import you! import you!

.

Even now, Lucy could feel Capricorn in the background, tugging on her magic. This was her training to become a top-tier Celestial Wizard—summoning spirits until it came as natural as breathing. After she’d summoned him, he’d stepped away and left her to her own devices, but it was hard not to pause and search for the thread of her magic that tied them together. Her mother had taught her that the connection between a wizard and their spirit was of the utmost importance, and while she understood, intuitively, that this wasn’t a betrayal of those values, it was hard to let go of old habits.

She’d at least been able to pull her focus enough to complete her current task, which was digging through the private archives of Magnolia’s central library. Even with their penchant for recklessness and property damage, Fairy Tail had always been a valued guild within Magnolia, but after 7 years their reputation had gone to the gutter. It was only after she’d summoned both Crux and Capricorn that the librarians had been… persuaded, to let her in.

It had been a while since she’d thrown her weight around like that.

Once she’d run away and hidden her name, she’d been committed to living her life as an ordinary person… or as ordinary as one could be while being a Fairy Tail wizard, which was just about the most extraordinary thing anyone could imagine. Some days, it felt like a dream; Lucy worried she’d wake up in her bed in that hollow manor, still nothing but a rich man’s daughter.

Seven years after the Heartfilia name had already crumbled into ruin, the status of that name had withered and then died. Though she’d never relied on it, she found it disconcerting to live without it, to treat her last name like it meant almost nothing at all.

In this dusty room, her throat felt like sandpaper. The information on Celestial Spirit Magic here was thin and disappointing, especially in comparison to what Lucy half-remembered from her childhood. While Celestial Spirit Magic was by no means rare—silver keys were popular amongst wizards for casual use—any higher-level Celestial Spirit Magic was cloaked in secrecy. Layla Heartfilia, then, must have been one of the greatest wizards of the ages, Lucy thought.

Tears pricked at her eyes. After the Heartfilia estate had fallen into disrepair, Layla’s collection of books had been sold and scattered. Lucy could now only hope to live up to her mother.

Apart from Celestial Spirit Magic, she’d also tried to look into dragons and Dragon Slayer Magic, but the results were similarly disappointing. Acnologia’s shadow loomed large in her mind, as did the mystery of Tenrou Island. But the latter was a secret reserved for Master Makarov and his predecessors, and the former had disappeared without any trace, so for now, all Lucy could do was train. She wanted to do right by her guild; they had given her so much over the years, and though she’d let go of so much of her old life, she couldn’t let go of her pride.

As she stood up, ready to get some fresh air, the door to the basement level creaked open. Instead of the spirit she’d expected, though, in walked a young, green-haired man, with an unmistakable red coat.

Freed mirrored the surprise on her face. Cautiously, he said, “…Hello, Lucy?”

She tugged again at the thread of her magic. Seriously, where had Capricorn gone? No matter how serious they looked, her spirits all loved to do their own thing, it seemed…

Lucy sighed and pocketed her magical speed-reading glasses. “Hi, Freed,” she said, offering him a beleaguered smile. “I’ll get out of your hair—I was just about to head out.”

“You don’t have to—” he hurried to say, but she shook her head.

“Really, I’ve been dying to get out here,” she assured. “I thought I’d find something about my magic, but it’s not anything I don’t already know…”

Freed considered the books she’d been about to reshelve. “…I might have something in my personal collection,” he said. “But a lot of that information is lost to time—I suspect that the magic’s true secrets were passed down from teacher to student, and little was written down.” He paused, gaze flickering towards her keyring, which shone of gold—ten of those keys, now. “How did you come to learn it?”

The Heartfilia name really had lost its power, Lucy thought. “My mother,” she said, and didn’t wait to see if Freed made an awkward face about it. “I might take you up on your offer sometime,” she continued, “but if I stay in these archives, I’ll fossilize.” She looked to Freed, who seemed perfectly at home in this old, dusty room. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Freed said, but he looked contemplative. Finally, he said, “If you’re heading out, would you like to spar?”

Lucy raised an eyebrow.

“I actually came down here to escape Laxus,” Freed admitted. “He’s… well, he never goes easy, which I respect him for, but it would be nice to spar with someone who’s a little less… intense.” He paused. “No offense.”

“…None taken,” Lucy said. Now that she was looking for it, the coat had covered up most of the damage, but his boots were scuffed, and his hair, which had been pulled back, was unusually dull. There was a smudge of dirt under his chin. It fit the aura of this rundown room all too well. “Wow, he really did a number on you.”

Freed smiled. “Well, he didn’t get out of it clean, either.” At Lucy’s disbelieving stare, he reddened, and haltingly explained, “I—I fight—kind of dirty, so it gets… pretty uncivilized.”

As the blush crept higher on his cheeks, a memory clicked into place. “You went easy on me,” Lucy realized. “On Tenrou.”

Freed froze. “…I suppose,” he said.

Lucy frowned, and put her hands on her hips. She’d been working on her Erza-glower. “I want to know why,” she said.

Whether it was due to her near-perfect channeling of Erza or his guilty conscience, Freed sat down.

Lucy sat beside him. There wasn’t anything to be guilty of, she thought. Maybe Natsu cared about being able to take Gildarts head-on and win, but Lucy didn’t mind taking advantage of luck. It was maybe the only thing of her father that she had left.

“…I’ve always thought that being an S-Class wizard requires more than pure power,” Freed began. “The magic council, they grade their knights with a lacrima that assesses pure magical power. But that’s a simplistic understanding of combat. Given time to prepare, my Jutsu Shiki can trap just about anyone. But one-on-one? I’m no slouch, but there’s a reason Mirajane made short work of me.”

“Okay, you’re not that good,” Lucy interjected. “Mirajane would’ve won no matter what—she’s just strong.”

“That she is,” Freed acquiesced. “All of our S-class wizards are strong no matter what, but like me, like anyone, I think there are niches they excel in.”

“So, Mirajane’s best at one-on-ones?”

Freed hummed thoughtfully. “Something like that. Mirajane was always cunning in a way that Erza wasn't. She had… something of a vicious streak. And that temperament bleeds into her style of fighting, which is to wreak havoc upon her opponent. So, when we fought, I really thought…”

“…that you were going to die?”

“I wouldn't blame her,” Freed said, but when Lucy remained silent, he added, “but I am grateful for her mercy.” He smiled. “Laxus would say she’d gone soft.”

“And how does Laxus fight?”

“Thoughtfully,” Freed said. He tilted his head, considering Lucy’s look of disbelief, and explained, “There’s no wasted effort, when he moves. He's every bit as sharp as the lighting he wields. It might seem like he just dominates his opponents through sheer force, but he’s always thought it through.” The more he spoke about Laxus, the wider his smile grew.

“When you put it that way, our S-class wizards are all pretty different,” Lucy mused. “Gildarts is super strong, but he’s more… solitary? Since he’s always wandering here and there. I guess Laxus did that too, but that wasn’t on purpose—” She snapped her mouth shut.

“No, it doesn’t suit him the same, does it…?” Freed murmured. He paused to collect himself. “I do think that his lifestyle informs how Gildarts fights,” he says. “As an S-Class wizard, he handles 100 Year Quests, while Mirajane stays back to protect her guild. They’re both powerful, but they make different uses of their powers.”

“Oh!” Lucy exclaimed. “It’s not just about how they fight, or use their magic—it’s about how they contribute to the guild!”

“Yes,” Freed said, emphatic. “That’s—that’s what I meant, you worded it so perfectly…” He fidgeted with his hands, and continued, “Um… so I think… after what we did, the guild master has been especially conscious of the fact that our S-Class wizards are S-Class wizards of Fairy Tail.”

Freed looked embarrassed. Solemnly, Lucy concluded, “You think he wanted someone who would be good for the guild.”

He nodded. “That’s why Gajeel wasn’t nominated.”

“And you were.”

“That was a mistake.”

“What do you mean?” Lucy asked. “You apologized so sincerely.”

Some time after Laxus’s exile, Bickslow had approached her, and asked if she could help Freed regrow his hair. Freed had been adamantly against it, insisting, It won’t mean anything unless I wait, but after Lucy and Bickslow and Mirajane had been unable to convince him, Evergreen had loudly said, If Laxus came back right now, he’d call you ugly, and somehow, that had actually worked.

Now he was twisting that regrown hair between his fingers. Slowly, Freed said, “The guild master… he thinks that Laxus instigated it, and we just followed him, because we were scared, or because we didn’t know anything better, I don’t know. But whatever good there is in me, Laxus has it, too. The path to redemption… I wanted to walk it with him.”

He hung his head low. Cana, crying in the bathroom, had trembled just like this.

“Freed…”

“…How mortifying! For him to go where I can’t follow!”

Lucy swallowed. She couldn't hug him, because they weren’t close enough for that. Nevertheless, she understood him—almost nothing in the world could tear her apart from her loved ones. But the world was exceptional and terrible, and so she had lost her mother to illness and her father to time.

Freed, composing himself, took a deep breath. “You are strong, Lucy Heartfilia. You have power, and intellect, but most of all, you have heart. The match was decided from the start.”

Lucy didn’t feel strong, but she asked, “You can fly, right?”

Freed raised his head. “…Yes,” he said. “In a certain form.”

Lucy curled her fingers around the handle of her whip. “It would be good to practice against,” she suggested.

Freed didn’t smile, but his eyes curved into something close. “It would be my honor,” he said.

