The whispers of winter were finally emerging, shoving out the hot, blunt force of summer and all its green, rainy glory. The skies were orange with dashes of pink, the wind picking up and blowing Tadakuni’s hair out of his face as he walked sullenly home. Beside him, his coworker Nago watched him with her slight glare, hand gripping tightly to her school bag as she outwardly kept herself from laughing. 

Tadakuni’s face was flushed red with embarrassment as the silence enveloping them hit its fifth minute. In his head, he thought, I hope she didn’t notice that, and in her head, she thought, He knows I got all of that, right?

His outburst earlier upon once again being tricked by the back-of-the-head doppelgängers was not one of his proudest moments, especially not when he teared up afterwards when realizing that all his emotional turmoil before going up to them had been for nothing. Yeah, he could try to stop by one of their houses to talk to them about it, even maybe call them on the telephone, send them an email or something, but after the disaster that was the day already, he didn’t have any more energy to facilitate those actions. He felt inexplicably nervous about it. Nago had said, not even ten minutes ago, “What are you, a girl?”, and at this point, Tadakuni didn’t see any reason to argue with her. Maybe for reasons outside of his two best friends he wasn’t fully ready to explore yet, but nonetheless, not something he wanted to get into. 

Nago broke the silence. “That wasn’t them.”

Tadakuni blushed furiously and hollered with shame evident on his face, “I know that!” 

“So you’re gonna give up? You didn’t even actually talk to them.”

”They probably don’t want to talk to me anyway. If they did, they would have walked home with me after school like they always did.”

“Are you sure this wasn’t your fault?”

”No! I mean, yes! I’m sure!” He shook his head. “Everything was going great during summer vacation. We spent everyday together! Pretty much everyday, anyway.”

”Oh. Then they probably are tired of you.”

Tadakuni brought both hands to his head and felt real, actual panic envelop him like a shroud. “That’s what I’ve been saying! They even went to the school festival together without me! How can two nut jobs who did nothing but stay at my house and do stupid stuff with me even on Valentine’s Day only now start minding their own business? I mean, I knew they hung out without me, but what’s this lonely feeling, huh? Huh? What happened between summer and now that’s made them not like me anymore?”

Nago was suspiciously quiet for a while, and Tadakuni was on the verge of just going his own way home and forgetting about the whole thing when she said, “…They probably just like you too much.”

“Eh?”

Tadakuni stopped short and Nago took one step before looking back at him, expression both calculating and bored. She had a permanent furrow in her brow whether she was happy or sad or embarrassed, and he’d gotten pretty sufficient in figuring out what each quirk on her forehead meant, but now Tadakuni couldn’t place her thoughts whatsoever. On her side, though, she was wondering if Tadakuni was either stupid, or she’d been reading too many manga— and since Nago rarely read manga, she figured it was the stupidity one. 

A wind blew past them with incredible timing, giving the air a dramatic flourish. The wind rustled the trees on the path beside them, as well as the hearts of the two boys hiding behind them, faces equally as pink and eyes just as wide. 

In Hidenori’s head, he thought, Aaaaaaa! How embarrassing! How the hell do I keep ending up in these situations? Aaaaaa!

And subsequently, Yoake was thinking, What the hell? What the hell are those two talking about? Who? Huh? Like who?

The two had been strolling comfortably in mid conversation down the road when they’d seen the tip of Tadakuni’s head coming up the hill, and once they’d seen the downcast eyes paired with his featured blushing face beside the high school girl beside him, they’d inexplicably hid behind the trees next to them with no further thought as to why they did it or what they planned to do. There was no look between the two to confirm the sequence of events, but they were in sync nonetheless, as they had been since childhood. They didn’t need to see each other’s faces to know they were both thinking, since when did Tadakuni get a girlfriend??? And how did it happen so quickly between classes starting back up and the school festival? And WHY DIDN’T HE TELL US?

That way of thinking quickly devolved into reasonable answers as the two  drew closer to Yoake and Hidenori and their voices could be heard comfortably and clearly: He doesn’t. It didn’t. And because we’ve been purposefully shunning him, and because it’s not true. 

Now as to why the two had been purposefully ignoring him, it starts way back, about a month ago, with a throwaway conversation between the two childhood friends—

“Wait, when did you take a picture of Tadakuni in the girl’s uniform skirt?”

“Oh, I have my ways—wha! What are you doing!?”

“Send it to me! How did you even have time to take it in the first place—?”

“Why? material? Ah! Hey! I will! Geez!”

“What were you keeping it for? Blackmail?”

