Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The water is so hot it feels like a physical presence against her back and clouds of foam and steam refract the world into uncountable colours whenever she opens her eyes, but this is not a dream. Kuroumaru could never have imagined this.

They had fantasised about kissing Touta, or being kissed by him, more times than they could count, in full view of their conscious mind and in quiet little distracting diversions; while standing beside him in battle, and while eating together, and while separated by no more than a bedframe and a mattress, and for forty-five long years all alone.

But while they could always visualise the physical pressure (pillows pressed with embarrassment to mouths, or the backs of fingers against warm lips), and while they could envision the stirring of love and euphoria as a logical progression of what they already feel for him every day, they could not have imagined him doing this.

Even when Touta had acted first in Kuroumaru’s most fevered dreams, it had been nothing more than a mirror-image – Kuroumaru’s mind playing the part with his body as a puppet. They could not have predicted the way Touta would huff as he hikes up his knee, or twist his fingers with pleasure around the strands of hair at the base of Kuroumaru’s neck. They way he kisses with a force that doesn’t echo Kuroumaru’s but initiates it, his own world of insecurities and worry and grief bundled up in that head and released in fits and starts on Kuroumaru’s willing body.

The world around them might resemble a fantasy but Kuroumaru and Touta have never been so real.

They kiss until Kuroumaru can’t breathe, and then they continue for too too too long afterwards, until surely there would be not a molecule of air left in either of their bodies. Immortality was worth it if only for this – to be able to back up that cliched prayer ‘I could do this forever’ with every ounce of deliberate commitment their impassioned hearts can hold. Kissing Touta forever? Why would she not?

Still, when Touta finally taps at her waist and tugs her backwards, Kuroumaru follows him up with nothing but excitement.

Skin red and gasping for air more on instinct than due to any real need, Touta’s eyes roam Kuroumaru, from the dark hair plastered down her neck just like Touta’s to the pools of hot spring water cupped between her collarbones, and lower.

“Can I touch them?” Touta blurts out.

It’s not unromantic. It’s what Kuroumaru wants most, too.

Touta’s touch is so tentative, his brow furrowed with focus, and Kuroumaru is just as marvelled at how new and unfamiliar this body must be to him. After their reunion they had taken off as if no time had passed, like they had been running and they had caught him while their feet still pounded the ground underneath, but this is a real, startling change. It’s almost unbelievable now that Kuroumaru had once felt genuine terror at the thought of revealing themself to Touta, though they’re not so unsympathetic to their past self as to think on it with nostalgia. And Touta has truly never seen even so much as the shape of this current figure in form-fitting clothing.

This body they have woken up with and showered and dressed in suits and dresses alike for over forty years is shockingly new to Touta. It’s funny how that didn’t even really occur to her when she first came in here.

And this body really is as entirely different from old as it has ever been over those forty-plus years, because when Touta gently cups the underside of Kuroumaru’s breast, she has never felt so much like a girl.

...which is maybe why, even alongside her long-earned comfort with her chest, Touta’s expression makes her glance away shyly.

“Is something wrong?” he asks immediately, and Kuroumaru’s chest pounds.

“N-no, it’s just...” Right – Touta may be her dearest beloved and they may be best friends and partners, but what they’re doing together is still… “I just suddenly felt like your face was looking very, um, shameless… like you were thinking, ‘wooow, boobs are great!’ or something...”

Touta blinks. “Ah, yeah…” After a moment, he laughs, hands settling at Kuroumaru’s waist. “I’m still getting used to it! But, I mean...” He shrugs. “I think boobs are pretty great, actually? And like, it’s Kuroumaru and they’re boobs, so… what’s not to love?”

He smiles cheerfully, thumbs pressing warmly at her sides.

Kuroumaru stares into those wide eyes, so youthful and guileless, and before she can stop herself her snort bubbles out into an outpouring of laughter.

“Hey, wha-?”

“Sorry…!” She’s pushing Touta’s shoulders away but it’s only so she can double over, legs curling under the water as her laughter forces its way out of her. “I’m only… it’s just...”

Her eyes are teary again when they return to Touta, whose slightly pinched mouth has her reaching out gently to cup his cheek.

“It’s just...” There’s a universe in the breath that Kuroumaru lets out, long and slow and just a little jagged. Touta leans into Kuroumaru’s touch, brows furrowed again. “For so long, I used to worry so much…”

Her fingers curl, digging in for just a moment before they reorient, stroking Touta’s soft cheekbone.

