Happy arospec awareness week 2023! Cw for mentions of fatphobia and aphobia 
 

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I got really into movies before my second year of high school. Still am!

During the break between first and second year, I binged maybe a million different movies. I got into so many action franchises, I could quote the name and time stamp of every pop culture phrase known to man(“Call me Ujisaka, from now on, will ya, Yashiro?”). Okay, so, Japanese man, anyway. I watch a lot of western movies too, of course. It diversifies the palette. It’s hard not to hear about all the series of movies coming out over there. All the sequels and prequels. 

But I’m getting away from myself. What was I thinking again? Oh right! Let me get back to the point. Why am I bringing up my media obsession, you ask? Well, that’s simple. The point is, a lot of Japanese movies point out the struggle behind friendship. Getting in one, being in one, having too many, having too few. All in all, it made me feel less alone after years of being by myself. I was just like those protag guys; socialites, forced to be loners. Loners, forced to be extroverts. People who lost everything and then found it again in the friends around them. I was perfectly content living in the lives of those guys, watching everything play out around me. 

And then senior year comes around, and I meet Shoya Ishida. 

Shoya’s the living embodiment of a loner forced to be an extrovert. He’s a main character, caring and daring. Before we’d even actually formally met, he’d saved my skin. After that, I decided I’d try one more time, just one more time, to make friends during school, and that’d be it. And it worked. Shoya became my first real friend. 

I took him out to the theatre, and then we grabbed lunch. There, we made a sacred blood oath to be best friends for as long as we two shall live, and it’s been real ever since. I even got him to talk to the girl he liked, who I now consider one of my best friends. Before he’d met me, he didn’t even know what a friend was, let alone having a girlfriend. But look at him now! Smiling, and living, and..

Without me. 

With my boy Ya-sho, came a bunch of new people, and with them came the problems. Shoko was great, her little sister…ehh, debatable, but the others? Besides Miyoko, who is a saint in comparison, Kawai, Mashiba, and Ueno and are the worst. The couple, Kawai and Mashiba, are always teasing me about my height and hair, just like all those before them. Ueno is the worst kind of person. All she does is make fun of my weight, which, I’ll give her credit for, she hasn’t done in a while, but I’m still holding out for the minute the ball drops with her. It’s been months, but who knows when it comes to that girl. 

The point is, when all those guys came into the friendship, everything started going downhill from there. Ya-sho and I had our first screaming match, and soon after he stopped talking to us at all, and then after that, he…

Well, he’s fine now. We’re all fine now. Except…something’s been going on with him lately. Last week, Ya-sho took a few days off, and when he got back he told us he was sick, but he looked awful that day, and I can’t help the rising feeling that he was not telling us the whole truth. Lately, he hasn’t been texting me as much, or responding when we’re talking at lunch. He seems so absent. He looks so sad, and it feels like he’s drifting away from me. Ya-sho, well, he’s kind of still my only friend. Yeah, there’s the others, but who are they, really? I don’t really talk to them if it’s not with, or about, Shoya. And lately he’s been getting along with them a lot more than he was previously. Just the other week, he went to a funeral with Mashiba and Kawai to celebrate the life of Mashiba’s recently deceased relative. And after that, he spent most of the day at the aquarium with Miyoko and the Nishimiya sisters cause I arrived late and had to leave early. Then, apparently, last week he hung out with Kawai and got into it with her and Mashiba, who got really angry and weird about it when I asked him what happened. Not to mention all the time he spends tutoring Yuzuru. With all of that going on, he barely has any time for me— I mean, for just us to hang out. Like, I get that you like Shoko and want to get along with her friends and all that(although Mashiba, like me, didn’t know her until Ya-sho introduced them to each other), but c’mon! Don’t forget about me!

And then, after the whole couple vs. Ya-sho debacle, he caught a cold or something from his workplace and when he came back he was zombified. He met with us at the bridge we always go to, and his eyes were really puffy and red. He said that he was fine, but it’s hard to believe; I mean, he looked like he’d been crying rather than sick, but sometimes those things kinda look similar, right? Then, when we got back to school, he was barely paying attention in class, and in between classes he just gets this look in his eyes like he’s remembering something awful. He even asked me if I thought something was wrong with him. In a panic, I said no, but really I was thinking that he has been acting weird lately, so then I said well, yeah, maybe a little, and then he laid his head down on the table and shut down. Kawai keeps trying to share some of her lunch with him for some reason, but he always declines, and even Mashiba has bought him a drink or two during lunch, so it’s like everyone’s noticed something’s up. He doesn’t text me as often, and when I asked Shoko if he was answering her like normal, she said yes, so it seems like now I’m just like everybody else. Last week it was them who weren't getting any texts, barring me and Shoko, and all of a sudden..I’m just another one of the locals. 

So, you can imagine, I’m not especially good at keeping friends. And because I have so many crazy experiences, without Shoya, I’m just the short filmmaker who everyone in class thinks is a liar. Kawai had Mashiba, and Naoka had her music buddies, and Shoko had Miyoko, and I had Shoya; now Kawai still has Mashiba, but Miyoko has Naoka, and Shoko has both Yuzuru and Shoya, and I’m all alone. 

I’m terrified. I don’t want to be alone again. I don’t want to lose Shoya again. Not after last time. 

I decided today that I’m going to talk to him. 

 

After school, I follow Shoya over to our bikes. Another day of mostly silence. Even as we walk, I struggle to get his attention over whatever fuzz is happening in his mind. It’s like he’s not even hearing me. 

“Shoya!”

Me calling his name always snaps him out of it. I reckon it’s quite jarring when all I ever call him is by the nickname I gave him. Ya-sho. Clever, right? In yakuza and delinquent films, nicknames are always given to each other as a powerful form of camaraderie. Anyway. His head bobs up from unlocking his bike and he looks at me, round-eyed and confused. 

“I was asking you if I can keep you company on your way home!” I repeat, this time with him actually listening. 

“Huh? Oh,” he says, then glances down at his bike. “You wanna come over?” His eye bags are gone, so at least he’s getting sleep, and his voice is normal, so he’s definitely not sick anymore. He’s not wearing a mask today either. 

I hesitate. “Can I?”

“Of course,” he says. 

I bring my fist down in a pumping motion. “Yes!” I cheer under my breath. 

He hears me anyway, and stares at me curiously for a few seconds. “…What are you so excited about?”

We get our bikes and exit the school property before getting on them and riding out on our way. The skies are a picture perfect blue, and the streets are empty but for a few other stray students on bikes. Pretty soon, it’s obvious Shoya is in his head again. “Whatcha thinking about, Ya-sho?”

He snaps back to reality. “Huh? Nothing.”

I take the scenic approach, putting my joking hat on and rubbing my fake mustache. “Hmm? Mayhaps..young love, is it?”

Ya-sho looks forward, then down to the grey pavement as we ride, when suddenly he stops pedaling and his bike starts to slow before coming to a complete stop. I put on the breaks a few feet ahead of him, catching his downward gaze and pondering expression. 

“Actually..” he starts. 

I raise a surprised eyebrow and begin to step back, rolling backwards on my bike until I’m right beside him. Around us is a field of grass, yellowish and orange daisies flickering in the wind beneath the towering sun. If this were a movie, it’d be a great establishing shot. 

“I wanted to ask you something.” He says, then looks directly into my eyes with his own serious, kinda nervous, hazel ones. 

“Anything.” I reply. 

