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Langa got his first love letter when he was twelve. A fresh-faced seventh grader, he was pulled to the back of the school after classes and confessed to by some girl in his science class. He didn’t know her name. Even after she poured her heart out for him, he still failed to remember her face.
“Langa, do you want to, um, go on a date?”
He never really understood the appeal behind dating. Love never really resonated with him. He was pretty sure he fell in love with his food more often than another girl his age. Besides, he was way too focused on snowboarding; he was pretty sure there was no girl who’d get that enough.
So, as a seventh grader with the emotional depth of a kiddie pool, Langa didn’t sugarcoat the truth. “Not really.” After a second, he added, “who are you, again?”
He never did learn her name after she ran away in tears, and he never really gave the rejection a second thought. He read the letter because his mom told him to at least spare some of her feelings, but his opinion didn’t change even after reading it. It sounded like a lot of those flouncy romance novels he read in English class, about true love and soulmates and whatever.
Langa wasn’t necessarily a pessimist (he wasn’t really an anything-ist; his dad always told him that his skull was too thick to get philosophical), but he seriously didn’t understand how this love stuff was even remotely interesting.
But the love letters didn’t stop. Three weeks later, another girl confessed to him the same way. And two months after that, another asked if he was single through text. When he said yes, she jumped on the chance like a panther. Wanna go to the movies with me this Saturday?
Not really, Langa replied, just like how he responded to the last two offers from the other two girls.
Are you busy? she asked with a teary-eyed emoji.
No, I just don’t really feel like going on a date with you. After that, he never got a text back.
Around Valentines day, Langa’s locker was covered in notes, all of which taped onto the door like paper hearts. He could barely open the door itself, that’s how crowded it was. Some of the boys nearby gave him death glares, but he simply didn’t acknowledge them.
As always, he read every letter, but none of them stuck out to him. The next day, he gathered all the girls in a group chat and rejected them in one single instance, through text. He was the grade’s most hated guy by the female population for a week. Langa, ever the clueless, wasn’t even aware of this.
In eighth grade, six girls confessed to him. Ninth grade, seven. Tenth grade, ten. Eleventh grade, thirteen. To every single one, Langa gave the same dry, cut-to-the-chase, “not interested.” Kids began to wonder if Langa was already dating someone in secret. Maybe his girlfriend went to a different school. Maybe he was in a relationship so taboo, he couldn’t make it public. Boys specifically speculated that Langa wasn’t even a human being. He must’ve been an alien, devoid of love, the very best part of being alive. A heartbreaker, was how his peers collectively viewed him.
When Langa moved to Okinawa, during his first week, he opened his locker and a letter cascaded down. It was from a girl who asked him to meet her behind the school. As if he hadn’t learned anything from the first love note, he followed her request. When he approached her, she bowed swiftly and announced. “Hasegawa-san, I like you!”
“I’ve been here for a week,” Langa said, confused. How can you like someone you barely know?
“I-I know, but, well, I can’t explain it, really. I just like you! When I see you, my heart races!” She bowed again, even deeper this time. “Please at least consider the confession! I don’t mind waiting for your response!”
“Sorry,” responded Langa. He remembered how his mom told him to let the girls down easy with an apology. “I don’t like you back, if that’s how you define ‘liking’ someone.”
The next day, despite the girl crying and messily saying sorry for wasting his time, Langa forgot her face. Even without this snowboarding business taking up space in his brain, he’s just not built for love.
💌
This love letter given to him this temperate February afternoon, Langa originally expected, was going to be like the rest of them.
It would probably quote a cheesy line from a novel aimed for fourteen year old girls involving a dreamboat boy and an unrealistic happily ever after. It would probably have a heart drawn on it, whether that be near the author’s name or near Langa’s. It would probably be paragraphs and paragraphs long, as if Langa hung the stars in the sky. Seriously, what is up with that? Langa is just another teenage boy, and he can’t even read a lengthy paragraph before getting bored.
He always reads the letters, but he’s grown desensitized to the contents. He sort of feels bad about being so indifferent, but he really just doesn’t care. Women don’t appeal to him, not even the prettiest ones, and he doesn’t particularly find “able to write a poetic love confession” a very incredible skill in a significant other.
But this love letter, stuffed haphazardly into his locker, slightly crinkled at the envelope’s corners, is actually not just like the rest of them.