“So much...” she breathes. “That… no matter what I chose when I turned sixteen, you would never really see me the same way again. That you wouldn’t be able to think of me as your partner, as someone you could trust in and rely on to protect you…” Kuroumaru blushes, eyelashes fluttering. “Or, you would never say I was cute again...”

Touta swallows.

“I felt so selfish...but I wanted all of that. If you only liked me as a boy, or as a girl, it wouldn’t feel real… I just wanted you to like me as Kuroumaru.”

Touta’s hand curls around their wrist.

“Kuroumaru…” he breathes, as if on instinct.

“So… I really wasn’t laughing at you.” Kuroumaru still can’t stop smiling – hasn’t since they first went under the water together. “I was just so happy, I didn’t know what else to do…!”

She really doesn’t. The words are coming from inside her like divine revelation. She had come to this conclusion on some subconscious level during the time that they were apart, but she hadn’t really known for sure. It was in seeing him – and fighting alongside him, and protecting him, and kissing him – that it had crystallised into certainty.

But...that means there’s something else she’ll need to say outright, huh?

“Kuroumaru, I-”

“Just, also...” Kuroumaru shakes away the words she surely really wants to hear – not now. “Um… I just want to tell you one more thing.”

He nods immediately. “Sure. Go ahead.”

She swallows, thighs squeezing together under the water.

How strange… to feel unnerved at her body’s lack of femininity. But while her own preferences had remained stubbornly opaque for so long, she has always been entirely certain of what Touta likes.

“My figure looks like this right now,” she says slowly, “because I feel fully, completely female… but, um. I don’t always.”

Again Touta opens his mouth and again Kuroumaru interrupts him, throat suddenly tight.

“It’s okay – I don’t expect you to ever want to do, um, these kinds of things-” Now, the heat is making Kuroumaru light-headed and dizzy. “-w-with me, when my body isn’t like this. I’ve always known that’s what you like, and it’s – but that isn’t why I chose this body, or not solely-”

Oh no. She should be past this kind of fluster, but it seems Touta will always made Kuroumaru feel like a babbling adolescent.

“It’s not,” she repeats firmly, forcing her eyes back to Touta. It’s hard to see what he’s thinking from this close, but she’ll never forgive herself if she gives up now, after all this time. “But… just because I chose this body, doesn’t mean that I stopped feeling like a boy, sometimes. So I am – or, I think of it, that way. And, um...”

Touta waits patiently.

“...when I’m a boy,” she breathes, full of memories, “I still… love you.”

They’ve already kissed, so why does this feel like her truest confession of love?

Not from boy Kuroumaru – he’s somewhere much deeper down, asleep for now. But on behalf of boy Kuroumaru. Because she knows how much boy Kuroumaru needs this.

“S-so like I said, you don’t need to do anything about that, when it’s happening, or...” Kuroumaru shakes her head. “I just… needed you to know it. And, um...” She swallows thickly, desperately trying to conjure up that masculine certainty, all while knowing full well that male Kuroumaru is not one bit any less unsure. “T-to know if that’s… okay...”

When she finishes talking, Touta just hums.

“...I mean, I think I did get something like that,” he says.

Kuroumaru’s breath catches.

“I mean...” Touta’s position shifts, cradling Kuroumaru’s shoulder comfortingly, and Kuroumaru instantly melts, dropping her head to Touta’s shoulder in relief and hope and an embarrassingly strong need for comfort. “When we first reunited… you were in, like, ‘guy mode’ then, right?”

“Mmm.”

“Yeah, that’s why I was so surprised when you came in here. I thought that, well… that that’s what you’d chosen. But it all makes sense now.”

Kuroumaru chuckles. “Why are you sometimes so perceptive about the weirdest things...”

Touta snorts.

“...just, uh...” His arm tenses and Kuroumaru tries not to panic. “Like, just so I know… you still want to be, um, bros, right? Partners? Am I being super insensitive again by saying all that stuff...”

“No, no!” Kuroumaru shakes her head vigorously, meeting his eyes with as much sincerity as she can muster. “I want that so much – I’ve always wanted that! It’s just like I said – I want everything. It’s just, it’s not always one or the other, I guess…? When you called me your partner before we did this, it made me so happy. And when I’m a boy, I still...” She sighs. “I always still… felt this kind of, um… softness. For you.”

