Out of the Game
A Hana Kimi fanfiction by Mintaka14
Someone had changed the rules on him, and Nakatsu stared at Mizuki, trying to make sense of things while Sano was talking. Nakatsu couldn't even hear clearly, and it didn't matter anyway.
You knew she was a girl all along? He wanted to shout Sano down, hit something. I loved her when I thought she was a boy! I loved her even when you made her cry.
But Sano had known all along, and it felt like an unfair advantage somehow.
Two years! You had her for two years! And the implications started to sink in. Sano had spent two years knowing, two years beside Mizuki, sharing a room with her… and never letting her guess that he knew. Nakatsu felt a dawning, reluctant awe of the self-control that must have taken.
I couldn't have done it, he admitted to himself, remembering with a shamed blush the times he'd thrown himself at Mizuki even before he knew, and the way she'd backed off, the nervous look in her eyes that he'd made himself blind to. And Sano had kept her secret, never given any sign he knew in case it freaked her out or took her away from his side.
That was the moment when Nakatsu knew he'd lost to Sano.
Nakatsu didn't realise just how badly he'd lost until the implications of what Mizuki was saying had sunk in.
The guy Nakatsu had crushed so hard on was a girl.
He was a girl who had cut off her hair, disguised herself as a boy. Left her family and travelled halfway around the world. Spent almost three years in hiding in a boys' school.
For Izumi Sano.
If Nakatsu had been in any doubt, that was the moment when he realised that not only had he lost Mizuki to Sano, he had never even been in the game. Nothing and no one was ever going to compete with what they were to each other.
He had never stood a chance.