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Kei squints against the blinding sun, brows furrowed, hand up in the hopes of shielding his eyes. He can’t see a damn thing.
The plastic wrapping the flowers is clammy in his hands. He should have worn gloves. Should have thought to buy something other than flowers in the middle of winter. Surely they’re going to die before you even make it out of the train, and he’s going to stand there with dead flowers in his hands like an idiot.
He scoffs. Tugs at the collar of his shirt.
Overhead, a voice announces the arrival of your train. His heartbeat spikes and he’s close to turning away, running for the hills.
He can’t do this. Whatever made him think he could? He’s just Kei, good old Kei.
His thoughts still circle as the train comes to a halt. The doors open, and the station gets flooded with people, all of them chattering, stumbling, rushing, complaining about the cold.
He can’t see you, the sun blinding him. You might have already passed him, blind to whatever he thinks this is.
“Kei?” You ask at that moment, and his heart stutters to a stop. Your face is highlighted by the sun and your smile, tentative and just as hopeless as his, breaks his heart.
-
“Be nice,” his mother tells him, pushing him forward.
He ignores her advice.
You’re a tiny little thing, at least compared to him, hands digging into the skirt of your pink sundress. It’s dotted with tiny strawberries, and so far that’s the only thing going for you. Kei loves Strawberries. He tells you so.
“Ah,” you say, eyeing him, a little scared maybe? “I like your shirt,” you point out then, pointing. “It has Dino’s.”
“Course,” he explains roughly, crossing his arms. “Dino’s are cool.”
“They are.”
Awkward silence follows. You shuffle from one foot to the other, eyeing the park around you.
“Can you push me on the swings?” You ask then, look at him through your lashes and something shifts awkwardly in his stomach. His hands turn sweaty.
“Sure,” he says, wiping them on his pants. As you walk ahead of him, the sun catches in your hair, bringing you to light. He dreams of it for days after.
-
Lunch breaks in middle school, hours spent on the rooftop.
He’s got quieter. Brasher in his actions and his words.
Sometimes, when he looks up at the clouds above him, he can see you from the corner of his eyes. Laughing. Talking. Smiling.
You’re quiet in your affection and he’s learned to read you long ago.
He knows how you feel way before you dare to speak it into existence.
Kei wishes you didn’t. Wishes you’d fallen in love with Yamaguchi instead.
You’re the sun and he’s the dark hole threatening to swallow you up, the cold gust of wind blowing out the candle, the moon keeping your light from shining through.
“Sorry,” he answers your confession, hands shaking where they’re holding the chocolate you made. He’ll later find out that it’s strawberry flavored, will be unable to forget the look on your face when he left.
It’s a warm spring when he graduates, but he doesn’t quite feel the sun without you there with him.
-
“You wanna say hi?” His mother asks, standing by the door. “She’s back for the holidays.”
Mind muddled like a dirty pond, he trudges after her through the snow.
His heart’s still hung up on you, but it’s been long enough that you might have forgotten about him.
The sweater you’re wearing has strawberries stitched into the fabric and he swallows his own heart back down again at the sight.
“Hi,” you greet him, your smile warm despite the pain hiding behind it.
“Hi.”
You nod toward the living room, the lights in the hallway casting a halo in your hair. “You wanna come in? We’ve got strawberry shortcake.”
“Were you expecting me?” He asks, words a little too brash for the moment. You laugh.
“No, Kei, I just… acquired a taste, that’s all. Come in. I heard your team went to Nationals. How was that?”
“It’s just volleyball,” he starts to say, cutting himself off just as Akiteru pointedly clears his throat a few steps away.
Red blooms in his cheeks. He starts again. “It was hard.”
“Yeah? Tell me about it.”
-
He trudges through the cold with a heavy heart. Fog has settled in the hills, heavy and grey. The sun rarely makes it through.
Graduation looms over him. He knows what he wants, but he’s afraid to try.
“You act like it’s easy,” he complains, not quite able to look into Yamaguchi’s eyes. He never told him what really happened that one fateful afternoon. The reason why you changed schools.
“I didn’t say it was easy,” Yamaguchi says, laughing lightly, blushing brightly. “It’s fucking hard. But it’s not impossible.”
“Is that why you’re taking the easy route?”
“Oh,” Yamaguchi laughs, the sound a little louder, a little harsher this time. “Don’t mistake a simple path for an easy one. To me, being on my own is the scary part. To you, it’s hoping.”
“I’m not afraid of hope!” Kei defends himself, but he knows the truth. He is. Always has been, or at least for a long time.
He sighs. “Maybe I’m just clinging to the familiar things.”
“Sure,” Yamaguchi agrees, clapping him on the back as they part ways. “But who said anything about the familiar thing being the wrong thing after all?”
In the distance, he can see a glimpse of blue sky.
-
His heart is beating a mile a minute, or faster even, he can’t say.
Your smiling face, precious as ever. He takes a step forward and offers the flowers.
“I made chocolates,” he starts, which is not at all what he wanted to say. “For you. I mean, I made chocolates for you, because I… I realize I’m years too late, but I want,” he swallows wrong, almost chokes on the words. He hates hard things, and this is almost unbearable. “You deserve to know that I liked you. Always.”
“Always?” You ask, and he can’t help but smile. At himself, you, the cold, the dying flowers in his hands that you probably don’t want.
“Strawberry sundress, remember?” He asks, his voice failing him at the end. He tries anew. “I know I’m just… me. Kei. Pale like the moon, a little too cold and uncaring, and I- You’re the sun. I’m sure you’ve got your life planned out and everything, and maybe I’m just choosing the familiar thing all over again, but I don’t think so. I think… I think I love you.”
Surprised, you lift your head to the sky. Snowflakes are dancing around you like butterflies in winter. You’ve never looked more beautiful, and he’s transfixed, frozen in his spot, as you laugh and reach out, take his hand.
“Kei!” You say, your voice as firm as your grasp. “I love you, too.”
Sometimes, nothing else matters.