Kanji felt the cold wind pushing slowly against his back as he made his way down the street from his house.

He had forgotten what day of the week it was. He hadn't been doing enough lately to care. Unsure of what books or notes he should bring to school, he made the decision easy on himself that morning and simply chose not to bring any.

Weird, he thought to himself, pondering what had been spoken to him within the past two weeks.

Acting weird, huh?

"Did you hear?" the other students whispered in class as their eyes burned into the back of Kanji's neck.

"Hear what?"

"Kanji-kun's been hangin' around the soccer jock, the one with the plaster on his face."

"What? You mean Nagase, that second-year? I heard he only hangs around that new kid Seta and his friends, what's with that anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

His boots scuffed along the pavement.

"He just sits there and talks shit to anybody who tries to say anything to him, even girls. Do you think he's gay or something weird?"

Reaching up with his forefingers to flick his nose, his dark eyes scanned the gray horizon. The fog had been slowly seeping back into Inaba; the air carried a forlorn feeling with it inside the density of the gray skyless cloud.

He imagined once again what it was like to sit upon the grassy riverbank with her.

"Why can't you talk about anything, Kanji?" Naoto had insisted on asking.

Kanji felt bristled by her questions; her words were the dagger-like claws of a cat on his back. He faced away to protect himself.

"You were so open just the other week. Now you'll hardly say a word."

Kanji didn't remember when it first was; when he first gazed out the window of his classroom and saw it. Saw them. Saw him.

He hunched over into his knees, gazing into the green abyss that flowed before him. The water was clear once.

"It's..."

Naoto's eyes narrowed beneath the bill of her cap.

"I'm just so god damned confused."

Was it worth the relationship, the risk of getting caught up in another person he accidentally cared about? Kanji remembered his shoulders rumbling as he shivered; the wind that dug its nails deeper between the fibers of their clothes pinched at his skin and swept his emotions away.

"...all of the time."

He passed by the nearest residential district. Souji Seta's dark wooden house stood solidly against the ground, unplucked brown shreds of grass sticking out from between the cracks in the sidewalk. There was an orange cat. Kanji's brow furrowed as he cocked his head. There was always an orange cat there.

His fingers moved to the back of his white-haired head, scratching it.

The room in his house had been lonely lately. For weeks he had put a halt on his hobby of doll-making.

"What's wrong with you?" his mother asked. "Why aren't you helping me in the store? You know those kids are going to be disappointed, Kanji, really."

His hands flitted inside his pockets. He tried not to show how incredibly fidgety he was.

His thoughts gravitated back to when his door slammed. The walls were wavy; he remembered smiling, but his lips had taken on a sinister curl. He had felt it. His fingers had strummed against that spot in Daisuke's thigh, where no one else's hand had been before. It seemed like forever since then.

"What do you mean, nothing in common?!"

After that, there had only been one time that they met.

The small-town road snaked steadily into his feet as the metal in his nose and ears glinted sharply in the cold. His eyebrows knit into a customary scowl and his neck hung over his collarbone as the concept, the reasoning, behind what he was doing at this very moment moved in and out of his consciousness like a fly.

Whatever it was, it had been bubbling inside him ever since it all started. The truth was, it was easy to hide behind the image of a grim and hormonal teen.

Kanji reached into the innards of his leather coat and extracted his flask. He drank from it. His brain was a narrative collage of colors; feelings that hid inside the dark, punk tones of his clothing. The feeling of the palm of his hand wiping against his jeans left a familiar memory in the back of his brain.

The memory of those stupid track pants.

---

After days of receiving groveling text messages, Daisuke picked his phone up from the middle of his bed where he had thrown it. The team had been taking more days after school to practice recently, as they steadily moved their way up in the ranks of the surrounding regional districts.

But it was just another day. The darkness of the room cocooned around him, except for a pale glow that shone from the television set as the dim colors seizured against his tired face. There was barely sound; Daisuke had lowered the volume on the screen daily by small increments until it was nearly muted, as each day he found himself wishing to hear himself think, while watching the men with boxing gloves try and knock each other down. He loved his own sport, but he wasn't sure anymore of what was truly refreshing to him.

Thumping back down in his sunken seat, he remembered his nose plaster and tore it off. He held it in front of his eyes: the small piece had lost a considerable amount of stiffness around the edges, and it had turned cream-colored from dust and dirt. He reached over to place it delicately on his cramped bed stand, his gaze moving back to the TV.

As Daisuke flipped open his cell phone, a fluttering feeling began to boil in his chest. He paused as he listened to the barely-audible sound from the televised match, before moving his fingers over the keypad, tapping them quickly. He used his other hand to pick subconsciously at his privates through his sweats as he thought about how he was going to deal with Kanji.

Or, more importantly, how he was going to deal with himself.

---

"Hey."

Kanji's voice was low. His heels dug into the flayed carpet, the back of his jeans rubbing against the windowsill. His shadow projected by the moon behind him sunk faintly into the dim light of Daisuke's room; a lamp next to the TV spilled yellow against their faces as their eyes caught.

At first, Daisuke said nothing. Then he murmured, "Come inside, I don't want a draft in here."

Kanji slid the rest of the way into his room. His focus broke away from Daisuke as his eyes wandered around the room, from soccer poster to poster. The walls weren't the same color he had expected them to be.

