Episode 9. All Wounds Heal, Some Leave Scars

Sakura sat on the floor by the low table, looking at her computer screen on her desk. She could have sat by her desk, but had her bluetooth mouse and keyboard on the floor in front of her. She rested her cheek against her palm, supporting herself against the table next to her.

“Saku-chaaaan…”

On the other end was Tomo. His body covered most of the small table while he had his face downward and arms stretched toward Sakura. He whined into the table, while his friend looked utterly uninterested in his troubles.

“Saku-chan, why did Yama-senpai act like that?” He lifted his gaze, hoping she would answer to Ken’s peculiar behaviour.

She turned to him, holding back her laughter, though her dainty frame shook, and she looked amused with a smile playing at her lips. “For the hundredth time, I don’t know. If I knew, I would have told you hours ago, you know.”

“Keeeeeeeeeen…”

“Go home and study. The finals are next week. Mister Ranked-Thirtieth-on-the-Entrance-Exam can’t flunk.”

“But Saku-chan…”

She furrowed her brow, and the smile turned to an annoyed straight line across her face. Her long braids dangled, almost threatening to whip anyone close if she stood up.

“Seriously, go home already!”

The door opened behind Tomo. “Is there a ghost haunting you, Sakura? I’ll save you!” he heard her older brother say in a pretend-heroic tone.

“Yeah.” She turned her tired gaze to Tomo. “I think Tomo-chan died of grief and came back to haunt me for unknown reasons.”

“Haruka, why did Yama-senpai pretend to be fine?” Tomo moaned, still half-sprawled out on the table.

“I don’t know what this is about.” The young man’s expression turned from a brotherly smile to disgust and horror. “Sakura! Don’t watch that! Tomo-chan, come here!”

Tomo turned to look at what he saw, however he stepped in the way. Haruka pulled Tomo to his feet, turned him around and finally pushed him out of the room.

“He wasn’t reacting no matter what I put on, so he’s not all right,” she said as Haruka hurriedly closed the door.

“There’s nothing to see.”

Tomo’s eyes opened wide when he realised she must have watched something from her collection. “Was she watching—?”

“Come. Let big brother Haruka hear about your troubles,” he interrupted him, leading him by the wrist along the hall.

He opened the door to the room of the oldest of the Hanakawa children. Fuyuki sat at his desk, likely getting some work done while visiting his parents for the weekend, and the second son, Natsuhiko, was on Fuyuki’s bed reading a book on medicine.

Those two had always been very close, according to their father.

“Fuyu-nii, Natsu-nii, I found Tomo-chan in Sakura’s room and she was watching her collection. It was paused when I came in, but it looked pretty gruesome.”

Fuyuki turned his chair around, and Natsuhiko put the book down. They both looked at Tomo and then Haruka. The eldest two only knew that the ‘collection’ disturbed Haruka, Ken and Tomo, not what it included. Akira probably knew about it but refused to say a word.

“Tomo-chan wasn’t aware. He seems pretty troubled.”

“Fuyu, Natsu, why would Ken be acting? Pretending in front of me?”

Fuyuki nodded to his bed and Natsuhiko sat up, putting the book on his brother’s desk. Haruka seated Tomo beside Natsuhiko and sat down on the floor.

Fuyuki removed the hair tie keeping his hair back and took off his glasses, making him look more his age and the three oldest looked more like triplets than brothers of ages 26, almost 25 and recently turned 22.

“So, what happened between you and Kenta?” the eldest asked.

***

“Isn’t it because he rarely does that?” Natsuhiko patted Tomo’s head after hearing what happened.

“But he does, Natsu,” Fuyuki said.

Fuyuki had visited the café a few times, letting Kouta know in advance because he wanted to respect what Akira was hiding. He had thus seen Tomo and Ken at work, but generally mentioned nothing about it.

“He kisses people at work? Tomo-chan, you’re not in some shady business, are you?”

