Notes: This was a belated birthday present for my friend June. When I got the idea for this, I was super excited at how much this would break her heart, but writing this ended up destroying me emotionally instead. Karma!

Also thank you to Levi and Noon for looking at earlier drafts of this and giving me really good advice.

What draws me to you

After their middle school graduation ceremony, Sakuma, Genda, and Fudou had split up, as always, to continue their separate ways back home. The curtain may have irrevocably fallen on their middle school days, but their "laters" and "see yas" had felt the same as ever. Ten days of spring break, which Sakuma spent in the countryside visiting his grandparents, passed without incident. Then the first day of high school came and Sakuma had slipped into his new uniform fully expecting the three of them to reunite at the entrance ceremony.

Kidou had surprised him and Genda at the front gates. After rightfully berating him for keeping it from them, they had run to the class assignments board, only to find out all three of them had been assigned to different classes.

With their parents, they had filed into the auditorium. Found their respective classes and sat down, listened to long speeches and tried not to fall asleep. Sung the school song to conclude the ceremony. Followed their classes to their assigned rooms and introduced themselves to their classmates for the next three years.

And Fudou? Hadn't shown.

A week went by. Sakuma settled into his new class and actually tried to make friends for the first time in three years. He sent daily texts to Fudou, first roundabout and teasing, then increasingly interrogative as the timeframe to joke about forgetting the first day of term stretched to its limit— and then passed.

A month went by. If you counted every line break as a separate text message, Sakuma had sent Fudou almost two hundred, without a single reply to show for it. Fudou hadn't answered any of their calls, either. Three weeks into the school year and multiple lengthy conversations with the middle school division later, Kidou finally managed to obtain Fudou's most recent address. They had gone there and found the windows boarded up and the front yard bare. Knocking on the surrounding doors and putting on their best good-boy voices had been in vain. As far as the neighbours were concerned, the Fudou family had, quite simply, evaporated.

A year went by. And then two. The Teikoku High football team prospered, smashing Inter-High records and attracting blinding new talent year after year. Led by Kidou, Teikoku reached the Inter-High semifinals in their first year and took the championship outright in their second. A new legend was in the making, with Sakuma at the vanguard, Kidou at the helm, and Genda supporting them from the rear. A Teikoku without any of them was no longer Teikoku at all. Fudou had been a frequent topic of conversation the first two years, with the gossip speculating everything from what he was doing now to what heights the team could have reached with him in it. But as Teikoku ascended, his mentions had diminished, and now that Teikoku was champion, the only time his name ever came up any more was the occasional self-conscious whisper that maybe it really was for the best that he hadn't come, because how hard would it have been to fit two playmakers onto one team?

Sakuma didn't know. And frankly, after two long, hard years of building up a juggernaut from the foundation of Kidou, Sakuma, Genda, thinking of what could have been was nothing but pointless. The priority now was to prepare for the seniors' final push, the summer Inter-High. It was no exaggeration to say that the three of them had been training for this tournament since their first day of high school. It was make-it-or-break-it for all the football team seniors across Japan, and Teikoku had their title to defend.

The first week of school, where first-years could try out different clubs with no obligation to join, passed. Now that their new crop of members was mostly set, they could ramp up the intensity of their training. And with that change in pace came a natural change in dynamic. Today had been hell in more ways than one.

Within his municipality, Sakuma's house was located in the eighth block of the third district. The quickest way home was going behind the local hospital, through a narrow alley that straddled the eighth and fifteenth blocks. On a normal day, Sakuma might have walked all the way around the hospital to the other side of the Eighth and made his way home from there. But today's practice had been unbearable. He was tired to the bone.

The hospital back-alley was often clogged with cars that people wanting to avoid the parking fees surreptitiously "left". But today, there was only one. It was sleek and black and was parked at the midpoint of the alley, politely positioned as far to the side as it would fit. The lights and engine were off, but the windows were tinted. Sakuma had no idea if anyone was inside watching him and he had the impression that the owner of the car wanted it that way.

He quickened his pace, taking the twenty or so steps to his front gate. Above him, the cherry blossom trees shed their petals steadily, creating a soft layer of white on the pavement. It was yet another reminder that it was time to get serious. His keys were somewhere in the depths of his sports bag, having been thrown in, as always, before his shower with the foolish expectation of a seamless retrieval. After some digging, Sakuma found the smooth keyring and hooked one finger in.

