1:12 p.m. She should have been there by now.

A slight aroma was filling the air and he was practically dancing between the stove to the filled counters. He had so much on his mind as he was cooking. Would she show up? Would she like the food? Why wasn’t she in school today? Was she alright? He was moving so anxiously between dishes that were about to end and making sure everything was beyond the expectations. Till as he was slicing the chicken that was ready to seep in oil over the stove, he slit his finger with the sharp end of the knife. It wasn’t deep enough to cause any immediate attention, but it disrupted all his thoughts that were blaring inside him. He stood over the counter, listening to the stove beeping at him and the vegetables steam through the boiler, just watching the slight blood trickle through his finger and build into a single droplet that streamed down his finger.

He was a mess and that was putting it lightly.

He said he was going to make her lunch, but in fact was slaving over what seemed to be an 8 course meal. All for a simple hang out that was probably only going to last a few hours. He was going to have so much left overs and if she did show up, there would still be enough to feed the world.

The beeping of the stove was getting on his nerves. His lower back rattled with annoyance and he just shoved his finger into his mouth to get rid of the bleeding. He flipped the switch for the oven and the beeping stopped as it shut itself off. Sighing to himself, he felt his knees wanting to give out and just fall to the ground.

Earlier when school ended, he saw Kanae but no (Name) beside her. His head that was racing faster than time usually did not permit for life, fell into a dark hole that needed some squeeze holds to cure. They planned to walk to his place together. It was the reason she grabbed his phone number to begin with. She bugged him all Thursday for it and he told her a thousand times he didn’t remember his number, which then she teased him for the point of having a phone to begin with if he didn’t use it. He just grimaced at her but also died on the inside. He wanted to give her his number, so badly he wanted her to have it. It would give him a reason to look at his phone. To check if she was trying to reach him. To let him talk to her. But he was hopeless.

She got his number, of course she did somehow. He had a feeling Gou gave it to her but he wasn’t going to ask. Honestly he didn’t care since when he turned on his phone when he got home that night, he found a message saying it was her with a smiley face. He just stared at the message for the longest time. The smiley face bothered him. It was intrusive of her to put it in there since she never smiled, but his heart raced all the same. He couldn’t even respond for hours. Every time he tried, he threw his phone down and walked away. Only to go back, stare at it and try again till he actually sent the most useless message in the history of his life of just an ‘Okay.’

Haruka felt like his lungs were going to fall apart. His plan wasn’t working anymore. Where was she?

DING-DONG!

He needed to give up and throw all the food in the trash. He was about too, till that forsaken doorbell rang made him physically jumped to the stars and back.

"Nanase, open the door!"

It was her. Thank whoever people thank in these situations.

Her muffled voice through the door gave him just enough push start to have himself flung into the foyer. Tripping over his feet multiple times but never making any face contact with the floor, he made it to the door as he heard her groan on the other side. She was here. She didn't ditch him. He was so elated and nervous he wanted to do a two-step and puke before he opened the door. Obviously, he didn't and moved with a giant sigh as he collected his prayers and silent truths to calm himself.

“Hi! I should have called you or something! I’m SO sorry, but I had therapy this morning and I completely forgot!” The moment he threw open that door with a stare of ice and a stomach that wanted to curl into a tight spiral to let hell itself through his throat, (Name) jumped up into his space. She started spewing an explanation that took him back. His eyebrows lifted to the skies as he watched her stagger left and right on her metal crutches, falling and tensing those shoulders of hers, moving in ways that enticed him. Her gentle demeanor was on a hyper end and he noticed a light sweat clinging to her eyebrows. Did she climb those stairs by herself? He was amazed and had to look past her shoulder down the hill to remind himself of a height he lived on. “My younger sister was supposed to tell Hayashi to tell you… I’m guessing either my sister or Hayashi forgot …?”   

She spoke softer as to apologize for what happened as he felt her lean away when his body crossed over hers and his ears recuperated a melody that made him automatically nod in her favor.

