Work Text:
About one month into the school year—well, this school year, at least—the hallway sees it fit that Ichinose Ao and Shirahama Kyouji cross paths. Shirahama recognizes him first, but it’s Ichinose who looks in his direction and beams in recognition. He is alone; Shirahama is not—next to him, Miyano grimaces, tightening his grip on his shoulder bag. “There’s not some kind of hidden route, is there?” he asks.
This, Shirahama can answer. “You can’t romance a third year,” he says. “It won’t work out.”
“Good,” Miyano says, the vehemence in his voice so forceful that Shirahama trips over air.
He regains his balance before Ichinose walks past them—Shirahama nods in miniscule greeting—and Miyano’s shoulders loosen a bit. Still, he worries his lip, and asks, “…Then why was he looking at me?”
He wasn’t, Shirahama doesn't say. “Maybe he’s just friendly,” he suggests. “Like a dorm head’s instinct… looking out for his people, or whatever.”
“Dorm head…?” Miyano questions. “Isn’t that Hanzawa-senpai?”
“He is,” Shirahama assures. “That guy was just the previous one.”
Miyano sighs. “You had me worried that things were suddenly different! It’s already hard enough…”
“…Having trouble choosing?”
“I—” Miyano shakes his head. “I know you said you’d help me pick my route. But… I’m not… I don’t think I want to go on any route.” He looks to Shirahama, now, the universe reflected in his hopeful eyes. “That’s… possible, right?”
After some consideration, Shirahama says, “As long as you avoid any extended conversations, you probably won’t trigger anything. And—” he adds, with a great deal of embarrassment, “you have me.”
At that, Miyano finally unwinds, flashing him a quick, nervous smile. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s good to have you. Even that guy… you really know this game inside and out, don’t you?”
Shirahama wills himself not to blush. When that doesn’t work, he wills Miyano not to notice, and nods tightly, trying to project an aura of confidence. He hadn’t lied—Ichinose Ao was the dorm head last year. But that wasn’t game knowledge. That, Shirahama learned only a few days ago.
Ichinose Ao does not exist within the files of Boys’ Life Romance!. He’s not on the cover art, or in the manual, or in the background, because Boys’ Life Romance! is a dating sim, and it’s one that finds itself hard-pressed to care about anyone except its romanceable leads. The game’s CGs are drawn in stunning definition, but background characters are reduced to faceless bodies with similar hairstyles. Even Kuresawa’s girlfriend isn’t spared—he describes her smile, and the way her eyes curve, but the game leaves those details in shadow.
The “Life” in Boys’ Life Romance! applied not to a sense of realism, but rather the game’s timeline, which spanned two fictional years and filled those days with plenty of content. The main romance routes only began in earnest in the protagonist’s second year, so by virtue of their graduation, third years were locked from interaction, and thus locked out of romance.
Ichinose Ao, for all intents and purposes, is a nobody.
This doesn’t mean that Ichinose Ao isn’t real. He is—real enough to have a name, to have a face, to have a body, to touch, to hold, to be lighter than he looks. Real, like any faceless person in Boys’ Life Romance! now is. But when searching for an ending—Miyano’s true ending—he’s a dead end.
…And for somebody who’s already died once, Shirahama reflects, he’s really scared of doing it again.
Miyano Yoshikazu died on a Tuesday—Shirahama Kyouji’s least favorite day of the week.
These are not related statements: he only learned of his classmate’s death on the following Wednesday.
He was not the first to know. First came the passerby, the police, and then Miyano’s parents, and then the school staff, and likely close relatives were informed, too, but from the pool of his classmates it was Shirahama that knew first. It wasn’t because he knew him best—in fact he figured he was far down the list of people who did, because Miyano and he were friendly enough, but not the type to move heaven and earth for the other, or even the type to exchange “good morning” and “good night” texts—it was just that two weeks ago, Shirahama Kyouji had lent Miyano Yoshikazu his copy of Boys’ Life Romance!.
On principle, Shirahama doesn’t play BL games. But he’d picked this game up on an alien whim, intrigued by the box art and the way colors bled across the cover, and after giving the opening section a try, he’d fallen into his latest obsession. Almost immediately, he got the feeling that Miyano would love it, too. Though he seemed to prefer media more tangible than game discs, Shirahama was online enough to recognize some of what he muttered under his breath. And then they’d run into each other at the bookstore.
That well and sealed the deal—Miyano squeaked, dropped his books, looked horrified at the possible damage he’d caused, and Shirahama knelt, instinctually, to pick them up. The covers were—well, not lurid, by any sense, but obvious, and if that wasn’t enough, Miyano’s face had gone scarlet. Shirahama picked them up one by one, tucking them close to his chest, and with a careful clearing of his throat, said, “…You dropped your things.”
