Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Look at it this way,” pale hands gestured circularly somewhere on his left. “If they don’t find out, it’s hardly likely that we’ll get punished.”

The further away from school they went, the better it felt for his nerves. The air started smelling like freshly baked pastries. “They will find out. It’s in their office. Besides, it’s not something worth getting punished for. I’m not doing it.”

That seemed to settle the discussion, momentarily. “But if one of us was to accidentally take it during an errand…” he put his finger to his lips, deep in thought and no, nope, that was never a good sign.

“No. Not gonna happen. Just forget about it,” he stated as firmly as possible, and still the other’s face shifted as if he was going to say something more. “Let it be, Komaeda. I don’t care anymore.”

That earned him a knowing smile, but it wasn’t as bothersome as it should have been. “Well, I don’t know about that…”

Hajime grimaced, digging his hands deeper into his pockets as a gust of cold wind swept the street. He habitually glanced over at Nagito’s hands and wondered how he could make him keep them out of the wind without sounding stupid. Since, obviously, he couldn’t, he kept his mouth shut.

“Do you need to be home early?” the other looked at him and asked.

Hajime glimpsed wavy strands of white hair being blown into his face, so he kept looking ahead. “Kind of. We’ve got that test tomorrow.”

“Ah...” Nagito scrambled to get his hair out of his mouth. “I understand.” He was holding part of it in his hand as he used the other one to search his jacket’s pockets until it found two bobby pins. Hajime determinedly stared elsewhere as the other started opening them with his teeth. “Maybe we can talk with the teacher afterwards and...”

“Komaeda,” Hajime turned to scowl at him and he got a ridiculously innocent smile. There were still some wayward wisps left over his forehead. “No,” he huffed and set his eyes back on the sidewalk.

“It was just a suggestion,” Nagito defended himself feebly, grin still present in his tone.

Hajime’s first real friend had probably been the class president in 2nd grade, who, instead of telling on him when he’d forgotten his homework, kept quiet. The “real” constituent wasn’t related as much to loyalty as to the fact that she wasn’t imaginary. Up to this point, that is his first memory of somebody outside his family doing something kind for him.

He had felt awful about the homework, if only because he knew that he’d left it at home on purpose, only half-done and almost all of that scribbled over and over again. The previous evening he had worked for hours on it and with every calculation he felt even more stupid until he got knots in his stomach at the mere sight of the paper. From that day on, the amount of time spent doing or worrying over schoolwork quintupled.

His first real friendship had consisted of maths exercises in the short break before the lunch one; and it hadn’t lasted long, like most childhood friendships do. In between being a child and struggling not to cry everytime he thought he didn’t understand something, there wasn’t much space left for Hajime to learn how to be a friend. Or how to befriend others, to begin with.

Hajime had always been afraid of bad feelings. It was quite ironic that as he grew up he found himself being more and more engrossed in them.

His school-related feelings, however, had oscillated over the years from dread to anxiety to crippling despair and back to vague discomfort, and that was what he was feeling now. The last few hours’ worth of work had left its mark, quite visible on his highlighter-and-ink stained fingertips.

He used to be so intimidated by naturally intelligent people before. People who would understand what they were taught on the spot and then find a use for that in real life. Hajime had always had to spend hours on a single subject before grasping the essence of it. Thus, he knew he wasn’t smart. He was just putting an awful lot of effort in keeping up with those who were. That was basically his high school experience; a mediocre person struggling to breathe in a school for prodigies.

Not that all of them were genii, but some of them were close enough, and Hajime was both amazed and horrifyingly intimidated when they reminded him of that one way or another. He had no idea how he’d ended up befriending Nagito, who was so absurdly, amazingly smart. Hajime had at first been stunned to see that they could actually hold a conversation.

What bothered him most this day was that Nagito could indisputably talk his way into that blasted office and retrieve his notebook without anybody saying a word. Hajime knew that, and he really didn’t want to be proven right. That was why he had been so vehement in his decision not to be helped. He could make do on his own, even if his understanding of making do basically consisted in letting the entire matter go.

He wished he knew how not to be so terrified of asking for help, though.

Nagito was in front of his desk, notebook in hand the first thing next morning, face blank and betraying nothing. Hajime stared at the notebook, at him, at his hand, and felt like slinking into the floor.

“Ugh,” he said, quite academically, and put great effort into taking the notebook in his hands. “Why?” he whispered as he looked at it.

“The door was unlocked,” the other stated simply and Hajime guessed he also shrugged, although he was not looking at him.

He felt stupid, which wasn’t something new, but also guiltily relieved, so he chastised himself by making eye contact. Nagito’s eyes weren’t judging or even mildly castigating. “Thank you.” It had been quite a while since he had dared look into anyone’s eyes. Force of habit, more than anything.

“It’s alright,” the other smiled before making his way towards his own desk.

He forgot to clip his hair again today, Hajime thought as he looked with misery at his recovered notebook. He wondered if Nagito had opened it.

Chiaki was sleeping again, Hajime realised as he handed the teacher the last few tests collected from his colleagues and bid him a good day. She had been sleeping through the test, and he wondered if she had really finished it that fast or if she was putting her hopes in the class activity. Still, it had been their last class of the day, so he went over and shook her shoulder gently.

“Nanami? We can go now. Wouldn’t you rather get to a bed?”

She blinked slowly and looked at him incomprehensibly. “I wasn’t asleep.”

“Ah, right...” he let a out a quiet chuckle at her giant yawn and looked around at the hastily emptying classroom, even going as far as smiling when somebody said goodbye in his direction. He turned back to Chiaki. “Are you coming home with me today?”

“I...” she attempted to answer, only to stop in order to yawn again. “I think so. Just wait a moment.”

“Sure,” he said, but instead helped her pack her bag, straightening all her papers so they would not get crumpled inside. She never commented on it, so he never asked if it was bothering her.

It wasn’t until they were done that he saw Nagito atop a nearby desk, legs dangling in the air and a small smile prepared for them. Hajime wondered if this was what his mother referred to when she said he was being too quiet sometimes.

“That wasn’t so bad,” the other said and Hajime blinked at him before he realised he was referring to the test.

“It was alright...” he conceded, shrugging at the floor and adding the last notebook in Chiaki’s bag. Thanks to the hours he had spent studying the other day, it hadn’t seemed so hard, but he was hesitant to make assumptions. “Are you coming with us?” It would only be a short way to the bus station where they would part, but it was nice to get to talk to him at the end of the day.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Nagito smiled again and Hajime remembered something Chiaki had told him the year before, that he wasn’t smiling quite as much with other people; not quite as often.

Something told Hajime that ought to make him happy, but instead it only sent dread down his spine and into his stomach. Is he doing it for me? He had no illusions that in their year and a half of friendship Nagito hadn’t picked up on his perpetual gloomy mood, but sometimes he liked to fool himself.

“Did you get it back?” Chiaki asked him after Nagito was safely away in his bus.

Hajime grimaced at the wind and kept on compulsively biting his chapped lips. “Komaeda got it this morning,” he admitted, and they left the bus station to get to the one they needed. “I told him not to, but he’s just...”

“I don’t think he minded. Isn’t it better to just have it back?” Her face didn’t bear any particular expression, but Hajime really liked how soft her voice always was. It was really hard to stay anxious when somebody so calm was talking to him.

“I guess,” he shrugged, looking down at his messenger bag, now heavier than in the morning. Another wave of relief washed over him, and he hadn’t even realised how strained he had been during the time he hadn’t had his notebook with him. “I’ll leave it at home from now on, though.”

Chiaki looked at him in mild surprise. “Is that okay?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t want to lose it again. It’s better if I stop taking it with me,” he glanced at her expression and waved a hand hastily, letting out a nervous little laugh. “It’s just a few hours. I can stay without writing a list for as much.”

Instead of pushing it further, she hummed and buried her face up to her nose in her knitted scarf. “If you need to, I’ll just give you one of mine,” she said, voice muffled by the fabric, and Hajime felt, for a moment, really really lucky.

It wasn’t that Hajime especially liked making lists. It was just that he’d been advised to try it when he was younger. So far, that was the only good bit of therapy he’d ever received. He was aware that it was slightly dumb and probably not at all helpful, but the truth was that he felt better when he had that particular notebook with him, just in case.

It was harmless, after all. It wasn’t like he was listing different types of poison in there. Mostly, it was just dumb. The worst thing he’d ever written in there was a 200-word rant about why people should stop adding pineapple to Teriyaki. The other day, he’d just happened to forget it in the chemistry lab and a variably annoyed teacher had confiscated it and took it to the main office.

Truth be told, Hajime had been more afraid of asking for it back than by the thought of losing it forever.

The first time Nagito had been in his room, all of Hajime’s alarms had been blinking red and screaming in his head, thinking oh gosh, I haven’t dusted the bookshelf and I hope those are not socks under my bed and I don’t even have enough chairs what do I do. He only had one chair, neatly tucked close to his desk, but Nagito only spared him a shy look before sitting on the very, very edge of his bed.

That was then. Now Hajime was partially covered in sheets of scribbled and highlighted paper on the floor, while Nagito sat cross-legged on his bed, looking through his notes and passing him the ones he deemed relevant.

He went through organic chemistry like he had invented the thing, though, and that was disconcerting, seeing as that was one of the few classes Hajime actually felt confident in. Nagito almost never took notes while studying outside of class. He read textbooks with the same expression he did fiction books and information seemed to seep in his brain like deftly woven tales.

Today, though, he had offered to help Hajime make sense of the chaos that were his notes; and although having him look over them and actually seeing how much effort Hajime put in keeping up with him was a frightening thought, it was also really helpful.

