Archive of Our Own

When Langa pulled open his front door a moment after hearing the doorbell ring twice, he expected to see a delivery person dropping off something his mother had purchased. Placid facial expression firmly in place, Langa made it halfway through a thank you, eyes already downcast to search for a package either on the doorstep or in waiting hands, before he hesitated because he saw neither. 

Instead, bright yellow high-top Vans eclipsed his vision, so, surprised, Langa snapped his head up to meet the nervous but determined stare of Chinen Miya. 

“Hi,” Langa greeted dumbly. 

Miya nodded stiffly, feet shuffling across the welcome mat. 

“You’re in my apartment,” Langa stated because it felt like a pertinent comment considering Miya had never been to his place before, and Langa was also pretty sure he’d never told Miya where he lived. 

Going by Miya’s responsive glare, maybe verbalizing such a statement was not so legitimate. 

“I’m outside of it,” Miya hissed, tapping the doorway lightly with the outside arch of his shoe. “The main door was wide open. Not a very secure building.”

“Oh, yeah, on the weekends it’s usually unlocked,” Langa explained, “because so many people come and go. It auto locks after five, though. And there are security cameras, plus we have double locks on our door,” he patted the flat edge of the apartment door with his palm, “so Mom and I feel pretty safe.”

Miya rolled his eyes. They stared at each other for a long moment, long enough for Langa to hesitantly offer, “Would you like to co–”

“Yes, ugh, say that first,” Miya complained, not letting the full question leave Langa before he was being shoved out of his own entranceway to make room for Miya to kick off his shoes. Sock-covered feet stomped down the short hallway and turned left past the first doorway into the kitchen and living room space.

After a beat, Langa shook off his stun and followed the middle schooler. He found Miya had perched himself onto the couch, phone in hand, viciously typing something out. He looked so natural tucked into the same corner that Reki liked to inhabit so that he could kick his feet up into Langa’s lap and laugh at his complaints, smushing the couch cushions so that after so many repetitions there was a noticeable dent in one of the pillows the size of a forearm.

Langa blinked several times to clear his vision. Miya was on his couch, not Reki. Right.

“Right,” Langa verbalized, and Miya raised an eyebrow, and though he did not glance up from his phone, Langa knew the action was pointed at him. “Did you want something to drink?”

“No, just come here.”

With understandable hesitance, Langa would argue, he rounded the couch and took a seat on the opposite end, facing Miya.

After nearly a minute of mostly patient waiting, Miya finally lowered his phone back to his lap. The nervous expression that Langa had noticed Miya wearing when he’d opened the door had returned.

Langa felt compelled to ask, “Are you okay?”

He and Miya had never had a one-on-one conversation like this before, not that anything had yet to be conversed, so it was new territory for them both. If the two of them ended up alone together, it was because there was something else to be done, like skating at the park when Reki was busy but Langa didn’t want to be by himself, or Reki left their table at Sia la luce to go to the bathroom or bother Joe in the kitchen, so they were left by themselves to eat and casually continue the conversation. Their common denominator was Reki (or Crazy Rock) and nothing had happened since the previous June when the three had become acquainted to remove that red-headed variable. Even when they had that bad argument in the fall, Langa’s connection to Miya had stemmed from the both of them missing and worrying about Reki for similar and different reasons. 

He still considered Miya a friend, as much as he could be a friend with someone four years younger, though if Langa took the time to analyze their relationship it was more akin to him being on good terms with Reki’s younger brother— anyway. Miya was his friend, and Langa cared about him, full stop. 

That didn’t mean he had any idea what Miya would respond with when asked about the well-being of himself, though. 

Miya obviously hesitated to answer, which was an answer in and of itself. 

So, as they had already done multiple times in the last ten minutes, Langa waited in silence for Miya to explain. He nearly startled when the quiet broke sooner than he expected. 

“What was your life like in Canada?”

Miya was staring him down, his eyes shouting for the truth, though Langa had no reason not to tell it, regarding such a broad question as that. 

“Normal, I think?” Langa replied. “The school system is a little different here. I basically repeated my junior year by moving here and joining the second year class.”

“What were your friends like? Your family?”

Miya’s stare was unrelenting, and Langa started to feel a bit like he was being interrogated. Still, Miya wasn’t asking for any stories he didn’t feel comfortable sharing. 

“I don’t–didn’t–have any siblings. It was just my parents and I. My mom‘s grandparents lived here in Okinawa, but I only met them once when I was really young so I don’t remember them. They’ve already passed. My dad’s parents still live in Canada, in Alberta. I saw them for holidays and stuff, same with my dad’s brother, my aunt, and my cousins. I don’t think we were any more distant than most families.” 

He cleared his throat, the embarrassment creeping up on him just a little, as it always did when he thought back to himself several years ago as an angsty teen Miya’s age. 

Langa continued. “As for friends… I didn’t have many.”

Miya made a humming noise, but didn’t interrupt further. 

“Snowboarding was the most important to me, besides my parents, so I spent a lot of time doing that if I wasn’t at school or home. When I was younger, I had more friends, but we all started doing our own things around middle school, I guess? A few classmates came to the, uh,” he coughed into a fist, “my dad’s funeral. But I didn’t keep in touch with any of them.”

There wasn't even a beat between Langa finishing and Miya’s next question. “So you didn’t date?”

Langa’s brain conjured up an image of an awkward middle school dance that he could only rid himself of with a facial cringe. Eyes squinting and nose scrunched, he shook his head. 

“But you get asked out a lot here,” Miya stated with confidence, like his argument was sound. “Reki told me,” he added, likely for validity.

“A lot” was exaggerating, though admittedly Langa had received three confessions in as many months since the beginning of his third year, and there were a worrying number of anonymous love notes tied to various ribbon-wrapped boxes left in his shoe locker on Valentine’s Day, but that pile only resulted in two in-person confessions, both of which he turned down, and Langa offered to split all of the chocolate with Reki. (Reki had shouted at him for being insensitive, but he ate the chocolate anyway.)

“It’s different here,” Langa replied. “I’m the mysterious transfer student who is Half,” which had been explained to him by both Joe and Cherry blossom as an intriguing concept to many young girls. “I wasn’t anything special in Canada, I just snowboarded well.”

“But you could date anybody there, right?!”

Miya looked angry. Langa had seen Miya angry before, sometimes even over very small things, so he knew his anger when he saw it. The clenched fists, the stiff shoulders, the glare— Miya was pissed. It just didn’t make any sense why. If Langa had held any control over this interrogation, he didn’t anymore. 

“Um,” Langa whined, “did I say something wrong?” He’d improved his Japanese comprehension significantly over the last year, but he did occasionally still struggle to understand the nuances of speech. It had led to a handful of foot-in-mouth moments, most occurring while in class.

Miya paid his question no mind. Being upset was, clearly, more imperative. Langa was glad he hadn’t given a drink to Miya because he was sure he’d have been wearing it. 

“That’s what Canada is all stereotyped for, right? Being super nice to everyone. No one yelling at you in the street, or shoving you in the hall, or, or beating you up for just standing at the train station.”

Alarm bells rang in Langa’s brain. “Are you being–” bullied, he was going to ask, but Miya didn’t let him finish.

“A-and you can be different there. You’re just such a l-loser that even when you could be anything, date anybody, any girl, any g-guy, any…anyone…” Miya quickly lost steam, his glare diverting down to his lap, body curling in on himself, “anyone else. Without people hating you. You, um. Didn’t.”

In the span of a breath, Langa was no longer an eighteen-year-old in his Okinawa apartment. He was thirteen, curled up in his childhood twin bed in Vancouver, nose stuffed and sticky tear tracks on his cheeks that were stubborn under the gentle wiping of a warm damp cloth driven by his dad. 

“Don’t tell her,” he had choked and covered his mouth with his blanket to muffle the sob. “Don’t tell her,” he begged his father.

As far as Langa knew, his was the only secret Oliver Shields had ever kept from his wife. 

Last fall, when Langa’s mother had all but confirmed during their short but impactful heart-to-heart that Oliver had taken Langa’s secret to the grave given her assumption that the person Langa liked was a girl, he had not been in a healthy enough headspace to understand the gravity of that realization. 

It wasn’t until things calmed down at S and when he and Reki were back to being friends, their relationship even stronger than before, that he took the time to reflect.

He could just tell his mother the truth, he started to reason. At thirteen, he had been so filled with fear that he would never have told anyone. His father stumbled into the secret on the same day he had, which was the only reason the man had known. 

From stories and recounts that people posted online, Langa read that many teenagers were accidentally outed by their internet search history. Some divulged, cheeks visibly pink even under the grainy filter of a YouTube video at 720p, that their parents found their porn. Langa’s situation had been both similar and different. 

Oliver Shields was an insanely loveable man whom Langa greatly respected, but he still had flaws. The biggest and most irritating one that Langa struggled with was his father’s complete inability to use his phone. The day the smartphone was invented was the day Oliver gave up on handheld technology. It was only when Langa entered high school that his dad finally graduated from the discontinued Blackberry with the full-type keyboard to the simplest touch-screen phone on the market. His mother often lovingly teased him that he and all of the local 65-plus seniors could bond over their devices. 

And that would have been fine and not a bother to Langa at all if it wasn’t for the fact that his father loved taking pictures and videos, on the slopes especially. 

Langa at thirteen was still two months away from the BlackBerry retirement, so the phone that stored all of those photos and videos was his own. 

The biggest disadvantage was his phone’s storage filling up every two weeks and then being requested to hand his phone over so that Oliver could upload all of the data onto his laptop. 

A laptop the man could navigate fine, but handheld technology was a bust from its inception. 

