Archive of Our Own

     The bath upstairs starts running, and Xie Lian sets his teacup down so quickly that it rattles in its saucer.

     "Sakura-kun," he says, leaning across the kitchen table. "Do you know what the twenty-eighth is?"

     Sakura glances at the calendar on the wall, a freebie from the rice shop by the canal. Every month, a cartoon grain of rice poses in a different kimono, and Sakura has never understood why. His eyes skim past March's garish paisley outfit to find the date.

     "...A Saturday?"

     "It's Sun Fei's birthday," Xie Lian says happily.

     Sakura didn't know. Suo never brought it up, and Sakura suddenly has a pang of regret that he never thought to ask. Surely a good boyfriend would have done so months ago.

     "We've always kept it small," Xie Lian goes on. "The three of us, a cake, a walk somewhere pretty if the weather is nice. When he was little there was nobody else to invite, and when we first came to Makochi he was still settling in." He presses his palms together. "But this year he has friends, Sakura-kun. He has you, and Nirei-kun, and the tall senior who is always showing off his plants, and the young lady from the café. I thought we could invite everyone and surprise him."

     "A surprise party," Sakura parrots dumbly.

     "Have you ever been to one?"

     Sakura has never been to any kind of party, unless the night half of Bofurin crammed into Pothos for omurice counts, and he's pretty sure that was mostly Umemiya-senpai shouting over everybody else. He shakes his head.

     Xie Lian turns in his chair toward the stove. "San Lang, how many people can we fit in the big room upstairs?"

     Hua Cheng is at the stove with his back to them, stirring a pot that smells of ginger and star anise. "As many as you like, gēge."

     "Then I'll make—"

     "No."

     "I haven't even said what!"

     "You were going to say that you'll cook. You will not." Hua Cheng taps the spoon against the rim of the pot sternly. "You can wash the dishes after."

     Xie Lian deflates, but only for about two seconds. "Just one dish. Something simple. Sushi! I wouldn't have to cook anything, so nothing can go wrong. And young people like spicy things, don't they? I could put lots of wasabi in it."

     Sakura has eaten Xie Lian's cooking. He once ate a steamed bun the color of pond water because Xie Lian was watching him with so much hope, and he has a fair idea of what Xie Lian could do to raw fish with a tube of wasabi. He keeps his face very still.

     Hua Cheng turns around. His visible eye goes from Xie Lian to Sakura and back, and he stays quiet long enough that Sakura starts to worry he'll give in.

     "You can't make the sushi, gēge," Hua Cheng says at last. "But the wasabi is a good idea."

     He explains the premise while he goes back to stirring. He'll make the sushi himself, in small bites that are all the same size. Under the fish, some will hide a layer of wasabi and some a layer of zucchini puree, which is the same shade of green and tastes like almost nothing. The kids will play truth or dare, and anyone who refuses has to eat one bite, picked blind.

     "So you don't know how bad the punishment is," Sakura says slowly, "until it's already in your mouth."

     "Yes."

     "That's evil."

     "Thank you," Hua Cheng says.

     Xie Lian claps his hands together. "San Lang, that's brilliant!"

     "It was your idea."

     It wasn't, really, but Xie Lian will take it. "Then what do I get to do?"

     "You wrangle the children."

     "We're not children," Sakura mutters. Hua Cheng looks at him over his shoulder until Sakura's ears heat up and he stares into his teacup.

     Xie Lian reaches across the table to squeeze his wrist. "Will you help us, Sakura-kun? You know his friends much better than we do, and I don't want to leave out anyone he would like to have there."

     Sakura isn't good with people, and a party means a lot of them in one room for hours. He'll need to recruit Nirei, who probably has a notebook for this sort of thing.

     "Yeah," he says. "I'll help."

     Upstairs, the water shuts off. Xie Lian lets go of his wrist and folds his hands in his lap. By the time Suo comes down with a towel around his neck, the only sound in the kitchen is Hua Cheng's spoon against the pot.

     Suo stops in the doorway and studies them one at a time. "What did I miss?"

     "San Lang is teaching me a game," Xie Lian says honestly.

     Suo's eye narrows a fraction. Sakura takes a long sip from his empty cup and is grateful when the tension breaks.

     When Sakura asks Nirei for help the next morning, the blond boy is delighted. By Monday he has a new tab in his notebook, and by Tuesday he has split the guest list into two columns: people Sakura should invite himself, and everybody else.

     "I'm not close to anyone," Sakura objects at lunch.

     Nirei gives him a patient look and writes Umemiya-senpai at the top of Sakura's column.

     Umemiya, cornered in the rooftop garden with his green watering can, agrees before Sakura has finished the sentence.

     "Sakura-chan is planning a party? For Suo?" He presses a dirt-smudged hand to his chest. "I'm so proud I could cry."

     "Don't," Sakura says defensively. He gets hugged anyway, and water from the spout dribbles down the back of his leg, pooling into his shoe. He drags it off and scowls at Umemiya, who has the good grace to look sheepish.

     Kotoha-san says yes and asks what Suo likes to eat, so that she can bake something. Sakura knows that Suo likes tea and Sakura, and he isn't about to say the second one out loud in the middle of Café Pothos. Kotoha-san watches his ears go red, hears Sakura mutter that Suo's not big on sweets, and decides that savory biscuits are a safe bet. She writes herself a note on the back of an order slip to make a batch for everyone.

     Tsubaki-senpai is a gamble, but Sakura once watched him and Suo talk about fashion for half an hour without either of them getting bored, so he tries.

     "Suo-chan's house?" Tsubaki grabs both of his hands. "Do you think he'd let me see his closet? I've been dying to know where he gets those coats since December."