"The cherry blossoms here bloom the same time as Ehime, you know," someone said behind him, and a startled Sakuma dropped the keys back into the bag. He spun around, surprised that someone had managed to get the jump on him, and paused.

A lean young man with a buzz cut and a piercing stare, dressed simply in a navy blue muscle shirt and dark jeans, stood before him. Many things had changed, but he was still, unmistakably—

"Fudou?"

Try as he might, Sakuma couldn't prevent the name from ending in a question. But while the Sakuma in middle school would have hesitated out of self-consciousness, high school senior Sakuma had long since grown past that. "What— Where the fuck have you been? Wait, did you go back to Ehime without telling us?"

Fudou was taller. Almost unreasonably taller, actually. Sakuma had shot up in high school, and yet Fudou and him were staring eye to eye. Hadn't he been a midget during Inazuma Japan?

He was leaner, too, but not in the same way a football player was. There was a sharpness and hardness to him, like those marble busts at the art museum. He stood out in a way that was different to before. It was like he was squaring up to fill the space he inhabited and yet simultaneously shrinking himself inside it.

"Good thing you still live here," Fudou answered with a smirk, and now that Sakuma knew it was him he wondered why he hadn't recognised his voice the first time. It had deepened with time, but its tone and subtle nuances were still the same as he remembered.

"What have you been up to?" Sakuma asked, and that was the cue for the rest of his questions to gush forth. "Where did you move? How are your parents? And— what the hell did you do to your hair? You a monk now?"

Fudou ran a hand over it in response. "It's neat," he said defensively, but there was a note of self-consciousness there. Idiot definitely missed his mohawk. "Gives a good impression. Important in what I'm doing now."

"Yeah?" Sakuma said. Fudou was being as obtuse as usual, but Sakuma was just glad to see him again after so long. "Good thing you got rid of your head tattoo all those years ago then."

A grim smile flashed onto Fudou's face, then smoothed out so quickly that Sakuma wasn't sure if it had been real. Fudou let out a bark of laughter.

"Ha! Funny you say that, actually."

Then he shut his mouth, still twisted into that maddening half-smile, and stuck his hands in his pockets. A silence fell between the two that was all the more awkward because they had never used to be.

It was Fudou who broke it.

"Sorry I didn't respond to all your texts and calls. I was… training. Didn't get your messages until like a year later. By then I figured it was kind of late. And even then I never had enough time to reply properly."

Still vague. Still noncommittal. Suspicion sprouted within Sakuma. Something was up.

"What high school are you attending?" he asked. "How come I've never seen you at Inter-High?"

Fudou bit his lip. Uncertainty flitted across his face, and it was weird. This entire encounter was weird. Was Sakuma dreaming? Had he actually passed out from fatigue on his doorstep? The Fudou in front of him was like looking at the Fudou he had known before through a goldfish bowl, with all the wrong bits reflecting and refracting back at him. Sakuma felt like all he had to do was blink and this Fudou would dissolve into ripples.

"I've," Fudou finally said, having seemingly decided that just ripping off the bandage would be the easiest way, "joined the yakuza."

And Sakuma realised that he was wide awake.

He couldn't help it. He took a step back, looking towards his house out of reflex. Fudou's expression shifted, and he simultaneously turned and opened his mouth, but, somehow having the presence of mind, Sakuma blurted out, "Wait. Don't go."

Fudou paused. Sakuma turned away from his house to fully face this new, strange Fudou, and tried to collect his thoughts. Things were starting to make sense. The haircut, the hard muscle tone, the new way Fudou held himself, the weird car.

Eventually, out came only one question: "Why'd you join?"

Fudou cracked a wry grin, self-deprecating to the core, and it looked so wrong that all Sakuma wanted to do was slap it off. "Well, that's easy. You want the long or short version? Basically, turns out my dad borrowed money from the wrong people. After we graduated from middle school, the debt collectors came knocking, and they brought backup. Backup that happened to like me. It wasn't much of a choice in the end."

"Then why don't you get out?"

"Don't get me wrong," Fudou said, and his form shifted again, further from the Fudou Sakuma had once known. "I don't hate this. In the end, it's just business."

