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Suna Rintarou has a secret.
It’s not the type of secret that will make him a target of some hidden organizations like he often sees in a movie or anything. It is a secret that doesn’t risk his life. At least he doesn’t think so and dearly hopes that his assessment is correct.
Still, it is far from a normal secret that you hide from family and friends. None of those Oh, I’m actually quite popular online doing livestream or I’m actually not my parents’ child by blood, they picked me up from somewhere long ago and forgot to tell me.
If he tells people what it was, he would surely receive some raised eyebrows and perhaps a worried look for his sanity. He might even get a business card for a psychologist if he is lucky. Chuunibyou, some might say. Liar, probably.
Suna’s secret is: he has a special ability that is out of the norm.
When Suna looks around himself each day, seeing nothing but ordinary locations and the serene fall weather, leaves turning yellow and cool breezes, he has another set of memories. Suna remembers slacking off, forgetting to jump for a block in a practice match and losing a stupid point. If he brings that up, Kita would contradict him and compliment that he played perfectly fine, though maybe his serves need to be worked on. He walks along a narrow street on the way home and takes a turn into the longer path instead of his usual one. Only a minute later, a car crashes into the sidewalk where he would have been if he didn’t make that odd decision.
Now he waits, standing in front of a curbside store owned by a kind old lady who calls him Rin-chan , where he also passed by yesterday, hiding his tall frame behind a bulky vending machine. He watches the sky turning a deeper shade of red by the minute as the sun sets. When a loud honk comes from the next street over, he takes that as a signal and sticks out his foot at the same time as the door to the shop opens.
There’s a muffled curse when the patron who just exits in a hurry trips over his ankle and falls forward.
“What–?!”
The man doesn’t have a chance to yell when Suna bends his arms backward and sits down on his back, putting his full weight on top of him.
“Call the police, granny!” He yells into the shop, knowing that the old lady has been trying to follow the thief and failing to catch up with her aged bones.
Just a couple minutes later, the police come look at the CCTV record from inside the store to find the man that Suna has tripped quietly pulling the bills from behind the cashier while granny was rearranging the display at the other side of the store.
They take the man to the station.
“Thank you, Rin-chan.” Granny says, handing him a box of steaming dimsum. She smiles despite being so close to losing her money from today’s work. “I’m too old to stop him even when I notice him in time.”
Suna accepts the offered food. He’d be a fool to turn it down. Her dimsum is the best. “I keep telling you to get a proper cashier machine, granny. Don’t put your money in a drawer. It’s not practical to unlock and lock it every time you have a customer. You forgot this time, didn’t you?”
“I can’t learn technology that fast, young man,” she laughs a little, teasing his youth good-naturedly.
He waves her a goodbye and plans to tell his neighbor about today’s incident. Granny has been living in this neighborhood since before most of the middle-aged residents in the area were born. The people here all know her. They can all drop by to gently pressure her into getting the cashier.
Anyone who notices what he has been doing might have thought that his special ability is seeing the future, but that isn’t quite true. He knows what is going to happen, but it’s not because he has some kind of divination or premonition. No, he only knows because he has already lived it.
Suna’s secret is that he lives everyday twice.
And let him just say that getting hit by a car hurt like a bitch.
***
Ever since Suna could remember, he always experienced everything twice. He went to school and learned about the same topic in the exact same sequence as the day before. His best friend at kindergarten told him that his pet died underneath a tree at the playground, and the next day, the boy wore the same shirt and told him about his pet’s death in the same fashion, crying into his shoulder as Suna merely blinked in confusion as to how a pet could die twice. When he was sick with flu in fifth grade, he got better in the afternoon, only for the next day to come and he felt as bad as yesterday morning.
Suna figured out very soon that he was the only one who experienced this peculiar time mishap when the people around him kept doing the things that they had done the day before as if they had no recollection of their actions.
It took a bit longer to understand the full mechanics through trials and errors. The repetition was entirely outside of his control. Whether he wanted the day to repeat itself or not, it didn’t affect the second coming flow of time in any way. He was simply a seaweed that flows with the peculiar current.
***
Friday. November 22nd, 2012.
When the first day out of the two same days ends, exactly at midnight, everything reset itself, evidence of the day leading up to that moment gone without a trace. His notes during class are erased, only blank pages remain. The food that he had eaten for dinner is gone too, so he always sneaks into the kitchen for more snacks before bed. The only proof that what happened was real only existed in Suna’s memory and nowhere else, so he calls the first days the ‘trial days,’ the days when he can do whatever he wants and the consequences will vanish by the end of it.
When the second time comes, it’s as if the first time never happened. Suna goes through the same life up until he decides to make some changes to how the first time went. The second day is the day that counts. If everything from the first day was erased, everything on the second day was kept and would continue to affect the future. He calls the second day the ‘final days.’
Suna walks into class and sits slouched onto his table, his arms dangling at the other end. There will be a pop quiz in the second period English. His score wasn’t bad the first time, but he could do better, so he spent last night memorizing vocabs and looking up the answers to the questions that he got wrong.
Suna’s English score will be perfect today.
The rustling of a duffle bag comes from beside him, then a figure drops into the seat next to him.
“What have ya so dead inside that ya become a goldfish, ha?”
That must be a jab to the blank look that he is giving the blackboard. Suna cranes his neck to face the newcomer. Osamu is watching him oddly.
“ Essential means important, ‘Samu.” He says, earning an even more confused raise of an eyebrow. “Just keep it in mind,” he says.
When the second period ends, Suna sets down his pencil with a relieved sigh. All the words he studied stuck with him. He answered every question correctly, as far as he knew. It’s a shame that he can’t see the future so he could know what the answer is instead of having to memorize the questions to go search the textbooks.
As soon as the teacher walks out of the house, Osamu turns to him and beams, his eyes seem to brighten with the spread of his lips. Like a puppy. Or a kit.
“Ya saved my life, Rin-chan! If I didn’t get that word right I’d have failed the vocab section!” He exclaims, waving a piece of flapping paper in front of Suna’s face. A number 9/10 5/10 9/10 in red ink marked the top corner, indicating his score for each section.
“What luck ya have, ‘Samu,” Suna drawls, tugging his own paper with tens in all sections into his bag.
“ Essential means important! I’ll remember that forever!”
Suna bet his lunch that Osamu will forget by evening practice.
The day went on, smooth and unhindered. Suna gets chocolate milk from the vending machine because the banana milk yesterday tasted a little weird. He swings by the library to borrow a book that would be checked out just five minutes later so he can get his hand on it before making his way to the gym.
The practice match is against another high school whose coach has been calling their coach twice a day, successfully annoying the man into agreeing to a joint practice. They are going to make an easy mistake that has the coach so mad he orders them twice the lap counts. Suna’s legs ache from phantom fatigue. He is determined to not let it happen this time. He doesn’t look forward to spending the next two days feeling like he pulls something every time he uses the stairs.
Suna keeps his eyes on the ball, moving like he usually does until a wing spiker on the other team goes for a jump. The ball will be too short, but the spiker is going to use his left hand at the last second and get a lucky one in. Suna moves, his shoes squeaking on the floor in the half a second that everyone is trying to determine the trajectory. When the ball falls over Inarizaki’s side of the net, he is there, passing it in a high curve to Atsumu.
“Good one, Rin-chan!” The setter yells, excitement in his voice, and jumps for a set. They score a point.
Their opponent stares in disbelief at the spot where the ball would have landed, just a foot away from the net. “I can’t believe they even got that lousy ball. That middle blocker just zoomed in from way across the court!”
“I guess that’s Inarizaki for ya.”
That has nothing to do with Inarizaki’s skill, Suna thinks, but they know no better.
The other team serves. It floats high, propelling at the back line. It doesn’t look like it’l make it.
But it will. Suna knows. “Line!”
Aran, who is in the back row, retreats further back without question and receives the ball with his feet stepping on the line.
And that’s how the match goes. Suna catches all the dumb mistakes but lets the more well-played ones go. He just doesn’t want to run more laps, not being mistaken for a genius. The first years look at him with stars in their eyes, impressed by the many saves that he caught. Suna winces. Did he overdo it?
The match ends with Inarizaki winning two to one sets. Coach is satisfied with their play, and that is all Suna asks for. The glint in Osamu’s eyes as he approaches has absolutely nothing to do with it.
“That was great, Rin-chan! Always the Mistake Killer!”
That’s the name his team has given him. He never misses the opportunities to turn the opponent’s oversight against them. It’s a cheesy name that Suna doesn’t really like—who wants to have a nickname that sounds as if he’s a villian in a hero movie?—but as soon as he said his thoughts on the matter, all the gremlins of the team (which is everyone but Kita) of course suddenly made a commitment to use it to his face whenever they could. The worst was when they did it in front of other teams. Suna would have dug himself a hole and disappeared if he could.
The grin that Osamu is giving him is an easy exchange for the sheer embarrassment of it all, however.
“Thanks,” he says when Osamu slaps his back and loops an arm around his shoulder. “And stop calling me that.”
Getting everyone to stop using that nickname is an old banter by now. It doesn’t really do anything, but Suna just feels the need to let them know that no, he doesn’t not like it. Maybe they’ll take pity on him one of these days.
Atsumu, always not far behind his twin, comes right up to Suna’s face and playfully punches him in the chest. “How did you do it?”
That punch is more than a little packed. Suna frowns and slaps his hand away. “I already told you.”
“Yes, yes, watch carefully and all that. But that doesn’t help me at all! Whatever you see before they even jump for the ball, I don’t! Is it because I wear contacts?” Atsumu turns to Osamu, who looks at him with a disgusted face as if repelled by the fact that they share the same DNA that makes up their brain cells.
Well, Suna has nothing else to say to that. He lives every day twice, so he gets twice the practice time compared to people his age. But while his body doesn’t remember the extra training it has gone through, his brain does catch up to memorizing patterns and noticing things. He caught more than half of the other team’s mistakes yesterday without the help of his ability.
Suna doesn’t know what else to say, so he shrugs. “You just have to look harder.”
Atsumu stared at him intently as if willing his answer to change through stubbornness. Osamu gives him an exasperated eye roll and flaps his hand at the ankle, telling him to don’t mind his twin.
“What’s your sight?” The setter doesn’t relent.
“Twenty-twenty?” Suna says.
“Ha! See? It’s my genes!”
