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The textbook's pages are illuminated by the fluorescent desk lamp by his head. Taichi's fingers slide over the cardiac diagram, following the path of blood through the chambers of the heart. "Vena cava," he murmurs, "right atrium, tricupsid valve, chordae tendonae, right ventricle..."
Next to the textbook is a small good luck talisman that Arata bought for him at their last New Year's shrine visit. Tucked into the book's spine is a hand-sewn cloth bookmark covered in pink felt hearts. He glances at them both and smiles.
He thinks about all the tiny blood vessels that wrap around the heart, feeding it nutrients and oxygen. He thinks about the way Chihaya and Arata wrap around him, the way their hearts beat at tempos that are different, but still steady.
"Impassionate gods have never seen the red that is the Tatsuta River," he murmurs.
--
"May I ask you something?" Taichi says after practice at the Shiranami Society one day. The national championship has passed, and the time to his high school graduation is counted in days now rather than months.
Harada glances over his shoulder, his hands filled with boxes of karuta cards. "There's no need to be so formal," his teacher says. "What is it?"
Taichi follows him with the stereo and the CDs that the club used for practice that day. "How did you know you wanted to go into pediatrics?"
Harada chuckles. "I was the oldest of eight kids." He sets the boxes down and stretches, a fist braced against his lower back. "Growing up, the one thing I was good at was taking care of people. It just made sense for me to keep doing it.
"Besides, back then was a different time...things were harder." Harada's smile is wistful, and he shakes his head. "I wanted to do what I could to help, I guess you could say."
Taichi's never known how to back down from anything. When he's nervous, like now, his back straightens, his shoulders go back. His head lifts. But his eyes reflect the thrumming energy that he feels beneath his skin, the sensation of being on a precipice but not knowing whether he should take the fall or not.
Going into medicine is what his mother wants, yes. But doing what his mother wants isn't enough of a reason for him to do anything—not after he started the karuta club with Chihaya, not after Arata started talking to them again. "How did you know it was what you wanted?" he says. "Not just something you'd be good at."
Harada's gaze rests on him, kindly but sharp. "You're the only one who can decide your future," his teacher tells him. "When it's right, you'll just know. It's like moving for the right card before the speaker finishes the first syllable. You're smart, but sometimes you think too much. Listen to your game sense, too."
Taichi turns Harada's words over in his head. Harada watches him for a little while before he smiles. "Let me know when you decide," he says. "I'll write you a letter of recommendation whenever you'd like."
--
"No fair," Chihaya says. She's sitting cross-legged on the bed across from Taichi, her pouting face framed by her cupped hands. One of his textbooks is open in her lap. "Why can't you use me instead?"
"Your muscles aren't as well defined," Taichi replies absently, splaying one hand across Arata's bare back. The warmth radiating from Arata's skin is pleasant against his fingers.
Even though Arata has buried his face in the pillow, the tips of his ears are pink. "Thanks for letting me do this," Taichi tells him.
Arata shakes his head. "It's no trouble," he says. His voice is muffled, but Taichi is used to having to parse out the meaning of his words over kilometers and through the static of long distance phone calls. He can identify the nervousness in it, and underneath that, the ever-present thread of affection. "We want to support you in any way that we can."
Taichi nods at that, and decides he better get started—there's no reason to prolong Arata's discomfort. His hand drifts to Arata's shoulder. "Trapezius," he says. He can't resist digging his fingers in, feeling how the muscle gives beneath the gentle pressure. Arata lets out a little sigh and Taichi turns the gesture into a massage, soothing the tension away. He glances up at Chihaya, whose eyes are locked onto his fingers. "Right?"
"What? Oh!" She jerks upright and fumbles for the textbook, peering at the diagram on the open page. "Y-yeah. Um, what bones are there?"
"Scapula," he says, pressing harder to map the bones out underneath the guarding muscle and skin. His fingers find a ridge and follow it up to the tip of the shoulder. "There's the scapular spine, and—" his fingers smooth over the bony prominence by the shoulder joint, "the acromion."
Chihaya shifts forward to settle her hand over his own. "Oh," she says when she feels the bump, her eyes wide and delighted.
Taichi nods. "In Greek, 'acromion' means 'the highest point.'"
"On Mount Ogura's peak, he is wont to stand,"1 Arata murmurs below them.
"Oh, wait, I know this one! 'The belling stag has passed many an autumn—'"
"The number?" Taichi finishes. "No one can tell."