There’s some laughing that drifts in the wind as two girls pass by us, and Ya-sho watches them as they get farther ahead, only to be replaced by more traveling students making their way home. He says to me, “Not here.” Like a super cool action movie protagonist. He leads me out of the field and we take a left towards the cafe down the road. The scent of fresh bread and pastries fills the air, preceded by the scent of flowers as we pass by a well-tended garden and ride into a neighborhood. We cross a street to a narrow walkway surrounded by fences on both sides. To our right is a baseball court hidden behind a fence and to our left is a small, degraded, white fence cutting us off from a trench where water drains from the houses across from us. Turning right at the end of the passage, the fence now to our right, we take a second turn between a house and the field. We head down the now open street, through a neighborhood. Any other students headed for home usually disperse from here, so now we’re practically alone but for a few strays far behind us either thinning out or entering their homes. 

I turn to my companion. “Trouble in paradise?” I ask in an effort to raise his spirits, or at least make the atmosphere less tense. He frowns, so I guess that didn’t work. I try a different approach. “Hey…are you ok, Ya-sho? You’ve been kinda..off lately..”

We ride at a slow pace, drifting almost, letting our bikes lead the way. “I’m..okay. I could go for some good news right now, though.” His smile is weak, begging me to challenge whatever thoughts are plaguing him. 

That’s it. My heart is set. I make it my immediate priority to do whatever I can to make my best bud feel better. It’s my duty as his number one best friend to keep him in check, and I never turn down a challenge!

“Some good news, some good news,” I mumble under my breath, tapping my chin as we stride. It hits me. “Aha! I think I finally got my mom to fully accept that I’m going to film school!”

“Oh really?” Already, his smile is turning more genuine. 

“Yeah! We were talking the other day, and we were talking about something or other.. uh, right! She was asking about what more I thought I needed for my room and she asked if I wanted some fairy lights! Yeah! And, uh, she said something like ‘this would make good lighting for one of your sets, wouldn’t it?’ Or something like that, and, bro, it was something so simple, but it made me so happy, like, I was finally being accepted, ya know?” As I talk, I watch as Shoya’s expression gets brighter and brighter, and he nods in agreement when I finish. “It was cool in the moment. Feels kinda lame, in hindsight, to be so excited.”

“What? In what way is it lame? I think that’s awesome..!” He says as we come to a stop at a cross section, pausing for cars. 

“Ya think?” I grin, his approval making me blush. “Right? And you remember that test we did the other day?”

“In English?”

“Yeah, I aced it.”

“Dude, seriously?” He hits my shoulder in disbelief. 

“Well, it was a eighty-seven, so not quite, but close enough!” I shrug nonchalantly. 

“Man, my grade was nowhere near that good.” He scratches his nose, eyes on the street as the path opens in front of us. We keep going, passing by a field of grass, a hotel watching over us in the distance and to our right, a parking lot. 

As we ride forward, I ask. “Hey, what was it you wanted to ask me earlier?”

He taps his finger on his handlebars. “Oh, right,” he looks at the ground ponderingly, like he’s not quite sure how to word it. “How do you know if you’re leading someone on?” Ya-sho asks me. He slows to a stop while I stop abruptly, in shock, at a stop sign in front of a second cross section, apartments to my right, grass cupping Shoya’s left. 

“Huh? Why do you ask?” I try to keep my voice level, despite my surprise. He gets one look at my face and laughs. “What?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. Your face.” He pedals forward into the next neighborhood.

I narrow my eyes at him, keeping up with him just to make sure he sees my face. “Nothing, he says. My face, he says.”

He lets out through another laugh, “No, but really. How do you know if you’ve been accidentally flirting with someone?”

After the initial shock, I start to really think about his question. “Well, I don’t think you can accidentally flirt with someone. Flirting requires intention?”

Ya-sho gives me a wide-eyed look and I return it. 

“What?”

“Nothing. That’s just surprising to hear, coming from you.”

“Hey, Ya-sho, what does that mean?” He laughs again and I frown. “You’ve been hanging out with Ueno too much.”

The ride to his house goes on in comfortable silence. We pass by a cross section with a sign in the shape of a panda, a little smile on its face and a reminder of traffic laws on its tummy; we make it straight past some small car dealerships and two cafe’s, and another delicious smell tickles my nose. We take a right at the second cafe and soft romantic music flows from the doors leading inside, open with a wood paneling curtain blocking our sight to the inside. We head down a long stretch of road. When we hit the main road, cars pass by on our right. We make sure to stick to the bike lane, and pretty soon, Shoya starts up conversation again. 

“What’s it like for you when you like someone? Like, how can you tell? Is it all about blushing and getting nervous? Is your heart supposed to race?”

If that were the case, I had the biggest crush on Shoya, cause I blushed around him all the time. And what’s with this school trip talk? “Well, yeah, but that can be anything. That doesn’t mean someone likes you, all the time. Sometimes it just means someone’s anxious, or something. Or just generally happy.” I tilt my head. “Well, maybe not the nervousness for the last one. But the blushing? Yeah. And, anyway, Ya-sho, what’s all this about? Do you think someone likes you?”

He shrugs noncommittally. 

“…Do you think you like someone?” I ask, leaning towards him and almost falling off my bike. My heart spikes and I move back, trying to get myself steady again. Around us, houses turn into local stores: candy shops, gas stations. “Maybe a special brown-haired girl?”

He let out a heavy groan, catching me off guard. “Why does everyone think I like her?”

“Don’t you?” I stand up on my pedals and let my bike soar forward for a few seconds. 

“No! I mean, yes!” He groans again. “Ugh, it’s complicated!”

“What’s so complicated about it? Do you like her or not?” I watch the rocky ground under me for a second longer, then sit back in the seat of my bike. Finally, I face him, and he’s watching the sky with a soft frown.

“…I do,” he admits finally, resignation in his voice. 

“Then ask her out!” I pause. “Wait. Is this about you guys going to different colleges?”

“No,” he mutters, lyingly, in a lying way, like a liar. 

My face turns up in a smug look, but he doesn’t turn to me to see it. “I get it. Long distance is always hard in the movies. But anyway, I don’t think that should stop you guys. I don’t think anything can keep you two apart.” I said honestly, also looking up at the sky. It’s bit cloudy, but in a nice way. A car that’s way too close blows a fierce wind in our direction.

He hums in his thematically noncommittal way. “What am I doing that makes it seem so obvious to everyone else but me?”

The road turns into a highway, and now we’re slowly climbing up a hill. “Hm, maybe it’s the way you look at her?” I respond sarcastically. 

He meets my gaze with curiosity. “What way?”

“Like you only see her. Like she’s the center of your world. And you never shut up about her! Even when we were working on the movie, almost everything that came out of your mouth was ‘how can we get Shoko involved?’ You were relentless!” I struggle to climb up the last stretch of the high way, straining and panting as I get up the last few feet and hit even ground. I turn just to see Shoya off his bike and walking it up the hill a bit behind me, consternation on his face.

“That wasn’t..” he says, then stops, confusion apparent in the furrow of his brow, an argument incapable of leaving his tongue. He looks back to the road, pausing as he reaches my side, something like distress between his clenched teeth. “What else?”

I think for a second. “Hmmm, well, you’re always blushing,” A thought occurs to me. “So maybe that’s why they got confused..!”

“Huh?” He gets back on his bike.

“The person you’re leading on? They probably think you like them based on how much you blush normally.” I propose, starting forward. In front of us is a bridge, and down below is the Ibi River. We stride across it at a leisurely pace. “Unless you really were talking about you not so secretly being in love with Shoko?”

