IN THE CLEAR SKY

Chapter 2

Kei has a system for entering a room.

It is not something he developed consciously or could explain if asked. It is simply something he does — has always done, for as long as he can remember. He pauses at the threshold. Takes in the room. Locates where the noise is, where the energy is concentrated, and then plots the most efficient route to his seat that keeps him out of both. It takes approximately two seconds and he does it every single time, whether it's a classroom or a convenience store or a family gathering he'd rather not be at.(Kei is an introvert)

He does it now, at the door of Room 2-B, and immediately regrets having eyes.

Haru is already there.

This is not unusual — Kei knows, in the peripheral, cataloguing way he knows most things about his classmates, that Haru is almost always early. What is unusual is that Haru is currently perched sideways on his desk — not sitting in his chair like a normal person, on top of the actual desk — talking to someone in the row beside him, laughing at something, and in the process of doing all of this is facing directly toward the door.

Directly toward Kei.

For one flat, terrible second their eyes meet.

Haru's face does something — a recognition, a shift, a smile breaking open like it was already waiting just under the surface — and he raises one hand in a wave that manages to be both completely casual and somehow specifically aimed, the way a spotlight is specifically aimed, and Kei feels the back of his neck go warm.

He walks to his seat. Efficiently. Without acknowledging the wave, which he will feel bad about for the next twenty minutes.

He gets out his notebook. Opens it to a blank page. Stares at the blank page.

From three seats across the room and one row up, he can hear Haru still talking to whoever he was talking to — something about a vending machine on the third floor being broken again, could someone please report it, it's a genuine quality of life issue — and the person responds and Haru laughs again, easy and unforced, and Kei writes the date at the top of his blank page just to be doing something with his hands.

May 2nd, he writes.

He looks at it.

Closes the notebook.

Ryuu arrives four minutes before the bell and drops into the seat behind Kei with the energy of someone who has been awake for approximately eleven minutes.

"Happy birthday," he says, producing a slightly crushed convenience store bag from his jacket pocket and dropping it on Kei's desk. "It's the chocolate one. Don't say I never do anything for you."

Kei looks at the bag. It is indeed the chocolate one — a limited edition chocolate cream bun from the bakery section that Ryuu knows Kei likes and would never buy for himself. Despite the crushing it is completely intact.

"Thank you," Kei says.

"You're doing the face."

"I don't have a face."

"You have the face you make when you're thinking about something you don't want to talk about." Ryuu leans forward on his arms, studying Kei with the cheerful shamelessness of someone who has known him since they were eight years old. "What happened."

"Nothing happened. It's seven fifty in the morning."

"Things happen at seven fifty in the morning."

"Ryuu."

"I'm just saying."

"I know what you're saying."

Ryuu grins, leans back, apparently satisfied with having planted the seed. He pulls out his own notebook and starts copying something from the board that Kei is fairly sure was put up last week, because Ryuu is the kind of person who deals with things at the last possible moment and somehow never suffers for it, which Kei finds both impressive and faintly aggravating.

The bell rings. Chairs scrape. The room settles into its morning shape.

Kei opens his notebook back to the page with the date on it and picks up his pen and does not look three seats across the room. He doesn't. He is focused. He is fine. He is sixteen years old and fully in control of where his eyes go.

A small square of paper lands on the corner of his desk.

He stares at it.

It is folded once, neatly, and on the outside in handwriting that is rounder and more deliberate than he expected it says: Sato-kun.

He looks up. Their homeroom teacher is writing something on the board, back to the class. Around him everyone is settling, getting out books, having the last whispered fragments of morning conversations.

He looks three seats across the room.

Haru is facing the front. Perfectly innocent. The absolute picture of a student ready to begin his educational day. He does not look back.

Kei looks at the note.