Then Atsumu slaps his back as if to vent and stalks away. If not for the playful grin, Suna would have thought he is really upset from how hard he hits. Osamu pats him on the shoulder, firmly but a lot more gently. Where his hand lands on his shirt, Suna’s skin underneath it warms. His body tenses up unintentionally, heat runs down his arms to the tip of his fingers.
It’s just a touch, he thinks as he watches Osamu jog away, giddiness under his skin.
Friday. November 22th, 2012. Final Day .
***
Friday. November 29th, 2012. Trial Day
Suna knows his obsession with Osamu. He isn’t a fool. He knows his eyes often wander about until they find the wing spiker, then it glues there for longer than he intends to at a time. He feels an inexplicable urge to always be close by, inching toward Osamu during practices and timeouts. Every word that Osamu says to him makes his heart race wildly.
It’s a crush.
It happens on a fine evening after practice, when he’s walking home with Kita, Miya twins, Aran, and Akagi. They stop at a convenience store to participate in a stupid high school boy activity of eating ice cream in the cold.
Suna shivers as he takes another bite of the melon ice cream. He contemplates the reason for this foolishness that he indulges in. Osamu chews a hefty piece of watermelon-flavored ice and lets out a shaky groan at the brain freeze, his cheeks flush a pretty shade of pink as his eyes squeeze shut. That, right there, is Suna’s reason.
Osamu doesn’t get flustered or blush easily, too used to embarrassment on account of his twin’s shenanigans and his general personality to let things slide off his back like water on duck feathers. Things that don’t have anything to do with his twin, at least.
He watches without blinking, lest he misses even a second of the rare sight, as Osamu blows visible air from his mouth.
“Oh? Are ya giving up ‘Samu? Ya’ll owe me another ice at this rate!” Atsumu, ever the more provoking one of the pair, taunts and munches on the second half of his stick, the sound of ice crunching between his teeth sends shivers down Suna’s spine. His teeth hurt just imagining the cold spreading in his mouth.
And for all the deadpan that Osamu is capable of, his competitiveness is beyond comparison. “Like hell I am!” He yells, fires in his eyes, and wolfs down the rest of his ice cream, chewing violently even when his eyelids slip shut and his face scrunches up. He swallows too soon, apparently just forcing the smaller chunks of icy dessert down in a bout of determination.
He turns to his twin, and upon finding out that Atsumu is still trying to swallow the last bit of his ice, he quickly forgets the chill in his brain in favor of laughing in victory. His voice lilts up as it usually does when he especially wants to annoy Atsumu. “I won! Get me the expensive chocolate one tomorrow, ‘Tsumu!”
Suna stares at the way Osamu laughs with his cheek bright pink and his lips puckered from the cold ice. Osamu is cool and pretty in the way that leaves Suna starstrucked. Not only is Osamu’s appearance Suna’s type, his charisma and the way he holds himself, down-to-earth but never afraid to speak his mind, is also what has captivated him. It’s impossible to not admire the brilliant star even when it blinds him.
The commotion dies down. Suna notices that everyone is looking at him with wide eyes. Even Kita, who looks as composed as ever except for the raised brows.
What?
Osamu is also looking at him. He blinks once, twice, slowly, as if he is trying to sort through something complicated in his head. Then finally, after many seconds that are entirely too long, which Suna stands frozen like a deer in a spotlight, Osamu speaks, “Didn’t know ya are one of the fangirls. Thanks, I guess?”
What?
“Ha! Look what I got, ‘Samu!” Atsumu fails to notice the stunned silence and ruins it with his exclamation. He shoves the bare wooden stick with the word atari engraved into it in his twin’s face. “I got a second ice!”
With that, the weird attention that Suna is getting breaks. Osamu jumps to one up Atsumu.
“What d’ya mean ya won? That’s gonna be for me! Ya owe me an ice!”
“Hell no! Ya can’t retrieve a win tomorrow!”
“Then I’mma get that reward right now!”
“Ya can’t get that chocolate one with this. It has to be the same brand!”
“Fuck if I care? I want to use ya atari !”
While the twins are occupied with their banter, Aran takes pity on Suna who is still wondering what has just happened and grounds him with a hand on his shoulder. “Nice try, Suna.”
Suna frowned. “Try what?”
Akagi pats his back. “You are brave, man, but next time you should tone it down a bit. You know it’ll pass over his head with that kind of wording.”
Now Suna is utterly confused. He looks to Kita, the last hope for explanation on what he has been missing out on.
Kita walks up to him. He doesn’t offer physical comfort like the other two, but his presence is enough to calm him down. Their captain always has that effect on people when he’s not scrutinizing their play.
“Ya said that out loud.”
Suna’s calming confusion shatters, his heart rate spikes back up and through the roof. His jaws hang open, as if he wants to say something or asks for clarification but doesn’t know what to say. He said that out loud? Those simpy thoughts that were supposed to be for his private gushing and pining?
He looks to the others, hoping that they would say that Kita is just practicing telling jokes, but they nod seriously even as Akagi is visibly trying not to laugh at Suna’s epic fail and embarrassing accidental confession.
Covering his face with his hands doesn’t do anything to ease his embarrassment, but he does it nonetheless for the comfort of hiding shamefully behind something. Rintarou, you idiot!
Suna has been picturing how his confession would go. It ranges widely from the classic “I like you. Will you date me?” behind the school building where literally everyone at the school uses for the confessing location, to asking Osamu to hang out on Christmas and confessing in front of warm, cozy Christmas lights. (Excuse him for his cheesy romance, he has no experience dating and the movies are telling him that this is the way to go.) For all the times that he has spent daydreaming, he never thought that his confession would be like this.
Now Osamu thinks that he’s one of those obsessed fans of the Miya twins who takes pictures of their matches from every angle.
(No, Suna doesn’t do that. He is on the court with them, remember? But if he goes online to save those photos after the match, well, no one else has to know.)
Suna hopes that Osamu will forget about it with Atsumu’s distraction. Maybe he’ll even doubt his ears and ask Suna again, to which he will say that he has been saying something else. If he remembers…well, Osamu is probably weirded out now.
Fuck.
***
Friday. November 29th, 2012. Final Day
When the Miya twins dive into their pointless competition on who can eat their ice cream faster, Suna keeps his lips sealed shut, pressing his upper lip tight against his bottom lip.
He has a phone in his hand, his thumb hovers over the red record button. Do not ruin this. He taps it as soon as Osamu starts stuffing his ice stick into his mouth, perfectly timed.
Suna keeps a tight leash on his thoughts when Osamu’s cheeks turn brighter shades of rose. He can gush over this later. He has a video! He doesn’t have to do this now and become a weirdo like yesterday.
Suna can’t believe that he’s so pathetically head over heels that he needs the help of his double days to get a boyfriend.
***
Sunday. December 1st, 2012. Trial Day.
Suna has a Notebook of Shame and a Notebook of Slightly Less Shame in his drawer, hidden under his other stationery. They are disguised as normal school notebooks, looking perfectly unremarkable. But inside is a list of his failed and successful attempts at getting closer to Osamu.
Notebook of Shame contains all his plans and doodles and brainstorming ideas around the possible actions he can take toward the goal of dating Osamu one day. It is messy and full of scratch marks, red ink circling around important phrases to make it jump out and a big cross over the particularly stupid ideas that won’t see the light of day.
Notebook of Slightly Less Shame contains only the attempts that he deems are a success and the results. He notes what he did and Osamu’s responses onto two sides of the page pair, one for the trial days and another for the final days. He calls it Slightly Less Shame because the fact that he needs twice the number of days to plan a confession is shameful enough in itself, success aside.
His note may seem excessive for many, but try living 730 days a year like he does and see if anyone won’t need a note for that. In the beginning, Suna got the days mixed up the days on a regular basis, and what a confusion that had been when it happened. It wasn’t fun to talk so excitedly about how one friend had failed so miserably at karaoke two weeks ago only to see the confused look on his other friends’ face and realize that it had happened on a trial day.
The scramble to cover up his mistake was a nightmare and a half and Suna prefers to never go through that again.
Sitting on his bed with his legs crossed, Suna tries to gather every last bit of his brain cells for more options. He is usually smart and quick-witted. He has a clear mind during the most important moment of the match and doesn’t succumb under pressure. Somehow, his love life is different. Just his luck.
He reads the ideas that he has on the page so far.
Getting closer to Osamu.
Goal: Road to Confess!
- Walk home together. Just the TWO OF US. How to not let Atsumu follow?
- Talk more to Osamu in class. Learn about what he likes.
- Ask about his type. DISCREETLY!
- Give him chocolate for valentine. Ask mom to teach baking.
- Invite him to hangout at my house? Sleepover. Or at his house.
- Watch movies.
Ask him on a date.Not now!
He’s so dreamy
- He likes food! Take him to good restaurants?
- How the hell do people flirt???
Go for it?
- Hangs out on weekends
He has nice ass…
- TBD
Suna is stumped. He thinks he is plenty close to Osamu, but it just doesn’t feel like the kind of closeness that will open up the opportunity for romance. How do people get from the friend zone to the couple zone?
He is so bad at this.
Sunday. December 1st, 2012. Final Day.
Suna spends his day sitting in the same position, at the same spot on his bed, his legs crossed and an Angry Bird plush cushioned between his back and the headboard. He taps the tip of his pencil on the page, creating a trail of dots.
Getting closer to Osamu.
Goal: Road to Confess!
.
.
.
- TBD Amusement park
- Shopping for clothes together
Ask Atsumu for helpAre you crazy? NO.
KabedonHe might punch me
- Study group
- Read more romance manga for ideas
- Mom said a man’s stomach is the way to a man’s heart. But Osamu cooks! Ask mom to help cook.
- Get Osamu birthday present
- Christmas presents! Oh my god I forgot about those!
He has rounded up roughly a dozen ideas to try. The plan will commence tomorrow.
Monday. December 2nd, 2012. Trial day.
Suna perks up when he hears the rustling of clothes next to him. Osamu throws himself onto his seat and slumps down on his desk, his chin resting on his crossed arms. A big yawn scrunches up his face.
“What’s gotten you so tired?” Suna asks, leaning back in his seat. There’s slight dark bags under Osamu’s eyes, not visible unless he pays attention.
Osamu makes no effort to move beyond turning his face to Suna, one eye peeking out from behind his upper arms that form a cushion for his head. He blinks slowly like a lazy cat.
“‘Tsumu and I had a movie marathon last night.” He drawls, his words dripped with sleeplessness. “Didn’t get to sleep until three. Bastard kept egging me on.”
