perfectly still in the dark
by bloodletter

perfectly still in the dark

bloodletter

Summary

It was always hard with him. You couldn’t get anything of substance by asking for it directly. Taichi had remembered how irritating that could be, but now he felt along with the annoyance a rush of irrational fondness. It was what Taichi used to like about him. What you got out of him, you felt like you earned. Not because you worked for it, but like he’d seen something in you that was hidden from yourself and decided he could humour you for a while. It was probably too much to hope for that he still would.

Notes

A couple notes:
- The most recent manga chapter when this fic was written was 226.
- I tried my best to keep the timeline and canon compliance details straight but probably screwed it up at times (especially for precanon events/Suo's Meijinship). Sorry if you notice any jarring issues.
- This fic assumes a slightly more depressing postcanon situation for both Suo and Taichi than I think (hope?) we'll actually get, but it's all in the interest of narrative catharsis (or whatever this actually is).

A content note: it's hard to get across via tags, but in case you are for some reason coming in canon-blind, the characters involved in the main ship had a mentor + protege-esq dynamic when one of them was a teenager. They don't get together romantically until years later when the power dynamic is no longer in play.

October helped me a lot with beta reading and moral support and I’m really grateful. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to comment if you find any residual glaring SPAG errors--I'd rather know!

Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 24316801.

Chapter One

At Kaimeisei Junior High, Taichi experienced for the first time what it was like to not be the most popular boy in his year. Other things he remembered of that time included the immaculately maintained grass of the school grounds and how easy it was for him to fit in there, though he knew none of his classmates before the start of term. For the most part, the other students were like him: hard workers with achievement-driven parents. Even so, there were others around him who enjoyed the kind of adoration from their peers only real money could buy.

Among them, and in Taichi’s division, was the son of the CFO of some company or other. They were friends, of a sort. Taichi got invited to study at his house a few times, invitations which his mother accepted on his behalf. He was so-so at languages and math, but gave Taichi a run for his money at soccer, and most significantly in Taichi’s memory, he was the kind of rich that most people only saw in movies.

Rain trickled down the window-glass on a Saturday afternoon, and Taichi did both sets of their homework in a room with a new flat-screen TV half of the size of the wall and a butler coming by every half-hour to check on them and bring snacks. Any time Taichi hung out there, he came away thinking that being real-deal rich was about never having to see your parents. Everything got taken care of by other people. Taichi knew better than that, though; he knew nothing that other people could envy you for came without a price. Because he never had to see them, the parents who owned this house were everywhere around them, looking down and watching their progress through every high-tech gadget or collectible work of art on the walls. It was nothing like Arata’s place, back when he lived with them in Tokyo; that house smelled musty and Taichi had been afraid to lean against the wall at first, in case it collapsed. Every time he and Chihaya had stopped by, Arata’s mother had looked grateful to have other people to cook for. That had surprised him; he always figured poor people would be stingy.

While Taichi mechanically plodded through trigonometry exercises, his classmate channel-flipped past variety shows, weathermen, and perfume commercials.

“Did you hear about our math teacher, Taichi-kun?”

“Hear what?”

Around a mouthful of imported chips: “That he likes men.”

The tip of Taichi’s pencil paused for a moment on the graph-paper page; he clicked the lead dispenser once and continued solving for x, though he’d lost track of his calculations and had to start the question over from the beginning. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Well, you can just tell from the way he talks. He’s not married, either.” He leaned closer to Taichi to press his point. “Don’t you think so?”

On the TV screen, a drama heroine collapsed to the floor in a crying heap. Taichi hated seeing girls cry; it made him think of Rika pitching a fit in the car to get their mom to buy her something. The remote control clicked and the channel changed again: now it was a nature documentary. A pair of Arctic foxes nuzzled each other in the snow. They might have been fighting. It was hard to tell. Taichi watched the beautifully clear display for a few seconds. If he told his parents about this TV, how long would it take them to get one like it? Two months? Less? They liked to buy new goods while they were still luxury items. Otherwise, what was the point?

His pencil tip still hovered over the page when he replied, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

His host nodded thoughtfully, popped another chip in his mouth, and mumbled past it: “You’re so lucky, Taichi. I wish Kasumi-chan was my girlfriend."

Taichi nodded, unsure what to say. Sorry didn’t seem right, but he didn’t feel like bragging about it either. Eventually, he reached over to grab a handful of the fancy imported chips to give him an excuse not to answer. He was finally too preoccupied to worry about how greasy they’d leave his hands.

-

Stingy early February sunlight slipped below the skyline, and Taichi, twenty-two and running on a handful of sleep, shivered in front of Sudo Akito’s apartment complex. The sidewalks were almost iced over, but it was too late in the day for them to be salted again until the next morning. His feet had slipped on the pavement as he stopped in front of the door, and now his hands shook faintly as he typed out, Downstairs.

At least Sudo had the decency not to leave him shivering outside for long. That, or he was wary of the neighbors. Before Taichi had even taken his coat off, Sudo asked, his tone a bad impression of casual, “Did you watch the match?”

“On broadcast,” Taichi replied. He was unsure, even while saying it, why he lied.

“Really? I thought I saw you in the crowd.”

“Must’ve been someone else.” Sudo’s apartment was cramped and brutally organized, and Taichi sat down on the edge of the bed for lack of other furniture. “I had an exam.”

It was almost true; the exam had been cancelled at the last minute, meaning he’d rejected Arata’s invitation to play as card boy for nothing. He’d caught a midday train west to watch some old friends play an old game; it didn’t mean anything more than that, and he didn’t want to let Sudo run wild with speculation.

Sudo hadn’t taken a seat or made any moves to come closer to him. From across the small room, he folded his arms. Taichi sprawled his knees out a little, trying to look relaxed beneath the weight of Sudo’s disdain. He hadn’t come here for conversation; he needed to blot out the noise in the back of his head that was rising in pitch the closer he got to his flight.

Maybe Sudo saw it in his face, because after a moment he took off his hoodie and let it drop to the floor. Still, though, the look he sent Taichi was distant and perhaps completely nonsexual. He came closer and his hand fell to the back of Taichi’s head. Taichi tilted his head back experimentally, leaning into Sudo’s grasp. When they met each other’s eyes, Sudo smiled and tightened his grip in Taichi’s hair. “Did you grow this out on purpose?”

“I got too busy to cut it.”

“Not trying to look like someone we know?”

For the first time since he’d stepped onto Sudo’s doorstep, Taichi felt a prickle of uneasy surprise. He laughed softly, the laugh of someone neither uneasy nor surprised. “Of course that’s where your mind goes.”

Sudo kept talking as if he hadn’t heard Taichi’s reply. “So what’d you come here for this time, huh?” When Taichi didn’t respond, Sudo’s eyes narrowed. “You pretend you don’t like this, but you keep hitting me up, don’t you? Can you only get off if you pretend it’s not your idea?” His hand came to rest under Taichi’s chin, tilting it upwards. Taichi met Sudo’s gaze through his lashes. That always rattled Sudo, though he tried not to show it. “Let’s get on with it, then. I don’t let you in my house because I like your personality.”

Forty-three minutes later, they both lay on top of Sudo’s comforter, not touching anywhere, and scrolled through their phones. Taichi had two urgently worded texts from his mother about his overseas mailing address, an actually urgent email from his German lab supervisor, and a tearful, emoji-laden message from Chihaya begging for study help. He dismissed the text notifications and opened the email. Next to him, Sudo muttered, without looking away from his own phone, “You’re still going away, right?”

“Yeah. At the end of the week.” Taichi looked away from his phone for a minute, watching the bridge of Sudo’s nose in profile. “Was Suo-san there when you played for Meijin this year?”

Sudo’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t look up from his screen. “Why do you care? I thought you didn’t hang around with him anymore.”

“Do you?”

“We see each other sometimes,” Sudo replied, oddly blank.

Taichi licked his dry bottom lip before asking, “What, like this?” Sudo scoffed and put down his phone to lean over the side of the bed and feel around for clothes on the floor—not that it stopped Taichi from noticing the blush from stealing up his neck. Taichi felt emboldened, and he added, in an undertone, “Did you? I mean, ever…”

Sudo stilled. Taichi watched the muscles in his bare back shift, but the sight didn’t hold much of his attention. His heart thudded in his chest.

Sudo’s reply came via textile. Sudo tossed something onto the bed behind him, and Taichi’s balled-up t-shirt came flying up from the floor to smack him in the face before falling into his lap. He shook it out and sniffed it, just in case: it smelled like detergent, everyday sweat, and dust, not anything more incriminating. Part of him always expected that he’d end up smelling like shame and secrets the whole way home. Sudo sat up on his heels. “Why don’t you ask him? Nothing’s stopping you. Unless something is.” He pulled his own shirt over his head and added, “Bet you don’t even know where he works these days.”

The last sentence sat badly in Taichi’s chest because it was true. For all the time that had passed since they stopped being rivals in karuta and started being whatever this was, part of Sudo still truly hated him. He’d never forgiven Taichi for being the wedge that drove the two of them apart. His disdain wasn’t a game, like it was to him with others; it was only incidental that it sometimes manifested in ways Taichi could make use of.