“Um,” Miyano said. His eyes flickered, down and up, down and up, again and again. He was rooted to where he stood.
Shirahama kept the books balanced in his arms as he struggled to think of the right thing to say. If this was a quick time event, he’d have failed miserably, but finally, he said, “…Akikawa-sensei’s pretty cool.”
It was like he’d flipped a switch. Miyano’s eyes sparkled brighter the sun, and he exclaimed, “You—you know—?”
“Only a little,” Shirahama said, before he could disappoint. She’d been credited as the main character designer and concept artist for Boys’ Life Romance!. As an easter egg, one of Hanzawa’s bad ends had a passing reference to her work.
Miyano ducked his head, conscious of the eyes they’d attracted. Shirahama handed his stack of volumes over, stepped back, and then trained his eyes on an odd spot of the ceiling. He made an offer: “I’ll—be outside?”
A few minutes later Miyano reappeared, his precious cargo secured in a bag. He was still faintly flushed, the pink dust of his cheeks hard to ignore, but Shirahama made the effort. “We can walk to the station,” he said.
So they walked, in total silence, and it was only when they were about to part ways that Miyano managed to blurt, “Thank you! For—for picking them up,” and all the station lights seemed to shine through him, illuminating his heart, glass and gleaming.
He nodded; tomorrow, when his head and heart had cooled from their quivering bliss, he would lean over to Miyano’s desk and ask him about his favorite BL manga. Not to know for himself, but to know him. After first-term finals, he’d quashed his nerves, wiped his progress, and handed over his copy of Boys’ Life Romance!.
And Miyano had loved it. He’d loved it so much that he’d asked to keep it indefinitely, intent on playing through every route in the game, and then he’d died, and Shirahama was left with the unfinished copy in his hands like a smoking gun, save data mocking him from the beyond, and so he played it, again and again, the ghost of his obsession devoured by grief, searching for shades of Miyano in empty, digital space, believing, desperately, wantonly, that this couldn’t be the end, that somewhere, somehow, there had to be something more, something truer, and then a sharp pain had bloomed in his head, lancing from there to every inch of skin, and until he woke up within the world of Boys’ Life Romance!, Miyano’s face peering at him from above, his expression intermixed with worry and relief, Shirahama hadn’t the space for thought or feeling at all.
Boys’ Life Romance!, realized into 3D, fell somewhere in the uncanny valley. The graphics, all-told, had translated admirably—in real life, every character looked human, but they shone in the way that movie stars stuck out among an unassuming public. The protagonist wasn’t left untouched—whenever they and Miyano interacted, a soft, dreamy haze filtered over the scene, transforming ordinary life into something eye-catching and unreal.
The exams, on the other hand, were real. They were very, very real. He couldn’t dump his points into the INT stat or the STR stat, and that meant he was stuck with terrible grades and on the basketball club’s bench for the foreseeable future.
He’s already regretting the choice, but he’d joined the ping pong club first because he thought it might be a good source of information, backed out of that because it was too intense for him, and now he was in the arguably even-more-intense basketball club, but he didn’t want to be the type of guy that backed out twice. Plus, he was still gathering information, since Kagiura Akira was there.
The two of them are walking back to the dorms when Kagiura lights up, and greets, “Ichinose-san!”
Shirahama stiffens.
Ichinose is… haggard would be a rude descriptor, and an ugly one, which he isn’t. But he is a close relative. His smile is wan as he replies, “Kagiura-kun, Shirahama-kun. Coming back from practice?”
“We stayed late,” Kagiura confirms, though it was more like Kagiura had stayed and Shirahama had nothing better to do. Miyano had done an admirable job avoiding romance, dodging invitations from characters left and right, which meant that Shirahama was left, purposeless and useless, to float invisibly in the background.
They chatter for a minute before Kagiura yawns, clipping their conversation short, and he wishes the two of them goodnight. Once he’s slipped into his room, Shirahama means to move towards his own, but he’s pinned by Ichinose’s sudden gaze.
“Want to grab some food?”
He checks the time on his phone. “Can we?”
“I asked ahead of time,” Ichinose says. “They said they’d leave the cafeteria open with some food, so…”
“Sure.” Shirahama’s not sure why he agrees, but he suspects it’s the same reason he’d stayed late—nothing better to do.
The cafeteria is empty and underlit, but like Ichinose had promised, a portion of leftovers has been set aside, containing enough curry and rice for the two of them. When he sits down, the hunger in his stomach kickstarts, and he begins to eat without space for words. Ichinose eats in comparable silence, but with smaller bites, chewing fully and methodically during each one.
Once he’s cleared half his plate, Shirahama asks, “How’s your stomach?” and winces.
With a smile, Ichinose lets the faux-pas slide. “Fine,” he says. “I studied a bit longer today, for the upcoming exams, so I’m not as nervous.” He takes another bite. “And you?”
