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"THE PROBLEM is that I like him." And it was no good. It wasn't exciting, or maybe it was, but it wasn't pure enough to share. Not like when he first loved Seishiro, the type of way people wrote songs about. Nowadays, he likes the man he's been trying to hate for weeks. There's nothing romantic about it, if anything, it's conflicting.
"Oh," she said. Reo didn't expect less of a reaction.
"Yeah, oh," he said, twisting his mouth with sourness. "And one thing is what I want but another is what I should do. If I followed my heart all the time, I wouldn't survive. I simply wouldn't. So I don't want to compromise who I am by falling into old habits."
I don't want to sacrifice who I've become.
He said it years ago, 'I'm tired of people taking parts of me' and even worse now, that he had more to lose.
"Seishiro is a bad habit," Reo added with furrowed brows, "a bad habit that I need to break. He wants me to take him back and now I'm being tested. So I need a moment to reorganize my thoughts and be sure that saying no is the right thing." Which is what he was doing with Asuka, what needed to be done.
"I don't like him for you either," she said, "has he even apologized?"
No, he hadn't. Not when they fought and not when they held each other either - that Friday night with drinks in Seishiro's system. The medallist had never swallowed his pride like that to admit his faults.
God, Reo was so soft and hopeless. "He hasn't, and still, for some reason, I'm already doubting my motives to stay away..."
Asuka's expression grew empathic across the phone at the tone of self-deprecation her friend had employed. Reo didn't like how familiar the self-criticism felt on his tongue, yet he continued, almost on autopilot. "Because I'm weak like that. In front of him, I'm weak. I prioritize him and how he feels and-"
"That's not bad," she kindly said before he could feel more sorry for himself. "I mean, it would be wrong if you were to put him before yourself but that was years ago. Taking his feelings into consideration isn't wrong, and now you know how much you're worth so you're putting yourself first by evaluating all risks and having this fucking conversation with me."
'Reo, what we did to each other was years ago...'
The skater tried to shake the ghost of Seishiro away as he focused back on what his friend was saying. "Look at me, Reo," she called him. "What you're doing now is mature. You're not seventeen anymore, and I really don't think you'll ever be that lost again, with or without Nagi in the picture. You've learned that lesson, so stop being scared you'll forget it."
