Chapter Text
rule one : tell yourself, 'who cares? it doesn't mean a thing.'
"There you are."
When Makoto finally finds Haruka sitting alone on the stony steps connecting their house, the evening has aged into a fine-tuned night, complete with the frantic chirp of crickets and the wafting of a stifled breeze, weak but still willing.
Haruka stares up from the concrete, away from the chalk-drawn heart between his feet, and right at Makoto, blinking once, twice, to signal, 'I've been here all along.' Makoto just smiles, sitting next to his best friend and heaving a giant sigh, or at least, the biggest sigh a nine-and-a-half-year old can ever dare to muster, before looking over at the ground. Haruka just hides the drawing by pressing his shoes together, like a double-sliding door shut closed.
"I've been looking all over town for you," Makoto says. "Figures I should've come here first."
"M-hm," Haruka mumbles, looking out at the night ahead of them, the sky oddly devoid of any visible stars today.
"Why'd you run off?" he asks.
"No reason," Haruka says, picking at the bandaid on his knee absentmindedly, before shifting his gaze over at his best friend in all lowered-eyed drowsiness.
"Really?"
"Really."
Only the most normal of silences comes between them after that, with Makoto tapping his feet in all casual contentment. Haruka just looks back up at the stars he can't seem to see, searching for them in vain before deciding it's not worth straining himself over.
"Does it have to do with that cat you were talking to before?" Makoto asks next. "After swim practice?"
Haruka frowns. "I wasn't talking to a cat."
"Oh?"
"It was talking to me."
"So it was a cat," Makoto says, flashing a small grin. "A talking cat." Haruka can clearly see that Makoto's trying not to laugh.
"You don't have to believe me," Haruka responds in a huff, letting the grimace linger on his face without restraint. He knows how ridiculous a talking cat sounds, even as a boy of almost ten he knows that this isn't quite normal, but he knows he hasn't imagined this.
Today, at about four-fifty in the afternoon, just after swim practice at the local facility, Haruka had received the strangest news about the current state of his relatively short existence, all from a cat in yellow rain boots with a penchant for polite conversation:
Fall in love, and you'll disappear.
And, of course, because this whole thing is so ridiculous, because he really doesn't want Makoto to start laughing in his face, and because it's bad enough the cat was wearing yellow rain boots, much less making polite conversation, Haruka decides not to say another word about the messenger's proclamation. After all, he's having a hard time deciding whether he should believe in it, too.
He wants to say 'no, there's no way that could have been real,' but it is not everyday at talking cat approaches anyone with such foreboding news.
"So, what did the cat say to you?"
Haruka snaps out of his daze about the talking cat and just stares up at Makoto again, offering a shrug and getting up to climb up the stairs, back to his house for a late dinner and a bath.
"Forget it," he says in response, taking one more look at the chalk-drawn heart and smudging it with his foot, all before realizing that he shouldn't even care if Makoto sees it in the first place.
"Ah...okay." Makoto just smiles. "Well, I'm glad you're safe."
Haruka just takes more glimpse at him from over his shoulder, before walking on without anything else to say.
Love.
Regardless of things like existing and fading away, Haruka tells himself that it shouldn't matter all too much in the first place.
Cat's Travel Blog, Post #5241: The Beguiling Case of Nanase Haruka
When I first came to Nanase Haruka, he was ten and uninterested in the face of impending doom.
I notified him of his rapture candidacy with the usual protocol, using the classic three step process that most new messengers seem to neglect these days. I think it would be helpful to write down here in my blog before I proceed with divulging on this case, considering that many of you cadets still need to understand the finer points of delivery, so please take the time to read this. (And yes, that especially means you, Parrot #347. I've seen you. You're terrible.)
- Introduction: It is always important to explain who you are and where you are from. Most people do not take well to the idea of talking animals, so you gain more credibility when you explain to them that you are a cosmic messenger. The world is full of different phenomena. Let them believe you (or not.) Tell them that the heavens has nominated them for personal rapture, or in short, a disappearance off the face of the earth.
