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“Hey, Reo.”
“Hm?”
“Would you date me?”
“Mm,” Reo says absentmindedly, scribbling out a misspelled word in his notes. It takes a few moments before the question actually registers, and his head whips up. “Sorry, what?”
“Would you,” his friend repeats, “hypothetically, date me?”
Reo blinks. Reo blinks again. The question continues to make zero sense. He puts his pen down.
“Um,” he says.
“Sorry, sorry,” Kunigami says with a sigh. “I’m going about this all wrong. What I’m actually trying to ask is—would you be willing to pretend to date me for a few weeks?”
“Oh,” Reo says, as if that makes any more sense than the original question. “Uh… why?”
Kunigami’s expression turns pained. “I don’t really know how to say this without sounding like… well, like an egoist—” Reo snorts at that. Their soccer coach would love to hear the term being used self-referentially from one of his players. “—but too many people keep confessing to me.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Reo says wryly after a pause.
“It is,” Kunigami says with another sigh, before shaking his head. “Or, at least, right now, it is. I don’t know what it is, but I just keep—any time I’m out of class, I get at least three confessions a day, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but it’s…” He brings a hand to rub at his forehead. “It’s a lot. And it’s distracting, and exams are right around the corner, and I…” He exhales slowly. “I can’t afford that distraction right now. I need something that will keep people away, at least just for the time being, and…” He trails off before giving Reo a helpless shrug. “This is the last idea I have.”
“It’s… certainly an idea,” Reo can’t help but murmur, and Kunigami huffs out a short laugh.
“I promise I wouldn’t be proposing such a ridiculous idea if I wasn’t desperate,” he offers. “Obviously, you don’t have to do it. But… well, you get confessed to a lot, too. I thought maybe you could benefit from it also.”
“Right,” Reo agrees slowly, but there’s a certain elephant in the room Kunigami has yet to address. He waits a moment, but Kunigami doesn’t offer anything more. Reo squints at him. “Sorry, why aren’t you asking Chigiri, though?” Reo and Kunigami were friends, of course, but Reo knew—everyone knew—that it was the red-head that was closest to Kunigami. In fact, these study sessions usually consisted of Chigiri and Kunigami chatting, with Reo simply there to use their conversations as background noise to revise his notes. Today, Chigiri had been too ill to attend, and based on the way Kunigami’s gaze shifts away at Reo’s question, Reo can’t help but wonder if there was a reason Kunigami chose to bring up this request when it was only the two of them around.
“I wouldn’t ask the person I’m in love with to fake date me,” Kunigami says quietly after another moment. “That’s not fair to him, or to me.”
How painfully earnest. Reo should have expected this from their resident hero.
He’s just about to suggest that actually asking Chigiri to date him would solve a lot of Kunigami’s problems, but Kunigami’s next words make Reo completely forget what he was going to say.
“Anyway, you don’t have to do it. Only if you and Nagi are comfortable with it.”
Reo opens his mouth. Reo closes his mouth.
“Sorry,” he says again—he’s been hearing a lot of incredulous things in the span of a very short conversation. “If Nagi’s comfortable with it?”
“Well, yeah,” Kunigami says with a blink. “I don’t want him mad at me. We do still have to play on the same field, you know.”
Reo feels vaguely delirious hearing this. “Mad at you,” he repeats. “Nagi, mad at you—why would—why would Nagi get mad at you over this?”
“Because you’re…” Kunigami trails off. He must see something in Reo’s expression, because something like realization dawns on his face. “Oh,” Kunigami says, and Reo’s not sure if he’s imagining the vaguely disappointed tinge to his tone. “You’re not together, are you?”
“Of—of course we aren’t,” Reo splutters. “Why would you—what made you think that?”
Kunigami opens his mouth, seems to silently debate with himself on something, then closes his mouth and shakes his head. “Never mind.”
“What does that mean—?” Reo begins to cry, but he’s interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat behind him. Reo cuts himself off and immediately schools his expression into a polite smile before turning. “Can I help you?”
“Mikage-san-I-really-like-you-would-you-go-out-with-me-please.”
Reo blinks at the girl staring intently at him now. “...what?”
“Mikage-san!” The girl repeats, thrusting forward a box of chocolates so fast that Reo has to dodge to avoid getting hit in the face. “I really like you! Would you go out with me?”
