Chapter Text
January 1, 2029
His first instinct, as with all things, is to tell Tsumiki.
He keeps a journal for her, where he writes down things to say to her so that he doesn't forget, but the journal's at home. He knows exactly where it is; it's on his desk in his bedroom, next to the vase of Lego flowers that he keeps forgetting to dust. If Megumi had it with him right now, he'd start the way he usually starts all his unsent letters to her: by telling her a bunch of random, inane, objective truths. Tsumiki—it's cold. Tsumiki—I forgot my scarf. Tsumiki—my hands are shaking, and my head's starting to hurt, and Yuuji didn't close the balcony door all the way when he left.
Tsumiki—I messed up.
Nobara comes out onto the balcony sometime after the chatter inside has died down to a murmur. Megumi knows that she must be in the dark about what happened—Yuuji definitely lied about the reason why he left the party early. Yuuji probably shoved on his shoes and said something like, I think I left the oven on or early job tomorrow, gotta sleep or just tired, sorry, don't mind me, but I love you all and happy new year—
Megumi can picture it in his head: Yuuji, pink hair, pink cheeks, pink tongue peeking out from between his teeth as he laughs sheepishly and makes up an excuse that does not, in any way, implicate Megumi. As always, Yuuji's first instinct is to protect him.
In any case, Nobara knows nothing. Megumi knows that she knows nothing. She also, however, knows everything, because she's sharp as a tack and—more importantly—she is Megumi's best friend. So when she pushes open the sliding glass door, scuffing her foot on the concrete to make sure Megumi knows she's there, it must be because she can tell that something's off.
"Loser," she says. Her voice is startlingly loud in the December—January?—night. Megumi doesn't respond. "You know you missed most of the games, right?"
It's a joke, in her own way. They both know that Megumi doesn't care much for the stupid games everyone else likes to play at New Year's. The only games he ever gets into are the hyper-competitive ones, and he was banned from those seven years ago because he once accidentally dropped the board into his shadow in a fit of rage.
Megumi reaches up to his collar and curls two fingers over the edge of the scarf he's wearing. Soft. Hand-knit. He wants to rip it off. He wants to take it to his grave.
Nobara makes her way over to him. She's wobbling a little, slightly tipsy, but when she sits down next to him she doesn't slump the way she would if she was truly impaired. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Megumi rolls his voice around his mouth like a piece of gum before he spits it out. "No," he says. "Not tomorrow, either."
"Day after?"
"Maybe."
"You're such a liar," Nobara says fondly, before yawning so wide that Megumi hears her jaw crack. "That's Yuuji's scarf, right?"
Megumi pinches the scarf between his thumb and forefinger. It smells faintly of Yuuji's bodywash, green apple and citrus. He doesn't respond, but Nobara still nods anyway, as if he's confirmed something to her.
"Yeah," she says, with an air of finality. "There's no way you're talking about this in two days."
"Shut up."
"What? You know I'm right."
She is. Megumi still doesn't want to admit it. He buries his face further in Yuuji's scarf and inhales, and when Nobara reaches out to wrap an arm around his shoulders, he lets her gently tug him sideways until he's leaning on her shoulder.
When Megumi thinks of going back inside—of leaving this balcony, and facing the aftermath of what happened, and going home to his empty apartment to try and fall asleep—he feels like he's going to throw up. He doesn't want to sleep tonight, because when he wakes up it'll be tomorrow. Or, at least, it will feel like tomorrow, and that will mean that Megumi has to deal with the fact that Yuuji left and the world did not end. It will be a confirmation that, yes: there is a future where Megumi kissed him and nothing good came of it. There is a future where that happens and Megumi is living in it.
"Nobara," he says, and she turns to him. She has to shift her entire body to do it, because she sits on his right, with her missing eye facing him. Some people would call it rude. Megumi knows that it's anything but.
"Yeah?" she asks.
"Do me a favour?”
“Depends,” Nobara says, narrowing her eye. “Do I have to spend money? Is this another one of your weird mental breaks?”
“Another?” Megumi repeats, incredulous. He twists his head around to stare down at her. “What do you mean, another? I don’t have weird mental breaks.”
“After Okinawa, you asked me to take you to a spa,” Nobara says. “You. To a spa.”
Megumi cringes. In his defence, Nobara had been waxing poetic about that one spa place for years, and she'd sworn on her life that it would be relaxing. But yes, he will admit that the spa was one of his worse ideas. And yes, maybe that could have been technically classified as a mental break. He'd done many strange things in the weeks (or months, if he's being honest) following his disastrous Okinawa mission with Yuuji. The spa was just one of them.
“It's nothing like that," he says. "Just—could you stay up with me? All night?"
"Oh? How forward, Fushiguro-kyun," Nobara says, batting her lashes. "At least take me out to dinner first."
Megumi levels her with a look that tells her exactly how funny he finds that joke. Nobara huffs out a laugh and knocks their heads together lightly. Megumi winces; she's got a hard skull.
