Chapter Text
There’s grief, he thinks, but he treats it like a kitten. A soft, fuzzy scrap of a thing with needle teeth that sink in and hold tight every so often. Mostly harmless, but it still hurts some days. It’d be worse if everything wasn’t so reminiscent of the way it used to be. The way it should be. The way it never will be again.
Kyon gets used to it, even when it bites.
They’re at North High today, and that always makes it a little more complicated. It’s easier sometimes, when he forgets that anything’s changed at all. When Haruhi throws her hands down on the table hard enough to rattle books over the edge and makes her outlandish declarations. When he clicks through the computer’s pixilated solitaire because he got there too early and Nagato’s busy reading in the corner. When he has tea poured from a familiar pot sitting in front of him and familiar voices drift all around.
It makes it harder, when something doesn’t click quite right and pulls him out of his memories and into the reality that things are different. Sometimes he stares hard at the gaps where missing computer files should sit, or the new books squeezed on the shelf that the literature clubs funds bought them, or Haruhi’s hair cascading long down her back, and everything aches, sharp and vivid. It reminds him he couldn’t fix everything. It reminds him the friends he used to know, the world he used to know, are dead and gone with only a comforting facsimile left behind.
Sometimes, they don’t even come to North High at all. It’s far for Haruhi and Koizumi, and while they’ve gotten to be scarily good at sneaking in with Kyon’s spare set of gym clothes and his previous year’s uniform—grown too short at the wrists and ankles for him—it isn’t convenient. So, they rotate. Some days, he and Nagato and Asahina shuffle onto the first train after school. The five of them in the club—they don’t call it a brigade anymore—always end up squeezed into one booth at Haruhi’s favorite cafe, drenched in warm, yellow light and the scents of coffee and cream.
When money’s tight for one or the other, overpriced drinks feel like too steep an indulgence, and sneaking onto campus sounds like too much trouble, they just meet up at someone’s home. The first time is strange, with each of them. He toes on unfamiliar slippers, walks down unfamiliar halls, and has to reckon with the memories in pictures on the walls, the collection of different teas in the cabinets, the crumpled notebook paper in the trash. The realization that these versions of his friends are people—people who smear ink on their hands studying for exams or nick themselves peeling potatoes by the stove—and not paper dolls cut out from a chain of Haruhi’s unfolded whims and wishes, always makes him pause. Rework his image of the world.
But they’re at North High.
Rain soaks the world in a coat of grey, drizzling down with a determined dreariness. There’s a chill in the air, and the damp doesn’t help. It’s quiet, though, which saves Kyon a headache. Because this is, officially, the literature club, with three recorded members who actually go to this school, Nagato and Asahina have gone off to the library in search of something to read. There’s certainly no shortage of books in the room, but Nagato has her nose in a book more often than not, even if she’s more sociable now than Kyon remembers. Not by much, still quiet and shy, but it’s something. Still, the club room’s catalogue, while growing with the scant funds the club was given, doesn’t keep her busy for long. Asahina goes with, to the school library sometimes. To the public library occasionally. She’s good that way.
The biggest source of noise—and headache—never really changes. It’s Haruhi, always. But today, she’s slumped over the table, head pillowed on her arms, drooling on the sleeve of the spare track jacket he’s long since relinquished. According to Koizumi, it had been a bit of a test day for their class, some from previous days graded and passed back, others handed out to be taken. Now that Haruhi’s here, passed out on the table rather than boasting about some academic achievement, Kyon would be willing to bet a large chunk of his life savings—even if that only consists primarily of New Years money and a college fund he’s been feeling rather ambivalent about of late—that she didn’t score as well on any test as she would of liked.
And so sets in the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Kyon feels like he needs to get his head checked for finding some kind of comfort in the familiar swings of her mood. Quiet, mildly sulky days balance the louder, brighter, busier ones. Puts things to rights. Besides, there’s something comfortable about it all. The scent of rain in the air and the patter of it on the roof. The familiar clutter of books littered around and school bags slouched wherever they landed. Haruhi, dozing in the seat between him and the window.
There’s Koizumi, too, sitting across the table, long legs folded primly beneath him so as to not knock Kyon’s ankles, flipping breezily through a book he’s almost definitely already read.
He wouldn’t have said it any other day. If all of the girls were around. If Haruhi were awake. If the rhythm of the rain hadn’t made him feel… something. A little wistful maybe. But there’s tea quietly going cold by his elbow and his mind is drifting, so he says it.