- Inform them of their trigger: Different people disappear for different reasons. Sometimes rapture will occur when you get angry and blow up one too many times. Sometimes it happens if you eat too many pieces of whole wheat bread with jam. Whatever the reason, please make sure you communicate the trigger effectively to the candidate.
- Offer guidance: As helpful as it would be to obtain as many candidates as possible, we must be sympathetic to the fact that these people might want to live out their lives. Offer a few helpful tips. Namely, on how to avoid their triggers, if they really want to avoid disappearing.
Now, since that's out of the way, let us return to this particular case.
Nanase Haruka, personal rapture candidate #23561, hails from Iwatobi, Japan. The notification of his candidacy came rather early in his life, at ten, and his trigger is rather difficult to begin with, so I expected any degree of tantrum or childish outburst upon delivering the news one day in the middle of summer. I told him the following:
"Don't fall in love. Because if you do, your existence will fade from this world. This is a warning for your personal rapture."
His response?
"Well...I guess I won't fall in love, then."
Rather bold words for a ten year old. Well, maybe nonchalant is the word for it. He asked no questions, offering no change in expression other than the single blink of the eye. In all my hundreds of years of playing messenger, I have never seen someone so unbothered.
It has been eight years since he's made that proclamation, and my curiosity about such an unfettered boy has never wavered in that time. As I make my way back to the small town of Iwatobi to check up on Nanase Haruka, I will be periodically updating this blog with any developments concerning this case.
Still, love. What a terrible trigger to have.
But there's nothing we can do about it, huh?
All we can do, at this point, is see what this world holds for the boy named Nanase Haruka.
rule two: follow the law
With another tally mark mentally drawn, Haruka thinks he must have a thousand rules for himself by now.
"I'm sorry, but I can't accept this," Haruka says to the girl whose name he'll never remember, and whose face he'll probably forget in a couple days' time. Her mouth forms the most disappointed grimace, but she doesn't cry or say anything else about it. She just looks down at the envelope in her hand, beginning to smile incredulously at the note's unbroken state, cruelly pristine with Haruka's way of saying, 'I'm sorry, but I just don't care for these sorts of things.'
"But you didn't even open it," she says. "Please, just read it."
Rule number one-thousand something, filed under trivial, forgettable, and unimportant, just because Haruka doubts he'll ever fall in love over a folded piece of paper and a few lines of chicken-scratch handwriting regardless—never, ever open their love letters anyway.
Haruka shakes his head, following the single statute of his newest rule. "No. Can't."
"What? Is there someone else, then?" she asks.
Haruka shakes his head, because there's no such thing as someone else, and he then thinks of another rule, one he always follows, and one he never, ever forgets.
Don't even bother trying to explain.
"No," Haruka says. "I'm just not interested." A beat of silence follows after.
"They were right about you," she remarks.
Haruka already knows what she's about to say next.
"You just don't care, huh? About things like this?"
Haruka just stares at her for a moment, remembering another cardinal rule, one he tries to use sparingly, for the highest of defenses, and the most maximum of securities.
Lie, if you have to.
"You're right," Haruka answers her. "I don't."
And with his latest rejection, the girl just crumples the note back into her pocket and gives a short nod and a conceding sigh. She has a strange mix of resignation and annoyance on her face, like a frown that just wants to give up being a frown altogether. She leaves Haruka not too long after that, shoulders bumping with her way out of the empty classroom.
All's well that ends well.
Haruka just takes a seat by the window, in a classroom that's not his, content to be alone for a little while.
When he's beginning to nod off, an early dusk revealing the onset of the oncoming winter, he wonders, half-asleep, if he'll finally be able to see the stars tonight. It'd be the first time in eight years. Just a single star. A small, passing pleasantry in an existence mixed with tally marks and little white lies and talking cats wearing yellow rain boots. Haruka thinks of the last time he's actually even seen stars, dancing across the sky in the middle of summer, and who he was with, to witness such an event—
No. If Haruka has any rules that he knows he must abide by, ones he cannot categorize as trivial or forgettable or unimportant, one so deeply ingrained it's more like a law of nature in his wild subconscious, it's this:
You cannot think of him that way. You can't. You cannot, absolutely under any circumstances, think of him that way.
