Chapter Text
Nakamura's POV
I had rehearsed it so many times.
Not out loud...never out loud, because the walls in my house are thin and my sister would never let me hear the end of it. But in my head, in the warm, private theater of my imagination where everything always went right, I had practiced this moment forty seven times since the start of February.
Hirose, I know this isn't much, but I wanted you to have it. Happy Valentine's Day.
Simple. Clean. Direct. The kind of line that, in volume twelve of My Heart Is a Locked Drawer, had made the golden haired love interest blush to the roots of his hair and stammer a breathless thank you. I had studied that panel for twenty minutes...the way the mangaka drew the light catching the protagonist's cheeks, the way the speech bubble wavered with nervous energy. That was supposed to be me today. That was supposed to be us.
The chocolates were in my bag. Small, modest, wrapped in dark blue paper with a silver ribbon I'd spent twenty minutes retying because it kept coming out lopsided. I'd bought them with my own money from the convenience store three blocks from school...the nice ones, not the cheap ones on the endcap, but the ones on the middle shelf that cost almost seven hundred yen. The ones that said I thought about this without screaming I'm desperate.
Seven hundred yen. That was a week's worth of melon bread at lunch. But it was worth it. It was going to be worth it.
The last class of the day was history. Okamura sensei was at the front of the room, droning on about the Meiji Restoration with the enthusiasm of a man who had given up on being heard sometime around 2015. The afternoon light slanted through the windows in long golden bars, catching the dust motes suspended in the air, turning the whole classroom into something that looked like a memory even as it was happening.
I wasn't listening. I was watching the back of Hirose's head.
He sat two rows to my left and one seat ahead, close enough that I could see the fine, wispy strands of his light brown hair catching the light, the slight shift of his shoulders as he leaned over his notebook. His gakuran jacket was unbuttoned again...of course it was...hanging open to reveal the white shirt underneath, the collar slightly rumpled. He looked warm. He always looked warm, like he carried his own small sun inside him that radiated outward and touched everything around him.
Takeuchi was sitting next to him, leaning over and whispering something that made Hirose laugh...that bright, startled laugh that cracked through the stuffy classroom air like a small bird taking flight. I felt my jaw tighten. Takeuchi had his hand on Hirose's shoulder, leaning in close, and I knew..I knew...it was just his stupid bromance act for the fujoshi girls who sat behind them, but it still made something hot and ugly twist in my stomach.
It's an act, I told myself, the same thing I always told myself. He doesn't actually...
Hirose turned slightly, still grinning, and for one electric, terrifying second, his warm brown eyes flicked in my direction.
I looked away so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash, staring down at my notebook like the Meiji Restoration had suddenly become the most fascinating thing in the world. My pulse thudded in my ears. My palms were sweating against the desktop.
Did he see me? Was I staring too long? Did he notice?
I hunched lower in my seat, my gakuran collar buttoned tight to my throat like armor. The blue wrapped chocolates in my bag felt like they were burning a hole through the fabric. Forty seven rehearsals, and I still couldn't even look at him without feeling like the ground was going to swallow me whole.
Okay, I thought, gripping my pen so hard my knuckles went white. Okay. After class. That's the plan. When the bell rings, everyone will be packing up and leaving, and I'll just...walk over. Casual. Calm. I'll say the line. I'll give him the chocolates. And then...
And then what?
The simulation flickered in my head, bright and seductive. In one version, Hirose took the chocolates and smiled...that full, genuine, puppy eyed smile that made his whole face light up...and said, Nakamura, I didn't know you thought of me like that. In another version, his long eyelashes fluttered in surprise, and he reached for my hand, and...
No. Stop. Be realistic.
Realistic. What did realistic even look like for someone like me? I was the gloomy kid. The plain one. The one who sat in the back of the classroom and spoke so quietly that teachers sometimes skipped over me during roll call by accident. I was the one who had stomped on Hirose's handkerchief like an absolute lunatic because a female classmate had reached for it first and I'd panicked, and then handed it to him like some kind of bizarre offering, crumpled and dirty with my shoe print on it.
I still thought about that at three in the morning. Every. Single. Night.
The clock above the chalkboard read 3:41. Nine minutes left. Nine minutes until the bell, and then I'd either be the protagonist of my own love story or the same forgettable background character I'd always been.
I touched the strap of my bag. The chocolates were right there.
You can do this. You can...
The classroom door slid open.
Every head in the room turned. Okamura sensei stopped mid sentence, his chalk hovering above the board. The soft murmur of conversation died instantly, replaced by that particular brand of classroom silence that only happens when something unexpected walks through the door.