Nanako was not one of those mothers who hovered, and Langa wasn’t a child who required hovering, so he didn’t have the concern of his parents checking his phone history or texts. Still, he’d heard enough horror stories to know to keep his preferably private matters to himself. His phone had a passcode, but it was his birthday, and his parents obviously knew that. 

So when Langa decided he was probably old enough to watch porn, he did so on an incognito browser and always double checked that the internet history was clear of evidence after, just in case. Pornography was fascinating : the positions people contorted themselves into, the noises they made that invoked warm feelings in his gut, and even the storylines were sometimes funny. 

But Langa didn’t think watching porn was doing what it was supposed to, for him. It made him horny, usually, but half of the time he didn’t feel compelled to do anything about it. 

Langa quickly grew bored of heterosexual porn after three videos and started clicking on more salacious thumbnails with muscular builds on display. Those were the videos that he watched with rapt attention, cataloging the lubricant used, the pillow under the base of the spine, the timeline of events starting with prep and ending with the cleanup. 

When he returned to school after winter break, he smirked to himself when he heard the group of classmates behind him tittering about some video one of them watched the night before. He felt like he finally belonged, even if he didn’t want to put himself into the conversation. 

However, his smirk slipped when he came to the realization that sex between two men was not the content within videos other boys his age were watching. In fact, they demeaned those videos. They laughed about them. Langa too found them silly at times, but his amusement was not snide like theirs. 

Langa excused himself to the bathroom and sat in a stall silently Googling “is watching man on man porn bad?” and “why is porn funny?” and “how important is sex?” and “do all men like sex?” and “what if I only like some sex?” and “what does liking gay porn only sometimes mean?”

One of his classmates was sent by the teacher to ask him if he was feeling okay after thirty minutes had passed. Langa truthfully told him he wasn’t, and the boy whose name he didn’t know but Langa thought was on the student council walked him to the front office, brought him his backpack, and the secretary called his dad to come get him. 

It may have been important to note that Langa attended a private Catholic school, so he never received any kind of sex education outside of the very clinical three-week reproductive course in health class. Langa later learned that many other teenagers actually received knowledge that wasn’t based around abstinence-free. 

The drive home was near silent, Langa’s dad not making him say more than a confirmation that he could handle the car ride and an agreement that if that changed he would let his father know. 

When they pulled into the driveway and parked, his father hopped out of the car first and retrieved Langa’s backpack for him, ushering him inside and over to the couch with a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

“Are you hungry?” his dad asked. “You skipped breakfast, so the empty stomach probably isn’t helping.”

Langa thought about it but eventually shook his head. His stomach did feel hollow, but he had no inclination to fill it.

“Okay–”

“I want to shower,” Langa blurted. He’d showered the night before, but his skin felt clammy and itchy and all Langa wanted to do at that moment was roughly drag his mother’s synthetic loofah over his arms and legs. 

His father looked confused at Langa’s unusual choice to deny food but didn’t vocalize it. “I’ll put your stuff in your room for you,” he offered instead.

Langa whispered his thanks before escaping into the bathroom, not even stopping to pick out a change of clothes before closing the door behind him. He stripped himself of his uniform with rough tugs. The blistering warm water felt like a balm for his soul. 

Usually it was the ice cold snow that brought him peace, but that day he needed the exact opposite. He stayed under the spray for a few minutes too long, and when he spotted his reflection in the mirror when he finally turned the water off, his skin was bright pink. 

On the bathroom counter was one of his t-shirts and a pair of sweatpants that had his school’s name emblazoned along the leg. His dad must have brought them in without him hearing. 

Feeling marginally better, though still like his world was tilted on its axis, Langa left the bathroom and walked instinctively to his room. His mind was a whirlwind of information clashing with a storm of emotions. 

The door was open, and Langa’s father was sitting on the edge of his bed, Langa’s phone in his hand. It was plugged into the wall charger, and Langa opened his mouth to thank him for thinking of maintaining the battery life, maybe attempt a joke along the lines of, “I’m proud of you for picking the right charging cord and finding the port to plug it into,” but the words died on his tongue when his father hesitantly met his eye. 

His mouth was pursed, he was fidgeting, and worst of all he looked guilty. Langa’s glance lowered. His phone screen was active, a bright white light illuminating the space around it. 

Langa recalled what had been open on his phone before he last powered it down. 

In a snap, Langa descended into a panic, shouting, “Get out!” in a voice so desperate his dad physically reacted. Langa ripped his phone from his father’s grasp, the charging cord disconnecting with a cracking sound, and pulled the man to his feet and shoved him toward the door. His father must have been stunned at the outburst, because normally Langa would never have been able to move the far larger man. 

“Son,” his dad protested, but Langa grew frantic, and he pushed at his dad again. He got him to the doorway before he gave up and switched tactics. He threw himself onto his bed and covered his body with the quilt his grandmother had knitted him for his tenth birthday. 

He clutched his phone to his chest, the device now locked and the screen dark. His breathing grew heavy, and a moment later he was sobbing. 

He was too distressed to stop his father from pulling the blanket back and exposing his crying figure. 

“Son.”

Langa shook his head over and over, refusing to listen, trying to breathe and finding it hard. His father turned him onto his side, which helped the breathing thing, but Langa had to shutter his eyes closed so that he wouldn’t catch sight of the man. He didn’t want to face whatever reaction seeing that Google search resulted in. 

“Langa, deep breaths, come on, shh. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

It took a long time for Langa to calm down. He said a lot of things, hurtful and untruthful things, to try and get his dad to leave, but it obviously didn’t work. He refused to open his eyes, even when his dad spoke in a soft voice that Langa knew from experience came with a gentle smile. The tears didn’t stop, though the sobs did slow. 

They didn’t talk about it. Langa couldn’t. He didn’t have the words to explain, didn’t know them. His dad was just about as clueless and defaulted to showing his love and support. 

His father left for less than a minute to snag and wet a washcloth to clean Langa’s face, and only then did Langa peel his eyes open. His phone was still clutched in his bruising grip, and he was tempted to throw the troublemaker across the room, but he stopped himself. It wasn’t the phone’s fault. It was his. 

Though it was only a moment, in his father’s absence, Langa worked himself up into further hysterics. 

Langa rarely showed his emotional reactions so boldly, so it was no wonder Oliver stared at his son like he was a new creature. Only in hindsight could Langa rationalize the expression as shock rather than horror.

“What can I do?” his father asked. “How do I make you feel better?”

“Don’t tell her.”

“Your mother? Langa–”

“No!” Langa screamed, throat raw, the word cracking as it ripped out. “No, no, no…” he continued to repeat. 

“It’s okay, son. You don’t have to worry. We’ll. We’ll figure–”

“Don’t tell her,” Langa begged again. He sniffled, choked, coughed, and sobbed. “Don’t tell her.”

It was bad enough letting his father see something so embarrassing. He couldn’t imagine what face his mom would have made, had she been the one to see it. Langa couldn’t get his father’s expression out of his head, like Langa had turned into something unrecognizable. He couldn’t take that risk. 

When his face was a little more clean, and he could breathe through one of his nostrils, Langa’s father whispered, “I just want you to feel safe and protected. And happy.”

Langa was too weak to speak, so he just shook his head and pulled the quilt up to his neck. 

They never talked about it, after that. It took a month for Langa to stop cringing whenever he looked at a web browser, and another two after that before he dared to open a porn site. He closed it after one video, stone-faced and assured that his opinions on sex hadn’t changed. 

After a year, he mostly accidentally came across a collection of pride flags and explanations for each. It took another year of internal self reflection, mostly done while snowboarding, for Langa to come to terms with his demisexual homosexual/romantic orientation. 

He still didn’t talk about it, and besides one heart stopping moment when one night they were all sitting in the living room with the television on and a gay couple was shown on screen, and his dad unsubtly assessed Langa for his reaction (which he didn’t give) and his mother had ignored the television long before that scene in favor of paying bills, there wasn’t the opportunity or need. 

Langa wasn’t interested in relationships; all of the kids his age were going crazy for their first sexual exploits and none of the boys were safe enough to even think about thinking about. Snowboarding was really all that mattered to him, his sexuality a seemingly unnecessary factoid known by one(ish). 

It certainly hadn’t mattered after his father died, the same way nothing had mattered anymore. The only important person left in his life was his mother (his father’s parents a too-close memory to touch) and any thoughts about a significant other were nonexistent. He didn’t have to worry about being a gay teenager in Japan because that part of his identity was incidentally buried under layers of grief. 

It wasn’t that Langa forgot. Who could forget a core part of themselves? But with the people he met and the relationships he forged, it wasn’t a door he’d had to open. 

Or so he thought. 

Langa had closed off his entire self after his father’s death, but he’d slowly opened back up with time, like a flower coaxed to bloom in the springtime. But once one wall was dismantled, they all began to crumble. And without Langa’s consent or knowledge, his self expression was suddenly an open floor plan. Once he was given and took the opportunity to open up, Langa subconsciously didn’t hold back. 

Langa was competitive, a risk-taker, a bit spacey, devoted, passionate, and gay. He was all of those things, without walls, without realizing. He’d never hidden his struggles with school, or quelled his hunger for a plate of food three times the size of his head, or bit his tongue when he wanted to speak, or detached his open and infatuated gaze from his best friend. 

There was a privilege to being so open without realizing it. But once Langa did realize, once he took the time to reflect and his truth unashamedly stared back at him, he began to fear again. 

That was when he resolved that he had to come out to his mom, because Langa did not want to fear himself anymore.

Miya was shaking him. 

Langa’s lungs burned. Miya’s expression was panic-stricken, eyes even a little glassy. 

