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Hanamaki liked doodling in Matsukawa"s notebook.
It was usually just little drawings, but sometimes he liked to skip ahead when Matsukawa wasn’t looking and leave notes instead. Then, hours or days or weeks later, he"d find a message for him from Hanamaki.
The messages were generally silly and designed to make Matsukawa laugh; one time, Hanamaki wrote "Bata-sensei is Baldy-sensei," and when Matsukawa came across it during class, he burst out laughing so hard he got detention for it, and when Hanamaki heard what happened he laughed so hard he started crying, and then he wrote the same thing again ten pages later.
(Which got Matsukawa detention again the following week.)
Over time, the doodles and messages became more and more frequent. Sometimes, Hanamaki would fill entire pages with scribbles and notes. One time, he wrote out his answers for the homework Matsukawa hadn"t done yet, just to confuse him.
(Matsukawa wasn’t confused—who else would it be but Hanamaki?—but he did fail that homework.)
But even when Matsukawa complained, he never made an effort to stop him.
It soon became routine for Hanamaki to sit down on the other side of Matsukawa"s desk at lunch and immediately reach for Matsukawa"s notebook, flipping through until he found a page that took his fancy. Then he would lean over, shielding the page with his arm, and start scrawling.
At first, Matsukawa would always watch, even if it meant trying to drag Hanamaki’s arm out of the way so he could see. But over time, he seemed to come to enjoy the surprise of seeing a new doodle or message from Hanamaki. So their routine evolved: when Hanamaki sat down and opened the notebook, Matsukawa would turn away—he would focus on his lunch or talk to one of his classmates—and he would only look back when Hanamaki shut the notebook with a small clap and slid it over to his side of the desk.
December of second year—whilst christening a brand new blue notebook—Hanamaki decided to confess.
It was the coward"s way out, he knew; if Matsukawa seemed at all grossed out or like he might reject him, all Hanamaki had to do was say that it was a joke.
It was easy; it was safe.
He waited until Matsukawa turned away.
Heart beating fast, his hands suddenly clammy against the smooth plastic of the pen, he swallowed, picked a page—second last from the end—and then turned the notebook on its side and wrote in the margin "I like you."
He stared at the words, and his heart only beat faster.
Face warm, he closed the notebook quickly, the pages slapping together. Matsukawa stiffened in his seat before turning back.
"You"re done?"
Hanamaki pressed his lips together and handed the notebook back with a nod. "Yeah."
Matsukawa accepted the notebook.
"Don"t skip ahead."
Matsukawa chuckled. "I would never."
And Hanamaki trusted him.
Matsukawa continued to make his way through his new notebook as normal. Sometimes while doodling, Hanamaki would peek at the second last page, but of course there was nothing there except his message. And then as the days turned into weeks, Hanamaki started to regret picking the second last page. After all, Matsukawa was barely over halfway through the notebook, and it would probably be months before he ever got there. In fact, at this rate, he may not even get there before the year ended.
But Hanamaki was no quitter; he may have taken the coward"s way with his confession, but he wasn"t going to back out of it now; he would stand by his cowardly confession and see it through to the end.
So Hanamaki waited, and he doodled, and as Matsukawa neared the second last page, Hanamaki stopped checking.
At the start of March—when Matsukawa had only five pages left in his notebook, and he had had homework that Hanamaki knew he would need to use the rest of the notebook for because one of those last pages was covered in volleyballs—Hanamaki came to school and waited for lunch, his heart in his mouth. He tried to concentrate, tried not to fidget as he sat through homeroom and the first period of the day. Second period was gym, and he almost choked when he passed Matsukawa in the hallway.
"H-Hey."
Matsukawa only gave him a weird look and snorted in response. "Hey?"
He tripped his way through gym, and then floated back to his class for an hour of self-study during which he considered skipping class, but Matsukawa had maths anyway, so there was no point, and Hanamaki didn"t want to give himself away just in case Matsukawa thought it was actually just a joke. So he sat, and he fidgeted, and he tried to swallow his heart back down into his chest where it belonged, even though it almost burst right out of him when the bell rang for lunch anyway.