He found himself turning his head after counting the many stairs below his house foundation and looked at her. She was standing there waiting for him to do something. She just watched him with those empty eyes of hers filled with an unfamiliar fire and he blinked himself back to what exactly was going on. Standing at the door would do nothing for them. He was not being proper nor what he pleased to be in her presence. Without saying anything, he straighten himself and invited her in with a quick notion through a tilted head backwards. She took the invitation so smoothly he had to wonder why he even had to speak to certain people to begin with.

The two of them made their way in his entry way as he closed the door and pressed his back against it. His entry way was super small. Two bodies would sure have a hard time shuffling their way into that house together. But, her closeness to him was already driving him up a wall. Behind this closed door, they were alone. They were free to do whatever pleased them. He quickly blinked at the weird images running over his eyes and he flicked the corner of his mouth into his cheek to disrupt them. He was turning into a blubbering idiot already and he hardly said anything. Where was the wooden bat to break his knee caps when he needed it most so he wouldn’t run away and hide?

“Therapy was awful… my back feels like it’s on fir- Oh my goodness! Is that food I smell?!”

Even though he was melding himself to the door, (Name) looked like she was about to fall over for a second but was disrupted to jump about crutch to opposite crutch, all while attempting to take her shoes off with the end of the crutch. Which completely failed when the smell of food hit her and it caused her to squeal. Haruka jumped and felt the wood of the door protrude into his back, where he pushed away from it. Had he ever heard her squeal before? It was so odd sounding but he kind of wish he saw her face and not the back of her head. “Yeah…”

Breathe, he had to breathe even if he forgot how.

“Uhh! If that tastes anything like it smells, I’m going to die.”

What? No. He wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Anything but that. She only started to be there.

The mere suggestion of her wanting to die made his chest tighten but as she danced in front of him, pulling herself upwards as if to smell whatever was still cooking deeply into her lungs, he sighed exquisitely. “I’m glad you’re excited…” He couldn’t think of a single time someone had been that excited to eat what he had made. Just the thought of it melted some of the ice that was always in his face. He felt the need to smile but instead scowled as he warped himself around her and stepped up the ledge, looking down at her over his shoulder. Even if she seemed more excited than normal, something was off. She was shaking with her every movement and staggering to and fro on crutches that seemed to give her no balance at all. He was more concerned with the shear fact if she was alright or not. “You said you’re back is… on fire?”

Her attention was back down to her shoes by then, though his voice ahead of her made her look up. “Yeah, therapy is pretty brutal on me…”

A flash of pain lit up her eyes as she spoke softer than her hair gleaming in his entrance way light made him cringe. He shifted uncomfortably, “… Would you like some aspirin? You look like you’re in a lot of pain…” He questioned as he offered to make her painless. To make her not show those signs that she was struggling on the inside.

Even if she couldn’t feel it, but could see with her own eyes, her crutch pinched the side of her shoe and it came off with final ease as she lifted her body fully on the opposite crutch. A graceful tap and shuffle back downwards, her cheeks flushed a light pink while she bit down on her bottom lip. “Yes, please.”

Truth be told, her back was more than on fire especially after climbing all those steps and a giant hill he did not inform her existed. It was literally ripping itself through the already healed scar. The pain was excruciating and she felt like someone was digging their finger nails through her skin along her back to completely take hold and throw that broken spine into the stars. It was awful. How in reality that every bone and cartilage was going to burst and cause her to forever be useless. She wanted to cry and drug herself for days till the pain washed away. Totally forgetting that this was going to happen the day she was supposed to eat her stomach’s full of food, she had to put up this front that she wasn’t actually dying and was perfectly fine. Yet, of course, this kid. He saw right through her in ways others have not. Curse him.

He nodded gently and turned on his toes towards the bathroom that would hold 3 little pills to make her possibly smile or cry. Maybe both. The emptiness would go away though, and that’s what he sought after.

“I shouldn’t use my crutches in your house, huh?”

