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There was a huge gush of wind from the southern part of the countryside that they were currently in. The Japanese styled house was soon to be shaken from the ground due to how harsh the wind is; the sliding doors and paper curtains that divided a room from the other ones are starting to tear apart. They could hear the whistling typhoon and the bullet-like raindrops hitting the roofs and the windows, making the two of them shake, too.
“This was worse than what we had expected, huh?” Hinata snuggled inside the warm coat that Tsukishima wears. “I asked to comeback here, thinking that I could get some peace of mind before sniffing them flowers, then we get welcomed by the cool embrace of the typhoon.”
Tsukishima tears the orange flock of hair below his chin, lying on his chest. He looked from Shoyo’s feet to his head, all curled up like a ball and keeping himself warm by sharing Kei's body temperature with himself, just like a cat to a heater. Kei hummed as a response to the last statement that his lover told.
“It's a natural disaster, it isn't avoidable. We were ready though, right?” He tightened his embrace on Shoyo's shoulders. “We have water, milk, biscuits, we even have shrimps in the refrigerator. We can just pick up fresh vegetables from the guarden, after all, my mother won't mind.”
Shoyo giggled. “She won't, because she's—”
“Dead. Yeah, right. Now shut up.”
They went silent. The sound of the breeze's song occupied their space, they were cuddled at the corner of their living room like the embracing branches of a nest built by a bird at the top of a pine tree. The television was no use for the current update of the typhoon, since all satellite connection were disrupted by the said natural disaster. All that the two of them has was instinct, the local government and their smartphones that are stuck at 48 and 65 percent.
“Death, it's actually not scary, you know?” Shoyo coughed, hiding his mouth in the cove made by his hands. Kei rubbed his back as to show comfort and help him ease the pain from it.
“But what's fearful is what could come after we die or what we'll leave unattained.”
Kei hummed once more to show that he's listening. His eyes swooped down to his left wrist, eyeing the running hands of his wrist watch. It is three in the afternoon, the sun is soon to set. He could feel his feet tingling to stand up and light up some energy-saved torch or those ones with batteries and refills, so they can see through the pitch dark of the evening's cloak that's about to cover their land. However, his mind immediately went back to the orange haired guy whose life was clinging onto him.
“I know that you have many fears, Shoyo. I do, too. We almost know each other's fears, you know?” Kei pulled out a warm smile as Shoyo eyed him up, as warm as his hair and as hot as the sun behind the gloomy and crying clouds. “But aren't you afraid of the dark?”
The latter returned the gentlest smile he had seen, before shaking his head and pushing himself more towards the younger man. He pulled the coat of Kei against itself and covered the two of them in a heating hug of a cloth that merely fits the two of them.
“Ha... Darkness isn't scary anymore.” Shoyo limply let himself loose into the arms of the moon. “I never fear anything anymore after leaving Brazil with you. After realizing that I should not fear anything when I'm beside you, I only remained standing with two fears.”
Kei, drifting away from the purpose of his question, asks, “and what are those?”
“My fear of what comes after death and leaving things behind me unachieved,” Shoyo pants, coughing again, “and not being able to hear anything nor see anything before I sleep.”
“You're too contented with your life, eh?” The taller chuckled, before combing Shoyo's hair, again. Kei wants to talk about more stuff, to discuss things that they two once considered out of reach and beyond the line. He wanna know about Shoyo's thoughts and his perspective, he wanna learn life through his eyes, and see the hymn of humanity and the world through his words.
Shoyo has always been an enigma, despite using his emotions to process things and just focusing his mind into volleyball. He's like a transparent aquarium that was covered with mosts and wild plants that was also abandoned in a ruin.
For Kei, his man, he has the personality that's like the shallow part of the river that could be found under the ocean.
Unable to think right and rationalize everything he's currently feeling, Kei rested his head over Shoyo's. He only realized that the typhoon has grown stronger and its eye is about to come to their location once he felt a shiver through his bones, due to the biting breeze on his ankles and the touches of small raindrops on his uncovered cheeks (those small water drops that slipped through the slips of doors and windows).
