Chapter Text
However cold the winter had been, the summer was even hotter than that. The heat weighed low on the ground, making the shrubs droop down and the bugs creak shrilly, sweat sticking shirts onto skin before vaporizing into itchy salt. It was hot like the sun wanted to burn everything into the asphalt, as if even the nights had closed their eyes to the deadly high temperatures; hot like the inside of a cremation furnace.
Hikaru might have died in January, but he hadn’t died until after six months of Yoshiki averting his eyes and ignoring his uneasiness.
Hikaru died on that sweltering summer day when Yoshiki first addressed the thing wearing his corpse.
Yoshiki didn’t want anything to change. He didn’t want the best friend he loved to be gone. He didn’t want to lose Hikaru.
Now at this point, every time he closed his eyes, he saw Hikaru’s stony, rain-drenched corpse. Every time he looked at the thing that wasn’t Hikaru smiling at him, there was only Hikaru’s cold corpse in his mind. But in the end, it was a simple matter. It was just that Yoshiki was clearly the kind of person who’d lie down beside his dead friend’s body until they both rotted.
Those six months were a testament to Yoshiki’s selfish desire to keep the Hikaru he loved from slipping through his fingers.
In contrast—
“So ya…”
…in contrast, the words that finally escaped his throat were a testament to Yoshiki’s respect for his best friend.
“Yer not Hikaru, are ya?”
The thing inside Hikaru didn’t have anything of itself. It had Hikaru’s dead body and Hikaru’s disconnected memories and Hikaru’s remnant personality and Hikaru’s feelings, however much remained, that it seemed to feel as well. Yoshiki called it Hikaru because they both wanted it to be Hikaru, though of course it couldn’t ever really be Hikaru.
Yoshiki had put that truth into the world by speaking it out loud. He had been the one to make it clear that no matter how much that thing tried to fit into the life Hikaru had left behind, it would never be able fit the way he was supposed to. And in accepting the stranger in Hikaru’s body, he had been the one to tell it that it didn’t have to deceive him anymore.
He hadn’t realized it at that point, but the creature wasn’t scared of being shunned by anyone but Yoshiki. He didn’t care about other people finding Hikaru strange. He didn’t care if they found it suspicious that Hikaru was acting differently. He didn’t care if they didn’t like him anymore, so long as Yoshiki was willing to accept him as Hikaru nonetheless.
By the next day, he was already not hiding his differences anymore.
Hikaru might have died in January, but he wasn’t dead until that summer day when Yoshiki finally killed him.
“Somethin’ about your scent’s weird, Hikaru!” Maki said, a week or so after Yoshiki confronted Hikaru. He had started smelling the air the moment he came by Hikaru’s desk and was now rubbing his nose as he stared down at the sitting Hikaru.
“Your smell’s weird,” Hikaru immediately retorted, before leaning down to smell his wrists and then his shirt and underarms, “No it’s not! Yoshiki, Yoshiki is my scent weird?”
Hikaru stuck his arms forward to push the thin-skinned inner side of his wrists under Yoshiki’s nose.
Yoshiki startled in his chair at a kick of learned fear before leaning away nervously in an attempt to show a more normal reaction. His heart was knocking around his chest with painful, nauseating force. He was aware of every single side-eye that glanced at him.
“I… I’m not gonna scent an alpha,” Yoshiki muttered, “Yer being disgusting, Hikaru.”
Hikaru had been the kind of alpha that led shounen mangas and videogames. He had been vibrant and friendly and reckless, with a scent that radiated out of his body even when he didn’t want it to, to the annoyance of many of their classmates. An omega in the next class over once told Hikaru he smelled like fresh linens drying in the wind. The alphas and some beta guys usually complained that his scent was painfully acidic and sour, burning their nostrils all the way back home when he sweated during gym class.
To Yoshiki, he smelled like biting a watermelon slice forgotten under the sun, too heated and somewhat disgusting and still shockingly sweet, without a hint of sourness. Scenting him felt like filling your parched mouth with sweet, clear water, swallowing down too much, and finding sticky, warm residue of sugar on your lips and down your cheeks.
