to be lilac and lavender

"What do you want to eat for lunch today?" Oikawa held up our afternoon with a lot of small talk.

"I'm good with anything," I uttered back.

"Hm, okay."

"Yep."

"Hm," he cross-examined me.

"What?"

"If you don't mind me asking, what happened between you and Emiko?"

"Whoa, way to change the topic. Also, weren't we saving the secrets for tonight? It was your idea, after all."

Oikawa rolled his eyes and inserted coins into the machine slot. The neon arcade lights rippled above us. Every piece of decor blazed in an artificial pink.

"Fine, I can wait a few hours," he grumbled and refocused his gaze onto the retro screen. He was set on leveling up on this Donkey Kong game. I leaned back in my seat, watching Mr. Perfect lose to the pixelated characters. "Fuck this shit! I'm done with this stupid game! Okay, do you want a toy? I'm going to win you a toy. I just need to win one thing. Ah! Fuck! I'm so annoyed at this fucking game! I'm annoyed at this stupid ass gorilla lookin' fool!!!"

I took a sip of my beer and shot him a side-eye grin.

"Okay, the last thing I want is to utter another 'fuck', but for god's sake, calm the fuck down, Crappykawa. It's just an arcade game," I rambled and Oikawa smirked. "But to answer your question, yes, I do want a toy."

Oikawa gravitated to a claw machine filled with Pikachu plushies. Their yellow bodies were jammed in there as if someone had mass murdered a town of Pikachus. God, maybe this was the delusionment of adulthood. Where was my childlike wonder? Oikawa pressed his finger on the glass. "Oh, Yes. This is my time to succeed. I'm going to win one of these for you, Iwa-chan. Even if I have to spend twenty-thousand yen."

"You have that money to spend on this? Rich people baffle me."

"Ah, NO," he screamed. The toy fell out of the claw and back into the mutated pile of his dead fellow Pikachus. Oikawa put in another coin. And another.

And another. I waited as Oikawa placed his hands on his hips to keep from yanking all of his hair out... before trying again. Until finally, after 5,000 yen (which could stock my fridge for two weeks), he won us one raggedy Pikachu. There was a stain on it.

I named it "Pikawa-Pikachu".

This arcade used to be our childhood haven—the game-filled paradise we would run to right after classes and volleyball matches. In middle school, we mowed our neighbors' lawns just to save money for rounds of Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Today, this whole place reeked of wet cigarettes and cheap plastic. At least Oikawa finally won something. After handing the plushie to me, he was back to being his calm and collected self.

"Sip of beer?" I handed the can to him. We stood, slightly out of place, in the dingey alley behind the arcade.

"No thanks. I'm trying to cut back on drinking. However, I could bum a cigarette from you."

I raised an eyebrow and touched the pack in my back pocket. "I didn't know you smoked."

"I didn't while I was still training, but it's a bad habit I've taken up recently. Sometimes, I just need a smoke to ease up now that I'm retired and crippled."

"You sound like an old man whenever you say that." I moved the lit cigarette away from my mouth and slipped it between his lips. "Here, take mine. I've been trying to quit."

People we vaguely recognized passed by us. Oikawa mouthed a few throaty hellos. I waved to the men drinking and gambling next to us. Suddenly, a familiar voice emerged from the pack of brawny men.

"Hold up. Oikawa? Iwaizumi?" The voice was deep and recognizable.

I looked up. Takahiro Hanamaki. Makki, as Oikawa would call him. I hadn't seen him in years. Almost couldn't recognize him. He was covered in tattoos and sported a bleached-blonde buzz cut, but beneath all that, he was still Makki. He threw his arms around our shoulders, squeezing us into a tight hug.

He pulled us over to meet his group of friends. After high school, Makki moved to Taiwan, hoping to make music with some online bands he met, but they all went broke about a year ago. Thus, he is back in Miyagi. He got a job at the arcade, balancing shifts with these other gambling, tired-eyed men. We talked about Tokyo, high school, and our mutual friends who were still around. Apparently, some people we knew were now married. Others had kids of their own. The concept of people our age raising kids blew Oikawa and I away.

