Chocolate Fic for tinyangl
To: tinyangl
From: dalampasigan
Title: Bright Skies, Burnt Stars
Pairing: Yamashita Tomohisa/Ishihara Satomi, Nagasawa Masami/Ninomiya Kazunari on the side, Nishikido Ryo being forever alone
Rating: PG
Summary: First impressions, keeping secrets, and the pursuit of happiness. AU.
A/N: You totally know who I am but tinyangl ilusm and you deserve the best, I hope this would suffice somehow.
i.
They first meet on a Monday, at seven o’clock in the morning for Asian Cinema. Ishihara Satomi is one of the first to arrive, wide awake and alert among the glass-eyed gazes and zombie-like shuffling of the students as they enter the classroom. She seats herself at the back along the aisle, eager to participate but feeling a bit shy. He comes shuffling in just before their professor arrives, the glassiest-eyed of them all. She doesn’t know why, but he makes a beeline for the seat next to hers, plopping down on it with a groan.
She made a resolution to be more open and friendlier-her best friend Masami’s words, not hers-this school year, having apparently kept her head down and talking to no one else except when necessary or unless she was talked to first, although Satomi always told Masami defensively that she was studying for the past two years. She didn’t think she was being unfriendly until Masami pointed out that her only friend in the entire university was pretty much only Masami herself, “And that’s because we’re roommates.”
So, she turns to him, this boy with eyes that somehow remind her of fish, smiles and chirps, “Good morning.”
He gives her a bleary look, grunts, and then looks away.
She blinks, affronted, but then their professor arrives, capturing her full and undivided attention. When she next looks at her seatmate, he has his head on folded arms, apparently asleep. Feeling doubly affronted-she’d been looking forward to this class for days-she does her best to ignore him and fights the urge to shake him awake to get him to pay attention.
Later, back in her dorm room, Satomi loses no time narrating what had happened to Masami, who typically dismisses his behavior with, “Maybe he just wasn’t awake yet.”
“He slept through almost the entire class.”
“Well, there you go.”
“It’s rude.”
“Miitan, you’re the only freak I know who’s chipper at seven in the morning.”
“That’s not true! Our professor was even more chipper than I was at seven in the morning.”
Masami gives her a look that means, that is not the point, and it isn’t. Satomi pouts. “Well, he was rude! He didn’t even thank me when I woke him up after class. He just up and left.”
“It’s just the first day of classes, why are you so obsessed with this guy?” Masami’s face lights up. “Ooh. Was he good-looking?”
Satomi tries to return the that is not the point look, narrowing her eyes and wrinkling her nose, but Masami ignores it. “I mostly saw the back of his head.”
“Fine. Was the back of his head good-looking?”
“How can the back of a head be good-looking?” Satomi half-cries out, half-laughs in half-exasperation.
“Are you serious?!” Masami cries out in full exasperation. “Any part of a man can be good-looking! Like his arms, or the curve of his back, the shape of his shoulders…” She trails off at the familiar clueless look on Satomi’s face when discussing men in general. “God, you’re hopeless.”
“Hopeless with what?” Satomi returns without missing a beat, feigning hurt.
“With love.” Masami replies dramatically. It is a banter they’ve had countless of times before. Satomi never minds them, though. Their friendship had had a bit of a rough start when Masami first moved into their dorm room on the first night of the first semester, all by herself, surrounded by her luggage. She didn’t have covers or pillows for her own bed, but rejected Satomi’s offer of her extra bedcovers with such iciness that Satomi was a little scared. But Satomi pressed on, giving up her own pillow and saying cheerfully that she can sleep just as well without one.
“Thank you,” Masami whispered meekly in the dark. For some reason this made Satomi giggle, which became infectious, and they laid in their beds giggling until they were shushed by an occupant in the next room. Masami let out a loud ‘HA’ of laughter before settling down with a smile on her face. They talked late into the night despite both of them having classes early the next day. It was the same night Masami had christened Satomi Miitan, choosing the same syllable of their names.
It was several months later that Satomi would admit to Masami that she made more effort to be nice that first night because she thought that Masami possibly didn’t have any parents. She didn’t say she thought this because she arrived in the same manner, because it was as if she didn’t have parents either; she grew up never knowing her father and mostly alone with her mother working two, three jobs at a time to support both of them. Her mother always said that they were better off without him even though they weren’t; her mother was always tired and sad and it made her sad, too, though she always did her best in school and always smiled in the hopes of making her mother happy. Masami laughed out loud at Satomi’s “overactive imagination”. Then she’d said, “You didn’t make the effort to be more nice, Miitan. You are nice. Too nice, sometimes.”
ii.
There are only three things she knows about him: first, that his surname is Yamashita, from roll call. Second, that people called him Yamapi. ‘People’ is a relative term; she only really heard him called that by someone named Nishikido, who only appeared on the second day of classes, looking perpetually bored in each one. The pair of them gets under her nerves.
Third, that the class they’re taking together is “just an elective,” something she hears him say with her own ears one day after class, making her annoyance spike up again; it’s one of her core classes and she loves it.
There is a fourth thing: he keeps sitting beside her in class.
A fifth: he’s only awake on the mornings he has coffee. He began a trend, much to her annoyance, when he first brought coffee to class. The tantalizing aroma of the brewed drink perked everyone up, except Satomi, who always preferred tea. Yamashita “Yamapi” whoever-he-was apologized when it caught the attention of the professor. Satomi thought their professor would get angry, but instead he thanked Yamashita for waking the class up, making the students laugh, and giving them permission to have their caffeine fix in class, if it helped. Satomi pursed her lips in disapproval, though she liked the smell as well. From then on, their other classmates began bringing coffee to class as well. Satomi makes it a point not to, even on the mornings she can barely keep her eyes open from having watched films for another major course on the small screen of her ancient laptop from the previous night.
Maybe there is a sixth thing: the back of his head does look good; she’s seen it a lot on the mornings Yamashita isn’t awake. His shoulders, too. And his arms. Satomi looks sometimes, wondering if he is into any sport, and then wondering why she’s even looking in the first place, and then blame everything on Masami to feel better.
And a seventh: he doesn’t talk to her, barely meets her eyes. On the off chance he happens to glance her way, their gazes connect briefly and he smiles, but his eyes slide away and he’s already laughing at something that Nishikido says in a way that makes Satomi think the smile isn’t for her benefit after all. It makes her feel small and insignificant and maybe not worth looking at, and feeling this way makes her angry, though she doesn’t know if it’s with him or with herself. It’s certainly not the first time she’s been ignored by a man; her own father had never made any contact over the years-but she doesn’t understand why this rejection hurts now compared to the rejection of the first man who should have been important in her life.
iii.
“I didn’t know you meant Piitan!” Masami exclaims, and Satomi thinks, Piitan? and says out loud as much. “We’re friends,” Masami explains. “Back in high school. We were sort of close.”
Satomi thinks they must have been, especially if Masami’s been calling Yamapi a nickname like Piitan. She wonders why she feels bothered, then wonders what exactly it is that she’s bothered about: the nickname or the fact that such a nickname implies a deeper intimacy. Or the fact that Piitan and Miitan sound ridiculously similar. “You sound like you were really close,” she hazards instead.
“We dated for a while.”
Satomi chokes on the tea she’s just taken a sip of and coughs, her eyes watering. Masami laughs, but not at all meanly, calmly patting the spots on the table Satomi had managed to sputter tea over and pushing forward a glass of water. “It was just a couple of months during high school. Then we were both accepted here but we have different majors so I don’t see him often, but we still say hi.”
Satomi, who has never had a boyfriend before, thinks it still must be a pretty big deal, even if it was a relationship that apparently didn’t last for very long. She can’t help but be curious. After having gulped down half of the water, she asks, “What happened?”
“I met Kazu,” Masami says in a tone that implies, and that was that, but then she adds, “I don’t know, it just didn’t work. It was okay for the most part until the moment we kissed.”
“And?” Satomi had leaned forward, elbows on the table, enraptured with the story. “Did he kiss badly or something?”
“Well, n…o, not really, but there weren’t any, you know, sparks.”
“Sparks,” Satomi echoes, as if she understands, though her face is a question mark.
“You know!” Masami waves a dismissive hand. “No swooping sensation in my stomach, nothing toe-curling or heart-pounding, or…” She trails off at the openly ignorant look on Satomi’s face. “Oh, come on. We totally have to get someone to kiss you at least once. How can you have lips like that and not have kissed anybody?!”
“You’re doing it again,” Satomi wails, holding one hand up to block Masami’s view of her lips. Once in a while, usually when they drink in their room and actually end up getting drunk, Masami becomes fixated on Satomi’s lips. “I told you! Don’t look-”
“ I mean, I can do it if you want! Just so you know how it feels to have someone else’s lips on yours.” Masami stands up partly from her seat, as if to make good on her word, making Satomi shriek and nearly topple back her own chair in panic, “Nononononono stay awaaaaaaaaay Machan!!!”
“And you experience sparks with Ninomiya-kun?” Satomi asks later, after Masami has sworn she won’t kiss her and dragged her back to her seat. Masami doesn’t get to answer because said person appears just then, Ninomiya Kazunari, who told Satomi to call him just ‘Nino,’ which was something Satomi couldn’t quite bring herself to ever do. He gives both of them a nod, doesn’t kiss Masami hello but sits next to her, reaching for her cup of tea and taking a sip from it as if it belongs to him. “Did I hear my name?” he asks, crossing one leg over the other as he sits back, teacup still in his hand.
“She was just asking where you’ve been,” Masami answers smoothly for the both of them. She and Nino fall into a conversation of their own that doesn’t necessarily exclude Satomi, but Satomi falls silent anyway. She usually does whenever Nino is around, content to observe the couple while pretending to not observe them. Their actions don’t scream in a relationship, but there is obvious possession with the simple way Nino stays beside Masami when they’re together, the way Masami quietly lights up when he’s there. In Satomi’s eyes, they are the poster couple of couples, not that she personally knows any other in the campus.
“-hates Piitan.”
Satomi’s attention snaps back to the present. “I do not hate him,” she protests. “I just-”
“Don’t like him?” Nino provides helpfully.
“Exactly.”
“But there’s nothing not to like about him,” Masami points out, then catches Nino’s eye. “I mean, aside from the fact that he can’t really kiss-”
“Machan.” Satomi’s giggling even as she tries to look stern. “He knows about that?” she asks, inclining her head in Nino’s direction.
“He knows everything,” Masami says dismissively. “As I was saying-”
“Machan, really, that’s horrible.”
“She is,” Nino agrees.
“Shut up! Get your own damn tea!” Masami barks at him, snatching her near-empty cup from his hands. This, their banter, doesn’t really diminish their poster couple status in Satomi’s eyes; Masami often says that it’s normal for couples to fight, although Satomi sometimes thinks that her friend often says that precisely because Masami and Nino often fight.
The entire story is eventually repeated, with added details, for Nino’s benefit, who butts in at the middle, “Wait, Nishikido? You mean Ryo?”
“What?” Masami raises her eyebrows at her best friend. “Dokkun? He’s in that class, too? You never said!”
