Archive of Our Own

     The greengrocer by the bridge keeps his best daikon in the back row, under the awning where the sun can't reach them, and Xie Lian is trying to choose between two of them when he hears Sakura's voice over the noise of the market.

     "I don't care if he has been parking it there for ten years. Tell him the steps aren't a bike rack."

     Xie Lian turns around with a daikon in each hand. Three boys in Furin uniforms are coming down the canal path. Sakura walks in front with his hands shoved in his pockets and a scowl that makes an old woman pull her shopping cart a little closer. Nirei trots half a step behind him, reading something off his phone and nodding along, and Suo strolls at Sakura's left with his hands folded behind his back.

     Xie Lian's first instinct is to wave. His second, a beat later, is to remember the afternoon he ran into Sakura at this market last winter. He hugged him, petted his hair, and bought him half the snacks on the street, and he knows perfectly well that he'd do it all again. But Sakura is on patrol now, leading his classmates in front of the fishmonger, the sweet potato man, and half the neighborhood, and nobody takes a captain seriously after his boyfriend's father has patted him on the head in public.

     Xie Lian crouches behind the crates.

     The greengrocer peers down at him over a pyramid of cucumbers. Xie Lian puts a finger to his lips. The old man grunts and goes back to stacking.

     Through a gap between the cabbages and the eggplants, Xie Lian can see the boys coming closer. What he has forgotten is that the daikon are taller than the crates, and their leafy tops stick up over the edge for anyone to see.

     It happens fast. A boy in a middle school uniform darts out from behind the fishmonger's stall, snatches an apple off the front of the display, and bolts for the bridge. He makes it a few steps. Sakura's hand shoots out and catches him by the back of the collar, and the boy's sneakers skid on the stones.

     "Oi!" the greengrocer barks.

     "Got him," Sakura says, rather unnecessarily.

     The boy twists around, sees who's holding him, and goes pale. Nirei crouches down to the boy's eye level. "Hey, it's okay. You're not in trouble." He glances up at Sakura's fist in the boy's collar. "Well. You're not in big trouble. Did somebody tell you to do that?"

     The boy's eyes slide toward the bridge railing, where two more middle schoolers are watching with their mouths open. The moment Nirei turns to look, they both run.

     "A dare, probably," Nirei says, straightening up.

     Sakura looks at the boy, then at the apple, then at the greengrocer. He lets go of the collar and digs in his pocket instead, counting coins into his palm with a frown of total concentration, and holds them out over the cucumbers.

     "It's one apple," the greengrocer says.

     "So take it."

     The old man takes it. Sakura turns and shoves the apple back into the boy's hands. "Ask next time."

     The boy blinks up at him. "Ask who?"

     "Him," Sakura says, jerking his chin at the greengrocer.

     "I'd have said no," the greengrocer says.

     Sakura glares at him, then back at the boy. "Then ask me, damn it."

     The boy clutches the apple to his chest, bows so fast that he nearly headbutts Nirei, and runs after his friends. Sakura's ears go red. He stalks off down the path before anyone can comment, and Nirei hurries after him, beaming.

     Suo lingers. His eye travels over the greengrocer's stall and settles, very briefly, on two leafy green tops sticking up over the crates. The corner of his mouth twitches. Then he catches up to Sakura in a few long strides and falls into step at his left.

     Xie Lian stays crouched until they’re well out of sight. When he finally stands, the greengrocer charges him for one daikon and lets him keep the other, since Xie Lian has squeezed it hard enough to dent it and nobody else will buy it now.

     "Guess who I saw at the market," Xie Lian says that evening, elbow-deep in soapy water.

     Hua Cheng doesn't turn from the stove. "Xiao Fei and Sakura."

     Xie Lian stares at the back of his head. "How do you know that?"

     Hua Cheng tastes the soup off a spoon, adds a pinch of salt, and tastes it again. Xie Lian gives up and scrubs a pot.

     "There was a boy who stole an apple on a dare," he says. "Sakura-kun caught him by the collar and then paid for the fruit himself, San Lang. Then he told the boy to come ask him to get it for him next time, and went redder than the apple itself! Sun Fei beamed at him. It was adorable."

     Hua Cheng sets the spoon down. "And where were you?"

     "Behind the cabbages. With the daikon I was buying."

     "You hid behind a daikon?" Hua Cheng sounds unimpressed.

     "I was holding the daikon. I hid behind the cabbages. It's different." He rinses a bowl and sets it on the rack. "You should come next time. You'd like seeing him like that."

     "I don't follow children around, gēge."

     "He's our son."

     "Especially not him... except with the butterflies." Hua Cheng ladles soup into a bowl and sets it on the table for Xie Lian. "He notices, you know."

     The big supermarket by the station is the only place in Makochi that sells a decent Shaoxing wine, so, on Thursday afternoon, Hua Cheng is in the import aisle reading the back of a bottle when Suo's voice drifts over the shelves.

     "That's the third time you've looked at that flyer."

     "Because it's wrong. It says eggs are on sale."

