Can You Keep A Secret? (Inupi Seishu)

| Chapter Two: Dress Up

The 2nd year had come around, I had spent my time during the summer back in the states and came back again to Tokyo for another school year, and I was giddy to come back.

Akane was the first to greet me, and I wish her smile was that genuine happiness it was of me to see her, but I was giddy to see him again.

Akane was more clingy, she's warmer to me, she'd blow up my phone, and we'd call for hours.

I asked her why she's too happy to see me again. She only said she has this separation anxiety and I understood, I missed her too.

But when I arrived at her house, her brother wasn't around anymore.

I sat on her bedroom floor, all the four walls of her room were color coded with pastel colors. Bright as her personality.

It's weird to be inside someone's room, you'd know their personality right away, how her room was filled with fabric swatches, mannequins and the singer sewing machine at the corner of her room, it was everything all at once, a cat mascot head that hung on the headboard of her bed from the last time Akane and I worked for the theater costume design.

I was now wearing an old pirate's hat we designed from last season's film theater for the campus.

Being in a fashion design course was every bit exhausting, but through it was my way of expressing myself through clothes and designs.

"Wait I forgot the pins, be right back." She said as she sashayed out of the room and my eyes followed her, until it landed on Inupi's closed bedroom door.

I don't know what led me to it, but there was this slight tinge in me that felt disappointed that I wasn't able to see him.

I was inside his room.

It gave an overwhelming scent, I'd caught a whiff from here and there whenever Akane invited me for dinner, but standing in his room almost had me in a whiplash.

Akane said they would take a long time to come back, but his things were left the way someone would leave for just a few days. Everything was still here.

It was calming, cinderose, smell mix of rose and smoke and slight of honeysuckle, his room was clean for a guy, wall plastered with posters of motors and a uniform hang behind the door, initials of BD on the backside of a coat.

The denim fabric was smooth against my palms, I traced my fingers on the intricate black coded fonts, it was soft so soft, he'd worn this.

This was his.

Without hesitating I raised it to my nose, and smelt the fabric, god it smelt nice, you wondered if this was really his scent nor was this just a newly washed artificial fabric softener they use, but this was his.. And I wanted to bury myself to it--

"Hey."

I gasp at the voice from behind.

Akane stood by the door frame, her face was stoic, and for a while I almost could see Inupi's stoic impression from her face.

"Sorry I thought I heard someone here." I said, a bad lie.

She didn't say anything, "Silly, I told you my brother won't be coming home for soon, he shifted back again to another college out state. I think he doesn't like accountancy that much." Akane's smile and upbringing mood came back.

And I thought how fast was she to just brush this off.

She gave me a small shove that leads back to her room after closing his brother's.