     "...Ask him, I don't have a clue," Sakura huffs, and takes his hands back.

     He finds Hiragi-senpai sitting on the low wall behind the gym. Hiragi-senpai hears him out and thinks it over while he chews on an antacid.

     "No," he says. "A crowd of kids in somebody's house all afternoon? My stomach would never forgive me. Besides, it's not like I know him that well."

     But when Nirei brings around the birthday card the class is signing later that day, Hiragi-senpai takes the pen and writes in blocky characters before handing it back. Sakura reads it over Nirei's shoulder: Happy birthday. Don't let them break anything. —Hiragi.

     Nirei's column fills up just as fast. Kiryu says yes without looking up from his phone, then warns Nirei that he has to leave early, because Ayaka-chan wants to go to the planetarium that evening. Anzai accepts a little nervously and asks three times whether Suo-san really won't mind. The Sakaki twins happen to be standing with Tsubakino-senpai when Nirei goes to confirm when he will arrive, so Nirei invites them too (mostly to be polite). Seiryu-senpai says he'll come, since he's always wondered what Suo's house looks like. Uryu-senpai asks if there will be food.

     Tsugeura hears the word party from across the classroom, and that settles that.

     "A party? For Suo? I'm in! I'm so in!" He slaps both hands down on Nirei's desk. "What should I bring? I could bring protein—"

     Nirei groans. "Tsugeura-san, please don't. And keep quiet! It's supposed to be a surprise."

     The present is a group effort. Everyone signs the card, and nearly everyone chips in for a tea set. Nirei collects the money in an envelope with a running tally on the front. They put Sugishita in charge of choosing the set, because he's the only one in class who knows anything about good tea, and he agrees only after asking whether Umemiya-san will be there. He pays his share out of a little coin purse, counted down to the last ten yen. Sakura, who paid in exact change that morning too, decides Sugishita might be all right.

     Keeping the event from Suo is the hard part. He notices when Nirei shuts his notebook too fast, and when Tsugeura bursts into the classroom yelling "Did everybody sign—" and chokes on the rest of the sentence. He notices on Thursday, when something folded makes its last secret trip around the room and Tsugeura rushes to hide it… under his butt.

     "Tsugeura-kun," Suo says pleasantly, turning around in his seat. "Are you sitting on something?"

     "Nope!" Tsugeura says, sweating.

     Suo's eye moves to Sakura. "Haruka?"

     Sakura doesn't lie, and he isn't about to start in front of the entire class, especially not to his boyfriend. "Don't ask me," he says.

     "Now I really want to ask you."

     "Then don't ask me harder." Sakura stands up so fast that his chair scrapes the floor, and he walks out of the classroom with Suo's quiet chuckle following him into the hall. To his credit, Suo doesn't come back around and ask.

     Sakura can't settle on a present of his own.

     He has been looking for a week. He has picked up and put down a scarf (Suo already owns several, all of them nicer), a teacup (everyone else is buying him a tea set), and a book of old poetry from the secondhand shop, which he put back when he realized he couldn't read half of the title so there's no chance he'll be able to tell if it's any good. On Thursday after school, he drags Nirei through the shopping mall one more time.

     They end up in the little accessory shop between the florist and the dry cleaner, where Sakura stands in front of the earrings for so long that the lady behind the counter asks if he's feeling all right. Suo wears his gold tassels every day. Sakura doesn't know if Suo even wants new earrings, but there's a pair with short silk tassels in a blue so dark that it's almost black, and Sakura keeps coming back to them.

     They cost more than he spends on food in a week. He buys them anyway.

     Next door at the variety shop, there's a bin of little plush kittens by the register. Most of them are orange or grey. One of them is half black and half white, split right down the middle of its face.

     Sakura stares at it. Suo has called him a cat more than once: a stray that hisses at everyone and then falls asleep on their feet, a cat who climbs a tree and can't get down. (He was not stuck. He was resting.)

     "Sakura," Nirei says slowly. "That's you."

     "Shut up." Sakura picks it up anyway and pays for it in exact change.

     On the bridge over the canal, with both presents in a plastic bag hanging off his wrist, Sakura stops walking.

     "It's not enough," he says. "It's earrings and a stuffed cat. Everyone else is getting him a tea set."

     "Everyone together is getting him a tea set. You chipped in too."

     "That doesn't count." Sakura scowls down at the water. "I don't even know what he wants. He never says. If I had more money, I could at least get him something good, instead of—" He lifts the bag and lets it thump against his leg. "This."

     Nirei is quiet for a moment. "Do you remember that sticky note he left in your textbook, the one that said 'good job today'?"

     Sakura does. It's still stuck to the inside cover of his math book.

     "It was a sticky note," Nirei says. "It probably cost him one yen, maybe less. You kept it because it mattered to you." He smiles. "He's going to love what you give him because you picked it, Sakura. That's what he wants."

     Sakura kicks a pebble into the canal and lets Nirei walk him home.

     On the twenty-eighth, the cherry trees along the canal are just starting to open, and Tsugeura sends a photo of them to the group chat with a long row of exclamation points first thing in the morning.

     Sakura and Nirei climb the hill to Suo's house a little after one. Suo answers the door in a soft grey sweater, and his face lights up at the sight of them.

     "Haruka. Nirei-kun." His mouth curls. "What a nice surprise."

     "Happy birthday, Suo-san!" Nirei says brightly.

     Sakura mumbles the same thing at the doorframe. He has decided that the safest plan for the afternoon is to say as little as possible.

