Moon Under The Blossoms

(Aoi’s POV)

Our flat is small enough that you can hear everyone’s morning from anywhere in it.

I lay on my futon with my eyes closed and listened. The kettle clicking on in the kitchen, which meant Sachi was up. She was always up first and always quiet about it. The old pipes knocking behind the wall. A drawer sliding shut. And from the next room, very faintly, someone humming a song with great confidence and no accuracy at all.

Hinata.

She hums when she thinks nobody can hear her. She is wrong about this every single morning, and I have never once told her.

I stayed where I was for a minute longer than I needed to, listening, and then I got up.

The kitchen smelled of toast and green tea. The window above the sink was open, and a few pink petals had drifted in and landed on the counter. Sachi stood at the stove in her university sweatshirt, her hair tied back, flipping eggs with the focus of someone defusing a bomb.

“Eat,” she said, without turning around.

“Good morning,” I said, pulling out a chair.

“Eat first,” Sachi replied, lifting the pan. “Good morning after.”

I sat down at the little table. Hinata was already there, cross-legged on her chair with a mug of tea, looking out of the window. She wore an oversized grey cardigan, and her hair was still tousled from sleep. When I came in, she turned her head.

“Morning,” she said, in a voice that was a little too bright.

“You’re up early,” I said.

“I couldn’t sleep.” She shrugged and sipped her tea.

“Any reason?”

“Last day of term,” Hinata said lightly, not quite meeting my eyes. “I’m just excited about nothing, I guess.”

I didn’t push. I picked up my toast.

On the fridge behind Sachi, held up by a magnet shaped like a pear, was the envelope with this month’s rent written on it in her tidy handwriting, along with a small pencilled tally of what we had put in so far. We never talked about the envelope. All three of us looked at it every time we opened the fridge.

“I have an early lecture across town,” Sachi said, shouldering her bag. “I’ll meet you both at the gate at noon. Don’t be late. Don’t be loud. Don’t do anything.”

“We never do anything,” Hinata said, all innocence, and I hid a smile in my toast.

“That is exactly what worries me,” Sachi said dryly, and she was gone.

The flat went quiet the way it does when there are only two of us. It was a good quiet, an easy one. Hinata finished her tea and rinsed her cup at the sink.

“I have to hand in a form at the office,” she said, drying her hands on her cardigan. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”

“Okay,” I said, and pulled my hood up.

The walk to the university took ten minutes, down a narrow street, past the bakery with the fogged-up window, over the little bridge and along the river. Every spring, the cherry trees on the bank bloomed all at once, so for two weeks the whole city seemed to hold its breath.

I put my earphones in. The petals had been falling for days, and they lay in soft drifts along the path. I walked through them slowly. Somewhere behind me, a bicycle bell rang. Somewhere ahead, a shop shutter rattled up.

I was thinking about Hinata, which was not unusual.

I had been in love with her since we were sixteen, and I knew exactly when it started, which made it worse. It was a rainy afternoon in the school library. She had fallen asleep on the reading table with a pencil tucked behind her ear and a textbook for a pillow, and I stood there with my bag half open, looking at her, and something in me went very still. Quiet and certain, like a key turning in a lock I hadn’t known was there.

Four years later, I had not told her. I told myself I was waiting for the right time, and that was a lie, and I knew it. The truth was that she was the best thing in my life, along with Sachi, and I would rather keep her as my best friend forever than risk losing everything for a chance at more.

That was how a coward thought.

I hadn’t stopped.

I reached the gate, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and slid into my usual seat at the back by the window. I hung my bag on the hook under the desk and put my head down on my arms.

Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.

Then someone tugged my earphone out of my ear.

I looked up, ready to be annoyed, and the annoyance left me the way it always did, quietly and all at once.

Hinata stood over me, holding the earphone between two fingers like she’d found it in a drain.

“Aoi Sakurai,” she said, in the low voice she used when she wanted to shout. “Are you deaf?”

“Good morning to you too,” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.

“I said your name three times.” She planted a hand on her hip.

“I was resting my eyes.”

“You were asleep.” Hinata raised an eyebrow.

“I was peacefully resting my eyes,” I said with great dignity.

She narrowed hers. She had big, dark brown eyes and a way of narrowing them that made you feel you’d been caught stealing, even when you hadn’t. She dropped into the seat beside me and held out the earphone. I took it. Our fingers touched for less than a second, and I pretended it did nothing to my pulse.

“What were you listening to?” she asked, peering at my phone.

“Nothing.” I tilted the screen away.

“It was something.”

“It’s calming,” I said, a little defensively.

“It’s sad and calming,” Hinata said, wrinkling her nose. “Like a rainy bus window.”

I smiled before I could stop myself. “That’s exactly what it is.”

“You’re a strange man, Sakurai,” she said, shaking her head.

“You’re the one who steals people’s earphones,” I shot back.

She grinned, and I looked down at the desk. Looking at her smile directly was like looking at the sun, and I had learned to take it in small doses.

Ms. Okada came in with a stack of papers in her arms and the look of someone who knew nobody was going to learn anything today. She handed back an assignment, told us what the final grades would look like, and then, with a tired, pleased smile, closed her folder.

“That’s all, everyone,” she said warmly. “Thank you for your hard work this term. Have a lovely break, and please enjoy your time with your families.”

The room filled with noise. Chairs scraping, zippers, people already talking about trains home, grandmothers’ cooking, little brothers and cousins who were coming from far away.

Beside me, Hinata went still.

It was small. Anyone else might have missed it.

Her smile stayed where it was, but she looked down at her desk. Her fingers curled around the edge of her notebook.

I looked at her for a moment.

“Hinata,” I said quietly.

She turned.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, a beat too quickly.

