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Naoki ditched club.
It wasn’t a hard decision; being at school sucked. Everyone still looked at him weirdly and hesitated before they talked to him. Inaba was a small town, and even though it had already been a few months since that event, it was still talked about every week on the news: Inaba serial killer still at large! In case you’ve forgotten, here’s his victims!
Naoki’s family didn’t even watch the news anymore, but Naoki always knew when that story had been mentioned again because nobody would talk to him at all the next day in class.
“Like they think I’m going to suddenly burst into tears or scream at them for no reason,” Naoki muttered to himself, kicking a pebble down the asphalt in front of him as he walked along the Samegawa river. “Ugh, maybe I will!” Then maybe people would look at him straight on again, instead of in little glances to the side.
Heaving a sigh, Naoki kicked the pebble hard enough that it took a strange bounce off the road and into the grass. He wished Seta-senpai was free more often at the same time that he was; hanging out with him always made Naoki feel better. He seemed to always know when to listen and what to say when Naoki needed to hear it, and best of all he didn’t seem to feel sorry for Naoki at all - sympathetic, yes, but he never pitied Naoki. Unfortunately the weather had been awful, with pouring rain for days straight and the famous Inaba fog rolling in afterwards. Nobody wanted to hang out in gross weather.
At the end of the flood plain Naoki started to turn right towards the shopping district when he heard his name being called. He looked back to see Hanamura-senpai, pushing his bike with one hand and waving. “Hey, Konishi-kun! Headed home?”
Naoki’s family was, to put it mildly, not fond of the Hanamuras and would probably be less than pleased that their son was talking to the ‘Prince of Junes’, as some of the kids at school called Hanamura behind his back. Naoki saw it differently. It wasn’t like it was Hanamura’s fault that Junes was here, and the couple of times they had talked he seemed pretty okay. “Hey,” Naoki said, trying to put some cheer behind the words, but the greeting flopped from his mouth heavy and hard.
Hanamura’s grin faded a little; he walked his bike up until he was close enough to talk instead of shout. “Rough day?”
Naoki shrugged. “Not in particular.” A normal day was kind of rough anyway, at least compared to before. He waved his hand half-heartedly. “Don’t people normally ride their bikes instead of walking them?”
Hanamura grimaced. “Yeah, yeah. The chain’s stuck again. It’s such a wreck.” He chuckled, but his voice had a weird self-depreciating edge to it. Naoki only heard it because he talked the same way.
Naoki looked up the street towards his parent’s liquor store; they lived on the floor above it. His entire plan for the afternoon had been to zone out in front the TV before doing his homework - or not, if he felt like it, since the teachers still gave him a pass on it - and go to bed.
“Want me to try to fix it?” he asked.
Hanamura’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “Do you know something about bikes?”
“Not really,” Naoki admitted, “but it’s not like I can screw up your bike any worse, right?”
Hanamura laughed. “Well, as long as you don’t take a brake off it or something, I guess! Sure.”
Naoki nodded up the road. “Then come on. My dad’s got a tool set; we’ll work on it behind the old bike shop.” The shop that had closed when Junes started selling bikes for half the price. He turned to walk up the hill towards the shopping district.
Hanamura didn’t follow. “Woah, right now?” When Naoki looked back, he fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like he wanted to move but couldn’t.
“Do you have someplace to go?” Naoki asked. Maybe he had a shift at work.
“Well - no, I’m not really … hey, why don’t we go to my place? My dad has a tool set too, and -” Hanamura choked on whatever he was about to say. “Anyway, wanna come over? We can work on this piece of junk there.”
Naoki realized that he didn’t think he’d ever seen Hanamura in the shopping district. Well, why would he go? It’s not like everything there couldn’t be bought at Junes for cheaper, he thought, before he realized that wasn’t it at all. It wasn’t like Hanamura didn’t know that people resented the store his father managed.
“Sure,” Naoki said. It wasn’t like his parents would miss him until late, anyway.