 “Uh…” He made dead stop in the middle of his back hallway. He didn’t think about that. How come he didn’t think about that? He couldn’t think about anything for the matter of fact. Okay, it was alright for her to, but at the same time, wouldn’t she have a hard time? But then again, she made her way up the hill stairs all by herself. She could do anything practically even still she was a half feeling human being. But she was in pain. She climbed that entire hill while being in this pain he couldn’t even to begin to understand. His skull felt like shattering and a light headed feeling came upon him as all the blood in his heart rushed to his brain. He couldn’t answer the damned question.

“It’s alright! I’ll crawl to the table!”

(Name) grunted quietly to herself as she sunk her entire upper body, resting her dead knees against the higher wooden floor. Twisting and dragging herself onto the next level as she let one crutch fall against the wall and that new free hand gripped the wood floor, that hand held up her entire body as she did the same with the other hand. She was so ready to crawl. She could see the table from where she was standing. She wasn’t blind. She had some idea where they were going to eat, plus it wasn’t so far away. Just one more ledge upwards and she would be there. No problem, well, she wouldn’t have had one till an arm enveloped round her back and underneath her arm that caused her to screech.

If she couldn’t feel her legs being wrapped with his other arm, Haruka still picked her up like the Princess she was and set her against his chest.  

To hell with it, she was nimble in her weight even if he never felt it before. Plus, her skin. It was so soft and light that his heart kept skipping a beat. Being a creep or not, he wanted some excuse to touch it again. Yeah… that really was creepy.

“H-Ha-Har- NANASE! What are you doing?!”

A sudden sun filled his eyes and when he looked down at her after throwing her about in his arms to make it much more comfortable for him, her entire body was a bright red from head to toe. Her eyes were brimming with embarrassed tears and her hands were clinging to his t-shirt. With that immediate look of wanting to punch him in the face, she puffed out her cheeks and made her chest heave in breaths.

She almost said my first name…

He felt like he was about to faint. To pass out and forever live in that picture of her. She was so darn cute when disturbed to the point she was about to cry.

“Carrying you to the table.” Thank goodness he didn’t and his obvious unnatural way of talking to human beings made him sound like a robot. 

“I can do it myself…!” She snapped at him with a slap to the chest. Realizing she just hit the kid that was being so kind and actually cooking for her, she pulled herself away as much as she could, trailing off in that ability to not be able to control her self.

This only made him turn to steel and retorted back with dark eyes. “I will not have you crawling through my house. Now let me carry you.” How dare she?

Her heart felt like it was going to explode. Moaning and throwing all her weight to her broken waist, she sunk into his arms as the blush seeped only into her chest and face. Her posture couldn’t keep up with him even if she tried. Every single day did she tried to read him to gather some sense into how he reacted to things and how he carried himself through his life so carelessly. However, every time she thought she had some idea of what caused him to tick, she tripped over everything leaving her two steps behind.

“… Alright.”

Moving her was simple. Simple enough to get up the ledge into the living room and placing her on a pillow at the table. It was also pretty easy enough to walk away, hiding himself from the sheer fact that he was overwhelmed. He did not watch her settle herself onto the ground with her bad hips while she shuffled about on her hands till she was comfortable and not about to fall over. He did not respond to her when she asked what was going to be for lunch and tapped her fingers on the table. He did not think towards the thoughts that were causing a sweat inside the palms of his hands and sweltering numbness in his arms.

Thank whoever someone would thank once again. Even if a bus going 100 miles per hour hit in him the gut, he was happy to die.

A harsh breath, three pills with a glass of water and a lunch that could feed an entire army, he was done frantically rushing about with the imperfect notion that her presence was now apparent. With plates that seemed to fill every corner of the table and her glowing face in awe over every single one of them, Haruka was trying so hard to keep everything composed so he wouldn’t turn into the pathetic man he tried to hide so effortlessly in front of her.

Brushing off his knees as he swayed, he picked up a chop stick and twirled it between his fingers. “Ready?”

“Mmm! Yes, please!” She was so excited, he thought he saw some drool hanging from the corner of her mouth but quickly disappeared as he motioned again towards her without words to eat.

