Chapter Text
April
When someone comes up behind Koushiro and yanks his bag off his shoulder, it’s not really a surprise.
He’s standing in the courtyard outside the gym, waiting for Taichi to finish soccer practice, and he can predict exactly how it’s going to go. He knows the insults already, all stuff about him being too smart, too short, too queer. These guys are nothing if not predictable.
This time, it’s Akihito from his social studies class, a rat-faced kid with an overbite, who manages to stop getting bullied himself only by picking on other people.
Koushiro holds one hand out for his bag. “Give it back,” he says, calm as he can.
Akihito grins at him. “What’s the matter? It got your tampons in it?”
“No.”
“It got your gay porn in it?”
“Look,” Koushiro says, “Nobody’s watching. You don’t have to act like a jerk just for my benefit.”
But, apparently, Akihito disagrees with that. He holds the bag out by its strap. “Oh, you want it? Here you go.”
It’s all too obvious what is going to happen. Koushiro considers not playing along, but the bag is full of unpublished pages for next week’s edition of the school paper and, as the editor in chief, it wouldn’t look good if he lost them.
He reaches for the bag, trying not to look too shocked when it is jerked away from him at the last second.
Akihito laughs and holds the bag out once more.
Koushiro thinks they are going to have to repeat the whole cycle again, but then someone shouts “hey!” from the other side of the courtyard, and they both turn to see Yamato walking towards them.
Koushiro takes advantage of the momentary distraction to snatch back his bag.
Akihito grabs after it, but then Yamato is standing right next to him, fixing him with one of his icy stares.
“Fuck off,” Yamato says.
Akihito’s not about to risk a real face-off with Ishida Yamato who, after Taichi, is pretty much the most popular kid in the whole school. But he musters the courage to mutter the word “Fag,” as he turns to go.
“Ooh,” Yamato says, with such cold disdain that Akihito actually blushes as he slinks away, ashamed to have delivered such an unimaginative insult.
Once he is out of sight, Koushiro turns to Yamato, hefting his bag more comfortably onto his shoulder. “Thanks,” he says.
Yamato doesn't even look at him. He just shrugs and says, “Whatever.”
They stand there in silence for a moment, both stewing, staring at the door to the gym.
Of all the chosen children, Yamato has always been the most elusive, the one Koushiro positively can’t make sense of. But in this one way they are the same. Turning events over and over, looking at them from every angle and fretting out the conclusions.
The difference is that while Koushiro’s conclusions are always empirical, Yamato’s are usually driven by emotion, which makes them thoroughly unreliable as far as Koushiro’s concerned.
Honestly, these days Koushiro barely sees him. They are both in the same French club at school, but they don’t really talk there. Yamato is only doing it for the extra credits and mostly just sits there looking bored out of his mind, seeing as he’s semi-fluent anyway.
Koushiro glances sideways at him. He’s an older version of what he’s always been. Aloof and willowy, exuding the kind of glamour you can only be born with.
“Doesn't it bother you when people call you that?” Koushiro asks, without thinking.
Yamato looks at him. “Call me what?”
Koushiro doesn't answer that, and Yamato looks away again. “It’d bother me more if it were true.”
It’s true for me, Koushiro thinks. One day he’ll open his mouth and say that. But not to Yamato and definitely not now.
There’s a burst of noise as the gym door opens and the first members of the soccer team come out, changed and fresh from the shower.
Taichi is there a moment later, walking towards them, bag slung across his body and his sunshine grin plastered across his face.
“Hey,” Taichi says, looking at Yamato. “What are you doing? I thought you had practice?”
“I’m blowing it off.”
“What for?”
“For you, doofus.”
Taichi puts his head on one side and frowns at that, so Yamato sighs and says, “You know, all those messages you keep sending me? ‘I never see you anymore’, ‘When are we going to hang out,’, ‘Why are you ignoring me?’. All that shit.”
“I do not sound like that.”
“Practically.”
Taichi drops his hand onto Koushiro’s shoulder, acknowledging him with the touch. “Well, I made plans with Koushiro now. He’s nice and dependable. Doesn't let me down like you do.”
“Oh, come on,” Yamato says, and then, “Okay, I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment.”
