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Bleak winter wind eats away at the tips of Rintarou’s fingers, slowly crawling up each appendage the longer he spends propped against the windowsill in his dorm room. Each gust threatens to put out the end of his cigarette, and the minute paranoia has him burning away each stick faster than the last as the smoke starts to stick to the walls of his throat. It’s filled up his lungs now, and each exhale grows in cruelty as the pain between his ribs manifests into a prolonged wheeze.
No, no. Rintarou grips his shirt with numb, trembling fingers and pushes against his chest, the edges of his vision spotting black. Fuck, keep them in, keep them in.
He always knew his lungs would somehow be the death of him, but his money had always been on something like cancer because, knowing himself, he’d ignore his symptoms until they put him in the hospital. It made sense, given how he’s been smoking stolen cigarettes from his mother’s purse since he was fourteen. Stress was always given freely in his family, and ways to cope with it weren’t, so he had to figure something out for himself.
Rintarou just never thought it would be flowers.
All he has to do is keep them in—it only becomes real when he sees them.
It’s all he wants, to ignore this pain in his chest and the feelings that come with it, but it's gotten too hard to shove them down, down—
—the blood spilling over Rintarou’s bottom lip is warm mixed with his spit.
a single blue rose stares up at him from the floor.
he pulls his lighter out of his pocket and watches the petals burn.
nothing but a pile of ashes now.
Rintarou is seven years older than his half-sister Rei, but even with their large age gap, he considers them to be closer than most other half-siblings like them. That might also be because all of the other half-siblings he’s met (which are only a few) don’t live together and only see each other during special events or birthdays. So Rintarou can only imagine what his moving to go to a sleep-away school 300 kilometers away from home is going to do to their relationship. Sure, it’s stronger than most full-blooded siblings, but a boy can still worry about the present future.
Right now, Rei is sleeping against his back with her face smooshed into his neck, completely dead to the world. Rintarou hoists her up a little higher to get a better grip on her thighs lest he drops her on the concrete as he follows the vague directions he’d gotten from another student to find the dorms. Their mother is trailing somewhere behind him with the one box he brought from home filled with clothes, and, well, that’s it, really. Nothing else back home seemed that important to bring along.
Eventually, he finds the building and the room that matches the number on his key given to him by someone on the faculty. The door swings open without much fanfare to reveal a standard single room with a school-issued twin bed to the left and a school-issued desk to the right. A large window sits in the middle of the wall in front of him, and Rintarou only hopes that it opens so he won’t get caught by staff when he smokes.
There’s nothing worse than the smell cigarette smoke leaves behind when it embeds itself into the deepest fibers of furniture and clothes.
His mother sets the box of his clothes on the bed and puts her hands on her hips as she surveys the small room.
“At least it’s bigger than your room back home,” she offers in lieu of anything actually comforting.
And it’s not bigger, in fact, to Rintarou, it looks considerably smaller, with a smaller bed, and a smaller desk, and less space for any other furniture he might want to add later down the line.
“Yeah, at least there’s that,” he offers back in lieu of anything actually honest.
Rintarou’s mother smiles at him, but it’s the smile Suna Hitomi always uses when she wants to say something but can’t physically bring herself to say it. It barely moves the apples of her cheeks, and her eyes stay sunken without any real inflection of anything other than hollowness. Rintarou has gotten used to the hollowness, he’s had his whole life to—sixteen years, to be exact.
His sister has started to grow too heavy against his back, her body digging into his shoulder blades, so he lays her down on his bed, careful not to wake her. She moves around slightly but doesn’t stir other than that, and Rintarou breathes a sigh of relief. He’s not ready to say goodbye to her the same way he’s ready to say goodbye to his mom. Somewhere along the line, they came to an unspoken mutual agreement that their farewell was said a long, long time ago when he stopped feeling like her baby and more like her sponsor.
Hitomi puts her handbag on the desk and sits beside Rei before pushing her hair off her forehead and pressing a kiss there as if she’s always been the kind of mother to do that. The mere prospect that Rei gets to have all the forehead kisses Rintarou never got when he was younger is almost enough to make him feel something other than numb, but he doesn’t have enough energy for that. He probably never will. Too many years have passed for it to really matter.
While his mother is distracted, Rintarou slips his hand into her bag and grabs the familiar rectangular box of a pack of cigarettes. He hides them behind his back and stashes them in one of the drawers of the desk to be found later. A quick theft, one he’s mastered with time and practice.
The rest of his family’s company passes in a bit of a blur where Rintarou isn’t really sure if he’s connected to his body or not.
Rei cries a little as she hugs him, and Rintarou isn’t sure if he does or doesn’t.
His mother waves at him, and he definitely doesn’t wave back as he watches the door close behind them. The only thought he can conjure is how long it’ll take for her to realize he’s not at home anymore to find her hidden stashes of nippers and bottles.
The room really is small as four walls surround him in a jarring kind of quiet. The kind of quiet that doesn’t signal him to check the kitchen to see if his mother is passed out on the floor again. The kind of quiet that doesn’t have him counting all the pills in the medicine cabinet or all the handles sticking out of the knife block. The kind of quiet that feels too good to be true.
Rintarou doesn’t think he’ll get used to that any time soon.
❀
Rintarou’s first official day at Inarizaki starts with his alarm going off at 4 AM and him snoozing it three times in a row before he has enough energy to sit up and look around the room. His body feels heavy, and the blanket is warm where it lays on top of his bare skin. Choosing to wear shorts to bed is really biting him in the ass right now, and maybe this whole volleyball thing is too.
He barely comprehends it as he all but falls out of bed and starts rummaging through the stuff the school gave him so he can find his practice uniform. Being late on his first day wasn’t really in the plan, but it’s starting to look like that’s what’s going to happen.
But through some sort of miracle or divine intervention, he walks through the gymnasium doors with a single minute to spare, and he watches as the other players on the team set up the net. As his eyes trail along each individual, never staying too long on one person, a boy with white hair ending in darkened tips walks up to him.
“Ya must be Suna Rintarou? The middle blocker that got scouted from Aichi?” He asks, voice showing no inflection, yet every syllable spilling from his lips has Suna feeling like he’s being read inside and out.
“Uh, yeah, that’s right,” Rintarou confirms, and when everyone’s eyes turn to face him, he wants nothing more than to have ignored his alarm entirely this morning.