Langa coughed, and then he found he couldn’t stop. Miya patted his back as he expelled half a lung, and then greedily sucked in air to replenish what he’d lost. 

Langa’s ears were ringing, but the shrill tone dissipated slowly and he could make out Miya speaking to him. 

“Sorry, sorry Langa. I wouldn’t have. I don’t know. I’m not mad. I’m not mad. Don’t. Don’t.”

Langa slowly shook his head, and Miya’s awkwardly patting hands ceased. 

“I’m okay,” Langa whispered. “I haven’t. That was a surprise one. Sorry you. You had to. See that.”

His breathing was steadying with each new inhale. He wondered how long he’d been unaware. Probably, hopefully, less than a minute. 

“Not your fault,” he assured Miya the next moment he could. 

“You turned blue after I yelled at you. I think that makes it my fault.”

Langa tried to smile. He shook his head. “It happens.”

It had been—Langa thought back and counted the months since Christmas—six months since his last panic attack. He was actually happy it was so minor in comparison to the large gap in time.  

Miya brought him a glass of water, getting one for himself too, and Langa was proud to note that none of his glass or Miya’s soaked his person by the time they were empty. 

“Sorry I yelled,” Miya apologized again. 

That apology Langa accepted with a nod. “Sorry I stopped listening.”

Miya rolled his eyes, and Langa was pleased to see such a natural response from the teen. 

“What happened?”

“A panic attack,” Langa explained. “I’m predisposed to them because of emotional trauma in my past,” he recited, just as it declared in the pamphlet his pediatric therapist had handed him during their last session before moving to Okinawa.

Miya blinked twice. “Oh,” he said softly. “That’s why they happen.”

Langa tilted his head to the side in consideration and hummed. “For me. Other people have them for other reasons.” After a beat he asked, “Is that why they happen for you?”

Miya shook his head slowly. “Mine aren’t like that.”

Langa knew it wasn’t right to pry into someone’s personal mental health status, so he didn’t ask any further questions even though he found himself to be naturally curious. If he had to guess, he would say if Miya experienced something different, but Langa’s panic attack was reminiscent of his experience, he probably had anxiety attacks, which were closer in nature, but could manifest in different ways depending on the person. Langa’s attacks were trigger-based. Anxiety attacks, he knew though not through experience, could come at any time, spurred on immediately or be delayed, be small, or be huge. 

So his mother divulged, at least. 

Langa decided to backtrack. He struggled to recall what Miya had been saying right before his attack hit. 

“Oh!” Langa exclaimed in a gasp when he remembered. Miya startled, eyes wide. Langa reached out and grabbed one of his shoulders and squeezed. “I wasn’t a loser.”

Miya choked on a laugh and shrugged off Langa’s hold. “You still are one.”

Langa frowned. “I’ve beaten you at S twice.”

Miya’s glare immediately returned, and Langa snapped his mouth shut. For a second, at least, because he wasn’t someone who held back his words, and Langa had more to say. 

“I didn’t date anyone because no one wanted to date me or because there wasn’t anyone I felt was worth it,” Langa divulged truthfully. He took a deep breath, banking on his intuition, and specified, “and I didn’t want to date girls at all.”

Miya’s intense gaze fell to his lap where he pulled one leg underneath himself, curling inward. “But you could have. There.”

Ah. Langa thought he’d arrived at the correct assumption as to why Miya was even talking to him. But he didn’t want to make any judgments he shouldn’t be making either. 

“If there was someone I cared about enough to enter into a relationship with when I was living in Canada, yes, it technically would have been… easier,” Langa chose his words carefully. “But not easy. I don’t think location has anything to do with it.”

“You have the language for it, though,” Miya argued, and Langa conceded. “Better resources. Nicer resources.”

Langa approached his next question carefully. “Are there… resources that you would like?”

Miya pursed his lips. “It’s still different,” he mumbled. “I’m different.”

“Okay,” Langa said, keeping his voice measured and soft. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Miya glanced up, and Langa must have been making the right facial expression, because he nodded. 

“Okay,” Langa repeated. “And anything you tell me I won’t tell anyone else. Oh, and I am gay. But I’d also like to tell people on my terms, so if you could keep that to yourself please.”

“You haven’t told Reki?” Miya asked, sounding surprised.

“Reki knows,” Langa replied, and he hoped his face didn’t indicate anything regarding how that conversation had happened. He was feeling warm, though, so he didn’t hold much hope.

Miya didn’t say anything either way, just nodded and said, “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Langa held out his fist, and when Miya narrowed his eyes in confusion, whispered, “Oh, oops, sorry,” and twisted his wrist, tilted his fist up, and stuck his pinky out. “Pinky swears are for kids, fist bumps are for adults.”

“Is that what Reki told you?” Miya asked, clearly holding back a laugh.

Before Langa could ask what he meant, Miya lifted a hand and locked their pinkies together. Langa curled his finger in and they shook on it. It felt just as binding as a fistbump promise. Maybe Reki had been wrong about that one.

Miya took his hand back and blurted, “I’m not a boy.”

Langa understood now what Miya meant by saying that he was different to Langa. Langa had never questioned his gender identity, and though he could commiserate in terms of having an identity crisis, Miya was tackling a different set of internal questioning. 

“Do you want to be a girl?” Langa asked.

Miya scrunched up his nose. “No. I like girls. I like girl y things, sometimes. But that’s not…” the teen trailed off before declaring, “I’m happy being boyish, but I don’t feel like a boy.”

“So someone in between,” Langa suggested. “Or someone completely separate.”

Miya nodded.

“It’s… different in Japanese. In English, I would ask what pronouns you use to describe yourself.”

“He, him,” Miya recited promptly in English. “I study English in school, too.”

Langa winced. “Right. Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound patronizing.”

“You didn’t. It’s fine. Ugh,” Miya scoffed in disgust and tipped his head back so that he was staring up at the ceiling. Langa looked up too, but he didn’t see anything of note. The corner was dusty, though. “I’m a boy,” Miya said. “I am okay with people talking about me like I am one. Or with you or anyone using masculine descriptors for me. But that’s not all I am. Or at least, not all the time.”

Langa did his best to stay quiet and give Miya the space to verbally work out his thoughts. With Langa’s admittedly limited knowledge of different gender presentations, it sounded like Miya was genderfluid. Langa recalled reading a long list full of many flags of various colors and maybe too many exclamation points and one of them talking about people who label themselves as demiboys. Miya’s explanation was reminiscent of the orientation’s description, but the only person who could really know for sure was Miya. 

Langa also knew, as Miya had mentioned, that the same language culturally wasn’t used in Japan. Langa racked his brain for the term, but he had only seen it once, briefly, in an article online.

“Do you have a name for how you feel?” Langa finally asked, when a long enough silence had eclipsed them and he felt like Miya had said all he was going to.

Miya nodded after a moment of clear thought. “I think so. I’ve seen—there’s someone at S who says they are x-gender.”

Langa made a noise of understanding and nodded. That was the term he’d read about. 

“Why did you come to me?” Langa couldn’t stop himself from asking the question that had been on the tip of his tongue the entire time.

Miya sat up, stretching his legs out and placing his feet back onto the floor. “Like I said, you had more resources to understand me than others.”

“That person at S–”

“Everyone at S knows who I am,” Miya interrupted, though not unkindly. It was clear he’d put a lot of thought into his decision to talk to Langa. “I’ve never been anonymous at S. If someone said something or saw something and it got out to my family, my sponsors…” Miya shuddered. Langa didn’t need to hear the resolution to know what Miya was implying. 

There was a reason Langa had been terrified at thirteen, and admittedly with hindsight he knew he hadn’t needed to fear as much as he had due to his circumstances. Of course, logic like that doesn’t stop or invalidate someone from feeling what they feel. 

“What help do you need? Or… want?” Langa asked. There wasn’t much he could do for Miya at the current moment other than help translate some sites in English if he asked. But Miya had trusted his truth to Langa, and he wouldn’t take that gift for granted. 

“I want to know how to be safe,” Miya whispered. 

As Miya glanced over at Langa when he said nothing in response, the teen recoiled with a noise of alarm. At least that was what it looked like to Langa. He was having a bit of trouble seeing, his vision gone a little misty. 

“Ah shit, Langa? Are you having another attack?”

Langa swallowed thickly and inhaled a shaky breath. “No, sorry. You just. My dad said something similar. When I, ah, came out to him. I’m also happy that you trust me.”

Miya’s hovering outreached hand paused, fingers curling into the palm as Miya exhaled heavily and ducked his head. He ended up weakly punching Langa’s knee before returning back to his (Reki’s) couch corner. 

“I’ll help you,” Langa promised. 

Miya’s soft plea was akin to a declaration, in Langa’s eyes. Between the lines, Miya was saying that he didn’t want to live as a facsimile of himself, so he needed to plan.

It would be a smart idea for Langa to do the same. Because though he’d come out to Reki and his mother, he hadn’t thought seriously about living outly as a gay man, though he didn’t want to ever be anyone other than himself. There was somewhat of a safety net to still being in high school, but he was already a third year– 

Langa stiffened. “Oh no,” he gravely murmured.

Miya froze up and stared at him with wide eyes. “What?”

“The third year college survey. It’s due on Monday. I haven’t filled it out yet.”

Miya made a noise that Langa described as a cross between a cat’s scream and a humorless laugh. The teen leaned across the couch and hit him, this time on the arm, and much harder. Langa yelped and rubbed the sore spot on his bicep, frowning at Miya.

“You’re such a loser. Talk to your mom about it.” Miya jumped up from the couch, looking like he’d said all that he needed to and was ready to leave. “Oh, and you should remind Reki about that form, too. Thousand yen says he forgot too.”

