You sweep the floors with your hair tied up in a red ribbon, humming songs no one else seems to know. You boil water in the back room, your sleeves rolled up past your elbows, wrists red from the heat. Sometimes you lean out the window to shake out a cloth, and Jinu watches from across the street, heart in his throat, as if looking at you might somehow unmake the curse.

It doesn’t.

Gwi-Ma’s words still echo like older thunder in his ears. One lifetime for every sin, the demon king had said. He doesn’t remember what he did to deserve this; only that it was enough for the king to curse him with memory, and longing, and you.

You, who never remembers him. You, who are always just out of reach.

Still, this life feels different. He’s not a lonely musician. He’s just Jinu. Just a man in a wool coat with frayed sleeves and too many lifetimes folded into the lines around his eyes.

Somehow, that compels him to step inside.

The bell above the teahouse door is delicate and cracked, like it’s been broken and glued back together a dozen times. It tinkles faintly as he enters, and you glance up from behind the counter. He orders ginger tea. It’s too hot, a little bitter. He drinks it anyway.

You don’t say much to him at first, just slide the cup forward with a polite nod, fingers dusted with flour, and return to kneading dough in the back. Jinu sits in the corner, watching steam curl from the rim of his cup, pretending to read a book he’s read a thousand times before.

He returns the next day. And the next.

Sometimes you smile at him now. Sometimes you ask if he wants something sweet with his tea. He always says yes, just to hear your voice again.

“Do you work nearby?” you ask one morning, wiping your hands on your apron.

“No,” he says. “I walk a lot.”

You tilt your head. “Even in the snow?”

“Especially then,” he says, and you laugh. The sound cuts through every century he’s lived without you. It makes something ancient in him ache.

You tell him your name one day. He already knows it, of course, but he pretends it’s the first time. He says it softly, rolls it on his tongue like a promise.

He brings small things sometimes: a book of poems; a silk ribbon the same colour as the one you wear; once, a tiny jade rabbit charm that he leaves near the register when you’re not looking. You find it later and keep it in your purse. You never ask if it’s from him, and he never tells you.

Some days, he helps. He carries water from the well; repairs a broken chair leg; teaches you how to fold paper cranes when the shop is slow. You sit across from him at the low table, your hands awkward at first, and he watches you fold the wings silently.

You crease the edge of the paper with your thumbnail, tongue poking out slightly in concentration. Jinu doesn’t laugh, though the sight of you furrowing your brow over something as simple as a paper crane is enough to pull a smile to his mouth. He leans forward and gently adjusts the angle of the folded wing.

“Like this,” he says quietly.

Your fingers brush, briefly, barely. It’s nothing—but to him, it’s everything.

After that, you start leaving out an extra cup when you brew tea in the morning, even before he walks in. You stop pretending not to notice the way he always sits in the same corner seat. You learn that he prefers ginger tea with honey, that he likes his bread warm and his jam unsweetened. You listen to him hum under his breath when he reads, even though his eyes don’t always move across the page.

He learns that you braid your hair when you’re nervous, and that you’re saving up for a trip to Busan, and that you talk to the teapot when you think no one’s listening.

Sometimes, when it snows harder than usual, you don’t get any customers and the city stays quiet. On those days, you sit across from each other on the heated floorboards, sipping tea and listening to the wind rattle the windows.

Once, you fall asleep like that—cheek pressed to your folded arms, exhaustion shuttering your eyelids. Jinu doesn’t wake you. He watches the snow gather on the windowsill and thinks about how peaceful your face looks in this life. 

He wonders if this is enough. If friendship is enough.

You wake, embarrassed, and he just smiles and tells you to rest more. You blink at him, still sleepy but shake your head, so he asks if you want to learn how to fold a lotus next. You do.

PARIS, FRANCE. SUMMER, 1890.

It’s your honeymoon. At least, that’s what the world thinks.

The hotel is charming in the way French hotels are supposed to be—wrought-iron balconies, velvet drapes, and wallpaper the colour of old pearls. The floorboards creak under his feet, and the hallways smell faintly of orange blossoms and candlewax.

Below, the Seine coils through the city, meandering long and slow. Gondoliers shout in lilting voices from the water. The bouquinistes have already opened their green boxes along the banks, selling secondhand poetry and crumbling maps to tourists who still believe Paris belongs to lovers.

Maybe it does. Just not to the two of you.

Jinu stands by the window, shirt half-buttoned, tie discarded somewhere near the settee. The silk catches on the carved wooden leg. The breeze lifts the edge of the curtain, letting in the sound of clattering dishes from the café downstairs.

The light falls soft on your face where you sit at the vanity, brushing your hair in long, even strokes, the red ribbon that you’d used to tie your hair back wrapped around your wrist. Your nightgown is lace-trimmed and far too sheer for the cool morning. He thinks it must be uncomfortable. But you wear it anyway, spine straight, chin lifted, always composed. You don’t look at him. You haven’t looked at him all morning.

There are two coffee cups on the table. One is untouched. You didn’t like the roast, but you won’t tell him that. You’ll let it sit there and grow cold because indifference is your sharpest weapon, and you know exactly how to wield it.

The lace shifts again as you move, bare shoulders catching the gold light. It’s almost enough to make him forget; almost enough to believe this life could be different. Maybe, if he just reached out—if he touched your shoulder, softly, just once—you’d remember something. The way your fingers once curled around the fabric of his hanbok, or the way you said his name.

It’s your honeymoon, and you can barely stand to be in the same room.

TOKYO, JAPAN. SPRING, ONE WEEK AGO.

Jinu promises to take you to see the cherry blossoms after work.

You’re half-asleep on the sofa when he tells you, legs tucked beneath you, your blouse rumpled and your slacks creased at the knees. Your fingers are curled around a mug of ginger tea you’ve forgotten to sip from, the steam long faded. The apartment glows in the evening light—low and golden, brushing everything it touches with warmth. It rests on your cheek, your collarbone, the line of your neck.

The window is cracked open just enough for the air to carry the sound of birds and distant footsteps. Someone laughs downstairs—the neighbour’s kid, maybe, or a passing couple. In the kitchen, the rice cooker clicks off with a soft chime, and the smell of jasmine rice begins to mingle with the faint perfume of laundry soap and honey.

The sakura have started blooming early this year, soft clouds of pink dusting every street, like the city’s been dipped in blush and left to dry slowly. He noticed them that morning on his walk to the train: the way petals clung to the sidewalk like confetti, the way one landed on the shoulder of your coat and you didn’t notice.

“Don’t forget,” you mumble without opening your eyes, voice warm and worn out, lips brushing the rim of the mug. Your feet are bare, and you wiggle your toes sleepily when he sits beside you.

“I won’t,” Jinu says, and he means it.

He never forgets, not in this life.

He reaches over and gently lifts the mug from your hands, careful not to spill it, and sets it on the coffee table beside your phone and a half-finished crossword. Your handwriting is in blue pen—curvy, a little impatient. He glances at it, then turns his attention back to you.

“You should change out of your work clothes,” he says.

“M’comfy,” you whisper, not moving an inch.

He laughs softly. “You say that. Then you complain about the wrinkles in the morning.”

You hum noncommittally, already slipping towards sleep. Your head tilts until it rests against his shoulder. He shifts a little to make it easier. Your hair smells like lemongrass shampoo and the rose spray you use in early spring. Jinu leans his cheek gently against the top of your head.

“Are we going tomorrow or Saturday?” you ask.

“Tomorrow,” Jinu says. “I want to go before the crowds come.”

“You hate crowds,” you agree, nodding.

“You hate them more.”

You smile. “Smart man.”

Jinu slides his arm behind your back, warm and solid and steady. He closes his eyes and listens—to your breath, to the tick of the clock on the wall.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA. EARLY SUMMER, 1972.

Jinu slings his arm over your bare waist, and thinks that this might be the life.

Maybe Gwi-Ma took pity on him. Maybe this is a loophole, and it comes with jazz and heat and the way your lipstick smeared against his collar an hour ago. Maybe it’s not a trick. Maybe, for once, he gets to stay.

Your breath is steady now, but your skin is still flushed, slick with the last traces of sweat. The cotton sheets stick to your thigh where it’s thrown over his hip, and your fingers twitch against his ribs, still restless in sleep.

He lets his hand drift up the slope of your side, slow and gentle, the way a man touches something he knows will leave him. He watches your lashes flutter, the corner of your mouth twitch as you stir.

“Are you awake?” he asks.

You hum without opening your eyes. “Barely.”

He presses a kiss behind your ear. “Should I stop?”

“If you’re asking that, you already know the answer.”

So Jinu doesn’t stop. His hand moves, slow and familiar now, tracing the curve of your hip. You shift closer, still half-asleep, until your leg slides between his and your mouth brushes against the underside of his jaw.

It’s easy like this. Too easy.

Your bodies know each other even if your minds don’t. There’s no fumbling anymore, no pretending. Just heat and breath and the memory of your name whispered into the crook of his neck, again and again, like you’re trying to brand yourself into him. Maybe you are.

He holds you afterward, and listens to the rain starting up again outside the window—soft at first, then steadier. Jazz spills in from the bar two floors down, muffled by distance and glass, but still there. Like everything in this city, it lingers.

“You’re staring,” you say eventually, not unkindly.

“I do that,” Jinu says.

“Why?”

“Do I need a reason?”

You make a soft sound in the back of your throat, somewhere between amusement and disbelief, and burrow deeper into his chest. Your fingers trace a line over his collarbone, idle and absentminded, like you’re not really thinking about what you’re doing.

“You always act like you know something I don’t,” you mumble. “Like you’ve been waiting for me to figure it out.”

Jinu swallows. “Figure out what?”

“Whatever it is you keep hiding behind your eyes,” you say. “You always look so sad, Jinu.”

His arm tightens around you just slightly. 

You’re not wrong. You never are, not in any life. Even without memory, your intuition is as sharp as it’s always been. You’re like a compass that always swings toward the truth, even when the truth is something you have no idea about. 

Jinu considers lying, or laughing it off. But you shift again, and your thigh brushes against his. You’re close—so close, close enough that he almost lets the truth slip past his teeth. You’ve died in my arms before. You’ve looked at me with your last breath. I’ve been cursed to find you again and again and again.

Instead, he says, “Maybe I just like the way you look when you sleep.”

“Poetic.”

“I try.”

You lift your head to look at him. There’s mascara smudged beneath your eyes, and a tiny crease on your cheek where it pressed against the pillow. Your mouth is a little swollen from kissing, and your voice is hoarse in the way that drives him insane.

“You know this isn’t forever, right?” you say, softly, like you’re offering him a kindness by saying it first.

“I know,” Jinu says.

You nod, like that’s what you needed to hear. “Good.”

But you don’t move. You don’t pull away. You rest your chin on his chest and look at him like you’re memorising the shape of his nose and the colour of his eyes.

“God,” you whisper after a while. “This would be so much easier if you were an asshole.”

Jinu laughs and says, “I can be, if it helps.”

“No,” you say, shaking your head. “You’re good. That’s the problem.”

He kisses your forehead and tries not to think about the way your voice cracked.

JOSEON, KOREA. WINTER, 1798.

It is snowing the first time Jinu sees you, and your name forms on his mouth like habit.

It’s not the name you carry now—not the one assigned to you by court records and a royal appointment, or the one embroidered into the hem of your hanbok in gold thread. It is the name you’ve had in your previous lifetime. The name he’s whispered into your skin, into your dying hands.

Jinu doesn’t say it aloud. He doesn’t dare.

He watches you from the far side of the courtyard, where the snow has muffled the world and the stone paths disappear beneath white. His breath fogs in the air. A court servant speaks beside him—something about a grain levy in Jeolla—but Jinu isn’t listening. He couldn’t, even if he tried.

You walk gracefully, holding a lacquered tray to your chest, with your back straight. Your hair is pulled into a sleek bun, adorned with a single ornamental binyeo shaped like a plum blossom. It is the sign of a new concubine: favoured and untouched. The wind catches your sleeve and flutters it gently, and his chest clenches at the sight of your wrist. A thousand memories flicker through his mind like reeds in the current.