It’s way too fucking early to be meeting all these new people when he has no idea what drives them or makes them act the way they do. He’s prowling on the edges of a fox’s den as an interloper, and he feels like if he moves one wrong way, he’s going to be torn limb from limb.
“Ya can leave yer stuff in the locker room over there, and we’re pretty much done settin’ up, so we’ll begin stretching when ya finish,” the other boy says, and Rintarou nods in confirmation as he strolls over to said locker room.
He spies which lockers aren’t taken quickly and chooses one that doesn’t have an occupied one next to it before heading back out to the gym. All of the others are waiting for him in a sort of semi-circle, and he hates the feeling of their eyes trailing across his skin like they know he’s an outsider that doesn’t belong here. Of course, they know he’s not from Hyogo, but there’s something distinctly different from being a newcomer and an outsider.
“I figured we could all introduce ourselves first,” the guy with white hair says as he crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m Kita Shinsuke, yer captain and a third year.”
Rintarou nods as each of the other boys introduces themselves one by one—Omimi Ren, Ojiro Aran, Ginjima Hitoshi, Kosaku Yuto, Riseki Heisuke, Akaji Michinari—until two identical faces come into view. The only clear, discernable difference right off the bat is that each of them has their hair bleached to a differing degree—golden yellow and ashy gray. Neither one of them looks particularly happy at the moment, and Rintarou can only guess what made their faces sour like that.
“Miya Osamu. Wing spiker. Second year,” the one with gray hair starts off sounding rather unimpressed before the blonde one cuts in with, “My name’s Atsumu, and I’m the starting setter. Now can we please get to practice already?”
“Atsumu,” their captain says rather sternly.
“Sorry, Kita-san,” Atsumu apologizes as his posture sinks into himself.
When all eyes turn back to him, Rintarou takes that as his cue to introduce himself.
“Suna Rintarou. Middle blocker. Second year,” he supplies, and he hopes no one can read how off-put he is right now.
But then that’s it, and the weird semi-circle disbands as everyone wanders off in pairs to begin stretching. Kita lingers in Rintarou’s space, and he takes that to mean their partners for today, so he settles on the floor and starts reaching for his toes. Kita presses on his back wordlessly, but there’s still this underlying feeling that Kita is saying something with his mind instead.
Stretches go by quicker than Rintarou anticipates, and then the whole team is practicing whatever they want to at the moment. The twins seem to be working on spiking while another group works on their receives. Rintarou might as well work on his blocks, and the twins seem like the better group to ask for that. So he does.
Atsumu looks at him with squinted eyes before begrudgingly agreeing after Osamu knocks him in the ribs with his elbow. They bicker for a moment, but soon after that, the three of them are working together, and Rintarou finds that blocking Osamu’s spikes is actually difficult. Though, to be fair, he hasn’t pulled anything out of his bag of tricks yet, because he doesn’t know enough about him to do that yet. He’ll just have to fix that, then.
When the end of practice rolls around, Rintarou lingers toward the back of the group on their way to the locker rooms, and Kita ends up beside him.
“Ya know smokin’ hinders an athlete's performance, right?” Kita asks quietly into the space in front of them, and Rintarou jolts as a cold bead of sweat rolls down his spine.
Rintarou doesn’t get a chance to respond as Kita pushes ahead of him, and Rintarou vows to invest in a really good deodorizing spray for cigarette smoke. He can only watch, a little astonished, as Kita pulls in front of him and disappears behind the door before falling back into step with the others. No one has ever clocked his nasty habit so fast before, usually then, they still have to walk in on him in the act.
The locker room is rather rowdy, with everyone trying to get ready as fast as possible so they won’t be late for class, but Rintarou can already tell it’s an easy kind of rowdy. Everyone on the team is close with one another, comfortable in a way that obviously can’t be achieved in the few hours Rintarou has known them, yet it’s calming nonetheless. It’s easy to sink into the mindless noise of it as the middle blocker packs up his remaining things and slings his backpack over his shoulder.
Rintarou takes a discreet whiff of his uniform shirt as he follows the rest of his teammates out of the gymnasium, and he can’t smell the faintest scent of smoke. Maybe Kita had seen him earlier from his window? Or maybe he just has a freakishly strong sense of smell?
“Hey Suna, where’s yer tie?” Atsumu’s voice draws Rintarou out of his head as he points at Rintarou’s chest,
The middle blocker looks down to see his red uniform tie is, in fact, missing, and his eyes automatically start scanning the surrounding area for the bright fabric.
“Ya might’ve left it in yer locker,” Aran offers from somewhere behind him. “We can wait fer ya ta get it.”
“No, that’s fine.” Rintarou shrugs as he side steps and turns around already heading back without much thought.
He can hear the slow shuffling of footsteps behind him as it blends with the ruffle of his shirt scratching his skin, and the yawn slipping past his lips. Each stimulant merges together, not a single feeling, thought, or sensation going through his mind except one. It’s barely there, barely discernible if one isn’t paying attention, yet Rintarou can feel eyes lingering on his back. Yes he had been expecting some surveillance on their end, but that doesn’t stop it from making his skin crawl.
When Rintarou walks into the locker room, the air seems less dynamic than it had been earlier, devoid of all previous antics from everyone. He walks over to his locker and looks down to see his missing tie pooled in a mess of fabric in front of it. Figures.
Then, as Rintarou leans down to grab it, he catches a glimpse of purple over by Aran’s locker. In front of it lies three purple petals—from a rose, if he had to guess. They look innocuous in their cluster on the floor, and Rintarou doesn’t pay them much mind before snatching up his tie.
Not his petals, not his business.
❀
Rintarou thought he could spend the first weekend he didn’t have evening practice catching up on this new anime his sister was hyper-fixated on so he could talk about it with her, but Kita was very persistent about the whole team participating in a bonding activity. He told everyone to meet at an arcade in town around 7 PM and that attendance was mandatory if they didn’t want to spend the entirety of their next morning practice running laps around the building. Like hell, was Rintarou going to get stuck running laps when he can probably spend the whole time in the corner watching the anime on his phone anyways.
He arrives a few minutes after 7, and he’s a little surprised to see he’s not the last one to get there, the Miya twins suspiciously absent.
“Alright, now everyone’s here.” Kita grins and starts leading everyone inside, but Rintarou furrows his eyebrows, knowing there’s no way he’d miss the twins’ loud presence.
“Wait, the twins aren’t here, though?” Rintarou questions, and he hears Aran sigh a little bit in front of them.
