(no subject)
Title: For A Season
Fandom: Nobuta wo Produce
Pairing/Characters: gen. Nobuta, Shuuji, and Akira friendship fic.
Summary: Five days in which nothing happens.
A/N: Written for nkiseki and originally posted on my IRL LJ.
It's different, they're different (and if you're feeling particularly honest with yourself, you'll have to admit you're different too) but everything still seems to fit.
It's not just the way Shuuji's hair is longer and fluffier than ever, and it's not the way that Kusano-kun's (because he'll always be Kusano-kun to you, no matter how much he insists on Akira) wardrobe's gained even more purple, because that could have happened even if they'd stayed in Tokyo. They've grown (and not just physically, though you're nearly certain that Shuuji's just as tall as Kusano-kun now) and you know it’s only been five months, but Kusano-kun seems a little more subdued and Shuuji wants to fill in all those silences he’d never minded before.
You step off the train and the air is fresh. You fidget with your bag, clench your fingers into fists, and feel like smiling when you spot them. They're standing over by the ticket booth, Shuuji's hands deep in his pockets, Kusano-kun leaning against Shuuji's shoulder, their backs against the wall. Occasionally Shuuji twitches, as if he's trying to dislodge Kusano-kun, but he doesn't have much success and, really, he doesn‘t seem to mind. They're speaking, soft and slow, as if they've had this conversation a dozen times before and know what the other's going to say before he says it.
Shuuji's the one that notices you. He stops speaking, smiles. His smile is warmer than you remember, but that might just be because you've missed it so much. "Nobuta." And then Kusano-kun's on top of you, wrapping long arms around you. You breathe in the familiar scent of expensive cologne, cheap laundry detergent, and spilled soymilk, and you feel safer and more protected than you have since before they left. You think about hugging him back but you never have before, so you don't know why you should start now.
Shuuji watches with a raised eyebrow before speaking again. "Come on, Akira, let her breathe."
Kusano-kun pouts and partly releases hold of you, slings an arm over your shoulders, still pressed as close to your side as he can be.
"Trip here alright?" Shuuji asks you. He looks amused. His hands are out of his pockets and folded across his chest, but somehow he doesn’t look unapproachable. You wonder how he manages that.
You nod your head once, don't say anything at all, just happy to be there with them. You’re soaking in their presence, content with that for the moment. Shuuji seems to understand that, doesn't seem to expect you to say anything at all.
"Well, let's go," Shuuji says after another moment, and Kusano-kun grabs your bag. It's instinct to reach for it, to pull it back towards you (even though you know it's just Kusano-kun and Shuuji, years of being bullied does that to a person) but you don't, just flex your fingers.
Shuuji notices, he always notices. (At least that hasn't changed.) He smiles again and you wonder if he's honestly so happy.
*
The walk to Shuuji's new apartment doesn't take long, just fifteen minutes or so, Shuuji walking in the middle, hands in his pockets again, while Kusano-kun slings your bag around on the other side.
You keep looking around at the narrow houses and you wonder if they ever miss tall apartment buildings nearly hiding the sky. You don’t ask.
Shuuji waves to an elderly couple as you walk up a steep hill. You know Shuuji lives on a hill (Kusano-kun had texted you every day for the first two weeks complaining about it) and you kind of hope it’s this hill because you’re used to the flat sidewalks of Tokyo. You’re breathing a bit harder than normal and you nearly sigh when Shuuji pulls his keys out.
You’d never been to his apartment in Tokyo so you don’t know if the new one is smaller or larger or exactly the same. It’s warm and comfortable though, just like you expected.
Koji looks up from his video game and you want to smile and reach out and ruffle his hair (also longer and fluffier) but you don’t, just bow to him. “Nobuta,” he greets you, and you start. For some reason you hadn’t expected him to call you that, but it warms you, makes you feel like part of the family that they’ve formed.
*
Shuuji makes dinner. You sit at the counter chopping onions but mostly just watching them. Shuuji pushes Kusano-kun out of the way, pops his knuckles when he refuses to budge. Kusano-kun pokes Shuuji on the cheek, croons a bit, spins in a circle.
You’ve missed this, missed their banter and easy camaraderie. You wonder how often they do this, and it hurts to realize that even though you’re sitting right there, you’re not a part of this, a part of the new them.
When Shuuji isn’t looking, Kusano reaches in the pan, burns his fingers, yelps. Shuuji rolls his eyes, runs cool water over Kusano-kun’s fingers before forcing him to sit down next to you and tells him that‘s what he gets.
Kusano-kun immediately latches to your arm. “Shuuji-kun’s mean!” he tells you solemnly, his eyes bright.
You nod slowly in agreement, though it’s not really true, and Shuuji makes a squawk of indignation. Kusano-kun laughs and you duck your head and it’s so much like before it makes your heart hurt for a second.
*
You’ve brought gifts for Shuuji from the class. Once they heard you were coming to visit, they’d insisted, piled your desk full of useless trinkets that Shuuj won’t appreciate and most likely will throw away or pack away in a box he‘ll never unpack.
You’ve brought your own gifts too, matching pig necklace charms that you’d won at the Spring Setsubun back in February. You’re a bit nervous when you hand them over, because what have you ever really given them before? They seem happy enough though, Kusano-kun immediately puts it on and Shuuji laces his fingers in the twine and they both smile at you.
You nearly smile back.
*
Shuuji gives up his bedroom for you, ignores you when you say that you can sleep just as easily in the living room. He pulls the other futon from his bedroom through the apartment, plops it on Koji’s bedroom floor.
