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It's been raining for four days straight, and Sakura still isn't used to what cold does to rain here: thinner and meaner than the rain he grew up with, down where a wet day used to warm your very bones as it soaked you. Today the sky's actually clear for a change, and Sakura is grateful for it, not that he would admit to anyone.
The bell over Café Pothos gives a small flat chime, and Kotoha barely looks up.
"Sit anywhere," she calls, already reaching for the pan.
She's got her apron on inside out, ties crossed wrong at her back, the mole under her left eye scrunching as she squints at the pan like it's personally done something to offend her. It’s not too hard to tell that she’s gotten too little sleep again.
Sakura sits at the counter, third stool from the register, the one with the wobble he's learned to compensate for without thinking. He watches as Kotoha cracks two eggs one-handed into a bowl without asking what he wants. She hasn't asked in months. She just knows by now.
It’s weird to feel known, but warm like the rain that he actually misses.
The café smells like butter, soy sauce, the sugar-sweetness of the caramels she keeps by the register. Outside, the street's still empty. Inside, it's just the two of them and the low hiss of the pan.
"Omurice," she says, setting the plate down before he's said a word, ketchup swirled into the same lopsided heart she always draws. Sakura has never commented on it. She keeps drawing it anyway.
She could set a clock by him, if she owned one that needed setting. Same hour, same stool, same order, down to the extra egg he always pretends he didn't ask for. He finishes every bite. He thanks her like it still surprises him that someone would feed him without wanting something back.
He pays every time too, coins stacked by the register before she's even rung it up, exact change but not always in the same denominations, like he's done the math on the walk over. She's tried waving it off twice; both times he looked at her like she'd insulted him, so she's stopped trying.
"You know I don't charge regulars for the extra egg, right?"
"I know."
"So why do you keep doing it?"
"Don't like owing nobody nothin'." He picks up his chopsticks like that ends the conversation.
"Everybody owes somebody something." Kotoha leans a hip against the counter, watching him eat. "I owe Umemiya-senpai about a hundred favors I'll never pay back. Doesn't keep me up at night."
"That's different. He's your brother."
"Not by blood." She wipes a spot on the counter that's already clean. "Doesn't stop him acting like one. You don't get to pick people by blood. You just get to decide who counts."
Sakura eats another bite instead of answering that.
"You don't have a part-time job," Kotoha goes on. "I'd know, half of Makochi comes through here at one point or another. So where does your money actually come from?"
"...Around."
"That's not an answer."
"It's all you're getting."
Kotoha huffs and lets it go, turning back to check on something simmering behind her.
Sakura knows that the twist in his gut isn’t indigestion, but he sets his chopsticks down anyway.
He was twelve the last time a set of foster parents sat him down at their table (their table, not his) and told him, gently, that maybe he'd do better finding his own way for a while.
They never called him a troublemaker. They said other things instead: a lot to handle, not really suited for a house with young children, probably happier when independent. Underneath the soft words was always the same sentiment. He cost them time and energy, and he didn't give back enough to be worth it.
They offered him money, that last time. Enough for an apartment deposit and a few careful months of spending. It's what we get for you anyway, the woman said, like handing back his own subsidy with a bow on it made it a gift.
The apartment he found in Makochi had a window that didn't close all the way, and that first winter taught him what real cold was: worse than anything he'd grown up with, a cold that got in and stayed no matter how many blankets he piled on. He learned to keep his socks on. He eventually even learned to cook rice properly... mostly by burning it fifteen times first.
It took him almost a year to think to look anything up. Cold enough one night that his fingers ached on the phone screen, he typed the ward's name and foster care subsidy into a search bar out of nothing better to do, and found out exactly how much the prefecture paid a family every month to keep a kid like him fed and housed.
Double what they'd handed him. Every month, for years, for every family, going back further than he can remember.
He never called any of them about it. By the time he'd found the numbers, he didn't have the energy left to fight people who'd already stopped being any part of his life. He just made sure, after that, that he never owed anyone anything he couldn't pay back immediately. It was cleaner that way. Nobody could decide you're not worth the cost if the debt never existed to begin with.