For one, there’s no writing on the actual envelope. It doesn’t read To: Langa like nearly all of them do. There’s a heart sticker, no surprise, but it’s sort of peeling off. No, it looks like it’s been actively scratched off, then reattached, then mildly scratched off again. It doesn’t stick right, and there’s sticky residue and scrapes along the texture.
Back in his room after a long day of school, Langa opens the envelope and unfolds the paper. He notices that the paper is crumpled ever so slightly. Clearly the writer balled it up, ready to throw it away, before thinking twice and smoothing it out again. The edges of the letter are coming undone a bit.
Strange, Langa knows, but these are all nothing compared to the final clue. If he really wanted, he could ignore all these signs, but he can’t ignore the last one.
The love letter is two sentences long. There isn’t even a Dear Langa, that’s how short it is. It covers approximately 10% of the paper’s surface area.
The sentences get straight to the point. I have a crush on you. Isn’t that awful? It’s written in striking red, in an almost illegible handwriting.
There’s no signature.
For the first time in Langa’s life, he cares about a love confession.
💌
"I got a love letter yesterday."
Langa's best friend, Reki, remains unfazed as he eats his lunch. They eat lunch together and practice ollies with their skateboards; it's simple and easy. Today, Reki is wearing a pink graphic hoodie under his school jacket, another in his large, large stash of uniquely dorky hoodies that he can’t seem to part from.
Reki picks at an octopus wiener in his bento before shoving it in his mouth and shrugging. "So?"
"I want to know who wrote it," Langa replies.
"You get confessed to like, every day, dude." Reki makes a face. "It's annoying."
Langa tilts his head. "Annoying?"
"When Sato-chan confessed to you three days ago, everyone in our class saw it from our window. You guys were right there. It's like you're shoving it in our lonely, no-girlfriend faces."
"Who's Sato-chan?" Langa racks his brain for a Sato-chan, but his mind comes up blank. He was seriously confessed to three days ago?
Reki looks at him in terror. It's like he's seen a ghost, and Langa knows first-hand how terrified his friend is of the supernatural. "I can't believe you don't even remember any of the girls! You're brutal, Langa!"
"I just don't really care about this stuff."
"You could at least do the girls a favor and remember their names!"
Langa thinks about this for a second. Yeah, he probably could afford to do that. He only remembers Reki’s name down pat, and the ones who participate in “S” races with him. Sometimes even their names elude him. “Well, the person who confessed to me yesterday didn’t even write who they were.”
Reki perks up at that. “Yeah?” He glances over, interest peaked. “You got an anonymous confession?”
“Seems so.”
“This isn’t just you not knowing their name because you’ve got the memory span of a goldfish?”
“I don’t have the memory span of a goldfish,” Langa rebuttals, unamused. “But yeah, they didn’t sign it. They didn’t even give me a number so I can text them my reply.”
“Huh.” Reki stares for a moment longer before returning to his lunch. There’s a look on his face that Langa can’t read, but to be completely honest, Langa’s never been good at reading cues. He moves entirely on instinct, and right now his instinct isn’t giving him any signs of life. “Well, whoever it ends up being, you shouldn’t get your hopes up.”
That’s weird of Reki to say. Reki standards for his own love life shoot through the roof, even though he’s never been confessed to and it’s a sore topic for him. “Why’s that?”
Reki shrugs again with a cheeky smile. “You’d reject them anyway, wouldn’t you? Anyway, wanna practice some ollies?”
💌
Miya is the second person Langa tells about this phenomenon, but it’s not like he actively chose Miya. Miya is like fourteen and probably doesn’t know any more about romance than Langa does himself. But when the younger skater points out that Langa’s head is in the clouds instead of on the “S” track, he accidentally lets slip his internal dilemma. “Someone gave me a love letter and I’m trying to figure out who gave it to me,” he says, dazed, like a complete idiot.
“What?” Miya replies with a snort. They’re sitting against a wall, cooling down after their race. He has his orange and green Switch out because he’s like fourteen years old. “ That’s why you lost beautifully to me? You were thinking about some silly love letter?”
Langa watches as Reki and Shadow sling petty taunts at each other as they straddle the starting line. “I didn’t lose beautifully to you. I only lost by about a meter.”
“Still a terrible loss in my book.”
Langa resists the instinctual urge to yank Miya’s rat tail. “It’s none of your concern. I’ll find the writer soon enough.”
“Why don’t you know who wrote it?” asks Miya with a frown, eyes never leaving his Switch screen. “They wrote you a letter specifically for you. They didn’t give it to you in person?”
“Nope.”
“And they didn’t even sign it?”