Other guys are heading past them, carrying boot bags, one lugging a huge net full of soccer balls. Taichi grins at a couple of them, but he doesn’t move his hand from Koushiro’s shoulder.
Perhaps it’s the warmth of the early spring sunshine, or the fact that Yamato saw off Akihito, but for some reason Koushiro opens his mouth and makes a suggestion, even though he knows that it’s not what any of them wants.
“We can hang out all three of us.”
Taichi’s fingers tighten around Koushiro’s shoulder in a way that might be good or might be bad. It’s hard to tell because Taichi is outwardly so cool about everything. He smiles easily and says, “Awesome. Let's do that.”
But Yamato takes a beat too long to agree with him and this is exactly the kind of thing that makes Koushiro half-hate him sometimes.
They go to a Saizeriya down the street, partly because Taichi wants to eat, but mostly because Yamato never seems to actually want to do stuff. Usually, when Taichi and Koushiro hang out by themselves, they’ll go to the arcade or play video games at somebody’s apartment. Yamato likes to talk face to face, or not bother at all. Koushiro always thinks an activity is best, but Yamato has more clout than him, so Yamato gets his way.
The waitress seats them in a booth by a window and slides plastic-covered menus in front of them. Koushiro opens his and scans the pictures of pasta and pizza.
“I can’t even remember what’s good here,” Yamato says, flicking his hair out of his eyes as he tracks the path of a passing waitress who’s carrying a tray high on one shoulder.
“It’s all good,” Taichi tosses his menu aside. “It’s basically just carbs and sauce. You can’t go wrong.”
When the waitress returns, Taichi and Yamato both order spaghetti with squid, but Taichi gets the red sauce, Yamato the black.
“You’re such a wannabe goth,” Taichi says, as he takes Yamato’s menu from him and hands it back to the waitress, along with his own.
“I wish I was as cool as a goth,” Yamato says, with a smirk.
“Is your friend Swedish?” the waitress asks Koushiro as she reaches to collect his menu too. She nods in Yamato’s direction, as though he can’t understand a word and she hasn’t just heard him speaking the language like a local.
“Nope,” Taichi says, before Koushiro can answer. “He’s Japanese. We don’t know why he looks like this either.”
She hugs the menus to her chest. “Really?”
“Actually his mom’s French and his dad’s half American,” Koushiro says, looking up at her.
“Wow! That’s amazing!”
“You don’t have to explain that to her,” Yamato says to Koushiro, and then adds, in French, “It’s none of her business.”
The waitress laughs uncertainly, sensing his tone, even in the foreign language. “I’ll get your order in right away,” she says, before turning on her heel and walking away.
“I’m sorry,” Koushiro starts, “I didn’t mean to—“
“Forget it,” Yamato cuts him off. “It just gets old. I know I look like a tourist. People don’t have to point it out.” He glances at Taichi, who is busy staring at him. “What?”
“You’re sexy when you speak like that,” Taichi says, with a grin. “All French.”
Yamato shakes his head. “You’re a moron.”
Koushiro can’t tell whether Taichi is teasing or being serious. Most likely, he thinks, it is a mixture of both.
One thing he knows for sure is that Taichi has never called him ‘sexy’, not even when he’s been sitting right next to him, conjugating French verbs out loud.
*
January
The day that Taichi comes out to them is the coldest day on record. Coldest for Tokyo in the month of January, that is. Not the coldest anywhere, not by a long shot.
Snow falls heavily all through the night, and by morning the streets are white and empty. Schools are closed across the city.
There is every reason to stay indoors, but when Taichi’s message comes through, calling them all together, of course they struggle out anyway.
“I feel stupid now, because this isn’t even important,” Taichi tells Koushiro, as he opens his apartment door and ushers him into the warmth. “Not digital important, anyway.”
Koushiro stamps the snow from his boots and bends down to pull them off. “Importance is subjective,” he says.
They all pack into the Yagamis’ living room and then Taichi does it. He just tells them: he’s gay.
“Sorry for making this seem like a fucking press conference,” he says. “I just didn’t want any of you to hear it from someone else. When the snow came, it seemed like the perfect chance.”
Sora is the first to step forwards. She puts her arms around him and says, “We’re proud of you. Thank you for telling us.”
The rest of them follow. They hug him, pat him on the back, anything to show that it’s okay, that nothing has changed.