“I think I was in love with Haruhi in my world.”
Her hair, left loose, mostly falls in gentle waves down her back, curled slightly with the humidity. A few strands are splayed out across the table, stretching near where Kyon’s hands rest, folded together. He flicks the nearest one back her direction.
Slow and deliberate, Koizumi closes his book without so much as dog-earring the page, and sets in down in front of him. For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything, and Kyon wonders if he struck some kind of nerve.
Makes me jealous. He remembers, hears it in the empty air.
But, Koizumi takes a breath, passive smile there as usual, and doesn’t seem upset in the slightest when he asks, “Past tense? Forgive my curiosity, but is that not the case anymore?”
Kyon thinks it should sting, and maybe it does, but not as much as it feels like it should. “They’re the same person,” he says. “They act pretty much the same too. This Haruhi, and the version I knew. You’d think nothing would change, wouldn’t you?”
Koizumi props his chin on a palm. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t be.”
Something behind Koizumi’s expression shifts just slightly. Enough for Kyon to tell there’s been a change, but too subtle for him to piece together what’s different about it. That feels like some kind of irony. “What makes you say that?”
It’s a question Kyon really doesn’t feel like digging up the answer to, so he waves Koizumi off. Leans back in his chair and wonders what he’s even doing, talking about this.
Tough to dissuade, it’s Koizumi that speaks back up over the drizzle. “They have changed then.” He says it like he isn’t sure whether to make it a question or not. “Your feelings for Miss Suzumiya, I mean.”
It does feel like, if anyone, Koizumi deserves to know. So Kyon lets go of an exhale, wondering how much lower the temperature would have to dip before it clouded up, and explains. Or, does the best he can to.
“I think circumstance had way too much to do with it in the first place. Before I met Haruhi, I was just trudging through bland, beige days one after the next. Of course I felt something when she came in like a tornado and turned my life upside down. How couldn’t I?” There’s a strange, yawning sort of feeling in his chest, like space opening up, hollowing. It’s just… absence, growing, aching. “She was the one who made my days interesting and exciting and fun. She was the one who made my life worth living. That’s the kind of person you fall in love with, right? In all the romance novels and the dramas on tv, that’s how it always plays out.”
Patient, Koizumi listens with the same smile on his face, the same unbothered expression. “It would seem so, yes. I suppose I can’t blame you for falling someone like that.”
It was easy to get swept up in, then. It still would be now, he thinks, if nothing changed. If he’d gotten his old world back and went to the SOS Brigade Christmas party and greeted the coming year with everyone, pulled along to watch the sunrise on some high rise or mountain no doubt, and watched winter turn to spring to summer, something new around every corner. Maybe he would have kissed her, then, under the blush of the cherry blossoms, or maybe just to stop her from running her mouth for once.
But that’s not what happened. He shakes his head, scattering the thoughts, feeling Koizumi’s gaze on him.
“She’s not that different here.” His attention strays to Haruhi, the even rise and fall of her back with each breath she takes. “If the world—my world—had always been this way, maybe it would have played out the same. I don’t know.” It hits him, a beat too late, that that isn’t true in the slightest. She wouldn’t have even gone to the same school as him. It would have been one fateful meeting with John Smith, then goodbye to that glimpse of a vibrant, colorful world for good. He would have had a plain, average life bathed in the grey light of mediocrity.
He taps a fingernail on the table, thinking. “Or maybe not.”
“Then, if it isn’t Miss Suzumiya who’s changed…?” Koizumi prompts, catching on too quick for his own good. Or for Kyon’s good, more likely.
“It wasn’t me,” Kyon says, even though it’s only partly true. “Like I said, circumstance had way too much to do with it. Here, after - everything, the situation was totally different. Haruhi had nothing to do with me or my life. She didn’t even know I existed.”
There’s a bit of an amused chuckle, Koizumi tilting his head where it rests on his palm. “You should be careful. It’s beginning to sound like you just wanted someone’s attention.” Something of a teasing glint glimmers in his eyes, and in the sliver of white exposed in a grin.
Kyon half wants to kick his shin under the table, but he pushes the urge back. For now. “Very funny,” he replies, dry.
“Who says I was joking?” Koizumi asks, but his smile never wavers. His attention doesn’t either, and something about that snags in the back of Kyon’s mind. He shoves it aside with all the other tangled, snarled things he doesn’t want to unspool.