Satomi doesn’t even question that nickname, only too used by now with her friend’s penchant for them. “How come you guys know everyone?!”
“We have the same major, silly, and actually we don’t know everyone; you just don’t know anyone,” Masami explains.
“Oh, ha, ha,” Satomi says, pouting a little, “anyway, why is he called Yamapi? Did that come from you, too?”
“Oh, no, that was from a teacher when we were in high school. He’d worn the wrong shirt color for dance class and our teacher just kept screaming ‘Yamashita! Pink!’ over and over like a deranged person and it sort of stuck.”
There is a pause as Satomi and Nino digest this strange tale.
“Doesn’t knowing about Yamashita Pink make you dislike him less?” Nino teases, bringing the topic back on track before reaching for Masami’s cup and draining the remaining tea in it.
Satomi fidgets, uncomfortable with the idea of disliking anyone, although that’s what it is. It makes her sound mean, and she doesn’t like to be mean to anyone. “I just think he’s rude, that’s all.” She looks up to see Masami and Nino exchanging a glance that she doesn’t quite know the meaning of. “What?”
“Rude is the last thing Piitan is,” Masami says with a certainty that makes Satomi uneasy. “You’ll see.”
iv.
The first time Yamapi speaks to Satomi occurs one day after class. Just before everyone filed out of the room, Maeda, a classmate who shares Satomi’s major, approaches her. “Hey, Ishihara, don’t forget! My shoot’s this Friday. Call time’s 3 AM on the dot. Since you’re the production manager, you should remind everyone of the call time, too.”
“I will,” Satomi chirps, holding her books to her chest. “I’ve already reserved the theater hall last week, so we’re good to go.”
“Alright. See you.”
“Ah, wait… you can help me with my shoot next week too, can’t you?” Satomi asks, hurriedly walking after Maeda as he’d already taken several strides toward the door. “You said you’d be my assistant director.”
“About that...” Maeda purses his lips a little, scratching the back of his head. “I’ll have exams coming up so I’m not sure. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay,” Satomi says, trying not to show her disappointment. “Thanks anyway.”
Maeda nods and turns away, but then Yamapi’s there, smiling amiably, his presence is enough to halt Maeda’s tracks. “Sorry,” Yamapi says right away, looking slightly sheepish. “I overheard. I was just thinking, y’know, isn’t it a bit unfair for Ishihara-san to help with your shoot but you’re not going to help with hers? I dunno, like.” He shrugs, palms up. “Shouldn’t you return the favor, at least?”
Satomi watches, feeling her cheeks flush in mortification over this unwarranted intrusion on her behalf. Maeda looks at Yamapi, then at her, then back to Yamapi, a slightly annoyed look on his face probably for the same reason, though he looks guilty as well for being caught. He shrugs, appearing to consider Yamapi’s words. “Yeah, I guess.” He looks at Satomi and shrugs again. “Okay. Count me in next week, Ishihara.” He gives Yamapi a nod and exits the classroom, leaving Satomi and Yamapi alone.
“What was that?” Satomi bursts out once their classmate is out of earshot, gaping at Yamapi. “What did you think-what were you doing? Why did you have to say that?”
Yamapi gapes back at her, looking thoroughly confused. “I was helping you.”
“That wasn’t helping! That was-” Satomi flaps her hands wildly, gesturing. “Coercion!”
He laughs a little, but stops at the stricken look on Satomi’s face. “That was hardly coercion, just a suggestion. And he took it,” he says, though he looks uncertain now.
“But now it’ll be all awkward!” Satomi cries out, distressed. “And it’ll be so awkward when we work together!”
Yamapi looks lost, as if he hadn’t considered that possible outcome, which he probably hasn’t, and it makes Satomi want to stamp her feet in frustration. “Why would it be awkward? He was pretty cool with it, wasn’t he?”
Satomi opens her mouth and then closes it, unwilling to admit that the one who’ll feel awkward is her.
“Oi, Pi,” comes a voice from the doorway, nasal and Kansai, making Satomi start in surprise. “Let’s go, I’m starving,” Nishikido says in a tone that seems to indicate we’ve wasted enough time here already, cocking his head to the general direction of the cafeteria.
Yamapi holds up a hand, then turns to Satomi. “How about I treat you to lunch?”
She finds herself seated next to him in a booth for four, unable to decide if she feels self-conscious more because he’s next to her or because of Nishikido’s presence across the table, though he hardly pays her any attention. Satomi’s never really found herself seated with any males she doesn’t really know, preferring to sit at a table for two, alone-if Masami isn’t able to join her for lunch-placing her bag on the other seat to avoid anyone else asking if the seat is free. Yamapi finds himself treating not only Satomi, but also Ryo for some reason unknown to her. She hadn’t been able to say no, but she chose the cheapest meal on the menu to make up for it.
They eat in silence, and Satomi feels awkward, something-she acknowledges inwardly-she has felt for the most of her adult college life, though she surmises there really wouldn’t be any room for conversation with the way both Yamapi and Ryo are shoving food into their mouths.
“Miitan, there you are!” Satomi looks up, smiling with relief just in time to see Masami’s eyes widen at their table in general. “Piitan? Dokkun? What-” Whatever she’s about to ask is evidently put off for the moment, deciding to sit next to Ryo instead.
Nino isn’t far behind, holding his own tray. “There’s not enough room,” he complains, but slides into the seat next to Masami. “Budge up, Ryo.”
“Get your own chair,” Ryo grouses, but presses close against the wall anyway.
“So,” Masami says cheerfully after having chewed and swallowed a spoonful of curry, “What brings us all here today?”
Satomi looks from Ryo to Yamapi before lowering her head to her meal; Ryo complains that Masami’s elbow is in his table space and Yamapi shrugs. “We’re classmates.”
“We know,” Nino says, followed by an “oomph” when Masami elbows his side.
“He,” Satomi begins, gesturing to Yamapi, making everyone at the table fall silent and look at her and making her flush pink at the attention, “he helped, sort of.”
“He helped and she was ungrateful,” Ryo elaborates.
“It’s not like I don’t appreciate it,” Satomi cries out, desperate to clear her name, embarrassed that there had been an audience to the earlier spectacle after all. Yamapi’s face brightens at the fact that she appreciates his ‘help,’ but she pretends not to notice. “It’s just that Maeda-kun said he was too busy to help with my shoot and Yamap-Yamashita-san talked him into it, but it’s fine, really, it’s no big deal. I’d rather work alone than work with people who are only forced to help me.”
There is an uncomfortable pause following her statement, which Yamapi breaks with, “I’ll help.”
“We all will,” Masami adds without missing a beat, nudging both Nino and Ryo with sharp elbows. “You too, Dokkun.”
“Why should I-ouch, Machan, stop doing that!”
“Yeah, you can hold the lights up this time,” Masami decides. “At least Kazu won’t be complaining having to act while being the gaffer, too.”
“What the hell is a gaffer and how do you know it?” Ryo wants to know, massaging his ribs.
“The one who does the lighting,” is all Masami says. She exchanges a look with Satomi and they both look down at their food the next moment, smiling. No one else really knows, apart from Nino, that Masami is currently pursuing a double major in Theater. She used to blame Satomi jokingly, saying the idea had taken root when she acted in one of Satomi’s first films, but they both know that Masami agreed in the first place because acting has always been one of her interests.
“Yeah, yeah, fine, whatever,” Ryo mutters. “As long as I don’t have to do any acting.”
v.
“You should hit Machan, Nishikido-kun!” Satomi calls out on the day of the shoot from behind the camera she’s rented from the film department. They began filming late in the morning; Satomi knew it would be no use to set an early call time if she was the only one who’d be awake at that hour. Maeda hadn’t shown up at all, which Satomi expected; he told Satomi as much during his own shoot that he really had to study and might not be able to make it. Yamapi’s mouth had set in a grim line, though, when he learned that Maeda wasn’t there. He and Ryo exchanged ominous looks that Satomi absolutely couldn’t comprehend.
Nino had, at the last minute, decided he’d rather hold the lights up after all, saying he wasn’t in the mood to act that day. Ryo ended up taking his place on pain of Masami’s elbows. He surprisingly had the flair for it, on the account of Satomi’s short film having minimal dialog and his following Satomi’s directions to the letter, although he buckles at the part where he has to slap Masami across the face. “You can’t just pretend to hit her or it won’t look real. It’s okay,” she tells him, trying to sound assuring, “we’ve talked about it and she’s agreed to it. Really.”
“You’ve agreed to have your face slapped?” Ryo asks incredulously, shaking his head a little to mask his anxiety. “Didn’t know you were M as well as S, Machan.”
“Oh, just shut up and do it,” Masami says from her position on the floor, where Ryo’s character had pushed her from an earlier take before Satomi called for a cut. “And make it quick.”
“But it’ll hurt.”
“DUH, Dokkun, obviously. Come on, we don’t have all day!”
“Ready?” Satomi calls out. “Three… two… one… action!”
Ryo looks down at Masami, jaw clenching and eyes flashing. His hand twitches, and then there is a resounding slap that echoes through the mostly bare studio that’s been set up specifically for student films.
Masami clutches at her face and looks up at Ryo in sheer terror, holding that expression until Satomi calls out, “Cut!”
“THAT FUCKING HURT YOU FUCKING IDIOT.”
“I TOLD YOU,” Ryo yelps as he tries to avoid being manhandled by Masami. “GERROFF.”
“I think you should rewrite the scene to Machan’s character being the one who physically abuses her boyfriend instead of the other way around, Satomi-chan,” Nino suggests, arms trembling from trying not to laugh while having to carefully lower the halogen light that he’s been holding up.
“YOU SHUT UP OR I’LL PHYSICALLY ABUSE YOU,” Masami yells.
The filming goes by slowly with the five of them having double, triple roles in the production: aside from being the actors, Masami, Yamapi and Ryo are also part of the film crew, while Nino is in charge not only of setting up the lights but also the props and costumes. Satomi herself is the director, cinematographer, and continuity supervisor-not to mention scriptwriter-rolled into one. They are all roles that other people should have assumed. She knows a production isn’t supposed to be this way, that each role should be filled with different people to assure that a film, even a short one, will be made smoothly from start to finish; she knows that her professors will once again chide her for her unhealthy work ethic and the repeating names that will appear on the closing credits of her film. But she prefers it this way, prefers shouldering most of the burden, something she’s done ever since she was a child.
“Interesting story,” Nino lets her know during break while munching on a melon bread Satomi has provided. This is the most she can offer them in return for working in her film: food. “If not a bit dark,” he goes on, tapping the script laid open on his lap with a finger. “Your main character has a boyfriend who physically abuses her and a childhood friend who’s loved her for years but can’t bring himself to confess. And she ends up with no one.”
Ryo has gone outside for a smoke; Masami sits on the floor with her legs stretched out, bento on her lap, while Yamapi is done with his, drinking water from a bottle as he reads the script over Nino’s shoulder. “I like it,” Masami says, and Satomi is grateful for that. “Not every story has a happy ending, after all.”
