The Tale of a Century \\ SoraMafu

> Four <

"You slept on the floor again."

Mafu looked over at Soraru, who was lying on his stomach on the bed, from his position by the window. He averted his gaze downwards, and then back out the window. Soraru sighed. He wished he could do something about the glint of sadness always hidden behind his eyes. "Why don't you sleep on the bed?" Soraru questioned.

Mafu visibly swallowed, "I like it better on the floor..."

"It makes me feel like I did something wrong every time you're on the floor, though."

"I'm sorry about that," Mafu said, and Soraru caught the tone of guilt, immediately regretting what he said.

"Oh, I didn't mean it that way, you did nothing wrong," Soraru quickly tried to cover up. Mafu's head snapped over to look at him, and Soraru lowered his head. "It's just that... I... love you, you know, and I want you to be comfortable here, so...." he trailed off, blushing from embarrassment from his statement. Soraru timidly looked at Mafu, whose eyes were wide with surprise and lips parted as if he was going to say something, and for a moment, Soraru thought he had said the wrong thing again. The slight panic disappeared when Mafu turned back towards the window and said, "Thank you."

Soraru stared at him, relieved that he had said the correct thing, but it was true. He did love Mafu.

"You don't smile or talk a lot, do you?" Soraru said in an another attempt to start a conversation. Mafu's reply to that was giving him a small smile. It was horribly fake. Soraru shook his head, "That doesn't count." Dropping the smile, Mafu turned back towards the window.

However, despite that smile being the worst fake smile on the face of the Earth, Soraru believed that even with that smile, Mafu looked beauitful, which is a phenomena that he didn't even know how to explain.

Suddenly a thought came to his head, "Mafu-kun, did you go to school?"

"I got a bit of education at the orphanage. It stopped after a while."

"Want me to tutor you before school starts again?" Soraru suggested. "It's going to be hard to catch up, right? And I'm a pretty smart guy."

Mafu gave him a skeptical look.

Soraru faceplanted into the bed. "I promise you, I have full marks," he said dejectedly into the sheets. When he looked up, Mafu was back to staring out the window.

".... Hey, how about we go out tomorrow?"

Mafu turned his full body toward him, a questioning look in his eyes.

"I think it's a good idea to get out of the house," Soraru continued. "We could get some things for you."

"Okay."

Soraru jumped, "What?"

"I said okay."

Soraru quickly pinched his arm on his lap to make sure he wasn't dreaming. He didn't expect Mafu to agree to it as easily as he did, so he was prepared to convince him to go.

"There's no backing out, Mafu."

"I know."