He practically ran to Matsukawa"s class, slowing to a walk only when he nearly ran into two girls right outside the door. He stopped and took a deep breath. Then another. Then he entered, making a beeline for his usual seat and sitting down without looking to see what kind of face Matsukawa might be pulling.
He sat down, and stared at his hands on the desk, and waited.
And then a bright red notebook was slid between his hands.
Eyes widening, Hanamaki jerked his head up to stare at Matsukawa"s impassive face.
"What?"
"Where"s your notebook?"
Matsukawa only blinked at him in that slow, easy way of his. "I left it at home."
"What?!"
Matsukawa blinked some more. "Yeah, sorry. I forgot it."
Hanamaki stared, mouth hanging open. "What...about your homework?"
Matsukawa winced. "Yeah, I forgot about that too."
Hanamaki wasn"t sure if he was grateful or disappointed; this at least meant he had another day to prepare himself before having to face the consequences of his impulsive actions, but he had been prepared to deal with them today.
But this, too, was a consequence of his actions: he would have to wait until Matsukawa found the note himself.
He closed his mouth and nodded.
"Well, guess we"ll just have to christen this one too, then," he sighed, already reaching for one of Matsukawa"s pens and opening the new notebook to a random page as he pushed away the anxiety in his belly.
The next day, Matsukawa had the red notebook again.
"Where"s the blue one?" Hanamaki asked, trying not to sound disappointed or irritated as he flipped through this new, interfering notebook. He picked a couple of pages ahead of where Matsukawa had gotten to and started drawing little cats.
"Ah, I don"t think I"m gonna bother with it."
Hanamaki"s head whipped up so fast he felt his neck seize. "What?!"
Matsukawa blinked at him and Hanamaki started getting deja vu.
"Well, it only had, like, 2 pages left, so I figured I"ll just use this one from now on."
Hanamaki chewed on his lip, processing the way his heart was plummeting.
"Why?" Matsukawa asked, and his eyes suddenly felt impossibly heavy. "Did you write something in it?"
Hanamaki stared, and chewed his lip, and tried to gather up his heart so he didn"t drop it on the floor. He swallowed.
"No, I didn"t."
Matsukawa watched him for another moment before shrugging and turning back to his lunch, and if Hanamaki had been thinking clearly he might have tried to read his expression, but at that moment he could only think Okay. Yeah.
It"s better this way.
✎
When Matsukawa gets home that evening, he wrenches open his desk drawer to pull out the blue notebook, where it is already open on the second last page.
His eyes fly straight to the three words in the margin, written in Hanamaki’s sharp, angled handwriting.
“I like you.”
Matsukawa stares at the words. He recalls once again Hanamaki’s strange behaviour the day he had forgotten the notebook—the day after he had found the words while doing homework and, too scared to ask if they had been true or not, decided to leave the notebook at home. He hadn’t been sure if Hanamaki was acting strangely because he knew where Matsukawa had gotten to in the notebook and he had been too scared to ask.
Because what if the words had been a joke, and he barely remembered writing them at all? Because what if Hanamaki laughed, and then noticed Matsukawa’s shaky voice, his sweaty hands, his red face, and he realised that Matsukawa had taken it seriously, and then he decided he wouldn’t write in Matsukawa’s notebook anymore because he clearly couldn’t take a joke? That was the last thing Matsukawa wanted. So he had kept quiet, because it was safer.
But then Hanamaki had lied.
Matsukawa stares at the words now, heart racing. He swallows, reaches out and presses his fingers against them.
Wonders how long they’d been there.
...Oh, shit.
