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Suguru should really stop coming to Satoru’s room to study. He never gets anything done, Satoru barely even tries to get anything done, and objectively, it is a waste of time.
But here he is anyway. Suguru reaches the end of a page of a textbook and promptly returns to the beginning of the same page. Absolutely nothing he’s read in the past five minutes has gone into his head.
“—and, like, I told her that I didn’t want to go to the market, it’s freezing out there—okay, I mean, I know it’s been worse, but it’s still pretty bad, and I don’t want to go out there if I don’t have to,” Satoru is saying, “and I told her as much, but she’s insisting on getting—on getting—” Suguru doesn’t need to look up from his computer to know Satoru’s wrinkling his nose at the pause. “I dunno, ornaments? Or something? Which, like, sure, I guess that’s fine, but in this weather?”
“Hm,” Suguru responds insightfully. He glares at his computer and wills the words on his screen to travel to his mind. The transduction of light, he reads, is caused by photoreceptors found at the eye’s retina. Photoreceptors are made of a protein called rhodopsin, which is light-sensitive—
“I don’t really think ornaments are worth going outside. You know? If it was, like, food or something, I wouldn’t complain because it’s, you know, food, but ornaments are just so—” Satoru makes a frustrated noise. “You know?”
“Yeah,” Suguru acknowledges. Light initiates a cascade of reactions whose end result is to close sodium channels that are normally open. This is also known as a—
“Are you done with your essay yet?” Suguru can hear a slight pout in Satoru’s voice.
“Uhh,” Suguru says in lieu of a response. The words are finally starting to make some sense in his mind, but just as he’s about to click to go to the next page, his screen flickers for a moment before shutting down. He stares at the black screen for a few moments before thinking to hit his power button, but to no avail. It’s only then that he remembers he hasn’t charged his computer for a whole day. Exactly how long has he been poring over the same paper not to notice? He glances around Satoru’s room, wondering if there’s a charger he can use, before remembering that Satoru’s charger isn’t compatible with his computer. He sighs and shuts his laptop.
“Everything fine?”
“Yeah, my computer just died,” Suguru mutters. He finally turns to find Satoru peering at him from his bed. “Can I borrow yours for a bit? I just want to finish reading this one paper.” At Satoru’s skeptical stare, he puts his hands up in the air. “It won’t take me long, I swear.”
With a huff, Satoru rolls towards his computer. “Yeah, yeah.” He all but throws his computer at Suguru, who just manages to catch it against his chest.
“Thanks,” Suguru says. “Password?”
Satoru mutters something under his breath. Suguru raises his eyebrows and squints at Satoru.
“What?”
Satoru clears his throat. “Birthday.”
Suguru puts in Satoru’s birthday. It doesn’t work.
“It didn’t work.”
Satoru clears his throat again. “Your. Birthday.”
Suguru turns back to squint at him a little harder. “Why would you make your password my birthday?”
“It’s… harder to guess, right?”
“Sure,” Suguru agrees after a pause. “I guess that makes sense.” He punches in his birthday, and Satoru’s computer screen blooms to life. Suguru moves to open a new tab to find his paper again, but his eyes inevitably draw to the open, fully visible tab Satoru has open on the screen.
how too confess to ur dense cruh
In Satoru-speak, that’s “how to confess to your dense crush.” Suguru’s deciphered enough of Satoru’s texts to know that much.
The translation comes instantly to him. The actual processing of what Suguru’s seeing takes much longer. For a few moments, he simply stares at the screen.
Crush. Satoru has a crush? And Suguru didn’t know?
Satoru might yap Suguru’s ear off on a daily basis, but Suguru still listens. There’s no way Suguru could have missed this big of a development.
Suguru guesses it really shouldn’t be that surprising. A crush was a normal thing to have, and Satoru was bound to have one eventually. It is a bit strange that he hadn’t told Suguru about it, but he supposed there were some secrets even Satoru wouldn’t want to share.
It isn’t that surprising. It isn’t that strange.
Suguru still can’t seem to explain the odd, twisting feeling in his gut as he rereads the search query.
He could drop the topic and pretend like he never saw the tab. He probably should drop the topic if he doesn’t want Satoru yammering his ear off.
Suguru’s curiosity gets the better of him.
“Hey, Satoru,” he asks slowly. The screen is still facing Suguru, and he doesn’t think Satoru knows what he’s seen. “You got a crush on anyone?”
This is the part where Satoru springs to life and begins talking about the person he likes at a hundred words a minute. This is the part where that strange feeling of Suguru’s subsides.
There’s a pause. “No,” comes Satoru’s eventual response.
Suguru’s gut twists a little more.
Wordlessly, he spins the computer to face Satoru. Satoru’s expression pinches a bit when he sees the screen.
“Ah,” he says. “Well.”
“Well,” Suguru says, and nothing more. They stare at each other in silence for a few moments.