Langa sighed while rubbing the sore spot on his arm. “Yeah. We promised we’d go over our lists together before turning them in. I’ll remind him to bring it over tomorrow when we study.”

Langa watched from the corner of his eye Miya raise a hand and heard a choking noise. Langa tilted his head up to confirm that Miya was apparently trying really hard not to laugh, the sleeve of his hoodie bit between his teeth as he snickered.

“Oh, was that a joke?” Langa asked. Japanese always surprised him. “I hadn’t meant it to be.”

Miya uncovered his mouth and rolled his eyes. “Forget it. Just make sure to keep Reki in the loop of your post-graduation plans.”

“Of course,” Langa replied instantly. “I wouldn’t want to go anywhere without Reki.” Langa listened to the words as they escaped his mouth, and as soon as he finished he said, “Oh,” and felt his face grow horrifically warm. “I know why you laughed now.”

Miya didn’t smother his laugh that time, and despite wishing the couch would swallow him in its cushions so that he could hide away from the revelation he had just come to, Langa was glad to see that all of the nerves Miya had exhibited upon his arrival were nowhere to be seen.

Langa came out to his mother on a Tuesday. 

Christmas had occurred three days before, and it was a weird experience for Langa to not be on break from school until after the new year. It helped that the lowest temperature on the holiday was equal to a peak summer day in Vancouver, eliminating any chances of a white Christmas. Combining the lack of snow, no church service to attend, no flurry of family crowding the house, and the ever looming threat of homework, Langa had nearly forgotten what day Christmas actually was. 

It was their first Christmas without Oliver, who had passed away in early January. Neither Hasegawa was inclined to celebrate. His mother attended a Christmas party on the 24th with some coworkers, and Langa spent the 25th with Reki at the skatepark and then back to his house for dinner before finishing their homework and then sneaking out for “A Crazy Rock Christmas” hosted by the King of S himself, the largest S event since the tournament. Langa slept over and they spent the rest of Sunday together. Langa barely had enough energy when he arrived home that night to greet his mother before falling into bed.

On Monday, he had a shift at DOPE SKETCH, and his mother worked evenings on Mondays and Thursdays. Langa opted to order food for delivery when Reki invited himself over to study. They had just started to eat when his mother got home. Reki immediately jumped up, intending to leave, but Nanako assured Reki that he was not imposing, and that any friend of Langa’s was welcome. Reki didn’t need much further convincing, and the three of them, all tired for separate reasons, carried on light conversation as they ate. Langa’s mom excused herself to bed before the boys finished their homework, and Reki helped Langa pack up the very few leftovers into a bento for Nanako to take to work the next day, as thanks. 

That fateful Tuesday was Reki’s solo day at work, and Oka was in a bad mood, so Langa decided to hedge his bets and not distract Reki throughout his shift, skating home instead. His mom walked in the door a few minutes after he did, and with a jolt Langa realized that it was the first time in a week that they’d been alone together when not dead tired or rushing out the door. 

Nanako thanked her son for packing her lunch, making Langa blush as she detailed how she’d gushed over how good of a son he was to her coworkers.

“It was Reki’s idea,” Langa admitted. “He’s thoughtful like that.”

His mother hummed. “He does seem so. I’m glad you two have each other.”

There was a wistful tone to her voice, and Langa swallowed down the heartache. 

“B-but if there’s ever anything you need to talk about, I’m always here for you,” she assured Langa and gave him a thumbs up and a bright grin.

“Okay,” Langa said, making a snap decision to eliminate the word “soon” from his vocabulary. 

I’ll tell her soon he’d kept repeating every time another opportunity passed where they were alone together. For months, he’d accidentally and purposefully avoided confrontations that could possibly result in bringing up the subject. (As Reki was a frequent visitor during their conversations, because he was who Langa spent most of his time with, it wouldn’t be hard to turn any conversation into a confession.)

His mother blinked, dropped her hand, and asked, “‘Okay’ like, ‘Yes, Mom, I understand,’ or, ‘Yes, Mom, I have something I need to talk to you about?’”

Langa clenched his hands into fists at his sides. “The second one.”

His mother nodded, a pinch frantically, and loudly voiced, “Okay!” She and Langa both winced at her tone. “Okay, yes. Of course. I’ll be right back.”

Nanako slipped away toward her bedroom, leaving her son to face the consequences of his own actions.

Langa wondered if they should talk while sitting at the table. Would it be weird to do so without also having dinner? Should he make something quick? Or should they just sit on the couch? Maybe his mom could sit on the couch and he could sit on the floor in front of her. Would that be too much? He wanted to come off as apologetic for keeping this part of himself to himself, not apologetic for being true to himself. Would she see it that way, if he was kneeling the whole time? Would his knees even be able to hold out through an entire conversation? Would she let him get through the entire conversation? Langa hadn’t given his father a chance to say anything, he never learned what his father actually saw or what he thought he knew, so what if he hadn’t actually come out to anyone yet and this was really the first time? 

What did his father actually think of him? 

“Langa?” A comforting hand encased his shoulder, shaking him slightly, and when Langa’s gaze met his mother’s, hers widened in understanding. His breath hitched and his body felt numb.

“I think you’re having another panic attack, sweetie. Quick, sit.”

She ushered him quickly but kindly to the couch and had him take deep breaths. They ran through all of the recommended exercises given to them by his childhood psychologist, and throughout the attack, his mother kept one of his hands held securely in hers. 

Afterwards, Langa felt silly for working himself into a panic attack. He’d caused the trigger, which was embarrassing and unhelpful. 

“Better?” his mom asked after he downed a glass of water and his shuddering fingers had stilled. He nodded, and she exhaled in relief and reclaimed her seat next to him, their shoulders pressed together. “Did something happen at school today?” 

Langa shook his head. “No, school was fine. I got caught up in my head.”

“Okay,” was Nanako’s gentle response. “Do you still want to talk?”

Langa had already decided that today would be the day, and despite the setback, he didn’t want to postpone anymore.

Langa nodded slowly. “It has to do with Dad, a little. Is that okay?”

His mother sucked in a long breath and tilted her chin up, like she was trying not to cry. “Of course that’s okay. Langa, you can talk to me about your dad whenever you want. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Langa remembered the months after Oliver’s passing, the silence in their once happy home, the nights filled with tears, the weekly cemetery visits, the biweekly doctor’s visits. How could he not worry about her? “But–”

“Who is the mother here?” His mom looked serious, direct gaze shooting through him. “Let me do my job.” She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Go ahead.”

He’d mentally drafted this speech several times, starting off with a different paragraph each time, but in the end, Langa defaulted to saying what was on his mind and not thinking about it before he spoke. (“The Langa-No-Filter,” Reki had called it once with a giggle so cute it imprinted on his brain and he recalled the memory often.)

“I made Dad keep a secret from you,” Langa began by admitting the part that made him feel the worst. His mother looked surprised, but not immediately angry, so he continued. “I wasn’t ever brave enough to talk about it with him, so I don’t know how he felt. I was thirteen and just scared, mostly of myself, and it took me years to understand why I felt the way that I did. And after Dad died… I didn’t feel anything.”

“You are allowed to have secrets with your father, Langa,” his mother whispered, squeezing his hand again. “I know you two shared a special bond. We have one too. And so did Oliver and I. You never have to feel sorry about that.”

“But it wasn’t a secret I should have needed to have kept,” Langa blurted. “But that’s not how life works, right now,” he continued after a beat, voice softer and less angry. “So I have to start with secrets.”

Langa risked a glance at his mom’s face and her expression was attentive, though there was a pinch between her eyebrows, like she was growing confused.

“I started watching porn,” he said flatly, and Nanako’s eyes blew open wide. “Other guys in class were talking about it, and I’d never watched it, so I did.”

“In a classroom of a Catholic school?” she asked, alarmed.

Langa shrugged. “They weren’t really concerned about the setting.”

“Right… It’s been so long for me, I don’t remember if I ever overheard my middle school classmates–” Her face went pink, and Langa quickly moved on. 

“I made Dad promise not to tell you what was on my phone–”

“Oh, Oliver was always using your phone back then, wasn’t he?” Nanako interrupted with a small laugh and a fond roll of her eyes. “Did he peek into your internet history?”

“He saw what I was looking up,” Langa admitted. “But he wasn’t prying, I don’t think. He was just charging my phone and probably wanted to look at the pictures or something– it doesn’t matter.” Langa shook his head. “It was gay sex, Mom.”

Nanako stopped laughing. Langa didn’t break their eye contact.

“I was… so confused as to why regular, no, heterosexual sex was boring. It was more, ah, interesting with two men. But even still, I didn’t care.” He took a deep breath. “I knew something was wrong— it felt that way. But–but I’m not wrong.”

“No, you’re not,” his mother agreed, and tears shimmered in her eyes. “And you weren’t then either.” She pulled him into a hug and whispered, in English, “I love you and so does your dad. And I know that he understood you.”

It wasn’t until that moment that Langa cried.

Once the tears had been spent, Langa helped his mother to understand how he could be both attracted to the same sex and not always desire, well, sex. She listened patiently and Langa was patient with her when she asked further questions.

“It’s a gray area with asexuality, which is where the term graysexual comes from,” Nanako laughed even though Langa hadn’t been trying to be funny, so he was glad for his accidental joke, “but I feel like demisexual makes the most sense for me. I’m not sex repulsed, like some people,” Nanako nodded, because they had already gone over that part of the spectrum, “but I’d like to be intimate with someone like that someday. Is it wrong for me to say that to my mom?”

His mother shook her head. “You can tell me anything, even if we both get a little embarrassed about it.”