He reaches for his bag and digs through until he finds the red notebook buried at the bottom. He pulls it out, scattering receipts and loose paper and a pack of gum on the floor, and then starts frantically flicking through the pages. He feels guilty doing it, because he had stopped skipping ahead when he had started looking forward to Hanamaki’s doodles—when he had started getting excited to see what note he might come across next.
But desperate times and all that, so Matsukawa swallows his guilt and checks. Some cats, cows, a dumb joke—and that’s it.
There’s nothing else in the new notebook.
And of course, because why would there be? He’s barely had it two days, and Hanamaki only ever draws in his notebook at lunch; of course there would barely be anything in it yet.
Matsukawa stares at the blank pages of the red notebook, disappointment and guilt and irritation—at himself, at Hanamaki for picking such a stupid, Hanamaki-like way of confessing—swirling in his stomach.
He looks back to the blue notebook, to those three words.
“I like you.”
He gets an idea.
He grabs a pen from his desk and flicks to the back of the red notebook—the second last page.
The next day, Matsukawa arrives at school feeling like someone has injected bees into his bloodstream. He barely listens in first period, and by the time second period comes round, he’s got such a bad stomach ache he thinks he might actually die before he makes it to lunch. He puts his chin down on his desk and tries to survive through the rest of class, and when the lunch bell rings, he swears his heart climbs into his mouth. He buries his face in his arms and doesn’t move until he hears the chair at the desk in front being pulled out. He waits another moment before lifting his head to see—
“Mattsun, do you feel sick, too?”
Matsukawa stares at Oikawa.
“What are you doing here?”
Oikawa pouts down at Matsukawa and props his elbow on the back of his chair, chin in his hand. “Iwa-chan and Makki are both off sick, so I came to keep you company,” he says. “But if you’re sick too I’ll go bother someone else.”
“Hanamaki is sick?” Matsukawa thinks he might have just felt his spirit leave his body. “Is he okay?”
Oikawa watches him with that gaze of his that always makes Matsukawa want to squirm away. “Why, don’t you want to spend some quality time with your future captain, Mattsun?”
Matsukawa decides it’s safer not to incite Oikawa’s interest or get him involved. He shakes his head and pulls out his lunch. “Of course, Captain.”
Hanamaki stays home the rest of the week.
Matsukawa feels like he might burst.
After class on Friday he kept staring at the blue notebook, wondering if he should just call Hanamaki and ask about the words outright. But then he would reason with himself that if Hanamaki was sick he wouldn’t want to talk. Plus, Matsukawa had already taken action; to say anything now could only result in more embarrassment.
So Matsukawa had waited, and paced round the house all day after volleyball practice on Saturday, and then all day on Sunday until his mum had yelled at him to either stop or go pick up Shouji from soccer practice, so he had gone to pick up his brother just so he doesn’t have to stop pacing.
Now that Monday has finally arrived, he’s pretty sure the bees in his blood have turned into hornets, and he’s not sure he’ll make it past homeroom.
Somehow, miraculously, against all odds, lunch rolls round and once again he keeps his head down until the chair scrapes back and—
Hanamaki grins at him and Matsukawa swears he can hear his heart faltering in his chest.
“Yo. Miss me?”
Matsukawa swallows, resists the urge to smile.
“What? Did you go somewhere?”
Hanamaki cackles and shoves Matsukawa’s shoulder. “Dickhead.”
“Weakling,” Matsukawa shoots back, grinning unashamedly. “Who takes half a week off because of a cold?”
“How do you know it was just a cold? Not like you texted to check if I was dying.”
Matsukawa snorts. “As if you’d depart this mortal plane that easily. Anyway, I spoke to Oikawa: he said you had a cold.”
Hanamaki clicks his tongue. “Dammit, ruining all my plans.”
Then he holds out a hand.
Matsukawa stares at it. “What?”
Hanamaki raises his eyebrows. “My work. My life project. My one sparkling source of happiness in this concrete prison.”
It takes Matsukawa a second, and then he remembers. Laughing, he reaches into his bag for his notebook—and in the next second remembers .