Yoshiki had yet to find another scent that quenched the dryness in his throat like Hikaru’s did. Not another alpha, nor any omega or beta. Even a distant whiff of it could electrify him enough to run another ten miles.
Actually, Hikaru had asked Yoshiki to try scenting him several times before— every single time had ended with Yoshiki in the bathroom of his house, shaking on the tiles. He’d feel sugar clinging to the roof of his mouth and between his teeth for hours afterward, and no amount of digging his teeth into his arm would hold down the fear and nausea nor stop the saliva pooling down his throat with every swallow. Yoshiki loved scenting Hikaru.
But not like this, where everyone could see Yoshiki being way too willing to scent another alpha. What if they saw him react to it? What if they thought Hikaru wanted Yoshiki to scent him in a weird way? He was crazy for asking it like this. At least he should have framed it like a joke. How did he dare to ask it with such obviously intimate casualness?
“It’s just gonna burn anyways,” Yoshiki muttered, as if he’d ever once found an alpha’s scent uncomfortable.
“Yeah, Hikaru,” Maki laughed at Yoshiki’s answer even as Hikaru started pouting. “Yoshiki’s had his nose burnt too many times on yer nasty smell, sitting next to ya all day!”
“What, am I just gonna have ta accept that my scent’s all weird and not ask others then? Yer not making this fair!”
“Ask others what?” Asako and Yuuki came closer to Hikaru’s desk. “What’s going on this time?”
“Maki’s sayin’ my scent’s gone weird,” Hikaru huffed, “What’s that even supposed to mean? And now Yoshiki’s not helpin’ me defend myself!”
“Yer scent?” Asako asked, eyeing Hikaru with somewhat more scrutiny than a stupid comment from Maki warranted. She had been acting a little off since Hikaru’s death, but since no one knew that he was dead but Yoshiki, he assumed that she must be acting considerate due to the whole ‘Hikaru got lost in the mountains’ debacle. “Well, lemme defend yer honour for ya! Give it over!”
“So you can scent me but Yoshiki won’t?” Hikaru huffed again with a trace of annoyance, but when he raised his hand towards Asako, his words were passed over without anyone noticing.
Asako was a beta, so she wouldn’t be affected much by his scent, but she could still identify any differences. She pitched her hand on the desk to lean down and smell Hikaru’s wrist. Yoshiki had to bite the back of his lips with force at the sight of her holding the back of his wrist and bending close enough to kiss the palm of his hand while Hikaru’s long-lashed eyes stared intently at her. This wasn’t even the Hikaru he had lost. He wasn’t even the Hikaru he loved. And yet.
“Hmmm… yeah, Maki’s right,” was Asako’s final verdict. “It’s weird.”
“What?!” Hikaru snatched his hand away from her, giving Yoshiki a brief burn of satisfaction before the fear once again overwhelmed him as Hikaru turned to push his two hands at Yoshiki. His eyes were excessively pleading as he stared up at Yoshiki, waving his hands in front of Yoshiki’s face, “Yoshiki ya gotta tell them they’re wrong!”
“I…” Yoshiki lowered his head to let his bangs cover his gaze. He didn’t want to look at Hikaru’s face right now.
Yoshiki was the one person who knew Hikaru’s scent the best in the whole world. He would go so far as to say that after the changes of puberty, even Hikaru’s mother might not know his scent as accurately as Yoshiki did. After all, she wouldn’t have had the insane desperation to catalogue every little change to it that Yoshiki had experienced.
Hikaru had always made fun of Yoshiki for knowing where he was standing, whether it was in a festival crowd or behind a wall. He’d thought it was funny and nice that Yoshiki knew him well enough to track him like a hunting dog sniffing a rabbit in its hole, instead of creepy and psychopathic. He’d told Yoshiki that that would have been sooo romantic if he had been an omega, though unfortunately for Yoshiki’s non-existent love life, he wasn’t. Yoshiki had told him go drown yourself in the river.
He’d also told Yoshiki that one day, his omega would know his scent better than even Yoshiki, and that’d be the day I’ll know that’s the wife I’m marryin’, Yoshiki, ya bloodhound!
Good for them.