“I’m not! And I can’t help that,” he rubs his cheeks, making them even more pink. His bike goes off course for a sec before he grabs the bars and turns it so he doesn't run into me or off into traffic. 

“Who is it? Someone from class?”

He shakes his head. Not as a no, but as in he doesn’t want to answer. “You wouldn’t believe me if I said.” 

“Huh?” I give him a face. “Who is it? Come on! I’m your best friend!” I whine to his profile as a bug buzzes around in my face. I quickly swat at it. “Is it someone you can’t tell me about? I can keep a secret! All my friends tell me so.”

He scoffs, amused. “What friends?”

I stop in my tracks, midway into the bridge. “I had friends before you, Ya-sho!” I glare into his dark green eyes. 

He stops too. The sound of running water and cars passing surround us. “Oh yeah? What were there names again? Hiroshi..?”

“Minashi, Satoshi, Yasushi, Shirushi,” I feel myself shaking. 

“Wasn’t it Takashi and Masashi last time?”

“Whatever! Who is it?” When he doesn’t answer, I begin to guess. “Hojo? Tsubaki?” I blink, a thought occurring to me. “..Kawai?”

He sputters. “Kawai?”

“Is it her? She has been acting awfully close to you, lately. I wouldn’t write her off for infidelity.” I sneer. “Poor Satoshi, though…” I click my tongue at the thought of how he’d react to that kind of news. He may as a person, but no one likes a cheater. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Satoshi a thing!”

“That would be great! Since you’re completely wrong! You’re way off mark!”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yes! Really! Kawai and I are friends.. Don’t just jump to conclusions based on nothing!”

“Then why won’t you just tell me who it is?” I raise my voice to his level, confused. 

“I already have!”

My brain goes blank, searching for any of the names he had said in the conversation earlier. He already said it wasn’t Shoko, or Kawai, so it has to be someone who doesn’t know him very well, someone who’s got the wrong idea about his feelings towards them. He’s an awkward guy; it’s not totally unbelievable that some girl in class got confused about his intentions. 

While I’m thinking, he sighs and bikes past me. 

“Ah! Ya-sho! Wait up!” I quickly follow after him. 

We turn off the bridge, crossing so we can exit right. A field of grass almost hides the lake as we flow along the road. The city skyline off in the distance to our left and nature to our right, the sounds of everyday life makes me yawn. Beside me, Ya-sho is once again in his thoughts. His eyes scream distress in the same way they had in class. 

Should I try again? Maybe it would be better if I didn’t push it. He already wants to tell me. Maybe I just gotta wait until he gets his thoughts together. He’s only just recently become talkative; it’s gotta be hard for him. 

But at the same time, seriously! Who was he talking about? I already wanna rip my hair out with curiosity! 

No! Get it together, Tomohiro! This isn’t about you! Your best friend is going through a hard time, and all you can think about is what girl in our class(did he even say she was in our class? Did he even say it was a “she”?) likes him? This is the kinda thing that’s making us drift apart in the first place!

I need to be gentle, not forceful. I can’t stress him out or else he’ll get all closed off, like he did in class. Come on, self! If you were in his situation, what would you say?

I let out the first thing that pops into my head. “Have you watched any good movies lately?”

“What?”

I resist the urge to smack my forehead. Just roll with it! Be confident! You got this! “When I’m feeling down, I think about a good movie I love and all the things I like about it. That way, my mind is focused elsewhere and I can cheer myself up while also practicing media literacy!”

“Media literacy?”

“Yeah! Like, movies and novels and stuff.”

He looks at me curiously as he pedals forward. 

Well, at least I got him out of his head. I let out a huff. “You just seem really sad, man.”

At that, Ya-sho looks genuinely surprised. “Doesn’t everybody?” He frowns. “Seriously, is there such a thing as second hand sadness? It seems like everyone has something going on with them lately, and that all my problems are stupid.”

Yes, we got him talking again. Go Tomohiro! That’s another score for the big man!

As I’m mentally fist pumping the air, what he says settles in, and I frown. Dang, ain’t that the truth. “That’s called having extreme empathy, and it’s one of the things I love about you. Outside of that, yeah, everyone has problems.” I pause. “But you can’t let yourself worry about that. Worrying about everyone else all the time isn’t good for anyone. Even I have problems, but why would it be your job to fix them?”

He somehow manages to frown harder. Hills roll by as we move farther down the road. As a car passes by, Ya-sho moves left just enough to not get ran over or fall down the hill into the city. “But isn’t that what friends are for?”

“Friends can make you feel better, Ya-sho, but they can’t fix every problem.” An amazing quote from an amazing movie. I gotta show it to Ya-sho sometime. The main actor’s career shot up after that delivery, and for good reason! “And even if you think your problems are stupid, I wanna be here for you. If they’re coming from you, there’s no way they’re not important. That being said, someone getting the wrong idea from you is their problem, not yours.”

“But isn’t it?” Shoya sighs. “I’m just…I’m just sure if it's not now then it's gonna be never.”

I furrow my brow. “What is?”

“You know..everything. Teen life.”

I..don’t know what he’s talking about. He’s not making a whole lot of sense. “Well, of course teen life isn’t gonna be forever. We all have to grow up some time, that’s just how time works.”

His bike slows down as he rubs his face. “No,” he groans. “Like..the things that go with teen life. Those experiences. It’s already been this long, and so much of what I’m supposed to have felt— I haven’t! And, like, I don’t think I ever will. And I’m fine with that, but, it’s all the stuff that comes with it that . Like, no one’s gonna care! Or they’ll even think less of me because of it..!”

I blink, shocked and confused. How did the conversation change so drastically? “What makes you think that?” I ask. “And what does that have to do with the person you’re supposedly leading on?”

Shoya breathes in deeply, and lets it out slowly. “Ok, I’m just gonna let it all out. I’m gonna think through all of my thoughts, and you can’t interrupt, ok? Even if it doesn't make sense. This is just gonna be a stream of consciousness, ok?”

“Ok?” I reply, getting scared.

He takes in another breath. “…If I tell that person how I really feel, there’s a highly probable chance that a bunch of people, including that person, will never talk to me again. And then, afterwards? When it’s all over? Even in the best case...I’m not gonna be anyone’s priority. Everything that I have to worry about is stupid in the grand scheme of things, but I’m still worried about it and it makes me feel even worse, and, because everyone else is already going through so much tough stuff, no one will have time for me. No one’s gonna console me over any of it, not just because it’s stupid, not just because they also have their own things going on, but because they already have someone more important to them to listen to. And if that someone were to have the exact same dumb thoughts, then it would be fine, they’d get that attention because they’re in love or something, but because I don’t have anyone like that and everyone else does, then I’m gonna be left out and sad forever.”

Wind blows casually past our ears as we roll. The road splits with one path curving right and the other going downhill. Keeping straight, our bikes naturally slide downward and into a tunnel lit by orange lights on gray concrete walls. It’s silent for a long few seconds with me just trying to process everything I’d learned about Shoya in just the last minute. Everything he said, all of his venting, it all just leads me to one conclusion:

Man, sometimes anxiety is really scary. 

It sounds funny to say, but seriously! Anxiety can make you think crazy things, man! I knew Shoya had issues, but to think it could all blow up into something like this! My guy has practically a million friends compared to before, but even now, with all that’s happened, he’s still worried we’re all gonna up and leave!