Yet, your face is unfamiliar in this first life. Younger, and softer. Your eyes don’t carry memory. You don’t look at him with recognition or contempt. You don’t look at him at all.

You pass through the courtyard, and Jinu stands frozen under the shadow of a ginkgo tree, as though time itself has collapsed.

Later, in his private study, he asks about you. He pretends it’s nothing—an idle inquiry wrapped in courtesy, spoken to the right eunuch over warm rice wine.

“The girl who came last month,” he says, carefully. “The concubine gifted by the Governor of Gangwon. What do we know of her?”

“The new Lady?” The eunuch says your new name, the one that doesn’t feel right in Jinu’s mouth. “She is quiet and well-mannered. Literate, I believe, though she comes from no family of rank. She entered the palace under the northern court’s petition—her village suffered a flood, and her people sought mercy. The Governor offered her as tribute.”

“Tribute,” Jinu repeats, tasting the word like ash.

“She was chosen for her beauty,” the eunuch adds. “Nothing more.”

PARIS, FRANCE. SUMMER, 1890.

You married him because you had to.

It was a bargain struck behind closed doors, a compromise made with fathers and fortunes and convenience. He had wealth, and you had a family in debt. It was all very civilised, very French. The papers printed your photograph beside a headline that called it a union of elegance and fortune. They didn’t print the part where you refused to meet his eyes.

At dinner, you speak to him in French, formally, like a woman who doesn’t wish to be misunderstood, and doesn’t care to be known. You order for yourself. You never ask if he’s read the books you quote. You let the silence stretch until it breaks and sip your half-finished wine instead.

Jinu lets you. He nods when appropriate, smiles when it seems polite, swirls his wine, and pretends not to watch the way you cut your food too carefully.

He thinks about how different your voice sounds in this life. How your laughter is a stranger to him. He remembers the you who laughed easily, the you who danced barefoot in the snow, the you who wrote him letters in the margins of books and left pressed flowers between the pages. That version of you isn’t here.

In this lifetime, you wear gloves to dinner and never once let your fingers brush his.

But you’re beautiful. God, you’re beautiful.

It kills him a little, every time.

You look like a painting he’s seen before and can’t quite place; one he’s spent lifetimes trying to find again. Now that you’re here—flesh and blood, name and ring and contract—you’re more unreachable than ever.

You don’t sleep in the same bed. The suite has two, and that’s something you requested specifically. He remembers the clerk glancing at him with a look that hovered between pity and apology.

The bellboy had asked, “Madame, shall I draw the curtains between the beds?”

“Yes, thank you,” you had said.

You don’t ask him questions: not about his work, not about his past. Not about the faraway look he sometimes gets when the light hits the Seine just right. He doesn’t ask you, either. The truth is, you are not his, in this life.

He wonders if you dream of him. He wonders if somewhere deep in your chest, beneath the silk and bone and flesh, something stirs when he says your name. He wonders if you ever wake in the middle of the night with a pang in your heart that you don’t understand.

Jinu hopes so, because he has woken up like that every night of this life.

SEOUL, KOREA. WINTER, 1937.

By the time Seollal passes and the paper lanterns are taken down, the people in the neighbourhood begin to notice—not with suspicion or idle gossip, but with a kind of slow, blooming fondness. They don’t whisper behind their hands or snicker when Jinu walks by. Instead, they smile.

The old woman with the parrot—Madam Kwon, who lives above the fermented soybean shop—starts referring to Jinu as your shadow. Every morning, as she feeds her bird sesame seeds and counts her prayer beads in the sun, she croaks out, “Your shadow’s early today,” when Jinu turns the corner near the tea shop. The parrot repeats her, mangled and gleeful. Sha-dow, sha-dow!

You glance up from the window, smothering a smile.

The boy from across the alley, barely thirteen, who runs errands for the ink shop, has started tipping his cap at Jinu each morning. One day, when he passes, he calls out with the overconfidence of youth, “She likes persimmons, you know. Bring her some. The kind with the wrinkly skins.”

Jinu hides his amusement behind a polite nod. The next day, a small cloth pouch of dried persimmons appears on the tea shop counter. You don’t say anything, just tuck them into the cupboard—but you save one, and when Jinu comes in at closing, you place it on a small plate beside his tea without a word.

The grocer, Mr. Baek, an older man with a permanent frown and a weak knee, lets Jinu pick through the fresh vegetables first whenever he sees him on the path to the tea shop.

“You work too hard, boy,” Mr. Baek grumbles as Jinu hoists a basket of firewood onto one shoulder.

“He’s not a boy,” Madam Kwon snorts from her usual perch. “He’s a man, Baek. Can’t you tell?”

“A man, huh?” Mr. Baek eyes Jinu’s hands, callused from helping with the heavy work around the shop. “Well, even a man needs to rest his back before it breaks.”

Jinu only smiles. “I’ll rest after I’ve swept the steps for her.”

They all approve of him, though none say it directly. The world is starting to tuck Jinu into your corner of it without him needing to ask.

One afternoon, while the snow still clings to the gutters but the breeze carries a hint of plum blossoms, an elderly couple walks in from out of town. They speak in slow dialect, asking for ginger tea and warmth for their aching bones. Jinu is seated by the window, sketching quietly in his notebook. As you prepare the tea, the woman glances at him, then at you.

“Your husband doesn’t say much,” she remarks.

You nearly spill the water. “He’s not— I mean, we’re not—”

Jinu looks up, and the couple laughs kindly. “Ah, forgive us,” the man says. “You have that look about you.”

“What look?” you ask, wary.

“The look of people whose silence with each other is comfortable.”

You don’t respond, but when you set the tray down in front of them, you notice Jinu watching you closely. After they leave, you go to clear the table. There’s an extra coin left on the tray, and the old woman has pressed a paper fortune beside it: “Love that arrives quietly stays the longest.”

You crumple it without thinking.

But later that night, after the shop has closed and the windows are shuttered, Jinu finds it smoothed out on the back counter, your handwriting scribbled in the margins: “Don’t get any ideas.”

He smiles.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA. AUTUMN, 1971.

Jinu finds you by accident, really. 

He’s searching for a bar—any bar—on an unnaturally rainy Friday night, his collar turned up against the warm drizzle, the air thick with the smell of sweet olive trees and fried catfish. The city hums with life even in the storm. Neon flickers on puddles like oil slicks, and brass spills from half-opened windows.

He’s already passed three places too crowded, one too quiet, and a fourth that reeked of stale beer and cigarette ash, when he turns down a narrow side street he doesn’t remember the name of.

He finds a wooden door, warped with time and painted a moody red. It sits beneath a hanging sign with chipped cursive that reads: The Red Ribbon. A string of paper lanterns hangs overhead, glowing soft through the rain like a trail of fireflies.

Inside, the bar is low-lit and warm, a haven from the storm. The air smells like cinnamon smoke and lemon rinds, and something old—like velvet curtains and perfume that clings to skin. There’s a quiet hum of conversation, the clink of glass on glass, and music.

No—not music. A voice.

Low and rich, not quite singing, not quite speaking. Like honey melting in a warm cup of tea. It curls around the room before he sees you; dips into the cracks between shadows; holds him still.

You’re on stage, beneath a gold spotlight, wearing a black satin blouse tucked into high-waisted pants, one heel perched on the edge of the stool as you croon into the microphone. Your voice doesn’t beg for attention. It commands it, slow and sultry and effortless. You sing a cover of I’ll Be Seeing You, but it’s yours now, softer, smokier, as if the song’s always belonged to you.

In your hair, tied just above your ear, is a red ribbon.

Jinu stops breathing.

You’re older in this life. Sharper. Your voice curls like cigarette smoke, and your smile doesn’t reach your eyes. But it’s you. Of course it’s you. He would know you in any century.

You don’t see him. You never do, not at first.

The room fades. Jinu’s heart hammers.

Gwi-Ma’s curse, so old now it’s half-forgotten, curls tight in his ribs like a warning. This is the fourth time, he thinks.

The bartender is young, with freckles scattered across his nose. “What can I get you?”

“What’s her drink?” Jinu asks, nodding toward the stage.

“She switches it up sometimes. But mostly it’s gin and tonic. Extra lime.”

“Then one of those. And whatever you recommend.”

He carries both your drinks over when you step off the stage, undoing the ribbon in your hair deftly and shaking your head. You wrap the ribbon around your wrist and raise an eyebrow when he stops by your table. 

“That for me?” you ask.

Jinu sets the gin and tonic down. “Extra lime.”

“Let me guess,” you drawl. “First time here, heard me sing, got curious?”

“Something like that,” he says.

JOSEON, KOREA. SPRING, 1799.

It is well past curfew when you slip into the old library pavilion.

The moon is high, its light diffused through the paper lattice windows, casting soft patterns on the wooden floor. The scent of old parchment and ink wafts through the air. Outside, the plum trees stir in the breeze, petals tumbling like tiny, perfumed ghosts.

You shouldn’t be here. No one comes here anymore—not since the roof began to rot, not since the scrolls were moved to the new annex.

But you know the door that creaks just slightly less. You know which floorboards to avoid. Most importantly, you know no one will be looking for a concubine in the archive of forgotten histories.

You light a single oil lamp and walk the aisles barefoot, your skirts brushing against shelves of neglected poetry and old Confucian texts. You’re looking for something. You don’t know what; only that your chest has been heavy lately with something unnamed, and that reading makes it easier to breathe.

You’re so engrossed in a worn volume of Tang poetry that you don’t hear him until it’s too late.

“What are you doing here?”

You whip around, heart slamming in your chest, the book nearly slipping from your fingers. 

Jinu stands in the doorway—half-lit by moonlight, half-shadowed, like something conjured from the very pages you were reading. He’s shed his ceremonial robes for the evening, wearing only a dark overcoat tied loosely at the waist. His hair is unbound at the nape, a sign that he, too, thought the night would pass without interruption.

You gasp. “I—I didn’t think anyone—”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says, though there’s no bite to it. Just curiosity, and a hint of wariness.

You lift your chin. “Neither are you.”

He arches a brow, and you realise your mistake. Of course he’s allowed anywhere he wishes—he’s one of the King’s closest ministers. But instead of correcting you, he steps further inside, eyes never leaving yours.

“What are you reading?”

“Poetry,” you say.

“May I see it?”

You hand him the book with reluctant fingers. He takes it carefully, as though it’s precious. You watch as he scans the open page. His lips move as he reads silently. Then, softly, aloud:

“In the quiet night, the moonlight before my bed perhaps is frost upon the ground. I raise my head and see the moon, then lower it and think of home.”

You say nothing.

“You miss it,” Jinu says quietly. “Your home.”

“You can’t miss what you barely remember,” you say, shrugging.

“Still, you’re here,” he says, closing the book. “Risking punishment for poetry.”

“I thought this place was empty.”

“It is. Mostly. You’ve been here before,” he says.

“Will you report me?” you ask, finally meeting his eyes.

He watches you for a long moment, and shakes his head. “No. But if you’re going to read by lamplight, you shouldn’t sit so close to the paper screens. It casts a shadow.”

TOKYO, JAPAN. SPRING, ONE MONTH AGO.

On Jinu’s birthday, you surprise him with a picnic beneath the sakura.

It’s a Tuesday, technically a workday, but you convince his supervisor to let him off early and drag him, half-confused, half-laughing, onto the Marunouchi Line. You refuse to say where you’re going, only grin over the rim of your coffee and tap your knee against his like you’re buzzing with a secret.

He figures it out by the time you’re walking down the path at Shinjuku Gyoen, past couples and families and students with cameras, every tree dripping in soft pink petals. The wind is light, enough to lift your hair and scatter a few blossoms onto his shoulder. You swipe them off with a delicate touch, fingers brushing his collar.

“Here?” he asks, looking around.

You point to a quiet spot beneath a tall cherry tree, where the ground is dappled with sunlight and pink. “Here.”

