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It’s hard sometimes, to realize. How lonely he’d always been. How different things are now that he’s not.
His walks to school leave small flutters in his chest when he rounds the corner to see her waiting there. In the heat of summer she shields her eyes and squints to find him. He gives a little wave and sometimes thinks of gifting her some sun hat the next time he’s able, but the idea is gone the moment he catches how her face shines with her happiness, so much more than the blinding sun. All because he’s there to meet her.
Even in the rain, as she holds her umbrella, its weight sometimes tipping from her hand, she scrambles to wave back to him.
It’s only right that he runs to her.
Sometimes they hold hands. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes he’ll look down only to find her looking up, their eyes meeting before they descend into embarrassed laughter.
It’s so much easier now, at her side like this.
He can’t help but think of past morning walks to school. Of dragging his feet. Of a loneliness that weighed him down even when someone was at his side. Of the whispers around him, about him, that he’d answer with a smile. Of wanting so badly to go home before he’d even walked through the school entrance.
Even before the feeling of rightness had become so entwined with their hands held together, she’d changed all that for the better.
He’s so happy, that a little voice that still lives in his past can only ever say that it’s wrong.
“Shima-kun.”
She squeezes his hand, and draws his attention down, out of the storming clouds blowing into his head. There’s nothing for her to say, only to look at him with a gentle smile. She must have noticed, she’s gotten better at doing so, the way he so easily gets lost in his own thoughts, both good and bad.
He squeezes back and answers.
“Mitsumi-chan.”
They fall into a new routine.
Though it takes a year, at least for him, to feel like he’s not about to fall apart from it.
University is fun. His new friends are genuine. He sees Mukai during lunch and enjoys their time chatting about the girls and the pains of their classes.
He’s begun to think, with so much good, he must be selfish for beginning to feel lonely again.
He’s needy. He craves reassurance. He wants her when he knows he can’t have her. He’s been given a taste of sincerity and comfort in the form of another person and suddenly he can’t have enough. Even though he gets to see her on weekends.
Sometimes they get dinner but most of the time it’ll be lunch. After, they’ll visit a park, stroll together and simply enjoy catching up. Though sometimes they’ll go shopping, her for the specific pens she likes to take her notes with, him for a new notepad or two. Other times they’ll see a movie that’s sparked at least one of their interests.
A few times they’ve gone back to her place. A small portion of those times, when Nao-san isn’t home.
It’s during one of those rare times that she tells him she can’t see him the next weekend or the one after that he realizes he might not be holding it together.
He understands why and can’t fault her for it. He knows how important her studies are, how competitive the world is, how cruel it can be even to those who sacrifice and work as hard as they can. Yet he recalls their third year of high school and the time before the Tokyo U entrance exams and all he can think of is the sting of loneliness. The missing her and missing her and feeling like he’d lost something so important just as he found it. At the time he’d thought how rightful a punishment it would be for him after it had taken him so long to figure out the portion of his feelings where she was concerned only after hurting her. She deserved success yet he wanted, so selfishly, he wanted her. Needed her.
Back then though he’d simply smiled and wished her luck, and tried not to show on his face how much their time apart pained him.
This time, he must not do a very good job.
Her face wobbles and she reaches for him, his head ends up in the crook of her neck with arms wrapped around his back. The fabric of his polo is clutched between her fingers. His run along the out seam of her jeans. He tries to memorize the feeling, the warmth beneath it. Tries not to feel like simply not seeing her is equivalent to losing her. That missing her will chase her away.
“‘m sorry,” he mouths against her skin, unsure if she hears it, unsure if he knows what he’s really apologizing for. His sulking or himself.
“I’ll message you,” she offers, “And we can video call at night.”
He pushes his weight forward until she’s trapped beneath him against the couch.
“You don’t have to,” he exhales, trying to keep his voice steady, “You need to study.”
“Y-You’re allowed to be sad about it,” she says, seeing through him. “I am too.”
His throat sticks. He curls around her, already missing her.
“I’ll come see you straight after my last exam is over.”