"Fine, I'll stay up," she says, and Megumi can't help but relax a little. He knows that Nobara notices, because she speaks her next words carefully, like she's picking her way over a thinly frozen lake. "Can I ask why?"
Why? Well—there are a few reasons why. But how does he explain it? How does he tell her that, for the first time in his life, he doesn't think he can stand to be alone? How does he tell her that, as long as he stays on this balcony, as long as the sun doesn't rise, he can trick himself into thinking that no time has passed at all, and that Yuuji might still walk back out at any second? How does he tell her that he doesn't want to know the future?
"It's the new year," he ends up saying. There. Easy. An indirect, roundabout way of explaining things, where he doesn't actually have to say the words. "I don't want to dream."
Nobara whistles lowly. "That bad?"
"No," Megumi says, watching his breath steam in the cold night air. "Worse."
Nobara insists on staying over at Megumi's apartment with him after the party. Megumi doesn't bother protesting—if he says no, then she'll probably just end up kicking his door down anyway, so he might as well get things over and done with. As the sun comes up, they tiptoe through Yuuta's living room to avoid waking their friends, and then Nobara makes Megumi wait in the car for a good fifteen minutes as she paces around outside with her phone held to her ear.
Judging from the way she chews her nails and scowls at the ground as she talks, Megumi's fairly certain that she's talking to Yuuji. It's almost definitely Yuuji, actually, because every single one of their other friends is snoring inside, and the only other person Nobara talks to over the phone is her grandmother. Megumi can't hear the conversation from inside the car, but he can imagine it well enough: Yuuji's probably laughing on the other end, bright as a bell, so convincing that you'd never be able to tell something was wrong if you didn't know him well enough.
When Nobara slides into the passenger seat, her face is dark enough to make Megumi lean away from her a bit. Whatever her conversation with Yuuji was, it clearly didn't go well.
"We're going to your place," she says abruptly, flipping her visor down to block the rising sun from getting into her eyes. "And you're packing."
Megumi slowly pulls the car out onto the street. "Packing for what?"
"To come back to my grandma's with me," Nobara says, and Megumi swerves so violently that he nearly takes the side mirror off Maki's car.
"No," he says immediately.
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes," Nobara says, pulling out her phone. Oh, shit—Megumi knows exactly what she's doing. He lunges over in a desperate attempt to snatch it out of her hand, but Nobara dodges him deftly, typing out a rapid message.
"Ha!" she shouts triumphantly, and Megumi's heart drops into the pit of his stomach. "Sent! Now my grandma knows you're coming!"
Megumi curses under his breath. Nobara grins at him smugly. Conniving little sneak—she knows full well that Megumi's terrified of her grandma. If Nobara's grandmother thinks that Megumi's coming to stay, then he better damn well be coming to stay.
"I can't," Megumi hisses under his breath as they trundle out onto the deserted main street. "I have to go to Kyoto. The clan—"
"Fuck the clan," Nobara says briskly. "Whatever it is, Maki will handle it. It's just all the new year's ceremonies and stuff, right?"
Megumi chews on the inside of his cheek. Technically, she's right. It is just ceremonies and shrine visits and the like, and Maki's more than capable of handling that on her own. And it's not like Megumi wants to go to Kyoto and hang out with his stupid extended 'family' anyway. But still—he knows they'll make a big deal out of it if he skips. He knows that they'll trace it back to Yuuji, like they always do, and he doesn't have the energy to deal with that.
He doesn't end up giving Nobara an actual answer, and she doesn't push—but, when they get to his apartment, she waltzes right in and starts rifling through his closet. Megumi just sighs and goes to lie face-down on his couch for a while. Outside, the sun rises. The birds start to chirp. Tokyo comes to life—slower than usual, but alive nonetheless; Megumi can hear cars outside, and the occasional murmur of other people.
So: it's a new day.
It's a new day, and a new year, and nothing has changed from the night before. Megumi is still wearing Yuuji's scarf. His head still hurts. Yuuji still left, and he hasn't come back.
Megumi lies on the couch for longer than he'd like to admit. The worst part, he thinks, is the fact that he doesn't really feel anything at all—or, to be more accurate, he's feeling so much that he can't even begin to process it. It's like being fatally injured, only for the wound to be immediately cauterised. The pain is there, but there's so much of it that it feels too distant to be real.
Megumi really, truly, did not see this coming.
He should have. He knows he should have. He knows—Yuuji's been doing the same damn thing for the last decade—but it still caught him off guard. He thought that they were getting somewhere. He thought that they'd made progress. He thought—
Well. He thought a lot of things. Evidently, he was wrong.
Nobara ends up making breakfast for the both of them. The fact that Megumi lets her is a testament to his exhaustion; usually, he'd be wrestling her away from the kitchen for fear that she'd burn it down. He hears her clattering around for a good couple minutes before she shuffles into the living room. Megumi's got his face buried in the couch, so he can't see her, but he can hear the gentle thunk of a tray being set on the coffee table.
Something pokes the small of his back. "Oi," Nobara says.
Megumi grunts.
"Get up, moron. I'm not having all my hard work wasted 'cause you were too busy moping to eat."
