Work Text:
omohi araba
mugura no yado ni ne mo shinamu
hijiki mono ni ha
sode wo shitsutsu mo
"if you love me, sweet,
any weed-grown house will do:
come, lie down with me,
even if to spread beneath us
we have nothing but our sleeves."
Shinsuke meets Ojiro Aran on a Saturday afternoon, just a few weeks before high school begins. Their first interaction is not what most people would call a meet-cute. It’s a meet-practical more than anything else, but perhaps that’s fitting for them. It goes like this: All of the volleyball new recruits line up by the bleachers, and Aran and Shinsuke happen to stand beside each other. This makes them happen to be stretching partners, and then passing partners, and then when they’re finally allowed to choose their teammates for a mini practice match, they pick each other without a second thought.
It’s hard for Shinsuke to articulate why he feels comfortable around Aran so quickly. He’s normally at least a little paranoid around new people, the same way he’s at least a little paranoid a new dish will shatter or a new tire will pop, but being with Aran is easy right from the get-go. Maybe it’s because pop culture references also fly over his head, or because he clearly cares about the work he does. Maybe it’s because he’s a monster on the court but bereft of an ego that eclipses the Milky Way. Or maybe there is no reason—at least, not one that can be understood by a mere mortal.
Shinsuke and Aran get along well. That’s all there is to it.
They start spending time together outside of practice: boba runs, actual runs, study sessions. Whenever they do an activity that requires sitting for more than an hour, they set up camp at Aran’s place. It’s better this way. The Ojiro household is closer to Inarizaki, bigger, and always has freshly baked bread for them to snack on. Shinsuke’s house, on the other hand, has never felt much like a home.
(He tells Aran this one afternoon, and his friend goes quiet for a long time. Finally, he shakes his head and says, “That sucks, Shin.”
Shinsuke nods. “Yes, I suppose it does.”)
The years bleed together like cheap watercolors. Though Shinsuke knows that time doesn’t actually move faster as he gets older, it feels like it does. One moment, he’s a skinny fifteen-year-old, constrained to bench warming and congratulating his teammates from the sidelines, and the next, he’s being named team captain. His tears fall like rain that afternoon, springing from nowhere.
Shinsuke’s grandmother would probably argue that they come from everywhere. Her childhood teachings resurface in his mind more and more often as he gets older. Do things with care. Do things thoroughly. Scrub the toilet and sand the deck and wipe the tables—all for the gods.
When Shinsuke’s homeroom teacher asks him about his post-graduation plans, he pictures his grandmother’s face as he answers: “I’d like to run the family farm. The one back in the countryside.”
Fujisaki sensei tells him that’s a noble plan. Shinsuke responds that it’s not about nobility.
Unsurprisingly, Aran is supportive of Shinsuke’s decision. “That sounds wonderful. You’ll be great at whatever you choose to do.” After a gentle hum, he adds, “Also, I’ve always wanted to visit your family’s farm.”
They’re sitting under the kotatsu in the Ojiro family living room, textbooks open even though the test they’re studying for isn’t really of consequence to either of them anymore. Shinsuke’s signed himself up for five decades of manual labor and basic business skills. Aran’s practically in the back pocket of the Tachibana Red Falcons. Advanced calculus won’t be very applicable in either of their career fields.
“It’ll be my farm soon enough,” Shinsuke says, dropping his hands to his sides with a shrug. “My grandmother’s getting old, and my mother’s brother wants to move into the city within the next five years.”
Under the blanket, Aran drags his knuckles over the thin bones of Shinsuke’s wrist. The touch leaves as quickly as it comes. “Well, if it’s your farm, can I get an open invitation to visit?”
Shinsuke’s heart is lanced. “No,” he manages at last, pulling away from Aran, “an open invitation would disrupt our rhythm.” Nursing the self-inflicted wound in his chest, he amends, “But I could propose a few dates each year when you’d likely be able to come.”
Aran beams, flashing brilliant white teeth. He’s probably never had a cavity in his life. “I’d like that,” he says.