“Yeah, they’ve actually been here since six tryin’ ta see who can win the most tickets.” Aran points through the doors, and yeah, there in all their glory are the Miya twins waving an insane amount of red arcade tickets in each other’s faces.
Something about their obviously tight-knit bond, even as they try and outdo each other, makes a small piece of Rintarou ache for a two-bedroom apartment in Aichi and a small head pillowed by his lap. His sister would probably love attempting to beat him at skeeball or air hockey or any of the games, really. He pushes that thought out of his head though as the rest of the team enters the establishment.
The overhead lights are dim, but most of the place is lit up by the dynamic neon lights of the arcade games, and noise coats the entire place like a dull heat that refuses to reside on summer nights even after the sun hides away. Overall it’s exactly where Rintarou doesn’t want to be because he just knows halfway through this outing, his already depleted social battery is going to dip into the negatives, and everyone on the team is gonna know. They’re gonna see right through him whether Rintarou likes it or not, and oh, there’s that feeling again.
It simmers in the tips of his fingers and travels up the veins in his arms until it settles into the beating lump nestled somewhere between his fight or flight response and his sheer will.
Rintarou takes a subtle deep breath as he follows at the tail end of the group, eyes trained on the fine white hair lying perfectly against the back of Kita’s head. Apparently, he’s buying everyone their first round of coins, but after that, the team is on their own if they want to keep playing. Before he knows it, a plastic cup of gold tokens is shoved into Rintarou’s hands by Aran, and he catches sight of the other boy’s kind smile before he turns back to their captain.
None of them are paying much attention to him, so Rintarou wanders further into the sea of machines where fewer people are glued together like pods. He ends up stationed near a basketball hoop and slides two tokens into the slot before it turns on. Somewhere farther away, he can hear the twins bickering over some sort of foul play during whack-a-mole as he starts throwing the orange balls at the hoop. Less than half of his shots make it in, but it’s not like Rintarou is really trying to get many points anyway.
Everything starts to feel slow as Rintarou watches the basketballs fly a short distance through the air, and the song playing over the speaker starts to sound distant as the words turn muddy. Maybe now is a good time to start watching anime in the bathroom while he waits for everyone else to have their fun. He’s heavily considering it when the twins come up on either of his sides, peering over his shoulders.
“Whatdaya say ta a challenge, Sunarin?” Atsumu asks from his right, and Suna can practically feel his smirk searing into him.
“Don’t do it. He’ll just bitch when he loses,” Osamu hums, and Rintarou swears he can feel the vibrations from how much closer Osamu is hovering by his ear.
It’s easy to ignore the strange shiver that travels down Rintarou’s spine when he can cover it up with the loud buzzing of the machine in front of him. Then the twins start to bicker again, and like a siren call, it summons the rest of the team to where they are.
Rintarou shifts his stance to face Atsumu, and he makes himself smirk as he pushes the last basketball into Atsumu’s chest. “Loser buys the winner ramen?”
The blonde twin grins ear to ear as he smacks Rintarou’s arm in what he assumes to be a playful way. “Now I knew I liked ya, Sunarin.”
Somehow that statement feels like a lie, but Rintarou isn’t willing to deplete his scarce energy confirming his suspicion.
Their team encourages the good-natured competition with loud cheers that could probably get them kicked out as Rintarou and Atsumu slot their tokens into the matching machines. It’s obvious who’s going to emerge the victor as the timer dwindles down to the final ten seconds. The score is 23-15, Rintarou's favor, and Atsumu growls on his right as he glances at the scoreboard, frantically trying to score as many points as he can.
But Atsumu is a volleyball player, not a basketball player, a fact that becomes crystal clear as his panic grows and his shots get wider, wider, wider, until he’s missing the hoop entirely.
When the buzzer sounds, Atsumu wails, and okay, Jesus, Osamu wasn't kidding when he said his brother was only going to bitch when he loses. He groans dramatically, and he turns to Rintarou like he’s going to curse him out before he breathes in too deeply and starts choking, body bending in on itself.
“Whoa, whoa, calm down dude, it sounds like yer about ta start hackin’ up flowers,” Ginjima laughs into his hand.
“Oh fuck you,” Atsumu rasps out, voice ragged once he recovers. “I’m not dumb enough ta get hanahaki.”
The simple mentioning of that one word—hanahaki—spurs the boys around him into a massive conversation about the disease. It affects one in every four people at least once in their lifetime, and it develops when the host has romantic feelings towards another person who doesn’t return them. The only cure without medical intervention is getting that person to reciprocate the host’s feelings, but more often than not, that doesn’t happen. So a few decades ago, surgery to remove the growing blossoms was invented, but there’s a catch. The feelings follow the flowers, and when the flowers leave, the feelings vanish with them.
Rintarou has never had it himself, nor has he known anyone else whose had it besides in passing during middle school. He never understood how his peers developed a chronic illness pertaining to love when they had barely made it to the next stage of adolescence. They were still all children; what could they ever possibly know about love? Or maybe, this entire time, everyone has just been smarter than Rintarou.
The middle blocker watches Atsumu passively swat at Ginjima, who evades it easily by leaning into Akagi’s side. They continue their little back-and-forth dance for a moment longer before the team starts talking about hanahaki more in-depth—each person revealing whether or not they’ve had it before. Some of them fully join the conversation with rapt fascination, and others merely observe with half-baked curiosity. Rintarou himself just watches whoever has the most easy-to-read facial expressions.
After Atsumu’s little outburst, Osamu took to ignoring their little group and started a round of basketball on the machine farthest away from them, so he was removed from Rintarou’s options. Then as Rintarou is choosing his subject, the conversation swivels to him, where he stands beside Aran. His past self half hoping the other boy’s presence would shield him from the prying questions (oh how wrong he was).
“What about you, Suna? Ya ever have it?” Akaji asks, hands propped on his hips as he sways in place.
Rintarou feels his nose twitch as he weighs the pros and cons between telling the truth or spinning some long-winded tale of an unrequited first love. He’s always been somewhat prone to compulsive lying—a learned habit from the people he grew up around—and he’s yet to be caught in one of them, but he’d rather not risk it so soon. There’s a delicate balance here that Rintarou has yet to figure out, and until he does, he needs to play it safe.
The lights shift from a mix of blue and pink to a light purple, and Rintarou finds he quite likes the color.
It’s calming.
