Bat Swings and Guitar Strings Part 2

[bluebirdsongs]

The bathrooms at Shibuya Station are dingy at best, and Kazuya squeezes into one of the narrow stalls with his bag, mindful of where he steps as he wiggles into the tightest pair of jeans he owns. Next, he changes into a t-shirt that’s a size too small in the arms and shoulders from all the muscle he’s put on playing ball. He’s still too skinny, though. He can’t wait until he hits another growth spurt and gets big and beefy like his older brothers. He doesn’t want to be scrawny for the rest of his life, so he’s glad his clothes are already too tight in the right places.

Stepping out of the stall, Kazuya sets his bag on the counter and examines his short, spiky hair in the dirty mirror. He’ll do just the ends at first, so that he’ll have pink tips like Jin and that girl do. He holds the towel to his face to not paint his forehead or get any in his eyes, takes the can in hand, and sprays blind.

He coughs when he gets a whiff of the fumes despite the towel, which he sets to the side so he can admire his handiwork. No good. Even under fluorescent lighting, his hair is too dark for the effect to be very noticeable. He won’t stand out at all in the darkness of the livehouse, even if he manages to get close to the stage. He drapes the towel over his shoulders and picks up the can again. It’s all or nothing. Taking a deep breath, he squeezes his eyes shut and sprays his whole head. Coughing again, he straightens and takes in his reflection. Much better. Satisfied, he finds a coin locker in which to store his bag and steps out into Hachiko Square.

The venue proves easy to find with the help of the map and directions on the back of the flyer. From Hachiko, go past the police box and take the street with Seibu on the left. Pass Shidax Village, two Family Marts, and take the second street on the left from the second Family Mart. Go halfway up the hill, and it’s on the right. See you there!!

The last set of instructions proves unnecessary; the queue for tickets stretches down the hill and around the corner. Kazuya joins the end of the line, amazed at the size of the crowd there for the show. Could a little high school band called Fanta Sea really have so many fans? Will he even be able to get in?

As the line shuffles slowly forward, Kazuya learns more about how the show will be set up by stealthily listening to the excited chatter of the group of girls in front of him. It turns out that Fanta Sea is one of six or so small bands, and most of the people in line are there to see the headliner, some up-and-coming group that Kazuya’s never heard of called Nightmare, not a neighborhood band fronted by a high school delinquent with pink-tipped hair.

In a way, Kazuya’s relieved. If the fans with chains clipped to their clothes and metal poking out of places Kazuya didn’t realize it was possible to get pierced are anything to go by, the crowd for Nightmare seems a lot rougher than the group of girls that giggles after Jin and his friends in the hallways at school. If Fanta Sea isn’t the main attraction, hopefully Kazuya will be able to leave and be on his way home before things get too rowdy.

Kazuya’s feet ache by the time he makes it to the ticket window, about five minutes before the first group is scheduled to go on. He hands over his money and receives a ticket from the kohl-eyed venue employee manning the ticket window. He hands his ticket to another venue employee at the livehouse doors, and the rough-looking girl with neon green hair, green-gold eyeshadow, and a lip ring asks him which band he’s there to see.

Kazuya flushes at the noticeable stammer in his voice when he answers, “Fanta Sea,” and he watches as the employee drops his ticket into a jar with the band’s name on it before handing him back the stub. Each group performing has one. The jar for Nightmare overflows with tickets; Fanta Sea’s is maybe a quarter full. The employee hands him back his stub, along with a program and a ticket for the bar and ushers him inside. He doesn’t want to go up to the bar and ask for a melon soda when everyone else is drinking alcohol, so he stuffs the drink ticket in his pocket as he heads through the doors.

The heavy smoke hanging in the hair stings Kazuya’s eyes when he enters the livehouse proper. A small group of fans in the first few rows stands and cheers for the first band of the evening playing its set (some group called Strawberry Pandemonium), and while some listen politely, the rest of the spectators gravitate to the bar before the headliners show up. According to the program Kazuya got at the door, Fanta Sea will play third, and if the current crowd is any indication, he shouldn’t have any problem getting near the stage when the time comes.