He watches you set the blanket down and unroll the bento boxes you packed that morning, tied in checkered cloth, still warm. Tamagoyaki, onigiri, simmered daikon, the pickled things he likes. There’s even a small chocolate cake hidden in your tote, which you keep sneakily tucked behind your legs like it isn’t obvious.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” he says, sitting beside you. His voice is warm. He never quite knows what to do with being loved like this—not when it’s freely given.

“I know,” you say. “But I wanted to.”

Jinu looks at you for a long second. You’re wearing that soft blue sweater he likes, the one that slides off your shoulder when you’re not paying attention. The sunlight hits your cheekbones and catches in your lashes, and he thinks—like he always does—that you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

You open a thermos, pour him tea, and he raises it in mock solemnity.

“To thirty-three,” he says.

“Thirty-two,” you correct.

“Am I?”

“You always forget,” you say. “You’ve been forgetting since we met.”

He laughs. “Feels like I’ve lived a hundred years already.”

You don’t say anything. Sometimes, when the light hits his face just right or he says something echoes in your mind, you wonder.

You’ve always had strange dreams: places you’ve never been, languages you’ve never studied, and a man who always looks like him, even when he wears a robe, or a bloodied uniform, or a wool coat in the snow. You never tell him this. You’re afraid it will break the spell.

Instead, you offer him another onigiri and press a kiss to his cheek.

“Happy birthday,” you whisper. “I’m glad you were born.”

Jinu closes his eyes and laces his fingers with yours, lets you lean your weight into his side; lets the breeze scatter petals in your hair; lets the warmth spread down his spine like he’s standing in the sun after a long, long winter.

MANCHURIA. WINTER, 1944.

It comes as no surprise, then, that when the war begins, you and Jinu get married and business at the teahouse dwindles with every passing day.

The papers are signed quietly one late afternoon, in the cramped back office of the local administration hall: two names written in black ink, side by side, binding you together not by love but by survival. There is no time for anything else. The world is already falling apart.

The Japanese occupation deepens its grip. All around you, men vanish into forced conscription, women into labour camps, into silence. The air grows tighter with fear. Propaganda posters replace the poetry on the streets. The teahouse shutters for good.

You and Jinu are sent away within the month. He becomes a soldier. You become a nurse.

You are not the only married couple split between posts, but somehow, impossibly, the army places you both near the front. You meet sometimes between camps. Once every few weeks, maybe. Sometimes longer.

Each time, your reunion is brief and practical. You sew up the tears in his uniform. He shares what little rations he’s stashed away for you. He never forgets to hand you a pair of gloves or wrap your scarf tighter, or tie your hair back with that red ribbon with shaking fingers. You always insist he sleep for at least two hours before returning to his unit.

There is no time for affection. There is barely time for sleep.

But sometimes, when you are alone—when the tents are quiet and the snow piles against the canvas—he touches your face in the dark, and you lean into him without a word. Sometimes you rest your forehead against his shoulder, and Jinu runs his hand up and down your back.

The night you die, it is snowing.

The war has reached a new fever. There are no longer clear lines, no longer rest stations or warning signals or predictable patrols. The world is burning in patches, and no one can remember what day it is.

Jinu is stationed near the ravine when the call comes—medics down, supplies hit, critical injuries. He runs before they finish speaking.

He doesn’t recognise the wreckage of the medic tent at first, just the shape of it, torn open by gunfire and winter wind, canvas flapping in the air. The snow is tinged red. Bodies are scattered everywhere.

You’re still alive when he finds you, but barely.

You’re half-buried beneath another nurse, shielding her even in unconsciousness. Your side is soaked through with blood, spreading dark and fast across your uniform. Your breathing is shallow, more rasp than breath. Jinu drops to his knees beside you.

“Hey,” he says, voice breaking. “Hey—look at me. It’s me.”

Your eyes flutter open. Focus. Unfocus. Finally, they find him. “...Jinu?” you breathe, your voice thready.

He laughs, because it’s either that or scream. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s me. You stubborn woman, what were you doing here? You were supposed to be safe.”

“I stayed.” You cough, wet and small. “One of the children… the boy with the bad leg…”

“I know,” Jinu says. He does know. He always knew you’d stay. He presses his hand to your wound. His other hand cradles the back of your head. Snowflakes melt on your cheeks.

Later, they find him still holding you, long after the snow has buried your boots and the blood has dried stiff on his uniform. He won’t speak for days, won’t eat. When he finally returns to his post, he doesn’t say what happened; he only writes your name on the inside of his sleeve in black ink, where no one else can see.

Years later, when the war ends and the country forgets the names of its dead, Jinu does not. He leaves a folded paper crane at every teahouse he passes, and he never remarries.

PARIS, FRANCE. SUMMER, 1890.

On the third day of your honeymoon, Jinu takes you dancing.

It is a Friday evening, and the city glows with the kind of gold that never quite fades, even as dusk creeps in. From the hotel balcony, the streets below shimmer with laughter, carriage wheels clattering against cobblestones, parasols twirling, violins warming up in salons beyond shuttered windows.

He waits for you in the sitting room, dressed in pressed trousers and a charcoal waistcoat, a pale lavender cravat at his throat—the one you picked, absentmindedly, on your first day in the city. The silk still smells faintly like you.

You emerge from the bedroom without a word, gloves drawn tight over your wrists, gown cinched neatly at the waist. You’re beautiful, but distant.

Always, always distant.

“Shall we?” he asks, offering his arm.

The carriage ride is quiet. The air smells like summer rain and perfume, and Jinu watches your profile in the glass—the slope of your nose, the way your eyes follow the shape of the Seine like it’s memory. You haven’t touched him since the day you arrived. Your hand rests lightly on his arm now, like you’re afraid even weight might give too much away.

He wants to ask about the letters.

The ones you receive from a different postbox. The ones you tuck away before he enters the room. He’s never opened one, but he doesn’t need to. The handwriting is always the same: slanted, and familiar only to you. He doesn’t ask. He never does.

Tonight, he only wants to pretend.

The ballroom is in Montmartre, crowded and warm, lit by chandeliers that make the dust shimmer. The band plays slow waltzes, the kind that linger in your throat even after the music fades.

Jinu places a hand on your waist. You let him.

Your fingers rest against his shoulder, delicate as frost.

He draws you closer, searching for something in your eyes. He finds nothing. Nothing but the practiced smile of a woman doing what is expected.

“You’re quiet tonight,” he says, voice low.

You look away. “I’m tired.”

“Of dancing?” Of me?

You don’t answer. Jinu guides you in a slow circle. You follow, graceful, perfect. A doll in silk and pearl. Yet, every few beats, your gaze slips towards the doors; towards the windows; towards something far away. He’s used to it now. Gwi-Ma’s curse has hardened him, but just because he is used to it, it does not make it any easier to be the consolation prize in this lifetime that never belonged to him.

“Do you love him?” he asks suddenly, before he can stop himself.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say.

You’re right. It doesn’t. Not in this life. Not in this world where your father sold your hand to erase a debt, and his name was the one on the contract. Not in a marriage made of cold sheets and polite lies.

Jinu exhales slowly. “It does to me.”

You meet his gaze, then, and something flickers in your eyes. Not love, or forgiveness—just sadness, deep and quiet, like the kind that seeps into your bones and never quite leaves.

“You’re not a bad man,” you say softly. “You just aren’t mine.”

He closes his eyes. The music swells. Couples spin around you both like falling leaves.

Jinu doesn’t say another word. He just holds you a little tighter, for as long as the song lasts. Because after tonight, you’ll drift further away. He can feel it, that tide pulling you towards a life you’ll never have and a man he will never be.

But for this dance—just this one—he lets himself imagine you’re his.

The next day, the divorce papers are finalised and the money is settled. You move to Vienna the week after.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA. AUTUMN, 1972.

The bartender tells Jinu you moved to Chicago.

He says it like it’s nothing, like you didn’t leave a hollowed-out space where your voice used to sit on stage at The Red Ribbon, smokey and golden and soft as dusk.

“Packed up two weeks ago,” the freckled boy says, polishing a glass. “Didn’t say much, just left a note for Missy in the back. Said she got an opportunity, somethin’ better. Maybe a record label.”

Jinu doesn’t ask for details. He doesn’t need them.

He nurses his bourbon in silence for a while, and lets the saxophone on the radio spill into the half-empty room. The walls feel thinner without you—less velvet, more echo. The stage is dark now, the piano covered in a wrinkled sheet.

When he asks for your address, the bartender raises an eyebrow. “You a friend?”

“I was her lover,” Jinu says, and it’s not wrong.

The man shrugs and writes it down on the back of a bar napkin, sliding it over with two fingers. It’s smudged at the edges, ink bleeding from moisture left behind by someone else’s glass. But the words are clear.

South Side. Chicago. Apartment 2B. ℅ Langford Records.

Jinu stares at it for a long time. He folds it once and pockets it.

That night, in his apartment above the bakery on Dauphine Street, he sits at the kitchen table with a cigarette burning low and a single lamp flickering behind him. Rain taps gently against the window, steady as a metronome.

He finds a sheet of paper, ivory and heavy. He doesn’t plan to write much.

October 12th, 1972 New Orleans

You left without saying goodbye.

That’s not a complaint. Just… an observation.

The bartender said Chicago. He said you packed light, but you always did. I used to wonder how someone could carry so much in them and still leave so little behind. I guess I have my answer now.

I keep thinking about that night on the balcony. You, with your lipstick smudged and your heels kicked off, humming some Ella Fitzgerald song that only you knew all the words to. You asked me if I believed in fate. I said no. You laughed like I was missing the joke.

I think I get it now.

Maybe it wasn’t fate. Maybe it was just timing. Bad, as always.

I don’t know what you’re chasing up there—music, love, a version of yourself you can finally live with—but I hope you find it. And if you don’t, I hope it finds you anyway.

I won’t write again. This feels like enough.

But if it ever rains in Chicago, and you think of me, just know I was thinking of you too.

– J.

Jinu folds the letter carefully and slides it into an envelope but doesn’t seal it. He stares at it for a long time. Then he sets it on the counter beside his keys and goes to bed without turning out the lamp.

He never mails it, but every now and then, when the rain hits just right, he reads it again.

JOSEON, KOREA. LATE SUMMER, 1799.

They charge you with treason.

No matter how many times Jinu kneels before the King, no matter how many sleepless nights he spends rewriting every record, begging the court historian to leave your name out of the final script, no one listens.

It is easier to silence a concubine than to question a minister, easier to blame a woman for sin than to hold a man accountable for love.

So, on the last evening of your life, they dress you in white: a shade meant for funerals; for forgetting.

Your hair, once combed and oiled and pinned with mother-of-pearl, hangs unbound down your back now. The servants didn’t bother with ceremony. They gave you water, and left you in a corner of the gardens, as if you were already half-gone. You sit on the edge of the low stone wall, staring at the lotus pond, legs tucked neatly beneath you and wrists bound.

The ropes around your wrists bite into tender skin—tight, too tight—but you won’t ask them to be loosened. The guards know better than to keep an eye on you. You’re not dangerous, just inconvenient.

You know he’ll come.

You don’t look surprised when Jinu appears between the carved columns, breathless, his topknot hastily tied and robes disheveled. His boots make no sound against the wooden floor as he drops to his knees before you.

“Please,” he says, his voice shredded down to the bone. “Please tell me you’ll hate me for this.”

You blink slowly. Your lashes are damp with the humidity. “Would that make it easier?”

“No.” Jinu shakes his head. “But I want you to have something.”

There’s no moon yet, but the light from the lantern by the steps is enough to see him properly. His lips are chapped. There’s ink on his sleeves, on the soft crease where his palm meets his thumb. He hasn’t stopped writing letters, then. Petitions. Pleas.

“You should go,” you say quietly. “If they see you—”

“I don’t care.”

“They’ll strip you of your title.”

“I don’t care.”

His hands are trembling when they reach for yours. He cups your bound wrists with reverence. His touch is a contradiction—soft, but desperate. His thumbs brush over your bruises. You don’t flinch.

Between his palms, you feel something cool press against your skin, smooth and weightless. Your fingers twitch, instinctively curling around it.

A jade rabbit. 

The kind children carry for luck. The kind lovers carve when words aren’t enough.