A pan hits the floor hard enough that Sakura's out of his chair before his brain has caught up to itself. Kotoha doubles over laughing before he can even turn around, the pan spinning in a lazy circle by her feet.
"You should've seen your face," she wheezes. "Straight up out of the chair like the stool bit you."
"What—" He finds Umemiya-senpai already crouched to retrieve the pan, grinning like he hasn't nearly caused a small disaster by existing.
"Sorry, sorry." Umemiya doesn't sound sorry at all. He sets the pan back down and steals a caramel from the jar by the register, unwrapping it without any hurry. "Wanted to see if she’d made the good soup today. Startled her instead."
"You don't just pop into places without warning," Kotoha mutters, swatting his arm. He laughs and lets her hit him because, yeah, he really does do that.
Umemiya settles halfway onto the stool beside Sakura, elbow on the counter, chin in his hand, that same open attentiveness he hands out to basically everyone in Makochi. There's dirt crusted under his thumbnail, courtesy of whatever he's coaxing out of a paper cup on his windowsill this month.
"So," Umemiya says. "Settle something for me."
"What?"
"Who's the better cook, Kotoha or Suo?"
Sakura blinks. "What?"
"Word gets around. Heard you and Nirei stayed over at Suo's place. Heard he made you two a delicious breakfast." Umemiya pops the caramel into his mouth. "Compare notes for me."
Heat climbs the back of Sakura's neck, instant and completely out of proportion.
"It was just breakfast," he says, too fast.
"Didn't say it wasn't." Something behind Umemiya's grin sharpens, small and private. "Why’d you get that red over a meal?"
He doesn't answer, because the honest answer would take longer than he has words for, and isn’t for public consumption anyway.
Morning light had come in low and gold through Suo's kitchen window, catching in his hair while he stood at the stove in a crooked apron, humming something under his breath like it was any ordinary morning of his life.
Before that: Suo's hand in the grey almost-dawn, found under the quilt and never let go all night, warmer than Sakura's has ever managed even in summer.
And the food when it finally came, rice and eggs and something with a bright citrus edge, sat warm in his stomach the whole walk to school, better than two years of eating at Pothos, though he'd bite his tongue before admitting that anywhere Kotoha could hear it. He'd thought, somewhere between the first bite and the last, about what it would be like to wake up to this every morning, and shoved the thought down before he could look at it straight on.
Umemiya watches him drift off like that for a few seconds, and when Sakura blinks back, whatever his face gave away in the meantime is apparently answer enough. "Yeah," he says, not unkindly. "You've got it bad."
"I don't have anything," Sakura says, entirely unconvincing even to himself.
The bell rings again, and Nirei's face appears in the gap a half-second before the rest of him does.
"Sakura! Umemiya-senpai! Kotoha-san!" Backpack half-slung over one shoulder, notebook already out. "What'd I miss?"
"Nothing," Sakura says, at the same time Umemiya says, "Nirei-chan, perfect timing!" and pulls Nirei in by the shoulder. "Settle something for us. Who's the better cook, Kotoha or Suo?"
Nirei's face does something complicated. "I haven't had exactly the same dishes from both, so it's hard to compare directly. But if I had to guess, Suo-kun might have a slight edge. His technique's really precise."
"Wow," Kotoha says, hand to her chest. "Right in front of my omurice."
"It's really good omurice! I just meant overall, technically, in terms of—"
"I'm teasing, Nirei-kun." She waves him off, grinning.
Nirei brightens, relieved. "Though neither of them have anything on Suo-san's dad."
Sakura's stomach drops. "He means Hua Cheng," he says, too fast. "Not the other one."
"There's two?" Kotoha says.
"I think so," Sakura says, which does nothing to make him sound less suspicious. Some days, he’s not sure Hua Cheng isn’t a mass hallucination. That man didn’t get wet in the rain at all, how was that even possible?
