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What Mukai understands more than anything else is that he doesn’t know anything, not really. And neither does anyone else.
On the small scale, he doesn’t know why he decides to buy yakisoba bread for lunch. Well, because it’s cheap, and it tastes good. But why it’s cheap— does it cost less to manufacture? Is there less demand?— he’s not so sure about, and he’s not so sure about why it tastes good to him, either. It’s small mysteries like that that drew him to science as a kid. The promise of truth, and thorough explanations.
But science, for all that it promises truth and logic, often brushes against truth more than reaches it fully. In the words of the impassioned Nu-Ton editor’s letter three issues ago— much more romantic than Mukai could ever manage to be—: we are closed off from truth by a flexible barrier. We can put our hands to it and feel its shape, even its texture, but we can’t touch it. Not really.
Mukai is dubious, sometimes, that anyone can even get that close. In some ways, it’s impossible to even truly touch other people, or objects, when atoms can’t come into contact (depending, of course, on how one defines ‘contact’, but the commonly understood definition of touch isn’t quite possible). And science offers greater mysteries, truth-shaped holes bigger than anyone feels comfortable with: why is the universe expanding? Why did it start? How will it end?
And on another scale, between the small (yakisoba) and the large (expansion of the universe), there are other people. Who he sometimes thinks he understands and sometimes thinks will always be a mystery to him.
Sousuke, for instance.
But not just him. Egashira Mika, lately, is a mystery in her own right. Or many mysteries stacked on top of each other.
Does she really not like Sousuke anymore? Does she like Kousaka? Does Kousaka like her? Is he stringing her along? Why does Mukai care? Is she insecure, or confident? Mean? Kind? What is she thinking about, and is it egocentric of Mukai to think that he understands her? Does he think that? Who is she? Does he want to know? Why does he want to know?
If people were celestial bodies (which they aren’t), Mukai understands that he would be pulled in by Sousuke’s gravitational force. Egashira, he suspects, is pulled into Iwakura’s orbit. But the two of them, he thinks, are of completely equal gravitational pull. If he sees through her, it goes both ways.
Sometimes the secrets of Egashira Mika distract him more than the secrets of the universe.
-⟡-
The three body problem does have something like a solution, actually. Or several.
Not that any of them are airtight. Or worth anything if the three body problem suddenly becomes a matter of life or death in someone’s real life. He’s read the novel. But it’s not a mystery in the traditional sense. There are graphs, probabilities, predictions that can be made. The margin of error just happens to be a bigger deal when it comes to the movement of celestial bodies.
-⟡-
Mukai thinks about the three body problem (well, the n-body problem, and four bodies to be precise) while he and Obuchi watch Kousaka and Egashira walk away together, and thinks about it some more while Obuchi sings his heartbreak away at karaoke.
If people were celestial bodies (which they aren’t), it would have been simple enough to predict the relationship between Obuchi and Egashira. But Kousaka, and, admittedly, Mukai himself are conspicuous additions to the simple equation. A wingman is all well and good until he complicates things needlessly, and Mukai is beginning to think that he is not a very good wingman at all. And another man (a taller, more charming, more handsome, sorry Obuchi, man) sweeping in is never well and good.
It strikes him as unjust and confusing that Obuchi, for all of his innocent and wide-eyed affection, is the one who has to sit back and watch as someone else manages to win over Egashira. Not that Egashira is a prize to be won, or anything. It also strikes Mukai as unjust and confusing that a clear player like Kousaka will no doubt hurt Egashira, and that as her only sometimes-friend, Mukai has no real grounds to object.
Like it or not, he’s inserted himself into the situation, and now he’s part of the completely unpredictable pattern of gravitational pulling and pushing. Now he cares about things he has no business caring about, like if Obuchi gets his feelings hurt, like if Egashira gets her heart broken, like what Egashira is ever thinking.
-⟡-
Mukai knows what it feels like to feel his brain growing new pathways. Like growing pains. A sudden awareness of a type of thought pattern that’s there, now, in a way it wasn’t before.