All the blood in his body rushes to his face. He hesitates for just a split second, but it’s enough.
Hanamaki frowns at him. “Oi, you alright Matsukawa?”
Matsukawa nods stiltedly and holds out the notebook and tries to will away the blush that he knows must be all over his face, ears, neck, God, this is humiliating—
Hanamaki takes the notebook and opens it to a page in the middle. Before Matsukawa even has time to look away, Hanamaki draws a little daisy, right in the middle of the page, and then slaps the notebook shut and places it back in Matsukawa’s still open hand.
“There you go.”
Matsukawa blinks at the notebook blankly before slowly, hesitantly, slipping it back into his bag.
“Thanks.”
Hanamaki hums as he gets out his lunch and starts eating, and suddenly, Matsukawa realises that this may have quite possibly been one of the worst ideas he had ever had to date.
The week ends and takes the school year with it. Matsukawa curses himself for forgetting as he stands in his last homeroom of second year, with a largely empty red notebook staring up at him from his bag, its pages depressingly bare of both study notes and Hanamaki"s doodles. He wonders if Hanamaki had always doodled this little, or if he was just hyper aware of the time Hanamaki now spent going through and looking for a page to write on, like a dog choosing the perfect spot to mark its territory.
The bell rings and Matsukawa packs up, distracted as he wonders what to do with the notebook now. He isn"t paying attention, so he doesn"t expect the weight that suddenly drapes itself over the back of his shoulders, knocking the air from his lungs.
"Matsukawa-kun, why you glaring at your notebook? You don"t have to study anymore today, you know?"
Matsukawa turns to see Hanamaki"s face, right there, so close he can feel his breath on his cheek as he speaks, and he swears he could count every single freckle on his face if he didn"t insist on hiding them under foundation that he"s pretty sure Oikawa taught him how to use—
Matsukawa turns away with a cough, and then another, and then many. He feels Hanamaki"s weight slide off, a single hand shifting to pat his back instead.
"Whoa, you alright, old man?"
Matsukawa flaps a hand at him, grateful that he has an excuse to hide his face because holy shit.
He thinks if Hanamaki had looked any closer, he probably would have felt the heat radiating from Matsukawa"s face himself.
God, why was this happening? Before he had his crush under control—hidden away under lock and key—and now he could barely look at Hanamaki without his stupid, traitorous face blushing.
He has to do something, he thinks, or else Hanamaki will eventually notice and bring it up and then he’ll be forced to actually say the words out loud.
The coughing subsides and Matsukawa slips his notebook back into his bag, ignoring Hanamaki"s piercing gaze.
"Come on, let"s go find the idiot duo."
They meet Oikawa and Iwaizumi at the gates and head to their usual ramen shop, and after stuffing themselves there, they head to the park with a collection of convenience store sweets. Hanamaki, true to his brand, buys several cream puffs which he refuses to share with anyone.
While listening to Oikawa talk excitedly at Iwaizumi about some kouhai that will be coming over from their middle school, Matsukawa feels a tug on his sleeve. He turns and sees Hanamaki, stretched out on the ground with a cream puff in hand, pointing to Matsukawa"s bag. Matsukawa reaches over and passes it to him, then watches Hanamaki dig through one handedly until he finds the red notebook and a pen. He feels his heart jump in his chest.
"You going to doodle?" he asks, but his mouth is dry from the bread he"d been eating and his voice cracks.
Hanamaki just nods as he stuffs the rest of the cream puff in his mouth and flips open the notebook to a random page. He starts drawing little leaves, and then a tree, and then some birds, and then he decides he"s done and turns ahead a few pages and starts drawing some dogs. He grabs another cream puff.
"Because it"s the end of the year so you should get a new notebook, but it would be a waste not to use this one."
Matsukawa sucks in a breath. He hadn"t thought that far ahead. In fact, even if he had, he"s not sure he would have done it anyway—not after the mental strain of the last couple weeks.
