Work Text:
During their last semester as second years, Hori took Sakura as an apprentice.
Nozaki knew that he was usually a bit blind towards that kind of thing; even he accepted that he wouldn’t have noticed if it wasn’t because of the spectacle. Hori stood on a chair and dramatically declared that Sakura would be his one and only apprentice. You can take the man out of drama club, but you can’t take the drama out of the man.
Kashima cried. Sakura looked the perfect mixture of confused and overjoyed. Nozaki took notes; it would go perfectly with his cooking club side-plot idea.
“But Hori!” Kashima shouted. “How am I supposed to become better than you if you don’t teach me all your tricks?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, “and I wish I didn’t care. Stop skipping rehearsals, and you’ll automatically improve.”
Nozaki’s notes altered the dialogue to something a bit more romantic. A jealous older club member refusing to share her Valentine’s Chocolate recipe? That could work. But the young upstart only wanted it in the first place to bake it for his mentor! It was perfect.
Sakura smiled at him and stole a quick glance at his notes. He expected her to roll her eyes or shake her head like anyone else would have done. But she didn’t. She was Sakura, after all. Instead, she read them carefully and turned to him. “You don’t know how to draw food,” she said, and he scrapped the idea entirely.
Nozaki assumed the issue was dealt with after Hori and Kashima started wrestling on the floor. It always went that way: they would fight (judo seemed to be Hori’s current preference), insult each other, and fight some more. At the end of the day, Hori would ask for a script with whatever nonsense Kashima had said last, and they would continue to be each other’s favorite person.
And yet, two days later, when he got to his living room to tell Hori and Sakura that dinner was ready, Hori was sitting next to Sakura. He was slowly explaining how line thickness was affected by perspective.
Sakura took notes, nodded at Hori’s words, and replicated one of his backgrounds. Her work was not as good as Hori’s, but it was considerably better than the last time he had seen her draw backgrounds.
“He is going to move away after graduation,” Sakura told him a few days later, “and someone has to pick up the slack.”
“I could—”
Sakura gave him a look, and Nozaki shrugged. He had tried. He had tried multiple times. But perspective never made sense to him. He could tell when something was off, but he could never put his finger on what it was.
“You would learn backgrounds for me?” he asked.
“I would learn anything for you.”
Sakura was such a good friend. And such a good manga assistant.
o.o.o.o.o
Hori’s graduation was weird. Nozaki usually loved the event; it was a perfect opportunity to pick up ideas. Girls were crying; guys were trying not to. Club members were giving overly emotional goodbyes. Couples were breaking up, and new ones were forming. And yet. When he saw Hori and wished him good luck, there was something that didn't feel entirely right.
“You will miss him,” Sakura explained.
Nozaki nodded at that. She was right; he would miss Hori. Part of him wanted to miss his background work, but he knew that he would mostly miss him as a friend.
“I will miss him too,” Sakura continued. “Part of me wishes I was in one of those mangas where time doesn’t pass.”
“We could be second years forever.”
Sakura laughed. “Could you imagine that? Always stuck in the same uniform, repeating the same events again and again without any real progression.”
“This is not that kind of story.”
“No, it is not,” she agreed. “I wonder what kind of story ours is. I wish it is a romance one.”
He nodded. “Lower probability of dying that way. Action and adventure have a higher-than-average number of orphans. And a secondary character has to die to show that the stakes are real.”
She gave him a look he could not decipher. He hoped it was nothing too bad.
o.o.o.o.o
Sakura spent hours improving her backgrounds. Before starting their third year, she spent most of the break in his apartment surrounded by reference books and notes Hori had left her.
“I could try to reduce the amount,” he offered, but she dismissed him with her hand.
"I want to learn for me too. It's interesting, and once I get the hang of something, it is quite fun."
“Easier than drawing humans?”
Sakura thought about it. He loved that about her. She took her time to think about his questions, to give him actual answers. From the strangest questions about his manga to the most straightforward ones about what she wanted for dinner. She never dismissed his words; she was that good of a friend.
“I like drawing humans when I have a reference,” she started, “but I struggle to model them in my head. For me, humans do not have joints, so when I try to draw them without a reference, their positions throw me off. Backgrounds are a bit easier because it is all about perspective. As long as I can picture myself in the room, I can draw it.”
“It is the opposite for me. Joints are easy, but perspective makes no sense.”
"I guess we are the perfect team!" she said and then hid her face for some strange reason.
“Or with Hori, he is great at backgrounds too.”
Sakura nodded and turned back to her books.
o.o.o.o.o
Their third year was both harder and easier than their second one. Classes were harder, teachers were tougher, and students were expected to decide what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives. It was easier because his team worked like a well-oiled machine. Sakura's background work had gotten to the point where he didn't have to think too hard about adding them to his work, Mikorin was still open to working for him, and Wakamatsu made his life easier by taking over all of the screentone work.
"What do you want for dinner?" he asked Sakura. She was sitting by his table, a mechanical pencil in one hand and Hori's old ruler in the other. She waited until she was done with the panel to turn to him. Then she smiled, and Nozaki wished he had his notepad with him. It would be the perfect smile for his heroine.
“Do you still have the extra rice from the other time?”
"I think so; let me check." He did have the extra rice. "Fried rice?" he asked her, half of his body still shoved on the fridge, looking for eggs and vegetables.
“Sounds perfect!”
o.o.o.o.o
“Why not art?” Nozaki asked, looking at Sakura’s half-completed career form. She wanted to go to college, he knew that, but she had not made up her mind about what she would study yet.
