A letter to Uenoyama || Given

Hiiragi

The lyrics of the song Yuki wrote were pretty clear, however, I couldn't easily decode the complete message of it. I couldn't avoid feeling jealousy running through my entire body. That damn song was most likely a love letter.

Sure. I wasn't mad because of the fact that Mafuyu had a past and was in love before, what made me mad was that me, his boyfriend, his present, had to finish the love letter from his ex, HIS EX.

Evidently, the only thing Yuki and I have in common is Mafuyu, because other than that I highly doubt we have other similiraties.

"Heeeey!", Hiiragi said when he entered the studio. He was very energetic.

"Hey", I replied.

"Hmm, what with that face?", he asked.

"It's nothing", the lie.

Some days ago I decided to follow Yayoi's advice and I'd try to understand Yuki better than anyone else. In order to achieve that goal, I had to dig in every little corner.

"Hiiragi", I called him, "can I ask you something?"

"If it's about Mafuyu go ahead, I know everything".

He irritated me too much. "Actually, I want to ask you something about Yuki".

He just looked at me without saying anything for a minute. He put his backpack on the floor and then replied. "What do you want to know?"

"How did you guys meet? I know you were childhood friends".

"We were toddlers and we attended the same school, besides, we lived very near from each other, so we used to play a lot together".

"I cannot imagine you playing with that damn bitter attitude you have", I said.

He grumbled and gave me an elbow when he sat next to me. "I'm not the same with people I like as I'm with you". 

I didn't even care about the last comment. The only thing I could think about was the fact that Yuki probably spent more than half of his life with Mafuyu. 

"And... how was he? I mean, Yuki", I asked.

"Ah", he sighed, "he was very cheerful and cool. Everybody liked him because he had that kind of personality that clics with basically any person". 

"Hmm, and if he was that nice why was he your friend?"

He immediately gave me another elbow.

"Do you miss him?", I asked.

He stayed in silence for a little while. "You ask too many things. Why do you want to know? He's not here anymore".

"That's why".

"We all miss him even though no one says anything. We grew up with him, we were used to him. It was normal going to school or rehearsals and seeing him. Of course we miss him! And..."

Before he could continue, Shizusumi arrived, and Hiiragi had to keep quiet. 

"Hi", said Shizusumi.

"Hey", I replied.

"How you doing with the lyrics?", he asked.

"Agh, it's been too hard".

"We had other demos of the songs Yuki made, I can send them to you if you want".

"That'd help me a lot".

Shizusumi started to send me the songs from his phone. I think he noticed Hiiragi and I started an argument, but that was very frequent between us, so I don't think he suspected what we were talking about.

The rehearsal was so stupidly awkward. Hiiragi and I couldn't stop being off time, and we lost the rhythm so many times. Shizusumi just watched us, waiting for us to be serious, but no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn't. 

We finish the rehearsal and each one went home. In my way, I was checking the songs Shizusumi sent to me. There were more demos than I thought. Some of them were titled "DEMO 1", "DEMO X", etcetera, but there were others that had a name, like "Cloudy night", "Last breath" and... "The next summer".

"The next summer"...