As they spend the next hour correcting each other’s problem sets, Shinsuke considers whether he should have intertwined their hands back under the kotatsu. He’s certain that Aran’s hand would’ve felt great in his own. But he’s also certain that complicating their relationship so close to graduation would do more harm than good. Aran’s leaving for the city; Shinsuke’s heading home to the country. Their schedules are going to be equally busy in polar opposite ways. It would be immensely difficult to maintain a relationship that satisfies both parties.
Better to not do something at all than do it without care, without follow through.
Shinsuke tells himself that the time will be right eventually. One day, he and Aran will be older, and wiser, and things will make sense. One day they will look each other in the eyes and they will just know. Waiting is hard for most people, but Shinsuke isn’t most people. He’s never been ordinary—and he says that in less of a “gifted child” or “volleyball monster” way and more of a “for the first four years of his life, he barely uttered a word.”
He’ll wait for Aran, even if Aran doesn’t ask him to. He’ll wait.
High school graduation is an emotional affair, which frustrates Shinsuke to no end. His parents make no effort to show, but his older sister sends him a thoughtful text, and his grandmother comes with a bouquet of flowers. She asks Aran to take their picture, then asks if he can print it out for them too.
“Baachan,” Shinsuke interrupts placidly, “Aran can message me the photo and I’ll print it out for us.”
His grandmother smiles. “Nonsense. Aran-kun’s a big boy now; he knows how to get a photo printed.” Turning toward her son’s friend, she says, “You can bring the print to me when you visit the farm one day, all right?” Shinsuke doesn’t have to see her cloudy eyes to know there’s a mischievous glint in them.
Aran gives her a ninety-degree bow, gives Shinsuke a hug goodbye, and then runs off to take another hundred photos with his family. As Shinsuke watches him disappear into the crowd, the sniffles start.
Though his grandmother’s visual acuity has gone over the years, her hearing remains stellars. She tugs on the hem of her grandson’s suit jacket to gather his attention, gestures for him to lean down once she’s got it, and then taps his forehead—her favorite, peculiar form of affection. “It’s all right, Shin-chan,” she says, all the years she’s lived rattling in her voice. “This is just the way things go. You’ve outgrown high school. This world is too small for you now, so you’re entering a new one. Both of you are.”
Shinsuke nods, but privately considers his grandmother’s words to be a bit backward. His world isn’t getting bigger. Objectively, it’s getting smaller. He’s leaving behind volleyball and all of the friends he made through it, returning to his crown roots of rice fields and tulip beds and a house without youshitsu. He’s isolating himself.
It will take a number of years for Shinsuke to understand his grandmother’s remarks. He will be peeling an orange while sitting on the deck of the old house, and the sun will be blazing, and as he brings the tough, pulpy skin of the fruit to his teeth, he will think to himself: Ah, so that’s what she meant. And then he will go about the rest of his day.
Shinsuke moves to the family farm in the countryside a month after he graduates high school. He takes one suitcase, a large duffle bag, and his old team backpack—because it’s still in great quality, because maybe he needs things like memories. His grandmother greets him at the front door and dramatically pokes his forehead as if she hasn’t seen him in years. Shinsuke meets his estranged uncle in the living room and learns that he’ll be the one showing him the ropes.
“Are you ready to put in the work?” his uncle asks the next day, over the snap of his green rubber gloves.
They’re standing in the middle of one of the rice fields. The muggy heat makes everything go cloudy, soft at the edges, and coupled with childhood nostalgia, the surrealism of it all is extreme. Shinsuke feels like he’s floating in a dream. Is this how his grandmother felt when she’d work the farm all those years ago as a young girl? Could she ever stop imagining her own grandmother’s hunched back, her father’s leathery brown hands?
He adjusts his large-brimmed sun hat. “Yes, I’m ready to work.”
“Oh, thank god, ‘cause I’ve been trying to move to the city for years now. The only thing stopping me was Ma. But now that you’re here, I can dash.”
“I’ll have to learn everything first,” Shinsuke reminds his uncle, not unkindly. “I don’t remember much of what baachan taught me over summers when I was young.”
His uncle waves a dismissive hand. “Ah, you’ll be fine, Shinsuke. You’re your mother’s son, and my sister was just about the best farmer these fields have ever seen.” Wiggling his jaw back and forth as if teething on a memory, or maybe a multiverse, he mumbles, “Sometimes I think about how things would’ve gone had she stayed.”