“I just want it to be realistic,” Satomi explains reluctantly, feeling a bit shy having to discuss the nuances of her script with other people. “Like Machan says, not every story ends happily. Not every love story ends up with people together. Sometimes people end up alone. Sometimes people end up never confessing their feelings.” She looks down, playing a little with the straw of her milk carton. “Some people do their very best but still end up failing.” She forces a laugh, waving a hand as if to dismiss her thoughts while avoiding everyone’s eyes. “Well, that’s life.”
She hears Nino hum noncommittally and Masami closing her bento, feels Yamapi’s gaze on her. Then Masami stands up and calls for a time check, hollering at Ryo from the window to get his ass back inside, and Nino gets to his feet as well to set up the lighting again. She feels herself stiffen a little when Yamapi takes over Nino’s seat next to hers, and she keeps her gaze on her lap until he speaks. “I like it too, actually,” he says, and it makes her look at him in surprise.
“Oh! Thank you.”
He twists the cap off his water bottle, then on, looking at her. “But I just thought, even if not every story has a happy ending, don’t you think everyone deserves a shot at it anyway?”
“Piitan!” Masami’s voice cuts through their conversation, making both of them jump a little. “You’ll be standing here. You know your lines, right? Ready for the take, director!” she calls out to Satomi, giving her best friend a salute.
“Oh, yes,” Satomi says, flustered, nearly upending her empty milk carton from her lap as she hurriedly stands up. “Let’s rehearse.”
Yamapi’s words resound in her mind long after filming is over, making her wonder of all the things she’s been trying not to think about for years.
vi.
Satomi considers leaving the editing of her short film to a more-skilled upperclassman because she has several papers due. In the end she decides against it, though she knows that she always tends to take her time with editing, agonizing over whether or not to remove certain shots that were painstakingly filmed but ended up having no relevance in the film itself. And so she does the rest of the post production herself, reviewing all the footage beforehand and writing down specific time codes to make it easier for her to spot the good takes.
Yamapi asks if he can take a peek while her film is being edited. She doesn’t want to say no, but ends up refusing him anyway, not wanting anyone hovering over her shoulder while she plays a scene over and over to check for imperfections. Instead, she takes him along as she does the grueling task of watching each and every take, at first conscious of watching him watch himself on the screen.
He watches movies occasionally, he tells her, ends up crying most of the time at simple, but heartfelt scenes, mentioning several films that Satomi loves and has cried over as well. It surprises her that they have something in common, that she feels at ease now in his presence, that her first impression of him had been proven wrong like Masami had said it would.
He doesn’t have a particular favorite movie, because there are a lot of good ones. “But I guess I can say I like the ones that end happily,” he tells her, watching as she presses a big dial on the tape deck she’s using and turns it to the left to rewind the tape.
“Oh, I do, too!” Satomi says with such enthusiasm that he looks a bit taken aback. “When it ends well and you just lean back and think, ah, it was good and you feel happy, too.”
“Eh.” He laughs, looking amused. “I thought you didn’t. You said not every story has a happy ending.”
“I do think that,” she says, slightly embarrassed. “You know how they say art imitates life? I think the same. Movies are a lot like life, aren’t they? Not just because they’re based on it. Some are happy, some are sad. Some are simple, some are complicated, elaborate, confusing. They’re like different choices, different paths.” She stops to find him looking at her with an intensity that makes her blush. “I’m sorry! I do that a lot, ramble on without really thinking.” She laughs, inwardly cringing as the sound a bit shrill to her own ears. “It makes people feel weird around me and I have to tell myself to shut up and not tell people things about me that they don’t want to know.”
“I don’t mind knowing,” Yamapi says, and her heart skips one, two beats when she looks at him again and realizes he hasn’t looked away. “Try me.”
vii.
There is an ease in everything Yamapi does, be it sitting next to her in class or opening a textbook or walking her to her next class. His ease that makes her feel at ease, makes her talk, allows her talk without feeling that she has to restrain herself. But she still holds back a part of herself, the very core, a part she’s not even sure Masami knows.
“Do you ever keep secrets from your friends?” he asks one day, and she starts so bad that she knocks over the cup of coffee he’s bought for her on several papers she’s laid out at her usual table in the café she and Masami frequent. They’d gone there for lunch, Satomi hoping there was natto pasta-her favorite food, she told him-on the menu for the day, but it wasn’t available. He apologizes, but she waves him off, tells him she’s always been clumsy as she grabs the entire bunch of napkins from its holder to pat the ruined pages dry, her laughter high and hysterical-sounding as she jokes, “I don’t have friends.”
The look on Yamapi’s face tells her that he doesn’t believe her. “Machan’s your friend,” he says, as if Masami is the only friend Satomi needs, which in a lot of ways is true. “Buy you another cup?” he offers, taking the napkins from her and wiping at the spots she missed.
“No... no, thank you. Let’s just go.”
They leave the cafe and walk back to her dorm room. “I think it’s stupid,” he says, laughing a little, one hand in his pocket while the other carries her books for her, bound theses checked out from the university library that she’s been reading through for ideas for her own thesis. “Keeping secrets from people who are supposed to know you well. Doesn’t it sort of feel like, the hell is he keeping secrets from me for.” Satomi stumbles and he holds out an arm for her to take without missing a beat, seemingly without noticing her discomfort on the subject. “But I understand that some people keep things to themselves because they don’t want to burden anyone.”
Her face is hot and she feels naked, exposed. Her grip on his arm tightens though she suddenly feels like running away. He glances at her and smiles a little before looking ahead at the path they’re walking on. The night is balmy, a sign that spring is about to give way to summer, that the end of the semester is nearly there.
“Have you ever seen that movie that begins and ends with a tree?” he asks, and when she shakes her head, laughs a little. “Sorry, that was probably a pretty bad description. I think we’re due to watch it next week in class. But anyway, it tells of a legend-well, I’m not too sure if it’s a legend, actually-of how people would whisper their secrets into a hole of a tree and then cover it with mud so the secrets stay there forever.
“The secret’s been told, but no one will ever know what it is.”
viii.
Under a flickering streetlight, he becomes her tree. She has to stand on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. She tells him things that only Masami knows of. That she was born Ishigami Kuniko. Her mother changed their surnames in the family registry when her father left them. That, eventually, her mother renamed her as well, Kuniko being a name her father had given, robbing her of the only legacy he’s imparted to her. She was two years old and does not, though she’s tried her hardest to recall, have any recollection or memory of him. That she often wonders what she would have been like if she’d grown up as Ishigami Kuniko, if Ishigami Kuniko would have been any different from Ishihara Satomi: would Kuniko have found it easier to make friends, to laugh with abandon? Would she have been able to take her mother’s hand and make her smile instead of pretending to be asleep when her mother lay crying in the dark?
She tells him things that even Masami doesn’t know; that she believes in happy endings, but couldn’t seem to reach for them. That sometimes she thinks it’s within her grasp, but she pulls back, feeling like she doesn’t deserve it. That she has to work harder, harder, harder still to prove herself, although she doesn’t quite know to whom.
Afterwards, she can’t tell whether she’s laughing or crying, or both, whether it’s from a fresh sadness the memories bring, or the relief of having confided in someone else.
He has to bend down when it’s his turn, his hands on her shoulders. She learns that he was once Aoki Tomohisa, that his own father had left them-his mother, younger sister and him-at an age when he was already fully conscious of his father’s abandonment. That even so, he wishes to be no one apart from himself, and she realizes it is the biggest thing that sets them apart.
“We have to cover the secrets,” he says much later, unmoving, his mouth still close to her ear.
“What?”
“We carved a hole, remember? Now we have to cover it.”
“How?”
He steps back and presses his lips to hers.
ix.
Satomi has vague recollections of what happened after the kiss: saying good night at her dorm room, squealing behind the door and constantly touching her lips before falling asleep with a smile on her face. The following days are a blur. She doesn’t quite remember typing her papers, but remembers handing them in and getting full marks in turn. There is no opportunity to tell Masami with all her exams and rehearsals for an upcoming play.
Her elation eventually fades when she doesn’t see nor hear from him, though she knows he must be busy as well. She shuts herself up inside the editing room, adding finishing touches to her film and rewatching the scenes with him in it, blushing when her gaze falls on his lips. But by the time they see each other in class again, she’s managed to convince herself that the kiss had meant nothing, simply because she doesn’t want to think of its other possible meanings, because she thinks those other meanings are impossible, though she’s aware of sitting up straighter in her seat when he arrives, late with Ryo in tow, feeling goosebumps rise on her skin from his proximity.
Satomi couldn’t deny, though, that she still hopes, no matter what she’s convinced herself to think.
She takes her time gathering her things when class is dismissed, hoping he’ll be gone by the time she’s done, but he’s there when she finally turns around, waiting for her. “Ishihara-san-”
“It’s okay,” Satomi chirps right away, nodding for effect, trying to ignore the way her heart seems to drop as she forces herself to say the next words, “d-don’t worry about it, Yamashita-kun.”
Yamapi looks confused. “What’s okay?”
“Eh?” Now Satomi feels confused. “About... I thought you meant... weren’t you going to s-”
“Pi.” Ryo pokes his head through the door. “Come on. Toda invited me to lunch today.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Yamapi shoots back, looking amused and irritated at the same time.
“Because. I-I can’t, alone, okay? You come too,” Ryo adds, nodding in Satomi’s direction. His head disappears, then pops back in. “Come on.”
Yamapi chuckles, shaking his head and glancing at Satomi. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Satomi says, feeling relieved but disappointed, half-wishing Ryo hadn’t interrupted. “Okay.”
x.
Yamapi doesn’t so much as confess his feelings as just plain states it, one night when he accompanies her back to her building after she shows him the final cut of her film. They celebrate by eating natto pasta-something he buys for the occasion, remembering that it is her favorite food-in the editing room, though eating there isn’t allowed. Neither is drinking, but that doesn’t stop them from saying “Cheers” and clinking their soda cans together. Her eyes light up at the first bite, saying it’s delicious. He says, “I like y-your film,” and she smiles brightly up at him while patting his back, thinking he’d choked on a soybean.
Masami unwittingly makes it easy for him. She opens the door to their room before Satomi can unlock it and gives Yamapi a scrutinizing look, her eyes narrowed. “Yamashita,” she says, the lack of nickname sounding strange coming from her, but it also sounds stern, “do you like Miitan?”
He looks at Satomi, cheeks as flushed as hers feel, though his answer sounds certain and true. “Yes. Yes, I do,” and when Satomi smiles up at him her smile is brighter and she feels a warmth that, she is startled to realize, is happiness.
Masami closes the door on them with a snap that makes them both start, forgetting she was there in the first place. “Go celebrate!” they hear her yell through the door, voice slightly muffled by the wood.
“Ehh?!” Satomi grabs the door knob and twists it to no avail. “Machan! I’m tired! Open the door! I want to sleep!”
“So sleep on his bed!”
In his room, they find Ryo dressed with a guitar in hand and about to go out, muttering something about having a gig with “the guys” and drinks with “Asami-chan” afterwards, though he smiles while saying the name and smiles wider still when he adds that he won’t be back tonight. He waggles his eyebrows at Yamapi on his way out and props his guitar up to his chest, strumming out a few chords. “Love me tender,” he sings in badly-pronounced English before Yamapi shuts the door on his face.