Makki looked at me. He looked at Oikawa. Then, he observed us as a pair, eyes moving up-and-down. "Hm," he began to ask, "are you two... together?" Our eyes shot wide, and Makki's cheeks turned red. "Sorry... sorry... was that a rude question? I always assumed that there was something between the both of—"

"No," I cut him off. "We're not. We just reunited as friends, that's all. Oikawa is still dating Ainu. You remember her, don't you?"

Makki looked mortified. "Yes! I do! Sorry, that was so out of place for me to intrude upon. I don't know why I even asked"

"Don't worry about it, Makki!" Oikawa placed a hand on his shoulder. "We're just glad that we're all finally catching up with you. It's been too long. I'm glad that you're doing well." He always had a way with words.

"Thank you, capt"—we all, for a brief second, had a collective flashback of our Aoba Johsai volleyball dynamics, how Oikawa served as our leader in so many ways—"I mean, Oikawa. It's great to see you and Iwaizumi doing well. Anyway, I have an arcade to run. Late for my shift. Come by again whenever you two are back in town, okay?"

We wished each other goodbye. The whole time, I was clutching onto the Pikawa-Pikachu. No wonder those scary-looking dudes were snickering at me that whole time. We walked out of the alley and into the sunlight. Our hometown felt different. Unlike those oblivious teenage years, I was finally viewing it without rose-tinted glasses.

"Don't you think those Pikachus were suffocating in there? Each one was all stained and beat-up. I'm pretty sure they've been in there for years. Years! At this point, they're all just a bunch of dead creatures stuffed into a glass box," I couldn't let go of this visual realization.

"You have a twisted, little mind."

"Hey, you can't say I'm wrong."

"Well, if you put it that way... the amount of times I yelled 'fuck!' at all those innocent plushies. Those poor, confined guys. They didn't deserve my wrath. They needed help. Now I feel bad." Oikawa held a hand to his stomach. "Just kidding. I'm just really hungry, actually. Should we go help your mom with dinner?"

"Oh, Shittykawa. Let's get you some food."

His cheeks turned pink. He looked up at the dusky sky. "For real, honest thoughts about that angry side of me? I didn't think those games would turn me into a raging asshole."

"It's fun to see again, Crappykawa, Shittykawa, Assikawa. I call you those names for a reason."

"Ha, good to know, Iwa-chan." He glanced at me with soft eyes.

"Why are you looking at me with that weird smile?" I chuckled.

"I'm just thinking about things."

"Like what?"

"Can't say. You were the one who reminded me to wait until tonight." Oikawa's cheeks turned red. Unlike the coldness I often give off, everything about Oikawa tip-toed on a tightrope of flirtiness. He'd always been hard to read.

_____

The Pikawa-Pikachu slept between our futons: right in the little gap.

Before bed, we had a hard time sitting still. Throughout dinner, we were too distracted to eat; I sensed the excitement race between us, ready to spill our truths and hidden memories in the darkness. "Did you boys eat already?" My father asked, "You are both awfully quiet tonight."

It was as if everything in the day was simply a long preparation for the night. That was why we hardly spoke about in-depth matters in the afternoon. Everything we could possibly tell each other was saved. Words were simply kindling itself for the big flame.

I lit a candle, partly because I'd hoped to catch small bits of Oikawa's expressions. Even in the dark, there was always something nice about watching the curve of his smile before that moment of laughter. We tucked ourselves into our respective blankets but rested close enough to hear each other's whispers.

"You wanted to know about Emiko, and well," I began, "I guess this confession stretches beyond our relationship and breakup."

Oikawa listened, his gaze attentive and curious. I thought about Emiko. When she walked, her slender curves moved like ripples on a lake. Strands of black silk cascaded down her sun-kissed shoulders. When she applied her red lipstick, she transformed into a femme fatale—always, getting more and more beautiful. She knew that people lingered on her smile. I was seen as the lucky one: the scrawny kid who somehow got the girl.

Yet, I never felt so lucky being her boyfriend. She was lilac and lavender when, deep down, I wanted smoke and cedarwood. She was gentle and soft, sweet like brown sugar, but I yearned for rough edges. Where was the rough jaw? The hard muscles? In the late stages of our relationship, an internal jealousy brewed within me. Sometimes, just sometimes, I wanted to be the storybook maiden who gets saved by the prince. It was wrong of me to put things into gendered labels and boxes, but I always wondered what it would feel like to be held by a nobleman, to sink into his arms.