Look, I can’t speak for everyone else, but I know that at the very least, me and Shoko have his back. Mashiba, Kawai, Miyoko, they can all move away and never speak to us again, for all I care, not even to mention Ueno. But haven’t I always had Ya-sho’s back? And he knows that…doesn’t he?

Of course he does. It’s that damn anxiety of his! It doesn’t follow reason; it latches onto anything it can get its grubby little hands on and mangles it into something unrecognizable, twisting it into a bundle of awfulness. It’s got Ya-sho convinced that he’s gonna be alone again some day. And I get that fear. If I’d lost him that day he’d jumped to save Shoko, I would be living his exact thoughts. But he survived! He survived and he’s alive and he’s here! With all of his friends! Ok, well, not in this exact moment, obviously, but, like, in the general sense. And yeah, we’re all gonna go off to college, but there’s still email! There’s still social media! It won’t be that different from how we have been, right? We’ll make time to visit each other when we can, and we’ll all catch up and vent whatever we need to about grades or personal projects, and then we’ll laugh and smile and get along. No one will hate each other (outwardly) and Ya-sho will have had nothing to worry about.

No one is dating anyone in our group officially anyway, besides Mashiba and Kawai. Where’s all this nonsense coming from? Unless he has some other group of friends I don’t know about? And when would he have had time to do that? I know I haven’t been hanging around that much lately, but still! Come on! I see him in class! Did he sneak out on those days off when he was sick and form some lifelong bonds with some randos? Is he in chat forums online? Seriously! 

Look, I get it, I have a hard time keeping friends too. 

He just doesn’t want to lose any of us. 

Just like I don’t want to lose him. 

But I don’t know how to say all of that out loud. I don’t know how to be succinct like characters in the movies. I don’t know how to squash that all down into two or three sentences, and with every passing second it feels like I’m losing my chance to say anything at all. I care about him, I need him, I want him to stop worrying so much. But that all sounds so awkward to say, and I want him to treat me seriously. I want him to know I’m not joking or just trying to make him feel better. I want him to know that, like it’s written in pen in the front of his mind. I feel it so powerfully, like it’s gonna burst right out of my chest. 

Shoya’s to my right, staring straight into the orange lights ahead, his expression oddly blank. 

It tumbles out of me, broken and barely audible. “That’s not true..”

His eyes meet mine, and I try to say it louder this time, with more feeling. I try to put all the raw emotion I’m feeling into my already scratchy voice. “You will have someone to talk with this kinda stuff about, Ya-sho, because I’m here. And I’m always gonna be here to listen to you! I’m not going anywhere!”

His lips tighten into a line and his short brows furrow as he looks at me. “You’re going to film school.”

I mirror his look. “That’s irrelevant and you know it. There are video call apps. Heck, I’ll take the train if I have to.”

“You need that money for school.”

“You’re way more important to me than school.” I say as we exit the tunnel. 

The light hits Ya-sho’s face just right, blinding him and making him blink rapidly, and maybe he’s shielding his eyes because of the sun or because he doesn’t want me to see him crying, but he keeps his face carefully turned away from me for awhile as we bike left and go slightly downhill again, then turn right into a small road adjacent to the main road we’d once been on. Some white buildings crowd to our right. 

We zigzag down some roads, passing white apartments now to our left and rolling by a short gate to our right. We slide around another curb, meeting the entrance to another tunnel. Once through, we take a left, and Ya-sho coughs and starts talking again. 

“I don’t appreciate you enough.”

“Damn right.”

He sighs again, more resolutely this time. “…You know how people go cherry blossom viewing every year?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, imagine that you don’t actually like cherry blossom viewing, and that most of the known activities for cherry blossom viewing don’t interest you. Now, most people like to drink and snack, bring fireworks, take pictures… but you have never found any of that appealing. And then, you get friends who love cherry blossom viewing, and you try to get into it for them, but the more around it you are, and the more they say you should enjoy it and that it’s a part of being a Japanese citizen, you just suddenly…like, after all these years of not necessarily minding it, now you find yourself hating it. Even though you do enjoy some aspects of cherry blossom viewing, say, maybe the food, or hanging out with friends, the rest just starts grating on you and sapping all your energy until you're just a bitter shell of a person and feel like you’re missing out on everything all the time.”

We turn right, into a small street. I watch his face carefully, trying to read the real story in his analogy straight from his mind. “…Okay, I’m imagining it.”

“Now imagine that all of your friends are insisting that you do actually want to go cherry blossom viewing. Imagine it’s all they ever wanna talk about with you. Guess you’re the cherry blossom guy now! You were the one who brought them all there in the first place! But then imagine you try to tell them, no, I don’t actually like cherry blossom viewing, I just like hanging with you guys, and then they laugh in your face, and when you say you’re serious, imagine they just all start getting angry with you, calling you non-human because you don’t like this thing that supposedly everyone else likes, even though you know for a fact that other people feel the same way as you, because you stayed up for hours searching the internet to see what’s wrong with you and why aren’t the magazines working and why can’t you feel anything and—…” he stops, because his hands have turned white on his handlebars and he’s staring down at the ground with a face of absolute horror like he’s just said something he hadn’t meant to, and his bike stops cause he’s stopped pedaling and all I can hear in the sudden silence is the sound of traffic somewhere far off and a soft breeze whistling in my ears. 

And I hesitate, because I don’t want to push him, but I don’t want him to think I don’t care, either. “…Seriously, Shoya. What’s going on?”

Lighting fast, he’s pedaling again and he’s already around the corner. It’s like he’s running away from me; I struggle to rush after him. “Nothing’s going on! That’s the issue! But no one will believe me!” His voice gets farther away, then stays in one place, drizzling out into nothing.

I turn the corner and catch his back to me, his stillness eerie like that of a horror movie. “It definitely doesn’t seem like nothing’s going on…”

We’ve stopped at the side of a car garage with posters stuck to the outside wall. Shoya’s eyes are drawn to one in particular, and that’s the one bringing to attention the coming of the real-life cherry blossom viewing event. He looks angry. “It’s this!” He says motioning towards it. “It’s everything, it’s—“ he lifts his arms and drops them to his sides, looking up at the sky, then to me. His rage eases and now he just looks sad. “..not you.” he assures, and I feel bad. He doesn’t need to assure me of anything. I should be assuring him. “I just feel like I’m going crazy.”

“Ya-sho..”

He turns his back to me. No sunlight reaches us here on the street beside the car garage, although it’s not dark in any way. It’s a very cinematic shot, him resituating himself on his bike, his lanky form hunched over, his broad shoulders tense beneath his white button up. 

“Let’s just go home.” He says roughly, then starts riding again. 

Down the road, we take a left at a two story house and ride down into a neighborhood until we reach a bend and turn into it. We ride straight out of the neighborhood and head into an underpass. It’s like going through a portal. From suburban houses right into blue skies, a grassy plot of land to our left, and a big fenced off house with a large driveway to our right. The large houses continue for a while with empty plots of grass opposite them. We reach a crossroad and keep straight, moving past flowery trees grown in yards and open plains.

I try to think about what it all means. This isn’t just about some person thinking he’s flirting with them. This whole thing goes much farther. This is a multi-person thing, and it’s been going on for a long time, apparently. I’m wondering if it has something to do with his elementary school days, or even some stuff coming up from middle school. We didn’t know each other at the time, but apparently he went to school with Ueno back then too. And he has hung out with her recently, so maybe it really does have something to do with her. Or even Kawai. I wouldn’t put anything past her, really. They also hung out, and they’ve known each other for years. She can be pretty pushy, so it makes sense.  

