Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Mitsuba. Hey, Mitsuba. Mitsuba. Open your eyes, I know you're not sleeping.”

Mitsuba cracks his eyes open to see downturned brown eyes staring at him.

“What gave me away?” he asks grumpily.

Natsuhiko grins in that annoying way that he so often does, folding his arms underneath his chin and resting them on the piles of boxes Mitsuba's laying on top of.

“You would never willingly go to sleep anywhere that the little squirt might show up,” he says, giggling between his words. “Not after the permanent ink.”

Mitsuba shudders at the memory and sits up, rubbing at his eyes as he does so.

It's true that he'd never sleep anywhere that Tsukasa might be able to do something to him, so he'd just been resting, bored out of his mind. He's curled up in a pile of boxes in the corner of the broadcasting room - full of tapes and such that Tsukasa had wanted to sort out, or something. Mitsuba doesn't care. It wasn't comfortable, but that didn't really matter. 

What Mitsuba was hoping for, and why he'd been lying here, was that Natsuhiko might do something suspicious so that Mitsuba could catch him in the act and use it as blackmail. He's tried doing this through the mirrors before, but Natsuhiko seems to be extremely aware of whenever Mitsuba might be watching something, even winking at his own reflection every once in a while as if purely to piss Mitsuba off. 

It's incredibly irritating. Natsuhiko is hard to read, and although he plays the role of an idiot, Mitsuba's sure there's something more lurking behind his dopey expressions.

He just doesn't know what.

“Did you want something?” he asks, annoyed as he undoes the ribbon tying up his hair and brushes through it with his fingers. It's messy after all the time he spent lying down. “Or are you just looking to make me angry at you?”

Natsuhiko's eyebrows shoot up into his hair. “No, Mitsuba, no, not at all!” he protests, and Mitsuba just glares at the false conviction in his voice. He watches as Natsuhiko stands and paces the room, pulling a box off of one of the many crowded shelves that lines the room and setting it down on the floor to sit in front of it. “Would you play Go with me, Mitsuba? I'm so terribly bored, I could use a partner!”

Mitsuba observes him from across the room. Natsuhiko is a terribly unfashionable person, always wearing that ugly jacket over his school uniform and those hideous necklaces that don't even match each other, let alone his outfit. His hair is always carelessly messy, and he's always smiling. Well, almost always. 

Him and Tsukasa feel equally dangerous to Mitsuba, even though Natsuhiko has never given him a reason to think he could be. It's just the idea of a person who always acts as though they're happy and carefree, even when they can't possibly be. It sets off warning bells in Mitsuba's mind every time.

…Maybe he's spent too much time around Tsukasa.

“I don't want to play Go,” he mumbles. He reaches behind him where a framed photograph hangs up crookedly on the wall and sticks his hand through the reflective surface, fumbling around for something. When his hand emerges, it's clutching the handle of a wooden brush, which he begins dragging through his hair. “I always lose, and it gets boring.”

Natsuhiko watches him do all of this with curious eyes, head tilted like a dog. “I'll let you win,” he suggests, lips curling. “What do you think about that?”

“You promised to let me win last time,” Mitsuba reminds him. “Then you stole the win from me at the last second because I was “playing so badly you couldn't resist it.””

He makes air quotes around those words before getting unsteadily to his feet and walking over to the mirror on the wall. It hadn't been there the first time Mitsuba had entered the broadcasting room - mirrors tend to appear wherever Mitsuba spends the most time, and this is no exception. He kneels in front of it, parting his hair with his fingers and studying his reflection intently so he can get it right.

In the reflection, he sees Natsuhiko creep up behind him, still smiling dopily. “Can we play cards, then?” he asks, wringing his hands together like a child. “Come on, Mitsuba, don't make me play with the runt, you know how he gets when he loses and he sucks so bad at games.”

Mitsuba does know how Tsukasa gets when he loses at games. He's bore witness to too many temper tantrums to forget. Although Tsukasa is supposedly only Mitsuba's junior by a year, he does privately suspect he is emotionally much younger.

“Play with the mokke,” Mitsuba suggests without sparing the elder even a glance. “They're good at cards.”

Beside him, Natsuhiko groans. “Oh, but they steal the cards, Mitsuba, you know that. Won't you play just one game of Go? I promise to let you win this time.”

Mitsuba's about to summon the disembodied hands from his boundary to throw Natsuhiko out the nearest window when the door opens.

Both boys jump to this, although for Mitsuba this is more so a fear reaction, making him startle so hard he drops his brush and grabs onto the edge of the mirror as if he may need to escape. Natsuhiko, however, breaks into a grin again and claps his hands together, as if already knowing who's there.

“My lady!” he cheers, rushing to the door. “I'm more grateful for your return than you know!”

Despite Natsuhiko's conviction, Mitsuba only relaxes when he actually sees Nanamine enter the room.

They look as disinterested in Natsuhiko's puppy-like greeting as usual. Chartreuse hair spills down their chest, cut unevenly from behind and not reaching the back of their winter uniform dress. Heavily lidded pale green eyes scan the boy in front of them, showing no reaction whatsoever. Their gaze shifts behind Natsuhiko to where Mitsuba is still sitting on the floor, and their lips twitch as if they are about to smile. Just the sight of that alone fills Mitsuba with relief, and he offers a small wave to say hello.

“Oh, my lady,” Natsuhiko despairs, oblivious to the interaction that just occurred. “Mitsuba won't play Go or cards with me and I'm so bored I can't stand it! Would you play with me, my lady, please?”

“No,” Nanamine says simply. Their voice has always been pleasing to Mitsuba's ears - low and quiet, their words spoken slowly and clearly like they're thinking very hard about them even as they're saying them. They're so calm and relaxed in comparison to Tsukasa and Natsuhiko who, between the two of them, are almost always screaming or shrieking. “Leave me to my business, Natsuhiko, I don't care to play games right now.”

Mitsuba admires how Nanamine is always so easy to say no to things. He wishes he had that kind of resolve. It usually doesn't take more than five minutes for someone to make him do something he doesn't want to do, as long as it makes them stop whining at him. His will to continue denying Natsuhiko is already crumbling.

Natsuhiko pouts, which just looks embarrassing on someone of his age. “If you're really so busy, I suppose…”

His eyes land back on Mitsuba. Mitsuba tenses and debates slipping into his boundary and never leaving. It's tempting. Very tempting.

Before he can make that decision, however, Nanamine speaks up, extending a dainty hand towards Mitsuba. “You wouldn't be willing to assist me with something, would you, Mitsuba? It's terribly important, and it would be so helpful if you could.”

Mitsuba's eyes widen, and he has to blink a few times to make sure he's still in reality. Nanamine wants help from him?

Clearly, Natsuhiko shares the same thought process. “Ahh, my lady, if you require -”

“No,” Nanamine says again, shaking their head. Their eyes are fixed on Mitsuba and Mitsuba alone. “I just need Mitsuba.”

Lips parting, Mitsuba takes Nanamine's hand and lets them help him up. With his hand still in theirs, Nanamine takes him across the room and clicks open the door to the studio. Mitsuba's breath catches as he realizes that they're taking him inside. He's never been in the studio before. Tsukasa told him it's Nanamine's private work space, and he's not allowed.

He tugs their hand gently, stopping in his tracks as anxiety bubbles up inside of him. “Nanamine -”

“It's ok,” they say, and offer him a reassuring nod. “This is my space, and if I say you can enter, you can.”

Tsukasa said I wasn't allowed, he wants to protest. Just the thought of Tsukasa finding out that Mitsuba had disobeyed him makes him want to burst into tears of panic. However… there's a smaller, less pathetic part of him that wants to rebel against him just because he can.

Finally, he allows Nanamine to take him inside the studio. Just before the door closes, and while Nanamine isn't looking, Mitsuba sticks his tongue out at Natsuhiko and pulls his lower eyelid down with his middle finger.

