It takes him a moment to pause, when they were in the final Dark Game.
He hadn't really noticed. After all, this was the first time ever he had the opportunity to see him without the mask that was omote to cover his features. (Secretly, he always wondered if he was projecting his wishes on him. It worked for his hidden clothes, didn't it?)
But, as his fingers toy with rough granules of sand, he ponders the new sight in front of him. He doesn't know how long he and his other friends had been in this game – it seemed like days, certainly. Mou hitori no boku doesn't know, either, and he can't blame him. Events are taking place with far too dizzying of a speed to be taken note of.
When he notices the shy smile that's plastered in front of the teenager in front of him (ignoring the pang that the sight of such youth gives him, the one that is always accompanied by the very, very secret thought of how all of this is going to turn out because now he can't ignore what's right in front of him), it takes him a belated moment to realize that he's been staring. A blush paints his features as he returns the gesture.
He doesn't need to vocalize his wishes. A smile, more genuine, and an accepting nod gives him all the allowance he needs to continue his unintentional cataloging of features.
The nose was a little broader, without the burn and peeling skin he knew that he and the rest of his friends would surely have had if they were but more real in this place. Not too much, though, and he's reminded of all the statues his grandpa had shown him over the years from dozens of aged photographs.
Cheeks and lips were pretty much the same. For a while he just traced their similarities without touching, content to notice the little irregularities. Surprisingly, the other's skin isn't chapped at all, if a little dusty. Probably from all the stuff they put on in the mornings, his mind muses back to him, and he lets the thought reverberate in his very empty mind as a vague consolation.
After all, the person he was missing the most was right in front of him.
He acknowledged the encouraging look with a small twitch of lips, knowing he was a terrible liar. With a sigh that breathed steadily out of him, he continued his observations.
The eyes… now, those were different. Framed by dark, dark lashes (he knew Anzu would start giggling if she knew what he was thinking, but he blamed his "prettiness" vocabulary on her with all those books she made him read growing up), a pair of solid brown eyes gazed serenely back at him.
They remind him of the chestnuts they used to roast come first frost, and it's only in retrospect that he understands his other's thoughtful gaze.
His throat is suddenly, painfully, dry. He never looked at eyes much, usually being too busy with other things, or too shy to look someone in the eye. It's only until sand and the fabric of his school uniform is filling his vision instead of a pair of dark, clear, and half-lidded eyes that he remembers what made him look away in the first place.
Knowing that he was being inexcusably rude, and yet unable to bring himself to care, his legs drew him up. Hurt flashed across the other's face, and his mouth opened and closed in an attempt to explain himself. A hand tanner than his ancestors could ever give him came into his peripheral vision.
He had just considered taking in and possibly-maybe dragging his friend into a hug, but the sound of others encroaching onto their temporary quiet broke the inclination. A smile – one of the fakest he had ever done – plastered itself onto his features, made real by the tiniest, guiltiest shred of relief.
There would be no time for frivolities, later. He knew this, knew they were tumbling forward into a chain of events that would end in a very definite conclusion, where there was no doubt as to the conclusion either way the dice fell in this grand design of a Game.
That made him so much less willing to disrupt the hope and joy he had found for the sake of his own contentment.