     Inside, the house smells like everything Hua Cheng has been cooking since dawn, and the kitchen door is shut. Xie Lian is in the hall in his usual soft trousers and white shirt, and he greets them so warmly that Sakura worries the entire plan is written on Xie Lian's forehead and Suo can read it. Sakura quickly turns to ask Suo if he's already finished with the homework, and Nirei keeps them both occupied in conversation for several minutes.

     Hua Cheng steps out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a cloth. "Xiao Fei. I need your help with something."

     "Now?" Suo glances at his guests. "Haruka and Akihiko just got here."

     "Qingming is next weekend, and I still need to choose the offerings for your diē's people. It will only take an hour, perhaps less. I want to get you something too, for your birthday."

     "Your friends can keep me company," Xie Lian says quickly, before Suo can protest that he's already gotten gifts from his parents this morning. "I'll show them the garden. The pine has new candles on it! Sakura-kun, have you ever seen them?"

     Sakura has no idea what that means. He looks out the window at the pine with great concentration.

     Suo looks from one father to the other, then to Nirei, who is smiling so hard that it must hurt, and finally to Sakura, who is still studying the pine.

     "All right," Suo says slowly. "Let me get my coat."

     He goes upstairs. The moment his footsteps reach the landing, Nirei sags against the wall, and Xie Lian presses a hand to his chest and lets out a long breath. Sakura stays where he is in the hall by the red shoe cabinet, with his hands jammed in his pockets.

     Hua Cheng stops beside him on his way back to the kitchen and sets one hand on Sakura's shoulder, leaving it there for a moment. When Sakura looks up, Hua Cheng is smiling at him. Then he lets go and goes into the kitchen to turn off the stove.

     Sakura can still feel the warmth of that hand when Suo comes back down, buttoning his coat.

     "Don't have too much fun without me," Suo says. The look he gives Sakura on his way out is so knowing that Sakura almost confesses to everything on the spot.

     The front door slides shut behind them. Xie Lian counts to thirty under his breath, peeks out at the path, and spins around with both hands in the air.

     "Quick! Everyone gets here at two!"

     The next forty minutes are chaos, most of it Xie Lian's.

     Hua Cheng has left very clear instructions for Sakura about what Xie Lian is allowed to touch, which is almost nothing. He's allowed to carry the clean plates upstairs, one short stack at a time. He is not allowed to open the pot of soup. He tries twice anyway, and Sakura finally takes the pot away from him and carries it up himself.

     "I just wanted to see if it was still warm," Xie Lian whines.

     "It's warm," Sakura says. "It's really warm. Don't touch it."

     Nirei has a plan in his notebook, laid out in neat numbered steps, and he works through it with a pen behind his ear. The low tables in the big room come out of the closet and get pushed end to end. The good cushions come down from a shelf Sakura has to stand on a chair to reach. Tsugeura dropped off a banner at Nirei's house yesterday. Nirei holds it up against the wall and frowns, because the letters get smaller toward the end and the last word is squeezed against the edge of the paper.

     "We'll hang it downstairs," he decides. "In the sitting room. Where it's less… visible."

     Xie Lian thinks the banner is wonderful and says so several times.

     At one point, Sakura comes down the stairs with an empty tray and finds Xie Lian standing in the middle of the kitchen with his hands clasped, smiling at the covered dishes on the counter. Sakura stops on the bottom step.

     "Sorry," Xie Lian says, without turning around. "I'm just so happy. He's never had this before, Sakura-kun." He turns, and his eyes are bright. "Thank you."

     Sakura mumbles "Yeah" and picks up the nearest dish, which turns out to be the fish. It's much heavier than it looks, and he has to brace it against his chest. Xie Lian laughs and takes the other end, and they carry it up together.

     Hua Cheng takes his time.

     At the florist, he orders white chrysanthemums for next Saturday and spends a few minutes choosing between two kinds of ribbon. At the fruit stall by the bridge, he picks out oranges one at a time, turning each one over in his long fingers before he puts it in the bag. At the shop that sells incense, he asks the old woman behind the counter to let him smell five different kinds, one at a time.

     Suo watches all of this with his hands in his coat pockets. Every year at Qingming, they go to the temple one town over, where Xie Lian keeps memorial tablets for people he lost a long time ago. They sweep, light incense, and set out oranges and wine. Xie Lian talks quietly to the tablets for a while, and Hua Cheng stands a little behind him and waits. Every year, Hua Cheng buys the offerings on his own in about fifteen minutes.

     "Bà," Suo says, at the fifth incense. "Are you stalling?"

     Hua Cheng holds a stick of sandalwood under his nose. "Do I look like I'm stalling?"

     "You never look like you're doing anything."

     Hua Cheng's mouth curves, and he buys the first incense.

     Suo has his theories. Haruka has been a terrible liar all week, mostly by refusing to say anything at all, and Nirei-kun's notebook has a new tab that he keeps covering with his thumb. Suo suspects a cake. He suspects that Haruka made it himself and that it's lopsided, and that Xie Lian tried to help and had to be stopped. The thought of it makes his chest go warm and tight.

     Before his parents found him, a birthday meant dinner at a long table where the adults talked over his head about money. He was expected to sit up straight the whole time and thank everyone at the end. On his first birthday with Xie Lian and Hua Cheng, they took him to see the sea, and Xie Lian bought him an ice cream that melted down his wrist before he managed to eat it. Nobody minded.

     They stop at the liquor shop for a bottle of the rice wine Xie Lian likes. While the shopkeeper wraps it, Suo watches Hua Cheng count out the coins. Every year, Xie Lian pours the first cup of this wine out for the tablets.

     "Whose are they? The tablets." He keeps his voice light. "Diē has never said, and I've never asked."

     Hua Cheng is quiet for a moment. "His parents. A few friends. People who meant a great deal to him, once."

     "And yours?"