Osamu is at least self-aware of how easily riled up he is with his twin.
Suna omits the retort that they have the same parents and that if Atsumu is a bastard, then so is Osamu. Instead. He elects to remind Osamu of a very important fact. “Did you forget about the practice match with Harima-Minami High?”
Silence is his answer. Suna watches Osamu blink like he doesn’t want to open his eyes back up. “What?” Osamu says.
“Harima-Minami High? You know, the school that has been giving us a tough time at the qualifier?” He says. When he gets only more bleary blinks and no recognition, he tries to explain more, his voice increasingly desperate, “The one with the dark blue and yellow uniform? With that annoying libero who digs half of your spikes? Coach said they’ll come today!”
Recognition slowly dawns on Osamu like a lazy wave of warning excess water, before memories return to him in a flash of flood. He springs up in his seat and slaps the table. The class jumps and turns to look at him. Osamu fails to notice any of that. “Miwabe is coming?!” He shouts and then dashes out of his seat.
“Where are you going?” Suna raises his voice when Osamu gets halfway through the classroom.
He sprints out the door, his reply floats in from a distance away. “Coffee! Like fuck I’m gonna let him get any more of my spikes!”
The closest vending machine is outside the building, at the corridor that leads to the science lab building. He watches Atsumu screeching to a stop in front of the machine, Osamu arriving a few seconds later. They bodychecks each other, their mouths moving rapidly as they try to be the first one to get their caffeine dosage.
Looks like Atsumu also forgot about today’s plan. No wonder they stayed up so late a night before the practice match.
Monday. December 2nd, 2012. Final day.
Suna stays up until the digit on his alarm clock turns 00:00 on the final day. Evidence of the trial day vanishes before his eyes. The world glitches. The mess on his desk disappears, all pens returned to its holder and books stacked neatly at the edge as it was at 23:59 on Sunday. His dirty uniform is whisked away from the corner, neatly hung back into the closet as they should have been, wrinkle-free.
His eyes are tired, but he resists the urge to slump down on his plush in fear of his consciousness slipping away. It’s always at times like this that he wishes the trial day’s settings can be transferred to the final day. He could have set an alarm to wake him up at midnight and go to bed on time.
He stifles a yawn and reaches for his phone.
To: Osamu
I have a feeling you will forget. Here’s a reminder. We have a practice match with Harima-Minami High tomorrow.
A reply comes ten minutes later.
From: Osamu
Holy shit, totally forgot about that! Atsumu is about to play another movie. Thanks, man. Goodnight!
To: Osamu
Goodnight.
His job done, Suna leaves his phone to charge on the nightstand and slips to sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.
***
Morning comes. Suna wakes up as energetic as ever. Late nights on the trial days don’t affect him as long as he went to bed at a decent time on the previous final day. It’s an advantage that he has found much use for, a period of a couple hours to prepare for the next day consequence-free.
Osamu swings into his seat like a whirlwind. “Ya saved me, Rin-chan!” He greets, a lot more alert than yesterday. Last time. The day that never was. Whatever. Time is complicated when it does a double take.
“How did you know I’d forget?” Osamu asks absentmindedly, his attention is more on pulling out the books from his bag and checking over his homework.
Suna shrugs. You did it before. “Just a hunch. You wouldn’t want to face down Miwabe with anything less than 100%”
“Damn right!” Osamu finishes flipping through the notebook for this afternoon’s science class and puts it under his desk. “I’ll treat ya to something at a convenience store later. Name your reward.”
Suna looks to the side, thinking. He doesn’t particularly want anything from the convenience store. He can get those himself. Rather…
“How about you recommend me a song you like,” he says, “I’ve been looking for some new artists recently.”
Osamu looks up from arranging the space under his desk and gives Suna a long look.
Shit. Is it too strange a thing for him to ask? Did he screw up again?
“Nevermind.” He hastily backtracks. “Now that I think about it, I’ll get–”
“Try My First Story,” Osamu interrupts, a sort of intensity in his posture, “They have pretty good songs, in my opinion.”
***
Turns out My First Story has very good music. Suna likes them. He listens to their most recent album while doing his homework. The progress isn’t great. The songs aren’t the kind that encourage much concentration, with electric guitar blasting in his ears and the lead singer’s voice scratching his soul. But that is fine. Sune doesn’t need much concentration anyway. He already memorized the answer from yesterday, when he studied in preparation for writing down the solution today.
He repeats the words and equations from his memory, filling up pages after pages until the last question is filled and he closes the notebook with a flap of the paper. He pulls out Notebook of Slightly Less Shame next.
Talk more to Osamu in class. Learn about what he likes. (Refer to p.54 of Notebook of Shame)
Dec 2, 13. Trial day:
- Osamu too sleepy to talk much. Movie marathon with Atsumu the night before. Forgot about practice match.
Dec 2, 13. Final day:
- Texted Osamu about the match. He’s less tired.
- Asked for recommendations on artists: My First Story.
Wednesday. December 11th, 2012. Trial Day.
The opportunity to walk home with Osamu comes when Atsumu is selected for the All-Japan Youth Training Camp. Suna isn’t envious in the very least when he gets to have Osamu’s time to himself for a few evenings.
“What are you doing tonight now that Atsumu is away?” Suna asks, trying to see if there’s anything that can help him bring up the invitation to walk home together.
Osamu shrugs. He crosses his arms and leans back against his seat, humming in thought. “I don’t know. There’s no practice tomorrow, so get home, eat dinner, play games, go to bed.” He turns to Suna with a raised eyebrow. “Why?”
“Do you want to go to the arcade after school?”
Osamu smirks. “Yes, let’s go.”
They go to the arcade at the nearest shopping street. The place isn’t too crowded, considering that it is in the middle of the week. Students in uniform mingle with young people in casual clothes. As soon as they pay for the credits, Osamu drags Suna by the arm to a shooting booth and inserts the card into the machine.
“I’m the best at this game,” he boasts, stretching his arms and fingers while waiting for the game to load.
Suna looks at the bloodied zombies on the screen doubtfully. He isn’t averse to blood or horror, but he does jump at the scenes that are designed to make players jump. He doesn’t like the feeling of tensing up suddenly, like his heart is going to drop to his feet. But Osamu looks so excited.
Lifting the plastic gun, he resigns himself to being jump scared and just shoots.
The game ends with Osamu lasting longer than him by a full minute. Losing is inevitable when half the team is dead, so Osamu is tackled down and clawed at eventually.
Osamu puts the gun back to the holder and rolls his shoulders. “Man, I thought we would go further than that. Not the best at shooting, are ya?”
“No.” Suna deflates.
Osamu looks around at the arcades around them, some empty and some occupied, and turns back to Suna. “What are ya good at?”
“Rhythm games.”
“Let’s play that then.”
That refers to the booth with two taiko drums. Osamu resolutely searches for the song that has the most difficulty stars and stares at the screen in anticipation when Are you ready? appears on the screen.
“I’m not losing to ya,” he says as he intensely watches the countdown. He licks his lip, the habit he shares with Atsumu when they look forward to a worthy competition.
Suna feels saliva pool in his mouth at the sight and swallows. Seeing Osamu focused like this always does something to him. The intensity in his eyes and the slight edge that lines his body attracts him in a way that no words can describe. He is so lost in Osamu’s presence that he almost misses the first hit.
Turning back to the screen where the irregular streams of bubbles flow to indicate the hitting pattern, his wrist moves nimbly when he catches the rhythm, his right foot tabs with the song to help him pin down some of the more difficult syncopation and not getting lost in the dizzying movement on the screen.
It’s hard to stay concentrated when halfway through the game, Osamu loses track of the rhythm and scrambles to find it with abandon, hitting wildly and getting a stream of MISS as his reward, but Suna manages. The song ends with a long drum roll that makes his arm ache. Suna scores almost twice as much as Osamu, the reverse of their shooting game.
“Urgh!” Osamu growls, irritated. He points the drum stick in his hand at the machine. “How did you even follow the bubbles? They all just blur into a single line at one point!”
The trick is to not stare at them, but let them pass by the corner of his eyes.
“You just need more practice,” Suna teases, smirking at Osamu whose eyebrow is ticking uncontrollably.
“One more time,” he seethed, swiping his card with more force than necessary. He stubbornly chooses the same song and glares Suna into swiping his card too to play a 1-on-1.
The result is the same.
“One more time!” Osamu reduces the difficulty stars from ten to eight.
A game later, he chooses a song with five stars.
One more game later, it reduces to three stars.
When the song ends with Suna still in the lead, Osamu grumpily admits his defeat, too prideful to reduce himself to one star just for a chance to win.
“How are you so good at this?” Osamu demands with all the heat of an official volleyball match. He gets into Suna’s space, pushing up close until Suna can see the color of his eyes clearly. “Is this how you know when to time your block?”
Suna swallows. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, his voice weak. “Rhythm games and blocking are entirely different.”
Osamu grudgingly accepts it and drags him to another arcade.
They play until the sun starts to set before going home. Suna walks with Osamu, listening to him pointing out different places along the way. Osamu likes korokke from the store next to the karaoke. The flower store next to the train station is owned by his mom’s friend from high school. He and Atsumu used to go to the family restaurant next to the gas station when they were younger. He points out the sloping street where he has tripped while riding a scooter, which earned him a small scar on his knees that faded away when he turned thirteen.
Suna doesn’t have much to say. All his memory of the city is short as he has only just moved from Aichi prefecture for high school. Instead, he compares the city to his hometown. Osamu listens with rapt attention the whole way. For all that he turns into a knucklehead with his twin, Osamu is generally calmer by himself. He doesn’t interrupt when Suna talks, asking more questions when he hears an amusing story about Suna’s childhood.
Their walk feels entirely too short when Osamu stops and points out that his house is down the street.
“It was fun hanging out with ya, Rin-chan. See ya tomorrow at school!”
They wave and part ways.
After dinner, Suna sits down at the desk in his bedroom and recounts the event from today, engraving it into his memory.
Osamu has never gotten that riled up over anything aside from one-upping Atsumu. Today seems like a good sign that they are growing closer.
He writes everything down in a diary when the day resets and goes to bed.
Wednesday. December 11th, 2012. Final Day.
Suna lets everything run its course, retracing the steps that he took yesterday. They go to the arcade, Osamu gets competitive, and they walk home together just like they did.
Suna opens his Notebook of Slightly Less Shame to fill in the event from the final days.