Again, she felt for the tether of her magic, and the fabric of space between Earthland and the celestial realm, and let the gate fall closed, returning Capricorn’s spirit home. This was what he didn’t know: Lucy was incapable of letting go. If that was what Freed called her heart, it was stubborn and strong.

.

Hirano has barely turned the lights off and tucked himself in when Kagiura poses him a question: “Do you remember when you climbed into my bed?”

If Kagiura hadn't said far more absurd things, Hirano would suspect he’d succumbed to heat fatigue and was now hallucinating. It is hot—Kagiura’s shucked his blanket down to around his knees, and is sprawled over his bed like he’s willing the cold onto his skin and failing.

Times like these are what the reading light by their beds was made for, Hirano thinks, so he leans over Kagiura, hears a squeak from below him, and flicks on the lights. Sure enough, his face is flushed red, the color disappearing all the way under the collar of his shirt.

“Hirano-san,” Kagiura whines. “You didn’t give me any time to prepare!”

“Prepare for what?” Hirano asks, baffled. “You’re in bed. I’m in bed.” With you, he doesn’t add. “And you kicked the blankets off,” he concludes firmly.

Kagiura makes a wordless noise, and manages to bite out, “Just—um, Hirano-san, it’s the positioning…”

Hirano blinks down at him. He supposes, maybe, that last time he’d done this, Kagiura had said he’d climbed in his bed, not climbed on top of him in his bed. It doesn’t feel like a big deal, only Kagiura’s skin is flushed so bad Hirano wonders if he’s going to start running a fever.

Hirano’s heart doesn’t have the same chaos, but it’s nice to see it reflected on Kagiura’s face, and he looks the perfect part—blanket hooked around a leg, hair sticking in various directions, shirt ruffled and ridden up enough to reveal his abdomen.

And Hirano was right—Kagiura does have nice abs. They’re defined, not in a movie-star bodybuilder way, but… obvious, to anyone who’s looking. He knows that Kagiura came here on a sports scholarship, but it’s not often that he’s so aware of the corded muscle beneath him, a testament to the way Kagiura’s been training his body over the past few years. It’s hard to tell—the reading light doesn’t cast that far—but he’s pretty sure that even there, Kagiura’s turning pink.

“Hirano-san,” Kagiura repeats, shaking him out of your stupor. His hand taps weakly against Hirano’s wrist. “Time out?”

Hirano draws back, tucking himself into the thin free space left on Kagiura’s bed. He’s kind of wedged against Kagiura’s legs, but they’re separated by the thick blanket he has tangled down there.

“What were you thinking about?” Kagiura asks. He’s staring determinedly up at the ceiling.

“Huh?”

“You zoned out, just then,” Kagiura says. He chews nervously on his lips. “But you said not to assume anything about that kind of thing, so… what were you looking at?”

“You, obviously,” Hirano says, and Kagiura has the nerve to look shocked. He doesn’t vocalize it, but Hirano can see the Why? hanging at the edge of his tongue, and he snaps, “Am I not allowed to?”

“What?” Kagiura scrambles up to a sitting position. “You’re—um, definitely allowed, Hirano-san.” He nervously swallows, and makes eye contact with Hirano (good) before casting his gaze down to the shadow of his lap (bad).

“I mean, I—I look all the time, so”—he peeks back up at Hirano again—“it’s fine. Right?”

Hm. “…What were you looking at?” Hirano asks.

Kagiura whips his head back towards him, wide-eyed. Good. He opens his mouth, but words fail to come out of it.

Hirano says, “We’ll never get anywhere if you don’t tell me this kind of stuff, you know.”

“I know,” Kagiura says, though he looks a bit too stunned to have internalized it. “I just—don’t know what you want me to say…?”

It takes a minute, but Hirano finally realizes he’s basically asked Kagiura to aggressively compliment his looks, and feels a telltale heat creeping to his face. Nonetheless he forges on. “Not—I just was curious,” he mumbles, unsure how to phrase it in a way that doesn’t look like he’s begging for attention.

Kagiura tilts his head up at him, anyways, shy and searching, like he’s seeing him for the first time all over again, and the sense of wonderment in his eyes makes Hirano want to save that image of it forever. He understands, before Kagiura can speak, why he looks. What can be so captivating about a person. Especially when that person is as bright as the sun. Deadly. It’s strange to think that he’d been looking at him like this the whole time, long before he’d even made the conscious thought about romance.

“Well, I like your hair.”

Hirano’s eyes twitch. “Didn’t you say it felt super damaged?”

“Yeah, the strands are really fine,” Kagiura acquiesces. “But it doesn’t feel bad. And I liked… seeing it in black and in blond. And I liked that you let me touch it.” He smiles. “I mean, it’s really flashy. I didn’t know what to expect, when I met you.”

“I see,” Hirano grits out.

“I like your ears,” Kagiura says next, because he’s created some kind of monster. “Your piercings, especially. And the way you’re always wearing my gift.”

Hirano flushes. “You insisted,” he protests.

“And you accepted!” Kagiura rebuts. “If you really hated them, wouldn’t you refuse.”

“Haah? How is that possible?” Hirano demands. “Who’d refuse you?”

Kagiura stares at him and then doubles over with suppressed laughter. Hirano watched him, bewildered as he recovers his breath. “You would, if I went too far,” he said. “I mean, I don’t want to do anything you don’t want, too.”

“…Me too,” Hirano replied, wondering why words were so hard. “Okay, so my ears and my hair,” he said. “Is that all?”

Kagiura flushes. “Uh—no, not all,” he says. “I mean, I like… all of you,” he says.

“Right,” Hirano says agreeably. “But where were you looking. Sure wasn’t at my face.”

“Your… waist?” Kagiura says hesitantly. He cringes. “Sorry, I know—”

“Oh, good, me too,” Hirano says, absurdly relieved.

Kagiura makes another one of those endearingly wordless noises.

“I… don’t you dislike being touched there?”

“Yeah,” Hirano says. “But—well, I’ve been looking at your waist too.”

Kagiura is wide awake. “You have?”

“It should be,” Hirano says, only a little irritated by this point. “You’re the one who wouldn’t let me see your abs.”

“Hirano-san!” Kagiura whisper-shrieks, impressively mindful of the late hour. “That—that was different!”

“What do you like about it, anyway?” Hirano asks.

Kagiura screws his eyes shut, but he’s brave and lovely, so he answers well. “I just… think it’d be nice to hold?” he says. Quickly, he adds, “I mean, only if you’re comfortable. But… well… I don’t know,” he says. “I just think it could be nice.” He pauses. “It’s stable.” He peeks an eye open. “And… nobody else would touch you there. So, it’s… just me.”

Hirano mulls it over. He’s placed his hands on his own hips before, he thinks, and so he does so now, placing a hand in each side. There’s some truth to what Kagiura’s said—his hands sink around his waist like there’s a divot made for them. Even with his own hands, the feeling is slightly alien—and Hirano, at the very least, can understand wanting to be the only one.

.

Tonight, he was craving heat. He’d come out for the cold, because he’d thought he’d wanted it, but he hadn’t, not more than he’d needed the snap of fresh air to clear the drunken haze from his mind. After that it was still cold, still miserable, still dull, like the headache festering at his temples. And this was when the desire, bottled up and dusky, began to gleam—he longed for a crystalline peace, fragile-edged and teetering.

Body leant over the railing of the veranda, his fingers searched into his pockets until he’d unearthed his lighter and a cigarette. The exposed flame sputtered against the windswept night. He clicked emptily though the tedium—caught sparks, flared heat, snuffed out—until the breeze broke into quiet.

Cigarette now lit, he led it to his waiting lips. The nicotine dragged through him, hot and acrid, stealing cacophony into stillness.

The view was distant from the city proper, but even here, the nightglow had sunken its claws into the dark. He let the cigarette dangle between two fingers, and breathed out the smoke. It dissipated as thin fog, and in its place came his frosted breath, tumbling up in the air as he lingered on the sky, lights bleeding in from the buzzing of the buildings below… He fumbled for his portable ashtray, pulled it from his pocket, and balanced it on the railing before taking another puff of his cigarette. Inhale, exhale… The world dripped slow like tar.

A gust rattled behind him—the sound cut through to him a few seconds late, so the face that appeared in his periphery was more mirage than truth.

Tashiro’s hair was loose, and blond all the way to the roots. Strands of it, cut unevenly, curled and stuck to his chin, his neck, and his shoulders. And he was smiling.

“Wow, Hanzawa-sensei,” he chirped. “Fancy running into you here.”

Hanzawa flicked the ash from his cigarette, and watched the smoldering embers of the end. “Please, you’re not my student,” he scoffed. “Don’t call me that.”

Tashiro made a face. “Feels weird to call you Hanzawa-san,” he declared, “so you’ll have to settle for senpai.”

Despite himself, Hanzawa laughed. “Settle…?” he began, and then his voice faltered into a noiseless exhale when Tashiro slipped a hand over his.

Perhaps the chill hadn’t quite chased away his intoxication. He’d dreamed of the door as a jagged pass, but it was sliding glass and mesh screen, neither of which were opaque. The territory he’d deemed unassailable had been bridged in a breath. Distances were funny like that—hard to judge, with walls.

He blew smoke out of his mouth. “Is this an intervention?” he asked.

Tashiro gave him a funny look. When he spoke, his breath wisped white. “I heard smokers have cold fingers. Thought I’d check if it was true.”

