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Do you remember when you realized you weren’t in love? Maybe it was in his voice, buzzing at the back of your head like white noise amidst the much more salient sounds of a young man making a name for himself. Shoes pounding the pavement; a vibrating cell phone; fingers vigorously punching numbers into a calculator to see if there would be enough to pay the electric bill, or perhaps even splurge on ingredients for a real meal instead of instant noodles. Perhaps your ears are so full of these sounds that something as unreliable as romance becomes nothing more than background noise. You did feel a little guilty about breaking the news, because he seemed rather fond of you, but it was for the best. You have more important things to worry about, and he can find someone a lot more important than you.
Or maybe it was in the way he looked at you when he stood in the doorway of your tiny dorm. You were sitting on your bed crossed-legged, and met his eyes as you slammed your book shut and tossed it to the side. You held back a yawn and began going through the motions of removing your clothes without considering if this was even something you wanted, or why the answer to that question seemed altogether unimportant. His gaze never left your body, just shifted from one exposed part to another and then back again—hungry, impatient. Despite the enthusiastic praise he’d push out through gritted teeth, both of you panting and sweating a little, it never felt like it was really being directed at you. It could have been anyone’s soul inside this body and the words would have been the same. You even tested it out on a couple of occasions, disconnecting from yourself for a while, just kind of watching your bodies move together. You waited to see if he’d notice. He never did.
What if the first loveless realization happened before you even reached adulthood? Perhaps it was when you were outgrowing your favorite sweater and he was outgrowing you, and you realized you were more upset about the sweater. It happened in that hidden-away corner of the garden at school where you would go to hold hands without feeling like you constantly had to watch your back. When he solemnly explained that you wanted different things and that you should part ways, you expected something like knives carving a hole in your chest and prodding painfully at your stomach. Instead you felt nothing. If it was a shot to your heart, it was novocaine. He cried. You didn’t, but comforted him until you could both live with yourselves in the morning.
Or perhaps you conclude that the first time you knew you weren’t in love is irrelevant, because there was never really a chance for love to bloom within you in the first place. Your soil is nutrient-deficient, there’s not enough sunlight, and the rain comes almost exclusively as a monsoon. There would be nothing to harvest. At best, if your mother was expecting apples, you were going to end up giving her persimmons. That is, if the way your stomach dropped whenever she brought up how pretty her friend’s daughter was becoming was any indication of your fate as the family disappointment.
You should have taken the hint way back in elementary school when the kids would play house and nobody ever wanted you to be their husband. You don’t like to think of yourself as ever having wanted that, both to be a husband and find one to have and to hold. In fact, by the time you turn 25, you’ve tamped that desire down to nothing. You jump headfirst into growing your business and making a name for yourself. Somewhere along the way, you take this goal literally, dutifully filling out the paperwork using all the proper legal channels so that the name on your driver’s license matches the one on your business cards.
Sometime after that, a boy half your age teaches you a different kind of love, the kind that makes you want to quit smoking and brings you dangerously close to sounding like your mother when he walks home in the rain and shows up at the office the next day with a nasty head cold. You continue to dodge calls from said mother about which family friend just got engaged or whose daughter is having their second baby. You have carved out a life for yourself, even if you used a different stencil than everyone else you know. You are a jack of all trades except in dealings of love. You tell yourself it’s enough, because it has to be. But sometimes you still dream.
You are loathe to admit it out loud, but from time to time your thoughts wander to the dangerous territory of what ifs and happily ever afters that were never meant for you. Call it coping; call it escapism; call it a way to protect real people from the onus of your deepest desires. Whatever it is, it remains firmly and safely in the realm of the mythical—that’s your one rule. For a while, it seems to work. At the very least it treats most of the symptoms, makes them a little easier to bear. If loneliness is a disease you think you’re doing a bang-up job of fighting it. The bleak evenings watching bad movies and eating takeout alone in your tiny apartment are manageable when you let yourself indulge in just a little bit of fantasy.
Sometimes you’ll sit on your couch and imagine a faceless man sitting next to you, eating out of his own takeout box. You’d make a really bad joke, but he would laugh at it anyways, almost choking on his food. When the empty containers lay abandoned on the small table in front of you, he might gesture for you to lay your head in his lap. He’d stroke your hair and plant small but meaningful kisses on your cheek as you drifted in and out of consciousness. Next you knew, he’d be carrying you to bed with strong but gentle arms. Only, instead of making a smooth getaway, he’d get in bed beside you, snuggling up as close as possible.
