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Shinkai learns it first.
The two of them are still in their second year of middle school, yet fast enough to make high school coaches take an interest; even in the fall, when the major races are over and school has started again, Juichi insists on practice every day. Shinkai does not mind humoring him – over the past two years they have learned not to mind humoring Juichi, with his grave face and outsize sense of maturity – and so on a night when most of their classmates are sitting at their desks working at math problems, Shinkai Hayato is racing their best friend. Their homework will get done eventually, of course – Juichi is very strict about schoolwork – but cycling has always come first.
The road is one they have often gone down before. Shinkai knows it, can feel it in the breaths they take and the slight shaking of the handlebars; loves and remembers and lives every slight swell and hollow, senses instinctively the wind as it rustles the branches above and the bushes below. They can feel Juichi behind them and this too is instinctive – they can sense when he will slow down, accelerate, shift gears. It is a familiarity and a friendship that comes as naturally as breathing.
Shinkai is the faster rider; both of them have come to accept this, and yet Juichi never seems to give up on overtaking them even on the flats. They can feel him tense behind them as the two approach a soft, yielding curve – can almost hear the halt in his breath as he prepares to accelerate, hoping to catch them off guard – and find themself leaning forward, their body moving almost on its own to leap ahead first. When they reach the low-hanging tree which marks the end of the flat road (nearly two bike lengths ahead of Juichi) they glance back; what they read in his face is something which pains but for some reason does not surprise them. “Juichi is in love with me,” they think, and then the slope is here and they find themself slowing down. Juichi catches up and clasps their shoulder. “You were the stronger one again today,” he says, and Shinkai finds themself wondering if he knows, yet.
It takes Fukutomi another year to figure it out, when he learns that he has been accepted to Hakone Gakuen. The news does not surprise him; he has known that he will go to Hakone for what seems like most of his life. He will join the cycling club there, and become its president in his third year – like his brother and his father before him. Shinkai will be there too, he assumes; it’s not something he’s thought particularly about, and yet for some reason it’s impossible to imagine cycling without Shinkai – always slightly ahead, leaping forward like a predatory animal or turning back to smile at Fukutomi with their lopsided smile. Fukutomi does not question the way he always finds himself smiling back, or the jump in his heart rate that will sometimes happen when Shinkai touches his arm, or the way that sometimes it is as if he can feel Shinkai’s pulse in his own skin – their breath in his own lungs. This happens sometimes, he knows, between an ace and their assist (he and Shinkai are not that, not yet, but he hopes.) And so it bewilders him when Shinkai tilts their chair back and looks at the ceiling and says, “I don’t know, I’m not so sure I’m going to Hakone next year,” and he can feel his breath freeze solid in his chest.
“What?” Fukutomi feels sick. Something has happened to his stomach and thinks he may throw up; he tries to focus on Shinkai’s face, finds his vision rebelling. “But you-“
Shinkai shrugs. “We might be moving,” they say. “To Chiba.”
“Chiba?” Fukutomi sounds more disgusted than he intends. “Why would you – there’s nothing in Chiba.”
Shinkai smiles at him apologetically. “It’s not really my choice, is it? Besides, they say there’s a pretty strong high school in Chiba. I’m sorry, Juichi.”
Fukutomi tries to respond but he cannot speak, can only stare blankly. We promised, he wants to say. Which would be a lie. They have never promised each other anything.
But they have ridden together nearly every day for three years; Fukutomi can identify Shinkai by the sound of their footsteps, the weight and cadence of their walk, can measure their mood in the tension of their back, and he thinks that this, too, is a kind of promise.
This is the first night in nearly three years that Fukutomi does not practice. It is raining outside, which gives him one excuse, but he dutifully sets up his Bianchi on the rollers in the practice room and stares at it. He knows how to ride a bicycle. He knows how to use the rollers. And yet he can’t; he can only stare at it, uncomprehending, until he finally puts them away and returns to his room. There is something deeply wrong with him.
He should go to his father, he thinks, but there is something quiet and embarrassed inside him which tells him that this is not something that he can talk to his father about. So he draws up a list instead, writes in neat handwriting on an empty sheet of paper his symptoms: clammy skin. Nausea. Shortness of breath and a tightness in his chest. The feeling that he has died, that some organ or muscle vital to his continued existence has threatened to remove itself from his life.