He unfolds it under the desk.

did you eat something this morning? you have the look of someone who forgot to eat breakfast. also good morning. also happy birthday again 🎈

Kei reads it twice. He has, in fact, eaten breakfast — the tamagoyaki star, the miso soup, the rice, all of it — but something about being asked makes him feel briefly, inexplicably looked after in a way he doesn't know what to do with. He turns the note over. Writes on the back, small and neat:

I ate breakfast. How do you know what I look like when I haven't eaten breakfast.

He folds it. He holds it for a moment. Then, during the brief window when the teacher turns back to the board, he passes it sideways, watches it travel the row in small careful handoffs until it reaches the end, crosses the aisle, and begins making its way up.

He faces the front.

His heart is doing something slightly unreasonable.

The note comes back during second period.

i pay attention. you'd be surprised what you notice when you actually look at people.

also you passed the note the wrong way, it went past three people who definitely read it. next time go via Nakamura, she's more discreet.

Kei looks at this for a long moment. Then he writes back:

There won't be a next time. We're in class.

The reply comes back faster than should be physically possible given the distance involved.

sure 🎈

Kei puts the note in his desk drawer. He does not write back. He stares at the board for the rest of second period absorbing approximately nothing of what is being said and being, for once, completely unbothered by this fact.

Lunch is the part of the school day Kei usually navigates with the most precision.

He and Ryuu have an established spot — the far end of the second floor corridor, a windowsill wide enough to sit on with a view of the courtyard below and a corner that keeps them out of the main lunchtime traffic. They've been eating there since first year. It is reliable. It is theirs. It requires no decisions.

Today he is three bites into his lunch when footsteps stop in front of them.

He looks up.

Haru is standing there with a convenience store bag in one hand and the specific expression of someone who is very good at looking like they've arrived somewhere by accident when they absolutely haven't. He takes in the windowsill, the courtyard view, Ryuu's immediate and undisguised curiosity.

"Nice spot," Haru says.

"It's fine," Kei says.

Ryuu says nothing. He is doing the thing where he keeps his face very neutral, which on Ryuu's face looks deeply unnatural and means he is paying extremely close attention.

Haru looks at Kei. Just for a moment — a question in it, brief and unbothered, not pushy. Kei thinks about saying something like we're fine here or there's not really room but both of these things are visibly untrue and Haru's eyes are patient in a way that makes small deflections feel more exhausting than they're worth.

Kei moves his bag.

Haru sits. He opens his convenience store bag, pulls out an onigiri, and settles against the wall with the ease of someone who has decided to be comfortable somewhere and simply is. He does not try to fill the silence immediately. He looks out the courtyard window and eats his onigiri and lets the moment be what it is.

Ryuu catches Kei's eye over Haru's head.

His expression says, very clearly: we are absolutely talking about this later.

Kei's expression says: please don't.

Ryuu grins and looks away.

They eat lunch in the pale May sunlight coming through the corridor window, the courtyard below full of the noise of other people's ordinary days, and Kei sits with the strange, uncomfortable, not entirely unpleasant feeling of his routine shifting slightly beneath him. Like the furniture moved an inch in the dark.

Just enough to notice.

Just enough.

At the end of the school day, Kei is packing up his bag when a small object lands on his desk.

He looks down.

It is a single wrapped caramel candy. The good kind, the slightly expensive one from the confectionery shop near the station that he mentioned to exactly no one, ever, that he liked.

He looks up.

Haru is already halfway to the door, bag over one shoulder, saying goodbye to someone across the room. He doesn't look back.

Kei picks up the candy. Turns it over in his fingers.

I pay attention, the note had said. You'd be surprised what you notice when you actually look at people.

He puts the candy in his pocket. Slings his bag over his shoulder. Walks out into the May afternoon where the sky is still doing that thing — pale at the edges, deep at the centre, clear and unhurried and endless.

He thinks: nobody has ever paid that kind of attention to me before.

He thinks: I don't know what to do with that.

He walks home the long way. Both ways. He takes so long getting home that his mother texts him twice and he barely notices.