The studio is dead quiet. It's soundproofed in here, obviously, so anything said within its walls can't be heard from the outside unless Nanamine uses the speaker to project the sound. Mitsuba knows that much - he's seen them work before, heard rumors fall from their lips like honey. It always makes him nervous, knowing how easily their words could be turned against him if he ever spoke out and Tsukasa decided he wanted to be rid of him.

From inside, he can see how terribly messy it is. There's a large panel of buttons and switches that looks too complicated for Mitsuba to understand, which sits in front of a large glass window, through which he can see Natsuhiko sulking. A neon sign above it reads ON AIR, although it's dimmed now, lights off. Boxes are piled in the corners, and bookshelves are full to bursting with books of various natures. Papers are scattered across the floor. Even the walls have things written on them in neat, slanted handwriting. A few words catch Mitsuba's eye as he glances around. Ghost. Sixteen hours. The moon. Seal.

They must have made sense to Nanamine at the time. Mitsuba can't make head or tail of anything he sees.

Nanamine steps around the broadcasting table, humming softly. There is a large chair there, with a microphone pointed at it. Mitsuba's artificial heart beats faster when he looks at it, causing his breaths to quicken.

“Tea?” he hears, and he tears his gaze away to look at Nanamine again. They're pulling out an electric kettle from a small table in the corner and setting it on its heating pad so it will boil. Mitsuba swallows, watching them move. Slowly, nonchalantly, like they have nowhere to be.

“No thanks,” he says softly, instead of isn't having water in a room so full of electronics dangerous? There's really not a better place to put that? “I'm fine.”

They look at him and offer a thin smile. “The kettle never gets anywhere near the electronics, don't worry,” they say, and Mitsuba's heart jumps into his throat - had he accidentally said his thoughts aloud instead? “I wouldn't risk our equipment like that. It's important, after all.”

Mitsuba nods quickly. “Right. I didn't mean to - I'm not questioning you.”

He's standing uselessly in the middle of the room, and he realizes he still has his brush in one hand and his ribbon in the other. His hair is still loose, too, hanging around his chin limply. Nanamine had distracted him before he could tie it back up.

“Come sit,” Nanamine says, without warning. Mitsuba stiffens as they come towards him and touch his shoulders, guiding him across the room and into a seat on the chair. The microphone hangs ominously next to Mitsuba's face. He can't take his eyes off of it.

Nanamine reaches out and pushes the microphone away so it's facing the wall.

“What did you need my help for?” Mitsuba finally manages to ask. His hands are shaking. He sets his brush and ribbon down on the table and puts his hands underneath his legs so Nanamine won't see.

They don't seem to notice at all. “Oh,” they say, as if surprised he even asked. “I didn't need anything. I just thought you might want to get away from Natsuhiko. I know how insistent he is and how easily you give into him, even when you don't want to.”

Mitsuba flushes, embarrassed. Embarrassed that Nanamine knows his inner workings so well, and embarrassed that he'd thought they needed his help for real. “Oh.”

One of their hands comes into view from behind him, and he watches with an open mouth as they take his brush and ribbon off the table. He doesn't move, though, because they'd asked him to sit and he doesn't want to do something that might get him in trouble.

“May I tie your hair for you, Mitsuba?” they ask politely. Mitsuba's shoulders shoot up towards his ears.

“Uh -” he stammers. “I, uh -”

“You can say no,” Nanamine reminds him. A hand rests on his shoulder, as light and gentle as their tone of voice. “You don't have to worry about Tsukasa while you're in here, Mitsuba. Even he doesn't come inside unless I've asked him to.”

Swallowing, Mitsuba relaxes minutely. It does help to know that Tsukasa isn't going to come swooping out of nowhere to mess with him. “I… I suppose you can do my hair.”

He can hear a smile in Nanamine's voice. “Thank you. You really do have lovely hair, Mitsuba.”

A prideful flush blooms on Mitsuba's face. His hair is very important to him and he devotes a lot of time and effort into looking after it, so this means a lot. He wonders how Nanamine always knows exactly what to say to get him to let his guard down. If it were either of the other two, he might be concerned. But Nanamine doesn't have any kind of malicious energy around them. Mitsuba respects them miles more than anybody else. In fact, he's kind of in awe of them. If he had the chance to grow up into adulthood, he might wish to be like Nanamine when he did, poised and collected and effortlessly perfect looking as they are.

He realizes he didn't reply. “Thank you, Nanam-”

He jumps a foot in the air upon feeling their fingers graze the back of his neck. “Sorry,” they say, and sound actually apologetic, too. “I'll try to be careful.”

Their hands gather his hair and brush through it, so incredibly gentle. Every time the brush comes into contact with his neck, he startles, and each time, they apologize. Even though it hurts, Mitsuba couldn't care less about whether they touch his neck or not. Not when the pressure of fingers on his scalp sends sparks down his spine that he hasn't experienced in possibly forever. Most of the physical contact Mitsuba receives is from Tsukasa. He gets so little of it that even when Tsukasa hurts him, he can't help but want more. Mitsuba knows how pathetic that is, but he's so starved for attention he'd take just about anything.

His eyes flutter closed as Nanamine drags their fingers through his locks, humming a tune that sounds vaguely familiar but he can't quite place. He might fall asleep like this. It would be so embarrassing, though, so he tries to fight it, even though he's more relaxed right now than he ever has been in his life.

When Nanamine's hands eventually leave him, he can't help but lean into them, a soft whine escaping him that causes him to slap a hand over his mouth almost immediately.

Nanamine laughs at his reaction and brushes a piece of loose hair behind his ear. They produce a small hand mirror from somewhere, holding it in front of Mitsuba's face. “Does it look good?” they ask. There's a soft note of amusement in their voice. “Is it up to your standards?”

Mitsuba examines his own reflection. His hair is tied more neatly than he's ever managed to do on his own, and the ribbon has been tied into a pretty bow, perfectly even and straight. He looks nice. He almost wishes he was going out somewhere so he had some reason for his hair to look so good.

“It's nice,” he says. He meets Nanamine's eyes in the mirror. “Thanks.”

They nod in appreciation. “You really like that bow I found you,” they say with a teasing smile. “It suits you.”

Mitsuba cracks a smile. “I hadn't considered using hair accessories for decoration before. It's cute.”

“It sure is,” Nanamine agrees. They take the mirror away, pocketing it and handing Mitsuba his brush back. “Feel free to make yourself at home. If you want to rest, I can bring you anything you need to get more comfortable. I'll be in the corner over here writing, if you need me.”

Mitsuba turns to watch them as they go. Nanamine pours themself a cup of tea from the kettle in the corner and takes it to a soft looking armchair that sits underneath a black metal floor lamp. From a stack of boxes beside it, they pick up a notebook and pen that are sitting there and place them in their lap, sipping their tea and flicking to the page they must have last been on absently.

When they notice Mitsuba still looking, they tilt their head. “What's wrong?”

Mitsuba stiffens. “Uh…”

He just doesn't know what to do now. The studio isn't his place to be, so he doesn't have anything in here to do. The school is closed and it's dark outside, meaning there are no students to watch through the mirrors. There won't be any need for him anywhere until the sun comes up at least.

“Oh, I see,” Nanamine says, and Mitsuba startles - had he accidentally spoken his thoughts aloud again? “Well, in that case, I can find something for you to do. Are you interested in alphabetizing some of Tsukasa's old tapes in these boxes here?”

Mitsuba wrinkles his noses, skin crawling as he imagines how dusty those boxes must be, how many bugs could be living inside them. “No thanks.”

Nanamine laughs. Their laugh is beautiful, like bells. “I was only joking,” they say, shaking their head. “If you'd like, Mitsuba, you can have a look through my books. There might be something of interest for you somewhere in there.”