Kazuya tries to watch the band, but his gaze falls instead on the die-hard fans in the very front rows and the complicated hand motions they do in time to the music. It looks impossibly difficult from where Kazuya’s standing, and he wonders how they all know to fist-pump, head-bang, and throw their hands in the air at exactly the same time. He looks on in awe when the lead singer screams, “Come on!!” into his mic for the last chorus of the song, and all the girls in the front rows start throwing their bodies forward at the metal bar separating the crowd from the stage, over and over until the drummer and the guitarist go into their final riffs.

The bass and the drums pound in Kazuya’s chest. Whatever he’d imagined being in the crowd at a visual kei concert would be like, it hadn’t been that. All he’d come for was the chance to see Jin and for Jin to maybe see him, but would that even be possible with all the head-banging going on? Would he even be allowed in the front section if he didn’t know the hand motions? Maybe the whole thing was pointless.

Strawberry Pandemonium finishes up to a round of enthusiastic applause from their fans, and the next group (Hellsink) quietly sets up behind them while they bow. What happens next catches Kazuya completely by surprise. The moment Strawberry Pandemonium walks offstage, the entire block of head-banging, hand-waving fans rushes for the exit, and a new group of girls that had been chatting and drinking at the bar when Kazuya came in takes their place in front of the stage. They scream and jump up and down when the members of Hellsink introduce themselves, and they launch into different variations of the same crazed body motions and hand gestures when the band begins its first number. From watching this take place, Kazuya figures out what he needs to do.

Nodding in time to the music, Kazuya joins a small group of casual spectators a few rows behind the head-banging die-hards. Out of the corner of his eye, Kazuya spots Fanta Sea’s fanclub, dressed in different combinations of black and pink and their hair done up with beads and glitter. They appear to be paying attention to Hellsink, but Kazuya knows they have the same thing in mind that he does-inching closer to the stage for the moment when Hellsink’s fans all leave.

Kazuya takes a deep breath and bounces a little on his toes, waiting for it to happen. Hellsink plays a three-song set, and when they end the last song by throwing towels and guitars into the crowd, Kazuya gets ready.

The mass exodus still manages to catch him by surprise. He tries his best not to elbow anyone, and he takes extra care not to accidentally come down on a nylon-clad foot as the girls leave with their stiletto heels in hand. With a few polite nudges and mumbled Excuse me’s, Kazuya finally wriggles his way to the front, joining the girls at the barricade just as the lights come on and the first guitar chord rips through the club.

Kazuya recognizes the guitarist as Jin’s best friend. He doesn’t recall ever seeing one without the other, and he’s heard they even arrive at school and leave together most days. Kazuya didn’t learn his name, though, until the day he cornered the fanclub in the stairwell. He’s called Yamashita Tomohisa, but the girls all call him YamaPi or just Pi. Apparently he’s the reason pink is Fanta Sea’s signature color, but Kazuya hadn’t even noticed that Yamashita has pink in his hair, too. He’d only noticed Jin’s.

Yamashita growls into the microphone, “We’re Fanta Sea!! Are you ready to rock?!!”

The girls all jump up and down and scream, but Kazuya forgets to, because at that moment Jin appears at the front of the stage, twirling his mic stand and passing it from hand to hand. Then the drummer counts off, and Fanta Sea begins to play.

Kazuya forgets all about the girls and their complicated hand dances as he stares up at Jin, in awe of the metamorphosis that’s taken place before him. Jin looks…beautiful, for lack of a better word. Onstage, shrouded in elaborate costume and make-up, the quiet, awkward high school boy disappears, transformed into something radiant. Kazuya almost doesn’t know what to make of it. He wouldn’t have pegged Jin for the type, but onstage, bathed in the spotlight, the look works.

Jin wears hair extensions that make his blond and pink locks cascade over his shoulders, bubblegum framing his powdered face. Kazuya blushes as he takes in the rest of Jin’s outfit. He’s never seen a boy wear a skirt before, let alone a corset with it. Both are back with pink accents, and the lace hem of Jin’s skirt brushes the stage even with the high-heeled boots he wears.

If Jin didn’t intrigue Kazuya before, he certainly does now. A thrill rushes through Kazuya’s body at the thought of getting to know someone like Jin, someone who keeps to himself during the school day, but then goes up on stage in make-up and skirts on the weekends. It makes Kazuya wonder if Jin is living a double life like he is, if he has a secret that would ostracize him. Kazuya knows what that feels like, and he has a feeling Jin does, too.

Kazuya could have stood there and watched Jin all night, but someone bumps him, and the metal barricade catches him in the ribs. He grunts in pain, and he hears a familiar voice beside him shout, “Oh, sorry!”