“Ah, when I first time went to Brazil, one of the thing that I missed is this kind of wind.” Shoyo spoke through the fur coat. “When I was in Brazil, aside from feeling homesick, it's always like I'm in the free trial of hell.”
Kei giggled on that statement. Shoyo shot his head up and widen his eye on him, saying, “no, I wasn't joking! It's really true.”
“Our summer here in Japan is as if multiplied into three just to reach the average weather temperature in Brazil.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know, we went there last time, right? Remember when your friend, who's also a volleyball player, had a baby?”
“Holy— yes! Things seemed like they had happened in a blink of an eye, eh? Time was too fast for this body of mine.” Shoyo laughed, his cheerful yet hoarse voice bounced throughout the living room. “I already miss those things....”
His partner sensed the sudden drop of the atmosphere, so he wrapped his arms around the smaller, orange head, once more. His cherry-blossom-colored lips touched the sunkissed flocks of hair, before carefully caressing his slender, snow-white-fingers onto the tanned skin of Shoyo. In slow motion, Kei helped Shoyo to face him.
With him over the 5’7 man, he could see how deep his eyes were. They were not deep like the ocean, but deep like space; his eyes were like the sun, too bright at the extent that it is blinding him. He only wanna look into his eyes and not on his face—
‘But that's cheating. I loved him as who he is.’
Kei, pulling all of his courage into his heart, scanned the face of his lover. His eyelids were brown, sunken like his cheeks. His freckles were darker than the shade of his lips. His shoulders showed his shoulder blades, and his collarbones are presenting themselves in a full view.
“Don't look at me like I need nourishment or watering, or something.” Shoyo shakes his head with a smile. Afterwards, his fragile and thin hands reached for the neck of Kei. Leaning forward, he admired the latter's appearance.
He could see the dirty blond flocks of Kei and his blazing-like-fire, hazel eyes. Kei gained muscles as he started to go for Sendai Frogs and also work and study at the same time. His cheekbones and chin were prominent, just like his pink lips and cheeks. He looks like he was pushed into a bush of fallen cherry blossom petals and red roses, before he absorb every pigments pf each of them.
And under his thick, clear-cased eyeglasses, a glimmer of small light could be seen– the color of Shoyo's hair.
“Are you still hoping, Kei?”
The wind stopped from spewing raindrops towards them, everything seems to stop as he asked that certain question. Kei didn't answer, yet he remained looking directly into the sun's eyes, blinded by the beauty behind his fragile light.
“As long as we are alive, there's hope. Right?” Shoyo beamed after that statement of his. He went closer to Kei, before cupping the man's pink cheeks.
They locked eyes for mere seconds before letting the eclipse occur. The moon and the sun, under the crying weather, had their lips meet genuinely for the first time, like the arms of a couple that are longing for each other after a war.
Kei didn't pull away, nor Shoyo. They let their feelings burst throughout of them through that single kiss, and let that single and affectionate act speak for all of the things that are left unsaid. As the wind cries and so the sky, the sun and the moon console each other's unshed tears with their encounter.
The typhoon was running 210 miles per hour, causing choirs of whistles and rough rustling of trees and plants outside, but neither of these exterior distraction pulled the two away from each other. Until Shoyo tapped Kei's shoulders and rested his head on the crook of Kei's neck. While sitting in between his lap, Shoyo let his mind dance with the thing they've just done.
“We should have done that before— kiss, a pure one, just a kiss that speak for the two of us ”
“Sho?” Kei thought that it was the time to ask him about it, in which Shoyo hummed in response.
“If we can—” Kei felt his heart beats faster, as if marching on a drum roll; meanwhile, Shoyo felt it too, since his chest was against his lover's.
“If we can be until the end, will you marry me?” A muted silence followed his question. He glanced on the bare feet of Shoyo to, somehow, assure himself that the orange haired man's answer would not be too harsh, or to be more bittersweet, rejection.
He heard a small chuckle, before he was hugged as tight as a seatbelt would. After all, he needs that hug, as their relationship and their lives were faced with numerous predicaments and obstacles that they thought they won't last for nine years.