In his bed they sit cross-legged, side by side. Satomi can’t quite look at him, half-wanting to be in her own bed so she can roll around and squeal into her pillow, but unwilling to be apart from him at this moment.
“You’re sleepy, aren’t you?”
“No, no,” Satomi insists, hoping the double “no” will convince him, even though she could barely keep her eyes open. “I’m fine.”
They talk of everything and nothing. He asks her several times if she’s sleepy and each time she insists she’s not, but eventually her head droops onto his shoulder and she’s fast asleep.
When she wakes up alone in bed the next morning, it feels just like any other day, except the snores coming from the other bed are Yamapi’s instead of Masami’s. She’s covered up to her chin with his blanket, surrounded by his scent.
xi.
She forgets that she has applied to study for a semester in New York until one of her advisers informs her that she gets accepted.
“You have to take it!” Masami exclaims, watching Satomi pace back and forth in their small dorm room.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I don’t know!” Satomi cries out, pressing both hands to her cheeks. “It’s just, I don’t know, okay?”
“Is it because of Piitan?” Masami asks, and though Satomi doesn’t answer, goes on, “Don’t mind him. If it were me, I’d go.”
“Really?”
Masami nods emphatically and Satomi sighs, flopping down on her friend’s bed and leaning her head against the Masami’s shoulder. “You were hand-picked from hundreds of applicants,” Masami says, patting Satomi’s head. “You’d be an idiot not to go.”
The insult is affectionate, and it makes Satomi giggle despite her inner turmoil. “But what if Yamashita-kun doesn’t want me to go?”
“Then he’s an idiot.”
When she does tell him of the scholarship, Yamapi is surprised, but pleased, supportive. When she tells him of her hesitation, he asks, “If you don’t go, do you think you’ll regret it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Yes,” she says, and it’s true. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she knows that she’ll be going no matter what anyone says, no matter how much she wants to be with him.
xii.
He’s nonchalant, almost standoffish when he sees her off at the airport. He doesn’t cry, isn’t even on the verge of tears like she is, though his hug pulls her in and makes her feel more loved than she’s ever felt her whole life. When he pulls back, his eyes are still dry, and he gives her a nod: Go. There is nothing to be said; they’ve been saying goodbye for the entire duration of summer vacation.
He accompanied her home to visit her mother, to let her mother know where she’ll be for the next four months. Satomi had no qualms showing Yamapi the small apartment where they’ve always lived. Her mother, though surprised to see her daughter arrive with another person, invited him to stay for dinner, and then after, to stay the night. Yamapi declined the latter, which was just as well as there wasn’t much room, though he later told Satomi he thought they should have the time alone.
“I’ve never seen you bring home a man before,” her mother said as they were rolling out the futon for bed.
Satomi could only nod, feeling her cheeks flush, part in guilt because she rarely came home. She wondered if her mother disapproved of Yamapi, if he reminded her mother of her father, if she was going to be told that Yamapi would leave her someday the way her father left her mother. But all her mother said was, “Be happy.”
She felt as if a dam inside her broke. That night, it was Satomi who cried herself to sleep while lying in the dark.
Right now his lack of tears sets her at ease, and Satomi nods back, managing a smile even as she gives him a playful salute before finally walking through the gate for boarding. Her eyes remain dry throughout the whole flight, despite feeling incredibly lonely during her first nights alone in her room, too nervous to go out and venture into New York City by herself. Her tears only fall when Masami calls after a week, asking how she’s been, telling her that Yamapi had gone to their dorm room the night she left, “sobbing his heart out,” inconsolable for days. Satomi cries when she hears about it, starts sobbing herself, but she is also laughing, feeling the bittersweet ache of loving and being loved by someone who is miles apart.
~*~
Satomi’s arrival is on the thirty-first of December, well before midnight. Masami tells her that she’ll be throwing a homecoming party that will double as a celebration to welcome the new year. Satomi protests and tries to convince Masami that there is no need to throw a party for her benefit. There is nothing she would rather do than spend the first day of her return with Yamapi; the first day of the new year will be spent with her mother. But in the end Masami manages to twist her arm and make her agree to go.
She feels anxious for two reasons: first, it is their first party as a couple, and second, it is her first party. Ever.
“Can we have a code for let’s get the heck out of here please, please?” Satomi asks Yamapi as they trudge up the stairs to Nino’s floor, fresh from her flight, half-joking, half-serious. They’ve already been warned beforehand that the elevator is broken, and she holds onto his arm tightly, legs shaky in heels that Masami had insisted she wear and from the cold. Satomi keeps tugging at the hem of her dress which ends above her knees, the very image of nerves to Yamapi’s calm, frequent-partygoer self.
He laughs and pauses briefly midstep to slip an arm around her waist instead. “You can’t escape from your own party. Machan’ll kill you.”
“True.” Satomi sighs and leans against him, hand fisting at the back of his jacket for balance. “But can we have one so I can at least let you know that I want to hypothetically get out, even if I can’t?”
“Okay. Like what?”
She looks up at him and scrunches her face up, eyes shut tight and nose wrinkled. “How about that?”
“Too adorably obvious.”
They debate about it for the duration of three more flights of stairs, going from several hand signals -“No rude ones!”-to winking. “Can you actually wink?” Yamapi asks her, and after she demonstrates, says, “Guess not.” She hides her face in both hands briefly in embarrassment, nearly missing a step. Eventually they settle on her first choice that he’s titled The Double Wink, and then they reach Nino’s floor, breathless, but Satomi barely manages to recover before the door opens and Masami’s hugging her while shrieking in her ear.
Nino’s place isn’t very big, but Satomi counts about twenty, twenty-five people inside. Surprisingly it feels cozy instead of crowded, people clumped in groups of twos or threes or more, drinking beer, munching on whatever is on the dining table, playing video games in one corner. She also finds it surprising that she actually recognizes several faces, particularly one who gets her attention by tapping her on the shoulder. “Sakurai-kun!” she says joyfully, turning to face him.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, and Satomi giggles; they’ve just gotten off of the same plane mere minutes ago.
“What are you doing here?” Satomi asks, then remembers Yamapi, blinking a little at the blank expression on her-though she has yet to refer to him as such in public-boyfriend’s face. “This is Sakurai Sho. He was on the exchange student program in NYU, too. This is Yamashita Tomohisa,” she introduces them, debating on whether or not to say “boyfriend,” but Sho is already holding out a hand to Yamapi, introducing himself as a friend of Nino’s and remarking about the difference in weather between New York and Tokyo.
When Sho excuses himself to go talk to another friend, Yamapi takes Satomi by the elbow and leads her to the table, grabbing two cans of beer and handing her one. “Did you see him often when you were in New York?” he asks, popping the tab open and taking a sip of his drink, still slightly stone-faced, though she can’t exactly tell why.
“Not really,” Satomi answers honestly. “He’s in a different department. Yamashita-kun, what-”
She’s interrupted when someone else taps Yamapi’s shoulder this time, and he turns around and says, “Hey, Kitagawa-san,” with a smile that makes Satomi’s heart twinge.
“Friend of Nino’s?” the girl asks, spots of red on her cheeks from too much alcohol.
“Masami’s, actually.” Yamapi remembers his manners the same way Satomi does earlier, and they are introduced: Kitagawa Keiko is a classmate of his for the recently-concluded semester. “Ishihara Satomi,” he says, “they’re roommates,” and Satomi feels her stomach drop at that casual description, at not being introduced as his girlfriend, though his hand slips behind her to rest on the small of her back.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” Keiko exclaims, and Satomi blinks in confusion although she returns the other’s exuberant smile. “He talks about you a lot.”
Before Satomi can quiz him on this, Ryo appears out of nowhere and hijacks the conversation, slinging an arm around both hers and Yamapi’s shoulders. “Welcome home,” he slurs, possibly the most drunk of them all. “Finally this idiot can stop crying himself to sleep every night-”
“Shut up,” Yamapi says, face red now, and Satomi is sure it’s not because of the beer. Yet. “Ah, this is my classmate, Kitaga-”
Keiko cuts into the introduction, her eyes already narrowed at Ryo. “Nishikido-kun?”
“You know each other?” Yamapi asks in confusion.
“We’ve met before in Hokkaido,” Keiko says, red deep in her cheeks before excusing herself quickly to another part of the room.
“Hokkaido?” Satomi and Yamapi echo at the same time, looking at Ryo.
They catch several words from Ryo’s mumbles, something about “school trip” and “back of a taxi” before wandering off to the opposite direction.
Satomi finds Masami next to her just before they start the countdown, her friend’s arm around her shoulders, squeezing. “I missed you so much,” Masami tells her-screams in her ear, really, as someone had turned the music up earlier, the bass resounding inside their chests. “You look so different!”
“Ehh!” Satomi laughs, giving Masami a brief hug. “How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Glowing! Relaxed!”
“Machan, relaxed was the last thing I was in New York. I have eye bags the size of luggages, look!”
“Whatever, you still look different! New York did you good!”
Someone takes hold of Satomi’s wrist and she turns to see Yamapi giving her The Double Wink, and her heart skips a beat when she realizes that he wants to go, that it’s him who wants to go and that they are actually going.
“So,” she says once they’re outside, giddy, words tripping over themselves; from all around them they hear a faint Ten, as the countdown begins. “She was a classmate!”
He looks at her wordlessly, stopping in his tracks. They’re standing in the middle of the street but neither of them seems to care. “Satomi.”
She feels her heart expand at the name, and for once, she realizes, being Satomi-not Kuniko, not anyone else-is just fine.
But it doesn’t stop her from saying next, “She’s really pretty.” Her cheeks heat up, inwardly beating herself up for saying that out loud; it makes her sound jealous, accusing, though that’s exactly what she felt when they were introduced.
“Well, what about Sakurai-kun?” Yamapi says, and she looks up at him, surprised to find him looking away, slightly embarrassed. “What was he?”
Satomi steps forward and stands on tiptoes. She whispers in his ear how it had been a relief to find another Japanese in a foreign country, how she and Sho checked in on each other in New York the same way siblings would. How she laughed at Sho when they went out for dinner one evening and he was wearing two parkas because it was so cold outside. How she told Sho that there was someone back in Tokyo whom she missed terribly and couldn’t wait to go home to.
“A boyfriend?” Yamapi asks lightly, though Satomi can see he’s mollified.
“Something like that.”
He bends down to whisper that he and Keiko were seatmates the same way he and Satomi were, but the difference was he told Keiko about a girl in New York whom he missed terribly and couldn’t wait for her to come home.
“A girlfriend?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
He kisses her, right in the middle of the street, just as people scream One! and fireworks brighten the evening sky like burning stars. In his arms she feels they’re feeling the same things: that Sho and Keiko don’t matter, that they care for each other too much and possibly wish that they didn’t because feeling this much is scary but it is also-she realizes for the second time with him-happiness.
~*~
Note: The movie Yamapi refers to is 2046, a Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar Wai. One of my absolute favorites. *__* Randomly, KimuTaku is in it, haha.
