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He doesn't know why he's running–out of breath and gasping for air, hair sticky and damp with perspiration, blood thumping in his ears. His strides gradually turn slow as he nears the student council's room.
He doesn't know why his heart had sunk several feet into the ground the moment he realized he couldn't find the former student council president after the ceremony.
He doesn't know why a rush of oxygen surges back into his throat the moment he opens the door to find Minamoto standing behind his usual desk. He doesn't know why he feels so relieved.
Minamoto looks shocked when he turns to look at him. It's gone before Akane can even notice.
"Missed me already, Aoi?" Minamoto says, a playful glint in his eyes. The smile he reserved exclusively for Akane, meant to get a rise out of him, only made him blink in surprise.
"Pres," Akane breathes out, the word tumbling from his lips before he can stop it. Like he didn't expect Minamoto to actually be here. Like he was expecting to be greeted by a room completely stripped of Minamoto's belongings: the picture of his siblings on his desk, the pen holder next to it, the cat figure Akane had tossed to him on his birthday. "Why are you here?"
"Why are you here?" Minamoto shoots right back at him, leaning on the desk with arms crossed over his chest, still grinning in that infuriating way of his. "Did you come running for me?"
Akane chokes up on his words. The realization that he was searching for Minamoto—sprinting through the hallways just to catch him, of all people, even if it was just a fleeting glimpse of his sunny hair—on him. "N—no. I just— forgot something."
Maybe it's the way Minamoto's face falls—a change so subtle no one else would notice unless they were Akane. He's spent enough time with Minamoto to recognize even the smallest of his microexpressions, having carefully studied each one, that it prompts him to blurt out something stupid. "You're the one who's going to miss me. No one else's going to be as tolerable as I am once they find out how you really are."
At that, Minamoto's face lights up, as blinding as the sun that Akane has to force himself to look away, his face burning a thousand degrees hot. "Who knows? Maybe I'll find someone even better than you."
Just like clockwork, this back and forth of theirs.
"Like hell you'll find someone willing to patch you up a few nights a week without pestering you with millions of questions," Akane scoffs. "Unless you tell them about your job. I highly doubt it, though."
The thought of someone other than Akane knowing Minamoto the same way Akane does—learning how much Teru cares for his family, seeing how he puts his duty as part of the Minamoto clan first, understanding him to the extent Akane does, deeper, even—leaves something bitter bubbling at the back of his throat.
"We'll see," Minamoto leaves it at that, turning back to stare at pictures of student council members on the shelves, both past and present.
A slight breeze from the open window tussles Teru's hair. Akane finds himself staring at the way the light hits Teru's face, the sun illuminating his outline. As perfect as ever, Akane thinks bitterly.
Neither of them say anything; Akane is still standing by the door, trying to wrack his brain for something, anything, to break the silence.
"You don't have to wait for my instructions, Aoi. I'm not your president anymore. Don't wanna keep Akane-san waiting, hm?" Teru beats Akane to it without raising his eyes from a picture frame he’s holding. "Or were you perhaps waiting to be hung up from the ceiling one last time?"
Akane’s eyes widen for a moment. He basically took off the second the ceremony ended, forgetting about Aoi, his mind set on looking for that charming smile and electric blue eyes. There’s an ugly feeling in his stomach when it occurs to him that it doesn’t really bother him as he thought it would. Nevertheless, he’ll have to beg for Aoi to forgive him later. It’s what he’s always done, after all.
“On the contrary, I feel like I’m on cloud nine knowing that I’m never going to be caught up in your sadistic schemes ever again.”
“Can’t you be nice just this once? It’s my last day here, you know,” Teru’s faux expression of hurt causes Akane’s eyes to roll.