But it was always nice to scent Hikaru, was the thing. Even when it hurt like a punch to the gut. Now too. It would smell so nice, and it would be satisfying because Asako didn’t get to have Hikaru begging her like this, and the scent would linger in his mouth so painfully good for the whole rest of the day.
It would be nice in a terrible, awful, disgusting, defiling way. It would be nice and if Hikaru knew that Yoshiki thought so, he would…
…well, this thing in Hikaru’s body would probably think ‘that’s great!’ and ask Yoshiki to scent him again.
“Cmoooonn, Yoshikiiiii, just one try!” Hikaru said, clambering closer to Yoshiki’s desk on his chair with the most obnoxious floor-scraping noise ever. “How am I supposed to know the truth if you don’t tell me!”
“….fine,” Yoshiki sighed reluctantly, still looking only at the top of his desk.
Hikaru’s hand was immediately placed palm-up right under Yoshiki’s gaze.
“Well?” Hikaru asked excitedly.
Yoshiki glanced quickly up from behind his bangs. The rest of their friends also seemed to be excited and amused, likely not finding this weird except in a ‘Hikaru playing a prank on Yoshiki’ kind of way. “Yeah, Yoshiki, well?” Maki echoed, cackling. “Burn your nose for the sake of science!”
“Stop making fun of the poor guy!” Yuuki hit him on the arm, but she was also smiling in amusement. As the only omega among them, no one’s scent here was truly bothersome for her, but she had a sensitive nose so she didn’t enjoy scenting anyone. She claimed she’d surely like it if it was romantic, but Maki was the only one who really seemed to believe that.
“Well, Yoshiki!” Asako laughed as well, and Yuuki’s playful attacks turned towards her.
Yoshiki pulled Hikaru’s hand carefully into the cup of his palm and raised his wrist up to his face. It was like all he could focus on was the brushstroke blue veins under Hikaru’s skin, the almost invisible peach-fur-thin white hairs on the inner side of the wrist, the bones and sinew on the back of Hikaru’s hand pushing into the palm of his hand. His heart was coming up his throat. He was going to let on that he liked this. He was going to be found out. Could anyone hear his breathing changing?
Hikaru’s wrist was loose in Yoshiki’s hand as he pressed his nose onto the gland near his wrist. Warm and heady. The scent slid almost liquid-dense everywhere in Yoshiki’s nose and mouth. Watery watermelon, too-warm and sweet as it filled his mouth, and a hint of…
Yoshiki froze.
It only took a second, but he slowly loosened his frozen muscles and let go of Hikaru’s hand. “Huh,” He let out.
“What? What’s that mean?” Maki demanded, “Do ya need to wash yer nose? Did ya fry yer brain?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Yoshiki said. He straightened up as nonchalantly as he could and turned his gaze sideways under his bangs to eye Hikaru. He was still sitting too close in his chair, holding his arm close to his chest with a satisfied smile, watching Yoshiki back with that now familiar syrup-sticky look in his eyes. Yoshiki turned his gaze to the others. “Are ya stupid, Maki? No one’s gonna keel over and die from smelling somethin’ bad.”
“So, what’s the verdict, Yoshiki-sen?” Asako demanded.
“I guess,” Yoshiki said softly, “It’s a bit weird.”
It became increasingly clear just how much Hikaru had been acting before Yoshiki confronted him.
Now, he didn’t hesitate to laugh out loud to jokes they’d heard a thousand times till it became tiresome, cry during the most boring argument scenes of the drama movie they always watched during free hour, admit that he wasn’t afraid of horror stuff anymore. Before, he had been careful not to let on a single thing. Now, it was almost scary how obvious it would have been that Hikaru’s body was being puppeted by a body-snatcher, if anyone would ever think of that possibility.
As the days passed… no matter how much Yoshiki wanted to see Hikaru as the one he had lost, it became more and more obvious that this just wasn’t him.
Even when Yoshiki went to visit Hikaru at his house, there was no escaping how the familiar rooms of Hikaru’s sunny and airy house were all permeated with that changing scent. He sat under the burning sunlight in the livingroom, glancing at Hikaru. He was on the ground after devouring a watermelon slice in three bites, joking around just the very same way he used to joke around, then falling asleep with drool at the corner of his lips just as he used to. Almost the same. So, so close. But just not it.
