Iwa-chan was the coolest and bravest boy Tooru had ever known in his six years and nine months of life. He scored the most at football and could bat the baseball really far. He caught the biggest stag beetles and dared to climb the tallest trees. He was the only one of them who had had the stomach to jump from ten meters at the public pool when they had gone swimming with the gym class (the teacher had scolded him later). He knew the most dirty words and could eat the spiciest ramen.

"Oh my, it's really coming down," Tooru's mother said and peeked at the murky sky. Downpour beat the ground and heavy drops splashed against the wooden deck of the backyard coloring it almost black. "It doesn't look like it's easing up at all. I think you should just stay over, Hajime-kun, or you'll catch a cold."

"Yay!" Tooru exclaimed and bounced to his feet to catch Hajime in his arms. "We're gonna stay up the whole night!"

"I should call my ma," Hajime said and tried to pull free from Tooru's enthusiastic embrace.

"Of course. I'll dial the number for you."

Tooru's mother flipped through the little notepad hanging next to the phone on the wall until she found Hajime's home number. The landline phone rattled as she rotated the dial, and the twisty cord hung and swayed in midair.

"Here, it's calling," she said and handed the phone to Hajime who pressed it against his ear with both hands.

For a while, he stood quietly and listened to the regular toot-toot-toot. He twisted the sticky phone cord around his fingers and watched as Tooru continued his alien drawing. They had been coloring pictures on the living room floor, listening to the heavy rain and waiting for the storm to pass. Tooru had gotten new crayons – the new kind they had seen in commercials between Saturday morning cartoons – and Hajime had been secretly dying to try them out.

The line clicked, and Hajime's mother's voice answered the call.

"It's me. Can I stay at Tooru's tonight?" A pause. Hajime frowned. "Yeah, she said it's fine. It's raining really hard." With a little sigh, he handed the phone to Tooru's mother. "She wants to talk to you."

"Hello, Iwaizumi-san? Yes, I thought…"

The conversation faded to mere background noise when Hajime rejoined Tooru in the living room.

"Hey, did you take my green?" Hajime looked around the floor littered with colorful crayons until he spotted the green one in Tooru's hand. "Give it back, I still need it!"

Tooru didn't even look up from his picture, just kept coloring with his pink tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. "In a sec, I'm not done yet."

"I wasn't either!"

"You can do other parts."

"But I had it first!" Hajime snatched the crayon from Tooru's hand but accidentally smeared his picture with a green line over the borders in the process. Tooru looked at the ruined picture, and his face twisted into a pout.

"Iwa-chan, you ruined it!"

"Come on, it's not that bad, it's just a little line."

Tooru frowned at the picture he had been working on with care. He was the best at coloring in his class and never colored outside the borders.

"But you made me go over the lines. You ruined it. And you can't take from someone's hand! Mo-om, Iwa-chan took from my hand and ruined my picture!"

"Look, it's not that bad, okay? I'll help you fix it!" Hajime hurried to shush him and took a closer look at Tooru's picture. With the green crayon, he sketched a tail for the alien. "There, see? It's even better now."

Tooru looked at the picture with a skeptical frown. "Baka, aliens don't have tails."

"How do you know? This one has."

"No, they don't, I've seen and they don't."

"But this is a different species."

"What's a spe – scie – what's that?"

Hajime deemed the crisis averted and went back to his own drawing.

"It means it's a different kind of alien," he said matter-of-factly but couldn't quite hide feeling a bit smug that he knew such a grown-up word. "That alien has a tail but the others don't. Kinda like you have brown hair but I have black."

Tooru's eyes widened and his mouth opened in silent awe. "Are we different sciepies?"

"Yup."

Tooru's mother peeked around the corner while tying an apron behind her back. "Hajime-kun, your mother said you can stay the night and go school with Tooru tomorrow. Where did you leave your bike? Not on the driveway, right?"

"It's where Tooru's bike is."

"Good. Why don't you finish those pictures while I whip up some supper? Hajime-kun, you can borrow Tooru's pajamas after the bath."

"Do you want the dinosaur one?" Tooru offered, hoping Hajime would pick it instead of Tooru's favorite that was so precious to him he barely wore it.

Hajime made a face at the suggestion. "Eww, no, it has flowers."

"They're not flowers, they're trees!"

After eating homemade onigiri with chicken and orange wedges, Tooru's mother hung up their artwork on the fridge door and ushered them to the bath. The tub was just big enough for both of them, and their bony little boys' knees bumped under water occasionally. Before leaving to clean up the living room and lay down the guest futon in Tooru's bedroom she squirted a little of the extra foamy soap in the bathwater. As soon as she left the room, Tooru reached for the top shelf on his tippy-toes and added some more. Soon the tub was overflowing with foam, and white fluffy bubble islands silently slid down over the edge.

"Your army is in the boats, and then I come from under," Tooru instructed and arranged the duck army in front of Hajime.

"I had the boats last time, too, and they always lose!"

"Not always! They can dive."

"But they can't shoot underwater, it's not fair." Hajime reached to rummage through the big plastic basket of toys until he pulled out an old battered T-rex missing its right hand. "Now, I've got air forces, too," Hajime said and imitated the sound of a fighter plane while sinking one of Tooru's submarines.

"But dinosaur can't fly, it's – "

"Shh!" Hajime's head whipped around, and he waved him quiet.

"What?"

"Shuddap."