It gets later and later and Kusano-kun clings a little more with each passing minute. “But I don’t want to leave Shuuji-kun and Nobuta and Shuuji-kun!” he wails, attaches himself to Shuuji‘s arm and refuses to let go.
Shuuji looks amused, pets at Kusano-kun idly, glances at you and rolls his eyes.
When Kiritani-san says that it’s alright for Kusano-kun to stay over as well, Kusano-kun lets out a whoop and releases Shuuji’s arm, flails around the apartment a bit.
As they’re going into Koji’s room, you hear Shuuji muttering. “Just stay on your own futon tonight, alright?” and as soon as you’re hidden in the darkness of Shuuji’s room, you feel yourself smiling.
*
When you wake up the next morning, the first thing you see is Shuuji’s little three-legged pig standing guard on his dresser, just like you see your own every morning from your own bed. The second thing you see is Kusano-kun sitting at the foot of the bed, legs crossed and curling his hair with his fingers.
He perks up when he notices you open your eyes, bounces before lifting a finger to his lips. “Shh! Shuuji told me to be quiet and wait until Nobuta gets up!” He bounces a little more and you sit up, push your hair off your face. “But now you’re up!”
And before you know it, he’s off the bed, his hand around your wrist, and he’s pulling you out into the family room. “Shuuji! Shuuji! Look! Nobuta’s awake!”
Shuuji doesn’t look much more awake than you feel. He’s standing in the kitchen with his hair pulled on top of his head and a teacup in hand. “You didn’t wake her up, did you?”
Kusano-kun looks scandalized. “Of course not! What’s for breakfast, Shuuji-kun? Nobuta’s hungry!”
Shuuji rolls his eyes again but turns dutifully and starts looking through the cabinets.
*
“Let’s show Nobuta where I live,” Kusano-kun says after breakfast.
Shuuji’s washing dishes, handing them to Koji to dry. He glances down at his brother. “Are you going to be alright today?”
Koji rolls his eyes, looking so much like Shuuji that you nearly point it out. “I’m thirteen,” he says, as if that explains everything. Maybe it does, because Shuuji nods and pulls his hair down after handing the last plate to Koji, and you think you’re ready to go, but Shuuji lingers, wiping down the already clean counters and checking the latches on the cabinets.
It takes you a moment to realize that he’s worried about Koji.
He never really worried about leaving Koji on his own back in Tokyo, so you wonder what happened, why neither of them told you. You wonder when they started keeping secrets… well, not secrets, but started filtering everything they say. It makes your chest tighten because you’re suddenly realizing things aren‘t the same.
*
Kusano-kun doesn’t really live there, you realize as you toe your shoes off and he pushes you out into the living room. His new apartment is larger than his last, empty with big windows and a view of the sea. The air smells a little stale and there’s dust on the arms of all the chairs, but there‘s a fresh supply of soymilk in the kitchen and Kusano-kun‘s school books are piled sloppily on the table.
The more you look around the more you realize his apartment is more for storage than living and you’re not sure how that makes you feel.
You spend the day lounging around Kusano-kun’s living room, making your way through a huge stack of magazines and manga you find hiding in a corner, because Shuuji-kun thinks you need to rest after your long train ride the day before. The dust makes you sneeze, but you don’t think you mind, really, because Kusano-kun’s got the radio on and he’s singing off-key at the top of his lungs and Shuuji-kun’s reading your magazine upside down and they’re both just there and you haven’t been this content in a long time.
That night you leave Kusano-kun in his apartment. He’d pouted, of course, and swore that he’d knock on Shuuji’s front door at dawn. Shuuji’d smiled and told him to have at it and when you’d left, Kusano-kun had been trying to figure out all the settings on his grimy alarm clock.
“Is he really alright here?” you ask Shuuji. You worry about them both, but especially Kusano-kun, who left his entire life for Shuuji. You want him to have more than Shuuji and Koji-kun and Kiritani-san.
“Akira? Of course he is. We both are. Tell me about everyone back in Tokyo.” And he so skillfully dodges what your next question would have been that you don’t even realize that you didn’t get your answers until you’re already tucked in Shuuji’s bed.
*
Kusano-kun almost makes good his threat and arrives thirty minutes after sun rise. Not that you know this immediately, because you’re still burrowed between Shuuji’s warm sheets, but you wake up not long after to Shuuji pushing tiredly at your shoulder. He looks exhausted, and you wonder how much sleep he really gets with Kusano-kun around.
“I convinced Akira it’d only be fair that I get to wake you up today; he was ready to come in and bounce on the bed until you strangled him or got up.”
Strangling him is an idea that sounds vaguely satisfying, and that worries you, so you sit up, shake your hair out of your face and try to clear your head.
*
The tofu shop they take you to is nothing like the one in Tokyo. It’s not as run-down, the paint on the walls is fresh and bright, and the tables are sturdy. The tofu isn’t as good though, but you assume that’s because no tofu will ever taste quite like the tofu man’s.
You slide into the booth and Kusano-kun claims the spot next to you, drapes his arm over your shoulders and smiles. “Shuuji~kun!” he sings. “I want lots of soymilk today!” and he gestures that Shuuji should go order.
Shuuji sighs but turns and obediently goes to the counter. Kusano-kun twirls a few loose strands of your hair before dropping his arm and drumming his hands on the table.
Shuuji brings back a few plates of sukiyaki and a pile of fried tofu, his mouth already full of the tofu, and a girl you don’t know follows him, slides in the booth next to him.
