I stared down at the broken mess in front of me that was Niou Masaharu. I looked, but I didn't see.
It just doesn't make sense. He doesn't cry like this.
He doesn't cry at all.
And yet here he was, crumpled on his knees with his head bowed down and convulsing with choked sobs like a small child.
"He left…he's gone…" The same miserable words tumbled over and over again from his quivering lips, and tears seemed to spill indefinitely and uncontrollably from hysterical eyes. And still, I merely stared.
I stared because I didn't know what else to do. There was nothing I could do, nothing he would have wanted me to do. At least that's what the Niou-senpai I knew would have thought. Or perhaps the one I knew this entire time was nothing more than a façade; I don't know. I don't know, and I realized that there was probably still much more to him that I don't know. If the one who left were me, would he have cried like this? And then I realized that maybe I didn't want to know, because inside, I already knew.
"…Kirihara…" I let out a breath that I did not notice I was holding. Slowly and silently, I lowered myself to my own knees and waited for him to continue.
"…I…scr-" He interrupted himself with a repressed sob, and I felt a hot flush of pain. I pulled him clumsily to my chest.
"It's...it's okay."
"It's not…I- screwed up and he-"The trembling body I held, though so much larger than my own, felt, for the first time, so small and weak.
"It's okay that you screwed up, senpai. We…we all did."
And at this, he suddenly jerked in my arms; a white-knuckled grip seized me painfully by the wrist and I felt the hot breaths of soundless sobs and the hot warmth of tears as they seared my chest and charred everything within. I felt my own eyes burn and my throat constrict and I clung to him and we both shattered on the green asphalt and cried and cried.
Him, for losing Yagyuu.
And me, for losing him.