It’s the tiny third-year with baseball bat legs. Her pink-dipped curls have all but fallen out, and the sweat beading on her forehead has ruined her elaborate make-up, but she doesn’t seem to care.

“It’s okay,” he calls back, rubbing his abused side.

Her mascara-ed eyes widen when she looks at him. “Oh, you’re that first-year from school!” she exclaims. “Have you been to one of these before? I’m Suzuki Naoko, by the way, but you can call me Nina!”

Kazuya shakes his head. “No, it’s my very first time. And I’m Kamenashi. I go by Kame.”

She laughs. “Ah, a virgin, then!”

Kazuya chokes, blushing to the tips of his ears.

“In that case, c’mon, Kame-chan! I’ll show you what to do!”

Kazuya tries to protest, but Nina takes his hand and pulls him from the end of the front row to the very middle.

“This is Kame-chan!” she announces to the girls around them. “It’s his first time!”

Some of them giggle, but not in a way that makes Kazuya think they’re making fun of him. Rather, they seem to welcome him. The three or four girls nearest to him, along with Nina, show him what to do with his hands. “This is a famous song by Buck-Tick!” Nina explains. “Everyone knows the moves!”

By the last chorus, Kazuya knows them, too, and he fist-pumps and head-bangs in time with the rest of them. As the lights flash through the crowd and the song approaches its climax, Nina shouts, “Dive!”

Before Kazuya even realizes what’s happening, he gets thrown against the bar, pushed forward by the wall of diving bodies behind him. His ribs take another beating, but by the time the pressure lifts from his back and Nina yells, “Dive!” again, he’s ready. When the crowd throws itself forward again, Kazuya dives with them, curling his body around the bar instead of letting himself get slammed against it.

They dive again and again, and it’s one of the most exhilarating things Kazuya’s done in his entire life. From the sidelines, the whole thing looked claustrophobia-inducing, but it’s not like that at all in practice. Instead of feeling stifling, the warmth of the other bodies feels good against Kazuya’s back, and he feels like he’s part of something when they move as one.

Finally, the song ends and the crowd straightens. Kazuya feels his heart pound as he claps and cheers with them. Sweat runs down his temples and neck, staining his skin pink, but he hardly notices, exhilaration coursing through him as he beams up at Fanta Sea and Jin. Jin’s skin shines with sweat, too, but he looks euphoric, like he’s feeding off the crowd’s energy and it’s lifting him to another state of being.

As the music fades, the mood shifts. The stage lights change from sunny yellow to a tranquil blue. Someone brings out a stool for Jin to sit on, and Yamashita raises a hand for silence.

Acoustic guitar in his lap, Jin adjusts his mic stand and speaks into it. It’s the first time Kazuya’s heard his real voice.

“This song is for hide, who left this world too early,” he says quietly.

Kazuya has no idea the significance of Jin’s words, but knowing murmurs ripple through the crowd, and some of the chatter at the bar in the back dies down.

At Kazuya’s side, Nina stares up at the stage in what seems to be disbelief, and she lets out a quiet, “Ohhh…” when Jin strums the first few chords.

Kazuya would ask her what’s going on, but he doesn’t want to interrupt the moment; Jin has the entire room captivated.

Then he starts to sing, and Kazuya gasps.

“Flowing tears accumulate on the winds of time. I feel your unending sigh…”

Stripped down to its rawest elements, with just his acoustic guitar, Jin has the most incredible voice Kazuya’s ever heard. He pours his soul into every note, and the melody washes over everyone in the room, Jin effortlessly guiding its flow. When he shifts into the English chorus, he stumbles over neither the rhythm nor the falsetto, and the smoothness of his voice crooning out the high notes sends shivers down Kazuya’s spine.

So close to the stage, Kazuya can see every shift in Jin’s facial expressions, every breath he draws, the tremble of his Adam’s apple on each vibrato. Jin isn’t even watching the crowd. His eyes are closed, and another shiver racks Kazuya’s frame at how Jin presses his mouth to the microphone as he sings, caressing it with his lips.

Only a soft sniffling at Kazuya’s side makes him look away. To his surprise, he sees tears running down Nina’s cheeks. When he looks around him, he realizes that everyone is crying. Kazuya doesn’t know the significance of the song or its dedication, but when Yamashita comes in with a solo on his electric guitar and Jin’s voice breaks through again, stronger and clearer than before, Kazuya thinks he could be moved to tears, too.