Her cheeks burn. This, maybe, had been the final step – that one last piece of the puzzle that had, once Kuroumaru set it together with a click and stepped back to admire the view – brought them into something that almost felt like understanding.

She loves Touta as a girl loves a boy. But he also loves Touta as a boy loves a boy.

And that is also precious and irreplaceable to Kuroumaru. They cannot imagine any version of themself not loving him.

“...does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Touta says quietly, voice low and deep. “I think it kinda does, actually. You’re just you. Right?”

The arm around her slowly relaxes once more. Kuroumaru sighs, nodding with a sniff into Touta’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” she murmurs, throat thick.

Touta snorts. “It’s not something I need to be thanked for. Man, if anything, I feel like hitting myself for all the dumb stuff I used to say...” He shakes away her reassurance. “And, uh… well, when I first saw you again, after all that time...” he lets out a breath. “Well, I guess it didn’t feel as long for me as for you, but… for me, I still really thought for a while that you were dead...”

Kuroumaru nuzzles in closer, nose against his neck.

“And seeing you again, I just… I’d always known you were really important to me, but in that moment I was just so happy, and so relieved, and I’d been so scared, honestly,” he says with a mirthless chuckle. “And I still was, I think… maybe even more just then, ‘cause I just loved you so much and everything was still so bad...

“So just… at that time, there were so many things going through my head, and so many things I was feeling… But man, when you went to go fend them off, and you were straight-up flying with that sword? Seriously, it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen…!”

Kuroumaru’s inner fourteen-year-old screams so loudly that even the current her can hear it; she wraps an arm around Touta’s waist, grinning stupidly. “Mmm?”

“And, uh… it was sorta shocking, for a few reasons… and made me feel sorta, weirdly weak for a moment, maybe…” Kuroumaru squeezes him again, but Touta clears his throat.

“But when I think about it… mayyyybe, just for a second, seeing you protecting me looking so cool like that… I think...”

After a pause, Kuroumaru draws back to find Touta grinning.

“My heart might’ve kinda… skipped a beat? Just a little?”

Kuroumaru breathes it all, all, all in.

Pulling him closer at the waist, Kuroumaru kisses him, and it’s the most important moment of their entire immortal existence.

They had worried so much – since they were fourteen, since yesterday, since the day they were bitten all those years ago. It should feel impossible to be this happy – some inextricable law of the universe, that human instinct of narrative baulking at the idea of one character simply receiving everything they had ever asked for all in one singular scene.

But none of them are human. They shrug off laws physical and man-made alike with every beat of their implausible hearts.

And it’s been forty five years.

Some things have never changed – that Kuroumaru worries too much, that Touta’s smile is welcoming and beautiful, that the world is filled with bad people and good people and that they together will do anything in their power to help those in need of helping.

But so many things have.

Ever since the moment they had been bitten, sharp bone tearing apart child’s flesh, Kuroumaru’s fate had been sealed inside a stranger’s shape. There was nothing they could do to stop organs and meat reshaping inside them, left only to shiver and sob as they transformed into their own worst enemy. That shock had never really left them – that those they love could turn against them in an instant; that their life was not their own, and even the most deep and fundamental parts of themself were not within their control.

Touta had been a miracle – the one thing that wandering, lonely spirit could cling onto with skeletal hands. But they understood why Touta had only felt more scared when he had finally reunited with Kuroumaru again. Something they could protect was also something they could destroy.

And that anxiety, that discomfort, that pain, that uneasiness, that shiver over their bare skin and scary-fast pulsing of their heart-beat, had never left. Their body was still changing, and knowing the countdown to annihilation did nothing to muffle the horror of it. They had tried, over and over again, forced down onto their knees counting pebbles over and over on some trickster’s abacus in the hopes that there was some way to keep all that they valued and destroy all that they hated. There was never any equation that worked. It wasn’t even that they liked the body they had then, because in its neutral state it represented all the worst of either option. But this was supposed to be their choice, so there felt no-one to blame for their paralysed uncertainty than themself.

And all the while, their immortality glowed like a light that could not be turned off, put to test more than any other fellow they ever met. They were sliced, burned, hit with the force of a truck, stripped of their limbs and possessed by spirits, each new injury never losing its shocking sting. Yet the body’s natural defence system, the automatic shut-down that would save its soul from further pain, was malfunctioning. No matter how riddled with glitches, how overheated their hardware or how scrambled their electronics, it was only a matter of time before their body returned to its for now Default state. Even when they tried to hone themselves, if only to spare others their suffering, their muscles had never moved right, sword hand clumsy and feet too slow.