Symptoms are aggravated by, he writes carefully, and pauses. He has been careful to drink sufficient amounts of water and eat regularly, and the only upsetting thing that happened at school was his discussion with Shinkai but when he thinks about Shinkai he feels a leaden weight in his knees, like he is incapable of doing anything except collapsing onto the floor and staring, unseeing, at the lines in the wood. His mother calls him to dinner and he manages to walk down the stairs without tripping, eats robotically. His family does not seem to notice the fact that he is not there; they talk amongst themselves and ask him to pass various dishes, tease his older brother about his new girlfriend – the fourth in as many months.
Fukutomi has never been teased about girls by his family. He has never had a girlfriend, has never had time or reason for one. He does not see the point, really, of having a girlfriend – it might be nice perhaps, to have someone to cycle with or to talk to, but he doesn’t need someone else, he already has –
And then he understands; he is in love with his best friend.
Juichi knows now, Shinkai thinks. They aren’t sure what prompted the revelation – knowing Juichi, it was probably something impossible to ignore – but it shows in the way he looks and speaks, or rather in the way he doesn’t. He is quieter, graver (but Juichi was never talkative to begin with) and sometimes Shinkai catches him staring at them with a pained, desperate kind of look in his eyes, and he looks away almost immediately when they meet his glance. He loves them, intensely and absolutely; loves their reddish hair and full lips and strong arms, loves the spark that fills them when they race and the crackling energy with which they will swing themself over banisters or the languid sleepiness with which they will smile at him during history class. Shinkai loves Juichi too, loves him simply and wholeheartedly and more, perhaps, than anyone they have ever known; loves and trusts and cherishes him. But Juichi’s love is different, tinged with a desire that shows in the catch of his breath when Shinkai smiles and the love poems which he clumsily reads them, stuttering and halting every few words, under the guise of wanting them to critique his writing, in the way he shudders when Shinkai clasps him on the shoulder or brushes leaves off his back. They have learned not to touch Juichi, to do what they can not to remind them both of the love that they wish they were able to give.
They are in high school – both at Hakone, after all – when Fukutomi first kisses Shinkai.
They have just finished a practice race against the second years; Shinkai took the first stage easily but slowed down once they hit the slope, and Fukutomi just barely managed to scrape out third place at the end – both impressive results, for first years. They are drenched with sweat, and dizzy from the heat. The stillness of the air has been threatening rain for the past several hours but it is only when they finally dismount that it comes, cool and soft and gray. The second years wave at them and leave, and the other first years begin to head back as well, hoping to get back to Hakogaku before the rain gets worse. Fukutomi and Shinkai are alone.
“You rode well,” Shinkai says. Fukutomi is silent.
He can feel his heart jumping in his chest, pounding as intensely as it did during the last sprint of the race. Shinkai leans on the trunk of the tree against which they have propped their bicycle, shakes their head to get the water out of their eyes. Fukutomi can see with painful clarity the shape and swell of the water droplets on their lips; can feel the heat of their body and the energy of the chase that still hangs from them, lingering. He is shaking. Perhaps part of it is the leftover adrenaline from the race, but he is trembling, and the rain on his face feels too hot and too cold all at once.
“Juichi?” Shinkai asks. Fukutomi stares at them, unable to speak, unable to move.
“Let’s go,” he tries to say, but instead he is leaning forward, and his hands are on Shinkai’s face, pulling it towards his own as his eyes seek out Shinkai’s eyes, his lips Shinkai’s lips. He has never kissed anyone before and the experience is not so much enjoyable as terrifying; he runs his fingers through Shinkai’s hair, clutches at their shoulders, brushes a hand at once gentle and desperate over the ridge of their jaw.
“Oh, Juichi,” Shinkai sighs, and they kiss him back. It is a kiss full of pity, of love, of sorrow, and it is bittersweet in Fukutomi’s mouth.
This marks a change in their relationship which is somehow no change at all. Fukutomi and Shinkai still ride together, still do their homework together, still squabble about whose turn it is to do the laundry. They are still best friends. The only difference is that now, after some practices, Fukutomi will pull Shinkai into a quiet room (a classroom, a storage closet, a shower stall, always somewhere dark and empty and alone) and kiss them; they will always let him. Fukutomi’s movements are abrupt and intense, Shinkai’s softer.