Nirei, blessedly oblivious, nods along. "Right, sorry, I should've been specific. Anyway, I've genuinely never seen Sakura look as happy as he did eating that breakfast. I almost took a picture."
"Nirei." Somewhere between a warning and a plea.
"I mean it as a compliment!"
"Nirei, shut up—"
"He had this whole soft look on his face, like—"
"Shut up!"
Umemiya watches the whole thing with delighted patience, then leans back on his stool. "Sakura-chan. Are you trying to make Suo into your housewife?"
The café goes very quiet.
"He'd have to admit to having feelings first," Kotoha offers, unable to resist. "No offense."
"I hate it here," Sakura says to the ceiling.
He's on his feet before he's decided to be. "I'm leaving," he announces to no one, and he's out the door with the bell clattering before Kotoha can get a word out.
He makes it maybe ten steps before he remembers he hasn't paid, swears under his breath, doubles back, and drops a fistful of coins on the counter without meeting anyone's eyes.
"Sorry — bye—"
He's gone again before Kotoha has stopped laughing.
He doesn't see Kotoha picking the coins up and turning them over in her palm a second longer than counting requires, and Umemiya watching her do it with an expression that isn't teasing anymore at all. Nirei looks adorably confused at the both of them, then launches into telling Kotoha about Hua Cheng’s dishes for their dinner the night before. He has so many notes to share and Kotoha listens attentively, putting Sakura’s behavior out of mind for now.
The walk to school is cold but dry which, after four days of rain, feels like a favor from the heavens themselves. Sakura keeps his hands in his pockets and replays the last five minutes at Pothos, wincing at each new angle of it. His brain keeps circling back to Nirei's face, so sincere, saying I've genuinely never seen Sakura look as happy.
He doesn't know what to do with being seen like that.
School isn't due to start for another forty minutes, but the gate's already open, and Suo's already inside it, schoolbag over one shoulder, uniform pressed like it ironed itself out of respect for him.
"You're early," Suo says evenly.
"Couldn't sleep." Not quite a lie. He'd been awake since five, replaying the almost-shame with which he resisted washing his hand that morning after having Suo’s in his all night, until lying there on the futon with his heart aching felt worse than just getting up.
Suo looks at him a second too long, then tips his head toward the camphor tree at the edge of the yard.
"Up, or in?"
"Up."
They climb. Sakura's hands find the holds without thinking; Suo follows with an elegant ease that shouldn't surprise him anymore and somehow still does. They end up on the same wide branch, close together because there isn't any guarantee that the far end of the branch won’t break under their weight. (That’s the only reason. Definitely.) From up here, the yard is still empty, dew silver on the grass, the sky a flat, rinsed blue that hasn't looked like that in days.
A year ago, this tree was just somewhere to kill time alone before homeroom. He didn't mind it then, or at least told himself that.
Suo doesn't say anything for a while. Then he leans to the side and rests his head against Sakura's shoulder.
"Is this okay?"
"...Yeah." Sakura’s voice is rougher than he means it to be.
Suo's fingers find his a moment later, tangling loosely on top of Sakura's knee.
He's grateful Suo can't see his face right now. His head's a mess (as usual): Kotoha's grin, housewife, Nirei's never seen him that happy. Underneath it is the thing that never stopped playing since that night, Suo's voice in the dark, saying I just want to stay by your side.
He still doesn't have a name for what he feels about that. He just knows it comes with an answer already attached. He wants to stay too. It’s the same thought from this morning, really, just wearing different clothes. Mornings like the one at Suo's house. A version of himself that doesn't pull back the instant that he is shown affection. A version of himself that doesn't shake internally when Suo's hand finds his.
He doesn't shove Suo away. He wants to, a little, as a reflex. His whole body remembers a decade of flinching away before anyone else could decide to leave first. He holds still instead, practicing his breathing. Suo’s breathing, the same as that night. One-two-three-four-five in, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven out.
"My dads got into it again," Suo says, apropos of nothing. "Diē decided the old shrine two streets over needed sprucing up. Said he used to look after a place like it, a long time ago. Wanted to do it again — leave out water, sweep the steps, that sort of thing."