“Excuse me?” Shinsuke asks, even though he knows what he’s just heard.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” his uncle says, jaw snapping back into place. “Let’s start with the basics.”
Over the next two and a half years, Shinsuke learns to reap what he sows. He devotes himself to the fields: rice, tea, strawberry. He memorizes the tricks of the trade. He discovers that both crops and farmhands need specific tending in order to thrive, and he has nasty run-ins with heat stroke, and he remembers that before one can walk, let alone run, they must be able to crawl.
The agrarian lifestyle is back-breaking, but it offers consistent small joys. Sunrises that look like something out of a movie. Fruit so fresh it nearly breaks your heart. A community connected by the very things that nourish them—these plants they’ve raised together, watered together, cared for from farm to table. What could be more special than that?
A soft change in Shinsuke’s life comes in the form of the ballooning distance between him and Aran. They don’t talk anymore. Sure, Shinsuke carves out time to watch his friend’s games, even in the beginning when he’s a mere reserve player, and yes, sometimes Aran will send him a photo of a pretty flower he saw, but they don’t talk—not really, anyway.
Once in a blue moon, the stars will align and they’ll be able to call for a half or so. These moments are particularly lovely. If Shinsuke closes his eyes when they’re on the phone, it almost feels like Aran’s beside him again. They’re seventeen and they’re walking home from practice together, or they’re sixteen and they’re ordering coffee that’ll make Shinsuke’s hands shake, or they’re fifteen and they’re lined up beside each other on their first day of volleyball practice. Whatever the situation, they’re together.
But then Aran will have to get back to conditioning, or Shinsuke will have to help his uncle unload the truck, and the mirage breaks cleanly. They rush their goodbyes and promise to call again soon, though they never do. Never once do they discuss meeting up in person.
Aran could very well invite himself over any day of the week, but he never tries to do so, and they both know why: He’s waiting for Shinsuke to ask. He’s waiting for that promised invitation from all those years ago. But the time isn’t right yet. There is still so much for them to do apart from one another, so much growing they must accomplish on their own. Every time Shinsuke murmurs a “talk to you soon” at the end of their calls, he prays that Aran can read between the lines: “I haven’t given up. I’m just waiting, too.”
They keep getting older—all of them. The trees surrounding the house grow leafy green, burn to a bright orange, and then strip themselves bare to start all over again. Young couples become young parents. Shinsuke’s uncle leaves for the city, and Shinsuke himself watches the curve of his grandmother’s back deepen. As he passes bones at funerals, he thinks about how everything is transitory. Ichi-go ichi-e. They will never be here again.
For his twenty-second birthday, Shinsuke’s grandmother gifts him a set of watercolors. When he asks why, she flashes a gummy smile and says, “You seem like you have something on your mind. Why not try to paint it out?”
So Shinsuke starts trying exorcise his thoughts through art. This is easier said than done, and for a number of reasons. The first is that Shinsuke is not good at painting. His strokes are sloppy and uncoordinated, too hard at some points and too soft at others. He’s given himself to volleyball and then to the farm; to give himself to something entirely new at the oldest age he’s ever been is terrifying.
The second reason is that Shinsuke has a particular problem: He keeps painting the same thing. Over and over again. He’ll try for a self-portrait, and out comes wisteria. He’ll bring his brush down to the bristol for a butterfly, and there’s a cosmos. No matter what Shinsuke attempts, the end result is flowers: dozens of shapes, colors, and sizes, but always in bloom.
He starts dedicating himself to the blossoms. Studies their anatomy, watches YouTube tutorials about shading their petals. In other words, Shinsuke starts painting with purpose—that funny word. As fall turns to winter turns to spring, he begins to hang his paintings on his bedroom walls. And there’s something comforting about seeing his work all around him. It’s akin to standing in the middle of the rice field and knowing that he helped make this possible. This is life, and I have created it. This is life, and I am inside of it.
One evening in a brutally warm August, Shinsuke’s grandmother comes into his room to complain of a headache. The sight of his colorful walls knocks the pain right out of her.
“My goodness, Shin-chan, your paintings are beautiful.” She runs her hand along the piece closest to her: morning glories nestled in a glass vase. “I never wanted to peek into your room without your permission since you’re all grown up now, but to think you were hiding away such beautiful things.” Tongue darting out between her teeth, she carefully unpins the painting from the wall. Then she winks at him. “I’ll be taking this with me. Goodnight now.”