“No, I don’t really fall in love with people,” Rintarou says with a shrug of his shoulders before averting his eyes.
His gaze lands somewhere on the twins, and for a fleeting moment, right before the lights change again, Rintarou thinks about how nice Osamu’s eyes look stained purple.
❀
After that whole team bonding ordeal at the arcade, it’s as if Atsumu has adopted some sort of mission to initiate Rintarou into his inner circle—something that seems more akin to a curse than a blessing. The only small reprieve that comes with being Atsumu’s friend, is being Osamu’s friend as well.
Don’t let their faces fool you into thinking they're identical because that couldn’t be farther from the truth once you take a closer look at them, and Rintarou has taken to viewing them through the world's highest quality microscope.
Where Atsumu externalizes with biting words and harsh physicality, Osamu internalizes with anger that shimmers between pinched eyebrows and that faraway look in his eyes. They’re both a puzzle in their own right with varying difficulty levels, but both are entirely too fascinating, and Rintarou hates that because he knows it’s going to eat him up inside until he solves them. It’s an unhealthy habit he’s had for a while now—the need to understand the people around him inside and out, to know exactly what motives and drives them to make the choices they do.
Maybe he developed it after his mother’s first overdose as he sat in the waiting room at the hospital next to his Aunt Mei, wondering why she did it, or maybe he was just born like that. With this inherent need that constantly consumes his mind, wondering when and where the next person is going to hang him out to dry.
So yeah, it’s a little hard to be around the Miya twins at first, but it becomes more bearable as the months stretch on, and instead of needing things from him, they just enjoy his company. It even gets to a point where he hangs out with others from the volleyball team as well, and he doesn’t dread it when Kita springs a team outing on them.
Summer break is only a week and a half away, and everyone is cramming as much studying as they can into their free time due to the final test of the first semester. This leads to much less hanging out, but the twins find a loophole in forcing Rintarou to allow the three of them to study in the middle blocker’s dorm. They claim he has more space than them which is true, but that’s only because he actually keeps his room tidy instead of allowing filth to accumulate on top of filth. He has no idea how they even pass random room checks half the time.
All of them were supposed to study with the Ginjima and Kosaku tonight, but Atsumu had taken it upon himself to plan a little excursion solely for the second years, and it’s not like anyone could say no to him. His plan involved sneaking out right before curfew and dragging them to the closest konbini so they could stock up on snacks.
Rintarou is deciding if he wants Coke or Monster, a pack of jelly sticks in his hand, when Osamu walks up on his left side and points at the bright pink can—pipeline punch.
“Ya want this one,” Osamu hums as he leans into Rintarou’s space without actually touching him.
It’s no question that the twins come from a family unafraid of physical affection, given just how often they’re touching one another, whether they’re fighting or unconsciously letting their knees brush. This tendency also happens to bleed into their relationships with other people. Rintarou has noticed how they’re always hopping on Aran, exchanging fleeting touches with Ginjima, offering Reiseki praise in the form of a high five, or messing up his hair. It’s basically written into their DNA to seek and initiate touch to show their affection.
Another thing Rintarou has noticed, though, is that only Atsumu seems to initiate physical touch with him, while Osamu tends to restrain himself. Rintarou can count on one hand how many times Osamu has actually let their skin touch. The number is three, and two of those are high-fives exchanged during a single practice match with some godawful team.
But the remaining one happened the first time they hung out alone. They were sitting on Rintarou’s bed doing nothing and everything on their phones when Osamu leaned in close to show Rintarou a stupid 4-second video of a toddler falling down. Their bare arms pressed entirely against each other, and it was nice, but then Rintarou met Osamu’s gaze centimeters from his own, and it was over before he could pick the moment apart.
“Only if you promise to try it.” Rintarou opens the door and pulls out the cold can. “I will get you to be an energy drink liker. You’ll see.”
“In yer dreams, Sunarin.” Osamu grins at him then, and Rintarou feels his stomach swoop as his eyes dart between the two dimples at the corners of the older boy’s mouth—they only come out when he smiles wide enough.
Atsumu himself has one on his right side, but Rintarou has always had a thing for symmetry.
It might be time to find a part of Osamu that’s just a little bit crooked.
Except as time goes on, Rintarou finds all of those things—his left pink is slightly bent, his nose is crooked from breaking it, his left canine tooth is backwards—and none of them matter. Yes, they’re all superficial asthetic things, but that’s all Rintarou can even find to be wrong with him. Miya Osamu is one of the most perfectly perfect flawed people Rintarou has had the misfoutine of meeting because he’s just so, so, good.
Rintarou still isn’t used to this whole having friends thing, even after four months of having them. His teammates have become so much more than just teammates, but when he thinks of them, Osamu’s face springs to mind faster than the others.
To be honest, he didn’t really notice Osamu at first, chalking him up as the quieter, albeit still wild, other half of the Miya Twins. The aura around them was intriguing, sure, but getting to know them seemed like more trouble than it was worth. If only past Rintarou could’ve prophesied the comfort he’d find in Osamu with the way he speaks and the way he acts.
The two of them click in ways Rintarou never thought he could with anyone besides his sister. Osamu makes him feel light and almost content. It’s a foreign feeling in description of someone else, but Rintarou doesn’t mind. Contrary to popular belief he is open to learning new things about the world, himself, other people.
Rintarou glances over to see Osamu dozing off on top of his sheets, and the view tugs at the corners of his lips. He looks peaceful with his hair splayed over Rintarou’s pillow—a little past due for a trim. A few pieces obscure his eyes, and Rintarou wants to move them.
Then, just as he’s about to, his chest tightens, and he coughs when something tickles his throat. The tightness subsides almost instantly, and when he looks down at his palm, he sees three pristine rose petals.
They’re not red, but coral in color, and Rintarou knows that can’t mean anything good. He glances back at Osamu, thankful for the fact he sleeps deeper than the dead.
His favorite lighter sits on the windowsill, and Rintarou grabs it without further thought before taking the petals and setting them on fire.
They curl up at the edges as they burn, wilting in fast forward, and as soon as they cease to exist the memory of them stays but only as an undeveloped film reel—left to be forgotten.
❀
When Rintarou arrives back in Aichi on the first day of summer break, no one meets him at the train station, and he has to make it back to his family’s apartment by himself. His mother had volunteered to pick him up when he informed her he was coming to visit, but he knew she’d end up forgetting, so he declined her offer. It’s always best to avoid disappointment when one has the means to, and Rintarou has been building up his arsenal since he was small.