“Girlfriend from back home?” the girl asks, her eyes directed at Shuuji, even though Kusano-kun is the one sitting next to you and the one that had supposedly once had a crush on you (Mariko had told you of early morning basketball practice, Kusano-kun’s voice wavering over the intercom; you‘re not sure if you believe her or not. Kusano-kun is too straight-forward to hide something like that, but you don‘t want to think that Mariko is a liar.)
You duck your head, study the wood grain patterns on the table. You’re still not comfortable with people talking about you.
“Shuu~ji and Nobu~ta!” Kusano-kun croons before popping a piece of tofu in his mouth. The girl doesn’t look at him.
“Nobuta’s a friend of ours from Tokyo,” Shuuji tells her, and you can see the relief run through the group of girls she shakes her head at on the other side of the shop.
You wonder why they’ve never straight out asked him if he has a girl waiting back in Tokyo, but knowing Shuuji, he’s probably been evasive and wouldn’t tell them either way.
He looks relieved when the girl returns to her table of friends, smiles guiltily at you. “Sorry about that,” he says, but you’re not sure what he’s sorry about.
*
The three of you sleep at Kusano-kun’s apartment that night, you in Kusano’s bed, Shuuji and Kusano-kun sharing Kusano’s spare futon in the living room. You wonder what Kiritani-san thinks about this, what he’ll report back to your step-father, but you find that you don’t really care.
You and Kusano-kun stay up late into the evening, whispering quietly in the kitchen after Shuuji‘s fallen asleep. He tells you about Shuuji’s fan club and you tell him about Che’s pretty engagement ring and before you know it, Shuuji-kun’s blearily stumbling through the apartment, telling you both to go to bed.
It makes you a little sad in the morning when Shuuji knocks on the door to wake you and a three legged pig doesn’t greet you when you open your eyes. Then again, you imagine it’s probably at Shuuji’s, tucked near wherever they lay Kusano-kun‘s futon at night.
*
They take you to the beach. It’s still May and much too cold for you to swim, but that’s alright because you hadn’t thought to bring a swimsuit and when Kusano-kun offers to buy you one, you turn him down. You’ve always felt a bit awkward with the amount of money he spends on you, and you wonder what his father thinks when looking at his credit card bill: the girly boutiques, the roundtrip train ticket from Tokyo and back. Things Kusano-kun doesn’t need for himself. Though, if he let his only child move clear across Japan on a whim, you imagine he doesn’t really look over Kusano-kun’s purchases.
You sit on the shore, dig your bare toes into the sand, turn your face upwards towards the sky. You let the warmth creep into your skin as you listen to them play in the water. It’s not too cold for them, and they swim like a pair of mermen, completely in tune with the water and the waves and the sand and the sun. You hear Shuuji sputter indignantly and Kusano-kun shriek with laughter, and your eyes are closed, but you can imagine them diving through the waves together, Kusano-kun trying to dunk Shuuji underwater.
This has become their place, you know, much like the roof had been back in Tokyo. Kusano-kun sends pictures to your phone every few days, a sandcastle Shuuji’s built and he’s trampled through, seagulls flying overhead, beautiful shells, once a crab scuttling through the sand. It always makes you smile, a bit sad, but you’re happy they have this place they can be themselves. It’s almost hard to imagine them any place else.
After a while, Shuuji climbs out, leaving Kusano-kun behind in the water. He trudges up the beach, sits down carefully beside you, tries not to kick sand on your beach towel. He smells salty and fresh, and you can feel the coolness from the water radiating off his skin though he doesn’t touch you.
You keep your eyes closed and when he doesn’t say anything to you, you keep silent. You hear Kusano-kun splashing around, trying to fling water up at you, but you’re too far up the beach. He gives up, trudges up the beach.
He plops down happily on your other side, flings an arm around you. You open your eyes, see him grinning cheerfully, and you can feel the water from his skin seeping into your clothes. It makes you shiver and Shuuji seems to know this without even opening his eyes, makes a small sound.
“You’ll get her wet, Akira.”
Kusano-kun pouts and moves away, and you can feel the gritty, damp sand clinging to the back of your neck.
*
Mariko calls that evening. To see what time your train is coming in, she says, but you can tell all her claiming to be over Shuuji is a lie when her voice goes soft and she asks “how’s Shuuji-kun?”
You don’t know what to say, don’t know how to deal with this new information. It makes you uncomfortable and anxious, and you don’t know what else to do but push your phone into Shuuji’s hands.
You don’t know how he feels about this, because his eyes look apprehensive when he glances down at the tiny screen, but his lips are smiling when he says hello.
You feel strange sitting there, listening to a conversation between two of the people you consider your closest friends (and it’s so awkward you can feel it coming in waves through the phone) but there’s not much you can do besides stand up and wander through Kusano-kun’s apartment, rummage through his belongings.
After the beach, you had all filed back into Kusano-kun’s apartment and had taken turns in his cramped shower. They had insisted you go first, and Shuuji had followed, so now Kusano-kun is dealing with whatever lukewarm water is left. You walk around his room slowly, listen to the drumming water of the shower, the soft mummer of Shuuji’s voice.
You feel a little strange, wonder what they’re talking about, if Mariko is telling him about how you went and got matching haircuts a few weeks ago (the change in your hair isn’t much, so you didn’t expect them to notice you’d had a haircut, but Mariko’s is a pronounced difference) or how she’s teaching you how to cook. It doesn’t matter really.
It’s on his windowsill that you spot them, the little three-legged pig and the happiness seed. You run your fingers over them, smooth the little doll’s hair back. They feel exactly the same as your own do in your hands. Small. Precious.