[art by @sunnfish]

Hanzawa clicked his tongue and took another drag; Tashiro’s face remained unchanged. “I’ve been outside,” he said. “Of course they're cold.”

“Well, I guess you’ve always had cold hands,” Tashiro said. He made this observation as he intertwined their fingers, slotting the warmth of his grip between Hanzawa’s shaking flesh. When their eyes met, his flashed with old memory—an unfair vise.

He swallowed. “Guess I have.”

Tashiro’s hand didn’t squeeze, but the entanglement of their fingers was pressure enough. Pinned together, their breaths intermingled, crisp and clean, scorched and sluggish.

In the distance, the city held straight against the dark, concrete and steel and glass wedged into right angles and stabbed into forgiving ground. The skyline scarred the earth as it always had, and in the dead night its lights glowered through the haze, mocking the faded stars that had long since dipped out of frame.

Ash lay leaden on his tongue. He hadn’t the hands to move for it, but the lighter in his pocket weighed of metals and flint and fuel. From his mouth, smoke curled over the horizon, heavy and foreboding. Whether the buildings were dated or stately or had just removed their scaffolding, their curse was well-told: the upswell of growth, the ever-coming march of industry, racing electrically forth, unsleeping and unflinching against the black of night, which waned as the moon into gray and blue smog.

Finally, Hanzawa asked, “Why’d you follow me out here?”

Tashiro didn’t refute the accusation. “I saw you go out a while ago,” he said, “and it looked like the more interesting thing.”

He tamped down a smile. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Tashiro said, emphatic. “Kuresawa went home because he wanted to be with his fiancée, Ogasawara-san lost a drinking contest to Miyano so he’s curled up on the floor and trying to recover his pride, Hirano-san’s moodily watching the TV with Shirahama, who’s still nervous even though it’s literally his apartment, and Sasaki-san got convinced into drinking so he and Miyano are, well…” His hand was warm and point-making. As he talked, he gestured with his whole body, words spilling forth with an almost frenetic quality, and still linked to him, Hanzawa was pulled along.

“He and Miyano are…?” Hanzawa prompted, when Tashiro came to a sudden stop.

Tashiro furrowed his brows. “I’m not supposed to say it…?” he mumbled, but then tilted his head at Hanzawa, and asked, “You’re good at keeping secrets, right?”

Hanzawa offered a miniscule nod. Tashiro’s grip went loose as he considered it.

“Dating,” he said, “That was what I thought, but I guess it’s just the… feeling of it? Kuresawa says not to say anything, and he’s the one with a wife, so he must know better than… I mean, what does it even mean, to date someone…?”

He did not tense. “I see,” Hanzawa said, though he wasn’t even looking in his direction.

A breath glanced by his ear. “Did you get another piercing, by the way?” Tashiro asked. “Your ears—they look a little different…”

“At—some point, yes.” Now he had tensed.

“I can’t place it,” Tashiro sighed. He was silent for a moment, and then muttered, “Need to clear my head, I don’t want to be too drunk tomorrow…”

“Night shift?” Hanzawa asked, turning to him.

Tashiro beamed. There was a glassy, unclear tint to his gaze. “Of course you knew that,” he said. “Must be pretty different than your 9 to 5, huh?”

Hanzawa demurred, “Teaching isn’t such a predictable schedule, what with grading and extracurriculars…”

“So you’re still working yourself to the bone,” Tashiro said. He worried his lip. “Not that I realized it, then.”

A deep, trembling chill was burrowing under his skin; his fingers twitched. He puffed on his cigarette, the warmth of it brittle and souring.

“Seems like you’re working pretty hard, too,” he said. “If you’re working weekends.”

Tashiro smiled sheepishly and scratched at the back of his neck. “Ah, well… at a certain point… there are just some things that are hard to run from.”

Wind bit at his cheeks and set his body back to rights. Hanzawa took a deep breath, and freed his hand. It was the only part of him that still glowed with heat. “Back then,” he said, “you always wanted to leave.”

Tashiro’s smile flickered. He said, “You didn’t let me.”

He watched the fire die as he stubbed out his cigarette on the ashtray, and pocketed it. “It was the previous president’s decision.”

“Which you upheld.”

His hand felt for his lighter. “Not well enough. I couldn’t make you captain.”

“Not your fault,” Tashiro countered. “I didn’t think I’d be a good fit. I just didn’t care about it the same way…”

Cool metal, hard edges. The thing pressed against his palm like the night. “Do you regret it?”

Tashiro’s answer was instantaneous: “No.” He repeated it firmly. “No, I don’t regret it. I spent a long time trying to quit, so I kept challenging you, and going to the bathhouse… and I wanted to quit, but I—I liked all of that. And I know I ran away when you wanted to make me captain. But I liked that, too.” His face had gone scarlet, but his lips were twitching up as he recollected the past.

“It would have been great if you were captain,” Hanzawa admitted.

“…Maybe you’re right,” Tashiro said. “I wonder if…” His gaze went half-lidded, drawing attention to his lowered lashes, long and undyed, the black shadow of them on his face a plain kind of beautiful. Again he had trailed off.

Rather than prompt him, Hanzawa went quiet, running his tongue over the roof of his mouth. It was dulled by the aftertaste of tobacco.

“After you graduated, it was like you disappeared,” Tashiro said. “But then you ended up working with Miyano. Only I didn’t see you much, still. And then now, we have all these people from the same high school, in the same building again… it’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?”

“It’s quite a serendipitous series of events,” Hanzawa agreed

Tashiro steadied himself on the railing. He stared at him. “You know,” he said, very slowly, very clearly, in the way that drunk people tried to not slur their words, careful to the extreme, “I missed you, too.”

His face was still red. Everything of him burned. Tashiro’s eyes were aglow, brightened like every dying firefly had found respite in the ring of his irises. Heat cascaded through Hanzawa’s body, tasting of thrill and triumph.

“…It’s too late to talk about that,” he lied, and stepped away from the railing. But he hesitated by the door. “…If you wanted to talk again, though, you could come by mine.” His piece said, he ducked back inside and didn’t look back.

The interior was just as Tashiro had described. Sasaki was flushed and curled up against Miyano’s shoulder, who startled and pinked at Hanzawa’s reappearance. Hirano and Shirahama too engrossed in the TV to take notice, white-knuckled on the couch as they watched Kagiura drive through the paint. He stepped over Ogasawara, who was slumbering on the floor, and once he’d crossed the room halfway, the balcony door slid open.

“Wait!” Tashiro cried out. “Your place—I don’t even know where that is!”

“If you want to know, you’ll have to catch me!” he crowed, and bolted for the front door.

And the rest of everything—it blurred by. An electric hum arced through him.

Tashiro skidded through the front door, which was just a wooden thing with hinges and knobs that had swung open and allowed chase. Gasping for breath, he called after him: “You have—seriously—bad habits!”

As he skipped down the stairs, footsteps thundered after him; Tashiro had broken out into a run.

have to start with that note, oh my... dorm manager leaving a specific note for ichinose. and giving him carte blanc on his food... that hits me right in my heart. it's such a natural extension of the whole setting alarms thing, like of course he'd still care about ichinose's health like this... I get why it'd be hard for ichinose to move on. but, like he says, he's got to graduate eventually! what a loaded choice of words. it grounds the whole thing in this idea of him as a student not being able to mature and move on. also of interesting note is ichinose saying that it can be cool to just... give your all, even if it's ultimately not affecting your final grades.

and I think all of this is very reflective of the tensions of his relationship with yanagimoto. ichinose likes him, likes him a lot, but it's also not going anywhere, and at this point it's certainly going to be harder and harder to stay in touch—hirano mentions that the dorm is pretty far away from his place, and ichinose says it's a good workout or not, but good for him or not, it's still effort, isn't it? it takes something out of you.

as you say, where is the "moving on"? ichinose is still here, for the time being. he said he'd spend 10 years in this. but he's also self-described himself as impatient, always rushing for the future. and I think his love of yanagimoto exists in this tension. knowing there is an end of it, wanting and yet not wanting to meet it... getting excited by silly things, like the character in his name... it makes you go red in the face with delight. it makes you hurt. it is so many complicated and conflicting things all at once.

I love ichinose because I have a deep love for love that is unrequited, because I think so much focus is put on that unfulfillment, and I think there is actually something very powerful to it, even when it is "incomplete". this is part of the reason why ichinose has to feature in my dating sim au. but the best way I can describe my feelings on this is actually by talking about the ending of violeta fantasy, so... spoilers!

what's it mean for a game to have the message of moving on, when ichinose clearly doesn't want to? well, I think that tension must exist within the game itself. so, within the game of violeta fantasy, ven is wracked with grief, and believes that being held to memory of his friends is useless, but... it isn't. it's wasted effort to try to bring them back, but it's never wasted effort to love them. it just doesn't mean nothing. it's important to move on, because you can't let it hold you back, but that doesn't mean discarding it, not at all. and I've never seen ichinose falter in his goals, yet. he loves love! of course he'll cherish it the best he can, while he has it. it's all there is to do...

.

Hanzawa is looking at you like he’s forgotten to work his limbs along with his eyes. This does not bode well.

Nonetheless, you soldier on. “Have you thought about joining the ping pong club?” 

“Ping pong…?”

He’s a clever kid, this Hanzawa. He doesn’t resist interrogation, but he does resist elaboration, so you know that he has three siblings and good grades and dyed hair and a birthday that’s only one day after yours, but you don’t know how he feels about any of that. He’s still a kid that’s a whole school year your junior, though, so after he dutifully repeats your question his eyes dart to the side in confusion, nerves radiating plainly through him.