The only one that greets him at the door is Rei, and she just about concusses him with how hard they tumble to the ground when she tackles him in a hug. Her hair tickles Rintarou’s nose as she giggles, and it must be infectious because Rintarou starts laughing almost instantly in return. He never thought he’d feel so happy being home, but even he knows it has less to do with the place and much more to do with the person latching onto him.
“Rin-Rin!” Rei exclaims after planting a way too wet kiss on the side of Rintarou’s nose. “We’re having mac n’ cheese for dinner 'cause my new friend Emma said her mom makes the best in the entire world. She’s from the States, and she moved here a few months ago. I really like her, and I wanna ask her to be my best friend.”
Listening to his sister ramble on about her life as he straightens them back up to standing positions has Rintarou’s chest feeling pleasantly warm. Their mother hasn’t shown her face yet, and alongside that warmness, an unease starts to creep into the edges of it, swirling together like two ingredients that don’t belong together in a dish. Unfortunately, it doesn’t dissipate even as he finds her making the mac n’ cheese in the kitchen, just like Rei described, but he chalks it up to being tired from his trip.
Rintarou doesn’t realize the true problem, though, until it’s 3 AM, and he’s diligently going through all of the cabinets in the house looking for something, anything, that could be amiss. It hits him harder than a volleyball to the face while he’s checking all the cans in the pantry to make sure that none of them are hollow. With that in mind, he sits down with his back against the wall and stops himself even as the compulsive urge to keep going claws at the muscles wrapping up his bones.
God, he really, really wants a fucking cigarette.
No, five.
Or better yet, the whole pack.
Another half hour passes before Rintarou can force himself into bed, and he can only pray these habits don’t inhabit the front of his mind again when he returns to Inarizaki. It would take everything to subdue them again in favor of the calm, unbothered persona he portrays in front of his friends.
For the remainder of his vacation home, Rintarou stocks up on his cigarette reserve and smokes half of them in the backyard during violent violet twilights. He battles with harrowed thoughts and urges he can’t seem to escape no matter how fast he runs, always destined to trip over his own feet and faceplant.
Rintarou’s lungs are starting to burn, and he’s unsure how much longer he can push his body through the chronic fatigue that ails his misfiring neurons.
His perfect little hiding place presents itself in the form of an offer Atsumu had extended to him right before the start of summer vacation.
“Ya know our ma would let ya stay with us when ya get back from Aichi. ‘Samu told her you’d just be spendin’ it alone in yer dorm, and she didn’t like that.”
Rintarou had tried to shrug the offer off at first, but Atsumu was adamant and insistent about the middle blocker finishing out summer break at the Miya house. The reason as to why exactly has continued to evade Rintarou even as he places his duffel bag on the floor in the twins’ room.
Most people say a person’s bedroom is an easy window into understanding their personality, which is for the most part true, but you need to know what you’re looking for. Not everything is going to reveal some deep dark secret or hidden character trait not easily revealed. It’s a good thing Rintarou has been learning to read other people’s subtle actions for as long as he can remember.
The twins share a room which makes it a bit harder considering Rintarou isn’s sure which stuff belong to which twin, but he’ll certainly know more about each of them before summer break ends. In the first few days he learns that Atsumu snores and Osamu mumbles nonsemnsical words in the middle of the night. Not really as that interesting but Rintarou already knows a lot about them anyway, a byproduct of them being his (reluctant in terms of Atsumu (at first)) best friends.
What Rintarou was never counting on though, was them learning more about him, Osamu specifically in this case.
It had been some time early in the morning, probably close to sunrise, when Rintarou had woken up from a dream that left his skin whirring and mind itching. He barely remembered stumbling into the bathroom but he had and he opened the mirror above the sink before taking stock of the medications housed inside it.
In the midst of his sleep flurried haze, Rintarou hasn’t heard Osamu’s footsteps padding down the hallway, completely unaware of his presence until he asked the younger boy what he was doing. Rintarou played it off as best he could, but he knew Osamu could tell he was letting any of the truth seep through his deflections.
They haven’t talked of it since then, even after going back to school, and Rintarou is thankful for that—he’s not ready to be known yet.
❀
Rintarou is drunk, or maybe he’s tipsy. He can’t really tell because he doesn’t have much experience in this department of teenage degeneracy. Most of his background knowledge comes from shitty shows from the States, like Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill. His aunt would always have them playing in the background whenever he and Rei would stay at her apartment, which was often.
Great, now he’s thinking about Blair Waldorf and Sabrina Vanderwood as the world starts tipping sideways, and the carpet looks like the perfect place to nap.
Inarizaki had a few practice matches in Tokyo today and that eccentric libero from Itaichiyama convinced the team to attend this “mashup party” as he put it. He also convinced Rintarou to have three of his signature cocktails and the middle blocker can’t even remember his name (did he even get it in the first place?).
One second he was listening in on Atsumu’s conversation with a guy wearing a neon green jacket in the kitchen, and the next, he was sitting in a circle surrounding an empty bottle. The people are him are giggling, but it almost sounds like they’re underwater, voices emerging on the surface of the sea like bubbles popping into noise. Osamu is sitting next to him and his body is warm, he’s always giving off ungodly amounts of heat, and he looks pretty in what can only be considered ugly lighting.
The older boy is talking to someone across from them, lips moving nicely around the words Rintarou can barely comprehend leaving his mouth. They’re a bit chapped and Osamu bites at a dead peice of skin with his teeth and there’s a part of Rintarou that want to pull it away from such aggression.
Osamu can often be caught biting his lips and nibbling on the tips of his pens, always in constant need of something occupying an underlying unwillingness to be still.
Then, the water keeping Rintarou from being present in the moment drains as if a plug has been pulled between his ears, and sound rushes at him full force. He catches the tail end of Osamu’s conversation with the other person, and only then does he realize he’d been roped into a game of Truth or Dare.
“I dare you and Suna to play seven minutes in heaven.”
Osamu casts a careful glance over at Rintarou and his eyes widen ever so subtly when he finds the middle blocker already gazing at him with his breath stuck in his throat.
“I’m okay with it if you are,” Rintarou whispers only loud enough for Osamu to hear, and Osamu nods before standing up, his gaze falling away much too soon for Rintarou’s liking.