“I like it, but I don’t think I can do it well enough to make a career out of it.”
“You could work in an anime studio? They always need colorists and line artists. You are really good with the beta.”
Sakura nodded. “Thanks,” she said, “but I don’t think I want to work in anime. I love working with you too much.”
Nozaki smiled at her. She was such a great friend and such a big fan of Let’s Love.
"What about you?" She asked after a few minutes of staring at her career form. "Have you decided if you want to go to college too?"
“Yes, Miyako was able to juggle her college work with her manga, so I should be able to. And I really want the experience."
“Are you going to study art?”
Nozaki shook his head. “Literature and creative writing. Most art classes are on fine art, and I am more interested in the crafting of stories. Maybe you could do that too?”
Sakura thought about it but didn’t write anything down on her form.
o.o.o.o.o
St. Valentine's was fun. He convinced Sakura to spend the day before with him. He wanted to try his hand at homemade chocolate and have a girls' day in. Mikorin was there too, as he was the best reference for Mamiko that he had.
Sakura had made a funny face when he asked but had soon agreed to join them. They had made some simple chocolate and then baked some mini chocolate muffins. Sakura had told him about her first time trying to bake, and he had shared his own misadventures with cooking.
She had also laughed at his adventures with Wakamatsu at the mall. Getting every type of packaging had been hard, but he was pretty happy with the haul he managed to get.
“Wait,” he said when she was leaving, “take this.” He handed her one of the chocolate boxes he had bought. He was not a big fan of the packaging, but it had quite a few caramel chocolates. “You like caramel, right?”
Sakura nodded and hugged the box to her chest. "Thank you!" she said a large smile on her face.
On St. Valentine’s proper, she got him a box with some packaging he hadn’t managed to find. “I saw it a few weeks ago when I went to visit my grandmother,” she explained. “I don’t think you have this one yet.”
“Thank you, it’s perfect.”
She knew him so well. And she had such a keen eye for reference material.
o.o.o.o.o
For white day, she got him homemade yogurt.
“You gave me that box of chocolates, remember? And let me take as many as the muffins as I wanted. So: white day!”
The yogurt was in a lovely mason jar decorated with a nice ribbon. It had the same pattern as hers. And there was a small tag with carefully written kana saying, "Thank you for the chocolate; it filled me with joy."
Suzuki’s homemade yogurt white day gift was a hit with all his readers.
o.o.o.o.o
Sakura’s background work was incredible.
Sometimes, Nozaki wondered if he should pay her with actual money, but she just asked for food every time he offered. Hori had always wanted scripts, Mikoshiba wanted his space, and Wakamatsu was working for music.
Now that he knew that Lorelei was Seo, he didn’t need her music. But he still required music to sleep, and Nozaki had become his go-to dealer.
“Your technique is incredible,” he told Sakura.
She smiled, widely and with a bit of teeth, and Nozaki could feel his heart do a weird somersault. Maybe he needed to get more exercise.
“Thanks! Do you mind if I use it for my portfolio?”
“Portfolio?”
Sakura blushed and then nodded. “I think I finally decided on what to study.”
“Not art, then?”
“No. The last few months have been a lot of fun, and I have learned a lot about buildings. I am now seeing the world with a different perspective, and I quite like it. So,” she stopped for a bit. Nozaki wondered if she was nervous but could not understand why she would be. There was nothing she could do that would make her any less amazing. “So, I am going to study architecture. I get to do art, but it is more applicable than fine art. And I get to stay at home.”
“You will be amazing,” he said, and he meant it.
o.o.o.o.o
Some days, he really wished his body was a bit more slender. It would make his life easier, to be able to wear all the reference clothes he wanted. Mikoshiba sometimes helped, but it was a drag to talk enough confidence into him. Mayu was a perfect model, but even harder to talk into doing things. Sakura was…
Sometimes she agreed easily enough. Especially when she was already wearing the outfit and he asked for pictures. Other times, she was even harder than Mikoshiba.
“Hey,” he told her. Sakura was sitting by his table, working on some backgrounds for his manga. “Would you mind trying this on?”
It was the outfit for a one-shot he was planning. A light, pink yukata his protagonist would wear when she was stuck in the spirit world. He had seen it in a shop a few weeks before and had fallen in love with the pattern. But it was so hard to picture how it fell when worn, especially when his protagonist was trying to jump from a mystical rock.
“Sure,” she agreed, after carefully inspecting the yukata.
She changed in Mikoshiba’s secret storage room—also known as the spare room—and came out with the obi loosely hanging from her hips. He already had his favorite book on knots on his hand. It was open on a page on a knot he thought both looked nice and would be easy enough to draw but had never considered how easy it would be to make.
It took him a few tries to get it perfectly. Sakura spent the whole time looking at the ceiling, her face red for some strange reason. He offered her a glass of water, but she refused and got even redder. Maybe she had seasonal allergies.
“There,” he said, “it’s perfect.”
“What about me?”
“You look perfect too. The pattern looks very nice on you and your body is perfect for these types of yukatas.” Not like his. He had tried it and it didn’t even close. It was not fair.
Sakura’s allergies seemed to get worse.
o.o.o.o.o
Nozaki found himself in the art clubroom on his last day at school. He wasn’t entirely sure how he ended up there, just that one moment he was following two lovebirds as they made fake promises and the next moment, he was standing in the middle of the clubroom being loaded up with past projects.
He would miss the club. It was odd; they had sneaked on them. One day he was not a member, and a few months later he was, without him ever realizing the change. He was pretty sure the president had faked his signature to get him registered with the school, and he had been able to vote in the elections.