That isn't quite true. Taichi has a head for numbers and recall, and years of karuta have sharpened his memory. He knows exactly how long Chihaya and Arata have been in his life. But in moments like this, when the three of them are ensconced in the warm yellow light from the bedside lamp, the years he's spent with them feel timeless.
--
"You have such nice handwriting," Chihaya says, flopping onto her back so that she looks half-buried under the kotatsu. "It's kind of a shame."
"...You think my handwriting is nice?" is the first thing out of his mouth. Then Taichi's brain catches up and he says, "Wait—what are you talking about?"
"If you're going to be a doctor! Doctors always have such terrible handwriting. I bet yours is going to get worse too."
"I don't see what my career has to do with anything," he mutters, but Chihaya isn't listening.
Arata chuckles, sitting between them on the third side of the kotatsu. He rests his hand on top of Taichi's, and the newness of the gesture—that it can be this easy—is enough to make Taichi's cheeks tinge with color. "I'm just glad we're all going to be together," Arata says.
"Yeah!" Chihaya bolts upright again. "There's another open house on Saturday, right?"
Arata nods, and Taichi stares hard at the tabletop. It's the third open house they've been to, now that they're...Taichi doesn't know the word for it. The words boyfriend and girlfriend seem at once too large and not enough.
They've talked a little about what kind of apartment they're looking for, but ultimately it doesn't matter to any of them, as long as they're living there together.
Together.
Deliberately, Taichi reaches across the table to hold Chihaya's hand. She blinks, and then smiles. She reaches for Arata and the three of them just sit, enjoying the warmth of the kotatsu and each other's presence.
--
Taichi slides his last card across the tatami and bows low to his teacher. Harada beams at him across the playing field. "You're playing well today!" he says, bowing back. "One of these days I'm not going to be able to beat you anymore."
Taichi shoots Harada a disbelieving look and the older man laughs, clapping his shoulder hard enough to make him sway sideways.
"Come with me to the back," Harada says. He gets to his feet with a groan, but Taichi doesn't move to help him up; he'd never hear the end of it if he did. "I have a present for you."
The back room is a barely-used office where the club stores its documents and extra karuta supplies. Harada thumbs through his briefcase, mumbling to himself, before he pulls out a box in a familiar shape.
"Karuta cards?" Taichi asks, reaching out when Harada offers them to him.
"Not quite. I'd been meaning to give these to you once you started university, but it kept slipping my mind. They helped me a lot when I was in school, so I thought you could use them with the other two."
Taichi opens the box and stares at the hand-cut cards with their brown cardboard backs, the scribbly handwriting in blue ballpoint pen. He blinks once; then again, forcefully. Harada grins and wraps a warm arm around his shoulders.
"Thank you," Taichi says, and the words don't seem like enough. "Thank you so much."
On the way out he turns back and bows deeply to Harada. "Stop that, Eyelashes," he hears above his head. Harada's voice is fond and a little embarrassed. When he straightens, he sees his teacher scratching at the side of his face, frowning at him in mock impatience. "You're making me feel old. Get out of here! It's late."
The reminder makes him think of Arata and Chihaya waiting on him to eat dinner, and hurries his steps out the door.
Later that night, Taichi pulls out the new deck of cards and flips through them with Chihaya and Arata, explaining the game. Chihaya takes a seat across from him as Arata settles into the reader's position, and they lay fifty cards out before them. Each one is emblazoned with a word: B cell. ATP. Cytokine.
"Chihaya's at a bit of a disadvantage," Arata says when their memorization time is over.
"It's not like I've ever done this before, either," Taichi answers. "Whenever you're ready, Arata."
"Should I say the opening poem?"
"I don't think you need to," Taichi says.
Chihaya frowns at him. "It's karuta!" she insists. "You have to do it right."
Arata's soft, lilting voice around the familiar poem is soothing. Taichi can feel his focus sharpening as he stares at the cards before him. His right hand tingles with anticipation.
Arata takes a breath. "A series of chemical reactions used by all aerobic organisms to generate energy—"
Taichi bursts forward and swipes the card from Chihaya's side a hair faster than she can react. The card goes flying, hitting the TV with a familiar clack. Taichi goes to pick it up, showing it to Arata. "Krebs cycle," he says for Chihaya's benefit.
Arata nods but says, "Your swing was a little high."
"Thanks," he says, settling back into position. Chihaya is staring at the cards before her, and he takes a moment to admire her face in its perfect concentration: her high cheekbones and the way her ponytail wisps against the sides of her neck. She's the most beautiful like this, Taichi thinks.