You remember once, weeks ago, a charm just like it left behind on the counter behind the Queen Dowager’s quarters—no note, no name. You’d tucked it into the folds of your robes and told yourself it didn’t mean anything. Now, you understand. You clutch it tighter.

“You said once,” Jinu whispers, “that you didn’t believe in reincarnation.”

You manage a faint smile, remembering his stories of the demon king and the curse of love and memory because of sins past. “I still don’t.”

“Well.” His eyes close briefly, lashes dark against his cheek. “I’ll believe for both of us, then.”

The cicadas outside scream like they know how little time is left.

“It’s just a story,” you say. “No one remembers their past lives.”

“I do,” he says, and something deep in you twists, aching. “And I will. I’ll find you again.”

“I don’t want to be remembered like this,” you whisper.

“I won’t remember the ropes,” Jinu says. “I’ll remember the way you fold paper cranes, and recite poetry, and the sound of your laugh when you think no one’s listening.”

Your throat tightens. There’s a sob there, buried deep, but it won’t surface. You’re too tired for crying. “Don’t—”

“I’ll remember,” he says. “And one day, somewhere—when you are free and unafraid—I’ll press this rabbit into your palm again, and you’ll know.”

“Jinu—”

He leans forward slowly, and presses his forehead to your bound hands. The lantern’s light glows between you. The cicadas hush. Far in the distance, a temple bell rings the hour. It’s almost time.

TOKYO, JAPAN. PRESENT DAY.

These days, you find it harder to sleep. The dreams are worse now, beguiling and long and sad. They stretch like old film reels behind your eyes, full of half-familiar cities and names that slip away when you wake. They end with Jinu, always Jinu—but not Jinu at the same time. He wears different clothes, speaks in languages you don’t remember learning.

You shift in bed, sheets tangled around your legs, one arm heavy and warm across your waist.

This version of Jinu sleeps with his mouth slightly open, his breathing even, steady. His chest rises and falls against your back, his palm curled gently beneath your navel. The window’s been left ajar, and the scent of sakura drifts in on the night air. You press your hand over his absentmindedly. His fingers twitch in his sleep and close tighter around you.

You sigh. Your forehead presses into the pillow. It’s too early or too late to be awake, and you’re tired—so tired—but your body doesn’t know how to rest anymore. Not when your mind insists on wandering. Not when you wake up crying into a man’s arms and can’t tell him why.

You almost speak, but he stirs before you can.

“Mmh,” he mumbles, lips brushing the curve of your shoulder. “You okay?”

“I… had that dream again,” you tell him.

Jinu lifts his head. He’s groggy, eyes swollen with sleep, but he’s already frowning. Already reaching up to tuck your hair behind your ear.

“The one with the snow?” he asks.

You nod. “And the red ribbon. And a jazz bar.”

He doesn’t laugh, though you’d expect anyone else to. Instead, he kisses your shoulder. “Come closer.”

“I’m already close.”

“Closer,” he says again, like the space between you could ever be enough to stop the ache. Like if he holds you tight enough, he can keep the dreams at bay.

You turn to face him, legs brushing his under the blanket. He touches your cheek with the backs of his fingers.

“Do I do something wrong in the dream?” he asks.

“No,” you say. “But you’re sad. Like… you know something I don’t.”

His throat works. His thumb runs along the apple of your cheek, just once. “Maybe I’m dreaming it too.”

You stare at him. It’s too dark to read his expression clearly, but something in you catches at the thought. Maybe he’s dreaming it, too: the same ink-stained hands, the same gardens, the same unfinished goodbyes.

“You think so?” you whisper.

He nods. “Remind me,” he says. “I found this antique rabbit made out of jade yesterday at the market. It reminded me of you. Remind me to give it to you.”

“Okay,” you say, and bury your face against his chest and let him wrap both arms around you. You press your palm over his heart. 

“You talk in your sleep, too, sometimes, you know,” you murmur into the dark. “Who’s Gwi-Ma?” 

You’re teasing, mostly—half-asleep, your words loose around the edges—but there’s a small, curious lilt to your voice that makes Jinu still for a fraction of a second. Barely perceptible, just long enough for you to notice.

You continue, lightly, unaware. “Should I be worried?”

He should’ve prepared for this. He’s had five lifetimes to come up with a better answer. Five lifetimes of choices and mistakes and prayers spoken into temples and alleyways and bomb shelters. Five lifetimes of watching you slip through his fingers, of losing you just when he thought he might have a chance.

He should’ve been ready.

Jinu exhales slowly, lets his palm slide a little higher on your stomach, grounding himself in the warmth of your skin. Your breathing is calm now. You trust him.

He leans in and kisses your shoulder again, and says, “No one.”

You shift a little in his arms, not entirely convinced. “Sounds like a someone.”

He smiles against your skin, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Just a strange dream. One of those names that sticks for no reason. You know how it is.”

“We’re weird,” you mumble. “I mean… you and me.”

“I know,” Jinu says, and he means it more than you’ll ever understand.

You don’t see the way his gaze always rests on you in the dark after you drift off. You don’t feel how tight his arms become, how he pulls you closer like he’s afraid you’ll vanish in your sleep.

You don’t know that he remembers everything.

The snow in Bukchon. The teahouse. The library in the palace. The battlefield and your name on the inside of his sleeve. Paris and silence. New Orleans and the ribbon in your hair. The prison courtyard and the jade rabbit you clutched until the rope took you. All of it.

He remembers the taste of your ginger tea; the colour of your blood on his hands; the sound of your voice in French; the way you looked at him in a jazz bar in 1972 and said, “Don’t fall in love with me.”

Too late, he’d wanted to say. Too many lives too late.

Now, in this quiet Tokyo apartment, with your fingers unconsciously curled into the fabric of his shirt, he knows Gwi-Ma has finally allowed him to keep you. The king has grown tired of watching him suffer. That was the promise, that in this fifth and final life, he can keep you safe and warm, tucked into his side, where the only real concerns are whether he’s put the laundry to dry, or what to cook for dinner.

Jinu watches the sky begin to pale through the window, watches your lashes flutter in sleep. He watches your mouth part like you’re about to say his name, even here, even now. He thinks about the red ribbon he keeps tucked inside his coat pockets, and worn-out letter in his dresser, and the jade rabbit he keeps underneath his pillow, and he smiles into your hair.

On the TV drones a broadcast where they show a map of the prefecture, tracing the path of the next storm in red-blue whorls. It won’t quit until next week. Lying stomach-down and doing nothing on the hardwood floor, you hope it never will.

The doorbell rings. You don’t get up to answer it.

Your mom might be calling you to shove all the boxes with your things from Tochigi to the side, shuffling some of the cardboard away with her house slippers, but becoming one with the floor is your only mission. It’s a noble cause for a five year old like you.

Your mother calls again; you don’t respond, but you hope she can feel the gravity of your eye roll. She talks quietly to someone in the genkan, and then the stranger slips off their wet shoes with a squeak— sounds like rainboots and— pads down the hall.

You close your eyes, listen to the hiss of the rain and the empty lull of the cicadas and the hollow wheeze of a ball being bounced against the floorboards…but you don’t have a ball.

“Do you like volleyball?”

( And this is where it all begins. )

You crane your neck and turn your face towards the ceiling. The boy standing above you is haloed in a starburst of lamplight; he’s all round cheeks and bowl cut bangs that hang over his eyes. He brushes his hair (it’s dark like the ink from your mom’s fancy pen) away from his eyes (they’re dark blue).

Well, they’re more than just dark blue, but you haven’t learned enough words to really describe it, so.

You don’t know what kind of face you make, but judging by the face he makes, it must not be pretty. “No. I hate exercise.”

“You don’t have to run around,” he tells you. It’s under-breath and quiet. He talks strangely like all the other people in the neighborhood with their smudgy consonants and pitched vowels. “Setters don’t move a lot.”

You slide your attention back to the broadcast. The weatherman is almost finished; after this, the sports game your dad wants you to record for his mentor’s son will start. “I don’t even know what that is.”

He settles down on the floor next to you, cradling the volleyball in the hollow of his crisscrossed legs; without a word, he watches you watch the athletes jog around.

“Stop looking at me.”

“You said you don’t like volleyball.”

“I don’t, my dad’s friend does,” you say, pushing the tape recorder. Your jaw begins to ache, molars gritting. “Leave me alone.”

Your mom walks by, floorboards protesting under her and the laundry basket’s weight. The whole house is like this; it’s old, and creaky, and smells kinda stale. You wouldn’t be surprised if it was haunted.

She says, “Play nice with Tobio. He’s staying until his parents are back from work.”

That’s not until nightfall, which means you have to put up with the strange volleyball boy for hours. What if he makes you get up from the floor to run laps around the living room?

You shudder.

Tobio straightens and his ball rolls across the floor. He points to a man on the screen, but it’s hard to distinguish because they all look like tiny, walking stick men. “That’s my favorite player.”

“What’s so special about him?”

He shuffles closer, repositioning to lay on his stomach like you, whispering, “His spike point is super high. My grandpa heard that he’s still growing too.”

You don’t know what to say first. What even is a spike point? Why couldn’t his grandpa watch him instead? When will this bowl cut nerd leave you alone?

The whistle blows sharply, and Tobio’s so-called favorite player tosses up the ball. It’s too fast to track— you can only hear the echo of the impact and the spectators’ noise.

Woah.

“That’s called a service ace. He’s cool, right?” Tobio asks. His feet make a slow thump-thump beat against the floor that matches the rhythm of your pulse.

You nod, eyes hunting the ball as it goes up again, trying to catch the movement and make it tangible. “I guess.”

He reaches to claw at his volleyball, small fingers reeling it back in front of him. It looks right in his hands, a key sliding home.

“I’m gonna be just like him one day.”

ー

There’s a singular ribbon of light slipping its deft fingers in the line between your drawn curtains. When it flickers, you know that the light is coming from your neighbor and not an early dawn.

You stumble out of bed, careful to land your feet without sound, and skitter to the window. Throwing the curtains apart, you’re met directly with Tobio’s beams; they sear white-gold starbursts behind your eyelids that linger for a while.

You pick up your light, switching the button on and off.

Tobio messages: You’re up.

You woke me up, you send. Too bright.

Graciously, he angles his light away. Sorry.

What do you want — and you aren’t quite sure what his name is in your little firefly language— TO-B-IO?

He makes a face, all pucker with no sour bite. You want to laugh at his duckbill-pursed lips and press your thumbs between his furrowed brows, smooth out the wrinkles in his skin.

What the heck is TO-B-IO?

Name.

It’s supposed to be like this — he flickers his beam in a pattern that you assume must be his name. It’s easy to do after you learn it, like second nature.

Tobio.

You mouth the syllables with every pulse of your thumb on the flashlight’s button because for some reason, the shape of his name feels so right against your tongue in the way a volleyball looks so right in his hands.

Yeah, that’s better. He turns off his light and gives you a thumbs up; illuminated by only the moon, Tobio is all silvery and chromatic. You wonder if all boys sparkle like shining knights.

The moonbeam shifts away with the approach of a cloud, and you raise your flashlight again.

Mine’s like this — you show him, blinking the light. Got it, Tobio?

He shoots your name back in photons, little pulses of light that have you grinning excitedly. Tobio can’t really do the same; it’s awkward and stilted, almost half-assed. He has dimples, which almost makes up for it.

You seriously gotta fix your smile, you flicker. He dials the intensity of his light all the way up and shoots the beam right into your face.

ー

You come to the conclusion that Tobio is really freaky about volleyball.

He demands that you toss the ball to him on the one day the rain breaks, right when you’re about to step outside in a pair of eye-scalding Hello Kitty sandals, clutching a net and mason jar. Your mom has to come down to the genkan and wrestle away your beetle catching gear because she feels bad for Tobio.

( You feel bad for him too— kind of. Even if his parents are at work more than they are at home, at least he still has you to come to. )

After that, you throw more balls than you swing bug nets, and Tobio’s arms look like cooked lobster shells from how many times he’s received them. Although, sometimes it’s just sunburn.