“Nozaki,” Sakura called, standing on a chair trying to get one of her drawings down. “Could you help me?”
He went over and was able to take the drawing down without needed nothing more than to stretch a little bit. Sakura was still on the chair, and it was the closest her face had been to his in a long time. Then his eyes started to go down: Her eyes, her lips, her neck and then her chest.
He had a realization when looking at her chest. Sakura must have misunderstood, because she started to turn red in anger. Or maybe red in embarrassment. Or maybe just red in general. Who knew?
“Sakura, can I have your second button?”
“I—Yes! I mean, sure, but—But I need yours in return! Equivalent exchange, yes.”
He wasn’t sure what to do with the button once he had it. The rest of the day had been emotional and hard, and his lack of button had been a bit distracting. Sakura had had to take a safety clip from the club room—she had even offered him one—but he had liked the small reminder.
Once he got home, he put the button on the table and stared at it. What was he supposed to do with it? He considered several options. Some were too mundane, some were too dramatic, and some seemed like suggestions from Wakamatsu, which made them terrible just by principle.
At the end, he decided to put it in a small origami box his sister had made for him. It was nothing too special, but it looked nice and he had already kept it for a few months, so it would survive a bit longer.
He never stopped to wonder what Sakura had done with his.
o.o.o.o.o
Nozaki was surprised when Sakura didn’t join their university’s art club. She had been part of their high school one, after all. He had very fond memories of visiting and knew that, by the end, he was a member of the club himself.
“I wanted to try something new,” she said when he looked at the clubroom he had walked her to. “And the art club gave me weird vibes,”
“So, you joined the…” he looked at the door, “photography club?”
“Yes, isn’t that fun? I can learn how to take better reference pictures.”
Nozaki felt a weight lift off from him. “You still want to help me with my manga?”
“Of course, why wouldn’t I?”
“I thought you might not want to do art anymore,”
Sakura’s eyes turned round, and she started to move her arms around her, as if she was trying to scare off some flies. “No, no, how could you think that? I love being with you and,” she paused, for a few seconds, her face turning scarlet for some strange reason Nozaki couldn’t comprehend, “manga! I love manga. So much, love it, you know?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, of course you love manga too, you do it for a living. But, what I mean, is that, I love helping you, so, if you want me, then I’ll always be there for you. I mean, for your manga. Yes, Mamiko is why I am doing this!”
Nozaki nodded. Mamiko was also why he did a lot of things.
“So, yeah, I am not joining the art club, but I still love art, I just, wanted to try something new? You know?”
o.o.o.o.o
“Nozaki!” Sakura shouted, running into his lecture room. The lecture had just finished, and Nozaki had started to put his things away when he heard his name.
Sakura was pulling on another girl, who looked mostly confused at the whole situation. “Look! I made a friend.”
Nozaki perked at that and ran to the new girl. Her look was plain—a real shame, but not completely unexpected—but the real treat would be either her personality or her life story. Sakura always made the best friends for him to use as reference.
“Hello,” he said quickly, taking his notepad out. “Who are you and do you have a boyfriend?”
The girl looked confused at both of them, but shrugged and sat on one of the empty tables. “I assume you are the Nozaki that Saku-chan wouldn’t shut up about. I’m Rika and I do have a boyfriend.”
Nozaki nodded, and started to jot things down. The Saku-chan was new; usually her friends used Chiyo- or Sakura-chan. Odd nicknames, that could be an interesting character trait.
“Tell me everything about your boyfriend,” he asked.
Rika smiled and started to talk.
o.o.o.o.o
Most of the times, they worked in silence.
Sakura was bubbly and loud when he walked her to his home, but as soon as she sat down to work, her mind was laser focused on the page.
Mikoshiba was different. When they walked together, he was mostly silent with a few words here and there, but as soon as he got to Nozaki’s apartment he would not shut up about his newest game or manga, about what flowers he had thought for which panel and why, or about his life and his new friends.
Nozaki was not sure of which one he liked more.
When Sakura was silent on their way home, he knew that something was wrong. When instead of taking out her tools as soon as she got in, she stood frozen on his living room as if unsure of what to do, he knew that something was really wrong.
“Girl talk?” he asked.
Sakura nodded, and walked to the toilet. Nozaki closed the door behind him, and they both sat down of the floor. A few minutes passed as Sakura tried to find her words. He waited. He would have waited hours for her.
“I’m just so tired,” she confessed, breaking the silence. “I thought that forty-five minutes wouldn’t be that much, but it’s not just forty-five minutes, isn’t it?”
Nozaki nodded along. It wasn’t just forty-five minutes, it was an hour and a half of commute broken into two forty-five minute segments. There was a reason he had moved as soon as he was able to be closer to his school.
“And the train is alright at night, but in the mornings, it’s just so cramped with people and it’s not like in school when I had friends with me. Now, I am back to not knowing anyone on my line and it’s just weird and lonely and… I am just so tired.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, unsure of what to say. “Your parents still don’t want you living alone, right?”
Sakura nodded.
“And there is no place in the university halls?”
“Not until next year,” she said, “and even then there might not be any place.”
He wished he could help somehow, but he had no idea how. Sometimes he wished he could be like Wakamatsu and just do whatever the first old shoujo manga he found suggested. But life was not a manga. At least not that type of manga. This was the kind of set up in a josei manga where the protagonist would end up finding a room next door and...
Next door!
“Miyako!”
“Miyako?”