You’re a man of rationality first and foremost, so even your imagination throws in dashes of realism. You consider that he might feel like a furnace, his vice-like grip around your waist making you overheat. Or maybe his feet would be ice cold, and every time they’d brush up against your leg you’d flinch and yelp. Even if his body temperature is ideal he might snore louder than anyone you’ve ever heard. As you lay in bed alone, hugging a pillow tight to your chest, you try to convince yourself that you’re actually better off this way, a whole bed to yourself. There’s no one to knee you in the side or steal all the blankets; no one to keep you up late with a flu-driven coughing fit or wake you up far too early with a shout after a nightmare.
Yet on some nights that’s not enough of a deterrent to keep you from stretching the fantasy a little further than should be allowed. You think about doing mundane tasks with this imaginary man, grocery shopping or a trip to the bank. You consider what your hand would look like with a ring on one finger and you can feel your face flush with embarrassment that there’s a tiny part of you still clinging to the idea of a childish fairy-tale romance that was never meant for you. But as long as you keep the man in your mind faceless and nameless, your heart will remain safeguarded. You’ll keep getting out of bed to face each new day head on. It’s more than enough, you assure yourself.
Until it isn’t.
*
It starts with an unexpected touch. You’re walking back to the office from the bus stop after a big job at the other end of the city that had dragged on for hours. You’re exhausted after spending half your night dealing with the nightmare of a burst pipe in your bathroom and a landlord so stingy he makes you look a philanthropist. You can feel a headache coming on, a dull throb in your temples putting you in a foul mood. On top of all that, you’ve skipped lunch. So when you and your taller counterpart move to cross an intersection then jump back as a car blows through a stop sign, almost hitting you, whatever remaining patience you have evaporates.
You’re so busy shouting curses at the driver that you miss the step up onto the curb and trip gloriously. Next thing you know there are hands on you, warm and firm and keeping your face from smacking concrete. You lock eyes for just a moment before he quickly turns away and steps back, apologizing for helping you , of all things. You spit out some bullshit about tripping on purpose to test his reflexes, all while quietly wondering why he hadn’t used his powers and trying to ignore feeling pleased about that fact.
A couple weeks later, you try to bring it up casually. There’s a confused pause and then an “Oh!” and he tells you the thought never even occurred to him . You might be pulling a strange face because his brow knits and he promises to use his powers more in the future. Of course now you backtrack and tell him it was the right decision not to use his powers on another person without their consent. You think about adding on that you don’t mind him touching you—but no, that would be weird, especially coming from one’s boss.
A month or so after that, he barrels into the office at a quarter past eight, a string of apologies on his lips and a hot drink in each hand. You laugh it off, teasing him about how tired he must have been to ignore his alarm and grab two coffees on the way in. He stares at you blankly as you start to sweat with the fear that your relationship is not yet the kind that allows for making jokes at each other’s expense. It’s your turn to look confused when he awkwardly sets the second drink on your desk and sits down at his own.
“You mentioned having not drank any since you were a little kid, and since I haven’t either, I thought it would be a nice treat, since it’s so cold.”
You take a sip immediately and almost scald yourself but it hits all the right notes. It’s tart but sweet at the same time, a perfect blend of spices. “Oi, Serizawa! Now it really feels like autumn!”
He nods thoughtfully as he takes a much more careful sip of his own cider. “This is even better than I remember it.” A rare smile breaks out on his face, which you return graciously. For the first time, conversation flows easily between the two of you in between walk ins, calls, and emails. The warmth of the cider stays with you for the rest of the day, long after you’ve finished your drink.
*
As a young child, there had always been something about autumn that felt almost magical to you. You would inhale the cooler air gluttonously on your walk to and from school, and you thought that if the trees could turn such vibrant shades of yellow, orange and red, than just about anything would be possible. This hypothesis seems all but confirmed by the time you’ve stood face to face with a giant broccoli tree and followed around a yokai hunter who you could’ve sworn jumped straight out of a manga series and into the three dimensional realm.
If it weren’t for the two hard-working employees who could confirm the reality of these events, you might have thought they were another one of your childish fairy tales. Of course, both of them are fantastic in their own right—Mob because he is so full of raw power and wisdom for someone so young, and Serizawa because he is progressing at a rapid pace despite being considerably past the typical growing season. Although it’s altogether outlandish, you feel more grounded than ever with them by your side.
