Archive of Our Own

Atsumu Miya has never met another Japanese person.

That’s actually a lie because he has a twin brother and parents and a handful of extended family members who are also Japanese, but it’s not far off from the truth, the truth being that Atsumu has never met a Japanese person who isn’t related to him.

He lives in a quiet, white neighborhood. Quiet and white means older adults grown out of the American dream and little to no one his age except for the one kid across the street who moved away years ago. That house has been collecting dust for a while both metaphorically and literally; the exterior used to be a much livelier blue but is now more periwinkle with a smattering of dirt streaks, and the inside is probably not much better. The realtor sign was only removed a few weeks ago, and Atsumu is admittedly a little apprehensive about the identity of the buyer. It’s between a tired old man wasting his pension or a white couple who are looking to further gentrify the already gentrified house, but it’s all up to the will of God, who loves to fuck with Atsumu.

He is surprised to discover a few days later that it is neither. He peers outside the living room window and notices a middle-aged woman with the curliest black hair he has ever seen and a taller, male version of her with shorter, equally curly hair. The woman is holding a key. She uses the key to open the front door. Atsumu has finally solved the mystery.

“Are those Japanese people,” Osamu comments from behind Atsumu.

Atsumu blinks. “I think those are Japanese people, ‘Samu.”

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit,” he agrees.

This is a big deal. Their parents will be ecstatic, and in fact, their mother is walking out the door as they speak. Oh my god, they both think. Oh my god is right.

Haruyo Miya is similar in personality to an overbearing aunt. She is good to her family and even better to other families. She leaves trick-or-treaters Ferrero Rochers instead of the garbage from Costco, and they always disappear suspiciously fast for a neighborhood with about three children in it. She is nice to her husband and children. She learned how to make a casserole eight years ago but forgot after a month. She is what people call a good person.

On the other hand, Hidetaka Miya is a recluse man who spends more time in his study than in any part of his house. He counts as a good person too, but not enough people know him well enough to say that about him. Most of his acquaintances know him well enough to ask if he works in IT though, to which he has to reply in the positive.

Across the street, the new neighbors seem fine with Haruyo. Maybe not the boy because he looks like he wants to leave, but his mother seems enthusiastic enough. Perhaps Haruyo will invite them over for holiday dinners. She has been wanting to do that for a long time.

“Her name is Ryoko Sakusa, and you will call her Sakusa-san,” Haruyo reminds Atsumu, handing him a large plastic box full of banana muffins. “Her son’s name is Kiyoomi. Don’t forget. Make a good first impression.”

She had made the muffins earlier in the day. They had been sitting around on the kitchen counter for a greater part of the morning in a large tupperware container, confusing the fuck out of Osamu, Atsumu, and Hidetaka in that order. But now Atsumu knows and also regrets knowing because Haruyo sends him out of the house to be the messenger of her goodwill.

Outside, the June heat presses against Atsumu’s arms and legs like a clingy child. The house across the street glares at him, and he, with all the anger of a teenager with no heat tolerance, glares back.

Kiyoomi opens the door, a deep scowl etched into his face. “Why did you ring the doorbell three times,” is the first thing he says. His eyebrow is raised. His hand is on his hip. His stupid hair is falling into his stupid eyes. Atsumu decides he is interesting.

“No,” he tries and hands over the container. Kiyoomi does not take the container. For all it’s worth, he glowers at it.

“What do you want.”

At this point, his mother decides to greet Atsumu at the door with all the smiles missing from Kiyoomi’s face and tells Atsumu to call her Ryoko because she doesn’t care about honorifics, but Atsumu doesn’t tell her that he’s still going to call her Sakusa-san in his head because he feels bad.

What’s in there, Ryoko asks. Banana muffins, Atsumu replies. Why don’t you come in for a snack, Ryoko asks. It’s okay, Atsumu replies. I insist, Ryoko insists. Atsumu knows better than to decline when an Asian woman insists you do something; which is to say, he tucks the container back under his arm and trails after Ryoko into her kitchen.

She fishes a cup out of the cabinets, filling it with water from the refrigerator. “Your mom told me your name is Atsumu,” she says in Japanese and appears promptly alarmed when Atsumu looks at her with a face that says he has never spoken a lick of Japanese in his life.

“Sorry,” she switches back to English, offering Atsumu a glass of water that he accepts gingerly and a cookie that Atsumu declines.

Ryoko makes good small talk, he realizes. She knows when and how to ask questions and to talk about herself and it’s apparent that Kiyoomi was unable to inherit this trait, revealed by his face (crumpled in discomfort) and posture (hunched over like a very long fish hook). She retreats into her room after a while on the business of doing work, and she leaves the tray of cookies on the kitchen table along with suggestions of getting to know each other which Kiyoomi does not take.

After a pitiful silence, Kiyoomi sighs. “Are you going to stay any longer?”

