"Well, I go this way! See you both Monday!" Nagisa and Rei go the other way, towards a train headed for their houses. Seijuro -san (he told me not to call him Mikoshiba anymore, so here we are, I guess) must live in the area, because he's walking home. I wonder if he misses Samezuka at all. What is life like after school, with university and jobs and adulthood and all these things you're suddenly supposed to do? I'll just ask him sometime, I guess. We traded numbers, so I can call him whenever. My train arrives, and by some small miracle, I end up on the same carriage as Onii-chan, coming home from his shop with Haruka-senpai and Makoto-senpai. Fighting my way through the crowds of people, I make my way over. I stand next to him, but he doesn't seem to notice me.

"Hi, Onii-chan." Nothing. I wave my hands in front of his eyes, "Yoo-hoo? You in there?" The train starts moving while my hands are in mid-air, and the sudden motion throws me off-centre, and I start falling backwards, until Onii-chan's strong arm wraps around me and pulls me back up straight. "Nice catch, moonwalker." I layer sarcasm thick through my voice.

"Moonwalker? What does that even mean?"

"Where were you a second ago? I said hi, and you didn't even hear me. It's like you were on the moon! Thus, moonwalker."

He scoffs, half with contempt, and half with affection. "Don't just go making up words. No-one'll understand what you mean."

"Enough about my linguistic habits, what about you? A tsunami could've rolled in just then and you'd be none the wiser. What gives?"

"I have my reasons, but I don't need to explain myself to you."

"I'm not asking for that. I'm your little sister. I'm concerned about you. It's not healthy to worry alone, you know."

"You're one to talk."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I'm indignant. I don't worry alone. My issues just happen to be private.

"It didn't take a genius to tell you weren't sick on Tuesday."

"That so?" I guess he knows me better than I realise, but I can't let him know he's right. "Then why wasn't I at club again?"

"The fact I don't know proves my point." I get the feeling he really does know, and just doesn't want to say it for whatever reason. "You worry alone all the time. I think it must be in our blood, 'cause Mum's exactly the same."

"Well, maybe we all need to learn to worry alone together."

"You start, I'll follow." Dammit. He's as sharp as ever.

"Not in public."

"Okay then, tonight."

"Deal."

"What did you buy?"

"Just some clothes."

"Can I see?"

"Well, I can't change but you can see them off me."

"What did you think I meant?"

Taking the train's handle tightly I rummage about in the bag briefly and pull out Nagisa's outfit. "Nagisa picked these out."

Onii-chan starts a little. "Nagisa? What happened to Nagisa-kun?"

"We decided honorifics were getting a little stuffy."

"But he still calls you Gou-chan, right?"

"You say it like it's surprising."

"Some things'll never change."

"I didn't think that'd look good on, being blue and whatever, but I actually look all right in it."

"I can imagine. Nagisa has better taste than you'd think, huh?"

"I guess so."

"There's something else in there."

"That one's a secret."

"What? You said I could see."

"Not this one. I want you to see it on first."

"That's not any fun. Show it!"

"Rei picked it out for me. Looks like all that beauty talk isn't for nothing after all. He picked well."

"Just show me the friggin' clothes, Gou." His shift in tone is immediate, and jarring.

"No way. Not until I can show you properly."

"Tonight, then?"

"Tonight."

I'm still concerned about him. He's gone back to the moon. I don't know why, exactly. Maybe it had something to do with that change in tone after I mentioned Rei? It couldn't have anything to do with him, could it?

"Bye-bye, Gou-chan!" Nagisa pushes forward onto the balls of his feet in an effort to seem taller, waving goodbye to Gou with both hands. I'm just quickly texting her brother, sorting out some business of my own, but I text quickly, so I put my phone away in time to wave goodbye. I adjust my glasses at the end of the motion, because they've been sitting weird for a while now. My phone buzzes. Rin-senpai texts quickly, too. See you then. Good. I'm glad he agreed.