"...Huh. That sounds boring."
"It got less boring once bà got involved. He wouldn't let diē touch a broom without doing it all himself, so now there's a whole production over who's allowed to take care of which part of what needs doing. Diē pretends to be annoyed. He isn't." Suo huffs something almost like a laugh. "Yesterday bà chased off a stray dog by standing very still and staring at it until it left. Didn't say a word. Diē laughed so hard he had to sit down."
"That's terrifying."
"It's efficient."
Sakura laughs before he can stop himself, short and surprised. Suo looks pleased with himself for having caused it.
"They're insane," Sakura says, fondly, which is new.
"They're something." Suo laughs a little, the vibration carrying straight through his shoulder. "I like hearing about what they’re doing. Even the boring parts. It means nothing's wrong."
Sakura doesn't say anything to that. He's thinking about what it must be like; two people who look after each other for no reason except that they want to, who invent excuses like a shrine two streets over just to be ridiculous together.
He's seen it up close, in that house. Hua Cheng flicked water at Xie Lian's cheek at the sink, and Xie Lian laughed instead of getting mad. Xie Lian dropped a towel over Sakura's own head and scrubbed it dry without asking, like Sakura already belonged there. He believes in love, he really does. It's just that some older, more stubborn part of him keeps insisting it doesn't apply to him, that it's a room Sakura is welcome to visit but never allowed to live in.
He still doesn't understand the story Hua Cheng told him that same night about the flower in the rain. What he does know is that neither of Suo's fathers has ever once looked at their son like something they'd let wilt. Nobody has ever done that for him before.
Something must show on his face. Suo lifts his head, brow creasing.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Sakura."
"It's nothing, I said—"
Suo takes his face in both hands instead of arguing, thumbs pressing his cheeks together until his mouth puckers. Sakura makes a noise of pure, useless outrage.
"Just so we're clear," Suo says, not letting go, "they love you too. Diē's already asked twice when you're coming back. Bà said something about teaching you to hold chopsticks properly next time, which I'd take as a threat."
"Only if your diē doesn't try to feed me that green thing again."
Suo laughs — really laughs — and lets go. "That was your fault. Nobody made you finish the food."
"You watched me eat it. You could've said something."
"And miss that? Not a chance. Diē looked so proud of himself I almost didn't have the heart to tell him it was terrible."
"So why didn't you?"
"Would you have?"
Sakura considers this honestly. "...No. I could've died."
"You didn't, though." Suo's smile softens. "And you keep saying yes anyway. Even after the green thing. To him and to me."
Sakura doesn't have a good answer for that.
He almost asks, then, whether it had been as easy for Suo to admit his affection for Sakura as it must have been for his parents, or how easy it is for everyone to love Xie Lian. He doesn’t voice the question, but something in his face must ask it anyway.
"I almost didn’t tell you," Suo says, quieter, looking at the yard instead of at him. "I had the words ready for months and lost my nerve every time. Kept telling myself there'd be a safer night, a better day." A small, wry twist of his mouth. "There wasn't going to be one, of course. I don't think there ever is, with the things that matter."
Sakura doesn't try to do anything with that. He just lets it sit there between them, warm and a little raw.
The bell rings somewhere below, tinny through the cold air, and it startles Sakura enough that he shifts wrong, foot not braced the way he thought, and the branch wobbles just slightly. He goes sideways fast enough that there's no time to be scared, only surprised, one bright flash of oh before the ground rushes up to meet him —
— and Suo's already moving, already airborne, an arm hooking around his middle and twisting so his own back takes the ground first.
The impact knocks the air clean out of him. For a second, there’s just grass, crushed leaves, the smell of packed dirt. For a second, there’s just them and nothing else.
"You—" Sakura's already running his hands over Suo's arm, where a long scrape has opened above the elbow. "You didn't have to do that, it's like two meters—"
"I know," Suo says, unbothered, inspecting his own arm like he's checking the weather. "You'd have been fine."