As Rintarou pushes himself onto his feet, every sound in the room falls away again in favor of the ringing in his ears—brain unable to fathom his current predicament. He barely registers as Osamu opens the closet door in the entryway and pulls him inside before closing it behind them.
“We don’t have ta do anythin’. We can just wait it out,” Osamu sighs across from him, and even in the dark, Rintarou can see how sparkly his eyes are.
Words bubble up from the core of Rintarou’s desire, but they get caught somewhere in his lungs, and the pressure keeps him from speaking. So instead of voicing how much the alcohol makes him want, Rintarou reaches out and cups Osamu’s face with both hands, thumbs brushing against the spiker’s bottom lashes. There’s a small part of him praying that Osamu will see right through him, but the more rational part of Rintarou knows he’s been perfecting his impenetrable wall for far too long for that fantasy to ever come true.
“Rin?”
The name is whispered softly into the warm air between them, questioning and confused, as Rintarou drags one of his hands down to trace the curve of Osamu’s adams apple. A wheeze builds in his throat, and the need to cough intensifies until the absolutely sickening taste of flora blooms in the back of his mouth. Rintarou swallows it down as he pulls Osamu closer with the hand on his neck and presses their foreheads together.
Osamu feels so nice against him, skin to skin, and the need to touch more almost brings Rintarou to his knees.
“I said ya don’t hafta,” Osamu reiterates, voice softer than before as their breath mingles.
“I know,” Rintarou whispers back before he allows himself to sink into the feeling of Osamu’s lips centimeters from his own.
The temptation couldn’t be described as anything less than tantalizing, and Rintarou is desperate to let himself succumb, but there’s still this small rational part of him that keeps him from doing so. It sparks in the dark like the souls of fireflies, wispy and faint as they brush against the middle blocker’s arms, gooseflesh rising in their wake. Hands settle almost nervously on Rintarou’s stomach, abdominal muscles clenching at the touch, before they slowly glide up toward Rintarou’s shoulders.
Then fingers are trailing over his cracked lips and up the slope of his nose before tracing the shape of his eyebrows. It tickles slightly, and it sends a pleasant shiver down Rintarou’s spine that involuntarily makes his back arch. Rintarou has never been this close to another person outside of his family, and certainly not within this intention. Something about it is so much more intoxicating than the drinks Komori forced upon him earlier, and he knows this moment will haunt his dreams tonight.
“Are ya gonna kiss me?” Osamu whispers, their lips grazing for a split second.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“I want to.”
“I can’t.”
Hearing Osamu’s shuddered gasp and feeling him try to slip away hurts more than saying the actual words.
“I just wanna hold you,” Rintarou practically begs, voice dipping dangerously close to a whine as he pulls Osamu even closer.
“Okay,” Osamu agrees in the end as he settles into Rintarou’s embrace, head tucked under the middle blocker’s chin like he’s trying to make himself smaller.
The two of them stay like that for the remainder of the time, simply holding each other in their arms until someone Rintarou doesn’t recognize comes to retrieve them. Rintarou returns to where they’re playing the game while Osamu heads in the direction of the kitchen, the middle blocker watching him retreat until he’s gone. An odd pang resonates within his chest, and he tries to push it away as he focuses on Atsumu bickering with the same guy from earlier about something to do with, uh, actually, Rintarou doesn’t really care; he can’t help but wonder how Osamu is doing.
Rintarou will just find him later.
❀
There’s a twisted part of Rintarou that almost wishes volleyball was never that important to him, because if that had been the case, he never would’ve met Osamu, and he never would’ve coughed up more flowers.
A few days after Inarizaki got back from Tokyo, Rintarou was alone in the locker room because he’d left his tie again, and he almost passed out from having a coughing fit.
On the floor in front of him laid four rose petals—yellow with red tips.
The world began with Miya Osamu and it was going to end with him too.
❀
The still-smoldering cigarette sitting in the ashtray on the windowsill seems to mock Rintarou as the hazy trail of smoke from the ash disappears into the night. It twists around the sparkling shape of stars like some kind of cosmic being that yearns to return to the beginning of the universe even though it is so clearly out of reach.
Would the beginning of the universe look like nothing in the void of space, or would it look like stormy gray eyes staring at you for the first time across a high school gymnasium?
Pressure builds in his lungs, and there’s a tickle in his throat that’s just begging to be relieved, but Rintarou keeps it firmly lodged in place. Instead of focusing on that, though, he moves his attention to the dent in his pillow left by Osamu when they hung out after practice earlier—a new tradition, it seems. Without fail, the two of them will always end up in Rintarou’s dorm, most times alone, and usually, they barely speak three separate words to each other.
Osamu will more often than not nap on Rintarou’s bed while the middle blocker works on his assignments at his desk or catches up with his sister.
There’s one specific moment that comes to mind where he was skyping with Rei, headphones on to keep the noise at minimum volumes because Osamu was curled up behind him. Up until halfway through the call, the spiker had been stiller than a rock, but then he turned in range of the camera as the blanket fell away from his face.
“Who’s that?” Rei had asked, her attention instantly shifting from their prior conversation.
“Oh, that’s just Osamu,” Rintarou revealed, voice hushed.
He remembered looking at the other boy through the webcam, but he didn’t remember the soft smile that had snuck across his lips until Rei brought it up a few days later.
“Your face changes when you talk about Osamu,” she said offhandedly as Rintarou watched her color in a page from the end of a coloring book, purple crayon worn to the point of stubbiness.
“It what?” He asked in clear confusion.
“It changes.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“You just look happier.” Rei shrugged before she held up her completed creation, and that was it; they didn’t bring up Osamu for the rest of their call.
Happier huh?
Rintarou doesn’t know if happiness is how he’d describe the feeling flooding his brain as he runs his hands along the cotton fabric of his pillowcase. He disturbs the creases without meaning to before picking up the object and shoving it against his face to muffle the groan that escapes him. The pillow smells like Osamu—something light, smokey even—and Osamu smells like a homecoming after years spent dreading one only to realize it’s what you needed all along.
Osamu.
Osamu. Osamu. Osamu.
Miya Osamu.
Miya Osamu.
Miya Osamu.
Fuck!
The air between Rintarou’s face and the pillow is nonexistent, but it’s hot, and he can’t fucking breathe because nothing is circulating through his respiratory system besides a taste he’d rather not acknowledge.
Would Osamu’s taste be worth the acid and the bile that accompanies rotting flowers?