This is a new world for Fukutomi, for whom the path forward has always been straight and clear. There are new places to touch and be touched, things that are forbidden that he has never imagined and things that are allowed that he is afraid to imagine now. His movements are clumsy and confused, filled with desire and a longing that he cannot vocalize; Shinkai matches and meets him at every turn. Their movements are filled with a wordless love and a painful kind of emptiness.
(Fukutomi takes Shinkai’s hand and moves it in a silent, agonized request and they kiss his jaw his neck the sharp lines of his collarbone and kiss him again and again lower and lower) (shaking he guides their hands to his hips and they take this permission to work away at buttons and fabric and metal) (their fingers deft and gentle) (their mouth gentler) (Shinkai places a thumb on the inside of each of Fukutomi’s thighs and kisses Fukutomi again softer than they ever have and Fukutomi sucks in the stillness of the room between his teeth and stares at the ceiling as his knees twitch and his fingers rub circles on the desk) (Shinkai presses their lips against him and whispers [Juichi] and it’s enough)
When Fukutomi has calmed himself and Shinkai has finished wiping the room clean, never looking at him or speaking a word, Fukutomi turns hesitantly to Shinkai and asks if they’d like him to return the favor. Shinkai smiles at him sadly, gently, with a kind of wistfulness in their eyes and a hand on the door and says, no.
One day they are both sitting outside, in a clearing by the side of the road. There are no other cyclists around (no one else trains here, not at this hour) and no cars passing by and Juichi and Shinkai are perched on the ground, Juichi’s hands on Shinkai’s shoulders and his mouth on Shinkai’s mouth. Shinkai lets themself be pulled forward like they always do and lets themself be kissed like they always do; this is a routine that is by now familiar to them. They are better than they have ever been at reading Juichi, the subtle changes in his breathing and movement and the way that his thoughts are written in minute shifts of his face. And so it comes as a surprise to them when he pulls away and sits back on his heels and stares.
“Juichi?” they ask softly, smiling at him. Overhead the trees rustle in the breeze and the light comes down filtered through layers of branches so that it looks like water made visible. Shinkai rests their fingers on a stream of brightness by their feet and imagines that if they dipped in a finger they could create a ripple that would spread, humming, across the two feet that separates them from Juichi and splash light against his own fingers where they rest inches away from the front tire of his bicycle.
“Do you want this?” Juichi asks abruptly. His eyes are focused on them and at the same time distant. The light shivers and shudders across the forest floor as if responding to some disturbance, and Shinkai knows that they could lie.
Their silence is enough answer.
“Not at all?” Juichi is still staring at them with that pained, distant expression, and Shinkai wishes that they could lie to him. Wishes they could lean forward and kiss him, tell him that they do want this, that they love him with the kind of love he wants rather than the kind of love that they are able to give. But Juichi knows Shinkai as well as they know him (better, perhaps, they are beginning to suspect). There would be no lie.
“I don’t need to,” they say quietly. Their hand moves to his knee and they try to say, I cannot love you in that way but I can live a love I do not feel; I will meet your desires even if I have none of my own; I love you in a way that I do not have the words for but I will shape the outside of it to fit the story you want to hear.
Juichi gently moves their hand off his knee.
“No,” he says, hand lingering for a second over theirs before he lets it go. He rises, and pulls his bicycle from where it rests against Shinkai’s own. There is a rustle of wheels on grass as he walks it to the road, and then he is gone.
Neither of them say anything more about it (what more is there to say?) and on the outside things continue the same as before. They practice daily together, steadily improving their skill and their records; they enter races and do impressively well. Juichi wins sixth, fourth, third, and Shinkai collects victory after victory. Juichi will always greet them after a race, clasp a hand firmly on their shoulder in congratulations, but there is a stiffness to their touch that makes Shinkai’s heart ache. I love you, they want to say, but they know enough to avoid that cruelty. They cannot help it, though, in the stoop of their head when he passes them in the hallway, in the turn of their head when he collapses in exhaustion after a particularly brutal day of training (he is training too hard, too much, and they see this but are afraid to say anything, know they have given up the right to criticize something that is their fault). When Fukutomi comes through the clubroom door as they exit the way their hand lingers over the doorknob says, “I love you”; the way that Fukutomi takes the handle from them says, “I know,” and he brushes past them and leaves Shinkai to stare at the closed door in an acute, guilty agony.