Coldly: “Well go on, then. Tell me. You’re dying to.”

Sudo’s jaw shifted, a tense movement for the pronounced carelessness of his words. “He’s a speech therapist now. Isn’t that something—him, teaching people how to talk.”

That—Taichi felt shock, a pang of warmth, and on their heels something that might have been jealousy. Taichi set down his phone, which had gone dark minutes ago, and leant over the edge of the bed to feel around on the ground for his discarded pants. He dressed himself in silence and stood up, but not before casting a dispassionate eye towards Sudo, who still sat on the bed with all the arrogance he could muster. With his hands thrust deep in his jeans pockets, Taichi said, “Sorry that I kept you from challenging Suo, back when he was Meijin. I mean, I’m not sorry that I beat you. But I’m sorry for you.”

Sudo, still in briefs and a t-shirt with his bare knees jutting past the edge of the bed, narrowed his eyes. “Save your pity for yourself. It’s not as though you could get past Arata either, is it?”

Arata—he couldn’t think of Arata at a time like this. Instead of answering, Taichi opened his phone back up to finish the email he’d started. While Taichi’s gaze was averted, Sudo added, “You know what Suo-san saw in you? You didn’t contradict him. That’s all. You were just a kid to him.”

Taichi hit send, and didn’t argue.

-

The Meijin-Queen title matches had happened only weeks earlier, yet the memory already felt warped from repeated touch. He congratulated Arata after his matches against Sudo reached their conclusion, and it was hard, blinding, even, to meet Arata’s gaze. Taichi couldn’t get out of hugging him, though there were less people around this time than the last occasion Arata had embraced him after a match. Whenever Arata reached out, it was hard to pull away. Taichi’s throat welled up at the smell of his aftershave and the feeling of the fabric of Arata’s hakama against Taichi’s cheek. It was the same one Arata had worn to the last Meijin challenger final he’d had to play: the games against Taichi, back in their third year. The arm of Arata’s glasses dug into the top of Taichi’s head. It all felt too familiar to be accounted for.

Arata’s low, calm voice whispered next to Taichi's ear: “You told me you weren’t going to make it.”

“Yeah, well,” Taichi replied, after taking a moment to clear his throat of the hoarseness clouding it. “Isn’t Murao a good enough card boy for you?”

Arata had laughed at that, tender and fatigued, and ruffled the back of Taichi’s hair. Taichi felt as though he were the one to just play four games in a row; his heart thudded in his chest so fast he thought Arata must be able to feel it.

Thankfully, Arata chose that moment to let him go. “I heard you’re leaving.” Arata’s accent thickened, as it always did when he got tired or emotional. It was a tell Taichi was glad he didn’t have to reckon with himself.

“Just for a while. I’ll be back before the end of the year.”

“Where are you going, again? Somewhere in Europe?”

“Germany. It’s a study-abroad thing. Like an internship.”

Arata nodded. His face was still flushed, the way it always got when he had to get up in front of a crowd and make a speech. He’d gotten better at public speaking over the years since he took the title, but he’d never be a natural celebrity. Between Arata and the Meijin who’d come before him, it was hard to say who was worse in front of a microphone, though Arata made up for his shyness by being vastly more willing to work with the wishes of the Karuta Association than his predecessor.

(Suo could speak well, when he wanted to; you just had to be willing to listen carefully—)

Arata’s skin was still damp to the touch from sweat. He smelled like exertion and a lightly masculine scent Taichi suspected was something he’d put in his hair to keep it off his forehead before the picture-taking began. It was charming that he’d finally picked up something like that. Surely someone had given him a talk about personal presentation, though it was hard to imagine who it could’ve been. Chitose?

The door to the prep room they’d holed up in opened to reveal Arata’s mother, looking more grey than Taichi remembered her from Tokyo, but just as kindly. Arata glanced at her for a moment before blinking at Taichi sheepishly. “Bring us back some souvenirs, alright?”

Taichi left Omi Jingu not long after that, dropping a box of victory chocolates off for Chihaya on his way. On his way to the outdoor courtyard, he spotted the back of Sudo’s head at a distance. He was surrounded by a throng of dejected Hokuo and Todai alumni. Hiro was still in his card boy’s hakama and looked fully distraught. One of Sudo’s hands patted his shoulder dispassionately. Taichi could have stopped for him and offered his condolences on a graceful defeat, but he kept on walking. Even so, he didn’t pass through the gate before glancing at every tall figure around Sudo. Just to be sure.

He kept it up on the train back to the city, as well; his head turned every time he saw someone in sunglasses. Stupid. He knew better than to think he’d see Suo there without a reason, and what was he going to do if he did see him, anyway? Taichi was the one who’d stopped calling.

-

A professor Taichi had worked with as a lab assistant two terms back had recommended him for a study-abroad program at an experimental ophthalmology clinic in Germany. It was surprising how little he needed to take with him for half a year on the other side of the world. Most of his bags were already packed and tagged and stacked near the door of his apartment, waiting for him to collect them and leave the place behind, for a time. His parents had agreed to pay rent on it in his absence, keeping it waiting for his return, preserved and lifeless as a moth in a jar.

Even though it was just temporary, this would be the first time he’d ever lived outside Tokyo. The day before the flight, the reality of his departure was settling into the pit of his stomach. The feeling was in large part fear.

Halfway through filling out the online flight confirmation, a soft but decisive knocking came at the door. His brows knit together, but he got up to peer through to the other side.

“Mom?”

“Are you going to leave me standing in the hallway?”

His mother had just that morning had her roots dyed over, so the incoming grey was covered with a coppery auburn. Once he moved aside to let her in, she looked at him over from head to toe with an expression full of disappointed skepticism. “Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?”

She irritated him with her unplanned visits even when they were harmless, and he did a poor job keeping it out of his tone. “I said goodbye when I came by on the weekend, didn't I?”

She exhaled something too delicate to be called a huff and sat at his table with the grace of a dancer. Her manicure matched her hair: shiny as a new coin. “Are you all ready to leave, then?”

“Mostly.” He gestured vaguely around the stripped-down room.

She smoothed a crease out of her cashmere sleeve and said, “I still think you should’ve taken the research position here. We need your help with the renovations, and it’s wiser to build connections in your own country, don’t you think? Wiser to stay close to home.”

He swallowed several half-formed sentences and took a sip from the half-empty water bottle beside him. He couldn’t tell her how much time he’d spent thinking of walking down the street in an unfamiliar place, where there weren’t any people that he used to know or a mother to drop by his apartment unannounced if he went too long without replying to her texts. He wanted to spend some time living a temporary life; something that, when he left to come back home, would melt away like paper in the rain.

She watched him as he swallowed. There was a look in her eye he didn’t recognize and thus didn’t know how to brace himself for, and before he could put together something neutral to say, she spoke again: “Did you know I lived in Australia for a few years?”

Taichi blinked involuntarily, the kind of expression that took over your whole face. “When?”

“Oh, a long time ago. Before you were born.” She sounded very matter-of-fact, as if this was something she talked about often, instead of something he was hearing for the first time. “I went abroad to study English and stayed for longer than I planned because I liked the weather. But eventually I came back. So I understand why you want to go, but be careful you don’t lose track of what you came for, and make sure you come home when it’s time for you to return to the things you’re working toward.”

“Why did you stay so long, then?”

She unzipped her purse and withdrew a tube of lipstick, which she reapplied before replying. Her movements were as clean and soundless as ever. Someday her body would start to show the difficulties of age, but she hadn’t let it gain any ground yet. At least not where anyone else could see. “There was a man there. We saw each other for a long time—almost from the beginning. He was madly in love with me. I almost married him.”

Taichi cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you?”

She smiled, crooked and genuine, for a quick moment before it was gone. “He badly wanted children. I didn’t. I thought I was very independent back then and didn’t want anything to do with being a mother.”

“Oh.”

Usually, when they spoke, it was hard for him to maintain eye contact. He had to continually remind himself to look her in the face. At that moment, he didn’t think his gaze could drift away from her if he tried.

Her eyes were far away. She wasn’t looking at him, but out the window onto the dusky street below. “I broke off the engagement at the last minute and went back to Japan. Later on, I met your father, and realized that I did want children after all. I just hadn’t wanted children with him. That’s when we had you.”

She’d never mentioned any of this to him before. His mother had lived a life—it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but his own secrets, kept so zealously from her for years, each one a minor victory, all seemed suddenly petty in the face of her own. He'd seen photos of his mother as a young woman, of course. A series of lavishly framed wedding photographs were displayed in his parents' bedroom—but his mother was vain and self-controlled, and Taichi had never thought of her as really young, just slightly less old than when he knew her. She'd certainly never been one to admit to mistakes in general, let alone youthful indiscretions. Recklessness wasn't a very maternal trait, and he wondered whether she was able to excise it from herself, or if she just buried it beneath the weight of the lip-pursed scrutiny she'd always directed towards her children. She'd done her level best to purge any hints of impulsivity out of them. Unsuccessfully, clearly, but it gave him a cool wash of feeling for her, somewhere between fondness and anger.