“Yes, she was telling me how she wanted to do something with her extra room. And she was looking on getting some help with her backgrounds. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind letting you stay and use background work as rent payment.
“That, that would work!” she said, cleaning a stray tear from her face. “Let’s ask her if she would be willing. I could pay normal rent if she wants me to, and it would be at a walking distance from campus.”
Miyako was more than happy to let Sakura stay in her spare room—most commonly known as the tanuki room given that it was where she stored all the extra merch from her mangas—in exchange for some background work.
Sakura saved an hour and a half from her commute, and now Nozaki could walk her to and from university. He really did love hearing her talk while they walked.
o.o.o.o.o
Exams were upon them. The library had become their second home.
Nozaki finished his analysis on some old book and passed it to Sakura. She finished her essay on the architectural differences between the East and the West and passed it to him. Without a second thought, they started annotating each other’s work as if it was second nature.
They were a well-oiled machine. They were the perfect team.
o.o.o.o.o
Mayu didn’t bother standing up when he got home. Nozaki wasn’t expecting it. His brother still gave him a slight smile and a lazy wave, which was more a welcome that he had been expecting from him.
He hadn’t even removed his shoes by the time his mother had him in a tight hug.
“I miss you, my baby, you should come visit more often,” she said, “how’s everything? How is school? I loved the short story you sent me; it was lovely! How’s Chiyo-chan doing? Is she eating properly? She is so small; sometimes I wonder if she will disappear into thin air.”
He hugged his mother back and wondered when Sakura’s wellbeing had become one of the first questions his mother asked him.
o.o.o.o.o
“Tanaka got a new boyfriend.”
“I thought she already had one,” Nozaki said, turning down to look at Sakura. Her geta, clunky and wooden, were adding a few centimetres to her height, which was odd.
“I know, right? Apparently, he broke up with her a few days ago and she didn’t mention it.”
“And she is already with someone else?”
Sakura nodded as she took another bite at her candy apple. “I was surprised too. I think this new guy is a rebound.”
“What about a childhood lover who finally asked her out after years of pining. He learned that she had her heart broken and went to console her. As she cried, she cursed her fate and the fact that no one would ever love her. He denied the claim, and when she asked for evidence, he had to confess his love.”
“That sounds a lot nicer; did you bring your notebook?”
Nozaki had brought it, and jot down his idea before he forgot. It could work for one of his one shots, especially if he added some fantasy elements and maybe a rival or two. While he was taking notes, Sakura took out her camera from his backpack and started taking pictures of the festival’s stands.
Her yukata was too pretty to be hidden under a bag, so he had decided to carry her camera himself. It was a good compromise: he got to pick the yukata’s pattern and she got to pick all the food and not have to carry her things.
Back at Miyako’s apartment they had had a little photoshoot, with both Miyako and him taking enough pictures to last a lifetime. Something told him that soon there would be a tanuki wearing a yukata on one of Miyako’s works.
Sakura was checking on the pictures she had taken when he tried to steal a glimpse. The lighting was fantastic, and Sakura loved to play with angles. Some of the pictures looked like reference for manga, but some others looked like the kind that Sakura liked to take for her club.
“We could print some,” he said.
Sakura jumped. She probably hadn’t noticed he was hovering above her. He sometimes wondered how he managed to blend into the background with his size. “Hey, oh, hi,” she mumbled, turning red for some reason. The summer heat, most likely.
“We should print some of your photos. I don’t have many pictures in my apartment and yours are incredible.”
“Really?”
“Of course they are, you have a fantastic eye.”
The yukata must have been warmer than Nozaki had expected; the heat was really getting at Sakura.
o.o.o.o.o
Yoshida had a secret.
Or at least Nozaki hoped she had, because otherwise she would be as boring as she looked. Sadly, she was very good at their classes, and she was part of his study group. Maybe her secret was something to do with her family. A secret half-brother who was trying to frame her? Her separated-at-birth-twin-sister was confused at being called Yoshida and was about to start her detective career by discovering her own past?
Maybe Yoshida was a magical girl! College student by day, magical girl by night. Keeping ghosts and spirits at bay, and sometimes using them as reference for her history classes.
Or maybe not. Maybe Yoshida was really just the studious bookworm that wanted to get good marks that she looked like.
Nozaki shifted his eyes to the next person over: Saito. He didn’t look like the type to have an evil half-brother, but he definitely looked like the guy in a love triangle that ended up alone. He was funny, but plain, and had good love-rival vibes.
It was a shame that he already had a few love-rival references.
If Sakura was there, she would be the one to suggest mixing both backstories. Saito’s love-rival personality with Yoshida’s magical-girl one. Maybe a bookworm who gains powers from stories, and uses them to defeat rogue fictional creatures. She can be in love with some guy who is part of a different love triangle. And she knows that her best hope is being the second best to Saito, but he slowly learns to love her over the series, and at the end the girl from the love triangle chooses Saito but he realizes he loved Yoshido all along.
Nozaki thanked the Sakura in the back of his head as he ignored the confused looks from his study group and started to take notes that had nothing to do with the book they were studying.
o.o.o.o.o
Nozaki stood to go check on his stew. Sakura was working on some of her mathematics worksheets (who knew architecture involved so many equations?). Her tongue was sticking out a little bit, and her mechanical pencil kept drawing tiny circles on a piece of scrap paper.
The stew was doing good. He lowered the temperature and went back to the living room. He sat down and continued to work on his latest manuscript.