“Maybe.” Atsumu grins, crossing his arms and leaning against the kitchen counter. “Would your mom be mad if I took a cookie?”

“Just take it,” Kiyoomi says, wrapping one in a paper towel and shoving it in his direction.

Atsumu laughs, raising an eyebrow. “C’mon, that’s not polite,” he says as he accepts the cookie. “I am a guest in your house, which means you should be at least a little nice.”

“We are the same age. It doesn’t seem to matter to you either if I have something to say about it.”

Atsumu whistles. “That’s harsh.”

“Get out of my house.”

Atsumu grins wider. “Fine. You’ll still have to see me when you have to return the box,” he declares and walks out the door, notwithstanding the many things he would’ve liked to say to Kiyoomi to annoy him. Perhaps he’ll use them on a later day.

“Ugh,” he hears Kiyoomi say as the door clicks closed behind him.

Atsumu snickers all the way home, which isn’t a long walk, but it’s enough to make him look forward to messing with Kiyoomi the next time he sees him.

“I feel like you left this last time just to bother me into doing this,” Kiyoomi says, standing on Atsumu’s porch with Haruyo’s Tupperware container.

Kiyoomi is at Atsumu’s house to return the container. His face scrunches in discontentment, and he recoils when Atsumu leans in closer to take the container out of his hands, and Atsumu finds this the slightest bit funny, if not for the fact that Kiyoomi is visibly displeased every time Atsumu opens his mouth. Something about this fascinates him. Maybe he’s finally lost his mind, but God is already at his doorstep like a solicitor. Meeting new people is cool and fun. You need more friends. He’s pretty cool and fun, God advertises. Shut the fuck up, God. You don’t have to tell me twice.

“I’m offended you would think so lowly of me,” Atsumu laughs, leaning his elbow into the doorframe. Kiyoomi glares at him like he killed his mother, which is not what happened. Ryoko is alive and well. Ryoko probably sent Kiyoomi here because she is at work and she seems like a sensible person, unlike her son who if given the choice, would never look at Atsumu again.

“I’m leaving,” Kiyoomi declares.

“Aw, that sucks,” Atsumu huffs, loud enough to make sure Kiyoomi hears. Kiyoomi turns back around, and Atsumu chuckles under his breath, hand covering his mouth.

“What do you mean by ‘that sucks’.”

“We should get to know each other,” Atsumu says, shrugging. “It’s gonna be boring without anyone to talk to.”

Kiyoomi’s grimace betrays him as if to acknowledge Atsumu’s words. He sighs once and runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t you have a brother?”

“It’s different because we’re related,” he explains. Kiyoomi crosses his arms, unimpressed.

“Sure.”

“I’m serious,” Atsumu responds, sounding not-at-all serious. “Wouldn’t it be fun?”

Kiyoomi scowls. “No.”

“It would. I’m not that bad, aren’t I?”

“You are. Have a terrible day,” Kiyoomi says, lips curling up almost too slightly to be noticed, and turns around for the second time, stuffing one hand in his pocket and raising the other to wave at Atsumu.

He laughs. “How inconsiderate!”

June phases into July faster than a goddamn Nascar race.

The Miya and Sakusa houses begin to see new visitors, and Atsumu’s room starts to smell a little more like hot asphalt and Kiyoomi and less like the ink he spilled on his textbook during finals week. This is good for many reasons, one of which is that Kiyoomi smells faintly like lemons and freshly cut grass. It’s a big step up from dried ink, and Atsumu thanks any and every higher power for the upgrade.

Sometimes when he goes to Kiyoomi’s house, he is writing in some workbook or another, head buried in notes and scratch paper. Whenever Kiyoomi notices him, he puts everything away.

Atsumu admires him for it, frankly. He’s lazier than the average student if Haruyo has anything to say about it. She’s always seemed a little reluctant to force Atsumu to study though, so he gets away with a few scoldings from her every time he bombs a test. It’s a good life, but every so often, people like Kiyoomi come around and make him want to be them.

It’s not to say Kiyoomi is perfect, but rather that he’s the Asian standard in human form, and that’s enough to make Atsumu need him and need to learn him.

“Wanna go somewhere?”

Kiyoomi scoffs. “No.”

“Why not.”

“No.”

“Wrong answer. We’re going to Rita’s.”

Kiyoomi has a big bike. It’s something like twenty-eight inches tall, which, if Atsumu recalls correctly, is really fucking tall. Kiyoomi is tall too, but not tall enough for a bike that large, but it doesn't matter to him because he’s ridiculously fast, leaving Atsumu with no choice but to follow behind on his old skateboard with a loose wheel.

He chats sparingly on the way there, mostly because Kiyoomi looks like he’s concentrating on trying not to fall over while also trying to admire the scenery that consists of rows and rows of McMansions and gangly trees overlaying a sky so orange it’s on fire. It’s a pretty view, sure, but Atsumu is accustomed to it after revisiting all the ups and downs of this particular street his entire life.