*
“See? It jams every time I switch speeds,” Hanamura explained, picking the chain back out from between the two front gears.
Both their hands were coated in grease to the palm from wrestling the bike chain into place. The ten-speeder, upended on its handles and seat, refused to cooperate; it clicked from one gear to the next at the back wheel, but every time Naoki spun the pedals by hand and Hanamura switched the front speed, the chain popped off the big gear, missed the second one, and got caught in between them.
“Maybe the gears aren’t aligned right?” Naoki suggested, turning the pedal slowly so Hanamura could set the chain in place again on the smaller gear.
“Or maybe there’s too much space between them.” Hanamura groaned. “We couldn’t fix that.” It would be a manufacturing flaw.
“If that’s the problem, couldn’t you send it back for a refund or something?” Naoki asked, settling back to sit cross-legged across the bike from Hanamura.
The older boy gave Naoki a long-suffering look. “The warranty expired like half a year ago.”
“But your dad runs Junes,” Naoki protested.
Hanamura leaned back on his hands, leaving a streak of grease on the cement floor of the garage in the pattern of his fingers. “Dude, it’s not like he owns the store - he’s a manager. We get inventoried every quarter. A refunded bike’s gonna need an explanation, and ‘well, it was my son’ isn’t good enough.” Hanamura laughed and waved a hand at the bike. “Eh. I’m saving up for a motorcycle anyway, so I only have to put up with this crap for another year.”
“What do you want a motorcycle for?” Naoki couldn’t help asking.
“To impress girls, duh,” Hanamura said, and winked.
“That’s not going to really impress girls around here. Nobody owns motorcycles except biker gangs.” Naoki spun the pedals on the bike once, hard, and let go, watching the back wheel spin frantically, the distinctive bzzzzzzzz of the released gears loud in the garage.
Hanamura sobered. “I’m joking. Well, mostly.” He watched the wheel spin. “Wanna keep working on this?”
Naoki pursed his lips. They would have to take the pedals off to get at the gears that were misaligned. “If we mess up it might not work at all anymore.” He had been wrong before; they could definitely make it worse.
Hanamura shrugged. “So I walk to school. No big deal.” He dropped back to one elbow and dragged the tool set closer. “Don’t give up now, man.”
Naoki echoed Hanamura’s shrug and leaned over to grab a wrench that looked like it had never been used. It was Hanamura’s bike, and if he was okay with screwing it up, so was Naoki.
For a while all they talked about was what they were doing - how to take off the pedals, how to realign the gears, would realigning them do anything?, how should they realign them? The gears lay in pieces on the floor, an array of screws and nuts and bolts covered in grease lined up between them. The offending bike chain dangled to the ground by the back wheel.
“Maybe it’s just that the chain needs replacing,” Naoki said while Hanamura fiddled with the gears.
“Oh geez, now you say that!?” Hanamura started to smack his forehead with his grease-covered palm, but thought better of it just before he did. He looked up at Naoki. “You really think it’s that simple?”
“Not really,” Naoki admitted, dropping his gaze. “I just thought of it now.”
“If it’s that simple I can try that next.”
Naoki’s phone beeped in his pocket. “Can I get a towel?”
“Yeah, here.” Hanamura tossed him a clean rag from the toolbox. Naoki wiped his hands and pulled out his phone, surprised when the readout told him it was already 6:34.
It was a text from his mother: Are you still at school?
No. What is it? Naoki sent back, leaning back on one hand to wait. Like he was going to tell his parents where he was!
“What’s up?” Hanamura looked up from the gears, then made a grabbing motion at the towel. Naoki handed it back to him.
“It’s getting late. Mom was starting to worry, I guess.”
“Ah, yeah ….” Hanamura trailed off. “Moms gotta do what they do, I guess.”
The unspoken ‘because it was your sister who was killed’ hung between them for a moment. Naoki sighed. “Nobody ever comes out and says it.”
“Says what?” Hanamura’s eyes widened, his eyebrows arched.