“I never cheated on you and so do you. We fought, but here we are. We faced and conquered every trials we had.” Shoyo pulled away, before locking his eyes onto Kei's. “Why would I not accept your life to merge with mine? Since our third anniversary, I told myself that if we could, I would kneel before you with a ring and ask you for your lifetime to be spent with mine.”
“I know I'm yours and I'll never pull away since the day you cried in front of our house, just because you thought I hated you for being gay and for liking me.” Shoyo sat back in between Kei's legs, picking up the man's hand and tracing the lines on it with his fingertips.
“Our heartbeats were beating in rhythm and would always be.” He smiled, but the fragility is showing as it's just half of his usual beam— the one he's known for. “Would always be.”
Kei didn't waste any more seconds. He took his hands away from Shoyo, before commanding him to remain in the same position as he run through their bedroom and seek for his special stuff. He could see a deep orange box under his own pillow, with an engraved name over its lid.
It says ‘Tsukishima’.
Kei could feel his legs shake once he started to approach his lover, and as soon as their eyes met, he could feel a tightening and churning on his stomach. His anxiety was rising over the roof, raining like the typhoon.
He heaved a sigh, before kneeling in front of Shoyo who has his eyes wide. Bringing the box out, he opened it, leaving his lover with a pair of eyes in brink of tears.
“You already said your vow, I can ask you now, right?” There was no answer. “Hinata Shoyo, we went through battles and disasters together, and currently facing ‘two’. Throughout this Track and Field game, we were faced with obstacles that challenged our connection.
“So I am here, kneeling in front of you to show that I am– I will be! Serving you until my death, I'll feed you with me until we meet in our graves, and I'll retell our story to the angels we'll meet. Will you spend your remaining lifetime with me?”
Shoyo beamed on him, but he didn't answer, nor he did raise his hand to accept the proposal. He sat there covered in a coat thicker than him, as hegaze dreamily towards his man.
“Kei, my Kei.” Shoyo caved Kei's hand with his, not to accept the blinging ring, but to close its box. This left Kei with quivering chest and a heart that was about to turn into dusts.
His eyes were wide as he look in front of him to see Shoyo's smiley face.
“I know I said I'm yours. I know it is already engraved in the souls of the two of us, just like this ethereal name of yours.” His fingertip trails the embarked name on the lid of the box, before, again, facing Kei. “But you know, I don't want you to be tied with me.”
“Sho...”
“Kei, hey, Kei.” Shoyo cups the soaking cheeks of his lover, before beaming on him.
“I've always wanted to be free, but I can't. You've seen me fall many times, nearly meeting death, then given by false hopes again and again. I am never free unlike during my high school years. And I know it's painful, honey.
“But I'll never be free.”
Kei still has his eyes wide open, as it rained like the weather above them.
“I am tied to a destructive disease, and you're not. And if you'll ask for my hand right now, well in that case, I'll be the disease to you. My memory will be a disease for you. I don't wanna be an even more burden to a person I'd like to receive every good thing that I didn't.”
His man shuddered with his words, those statements are the things he least likely to hear. They are the pressure to his wounds and the mirror to his fears. They are the things he'd like to erase from his memory; he wants everything erased and just leave Shoyo in there... and beside him.
“I want you to be free, Kei. So don't tie yourself to death. Don't tie yourself to someone who's about to close the book of this lifetime and guide himself into the other side of life.” Shoyo wiped off all of Kei's tears, before giving him a hug that a child would give to his teddy bear.
“Someone better deserved this, Kei. Someone who can give you the lifetime you're asking for.”
Neither of them followed up any more discussion after that conversation. They were now open with each other, translucent and clear. The fog of Shoyo's world was now cleared for Kei to walk through.
Shoyo felt nothing, but completion. “I'm sorry, honey. I'm sorry for not accepting your marriage proposal. I just can't bear to burden you—”
“Hush, we're done with that. Let's just rest, alright?”
“But I can feel that you're still bothered.” Shoyo switched position and rests his head on his man's lap. “Tell me, be open to me, Kei. I am still bothered by your heavy silence.”
Kei looked into him, heaving a burdened sigh.
