Diya_Tejal

The first time Ren saw Aoi, he was crouched beside the old vending machine outside the corner bookstore, sketching something into a tattered notebook. His blue hair shimmered faintly in the spring sun, like the sea had gifted him a crown.
Ren almost walked past him. But the breeze carried a whisper of graphite on paper, the soft rustle of pages turning, and something made him stop.
“You’re drawing?” Ren asked, unsure why he even said it.
Aoi looked up, blinking once like he was waking from a dream. His eyes were a startling grey, like rain on glass.
“…Yeah,” he said quietly. “You’re blocking my light.”
Ren awkwardly stepped aside. “Sorry.”
For a moment, they stared at each other. Then Aoi returned to his sketch, and Ren left, but something about that moment stayed with him — like a bookmark placed in a chapter he hadn't meant to read.

Ren had moved to the seaside town of Hoshinawa after his mother passed away. He lived with his aunt above a quaint little flower shop, spent afternoons helping arrange lilies and writing poems he never let anyone read.
The town was quiet, and Ren liked it that way — until he started seeing Aoi everywhere.
At the bookstore. Near the cliffs. At the library where he sat in silence, scribbling in his notebook, always alone.
They spoke rarely, but when they did, Aoi’s words were careful, like he measured every sentence before letting it out. He didn’t smile much — but when he did, it was faint, fragile, like a star peeking through a cloudy sky.
One day, Ren found a sketch slipped into his poetry book at the library. It was a pencil drawing of the cherry tree that bloomed outside his flower shop — and beneath it, a figure that looked suspiciously like him.
The next time he saw Aoi, he waited until they were both at the vending machine again.
“You left this?” Ren asked, holding up the drawing.
Aoi flushed, eyes darting. “Maybe.”
Ren smiled. “I write poems about that tree.”
“I know,” Aoi murmured. “I’ve read them. You leave the scraps behind.”
A silence stretched between them — but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It felt… intimate.
“I think,” Aoi said slowly, “your poems make me feel less alone.”
Ren’s chest ached, soft and sudden.
“I think your sketches do the same,” he whispered.
And that was how it started.

Over the weeks, they met more often. Exchanged words, drawings, half-written poems. They didn't need grand declarations. Their closeness grew in the quiet spaces — the brush of hands as they reached for the same book, the shared silence watching the sea, the way their shadows leaned into each other as the sun set.
One day, under the blooming cherry tree, Ren turned to Aoi and said, “You make me want to write again.”
Aoi looked at him, eyes gentler than ever. “Then write me something I can keep.”
Ren leaned in, nervous but certain, and kissed him — soft, slow, like poetry in motion.
And in that moment, the world wasn’t loud or broken.
It was just them — beneath the cherry sky, finding something beautiful in each other.

Beneath the Cherry Sky

March crept in with rain-kissed winds and cherry buds curling open like secrets.

Ren had started visiting the corner by the bookstore every few days — not always to see Aoi, or so he told himself. But the truth hung gently in the air: he hoped Aoi would be there. He liked the silence that sat between them, the way it wasn't empty. It had weight. Intention.

On a Monday afternoon, the sun was unusually warm. Aoi was already there, sketching with a soft look on his face that Ren hadn't seen before — not peaceful, exactly. Just… present.

Ren sat beside him. No words at first. Just the soft sound of pencil on paper, and the flutter of a page as Ren flipped through his worn-out journal.

Then Aoi said, without looking up, "Do you always write about trees?"

Ren blinked. "No. Sometimes about the sea. Sometimes about people. But trees… they don't leave. They just change."

Aoi paused. The corner of his mouth twitched. "That's a very poetic thing to say."

Ren nudged his knee gently. "I'm a poet. It's in the job description."

Aoi smiled — small, barely there. But real.

Later, they walked toward the harbor, quiet and slow. Aoi had his bag slung lazily over one shoulder, sketchbook pressed close. Ren carried a thermos of barley tea from his aunt's shop.

They sat on the edge of the pier, legs dangling above the rippling sea.

Ren leaned back on his hands. "Do you go to school?"

He looked away, hair falling into his eyes. "Didn't really fit. People... talk too much and listen too little."

"Were you always in Hoshinawa?" Aoi asked.

Ren nodded. "I used to live in the city. Moved here after…"

He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. Aoi didn't press. Instead, he offered a quiet truth of his own.

"My parents own a guesthouse near the cliffs. It's mostly empty. They're rarely around."

Ren turned to him. "So you're alone a lot?"

Something in Ren's chest twisted. Not with pity — but with familiarity.

"I met a boy made of sky and salt,

whose silence tasted like home.

He doesn't ask for the light—

but it bends toward him anyway."

He didn't tear it out. Instead, he folded it carefully and slipped it between the pages of his journal — beside the drawing Aoi had given him.

The wind rattled the attic window. Outside, the cherry tree shivered.

And inside, Ren slept for the first time in weeks with something calm in his chest.

Chapter 3 A Place Between the Pages