I think I'm gay, I've thought to myself many times before, but no, it is more complex than that.

I loved Emiko. I truly did, but how far could a relationship go? Is it still love when we're all drowning in a flood of "what if's"?

"I don't think I've ever loved a woman the way lovers should love" I confessed. "I think I loved Emiko while we were young and naive, but it wasn't the kind of love that ever bloomed into anything profound or worthwhile."

"Do you still think about her?"

"The thing is, I wish I did, but no," I swallowed the lump in my throat. "I hope I'm not an emotionless human."

"You're not. Trust me, you're not." He looked into my intense gaze. "Have you been dating other women in Tokyo?"

"Hm, well, that's my dilemma. I really do want to fall in love again. I just don't know if I'm capable of it. Strange, uh? People are always talking about love, but I can't even bring myself to touch a woman. I don't know why. I liked it in high school. Sex and lust and all that," I took a deep breath. "But something changed when we left that little world of ours. I was the one who distanced myself in Tokyo, so Emiko and I decided to go our separate ways."

I wondered what Oikawa was thinking about. He scrunched his nose in that curious yet tired way. His smile was melancholy and comforting. He stayed quiet for a long time. Perhaps, we were both trying to piece together our string of words. I wondered if he was thinking about us. Did his mind fall back on our first trip to Tokyo? It was the first time we explored each other's bodies: hands slipping through ruffled hair, beneath wine-stained shirts, down our back muscles and thighs. Did he remember how our friendship broke apart when I began sleeping with Emiko instead? Did Oikawa ever sleep with other boys? Was I just an experience he wanted to have? Were we just exploring our identities and nothing more? Was a "nothing more" even possible in this scenario? What if—

"I can go now," he said, stopping my stream of questions.

The candle's yellow flame glowed against the side of his face, casting shadows that sharpened his features. He appeared in front of me like the figures in museum paintings: handsome and lost in the chiaroscuro shadows. A cold breeze entered my small window. Unconsciously, we squeezed just a bit closer to each other.

"Remember Yuna?"

"Your first girlfriend?"

"Good memory," he laughed. "Well, Yuna broke up with me because I spent too much time with you."

I snorted. "Seriously? To be honest, I wouldn't have dated you in the first place. For a freshman boy, you were quite the player."

"Yeah, looking back, I couldn't blame her. I would feel very shitty if my boyfriend constantly ditched me to go play video games with some other boy. I guess, the part I want to confess is that I broke your sculpture project afterwards. It seemed like an accident, but it was the day Yuna broke up with me, and I was just so angry, and you invited me over, and I unleashed all of my teenage angst onto your artwork. I was the stupid one, to you and Yuna. I never really apologized."

He sighed in relief after telling me. It happened over eight years ago. I couldn't even remember what the sculpture looked like, but it was as if Oikawa had been carrying this guilt with him in the back of his mind.

"Again, this is why I call you Shittykawa," I joked. "Just kidding. I don't even remember this sculpture, but I'm glad that the weight has been lifted off your shoulders."

He laughed. "Well, now that we're talking about this, you do have a way of making people's girlfriends jealous, Iwa-chan."

"Hm? What does that even mean?"

We both laughed, but Oikawa averted his gaze. "Don't worry about it. Just keep being you, okay?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, but sure." Our laughter reached a level of drowsiness—that sedative, giggly feeling.

"I always think about your grandparents, you know. How they met when they were twelve and stayed together for all their lives. It's a special kind of love."

I missed them. Oikawa carried the same sadness. Ojiisan and Obaasan were, in many ways, his grandparents too. There was a lasting grief buried beneath the two of us, but all I could utter was: "You're such a romantic."

"Yeah, yeah. I'm an unapologetic cheeseball. What could you do about it?" After some mundane, sleep-deprived chatter, he turned around and pulled the blanket to his chin in a cheeky manner. "I'm falling asleep. Should we call it a night?"

"Sure, we'll save the rest of this conversation for tomorrow night."

This time, it was Oikawa who kept me awake with his soft snores. I didn't mind it. I loved how he glowed in the dark. It made me feel like lilac and lavender.