The Rita’s by his house is a little run-down, if not bordering on dirty. Only two people work there, both of whom are familiar enough with Atsumu that they recognize his face whenever he walks into the store. The wallpaper is peeling and the vinyl flooring probably has mold growing on the underside, but it’s about as familiar as shops get. Atsumu has his order down to a tee, and Kiyoomi gives him a weird look when he recites it in one breath (gelati-with-root-beer-Italian-ice-and-vanilla-custard-regular-sized-please-thank-you) with perfect accuracy to the cashier.

It takes three minutes for both of them to get their order, which is a surprisingly short time considering the person who made their orders is the one who works slower.

(Atsumu knows. He has ordered with both of them. He knows both of their names. They both know his name. It’s a great situation.)

Kiyoomi squints at the sky. “How are we going to get home in the dark.”

Atsumu bites off the top half of the custard dollop on his gelati. “We’ll figure something out.”

“That’s not helpful.”

They talk outside the storefront until the sky goes dark purple. Talking means Atsumu rambling about anecdotes from school or the meaning of existence and life and Kiyoomi making sounds of acknowledgment to prove he hasn’t fallen asleep. Talking means Atsumu trying to fill the silence with stupid jokes and Kiyoomi threatening him until he stops laughing. Talking means Atsumu getting bored of filling the silence and drinking the melted root beer in his cup. Talking means Kiyoomi doing the same with his melted lemonade ice.

Half of the lamps stationed along the street are too dim to serve their purpose, and they can barely see their feet, so Atsumu comes up with the genius idea of using the flashlight on his phone to get home, and Kiyoomi can’t do anything but agree because he really can’t think of anything better.

Atsumu holds out his shitty phone flashlight as he goes as fast as he can on his shitty skateboard while Kiyoomi tails him with his bigass bike, going so slow it looks like he might actually fall over. Atsumu steps on the ground every two seconds, and Kiyoomi mumbles something about him looking like a child learning how to scooter, to which Atsumu takes massive offense.

“I’m gonna turn off the flashlight,” he warns.

Kiyoomi scoffs. “We’re both going to get stuck here then. Maybe think before you speak.”

Atsumu balks, turning off his flashlight with no hesitation. “At least I know the way back. I could leave you here.”

“Can you even see?”

Atsumu turns the light back on. “I never win,” he huffs.

“Nope,” Kiyoomi replies, popping the p. Atsumu just knows he did so with a straight face, like a motherfucker.

Just like the ride there, the ride back falls into quiet. Atsumu lights up the road, his skateboard wheel bouncing around on the asphalt, and Kiyoomi follows, his bike chain clicking in a steady rhythm.

Turns out, it’s not so bad after all. Kiyoomi’s silence is not the same kind of silence as many other people’s. While everyone else’s silence is cold and rigid and harsh, his silence is more like jello in that it doesn’t become uncomfortable. Even after it has persisted for minutes, it is just how it started—warm, mellow, and malleable. Atsumu likes it better than any other variation of silence, and if he’s feeling brave, better than most variations of music.

They say simple goodbyes when they reach home. Atsumu parts with root beer still on his lips and best wishes on his tongue, lingering as he watches Kiyoomi enter his house through the garage. As the last of the day’s light seeps out of the sky, Atsumu stares up at the few stars littering the wide expanse overhead, wondering when he last did this.

Hint: it had been a long, long time.

“What are you gonna do after high school?” Atsumu asks one day in Kiyoomi’s kitchen, bored.

His hair is still wet from his post-swim shower, but Kiyoomi’s is not because he didn’t go in the pool. Somehow he had allowed Atsumu to drag him all the way there just to watch him kick his legs in the water as he talked to Kiyoomi who sat under an umbrella with a thick book.

“Go to college, obviously.” After a moment of silence, Kiyoomi stares at Atsumu quizzically. “Aren’t you?”

Atsumu fiddles with a strand of his hair. “I dunno. Probably. I don’t have much of a goal.”

Kiyoomi sits at the bartop counter, resting his head in the crook of his elbow. “You know, that must be nice,” he mumbles.

“What’s that supposed to mean.”

Kiyoomi shrugs. “The pressure,” he says as if it’s the simplest thing in the world which is seriously confusing because it really is not. “It’s hard.” He grimaces. “I sound like such an asshole right now.”

“Of what?” Atsumu asks, unphased.

“Of needing to get into a college. To get into a good college,” says Kiyoomi as he toys with his hands. “My mom cares.”

“She didn’t seem like that kind of person.”

“She grew up poor and Asian,” Kiyoomi says, resignation seeping into his voice and hunched shoulders. “You know how it is.”