     "I have him," Hua Cheng says. "And I have you."

     Suo knows that it's the only answer he'll get. Hua Cheng would never claim anyone else as his own to grieve. There are a few people he misses, gathered over a very long time, and he keeps them to himself.

     Hua Cheng checks the clock over the counter. "Now we can go home."

     Suo is looking at the window display, so he misses the silver butterfly that lifts off Hua Cheng's sleeve and slips out the door ahead of them.

     They walk home along the canal. The cherry trees have opened more since the morning, and the path is speckled with fallen petals. The canal kids are down on the stone steps with their bucket and net, and when they spot Suo, all four of them wave. One of them yells, "Where's your boyfriend?"

     "At my house," Suo calls back, "hiding something from me."

     The kids accept this without question.

     "Bà," Suo says, once they're past. "What's waiting at home?"

     Hua Cheng hums. "Your diē."

     "And?"

     "Sakura. Nirei. And dinner."

     Suo gives up, and he's smiling when he does.

     At quarter to two, Xie Lian disappears upstairs and comes back down in an absolutely gorgeous hanfu.

     Sakura, halfway up the stairs with a platter of dumplings, stops dead.

     Xie Lian is dressed in white, which is the norm, but this looks like silk that has been embroidered in gold, with pink layered underneath. The robes have wide sleeves that fall past his hands, a sash tied at the waist, and an outer layer that moves when he walks. Ruoye is wound around his wrist, the same pale silk as the sleeves, and his hair is tied half up. Sakura's eyes come to rest on a necklace with a tiny crystal ring with a delicate silver butterfly resting on top.

     "Is it too much?" Xie Lian asks, smoothing a sleeve nervously. "We always dressed up for birthdays when I was young. San Lang said it was fine."

     Sakura searches for a word. "It's… fancy."

     "Oh!" says Nirei, from behind a stack of plates.

     The guests arrive almost all at once, because Nirei told everyone to meet at the bottom of the hill. Sakura watches through the front window as they come up the path in a loose clump. Umemiya-senpai is out in front with a gift bag, and Kotoha-san walks beside him with a big tin of biscuits. Tsubakino-senpai follows in a pale pink coat with a Sakaki twin on either side, then Kiryu with his phone, Anzai hanging back a little, and Sugishita at the rear with a wrapped box held carefully in both arms. Tsugeura runs laps around all of them.

     They slow down as they get closer. Suo's house is old, with a dark wooden fence, a tiled roof, and a garden behind a low wall, and next to the newer houses on the hill, it looks like it belongs in another century. Tsugeura actually stops to stare at the gate.

     Xie Lian opens the door before anyone can knock.

     Nobody speaks. The crowd of teenagers stands on the step and stares at the man in white robes, and he beams back at them.

     "Welcome! Thank you all so much for coming. I'm Sui—" He stops himself. "Ah, Hayato's father. Suo's. Please come in, you must be cold."

     "You're Suo's dad?" Tsugeura blurts out. "You look like you're twenty-five!"

     Kotoha-san elbows him. Xie Lian only laughs. "That's very kind. I'm a lot older than I look."

     Anzai bows so low that his bag swings forward and hits him in the knee. The Sakaki twins exchange a look, Sugishita holds his box a little tighter, and Kiryu lowers his phone for the first time since the bottom of the hill.

     Then Umemiya steps forward and takes Xie Lian's hand in both of his.

     "Umemiya Hajime," he says warmly. "Thanks for having us!"

     "Oh, you're the one with the garden!" Xie Lian says, delighted. "Sakura-kun told me about you. Do you really grow tomatoes on the roof of the school?"

     "Tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, a little shiso… do you garden?"

     "I try," Xie Lian says. "Last year I planted radishes, and they came up purple and about the size of my thumb."

     Umemiya-senpai looks horrified. "What are you planting them in?"

     "Whatever was already in the garden… mulch or something?"

     "Oh, no. No, no, no. I'm bringing you compost."

     Within two minutes they're talking about drainage, and within five, Umemiya has hugged Xie Lian more than once; Xie Lian has returned every one, of course. Watching them, Sakura understands why Xie Lian reminded him of Umemiya-senpai the first time Sakura spent a day with him. They both look at a stranger and decide to love them on the spot.

     Everyone else relaxes after that. Kotoha laughs at something Xie Lian says about failing to cook the things he grows, and Tsugeura introduces himself at full volume. By the time they've all taken their shoes off, the hall is full of noise.

     "Shoes," Nirei says, checking his notebook. "Suo-san will see the shoes."

     They pack them into the red shoe cabinet until its doors won't close, and the overflow goes into a cardboard box in the hall closet. Tsugeura's sneakers are enormous.

     Nirei takes everyone upstairs to show them where the party will be, and the guests stop in the doorway of the big room.

     A whole steamed fish lies under a scatter of ginger and scallion. There are platters of dumplings, red-glazed pork, fried chicken, and rolled omelet. There's a pot of soup and a mountain of soft white buns shaped like peaches, each one pink at the tip. In the middle are noodles in a bowl, each one so long that it has been coiled into a tight spiral to fit. At the far end is a tray of sushi, every bite the same size, with something green showing faintly under each slice of fish.

     "Are other people coming?" Kotoha-san asks.

     "San Lang was worried there wouldn't be enough," Xie Lian says.

     Kotoha looks down the length of the tables. "There's enough for fifty."

     Uryu walks past everyone, picks up a peach bun, and eats it in two bites.

     "He's always like this," Seiryu says.

     The twins are more interested in the house. They drift from room to room downstairs with their hands clasped behind their backs until Seiryu stops in the sitting room and bends to look at the carving on the legs of the old table.

