Heart pounding, I stand outside of Ren's door.

I can't think of a reason for why he would suddenly ask me over like this. Does he need my help with something? It could be that he's hungry, and wants me to cook for him, though that doesn't really seem like something he would go through the trouble to call me here for. Maybe he just wants to spend time with me.

Maybe. But it's too soon for me to get my mind to agree with an idea like that.

I'm unbelievably nervous, and contemplate just turning around and going back home. I could simply message him with an excuse later, for why I couldn't make it. It wouldn't be hard to come up with one, really. After all, I have so many things I need to get done, it's ridiculous that I'm even here.

I step back outside, then pause. I've come all this way, haven't I? If I leave now, I will have whiled away thirty minutes of my day on a pointless walk. But if I get to see Ren...it might be worth it.

I sigh, moving towards the door once more, knowing all too well that there had been no point whatsoever to the internal argument I just had with myself.

If Ren's on the other side of that door, there's no way I could just leave.

I stretch my reluctant fingers towards the calling bell, but before I have a chance to press it, the door is thrown open in my face. "Yo, you came," Ren grins, standing before me in a baggy shirt and sweats, his hand fisted around the knob. My body feels warm at the sight of him, and I reach to undo the top button of my collared-shirt. "Hi. How did you-"

"I saw you come in." I follow his line of sight to the window looking out of his room. "Ah." I suppose leaving had been out of the question this whole time.

"Come on up," he says, motioning for me to enter. "Sorry for intruding," I say politely, while trying dizzyingly hard to shake the image of Ren waiting for me by his window from my head. Sometimes, my brain knows no bounds. Coincidence, I insist to myself. He only happened to glance outside and see me here by chance. He was not waiting for me.

As I follow him across his living room to the stairway, I take a look around his house, letting the sight of the inside of it properly sink in. I had been too preoccupied with taking care of Ren to notice much of anything the last time I was here, but now, when I note the absence of frames on the walls, trinkets on the stands, it strikes me that this place lacks a personality. So clean and minimalistic that it feels more like an office than a home. So this is where Ren lives.

I shift my gaze back to him, and my heart resumes to stir restlessly in my chest. At the time of my previous visit, his head had been too muddled with feverish thoughts for him to pay any attention to me. But now, he keeps glancing back at me every few seconds, as if to ensure I'm still behind him, and it makes the hairs on my neck rise.

There's a faint smile on his face that I'm not sure he's aware of.

He looks so...

Happy.

I want to know what he's thinking, why he's smiling this way, if it's really because of me. It's almost become an instinct, to rapidly look for answers to any and every question that arises in my mind, if it's about Ren. This time though, I push the questions aside, because it feels like it will be easier not to think about them. It feels like I'm not ready to know the answers yet.

Ren leads me into his bedroom, and the frantic pace of my heart finally starts to slow as I stop before his wall, the one he hadn't wanted me to see last time. The sight of it had sent a lonely pang through my chest then. I couldn't bear the fact that all this time, Ren had had nothing else but this wall to communicate his sufferings to. But now, it brings a smile to my face.

If it's surface had been in a frenzied disarray before - from all the distraught scribbling - now it's chaotic. Playful doodles crowd the spaces between the whorls of black. A hoard of messy, painfully random, amateur drawings. At one place, a sun peeks out from behind a cloud-like mass of ink, slanting lines of light stretching away from it. Beside it, a stream of wide eyed dogs and cats flow down from another cloud. The phrase, "Crap, it's raining cats and dogs!" is crammed in beside it

The whole thing is unbelievably ridiculous.

All sorts of shapes fill in the gaps - flowers, butterflies, crazed emojis, frogs, but mostly hearts. So many hearts, some bold and smooth but most of them hurried and distorted.

"Dorks," Ren chuckles from beside me.

"You love it," I say, turning to look at him with wide eyes.

He nods. "This wall has always felt like...a stain in my life. A darkness, that's there everytime I get home. It felt like a storm was coming, or something." He traces the pictures, his face soft with fondness. "But now-" He steps back to admire it from afar. "The shapes that I could only ever see as dark clouds have started to look like what they actually are - the scribblings of some pre school brat." It makes sense all of a sudden, why I haven't been feeling any negative emotion from him. Why he seems more relaxed these days, why he's not as reluctant to return home. The girls' drawings have been keeping him company.

Ren tilts his head towards me, and I realise how much I love it when he's like this. "Don't tell Amari I said that though, fuck, she'll never let me hear the end of it."