Koushiro is sure that he is blushing as he gives Taichi what must be the most awkward hug in the history of their friendship. They try to put their arms in the same place, and have to readjust, with their faces way too close together.
“That took guts,” Koushiro mumbles, hoping that at least some of his admiration trickles through. Taichi has just stood there in the middle of a room full of people and demoed how to face Koushiro’s biggest fear.
“I guess I have those,” Taichi says with a shrug.
Through it all, the only person to hang back is Yamato. He stays where he is, leaning casually against a doorframe with his arms folded and legs crossed at the ankle.
Koushiro is taken aback by his lack of reaction, feels kind of mad about it, thinks about saying something on Taichi’s behalf. But Sora beats him to it.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asks, staring at Yamato, who shifts against the wall, in no hurry to reply.
“He already knows,” Taichi says quickly. “I told him a couple of weeks ago.”
“Yeah, this is such old news. I don’t even know why I’m here,” Yamato says, in that tone of his that makes it hard to tell if he’s being sarcastic or not.
“It’s called ‘moral support’ bro,” Taichi says, copying the tone.
“Excuse me, do you know how cold it is outside?”
“Extra moral support, then. Heroic levels of support.”
“Well, you’ve got that from me.” Yamato turns his head to stare out the window, his voice dropping into sincerity as he does so. “Always, Tai. You know you have.”
“And I appreciate it,” Taichi says, still looking at Yamato, even though he’s not looking back.
*
April
As usual, Taichi devours his food at lightning speed and then sits watching everyone else eat, like a family dog hoping for scraps.
He keeps up a steady flow of conversation though, which Koushiro is grateful for. It means that he doesn’t have to worry about awkward silences. And without Taichi’s chat, there would be plenty of those. Yamato is trying to quit smoking, and mealtimes bring on his worst cravings. The longer they sit there, the more irritable and fidgety he becomes.
“How’s it going?” Taichi asks, watching Yamato push the last of his black spaghetti around his plate.
“Bad. It’s going bad, okay? I would stab you in the face right now for a cigarette.”
Yamato’s foot is tapping repeatedly against the base of their table. Koushiro can feel the vibrations travelling across the tabletop.
Taichi nods, mulling this over. Then he says, “If you do it, I’ll take you to DisneySea.”
“I don't want to go to DisneySea, Tai. I want to smoke.”
“Okay. Sexual favours? No? I’m thinking no, right?”
“No.”
“Can I finish your pasta?”
“Yes.”
Koushiro wipes his mouth with a napkin and sets his chopsticks neatly down beside his empty plate.
“You know, there have been studies suggesting that nicotine actually has the potential to slow cognitive decline,” he says. “Not if you smoke it as a cigarette, because there are so many other harmful chemicals in there, but there’s some evidence that, on its own, nicotine can actually prevent Alzheimer’s.”
He looks at the other two expectantly. They stare back, Taichi blinking, while Yamato rests his chin in one hand, wearing the same expression he wears during French club.
“Cool,” Taichi says, eventually. “Shall we get the check?”
As they walk out of the restaurant and down the street, it is becoming increasingly clear that Koushiro’s idea that they all hang out together was not one of his best.
There’s something about Taichi and Yamato together that makes them hard to be around.
Their interactions create a kind of vacuum. They are their own black hole, filled with unknowable and unreachable matter.
Koushiro has never felt so distinctly like a third wheel. As they walk, weaving in and out of the bikes and pedestrians, he lags a step behind, listening in like an eavesdropper.
“Sometimes I get really tired of this city,” Yamato is saying, as he and Taichi step apart to let yet another jogger pass between them.
“You love Tokyo,” Taichi says.
“Doesn't mean I can't be tired of it too. I mean, honestly, these crowds? Don’t you just feel like you could snap and start shoving people?” Yamato looks over his shoulder at Koushiro, for objective validation.
“Not really,” Koushiro says, with a shrug.
“Yeah. But we’re civilised people,” Taichi says. “The trick is to make it accidental. Like...”
And before either of them can stop him, he has darted forwards, barging between a couple of tourists, checking them both hard with his shoulder. They don’t even have time to react with anger before Taichi immediately falls over himself apologising in broken, heavily-accented English.
“Sorry, sorry, prease forgive me,” he says, bowing low.