Jin reprises the first verse, going into the finale, and the entire audience starts singing along. Individual voices shaky with emotion combine into something powerful, rising over the music and meeting Jin’s own soaring voice.

“Dry your tears with love,” he croons once more, and when the last note fades, the room erupts in applause. Fanta Sea gets a standing ovation.

Onstage, Jin rises from his stool and bows low, his hair extensions nearly reaching his knees.

Kazuya continues to clap, at a loss for words. Wow is all he can think. Just…wow.

The mood shifts again as Yamashita speaks into his mic. “Hey, everyone, let’s not be sad! We may have lost some special people, but they live on with us, and they’d want to see us having fun, right?!”

The crowd regains some of its energy at the guitarist’s words, and they scream, “Yeah!!” back.

Yamashita grins. “Plus, you don’t want diamant to come out and see you all depressed, right?!”

“No!!” the crowd yells back.

“All right, then! Our last song is an original, written by me and Jin, so please enjoy it! We are Fanta Sea!!”

At the announcement that Fanta Sea’s final song will be an original, those who’d come onto the floor for the ballad lose interest again, and a bunch of girls wearing outfits decked out in rhinestones start to fill in around the small group of Fanta Sea supporters, no doubt diamant fans ready to take their place at the front.

The last song turns out to be a high-energy, catchy one about a guy who can’t stop drinking soda, even though it rots his teeth. Fanta Sea must be debuting it, because Nina and the rest don’t seem to know any hand motions to go along with it, so they make a routine up as they go.

Kazuya halfheartedly joins in at first, but he ends up watching Jin for most of the song. The boy performing bears no resemblance to the shy kid who hangs out by the school gates, and not just because of his costume.

Onstage, Jin is alive. Behind his mic, a light shines in his eyes, and he smiles like he hasn’t a care of the world outside of the livehouse and goofing around onstage with his friends.

And goof around they do. First, Yamashita crosses the stage and invades Jin’s mic. Jin tries unsuccessfully to push him away, and they end up pressed cheek-to-cheek as they sing together. The girls chant, “Kiss, kiss, kiss!” and Kazuya’s face turns the color of his dyed hair, wondering if they will.

The best friends share a look, but then Yamashita pulls away, much to the girls’ disappointment. Yamashita stays close, though, and he stops playing his guitar to lunge for Jin’s collarbones. Without the guitar, the melody fades away, and the undignified shriek that Jin lets out when Yamashita’s fingers find their target drowns out everything else. With a shit-eating grin, Yamashita picks the guitar part back up and takes over singing lead while Jin collects himself, halfway across the stage. The girls eat up their antics, and Kazuya looks on, bemused.

Watching Fanta Sea isn’t anything like Kazuya imagined it would be, and the more he watches, the more he wants to get to know them. Especially Jin. He never would have guessed that the boy who walks around school with a faraway gaze and shoulders hunched like he’s carrying a heavy weight on them could undergo such a Madame Butterfly-esque transformation and look so…free. Kazuya wants to be free like that in aspects of his own life that he’s always kept secret. Jin’s the first person to interest him in that way, enough to make him want to do something about it. When the time is right, he’s going to.

Before Kazuya knows it, the song comes to an end, and Yamashita goes into one more gratuitous riff on his guitar while Jin and the others shout over the din, thanking their fans for turning up.

Someone yanks on Kazuya’s arm.

“Bloom!” Nina shouts next to him.

“What?” Kazuya yells back. He’d been ignoring her and the crowd, but it would appear she wants him to participate in whatever they have planned for the finale.

Nina demonstrates what she wants him to do, bringing her hands to her chest and spreading them open as she raises them over her head, like an opening flower.

“C’mon, Kame-chan, bloom!!” she says again.

Kazuya blooms. He imagines he’s showing his appreciation for the band by opening for them like a flower in the bright stage light.

They keep ‘blooming’ as Fanta Sea joins hands for a final bow, and Nina only stops him when they start to gather up their gear, preparing to leave the stage.

“Ne, are you going to come with us to meet the band?” she asks. “We have to go now if we want to catch them when they come out.”