You wonder why he keeps them so far away from where he sleeps.
“Nobuta~!” Kusano-kun sings when he exit’s the bathroom and spots you standing by his window. He’s dressed like you are, one of his purple tank tops layered under one of Shuuji’s flannel shirts, and he’s haphazardly drying his hair with a towel. He lowers his voice. “Are you hiding from Shuuji-kun?” he asks in a dramatic whisper.
“He’s on the phone.” You blink, turn back to the window, and you hear him drop the wet towel on the ground. “With Mariko,” you say after a stretch of time.
Kusano-kun doesn’t know what to say to that, stays silent, but you imagine him blinking behind you.
*
“Do you ever miss her?” you ask. It’s getting late, dusk, and you’re walking back to Shuuji’s apartment. Your fingers clutch at the plastic bag Kusano-kun had given you, filled with your damp clothes.
You don’t know what makes you ask, maybe the way her voice had sounded so forlorn when Shuuji had finally handed the phone back to you, maybe the memory of Shuuji’s face the last time he had seen her, maybe because she’s your best friend now and deserves to know something, one way or the other.
He glances at you. He’s still not used to you walking beside him, you can tell, and sometimes you want to drop your pace, scuffle behind him, but it’s part of who you are now, so you don’t. “Who? Mariko?”
You nod, once.
He makes a face, but you’re not sure what kind of face it is. It takes him a while to answer, but you know he will, so you don’t bother fretting that he’s ignoring you. “I don’t know,” he finally says.
You nod again, because that’s as good as it gets, and you realize that you don’t know him as well as you’d ever thought, as well as you’d ever hoped. You think of Kusano-kun, up ahead on his bicycle and missing this conversation, and you wonder if he knows Shuuji any better than you, if anyone really knows Shuuji.
*
It’s your last night there and the three of you are out on Shuuji’s tiny balcony, tracing shooting stars across the sky. You’re all pressed close together, limbs carefully arranged, all three of you sitting in a space meant to be standing room for one, but you don’t mind the closeness and they don’t seem to either.
You breathe in their smell, lemon dish detergent and soymilk and two very different colognes, while they bicker about constellations. It hasn’t changed at all, their smell, still the same as when you met them last fall. You take comfort in that.
The evening is a little too warm, but the concrete beneath you and the glass door behind you are both cool to the touch. It’s comfortable, and it’s not surprising that you’re the first to yawn.
“We should go in,” Shuuji says, always the practical one.
Kusano-kun makes a noise of protest, laces his fingers around the railing, and you shake your head because this is the last time you’ll all be able to do this together, really; next summer, you’ll all be on your way to becoming adults. You wish you had more time to laze away with them, just like this.
Shuuji shakes his head and they continue their argument on Orion, which is Lepus and Taurus and Sirius. You lean your head back against the glass, close your eyes, content to have them both there for a little while longer.
It’s hours later when Shuuji shifts that you wake up. It’s cold and the morning dew is stuck to your eyelashes. It’s still early, the sky black, whispers of purple tracing the lines of rooftops.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Shuuji whispers, and you’re surprised to look over and see that Shuuji’s already awake. Maybe he hasn’t been asleep at all, which seems more likely to you. His eyes are still focused on the sky above you.
You shift to sit up straight and the muscles in your back pull. You wince, and Shuuji seems to notice, scrunches closer to Kusano-kun so you can sit up with more ease. “Sorry, I probably should have woke you both up earlier.”
“It’s okay,” you tell him, because it is. He needed this time, for the three of you to be pressed so close together, breathing the same air. You all did.
“We’ll miss you when you leave,” he suddenly says. “You know that, right? We always miss you.”
It hurts, because Shuuji never lays himself open like this so you know he’s telling the truth. That somehow makes being separated from them that much worse; you’ve never been missed before.
You’re saved from answering when Kusano-kun turns over in his sleep, throws a leg over Shuuji. It throws the careful arrangement of limbs off, so you’re uncomfortable, your ankles pressed against the railing and your back smashed against the glass. Shuuji sighs and pokes at Kusano-kun until he’s awake and smiling.
The three of you watch the sky turn orange and pink before Shuuji insists on going in.
*
It’s awkward at the train station, and you’re not sure why. For some reason, this feels more like goodbye then when they’d both left you.
“One more picture?” Shuuji finally asks.
You nod your agreement and they loop their arms around you, Kusano stretching his other arm out and snapping a dozen quick pictures.
For the last one you smile, small and sad.
Shuuji grabs Kusano-kun’s phone and starts flipping through the pictures. He laughs at Kusano-kun’s faces and his own mock seriousness. At the last one, his expression softens. He nudges Kusano-kun.
“Where did you learn to smile, Nobuta?” Kusano-kun asks you, dropping his chin to rest it on your shoulder.
You smile again and don’t say anything because you know they understand that even though they weren‘t there when it happened, it was because of them, and even if they don’t understand, it’s enough to pretend that they do.
*
You've lived in Tokyo the longest out of all the places you've ever lived, and it almost feels like home, but you know it's not. Wherever Shuuji and Kusano-kun are is home.
You can't watch as you leave, so you close your eyes, clench your fists. Lean your head against the window so no one can see if you start to cry.
You wonder if they watched, you leaving them this time.
Kusano-kun’s first text arrives as you finish pulling out of the station; it's a picture of the back of the train. You trace the lines on the screen, your fingers shaking. A moment later another one arrives, this one of Shuuji, laughing and ducking his head, followed by one of Kusano-kun making kissy faces.