An abrupt weariness drops on Reo’s shoulders. All of a sudden, Kunigami’s frustration seems to make perfect sense. All of a sudden, Kunigami’s proposal is incredibly appealing. Reo opens his mouth. He closes it. He glances at Kunigami. Kunigami raises his eyebrows pointedly.
Reo searches Kunigami’s expression for another moment before sighing quietly and turning back to the girl. “Uh… I’m really sorry. But I’m actually… in a relationship right now.”
“Oh.” The girl’s shoulders slump. She looks disappointed, but not surprised. “Right. I guess I should have… yeah.” She mutters something to herself that Reo can’t make out before she glances at Reo again. “Sorry for bothering you, thank you, bye!” she blurts out in a rush before she speedwalks away. Reo watches her leave with mild bewilderment before he glances at Kunigami.
“...she knows I’m in a relationship with you, right?”
Kunigami gives him a half-shrug. “I’m sure that’s the conclusion she came to.”
Reo isn’t so sure about that at all, but it’s not like he’s going to go and chase the girl down just to clarify. He’d correct any misconceptions arising from this as they’d come. Anyway, it’s not like he had been subtle in his glance towards Kunigami—surely, like Kunigami said, that’s the conclusion she came to.
“Right,” Reo eventually says. Kunigami closes his notebook and rubs his forehead.
“Hopefully this works,” he says wearily. “Anyway, you’re not going to tell anyone, right?”
“Of course not,” Reo says immediately, a bit offended that Kunigami would think otherwise. “It wouldn’t work if everyone knew it was fake.”
“Including Nagi, right?”
Reo pauses. “Well—”
“Including Nagi, right?”
Reo shifts a little in his seat. “It’s not like Nagi would tell anyone—”
“You don’t know that,” Kunigami says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. “I’m not telling Chigiri, either.”
“...that’s different.”
“Not really, no.”
Reo’s lips twist. “You don’t think they can keep a secret?”
“I just don’t want to risk it,” Kunigami says honestly. “They’re our favorite people, but…” He trails off before giving Reo a helpless smile. “I don’t know if we’re theirs.”
Reo goes silent. It’s not like he can argue with that.
“I will be telling Chigiri about our relationship, though,” Kunigami continues. “I don’t want him to have to hear it from someone else before me.” He gives Reo a purposeful look. “Make sure Nagi hears about it from you, too.” His nose wrinkles. “I don’t think he’d take it well from someone else.”
Reo huffs out a surprised laugh at that. “Bold of you to assume Nagi would care at all.” He can already imagine Nagi’s uninterested hum when Reo tells him the news.
Kunigami gives him a strange look.
“...I think you’d be surprised.”
Reo was going to tell Nagi. He was.
But he gets to class late, and he barely has time to greet Nagi before their teacher begins class, and this isn’t really the type of thing you’re supposed to just blurt out or scribble on a note, no, there was a specific, careful way Reo would have to go about this—
“Reo-san!” A girl blurts out as soon as their teacher leaves the room for a break. “I’ve liked you for a long time, and I—”
“Yuki-chan!” Another girl next to her hisses, dragging her back into her seat. “Didn’t you hear? He’s in a relationship now. With—” She whispers something into Yuki’s ear.
“Oh!” Yuki’s face pales. “Oh…”
Reo can feel Nagi staring at him. He coughs. This is not how he wanted this to go.
Yuki stands up again despite her friend’s attempts to keep her in her seat before turning to Reo and bowing. “I’m so sorry! Reo-san! Nagi-san!”
Reo freezes.
“I probably should have known that, huh?” Reo distantly hears Yuki ask her friend. It’s only when her friend nods and gives her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder that Reo startles back into a state of action.
“Sorry,” he says with a vaguely frantic laugh. “Do you think I’m in a relationship with Nagi?”
The girls share a glance with each other before looking at Reo again.
“Yes…?” Yuki offers. Reo chokes on his next breath. He can still feel Nagi staring at him. He refuses to turn around. He cannot make eye contact with Nagi right now.
“No,” Reo says quickly. “Ha. Uh, no. No, I’m not in a relationship with Nagi.” He clears his throat. “I’m dating Kuni—Rensuke. Rensuke Kunigami.” The girls stare at him blankly. “From… 2-B.”
“Oh,” Yuki says eventually. “...really?”
“Yes,” Reo says weakly. “Really.”
“Oh,” Yuki says again. “Um… okay.”