*
The first snowfall of the year seems to brush your hair like magic dust as you walk back to the office with the bento lunch you purchased from the nearby corner store, and a rare and dizzying joy fills your chest and catches in your throat at the sight of your coworker and companion speaking with an older customer as comfortably as one might speak to their grandmother. After the woman leaves with a broad smile adding creases to her wrinkled face, you cough out the words you’ve been holding back—uncovered and uninhibited at last.
“Hey Serizawa, wanna grab a drink or something, for once?”
He’s doing homework now (never wasteful, never aimless) but stops what he’s working on to meet your eyes apologetically. He already has plans for New Year’s. It makes sense, of course, since there’s only a couple days until the holiday. It’s far from the end of the world (lightyears from the feeling of standing amongst rubble and dust and watching helplessly as a fourteen year old child under your care battles a man who fears not even God himself). Yet somehow, it’s worse. You swallow back down whatever it is, hot and sharp like a thorn piercing your gut. It’s nothing, you tell yourself. You tell him, too, when he sees something in your face and decides to ask questions. If anything it’s an ulcer, undoubtedly a result of stress and a poor diet.
A couple weeks later the lining of your stomach feels miraculously cured with the warmth of a few drinks you have no business indulging in (never mind that alcohol should, by all accounts, be an irritant). You've prescribed yourself a fun evening with your only real friend, sitting next to you at the bar, eyes following your hands intently as you wave them around, drink sloshing dangerously close to the edge of your glass. Actually it’s Serizawa who wrote your script, in the form of a rain check. “To make up for when you invited me out a couple of weeks ago,” was his explanation.
The moment is etched into your brain despite well-meaning efforts to convince yourself it’s just another temporary remedy. It was a dead day at the office due to the bitter cold and the forecast of snow in the evening. You were sure most people would nest in their homes for the day, enjoying some well-earned time with their loved ones, still riding the optimistic high of a brand new year. But you opened up for business anyways, because the office is more of a home than your actual apartment, especially since you’re rarely there alone now. Serizawa has been coming in almost every day of winter break, apparently having nothing better to do during his time off than keep you company.
There’s truly no reason for him to hang around that much, because apparently spirits hate the cold almost as much as people. But you wouldn’t want to disappoint him by saying so. You’re not keen on turning down a bit of company either, especially when said company doesn’t seem to mind it when you ramble about nothing worth hearing to keep your mind busy and your body warm. You were prattling on about how a strange spirit must have passed through you during the winter solstice because now your joints ache every time the temperature drops below freezing. He had just smiled sympathetically and told you that the same thing happens to his mother. Then he asked you if you still wanted to “get that drink.”
Now here you are, a fourth (or maybe fifth?) drink in hand. He’s been keeping up with you easily so far, but you notice he’s sipping this drink considerably slower than the previous ones. You’re starting to lose track of time, and everything else around you seems incredibly unimportant as you sway slightly in your chair. Are you two having a moment? He keeps looking at you, smiling. You’ve been making lots of really bad jokes since finishing drink number two, and he laughs every time. He’s being polite, because that’s who he is. You tell him you think it’s admirable how he’d rather die than come across as rude. You know you didn’t teach him that, so it must just be who he is—a genuinely nice guy.
When you call it a night, you’re putting all of your focus on not slipping and falling on the icy sidewalk. It’s been snowing, enough for it to nearly cover your shoes each time you take a tentative step. You almost forget he’s there at all, until he reaches a hand out to steady you as you almost lose your footing again. “I’m fine,” you manage to slur, but you’re possibly past the point of being intelligible, because he makes no move to pull away.
“You’re freezing.” (He’s right, but only because you left your coat back at the bar and were adamant that you didn’t need to go and fetch it).
Something warm and soft is wrapped around the exposed skin just below your ears. You blink, and reach a hand up to feel the woven fabric of his scarf around your neck. “N-no, can’t do that” you tell him, because you have a rule against gifts. Just borrow it , he tells you.
You reach the intersection where you both have to turn in different directions, and he gives you a wave and a small bow that embarasses you. “So formal,” you mutter, and maybe he realizes it too, because his face is bright red as he tells you to be careful getting home. Or maybe he’s just cold because you’re an underdressed idiot who can’t keep himself warm, and are now inconsiderately donning the scarf that was keeping the wind from biting his face and ears.
