Word Count: 460
They're just hanging around, doing homework in the classroom one lazy afternoon, Megumi, Yuuji, and Nobara, when suddenly, Yuuji gets oddly… Well, it's hard for Megumi to really place the emotion. Is the other boy earnest? Dreamy?
(Yearning?)
Whatever it is, Yuuji's voice is full of it as he speaks up suddenly:
"You know, Megumi, someday someone's gonna love you so much." His uniform makes that quiet whhsshhf sound as he shifts around, abruptly changing his focus from out the window to Megumi's face. He props his chin up on his elbow, and his teeth clack sharply together at the end of his sentences.
Megumi pauses, the tip of his mechanical pencil just barely touching his paper, and he furrows his brow at Yuuji. What is he going on about? He wonders.
"And they're gonna be really lucky," Yuuji continues. (There's this look in his eye that opens up an ache in Megumi's chest, and a feeling he can't seem to identify.) "And you're gonna deserve all that. You're gonna be happy, and someone's gonna love you for all you are."
"What are you talking about?" Megumi wants to sputter. "Where did that come from?" He puts his pencil down and opens his mouth at Yuuji— the usually boisterous, irreverent Yuuji, who must have been replaced with some sort of overly sentimental clone to have said stuff like that out of the blue-but the words cling to his tongue, refuse to fall out of his mouth.
He shuts his jaw. Glares downwards, as if trying to scold his own voice. All the while, there's a hole forming in his chest, sinking deep into his belly; a terrifying feeling made all the more so by the butterfly wings brushing against the edges of the chasm. He swallows, then regrets it, for the action makes him all too aware of his beating heart.
"And what about me?" Typical Nobara, barging into their conversation with no warning or ceremony. She kicks back her seat dangerously far, picks her hammer out of her belt and twirls it around one-handed. She sneers at the boys, baring her perfectly white teeth.
Yuuji turns around. "I don't know, ask Maki-senpai!" he snips.
An anger mark appears on Nobara's forehead, and her chair's forelegs slam into the ground. "Hey! what's that supposed to mean?!" She shakes her hammer at him.
Megumi breathes a quiet sigh of relief as his classmates disintegrate into petty squabbling. The frightening pit of emotion in his chest mellows out into something soft and warm and pleasant— still unnamed, but nicer, at least. He picks up his pencil and returns to business as usual.
author's note ii. originally published to my tumblr on 12/23/2020.