     "They are on sale."

     "Not these eggs. These are the brown ones."

     Hua Cheng steps to the end of the aisle. Sakura stands in front of the refrigerated case with a red plastic basket over one arm and a crumpled sale flyer in his other hand, glaring at a carton of eggs as if it has personally lied to him. Suo leans against the shelf beside him, empty-handed, watching Sakura instead of the eggs.

     Sakura picks up a carton of white eggs, opens it, and turns each egg over to check for cracks before he puts it in his basket. Then he moves down the aisle without looking up. Sakura is far too busy doing math in his head to notice a man in red.

     "How much sugar does your bà put in the red-glazed pork?" Sakura asks.

     Red-glazed pork is Xiao Fei's favorite, Hua Cheng thinks. He had meant to pay for his wine and go, but he stays where he is for a moment longer.

     "I don't know," Suo says. "He doesn't measure."

     "Then how does he know how much to put in?"

     "He just does?"

     "That's not a recipe, Hayato."

     "No, it isn’t," Suo agrees, too cheerfully. "He’s just an experienced cook."

     Sakura grumbles and stops in front of the soy sauce. He reaches for the store brand on the bottom shelf, the one with a plain white label and the price written in big red numbers.

     "Bà uses that one with the gold label." Suo points. "Second shelf. I’m not sure if it affects the taste."

     Sakura's hand stops. He looks up at the bottle and then at the price beneath it, and his mouth goes tight. A bag of shrimp chips sits on top of the eggs in his basket. He chews the inside of his cheek, ducks into the snack aisle, and puts the chips back where he found them. Then he comes back and takes the gold-label bottle off the shelf.

     "Haruka," Suo says quietly. "I can—"

     "No."

     Suo smiles, shrugs, and lets it go.

     At the register, Sakura counts out his money coin by coin while the cashier waits. He comes up one yen short, and his ears go pink as he turns out both pockets before he finds the last coin stuck to an old receipt. Suo stays quiet and doesn’t interfere, ostensibly to let Sakura keep his dignity. But when the automatic doors slide open, Suo reaches for one of the bags. Sakura sidesteps him, takes both bags in one hand, and moves to walk on Suo's right — the side with the eyepatch — without breaking his stride.

     Hua Cheng has worn a patch over that same eye for longer than anyone in this town has been alive. He knows what that side is like: a blank, where anything can come at you before you see it. He can compensate with the butterflies, but Suo can’t. He smiles.

     Through the glass, Suo glances back. His eye meets Hua Cheng's across the checkout lanes and holds for a second. Then he turns to say something to Sakura, and Sakura snorts and bumps him with his shoulder, and they disappear down the street toward the canal.

     Hua Cheng pays for his wine.

     Sakura's apartment is small enough that Suo can watch the stove from the low table. Sakura would really prefer that nobody watch right now but won’t deprive himself of Suo’s company.

     The pork is fine. It's browned and cut into roughly even pieces, and it's waiting in a bowl. The sugar is the problem. The tiny recipe printed on the back of the soy sauce bottle says to melt it slowly over low heat until it turns amber, and it has been sitting in the pan for what feels like forever, doing absolutely nothing.

     Sakura turns the heat up.

     "Haruka," Suo says from the table.

     "What, it’s not doing anything! Maybe their low is different from my shitty stove’s low, I dunno."

     It takes less than a minute for the sugar to go from white to gold to brown to tarry, and then the smoke starts. Sakura swears, yanks the pan off the burner, catching his thumb on the hot rim, and dumps in the pork and the soy sauce, which hisses and spits at him. The smell of burnt sugar fills the apartment. Suo gets up and shoves the window open as far as it goes, since the fan above the stove has exactly one speed and it isn't doing anything for the smell.

     By the time the pork has simmered and Sakura has scooped it over two bowls of rice, the sauce is dark and glossy and smells a little like a campfire. He sets one bowl in front of Suo and sits across from him with his arms crossed. "Don't eat that."

     Suo eats it. He chews thoughtfully and takes another bite.

     "It's burnt," Sakura says.

     "The sugar is a little burnt," Suo agrees.

     "So stop eating it."

     "I like it."

     "You don't. It's bitter. I can smell it from here."

     Suo sets his chopsticks down. The pleasant, polite face he wears for everyone else is gone, and the one underneath is softer. "Haruka. You went to the store with a flyer, and you put back your chips, and you burned your thumb on the pan, and you made this for me. I like it."

     Sakura looks down at his thumb. There's a red welt on the side of it that he hadn't felt until now. His face goes hot. "That's not the same as it being good."

     "It is to me," Suo says, and picks his chopsticks back up.

     Sakura makes a strangled noise, snatches up his own bowl, and eats fast, mostly to have something to do with his face.

     It is bitter. Suo eats every grain anyway. When he's finished, he gets up, runs the tap until the water is cold, and holds Sakura's thumb under it.

     "Next time I’ll do it right," Sakura mutters at the sink.

     "I’m sure you will," Suo says, and presses a gentle kiss to Sakura’s finger to encourage it to heal more quickly.