“You know, with the paddles,” you say, and at Hanzawa’s blank stare, add, “Like this,” and mime a swing. A beat of silence, and then—

He cracks a smile. “I—I know, yes.”

Ha, still got it, you crow, but only in the steel trap of your mind. You’re smart like that.

“I’m going to join the disciplinary committee,” Hanzawa offers, which lesser upperclassmen would see as refusal. You, on the other hand, know that he’s lowered his guard, and only a fool wouldn’t take advantage.

“No reason you can’t do both,” you say. This is true. “It’s pretty easygoing, too.” This is a lie. The current captain of your club is ridiculously intense about ping pong, and the team goes all out during competitions. But you think that easygoing might mean something different for Hanzawa, who makes faces at his green peppers but still methodically eats every one, and who has started the school year with a perpetual sort of readiness, like he’s just waiting for classes to kick into high gear. This is a brand of impatience you’re well-acquainted with; that scary kid in your year, Ichinose, studies like his life depends on it.

While Hanzawa is restless but measured, Ichinose will study at his desk for hours and forget to eat. It is so effed up that he’s the dorm head, and you would file a complaint were it not for the fact that he actually seems to be doing pretty well at the whole thing. Even though he’s so strict with himself, he’s never uppity towards his fellow peers, and as a dorm head he’s been nice, if a little distant. You can respect that, and respect him, and still wish he’d look you in the eyes more than he does. Last year, after you’d conned him into playing ping pong for the sports festival, he’d gotten red and angry and tired and real, so that’s your favorite look of his, now.

You and Ichinose, you suspect, are made of the same stuff. You’re both meant to have a singular, driving focus in life. His just happens to be on the incredibly valuable academic front, while you’re currently devoting yourself to a sport you don’t really plan on playing after high school. Your vision, unlike his, is as forward-thinking as it is narrow. This is what makes you a ping pong genius—the ability to think about nothing else but the game, even while you’re thinking ten moves ahead. The captain, upon hearing your speculation, had said that ping pong wasn’t chess, and basic reflexes and technique matter a lot more, but your win-loss record against him is basically tied, so there.

“We’re still in the trial period for clubs, and it’s easy to leave if you decide it’s not for you,” you add. This is unfortunately true. You have a lot of ideas for how to up retention, but they’re probably the kind that would earn the captain’s unyielding ire. What a bizarrely serious and no-fun guy… there’s just no way to win him over.

Hanzawa, at the very least, is giving you polite consideration. You can work with that, even if you figure he only needs this kind of sweet talk to trick himself into thinking it’d be fine to try things out. When you’d mentioned the possibility of doing both ping pong and… whatever the disciplinary committee does, his expression had eased, not tightened. And it’s nice, to see that happen. You think that a kid with this much brimming nervous energy deserves to loosen up. You want to see this kid play ping pong. You want to play ping pong. The rest of everything, you’ll probably only think about in the winter of your third year, because to you it just won’t matter that it’ll be over until the very day that it’s over.

Hanzawa, still fidgety, asks, “Um… so you play?”

You blink. Okay, maybe the bug-eyed nervousness is less the sweet innocence of a first year, and more your inability to say anything about yourself. “I know,” you boast, “the basketball team would love to poach me, but I’m too loyal. This is the future captain you’re looking at, here!”

Hanzawa perks up. “That’s cool,” he says, and crap, he seems to actually mean it.

To cover your butt, you add, “It’s a secret,” which is a cover like tissue paper is a blanket.

Still, now the kid is properly contemplative. He’s chewing on his lip and everything. Finally he asks, “Is it fun?”

“When you’re good, yeah,” you say. “It’s nice to move around, and when you get in the zone during a match, it’s like…” You make a vague gesture to your face. “Your whole field of focus sharpens. You can’t think about anything else.”

“… Maybe I’ll try it out, then,” Hanzawa says. He’s got a funny look in his eye. You like that kind of look. You’ve always liked it. It’s the way people look when they want something, but they haven’t quite realized it, and the way they look when they’ve gotten it, but haven’t noticed.

This might be why Mister Stick-in-the-Mud dislikes you. The handling a kid’s dreams like it’s a fun game, and all that. But you love games; it’s why you play ping pong. So you guess he’s just going to have to fall for your charms, or something, because you’ve just promised this kid that you’re going to be captain, and as member of your captain’s ping pong club, you are everything he looks for in a player—competitive, driven, and hates to lose.

Come to think of it… Hanzawa has adjusted to the dorms remarkably well. Maybe it’s because of his siblings, but he’s already managed to get on friendly terms with most of the residents, so he’s definitely good with handling people. He’d probably make for a great successor… you still aren’t thinking about what you’ll do after ping pong, but the idea of leaving some kind of legacy behind feels… nice, in a way you hadn’t thought of, before. Maybe it’s the funny feeling you like. But if you knew exactly what the feeling was, it wouldn’t be so funny.

“We’re going to be great roommates,” you tell Hanzawa, and Hanzawa’s face goes funny again, but a different kind, the kind where he’s only just realized that you could actually be a bad, bad roommate. A second later, though, that expression clears into perfect calm, and he nods, smiling as if to placate you.

.

“He acts spoiled? With you?”

“Yeah,” Ogasawara said, unthinking. Like an acknowledgement, Tashiro hummed beside him. Breezily, he continued, “He’s so annoying. Wailing on me like that, causing all that trouble for your club…”

Tashiro pointed out, “I won the candy back, though.”

“Doesn’t erase all the times I lost,” Ogasawara griped, and then he stopped to think, because it kind of did.

The sheer nerve and talent it took, to go up against Hanzawa Masato when he was like that, and win—it wasn’t nothing. Tashiro Gonzaburou, Ogasawara reflected, was really a special kind of guy.

He wasn’t really sure why he was here, but maybe this was part of the reason. He’d hung around with Masaomi and Masato—who he’s just learned were related, which made a hell of a lot of sense when you stopped to think about anything, like their names or the way they liked to tease people—during the festival, and once they’d split up Ogasawara had been about to head home and… then he’d doubled back. Tashiro, two-tone hair recognizable even from afar, was out on the field, snapping pictures. He’d been separated from the lanky, light-haired kid Ogasawara had spotted earlier, but he didn’t seem all too bothered.

He didn’t seem surprised to see Ogasawara, either. Instead he’d greeted him like they’d just passed each other in the hallway, like he was still every bit the senpai he wasn’t, and from there it was just natural to start a conversation.

When he’d asked about his friend, Tashiro explained, “He got roped into helping someone else.” Privately, Ogasawara had thought that the kid seemed like the type to get easily conned.

Tashiro didn’t ask about where Ogasawara’s friends had gone. Maybe he didn’t need to. He’d just asked, “You guys had fun?”

Ogasawara had said, “Yeah, tons.” He’d grinned at Tashiro. “Especially once you pulled that guy away from the ping pong tables.”

Tashiro had smiled. “He really doesn’t like to go easy on people, does he?”

“Seriously,” Ogasawara had agreed, “he doesn’t hold back. That guy always loves to act spoiled, he’s such a pain…”

And Tashiro had paused, then. It took a bit for Ogasawara to notice. But now that he had, he couldn’t look away from it, because Tashiro, who’d been moving with an unpretentious ease the whole day, was saying, “Ha, that’s true…” even though he couldn’t wipe the longing from his face.

Ogasawara swallowed back whatever he’d meant to say. But even after thinking through it a second time, he wasn't sure what to do. “Probably he doesn’t whine as much to you because he wants to maintain his image,” he said, which was probably a ruthless betrayal of that image. “It’s a little stupid.” Only a little, because Ogasawara was just now realizing how easy it was to want to make your kouhai happy.

Tashiro shook his head. Ogasawara wondered if maybe he thought it was a lot stupid, but then Tashiro said, “Hanzawa-senpai’s kind of an idiot, sometimes.”

.

Lamiroir was standing in the prosecutor’s lobby.

The hall was already darkened, but she had veiled herself in a shadowy corner, hand lingering against the wall. Idly, Klavier wondered if it was a habit of hers, to search for some anchor to guide her. To have something to hold onto, under total darkness. If, over time, she had acquired thousands of methods like this, to keep herself stable even as she bore her secret. Speaking of those…

“Machi Tobaye is being escorted back to the detention center,” he informed her. “He still needs to stand trial for his other crimes, but they may be a bit more lenient, considering his relative innocence…”

Lamiroir did not speak. Her silence hung heavy over the empty corridor. By this point after the trial’s conclusion, Daryan and Machi had been escorted out, the crowd had been dispersed, the defendant’s lobby had been cleared, and the security guards had been dismissed. The prosecutor’s lobby, too, should have been clear, but Klavier had waved away the security guards ahead of time. He’d wanted the lobby and its dark solitude all to himself. Maybe then, his nerves could finally settle.

Under the weight of her gaze, they were quickly re-fraying.

“…Would you like an escort there?” he asked, even though he wanted to be doing the exact opposite.

Now that the case had met its end, so would Daryan Crescend. Klavier knew that there were matters to be handled—the ensuing trial that would pronounce Daryan as guilty, his resulting dismissal from work, the breaking up of the band, and… it was Klavier who needed to tie up every loose end. It was Klavier who needed to make sure the execution went through. But he’d only just made it to the point of conviction—was it too much to ask, to rest a little? To have a moment to settle himself?