Maybe that’s why he feels so much like he’s lost his way when he realizes that he’s interested in Egashira. Not in the normal way he’s interested in girls. Those pathways are a done deal. But there’s new, uncharted territory in his brain, every time he speaks to Egashira. He thinks he has a handle on her, and then he doesn’t, but somehow he manages to have more of a handle than most of their other friends. Like he keeps being around to catch another piece of the puzzle that makes her up, and his brain can’t stop itself from trying its best to place every piece. Or like a draw-by-numbers kit for children. His neural pathways are branching furiously, and every new line is another line in a picture that makes up Egashira.
Maybe the term for that is ‘a crush’. But Mukai’s had crushes before. What he isn’t used to is the feeling of knowing someone, and knowing that they know you, and being around each other, knowing.
Truth isn’t something you can reach. Mukai Tsukasa doesn’t know the truth about Egashira Mika.
But sometimes he feels like he’s gotten close enough to almost feel its texture.
-⟡-
The first time Mukai sees Egashira after winter break, he’s trying very hard to pretend like he doesn’t feel awkward around her. He’s lucky to be surrounded by their other friends, and very unlucky to also be subject to their prodding about his girlfriend. He doesn’t miss the dumbstruck look on Egashira’s face when he manages to admit that, yes, he has a girlfriend, and that yes, he was the one who communicated his feelings first.
Vague and contradictory. He’s certain that if he told Egashira that he worried he was just as vague and contradictory as other guys, she would laugh at him and tell him that of course he was. Egashira’s never told him that he’s too serious, or anything like that. She sees to the root of the matter. That’s sort of the issue.
It’s not a crush, as he’s stated and will state again, so there’s really no issue with him being around her, except for the part where she really wants to know about his girlfriend. She bothers him about it again at karaoke, with that glint in her eye like she has a special interest— which, considering that too many of their private conversations have revolved around each other’s love lives, she probably does. Mukai escapes to the bathroom instead, praying that she won’t be waiting in the hall when he gets out.
Which she is.
“Mukai,” she says, and there’s none of the sparkle in her eyes this time. Well, maybe a different kind of sparkle. A knowing look. Less of the excitement she had shown at the shrine with their friends, more of the wry sharpness she had shown on the train when Mukai had tried to apologize to her. “Tell me about your girlfriend.”
Mukai feels his cheeks get hot. “Didn’t you hear me? I want to respect her privacy.” He feels like a mouse being eyed by a bird of prey.
“At least tell me her name,” Egashira says, leaning against the wall. She turns her head and fingers the leaf of the plant next to the door casually. “I just want to know this girl that somehow broke through your inability to talk to women.”
Mukai ducks his head.
“...Nakamura,” he says at last.
“Nakamura?”
“Nakamura Minako,” he mutters.
“Minako! Cute.” Egashira opens the door to the karaoke room and smiles over her shoulder. “Bring her to meet us sometime.”
Not happening, Mukai thinks.
-⟡-
At the heart of the problem is this: Mukai is afraid of what will happen if Egashira and Minako ever cross paths. Not necessarily what Egashira will think of her, although of course there’s a part of him that would like it if she got along with his friends. No, Mukai is afraid of what will happen if Egashira sees him and Minako together, sees the way that he behaves around her and the minutiae of their relationship. He can’t stand the idea that she would see right through him, understand his insecurities and contradictions, understand him in a way that he doesn’t want to be understood.
-⟡-
Maybe it’s a little hypocritical of Mukai to want to keep Egashira and Minako so far away from each other when he can’t help but want to know everything about Kousaka. Alright, so it’s hypocritical. Mukai knows it as well as Egashira knows it. That’s why he’s avoiding her at school. He doesn’t think he can bear hearing her lay flat his contradictions in the way that he knows she would. It’s embarrassing enough to be an illogical person, let alone to have come to that conclusion late. Let alone to know that, if informed Mukai only realized he was so illogical a few weeks ago, Egashira would probably laugh and say she’s known that all along.
But avoiding Egashira and wanting to know more about Kousaka are things that are hard to balance, and he can’t exactly ask his other friends for information on him. He’s tried, and it’s gone terribly— Yamada had given him a look, in the way that he’s recently become the sort of guy who can give looks, and asked if he was really more interested in Egashira-san than Minako-chan.
Mukai is maybe a little more uncomfortable with Yamada’s new ‘guy who has a girlfriend’ persona now that he has a girlfriend, too.
