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Itaru tosses and turns in his bed, unable to find that one comfortable position to finally drift off to sleep. His drained 3DS charges by the wall, the indicator assuring him that it was plugged in correctly being the only light in the room. On some whim, he sits up on his bed, knees folded against himself. It doesn’t bother him despite his lack of flexibility.
Tired eyes drift over to the other side of the room to see only a tidy and empty bunk bed. The office worker sighs in defeat – he finally acknowledges the real reason why he couldn’t fall asleep. Or rather, why he doesn’t want to.
Finally, his gaze shifts to the open window, and he softly curses under his breath… not that there would have been anyone to disturb in the room if he’d done so louder. Man, now that he’s seen that bright full moon high up in the sky, he knows for sure it’s coming again. That stupid dream of his.
Still grumbling to himself, he feels around his pillow to grab his mobile phone. Maybe he’ll just play some FPS games… or wait, that wouldn’t be too relaxing before bed, now would it? Oh, that’s right. He should check on his best girls!
But strangely, his fingers move sluggishly across the screen as he enters his passcode. Ah, didn’t he used to always be in a rush to log in no matter the game? Strange...
Eventually, he gets to the loading screen and one of his favourite characters greets him. He imagines someone else saying her words… and he closes the application whilst fuming. Maybe he was overthinking stuff. He just had too much soda and energy drinks earlier, yeah… that was definitely it. There’s no way he can have the same dream three nights in a row, right? Whatever, he just needs to get to sleep now.
He flops over on his stomach with a small, dissatisfied, “Mmph.”
“Senka High School,” the signage above the entrance gate proudly proclaims, and Itaru immediately wants to scream in frustration.
But he’s long known that he can’t really do anything in dreams like these. He sees it in the first person, yeah, but it was like being stuck in a story character’s body. Like a hyper-realistic otome game without choices, maybe. He actually wishes it was an otome game instead… He could study how to avoid the bad end, then.
“Itaru-kun, hurry up!” a familiar voice calls from up ahead, and dream Itaru’s head turns to look at her with an unamused expression on his face.
“So energetic in the morning, Tachibana-senpai… it’s the last day of class, y’know,” he sighs, but a hint of amusement is evident in his tone.
“Exactly! This is the second to the last time we’ll see Chikage-senpai in school before he leaves to study abroad!”
Time seems to stop even within the dream. Itaru knew this was going to happen, and he felt for a fact that his dream-self had known it too. Yet he still froze, as if one wrong move and those words would shatter him like glass.
“...Itaru-kun?”
“Yeah, was just thinkin’ about what I’ll do with the hot sauce packets that come with the pizza our club orders after practice now.”
Izumi laughs brightly, too brightly for his comfort, “Silly! I can use them in my curry.”
Itaru sighs again, his breath trailing softly in the cold spring morning air.
“So… how should we celebrate after his graduation ceremony?” she thoughtfully asks as they walk up the school entrance’s stairs.
A singular shrug is his only reply, but it isn’t as if he doesn’t have any ideas.
Then the scene changes… even though he doesn’t really want it to.
He’s on a rooftop now, even though real Itaru’s only high school memories are those in the library whenever he skipped gym class. The breeze is nice and comforting, like someone’s patting you on the back… wait, someone actually is patting him on the back?
“Ah, sorry, who are you?” his eyes turn warily towards the stranger beside him.
“...Hisoka,” came the slow reply, the boy’s voice sluggish and sleepy in nature.
“I’m April’s younger brother. Ah, we’re not related by blood though. Adopted,” he explains simply, as if his words clarified anything.
“April???”
“Oh. You guys know him as Chikage?” the silver-haired student finally turns his eyes towards Itaru’s.
“...you’re Chikage-senpai’s…?” he seems to be having a hard time finding the right words.
“Yeah. I go to a different high school.”
“I… see.”
A beat of silence, much more uncomfortable than the ones he was used to with Chikage.