“Do you regret it?” As he asked it, he was absently conscious of the dark circles under his eyes and the way his hair had grown out too long at the back and sides. He looked disheveled to himself, these days. To her eyes, it must have seemed a lot worse. For once, though, she didn’t watch him with a scrutinizing gaze; a gauzy, dreamy expression had taken hold of her face.

“Regret what? Leaving?”

“Having children.”

“Why would I regret that?”

Outside his apartment window, distant trains clattered on their way through the city. In the silence between the two of them, parts of his mind spun fast enough she ought to be able to hear. Receiving her confidence was dangerous; it was almost enough to trick him into thinking he could afford to do the same. If she ever found out about who he really was—a coward, greedy for approval and success, who lacked the self-discipline necessary to train himself out of things it did no one any good for him to want—in what tone would her disapproval come? What flavour: exasperated, nagging, angry? At best, she would cough politely, the verbal equivalent of dabbing the corner of her mouth with an embroidered napkin, and go on pretending she never knew, with only something shuttered behind her eyes whenever she looked at him to tip him off to the lie.

“We haven’t always made things easy for you.”

She laughed. “That’s not why anyone has children.”

He nodded. Neither of them looked at each other; his mother watched the sun wane behind the window glass, and Taichi watched her cautiously. The moment felt delicate, like eye contact was all it would take to break. She brushed an errant curl behind her ear and added, still looking away, “I am proud of you, you know. I wish I told you when you were younger. You were always so hardworking that it felt like I didn’t have to… But maybe that was my mistake, and you did need to hear it.”

There was a statement light fixture in the main living space, one of a few touches made by the apartment's owners to justify the above-market rent. As if it took her strength to face him, she folded her lips into a tight line before turning away from the window. In the dimming sunlight, she was gently starlit from the fragments of refracted light from the overhead chandelier that landed on her hair and face and danced around as she moved.

“Thank you,” he replied with a hollow calm, and her mouth twisted in a half-smile as she reached for her purse.

“You’ll call me when you make it to Europe. Even if it’s the middle of the night.”

“Yeah. I’ll remember.”

By the door, he listened to the tap of her heels recede down the hallway until she was gone. The room around him felt suddenly drab; he was aware in a way he wasn’t before of how ugly and tired a soon-to-be-vacant room looked.

His computer was still propped open on top of the largest of his unzipped suitcases; he had the flight confirmation to finish, plus a couple hours’ chores and the last of the packing to get through tonight if he didn’t want to be scrambling in the morning. Taichi had ground all capacity for procrastination out of himself back in elementary school. Even so, he turned to his laptop and opened a new tab.

The cursor blinked inside the search engine box impatiently. His fingers fidgeted above the keys until he typed in the web address of his old juku. Their website looked the same as it had several years ago, when he’d spent more of his evenings there than at home. He clicked through to the staff page and scrolled down the list of current lecturers. A few familiar names jumped out at him, but there was no Suo-sensei among them. Taichi looked through twice, to be sure.

He wasn’t disappointed, exactly. He’d never liked thinking of Suo as his teacher. When it came to karuta, Taichi’s only teacher was Harada-sensei, and Taichi had never really been Suo's disciple, no matter what others might have said. Suo was something else to him. Whatever it was you called an old friend that you fell out of touch with, whose voice you never trained yourself out of hearing in your head.

The juku’s website didn’t provide him with any answers, so Taichi searched for mentions of Suo Hisashi on the web in general. One of the links immediately caught his interest: the Nagasaki weekly newspaper’s online archives. There were a few stubs noting each of his title defences, as well as one announcing his loss and subsequent competitive retirement. Taichi scrolled to the end of the results and saw a slightly longer article with an image attached. Nagasaki-born University of Tokyo student Suo Hisashi takes the grand title of competitive karuta three years after beginning the sport. When asked what got him interested in the game, the university third-year replied, “It was something to do…”

Taichi laughed under his breath and clicked the image to full-size. It loaded as a pixelated and artifact-laden photo of a familiar scene: the Urayasu Auditorium at the end of its most important day.

In the foreground, Suo looked mostly the same, though he wore a different hakama than in later title defenses. Maybe this one was rented. No sense in buying one until you know you’re all in, though most don’t wait to achieve the game’s highest title to admit it. He held the trophy a little higher for the camera than Taichi remembered from any of Suo’s wins he watched himself. After a while, the rituals of winning must get tiresome. The most obvious difference between this Suo and the one Taichi remembered was that, in the picture, his hair was black and only about an inch long. This must have been Suo at Taichi’s current age, or around there. Three years into Todai, with, for now, more to show for it than Taichi had managed.

He sat staring at the photo for long enough his laptop screen began to dim and he needed to jiggle the cursor to keep it awake. The image kept his attention, but mostly for the way it reminded him of all the things about Suo it couldn’t capture: his strange playstyle (not that the reporters could be expected to understand the subtleties), his unselfconscious appetite, his eccentric manner that no one who saw him in person could mistake. This grainy .jpg painted a more flattering portrait than anyone who lived in the karuta world at the time would've, but a less distinctive one, too. Any non-player who read the news byte wouldn't come away understanding what it was about him that drew people in. It was his simultaneous cynicism and naivete, and above all his soft-spoken voice that seemed to draw you in closer, straining your ear until you learned what listening could really mean.

Taichi went back to the flight confirmation, but he couldn’t bring himself to close the tab.

-

They ordered two teas, some complicated flavour Taichi forgot the name of as soon as Suo said it. Same amount of ice, same size of cup. Taichi remembered at the last second to scale down the sugar level in his order. He bought his own drink, of course. Whatever they paid Suo at the juku wasn’t enough for him to treat anyone, especially not at the frequency the two of them were going out before practice, these days.

Inside of the tea shop, they sat on cramped stools by the front window and watched the people on the street outside pass through the patterns of dappled evening light. Next to him, Suo’s legs were folded up awkwardly to fit under the counter-top.

On the tatami, or in front of a lecture hall, Suo had a soporific quality about him that made you strain to keep track of what, exactly, was going on in front of you. When it was the two of them out in the world, Suo sometimes held himself with a strange, coiled energy. It seemed more honest, even though part of him did always expect Suo to get up and leave halfway through their conversation. He hadn’t yet.

“There aren’t too many shops like this where I grew up. You have to go into town if you want to try new drinks when they come out.”

Taichi glanced to the side sharply. The direction of Suo’s gaze was still fixed on the street in front of them, but from his seat next to him, Taichi could see through the space between Suo’s dark lenses and his face. His eyelids were slack, his eyes mostly closed. He looked to be existing elsewhere.

It was the first time in their acquaintance he’d heard Suo speak of his childhood. He wanted to seize hold of it and coax more out of him, but Taichi had started to realize you couldn’t approach Suo head-on about most things. He balked easily.

“You grew up in Nagasaki, right?”

Suo didn't say anything, but his head bobbed in a way that could've either been a nod or a meaningless gesture. Taichi took it as an opening through which he could pry out the things Suo wasn't willing to tell.

He ran his tongue over his teeth, feeling the residue of sugar, and commented, "I've been there. It's nice." Suo didn't respond, but neither did he turn away or look angry, so Taichi pressed on. “We probably weren't in the same places, if you were in the country. We mostly stayed in hotels.”

“You went with your family?”

“We took a vacation around Kyushu.” It wasn't one of their better family trips; his memories of Nagasaki were mostly about fighting with Rika over control of the hotel TV. Dad, who had a rare stretch of time off, had wanted to go hiking in the mountains, and his mother had feigned a headache to get herself out of it. He'd paid the memories more attention lately than he had in a long time. The more time they spent together, the more curious Taichi became of what Suo's life was like before he came to Tokyo. Surely he hadn't always been this person. “I think I was too young to appreciate it. I’d like to go back sometime.”

He dared a glance down the counter-top. Behind his sunglasses, Suo’s eyes were open but unfocused, staring blankly into the darkening street.

Suo had a way of simultaneously dominating a room and seeming to take up very little of it. He could be magnetic when he wasn’t speaking, but only sometimes, and half of the time when he did open his mouth the only thing to come out was nonsense. Only half of the time, though. He could speak very well when he chose to. Even so, it was his silence that was the hardest to look away from, drawing you in until you were doing anything you could to fill the gaps with meaning. Maybe that missed the point. Maybe the silence was the meaning.

The contents of Taichi’s cup were getting down to the bottom of the ice. Taichi had started leaving the last dregs of his drinks unsipped because they were too loud to get to with a straw. At first, it was just when he was with Suo, as not to be rude, but by now it had become habitual. Taichi put his almost-empty cup aside and waited for Suo to do the same. Suo was taking his time today. Almost stalling.

As if sensing his thoughts, Suo blinked and set his drink down. Without warning, he reached out to clasp Taichi on the shoulder. “We should go before they close up the practice room.”