"Let's go, Rei-chan. Our train's nearly here." Nagisa grabs me by the wrist aggressively, and starts dragging me down towards the platform. He's not incorrect. The train arrives quite literally the second we set foot on the platform. It seems our line is unpopular today, because we don't have to fight a tsunami of people to try and get on, and there are plenty of free seats just begging to be taken. So we sit down next to each other, and suddenly I wonder if that's weird. Are two guys normally close enough that they voluntary push themselves up against each other when they could just as easily spread out? It doesn't bother me at all. I like being close to Nagisa. With this view, he looks kind of fragile, like you could just flick him and he'd fall over and shatter. But he also has some sort of internal strength, like he'd just put himself back together and carry on like nothing even happened. He's quite the enigma, but I think that's what makes him attractive. The idea that there's what he shows to the world, and then layer after layer after layer sitting underneath that ready for you to peel back and discover, like unwrapping a birthday present.

"Nagisa… I've been thinking about some things, and I have something I need to ask you about."

He turns his face to me expectantly. "What kind of something, Rei-chan?" He narrows his eyes playfully. "A study something? A swimming something? Or could it be… a love something?" He seems excited at the prospect, more than he reasonably should be for my part. I blush and shake my head vehemently, temporarily lost for words. "I should have guessed as much." It sounds bitter, like he didn't want to say but it just came out anyway, and his face falls briefly so I can't read his expression. But it only takes him a fraction of a second to be facing me, smiling again. "So what is it?"

"It's just… now that we're second years and all, and now that more and more people are inviting me to stop using honorifics, I've been thinking maybe I've outgrown the way I speak. Do you think using boku is too immature for me?" Silence lays heavy in the air for a moment, and I'm worried I said something wrong. Suddenly, his blonde hair vibrates violently as he collapses into spasms of laughter. "Don't laugh, Nagisa! This is a serious question!"

He continues laughing anyway, and I suppose it is sort of funny. "Sorry, Rei-chan! You just sounded so serious I thought you were going to tell me you've secretly been a murderer all along or something stupid like that!" He doubles up over his knees, and wipes at the side of his eyes with his left hand. I wonder why he used his non-dominant arm. It probably has something to do with the fact that his right arm is rather occupied in holding his stomach. It must hurt from laughing so hard. I really have to stop overthinking everything.

"So anyway, now you're finally done laughing, do you have an opinion?"

"Well, you know, I like you the way you are, Rei-chan, so I think boku's fine. I mean, I use boku. So, I guess, it's normal for me to say that, isn't it?"

"But… we're really quite different, Nagisa. Boku suits you perfectly. But I think I need a more adult image, and if I use boku it just makes me sound like a kid. And besides, everyone else uses ore."

"Huh? I didn't pick you as easily influenced like that, Rei-chan."

"What?! I'm not easily influenced!" Am I?

"Really? Then what does this mean?" He clears his throat and puts his hand to his face, imitating me and my glasses. "Everyone else uses ore." He even tries imitating my voice, but, it's so much lower than his, he doesn't meet with much success. But he has a point. If I'm not easily influenced, why'd I bring that up?

"Well, whatever, you get the idea! Should I switch to ore, or not?"

He hums a little, thankfully giving it some serious thought. "No."

"Why not?" I'm curious to know.

He hums again, like he hadn't really thought about it at all. "Well, first off, if you use ore, there are some situations in which you'll have to use boku anyway, so you'll be changing back and forth all the time. Oh, and since you're bad at changing your honorifics, I bet you'd be even worse at changing your own pronoun, so you should probably just leave it alone." I'm a little offended by his forwardness. "But, mostly, I just don't think ore is beautiful enough for you, Rei-chan."

I'm a little taken aback, and I don't really get where he's coming from here. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, maybe it's just me, but ore sounds really harsh and blunt. With boku, it's easier on the ears, and it's easier to say. It just has a more beautiful sound to it, don't you think?" I do think, playing the two over and over in my head to see if I agree or not. But for some godforsaken reason, my internal recording of boku is in Nagisa's voice, and ore in Rin-senpai's. Aside from the bias that straight off gave to boku (Rin-senpai's voice might be lower and stronger and more masculine or whatever like that, but Nagisa's is more musical, and hence more beautiful, to my ear at least), I do think it has an inherently more beautiful sound.