You ask him once about why he can’t just go somewhere else to play; he says that he usually does, but the nearby kid’s gym is closed until the owners can fix the roof that leaked during one of the summer storms.

Plus, he adds, my grandpa’s helping Miwa with her volleyball stuff most of the time. And you’re okay at tossing.

It’s then that you’re introduced to the Kageyama family, sans Mom-geyama and Dad-geyama. You see them in passing like far-off ships from the porthole of your window sometimes; Tobio gets his eyes from his mom and hair from his dad.

So tonight, like all other nights when the kid’s gym closes early and Tobio’s parents overstay their time at the izakaya with their coworkers, Kageyama Kazuyo-san is in charge of his grandkids, and by the same token, you too.

( Your mom lets you stay at over on Friday nights, and Friday nights only. )

“Kageyama Kazuyo-san.” You toddle up to the old man; his knees crack and his beard bristles with a smile when he crouches down to meet you, and you can tell that Tobio did not get his smile from his grandpa. “What school did you go to?”

“Ah, that was so long ago,” Kageyama Kazuyo-san sighs. He cradles his chin between his thumb and forefinger, the skin on his knuckles gnarled and splattered with liver spots. “Why do you ask?”

You twist your hands behind your back, mouth shifting. “Tobio wants to go to your school because he said it’s a volleyball big-house or something, but he’s not telling me which one.”

The old man hums and scratches his beard; it makes a funny sound that tickles your ears. You lean in when he shields his mouth with a hand. “He might be embarrassed because he probably forgot the name.”

“Yeah, he’s a super idiot. Inoue-sensei made him stand at the back of the classroom ‘cause he keeps falling asleep. Oh, did you know that I’m the smartest in kindergarten?”

When Tobio’s grandpa laughs, it’s with his head tucked down and his shoulders shaking and— Tobio does that too, when you trip over your own jump rope during recess.

“I’ll tell you the secret,” Kageyama Kazuyo-san says. He rocks back on his haunches with a tired groan, knees creaking with relief; he crosses his hands over them, wrist in palm. “But only if you stop saying Kageyama Kazuyo-san. It makes me sound like an old monk.”

The words fly out before you can catch them with your hands, which freeze halfway around your mouth. “But you are old, Grandpa-yama.”

He regards you with narrowed eyes and a pursed mouth, bent frame unfurling after a moment. Grandpa-yama has long legs; it takes him a while to stand straight with minimal protest from his creaky knees.

“The name,” he declares, forcing his shoulders back and chest forward with his hands balled and propped on his waist like some manga hero, “is Shiratorizawa.” He curls back into his normal old man posture. “Now, go to bed, it’s late.”

You settle next to Tobio on the floor of his room. He’s sleeping already, body furled fetal with his knees and arms held tight against his chest— the blanket of his futon is kicked to the side, and he’s half-laying on your own.

Tobio insisted on the roll-out mattresses for reasons unknown. He has his own bed, the frame towering over you on the floor. The shadow it casts reaches all the way to the door.

He shifts, just close enough that you can smell his mint toothpaste (you tried it earlier and gagged at the spiciness) and see his brows furrowing. Tobio makes a small, displeased sound when you tug your blanket from under him.

“Psst. I bet you forgot that your grandpa’s school was called Shiratorizawa,” you whisper.

His eyes don’t open, but his nose crinkles like the crushed paper in Inoue-sensei’s trash bin. “Shut up.”

“That’s a bad word, Tobio.”

He just yanks the blanket his way until you’re both huddled under it.

ー

Primary school rushes towards you at a speed you hadn’t expected.

Winter thaws and eases to a close; the ice that had built up under the eaves melts away with a slow drip, feeding the bushes that line the outer wall of your house. They’re budding now, little blue-tipped blooms that’ll surely burst come summertime.

Armed with your mother’s old randoseru (because the new ones at the big store in Sendai made you cringe at the price), you march the short distance to the gate of Tobio’s house and ring the bell.

You don’t really know how to read his last name on the nameplate; the characters are too complicated for a simpleton child like you, and even if you weren’t a simpleton, you’d still be too lazy to look up the meaning.

He’s just always been Tobio. You’ve never really seen the need to know the meaning of his family’s name until now, because according to your mother, surnames are so important that she made you practice writing real kanji and hid all your hiragana books last night.

A girl— Miwa, since Tobio said that his mom was leaving early and coming home late today, like all days— breathes life into the intercom. The feed sparks. “Good morning, who’s this? Wha— Tobio, don’t run out like that!”

The door swings wide and Tobio stumbles out, a dark blue randoseru hanging from his shoulders. You don’t miss how the leather shines with novelty; you close your fists tighter around the worn straps of your own bag.

When he grabs the bars of the gate that’s very much taller than he is to close it, you spring on him.

“How do you read your last name again? I only know it’s Kageyama, but like— which kage does it mean?”

Tobio latches the gate with a metallic snick. “Shadow or something.” And then he squints at the placard. “It’s not that hard to read.”

“It is,” you insist, scrutinizing the engraved characters. Kageyama Tobio— shadow, mountain, to fly, hero— it fits, you think. You jolt the wrong way when his fingers tug at your sleeve, jerking your nose into the nameplate. “Ow….”

Tobio mutters an apology and slides an arm out of his backpack strap to grab tissues; you eye him with your palm clasping your nose. There’s a weird flex in the big pocket of his randoseru, the seams stretching to accommodate—

“Tobio,” you tell him, “you know they probably have volleyballs at school, right?”

He huffs, scooping the ball out underhand and sending it over the gate. You hear it bump against some garden supplies with a shallow clatter. “They won’t feel the same as mine.”

The tissues he offers you are creased all over in their little plastic pack. You take one nonetheless and dab at your nose; it isn’t bleeding, which is good, but you sniffle just to make him feel bad. “A volleyball is a volleyball.”

His face pinches in on itself, puckering like the mouth of a drawstring bag. You resist the want to pull his face out of the expression with your fingers; Tobio angles away to fumble with a map before you can reach up.

He points down the street, eyes fixed on his paper. “My sister said to keep walking until we get to the…lamp with the cat and then turn right.” He frowns. “There’s a cat lamp?”

You shrug, reeling him by the arm along the sidewalk. The asphalt is still damp at this time of day, and loose rocks grit against the soles of your new shoes. Tobio grunts when he stumbles over a small pothole, tugging your wrist.

The lamp with the cat is, in fact, a streetlight hosting a number of lost pet posters. There must be at least fifteen dogs and cats and hamsters that your neighbors are looking for, though the hamsters are good as dead by now.

Tobio grunts to get your attention— walk all the way down until we get to the konbini; turn left. No, if you buy something, we’ll be late.

You turn to him pleadingly. “The entrance ceremony isn’t that important, right? It’ll be fine if we’re late.” Tobio just keeps looking on and on, eyebrows lax in exasperation. You groan, “I’ll buy milk too.”

The aircon breathes ice down your neck when Tobio tows you into the convenience store; he speeds straight to the vending machine, deliberating between two brands with a squint. You wander off to pick up an onigiri, grabbing the first one you see off the shelf.

When you come back, Tobio’s still trying to weigh his choice of milk box.

“What’s taking so long?” you mutter, digging around your pocket for spare change. You slip a coin into the machine’s slot, nudging Tobio out of the way.

You jam two buttons at the same time, and one of the boxes comes racketing down with a dull clatter. He kneels to grab it while you put in a few more coins for your own.

“This one isn’t healthy,” Tobio scowls, slipping your peach milk into his randoseru for safekeeping until lunchtime. He punches the sharp end of the straw into the hole in his box. “Too much sugar.”

You waltz to the counter, absently dumping a stack of coins for your onigiri. You unravel the plastic covering, digging your teeth into the rice ball; salty ikura bursts under your tongue. “I’m not a sports freak like you, Tobio.”

He grunts and hooks his fingers into your sleeve, pulling you towards the door. His nails are short and neat, skin still soft; the heat blooming from his palm bleeds into your skin.

You move closer to him without a second thought. Tobio is shorter than you are and you have to tilt sideways to accommodate him, but you don’t like walking with a lean, so you wrap your palm around his to fix it.

He keeps his words to his chest, easing into a silence only filled by the grit-gravel crunching under your shoes. It isn’t until after the opening ceremony does he slip away, drawn like a moth to the flame at the sight of a volleyball in the ball-bin during recess.

ー

Three summers pass in all but the blink of an eye.

Tobio’s not as tall as you yet, but he’s still the tallest boy in your year. You’ve gotten lucky time and time again to share a classroom, a desk next to him; that way, you always have him to whisper to and he’ll always have you to give him hints on the multiplication worksheet.

You’ve been twined by the hand since that spring day at the beginning of year one. The other girls in your class tease you endlessly, little snide comments about how you’re Tobio’s girlfriend and you are always gonna be my love, itsuka darekato—

You don’t really care. They become white noise when he stretches his arm across the aisle to tap your wrist for help; it’s lunchtime, and you’re halfway through a bite of your rice ball while your girl friends giggle.

“Hitano-sensei didn’t explain this well,” he mutters, brows angled together. “Mixing words and numbers is stupid.”

Tobio, though lonely more often than not, finds solace in the junior volleyball club. He’s learned some choice words from the bigger kids— not that you really care. To you, he sounds cooler.

You set down your lunch, chair scraping along the floorboards. “Underline the important stuff only.” Tobio begins to draw under every character. “Er…maybe just the numbers, it’s easier if you just take the numbers out first.”

You can hear them teasing you with that Utada song in the back of the classroom, off-beat and terribly out of tune.

Always be inside my heart, itsumo anata dake no basho ga arukaraaaaa…

You study Tobio instead. You’ve learned that in concentration, he tends to stick out his tongue, pinch his brows, and pout. It’s endearing; you find yourself leaning closer, close enough to see his lashes flutter and eyes dart around.

You’re just trying to get a better look at his eraser-bitten paper, that’s all. Really, that’s all.

ー

Valentine’s Day is a nuisance.

You can’t quite grasp where it all went horribly wrong. Before, in the lower years, everyone wrestled in the playground together with no qualms; now, the girls and boys have broken up into cliques, and the boys are the only ones who still wrestle. The girls flutter about in the shade and by the swings instead.

Tobio and you are the only ones who have yet to separate.

“Have you given anyone chocolates?”

You turn to meet the expecting faces of your friends. Akari, the one who asked, slips her gaze past the curve of your shoulder— you know that she’s looking at Tobio.

He’s been steadily growing, and before long, he might be taller than you. But that hasn’t happened yet, and you hope that it won’t for a long time.

If Tobio shot up above the rest of your year, the number of crushes on him would skyrocket. You don’t think you can handle more than one girl— your friend nonetheless— chasing his affections.

Akari’s looking at Tobio with so much love sickness that you can practically see the hearts in her eyes. Your face prunes like a plum forgotten in the sun. “No way.”

The group breaks into white-noise chatter.

Well, I’m giving sweets to Sato-kun — I hope Katogawa reads the love letter I put in his locker — Nakamura-kun already said that he can’t wait to give me flowers on White Day — Whaaat, you’re lucky Nana, Himura-san rejected me…

“I’m confessing to Tobio after school,” Akari says. The noise falls flat.

You blurt, “You can’t do that.”

“Why not? It’s not like he’s your boyfriend.”

It’s not like he’s your boyfriend either.

“Because,” you sputter, shooting a glance over your shoulder. The boy in question is spinning one of the school volleyballs, hands running over the cracks and crevices in the sun-beaten leather.

“Because what?”

You have a lot of things waiting to dart off your tongue: because you’ve never talked to him before, so why should you get to call him Tobio, because you don’t know him like I do, because volleyball has always been his first love and I’m pretty sure that he’s not interested in girls or romance for any of the matter, because I’m his best friend, because—

“He has practice after school,” you tell her instead. The rest gets caught wriggling between your teeth. “At our neighborhood’s volleyball club. They have a match next week.”

Akari doesn’t budge. “Well, chocolates will make him excited for his game!”

You scramble for anything else. “He doesn’t like chocolate. Plus, he already has a girlfriend.”

Someone— it might be Ichiko— almost shouts, but the sound is caught in the hollow of her slack jaw. “Who?”