Sousuke is no help, not that Mukai tries very hard with him. It feels almost childish to bother him with his problems, considering what goes on in his own head. Besides, if Egashira strikes him as uncomfortably perceptive, at least it goes both ways. Sousuke is as walled off as he’s ever been, which is as frustrating as it’s ever been.
He supposes he could ask other people— but who? He doesn’t really have friends other than Sousuke and Yamada. Obuchi, maybe. But it seems a bit like rubbing salt in the wound. He’s certainly not about to ask any of Egashira’s friends. Leaving aside his apparent inability to talk to girls— up to and including Minako, if he’s being honest—, he gathers that Egashira and her friends are earnest and tight knit in a way that Mukai simultaneously envies and rankles at. Though, he gathers that Egashira herself has felt similarly, at least in the past. Those girls did something to make her break past her cynical shell.
Maybe, and it’s a big maybe, but maybe Mukai finds himself upset at the thought of so much as testing the trust between them because he, himself, remembers what it was like to glimpse beyond Egashira’s exterior for the first time. The way she had flushed and avoided his eyes, asking if he would have been pleased to receive a confession from her. The way she had steeled herself to flay herself— well, that’s dramatic. But the way she had steeled herself to reveal parts of herself that Mukai had certainly never seen. Insecurity, fear, shyness. Nothing like the sly, charming, pretty Egashira everyone else got.
Mukai has kept that memory to himself. For her sake. Privacy, and all that. Of course, a little for his sake as well. And he doesn’t want to do anything to hurt it.
Which means he can either talk to Egashira or he can try to follow her from a distance to gain information on Kousaka, who he is certain one way or another would not treasure moments of Egashira’s shell cracking in the way that her tight-knit earnest friends surely do. The way that Mukai himself cannot decide if he likes that he does.
Sometimes the secrets of Mukai Tsukasa evade even himself. That they do so was secret to him in and of itself until very recently. New neural pathways, and all that. It’s all confusing. He wants an anchor, and wishes very badly that the most apparent one was not Egashira Mika.
-⟡-
It’s a nice early spring day when everything goes to shit. There’s still a little bit of a bite in the air from the last of the winter, and the feeling of anxious romance is still floating, hanging on in the interim between Valentine’s Day and White Day like a lingering cough. Mukai thinks that these sorts of things are maybe a little silly— but that goes to show what he knows. The chocolate Minako gave him was very nice, admittedly. Even if he’s not much one for sweets.
He’s walking with her one day, just sort of aimlessly around some shops she wanted to go to in Jimchobo, when she gets a sort of sad look on her face.
“Mukai-kun,” she says, kicking at a rock in front of her shoe. “Can we have a conversation?”
“Sure,” Mukai says, distracted by a book on strange loops in the window of a used bookstore.
“I think it might be time for us to break up,” Minako says, and Mukai almost trips.
“What makes you say that?” He asks. It’s the only question he can think to ask.
“I don’t really think you’re the sort of person I thought you were,” she says, lips pressed together and eyes on the ground.
“Ah,” Mukai says, since he isn’t really sure what else to say.
Just for starters— what sort of person did she think he was? Why did she choose to bring it up in that manner, rather than elaborate on what he’d done wrong? Is he not considerate enough? Probably.
Minako looks at him, likely finding his answer unsatisfactory. Truth be told, Mukai is not feeling terribly satisfied with himself. Try as he might, he can’t seem to conjure up the typical feelings of depression that he associates with breakups.
“Well, it’s been nice,” he says weakly. “Thank you for everything.” He’s not sure what he’s thanking her for. The gloves? The chocolate? The sort of lackluster memories? It’s hard to say.
“Thank you,” she echoes, and then turns in the opposite direction. He supposes it’s good that she never met any of his friends, now, and the only thing that he can bring himself to feel is a sort of distant embarrassment that he mentioned her to them at all.
He buys the book and goes home. His mother asks him how his date went, and he doesn’t have it in him to lie, so he tells her they broke up blandly and goes to his room.
He supposes it was nice to have a girl like him. Even if she didn’t really like him for him.