“I'm not a big reader,” Mitsuba mutters. He pulls his knees up to his chest, feeling awfully childish talking like this. “I've never been interested in idle things like that.”

“That's ok,” Nanamine says. They gaze at him from beneath dark lashes, face shadowed by the lamp above them. “I do art, too, if you wanted to look.”

Mitsuba inhales sharply, suddenly understanding. “All of these books - you wrote in these?”

Nanamine nods, expression unreadable. It doesn't look as though they're intentionally hiding what they're feeling - Nanamine always looks like this. Drowsy, dazed, nonchalant. 

“They're my notebooks,” they say softly. They gesture around the room with their hand. “I put my soul into a lot of these. I don't mind if you want to have a look at them. My truly private thoughts mostly stay in my own mind, and anything of that nature which I write down is few and far between. I'd be surprised if you managed to find anything I didn't want you to read.”

Mitsuba's mouth suddenly feels dry. He licks his lips, nervous. “You're ok with me looking at your private things?”

“Of course,” Nanamine says. Their lips twitch as they lean back in their chair, getting comfortable in its embrace. “It's all silly things anyway. No one's ever looked at my writing before, so you'd be my first critic.”

That makes this even more nerve wracking. Still, Mitsuba is agonizingly curious. He'd just been thinking about wanting to find out information on Natsuhiko, so why wouldn't he take up the chance to learn about Nanamine instead? They're possibly the most elusive and difficult to read out of all of the broadcasting club. At least Tsukasa is always incredibly honest about his feelings and intentions, to the point where it makes Mitsuba seriously uncomfortable. At least Mitsuba knows what he's thinking.

He never knows what Nanamine is thinking.

So he gets up from his seat at the table and heads across the room. The bookshelves creak under the weight of the hundreds of books piled on them. Mitsuba wonders if Nanamine has filled each and every page of them. He wonders how long they've been trapped here.

“Not all of them,” Nanamine says, and Mitsuba jumps. They're not looking at him, instead stirring their tea slowly with their gaze fixed on reading something in their notebook. “A few of those books are blank. Not many, but a few. Some are unfinished. I've had a lot of writer's block over the years. It's terribly unfortunate.”

“How did you hear me think that?” Mitsuba asks, unable to hold himself back anymore.

This time, Nanamine looks up. Innocent grassy eyes peer up at him, glittering with warmth. “Think what, sorry?”

Mitsuba swallows again and shakes his head, deciding against continuing that train of questioning for fear of making himself sound crazy. Maybe he's just tired, although he doesn't really experience that kind of thing. “Never mind.”

He picks out a book from the shelf; one with a thick leather cover and creamy white pages that are yellowed with age and have soft blue lines with prints of violets in the corners. It looks expensive. The ink that's been used to write is black and sleek, forming kanji in a way that makes it look like art. It's barely readable, but Mitsuba can make it out.

Chrysanthemums in summer

Daisies in winter

Dahlias in autumn

Lilies in spring

That's all that's written on one page. He flicks to the next and reads there too. This one isn't a poem - it's clearly an excerpt from a story of some kind, written with no context of what had happened prior.

The beauty of Airi was that she did not know her own grace. Ryo had known multitudes of other diplomats before her who carried themselves with utter arrogance, noses turned upwards to face where they believed their worth lay; in heaven with God Himself. Obversely, Airi walked as though she believed each step could be her last. She took each breath as if she was thanking the Lord for the chance to breathe His air. Ryo had never known another with so much power to act as humble as she does. She asked her, once, if she acted this way on purpose to attract suitors. She had not meant to phrase it so impolitely, but that was how it had come out of her mouth. Despite this, Airi had not taken offense; instead, she'd laughed, cheeks flushing rosy like polished apples. “Oh, Ryo!” she had chortled, and reached forth to take her hand in her own. “Do you truly view me to be so

The sentence cuts off midway, and the next page is blank.

“I write a lot of things I don't finish,” Nanamine says, into the silence. “Whatever's in my head, I write it down, and if it doesn't continue to interest me, I scrap it.”

“You make up characters?” Mitsuba asks them. “Who are Airi and Ryo?”

Nanamine blinks, their gaze drifting as if they're thinking. “I don't remember,” they say, after a pause. “Like I said, if it doesn't continue to interest me, I won't finish it. If I've forgotten it, you must be looking at a very old book right now.”

Mitsuba looks at it again. An idea strikes him, and he opens the cover to see if there's any text there. He finds there are, stamped at the bottom of the interior of the cover to state the name of the company who made the book and the year it was printed. It's hard to read, smudged with ink, but he manages to figure it out. Printed in 1905.

“That is an old one,” Nanamine says lightly. Mitsuba doesn't even comment on the fact that he hadn't said anything again, yet they'd still managed to hear. “I would have been young. The way I used to write involved a lot of usage of “flowery” words that didn't fit together naturally yet. I can't imagine anything in that book is very high quality. Please, don't judge me for anything you see in there.”

“I won't,” Mitsuba says, and for some reason, it's true. Yes, he's an extremely judgemental person, mean and too brutally honest and often kind of a bitch. But being around Nanamine brings out a side of Mitsuba he didn't know existed. A version of him that's polite and respectful. It makes him sick sometimes, but he doesn't really mind that much that Nanamine makes him into someone different. He respects them deeply, and enjoys their company. He even thinks their dress sense is tasteful despite the gaudy shade of green their hair is.

He continues looking through Nanamine's books, and finds more writing. A lot of what they write are small snippets of paragraphs about characters that don't appear more than once. It seems they enjoy writing about romance, which Mitsuba finds intriguing. It couldn't be more obvious that Nanamine shares no mutual feelings with Natsuhiko, so he wonders where they get their ideas from.

There are drawings, too. A sketch of a large, elaborate ballgown (“I wanted to get an idea of what it looked like on paper before I described it,” Nanamine says), an androgynous fairy-type creature with cloth wings (“The idea wouldn't leave my mind,” Nanamine admits), a table covered in pieces of shattered glass. This one gives Mitsuba pause, and he feels a shiver go down his back at the sight of it. He refrains from asking Nanamine any questions about this one. It feels wrong in a way he can't explain.

Eventually he goes to sit back down, taking the book he's been flicking through with him. He doesn't want to sit on the broadcasting chair again - even though the mic’s been moved, he's still incredibly nervous about its presence - so he goes to sit by Nanamine instead, next to their legs. They hum at the sight of him, and reach out to smooth a piece of hair out of his face. It's a futile effort, because half of Mitsuba's face is purposely hidden behind his hair, but the gesture is so sweet and gentle it could make him tear up.

He doesn't, though. Instead, he asks; “What are you writing now?”

Nanamine blinks slowly, as if processing the question. “Nothing much,” they say, and stretch their arms above their head languidly. “You can look if you like.”

Mitsuba waits until Nanamine hands him the book, not wanting to take it directly off their lap. The notebook they're currently using is dark blue in colour and looks closer in quality to a student's workbook than some of the other books he'd looked at before. The pages are slightly crumpled, and there's a tea stain that soaks through some of them, leaving the paper brown and crinkled. Nanamine is currently writing with a blue ballpoint pen, which is what Mitsuba finds in the page that they're working on, which he reads quickly as if the text could run away.

Suzuki was soon even quieter than Takara, no matter what the circumstance. She ate without so much of the sound of chopsticks against the glass bowl, dressed in the morning without so much of the ruffle of clothing, walked without so much as a patter of footsteps. It was as though she didn't exist. Sometimes this angered Takara, for reasons she couldn't explain even if she tried. All she knows is that her friend deserved to live loudly, and it upset her enormously to see her size herself down for the sake of others, for the sake of - Something is scribbled out here - her fiance.