It is easiest to forget about Juichi during races. Everything has always cleared away for them in races; their focus sharpens until the only thing they want or can conceive of is victory. Shinkai has won the name “the straight line demon of Hakone,” and there is, they think, something almost demonic, almost mystical in the way that their mind changes in a race. Things flow together and become sharper and at the same time less distinct. Shinkai looks down at their Cervelo, thinks of what they have been told about road racers – the kings of bicycles, stripped down to their core and rid of dead weight. As a sprinter their bicycle is almost an extension of themself and so it does not bother them that they find that parts of themself disappear into that overpowering desire for victory. Juichi has always been filled with an almost worshipful admiration for Shinkai’s speed; it is as if he thinks of it as something supernatural, some mystical quality inherent to them that defies study or explanation. The true answer, they think, is much simpler, and only a logical extension of one of the basic philosophies of cycling. When you cycle, you strip away everything unnecessary for speed, purge yourself of waste and excess.
For Shinkai, this includes their sense of self.
It has been the same today, in this race, as in the others. They will return to Hakone with another victory, as the third years at the club have grown to expect (as Juichi has always expected, for as long as they have known him). They have a vague memory of hitting some obstacle during the race, of some distraction, but when they try to remember details everything is a blur. They give up. They have learned long ago not to try to remember what happens during races.
With a whisper the wind picks up, sad and quiet in the edges of their hearing, and Shinkai can smell blood. Their breath quickens. There is a kind of mewling in the distance. For some reason they cannot identify, dread fills their lungs and they cannot breathe.
They turn the corner.
On the soft curve of grass next to the road is a small, bloody, huddled shape. A smaller shape beside it mewls softly, nudges at the larger shape and cries. Shinkai cannot feel cannot see but they think that their legs have stopped, that somewhere in that blankness they have dismounted. Their Cervelo falls to the ground forgotten as Shinkai falls to their knees in front of the two shapes and the smaller one cries and they reach out, ever so slow and yet not slow enough, ever so gentle and yet not gentle enough, and pick up the small shape that twitches in their hands and cries, and cries, and cries.
They name him Usakichi.
Shinkai leans against the side of his cage, presses their forehead against the cool steel, stares at the tufts of grass that poke their way through the bars.
For the first time in their life, they cannot ride.
During practice they tried to pass the rider in front of them and braked so hard they were nearly flung out of the seat; their feet slipped off their pedals and they stood there, hunched over their handlebars, staring at their hands which had moved without warning, without conscious thought. Despite the pounding in their head and the coldness clamped around their body they managed to blame a stomach-ache and stagger back to the school, pulling their Cervelo along. The others joked about Shinkai’s iron stomach finally giving in but Shinkai heard none of them, could not think, could not speak. Could not ride.
Can not ride.
They have tried, tried until they are collapsed against the side of the building with their palms hard against the ground, and the coldness of Usakichi’s cage pressed tight against their forehead, tried until their vision spins and their eyes shudder from side to side but cannot focus on anything. Their breath flows thick and viscous through their lungs and they feel trapped in the grip of some existential terror; guilt leaks from their pores and forms an oily sheen on their skin, taints everything they touch and ripples the air in front of them. Shinkai, calls the tree as it shakes its branches overhead. Shinkai, calls the wind, which knows, it knows, Shinkai knows it knows it was there, Shinkai, says the crow as it croaks harshly from on top of their Cervelo, Shinkai, says the Cervelo as it stares at him and knows their guilt it sees the blood it feels the crash Shinkai, cries Usakichi from inside his cage, Shinkai, Shinkai, and Shinkai cannot ride.
In front of them the other underclassmen watch with faces tinged in jealousy and awe as Fukutomi kneads his fingers against each other behind his back, tries to focus on the straightness of his back and the stillness of his shoulders, the tilt of his head and his eyebrows and not on Shinkai standing beside him. Shinkai has changed recently (although Fukutomi spends less and less time with Shinkai, trains alone with the same growing frequency that marks days on which he will wake earlier than sunrise and sleep later than midnight, a pattern which he tries to deny to himself is one developed only half-unconsciously to avoid bumping into them in the hallways or brushing past them on the stairs) and it is a change that he no longer feels allowed to notice. Asking would be out of the question; they have long been able to communicate in looks and touches and silence but the barrier between them seems to stifle even this exchange, a barrier steeped in guilt and regret and despite Fukutomi’s best attempts, resentment.