     "This is old," he says. "Like, really old. How is it still in such good condition?"

     "San Lang says it's from a royal dynasty," Xie Lian says. "I mostly use it for folding laundry."

     Anzai, who has just set the teacup Xie Lian handed him on the corner of it, snatches the cup back up and holds it in both hands for the next ten minutes.

     Tsubaki has found the coat hooks by the door and is going through them one by one. "Is this charcoal one Suo-chan's? Look at the lining." He turns to Sakura with shining eyes. "Sakura-chan, do you think he'll really let me see his closet? I bet it's full of so many goodies!"

     "I said, ask him," Sakura says.

     Umemiya sets his gift bag on the old table with the other presents and comes to stand beside Sakura. Kotoha-san is on Sakura's other side, arranging biscuits on a plate.

     "It's only something small," Umemiya-senpai says, frowning at his bag. "I didn't even get him condoms."

     Sakura chokes on air. Without looking up from the biscuits, Kotoha-san drives an elbow into her adopted brother's side.

     "Kidding," Umemiya-senpai wheezes, and goes to help Xie Lian hang Tsugeura's banner over the doorway. Despite the way the letters squeeze unevenly in at the end, Tsugeura beams at it the entire time it goes up.

     Sakura is still recovering when something small drifts in from the veranda.

     It's a silver butterfly. It makes a lazy loop over the plate of biscuits and settles on Xie Lian's white sleeve. Sakura has seen one exactly like it before, perched on the rim of Hua Cheng's red umbrella on a rainy night, the first time he ever came to this house.

     Xie Lian looks down at it and gasps. "They're coming! Everyone, hide!"

     It isn't graceful. Tsugeura tries to fold himself into the hall closet on top of the box of shoes. The Sakaki twins crouch behind the painted screen in the sitting room, Uryu bringing a peach bun with him. Kiryu wraps himself in the curtain with his phone already in camera mode, his socks poking out underneath it. Anzai hides behind Kotoha-san, who ducks into the kitchen. Sugishita refuses to hide at all until Umemiya drops below the old table, and then he crouches next to his senpai so fast that Sakura never sees him move.

     Sakura and Nirei end up behind the sliding door between the sitting room and the hall, pressed shoulder to shoulder. Xie Lian is right beside them, and a hand's width of white cloth sticks out past the edge of the door.

     "Your sleeve," Sakura hisses.

     Xie Lian gathers it up in both arms. In the closet, Tsugeura gets the hiccups and is shushed from three directions at once.

     At the bottom of the hill, Hua Cheng shifts the bag of oranges to his other hand and brushes the air with his free fingers, as if he's flicking a petal off his sleeve.

     Up at the house, a hush settles over the roof and the garden walls. Nothing about the house looks any different. Inside, nearly a dozen teenagers are struggling to keep things to a whisper, but not a single sound reaches the path.

     Suo hears birds, the wind in the cherry trees, and his own footsteps on the stones. The house is very quiet. That's strange, because Xie Lian is home with Haruka and Nirei-kun, and Xie Lian is never quiet when he has company. Suo listens for his laugh all the way up the hill and hears nothing.

     He opens the door.

     The entryway is empty. There isn't a single shoe on the step, not even Haruka's battered sneakers, which have sat there at least once a week since autumn. For a second, Suo's stomach drops. Maybe they got bored. Maybe they left.

     Then he sees the red shoe cabinet. Its doors have been pushed shut, but they don't quite meet, and a frayed white shoelace hangs out of the gap.

     Suo feels his mouth twitch.

     "I'm home," he calls.

     Behind him, Hua Cheng slides the front door closed, and the hush around the house lifts as quietly as it came.

     The sitting room door flies open.

     "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

     It comes from everywhere at once. Tsugeura bursts out of the hall closet. The Sakaki twins pop up over the top of the screen. Kiryu's camera flashes from a gap in the curtain, Kotoha and Anzai spill out of the kitchen, and Umemiya vaults over the old table with his arms already open and Sugishita right behind him. Nirei throws a handful of confetti that lands mostly on Xie Lian, who is laughing too hard to notice. Sakura stays in the doorway of the sitting room with his hands in his pockets and watches Suo's face.

     Suo's eye widens, just slightly. His hand finds the doorframe beside him and he focuses on not gripping it too tightly. He takes one slow breath, and then another.

     Suo had expected a cake. He had expected Haruka and Nirei and his parents around the kitchen table, and he had been more than happy with that. Instead, everyone he cares about is crowded into his front hall in their socks. It hits him all at once, too much and too fast, and he folds the feeling up small and puts it away where nobody can see.

     He'll feel later. For now, he smiles. It's the gracious, composed smile he wears at school, but maybe just a touch wider. "Ah, you're all here."

     Suo thanks them one at a time. He lets Umemiya hug him until his feet lift off the floor (juuust barely), and he lets Tsugeura hiccup "Happy birthday" at him over and over. He bows to the Sakaki twins, who nod back, and assures Anzai that he's very glad he came. He thanks Kotoha for the biscuits, which he can smell from across the hall. Sugishita mutters "Happy birthday" at the floor, but Suo answers him warmly anyway.

     Sakura is last. He's still in the doorway of the sitting room, under the lopsided banner.

     Suo stops in front of him.

     "Haruka," Suo says. "Your shoelace is hanging out of my shoe cabinet."

     Sakura's face goes hot. "That's Tsugeura's."

     "It's yours. Tsugeura-kun's shoes have velcro."

     "They do not," Tsugeura protests from somewhere behind them, and Kiryu affectionately calls him a liar.

     For half a second, Suo's smile wobbles at one corner, and Sakura sees it before Suo steadies it. Then Suo bumps his shoulder against Sakura's, very lightly, and turns to the rest of the room.