Takara spends hours on the younger woman's hair, practicing for the wedding. Her hair is one aspect of Suzuki that Takara admires dearly, because she hadn't changed it when she'd torn out the rest of her personality. It's a soft, strawberry pink, cascading down just past her shoulders, glossy and well taken care of. Black roots are just barely visible at the top of her scalp, but Takara is sure it won't be a problem with the style she's planning for.

The writing stops there.

Mitsuba looks up at Nanamine almost accusingly, and the elder’s eyes glimmer with a knowing, guilty look, clearly already knowing what Mitsuba's about to say.

“I know,” they say, holding up a hand. “Suzuki isn't based on you at all, as I'm sure you can tell. But styling your hair gave me the idea for writing this. Sorry to use you for inspiration.”

Mitsuba huffs softly, offering an uncaring shrug now that he has an explanation. “It's ok,” he says. He's weirdly flattered, even though it seems all Nanamine had used him for in this scene is the fact that someone with pink hair is getting their hair done. “I've never been someone's muse before. It's about time, I'm cute enough to deserve it.”

Nanamine giggles, and Mitsuba's heart leaps with pride. “You sure are,” they say softly, and they place a gentle hand on the side of his head, running the pads of their fingers along his hair. Mitsuba's eyes close again against his will, and without thinking, he leans to the right and lets his head fall against Nanamine's leg. They don't seem to mind, and continue petting his hair. Every touch sends shocks through Mitsuba's whole system.

A few moments pass before Mitsuba realizes, embarrassingly belatedly, that he hadn't given Nanamine their book back.

He sits bolt upright and does so, feeling his face grow hot. “Sorry,” he mumbles, and passes it back to them.

“Don't apologize,” they say, sounding somewhat amused. They take the book and set it back on their lap. “There's nothing wrong with seeking comfort every once in a while.”

Mitsuba fixes his gaze on a point far away, lost in thought. Part of him wants to believe Nanamine is right. The other part of him is humiliated by the idea that he would be so desperate to be touched gently that he would allow his head to be pet like a dog's. He hates his own mental comparison of himself to something nonhuman - Tsukasa had once told Mitsuba that he sees him as a stubborn houseplant, and it had made him so angry he'd wanted to hurl the boy through the window. 

Of course, he hadn't, because Tsukasa is terrifying and Mitsuba hates the anticipation of pain, more than anything. It's why he locks himself away in his boundary and cries when he knows he needs to eat, because he has no choice but to either starve and fall to pieces or find someone to hurt so he can take their heart. Tsukasa calls him a crybaby. Kou says it, too, but when he says it there's always a layer of fondness in his tone that makes Mitsuba's heart jump.

…Now he's thinking about that lame ass earring, and about being hungry, and defenestrating Tsukasa, and it's all too much for his brain right now. He closes his eyes again, but doesn't return his head to Nanamine's thighs. He doesn't want them to think he's weird, because he knows damn fucking well that if anyone else did that to him he would punch them in the face and call them a pervert.

He briefly imagines Kou laying his head on his lap and gets dizzy enough that he has to palm his face, bringing his knees to his chest again so he can lean on them for support.

“I hope you don't mind the manner in which I used your likeness for Suzuki,” Nanamine suddenly says. Pale green eyes meet his from above, where they're still sat in their chair. “It has nothing to do with how I view you. I simply am more used to writing female characters.”

It does take Mitsuba a moment to understand what Nanamine means, but then he catches on. “I don't mind that,” he says honestly, uncovering his face so he can speak properly. “I know I look like a girl. I prefer it like that.”

“You prefer it?” Nanamine prompts gently. Mitsuba feels like they're underneath his skin, reading his very thoughts. He takes a breath and holds it briefly.

“Mhm,” he confirms noncommittally. “I guess. I sometimes think if I were a human, I might prefer to be a girl.”

He doesn't think about that very often, because it doesn't matter. There's so few people who can see him that it's barely relevant what gender they see him as. Sometimes he thinks it might be nice to be more androgynous, like Nanamine. Sometimes he likes the way he is.

“Sometimes?” Nanamine asks. When Mitsuba looks at them again, they have a curious expression on their face.

“Yeah,” Mitsuba says softly. “I don't know. I change my mind all the time. It's not important.”

Silence fills the room. Mitsuba wonders where Natsuhiko went - at some point, he'd vanished from view of the window.

“That's not unusual,” he hears Nanamine say. Their gaze is far away, when Mitsuba looks at them. “The longer one spends as a supernatural, the less human concepts like gender continue to matter. You're quite young, though. Perhaps it's different for you.”

Mitsuba shrugs, uncertain of what to say. Things like that have never mattered to him. He's always loved how soft and feminine his face is, how easy it is for people to get confused about his gender. He's thinking about it now, however. Is he different? Well, in a way. There are no other supernaturals like him.

“What's it like for you?” he asks, out of pure curiosity. And nosiness, because he's Mitsuba.

Nanamine smiles and takes their teacup in hand again, sipping it slowly before speaking. “I've never thought about it much at all. It just stopped meaning anything one day.”

Mitsuba wonders why Natsuhiko still refers to Nanamine as my lady, why both him and Tsukasa still use she and her on them. Maybe they just never picked up on it the way Mitsuba had done so easily.

“They're not very perceptive to things like that,” Nanamine says, in response to nothing at all. “I don't mind. Like I said, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything.”

Nanamine is over a hundred years old. Mitsuba tries to think about existing like this for another hundred years and feels his blood run cold.

“Does everything stop meaning anything?” he asks hollowly. His voice doesn't sound like his own.

There's another stretch of silence, with the only sound being Nanamine's teaspoon clinking against their cup.

“No,” they say, eventually. Once more, their hand falls to the side of Mitsuba's head and strokes the hair there, so gentle, more gently than Mitsuba has ever been touched in his miserable existence. “There are things that are still important to me. Sometimes I even manage to find new things, and grow to care for them, too.”

Mitsuba closes his eyes and lets his head fall against Nanamine's leg again.

Chapter Text

Supernaturals do not have most human bodily functions. They don't sweat, they don't need to eat or breathe or use the bathroom, they don't have aches or pains or feel hunger. At least, not usually. Mitsuba is just lucky enough to get to experience fun things like that.

Due to all of this, there's no need for a supernatural to preen themselves. It's not possible for Mitsuba's hair to ever grow, or become thicker or glossier. It's not possible for him to get acne or spots. Despite this, he takes great care of his looks, because it just feels correct to do. It feels normal. He likes the routine of it.

He's not a pervert like Honorable Number Seven, so he doesn't spend time in bathrooms for creepy reasons. But - well. That is where most of the mirrors in the school are located. Of course, Mitsuba can see through any reflective surface in the school, but he gets the clearest view through mirrors. By God, do people talk a lot of shit in bathrooms when no one else can hear them.

Nishi made out with Saito at the cinema last week. Ueyno and Mae are planning to kick Masaki out of the friend group because they think she cheated on her boyfriend with Ueyno’s. Kurata started smoking and she doesn't want her mom to find out so she pretended she joined gardening club so she could get the smell off in time. Chino is planning to confess to Minamoto after Science tomorrow. 

The amount of information that Mitsuba absorbs on the daily could probably knock a human unconscious. Of course, a lot of it is nonsense that he doesn't care about. There's a lot of drama about romance in this school, he finds. A lot of people cheating on others, kissing people in secret, doing inappropriate acts in inappropriate places. How ridiculous.

(Sometimes Mitsuba catches pieces of gossip that do interest him. Kou Minamoto, you know, the younger one? He's in the girls bathroom all the time. Do you think he's some kind of pervert? Do you know he fancies himself an exorcist? Like, of ghosts? He's such a kid. How does he have such a cool older brother, acting like that? No, I don't think he's a bad guy, but he's such a weirdo, isn't he? Walking around talking to himself the way he does.