Suguru’s the first to break his gaze away with a cough. They were friends, and surely friends talked about crushes. There was nothing awkward about this situation, and Suguru can’t explain where the current tension in the room could possibly be coming from.
“Well,” Suguru says again, “who is it?”
“No one,” Satoru says too quickly. “I was just—you know, I was just searching that up as, like, a hypothetical.”
Suguru is wholly unconvinced by this explanation, and he’s sure it shows on his face. After a moment, Satoru deflates. He picks at his nails.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
This is surprising. “Really?” Suguru can’t help but ask. “You know, maybe I can help.”
Satoru looks up and blinks. “Huh?”
“I’m no expert, but I’m bound to be more helpful than a random internet article,” Suguru offers. “Although I’d be… more helpful if you actually told me who you liked.”
Satoru’s mouth twitches. “You want to give me advice on, what, how to confess?”
Suguru frowns, a bit offended by the incredulity of Satoru’s tone. “We’re friends, aren’t we? Of course I want to help.”
For some reason, the sentence was a bit hard to get out of his mouth. Suguru has no idea why.
“Um,” Satoru says, looking a bit lost but also faintly amused. “Uh… okay. What the hell. Sure.” He spreads his hands in front of him. “What’s your advice, Suguru?”
“You’re still not going to tell me who it is?” Satoru shakes his head. Suguru sighs. “Okay, well… you think they’re dense, huh?”
“Extremely.”
“Right,” Suguru says, a bit bewildered by Satoru’s insistence. “Then, I guess the best first step would be to make it clear that it’s a confession. You wouldn’t want them mistaking it for something else, you know?”
“Uh huh.”
“So, you know, maybe… be specific. Tell them the things you like about them, things that would only apply to them.”
“Right.”
“And then…” Suguru trails off. “I guess that’s it? I don’t think it’s really that hard.”
“Uh huh,” Satoru says again, before leaning forward. “Hey, Suguru?”
“Yeah?”
“This is a confession. I really, really like you, romantically, and I think we should go out. On a date. Or many. I like the way you talk, I like the way you listen to me, and I think you look hot.” Satoru blinks at him. “So?”
Suguru stares at him.
“...so?”
Suguru continues staring at him.
“Are you going to say anything?”
“Um,” Suguru eventually says. “Right.” He swallows. “Just like that. Just do that for the person you like.”
Satoru’s expression twitches before he leans back. “Hey, Suguru?”
“Yeah?”
“What if I follow all of your instructions and they still don’t get it?”
Suguru looks away. “I don’t think anyone would be that dense.”
Satoru makes a strange sort of choking noise. “You’d be surprised.”
Suguru brings a hand to his neck. “Then… I don’t know. At that point, just ask to kiss them, I guess.”
“Okay,” Satoru agrees. “Can I kiss you?”
Suguru presses his lips. “Yeah. Like that.”
He doesn’t understand why Satoru is being so oddly insistent about practicing all of his lines on Suguru. Suguru wanted to help, but this entire thing is making him feel a sort of wretched, and he can’t explain why.
Satoru’s still staring at him expectantly. Suguru decides he’s spent about enough time in Satoru’s room for the day. Anyway, he has an essay due at the end of the day. Maybe that would distract him from that uneasy feeling still wriggling under his skin.
“Okay,” Suguru says. “Well, I hope that helped. I’ll, uh, go back to my room now.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Satoru blurts out. “Suguru, how can you—how the fuck can you be this—this—”
Suguru watches Satoru splutter, mildly concerned. “I don’t think my advice was that bad—”
“It’s you,” Satoru interrupts. “You—you idiot, it’s you—the person I’m trying to confess to is you! It’s always been you!”
Suguru’s lips part.
“Huh,” he croaks out.
“I cannot believe how many times I’ve had to—to spell this out to you—Suguru, my password is literally your birthday—”
“Oh,” Suguru says. “I guess that was a little strange.”
“Oh my god, and I literally confessed to you, and I asked if I could kiss you, and you still didn’t get it—”
“Yes,” Suguru says. Satoru stops flailing his arms around to turn and stare at Suguru.
“What?”
“Yes,” Suguru says, blinking quickly. “You can kiss me.”
Satoru’s arms are still suspended in the air. For a moment, he gawks at Suguru. “Huh?”
“I also… really, really like you. Romantically. I like…” Suguru doesn’t have enough neurons firing to make this a good confession. “Everything about you. I also. Think we should go out on… lots of dates.”
Satoru is still gaping at him.
“...can I kiss you?”
“Hgnk,” Satoru says, which Suguru takes as a yes. He leans in to press a quick kiss to Satoru’s lips, and when he leans back, Satoru’s face is a fiery red. Satoru turns away with a huff, but there’s a smile playing at his lips.
“Took you long enough.”