When Kazuya doesn’t answer right away, she makes the decision for him, taking him by the hand and pulling him toward the exit. Only when they join the mad rush of other girls doing the same does Kazuya realize what the mass exodus between each set had been for, and he finally catches up with what Nina’s talking about.

He digs in his heels and starts to pull his hand back. “Wait a second. I hadn’t…”

She looks at him expectantly. He hadn’t what? Hadn’t planned on approaching Jin-hadn’t planned on making his move is the correct answer, but he can’t say that. Instead, he stammers, “A-Actually, I have to go home. I have a curfew…”

Nina shrugs, as if to say, “Your loss,” and lets go of his hand, running out the door to wherever the bands emerge from when they’re done playing.

Following at a normal pace, Kazuya steps out onto the street and shivers. He’d barely noticed he was sweating while he was watching the show, but his skin feels clammy in the cool night air, and he realizes his t-shirt is soaked.

For a moment, he stands there, wondering if he should follow after all. The whole idea doesn’t make a lot of sense to him, though. They all see each other at school every day, so what’s the big deal about trying to meet Jin and the rest of them after the show? At the same time, he wonders if he’ll be missing out on an opportunity if he chooses to go home. Then he imagines Nina and the rest of her friends waiting for Fanta Sea to come out, screaming the band’s praises and competing for the members’ attention when they do. That’s not the kind of scene Kazuya wants to be a part of. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he turns and heads back towards the station.

The show had been exhilarating, though. He doesn’t think he’ll become a real fan of visual kei any time soon, but he has a better understanding and more respect for the scene after experiencing it firsthand. He’s glad he went, because the experience solidified at least one thing in his mind: he wants to get to know Jin better. He wants to get to know the boy both underneath the make-up and underneath the too-big uniform jacket. He has a hunch, and if he’s right, he and Jin could have a lot to talk about.

After collecting his bag from the locker, Kazuya goes back into the bathroom, where he strips out of his damp t-shirt and sticks his head under the faucet. He scrubs furiously, trying to get as much of the dye out as he can before he goes home. If he’d been thinking, he would have brought shampoo along, but he hadn’t had quite that much foresight, so he does the best he can with his fingers and the cold water.

Goosebumps stand on his skin when he straightens, and he chases the stray drops running down his chest with the towel before attacking his hair with it. When he’s finished, he examines his reflection in the mirror.

The next step will be figuring out how to approach Jin. He realizes now his best chance will be at school; the hard part will be getting Jin alone and finding somewhere quiet enough for him to say what he wants to say. After practice would be perfect, but Jin and the rest of Fanta Sea don’t usually stick around that long, and Kazuya doesn’t know where any of them go after they leave the school.

Before practice provides probably his next best chance, provided he leaves the locker room early enough. Then all he has to do is screw up the courage to introduce himself and ask if he can speak to Jin privately. Kazuya sighs and leans more heavily against the sink counter. Still difficult, but not impossible. At least now he has an icebreaker: “Hey, you’re Akanishi Jin, right? I went and saw Fanta Sea play! Can we maybe talk for a second?”

Then he’ll smoothly lead Jin away from his friends, introduce himself properly, and then confess. Yes. That’s what he’ll do. The second he gets the opportunity, he’s going to take it.

Running the towel once more over his hair, he repacks his bag and heads out. Still shivering from the damp, he makes his way down the series of escalators that lead to the subway line he needs, thankful that the train cars will be heated.

When he gets down to the platform, he stops short, and he blinks a few times to make sure he’s not hallucinating. A bit further down stands a figure with a guitar case slung over his back. Pink-dipped hair falls over the collar of his too-big school uniform jacket. Kazuya’s mouth goes dry.

“Hey!” he calls out before he can stop himself.

Five other people look up, but Jin looks at him with the same startled, doe-eyed look as the day they met eyes across the school grounds. This time, Kazuya hurries over.

“You’re Akanishi Jin, right? I went to your show!” He points to the pink dye he hadn’t managed to wash out, as if it somehow provides proof he was there.

His enthusiasm appears to catch Jin off-guard, and mentally he cringes at how his words come out all in a rush. He must seem like one of the crazed fans he sought to distance himself from. A male Nina.

Jin’s eyes search Kazuya’s face for a long moment, and then a shy smile comes across his face. “Oh…you did? Thank you.” He fidgets and scratches the back of his neck. “Um…what did you think of it?”