He swallows, clears his throat. "I don"t really care. I"ll probably just use that one until I finish it."
Hanamaki gives him a look like he"s just suggested that cream puffs shouldn"t be part of a healthy balanced diet.
"Heathen," he hisses, and then goes back to drawing. Matsukawa watches Hanamaki draw two more dogs, then flick back to an earlier page and switch to drawing swirls.
Matsukawa wonders idly if he"s planning to just fill up the whole notebook now, and then, suddenly, his hands start sweating.
What if he sees what Matsukawa wrote? He had planned for Hanamaki to see it during lunch, when it was just the two of them, minding their own business in the corner of the classroom—not here, in the middle of the park, with Oikawa and Iwaizumi right there and within guaranteed ear and eyeshot.
Panic grabs hold of his heart and he slaps a hand down.
Hanamaki blinks at the sudden hand on his page, then frowns up at Matsukawa. "What?"
"Uh..." Matsukawa pulls his hand back, looking for an explanation that will make sense—that won"t make him sound insane. He realises that Oikawa and Iwaizumi have stopped talking, too.
"I..."
He slides the notebook out from under Hanamaki"s hand. The nib of the pen drags a line down the page and then thunks mutedly into the grass.
"I really don"t need to buy a new notebook just because it"s a new year. I"d rather save up and get one later."
Yes, good, well done, that was normal and logical and not weird.
Hanamaki watches him, glances at the notebook in Matsukawa"s hands with something that almost looks like disappointment, and then shrugs. He hands Matsukawa the pen and then rolls onto his back to eat the rest of his cream puff, eyes fixed on the clouds above. Guilt twists in Matsukawa"s stomach at the sight, but he shakes it off.
He slips the notebook and pen back into his bag as Oikawa and Iwaizumi go back to talking about their kouhai, breathing a small sigh of relief.
It"s okay. It"s just for now. Just until he sees the page.
On the first day of their last year in high school, Matsukawa arrives with a spring in his step.
He"s made peace with the fact that he"s probably going to have to wait for Hanamaki to find his note, because they have the whole year ahead of them now and eventually Hanamaki will see it, because eventually Matsukawa will finish this notebook, just like the others. He realises he"s kind of shot himself in the foot by leaving it to Hanamaki to find because he has no idea when it will happen and will therefore have approximately zero seconds to actually prepare himself, but he figures it"s apt punishment for his cowardice upon finding Hanamaki"s note.
So he arrives at school, and he spots Hanamaki during the opening ceremony, and they take turns pulling faces until Matsukawa breaks first and snorts during the school head"s speech, and he gets dirty looks from everyone around them and Hanamaki absolutely beams.
On his way back to class after the ceremony, Hanamaki catches his elbow in the hallway.
"Oi, nice show back there."
"Shut up. You were this close to breaking, too."
"Yeah, but I didn"t, and you did, so."
Matsukawa chuckles at Hanamaki"s grin. "See you at lunch?"
"Of course."
Lunch arrives and Matsukawa already finds himself feeling jittery. He tells himself repeatedly that there"s no point expecting anything, because worst case scenario Hanamaki might not see the note for months. But still, he can"t quite stop himself hoping.
Hanamaki arrives, and Matsukawa has to wave at him from the front of the classroom before he spots him.
"What, you"re at the front now," Hanamaki says as he grabs the chair from a neighbouring desk, sliding it over so he can sit at Matsukawa"s desk side on.
"Yeah, sorry."
Hanamaki shrugs. "It"s fine. Also, close your eyes."
Matsukawa frowns at Hanamaki, his heart stuttering. "What?"
Hanamaki smirks. "Close your eyes."
"Why?"
"Just do it."
"What are you gonna do?"
"Oh my god," Hanamaki groans. "What, don"t you trust me or something?"
"Of course not."
Hanamaki scoffs. Then he reaches out and puts a hand over Matsukawa"s eyes.