"S'like, orange..." he said aloud, as Daisuke pulled the window shut behind him.

"What?"

"Nothin', just..."

He fell backwards onto Daisuke's bed. "Nice place."

Daisuke still remained standing beside his window, nodding, glancing about his room for food containers, socks he had masturbated into, anything he had meant to clean up before Kanji's arrival but forgotten.

"So what's goin' on?" the blonde boy asked, attempting to make his tone casual.

Daisuke shrugged. They looked, but it was different now. Now they studied each other, watching each other's brains operate through their pupils.

"So..."

Kanji's expression was curious as Daisuke stood in front of him. Legs straddled, their faces pulled together like gravity and very soon they lay atop one another, stomachs sweating and articles of clothing gone. After moving apart from each other beneath the covers, Daisuke lay on his side, picking at the front of his wifebeater between grasps of Kanji's naked torso. His brown hair was ruffled, as usual.

"Kanji."

A grunt. He faced away from Daisuke, cheek nestled atop the sheets, smelling the deep scent of the boy's sleep inside the fabric.

"Do you think things will stay like this?"

If Daisuke had noticed Kanji shifting in place before, he noticed the lack of motion that came from him now. The pause sunk into the room like a poisonous gas.

"Well, again...do you want the truth, or you want it sugar-coated?"

Daisuke's eyes darted, his weight resting upon his elbows as he lay halfway-up.

"Just tell me."

"You know...I think I love you."

Daisuke was momentarily subdued by shock. For a second, he felt for the first time as though there was no boundary between them any longer; he could have said anything and it wouldn't have been strange. It was almost euphoria.

"You didn't answer me," Daisuke finally pressed.

Kanji still faced away silently.

"Will we?"

"......"

"Will we?"

The feeling fluttered in his throat. The walls moved calmly into their space, the light from the lamp forming pressure in the air, leaving the setting of the moment imprinted in their minds forever.

"No."

---

Kanji's feet stopped at the gate. The fog was letting up, but barely.

The sound of a ball thumping against cleated feet punctuated the otherwise still environment; the color of the grass spread across the ground was astonishingly bright compared to the rest of Inaba, and Kanji imagined touching it with a feeling of something freshly wet, as in the early morning. He looked around to see if anyone else was there. He fingered carefully the cold bar on the gate and opened it, sliding through the metal quietly as he watched the soccer players sweep over each other in patterns.

He tiptoed his way across the green. There were clapping sounds; the players in orange made a goal.

Daisuke's breath was heavy, but his lungs springy; his knees buckled steadily in sync with his running feet. Despite the gloomy weather, beads of sweat shone on his cheekbones as he darted between blades of grass. So far Yasogami held the advantage against the other team; they came from the nearest town south of Inaba, and they wore black.

"Nice one, Ishitaka!" Daisuke bellowed to his teammate. Rubbing his face against the short sleeve of his shirt, he glanced to see someone sitting at a far end of the empty bleachers. It was another second before he realized who that person was.

A flock of ducks swam low through the air above Kanji's head as he watched Daisuke. Their eyes locked, their faces stolid; for a moment, the two boys endured the familiar chilling feeling of knowing the other was there. Daisuke turned away as he walked back into position, looking back once more as Kanji stuffed his hands inside his leather jacket, shivering slightly. The same boiling feeling curled slowly inside their chests. The grass chipped and smeared onto the players' cleats as another goal was blocked, and their breath formed clouds of smoke that dissipated into the cold air. Daisuke went silent, as he often did when he played, but this time there were no congratulatory pats or words of encouragement at the end of a round after a teammate executed a proper pass or a successful intervention. The only sounds that came from lips as he darted back and forth were the quiet pants and grunts.

He played this way until there was suddenly less than a minute left of time in the game. The sun had gravitated closer to the horizon behind the thick layers of fog, and he found himself standing at the end of a line before their net, his hands held behind his back. There was a chirping sound somewhere nearby; the leaves and the newly-sprouted blossoms hung still on the trees like glue.

A thump; Daisuke narrowed his eyes toward the oncoming ball, and leapt upward as he braced himself for an impact against the forefront of his damp hair. As the soccer ball flung itself up into the sky, it took a weight in Daisuke's stomach with it, and the opposing team players move their hands against their own bodies in awkward places, knowing they had lost.

A rough grin cracked on his face, and as the other Yasogami players held each others' shoulders and extended their hands to their opponents, Daisuke's head turned back toward the naked bleachers to find them empty.

His torso swayed with the congratulatory claps on his back and front; the feel of teenage hands caressing him smoothly played in slow-motion in his mind as he stood there, watching Kanji move slowly away with his hands in his pockets. Etiquette slipped from Daisuke's thoughts as his heart leapt into his throat. He had a feeling that he had missed an opportunity, a chance to say anything he had wanted to say, but couldn't recall what any of it was. As Kanji reached the gate, he looked back, straightening his shoulders slightly, before slipping back between the chain-link fence one last time. The wet air began to form droplets in the sky. Daisuke stood quietly in the drizzle as he realized the chapter in his life was ending; between kids like them, there was no final word. There was no final goodbye. And as he felt his own fingers rub subconsciously against his thigh, he gazed out across the first love he had ever had, walking away from him, at the other end of the field.

---

end