A puzzled Shinsuke nods his head. “Goodnight, baachan.”
He sleeps in uncharacteristically late the next morning. When he finally manages to drag himself into the waking world, he’s greeted with the sight of a folded note right beside his pillow. It reads as follows:
“Shin-chan,
I’m moving into the apartment complex down the street where Yasuko and Mari live. It’s been sorted for months, so please do not worry about me. I’ll still pop in a few times a week, but you’re a proper adult now. You shouldn’t be living with an old woman. The farm has been yours for the last year, but now the house is yours too. Please invite whomever you please.
Baachan”
Shinsuke re-folds the note into a neat square and tucks it into the breast pocket of his pajama shirt. He knows what his grandmother is telling him in her slanted handwriting: Time to stop waiting, Shin-chan. Time to start running toward.
From: Kita Shinsuke
To: Ojiro Aran
[09:43]
If you have any availability over the next month and a half, you're welcome to come visit the farm.
Please let me know in advance which day you will be coming so I can adequately prepare. Hope you are doing well.
From: Ojiro Aran
To: Kita Shinsuke
[11:32]
:)
[11:32]
I'll let you know.
The mother of all ironies is that after Shinsuke extends his invitation, Aran doesn’t have time off for a long time—so long, in fact, that the original window of time Shinsuke provides soon passes like a rainy day. After a few failed attempts to get their schedules to align, they decide to wait until the new year.
It’s hard to gauge how Aran feels about this new development. Shinsuke’s always had trouble analyzing tone, and this trouble multiplies exponentially when fuzzy cell service is added to the mix.
“I’ll have a break in early January,” Aran tells him in early November, during one of their rare phone calls. “I’ll message you when I get more information.”
“Okay,” Shinsuke says, because that’s what he’s supposed to say.
A heavy silence blankets the line.
“Shin?” Aran asks after a moment or two.
The nickname has Shinsuke’s throat clenching. Even after all these years—all this distance, all these flowers—he still gets heartburn when Aran says his name like that. “Yes?” he responds.
“We’ll make it work.”
Aran hangs up without waiting for an answer. True to his word though, he does make it work. In December, he messages Shinsuke that he can visit the farm on the third day of the new year. “I could stay over for a few days too, if that’s not too presumptuous,” he adds. “Otherwise I can get a hotel.”
“A hotel would be a waste of money,” Shinsuke writes back, pretending his logic is doing the talking. “Of course, you’re welcome to stay over.”
January third takes her sweet time arriving. During the short days leading up to her, Shinsuke spends long hours in the living room, painting gestural flower after gestural flower with diluted Chinese ink. This is an aberration from his normal routine; on a typical day, he’ll spend no more than forty-five minutes making art. But in Shinsuke’s eyes, there are a few things worth adapting for. One of these just so happens to be Aran.
And when January third comes and that man out of a memory messages that he’s at the front door, Shinsuke feels the lovelorn leave his body. He goes to Aran as if going to the sea. Presses the wrinkles out of his pants, though he knows there aren’t any there, rolls his shoulders back and lifts his chin. Opens the door like he’s opening a present.
Ojiro Aran is twenty-three now, with a sharper jaw, broader build, and those same round eyes. He’s wearing a thick winter jacket to brave the cold. His hair’s a bit longer now, grown out into a short afro rather than buzzed close to his scalp the way he kept it in high school. A small gold hoop sits in his right ear.
“Hi,” Shinsuke greets, jaw loosening into a shy smile. What a strange feeling it is to miss someone and then stop missing them all of the sudden.
“Hi, Shin,” Aran answers back. As he steps into the genkan, one hand lifts his suitcase inside. The other glides across Shinsuke’s back. “It’s good to see you,” he says, and his hand lingers.
“It’s good to see you too,” Shinsuke breathes. He’s not sure what the hand on his back means; he’s never been great at reading people’s gestures, and liking Aran does not make him an exception to this rule. Still though, there’s something grounding about the touch. So against his better judgment—or without any judgment at all, really—Shinsuke pushes some of his weight into Aran’s hand. “You can leave your bag at the front of the house for now,” he says. “Come inside and I’ll make us some tea.”