“Me…?”
Ichinose’s jaw works through his food, and stills as he swallows. Shirahama follows the movement down his Adam’s apple, and looks back up to his lips as he speaks. “I thought I’d check in,” he says. “After…”
“No need for that,” Shirahama says.
“Why not?”
“It’s just…” Stalling for an answer, he shovels some more curry into his mouth. “I guess you are the dorm head,” he concedes.
“Was!” Ichinose corrects with a smile. “I’m totally powerless to stop any rule-breaking you might get into, Shirahama-kun.”
That gets a dry laugh. “Rule-breaking, huh…?” Shirahama muses. “I’m not planning on it.”
“Smart of you,” Ichinose replies. After a moment, he adds, “But it’s good to be flexible. The dorm manager’s always nagging me to take more breaks, or at least ask for something like this. But I just zone out when I’m studying!”
“How?” Shirahama asks, aghast, before he can think better of it. This is the wrong question: Ichinose Ao scores at the top of his class, not from natural genius or putting points into an INT stat, but by working extremely hard, the way anyone can. Desperate to change the subject, he diverts from Ichinose to himself, and says, “I—I’m ruined when it comes to exams. I’m no good at all.”
Evidently taking his aimless self-deprecation as sincere, Ichinose frowns. “I don’t think that’s true…”
Shirahama shakes his head, but doesn’t know how to explain himself. He can’t say that none of this feels real, that he doesn’t know if he’s in hell or heaven or in a between-place instead of any afterlife, and he doesn’t know what Miyano’s true ending means, or what awaits them after, be it reincarnation or resurrection or endless void. With the spectre of that future looming over his head, all else pales. “…It’s not gonna matter,” he concludes, lamely. “Whatever I do.”
“Hey,” Ichinose says, suddenly insistent. He waits until Shirahama meets his eyes. In the dim light, his eyebags just look like shadows. “Do you really mean that?”
“…Yeah?” Time ticks forward in a chilling quiet, and Ichinose’s question finally clicks into place. “No, that’s not—” It really is impossible to explain, because he can’t prove that he’s stating objective fact instead of a depressive manifesto, so Shirahama just ends up sputtering, “I—I’m not—I didn’t mean it like that…”
“Okay,” Ichinose says. It’s like he can’t even hear him. “But you matter, Shirahama-kun. You know that, right?”
“That really isn’t what I meant,” Shirahama repeats with growing hysteria, “I just—I don't really care about grades, I don’t mean any more than that…” and this time, probably because everything about his raised shoulders and averted eyes screams, please drop it, it works, and Ichinose’s frown softens into neutrality.
They finish their meals without further conversation. Shirahama wonders how it settles in Ichinose’s stomach. If it settles at all. If it counts as one more stress, if it’s anything like the bottomless, gnawing pit of his own, if it’s lodged in there like a parasite. If it settles and passes without comment, his mind already somewhere beyond a stranger he's spoken to twice.
In celebration of the end of midterms, Shirahama finds himself having dinner with Miyano, Kagiura, and Hirano. This is because in an effort to keep himself busy and unavailable, Miyano had been suckered into joining the Disciplinary Committee, which meant that Hirano had taken interest in his new kouhai. Hanzawa, too, but Hanzawa was also the dorm head—no matter what the protagonist did, he was always some level of interested. Joining no clubs, though, would lean him closest to Kuresawa’s route, which Miyano was understandably avoiding like the plague.
“I get that he asked,” Shirahama had hissed to him when he’d heard, “but why did you accept?”
“I…” Miyano flailed for words, and only when his face had completely pinked did he admit, “It’s… rare! To see them both, you know?”
Shirahama furrowed his brows. “Hirano and…”
“And Kagiura,” Miyano hissed back. His voice dropped, and in a low voice he confessed, “I’ve always thought they had—well, something going on.”
Shirahama frowned.
“I mean—they’re roommates!” Miyano whisper-shrieked, tinged with a feverish kind of excitement. Like this, he was magnetic, and sun-like—irresistible, but impossible to look at directly. “And Hirano’s got so many attributes, which is fresh, but the pairing itself is a total classic. Bad boy and pure sunshine, you know? A manly uke and a puppy-like seme—!”
“Yeah,” Shirahama managed. He did not know; he did have a headache coming on. Because Miyano was right—Hirano and Kagiura were a classic couple. This was why, unless you played their routes, they always got together. It was obvious, to just about anyone—
…Unless you hadn’t seen the CGs in Niibashi, Tashiro and Hanzawa’s routes. It occurred to Shirahama, then, that Miyano had gotten a bad end on his only run through of Hanzawa’s route, and hadn’t even started on Tashiro’s. For the other guys—Hirano, Kagiura, Niibashi, Ogasawara, and Kuresawa—he hadn’t completed more than their good endings and whatever bad or neutral ends he’d strayed into along the way. If he hadn’t been paying attention, he could have missed Hirano and Kagiura…
…and if you weren’t paying attention, you could mistake someone important for someone faceless.