“Volleyball.” You say it with as much nonchalance as you can muster and play with the skin next to your nail that’s beginning to peel in strips.

Pain blooms hot and red, aching under your skin when you pull it too far back. Tobio’s going to be mad that you’re messing with your fingers again, and then he’ll let you borrow his hand lotion and give you his nail clipper and tell you to cut the skin before it gets too long and starts bleeding— you know this because he does it every time, without fail.

Ichiko laughs at your remark and Akari isn’t far off. She says, “It’s probably just something he does for fun, you can’t be serious.”

“Don’t cry when I say that I told you so.”

Secretly, you hope that Akari will heed your warning. She doesn’t, and Tobio gives a whole box of chocolates to your mom because the only sweets he’s ever really liked were the milk-flavored popsicles from the konbini.

You don’t see Akari’s face for two days. It takes her three more to be able to meet your eyes, and another to open her mouth.

ー

“I’m going to Okinawa.”

You try not to let your words wilt like old kelp. Tobio’s spoon stills, hovering over the marinated egg he always nabs when you bring pork curry for lunch; you knew that he might get upset. You’ve spent every summer together since you were five, him trying a new milk flavor for every volleyball you tossed his way.

Tobio lowers his makeshift plate— the lid of your bento. “Okinawa? Up north?”

“It’s actually down south,” you correct, and you readjust your grip on your chopsticks for the fifth time. There’s a little crescent divot in the wood from your fidgeting habit; you run your nail over the dip and it slots right into place.

Tobio tucks his mouth in, holds it between his teeth. When he lets go, he runs his tongue over his lips lightning-quick. “You aren’t coming to Kita-iichi with me?”

“What?” You push the side of your chopsticks into a soft potato and it falls into halves. Tobio looks for some far horizon just past your temple. The distance bleeding into the edges of his eyes is maddening. “It’s just vacation.”

“Oh.” He slips back into normal function, spooning the curry egg into his mouth. As he chews, he pushes around the loose grains of rice on your bento’s lid. “But you are going to Kita-iichi, right?”

You snort and bridge the short distance of your desk to poke his cheek with the butt end of your chopsticks. “Obviously, ‘cause it’s closest to home.” You nudge him again, and he does nothing to stop it. “Why? Want me to walk to a different school? The next junior high is an hour away, you know, and I—”

Tobio scowls, cuts your sentence in the middle with, “And you hate exercise.” The tail end of his sentence gets warbled by the other half of the potato you had split between your chopsticks.

“I was going to eat that, Tobio.”

“Sorry.” He isn’t. You give him the other half of the potato anyway.

ー

One of Tobio’s teammates— Kindaichi, you think his name is— looks at you with something akin to awe on the days you’re able to stay for practice.

“You should come to practice more often,” says Tobio’s teammate Kindaichi’s friend, Kunimi. It’s lunchtime, and he beelined down the aisle of desks the moment Tobio ran off to get something from the vending machine. “Hell, come to all our games too.”

“I’m busy,” you tell him, shuffling away your literature papers. “Senior high entrance exams are coming up. Plus, I’m not interested in you.”

Kunimi’s laugh is low and lazy, almost blasé. “The only thing I’m interested in is when Kageyama plays nicer every time you’re there. It’s like he’s practically in love with you.”

“What?”

The boy in question rounds the door frame with two milk boxes in hand, gliding across the length of the classroom with his head bent to look at his phone. Kunimi skitters away in the opposite direction before your best friend can spot him.

Tobio pokes your drink— banana flavored this time— with the straw first before he does his. When he passes it over, you can still detect the barest heat from his skin lingering on the box.

“Didn’t get the scholarship to Shiratorizawa,” he grumbles. His milk box slowly sinks in on itself the longer he sulks, inhaling the dairy with a vengeance. “Guess I’m taking the test with you.”

You start going through the possibilities in a millisecond— Tobio learns better with flashcards and volleyball terminology, he needs to summarize better, there’s no way he’s going to get through the English portion of the exam without falling asleep. Maybe you’ll bribe him to push through, he’s been wanting to work on his digs for a while.

“My mom’s making curry tomorrow. I’ll have flashcards ready then.”

Tobio is still frowning (pouting is the better word) when he rests his shoulder against yours. You wonder if his teammates have ever seen him like this.

ー

“I’m cold.”

Spring is coming later than the last. There’s still a good, solid centimeter of snow waiting to thaw on the shingled roof, a layer of frost still clinging to the placard on your gate.

You shift under the covers until Tobio’s eyes are lined up with yours. You study the furrow of his brow, how his eyelashes make the barest flutter as he awaits your response.

He still drags down an extra futon when you’re over. You sink your fingers into your blanket and step over to his bed— the real one, with the frame and mattress and dark blue sheets.

It bounces when you flop down on it with loose, sleepy limbs.

“C’mon,” you mumble, rolling onto your stomach and lifting a corner of the blanket, “sleeping down there’s bad for your back.”

Tobio clambers over with deliberate, smooth movements, like he’s trying not to waste energy. When he lies down, it’s not with your ungracious attitude but with a gentle slide that makes his warmth wash over you in waves.

He holds you in his gaze, brows low over his eyes, the corners of his mouth downturned— there’s melancholy tucked in there, the blue dusk that lingers after the sun has melted behind the mountains.

Should you even be doing this? He’s a boy, you’re in the same bed, but he’s also your best friend who falls asleep with you every Friday night. What if you aren’t supposed to do this? What if they— whoever they are— take you away from him?

You pull the covers up to your chin and Tobio threads his arms around your frame. You find that all your worryings are just that— worries, empty promises of something that couldn’t possibly happen because he’s here.

Tobio guides your head to press against his sternum, wordless. You can feel the weight of what he wants to say though, pressing against your ear, knotted around your waist. You card through the crow-feather strands at his nape and a shudder rips a wavelength down his spine.

“You okay?”

His ribcage spreads around a gasp for air, spine flexing when he lets his breath out all at once. You trace a nondescript shape around a knot in his shoulder, and he wraps a knee around your own, wordless. You think about what Kunimi said.

An eternity doesn’t do the minute before he starts speaking justice; the seconds go viscous all while sprinting past you.

“Kazuyo died.”

Oh.

You wrap him tighter in your arms. You can hear his heart kissing the underside of his ribs— the rhythm is stable, slow and assured.

“I pulled out an extra chair yesterday, watching the game,” he rumbles like a storm resting in the horizon, “I forgot until Miwa sat there and asked me who was leading the set.”

With your mouth dry, tongue like cardboard: “Are you okay?”

The cricket song fills what he doesn’t say with harmonics. You shift until the negative space between your bodies is airtight, filled to the brim with the scent of clothesline wind and salonpas. It’s the sharp, minty smell of a gym that has you shuddering, tears staining thundercloud spots into his shirt.

“I’ll be okay—” You pinch his shoulder and Tobio huffs out a small, not really laugh. “You should ask yourself that.”

( One day, but not today. )

“I’m being serious,” and you don’t sound very serious with your voice muffled in his chest, caught by the tail under the lump in your throat. “Always here for you.”

The compass point of his nose kisses the crown of your head when he cranes down to murmur— I know. You’re sinking deeper into the lined-dried sheets, wading through a pool of the gentle, honeyed warmth that comes from being cocooned in your best friend’s arms.

“I miss Kazuyo too,” you speak again, cheek flush to the worn, pilled cotton of his shirt. Tobio smiles that smile with his mouth pressed in a line; you can feel the shape of it against your hair. “I think he’s proud of you, though.”

I’m proud of you too goes unsaid.

Tobio’s chuckle is shaky, stained with a butchered inhale— I know.

He always knows. The thought of pressing the truth between his lungs, into the atriums of his heart anyway still unspools in your stomach.

ー

You get into Shiratorizawa. Tobio does not.

You think that he’s already accepted it, walking away from the results board with his hands jammed firmly in his pockets and shoulders set straight. Still, you chase his shadow, prying your fingers between the gaps and slipping into his pocket.

His hands are cold to the touch; he lets you press your palm to his, reeling in the heat you offer him so readily, so willingly. You’re thoughtless in your pursuit, driven only by instinct and a need to hoard every moment you can get with him.

“It’s good.”

You almost miss it from how dampened his voice is. There are cracks in it, a swallow mid-way through a vowel, a pinch to his lip, tongue pocketed in cheek.

“What do you mean?” you ask, breath going cloudy around the corners of your mouth. You shrug your scarf higher until the wool tickles the tip of your nose.

He looks down at the scuffed toes of his shoes, following his own steps like he can’t really believe he’s still here. When he speaks, it’s stilted and butchered like he’s choosing his words so very carefully. “You’re smart. You can get anywhere with that.”

You draw your brows together, frowning. Tobio gives no resistance when you pull your tangled-up hands from his coat and plunge them into your own pocket. He sags with the movement though, shoulder tilting to accommodate the height difference.

“But getting anywhere doesn’t really mean much if you aren’t there. Plus, volleyball goes places too.”

You hear his smile more than you see it. It’s a light scoff that gets washed under the sound of traffic, an upstep in his gait, a rustle between his elbow and side when he clasps your fingers tighter. Tobio ducks his chin into the scarf that he borrowed from you— he never remembers to take his own— and clears his throat.

Can he smell your detergent on the wool? Once, you left a sweater in his room; he handed it back cleaned and folded properly as per the washing instructions. You pressed it to your face until near-suffocation, drowning in the scent of clothesline wind and citrus soap.

You tilt into him, arm to arm, tendrils of body heat knitting together until you can’t tell where he ends and you begin, “What’s your backup school? If it’s public, then we’ll have already taken the standard exam.”

He’s hesitant, too caught up in watching his steps pad against the concrete. Your eyes trace the path down his profile from the slope of his forehead, along the gentle swell of his wind-bitten cheeks, off the cliff point of his nose. At the end of your journey is his cupid’s bow, half-buried under his scarf.

The yearning hits you full-force then, to see the purse of his mouth, the bowed line of his lips. Tobio is pouting, and you’ve only been able to catch glimpses of it through a window, across the playground, down the hall. You try not to think about Tobio hiding it from you.

“You should,” Tobio lifts his head up, running his tongue over his lips. You almost chastise him for doing so because he’ll end up using the chapstick that he bought for you last winter; he knows that you’ve been saving it in your left inside pocket. His hand slips away, leaving a phantom warmth in your palm, “We should go to different schools.”

Did he really just say that?

You can hear how dry his mouth is when he speaks again. “I’m going to Karasuno for volleyball.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“No,” he refuses, taking in a shaky breath, “you’re going to Shiratorizawa.”

The frown that folds over your face is deep-set, betrayed. “You can’t decide that for me.”

Tobio starts with your name— and you’ve never known a sound so fulfilling than when he says it— sneakers grinding against the sidewalk when he pivots to grab your shoulders. The clouds steaming from the corners of his mouth are synced to the harsh rise and fall of his chest. “You’re throwing everything away by not going to Shiratorizawa.”

( He sounds like he’s in pain. )

There’s so much in you that wants to combat him; that you don’t care about Shiratorizawa; that throwing away everything means throwing him away because ever since you were five years old, Kageyama Tobio has been your everything and for god’s sake, you might even lov—

But like Valentine’s Day in third grade, turning around to answer Akari over the chatter of the playground, the well of what you want to say dries up the moment you pry your mouth open.

“Fine.” You lock the remains behind the pearled gates of your teeth, tear your gaze away to hide your tears behind a guise of defiance. Your voice splinters when you say it again— fine.

The walk back home is silent.

Your curtains don’t glow with flashlit fireflies in the night.

Pork curry with eggs doesn’t fill you up during lunch anymore. The vending machine at the konbini is always a few coins short and a strawberry milk too heavy.

Spring comes, and the cherry blossoms bloom too early for the opening ceremony at Shiratorizawa.