The corner of Aran’s mouth curls upward. “All right, then.”
They stand in silence while Shinsuke prepares the tea. There’s tension, and it’s difficult to explain why. Is it the tension from no longer knowing someone, or from knowing them so well it hurts? As they settle onto their cushions in the tatami room, cups of steaming sencha in their hands, Shinsuke thinks that maybe he’s never been more confused in his life. What to do when you can’t read a situation? What to do when all of the techniques you’ve practiced seem to fail?
He’s acutely aware of everything in this moment: The scab on his left elbow. The tokonoma hanging on the wall. The tag in his button-up and the miniscule chip in his cup and the rings on the coffee table that’s at least a decade older than him. Why didn’t his grandmother take this old thing with her?
“Is this from your farm?” Aran asks, breaking the silence before taking a sip of his tea. He pulls a face. “Oh, wow. It’s more bitter than I thought.”
Shinsuke smiles. The tension dissipates ever so slightly. “Oh, no, this was actually a gift from a neighbor. I brewed it extra strong.” Bringing his own cup to his lips, he says, “We do grow green tea here too though, among other things.”
Aran props an elbow on the table and rests his cheek in the heel of his palm. “Yeah? What’re the other things?” Upon being met with silence, he nods his head slightly, as if to encourage Shinsuke like he’s a frightened animal. “Well, go on! I wanna know.”
It should be patronizing. It isn’t.
Shinsuke finds himself telling Aran everything that comes to mind. He talks about the monthly produce trades he and the other farmers conduct. He tells stories about the round-faced toddlers who come to pick strawberries with his permission, and the rowdy elementary schoolers who steal figs from the tree in his backyard. He even recounts the horrific time he drank too much with his younger farm hands, passed out on one of the dirt paths meant for kei trucks in between his rice fields, and then threw up into the nearest irrigation canal as soon as he regained consciousness.
“Wow,” Aran says at last, clearly trying to put a lid on his chuckles so they don’t starburst into laughter. “Man, I would give anything to have seen you that night.”
“Please, I was a mess that night.”
“So what?”
“So I threw up at least four times,” Shinsuke continues. He places his hands in his lap, looks down at them like something might appear in them. “I’m grateful no one saw me in the fields. Especially you.”
Aran clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Ah, but I missed seeing you all these years, Shin. I would’ve gladly seen you then, even if you were at your worst.” A pause, and then he’s bringing his hand to rest on Shinsuke’s knee. “You know that right, yeah?”
Shinsuke chances a glance up and finds that Aran’s already looking at him. They are older now. They are probably not wiser. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, keeping his voice steady even while his cheeks ruddy.
Aran’s hand twitches, but it remains on top of Shinsuke’s knee. Smiling, he says, “Honestly, I never thought you’d ask.”
Time starts to go funny here. It doesn’t slow down so much as it seems to go backward; as soon as something new happens, Shinsuke finds himself circling back to the action before. It goes something like this: As Aran cups his cheek in his hand, Shinsuke watches him scooch forward. When Aran brushes his thumb against Shinsuke’s bottom lip, tugs it down enough to see his white teeth, Shinsuke sees him cup his cheek. And when Aran presses their lips together, and it’s softer and sweeter and warmer than sun, Shinsuke feels the rough finger pad of his thumb on his lip.
Maybe this hiccupy time says something about him. Maybe it’s bad that he’s not fully living in the moment, that he’s processing things late, lingering on what’s already in the past. But Shinsuke finds that he doesn’t really care about any of that because Aran tastes like sencha and he smells like that same vanilla and he’s here here here.
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” Aran breathes when they finally pull apart.
The admission makes Shinsuke’s heart do a little metaphorical flip, or maybe grow a size too big in his chest. It’s a nice feeling, and Shinsuke drags his lips over Aran’s jaw to try and communicate just how nice it is. He can tell his movements are clumsy. He hasn’t done this kind of thing with anyone before, and it doesn’t help that most so-called instincts in this kind of situation have never felt instinctual to him. But Aran’s letting out these breathy groans, and he’s letting his head tip backward, so maybe it’s good enough.
