Anh!

i know that original Hikaru’s feeling for Yoshiki are a bit controversial in the fandom (plus, he’s dead) but with the combination of the one shot and what we’ve seen from him in the manga the conclusion i reached is that he had repressed romantic feelings for Yoshiki

he might have been bisexual (since he seems to like boobs lol) but he is a highschool boy from a small traditional village (where homophobia canonically exists, based on how that one family talked about their son)

we know they never confessed to each other and both repressed their emotions to some degree

we also know that between Hikaru and Yoshiki, Hikaru was the better liar/the one who was better at hiding his feelings

the fandom has talked about Hikaru’s dying wish and how it was changed between the one shot and the series before, as well as the “you’re not gonna be able to bring a girlfriend home cause i’ll be there” conversation at length, but what strikes me as very interesting is the connection between the indou family curse and hikaru’s last moments

in the one shot, ‘hikaru’ openly says that one of the reasons Hikaru didn’t confess his feelings to Yoshiki was that the he was worried about Yoshiki getting taken by Unuki-sama if he acknowledged his feelings, because Yoshiki is the person he loves the most

in the manga the superstition is explained like this

when Hikaru is dying in the forest, he thinks of his parents and the “family duties” (the apology/ritual) and then he thinks of Yoshiki and how he doesn’t want to leave him alone… and then he asks Unuki-sama to take his place and stay by Yoshiki’s side, specifically his, not just to take his place in general so that no one (his mother, his other friends) is sad about his death

it’s clear that Yoshiki is the person he cherishes most, but the way his father explained the rules to him, the people in danger of being taken away are just the lovers of the Indou family, not family members or friends they don’t have romantic feelings for

what i’m getting at is that in addition to all the normal “teenage boy growing up in a small conservative village” reasons that Hikaru and Yoshiki have to repress their emotions, Hikaru has two additional reasons because he was born into the Indou family

1) if Hikaru accepts the reality that he’s in love with Yoshiki, Yoshiki might be in danger, especially if the two of them were to enter a defined romantic relationship. In addition to that, the ‘protection through marriage’ option wouldn’t be open to them because of the reality of the status of same sex marriage in Japan (in the one shot it is explicitly said that this was a concern, as well as that it was done in the family once before with a happy ending but hikaru was still hesitant)

2) less relevant/well founded second argument: Hikaru was someone who lived with the idea in his mind that he had a family duty to uphold, which is what ultimately caused him to go up into the mountains and die. He seems to have taken that to heart. It’s not a huge stretch to assume that part of that duty was to make sure that there is always an Indou family member in the village to complete the ritual. This implies two things:

2a) that Hikaru would have to stay in the village (or close enough to ‘fulfill his responsibilities’ till someone could take his place) This could also add extra context to the scene where he tells Yoshiki that he will probably just take care of the family mushroom farm (granted, not an unusual life path for a village boy)

2b) that Hikaru would eventually have children to carry on the family duty since afawk he’s an only child (Especially cause the subject of a “family heir” is touched on in that same conversation about the other gay boy in the village in chapter 9)

now this second argument (especially 2b) makes quite a few assumptions but it could point towards Hikaru having more reasons than most in similar positions to repress his feelings and force himself into an existence that complies with heteronormative society

considering how much of this story is using ‘hikaru’ as a queer allegory, as well as how much it emphasizes the ‘horror’ of living in a small rural village where everyone is in everyone’s business and the kids are expected to act in certain ways through Yoshiki (and to an extent Yoshiki’s whole family), it wouldn’t surprise me if these aspects were reflected in the original Hikaru’s feelings as well

the distance between two, words unspoken