His grasp loosened quickly and slid away, but Taichi sat there, dumb and blinking, for long seconds, until Suo was almost out of the door and Taichi had to get to his feet and follow him, so not to be left behind.

-

In the responseless seconds after Taichi rang the buzzer, it struck him for the first time since he’d had the idea that his presence here was an invasion of privacy. Standing on his doorstep, his free hand thrust into his pocket to stave off the chill, Taichi tried to summon some of whatever had driven him to make so many intrusions into Suo’s life when they were—friends. After a few seconds, he realized that taking that train of thought too far was hardly comforting, and so Taichi focused instead on finger-combing his hair into order against the February wind.

After many seconds of silence passed, Taichi pulled out his phone to double-check the apartment address listed in his contacts. He’d never had a reason to delete it, but he’d also never been inside the place; he’d only ever come by the general area to meet Suo and go somewhere else, and even that had been years ago. This might well be a fool’s errand on a very cold night. He could’ve called ahead, to save himself the time, but something had held him back. Fear, maybe. Besides, it was already late; it had to be close to 10pm.

Taichi had nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. Nothing that couldn’t wait until the morning, anyway.

The tread of footsteps on the other side of the door was nearly inaudible until the second before it opened. Taichi thought he managed to hide his startle of surprise.

He was peaky, bare-faced, and dressed in rumpled work clothes he hadn’t yet changed. Taichi had forgotten how he always looked disheveled even when he had put in effort, which he hadn’t today. Suo wasn’t all that much taller than Taichi, but he could make those few centimetres count—Arata was like that, too, had that bearing to him, but that wasn’t something he wanted to think about now—and Taichi had remembered that about him, but, being faced with it again for the first time in years, it sank within his stomach like a stone.

For a flickering moment, Taichi caught a ripple of shock spread across Suo’s face before it was quashed beneath indifferent blankness. “Mashima-kun?”

Suo was never good at faking it. Taichi, who had been faking it his entire life, cleared his throat.

“Are you hungry?”

Suo blinked, uncomprehending, before his eyes flicked down to the box of dorayaki under Taichi’s arm. He looked back at Taichi’s face, and answered, “No.”

Taichi’s blood froze before Suo added, “But you can still come in.”

That startled a sharp laugh out of Taichi. Liar. When was Suo ever not hungry?

As he followed Suo into the apartment, Taichi watched Suo’s hair brush his shoulders as he moved. It looked longer now than he’d ever kept it as Meijin. Did he wear it held back at all, anymore, if he no longer played? To work, surely. He was lucky to have found someplace that let him keep it like that.

“I wasn’t sure you still lived here.”

“It’s convenient. Moving isn’t very fun, so...”

The place was dimly lit, of course, but before long Taichi’s eyes began to adjust. When they arrived at the small kitchen, Suo took the box of dorayaki from him, scanned it over with the critical eye of an expert, and then opened it to fish out the first of the individually wrapped packages. Liar indeed. He did have the decency to look up at Taichi and offer him one, wordlessly, though he had the excuse at that moment that his mouth was full. Taichi shook his head, and Suo nodded, turning back away from him to stow the rest of the box away in his cupboards in a rare show of restraint.

This was something his mother taught him years ago: you should bring a gift any time you’re about to ask too much of someone. It’s not bribery, she’d added, sternly. It’s an apology. That’s how the world works. He still wasn’t sure what it was he’d come here to ask for, but showing up on Suo’s doorstep after such a long absence was enough of an overstep to warrant apology on its own.

While Suo’s back was turned, Taichi glanced around the apartment without taking much care not to avoid looking nosy. This could have been anyone's 1DK suite, besides a few identifying touches here and there, like the heavy sound- and light-proofing curtains over the windows and a pair of surprisingly high-quality speakers. What little decor there was had nothing to do with karuta. Did Suo still have his hakama? Where did he keep it? There wasn't much space in a cramped place like this. What about the cards? Stowed in a box somewhere, no doubt. Or—he spared a thought for the crowded house he visited in Nagasaki, where they were running out of room for Suo’s trophies. The thought distracted him enough that he gave a small start when Suo spoke.

“You look… no. You smell different. I guess you buy different soap than your parents’ housekeeper did. Would you like some japchae?”

Taichi ignored the comment about his detergent, though true, and was about to reply that he wasn’t hungry before he realized that doing so would stretch even leaner the already thin premise he had to be there. Besides, Suo was a pretty good cook, when he bothered.

“Yes. Thanks.”

Suo heated water for the glass noodles, and Taichi tried to approximate a casual posture as he watched. There was a way you had to be with him: unintimidated and unimpressed, but not judgemental. Not slavishly devoted, but still listening. Still coming along for the ride.

The kitchen was surprisingly well-stocked for a bachelor. He was making an assumption that Suo hadn’t found a girlfriend in the intervening years, but there was nothing in his apartment to suggest that he had, and Sudo would probably have mentioned it. Even so, it was the kitchen of someone who had the palate of an overgrown child. The contents of his cube fridge, when Suo opened it to pull out some vegetables, were predominantly sweets and other flashy things that came in colourful packaging.

On the countertop rested an old cassette player. “Do you still have the recordings you got from Yamashiro Kyoko?”

“They’re around somewhere. I’m not sure where I put them.”

It was always hard with him. You couldn’t get anything of substance by asking for it directly. Taichi had remembered how irritating that could be, but now he felt along with the annoyance a rush of irrational fondness. It was what Taichi used to like about him. What you got out of him, you felt like you earned. Not because you worked for it, but like he’d seen something in you that was hidden from yourself and decided he could humour you for a while. It was probably too much to hope for that he still would.

It didn’t take long for Suo to finish cooking. The japchae was a little sweet for Taichi’s taste, but the sweetness was familiar. When he passed Taichi the plate, Taichi got a good look at him for the first time since he’d come in. His face was unlined but a little softer, more filled out with age, though Taichi didn’t know if anyone who hadn’t once studied it up close could tell. You’re getting older, Suo-san. You need to watch those sweets.

After everything, when Taichi finished with whatever it was he'd achieve, he hoped more would remain of him than this—he thought it, and immediately felt ashamed. Surely, it was shameful to pity a man who’s feeding you dinner. He was suddenly aware of just how much he sounded like his mother inside his own head. What was it in the two of them that made them this way, never satisfied, always looking at the state of things, calculating how they measured up to others, and judging whether it was worth the effort to make up the difference? His father wasn’t that way, and neither was Rika. What was the difference between Taichi and them, and was there ever a time when he could’ve closed the gap?

A photo in a frame by the sink snagged his eye. It looked like it came from one of those instant film cameras that got popular a few years back. Rika got one for her birthday the first year they came on the market. In Suo’s photo, someone who looked like Wakamiya Shinobu stood in front of something that looked like a tiny airplane. The background was vaguely familiar; after casting around in his mind for a few moments, he registered it as part of the Lake Biwa shoreline. She was smiling in the picture, not one of her press conference smiles, smug and glassy, but a crinkling of the skin around her eyes, though her mouth bore only the slightest curve. She looked as superior as ever, even so. No longer Queen Wakamiya, she still knew something he didn't, and looked as though it was up to him to figure it out. He wondered whether Suo took the picture, or someone else, and if so, who would go to the trouble of sharing it with him.

He’d seen her from a distance at Omi Jingu a few weeks earlier. She was dressed for the occasion in a purple and blue hakama, though not competing in the matches that year due to an injury; she’d appeared at the title matches to commentate. The Karuta Association pulled her in to present at as many of the streamed matches as she would agree to because she was good for ratings, or at least that was what Chihaya had told him. Wakamiya hadn’t recognized him, as far as he could tell. She certainly hadn’t looked him in the eye the way her image did now. In Suo’s kitchen, she looked both reproachful and mocking; at the shrine, she’d looked as eccentric as ever, but somehow smaller than she once did, though her hair was still stacked on top of her head like a mascot character. How do you come back here?, he’d wondered, listening to her insincerely praise Chihaya’s challenger’s take. How do you return as a pilgrim to the place where you were once a god?

Taichi was lucky, in a way; he could pass through that place mostly unnoticed. It was the privilege granted by never having played for the title, let alone having had it and lost it.

He tore his eyes away from the picture to glance at Suo again. In between bites, Taichi asked, “I hear you left the juku?”

“I still fill in sometimes when they need substitute lecturers.” Taichi nodded. It struck Taichi, listening to his voice for the first time in years, that Suo didn’t have much of a regional accent. If he did, it might have been another thing his quiet intonation helped to conceal.

Taichi chewed quietly, out of politeness and habit, and slowly, out of a desire to prolong the time before he needed to come up with another thing to say. He brushed his hair behind one of his ears without giving it much thought before hearing Sudo’s voice in his head: Trying to look like someone we know?

Well, Sudo could go—it was a coincidence borne out of being too busy with labs and exams to look after himself. He hadn’t planned on ever seeing Suo again, much less tried to take after him.

“What are you doing for work now?” He didn’t want to admit that he’d already heard that much from Sudo, too, in case it made Suo start asking questions it would be awkward to answer.