The elder brother sighed. “Haru, if it was, I would do something about it, right? And I wouldn’t let Aki work there either.”

“But Fuyu-nii is a friend of Kou-nii, so…”

Natsuhiko laughed. “Between Fuyu-nii and Kouta, I’d say Fuyu-nii is more likely to commit a crime.”

Fuyuki’s usually gentle features turned into a relentless glare.

“Don’t glare at me like that, Fuyu-nii!”

Much like Sakura’s contradictory outer and inner, Fuyuki looked more like a soft and kind kindergarten teacher rather than a lawyer who’d argue for a case in court, but he could be just as strict, ruthless even, when necessary, and perhaps that was needed in his line of work.

“Then isn’t it because he doesn’t kiss Tomo-chan, usually?” Haruka tried to steer the topic back on track.

Fuyuki showed nothing on his face, and Tomo was glad he already had been blushing telling them what happened. In the past, he had asked Fuyuki to not let anyone know about the scenes with him, and Fuyuki didn’t want their parents to force Akira to quit because of ‘indecent actions’ happening on the floor. And he had said it wasn’t like he ‘couldn’t tell what was an act and what wasn’t’.

“I think Kenta could kiss anyone if he’s acting,” Fuyuki pointed out eventually. “You’ve seen him at the theatre.”

Tomo nodded in agreement.

Perhaps Ken had gotten into the moment and not realised how close he had gotten. And, having grown up together, it was possible Ken could see right through his childhood friend, which led to the current situation.

After some thought, Natsuhiko agreed as well.

Haruka, however, remained silent and Tomo felt the air in the room turn ominous. It almost felt like Tomo was in a horror film. Maybe because it was because of the person he was looking at.

“Tomo-chan is adorable, so maybe Ken got charmed?” he finally suggested.

Tomo felt his face turn hotter, and he looked down on his hands, which were crumpling the hem of his shorts.

“I’m not that…”

“To be honest, I think Tomo-chan is one of the most beautiful people I’ve seen,” Natsuhiko added. “But I think it’s your eyes. After you began wearing glasses again you got prettier.”

“I still wear lenses at work.”

“Most beautiful is a bit much, but I think it’s the hair, Natsu-nii,” Haruka said. “The silky smooth fine black hair. Very Japanese. He looks better with that haircut too.”

“It’s definitely the eyes!”

“No, the hair!”

“The eyes!”

“Hair!”

“Haru, Natsu. your girlfriends would cry if they heard you fight over Tomo-chan. And Tomo-chan might pass out if he gets any more embarrassed. I think it makes him anxious too.”

Natsuhiko hurried out after telling Tomo to breathe and came back with a bottle of tea.

“Drink a bit and calm down. We don’t want you to get a panic attack from being embarrassed.”

While Tomo calmed down, Haruka asked Fuyuki how things were going. Last time he saw Fuyuki had been during New Year’s, when he came home for both his birthday and the New Year celebration.

Fuyuki had been born just as the year had changed, which his parents said was the greatest fortune they could have gotten, and had never since gotten any fortunes from shrine’s, apparently.

“Actually,” Natsuhiko interrupted his brothers. He had been looking down into the floor and now he turned his gaze up and toward Tomo, “Isn’t it really because it’s Tomo-chan?”

“I thought we concluded it wasn’t, Natsu-nii,” Haruka said.

“I was thinking the same, to be honest,” Fuyuki admitted.

“Why?” Haruka demanded to know, knitting his brows in bewilderment.

Fuyuki and Natsuhiko stared at Tomo and he looked between them both, trying to read their faces. Fuyuki looked gentle, but didn’t really show anything, while Natsuhiko smiled as if he had solved some crazy mystery.

“The human mind and emotions are more Aki’s territory than mine,” Natsuhiko said, “but couldn’t Kenta really have fallen in love with Tomo-chan and he’s feeling awkward about the situation that happened at the café? You said he was much closer than he’d normally be to you. Something like that wouldn’t bother him. He’d just talk about it.”