Sometimes Mitsuba reaches out and raps the glass with a clawed hand and giggles when they scream. There's nothing wrong with him having a little fun where he can, after all.)

The one thing that really catches his attention is when the girls do their makeup in the mirror. Mitsuba's always had a fascination with the way that so many of the girls at this school look as though they have flawless skin, lips glossy and eyes perfectly shadowed, so getting to see the process of this being done interests him to no end. A lot of the gossip he hears between girls occurs during these crammed five-to-ten minute sessions of applying makeup, painting their faces beautifully and transforming themselves before heading to class. He's even found himself experiencing feelings of jealousy when watching them, which is crazy, because he's way cuter than any of the rest of them are. It's the skill he's jealous of, he thinks. He wants to be able to do that too.

One day, he performs a risky maneuver and steals a girl's makeup bag through the glass when she turns the other way for a moment. He feels slightly guilty about it, but only for about five minutes. The second he's back in his boundary and sat in a bathroom in front of a mirror, he's filled with nothing but excitement at the thought of getting to enhance his already flawless face further with this magical paste that he's certain he knows how to use.

As it turns out, those girls made it look easier than it is. After three hours of struggle, Mitsuba has hands smeared with coloured goop and has scrubbed at his own face with wipes so many times his skin has turned red and raw.

It looks terrible. He's never been more annoyed in his life.

He abandons the makeup and decides to clean himself off in the shower, because it will relax him while he scrubs off the remnants of his failures. He grabs new clothes and hums to himself as he strips, piling his clothes neatly so he can clean the makeup stains off of them and brushing out his hair in preparation.

Then he stops and stares at his reflection.

Mitsuba's body does not belong to himself. It never has, from the moment Tsukasa brought him into the world. His body, his face, his voice, his name, his mind, belonged to a boy named Sousuke. He was a boy who was soft spoken and polite, who was kind to his classmates and rarely spoke up in class. He carried a camera everywhere he went in a thick black bag that hung around his shoulders and laid on his waist. He had died a year or so ago in a car accident.

Mitsuba knows for a fact, however, that Sousuke Mitsuba was not at all the way he portrayed himself to be. He was rude, cocky, brutally honest, snarky. Girly. Gay. All of those things he'd pretended not to be during the short time he was alive at Kamome Academy. He was closer to how Mitsuba himself was, supposedly.

He'd never gotten the chance to meet Sousuke. That boy had to die once to a car, and again at Tsukasa's hands, for Mitsuba to get the chance to even exist.

Now he wears his face. This isn't the part that's a problem. Mitsuba loves how he looks. His face is delicate, skin mostly unblemished, eyes soft and round, hair smooth and clearly well taken care of. He'd been blessed in that regard. Mitsuba could stare at his own face all day. Kou had once sardonically asked him if he'd ever heard of the myth of Narcissus. Mitsuba had flicked his ear so hard it made the other boy shriek.

No, it's everything else that gives Mitsuba pause.

Sousuke had just turned fourteen years old when he died. He lived fourteen years in the body Mitsuba wears now. Fourteen years of human wear and tear that Mitsuba has no memory of, no understanding of. 

Mitsuba's body belonged to someone else, and as such, isn't perfect.

There is a lumpy scar on his left elbow, as though Sousuke had fallen over and injured it on something. There's a similar one on his right knee, and both of them are scuffed and red, like he took a lot of tumbles. This is unsurprising - Mitsuba does have a rather skewed sense of balance. Tsukasa sometimes calls him butterfingers in a tone that sounds like it's supposed to be fond, but isn't.

There's a red dip in Mitsuba's right eyebrow, the one he hides underneath his hair, as though something had taken a chunk out of the skin there. There are two holes in his earlobes for earrings to go, although there were none there when he died, and therefore Mitsuba doesn't have any either. There's a blue helix piercing curling along the top of his earlobe. It would be cute if it weren't for the colour.

There are thick, angry scars in too-neat rows along the underside of Mitsuba's right forearm. It couldn't be more obvious how they'd gotten there. There are a few similar ones on the tops of his thighs, although not many. Closer to the top of his forearm are some thinner, lumpier scars that he'd deduced more recently were from surgery done on a broken arm.

His right hand is broken, fingers unaligned and wonky, skin red and disgusting looking. It doesn't hurt. It just - feels weird, is all.

His throat is lined with scars too, from a broken neck Mitsuba had never experienced. Sometimes they ache sharply when a car doesn't slow down as he's about to cross a road. They're ugly. Mitsuba despises them.

Mitsuba despises every little piece of Sousuke that lives in his body. He's never hated anyone more than him. Not Tsukasa, not Number Seven, not Kou. He wishes he could lean through the mirror memories he watches with the boy in them and strangle him dead.

He often sits in his boundary and watches him, almost obsessively. Sousuke would spend a lot of time in class not paying attention, doodling or staring at Kou from across the room. That stupid, idiotic lame ass earring didn't notice a damn thing. How fucking pathetic, that Sousuke spent so much of his time alive pretending to be someone he wasn't and pining after a straight boy who didn't love him. Mitsuba hates him. Mitsuba hates him.

Mitsuba hates him for ruining his body. Mitsuba hates him for having been so pathetic, so miserable. Mitsuba hates him for everything he is.

Mitsuba's never felt so angry at anyone in his existence.

He watches as Sousuke twirls his hair around his finger, draws on the back of his hand with pen, bites his nails, picks at a fraying thread on his collar. So human. Undeniably human. Wasting his life away, depressed and doing nothing about it. A mother who loved him at home who would have done anything for him.

He wonders how Sousuke felt when he died. He wonders if he felt any kind of relief.

“Why are you in here, again?”

Mitsuba is in an empty classroom on the top floor of the school. He's sitting backwards on a chair he pulled from someone's desk, elbows propped up on the desk in front of him and chin resting in his hands. He's staring at the boy in front of him curiously, waiting for an answer.

Kou Minamoto is on the other side, leaning on his fist and halfheartedly poking at the tempura in his bento box with the ends of his chopsticks. Blonde hair falls into his eyes, unbrushed and messy. He doesn't push it away. His eyes are downcast, and if Mitsuba's not mistaken, there are faint purple bags underneath them. He's clearly not been sleeping. Mitsuba wonders what minute little thing he's hyperfocusing on now that's keeping him up at night.

“I told you, Satou and Yokoo are being weird,” he sighs. He picks up a piece of tempura before dropping it back into his rice with a frown. “They've spent all day giggling at each other and telling me nothing's up whenever I ask, and now they're not at their usual lunch table. I don't know where they went, so I'm eating here instead.”

Mitsuba knows, actually. Mitsuba's seen those boys exchange soppy glances, kicking each other under their desks and brushing fingers when they walk through the halls together with the air of newly confessed lovers. Kou's extremely oblivious to things like this, however, and Mitsuba's not about to expose his friends if they're not ready to say something. Besides, it's definitely funnier watching Kou mope.

“Oh, I see,” Mitsuba drawls, kicking his legs absently. “They probably hate you. I bet they're planning to kick you out of the friend group.”

Kou flicks a piece of rice at Mitsuba's face, and Mitsuba yowls. It's sticky with soy sauce. He wipes his face frantically, trying to get it off.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Kou deadpans.

He doesn't seem to be actually upset about the situation. He's probably a bit bummed out because his friends went somewhere without telling him, but Mitsuba can't imagine that's enough to actually hurt him. Sometimes he wishes he could get inside Kou's head, read his mind the way it feels like Nanamine reads his. He bets that Kou's always thinking about weird shit, pervert that he is. 

Mitsuba's eyes briefly drop to Kou's lips before he catches himself and lunges forward to grab the tempura Kou had been playing with and stuff it in his mouth.

