The second semester started without event. Hideaki saw Arima walking with Yukino to class. There was a small smile on his face as he watched her talk enthusiastically, shaking her short, smooth hair for emphasis. The murky emotions that had plagued him seemed to have fled, or simply suffered themselves to be hidden once again inside the quiet boy's calm frame.
Yukino shrieked when she saw Hideaki leaning against the wall, watching them. "Asapin, you look like you've done nothing but lay in the sun all summer!" She tried to give him a disapproving glare but her mouth kept twisting with contained laughter.
Smirking, Hideaki lifted one hand coyly to his face, showing off his ring. His uniform white shirt was loose from his dark pants and the top buttons were undone to reveal a large stretch of his smooth chest, tanned and lightly muscled from his days in the surf.
"Jewelry?" Arima scoffed, noting the band on his finger, the simple chain around his neck, and the three silver rings in his right lobe. "You're going to get in a lot of trouble for—"
Yukino gasped, her eyes jerking to the left. Turning his head, Hideaki saw class advisor Kawashima approaching with a look like death on his face.
"We're model students," Arima hissed. "We can't be seen with you!"
"Asaba Hideaki?" Kawashima asked, voice weary and rough.
"That's me!" Hideaki chirped, forgoing the usual polite reply.
Unexpectedly, Kawashima set a hand on his shoulder and sighed, looking down away from his face. Hideaki watched the advisor with curiosity while Yukino and Arima hyperventilated a few steps away.
Kawashima's voice sounded tired and resigned. "I know you're a good student at heart… But this is a respectable school… please don't go overboard."
"Okay," Hideaki agreed, shrugging. It wasn't as if he started fights or dealt drugs or something. Perhaps the half-open shirt had been a little daring, he mused.
"Work hard and make your parents proud," Kawashima recited without enthusiasm. He nodded to Arima and Yukino before turning to walk away.
"Poor guy," Yukino sympathized. "Dealing with kids like Asapin at his age."
-
After class, Hideaki met Miyazawa and Arima in the hall. They headed toward the lunchroom together to meet with the rest of the lively group.
"I'm starved," Yukino announced, bumping heads with Arima as she reached for the boxed lunch in her book bag. He grinned sheepishly and rubbed his forehead.
"Arg!" Tsubaki complained, waving an anpan at them disdainfully from her position at the table between Maho and Tsubasa. "You're like a pair of newlyweds! I bet a machete couldn't separate you two."
Arima looked a little embarrassed, but Yukino just shrugged and pulled the wrapping off her bento box with a look of anticipation. Hideaki opened his own lunch sack and removed the package of three sweet rolls he had snatched before racing out the door. The night before, he had watched a fashion show instead of doing his history homework and, in his scramble to finish it the next morning, he had only had time to grab the rolls on his way out. Removing one, he bit into its sticky surface and noticed Arima's frown.
"Is that all you brought for lunch?" Arima asked disapprovingly.
"Yeah. Stupid history homework," Hideaki complained. "You want one?"
Arima shook his head, still frowning. "You need more nutrition than that." He picked up his own neatly packaged lunch. "Here, you can share my food."
Hideaki grinned broadly and leaned in, licking his lips teasingly. "Are you going to feed it to me yourself?"
"No," Arima answered sharply, glaring to cover a light blush at his friend's close proximity and insinuation.
Hideaki tilted his face toward Arima and lowered his eyelashes seductively. "Tell me to say 'ah' and take it like a big boy."
Arima refused to back down, but his face colored a bright, fetching pink. "What are you talking about?" He avoided Hideaki's eyes, staring at the table as the other boy caught his hand.
Aya stared openly, Maho looked embarrassed, and Tsubaki lifted her eyebrows in surprised appreciation. "Never thought I'd admire a pair of boys, but you two look good together."
Yukino didn't even bat an eye as she continued to eat. "Yeah, but my food's better." She caught Hideaki's gaze and crossed her chopsticks defensively. "I'm not sharing."