"I'm not moping," Megumi grumbles, pushing himself upright. He winces against the bright sunlight—shit, the sun's way higher than it was earlier, was he really wallowing for that long?—and squints down at the bowl that Nobara pushes in front of him. It's predictably simple: rice and eggs, and a bowl of instant miso soup. Yuuji would be shaking his head in disbelief if he were here—but he's not.
Something in Megumi's chest constricts at the thought. He sits up, tucking his feet under his thighs, staring at the food—and he realises, suddenly, that he'll have to take Yuuji's scarf off if he wants to start eating.
It's a simple thing, but it's hard. It feels uncomfortably like he's doing something that cannot be undone. Megumi forces himself to do it anyway. He unwinds it carefully, folds it into a careful square and sets it aside, ignoring the knowing look that Nobara sends his way.
"Not moping, my ass," she mutters, before nudging his bowl closer to him. "Eat."
Megumi eats. It's a convenient excuse to not have to do anything else. If he focuses on finishing his rice, then he won't have to think about Yuuji's discarded scarf lying next to him. If he uses all of his attention on dicing up his eggs, then he won't have to remember the fact that Yuuji didn't kiss him back.
Beside him, Nobara divides her attention between eating her own food and tapping away at Megumi's phone. He lets her; she might be a meddler, but she's not stupid enough to send any life-destroying texts from his number. The worst that will happen is that she sends something embarrassing, but most of Megumi's friends know his texting style well enough to distinguish him from Nobara.
As it turns out, Nobara's not sending any texts at all. She's actually doing the opposite—as Megumi finishes his food, she slides his phone across the table and says, "There. Everyone's blocked."
Megumi chokes on the last of his rice. "What?"
"Everyone except me and Maki," Nobara amends, like that makes it any better. "And all the people who you're, like, paid to text back. And Yuuji, obviously."
Obviously, she says, like it's a given. Like she knows that Megumi would kill her if Yuuji sent him a message and it never ended up arriving because Megumi had him blocked. She's right, of course, but it still makes Megumi want to burrow into the ground and wait for everyone to forget that he exists.
"What the—you can't just block everyone," Megumi hisses.
"Why not?" Nobara drums her fingers on the table. "Not like you'll answer them even if you get their messages. Besides, I already told them all that you're gonna be off the grid for a bit. Bad service at my grandma's, remember?"
"I never said I was going to come with you."
"Yeah, but I told her you were. Are you gonna disappoint her, Megumi? Are you going to disappoint a poor, feeble—"
"Nobara."
"—lonely old woman, who's probably preparing for your arrival as we speak, throwing her back out to get the spare futon—"
"Nobara!" Megumi snaps, and she finally shuts up. He knows, from the way her mouth tightens, that she must have realised she's stepped a little too far. None of what she said about her grandmother is true—she's not poor or feeble or lonely, and she definitely won't be disappointed if Megumi fails to show, but still. It's just—it's a lot.
"...Sorry," Nobara offers, after a few seconds of silence. Megumi exhales through his nose and shuts his eyes.
The Zen'in clan, Headquarters, his friends, Nobara's grandmother—there are so many people who he has to fucking warn if he just wants to lie low for a bit. Megumi's not sure when his life expanded this much.
No, that's a lie. He knows exactly when, and he knows exactly why. There is one reason—one sole reason—why he's still here at all, and that one reason left him alone on Yuuta's balcony less than twenty-four hours ago. That one reason left him with an ugly fucking scarf that everyone agrees should've been left to rot in the closet, but which still gets worn every winter because Megumi's the one who made it.
Fuck. Fuck. Why does this hurt so badly? Why does Megumi feel like the inside of his ribcage is being scraped clean with a spoon? They didn't even fight. It wasn't even an argument. They've pulled through much worse before, so why does this feel so final? Why does it feel like Yuuji's never coming back?
Megumi braces his elbows on the table and bows his head, forcing himself to breathe through gritted teeth. If he cries right now, he thinks he might go crazy.
Nobara's hand lands on his shoulder. She doesn't rub it or anything, doesn't try to lean in closer. She is not, after all, Yuuji. She's here, and Yuuji's not.
"You don't have to come home with me if you don't want to," she says quietly. "I just thought—you know. You probably don't want to deal with the clan after whatever happened with Yuuji. And I don't want you here alone while I'm gone, so..."
"I'm not incompetent," Megumi snaps, and he hates how his voice cracks. "Just because you're not here—"
"Asshole. You know that's not what I meant."
Alright, fine. So Megumi does know that that's not what she meant. He knows it's because she cares, he knows it's because she wants to make sure he's okay. He knows. But it's just—it's all so fucking embarrassing, for everyone to know that Megumi's out of commission because he's too busy trying to wrangle his stupid heart. He has never been, and will never be, ashamed of his feelings for Yuuji, but that doesn't mean that it's not humiliating for everyone to see them.