It wasn’t a question worth an answer, now. He wasn’t alone.

“Thank you,” Lamiroir murmured, which sounded like acceptance, but she remained rooted to her spot. Her voice was quiet but powerful as it echoed through the room, beautiful even with middling acoustics. It was a reminder to Klavier that she really was the “Siren of the Ballad”—her voice deserved unending admiration. He could only hope this trial wouldn’t stain her reputation.

Lamiroir fiddled with the edge of her shawl; Klavier struggled not to do the same with his rings. It wasn’t Lamiroir, really, that was the problem, even though it might have been easier without her here. Klavier knew his problem. It was ever-present cowardice. It was the way that he could exit a shower, glance at his reflection in the fogged-up mirror, and see Kristoph. The eyes of judgement, reflected in his cold gaze, would always cast their aspersions.

As long as Kristoph was still in his holding cell, waiting for the knife, Klavier would remain on the knife’s edge. Someday, Klavier would need to steel himself, face the truth down, and look into the spectre of death looming ahead—but it was someday, still. Not today. Not yet.

“You knew I was lying.”

“Hm?” He’d let his mind wander.

“About my sight,” Lamiroir said. “You knew that I was lying.”

“I had the fortune to be informed about Machi Tobaye’s blindness—or his lack of one, I suppose I should say—in advance. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”

She shook her head. “But, just before the trial—that’s not when you learned of it, isn’t it?”

He fell silent.

“Lies don’t become you,” she said, and even behind her veil, he could see the smile creeping to her lips.

“…I’d known when we met in Borginia,” he admitted.

“And I thank you for keeping my secret,” she said. “It’s the same principle as a magic trick.” At Klavier’s blank look, she added, “Once it’s revealed, it becomes meaningless. But that’s also why it’s not good to perform the same trick, too often. It shames the audience.”

“You’re quite knowledgeable about magic, Lamiroir,” Klavier said. “I recall some of what the Gramarye magician had said, but most of it… went in one ear and out the other.” He shrugged, trying not to betray his confusion. There was a point that she was making, but he couldn’t fathom what that was. If she’d just wanted to know that he was lying, surely she’d have already left…

Curtly, Lamiroir said, “Working with that man made my head hurt.”

Klavier winced. “Well, I suppose it’s for the best that the concert and the trial has been wrapped up, then.” He paused. Looking at her face made him want to confess. “You give me too much credit, though. By the time of the trial, I’d deliberately omitted mentioning of it, but… not much else. I knew it would be revealed.”

“A man of many faces,” Lamiroir said. “I sincerely believed that you meant to convict Machi, at the beginning, but you turned on your friend, just like that.”

From her mouth, it sounded like a damning indictment. He tugged uneasily at a stray lock of hair. “I consider myself a loyal devotee of the truth,” he said. “It had to be done.” Really, the worst part was that it hadn’t been done earlier.

She raised an eyebrow. “No matter what…?”

The air in this lobby was beyond stifling. Klavier took a deep breath, but couldn’t summon any words forward. Even in his head, it was just a plain, staticky buzz.

“You just lied for me,” Lamiroir said. “Not very loyal, I’d say. Even if you don’t call it a lie, it’s still turning away from the truth.”

Haltingly, Klavier replied, “I suppose… I believe that all things come in due time. All… truths in due time, as well.”

Lamiroir gazed at him. He supposed she wasn’t really looking, but—she still was. Whatever form a blind woman’s gaze took, hers was oppressive and insightful. “Then,” she said, “until we meet again, Prosecutor Gavin.”

Her piece said, she swept out of the room.

White noise. Klavier leaned against the wall, feeling like he’d been punched in the gut. Seven years of hesitation would do that to a man. He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket, and felt for his keys. The metal of the ring was smooth, but the edges of his keys dug coldly into his palm.

In the quiet depths of an empty courtroom, the law’s dark underbelly seemed to bleed out, the misery hanging onto the shadows of those walking away. But it was just a seeming thing—a temporary illusion.

this scene's actually kind of embarrassing to talk about, because on an irl level I was just projecting. I hate being sick. I think it is just one of the worst experiences in the world, to feel awful and then being constantly pressured to instantly recover and get better while also having your sickness be doubted. so on that level, this is just wish-fulfillment, because the way that richard treats seigi is, in part, just me settling my own personal vendettas.

but there’s a judicious application of this here, I think. I am self-inserting into seigi, but it’s not without consideration of his own background. we know that his birth father was horribly abusive, and that shortly after seigi was born, his mother, hiromi, divorced that scumbag, moved, went as far as to change her name to avoid him, and barely managed to scrape by, money-wise. seigi’s grandmother didn’t enter the picture until his second year of middle school, when she was already in the early stages of dementia, and she passed when seigi was in high school. his mother did remarry, but her new husband’s work was mostly overseas, so for most of his life, seigi was in a position of strong isolation and independence.

from volume 1:

Hiromi and I felt more like comrades in arms. I probably talked to my mother and went home more often than most college students did, but it wasn’t like either of us was sticking our nose in the other’s business. As long as we were both happy and healthy, that was all that mattered.

from volume 4:

“Calling her Mom just felt…kind of immature, I guess, and I didn’t like it. I wanted to think of us more like, I’m Seigi, and she’s Hiromi, and we’re in this together. But thinking about it now, I guess that’s little-kid logic for you, huh? I mean, honestly, she’s done more for me than I can even imagine.”

where does this leave us? hiromi clearly loves and cares for seigi, but she’s also someone that simply can’t afford to spend all her time by his side. the above excerpts show us that seigi likes to think of him and hiromi on the same team, rather than himself as a dependent to her. in volume 4 it’s also mentioned that he’s planning on using his savings to pay her back for paying his college tuition.

sickness renders you inherently vulnerable, and I think that seigi would fear that weakened state, and want to recover as fast as possible, so that he can stop being a burden. that is where my projection is relevant and useful. seigi, like me, would hate the feeling of sickness, because it puts him at the mercy of others. similarly, even though the way richard acts is a kind of wish-fulfillment for me, it scans properly onto canon because richard basically is wish-fulfillment for seigi. seigi is always astounded by the depths of his care, and the endlessness of his beauty. so even though these events are motivated by projection, they aren't out of place.

moving away from my personal motivators behind this scene, the core of ill at ease is that seigi doesn’t like to accept help, need help, or want help. this is part of what fuels his actions in volume 6, and as this fic takes place directly after the events of that volume, it’s in conversation with that struggle. this first scene, and this conversation in specific, is a microcosm of the whole fic—that push and pull between seigi trying to diminish his wants, and richard wanting, so badly, to be wanted by him.

in this conversation, seigi characterizes this whole affair as richard’s kindness, rather than something he actively wants to do. this is, of course, in direct opposition to the fact that richard literally says, It would be an honor to take care of you. seigi, of course, notes that this is the specific line that puts him at ease. this is because it reframes the concept of caring for seigi as not a willingly handled burden, but a privilege.

seigi does not see himself as such. he calls his momentary silence unpleasant. his self is sickened. he says that richard’s seen worse from him—implying, of course, that his current state, if not the worst, is somewhere worse than good. he thinks that there will never be enough thank yous to say.

richard, on the other hand, is concerned with what seigi wants. he asks, Do you not want to see me? and he wants to hear yes, I want you. he doesn’t get it. he gets, “I don't—I don't… not want to see you, that is,” which is a frustrating half-measure of an answer. we’re going to spend the whole fic with this tension until we get the answer richard wants.

.

YOU CAN’T CLOSE YOUR EYES.

Nirei’s head was pounding. Dark had fallen over their town, so all he had for illumination were the dim streetlights and his phone, the brightness high-white and beamed into his face. In the cold weather, the sound of animals was sparse—all that was left, then, was the wind as it intermittently picked up and died down. He’d been crouched on the edge of this plastic slide for so long that his legs were starting to hurt. Maybe it was a sign to give up the ghost and head home.

He didn’t move. He just kept thinking about it—the first thing Suo had taught him, when he’d wanted to learn how to fight.

If you looked away, you’d miss your opponent’s next move. You’d never be able to tell the difference between a punch and a fake out. Facing someone head on meant that sometimes you’d take a hit, sure, but if you flinched, you’d always take a hit.

Suo had told him this, and then promptly demonstrated it for his benefit.

…As far as punches to the face could go, Nirei had to admit it had been remarkably gentle.

When you met someone’s eyes, that was the moment a one-sided beatdown became a real fight. Just like Pokémon, Nirei thought, and wisely kept that to himself. But maybe Suo would’ve laughed, if he’d said it out loud. As disciplined as he was, sometimes Nirei got the feeling that all of it—fighting, living—was something of a game to him. Like he was a step removed from the situation.

YOU NEED TO OPEN YOUR EYES.

His phone screen dimmed, and Nirei tapped it back awake. Another missed call. His fingers were starting to numb.

Back when they’d fought Shishitoren, Sakura, too, had emphasized the importance of looking—keep your eyes forward. Seeing him in action, Nirei really did think that fighting could be a real communicative art, like a form of partner dance that hadn’t been popularized, yet. Even Momijikawa had been charmed.

That fight with Shishitoren was also when Sakura had said that Suo had “a rotten, garbage personality.” But he didn’t sound all that pressed about it then, so Nirei had let it go. He’d believed in what Umemiya had said, too: that Suo was a kind kid.

Nirei wasn’t sure what to believe, now.