ー

from: tobi !! subject: untitled Don’t be late for your opening ceremony.

to: tobi !! re: subject: untitled (draft) so u want me back now or wha| (draft) idec abt shiratorizawa| (draft) my mom made pork curry| was late anyway. not sorry

from: tobi !! subject: Volleyball Training camp. A team from Tokyo came over to play with us. Hinata likes their setter.

to: tobi !! re: subject: Volleyball (๑•ૅㅁ•๑) ??

from: tobi !! subject: untitled haircut (miwa) kinesio tape salonpas protein powder

to: tobi !! re: subject: untitled im not ur grocery list ….my mom wants peach milk

to: tobi !! subject: interhigh haruko wtvr gl on semis. iwa and oikawa r troublesum.

from: tobi !! re: subject: interhigh haruko wtvr Haruko is in the spring. We’ll try that one if Interhigh doesn’t work out. Thank you.

from: tobi !! subject: English What does it mean when a sentence is partially inverted in past tense?

to: tobi !! re: subject: English (draft) idek what that is TT it means ur an idiot

to: tobi !! subject: shoulnt even care but i hate this school so u better beat them

from: tobi !! re: subject: shoulnt even care but Are you mad at me or something? You don’t have to go to the game but at least stop being mad. It’s bad for your heart.

to: tobi !! subject: toboke bakageyama stupid tobio ur so dumb smtimes i hate it >:/ and mom needs ikura onigiri from konbini on cat lamp street the brand w blue stripes.

from: tobi !! re: subject: toboke bakageyama Stupid Tobio also got peach milk for your mom as a surprise. She likes it, right?

ー

The sky opens up and in the patter of the raindrops, you think you can hear cicadas.

But that’s impossible; cicadas only come out in the summer, and it’s winter now. The mid-December chill has long wrapped its talons around the old wooden beams of your home, frosted over the corners of the windows and dripped from the eaves with icicles.

Your new heater sits over the ring of dust left by the metal fan from last summer; it hums with the winter storm outside. The day hasn’t gotten so cold that the rain will turn to snow. You hear the cicadas sing again.

( A better part of you knows that the hymn is just the heater’s hum. You still pretend that it is summer regardless. )

The doorbell rings and you don’t get up. Your mother is definitely calling you from the laundry room to greet your guests, but you only move to slide the short distance from the couch to under the kotatsu, feigning sleep.

Getting your feet warm again is the only thing you care about right now.

( Has this happened before? )

The cicada choirs cease their hum when the thunder gets too loud. Tobio— because you know that the footsteps are Tobio’s, he walks with the same caution and purpose from the court— pads over. When he crouches down, his knees crack, and you squeeze your eyes shut.

“Stupid Tobio,” he mutters. You can see his dumb little pout in your mind. “Not that stupid, I can be smart sometimes.”

You nearly stop pretending when you feel a cool hand on your forehead. But Tobio sighs in the absence of your response, clothes rustling with movement— he’s pulling the edge of the kotatsu’s blanket higher over your shoulder.

The cuff of his sweater brushes against the swell of your cheek; it’s damp, and you can smell petrichor on the threadbare fabric.

He ran up to the cat lamp konbini and back for you in the rain. He’s soaking wet and here he is, pulling up your blanket and checking if you’re sick or not.

“Can’t even work a kotatsu properly,” Tobio continues, cranking up the temperature until you’re sure that you’ve begun to sweat under the covers. “You’re the stupid one.”

He sets down something by your head, floorboards creaking as he stands, unfurls his spine, walks away. You crack your eyes open to a sliver.

It’s the peach milk.

The thing about Tobio is this: he doesn’t just ask if you could share your food or help him with a problem. He skates around what he really wants in hopes that you’ll be the one to pick apart the things he can’t express.

In this breadcrumb-trail language, pulling up the blanket and running errands in the rain is tantamount to I miss you.

Later, he slides his legs alongside yours under the kotatsu. You take a peek— he’s wearing the pajamas you always keep for him in the topmost drawer of your wardrobe.

“I know you’re awake.” Talk to me.

You shut your eyes tighter and feign a sleepy grumble, scooting away.

Tobio sighs. “I’m gonna drink your milk, it’s getting warm.”

“You’re a meanie.” Say sorry.

“And who’s the one ignoring me for a year?”

This is certainly a bruise to your pride, being made to apologize before he does. But then again, you’re equally as guilty for the ongoing feud with your best friend, opting for prickly exchanges and stiff greetings when you both happen to leave the house at the same time.

You huff and shuffle forward, resting your temple on his thighs, wreathing his waist with the cage of your arms. Tobio doesn’t seem to mind being held captive— instead, he maneuvers so that the sliver of space between you and his solar plexus is infinitesimal.

Here, you can feel every breath he takes. It’s more…intimate than it should be, but those worms of thought are banished by Tobio’s hand resting on your head. He’s warm, a lot warmer than the kotatsu.

“We’re going to Nationals,” he says to fill the silence. “Do you…want to go to the temple together on New Year’s? For good luck.”

“Yea.” It comes out before you can think. “I miss being with you.”

Tobio’s fingers slide tentatively from your crown to your temple, then lower until his palm cups your jaw, thumb pressing at the corner of your mouth. You swallow when you look to catch your best friend (more than, please, more than) slowly turning pink.

You had forgotten that he has dimples. The little dip in his cheek is still there when he suppresses his smile, all the same.

Everything thaws.

You might be seeing spring.

— 7.2k words later,, haii,, if u read thru all the yap abt tobio then ur legally obligated to reblog with tags!! /hj but pretty pls give me ur thoughts i will eat them all for breakfast lunch dinner and dessert <3

“Mark, I promise you,” you say. The pillar fan tilts toward you, providing the barest breeze to kiss the sweat coating your forehead. “It is not that deep.” 

“You’re telling me that Violet making a point that she wants to sit in the back of the theater is ‘not that deep?’” Mark rolls his eyes, exasperated. He stumbles up, steps sluggishly to his bed and flops down without ceremony. 

You follow him. Sit on the edge of the mattress, the bottom of Mark’s (Séance Dog) socked foot pressing into the side of your thigh. “You always make me sit in the back with you. How is that not different?” 

It is completely and totally different, though. Here’s the thing: you and Mark are friends—besties, even, when you don’t roll your eyes or want grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. You most definitely don’t make out in the back of a movie theater like a pair of freaks. 

Case in point: you’re in his room, door shut all the way, and his parents are out on a date. Debbie doesn’t even have to give you the shovel talk any time she leaves you two alone. That’s how much integrity your friendship with Mark has. 

And Violet? You don’t really have much of an opinion to say something about her. Well, not if you want to sound like a real bitch. 

But just to put it out there in an unbiased manner, you know she’s been plotting on him since the middle of sophomore year, and you did not appreciate her joining Yearbook. You were even less appreciative watching her save random candids of Mark to her personal drive. 

(Alright, you did the same thing, but only for the ugly ones where his face is warped, blurry, or could star in a horror movie. And you do that for William too—with full consent from both, obviously, and totally not for the purpose of exchanging blackmail material.) 

You can’t blame her for liking Mark. He’s funny, kind, cute at the most inconvenient of times. Even though his grades are average and he looks like he would be an e-dater, you and the rest of the school know that Mark Grayson is one of sweetest, most genuine boys out there. 

You also can’t blame him for freaking out either. Violet is pretty; shiny hair and clear skin and natural makeup. Heart lips and doe eyes. His type, probably. It’s the first time a girl has given him her number, and this will be his first kiss or more. The realization hardens into a pit in your stomach. 

But back to what’s important—you just don’t think they’re good for each other. She’s in love with an idea of Mark found through candids and hallway talk, and you know who he really is. Not that it makes you a prime candidate to be his girlfriend or whatever. 

He sputters and kicks his foot. You grab him by the ankle, hot skin on hot skin. That makes something flip in your stomach; you swear it’s the pint of ice cream you polished off from the Grayson’s fridge. 

“Look,” you start. Mark lifts his head, glares at you with a heat-addled blush. You want to push him off the bed. And you also, maybe, want to profess your affection. “Violet’s liked you for—I dunno, probably a while. Asking out a guy isn’t easy, so if you’re just gonna go to get some, don’t go at all.” 

She’d better thank you for this. Here you are, playing seesaw with your judgement and sticking your neck out for the girl you try to sit very, very far away from in the yearbook room. 

Pure denial, saucepan eyes and hands waving in a distraught flurry, “I’m not. She’s pretty, and nice, and I do want to go out with her. I just…” 

Mark rolls over onto his stomach with a long groan, squirms with discomfort. Pinching his calf, you raise your brows at him when he looks over his shoulder, whole face and neck splashed with pink. Spit it out, already.  

“I don’t know how to kiss,” he finally admits. Now it’s your turn to roll your eyes—barely five seconds since you told him not to go if he only wanted something out of it. Mark rushes to defend himself. You’d think he was sunburnt with how much pinker he gets. “Jesus Christ, just in case! And it’s not like you know how to do it, either. Books—or whatever you read—don’t count.” 

“At least I have a tutorial,” you mutter, giving him a once-over from your peripheral and scooting away. You know what your sneer must look like; some mix between judgy and terribly disappointed, and you’re probably right, because Mark lunges for your hand and pulls you right back. 

“Okay, Ms. Tutorial, you haven’t had any real-world experience,” he reminds you. He pokes your cheek with a lopsided smile. 

Singsonging right back at him, “Your tissue-lotion combo doesn’t count as experience either.” 

You know you’re evil, but it’s not like William doesn’t bring it up either. If they get to tease you for reading sometimes spicy romance stories, then you’re allowed to serve the ball right back into their court. 

If he wasn’t pink before, Mark lets your hand fall and turns scarlet. Mouth dropping and slow head turn and all, like he’s the butt of a sitcom joke. You can almost hear the laughing track playing in the background while he struggles to fish for his words. 

Just barely above the drone of the fan, nothing below a mortified, high-pitched squeak, “You wouldn’t.” 

You laugh and dig your hand into his hair, mussing it up. “You know I’m kidding.” 

And you’re telling the truth this time around. That makes him frown (fussy as always), but he still settles down with his head resting atop your thigh, eyes pinched shut. He’s so cute, whispers a voice at the back of your head, he pouts like an overdramatic baby. 

You trace a line between the two moles on his cheek and wish that your heart would stop trying to break open your ribs. 

Mark reopens his eyes slowly, a revelation dawning. Oh, you don’t like that look on his face. It’s the kind that landed both of you in detention before finals week for the parking lot incident. Curse Mr. Porter—forever remembered as the worst US history teacher, by the way—for insisting that you get your first transcript strike, all for a little eggshell on his car. 

“Don’t give me that look,” you sigh, exasperation creeping up your spine. You just started to forgive him for his AC grievances. Mark smiles at you innocently, brown eyes going soft like he’s the male lead of a romcom. “Why are you giving me that look?” 

“Since you read so much, you should know what girls like, right?” he asks, goading. He’s got that angle to his mouth that tells you he’s trying to fight back a fit of giggles. 

Is he still hung up on this? You speak with hesitance, hands fisted at your sides just in case you can’t hold back the urge to strangle him, “Right...” 

“So.” He draws out the ‘o’ all the way, until he runs out of breath. A quick inhale, and then, “You said it yourself. It’s basically a tutorial.” 

“So?” you can’t help but lead him on, even though you don’t like where this is going. Don’t say it. Don’t ruin it. Fingers finally uncurling, you press your palms into his duvet to fight how clammy they’ve become. “I’ve never actually kissed someone.” 

“So,” Mark says again, a hopeful smile gracing his mouth. Faint dimples and constellation freckles—compared to his reaction when you brought up the tissues, he’s practically stone-cold serious. “We could practice on each other.” 

He says it like it’s the simplest thing, kissing your best friend. 

You hold your breath, count to three. A high-pitched guitar riff from his CD player. It matches the ringing in your ears. 

You’re supposed to say no. 

On the Immortal’s soul, Mark is still your best friend, no matter how infuriating and impulsive and stupid he may be, or how many times you want to smother the lights out of him with his own pillow for being those exact three words. And fuck, how does he get his pupils dialed up to dinner plate diameters? 

But all that falls out of your unsteady mouth instead is a dumb, “I guess,” and Mark looks so happy that he could kiss you. Well, you just signed your soul away to let him do exactly that, but not before— “You gotta brush your teeth first.” 

