Chapter 20

“I wonder which BL would make the best thank-you gift,” Yuki said. “What kind of stuff does Miyano like?” No one had ever asked me that before. I could explain what she liked, at least to a point, but Miyano? “I don’t know,” I admitted. “You should take a little interest in your friends’ preferences!” Talk about easier said than done! It was nice to have a little easy banter like this, though. “I don’t care about men’s preferences,” I said. “Try to remember. Something he said when he was giving you advice, or something he talked about even though you didn’t bring it up. Anything at all would give us a hint.” “You’re really serious about this,” I said. Because she asked, I searched my memory as best I could, but not much came to mind. “Let’s see… I think his tastes are pretty eclectic. Oh, I guess one time he said he always used to read school stories, but now he can’t anymore and he reads stuff about adults instead. And I think he said he reads a lot of gag stuff and things with happy endings.” The gag stuff might have been something he was recommending to Sasaki, though. Wow, I really didn’t remember much. I felt bad for Yuki, who was nodding sagely; I wanted to come up with something definite if I could. “I see,” she said. “Upbeat stuff inspires empathy, not just with the uke’s change of heart, but with the seme, too. Best of all is that feeling they give you when you’re done reading.” “Huh. I never knew.” It was obvious from the way she was talking: If she and Miyano met, they would have their own personal BL roundtable going in no time. When Miyano talked about this stuff with Sasaki out in the hallway, he got so enthusiastic that he would do the classic smack-your-palm-on-the-wall—in fact, he would practically slam his entire body into it. And that was how he got when Sasaki would fearlessly bring up the subject—the passion would only be multiplied when two BL-lovers got together. “Doesn’t Miyano talk to you about BL? Like, which series he especially enjoyed or anything?” “Sometimes he uses vocabulary that’s unique to fudanshi or something. And sometimes he talks about his BL fantasies or suggests, like, potential plots that he sees around him. But he doesn’t give me his thoughts on any particular series like you do.” I suspected he only did that with Sasaki, although I didn’t say so, since it was just an assumption. “If anything, I probably talk to him more than he talks to me.” “About what?” “Bragging about my girlfriend…” When I started in on that subject, all my friends at school would just give me a there-he-goes-again look, but Yuki didn’t know about any of that and thought I was teasing her. She puffed out her cheeks. “Bah! But you talked a lot on the school trip in second semester, right? Wait… Hold on. You did talk about something other than me, didn’t you?” “Things other than you, Yuki? Oh, uh, let’s see…,” I said apprehensively and pretended to think. I tried to look very serious as I said, “I’m not…coming up with anything.” She gave me a look. “You’re joking… Right? No… No way!” She sounded downright distraught. I felt bad; I’d pushed it a little too far. “It’s a joke! Don’t worry. Let’s see. On the school trip… I guess maybe we talked about some things you would enjoy hearing about.” “Like what? Spill!” Now that I thought about it, I realized I never told Yuki what had happened on the trip in much detail. We’d talked on LINE and on the phone while I was away, so she had a general idea of where I’d gone and what I’d done. When I got back, I’d shown her my photos and we talked about where we’d like to go, what food we’d like to eat. Pretty soon, it was like we were planning a vacation of our own, and the subject of who exactly did what on the school trip never really came up. I remembered looking at a map with her, tracing where I’d gone. I remembered the way her eyes shone as she looked at the pictures in the guidebook, how lovely she’d been. And then she’d asked me, “It’d be just the two of us, right?” She couldn’t hide the nervousness in her voice, and then I got a case of nerves, too, so on the way home that day it didn’t matter that it was a chilly afternoon; I was warm right down to the tips of my fingers. I could still feel that heat even now. “We talked about, like, romance and stuff.” My girlfriend—always cute to begin with—gave me her brightest smile. Her eyes sparkled, more beautiful than the stars in the night sky. “Boys talking about love! This I have to hear,” she said, clenching her delicate hand in a fist. I laid my hand over hers. “All right. Let me start at the beginning,” I said. This was before Miyano and Sasaki had started dating. We’d all been at the hotel one night, talking about matters of the heart. I also worked in a little something I’d overheard, something that stuck in my mind, even if my conclusions might be baseless. So I chatted with my girlfriend about my classmates, the pleasure written on her face even though she’d never met these people. The conversation warmed me in a way none ever had before.