"Then why—"
"Would you rather I hadn't?"
"That's not—" Sakura fumbles for an objection. "That's not the point."
"It's reflex," Suo replies. "Ask anyone in Bofurin. I've thrown myself in front of worse, for people I like a lot less than you."
Sakura doesn't have an answer for that either. Suo's right, technically, infuriatingly right, and Sakura tries not to think about how much he owes Suo for always having his back. They all do, but him and Nirei most of all.
"You're bleeding."
"It's a scrape." Suo gets to his feet, brushes off his slacks, and offers Sakura a hand up. His grip is exactly as warm as it was in the dark, under a quilt. "You can make it up to me, if it's bothering you that much."
"How?"
"Come stay over again. My dads would like that. So would I."
Sakura's face goes pink, just like it did earlier this morning, and he's opening his mouth to say something back, still not sure what, when a voice cuts in from entirely too close.
"Well, well~!"
Both of them freeze. Umemiya's standing at the base of the tree, hands in his pockets, grinning like Christmas came early.
"Didn't take you two for the type to sneak off before class," he says, "but I respect the commitment. Just—" both open hands come up, "—maybe save the bedroom activities for after school? And use protection, obviously! I'm not your dad, but in this specific, narrow context I am going to act like one."
"That is not—" Sakura's voice cracks clean in half. "That's not what's happening—"
"He fell out of a tree," Suo offers.
"Sure he did." Umemiya's grin doesn't flicker. "For what it's worth, you two make a great couple. It warms my heart right up."
They run. They book it through the yard and the school doors, Umemiya's laughter chasing them the whole way.
They slow to a walk somewhere around the second-floor landing, and stop to catch their breath against the wall. Well, Sakura gasps for breath, anyway. Suo barely sounds winded.
"Sorry," Suo says, not sounding sorry. "He does this to everyone. Not personal."
"It felt personal."
"Okay, a little personal," Suo concedes.
They make it into homeroom seconds before the final bell, Sakura's face burning red, Suo's a far more restrained pink that somehow only makes it worse.
The class erupts.
Nirei skids in half a beat later, breathless, apologizing to the teacher before he's even asked. He'd stayed behind to help Kotoha sweep up the contents of the pan once he finally stopped chattering. He slides into his seat, catching Sakura's eye with a look that says, unmistakably, I have so many questions.
Sakura shakes his head at him, once, sharply. Never.
Suo settles into his chair like fighting a tide is a worse use of energy than floating in it. "It's going to be a long day," he murmurs, smiling anyway. The swirl of gossip doesn’t stop.
"I'm going to fight every single person in this room," Sakura announces to his desk, and drops his head into his folded arms.
The noise dies down eventually, and the teacher steps up to scold everyone into some rough approximation of order. "Sit down, all of you. This is homeroom, not a wedding!" he snaps, which sets off one more wave of laughter before it finally dies out for good. Sakura sits there with his face still hot, and steals a glance sideways anyway.
Suo's already got his textbook open. Mask up, spine straight, every inch the top student the whole school thinks he is. He doesn't look back.
Sakura finds he doesn't mind. He wants Suo to look at him again, wants it more than he'd ever say out loud, but he can sit with wanting and not getting it. He's had a lot of practice at that. Besides, Suo has waited for Sakura long enough already. Waited through a whole rainy night (and dozens before it). Waited with his hand open and no promise Sakura would ever take it. Waited for Sakura to finally acknowledge that there might be a safe harbor in the tumult of his heart.
Sakura can wait now. It's his turn. After school, he’ll follow Suo home and admit to Hua Cheng that maybe he has a different goal after he becomes the strongest person at Furin High. Maybe he knows what he wants of Suo now.
I just want to stay by his side, more than anything, Sakura thinks, an echo of what Suo told him that rainy night. He allows himself the smallest of smiles. I want to see the real him whenever he is willing to show me. I want to practice holding his hand without overthinking it. That's all; it's nothing, but it's everything to me.