Through talking it out with his mother, Langa came to the realization that at thirteen his fear of coming out hadn’t stemmed from a fear of disappointing his family, at least not past the initial rush of panic. His parents and extended family had never shown any indication of bigotry or involvement with bigoted organizations. He attended Catholic school because it was the nicest private school in their town, and Langa’s grandparents who were religious helped to pay for his tuition to go there primarily because of their high educational standards. And Langa met many Catholics, especially those in his school, who were nice and, once in high school, more open about shutting down slurs and homophobic jokes. By fifteen, he knew and accepted that he was gay, but when he looked around at the boys around him and felt nothing more than a tingle of interest, he didn’t feel like enough of one. 

He’d been shamed, not by internal homophobia, but internal acephobia. 

“Thank you,” his mother said before they retired to their respective bedrooms that night. “For sharing yourself with me. And for teaching me. You are the greatest blessing in my life.”

The next morning, when Reki arrived at their meeting spot, they fist bumped as usual, but Reki stared at him with narrowed eyes for a long moment before he dropped his half of the infinity. 

“Something’s different,” he noted and then smiled. “A good different. Did you have a good night?”

Langa smiled. “Yeah, it was really good. I spent it with my mom and we just talked.”

“Aw, those are great days,” Reki agreed. “I’m glad you had that time with her.”

“Me too,” Langa agreed. “Want to race to school?”

Reki clapped his hands and dropped his board underfoot. “Totally. I’m feeling lucky. Last one has to dust the store shelves.”

Langa leaned forward on his board, ready to roll. “I’ll take that bet.”

Reki threw his head back with a laugh. “You’ll take any bet if it involves a skateboard.”

“If it involves you, you mean,” Langa corrected. 

Reki choked on his laughter, coughed, and then faced away from Langa. “Right,” he murmured, though not low enough for Langa to miss it. He bent down to retrieve an abandoned yen coin on the road and flipped it over in his palm. “Right back at you.”

Reki threw the coin into the air, and as soon as it hit the pavement, they both took off, side by side. 

Miya didn’t stick around for very long after their conversation came to a natural standstill, but Langa was left thinking about it hours after his departure. 

He successfully remembered to text Reki a reminder about the college survey, and he’d immediately received a long string of exclamation points, followed by OMGthankyou i COMPLETELY forgot!!

Langa was glad he didn’t take the bet with Miya. 

Occasionally his mom took on weekend shifts because she was paid time and a half, and that Saturday happened to be one of them, so he was still alone in the house for a few more hours as he ruminated over many things. By the time she returned later in the afternoon, Langa had migrated over to the kitchen table, his laptop open to his left and his half-filled college survey to his right. 

Nanako took one look at her son and made a loud noise of understanding and commiseration. “I’m going to change and shower, but I’ll come help you as soon as I’m done,” she assured, ruffling his hair as she passed by.

“Thank you,” Langa groaned and thunked his forehead against the table. Who would have thought finding a college for general studies would be so hard?

Langa had no idea what he wanted to do for work, he only knew he liked being in Okinawa, so staying on the island would be preferable. Of course, if Reki mentioned otherwise when they met up the next day, he would easily reevaluate his choices. But both of them had mentioned in the past how important staying close to family was, so he wasn’t really worried about that. 

Maybe Reki would have some ideas for him. They talked constantly, but the one subject they barely touched on was jobs. They talked about the future plenty, but loosely, and mostly regarding lofty personal goals. Reki still desired to build a board for himself that would complement the best aspects of his skating. Langa hoped to visit France, where his father’s patriarchal side of the family heralded from four generations back. Reki dreamed about getting a dog one day, a puppy, so that he could start them young learning all of the silly skateboard tricks that he and Langa failed to get Sketchy to enact. Langa planned to fully master the Japanese language and improve his handwriting. Reki wanted to make enough money so that he could help his parents send Nanaka and Chihiro to college and allow them to work at their own pace. Langa wanted the same financial assurance for his mother. 

(Reki agreed to skate with Langa for infinity.)

Langa hadn’t gotten any further (no increased pen to paper, at least, though he had imagined several more future scenarios for him and Reki to share together) by the time his mother joined him at the table, pulling a chair over so that they could both see the computer screen. 

With her help, they narrowed down three schools (from an already narrow list, which one would think made things easier, and yet) with affordable tuition. Nanako signed the form at the bottom, her written parental approval for the school advisors. 

Langa wasn’t looking forward to having that one-on-one meeting with a counselor where his grades were examined, gathering the materials to start studying for each school’s exam, and devoting the next eight months of his life, at least, to his education. At least Reki would be at his side for it.

Speaking of preparing for his future…

“Hey, Mom?” Langa turned to glance over his shoulder at the kitchen where his mother had taken their dinner plates and was rinsing them under the sink. When she didn’t respond, he repeated his call, louder, and she shut off the water and whipped her head around.

“Yes?” she asked, snagging the towel hooked on the sink cabinet door and drying her hands.

“Do you know if the hospital has contacts for any, um, queer support groups?”

Finished drying her hands and tilting the dishes in the rack to dry, Nanako faced her son fully, and she wore an encouraging smile on her face. “Are you thinking you want to join one?” she inquired, sounding almost a bit excited.

Langa had figured out the wording he wanted to use ahead of time to avoid sharing any details that weren’t his to share, so he recited, “I know someone who is looking for advice, and I don’t know much about the community here and don’t want to give bad help. They’d feel more comfortable, I think, if I went with them.” He added after a beat. “It would probably be good for me, too.”

His mother tilted her head to the side in thought. “Hm… I don’t know of– oh!” She clapped her hands, eyes alight with a revelation, and beamed at Langa. “If I remember I’ll snag a pamphlet on my next shift, but I know there’s a gender equality center and I think I recall seeing them host LGBT forums and talks sometimes. I’ll see if I can find the website and maybe you can check the schedule, see if they have anything soon.”

“That’d be great, thank you,” Langa said.

“And I know you said it was for someone else,” his mother hastened to follow-up with, like it was imperative she impress upon Langa such a comment, “but if you ever want support from someone else physically with you, I’d be more than happy to go with you.”

Langa stood and pulled his mother into a hug. It didn’t last very long, but by the time they broke their embrace, Langa felt worlds more relaxed. He was very grateful to have the mother he did, and he made a promise to show and tell her that more often. 

He started immediately. “You are the best, Mom.”

Nanako lightly patted her son’s cheek. “You make it easy.”

Less than an hour later, as Langa reclined in his bed while messaging Reki on LINE, sharing tiktoks back and forth through DMs, and scrolling through the S hashtag on Twitter simultaneously, his mother forwarded him an email newsletter. Opening his email up on his laptop, Langa clicked on the bolded LEARN MORE! button in the center of the email and was redirected to a website. The headline read Okinawa Prefectural Center for Gender Equality, and in brackets next to it was the nickname Tiruru. Tiruru was just as its long-form name declared it to be, and like his mother suggested, he went to their page of events and found exactly what he was hoping to find. 

Later that month on the afternoon of June 25th, Tiruru was going to be hosting a lecture on sexual diversity led by the chairman of an organization called Rainbow Heart Okinawa. A quick Google search yielded that RHO was a well established organization in the area that, until recently, had been all volunteer work but was now considered, from what Langa could guess not knowing anything about businesses in Japan, a registered non-profit. They had pictures scattered on each page on their own website, showing off past conference panels and even school visits. 

The lecture itself was set to run for about two hours. It was also on a Saturday, which could impact Miya’s training schedule. The only reason Langa knew Miya had been available to accost him that day was because he’d told them earlier in the week that his coach was out of town so he was self-training in their absence. He sent Miya a message with the event’s link attached and assured him that his schedule was free so Miya wouldn’t have to go by himself, if he had any interest. He had a feeling that attending something in person may be too big of a first step for the teenager, so he followed up his message with assurances that it was just a suggestion, but that Langa would be attending either way. 

His phone beeped with a new alert, and Langa startled out of bed when he recognized the noise as his calendar reminders. It was an S night, and he’d completely forgotten, his brain side-tracked with all that had happened. S was such a normal part of their lives now that it wasn’t something Reki needed to remind Langa about. Langa was glad for his foresight in setting up the reminders for the same time each night. 

Technically, he didn’t have to leave the apartment so early to get there on time, but he liked swinging by Reki’s house and being the one to pick him up. And then together they stopped at DOPE SKETCH to (steal) borrow the shop’s scooter. It granted Langa at least an extra thirty five minutes with Reki, and it was usually longer than that. Secretly, Langa had been arriving and knocking on Reki’s window earlier each night so that Reki, instead of making him wait outside, would pull him up into his bedroom, and while Reki got ready as quietly as possible, Langa was allowed to watch. 

Langa liked watching Reki. He could do anything, and Langa was pretty sure he would find it more entertaining than most television shows. He never said so out loud, though, because he knew how voyeuristic it sounded. He didn’t mean it in a perverted way, but he was aware that that was the general assumption. 

Langa knew that his mother knew that he was sneaking out, and yet she hadn’t stopped him from doing so or even confronted him about it. If he came home worse for wear, then she may be inclined to say something, but that had yet to happen. (“Miraculously. You’ve done nothing to decrease the chances,” Reki had murmured to him when Langa had told him all this one day during a DOPE SKETCH shift. Though, Reki had been grinning with his teeth on display, eyes squinting due to its sheer size, when he said, “But you’re pretty good at making miracles, so I don’t worry too much.”)

It wasn’t even half past ten before Langa was rapping his knuckles along Reki’s window, crouching halfway up his ramp, thighs straining to stay upright. Ten seconds later, he heard the latch for the window lock click. 

“Miss me?” Reki teased as he helped pull Langa the rest of the way up the ramp and into his room with one arm. 