I have no concrete words to express my gratitude for my beta, S; she is amazing and she knows it. Much thanks as well to K and R for their character inputs, I very much appreciate it. ♥
From: dalampasigan
Title: Bright Skies, Burnt Stars
Pairing: Yamashita Tomohisa/Ishihara Satomi, Nagasawa Masami/Ninomiya Kazunari on the side, Nishikido Ryo being forever alone
Rating: PG
Summary: First impressions, keeping secrets, and the pursuit of happiness. AU.
A/N: You totally know who I am but tinyangl ilusm and you deserve the best, I hope this would suffice somehow.
i.
They first meet on a Monday, at seven o’clock in the morning for Asian Cinema. Ishihara Satomi is one of the first to arrive, wide awake and alert among the glass-eyed gazes and zombie-like shuffling of the students as they enter the classroom. She seats herself at the back along the aisle, eager to participate but feeling a bit shy. He comes shuffling in just before their professor arrives, the glassiest-eyed of them all. She doesn’t know why, but he makes a beeline for the seat next to hers, plopping down on it with a groan.
She made a resolution to be more open and friendlier-her best friend Masami’s words, not hers-this school year, having apparently kept her head down and talking to no one else except when necessary or unless she was talked to first, although Satomi always told Masami defensively that she was studying for the past two years. She didn’t think she was being unfriendly until Masami pointed out that her only friend in the entire university was pretty much only Masami herself, “And that’s because we’re roommates.”
So, she turns to him, this boy with eyes that somehow remind her of fish, smiles and chirps, “Good morning.”
He gives her a bleary look, grunts, and then looks away.
She blinks, affronted, but then their professor arrives, capturing her full and undivided attention. When she next looks at her seatmate, he has his head on folded arms, apparently asleep. Feeling doubly affronted-she’d been looking forward to this class for days-she does her best to ignore him and fights the urge to shake him awake to get him to pay attention.
Later, back in her dorm room, Satomi loses no time narrating what had happened to Masami, who typically dismisses his behavior with, “Maybe he just wasn’t awake yet.”
“He slept through almost the entire class.”
“Well, there you go.”
“It’s rude.”
“Miitan, you’re the only freak I know who’s chipper at seven in the morning.”
“That’s not true! Our professor was even more chipper than I was at seven in the morning.”
Masami gives her a look that means, that is not the point, and it isn’t. Satomi pouts. “Well, he was rude! He didn’t even thank me when I woke him up after class. He just up and left.”
“It’s just the first day of classes, why are you so obsessed with this guy?” Masami’s face lights up. “Ooh. Was he good-looking?”
Satomi tries to return the that is not the point look, narrowing her eyes and wrinkling her nose, but Masami ignores it. “I mostly saw the back of his head.”
“Fine. Was the back of his head good-looking?”
“How can the back of a head be good-looking?” Satomi half-cries out, half-laughs in half-exasperation.
“Are you serious?!” Masami cries out in full exasperation. “Any part of a man can be good-looking! Like his arms, or the curve of his back, the shape of his shoulders…” She trails off at the familiar clueless look on Satomi’s face when discussing men in general. “God, you’re hopeless.”
“Hopeless with what?” Satomi returns without missing a beat, feigning hurt.
“With love.” Masami replies dramatically. It is a banter they’ve had countless of times before. Satomi never minds them, though. Their friendship had had a bit of a rough start when Masami first moved into their dorm room on the first night of the first semester, all by herself, surrounded by her luggage. She didn’t have covers or pillows for her own bed, but rejected Satomi’s offer of her extra bedcovers with such iciness that Satomi was a little scared. But Satomi pressed on, giving up her own pillow and saying cheerfully that she can sleep just as well without one.
“Thank you,” Masami whispered meekly in the dark. For some reason this made Satomi giggle, which became infectious, and they laid in their beds giggling until they were shushed by an occupant in the next room. Masami let out a loud ‘HA’ of laughter before settling down with a smile on her face. They talked late into the night despite both of them having classes early the next day. It was the same night Masami had christened Satomi Miitan, choosing the same syllable of their names.
It was several months later that Satomi would admit to Masami that she made more effort to be nice that first night because she thought that Masami possibly didn’t have any parents. She didn’t say she thought this because she arrived in the same manner, because it was as if she didn’t have parents either; she grew up never knowing her father and mostly alone with her mother working two, three jobs at a time to support both of them. Her mother always said that they were better off without him even though they weren’t; her mother was always tired and sad and it made her sad, too, though she always did her best in school and always smiled in the hopes of making her mother happy. Masami laughed out loud at Satomi’s “overactive imagination”. Then she’d said, “You didn’t make the effort to be more nice, Miitan. You are nice. Too nice, sometimes.”
ii.
There are only three things she knows about him: first, that his surname is Yamashita, from roll call. Second, that people called him Yamapi. ‘People’ is a relative term; she only really heard him called that by someone named Nishikido, who only appeared on the second day of classes, looking perpetually bored in each one. The pair of them gets under her nerves.
Third, that the class they’re taking together is “just an elective,” something she hears him say with her own ears one day after class, making her annoyance spike up again; it’s one of her core classes and she loves it.
There is a fourth thing: he keeps sitting beside her in class.
A fifth: he’s only awake on the mornings he has coffee. He began a trend, much to her annoyance, when he first brought coffee to class. The tantalizing aroma of the brewed drink perked everyone up, except Satomi, who always preferred tea. Yamashita “Yamapi” whoever-he-was apologized when it caught the attention of the professor. Satomi thought their professor would get angry, but instead he thanked Yamashita for waking the class up, making the students laugh, and giving them permission to have their caffeine fix in class, if it helped. Satomi pursed her lips in disapproval, though she liked the smell as well. From then on, their other classmates began bringing coffee to class as well. Satomi makes it a point not to, even on the mornings she can barely keep her eyes open from having watched films for another major course on the small screen of her ancient laptop from the previous night.
Maybe there is a sixth thing: the back of his head does look good; she’s seen it a lot on the mornings Yamashita isn’t awake. His shoulders, too. And his arms. Satomi looks sometimes, wondering if he is into any sport, and then wondering why she’s even looking in the first place, and then blame everything on Masami to feel better.
And a seventh: he doesn’t talk to her, barely meets her eyes. On the off chance he happens to glance her way, their gazes connect briefly and he smiles, but his eyes slide away and he’s already laughing at something that Nishikido says in a way that makes Satomi think the smile isn’t for her benefit after all. It makes her feel small and insignificant and maybe not worth looking at, and feeling this way makes her angry, though she doesn’t know if it’s with him or with herself. It’s certainly not the first time she’s been ignored by a man; her own father had never made any contact over the years-but she doesn’t understand why this rejection hurts now compared to the rejection of the first man who should have been important in her life.
iii.
“I didn’t know you meant Piitan!” Masami exclaims, and Satomi thinks, Piitan? and says out loud as much. “We’re friends,” Masami explains. “Back in high school. We were sort of close.”
Satomi thinks they must have been, especially if Masami’s been calling Yamapi a nickname like Piitan. She wonders why she feels bothered, then wonders what exactly it is that she’s bothered about: the nickname or the fact that such a nickname implies a deeper intimacy. Or the fact that Piitan and Miitan sound ridiculously similar. “You sound like you were really close,” she hazards instead.
“We dated for a while.”
Satomi chokes on the tea she’s just taken a sip of and coughs, her eyes watering. Masami laughs, but not at all meanly, calmly patting the spots on the table Satomi had managed to sputter tea over and pushing forward a glass of water. “It was just a couple of months during high school. Then we were both accepted here but we have different majors so I don’t see him often, but we still say hi.”
Satomi, who has never had a boyfriend before, thinks it still must be a pretty big deal, even if it was a relationship that apparently didn’t last for very long. She can’t help but be curious. After having gulped down half of the water, she asks, “What happened?”
“I met Kazu,” Masami says in a tone that implies, and that was that, but then she adds, “I don’t know, it just didn’t work. It was okay for the most part until the moment we kissed.”
“And?” Satomi had leaned forward, elbows on the table, enraptured with the story. “Did he kiss badly or something?”
“Well, n…o, not really, but there weren’t any, you know, sparks.”
“Sparks,” Satomi echoes, as if she understands, though her face is a question mark.
“You know!” Masami waves a dismissive hand. “No swooping sensation in my stomach, nothing toe-curling or heart-pounding, or…” She trails off at the openly ignorant look on Satomi’s face. “Oh, come on. We totally have to get someone to kiss you at least once. How can you have lips like that and not have kissed anybody?!”
“You’re doing it again,” Satomi wails, holding one hand up to block Masami’s view of her lips. Once in a while, usually when they drink in their room and actually end up getting drunk, Masami becomes fixated on Satomi’s lips. “I told you! Don’t look-”
“ I mean, I can do it if you want! Just so you know how it feels to have someone else’s lips on yours.” Masami stands up partly from her seat, as if to make good on her word, making Satomi shriek and nearly topple back her own chair in panic, “Nononononono stay awaaaaaaaaay Machan!!!”
“And you experience sparks with Ninomiya-kun?” Satomi asks later, after Masami has sworn she won’t kiss her and dragged her back to her seat. Masami doesn’t get to answer because said person appears just then, Ninomiya Kazunari, who told Satomi to call him just ‘Nino,’ which was something Satomi couldn’t quite bring herself to ever do. He gives both of them a nod, doesn’t kiss Masami hello but sits next to her, reaching for her cup of tea and taking a sip from it as if it belongs to him. “Did I hear my name?” he asks, crossing one leg over the other as he sits back, teacup still in his hand.
“She was just asking where you’ve been,” Masami answers smoothly for the both of them. She and Nino fall into a conversation of their own that doesn’t necessarily exclude Satomi, but Satomi falls silent anyway. She usually does whenever Nino is around, content to observe the couple while pretending to not observe them. Their actions don’t scream in a relationship, but there is obvious possession with the simple way Nino stays beside Masami when they’re together, the way Masami quietly lights up when he’s there. In Satomi’s eyes, they are the poster couple of couples, not that she personally knows any other in the campus.
“-hates Piitan.”
Satomi’s attention snaps back to the present. “I do not hate him,” she protests. “I just-”
“Don’t like him?” Nino provides helpfully.
“Exactly.”
“But there’s nothing not to like about him,” Masami points out, then catches Nino’s eye. “I mean, aside from the fact that he can’t really kiss-”
“Machan.” Satomi’s giggling even as she tries to look stern. “He knows about that?” she asks, inclining her head in Nino’s direction.
“He knows everything,” Masami says dismissively. “As I was saying-”
“Machan, really, that’s horrible.”
“She is,” Nino agrees.
“Shut up! Get your own damn tea!” Masami barks at him, snatching her near-empty cup from his hands. This, their banter, doesn’t really diminish their poster couple status in Satomi’s eyes; Masami often says that it’s normal for couples to fight, although Satomi sometimes thinks that her friend often says that precisely because Masami and Nino often fight.
The entire story is eventually repeated, with added details, for Nino’s benefit, who butts in at the middle, “Wait, Nishikido? You mean Ryo?”
“What?” Masami raises her eyebrows at her best friend. “Dokkun? He’s in that class, too? You never said!”
Satomi doesn’t even question that nickname, only too used by now with her friend’s penchant for them. “How come you guys know everyone?!”