You smile, missing them already.
Fandom: Nobuta wo Produce
Pairing/Characters: gen. Nobuta, Shuuji, and Akira friendship fic.
Summary: Five days in which nothing happens.
A/N: Written for nkiseki and originally posted on my IRL LJ.
It's different, they're different (and if you're feeling particularly honest with yourself, you'll have to admit you're different too) but everything still seems to fit.
It's not just the way Shuuji's hair is longer and fluffier than ever, and it's not the way that Kusano-kun's (because he'll always be Kusano-kun to you, no matter how much he insists on Akira) wardrobe's gained even more purple, because that could have happened even if they'd stayed in Tokyo. They've grown (and not just physically, though you're nearly certain that Shuuji's just as tall as Kusano-kun now) and you know it’s only been five months, but Kusano-kun seems a little more subdued and Shuuji wants to fill in all those silences he’d never minded before.
You step off the train and the air is fresh. You fidget with your bag, clench your fingers into fists, and feel like smiling when you spot them. They're standing over by the ticket booth, Shuuji's hands deep in his pockets, Kusano-kun leaning against Shuuji's shoulder, their backs against the wall. Occasionally Shuuji twitches, as if he's trying to dislodge Kusano-kun, but he doesn't have much success and, really, he doesn‘t seem to mind. They're speaking, soft and slow, as if they've had this conversation a dozen times before and know what the other's going to say before he says it.
Shuuji's the one that notices you. He stops speaking, smiles. His smile is warmer than you remember, but that might just be because you've missed it so much. "Nobuta." And then Kusano-kun's on top of you, wrapping long arms around you. You breathe in the familiar scent of expensive cologne, cheap laundry detergent, and spilled soymilk, and you feel safer and more protected than you have since before they left. You think about hugging him back but you never have before, so you don't know why you should start now.
Shuuji watches with a raised eyebrow before speaking again. "Come on, Akira, let her breathe."
Kusano-kun pouts and partly releases hold of you, slings an arm over your shoulders, still pressed as close to your side as he can be.
"Trip here alright?" Shuuji asks you. He looks amused. His hands are out of his pockets and folded across his chest, but somehow he doesn’t look unapproachable. You wonder how he manages that.
You nod your head once, don't say anything at all, just happy to be there with them. You’re soaking in their presence, content with that for the moment. Shuuji seems to understand that, doesn't seem to expect you to say anything at all.
"Well, let's go," Shuuji says after another moment, and Kusano-kun grabs your bag. It's instinct to reach for it, to pull it back towards you (even though you know it's just Kusano-kun and Shuuji, years of being bullied does that to a person) but you don't, just flex your fingers.
Shuuji notices, he always notices. (At least that hasn't changed.) He smiles again and you wonder if he's honestly so happy.
*
The walk to Shuuji's new apartment doesn't take long, just fifteen minutes or so, Shuuji walking in the middle, hands in his pockets again, while Kusano-kun slings your bag around on the other side.
You keep looking around at the narrow houses and you wonder if they ever miss tall apartment buildings nearly hiding the sky. You don’t ask.
Shuuji waves to an elderly couple as you walk up a steep hill. You know Shuuji lives on a hill (Kusano-kun had texted you every day for the first two weeks complaining about it) and you kind of hope it’s this hill because you’re used to the flat sidewalks of Tokyo. You’re breathing a bit harder than normal and you nearly sigh when Shuuji pulls his keys out.
You’d never been to his apartment in Tokyo so you don’t know if the new one is smaller or larger or exactly the same. It’s warm and comfortable though, just like you expected.
Koji looks up from his video game and you want to smile and reach out and ruffle his hair (also longer and fluffier) but you don’t, just bow to him. “Nobuta,” he greets you, and you start. For some reason you hadn’t expected him to call you that, but it warms you, makes you feel like part of the family that they’ve formed.
*
Shuuji makes dinner. You sit at the counter chopping onions but mostly just watching them. Shuuji pushes Kusano-kun out of the way, pops his knuckles when he refuses to budge. Kusano-kun pokes Shuuji on the cheek, croons a bit, spins in a circle.
You’ve missed this, missed their banter and easy camaraderie. You wonder how often they do this, and it hurts to realize that even though you’re sitting right there, you’re not a part of this, a part of the new them.
When Shuuji isn’t looking, Kusano reaches in the pan, burns his fingers, yelps. Shuuji rolls his eyes, runs cool water over Kusano-kun’s fingers before forcing him to sit down next to you and tells him that‘s what he gets.
Kusano-kun immediately latches to your arm. “Shuuji-kun’s mean!” he tells you solemnly, his eyes bright.
You nod slowly in agreement, though it’s not really true, and Shuuji makes a squawk of indignation. Kusano-kun laughs and you duck your head and it’s so much like before it makes your heart hurt for a second.
*
You’ve brought gifts for Shuuji from the class. Once they heard you were coming to visit, they’d insisted, piled your desk full of useless trinkets that Shuuj won’t appreciate and most likely will throw away or pack away in a box he‘ll never unpack.
You’ve brought your own gifts too, matching pig necklace charms that you’d won at the Spring Setsubun back in February. You’re a bit nervous when you hand them over, because what have you ever really given them before? They seem happy enough though, Kusano-kun immediately puts it on and Shuuji laces his fingers in the twine and they both smile at you.
You nearly smile back.
*
Shuuji gives up his bedroom for you, ignores you when you say that you can sleep just as easily in the living room. He pulls the other futon from his bedroom through the apartment, plops it on Koji’s bedroom floor.