"She wouldn't," I agree, my smile deepening. I look to my left to find Ren's eyes transfixed on me, his smile fading. My heart leaps. I suddenly want to be closer to him.

I turn back towards the wall, close my eyes, and breathe until my head clears. Then, once I've managed to get enough of a hold over my thoughts, I force myself to address the matter at hand.

"Why did you call me here?" I ask.

"Right." The cheeky grin returns. He grabs a black marker from his desk drawer and tosses it to me. "Draw something. You didn't draw anything."

I stare at the marker in disbelief. "This is what you invited me over for?"

He shrugs like it's no big deal.

"B-But, I did write something," I say, pointing at a small spot on the wall where the words get well soon are scrawled tightly together. I might have drawn a few hearts as well but I decide not to mention that.

Ren scoffs. "But I'm not sick anymore."

I sigh, and unscrew the marker, giving in. Somehow, the fact that Ren made me come all this way for something as trivial as this doesn't surprise me as much as it should. "Is it okay if I write something?"

He nods and draws closer, watching intently to see what I'll come up with as I bring the nip of the pen to a clear patch on the wall. I know what I want to write without thinking too much about it. The words come to me, almost immediately.

Careful to maintain a balance in my arm, I trace the characters for chikara (strength) and kofuku (happiness) onto the wall with bold strokes. Ren stares at the syllables, and then at me, waiting for an explanation. "It's my wish for you," I say quietly, handing the closed marker back to him. "To stay strong, and happy. I mean for these symbols to act as a sort of goodluck charm, I suppose." Strong, as Ren always has been, and happy, as he is now. I like him best this way.

Ren remains silent for another long beat, his eyes thoughtful as they study my work. "You're such a serious guy," he mumbles.

"You don't like it?"

"I - I never said that," he jumps, flustered. "It's nice. They're nice words - I mean, they're, uh..." His fingers twirl around the stud embedded in his ear. "really nice," he finishes without meeting my eyes, and although I'm not sure I understand what he's trying to say, I've chosen to decide that he likes it.

"Akito. What does it mean?" he asks after a while, raising his head.

I'm used to these sudden questions of his, that come out of nowhere. Even so, it takes me a second to realise what he's asking, because everytime my name leaves his mouth, my brain refuses to focus on anything else. "Akito is written with the characters for intelligent person," I reply.

"The hell - that's so dull."

It's definitely not as picturesque as some other names. "And Ren? Is it-"

"Love."

I swallow. "I-I see." Hearing the word love in Ren's voice sends a tingle down my back. It's strange, how some words sound richer than others when Ren says them.

"Intelligent person," he mumbles to himself. "Guess that explains why you're so put together." He throws his marker on his bed, and walks across his room to hold the door open for me. "If you want to go home now, I'll walk you."

"Okay."

I'm not put together at all. In fact, for the last couple weeks, my mind has been in a state of utter disorder. Even now, there's a part of me that wants to push Ren against this very wall and kiss him till I've had enough, despite knowing that I could never really get enough of him. Sometimes, it feels like even a lifetime wouldn't be enough. I don't know what to do with thoughts like these, and they've started to increasingly clutter my brain.

I'm a mess.

•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

When we arrive at my house, I jam my keys into the lock as Ren waits behind me with his hands in his pockets. Nee-san is at home but our doorbell doesn't work. When it broke down, the two of us came to an unanimous decision that getting it fixed wasn't worth the money, so we usually just let ourselves in.

Once the door unlocks, I'm about to turn around to thank Ren for accompanying me, when my eyes catch note of how dark and disquieted it is inside.

Unease settles over me. Our house is small enough for a single light to be enough to dimly illuminate the space till the hallway out here. If it's this dark, it could only mean that Nee-san isn't home. I anxiously pick my shoes off and hurry inside, leaving Ren by the door.

If Nee-san was going out, she would have texted me about it first. Something feels off.

"Nee-san?"

I walk straight to the kitchen because she's in charge of making dinner. I don't find her there, nor do I see a note on the refrigerator telling me she's out. Dread seeping into my gut, I slide open the door to the living room next, and freeze when I spot humanoid shadows inching closer. "N-Nee-san?"

Just as I start to back away, the lights flicker to life, and two blurry figures jump me before my eyes have time to adjust to the brightness. I stumble backwards from the weight as two sets of arms fly around me. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" scream the voices of Rubi and my sister, and I'm shocked to a stand-still.