The thought has left his tongue soured. He wonders, now, as Miyano bears witness to Hirano and Kagiura’s frankly shameless flirting, how he would react upon knowing that Hirano and Kagiura spend their respective second and third years intertwined in conjugal bliss.
He thinks about the sheer delight on his face. The reckoning of his own influence. And he thinks, again, about choosing basketball as his extracurricular in every route. The result remained the same: whether you won or lost the tournament, Hirano’s flash of blond hair was in the stands of every CG.
Kagiura makes a face at his plate. “Ugh, green peppers.”
“Right,” Miyano recalls, “You don’t like them!”
Shirahama watches the odd look that Kagiura gives him, and the resulting mortification on Miyano’s face when he realizes he’s not supposed to know that.
He doesn’t say anything. When the protagonist interacts with any romanceable character, Shirahama becomes unable to speak. They don’t know why this is the case, but he suspects the game has cast him in a sort of advisory role, one which locks him out of scenes between the protagonist and other stars. That, after all, is when the protagonist is meant to shine. If you could check your stat sheet for every minute of the day and ask for the best answer, there would be no challenge. The end result, no matter what, was that Shirahama was having a pretty miserable dinner.
…So maybe there were some reasons he hadn’t said anything to Miyano.
Looking for a distraction, he casts his gaze around the room. Hanzawa is holding court in a group of three, consisting of himself, his roommate, and—
—Ichinose Ao, looking directly at him.
Shirahama drops his head onto the table and covers his face with his hands. His heart beats incessantly, the pumping loud enough to bleed hot through his head. That reaction is enough to earn a concerned glance from Miyano, who he waves off in what he hopes is a self-assured gesture, and tries to re-center his focus on the conversation.
“—you’ve got to eat your peppers, you know?” Hirano scolds, a scowl set deep on his face.
“…Another time?” Kagiura bargains, but his eyes were twinkling with mirth. That was how they got you, Shirahama knew. That beauteous sparkle.
“So,” Miyano says, “You guys are… pretty good roommates, aren’t you?”
“We’re normal,” Hirano says. “What’s your roommate—wait, you don’t have one,” he self-corrects, the fog of game logic settling over the scene. The protagonist’s single room offers privacy, a save point, and an easy location to place scenes. So Miyano can’t have a roommate. Shirahama also doesn’t have a roommate, but no one asks him about that.
In resignation, he picks his sorry head off the table, wondering if Hirano will later question his usage of the world normal, and brushes away the hair that’s fallen in front of his eyes—
—and Ichinose is still looking at him. Shirahama must be wearing a particularly embarrassing expression, because Ichinose’s face cracks out into an uncertain smile. He raises his hand a few inches from the table and waggles his fingers.
Stunned still, Shirahama stares back, until his brain reboots and he recognizes the motion for what it is—a greeting. He raises his hand and makes the world’s smallest wave back. The hesitance on Ichinose’s smile smooths out, and he seems to want to do more, but Hanzawa calls his attention back to the table. Finally, the weight of his gaze flickers away.
This time, Shirahama stays. He watches Ichinose, who shouldn’t be any different than the other ones at that table, talk to Hanzawa, who moves with composure beyond a high school boy. The food on Ichinose’s plate looks half-eaten, but the portion itself is small. By now, hasn’t it cooled too much? Not that it’s any of Shirahama’s business. Ichinose finishes whatever he’s saying, and—
Shirahama jerks his gaze down to his lap before he can be looked at in return. He doesn’t want to know. If he’s looking at him. If he’s not, but he still looks like he carries a similar solitude. If his gaze, trained towards Shirahama, is weighted by a starstruck recognition, the surety of kinship. His heartbeat doesn’t spike, but his blood pumps, still boiling, heated flush building under his skin. He pushes it aside; he eats his green peppers.
As expected, his exam grades are uniformly terrible. Miyano, on the other hand, had placed in the top of his class, but not his grade.
“It’s better than I did… the other time,” he says. “You should bump up your grades, too.”
“What’s the point?” Shirahama asks.
Miyano asks right back, “What else is there?”
He has a point. Avoiding interacting with any romanceable characters was equivalent to shutting down most conversations, so now there wasn’t much to exchange with others except for small talk. “I don’t know what comes after, but it can’t hurt to have good grades,” he says, and then undercuts that by worrying his academic excellence will attract Kuresawa.
“So there’s no one you… like?” Shirahama asks, and grimaces—it’s such a girly question.
“No,” Miyano says, firm in his convictions. “I like girls. Just because I like BL… what I like to read and what I want, it’s different,” he says. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.” A thoughtful look crosses his face as he adds, “Aren’t you the same?”