“It’s not as bad as you made it sound,” Nagito said as he passed him another page, and Hajime didn’t look at him, just pressed his notes together into a neat pile. “You’re really organised, Hinata,” he then murmured, as if to himself, and when Hajime looked over his shoulder at him, he was inspecting a particularly detailed list.

“Uh, it’s nothing...really,” he bit his lip and cast an awkward glance at the notes on his lap.

Nagito plopping on his elbows beside his head wasn’t something he had expected, though, and it got an embarrassing yelp out of him. “No, it’s really impressive. I’m never this tidy,” and with that he also let his head fall on the mattress, so all Hajime was seeing now were outstretched pale arms still holding his sketches, and a mop of nebulous dandeliony hair. He felt his face getting hot. “You should show me how to do this, one day,” Nagito went on, voice muffled now.

“Y-you’re doing pretty well without my help too, I think,” Hajime almost choked as he tried to inhale and speak at the same time. Saying that Nagito was doing pretty well was like saying the Colosseum was pretty old.

“You’d say that,” the other conceded and raised his head again. “I like studying with you, though.”

That...was unexpected. So unexpected that Hajime actually turned to look at him, which in retrospect hadn’t been such a good idea since their faces were so close at that moment. Nagito had parts of his fringe yet again untidily pinned to a side, and after his forehead had met with the mattress it was as if the bobby pin wasn’t even there anymore. Suddenly, Hajime felt really sad.

Instead of showing it, he gave his friend a small smile. “Me too.”

He got up from the floor soon after, muttering something about tea and guest policies and what not. Back on the ground floor, he almost overfilled the kettle with water. And watching it steam up, a single abrupt shudder went through his body, which might as well have been a sob.

There were days when he remembered.

It was the beginning of their 1st year of high school and classes had just started for a few weeks. They were discussing civilisation, or something close enough to it, and Hajime had had a particularly nice sleep the previous night. This wasn’t especially good, because good moods made him stupid more often than not. Being relaxed meant he was thinking less.

He didn’t yet know anyone; he just remembered their names, since he had tried to list them down some weeks prior. Standing in the first row of desks, he rarely caught a good sight of the class unless someone farther behind was speaking. The subject wasn’t one he was particularly interested in. Thinking back on it, maybe it was the underlying idea that bothered him personally.

“...People have never really existed outside of a natural hierarchy. That is why I think the third-world problems should, in their turn, be dealt with as to make the existence of this world useful instead of equal to ours. History has proven that not all countries possess the same amount of potential with regards to the future, so it’s only counterproductive to lose resources helping a hopeless cause. I’m not saying, of course, that help shouldn’t be sent, but it should be done with the intent of giving the respective country a more industrious role than the one of developing itself into something that might, in time, only damage the world further.”

Hajime had kept frowning for as long as he could, until he heard his own voice pipe up, clumsy and doing the vocal equivalent of a duckling stumbling over a rock. “You’ve got that wrong.”

For the moment, he thought he was dead, because the entire classroom, teacher included, turned so very silent. Nagito, with whom he’d never exchanged a word before, stared at him with an unreadable expression, something that looked faintly like intrigue and expectancy. Hajime gulped down his breath and thought oh god, I just interrupted the valedictorian.

Everyone was looking at him as if he was expected to talk, though. He tried. “I-I mean...Just because some countries haven’t developed as fast as others did doesn’t mean they should just be...written off as lacking potential. T-think about it, there is proof of more intelligent societies existing before the current ones were born, and yet they’ve disappeared. Saying that something is not going to do well in the future looking just at present and past events means you are dismissing the possibility of today’s knowledge being wrong. Since you maintain that society is evolving, it means that you are aware there are things that can be improved. So, um, how can we be so sure we are in the right that we’d take the development of other countries into our hands instead of letting them progress in their own way and time, so they might have the chance to discover a better way of living that we haven’t yet thought of?”

What he meant to say was please, don’t throw people in categories that cut off all their hopes for the future just by looking at their past performances. What he meant to say was please, stop making it sound valid because I might never be able to show you that you are wrong. What he’d had to keep down was please, don’t make all my efforts seem a hopeless cause.

What he got out was a stuttering mess. And everyone was looking at him. And Hajime wanted to disappear into the floor forever, maybe move to the countryside and live underground, far away from their memory and their stare.

Komaeda, still standing up from when he was delivering his argument, blinked at him, looked away as if deep in thought, which he might have been, one hand brought to his mouth, and then slowly, calculatedly nodded. “You make a fair point, Hinata. However, how do you explain the fact that most of the greatest civilisations till this day have been built on slavery? That is, indeed, a very awful process and strongly fruitless in the long run, because it causes the thoughtless obliteration of useful work forces, but looking from the point of view of...”

He went on, his eloquent tone making Hajime’s statement sound even more horrible and childish in his mind, but it was hard to keep track of it all. Not because it was exceedingly complicated, but because Hajime’s mind was screaming with the fact that he actually knew his name and that he had said he was right and, unfathomably, he was putting an additional effort to take his words into account. It was, frankly, more attention than he’d been given in years.

“...Don’t you think so?” Komaeda snapped him out of it with an expectant glance and a hint of a smile on his lips, like he knew Hajime hadn’t heard most of it.

Which, just to be clear, he hadn’t.

List of interesting small countries:

• Tuvalu (“eight standing together”)
• Liechtenstein (false teeth)
• Seychelles (pirates!)
• Marshall Islands (coconuts)
• Slovenia (cabbage festival??)

Chapter Text

It wasn’t a fact that was very often voiced out, but Hajime wanted a lot of things. Good grades, better neuron synapses, a happier life, more friends, proud parents, self-confidence, lots of good luck, a better ability to display affection. All the normal things a normal teenager would want to have. Except he didn’t, really. If one were to take his wish-list and put it beside his scared-out-of-my-mind-of-list, they would see that quite a number of things coincided.

Hajime sneaked a glance towards Chiaki. She was more or less taking notes in her notebook. Sum up and compare – that was the strategy. The only thing he had summed up was the title: he simply hadn’t written it.

Okay, so he felt a little guilty, wasting Chiaki’s time while crowding her room on a Friday afternoon. Her room was quite nice, different from what other people would have expected. It was, well, it was messier than his and larger, but it was infinitely cosier. For how much time she usually spent playing video games, it was an unexpectedly lived-in room. They were on the first floor and still the wood felt warm under Hajime’s feet and everything in her room was given a purpose, although usually that purpose was the one of holding clothes, and there was a purple lamp by the window.

Times like these Hajime wished he could move. Just take a blanket and live in Chiaki’s closet until he went to college. His own room was a lost cause. It reminded him too much of himself to be able to make it better. It was a sad thought, since his room was pretty generic to begin with. He guessed he was just really, really boring.

“I don’t really feel like doing this at all,” she said to him and got up from where she was sitting on her belly and scribbling ideas.

“Yeah, me neither,” he agreed and grimaced at his blank paper. Once Chiaki was up, she leant closer to him to look at it too. She didn’t seem quite as disappointed as he felt she had the right to be.

“Do you want to play?” she raised wide eyes to his own and he resisted leaning away from her.

“I think so, yes,” he agreed, because if there was something he had really appreciated from his childhood and on to his current age it was the existence of video games. More often than not, he had calmed himself down after a test or a bad day by spending a few hours playing, and that was something no amount of bad thoughts had been able to take from him.

This was another reason why he was in love with her room. It had everything. So, in no time, they had put away all school-related materials and got on comfortable spots on the floor, facing her TV and console. Chiaki was also really fast, but only when what she was doing was related to games. In rest, she was the sleepiest, calmest person Hajime had ever met.

She also had a lot of pillows, which was why the floor was so comfortable at that moment.

“Are you doing anything tomorrow, Hinata?” she suddenly asked in the middle of their 3rd game. The silence up to that point had been very comforting, the likes of which Hajime didn’t encounter that often.

The next day, as he recalled, was Saturday. “No, I was going to stay home.” Actually, he had planned to clean his room, which sounded creepy even to him, so she didn’t need to know any more details.

“We were thinking of going to see a movie,” she explained as soon as she got them through the next gateway of the game. Then, in a more pensive tone, “I haven’t been to the cinema in a long time.”

Hajime’s hands were slack on the controller. “Huh? Who’s ‘we’?” Because, while Chiaki talked to a few different people occasionally, he had no idea which of them she was actually friends with. Most of his time with her was spent only between the two of them, like he’d been used to do with the friends he’d had so far.

“Tsumiki, Mioda, Komaeda and I,” Chiaki counted on the fingers of her free hand before grasping the controller again. “Koizumi wanted to come too, but she has an art show this weekend.”

Hajime was really glad he had a good memory of names and faces. “I...that’s quite a large group, isn’t it?” He attempted a smile, but she was looking blankly at the screen. He felt a little inappropriate, never having heard of her hanging out with so many people at the same time.

“No, not really...” she answered, then blinked and seemed to snap out of the screen’s spell. She looked at him with a vaguely worried expression before giving him a reassuring smile. “You don’t have to come if you don’t think you’ll be comfortable, but in case you want to, I’d be really happy.”

“Ah, no, it’s...fine,” he took a deep breath halfway through his sentence. He didn’t feel that confident in his social performance if he was needed to pay attention to more than two people at a time, and the thought of meeting other colleagues outside of school was a little stressful, but now that he knew about the plan he didn’t quite feel like staying home anymore. Still, he wondered if the others wouldn’t wish he hadn’t come.

After all, if this had been decided a while ago, why hadn’t he...

“I asked Komaeda to let me invite you.” Busted. So busted. “Since we had that presentation yesterday, I thought it would be better if you didn’t have this to dwell on too.”

Controller away and hands occupied with the wringing of the hem of his T-shirt, Hajime coloured an embarrassed red. “I would’ve been okay, you know. Still...uh, thanks.”