The tourists scowl at him and murmur in a language that sounds like Dutch, but head off with their guidebooks without any trouble.
Behind their backs, Yamato grabs Taichi by the elbow. “What are you doing? You speak good English.”
“They don’t know that. And now I feel better.” Taichi tugs his arm free and throws it around Yamato’s shoulders. “And so do you.”
Koushiro stands there in the middle of the street, wondering if either of them would notice if he simply wandered off, as Yamato looks up at the sky, pretending not to be interested in the arm wrapped around him. Or maybe not pretending, Koushiro reminds himself. Probably genuinely not interested.
“I might if it wasn’t also freezing,” Yamato says, staring at the clouds that have rolled in, turning the spring air chilly.
“You’ve always got to find something to complain about, haven’t you? Here, you want this?” Taichi grabs the hem of his sweater and makes to pull it up over his head.
Yamato shrugs free of his arm. “Don’t do that,” he says.
“What?”
“Treat me like a girl.”
“Hey,” Koushiro says, because he can see where this is going.
“Oh my God, forget it, then,” Taichi snaps. He starts walking again, leaving the others to fall in step. “Seriously, Yamato. Fuck you sometimes.”
“Fuck you too.”
“Where are you going to go instead, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“Instead of Tokyo? If you hate it so much.”
“I don’t know. Bali? Or something.”
“Bali? That’s bullshit.”
“What’s wrong with Bali?”
“You can’t stand the heat.”
“Koji says it’s interesting.”
“What the hell would Koji know?
“Okay,” Koushiro says, finally, stepping between them “This is…”
But as soon as the bad blood has bubbled up, it clears again, disappearing into nothing.
“Ooh, takoyaki,” Taichi says, brightening instantly, his eyes fixed on a food stall across the street. He heads right for it, while Yamato is looking in the opposite direction, staring at a group of college kids crowded outside a coffee shop.
“Smokers,” Yamato says, beginning to drift towards them. “Maybe I can bum one.”
Koushiro hesitates, looking back and forth between them. Then, he chases after Taichi, who is already digging notes out of his pocket to pay the stall owner.
“Are you guys okay?” Koushiro asks. He shakes his head when Taichi offers him a ball of takoyaki from the little cardboard tray.
“Of course we are. What are you talking about?”
Taichi pops a piece of the fried dough into his mouth, without even a glance in the direction of the coffee shop, where Yamato is cupping his hand around the wrist of some older guy, to keep the flame of a match steady while he gets his cigarette lit.
*
February
After Taichi comes out, it doesn’t take long for the rumours about them to start.
Taichi doesn’t hold the same kind of ‘press conference’ for the rest of the school, but he isn’t the type to hide anything either. If someone asks him straight, he just tells them.
He’s popular enough that it doesn’t seem to matter. He is still the captain of the school’s champion soccer team, after all, and still friends with all the other most popular kids in school, including Yamato – with his cruel right hook and pending record deal.
Despite not actually being together like that, the two of them make quite the power couple, something right out of a teen movie. That kind of status brings a hell of a lot of protection.
It doesn’t stop the gossip, though. And there is certainly plenty of that.
“I heard they’ve been fucking since tenth grade, but Yamato won’t admit it because of what the record label will think,” Koushiro hears some girl saying behind him in the lunch line one day.
“No, that’s not right,” her friend says, sliding her tray forwards to the drinks fridge. “They were together but Taichi ended it because Yamato slept with someone else. Michiko told me the whole story. And that’s not all. Apparently, it was Akiyama-sensei.”
“The music teacher? That’s no way true,” says the first girl. “Why would they even still be friends if Yamato cheated on him with a teacher?”
“Duh. Because he’s still in love with him?”
“Actually,” Koushiro says, turning around to face them as the cafeteria worker is ladelling miso soup into a bowl for him. “They’re not together at all. They never have been. And Yamato’s straight.”
Both girls stare at him. He thinks they might be friends of Mimi’s. Or, at least, they have the glossy hair and manicured nails to give a good impression of being part of her ever-expanding clique.
The first girl looks Koushiro up and down in a way that makes it very clear that she is not impressed by what she sees. “What would you know about it?”
“No, I think he’s really friends with them or something,” her friend tells her, barely looking Koushiro in the face.