Just a few months past, the whole Indo house had been covered in marks of Hikaru’s and his mom’s scents, both of them intimately familiar and unchangingly welcoming to Yoshiki. Whenever he came over the house would always smell like a greeting, a cheerful Hey Yoshiki, it’s you, nice to see you. A smell that was accepting and friendly, unlike all the others in the village who invited him in with smiles into houses that always reeked of scrutinizing curiosity and schadenfreude. Whether it was their opinion of him in their scents or his own pathological perception, Yoshiki had always hated breathing the air of any house in this village other than Hikaru’s.
But that intimately familiar smell of the house was slowly starting to fade. The house smelled of Indo-san’s usual marking, with barely any of Hikaru’s heavy and strong alpha scent. Even now as the fan blew periodically on Hikaru’s sweaty skin and raised his scent through the summer heat, it left no doubt at all to the fact that something about him was changing.
Not just his soul, which was already gone and replaced by some unknown creature, but now as the creature in him relaxed, even his dead body was slowly changing in some unknown way.
Yoshiki sat beside the familiar sunflower garden and the familiar wide-open screens and the familiar body of his friend, and he leant on the table with his hands suffocating his breath. Trying not to breathe any air in, trying not to think of a single thing. He didn’t think of the fact that he’d have to eventually acknowledge that this alien couldn’t really take the place of his best friend.
Hikaru had already died twice in Yoshiki’s heart.
Yoshiki wasn’t ready.
He wasn’t ready to kill Hikaru a third time.
Hikaru was an alpha like Yoshiki himself and fairly muscled from biking to school and running around and helping out the adults in the village. He was strong and fit. Sometimes he’d crouch down and the definition of his calves and thigh muscles flexing would be impossible to look away from.
However, they were both highschoolers and when it came to fights at this age, height and weight were basically everything. Yoshiki was lanky and not particularly more built than Hikaru, but after he’d shot up at the third year of middleschool, he’d become nearly unbeatable in strength among his agemates. He’d rarely ever wrestle with Hikaru for real, but when he did he’d usually win— except when Hikaru used evil cheating moves like licking him.
Yoshiki had only barely started to accept that this wasn’t Hikaru after all.
“What’s this, an interrogation? Yer so creepy!”
After all, he’d have to accept it at some point.
“As I thought, is it because I’m not the real Hikaru? Is that why yer mad at me..?”
But how did it end up like this?
“So I… I can’t be enough, for ya..? ...Hey…”
“Isn’t that obvious?! You… ya look the same as Hikaru… act the same, talk the same… but in the end you’re just not Hikaru, are ya!”
“Ah…Sorry, yeah… No, you’re right. Haha, it’s plain true so I can’t even say anything…”
Yoshiki wasn’t used to being pushed down and held in place without even being able to put up a token resistance.
“…I can’t even say…”
Hikaru was pressing Yoshiki down on the classroom floor with his whole body. His face had entirely leaked out of reality, covering the classroom in those maddening, disgusting swirls of his muddy insides. There was a strange ringing in the air, like alien musical notes or an awful case of tinnitus, entirely burying the sound of the downpour of rain outside.
Yoshiki was held down on the floor like some hollow-boned bird pinned by a heavy cat, struggling like crazy but unable to push Hikaru back even half an inch. And he was terrified.
It was terrifying.
This was the monster living under Hikaru’s skin.
The worst part was that the growing edge of that new scent was still clinging to Hikaru’s mutilated body, something completely different from the smell Yoshiki had known all his life. Still only barely there, hidden by Hikaru’s original alpha scent, but timidly and unceasingly persisting behind it. An obvious strangeness that only appeared if you paid attention to it, or if you were Yoshiki and the dissonance blared at the back of your mind at every moment.