He just had to accept that Chiaki was more straight-forward about his issues than Nagito was. She addressed them whenever they were concerned, but still talked to him like they weren’t something that made him weird. It had been harder to adapt to this behaviour, but he eventually did.

“So, are you coming?”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, eyes focused on her purple lamp. “Yeah, I think so...”

When he later cautiously glanced at her, he didn’t regret it, as her smile was really real and really sweet; and when their eyes met, he let a smile form on his lips too.

The movie was horrible. The place smelt kind of weird, but Hajime thought that was just the smell of a public place which was more or less constantly bustling with people. He hadn’t been to the cinema all that often. He felt a little put upon that he didn’t like the movie more. Nagito seemed to be absorbed in it, chin on his hands and eyes focused, which was actually kind of adorable. It didn’t really help that the movie was in French.

When it was over, all the chat Ibuki had been keeping inside until then, mostly by claiming the bowl of popcorn for herself, went out in a waterfall of sentences. Hajime lost track of it soon after she started trying to pronounce French words and claim they sounded like American actors. Chiaki was still giving her some feedback from time to time, though, so he didn’t feel too bad.

However, it only took a few moments for that to change, because as soon as he looked to his right he realised Nagito was talking to Mikan, and that this was the problem of being in a group of five. The rapidity with which his panic reached his throat upset him even more, though. He would, he would just go back to making sense of Ibuki’s banter, that what was he was supposed to do. It wasn’t a big deal, and he could do it and keep on seeming normal.

Only he didn’t do that, because as soon as he inhaled a second panicked breath, Nagito took notice of him and... Uh oh, Hajime thought. He was going to do it. He was going to stop talking to Mikan in order to focus on him. No, no, that was not at all what Hajime wanted. Guilt tripping friends into paying attention to him was one of his greatest nightmares. He felt like running away.

“Hinata, didn’t you think it was like Amélie? Actually, it was Tsumiki who told us to watch it that one time,” Nagito talked, instantly taking all will of fleeing out of him; he even took a step back to let Hajime and Mikan see each other.

Hajime sent him a startled gaze, and got a very subtle shrug in return along with a sympathetic smile. He felt stupid. This was how Nagito, on his part, dealt with his issues. Never as blunt as Chiaki, but nevertheless just as aware of them, he prodded at him with actions rather than with questions. He was usually perceptive enough to know what to do without Hajime having to spell it out. Hajime felt just as bad about it, however, since he didn’t think he should’ve been pampered that much by them; and felt even more horrible for being thankful for it.

Still, Nagito’s hand was on his sleeve, pulling him just the faintest bit closet to them, so he let out a great breath and answered, “It wasn’t at all like Amélie.” Their fingers brushed when Nagito released his sleeve, and nothing followed.

“It was more serious, so I...I find it quite hard to compare them,” Mikan stammered the continuation of what was probably her discussion with Nagito, but this time she also glanced at Hajime, so in the end he didn’t die quite as quickly as he’d expected.

He got home later than he’d expected, when the early spring sun was already gone, and as soon as he got inside Hajime let out a great sigh. He was torn between the wish to sleep forever and to take an eternal bath, which vaguely mingled in his brain as a wish to sleep forever in the bathtub, but he didn’t get the time to choose a way of action. He had barely took off his boots and jacket and drank a glass of water when his phone rang from where he’d left it in the hallway.

He answered on what was probably the second ring. “That was exhausting,” Nagito claimed with so much theatrical pathos that Hajime had the nagging suspicion that he was impersonating his subconscious. It didn’t feel good; at all. “Sorry, I guess I expected it to be a little more like school, sans the lessons. I kind of forgot how much people talk during breaks.” And, oh, okay, he was actually talking about himself. Hajime really wanted to sit in the shame corner now. “Did you have fun, Hinata?”

He was just in the middle of forming answers to his complaints, so the question took him by surprise. “I...yeah, kind of? I think so...”

Nagito had been one of the first people to laugh around him without giving him the impression that it was at his expense. It always, somehow, sounded too nice to be hurtful. “I’m sorry you didn’t actually know Mioda and Tsumiki. They are quite nice if you get to know them.”

“Ah—no, it was alright. Really,” he let out a sigh at his own tone and then listened to the sound of traffic coming from Nagito’s end. “What are you doing?”

They barely separated a few minutes before. He would have expected Nagito to wait for at least a few hours before talking to him, if at all that day. Don’t let poor Hajime overdose on sociability and all that.

“I’m going to the bus station,” then a pause. “I don’t walk very fast.”

“Oh. Um, alright...” Hajime eventually got out of the hallway and into the kitchen, fumbling with a few drawers, trying not to see his hands shaking.

“Does it bother you that I called? It was getting kind of lonely and we didn’t get the chance to talk just by ourselves today.” Hajime almost squeaked as he mishandled a carton of milk.

“It doesn’t bother me,” he muttered as he attempted to open the box single-handedly. He didn’t know what more to say. There were a thousand things bothering him at that moment, but none of them related to their conversation. And just as he thought of that, he was overcome by the appalling need to spit them out. “I think I’m overthinking.”

There wasn’t a sigh or even a shuffle coming from Nagito, just the same traffic sound until his voice was heard again. “I can come by tomorrow. Or Monday after school,” and another thoughtful pause. “Do you want to talk about it now?” It wasn’t voiced like a worry, though. It was just a normal inquiry.

“Not really,” Hajime decided as he played with the mouth of the milk box. “But I think I’ll want to on Monday.”

However, on Monday he was too embarrassed to go through with the plan, so he ended up postponing it day after day, although no complaints were made on Nagito’s part. Truth be told, he looked like he was waiting for a pass rather than an interdiction, so eventually Hajime felt dumb and stopped inventing excused every day.

It was quite some time later when he just happened to keep walking alongside Nagito, unaware than he was off-course until he recognised the residential area his friend was living in. Nagito didn’t exactly mention it, but he did give Hajime a reassuring smile as they crossed the remaining distance to his house.

Two hours later and they were staying in relative silence, each reading their book of choice. Hajime guessed these kinds of things just happened, sometimes.

Unlike Chiaki’s, Nagito’s room was slightly more spacious, not because it was bigger, but because it didn't have clothes and pillows strewn all around it. The floor was mostly empty, while every other surface was hosting piles of books.

The walls were more or less covered in bookshelves, although some only occupied the upper side of the wall so that a small couch and a bed could be placed under them. Since his first visit, Hajime had safely claimed the couch, eyeing suspiciously the end-of-time creature that Nagito called a blanket from where it was almost obscuring the bed. I like being comfortable, Nagito had explained sheepishly, and that didn’t come as a surprise. The nicest thing about his room was that it unconditionally gave one a pleasant feeling. It looked very personal and homely, but Hajime didn’t really want to live in this one’s closet. He just wanted to come over really, really often, which was exactly why he did it so seldom.

Eventually, Nagito had got into the habit of sitting on the green couch too, like he was doing now. It was just large enough to let keep his legs up and use them as a bookstand. Hajime never understood why it was this, seeing him so at ease in his room, completely focused in a book and with a thoughtful expression of his face, which made him feel like an intruder. Maybe because at this point he realised how different Nagito acted at school, or when anyone else was around, or even when they were at Hajime’s place. He felt what he at first thought to be a pang of guilt, but which eventually proved to be much more. Longing, probably.

It was soothingly quiet, and Hajime’s voice was almost a whisper. “Do you ever feel lonely?” he asked, feeling his own throat clench painfully, because the words had come abruptly, but on this rare occasion they were the honest.

Nagito didn’t raise his eyes from the book. “Yes.” He hadn’t needed a lot to think about it, and Hajime bit his lip as he tried to let air pass through his throat. He knew he was hitting home, probably not only for himself, and he had no right to do so.

Still, he couldn’t remember ever hurting so much from wishing for someone’s wellbeing before. Nagito must have been feeling awfully lonely if he preferred his company over sitting alone. That was what he’d been thinking, but even as he recalled that, he realised it was not true.

Hajime’s voice was even smaller when he continued. “Are you feeling lonely right now?”

This time the pause was a little longer, but then Nagito smiled at his book. “Just a little bit.”

He didn’t really know what he was feeling. He just knew that what had before felt like a dull sadness weighting down on his soul was now also coated with a thick layer of affection. Hajime didn’t realise he had spread his hand in between them on the couch until Nagito grasped it, intertwining their fingers with careful determination.

For once, he didn’t panic. Nagito’s hand was warm and firm as it held his and, with vague surprise, Hajime realised that so was his. He got the faintest sense of vertigo as he became aware of how chaotic his mind had been until then, because now everything was calm. So much calmer than what he’d felt in years, and he wondered if that was what Nagito felt every day or something they had created together. Eventually, he started reading again, not feeling adrift anymore.

Things to do on a train:

• Sleep
• Read
• Play word games
• Find weird-looking suitcases/shoes
• Doodle animals
• Narrate dramatically while looking outside the window
• Be taught pompous words (that guy has too many hobbies)

Chapter Text

Hajime had always disliked counsellors and psychologists in general. Well, it was probably the meetings he hated, or even more to the point the idea of them. He had nothing with the counsellors as people. He surely hoped most of them were good people on their own. It was just that he didn’t like being sent to an appointment that was supposed to make him better only to come back feeling even more miserable. It stood to prove that, yet again, he was somehow doing something wrong.

“It’s really good that you’re getting along with your friends. Alright, one last question. Tell me, do you think you’re in love?”

It was brusque; and it clicked. Yes. A thousand times yes.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“That’s not a bad thing. It’s a good sign that you’re accepting affection, Hinata.”

You don’t get it. Please don’t take this away from me. This wasn’t, couldn’t be some reaction of his messed-up mind. Not again, not something that only existed because he was such a creep.