“Of course,” Langa answered truthfully, and Reki’s responding blush paired with unintelligible muttering caused Langa to feel like he was floating on air as he smiled and watched. 

(Reki had told him once that when Langa executed huge jumps, Reki sometimes visualized him with wings, soaring high above the rest of them. Langa didn’t say so then, but privately he thought that if anyone possessed the power of flight, it was Reki who was granting it to them, because when Langa made those high jumps, he always glanced down to find his anchor to Earth.) 

Unlike with his mom, Langa did not plan how or when he wanted to come out to Reki. And concerning the way that it happened, Langa could only consider it to be a consequence of the day. 

White Day. Langa did not understand White Day. The only thing March 14th had ever been to him in the past was Pi Day. If the holiday happened to coincide with a school day, the math lesson usually included pi, as a “celebration,” and only once did he actually eat pie on Pi Day. The Ides of March, on the other hand, the following day, made Literature classes very redundant year after year. 

But Langa had never heard of White Day until March 13th when he passed a bakery in downtown Naha after dropping off dinner at the hospital for his mother before heading to the Kyans in advance of a night of S. There had been a pushy salesperson standing in front of the bakery doors, handing passersby branded coupons tied to cellophane wrapped and bow-tied bags of bite-sized candies. One had been unceremoniously shoved into his hand as he dared to lighten his stride on the sidewalk out-front, the bakery employee declaring, “Give it to someone for White Day!”

“What?” Langa had asked, bewildered, staring down at three foil-wrapped chocolates. The bakery’s coupon read TWO FOR ONE COUPLES DEAL! inked in pink bubbly characters.

The worker’s smile visibly strained at his confusion. “White Day,” they repeated through gritted teeth. “You’re a handsome boy, I’m sure you received lots of Valentine’s Day chocolate. Give it to one of your admirers.” They winked. “Who knows, maybe love could blossom?”

“What does that have to do with White Day?” Langa inquired, point-blank, following up with, “I already ate all of my Valentine’s chocolate, and I don’t remember who any of it was from.”

The glare he received was so fierce that Langa actually recoiled back and decided to cut his losses and leave immediately, even though the fresh bread smell was very inviting. He recalled Reki chastising him for being so forgetful about the people who left him gifts. The debacle dissipated from his mind, however, as soon as he finished the foisted chocolates, far more occupied with what the rest of his evening had in store.

When Langa woke up the next morning, #WhiteDay was trending on Twitter, which brought it back to the forefront of his thoughts and gave him a better understanding of what it was meant to be as he lazily scrolled through the hashtag. It was nice, in theory. It was a holiday built around reciprocation and gratitude, if not steeped in the same gender roles that Japan was desperately trying to break.

Maybe in some places in Japan it wasn’t as popular anymore, but it seemed that their corner of Naha embraced it.

From the second he and Reki skated onto the school campus that morning, Langa felt eyes on him from several directions. Even in class he had pointed stares directed at him. Reki seemed to find it hilarious, if his stifled giggles said anything, but Langa wasn’t so amused.

On their lunch break, they successfully avoided any potential student drop-ins and made it up to the roof, tucked into a corner most people avoided because it was dark and didn’t get much light. That was a draw to Langa because he was able to escape the oppressive Okinawan sun without sacrificing the fresh air, and Reki liked it because they could see his phone screen better to watch videos. 

Today, though, Langa took his usual starting position across from Reki and heavily sighed, freeing his saran wrapped sandwich with sharp jerks of the sticky plastic. Without needing to hear Langa explain, Reki knew just what his exhale meant.

“I don’t think you’ll ever stop being popular,” Reki teased as he unwrapped and popped open the lid of his bento box. Langa’s eyes zeroed in on the food inside and licked his lips. Reki shoved him back out of his space, which Langa had unknowingly leaned into, with two fingers pressed against his forehead, expertly holding his chopsticks in the opposite direction so that they didn’t stab Langa. “Eat your lunch first before mine, come on.”

Langa viciously bit into his sandwich for effect, and Reki snorted out a laugh. Langa did it again, and he reveled in the continued laughter he was able to pull from Reki. 

He forgot all about White Day in the face of time alone with Reki. Recently, the time they spent together not skating or at work had become hours hitting the books and studying for their end of the year exams. They were almost third years, and for Langa it felt like his final year of high school was taking its sweet time. He was already eighteen. Had he continued on with his education in Canada, he would have been graduating in less than three months. 

Still, one more year of high school allowed for one more year at Reki’s side, so not even the annoyance of being the transfer student cliché on top of being the oldest in their class could outshine Reki’s impact. 

Langa gasped, and the noise must have startled Reki because the redhead’s shoulders hiked up around his ears and he choked on a bite. He forced the mouthful down his throat before rasping, “What is it?” to a visibly distressed Langa. 

“What if we’re not in the same class next year?” Langa asked, concerned. 

Reki stared at him for a long moment before rolling his eyes and balancing his chopsticks down on top of his mostly empty bento box. “How did you go from White Day to class charts?”

Oh yeah. White Day. Langa scowled at the reminder. Reki flicked his forehead to get him to stop, because of course Reki knew exactly what he was thinking. 

“Don’t make that face,” he ordered with a wagging finger, a mockery of their gym teacher’s scolding gestures, and Langa chuckled at the imitation. It was pretty spot-on to how the man looked when he lectured them in the faculty office (usually a twice a month occurrence) about skating on school grounds. “First of all, we keep the same class for second and third year, if you remember, so you’re stuck with me.”

Langa immediately made a loud annoyed growl, and Reki huffed. “Okay,” he rescinded. "I was joking. I know you aren’t stuck with me.”

Langa had been helping train Reki out of his self-deprecating gut reactions, and making upset noises usually did the trick. Reki had been better over the last few months about celebrating himself rather than dragging himself down, joke or not. And though this occurrence was a very minor self-tease, Langa wasn’t going to let the smallest slip fall through the cracks. 

If you start letting things go, then eventually what was once a tiny crack will grow into a chasm. Langa had learned that in therapy, and he figured the same concept applied in many situations, including this one. 

Reki did so much for Langa, so doing this one thing for him was easy. He also liked making increasingly more odd noises to alert Reki of his personal transgressions. 

“Thank you,” Langa told him, because praise was also an important part of the process of retraining a brain. That Langa didn’t learn in therapy, but it seemed to work when teaching tricks to animals, so it wouldn’t hurt to try with people. 

It was also very, very easy to praise Reki. 

“Second of all,” Reki said, forcing their conversation back on track, a road Langa was not a fan of traveling on, “did you really not prepare anything for White Day? Even for, like, your mom?”

“Until yesterday I didn’t know that White Day existed,” Langa admitted. “We don’t do that in Canada.” He followed up with, “It’s Pi Day.”

Reki’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, we should stop for those mini handheld cherry pies before work today.”

Langa nodded aggressively in agreement. 

“But I guess that makes sense. It’s a bit outdated. I mean, I gave chocolate on Valentine’s to my mom and sisters so that I didn’t have to remember,” Reki said with a laugh. “I should have known you didn’t know about it and told you.”

Langa tilted his head in confusion. “Why is it Reki’s fault?”

Reki’s cheeks pinked and he stubbornly leveled his gaze over Langa’s shoulder to avoid his eye contact. “I’m not saying it’s my fault! But I was, I guess, implicit. We ate the chocolates. The kind thing to do would be to give them some back,” Reki admitted, flailing a hand about. “That’s what you do. You accepted them. They will accept something back.” He shrugged. 

Langa reached forward and pulled Reki’s forgotten bento toward himself, ignoring the sigh from Reki, and picked up a piece of fried chicken. He popped the bite into his mouth and said, “But if I gave them something, they might have hope that it means more than just ‘thank you’ right?” Langa was trying to attract less attention, not more. 

Reki pulled his legs up, knees bent, a silent sign that he was done eating, and Langa fully took custody of the rest of his lunch. Head tilted and resting on his folded arms on top of his knees, Reki murmured, “A little bit of hope is good sometimes.”

“Of course,” Langa agreed, with a caveat. “Sometimes. But I don’t think it’s good when the expectations can never be met.” 

Langa polished off the rest of the rice. Reki leaned forward and picked a spare grain from his cheek, so Langa mumbled his gratitude as Reki sat back, the rice disappearing between his lips. 

“What do you mean? You’d never go out with any girl?” Reki snorted, like the thought of Langa not dating some random girl was inconceivable.

With his attention stuck on Reki’s mouth, he not only heard Reki’s words but watched them fall from his lips. The dual combination of senses in addition to his comprehension of the sentences uttered caused Langa to lock up. Unwillingly, he felt a pang of hurt in his chest. 

Langa had never been truly angry with Reki before, and he wasn’t now, but it was some emotion like anger burning in his gut that compelled him to respond resolutely, “No. I’ll never go out with a girl.”

A beat of silence passed between them, Langa’s gaze downcast to the roof floor. The burning inside him receded, and instead it was replaced with worry that he’d said the wrong thing. 

Voice so weak it was almost an uncharacteristic whisper, Langa heard Reki break the silence with a question. “A guy, then?”

Langa stared forward. He could do nothing else, lips parted on a shocked inhale. Very slowly, he raised his gaze from the ground to level it at Reki. 

There was only one clear emotion brewing across Reki’s face once Langa and he locked gazes: panic. His eyes were growing wide, his mouth trembling, jaw working, and Langa knew he was seconds away from speaking. In that moment, Langa had to make a decision. He could risk saying nothing and let Reki provide whatever (likely) excuse he conjured, and chance hearing him brush off his question as a joke and maybe learn something horrific about his (everything) best friend in the process. Or, Langa could speak before Reki got the chance, tell the truth, and face the possible consequences. 