Walk home together. Just the TWO OF US. (Refer to p.54 of Notebook of Shame)
Dec 11, 13. Trial day:
- Asked Osamu to go to the arcade.
- Osamu is very good at shooting games. He gets competitive when he loses a rhythm game.
- Walk home together. Favorite korokke next to karaoke. Mom’s friend owns a flower shop close to the station. Fell off a scooter as a kid and had a scar. Used to go to a family restaurant next to the gas station.
Dec 11, 13. Final day:
- Same as trial day
Tuesday. December 24th, 2013. Trial Day.
Suna lays on the couch in the living room. The TV is airing a comedy reality show that his dad likes. He is still in his uniform, having just returned from school. Normally, he would get out of his outside clothes as soon as he gets home and transform into a homebody donning a t-shirt and sweatpants, but he is deep in thought.
It’s Christmas Eve. Suna still can’t decide if he should get something for Osamu as a Christmas gift. He has seen people in the Western movies do it, and they usually end up dating afterwards, so there must be some kind of meaning behind it. But people here don’t usually give gifts on Christmas unless they are already couples.
Suna chews on his lips. He needs a second opinion.
He dials a number that he knows by heart.
“Rintarou? Ara, I was just thinking about calling you, but you beat me to it.”
“Hi mom, I need some advice.” A sizzling sound filters through the call. She must be preparing dinner.
“Okay?” She prompts.
“Should I give my teammate a Christmas gift?”
A sound of bubbling oil follows—mom is probably deep frying something—then she replies. “The one you have a crush on? Why not!”
What did he just hear?
Suna springs up from the couch cushion, his back ramrod straight. “What did you say?”
His mom is silent for a few seconds, a clinking of utensils occupies the line. “You think you can keep secrets from your mom? You’ve been taking much better care of your appearance lately, I saw the pictures you sent! Don’t think I didn’t notice!”
“Who said the gift is for my crush?”
“Who else would you give it to on Christmas day?”
Well, that’s true. Feeling like an idiot, Suna flops back onto the couch and rolls over to his side.
“Won’t it be weird? I haven’t even confessed.”
“That can be your confession then.” A rapid-fired chopping sound interrupted his mom’s speech. “If you give him the chocolate, it’s unlikely he wouldn’t realize your feelings considering the day.”
“But I’m not ready!”
“Well, then you better man up, young man!”
“Mommmm,” he groans and listens to her full laughter.
“If you aren’t ready, then you can do something else just as meaningful.” She said soothingly, her laughter calming down to the serene way that she usually speaks, gentle and patient. Suna is reminded of how lucky he is for having his mom. “Send him pictures of your days during the break, Rintarou. It means that you want to stay connected during time away and that you want to share it with him. Maybe he’ll send back about his time. You can keep knowing more about each other that way.”
“Mnn…” Suna hums back, turning the idea over in his head. “That sounds good. Thanks, mom.”
They chat after that. Suna tells her about his day and his team. His mom tells him about her own days. She doesn’t ask him who his crush is, wanting him to bring it up when he is ready. When it is time for dinner, she reminds him to eat healthily and they hang up.
Suna makes a simple meal consisting of boiling thin-sliced pork belly, vermicelli noodle, tofu skin, and spinach in a soup base. It’s lazy cooking that doesn’t use oil.
He snaps a picture of his meal and sends it to Osamu.
To: Osamu
[A picture of dinner]
From: Osamu
That looks hella sad. I’ll make ya something better.
Suna almost snorts vermicelli up his nose at the first sentence. He coughs vehemently and grabs a napkin to wipe his mouth. He blinks at his food and wonders what’s wrong with it. It has carbs, it has proteins, it has veggies? The presentation doesn’t look that bad either.
Book of Shame
Mom said a man’s stomach is the way to a man’s heart. But Osamu cooks! Ask mom to help cook. ABANDONED. Let’s not embarrass yourself, Rintarou.
Wednesday. January 1, 2014. Trial Day.
New Year comes with a temperature drop. It’s early morning, the sky just sheds its orange hue in favor of cloudy blue once the sun leaves the horizon. Suna blows a puff of air from his mouth, watching the white vapor dissipate quickly. He waits at the gate of the shrine, his hands stuck in his coat pocket to escape from cold air.
It is 6:30 am. And he is the first one here. It’s not surprising, the team isn’t supposed to be here until 15 minutes later.
Suna watches families, couples, and groups of friends walking past him into the shrine ground and snuggles his chin into his scarf, feeling the soft fabric on his cheeks.
“Rin-chan!” A voice calls from across the street. Suna looks up to find the Miya twins waiting at the crosswalk. Atsumu is waving at him with the full length of his arm swinging wildly, while Osamu shoots a death glare at his brother and steps away to dodge the offending limb from slapping him in the face. He gives Suna a little wave.
They cross when the pedestrian light turns green.
“Happy New Year, Rin-chan,” Osamu says, fixing his scarf to cover the spot on his neck that has been exposed to cold air.
Atsumu turns on his twin in record time. “What? Where’s my Happy New Year?!”
Osamu frowns, “I told ya this morning.”
“No, ya didn’t.”
“I did. In the kitchen, first thing in the morning.” He says, turning away from his fuming brother and leaning on the wall next to Suna.
Atsumu pauses, rewinding the events from the past hour, then he crosses his arms. “Ya said that to the family. I want one for me .”
Suna can tell the exact moment Osamu’s patience starts to wane. His brows draw tighter together and his eyes narrow.
“What? Ya not a part of the family now?”
Osamu is as stubborn as his twin. He could have told Atsumu Happy New Year and the problem would be resolved, but he didn’t.
Suna is in a tug-of-war between letting them fight it off and interrupting them with his own greeting when a chill voice rings behind Atsumu.
“Miya.”
Just one word. Suna sees Atsumu and Osamu tenses and drops the fight as if it never happened.
“Good morning, Kita-san! Happy New Year!” Atsumu chirps.
“Happy New Year,” Osamu tries to sound as enthusiastic but fails.
“This is the first day of the year.” Kita starts. Suna tunes him out, knowing that a short lecture will follow. “We are here to welcome the new and let the old pass. Are you going to bring your fight into such a day?”
“No, Kita-san,” they echoes each other. The Miya twins can be perfectly harmonious when they want to.
The rest of the team arrives soon after. As they proceed into the stone path that leads to the main shrine, Osamu falls into steps with Suna. He’s wearing a beanie, Suna notices.
“Happy New Year,” he says when Atsumu is far enough away to not throw a tantrum when his brother gets the greeting before him. “That toshikoshi soba looked good. You made it?” Osamu sent him a picture of the family meal last night.
“Yup,” he smirks, looking proud of himself. “‘Tsumu had this constipated face the first half of the meal. He wanted to give some criticism but couldn’t because there wasn’t anything to say. That was the highlight.”
Suna laughs, not surprised.
“How’s the call with your mom?”
Suna lives by himself at an apartment, so he doesn’t really make an effort to follow the New Year tradition like he did at home with his family, but he did get to call his mom and talk for a long time.
“It was good. Mom’s sister came to visit yesterday and brought their daughters too. They were really cute. Half kids are always cute.”
They texted each other constantly during the break. Osamu sent him many pictures of the food that he made. Even the one that he said was his first time making it look good. Suna in turn sent him a picture of the show that he was watching and a snapshot of the New Year envelope with his mom’s name on it.
Suna feels like he has so many things to talk to Osamu now despite their time away from each other. He thought that people who have known each other for a long time must not have anything to talk about because they just know everything, but he was wrong. There seems to always be something else to know, a new aspect of a person to discover.
Osamu must feel that way too because he weaves what he has learned about Suna into his talk so smoothly, referencing the texts that they exchanged and cracking jokes about it.
When they reach the main shrine, they step into the line to toss coins and send prayers. Suna closes his eyes and prays
He prays for his parents’ health, his younger sister’s friendship, and for a fruitful new year.
It’d be nice if he can date Osamu too.
He bows, and their group retreats to the side to get an ema to write their wish on. (They all agree to skip trying their luck on omikuji so as to not ruin the day if someone happens to get a misfortune paper.)
Suna writes his wish on the wooden tablet with a marker pen, scratching over the uneven surface slowly. May by wish come true. It’s not really a wish, but he thinks this is good enough.
When they step out of the shrine to go their separate ways, each having a plan to spend the New Year with their family, Osamu stops in front of Suna.
“What’s your plan today?”
Suna doesn’t have a plan, so he shrugs, trying not to show how disappointed he is at having to spend the day alone. He usually spends today under a kotatsu with his little sister, eating oranges and throwing the peels at each other while waiting for mom’s food. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go pick up osechi ryori from the supermarket and then eat it at home while watching TV.”
Osamu has a determined look on his face when he hears the answer. He grabs Suna’s sleeves and pulls. “Come with me to the parking lot. I have something for you, but it’s in the car.”
Suna raises his eyebrows in question but follows. He turns to Atsumu to see if he can get a clue from him, but the other Miya simply gives him an indecipherable look and waves at him to follow Osamu.
The Miya’s parents are in the car, waiting. Osamu bends in to grab a stack of black square boxes tied together by a red ribbon along the side. He deposits it in Suna’s hands. “I made it yesterday. Pretty sure it will be better than store bought ones. Eat it and just keep the boxes.”
Suna looks down at the shiny painted bento. “This…”
“ Osechi ryori .” Osamu says simply, as if he isn’t shaking Suna’s world with his words. He looks into Suna’s eyes. “I know ya are not with your family, but I don’t want ya to eat store bought stuff on the New Year. Handmade is better.”
Something lodges in his throat. Suna doesn’t know what to say. “I…” he struggles, so thankful for the thoughtfulness that he receives.
Osamu snorts at the sudden awkwardness that permeates between them. “I know. You’re welcome.”
When Suna returns to his apartment and eats the food from the stack of three wooden trays, the room feels brighter. The curtain is pulled open, letting sunlight into the living room. He is glad that tomorrow will still be the New Year. He gets to eat Osamu’s handmade food twice.
Friday. January 24th, 2014. Trial Day.
Suna engraves the nameplate in front of the Miya’s house into his memory. He trails at the very back of the group behind Aran and Kita, with Atsumu and Osamu leading them past the gate to the door. Akagi looks around the place beside him, pointing out the bonsai trees that are the twins’ father’s hobby.
“Welcome!” Atsumu cheers and opens the door. The group files in, taking off their shoes and stepping inside.