As if frantic to reach Yoshiki, the creature engulfing the classroom surged towards him and down into every crack in Yoshiki’s skin. Down his mouth and past his tongue and into him. A flood of what felt like slime and mud and ten thousand live snails connected to each other, and it felt—
‘Disgusting… disgusting, disgusting… it feels so bad. Stop— stop—’
‘It feels awful— it feels so bad— it feels so—’
Yoshiki couldn’t breathe. He was going to die. He felt—
‘—good? It… it feels good? It feels good… it feels so good…’
It felt so good, it felt so good, it felt incredible, it felt like concentrated pleasure and joy. It felt so good and Yoshiki couldn’t understand it. It was so obviously awful and wrong and revolting but it felt so good and right. How could something so monstrous happen to feel good?
Hikaru’s true form suddenly vanished from inside him, letting Yoshiki gasp for his first full breath in a minute.
He was flattened on his back with every muscle trembling, covered in sweat, panting to catch his breath. He had to take a long while just to let his colour-burst vision of the ceiling realign back to normal. The floor and his uniform and even the overturned desks and chairs seemed to smell violently of his own alpha scent. Normally it was so reticent and faint that even in rut it would barely stick to his sweat-soaked pyjamas, that even scenting him might not let someone get his smell properly, but now it was clinging to everything around him, lingering low on the ground like a humid fog.
Eventually, his ears stopped ringing and other sounds beside his rabbiting heartbeat started filtering into his consciousness.
The sound of the rain pouring down behind the cracked windows of the classroom sifted softly closer.
The laughter and chatter of people came muffled from outside the room.
And with them, louder than anything else, sniffling coming from the boy past him. Sniffling, then a choked down sob, a cracked and carefully silenced whine. A voice that was entirely blocked in the nose; “Yoshiki… not ya, I can’t do this to ya… Not to ya…”
Yoshiki somehow managed to push himself to sit up. When he reached up, his wrist was bruised dark in the shape of Hikaru’s fingers. “Hikaru?” He asked hoarsely.
“I’m sorry,” Hikaru’s face was wet with large drops of tears falling one after another, the pattering spirals of his true alien insides still unfurling out of his body. His reddened terrified eyes met Yoshiki’s eyes for a mere moment before Hikaru stood up and backed away from him. “I’m sorry,” He said again.
Yoshiki’s voice was still trapped in his chest when Hikaru caught the handle of his school bag and dragged it behind him as he walked out of the classroom. A wet sniff every few steps, feet shuffling heavily like a criminal walking to his execution. Hikaru only paused minutely at the door to tilt his head in Yoshiki’s direction, but didn’t seem to dare to face him fully.
He whispered,
“…don’t hate me…”
Yoshiki, look!
Yoshiki!
Yoshiki, Yoshiki!
Wow, see, Yoshiki!
Yoshiki?
Yoshiki!
…don’t hate me…
The Hikaru who Yoshiki had loved was already dead.
This Hikaru… this Hikaru was indeed something akin to a replacement, but honestly he sucked as a replacement. He certainly looked the same and got all the tones and mannerisms right, but he failed at everything else.
His likes, dislikes, fears, interests, hobbies, even the amount of attention he was supposed to give his different friends were all wrong. He didn’t even talk about omegas or his various crushes anymore. He was always looking at Yoshiki. And after so long, Yoshiki had to finally accept what he had already realised the first time he scented this Hikaru— in the end, Hikaru had not even been able to properly keep the gender of his body right.
Yoshiki’s lips parted to breathe in as he stood behind the closed door of Hikaru’s room where Hikaru had shut himself in after their… fight. The orange light of the setting sun was poking out from under Hikaru’s door. The light cast a line on Yoshiki’s socks, and those were the only part of Yoshiki not in the shadows.
He had raised his hand to knock the door before he smelled the scent in the air and froze in place.
Alongside the last rays of sunlight, an unfamiliar scent spilled out from under the door like a despondent little raincloud. Even though Hikaru obviously wasn’t human himself, he was almost achingly human in the way he cried and the raw and honest way his scent mirrored his mood. If only it was that scent which Yoshiki had loved so, that scent which belonged to a dead man who only Yoshiki knew to mourn.
Yoshiki closed his eyes and bit his lip to push the darkly spiralling thoughts down.
He breathed in. Breathed out.
That fog of scent was already clinging to his ankles. When he went back home, his mom was going to demand what he had done and how he had ended up with such a smell on him and it was going to be a whole fight, because Hikaru’s scent reflected his mood like crazy, and alpha Yoshiki causing an unfamiliar omega such despair would probably normally end up with him in jail.