“Do you remember the TV special we filmed?” Taichi nodded. Suo turned away from him to wash the handful of dishes in the small sink. “Later, the sound technician who measured my results got in contact with me. He knew someone who was looking for an apprentice with good hearing. The juku was getting boring, anyway.”

“So what do you do?”

“Correct people’s speech.” He didn’t look like he wanted to talk about it further, which wasn’t much of a surprise. He never liked to talk about teaching, and this was a different kind of teaching, wasn’t it? Nevermind that he was good at it, when he tried. “How’s school?”

Taichi gave the answer he gave everyone—hard but good—and gave a what can you do shrug about it.

Medical school was a slog, but there was something comforting to just how much more he had left ahead of him. He was on a train track and all he had to do was keep moving forward, though that was easier said than done. There was always a next stage to be overcome, and at no point did Taichi have to make real decisions about the shape of his future. He could rest easy, as much as that was possible amidst grueling study timetables and nightmarish tests, that he hadn't already gotten as good as he was ever going to get.

He had been hungrier than he thought. His plate was empty, yet Taichi found himself unwilling to leave just yet. He was lucky to have even been let in; he wanted to stretch the time he’d stolen out of Suo for as long as he could.

“Do you have any tea? It’s pretty cold out. I could use some before I go.”

For a few moments, Suo once again looked visibly startled. He was facing Taichi at three-quarter profile, and Taichi watched the line of his arm tense up for a second. Was Taichi always so good at taking him by surprise? He seemed more physically cautious around Taichi then than he ever was before. There was a time he wasn’t cautious at all.

It wasn't as strange as he expected to be on something like equal footing with him. If anything, Taichi was the intruder here, pushing at Suo's edges and waiting for admonition that hadn't yet come. It wasn't that Suo couldn't put his foot down. He had it in him to be casually cruel; Taichi still remembered the look on Sudo's face when Suo had chastised him in public: Don't take liberties. Taichi had done nothing but take liberties since he'd come to the door, but Suo hadn't made him pay for it yet.

An immeasurable period of time passed, and then Suo turned toward Taichi, reaching out as if to touch him. Taichi’s throat seized up, but Suo’s hand slid past Taichi to pick up the kettle, resting on the counter behind where Taichi stood.

Suo was down to shirtsleeves and a loosened tie. His shoulders and arms were spindly under his shirt, and Taichi wondered whether he'd always been so thin or if he'd lost weight in the intervening years. There was a tension between the way he held his body, with silence, care, and economy of movement, and his disheveled manner. Though not especially muscular, Suo was still assured in his own skin, and he moved as though determined not to disturb the air around him. Even so, there was a slight hesitation in his arm when he reached for things that weren’t right in front of him, and Taichi recognized patterns in the layout of the space. Nothing was tucked away in shadowy corners; everything in Suo’s kitchen was positioned so it could be reached for while looking straight on, compensating for the lack of sight around the corners of his field of vision.

Taichi never asked him the name of his condition, back then; he had his own theories, come up with while reading case studies, but he was working off imperfect data. It was hard to tell how much of the adjustments to his living space had been made due to actual deterioration of his eyesight or just proactive measures to avoid strain, as well as to prepare himself for the inevitable. Most people ran from their fears and clinged to the things that brought them comfort, but Suo had always taken the opposite approach, letting go of things before they had a chance to fade away. Taichi understood this; it was something they shared.

During his first Intro to Ophthalmology lab, Taichi dissected a cow’s eyeball. In the time since, eyes had lost much of their mystery for him, but he still remembered the unexpected nervousness he felt taking a scalpel to the delicate retina and the structures behind. Even so; he shifted his weight from side to side in the scanty elbow room he had to himself in Suo’s small kitchen, and was once again aware of the strength it took the body to see.

After Suo produced the tea, he made his way towards the kotatsu in the centre of the main room. Taichi followed, feeling the thrill of a trespasser with each step he took deeper into the apartment. The warmth under the table soaked through Taichi’s jeans as he heated his palms with the side of his cup. He hadn’t realized just how cold he was.

Once they were both seated at the kotatsu, Suo began to sprawl outwards. It was his home, so he had the right to, but the informality was distracting. The first two buttons of his shirt had been undone, revealing hollow clavicles, and Taichi's mouth went dry at the sight of visible skin. At the same time, the sight of his bones made Suo seem oddly frail and very human.

He took a deep breath through his nose, steeling himself, though he wasn’t sure why, and said, “I’m flying to Germany tomorrow.”

Suo’s brows creased, and he shot Taichi a dispassionately withering look across the table. “Why?”

“I got a temporary research position there.” He took a small sip of the middling-quality tea, and this time he knew why he was steeling himself. He added, “At an ophthalmology institute.”

That did shake Suo into silence. Taichi could feel his own racing pulse running through his neck, his wrists, his fingers. He didn’t know what he was afraid of, besides Suo coming to conclusions that were true. He did keep his eyes on Taichi’s face now, more consistently than he had when they were in the kitchen; Taichi could feel the shiver of that look all over, even though only the upper part of his body could be seen above the tabletop.

He wondered if he should explain himself, or begin to take his leave, but Suo at last found words. “When is your flight?”

“Tomorrow.” Taichi shifted his legs around under the kotatsu, breath half-caught in his throat. It was a miracle they’d managed to not yet knock knees.

Across from him, Suo rested his chin on his left palm and traced around the side of his cup with the tip of his right index finger. “Aren’t you worried you’ll oversleep if you stay out too late?”

“I won’t.” You didn’t make it through years of Todai pre-med without learning how to function on little sleep. Suo knew that already; Taichi could see it in his face. Taichi had never missed a flight in his life. He wasn’t the kind of person things like that happened to. Suo surely knew that, too. He added, “I’m already packed, anyway.” That much was mostly true.

“The last train must be soon.”

The cup of tea between his palms had gone cold. Would he ever learn that saving it for too long just meant missing out on it while it was still good? Some things it wasn’t worth trying to make last. Taichi set it aside, reflexively wet his bottom lip with his tongue, and replied with less trepidation than he felt, “I’ll get a taxi if I have to.” By the clock on the wall, visible only dimly in the half-dark of the room, he’d have to set out soon to make the last train at all. Not that it mattered; Suo lived within walking distance to Taichi’s own apartment, both of them within a close radius of Todai. Something kept him from saying so. It was very cold out, and he wasn’t in a hurry to walk back alone.

He’d been resting his elbows on the table since they got there, and Taichi folded his forearms and laid his head down, tilting his face so he could keep Suo in his line of sight. Taichi let his gaze linger on the shift of cotton shirtsleeves over his lean arms. They were alone, together, and he could allow himself that much.

The exhaustion was hitting him, not just from packing and the making of last-minute arrangements, but accumulated over the last few years of studying harder than he ever had and running on fumes. Suo watched him with an unidentifiable expression. When Taichi let his eyes slide closed for a moment, his other senses came to the fore. Something unspoken was ringing in the air, impossible to hear under everyday noise but reverberating in the stillness between them, in this room outside of the world.

“You can sleep here, if you need to.”

The skin on Taichi’s arms pricked with goosebumps beneath his sleeves. He wondered, with the absent curiosity he’d use to solve a physics problem, whether this was a test he was about to fail. He felt reckless, so it might be so. Three things were clear to him as he assessed himself in hopes of arriving at an answer: he had missed this, it felt different now, and he didn’t want to leave. The realizations trickled down his spine like cold water, thrilling and unsettling in equal measure. He opened his eyes and he tried to temper his nerves when he answered, “Don’t inconvenience yourself. I don’t mean to intrude on you. I didn’t even really think you’d still live here.”

“You could stand to intrude a little more.” Suo’s tone was flat and unreadable.

Though Suo was extending the invitation, Taichi still couldn’t help but feel like he was the one pressing forward, and Suo was following his lead. The part of Taichi’s mind that was still fully awake was trying, belatedly, to shake the rest of him into sense, without much success. The decision-making part of him had passed into the realm of consciousness only attainable after midnight, where consequences seemed very far off, and he felt a conviction that if he were to go back to his half-empty apartment, he wouldn’t sleep at all. “I can take the floor. I’ll leave for the first train in the morning.”

“If you think that’s best,” Suo replied, again unreadable. Well, if he had something more to say, he could say it. Taichi wasn’t his disciple anymore, if he ever was. Suo wasn’t even Meijin anymore. All they were now was a soft-spoken man in a featureless apartment and his uninvited guest.

-

The men were never anyone important, and he was careful not to make a habit of it. He had to be able to pretend, even to himself, that he hadn’t gone out looking for it, so the opportunity didn’t come along often. Even so, he couldn’t avoid it entirely. One moment, he would be walking through the doors of the seedy izakaya a group of his classmates crawled to after a soul-crushing exam, and two hours later he’d be on his way out, this time not alone.