He’d kept his eyes peeled open, like Suo had asked. In a way, reading your opponent was like information gathering, just in bullet-time. At least that was how he’d psyched himself up before training with Suo. As far as Nirei was concerned, it was the one thing he was even sort of okay at. Suo had said as much, only nicer, telling Nirei that he had plenty of good qualities, but he especially had good eyes.

And he’d still missed it. For all the fuss Suo had made, Nirei hadn’t managed to learn anything more than a fake address and a probable dislike of natto. Any compliment Suo could give Nirei had to be reflected back on himself, twofold; they’d both witnessed Sakura’s living situation, but it was Suo who’d known how to handle it. For a guy like Sakura, you couldn’t blindly ambush him with friendship. Instead you lured him in, carefully, patiently, until he was ready to open up on his own. That was what eyes were for—to figure these things out.

Nirei was feeling pretty fucking blind, now. And stupid. And terrible. And a list of generally awful things.

In any other situation, Sakura would pull him out of his self-flagellation, but Suo’s departure had clearly left him smarting. Nirei wasn’t the only one racking up missed calls. He was putting on a brave face, but…

Nirei shook his head. Maybe he was just projecting; how could he be sure of how someone else felt?

They’d walked these same streets time and time again. And every day, when they’d parted at the same corner, Suo had walked off into the dark. Each day, they’d parted at the same corner, and Suo had walked off into the dark, alone.

And Nirei had let him.

He shuddered. The chill was getting to him. At least his hands were warm; his phone was starting to overheat. Nirei curled tighter into himself, gaze drifting to the surrounding empty.

He’d thought of those goodbyes as temporary, almost too insignificant to remember, but now all he could do was turn back to that moment, over and over. That night, when they bid each other goodbye, did Suo know he was leaving? Had he known the whole time? What had that felt like?

Nirei didn’t know. If Suo came back, he could ask him—but only if.

It occurred to him now that Suo might’ve known the best way to treat Sakura because he, too, wasn’t so used to friendship. The thought seemed impossible at first, because Suo was a generally agreeable person, and it wasn't like he got along badly with anyone else, but… friends were more than just pleasantries, Nirei thought. They were supposed to share their joys and sorrows. And it was dawning on Nirei that Suo hadn’t shared much of anything.

His phone rang out again, trilling into the dead of night. If it was still warm, his fingers were too numb to feel it. He didn’t know why he was still calling. It was a compulsion—like striking matches to keep warm in winter. You dreamed of an impossible fantasy, got lost in the dream, burned up all your last wishes, and died in sleep, never even knowing when the last flame had been snuffed out.

The wind whistled through the playground. Nirei chewed on the inside of his lip. His tears had dried up, but his eyes still stung. He’s really not answering.

As sudden as a lightning strike, the call connected.

He almost dropped his phone in the rush to hold it up to his ear. “Suo-san?!” he cried, but the other end of the line stayed silent, even as he repeated the name, growing frantic. “Where are you? What happened to you?”

The winds had picked up again; the buffeting noise was almost loud enough to drown out Suo’s reply. “Nire-kun. You’ll be cold if you don’t bundle up.”

YOU HAVE TO LOOK CLOSER.

There—just across the street. Dead leaves fluttered through the air in a tizzy, but none of it was enough to obscure Suo Hayato, who stood just beyond the scattering. Through the phone his voice had sounded tinny and distant—this close, he’d hear if Nirei shouted. And it was close enough for Nirei to see his face.

He was smiling. That hurt worse than any hit Nirei had ever taken, because Suo was just like usual, and though with this weather the cold had already seeped into his skin, the thought that Suo had always smiled like this, hiding everything, and that Nirei hadn’t looked hard enough—that thought gave him bone-deep chills.

In a fight, the space between a hit and a miss was a thin sliver of a line. Their eyes had met, so the same principles applied; if he lost sight of him again, Nirei thought he might lose him forever.

Now it wasn’t enough—to not close his eyes—to open them—to look closer—it wasn’t enough to just stare at Suo, his figure far enough to be almost silhouette, winking in and out of the dark.

Nirei’s head, his heart, the wind—everything was howling.

origins

like a lot of my fics, this started as me messing around. back in may 2024 I asked @sunnnfish to guess how many words I had in my then-draft for life committments and since they’d guessed the word to the exact count, I felt compelled to reward them with some tashiro writing. this is how we get blur, which I posted virtually unchanged because I think it’s got its own type of charm compared to see the light.

(fun coincidence! both these fics I just mentioned ended up being birthday gifts—life committments for @dirtbra1n and see the light for @sunnnfish)

anyways, as the progenitor for the whole fic, what happens in blur is key to see the light: tashiro’s crossdressing, and shirahama’s looking at him. that viewpoint of his—the soft-focus feel, the undeniable attraction that is nonetheless denied—got me playing with the idea of shirahama’s “vision” as I expanded on the piece.

themes

see the light structures itself around two things—tashiro, girls—and shirahama’s perception of them.

one of my favorite things about tashiro is the way he’s relatively nonchalant about gender—totally cool with being called gon-chan, and his only objection to dressing as a girl is not wanting to shave his leg hair, which wouldn’t be necessary if he was wearing a kimono like miyano did, and isn’t even necessary to be a girl in the first place. similarly, he seems curious about romantic relationships as a whole, without the gender of it mattering. in love & passion, from sasaki and miyano: first years, when he finds out the old ladies at the bathhouse are yuri fans he’s just appreciative of their passion, and the same is true of how he feels about miyano’s BL interest.

shirahama, I think, is not the same. in ch 42 of sasaki to miyano, he’s conscious of the fact that they maybe shouldn’t openly be referring to miyano’s boyfriend. and he’s concscious of what it might look like to share his umbrella with miyano, in ch 50 of sasaki to miyano. tashiro immediately asks him to share his when he spots him.

those conflicting perspectives, and differing levels of awareness—I wanted to explore that. I knew the last scene had tashiro crossdressing, so making the fic explore #tashirogender was a natural extension, and since that last scene has shirahama looking at him, the way shirahama looks at things has to extend out into the rest of the fic, too. hence, “vision” weaving its way into the piece.

all that said, let’s now look at how this fic works on a scene-by-scene basis. truthfully I’d first thought about going through this fic on a sentence level, but I’m line-by-line annotating another fic right now, and… that takes a lot of work, alright? maybe you can convince me another time :p

scene #1

here’s the main points of this scene:

we establish that shirahama and tashiro are college roommates

shirahama’s got perfect vision

shirahama’s also playing a dating sim.

#1: obviously I need to establish the college roommates context. we need that situation for the last scene, so they’re in the same room and are capable of doing shenanigans like these. we also need it for, uh, the rest of the fic. since it’s important background. shirahama notes that these days people assume that he and tashiro are operating on a higher level of familiarity and closeness (that childhood friends label) and also says he’d be jealous if he thought about how he and tashiro didn’t talk to girls. he means that he’s envious of his single status, of course, but that meaning is going to blur in time.

#2: theme of vision is introduced. shirahama’s going to observe lots of things over the course of this fic, and we need to set up that he has perfect vision, so that we know he’s lying when he talks about seeing clearly. he’s also kind of arrogant about this—it’ll make his later destabilization appear in wonderful contrast.

#3: dating sims bring up the topic of girls and relationships, both of which are important to this fic. a dating sim is also going to come up again, so it’s important that tashiro takes interest, here. he sucks at it for the same reason that shirahama is good—tashiro’s less concerned with all the lines of what is and isn’t proper, in terms of relationship and gender, whereas shirahama is concerned.

scene #2

our main points:

shirahama gripes about couples.

shirahama bleaches tashiro’s hair.

shirahama and tashiro talk about crossdressing.

#1: we once again see that shirahama is romantically unfulfilled and unsuccessful. he’s also weird about miyano’s relationship in a classically shiramiya fashion. shirahama and tashiro still go on group dates, tashiro’s popular with girls, and tashiro also gets compared to the sun. these will all come up later.

#2: this is a great vehicle for showing intimacy and distance. tashiro’s described pretty attractively here, but shirahama blames it on the bleach fumes. he can recognize something’s up with hanzawa and tashiro, which thirdwheels him as much as it confirms how well he knows tashiro. we also bring up shirahama’s vision again, and have him wish he could see less, because he doesn’t want to confront anything difficult. tashiro also gets compared to the sun.