By the time you stumble into your apartment and fumble with your shoes, you’re much warmer, and you aren’t sure if it’s the alcohol or the scarf that’s to blame. You don’t have the stamina to test out a hypothesis, falling immediately onto the couch fully clothed. Taking the scarf off seems like something beyond your current skill set, so it stays. Your feet are sore from the walk home so you prop your legs up on a pillow for some relief. In your drunken haze, you’ve never felt cozier. The scarf smells like him and you breathe in the familiar scent like a drug, inhibitions long gone. You reposition your legs a little and imagine it’s his lap your legs are resting on instead as you drift into dreams.
You wake up long before you need to, your stomach protesting painfully against last night’s decisions. For a split second you panic, expecting him to really be sitting there on the couch, watching you stupidly stumble to the bathroom to puke and then lay on the floor there, mumbling regrets. After several minutes of that you’ve come to enough to realize just how fucked you really are. You send a quick text-you’re sick and won’t make it in today. Don’t worry about showing up, you assure him. You tell him to see it as an impromptu vacation day, well-deserved.
It’s not technically a lie to say you’re ill, but the kind of sickness you feel weighing you down is not from your hangover. Your ears ring in the dead silence of your apartment, and suddenly you ache so much that your hands tremble just thinking about what you’ve done. After all these years, you’ve gone and broken the one rule you so carefully laid out for yourself—you gave the man in your silly fantasies a name and a face. And now, the magic won’t work anymore, won’t do anything to treat the symptoms of your loneliness. The only treatment left is one you simply cannot afford.
So you return the scarf. If he notices a steeliness in your demeanor, he doesn’t mention it. In fact, he never mentions that night at all (but neither do you). Your heart freezes in time with the branches on the trees outside.
*
Springtime thaws the earth but not your heart. He notices. For a while he tries asking what’s wrong, and worse, offering to help. After the 10th or 12th time of getting nothing more than a hand wave or noncommittal shrug and a flow of excuses, he finally stops asking. He smiles much less lately, laughs even more rarely, and you refuse to entertain the possibility of any of it being related to you. That’s what got you in trouble to begin with—that pesky daydreaming.
When your star pupil comes to you seeking guidance about matters of love, you bite your tongue before anything bitter and pessimistic can slip out. He isn’t like you; he’s all heart. So you tell him he can do it, that he just needs to accept who he is. You realize you’re not just telling him what he wants to hear—you truly believe it this time.
It’s sweet how these kids can exist without distorting each other. It’s something pleasant wafting into your consciousness, like the smell of the cherry blossoms blooming somewhere just outside the city. A lonely, yearning part of you wishes you could become a partner like that, although you know it’s not in the cards for someone like you. Your companion (if you can even still call him such, considering how you’ve regarded him for the past few weeks) is raising his eyebrows in surprise, and shit - you said all that out loud.
“Reigen, if it’s you, you can do it.”
You try to laugh it off. He just parroted your own words to Mob back at you. But for the remainder of the day, you can feel his eyes on you. If you’re honest, you’re both terrified and excited about what he might be seeing.
*
Some days later, you consider the implications of walking straight into a psychic storm under a shared umbrella, clinging to a man only because you presume it will be your last chance to feel close to him, or to anyone. At the end of the day its cowardice, but it does something to the chunk of ice where your heart should be.
*
A strong gust of wind rustles your hair and clothes as you tilt the umbrella to intercept the changing direction of the rain. The wind doesn’t have the bite it used to. If it weren’t for the lack of sand or sound of waves, you could probably close your eyes and imagine it an ocean breeze. Water rolls down the polyester sides of the umbrella and you watch it form neat drops at the metal tips before falling to the pavement below.
“Are you getting wet? Here.”
The pattern of the droplets shifts and you bite your lip as you feel the phantom prickle of something otherworldly surround you. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Would you like me to stop?” He knits his eyebrows in a pained expression and you know he’s asking about so much more than psychokinesis. Ever since that day—that heart-stopping moment he found your shoes buried in the rubble—he’s hovered. It’s almost parental, but it doesn’t bring forth the sort of hot rebellion in your throat that one’s mother induces.
“No. I’m-” But you don’t know what you are. He seems to have some idea, though. Singularities swapped for plurality when the red light turns green and suddenly you’re standing hand in hand at the curb while the cars roll past, tires kicking up water as they turn. A fantasy washes away with the dirt and mud and you’re shamelessly glad to see it go, the real thing standing in its wake. His hand is cold after all, at least compared to yours.
Further on, your back and shoulders stiffen at the soft I love you that spills from his lips as he lingers at your doorstep, larger hand still pressed flush against your own. “We haven’t even kissed yet,” you inform him.