Atsumu admits that in the back of his mind, there’s always been something like that. His father’s I want you to go somewhere goods and the it’d be nice if you could go to an Ivys and conversely his mother’s I’ll support you in whatever you decide to dos that only serve to make him feel more guilty for not knowing where he’s going and what he’s doing, and of course, the pressure gets amplified somewhere along the way because Atsumu’s mind works like a faulty calculator. He’s aware of this, but he does not know how to repair faulty calculators which by extension means he does not know how to repair a faulty mind. So he knows how it is, and Kiyoomi also seems to know how it is. Perhaps they have things in common.

“Yeah,” Atsumu attempts. It’s a pretty bad attempt, and Kiyoomi raises his eyebrow. Ah, Atsumu thinks. There is no getting past him.

“Why’d you even ask to begin with.”

He purses his lips. “I was just curious.”

Kiyoomi nods, occupying himself by eyeing his fingernails. They are strangely neat, Atsumu has discovered. It was among the first things he’d noticed about him.

“Why,” Kiyoomi persists. He is still eyeing his fingernails. His stupid hair is sweeping over his forehead. More things.

“Dunno. I just was. Don’t most people talk about these things?”

“Probably.” Kiyoomi tucks his legs under the stool and rests his chin in his palm, apparently bored of eyeing his fingernails. “Although most people where I used to live were more or less unfocused on school. They’re even worse than what you see in movies.”

“Huh.” Atsumu drags a hand through his hair, watching as it untangles. “I’ve lived here my whole life,” he continues. “It’s like—I’ve watched all my classmates grow up, and they’ve also watched me grow up. It’s useless trying to seem cool here because they all know about the weird things I did in elementary school.”

“Tough.”

Atsumu huffs, indignant. “Everyone’s a little stupid in elementary school. I bet you’ve done some weird shit. Like throwing up on someone in class—everyone’s done that.”

Kiyoomi laughs out loud. It’s bright and unafraid, and it fills the room. Atsumu stares at him.

“Did you just. Laugh. Because I threw up on someone in elementary school.”

Kiyoomi keeps laughing. He keeps a defensive hand over his mouth as he doubles over, nearly hitting his head on the counter. “Maybe,” he manages between heavy breaths.

Atsumu blinks. Then he starts laughing too. Then they are two boys in a kitchen in the middle of nowhere important, laughing their asses off about nothing in particular, and they don’t stop laughing until Kiyoomi runs out of breath, then Atsumu in succession. His chest hurts as he gasps for air, but everything feels perfect, not just in the way that Kiyoomi’s kitchen feels strangely like home, but also in the way that the sun hits them just right to rewrite them into the birth of the universe.

“God,” he says finally.

Kiyoomi shoots him a knowing look. “Who?”

Atsumu laughs again, lurching forward with each breath. “Christ, Omi.”

Kiyoomi takes his workbook to Atsumu’s house one day. It’s a thick one for some AP course that Atsumu knows he hasn’t taken yet, and Hidetaka compliments Kiyoomi’s diligence with a knowing glance in Atsumu’s direction. He should’ve seen it coming, because his father is a thing or two like Ryoko in that they believe in the power of education, and they’ve gotten along well talking about the benefits of standardized testing.

Kiyoomi himself doesn’t notice a thing and does his work at the kitchen table while Atsumu watches iCarly in the living room. Something about this situation reminds him of the one time his cousin did the same thing, and Hidetaka compared Atsumu to his cousin because that’s what parents do when they see another child doing schoolwork, although he seems to have mellowed since then. He does not execute the comparison verbally, preferring to do so via a raised eyebrow in Atsumu’s direction as he points his chin in Kiyoomi’s direction.

It’s enough to make him stir uncomfortably on the couch.

The thing is that Atsumu has always known that Kiyoomi is the better one out of the two of them. Don’t tell him to take it back, because it’s always been ingrained in him that the better student is the better person. He’s lived by this.

He has lived by many things, but this one has stuck around the longest because it’s the one thing he could never achieve. When he was younger, he’d been the star of the track team with Osamu trailing closely behind him. He was fast. He was so fast that he could run away from anything if he wanted to. He ran from homework. He ran from drama. He ran from arguments. He ran from so many things that everyone got tired of seeing him run.

When high school came, he didn’t run anymore. He came home every day with paper covered in red ink, and while his grades weren’t objectively horrible, they were subjectively horrible. His father was mad, his mother was disappointed, and while he had pride as an Asian, his parents had more, and that made all the difference.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Kiyoomi interrupts from the kitchen table. It is welcome, and Atsumu silently thanks him for it.

“Do you even have a penny?”

“No,” Kiyoomi says, but he searches his pockets anyway. “You just look a little troubled.”

“Troubled,” Atsumu repeats incredulously. “Do I?”

Shrugging, Kiyoomi scratches the side of his mouth. “You do. That’s what I’d think if you were a stranger walking down the street with that expression.”