#3: this conversation introduces the question: what’s the difference between tashiro and a girl? girls can be as tall as tashiro, in games or in real life. tashiro conflates the two, here, which shirahama seems dismissive of, even though he’s going to do it in the very next scene. at the end of the scene, tashiro decides keeps his hair long—like a girl—and the feminine “blonde” is employed in this sentence.

scene #3

kind of tough to split this scene into any points. it’s just really about one big thing, which is tashiro bringing home a BL dating sim.

tashiro conflates shirahama’s heterosexual dating sims with a BL dating sim, which prompts shirahama to insist that it’s different, and girls, too are Different, in some way. he’s talking about videogame girls, but also real-life girls. and once tashiro gets shirahama to try the game out, shirahama’s really in it, and doesn’t think about stopping.

scene #4

our final scene. now I get to talk about how everything threads together.

shirahama starts the scene with a lie. what’s blurring here is not his vision—it’s his understanding of the world. he admits that tashiro is Like A Girl, which he’d denied beforehand, and though there’s a heady desire in his description, he’s still deflecting about it with his lie.

tashiro gets another sun-related descriptor, and tashiro calls their apartment home. this is a nice confirmation of the comfortability of their roommate relationship, which is a constant throughout this fic. it is maybe even a type of romance readily available to shirahama, if he only were to look at it.

we get another group date, which we’d already set up as a recurring event. tashiro’s Normal about talking to girls, while shirahama’s jealous, but here it feels like he’s jealous of the girl, not tashiro. the name for the girl tashiro mentions, aya, is taken from voice actress hirano aya. I thought the fact that her last name was “hirano”—famously blond—and that I knew her best for the roles of lucy heartfilia, amane misa, and retz—blondes—made it a fun fit. tashiro just mentions that aya’s hair was dyed, but I specifically intended for it to be blonde, so he’d see her almost like a possible self.

then, while shopping, shirahama implies that tashiro’s his girlfriend, so his neat lines of girls and guys and romance and friendship are really having all of their wires crossed. when he describes tashiro, he’s pretty, but also “blond” in the masculine form, and he’s still got leg hair, and muscles, and a visible adam’s apple. so shirahama’s seeing direct signals of masculinity come into contact with the truth that tashiro’s still Like A Girl to him. everything is blurring. tashiro’s shampoo is his And theirs.

.

Hanzawa wakes up with nothing but the memory of music. That, and lights. The pattern-matching part of his brain rouses, and concludes, karaoke, which he does then remember.

But he doesn’t remember how he got home. He’s still in his clothes from last night, which are now sleep-rumpled, but otherwise intact. The headache throbbing at his temples and the queasy feeling in his stomach suggests a hangover, but that would require mistakenly getting blackout drunk off of someone else’s order. And getting so spectacularly drunk that he wouldn’t remember any part of the getting drunk, not even the part where he picked up someone else’s glass, but not so spectacularly drunk that he couldn't arrive home in one mostly-together piece. What an unlikely concoction of events; he can’t believe in it. Of the many stupid things he’s done in his life, this is not one of them. In a few months, he’ll turn twenty and can make those stupid, blackout-drunk decisions all by his lonesome, but for right now, he’s safe.

He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, ineffectually tries to straighten out his clothes, and pokes his head out of the bedroom. Alcohol or not, the inside of his mouth feels disgusting. He’d like to freshen up before anyone finds him.

The world is not on his side, because his older brother just has exited the bathroom, and notices him immediately.

Hanzawa suppresses a groan, and tries to finger-comb his hair down into something less embarrassing as Masaomi lopes over.

His brother is sporting a huge grin. This bodes terribly. “Wild night last night?”

Humorless, Hanzawa squints back at him. “How’d I get home?”

“You don't remember?” Masaomi asks. “Your girlfriend dropped you off.”

“Girlfriend…?” It’s not that Hanzawa doesn’t remember Tashiro—he’s not the type of person you just forget, even when all-nighter karaoke sessions tend to blur into each other as a matter of principle—but he hadn’t been crossdressing last night. Not during the parts Hanzawa remembers, at least.

Masaomi furrows his brows. “Yeah, Tashiro-chan,” he says, slowly. “You must be really out of it, Maa-kun.”

Lying so bald-facedly to his family should weigh on him more than it does, but the way Tashiro-chan sounds, so nice and believable, softens the sting of it. Opting for calculated vulnerability, Hanzawa admits, “…I guess I’m more tired than I thought.”

“That’s what Tashiro-chan said,” Masaomi notes. “She says you don’t rest enough.” By the look of it, he agrees. “Have classes been… hard, lately?”

He shrugs, noncommittal. Not more so than usual, he thinks. Academics are the easy part—everything else is what’s hard to handle.

It at least settles sleep-deprivation as the reason for his spotty memory. “…She’s probably right. I’ll have to thank her.”

It doesn’t settle why Masaomi seems to still think he has a girlfriend. Does Tashiro just carry around a change of girls’ clothes with him? And last night, he’d the wherewithal to swap into them, dodge any questioning from their friends, and what, drag Hanzawa back home? What a convoluted turn of events; it’s hard to believe.

Maybe Masaomi just has a particularly favorable girl-vision of Tashiro. That, Hanzawa can believe—it would be a shared vision.

“You should. She carried you all the way here—barely broke a sweat, though! I was impressed.”

Maybe Masaomi has an extremely favorable girl-vision of Tashiro. “She does sports,” Hanzawa says. He searches his memory for the sensation of being on someone’s back, of feeling their warmth, and comes up distressingly empty.

“What kind?” Masaomi asks.

“Ping pong,” Hanzawa says, and Masaomi’s eyes light up with a knowing glint. “And track and field. And karate. A little bit of everything, in middle school.”

“But mostly ping pong?”

He can’t read his gaze. “Mostly ping pong.”

“You ever played against each other?”

Hanzawa laughs. “I win every time.”

Masaomi looks surprised. “You should let her win at least once,” he says. “You’re a sore winner—doesn’t she get mad at you?”

“She gets annoyed, but she’s never really mad. She would be, if I went easy on her.”

“Oh, so you’re both competitive, then,” Masaomi says, which isn’t exactly the truth, but Hanzawa doesn’t know how to explain that Tashiro is the sorest and bestest of losers, and that when he gets frustrated it’s the kind that makes you simultaneously want to cheer for him and tease him, and that when he plays ping pong, the emotions on his face are always so open and easy to read. He has the words for it, because it’s easy to talk about Tashiro, but he can’t so easily tell the truth.

“Yeah,” he lies. He wants to head into the bathroom, wash the grime off his face, and finally strip out of his old clothes, but Masaomi keeps nodding to himself like he wants to say something. So Hanzawa waits, hackles raised.

It’s impossible, after all. These days, Tashiro is taller than him, and even when he was shorter, he’d never been mistaken for a girl. In a picture it doesn’t read so badly, and these days you can edit those as you like, but in person, the illusion thins. Even if Hanzawa had always believed in it, the image forever at the edges of his vision, that can’t be the case for everybody.

“…So that’s your type, huh?”

“…What?”

Masaomi grins and makes an ambiguous gesture. “You know, the type of girl who could take you in a fight. A really strong woman!”

The glower on his face must be formidable, because Masaomi instantly raises his hands up in surrender. It’s not even undercut by the heat that swarms Hanzawa’s face at—at whatever implication that is.

“Alright, alright, Maa-kun,” Masaomi says. “Dropping the subject. Won't say another word.”

“Good,” Hanzawa says, vehemently.

Masaomi’s expression softens into sincerity. “Really,” he says, “she seems… good for you. I’m happy.”

Still flushed, Hanzawa manages a stiff nod, and shuffles off to the bathroom instead of the mortal coil. The hard, white lights and the mirror highlight his imperfections—the bags under his eyes, the pallor of his skin, the crust in his eyes he hadn’t rubbed out, the wrinkles in his clothes he hadn’t smoothed.

Tashiro is good to him. He’s probably good for him, too. He’s more good for him than Hanzawa is for himself, considering the last couple months of his life could be counted as his strangest form of self-sabotage yet. But even as he looks at the miserable state of his reflection, he can’t find it in himself to regret it.

What he misses is Gon-chan—who brought him home, and carried him, and talked to Masaomi, all with Hanzawa unseeing and unfeeling. She must have been something entirely beautiful—a stark contrast to who he’s taking stock of, now. He sighs, and pushes his hair—limp and unkempt—up so he can wash his face.

There’s a lipstick mark on his forehead. Not just any color—a green lipstick mark, stark against the pink his face goes when he first sees it.

Here’s what Hanzawa knows: before they’d started dating, he’d pressed a green eyeshadow palette into Tashiro’s palm. At the time, it hadn’t meant anything—he’d just thought that Tashiro’s favorite shade of spring green was just surprisingly hard to find. So it hadn’t meant anything when, months later, he’d come across a matching lipstick and bought Tashiro another gift.

Here’s what Hanzawa doesn't know: that she'd carried it. That Tashiro had kept that lipstick stashed on her person, and hell, maybe her eyeshadow as well, even though the colors were too crazy to pass as a normal girl. But in the dark, with nothing else but her wit and daring, she’d put it on, the color too bright to question, and taken him home. And almost like she knew he’d miss her, she’d left him a little stamp of her influence, like a blessing to tide him over. Like Cinderella—Gon-chan could make one magical transformation, but she couldn’t stay the night.

What a coincidental series of events; Hanzawa believes in every piece of it.

.

“That can’t possibly be effective.” 

Tashiro squints at the newly arrived Hanzawa. “How do you know?” he asks, even though now that he’s stopped flapping a hand in front of his face at a breakneck pace, he realizes there’s not much of a difference. 

Still, it’s so hot that he's willing to try anything. Even Hanzawa is sweating under the height of summer, which is seriously messing with his sense of reality. On some level, Tashiro knows that Hanzawa sweats and gets exhausted just like any other guy—maybe gets a little too faint, judging by how he’d looked during ping pong practice, sometimes—but he just seems like the type of person who would never succumb to the sun. Here, though, he looks more mirage than ever, and when Tashiro squints he can see a bead of sweat roll down his neck. 

…The heat's getting to his head. 

“If it worked, I imagine someone who wasn’t you would be doing it,” Hanzawa replies, adjusting the strap of his messenger bag. “As it is, you’re all out of luck.” 

Tashiro restlessly shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Sure,” he agrees. “We’re going inside soon, right?” 

Hanzawa gives him a funny look, and Tashiro feels a year younger already. “The president’s always five minutes late to things.”