Before me, our small living room is bursting with colour. There's a banner pinned to the centre wall, that says "Happy Birthday Akito!" in elegant letters. Streamers hang from the ceiling, and the short-legged table in the middle is cluttered with paper plates, cups and all of my favorite snacks. There's also...a...a cake.

Irina is standing in the room, and when my gaze lands on her, she gives me a small wave and mouths, "Happy birthday." I'm too stunned to respond, so I continue to stare at the scene in disbelief. It's my birthday, it finally clicks. Today is the 4th of March. Of course. It completely slipped my mind.

"Thank you," I say, dumbfounded, when Nee-san and Rubi pull back to look at me with wide smiles.

"Do you like it?" Rubi eagerly asks.

I manage a nod, as a bittersweet sort of ache swells in my chest. My eyes start to sting, and I wordlessly wipe away the tears. Birthdays had always been something to look forward to when I lived with Baa-san. We had our own little parties, and though we didn't have decorations or anything that grand, we always had a cake, and we always lit a dozen candles to celebrate.

I'd forgotten that birthdays were supposed to feel like this.

Rubi takes my arm and sits me down at the head of the table, and when I cross my legs together on the mats and stare at the happy faces around me, I realise that though Baa-san isn't here today, there's nobody else I'd rather surrounded myself with.

"This is why you called me out?" I ask Ren when he appears at my side.

He smirks. "You didn't suspect a thing."

Rubi is watching the two of us with an amused glint in her eyes. She walks over, plops herself down beside Ren and gives him a little nudge. They exchange glances, and it feels like a silent conversation has just transpired between them. Ren turns back to me and clears his throat, while Rubi sits back to watch, a smile on her face. Anticipation stirs in my stomach when I realise something is coming.

"Um..." He pulls a little package out of his pocket and holds it out to me. "I got you something. Happy birthday."

I take the package from him and gape at it for a second.

Ren got me a present.

Ren got me a present?

I quickly start to tear into the clumsy wrapping, before freezing momentarily to look at Ren. "Can I...?"

"Yeah, go ahead," he mumbles, cheeks turning ever so slightly red.

I get rid of the packaging and pull out a flower. A metallic flower, with white petals curving away from the yellow center. I trace my fingers over the wiring of the silver stalk in confusion.

"I didn't know what to get you, and when I asked Amari, she suggested flowers," he says slowly, hand resting on the nape of his neck. "But I figured that the flowers would just...wilt, you know. So I got you something you can keep."

"Ren..." I lift the lily into the air and show him the clip attatched to the stalk. "This is a hair ornament."

Silence sweeps into the room, and a moment later, Rubi doubles over laughing. "Ren...what on earth? I know that your intentions are sweet, but...a hairclip?" she gasps between breaths. Even Irina, who's sitting beside Rubi with her legs folded underneath her, is holding her hand over her mouth, a slight quiver to her shoulders.

Ren's cheeks flare. "Fuck." He dives for the hairclip but I quickly veer it out of his way. "G-Give it back. I'll get you something else."

A disturbance cracks open the pit of my stomach. Not a good sign. He's upset. In a state of near panic, I push the flower into my hair.

Ren sits back and gawks at me.

I feel my face heat. "What? It doesn't suit me?"

Ren's cheeks seem to burn even brighter, but the sharp tug of discomfort in my stomach has disappeared. "N-No, it looks good, looks great."

With some relief, I move to take the flower out, but Ren catches my hand. "Don't take it out yet," he mumbles. So I leave it on, because if Ren likes it then I don't particularly mind. All that seems to matter is that Ren got me a present, and I know that I'll smile about it all day tomorrow.

"Aw," Rubi hums, and not-so-discreetly snaps a picture of me. Ren makes her send it to him on the spot and then immediately checks his phone, making my toes curl in embarrassment. Shortly after, Nee-san walks in with a pack of candles and a butter knife. We gather around the cake, and I place my favorite picture of Baa-san on the table before me because there's no way we can do this without her. They sing for me, loudly, and Rubi records it all.

After we split the cake, we sit in a circle with our slices and start to play games that are some version of guess what I'm drawing! Or guess what I'm describing! The rules are simple, but we still end up going over them multiple times before everyone gets it. Teams are formed, but by the end of the evening, everyone is indiscriminately shouting the answers. It's pure chaos. It's perfect.

END OF CHAPTER