“Yup.”
Miya lets out a petite “ugh” sound. When Langa looks over, he is making a rather disgusted face. The game he’s playing is paused. “Then what was the point in the first place? That person really wasted their time writing you some dumb letter without even letting you know who they are? Are they stupid?”
To be fair, the letter isn’t very long, and Langa tells him this.
“God, still. Honestly, you shouldn’t even go through the trouble. You don’t wanna get involved with a moron.”
Reki’s race starts, and Langa’s eyes follow his friend’s back until it disappears into the dark. “Maybe,” he mutters.
“Or maybe it’s worth it,” Miya continues, slyer now. “Stupidity does attract more stupidity.”
“ Hey! ”
💌
“Unprofessional,” Cherry mumbles with a sleek examining eye.
From beside him, Joe hums, “unacceptable.”
“The handwriting certainly strikes me as hasty.”
“ So unacceptable.”
“The usage of red ink is an interesting, but overall unnecessary, touch.”
“Unequivocally unacceptable.”
“The texture of the paper indicates that this person really hesitated confessing to you in the first place. It alludes to a lack of commitment, or the ridges represent over-encompassing eccentricism.”
“Unbearably, undeniably, unexplainably unacceptable!”
“Would you care to shut up now, Kojirou? ” Cherry snaps, whirling his pink-haired head to face Joe’s teasing expression. The increase in volume causes Langa to jump a bit, even though he’s sitting on his knees. “Some are actually trying to take this matter seriously.”
“Hey, I’m taking this just as seriously as you!”
He and Cherry sit across from Langa, a low table between them in Cherry’s work building. Who knows why Joe’s visiting? It wasn’t exactly Langa’s intention to get his perspective; he really only asked Cherry since he does calligraphy and likely knows the intricacies behind writing a note. Langa hasn’t really staked a lot of effort on figuring out what their relationship is, exactly, but it’s not much of his business.
“This isn’t some sort of nitpicky job resume, it’s a love letter,” Joe snarks, taking the sheet of paper from Cherry’s hands. He’s wearing his chef outfit, which just looks incredibly jarring in Langa’s opinion. He’s used to seeing Joe wearing a simple shirt just barely covering his exposed abs. “What matters more is the content, not whatever presentation stuff you’re paying attention to.”
“I think both are pretty important,” Langa says quietly.
Joe holds up a hand. “Ah-ah-ah; I hate to play this card, but out of everyone here, I believe I’m most qualified to speak on relationships and confessions and anything remotely romantic.”
Cherry scoffs daintily. “As if, mister playboy.”
One of Joe’s eyebrows twitches. “Shut your trap, Kaoru. At least I’ve actually been with a real woman, and not some creepy AI lady.”
“ Take that back! ”
“Or what, will your very real Carla give me a very real punch in the face for insulting her very real feelings?”
“You better sleep with one eye open, Kojirou-- ”
“Um, hey,” Langa interrupts with a cough. “Can we get back to the letter?”
The two men briefly cease ripping at each other's throats. “Right, the note,” Joe says. “Well, what I noticed from the writing was that whoever wrote it seems to be ashamed of liking you. Y’know, like having a crush on someone you have a complicated relationship with, or someone who’s way outta your league...”
“I hate to agree with him, but the presentation seems this way as well,” Cherry notes, but not without a stealthy glare in Joe’s direction. Joe doesn’t seem to react to it. “The individual must be aware of what confessing to you entails. They’ve shown clear signs of wanting to backtrack, but ended up powering through.”
It’s likely for the better that neither of them know Langa’s reputation when it comes to confessions. “So who do you think wrote it?” he asks.
Joe cups his chin with his hand, deep in thought. “You mean, who specifically? Or do you mean what kind of person?”
“Uh, either or, I guess.”
“I don’t know any kids your age,” he says, shrugging, “so I can’t say I can give you a solid candidate.”
“Perhaps a less popular, less liked student in your school is the culprit,” Cherry offers. “The author of this letter could have low self-esteem, so they equate confessing to you as a shot in the dark.”
At that, Joe suddenly slams his hands against the table. “Shy girls! Shy girls always write the most unconventional stuff, and they’re too shy to say how they feel out front! That’s why love letters are their go-to method! That’s it, Langa - your mysterious writer’s just some shy girl who’s afraid to confront you head-on!”
“Not necessarily,” Cherry starts to debate, but Joe slaps a hand over his mouth before he finishes his thought.