Naoki’s teeth clicked shut. “My big sister died. She was killed. Of course Mom is worried about me.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Hanamura protested, his voice weak.
“Of course you weren’t! Nobody does. Nobody dares.” Naoki tightened his grip on his phone, looking down; his mom still hadn’t responded.
“Geez, Konishi-kun, I wasn’t thinking about that at all,” Hanamura protested, sounding honestly confused. “Isn’t everyone worrying about their kids? Saki-senpai’s killer still hasn’t been found.”
Naoki couldn’t look up; his face grew hot with embarrassment. Fortunately his phone finally beeped. Don’t worry. Dinner is at 9. The usual time, after the liquor store closed for the day so they could eat dinner together.
Naoki considered saying that he had to go for dinner right away, but he swallowed and looked up. “She says dinner isn’t for a while, so I guess I have some time.”
Hanamura nodded, but he didn’t go back to fiddling with the gears. “Is everyone at school still giving you a hard time?” he asked.
Naoki sighed. “You don’t have to be nosy about it.”
“That’s what you said last time, too,” Hanamura pointed out, flashing a grin.
Naoki narrowed his eyes, a flash of annoyance making his heartbeat pick up. “Are you just being nice because you liked my sister?”
Hanamura held up his hands in a ‘I’m not touching that one’ gesture. “Dude, how shallow do you think I am? You’re the one that offered to help me out with my bike.”
Naoki breathed in. For some reason, that made him feel … lighter. No, Naoki knew the reason: it was because nobody talked to him like that anymore. Nobody except Seta. “Sorry,” he said. “... Yeah, everyone’s still really weird around me. I guess that’s not going to change for a while.”
Hanamura shrugged. “I figured that’s what got you down.” He snorted quietly. “Your sister would’ve never put up with it. She was always pretty direct, you know? Not to your face, but she always made sure everyone knew what she was thinking.”
Naoki fiddled with his phone. “Yeah, she was like that.” He smiled a little, imagining his sister’s face, but it felt like his heart was trying to beat inside a narrow tube. “Nobody ever talks about her any more. Not my mom or dad; not anyone. It’s like they’re trying to imagine Saki away. Nobody even says her name.” He hesitated, looking up. “Except you.”
One corner of Hanamura’s mouth turned up, and he wiped his bangs out of his eyes, leaving a greasy streak over an eyebrow. “I think she deserves to be talked about,” he said, looking past Naoki and at the garage wall. “Even if it hurts sometimes.”
“Yeah.” Naoki’s eyes had started to burn; he blinked hard, until the burning sensation went away, and lifted his head. “Can we just … I dunno. Talk about her sometimes?”
Hanamura didn’t even seem surprised at the question; his half-grin became a full grin. “Yeah, of course. I mean, Souji is great to talk to and all, but it’s not like he knew her. I’d like to talk about her with you.”
“Great,” Naoki forced himself to say past the lump in his throat.
“Great,” Hanamura echoed.
An awkward silence descended on them. It lasted a few moments, and Naoki swallowed hard and said, “You’ve got a streak of grease on your forehead.”
“Ack, really?” Hanamura grabbed the towel. “When did I do that?” He started scrubbing at his forehead in the middle.
Naoki snickered. “On the left side. Your other left. I mean, my left …”
“Did I get it yet?”
“Mostly, just - yeah, it’s gone.”
Hanamura put the towel aside, his forehead red from scrubbing. “So, uh … how about we get back to the bike?”
Naoki nodded. “Sure.” But as Hanamura leaned back over the gears, he dropped his chin and muttered, “Thanks, Hanamura-senpai.”
Hanamura smiled without looking up. “What’re friends for? You can call me Yosuke, by the way.”
Naoki bit the inside of his lip. “Call me Naoki, then.”
“Sure, Naoki-kun. Now, how do you think this lineup looks?”
*
Naoki stayed at the Hanamura’s place until he had to leave for dinner.
They didn’t finish working on the bike, but that could wait until next time.