Tashiro has the urge to be pedantic. Technically, the president of the ping pong club arrived seven minutes ahead of time. One ex-president is punctual. It’s another ex-president that's late. But between the two of them, there’s only one common president.

“Then why are you on time?” 

“How about this,” Hanzawa counters, “why were you early?” 

That’s not an answer, Tashiro thinks, but it’s not like he has one, either. He goes back to fanning himself and groans, “I’m going to die in this heat.”

As if on cue, a cool shadow looms behind them. “Patience is a virtue,” the president says.  

Tashiro startles, and turns to face the president, who looms above them both, his figure a momentary alleviation of the heat. He steadies his heart. “Then I’ll be—un-virtuous, or whatever.” 

Hanzawa hums a contemplative set of tones. “Punctuality is also a virtue.” 

“Certainly,” the president remorselessly agrees. “Now, don’t abandon me now, ‘kay?” he appeals, crooking a finger to beckon them both inside. 

Tashiro has three separate protests building on the tip of his tongue. But the president’s shadow is stretching longer, farther, and Hanzawa looks like he might wilt under the heat. He follows them in.

—

Even under the welcome blast of air conditioning, it’s like Tashiro can still feel the heat creeping at his back. His restlessness makes him the first to clamber into an open booth, and he immediately regrets it when the president slides in next to him. Hanzawa slinks into the opposing side of the booth with a nonchalance that’s ruined by the smug look on his face.

Tashiro’s legs drum beneath the table, unable to kick the summer buzz. Forlornly, he says, “I wanted the outer seat.” 

“Well,” the president says, effervescent, “Clearly my legs need the room more than you do.” 

“You’re so unfair,” Tashiro says. “Hanzawa-senpai’s shorter than me, why can’t you box him in?” 

To Hanzawa’s credit, he does not comment. This might be because the first time they’d figured this out, Tashiro had immediately crouched on the ground to make him feel better. Hanzawa had burst out laughing, and said, Do you think height is going to stop me from being your senpai?

It wasn't the height that bothered him. It was the difference. In his first year he’d been short enough to dress as a girl, so long as he shaved his legs, but now that was no longer the case. He couldn’t help but wonder what else would change.

The president wags an infuriating finger. “I just sat down!” he says, looking affronted. “I’m not going to get up just so you can switch seats.” 

Tashiro stands, still cramped in the booth because the president’s legs are long, and gangly, and he’s got a dangerous glint in his eyes that suggests he’s about to encroach on Tashiro’s personal space. He teeters dangerously over the table to stare down Hanzawa, who’s unable to hide the way his shoulders shake with suppressed laughter. “Come on, Hanzawa-senpai!” he protests. “This is an injustice!” 

Hanzawa breaks from his laughter, looking up at Tashiro, undyed brows exposed to the overhead lights, and lets Tashiro helplessly dangle above him. Finally he curls a finger around the neckline of Tashiro’s shirt and tugs him back down to a seated position. “You’re going to get weird looks,” he says. 

“And?” Tashiro rebuts. “They’ll agree with me.” 

A waiter comes by to take their orders, and after the president orders some monstrosity of a sundae, he ambles over to the restroom. Tashiro leaps for his chance.

When the president returns, Tashiro is sitting on Hanzawa’s side, legs kicked outwards and free.

“Mutiny!” the president gasps. 

“Is it really mutiny if you both chose us to be presidents?” Hanzawa argues with a devilish smile.

“Mutiny,” the president repeats, “My two proteges, striking back at their master! You can’t even beat me at ping pong!”

“He can,” Tashiro reminds him, jabbing a finger at Hanzawa, who is in the process of accepting the sundaes that the waiter has brought over.

“Stolen valor,” the president insists, undercut by the giant sundae that’s been plopped in front of him. He’s lucky enough to be tall, so his face isn’t totally covered, but it’s still silly. “I could still crush you.”

“I don’t know,” Tashiro says. “Don’t your skills dull with age? You said you were out of practice.”

The president gasps. “Well, I never,” he says, which is a sign of age better than any Tashiro could have pointed to, and then he’s off on another tirade about mutiny again, about his deceptive kouhai and how they’re true terrors, and—

“Your sundae’s going to melt,” Tashiro finally says, because it’s worrying him, and instead of going for the sides the president just squawks and dives into the center, which makes Tashiro accept that smart people can be really, really dumb. And misleading. For all his stupid tirades and strange manner of speech, the president’s best subjects are the sciences, which Tashiro had only learned after hearing him babble about metabolic processes in the midst of kidnapping him back to the ping pong club. He was tricky like that.

Under the table, the president’s foot kicks against his ankle. Tashiro frowns and taps the foot to the side. Another kick. “Seriously?”

“Why, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Tashiro-kun,” the president says, with a shit-eating grin. There’s a spot of ice cream on his lips. His sundae is totally melting.

Tashiro finishes off his sundae. He kicks back at the soles of the president’s sneakers.

Hanzawa says, “I can see you playing footsie under the table.”

Tashiro jerks his feet back. “He started it,” he says, and then, “Captain, your sundae’s going to melt over—”

The president makes an unintelligible noise and attacks the spilling over sides. Once he’s finished it—quicker than he should—he wipes his mouth, says, “Same time next week, yeah?” and flits off.

Tashiro slouches in the booth and grumbles, “He’s so demanding.”

“It’s not like you have to say yes,” Hanzawa says. With that face, he should have a lucrative poker career.

Tashiro taps his ankle with his feet. Lightly, because Hanzawa’s delicate. In response, Hanzawa slips out from his hold and hooks his foot around Tashiro’s ankle. He eats the last bit of fruit from his sundae like that, and doesn’t let go even when he’s done.

“You know that’s not true,” Tashiro says with a look of consternation. It’s the inevitability of existing within the president’s inner circle. Once you’re in, you can’t get out.

With a smile, Hanzawa pays for the three of them. Their ankles uncross, but they exit together. “Are you planning on showing up early, next week?” he asks.

Tashiro thinks it over. “Only if you are.”

In the two weeks preceding The Great Fires of Extinction, Furin High operated with the efficiency of a machine. It was true that Furin had always fought—their reputation, though malformed, did not sprout from nowhere. Nonetheless, it was rare for that fighting to be accompanied by mechanical practice, and the sight of the student body, split into regimented sparring, was foreign to outsiders and insiders alike.

first sentence establishes the specific time and context of this piece, and sets us up with a statement: furin's working like a machine. this is a piece of fiction, but it works a little bit like an essay, especially because of the framing I've chosen, here: a 3rd person omniscient pov. in my original plotting, I'd written thoughts and observations about both nirei and suo, and if I'd picked just one perspective to go with, I'd lose out on what I wanted to convey. this distant, formal tone allows suo to remain appropriately mysterious, while also giving us a little bit of insight into him that we might not have gotten from nirei's pov alone.

as I said, it's like an essay, so I really pull out the ten dollar words to sell the tone here: "malformed" "nonetheless" "regimented" etc. my opening statement is about that machine efficiency, and I reinforce that idea through the paragraph with language like "mechanical practice" and "regimented sparring." this style of pov and overall tone also sits, on a metatextual level, at odds with furin's usual energy, and I think that helps sell the idea that they're uncharacteristically serious. "sprout" gets used here to refer to furin's reputation, and it leads well into the next paragraph.

Umemiya Hajime was, at heart, the type to want to nurture students like seedlings—give them the space to grow roots, and bloom in their own time. But in the face of fire, “ease” was a term best left to the past. If gardening had taught Umemiya anything it was the beautiful, decisive application of rigor. To cultivate, day after day, and build anew from there. In that sense, machine and plant were not all that different—they required upkeep, diligence, careful applications of force. And sometimes, you just needed to put in the work.

so obviously "gardening" is a big thing here. it's literally a big thing in wind breaker. lots of words to reflect that theme: "nurture" "seedlings" "grow roots" "bloom" "cultivate".

but in the face of fire, "ease" was a term best left to to the past is a good example sentence of the types of things you can do when you have context. rather than say the upcoming battle, or anything so specific, I can just abstract it into the symbolic "fire" which feels naturally at odds with plant life, and something that would provoke a dramatic shift. I also quote "ease" here even though it's a word I don't use specifically until now. I can do that because the preceding sentence demonstrates the concept of ease, even I don't actually say that word. in my head I always call this show, then tell: I punctuate the statement with a concise, one-word sum up, and use that as an easy hook back, later.

the last sentence deliberately drops into a less formal tone, because it delivers better as a blunt, honest truth. it gives the impression of dropping ideologies in the face of immediate danger. I think it really hammers the point home.

Work, ritualized, was the core of Suo Hayato’s discipline, and in his practice of it, he extended that ideology to every movement. And so, though Furin was in an anticipatory period of fighting focus, his training sessions with Nirei Akihiko remained unchanged.

the "work" at the beginning of this paragraph plays right off the ending of the previous one. here we introduce the actual main stars of this fic: suo hayato and nirei akihiko. I like to full name characters when talking about them As A Concept... when they embody a certain role or weight. so umemiya hajime gets full-named because it's not just about him, it's about his representative ideology. the same is true of suo, and nirei is a participant in this, so he gets swept up, too. it just makes a grander, more formal sort of statement. of course this matches well with the tone I set for this fic, but you'll notice that I tend to do it in the beginning of a lot of other fics, especially right as a character enters. it just gives their presence a lovely additional weight.