“Who else could it be, Kaoru? ”
The other man flushes frustratedly, shoving Joe’s hand away. “One, I told you not to call me that. Two, it could be anyone, really--”
“Shy girls,” Langa says under his breath. Thinking back, from the girls he can remember, none of them were particularly shy people. He retrieves the letter again and takes another glance at the sentences. I have a crush on you. Isn’t that awful? In all of his now-eighteen years alive (yes, he spends his eighteenth birthday on this mystery), he’s never crushed on a girl. Maybe the girl who wrote this love letter is different.
“Okay, I’ll try asking shy girls. Thanks for your help.”
“Wait,” Cherry calls after him, but Langa is already out the door.
💌
Langa doesn’t know any shy girls. He doesn’t really know any girls, period, and certainly not by name. But Reki knows, probably, so before class the next Monday he confronts his best friend. “Hey, who are the shy girls in our school?”
Reki looks up from his notebook. “Huh?” He’s sketching out a new design that he’ll undoubtedly put on a new board. It looks like it’s of a gorgon monster with four eyes. It might be a commission.
Langa notes that Reki sticks out his tongue a lot when he’s focused. He wants to poke it.
“You know girls, don’t you? You know the shy ones?”
“Sure I know girls,” Reki responds with a huff, perhaps pridefully. He leans back in his seat. “I know all the girls. Girls love me.”
If that’s the case, Langa wants to know why Reki doesn’t get approached by any of them, but he doesn’t ask because that’s not important right now.
“Shy girls,” Reki taps his eraser against his chin. “Asano-san is pretty shy, I think. She’s in class 2-B and has dark brown hair in a bob cut. Ichikawa-san, too, who’s also in 2-B. There’s a girl from third year who’s pretty notorious for being super shy around people; I think her name is Mihara-something? Oh, and Konno-san! She doesn’t really speak much, but she’s nice. She helped me with homework once.”
“I don’t know any of them,” Langa replies, deadpan.
Reki knits his brows together, face just as deadpan. “Konno-san is in our class. She sits four seats in front of you.”
“She does?”
“You’re hopeless.” He goes back to his board design. “Why do you ask all of a sudden?”
“Joe said that the unknown person behind that letter is probably a shy girl,” Langa says, returning to his seat. The teacher has just entered the class, so the break must be over. “Someone who’s too self-conscious to put a name to their writing, so they left it anonymous.”
“Oh.” Reki stops sketching for a short second.
“But thanks; I’ll go ask those girls later today.”
His friend chews on the pencil eraser. He’s quiet, a bit uneasy.
“Reki?”
“Yeah.” Reki smiles, and it looks a tiny bit dejected, but it could just be Langa’s eyes failing him. Is he jealous? Not sure; Langa’s never been good at reading people. “No problem.”
“Hello,” Langa starts as he traps a girl before him. He thinks it’s called a “kabedon”, where you press someone’s back against a wall and lean over them with your supported arms. Reki taught him it once - he said it’s crucial for a cliché romance scenario. It makes all the girls swoon. And probably forfeit information. The latter is what Langa’s after.
The girl before him -- Asano? Ichikawa? Girl from third year? Konno? -- squeaks in embarrassment, face flooded with blush. “H-Hello!” she hushes, eyes wandering.
“Can I ask you something?”
“A-Anything!”
Langa holds up the letter. “Did you write this?”
The shy girl, whatever her name is, takes a peek through her fingers. At the sight of the note itself, she lowers her hands and frowns. “No. What’s this?”
“Someone gave this to me. Did you?”
“No,” she repeats, more antsy now than bashful. Her eyes scan the words and her expression only grows more uncomfortable. “Um, is this s-supposed to be weird? Because this is weird.”
She scurries out from under Langa’s arms and runs away.
Weird? Langa wonders. I guess it kind of looks like a killer’s note before they murder me.
Maybe that’s the situation he’s in right now. Maybe he’s a hitman’s target. (“You’re not a hitman’s target,” Reki reassures him with a raised eyebrow, as if to say “really?”. “Nothing crazy like that ever happens here.”)
He tries another girl. Again, he doesn’t know her name, but he has a feeling it’s Asano, since she does fit the physical description Reki gave him earlier. Dark bob cut, big doe eyes that look watery no matter what Langa tells her. She stands like she’s about to be mugged, but there’s pink on her cheeks and she’s watching expectantly, so she’s probably aware that Langa isn’t actually going to jump her.
