They kept him in a holding room for hours. They searched him for weapons and drugs, but found nothing but his empty pockets. They hounded him for personal information, only to discover that his record was clean and he was just a student from one of the local universities. He was questioned by security guards. He was questioned by managers. He was questioned by police, and then they gave him a phone and told him to call someone to get him, because his personal drama was a waste of their time. Oh, and also they slapped him with a hefty fine for trespassing and disturbing the peace.

He called Makoto. He didn't feel like getting a lecture from his sister, and he knew everyone else was going to make a comment about how stupid he was. And even though Makoto affirmed that he'd be there right away, it was most unfortunate for Asahi that he just happened to bring everyone else with him.

"We were worried," Makoto explained on their way out of the station, once all kinds of release forms had been signed. One of the managers and a couple security guards watched them all walk away into the night with heavy eyes on their backs.

"Ikuya called Haru after you asked everyone if we'd seen Kisumi, and we were going to help you find him."

It was a warm night, and he found that incredibly annoying. The air was thick, he wasn't entirely sure he'd ever stopped sweating, and the clog in his chest wasn't helping any of that. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down, trying to ignore how closely Makoto was walking next to him, and how cautious everyone's eyes were. He could feel their concern touching him, and he didn't want it right now. He didn't want them right now. He was kind of just thinking how tempting it would be to sink into the pavement and close his eyes forever.

"Did he not leave you a note or anything?" Ikuya asked, his voice soft, because he was probably the only one who really understood the significance of Kisumi's sudden departure right now.

Asahi shook his head.

"Well," Makoto started, and his hopeful tone grated the nerves in Asahi's spine. "If we call him, I'm sure we could —"

"He left his phone at home."

"Oh … But why would he —"

"Did he take anything else with him?" Ikuya interrupted, quickening his pace to get around to Asahi's other side.

He shook his head again. Ikuya's silence was strained, and Asahi could feel the weight of it pressing down on his shoulders.

"I'll call Sousuke," Makoto said. "He can meet up with Kisumi when he gets there, and maybe we can talk to him then."

Asahi's shoulders trembled, fingers tightening around the lining in his pockets, and it was suddenly very hard to walk. It felt like there were lead weights in his knees.

"What happened?" Haru's voice spoke up, peeking around Makoto's broad chest.

Asahi didn't respond, and he was one more trembling step away from stopping, when Hiyori — who had been entirely silent and elected to linger behind everyone else through the entire process of springing Asahi free — finally spoke up.

"He probably did something stupid."

Asahi's feet stopped. Everyone's feet stopped.

It was Ikuya who looked over his shoulder with an admonishing glance. "Hiyori …"

"I'm not being insensitive," Hiyori stated, before turning his gaze to Asahi's back. "It's just true, right? You did something stupid."

Asahi's eyes were burning holes in the ground. He didn't turn around.

"Hiyori," Makoto said gently, his voice quiet, as though he was trying to keep it from Asahi's ears. "I think maybe we really shouldn't right now."

"Why not?" Hiyori responded, his tone entirely too relaxed. "It has to happen at some point. No one else wants to point out how reckless he's been lately? He's already made a move on you, dumped his parents, and now he's chasing down trains and getting himself arrested. We're not going to talk about it?"

"Oi," Haru spoke up. "It's not our job to tell him how to react to any of this."

"Isn't it though?" Hiyori questioned. "Wouldn't you get onto me for recklessly allowing my feelings to make my decisions for me? And, I'm sorry, but weren't you the one who very kindly tased him in the neck because of one of his 'reactions'?"

"Hiyori, we don't need to hold onto any of that stuff," Makoto said, when Haru gave no response. "Asahi and Kisumi have been through a lot lately. They're doing their best, okay? Our job is to be supportive."

"Which translates to, let Asahi do whatever he wants, even if that means he's going to kiss other people's boyfriends and break the law?"

"Hiyori, stop it," Ikuya spat. "Now. This isn't helping anything."

"Well, what is going to help, honestly? How far are we going to let him go? Are we just never supposed to say anything except how sorry we are that he's having a hard time with life right now, like the rest of us aren't being affected by any of this? Last time I checked, Kisumi was our friend too, but you don't see any of us losing our shit. But I guess it's fine, because Asahi's the one who's in love with Kisumi, so he gets a pass. Is that it?"

All three of their friends tried all at once to quell it with warnings before it could go any further, but Asahi was turning around now. And the absolute indifference in Hiyori's eyes, to everything that was going on, really started to boil Asahi's gut as he stared back at those manipulative hazel eyes.