Is he sweet? Sour? Something else?
Sadly, Rintarou will never know; he’ll probably be dead before he ever could.
Jesus, he really is dying. This is real now.
The pillow falls into his lap, and Rintarou sighs as he roughly rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands, skin stretching uncomfortably with the action. He feels fucking disgusting, stray strands of hair sticking to his sweaty forehead, and his chest hurts worse than the first time he was nailed in the sternum with a volleyball. So why oh why is Rintarou lying down and moving the pillow back over his face as a stray hand descends under the waistband of his boxers?
Rintarou doesn’t just feel disgusting. He is disgusting.
He wraps a rough, cracked hand around himself and imagines Osamu’s face in his mind, that quiet smile he gives Rintarou whenever they’re alone taking on a more shy appearance. The scene starts to shift after one tug, followed by two, until the dry dragging of skin against skin is nothing compared to the mirage of just how utterly sweet Osamu would be. He would look so pretty with his skin flushed in rosy patches, and his eyebrows scratched together from the foreign pleasure graced to him by Rintarou.
It would be perfect, so fucking perfect.
Then, the scene swirls, and it glistens in its saccharine facade before it fades out of existence when Rintarou spills into his hand, the stickiness of his release already uncomfortable.
Disgusting, fucking disgusting.
Pressure builds inside Rintarou’s chest, his lungs inflating and deflating around the foreign bodies growing inside them until it all comes crashing in like ocean waves against jagged rocks at high tide. He sits up straight as violent, unwavering coughs force their way out of him, a scratchy tickling sensation climbing up the column of his throat. It’s absolutely unbearable in the way that it burns, tears springing along his waterline.
The saliva comes first, pooling between his thighs in a sickening puddle. Then the blood comes, diluting the clear substance until it almost looks black in the dark lighting. After that, though, comes the thing Rintarou would rather not acknowledge—a light pink fucking rose, halfway formed and defiled by his insides.
Serves it right for defiling him first.
Watching it fall away to nothing more than ashes no longer brings Rintarou the security it did at the beginning of all this, and he’s not really sure what to make of that right now. So as the moon shines and the fireflies sing, he’ll revel in this feeling of uncertainty until it makes him numb.
Rintarou doesn’t remember much after burning the blue rose besides how hard his body hit the floor when the muscles in his legs gave out. He definitely doesn’t remember calling 911 or admitting himself to the hospital, but that’s where he finds himself when he wakes up, a doctor hovering around the foot of his bed as she writes something down on a clipboard.
“Ah, you’re finally awake,” She hums thoughtfully while sparing a glance at him.
The bright lights are already prodding Rintarou’s head with the beginnings of a migraine, and he knows the inevitable conversation waiting between them is only going to make it worse. It’s not like Rintarou can make a run for it either while he’s hooked up to all these machines monitoring his vitals, his blood oxygen content nothing to laugh at.
“I assume you already know why you’re here, given the look on your face,” the doctor speaks again, and Rintarou spies her name sewn into her white coat, Dr. Moriyama.
“And I assume you’re not gonna let me leave until you talk to me about end-of-life care?” Rintarou tries to keep the bite out of his voice as he sits up against his propped pillows, but the knowing closed-lip smile on the professional’s face says he didn’t do a good job.
“Well, surprisingly, it’s not too late for you to have the surgery, but that’s only if you get it tomorrow.”
Dr. Moriyama puts the clipboard under her arm and shoves the pen back into the breast pocket of her coat before sliding Rintarou two different pamphlets. One of them has to do with the surgery in question and how to prepare yourself for it, while the other is about the meanings of certain kinds of flowers pertaining to hanahaki, this specific pamphlet being about roses.
“I’ll give you some time to look this over, but I need your decision by tonight,” Dr. Moriyama says before giving Rintarou a slight nod and leaving the room.
Rintarou stares down at the pamphlets in his lap and feels his chest seize as a particularly bad coughing fit plagues him. A mess of blue rose petals and spit mixed with blood land just below the one about flower meanings, and if that isn’t the definition of fuck it, Rintarou doesn’t know what is.
The middle blocker reaches for it with trembling fingers and finds every color of rose imaginable displayed before him with their meaning printed neatly next to them.
Coral: Desire.
Yellow With Red Tips: Falling in Love.
Light Pink: Sweetness.
Blue: The Unattainable, The Impossible.
Rintarou doesn’t know if it’s possible for someone with hanahaki to feel the roots growing inside their lungs in real time, but he swears he can feel the sensation of them constricting his organs. He closes the pamphlet as the door to his room opens, and instead of Dr. Moriyama or a nurse coming to check on him, Osamu is the one standing before him, cheeks stuffed with what can only be food. Osamu has always been one to snack compulsively when he’s nervous. That was one of his easier habits to pick up on.
“You found me.”
It isn’t presented as a question but rather a statement, and Osamu sighs, mouth opening and closing like he can’t exactly figure out what to say. And Rintarou gets it. He really does. What is a person supposed to say to their best friend who’s dying from an illness they never told you they had in the first place?
“I need more chips. I’ll be right back,” is what Osamu eventually settles on, and Rintarou makes no move to comment on the fact that Osamu is eating Sour Patch Kids, not chips.
Then, just as the door is closing behind Osamu’s retreating form, the spiker coughs into his hand, and before he can catch it, a lavender colored rose petal innocently gets stuck on Rintarou’s side of the door.
Oh shit.
Lavender: Love at First Sight.
Oh my god.
Osamu has Hanahaki too.
And it isn’t for Rintarou.
A nurse comes to check on Rintarou before Osamu returns, and Rintarou is barely aware of his mouth moving until he hears his own voice say he wants to get the surgery tomorrow. Rintarou had been fully prepared to die for these feelings, with these feelings, on the off chance that Osamu would look at him and say, “I love you.”
Maybe this is just fate's funny way of telling Rintarou the two of them weren’t destined for romance but rather a quiet parallel existence held together by friendship.
It takes Osamu what feels like ages, but what can’t be more than a half hour, to return with an actual bag of chips in his hands this time. The line of his body is taut to the point where it looks like he’ll snap if someone were to touch him, and his eyebrows are permanently pinched like they’re trying to become one. All in all, he looks every bit as stressed as Rintarou felt the first time he coughed up coral petals.
“How long have you had it?” Rintarou asks, and Osamu freezes two steps into the room.