Still slightly red, Arima slid his lunch toward Hideaki and moved to sit closer to Yukino. Hideaki let out a deep, gusty sigh to convey his loneliness and started on the delicious-looking pickled vegetables that Arima's aunt made so well.
"So…um, culture fair's coming up," Arima said quickly. "What are you guys without clubs going to do for it?"
"Catch up on sleep," Yukino replied, earning herself a chopstick poke from her boyfriend. "Maa, I do enough work already. Let's leave it up to the class, I say."
"You don't know what the prizes are, do you?" Arima asked.
She sighed and rolled her eyes playfully. "Okay, so I didn't read the announcement completely. What are they, Mr. Representative?"
Arima reached into his book bag for a folder of papers and rummaged through them until he found the one he wanted. "The club with the most successful attraction will win one of the following:" he read, "…gift certificates for a nice meal, tickets to a destination of the club's choice, or a copy of notes taken by a Tokyo University graduate while he was still at this school."
All around Hideaki, faces lit up as though turned on by a switch as various students spun spontaneous visions in their heads. Miyazawa alone looked as though stars might burst out of her pupils at any moment. Hideaki could almost see the wheels in her head turning: notes from a top university graduate? The ambition so deeply rooted in her soul could not resist.
"What are we waiting for, Class A? Let's get started!" she declared, pounding the table with a fiery enthusiasm that caused several pieces of pickled radish to jump out of the tsukemono dish in front of Hideaki. "The Going-Home Club can win this!"
Hideaki ignored the slice of radish that had fallen into his lap and leaned back into his seat to stretch casually against the wall. "I'm afraid not," he purred, smirking as Yukino's head snapped toward him, "…because Class F is going to take this culture fair by storm with its marvelous performances of the fantastic Asaba Hideaki Date Show."
"Gah!" Yukino's eyes went a little wild as she considered the implications of this statement. The majority of female population in the room stared at him in worshipful awe, their faces pink with anticipation. Casting frantically about, Yukino clutched Arima's arm and fastened a gaze of hopeful desperation on his features. "Arima will do a date show for us, won't you?"
He detached her quickly, backing away. "I'm with the kendo club, remember?"
"They're baking desserts," Hideaki reminded her helpfully.
"Do you want our class to lose?" Yukino pleaded, appealing to him with fanatically bright eyes.
"No, but I'm still not doing it," he said, looking mortified at the thought. It would go completely against Arima's character to show off and try to impress people with his looks, Hideaki thought. Luckily that's not the case with me!
The girls in the room looked rather crestfallen at Arima's refusal. Hideaki felt vaguely sorry for them.
-
Miyazawa sat on the bench outside the P.E. building hunched over a notebook and looking somewhat stressed. Hideaki took a moment to observe her alone for once, taking in her small form in the school uniform. Her smooth chestnut hair obscured the shape of her face, but he could see bright caramel-colored eyes and a small, red mouth softened in her silence. She's cute, he decided, but not gorgeous.
Yukino presented the attractive picture of a diligent young high school girl, and he could see what attracted Arima. It was less easy to see why Arima stayed with her—that was, until you had seen them together, seen the glow that sufficed them when they thought they were alone, warm and soft and private, like a shared secret. Hideaki had never been good at keeping secrets.
"Oi," he said, walking up to her. "Arima's still in P.E.?"
She squinted up at him distractedly. "Yeah, he should be out any minute. I'm just hiding from Aya right now."
"Oh." He didn't ask, knowing she would tell him.
Yukino grimaced, gripping her notebook. "She wrote this awesome play for the fair…but she expects me to play the lead role in front of all those people. Me! It's a disaster waiting to happen."
"…because we all know you have no acting experience," he teased, stepping back quickly in case she decided to whack him with the notebook.
"Argh! You too?" she grumbled. "I play the role of model student, not the emotionally conflicted futuristic scientist that she expects me to learn."