What does it mean, anyway? For someone to break up with you because their preconceived notions are wrong? Mukai supposes that whatever his true self is, whatever approximation of his inner nature Minako was able to glimpse, wasn’t good. A theory that’s only supported by the blank disappointment he’s feeling. He’d probably be more upset over losing a favorite book than this. He’d most certainly be more upset about losing a good friend than this. And that’s not how it’s supposed to go, right? Love is supposed to make you so sick you can’t even eat, you’re too busy thinking of the other person.
Whatever is inside Mukai, it’s not really worth looking at.
He thinks about Egashira, because of course he does. Maybe he’s free, now, to have a crush on her. But he still doesn’t think that’s it.
Maybe he took her for granted a little, that’s all. Maybe he’s been underestimating how nice it is to have her around. Maybe it’s sort of invaluable, to have someone who knows you and likes you anyway.
-⟡-
Egashira is cute. But she’s got a boyfriend, so, moot point, and Mukai doesn’t like feeling like some dirtbag who only goes after cute girls anyway. And Egashira is his friend. So maybe she’s proof, all things considered, that he’s perfectly capable of being friends with cute girls without trying to go after them himself.
What’s really good about Egashira is her personality. That’s the main thing. And he means the real her, underneath her popular girl exterior. The her that’s layered beneath the sweet facade, and then the jealous facade, the her that’s hidden below all that. The real, insecure and insightful Egashira. That’s the Egashira he feels he can get in glimpses, fits and starts in the moments that are just the two of them. That’s the Egashira with the equivalent gravitational pull to his own, like binary stars.
That’s what makes her worth noticing. If Mukai seems appealing on the outside, but isn’t worth it on the inside, Egashira is probably his opposite. He thinks she's worth getting to know. He still can’t quite figure out why she’s so interesting to him, but she is, so he supposes he’s destined for a while longer of trying to uncover the secrets of Egashira with the same intensity most people devote to the secrets of the universe.
-⟡-
The problem with the three body problem and any attempt to apply it to human behavior is that no one really exists in a two-body vacuum. People are constantly bouncing off a countless number of other people— so really, every single human interaction is a version of the n-body problem. Not even the isolated behavior of two bodies interacting can be properly predicted, because you can’t possibly control for all other interactions that have continued to influence those bodies. In that case, the problem becomes practically useless to apply to human behavior. You might as well accept that nothing is truly knowable or predictable and give up. Not that Mukai has ever really been good at accepting that.
Mukai is frustrated that even his own interactions with Egashira are completely unpredictable. Even a person who can see right through him, disconcertingly so, remains fundamentally inaccessible to him. The pitfalls of human communication are endless, and endlessly frustrating.
Mukai does a lot of staring at the back of her head and wondering what she’s thinking.
-⟡-
Mukai doesn’t think he’s ever experienced true rage the way he does when he learns that Soukasa has broken up with Egashira— but he tries his best to make it into concern for her wellbeing. They’re friends, after all. He should care about her more than he hates him.
-⟡-
The pitfalls of human communication include this: Mukai being stupid and putting his foot in his mouth.
He wanted to comfort Egashira, so maybe he’s achieved that goal.
Didn’t really mean for it to come in the form of an accidental confession that he finds her attractive, of course.
-⟡-
It’s awful. There’s something to be said for the torture of being around someone who knows something about you, more than you want them to know. Mukai has been searching for truth his entire life, yes— maybe he hasn’t dedicated enough time to considering how awful knowledge can really be.
Egashira knows that he thinks she’s pretty. Well, it’s not the end of the world. What might be the end of the world is how awkward and fumbly he now feels around her, how he feels his ears heat up and his words catch in his throat. What might be the end of the world is how she blushes right back, how there’s now a piece of knowledge between them that sits heavier on Mukai’s shoulders than any other piece of knowledge between them. He used to feel a bit privileged to have access to Egashira’s inner thoughts, or at least more of them than most— now he feels so horribly aware of it, he wishes desperately he could just take it back. Go back to how they were, before he accidentally let it slip.
“You seem a little preoccupied these days,” Yamada says to him one day, which is absolutely code for a conversation that Mukai doesn’t want to have.
“Exams,” Mukai says, and thanks the lord that they have that, at least, to blame any and all erratic behavior on.