An hour and a half after that, he walked home under the streetlights’ gleam, filtered through smog and dense, luminous winter clouds, with the sound of his feet on the sidewalk the only thing around. He shivered, not only from the three-something in the morning cold, but mundane exhaustion, the residual quavers of drunkenness, and the afterclap of unfamiliar touch on his skin. The forecast had said there was a chance of snow, but he could tell it wouldn’t come. The air had none of the necessary dryness. He felt damp all over; his skin was sweating out the several beers he’d had out of obligation, while his stomach under his shirt and jacket was still wet from the mechanical cat-bath he’d given himself in the bathroom before leaving the apartment. The other guy, an engineering student a year below him, had stood awkwardly and half-dressed by the doorway as Taichi made his exit. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but Taichi couldn’t stay there any longer than it took to get what he’d come for. Couldn’t sleep on the offered pillow. A night train whistled past him, and as he reflexively covered his ears with both gloved hands against the passing sound, he swore to give it all up. What, exactly, he wasn’t sure.

-

After a fairly involved series of negotiations, Taichi conceded to Suo’s insistence that he take the bed. Suo was sleeping in a pile of blankets on the floor below him. Taichi hadn’t known how to say that he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to fall asleep, wrapped up in Suo’s sheets.

He could have been lying there for hours. Suo’s bedding was scratchier than his own. Every slight shift of the apartment floor from the other tenants above and below them seemed to Taichi like a hitch of breath. He went over his mental checklist of things to do before the flight three times before accepting he’d already taken care of almost everything he could think of, and the rest he was powerless to change at the moment.

His thoughts drifted back to the day. His mother’s nostalgia, imperceptible if he hadn’t known her his whole life and never before seen her sentimental. The image of Suo on his laptop screen, twentyish and not humble, even then. He thought of Suo’s trick; of how matching the difference between his game and another always meant letting some cards get away from him. Fly free, little ones—something like that’s what Wakamiya would have said to any cards she lost, back when she was shining in her glory, sunning herself in her own strength like a cat in a pool of light. Whenever he thought of her, his mind went back to the studio where they’d filmed the television special. Wakamiya, for once completely sincere, explained how she saw the cards as little gods she loved. A queen, but still a girl, not a woman; a girl dressed up in a very expensive kimono picked out by someone attentive enough to notice drapery houses and price points but not enough to stop her from appearing on television wearing her hair done up like a child. And to think he and everyone else was intimidated by her.

Taichi’s eyelids were falling despite the tension in his spine and the pinpricked alertness of his skin. The tiredness was purely physical; his brain kept whirling with hazy thoughts. In his mind’s eye, the Wakamiya in Suo’s photograph laughed at him behind her sleeve. It was as crystalline and cutting a sound as it was in person, though now all she was to him was the blurry and delighted image of a young woman on an Instax print, standing in front of some kind of demented, tiny plane and sporting a polka-dotted sundress with dangling plastic snowman earrings. Oh, who is that—Mishima-kun? I’m surprised to see you here. I thought Suo-san got bored of you already.

The picture window jiggled with movement, shaken by the photographer’s laughter, and a familiar pealing voice rang out from beyond the frame: Shinobu-chan, be nice! It’s just Taichi; don’t pretend you don’t know his name. Chihaya straightened the camera, and added, Now here it goes… There’s only one shot left, so stay still…

Her camera flashed, and on the floor, Taichi heard Suo turn away from him, over onto his side. Taichi couldn’t say whether he was asleep or awake, but the even tone of Suo’s breath made him think he was dreaming. Taichi crossed his own ankles underneath the cover sheet, trying to keep his body contained from the air. He felt close to dreaming. His mind drifted back to thoughts of Suo as a boy in Nagasaki. Taichi had never seen a picture of him before Todai, even when he’d visited the Suo family home. He wondered if Suo would show him one if he asked. He tried to imagine what he would’ve looked like if Taichi had passed him at a street crossing during the Mashimas’ vacation: shorter limbs, shorter hair, perpetually clean-shaven. Studying only when it suited him. No school karuta club practices holding him down. If Taichi didn’t know that he managed to get into Todai, he’d have assumed that a younger Suo skipped school as much as he could, going where he liked, beholden to no one.

-

“How long ago did you first meet Wataya-kun?”

They were usually the last ones left in the tatami room at Todai. Everyone else had long since gotten bored of watching the two of them play match after match against the tape-deck.

Sweat trickled down between Taichi’s shoulder blades. True karuta players never left a fan on during practice, and Suo least of all. It was a humid day, they’d been at it long enough for the evening to creep up on them, and Taichi’s shirt was stuck to his body. It was late summer of that year they spent living out of each other’s pockets, and though the blinds were drawn, some of the sunset’s golden light stole into the room.

Taichi didn’t remember ever telling Suo that he and Arata had history together, but he wasn’t surprised he’d figured it out. “When we were still kids.”

He’d spent the night before this one lying awake in bed and reviewing the matches they’d played earlier in the day behind his eyelids. Taichi studied his blunders and losses with all the intensity he ought to be showing to his mock entrance exams; instead of tricky chemistry questions, he memorized the faults he’d been led into making on the tatami. The course Suo’s hand took across the field, silent, no motion wasted. In the half-moments before sleep he thought of those hands moving down from the back of his head, where they occasionally came to rest, to the nape of his neck, where his shirt collar met skin. Under the fabric’s edge into uncharted landscapes, moving soundlessly. He wished he could dismiss them as dreams rather than fantasy.

Suo wasn’t looking at him. Taichi remembered that, even years later, because it was that Suo was so focused on twirling the stereo remote between his fingers that let Taichi watch him, unabashed. It was safe to look, then, as Suo’s gaze was elsewhere. Suo’s shirt was clinging to him, too; Taichi watched the ridges of his spine shift under the cotton as he moved. Suo’s hair was disheveled from effort. His hair elastic, one of the scrunchies the kohai girl had loaned him, had almost slipped out.

“Must’ve been hard, playing against him back then. Facing children that strong can snuff people right out.”

“It was,” Taichi replied. He wanted to stop talking about Arata; he couldn’t think about Arata at a time like that, when he was already reeling, simmering with a realization so intense it verged on painful. He felt a frantic itch underneath his skin to lean over and see what would happen if he tightened Suo’s hair elastic for him, and its companion feeling, the impulse to get up and cross the room, head for the door, and not look back. He was too good, too practiced of a liar to let it all get ruined now, but Suo saw through him about everything; why not this? Suo was going to read it on him, to reach in and pluck another truth hidden within Taichi, pulling it into the light where anyone could see.

Taich leaned back on his hands, braced against the mat, and let his head fall back limp into the air behind him. Above him, a fly made its way across the yellowed ceiling. He added, more quietly this time, “And back then I was a sore loser.”

“Well, you aren’t anymore.” A hot blush coursed up and across Taichi’s neck and face. He righted his head just enough to see Suo shoot him a glance. He smiled in that mean way he had, like it was a taunt. In the dimmed sunlight of the late afternoon, with his face uncovered by dark lenses, Suo’s expression had nothing to hide behind. Nasty, someone might say about that look. It was, but it didn’t bother Taichi. He liked it, liked the permission it gave him to be nasty too. Taichi’s heartbeat raced. He wished he could go back to moments earlier and unlearn everything he now knew. It must have been written on his forehead: I get it now, why I stick around. Forgive me, will you? We’re almost there. I won’t impose on your hospitality much longer.

The fly lifted off the ceiling and buzzed its way toward the window, its wings deafening in the silence of the room. Taichi blinked, and when he looked back Suo was still there, still looking at him with eyes full of knowing, still close enough Taichi could reach out and touch, though he couldn’t, for many reasons, not least that now he knew that he wanted to. “You’re the best loser I know.”

Taichi opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Thankfully, Suo’s attention had moved on; he stood up and went over to change the tape in the player, and Taichi watched him go.

-

Taichi awoke to an empty room, and thought for a single, electric moment that Suo had left him without another word before he registered his surroundings—he was still inside Suo’s apartment. From the other side of the bedroom door, Taichi could make out the sound of a knife slicing through something on a cutting-board.

Suo didn’t turn around when Taichi emerged, though he surely heard the sound of the door opening and closing. Taichi took advantage of the unobserved moment to run his hands over his face a few times and massage alertness into his skin.

When he took a second look toward the kitchen, he noticed that Suo’s hair was tied back, a sight that tightened something inside his stomach, like his body was for some reason flinching away from a familiar sight he’d done without for so long. Without turning around to look at him, Suo said, in a level tone, “You should eat before you go.”

Taichi wondered, then, whether he wasn’t the only one trying his best to delay his departure. “If you don’t mind.”

Suo was cooking for him again. Nothing fancy, but that didn’t matter when it was from scratch. Taichi couldn’t face him in his current state of half-asleep and even less self-possessed, so he shut himself in the apartment’s cramped bathroom for longer than he really needed. He brushed his teeth as best he could with toothpaste on a fingertip. His reflection in the mirror was as rumpled as if he’d fallen asleep sitting up at a desk. He half-heartedly washed his face and underarms at the sink before pulling the t-shirt he’d slept in back over his head. He didn’t plan to linger much longer, anyway. Just a couple bites to eat, and then he’d make his way back to the stop-over apartment that wouldn’t be home much longer, to bide his time.