Back then, that pitiful, pathetic vessel their soul had been forced into had never been anything but a curse.

Even when they had finally made their choice, there had been neither epiphany nor sense of relief. They had still been so young, so full of grief and worry and fear that Touta was gone, and it was all they could do to push through the despair and make whatever choice their head had whispered when the moment came. In the immediate aftermath, there was only resignation.

Even now, suspended in animation with Touta’s warmth against her front, she can’t put into words exactly why she had chosen this female body. But after forty-five years, they’re just starting to gradually piece it together.

It had been important, they think. It had been a promise, in some ways, to cast off the ways of thinking they’d held when they were younger, that Man was their only acceptable choice. It had been their way of standing up to their fears, of bringing out those feminine facets they still felt ashamed of until accepting themselves became a matter of psychological life and death. Maybe, on some level, it had been an attempt at self-destructive punishment, but maybe in another way it had simply seemed easier to keep the chest they had already become almost accustomed to. And, yes, Kuroumaru had been thinking about Touta, because if the decision had ended up being so arbitrary anyway, what did it matter if they chose a body that the person they loved would find beautiful?

Because it had been arbitrary, too. Even as they had felt their silhouette changing, sealing its inevitable fate once more, there had remained that small stubborn part of themself that had refused to go quietly. And they had waited with gritted teeth for themself to mature and accept their new reality with responsible diligence, but it never had gone away. And as they struggled and practised and trained, limbs groaning with the effort of matching up to the fighter in their head, all so that Touta could be safe one day, a single thought had grown louder and louder.

If it was so possible for her to be a woman who was strong, was it not also okay for him to be a man who was not?

Perhaps that contradiction was the way of the world, but such a line of thinking simply did not feel just. Touta himself lay lost and weak, and Kuroumaru could never have been prouder of his sacrifice – and loved him all the more for it.

It was only then that Kuroumaru had felt themself stretch out, body flashing with an agility they did not know they had. For so long they had kept themselves cramped up in a tiny box, and now for the first time they felt their back beginning to straighten.

If she could wear her suits and be a woman, could he not be a man who had worn a dress? Who still did, from time to time? If they did, who would be harmed?

All this had happened largely in the back of their mind – perhaps a blessing, given their penchant for overthinking. Kuroumaru’s sole priority, all along, had been Touta. Any other restrictions Kuroumaru placed on themself could only hold them back from protecting him. Thinking of that alone had lifted a weight from their back, and when their back could now twist and manoeuvre in ways it had been too stiff to do before, how could they question it?

And now Touta is here. And all the world is better.

It should feel impossible. But as Kuroumaru’s reverie softly fades away, Touta is kissing down her collar and swirling one thumb around the other breast. His eyes are dark, cheeks red beyond what the waters could induce. Her breast, modest and well-shaped, fits perfectly against his palm. And she likes all of it.

She didn’t realise she could do that – think of herself and not flinch. That skin mapped with invisible scars could be pleasant to the touch. That this simple form could bring pleasure to others; to herself.

And this feels good.

Too soon Touta parts from her chest, but only to move deeper deeper deeper, pressing a ticklish kiss to her belly button and locking his arms under her thighs.

“Let me know if this hurts, okay?”

Kuroumaru snorts. “You really don’t need to worry about my pain tolerance.” It’s a bit funny to hear from a guy she had beheaded upon their first meeting.

Touta raises a bemused eyebrow. “I mean, yeah, but. I still don’t want to hurt you, y’know?”

Kuroumaru’s mouth opens and closes.

“Oh,” she says. Then, “Yeah. I’ll… I’ll let you know.”

Saying it out loud to Touta was too shameless for her to bear, even now, but the words had been wrenched from deep within her soul.

Maybe, after all, she does deserve a reward.

That doesn’t feel impossible, either. She has suffered so, so much over the course of her life – already long enough for many mortals to be satisfied with. And she has tried so, so hard to contort herself into the life and the anatomy she has been thrust into. Maybe she does deserve some cosmic compensation. Some sign from the heavens, or the writer of her fate, that she has done okay. That she is okay.