It gets later and later and Kusano-kun clings a little more with each passing minute. “But I don’t want to leave Shuuji-kun and Nobuta and Shuuji-kun!” he wails, attaches himself to Shuuji‘s arm and refuses to let go.
Shuuji looks amused, pets at Kusano-kun idly, glances at you and rolls his eyes.
When Kiritani-san says that it’s alright for Kusano-kun to stay over as well, Kusano-kun lets out a whoop and releases Shuuji’s arm, flails around the apartment a bit.
As they’re going into Koji’s room, you hear Shuuji muttering. “Just stay on your own futon tonight, alright?” and as soon as you’re hidden in the darkness of Shuuji’s room, you feel yourself smiling.
*
When you wake up the next morning, the first thing you see is Shuuji’s little three-legged pig standing guard on his dresser, just like you see your own every morning from your own bed. The second thing you see is Kusano-kun sitting at the foot of the bed, legs crossed and curling his hair with his fingers.
He perks up when he notices you open your eyes, bounces before lifting a finger to his lips. “Shh! Shuuji told me to be quiet and wait until Nobuta gets up!” He bounces a little more and you sit up, push your hair off your face. “But now you’re up!”
And before you know it, he’s off the bed, his hand around your wrist, and he’s pulling you out into the family room. “Shuuji! Shuuji! Look! Nobuta’s awake!”
Shuuji doesn’t look much more awake than you feel. He’s standing in the kitchen with his hair pulled on top of his head and a teacup in hand. “You didn’t wake her up, did you?”
Kusano-kun looks scandalized. “Of course not! What’s for breakfast, Shuuji-kun? Nobuta’s hungry!”
Shuuji rolls his eyes again but turns dutifully and starts looking through the cabinets.
*
“Let’s show Nobuta where I live,” Kusano-kun says after breakfast.
Shuuji’s washing dishes, handing them to Koji to dry. He glances down at his brother. “Are you going to be alright today?”
Koji rolls his eyes, looking so much like Shuuji that you nearly point it out. “I’m thirteen,” he says, as if that explains everything. Maybe it does, because Shuuji nods and pulls his hair down after handing the last plate to Koji, and you think you’re ready to go, but Shuuji lingers, wiping down the already clean counters and checking the latches on the cabinets.
It takes you a moment to realize that he’s worried about Koji.
He never really worried about leaving Koji on his own back in Tokyo, so you wonder what happened, why neither of them told you. You wonder when they started keeping secrets… well, not secrets, but started filtering everything they say. It makes your chest tighten because you’re suddenly realizing things aren‘t the same.
*
Kusano-kun doesn’t really live there, you realize as you toe your shoes off and he pushes you out into the living room. His new apartment is larger than his last, empty with big windows and a view of the sea. The air smells a little stale and there’s dust on the arms of all the chairs, but there‘s a fresh supply of soymilk in the kitchen and Kusano-kun‘s school books are piled sloppily on the table.
The more you look around the more you realize his apartment is more for storage than living and you’re not sure how that makes you feel.
You spend the day lounging around Kusano-kun’s living room, making your way through a huge stack of magazines and manga you find hiding in a corner, because Shuuji-kun thinks you need to rest after your long train ride the day before. The dust makes you sneeze, but you don’t think you mind, really, because Kusano-kun’s got the radio on and he’s singing off-key at the top of his lungs and Shuuji-kun’s reading your magazine upside down and they’re both just there and you haven’t been this content in a long time.
That night you leave Kusano-kun in his apartment. He’d pouted, of course, and swore that he’d knock on Shuuji’s front door at dawn. Shuuji’d smiled and told him to have at it and when you’d left, Kusano-kun had been trying to figure out all the settings on his grimy alarm clock.
“Is he really alright here?” you ask Shuuji. You worry about them both, but especially Kusano-kun, who left his entire life for Shuuji. You want him to have more than Shuuji and Koji-kun and Kiritani-san.
“Akira? Of course he is. We both are. Tell me about everyone back in Tokyo.” And he so skillfully dodges what your next question would have been that you don’t even realize that you didn’t get your answers until you’re already tucked in Shuuji’s bed.
*
Kusano-kun almost makes good his threat and arrives thirty minutes after sun rise. Not that you know this immediately, because you’re still burrowed between Shuuji’s warm sheets, but you wake up not long after to Shuuji pushing tiredly at your shoulder. He looks exhausted, and you wonder how much sleep he really gets with Kusano-kun around.
“I convinced Akira it’d only be fair that I get to wake you up today; he was ready to come in and bounce on the bed until you strangled him or got up.”
Strangling him is an idea that sounds vaguely satisfying, and that worries you, so you sit up, shake your hair out of your face and try to clear your head.
*
The tofu shop they take you to is nothing like the one in Tokyo. It’s not as run-down, the paint on the walls is fresh and bright, and the tables are sturdy. The tofu isn’t as good though, but you assume that’s because no tofu will ever taste quite like the tofu man’s.
You slide into the booth and Kusano-kun claims the spot next to you, drapes his arm over your shoulders and smiles. “Shuuji~kun!” he sings. “I want lots of soymilk today!” and he gestures that Shuuji should go order.
Shuuji sighs but turns and obediently goes to the counter. Kusano-kun twirls a few loose strands of your hair before dropping his arm and drumming his hands on the table.
Shuuji brings back a few plates of sukiyaki and a pile of fried tofu, his mouth already full of the tofu, and a girl you don’t know follows him, slides in the booth next to him.