It is a big house for four people. Traditional paintings hang along the wall of the hallway leading deeper into the house. Suna has seen some parts of the house from the photos that Osamu sent him, but being in it physically is a lot different. Their house is best described as a clash of personality. Their mother’s paintings occupy the wall space while their father’s passion for plants turn almost every available shelf and furniture surface into an indoor garden. Then there’s light wood furniture everywhere which is probably Atsumu’s taste. The kitchen is full of appliances that Suna has no idea what it does, courtesy of Osamu.
“You can put your bag in the living room for the time being. We’ll deal with room arrangement later.” Osamu instructs.
Suna leaves his duffle bag that contains his sleeping clothes and toiletries on the floor and goes into the kitchen, where Atsumu is already pulling out vegetables and meat from the fridge.
The Miya twins proposed a sleepover at their house during the weekend because their parents were going to their father’s boss’ son’s funeral and didn’t want just the two of them at home. Suna has been looking forward to this. It feels like a dream come true to be in Osamu’s private space and see him so at home in the way he walks and drifts around the kitchen with ease.
“Do you need help with anything?” Suna asks when Osamu put a colander full of shrimp under the running tap.
“Yes,” Osamu immediately said. “Can you pluck the lettuce leaves, cut them in half, and rinse them? The colanders are in that cabinet over there.”
Kita wanders in a few minutes later and is sent to make meatballs from the marinated ground pork that is in the fridge. The rest comes in and gets a job assigned to them by the head chef.
Suna loses himself in the lull of chopping and running water sound. The pot is set on an electric stove on the dining table, broth heating up. Akagi finishes trimming the shrimp’s antennas and plates them in a wide bowl. Atsumu pulls out kimchi and seaweed salad and puts them at the center of the table. Suna pours the lettuce into a big bowl and transfers it to the table at the same time that Aran gives the miso soup on the stove a final quick stir and turns off the dial. Kita’s meatballs look the most symmetrical Suna has ever seen.
With all ingredients laid out on the table, Osamu takes off his apron and leaves it in the kitchen before joining the team who is already seated. He grabs two bottles of soda from the fridge and takes his seat.
“Itadakimasu!”
Sukiyaki is typically a messy meal. Soup slouches out of the ladle and food drops onto the table, but they laid out a disposable table cover beforehand, so no one minds.
There is a couple minutes of silence as everyone is eating their first fill of dinner, but it is soon broken by Akagi when he looks up from his bowl.
“Ya look really comfortable in the kitchen, Osamu. Do ya cook a lot?”
“I do. I like cooking.” Osamu says between bites of sliced pork belly. He chews thoughtfully, “I’m even thinking of doing something food related after graduation.”
Aran sets the ladle down and picks up his chopsticks. “Like opening ya own restaurant?”
“Something like that.”
Kita waits until he finishes chewing to talk, ever the proper one of the team. “So ya are going to retire from volleyball?”
“Yeah, most likely.” His eyes shift to Atsumu, but he quickly returns them to the pot. Suna finds it odd.
The topics switch to the third years, asking about their plan note that graduation is looming over them. Aran plans to continue his volleyball career, having been scouted by some teams already, while Kita and Akagi are retiring.
Despite the initial concerns for leftovers, they finish all the food. Akagi looks at the empty dishes as if he could believe his eyes. They cleans up and migrates over to the living room to laze around while waiting for digestion.
“Do ya have any games, Miya?” Akagi drawls from his face down position on the long couch. Suna tucks his legs to his chest and sit comfortably in one of the single couches, while Kita and Aran are on the floor in front of the coffee table.
“Oh yeah!” Atsumu perks up, his bad mood at dinner forgotten, “which kind, board games? Console games?”
They vote, and console games won. Osamu pulls out several consoles from the TV cabinet and distributes them. After a long discussion over what game to play, they settle with Mario Kart. And that’s where peace ends.
Suna is immediately glad that he is on a single couch when Atsumu starts clawing at Osamu and catches Akagi who has the misfortune of sitting in the middle in their playfight. Osamu throws a pillow across Akagi to Atsumu, but Atsumu smacks it away, sending it flying at the back of Aran’s head. Then Aran’s car slides out of control and pushes everyone else off track.
“Oi!” Atsumu yells instantly.
“I thought we were comrades, Aran!” Akagi whines, tring to get his spinning car under control.
Osamu catches the third years’ mistake and latches onto it, “There is no team! Were ya cheating?”
“Atsumu, stop kicking me.” Kita makes his two cents known when the activity on the couch behind him is getting too erratic.
Suna tries to make himself as small as possible on the single couch to avoid being the target and attempts to discreetly maneuver his car away from the group without notice.
Unfortunately, Osamu sees him rounding the corner. “Oi, where are ya going?!” He quickly disengages from Atsumu and chases after Suna.
Suna panics and presses the turbo button. His car propels forward and almost doesn’t make the next sudden turn. “Why are you racing me? Go race Atsumu!”
“No one gets in front of me!”
The game continues in that fashion until Atsumu successfully skids Osamu with a banana peel and arrives at the finish line first.
“Hell yeah!” He jumps up from the couch and punches his fist. “See, ‘Samu? I’m the best at games!”
“Huh? Ya only won because I lost balance when ya pushed Akagi onto me!” Osamu bites back, which was true. Atsumu did body slam into Akagi, which made him almost nudged Osamu off the couch.
Atsumu, however, does not care about how the specific comes to be. He puffs up his chest and crosses his arms. “Oh? What’s this? Are ya a sore loser, ‘Samu?”
Osamu clenches his jaws, the veins on his forehead look like it is ready to burst. But he catches Suna from the corner of his eyes and an idea comes into his head. He smiles sickly sweet at his twin. “How about this, if ya win against Rin-chan in a rhythm game, I’ll admit that ya are the best at games.”
Even while he is saying it, Osamu looks like he is swallowing limes. His face scrunched up in obstinacy.
Atsumu gives Suna a puzzled look. Suna gives the same look back. “And why would I do that?”
“Are ya afraid ya’ll lose?”
One sentence is all it takes to rile up the setter. He is so predictable like that.
Atsumu turns to Suna, who winces at the foreboding battles, and rudely points a finger at him. “Fine. I’ll play one game with Rin-chan. And I’ll have ya call me a Game Master if I win.”
“Deal,” Osamu says through grinding teeth. Then he sends a fierce glare at Suna with a clear message: Do not lose , while Atsumu looks like he is promising a painful death for Suna.
Suna wants to cry and begs for mercy. Don’t drag him into whatever is between the Miya!
Aran has the nerves to give him a thumbs up.
Resigning himself to his fate, Suna picks up the console and waits for the game to load the most difficult song it has. He swears Atsumu and Osamu are so similar in that regard. He’ll fight to death if anyone dares to argue differently.
Best to beat them at their best game or whatever. Suna would be glad to just win any game at all.
Atsumu, as it turns out, is better at rhythm games than Osamu. He maintains his score well in the beginning and manages to get a GOOD on the more tricky patterns instead of plain MISS . Still, he is nowhere as good as Suna. By the first minute of the song, the point gap increases as Suna claims himself a PERFECT from most beats, and so does Atsumu’s volume.
The frustrated noises he makes when he misses a beat makes Suna want to shrink in on himself even more and just melt into the couch. He has half a mind to give Atsumu a handicap when the setter gets so frustrated that he springs out of the couch and stands in front of the TV, turning deaf ears to the protests from other people on the long couch that he is blocking the screen.
Sitting on the single couch adjacent to the TV, Suna has no such problem and finishes the song with the highest best score.
“No way!” Atsumu yelps and whips his head to look at Suna as if he has never seen him before. With Suna scoring twice the amount, it is hard to make excuses. “Are you a god?”
“No, but I’m good at it.” Let it never be said that Suna is humble.
Osamu snorts, which draws Atsumu’s attention back to him. The sight of his twin getting what he wants doesn’t seem to sit well with the setter. The fire in his eyes burns once more.
“One more game!” He demands and selects a song with a lower level of difficulty this time.
Ah, Suna is having a deja vu.
***
The games keep them occupied until ten, when Kita suggests that they start getting ready for bed.
Akagi groans, “It’s only ten…”
Kita gives Akagi a long look. Suna can see the moment realization dawns on Akagi’s face that he is about to lose the argument and braces himself for it. “But we have to take turns taking a shower. Atsumu takes a long shower, by the time all of us are cleaned up it will already be eleven.”
“Oi!” The one guy who receives the honorable mention protests.
“Then we have to decide on the sleeping arrangement. Set out the futons and pillows. Then y’all will spend at least half an hour on your phone in bed with the lights off. Really, it will probably be midnight when y’all get to sleep. I have seen what your routines are at the training camp.”
The scarily accurate assessment causes everyone to groan in harmony. Suna sighs and slouches further into the soft cushion. He does not appreciate being called out like that.
They take turns using the bathroom to clean up. Atsumu vehemently denies that he takes a long shower, but disappears inside the fogged up room for almost half an hour, much to the chagrin of Osamu who has to deal with it everyday but still nowhere near accepting it as the truth of life.
When it is Suna’s turn, he closes the sliding door to the shower and looks around for the body wash. The finds an array of scent, from sweet lavender on the far left, to aloe vera, green tea, pine, to cocoa. Curious, he picks up the green tea scented body wash and unscrews the pump. He puts the bottle under his nose and inhales.
It smells like Osamu. The earthy scent of green tea and something lightly sweet underneath it reminds him of the moment when Suna places himself just right next to Osamu, when a waft of wind carries the lingering scent on his skin with it.
Suna puts the pump back on and squirts a generous amount of body wash onto his hand. He hopes Osamu doesn’t mind him using his things.
He emerges from the shower a few minutes later smelling like Osamu. He observes his reflection in the mirror as he brushes his teeth and notices that his cheeks look a little pink from using hot water. Suna uses moisturizer on his face, collects his things into a bag, and leaves the bathroom.
Osamu is waiting in the hallway, his back leaning back against the wall, a change of cloth hugged to his chest. He seems to be deep in thought as he doesn’t react when Suna approaches, studying the wall on the other side of the hallway absentmindedly.
Suna stops next to him and calls out, “Hey, I’m done. You can use the bathroom now.”
Osamu blinks and turns. His eyes meet Suna’s and pauses. He blinks and cocks his head slightly to the left, as if he is trying to figure out something, before his expression clears. Osamu lifts his brow. “It’s a nice scent, isn’t it?” He comments simply and walks around him to get to the bathroom.