Everything was going well. Some part down in his stomach did he feel with a humming wellness made him rise his shoulders higher than usual and hold his chest out more. Was it “pride”? Most likely, since he knew Rin felt this way about swimming and always held himself in the way that could be taken to the extreme. Still, she was doing that thing again that made him not able to breathe. Due to the fact that she clapped her hands together and instead of saying thank you to him, she expressed her eagerness with the least expected through her bottom bitten lip. He was once again lost in yet another unknown feeling his minds could never be able to apprehend.

“Really? Soy bean paste? Is this supposed to be some kind of joke…?”

He was about to dig into the mackerel off to his left to get his mind off her, when her voice furcated into the annoyed pits that he thought were never going to be present. Looking up, her chop sticks were hovering over the unohana that contained the main ingredient that she was glaring over.

On no, he fucked up. He wasn’t thinking when he made it, he swore. “I didn’t mean for it…” It just happened. It wasn’t a joke, but now that she was pointing it out he felt stupid for doing so. 

Truth be told, her last name was a food made out of soy beans. Okara, a kind of sweet delicacy that he wasn’t so fond since it was usually bland in taste. If made to become the impressive side dish he made, it was sometimes better than rice. But it wasn’t supposed to be her last name, he was sure of it. Like his name wasn’t supposed to be girlish, it just turned out to be.

Her eyes rolled and his throat dropped into his liver. Was she that pissed off? No, she couldn’t be mad at him. That was the very last thing in the entire earth he wanted.

Then a smirk he wasn’t fond of came to a corner of her mouth and she tried to suck it inside to hide it. “Well~ at least you were thinking about me. It looks good, thank you for everything.” Her voice hummed something wicked and he felt like he was shot in the gut.

Thinking about…? He averted his eyes when he made sense of her words and his top lip curled. He didn’t like it when her eyes had a storm brewing in them and said words to tease his heart strings that could never recognize. They made him unsure of a lot of things. Not only do things he should not be able to. “Okara, can I ask a question?”

Like this. Things like this were always his doom.

She was flipping between so many plates of things, sighing with every single one of them as the taste spread euphoria throughout her. It was sweet, especially the blush on her cheeks that made him quiver and made his voice rasp against the trembles in his chest. Chop sticks in her mouth, she looked up at him and nodded. Only to purr waiting for a response that voiced her entire voice box loudly.

“Can you tell me what happened with…?” He was going to fuck up again.

He needed to know. Even though the context of the question was out of reach to many, she would have understood. If it was too much to ask. If was hard for her to answer. He would understand but he longed for her to tell him everything. The why, the where and the when. Everything about why she is the way she is.

Her hand fell from her chops sticks, but they continued to hang there between her lips diligently, so close to falling. On the inside she was so happy but this question alone made her plummet. She felt her hips drain in their loosing ability to keep her upright and her face turned into the returning stone. “Do you really want to know?”

“I want to know everything.”

He meant to keep his mouth shut and say something along the lines of a ‘yes’ or a ‘please’, but his minds spewed everything embarrassing and how he was feeling before he could catch it. He immediately clamped his mouth shut and felt like slamming his head against a wall.

She was taken aback that was for certain. It was nothing she showed though in her need to scream and cry. She just closed her eyes and plucked those chop sticks out of her mouth with a sigh that they pulled out with them. “I was hit by a car when I was 13…”

Damn it. All he could do was stare. It wasn’t the answer he was expecting.

“I was coming home from a dance recital with my mother,” The way she paused and spun the chop sticks that she was fiddling with between her fingers and went to eat some more, worried him greatly. “My mother didn’t make it.”

Well shit, look at him screwing up everything. He couldn’t even speak to make it feel better in his bones.

"Driver died on scene. He was so plastered and it was only 6 pm. For a while, I couldn’t move anything chest down till they repaired my spine to the best they could … or what the money we had could do anyways, but here I am! 25% working hips and no legs but have strong arms like an ox!”

It was worse than being hit with a bus or shot in the gut, even if she threw her arms up in a flex with the most fake smile he received from her yet. The thought of death and what it had done to her to be the way she was, brought levels of unbearable and more. To watch her own body fail beneath her and not be able to do what she was capable. It was so hurtful to him, he cursed himself that he even thought about death from time to time as the better treatment than the hell that was so apparent in life. What did she say? That she used to dance. That she used to have some life where her legs were needed. If he lost all of that ability to never swim again. He couldn’t bare it. It scared him. It made him want to curl up into a ball on the floor and weep a thousand unseen tears.