“You're just... unfair, but at the same time, you're not. You know? Like a paradox or something. You said earlier, you'll marry me if you could. Yet, you didn't accept my proposal. I mean, I'm still absorbing everything you said, I'm still in that conversation and I couldn't get out. What do you mean about me being free? Me finding someone better?” Kei furrowed his eyebrows, letting the fire in his chest turn into words.
“Sho, I can't– I think I won't be able to find someone better than you. You've known me for nine years, you've been with me when I laughed, cried and raged. I– you just know me better than my brother does.”
“Tell me, who's better than you, when you literally have the capsule of everything I used to be and the map of every phase where I've been through?”
Shoyo didn't answer, but rather, he pulled Kei's neck for a kiss, only for it to be rejected. “No! Don't do this tactic right now! I'm spewing whatever I want like you did earlier!”
Instead of another attempt, Kei received a laugh louder than bombs. Shoyo rolled to his right side and shiver due to the wind slipping from the slits of the balcony door.
“Your inner child is showing, hey!” His laugh covered their gloomy living room, again.
Shoyo stood up, balancing himself as he takes steps towards Kei. As soon as he's in front of him, he stole a peck on his nose, causing the raging man to be as red as beet.
“Instead of fuming at the same time as the storm, why don't you just sing to me, huh?” Shoyo sat on Kei's lap, clinging onto his neck. He heard Kei huffed, causing him to chuckle.
“As if I can resist when you're clinging onto me like this. You dirty player.” He earned another laugh.
And he started to sing their song, the once he was caught by Shoyo singing in the bathroom of their past high school building when he's alone.
“Running in circles, coming up tails
Heads on a science apart
Nobody said it was easy.”
The roughness of Kei's voice had always a lullaby effect on Shoyo. He felt his bones crack to go back into their normal position as he put himself in a more comfortable position.
“It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard.”
His voice sways Shoyo back and forth, putting his almost paralyzed body in a state of dreaming and seeing the unreal.
Kei stopped for the meantime to put away Shoyo's hair from his face, scanning his dark eyelids, his long eyelashes, before hugging him tight to give him assurance that he won't fall. And to sustain the same position, Kei leaned on the corner of the room, noticing how wide the place is without the jumping Shoyo, and how gloomy and incomplete the place is without his bright orange hair.
“Oh, take me back to the start
I was just guessing at numbers and figures
Pulling the puzzles apart
Questions of science, science and progress,
Do not speak as loud as my heart..”
Kei felt Shoyo's warm breath on his neck, making him thank the Gods for feeling it still.
“But tell me you love me, come back and haunt me
Oh and I rush to the start—”
After singing his feared line, he felt Shoyo's chest going up and down slower and slower, whilst his own goes faster, leaving Shoyo's heart behind.
Shoyo was a scientist, a mad one, trying to live against the fate he was destined to take; he ended up eating himself up, just to give himself and Kei the only thing he could give as a whole.
A lifetime.
The wind rushed towards him, as if tearing his blonde hair the way Shoyo would. A cracked smile formed in his lips.
“I have always told you before, right?” He looked around to find himself all alone under the trees left in time. “I would dedicate my lifetime to someone who will dedicate theirs to me.”
The moon was carved on a stone beside it was the sun. It was childish and clever, but he knew Shoyo would like to at least have it as a remembrance before he goes. Tsukishima, Hinata... a fate where the fast heart was left by the slow one.
Just how high can one reach if they flee without being in a world?
“You may have lived short, but there's a completion that you gave to me as you left.”
Kei stood up, dusting his slacks off. His eyes rose upwards to lock his eyes with the cotton-like clouds, dirty white, accompanied by the melody of the loud breeze and the rustles of the swaying trees, along the claps of their fallen leaves.
“I am not sad, I am not mourning.” Kei looked beside him to meet the same stone where a single sunflower lies above. “I feel lonely, but completed.
“You completed your lifetime with me, you gave me your nine years and last breath, laughs, even tears.”
“You're unfair, as always. . .” Kei chuckled on his own.
As if the time went back to that gloomy night, he screwed his eyes close to see the glimmering, circular thing around Shoyo's fourth finger. The gloominess subsided as he focused himself on the way that it shines amidst the cries and mourns.
He, then, looked on his own.
“You're not my disease. You're my cure.”
‘Shoyo.’