“Just try and see what exactly you’re substituting for, and then you’ll understand it better. There’s no need to be afraid. Oh, dear, you’ve gone all white. Did I scare you?”

Yes? Definitely?

No, Hajime thought. I scare myself.

The last list he’d written in his notebook was of all the drapes he’d seen when his parents had taken him with them to the store. It was safe and he was also helping them, that way. Unfortunately, he’d ended up with some weird blue ones that didn’t completely block out the sun as much as they dispersed it in a weird blue mess.

The feeling of existential crisis and fright had died down on the way home, and then during the late afternoon nap he had thankfully managed to get. Now he couldn’t stop replaying the counsellor’s words in his head, steadily growing angrier and coming up with more and more spiteful imaginary replies.

I’m not substituting anything, why would I even want to substitute something? He glowered as he started scribbling words in dark ink on a heavily doodled page. You make me sick. What would I even substitute in the first place? He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

In a way, it was such a relief to feel anger, even if only for a few moments. The past few, well, many years he’d been too sad to get angry. There had been a time when he’d been constantly irritated with everything and anything. Angry that he wasn’t smart enough, angry that he wasn’t thinking right, angry that he couldn’t be happy, angry that he was never good enough. In the end, all of it led to a mellow state of self-hatred that settled like melancholy over his entire being.

It felt good to be angry again, but it was also completely exhausting. His writing was getting smaller and smaller the less space he had on the page, and he felt something tug as his gut with every word, guilt and sorrow and hopelessness. You make it sound so bad, so vulgar, he accused in his mind, but he was already weary.

It had taken him a week to be able to keep a variably straight face during daily activities after that. To be fair, it took him until he had his next meeting programmed, when it didn’t really matter anymore. Really, it didn’t matter at all, because Hajime was not going there. Full stop.

He would probably start feeling terrible halfway through his walk home and decide to come back and apologise. He was lame and pitiful like that. “Aren’t you going to the counsellor’s meeting today?” Chiaki asked him as she got out of her desk when classes had ended.

In his defence, Hajime tried to shrug as flippantly as possible. It didn’t quite work, he felt. “I don’t want to.”

She leant her head to a side the slightest bit, but didn’t get to ask him if he was okay, which he wasn’t, because both of their attention was suddenly caught by a third element. “Great! Can we go get something to eat, then?”

Chiaki blinked at Nagito while Hajime was too busy feeling his own face burn up. “I have violin practice.”

Apparently not minding his gradual transformation into a tomato, Nagito turned to give their friend a sad look. “I’m sorry, I totally forgot. Ah, what kind of friend am I? Do you want us to take you there?”

Hajime didn’t have the chance to say that he wasn’t going anywhere that wasn’t his self-pity cocoon in his room because Chiaki shook her head with a smile. “No, that’s quite alright. I’ll have to pass by the music room, so we’ll see each other tomorrow.”

“Right, see you...” Hajime gave her a shy wave, feeling a little dumb after not saying anything for a while.

“See you tomorrow, Chiaki!” Nagito waved more enthusiastically, then turned towards him, a perfect 180° turn which made Hajime almost jump out of his skin. “Let’s go, Hinata.”

He hooked two of their fingers together, but only until he got him out of the classroom.

Hajime couldn’t say he was feeling too hungry these days. If anything, he had less of an appetite than usual, as his system’s reaction to his thoughts had been all sleep, sleep, sleep. This way, he was nursing a coke while Nagito was thoughtfully munching French fries and unsubtly analysing his face.

Hajime found it was better to just look outside, at the rain that had started a few hours before. He had thought the reminder of it would have changed Nagito’s mind about going out, but apparently not. He even offered to share his umbrella. Hajime, being not only forgetful, but also a chronic coward, had accepted.

“Hinata, your face is going to gets stuck like that if you keep frowning so scarily.”

Hajime turned and looked at Nagito giving him an apologetic smile. Just as he wanted to disagree, he realised his eyebrows scrunched even more and huffed. “I’m not scary.”

Nagito let out a short laugh. “You’d be surprised.” Which made Hajime goggle at him. “Ah, don’t take it like that. It’s just that you get annoyed so rarely it’s kind of intimidating when it happens.”

Hajime stared at him in surprise before eventually frowning again. Him, intimidating? “Like you’re one to talk.”

That sentence had a double meaning. One, you get annoyed even less than I do and two, you’re intimidating even when you’re in a good mood sometimes. It was hard to say whether Nagito had picked up on both of them, but he did grin as if to admit his fault, just before biting into another fry.

“Do you want to do something?” the other leant slightly forward a little while later, eyes bright with the new idea. Hajime thought that he hadn’t really understood what intelligent eyes were supposed to look like until he met him.

“Huh? What?” he asked, eloquently.

Nagito twirled a potato fry through the air, making the movement so expressive that a foreigner would have thought that was a common way of displaying an idea. “Go out. Maybe we could watch a movie, or visit a bookshop or five.”

If anything was screaming its metaphorical lungs out in Hajime’s chest, he shut it out. “It’s the middle of the week,” he said, although his fingers had gone all tingly at the thought of spending even more time together. This entire afterschool outing was something he considered divine providence. “Also, it’s raining,” he added as an afterthought, grimacing once again at the window.

Nagito shrugged. “There’s nothing interesting going on tomorrow; and I have an umbrella.” Yeah, with emphasis on the singular. This time, he looked outside the window too. “Let’s go in the park.”

An eyebrow was raised in his direction. “What park?”

Without moving his gaze, Nagito pointed across the street. “That one.”

Hajime would never have guessed there was a park there. Which, in retrospect, was dumb since there was enough vegetation to signal it. He passed by it every day on his way home, too.

The rain wasn’t that bad, all things considered, but Nagito kept his umbrella over both of them anyway. At least the rain meant that there weren’t that many people in the park. Add it being Thursday and you got almost empty alleys. Thanks to his mind’s unfamiliarity with that particular topic, it’s safe to say that it took Hajime an awful amount of time to think that whatever they were doing looked like a date.

He wanted to scream. Actually, he wanted to scream and run and hide himself under a very thick, very oxygen-depriving duvet. Then he shook himself mentally because what was he even thinking? They’d done worse things than this since they were friends. Well, not worse, because this wasn’t bad, but more...intimate? Wrong word; Hajime felt himself getting slowly asphyxiated through sheer will power.

When he was making slightly more sense, he glanced over at Nagito, actively not thinking about things. He wasn’t looking back at him, and yes, this was his chance. He had to think of something that would put his mind on a different track. Luckily, his mind was amazing at doing that.

It plunged directly, and enthusiastically, back into self-hatred. “You don’t have to do this, you know? I’m fine...”

Because it wasn’t fair letting Nagito do all his great friend deeds while Hajime was well aware that he would never be able to return the favour. Because he was a shitty friend, really. Chiaki had told him that he was really kind and caring and one of the best friends she’d ever had, but in fact it was Chiaki who was astonishingly kind and caring, and she had just somehow applied all her attributes on her vision of him. His friends were the best things that had happened to him in years and he hadn’t even thanked them properly for that.

It hurt everytime they were kind to him, but it hurt even more when he thought of putting all his gratitude in words. Because what if, by saying it out loud, they would realise what a lousy friend he really was? He would rather let them be misled for a little while longer, because he was awful like that. Awful and so very scared of being alone.

It only took seconds for all this to pass through his mind at lightning speed, and still Nagito’s voice caught him unprepared. “Oh, it’s not you, really...” He was looking ahead, a blank expression on his face and Hajime felt dread seep into his bones like acid. A thousand scathing words in his friend’s voice ran through his head and he felt dizzy. It only took a moment; then Nagito caught his eye and gave a tiny gasp. “No, no, that sounded bad, I’m sorry—”

“No, sorry, I was being stupid,” Hajime forced a smile and waved it off, because gods only knew what his face had looked like if it had unsettled Nagito.

He got another apologetic smile in turn, and then Nagito looked elsewhere, suddenly letting him breathe. He seemed to look for another way of starting what he wanted to say, but in the end settled on the main idea. “My parents had a fight last night...,” he said and he didn’t sound exactly sad as much as tired. “I figured I’d better let them calm down before coming home today.” Hajime was relatively startled to realise that he understood that to mean I don’t want to go home yet.

“Oh,” he helped, kicking a pebble. There was no point in saying sorry since Nagito himself wasn’t particularly sad about it; it wasn’t exactly news. “We can go to the cinema, then.” Easy. Coward’s way out, since that way he wouldn’t have to spew only wrong words out of his mouth.

He didn’t give much thought to Nagito changing hands for his umbrella until his own was grasped in a gentle hold. Nagito’s fingertips were cold from holding the umbrella until that moment, but the rest of his hand was warm and Hajime did all he could in order not to cover it all up with his own.

They weren’t intertwining fingers this time, but it felt just as close and secure and Hajime thought, with a dull pain boring in his chest, who would I ever replace with you?, just before feeling a paradoxical smile form on his lips. “Or we could go uptown to that bakery. You can beat me again at Shiritori so I’ll have a reason to buy you a cake.”

Nagito actually laughed, that light, heart-warming sound that used to get to Hajime even in his darkest times; and it was great, because they were in an empty park and it was raining and they were holding hands and Hajime had just made his best friend laugh. “You beat me last time, if I remember correctly,” he grinned and then their shoulders touched for the smallest moment. “But let’s do that. It sounds nice.”

Letting Nagito pick their way through the city that day had eventually proved to be a very bad choice. He didn’t know how he did it, but Hajime was quite fascinated by the number of times they ended up in a bad end or a creepy side of the town. For all he could say while hastily dragging him away, Nagito swore that he was actually trying to find the right path. It just wasn’t his lucky day. Only a few of their most ancient gods knew how they’d gone through the day alive.