But, deep down, he knows that Nobara's right: it's in his best interest to go with her. He sure as hell doesn't want to deal with the clan right now, and if left to his own devices, then he'll probably just lie around feeling like shit until he inevitably gets called in for another re-assigned mission. So he sighs, rubbing a hand over his face before looking up at Nobara.
"I'll come," he says. Nobara's entire body relaxes a bit with clear relief, which Megumi would find almost insulting on any other day. "But seriously, the clan—"
"Already told you, Maki's got it," Nobara says, nodding at his phone. "I texted her. Check your messages."
Megumi does. Sure enough, there's a series of brief texts from him to Maki, explaining that Nobara's texting from Megumi's phone and he'll have to dip out for at least a few days because something happened with Yuuji. Maki's already responded.
Maki: Tell him I'll handle the clan. Get him out of Tokyo.
Maki: I'd rather deal with the Zen'ins' shit than whatever he and Yuuji have going on again.
Megumi has to actually, physically wince when he reads that. He does feel a flash of guilt for putting all of their friends through this...whatever-it-is that he's got with Yuuji. If Maki's saying that she'd rather deal with the Zen'ins, then it must be bad. Maki would rather walk on hot coals than deal with the Zen'ins any more than she has to. Hell, she and Megumi had drawn straws to see who'd have to go over to Kyoto this year for the ceremonies, and now she's just willingly stepping in to let him get a breather from his Thing With Yuuji?
...Maybe things are worse than Megumi thought they were. From an outsider's perspective, at least. Maybe that's why Nobara keeps looking at him with the same expression she had when he woke up after Shinjuku. Maybe that's why she keeps looking at him like she thinks he's going to drop dead.
He swipes out of his messages with Maki and checks his other notifications. Nobara's sent another message to the group chat, telling them all that she's got his phone and that he won't be online for a few days. She's sent messages to almost everyone he knows, actually. The one exception is, as always, Yuuji. Nobara has left that particular chat untouched.
There are no new messages from Yuuji. When Megumi taps into the chat anyway, the last message he sees is still Yuuji's cheerful see u later!, followed by a long string of heart emojis. Green, of course. Yuuji has never said why he always uses the green heart for Megumi, but it doesn't take a genius to guess.
Megumi doesn't realise he's tightened his grip on his phone until his fingers start to hurt. He takes a deep breath, then forces himself to put it face-down on the table. Nobara is watching him warily, still with that look on her face like she thinks it's a miracle that he's still standing.
"My grandma wants me home before the eleventh," she says. "She's traditional, wants to break mochi and everything. We can leave in like a week-ish. Sound good?"
A week. A week of staying in Tokyo, surrounded by everything that has become so dear and familiar to him in the last ten years—things that always, somehow, seem to lead back to Yuuji. Megumi looks around his apartment and sees the inevitable truth: Yuuji is everywhere, both in presence and in absence. He's in the stupid little animal magnets on Megumi's fridge, carefully picked out to resemble his shikigami. He's in the droopy succulent on the windowsill, bought because Yuuji was adamant that he could find a plant that Megumi would be able to keep alive. He's even in Megumi's own scarf, hanging innocently on the hook by the door, completely forgotten in his rush to get out of his apartment in time for the New Year's party—the reason why Yuuji had given Megumi his.
Megumi hadn't even asked, and yet Yuuji had still given it. It's the story of their lives.
A week in this apartment will be too much. Megumi drags a hand through his hair and winces when his fingers catch on a knot. He glances over to his bedroom door, which has been left half-open; he can see a bunch of clothes thrown over the bed, the victim of Nobara's pickiness. Beyond that, there's his desk, and the Lego flowers—another one of Yuuji's marks, like a fingerprint smeared on a camera lens. They'd been a birthday present. Megumi had put the camellias together on his living room floor with Yuuji's head pillowed on his knees.
Beside the Lego flowers, there's his journal. Megumi chews on the inside of his cheek.
"We can leave earlier," he says, and it feels uncomfortably like some kind of confession, especially when Nobara's brow slowly climbs up her forehead. "Just—give me a few days, at least. I need to visit Tsumiki."
"Sure," Nobara says easily, which is how Megumi knows he must really look like shit, because she'd give him attitude for no reason if he didn't. She pushes his bowl of soup towards him, so close that it bumps his hand. "You didn't drink your miso. Hurry up before it gets cold."
Megumi bows his head over the bowl. Out of instinct, he reaches out to push Yuuji's folded scarf behind his back. He doesn't want to get it dirty, after all; he still needs to return it.
And he will return it. He will. He has to. He won't accept anything else.
January 6, 2029
They arrive in Nobara's hometown after dark. Megumi pulls the car into her grandma's driveway, and when he looks up, he can already see the old woman's silhouette in the open door. He instinctively straightens up a bit. Next to him, Nobara snorts.
"Nerd," she says. "You think she'll care if your posture's bad?"
"I don't need to give her more reasons to hate me."
"She doesn't hate you," Nobara says breezily. Easy for her to say when she's the only person in the entire world who her grandma doesn't hate at least a little bit. "She just thinks you're boring and that you've got a stick up your ass. Which isn't wrong, by the way." She swings her door open before Megumi can respond, lifting a hand in greeting. "Oi! Obaa-chan! Happy new year!"