     Behind him, Tsubaki catches sight of Hua Cheng in the entryway and grabs Seiryu's sleeve.

     Hua Cheng has shrugged off his black overcoat. Underneath it, he's in red from the collar down: a long red coat over black, silver cuffs at his wrists, and a braid over one shoulder with a single red bead at the end. The black patch over his right eye looks like it was made to be part of the outfit.

     "Oh my god," Tsubaki says faintly, quite possibly blushing. "Who are you?"

     "His other dad," Nirei whispers.

     "Where do you get your clothes?"

     "I have them made," Hua Cheng says.

     "Of course you do." Tsubaki's hand goes to his heart. "Would you mind—could I look at the stitching on that cuff? Just for a second?"

     Hua Cheng holds out his wrist. Tsubaki bends over the cuff with his nose an inch from it, and spends enough time staring that Seiryu comes and pulls him back by the collar.

     "San Lang has wonderful taste," Xie Lian says proudly.

     Hua Cheng looks at him, at the white-with-gold robes and the confetti still caught in his hair. "I do," he agrees. "As do you."

     Xie Lian goes pink to the ears. Sakura has to look at the ceiling.

     Upstairs, when Suo sees the food, he turns to Hua Cheng. "Bà. How many people did you think were coming?"

     "Enough," Hua Cheng says.

     They eat. The big room fills up with talking and laughing and the clink of chopsticks, and the light through the paper screens goes from white to gold. Xie Lian explains, between bites, that the peach buns and the long noodles are for a long life, and that you aren't supposed to bite the noodles in half. Tsugeura takes this as a challenge and slurps a single noodle for so long that Kiryu starts filming.

     Then Nirei brings the presents up from the sitting room. Suo reads every message in the card. He laughs out loud at Hiragi's, telling them he'll write a reply note to send tomorrow. The tea set comes out of its box cup by cup: pale green glaze with a darker green pooled at the bottom of each one, and a matching pot. Suo holds a cup up to the light from the window.

     "This is lovely," he says. "Who picked it?"

     Every hand in the room points at Sugishita.

     Sugishita stares at the wall. "It's for hojicha," he says. "Don't put anything sweet in it."

     "I wouldn't dare," Suo says gravely.

     The rest are small. Kotoha-san brought him a tin of the black tea he always orders at Pothos.

     "For when the café's closed or doesn't have stock," she says. "You always look so sad when I tell you we're out."

     "Do I?"

     "You do," say Kotoha, Nirei, and Sakura at the same time.

     Umemiya brought a little pot of mint from the rooftop garden. There are rice crackers from the Sakaki twins and a good pen from Anzai. Tsugeura brought a six-pack of protein drinks.

     "I know Nirei said not to," Tsugeura says, "but it's chocolate."

     "Thank you, Tsugeura-kun," Suo says, and seems to mean it despite not being fond of sweets at all.

     Sakura's bag is the last one on the table. "Here, for you." He hands it over without looking at Suo, heart beating far too fast.

     Suo opens the little box first. He looks at the earrings for a long moment, at the dark blue silk in its folds of tissue. Tsubaki makes a small, involuntary noise of approval.

     Then Suo reaches up, unhooks his gold tassels, and puts the blue ones in right there at the table. He turns his head so they swing.

     "How do they look?"

     Sakura looks up and has to clear his throat. "...Good."

     Next, Suo pulls the kitten out of the bag. He looks at it, then at Sakura, and holds the kitten up next to Sakura's head.

     "It has the same face as you."

     "It's a stuffed cat!"

     "It's glaring at me exactly like you are~" Suo tucks the kitten into the crook of his arm, where it stays for the rest of the afternoon.

     Umemiya coos. Kiryu takes a picture with his phone and texts it to the group chat. Sakura's ears are on fire, but beneath the embarrassment, he's sitting with the strange idea that Nirei might have been right. Suo is wearing the earrings Sakura chose, and he has his arm around a plush cat that cost a few hundred yen, and he's got an expression on as if nobody has ever given him anything better.

     "All right!" Xie Lian claps his hands, and his sleeves flap. "It's time for a game!"

     He sets the tray of sushi in the middle of the table and explains the rules with great enthusiasm. A few people look at the green under the fish and go quiet.

     "Who made these?" Seiryu-senpai asks, eyeing the tray.

     "San Lang," Xie Lian says. "I had the idea, but I'm not allowed in the kitchen."

     Hua Cheng, leaning in the doorway, inclines his head.

     Kiryu goes first, since he has to leave soonest. "Tsugeura-kun. I dare you to—"

     "Fifty pushups? On it!" Tsugeura is already on the floor.

     "—to sit still for one whole minute."

     Tsugeura freezes in a plank. He looks up at Kiryu, then at the tray, and then he picks a piece of sushi and eats it whole. He chews. He swallows, and makes a completely befuddled expression at the taste.

     "Zucchini," Hua Cheng clarifies.

     Tsugeura gets the next turn, and he swings straight around to Nirei. "I dare you to send the most embarrassing text possible to your girlfriend!"

     Nirei shrugs and smiles, lets the class draft a horrible text that starts with 'My angel of mercy, I'm in love-love with your existence' and ends with a string of fifteen emojis. He sends it without even blinking twice. Then he turns to Sakura.

     "Sakura, truth: What's your favorite thing about Suo?"

     Sakura grabs a piece of sushi before Nirei has even finished the question and shoves it in his mouth whole.

     It's wasabi. It's a lot of wasabi. His eyes flood, his nose catches fire, and he folds over the table with his fist pressed to his mouth while the room howls. Suo, laughing, pushes a cup of tea into his hand.