"Think of it as a career challenge," he advised playfully, grinning at the image of Yukino as a snobby professional actress. "You could play the role of a lawyer and skip law school entirely. Plenty of people would pay for a fake lawyer and you'd save a lot of money." The notebook flung toward his shoulder told him she was not amused.
"Hey!" Arima's voice called from across the yard. He approached them quickly, changed back into the regular uniform after basketball in the gym. His hair looked slightly damp from the shower. Beside him walked a taller, dark-skinned boy with an open, handsome face.
"Meet Tonami," Arima said, smiling. "We went to junior high together and he just transferred back here. I thought he might want to study with us sometime."
Yukino and Hideaki tried not to stare. They had never seen Arima so friendly with any of the other students. Hideaki blinked at the way Arima laid a companionable hand on the towering boy's shoulder. Tonami looked just a little too flushed for being out of practice for at least a quarter of an hour, he decided.
"Sounds good to me," Yukino said, looking a little dazed.
Arima grinned. "This is my girlfriend, Miyazawa," he told Tonami. "She's at the top of the class."
"Pleased to meet you," Yukino chirped, giving him her happy-puppy face.
Hideaki noticed the skeptical look in Tonami's gaze and he nearly laughed out loud. He had probably seen the chucked notebook too.
"And this is Asaba," Arima said, gesturing casually toward Hideaki. "But you don't have to remember him."
"Hey!" Hideaki protested. "Are you trying to replace me, Arima?" He threw both arms around Arima's neck and wailed theatrically. "Can he cook ramen like I can or rub sunscreen lotion on your back? Does he know your ticklish spots?"
"What?" Arima cried. Tonami's mouth dropped open and his gaze went to Yukino but she only rolled her eyes and poked Arima in the side to get his attention.
"You didn't finish your bento today," she said, uncovering the lunch with a pair of chopsticks.
"I wasn't hungry," Arima explained.
"Eat your lunch, silly, or your beautiful hair will fall out!" She stabbed a sushi roll toward his mouth and Arima dodged it agilely. "Do I have to force you?"
Hideaki grabbed both his arm and held them behind his back so that Yukino could push the roll into her boyfriend's mouth. Arima sputtered at the intrusion and then chewed it sullenly, glaring at them both. Yukino wiped her forehead with a grin.
"The abuse game never gets old," she said with satisfaction.
"I know," Hideaki agreed.
Tonami just stared at them with the kind of uncomfortable scrutiny one usually reserves for mutated lab rats, full of curiosity, confusion, and a little bit of fear.
-
Thankfully, Tonami Takefumi did seem more tolerant than Hideaki had expected and he soon found a place in their little group, although he seemed to have developed an uncomfortable tendency of getting into arguments with Miyazawa.
"He called me a strange little girl," she told Hideaki resentfully, "and asked me what Arima could see in me. Just like you did!"
"The man has a good sense of perception," Hideaki remarked. Arima laughed lightly and avoided Yukino's death glare.
"But he did ask me one weird thing," she said, biting her lip. "Why does he care about Tsubaki knowing about him?"
"Ask the fellow himself," Hideaki said, spotting Tonami on the stairs. The dark-skinned boy stood on the landing between flights, looking out the window with a pensive, almost angry expression on his striking face.
When they approached him about it, he wasn't offended at all, but whipped out a picture of himself at an early age as quickly as they had that day on the grass. Hideaki stared at the photo of the chubby child in disbelief while Miyazawa listened rapturously to his tale of revenge.
"I worked my ass off to become what I am," Tonami said passionately. "Exercising, dieting, studying constantly…"
Miyazawa practically glowed with excitement. "And no one understands the effort and the passion it takes to become the best. I would get up at five in the morning to go running every school day."
"Me too!" Tonami exclaimed. "I run five kilometers every morning."
"Hah! Try ten," she countered, flashing her teeth.