The door shuts, but Suna still stands there, frozen.
What was that? For a second, Osamu’s eyes trailed from his face to his sleep shirt down to his feet, before traveling back up to meet his gaze. As if he was taking note of something.
***
In the end, it is as Kita predicted. They gather back in the living room five minutes past eleven. Those who finish early bring the futon down to the living room, stacked next to the wall.
“We should all sleep here together.” Atsumu says to Kita’s questioning face. “Better than cramping six athletes into two small bedrooms.”
Osamu points to the space in front of the TV. “We just have to move the couch to the side so we can have a wide space in the middle.”
“Sounds good.” Kita agrees with a nod.
It takes less than half an hour for them to move all the couches away, arrange the futon on the floor, put on the sheets and pillow cases, and unroll the spare comforter. Then two more minutes to reverse the direction of the futon because apparently sleeping with your head in the direction of the sunset is a bad omen, says Aran.
Suna tucks the pillow into a black fabric and throws it to the top of the futon. He looks around the living room that has been transformed to their temporary living quarters. Kita turns off the light.
“You have 4 sets of beddings just sitting around in the closet?”
Osamu lays down next to him despite having his own full-sized bed upstairs and picks up his phone. “We have a lot of extended relatives. They stay over at our house when they come for a vacation around here.”
Suna hums and files away the information in his brain. He texts his mom to let her know that he is having a sleepover at a friend’s house and gives her the address.
The chatters in the living room die down as each of them turns their attention to their phone after a few hours of not checking their texts and calls. Suna glances at Kita at the end of their neat rows and finds that the captain is already closing his eyes. Sometimes he finds the level of disciplines exhibited by his captain a little scary.
Suna returns to his phone, but his mind isn’t on the device. He smells like Osamu, and the man himself is lying next to him, just a hand-length away. Suna can hear the sound of his breathing in the quietness and the soft rustling whenever he shifts.
Friday. January 24th, 2014. Final Day.
Suna opens his note app. He didn’t bring his notebooks in fear of them being discovered, so he makes do with typing out today’s events on his phone and then copy it to his notebooks when he gets home.
When he puts his phone down, only Akagi is still awake with the light from his phone illuminating his face. Suna pulls the blanket up to his chin and turns to lay on his side. He always sleeps better curled up underneath the comforter rather than laying on his back. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, Suna finds Osamu’s face just inches away from him, sleeping soundly.
There is something magical about seeing Osamu’s face in the dark, all guards leaving him, only serenity on his face.
Suna curls up a bit more, his heart beats wildly in his chest. He closes his eyes and breathes in the gentle scent of green tea.
Saturday. January 25th, 2014. Trial Day.
Like all the highschoolers during a sleepover, they have a grand plan for the weekends. After breakfast, they sit down in a circle around the coffee table, which is still tucked to the side of the living room, and play board games slash party games marathon.
Akagi introduces a game called Never Have I Ever that he has learned from his middle school reunion, and the result is as Suna has expected. Chaos.
Kita, Aran, and himself start with benign statements. Aran goes with “Never have I ever failed a test,” to which only Akagi bends a finger. He looks around in disbelief and accuses Atsumu of lying.
Interestingly, Osamu jumps to his twin’s defense. “Trust me, he has never failed. Not when I have anything to say about it.” He smirks and shoots Atsumu a knowing look, but doesn’t reveal anything more. Atsumu huffs and puffs but doesn’t say anything either, to Akagi’s disappointment. Aran probably knows, judging from the way he nods along with Osamu. Childhood friend privilege.
“Never have I ever been late to school.”
The whole group minus Suna groans pathetically, protesting that Kita’s statement is too strict. But then they realize that Suna hasn’t bent his finger and balks at him.
“No way!” Atsumu is in denial. “I thought ya were one of us!”
What one of us, Suna doesn’t ask.
Okay, maybe he hasn’t been that truthful. Suna has been late to class before, many times. But they were all during the trial days. No one remembered, and his tardiness isn’t present anywhere on his school record. If there is no evidence, it didn’t happen, right?
Suna spends two seconds thinking about what his turn will be. There aren’t that many things that he hasn’t done, considering that he has half the amount of days in his life to just do whatever he wants without consequence. He has gotten into a fight to the point of punching someone before. He has illegally driven his dad’s car around the neighborhood when both him and mom are out of the house. He has gotten arrested because he wanted to try breaking the law. But only the final days count, remember?
“Never have I ever forgotten to bring my homework.” Because on the day that he is supposed to forget, he has a chance to redo.
Everyone but Kita bends their fingers.
Aran narrows his eyes at him. “Who are ya?”
“Oi, I don’t see you questioning Kita-san,” Suna protests, indignant on behalf of his final day self.
Aran shrugs. “Kita is Kita, you know?”
Suna definitely knows.
They go around using up their turn to make as many people bend their fingers as they can, except Suna seems to defy all expectations that they have for him.
“Never have I ever met someone who’s my type!” Akagi announced, looking proud at his own intelligence.
Suna frowns, “What kind of unrealistic type do you have?” Is it possible to not ever find anyone, even a stranger passing by on the street, who is your type? Even a celebrity crush?
“Less about me and more about ya. Now reveal yourself!”
Suna bends his finger while trying not to immediately look at Osamu and outs himself to the crowd.
Everyone bends their fingers, even Kita. Now Suna really wants to know what Akagi’s type is.
In the end, Suna wins by sheer unpredictability. It seems like living his double day life has caused the discrepancy between his outward personality and his achievement. Everyone seems surprised that he isn’t a slacker even when he rarely expresses enthusiasm in anything.
Suna doesn’t think that he is a slacker, but it’s hard to conjure eagerness when he has already done something before.
Of course, they have to take a break for lunch since Kita is there to act as a supervisor with an iron grip. But once that is done, they jump right back to the games.
Suna likes board games, but not the kind that they are playing right now. They are playing Catan, a game infamous for taking literally hours to find a winner. Suna sits out with the excuse that he has been using too much brain power for the previous games and cannot think anymore. Surprisingly, Osamu also asks to sit out. He even endures the jabs and taunts from his twin and still insists that he isn’t going to play this one.
Both of them sit on the couch, watching the rest of the team trade resources between themselves for half an hour with no one obviously in the lead, before Suna yawns and stands up to stretch his legs.
Osamu glances up at him from the phone and looks at the time. He spends a minute observing the game board and decides that they are still nowhere near finishing.
“Wanna go for a walk?” He asks, cracking his neck and bending his back. “I have to drop by the supermarket to get more skewers for tonight. Forgot to get them last time I went.”
Suna shivers at the thought of going out into the cold, but he nods. It’s an opportunity to spend time alone with Osamu.
They grab their coats and step out. Osamu wraps a scarf around his neck, while Suna zips his coat all the way up to his chin.
“It’s just ten minutes from here,” Osamu says and leads the way.
Suna vaguely remembers what Osamu’s neighborhood looks like from when he walks the man home while Atsumu was at the All-Japan Youth Training Camp.
“I can’t believe Akagi-san has never met anyone his type.” Osamu brings up the game that they played. “What do ya think his type is?”
“Hmm…” Suna frowns and tries to think, “I don’t know. Maybe an alien? You know, it's a one in a hundred million chance of meeting those.”
Osamu laughs, white puff of air exhaling from his mouth. Suna watches him from the corner of his eyes and drinks the way Osamu’s cheeks scrunch up when he smiles.
“What is your type?” Suna asks, finding his chance to talk about the topic without having to bring it up himself.
“Me? Let’s see…” Osamu tilts his head up in thought, his mouth curved down slightly, “I like people who are observant and not too talkative. They notice things about others and don’t feel the need to always fill the silence with something. Also tall. Athletic, or at least active. Down to do things with me.”
That sounds reasonable. But it doesn’t answer the question that Suna is the most curious to know. He doesn’t really know what the best way to bring it up is, so he goes for the simple way. Osamu appreciates blunt, simple questions.
“What about boys?” Suna hides a wince. That comes out a bit out of context.
Osamu glances at him, caught off guard. “Are ya asking if I’m gay?”
Yes, that was what Suna was trying to convey. “Kinda?”
Osamu returns his gaze to the street in front of him. The supermarket is just around the corner. Suna can see the big sign above the automatic door that spells out AEON .
It seems like he isn’t going to receive an answer. Osamu goes ahead and steps up to the door which opens with a soft whirl. Suna’s heart drops. He screws up. Big time. But that’s okay, his brain supplies. He has the final day. He won’t ask about it again. He won’t.
But that doesn’t make his chance of dating Osamu any higher. If he doesn’t like boys…
“I don’t really care.” He says when Suna dejectedly catches up. “If a boy fits the rest of what I look for, I don’t really care.”
Wait, what?
Suna looks up and only sees the side of Osamu’s face as he presses a basket in his hand.
“Here, hold this. Maybe I’ll get dessert too now that we’re here.”
Friday. February 21th, 2014. Trial Day.
Suna has been feeling nervous since morning. Despite his best effort to not let the anticipation get to him, his eyes are drawn to Osamu who sits just a desk away, all the while words circle in his head.
He has been planning this for days. He comes to school early every morning for the past four days to use the computer at the library, searching for a restaurant that he thinks Osamu would like. He has been asking his friends who have dated before about the places they go to on a date. But this is not a date. He just…wants to hang out. Yeah, just hanging out.
Suna is going to invite Osamu after school, casually when the last period ends and most classmates leave to go to their club activities. He waits, feeling like his heart is literally trying to jump out of his chest as different subjects pass. Teachers come in and out of the class, but nothing registers. He shouldn’t be this nervous. It’s a trial day!
But he does. He’s so hopeless.
When the last bell rings, Suna stalls his time by slowly packing away homework and glancing around the classroom as others trickle out.
“Did sensei say we have homework for science?” He hurriedly asks when Osamu raises up from his seat with a bag slung over his shoulder.
Osamu looks puzzled, which is fair. Suna doesn’t usually forget. “Yeah, two pages in the workbook.”
“Okay.” He put the workbook in his bag.
Osamu looks like he is in a hurry. He glances at the clock on the wall and backs away. “I have to talk to the career counselor about something. I’ll see ya at the gym.”
Suna jumps up, panicked. His chair screeches. “Can you wait a bit? I have something to tell you.”
Osamu dislikes it when people don’t say what they mean. He hates it even more when people stumble over their words in their hesitation over whether they want to say what is on their mind. He’s showing Suna incredible patience when he angles his body back towards him and blinks. “What is it?”
