ummm wrote this in five minutes probably full of typos oh well
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set in lighters-verse, you don't need to read Lighters to get it but basically they're in college studying abroad in the US together and they went through a rough patch but they're friends now kind of?
green
a Lighters story
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So once upon a time, An sees Kirihara, electric and vivid and raw under the sun and she thinks, I want this forever.
Sometimes, when she thinks he's not paying attention, she watches him.
The way his body sprawls over the desk when they study together. The way the sunlight tangles in his dark, dark hair when he lounges outside. The way his eyes seem to shine when he smiles, like something bright. Like lighters.
What are you staring at, he says when he catches her staring. His mouth curls in a lazy smirk. Can't blame you, I guess. Stare away.
He does it to get a rise out of her, which is exactly why she doesn't rise to the bait. Quips, Just wondering how God could've messed up one person so badly.
His teeth show when he grins, and An ignores the little flip she feels. If she doesn't think about it then it won't exist. If she doesn't stare into the abyss then it won't stare back.
(But she's been staring into the abyss for a long, long time.)
He yawns, and she smiles a little.
There is something about Kirihara that makes An think. Makes her think that maybe he wasn't meant to be born a human, that maybe in another life he had a different sort of teleology. Then she thinks that maybe Kirihara is the kind of person who's not meant to have a teleology at all, because he is too uncontained, too much to be predestined for any kind of end.
Kirihara, she thinks, is an end in himself.
Then she remembers that she's supposed to be philosophizing about Kant and Nietzsche, not Kirihara Akaya.
As if the boy could ever be captured with words. On paper.
As if the boy could ever be captured at all.
He sneaks a glance at her and catches her staring off into space. You're not writing, he accuses, sotto voce. Why are we in a library if you're not even working? I could be playing tennis right now. I could be playing video games.
His voice is so forlorn. She can't help it—she laughs.
The entirety of the library turns to glare at her, and she ducks her head, lets her hair fall over her face. Shut up, she hisses at him.
You laughed, not me, he points out. The smug bastard.
She subtly scribbles doodles of little angry tennis fairies all over his notes, and he not-so-subtly kicks her under the table.
When they walk back from the library, it is dark and the air is biting.
The air hurts my face, Kirihara complains. Why am I living in a place where the air hurts my face.
An snorts. You're such a wuss.
Sometimes, when they walk together, one of them spontaneously challenges the other to a race around campus. To a cartwheeling competition. To a sudden thumb war to the death. An loves those moments, because they are charged and electric in a way that she thinks is very Kirihara, in a way that is very college, in a way that is everything she wants and everything she wants to be.
Other times, when they walk together, they walk in comfortable silence. Side by side, no words exchanged. It's too cold to talk, with the freezing air numbing her face. And with someone else, she thinks it might be awkward, but with Kirihara it's comfortable in a way that she doesn't understand, and doesn't bother understanding. She thinks that there are some things in the world better left to magic and mystery.
She never wants to understand why love happens, why it makes you feel like bravery and fear and surreality. She never wants to analyze all the metaphors and tropes and literary devices of her favorite books. She never wants to know where the Little Prince ends up at the end of that lovely little story.
She never wants to know what makes fairy lights so magical, what makes music worm its way into her heart and never leave.
She looks at Kirihara, rosy-cheeked from the cold, and thinks that she never wants to pick apart this feeling.
It is winter and cold and An dreams of spring, dreams of walking barefoot onto the quad, the grass soft and cold and wet against her feet.
An dreams of cherry blossoms and pollen and green leaves, green grass, green and green and green.
And then she thinks that maybe it's okay if spring never comes again, because Kirihara's eyes are green enough for all of the springs for the rest of time.