Atsumu scrunches his nose. “Weird,” he says, and that’s the end of it.

“You’ve been hanging out with the Kiyoomi guy a lot recently,” Osamu says, shoveling cereal into his mouth. It is the middle of the night, and it’s ridiculous that they are both in the same place at the same time.

Atsumu leans against the counter with a glass of water. “I guess. You’re always at whatever-his-name’s house anyway.” He tips back half of the glass at once. “I just get bored at home.”

“You have other friends,” he points out.

“They have other friends too.”

Osamu looks up from his cereal. “And that’s a problem why?”

“You know how they are. They haven’t really bothered since I stopped with the Adam thing.”

Osamu raises an eyebrow and turns back to his cereal. “Then fuck outta there. You can find new friends.”

Atsumu stares at his feet. “That’s what I mean. Who better than him? He’s smart. He’s diligent. He’s not gonna judge me for not being Adam. He’s everything I’m not. For fucks sake, he doesn’t even know about the Adam thing.”

Osamu doesn’t reply. The quiet trudges onward, interrupted by the periodical hum of the air conditioning. The clock reads 2:49 AM, and Atsumu should be getting to bed, but he’s tossed and turned all night and he doesn’t expect that to change because he went downstairs and spoke a few words.

“You gonna sleep?”

“Nah. I’m not tired.”

Osamu makes a noise of acknowledgment, leaving his bowl in the sink, and trudges back upstairs. The AC quiets, and Atsumu stays against the counter staring at his feet as the light overhead illuminates the aimless dust particles left in the room. Silence, and he drains the rest of the glass.

Here is the story behind the Adam thing—nobody could pronounce Atsumu’s name.

It had been a series of events:

“Ah-some-woo,” said Jake from kindergarten.

“At-soom-oo,” said Allison from first grade.

A-tsu-mu. A-tsu-mu. A-tsu-mu. He doesn’t remember how many times he had repeated it.

“Can I call you Adam,” said Mrs. Stevens from first grade. It was not meant as a question, but Atsumu agreed anyway.

He told Osamu later that day to call him Adam from then on. It had seemed like a rational decision at the young age of six, and the short term effects were also beneficial because the stupid little kids thought he was cool because they could finally pronounce his name.

He told his mother once that he wanted to change his name. She was reasonably confused until he had explained why, and when she heard, she blanched like she had just seen the root of all the world’s problems. She asked him why again.

“Because it sounds better,” was his answer.

He thought he heard his mother crying that night. He couldn’t understand why she was upset; Adam sounded better. His classmates could finally talk to him without needing to ask for the pronunciation of his name. She should’ve been happy for him. She should’ve.

(It took him nine years to understand why she cried. The day after, he reintroduced himself for the second time as Atsumu Miya.)

Haruyo once told Atsumu that life is full of surprises. Many other people have said the same, but they didn’t give Atsumu a hug and a cookie afterward, so he only listens to his mother.

It was one of the things he brushed off due to its philosophical nature. Atsumu has never been someone who listened to what the older generations would call accumulated wisdom. He lives by his own learnings and tries not to doubt them. It’d been fine so far. Life has not been full of surprises because Atsumu lives in the suburbs. There are no surprises. There have never been surprises in the suburbs.

Well, one surprise, but Atsumu still wouldn’t go as far as to say that life is full of surprises.

Kiyoomi himself is not surprising. He is just a boy with kempt nails, stupid hair, and bad posture. Nothing about him should be surprising, or staggering, or extraordinary—and yet, Atsumu finds himself believing he is.

This is the thing about Kiyoomi Sakusa. Atsumu would not have bothered with him if anything about him was different. He would not have bothered him if he wasn’t someone he wanted to become. Atsumu would not have pestered him to begin with which would not have led him to this point, so he doesn’t know whether to laugh or pity himself, but in the end, he finds neither fitting and instead chooses to lay face down on his bed until his nose hurts or until he stops thinking about it.

He doesn’t remember which happened first.

“Are you avoiding me,” Kiyoomi says over the phone.

“No,” Atsumu lies. “Why would you think that?”

“Because—you. Actually, nevermind.”

Atsumu stares at his phone screen, sighing. “Say it. I won’t mind.”

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Goodnight,” he says and hangs up before Atsumu can say it back.

Atsumu rubs his eyes. “God,” he mumbles to the emptiness of his room.

“Atsumu,” Haruyo says, and nothing else. She stands in the doorway of Atsumu’s bedroom, arms crossed, peering at him with an expression that could either mean you are in trouble, young man or you are in big trouble, young man .

“Yes,” Atsumu responds, raising his eyebrow.

“You’ve been holed up in your room for the past week, and Kiyoomi hasn’t been here either. Why do I feel like something happened with him?”

“Nothing happened,” he says, which technically isn’t far from the truth. “Actually.”