Detouring around that train of thought, he rather pointedly ignores Koizumi’s question and tries to get back on track. “Look, when everything changed, I could have just accepted the cards life dealt me and moved on. It would have been weird at first, sure, but is a peaceful life really so bad? I could’ve used a break, god knows that much. Back then, I might have loved Haruhi, even if I wouldn’t admit it, but I was sick of the headaches and cleaning up after her messes.”
“Of course, we both know that isn’t the path you took.”
Long and low, Kyon sighs. Of course. Still, he sits up a little straighter in his chair, some semblance of pride coming to life in his chest. That would have been easier, surely. But would it have been a better life? It’s a pointless question. He already knows the answer.
“This time, I was the one who had to make the choice. I was the one who turned my back on a boring life and put in the work to make life fun again. And yeah, maybe at the start it was just to put things back the way they used to be. But, even if that… didn’t exactly work out, I’m still glad I tried.”
“Are you?” For just a moment, something a bit more serious presses into the slant of Koizumi’s brows. Something that feels strangely genuine, on him anyways.
It’s that uncharacteristic edge that makes Kyon pause and really think. It’s not exactly a hard fought conclusion he comes to, but it feels better to have given it proper consideration anyways. “Of course. If I’m here for good, I’d rather have my friends around than be alone.” It feels weird to call them friends. Not because he doesn’t consider them to be friends—he does—but just that, from their perspectives, how long have they known him? Not long, in the grand scheme of things. And it must be weird, hearing him offhandedly mention things they’ve never told him, things he should have no way of knowing. To see the stains of another reality bleeding through.
Koizumi takes in a breath, lets it out. The rain drizzles on. “I have to admit, I am glad to hear you say that. As much as your circumstance now is… unique, to say the least, it’s comforting to know I, and everyone else for that matter, am more than just a bitter reminder of what you used to have.”
For a moment, all Kyon can do is blink and try to put that piece, that sentiment, into his image of Koizumi. This one, the one from his memory, or otherwise. Why should he care how Kyon feels about him, and the whole situation, beyond how it affects him? What should it matter, if Kyon sees a shadow—he doesn’t, or, not always—lingering behind people, a trace of what used to be? As long as they continue on like this, books and warm cafes and too-long conversations that meander and wind back in circles, why should Koizumi care?
“That’s…”
“I am sorry. I think I’ve derailed us a bit,” Koizumi says, and he actually does seem apologetic. “Please, ignore me and continue.”
That’s easier said than done. Honestly, Kyon doesn’t quite remember where he was at, or what point he was leading to. Still, it gives him an out from reckoning with mismatched pieces that don’t quite fit. Running a hand back through his hair, he cuts to the heart of it.
“What I meant by all of that was just - if I fell in love with Haruhi because she was the one who made my life more than what it was, then I can’t give her the credit for that this time around. That was me.” He realizes, maybe for the first time in a long time, what the warmth tucked in his chest is. Being painfully average, living a life set on autopilot, he didn’t get the chance too often to feel particularly good about himself, even if his feelings rarely swung too far in the opposite direction either. He feels it now, that warm sense of accomplishment, of pride. No one can take the credit for improving his life this time but him.
Koizumi hums something in his throat. “Is that really all there was to your feelings?” he asks.
“That makes them sound shallow.”
Maybe they were. They didn’t feel shallow, not at the time. And yet…
“That wasn’t my intention.” Whether he should or not, Kyon believes him.
Letting out a breath, he glances over to Haruhi, still dozing on the table. Once upon a time, he would have reached out, touched the curve of her cheek, the fan of her lashes, the corner of her lips. Even farther back, he would have popped the cap off a permanent marker. Now, his fingertips don’t itch with the urge to do either. Something like affection, care, still comes like the pink of a sunrise in his chest, but alongside it, there’s just a settled calm. A contentment with the way things are. He doesn’t want anything more from her.
“In any case, I’m not in love with her,” Kyon says - decides, really. He thinks back to their first days, and candid admissions. “That should make you happy.”
Yet, Koizumi’s mouth presses to a rare flat line, thoughtful for just a moment. After just a beat, the tension eases and he looks just like himself again, light and easygoing.
“I am. Happy, I mean.”
He really does seem like he means it. Even so, Kyon can’t help the feeling that something has flown just over his head.