Privately, Shirahama thinks that if it didn’t mean anything, Miyano would have woken up in a different world after his death. But it’s not like he wants to disagree, so he just nods along.
“And,” Miyano adds, rambling like he’s trying to convince himself, “It’s not like I really know them. I can’t get that attached.”
This, he does want to disagree with. Perhaps it’s the disparity in their play hours, but when Shirahama sees Kagiura wipe the sweat from his face during a scrimmage, it doesn’t look like something unreal or unfamiliar—just the beautiful, practiced motion of someone who wants to dedicate their life to the sport. He can’t match that, he knows, but he thinks he can understand it—Kagiura’s unyielding passion, and how it dazzles others. There’s a reason Hirano loves him. and there’s a reason it’s his favorite route.
And Tashiro, who Miyano’s barely talked to in these months, has a route that might feel like it doesn’t deserve to be labelled a romance, but his lines are delivered with a careful and awkward charm. Maybe it’s not an earth-shattering love, but his dialogue trees are the most detailed and responsive, integrating as much information about your choices and interests that they can. Here, even though Shirahama quit the ping pong club in a week, Tashiro hounds him, jokingly calls him “The One That Got Away,” and passes him candies during class breaks, alternating between sweet and sour. This version of their relationship is new, but it’s easy to translate over Shirahama’s memories of the game, and build affection. It’s so easy to fall in love with them…
…and that’s exactly what Miyano is avoiding. As the protagonist, he has to view every interaction as its romantic inevitability. Even more than Shirahama, he must feel the limits of what this game will allow him.
He sighs, “I guess it’s hard for you to even be friends.”
Miyano nods. “It’s a slippery slope. But… it’s not like I have to fend suitors off with a stick, so don’t worry too much.” He purses his lips. “I kind of feel bad that you got stuck here with me. This isn’t really your thing, after all…”
“It’s fine,” Shirahama lies. There’s no other answer he can give.
He makes his way back to the dorm on autopilot, mind swirling with thoughts. It leaves him nor as conscious of his body as he should be, and he bumps against someone’s shoulder.
When he looks up to apologize, he sees the face of the dorm manager, gentle as he towers above him. “Oh, Shirahama-kun,” the dorm manager says. “You look lost in thought.”
“Sorry,” he says.
“No need to apologize. Care to share what’s on your mind?”
“Um…” Shirahama says. He’s never asked this so bluntly. “Not really?” Who would believe me?
At that, the dorm manager seems to rethink his approach, but before he can say anything, his attention is stolen by something behind Shirahama. “Ah, Ichinose-kun! How are you, today?”
Shirahama turns.
Haggard is definitely the wrong word, now, but there remains an air of vulnerability in his frame. He’s flushed a familiar and deadly red, splotches dotting his face and neck in uneven blooms. “It’s going… okay.”
The dorm manager presses a hand onto Ichinose’s forehead, mutters something indecipherable about temperature, and lets him go. “You certainly shouldn’t be holing yourself up in your room,” he says. “Have you been eating dinner? On time, not alone at night.”
“I—recently I had dinner with Hanzawa!” Ichinose protests. If anything, his face has gotten redder. He reaches out and clutches Shirahama’s sleeve. “Shirahama-kun, too, you can ask him… I’ve been good!”
When he’s grabbed, he flinches. Before Ichinose and the dorm manager can freak out, he says, “Sorry. I’ve been jumpy lately.” Realizing that’s done nothing to reassure them, he forces a laugh and says, “I’ve just been… nervous? About exams.”
This must be a stellar diversion, because both of their faces immediately turn sympathetic. “Did midterms not go so well?” the dorm manager asks.
“I can help you with that!” Ichinose pipes up. “We can review some stuff together.”
Shirahama waits for the dorm manager to say something, but he doesn’t seem to be concerned about Ichinose overworking himself. “Just make sure you’re back in your own rooms by lights out,” he advises.
Ichinose, still crimson to the neckline of his shirt, yelps, “Um, yes! For sure. We can go now?” His voice hikes in desperation.
As they walk away, Ichinose still has Shirahama’s sleeve in a death grip. He means to shake him off, but even through the barrier of cloth, the touch reminds Shirahama how long it’s been. He figures if Ichinose’s using him to get out of an awkward conversation, he can use him just a little, too.
Almost one month into the school year—the year of this school, with its vague limits and futures—the hallway sees it fit that Ichinose Ao and Shirahama Kyouji first cross paths. He is alone; Shirahama is, too. These few weeks have served as his adjustment period to this new world, and in a way it is just like entering high school, only a few people have the kind of aura that makes you think, wow, in a videogame they would have a very long CG album, only it’s the reverse that’s true: they all had very long CG albums in their videogame, and now real life deems it fit to shimmer around them.
