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the words slip from between his tongue and teeth before he knows it. the evening light bends round his bicycle tyres, falling in penumbral columns on sakamichi's face against the bed of grass, and manami's drowning in the lux of their smile when he says, "i was so lucky to have met you."
predictably, he's rewarded with a yelp and a flail and glasses sliding down the bridge of their nose. "m-m-manami-kun, uh, i'm the lucky one, really—if you hadn't saved me that day, i—"
"no, i mean it," the hakone climber says, reaching to nudge the frames back into position, fingers not-so-accidentally gliding across their flushed cheeks (and kindling a fresh flame) in the process. "iinchou's always nagging me for being late and getting sidetracked by hills, but if i hadn't been distracted we wouldn't have met, and i probably wouldn't have talked to you while scouting either, so we wouldn't have made our promise. so really, it's a good thing that i am who i am, isn't it?"
(it's a good thing you don't know there was once a time i wished i hadn't met you)
"that's an interesting way to look at it." wryness plays on sakamichi's tongue but their lips are tilted upwards, the way they always are when they're chasing his heartbeat into the horizon, and manami burns. he digs his elbows into the ground and leans in, trailing featherlight kisses down their wind-brushed jawline to their neck, and there's a shift, a squirm, a soft giggle.
"manami-kun, i—me too, i'm glad i-i—"
"i know," he hums into their throat, their ribs, the hollow of their knee—and he does, he does, he does.
.
("—love you, sakamichi-kun."
they don't dare say it back, not yet, but they will one day. it's a promise.)