     Suo comes home a little after nine. Hua Cheng is at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, and Xie Lian is folding laundry in the next room, humming something tuneless.

     When Suo bends to take off his shoes, the smell of Sakura’s cooking comes in with him, clinging to his shirt.

     "He made red-glazed pork," Hua Cheng says.

     Suo blinks, then smiles a little sheepishly. "He's learning."

     "Did he burn the sugar?"

     "...A little."

     "Mm," Hua Cheng says. Suo waits a moment, then says goodnight and goes upstairs.

     Hua Cheng takes a blank piece of paper from the drawer, uncaps a pen, and writes for a while. When Xie Lian comes in with an armful of towels, he leans over Hua Cheng's shoulder and squints.

     "San Lang, what is this?"

     "Red-glazed pork."

     "It says… is that 'pork'? That might be 'pork.' And what's this, a tree?"

     "Soy sauce."

     "Nobody is going to be able to read this." Xie Lian sets down the towels, slides the unintelligible recipe out from under Hua Cheng's hand, and takes the pen. He pulls a fresh piece of paper from the drawer. "Tell me, and I'll write it."

     Hua Cheng recites quantities he has never measured, down to the half-spoon, and Xie Lian copies them out in neat, flowing characters. At the bottom, Hua Cheng says, "Low heat. Underline it."

     Xie Lian underlines it twice. "Who's it for?"

     Hua Cheng takes the paper back and tucks it into his pocket. "No one."

     Xie Lian smiles and goes to put the towels away.

     The bus from the next town over drops Xie Lian and Hua Cheng at the stop beside the canal convenience store just as Sakura and Suo come out of the store with a paper bag of pork buns. Xie Lian has spent the afternoon in an antique shop and is carrying a teapot in a string-tied box to prove it. As far as he knows, hiding worked at the market, so he slouches down on the bus stop bench at once and tugs the brim of his straw hat over his face. Hua Cheng, who knows better, sits down beside him without the slightest compromise in his posture.

     The boys don't go far. They hop up onto the low wall along the canal, a few meters from the bench, with their backs to the street, and Sakura tears into the first pork bun.

     "I'm still mad about the pork," he says around a mouthful.

     "I know," Suo says. "You've mentioned it."

     "It was black, Hayato."

     "It was very dark brown."

     Sakura chews furiously. Then he swallows and stares out at the water for a while, his heels knocking against the wall. "Did your parents ever mess stuff up? At the start?"

     Suo tilts his head. "What kind of stuff?"

     "I don't know. Anything." Sakura picks at the paper on his bun. "Your bà does everything right. And your diē is…" He waves the bun vaguely. "Nice."

     Under the straw hat, Xie Lian presses his lips together.

     "Diē once made bà a birthday cake," Suo says.

     "Okay?"

     "He set the kitchen on fire."

     Sakura turns to stare at him. "What?"

     "Well, only one cabinet. And the curtains." Suo takes a neat bite of his own bun and chews it thoughtfully. "Bà put it out with a pot lid, and then he ate the part of the cake that wasn't burning."

     Sakura chokes on his bun, half horrified and half laughing. "He ate it?"

     "He said it was the best cake he'd ever had."

     On the bench, Hua Cheng murmurs, "It was."

     Xie Lian elbows him without lifting his hat.

     "That's insane," Sakura says.

     "That's my bà." Suo looks at him sidelong. "So, no. They didn't do everything right at the start. They still don't, sometimes. Diē still isn't allowed near the stove."

     Sakura is quiet for a moment. "So it's fine if I burn stuff."

     "It's fine if you burn everything," Suo says. "I'll still eat it."

     "You'd eat charcoal?"

     "If you made it."

     Sakura opens his mouth, shuts it again, and stuffs the rest of the pork bun in instead. The tips of his ears turn pink. Suo watches him with an expression so fond that Xie Lian, peeking out from under his brim, has to look down at his own hands.

     When the boys finally hop down off the wall, Suo crosses to the bin beside the bus stop to throw away the paper bag. On his way past the bench, he says, "The string is coming undone," without looking away from his path and follows Sakura down the road.

     Xie Lian lifts the brim of his hat and looks down. The string around the teapot box has slipped loose.

     The little shrine on the edge of town doesn't get many visitors, but Xie Lian looks after it anyway. On Sunday afternoon, he's halfway down the worn stone steps with a broom, sweeping off the cedar needles that blew in overnight, when he hears footsteps on the path below.

     "I told you it was this way."

     "You said it was left."

     "It was left. Then it was right."

     "Why'd you even want to come all the way out here?"

     "Nobody comes here," Suo says. "It's the quietest place in town."

     Sakura and Suo are coming up the path side by side, Sakura on the right, each with a snack from the vending machine at the bottom of the hill. They aren't in uniform. Suo is in a long tunic, and Sakura is wearing a short-sleeved shirt that Xie Lian is fairly sure he has folded before when he has done Suo's laundry.