Shinsuke brings his hands to rest on Aran’s shoulders. Traces Orion’s belt on the strong line of his collarbones, then drags down to cup his pecs. Aran’s got great pecs. Star athlete pecs, really. They’re solid and weighty, and Shinsuke spends a good thirty seconds just fondling them through the thin of his t-shirt, amazed.
When he finally remembers himself, he blinks. Softly scrapes his fingernails over Aran’s hardened nipples and meets his waiting gaze. Tells him, “I think you’ve always had me.”
Considering his lack of experience in the bedroom, Shinsuke never expected himself to be the type to sleep with a person the same day he first kissed them. But as he leads Aran through the narrow hallway of the old house, he can’t help but feel this is right. This is more right than half of the things he does on a daily basis.
Shinsuke’s room is an addition that was built onto the original house only a decade back, so it’s a bit of a trek to get there. They pass by decades of old family photos on their way—one’s that show his grandmother as a young girl, and then his grandmother’s mother as a young girl, and then paintings once they’re really in the roots of the family tree. Shinsuke doesn’t make it a point to pause by any of the picture frames, but when one piques Aran’s interest, he lets them stop. Their hands stay intertwined as Aran studies the photo. Sometimes he’ll make a little noise of amusement in the back of his throat, and sometimes he won’t say anything at all. Shinsuke wonders what wonderful detail he finds in the images. He thinks about looking for it himself, but then decides against it; he wouldn’t be able to see it anyway.
When they reach Shinsuke’s bedroom and push open the door, it’s like the entire house sags in relief. Yes , the curtains say, billowing ever so slightly from the breeze coming through the window, he’s finally home. And Shinsuke can’t help but think to himself: You’re right, he is. And: You’re right, I am.
Aran presses him into the futon like he’s pressing flowers. He’s all tender touches, reserved strength, idle worship. When he strips off Shinsuke’s clothing, he takes his time. Makes a show out of it. This is the kind of thing Shinsuke never really understood the point of, but as he sprawls bare in bed like a swallowtail and observes Aran tug his shirt off with one deft hand, his perspective shifts. Maybe the point isn’t understanding another’s whims. Maybe the point is realizing that some people are worth indulging.
“You’re so handsome,” Aran says, climbing on top of him, bracketing his arms around Shinsuke’s head. They’re pressed hip to hip now, and the pressure is excruciating. “What are you thinking about?”
“How much more profit we could yield if we hired another farm hand,” Shinsuke answers truthfully. He brings hand up to the nape of Aran’s neck, scratches at the coarse hair there. “And also you. Always you.”
Aran burrows his head into the crook of Shinsuke’s neck, and his cheeks are warm enough that it’s easy to tell he’s blushing. “God, you have no idea what you do to me, Shin.”
Shinsuke wiggles his hips pointedly. “I think I have some idea.”
If possible, Aran’s skin grows hotter. He pulls back to look Shinsuke in the eye. “Should we do something about it?” he asks, very seriously.
“Oh, absolutely,” Shinsuke replies, just as solemnly.
For the most part, it’s a quiet affair. Shinsuke’s never been loud when getting off by himself, and though Aran is skilled, habits holds fast. In the beginning, he worries his relative silence is a turnoff, but then Aran catches his thoughtful gaze, kisses his eyelids closed and whispers, “It’s okay; your body’s talking even if your mouth isn’t,” and Shinsuke decides to stop worrying. Aran will take him just as he is. And take he does.
There’s power in his movements, expertly controlled but evidently still there. It’s in the way he bites at the meat of Shinsuke’s thigh, the way he stretches him with deliberate ease, the way he sinks into him ever so slowly. This knowledge spins a fuzzy feeling in Shinsuke’s chest. It builds and builds until Aran flips him onto his stomach and the feeling is at last expelled from his lungs in a punched-out groan.
“Okay?” Aran asks, stroking the dip of his hip bone.
Shinsuke is about ten seconds from exploding into a thousand pieces of confetti. “Very,” he replies.
When Aran comes, it’s with a shout that seems to rattle the house. Shinsuke thinks of opera singers in movies shattering glass with their high pitches, or birds flapping off telephone lines when a car drives by them. And then he thinks about the man on top of him, this heaven-sent man, this man who his friends love and his grandmother loves and he loves so much it hurts. Shinsuke cranes his neck to see Aran’s face. He looks at all of him—the slit in his left eyebrow, the pout of his plump lips, the bead of sweat dripping down his temple—and then he whispers a prayer.