A few days later, Sakura would have to stay late at college for a project, and he would wonder when having dinner alone became so weird.
o.o.o.o.o
Nozaki usually walked to campus with Sakura. He loved having time that was just theirs: no work to do, no other friends to talk to, and nothing to do but walk and chat.
Some days he had to leave early, and he hated not being able to see Sakura until later in the day. He would leave her bento in front of Miyako’s door, usually with a cute doodle wishing her good luck.
That morning, it was Sakura who had to run to an early meeting for a project. When he left his apartment, there was a post-it note on the door with a tanuki!Suzuki waving at him. Sakura had added a quick “good luck” and a short apology for not being able to be there that morning.
Nozaki put the note on one of his notebooks and left for class with only the silence and his ideas for company.
He managed to find her between her first class and his second. She was huddled with her group partners, all bouncing ideas and references at each other.
“Sakura,” he called her out. “I brought you your lunch.”
Sakura turned and lit up. “Nozaki! Thank you, thank you! You didn’t need to, but I am so glad you did, thank you!”
He gave her the bento and left with a quick wave to her friends. He knew some of them from some of her other projects, but they all had that crazed look of architects on a deadline. It was a look he had quickly learnt to fear.
They walked back home together. Sakura had had to stay a bit later, but he didn’t mind the wait.
“Thank you,” she said. “It was delicious!”
“You are welcome.”
“I was the envy of all the group, did you know?”
“Really?”
“Yes, Nakamura even took a picture. She said it was the prettiest bento she had ever seen in the wild.”
Nozaki glowed at the compliment and made sure to make Sakura’s bentos as pretty as possible for the rest of her project.
o.o.o.o.o
It was at the end of his second year of college when he noticed. He stood in front of his wall calendar: a whiteboard he changed every month to reflect his deadlines, future events and important reminders. He wondered when he had started to include Sakura’s too.
o.o.o.o.o
There were many good things that came out of being friends with Sakura. First and foremost, Sakura was an excellent friend. Then, there was her background work. But another important advantage was Towa.
“Do you think they are rivals?” he asked Chiyo, because she was Chiyo when there was a second Sakura to confuse her with.
Chiyo turned to where he was pointing. The tennis competition was full of people, but it was easy enough to spot the fighting boys. “Love rivals or sport rivals?”
Nozaki thought about it for a bit. They had that symmetry that he loved in Love Rivals, but they had that look in their eyes that suggested Normal, Boring Rivals instead.
“Either?”
Sakura nodded at that, and started to examine the couple. “Same hair color,” she said, and Nozaki wrote it down on his CON list. “But they do have similar faces,” that went to his PRO list, “and they seem to—forget it.”
“What?”
“You are going to love this. I know them, Towa introduced them to me ages ago. They have grown up quite a bit since, which is why it took me a while to recognize them.”
“Are they really in love with the same person, then?”
“Maybe better than that. They are brothers.”
“Brothers!”
Nozaki crossed out the CON list and wrote a large BROTHERS down on the PRO list. That was amazing. Brothers—he really hoped they were twins—were the best type of rivals. Similar but different enough, with the added tension that they have to live together. It was perfect.
“Brothers are the best,” he told Sakura, as he jotted down as many ideas as he could.
“They sure are,” she said, taking more pictures of the tennis court.
“Yes, aren’t they?” Towa said, giving them both a disappointed look. “Did you even see my match or where you too lost in lovely-dovy town to notice?”
Chiyo got red—she probably didn’t appreciate her brother accusing her of being distracted—and showed him the pictures she had taken of his match. He was reassured enough that he even let Nozaki take some pictures of his uniform.
It was a great day.
o.o.o.o.o
It rained on their college graduation. It is unfortunate, as it ruined the lighting for the reference pictures that he wanted. Four years, four years of sweat, tears and blood in that one occasion in which the cutter knife fell on his leg. All for a rainy day with poor lighting.
“Hey,” Sakura said, “can I get a selfie?”
Instead of using her camera—her nice, proper camera—, she used her phone. It was an old model, with terrible image quality. Also, they were both soaked and the lighting somehow managed to get worse. And yet, hours later when she sent it to him, he couldn’t help but smile.
They were both smiling. Sakura was on her tiptoes and a quarter of his face was off frame. But they both looked so happy; it was one of the few pictures taken that day that he had honestly liked.
He printed it and put it on his bedside table.
o.o.o.o.o
Without college getting on the way, Nozaki decided to concentrate on his manga. He asked Miyamae, his trusty editor and the only man who could do the job, if he could go from a monthly to a bi-weekly work, but only got a weird look in response.
“Try making one-shots. We are still looking for some for the summer issues,” his editor said. “Also, do you have Sakura’s phone number?”
His work on a one-shot about a festival where his sweet protagonist finds her true love, only for him to turn out to be a tanuki spirit—sue him, he had been brainstorming with Miyako—distracted him enough that he forgot about the small piece of paper with a phone number on it.
It was until a week later when Sakura knocked on his door like crazy until she remembered that she had a key. “Miyamae offered me a job!” she shouted, as she bounced around his living room.
“What?”
“He called me earlier and offered me a job! He asked me to work as an emergency assistant. I will be working with new mangakas who don’t have a team yet, with one-shots and artists that need a bit of help to meet their deadlines. It would be great fun! And I will get paid!”
“Do you want to get paid?” he asked.
“Of course! Now it is an actual job.”
“What I meant is, do you want me to pay you? I could, actually, I probably should.”
“No, no. Miyako asked the same earlier, but I am okay with barter with you two. Board and food, instead of money.”
“If you are sure of that.”