     The boys have walked all the way out here to be alone, and the last thing they need is Suo's father popping out from behind the offering box with a broom. Xie Lian slips around the side of the shrine, where the eaves hang low and the moss grows thick, and presses his back to the wall.

     The boys reach the top of the steps. Sakura looks around at the roof patched in mismatched colors of straw, the faded gate, the frayed bell rope, and the little cup of water beside the offering box. "It's tiny."

     "It's well loved," Suo says.

     Sakura grunts. He sets his snack down on the top step, digs in his pocket, and comes up with a five-yen coin. He frowns at it, then at the box. "This is the right one, yeah? For luck?"

     "For good fortune. Go-en." Suo's mouth curves up. "It also means a good connection."

     "Whatever." Sakura tosses the coin, and it clatters into the box. He pulls the rope, and the bell gives a dull, cracked clank instead of a ring. Sakura winces. Then he claps his hands, bows, and closes his eyes.

     Let him be happy, Sakura thinks, and then, because that seems like too little to ask for five yen, And let me keep up with him, please. That's all.

     Behind the shrine, Xie Lian's hand tightens around the broom handle. He presses the other hand flat over his mouth.

     Sakura opens his eyes and steps back. Suo takes his place and drops in a coin of his own. He bows and stays bowed for a long time, longer than Sakura did, and when he straightens up he's smiling.

     "What'd you wish for?" Sakura asks.

     "If I tell you, it won't come true."

     "That's birthday candles."

     "Is it?" Suo says innocently. "Then what did you wish for?"

     Sakura scowls. "Mine doesn't count. It's not about me."

     Suo looks at him for a moment. Then he picks up Sakura's snack from the step and hands it to him. On his way past the offering box, he reaches down and nudges the cup of water a little straighter on its stone. "Thank you," he says quietly, to the shrine.

     Sakura gives him a look. "You're thanking a building?"

     "It's polite."

     They go back down the steps together, arguing about which way is left. Xie Lian waits until their voices fade. Then he comes out from behind the shrine, sits down on the top step with the broom across his knees, and stays there with a soft smile on his face.

     Hua Cheng is crossing the footbridge with a paper-wrapped whetstone from the hardware shop when he hears the canal kids shrieking.

     It's the good kind of shrieking, thankfully. Below him, on the stone steps that lead down to the water, a pack of boys with a bucket and a net are crowded around Sakura, who crouches at the edge with a flat stone in his hand and an expression of grave concentration. Suo sits a few steps up with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, holding the net for them.

     "You gotta keep it flat," Sakura says. "Low, like this. If you throw it upwards, it just sinks."

     He flicks his wrist. The stone hits the water and skips, and skips, and skips again, all the way to the far side of the canal before it sinks. The kids explode.

     "Again!"

     "Do it again, do it again!"

     "Teach me!"

     Hua Cheng stops at the railing. Nobody on the steps looks up.

     The smallest kid grabs a stone and hurls it straight down into the water with all his strength. It goes in with a plop and splashes his shorts, and his face crumples.

     Sakura picks up another stone and turns it over until he finds the flattest side. He presses it into the kid's hand, crouches behind him, and takes his wrist, moving it slowly through the motion, low and sideways. "Like that. Don't throw it hard. Just let it go."

     The kid lets it go. It skips once and sinks.

     The kid shrieks louder than all the others put together. Sakura says "See?" and stands up looking extremely pleased with himself, trouser cuffs soaked through.

     Suo is watching Sakura instead of the water, his chin propped on his hand, adoration plain on his face.

     The oldest kid has been eyeing the two of them. He nudges the boy beside him, then turns to Suo. "Hey. Are you guys still going out?"

     "Yes," Suo says.

     The kid looks to Sakura for confirmation, squinting with suspicion. "For real?"

     Sakura's ears go red. He scowls, jams his hands in his pockets, and says, "Yeah. So?"

     "So nothing," the kid says with a shrug. "My sister said you'd break up by summer."

     "Well, it's summer," Sakura snaps, "so she's wrong."

     The kids find this hilarious. Suo laughs too, quietly, behind his hand, and Sakura rounds on him. "Don't you start."

     "I'm agreeing with you," Suo says. "She's wrong."

     Sakura looks at him for a second too long. Then he snatches another stone off the steps and shoves it at the oldest kid. "Flat side down. Go."

     On the bridge, Hua Cheng shifts the whetstone to his other hand. Below him, Suo lifts his head and looks straight up at the railing. He smiles, small and private, and goes back to holding the net.

     Xie Lian should have been home from the shrine an hour ago, so Hua Cheng heads out past the edge of town instead of up the hill, and finds Xie Lian sitting on the shrine's top step with the broom across his knees and the sky going orange behind him.

     "We're late for dinner," Xie Lian says.

     Hua Cheng sits down beside him. "Sakura is teaching the canal children to skip stones."

     Xie Lian laughs a little wetly. "He was here before that. Made a wish." He leans into Hua Cheng's shoulder. "It wasn't even for himself."