He knows she will. She’ll probably run, tripping over herself to catch the train, bags beneath her eyes weighing her down after cramming the night before. They’ll hug after two weeks of sparse messages and LINE stickers, she’ll tell him about the craziest multiple choice question and he’ll let himself remember how it feels to see her in the flesh, forgetting the shadow he’d sat in without her.
But his lingering before whispers doubts in the darkest corners of his mind until they echo to the forefront that maybe she won’t.
“I know you will,” he argues to himself.
She turns her head to look at him like she has a question.
“I love you,” she instead says. “Shima-kun. I love—”
He seals her late night confession with a kiss and tries to take the words from her lips to keep in all the parts of him that doubt her.
“What’s this?” He asks from across the table, holding the rather large panda plushie.
“A mini Mitsumi!” She smiles, rather proudly, its shape a rather uncanny mirror of the panda’s own stitched smile. He can’t fight his own in reply.
“What’s the occasion?”
She flusters, and looks down at her coffee, “Ah…well, I thought- you know. It’s been hard, hasn’t it? Not seeing each other?”
He doesn’t reply, surprised she’s brought it up. He thinks of the last two weeks. Of not feeling her hand in his. Of his poor midterm exam scores. Of lying in bed thinking of everything about her and him and trying not to but eventually giving into the spiral of thoughts that’s haunted him since he was a kid. The thoughts that remind him she shouldn’t even be with someone like him.
“Yuzu-chan gave me the idea! It’s something to remind you of me when I’m not there.” Her cheeks are bright as she only barely stutters through her explanation. “Y-You don’t have to do anything with it! You could keep it on your desk or something!” She laughs, rather meekly.
The fluffy panda sits on the cafe table’s edge, looking up at him with black plastic eyes. He can’t help but think a fluffy cat would better capture Mitsumi’s essence. Yet the pitter-patter of his heart at the gesture makes the panda exude its connection to all things Mitsumi.
“Thank you,” he tells her, quietly. Sitting the plush in his lap before he reaches across the table to take her jittery hand. She settles, her nervous energy slipping from her easily, her fingers intertwining with his.
“You like it?” She asks, almost with the doubt that he even could.
“I do,” He tells her, and watches as she sighs in relief and then shines in pure bliss.
He makes a note to find a mini “Shima-kun” plush that looks like her dog back home.
They get better at it.
The loneliness and the loving and the being apart as well as the being together.
In their second year he gets an apartment. It becomes his first home and her second.
He walks through the door and doesn’t feel like he’s on eggshells. The doorbells rings and he doesn't run for the safety of his room.
They have their first real fight. It’s so far removed from the disagreements they had in high school that he’s shocked they had it in them.
Even more so when it ends when he suddenly finds he can’t breathe after she tells him she’ll be back and every inch of him doesn’t believe her.
He thinks of his father. Of smashed glass and shouting that echoed through his walls and skin. Of his mother’s tears and the desperation he felt to fix it. The empty seat at their table that neither his mother nor him could ever fix that led to her rebuilding a family without him.
When she comes back after her walk to cool her head, she finds him sobbing on the floor.
It’s in the aftermath that he gets better at telling her what he thinks he feels and what he’s afraid to. In turn she gets better at making time for them and including him in her vision of the future.
When they’re apart, for school, or his work and her internship, they message each other. Sometimes about something funny, or just a passing thought. Sometimes they’ll send each other pictures of Mini Mitsu-chan and Sato-chan. Sometimes he’ll send one as he lays in bed missing her, and he’ll follow the picture by letting her know. Sometimes - with a little bravery - she’ll reply with one of her own. One that leaves him wide awake and craving her in ways he wasn’t sure he could.
Sometimes they’ll kiss and kiss and kiss and he’ll be startled that it doesn’t feel wrong.
It’s in those moments he’ll wonder how they found each other, how it must have been a miracle that they did, how he must be doing something right if she hasn’t gotten sick of him yet. If he hasn’t completely screwed it up yet.
How he could have ever not thought of her like this, red tint to her skin with breath heavy against his pillows as he runs his fingers along her sides. It must tickle because she jolts, the little gasp she makes a secret just for him to keep. The first of many, he thinks - promises - as he kisses her some more.