It was clear that the past two years had left their mark. Around Fudou, a layer of a totally foreign colour was forming. Sakuma suddenly felt old.

"Enough about that," Fudou said. Sakuma's true feelings must have shown on his face, because he was hurrying to change the topic. "I've been following your achievements. Congrats, champion. Good thing Kidou-kun joined, huh? He's probably really good now."

"I don't know about that, but we're training hard." They had trained very hard, but whatever Sakuma could think to talk about was probably incomparable to anything Fudou had done in the past two years. Sakuma wasn't foolish enough to think that he would get a complete answer, but he still asked, "What's it like? Life in there, I mean. You have yakuza siblings? Did you do the initiation ceremony?"

Fudou's eyebrows went up. He answered, albeit carefully, "Yeah, a few. The sakazukigoto, it's dying out nowadays. Not that practical to hold the full ceremony every time. But the kumicho is very traditional so we all got a proper one. Best sake I've ever had in my life. They use the good shit, you know…"

Sakuma had never had sake. If you had told him two years ago that him and Fudou would walk such divergent paths, would he have believed it?

"You inked?" He was trotting out the yakuza stereotypes one by one, and both of them knew it.

But Fudou obliged. "Yeah, right! You know how much that freaking costs? I'm still paying off my debt! And we don't do that as much anymore either. Makes doing business more difficult."

Then he stopped, and Sakuma could see the gears turning in his mind, although two years ago they would only have been concerned about football tactics and math.

"But now that you mention it, the kumicho is pretty traditional," Fudou continued thoughtfully. "A full-body one would really impress him. But you don't even get to pick your design, the tattoo master does. I know I'm going to get Ofudou-sama and he's going to think he's so original."

Despite himself, Sakuma cracked a smile. "Doesn't it hurt like hell?"

"Apparently you want to die. They say it doesn't hurt above your heart though."

Sakuma snorted. "Fat lot of good that is."

"Yeah, right?" Fudou laughed, his first genuine one since their reunion. "It's full-body or bust. Y'know," his tone dropped conspiratorially, and Sakuma wondered if this was how he talked with his yakuza brothers too, "I've heard the inside of your thigh hurts the most."

"Bet you're going to do that all the way down to your calves on both legs then, you maso."

Fudou shrugged, his smile wide and satisfied. Evidently, the thought that Sakuma felt he was tough enough to endure that pleased him. "It would look so cool, though, you have to admit."

Sakuma did actually think so. But at the same time, he didn't. A movement at the corner of his eye saved him from having to think of an answer, and they both looked up to see a middle-aged, bespectacled man in a suit. He would have looked for all the world like a regular chauffeur if he hadn't been leaning on the black car with tinted windows. When he saw that he had their attention, the man tapped at his wrist with one gloved finger.

It was by now obvious where he was from, and Sakuma's heart lurched. He would have thought that Fudou, of all people, would have been careful to hide his movements. "You're not supposed to be talking to me, are you?" he asked urgently. "Yakuza can't talk to outsiders?"

"Only about the group," Fudou said, as if they hadn't been doing just that. A laugh padded the edges of his voice. "Don't give me that look. He knows full well what I'm doing. I had to ask his permission just to approach you."

Sakuma's eyes widened. "There's no way they would let you do that without any consequences."

Fudou quirked one side of his mouth up in a vague sort of smirk. He didn't confirm or deny anything, merely angled his head. He pulled his hands out of his pockets, holding the palms out, and dread pooled into Sakuma's veins. All the yakuza clichés, and he hadn't even thought of the biggest one.

He took Fudou's fingers in his hands, and immediately felt like sagging in relief.

They were still whole. For now.

Sakuma looked back up at Fudou, who had an inscrutable expression on his face, almost blank but tinged with something that could have been melancholy, hope, resignation, happiness, relief, or all of them at once. Fudou's green eyes were dark and looked so deep that Sakuma felt that if he jumped in, he would be swept away. His heartbeat quickened, and he was about to drop Fudou's hands, only to freeze as Fudou started to tug his fingers closer in with his own and intertwine them together. Their palms touched, and Sakuma felt the calloused skin where Fudou's fingers met his palm. He couldn't help but close his fingers around Fudou's cool hands and give them just one light, hesitant squeeze.

The answering pressure sent Sakuma's heart madly aflutter, and Fudou flushed, complexion growing darker even as he stubbornly maintained eye contact. The two of them stared at each other for the shortest eternity, or was it the longest moment?