“Of course, working with you is reward enough.” She smiled, and Nozaki felt his heart jump. It was probably that he was so impressed by her dedication. Or about how great of a friend she was. Definitely nothing to do with how cute she looked when she smiled at him like he was the best thing she had ever seen.
o.o.o.o.o
If there was something he had learned over the years, it was how to braid hair. He loved doing something with his fingers while they watched TV. Sakura was amenable to acting like his giant doll, and he had learned so many different styles that he had started to keep a notebook with photos and how he did it.
It was great fun.
However, when they went to their monthly lunch with Sakura’s family, —a tradition that had started somehow in their third year of college—her mother noticed the complex medieval style braid adorning her daughter’s head.
“That looks great,” she said, “who did it?”
“Me,” he said, not thinking twice about the question. And yet, she gave him a strange look for the rest of the meal. At the end of it, she took him aside, looked at him in the eye and asked him to take care of her daughter. Nozaki accepted, of course he would do his best to keep Sakura safe and happy.
After that their relationship changed, but he could never tell how exactly. He just knew that one day, he started receiving weekly recipes from Sakura’s mother and that he loved it.
o.o.o.o.o
One year, three months and twelve days after they graduated from college, Miyako got engaged. Sakura was the first one to know; they had been living together for more that four years by that point. But the second one was Nozaki. He imminently went into overload mode, and started to ask everything and anything. Miyako, who was a writer first and a person second, also started critiquing everything that had happened. What went right, what went wrong, what could have been more romantic, what could have been more dramatic.
Ryousuke looked confused, but bemused, in the corner he was staying at. More importantly, he looked utterly in love. When the Nozaki-Miyako duo started interrogating him about his feelings, actions and intentions, he answered with a smile on his face.
“Marriage, eh?” Nozaki asked, hours after the frenzy. Sakura had eventually left with Ryousuke to go tell his family the good news, leaving Miyako and him alone.
“Weird, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it kind of is. How did you know to say yes? How could you tell that he was The One?”
“I couldn’t.”
“What?”
“Nozaki, life is not like a manga. There is not such a thing like The One, or True Love, or Soulmates,” she said, a smile on her face. “But I asked myself. Do I see me growing old next to him? Can I picture spending the rest of my life with him in my team? Good times and bad times, working together to be happy?
“And that, that was an easier answer. Because I do love him, and I love who I am when I am with him, and that does matter. But marriage? That’s about being a team. Knowing that he will have my back and that I will have his.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, so at the end it was an easy answer. I love him, yes, but more importantly, I want to share the rest of my life with him.”
o.o.o.o.o
The wedding was wonderful. Sakura cried three fourths of the way in. Nozaki didn’t even make it to the first half. They ate three days worth of food and took enough pictures to last a lifetime. Sakura had been entrusted with refence-picture duty by Miyako, so while the real photographer was busy taking pictures of the newlyweds and their guests, Sakura was off taking pictures of tables, and ceilings, and the decoration.
Once they were back home—Nozaki’s home, Sakura technically still lived next door despite spending most of her time at his—Nozaki plopped down on the sofa and Sakura just laid face down on the floor.
“So tired,” she mumbled, the tatami drowning out most of the sound.
Nozaki couldn’t even answer, he was too tired to even talk.
Hours later, once Nozaki had managed to force his body into sitting and Sakura had wiggled her way to him, he started to remove everything out of her hair. It was a long process, with more bobby pins coming out to the point that he felt like a magician with those never-ending tissue tricks. And yet, it took him just a fraction of how long it took him to put up her hair on the first place.
“Now what?” she asked.
“There are still bobby pins, but after that you can brush your hair or take a bath.”
“No, I mean, thanks for that, but no. What I meant was, now what do I do? I can’t continue living with Miyako, she is probably moving in with Ryousuke, right?”
Nozaki nodded. That would make sense.
“You know, you could just move in with me. Mikorin doesn’t really need the spare room anymore, and you wouldn’t have to move too far away.
Sakura turned red. Anger? Not likely. Maybe embarrassment, it would be a bit weird for the two of them to share an apartment.
“You wouldn’t mind?” she asked.
“Of course not, I love having you here. And you wouldn’t have to pay rent, just do my background work. I have been feeling guilty about how much work you do for just food in exchange.”
o.o.o.o.o
Moving Sakura in wasn’t too complicated. Mikorin had taken most of his things by then, and either moved them to his apartment or disappeared them in shame. Mayu took a bunch of the leftovers, Nozaki kept some as reference and Sakura kept one of the figurines in the room. Mostly to shame Mikorin.
Her parents had given him a long look when they told them. Then, surprisingly, they just nodded and accepted it. “Not the best of circumstances, but the youth is like that, isn’t it?” and said no more. His parents were a different story. Or at least his father was.
When his parents had first heard that he was having monthly lunches with Sakura’s parents, they had forced them to come to monthly lunches with them too. Eventually, they had added another monthly lunch with both families. Mayu couldn’t care less, but Towa and Yumeko had quickly become friends.
His father had looked at him in one of those monthly lunches, and asked him to talk alone. “Are you sure about this?” his father had asked.
Nozaki nodded. “Why wouldn’t I be? She is the best and she already spends most of her time with me.”
His father had looked him in the eye, and must have searched for something. Nozaki wondered if he found the answer he was looking for, because eventually his father just nodded and said, “I wish you two the best, but remember that formalities exist for a reason.”
“Okay?”
“Weddings are nice,” his father said.
“I know. I love them.”