Langa hadn’t planned on coming out to Reki that day, but White Day was all about reciprocity, wasn’t it? 

The truth it was, then. “Depends. He has to be really special.”

Reki’s expression cleared like the sun breaking through a wall of thick clouds, and the corner of his eyes crinkled as his smile grew. Langa knew, the second the words had left him, that any fear he’d felt was on the same level as what he’d felt before telling his mom— it stemmed not from any past proof, but from losing the love of a person that would be devastating to separate from. 

Reki licked his lips, huffed out a chuckle, and lowered his legs into a crisscross so that he could more easily lean into Langa’s space. “Well, of course!“ he exclaimed. "Not just anyone is worthy of you. They have to be just as amazing as you.”

A final wave of relief followed by a stronger one of joy flooded Langa. He chuckled as he adjusted his legs to mimic Reki’s stance, one elbow wedged into the bend of his knee so that he could support his chin with that hand. “That’s not exactly what I meant,” he said, "but sure.”

Reki twisted his body as he scooted forward, apparently refusing to change his seated stance to accomplish his goal, which was amusing to watch, and stopped well within reach to grip Langa’s unoccupied knee, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Will you explain it to me?” he asked, an open and curious expression on his face. His hand lingered, Reki’s thumb tracing a line back and forth across the knob of his knee, the thin fabric of his uniform pants the only barrier between them. Langa struggled to keep his gaze on Reki’s smile and not stare at the contact. He didn’t want Reki to take it away.  

Langa found he had no words other than. “Thank you.” He could feel his cheeks aching from the breadth of his smile. 

Reki’s eyes widened, jaw dropping on a sharp, nearly inaudible, inhale. He took his hand back, and Langa mourned the loss, but the visage of Reki using that arm to hide his face and the blush Langa spotted before it disappeared behind a wall of uniform sleeve softened the blow. Reki cleared his throat, a belated cover for his cover. “What for?”

Langa didn’t need to think hard regarding his reasoning. Reki had helpfully provided the words already. “For being so amazing.”

Too much praise laid upon him, Reki was inconsolable for the few remaining minutes of their lunch break, face a beautiful pink that regretfully stayed hidden behind once more tucked-up knees. 

Still, Langa knew Reki was listening attentively as he talked. When the bell rang, Reki jumped up first and offered Langa his hand to help him stand. Their palms slid together, fingers curling in a tight, protective grip, as Reki used his strength to bring Langa to his feet. 

It was easier to ignore the heavy gazes of students, after that. Langa just thought back to the secure grip of Reki’s hand in his. From the corner of his eye, he watched Reki sporadically jot down notes in between doodles. Once, Reki caught his eye, and his pencil stilled in favor of mouthing to Langa, “Pay attention!” with a teasing lilt to his lips.

Langa’s heart skipped a beat, but it wasn’t a big deal. He’d long become an expert at recovering when Reki left him breathless. 

Miya hadn’t shown up at Crazy Rock the previous night, but Langa had pretty much expected that. The teen didn’t go all the time, plus after admitting a personal hidden truth to someone, no matter how the conversation went, it was always difficult being around them at the next opportunity. And with just a few hours between them, Miya would have needed more time to process and maybe think about what Langa had sent him. 

And though it wasn’t a shock, Langa was a bit disappointed when Miya messaged him the next morning confirming that he wasn’t going to attend the lecture. The surprise came with the follow-up message that truthfully explained why Miya was choosing not to go, starting with the words I’m not ready.  

He also did have practice that day, but he admitted to Langa that had he felt prepared to take such a step he would have found a way to reschedule. However, at the point he was at in his life, he wanted the support to come to him, rather than him seeking it out. 

Is that selfish? Miya asked. 

Not at all, Langa assured. I’ll see what information I can find for you. The Rainbow Alliance people seem like they work with kids a lot, so they may have good resources for you. 

Miya yelled at him for three straight minutes over text complaining that he wasn’t a child, ignoring the fact that he was only in middle school which very much classified him as a child. But within the impressive paragraphs that Langa took his time to decipher, there was a hidden “thank you.”

Feeling optimistic at the start of the day put Langa in a good mood. Both he and his mom had a late start, able to both sleep in (Langa more so out of necessity due to a 3AM bedtime) so they made and ate breakfast together. Langa took care of the washing up as his mom got ready to go out. Since moving back to Okinawa, Nanako had rekindled her love of swimming, so on her free days, Langa often saw her off with a wave as she left with a bag filled with swim gear, headed toward the local gym that boasted about its Olympic-sized pool. Langa hadn’t known that his mother was on the swim team in high school, and he was happy that she was finding hobbies to enjoy that were her own. 

Nanako had been swept up into snowboarding initially because of her husband, but her involvement was cinched when Langa took to it instantly. She’d never said anything disparaging about the sport or regarding how many hours she had to spend standing at the base of mountains, waiting for her son to reach the bottom, only for him to scramble back toward the ski lift a second later, wanting another go. But with the privilege of hindsight, Langa realized that it couldn’t have been much fun for her. 

“Your smile made it all worth it, all of it,” he’d been assured in the past. Langa knew what that felt like now. 

A free Sunday ahead of her, and Langa knew the pool was where she would be. She called out her goodbyes as Langa finished setting a pan in the drying rack, and then the house fell quiet. 

It didn’t stay quiet for long, though. This time, when the doorbell rang not twice, but three times, Langa knew exactly who to expect on his doorstep, and when he swung the door open he greeted Reki with a grin. 

“Hey!” Reki cheered as he stepped into the entryway, kicking his shoes off as he spoke, “Did you get any sleep after last night?”

Langa hummed and nodded. “Yeah, I slept really well, actually.”

Reki beamed and bumped their shoulders together. “Nice! Me too. I think I wore myself out because I barely made it through the window before passing out.” 

Langa could picture Reki stumbling into his room, gripping his desk’s edge for leverage and nearly resolving to sleep half in and half out of his house before gaining one last burst of energy and toppling onto the floor. 

Langa snickered, and Reki glared at him. “Shut up,” he grumbled, but his vengeful shove wasn’t very forceful. Langa allowed it to rock him back, though, so that he could continue to laugh out of Reki’s hitting range. 

“Is your mom home?” Reki asked as he ducked his head around the doorway to peer into the kitchen. 

Langa shook his head. “No, she left a bit ago. She’ll probably be back in a few hours.”

Reki nodded. “Then we can study in the living room.”

Reki was always very thoughtful concerning Langa and his mom, never wanting to intrude, and primarily being mindful of the noise they made. Langa didn’t consider Reki to be a very loud person, though. He occasionally got excited, and he'd scold his sisters if they started to get annoying or bothered Langa when at the Kyans. But when he explained things to Langa, be it their homework or some new skateboarding tech, he spoke in a measured voice, sometimes repeating his sentence so that Langa could fully grasp the context of the words he was hearing. When they watched videos, they usually shared a pair of earbuds rather than use the phone’s speakers. 

Langa had never said so to Reki, but he thought his best friend could actually stand to be a bit louder, sometimes. Langa would certainly never be upset with a more boisterous Reki. He just tried to encourage it out of him instead. 

Langa requisitioned his backpack and laptop from his room before taking a seat on the floor next to Reki, their backs pressed against the couch. Reki had already started pulling books from his own bag and arranging his usual study set-up on the coffee table. Resting on top of two of his textbooks was the slightly wrinkled, but less than Langa’s, college survey form. 

Langa peeled open his laptop, the screen awakening from its slumber as slowly as he had earlier that morning (it was an older machine and Langa treated it very gently). He then pulled his own form from his backpack and turned toward Reki, ready to ask if they could compare choices. But Reki’s attention was caught elsewhere, and Langa followed his gaze to his laptop. 

Langa was struck with a sense of deja vu, but this time he did not panic. He didn’t have to.

Covering half of the screen was a pdf of the flyer for the Tiruru lecture event. Reki was reading it, murmuring out loud what he read, and when he finished he made a noise of understanding and tilted his head to smile at Langa. “Where did you find that?”

“My mom,” Langa admitted. He had no intention of outing Miya to Reki, so he stuck to the truth that was relevant to himself, which really was most of it. “I asked her if she knew of any LGBT groups or anything, and she said this place,” he gestured to the flyer, “does events and this one is later this month. I was thinking of going.”

“I’ve never even heard of it. Rainbow Heart Okinawa?” Reki hummed. “That’s cool! So you want to go?”

Langa shrugged and nodded, which Reki rolled his eyes at upon seeing the admittedly oxymoronic movement. 

“When is it?” Reki leaned forward and toward Langa so that he could read the screen better, and Langa tilted the laptop so that it wasn’t catching as much reflection from the ceiling lights. “Thanks. Oh, the 25th, that’s so soon, sweet! I don’t think I have anything going on that day.” Reki ribbed at Langa and winked. “If I did, it would have been with you anyway.”

Langa didn’t squash the surprised squeak that escaped him, and Reki raised an amused eyebrow at him. Langa didn’t let the embarrassment distract him this time, though. 

“Are you saying you want to go too?” Langa asked, not hiding the hope in his voice. It really would be nice to not go alone, though he was pretty sure his mom had all but directly offered and he wouldn't have anyway. But this was Reki. “You’ll go…for me?”

“Yeah… Well, no– er,” Reki fumbled his words and huffed in irritation. Langa blinked, confused. Reki winced, seeing Langa’s expression, and hastened to speak before Langa could open his mouth, “Wait, I mean yes, I would go to something with you if you wanted me to because we’re best friends and if you wanted me there I’d be there. But,” Reki visibly hesitated, drawing back into himself, shoulders hunching, and Langa didn’t like seeing it. 