“Did you write this?” he asks again, and when Possibly-Asano glances at the sheet of paper, she shakes her head silently. “Really?” She shakes her head harder this time.
The third girl Langa tries, Reki is nearby for moral support. Whether or not he’s supporting Langa’s endeavors or the girl for being emotionally attacked by a pretty boy is up for question. “I didn’t write that,” the girl responds airily, like her voice can’t go above a whisper.
“Do you know if any of your friends did?” Langa urges.
“No, sorry,” she says, even quieter.
“This isn’t working,” Reki finally decides after Langa has confronted nearly thirty different girls in the span of three days, each resulting in failure. “Clearly the writer isn’t a shy girl.”
“Joe lied to me,” Langa mumbles, defeated.
Reki scoffs. “No, Joe’s just a total blockhead. You know he’s never the one who breaks up with his girlfriends, right?”
“They break up with him? ”
“Yeah, because he’s really stupid and doesn’t understand women.”
“And you’re any better?”
“Okay, rude. ”
Langa sighs. “Well, what now?” The note in his hand has grown more worn and wrinkled the more he grips it. It’s starting to look more like scrap than an actual letter. The writing is wearing off, and Langa has read it so many times it’s practically etched into his brain. “If a shy girl didn’t write this, then who wrote it?”
With a roll of his eyes, Reki goes, “there’s more people in this world than shy girls.”
“Cherry said something about less popular kids...”
Langa pouts, eyes focused on the writing. I have a crush on you. If they really liked him so much to use up a whole paper sheet for a love letter, why wouldn’t they sign it? Isn’t that awful? If they really thought confessing to him was this bad, why would they do it against all warnings?
He hears snapping in front of his eyes. He blinks, vision refocusing. Reki juts his head to the street. “C’mon, let’s go already! I gotta stop by Shadow’s flower shop on the way home.”
“What? Why?”
“‘Cause tomorrow’s Valentine’s day, and I’m giving flowers to my mom. She’s all alone and stuff and my dad used to give her flowers yearly, so I thought I’d keep up the tradition.”
“Oh,” Langa says. “That’s very sweet of you.”
“It’s nothing.” Reki grins, “I’m just a very sweet person!”
💌
Outside of “S” related activities, Langa doesn’t really interact with Shadow. He doesn’t buy flowers because he’s allergic to pollen, he has no reason to interact with an older man for his own personal gain, and frankly, he’s never fully comfortable knowing that Shadow’s skateboarder persona and his florist persona are basically two different people.
The bell above the door chimes brightly as Langa and Reki enter the shop. “Yo, Shadow!”
“ Shhh! ” Shadow hisses, head turning like a top as he steals a quick glance at his coworker. She’s a pretty lady tending to an older customer. “Not in this holy establishment! I’m Higa here, got it? How many times do I gotta tell you?”
“Whoops.” Reki doesn’t look sorry.
“Anyway,” he grumbles, clearing his throat, “what’re you two doing here? ‘Specially Langa. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here for flowers.”
“I’m just tagging along,” Langa says with zero enthusiasm. He sneezes into his fist. The place is covered in flowers, which is a nightmare for Langa’s sense of smell.
“I’m buying flowers for my mom,” Reki says with much more enthusiasm. “A bouquet of red roses, please!” Shadow grunts before getting to work, plucking several roses from the section behind him.
Langa scrunches his face. “Red roses for your mom?”
Reki groans. “They’re her favorite flowers, and my dad would buy them for Valentine’s day. Stop making it creepy.”
“I’m not the one buying--” Langa sneezes again-- “red roses for my mom.”
“I will beat you up, Hasegawa Langa . ”
Before Langa is given a chance to retort, Shadow finishes the bouquet. “Added some buds here and there to make it look fuller,” he says like it’s an afterthought. The stems are wrapped in delicate wax paper, tinted yellow and pink. “Two-thousand yen.”
Reki fishes through his wallet and plinks down a good amount of yen coins. They’re a variety ranging from one yen to one hundred. “Here ya go!”
Shadow rings up the purchase as Reki snatches the flowers from his hand, but not before he notes Langa’s downcast expression, staring like an airhead at the different types of blossoms. “Something up, Langa?”
“I really have no idea why people fall in love,” Langa sighs.
“Are you bitter about Valentine’s day or something?”
“It’s so painful and useless.”
Shadow doesn’t say anything for a minute as he hands Reki back his change, before going, “I feel that, man.”