Ichinose Ao does not have a dedicated CG album. On this day, Ichinose Ao is every inch of the description haggard, because before they walk past each other a grimace overtakes his face, and he sways…
…Right into Shirahama’s arms. In any other world this would be some kind of meet-cute, but Ichinose—a stranger, at the time—just slumps forward, face ungainly pressed against Shirahama’s chest, his limbs knocking into Shirahama’s at all their sharp points. His instinct had been quick enough to catch him, but not quick enough to do it with grace.
Carefully, the stranger pushes himself back upright, using Shirahama’s body for leverage. Before he can sway some more, he slumps down into a sitting position, resting his head and side against the wall. Above him, sunlight shines through the window, leaving him completely shadowed.
Despite his gaunt face, the stranger isn’t feverish. Shirahama is a different story—he stands, over-warm, like a deer in headlights. His face must be doing something particularly embarrassing, because the stranger laughs before he says, “You also late for class?”
“I guess so,” he says, and sits next to him. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” the stranger breathes. “I’ve just got a weak stomach.” He pauses, and then says, “I probably shouldn’t condone skipping, should I…?”
He doesn’t continue his musing, so Shirahama figures he’s good for now. They sit together in cool silence as the stranger regains his color and composure. Judging by the color of his shoes—neither red nor blue—he’s a third year, which explains his lack of appearance in the game. His hair is ash-black, and his eyes are dark brown, though beneath the windowsill they look more like dull voids. He’s probably of average height, too, but it’s hard to tell when sitting.
Finally, the stranger says, “I’m Ichinose.”
“…Shirahama.”
“Nice to meet you,” Ichinose says with a nod. “Sorry about the circumstances. If you’d like to head to class… I should be fine here.”
“Oh, um, it’s fine,” Shirahama says, unsure how to clarify that he’d rather die than draw that kind of attention to himself. “I’m not too excited to go, anyways…”
At that, Ichinose frowns, but eventually he says, “Well, as long as it’s not an exam I guess it’s okay. I always end up getting really sick on those days and it’s—” He shakes his head. “It’s not a big deal. Is something bothering you?”
Without thinking, Shirahama laughs. “Sorry,” he says, tonelessly. “Yeah—it sure is something. Pretty hopeless, too.” Maybe it’s the knowledge that Ichinose can’t stick around long enough for it to matter. Whatever it is, he finds himself compelled to be uncharacteristically honest.
“Hopeless?” Ichinose asks. “I think things rarely are.”
“It’s a total dead end,” Shirahama confirms. “For someone like me…”
At that, Ichinose’s gaze sharpens. He looks at Shirahama like he’s just seen a ghost, asks, voice dropping into a whisper, “What you’re worried about… rather than a something, is it someone?”
He gets chills so violent he shrinks back. “What?” How did you know?
Ichinose chews on the inside of his mouth, but his gaze doesn’t break. “I… like recognizes like, I think.”
It’s like when an animal realizes it’s been caught in a trap—Shirahama had been lured into this corner, tucked into comforting solitude, and now the metal underbelly has exposed itself, ready to clamp its jaws around him. “And it’s a…” he trails off.
Now Ichinose’s gaze breaks, going distant with memory. “Yeah,” he says, almost noiseless. “It’s not really a—even if he wasn’t… like you said, it’s a hopeless effort, you know? But I still…”
A tightness has seized Shirahama’s throat. He manages to grit out, “I know.”
“Even if you want to, you can’t let go,” Ichinose concludes, more to himself than anyone else. “And I… I don’t even want to do that, too.” After a moment, he says, “Shirahama-kun,” and hesitates again, a question at the tip of his tongue, but at the sound of approaching footsteps, not another word is exchanged as they scramble to part ways.
The door to his room has barely closed shut before Shirahama asks, “That’s… the guy, isn’t it?”
The red, which had faded somewhat on their walk back, returns with thundering force. Like a rash, it’s spread unevenly on Ichinose’s skin—reddest at his ears, his nose, his nape, his cheeks. “It—you can’t tell anyone,” he says, clutching at his messenger bag. “No one even…” He bites his lip.
Hanzawa’s route, in its most successful ending, is torturously resistant to romance. It’s such a departure from everything else that Shirahama remembers with perfect clarity the way that, only a few months from graduation, does Hanzawa even begin to broach the topic of feeling. At the time, Shirahama had thought it was a bizarre yet compelling choice—now, struck with the sight of Ichinose’s face, unable to speak another word, he understands the fear underlying that decision. At least in romance, there’s a guaranteed happy ending; even now, there’s a true ending they can find. But Ichinose, for whom everything is real, has no such safety net.
“I won’t,” he assures. “…You really didn’t expect to run into me then, did you?”