Her grandma cups a hand around her mouth. "Where's the boy?" she bellows, and Megumi winces. He unlocks his door and pokes his head out.
"Hello, Kugisaki-san," he calls. "Happy new year."
Nobara's grandma grunts in response. "Come inside," she says, turning around and trudging back into the house. It's better than the last time Megumi was here, when she didn't say anything at all until he was already standing awkwardly in the hall.
As expected, Megumi gets put to work immediately. He unloads his and Nobara's luggage, then gets out the guest futon because, as Nobara's grandma reminds him, he 'knows where it is anyway', and then he gets dragged into the garage to help move around furniture that's been gathering dust all winter. Nobara watches smugly for a grand total of ten seconds before her grandma barks at her to get off her ass and do something to help. Megumi glares at her when her grandma's not looking; Nobara sticks out her tongue and kicks his shin in return.
Megumi had seen this coming. Every time he and Yuuji come home with Nobara, her grandma uses them as free labour—Nobara had to have gotten it from somewhere, after all. What he hadn't seen coming, however, was the fact that the chores just...don't seem to end.
Usually, whenever Megumi comes to stay, he gets roped into a day or two of hard work before Nobara's grandma runs out of ideas and he gets left to his own devices. This time, though, he can barely get a second to himself.
Like, come on. The old woman lives alone, and she's healthy enough to take care of herself for the rest of the year. There can't be that much to do around the house. Yet Megumi still finds himself constantly scrubbing dishes, washing clothes, mopping the floor, chopping firewood—what the hell? Nobara's grandma doesn't even use firewood. She has a gas stove. And Nobara's in on it, too—she's constantly popping up with new things for him to do. Her grandma needs him to head down to the supermarket and grab these groceries. Her grandma needs him to help watch a pot on the stove. Her grandma needs him to break down those old training dummies in the spare room that no one's used in over a decade.
It goes on like this for days. Megumi helps out around the house, says hi to Nobara's old friend Fumi when she drops by to wish Nobara a happy new year, eats with Nobara and her grandmother, and then collapses into bed and has a dreamless sleep. Embarrassingly, it takes a full four days for things to click—it isn't until Nobara's shoving a mostly-empty laundry basket into his arms that Megumi finally realises why, exactly, she and her grandma have been running him ragged. He reaches out and snatches Nobara's sleeve before she can escape.
"Are you," he says slowly, "trying to distract me?"
Nobara scoffs. "As if. If you were Yuuji, then I'd be trying to distract you." She spins him around and shoves him in the direction of the laundry. "But your brain doesn't work like that, so no, I'm not distracting you. I just want you to do my chores."
Just to spite her, Megumi drops the laundry basket onto the floor. Nobara blanches and snatches it up before her grandma can come to investigate the sound.
Megumi believes her when she says she's not trying to distract him. It's true: his brain doesn't work like that. Yuuji's does—he's the kind of person who needs to be doing something. He needs to know that he's helping, even if its in the tiniest way possible, to take his mind off things. Megumi, however, was cursed with an overactive brain and an incessant internal monologue, which means that, even as he's cleaning out every nook and cranny of the Kugisaki family house, he's still thinking about New Year's.
He turns it over in his mind like a jeweller looks at diamonds. He inspects it from every angle, tries to find a crack, a flaw, an explanation—and he comes up empty-handed. The only explanation is the same explanation that Megumi's been getting for the last ten years: that Yuuji, absurdly, loves him too much.
It's so stupid that it's hysterical. It makes Megumi want to rip his hair out. It makes him want to slam his head into the wall until something breaks. It makes him want to track Yuuji down and grab him by his stupid face and demand to know why.
It doesn't help that he still has the damn scarf.
He'd brought it with him. He'd left his own in Tokyo—a conscious decision. Every time he pulls it out, Nobara sends him a knowing look, though she's smart enough to not bring it up. Whatever she's got to say is something that Megumi already knows.
The smell of Yuuji's bodywash has faded in the days since New Year's. Megumi wears the scarf nonetheless, even though it's slightly embarrassing to walk around with something so ugly that he made himself. Yuuji loves this scarf. He loves it so much, in fact, that he owns no others; Megumi had tried giving him a new one once, one that wasn't misshapen or a hideous orange, and Yuuji had flat-out refused. He has no other scarves. He let Megumi borrow his only one. Somewhere out there, Yuuji is spending winter with a cold neck.
Megumi hopes that Tokyo's not too cold right now.
He checks the weather app intermittently. There are no cold snaps, and Yuuji's always run warm, so he should be fine as long as he keeps his collar upturned. He tries to check Yuuji's location on their shared tracking app, too, but he finds that Yuuji's location has been turned off since the second of January. There are three explanations for that: either he turned it off on purpose, he broke his phone again, or he is, for some reason, somewhere with no service.
Whichever it is, Megumi has no idea, because Yuuji does not message him.