"It's stupid," Hiyori said again, gazing straight back. He ignored everyone else. Right now he was just talking to Asahi. "We shouldn't have to thank Shinkansen security for letting you go so easily. Why would you do something like that?"

Asahi bristled, but kept his voice quiet. "I'm not explaining myself to you."

"Then don't. But clearly no one has truly confronted you about this, so I will. You're a mess, Asahi. And you're the kind of mess that has everyone else way more concerned than they should be. Kisumi is one thing, but you're another thing entirely. We can't keep losing sleep over both of you. Pull your shit together."

There was a shift from the rest, all three of them once again taking a breath to stop him. Makoto even got out a surprisingly stern, "Hiyori, that's enough." But Asahi had quit minding them too, and their cautions were interrupted.

"I'm sorry," he shot back, words shaking with anger. "Who deemed you the spokesperson for the intervention scene of this shit show? My shit is going to stay wherever I put it, because I don't give a fuck about your half-ass involvement in any of this. It's not about you. It's not about Makoto, it's not about Haru, it's not about Ikuya, it's not even about me!"

"And yet here we are," Hiyori shot back, raising his voice to match. "All five of us, standing here on a Wednesday night, because your irrational way of handling things has reached a climax, and now the story is about you. You acted out. You put no thought into those actions. You let how you were feeling get the better of you." He threw a hand out behind him. "Now, one of us is gone, who knows where, and you're still responding like you have some kind of control over that."

"I wasn't just going to sit there and do nothing! You have no idea where Kisumi's head is at right now!"

"You think the rest of us haven't picked up that he's suicidal? You're not the only one watching him. You're not the only one who's been talking to him. And yet you insist that the responsibility for keeping him going is entirely your own."

"It doesn't matter whose responsibility it is!"

"Yes, it does, because you can't handle it! You've stretched yourself too thin, Asahi. Get it through your head! You can't do it. It's not yours to hold by yourself, and the more you insist that it is, the more damage you're doing to Kisumi that way."

Asahi shoved him several feet back.

"Asahi, don't."

"Just calm down for a second."

"I'm doing the fucking best that I can!" he shouted, voice cracking in the middle.

"And it still isn't working," Hiyori spat back. "What a surprise. I know you're having trouble understanding this, so I will make it clear for you. Nothing you do is going to fix him, Shiina Asahi. Nothing you do is going to fix Kisumi."

Asahi was swollen with heat, his jaw threatening to crack under pressure, and he could hardly see anything but Hiyori's dark silhouette through the blur in his eyes. His muscles were vibrating out of control.

"Nothing you do. Is going. To. Fix. Him," Hiyori repeated, accenting each word with a bite to his tone as though he meant for each one of them to rip out a piece of Asahi's soul.

"Stop," was the only thing he managed to hiss through his teeth.

"Not until you get it. Because I'm not coming to bail you out after this, and no one else should have to either. If you want to keep throwing your weight around and demand that the universe change everything to your exact specifications, then go ahead. Keep making your stupid decisions. I won't pity you. What I do pity is this part of Kisumi's life having to intercept with your chaos. If you keep this up, Asahi, he has no chance."

"Shut up! I'm the one who's been with him this whole time!"

"And that's exactly why he's gone, Asahi! You just fucked him over! Now no one's ever going to see him again!"

"Asahi, no!"

The last word wasn't even fully out of Hiyori's mouth before they both hit the ground, and Asahi wailed on him. It was all a blur to him, he wasn't even conscious of his own fists connecting furiously with Hiyori's face. Everything was red, and his ears were ringing. He didn't hear Makoto pleading for him to stop, didn't know that Haru was refusing to let him intervene, didn't know that Ikuya was just watching his fury unfold in shock, didn't know that he'd snapped Hiyori's glasses in half, and that the other boy was still desperately trying to get one last word in while he held his hands up to protect himself.

Asahi was completely gone for several heart-pumping seconds, during which all he felt was raging energy. There was no other way to let it out. It just gushed through his fists and turned his skin red. He probably wasn't even breathing, and maybe that was why his chest hurt so badly, but maybe it was also because this fight had turned less into him beating the shit out of a barely-friend who had been asking for it for years, and more into him fighting the very real and very true accusations that had managed to come out in everything Hiyori had just said. And he didn't want to acknowledge them. He couldn't. He couldn't let it all be real, because then that meant …

"… know how you feel!" Hiyori's voice sharpened back into focus. "I know how you feel!"

"No, you fucking don't!"

