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

The next time Ren came to the guesthouse, Aoi wasn't sketching.

He was sitting on the floor of his room, surrounded by torn paper. Not crumpled — torn. Neatly. Deliberately. Like each page was something he wanted to forget.

Aoi didn't look up. "It was just noise. All of it."

Ren stepped inside slowly, his voice quiet. "What happened?"

Aoi's hands trembled slightly as he gathered the pieces. "My parents called. They're coming back next week. Haven't seen them in over a year."

Ren sat beside him. The air felt different today — tense, charged, like a thread pulled too tight.

Aoi gave a breath of something like a laugh, but without humor. "No. I'm used to being invisible when they're around. I'm just… preparing."

Ren watched him carefully. "Preparing to disappear again?"

So Ren reached out, slowly, and placed a hand over Aoi's.

It was the first time he'd done that. Skin to skin. Real.

Aoi flinched — not away, but like the touch startled something deep inside.

"You don't have to go quiet for them," he said gently. "You don't have to fade."

Aoi turned to him, and this time, his eyes held that haunted shine — the kind of shine that comes from holding too much in for too long.

"My father told me once that artists starve because they feel too much and talk too little. He said I'd never grow up if I kept hiding in notebooks."

Ren's jaw clenched. "He doesn't get to decide what makes you whole."

Aoi blinked. "You really think I'm whole?"

Ren gave a trembling smile. "I think you're still becoming. And that's braver than pretending you've already finished."

Aoi looked away, but not before Ren saw it — the water in his eyes. The crack in the mask.

And then — in a voice smaller than he'd ever heard from him — Aoi whispered, "Will you still come back next week? Even if they're here?"

And then Aoi leaned forward — slowly, shakily — until his forehead rested against Ren's chest. Not his shoulder this time. His chest. Closer. More fragile. More real.

Ren held him like something sacred.

And outside the guesthouse, the wind moved gently through the trees — as if even the world had gone quiet to let this moment breathe.

Chapter 9 The Window That Never Closed