She likes her strong thighs, encircling Touta’s head. She likes Touta’s hands on her skin, and she likes that she likes him. And when Touta’s tongue licks up against her most sensitive place, she likes the way that felt so very much.

She tangles her hands through his hair, not to hold him in place, but because… well, because she can. She deserves to. She loves him as a boy and a girl and every little pebble that makes up the soul of Tokisaka Kuroumaru. And he loves Kuroumaru back. If there were ever any single thing in the world she has a right to, it is this, right now.

Her back arches, eyes stinging. This soft, difficult, stubborn creature of a body of hers resounds in pleasure.

*

Kuroumaru wakes up on a shore, Touta’s knuckles brushing against her temple.

She doesn’t know what she looks like, tired and hot and skin still buzzing with aftershocks. How many had there been? Maybe immortality does have its perks.

“Good morning,” she murmurs.

He smiles. “Good morning.”

She stretches her arms and legs, a jolt of nervous excitement when Touta’s gaze travels over her.

“...hey, so I’ve been wondering...”

A real question? Kuroumaru tries to blink away the haze and pulls herself up on one elbow. “Um, yes?”

Touta’s still staring. Kuroumaru shifts her knees up awkwardly; this is surely silly given how close a view he would have gotten earlier, but that was her first time. She’s not used to this yet.

“...you said that your body changes based on whether you, like, feel more male or female...”

“O-oh!” She sits upright, ducking her head nervously. “Um, yes, it becomes more masculine when I’m feeling that way… But!” She sucks in a breath, waving her hands hastily. “N-not as much as you’re probably thinking! Just, it kind of – it gets-” She hides her head, staving off a familiar panic. “It-it doesn’t matter anyway – I’ll make sure it never bothers you. I promise.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Touta says with a chuckle.

“But, I mean… you don’t...” Kuroumaru swallows, avoiding his eye.

Touta shifts, adopting a thinking pose with a fist to his cheek. “Hmmmmmmm,” he says.

Kuroumaru’s stomach flutters. What does that mean, that he’s actually saying ‘hmmm’ aloud?

“...I don’t really want you to feel so worried about it,” he says soon. “I mean, we’re partners. And you’re my girlfriend, right…?” He chuckles; it seems even Touta can blush. “And my boyfriend, I guess.”

Kuroumaru squeaks.

“So I don’t really want you to feel like your body is something you have to hide away from me for my protection, or something. I kinda feel like you’ve had to do that enough, already...”

“...that’s-” Kuroumaru swallows thickly. “That was only my… my weakness, back then...”

“You’re not weak,” Touta says, quietly and firmly.

Kuroumaru goes quiet.

Touta touches her shoulder, strangely tentatively. “I just… want to be with you, right now, whatever you look like. I don’t want to ever be away from you again.”

Her eyes water.

Forty-five years was too much. She could live for an eternity and it would still be too much.

“...and, I mean.” Touta scratches at his head, gaze drifting. “… right now, I’m not sure how ready I’d be, but… I don’t think I want to count anything out just like that.”

“...c-count what…?”

Touta sits up straight, facing her head on.

“We’re going to be together forever,” he says, as a fact of time and space. “So… it seems sort of a waste to restrict ourselves, y’know? Like, it just seems pretty short-sighted to say for sure I’d never want to try it. When we have a literal eternity of time ahead of us… we might as well just do what we feel like. Right?”

“...oh,” is all Kuroumaru can breathe.

“So, honestly – having a body that changes is probably kind of a plus, if anything?” Touta laughs joyfully. “Sorry if that sounds insensitive or whatever – lemme know if I ever say anything dumb that makes you feel bad! I know I’m pretty bad at this stuff.”

“N-no, you’re not.”

It’s not impossible.

This is Kuroumaru’s hand, and this is Touta’s hand. Such delicate skin shouldn’t be so indestructible. But despite everything that has happened, right now, they are intact.

Touta feels warm. Kuroumaru must feel warm, too. They come together as one, each seeking out the same thing.

The world has not stopped. There are still bad people out there, and good people in need of saving. Kuroumaru will change, body ever an imperfect reflection of mind, and Touta will change, too. But if there is any order to this universe, these two hands will find each other again, over and over.

Kuroumaru will make it happen. Not only for Touta’s sake, but for theirs.

And so they flow, in water and space and time, on and on into eternity.

*

Three days later, Touta makes teppanyaki.