He breathed in. Breathed out.
To Yoshiki, Hikaru’s alpha scent had been too-warm and kinda off and overwhelmingly sweet and vibrant with the fragrance of the watermelons he loved.
But this… Despite the noon heat that wrapped close and humid on Yoshiki’s skin, this smell that spilled out of Hikaru’s room now was colder than winter air. It was a scent that filled Yoshiki’s mouth with a stinging coolness as if he had lost in an ice-cream speed eating contest, leaving the taste of some refreshing but undefinable fruit, an icy buzz in his brain, and an overwhelming sweetness that stuck to his tongue like syrup— the single unchanged thing to the scent.
Beside the way it smelled to him, though, there was no doubt right now that it was an omega’s scent.
Yoshiki finally forwent knocking and pulled the door open directly.
The scent emanating from the suspiciously high pile of fabric at the corner of the room immediately shifted. Suddenly, the cold ice-cream scent was gone and the heated watermelon was filling the room instead. The fabrics hadn’t even twitched, totally letting on that Hikaru had long since known that Yoshiki was standing behind the door. Perhaps, though, what he didn’t know was that…
“…I could smell ya from out the door, Hikaru,” Yoshiki said quietly, walking closer with his cap’s brim pulled down over his eyes. “Yer underestimating humans.”
“Hn?!” An exclamation came from under the huge pile of blankets and clothing before it hurriedly fell silent.
Sighing, Yoshiki approached the pile.
There were a dozen blankets and coats and cardigans over where Hikaru seemed to be peeking out at Yoshiki. The orange sunlight lit everything on the pile up, casting dark shadows under the cover of it, so nothing of Hikaru himself could be seen underneath. But while Hikaru might have flipped his scent to alpha as soon as Yoshiki entered, the scent emanating from him couldn’t entirely hide the way that a far colder scent was marking the room and the pile of clothing and blankets.
Despite the misery radiating out from Hikaru himself, the marks left in the room seemed to smell like it was saying, Yoshiki welcome, Yoshiki, Yoshiki, you’re welcome here, you’re always welcome, I want you here, Yoshiki stay.
Yoshiki didn’t think even his own bed smelled this much like he was supposed to be there.
It felt a bit painful in his chest.
“…Hikaru, hey.” Yoshiki lowered himself to his knees to see the large shadow where he assumed Hikaru’s face was.
Hesitantly, Yoshiki apologized. In return, Hikaru apologized back.
In hindsight, it was a little funny how they had to go back and forth about it.
He didn’t know what he’d been thinking they’d say when he came over here. He’d only had an inkling of Hikaru’s personality and maybe a deep desire to reconcile somehow, someway. His aim for this conversation hadn’t been to get Hikaru to tearfully throw himself at him, promising not to question him for meeting anyone and pleading for him to not hate Hikaru despite the presumptuous act of puppeting the dead corpse of his best friend, but it just so happened to move that way.
By the end, Hikaru’s cheek was in his palm, warm and squished and rougher near the jaw edge. His tears slipped down the inner skin of Yoshiki’s thumb all the way to his wrist before falling onto the floor. Hikaru would never have allowed Yoshiki to hold his face like this. Hikaru would never have cried like this. Hikaru would never have pleaded for anything like this.
Hikaru’s face was half-turned into his palm, impossibly endearing.
“You really… are way more of a brat than he was,” Yoshiki murmured, the thought pulling up a smile from the paleness of his expression.
In response, Hikaru could only sniffle. “Ya ain’t mad?”
“Nah.”
Yoshiki lowered his hand from Hikaru’s cheek.
“You’re just a really lonely little brat, aren’t ya?”
“Lonely?” Hikaru asked with his tearful gaze turned up to meet Yoshiki’s. “Do ya think what I’m feelin’ now’s loneliness?”
“…” Yoshiki’s smile returned, faint. “Who knows.”
If it was this Hikaru… if he really just didn’t know anything… then Yoshiki had to be the one to teach him stuff. All the human things that he didn’t know. Yoshiki slowly grasped Hikaru’s hand in his, a gentle hold turning stronger until he had his fingers clasped around Hikaru’s palm. He could be the one to teach him.