The sun had died down for more than an hour when they got close to Hajime’s home. It would’ve been completely dark if it weren’t for the streetlights, and the road was uncommonly clear. He guessed that just because it was dark didn’t mean it was late. Still, it was quiet, and their feet made only a small amount of sound as they found their way around puddles. Their fingers were still holding loosely to one another.

A white van passed and broke the silence for a short while. When it was gone too, Nagito spoke up. “Thank you,” his voice was just loud enough and calm enough and Hajime stopped biting his lips in order to look at him. He had thanked him. Did he really not know how much all of today had mean for him too? His own gratitude was stuck in his throat, unable to come out in its immensity.

So “Me too,” was what got out instead and Hajime’s face crumbled in a mess of embarrassment as he averted his gaze. “I-I meant, yeah, uh...you know...I’m thankful...too—for everything... No, shit, I—”

Nagito pulled his hand back into a firmer grip and gave it a light squeeze then, and when Hajime dared to look at him again he was grinning, a little too broadly for it not to show amusement too, but he was alright with that. Somehow, it still seemed too soon when they stopped in front of Hajime’s house. Three out of four windows were lit, so there was at least somebody inside.

“So, I guess we’ll see each other tomorrow,” Nagito brought his hands to his pockets as soon as they broke contact.

“If you don’t catch a cold before that,” Hajime replied absent-mindedly upon finally becoming aware of the frosty weather, but while being far more concentrated on how the lamplight brought Nagito’s win-reddened cheeks into clear view.

At his words, the other seemed to draw a little bit deeper in his jacket, smile still in place. “Ah, don’t worry about me. I’m usually prone to any kind of illness, but flu was never one of them.” Hajime had a brief flashback of that time he had had an allergic reaction to red pepper and didn’t question him. His bigger problem lay in the choosing of an appropriate parting word. “By the way, Hinata,” Nagito pulled him away from his thoughts again and uh, oh, these words never meant good.

Hajime gulped and opened his mouth with the hope that his voice would still be there. “Yes?”

The brief tension eased when Nagito bounced on the balls of his feet, mouth pulled at one corned in an embarrassed expression. “I’ve wanted to mention this for a while...,” he went on, voice growing dimmer, and the silence of the street was once again to their advantage. “I realise you might not be the type to do this, but...you know you can askforahug if you want one, right? A-anytime, I mean.”

It took a good thirty seconds of scrunching his eyebrows at him before the words, hurried and otherwise, made sense in Hajime’s mind. “U-uh,” was his competent reply, and he wished Nagito wasn’t still looking at him so he could go on nibbling at his broken lips. “Er, um, t-thank you...” He regretted the fact that his first thought after confused alarm was does that include ‘now’ too.

Proving the goodness of his soul, Nagito didn’t leave him alone in his embarrassment, choosing to keep lingering and smiling self-consciously at the gravel under their feet. “I’m sorry. That was a wrong way to put it. Not that I didn’t mean it, but what I wanted to say initially was...” Gray-green eyes looked up at him with a silent plead.

“...Do you need a hug?” Hajime asked, somewhat taken aback by his own deductions. He expected it to be like the wrong answer that led the way to the correct one, but Nagito simply nodded, moving his shoulders slightly as if not completely sure whether he ought to take his hands out of his pockets yet or not. “Um,” Hajime let his guard down and involuntarily bit at his lower lip, “alright.”

Apart from Chiaki in an awkward moment at the end of their first year of high school, he hadn’t hugged anyone in years. He had been told that he gives off the impression of someone having problems with physical contact, but that wasn’t true. Of course, Hajime liked hugs, he liked holding someone’s hand, being near enough for their shoulders to brush while watching movies of playing games, just as long as he was close to that someone. Contact wasn’t the problem; closeness was.

For all his hesitation, Nagito was as sure in returning the hug as he’d been in holding his hand. Hajime couldn’t help but feel a little overwhelmed, but then he realised he got some of the other’s hair in his mouth and redirected his thoughts from the warm feeling in his stomach to that. He held him tighter too, remembering his uncharacteristic reluctance to go home.

For a while, he refused to let anything more enter his mind, but then something stuck him wrong about their current position. “You’re taller than me,” Hajime mumbled in the other’s shoulder, which shook the slightest bit with a chuckle.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that,” Nagito replied, clearly more amused than Hajime felt he had the right to be. Oddly enough, he actually went down with a cold the next day.

Things that make people happy:

• Sweets
• Bookshops and grocery stores (?)
• Game releases
• Hugs
• Soap balloons
• Kind words
• Music
• Hot chocolate
• Talking
• Small animals
• Happy animals
• Excited animals
• Attention
• Smiles

Chapter Text

After that incident in their first weeks of high school, nothing really changed; at least, not immediately. Hajime didn’t think his colleagues liked him any better, and after stuttering so much while inadvertently debating with Nagito, he was too embarrassed to try and talk to any of them. Not only was he mediocre now, he was mediocre and tried to seem smarter than he was. At least, that’s what he imagined them thinking.

There had been a single repercussion, a week or so after that wannabe debate, when he was asked to answer a few questions in history. The subject was just on the verge of his knowledge, so he was trying to give as much of the information he knew, so he wouldn’t have to reach the unstudied part (and, really, how could he miss writing down that lesson?). For the most part, it was going well. If by well one understood a very painful description of events spoke with the constant fear of messing it all up. The pain, of course, came from Hajime’s excruciating effort not to drop his voice to unhearable levels.

As always, he wasn’t at all lucky, so, soon enough, he saw himself facing an unknown subject. Somehow, he managed to stumble upon a few sentences, but he had never been an expert at beating around any kind of bushes. The terror he felt when Nagito muttered a not particularly scathing you’ve got that wrong from his seat in the dead middle of the class was, embarrassingly enough, mixed with relief. The other’s whisper had been just loud enough for the classroom to hear, of course, and it brought forth a few snickers.

The ardent need to make himself invisible must have been plain on Hajime’s face at that point, because it nevertheless made the teacher stop the questioning and professionally explain what exactly was his mistake. Hajime made a single more voluntary movement that day, and it was the one of glancing back at Nagito, feeling sick from nerves, but still wanting, needing to see an emotion.

It just so happened that Nagito caught his eyes too, and... well, smiled. The lack of malice in that expression was probably the only thing that let Hajime sleep those restless couple of hours the following night.

Okay. Correction time: usually, it wasn’t that Hajime thought others didn’t like him. He thought most of them were, at best, mildly unenthusiastic to make his acquaintance. However, what he did believe was that, if any of them held a conversation with him, then they would dislike him. He was just boring, and people didn’t like boredom. He’d been trying to accept that fact most of his life.

Fast forward some days after history and it was biology class. They had to work in pairs, one taking notes and one looking into the microscope. Not particularly difficult, but it was their first group assignment. In order to provide himself with a less abrasive reason for being alone, Hajime had seated himself, yet again, on the first row.

For all the word, he looked as if he was waiting for somebody. In reality, he was unsure whether to hope for a round number or not. For now, although he wasn’t one for looking up from his notes too often, even in the free period before the teacher arrived, he sometimes did, and thus learnt the faces of his colleagues. Thankfully, they scarcely ever made eye contact, which was absolutely fine by him, since it made him uncomfortable nine times out of ten.

This, in retrospect, was why Hajime literally felt his lifespan draining when he looked up only to see Nagito, freshly arrived in the classroom and looking over the available desks, and more precisely when they caught each other’s eye. This was it, Hajime thought. Nagito was going to settle his social life forever with a simple, but undoubtedly extremely smart remark. He’d known this would come for weeks.

Funnily enough, Nagito did exactly that. Only not in the ways Hajime had expected.

He felt like one about to be guillotined when Nagito moved towards him, but the other’s stance seemed altogether too relaxed to look like a headman. In his distress, Hajime almost missed the first few moments of a messenger bag being put on his desk.

“Are you waiting for someone?” Nagito asked, and the question sounded hilarious to Hajime’s ears. However, the other seemed to mean it, so he shook his head. “Can I sit here, then?” he went on and Hajime was agog and aghast, but nodded nevertheless.

The smile Nagito shot him looked like the 8th wonder of the world that chilly morning, as he took a seat beside Hajime. Bohemian Rhapsody was playing somewhere at the back of his mind.

The teacher arrived before any man died, and, more importantly, before Hajime made his mind to say something that was obviously not needed. If Nagito wanted to make conversation, he might have just as well seated himself with the people he usually talked to. Hajime knew they existed, although he couldn’t pinpoint them at the moment.

Anyway, the class went on really well for the first twenty minutes, especially since they reached an agreement for Hajime to take the notes since, well, since he wasn’t the one closer to the microscope, to be fair. For a short moment, he considered the ridiculousness of him being the one telling Nagito what to write instead, and yeah, no, this was his rightful place.

It went well, until he realised they were done, at the end of those miraculous twenty minutes. Hajime forgot himself and gave Nagito a baffled look, to which the other replied in kind, and that would have been so normal, if only Hajime hadn’t averted his gaze a moment later. He had never wanted to be comfortable around people more than then, because it seemed like such a waste. Because the more he stood, staring at the desk’s surface and not attempting a disguised conversation, the more resolute he was that he actually wanted to know the person sitting next to him. For no reason particularly, other than the fact that he was a person.

Then Nagito shifted, putting his arms on the small desk space left by the microscope. “Are you angry with me, Hinata?” he asked in a hushed tone that still managed to sound like his normal voice, and Hajime spared him another glance.

“N-no?” he asked, because what had even brought that forth? Hajime really doubted his power to get angry at anyone.