I stay behind Ya-sho, but I can already see his mood cooling down. He lifts his nose to the air and takes in a deep breath, and there’s a smile in his voice as he lets the breath out. His dark hair glints in the sunshine, the blue skies once again clear to see when the trees are not there to block it. His head turns to the right as he takes in the sight of red and purple flowers while we stroll down the way. Soon we get near an apple tree so weighed down with growing apples that it’s leaning off from someone’s yard into the road, and Ya-sho stops for a second to reach one long scrawny arm up and pull a small but hopefully ripe one from its branch. I glide up to him as he looks it over, then reaches up and grabs another one. This one he gives to me, and I smile gratefully, glad his bad mood already seems to have fallen away. 

Moving onward, apples in hand, we reach the old bus stop that’s nothing but a few panes of glass on a sidewalk next to a vending machine. We unanimously decide to stop and rest there for a bit, so we get off our bikes and set them against the sides of the walls, hanging our bags from the handlebars. 

“Let me buy you a drink,” I say, then run over to the vending machine before he can refuse. It’s filled with fruit flavored drinks. Lemon, kiwi, orange-pineapple, strawberry. I get out my wallet and purchase one of the orange-pineapple juices I know he likes, then rush back over to him. 

He’s sitting on the curb, his knees brought up to his chest and his arms crossed on his knees. An apple with one bite taken out of it is in his left hand. “You didn’t get yourself one?” He accepts the can from me and I sit down beside him. 

“Nah, I’ll just steal something from your fridge when we get to your house.”

“Hey..!” He says, but he’s not really offended. 

We let out small laughs, then sit in silence as we take a snack break. This isn’t the first time we’ve done this. Usually we head straight for the bridge, but I’ve ridden with Ya-sho to his house multiple times. Usually when he doesn’t have work or we aren’t both otherwise busy. 

Despite the heavy topics, today’s a good day. The weather is nice, and the fruit is juicy and sweet. The vibes are good, as they say. This is what they call the calm before the storm. The moments between characters that build them and their relationship up, right before the , and it all comes tumbling down. It’s a good story mechanic. 

I take one last bite of my apple, chew on it, savor it, then swallow. “So, s’ there something you wanna say to me?”

Ya-sho is mid sip when I ask. He slowly pulls the can from his lips and focuses his eyes in the distance, then on the ground between his knees. He nods. 

“Then get on with it.” I say, all cool like. 

“There’s something that I’ve been keeping from you guys,” Ya-sho says, already beginning to ball in on himself. “I’ve been wanting to tell you, but..I’m scared.”

Ok, scrapping the cool act instantly. “Scared of what?” I ask gently, leaning in. 

“That, you guys,” he keeps pausing. “That you guys won’t respect me anymore.”

“Ya-sho.” That sounds so incredibly ridiculous. Because he has issues that seemingly aren’t as big as everyone else’s? Is this what people call Imposter Syndrome?

“Nevermind,” he says, his hands grasping the sides of his pant legs. “It’s nothing. Forget I said anything.” He’s quickly losing all the nerve he’d gathered up within only seconds of gaining it. That’s anxiety for you.  

“Ya-sho, you promised.” I say with as serious a tone of voice as I can manage.

Ya-sho looks at me with shock, then with shame. He knows it’s true. He promised to be open and honest with us, all of us. If something were ever wrong, he was supposed to let one of us know ASAP, so as to not cause any more accidents. There wasn’t a spoken rule that it was vice versa, but I just assumed we all knew. Yeah, I don’t get along with Miyoko that well, but if she were to say she needed to talk about something and I was the one around, then I’d listen to her. “I’m sorry…” He wraps his arms around himself. “I wanna say it so bad.”

“Then say it.”

“I can’t. I want to, but I can’t! Not yet…not until everyone else is here.” He says determinedly.

I freeze up, the worst possible scenario springing to mind. “Are you…are you ill? Like, mentally?”

“No! Well, I don’t know..! That’s irrelevant.” He looks annoyed. “It’s that..I finally have myself figured out. Everything was clicking together, and I feel so free! I’ve never been this happy, but—“ and he pauses, for so long I start to think he doesn't have anything else to say. It takes a few moments, but he finally lets out, “I want to tell everyone, but I know that it’ll be letting the others down. They’ll think less of me, or be disappointed, or won’t accept it. Even though my feelings are true, they won’t accept me. And, it’s all because they think I can’t possibly be happy if I don’t have this particular thing they all do.”

He’s talking about Shoko, I realize. He wants to confess to Shoko, but someone (Ueno, probably) is in the way. Who else would be disappointed by them going out? Who wouldn’t accept them but her? Just because Shoko can’t hear doesn’t mean they can’t be happy! Anger at the mean raven-haired girl makes me visibly shake.

“Ya-sho,” I say once I get my thoughts in check. “The people that matter won’t care. In fact, I can bet 100,000 yen they’ll even be glad for you! Although it took you long enough to realize.” I laugh. 

He stares at me with shock. “You knew?”

“Dude, everyone knew.”

He looks at me with doubt. “Nagatsuka…what is it you think I’m talking about?”

“Shoko, right? Look, you don’t have to worry about what particular people think. You have me, and the others, and we are all rooting for you!” I laugh. “No one is gonna be upset with you because you’re nervous about liking a girl.”

“See, that’s the thing. I don’t want anyone to laugh about it. I don’t want anyone to tell me they already knew or that it’s about time, I want them to listen to me. I want to be taken seriously, just like anyone else would.” He says, once again getting riled up. “My ‘like’ is different from your ‘like’, and I know, I know that you don’t know what that means, and I promise that I’ll tell you someday, but you gotta trust me on this, ok?” The desperation leaves his voice and now he’s just looking into the distance again, and he says. “We’re different.”

That’s weird, hearing him say. We’re different. It’s not an insult, not a brag. It’s just fact; just a statement. We’re two different people. 

But for some reason, out of everything he’s said, this sticks the most. The whole day, I kept finding similarities between us: our need to not be alone, our history with bad friendships, our fear for the future. But we are different. First off, Shoya has other friends besides me, second off, he gets along with others in class, and third, he has people who actually find him attractive. Forgetting Kawai, Naoka and Shoko are all over him. And I would be a liar to say I wasn’t just a bit jealous of him. 

And I hate being called a liar. 

But here’s Shoya, having convinced himself he’s not worthy of love because his anxiety has told him so. It’s lying to him, telling him he’s different but in a bad way and that everyone will know and hate him for it. He thinks that no matter what happens, we’ll all have some issue with him going out with Shoko, which is blatantly untrue. 

This whole thing is a mess.

“Ok,” I say. “I’m listening.” I place a hand on his shoulder.

“Just..don’t ask me what it is.”

I nod, giving him my best sympathetic face. “Just don’t tell me it's nothing again.”

Shoya looks me in the eye, then nods back. He closes his eyes, and pulls in a deep breath of air from his nose, and lets it out through his mouth. “I feel like if I don't get this out, then I’m never gonna get the chance to again. That this is it, and no one will ever really get me.” He says. “When you guys leave, there’s no way our friendship is gonna stay the same. We’re gonna look different and feel different, and we’ll all grow distant while we get used to all the new stuff. 

“And, I guess.. I’m scared that they’re right.” He lifts his palm, then lets it drop down again. “What if I was wrong all this time? What was I so happy for, then?” He looks down to the ground. “I’m afraid of rejection.”