“I think you’re lying. Tell me about it,” she persists, moving to sit in Atsumu’s desk chair as if to show that she is not leaving.

“It’s dumb.”

“I know about plenty of the dumb things you’ve done.”

“Yeah, but it’s different. This is different.”

Haruyo sighs and turns in the chair to face him. “You never had a problem telling me these things in middle school. I’m your mother. I’m not going to judge you. I’m just worried about you. Seriously.”

“I don’t know. It’s just,” Atsumu pauses, searching for words. “It’s just stupid. For me, I guess. I don’t know.”

She nods. “Did you two fight?”

“No,” he says, and proceeds to groan, laying back onto his bed and forcing his fingers through his hair.

“So you didn’t fight.”

“I just said that,” Atsumu notes miserably.

“So Kiyoomi did something that bothered you?”

Atsumu rubs his eyes so hard he sees spots. “It’s not that either.”

In Haruyo’s eyes is something that looks distinctly like pity. Her eyebrows knit, and she hunches over in the chair, elbows resting on thighs. “What happened?”

“Remember when he brought his, like, AP Euro workbook or something?” Haruyo nods, and Atsumu lets his eyes close.

“Right, so he was doing his work, and Dad came by and gave me this look that’s just like,” Atsumu clears his throat, feeling his eyes sting, “oh, you’re unintelligent, look at this guy who can do things better than you and get into a better college than you and live a better life than you. Look at this guy who can take care of his parents better than you. And like, I know how much he does this, but it hurts every time. It sucks. It sucks.”

What he doesn’t say is that he’s mad that his father was right; that Kiyoomi is an amalgamation of everything he knows his parents want him to be, and that it hurts this much because he seeks comfort in knowing that someone like Kiyoomi can be around someone like him. 

He stops to breathe and wipes his eyes. Haruyo comes to sit at the edge of his bed, pulling him up and rubbing his back. Atsumu thinks this may be even more embarrassing than his actual feelings.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs. “It’s okay.”

Haruyo rubs long strokes up and down Atsumu’s back, and he notices the tear stain on her shoulder, and it’s like all the times this has happened when he was younger and cried onto her shirt.

“I understand. I do,” she continues. “Your dad is just worried about you. He wants you to be successful. You may not be as smart as Kiyoomi, but there are other things you’re good at. Things happen, even to the best of us.”

“Things happen,” Atsumu parrots.

“Things happen.”

“Oh.”

“Mhm.” Haruyo pulls away and smooths out his hair. “Don’t let Kiyoomi be the reason you start doubting yourself. You and Osamu are the best sons your dad and I could ask for.”

Atsumu smiles halfheartedly, eyes still red. “I know, Ma.”

Haruyo smiles back, pity strewn all over her face. She pats his shoulders once and stands up. “Whatever happens, I know you’re strong enough to get through it.”

“Yeah,” Atsumu says. The word carries no weight. “I guess,” he adds quietly.

Haruyo nods, lips pressed in a line, and shuts the door behind her. Atsumu listens to her footsteps disappear, and he returns to the more comfortable position of lying down and staring at the ceiling.

He recalls that there used to be posters and drawings on it, but they have long since been removed as a side effect of growing up. His parents had helped him attach and detach them; they stood on his bed and pried them off slowly to not damage the paint job, but they ended up creating a small chip near the center of the ceiling. Osamu had laughed at him for an entire minute, but Atsumu didn’t mind the chip because it made his room look lived-in.

There were no surprises back then. There was no Kiyoomi either, but he is so closely entwined with the definition of surprises that Atsumu considers them the same entity. Nonetheless, it’s a process of living. One day he’ll also understand the meaning of things happen , but for now, he’ll settle with knowing all the things his mother has said will connect in some way or another.

Ryoko fumbles through her cabinets and finds six cups, not a single one matching the other five. She fills them with water and brings them over to the table in one trip, which is a miracle in its own right. Atsumu has thought three separate times that she would drop them in the ten seconds they were in her hands.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Haruyo asks, absolutely delighted.

She was just holding cups, Atsumu wants to say. He does not say it because it would be rude, but also because she has been excited to go over to the Sakusas’ for dinner, and Atsumu isn’t that much of an asshole.

Ryoko shrugs, wiping her hands off on her pants. “I worked part-time at a restaurant back in college.”

“How cool!”

Ideally, Atsumu would not be here. Hidetaka looks like he’s itching to talk to Kiyoomi but is holding back, and Atsumu hopes he can keep holding back because he doesn’t want to hear any more talk of college and AP classes. The reality is just that he wants to run away from his problems, but he is sitting at a table with two reasons why he can’t run anymore.

Osamu looks at him like he knows something is wrong because something is sort of wrong, but Atsumu won’t say it out loud, although Osamu knows that too. He shoots Atsumu a pointed look, and he returns it with a sharp glare and a kick under the table.

