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Leo sometimes finds himself on the roof of the ES building late at night.
It’s not for the same reasons he would have once found himself there, where he would stare contemplatively at the ground far below. Instead, he now likes to lay flat against the concrete of the roof and look at the sky above. Unfortunately, the island that the ES building rests on is in the middle of metropolitan Tokyo, so Leo has no hopes of seeing the constellations. But that’s okay, he doesn’t need to be able to see them. He likes to imagine the possible constellations in the sky and the stories that they could tell. Leo has no interest in studying astronomy, but the mythology behind the constellations sparks inspiration for many stories. Leo can easily imagine Ursa Major protecting her younger cub against the predators that roam the skies, like the great eagle Aquila, or the strong wolf Lupus. Leo’s namesake, the invincible lion Leo, would observe its prey and then sneakily lure them to their death.
Leo loses himself in these stories, the inkling of a melody starting to form in the recesses of his mind.
Just when he’s thinking of returning to his dorm room and putting this melody down onto paper, the door to the roof creaks open, shining bright white light onto Leo’s face.
“What the hell?” Leo says, rolling into a sitting position to better see the intruder. The door shuts, leaving the roof in darkness once more.
“Oh, Tsukinaga-senpai.”
Leo feels his stomach twist when he recognizes the voice.
“Sorry to bother you,” Makoto says, “but have you seen Daikichi anywhere? Akehoshi-kun isn’t able to find him, and since it’s late at night, we’re worried about where he could have gone.”
Leo shakes his head. “Nope, I haven’t seen him.”
“Alright,” replies Makoto stiffly. He nods his head and makes for the exit, and Leo lays back down, expecting that to be the end of this encounter.
The creaking noise of the door never comes, however.
“Um, Tsukinaga-senpai, do you— perhaps have a key for this door?”
Leo sits up again with a sigh. Then, his eyes catch on the door Makoto is currently struggling with, which is closed all the way shut.
“What happened to the brick that was keeping it open?!” Leo scrambles over to the door.
“I didn’t see a brick,” Makoto replies, his already adenoidal voice becoming even more high-pitched with panic.
Leo groans. “That means we’re stuck up here!”
Even in the darkness, Leo can see Makoto’s eyes fill with panic. “I left my phone in Akehoshi-kun’s room. I assume you don’t have your phone with you either, Tsukinaga-senpai.”
“I don’t like how you assumed that,” Leo grouses, “but yeah. How the hell do we get back down now?”
Makoto sighs. “Wait until someone notices we’re gone and starts to look for us?”
Leo only now realizes what this means. He’s stuck in this guy’s presence for what could be hours. Maybe it’s time to start contemplating the ground instead of the sky again.
“What were you doing up here, anyways?”
Leo walks away, eyeing a seat close to the walls of the roof. “I don’t really want to talk with you, Yuu-kun.”
“Oh,” he hears Makoto say. “Alright. It’s just, with our school’s history of students on rooftops—”
“I wasn’t going to kill myself,” Leo replies shortly. “If that’s what you were worried about.”
“I’m— I’m glad to hear that.” Makoto sounds quiet, and Leo knows that he won’t talk to Leo again unprompted. He’s such a goody-two-shoes. It pisses him off.
Leo sits down and sighs. “I like to watch the sky,” he reluctantly offers. “You can’t see any constellations from here, but it’s an empty canvas to come up with whatever stories you want, with the only limit being your imagination."
“Wow,” Makoto breathes. “I never thought about it in that way.”
“You limit yourself to the confines of the games you play, don’t you?” Leo looks over his shoulder at Makoto, who’s standing uncomfortably next to a pillar. “Isn’t that restricting? Don’t you wish you could just break through the story and create your own?”
“You know about the games I play? Do you watch my streams?”
Leo rolls his eyes. “Not willingly. Sena puts them on at night when we’re in Florence, and I can’t block it out.”
“I— um, I appreciate it regardless.” Makoto walks closer, still keeping a distance between them. “To answer your question, I don’t find it restrictive. It’s simply another way of telling a story, where I get to walk in the footsteps of the character and experience the tale firsthand. It’s just like reading a book or watching a movie.”
“It sounds stifling to be told what to do in a game,” replies Leo. “If you don’t follow the instructions, you don’t move forward in the story. Where’s the fun in that?”
“Don’t you think that movies and books are even more restrictive, then? The story moves forward whether you like it or not.”
Leo sits there for a moment. “You got me,” he finally says.
Makoto chuckles. “Not all the games I play are story-based. I think you’d even like some of them, Tsukinaga-senpai.”
Leo shakes his head. “I want to spend as little time on computers as possible. The only reason I even use them is because the people who commission me don’t like it when I give them paper copies instead of uploading it online.”
“For a free soul like yourself, you must hate how everything revolves around the Internet these days.”
“I do hate it! Everyone’s always buried in their phones or computers, and no one sees the real world passing them by! One day, they’re all going to be on their deathbeds, and they’ll realize that the world has completely changed around them without them ever noticing, because they only watched a filtered version of the world through their screens.”
Makoto hums. “You’re very opinionated about a lot of things.”
“And what about it?” Leo snaps back. “I don’t care about being passive. I don’t want to be suppressed.”
“It’s admirable,” Makoto says. “Most people would be happy to hide their emotions to keep the peace.”
“You’re an easy person to talk to,” Leo says, suddenly. “I don’t like when I find things to like about you.”
“Um, thank you?”
“You know,” Leo starts, looking up at the dark sky, “I don’t really like you very much, Yuu-kun.”
“I gathered as much,” replies Makoto, amusement in his tone.
“I don’t think you like me very much, either,” Leo says. “And that’s okay! We’ll always view each other as competition.”
Makoto laughs. “I don’t see you as my rival or anything of the sort, Tsukinaga-senpai. To me, you’ve always been a reminder of my former self.”
That makes no sense. “What?”
“When Izumi-san kidnapped me, I know now that it was out of a misplaced sense of responsibility. He needed to protect me in a way he wasn’t able to with you. And I let him suppress me and let him try to fit me in his life in a place I didn’t belong. When I look at you, I just remember the person I was before I properly stood up to Izumi-san, and before I was confident enough to stand as his equal.”
Leo thinks about that for a moment. “That pisses me off.”
“I expected it to,” Makoto replies evenly.
“I view Sena as my equal, and if you view Sena as your equal, that makes us equals. I just don’t see you in that way.”
“And neither do I,” says Makoto. “I suppose we’ll always be at this stalemate.”
“I guess so,” Leo says.
They both sit in silence, staring up at the cloudless night sky, devoid of stars.