No proofreading, unfortunately I'm a lazy person.
"Tanuma!" Natsume shouted.
"Yes?" he shouted back. The flashes from the colourful fireworks that exploded over their heads illuminated his face.
Natsume made a cone out of his hands over his mouth in order to be heard. "Thank you for bringing me here!"
"Ha?"
"I said, thanks! For telling me to come!"
Tanuma shook his head and shrugged, an indication that he hadn't understood a thing. Natsume leaned closer, his breath swaying a few stray black strands of Tanuma's hair.
"Thank you"
Tanuma's face lit up, his eyes melting into that kind stare that he used to get whenever he felt overwhelmed with emotions. Natsume could tell after seeing his friend's reactions when they watched movies. This was the face he had made during UP.
Did I make him sad somehow?
But no. This was different. Tanuma was smiling, and that smile held no sadness. Natsume found himself smiling back, and a reassuring feeling flooded him. He closed his amber eyes, relishing the bursts of air - sound that hit his skin and shook his insideas and eardrums like invisible waves of energy with every firework explosion.
No... Not sad... I wonder if he feels nice like I do?
He blinked, taking in a blurry view of sparkling, bright lines of every colour spreading across the sky like glitter marker ink. It was nice to look at them. Tanuma's eyes were nice to look at too. They were dark like the sky, but decorated by tiny specks and flecks, tiny colourful explosions, reflecting the fireworks that they stared at with admiration.
It felt nice.
Looking at Tanuma made Natsume feel nice. Not the kind of nice you feel when you turn off the daily alarm before going to bed on a Friday, or when you drink juice under the shade of an umbrella by the beach.
No. It was the kind of nice you feel when you deliberately avoid stepping on any daisies as you cross the garden, delicately, from toe to toe among the grassbaldes, overflowing with a sudden desire to cherish and be grateful. That kind of nice. Not the one that was given to you by circumstances, but the one you gave to the world.
I like Tanuma.
Natsume had that thought very briefly. But he didn't process it. It was just a fact that ran through his mind. A simple truth. He didn't think much of it. It had come so naturally, that it was forgotten as easily in a few seconds.
A smaller chapter, but still nice I think. I wrote it using my own experiences as an inspiration. Realising I liked a close friend was very brief for me, and I only ended up thinking about it much later on from when the original thought occured. I don't know why. Maybe it's just that, you can like someone without wanting to do anything about it. But then these feelings grow and you can't help but want to do something about them. Much like a small plant. You acknowledge its existence but think nothing of it, until it grows into a taller tree and you start thinking about resting underneath its shade.
I hope it was a nice read for you too.