Megumi knows that he won't. He knows. He switches everyone from blocked to muted, because Nobara always does things to the most extreme and Megumi, frankly, does not want to have all of his friends blocked when silencing does the job just fine—and when he checks his messages, he sees a few well-wishes from Yuuta, a single sad-face sticker from Toge, a hope the time out of Tokyo does you good message from Hana. But there are no updates from Yuuji. No texts, no calls, not even a happy new year. When Megumi checks the group chat, he finds that Yuuji hasn't said anything there, either.
Megumi is here with Nobara. Maki is in Kyoto dealing with the Zen'in. The rest of their friends are in Tokyo, where Yuuji is most likely not, because no one's breathed a word about him since New Year's. Not even Maki, who is, out of the entire group, the one person who Megumi can trust to never sugarcoat the truth.
Megumi corners Nobara about it when he gets so sick of thinking about it that it makes him feel physically nauseous. When he asks her who’s checking up on Yuuji, she goes conspicuously still, and Megumi’s heart sinks.
“He hasn’t been around,” she says, shrugging. She’s trying to act cool about it, but Megumi can see how frazzled she really is. She hasn’t even bothered to repaint her chipping nail polish. “Yuuta said he took a bunch of missions from Headquarters right after New Year’s and went off the grid. No one’s heard from him since.”
“What?” Megumi says sharply. A stab of instinctive panic spears through his gut. It’s been more than a week since then. What if Yuuji’s hurt? What if he’s gotten stranded somewhere and no one knows? “Where—”
“No one except Headquarters,” Nobara corrects, stopping Megumi before he can start. Megumi’s entire body goes a little slack with relief; he didn’t realise he’d tensed up so suddenly until it was gone. “He’s checking in and everything, so he’s fine. He’s just…” She waves a hand vaguely. “He hasn’t been picking up my calls. He told me not to worry, and then he…you know how he is.”
Right. Of course. Megumi rubs a hand over his face and tastes guilt in the back of his throat, sharp and sour. He doesn’t push Nobara for more answers, because he knows she doesn’t have them. He texts Yuuta instead, asks him to let him know if Yuuji comes back to Tokyo. Yuuta responds in record time, and the message is—well.
It’s a little unexpected, is all.
Yuuta: will do. if it makes you feel better he’s definitely alive and ok
Yuuta: he asked me the same thing about you actually haha
Yuuta: to tell him when you come back to tokyo, i mean
Yuuta: what a coincidence!
Megumi stares at that for longer than he’d like to admit. His first reaction is a tightening in his throat and a hot prickling at his eyes. His second reaction is a weird unnameable pang in his chest—not painful, but not not painful. His third reaction is some kind of anger, which mixes strangely with the instinctive butterflies in his stomach. It’s like half of Megumi’s brain is getting all red-faced and saying, he’s asking about you, while the other half is scowling and saying, he doesn’t need to ask about me when he could just ask me himself.
He wonders when Yuuji asked. Was it right after Nobara texted the group chat to tell them all that Megumi was coming home with her? When he realised that Megumi was leaving, was it his first thought to ask when he’d come back? Did he have to think about it? Did he pace for a bit, worrying his lip, before he finally typed out a message to Yuuta and asked him to keep him updated?
Megumi taps his finger against the side of his phone for a good few minutes before he sends Yuuta a response.
Megumi: No need to tell him when I come back.
Megumi: I’ll text him myself.
January 11, 2029
He tells Nobara about New Year's nearly two weeks after it happens. He's managed to compress it into something that he can fit inside his body, so he just—says it. He has to, or else he'll never be able to get it out.
He does it after the kagami biraki ceremony. The Kugisakis, as it turns out, have a unique way of breaking their mochi: Megumi had had to duck for cover from the flying bits of brittle mochi as Nobara’s grandma brought her hammer down with enough force to shake the whole house. Now, though, Nobara’s grandma is asleep upstairs, the mochi’s soaking in soup, and Megumi and Nobara—as per tradition—are trying to play Smash Bros in the living room as quietly as they can. Megumi gets destroyed, as he knew he would. He’s improved over the years, but Yuuji and Nobara are usually the ones playing while he watches from the couch. He waits until they take a break, Nobara reaching over to take a sip from her cup of cold tea, and it’s like his mouth just unhinges and moves all on its own.
"I kissed him," he says, apropos of nothing, and Nobara spits out her tea.
“What," she says shrilly.
"I kissed him," Megumi repeats, and it feels like the weight of the world is lifting off his shoulders, if only for a moment. Speaking it means that it was real. This is the truth; this is what happened. “Yuuji, I mean. On New Year’s.”
“No fucking shit,” Nobara hisses, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She twists around to stare at him. Her eye is so wide that Megumi can see white all around her pupil. “You kissed him?!”
“That’s what I said,” Megumi says, his voice turning a little snappy. He’s starting to get that uncomfortable roiling feeling in his stomach that shows up whenever he gets too close to a bad topic. “Don’t make it a big deal.”