     Hua Cheng looks out over the town, soaking in his husband’s warmth. "It wouldn't be," he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

     The festival by the canal comes every July, when the shopping arcade strings paper lanterns along the water and the stalls go up shoulder to shoulder from the footbridge to the convenience store. Xie Lian has wanted to go since the posters went up. Hua Cheng has been to more festivals than he can count, in cities that no longer exist, and he has never enjoyed one as much as he enjoys watching Xie Lian burn his tongue on takoyaki.

     "Hot," Xie Lian gasps, fanning his mouth. "Hot, hot—"

     "You could let it cool, gēge."

     "Then it wouldn't be takoyaki. It would just be cold balls of octopus." He tries again, more carefully. He's wearing a white yukata with thin blue stripes, and Hua Cheng is in red, and they've been stopped more than once by people asking if they're part of the entertainment.

     Xie Lian hands Hua Cheng the takoyaki and tries the ring toss. The rings are cheap bamboo hoops, and the prizes are bottles of ramune standing in tight rows. His first ring hits a bottle and bounces off. His second hits the same bottle and bounces off at a completely different angle, and his last one ricochets off the stall's support pole and lands neatly around the stall owner's wrist.

     "That's never happened before," the stall owner says, staring down at it.

     Xie Lian is laughing too hard to answer. He takes the takoyaki back and leads the way down the row of stalls. Hua Cheng could make any of those rings land anywhere he liked. He lets them fall where they desire because Xie Lian is laughing, and that's worth more than any bottle of ramune.

     They spot the boys at the shooting gallery.

     Sakura is in a dark blue yukata (a gift from Tsubakino-senpai that he reluctantly accepted two weeks ago) tied a little crooked, holding a cork gun with both hands and squinting down the barrel. Suo stands at his elbow in grey, lightly waving a paper fan to supplement the barely-there breeze. On the top shelf of the prize rack sits a plush cat the size of a watermelon, bright orange, with a smug expression. Sakura is very obviously aiming at it.

     His first cork hits the cat square in the face. The cat rocks back and settles.

     "Oh, come on," Sakura says.

     The second cork hits it in the same spot. It wobbles and sits back down, smugger than before.

     Hua Cheng's eye narrows. From how the cat rocks and settles, there's something heavy sewn into its base. He takes a step toward the stall.

     Xie Lian's hand closes on his sleeve. "San Lang."

     "He's being cheated."

     "I know. Let them have their experiences, for better or worse."

     Hua Cheng looks at him. Xie Lian looks back steadily, and, after a moment, Hua Cheng steps back to his side.

     The third cork misses the cat entirely. It ricochets off the back wall and nearly hits the stall owner, who ducks. Sakura lowers the gun and glares at the cat with pure loathing.

     "It's glued down," he announces. "It's glued down, or it's full of rocks, or something."

     "Probably," Suo says. "May I?"

     Sakura shoves the gun at him. Suo pays for a single cork, barely seems to aim, and fires at the bottom shelf, where a row of little keychains hangs from hooks. A tiny white maneki-neko with one paw raised pops off its hook and drops onto the counter.

     The stall owner hands it over with a sigh. Suo turns and holds it out to Sakura. "For luck."

     Sakura glares at the keychain, then at Suo, then at the keychain again. "You didn't even try for the big one."

     "I wanted this one."

     Sakura takes it. He turns it over in his fingers and then, with a great deal of muttering, threads its cord through the strap hole on his phone case so that the little cat dangles from the corner.

     As they turn away from the stall, Suo's gaze drifts out over the crowd. It passes over the takoyaki stand and a family with a toddler on the father's shoulders, and it stops for a fraction of a second on a flash of red sleeve by the lantern post. Then it moves on, and Suo takes Sakura's hand.

     "We should go," Xie Lian whispers.

     "We should," Hua Cheng agrees, and follows the boys down the row of stalls. Xie Lian follows him.

     The boys stop near the end of the row, where the stalls give way to the stone steps down to the water and the lantern light runs thin. Sakura is saying something too low to hear, and, even in the dark, his ears are red. Then he grabs the front of Suo's yukata, tugs him down a little, and kisses him. It's quick and clumsy and over in a second, and afterward Sakura looks like he would like to throw himself in the canal.

     Xie Lian's hand comes up and covers Hua Cheng's eye.

     "Gēge."

     "Don't look."

     "I've seen worse."

     "Not of our son, you haven't. Now shush!" He drops the takoyaki and slaps his other hand over Hua Cheng’s mouth.

     Under Xie Lian’s palm, Hua Cheng's lips twitch upward, but he indulges his husband and stays still and quiet. Xie Lian keeps his hand there until the boys have gone down the steps toward the water, then sighs. Hua Cheng takes the moment to kiss Xie Lian senseless.

     They walk home up the hill after the fireworks, away from the noise, and the lanterns fall behind them one by one. Xie Lian slips his arm through Hua Cheng's, on his right, and leans into his shoulder.

     "He walks on Xiao Fei's right," Hua Cheng says.