She stood in the doorway, backlit by the corridor light.
A girl. Our age, maybe a year younger...it was hard to tell. She had long, light hair that fell past her shoulders, a pink cardigan over her uniform, and a small gift bag in her hands decorated with heart stickers. She was pretty. Not in the sharp, intimidating way that some girls were pretty, but in a soft, cute, approachable way that made you feel like you'd already known her for years.
She scanned the room, her eyes bright and purposeful, and then they landed on one specific spot.
"Hirose kun!"
Her voice was clear and warm, carrying across the silent classroom with the easy confidence of someone who had no reason to be afraid.
I saw it happen in terrible, crystalline slow motion.
Hirose's head turned. His eyes went wide...those big, round brown eyes with their ridiculous lashes...and then his whole face transformed. It was like watching the sun break through clouds. His lips parted in a grin so bright it physically hurt to look at, and he pushed back from his desk so fast his chair scraped against the floor with a harsh, metallic shriek.
"Hana chan!"
He said her name like it was music.
Hana.
The world narrowed to a single, pinpoint focus. I could hear my own heartbeat, thick and sluggish in my ears, like something drowning.
Hirose was already moving, weaving between the desks with an easy, loose limbed grace that I had never possessed in my entire life. The girls in the class were whispering and giggling behind their hands. Takeuchi let out a low whistle. Oomori, sitting by the window, smiled a knowing smile that made my chest cave in a little further.
Hirose reached the doorway. Hana held out the gift bag, her cheeks slightly pink but her smile steady and sure. "Happy Valentine's Day," she said.
And Hirose...he took the bag, and then he took her hand, his fingers curling around hers with a casual, effortless intimacy that spoke of something already established, already real, already theirs.
"Thanks! Wait for me, okay? Class is almost over."
"I don't mind waiting." She leaned against the doorframe, comfortable, at home in his world in a way I had never been and never would be.
Hirose laughed..that same bright laugh, except now it wasn't for Takeuchi's jokes or Oomori's quiet observations or some stray dog on the street. It was for her...and he was still holding her hand, and he turned back to the classroom with this incandescent, unguarded joy on his face, and he said:
"Everyone, this is Hana! She's my girlfriend!"
The classroom erupted. Gasps, squeals, thunderous applause from Takeuchi, a chorus of EHHH?! and So cool! and I knew it! The fujoshi girls looked momentarily devastated before pivoting to whispering furiously among themselves. Okamura sensei sighed and put down his chalk, clearly aware that the Meiji Restoration was no longer the priority.
And I sat there.
I sat there with my hand on my bag strap, my fingers inches away from the blue wrapped chocolates with the silver ribbon I had retied twenty minutes ago, and I felt something inside me go very, very quiet.
It wasn't a shattering. I think that would have been easier, somehow...a dramatic, cinematic break, complete with gasping sobs and a thunderstorm outside. But it wasn't like that. It was quieter. It was like a door closing in a house that was already empty. A soft, final click. The last light in the last room turning off.
Girlfriend.
He has a girlfriend.
Her name is Hana.
The simulation in my head...the one I had run forty seven times, the one where I walked over after class and said my line and made him blush like the protagonist of my favorite manga...that simulation crashed and burned, the screen going static white before fading to black. There would be no version of this story where I gave him those chocolates. There never had been. I just hadn't known it until now.
Hirose was still at the front of the room, Hana's hand in his, grinning at his classmates with that open, beautiful warmth that I had...what? Thought was special? Thought was meant for me?
You're an idiot, I told myself. You absolute, delusional idiot.
The bell rang.
The sound jolted me like an electric shock. Around me, the classroom exploded into motion...chairs scraping, bags zipping, voices rising in the cacophony of freedom. Hirose turned to Hana, said something I couldn't hear over the noise, and she nodded. They walked out together, hand in hand, his unbuttoned jacket swinging behind him, her pink cardigan bright against his navy blue.
They didn't look back.
Nobody looked back. Not at me. Not at the tall, lanky, gloomy boy in the back row with his collar buttoned to his throat and his dark bangs hanging over his eyes, sitting perfectly still while the world moved around him like water around a stone.
I watched the empty doorway for a long time.
Then, slowly, I reached into my bag. My fingers found the blue wrapping, the cool, smooth surface of the ribbon. I pulled the chocolates out and held them in my lap, staring down at them.
Seven hundred yen. A week's worth of melon bread. A nervous laugh.
I shoved them deeper into my bag, buried them under my notebook and my pencil case and a crumpled handout I was supposed to have returned two weeks ago. I didn't throw them away. I couldn't. Not yet. Not with my hands shaking this badly.