“What,” Osamu hisses.

Atsumu kicks him again. “Stop that,” he hisses back.

Kiyoomi raises his eyebrow at them from the other corner of the table. He doesn’t say anything about it and instead decides to drink from his glass of water with the band of pink screen-print around the top.

“Kiyoomi-kun, what kind of classes are you taking next year?” Hidetaka asks, apparently tired of holding back.

Kiyoomi provides a clipped, quiet response and transitions back to sitting in silence, listening to the adults talk about stocks or some other adult thing Atsumu doesn’t understand, although it’d be fair to say he doesn’t understand most other things either.

Haruyo looks at Atsumu, concerned, her eyes flitting between him and his father and Kiyoomi, who is sitting there picking at his rice. She pats his knee under the table, still talking to Ryoko about work while occasionally asking Hidetaka for an opinion. She is a good conversationalist, just like Ryoko—good at keeping a pleasant face and talking when there is silence to be filled.

“Kiyoomi-kun, how have you been?” she asks.

Another short response. Atsumu wonders how he can look so uncomfortable in his own home, but then again, he has asked Atsumu if he was avoiding him to which he answered no, which in this situation ends up meaning yes, so it had been uncomfortable enough.

The conversation veers off the topic of stocks and work. Hidetaka asks about where the Sakusas used to live and discovers all the niceties of the northeast. Ryoko asks Osamu and Atsumu about their hobbies. It all becomes a buzz in the background as Atsumu sits, staring listlessly at the table, vision blurring around the edges as he stops focusing his eyes.

It’s nice until his father snaps him out of it with a snappish “Atsumu.” Hidetaka raises his eyebrow—a silent instruction to straighten up and look like he cares. Atsumu presses his mouth into a line and straightens his back. It cracks in the process. Kiyoomi looks at him. He looks away.

By the time all the dishes have been deposited into the sink, it is late at night. Atsumu has spoken a grand total of three or five words the entire night—very unlike him—and he’s dying to get out of this goddamn dining room because it’s more stifling than it has ever been before. He excuses himself to the bathroom without lingering to listen to Ryoko give directions.

He finds it eventually. It’s the last door in the farthest hallway, which he deems faulty interior planning. He stares himself down in the mirror, and the shallow wrinkles on his face are on display, reminding him of the past few days he’s spent staring at the ceiling. He tears his gaze away, head hanging low, close to the bowl of the sink, and rubs a layer of cold water over his face. When he unfurls himself to standing and rolls his shoulders, his back cracks again.

Outside the bathroom, the energy seems to have died down. Atsumu can’t hear much more than a few quiet colloquies and forces himself back to the dining room. Kiyoomi is wiping the table, and Atsumu momentarily considers returning to the bathroom.

“Atsumu,” he says.

“Not right now,” Atsumu answers, as if he is busy which he clearly is not.

Kiyoomi pauses in his movements for a moment, blinking. He does not reply and returns to his task.

Atsumu shoves his hands in his pockets. Osamu is nowhere to be seen, and Atsumu has half a mind to go find him, but he lingers to offer a quiet “sorry” to Kiyoomi, who looks up to open his mouth to say something but cuts himself off, pressing his lips together and rubbing harder at a spot on the table. Atsumu nods to himself.

So this is how it’s going to be, he thinks, turning on his heel to look for Osamu.

He supposes he’ll live with it.

Turns out, life is full of surprises.

This is what Atsumu thinks when the doorbell rings and he just knows it’s Kiyoomi standing outside the door. It’s what he means when he considers him the very idea of life is full of surprises .

Atsumu doesn’t get the door for a long time, wringing his hands red. They grow sweaty, and when Kiyoomi rings the doorbell for the second time, Atsumu has to wipe them on his pants.

Kiyoomi rings a third time. Haruyo yells at Atsumu to get the door which means she is probably trying to encourage him, so Atsumu gets his metaphorical ducks in a row and goes to open the door. The first thought that comes to mind is that Kiyoomi rang the doorbell three times; the second thought is that he looks a little remorseful.

“You look like shit,” is what Kiyoomi says first.

Atsumu does look like shit, at least to some degree. His hair sticks up in all directions, and he doesn’t remember the last time he changed his shirt.

He tries his best smile, but from the look on Kiyoomi’s face, his best isn’t very convincing. “Do I?”

“Yes,” answers Kiyoomi. “You do.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Atsumu scratches his nose in a feeble attempt to cover his face. “I’m not avoiding you. I promise.”

“That’s bullshit. What did I do.”

Atsumu is stunned for a moment, then steps outside and closes the door behind him. “It wasn’t you,” he begins.

Kiyoomi rakes his hand through his hair and looks at Atsumu. “I don’t care if it wasn’t me. I still need to hear it.” He looks back at his feet.

