Chapter 9

In the summer of my second year of high school, I, Shuumei Sasaki, bumped into one particular first-year: Miyano. Now summer was turning into fall, and he and I kept getting closer. “Sooo, Miya, what’s this BL thing anyway?” I drawled. “It’s what we call those guy-on-guy love stories you’re always borrowing from me,” he said after a beat. He was so cute, I couldn’t stand it. “Oh, those.” “And I thought I told you to keep that to yourself in public!” I liked to call him Miya. Yeah, it sounded silly, kind of like a girl’s nickname. And yeah, this was an all-boys school, so he was a boy too, but whatever! He’s just insanely cute. What was I supposed to say to something like that except, “You’re freakin’ adorable, Miya!” If there was a better way to respond, I hadn’t heard it. Every time I said he was cute, Miyano would get angry or try to get back at me. Believe me, if I thought there were any other word to use, I would have used it. But the way he made my heart dance in my chest—well! Another day, another chance to say… “You’re so cute, Miya!” “Hey, is Hirano here?” our homeroom teacher asked, sliding the classroom door open with a rattle. It was only me and my two friends inside. My friends were both on after-class duty, and me, I was just hanging around because I was putting off going home. “Guess not,” the teacher said. He spun on his heel and was about to leave when I threw up my hand. “Hirano is probably at the Disciplinary Committee meeting, sir. You need anything?” “Oh, right. Nah. I’ve got some paperwork he asked for. Thought I’d give it to him if he was around.” “I can make sure he gets it, if you like. I bet he’ll be done soon.” “You’d go to that kind of trouble?” the teacher asked. I didn’t blame him for being skeptical; I knew I tended to act like everything was a big headache all the time. Well, call this proof that I was mending my ways. And this was kind of a headache, but I was willing to do it anyway. “It’s no rush,” the teacher said. “I’ve got nothing but time, sir. Actually, I need something at the Disciplinary Committee room myself.” “All right, then. Thanks.” With the materials in my hand and my bag slung over my shoulder, I bid farewell to my friends and left the room. My steps were suddenly much lighter than they had been earlier. The whole reason I offered to take the teacher’s envelope to Hirano was so I would have a pretext to show up at the Disciplinary Committee room. I knew Hirano would get annoyed if an underclassman were to drop in for no reason—but by the same token, as long as you had even the flimsiest excuse, then there was no problem, right? That’s what I hoped anyway. I knew that if Miya had any serious trouble, Hirano would help out—he was the protective type that way. But he didn’t try to get between us much these days. It was probably obvious even to an outside observer that Miya and I were bonding. At least, I thought so. Hey, it felt good, though. I opened the door to the committee room, thrusting the envelope at Hirano with a friendly “Speedy delivery, from Teach to you!” and a grin at Miya. My timing was perfect—they were just getting ready to leave. “Let’s head home together, Miyaaa,” I suggested. “I’ll pass. I need to go to the bookstore.” Hirano, clearing some space on the desk, thanked me, and said, “You two go home together?” “We just happen to live in the same direction,” I said. “Huh.” He didn’t sound very interested. He was busy pulling some printouts from the envelope. Doesn’t look like he’s going to try to stop us, I thought. But while I was busy feeling out Hirano, Miya just about leaped to his feet. “Okay, I’ll see you guys later!” he said. “Sure, see ya,” Hirano replied. “No, Miyaaa, wait!” I cried. I was about to zip after him, but in a hard voice, he said, “I’m g-going to the bookstore by myself today. I’ve made up my mind, and you can’t change it!” Was that guilt I heard, though? His fundamental niceness probably made him feel bad pushing me away. He took off at a quick trot, but—as befitted a member of the Disciplinary Committee and all-around Top Student—he resisted running in the hallway. My legs were a lot longer than his, and I caught up easily in just a few strides. Somehow, even that seemed cute to me. “You buyin’ some BL?” I asked. It seemed likely, given his insistence on going by himself. And if that wasn’t the reason, then I was definitely curious what was. “Y-you can’t just ask like that!” Yeah, okay. I still didn’t know what had Miya so worked up. “Wouldn’t it be cheaper if we