A car engine sputtered to life, jolting Sakuma out of his reverie. Fudou's eyes cooled and he let out a short breath. The moment was gone.

Slowly, and much gentler than Sakuma had ever thought him capable of being, Fudou extracted his fingers from Sakuma's grasp. The abstract knowledge of what was coming unfurled in Sakuma's mind and settled, off-kilter, into his heart. Three long seconds later finally came the concrete understanding that Fudou was about to go.

Fudou turned and took one step away. It might as well have spanned a million light-years.

"Give my regards to Genda," he said, rubbing his left pinky with his right thumb. An easy, practised smirk already on his face. In the context of what had just happened, it was almost cruel. "And that gogglehead."

And just because Sakuma knew what was happening didn't mean that he knew what to do. He could only nod.

"Goodbye, Jirou," Fudou said, softer than Sakuma had ever heard him.

"Goodbye," Sakuma swallowed, then forced the word out, "Akio."

Almost imperceptibly, Fudou's smile widened. His only acknowledgement of his given name was a casual backhand wave as he walked towards the black car. He slipped into the front seat, shut the door silently, and the car drove off.

Sakuma stayed staring at the alleyway that straddled the Eighth and Fifteenth, long after it had gone.

Above him, the wilting cherry blossoms swirled in the wind, twirled from the branches, and scattered away.

Dong—

Dong—

Dong—

Three threes made nine, and Sakuma was now twenty-six. It had now been three whole high-school-lives since Fudou had appeared in front of his old house to say goodbye. His fellow Inazuma Japan members had stopped asking about him years ago. Sakuma had told no one of their meeting, because even just mentioning it felt like it would give it the legitimacy that he was still not sure he could accept.

It was the New Year's festival at the local temple, and the normally bare temple grounds teemed with what seemed like the entire neighbourhood. It was a briskly cold afternoon, but whoever was up there had been merciful: there was only a light smattering of snow lining the edges of the stone, and the occasional drifting snowflake. The queue to ring the bell and collect your fortune snaked around the inner temple and extended to the outer grounds, where children ran around playing catch and vendors yelled over each other to compete on who could draw the most customers. Every normal Japanese person knew the latter's origins, of course, but no one would ever mention them. It was hatsumode, after all. Everyone wanted to start the new year with a clean slate.

Sakuma made it a point to visit every new year to soak in the atmosphere. With a job that was filled with tactics, rules, and order, it was one of the few times of the year he could sit back and watch organised chaos unfold around him.

But first, the formalities. After a few more minutes of waiting and greeting familiar faces, he reached the front of the line and washed his hands, rang the bell, and smoothly collected his fortune (Small Fortune; well, anything was better than the Great Misfortune he had received last year). He made his way downstairs and was midway through straightening his suit when a voice called out to him.

"Hey! Coach Sakuma!"

Kidou had returned to Teikoku years ago, demoting Sakuma back to trainer (although sometimes he managed to garner an "assistant coach" from those who didn't know better), but bless Miyabino's soul for sticking to this title. He was the only student left on the team who had experienced the match-fixing era of middle school football, which was why he was Sakuma's favourite student, professional neutrality be damned. Sakuma would miss him when he graduated in a few months. As a first-year, Miyabino had contributed much to the Resistance, and as a third-year, he had led Teikoku Academy's football team to win the Football Frontier. He had matured into a competent and respectable captain. On the pitch, anyway.

"Miyabino-kun," Sakuma greeted him. "Happy New Year. Here with your family?"

"Happy New Year!" Miyabino answered with a cheeky grin. "My family went to play goldfish scooping with my little sister. But I saw you and thought I'd say hi!"

"That's very considerate of you. Shall we walk around the festival?" Belatedly, Sakuma realised that he had adopted his teacher persona. He was by no means old, but working with students at your alma mater had a way of emphasising that they were, and that he himself had once been, so young.

"You're actually interested?" A tinge of scepticism entered Miyabino's tone. "Coach, you do know that all this stuff is…"

"Oh, hush," Sakuma said, the gentle reprimand already dying on his tongue. Of course he knew. It was an open secret. The festival games were rigged. The adorably squeaking chicks with vibrant coats had had their colour manually enhanced with spray paint. The festive bonsai plants had been chopped off above the roots and would die within the week. The corn was not premium but instead from the bargain bin of the local grocery store. Who honestly expected the yakuza to hawk legitimate wares?