Matsukawa jumps at the contact. He tries to move back, but Hanamaki just presses forwards.
"Oi, Hanamaki—"
"Stop being a baby and put your hands out."
Face warm, Matsukawa licks his lips. Swallows. Then, with his heart partway through breaking free of his ribcage, he tries his best to keep his hands steady as he slides them onto the desk palms up, relishing in the feel of the cool wood against his hot skin. He swallows again, and after a moment says, "Okay."
There’s a second, two, three of silence, and then shuffling. Matsukawa feels the pressure from Hanamaki"s hand shift as he moves, and then there"s another beat of silence, of stillness, before something warm and smooth is placed on Matsukawa"s hands.
Hanamaki lifts his hand away. Matsukawa blinks, waiting for the world to come back into focus as he feels the ghost of the warmth from Hanamaki"s hand fade from his cheek bones, and then he looks down.
And sees a green notebook sitting in his hands.
He stares at it another moment before Hanamaki speaks.
"Happy birthday."
Matsukawa tears his eyes away from the notebook to stare at Hanamaki instead. "What?"
"Happy birthday," Hanamaki says again with a bright smile that would normally fill Matsukawa"s stomach with butterflies if his stomach hadn"t suddenly dropped away somewhere.
"It"s not my birthday though."
Hanamaki just shrugs. "It was last month. And I didn"t get you anything, so. Belated happy birthday, then."
"No but—" Matsukawa frowns and thinks back to his birthday. "We went for ramen with everyone."
Hanamaki waves a hand at him. "We always go for ramen, that doesn"t count. Anyway, you were saying how you didn"t want to pay for a new notebook yet, so..." Hanamaki shoves at his shoulder. "Be grateful, asshole."
Matsukawa shakes his head then. "Sorry, sorry, I am. Thank you. I"m just...surprised..."
Matsukawa looks back to the notebook in his hands and goes to flick through it when Hanamaki grabs his wrist. He looks up, one eyebrow raised.
"What? I can’t use my own notebook?"
There"s a strange look on Hanamaki"s face, and it makes Matsukawa"s heart stutter against his ribs again.
"Don"t skip ahead."
Matsukawa stares at him. His hands tighten on the notebook, his thumb pressed against the edge of the pages, ready to flick through, but he keeps his eyes firmly trained on Hanamaki"s.
"Why?"
Hanamaki blinks. Jerks back almost imperceptibly. "What? What do you mean, "why?""
Matsukawa doesn"t look away.
"Why should I not skip ahead?" he asks, carefully, deliberately. "Did you write something?"
He watches Hanamaki"s eyes flick back and forth, watches him swallow, watches his lips twitch the way they do when his poker face is close to cracking.
"You never skip ahead," Hanamaki says lightly, as if that should be explanation enough.
And usually, it would be.
But Matsukawa had just spent the last few weeks waiting with his heart in his mouth almost every day, wondering when Hanamaki would see the note he had foolishly written. He had just spent the last few weeks waiting, thinking about all the things he could have done differently, thinking about how anxious Hanamaki must have been after he had written his message, thinking about how he might never know just how long that message had even been there. Thinking about how much time they had lost waiting, hiding behind ink on flimsy sheets of paper.
And right then, Matsukawa thinks he"s tired of waiting.
Matsukawa looks down just as he flips open the notebook to the back page, just as Hanamaki reaches out to stop him.
"Wait—"
It"s blank.
Matsukawa sees Hanamaki"s hand pause in his peripheral as he stares at the blank page. Then he flicks to the next page, and Hanamaki"s hand twitches.
That one is blank, too.
He flicks to the next page, and the next, and Hanamaki"s hand comes down on his forearm. "Matsukawa, seriously—"
Matsukawa nudges him off and keeps flicking through the pages, one by one, but he"s starting to feel uneasy.
Because they"re all blank.
He"s in the front third of the notebook when he turns to Hanamaki with a frown.