Reo cannot understand why she sounds so horribly unconvinced, but before he can ask anything more, the girls return to a furtive discussion between themselves that Reo can’t make out. Reo taps his fingers on his desk. The teacher still hasn’t returned, which means—
“Reo,” Nagi says quietly. “You’re dating Kunigami?”
Reo’s fingers tap a little faster on his desk. He clears his throat again. “Yup.”
“Oh,” he hears Nagi say. There’s another pause before he speaks again. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Reo digs his nails into the wood of his desk. It hurts a bit. “It was—it was, you know, a recent development. I was going to tell you at the end of class. Sorry.” He dares to finally glance at Nagi’s expression.
It is utterly and totally blank—devoid of any emotion at all. A small, selfish part of Reo wilts at the sight.
But, well. What else was he expecting?
“Hm,” Nagi says, and then he turns back to stare out the window.
Reo begins to pick at the splinters from underneath his nails.
“So,” Reo hears Chigiri ask during a lull in their practice that same day. “You and Kunigami.”
News here really does spread like wildfire, Reo thinks wearily. To avoid looking at Chigiri, he drops to one knee to redo the laces on one of his cleats.
“Yeah?” he responds with feigned nonchalance.
Chigiri’s silent for a while. Reo slowly fiddles with his laces.
“I thought you were in love with Nagi.”
Reo’s fingers still.
Reo is starting to realize, with no small sense of horror, that two facts are true: everyone knows that Reo is in love with Nagi except for Nagi, and everyone knows that Kunigami is in love with Chigiri except for Chigiri. Reo is fairly certain that Kunigami has not reached this realization yet, or else he wouldn’t have asked Reo to participate in what is increasingly becoming a useless charade. Still, Reo made a promise. He tightens the knot on his shoe and stands up.
“Yeah, well,” Reo starts, ignoring the squeeze in his chest. “I got tired of waiting.”
When he looks at Chigiri, his expression is pinched into a frown.
“You better not be treating Kunigami like a rebound. He deserves better than that.”
Reo has to resist the urge to laugh. “I’m not treating him like a rebound.” He really isn’t. “I promise.”
Chigiri scrutinizes him for a moment. “Good,” he says eventually. He looks like he wants to add something more, but after a moment of deliberation, he turns on his heel and walks back to the field. Reo watches him for a few moments before turning his gaze on his water bottle.
It’s times like this that Reo sometimes wonders if his friend might hold some feelings for Kunigami, after all. Chigiri’s very reserved about the things he keeps close to his heart, but Reo’s noticed the way he watches Kunigami, sometimes, and he wonders. He can’t especially blame Kunigami for not being willing to take the step to confess just yet, though—and it would be far too hypocritical of him to suggest such a thing when he would never consider doing the same with Nagi.
But Reo watches Chigiri, and wonders.
“Reo-san!”
Reo resists the urge to bash his head into his locker. It’s been a long day, a very long day, and he can recognize the cadence with which his name is said to know exactly what the upcoming request will be. It’s been a few days since Reo’s been privy to a confession—once his “relationship” with Kunigami had made the rounds, Reo had finally got some peace and quiet. Apparently, though, someone was still out of the loop.
Reo turns to find a girl sniffling loudly. Reo guesses it’s allergies that have kept her out of school long enough not to learn the news.
“Umm,” she starts with another sniffle. “I really like you, um—would you go out with me?”
“I’m actually—”
“He’s taken,” a voice interrupts. An arm comes to rest around Reo’s shoulders. “Sorry.”
Reo isn’t sure where Kunigami came from, but he’s fairly grateful for the interruption. He lets his shoulders drop and offers the girl a slight smile. He opens his mouth to offer his own platitudes, but—
A snap from behind him interrupts Reo. He and Kunigami turn around to find Nagi, his hands covered in black.
“Oh,” Reo says, his eyes widening when he sees half of a broken pen in Nagi’s hand and the other half on the floor. “Nagi, your pen broke.”
Nagi blinks. He looks down. He seems to have only just realized what’s happened.
“Oh,” he says. Reo reaches down to pick up the fallen half.
“Do you need any help with—”
“No, that’s okay,” Nagi blurts out, and by the time Reo stands up again, Nagi’s only a retreating figure in the hallway. Reo’s brows furrow.
“What’s up with him?” Kunigami asks. Reo glances at the broken pen piece in his hand. It’s beginning to leak black on his skin, too.