But Shinkai has changed more than this disconnect alone can account for; they are abstracted, lost, farther removed from the world and life than before, and Fukutomi has seen them at practice lately with a scarcity that is unnerving even taking into account Fukutomi’s own avoidance. He thinks too often about that day in the woods when he might have made what was the wrong choice, might have made lost to him forever the best chance he has had and will ever have at happiness. Some nights he will awake pale and sweating and remember the feel of Shinkai’s lips on his lips, of his hands pressed stiff against the hollow of their back and the edge of their ribs, and he will wonder why he was unable to take the sacrifice they were willing to give.
He misses Shinkai with a pain that seems to live in him as another entity, one that breathes his breaths and bleeds his blood and lives in his veins and in the pit of his bones. The physical ache feels so intense at times that it may destroy him; and yet it is nothing compared to the less tangible one, the sensation at once of being empty of emotion and entirely too full that comes when he remembers again that he has lost his place in their life. He dies each day when he looks at them, when he stumbles into a hole in his life that they once filled, across a memory they inhabit and overshadow and from which the thought of them has become inseparable, and as he makes his speech to the club and looks at Shinkai (everyone is looking at them, he can’t avoid it, he has no excuse and this is his excuse) they lose the focus in their eyes and stare somewhere entirely removed from the physical reality of the room and say, “Can I resign?”
They leave their number behind on the table but Fukutomi is not there to see it; he has followed them outside, is running after them with nothing in his head except blind panic at the fact that they will not be there, at the impossibility of riding at the Inter-high without Shinkai. “Wait,” he says. Wait.
Shinkai slows and turns to look at him.
“We promised,” he says, and he is almost angry, the disbelief and the terror and confusion all mixing together into a kind of betrayal, the memory of every ride and every practice and every touch they shared rising up to scream at the impossibility and injustice of what Shinkai has said.
Shinkai smiles apologetically.
“It’s … it’s a little inconvenient for me.”
What could be more important than this? Fukutomi wants to shout. He does not understand how Shinkai does not want this, is willing to throw away what they have worked and fought for for the past year, willing to walk away from what comes more naturally and easily to them than it has ever come for him.
“Racing,” says Shinkai, and their mouth twists up a bit in a sadness that Fukutomi does not understand, “means throwing away. Other things.” And Fukutomi says, This is how it always is, this is the nature of races, this is what we all do to win and why is it that it is different for you now? What has changed that I did not see and that you did not tell me?
“I’m sorry, Juichi,” they say, their smile an apology. “Actually I’ve – been raising a rabbit. I have to feed him.”
Fukutomi is silent.
“Ah. Do you want to come with me? He’s cute.”
Above them the sun is hot and bright and Fukutomi can feel the heat of it burning the back of his neck but Shinkai is cool and gentle as they feed their rabbit, murmuring to it quietly while stroking its ears. “Eat well,” they say, and Fukutomi is lost, does not understand.
“As long as I have known you,” he says, and silently his mind runs through each year, each month, measures out time in Shinkai’s looks and Shinkai’s words and in the spaces between their words, “you have never run from a battle.” The first time I saw your sprint I could not speak; I was amazed; every second of my life you have thrilled and bewildered me with the things you can do and the ease with which you gather victory.
Shinkai closes their eyes.
“That was a while ago.”
And Fukutomi cannot breathe, can hardly think and it infuriates, enrages him that he still cannot understand, and he clutches at the front of Shinkai’s shirt and wants to drag an answer out of them that will absolve him, presses so tight against them against the cold steel of the fence says, what happened to you, what happened to the demon that possessed you, what happened to our promise to fight and strive and to drag down together every opponent to our victory, you were always the one who fought hardest you were always the one I trusted and he is yelling he knows and this is too much, too loud, and every word pains him to say but he cannot stop talking as he continues to speak of races and victory and he knows, in a place he recognizes but cannot fully acknowledge or admit to, that he is really saying I loved you, I loved you and you loved me and somehow this was not enough, he is saying you have closed yourself off to me and I no longer understand you and this will kill me, I can feel you drifting farther and farther away and it is destroying me and they say, I can’t breathe
Fukutomi lets go.
Everything is too quiet and too bright.
“This rabbit is still a baby,” says Shinkai. “I have to take care of it.”
“I killed its mother during a race.”
Understanding trickles cold and unpleasant into the pit of his stomach.