“We have the same major, silly, and actually we don’t know everyone; you just don’t know anyone,” Masami explains.
“Oh, ha, ha,” Satomi says, pouting a little, “anyway, why is he called Yamapi? Did that come from you, too?”
“Oh, no, that was from a teacher when we were in high school. He’d worn the wrong shirt color for dance class and our teacher just kept screaming ‘Yamashita! Pink!’ over and over like a deranged person and it sort of stuck.”
There is a pause as Satomi and Nino digest this strange tale.
“Doesn’t knowing about Yamashita Pink make you dislike him less?” Nino teases, bringing the topic back on track before reaching for Masami’s cup and draining the remaining tea in it.
Satomi fidgets, uncomfortable with the idea of disliking anyone, although that’s what it is. It makes her sound mean, and she doesn’t like to be mean to anyone. “I just think he’s rude, that’s all.” She looks up to see Masami and Nino exchanging a glance that she doesn’t quite know the meaning of. “What?”
“Rude is the last thing Piitan is,” Masami says with a certainty that makes Satomi uneasy. “You’ll see.”
iv.
The first time Yamapi speaks to Satomi occurs one day after class. Just before everyone filed out of the room, Maeda, a classmate who shares Satomi’s major, approaches her. “Hey, Ishihara, don’t forget! My shoot’s this Friday. Call time’s 3 AM on the dot. Since you’re the production manager, you should remind everyone of the call time, too.”
“I will,” Satomi chirps, holding her books to her chest. “I’ve already reserved the theater hall last week, so we’re good to go.”
“Alright. See you.”
“Ah, wait… you can help me with my shoot next week too, can’t you?” Satomi asks, hurriedly walking after Maeda as he’d already taken several strides toward the door. “You said you’d be my assistant director.”
“About that...” Maeda purses his lips a little, scratching the back of his head. “I’ll have exams coming up so I’m not sure. I’ll let you know.”
“Okay,” Satomi says, trying not to show her disappointment. “Thanks anyway.”
Maeda nods and turns away, but then Yamapi’s there, smiling amiably, his presence is enough to halt Maeda’s tracks. “Sorry,” Yamapi says right away, looking slightly sheepish. “I overheard. I was just thinking, y’know, isn’t it a bit unfair for Ishihara-san to help with your shoot but you’re not going to help with hers? I dunno, like.” He shrugs, palms up. “Shouldn’t you return the favor, at least?”
Satomi watches, feeling her cheeks flush in mortification over this unwarranted intrusion on her behalf. Maeda looks at Yamapi, then at her, then back to Yamapi, a slightly annoyed look on his face probably for the same reason, though he looks guilty as well for being caught. He shrugs, appearing to consider Yamapi’s words. “Yeah, I guess.” He looks at Satomi and shrugs again. “Okay. Count me in next week, Ishihara.” He gives Yamapi a nod and exits the classroom, leaving Satomi and Yamapi alone.
“What was that?” Satomi bursts out once their classmate is out of earshot, gaping at Yamapi. “What did you think-what were you doing? Why did you have to say that?”
Yamapi gapes back at her, looking thoroughly confused. “I was helping you.”
“That wasn’t helping! That was-” Satomi flaps her hands wildly, gesturing. “Coercion!”
He laughs a little, but stops at the stricken look on Satomi’s face. “That was hardly coercion, just a suggestion. And he took it,” he says, though he looks uncertain now.
“But now it’ll be all awkward!” Satomi cries out, distressed. “And it’ll be so awkward when we work together!”
Yamapi looks lost, as if he hadn’t considered that possible outcome, which he probably hasn’t, and it makes Satomi want to stamp her feet in frustration. “Why would it be awkward? He was pretty cool with it, wasn’t he?”
Satomi opens her mouth and then closes it, unwilling to admit that the one who’ll feel awkward is her.
“Oi, Pi,” comes a voice from the doorway, nasal and Kansai, making Satomi start in surprise. “Let’s go, I’m starving,” Nishikido says in a tone that seems to indicate we’ve wasted enough time here already, cocking his head to the general direction of the cafeteria.
Yamapi holds up a hand, then turns to Satomi. “How about I treat you to lunch?”
She finds herself seated next to him in a booth for four, unable to decide if she feels self-conscious more because he’s next to her or because of Nishikido’s presence across the table, though he hardly pays her any attention. Satomi’s never really found herself seated with any males she doesn’t really know, preferring to sit at a table for two, alone-if Masami isn’t able to join her for lunch-placing her bag on the other seat to avoid anyone else asking if the seat is free. Yamapi finds himself treating not only Satomi, but also Ryo for some reason unknown to her. She hadn’t been able to say no, but she chose the cheapest meal on the menu to make up for it.
They eat in silence, and Satomi feels awkward, something-she acknowledges inwardly-she has felt for the most of her adult college life, though she surmises there really wouldn’t be any room for conversation with the way both Yamapi and Ryo are shoving food into their mouths.
“Miitan, there you are!” Satomi looks up, smiling with relief just in time to see Masami’s eyes widen at their table in general. “Piitan? Dokkun? What-” Whatever she’s about to ask is evidently put off for the moment, deciding to sit next to Ryo instead.
Nino isn’t far behind, holding his own tray. “There’s not enough room,” he complains, but slides into the seat next to Masami. “Budge up, Ryo.”
“Get your own chair,” Ryo grouses, but presses close against the wall anyway.
“So,” Masami says cheerfully after having chewed and swallowed a spoonful of curry, “What brings us all here today?”
Satomi looks from Ryo to Yamapi before lowering her head to her meal; Ryo complains that Masami’s elbow is in his table space and Yamapi shrugs. “We’re classmates.”
“We know,” Nino says, followed by an “oomph” when Masami elbows his side.
“He,” Satomi begins, gesturing to Yamapi, making everyone at the table fall silent and look at her and making her flush pink at the attention, “he helped, sort of.”
“He helped and she was ungrateful,” Ryo elaborates.
“It’s not like I don’t appreciate it,” Satomi cries out, desperate to clear her name, embarrassed that there had been an audience to the earlier spectacle after all. Yamapi’s face brightens at the fact that she appreciates his ‘help,’ but she pretends not to notice. “It’s just that Maeda-kun said he was too busy to help with my shoot and Yamap-Yamashita-san talked him into it, but it’s fine, really, it’s no big deal. I’d rather work alone than work with people who are only forced to help me.”
There is an uncomfortable pause following her statement, which Yamapi breaks with, “I’ll help.”
“We all will,” Masami adds without missing a beat, nudging both Nino and Ryo with sharp elbows. “You too, Dokkun.”
“Why should I-ouch, Machan, stop doing that!”
“Yeah, you can hold the lights up this time,” Masami decides. “At least Kazu won’t be complaining having to act while being the gaffer, too.”
“What the hell is a gaffer and how do you know it?” Ryo wants to know, massaging his ribs.
“The one who does the lighting,” is all Masami says. She exchanges a look with Satomi and they both look down at their food the next moment, smiling. No one else really knows, apart from Nino, that Masami is currently pursuing a double major in Theater. She used to blame Satomi jokingly, saying the idea had taken root when she acted in one of Satomi’s first films, but they both know that Masami agreed in the first place because acting has always been one of her interests.
“Yeah, yeah, fine, whatever,” Ryo mutters. “As long as I don’t have to do any acting.”
v.
“You should hit Machan, Nishikido-kun!” Satomi calls out on the day of the shoot from behind the camera she’s rented from the film department. They began filming late in the morning; Satomi knew it would be no use to set an early call time if she was the only one who’d be awake at that hour. Maeda hadn’t shown up at all, which Satomi expected; he told Satomi as much during his own shoot that he really had to study and might not be able to make it. Yamapi’s mouth had set in a grim line, though, when he learned that Maeda wasn’t there. He and Ryo exchanged ominous looks that Satomi absolutely couldn’t comprehend.
Nino had, at the last minute, decided he’d rather hold the lights up after all, saying he wasn’t in the mood to act that day. Ryo ended up taking his place on pain of Masami’s elbows. He surprisingly had the flair for it, on the account of Satomi’s short film having minimal dialog and his following Satomi’s directions to the letter, although he buckles at the part where he has to slap Masami across the face. “You can’t just pretend to hit her or it won’t look real. It’s okay,” she tells him, trying to sound assuring, “we’ve talked about it and she’s agreed to it. Really.”
“You’ve agreed to have your face slapped?” Ryo asks incredulously, shaking his head a little to mask his anxiety. “Didn’t know you were M as well as S, Machan.”
“Oh, just shut up and do it,” Masami says from her position on the floor, where Ryo’s character had pushed her from an earlier take before Satomi called for a cut. “And make it quick.”
“But it’ll hurt.”
“DUH, Dokkun, obviously. Come on, we don’t have all day!”
“Ready?” Satomi calls out. “Three… two… one… action!”
Ryo looks down at Masami, jaw clenching and eyes flashing. His hand twitches, and then there is a resounding slap that echoes through the mostly bare studio that’s been set up specifically for student films.
Masami clutches at her face and looks up at Ryo in sheer terror, holding that expression until Satomi calls out, “Cut!”
“THAT FUCKING HURT YOU FUCKING IDIOT.”
“I TOLD YOU,” Ryo yelps as he tries to avoid being manhandled by Masami. “GERROFF.”
“I think you should rewrite the scene to Machan’s character being the one who physically abuses her boyfriend instead of the other way around, Satomi-chan,” Nino suggests, arms trembling from trying not to laugh while having to carefully lower the halogen light that he’s been holding up.
“YOU SHUT UP OR I’LL PHYSICALLY ABUSE YOU,” Masami yells.
The filming goes by slowly with the five of them having double, triple roles in the production: aside from being the actors, Masami, Yamapi and Ryo are also part of the film crew, while Nino is in charge not only of setting up the lights but also the props and costumes. Satomi herself is the director, cinematographer, and continuity supervisor-not to mention scriptwriter-rolled into one. They are all roles that other people should have assumed. She knows a production isn’t supposed to be this way, that each role should be filled with different people to assure that a film, even a short one, will be made smoothly from start to finish; she knows that her professors will once again chide her for her unhealthy work ethic and the repeating names that will appear on the closing credits of her film. But she prefers it this way, prefers shouldering most of the burden, something she’s done ever since she was a child.
“Interesting story,” Nino lets her know during break while munching on a melon bread Satomi has provided. This is the most she can offer them in return for working in her film: food. “If not a bit dark,” he goes on, tapping the script laid open on his lap with a finger. “Your main character has a boyfriend who physically abuses her and a childhood friend who’s loved her for years but can’t bring himself to confess. And she ends up with no one.”
Ryo has gone outside for a smoke; Masami sits on the floor with her legs stretched out, bento on her lap, while Yamapi is done with his, drinking water from a bottle as he reads the script over Nino’s shoulder. “I like it,” Masami says, and Satomi is grateful for that. “Not every story has a happy ending, after all.”
