#kusajou

My ship archetype in question: dark/brown hair x blonde hair

The way I see it, he seems like a coward who’s afraid to go for anyone whom he doesn’t have power over, probably because he’s afraid of rejection from someone who’s actually more his equal—his “they’re not like us” feels to me like him projecting his own fears of non-reciprocity and one-sidedness when it comes to queer love towards Hikaru, and him using that fear to manipulate Rihito into accepting his advances. It’s a similar kind of fear to when Hikaru’s friend tells him that them and Rihito are “different genres”, that maybe Rihito wouldn’t “get” Hikaru in a sense; Rihito, a Good Kid who studies hard for his academic goals and has a clear career path he’s intent to take, and Hikaru, who stays up past midnight smoking cigarettes and performing with his soon-to-be disbanded band for a club that sells liquor to minors. 

And it does get to Rihito. Hara saying that Hikaru is “not like them” gets to him the same way Hikaru’s friend saying that they’re “different genres” and that them being together is “weird” gets to him. And a similar kind of fear gets to Hikaru when Rihito starts to work towards his own career path while he hasn’t figured out the path that he himself should take, that he wouldn’t be able to catch up to him, that Rihito was “really just waiting for their relationship to fade out”, and also when he thought that they didn’t have the same goal (being in each other’s company) when practicing for the choir... But time and time again, these fears are proven wrong by them simply being honest and genuine with each other and trying to work towards an understanding.

But also, there are valid fears when it comes to being queer especially in such an environment; things like being outcasted and losing your job over it, for example. I was gonna say that Hara making advances towards his student is a worse career-ending offense than that…but then I remembered that a lot of child abusers actually get away with it just fine, and also, he is probably counting on Rihito and Hikaru not saying anything about it—speaking up would out them as well, after all. And assuming Hara is monosexual and gay, him reading a (straight) porn mag at school in that one scene really reads like performative straightness to me, which is contrasted to the kids who were also reading a similar kinda magazine in the hallways, except they seemed to actually enjoy reading it.

In a way, there’s a messed up kind of mutual understanding between the three—it’s the same kind of understanding between Hara and Hikaru when they smoked on that school rooftop (when it’s prohibited on school grounds, both for Hikaru who’s a minor, and for Hara who’s supposed to be his role model), or when Hara plays into Rihito’s fear of his feelings being unreciprocated (because he’s probably also felt that fear), and just being gay in general and the reasons why they feel like they have to hide it—all of which probably played a part on why Hikaru felt compelled to reach out to Hara to ask about being gay out of anyone else in the first place. Well that, and the fact that he doesn’t really know any other queer person besides Rihito, let alone a queer adult that they can talk to (besides Hara).

20 years of love