“Girlfriend from back home?” the girl asks, her eyes directed at Shuuji, even though Kusano-kun is the one sitting next to you and the one that had supposedly once had a crush on you (Mariko had told you of early morning basketball practice, Kusano-kun’s voice wavering over the intercom; you‘re not sure if you believe her or not. Kusano-kun is too straight-forward to hide something like that, but you don‘t want to think that Mariko is a liar.)
You duck your head, study the wood grain patterns on the table. You’re still not comfortable with people talking about you.
“Shuu~ji and Nobu~ta!” Kusano-kun croons before popping a piece of tofu in his mouth. The girl doesn’t look at him.
“Nobuta’s a friend of ours from Tokyo,” Shuuji tells her, and you can see the relief run through the group of girls she shakes her head at on the other side of the shop.
You wonder why they’ve never straight out asked him if he has a girl waiting back in Tokyo, but knowing Shuuji, he’s probably been evasive and wouldn’t tell them either way.
He looks relieved when the girl returns to her table of friends, smiles guiltily at you. “Sorry about that,” he says, but you’re not sure what he’s sorry about.
*
The three of you sleep at Kusano-kun’s apartment that night, you in Kusano’s bed, Shuuji and Kusano-kun sharing Kusano’s spare futon in the living room. You wonder what Kiritani-san thinks about this, what he’ll report back to your step-father, but you find that you don’t really care.
You and Kusano-kun stay up late into the evening, whispering quietly in the kitchen after Shuuji‘s fallen asleep. He tells you about Shuuji’s fan club and you tell him about Che’s pretty engagement ring and before you know it, Shuuji-kun’s blearily stumbling through the apartment, telling you both to go to bed.
It makes you a little sad in the morning when Shuuji knocks on the door to wake you and a three legged pig doesn’t greet you when you open your eyes. Then again, you imagine it’s probably at Shuuji’s, tucked near wherever they lay Kusano-kun‘s futon at night.
*
They take you to the beach. It’s still May and much too cold for you to swim, but that’s alright because you hadn’t thought to bring a swimsuit and when Kusano-kun offers to buy you one, you turn him down. You’ve always felt a bit awkward with the amount of money he spends on you, and you wonder what his father thinks when looking at his credit card bill: the girly boutiques, the roundtrip train ticket from Tokyo and back. Things Kusano-kun doesn’t need for himself. Though, if he let his only child move clear across Japan on a whim, you imagine he doesn’t really look over Kusano-kun’s purchases.
You sit on the shore, dig your bare toes into the sand, turn your face upwards towards the sky. You let the warmth creep into your skin as you listen to them play in the water. It’s not too cold for them, and they swim like a pair of mermen, completely in tune with the water and the waves and the sand and the sun. You hear Shuuji sputter indignantly and Kusano-kun shriek with laughter, and your eyes are closed, but you can imagine them diving through the waves together, Kusano-kun trying to dunk Shuuji underwater.
This has become their place, you know, much like the roof had been back in Tokyo. Kusano-kun sends pictures to your phone every few days, a sandcastle Shuuji’s built and he’s trampled through, seagulls flying overhead, beautiful shells, once a crab scuttling through the sand. It always makes you smile, a bit sad, but you’re happy they have this place they can be themselves. It’s almost hard to imagine them any place else.
After a while, Shuuji climbs out, leaving Kusano-kun behind in the water. He trudges up the beach, sits down carefully beside you, tries not to kick sand on your beach towel. He smells salty and fresh, and you can feel the coolness from the water radiating off his skin though he doesn’t touch you.
You keep your eyes closed and when he doesn’t say anything to you, you keep silent. You hear Kusano-kun splashing around, trying to fling water up at you, but you’re too far up the beach. He gives up, trudges up the beach.
He plops down happily on your other side, flings an arm around you. You open your eyes, see him grinning cheerfully, and you can feel the water from his skin seeping into your clothes. It makes you shiver and Shuuji seems to know this without even opening his eyes, makes a small sound.
“You’ll get her wet, Akira.”
Kusano-kun pouts and moves away, and you can feel the gritty, damp sand clinging to the back of your neck.
*
Mariko calls that evening. To see what time your train is coming in, she says, but you can tell all her claiming to be over Shuuji is a lie when her voice goes soft and she asks “how’s Shuuji-kun?”
You don’t know what to say, don’t know how to deal with this new information. It makes you uncomfortable and anxious, and you don’t know what else to do but push your phone into Shuuji’s hands.
You don’t know how he feels about this, because his eyes look apprehensive when he glances down at the tiny screen, but his lips are smiling when he says hello.
You feel strange sitting there, listening to a conversation between two of the people you consider your closest friends (and it’s so awkward you can feel it coming in waves through the phone) but there’s not much you can do besides stand up and wander through Kusano-kun’s apartment, rummage through his belongings.
After the beach, you had all filed back into Kusano-kun’s apartment and had taken turns in his cramped shower. They had insisted you go first, and Shuuji had followed, so now Kusano-kun is dealing with whatever lukewarm water is left. You walk around his room slowly, listen to the drumming water of the shower, the soft mummer of Shuuji’s voice.
You feel a little strange, wonder what they’re talking about, if Mariko is telling him about how you went and got matching haircuts a few weeks ago (the change in your hair isn’t much, so you didn’t expect them to notice you’d had a haircut, but Mariko’s is a pronounced difference) or how she’s teaching you how to cook. It doesn’t matter really.
It’s on his windowsill that you spot them, the little three-legged pig and the happiness seed. You run your fingers over them, smooth the little doll’s hair back. They feel exactly the same as your own do in your hands. Small. Precious.