"Did you really not write anything?"
Hanamaki"s lips are pressed together and his face is uncharacteristically red and Matsukawa thinks there"s no way, there"s no way he didn"t write something because Hanamaki has the best poker face he"s ever seen and right now he looks like he"s been caught completely red-handed, but there"s—
"How did you know?"
Matsukawa snaps back to attention. He focuses on Hanamaki"s flushed face, on his eyebrows pulling in—halfway to a frown—on his lips still pressed together, and then...
He thinks how Hanamaki sounded decidedly unhappy.
His chest tightens.
"What?"
Hanamaki looks at the notebook pointedly.
"How did you know to look at the back?" Hanamaki asks, his voice steady despite his clearly flushed face. "Why did you think I had written something in the back?"
Matsukawa feels his stomach sink.
He realises his mistake.
"I..." Matsukawa licks his lips, drops his gaze to the notebook in his hands. "Um..."
Silence.
Matsukawa is starting to regret everything—the notebook, the messages, the waiting, the letting Hanamaki slip into his life and take a part of his heart without even realising he was giving it away.
"You saw, didn"t you?"
And Matsukawa sucks in a breath at the quiver in Hanamaki"s voice.
He should have known that he couldn"t keep it up; he should have known that his poker face would crumble next to Hanamaki; that Hanamaki could break him as easy as breathing.
Matsukawa wracks his brain and tries to figure out how to fix this. He wonders if he can bluff his way out—claim that he just happened to start at the back—but then he had already made the mistake of asking Hanamaki if he hadn"t written anything, so there goes that plan—
But then Matsukawa realises that his mistake had not been asking Hanamaki if he had written something in this new, green notebook; his mistake had been not saying something as soon as he first found those three words in that blue notebook, still sitting open in his drawer at home.
Matsukawa looks up to see Hanamaki still watching. He shuts the notebook slowly. Hanamaki"s eyes flick down briefly as he lays it on the table, but then they"re back on Matsukawa.
Suddenly, he feels like he can"t breathe.
"Hanamaki," he says, quietly, voice shaking, "let"s go."
Hanamaki frowns at that.
"Go where?"
Matsukawa"s chair scrapes across the floor as he pushes back. He stands and reaches down to pinch the corner of Hanamaki"s collar. He watches Hanamaki suppress a flinch as his fingers skim the edge of his jaw, and then he tugs once.
"Let"s go," he says again, almost a whisper this time. He turns to leave without waiting for Hanamaki to follow, but he can hear him scramble out of the seat a second later.
Matsukawa slides his hands into his pockets to hide their shaking and stares straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with his classmates as they walk through the corridors in silence, Hanamaki trailing behind him. Matsukawa vaguely notices people giving them strange looks as they pass, and wonders if they seem like they"ve had a fight, because he can"t remember the last time he didn"t walk side by side with Hanamaki.
They reach the staircase that leads to the roof, and Matsukawa starts making his way up without pausing, even though all he wants to do is turn around and see what kind of expression Hanamaki is pulling now that there are no more people around, now that it"s just the two of them. They round a corner and Matsukawa looks up to see the door to the roof, finally, just five more steps and they"ll be there, and then—
He feels a hand on the back of his jumper. He stops.
"Matsukawa, I—"
His pulse doubles.
"It"s okay," he blurts out. He doesn"t turn around. "Let"s just get to the roof and then we can talk," he adds, trying to calm his heart.
"No, Matsukawa, listen—"
It"s just five more steps, he thinks, pulling ahead. Five more steps and they’ll be on the roof, they’ll be able to talk, the door is right there .
"Wait, Matsukawa—"
"Hanamaki, let"s just—"
"Matsukawa, I like you."
Matsukawa"s breath hitches. He stops, eyes still fixed on the door, his jumper stretching where Hanamaki hasn"t let go from several steps down.
"I like you," Hanamaki says again—whispers it—and it"s so quiet, but it"s all Matsukawa can hear.