"It hurts!" And he wasn't talking about the punches. Which was probably why Asahi's fists stopped and bunched around his shirt instead.

"It hurts," Hiyori repeated, struggling to sit up. His hands closed around Asahi's wrists, sucking the energy out of him, so that he was left just kneeling over him in a trembling heap, gasping for breath.

Hiyori was breathing hard too. His face was smeared with blood, and there was still a lot of it liberally dripping down out of his nose. But he looked at Asahi as though he didn't notice. His eyes were shining, his brow furrowed, and his attention was on Asahi only, as though trying to appeal to something deep down in him that was actually responding.

"I hear you, Asahi. I know. It hurts," he breathed one last time, "because you can't do anything."

The unfiltered sincerity in his voice pierced a spot in Asahi he didn't know he had, and his eyes became so saturated, he couldn't see anything anymore. It was immensely difficult to choke words past the thickness in his throat.

"I feel so fucking useless," he whispered, words trembling as his fists squeezed more desperately.

Hiyori pulled in a patient breath. "Then why are you trying so hard?"

He watched it, like a single pebble arching through the air to land on top of the mountain, and the whole thing collapsed. The tears poured from his eyes, faster than he could comprehend, and all he understood was pain that squeezed the air out of his lungs. He wept.

It wasn't a silent cry. It wasn't a reluctant waver to stubborn tears. It wasn't prickly eyes and a stinging nose, and a toxic stubbornness to refuse emotions he didn't understand. He wept.

It was loud. It was wet. It was defenseless, and exposed, and every kind of vulnerable he had never wanted to be. It was heartbreaking, and he was consumed by it, like getting caught in the tide and tossed in a whirlpool.

His quivering body slumped forward, hands still gripped around Hiyori's shirt, and his head dropped against his chest. Arms folded around him in a slow embrace, and it was of the sort that continued to reach that something deep and ease away the angry knots in it. It was a painful process. He could have sworn he was dying. But the act of letting something go that he had been double-fisting for almost a year and a half seemed to be taking full advantage of the moment to wash everything out of him.

Hiyori held him in silence. Ikuya and Haru watched, both with creases of compassion on their brows. And Makoto had to turn his back with his hands cupped around his nose, while he let his own tears quietly run their course.

And there they were, all five of them, rocked by the wake behind an event that was much bigger than them — some of them drowning, some of them flailing, all of them trying to keep each other afloat. It was chaotic, and a little bit pathetic, and not at all smooth, but they were there. And they tried not to focus too hard on the fact that one of them was not.

He didn't go home that night. His friends walked him to Marron, and they all sat in silence, staring into mugs of tea and coffee, until there was nothing more to get out of being together in that moment. Makoto hugged him for a long time. Ikuya squeezed his shoulder. Haru patted his head. And he and Hiyori met each others gazes for a weightless, stretching moment. Then they were all gone, and he sat by himself until the café was clean and the lights had been turned out.

His sister came to get him from the table, and he followed her up to her home, where Kon promised he'd take care of Tsukushi for the night, and Asahi ended up in a foreign bed with his sister's arms curled around him. She held him close to her chest with one hand consolingly rubbing his back and the other cupped around his head like a baby. He didn't mind. He didn't have an opinion about it at all, except that it seemed to fend off the inclination to want to slip back into panic and despair, thinking that he was never going to see Kisumi again, and that was his own fault.

"No, it's not," Akane's voice said, vibrating against his forehead.

He hadn't realized he'd spoken out loud.

"Kisumi-kun's life is in his own hands, and what he does with it ultimately has nothing to do with how you've responded or haven't responded. You love him with everything you have, and that's all you can do."

"Love doesn't work, Akane," he said quietly, his words muffled by her collar. "All it does is anchor you to things that aren't permanent … and then you end up drowning."

Her arms gave him a squeeze. "That's a lie. And I don't want you to believe it. I'm sorry Mom and Dad didn't give you a good example to look up to growing up. And I'm sorry that you're having to go through so much with Kisumi-kun. But there's love everywhere, Asahi. You're surrounded by it, whether you know it or not, and you've always been exceptional about surrounding other people with it too. It works — just not always in the way you ask it to."

He didn't respond to that. Instead, he focused on the drag of her hand across his back and the tenderness of her fingers in his hair. He closed his eyes, sinking into it all with an exhaustion that was unparalleled. He let the hopelessness drift away to hover on the other side of the room until morning, and he let it take the sadness with it. He felt nothing but his sister holding him, and so he finally slept, for the first time in months.