But if you walked amidst the stalls and let yourself fall under the spell, keeping only the barest of wits about you, you could believe. This was an event that brought people together, hosted by the community, for the community. Even in midwinter, young and old alike could bask in the friendly warmth. Everybody was gathering to ring in the new year. Everybody was the same.

A crisp, sweet aroma drew Sakuma's nose to a grilled corn vendor. His gaze followed soon after and landed on a man slouched behind the stand. Despite being draped in a formal kimono, he had a combatively casual air about him, leaning forward without a care for the fabric falling dangerously close to the grill. With a practised, roguish grin, he lured customers in, face flushed from the heat despite the lightly falling snow. In his right hand was a half-eaten corn on the cob, gleaming orange in the light cast by the setting sun, and in his left was a bunched-up magazine he was fanning himself with non-stop. The vendor only paused every so often to direct some air towards the coals, as if in afterthought.

They made eye contact, and Sakuma saw the deliberate disconnect between the vendor's grin and his serious, watchful eyes. His body turned to lead, but the vendor merely took another bite of corn, gaze unwavering. They stared at each other, Sakuma standing, the vendor sitting; Sakuma in his perfectly laundered and ironed Western-style suit and the vendor in his ruffled kimono; Sakuma through his bangs with one eye and the vendor with his short bushy hair falling on and around both dark, viridian eyes.

There was no surprise in his gaze. He must have seen Sakuma a long time ago, possibly even when he first stepped into the temple grounds. One side of Fudou's mouth twitched upwards, crooked, mischievous, as sardonic as it had always been, and Sakuma's jaw dropped. It had been three whole high school lives. So long that he had ceased to believe it would ever happen.

Fudou grinned broadly. "Some corn for you and the kid?"

"Hey," Miyabino protested, a hint of outrage in his tone, "I'm not a kid!"

"You're small. You're a kid until you reach my nose at least," Fudou said dismissively and shook his head. His kimono rippled, shifting at his neck where the fabric met skin, and Sakuma found himself wondering whether there was now vivid ink underneath. His gaze flickered down to both of Fudou's hands, though he pretended that he was looking at the corn grilling merrily away. In the corner of his vision, he could just make out Fudou's smug smirk, and Fudou's hands stilled. It could only be a barefaced dare to look closer.

At first glance, his hands looked fine. Perhaps rougher with age, but still a complete set of fingers and joints. But Sakuma wasn't fooled; he knew that yakuza wore prosthetics when in public to keep up appearances. The tip of Fudou's left pinky was bent against the magazine and unnaturally pale. Or was that just a trick of the light?

There was no point in asking. He would never receive a straight answer anyway, not here.

Sakuma was glad to see Fudou again. But what he would give for them to have met again in some other combination of place and time, with no one but faceless strangers around.

Regret pooled, sticky and viscous, in his veins. Conscious of the time that had elapsed and of Miyabino growing increasingly curious next to him, Sakuma gestured, feeling like a marionette on a string, at the sign advertising the juicy, succulent, honey Hokkaido corn, and gave Fudou his best and sweetest smile.

"How much?"

Notes: I'm not crying you're crying. Actually, writing this made me a useless lump in my bed for two weeks, staring at the screen, trying to figure out how to convey everything with the delicacy and poignancy that I wanted. Hopefully I did it.

Some references:

1. Anton Kusters' blog was an invaluable resource, especially for details on Fudou's yakuza training.

2. Ofudou-sama, aka Fudou Myouou, aka the deity that Fudou Akio's kanji characters are actually a reference to, is more commonly known as Acala. Apparently the yakuza highly respect him. The more you know...

3. Yakuza finger prosthetics are a real thing, with an Osakan woman being the most internationally famous prosthetic maker.

4. In the festival, Fudou is wearing an iro-montsuki. (There's a link to the actual one he's wearing in the AO3 mirror. It's deep blue.) Ah... Imagine the deep blue of this against the orange sunset sky!

5. The festival scene was inspired by a certain article which is linked in the AO3 mirror. And there are a couple more links other cool articles in... yep, the AO3 mirror!

Thanks for reading!