He looks over his shoulder, turns around slowly, his jumper pulling in Hanamaki"s grasp.
Hanamaki"s face is so red.
His eyes are fixed on the ground, shoulders bunched around his ears, and he doesn"t move even when Matsukawa comes down a step closer. Matsukawa slips his hands from his pockets, then reaches round and, gently, places a hand on Hanamaki"s wrist where he"s still got a fistful of Matsukawa"s jumper.
Hanamaki jumps at the contact. His head shoots up, mouth open, and in the next instant he snatches his hand back. Matsukawa comes down one more step, then another, until he"s on the same step as Hanamaki. He reaches out and takes Hanamaki"s right hand in both of his, thumbs pressing firmly into his palm even when Hanamaki tries to pull away.
Hanamaki"s hand is warm and smooth and Matsukawa thinks he might burst. Eyes fixed on Hanamaki"s hand, he sucks in a shaky breath, and then he lets it out in a long rush of air that seems to only magnify the breakneck pace his heart has settled on in his chest. He swears he can hear the beating in his ears—feel it in his fingers.
He wonders if Hanamaki can feel it too.
Matsukawa lifts his gaze. He sees that Hanamaki"s face is still red, and his eyes are wide with a mix of fear and confidence and hope that makes Matsukawa"s heart soar.
Matsukawa licks his lips and he watches Hanamaki"s eyes flick down. He tugs on Hanamaki"s hand. He leans forward.
He presses his lips to Hanamaki’s.
After a couple of seconds, Matsukawa pulls away, just enough to meet Hanamaki"s eyes, and says, "Yeah. I like you too."
Hanamaki blinks, and Matsukawa thinks he feels his breath on his lips. "And I did see," he adds. He waits for understanding to flash across Hanamaki"s eyes before he continues.
"I did see what you wrote. But I got scared, thinking—thinking maybe it was a joke. But then..." He bites his lip. "But then it wasn"t a joke. But by then, I didn"t know how to fix it anymore. So I wrote you a note—in the red notebook." He chuckles nervously. "But you wouldn"t read it."
As he listened, Hanamaki"s eyes returned to their usual size, and his cheeks lost just a shade of red. Now, he sucks his lip between his teeth, and Matsukawa can practically hear him piecing the information together.
"Well, shit," Hanamaki mutters, eyes dropping to their hands "You"re actually a verified idiot."
Matsukawa laughs at that. "Yeah, well. Birds of a feather."
Hanamaki snorts, and then chuckles, and then laughs. Matsukawa grins, and finds himself laughing too, and soon they"re both laughing loudly, voices echoing, bodies shaking, aching, and Matsukawa puts a hand on Hanamaki"s shoulder and Hanamaki grasps his arms and they laugh and lean on each other until they can barely stand.
Once they"ve both calmed down, Matsukawa turns to Hanamaki where he"s sat on the step next to him.
"So," he starts. Hanamaki hums. "Does this mean we"re dating or something now?"
Hanamaki glances at him. He considers it. "Take me out on a date first and we"ll see."
Matsukawa chuckles even as his heart flutters. "Alright then. Where do you wanna go?"
Hanamaki hums again, then hops up as the bell for the end of lunch rings. He holds a hand out to Matsukawa and pulls him to his feet with a grin.
"Dunno, but we"ve got all year to decide."
✎
Back in the classroom, Matsukawa gets out his red notebook and flips to the second last page to read over the note he"d written for Hanamaki; the one he never saw.
"Cream puffs? My treat."
He grins, feeling embarrassed and giddy and foolish and like the luckiest person alive. Slightly relieved that he doesn"t need to use the red notebook anymore—now Hanamaki will never need to see Matsukawa"s poor attempt at confessing in an even stupider, more roundabout way than he had—he slips it into his bag.
New year, new start. New notebook.
He flips open the green notebook to the first page and—
In the middle of the page are three words.
"It"s a date."