“Nah,” Yamada says, complete and confident denial. “You’ve been acting all weird around Egashira lately.”
Mukai’s ear goes pink. He can feel blood rushing into it, hot and fizzy, and wonders if there’s any way his friends haven’t noticed this tell of his. The chances look dismal.
“Have I?” He asks. “We’re friends.”
“I think you have a crush on her,” Yamada says. “Awwww. I was worried you’d never love again. I guess a rose yet blooms in Tsukasaland.”
“Shut up,” Mukai says.
-⟡-
The question is, does he have a crush on Egashira? Mukai isn’t sure. He wishes he could be.
What is a crush, anyway? He doesn’t think he really had a crush on Minako. She asked him out, he said yes, she broke up with him, he said okay. That’s how it went. He doesn’t ever recall the typical parts of having a crush. The butterflies, the blushing, the constant thoughts of them.
“How’d you know you had a crush on Egashira?” He asks Obuchi one day. He’s probably the worst person to ask. Mukai feels a little guilty. But he supposes that someone else who’s liked her would be the best resource. Maybe there’s something special about Egashira, something that draws all men in like a magnet, and Mukai is caught up in some natural force rather than any sort of deeper, friendship-affecting sort of romantic attraction.
“Oh, I dunno,” Obuchi says. “She’s really pretty, you know? And super sweet.”
Mukai knows.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess I just meant how did you know you had a crush?”
Obuchi looks at him like he’s crazy. “Didn’t you have a girlfriend?”
“Eh.” He doesn’t want to come across as an insensitive ass, but he wasn’t really the one who sought her out. As cute as she was, and as much as he enjoyed having her there, he didn’t think that it had ever really crossed his mind that he might be even a little bit in love with her. This sort of conundrum over the existence (or non-existence) of his feelings for Egashira is new and confusing in and of itself, not to mention the question of existence to begin with.
Obuchi shrugs. “Well. I guess I felt the typical stuff, you know? I would look for her in the hallways, think about her when I got home from school, want to impress her when I saw her. I felt all messed up inside when I thought about her.”
“Hm.”
“Who’s caught your eye?” Obuchi turns to him with an easy smile.
“Not really anyone,” Mukai lies. “Just thinking about these things.”
“Keep your secrets, bro.”
Mukai makes a noise that he hopes could be considered a laugh.
-⟡-
Certainty is a fool’s errand, but Mukai thinks. And thinks, and thinks, and thinks, and most of his thoughts are of Egashira and what she thinks of him and what he thinks of her and what he could possibly do to understand her better.
It’s a pretty bland day when he realizes. The sun is out, but the sky looks like it might rain later. It’s a weekend, and Mukai is out walking and listening to music because he has nothing better to do. It hits him when he’s thinking about an article in the latest edition of Nu-Ton— he’s pretty sure he could be happy if he spent the rest of his life trying to understand Egashira better.
If that’s not a crush, he’s really not sure what is.
-⟡-
So the world continues to spin, as it always has, and Mukai and Egashira continue to orbit each other in their own strange way, as it feels like they always have. And Mukai now knows that he has feelings for the one person who can see through him, and doesn’t know if he wants her to see that or not. She confuses him. He feels like a human Rubix Cube, and completely unable to sort himself out. Which is leaving aside Egashira, who seems more like a complicated calculus problem than anything else, albeit a calculus problem that Mukai feels compelled to solve beyond all rational levels.
Summer comes slower and cooler than the year before, and vacation approaches at a steady pace. Iwakura’s family agrees to let them stay with them again, and Mukai can’t help but let his newly discovered feelings rise and churn at the idea of another few days spent in the presence of Egashira. Maybe it’s foolish of him to get a crush in his last year of high school— well, it is foolish, which is why he hasn’t said anything to anyone, let alone Egashira, about it. Yamada’s mostly let the subject drop, and if Egashira’s seen right through him, she hasn’t said anything yet.