“I just want it to be realistic,” Satomi explains reluctantly, feeling a bit shy having to discuss the nuances of her script with other people. “Like Machan says, not every story ends happily. Not every love story ends up with people together. Sometimes people end up alone. Sometimes people end up never confessing their feelings.” She looks down, playing a little with the straw of her milk carton. “Some people do their very best but still end up failing.” She forces a laugh, waving a hand as if to dismiss her thoughts while avoiding everyone’s eyes. “Well, that’s life.”
She hears Nino hum noncommittally and Masami closing her bento, feels Yamapi’s gaze on her. Then Masami stands up and calls for a time check, hollering at Ryo from the window to get his ass back inside, and Nino gets to his feet as well to set up the lighting again. She feels herself stiffen a little when Yamapi takes over Nino’s seat next to hers, and she keeps her gaze on her lap until he speaks. “I like it too, actually,” he says, and it makes her look at him in surprise.
“Oh! Thank you.”
He twists the cap off his water bottle, then on, looking at her. “But I just thought, even if not every story has a happy ending, don’t you think everyone deserves a shot at it anyway?”
“Piitan!” Masami’s voice cuts through their conversation, making both of them jump a little. “You’ll be standing here. You know your lines, right? Ready for the take, director!” she calls out to Satomi, giving her best friend a salute.
“Oh, yes,” Satomi says, flustered, nearly upending her empty milk carton from her lap as she hurriedly stands up. “Let’s rehearse.”
Yamapi’s words resound in her mind long after filming is over, making her wonder of all the things she’s been trying not to think about for years.
vi.
Satomi considers leaving the editing of her short film to a more-skilled upperclassman because she has several papers due. In the end she decides against it, though she knows that she always tends to take her time with editing, agonizing over whether or not to remove certain shots that were painstakingly filmed but ended up having no relevance in the film itself. And so she does the rest of the post production herself, reviewing all the footage beforehand and writing down specific time codes to make it easier for her to spot the good takes.
Yamapi asks if he can take a peek while her film is being edited. She doesn’t want to say no, but ends up refusing him anyway, not wanting anyone hovering over her shoulder while she plays a scene over and over to check for imperfections. Instead, she takes him along as she does the grueling task of watching each and every take, at first conscious of watching him watch himself on the screen.
He watches movies occasionally, he tells her, ends up crying most of the time at simple, but heartfelt scenes, mentioning several films that Satomi loves and has cried over as well. It surprises her that they have something in common, that she feels at ease now in his presence, that her first impression of him had been proven wrong like Masami had said it would.
He doesn’t have a particular favorite movie, because there are a lot of good ones. “But I guess I can say I like the ones that end happily,” he tells her, watching as she presses a big dial on the tape deck she’s using and turns it to the left to rewind the tape.
“Oh, I do, too!” Satomi says with such enthusiasm that he looks a bit taken aback. “When it ends well and you just lean back and think, ah, it was good and you feel happy, too.”
“Eh.” He laughs, looking amused. “I thought you didn’t. You said not every story has a happy ending.”
“I do think that,” she says, slightly embarrassed. “You know how they say art imitates life? I think the same. Movies are a lot like life, aren’t they? Not just because they’re based on it. Some are happy, some are sad. Some are simple, some are complicated, elaborate, confusing. They’re like different choices, different paths.” She stops to find him looking at her with an intensity that makes her blush. “I’m sorry! I do that a lot, ramble on without really thinking.” She laughs, inwardly cringing as the sound a bit shrill to her own ears. “It makes people feel weird around me and I have to tell myself to shut up and not tell people things about me that they don’t want to know.”
“I don’t mind knowing,” Yamapi says, and her heart skips one, two beats when she looks at him again and realizes he hasn’t looked away. “Try me.”
vii.
There is an ease in everything Yamapi does, be it sitting next to her in class or opening a textbook or walking her to her next class. His ease that makes her feel at ease, makes her talk, allows her talk without feeling that she has to restrain herself. But she still holds back a part of herself, the very core, a part she’s not even sure Masami knows.
“Do you ever keep secrets from your friends?” he asks one day, and she starts so bad that she knocks over the cup of coffee he’s bought for her on several papers she’s laid out at her usual table in the café she and Masami frequent. They’d gone there for lunch, Satomi hoping there was natto pasta-her favorite food, she told him-on the menu for the day, but it wasn’t available. He apologizes, but she waves him off, tells him she’s always been clumsy as she grabs the entire bunch of napkins from its holder to pat the ruined pages dry, her laughter high and hysterical-sounding as she jokes, “I don’t have friends.”
The look on Yamapi’s face tells her that he doesn’t believe her. “Machan’s your friend,” he says, as if Masami is the only friend Satomi needs, which in a lot of ways is true. “Buy you another cup?” he offers, taking the napkins from her and wiping at the spots she missed.
“No... no, thank you. Let’s just go.”
They leave the cafe and walk back to her dorm room. “I think it’s stupid,” he says, laughing a little, one hand in his pocket while the other carries her books for her, bound theses checked out from the university library that she’s been reading through for ideas for her own thesis. “Keeping secrets from people who are supposed to know you well. Doesn’t it sort of feel like, the hell is he keeping secrets from me for.” Satomi stumbles and he holds out an arm for her to take without missing a beat, seemingly without noticing her discomfort on the subject. “But I understand that some people keep things to themselves because they don’t want to burden anyone.”
Her face is hot and she feels naked, exposed. Her grip on his arm tightens though she suddenly feels like running away. He glances at her and smiles a little before looking ahead at the path they’re walking on. The night is balmy, a sign that spring is about to give way to summer, that the end of the semester is nearly there.
“Have you ever seen that movie that begins and ends with a tree?” he asks, and when she shakes her head, laughs a little. “Sorry, that was probably a pretty bad description. I think we’re due to watch it next week in class. But anyway, it tells of a legend-well, I’m not too sure if it’s a legend, actually-of how people would whisper their secrets into a hole of a tree and then cover it with mud so the secrets stay there forever.
“The secret’s been told, but no one will ever know what it is.”
viii.
Under a flickering streetlight, he becomes her tree. She has to stand on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. She tells him things that only Masami knows of. That she was born Ishigami Kuniko. Her mother changed their surnames in the family registry when her father left them. That, eventually, her mother renamed her as well, Kuniko being a name her father had given, robbing her of the only legacy he’s imparted to her. She was two years old and does not, though she’s tried her hardest to recall, have any recollection or memory of him. That she often wonders what she would have been like if she’d grown up as Ishigami Kuniko, if Ishigami Kuniko would have been any different from Ishihara Satomi: would Kuniko have found it easier to make friends, to laugh with abandon? Would she have been able to take her mother’s hand and make her smile instead of pretending to be asleep when her mother lay crying in the dark?
She tells him things that even Masami doesn’t know; that she believes in happy endings, but couldn’t seem to reach for them. That sometimes she thinks it’s within her grasp, but she pulls back, feeling like she doesn’t deserve it. That she has to work harder, harder, harder still to prove herself, although she doesn’t quite know to whom.
Afterwards, she can’t tell whether she’s laughing or crying, or both, whether it’s from a fresh sadness the memories bring, or the relief of having confided in someone else.
He has to bend down when it’s his turn, his hands on her shoulders. She learns that he was once Aoki Tomohisa, that his own father had left them-his mother, younger sister and him-at an age when he was already fully conscious of his father’s abandonment. That even so, he wishes to be no one apart from himself, and she realizes it is the biggest thing that sets them apart.
“We have to cover the secrets,” he says much later, unmoving, his mouth still close to her ear.
“What?”
“We carved a hole, remember? Now we have to cover it.”
“How?”
He steps back and presses his lips to hers.
ix.
Satomi has vague recollections of what happened after the kiss: saying good night at her dorm room, squealing behind the door and constantly touching her lips before falling asleep with a smile on her face. The following days are a blur. She doesn’t quite remember typing her papers, but remembers handing them in and getting full marks in turn. There is no opportunity to tell Masami with all her exams and rehearsals for an upcoming play.
Her elation eventually fades when she doesn’t see nor hear from him, though she knows he must be busy as well. She shuts herself up inside the editing room, adding finishing touches to her film and rewatching the scenes with him in it, blushing when her gaze falls on his lips. But by the time they see each other in class again, she’s managed to convince herself that the kiss had meant nothing, simply because she doesn’t want to think of its other possible meanings, because she thinks those other meanings are impossible, though she’s aware of sitting up straighter in her seat when he arrives, late with Ryo in tow, feeling goosebumps rise on her skin from his proximity.
Satomi couldn’t deny, though, that she still hopes, no matter what she’s convinced herself to think.
She takes her time gathering her things when class is dismissed, hoping he’ll be gone by the time she’s done, but he’s there when she finally turns around, waiting for her. “Ishihara-san-”
“It’s okay,” Satomi chirps right away, nodding for effect, trying to ignore the way her heart seems to drop as she forces herself to say the next words, “d-don’t worry about it, Yamashita-kun.”
Yamapi looks confused. “What’s okay?”
“Eh?” Now Satomi feels confused. “About... I thought you meant... weren’t you going to s-”
“Pi.” Ryo pokes his head through the door. “Come on. Toda invited me to lunch today.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Yamapi shoots back, looking amused and irritated at the same time.
“Because. I-I can’t, alone, okay? You come too,” Ryo adds, nodding in Satomi’s direction. His head disappears, then pops back in. “Come on.”
Yamapi chuckles, shaking his head and glancing at Satomi. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Satomi says, feeling relieved but disappointed, half-wishing Ryo hadn’t interrupted. “Okay.”
x.
Yamapi doesn’t so much as confess his feelings as just plain states it, one night when he accompanies her back to her building after she shows him the final cut of her film. They celebrate by eating natto pasta-something he buys for the occasion, remembering that it is her favorite food-in the editing room, though eating there isn’t allowed. Neither is drinking, but that doesn’t stop them from saying “Cheers” and clinking their soda cans together. Her eyes light up at the first bite, saying it’s delicious. He says, “I like y-your film,” and she smiles brightly up at him while patting his back, thinking he’d choked on a soybean.
Masami unwittingly makes it easy for him. She opens the door to their room before Satomi can unlock it and gives Yamapi a scrutinizing look, her eyes narrowed. “Yamashita,” she says, the lack of nickname sounding strange coming from her, but it also sounds stern, “do you like Miitan?”
He looks at Satomi, cheeks as flushed as hers feel, though his answer sounds certain and true. “Yes. Yes, I do,” and when Satomi smiles up at him her smile is brighter and she feels a warmth that, she is startled to realize, is happiness.
Masami closes the door on them with a snap that makes them both start, forgetting she was there in the first place. “Go celebrate!” they hear her yell through the door, voice slightly muffled by the wood.
“Ehh?!” Satomi grabs the door knob and twists it to no avail. “Machan! I’m tired! Open the door! I want to sleep!”
“So sleep on his bed!”
In his room, they find Ryo dressed with a guitar in hand and about to go out, muttering something about having a gig with “the guys” and drinks with “Asami-chan” afterwards, though he smiles while saying the name and smiles wider still when he adds that he won’t be back tonight. He waggles his eyebrows at Yamapi on his way out and props his guitar up to his chest, strumming out a few chords. “Love me tender,” he sings in badly-pronounced English before Yamapi shuts the door on his face.