“Why are you here now, Hisoka-san?” he finally asks as he returns to his position leaning over the railing, eyes unmoving yet trained on nothing in particular.
“Mmm… went to visit Chikage but a kitty told me to go to the rooftop first…”
“What?” unlike real him would have been, dream Itaru was thoroughly confused.
“You… like him, don’t you?”
Itaru’s ears are ringing now – or at least, it feels like they are.
Face hot and a familiar pricking behind his eyes, the actor realises that he needs to get away unless he wants this near-stranger to see his snot-covered face.
Quickly, resolutely, he exclaims, “Excuse my language but… what the hell?!”
“Do you make a hobby out of assuming weird stuff? Senpai’s annoying, he always makes us eat insanely spicy food, he never really tells us anything about himself and– and–!”
His voice grows quieter, almost a whisper now, “...he thanks me with an uncharacteristically sincere smile whenever he messes up a line and I save him.”
He clamps his mouth shut as he turns away from the conversation, but not before noting that Hisoka’s eyes merely softened in response to his outburst. That kind of pisses him off.
“...okay.”
Itaru expects the conversation to be over, but the other boy continues after a few moments, “Can I ask you a favour, then?”
He almost laughs, “Despite your quiet voice, you sure don’t know how to be shy, huh?”
Hisoka ignores his remark and squats down – when Itaru turns to look, he’s petting a bluish-grey cat.
“...Blue says you should ask Chikage for his second button… At the graduation ceremony.”
Itaru’s blood runs cold. Fear, guilt, frustration, anger, emptiness – he’s pretty sure he’s feeling all possible negative emotions at once. But his next words are said placidly.
“Why should I…? I’m serious, tell me.”
Turning to look at him, Hisoka blinks slowly, steadily, like a cat you’ve just asked why he meows. Itaru wants to believe he doesn’t understand, but deep down he knows.
He knows all too well... and it scared the fuck out of him.
“...Itaru, do you… know where this Japanese custom comes from?” The question surprises him too much for him to notice he’d never told the boy his name.
“Seriously, what the shit? Why do you keep asking weird stuff…? This whole cryptic character thing is so not working for you.”
Hisoka hugs his knees as he continues on, the cat from earlier still circling around them,“Chikage and I weren’t born in Japan. We were adopted when we were elementary-age kids… Our eldest brother did a lot of research about this place and chattered all about it on our way here. I mostly slept through it but…”
“I somehow remember this now. All the way back in the World War, men drafted to fight would give their loved ones the second button of their uniform as a keepsake. Something to remember them by until they come back… or in case they don’t…” his tired voice lowered, “August said he thought it was because the second one’s closest to the heart.”
“I wish I’d thought of it when he graduated. I wish I had something from him. It’s useless to think that though, now that he’s gone,” Hisoka’s voice had always been soft and rather toneless, but the sheer depth of sadness in it now made Itaru speechless.
“You… asked why, right? Just do it so you won’t have any regrets like me.”
And with that, he stood up… brought one leg over the railing… and jumped gracefully off the rooftop.
“Ehh?!” Itaru morbidly scrambled to look for his body on the ground, but the older student had somehow landed safely on the ground from four stories up.
Collapsing onto the floor behind him, Itaru let out a strangled gasp of shock and relief. Well, Chikage seemed a little less strange now that he’d met his little brother...
“Oi, Chigasaki… what are you doing?” the one voice Itaru was dreading to hear easily pierces through the still air of the near-empty clinic.
“...a new expansion pack was released for KotR III,” comes his bored reply, punctuated with an overdramatic cough.
“Seriously… you really are such an uncute kouhai,” dream Chikage grumbles before drawing the thin curtain away that obscured the hospital bed Itaru was laying on.
“Mhmm, why is that again, senpai?” surprisingly, he turns his eyes away from his game to look at the older student.