The ride to the country with Iwakura’s aunt is fun and uneventful, and Egashira, for reasons unknown to everyone except her, sits next to Mukai. Her body heat radiates next to him and he feels electrified, turned to some kind of soupy mess just by the feeling of her bare arm pressed against his. He can’t stop staring at her— her hair where strands of her ponytail have escaped to sit around her face, her cheeks and the way they flush when someone rolls down the window for fresh air, the dip of her clavicle and how visible it is with the thin straps of her tank top sitting over it. Her legs are mostly covered by a long skirt, but there’s a small bit of smooth shin showing, and Mukai feels absolutely horrible for noticing every part of her body in the way that he does.
What’s more agonizing than that is the sound of her voice, the feeling of her breathing, the way her eyes get distant and spacey. The reminders that she’s real, a person, with thoughts and feelings, and that those thoughts and feelings are inaccessible to Mukai, and that he wants to know them in a way he’s not sure he’s ever really wanted to know anything before. She’s so interesting. He’s so interested in her. He can’t help but stare, just a little.
-⟡-
The first night is hot and buggy. Mukai gets a horrible blackfly bite on his knee, which swells and reddens, and Egashira laughs at him, which only makes the rest of them start giggling as well. Iwakura apologizes profusely and gives him anti itch cream, and Egashira apologizes for laughing with tears hanging on the edges of her eyelashes, and Mukai says it’s fine through a sudden lump in his throat.
They eat barbecue and ice cream and contemplate setting off fireworks, but everyone is too lazy to go out and get them, so they settle for some sort of soggy sparklers Iwakura’s brother had stashed away somewhere. The sparklers, once they get them to light, hiss and fizz like hot metal in cold water, and Kurume yelps when one gets too close to her hand.
Mukai isn’t much one for sentiment, but he feels suddenly sad at the thought that this might be their last summer all together.
“Weird that this is our last summer break,” Egashira says next to him.
“Yeah,” he says. “I was just thinking that.”
She smiles. “I guess we’ll all still see each other. But I’m glad that we got to be friends while we were all in school.”
Mukai doesn’t get a chance to respond before she’s lighting a fresh sparkler and going off to laugh with the girls. The light bounces off her hair and face, coloring her in splashes of gold.
Mukai wants so badly to reach out to her, to ask her to elaborate. To know what she thinks, always, from start to end.
-⟡-
They go to the beach the second day. Sousuke insists on burying Mukai in the sand again, so he goes to rinse off in the water and Egashira follows after him.
“It’s so cold,” she says, wrapping her arms over her chest and stomach and shivering. Mukai busies himself with refusing to stare.
“I hear you just have to jump in,” he says, and does just that, hoping the cold water will serve as a shock to his system. He remerges and rubs salt from his eyes just as Egashira dunks her own head and resurfaces with a gasp.
“Do you take all your cute girls to the beach to woo them, Mukai?” Egashira asks, grinning in that playful way she often does. It looks even more beautiful with flushed cheeks and wet hair, somehow.
“No,” Mukai says, flustered. “I don’t— I don’t take cute girls to the beach.”
“I’m hurt,” Egashira says, looking to the side, and it occurs to Mukai that she might be flirting with him, which feels even more shocking than the temperature of the water.
“I don’t mean you aren’t cute,” he says, his voice coming out quieter than he intends. “I just meant that I don’t really do that kind of thing.”
“Sure,” Egashira says, and tucks her hair behind her ears. She’s smiling. Mukai feels weirdly scared and weirdly hot, despite the cold water.
“It’s not like I took you here, anyway,” Mukai says. “It wouldn’t count as a date. I’d have to ask you for it to be like that.”
“Sure.” He can just barely make out Egashira’s legs beneath the water, kicking up clouds of sand. “But you’re horrible at talking to girls, right?”
“I had a girlfriend once,” Mukai mutters.
“Well, I had a boyfriend once,” Egashira says. “And I’m clearly not too good at talking to boys.”
“I don’t think you’re bad at it,” Mukai says. He means it.
-⟡-
The night of the second day is cloudy and windy. No one wants to go out, but then they’re out of anti-itch cream and everyone’s covered in bug bites, so Mukai heaves a put-upon sigh and volunteers himself to go get some from the nearest pharmacy. Everyone thanks him profusely, but Egashira hops up and says she’ll join him, which is (of course) welcome. Their friends applaud them, and they leave into the night, hoodies zipped up to their chins to keep out the wind.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Egashira says, smiling up at the moon.