"You raise a solid point. Maybe I should carry on using boku."

"I'm happy you agree, Rei-chan. I don't want to you to change." He's dropped his head again, so I can't read what his face is saying. But even without adequate theoretical analysis of his face, Nagisa's voice was pitched differently to normal, so that indicates something, I think. Some sort of emotion wrapped up behind Nagisa's sing-song voice.

"Nagisa? You sound off-colour. Is there anything you need to ask me about?"

Wow. Rei-chan's more sensitive than normal today. He picked up I was choked up over him changing. But I don't think he picked up why. He's not that sharp. But I think this is a good time to get all this off my chest. Because even though we're on the train, we're alone. Because if it all goes horribly wrong, I just get off, even if it's not my stop, and wait for another, leaving Rei-chan alone to think. Because if it all goes horribly right, I can stay on for his stop and we can get off together. So I'm just gonna tell him. I'm sick of secrets.

But how to phrase it? I look coyly at my hands, just in case I happen to be holding some brilliant idea. And I am. I see my new CD in its bag, and suddenly the words I need to say just kind of come to me.

"Rei-chan? You said you'd read Nana-chan's biography, right?"

He's taken aback. "Well, yes… Why do you ask?"

"Did you read about her childhood, and her pre-career life?"

"Yeah…"

"Tell me about it, Rei-chan."

He stammers a little as he goes to start the sentence and it reminds me why I love him. "As a child, her father had always planned for her to be famous, as his first child, so he gave her strict training in enka."

"What do you mean by strict?"

"If her technique was poor, or if she was generally unsatisfactory, she would be punished. Normally a physical beating, if I remember rightly."

"Doesn't that sound horrible?"

"But that's not the worst of it."

"I know. Keep going."

"When she came to be high school age, she went to study at Hirokoshi High School, because of its industry connections and strong music program. So she left home and lived with her enka teacher from childhood who'd moved there in an attempt to establish a record label."

"It only gets worse, doesn't it?"

He gulps. "Nagisa, if you already know, why do you want me to tell you?"

"Just say it, Rei-chan. I have my reasons."

"Her teacher abused her emotionally and…" he struggles over the next word, "…sexually. She refused to leave his label, both because she felt she owed him for his help both in teaching her, and in supporting her through high school by signing her."

"But eventually, she left because she realised he wasn't seriously promoting her, and she moved onto King where's she had all this success."

"She's earned every drop of it, in my opinion. No-one should have to go through that sort of thing, especially not as a child."

"But that's it, isn't it? That's why she can sing so well. Because she loves it. She loves it so much she willingly put herself through hell and back to be the best she could. Isn't that what love's about?" I notice suddenly that somehow, throughout the conversation, Rei-chan and I have been turning away from one another, and now we're sitting back to back.

"I don't know enough about love to answer that, Nagisa."

"You don't have to know anything, Rei-chan. You just have to feel it."

"I don't know how."

I turn myself back to him, and find myself staring at his back. "Well… I want to go through hell for you, Rei-chan!"

He starts, and I think that means I got through. "Nagisa…"

"That's just the way I feel about you. I want so much for you to be happy, I'd go through hell right now for it." The train pulls up to a stop, and by some ploy of fortune it's mine. "This is my stop. I just had to tell you. I don't need an answer right away. Take your time." I push back his hair and kiss his cheek as I walk past. "See you Monday." I walk off the train, and start heading off towards my house.

I stretch back my shoulders and smile. Secrets really are the worst. I feel so much better now that everything's out, now that my cards are all shown. I really don't need an answer. I don't think Rei-chan had one anyway. So, now, I guess everything's just got to fall how it falls now, doesn't it?