“My fucking lunch,” Kou moans, but he doesn't make a move to stop Mitsuba as he picks all the pieces out with his bare hands and eats them. They taste alright. When he swallows them, he doesn't feel a thing. His stomach is as painfully empty as always.

“Too slow,” Mitsuba says, licking his fingertips and flipping Kou off without remorse. “Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with your food?”

He remembers just slightly too late the current status of Kou's mother, but the boy doesn't show any signs of offense. “She also told me that kindness was a virtue,” Kou says, eyebrows raised, “and to treat others the way they treat me. You don't treat me very nicely.”

Mitsuba snickers at Kou's serious words. “She also said “loss means there was love,” if I remember correctly -”

“Shut the hell up about that, man, you're so heartless it's unreal!”

Within his chest, Mitsuba's artificial heart beats quicker. A more genuine smile creeps onto his lips, and he sinks his chin back into the palms of his hands, watching as Kou starts eating the sad remainder of his bento box. A piece of egg ends up stuck to the corner of his mouth. Mitsuba can't help but stare at it, stare at the sharp fangs in Kou's mouth as he opens up to shovel more food inside. 

He starts feeling dizzy at the sight, so when Kou unscrews his water bottle to take a drink, Mitsuba reaches out and whacks the bottom of it so Kou chokes and spills water down the front of his shirt.

“What was that for?” the boy splutters, coughing wildly into his hand. So dramatic. He shoots Mitsuba a look of furious betrayal. “I didn't do anything!”

Mitsuba shrugs. Willing his heart to slow down, avoiding looking at Kou's mouth at any cost. “Just thought it would be funny. You should be on your guard at all times, Kou, if I were an angry supernatural who wanted to kill you, you'd be dead.”

Kou just scoffs and sets his water bottle back on the floor beside his bag.

Avoiding looking at the bottom half of Kou's face means staring at his eyes a lot more. They're an extremely brilliant ocean blue, tones of grey-green lining the interior of them. They look as though lightning might clap across them at any moment. Being around Kou in general feels like that, actually. Sometimes when he gets particularly passionate about something, Mitsuba feels the air get hot, and his skin crawls as the crackle of electricity runs across it. It's addicting, in a way.

No wonder Kou's hair always looks so terrible if he has such little control of his powers over lightning. Mitsuba shouldn't be surprised.

“Why aren't you hanging out with your other friends?” he asks.

He knows for a fact that Kou is fairly popular. Well - perhaps popular is the wrong word entirely, and maybe Mitsuba just doesn't understand human customs, but people tend to like him, at least outwardly. When Kou cracks a joke, people laugh. Students call him by his given name in the halls. His teachers talk about him fondly in the staff rooms when discussing their day. He's almost always surrounded by others. It kind of pisses Mitsuba off, actually, in a messed up way that comes from the most angry parts of his artificial soul.

Kou looks surprised at the question. His lips part, revealing the tips of his fangs again - Mitsuba tears his gaze away - but he doesn't speak for a moment. He has this dumb, dazed expression that he so often does, looking sort of lost.

“Oh, well,” Kou says, and Mitsuba mentally notes the way his voice has pitched just slightly. “It's just one of those things where you're like - you're friends with someone, but it's more of a classroom type of friends than a lunchroom type of friends. I mean, I always sit with the same people, so it'd be weird if I just barged in on someone else's group of people. They'd be cool with it, but it's just - it's just one of those things, you know?”

No, Mitsuba doesn't know. Mitsuba doesn't have friends and never has. Nanamine is more of a supervisor who keeps him company sometimes, Natsuhiko is a jerk and loves irritating Mitsuba, Tsukasa is Tsukasa, and Kou - Mitsuba's not sure Kou counts as a friend. He thinks they're something worse than that. Whatever it is when you hate someone but also want to kiss their mouth but also want to tear their heart out of their chest and eat it raw.

He's not sure there's a word for that. Tsukasa would come up with one, he's certain.

“Sure,” Mitsuba says doubtfully. He picks at the nail polish he'd applied yesterday. It's a cute rose pink colour, but he'd felt hungry and sick when he'd been doing it and his hands had been shaking all night, so the paint looks terrible and spills over onto his cuticles. He'd rather just redo it. “If you say so.”

It takes a moment for him to realize that Kou's watching his hands, as much as he's pretending like he's not. His face flushes pink when he realizes, and he averts his eyes, dropping his gaze back into his bento box. Mitsuba's lips curl. It's so easy to fluster Kou that it's actually insane. He doesn't need to do a damn thing.

“What's up?” he hums, leaning in closer towards the boy across the desk. “What're you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Kou replies hurriedly, crimson painting his cheeks. “I was just - your nails. I didn't notice them before, since you're always hiding your hand in your sleeve.”

That's true - Mitsuba had been paying so little attention that he'd removed the fingertips of his right hand from his sleeve. He hopes Kou didn't notice the scars or the odd angle of his broken fingers. He doesn't need any more pity from him. It'll only make him angry, and being angry at Kou feels like there's a tempered flame in his chest that bites sharply at his throat with every word he speaks, begging to break free. If Mitsuba had slightly less self control, he would ruin his and Kou's relationship forever in minutes with the nasty, repulsive things he thinks that would surely escape from his mouth against his will. 

Mitsuba is an extremely cruel person, deep down. The day Kou realizes that will be the day he loses everything.

He shows off his left hand instead, where he hasn't started peeling the paint off yet. “I'm going to redo it,” he explains. “So I'm taking it off.”

Kou hums thoughtfully, setting his chopsticks down in his box. He doesn't put it away immediately, however. He's just looking at Mitsuba, and the longer he stares without saying anything, the more exposed Mitsuba feels. Heat spreads across his face.

“What?” he barks, tensing. “Stop that, you perverted little freak, what are you thinking about?”

Kou's unfazed by the insults at this point. “So quick to jump to perversion,” he comments, tilting his head where it's still resting against his fist. “I was thinking your nails look nice. Now I'm thinking, “wow, Mitsuba sure is a jackass. It's a wonder I still hang out with him at all.””

Mitsuba bares his teeth in a harsh grin. “Yeah, without me you'd be eating in the toilets with Honorable Number Seven, so I wouldn't start if I were you.”

“I wouldn't go that far,” Kou says. His lips twitch at the corners, and fuck, Mitsuba's looking at his mouth again. “Didn't you just say a couple weeks ago that I don't compliment you enough? I just did and you're being a dick about it. I actually cannot win with you.”

Rolling his eyes, Mitsuba slumps all the way back in his seat and brings one knee up to his chest, foot propped up on the chair. “My nails look like shit right now,” he says. “So you can't even compliment me accurately. A you're looking so cute today, Mitsuba wouldn't hurt.”

“Over my dead body,” Kou snickers, and dodges the blow Mitsuba nearly lands on the side of his head.

Mitsuba's about to go for it again when Kou asks a question that could have been a distraction technique just as easily as it could have been a legitimate query. “Why'd you paint your nails, anyway?”

It's such a stupid question that Mitsuba screws up his face disgustedly at the boy. “Why'd you dye your hair blonde?” he retorts, curling his lip meanly. “What a dumb fucking thing to ask.”

Kou, however, looks genuine, blinking slowly at Mitsuba with those stormy eyes. “I don't dye my hair,” he says seriously. “It's natural.”

Mitsuba's eyes travel to his roots. He's still not sure he believes that.

“It's true,” Kou insists, and clicks the lid on his bento box with an air of annoyance. “I asked because I'm curious. I've never seen you do it before.”

That makes sense, Mitsuba supposes. There was nail polish in the makeup bag he'd stolen from the girl in the bathroom a few days ago, but he can't tell Kou that. He'll get told off for stealing, and Mitsuba will definitely get angry at Kou for that. He wants to avoid that conversation entirely.