Langa returns his attention to Shadow, and oh. Um. There’s already tear tracks running down his face. His bottom lip is wobbling. For such a terrifying skateboarding opponent, Shadow’s quite the softie.
“Finally, someone gets it,” the older man says, breath shaky. He presses a hand against his heart woefully. “Love is the cruelest game of all. My manager over there, you see her? She’s the loveliest flower in this entire store, but she’ll never love an ogre-looking fool like me! I’m pretty sure she’s got a boyfriend already! Everything is hopeless!”
“What is happening,” Reki comments, quizzical.
Langa sneezes.
💌
It’s Valentine’s day, Langa’s least favorite holiday. It’s a new progression. At first he didn’t really like it because he’d get bombarded with confessions without knowing how to respond to them properly, then he didn’t like it because he’s expected to care about it because all the other girls cared about it. Toss in white day’s connection in Japan and it just feels ridiculously overbearing.
Now, Langa hates it because he’s got this romantic mystery on his hands and no solution in sight. None of the girls who confessed to him before wrote this letter, shy girls didn’t write this, nobody’s stepping up to the plate as the true author of the note, and he’s successfully wasted a week of blind searching.
(Also, he got nine letters in his locker and a buttload of chocolates. He doesn’t even like sweets that much, and now his entire night is going to be dedicated to sludging through paragraphs and paragraphs of soap opera level stuff.)
Langa isn’t naturally a pessimist, but he’s starting to think that maybe he’s getting there. Cynicism sounds so appealing at the moment.
After his last class, he’s asked to help put away books. He tells Reki not to wait up for him; it might take a while. When he’s finally done, the sun hangs lower in the sky and almost all the students are off the premises.
He leaves through the front door, where a girl kicks off the wall and approaches him. “Hasegawa-kun, can I talk to you real quick?” She’s hiding something behind her back, and Langa’s pretty sure he knows where this is going. This note will equal ten whole confession notes that he’ll have to read tonight...
“Sure,” he says despite knowing how this ends. And besides, it’d just be rude of him to not let her say anything at all.
She clears her throat before aggressively pressing a letter into Langa’s chest. “Please read my confession to you!”
Oh, he will. Even though this girl remains nameless in Langa’s head, he reads every letter. He peels the envelope off his clothes and takes a cursory look-over. On the envelope reads To: Hasegawa Langa. The heart sticker is stuck on confidently. It’s creaseless, so sharp on the ends that it could give clean papercuts.
Without thinking, even though he knew the answer, Langa asks, “You weren’t the person who wrote that two-sentence love letter from a week ago, were you?”
“Uh, no? This is my first letter to you, unless you want more in the future.”
“Oh. Then sorry, but I’m not interested.”
“Wha-- hey! ” Nameless-san takes a step closer in indignation. Her auburn hair reaches the small of her back, and the shadows from the afternoon sun sprinkle across her face. She’s cute, Langa guesses. It’s a shame her face runs as nothing special in his head. “Can’t you at least read what I wrote and consider it? I put a lot of effort into it!”
Langa blankly stares at her. From the way she demands expectations from him, she definitely didn’t write the legendary two-sentence love letter from a week ago. “I’ll read it,” he says, because he always does. He reads every letter.
“Good!”
“But, uh, remind me,” he adds with a mental apology to Reki for not knowing Nameless-san’s actual identity, “who are you, again?”
Nameless/Faceless-san freezes. She slowly sucks in a breath. “Hasegawa-kun, we’re in the same class.”
“We are?”
She clenches her teeth and takes yet another step forward. They’re actually so close, Langa feels the need to step back again. “We’ve been in the same class since the school year started, and you don’t remember me? ”
Langa gulps. Right, won’t an apology help in this scenario? “Uh, sorry--”
“ You really are heartless! ” she cries at last. “All the rumors about you being a stone-cold heartbreaker are true! All those rumors about you caring about nobody because nobody is good enough for you are true! ”
Langa, ever the clueless, thinks, there are rumors about me?
Before he can respond, she slaps him across the face. The slap stings like hell, and it’s so strong, Langa almost loses his balance. His cheek throbs, and when he tries looking forward again to offer yet another empty apology, she slaps him again on the same cheek.
“Ow,” Langa chokes.
“Don’t even bother responding to the letter,” Nameless/Faceless/Can-pack-a-punch-san sobs, big globby tears rolling down her face. “Better yet, just burn it! It’ll probably warm your cold, dead heart!”
💌
Langa finds Reki on his way back home. He’s out at the empty skatepark doing ollies. He’s always been really good at them. The way he jumps with his board kind of looks like a bird taking flight.