“Don’t make it—don’t make it a big deal?! Do you understand—” Nobara cuts herself off, clapping her hands together in front of her face and inhaling deeply. She kind of looks like she’s about to combust. Megumi can tell she wants to yell at him, but she wouldn’t dare with her grandma upstairs.
“Okay,” she finally wheezes out. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay. So you—okay.”
“Are you done?”
“I’m processing,” Nobara says venomously. “You seriously kissed him?”
“I seriously kissed him.”
“Okay,” Nobara says, her voice pitching up an octave. “Fuck. Shit. Okay.”
The nausea in his stomach grows worse, kind of like motion sickness. Megumi tosses his game controller aside and leans back into the couch. “You’re not helping,” he says to the ceiling, and Nobara blows out a breath.
“You just told me you kissed him after ten fucking years of you two not doing shit, so forgive me for being surprised,” she bites back, raking one hand through her hair and reaching for her cup with the other. She takes a swig of tea, so desperate that Megumi bets she’s hoping it’s magically turned into alcohol since she last touched it. “And you, what—you fought after that?”
“We didn’t fight,” Megumi says automatically, bristling. He and Yuuji have fought before, and this wasn’t that. This was nowhere near that. This was somewhere on the same line of evolution as that, but it wasn’t the same. “It was—I don’t…”
His voice trails off. Nobara sits up straighter, her eye fixed on him. The quiet night, which up until now had felt peaceful, suddenly feels like it’s got one clawed hand wrapped tight around Megumi’s throat.
"So you kissed him," Nobara says carefully, tapping her nails against her cup. "After ten years of pining, might I add. Then what happened?"
Megumi opens his mouth, but no words come out. His voice sticks in his throat and chokes him. The silence stretches on; Nobara stops her tapping.
"Megumi," she says slowly. "Then what happened?"
Megumi swallows. It’s a good question. The most simple answer is that Yuuji didn’t kiss him back. Yuuji reached out and cupped Megumi’s face in his hands, but he didn’t kiss him back. Yuuji leaned in closer, and he said I love you so many times that it started to lose its meaning, but he didn’t kiss him back.
Megumi kissed him. Then what happened?
“I don’t know,” Megumi says honestly. To his horror, he can feel warmth at the corners of his eyes. Fuck. His first instinct is to turn away, but Nobara’s definitely already seen how glassy his eyes have gotten, and it’ll be so damn obvious if he looks away now. So he determinedly keeps his eyes open, even as his vision starts to blur. When Nobara sighs, he turns to look at her.
She’s got one hand raised to her temple now. Her fingers are pressed against it so hard that Megumi can see the skin there turning white.
“Okay,” she says grimly, with the same expression that she wears when they’ve been pushed to the brink by a particularly nasty curse. “Walk me through it.”
The day before they go back to Tokyo, Nobara takes Megumi to a diner for breakfast.
It’s one of two restaurants in the entire town that are open right now. Nobara nods at the woman behind the counter, then ushers Megumi into one of the booths and tells him to order the beef udon. He dutifully does so, and as they wait with two cups of tea that are too hot to drink, Nobara reaches out to pluck a napkin from the table holder. She shreds it absently in her hands, and the action makes Megumi’s heart ache. She must have picked that up from Yuuji. It’s one of his nervous habits.
“So,” Nobara says abruptly. “Action plan.”
“...For?”
“For Yuuji. Duh.” Nobara leans over the table. “Nothing’s happened yet, right?”
Megumi shakes his head. There have been no updates about Yuuji since he last asked—not from Nobara, nor from Yuuta, nor from Yuuji himself. As far as Megumi knows, Yuuji could be on the other side of the world.
“Good,” Nobara says.
“Good?” Megumi says incredulously.
“Yes, good,” Nobara says, nodding authoritatively, “because that means you’ve got a blank slate to work from. He’s obviously not going to message you first, so…you get to pick how you start.”
Megumi wraps his hands around his teacup and feels the heat seep into his palms. Nobara is right: Yuuji won’t message him first. Megumi could’ve told her that even before Yuuji went silent for two weeks. It's a trend, when it comes to their fights and disagreements and incidents, as Nobara calls them: Yuuji never speaks first. He always waits for Megumi to be the first to respond, the first to call or text or—once, while Yuuji was overseas—email. The first few times it happened, Megumi had thought it meant that Yuuji was still angry. These days, he knows better: Yuuji waits for Megumi to speak first because he's so goddamn terrified of scaring Megumi off that he doesn't dare to so much as breathe until Megumi gives him the go-ahead.
You get to pick how you start. It would be true for every other time he and Yuuji have had an incident, but not this time. No, this time…
“It’s up to him,” Megumi says flatly, and Nobara groans. "I kissed him, so it’s his turn to respond.”
“That’s not how this works, dumbass."
“That’s how I say it works," Megumi snaps, before dropping his voice low as their food arrives: two matching bowls of beef udon. “I’ve done everything I can do, so the next move has to be his.”
"Nuh-uh." Nobara jabs a finger at him. "You guys aren't meant to take turns like it's chess or whatever. Besides, it's not like he was ever gonna reach out first anyway." The words make something twist low in Megumi's gut; a corkscrew in a bottle. "When we get back to Tokyo, and he gets back to Tokyo, what do you wanna do?"