     Xie Lian looks up at him. "Since when?"

     "Since before I started noticing. It’s obvious that it’s a habit."

     Xie Lian's hand tightens on Hua Cheng’s sleeve.

     Sun Fei was nearly eight when he came to live with them, so careful and deliberate and probably terrified that he might drop something because his depth perception was compromised. Xie Lian remembers the three of them training together, how Hua Cheng taught their son to compensate, how they built up his grace and fluidity and awareness so that he’d never feel that he was lacking despite his injury.

     Sun Fei has never stopped carrying that ancient teapot carefully, and Xie Lian has often wished that they’d been able to heal their baby boy, that they’d found him sooner so he wouldn’t have to make up for the loss of his eye.

     Tonight, that same boy gave a lucky cat to someone who stands on his blind side without being asked.

     "Good," Xie Lian says, and leans his head on Hua Cheng's shoulder as they climb.

     "Where's Sun Fei today?" Xie Lian asks casually on a Wednesday three weeks later, over breakfast.

     Hua Cheng turns a page of the newspaper. "The arcade, with Sakura."

     "Oh." Xie Lian butters a piece of toast. Then he butters it again. "It's a nice day for a walk, isn't it?"

     Hua Cheng looks at him over the newspaper for a long moment and folds it up.

     Xie Lian is not allowed inside the arcade. Last winter, he touched one of the claw machines, and it broke spectacularly and rained plush ducks all over the floor. The owner was very gracious about it, but there's now a photo of Xie Lian taped up behind the register with a polite note underneath. So they stand on the sidewalk by the big front window, half hidden behind a poster for a racing game.

     Sakura and Suo are at the air hockey table.

     Sakura is hunched over the table with the striker clamped in his fist, swearing under his breath every time the puck gets past him, which is often. Suo plays one-handed, standing up straight, and taps the puck into Sakura's goal with almost lazy precision. The scoreboard reads six to one.

     "You're cheating," Sakura says.

     "How would I be doing that?"

     "I don't know yet!"

     Sakura winds up and slams the puck as hard as he can. Suo blocks it and sends it back harder than he means to. It clips the edge of Sakura's striker, leaps clean off the table, and smacks Suo in the middle of the forehead with a loud pock.

     Suo blinks, one hand rising slowly to his forehead.

     Sakura laughs.

     He laughs out loud, bent double over the table with one hand braced on the edge, loud enough that a couple of girls at the photo booth turn to stare and the boy behind the prize counter leans over it to see what happened. Sakura is oblivious to all of them. He's wheezing "your face, Hayato!" and wiping his eyes with the back of his wrist.

     Outside, Xie Lian has both hands pressed to the glass.

     Suo rubs his forehead. Then he lifts his head, looks straight past Sakura's shoulder at the front window, and gives a small wave.

     Hua Cheng waves back.

     Xie Lian drops below the windowsill so fast that he bangs his chin on it.

     Sakura straightens up, still grinning, and turns to look. The window shows the racing game poster, the sidewalk, and a man walking a dog.

     "Who're you waving at?"

     "Nothing," Suo says, and holds out his hand for the puck.

     They leave the arcade late in the afternoon. Sakura is still snickering every few steps, and Suo has a faint pink mark in the middle of his forehead that Sakura keeps reaching up to poke.

     "Stop that."

     "I can’t believe you didn’t catch it, Hayato."

     "So you’ve said."

     Sakura pokes it again. Suo catches his wrist, and somewhere along the canal, it turns into holding his hand. Sakura suspects that was the point.

     They walk along the canal toward Sakura's apartment, Sakura on Suo's right as always. Halfway there, Sakura glances back over his shoulder, then up at the footbridge, then at a perfectly ordinary bicycle parked outside the dry cleaner's.

     "What?" Suo asks.

     Sakura frowns. "It's weird. Lately it feels like somebody's watching me."

     "Somebody usually is," Suo says. "You're the most recognizable person in Makochi."

     "Not like that." Sakura scowls at the bicycle. "The old guy at the greengrocer's keeps looking at me like he knows something. And when we were on the canal steps with the kids, I swear somebody was up on the bridge the entire time. I could feel it."

     "People do walk on bridges, Haruka."

     "And the window at the arcade." Sakura turns to look at him. "You waved at someone."

     "Mm."

     Sakura gives him a flat look. "You're being weird about this."

     "Am I?" Suo says, and squeezes his hand. "Maybe Makochi just likes keeping an eye on you."

     Sakura grumbles that he doesn't need anybody keeping an eye on him, but his grip tightens, and he stops looking over his shoulder.

     Suo could tell him. But if Sakura knew who had been watching, he would never hold Suo's hand on the canal path again, and Suo has no intention of giving that up.

     "He saw us," Xie Lian says again, with his face in his hands at the kitchen table.

     Hua Cheng sets a cup of tea in front of him. "He has seen us every time."

     Xie Lian lifts his head. "Every—?"

     "The supermarket. The bus stop. The canal. The festival."