God, you are both insane, Hideaki thought, shaking his head slightly in amusement. He glanced at Arima to see if the other boy felt the same, and experienced a sudden chill run up his spine.
Arima wasn't looking at the joking, enthusiastic pair who argued playfully in front of him. His cold, empty gaze stared beyond them, away from them, at something invisible and distant. Hideaki's vision flashed back to the image of the silent boy by the stone pillar with eyes blacker than ice water in the night.
Beautiful, unreachable, alone.
-
He had thought Miyazawa couldn't see it, but she did. She sat Arima down and wrapped her arms around him and told him she loved him more than anyone. Hideaki listened to Arima's calm breathing and Yukino's soft voice from his place in the hallway. "I like feeling your head on my chest," she said.
He had thought it would hurt to finally face this, to realize that Arima's happiness depended so completely on this one person. But Hideaki felt a strange sense of calm in the bitterness, a feeling of relief and hope. If Miyazawa could hold Arima together, then they could both survive this crazy life somehow. She, who had grown up in a supportive family and a happy home, could show Arima what it meant to be loved so much easier than Hideaki could even comprehend attempting.
He had no idea what to do with his feelings for Arima, or with his trust in Yukino. He could only stand by them and protect them as much as possible. Despite Yukino's assurances for her boyfriend, Hideaki caught him watching her several times as she spoke with Tonami in the halls. The two of them had a strong sense of chemistry and connection that disturbed even Hideaki. He knew she acted playful and friendly with everyone close, but that fierce, exuberant energy had always been directed toward himself, Arima, or one of the girls, never at an outside male. And their meetings could only increase as students spent more and more time at school, preparing for the fair.
Hideaki had plenty to do with his own show, but he also volunteered to help create the scenery for the play that the girls of the Going-Home Club decided to put on. Miyazawa had finally embraced her lead role and studied the script with her usual intensity. Tsubaki had ballet club but Maho was there running lines with Yukino, and Tsubasa also sat around eating sweets and playing with various trinkets people gave her when she wasn't in the script. And of course there was Rika, who Hideaki had grown to rely on more than he realized. At first he thought she was simply the quiet, placid girl in the back, but like most of Miyazawa's posse, she had depth beneath the pretty face that he could hardly have predicted.
With the fair approaching, some of the students came in to school at odd hours to work on the paintings they planned on displaying at the festival. Later in the afternoon, Hideaki visited to art room to touch up his own project: the posters for the play. He didn't notice another presence entering the room until the girl came up behind him.
"It's so…subtle," she said, voice glowing with admiration. Hideaki turned to see Sena Rika's soft smile. She touched the paper lightly, tracing the dark stroke of an eyelash on the face of the futuristic scientist with Yukino's face.
"Thank you," Hideaki answered, preening. Normally this type of compliment would signal him to begin flirting outrageously, but he knew Rika from the time she spent as part of Miyazawa-tachi. Although she embodied his ideal of the beautiful, innocent schoolgirl, she had never fawned over him or expressed anything other than genuine kindness and respect for him as well as everyone. Somehow he knew his charm would only embarrass her.
"I wish I could paint this kind of work," Rika sighed. "It's very simple, but beautiful. I would never have expected you to express yourself like this."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Hideaki demanded, furrowing his brow in mock outrage.
Blushing, she tried to backpedal. "Ano, I didn't mean it like that! It's just… you're such a bright, vibrant person… I really expected your painting to be a little more… showy, I suppose."
"Hm," he sniffed, but then cracked a smile to let her know he teased. "Didn't think me capable of sensitivity, is that it?"
"No…" she denied, pink face turning down toward her cute oxford shoes. "You're incredibly talented, Asaba-kun."
"So are you," he said honestly. Her painting of a sleeping kitten leaned on its easel a few seats away. The small details in the art amazed Hideaki. He could only imagine the patience and skill it took.