“I’m not sure,” he admits quietly. He closes his hand into a fist before turning to smile at Kunigami. “Anyway, thanks for the save.”
“No problem.” Kunigami juts his head in the direction of the library. “Study session today?”
“I… think I might just head home.”
Kunigami watches him for a moment before nodding. “Alright. See you tomorrow.”
“See you.”
It’s working. It’s working really well, actually. Reo hasn’t received a confession in two weeks, and neither has Kunigami.
Reo can’t understand, then, why he feels so miserable.
It’s nothing to do with Kunigami—hell, he and Kunigami don’t even see each other that much anymore since Reo keeps avoiding their study sessions. It’s nothing to do with Chigiri, either, although he does keep giving Reo strange looks when they pass each other in the hallway. It’s mostly because Reo is tired of being on the receiving end of those strange looks that Reo keeps avoiding their study sessions, though.
Then, did it have to do with Nagi? It must, and the fact would make Reo laugh if it wasn’t so pathetic—even when he was in a relationship with someone else, fake as it may be, his thoughts continue to revolve around the same person.
Perhaps Reo would be justified in this if Nagi showed any change in behavior, but the truth is, he doesn’t. He acts exactly the same with Reo, continues spending the exact same amount of time with Reo—and maybe that’s the problem. That small, selfish part of Reo isn’t so small any longer. He wants Nagi to say something, to do anything—the fact that he has nothing at all to say or ask about Reo’s relationship is all but driving him up the wall. It shouldn’t surprise Reo that this isn’t something that interests Nagi, but he’d thought Nagi would ask about something. Wasn’t he curious at all? Reo knows if the roles were reversed, Reo would want to know everything about Nagi’s relationship—
This is probably because Reo is in love with Nagi. And Nagi decidedly is not. Reo’s spiraling always ends rather abruptly when he reminds himself of this fact.
In the end, it didn’t matter. It was a temporary arrangement, and if anything, Reo should be grateful that he’s still allowed to spend this sort of time with Nagi. He doesn’t know what he’d do if Nagi began to distance himself.
Maybe, Reo thinks distantly as he trails a hand through Nagi’s hair as they sit on the rooftop, after Kunigami and I break up, I can ask Nagi to fake date me…
It’s an incredibly stupid idea. Possibly the stupidest one he’s ever had. Maybe in another universe, Reo actually goes through with it.
“Hey, Reo.”
It takes Reo a moment to realize it’s Nagi speaking.
“Yeah?”
“Does Kunigami make you happy?”
Reo stills. He’d just been lamenting Nagi’s lack of interest in this, but—
This certainly isn’t the type of question he’d expect from Nagi. He’s so stunned that for a moment, he can do nothing but stare at the boy leaning his head against Reo’s shoulder.
“Um,” Reo says eventually. “Y…yeah, I guess.”
Nagi opens his eyes and sits straight up. “You guess?”
“It’s complicated,” Reo mutters, mostly to himself, but Nagi’s eyebrows draw together.
“What does that mean?”
“No, no, it’s—it’s fine.” Reo waves his hands in the air. “I’m fine. We’re fine. We’re great!”
At least, they will be for the next week. They’ve already agreed to end their farce around this time next week, just after the end of exams. Reo’s not looking forward to the influx of confessions that will follow it, but it’s been a nice reprieve so far. Still, Reo is quietly pleased he can stop pretending soon.
Nagi looks skeptical of Reo’s words, but after a few moments of scrutiny, he rests his head on Reo’s shoulder again.
“If Reo says so,” he hums.
“By the way,” Reo tells Nagi a week later. “Kunigami and I aren’t dating anymore.”
When Nagi lifts his gaze from his phone, his eyes are as wide as saucers. “You’re engaged?”
“What?” Reo splutters. “What? No—god, of course not, what—” He shakes his head. “You’ve been watching way too many romcoms. We aren’t dating anymore because we broke up.”
Nagi looks a little taken aback by that. “Oh.”
Reo doesn’t really know why he’s telling Nagi this. Nagi would have heard from someone eventually, anyway, but—
—that selfish part of him wants to see if Nagi will have a reaction to this, at least. Based on the way Nagi squints at him now, Reo doubts it.
“Yeah,” Reo eventually says when Nagi doesn’t offer anything further. “Just—for your information.”
