HEART TO HEART. blue lock

10. WHAT COMES AFTER RAIN IS MORE RAIN

"eat your damn food!"

his sister shouts, slapping the back of his head using her new obsession: romance novels, sapphic ones. hyouma doesn't think that's any different from her otome games, but she says that a single gay man like him won't ever get it.

"what— i am eating!" he shouts back, caressing his head. that novel must've weighed the same as her hair straightener because he feels a bump on the back of his head.

his sister rolls her eyes as she sits herself down across from hyouma. she turns on her phone instead of turning a page of the book she brought. "obviously not. i bet you're wallowing over those soccer men who are married with three kids."

hyouma huffs. he will probably never get to be one of those men since his knee is essentially damned now. "most of them are prioritising their careers over their love life. you should take some notes."

she gasps with her hand over her mouth and her eyes widening. dramatic bitch. "i am going to be my girl's housewife, a plan you can never imagine because you don't get any bitches."

hyouma gasps just as dramatically. "excuse you—"

a sigh interrupts him.

"i get home from work and you two start to fight like animals. i just want to see when this kazehaya boy and sawako girl will confess," she says from the couch, her tone given up on being firm with her kids.

his sister snickers and mutters under her breath, "you can't relate to them, by the way."

she hisses when hyouma kicks her under the table.

☆✮☆

looking back on it now, his relationship with y/n was something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

it's not as if hyouma doesn't know a thing about him, even though that's what he's been saying, it's just... it's just that he was never exactly close with him.

sure, they were almost together twenty-four-seven in middle school, but sometimes it feels like if they were to drift apart at any moment, they would've been okay. almost as though the amount of words exchanged between them doesn't equal the worth of each of them.

it's too bad that they ended up as anything but okay as a result of hyouma cutting things off between them. he values emotional intimacy, but he won't seek it out. he'd rather take the impulse from rage than the initiation for comfort.

but he did it because y/n was the one to drift away first.

not to exactly blame him but it's just so... god. try getting to know y/n for yourself and you'll understand. not understand y/n—though that works too—but what hyouma is trying to go on about here.

there's a chance hyouma was the problem here, snapping and leaving like that.

still, it's not like y/n shouted after him.

silence was his response, yet it said enough and more than what hyouma wanted to know.

☆

vulnerability isn't the son of chigiri's household's strongest suit.

it's an uncharted territory hyouma tries to ignore, one he will never get near even if his sister looks at him with something as strange as concern.

men can and should cry, but not hyouma. and that's not because he's a man, but because he's hyouma. also not because of who he is, but because of the foundation of who he is.

do you feel him?

take this as an excuse if you want, but it's just how he was raised. he's not made of feelings spoken to one another in words or confrontation, he's raised by actions left unspoken and tears a taboo topic. soft conversations go cold with hyouma's bitter nature and averting gaze.