With his hand in Yoshiki’s hold, the absolute despair in Hikaru’s scent softened until there was no emotional spikes left in it. Yoshiki’s tensed-up back relaxed a little too, as if he’d released his muscles in instinctual response.
“So, that over there…” Yoshiki said, glancing over at the now-scattered pile of heavily-marked clothing and blankets.
Hikaru blinked as if waking up. He left his hand loose in Yoshiki’s hold as he turned around to survey his own mess, sniffling one more time with a shrug of his shoulders. Anyone else might have been embarrassed to have someone else see this, but to Hikaru it seemed like it was the most natural thing in the world. He shrugged a little before replying.
“I dunno…” His nose was blocked. “I felt like gettin’ in one, but making it wasn’t easy like I thought it’d be.”
If Yoshiki didn’t know Hikaru, he’d have thought the pile was only a stack of nest materials left haphazardly for later use. But he knew him and suspected that this itself was actually an initial attempt at a nest. It was just really bad compared to what he’d seen of his mom’s nests. But no one had taught Hikaru how to make a nest, and Yoshiki imagined that he hadn’t tried much to figure it out himself before making the most nest-like pile he could and burying himself in it.
He must have been trying to comfort himself. Had this Hikaru even known what sadness or rejection felt like, before Yoshiki tried to cut off their ill-fated relationship? He must have been trying to make himself feel better by whatever way came easiest instinctually.
Yoshiki remembered being four or five and getting into his mom’s nests when he felt scared after a nightmare. Nests were made of warmth and security. Even now, even when he knew he was never gonna get in a nest again since he definitely wouldn’t get married, Yoshiki kept those memories with fondness.
“Do ya know where I went wrong?” Hikaru asked.
“Well…” Yoshiki hesitated. How was he supposed to know? “Maybe ya could search up instructions?”
Hikaru turned his lips into an unhappy upside-down v, like an exaggerated pout. Yoshiki felt a pang in his heart despite the fact that he’d already decided that he couldn’t treat this Hikaru as the one he’d lost. That Hikaru had also hated looking up instructions; he’d rather make a hundred fruitless attempts at something than look up a single hint for it. Yoshiki was always the one who had to secretly search for tips and then secretly slip them into a conversation for Hikaru to take the advice.
“Okay, fine. I’ll search it up for ya,” Yoshiki sighed. “But you’re gonna be the one makin’ it. It’s too embarrassing.”
“Sounds good!” Hikaru’s pink-tinged grin could light up the village and the town too with how pleased it was. “Hey… ya know,” He added quietly, tilting his head down a little with that smile still on his lips, “Yer really so nice to me, even after I did all that… So, well… Thank you, Yoshiki.”
Yoshiki couldn’t move or respond for a while. Maybe his brain had been fried by the sudden shock of that bashful, pleased expression on an otherwise familiar face.
It was so obvious, suddenly, that Yoshiki could have never succeeded in putting a wall against him. One way or another, he’d have surely folded eventually. How was he supposed to stay away from something that smiled so genuinely with Hikaru’s face and so desperately needed Yoshiki around? It was like a trap that was set specifically to snare Yoshiki's heel.
After a moment, Yoshiki laughed under his breath at his own ridiculous weakness. This was dangerous, wasn’t it? Just like Kurebayashi-san had said, this was a dangerous and harmful creature. It was a twisted relationship. A relationship between a snail and a baby bird, a slimy little stupid snail cozying up to the baby bird like it didn’t know it was just future food. It was going to ruin him, wasn’t it? It was going to ruin his life.
It was dangerous. He knew that. But equally as much, he couldn’t help but think that this baby bird was his baby bird now. Maybe if he taught him well enough, no one would have to get eaten at all.
Well... Either way, Yoshiki didn’t know how he was supposed to take the danger of it seriously when the first thing he had to teach Hikaru about humanity had ended up being nest-making.
“It’s okay,” Yoshiki said, wry smile tugging at the corners of his lips, “We’ll figure it out somehow.”
They would figure it out somehow.