     "You could have just answered," Suo says.

     "No," Sakura wheezes, "I couldn't."

     When he can see again, he wants revenge on Tsugeura, but Umemiya claims the next turn first. "Sugishita! Dare. Say something nice about Sakura-chan."

     Sugishita picks up a piece of sushi without the slightest hesitation and eats it. His face doesn't move at all, but after a few seconds, tears start running silently down both cheeks.

     "Wow," Sakura says.

     Umemiya pats Sugishita on the back with great tenderness. Sugishita keeps staring straight ahead and keeps crying.

     Anzai picks truth and gets asked by Seiryu who he has a crush on. He looks at the tray with real terror, takes a piece, and finds zucchini. He sags against the wall in relief. Kiryu, it turns out, has never refused a dare in his life, and he cheerfully lets Kotoha draw a mustache on him with her eyeliner before he has to go.

     Then Tsubaki turns to Suo with a gleam in his eye. "Suo-chan. Dare. Show me your closet."

     "That isn't much of a dare, senpai," Suo says.

     "It is for me."

     Suo laughs and agrees to take him up after the game. For a moment, Tsubaki looks like he might faint of happiness.

     Umemiya turns to Xie Lian, who is sitting on the floor among them with his sleeves pushed back. "Okay, I've got one. Truth! What's the worst thing you've ever cooked?"

     Xie Lian thinks about it for a long time. Eventually, he picks up a piece of sushi and eats it. His eyes go very wide and very wet, and he swallows heroically.

     "It's very good, San Lang," he says hoarsely.

     Hua Cheng crosses the room and hands him a glass of water. "Thank you, gēge."

     After the game, the party breaks up into little groups.

     Sugishita has been staring at the tea set since it came out of the box, so Suo brews the first pot in it. He warms the cups first and waits for the water to cool a little before he pours it over the hojicha, and Sugishita follows every step with his eyes. When Suo passes him a cup, Sugishita takes a sip and nods once. From Sugishita, that's practically a standing ovation.

     Tsubaki has trapped Hua Cheng by the window (as far as anyone can corner the man, who could be gone in a swarm of butterflies in a moment if he so desired) and is asking him questions about tailoring. Hua Cheng answers every one of them in a few words, and Tsubaki types each answer into his phone.

     On the other side of the room, Umemiya is telling Xie Lian about the tomatoes he lost to a typhoon last summer, and Xie Lian is listening with both hands pressed to his mouth, as if in true distress on the teen's behalf. Kotoha sits beside them and steals the last rolled omelet off Umemiya's plate while he's busy gesturing.

     Sakura ends up near the door with a plate he isn't eating from, watching all of it.

     He has been in rooms full of people before, at school and at Pothos and in a string of foster houses where the TV never went off, but he was always the one at the edge, waiting for someone to tell him to leave. Today, not one person has looked at him like he's in the way. Tsugeura is trying to teach Xie Lian an arm-wrestling grip. Kotoha-san has a mustache drawn on her own lip now, in solidarity. And in the middle of it, Suo is laughing with his head tipped back, the blue tassels swinging against his jaw.

     Sakura looks down at his plate before anyone can catch him smiling, a blush splashed over his cheeks. God, Suo looks so beautiful.

     Kiryu leaves around five, still mustachioed, after selfie-ing a group photo. "Happy birthday, Suo-chan!" Kiryu calls from the door. He posts the picture to the chat before he's even reached the gate, and Sugishita scowls at how red his eyes are in the picture.

     Tsubaki gets his closet tour. Through the wall, everyone else can hear him gasp dramatically at regular intervals and gush at an ever-increasing pitch.

     The others stay until the sunlight outside goes orange. Suo sits between Sakura and Nirei on the tatami with the stuffed kitten in his lap, and every so often Sakura feels Suo's knee press against his. Now and then, Suo looks around the room at all of them, as if to check that they're still there.

     They leave in twos and threes. Hua Cheng sends everyone home with a container of food. So that's why he cooked enough for fifty. That's kind of him.

     At the gate, Umemiya hugs Xie Lian one last time and promises compost by Tuesday. Then he rests a hand on Suo's head for a moment. "Happy birthday, Suo," he says. "I'm really glad you were born."

     Hua Cheng presses a small paper bag of tea leaves into Sugishita's hands, and Sugishita bows deeply to him. Sakura has only ever seen him bow like that to Umemiya-senpai. Tsugeura shakes Suo's hand with both of his. Nirei is the last to go, and behind Suo's back, he gives Sakura two thumbs up.

     Sakura hangs back. He tells himself it's to help clean up. Instead, Xie Lian catches him in the sitting room while folding Tsugeura's banner on the old table, and regales him with tales from his storied life.

     "It was a long time ago," Xie Lian says. "I was traveling, and I had to cross a mountain pass that was absolutely full of snakes. Poisonous ones, all of them. I must have fought a hundred."

     Sakura nods and keeps his face as neutral as he can. He fails.

     Xie Lian practically pouts. "Sakura-kun. You don't believe me."

     Sakura turns his head toward the window.

     "Let me see your face."

     "No."

     Xie Lian leans sideways to look at him. Sakura turns a little further. Xie Lian scoots around the corner of the table, banner and all, and Sakura turns until he's facing the wall.

     "It was at least eighty," Xie Lian says.

     "...Okay."

     "Sakura-kun, you still don't believe me!" Xie Lian puts the banner down entirely. "There was one as long as this table. Longer! It came out of a crack in the rock, and I had to—" He makes a sweeping motion with one sleeve and sends a cushion skidding across the floor. "Like that."

     Sakura looks at the cushion on the floor. He looks at Xie Lian, who once broke a claw machine just by touching it and is currently tangled in his own sleeve.