The sound of a sliding door shakes Haruka awake from his half-slumber, making him flinch ever so slightly in reflex.
"Haru."
Haruka doesn't even have to look over to see who's calling him. He knows this voice anywhere.
"Makoto," Haruka calls out, peering over his shoulder to find him walking down the aisle of desks. He pulls out the chair in front of Haruka and sits in it, offering his usual smile and leaning over the backrest of the seat. His eyes stay on Haruka's face, lowered and sleepy from a full day of school and looking for his best friend on top of that, but he still seems glad to have found him.
"Why are you here, of all places?" Makoto asks, in all curiosity.
Haruka shrugs. "A girl led me here."
"Why?"
"What do you think?" Haruka just responds with another question.
"To confess?"
"To confess," Haruka repeats back to him.
Makoto looks a little startled, raising his head up from any drowsiness. "And?"
"I'm madly in love," Haruka says, feigning a little sigh. "We're getting married tomorrow."
Makoto's eyes widen. "What?"
"I'm kidding."
"You're too cruel, Haru." Makoto produces this weird mix of a laugh and a very, very tired sigh. "So what did you really do, then? What did you tell her?"
"This bothers you," Haruka observes.
"N-no!" Makoto stammers. "I'm just curious."
"Ah." Haruka will never believe that.
"So...what did you tell her?"
"Hm."
Haruka's eyes soften towards the setting sun outside, away from Makoto altogether.
"That I don't care about things like love." Haruka just looks over at Makoto again, keeping his mouth buried behind a closed palm. Makoto's face rises up in surprise, lips parting to say something, but the words never come. He doesn't say anything, he just lets his eyes linger on the floor with a suppressed sigh, and puts on the facade of a smile that says, 'Oh. Well, that's completely fine.'
Makoto does this every time, and it is something that worries Haruka more than unopened love letters or the absence of stars.
And as Haruka feels something start to ache in his chest, a strange mix of tenderness and pain and breathlessness, he knows he must dispel whatever this moment is. He's done it before, dozens of times since the start of their teenage years, and he will do it again.
"I just don't care," he reiterates, in all accidental softness. "I don't."
Rule number six or seven, or whatever it is, filed under to be sparingly used, but ultimately necessary, and just a little bit dangerous to all parties involved:
Lie, if you have to.
Cat's Travel Blog, Post #5242: On Disappearing
Has anyone ever read the stories about people spontaneously combusting into flames? Or of pilots flying over the Bermuda Triangle, never to be heard of again?
If not, just think of all the countless missing persons posters, and every single cold case, unsolved and forgotten with the test of time. Think for a moment, readers. What do these seemingly random and unconnected events even have in common?
Well, these are just the various ways people can disappear.
Now, most disappearances are not as dramatic as combusting into flame or disappearing over the waters of the Caribbean, but these are the most interesting sorts of cases. Whether one vanishes with the impatient snap of cosmic fingers, or fades away into complete and utter obscurity, slowly, but surely, I will still find any and every disappearance interesting. Perplexing.
And I say perplexing because that's precisely what this is.
Because even as a cat of my wise age, I will never understand why some people disappear the way they do.
rule three : it's just makoto. really, breathe and stop thinking about it. it's just makoto.
There is a certain voice Haruka uses to get Makoto to come home with him, small but heard with all of its soft, entrancing command.
"Let's go," he'll say, at the bottom of the stairs, tugging the edge of his jacket sleeve, just before Makoto leaves to go back to his house.
"Ah," Makoto usually breathes out, in all genuine surprise.
Haruka will never usually say anything else after that, but he doesn't have to. With those words, and that slight pull of pinched fingers on fabric, Makoto will take a deep breath, nod, and turn away from his usual place at the bottom of the stairs. Without objection or question, he'll climb the stairs after Haruka, steps deliberately light in knowing where they're about to go.
And, well, today has been no exception.
"Haru..."
