Between pursed lips. a "pff" escapes. Souta's brown eyes narrow as Shintarou begins to laugh at Souta's irked expression, and Souta stares at Shintarou, stunned.
Is he for real?
"What's so funny?" Souta demands. "What is?"
Shintarou continues to cackle.
Souta extends his hand, and pulls on the lock of hair that sticks out of the top of the howling boy.
"Ow!" Shintarou jumps back. The humour's gone from his face, and he jabs an accusing finger onto Souta's chest. "What was that?"
Souta innocently blinks at the boy. "What? It's funny." He starts to laugh, ridiculously artificial "AHAHA"s that an irate Shintarou unamusedly listens to, mouth curved down in displeasure.
But it's hard to keep his arms crossed and brows narrowed together. Shintarou's features, out of his own control, soften by the second, and soon, both boys are giggling together, shoulders shaking in genuine mirth.
It seems as if they are friends now.
✧࿓☾
Shintarou and Souta, Souta and Shintarou. They are friends now.
It's an interesting revelation, really. On the walk home from kindergarten, Souta sometimes wonders how he even hated Shintarou in the first place. He has never smiled so much in another boy's presence, simply basking in the moment, comforting and wild, baseballs hitting faces square in the nose and hands linked together, arms swinging merrily on field trips and in playgrounds.
They are the best of friends.
"If you leave, we're never gonna be friends again."
Shintarou frowns at Souta's glum statement. His heart twists, not because of the words, but because of the crestfallen expression that Souta is wearing. Perhaps his words are roundabout, but Souta is very against the mere prospect of his best friend leaving him.
(Like his father, whose beer-reeking body is now ashes in an urn, and how Souta has left his father's house and now lives in a big, nice-smelling house with a nice lady who smells like daises and who apparently is his aunt. She won't leave him, will she?)
"Oto-san wants me to leave," Shintarou says, referring to his father, who Souta still doesn't know is the emperor. He only knows that Shintarou's father is a very important person, more important than his own father. (Or maybe he does know. Shintarou doesn't care.) Perhaps that was why Shintarou's father wasn't an urn in some random cremtorium somehwere.
Souta's eyes fill with tears. It is not manly to cry, nor is it manly to beg. But Souta cannot control his emotions like the adult he is supposed to be, the man of the house that his father used to be. Shintarou stumbles back from the way Souta throws himself at him, arms wrapping tightly around him, as if he were trying to make sure that Shintarou didn't slip from his grip.
"Don't leave me," Souta's words turn into sobs, and the tears that he had been vehemently holding him soak Shintarou's shoulder, and Shintarou can feel in every single crevice of his body the way Souta's body shakes. "You're the only person in the world that hasn't left me yet."
Shintarou's nose is stuffy and blocked, and his grey eyes burn with warm tears. He doesn't want to leave Tokyo, leave the Imperial Palace, he doesn't want to leave and never come back like his little sister had, doesn't want to disappear and never come back like Mina did.
But he is still so incredibly fortunate that everyone else in his family is still here, right? Even though Oto-san has changed and he is sending Shintarou to Italy and sending Junta to China and he has given up on finding Mina. Even though Shintarou was going to leave the only boy in the world who could give him comfort in a time of turmoil like this.
extra | truth, reality and everything in between
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