He goes quiet, and I guess it’s my turn to speak. “Everyone gets rejected.”

He glances at me, lets the silence drone on for a few more seconds. “You can’t get rejected if you never ask,” he says huffily, practically rolling his eyes. 

“Is that the problem? You’re just, never gonna ask her out because you’re afraid she’ll say no and the others will hate you for it?”

He sighs and wraps his arms around his knees. “Isn’t it you who said that friends can’t fix every problem? Well this is one of them. I’m not a problem. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“I..I didn’t say you were..” But he’s right. That’s..kinda what I’m doing now, huh? I can’t fix whatever is going on with Shoya, I can’t console him or convince him his fears are unwarranted, but I can at least hear him out. I mean, even with me, my issue is that he’s my only friend and everyone else thinks I’m a liar, but what is he going to do? Go up to everyone and convince them otherwise? Ask them to hang out with me? That would be an impossible and, let’s say, inane task. 

Here’s the thing: I’ve never been especially good at making friends. Growing up big-boned, it’s always been a struggle for me to find people who won’t make fun of me or use me to buy lunch for them. It usually goes like this: person comes up to me, I start talking with person, me and person get along for a few days, person starts asking me to go places with them— such as the cafeteria or the food court at the mall or to arcades—, person says they’ll spot me next time, we keep going, I keep paying, there is no next time; I find out person is talking about me behind my back, or that person was just using me to get free tickets to a concert, or that person had been dared to hang out with me… and there and henceforth, end of friendship. 

After middle school, I decided I would just stop letting people step all over me. From then on, I would make the first move. That first year of high school, I talked to as many people as I could. I laughed at all their jokes, kissed their asses, the such. Even went to a few movies with them and paid. All that to say I got nowhere. No new friends. No real ones, anyway. No one actually cared about me. They made jokes about my fro, my outlandish but TRUE stories, my weight, and I laughed with them. 

The next year, I stopped laughing. It was painful. That entire break, I felt nothing but anxiety and terror about going back to school. I’d wake up in a cold sweat the nights before school started again because I couldn’t get thoughts of how terrible the year was going to be out of my head. But then I started watching old yakuza and tokusatsu shows, and everything felt a bit easier. Those stories saved my life, and when I started hanging out with Shoya, he became my hero. Before then, I’d never had anyone stand up for me like that. What is this they call it? Codependency? Well, whatever. I don’t need anyone else. I just want Shoya to be happy. 

But I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know how to assuage his fears. And he’s telling me that there’s nothing wrong while telling me there’s something wrong, and he wants me to listen to him vent but he’s venting about something he thinks I’m going to do in the future. And how can I prove to him that I’m not going to leave him, if not by just doing what I’ve been doing— telling him that I’m by his side and always going to be?

How do I make him believe me? Why is it so hard for everyone to believe me?

After the leftover trash is thrown away, we get back on the road. We pass another cross section, looking out for cars, and ride past an empty field to our left and a bunch of large gardens in front of nice houses to our right. At the second turn, we go right, onto an empty street. 

There’s a small white fence acting as a frail barrier to a much bigger cement wall overseeing the farmland to our left. As we reach the end of the road, we’re met with a shrine entrance. We go left. 

The farmland is now partially behind a fence to our left. I trace my hand along the short concrete fence guarding its houses, the trees behind it swaying in the wind. We pass by another small crossway, and another white wall is to our right, a metal fence still to our left. We exit into another cross section, and the smell of dry wood fills the air as we pass by a wood storage building and a few black and modern two story condos to our left. A small neighborhood pops up on our right, warehouses and farmland replacing the condos as we move closer and closer to Shoya’s house. Empty plots of land replace the neighborhood and we pass a cross section to now be surrounded by houses on both sides. A bunch of white two stories that popped up out of nowhere in the last year due to rapid redevelopment lean in from the right as if to talk to the houses on the left. Two stories become three, houses become a small clunky cemetery, and then we’re at another cross section. Fenced off houses appear on the left with a shrine to the right. The road narrows, but we keep straight. 

I study the traditional Japanese houses that are promptly going out of style while we ride in silence. There’s already empty and grazed plots of land that’ll soon be filled with modern apartments. A crane is even in the distance, sitting in the opposite direction, but it’s been there for years. A garden is even flourishing around it. We pass by more modern houses, Japanese style houses, and apartments. The small road exits into a bigger one, but we keep straight. Once more we are met with white, three story apartments on our right. This goes on for a long stretch, and I think about saying something, but I don’t. Because what could I say? What do I say?

Fields surround us for miles in either direction, but this time Shoya doesn’t look as comforted. We fly right past a cross section and soon we find ourselves nearing Wago Park. I slow to a stop right before the entrance and call out to Shoya. Shoya’s bike stops a few feet ahead and he turns around to face me. I nod at the entrance to the park. “One last stop.”

We put our bikes in the bike rack on the inside of the park next to the entrance, a rusted silver arch with the kanji for Wago painted on the top. Trees surround the area and benches are placed all around the sides of the park. There’s a baseball court on the far side, and a playground to the southeast of it. Some elementary schoolers are around, but they pay us no mind. I lead Ya-sho to the far left bench, away from everything. The way the sun is shining through the trees makes it so the leaves look a bright iridescent green, and branches of thick foliage cup the bench like it's a child in its mother's arms. 

He sits far away from me, at the end of the bench. My heart squeezes tightly in my chest at the indiscreet rejection, but I push that away for now and scoot closer. Shoya has his school bag sitting between us, but I move mine so it’s to my left, allowing me to close the distance a bit more. 

“Hey, Ya-sho?” He’s got his face turned away from me, and I try to lean forward and around to get a look at it. He just turns his face further away. “Look, I can’t pretend to understand exactly what you’re going through, but I’m willing to listen? You’re my best friend, remember?” Still nothing. “…And I don’t wanna lose you, either.”

He puts his bag in his lap and wraps his arms around it as if to give it a hug, then places his chin on it. His face is oddly blank, but his eyes are downcast. “I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I scoot closer. “Ok, good. We’ve checked that off the list.”

He chuckles a bit and a smile of encouragement reaches my lips. “What’s next?”

“Well, I guess bodily sabotage?” I look up at the sky in thought. “Have you been eating well? Sleeping the recommended amount of hours?”

“Uh..probably not, I’m ashamed to say.”

I elbow him. “Better get on that. Might gotta use my college money to get you a personal cook to make your meals. I’ll even tuck you in myself if I have to!”

He smiles at that just a bit. “I bet my mom would really appreciate that.”

“Ya-sho, your mom still tucks you in at night?”

“Of course not!”

“It really sounded like that’s what you just said, bud—“

“I meant the personal cook bit, funny man,” he shouldered me. 

A laugh bursts from my throat. “Funny man?”

“Shut up! It’s the first thing that came to mind!” But he was laughing too. 

“You’re so pure, dude.”

“If you say so.”

“But that’s what makes you Ya-sho!” I shrug with a sigh. “I know you said you think your problems are dumb and all, but it’s gotta be serious if it’s keeping you up at night.” I say it casually to keep the mood up. If we can get back to talking about it again without all the drama, maybe we can actually get somewhere. My goal is to help him, and I can help him by just listening, until he’s got everything out. Right now, he just needs someone to be here for him, not take action. A few jokes here and there can’t hurt. “Or are you having nightmares? Like, super crazy ones where there’s a guy in a red and white shirt?”