"I don't know," Megumi snaps. "I don't—" He reaches up and rubs a hand over his eyes until his vision starts to blur with tiny spots. "What can I even do?"
"Stop being an idiot, for starters," Nobara says bluntly, pulling her food towards her. "Also, gee, I don't know—talk to him?"
"We talked. It didn't work."
"Because you're both stupid," Nobara says viciously. "Besides, this isn't even that bad, right? That time with Okinawa—"
"I don't know," Megumi grits out again. He's been saying that a lot these last two weeks, and he hates it. It makes him feel like a kid left drifting in the ocean. "It's—it feels bad, okay?"
Understatement of the fucking century. It feels bad, he says, when what he really means is it feels like the end. And the part that makes it all worse—the part that makes Megumi think that this might be it—is the fact that this isn't a one-time thing.
It would be easy to say that New Year's was the end of it, but it would also be a lie. The end of it, if Megumi thinks hard enough, might have also been the start. His and Yuuji's relationship is a circle. No—a spiral. In the last ten years, they've walked over the same lines again and again and again, but each time they repeated it they drew everything in a little closer, a little tighter, a little more inescapable. In all honesty, this shouldn't have come as a surprise.
Nobara flicks a piece of shredded-up napkin at him, then swears as it ends up drifting down into her soup instead. Megumi watches her pick it out frantically with her chopsticks and says nothing.
"Okay, but seriously,” she says, once she's got the soggy napkin piece on the table next to her. “Do you actually…feel like that? Is it that bad?"
Megumi exhales, sliding down a little in his seat. He looks up at the light over Nobara's head so that he doesn't have to look her in the eye.
"I think I fucked up," he confesses quietly. For a second, he hates Nobara for bringing him to a diner for this conversation. The waitress is definitely eavesdropping from behind the counter, and it makes Megumi want to crawl into a hole in the ground and die.
On the other side of the booth, Nobara is silent. Megumi braces himself for her to confirm his worst fears: that yes, he fucked up. He crossed a line, he went too far, he made a wound that can't recover—
Nobara kicks his shin under the table.
"Ow—what the—?!"
"I don't like how you're talking about you and Yuuji," Nobara says, narrowing her eye at him. "Have some faith, idiot. You think a stupid kiss is enough to end things? Hell no. You guys are way too weird about each other for that, and I did not spend ten years playing referee for this."
"This isn't about you!" Megumi says indignantly.
"It might as well be, with how much I have to deal with it!" Nobara barks. "If you two break up, who am I supposed to pick, huh?!"
"We can't break up. We're not even—"
"Don't even try to finish that sentence," Nobara says lowly, pointing her chopsticks at him. "If all the bullshit of the last couple years wasn't enough to scare you or Yuuji off, then a kiss won't do it. Toughen up."
Alright, fine: she's right. Megumi doesn't think the kiss could fuck everything up on its own. But that's the problem—the kiss wasn't on its own. The kiss came after Megumi's birthday present, and after Yuko, and after Okinawa, and all of those things combined are enough to make Megumi's relationship with Yuuji wobble at least a bit.
To say that Megumi ruined it all at New Year's would be wrong. To say that he ruined it all ten years ago on a summer night in Sendai would be wrong. Nobara, as the unfortunate witness to both Megumi and Yuuji's sides of the story, once called it the world's most confusing Jenga tower. Megumi disagrees. The most accurate description, he thinks, would be that Megumi let his Thing With Yuuji ruin itself, like a plant left unattended that tried to outgrow its pot and choked its own roots in the process.
What does Megumi want to do when he goes back to Tokyo? He wants to sleep in his own bed again and pretend that none of this ever happened. He wants to go talk to his sister and ask her for advice, even though he knows none will come. He wants Yuuji to text him first, for once in his life, instead of giving Megumi space that he doesn't actually want.
His phone buzzes where it lies face-down on the table. Megumi grits his teeth. Everyone is silenced except for Nobara, Yuuji, Maki, and the people who Megumi is legally obligated to answer when they call. Maki wouldn’t text him this early in the morning. It's not Nobara, and it's sure as hell not Yuuji, so it has to be official correspondence. If it's Headquarters, then they're probably messaging him about another re-assigned mission that they’ve got lined up for him, and he might just go insane. If it's Zen'in Nagashi, who's been a thorn in Megumi's side for the last seven years, then it's going to be about some stupid fucking clan thing again, and Megumi will storm over to the Zen'in estate and kill his distant cousin himself.
"It's probably Nagashi," Nobara says, glancing at the phone. Her lip curls with disgust. "Just ignore it."
The phone buzzes again. Megumi snatches it up and flips it over.
"I'm going to skin that fucker," Megumi mutters, tapping the screen to make it light up again. "If he's texting me again about the fucking clan—"
He freezes. His voice dies in his throat.
It's not Nagashi. It's not headquarters.
Yuuji: hey
Yuuji: can we talk?