Langa pressed his left shoulder against Reki’s right and made an encouraging noise, urging Reki to continue. 

Reki caught his eye and smiled genuinely, though it was small. “But,” Reki repeated after taking a deep breath. “In this case, for this thing, I want to go with you not just for you. But, uh, also for myself.”

Langa did not understand what Reki was implying, but some part of his brain must have received the correct signal, because his heart tumbled over itself, and he couldn’t peel his eyes away from Reki’s hopeful and determined expression. 

“What do you mean?” Langa asked, because it felt very pertinent in that moment to do so. 

Reki’s gaze drifted for just a second, darting around the room, hesitating on the laptop, before it met Langa’s again. And Langa knew, because wherever Reki looked, Langa followed. 

Reki expelled a noise that was a cross between a laugh and a groan, and in a split second Langa’s hand was suddenly being held by both of Reki’s. Langa curled his fingers around one of Reki’s thumbs and squeezed. 

“I. This is so silly.” Apparently, because Reki giggled, but Langa was still unaware of the joke. “I guess I really do need to go for myself. Because I…” Reki shrugged. “I don’t know what I am. All I know is that I’ve been thinking a lot. About you.”

Langa licked his lips. He suddenly felt very parched. Reki had a deep earnest look in his eyes, and even though Langa felt like he was about to enter a dream, he did his best to manage his expectations. Langa croaked, “Just because I–” Reki squeezed his hand, so Langa cut himself off. Was he wrong?

Reki shook his head. “No, not like that. I haven’t been thinking about you because you’re gay.“

Langa’s hand started to sweat. Could Reki feel it, pressed between his strong, secure palms? His entire body was growing warm, actually. Was it showing on his face? He wore heat very easily due to his fair skin. Reki was good at reading him, so even without the obvious tells, he likely knew.

Reki’s eyes were beautiful. They always had been, but Langa figured it was worth repeating, because in that moment the world could have ended and Langa would have continued staring right into Reki’s eyes, oblivious. They shimmered. Was Reki crying? Langa felt the sudden grip of panic on his lungs. 

“It’s because I’ve been thinking about you. You as a person. A lot. And I think that means something.”

“What are you saying, Reki?” Langa asked, feeling breathless, his panic evolving into butterflies that flew from his lungs straight down to his stomach. 

Reki choked out a wet chuckle, and Langa raised his free hand to brush his thumb across Reki’s cheek, clearing away a tear before it fully fell. “Lots of people have a crush on you, Langa. I hope me being one of them doesn’t upset you.”

It must have taken all of Reki’s built-up confidence to say that to Langa, because as soon as he finished, his grip on Langa’s hands went slack, his open fists falling into his lap. Reki’s eyes shuttered closed, though Langa was relieved to see no more tears. 

That was fine. Langa could take it from there. After all, it was Reki who made him feel like he could do anything. 

“No!" Langa exclaimed, taking the step and enclosing Reki’s hands within his. Langa shook his head. ”No, not at all. Actually, can I encourage it?”

Reki had gone stiff when Langa took his hands, but Langa’s request seemed to melt him from his freeze, and he lifted his head, hesitant but decisively meeting Langa’s eyes. “What?” he croaked. 

“Miya laughed at me when I told him we were going to be going over our college surveys together because I said that I didn’t want to go anywhere without you.”

“Don’t let Miya be so mean to you,” Reki immediately responded. After a beat, he shook his head before giving Langa an awestruck look that struck Langa in his chest. “Wait, you really want to go to college with me?”

Langa raised their intertwined hands and shook them for emphasis. “Anywhere, Reki. I said infinity, and I meant it.”

Reki pulled his hands out of Langa’s relaxed grip, but he didn’t allow Langa to worry for more than half a second before his arms were thrown around Langa’s neck. “Me too,” Reki whispered, the words spoken against his burning cheek. “Me too, Langa. Thank god.”

Langa ducked his chin, his nose digging into the bend of Reki’s neck, and he raised his arms to hold Reki back. With their sitting position, unless they moved, it wasn’t possible to get any closer together, but Langa was so incredibly happy in that moment, he didn’t desire those last few inches. 

Langa confessed, “I like you, Reki.” 

Reki’s responding smile felt like a brand against his face, and Langa shivered when Reki’s fingers tangled in his hair, blunt nails raking against his scalp like a massage. 

Unbidden, as Langa melted against Reki, his father’s words came back to him. 

“I just want you to feel safe and protected. And happy.”

“I do,” Langa murmured. 

“Huh?” Reki asked, leaning back so that they could see each other again. 

Langa shook his head. “Nothing. I’m happy.”

Reki hummed in agreement. Langa hoped Reki never stopped playing with his hair. His own hands had draped naturally around Reki’s waist, and his thumb traced across Reki’s waistband, every few strokes accidentally brushing bare skin. 

“We’re not getting any homework done today,” Reki vocalized Langa’s own thoughts when a few quiet minutes passed with them just staring at each other, sharing smiles and reassuring touches. 

“We should at least compare our college forms,” Langa added. Two minutes later, though neither of them made any move to do so. 

Instead, Reki sighed and tipped forward, resting his forehead against Langa’s shoulder. “Are you okay with me?” he questioned, and Langa suspected he’d moved so that he could purposefully avoid eye contact when asking. “Even though I don’t know what I am and I’m not ready–”

An expert at stopping Reki from putting himself down, Langa executed his fool-proof technique. With Reki’s ear so strategically placed near his mouth, it only took a twist of the head for Langa to be in the perfect position to whine, “Reki!”

Reki’s head snapped up, nearly taking Langa’s nose off with the speed as he sat back on his haunches. The hand in Langa’s hair regretfully fell away to instead protectively cup Reki’s teased ear. He stared at Langa in shock, jaw dropped. “Langa!” he hissed. 

“Reki is Reki,” Langa declared. “You don’t have to be anything else. I don’t like you for anything else.”

“You, too,” Reki blurted, reaching for Langa once more, fingers curling around the nape of his neck. “I l-like Langa. We…we get to choose what we do with our infinity.”

Our infinity. Langa made a mental note to press those words onto a ring someday. 

For now, though, Langa simply pressed them against Reki’s forehead with his lips. Reki’s grip on him tightened, and Langa ended up half in Reki’s lap a minute later. 

They only pulled apart enough for Reki to free his phone from his pocket, softening the heavy atmosphere around them by suggesting they watch a video. Langa’s laptop eventually fell back into sleep mode, and the automatic screen saver scrolled through Langa’s camera roll. 

“That’s a nice picture,” Reki commented, using his phone to point at the computer, and Langa barely had a second to see which picture he was referring to before it disappeared, replaced by a picture taken of the sunrise on the Miyakojima beach. 

The photo Reki pointed out was one Langa had taken of his mom a few years ago. Bundled in a plush jacket so oversized it had to have been his fathers at some point, she held a mug of half-drunk hot chocolate as she stood in a lodge’s café and smiled at the camera. 

“These are all really nice, actually.” Reki gave Langa a wide-eyed smirk that spoke of mischief. “I didn’t know you took so many photos.”

“My dad liked keeping memories,” Langa replied with a shrug. “I learned it from him. And there’s lots of beautiful sights in Okinawa,” he added with a wink. 

“Maybe you should study photography,” Reki suggested to cover up his flustered reaction of nearly smacking Langa in the nose with his phone. Langa resolved to be more careful with his flirting, now that he could do so blatantly. “Oh! Or, you could do translation, since you’re bilingual.”

“Mostly.”

Reki rolled his eyes. “You’re close. You could still translate to English.”

“And you could do art. Or programming. Or business. Or–”

Reki covered Langa’s mouth with a hand. “I’m not that versatile,” he muttered. 

Langa licked Reki’s hand, and when the redhead reacted by pulling away and yelping, Langa took the opportunity to capture it and intertwine their fingers. 

“That’s gross, Langa,” Reki complained. 

“I’m hungry,” Langa replied. 

“Well you can’t eat me,” Reki said. “Wanna skate to Joe’s, see if he’ll feed us?”

Langa scrambled off of Reki’s lap, keeping their hands connected so that he could pull Reki to his feet. Reki had braced himself for the sudden movement, as he was also an expert on Langa and knew that when food was mentioned, to prepare to go immediately. “Yeah,” Langa agreed, belatedly, and he ignored Reki’s snickering. “Let me grab a pair of socks, and I’ll meet you at the door.”

Langa ran to his room and tugged on the first pair of clean socks at the top of his underwear drawer and paused in the living room only to close his laptop so that he didn’t drain all of its battery. 

Consequently, by doing so, he could observe the entirety of the coffee table stacked with abandoned textbooks, notebooks, and homework handouts. 

Included in the mix was their college survey forms, and Langa slid his closer to Reki’s, too curious not to sneak a peek. 

They were the exact same, right down to the order of schools. They were even both signed and dated on the same day.

If Langa had been looking for a sign to confess to Reki, that would have been it, but he didn’t need one anymore. Reki had been brave for the both of them, confessing in more ways than one, and Langa couldn’t wait to spend the rest of their lives side by side, in whatever way that meant for them. 

“Langa! Let’s go!”

Langa shoved his feet into his shoes as Reki bounced on his heels, his board in hand, the other wrapped around the door handle. “Race you there?” Reki asked once Langa finished lacing up his converse. 

Langa picked up his own board and held his fist out to Reki. Reki followed through with natural ease, finishing off their dap with the infinity symbol. Before Reki dropped his hand away, Langa linked their pinkies together, and Reki raised his eyebrows in surprise at the action. This time, he didn’t tell Langa that pinky promises were too childish. He simply curled his finger. 

“Always,” Langa promised, and he locked the door behind them.