“Sure is,” Mukai says. “You can’t get stars like this back in Tokyo.”
Egashira hums in agreement, and they lapse into silence. It feels more pressing and more awkward than it normally does. He’s used to this being the part where Egashira makes some smart remark about him, something cutting and teasing, and her conspicuous silence is making him sweat through his hoodie.
“Mukai,” Egashira begins, walking a few steps ahead of him. She’s wearing shorts and sandals, and her hands are clasped behind her back. The wind rustles her hair. “Do you have a crush on me?”
The world stops spinning for just a second, and then starts up again, just a touch faster, in the way that a recording speeds up to get to the right spot when the connection breaks.
The silence stretches on like a rope pulling taught, and Mukai reaches to find the words that have died in his throat.
“I do,” he says, finally, dredging it up from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Hmmm,” Egashira says. “I see.”
Mukai swallows. “Is that… alright? With you?”
“It’s alright with me,” Egashira says. She stops in front of the pharmacy doors.
“You should go buy the anti-itch cream,” she says, leaning against a pole on the sidewalk and twirling a strand of hair around her finger.
“Yeah,” Mukai says blankly, and goes into the store robotically.
It’s alright with her.
It’s alright with her.
He can’t bring himself to think anything other than that, even as the anxiety mounts in his stomach and he struggles to focus on getting the cream. It’s alright with her. It’s not a rejection, but it’s not really reciprocation either. He finds the cream and places it on the checkout counter, moving slowly and sluggishly, like a dream. His eyes are fixed on the shadow of Egashira outside the windows, and the cashier seems completely uninterested in how far away his mind is. He pays and puts the cream in his pocket before leaving. The whirr of the sliding glass doors feels earsplittingly loud.
“Hi,” Egashira says when he emerges.
“Hi,” Mukai says.
“Shall we take it back to the house?” She says, standing up straight from her position against the pole.
“Yeah,” Mukai says, weakly. “Um, Egashira—”
“You can call me Mika,” she says quickly. “If you want.”
The idea had not occurred to Mukai, and it floods his body like an IV drip. Calling her by her first name seems like a bridge so long and high it’s almost insurmountable— but the rewards on the other side seem suddenly so appealing that he can’t quite see straight.
“Okay,” he says. He’s not sure if he can bring himself to think of her as Mika quite yet. But he wants to get there. That it’s there at all, a desire within him, seems shocking.
“Do you… that is… um.”
Mukai sweats.
“Are you interested in me?” He finishes lamely.
“I think so,” she says quietly. “I think I probably am.”
They’re standing in front of the house, now. The thought of going in, seeing their friends, ignoring it, seems awful, so—
“Do you want to keep walking for a bit?” he asks. “We can get someone to come get the cream.”
“I’ll text Nao-chan,” Egashira says, and pulls out her phone. Her nails tap audibly on the screen, and Mukai reels beside her, trying to wrap his head around what she’s said. Probably is not the world's most ringing endorsement, but the fact that the thought has crossed her mind at all is staggering. He wonders what she’s thought about. Clearly, him saying her first name. He tries to think about the inverse: Tsukasa in her voice, and it makes him feel very strange indeed. Has she thought about them going on dates? Does she feel the way he does when their arms touch?
Nao emerges a few seconds after and takes the anti-itch cream from Mukai, and Egashira tells her that they’re going to keep walking for a little while. Nao gives them a smile that makes Mukai’s face feel hot, but he and Egashira walk in tense silence down the street for a while until they reach a bench, where Egashira sits down.
“Why do you like me?” She asks.
The question sort of floors him. It seems pretty obvious.
“…You understand me,” he says. “I feel like you see through me, sometimes. And you’re a good person. I guess I didn’t see that at first. I still feel bad about it. You really care a lot about other people, and how they feel about you. But you respect yourself and bounce back, and you admit your flaws. I guess I just admire you.”
Egashira blinks up at him a few times. Mukai sits down next to her. She’s so close he can almost feel her body heat through both of their hoodies.
“It’s not just because I’m cute?” She asks, quiet like she’s not sure she believes it.
“I’m telling you, I’m not like that,” Mukai groans. “I care about personalities, too. I… I like being your friend, you know?”