His father waited. And waited some more. When he realized that Nozaki was not going to say anything, he let him go and return to the family lunch.
“What did he want?” Sakura asked, once he was back on his seat.
“Not sure what that was about,” he confessed, and Sakura gave him a shrug. Fathers were weird sometimes.
o.o.o.o.o
The eight anniversary of Let’s Fall in Love approached and Nozaki knew that his series would have to end soon. The characters needed to grow, and his audience had grown out of his series. It was time.
And yet, there was a horrible feeling pooling in his stomach.
“It will be fine,” Sakura said, as she worked on the backgrounds for the last chapter. It was a wedding scene—of course it was, his fans would have killed him otherwise—and there was something that made him itch all over.
Once the chapter was published and he got to read it on the magazine, he managed to name it: yearning.
o.o.o.o.o
Their day-to-day eventually settled. He waked up and made breakfast, Sakura cleaned after him and they sat down to enjoy the meal. Then he would start working on his one-shots and the short stories he was writing for a magazine. Once Let’s Fall In Love had ended, he had found himself free enough to go back to writing for pleasure. There was something fun about getting to stretch his imagination and using the skills he learned in college.
Sakura would leave and work with different mangakas. Most of the time she worked with other romance mangas, but had started to expand into other genres. She only did backgrounds for others; she only worked on beta with him.
He always made sure to send her away with a carefully packaged lunch. Over the years, his bentos had become a work of art. He had started a Twitter for his professional self (his fans wanted a way to hear from “her”) and his bentos were 90% of his posts. The rest were a mix of publicity and small facts about his day-to-day.
Sakura would come back two hours or so after lunch and work on his one-shots. When he wasn’t working on a specific one, she would work on her portfolio or on work for other people that could be done remotely.
Dinner was sometimes with friends, sometimes with family, but usually just the two of them. Every so often they went out to try new restaurants and cafés, as both a relaxing activity and an opportunity to get reference material.
They would end the day watching TV or reading in the living room. Sometimes, Sakura would fall asleep and he would carefully pick her up and move her to her bed. Once, he had fallen asleep and woken up to Sakura building some strange contraption to move him. It hadn’t worked, but he had used it for the plot of one of his short stories: a small fairy who can’t use magic having to find a way to move a sleeping ogre from her mushroom without waking up. He ended up illustrating it and tried to sell it as a children’s book. It took a few edits, three rejections, and a lot of learning about the children’s picture book industry, but he eventually published it. It did great.
o.o.o.o.o
Two years after Let’s Fall in Love ended, he managed to get another series serialized. It was another High School love story, but the characters were fun and the setting was interesting. He also continued to work on his short stories, and eventually got an offer from a magazine to serialize one of his stories. It lasted only a few months, but it got published as a light novel and was well liked by his fans. He offered to draw the covers himself, but apparently his “shojo manga art” was not what they were looking for.
“I could give it a shot,” offered Sakura.
She needed a lot of references, but managed to do something that his editor liked. It was a watercolor, her current and favorite medium, and he made sure to frame the original and hang it in their dining room. Sakura had blushed and tried to disappear it, but there was no way he would allow her to remove his favorite piece.
o.o.o.o.o
Three years after Let’s Fall in Love ended, he realized that they held hands everywhere they went. It was not that he didn’t know, but he had just not realized that what used to be a necessity for train stations had become their norm.
o.o.o.o.o
Four years after Let’s Fall in Love ended, he made the list of “Famous Lesbian Mangakas” in some magazine. He was very confused. When he checked the evidence section of the magazine, it mostly listed his Twitter Posts about “S-chan.”
He wrote to them and explain that despite using a female pen name, he actually identified as male. They removed him from the list, but he wondered how so many people had assumed that Sakura and him were together.
“You live together, do everything together, visit each other’s families all the time and, AND, you are always writing about how tiny and cute she is. It made sense.” Explained over email the writer of the article when he asked her.
He wondered if other people thought the same way.
o.o.o.o.o
Three months after accidentally becoming a famous lesbian, Sakura proposed to him.
It had been a lazy Saturday morning. They both had recently finished big projects, and had decided to take a nice three-day break. The Friday they had gone for a walk, tried a new restaurant they had been eyeing for a while, and caught up with their favorite show.
Friday morning, their only plan was to relax and laze around. Nozaki had woken up two hours late, and had started on breakfast more like an afterthought than as a conscious action. Sakura had wiggled her way out of bed half an hour later, and had woken up to warm soup on her lips.
“This is so good,” she sighed after a few gulps of the miso soup, “I could easily have this for breakfast for the rest of my life.”
And while Nozaki could have taken it as any other comment, he also loved traditional Japanese proposals. And yes, it was not the most traditional way, and the words might not have been exactly what he had been dreaming of for a lifetime and a half, but it was close enough.
And while he was under the impression that they were not dating—he didn’t remember starting to date, and that seemed like the kind of things that he would notice—he had also come to realize that most people assumed they were. What if Sakura was too? What if they had been dating since High School and he had been the worse boyfriend ever?
So, instead of nodding along to the comment as if it was just another compliment, or asking Sakura why she would think they were dating, he thought about it. Would he marry her?
He did love her; she was his best friend after all. And she was cute. And nice. And he couldn’t picture the rest of his life without her by his side. His heart skipped a beat, and he felt like all the blushing maids he wrote about so much.
“Okay,” he said at last.
Sakura looked at him confused. She probably wasn’t expecting an answer so soon. “Okay?”
“The miso soup. I’ll make it tomorrow too. And the day after.”