“You’ve known each other since you were just a few months, right? If he’s in love, maybe he feels like he overstepped boundaries between you. If he fears you’re uncomfortable with it, he might just distance himself to give you space. Or something like that.”

Tomo’s heart beat furiously in his chest as he just stared at Fuyuki.

“Ken’s into girls. He always says that.”

“He’s never had an actual girlfriend, so it could be he’s just sexually attracted to women,” Natsuhiko argued. “These things are more complicated than you’d think.”

“I don’t think it’s just that. Ken has had a few crushes in the past.”

Probably.

“It could be difficult to admit if he likes someone not of the gender he says he’s attracted to. Or he could also just hide his attraction to men.”

“Or androgynous-looking people.”

“Huh?! Tomo!” Haruka exclaimed.

The bottle of tea laid on the floor, clucking a couple of times as tea spilled on to the floor before Natsuhiko picked it up. With his hands covering his face, Tomo laid on his back on the bed.

Could Ken be in love? With Tomo? Was that even possible? Was Ken gay? Or maybe not gay, but kind of? Wait, was it gay to like someone who was the same sex but who didn’t feel like it? But Tomo had to be a boy so that would make Ken gay, right?

“Fuyuki, Haruka, he’s fine. But aside from having fallen for Tomo-chan, maybe there’s someone else. Possibly someone working at the café, or someone that came to mind.”

“That’s definitely possible.”

“Uh… Maybe we shouldn’t talk about that possibility?”

“We’re looking at both sides, Haru.”

“But… you know…”

Tomo sat up. “What?”

“Ah, no, nothing. Don’t mind me. They’re right. Maybe he likes someone he’s currently ‘dating’.”

It was possible Ken liked someone else.

With a frown, he looked at the floor where Haruka was putting towels to dry up the tea.

Did Ken like Sayoko? That would explain why he kept going with her.

But that was against the rules…

***

He opened the door to Sakura’s room. “Saku-chan.”

She turned away from her desk as he stepped inside. “Here we go again,” she sighed, but looked more happy about the interruption. “Are you going to complain today too? I’m studying, you know?”

He closed the door, crawled up on her bed and leaned against the wall with his legs pulled to his chest.

“Saku-chan… Have you ever been in love?”

Her brows show up as her almost-black eyes widened. “What? Girls’ talk? With me? The Manliest of Men?”

Anyone calling Sakura manly or a boy was the most offensive thing one could do to her, yet she now called herself a man as a joke.

“I was just wondering how it feels like,” he replied. “Yuu likes Airi, but how does he know? That kinda thing.”

He looked away, feeling guilty. He tried to find new excuses. Maybe he was just strangely attached to Ken.

“Right. You haven’t fallen in love yet. Yeah, I have.”

“Really? Who was your first love? Yama-senpai?”

She had been so excited when she pulled him along to introduce him to the cool boy, and to his surprise she brought him to Ken. And they hadn’t told her for so many years they knew each other very well.

No one knew better than him how cool Ken was.

But they were cruel to Sakura, weren’t they?

“You, actually.”

“Huh?” He stared at her.

“I was eight, and you were cute. I crushed on Kenta for a while, though. He was so cool when I started the troupe! I wanted you to see him act too!” Sakura’s eyes glittered at the memory. “But, you know, after a while, I noticed you two were a little weird. I think you two still aren’t telling me something, but I won’t force it out of you. But I think I—Wait, Tomo-chan, what is it now?”

Tomo had taken one of the cushions on her bed and hid behind it.

“Forget I ever asked. Forget all of it. Everything.”

He felt nauseous.

For a moment he had been flattered, but then she hit him in the face with anxiety and guilt. She called them weird. Did that mean she knew? Had she seen all those things they did?

“I think,” he said, putting the cushion away, “I’ll go now.”

“If you do, I’ll tell the class about our friendship.”

He instinctively put his hand against his side.