     "I believe you," Sakura says carefully.

     Xie Lian gasps dramatically. "You're lying? To me? You never lie, and you're doing it terribly, for the record, and I'm appalled!"

     Suo, who has been stacking cushions by the veranda door, slips out of the room.

     In the kitchen, Hua Cheng is fitting lids onto the last of the glass containers. He hears the door slide open behind him and doesn't need to look up; he knows the footsteps like the back of his hand.

     Suo crosses the kitchen and walks straight into his chest.

     Hua Cheng sets the lid down and wraps both arms around his son, one hand cradling the back of Suo's head.

     Suo has kept the afternoon packed away for hours, and now it all spills out at once. He shakes, and then he cries, quietly, into the red of Hua Cheng's coat.

     The last time Suo came to him like this, he was nine years old and had woken up from a nightmare about the people who hurt his eye. Hua Cheng sat on the floor of his room until morning that night, holding him the same way. This is different, though. Suo's hands rest loose against his back instead of clutching at him.

     He has a senior who hugs him whether he wants it or not, and who is going to bring his father compost. He has a classmate who would rather cry over wasabi than say something nice out loud, and who spent days choosing cups for him anyway. He has friends who hid in closets and behind curtains and tables, who crammed their shoes into a cabinet so they could surprise him. He has Nirei-kun, who planned it all in that tiny notebook of his. And he has a pair of blue earrings on and a stuffed cat on the couch that looks exactly like the boy who bought it.

     He has a community now. He has so many people who love him.

     "They came, bà," he says, muffled. "All of them."

     "They did," Hua Cheng says.

     "I didn't think—"

     "I know, Xiao Fei."

     Sakura escapes Xie Lian by announcing that they need more tea. He slides the kitchen door open a crack and stops.

     Suo is pressed against Hua Cheng's chest with his face hidden, shoulders still trembling minutely. Hua Cheng's hand is moving slowly over his hair.

     Sakura steps back. This isn't his to see.

     Hua Cheng looks up. His eye finds Sakura in the gap, and he shakes his head. Then he puts his hand on Suo's shoulder and turns him gently toward the door.

     Suo lifts his head. His eye is red and his face is wet. When he sees Sakura, his mouth wobbles.

     Sakura gives him a small, private smile. Then he crosses the kitchen in three steps and pulls Suo into his arms as tight as he can.

     Hua Cheng picks up the stack of containers and leaves the kitchen, sliding the door shut behind him.

     For a while, they just stand there. Suo's hands are fisted in the back of Sakura's sweater, and his breath is hot and uneven against Sakura's neck.

     "Haruka," Suo says eventually, into his shoulder. "Did you set this up?"

     "Your diē came up with it. Nirei did most of the inviting. He's way better at the people stuff than I am. I just…" He tries to shrug, but it's awkward with Suo still attached to him. "Helped."

     Suo pulls back far enough to look at him. "Why?"

     Sakura looks at the floor, then the ceiling, and finally at Suo, because there isn't anywhere else left to look.

     "Because you deserve it," he says roughly. "You deserve to be celebrated more than anyone I know. You're always looking after everybody. You notice when I haven't eaten, and you notice when Nirei's tired, and you notice everything about everybody, and nobody ever…" He stops. Starts again. "I never had a party like that. Not once. Nobody ever made a big deal out of my birthday. But maybe we can start doing stuff like this. From now on. Maybe we can figure out how to be happier, the both of us."

     Suo's visible eye is blown wide.

     Sakura is red to the ears. "And seeing you happy is…" He swallows, and his voice drops. "It's the best feeling in the world. It's better than winning any fight."

     "I love you."

     It comes out too fast, before Suo has even really decided to say it, and he looks as surprised as Sakura does to hear the words aloud. They'd circled in his head a hundred, thousand times, and...

     Sakura stares at him with his mouth slightly parted in shock.

     For one awful moment, Suo thinks he might have to take it back. He could laugh it off, call it the long day or the birthday, and Sakura would let him. He's already reaching for the words.

     Then Sakura grabs the front of his sweater and kisses him.

     It's terrible. Their noses crash together, and Sakura's teeth catch Suo's lip, and he's pushing too hard and he doesn't know where to put his face. It lasts about a second and a half. It's a disastrous first kiss, and Suo is going to treasure every second of it.

     Sakura breaks away, gasping, and immediately buries his blazing face in Suo's shoulder.

     "I love you too," he mumbles into the wool. "Idiot."

     Suo laughs. It comes out wet and cracked and helpless, and he wraps both arms around Sakura's back. The tassels of his new earrings brush Sakura's hair.

     In the sitting room, Xie Lian has stopped fixing up the sofa.

     He's sitting perfectly still at the old table with the fabric cover half-creased in his hands. Hua Cheng sits next to him with the containers on the floor. The kitchen door is shut, but the walls in this house are old and thin, and neither of them has moved since Suo started laughing.

     Xie Lian looks at Hua Cheng. His eyes are shining.

     Hua Cheng takes his hand and laces their fingers together.

     Their son is happy. For years, his birthdays fit around one kitchen table, and this year it took every table in the house. Now there's a boy in there with him who kisses like he's trying to win a fight. Xie Lian and Hua Cheng have waited a very long time, through more years than either of them would ever tell Suo about, to find what they have with each other. They would never wish that wait on anyone. But a glimpse of it, in a kitchen full of leftovers — that, they would wish on these boys with everything they have.

     "San Lang," Xie Lian whispers. "When is Sakura-kun's birthday?"

     Hua Cheng considers. "I don't know."

     Xie Lian squeezes his hand, already smiling. "I'll ask him."