Suna looks around the room. Half the class is still here. “Uh…”
He doesn’t have to hesitate! He isn’t going to confess or ask Osamu on a date. Friends ask each other to hang out all the time. Completely normal!
Seeing Osamu’s face darkens the longer he has to wait, and the occasional twitch like he is debating whether he should leave Suna here and go to his counseling session, Suna makes up his mind.
“Do you want to hang out with me tomorrow?”
Classmates around him still laugh and joke with each other without paying him and Osamu any attention, but Suna feels as if all the sound in the world is sucked into the vacuum until only the beating of his heart is left echoing. The color of his cheek darkens to a shard of pink at the slight stumble near the end of the sentence when his nerves get the better of him. The hands that he has planted on the table shake, as if they are supporting his whole weight.
Holy shit. Is he that far gone for Osamu already? To the point that he can’t even be composed on a day that he knows won’t matter?
If anything, Osamu looks even more confused than before. “Why are ya so nervous just to ask me to hang out?” He says, pointedly looking at Suna’s trembling hands. Then he meets Suna’s eyes and searches his face. “Is it really just a hangout?”
Suna can’t do this. Osamu isn’t supposed to figure it out. It’s too soon!
Except, is it, really?
Suna has been talking with Osamu a lot more, not to mention learning things about him that few people in his class or in the team knows. Their closeness right now was unimaginable to Suna three months ago. He has made good progress. And Osamu seems to warm up to him a lot more too. Doesn’t he have a pretty good chance right now? And if now, well, he has tomorrow to figure out.
“Rin-chan, I will have to go to counseling.” Seeing Suna still stuck in his thoughts, Osamu sighs. “There’s not much time until practice. Ya can text me what yoa want to say later.”
He turns around and leaves.
Suna misses his chance. Lightheaded, he falls into his seat.
He should have braved it and at least tried. He has the next day to fix whatever he fails. But now he doesn’t even have a clue of what to change when he lets the chance pass by without doing anything. Should he have been more straightforward?
Suna spends the whole night going through what he should do tomorrow. Should he just…postpone it altogether? He has many other times to ask Osamu to hang out when he has a better plan.
“Urgh…” He groans, pushing his head into his hands. His two trusty notebooks lay open on the bed in front of him. The angry bird plush is on the floor due to Suna’s frustrated bout of kicking and squirming earlier. “I totally thought it was a good time…”
What should he do now? He hates his indecision.
His ability may give him an advantage of redoing whatever has gone wrong the first time around, but it also comes with drawbacks. The most prominent is the effects it has on Suna’s personality on the final days. If the Suna on trial days is usually reckless and adventurous, the Suna on the final days is the exact opposite. His desire to take risks on the final days is close to zero, knowing that he has the next trial day to try it without consequence. He knows that part of himself.
Still, something in his gut tells him that today after class was a good time evenafter the epic fail that he has just experienced. No one else has double days like him, but they still manage to make it work and face any rejections head on. Everyone but him has accepted the fact that there is no redo as a fact of life. And here he is, afraid and indecisive. His ability has spoiled him, hasn’t it?
He bites his lip and rolls over onto his side, curling up a bit until he can feel the comforter wrinkling underneath him.
Friday. February 21th, 2014. Final Day.
Despite thinking that he will embrace the uncertainty and take risks, it is an idea that’s easier said than done. After the last bell rings, he finds himself unable to gather up courage again.
“Rin-chan, I will have to go to counseling.” There it comes. Suna has hesitated long enough to circle back to square one, where Osamu will walk away like yesterday. “There’s not much time until practice–”
No. His chance is slipping away. Nonono. Not this time!
“Right, sorry, I mean…no, it’s not…uh, just a hangout,” Suna stumbles over his speech, conscious of a couple classmates who are still in the room. He takes a deep breath. “It’s…um…a date.” It comes out soft like a whisper, uncaught by the other occupants.
Looks like that isn’t a response that Osamu anticipates. His eyes widen and his jaws fall slack slightly. “I-” He glances at the clock again then back to Suna, who suddenly cannot meet his eyes. He presses his lips together and says, “Walk home with me after practice.”
Osamu leaves. The rapid beating of Suna’s heart underneath his uniform remains.
Suna spends the entire practice time unable to look at Osamu without the rush of self-consciousness brushing against the shore, so he tries his best not to let his eyes wander to the opposite hitter at all. And that results in him being distracted. He misses a jump to block a feint that normally wouldn’t escape his read and messes up the coordination of the team when he deliberately doesn’t look at Osamu when he saves a spike.
Coach is livid. Suna hunches in on himself in front of a human manifestation of rage, playing with his fingers as he waits out the round of shouts that he knows he deserves. His play is a disaster. He feels the eyes of the team on the back of his head and knows that among them is the person who makes him like this.
Eventually, coach sighs and asks him if anything is wrong.
“No,” Suna lies, “I just can’t concentrate.”
Coach massages the space between his brows. “I can see that much, Suna. What I want to know is why you can’t focus.”
Suna avoids the coach’s eyes in the way that he knows will tick the man off, but he can’t say the reason out loud. Fortunately, someone intervenes on his behalf.
“Don’t all of us have those days once in a while, coach?” Suna recognizes that voice as Osamu. It sounds so close, as if Osamu is standing right behind him. He looks down. Indeed there is another shadow on top of him on the gym floor. “I’m sure he’ll be better by the next practice.”
Coach looks between both of them and sighs. “I hope that’s true, Suna. I won’t let you get away if by Monday you’re still playing like this.”
Then they are dismissed to clean up the equipment and get change. Suna is pulling on his sweatpants over his shorts when he hears Osamu telling Atsumu to go ahead because he has somewhere to drop by on the way home.
“And why can’t I go with ya?” Atsumu demands. Suna can picture him crossing his arm and standing right in Osamu’s personal space.
Osamu’s irritated voice replies, “I don’t need ya to be my ma. Get lost, ‘Tsumu.”
“I swear ya are having a rebellious stage…” Atsumu’s complaints drift further away. Suna turns and finds that everyone has left. Osamu bends down to pick up his duffle bag and school bag, slinging both over each shoulder as he straightens.
For the first time since their talk in the classroom, their eyes meet. Osamu pauses, then he turns and leaves the changing room. “Let’s go.”
They walk home in silence. Suna snuggles his cheeks into his scarf, his shoulder raises almost to his ears, a futile attempt at keeping warm. They take a long way back, turning left at the intersection in front of the convenience store instead of left. Suna watches warm yellow light from the window of each house they pass, a contrast to the darkening sky. He shivers when a strong gust of wind brushes into the street.
“Ya want to ask me out on a date before you even confess,” Osamu states, still not looking at Suna who is walking beside him. Headlights from a passing car illuminate the side of his face. Suna can’t clearly see what kind of expression he has on his face. “Oh right, ya were going to disguise that as a friend’s hangout.”
Suna thought he was being smart and sneaky. Sometimes he forgets that Osamu is observant and has a terrifyingly keen sense.
Osamu turns into a park. It is empty on a cold evening like this. Kids who usually play at the sandbox are already in a warm house with their parents, watching TV or playing with their toys. It is a little dark, with only street lights giving visibility in equal intervals. But Suna can see the dim glow as being a bit romantic if he tries hard enough.
Suna follows Osamu to the middle of the park, where a big tree stands surrounded by benches. He turns around to face Suna and asks, “So?”
Suna stops when Osamu stops. He is completely out of his depth, not understanding what it is that Osamu wants. “What?”
Osamu, for his part, looks incredibly amused. His posture is open, his hands stuffed in his pocket. “Are ya going to confess to me or not?”
Suna has a second to question himself if this whole situation is real or if it’s a part of a dream and he is actually sleeping in his bedroom right now. Whichever one it is, it is a chance.
Suna squares his shoulder and thinks about all the effort he has put into getting to know Osamu, coming out of it falling even deeper for the man. This might be the most encouragement he will ever get from Osamu.
He summons his courage and looks deep into Osamu’s gray eyes. “I like you, Osamu. Please be my boyfriend.”
The response is immediate. Osamu blushes despite the confident gesture he displays. “I thought ya were never going to say it. Well, if ya didn’t, I would have said it myself.”
Then he gives suna the most beautiful smile. “Yes, I’ll be your boyfriend.”
“So, what is it about tomorrow?”
Book of Slightly Less Shame
Confessed to Osamu. We’re dating now. :)
***
Monday. 14rd July, 2014. Final Day.
They have been dating for five months. It is the happiest five months of Osamu’s life. So far, they have dated four times on the weekends, Suna proposed two of the times and the rest Osamu brought up.
Holding hands with Osamu isn’t supposed to be earth-shattering, but when he does, Suna feels like a missing part of him is found. He likes the way Osamu’s hand grips his firmly whenever they link, grounding him in the moment.
Still hung up over the sad meal that Suna makes for himself, Osamu cooks for him, bringing them to school in an insulated lunch box so that it can last until he gets home. Suna eats a lot more as a result.
They text almost every night. Osamu asks for help with English homework, the one subject that he isn’t good at, and gives him more songs to listen to. Suna sends him his songs in return.
On the day when they don’t have practice, they hang out on the rooftop. Not many people go there after school. If they choose the right tucked-in corner, no one would see two boys sitting shoulder to shoulder, leaning against each other.
Today is one of those days. Suna sits on the rooftop, his legs stretched out in front of him. Osamu sits next to him, his knees tucked up. He tells Osamu about his dream of opening his own restaurant, although he doesn’t know what kind of food he will sell yet. He is going to start a part-time job at an izakaya during summer break, which is quickly approaching in a week.
“‘Tsumu doesn’t like that I’m quitting,” he says quietly, his gaze faraway. “He thinks I was going to keep playing volleyball with him forever, be a rival for him even in the professional league.”
Osamu leans his back on the concrete wall, tilting his head up to look at the pink sky. The downward tilt of his mouth tells Suna all he needs to know about his boyfriend’s mood. Osamu is trying to figure things out.
Suna has never imagined that Osamu would open up to him this quickly after they start dating, to the point where he would talk about what’s bothering him and his vulnerabilities. It is as if Osamu’s wall crumbled in one night, when he said yes to Suna’s confession, giving Suna a full view of himself.
He lays himself bare for Suna’s inspection without fear, both the good and the bad. He let Suna into the deepest part of his mind, his frustration with Atsumu’s daily shenanigans and his joy at discovering new recipes to try. Because of his openness, Suna feels as if he has been dating Osamu for years.