You wonder why he keeps them so far away from where he sleeps.
“Nobuta~!” Kusano-kun sings when he exit’s the bathroom and spots you standing by his window. He’s dressed like you are, one of his purple tank tops layered under one of Shuuji’s flannel shirts, and he’s haphazardly drying his hair with a towel. He lowers his voice. “Are you hiding from Shuuji-kun?” he asks in a dramatic whisper.
“He’s on the phone.” You blink, turn back to the window, and you hear him drop the wet towel on the ground. “With Mariko,” you say after a stretch of time.
Kusano-kun doesn’t know what to say to that, stays silent, but you imagine him blinking behind you.
*
“Do you ever miss her?” you ask. It’s getting late, dusk, and you’re walking back to Shuuji’s apartment. Your fingers clutch at the plastic bag Kusano-kun had given you, filled with your damp clothes.
You don’t know what makes you ask, maybe the way her voice had sounded so forlorn when Shuuji had finally handed the phone back to you, maybe the memory of Shuuji’s face the last time he had seen her, maybe because she’s your best friend now and deserves to know something, one way or the other.
He glances at you. He’s still not used to you walking beside him, you can tell, and sometimes you want to drop your pace, scuffle behind him, but it’s part of who you are now, so you don’t. “Who? Mariko?”
You nod, once.
He makes a face, but you’re not sure what kind of face it is. It takes him a while to answer, but you know he will, so you don’t bother fretting that he’s ignoring you. “I don’t know,” he finally says.
You nod again, because that’s as good as it gets, and you realize that you don’t know him as well as you’d ever thought, as well as you’d ever hoped. You think of Kusano-kun, up ahead on his bicycle and missing this conversation, and you wonder if he knows Shuuji any better than you, if anyone really knows Shuuji.
*
It’s your last night there and the three of you are out on Shuuji’s tiny balcony, tracing shooting stars across the sky. You’re all pressed close together, limbs carefully arranged, all three of you sitting in a space meant to be standing room for one, but you don’t mind the closeness and they don’t seem to either.
You breathe in their smell, lemon dish detergent and soymilk and two very different colognes, while they bicker about constellations. It hasn’t changed at all, their smell, still the same as when you met them last fall. You take comfort in that.
The evening is a little too warm, but the concrete beneath you and the glass door behind you are both cool to the touch. It’s comfortable, and it’s not surprising that you’re the first to yawn.
“We should go in,” Shuuji says, always the practical one.
Kusano-kun makes a noise of protest, laces his fingers around the railing, and you shake your head because this is the last time you’ll all be able to do this together, really; next summer, you’ll all be on your way to becoming adults. You wish you had more time to laze away with them, just like this.
Shuuji shakes his head and they continue their argument on Orion, which is Lepus and Taurus and Sirius. You lean your head back against the glass, close your eyes, content to have them both there for a little while longer.
It’s hours later when Shuuji shifts that you wake up. It’s cold and the morning dew is stuck to your eyelashes. It’s still early, the sky black, whispers of purple tracing the lines of rooftops.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Shuuji whispers, and you’re surprised to look over and see that Shuuji’s already awake. Maybe he hasn’t been asleep at all, which seems more likely to you. His eyes are still focused on the sky above you.
You shift to sit up straight and the muscles in your back pull. You wince, and Shuuji seems to notice, scrunches closer to Kusano-kun so you can sit up with more ease. “Sorry, I probably should have woke you both up earlier.”
“It’s okay,” you tell him, because it is. He needed this time, for the three of you to be pressed so close together, breathing the same air. You all did.
“We’ll miss you when you leave,” he suddenly says. “You know that, right? We always miss you.”
It hurts, because Shuuji never lays himself open like this so you know he’s telling the truth. That somehow makes being separated from them that much worse; you’ve never been missed before.
You’re saved from answering when Kusano-kun turns over in his sleep, throws a leg over Shuuji. It throws the careful arrangement of limbs off, so you’re uncomfortable, your ankles pressed against the railing and your back smashed against the glass. Shuuji sighs and pokes at Kusano-kun until he’s awake and smiling.
The three of you watch the sky turn orange and pink before Shuuji insists on going in.
*
It’s awkward at the train station, and you’re not sure why. For some reason, this feels more like goodbye then when they’d both left you.
“One more picture?” Shuuji finally asks.
You nod your agreement and they loop their arms around you, Kusano stretching his other arm out and snapping a dozen quick pictures.
For the last one you smile, small and sad.
Shuuji grabs Kusano-kun’s phone and starts flipping through the pictures. He laughs at Kusano-kun’s faces and his own mock seriousness. At the last one, his expression softens. He nudges Kusano-kun.
“Where did you learn to smile, Nobuta?” Kusano-kun asks you, dropping his chin to rest it on your shoulder.
You smile again and don’t say anything because you know they understand that even though they weren‘t there when it happened, it was because of them, and even if they don’t understand, it’s enough to pretend that they do.
*
You've lived in Tokyo the longest out of all the places you've ever lived, and it almost feels like home, but you know it's not. Wherever Shuuji and Kusano-kun are is home.
You can't watch as you leave, so you close your eyes, clench your fists. Lean your head against the window so no one can see if you start to cry.
You wonder if they watched, you leaving them this time.
Kusano-kun’s first text arrives as you finish pulling out of the station; it's a picture of the back of the train. You trace the lines on the screen, your fingers shaking. A moment later another one arrives, this one of Shuuji, laughing and ducking his head, followed by one of Kusano-kun making kissy faces.
You smile, missing them already.