“Really?” Nagito countered, genuinely inquisitive. “It’s alright if you are, you know. I wasn’t picking on you, I just wanted to know.”

Hajime felt his knees turn to jelly for no particular reason. “I’m not angry with you,” he struggled for eloquence and then, just because he loved trying his bad luck, he went on, “Why would you think that?”

The other seemed to ponder. “We never talk.”

“I never talk to anyone.” Hajime was dumbstruck by his own honesty.

It seemed like he wasn’t the only one either, because Nagito blinked at him with wide eyes for a moment before smiling. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. My fault.”

That was it. Hajime could practically feel the end fall on their conversation. It shook his already trembling knees. It took a moment. “Uh, I don’t really know what to talk about...”

It was amazing how Nagito could express enthusiasm even while whispering. “What about video games?” he asked, Hajime gave him a profusely startled look, because, if anything, he hadn’t expected him to choose something so mundane. Huh, it almost seems like he’s an actual human being, eh, one part of Hajime’s mind snorted derisively.

“Ah, I guess they’re nice...” he answered half-heartedly out of habit, staring at his fingers as they played anxiously with the hem of his uniform vest.

“Hmm,” there was another pause, just enough for Hajime to send a you did it again to his brain. “Books? Some people like movies better, but we’ll go to those too if you’d like.” It almost hurt to hear all these attempts and be aware that they weren’t going to help at all.

“I like books,” Hajime answered, still looking dejectedly at his lap. What was the point?

“Me too. It’s so amazing that all these writers have kept so many people inside them all their lives. It makes me happy, in a way. To think that people can love imaginary beings so much so as to devote their entire lives to sharing that feeling with others. Think of how much love they can give to the real people around them after that.”

“They usually don’t.”

He didn’t seem deterred. “You’re right, of course. But some of them do, and those feelings touch others too. They’re a main source of our hope for the future, I think. Actually, I think this applies to all artists, in fact—ah, I’m sorry, I made the discussion boring.”

Hajime bit his lip, only to realise that it was already cracked. “It’s not boring. I, I think I’m following you.” He was trying his mightiest to do so, at least.

“Ah, I wouldn’t want to start imposing my ideas from our first conversation. That’s inconsiderate and slightly rude,” and he stopped, as if to let Hajime pick up the chat from there or to change the topic. What could he even say to that? He was clearly out of his league. Nothing happened. “Um, Hinata?”

“Yes?”

“You’re going to tear the material apart.”

Upon looking down at his hands, Hajime realised that, yes, he had already split a few seams. “Sorry,” he said, although it was his vest.

“Hey, Nanami.” His elbows hurt a little from pressing so hard on the surface of her desk, but Hajime thought that, given the circumstances, he could suffer a little for theatrics.

On her part, the girl made a vague noise of recognition of his voice before glancing briefly up from her DS. He was mildly aware that she’d been advancing levels like mad the past hour.

“Have you ever liked someone?” he went on, miraculously not stumbling over his words, but identifiably speaking faster and in a lower volume. He felt stupid as soon as he’d said it. “Uh, I know it’s not my business, so you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to...” But—

Chiaki tapped her Stylus to her lips as she stared momentarily at a blank spot on the ceiling of her room. “I did, in fact,” she remarked with mild surprise, which made Hajime feel less silly in his own befuddlement. Inconspicuously, he slinked to the floor beside her. “I was in middle school and one time I was on class duty with them.”

Hajime waited. When nothing followed and Chiaki kept on staring at nothing, he prodded further. “Er, and?”

“I liked it. We had to clean the classroom after hours and we even talked like three times. I think. Can’t remember anything else.”

“That’s all?” he asked, not quite managing not to sound disappointed.

Chiaki looked at him as if his question had taken her aback. “Of course. What else would there be?”

Well, they had been middle-schoolers. “Uh,” Hajime ran a hand through his hair, “I dunno, did you keep in touch after that?”

At this, she turned pensive again. “No, not really. I haven’t spoken to any of my old colleagues in a long, long time.” She and Hajime had that in common. As a final statement, she put her Stylus away. “I haven’t liked him for more than a few weeks, anyhow.”

“Oh. Well, I guess it comes with time,” Hajime muttered, looking away and involuntarily hugging one of her pillows to his chest. He waited a few good minutes before saying what nagged at his insides. “Do you think I can like someone?”

In the next few seconds, he felt awful. He felt like Chiaki had just realised that the entire conversation until that point had been just his complex way of edging her into his talk about himself. For someone so self-conscious, he truly was awfully selfish. It was because of this that he didn’t apologize in that instant. Instead, he would do so as soon as she gave him an answer.

“What do you mean?” her voice said instead and he drew even more into himself; or, well, into her pillow. His eyes were fixed on a particularly interesting part of her desk’s feet.

“I-I mean, as I am now...” he freed one hand to move it vaguely in the air as if to emphasize his current state of being: the mollusc.

Chiaki didn’t answer right away, but he watched her out the corner of his eye and she didn’t show any particularly new emotion on her thinking face. In the end, she caught his eye again. “I don’t see why not.”

That, in itself, seemed too easy, so Hajime was instantly filled with a feeling of being misunderstood, so he turned towards her fully. “But wouldn’t it be weird? I mean, I haven’t interacted that much with people to be able to tell apart some emotions, right? What if I’m misinterpreting?” he looked at her with inquiring eyes before averting his gaze again and letting his voice fall to a mumble. “I can’t even think of kissing someone without hearing some psychologist tell me I’m actually trying to distract myself or substitute some kind of affection I apparently didn’t get as a kid.”

Some time along the way, Chiaki had gone as far as closing and putting her DS away. Right now, she was looking at Hajime with a bluntly unconvinced expression. When he was done, she sighed. That was uncommon. “Do you really think that?”

Hajime reeled back; mentally. “Um...”

Chiaki sighed again, this time closing her eyes too. He was somewhat worried that might send her to sleep. “It’s not a level-up game,” she mumbled him into confusion, then opened her eyes again and fixed him with a determined stare. “Hinata, you agree that we’re friends.” It might have been a trick question; he nodded. “Did you go through this before deciding that too?”

“Well...” He kind of had. Just a little bit.

Chiaki looked unimpressed now as she puffed her cheeks at him. But soon enough she was back to her usual kind face. “I think you’re perfectly able to tell what you’re feeling, Hinata...”

Different types of paper:

• Kraft paper
• Washi
• Xuan paper
• Banana paper
• Tyvek
• Fishpaper
• Mummy paper
• Azurelaid paper
• Teabag paper

Chapter Text

It was like swallowing a 12-sided dice. One moment it was there, obstructing all air from reaching his lungs, and the next Hajime was sprouting words like a broken sink. It was a very bad day. “Have you ever kissed someone?”

It felt like the world had ended, but Nagito didn’t look even slightly taken aback. “No,” he replied simply, like any normal person would, and it only made Hajime feel even more out of place. In his own room. He kept frowning painfully at the floor until Nagito let out a short, easy laugh, which made him raise his head. “I don’t think anyone would want to kiss me, either,” he grinned at Hajime as if he was letting him in on a joke and, with what looked like an afterthought, he put the science magazine he’d been reading aside.

Hajime was putting most of his strength into frowning at him. When he talked, it was as if he had to pry open his jaw from that expression. “Why not?”

Nagito shifted in order to turn a bit towards him and cross his legs at the opportunity of a conversation. After what appeared like a dozen possible answers crossed his mind, he settled for a thoughtful “Nobody ever tried.” Hajime didn’t hold back his unimpressed face and Nagito grinned again. “Thought that is somewhat wrong to say, since I shouldn’t expect other people to do all the work, right?” he shrugged out of his smile. “I don’t think I’d be able to initiate something like that, though. I’m too shy – or too insecure. I haven’t yet pinpointed the difference between those.”

To his battered heart’s relief, Hajime was following this conversation’s course with more fascination than dread. Had he seen himself, he would have given himself the depiction of ‘young man politely interested in contemporary affairs’. He was pulled away from that relaxing zone by the horror that he was actually planning a move, a fact which was immediately followed by deep, utter shame, and then by Nagito’s voice.

“But enough about that. Why were you asking? Do you want to kiss someone, Hinata?” His eyes were wide and curious, his face a picture of easy-going happiness and in that moment Hajime wasn’t so sure.

He felt like kissing him would take out all the life he still had inside him. It would be maybe like kissing a comet. Impossible, bright, and so very painful. It would burn him up from the inside until there wouldn’t even be ashes left and he would barely have time to realise it. It would spin him round a narrow axis, suffocating him with white fire as his body would be ripped apart. Hajime wanted to kiss him so badly he couldn’t breathe.

His throat was, coincidentally, dry. “Uh, no, not really. Just – asking.” He shrugged because the best thing to do with freshly broken feelings was to shake them inside yourself.

“Hm? And here I was getting curious,” Nagito teased, smiling at him with an expression that Hajime did not need to see so soon after making up a giant, fancy metaphor regarding awkward teenage smooching.

“Get as curious as you want, this is as interesting as I’m ever going to get,” Hajime muttered with a childish pout to match his rising spirits.

Sensing them too, Nagito leant back and picked his – well, it was actually Hajime’s – magazine again, but not before adding a coup d’état with “That’s more than good enough for me.”

“That’s not healthy,” Kazuichi said one early morning, peering at the Chemistry textbook Hajime had opened while they waited for the History class to start.

Those were not very good words to hear from somebody you’ve barely talked a dozen times, and even then only about math exercises. Hajime frowned at the solved exercises, not managing to find anything weird about them, before looking back at his colleague.

“What is?” he asked, reeling back slightly upon seeing that the other had leant over his desk.

At least Kazuichi seemed only mildly surprised. “Do you always do these in your free time?”