“I love volleyball, ya know? I wouldn’t keep playing it all throughout middle school and high school otherwise.” He sighs, his hand that is linked to Suna’s own in his lap squeezes tighter. “But I think ‘Tsumu has always loved it a tad bit more than I do. And I have other passions that are stronger than volleyball as well.”
“It’s not like he’s going to be alone from now on. I’ll go to every match that he plays, shout his name louder than anyone until the press tease him about it. But to him, it’s not the same if I’m not on the court.”
Suna squeezes back, giving Osamu encouragement and comfort through a silent gesture. He listens.
“He’s being so aggressive about it, and I just can’t help but respond as harshly. I lose my temper so easily when it comes to ‘Tsumu. Not a single time did we talk without one of us shouting. Sometimes I wish I was an only child…”
“You don’t mean that,” Suna knows. For as much as Atsumu and Osamu fight, they also encourage each other. They are brothers, friends, rivals. A life without Atsumu would be lacking.
Osamu smiles softly, not the usual smirk he likes to do. “No, I don’t. I just wish it was easier to settle this thing between us.”
Suna thinks that Atsumu just needs time. While it is true that the twins grew up with each other their entire life, they are not unhealthily co-independent on each other. It’s the change that makes the future seem so uncertain for Atsumu who has always known his twin to be a constant. Suna tells Osamu so.
Osamu hums, nodding. He knows. Again, he just wished that it was easier.
“I have something to tell you.” Suna suddenly says, the thoughts come to him so spontaneously that he doesn’t really think before speaking.
Osamu snorts, turning away from the sky to fix his eyes on him. “Should I expect something big? Ya said that on the day ya tried to ask me out on a date too.”
Suna shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “Maybe. Depends on whether you believe me or not.”
Sensing the tension behind his posture, Osamu drops his knees back to the floor and sits straighter. All his attention is on Suna. Suna likes feeling so important under Osamu’s intense gaze.
“What is it?” Osamu prompts.
Suna decides that it is time to tell Osamu about his ability.
It is a big step on Suna’s part. He has told a few people about the lost days which only he knows of, including his parents. They didn’t believe him, of course. Suna doesn’t know if it is because he was five years old when he told them or because it was too bizarre for them to believe it was anything more than a wild bout of childlike imagination.
“This is the second time today happened for me.”
Judging by the slight frown on Osamu’s face, he doesn’t understand. That’s better than him outright calling Suna a liar.
“Ever since the day I was born, I have lived every day twice, Osamu. This is the second time you told me about Atsumu on the rooftop on July 13th.”
Suna explains the mechanism behind his ability in the simplest and most precise way he can. The whole time, Osamu never turns away from him. He nods along as he listens, trying to understand the odd things that he was told.
When Suna runs out of things to say, Osamu stays quiet for a long time to gather his thoughts. Suna finds himself praying for Osamu to not disregard his speech as delusion.
“Ya parents didn’t believe you when ya told them?”
“No.”
“Alright,” Osamu says slowly, as if tasting the words on his tongue. “Tomorrow is ya trial day, right? Ask me where I used to hide my toys from ‘Tsumu as a child. I will answer. Then tell me what I say on the next final day.”
Suna knows right away what Osamu is trying to do. He wants to prove if Suna really lives double days. Osamu’s memory of giving Suna permission to ask will stay with him until the trial day tomorrow. And when the next final day comes, Osamu won’t remember that he has told Suna the answer, but if Suna knows something that only Osamu knows, then the period of days when Suna remembers but he doesn’t must exist.
His heart swells when he realizes that Osamu is taking him seriously.
“Okay,” Suna says.
Tuesday. 15rd July, 2014. Final Day.
“You hid your toys in your dad’s study, in the second drawer of the file cabinet. There’s always a box placed in front of it so Atsumu never thought to check,” Suna says confidently when Osamu comes to stand next to his desk first thing in the morning instead of throwing himself into his seat like he usually does. “Am I right?”
Osamu openly looks at him in wonder now. “…Ya are right.” He sits down and turns to Suna. “So what will happen today?”
The routine of reflecting and recounting daily events to himself before bed helps him remember everything that happened yesterday.
“There’s going to be a pop quiz during history. You’ll get 18 out of 20. One of the questions you’ll get wrong is the year that Oda Nobunaga died, so look that up.”
Osamu seems to accept that Suna somehow has the impossible ability to redo each day in a stride. He immediately pulls out his history textbook and flips through the pages.
“After practice, your mom will text you to get more eggs from the convenience store on the way home because she miscalculates the amount she needs.” Suna pauses, trying to think if there is anything else worth mentioning, “Oh, you’ll spike into the back of Atsumu’s head by mistake.”
Osamu looks up and raises his brows, “How the hell did I do that by mistake?”
“Your shoelace was loose. You stepped on it, which made you jump too low. You tried to fix it by spiking towards the back where Atsumu was setting against the wall.” Suna recalls vividly the moment that the entire gym went silent in anticipation of Atsumu’s explosion. “Atsumu tried to get back at you during the game until Kita-sa scolded him.”
Osamu snorts at that, “That’s hilarious. Let’s keep it.”
He looks back at the textbook and skims through the section that will be on the quiz. He repeats it soundlessly before closing the book.
“Is that how you know where the balls are going?”
Suna shrugs, “Sometimes. Usually, when I change something in the game, everything after that point also changes.” He explains, watching Osamu carefully to make sure that he follows, “Most events are consequences of the previous events, so if the past changes even slightly, there’s a good chance that the present changes. I only redo the plays that are bad enough for the new consequence to sound more acceptable. Afterwards, there’s no preparing it. I just play it by ear.”
Osamu stares at him for a long while. For a moment, Suna half expects Osamu to accuse him of cheating. He won’t deny it. What can he call the ability to redo the past if not cheating? Everyone gets one chance, but he gets two. Of course, it isn’t fair.
The accusation never comes. Osamu throws his hands in the air as if to say well, what can I do about it and says, “At least I know who to go to if I want my future read.”
Thursday. 7th August, 2014. Final Day.
It’s almost anticlimactic how easily Osamu accepts Suna’s secret and incorporates it into his life as if it is the most natural thing in the world. He helps Suna look for a better course of action on the final days when the trial days don’t go well. Osamu rarely asks Suna about what happens on trial days, saying that if Suna feels like something is important, he trusts Suna to bring it up.
More importantly, Osamu doesn’t get mad when Suna reveals the attempts at redoing the past only to screw it up even more on the final days, when the consequences make a mark in the stream of time.
.
.
.
Sunday, 10th January, 2021. Final Day.
Suna wakes up to a morning alarm. The other side of the bed is empty. He slowly pushes himself up from the soft mattress and yawns widely once for good measure. The apartment smells like coffee, which is a good indicator of what his boyfriend is doing.
He swings his leg out of the comforter and shivers when cool air touches his skin. He quickly throws on a thicker jacket and stumbles out to the kitchen.
Osamu is sitting at the dining table, a notebook and a cup of coffee in front of him. He looks up when he hears feet shuffling from the hallway. “G’morning,” he says, sipping from his cup, his eyes lowered to the notebook. “An eventful day we are going to have today, huh?”
After they newly graduated from high school, getting in touch with each other became harder when Suna was always training with EJP Raijin at their facility and Osamu busy with setting up his own food brand. Their schedules were always mismatched, which made spending a long period of time talking and catching up in one sitting difficult. Osamu proposed an idea to have Suna send a picture of his double-day notes that he already wrote everyday to him so that he is able to catch up on how Suna has been in his own time, and he does the same by sending his own version of diary to Suna.
Now, after they moved into an apartment together following the stabilization of their careers, Osamu still reads Suna’s notes. It’s nice that Osamu also knows what has happened on trial days. For the first time, Suna has someone to talk to about the days that are as real to him as the final days are to others.
“Yeah, I can’t believe I agreed to that interview.” He sighs, going into the kitchen to get himself apple juice. “But it’s too late to cancel now.”
Osamu looks the same as he did in high school. He keeps the gray dye of his hair, saying that he has become used to seeing himself in the mirror with that color. Only his shoulders are broader, muscles filling in the length of his bones, and the line in his neck more pronounced. His neckline looks very sexy, if Suna has anything to say about it.
“Just do what ya did yesterday, Rin-chan. Except maybe don’t tell the lady that you like going to the coffee on the fifth street the morning you have practice. It’s too specific.”
“Right,” he agrees. He was so flustered when he saw a big camera crew with a dozen of screen jam-packed into the room that he couldn’t regulate his mouth.
“We can go eat out together afterward. My friend is having a soft opening for the restaurant that they are going to open next week. They invited us to go try their menus.”
“The one that mostly sells vegetarian food?”
“Yep.”
Suna pauses, “If we are adding eating out to the day, then what about…” His voice cuts off as he thinks about what he is going to say. Despite the number of years that he has been together, Suna still couldn’t manage to be as stoic inside as his face portrays.
There’s a mean gleam in Osamu’s eyes when he caught onto Suna’s train of thought. “What about what?”
“You know . You read it.” Suna glowers. He really debated whether he should include it in the note last night and decided to go with it for the sake of honesty, and this is how Osamu chooses to address it? Unbelievable.
Osamu can’t keep a straight face for too long in front of his lover. He laughs heftily as he wipes tears from the corner of his eyes. “Sorry, you are just so cute getting all embarrassed like that for someone who wrote in their notes that yesterday was the best fuck of their life.”
Suna keeps his scowl and goes to sit at the table with Osamu. “Not like I lied.”
“So? How did we do it? You didn’t list the details in the notebook.”
Suna blinks. That is new. Osamu has never asked about the details of their sex before. “Why do you want to know? Are you going to bail out on me?”
“Well, I’d love to exceed your expectations.” Osamu says playfully, sending Suna a wink, to which he rolls his eyes.
Suna thinks back to the rosy tints on Osamu’s face as he moans his name, his knees hugging the side of his waist and his feet linked behind his back. He thinks of Osamu’s heavy breaths when he straddles Suna’s lap, rocking his hip painfully, teasingly slow. He still hears the raspy groan in his ears when Suna has his fingers disappeared in between Osamu’s thighs, one, two, three, four. Osamu was beautiful and masculine and attractive in all the ways that Suna would never get enough of.
“You’ve already exceeded my expectations every day, Osamu.”