This is the kind of stuff they all have to put up with – overhearing rumours, setting them straight.
Yamato gets it the worst, because he’s directly involved, but it seems to roll off of him pretty easily. Maybe because the rumours about him and the string of girls he sees are far louder, and actually grounded in fact.
Koushiro, on the other hand, finds it all particularly hard to stomach.
Ever since Taichi’s revelation about his sexuality, he’s been analysing his interactions with other men in a way that borders on obsessive. He tells himself this is because Taichi is the only other person in his life who he knows for a fact is gay. Therefore, he is Koushiro’s only model and only test subject. Everything he can learn right now about this lifestyle, he has to learn from Taichi.
As for what those interactions look like, they have been relatively unchanged. True, he flirts with guys more openly, but it’s usually done for effect, to make Jou blush or Sora laugh, and — at least when it happens within Koushiro’s earshot — it almost always sounds empty.
But Yamato is the tricky one. When Taichi flirts with him, it doesn’t feel quite the same.
Koushiro has yet to determine whether this is significant.
*
April
The peace created by the takoyaki and the cigarette is short-lived. Only minutes later, the heavens open, drenching the streets and sending people running for cover.
Yamato’s apartment is closest, so they make their way there, arriving just as the sun is beginning to break back through the clouds.
“Rainbow,” Taichi says, leaning over the railing of the walkway outside the apartment to point up at a faint arc in the sky.
Koushiro steps up beside him to look, while Yamato is busy rummaging for his keys.
“Did you know,” he says, “that, theoretically, all rainbows are circles?”
Taichi folds his arms on top of the railing and looks at him with interest, squinting one eye against a flash of sunlight. “Oh yeah?”
“Yes,” Koushiro says, “But you can’t see the other half of the circle, because it’s always beneath the horizon.”
“Huh.” Taichi looks back at the rainbow. Looks again at Koushiro. “You know, you could probably tell me anything and I’d believe it, even if it wasn’t true. I trust you way too much. Wouldn’t even notice the difference.”
“Hey, are you coming or what?” Yamato asks, from where he is standing in the doorway, propping the door open with one foot.
Inside, the apartment is dark because the curtains are still drawn. Yamato goes around opening them, letting in the last of the afternoon light, as Taichi and Koushiro are stepping out of their shoes in the entranceway.
The whole place smells faintly of cigarette smoke and aftershave.
“Sorry about the mess,” Yamato says, clearly for Koushiro’s benefit, because Taichi quickly makes himself at home, pushing aside a pile of junk mail on the low table to find the remote control for the TV.
Koushiro puts his bag down on top of his shoes and steps into the apartment. It must be years since he was last here. It’s smaller than he remembers.
He heads over to where Taichi is sprawled on the tatami, flicking through the channels, and sits down next to him.
In the kitchen, Yamato is opening and closing cupboard doors. “Do you want to eat something?” he calls.
“What do you have?” Taichi yells back.
Yamato puts his head round the kitchen door. “I don’t know. Whatever.”
Taichi thinks for a moment and then says, “Omelette?”
“Okay. Koushiro?”
“No, thank you,” Koushiro says.
Yamato shrugs and disappears again.
“You should have an omelette, dude,” Taichi says. “He doesn’t mind making them.”
“We just had pasta.”
“So? Their portions are tiny. Anyway, I’ve got to keep my protein up.”
Taichi finds a soccer match and turns the volume up. They sit and watch that until Yamato appears and glares at the TV.
“No,” he says, and that’s all it takes to make Taichi flick the channel to something else, some talk show.
Yamato hands Taichi a plate and a pair of chopsticks, and then drags a cushion over and joins them on the floor. “I don’t know how Ayumi can wear something that insane on national TV and then not expect people to rip her to shreds on social media,” he says, frowning at the outfit of the woman being interviewed by the host of the show.
Koushiro doesn’t know who she is – a singer, maybe? – but Taichi murmurs in agreement.
“She likes the attention though,” he says, through a mouthful of ketchup and egg. “Doesn’t care if it’s negative.”
“Why wouldn’t you care?”
Taichi laughs and raises his eyebrows. “Oh please. Like you don’t dress for attention.”
“I dress to look good, not for attention,” Yamato says, brushing at the knee of his school trousers. “That’s different.”