     "The festival?" Xie Lian's voice climbs. "San Lang, at the festival they—we—"

     "Yes."

     "And you didn't tell me?"

     "You were enjoying yourself."

     Xie Lian opens his mouth and shuts it again. He wraps both hands around the cup. "The shrine," he says slowly. "He thanked the shrine. Out loud." Then, in a smaller voice, "And the market. The daikon."

     Hua Cheng hums.

     Xie Lian groans and drops his forehead onto the table, very gently, next to the tea. "We have to stop."

     Hua Cheng takes the seat across from him and nudges the cup an inch closer to Xie Lian's hand. "Or we could stop hiding."

     Xie Lian lifts his head. "And just… say hello?"

     "He's family, gēge. Family says hello."

     "What if Sakura-kun is embarrassed?"

     "He will be," Hua Cheng says.

     "San Lang!"

     "He'll survive it, gēge." Hua Cheng picks up his own tea. "He survived the festival."

     Xie Lian puts his face back in his hands, but, this time, he's laughing.

     The river path is quiet at dusk. The old men who play weiqi at the stone tables are folding up their boards and arguing about a game, and the air has finally cooled enough to breathe easily. Xie Lian and Hua Cheng walk slowly, in plain sight of anyone who cares to look, with Xie Lian on the right.

     Xie Lian has been practicing. "Oh, Sakura-kun, what a coincidence," he says under his breath. "No. Hello, Sakura-kun! We were just—" He stops. "What were we just doing?"

     "Walking, gēge."

     "Walking," Xie Lian repeats, nodding to himself. "Hello, Sakura-kun! We were just walking."

     "You'll do fine," Hua Cheng says, rolling his eye fondly.

     They're almost to the footbridge when Xie Lian stops.

     On the grassy bank below the path, Sakura is asleep sitting up, his head on Suo's shoulder and his mouth slightly open. His phone has slid off his knee into the grass, and the little white cat keychain lies beside it with its paw in the air. Suo sits very straight so as not to move him. He's reading a paperback one-handed, turning the pages with his thumb.

     Suo looks up and sees his parents on the path above him. His eye goes from one to the other. Then he lifts a finger to his lips.

     Xie Lian nods. He picks his way down the bank as quietly as he can manage, but Sakura frowns in his sleep and burrows deeper into Suo's shoulder. The breeze off the river has turned cool now that the sun is down. Xie Lian takes off his thin cardigan, lays it over Sakura's shoulders, and tucks it in around his arm. Then he picks the phone up out of the grass and sets it in Sakura's lap.

     Suo mouths, Thank you.

     Xie Lian smiles and climbs back up to the path, where Hua Cheng gives him a hand up the last of the slope. They walk on toward the bridge.

     "I practiced," Xie Lian says mournfully.

     "Next time, gēge."

     "He'll want to know whose cardigan it is," Hua Cheng says.

     "Sun Fei will tell him."

     Hua Cheng glances back at the bank, where Suo has gone back to his book and Sakura is snoring faintly. "Eventually."

     Sakura wakes up because his neck hurts.

     The last of the light has gone while he was asleep, and the river has turned the color of slate. He's slumped against Suo's shoulder with a dry mouth and his phone in his lap, and there's something soft draped over him that wasn't there before. He picks at it. It's a thin, cream-colored cardigan, a little worn at the cuffs, and it smells faintly of incense and clean laundry.

     "Hayato." His voice comes out rough. "Whose is this?"

     Suo turns a page. "Hm?"

     "This." Sakura holds up a sleeve. "It wasn't here before."

     "Are you hungry? I'm hungry. Let's get noodles."

     Sakura narrows his eyes. Suo closes his book and smiles at him, perfectly pleasant, and that's how Sakura knows he's going to get nothing out of him tonight.

     He takes the cardigan home anyway, since he can't exactly leave it on a riverbank. He folds it and sets it on his second chair, and there it stays for the rest of the week while he tries to think of anyone who would tuck a sweater around him and walk away.

     On Saturday morning, they walk through the market on their way to Café Pothos, with the cardigan in a paper bag in Sakura's hand. He has decided that somebody at Pothos might know whose it is, since Kotoha knows everybody.

     Sakura sees them first.

     They're at the greengrocer's stall, under the awning. Hua Cheng stands beside Xie Lian in red, with a small paper bag of cherries between them. As Sakura watches, Xie Lian plucks a cherry out of the bag by the stem and holds it up, and Hua Cheng bends his head and takes it from his fingers.

     "Delicious, gēge," Hua Cheng says.

     Xie Lian laughs and reaches for another. Their free hands are linked. Xie Lian stands on Hua Cheng's right, close enough that their shoulders touch, on the side where Hua Cheng wears his patch.

     Sakura's feet slow on the stones.

     He started walking on Suo's right a few days after Suo showed him what was under the eyepatch, months ago now. He never really decided to; he just kept finding himself there, on the side where Suo couldn't see something coming, until it was simply where he belonged. He never told anybody and, until now, he has never seen anybody else do it.