He glared at Sakura, feeling angry tears fill his eyes. “That’s just cruel. This isn’t so important you’d have to do that.”

“Just tell me what brought this on! You’ve been like this for days.”

“I don’t want to talk to you!”

“You were the one who wanted to hide it for no reason.”

“You suggested it!” He slammed the door shut and headed towards the entrance to leave.

“What was— Tomo-chan, are you leavi— Oh, Tomo-chan!”

Sakura’s mother hurried after him, and wordlessly walked alongside him, while tears rolled down his face. He didn’t mind she saw it, since Eiko had seen him cry more times than his own mother, and had tried to comfort him every time.

“Excuse the intrusion. Ichirou-san?” she called as she opened the door to his house when they returned.

“Yes?” Tomoki heard Ichirou’s voice as he came from the kitchen.

He tried to turn and run away, but Eiko kept him from doing so. She looked as petite as Sakura, but was strong nonetheless.

Ichirou took one surprised look at them, then smiled fatherly. He walked up to Tomo and pulled him into an unexpected hug.

“Thank you for the cookies, Ichirou.”

“I hope you all liked them.”

“Very much so. Tell Sawa my regards. Next time I’ll come over with something in return. I’ll take my leave now.”

The door opened and closed, and Tomo could smell the scent of the detergent in Ichirou’s shirts as he held Tomo’s head against his chest.

Tomo felt oddly comforted by Ichirou’s embrace, and it reminded him of Shouji. His father had always been the kind who’d take Tomo in his arms when he cried. Sawa wasn’t as physical, but she had patted her children’s heads and talked them through their emotions. Neither might have been the ideal parent, but both of them had shown they cared when they needed to and could.

“Shall we go inside?” Ichirou finally asked in a calm and soft tone after several minutes had passed. Though, to Tomo, it felt like hours of shame and embarrassment, with just momentary comfort.

***

Yuu and Tatsumi both urged him to eat, but his lunch box was untouched in his bag and he had his forehead against the desk.

Ken avoided him and left him on read. It broke his heart, and without Ken a part of him was missing. He hated it. Even more so when he had already apologised for getting angry. Even begged Ken to stop ignoring him. In the past, Ken had to pry it out of him, especially if he was in the wrong.

If Tomo walked in the same corridor and Ken noticed him, he immediately looked elsewhere.

Though he couldn’t blame Ken. He had figured it out. And now he didn’t want to be with him anymore.

Additionally, he had fought with Sakura. It was better to apologise to Sakura, since she would never go around and tell people anything, yet she was in the wrong. It was she who needed to apologise.

“Is this related to when you ran out and didn’t come back?” Yuu asked.

“No… Or yes…”

It both was, and it wasn’t. Ken’s strange behaviour had brought it on, but it was also unrelated to that specifically. And he needed to solve the issue with Sakura. It was something he could fix. He’d just need to talk to her…

“That’s not it. It’s Saku-chan,” Tomo mumbled into his desk.

Yuu leaned closer and whispered: “You fought with Hana-chan?”

“Huh? What’s this about—” Yuu hushed and Tatsumi leaned closer and whispered: “What?”

“Hana-chan and Momocchi are neighbours. Hana-chan lives right next to his family. They’ve known each other since first grade when Hana-chan’s family moved. Something happened in middle school, so they keep it a secret.”

“I didn’t know about the neighbour thing, but I guess Hana-chan introduced Momo to senpai? I thought it was weird both Momo and Hana-chan called him ‘Yama-senpai’ when no one else did.”

“Let’s go with that,” Tomo said.

“Yeah, let’s go with that.”

“What did you fight about?” Tatsumi asked after giving them both an odd look.

“Love.”

“Did you fight about senpai?”

Tomo angrily stood up, glaring at Tatsumi.

“We did not fight about K—” he said in a raised voice, but stopped himself when he saw his classmates turned to see what was going on. Sakura was one of them.