In both of Langa’s hands are two separate letters. Of course, one of them is Nameless/Faceless/Can-pack-a-punch-san’s, and the other is the cursed one that’s putting Langa through this hell. He pockets the first one and plans to throw the second one in the trash--
Reki spots him and waves. “Yo! How was putting away those books-- whoa! ” He boards over, expression worried. “Dude, you’re bleeding!”
“Yeah,” says Langa lowly.
“Your skin’s cracked! Sit down, I’ll patch you up!”
Langa sits, cross-legged. He leans against the skate park’s fencing as Reki sits before him on his knees. As a skateboarder, he’s always got a handy-dandy first-aid kit around. He pulls out the disinfectant, cotton swabs, and a roll of gauze. “I don’t have any bandaids left, so you’re gonna have to deal with this.”
“Yeah,” says Langa again, even lower. A cotton swab brushes against his cuts and he winces. “Ow.”
“Sorry,” hums Reki, and he really does look sorry. “How’d you get this?”
“Some girl slapped me twice.”
“Oh yeah?”
“She confessed to me and then when I rejected her, she slapped me.”
Reki laughs under his breath. “Girls should just stop trying. There’s no getting through to you. Let me guess, you didn’t remember her name?” Langa nods. Reki clicks his tongue. “Yeeaaahhhh.”
“I guess it is pretty awful having a crush on me,” Langa whispers as he gingerly holds that crumpled up note. The bleeding red glare back, as if the words are disappointed in him. Yeah, he’s pretty disappointed in himself right now, too. “I really do hurt everyone who tries confessing.”
“Yeah, you do,” Reki responds with a roll of his eyes, like it’s obvious. It actually is, in fact, very obvious. Langa’s just so dense, he hasn’t noticed it until now. Reki tells Langa to stay still, which he does. It’s not like he’s itching to move right now, anyway.
Shortly after, he feels a makeshift bandage press against his cheek. It sticks easily. “There, good as new.”
Langa sighs. “Thanks.”
Reki pinches Langa’s nose and he lets out a quiet yelp. “C’mon, quit looking so mopey. At least now that you know that your words affect others, you can grow from your mistakes.”
“I guess.” Since his nose is still being pinched, it sounds nasal. I gehss. Langa continues when Reki lets go. “I should just give up on finding the author of this letter. Obviously they don’t want me knowing who they are. Otherwise, they would’ve signed it. Man, I’m a total jackass.”
He and Reki sit, across each other, for a good moment in the quiet sunset. Langa keeps rereading the two sentences, head down. His brain can’t get enough of this emotional pain, this horrible realization that he’s the king of oblivious jerks. I have a crush on you. Isn’t that awful?
I have a crush on you. Isn’t that awful?
I have a crush on you. Isn’t that awful?
I have a crush on you. Isn’t that awful?
I have a crush on you. Isn’t that--
“Hey,” Reki says at last, snapping Langa out of his vicious cycle. Langa looks up and Reki’s eyes are square on his, though they look fidgety, if eyes can look fidgety. “You really wanna know who wrote that letter?”
“Yeah,” Langa responds earnestly, though wilted. He looks down again and absentmindedly tries flattening the crinkles against his knee. “Why, do you know who?”
From the corner of his vision, Langa sees Reki purse his lips. “Uh-huh.”
It takes one moment for Langa to process that. His head shoots straight up and he squawks in betrayal. “Wait, you knew the person and you didn’t tell me?!”
“You said it yourself! They didn’t sign it for a reason!”
“So you made a promise to them that you wouldn’t tell me or something?”
“Well, yeah, kind of...” Reki presses his thumbs together, lacing his remaining digits. His hands are trembling. Maybe he’s cold. “There wasn’t really an actual promise made, but uh, sort of. Yes, there was, but no, there wasn’t? It’s complicated, actually, because it wasn’t really like a verbal promise? It wasn’t written either, or even explicitly said to me in any way, but it was kinda just... y’know, a promise. Kinda expected of me to keep this a secret, really.”
“You’re not making sense,” Langa says bluntly.
“ Just gimme a second, okay? ” Reki grumbles before shoving his face in his hands. Now, his expression remains a mystery behind his fingertips. “I’m breaking the promise, so I need to mentally prepare myself for the worst.”
The worst? Reki’s just the messenger. Langa isn’t so heartless to the point where he’d shoot the messenger too.