When he shudders against her, spent and mildly embarrassed by how short it lasted, he thinks how it could only ever be Mitsumi. That no one else could be against his bare skin holding him so tightly, trembling with him, despite his faults. That no one else could’ve helped him make it to this moment, their noses brushing together as they simply breathe. He’s overwhelmed by it. How thankful he is that it was her. That his heart learned it could trust her in all of this. A world he thought he’d never belong to, much less take comfort in.
“...love you,” she sighs drifting to sleep, his fingers brushing her bangs softly from her face.
He replies, by pulling her ever closer.
He watches her accept her diploma, smile beaming across her face, as Fumi-chan and her parents clap furiously beside him and realizes with certainty, he wants to give her all the love he’s never had.
He knows he wants to marry her, has for awhile now. They’ve talked about it. Know they’re in each others’ futures. Yet it's seeing her take the biggest step towards her dream, barely containing her tears, absolutely beaming like a star - the kind he could only ever see during the nights they spent in her hometown - that he knows it’s not simply about being together.
He wants to make her happy.
Wants her to know that’s what he wants.
The realization sits on his mind during dinner with her family. He talks with Mitsumi’s sister and Nao-san and Nao-san’s fiancee and Mitsumi’s parents, and Fumi and feels like he might combust by the time he gets to her. Outside the restaurant he finds her enjoying the city’s evening air.
“Hi,” she whispers, as he slips beside her. Her cheeks look a tad red in the nearby light. She wraps around his arm and he snickers. Perhaps the color is more than just the alcohol.
“Hi.” He leans down to kiss her cheek, and then goes back for her lips when he sees no one else around. “I don’t think I said it yet but, congratulations.”
“You did,” she laughs, “This morning!”
“Maybe. But I just wanted to say it again.” He laces their hands together, as they’ve done time and time again. “Your hard work finally paid off.”
“Mmm.” She replies leaning against him. He notices her phone screen glowing beneath her chin and catches familiar names.
“Talking with Kurume-san and Murashige-san?”
“Oh, yeah…”
He catches her sadness, even as she smiles and shows him a picture of their two friends. “They just sent me this, isn’t it cute!”
The two girls in the picture smile with a graduation themed filter.
“It is.” He holds her hand a little tighter. “I’m sorry they couldn’t make it tonight.”
She clicks the phone off. “I-It’s okay, I knew they were both busy with work. We all said we’d plan for something next month. With Mika-chan too. A late graduation celebration for all of us.”
“That’ll be nice,” he agrees, to which she nods, and poorly hides a sniffle. He knew it’d be hard to get all their friends together before they headed to Ikajima with her family, but he’d still had his fingers crossed for her. With how few and far between they all saw each other, he knows how much of a privilege it is, waking up with her by his side. “Maybe she can drag Tsukasa too,” he adds.
She giggles, “Just like old times.”
He thinks of high school and the blossom of warmth and light he found the day they met and ran after each other. He thinks of finding her awe inspiring their first year and unreachable their second. He thinks of finding her beautiful their third and unable to remove her from the furthest reaches of his heart ever after.
“Yeah… but it’s a little different now, right?”
Her darkened eyelashes blink up at him, her hair a little longer than it used to be, sat upon her shoulders in a way she’d never let it when they were younger. She’s beautiful right now - a subtle touch of makeup across her face for the occasion - as she is in the early morning when she’s sat up all night with her phone light reading her notes ad nauseam even after promising him she’d go to sleep. As she is when she stands protectively nearby when his mother makes her monthly call. When she jumps up and down with such over-excitement when she sees him appear on the TV in one of his small time advertisement gigs. When she listens to his insecurities and feels safe enough to cry about her own.
“Because I love you,” he explains, for the first time in ever and watches as her expression shifts with a joy so soft and lovely across her features, he wonders why he hadn’t said with certainty sooner.
The little, old voice in his head he’s learned to keep quiet with practice, tries to remind him why, with extra spite.
But he ignores it, too busy gathering Mitsumi in his arms, knowing that once the tears stop running down her cheeks she’ll say it back with the ease she always has.
And this time he’ll finally be brave enough to believe it.