Chapter Text
In the golden timeline, the one they had built together with blood, sweat, and impossible leaps through time, Hanagaki Takemichi’s world had a sun. And that sun was named Sano Manjiro.
They grew up joined at the hip, a strange and inseparable pair. Takemichi, the boy who cried too easily but never, ever gave up, and Mikey, the boy who held the weight of the world on his small shoulders and smiled like he was invincible. Their friendship was forged in the sweet summer heat of Tokyo, in shared popsicles that dripped down their hands, in the low rumble of Mikey’s motorcycle, and in the easy, unspoken understanding that passed between them.
For Takemichi, that profound admiration, the fierce need to protect Mikey’s light, had quietly, inevitably, morphed into love. It was a truth that lived in the quiet spaces: the warmth that bloomed in his chest when Mikey’s head rested on his shoulder during a Toman meeting, the way his breath would catch when Mikey turned that brilliant, unguarded smile on him, the desperate urge to smooth the worry from his brow.
He said nothing. He buried it deep, packing it down under layers of self-doubt. Because Mikey saw him as a friend. As his hero. As the crybaby who somehow managed to save everyone. Sometimes, when Mikey would look at him with a certain haunted softness, Takemichi was terrified he only saw the ghost of his older brother, Shinichiro. Friend. Hero. Brother's shadow. Anything but the one thing Takemichi desperately wanted to be. So he kept his secret locked away, a precious, painful thing. He was Hina’s best friend, her confidant, and she was his. Their bond was a bedrock of platonic love, and she often teased him about the way he stared at Mikey, but he would just blush and change the subject.
They succeeded. They saved everyone. The future was a bright, unbroken horizon.
The world shattered on a Tuesday.
He was just starting the school year that would lead him into high school. He’d been daydreaming about it for months, about walking the halls with Mikey and the others, about a normal, happy high school life he had fought so hard for. His parents sat him down at the kitchen table, their faces grim. A job transfer. A promotion. An opportunity they could not refuse. They were moving.
To Fukuoka.
The word felt like a punch to the gut. It was a different island, hundreds of kilometers away. “No,” Takemichi said, his voice small. “No, I can’t. All my friends are here. My life is here.”
His parents refused to let him live alone. He was too young, they argued. It was not safe. He pleaded, he begged, he even tried to use the stubborn determination that had bent fate to his will, but against the mundane finality of parental authority, he was powerless.
Telling Toman was one of the hardest things he had ever had to do. They gathered at the Musashi Shrine, their usual spot, and the news fell like a stone in the ensuing silence. Baji was the first to explode, shouting about how it was unacceptable. Draken’s jaw was tight, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Mitsuya looked away, his expression pained.
But it was Mikey’s reaction that terrified him. He did not say a word. His eyes, those beautiful, dark voids, went terrifyingly blank. The temperature around them seemed to drop. Takemichi recognized the chilling stillness, the faint, horrifying whisper of the dark impulses he had fought so hard to quell.
Before it could take root, Takemichi rushed forward, grabbing Mikey’s hand. It was cold. “Mikey-kun,” he said, his own voice trembling. “Please. I have no choice. It’s not what I want. You know it’s not what I want.” He squeezed his hand, pouring all his desperation, all his unspoken love, into the touch. “I’ll come back. I promise, I will come back.”
Slowly, agonizingly, the light returned to Mikey’s eyes. The darkness receded. He looked down at their joined hands, then back at Takemichi’s tear-streaked face. He nodded, a single, sharp movement. The rest of Toman, seeing their leader relent, reluctantly, angrily, accepted it.
The move to Fukuoka was a blur of cardboard boxes and tearful goodbyes. The city was quiet, the sky felt bigger, and the loneliness was a physical presence, a constant weight on his shoulders. He was the new kid in a school where everyone’s friendships were already set in stone. He talked to his classmates, he ate lunch in the crowded cafeteria, but he was utterly alone.
Then, the unluckiest thing happened. During a crowded festival, his phone was jostled from his pocket. He did not realize it was gone until he got home. He had not memorized a single number, always relying on the convenience of his contact list. Just like that, his lifeline to Tokyo, to his friends, to Mikey, was severed.
The silence of his new life became deafening. To fill the empty hours that stretched into infinity, he started to draw.
At first, it was just animals and plants, simple subjects to keep his hands busy. Then one day, hiding from the rain in a bookstore, he stumbled upon a shounen-ai manga. The art was beautiful, the story full of a gentle, aching romance that resonated deep in his soul. It was a turning point. He bought books on anatomy and perspective, and his sketchbook became his entire world.
He drew his parents. He drew his classmates. He drew the members of Toman from memory, trying to perfectly capture Baji’s fang-like grin and Draken’s steady gaze. But mostly, he drew Mikey. Mikey smiling. Mikey fighting. Mikey sleeping. Mikey laughing, head thrown back. His sketchbook was a shrine to Sano Manjiro.
Staring at a page filled with dozens of sketches of Mikey’s face, Takemichi finally admitted it to himself. His feelings were not a schoolboy crush. They had not faded with time or distance. He was in love with Mikey, a deep, hopeless, all-consuming love.
With that admission came an unstoppable urge to create. He started drawing mini-mangas, little what-if scenarios of their life in Tokyo. Then, he started something bigger. He began to draw stories, full-blown shounen-ai narratives. Each series was set in a different universe, starring a different version of Mikey from the timelines he remembered. There was the fierce gang leader with a hidden soft spot. The lonely idol who shone on stage but was empty inside. The broken man from a future he had erased. And in every story, there was a boy with unruly dark hair and blue eyes who loved him unconditionally. He changed their names, of course, a flimsy disguise for a story that was so intensely personal.
He posted them online under the anonymous username "Crybaby Hero." He expected nothing. But his art, filled with raw, genuine emotion, resonated with people. His visitors count grew. Comments poured in. And one day, an email appeared in his inbox. It was from a publisher. They wanted to help him make a physical manga. He said yes.
That was the beginning. Hanagaki Takemichi, the lonely boy in Fukuoka, became a secret, successful shounen-ai artist, pouring his unrequited love onto the pages of manga for the world to see.
High school finished in a quiet graduation ceremony where he knew no one’s name. He had saved a significant amount of money from his royalties, more than enough to be independent. He sat his parents down at their kitchen table, the same one where his world had fallen apart years ago.
“I’m moving back to Tokyo,” he announced, his voice steady. “I’m going to enroll in a university there.”
This time, they did not argue. He was an adult now.
As he packed his bags, a familiar mix of hope and terror churned in his stomach. He was finally going back. He might see them again. He might see Mikey again. A part of him, the foolish, romantic part that drew mangas late into the night, dreamed of a happy reunion. But the logical part, the part that had lived through three years of absolute silence, whispered a colder truth.
They had probably forgotten him.
He was going home, even if home no longer remembered his name.