pooled our money?” “Two guys browsing the BL shelf together?! Every girl in the store would be fantasizing about us!” “Oh. So that’s the problem.” “Yes. It is,” he said, and then he turned away as if to emphasize that alone meant alone. I was afraid that if I pushed too hard, he would just get upset. If the shelf was the problem, though, I thought I had a solution. “I can just wait by a different shelf,” I said. Miya swallowed whatever objection he’d been about to make. The way his eyes wandered away from me, at once embarrassed and cornered, was extremely compelling. He normally looked right at you when he talked, so this sent a thrill through me. When we’d first met, he always looked at me sort of guardedly, something he did a lot less since we started talking about his favorite thing. Now there was just a sense that he was trying to judge how much was safe to share. It was cute. We still weren’t super close, though. It was great to learn more about him and his interests and all, but when it came to things outside his “hobby,” I still felt a wall there. I guess some distance was natural between an upperclassman and an underclassman. But still, I wanna know! I was a lot more excited to come to school since meeting Miya. Maybe I would have experienced that sooner if I’d joined a club or a committee or something—but I got the sense that what I was feeling about Miya was something different. I’d never had anyone to really talk to much, and maybe that explained why I couldn’t seem to put this feeling into words. If anything, I sort of wanted to ask Miya if he knew what it was—even though I was feeling it about him! I wondered if he had a name for this connection that my fuzzy, ill-defined thoughts and feelings seemed to be heading toward. “You’re seriously coming? I’m telling you, it’s not gonna be that interesting.” “But I want to get to know you better, Miyaaa.” “Why do you always have to be so direct?” “Hmm? You say something?” “Nothing…” We’d already had the same conversation, or slight variations on it, several times by the time I stepped off the train with him. “If you really don’t want me here, I’ll leave,” I said. “I mean, I don’t really not… I mean, not really, really…” Miya wasn’t his most articulate at that moment. I decided to take his stumbling response to mean that he felt a little funny about this but nothing more. All right, then. I would forge ahead. The place he wanted to go was a big bookstore on the same train line as our school. Me, I loved little trips like this, getting off at stations you normally just commute straight through, walking the unfamiliar streets, seeing places you’d never really seen before. Time itself seemed to flow differently. “’Kay. I’ll be right here,” I said, stopping by a rack of fashion magazines. Miya looked relieved. His boyish face, dominated by his eyes, had a way of making him particularly cute when the tension left him. I’d heard he was born just before the school year started, so he was still fifteen—meaning that calendar-wise, there was a two-year gap between us at the moment. No wonder he looked so cute to me. I didn’t think I remembered ever looking so innocent in my entire life. “You sure about this? It’s gonna take me a while.” Gosh, he was so thoughtful. It wasn’t like we were on a date or anything; I’d just followed him. He was looking at me with an expression of genuine pity. “Hmm? Aw, it’s fine,” I said. “Take your time. I love just hanging out.” “Hanging out,” Miya repeated with a hint of a smile. “All right, then. I’ll shout when I’m done.” I could tell his mind was already somewhere else. The cuteness was enough to bring a smile to my face. “Sure thing. If we miss each other, we can meet by the exit.” I pointed to the bookstore’s front door, which faced the train station. Miya nodded and adjusted his bag on his shoulder. “Sounds good. See you in a bit.” I flipped through the fashion magazines, but nothing caught my interest—maybe it had something to do with the release date. I loosened up with a couple shoulder circles and stepped away from the shelf. I like clothes, but since I usually wore hand-me-downs from my sister’s boyfriend, I wasn’t exactly on the cutting edge of fashion. “No Miya yet…” I checked the time on my phone and discovered it hadn’t even been five minutes. It looked like I was going to have plenty of time to kill before Miya came to collect me. I was bored. Sure did wish I was with him. He’d said something about not wanting to be together because we’d attract attention, but I