In his bed they sit cross-legged, side by side. Satomi can’t quite look at him, half-wanting to be in her own bed so she can roll around and squeal into her pillow, but unwilling to be apart from him at this moment.
“You’re sleepy, aren’t you?”
“No, no,” Satomi insists, hoping the double “no” will convince him, even though she could barely keep her eyes open. “I’m fine.”
They talk of everything and nothing. He asks her several times if she’s sleepy and each time she insists she’s not, but eventually her head droops onto his shoulder and she’s fast asleep.
When she wakes up alone in bed the next morning, it feels just like any other day, except the snores coming from the other bed are Yamapi’s instead of Masami’s. She’s covered up to her chin with his blanket, surrounded by his scent.
xi.
She forgets that she has applied to study for a semester in New York until one of her advisers informs her that she gets accepted.
“You have to take it!” Masami exclaims, watching Satomi pace back and forth in their small dorm room.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I don’t know!” Satomi cries out, pressing both hands to her cheeks. “It’s just, I don’t know, okay?”
“Is it because of Piitan?” Masami asks, and though Satomi doesn’t answer, goes on, “Don’t mind him. If it were me, I’d go.”
“Really?”
Masami nods emphatically and Satomi sighs, flopping down on her friend’s bed and leaning her head against the Masami’s shoulder. “You were hand-picked from hundreds of applicants,” Masami says, patting Satomi’s head. “You’d be an idiot not to go.”
The insult is affectionate, and it makes Satomi giggle despite her inner turmoil. “But what if Yamashita-kun doesn’t want me to go?”
“Then he’s an idiot.”
When she does tell him of the scholarship, Yamapi is surprised, but pleased, supportive. When she tells him of her hesitation, he asks, “If you don’t go, do you think you’ll regret it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Yes,” she says, and it’s true. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she knows that she’ll be going no matter what anyone says, no matter how much she wants to be with him.
xii.
He’s nonchalant, almost standoffish when he sees her off at the airport. He doesn’t cry, isn’t even on the verge of tears like she is, though his hug pulls her in and makes her feel more loved than she’s ever felt her whole life. When he pulls back, his eyes are still dry, and he gives her a nod: Go. There is nothing to be said; they’ve been saying goodbye for the entire duration of summer vacation.
He accompanied her home to visit her mother, to let her mother know where she’ll be for the next four months. Satomi had no qualms showing Yamapi the small apartment where they’ve always lived. Her mother, though surprised to see her daughter arrive with another person, invited him to stay for dinner, and then after, to stay the night. Yamapi declined the latter, which was just as well as there wasn’t much room, though he later told Satomi he thought they should have the time alone.
“I’ve never seen you bring home a man before,” her mother said as they were rolling out the futon for bed.
Satomi could only nod, feeling her cheeks flush, part in guilt because she rarely came home. She wondered if her mother disapproved of Yamapi, if he reminded her mother of her father, if she was going to be told that Yamapi would leave her someday the way her father left her mother. But all her mother said was, “Be happy.”
She felt as if a dam inside her broke. That night, it was Satomi who cried herself to sleep while lying in the dark.
Right now his lack of tears sets her at ease, and Satomi nods back, managing a smile even as she gives him a playful salute before finally walking through the gate for boarding. Her eyes remain dry throughout the whole flight, despite feeling incredibly lonely during her first nights alone in her room, too nervous to go out and venture into New York City by herself. Her tears only fall when Masami calls after a week, asking how she’s been, telling her that Yamapi had gone to their dorm room the night she left, “sobbing his heart out,” inconsolable for days. Satomi cries when she hears about it, starts sobbing herself, but she is also laughing, feeling the bittersweet ache of loving and being loved by someone who is miles apart.
~*~
Satomi’s arrival is on the thirty-first of December, well before midnight. Masami tells her that she’ll be throwing a homecoming party that will double as a celebration to welcome the new year. Satomi protests and tries to convince Masami that there is no need to throw a party for her benefit. There is nothing she would rather do than spend the first day of her return with Yamapi; the first day of the new year will be spent with her mother. But in the end Masami manages to twist her arm and make her agree to go.
She feels anxious for two reasons: first, it is their first party as a couple, and second, it is her first party. Ever.
“Can we have a code for let’s get the heck out of here please, please?” Satomi asks Yamapi as they trudge up the stairs to Nino’s floor, fresh from her flight, half-joking, half-serious. They’ve already been warned beforehand that the elevator is broken, and she holds onto his arm tightly, legs shaky in heels that Masami had insisted she wear and from the cold. Satomi keeps tugging at the hem of her dress which ends above her knees, the very image of nerves to Yamapi’s calm, frequent-partygoer self.
He laughs and pauses briefly midstep to slip an arm around her waist instead. “You can’t escape from your own party. Machan’ll kill you.”
“True.” Satomi sighs and leans against him, hand fisting at the back of his jacket for balance. “But can we have one so I can at least let you know that I want to hypothetically get out, even if I can’t?”
“Okay. Like what?”
She looks up at him and scrunches her face up, eyes shut tight and nose wrinkled. “How about that?”
“Too adorably obvious.”
They debate about it for the duration of three more flights of stairs, going from several hand signals -“No rude ones!”-to winking. “Can you actually wink?” Yamapi asks her, and after she demonstrates, says, “Guess not.” She hides her face in both hands briefly in embarrassment, nearly missing a step. Eventually they settle on her first choice that he’s titled The Double Wink, and then they reach Nino’s floor, breathless, but Satomi barely manages to recover before the door opens and Masami’s hugging her while shrieking in her ear.
Nino’s place isn’t very big, but Satomi counts about twenty, twenty-five people inside. Surprisingly it feels cozy instead of crowded, people clumped in groups of twos or threes or more, drinking beer, munching on whatever is on the dining table, playing video games in one corner. She also finds it surprising that she actually recognizes several faces, particularly one who gets her attention by tapping her on the shoulder. “Sakurai-kun!” she says joyfully, turning to face him.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, and Satomi giggles; they’ve just gotten off of the same plane mere minutes ago.
“What are you doing here?” Satomi asks, then remembers Yamapi, blinking a little at the blank expression on her-though she has yet to refer to him as such in public-boyfriend’s face. “This is Sakurai Sho. He was on the exchange student program in NYU, too. This is Yamashita Tomohisa,” she introduces them, debating on whether or not to say “boyfriend,” but Sho is already holding out a hand to Yamapi, introducing himself as a friend of Nino’s and remarking about the difference in weather between New York and Tokyo.
When Sho excuses himself to go talk to another friend, Yamapi takes Satomi by the elbow and leads her to the table, grabbing two cans of beer and handing her one. “Did you see him often when you were in New York?” he asks, popping the tab open and taking a sip of his drink, still slightly stone-faced, though she can’t exactly tell why.
“Not really,” Satomi answers honestly. “He’s in a different department. Yamashita-kun, what-”
She’s interrupted when someone else taps Yamapi’s shoulder this time, and he turns around and says, “Hey, Kitagawa-san,” with a smile that makes Satomi’s heart twinge.
“Friend of Nino’s?” the girl asks, spots of red on her cheeks from too much alcohol.
“Masami’s, actually.” Yamapi remembers his manners the same way Satomi does earlier, and they are introduced: Kitagawa Keiko is a classmate of his for the recently-concluded semester. “Ishihara Satomi,” he says, “they’re roommates,” and Satomi feels her stomach drop at that casual description, at not being introduced as his girlfriend, though his hand slips behind her to rest on the small of her back.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” Keiko exclaims, and Satomi blinks in confusion although she returns the other’s exuberant smile. “He talks about you a lot.”
Before Satomi can quiz him on this, Ryo appears out of nowhere and hijacks the conversation, slinging an arm around both hers and Yamapi’s shoulders. “Welcome home,” he slurs, possibly the most drunk of them all. “Finally this idiot can stop crying himself to sleep every night-”
“Shut up,” Yamapi says, face red now, and Satomi is sure it’s not because of the beer. Yet. “Ah, this is my classmate, Kitaga-”
Keiko cuts into the introduction, her eyes already narrowed at Ryo. “Nishikido-kun?”
“You know each other?” Yamapi asks in confusion.
“We’ve met before in Hokkaido,” Keiko says, red deep in her cheeks before excusing herself quickly to another part of the room.
“Hokkaido?” Satomi and Yamapi echo at the same time, looking at Ryo.
They catch several words from Ryo’s mumbles, something about “school trip” and “back of a taxi” before wandering off to the opposite direction.
Satomi finds Masami next to her just before they start the countdown, her friend’s arm around her shoulders, squeezing. “I missed you so much,” Masami tells her-screams in her ear, really, as someone had turned the music up earlier, the bass resounding inside their chests. “You look so different!”
“Ehh!” Satomi laughs, giving Masami a brief hug. “How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Glowing! Relaxed!”
“Machan, relaxed was the last thing I was in New York. I have eye bags the size of luggages, look!”
“Whatever, you still look different! New York did you good!”
Someone takes hold of Satomi’s wrist and she turns to see Yamapi giving her The Double Wink, and her heart skips a beat when she realizes that he wants to go, that it’s him who wants to go and that they are actually going.
“So,” she says once they’re outside, giddy, words tripping over themselves; from all around them they hear a faint Ten, as the countdown begins. “She was a classmate!”
He looks at her wordlessly, stopping in his tracks. They’re standing in the middle of the street but neither of them seems to care. “Satomi.”
She feels her heart expand at the name, and for once, she realizes, being Satomi-not Kuniko, not anyone else-is just fine.
But it doesn’t stop her from saying next, “She’s really pretty.” Her cheeks heat up, inwardly beating herself up for saying that out loud; it makes her sound jealous, accusing, though that’s exactly what she felt when they were introduced.
“Well, what about Sakurai-kun?” Yamapi says, and she looks up at him, surprised to find him looking away, slightly embarrassed. “What was he?”
Satomi steps forward and stands on tiptoes. She whispers in his ear how it had been a relief to find another Japanese in a foreign country, how she and Sho checked in on each other in New York the same way siblings would. How she laughed at Sho when they went out for dinner one evening and he was wearing two parkas because it was so cold outside. How she told Sho that there was someone back in Tokyo whom she missed terribly and couldn’t wait to go home to.
“A boyfriend?” Yamapi asks lightly, though Satomi can see he’s mollified.
“Something like that.”
He bends down to whisper that he and Keiko were seatmates the same way he and Satomi were, but the difference was he told Keiko about a girl in New York whom he missed terribly and couldn’t wait for her to come home.
“A girlfriend?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
He kisses her, right in the middle of the street, just as people scream One! and fireworks brighten the evening sky like burning stars. In his arms she feels they’re feeling the same things: that Sho and Keiko don’t matter, that they care for each other too much and possibly wish that they didn’t because feeling this much is scary but it is also-she realizes for the second time with him-happiness.
~*~
Note: The movie Yamapi refers to is 2046, a Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar Wai. One of my absolute favorites. *__* Randomly, KimuTaku is in it, haha.
I have no concrete words to express my gratitude for my beta, S; she is amazing and she knows it. Much thanks as well to K and R for their character inputs, I very much appreciate it. ♥