     Xie Lian is doing it without a glance, just as Sakura does. He's eating cherries out of a paper bag and paying attention to nothing but the man beside him, and he's still standing exactly where he needs to be.

     Something in Sakura's chest goes quiet and warm.

     Suo follows his gaze, then looks back at Sakura's face for a long moment. He lifts his hand. "Diē! Bà!"

     Sakura nearly drops the paper bag. "Hayato—"

     Xie Lian turns, his face lighting up, lets go of Hua Cheng's hand, and waves with both arms. His elbow knocks the bag, and two cherries tumble out. Hua Cheng catches both without looking.

     "Act normal," Sakura hisses.

     "I am acting normal," Suo says. "They've seen us plenty."

     Sakura turns to stare at him. "What?"

     "Mm." Suo starts counting on his fingers. "The market, when you caught that boy with the apple. The supermarket. The bus stop. The shrine. The canal. The arcade." He tips his head. "You were asleep for the river."

     Sakura looks down at the paper bag in his hand. "…The river?"

     "And the festival," Suo adds.

     Sakura goes white, and then very, very red. "The festival? They saw—they were—at the end, by the—"

     "Diē covered bà's eye," Suo offers, "if that helps."

     "It doesn't!"

     By now, the parents have crossed the stones to meet them. "Hello, Sakura-kun!" Xie Lian says brightly. "We were just walking."

     Then he sees Sakura's face, and his smile turns so apologetic that it's almost painful to look at. "I'm so sorry. We weren't—" He stops and reconsiders. "Well. We were. But only a little."

     "You hid behind a daikon," Suo says.

     "I was holding the daikon!"

     Sakura can't decide whether to sink into the stones or run. In the end, he thrusts the paper bag out at arm's length toward Xie Lian, his face burning. "Is this yours?"

     Xie Lian peeks inside, and his eyes go soft. "It is. Thank you for bringing it back."

     Hua Cheng reaches into his pocket and takes out a piece of paper. He holds it out to Sakura between two fingers.

     Sakura takes it warily. Red-glazed pork, it says across the top in neat, flowing characters. Under that are rows of measurements, and, at the very bottom, underlined twice: Low heat.

     "Low heat," Hua Cheng says. "Don't rush the sugar."

     Sakura looks up at him, and then, slowly, at Suo. "I didn't tell him I burned it."

     "Neither did I," Suo says.

     "You came home smelling like it, Xiao Fei," Hua Cheng says.

     Sakura looks down at the recipe and reads it again, slower this time. "…Thanks," he mutters. Then, because it seems like it needs saying properly, he bows.

     Hua Cheng hums. "Make it for him again."

     "I'm gonna."

     "Come up to the house for lunch," Xie Lian says, hooking the paper bag over his wrist. "Both of you. San Lang is cooking."

     So they walk up the hill together, away from the market and the canal, with the sun high and hot overhead. Xie Lian walks on Hua Cheng's right, swinging their joined hands (which Hua Cheng indulges), the bag of cherries securely in his other hand. Sakura walks on Suo's right with the recipe tucked safely in his pocket and his hand in Suo's. Halfway up, Xie Lian glances back over his shoulder and smiles so widely at the two of them that he trips, and Hua Cheng has to steady him over a crack in the road.

     Suo squeezes Sakura's hand. Sakura squeezes back, and holds on the rest of the way home.

     Hua Cheng does not, in the end, cook lunch. He meets Sakura at the kitchen door with an apron.

     Soon after, Sakura stands at Hua Cheng's stove with a pan of sugar in front of him, a bowl of browned pork at his elbow, and every muscle in his body tense.

     Hua Cheng waits beside him with his arms folded, touching nothing. Xie Lian and Suo sit at the kitchen table, splitting the last of the cherries and watching openly.

     The sugar sits in the pan, white and grainy, doing nothing. Sakura grumbles "It's not doing anything."

     "It is. You can't see it yet."

     Sakura glares at the sugar and waits. Slowly, the edges begin to go clear and glossy, and a thin line of gold creeps in from the rim of the pan. The smell changes from almost nothing to something warm and rich and sweet.

     "Now," Hua Cheng says.

     Sakura tips in the pork, and the pan hisses, and this time it doesn't spit at him. He adds soy sauce from the bottle with the gold label. Hua Cheng hands him the lid and tells him how long to leave it.

     When it's done, Sakura scoops it over four bowls of rice and carries two of them to the table, and Hua Cheng brings the other two. Sakura sits down next to Suo with his hands in his lap and watches him take the first bite.

     Suo chews. He takes another bite. Then he looks at Sakura with a perfectly straight face. "I suppose it’s better than last time."

     "Last time was practically charcoal!"

     "Then you've improved enormously."

     Sakura kicks him under the table. Across from them, Xie Lian announces "It's delicious, Sakura-kun!" through a mouthful of rice, and Hua Cheng takes a bite, considers it, and lets out a low hum. "Good."

     Sakura looks down at his bowl, smiling despite himself. Under the table, Suo's knee knocks gently against his and stays there.