Sweet and savoury smells rose around the stovetop. Taichi leaned against the counter, out of the way. He didn’t offer to help; he didn’t want to be rejected, or to mess anything up. Besides, it was nostalgic to watch Suo’s hands at work.

He came here for something, surely, but he didn’t know what. Staying the night on a bed less comfortable than his own wasn’t it, and neither was eating someone he used to know out of house and home. This wasn’t something that he did, but he was doing it now, and he found himself at a loss for what he ought to do with the time that remained. His mouth felt sticky and stale, even with the stolen mouthwash he swished around in Suo’s bathroom ten minutes earlier. He didn’t bring anything with him for the morning, and why would he have? On an unplanned evening errand to give an unasked-for gift, before boarding a plane to the other side of the world? He didn’t expect he’d even be let in when he knocked on the door.

Inside of her photo frame on the wall, Wakamiya’s eyes twinkled. The annual birdman event at Lake Biwa, he remembered, suddenly: Chihaya mentioned going to Shiga back in August, along with Koishikawa and Yuikawa Momo. They must have all gone along to keep Wakamiya company.

“Suo-san.”

“Hmm?” Suo was dressed in casual clothes, but he still looked intangibly mussed from sleep in the way all people did before they left the house and felt the light of day. Had anyone else seen Suo like this since he left Oomura City? Taichi probably looked the same way. Certainly no one but his family had seen him in such a state in years. He couldn’t find it in himself to be embarrassed.

His spine felt reinforced with steely calm. Suo had always brought this out in him, his ability to take liberties. To pry. “Do you know what the deal is with Wakamiya-san and planes?”

“What do you mean?”

“It just doesn’t seem to fit the rest of her personality. I mean, it’s kind of an odd thing.”

“She has an odd personality. They’re not really planes, anyway. They’re gliders.”

Taichi blinked doubtfully at the distinction. “Does she want to fly them herself?”

“I don’t think so. She likes to watch them. I think she likes to imagine them talking to each other. That’s how she is.” Suo’s tone was off in a way Taichi had never heard before. It might have been tender.

Wakamiya on the television screen, soaking up the spotlight that suited her so well and Suo so poorly, gesturing with her finger and thumb: Little gods this tall. “Do you think she’ll grow out of it?”

“She’s already grown. I think she just lives in a more interesting world than the rest of us.”

On the day of filming, he hadn’t given her statement much thought; he’d just chalked it up to another of her eccentricities. He was more interested in the math that went into her success—her training versus her talent—and trying to tell whether or not Suo was right that she had no genius, only hard work. Seeing what she looked like now—no longer Queen but still a competitor, and happier than he ever saw her when she was at the top; dressed like a lunatic and posing for her photograph next to some kind of garish hang-glider, against the backdrop of a landscape both familiar and strange—, he wondered if she’d learned to laugh without a target, after all these years. Seeing the photo in the light of the morning, Taichi thought she looked as though she was about to extend a hand, beckoning, Come on, what are you waiting for? Are you just going to stand there and watch?

He’d never been to Lake Biwa proper, only Omi Jingu’s shrine and the immediate surroundings. In his mind, the place was inseparable from tournaments. Coming so close to that place on a summer day, with no karuta players in sight: how did Wakamiya do it, now, being how she was—reduced from what she once had been? And to think he and everyone else saw her as a curio, a mean little doll with the kind of talent only a lonely child could wield. Was she stronger all this time than anyone—than he—gave her credit for, or was this a lesson she only learned on the losing side of her life?

It was love, too, he realized. She was a hard worker, but only because she had a heart full of love.

If someone were to take a picture, like hers, of the two of them at this moment—barefoot, still not completely awake, with breakfast for two crammed into the small pans of a single man and the morning light filtering weakly but insistently through heavy curtains—Taichi wouldn’t want anyone else to see it. It would tell the whole story.

In a tone he hoped was casual, he remarked, “I looked for you there, this year. I didn’t see you.” After the words were out of his mouth, Taichi realized it was the first time either of them had mentioned karuta since he’d come through Suo’s door. It was too late to walk it back.

Quietly as ever: “The karuta people don’t want me there. I haven’t been invited.”

Even if he didn’t play anymore, Taichi’s hearing was still good. He still covered his ears when cars went past. Once he learned to be cautious about letting the world in, it was a hard habit to shake. Now, here, even if he tried, he couldn’t hear anything from the world outside—no rushing trains, no honking trucks. Nothing but the sizzle of oil and the quiet rasp of his own breath.

Taichi cleared his throat and murmured, trying to match Suo’s volume, “You don’t think Sudo would want you to watch him take on Arata?”

“He has others.” Taichi almost winced on Sudo’s behalf. No wonder he maintained such a cold feeling for Suo, if this was how Suo spoke of him.

The rice cooker chimed softly as it shut itself off, and Taichi thought for a moment he was hearing things when Suo asked, at almost the same moment, “Will you be back in Japan by the fall?”

Taichi leaned his hip against the countertop and braced himself against it with one hand. He felt vaguely woozy, like his restless sleep was catching up with him. “In September.”

“You should play in the qualifiers again.”

Something painful swelled inside his chest, like a halo of light leaking through a film negative to ruin the shot with its brightness. “It’s alright. I know you don’t like karuta.”

“I like to watch you play.” For all his soft-spokenness, Suo wasn’t a close talker. He was looking away from Taichi to focus on the eggs frying in the tiny skillet, so Taichi couldn’t get a good look at his mouth to read the words as they were formed. He couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward, afraid to miss out on anything else Suo might say. He was close enough to catch the vague sandalwood scent of Suo’s deodorant, which Taichi had also borrowed in the bathroom minutes earlier. He wondered if Suo could tell, or if Taichi just smelled like Suo in a way Suo couldn’t distinguish from himself. “I’d go to watch if you played the Meijin.”

“You think I could beat Arata now? When I couldn’t back then, and haven’t competed in…?” Taichi scoffed mirthlessly. Suo’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t want to think about Arata here, in this company, when he already felt as though he was flying over unknown waters without a map, but he had no one to blame but himself for bringing him up. “You’ve helped me out a lot, but it’s okay. You don’t have to try and get my spirits up. I don’t have what he has.” What you have. He could be honest with Suo, up to a point. It surprised him how little that had changed. There was no point lying now, anyway, inside this soundproofed room, where his admissions were hidden from the outside world. “There are other things I can do with my time. It’s—not so bad. I’m not unhappy.”

“Have you forgotten already? You’ll never get anywhere if you’re worried about winning.” Suo glanced over at Taichi at last and smiled, a little cruel, a little mocking. Taichi didn’t mind; an answering crooked grin split across his face. That was what he came here for, wasn’t it? To pay homage to one of the old gods: a little crumbled now, but still stronger than Taichi had ever been. Some amusement taken at Taichi’s expense was an acceptable price to pay to come close to that kind of strength again, even for a while. The kind of strength that made you think, it’s okay. I never had a chance, so it’s okay. I tried. Nothing to be done about it.

In a few hours, he would be inside a metal tube above the ocean, so far out they might never be found if their engine failed and they plummeted to the sea. He wanted him more than he ever had when it was just a daydream about someone unavailable and therefore safe. It wasn’t safe anymore, and in a few hours, no one would be able to look at him and know any of this went on.

“Suo.”

Suo looked back to the stovetop for long enough to turn the heat off. He glanced back at Taichi through the black corners of his vision: looking-without-looking. Still seeing right through him. Taichi’s heart drummed in his chest like thunderstorm rain on asphalt. He thought, a little hysterically, that he never told Suo what it was he’d tried to get across, that time he bowed to him in the street. Not in words, anyway. He’d felt tender and sore, like new pink skin underneath a scab just flaked off, shiny and healthy and raw to the touch. He still remembered the thought that had been in his head: he couldn’t bear to hear whatever Suo had to say to him. He couldn’t handle his congratulations or consolations, and the words of thanks in his own throat had dried up as soon as he’d seen Suo’s face. If he’d spoken, it would’ve been to say, You’ve gotten in so close, and now I need to step away before you see all of me. He never told him that, or anything else. Not even—

Taichi reached out between them to curl his left hand around Suo’s wrist. The thumb slipped up beneath the hem of Suo’s shirt cuff. He could feel the sharp jut of Suo’s bones through his skin.

He waited, motionless, to be shaken loose. He was not. Suo didn’t acknowledge his touch in any way; he reached over with his free hand to pull a cover over the pan, trapping the steam inside, and then let his arm hang loose by his side.

Taichi swallowed. In this company, at this distance, it almost certainly was audible. Hoarsely, he asked, “Should I let go?” It was the closest thing he could say to what he meant: Where is the line? Does it exist at all?

Suo turned back to look at Taichi, his face clouded over with one of the expressions he had that someone else might take to be blank. Taichi knew better than that, but he didn’t know how to interpret this one. It had been too long. The house of cards that was Taichi’s life swayed in the breeze every second they remained like that, but under his fingers, Taichi could feel the pulse in Suo’s wrist beating a rabbit tempo. It comforted him to think they were both out of their element, and so he pressed on, very boldly for a lifelong coward: “I can go now, if you want me gone.”

