Midwinter Blossom

1

On the last day of middle school, Takaharu went up to him and said, "I like you."

It was the middle of winter, and they were both bundled up in coats and scarves. Not even the warmth of graduation could fully protect them from the cold.

Fumi just stared at him. "Oh," he said. "Okay."

A moment of silence passed between them. Takaharu looked away, over the hill on which their school sat. More time passed with neither of them making a single sound. Anxious, Fumi offered an "mm" noise from between his closed lips. The two walked down the hill and back to school.

That was how it went down. The start and the end of it all.

*

Fumi turned 17. Takaharu 16. They were both going through the motions of high school, separate from each other.

Back in middle school, they could never have imagined being so far apart. After what occurred during graduation day, Takaharu pulled away. It was a slow veer from their daily routine, and Fumi hardly noticed. At first, Takaharu stopped going to Fumi's house on the weekends. He cited homework, which never encumbered him in the past. Then, he brought his own bento boxes to school and ate while studying, so there was no longer any reason to go to the cafeteria together.

After their first year in high school, some of their classes were reshuffled. They ended up seeing even less of each other. When they did meet, they never spoke. Yet Fumi couldn't stop himself from watching him. During P. E., when they were completing their laps, Fumi's gaze lingered on Takaharu's broad shoulders, on the clothes shifting over his back.

Takaharu was a good runner. He ran often, especially when something was bothering him. Their P. E. teacher put him on the school team just weeks after he entered high school. He went along with it solely out of respect for their teacher. By the end of the month, he brought two national medals back to Nagahara High. It boosted his rank among his peers, and made him something of a celebrity at school.

When the school bell rang, everyone began their slow filter off the track and into the gymnasium. Takaharu was, as always, swarmed. He didn't talk much, and that was why people liked him; he seemed a good listener. But Fumi knew he wasn't really listening. Takaharu didn't like gossip. He entertained it for the sake of appearances, as he did all other intolerable situations. Keeping that blank canvas of a face, offering generic answers and advice- people liked that plain, boring facade of his. No one really knew him for who he was.

Perhaps, Fumi thought, not even me.

He felt a tap on his shoulder. "Hey, Fumi, you going on the class trip?"

Tooru, one of Fumi's new friends, pulled him out of his reverie.

Fumi looked at him, lost for a moment. He tried to grasp the question he'd just been asked.

"Ah, Mount Iwae?" Fumi said. "Yeah, I've already paid."

"Awesome. I'm really looking forward to it- not the hiking so much as the view, though. There'll be lots of beautiful pictures to take..."

Surrounded by a group of girls, Takaharu slipped right past them. Not once did he glance at Fumi, as though to him, Fumi was a ghost without a material form, as ephemeral as one of the dozens of dreams humans have and forget. As Fumi and Tooru headed to the changing rooms, Fumi glanced at his hand. The crescents of his nails were imprinted on his palm.