A letter to Uenoyama || Given

Shizusumi

"Uenoyama!", I heard my name and when I turned around I saw Shizusumi.

"Hey", I said.

"Hiiragi told me that he'd be a little late".

"Agh, that stupid".

"Anyways, we have to go".

"Yeah, that's okay".

In the way to the place where we rehearsed, I got curious again. Hiiragi seemed to steem Yuki a lot, and of course I understood that, however, Shizusumi was more reserved about the topic. He never mentioned him, but I didn't know what was the cause of his silence.

"Uhm, Shizusumi", I called him, "can I ask you something?"

He nodded. His expressions were so hard to read and I couldn't tell if talking about Yuki bothered him or not. "If you don't want, we don't have to...", I said.

"It's okay. I know Hiiragi and you talked about him and you probably have your doubts".

"A-ah...".

"Whatever it is, you have to know that it doesn't matter how much we mention him, he's not here anymore".

We kept walking in silence for a couple of minutes after that. This was another cryptic answer I couldn't decode. Was he mad because we talked about him? What was I supposed to ask now?

"Even if it didn't seem like it, Yuki kept a lot of things to himself . He never said anything when he felt sad or angry, he always tried to look happy, mainly because of Mafuyu", he said.

"Oh..."

"It was ridiculous how much people thought he was okay, but there wasn't any way to help him, because it didn't matter how much I realised that, he just got carried away by Mafuyu. For him and no one else. I remember one very specific time when Hiiragi came back from school looking kind of weird, I asked him what happened, but he didn't want to answer. A little after, Yuki himself told me that Hiiragi saw them kissing, and they hadn't talked about it at that point, but Mafuyu and him wanted to be together".

"Hiiragi was...?"

"I don't know, but Mafuyu knew that Hiiragi noticed. They never said anything, but Yuki always and accidentaly left some hints about how things were going. It seemed he always wanted to say so many things but he couldn't at the end, or at least I believe so, because I don't know if he said something to Mafuyu".

"Did Mafuyu know Yuki wasn't okay?", I asked.

"Probably no, because Yuki never wanted to worry him. Mafuyu once told me that Yuki told him he would forget him and the memory they had of their date at the beach, and that he didn't understand why he told him that, but he had a bad feeling about it. Not so long after this, Yuki commited suicide. Maybe he was saying goodbye without directly saying it".

At that moment I felt angry. Yuki didn't have any idea about how much he was breaking Mafuyu in that instant, and how broken he left him after his death. They were childhood friends and in all those years he couldn't properly ask him for help. Yuki knew Mafuyu wasn't good at expressing himself either, and still, he left him with the burden of not being able to understand him.

I remembered one of the firsts arguments I had with Mafuyu, which happened after one of the complementary Japanese language classes at school: I felt frustrated because he spent all his time with Kaji-san and it looked like he was ignoring my messages. His desperate face when he asked me to talk about it in that moment to fix the misunderstanding now made so much sense.

Mafuyu didn't want me to kept my negative feelings to myself like Yuki did. He didn't want me to be angry and not telling him the reason. 

Mafuyu didn't want to feel useless.

And after all Yuki kept to himself and tried "not to worry him", he just... abandoned him.

"Uenoyama", said Shizusumi and I looked at him, "... stop it".

"What?", I asked.

"I know what you're thinking. 'Yuki just affected Mafuyu more hiding everything', and you're right, but Yuki's not here anymore. Mafuyu is with you now and you have to stop that feeling of inferiority".

"What you talking about?"

"Hiiragi told me and your face is pretty obvious, but Yuki and you are different people. He's not here, remember that. There's nothing we could do to change that fact, and there's a reason for you to be with us now, and that reason is Mafuyu, because he wanted to be with you, it doesn't matter how much you think about it".

"Even if I don't want, it's hard not to feel like the replacement boyfriend".

"There's no way you are. Yuki and you are not similar. I know you didn't meet him, but you should realise this".

Before we got to the studio, I stopped. Without any doubts, Shizusumi made me understand Yuki more than anyone else. But I had to understand him a little more.