Hajime peered at his exercises again. Well, these he’d done before going to bed the other night, hoping the productivity would send him to sleep. “Not always,” he replied half-heartedly.

“Yeah. Hey, so I heard from Tsumiki that you also know Mioda and I was thinking—look, I didn’t think she’d get mad at me just because I said I don’t like dubstep, okay? Fact is, I kinda need tickets to this thing for a...thing. And I know she knows somebody who knows somebody so she could get them for me, but she doesn’t talk to me these days, you get where I’m going with this? So when I heard you also know her I figured that, hey, she wouldn’t say no to somebody like Hinata, right? Er, so, will you help me? You just have to ask her. I'm begging you.”

Hajime realised that he’d dazed off through most of that. He shook himself. “Uh, you want me to...?”

“Ask her,” Kazuichi nodded eagerly.

Hajime nibbled at his lower lip for a moment. “For...?”

“Tickets to the show!” he literally bounced on his chair.

“Right...” How to get out of this one? It wasn’t like he was friends with Ibuki. In fact, he hadn’t talked to her since they all went out to that movie. They weren’t even in the same class. Also, what the hell did somebody like Hinata mean, anyway? “Na- Komaeda knows her better. I don’t really speak with her.”

Kazuichi inhaled sharply and swung from side to side. “Yeaaah, but I can’t really go and ask that guy, can I?”

Can’t you? Hajime raised an eyebrow. “Nanami then?”

The other stopped mid-motion and blinked at him. “Nanami knows Mioda?”

Yes, that’s what I thought at first too, Hajime nodded approvingly. “Sure. More than I do, at least. And she’s nicer. You’ll have more chances of success if you ask her.” He hoped Chiaki won’t end up ruining her game score because of this added distraction.

Kazuichi, however, was glowing. “Great! Thanks, Hinata, I owe you this one.”

Well, no, you don’t, I haven’t done anything, Hajime sighed in himself. “It’s alright,” he said as the other extricated himself from the desk in order to get to Chiaki’s, although their teacher was sure to arrive any minute.

“Uh, Souda?” he heard himself calling before the other got too far. He got an expectant, variably overactive look back. “What did you mean by somebody like me?” For sure, he was just looking for it.

His colleague just grinned quite widely at that. “Why, you’re one of the most reliable people in this school of weirdoes, you know?”

“I almost had a perfect score when he interrupted me,” Nanami puffed her cheeks at him while he was packing her bag at the end of the day (she had eventually let him do it by himself).

“Sorry,” Hajime smiled, careful to put her bunny erasers in a pile before adding them in her backpack. “Did you ask her, though?”

Chiaki was just slipping in her hoodie. “Yes. She said she’ll give them to me tomorrow. And,” she stopped to look at the ceiling, “that she doesn’t even remember being angry at him.”

Hajime chuckled and handed her the perfectly organised backpack.

“Nagito’s been called to a student council meeting after class, so I guess we can go home,” she explained as she finished getting ready.

“Alright,” he shrugged as he got his own bag and followed her out of the classroom.

Nagito had ended up as class representative just because nobody wanted the job in their first year and they ended up drawing lots, but that hardly seemed to matter. Hajime had seen him do his duty on a couple of occasions and he was acing it.

Chiaki pushed open the entrance door and once they were out in the warm spring air it didn’t matter that he had forbidden himself to think about it, Hajime still spoke up. “Ah, you’re been using first names lately.” Call it despairing curiosity or an annoying habit to make his friends uncomfortable, he hated it just as much.

Chiaki didn’t give any sign of having heard him for a while. “They started sounding more natural,” she piped up when Hajime was already mentally stabbing himself.

“Oh. Alright, then,” he swallowed the pain in his throat and faked looking after the bus.

“Would you mind?” she asked while he was still leaning over the road and he almost tripped himself.

Apparently, the safest place for him to be remained beside her. “What?”

“If we called you Hajime instead of Hinata,” she explained without sounding like a kindergarten teacher, though that was probably what he deserved in that moment.

“I...,” his breath caught in his throat and for a moment he was afraid he’d choked on a cherry blossom. “No, no, of course not. I...” he took a deep breath, “I’d like that.”

“Alright.”

Hajime blinked and looked at her, just to make sure that she wasn’t making faces at him. She wasn’t. But a moment after that, still staring ahead, she caught his pinkie with hers and kept their hands like that as they went on their way.

The next day they were given pamphlets. New genius idea from the student council, apparently, and Kiyotaka’s hand could be felt all throughout their contents. It was mostly information about the end of the school year and graduation for the upper-classmen, since they were in spring, but Hajime ended up leafing through it anyway. They had a free period, after all. He closed it abruptly as soon as he got to the student representatives.

As if on cue, somebody behind him called out. “Hey, Komaeda, are you gonna do the Junior speech?” Fuyuhiko asked, waving his own pamphlet in the air and apparently catching the attention of some of their other colleagues too.

Where he was concerned, Nagito was still distributing pamphlets to the people in the last rows. At the mention of his name, he turned blinked in surprise. “Ah? Yeah, I think I will.” Then he waved his free hand in front of his face, flashing them an apologetic smile. “I had nothing to do with it. We argued about it until the principal told us to just pick in accordance to exam scores. Really, I think he just wanted to shut us up.” There were more murmurs now as he passed the last necessary papers and put the surplus back in the box.

Hinata drummed his fingers on the desk, looking at his friend with mild worry. He had just slipped important information and in this school of prodigies somebody was soon going to pick up on it. When they did, it was followed by deep silence. “Does that mean you know the exam scores?”

Nagito barely had a moment to take in a sharp breath before he was assaulted by questions. He calmed them down as well as he could without hitting people’s heads with the pamphlets box. “No, no, that list’s still secret. They just had a teacher write the first five people on a sheet of paper.”

That seemed to calm them down. Then, “Who was on it?” And it burst again until Nagito got a thoughtful expression and started counting off his fingers.

“Fifth was Nanami, then Noguchi, Harada, Hinata and myself,” he finished with a smile at the disappointed or just simply bemused faces.

Hajime was just becoming aware that all of your muscles freezing also meant you couldn’t breathe. It was again Fuyuhiko who spoke first. “Hinata was second?”

“Of course,” Nagito replied in the same tone in which he might have said the sky is blue. “Hinata is very smart. It was a difference of only a couple of points.” Up-mentioned Hinata would have really appreciated if people stopped saying his name. The opening of an endless pit directly under his chair would have been appreciated too.

“Well, that’s true,” muttered the other and Hinata was still dying. “But I would have expected, what was her name, Kirigiri? People seemed to talk a lot about her.”

“Oh. But she’s a freshman,” Nagito pointed out, much to the other’s plain disbelief and with this he got them started on another classroom debate of who was actually in their year and who wasn’t. A much appreciated divergence of attention, if it hadn’t been already too late. “Wanted to call you last night, but I got home late. It truly lasted an awfully long amount of time,” Nagito occupied the emptied chair to his right and sat just so he could face him.

Instead of experiencing a meltdown over the fact that Nagito had put his name and smart in a direct positive relation in a sentence, Hajime forced air in his lungs and have him a sort of smile. “But since you planned all these, you won’t have to worry for a while.” He made eye-contact with him and realised something was expected of him. “Um, good luck with the speech, in any case.”

“Thanks,” Nagito sighed and sagged in the chair and Hajime thought that it was not fair that even with all the agitation in the room he’d still heard that sound perfectly. “I have no idea how these things work. Apparently a few teachers will give me directions or something. I’m not a good spokesperson, I’ll end up disappointing everyone.”

Involuntarily, Hajime jolted in his seat. Embarrassment burning through his skin, he gave Nagito’s shoulder a furtive pat. “You’ll do great. You’re good at talking in public.” As long as the public contained more than two person and preferably only strangers and distant acquaintances.

“Am I?” Nagito gazed at him with wondrous eyes and Hajime crossed his hands over his chest.

“Obviously.”

He got a toothy grin in response, and in that instant Hajime knew that if the others weren’t all busy disagreeing enthusiastically about their own things, he would never have experienced this outside of a closed room. It struck him odd that, of all things, he was still sure that the grin by itself he would have experienced nevertheless.

Things I don’t think I’ll die of but I probably will:

• Mosquito bites
• Spontaneous combustion
• Surprise
• Paper cuts
• Choking (on a peach)
• Malpractice during brain surgery
• Serial killers
• Hairpins

Chapter Text

It was stupid, really, when they first kissed.

It was just a little bit before the end of the school year and they were both at Chiaki’s place, since Nagito’s parents had gone abroad on business again and Hajime’s house held slightly less means of entertainment than Hajime himself.

As a convention, they didn’t play any game in three, because one way or another they always ended up killing Hajime. He was left with his turn on the portable console while Chiaki tried half-heartedly to tie Nagito’s hair back with one pink elastic band. Hajime only glanced at both on them from where he was perched inside an almost-dead bean bag, begrudgingly pressing buttons. They were presumably talking about Nagito’s speech and how many ladders he’d have to walk – or not – under if he was to give a good performance.

When any attempts at ruling his hair proved futile, Nagito opened his palm to be given the hair tie and then proceeded to turn and wring Chiaki’s own hair in a neat ponytail. At the end, he seemed quite pleased with the result, but Hajime wouldn’t know, of course; he was too invested in his game. He was also very not aware of the fact that some of Nagito’s hair had escaped the hair pins again and hovered messily over his forehead.

Nevertheless; what happened next was really stupid. Uncharacteristic hairstyle in check, Chiaki had absconded from the room once she got the idea her dad might have been burning the lunch. Hajime guessed she was mostly trying to keep him from setting fire to the house – and, in consequence, to her stuff.