I stood up. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else...stiff, mechanical, borrowed. I gathered my things. I walked out of the classroom. I walked down the corridor. I walked past the shoe lockers, switching my indoor shoes for my outdoor ones on autopilot, my fingers fumbling with the laces because they wouldn't stop trembling.
Outside, the February air hit me like a slap. Cold and sharp and clean, smelling of exhaust and someone's cherry blossom air freshener. The sky was pale and featureless, washed out, like it couldn't be bothered to commit to either sunshine or rain.
I got on my bike.
The blue bike was locked up in the rack by the gate, the same bike I'd ridden to school every day for the past year. I unlocked it with numb fingers, swung my leg over the seat, and started pedaling.
The route home was automatic. Left at the convenience store where I'd bought the chocolates. Right at the intersection with the broken pedestrian signal that hadn't been fixed since October. Straight past the small park with the rusted swings, the dentist's office with the fish tank in the waiting room, the narrow alley that smelled like miso from the restaurant at the end.
I pedaled mechanically, my legs moving in tight, rhythmic circles, my bangs blowing back from my forehead with the speed. The wind dried the tears on my cheeks before I even realized I was crying.
When did I start crying?
I didn't remember. It didn't matter. The tears came anyway, silent and relentless, blurring the streets into smears of grey and color. I blinked them away, over and over, but they kept coming, and my throat ached with the effort of keeping the sounds inside.
I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm...
He has a girlfriend.
Hana.
Hirose kun!
He said her name like it was music.
I pedaled faster.
I got home in eleven minutes. A new record.
The house was quiet when I opened the front door. The genkan was cluttered with shoes...my mother's loafers, my sister's sneakers scattered artlessly across the floor...but no one was in the hallway. No one was in the living room. The TV was on in the back of the house, playing some variety show at a volume just loud enough to make the walls hum.
I kicked off my shoes and went straight to my room.
It was small. A bed, a desk, a bookshelf crammed with manga and schoolbooks, a small poster of an octopus on the wall above my pillow...the only decoration in the entire room. The afternoon light filtered through the thin curtains, casting everything in a pale, washed out gold.
I closed the door behind me. I didn't lock it...there was no point. No one ever came in.
I dropped my bag by the desk. I stood in the middle of the room for a moment, staring at nothing, my chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths. The quiet was enormous. It pressed against me from all sides, filling the space where sound should have been.
My pet octopuse Icchan staring at me from his tank, one tentacle touching the glass.
Then I collapsed onto my bed, buried my face in my pillow, and broke.
It wasn't quiet this time. It wasn't dignified. It was ugly and raw and it came from somewhere deep inside me, somewhere I hadn't known existed until this moment. The sobs tore out of my chest in heaving, ragged gasps, muffled by the pillow but still too loud, still too much, still a sound that a person should never have to make alone.
Hirose.
He has a girlfriend.
He held her hand.
He smiled at her like she was the only person in the room.
Like she was the only person in the world.
The pillow was getting damp. I could feel the moisture soaking through the fabric, cool against my hot, swollen cheeks. I turned my head to find a dry spot, but there wasn't one...the tears kept coming, a relentless, soaking tide, and the pillow was drinking them all like a sponge.
I cried harder.
It's not just Hirose, I thought, and the realization hit me with a force that made my whole body shudder. It's not just him. It's everything. It's...
It was the house that never felt like home. It was the mother who worked late and came home tired and never asked how my day was. It was the sister who was three years older and had her own life, her own friends, her own reasons for not making eye contact with me in the hallway at school. It was the dinner table where I sat across from my family and felt like I was watching them through glass...close enough to see, too far away to touch.
It was every group project where I was the last one picked. Every class discussion where I raised my hand and was never called on. Every conversation that happened around me but never with me, like I was a piece of furniture, like I was the wall, like I was...
So plain he's forgettable.
That's what they said. The classmates. I'd overheard it once, last semester, two girls whispering in the hallway between periods. That Nakamura kid? The gloomy one? I honestly forget he's in our class sometimes. And her friend had laughed..not cruelly, just carelessly...and said, Same. He's like a background character.
A background character.
That's what I was. That's what I'd always been. Not the protagonist. Not even the love rival with the dramatic confession scene. Just...background. Set dressing. A smear of grey on a canvas that belonged to brighter, warmer colors.
And now Hirose had Hana...bright, confident, seen Hana...and I had no one.
I had never had anyone.
The pillow was soaked. Soaking wet, heavy with my tears, and I couldn't stop, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't...