He sat down again, chin in hand as he continued in a mutter. “It’s not like that at all. There’s nothing to fight about regarding senpai, and if I hadn’t gotten stabbed, Saku-chan and I wouldn’t have anything to fight about at all.”

“You got what?”

Yuu’s question took some time to sink in before Tomo’s eyes widened and any warmth drained from his body.

What had been wrong with him since he began high school? Why did he mention things he swore to never mentioned

***

Tomo stood outside his room with his hand on the handle, tightly gripping it. He wanted to run away, but he needed a private space for the explanation of this.

However, his room was girly. And he hadn’t told Yuu anything about his likes and dislikes — he had tried to steer the topic away from him when Yuu started talking about some TV-show or game and it seemed like he would ask what Tomo liked — so suddenly introducing Tatsumi to it seemed like overwhelmingly terrifying and inappropriate.

Besides, he let no one but Ken and Sakura in his room.

Using one of his sisters’ rooms would be too suspicious and avoiding it in some other way was strange as well. Had it been a girl it could at least seem somewhat normal to stress about it, but he had two boys with him.

He clenched his jaw while his knuckles turned white.

“Momo-chan, what’s wrong?” Yuu asked.

Tomo wanted to cry. He couldn’t say it was just messy, and he needed to clean it, because it was impossible to get rid of all the girly stuff. It was his entire room; the wallpaper, the furniture, the curtains, the small things spread around the room…

Maybe the rug was safe.

To throw everything out of the window was impossible. He couldn’t pretend he slept in an empty room with just a rug. They’d worry for a completely different reason.

If it had been something more believable, he could have been in the living room, but the entire thing was insane. And there was the fact he’d have to explain the situation of his middle school, and he had mentioned it to no one before. Only Ken and Sakura would know enough to puzzle everything together.

For obvious reasons.

“You don’t have to tell us.” Tatsumi sounded worried

Tomo exhaled the breath he had held.

Telling the story was still the simple part.

“It’s… weird.” He had turned to the boys waiting beside him, but avoided eye contact and looked into the space between them. “My room, I mean.”

“Weird?” Yuu asked. “If you mean it’s messy or something, that’s fine.”

“No. I mean, it’s strange.”

Tomo hesitated again before he pushed down the handle and tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

Ichirou had been fine with Tomo liking magical girls and pastels.

But his room… Even Ichirou hadn’t seen that yet. It would be a shocking entrance into Tomo’s world.

He opened the door and stepped in. He held the door open for the two boys following, Yuu freezing in the doorway. Tomo stared into the floor, fingering the hem of his shirt.

Tatsumi pushed Yuu into the room and Tomo closed the door. Yuu randomly looked around, while Tatsumi studied everything with more interest.

Tomo flushed and focused on breathing through the anxiety. The health teacher had also suggested focusing on things around him instead of his anxiety, but in his room, with two boys he barely knew, he was in hell.

Yes, this was definitely what hell would be like. Exam hell hadn’t been as stressful as the current situation.

There was a poster of Apple and Cherry on the wall.

Ichirou had recently brought him to see a kids’ show at an amusement park, bringing his niece with them, and they had gotten a poster. There had been a low-quality toy, but Tomo saw a child fall and break theirs right after leaving the stage area, so he gave it away. It felt like the right thing when the show was about saving people. He wasn’t otaku enough to need to keep it.

Not that he hadn’t felt a little sad about giving it away, but there was always the film in autumn…

His bed had lilac and mint sheets with plush puppies and bunnies. His wardrobe door had been open when they came in and the combination of greys and pastels were visible. He hesitantly closed the wardrobe door, cursing the creaking hinge which made the two boys turn towards him.

“I had this feeling you might like girly things, but I never saw this coming,” Yuu said. “That’s the Saturday children’s show, right? The neighbour kid absolutely loves it.”

“Mmhmm.” Tomo looked away. “Sorry.”

“For what? It’s a cute room, isn’t it, Yuu? You should see his. It’s all posters with football players.”