Atsumu’s cornered. He sits down on the stairs leading to his front door and watches as Kiyoomi follows, settling down to the side of him. Something about the way Kiyoomi looks at him makes him want to spill his guts. He doesn’t look like the same person who opened his front door in June with a face full of disgust; he looks different somehow—softer, more empathetic. It makes Atsumu lose his words for a moment.

He explains all the things he’s been hiding from. It’s not pretty; it’s like water dripping down the sides of an open mouth and staining everything around it, but it forces everything out from their hiding places in his body.

In this context, everything means everything. Everything means the workbook thing and the Asian thing and the Adam thing and all the things in between. More specifically how he stopped running and how he admired Kiyoomi and how his father looked at him with the same disappointment that teachers use on misbehaving children.

Kiyoomi keeps looking at him, and it’s like he grows warmer and softer with every word, and for a split second Atsumu wants to take his restless hands in his own equally restless hands and keep themselves from falling apart.

“You were insecure because of me?”

Atsumu rubs his fingers over his nose. “I never meant for you to know.”

Kiyoomi sighs. “Look at me,” he says, swallowing down a lump in his throat, placing his hands firmly on Atsumu’s cheeks. “You may be annoying, and talkative, and witless, but you’re still amazing. I don’t care if you get straight Cs or some shit.” Kiyoomi avoids his eyes, brows furrowed. “You’re still you.”

Oh. Oh.

What’s happening is that Kiyoomi is holding his face in front of his front door while he looks the most pathetic he has ever seen him. It’s cliche, but he can’t find it in himself to mind because everything falls into place, cliche or not, and maybe Atsumu likes him, just a little bit. Maybe this is why he thought he wanted to be him. Maybe this is why he kind-of-sort-of wants to kiss him, and why Kiyoomi looks like he kind-of-sort-of wants to kiss Atsumu.

Kiyoomi shifts his eyes away, clearing his throat. “But do you know?” he persists awkwardly, hands unmoving, and it sounds like he’s trying really hard to keep his voice from cracking. “Despite everything, your dad would probably be more disappointed in me than you’d think. Do you think I was born with a 1600 on the SAT? I wasn’t. I used to fail classes. I used to not know English. And every Asian kid grows up believing they’re a failure. I still think I am one sometimes, and it never fucking changes.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Why wouldn't I be.”

“You make it sound like you’re lying.”

Kiyoomi scoffs. “Have I ever lied to you?”

“I guess not,” Atsumu manages. Then, softly, “Can I kiss you?”

Kiyoomi nods weakly.

Here, Atsumu is home. Obviously he is at home, but now he’s home home. In Kiyoomi he has found understanding and he is reminded of things happen because something is happening, and that something is really, really good. Atsumu, overridden with the confidence of a self-proclaimed legend, presses his hands onto Kiyoomi’s face and shifts closer to him, and during a brief epiphany, he realizes he’s pretty far gone.

Kiyoomi pulls away breathless, a foreign red all over his face. He does not say anything, just blinks into space.

“Hi,” Atsumu says intelligently. “So about that—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Kiyoomi mutters under his breath.

Atsumu laughs and turns to sit properly on the steps again. “I think I’m gonna die.”

“It’s not that easy,” Kiyoomi says flatly. “If that was real I’d have done that a long time ago.”

“I am actually going to die, I don’t think you understand.”

“Sure you are.”

Atsumu scoffs lightly and closes his eyes. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“Omi.”

“What.”

“Do you wanna know something?”

Atsumu is lying on his stomach on his bed, Kiyoomi in the desk chair. It is August. School is a few weeks away. The neighborhood is slowly but surely returning to the steady buzz of work-life and reluctant productivity.

Kiyoomi offhandedly examines the mess on Atsumu’s desk, not bothering to turn around and look at Atsumu. “Sure,” he replies.

“I thought you were amazing when we first talked—like actually talked. You were this,” Atsumu pauses, his lips quirking upward, “this model Asian. College, motivation to go to college—I mean, you had it all. I think I wanted to be you.”

“That’s not what I expected.”

“No,” Atsumu agrees. “I wouldn’t have expected it either, but it happened anyway.”

Kiyoomi nods. There is a lull in the conversation, and Atsumu lays his head in the crook of his elbow. Kiyoomi still smells like lemons and freshly cut grass, and Atsumu wouldn’t have it any other way as he stares out the window at Kiyoomi’s rooftop. Ryoko is probably there alone, working in her study; Atsumu believes that Kiyoomi takes after his mother in terms of diligence, the relative opposite of someone like himself who wishes he could be like them. 

An unshakeable truth: he thinks he will learn to accept it in time. He hasn’t allowed himself, in his whole seventeen years of living, to make a habit of tearing himself apart, and he won’t ever allow it, not in the foreseeable future.

“Atsumu, do you want to know something?”

Atsumu nods.

“Would you believe me if I said I almost wanted to be you too?”