It's not fair.
The thought was small and childish and pathetic, and I hated myself for thinking it, but it was true. It was so, desperately, achingly true. It wasn't fair that some people got to walk through the world like it was made for them...like every door opened at their touch, like every smile was meant for them, like they belonged...and some people were just... left behind. Left in the margins. Left to cry into soaking wet pillows in empty houses where no one came to check on them.
Does Mom know I'm home?
Does she care?
I sobbed harder, pressing my face into the ruined pillow until I couldn't breathe, until the world was just heat and wet and the muffled sound of my own broken breathing. The variety show droned on from the other room. The house hummed with the noise of other people's lives.
No one came.
No one knocked.
No one asked if I was okay.
I don't know how long I lay there. An hour. Two. The light outside my window shifted from gold to grey to the deep, bruised purple of early evening. My throat was raw. My eyes were swollen nearly shut. My whole body ached from the force of the crying, like I'd run a marathon, like I'd been beaten from the inside out.
Eventually, the sobs subsided...not because the pain had lessened, but because my body simply couldn't produce any more. I lay there in the dark, hollowed out, staring at the wall with red rimmed eyes. The octopus poster stared back at me, its cartoon eyes round and friendly and utterly useless.
I can't do this anymore...
The thought came to me clearly, terrifyingly, like a message written on the inside of my skull.
I can't take this. The pain. The loneliness. I can't...there's no one. There's no one who understands. No one who even sees me. I'm alone. I'm truly, completely alone, and I can't...
But then, faintly, like a radio signal cutting through static, a different thought surfaced.
Matsumura.
I blinked.
Matsumura.
Creepy Matsumura, who had transferred to be closer to Hirose. Matsumura, who was Hirose's childhood friend and my supposed rival. Matsumura, who was tall...annoyingly, offensively...handsome, with those dark side swept bangs and that forehead that seemed almost aggressive in how much of it he showed. Matsumura, who kept old straws and candy wrappers with Hirose's fingerprints on them like some kind of bizarre shrine. Matsumura, who I had privately categorized as a creep and a threat and nothing more.
But...
Matsumura, who had stood next to me at the mall while we helped that lost child find their mother. Matsumura, who had looked at me...not through me, not past me, at me...while I nervously reassured the crying kid, and had said, quietly, You're good at this, Nakamura. Matsumura, who had eaten lunch with me every day this week, not because he was using me to get closer to Hirose, but because...he just did. He just sat down, and stayed, and didn't ask me to perform or speak or be anything other than exactly what I was.
Matsumura, who had his own problems. His own obsession. His own weird, broken, creeping way of moving through the world that probably made him feel just as alone as I did right now.
I reached for my phone.
My hand was shaking so badly I nearly dropped it twice. The screen glowed in the dark room, harsh and blue white, making my swollen eyes water. I opened my contacts. I scrolled past Hirose's name...the contact I'd added on the second day of freshman year and had never once had the courage to use...and found Matsumura's.
I stared at it.
What am I doing?
He's a creep. He's a weirdo. He's obsessed with the same person I am, and that's supposed to make me feel better?
But the alternative was lying here in the dark, in this room, in this house, with this soaking wet pillow and this hollow chest and this silence that was slowly, surely crushing me.
I couldn't do this alone.
I couldn't.
I typed the message with trembling fingers, backspacing four times because my hands wouldn't cooperate, because the letters kept blurring through my tears:
Nakamura 🐙: Can I come over?
I hit send before I could talk myself out of it.
The phone sat silent in my hands. The seconds stretched out like taffy, long and unbearable. I watched the screen, my breath caught in my throat, my whole body rigid with the terror of having asked for something I had no right to ask for...
He's not going to respond. Why would he? He's probably with Hirose. He's probably...
The phone buzzed.
Matsumura 🐺: Yes. Come to my house.
An address followed. I didn't recognize the street, but I knew the neighborhood...maybe ten minutes by bike, maybe less if I pushed hard.
I stared at the two words, reading them over and over until they stopped looking like language and became just shapes on a screen.
Come to my house.
Someone had answered.
Someone was there.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand...the gesture clumsy, useless, because my eyes were still swollen and my cheeks were still wet and my hands were still shaking and I was still, fundamentally, a mess. But I pushed myself off the bed anyway. I grabbed my coat. I walked past the living room where the TV flickered blue and my sister's laughter rang out at something on screen, and my mother's voice said something I didn't catch, and no one...no one...looked up as I walked out the front door.
The evening air was cold. The sky was dark. My bike was where I'd left it, leaning against the side of the house.
I got on.
And I rode.