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This trip is waaay too quiet.
It wasn’t supposed to be, because trips with the Summer Troupe are never quiet—which is good, because Misumi thrives in noise and chaos. (Usually the quiet reminds him a little too much of his house, anyway.) But then the director decided to sit in Summer Troupe’s train car to ”keep an eye on them” (like Misumi and Kazu can’t do it themselves?) and then Masumi dragged Sakuya into their train car, and then Kazu thought it would be fun to hang out with the adults for once instead. So now the two of them are in what used to be the Spring Troupe area, squished against Tsuzuru while he scribbles something into a notebook.
Okay, actually, Misumi takes it back: maybe this kind of quiet isn’t too bad, not with the sounds of Tsuzuru’s pen on paper, Itaru tapping out a rhythm on his phone, Kazu talking with Citron from across the aisle.
“Tsuzuuu.” Misumi turns around, tearing his eyes from the stars outside and nudging Tsuzuru until he looks up from the notebook. “Aren’t you s’posed to stop writing when it gets late?”
Tsuzuru rolls his eyes. “It’s not that late,” he grumbles, the effect half-lost in the stifled yawn accompanying his statement. (It’s definitely that late. The stars were out before they left, and it feels like they’ve been traveling for a while.) “I’ll stop when I run out of ideas.”
He won’t. He’s Tsuzuru, he never runs out of ideas. Which means Misumi has to be sneaky about getting him to stick to the Stop Passing Out plan.
“Okay…” Misumi flops backwards, sprawling onto Tsuzuru’s lap on top of his notebook. (It’s not the most comfortable, considering Tsuzuru’s arm is in the way, but it’s okay if it gets Tsuzuru to stop working like he promised to.) “But if you take a break, I’ll give you—”
“A Super Mister Triangle, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before.” Tsuzuru pulls his arm and his notebook out from under Misumi. “Do you actually intend on giving me one this time?”
He doesn’t. They’re out of stock, as always. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still triangles for Tsuzuru this time!
“Not a Super Mister Triangle.” Misumi springs upright again; turning back around and sitting on his knees as he eyes the distant city skyline, waiting until he feels the seat shift underneath him and he catches Tsuzuru looking at him out of the corner of his eye. (For all of Tsuzuru’s usual complaining, it doesn’t take long.) “There’s a lot of triangles out here, see?” He points at the top of the highest building in the skyline, dragging it along the glass to the brightest star he can see, then to another star not too far away. Not the prettiest triangle, and it sure isn’t one Misumi can really add to his collection or give to Tsuzuru, but it gets the point across anyway.
He honestly expects Tsuzuru to tell him off for getting fingerprints on the window, but to his surprise, Tsuzuru just laughs, tracing a triangle of his own on the glass. (Then again, that’s the thing about Tsuzuru, you know? He’s reliable, consistent in a way Misumi himself often isn’t, but that doesn’t mean he never throws Misumi for a loop. Besides, it’s more fun that way.) “You’re right, there are definitely more triangles than I expected.”
Misumi hums as he scans the night sky, looking for anything else that might make a good triangle. “This one’s better, though,” he mumbles, tracing lines between a trio of stars so close together that they might just fuse into one. (Well, really he’s just stamping his thumbprint on the glass, but the specifics don’t really matter.)
“Uh-huh. What exactly makes a triangle better, though?” Tsuzuru leans closer to the glass—and closer to Misumi, yikes, that’s making his heart do some weird things—examining the fingerprints making up said itty-bitty triangle.
Misumi could talk at length about what makes a triangle perfect—and, honestly, he thinks Tsuzuru might get it—but he just shrugs, saying, “It just feels right.”
Tsuzuru draws another triangle, and as they keep tracing lines, Misumi only halfway pays attention to the rest of the train car silencing themselves entirely, Itaru’s rhythm game and Chikage’s laptop keys and Kazu’s conversation trailing off like they’ve all noticed something Misumi hasn’t caught on to yet. (As perceptive as Misumi is, he knows he sometimes misses the obvious things. But it’s okay. Someone always fills him in eventually.)
It should be uncomfortable, now that it’s really quiet, but honestly? Misumi doesn’t mind it at all.
What he does notice, clearer than anything else, is that Tsuzuru’s slowing down, his lines dragging on the glass longer than they should. But he only has a couple seconds to really process it before Tsuzuru’s head lands on his shoulder, hand falling onto his lap, falling asleep way quicker than Misumi thought he would.
Something surges in Misumi’s chest, bright and sparkling and giddy, because Tsuzuru is unbearably cute at times like these. Or any time, really…
Oh. He’s read enough of room 202’s manga collection to know what that thought process means. Is that why the quiet doesn’t bother him right now?
The realization—that at some point Misumi kinda sorta a little bit really fell in love with Tsuzuru—is quickly overshadowed by the fact that Misumi has no idea what to do about it.
“ Nice, Sumi!” Kazu cheers, way too loud when everyone else around him has stopped talking. “I thought he’d never fall asleep.”
Misumi shushes him, holding a finger to his lips and hoping to whatever triangular god is out there that Tsuzuru doesn’t move. “Kazu, you’ll wake him up!”
Kazu might be a good person to ask about how to handle the whole feelings thing; between the mixers he’s occasionally convinced the two of them to join him at and the handful of real dates he’s been on since Mankai restarted, he’s the most experienced out of their whole little triangle. (Well, Misumi calls them a triangle, anyway. Kazu says “our little corner of Mankai,” Itaru compares them to “the prologue to the world’s most niche harem VN,” and Banri just says “whatever the hell those three have going on.”) But wouldn’t Kazu feel left out, then? Maybe he should just talk to Azuma or Izumi, then…
“Right, sorry, Sumi.” Oh, yeah, Kazu was actually talking to him. “Y’know what? I think I’ll tell Sakusaku and Massu to stay where they’re at, and then I’ll be right back.” Kazunari snaps a picture with his phone—probably so Izumi knows Tsuzuru’s actually sleeping, in case she assumes that he convinced Kazu to lie to the director —before getting up from his seat.
But he doesn’t actually go further than that.
“Sumi, you know you can just talk to him about it, right?” Kazu asks. “I mean, it’s Tsuzuroon, he’s too polite to be mean about it.”
Oh, duh, of course Kazu would pick up on Misumi’s itty bitty kinda major freakout. Kazu knows him best, after all.
All Misumi says in return is “Yeah, I know,” because he does, really. As grumpy and stubborn as Tsuzuru can be, he’s never really been mean. Misumi just doesn’t know what he’ll do if Tsuzuru says no thank you.
He doesn’t really know what he’ll do if Tsuzuru says yes, either. It’s all kinda confusing to him.
Kazu doesn’t say anything else; maybe he trusts that Misumi means what he’s saying, maybe he just doesn’t really know what to do in this situation. So instead he leaves the train car, and Misumi just listens to whatever sounds he can find; the faint rumble of the train as it rolls along the tracks, Itaru cursing under his breath as he hits the wrong note in his rhythm game, Citron asking Chikage about the very important work he’s doing on his laptop, Tsuzuru lightly snoring from his spot on Misumi’s shoulder…
Yeah, maybe there really is something to be said about this kind of quiet, after all.