"But I can't draw people the way you do," she admitted with a sigh. "Just flowers and houses and little animals. My portraits look like cartoons." She glanced down at his brown paper portfolio propped against the wall. "Did you ever finish that sketch of Arima-kun practicing kendo?"
He rubbed the back of his neck, twisting his mouth slightly. "Ah, no. Arima doesn't want to model for me, so I can only draw from my memory or try to sneak up during practice and catch him during a pose. It just never turns out right."
"I think it's harder to draw people that you know," Rika mused, rubbing the ends of her hair together thoughtfully. "It's really difficult to capture them the way they are."
Hideaki blinked at the light from the window that outlined her form like a halo. "I don't really know Arima," he said abruptly. "I don't think anyone does."
She looked at him curiously. "Surely Yukinon has him figured out by now; they're always together."
Turning his face away from her, he studied the pattern of black words on the textured paper. The sun enhanced the contrast between the white of the paper and the dark paint. His mouth relaxed into a loose smile.
Rika smiled hesitantly back. Her hair shone golden brown in the light that ringed her upper body.
"Would you like to go out sometime?" he said at last, not looking away from the painting. "We could check out the art films at that old theater."
She blushed again and clasped her wrists awkwardly with both hands. "Um… I'm very flattered, Asaba-kun, but there's kind of… somebody, right now."
Hideaki uttered a deep sigh and pretended to wipe tears away. "Alas! Another hath beaten me to the fair lady."
"…." Rika twisted her wrists harder and dropped her head lower, so that her long hair covered her flushed face. "Well… no. I'm just…"
Hideaki saw the distress in her sunken shoulders and understood. "…waiting?" he supplied quietly.
Her light-brown head nodded awkwardly, still turned to the floor.
"I understand," he said earnestly, trying to comfort her. "A lot of people are still waiting for someone to wake up." Cautiously, her face tipped up to him again. "Some people finally do wake up to how wonderful you are," he continued. "And some people don't. If he never notices you, isn't it time to move on?"
The sudden determination in her gentle eyes surprised him. "Sometimes you just don't have a choice," she told him, voice strong with conviction. "There is no one else for me. I can wait forever. Even if he hates me, even if he loves someone else, I can't stop… and I can't stop these feelings, but even more… this knowing who he is, who I am makes me so aware when I'm near him… And it's scary being with him, but… but without him…" She sucked in her breath sharply.
Listening silently, Hideaki felt the edge of her anguish like a knife, felt himself grasping for something in the hurried, honest words that tumbled from her mouth.
She wiped her eyes with small, slender hands and smiled sheepishly at Hideaki. "Sorry."
"It's okay," he assured her, standing quickly and opening his arms to offer a hug.
Her head fit awkwardly against his collarbone, but she held tightly, sniffling quietly against his shirt.
"You're supposed to be the cheerful one," he grumbled after a little while. She laughed softly and pulled away with a self-conscious gesture.
"You're supposed to be the playboy," she said, not meeting his eyes. "But the person I see you with most is Arima. Sometimes I wonder…if you put up this, ah, personality just to make people like you." She scratched absently at a spot of paint on his chair. Hideaki tried to keep smiling.
"Sometimes I look at you," she said, "and I wonder who you really are. The boy who says he loves all girls but dates none, or the artist who lives alone and paints sad faces—the guy who gives me such mysterious smiles that say, 'Don't go looking into my heart.'"
Hideaki attempted a laugh and his voice scratched uncomfortably in his throat. "I guess that's me: Man of Mystery."
"Hm." Rika bent to pick up her schoolbag and slung it over her shoulder. "Arima used to put up a personality too, but his was a personality of perfection. Maybe that's why you keep trying to understand him—so you can understand yourself."
"Aren't we all lying to ourselves?" he said, watching her walk away.
"Maybe," she agreed, giving him a final fleeting smile as she walked through the door. "I'll see you later, Asaba-kun."