“Had what?” Osamu asks back.
“Hanahaki.”
“Don’t make me answer, Rin.”
“How long?”
The air in the hospital room is stale, and Rintarou feels his breath catching somewhere along the paths of pointy stems as the tip of his nose burns.
“A year,” Osamu answers quietly.
“Who’s it for?”
“Ya don’t know?”
“No, so tell me, I’m dying.”
“Yer not dyin’ yet, Rin.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Because Rintarou has to know, he needs to know who caught the eye of the boy that possesses his immortal body, the boy that makes him ache.
“No.”
“Yes.”
They stare at each other like the world has hit pause around them, and they have all the time in the world.
One.
Two.
The burning in Rintarou’s nose travels up to the inner corner of his eyes.
“Fine, it’s—”
Then, before Osamu can answer the stupid fucking question, Rintarou’s mother bursts into the room and rushes to her son’s side with a quivering bottom lip. She starts going off on a tangent about how Osamu called her before she got on the first train to Hyogo, and Rintarou gets so swept up in the colossal tornado that is Hitomi Suna that when he turns to look for Osamu, the other boy is gone.
What an asshole, Rintarou thinks to himself before the thought makes the pain in his chest worsen under the pretense of guilt. Osamu isn’t an asshole, he’s one of the most compassionate people Rintarou has ever known, and that makes this so much worse. Rintarou is so fucking in love with him, and in less than 24 hours, he won’t ever feel that for him again.
It's odd having his mother lay beside him in the hospital bed, head resting against her chest as she soothingly scratches his scalp. Her heart pounds consistently within his ear, and Rintarou wonders about the last time he heard his mother's heartbeat without checking her pulse. Was it when he was seven, eight, or nine, or was it when he was being formed inside her?
Sadly, Rintarou doesn't think he'll ever know the answer.
"I think the last time you were in the hospital was the day you were born," Hitomi laughs softly, and Rintarou can feel the vibrations. "Apparently, you and I have different Rh factors, so your little ass was trying to kill me before we even met face-to-face. It's okay, though. I forgave you the second they laid you across my chest, and I made a promise to myself that I'd protect you until you didn't need me anymore."
Rintarou stays quiet as he breathes in the scent of Hitomi's laundry detergent, something he used to be so intimately familiar with, but now he finds himself longing for the hoodies Osamu leaves in his dorm room.
"I'm sorry I broke that promise, baby," Hitomi begins, and Rintarou wishes he could do anything to stop his mother from stripping herself human for his digestion. "I think the difference between you and Rei is that nobody actually raised you like you did her. 'Cause we grew up together, Rintarou, and I'm sorry that I didn't know how to be your mom yet. You are an extension of me, and it terrifies me to see so much of myself in someone who hasn't lived yet. I don't want you to follow in my footsteps and make all the mistakes I did when I was young, So please, baby, tell him how you feel. Do what I couldn't"
It's the confession Rintarou has wanted since he was small, but actually hearing it makes his stomach churn, and he wishes it was easier to hold onto that special kind of hatred saved for the people that you love even after they learn to be better people.
After a while, she steps out to find a restroom, and Rintarou scrambles to find his phone amongst the mess of his things on the bedside table. A few months ago, the twins and him decided to start sharing their locations with each other just for shits and giggles. Rintarou coughs harshly, and a fleck of spit barely misses his screen as he pulls up the app. The loading screen seems to never end, and the buzzing beneath Rintarou’s fingers worsens before tiny round icons appear on a map.
Rintarou’s eyes lock in on Osamu’s icon to find he’s somewhere in the courtyard near the middle of the hospital, only a few hundred yards from the middle blocker’s location.
Getting disconnected from all the machines surrounding him isn’t so hard as it is tedious, the panicked beeps grating on Rintarou’s mind. He climbs out of the bed on numbed feet and slips out of the room before a nurse has the chance to come and force him back into bed. The hospital layout is easy to get the hang of, and before he knows it, Rintarou finds himself outside.
The winter air is crisp with the promise of snow, and it burns as it crawls down his throat like some sort of serrated knife he’s seen Osamu use a thousand and one times in the kitchen. Because when will anything stop coming back to Osamu when he’s standing right over there, back facing Rintarou in one of the middle blocker’s sweatshirts and slides in the middle of winter? As pretty as he always is in the forefront of Rintarou’s mind.
Another series of coughs rips through Rintarou’s chest, the serrated knife slicing him up from the inside out as blood dribbles down his chin and blue petals float away in the wind.
“Osamu!” Rintarou calls out over the rushing of his pulse.
Then Miya Osamu is turning around with his own blood trickling down his chin; a fully formed lavender rose resting in the palm of his hand.
“You never answered my question,” Rintarou continues when Osamu moves away.
“Don’t make me say it,” Osamu pleads, like even the notion of his admittance will kill them both upon impact.
“I need to know.”
“I’m in love with you.”
And Osamu’s fear of impact is certainly true, but it doesn’t kill Rintarou the way he thought it would. No, no, suddenly, Rintarou is able to feel the vines entangling his lungs retreat, and he can breathe for the first time in months. The atmosphere shakes with the promising cords of hope, and Rintarou’s bare feet slam into the chilled ground as he closes the distance between him and the other boy. Osamu’s body is whole and sturdy in his grasp as he grabs his face and pulls him into a kiss of teeth and blood and painful symphonic beauty.
Hands grip onto the loose material of Rintarou’s hospital gown, fingers twisting the fabric up until it’s pulled taunt against his body. The space between their bodies disappears as Osamu pulls him closer and presses his lips more insistently against the younger boy’s chapped ones. Blood eases the glide, and the taste of new pennies should be utterly disgusting, but Rintarou couldn’t care less because the flowers are fucking gone.
The flowers are gone.
And just as that thought sinks in, Rintarou can feel the deep breath Osamu greedily sucks in against his lips like he hasn’t tasted clean oxygen in years.
Rintarou pulls away, fingers running through Osamu’s hair and over the features of his face like he’ll turn into a wilted bouquet if he stops. The boy in front of him isn’t faring much better if the way Osamu won’t release Rintarou’s clothes is any indication, fingers shaking with the intensity of their grasp.
“I love you too.”
“Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
So Rintarou says it again, and again, and again, until the cold becomes too harsh to bear, and he loses himself in the beautiful, white-hot grace of Miya Osamu; he’ll say it for the rest of his life.
And guess what?
He does.