“I didn’t,” Ichinose confirms. “You just caught me at… a time.” A wry smile appears on his face, clearing the nerves, and he says, “Literally caught me, too…” With a deep inhale and exhale, he says, “And you’re the same, right? So… I could trust you.”
Uneasy, Shirahama says, “Not… exactly.” At Ichinose’s raised eyebrows, he suggests, “The feeling isn’t… at the same level?”
Ichinose keeps his eyebrows raised. Before Shirahama can feel less than immensely judged, Ichinose reaches into his bag and pulls out a notebook. He gives Shirahama an expectant look.
“Wait,” Shirahama says, realization slowly dawning upon him, “are you… actually studying?”
Ichinose blinks up at him guilelessly. “Didn’t I say I’d help you?”
“Sure,” he replies, “but I thought you were, you know, making a getaway.”
“You helped me out there, so it’s only fair that I return the favor,” Ichinose says. With that continually judgy look, he asks, “Besides… you’re not really against it, are you?”
Am I so easy to read? “…No,” he admits. “I… I just know I’m kind of bad at it.”
With a shake of his head, Ichinose insists, “No such thing.” He makes himself at home in Shirahama’s room, sitting at his low table and pulling more stuff from his bag. “Why don’t we go over what you missed on the midterms? Is there a specific subject you struggle with?”
“…Math’s the worst,” Shirahama says, settling across him. “I can’t make any sense of it.”
“Math is methodical,” Ichinose says. “If it doesn’t make sense, you need a better handle on the rules. you just have to understand them in your own way. Here, show me…”
Shirahama produces his class materials for inspection, and Ichinose, plucking his reading glasses from his bag, begins to peruse their contents. He should squirm under the attention, but Ichinose flips through the pages so casually that it’s hard to not feel at ease. There are CGs in Boys’ Life Romance! from being tutored by Hirano, and there, the dialogue fades as you stare at the shadow of his lowered lashes, the radiance of his blond hair, the blue shine of his earrings…
Ichinose’s hair remains its usual black, and his face is barely visible and he hunches over a page with the type of posture that will cause neck pain for years to come, and the words he’s saying don’t fade in the slightest. In a game, studying is just an excuse to flirt and ogle, Shirahama supposes, but here, the math trumps all. No bells and whistles: Ichinose is just a guy, in love with a guy, sitting across another guy.
Thoughtlessly scanning over Shirahama’s notes, Ichinose mutters to himself, “Oh, this is still basic algebra. Neat.”
…Just a really, really smart guy.
“—I win!” Tashiro declares.
If Shirahama recalls correctly, around now there’s a special event meeting where you pick between Tashiro, Kagiura, Niibashi, and Hanzawa. That means that both of their practices had ended early, so Tashiro had challenged him to a match.
“Usually I do it at the bathhouse near my place,” Tashiro had said, “but you’re not there.” He spoke about it so matter-of-factly, like it was a given of the world, and while it was true that Shirahama’s dorm residence made the travel annoying, it was also true that Shirahama physically couldn’t leave the school. The scenery around the gates suggested there was more out there, and Miyano had visited the nearby snack shop by accident, after an early encounter with Tashiro. From that, they’d concluded that when events triggered, the world would simply teleport them into the location. Apart from that, they were locked within the confines of the school.
Shirahama, of course, enjoyed no such special teleportation privileges. In his first week, he’d mapped out the boundaries of the school, the air pressing back against him like a pulsing, elastic membrane wrapped around the grounds. If he wanted to play ping pong with Tashiro, it could only happen like this.
“Congrats, ping pong club member,” Shirahama says.
Tashiro sighs. “All that, and I can’t beat the president!” he complains. “I needed a win, so I asked you.”
“Hey, you barely won,” he fires back. Tashiro brushes past this truth with good charm and nature. In the corner of his eye, Shirahama spots the wall clock in the gymnasium, and adds, “Let’s wrap up. I need to head back to the dorm.”
“Why?”
Shirahama groans. That’s Tashiro’s natural curiosity, alright. He’ll never leave anything truly alone. “I got corralled into studying,” he says.
“You?!”
“I know! It’s just—” he waves his hands, frustrated. “It just… happened!”
“Uh-huh,” Tashiro says, disbelieving. “Like basketball ‘happened’?”
“No,” Shirahama dismisses, “That, I actually chose—” The words leaving his mouth surprise himself, but they are true. Even without a STR stat to max out, he would still choose the basketball club every time. “My grades are just bad,” he explains, “and he offered, and…”
“…And?” Tashiro asks. “You didn’t care about it before.”
“He just—” Shirahama struggles for words. “He gave me this look, and—”
His mouth snaps closed. That was the heart of it all, wasn’t it? Ichinose had looked at him, and Shirahama wasn’t used to people looking, in any world. The dorm manager had been right there and so had Hanzawa, and Miyano—and Ichinose had still looked right at Shirahama. Not in the way Tashiro’s looking at him now—only in someone’s absence—but in spite of someone’s presence.