Teru doesn’t notice Akane closing the distance between them to peer at the picture frame in his hands; he’s too caught up in staring at it—or simply spacing out. The younger peers at the picture. It was a photo taken on the day the new student council members were appointed. Akane was beaming, looking proud of himself for getting elected as the new vice president. ‘Ao-chan will definitely like me now!’ he had exclaimed after, pumping his fist in the air. Beside him, Teru was wearing his winning smile, ready to capture hearts and supernaturals.
“Something wrong with it?”
“Nope,” Teru replies without missing a beat. He shoves it in his bag hastily, as though he got caught doing something he shouldn’t have.
“You’re taking it home?” Akane never thought of the older as someone overly sappy. Teru, who easily discards the piles of letters he receives every day. Teru, who complains about how the other members of the student council only joined to gawk at him at meetings. Teru, who never showed affection to anyone other than his siblings. “Are you actually sentimental?”
“I’m cutting it so I can pin your face on a dart board! It’ll be my new stress reliever!” Teru grins, saccharine sweet. You could all but see a glowing aura around him, which only made Akane more irritated. He doesn’t notice how the other deflects his question.
Akane merely sighs, “Please say something normal for once.”
They lapse into silence again, with Teru packing the small number of items he has in the room, a pair of eyes following his every move. If Teru feels Akane’s gaze on him, he doesn’t say a thing.
It’s Akane who breaks the silence this time, turning a blind eye to the growing trepidation deep in his chest as he watches Teru’s desk being cleared of its belongings—leaving it looking as though it had never been used. No traces of Teru’s presence.
“Are you… Is it far away?” He asks as if it was a question the other should have an automatic answer for. “Your university, I mean.”
Such is an inevitable part of life: when someone leaves, you ask where they’re going, all while acting like the words don’t lay heavy on your tongue.
“Don’t act like you can last more than 24 hours without seeing your siblings, Pres,” Akane swears he sees a faint smile on Teru’s lips the moment he says that nickname.
A beat. Then, Teru laughs.
For a moment, Akane’s heart stutters.
For a moment, Akane considers taking out his pocket watch to stop time.
“You know me well. It’s only an hour away from here. Although I did get accepted at one of the top universities, I’d rather be close to Kou and the princess, in case something happens,” He looks up, stares into Akane’s eyes. “Besides, I want to protect the person I like, too.”
Akane’s heart sinks inexplicably. Somehow, along the way, with the long afternoons spent at the student council room with Teru, the ordeals of dealing with supernaturals alongside each other, and the quiet moments in between where they could exist as just Teru and Akane—not as the student council president and his vice, not as the exorcist and the supernatural, just them—Teru’s presence has come to mean something Akane welcomes in a way he hadn’t expected.
Still, Akane ignores the tightness in his chest and gapes at him in disbelief nonetheless, “You actually have feelings for someone?!”
The question is left hanging in the air as Teru zips up his bag and slings it over his shoulder.
There’s no way Akane can’t just let Teru leave. He can’t just watch him walk out the door without meeting his gaze one last time—not when he still hasn’t made sense of the weight in his chest.
“Wh—! Hey, tell me! Who is it, really?” Akane throws protests at Teru as he nears the door, scowling. “Hey, Pres! Don’t just ignore me and walk out the door! You’re seriously pissing me off.”
Teru stops in his strides. He turns back around and crosses the rest of the space between them. He leans down to match Akane’s height. Akane hesitantly takes a step back. Teru stares deeply through Akane’s glasses into his eyes, their faces close together.
If he were the first of the three Clock Keepers, Akane thinks he’d rewind time just to go back to this moment.
Over and over again.
“Don’t you already know?”
The way Teru smiles isn’t something Akane has seen before—soft, kind, and something else he can’t pinpoint. He pushes Akane’s glasses up his face with his index finger. Akane’s heart misses a beat, his heartbeat roaring in his ears. He could feel his knees buckle beneath him.
Could feel his world thrown off kilter at Teru’s next words before he walks out the door. Gone, as Akane stares at his retreating form, heart threatening to beat out of his chest.
“I like Akane-san.”