the way to the heart

[rokuta]

Dealing with confessions was always roughest at the end of winter. Touya's shoe locker literally rained them in the week before graduation, to the collective kudos of the boys from classes A and B, immediately heeled by an argument about which girls might merit selection.

"Bet they wouldn't like to hear you say that," commented Touya at large, though no one was listening. He picked up the envelopes that had tumbled onto the floor and closed his locker with a clang.

One of the envelopes had handmade lace on it, glued carefully onto the shape of a heart.

"Seniors," guessed Yukito later, correctly, and smiled.

Touya hadn't expected genuine surprise, but still on some level such a truism wounded him. Yukito just kept on slicing daikon into paper-thin rounds until Touya's posture leaning on the kitchen counter became palpably unnatural.

"You do make a wonderful younger man."

"No..."

"Or not."

Touya said, "Hey," but then Yukito smiled again.

"It was a joke," he said. "Do you want carrots?"

"Hm?"

"They're said to improve eyesight." A fall of hair was starting to get into Yukito's eyes, and his hands were occupied, so Touya came up and brushed it away.

About the carrots Touya said, "Okay."

"Thanks."

"Haha. You like carrots that much?"

Yukito laughed, too. Yukito liked everything, even two-month-old natto on toast. In reality, it wasn't the wisest of Touya's concessions to let Yukito cook for him, because he and Yukito didn't really see eye to eye when it came to food.

"Are you going to read them?"

"Eh? The carrots?"

"Silly. The notes."

"No," said Touya, and sighed. "I don't know. I don't like to. Why?"

"No reason," said Yukito, in a way that somehow made it obvious that he had always and without fail read every note appeared in his own locker, to a one.

"I guess they do make an effort writing them..."

Yukito looked up at him. "Didn't you?"

Yes, but that wasn't the point. You couldn't really shift the course of another person's heart, not even with a perfectly worded confession. Touya knew. He picked up a strawberry from the box under Yukito's elbow, bit it, and shrugged.

"I guess I could read them," he said. "It's just not so easy, you know?"

Yukito nodded, and moved the strawberries out of reach. The one he sliced turned instantly into a star shape. He had obviously been practicing at home.

Touya could tell. "I really hate making girls cry," he added.

"You're such a good person."

It would have been Touya's turn to laugh, but he didn't. He tried to be, he really did. It just wasn't all that easy. The place on Yukito's forehead where Touya had brushed the hair away showed the tiniest trace of a fingernail.

Delicacy and care. That was just it.

"Okay, fine."

"Oh? You'll read them?"

"I'll read them."

"That's nice." Yukito was smiling yet again, which meant Touya didn't need to worry. Neither of them did. That's how it was.

"Hey. I don't like corn."

"Too bad," said Yukito. "You'll just have to eat around it. Sorry. Here you go, then."

The sausages had even been sliced into little octopus shapes, swimming freely in a carrot sea, which was said to improve eyesight.

Yukito must not have been expecting genuine surprise, either.

"Now you'll have an excuse," he said.

Touya accepted the bento, and finally laughed. He couldn't help it, he laughed because Yukito's palm on his cheek was cold, and really wet still.

"Today, you're the expert," he said, and didn't wipe his face.