Germination
oOo
Maybe I've just forgotten how to feel surprise.
Maybe this isn't something I should be surprised at anyway.
Nonetheless, Hiroki felt the muscles of his calves tense just a little bit at the footsteps behind him, preparing to run for it should he need to.
He didn't need to. He needn't have bothered worrying. It's him.
Him.
If I were to ask your name—you who already know mine—would you even tell me?
"How long have you been following me?" he asked the pale evening without turning. A cheeky breeze curled in the air, and his gloved hands balled into fists in his pockets even though the rain had let up some time ago.
He had left Satou's apartment the moment it stopped raining.
A laugh, familiar and yet not, rippled from behind him. "I don't follow you, Hiro-san. Won't you turn around?"
Hiroki obliged—somewhat grudgingly, somewhat gratefully—and sure enough, there stood the alley cat, as young and fresh and unfathomable as ever. Though the student's gold-brown eyes first fell on his face like always, they glanced downward briefly to see that his scruffy black pants were wet from the knees down. It was not the first time that Hiroki had wondered whether the kid even owned any other clothes.
"It's getting cold, alley cat", he murmured.
A corner of the boy's mouth twitched upwards. "I've noticed. Would you like my blanket again? We're not far from... well, I wouldn't call it a home, but... we're not far from my base."
Something in the back of Hiroki's mind gave a sharp twinge. He ignored it in his haste to explain himself.
"I don't mean right now, stupid", he said roughly. "The weather. It's October. Winter's coming." A colder winter than usual, too, from the look of it. A chokingly awkward pause.
"Oh, you're talking about me?" It had not been phrased as a question, but Hiroki chose to hear it as one in his embarrassment and gave a tiny nod. The boy's smirk grew for the smallest of moments before becoming a genuine smile again. "You don't need to worry about me."
Don't I?
Do I even worry?
Who are you?
"I wasn't worrying", was what he said out loud; his voice sounded sharp, almost vehement. "There's no point in you dying of hypothermia, that's all."
He had not noticed, had not chosen to notice the sidling little footsteps that brought the alley cat closer, and now he was staring up into eyes that sparkled guilelessly at him from several inches above his own. It did nothing to make him feel any less flustered. "Are you even listening to me, kid?"
"I am", came the brief reply. Hiroki felt a hand close around his wrist, warm even through the admittedly thin sweater he wore, and his impulse to give in fought with his impulse to resist. His hand was lifted out of its pocket before he could resolve the battle.
Ah.
Oh, shit.
"Don't", he said shortly before the boy could open his mouth. "Just don't say a fucking word or I will end you."
Maybe he could shout down the color that was rising to his face.
The alley cat didn't look remotely ruffled; he gave the black glove a nod before letting Hiroki's hand drop gently down to his side. "I just wanted to see that you were using them."
"I am." Why this fucking blush? What, god dammit? "But something tells me you'll be needing them this winter."
"Something tells me", the boy replied, serene but firm, "that if I've survived winter on the streets all these years, I can live through another one." Then in a wonderfully childlike gesture, he dropped his gaze to the ground and raised his own hand to the back of his head, absently raking at the unruly hair that rioted there beneath the woolen cap he always wore. "Thank you for your concern though, Hiro-san."
They were walking now, walking down the roads so easily, so naturally that Hiroki was once again visited by that sense of unreality. I've seen you—what, thrice? Thrice all my life. I don't know your name, I do know that for some reason you seem to follow my footsteps wherever they take me, but it's easier to walk with you than it's ever been with anyone else.
It made want to never stop walking, but he would not admit that to himself just yet.
"Where have you been, Hiro-san?" his companion asked after a minute of smooth silence.
It's none of your business, Hiroki thought tetchily, but he said, "To see a friend." Following a moment of deliberation—deliberation of the kind that accompanied a deep loneliness—he added, "I had to cut my visit short, though."
Of course he was asked why. Of course when my words practically begged for it. He sighed. "They were making me uncomfortable. They always do, to be honest."
But he was not asked why he kept seeing a friend who always made him uncomfortable, and for that he was grateful. If he had looked into the boy's knowing eyes at the moment, he would have understood why, but he kept his gaze almost determinedly on the road that they were about to cross.
"What's his name?"
The question did not surprise him. Fucking nothing about this person ever surprises me. It did pique his curiosity, though. "Why would you want to know? Fat lot of good it'd do you to ask me, anyway—I only know his surname and he shares it with half of Japan." Damned common surname, that one.
For that matter, he thought suddenly, it might not even be his real name.
The fact that he knew so little about Satou actually comforted him.
"Half of Japan, you say", said the boy meditatively, his eyes toying with the red and green of the traffic lights and turning the colors into something inhumanly strange. "So his name's Satou?"
Hiroki shot him a sharp look that earned nothing but a grin. "I read in a newspaper once that Satou is the most common surname in Japan", the alley cat explained. "I thought I'd take a guess."
"You know how to read?" the words were out of his mouth before Hiroki could stop them; he bit his tongue, fuming at himself, as he saw neither a smile nor a twinkling eye in the young face.
"I do."
I shouldn't have asked him that. Fuck. Me.
I'm sorry.
I'm—
"How old are you, alley cat?" he asked quietly.
To his dizzy relief, the smile was back. "Fifteen, Hiro-san."
For how many years have you been living like this? How have you been managing? How do you eat? How do you stay safe, a kid your age? Have you always been alone?
Have I always been alone too?
Is that why I don't push you away?
Hiroki asked none of these questions, choosing to nod instead as they turned a corner. A few more blocks and he'd be back at his apartment. Would the boy accompany him that far into an area full of upscale apartments and glass buildings?
I'm being an ass. He's the one who said all of Tokyo was his home.
But it was not more than a second later that his companion—the person whom he was rapidly beginning to think of as his friend—stopped in his tracks, the breeze blowing past him without a care.
"I'm sorry, Hiro-san, but this is where I leave you." For once, he carried no expression at all—not in his face, not in his clipped words. The boy had shut down completely.
Hiroki knew he should say something like I never asked you to walk with me in the first place or Good, now I can go home in peace without you following me but when he opened his mouth to speak, the words were too jumbled to come out; he closed it and nodded again and tried to convince himself that he was neither disappointed nor slightly pink in the face.
"We'll meet again sometime, I think", said the boy, looking younger than ever, his body silhouetted against the watery sun in all its boyish lankiness. "Although I feel compelled to remind you that despite what you say, I don't really follow you."
My ass you don't.
But maybe you don't.
Hiroki found himself saying, "Yeah. See you, kid."
The heat took him unawares. The world before his eyes seemed to dissolve all at once in a cloudburst of black fire as a lean but strong pair of arms tightened around him—he struggled to beat down his gasp, thinking dazedly, a surprise at last, it's about time. Unable to either resist or reciprocate, unable to tell for sure if the very sidewalk beneath his feet existed or not, he closed his eyes against the alley cat's black-clad chest and breathed.
His hands trembled in their gloves.
"Something to keep you warm", the boy was saying softly. "You seem to need that more than I do. See you indeed, Hiro-san."
When the world had pieced itself back together and Hiroki could open his eyes, he was alone.
oOo
1. "How old are you?" "Sewenteen, sir."
2. Nowaki is a lil shit. Just look at him u_u