Egashira doesn’t say anything for a second. Mukai hears a small sniff and turns to look at her. It hits him that Egashira— Mika, she wanted him to call her that— is crying, and it hits him in the way a branch to the face might: a sudden and humiliating snap of a blow, the type of thing that makes you want to look around and see who could have done that to you, only to realize that you’re the idiot who just ran into the branch.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he says, a cold sweat running down his neck. He feels the weight of all he doesn’t know come crashing onto his shoulders. He knows Mika, but maybe not enough to always understand her actions. That gap scares him. Also, he really doesn’t want to make her cry. That’s a new and urgent feeling.
“It’s okay,” Mika manages, wiping her face with her sleeve. Mukai realizes she’s blushing, and smiling, and it makes something in his chest feel like it needs to escape, like he needs to somehow let all the energy building up in his body out, but he’s not sure how.
“I’m sorry,” Mika continues. “I, um. Haha. I’m just surprised that a guy like you likes me.”
It comes out of Mukai faster than he can possibly stop it.
“Any guy would really like you,” he says, and then stops short when he realizes what’s come out of his mouth. “I, er. Well, if anyone got to know you, they’d see you’re worth liking. I think so, anyway.”
Mika’s lips press together and her eyes dart away, but Mukai thinks she’s happy. He hopes.
“I see,” she says, then giggles. “I see, I see.”
“So, uh.” Mukai swallows. Everything is heavy and light at the same time. The moon is so bright and the wind is so cold and nothing in his body feels quite right, but he needs to stay in the moment. It doesn’t feel anything like it did with Minako. It feels so much more off-kilter. Less like, ‘this might as well happen’ and more like ‘I need to know what’s going to happen so badly I’m a little worried I’ll die if I don’t find out’. Maybe that’s what liking someone is supposed to feel like. Maybe his brain isn’t quite done growing new pathways yet.
“Sorry,” Mika says. “I think that I’d like to try and go on a date with you, sometime.” There’s a small smile on her face as she says it, and her bangs are flying in the wind, and Mukai realizes that it’s another moment where he’s gotten as close to infallible knowledge as he possibly can, because he knows that this is how it’s supposed to feel. It can’t possibly feel any other way. She’s beautiful, and his head hurts, and it all feels way too big even though he knows that it’s pretty small.
“That’s good,” he says. “Yeah.”
Stupid.
Mika laughs. “You have to get better at talking to girls.
Mukai can’t help from his instinctual reaction, which is to scoff and make a face. “Worked on you, didn’t it?” He blurts, and then feels his ears go hot and his throat close up.
“Maybe,” Mika says in a sing-song voice, that impish grin Mukai has come to—God help him—find so cute on her face, and inches her hand a little closer to his on the bench, just until their pinkies are touching.
The action makes Mukai’s entire hand buzz, and he comes to a very sudden and very shocking realization.
Maybe it’s impossible for two atoms to ever truly ‘touch’, in the commonly understood definition of ‘touch’, but that doesn’t mean they can’t communicate. That doesn’t mean that two people can’t brush hands and feel the electric impulses switch back and forth, experience texture the only way the human body knows how to communicate it to the brain.
Maybe he can’t really know Mika. Maybe he can’t ever be in her mind, or even really touch her. But he can talk to her. He can put his hand so close to hers that they come as close to contact as is physically possible, and the particles that make up her body and mind can speak to his, in their own way.
I’m here. I’m here.
If you know nothing else, you can know that I’m here.
-⟡-
She grabs his hand very briefly as they walk back to the house, but lets go of it when they come in. Mukai understands the unspoken: better to not let anyone know too soon. Everyone is gathered around the table and they sit down across from one another, trying to keep from catching each other’s eyes. Yamada is on the phone, and he teases Mukai for having gone out with Egashira alone, but everyone laughs him off, Mukai and Egashira included.
When he goes to sleep, Mukai thinks about her. And by now he’s used to doing that before he sleeps, but it’s a little more thrilling with the added knowledge that she’s probably doing the same. And the added knowledge that Mika, with all her secrets, and all her never-ending sources of mystery and interest and ability to keep Mukai guessing, is there. A few walls away, nothing more.
All he knows is that he knows nothing. That, and that Mika is there.