“Did I say I wanted you gone?”

Taichi’s hand travelled up the length of Suo’s arm, very slowly, up over the length of the thin cotton shirtsleeve to feel the contours of his flexors and extensors, the beginnings of his biceps, the strangely gentle crook of his elbow, and its soft underside, a place it felt shockingly intimate to touch on another person. Suo’s mouth was gently parted, but he didn’t say a word; he looked hunted and pale and it stirred something in the pit of Taichi’s stomach.

“Aren’t you afraid of missing your flight?”

Unlike the rest of the spectators and acolytes, Taichi had never before had a problem looking Suo in the eye. It was difficult now, but he wouldn't let himself look away. If he did, he might as well have turned around on Suo’s doorstep with the buzzer untouched.

“I won’t.” Suo had it backwards; the fact there wasn’t enough time was the thing that let him do it in the first place. It was his last chance, and the exit strategy was foolproof. Any consequences that might come, he could outrun, fleeing to the other side of the world.

-

Suo’s hair was still tied back from cooking. Only a few strands escaped, and Taichi grasped at them without tugging, just to feel their unexpected softness through his fingers.

Taichi’s other hand had migrated under Suo’s shirt before they even reached the bed, and now it tracked a hesitant but determined course back down and across to feel the protuberances of his hip-bones, the startling softness of his stomach. Taichi hoped his hair had grown out long enough to curtain his face and cover up the flush he could feel overtaking his skin. He felt intoxicated on nothing but their closeness. The room around them squeezed in tight. There might not have been a room at all beyond the bed, or outside of the mere space it took to fit them both, sprawled together, touching everywhere. Their combined weight pressed a dip into the mattress.

Taichi’s t-shirt was rucked up, but besides that he was still clothed. Even that small part of his body on display made him feel laid bare. He’d never felt self-conscious while naked in front of another person. His skin wasn’t as taut as it had been when he was still competing in one sport or another, but, overlooking a few moles he didn’t care for, he had nothing to be ashamed of under his clothes. Yet—he felt pierced through, seen for exactly what he was: a proud, vain, nervous creature looking not for something to hold onto, but something to let go of. Something that mattered.

He found himself leading more often than not, pulling aside clothes and claiming unexplored territory. Taichi reached out to take one of Suo’s hovering hands in his own and placed it on his bare hip. Suo’s palm was wide and cool. Breath caught in Taichi’s throat at the inescapable reality of the feeling. Half-undressed, Suo was all lanky, encompassing limbs, tousled hair, and faltering caution. Suo did some things without any regard for convention and then held himself back from things which no one would begrudge him. Taichi had never fully wrapped his head around the incongruity, but in that moment he found it exciting and almost sweet. He didn’t need to be able to make sense of him. The closeness was enough.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but when Suo at last took initiative enough to rearrange their positions by a few polite but decisive tugs at Taichi’s shoulder and waist, Taichi’s head spun. It felt good to let Suo mold him into something again. Taichi was taking care of him, too. Suo brought that out of him; before they met, he’d hardly thought himself capable of it. Suo looked serene when he was focused, like no one and nothing existed. Not Taichi, and certainly not himself. The thought curled and sparked within him like paper exposed to a match, burning itself brightly out.

His breath was hot and damp against the side of Suo’s neck. Taichi screwed up his eyes to block out even the faint light that came over Suo’s shoulder. It was too much to see; touch was overwhelming enough. For a second, he was selfishly grateful for Suo’s poor vision. It was comforting to think any barrier remained between them, to protect any secrets Taichi was still able to keep. It terrified him, the thought of being seen like this by someone who really knew him, who would be able to hold it against him forever if Taichi screwed something up now. If he felt that Suo was watching him, it would all come pouring out, every ugly thing that had ever come to rest inside him. Things it would do no good to anyone to say. Things like, I’m not a good person, but maybe I could be good to you. Maybe I was good with you.

He wanted to grant himself permission to feel dangerous and new. This transgression was made safe by how quickly it would necessarily end. He wouldn’t be here much longer—in the city, or this shabby apartment—and he was going somewhere no one knew his name. He might as well give himself something to remember this part of his life by besides exams and sleepless nights. He wanted to reach out and take something without letting it wash over him. This was the moment in a match after the sound hit the air, where his limbs animated themselves to take a card with perfect clarity before his mind had time to get in the way.

The enormity of mutual desire made him feel small in a way that comforted him. The part of his mind that usually occupied itself by coming up with reasons why he should keep himself in check shrunk away. The memory of that stillness would remain with him even once he was gone. He couldn’t wash off the skin-memory of being touched with such gentle urgency. It was hard not to imagine it would change the way he looked to strangers on the street, like his body was reshaping itself into something stronger and more capable. With each new line they crossed, he felt an increasing absence of fear. That was what he hadn’t known to expect. The desire, yes, but not the peacefulness. Had it always been there, waiting for him around the corner, whenever he finally decided to live a life?

It felt like trying to trap flowing water between cupped hands. His body trembled with barely suppressed haste, and his eyes flicked open to the old-fashioned digital alarm clock on the bedside table, counting the minutes they had left to them. His gaze didn’t stay there for long; he steeled himself, and then began to take in glimpses, here and there, of the whole bony extent of Suo at his fingertips. Suo’s face looked like a blur in a rearview mirror: dear and familiar, but smearing out of sight. Yet, for the time being, close enough to touch.

He glanced once more at the clock, and the corner of Suo’s mouth twisted in silent laughter. He reached out a hand and covered Taichi’s eyes. Taichi started at the sudden softness of his palm, but quickly relaxed. The future, hidden from both their eyes, could wait a little longer.

-

Not long after he took his place with the rest of the passengers on the inside of the jet, a soft, regular voice came across the speakers to instruct them to strap in for takeoff. The seat buckle made a soft schick, and Taichi’s head lolled back against the head-rest. His muscles were beginning to feel the vague soreness of having slept on an unfamiliar surface, among other causes.

The hours in between leaving Suo’s apartment and leaving his own had passed indiscriminately, late morning and early afternoon blurring together in the rumble of train tracks, the clacking of suitcase wheels on pavement, the rustling of keys in door locks and the whirs of escalators. Until the cold winter light began to wane outside, he had been moving with a dreamlike lack of urgency. By the time he arrived for his flight it was almost sundown, and he had no choice but to sprint through the airport. Pitying heads turned towards him as he ran through Departures, luggage clattering precariously in his wake, and he didn’t spare a moment’s thought for any of them.

In the last few minutes he’d spent at Suo’s apartment, he’d laced his shoes and headed for the door, feeling eyes on his back, but found himself unable to open it.

“Taichi.”

He stiffened at the sound of his given name in Suo’s mouth. Even so, he considered walking on without turning back. Not because he didn’t want to hear what it was Suo had to tell him, but because Taichi didn’t know whether, after it was said, he’d be able to arrange his face.

Taichi took a deep breath, buried his hands deeper in his jacket pockets, and spun on his heel. “Yes?”

“Where are you going, exactly?”

“Berlin.”

“Have you already found a place to live?”

“Yeah. I—my mother found an apartment for a short-term lease.”

“On your own?”

“Yeah.” The way Suo was standing, he didn’t look very tall. He was folded in on himself, his arms folded over his chest and his eyes roving around the room every few seconds before looking back at Taichi, as if it was hard to keep Taichi in his line of sight for long. Taichi’s chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with anything physical. This was the last chance for anything; to ask him the question he thought they were both mulling over, or to step closer and see if he could kiss him without either of them shying away. Just as an experiment, to see if either of them had it in them to stop running.

Taichi nodded, a wordless thank you and goodbye, and left the dim apartment for the brightness of the hallway.

A few hours later, the stewardess’s calm voice came back over the PA system to declare their ascension. He wondered, for a brief moment, what Suo would make of her intonation. He felt the unmistakable lightness in the pit of his stomach that came with flight.

Taichi let his left leg fall into the unoccupied space of the seat beside him and glanced out the window. The sun was sinking below the horizon and they were outrunning it, heading into a thickness of clouds. Tokyo spilled out below the edge of the porthole, all its towers and industrial sores and glittering lights and columns of fog. From this height, he couldn’t pick out a single landmark he knew. Descending on the other side would be the same in reverse, but there was nothing for him to recognize there, as a visiting stranger.

He imagined writing a cautious email. He imagined writing one less cautious. An invitation. He imagined making a long-distance phone call in the dead of night just to hear breath on the other side. He imagined ascending a flight of stairs, step by step, and knowing someone was waiting at the top for his approach. Taichi watched, through the glass, the glowing fumes of the city blot out as the cloudbank consumed them completely. They were about to be alone in the dark with the rumblings of the jet carrier for long hours, but he felt wide awake. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine himself gliding through the air with almost nothing between him and the sky, like one of Wakamiya’s birdmen—flying freely above Lake Biwa with no regard for the shrine, or karuta, or any of the dreams that were fixed in that place below.

He thinks: he will.