*For better formatting please read on google docs: Himitsu ; Secret*
When you are sixteen the world seems to exist on the tips of your fingers. It is yours for the taking, full of new feelings and friendships that feel immortal. Teenagers are often defined as thinking of themselves as kings and lords, arrogant little kids who are so close to tittering off the edge of their so-called throne. But for Keiji sixteen felt like an unending nightmare.
His sister’s funeral was a difficult one. Not that he’d been to many ‘easy’ funerals, but when relatives died he didn’t feel as though someone had reached deep into him and pulled something out. Something important. Not his heart, because he could still feel it beating against his chest. But something just as important, because the longer Keiji stared at the coffin the harder it got to breathe.
A hand comes to rest on the small of his back, quite placidly for the atmosphere. The weight of a ring against his back tells him it’s his mother, but Keiji doesn’t tear his eyes away from the coffin. Rooted where he stands as he tries to imagine his sister pushing open the lid and laughing at them all, what a sick joke. She doesn’t do that—Sana Fukumoto was never one for practical jokes. Slowly, he raises his head towards his mother, her face is red where she’s rubbed it raw with a handkerchief, there’s mascara smudged below her eye and she’s forgotten her gold earrings. Keiji can’t remember when his mother had ever forgotten her gold earrings. They’d been an anniversary gift from his father, and she’s worn them every day since then.
“I’m sorry,” Keiji says, solemn. His voice struggles to remain steady as he holds his mother beside him. Don’t cry today. He tells himself. Today’s not for you.
His mother shrinks beside him, and he thinks she’s never looked so small.
“I’m sorry,” Keiji says again. Not sure what he’s even apologizing for. I’m sorry.
Keiji’s sister died three days after her birthday. Three days after his father had named her heir to their business. And three days after she’d asked him about his best friend.
In three days, after two difficult conversations, he’d lost his sister. And in four days, he’d been named the heir to his family’s company. Not that he wanted to, he didn’t have much of a choice. Most things in Keiji’s life were definitive and chosen for him, his inheriting the company was simply another stone in the pond. Keiji took it as well as you would imagine—in fits of silent rage that he allowed himself in the quiet of his room when his parents were asleep and he was allowed to be angry and upset.
By the fifth day, his father had announced the news and by the sixth day, Keiji was skipping his first class.
“Are you sure about this?” Keiji stopped, halfway through climbing up the fire escape. He turned around to face his best friend. Who was barely a few steps behind him and who did this way more often than Keiji. “You never skip class,” he continues, “I know it’s been hard with your sister and you know… your dad. But maybe we should do something more on your stream. I don’t think we should risk getting you in trouble right now.”
Ryu Yoshikawa was a rebellious teenage bot in all the ways a teenage boy could be rebellious. For as long as Keiji has known him, he has wanted to cut classes together. Today, he wants to sit and talk about their feelings.
Keiji scoffs, turning back around to finish climbing up to the roof. “Isn’t this what you’ve been asking me to do since we met? Besides, we’re already here. Shut up and finish climbing before you get us caught halfway on the stairs.” He pushes himself onto the elevated platform, stepping off the staircase and onto the rooftop. The stairwell that leads here is closed after lunch breaks so no one would expect to find them here. So Keiji crawls all the way to the other end where a tall fence covers the perimeter of the roof. He sits with his back to the open yard below them and he waits as Ryu steps on.
He’s untied his tie and stuffed it in his pocket, his shirts untucked and his hair an unruly mess of curls. Full of all that boyish charm. The kind Keiji’s avoided thinking about since they were eleven and his hands started to sweat whenever they got close to each other.
Ryu goes to sit beside him, glasses pushed back into his hair to keep it off his face, but it does little to prevent the curls from falling anyway. He stretches back against the metal fence and lazily looks over at Keiji. His eyes half-lidded and his expression tired, “Are we not going to talk about it then?”
Keiji shakes his head no, quickly looking away from his friend. As nonchalantly as he can he wipes his hands on his pants. “Nothing to speak about.”
Ryu watches him for a minute before humming in agreement. He turns back forward and pulls out his phone, loading up the new game they’d both gotten into recently.
“Have you done your commissions?” He asks, leaning close to let Keiji see his screen. He tries not to flinch when his head comes to rest on his shoulder, instead, he lets out a shaky breath and looks up as he responds. “N-No. I haven’t.”
Ryu hands him the phone, “Go on then, I wanna see the new character you’ve got. Didn’t you say you built him already?”
Keiji bites down, this he could do. Talking about their video games and their characters, he could do. He takes the phone from Ryu and opens his character profile. Next to Zhongli he sees his unbuilt Childe, Ryu jumps at this, “You have them both? Ohh you know what they say about them right?”
Keiji falters, leaning back to look at Ryu confused, “What?”
Ryu laughs, “Haven’t you been on Twitter recently? There’s this thread going around about the two of them. I’ll send it to you later.”
Keiji frowns, but agrees to later anyway. They get back to Ryu resting his head on Keiji and Keiji trying not to let his sweaty hands interfere with his commissions.
He reads the thread when he’s back home. Scrolling through the tweets he finds his heart begin to race.
His hands shake slightly as he swipes through the character descriptions, the connections to canon they’d drawn. Finally, the words queer-coded make their way onto his screen. Quickly, he shuts his
phone off and swipes it under his pillow.
Keiji had gone so long without admitting it, that seeing the possibility of the characters he’d been playing with being queer… the very idea sent chills down his spine. Slowly, he takes his phone back into his hands. He’s unsure what it means when there hadn’t been anything to show for it in his game, but he feels warmth grow at the idea nonetheless. The characters were coded he begins to understand. A way of assigning characteristics to emphasize a specific trait, to be able to do that under heavy censorship… Keiji thinks back to how his father would change the channel whenever two boys would hug, or how his mother would frown and turn him away when their old neighbours, two old women, would sit to watch the sunset together in their home. He stares at the screen at his favourite character, at Ryu’s favourite character.
Ryu didn’t seem disgusted when he’d told Keiji. In fact, he’d never done anything like his parents. His sister had asked him why that was before she’d—well, it was a difficult conversation. Keiji hears her words over and over again. Are you in love with Ryu, Are you in love with Ryu?
He hated how she saw right through him. But she hadn’t been disgusted. Ryu hadn’t been disgusted.
He focuses back on the characters on his screen. On the people in the comments arguing over the validity of their sexuality. But Keiji smiles. Eyes tearing up. Later he’ll ask Ryu why he’d sent it, but for now, he’s happy. He’s happy he has characters like him. Characters who can also like their best friends and find it difficult to be out.
When he hears the shuffle of footsteps outside he puts his phone away and turns the blanket over his head. He doesn’t sleep until the sun rises in his room. But for once he’s not afraid when he stays awake, for once he doesn’t hate the dreams that follow. There are people like him. Suddenly the pressure of running the company, of having everyone watch his every step as the sole heir doesn’t feel so scary anymore. He may have hidden behind his sister for all sixteen years, not much a king, not really a prince. But for now, he didn’t hate who he was.
He wonders if Zhongli dreams about holding Childe’s hand as much as he wants to hold Ryu’s.
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