“There’s just two of them,” Yuu grunted. “And they’re both signed.”

“See, no problem!” Tatsumi laughed. “You like dogs, right?” he continued pointing to a few dog figures and plushies sitting on his shelf. “I do too.”

“I prefer cats.” Yuu’s statement left no room for an argument of which was better.

Tomo let out a nervous giggle. “Sit down wherever. I don’t have people over much, so there’s no table or anything.”

Still studying everything thoroughly, Tatsumi sat down on the floor while Yuu, who looked at anything except for everything, sat down on the bed.

While avoiding looking at his guests, Tomo hesitantly removed his tie and slowly unbuttoned his shirt.

“Wait! Momo! What are you doing?”

Tomo unwillingly looked at Tatsumi. “This is my room, you know. I can undress if I want to. If you don’t want to look, just don’t. It’s not like you’ll see anything new.”

He looked like any boy, after all. Tomo had never minded that part and had never found that he disliked his body, just how people perceived him. He didn’t like what they saw; he wanted others to see ‘Tomoki’.

Though experiences in elementary school had made him averse to getting changed with anyone, Ken and Kouta being the exceptions, as they were people he knew he could trust. Shouji, Sawa, Chiyo, Chika and his grandparents too, of course.

“Well...” Yuu hesitated while Tomo continued. “We’ve only seen you with clothes.”

He hung up the shirt and then lifted his t-shirt while pulling down the waistband, careful not to scratch himself by mistake. Both of his friends were looking away.

“I’m just showing you something. I’m not stripping.”

Yuu was the first one to look at him. He approached Tomo and studied the scar.

“This would’ve hurt a lot.”

“It did. I don’t remember much, but Sawa says I was in surgery. No major damage, and I was lucky I didn’t get any infection.”

The time an ambulance rushed with him to the hospital while on the way home wasn’t the only time he had been to the hospital. The first time he was too little to remember, but it was when they found out about his allergies.

The second time, Sawa almost killed him because of her carelessness. She didn’t remember that time as Tomo being at the hospital, but would assume it was Shouji.

“There was this girl… in my second year…” he covered up the scar then sat down in the chair by his desk, while collecting and organising his thoughts.

“Take your time, Momo.”

He nodded and leaned on the backrest.

“I had a lot of friends. Just girls, no boys. I made them in my first year. In my second, I also made ‘friends’ with some in the first year — they usually wanted me to pass on messages to Ken. I guess one got jealous or something because and just… yeah. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

Memories of that day gave him goosebumps. If he dreamt of it at night he’d wake up covered in sweat or crying. A few times he had screamed.

On his way home, Tomo had found her and offered to walk her home. He had realised she was there to confess her feelings for him, and he had told her it wasn’t mutual. She had jumped to her own conclusions and… He hadn’t made it home that day. Ken had nothing to do with it, but he blamed himself. Sakura had done nothing wrong, yet she held onto the thought she had caused it.

The one to blame was Tomo. Some of what she said might have been true.

“That’s just sick.”

Tatsumi looked at Tomo with furrowed brows and a tense jaw. Yuu had clenched his fists.

“It’s just what happened. There’s nothing to be done about it now.”

“That explains why you’re avoiding Hana-chan. I’d probably do the same,” Tatsumi said after he calmed down.

“And the scar explains why you don’t change with us,” Yuu added. “But you really are a guy, huh?”

The word stabbed his chest, but he nodded.

“So you did question it?” Tatsumi teased.

“All the guys in class have been saying that Momo-chan could be a flat-chested girl. I didn’t really believe it, but now it's confirmed he’s a boy.”

“True.”

Tomo abruptly stood up. “Um… I’ll go get us something to drink.” He was at the door in an instant and had opened it before even getting a response.

He close the door right after one of them said: “Sure, but—”

They were going to go downstairs to study, yet Tomo fled. The discomfort made him sick. The memories and his friends’ comments were a reminder of what he needed to be.

A boy.

Momoi Tomoki was a boy.