Chikage, for once, looks a bit taken off guard for a second, but he soon recovers and grins in what Itaru had come to regard a dangerous way, “All the other kouhais swarmed to say goodbye at the graduation ceremony, some were even crying, you know. I’m pretty sure a second year in the art club gave their senpai a portrait to say goodbye...”
His voice is matter-of-fact yet teasing at the same time,“But here my favourite kouhai is, hiding away in the school clinic to play video games. So uncute.”
As he said all of that, Itaru scans his uniform to note that all the buttons of his grey blazer were still in their proper places. He expects to have to hold back a sigh of relief, but he soon realises he doesn’t have one in him in the first place. Chikage was handsome and his skillset was always OP but his casual declaration that he disliked women easily put girls off, after all.
“Pfft, you’re such an unromantic senpai,” he simply states with a lighthearted roll of his eyes.
“Will you stop calling me that already?”
“Not a chance.”
Itaru knew he wouldn’t ask why he always called him an unromantic senpai, but he still wanted to give him an opportunity to. He really needed to start living in the real world. In the end, giving someone a nickname… calling Chikage an unromantic senpai wouldn’t make him his unromantic senpai.
“Come on, get up. The theatre club’s all going to eat out for one last time with us third years. I heard some of the alumni are even coming,” the person in question soon nudges him out of his mini-reverie.
“Yeah, yeah, coming… jeez,” he pulls the thin clinic blanket off his legs as he slips his shoes back on.
“By the way, it’s your treat.”
“...wait a minute, you can’t be serious. Come on, you’re the one celebrating your graduation here!” They laugh, but it’s the kind of laughter that leaves you hollow just moments after.
The dream ends there, but Itaru already knows that his dream self never ends up asking for that button. And never ends up seeing that Chikage again.
As usual, even though it ended in a subdued manner, Itaru wakes up sobbing loudly and unaware – or at least, not wanting to be aware – of where he is.
But this time, his breaths don’t calm after a few minutes… because he makes eye contact with his newly arrived roommate and this one little thing – it sends him over the edge, trembling as the flow of his tears surged once more.
Chikage, real Chikage, climbs the stairs to Itaru’s bunk and regards him with a tentative expression… as he continues to pathetically break down.
“Ahhh~ ah. Did you have that nightmare again? I keep saying you should just tell me what it is so you can get over it,” the older man’s voice is chiding, yet the painfully worried undertones he can’t be bothered to hide oddly make Itaru want to vomit.
The gamer still can’t say anything, almost as if he’s back in that dream and can’t control his body. He just keeps snivelling – in an uncute manner, he thinks bitterly to himself – as he feels like drowning.
It takes the first weak rays of sunlight streaming in through their window’s blinds to finally drive Itaru into motion.
He doesn’t say anything at first, instead just seizing the front of Chikage’s suit, hands trembling as he desperately holds onto the portion near his heart. He’s still sniffling, and his throat feels dry, afraid that the senpai would look disgusted and shake him off. Even through his vision blurred by tears, he can see Chikage’s expressions vividly… the ex-spy’s brows only furrow slightly in a mix of confusion and pity. Somehow, Itaru thinks… this is much, much worse.
“There, there… you need me to get you some water? Brew some tea or coffee? Heck, even soda if you want since I’m not in the mood to scold you on your health.”
“...second button. Can I… ha-have your second button?” his voice was still raspy, choked, and breaking just the slightest – but it rang clearly – too clearly.
“My… second button? Uh, sure…?” Chikage doesn’t quite sound like he understands what’s happening, but he quickly rips the object from his suit jacket before carefully placing it in Itaru’s outstretched hands.
“...I’m sorry… thank you,” is all Itaru manages to whisper, before closing his eyes as he curls up in a ball with his hands – holding the button protectively inside – folded near his heart.
Normally, Unromantic Senpai is the one that he can’t quite figure out. But this time, Uncute Kouhai knows it’s the other way around. This one mundane fact breaks his heart harder than he thought it would.
Itaru never dreams of him – of anything – ever again. It's better that way... at least, that's what he tells himself.