#hikaai

art by @DDU_45 on twitter

The final moments of a bloomed petal

are when it falls to the ground to become dirt, whirling in the wind.

I thought a lot about this, so little talk about it under the cut!

Because she tells us as much, more or less. Obviously Ai does not and likely would not ever put it as straightforwardly as I do, both because she would sooner chew off her own arm than blame someone else for a situation in which she perceives herself to be at fault and because I am the detached reader with a birds-eye perspective, but it's there when you read between the lines. Also, just like - the fact that the breakup happens at all also, obviously, points in this direction, as a person who is generally satisfied with a relationship typically does not opt to leave it and then turn down the opportunity to return to it despite their ex still being someone they clearly continue to hold deep affection for.

But, starting with Ai's perspective - there's her dialogue from 154:

To put it blunty, this is not the way someone describes a relationship that was making them feel good or safe. She even straight up says herself that Hikaru was dependent on her and her decision to leave is the result of her making the - to be honest, probably correct - judgement call that he was not emotionally or mentally in the right state to deal with her pregnancy. Again, this does not paint the picture of a dynamic in which Hikaru was acting as a consistently dependable or even particularly reliable support system for Ai - she perceives her own emotional needs and decisions as things that will come to 'burden' him and seems to have been put in a position where she was forced to consider said decisions primarily through the lens of whether or not they would cause Hikaru pain.

Beyond what Ai herself says, I also think how Hikaru describes their dynamic during the flashback in 153 to be equally telling in a different way:

That last page is even worse in Japanese, imo - Hikaru says 「僕にはアイしか居ないし、アイには僕しか居ない」, meaning something more like "Ai is the only one I have… and I'm the only one she has." or maybe "I have no one but Ai, and Ai has no one but me." In other words, as far as Hikaru is concerned, Ai's entire world revolves exclusively around him and he presumes that she is as satisfied with this arrangement as he is.

I think it's also telling that while Hikaru talks vaguely about 'supporting each other', there are no real examples in the text of him actually providing Ai with any meaningful support. The closest we ever get to him doing so is him teaching her how to act while they were at Lalalie together. Outside of that, everything we see is Ai taking care of him. He is the one who comes to her for help. He is the one who is 'on the verge of breaking', who Ai must be careful not to 'burden' with her own needs. He is the one who sees her as someone to help him bear his burdens, but not someone who has burdens that he needs to help bear in turn. I also think it's not an accident that, across these pages, the panel in which Hikaru is looking directly at Ai's face, she's smiling - but the two where he isn't and in particular, the one where she's alone with her thoughts, she seems troubled.

And like, to be clear, it is not some kind of Moral Failing that Hikaru was not able to be a 100% stable and responsive rock for her during their relationship - he was a child who was literally being sexually abused by an adult immediately before (and possibly during!) their relationship. He was suffering an immense amount of pain and Ai is obviously keenly aware of it. But her awareness of that pain and her desire to meet it with compassion doesn't actually make it any easier for her to exist within a relationship where she is constantly having to prioritize her boyfriend's needs over her own when she, too, is a fifteen year old girl who is struggling to navigate her own complicated career and personal life. I've described the breakup before as Ai realizing that she did not have the capacity to be a mother to both her new baby and her boyfriend and I still stand by that lol.

To sort of bring together a lot of scattered thoughts I've had about HikaAi as a duo in the past - the picture that's always been painted for me is one of two kids who are both deeply alone and in immense pain who recognize and respond to a particular sameness they're able to recognize in each other and in doing so, they're able to form a genuinely deep connection that gives them both something that was missing in their lives beforehand. There was a genuine love there. But the reason it ultimately failed is that, at the end of the day, their circumstances and the fact that they were both still children meant they were not actually in a position where they were capable of offering each other the kind of help they were each desperately in need of. They needed wider support networks and trusted adults in their lives who could help them and those were simply not things they had.

I know it's different situations but the same dead look in their eyes, Hikaru's star completely disappearing and Kana's galaxy eyes becoming like a black hole.

Plus this, the regrets.

I always say Aqua's relationships with both Kana and Akane can parallel Ai and Hikaru but in this case it felt more with Kana tbh.

I'm surprised to see that there are not many posts discussing the similarities between Aqua and Hikaru when they have been used as foils to each other multiple times in the story.

I guess that mainly stems from the fact that we didn’t get to see much of Hikaru, which is a shame. But while rereading the ending from chapter 150, I couldn’t help but find their dynamic incredibly interesting because, honestly, it’s the last way I would imagine them interacting.

First is the surface-level stuff: they obviously look incredibly similar. Aqua is literally Hikaru with shorter, combed hair. They’re both actors, but most importantly, both can easily make others do what they want.

"A family bigger than four" has now been uploaded on pixiv in full with a title page!

(yes, the little baby has Ai's hair.)

separate posts:

part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / side story 1 / part 5 / part 6 / part 7 / part 8 / part 9

side story 2-1 / 2-2 / 2-3 / 2-4

part 10 / part 11 / part 12 / part 13 / part 14 / part 15 / part 16 / part 17 / part 18 / part 19 / part 20 / part 21 / part 22 / part 23 / part 24 / part 25 / part 26 / part 27 / part 28 / part 29 / part 30 / part 31 / part 32 / part 33 / part 34

part 35(+side story 3 prologue) / side story 3-1 /3-2 / 3-3

Wedding 1 / 2 / illust 1 / illust 2 / 3 / 4

part 36 / part 37 / part 38 / part 39 / part 40