—

You glare at Mark’s reflection in the mirror. 

He gives you a look with raised brows, toothpaste foam clouding around his mouth—what’cha looking at? You shake your head, expression blank—none of your business. 

Speaking only in shrugs and eyebrow wiggles gives you the opportunity to think about your actions without accidentally saying the wrong thing again. God, you’re so stupid for being weak to Mark’s I’m a beagle puppy and I just got kicked look. When you get home, you will be pulling up a picture of them and training yourself to fight back. 

The sink rushing snaps you out of your thoughts. Mark emerges from the basin with cold rivulets running down his face, dripping from his hair, racing down his...forearms. You’ve never paid attention to the faint veins and casual lean muscle your best friend carried, but now you’re struggling to tear your eyes away. 

That’s enough—you imagine slapping yourself across the face and your head snapping to the side from the sheer force—don’t be a fucking freak, you are not like those kids at school who sneak behind the dumpster to get freaky. 

The word repeats in your head: freak, freak, freak. 

Mark grazes his fingers along the small of your back, making a shiver rip its way up your spine. “You good?” 

“Uh-uh,” is all you can manage without choking on the toothpaste in your mouth. You’re getting dizzy with anticipation, chest and stomach organs staging a mutiny and going buck-wild inside your body. 

Telling yourself that this is just practice, you rinse off and drop your toothbrush in the holder beside Mark’s. You keep your face in the sink basin for a little longer than usual; cold, wet hands pressed to your burning cheeks, stars spiraling behind closed eyes. 

It’s just the heat, you tell yourself, disregarding the way your thoughts scramble upon the realization that Mark’s still standing by counter, waiting for you. 

Just the heat. 

—

Knees knock when you and Mark settle with your backs pressed to the headboard, side by side. 

You ball your hands in the yellow duvet that lays over his mattress, and Mark’s own fists are white-knuckling the hem of his basketball shorts. His hair is still drying, face beginning to bloom with that pretty shade of pink again. 

Heat digs its claws into your neck. 

“So,” you start, just as Mark asks: “Ready?” 

He swallows, drawing your attention to the way his Adam’s apple bobs. Strained; an awkward smile, “You go first.” 

He’s all tense, ramrod straight like a cardboard cutout. 

As earnestly as you can manage, you reach for his hands; they’re cool to the touch, veins rising to the smooth surface of his skin. His fingers twitch as you guide them up to your face. The tremors are infecting you too. When his palms finally cup your warm cheeks, your relieved exhale shivers. 

You might explode at the sight of Mark’s eyelashes fluttering. 

“’Kay.” You aren’t sure if he can hear you over the grumble of his fan. You get a little stuck on your words when Mark’s tongue darts out to wet his lip. 

“I think I should’ve turned on the AC,” he blurts, just as quiet. A stillness slips over the room. He sighs, wistful, “Too late, I guess.” 

You burrow your socks into the duvet for some kind of grounding and huff lightly. “Changing your mind?” 

Mark tugs you in to place a small kiss to the corner of your mouth. You swear you erupt into a pile of ash as he pulls away and gives you a sweet smile, eyes still lingering on where he’s just been. “Does that answer your question?” 

You nod a little too fast.  

Holding steady, mouth starting to go dry, “So, there’s this triangle thing that apparently makes girls go crazy—” Mark follows exactly, gaze darting from your eyes, to lips, and back up again, leaning forward slowly. You forget what you’re about to say for a long moment “—yea, that.” 

He’s close enough that if you moved just a hair width forward, you’d be— 

“Can I kiss you for real?” 

The question feels like getting shot in the back. He’s too sweet for your own good. You might be walking away with cavities in your teeth and your heart after this. 

“Wow, you can read my mental instruction manual?” you tease. 

You keep your eyes open when Mark ducks his head to kiss you. You almost snicker—he's got the half-closed eyes and Kermit mouth, the epitome of a boy kissing and the stuff of nightmares for your girlfriends. 

It’s weirdly endearing and calming at the same time. He’s just a guy who happens to be one of your best friends; he can be gross and stupid and a total loser, but you still love him. 

Love. 

That isn’t something you’ve ever consciously thought about with him in the way couples get comfy in the halls. Dreamt about, maybe.  

You love him in the way you burn CDs for him on the school computers and save up to buy compendiums when his birthday comes around. And Mark loves you enough to let crash in his bed and wear his sweaters when it gets cold. But those are best friend things just as much as they are romantic things. 

You push it to the back of your mind at the first press of Mark’s lips. It’s chaste, stilted, two seconds long, and still makes your heart leap into your throat. 

He’s your first, you remember belatedly. And you’re his. 

Tastes like mint toothpaste, and victory. 

Take that, Violet! jeers a voice in your head. 

Mark doesn’t pull away for long, but you chase him immediately. He surges back, a little looser, tilting his head to slot his mouth against yours. You blink, and then you can’t open your eyes again, too lost in the slide of your mouths. Fuck, is he sure that this is his first time? 

Parting his plush lips wider, noses bumping into each other, soft sighs drowned in the white noise of the fan and still-running CD. He holds you with a sweet reverence, like you’ve been bruised all over, one hand skating down your arm to settle on your waist. 

You gasp when he nips at your bottom lip, startling him. 

Your teeth clack together as he draws back, pulling a light giggle out of your throat. Mark blinks expectantly, a slim ring of brown around his huge pupils. 

Right. You’re supposed to be coaching him on how to kiss with your romance book knowledge. 

“Was that okay?” he asks, hoarse. His throat keeps bobbing, mouth still parted like he’s tasting the air. You think: fuck it. 

You kiss him back, hands tangling into his hair, the rough spikes of his undercut scraping your palms. He’s going to need a haircut soon; you can feel it, the tacky way the longer strands cling to your skin. Mark murmurs your name in a groan, a sound that makes your cheeks go numb with how hot they grow. 

Dizzy, breathless. A string of butterflies unspools in your belly. Everything not Mark fades out—forget the heat, the fan, the heavy bass line of the current song. All you know is that one of your hands is sliding down to rest on his sternum, feeling how his heart furiously tries to meet your touch. 

The thoughts catch up to you, in fragments. He kisses like you’re water and he’s a parched man. Like he loves you, and this isn’t just practice. 

Mark threads his fingers into your hair, hungry, pushing you to teeter on the knife’s edge between sanity and the beyond. You feel weightless, fuzzy in the way shadows are when a smudgy sun peers out from the horizon. You don’t want to stop. You can’t stop, and neither can he. 

In a flash, Mark is moving your leg to the side, settling in the space he’s made for himself. His mattress is forced to dip under his weight—a voice screams about general relativity before you smush it down—pulling you into the supermassive black hole of his gravity. 

You almost pass out when he pulls you closer, knee nudging the inside of your thigh, accidentally finding a strip of bare skin under your shirt. It must have ridden up. A shudder tears down your neck at the hummingbird flutter of his eyelashes on the apple your cheek. 

Moving again, Mark blazes a line of kisses along your jaw and neck. Playing connect-the-dots, or something. Ear lobe, larynx—oh god, collarbone. It comes like second nature to turn your head and bare your neck to him. 

Your cheek meets the cool, polished wood of his headboard. You can’t think straight. This is going to be burned into your memory like how you burn his CDs. 

Faintly, you register the player on his desk shutting off, the mixtape reaching its end. Something, somewhere far-off, sputters to a stop, plunging the room into a silence broken only by the sound of Mark chasing your lips again. 

“‘S just me,” you manage between kisses—Mark hums into your mouth, the tip of his tongue lazily tracing your bottom lip in a heart-stopping move, “or is it getting really hot?” 

You almost try to follow his mouth when he turns his head to check. Separation provides a little bit of relief; you hadn’t noticed just how warm it was with his body crushed against yours. You crack your eyes open, vision coming back to focus just as Mark groans. 

Voice rough with disuse, “Fan’s broken.” 

Your gaze rolls along to meet his—you should have kept your eyes closed. You can only process the sight in fragments; Mark kneeling above you; chest rising at a million shallow beats per minute; eyes glassy, starstruck; lips swollen; skin flushed pink down to his collar; hairline damp with perspiration, the top messed up by your fingers. 

Another wave of sticky warmth crashes over you. 

He looks shit-faced drunk. You probably look the same way. 

“Shit,” you whisper, melting against the headboard. You’re gonna die of heatstroke, all because you kissed your best friend. 

Mark clears his throat, hurriedly fixing his hair. “Do you—do you wanna get fries?” 

“Huh?” 

“Fries,” he repeats. He dives for a shy peck at the corner of your mouth, back to his old chaste self. You don’t know how he keeps his composure. “New place a couple blocks down—free AC, you know.” 

“I guess.” You’ve been guessing a lot lately. Somehow, it’s landed you here. 

He stands up, somehow steady on his feet. “I think we could walk there.” 

“Isn’t it too hot?” 

“I mean,” Mark puts a sheepish hand behind his head, smoothing down the hair you dug your fingers into. Your eyes are drawn to the way his tricep stretches, magnetically attractive. “We just kissed. Can’t get any hotter than that.” 

“You’re gross.” 

—

Mark takes his bottom lip between his teeth, fingers dusted with garlic parm seasoning. 

“Spit it out,” you say, sticking your hand into the bucket perched between the two of you. 

The fry joint is small and reminiscent of a 50’s diner. Harlequin tile, vinyl cushions. You’re squished side by side in a booth, not unlike the way you were sitting against his headboard thirty minutes ago. Just infinitely less tense and sweaty and…intimate. Plus the fry bucket acting as an invisible wall. 

“Did I do okay?” he asks, lifting his thumb to his mouth. Mark licks the salt off his fingerprint—gross. If you didn’t get over your thing against (specifically) his germs a long time ago, you would’ve told him to get his own fries. 

Things are back to normal…not really. Now that you know what hides beneath his innocent exterior, you can’t help but watch his tongue darting out and think back to how it was just in your mouth. 

“I mean,” you pause, rolling back your mental tape, “I liked it, even if it was your first.” 

“And yours too.” 

That’s—what, the third reminder? Your brain activity is brought to a screeching halt. It doesn’t count, right? It can’t possibly. 

Mark looks at you sweetly, all innocent. You can hardly form a thought about his stupid face without having flashbacks to the way his eyes went foggy kissing you. 

Punctuating the long silence that follows, “We were just doing it for practice.” 

He nods right away, eager to agree. With you or his own rationale, you can’t tell. “Yeah. Like doing it with the back of your hand, right?” 

“Right.” 

“Except you’re a real person.” 

“Yeah.” 

You’re on the same wavelength, as always. 

Assured, Mark smiles. You’re strangely comforted by the confirmation that no, this doesn’t mean anything. Your relationship is still holding strong, minus the fact that you made out till you were almost tipsy. But Mark doesn’t have to know that you’re still thinking about it. 

“So when’s your date?” you ask, keeping your voice level. It still breaks off at the end. 

“Friday,” Mark responds, paying no mind to how you grip the edge of the bucket a little tighter. That’s closer than you thought it was. “We’re gonna see Descender.” 

Ouch. Everything he says just drives another nail home into your heart. You wanted to see Descender with him. Hell, it’s the first comic he ever got you into, so it’s special. 

You can’t believe just how stupid he is. 

“What if,” you swallow, inspecting the fry you just picked up, “it doesn’t work out, between you and Violet?” 

“I mean, I hope it does. But if not,” he grins at you with a glimmer in his eyes, dimples taunting you to pull him in, “I have my best friend.” 

“Is that asking for Round Two?” 

“Just saying,” Mark says. He puts his hands up, garlic salt and parmesan still dusting his fingertips. “Now that we’ve got it out of the way, just call me if you wanna practice again. Back of your hand, right?” 

“Except with a real person,” you repeat. A shadow passes over his face, but it’s gone just as quickly as it came. “Real feedback in real time.” 

Mark gives you dazzling smile worth a thousand watts; it’s the one he always pulls out when the matching halves of your braincells click together, all dimples and smug joy. Your heart flips. 

“Read my mind, there.”