Nagito was just reaching for a piece of candy – which he’d stolen from his family pantry, of course - when the ding came from the console, catching his attention. “Oh, you got it?” he popped it into his mouth and raised his head as if he could see anything from that far away and while the console was upside-down.

Hajime was staring at the 1 star the end of the mission had awarded him. “Barely,” he mumbled, saved the game and put the console safely on the bed, awaiting Chiaki’s turn.

He was just debating with himself whether he ought to try the sweets too when Nagito started pulling the hair pins out of his hair, lightly frizzled locks falling messily over his face. One would never have thought, looking at it, that it was so soft. Hajime, of course, had infallible proof for that; from when it had got in his mouth, or his face, or his eyes.

As he unawarely watched his friend try to pin it up again, his mind travelled to the fact that, hey, they haven’t exchanged a hug since the weather got warmer. Of course, that hardly said anything, since why would they, but he let it rest in his mind as a matter of fact. It had been a relatively better period of time and none of them needed that much comfort. Hajime wondered what it said about him that even now, when no particularly nasty thoughts resided in his mind, he still felt like going over and falling into a hug for a few hours or weeks.

“Hajime?” Nagito looked at him and it was still weird, but very nice to hear him say his name like that, and Hajime’s first thought was that he’d somehow learnt how to read minds.

“Hm?” He forced a smile on his face only to mask anything he might not have given away already.

Nagito didn’t look particularly bothered by anything. He looked around himself until he produced Chiaki’s more trustworthy hairclip and extended it to him. “Can you help me?”

It took maybe two moments of staring dumbly at the spaceship (“Uh, sure...”) before Hajime moved closer, kneeling right in front of him. He didn’t even attempt to touch it, though. It was hard to believe that such a small clip had any power against Nagito’s hair. “Er, what exactly?” he asked, worrying the pin in his hands.

The other blinked it surprise before getting a lightbulb. “Oh, let me help you,” and, easier than Hajime would have ever thought it possible, he tied his hair back with the band he kept around his wrist. It was still messy, but now the only problem seemed to be the too-long bangs whirling over his face.

Acting swiftly as if not to give it time to fluff itself up again, Hajime pinned what he could up to the side. “Alright,” he announced his victory and the other looked up at him like he was the saviour of the modern world.

“Thank you, that’s much better,” Nagito said, having to look a little up at him because of their position and Hajime almost started drawing his hands back. Almost.

It was just, well, it was a moment. Hajime wouldn’t have been surprised if he was the only one feeling it, since it was mostly a moment of stupidity, and he excelled at that, no matter how smart Nagito claimed he was. He was under the impression that his mind started yelling at him No, and That’s a really bad idea even before the thought occurred to him.

The truth was, Nagito was really close, and really pretty and he looked so happy. His heart was thundering in his chest even as he leant closer, but the gravity of the moment didn’t hit him until his lips were on Nagito’s lips and God, God, what was he doing, what was he doing. The shock of it almost didn’t let him feel anything except the painfully hard beats inside his chest and the fact that he was really bad at holding his breath, but he did get, for a fleeting moment, the notion of chapped lips and really warm skin.

It lasted just long enough for it not to be counted as an accident, then Hajime pulled away, petrified and at the same time wobbly all over. There was no other way to look but at each other and he was struggling trying to regain his breath. On the other hand, the hairclip had done its job and now Nagito’s face was in full view, eyes wide in surprise and cheeks the slightest bit pink. He wasn’t panting, not really, and there was a hint of something coming to his mind as the shock started dying down.

Hajime was not thinking about that. At the moment, his mind was a loop of that was his first kiss, what have I done, is he mad at me. Irrelevant, it had been his first kiss too, but as Nagito bit his lip in thought while still looking at – or through – him, it was the only thing that made sense.

So he forced the words out. “Um, sorry I...did that, without asking,” he gulped drily, feeling his hands shake uncontrollably, thus matching his voice.

Nagito’s eyes seemed to come back into focus, and as soon as they did so, his face seemed to flush harder. “Ah, no...it’s fine,” he visibly forced himself to grin, though what got out of him was a nervous titter.

“A-aren’t you mad?” Hajime tried to form his hands into fists in order to stop them from shaking, but to no avail in their state of tingly numbness.

On his end, Nagito was mindlessly fretting his fingers together. “Why...would I be mad?” he asked, almost making Hajime sick with the thought that he’d have to say everything out loud, but then a genuine smile played across his lips and Hajime’s anxiety melted into hesitant hopefulness.

He could do little more than shrug, and the silence stretched between them. Any moment, Chiaki would come and call them to take lunch. Maybe they were waiting for that.

And when she did, she only peeked inside from the doorway. “Dad says it’s okay to come now,” she announced vacantly before looking at them with more concern. “Shall I turn down the heating?”

They did mirror impressions of embarrassment and, offered a simultaneous “No, it’s okay...” and, for the rest of their visit, they hadn’t mentioned it again, although all of Hajime’s insides turned to jelly everytime they stood too close to each other.

For all they said about the heating, being outside in the crisp evening air certainly felt good when they left her place. They had kept on talking, of course, for as long as they’ve been there, and any surge of embarrassment they might have displayed, Chiaki hadn’t mentioned it, but now that they were slowly walking to the bus station, it was soothingly quiet. If they exchanged any words, they were short ones about insignificant part of the day.

Once they reached the stop, it persisted. And Hajime would be lying if he said he said he wasn’t still feeling jittery and tingly all over. The best he could hope for was that Nagito didn’t inwardly want him to leave him alone. After all, Hajime lived close enough that he could walk home. He was mostly waiting in the bus station as a form of company.

He mourned at the gravel under his feet.

Nagito hadn’t shown any spark of malice or resentfulness ever since he’d gone and did that stupid thing, but he could only wonder. He kept on wondering for as long as it took the other to start speaking. “Hajime?” And he made a small sound to show that he was listening. “Did you want to kiss...me?”

At the word kiss, it seemed like Hajime was sent right back in that moment, and his limbs instantly went so numb and wobbly that he was in awe that he was still standing. “What do you mean?” he asked slowly, doing an incredible effort to raise his eyes to the other’s face. It was one of the strongest sensations of relief he’d ever felt when he saw that Nagito looked just as nervous as he felt.

“I mean, um, whatever you say it’s okay. I meant...did you want to kiss someone or was it only, well, me?” and he sneaked a glance at Hajime while uttering the last word, which seemed to make him feel even more frustrated, so he looked away again. “Oh, well, I guess that now that I’ve said it I sound really self-conceited, you can just forget I said that,” he stuttered, mixing his words with a feeble kind of self-deprecating laugh, and Hajime’s heart stuck in his throat.

It was a really good thing that Chiaki lived on a really remote street, else people would have surely stared at them. Hajime made an attempt at kicking an invisible pebble. “Why would I kiss you if I wanted to kiss someone else? It makes no sense...,” he mumbled and pushed his hands deeper in his hoodie’s pockets. If he could hide his face in it too, that would have been perfect.

Another short laugh escaped Nagito. “Well, I guess, when you put it like that...” They watched a few cars pass on the road, then a cat fall in a rubbish bin across the street, then two planes’ traces intersect each other. “Can I...?”

And Hajime didn’t think about it before nodding. He didn’t think about it when he raised his head to look at him. He maybe started thinking about it when Nagito leant closer, and by the time it actually clicked, he was already closing his eyes.

Somehow, this time it felt totally different, maybe because Nagito initiated it or maybe because this time he wasn’t too terrified to feel anything. It didn’t, all in all, feel like a comet or any burning celestial bodies at all. In truth, it felt like his best friend was pressing his lips to his, and that was better than any metaphor he could have ever fever-dreamed.

It was hesitant and gentle and Hajime wondered if it was because it was the two of them that they knew how to be patient. He was feeling a thousand things at once, but at the same time he recognised Nagito in every move of his lips, in every pause for short breaths, and the familiarity calmed him more than anything had ever done before.

With the constant pauses to inhale and exhale, it lasted a little bit longer than expected, and by the time they finally leant back, Hajime felt stupid for not taking his hands out of his pockets sooner. With all those feelings accumulated in his chest, he would have pulled Nagito back into a hug if his legs didn’t feel like buckling at any moment.

His lips were tingling, warm and cold in the evening air, ghosts of touches still lingering on them, and from what he could see when he looked at Nagito’s expression, he was just as overwhelmed. “I think your bus is coming,” he said, stupidly, a moment later, and Nagito stared at him as if he’d temporarily forgotten what a bus was before blinking and looking after it.

“Ah, so it does,” he exhaled and turned back to him.

He was maybe on the point of offering to stay a little bit longer, and Hajime knew that he wouldn’t be able to say no to that, even though it was getting colder, so he hurriedly voiced a “Good night.”

He got a smile. “Good night,” Nagito agreed, effortlessly reaching one hand and giving his fingers a reassuring squeeze before turning back to the slowing bus.

Nice things people have said to me:

• “Your shirt smells like bubblegum.” – Chiaki
• “I like your jasmine tea best.” – mom
• “Your hair looks like my old hamster after I got the gum out of its fur.” – Chiaki
• “You’re the first person who made me understand a math problem.” – Mioda
• “Your hands are really warm.” – Nagito
• “If I were stranded on a deserted island, I’d take you with me.” (Because I know how to start a fire.) – Souda
• “I once saw a small tropical fish and thought of you.” – Nagito
• “I wish my sons were more like you.” – old lady at the grocery store
• “I feel like I could stay here with you for years and I still wouldn't get bored.” – Nagito, 10 minutes before they kicked us out of the bookstore’s attic
• “If I’m ever arrested, you can take my console before the police arrive.” – Chiaki
• “One day you’re going to make someone very happy.” – mom
• “I’m really glad we met.” – Nagito, Chiaki