His forehead crinkles at the joke, but he’s still smiling. “Ha, my life is a nightmare…”

“Ya-sho..come on!” I frown. “You don’t have to tell me the specifics, but you gotta let it all out sometime! What is it you’re so afraid of? Let’s talk like we’re on an overnight field trip in Kyushu. Tell me your greatest fears! Don’t hold back!”

Ya-sho closes his eyes for a few moments, his arms still wrapped around his bag. We sit in silence for a long time, and then he says, “I’m afraid I’m gonna be alone forever.” 

I look up at Ya-sho in confusion. “Dude, what? Of course you’re not..!” He sits there stoically, so I push forward, raising my voice. “I’m always gonna be your best friend, Ya-sho! Forever! You can count on that! Bet on it, if you have to!”

“But even you, Nagatsuka, you, like,” He starts, then realizes what he’s saying and stops. 

“I..what?” 

He doesn’t answer. 

I scoot closer, so I’m right up on him. “I what, Shoya?”

He looks up when I call his name, eyes wide with worry. “Nagatsuka, you’re gonna get married one day, or even have kids someday, and I,” his voice thickens with desperation, “I’m gonna be nobody! Everyone will move on to their own lives.”

“Ya-sho, what are you talking about? Even when we’re old and wrinkly, and married to our individual partners, I’m gonna be right by your side.” I assure, wholeheartedly. I bring my fist to my chest in emphasis. “When we get out of college, I’ll even get an apartment right next to yours! It’s not even an if I have to type of deal! I want to! Genuinely!” I notice my voice getting louder and make myself calm down. The kids across the park seem to be eyeing us now. I meet eyes with one and immediately feel a bit embarrassed. I settle down, sit more firmly in my seat. “You’re the only real friend I’ve ever had, Shoya— I don’t think you realize how much you mean to me.”

“I do,” he begins, but I interrupt him. 

“No, I don’t think you do. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have said the things you have.”

He’s nothing if not stunned. His mouth drops open and he’s opening and closing his mouth like a fish. 

I look him right in the eye and say, “You listen to me this time.”

He nods obediently. 

This time, I’m the one who lets out a large sigh. “I’ve been called a liar for what feels like all my life, but I’m not lying when I say meeting you has changed me for the better. I’ve always had a hard time making friends, had a hard time finding people I could trust, who cared about me. But you, Ya-sho? Shoya, I know you care about me so much. And for the rest of them too. You care for all of our friends too much. You never let yourself be selfish, and it’s to your detriment. We’re not going to forget you as soon as you’re gone, you know? And we’re not gonna care whether you get a girlfriend or not! When I told you at the school festival that you mean everything to me, I meant it. I wasn’t joking.” I look him in the eyes. “You’re the only real friend I’ve ever had. If something were to happen to you, I..I don’t know what I’d do.”

Shoya’s lips tighten and his eyes water. “Don’t say that.” He hides his face in his knees, his bag between his chest and lap. 

“But I mean it. I really do.”

“I know, that’s why I’m telling you not to say that.” His shoulders are shaking along with his voice. “Really, it’s too much.”

“Ya-sho…” I reach out to put a hand on his shoulder. 

He pokes his head up and looks into the distance, his voice groggy but his face clear of wetness. “You might not believe it, but I’ve never had a friend who cares about me as much as you, either. And I really, really appreciate it.” I rub his shoulder and he sniffs. “I really do. And I’m sorry if it ever seems like I’m taking you for granted.” He wipes away invisible tears. “I don’t mean to.”

“Yeah, man, just get it all out.” I move my hand to his back and rub it in small, comforting circles. 

He puts his head back onto his knees again and we just sit there in silence for a while, the sound of kids playing filling the air.

“Man, I kinda wanna talk to my mom,” he says, voice back to normal, and laughs a little. He sits up, and I move my hand back.

“You ready to go home?” 

“Yeah. Have been for a while.” He stands up and stretches. “Now that I’ve got that all out of my system.” He turns to me. “Let’s go home.”

Fields become warehouses, warehouses become regular old houses, and when we see a good old cross section, we make a left.

Birds flitter through the sky. The parking garage to our right has posters all over it, but Shoya doesn’t even glance at it as we pass it and the cemetery to our left. We go by the nicely gardened house on the right that belongs to an interesting old lady who sometimes stops us to talk for hours about how she’s a widow and used to be married to a farmer. She has crazy stories, some I’m even convinced she made up. She used to be in a biker gang? I wanna believe her, cause that’d be cool as hell, but she hasn’t shown me any paraphernalia yet and if there’s no pics it didn’t happen. 

The path is long, two story houses copied and pasted all around us, but we finally reach the end of the road and slow to a stop before turning right then making a quick left. 

We’re climbing up a short hill, and soon enough we can see the highway to the right of us move down from a tall checker-board patterned wall to a street curving to connect to our downhill one. Heading forward, we follow the path that curves to the right after meeting a crossroad and ride into a tunnel. Exiting straight out of it with no revelations, we are once again riding between fields of grass. There are solar panels disrupting the view of pale yellow blades flowing in the wind, but when we make the next left, they disappear behind us. We go straight down the road to a cross section and, as always, keep straight into long stretches of field. At the end of the road, we make a right. Trees line our left and as we pass these we turn into an opening that leads into a neighborhood. 

The houses here are close together, two stories, with some having white walls lining the outside and big parking spaces you can see from the entrances to the gate. We pass a clinic, and then a cemetery a minute later, and the thought occurs to me that that’s kinda morbid. We stop at a cross section right next to the cemetery(because we have to if we wanna obey the law) and now that I have death on my mind from our earlier talk, it starts to freak me out. I love zombie movies and the like, but the thought of real life corpses is..weird, right now. You get me. But we’re almost at Ya-sho’s house now, although that also gets me riled up a bit, the fact that it’s so close to here. 

I pedal a bit faster when we start going again. There’s an animal clinic that I rush by, because wow, that’s bad! A huge hotel disrupts the cycle of death to our right, and I relax. We come across another main road and have to stop to let cars pass. The smell of seafood fills the air around us and I breathe it in. The apple from before and all this exercising has only made me hungry for real food. 

“Might have to take a whole meal from you guys.” I mutter. 

“Huh?” Ya-sho pulls up beside me, struggling to hear me over the sound of cars passing in front of us. 

“I said I might have to take a whole meal from you guys!”

“Oh. Ha.” He’s forcing the laugh, but whatever. “You’re always welcome to dinner with us.”

“Really?” I turn to him, my heart spiking. He never asks me to hang out at his place!

“Yeah, why not?”

My eyes are sparkling, I know it, and Ya-sho laughs for real this time. 

Across the street is this western place called Restaurant Yellow Toad and it's sitting right beside Kasumiso, a shellfish restaurant. Beside Kasumiso is a power company, which Ya-sho mumbles under his breath about. “Gotta give mom my half of the bill..”

Adjacent to them on the path we’re riding on is an old run-down telephone company that shut down a while ago. At one point I wanted to use it to film some scenes for the movie, but getting permission for that was looking to be too tricky. We pass by it as we’re finally allowed to cross the street.

We pass more houses and multiple cross sections, more and more empty plots of grass appearing like beacons of economical death. 

We pass by some motels across from acres of grass. We hit the last cross section, keeping straight alongside some local businesses, another empty plot, and some two story houses. 

Then we turn right, onto the main road, straight to Hair Make Ishida. 