Shinkai begins to speak and their words are slow and muted with pain but Fukutomi can visualize the scene vividly in his head, can picture Shinkai and their urgency and their intensity and the blankness that sometimes comes over them when riding, the way that things seem to disappear for them as they become singularly focused on the chase. Sees the leap of the rabbit feels the jar of the crash sees them riding forward because you always go forward, because you never look back, because when the race is won and you turn back the other way and retrace the path you have gone before you are left with the blood that taints your footsteps seems streaked luridly across the bones of your fingers, are left with the weight of the destruction you have willfully smashed upon the world and the knowledge that you once did not conceive of caring.
(What Fukutomi cannot see is the blood that stains his own fingers the echo of something that has not happened yet but will happen; fear numbed with confusion at something which defies everything he knows to be true about the world and the way he knows existence is supposed to happen, something someone so like him and yet beyond him in ways he cannot begin to perceive and he reaches out, and pulls)
Shinkai brushes their hair back from their face. “A loss can always be atoned for,” they say: “But there are things that you can’t-“
They say: sorry, Juichi,
I can’t pedal right now.
Beside Fukutomi Shinkai is crouched by Usakichi, staring at the ground, but the barrier between them is gone. Fukutomi is filled with comprehension and almost a kind of relief, a quiet joy that Shinkai has come back to him; that he has not lost this after all. And he says, I understand.
Shinkai smiles at the ground and Fukutomi knows that this is at once apology and gratitude and forgiveness, that the lack of the love he wants does not mean the impossibility of a love that they are able to share; that they do, indeed, love him.
I am sorry, Juichi, thinks Shinkai, and feels the old love for him (which has never died, has never diminished, has only changed and shifted in its colour and tone) hum inside them; feels almost embarrassed of the fear and guilt that kept them from trusting him, is overwhelmed with gratitude at the acceptance that they should, they think to themself, have realized they would find. There is a light tensing in his shoulders and Fukutomi bends down. Cautiously, his hand reaches out to touch Usakichi’s head. Shinkai’s eyes widen in surprise and they fall in love again at this gentleness within him, think with adoration tinged with regret at how his stiff edges and sharp lines conceal a softness always beautiful and unexpected to find.
“Next year,” he says, “I am planning on assembling the strongest team.”
It does not surprise Shinkai that Juichi wants to be captain; this much is obvious to anyone who knows him – Shinkai cannot imagine him as anything else, can see Hakogaku’s future written in the stern lines of his face and the firmness of his shoulders, in the stiffness of his jaw and the softness with which he strokes Usakichi’s ears and rubs circles on his head.
“I want you to be on it.”
“Juichi,” says Shinkai. “I can’t even ride.”
“But you will,” Juichi says, and Shinkai can feel the faith that burns within him, the complete and unblinking faith which is his nature, the unquestioning belief he has always had that Shinkai can conquer anything, defeat anyone (including themself? Including their own brain?), this unbending belief in the rightness of the world and the natural order of things. For a moment Shinkai is able to fall into this faith, to look forward a year and see themself recovered, to a point when they have moved past this; to move forward always is how Juichi has approached life for as long as Shinkai has known him, and it is both beautiful and terrifying to know that he assumes, unthinkingly, that they will do the same.
Juichi says that he wants them to wear the number four, Hakogaku’s number four and Shinkai tells them, Juichi, I can’t, I can’t, and Juichi is as he always was; unflinching; and Shinkai finds themself against their will beginning to hope for a future that goes differently from the one they see stretching out before them; rests themself against the cool stability of his love and trust and thinks, Juichi has come back to me. The thing which once separated them seems almost inconsequential and Shinkai knows that the difference in wants may never disappear and knows also that this does not matter. They have never understood the need for marriage, for a love that shows itself in kisses and flowers and the trappings that they have come to associate with romance. But they love Juichi as much as they have loved anyone, and this, they understand. This is enough.
They will overcome this wall on their own; and when they have broken through Juichi will be waiting for them, as he always has been.
“You will ride,” Juichi tells Shinkai simply. “Stronger and faster than you ever have before.”
“You ask for too much,” Shinkai says, with a smile to show the love that lives behind their reproof. They reach out their hand, and it is a renewal of a promise that they have been making to each other for the past five years, but which neither of them have never felt the need to vocalize or put into words; it is the closest that they will ever come to a wedding vow.
Fukutomi takes Shinkai’s outstretched hand.
“I always have,” he says, and pulls them to their feet.