And every day after that, he thought, but left unsaid. Because while they often had lunch apart, Sakura off at work while he worked at home and dinners were sometimes with friends and family, and every few days they were at restaurants, breakfast was always just them. At home, their home. Together. And now, Sakura had asked him to be there for the rest of their days.
o.o.o.o.o
Nozaki considered going out of his way for their engagement dinner, but they already had a planned a joint family dinner the week after, so he just used that one.
There was no exchange of presents, as it was an old tradition and they had been together for so long that it would have felt wrong. Instead, when his father jokingly asked him when they wedding would be—a question he had been asking for almost a decade by that point—he told him that in six months’ time.
Sakura’s parents gave him a hug when they left, and his mother whispered an ‘about damn time’ a bit more harshly than he thought he deserved.
Six months. He had six months to organize a wedding.
o.o.o.o.o
Sakura was weird throughout the process. He had thought that she would be excited about the event, but she mostly treated it as a reference material thing. When he asked if she preferred a Western or a traditional wedding, she had answered that she would rather have pictures of a temple. Which was a fair enough reason, but seemed a bit weird for her.
She also refused to go try dresses with him, so instead he got her measurements and sent them off. It was weird. Maybe she was shy?
She loved the invitations. She had spent such a long time looking at them, longingly, as if she could not believe them. “You’ll change the names, won’t you?” she asked, a tinge of sadness on her voice.
“Do you want me to?”
“No! I love it the way it is.” She took the invitation she was holding, and ran to her room with it. A few days later he would find it framed on her wall. He would have offered her to take a few more, but she seemed happy enough with that specific one. Odd.
Choosing a cake once again felt closer to a reference material outing than a wedding preparation one. But Sakura was back to normal, so he took it as a good sign. He smiled at her and when she turned to him and smiled back, he couldn’t believe his luck.
o.o.o.o.o
The day of the wedding was chaos. He was running around, making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. The flowers were not the ones he had ordered and he considered starting to cry. Mikorin took one for the team and cried instead. It was very dramatic, and after a few minutes they both relaxed and decided that it was not important at all.
“Those are gorgeous!” said Sakura as soon as she saw the flowers. “What are they?”
“No idea, but definitely not what I ordered.”
“We should get the name, they look amazing.” She said, as she got her camera out and started to take a few pictures. Nozaki could have kissed her. She really made everything better.
When the ceremony started, everything was going great. It had been a bit hard to separate Sakura from her camera. Nozaki had made sure to hire two of Sakura’s old club members for the pictures. One for wedding pictures and one for reference pictures. He really wanted Sakura to be able to enjoy the day. But even then, it appeared that it was hard for her to turn it all off.
Around the middle of the ceremony, Sakura started to fidget. To look around, to look at the papers they were about to sign, to look at her family that had come from all over the country to see her. Then, she turned to him, and gave him a weird look.
She pulled on his sleeve. She had done it a thousand times over the last decade. He was easily two heads taller than her, so if she wanted to whisper something to him, she had to get his attention first. He lowered his ear as discreetly as possible—not discretely at all—and nodded slowly.
“This is a real wedding,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“No, I mean that, this is a real wedding. If we go through the ceremony, we will be married.”
“Yes?”
“You knew?”
Nozaki stared at her, and in a split second decision just took her in his arms and princess carried her out of the room. “Ten-minute break!” she shouted as he ran out of the temple.
Outside was humid and hot, but it was better to have this conversation without an audience.
“What do you mean, I knew?” He asked, “You were the one who proposed!”
Sakura stared at him, confusion clear on her face. “What do you mean?”
“You asked me to make you miso soup for the rest of your life. It was very romantic.”
“Oh. I didn’t notice. Sorry.”
“Oh.”
“I had no idea we were dating.”
“Me neither. I just assumed that we had because why else would you propose?”
“Oh.”
“Oh.”
They stared at each other.
They stared at each other.
They stared at each other, and then broke down in laughter.
“We sure make a hell of a pair,” she said, trying to regain some air. “How did I not notice that you were planning our wedding?”
“How did I not notice that you had no idea?”
“I thought it was for reference! How did we—Oh this will make a hell of a story.”
“Yeah. I am definitely writing a novel on this. Maybe add a bit of royalty or magic. Something more dramatic, you know?”
“Sure. Hey, does that mean that you would have married me?” She asked. “You said you thought that I proposed. Does that mean that you wanted to marry me?”
“Of course. You are Sakura, why wouldn’t I want to marry you?”
Sakura turned red, and he finally realized that it was in embarrassment. Then her face turned into the largest smiled he had ever seen. “Hey, hey. Do you want to marry me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Cool, because there is a wedding happening right now and we could just… You know, rejoin the ceremony.”
Nozaki thought about it. Considered the options. Maybe they hadn’t been dating, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t together. And his vows were still true. He still wanted to spend the rest of his days with Sakura by his side, on his team.
“Let’s go, then.”
“Wait!” Sakura told him, before they walked back into the temple. She pulled on his sleeve, and he obliged and bended down to her height.
“Yes?”
“I love you,” she whispered, and then stole a light kiss. “The first time we talked, I was trying to tell you, so I needed to get it out.”
Nozaki ran his tongue lightly over his lip, trying to see if there was anything left of Sakura on them. “Good. I love you too.” He said, and then kissed her forehead before straightened up again.
They walked back into the wedding holding hands. Nozaki had no idea what the rest of the day would hold, or what the rest of his life would be like, but he knew that as long as possible, Sakura would be there with him and him with her. And that was all that mattered.