I didn’t argue.

Instead, I rested my hand lightly on her shoulder.

She looked at me for a second, then away.

I cleared my throat. “Do you want to leave?”

“Leave where?” Hinata blinked at me.

“Here. Today. It’s the last day,” I whispered. “Nobody is teaching anything.”

She stared at me. “You’d skip the last hour just to make me feel better?”

“I’d skip it anyway,” I said with a shrug. “This gives me a noble reason.”

It made her smile, a real one this time. Before I could prepare myself, she hit me lightly on the arm.

“After the break,” Hinata said, pointing a finger at me, “you don’t drag me into this again.”

“Absolutely not,” I said solemnly.

“You’re lying.”

“Completely,” I admitted, and she laughed.

We slipped out of the back door while the others were still packing up. It went smoothly, in the way that things go smoothly right before they don’t.

We were halfway down the corridor when I heard heels on the tile around the corner. Quick, firm, unhurried.

Ms. Okada’s.

I looked at Hinata. Her eyes were as wide as mine.

I caught her wrist and pulled her through the nearest door. It closed behind us with a soft click, and for a moment, neither of us breathed.

The room smelled of dust, turpentine, and old paper. Dim light fell through a high, grimy window. Canvases leaned against every wall, and a broken easel stood in the corner like a skeleton. It was the old art-room storage closet, the one nobody had used since the new studio opened.

The heels came closer.

They passed the door.

They paused, just for a second.

Something tugged at my sleeve. I looked down and found Hinata holding it, her knuckles pale. She noticed the same instant I did and let go.

The heels went on, fading down the corridor.

We stood very still in the half-dark.

Then, without any warning, a laugh bubbled up in her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. I stared at her, and then my own mouth began to shake, and then we were both leaning on a stack of canvases, laughing in silence until my ribs hurt.

“That was,” Hinata whispered, wiping her eyes, “so stupid.”

“Mostly mine,” I admitted, still grinning.

“Entirely yours,” she said, jabbing a finger at my chest.

“I’ll accept that,” I said, bowing my head.

We slid down onto the floor, and the laughter faded into something calmer. The light from the window lay across the dust in a long gold bar. I sat close enough that our shoulders were nearly touching. I could hear her breathing. I was suddenly, painfully aware of every inch of space between us.

It was strangely peaceful, in a room that smelled like old paint and forgotten things.

“Aoi,” Hinata said after a while, her voice soft.

“Mm?” I turned my head.

She was looking at her hands.

“Do you ever wonder what it’s like?”

I didn’t ask what. I just waited.

“Having somewhere to go,” she said at last.

She paused.

“Someone.”

There was an answer sitting at the back of my throat. I held it there, where it had always lived, and said instead, as gently as I could:

“You do.”

She turned her head.

“You’ve got Sachi,” I added quickly, staring at the wall. “And me. I mean, we’re, you know. We’re here.”

Her expression softened.

“I know,” Hinata said quietly. “Thank you.”

I didn’t trust myself to answer.

“We should call Sachi,” she said eventually, resting her head back against the wall. “She’s going to have to get us out of here.”

“She is going to be furious,” I said with a wince.

“She is going to be so furious,” Hinata agreed, grinning.

I took out my phone and dialed. Hinata closed her eyes, and I murmured into the phone, no, we’re fine, no, we’re not in trouble, really, just come to the old art room, second floor, please.

Sachi arrived in few minutes. She knocked once on the closet door, and I opened it a crack. She looked at the two of us, dusty and guilty, and trying very hard to look as if we hadn’t been laughing.

She looked for a long moment.

“Explain,” Sachi said, folding her arms.

We explained, over each other, in two overlapping voices, with a great deal of pointing. When we finished, she pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose.

“I’m not even surprised,” Sachi said flatly.

I believed her. Sachi had known us for years, and she had never once seen us stay out of trouble for a full day.

“Come on,” she said and sighed. “Rascals.”

We left by the emergency stairs at the back, checking both ways like people with no conscience.

“Wait by the gate,” Sachi told us, jingling her keys. “I’ll bring the car.”

I watched her walk off. She glanced back once, over her shoulder, and her eyes rested on Hinata for a second too long. It was a thoughtful look, a planning one, the same look she got when she had decided something and hadn’t yet told us what.

I didn’t think much about it at the time.

Sachi’s little silver car pulled up at the back gate, and Hinata got into the passenger seat before I could open my mouth.

“Hey!” I protested.

“You sat here this morning,” Hinata said, buckling her seatbelt.

“That’s why it’s my turn.”

“That is not how turns work.” She lifted her chin.

“Rascals,” Sachi said, without turning around. “One more word, and I will leave you both on the curb.”

I folded myself into the back seat with an offended look. Hinata tried to look victorious.

The silence lasted about four seconds.

“Where to?” Sachi asked, glancing at Hinata in the mirror.

“Anywhere,” Hinata said softly, and I could tell she meant it. She was looking out of the window with her chin on her hand, and the light moved across her face as we passed under the trees.

Nobody spoke.

I leaned forward between the front seats and rested my chin on the headrest, with the particular expression I got when I had decided to cheer someone up and hadn’t yet decided how.

“Anywhere,” I repeated slowly. “That’s a big place.”

“Be quiet,” Hinata said, without looking back.

“I’m only saying,” I went on, grinning, “anywhere includes the cinema.”

She turned and looked at me, and I held very still because for a second, she was close enough to count her eyelashes.

“Fine,” Hinata said at last, with a small smile. “The cinema.”

And Sachi pulled out into the afternoon, and for the first time that day, I saw Hinata’s shoulders come down, just a little, just enough.

I sat back in my seat and watched the petals blow past the window.