Kuroumaru watches from one of the hard metal chairs in the kitchen, eyes following as his boyfriend flits about, doling out soy sauce and mirin with nothing more than the flick of a wrist and half an eyeball. As fresh cabbage crunches wetly beneath his knife, a wide pot bubbles, noodles curling around one another like dancing snakes, and Touta whistles to himself.

When Touta’s requests, Kuroumaru retrieves the grills from a lower cabinet, hesitating beside the counter for a full second before brushing one tentative wrist against Touta’s back; he glances back with a cheery smile just for one moment.

The sounds build up and up, water sloshing and metal pans crackling with heat as the other Numbers file in, taking their ordinary places around the table and light-heartedly demanding Touta stop showing off and get the food to their plates already. A bird call and response comes from outside; it’s a little cool today, but the sky is clear and Kuroumaru’s familiar jacket keeps him comfortable. The pop of sizzling meat is intoxicating, and Kuroumaru raises his hands against the heat as though they’re seated around a campfire.

“Since Kuroumaru was waiting here before anyone else, he can have the first one!”

The other Numbers groan about favouritism but Kuroumaru takes his plate willingly, locking grateful eyes with Touta before the other’s knives return to flash and scrape up further meals.

And when he takes it to his lips, it tastes perfect.

The cabbage is crunchy and the meat is tender, grill-lines smoking the beef charcoal in flashes of bitterness against salty, savoury glaze. Kuroumaru chews it with relish, with eyes closed and a soft sigh.

When he swallows, his throat remains tight.

Like an automatic physical response, as instinctive and unconscious as a leg kicking out when its knee is tapped, Kuroumaru’s eyes fill with tears.

“Hey, are you all right?” Touta asks immediately, and Kuroumaru nods hastily, breath coming out in quick bursts.

“Y-yeah, I am, I just...”

His hand shakes when it rubs up against his eye, but the tears flow on over his knuckle, winding rapidly down his sleeve. He sniffs, gasping for air, and he can feel himself surrounded, a hand against his back.

“It’s just… I’m so…” His voice is hoarse and croaky but it bubbles out of him, stomach clenching with painful tightness. He understands. “I’m so… h-happy...”

The hand stroking his back stills.

“And it’s n-not...” He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, fingers curling desperately. “N-not just… because Touta-kun is back...”

He chuckles wetly, back spasming with every sob.

“I-it’s… I have so many f-friends now… and I can do so many things I always wanted to do… and I like m-my body, and I know who I am even if it’s hard to understand but it makes sense...”

Is this how it feels, he wonders dizzily? To have been starving, and now to gorge on rich, warm food?

“And this beef tasted so good,” he gasps, voice cracking. “And I’m j-just, so happy to be alive… and I didn’t know what that felt like, or realise that’s what this was… but I really, really am...”

He can barely breathe, muscles cramping inside him, body curling and scrabbling for purchase. It feels like he’s dying, but he’s not, because it’s good.

Isn’t that a funny way to feel about it?

“...I’m glad, too,” Touta says.

Into Touta’s embrace, Kuroumaru wails.

He knows, distantly, that this is strange and embarrassing and that he’ll be mortified to have so utterly broken down in public at some time later on.

But the revelation overcomes him – this sheer, unblemished understanding that he is here and feeling Touta’s arm around his back and wood under his elbow and metal beneath his legs and every other arbitrary mundane sensation that he’s found himself sharing space with in this moment of time.

He is a part of this. And that is good.

“I shouldn’t waste your nice beef,” he finally mumbles, almost hysterically, nose running.

“I can cook plenty more,” Touta says, friendly and warm as the midday sun on Kuroumaru’s back. “Any time you want!”

“Then can I have his serving?” someone asks, and everyone laughs, and Kuroumaru chokes as well as he nods.

They hadn’t realised it while Touta was gone. They hadn’t been able to think about anything else, or care about anything else more than him, but while they had been looking only out towards his faint shape on the horizon, they had accumulated so very much.

How could they have ever seen immortality as a curse? Why had it taken so long to understand why Touta smiled and tugged them onwards and looked to the future with hope and excitement?

They could be with him forever, they could be with him, they could be.

It was strange – they had never felt so wealthy, yet it was that one most simple and basic thing that had them overwhelmed with relief.

Yeah, he thinks, forehead and arms and chest and running nose he had chosen all pressed up again the person he loved most in the world. I’m glad I still exist.