“Hardly.”
“It’s different. Koushiro?”
“That’s debatable,” Koushiro says, after a moment’s honest consideration. “I would argue that dressing to appear attractive to others is in itself a form of seeking positive reinforcement and therefore pursuing the necessary levels of attention required to demonstrate such reinforcement.”
“See?” Taichi says. “Attention seeking.”
Yamato drops backwards so that he’s leaning on his elbows, half sprawled on the floor. “Oh, kill me.”
Taichi swallows a mouthful of omelette, and then makes a show of running his gaze all the way up Yamato’s body, from legs to face.
“Come on, Yama,” he says. “You know there’s no point you dressing however you dress. People will always pay you attention anyway. Maybe Ayumi can’t say the same. You should cut her some slack, man.”
Yamato’s still and silent for a moment, staring at the TV screen. Koushiro predicts it is the calm before another fight, but then Yamato turns to Taichi and says, “Do you need more ketchup?”
Taichi nods, chewing again. “Yeah.”
Yamato fetches the ketchup and a tray of iced tea, and they sit there watching TV as the afternoon drags on and then turns into evening.
Outside, the sky grows dark. Yamato goes around closing the curtains he so recently opened.
Koushiro doesn’t know where Mr Ishida is. There’s no mention of him and no sign that he will be home any time soon.
The chat show is long over and Taichi is now slumped on his stomach, remote in hand, flicking through the digital TV guide at warp speed.
“So much shit on,” he says.
Koushiro thinks this is a good enough reason to actually do something, rather than just sit there having meandering conversations, but before he can make the suggestion, Yamato gets up and starts digging through a bag in the corner. It’s the kind of neat, leather affair that salarymen carry, probably his dad’s. He comes up with an open packet of cigarettes and heads for the balcony doors.
“That’s not very good quitting,” Taichi calls.
Yamato unlatches the door and shoves back the glass panel, letting in a gust of fresh, damp air.
Koushiro finds himself watching with fascination as Yamato puts a cigarette between his lips and then flicks his thumb against a cheap, convenience-store lighter. He leans sideways to do this outside, while still keeping his sock-covered feet indoors. It should be an awkward series of movements, but somehow he makes them graceful.
“Hey, do you want to watch Princess Mononoke?” Taichi says suddenly. “It’s starting in, like, three minutes.”
Yamato puts his head back through the door, one hand dangling outside, holding the lit cigarette. “Are you kidding?”
“No, I haven’t seen it for years. Let’s watch it.” Taichi sits up straighter. “Don’t you remember watching it when we were kids?”
“Wouldn’t you rather watch…” Yamato pauses to take a drag on his cigarette and blow the smoke up into the sky.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something for adults.”
“Don’t be a dick,” Taichi says.
“I love Princess Mononoke,” Koushiro says, partly because it’s true and partly to see the look of delight that Taichi turns on him.
“That’s it, then. We’re watching it.” Taichi flicks the channel and then settles back as the opening credits start to roll.
Yamato stays by the window until he’s done smoking, then comes to sit back down. He takes his phone out of his pocket and taps around on it, but Koushiro notices that he gets very still whenever anything exciting is happening, and that the phone screen turns black completely during the battle scenes.
“Mononoke reminds me of you, you know,” Taichi says, about halfway through the movie.
Koushiro looks over at him, but Taichi is of course staring at Yamato, who looks affronted.
“Because of the wolf thing?”
“No! Because she’s so mean and angry. And violent. But you root for her anyway.”
Yamato grunts at that. Then, after a pause, he mutters, “She always was my favourite.”
Koushiro stares at the television, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach.
When he was younger, he always identified with Mononoke himself. She was the weird, adopted kid. The outsider. The one who thinks in a different way to everybody else.
But looking at her now, sitting astride a huge white wolf, with her blue eyes and lip-curls of disdain, the match to Yamato is clearly better.
“The actor has your name,” Koushiro hears himself say, on autopilot.
Taichi looks over at him. “What’s that?”
“The voice actor who plays Mononoke. Her name is Ishida Yuriko. It’s nearly the same.”
“Nice,” Taichi says. “Destiny.”
Yamato doesn’t say anything. He’s too busy looking at his phone.