As Makoto buries his face in the nape of Haruka's neck, huffs of breath escaping him with every time he tries to kiss him, Haruka wraps his arms around Makoto and kisses him himself. He counts, one, two, three, before parting from him rather unceremoniously, throwing himself back down on the bed as he lets Makoto peel the jammers right off his legs.
A rule he keeps in situations like this: Never kiss him for more than three seconds.
Now, he doesn't even have sex with Makoto all that often, in fact the other boy is extra jumpy because it's been nearly a month since they've done anything, but Haruka has a whole set of rules just for intercourse with him regardless. As Makoto places his warmed hands all over him, full of longing for the smooth touch of his skin, Haruka recites another rule, which acts as both a constant reminder and reassurance:
Remember: it's just Makoto.
This is just something that we do.
There's nothing else to it.
"Mm...h..." Haruka breathes out.
It would've been easier if they just never had sex to begin with. Haruka knows this in hindsight, and he understands how much of a mistake this is for all current and future occurrences.
The first time had taken place one lonely winter night when they were both sixteen, one of the only times Haruka swears he felt himself disappearing into nothing, and he swore it would never, ever happen again, but here they were, clothes coming off, bodies pressed together.
It's just Makoto. The constant reminder. This is just something that we do.
If these sorts of things are unavoidable with him, the least Haruka can do is keep things under control.
As Haruka takes the time to unbutton Makoto's dress shirt, he lifts himself off the sheets to meet him for another three-second kiss. Makoto only wants more, though, after all it's been way too long since Makoto's gotten to kiss him, to touch him, so Haruka settles for six seconds this time, six seconds worth of kissing and potential disaster and a trip into the void. But he doesn't fight it, as much as he should. He just tells himself that he won't disappear from three more seconds of kissing.
He simply refuses to.
"Haru," Makoto says his name, breaking the silence with a whimper. Makoto is good at making Haruka squirm with the two syllables of Ha-ru, and it's one of the things other is always wary about.
'It's just Makoto,' Haruka mouths without a sound with the motion of his lips, as the other boy digs himself into the cove of his neck before kissing down his body. He makes an errant, winding line of smooches down his chest, tracing down the vague crease in the middle of his chest, lapping up a bump of muscle, and biting softly down on the cut edge of his hipbone. Haruka heaves from the touch, after all it's just been too long for him too, and he knows how sensitive he is to every brush and breath, but he reminds himself to just keep breathing. Just keep breathing. Just keep breathing.
Makoto lifts himself from the confines of Haruka's bare skin. "Haru..."
"Mm?" Haruka answers, half-coherent.
"I...can't wait anymore today. I want to...well—"
"You want me already?" Haruka asks. "Is that it?"
"Well...yes."
"Okay," Haruka answers simply, shifting his gaze to the side as Makoto goes in to kiss him once more. One, two, three, Haruka counts, keeping track, and they separate without a problem after the third count, but Makoto takes the liberty of keeping his face close, closing his eyes momentarily and letting their breaths mix in the stifled air. He swallows hard and peers down at Haruka slowly, offering neither a smile or something sad. Haruka thinks the word for it is unsure.
"Do you want to face me today?" He asks, in a light voice that rings with hopeful uncertainty.
Haruka looks back at Makoto, staring in all silence, feeling that familiar achiness rise up in his chest again. Unable to form the words, he just shakes his head.
I can't.
"It's...too embarrassing," he says, like he usually does when Makoto asks, but he knows it's not true. He just doesn't want to break another one of his rules.
If you have sex with him, never stay on your back. Never look him in the eye.
It's just too dangerous that way.
"I understand." Makoto just offers a sad a little smile and nods. "It's okay."
And before Haruka does roll onto his stomach, he lets himself linger on Makoto a little longer, while his best friend takes the smallest grip of one of his hands, filling the space between Haruka's fingers with a slow and solemn interlacing.
And Haruka just thinks, with all quiet pleading, like a small prayer aimed at no one, but anyone and everyone at the same time:
‘Please, please don't be in love with me .’
Makoto kisses him, and Haruka lets him break the three-second rule again for the second time in an evening.
‘Because I can't do the same for you.’