He can’t nail down the way it makes him feel, but he says, “I’m going to be late, if I don’t go now.”
Tashiro cocks his head, and says, “Then go,” like it’s so easy, and it maybe it would be, for someone else.
He thinks about the way Miyano had buckled down after midterms. The way he’d withdrawn, talked about how he’d survive his way through high school and then live out the after. The way he’d said, I don’t need any romance. With that thought tacked into his head like a sharp pain, Shirahama trudged back to the dorms.
“Is this… right?” Shirahama asks.
Ichinose peers over. “That’s a bad habit,” he says. “Show your work.”
He re-factors the quadratic, taking care to show each simplification step, and exhales in relief when it reduces down to the final answer.
“See?” Ichinose says. “You didn’t even need to ask. Build that confidence.” His glasses have slipped down his nose, but he continues to solve whatever nightmare that calculus is in his workbook.
“That’d be good for you,” Shirahama says. “Doesn’t this take up too much of your time?” Even if he wasn’t a third year, the amount of time that Ichinose spends locked up in his room and studying would make romantic encounters impossible.
“Not really,” Ichinose says. “It’s a nice content refresher, and so much of math builds on itself that it’s good to review the basics.” He looks up from his page for a second, pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, and grins. “And you take so many breaks—that’s probably good for me!”
Dryly, Shirahama says, “Happy to be of service.”
“And I’m kind of curious,” he continues, “You’re not a bad studier—”
“I’m not good, either.”
“Okay, but you’re not hopeless,” Ichinose argues. “But you seemed so ready to give up, before.”
By now, he knows enough to understand that Shirahama has never been despaired over exams. But he’s also seen Shirahama’s midterm grades, which are admittedly concerning, so he relents and tells the truth. “I just… get distracted? I don’t have your drive,” he says. “It’d be nice to get good grades, but caring enough to put in the work? It’s… alien to me.”
“Oh, so I’m an alien to you?” Ichinose asks. and there’s in his eyes something glimmers, the barest bits of light peeking through in the night.
“Not—not like that,” he hastens to say. “You’re… very real. Like any other guy.”
“Thanks,” Ichinose says. The fondness on his face is clear, and Shirahama feels awed at having inspired it. “I have… a dream I’m working towards. And to do it, I need really good grades. So it’s my top priority. You probably have something else.”
…I don’t have something else, Shirahama thinks, but he just nods, content to let Ichinose imagine some noble goal that’s not just watching Miyano make his way through the game and towards his happy end.
“Distractions, I understand, though,” Ichinose continues. “When I’m home, I game like crazy—it half the reason I decided to dorm.”
His pencil slips through his fingers. “You game?” Shirahama asks, incredulous, as if Kuresawa wasn’t a rhythm game god and Tashiro wasn’t surprisingly great at puzzle platformers.
Ichinose smiles, closing his workbook. “Yeah, lots,” he says. “You too? What kinds?”
“…Well, I haven’t played anything in a while,” Shirahama says, except, technically, the world you’re living in right now, “But it’s a mix of things. Right now… I have a love-hate relationship with visual novels.”
“I play a lot of RPGs,” Ichinose says. “Not a VN, exactly, but I do love to play a character in a story. What’s your hatred stem from?”
Not bothering the cut the whine from his voice, Shirahama grumbles, “The story… sometimes it gets really stupid, and you can’t change it.”
Ichinose laughs. “Only if it’s bad!” he argues. “A good RPG makes you feel like you have a choice.”
Deliberately contrary, Shirahama says, “Right. It makes you feel.”
“You don’t like getting swept along by the story?” Ichinose must really like videogames—his face is flushed as he begins to gesture animatedly. His glasses slip down again, but he doesn’t bother to push them back up as he asks, “You don’t like to imagine yourself as someone different? Isn’t that what so many visual novels do?”
“There are good stories,” Shirahama says, “But at the end of day…” It’s never me. For better or worse, there’s a distance between him and every protagonist.
“You dislike the return to reality,” Ichinose concludes. And he’s looking, now, somewhere far-off, the expression on his face so damningly familiar. But then he says: “You know what, Shirahama-kun? I think your reality is just as beautiful as anyone else’s.”
Steadily, he looks down to meet Shirahama’s gaze. And here, in his room, the color in Ichinose’s cheeks deepen in color, rosy pink to red, and the lights bounce off his hair, black with a metallic blue sheen, and the violet rims of his spectacles reflect into his eyes, and Ichinose glows, reds and blues and violets and roses, like a simple love poem, and Shirahama knows what he’d refused to know from the first moment that a stranger had fallen into his arms: Ichinose Ao is no nobody.