*
March
It takes way too long for Koushiro to realise how much trouble he’s really in when it comes to Taichi.
It’s a Saturday. Hanami. Mimi and Hikari organise a picnic in the park to say goodbye to Jou, who is going away to college.
The girls pick a pretty spot, where the cherry blossom hangs heavy as clouds. They spread down a huge blanket and lay out boxes upon boxes of food.
It would be perfect, if not for the hundreds of people coming to view the blossom, taking selfies right in front of them. One guy sets up a tripod practically on top of their blanket, so he can get the perfect shot.
All the crowds and commotion mean the party wraps up earlier than expected and, by the time that Taichi has to leave to make it to a soccer match he’s playing in, everyone else is ready to leave too.
“Do you want to come to the game?” Taichi asks Yamato, as they are walking away from the park. He has his kit bag slung over his shoulder and his hoodie unzipped in the spring sunshine.
Yamato has other plans, though. He has come to the picnic wearing incredibly tight jeans that Koushiro guesses were not chosen for Jou’s benefit.
“I think I’m going do something with Chloe,” he says.
“That Canadian girl?” Taichi asks.
“Yeah. She’s nice. She speaks French. And when I’m with her I don’t look like the only foreigner in town.”
“That’s stupid,” Taichi says. “There are so many tourists here. And you’re not even a foreigner.”
“Good luck in the game,” Koushiro says.
“Oh, thanks,” Taichi says, and then looks at Yamato expectantly.
“Go get ‘em, right?” Yamato says, without looking up from whatever it is that’s more important to him.
“Boy, am I lucky to have a cheerleader like you,” says Taichi.
“You bet your ass,” Yamato tells him and puts his phone to his ear.
Finally, Taichi gives up on him and looks at Koushiro. “Hey, you want to come watch the game? We can hang out after,” he says.
Koushiro doesn’t mind being second choice. Of course he goes. There is nowhere he would rather be.
The soccer pitch is bright and breezy and crossed by the shadows of passing clouds. Koushiro sits on the bleachers near the front, a spot just behind where the team’s coach is standing. He figures that’s a good enough indication of where to get the best view.
As the teams run out onto the pitch, Taichi’s unmistakeable with his thick hair and tanned skin, but he still lifts a hand to Koushiro anyway, to show that he knows he’s there.
The captains shake hands, there’s a sharp blast of a whistle and then the thunder of cleats pounding across the turf.
Koushiro’s not really one for playing sports himself, but it’s not like he has no interest in them at all. He follows soccer and baseball and can certainly appreciate the skill it takes to tackle and dribble and strike.
It’s not long before he’s on his feet, shouting along with the scattering of other spectators. He feels the sting of every near miss, of every foul and dive from members of the opposing team.
The game is supposed to be a friendly and doesn’t count for anything, but there is nothing amicable about it when it all comes down to a last minute penalty.
Taichi’s a striker as well as captain, so he takes the deciding shot for his team. Koushiro has seen him do this before. The moment of calm to gather himself, the look of intense concentration, and then the burst of movement as he shoots, square onto the goal.
It is not for the faint-hearted. It’s not for the indecisive. Taichi is brilliant at it.
When the ball makes it through the swoop of the goalkeeper’s arms and into the back right corner of the net, Taichi punches the air and does a few steps of a victory dance that wouldn’t look out of place in a music video – he’s got a surprising amount of natural rhythm – before the rest of the team catch up to him and launch themselves at him from behind.
Right in the middle of it all, with one of his teammates half-hanging off his back and another hugging him around the waist, Taichi looks up at the bleachers, catches Koushiro’s eye and beams right at him. See what I did, that look says. Share this. Be impressed.
And Koushiro is. He’s so impressed. But not just that. He’s breathless and warm and is feeling a rush of love flooding through his body as he claps and cheers that has nothing to do with game or the win. It just has to do with Taichi.
Deep down, Koushiro realises, if he is really honest with himself, there is more to his interest in Taichi’s interactions with other men than just learning about a lifestyle.
In the past, this has always been a hypothesis to be examined at another time, something to put off testing until he simply can’t wait any longer.
Maybe now is the time. That prospect is terrifying. But the longer Koushiro thinks about it, the more convinced he becomes.
And the only thing he has to contend with is Yamato.