“I was looking for a change,” he says, shrugging nonchalantly. He picks at the polish on his thumb with his middle finger, watching it flake off under his nail. “What, you got a problem with it?”

“So combatative,” Kou muses, a note of amusement in his voice. “I don't see guys wear nail polish a lot.”

Interesting. Mitsuba hadn't expected Kou to say that part out loud, even though he knew he was thinking it.

He looks up at the boy through his lashes, locking eyes mischievously. “I don't imagine you see a lot of guys who look like me.”

Kou goes red, shoulders stiffening slightly. “No,” he admits, breaking eye contact to glance out the window at the heavy grey clouds gathering outside. “You're… pretty unique, I'll give you that.”

Mitsuba narrows his eyes. “Elaborate on that, and be careful what you say.”

“In a good way!” Kou finishes quickly, holding both hands up beside his hair as a sign of surrender. “I meant in a good way. You're confident. I can tell you don't care what people think of you.”

Mitsuba narrows his eyes further.

Kou exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You're setting me up here.”

“You're setting yourself up,” Mitsuba says, and kicks Kou in the leg, hard. While the other boy is yowling about it, he continues. “You might as well be telling me you think I dress like shit.”

“I don't,” Kou protests, lifting the leg of his pants to check if Mitsuba's left a bruise. Mitsuba kind of hopes he has. It'd be nice to leave a mark on Kou's skin, no matter how small or how it got there. “You're different, is what I mean.”

“Girly,” Mitsuba supplies, and the way Kou's lips purse tells him that that is, in fact, the word Kou was avoiding saying.

“I guess,” he says. He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Gay,” Mitsuba continues with a sly smile, and Kou splutters, waving his hands around in front of his face.

“No!” he yelps, face burning red. “Not that! Are you trying to make me seem like the world's biggest jackass?”

Mitsuba shrugs, secretly enjoying Kou's immense discomfort. “You don't need me to do that for you.”

Kou huffs, palming his face as if to try and get the colour to go down. “I'm saying it as a good thing. Let me at least try and compliment you without accusing me of homophobia, please.”

The room seems to get darker. Mitsuba glances at the window and sees that the clouds have gotten bigger and greyer, heavy with the promise of rain.

When he looks back at Kou, he's staring at the table, eyes glazed. “I always wanted to paint my nails like my mom as a kid,” he says, casually, like it's nothing. “My dad wouldn't let me. I just thought it looked cool.”

Mitsuba sits back, a frown fixed on his lips. Kou talks about his father incredibly rarely, but Mitsuba's never heard a piece of information that he liked about the man leave Kou's mouth. He's starting to get the world's vaguest picture of what Kou's home life might have been like in his childhood, and he's not liking what he's seeing.

“Gender roles are for pussies and cowards,” Mitsuba says, tilting his head onto his shoulder. He keeps his eyes on Kou, curious about his reaction. “Who cares what's girly and what's not. Nothing matters. Everybody dies at the end regardless.”

Kou's eyebrows furrow thoughtfully, and Mitsuba can see him biting the inside of his lip. 

“It matters to my dad,” he mutters, and starts putting his bento box away in his bag.

Mitsuba stares at him, wondering what the hell that means. If he should bother looking further into that at all. Mitsuba's never sure what Kou is thinking.

Now might be a good time to ask the question that Mitsuba's had burning in his brain for the past few days.

“Kou,” he says, watching as the boy sits upright again, clearly startled by being acknowledged so seriously. Mitsuba slides his arms further forward on the desk, closer to Kou than before. “Have you ever thought about what it'd be like to be a girl before?”

Kou's jaw drops. “I - What - No?” he stammers, confusion evident on his face. Confusion, but not disgust - that's a good start. “Don't you remember that weird doll that made me into one for a full day? It was horrible. I hated every second of it.”

Of course Mitsuba remembers it. He's thought about it every day since it happened. It was what had got him thinking about all of this in the first place, even before Nanamine had made a comment on it.

It had felt more correct being in the body of a girl than Mitsuba had ever felt in his own. Not perfect, and still weird, but more comfortable. His own skin feels too tight sometimes, like he's straining to escape from it.

“Why'd you hate it?” he asks, and is actually, genuinely curious about the answer. “Like, what was wrong with it?”

Kou screws up his face, thinking. So stupid looking, Mitsuba thinks absently. He keeps his eyes firmly on Kou's and definitely doesn't fixate on the way he's chewing his lip, sharp fangs peeking out from between soft pink flesh.

“It wasn't my body,” Kou says eventually. He sets his bag back down on the floor. “I like my body the way it is. That just felt like I was in someone else's skin. Nothing about it was me. I don't really know how to explain it, it - might not make any sense.”

Mitsuba's vision glazes as he briefly retreats into his own thoughts, putting pieces together. “No,” he says quietly. “It makes sense.”

Kou tilts his head, doglike. Always so very doglike. Mitsuba can practically envision ears sprouting from his head.

“Is it…” the other boy starts, then hesitates, like he's considering what he's about to say. “Is it like that for you?”

Mitsuba snaps his head up. He hadn't expected Kou to be that perceptive.

“I dunno,” he says, dropping his eyes back to his nails. Chipped and ruined. “I'm still thinking about it.”

“You're thinking about it?” he hears Kou say, sounding slightly baffled. Mitsuba snorts. Kou is clueless, always so fucking clueless. Always sounding unsure of himself. Sometimes Mitsuba wants to strangle him.

“Yeah,” he says simply. “I'm thinking about it.”

“Thinking about what?” Kou asks. “Your, uh, body, or your gender, or what?”

“Lame earring boy's thinking about my body, what a pervert,” Mitsuba mutters, but it's half hearted. Kou doesn't even show any signs of annoyance at it like he usually would. Mitsuba sighs, and decides to be serious for just a moment, to match Kou's mood. “Everything.”

He thinks about Nanamine. He imagines a hundred years passing in this body. Artificial blood runs through artificial veins, artificial lungs pushing air out between artificial lips.

Kou is silent, waiting for him to continue. Mitsuba feels incredibly awkward, having his eyes on him when he's saying such important things. Or not important - he's still not sure how he feels about it. He thinks that Kou will think it's important.

“I might not be a boy,” he says eventually, and shrugs to make it sound like it means less. He watches the clouds gather outside, shifting slightly every second. “I'm still thinking about it.”

This is a test, of sorts, because Mitsuba has actually never gotten Kou's official stance on this kind of thing. Kou knows he's gay, but Mitsuba had never given him an opportunity to voice an opinion on that. However, Kou had seemed cool with it. Mitsuba had even kissed him and it hadn't grossed him out. The gender thing is an entirely different game, however. He can always say he was joking if need be. How this conversation ends will depend on how open minded Kou really is.

Kou does look confused. Again, though, there's no disgust there. No negative emotions of any sort. Mitsuba would give anything in the universe to be able to read his thoughts right now. Not knowing what he's about to say is killing him.

“Oh,” he comes out with eventually. Eyes big and blue-grey and as stormy as the clouds outside. “Are you… a girl, then?”

Mitsuba locks eyes with him, pushing his luck. “Not really,” he says. “Sometimes. But not always. I think I'm something else.”

“What something else?” Kou asks, almost incredulously. Still not disgusted. “Like… something in the middle?”

“Sometimes,” Mitsuba hums. “I guess.”

Kou blinks. “So you're… everything, but only one thing at a time?”

The way he's phrasing this sounds stupid, and really, anything else and Mitsuba might be mocking him right now. However, he's unfortunately bang on the money with his guess as to what Mitsuba's talking about. Everything, but only one thing at a time.

“Exactly,” he says. A note of surprise in his voice. “You're following this better than I thought you would.”

“I don't know about that,” Kou admits, leaning back in his seat and running his hands through his hair. It sticks up sharply in the wake of his fingers. “I don't know if I get it, but it's also not really my business, is it?”

