It was strange, what a good boyfriend Yoshiki was.
At first glance, he looked cold and rebellious - it was the hair; bleach blond was not a becoming color! she always argued - and at second, he seemed detached and tactless. Kishinuma was honest, sometimes in an insensitive and brutal manner, and it gave others the impression that he intentionally liked insulting people, which wasn't the case at all. Slackers and delinquents were notorious for being terrible boyfriends. So why was Kishinuma, who lived in his own apartment and brawled with petty rebels and snored whenever he'd dozed off in class, different?
Ayumi didn't really know. Yoshiki, initially being so blunt and easily frustrated and prone to bursts of bad behavior, truly was a good boyfriend, despite each of the, say, unflattering adjectives commonly used to describe him and his ways. Delinquents didn't slip their hands into hers and shorten their long-legged strides just so she could keep up with his side; he did. Slackers didn't text her 'good morning, beautiful' just before they headed off to school or that part-time job of theirs; he did. Bad boyfriends didn't kiss her forehead and offer her a shoulder to cry on, didn't introduce them to the only family in the world that mattered to them, didn't risk themselves for her very existence in the rundown, haunted school in some different dimension of hell, didn't tolerate two years of affections for his best friend and the cold shoulder.
He did.
Public displays of affection embarrassed her. He understood that; the feeling of questioning eyes burning into their intertwined hands and backs (hers was covered in a familiar jacket, clearly not hers because it was too big) made his skin prickle. But in more private situations, Yoshiki would throw yet another curveball and wrap her in his arms, and bury his face in her hair, and mumble that 'she made him feel sentimental and mushy and stuff.'
Once, when they were attending a small get together hosted at the Mochida household, the formerly icy stares weren't necessary; the cold jealously that had frozen Yoshiki's boiling blood in place was warmed by Ayumi leaning into his side and lacing their fingers, right in front of Satoshi. Yoshiki had been so elated, even if the reason behind the gesture was partially to snub the boy who chose Naomi over Ayumi. He'd smiled against her temple and mumbled something akin to the same 'I love you' he'd said to her a little while prior as she absentmindedly picked a piece of lint off of his dark green jeans, and closed her eyes and smiled.
(Naomi exaggerated a gagging sound, and the four of them could faintly imagine that it wasn't her who was sickened by the lovebirds, but a poor pigtail-haired girl. Seiko would've been sickened by such PDA; perhaps she'd demand to see something steamier, or just settle for sneaking dozens of glances at Naomi beside her.)
They weren't all pet names and date nights; flowers and chocolates or potential wedding bells. (Although, privy to her knowledge, he'd already planned his out, the folded-up speech sitting, stained with coffee and lead, somewhere in at the bottom of his underwear drawer, a familiar scrap of paper taped to it.) They weren't lovesick idiots, even though she liked to tease that he most certainly was an idiot. They called each other by their personal names and hardly anything else. It was almost like labelling the connection they had, the invisible strings tying them together, slowly tightening around them like a cattle's lasso as Heavenly Host kept being thrown in their faces.
But once, Yoshiki had called her 'baby'; what was even weirder was that he'd said it in English. 'I dunno,' he'd explained, blushing under her critical stare. 'Heard it on tv. Some American show, I think.' Then, after recovering from his embarrassment, he'd leaned down from his place eight inches taller than her and pressed their foreheads together. 'I like Ayumi more, though. Don't you agree?'
She'd smirked. 'Yes,' she concurred, her accent thick as she geared into the mandatory English they'd all had to learn throughout school. 'Darling.'
They'd kept the nicknames, only calling each other those names, strictly in English every single time, with a smirk at the scoff and confused looks they received. (They'd eventually stopped caring.)
Ayumi could lie on his chest, ear over heartbeat to listen to the soothing rhythm of her slumbering boyfriend, and drift away. He didn't have work on Saturdays and Wednesdays, so whenever she eventually dozed off and his alarm jolted him from his tranquil sleep, she'd wake up too and peer through the frizzy hair hanging in her face, asking in tiny voice she knew he couldn't resist about where he was going. After a little of the puppy dog façade, his iron will was melted away and he allowed her to sleepily wrap herself in his arms and fall back asleep.
On their own, they were hard workers in their own rites; Yoshiki juggled a job and school as well as his own wellbeing and relationships to Ayumi, his only sister and his friends. Ayumi pushed herself through academics and struggled to overcome her own personal barriers around the subject of her career as an illustrator. But when they were together, in basic shirts and shorts, under two or three blankets because it was cold and they couldn't really afford the air conditioning and heating costs, snuggled up together like they were attached, they both felt like they'd never ever want to work again. Of course, they eventually did get up - bathroom breaks, and the most important meal of the day - but eventually wandered back into bed, where they'd just lay there.
Remembering.
Thinking.
And it was during those times, her legs hanging off of the edge of the bed, head resting on Yoshiki's gently rising and falling chest and her hand twined with his between them, that she pondered over them.
'It's strange, what a good boyfriend he is..'