“Why else?” 

“Tch!”

“And anyway, what’s wrong with me having memories of my friends? I have pictures of you on here too.”

“Delete them.”

“Not those kinds of pictures..! Anyway, look, I took these when we got those fireworks and went to the beach.”

“…Hm.”

“And these..”

“You took all these during the summer?”

“Yeah…”

“…It..”

“—…Might be way too many..—”

“You sure have a lot of Tadakuni.”

“We saw a lot of him this summer, didn’t we?”

“Too much, maybe.”

“…Hey, Hidenori.”

“What?”

“Hidenori. Hidenori.”

“What? What?”

“…Do you ever think..Tadakuni looks different?”

“Huh? How so?”

“Like. I don’t know. He just looks different.”

“In the pictures?”

“No, not just in the pictures. In real life. Like, maybe it’s not something physical. Just something about him is, hm, different.”

“You keep saying different. It’s not helping unless you get more specific.”

“…”

“…”

“Ahem…! Hm. Actually, now that you say it, I do..think I get what you’re saying.”

“Right?”

“He does look different lately. Like..c..cu..”

“Cu..te…”

“Yeah. Cute… But like, in a specific way. A Tadakuni way.”

“You think we’ve been spending too much time with him?”

“No more time than I spend with you?”

“No, but, we’re different, aren’t we? We’ve known each other for longer.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Well, of course we’re gonna see each other differently than when we were kids. We looked different back then. But Tadakuni..”

“…Maybe we have been spending too much time with him.”

“Yeah..”

“We’ve been looking at his face too much.”

“Indeed. Indeed.”

“Yeah. And after a while he’ll start looking like normal and we can talk to him again.”

“Yeah. Of course! Yeah..!”

“Yeah!”

“Then our friendship will resume as normal, and we can get back to just hanging out properly.”

“Ahhh, but that means we won’t be able to cheat off his homework..!”

“Tch! You should do your own homework, Hidenori.”

“I don’t wanna hear that from you!”

“…Uwa! Speaking of..”

“No, I won’t let you cheat off my homework.”

“Tch! Stingy—!”

“…There’s always Karasawa.”

“And now you’re scheming?!”

“Yoake?”

“Uh. What’s up?”

“No more pictures.”

— and thus, the childhood friends unanimously decided that until their burdensome feelings went away, they would properly ignore Tadakuni, which meant, usually, saying no to going to his house, studying with him, and avoiding looking him in his face at class. They’d almost invited him to walk around the school festival with them, but even then, the rise of some unknown feeling in Yoake and a very, incredibly familiar tingle in Hidenori left them with no choice but to leave the third boy alone. Yoake chose to ignore the palpitations in his heart when he thought of how cute Tadakuni was in a skirt and bra, and Hidenori chose to pretend that he hadn’t had this same experience with Yoake only a few years earlier, and that it fell more into the lust direction than anywhere else.

And now they were stuck behind this tree, forced to face the consequences of their actions. Or forcing Tadakuni to do so in their place. 

They probably just like you too much, the girl had said. Yoake thought she hit the nail right in the head, and Hidenori thought she was way far off from the truth, at least for him. Like was becoming a strange thing for him. Hidenori liked the idea of girls liking him. He liked when there seemed to be a possibility of him getting a girlfriend. He got bored of it quickly, yes, but he liked it. He liked Yoake and Tadakuni, as much as he liked any girl, but he’d never liked any girl. He’d never had a crush. At least none that lasted over a minute. It wasn’t a persistent attraction, if it was any attraction at all, and he both didn’t think about it much and also thought about it regularly, as a high school boy. Lust was easy. No problem there. Love, on the other hand? The romantic kind? Took a lot of work that he had long since given up on trying. If it happened, it happened, and even with this Tadakuni situation, it still hadn’t, so whatever. 

Oh, he realized. He resigned himself to falling in lust with Tadakuni quite easily. Huh. 

On Yoake’s hand, he still didn’t want to think about it, even though the answer was right in front of him. Or rather, he was, as Nago was projecting onto Tadakuni, kind of stupid. The dots weren’t clicking, the lines not forming. Tadakuni was a boy. So it didn’t even rise up in his thoughts as a possibility— for him. Hidenori, on the other hand..

Anyway, Nago thought. There must be some miscommunication galore. 

And aloud, she said, “Just kidding.” And turned and walked away. 

This is why I hate manga, she thought. 

And there stood Tadakuni, as confused as ever, dealing with his two strange friends’ equally strange mistakes. Well. No way they’re owning up to it now, they thought.