand absently turning her cup. Like she’s already thinking of something else.

And Nagi knows she’s too smart not to be catching on. Not to what, exactly—but to something intangible. A misalignment. An absence that hums between them when they stop talking too long.

He wants to say something kind. Something true. But all that comes to mind is Reo—how easy everything is when he’s around, how effortless it feels to just exist next to him. How nothing with Raihou has ever reached that pitch, not even close.

Raihou looks at him again, eyes thoughtful.

“You space out a lot when we’re together,” she says gently.

Nagi blinks.

“I don’t mind,” she adds quickly. “Just wondering if it’s me, or if that’s just how you are.”

And for a moment, Nagi wants to tell her. Wants to be honest in a way he hasn’t been since this whole thing started—that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. That he doesn’t know why he said yes. That everything since Reo left has felt like trying to run through water.

But instead, he just says: “It’s not you.”

Raihou, sharp and soft all at once, but at all the wrong angles, smiles like she doesn’t quite believe him.