Tooru glared at him annoyed. "Don't always tell me to – "

"Be quiet!" Hajime snapped and froze to listen. Tooru frowned and perked up his ears, too, but all he could hear was the sloshing of the bathwater and the rain drumming against the roof.

"I don't – " Then he heard it. A low rumble barely reaching enough energy to push through the buffer of background noise but gaining power fast until it rolled loudly through the air.

Thunder.

Tooru glanced at the frozen Hajime and the way he was squeezing the forgotten T-rex in his hand.

Oh.

Oh.

"You boys about ready?" Tooru's mother peeked behind the door, and her face fell when she saw the wet mess they had made. "What on earth did you – you better dry this all up!"

"I'm ready," Hajime said and sprung to his feet so fast even more water splashed over the edge. With nervous stiffness, he climbed out of the tub and let himself be wrapped in a big, fluffy towel. Thunder rumbled again, and he fidgeted anxiously.

"Tooru, you too, up," his mother said and held up another towel.

"Mom, Iwa-chan is scared of the thunder."

Hajime turned on his heels to glare at him. "I'm not!"

"Are, too!"

"Am not!"

"Yes, you are, I saw!"

Embarrassment tinted Hajime's cheeks and stung in his eyes. "Stupid Tooru, always being stupid!"

"Hey hey, now," Tooru's mother said to put an end to the fight before it could escalate and dried Tooru's dripping hair with the towel. "No one is stupid, and it's perfectly fine to be scared, thunder scares me a bit, too. But it can't get you inside, so there's nothing to worry about."

"Yeah, it can," Tooru said knowingly from under the towel, "it can strike a house. I saw it on TV."

"Tooru, that's not helping. Please, don't worry about it, Hajime-kun. Everything is fine. Do you want to call home before going to bed?"

"I'm fine," Hajime muttered. "And I'm not scared."

To get payback, Hajime picked Tooru's precious alien pajama for bed. The bottom had pictures of space dust clouds, multicolored planets, swirling galaxies, and blazing stars. The top had real-life pictures of old rockets and spacecraft. Hajime and his mother had picked it together for Tooru's last birthday, and Tooru had loved it so much he had insisted on bringing it to the kindergarten with him the next day.

To take Hajime's mind off the thunder (that he was not scared of) Tooru's mother read them three stories and let Hajime pick two of them. After the last "happily ever after" she tucked them in, kissed them good night, and closed the door softly.

Quietly Hajime stared at the closet in the dim light of Tooru's night lamp. Rain lashed the window, and thunder showed no signs of relenting. Suddenly, a loud crack split the air like a whip, and an electric flash illuminated the room for a second. The night light flickered a little alongside with Hajime's heart. He screwed his eyes shut, and a quiet whimper escaped between his lips.

"Iwa-chan?" Tooru whispered after a moment of silence. "Are you awake?" The sheets rustled on the bed. "Do you want to come up here?"

"Who would want that," Hajime said and hated how the shakiness of his voice gave away how terrified he was.

"Do you want me to get mom?"

"No."

"Do you – "

"I told you, no. Let me sleep already."

"But – "

"If you don't shut up, I'll tell everyone you peed your pants last summer."

"Because I sneezed!"

"They won't know that."

Silence returned for a while until the wooden frame of Tooru's bed creaked and something soft thud on the floor behind Hajime's back. He didn't need to peek over his shoulder to know Tooru was settling on the futon next to him. His pride wanted to elbow Tooru and shoo him away, but he couldn't deny the closeness calmed him down.

A little bit.

"If Batman and Spiderman fought who would win?"

"Go to sleep."

Another flash of lightning slashed the darkness, and the thunder boomed soon after. The storm was almost above them, and tension stiffened up Hajime's shoulders. A warm hand nudged gently his back.

"Come on, Batman or Spiderman?"

"Spidey, of course," Hajime almost snapped.

"If Spiderman and Hulk fought wh – "

"Hulk."

A short pondering pause until, "No, he wouldn't."

"Totally would. Hulk's power doesn't have any limit."

"Yeah, but all he can do is punch really hard. Spidey can just dodge."

"But he can punch really hard and he can regenerate. And he gets stronger and stronger because he gets angrier."

"Okay, what about Hulk and Superman?"

Hajime frowned and fell silent. "I dunno, Superman maybe. He's super fast and powerful. He could use his laser eyes."

"If Godzilla and an alien fought who would win?"

Hajime rolled to his back and glanced at Tooru in the dim light. "Depends. What kinda alien?"

"The kinda with a tail."

"What powers they have?"

"They can breathe underwater and their tails are really strong."

Tooru's hand came to rest against Hajime's side and his bare, cold toes poked Hajime's foot under the blanket. The thunder kept on rumbling outside, but the rain had started to drown and overpower its loudness. The warmth of the blanket enveloping them set in Hajime's bones, and his eyelids began to grow heavy.

"Do they have armies?"

"No, it's just one."

"Hmm, I dunno," Hajime mumbled and tried to suppress a yawn. "Sounds like a weird alien."

"Yeah, he's pretty weird. But the Godzilla is definitely weirder."

Everyone wanted to be Iwa-chan's best friend, but they couldn't because he already had Tooru and everyone knew you can only have one best friend in the whole world. Tooru always told everything to Iwa-chan, and Iwa-chan always told everything to Tooru.

They had always been together and would always stay together.