#((hmm...))

Ice cubes pooled on his lap, some on the floor. His slacks were black today, so the wet stains won't be visible at least. His top is worse for wear, the toffee hue plastered onto the cloth. It's designer. It'll cost a lot to wash, and he couldn't recall if the laundry service he uses was open at this time.

The midfielder's looking up at you, taking in your face of indignation. Full of a potent loathing with a deep scowl embroidered into the twist of your lips and brow. It was kind of hard to see, with his soggy bangs stuck to his forehead now, dripping the coffee. You hold the incriminating evidence in one hand—the cup itself—and the other was balled into a fist.

But the novelty of seeing your face without baby fat—his first time seeing you face-to-face since he left for Spain at fourteen—somehow washes away his assumed irritation for being hit with a cheap café drink.

(Was it assault? Technically, yes. Does he care? Not necessarily.)

He's never seen you so mad before. But, he shouldn't really be surprised, considering the circumstances of his stay in Japan right now. You're a shadow of the kid he vaguely recalls, and him of himself.

In a way, Sae assumed Rin would have filled you in on everything that's happened. Some misplaced rivalry, one that eighteen year old Itoshi Sae brushed off as Rin being in that rebellious, pubescent, testosterone-fueled stage of life. He assumed Rin would have sought some sort of refuge in the closest figure who could isomerize his absence. That you two would have grown close enough in his absence for Rin to confide in you (even if it stirred something odd in his chest).

That even now, at his age of twenty one, he isn't free from his stupidity in youth. And you're the grim reaper passing judgment on his misdeeds. The real question was how close were you with Rin? And to what extent?

It didn't matter if your gazes were often held for extended periods of time, if your pinkies would brush when you'd sit beside him on the bench after a match. It didn't matter if you leaned onto him, whispered dreams and shared in laughter over the idiocy of your younger siblings. That was the past. That was childhood. This is—

"—a waste of time." Your words rip Sae out of his recollection, and his eyes track the way your chest shakes with the effort to take deep breaths. A hand carding through your hair, brows knitted.

"The bar was so low. You somehow managed to screw up there, too."

You and Sae shared similar sentiments. Similar perspectives. Similar habits. Similar everythings. Same inclination for blunt statements that come off as harsh, same birth order, same amount of love for your passions, and the same appreciation for your respective specialties. How you took care of your little sister reminded him of himself and a chubbier, kinder Rin, back when you both were nine and your presence was a frequent one at the Itoshi house.

Though, he wondered, did you treat your sister the way he treated Rin? He doubts it.

Swinging your leather bag onto your shoulder, your gaze remains lethal. Despite all the hushed gasps and murmurings around you in the café, you stood firm. All the people whipping out their phones to capture the fiasco didn't dissuade you from making a spectacle out of the worldstar in a public space. It was like a poorly shot drama, where he was the miserable adulterer caught for having affairs with a woman other than his girlfriend—the latter being you.

You, who tosses the empty cup at Sae's feet. It clatters and rolls to his leather shoe, running through the puddle beneath him and his seat. It reminds him of a football. It reminds him you have nothing to give him, and he hasn't given you anything to warrant any sort of kindness from you either.

Maybe that's why he chooses to not open his mouth, despite the nagging urge to at least defend himself or deflect. All things he wouldn't normally do. Things that you make him want to do.

"Next time you show up in front of me without meeting Rin first, you're dead. Fuck off to Spain for all I care."

You were always so fiercely protective. A blaze in your mouth and embers trailing in your feet as you storm out, leaving the coals of your fire to die out in the sea glass of his eyes.

When you're long gone and Sae's still drenched in the drink you ordered, staring at the croissant you never touched—maybe because he paid for it—he wonders if those words of yours would last. If you meant it from the bottom of your heart, even after all the years of distance. Even if there was some semblance of pathetic, childhood yearning. He didn't even see you when he visited at eighteen to play for the U-20; maybe your distaste was warranted there, somehow.

He plays with the frayed, worn out beaded bracelet around his wrist. A childhood memory far away from now, its round shapes in the varying shades of your eye color. An exasperated sigh is all he grants himself as a reaction, pushing down the violent urge to be swept away in unnecessary disappointment. He should've expected this, he muses, stroking the colored beads.

Why did he wear this bracelet today? Why didn't he fire back some offhanded remark to your criticism?

He doesn't want to think about it. He'd rather not, as he leaves the café with an even bigger headache. It wasn't every day that you get doused in the drink of the first person you ran into, especially if they're someone from your childhood.

(Ran into, he claims. As if he didn't dig through the deepest parts of his untouched memory to recall what pastries you liked, your opinion on coffee and drinks, and the café you mentioned as a kid that you thought was pretty, even if "it's made for adults and gross coffee." As if he didn't wait and quietly hope for a certain familiar face to possibly pass by.)

Rin isn't home when Sae swings by for a place to stay (he doesn't wanna admit seeing you made him feel nostalgic). He doesn't mind his absence, awkwardly conversing with his mother, who's beyond thrilled to see her eldest son after years. Your earlier words were pushed to the back of his mind as he ran some match footage on his phone.

He doesn't know his mom invited you over for dinner. He thinks he's over your disgusted, wronged reaction to his return. (He is not.)

He finds out pretty late into the night, as he opens the door, and meets your cheery expression. You, finely dressed on his porch with a tupperware for a dinner with your practically second family. Even worse, you, smiling like the sun incarnate. Nothing but pure and absolute excitement in your face, full of something akin to familial love because you probably anticipated his mom opening the door.

How closely your face still resembles and belongs to the charming girl from his youth, who used to know him and he, you.

He's mentally, distantly cataloguing symptoms of cardiac arrest—arrhythmia, shortness of breath, dizziniess, confusion—when your face drops. But the damage is done, and seeing you smile like that was enough to stall him. Just not in the way that would send his physician into a fit, but his PR manager, sure.

"Hi," Sae manages, eloquent and Shakespearean.

You're more Socratic—you spit out a startled, "what the fuck?"

He's screwed.

mimi's missive: i might expound on this in the future but the people (my neurons) yearn for itoshi sae. :]