Reki moves his hands so Langa can see his features again, and it’s rosy. Rosier than usual, at least. “Look, the reason why you couldn't find this mysterious writer is because you didn’t ask the right people.”
“I asked Cherry,” Langa mentions with a confused frown. “And Joe...”
“You didn’t ask me. ”
“Was I supposed to?”
Reki huffs, “well, yeah. I’m always around you, being the bestest friend you could ever have. I’m, um, your closest person. Don’t you think my opinion matters, too?”
Langa blinks. “Duh.”
“ I’m saying, I’ve kind of, um, been waiting for you to kinda just, well, talk to me about it. Because I know you best, so, well, the person who wrote that... I would’ve known them, y’know? I would’ve known them really well. Really really well, because I know you really really well. And I care about you a lot. And because it’s you, I would’ve helped you. I would’ve said yes.”
“Okay, I’m lost.”
“ Oh my god, read in between the lines, idiot!”
Reki grabs Langa’s hand and curls in the pinky, ring, and middle finger, so they’re pressed snuggly against his palm. He then aims the extended pointer finger at himself, at his chest. His own hands, holding Langa’s, are warm to the touch. “ I wrote that stupid letter, alright?!”
Langa stares at his hand. It kind of looks like he’s shooting Reki’s heart with a finger gun, like Cupid shooting his arrow.
“Like, as a joke?” he asks, since his processor runs as slow as Internet Explorer.
“As a confession. ”
“A real confession?”
“You think I’m the kind of guy to write a love letter to someone I don’t even like?!”
“You like me.” Langa likes the way that rolls off his tongue, but only when it’s about Reki. He couldn’t give two cares if some girl in his grade professes her undying love, but suddenly when it’s about Reki, Langa’s pretty sure the metronome in his own heart is speeding up.
He’s never felt this way before about someone. It’s totally weird, but experiencing it for the first time is kind of mindblowing, too.
“You like me,” he repeats, and yeah, he really does love the way it sounds. “And you think that’s awful?”
Reki’s face is almost as red as the dipping sunset behind them. It’s cute, Langa realizes, and this time the cuteness doesn’t escape him. “You rejected literally every single person who’s confessed to you since you moved here. You don’t even give them a good reason, you just don’t like them. Why would I be any different?”
Because you’re Reki, Langa wants to say. “But you confessed anyway.”
“Might as well shoot my shot, right? I didn’t think you’d care enough to go looking for the writer.”
So all those moments when Langa brought up the letter near Reki, and Reki growing tense, quiet, unnatural, weren’t because he was jealous, but because it was about him?
Wow. Langa really is stupid.
“Anyway,” Reki mutters, “you got your answer, so stop looking.”
“I only just started,” Langa argues. Reki’s face goes even redder. The blush stretches to his ears and his neck like a sunburn. A cute sunburn. “I kinda like what I see.”
“You are legally not allowed to say that to me, ” Reki hisses in a panic.
“I’m saying you’re cute.”
“Don’t say that stuff if you don’t like me!”
“Who said I don’t like you?”
Reki shuts up. His face is a full-blown cherry now, lips parted in surprise. Hesitantly, he adds, “like me, as in more-than-a-friend.”
That sounds nice, being more than a friend to Reki. Reki is cute and sweet and buys flowers for his mom and taught him how to skateboard all those months ago and hell, he cares about skateboarding. Reki cares. He made him a freaking skateboard. He likes Langa for everything Langa is, not just his looks or his height. He knows about Langa’s thick skull, his irrational stubbornness, his blatant dismissiveness and his kiddie-pool-deep emotions, and still likes him.
And Langa thinks he likes Reki back, even though he’s a boy and he wears tacky hoodies and headbands and sometimes acts almost defensively brash. He’s cocky, but only for show; he’s humbler than he looks.
“Yeah,” Langa replies honestly. “I like you as more-than-a-friend. Wanna be more than my friend?”
“Seriously?” Reki asks, voice cracking.
“Yeah,” Langa responds, smiling.
“You like me over all those other girls who’re way prettier than me, who wrote full-fledged sonnets for you?”
“Yeah.” Langa presses his forehead against Reki’s, and whatever shelter they’ve got together is warm. Their hands fold together, and Langa likes this, whatever this is. It’s not snowboarding, skateboarding, food, or anything he’s loved in the past, but he loves it just as much. Maybe even more.
Okay, so perhaps falling in love isn’t so useless after all.
“Because you’re Reki. How could I not like you?”