There’s a ramen restaurant that smells heavenly, and already my mouth is watering. A print shop follows, then some nice houses, and I can tell by Ya-sho’s demeanor that he is just as eager to be at his house as I am. This felt like the longest ride home from school in history! We make a final left, and yes! Yes! We’re here! 

 We’re in front of his mom’s hair salon business, which takes up the first floor of his house, and just as we’re walking up to the front door, Ya-sho pauses and turns around to face me. “Thanks. For everything.” He says. 

“What are friends for?” I quote, all cool like. “You’re family, dude.”

“I’m..” his forehead wrinkles as he knits his brows. 

“…You need a hug, Ya-sho?”

He looks around, as if instead of me it were a mysterious voice asking him from some secret hiding place in the ether. 

I take that as a yes and wrap my arms around his waist, since it’s as far as I can reach. Look, I can’t help that Ya-sho is so tall, okay? What am I to do? Drop an anvil on his head?

But he hugs me back, and any worry I have about the embrace being unwelcome leaves before it can even begin. 

He’s trembling.

I hug him tighter. 

 

Ya-Sho’s room is pretty barren but for a small studying table, a bunch of manga stacked in a corner, and some blankets tucked away to the side. He has stickers on the wall around his window, and a calendar hung up above where the blankets are, alongside a familiar object. 

“Oh, so that’s what you did with it!” 

Ya-sho follows my gaze to the (less than) one thousand paper cranes hung up on the wall. “What? Oh, the cranes? Yeah, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with them.”

“They work for good decoration.” I nod, crossing my arms and looking at them appraisingly. It’s one of the only things Kawai has ever done for Ya-sho that didn’t have anything to do with Mashiba. 

“Even if they didn’t make it to a thousand, I couldn’t just throw it away,” Ya-sho plops down on the ground by the table, his back to all his manga.

I follow suit and sit across from him. My attention is immediately drawn to the stickers on his wall. There’s a lot of them, some I recognize, some I don’t. “Ooh! I know that one! That’s a band, right?” I point to one. A lot of them are bands, or stickers from random events— I can tell at least that much. Some are little cartoon characters, some shapes and symbols. One sticker looks like it’s been colored over with a marker. “What’s this one?”

A heavy thump cracks through the air and makes me jump. I blink at Shoya, then to the back of his hand covering the wall where the sticker was. He stares back at me, wide-eyed, surprised at himself. Then he looks away guiltily. 

“Ya-sho?”

“That was weird. I don’t know what came over me.” He laughs awkwardly, grabbing his elbow with his hand. “Don’t pay me any attention.”

“What was that about?”

He smiles awkwardly. “Nothing.” He stuffs his hands into his lap. “It’s nothing.” When he sees I don’t look quite convinced, he says. “Yeah, I don’t know what that was. Don’t worry about it.”

I slowly turn my attention back to the sticker. It’s a star with a wide trail of light following behind it, but although the trail’s natural color is obviously yellow, someone went over parts of it with white correction fluid and so now it’s streaked with white, two different shades of blue marker, one light blue and the other dark blue, and orange marker lined just above the only natural sliver of yellow left.

Shoya’s watching me closely, and I quickly make a weird face at him, surprising him, catching him in the act. “You’ve got to get some sleep, Ya-sho, my man.” Seriously, though, am I missing something?

He looks relieved, and runs a hand through his thick, spiky hair. “I think you’re right, Tomohiro.”

A chill runs down my spine. “Tomohiro? Not Nagatsuka?”

“Why? Is that bad?” His features begin to form worry again.

“No, no, it’s just..different. Not bad though.” I put a hand on the table. “We’re far past being on a first name basis. At this point, you should be calling me Onii-san!”

He stares at me. “…We’re the same age, though.”

“I don’t see why that has to matter.” I hum delightfully. “You know, in the yakuza—“

“Let’s stop right there.”

 

Shoya makes us both tea and we sit in his room for a while and just enjoy it. Conversation goes this way and that, moving from light-hearted to just full blown laughing fests. We don’t talk any more about the future or about any of our hurts. We relax after a long day of school and strife, sipping on tea. 

“You have never watched Super Sentai?” I exclaim with disbelief.

“I never said that!” Ya-sho defends. “I just haven’t seen it since I was a kid. You still watch it?”

I blush. “Well, no, not now. I binged it all a few years ago, though.”

He blanches at that. “All of it? Doesn't it have like seven hundred episodes?”

“No way! It’s definitely not that much!” I frown. “And anyway, even if it did, there’s hundreds of live-action hero shows that go on for even longer than that!”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“You’re just not in the circle.”

“The circle with you and Takashi and Masashi?”

“I have other friends!” I exclaim for a second time today.

“Yet, didn’t you say earlier that I was your only friend?”

I growl. “I’m rescinding my offer of buying you a personal cook. And I’m not tucking you in, either!”

“Aww, that’s a bummer. I was looking forward to that.” Ya-sho replies sarcastically, then lets out a laugh. “I should start calling you Uji-ro, since you like to be so wishy washy all the time.”

I freeze up. 

In response, Ya-sho stills too, brows raised. “What?”

“Did…did you just give me a nickname?”

Shoya stares at me, and I stare at him, and he stares at me and I stare at him. 

“Is that..a big deal?” His confusion strikes me dead center.

“OF COURSE IT’S A BIG DEAL!!!” I reach across the short table and grab his shoulders, shaking him. My face heats up with so much joy I can barely feel anything else! “First you call me by first name, and now a nickname? Is it my birthday? Is this what real happiness feels like?”

My wrists get grabbed, forcing me to stop, and Ya-sho looks dizzy, his head rolling on his shoulders. “It’s that serious, huh?”

“There’s nothing more important than the bond between two guys who trust each other with nicknames, Ya-sho. Nothing.” I say in all seriousness, staring straight into his soul. “It’s the love of brothers.”

He squeezes my wrist, righting himself, and I squeeze his shoulders back. “Dude, it can’t be all that.”

“Dude.” I copy. “It is all that.”

“I already have one crazy sister, I don’t need a brother to go along with her.” Ya-sho turns his amused face away, waving me off.

I sit back down. “Soulmates, then.”

His smile goes crooked. “I don’t think that means what you think it means.”

“Whatever, Ya-sho, don’t be so close-minded! Two platonic guy friends can be soulmates, it doesn’t gotta be romantic.” I motion my empty cup of tea at him. “It’s all about love, brother.”

He stares at the floor beside him, a wavy smile and knitted eyebrows on his face. “Love, huh?”

“Yeah! I’m not afraid to say I love you, man. You don’t gotta say it back.” I confirm airily, leaning until my back touches the floor with my arms behind my head. I cross my legs, both bent at the knee. That reminds me of a line from a movie. Can’t remember which one, but it was definitely from a yakuza franchise. How did it go? “Something like…” I do a deep voice, trying to imitate the actor’s inflection. “They say that although the person you love doesn’t love you the same way, that doesn’t mean they love you any less, or something like that. Was that it..? Hey, Ya-sho, you said something similar earlier, right? You don’t watch yakuza movies, correct?”

I stare up at his slanted ceiling. He sleeps in the attic, even though all the girls in his family have their rooms downstairs. Sounds kinda unfair if you ask me. 

“Man, I..” I tilt my head up to the sound of Ya-sho’s voice, but his face is hidden behind my legs, so I let my head drop back down onto my arms and continue gazing into nothing. “..I really don’t appreciate you enough, Tomohiro.”

I smile to myself, the skin of my cheekbones prickling with delight, and close my eyes. “Call me Ujiro, from now on, will ya, Shoya?”