A boyish exhale is followed by his lips against yours, chaste but firm. A promise. A painfully polite salutation accented by something you can’t parse out as he excuses himself to meander home with the weight of your inaction weighing heavily in his chest. As soon as he’s out of eyeshot you collapse into your bed while your blood runs cold and tears run hot down your cheeks. You wonder why he looks at you and sees a garden when all you see is rotting vines and dirt.
*
Dating him doesn’t ease the frequency of your fantasies. In fact, they grow more relentless, more all-consuming. Faceless nameless men have long since been swapped for his soft eyes, smooth cheeks, and strong jaw. It’s his voice whispering in your ear that lulls you to sleep most nights, both imagined and real. Future you will surely kick you for it, but you don’t want to let this go just yet. You appreciate the intimacy of a pair. A conjoined hand, a warm hug or a sensual touch from him can shut the rest of the world out in an instant. But it can’t shut out what is already locked within you.
Every walk in the park as the sun slips slowly behind the trees to escape the onslaught of mosquitoes brings you closer to the precipice until the words fall out like rocks tumbling from a cliff's edge. At the restaurant you often find yourselves eating in following such lazy excursions, you decide enough is enough.
“Just to be clear, Katsuya” you say as you tap your chopsticks rhythmically on the side of your nearly empty bowl at the restaurant “I’m not capable of loving another person.”
“You used to be a better liar than that,” he quips.
“I’m serious. You should probably find someone else.”
“You love Mob.”
“That’s not the same.”
“It’s not,” he agrees. “But it’s proof that you’re fit for it. I don’t know why you’re so insistent on seeing yourself as a cold robot without feelings.”
“Well, maybe I wish I was. Maybe I’m trying to be.”
An exasperated sigh gives way to the empathetic look he wears far too often. “Honestly, Arataka. I think that might be the one thing you aren’t capable of.”
*
“What do you want for your birthday, Arataka?”
“Already? It’s only September.”
“That’s only a month out,” he reminds you. “Stop deflecting.”
You roll your eyes and remove the phone incessantly buzzing in your pocket for the fourth time that day. “All I want is for my mother to lose my phone number.”
“That reminds me. My mom said she’d like to have us over again soon.”
Your palms sweat profusely at how treacherously close this conversation is headed towards the most outlandish of your fantasies. Wryly, you ask him if you two can trade mothers, and almost choke when he mumbles something about how a trade would be unnecessary for someone already considered family.
“I’ll um, think about what I want, okay?”
He smiles graciously, satisfied, and you wonder what you could ask for when your deepest, most heartfelt desire is also what you fear most in the world.
*
The morning of the beginning of the last year of your 20s you decide to start with something warm and comforting—a buffer in case the rest of it goes horribly wrong. The line is long and you tap your foot anxiously as you slowly shuffle closer to the counter and finally place your small order of two hot ciders. You successfully avoid the spilling over of both the drinks and your rising panic as you make your way to the office, but fail in reaching the building first. Your counterpart is already there, opening the blinds and checking the phone for messages.
“Ah Katsuya, you’re early. I brought cider.”
“I see that. Thank you, Arataka. And happy birthday.” His voice fills you with a warmth that the cider could never match and you know it’s now or never.
You thrust it clumsily into his hand.
“Thank y-”
“I love you, Katsuya. I love you. The only gift I want is the gift of loving and being loved by you.”
His eyes widen in surprise. Then he laughs, sets the drink down and pulls you in for a crushing hug. Without warning you feel tears spilling out and soaking the left breast pocket of his shirt. “I know,” he whispers. “I know you do, okay?” He strokes your hair softly as you cling to him the way you always pictured while clutching a pillow in bed at night. “I know that you love me.”
You sniffle and pull back, smoothing out the wrinkles you left in his nicely pressed shirt. “Do you know that I dream about you? Not even exciting things. Just… grocery shopping and falling asleep together watching bad movies.”
He brushes your bangs aside and plants a kiss on your forehead. “I do now.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m not scared of what I’m dreaming about,” you warn him.
“I don’t love you any less for it. I have fears too, you know.”
You kind of feel like crying again so you’re relieved when he tips your head up and gently guides your lips to his. Your hands grip his shoulders and his wrap around your waist as you deepen the kiss, desperate to free everything you’ve been keeping locked up since you met him. Your legs are shaky and your palms are sweatier than ever before but for once you let yourself feel it—all of it, both good and bad. For better or worse, the real thing is both more frightening and more spectacular than any fantasy.