Again, Kazuya answers breathlessly. “It was great! I’d never been to a visual kei live before, so I had no idea what it would be like. I hadn’t expected it to be so…” His words fail him, and he runs his tongue over his lips. “So…”

Different is the word he goes with, and he’s not sure if it’s the right one. It sums up how he felt while he watched Fanta Sea perform, though. He’s different himself, and maybe Jin is, too.

Thankfully, Jin laughs. “Yeah, it is that. So…did you like it?”

I like you, Kazuya almost says, and although he catches himself in time, he can’t stop the blush that spreads across his cheeks. “I did,” he says finally.

The blush burns brighter when he realizes he forgot to introduce himself. He must be the creepiest stalker fan ever. “My name’s Kamenashi, by the way. Kamenashi Kazuya, but I go by Kame.”

To Kazuya’s surprise, a look of recognition spreads across Jin’s face. He says, “Oh, you’re that baseball guy!”

The blaze spreads to Kazuya’s ears. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and studies the toes of his sneakers. “Yeah, that’s me…” His tongue flicks out again. “Listen, I was wondering…”

A sudden breeze through the subway tunnel alerts them that their train is about to pull in, and Kazuya’s sentence dies on the wind. When the doors open, they both get on. Jin takes the seat at the end of the bench, and Kazuya sits down beside him.

Kazuya tries to ignore how close their shoulders and thighs come to touching, but his hands start to get sweaty. He rubs his palms on his jeans. “So,” he starts again, trying desperately to sound casual, “where are you headed?”

“Home,” Jin answers simply, but Kazuya doesn’t miss how Jin’s eyes grow distant and the sudden interest he takes in a scratch on his guitar case.

“Me, too,” he says, trying to keep the mood light. He leans back a little, and their shoulders touch. Oh god. “So…where’s home for you?”

“Toyocho.”

“Oh. So you’ll switch at…?”

“Otemachi.”

“Me, too. I’m in Kasai, so…same line? The Tozai?”

“Yeah.”

Kazuya takes a deep breath to try and steady his suddenly hammering heart. He must have said something wrong to be getting one-word answers all of a sudden. Frantically, he searches for a neutral topic, and he remembers something.

“For my first time, I really did enjoy the show. I was wondering something, though.”

That gets Jin’s attention. “Hm?”

“Otemachi. This is Otemachi.”

Startled by the announcement of their stop coming over the PA, Kazuya jumps up. “Ah, this is us.” He looks to Jin’s guitar. “Do you need help with that?”

Jin shakes his head and slips the strap back over his shoulder. “No, I’ve got it.”

Together, they exit the train car and navigate the station to the Tozai line platform. When they’re seated on the train that will take them both home, Jin prompts, “You said you wondered something?”

Kazuya’s cheeks feel hot again. “Oh, right. So, while I was watching the show, I wondered…your outfit…”

Without him coming out and saying it, Jin picks up on what he means. “Oh…it’s just the fashion. But not all bands wear stuff like that, so I guess part of it is personal choice, too? For me, there’s something...freeing about it.”

He doesn’t elaborate, but he doesn’t need to. “I know what you mean,” Kazuya says.

Jin gives Kazuya a funny look, like that was the last thing he expected to hear Kazuya say.

Kazuya blushes yet again, and he tries to backtrack when he realizes how that must have sounded. “I mean, I did my hair for the show because I wanted to do something different. I’d never done anything like that before. It’s fun, being different.”

The distant look enters Jin’s eyes again. “Not all the time,” he says, too solemnly for a sixteen-year-old.

Kazuya lowers his head a little and picks at a thread on his jeans. “No, not all the time,” he agrees. He tries again, “But it can be fun, if other people are different, too.”

Jin gives him an unreadable look, like he’s trying to figure out what Kazuya’s getting at. “Yeah, maybe,” he says, almost carefully.

Kazuya has to grasp at the knees of his jeans to stop his hands from shaking. “Hey, so…I was thinking, we go to the same school, and we live pretty close to each other…maybe we could…hang out sometime?”

Once he puts the question forward, Kazuya finally exhales. He should get an award for how smoothly he managed to say all of that-like Jin is just any one of his other friends instead of his first big, real crush.

“Yeah, sure,” Jin says, giving Kazuya a shy, but genuine smile. “I’d like that.”

Kazuya feels like he’s blooming all over again. “Great. I would, too.”