As he falls apart, silent as a lamb, Aran catches all of his pieces. Afterward, when Aran wipes him down with a warm washcloth and unrolls a spare futon from the closet for them to rest on, Shinsuke is put back together.
Some people say that sex makes them feel better. Makes them feel fuller, or more fulfilled, though Shinsuke thinks the two are often conflated. This isn’t the case for him. He’s neither better nor worse after sleeping with Aran and breaking into a million little pieces for him; he’s just different. And he’s been put together just a little bit differently too, like a kintsugi-repaired chawan.
It’s a fitting analogy, Shinsuke thinks, because Aran’s his golden boy.
He tells him as much while they’re spooning on the too-small futon.
“I’m the golden boy?” Aran shakes his head, forfeiting his little spoon position to turn around in Shinsuke’s arms and look him in the eye. “No way. Look at that tan you got going on! You’re definitely the golden one out of us.”
Shinsuke brings a hand up to cup Aran’s face. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know, honey.”
The pet name catches Shinsuke off guard. He can feel his brow furrow.
Too much? Aran asks with a quirk of his lips.
No, just give me time, Shinsuke responds by stroking the stubble growing in on his cheek.
They settle into a comfortable silence. It’s been a few hours now since the sky was a frothy blue, but as they lie together, it dips all the way from molten gold to a wind-eating purple. Cicadas jangle outside the window. Aran hasn’t offered to leave yet, and Shinsuke hasn’t told him to go.
Shinsuke wishes every interaction between them could go like this. It would be nice for them to always be in sync, always be on the same page. But this simply isn’t possible, and they both know it. They live far apart from each other for one, and distance is a well-known complicator. Their personalities are different too, as are their communication styles; they’ve had misunderstandings in the past, and some of them have led to Aran nursing hurt feelings like a nasty wound. But at the end of the day, they care for each other. That’s the one thing Shinsuke is sure they’re on the same wavelength about.
So he’ll treasure these moments of perfect serenity, and he’ll weather whatever storm might come his way to get back to them—over and over again. This is what entering a new world means.
Later in the evening, when they’re spooning in the thick heat, trapped under a mound of blankets, Aran whispers, “I forgot to bring the photo of you and your baachan from high school graduation.” He kisses the shell of Shinsuke’s ear. “Sorry.”
Shinsuke rolls over to face Aran. “No need to apologize. It’s my fault for making you wait for so long.” He intertwines their ankles. “And you’ll be back anyways, no?”
Aran looks at him like he’s hung the stars in the sky. “Yeah, I’ll always come back.” He brings a hand up to card through Shinsuke’s hair. As he’s gotten older, the amount of black in it has faded. A strange occurrence, but perhaps no stranger than having silvering hair in the first place. “By the way, what’s up with all of the paintings in here?”
Oh, right. Once Aran arrived, Shinsuke had forgotten about the flowerbeds he’d grown on his walls over the last two years. He takes a good look at them now and notices, for the first time, how much they overwhelm the other decorations in his room. They’re everywhere, really. When did they grow so abundant?
“I started a few years back,” Shinsuke says at last, by way of explanation. “First with watercolors, then acrylics, and then oils. But watercolors are my favorite. I kept coming back to them.” He recalls the first time he pressed a flat brush to textured paper. “And I kept coming back to flowers too, for some reason or another.”
Aran plays with the dust of hair leading down to Shinsuke’s boxers. (It’s innocent enough, so Shinsuke allows it.) “You never told me about the painting,” he murmurs.
“No, I suppose I didn’t,” Shinsuke admits. He doesn’t apologize, because there’s nothing to apologize for. “I won’t be painting any more flowers for a while though.”
Aran leans forward, dragging soft lips across the corner of Shinsuke’s mouth. “Yeah? Now why’s that?”
Shinsuke melts like browning butter. “Just a feeling.”
shini suru mono ni
aramaseba
chitabi so ware wa
shinikaeramashi
“If just loving —
If that alone were enough
To make one die —
Why, then, I would be dead
By now a thousand times.”