Chihaya gets the next card to Taichi and Arata's surprise. "You've been practicing the immune system so much that you're saying it in your sleep," she says, waving the "Macrophage" card in his face. "Of course we're going to learn some things!"
"Let's have a good match, then," Taichi says, grinning at her. The two of them grin back.
--
Taichi doesn't talk to his mom often anymore. He's not impolite—he wasn't raised that way, and on a more practical level, it's his family's money that pays for most of their rent—but he's tired of her harping on his karuta playing and how it "distracts" him. He stopped trying to explain things years ago; allowing their contact to fade seems like a natural progression.
He feels like his own relationship with his mother is thrown into sharp, awkward relief when hears Arata talking on the phone with his parents, or when Chihaya vanishes every other Monday to have dinner with her family. But he's always had an aloof relationship with his mother. It's just how it is, he tells himself, and tries not to think too hard when he hugs Arata from behind and makes him laugh with surprise into the phone. He listens to Arata make excuses to his father in Fukui, feels Arata relax back into the embrace, and tries not to think about his childhood at all.
His mother calls him after the first few months and asks him when he's going to visit. When he does, the house feels emptier than he remembers. Bigger. There's a hollowness to the clean white walls and the pristine living room. His mother serves lunch and their stilted conversation soon slides into silence.
If I should live long, then perhaps the present days may be dear to me,2 he thinks to himself.
She asks after Chihaya and Arata, and purses her lips at the fact that he's living under the same roof as a girl. Taichi sighs and doesn't try to explain.
It's a relief when he's headed home again, a box of sweets for Chihaya and Arata under one arm. Their apartment is tiny and in truth not large enough for the three of them. Half of his things are still in their boxes, but wherever he turns he's surrounded by tokens from the ones he loves.
Taichi swings the door open to hear the familiar slap of hands against the tatami mats, and can't imagine calling anywhere else home.
--
The whir of the printer as it spits out the coming week's powerpoints is a monotonous counterpoint to the restless tapping of his fingers against the desk. He silently begs it to hurry so he can catch the last train of the night. He's been studying on campus since the library opened at eight this morning. His mind feels numb, his eyelids heavy. His stomach mumbles a protest, reminding him that he hasn't eaten in several hours.
The last page prints out. Taichi flips through to make sure all the pages are there, then jams them into his bag without finesse, hearing the paper crumple. He winces, but he can straighten it out later; he has seven minutes to reach the station.
The train doors close behind him with a loud, pre-recorded chime and he slumps into a seat. The car is almost empty, with a handful of people scattered throughout who all look as tired as he feels. He sways when the train jolts into motion, watching the city lights pass by the window.
Every time he has a late night like this, he's grateful that the three of them live near the last stop. It seems like he's just closed his eyes when the conductor's voice is jerking him awake, announcing the end of the line. He stumbles out and relies on muscle memory to make it back to his apartment, stifling yawns as he goes. The nights are getting colder; he's going to have to start reminding Chihaya to wear a jacket soon. He wonders if he can ask Arata to make a hotpot next weekend. It's Arata's birthday in a few months too, isn't it? He should start talking to Chihaya about what they're going to get him.
He's fumbling with his key in the lock when the door swings open, making him stumble forward. Warm arms envelop him, accompanied by a laugh. "Welcome home!" Chihaya says close to his ear, turning her catch into a forceful hug that squeezes the breath out of him.
"I'm back," he says, smiling at Arata over Chihaya's shoulder.
He doesn't manage to make it through dinner before he's nodding off again. He registers Chihaya and Arata guiding him to their bed and getting him into his pajamas, but he's so exhausted that he doesn't have the energy to be embarrassed.
He can feel someone's hand in his hair, and another hand slipping to tangle with his own. A thought swims to the surface of his mind then and he reaches out to grab them both, his eyes still closed. Both of them still, waiting.
"This is going to be the next ten years of my life," Taichi says. His voice is a heavy slur. "Is—is that okay?"
There's a short pause before the hand in his hair takes up its motion again. He hears the other person shift forward to press a kiss against his mouth.
"You're our Taichi," Chihaya's voice says. "We'll be here no matter what."
Some part of Taichi wants to be disbelieving, but most of him just—trusts. Chihaya and Arata have been his two constants since the moment he met them. Why would that ever change?
"Good night," Arata says.
"Sleep well," Chihaya adds.
"I love you," Taichi murmurs before he slips under.