The tips of Reo’s ears burn with something hot like embarrassment. He’s really just making a fool of himself here, isn’t he? He coughs and turns back to his lunch, racking his brain for a new conversation topic to move to when—
“Did… you break up with him?”
“No,” Reo responds automatically, before he squints. “Well, I guess, technically, neither of us—”
“He broke up with you?”
“Huh? Wait, I didn’t say—”
Nagi stands up. Reo almost topples over from the sudden movement. He blinks up at Nagi. There’s an oddly intense expression on his face.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to kill Kunigami.”
A surprised laugh bursts out of Reo, but it trails off when Nagi’s expression doesn’t change.
“...you’re serious?”
“Reo,” Nagi says, his eyebrows furrowed. “He hurt you.”
“Oh,” Reo says faintly. There’s a strange, almost satisfied feeling glowing in his chest. He shoves it down and gets to his feet so he can stop Nagi from doing anything so drastic. “No, Nagi, it’s not like that, it’s—it’s okay. Really.”
Nagi frowns.
“Really.”
“But—”
“It wasn’t real,” Reo finally blurts out, because surely now, it can’t hurt to tell. “None of it was real. Kunigami and I, we just—” Reo waves a hand in the air. “It was just a thing of convenience. We were both faking it.” When he sees Nagi’s expression grow confused, Reo hurries to clarify. “We didn’t tell anyone because we wanted to make sure it would work. Because, you know, if we were both in a relationship, people would stop confessing to us.” It sounds extraordinarily stupid when Reo says it out loud. He distantly hopes Kunigami is going through a similarly embarrassing ordeal explaining this to Chigiri. “You know?” Reo finishes weakly.
“...it wasn’t real?”
“Nope.”
“Any of it?”
Reo shakes his head.
“Oh,” Nagi says. He stares at Reo for a moment. “I’m in love with you.”
“Oh,” Reo says.
“...”
“...”
“...”
“What?”
“I’m in love with you,” Nagi says again, as if he isn’t saying the most ridiculous thing Reo’s ever heard. Reo takes a step back and runs a hand through his hair.
“Uh,” he says with an awkward laugh. “I don’t know what you’re… you—” He cuts himself off with a strange noise. “You’re not serious.”
It’s not supposed to be a question, but Nagi nods anyway. Reo’s mouth goes dry.
“I’m serious.”
“That can’t be true,” Reo manages to say. “Come on, Nagi, this is—this is ridiculous.” He takes another step back. “I was—I was literally just in a relationship with someone else, and you didn’t even care—” He pauses. He presses his lips together. “Is that what this is about?”
Nagi blinks. “Huh?”
“You…” Reo starts slowly, the pieces finally clicking in his mind. “You realized I might not be around to pamper you forever, you realized—you realized if I was actually in a relationship, you wouldn’t get me all to yourself, so now you’re—you’re just saying anything to try and keep me around, Nagi, don’t you know how cruel that is—”
“I said I’m in love with you because I’m in love with you,” Nagi says bluntly. Reo lets out a strangled noise before shaking his head.
“That can’t be true,” Reo says again. “You didn’t say anything when you thought I was in a relationship—”
“Because I thought you were happy,” Nagi interrupts. His gaze drops. “And I knew saying something would ruin that.”
“Oh,” Reo says quietly.
“This whole time, I thought…” Nagi trails off before he looks away. “I thought I was too late. But you said it was fake, so… I thought I should let you know.” He brings a hand to the back of his neck. “Although… I guess it still might be too late.” He lets his hand drop. “Ah. What a pain.”
“No,” Reo blurts out. “It’s not too late. Obviously, I’m in love with you, too.”
Nagi’s eyes widen.
“...obviously?”
Reo flushes a little bit. “Obvious to everyone except you, I guess,” he mutters. “I’m sorry. I was being childish. I guess I just thought… I thought if you really liked me, you’d be jealous.” He laughs. “That’s kind of stupid, isn’t it?”
Nagi blinks at him. “I was, though.”
Reo’s eyebrows raise. “Really?”
“...you couldn’t tell?”
“...no?”
Nagi squints at him. “Reo, you’re weird.”
Reo laughs and tugs him closer. “But you still love me, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Nagi murmurs. “I do.”
“Then,” Reo says, putting his arms over Nagi’s shoulder. “You’re not late at all, are you?”
“Hm?”
“You’re right on time.”