wondered if it could really be that bad. Maybe the only way to find out was to go and see. Where is he, though? Where do they put the, uh, BL? Hmm… Maybe with the manga, I guess? I was surprised to realize I’d never seen it before. I worked my way through the store, glancing at the labels on each shelf, slowly looking left, then right. Shounen manga, shoujo manga… The books Miya lent me always had the prettiest pictures, so I figured they had to be around here somewhere. Oh, I saw the TV-series version of this. So it started as a shoujo manga? Funny how many of these titles I recognize, actually… I was getting distracted at every turn, but I kept working my way farther from the door until I found the BL corner. No sooner had I approached than I could feel the female customers nearby stealing little glances at me. It was definitely more than just my imagination, and although I wasn’t sure why, it didn’t make me feel very comfortable. I couldn’t help noticing it was almost all female shoppers over here. I guess it really is unusual for a guy to read BL. Maybe it’s as if he were reading shoujo manga. The shelves were right next to each other—it seemed like a logical conclusion. Just as I was figuring that out, I spotted a familiar face. “Oh! Miyaaa!” I said. He looked up from the book whose back cover he’d been reading studiously. “Huh? Sasaki?!” A little loud for the inside of a bookstore. That only attracted more looks. “Whatcha lookin’ at?” I asked. “Er! Uh…” I sidled over to him and looked at the book he was holding. It had a clever, eye-catching cover design that made it look almost like a style magazine. The only real difference was this thing used drawings instead of photographs. Huh. I had to admit, you didn’t see anything quite like that in shounen manga. “Huh, that’s cool!” I said. I started to let my eyes wander over the spines on the shelf—and then I froze. “Uh…” Most of the books had titles that referred so frankly to sex that I was almost embarrassed to read them. Trying to find something else to do with my eyes, I looked at Miya, but he averted his gaze. He looked like he’d been caught red-handed at…something. “I’m kinda surprised. I know it’s mostly girls who read BL, but the titles sound just like the pornos guys like,” I said. “Yeah, they’re from…a pretty intense label,” he replied. He looked like he might burst into tears, and for some reason he seemed to be trying to hide the book he was holding in his hand. Even though the title sounded downright tame compared to these others! “Label?” I asked. He didn’t even pretend to try to look at me as he said, “It’s like, uh, the kind of magazine they’re in.” “Ahh!” I nodded. That made sense. Miya got ahold of himself and said, “Wh-what are you doing here anyway?” The whiff of embarrassment that still hung in the air told me he wasn’t used to shopping for these books with a friend. He always came on his own and read them by himself. “Just wondered where you were at. Farthest corner of the store, I see.” I had to admit, the looks from the women around us were starting to get to me. They weren’t piercing so much as…curious. I’d never felt this way in a bookstore before. At least not when I was looking at magazines. Did a guy—did Miya—really stand out that much when he was just looking for his favorite books? Hmmm… I didn’t sense any hostility from the women, but they were definitely looking too much. I wished they could act just a little more natural. What a pain. Then I thought: It’s not good to see everything as a pain. I promised myself I’d stop doing that! While I was busy chiding myself, Miya had picked up another book off a pile. A sign next to it boasted that it included a “special bonus content!” Maybe he didn’t care about the looks, or maybe he was used to them. Gotta just enjoy what you enjoy, I guess. Maybe I was making him too conspicuous by standing there. So this was what he’d been warning me about. He really wasn’t imagining it! As if on cue, I heard someone whisper, “Are they a couple?” I dunno… I thought maybe I could enjoy that little misunderstanding. Miya didn’t look like he’d heard. He was too busy picking out books. If it looked like he was getting upset again, I’d just step away. He was furiously flipping things over, looking at covers, totally unaware that I was keeping a protective eye on him. He’s really serious about this. The sight of him focused on his books, fretting over them, was a little bit like seeing him dressed in an unfamiliar outfit. I just stood next to him and waited.