The silence was becoming painstakingly tightening. To her it felt like the air was being taken over as a solid and was constricting their thoughts to the pit of darkness. She poked her utensils at the bowl of rice near her and she sighed. He wasn’t looking at her. Only the table. She knew it would have been better to keep quiet about this kind of thing. No one needed to know. They just needed to know about her future existence and nothing of a past that haunted her.

Twisting her lips as her eyes saw past the rice and into the house she was sitting in, she spoke again, but quietly so the shadows wouldn't hear. "Your house is extremely empty.”

Yes, a great idea. Subject change.

“I live here alone…” It felt like something was curing inside him in the way his usual attacks came to him in waves. The sudden need to jump into the largest body of water close to him became so sickening.

“Really!? That’s so lucky…” Why was it that the earth elated her so suddenly with hints of jealousy that could only be explained with what she could never have?

“Not really… I used to live with my grandmother… she passed away not too long ago.”

Yet, everything was turning back to the subjected death that made the depression seep in a little deeper around them.

“… I’m sorry to hear. My condolences.”

Why are you apologizing!?

He just had enough of everything and everyone. He was breaking with the glass that was forming inside him and shattering into those sharp little pieces that would sure cause him to crumble and die in front of her.

I should be apologizing to you… Haruka cringed in the time of becoming the demons inside his head, which was causing his backbone to wind and feel like it was crawling out away from him to find something better to live in. Even if he tried to keep himself poised in the ways that make her feel better about being around him, he didn’t have any of that armor he liked to pretend he did have. "Its fine, I got over it."

"But you loved her."

Immediate confusion hit him. Peeling his eyes away from the table that wasn’t bursting into flames over his stares, he found her eyes gentle enough to melt in instead. What was that thing called ‘love’? Everyone spoke of it being the most magnificent thing in the world and at the same time, it was a thing that brought on hate and tears that never ended in a vicious cycle. Whatever it was, he knew there was no need for him to feel it or even want to try to understand its origins of emotion.

"I don't want to understand what that-."

"But love is beautiful. Either it's the type that makes you feel happy, or the kind that makes you want to scream, or the kind you want to be held into the night with, or the type that makes you want to cry. It's all love and it all makes the world go round."

The second he adverted his eyes and went to eat his mackerel with indifference steaming inside his throat, her warmth shot across the table and seemed to give and take all his acts of uncaring by the throat making all of it disappear. Throwing them to the side, he wasn’t fooling her any longer. He couldn’t help but lift his eyes once more and found her leaning over her plate. Her elbow against the low bearing table and a delicate fist holding chop sticks pushed into her cheek. The little push upwards against her skin made the eyes she had shine a tiny bit brighter or maybe, that was the love she spoke of that existed inside her but not him. "I guess..."

So he did ‘love’. It was hard to tell what exactly. He felt something for his grandmother, which was for certain. He felt something for Makoto that constantly took care of his every need and watched over him. The feeling was extremely similar in both instances. A warm sun feeling felt within his chest and made him comfortable being around them. It was just the other stuff that jumbled his head into chaos.

"I didn't think lunch was going to be so morbid." Breathing out in a small short breath, he watched her place her sticks down and allowed her hands to drop into her lap with fallen eyes. Even if the pain was still there inside her or not because of her back, the distant world she went too constantly was returning in her eyes and he didn’t like that.

"I'm sorry..." He didn’t want this to continue anymore. This wasn’t what he wanted. Nothing he stayed up at night thinking how it would be.

"It's not your fault." There was a breath of air that left her nose and as she lifted her eyes, there was a hint of comforting bliss that once again showed itself in his presence. It seemed that little breath was her way of telling him it was alright, although it was in a laugh that tried to never exist.

He had to hold onto this. Keep that there. Forever. Just how he wished to have over and over again.