A smile spreads across Mitsuba's face. He can't help it. “There you go,” he beams, leaning into his palms again. “You're finally figuring me out.”

A sharp laugh leaves Kou's lips. “You are such an irritating bastard, do you know that?”

Mitsuba nods cheerfully, and Kou shakes his head.

“So,” he continues slowly, and Mitsuba tips his head again, not having expected him to say more. “Are you, like… changing anything?”

Oh, Mitsuba gets it. “Changing what?” he asks innocently, even though he knows damn fucking well what Kou's talking about. He just wants to hear how he'll say it, if he'll commit to it. “I don't know what you mean.”

Kou scowls, picking up on Mitsuba's bullshit a mile away. “How people refer to you,” he explains, moving his hands around in the air as if that's supposed to mean anything. “What people call you. I figured that's why you're telling me this, right? Because you're changing something.”

Mitsuba… hadn't actually considered that. He hadn't even thought he'd get this far into the conversation before he had to change the subject. Maybe he was underestimating Kou's character - maybe he was doing so on purpose in order to prepare himself for a rejection. He should have known Kou wouldn't care what he was.

“I -” he starts. He swallows, suddenly stupidly nervous for no reason whatsoever. “I don't know.”

There's an awkward pause.

“Well,” Kou says, tone light. “When you know, tell me about it.”

As simple as that. Mitsuba feels like a weight he didn't know was there has been lifted off of his shoulders.

He leans back in his seat, pondering to himself, while the bell rings.

Kou gets to his feet, his chair scraping across the floor. “Fun's over,” he says, somewhat mournfully. “Will I see you later?”

His huge puppy dog eyes paired with those words - will I see you later? - make Mitsuba think of a film he watched with Tsukasa, Natsuhiko and Nanamine once. It had been a romcom, and Natsuhiko hadn't been a fan of it, snorting and commenting scathingly during every scene before glancing at Nanamine to see what their opinion was. 

But Nanamine and Tsukasa had loved it. They'd been enthralled the entire time, so much so that Tsukasa had been the one to tell Natsuhiko to shut up when he'd started a critique during the leadup to the big kiss scene. Mitsuba remembers this moment changing some of his views on Tsukasa somewhat drastically. It's not that he's no longer afraid of him; it's more that it became obvious in that moment that Tsukasa, despite his cruel and horrifying tendencies, was extremely interested in the concept of love. He'd shared the same expression as Nanamine, which Mitsuba had never seen before. He'd never witnessed them really get along on a personal level ever before. In that moment, however, they were leaned up against each other, watching the protagonists kiss with identical looks of enraptured glee on their faces.

…All that to say that the line Kou had just spoken reminded Mitsuba of that movie, and thus, is extremely cringe.

“Will I see you later,” Mitsuba repeats mockingly, then grins and pushes himself to his feet so he can flick the end of Kou's nose. “You're so sad. You'll see me when you see me, ok? I can't let you get too much of me at once, or I'll stop being a luxury and you'll start taking me for granted.”

Kou cracks a grin, blinking at Mitsuba's attack. “Uh huh,” he drones, unenthusiastically. “If you say so.”

Without warning, there's a loud crack of thunder. Kou jumps. Mitsuba doesn't, but does glance at the window curiously. There's rain streaking down the glass, painting the sky dark. Beside him, Kou groans.

“I have to walk home in that in, like, two hours,” he complains. He shoulders his bag, frowning. “Today's not my day at all.”

“Good thing you have an umbrella,” Mitsuba quips, nodding in the direction of Kou's raiteijou, folded away in the side of his bag.

Kou laughs, actually laughs, throwing his head back and everything. White fangs underneath pink lips fill Mitsuba's vision. He stares while Kou's rubbing at his eyes, not paying attention. He feels his stomach rumbling, shooting hunger pains causing him to wince and clutch at himself with a sharp intake of breath.

“Yeah, thank God for that,” Kou giggles, after he's collected himself. He heads to the door as the second bell sounds, opening it and allowing the sounds of students in the hall to fill the room. “Seeya, Mitsuba.”

Mitsuba always loves hearing the sound of his own name in Kou's voice. Somehow, it makes him feel more human.

“Wait,” he says, surprising even himself. “Kou.”

Kou stops and looks at him. Eyes the same colour as the sky outside. It's weird, how blue eyes change depending on the lighting. Mitsuba almost forgets what he was going to say.

“I don't mind if you keep referring to me as a boy for now,” he says as he pulls himself together. He folds his hands behind his back, digging his nails into the palm of his hand where Kou can't see. “Just so you're not weird about it.”

Kou opens his mouth, then grins, eyes thinning. “I won't be weird,” he laughs, shaking his head. “But fine. I'm glad you talked to me about it, Mitsuba.”

“You just said you wouldn't be weird,” Mitsuba says, feeling his cheeks light up. “You're being weird.”

“Not at all,” Kou says, sidestepping out the door so he can keep Mitsuba in view. “Just polite. You should try that sometime.”

Then he's gone, before Mitsuba has the chance to smack him.

He stands in the empty classroom for a few minutes, thinking. Staring at the clean white tops of his cute pink shoes. 

…Kou hadn't said anything about his eye makeup or lip gloss. Shame. Mitsuba's good looks are wasted on such an oblivious, ugly earring.

He's back in the broadcasting room five minutes later.

“How was lunch?” Nanamine asks him. They're sitting on the couch across from Tsukasa's CRT, although it's not on. Tsukasa doesn't let anyone touch it without permission. Natsuhiko learned that the hard way. He had cried for an hour after Tsukasa was done with him.

Mitsuba comes over to sink into the seat beside them. They're drawing something, although he doesn't snoop on what. “It was ok,” he says, nonchalant. “I had tempura.”

“Good tempura?” Nanamine asks. Their tone is somewhat wistful, eyes distant. “How I would love a good home cooked meal. You're very lucky, Mitsuba.”

Lucky. Mitsuba's never thought of himself that way.

Suddenly, Nanamine is looking at him. There's a knowing look on their face. “Did he say anything about the makeup I did for you?” they ask in a tone too innocent for the words. Mitsuba tenses, eyes practically bulging out of their sockets.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he says, a little too loudly. “There's no he. I just wanted to try it out.”

Nanamine hums, returning their eyes to their book. Their pen scratches against the page roughly. “Mhm, if you say so…”

“I do say so,” Mitsuba insists. He sits up, squeezing his hands together in his lap. “Really, you're worse than Tsu-”

The room door swings open with a bang, and Mitsuba's teleported into the nearest mirror in an instant.

His heart pounds. He stares out at the expanse of his boundary, even as conversation from the broadcasting room plays from the mirror he'd come through behind him, somewhat muffled through the glass. “Sakura,” he hears Tsukasa say through the glass. His voice is as light and cheerful as always. “Where's Mitsuba? I wanted to talk to him.”

“Oh,” comes Nanamine's voice. “I haven't seen them lately. Perhaps they're having lunch. My apologies.”

There's an exaggerated frown in Tsukasa's voice when he next speaks. “Phooey, I had something I really wanted to show him. Ok, seeya, Sakura, I have a new pet I need to look after and if I leave him for too long he might start eating people.”

“That sounds lovely,” Nanamine says, tone slightly strained. “Have fun with that.”

The second the door clicks shut again, Mitsuba sticks his head back through the mirror.

“Thanks,” he says, as he climbs back through. “I had a bad feeling that he was going to ask me to do something I wouldn't want to do.”

Nanamine's lips turn upwards. “Anytime.”

Mitsuba spends the evening reading more of Nanamine's books. His mind is wandering, however, thinking about their brief conversation with Tsukasa. Perhaps they're having lunch.

A smile forms on his face, and he hides it behind his hands.