Guys Don't Like Me

Chapter 20

  The next day, Ryuu was relieved to see Kazu on the roof at lunch time.
"So you're back to normal now, huh?" Ryuu said, laughing nervously. Good...because I don't think I can take much more of Kazumi...
"What do you mean, normal?" Kazu asked, frowning as he looked over at Ryuu. "Oh, I get it. You mean, cause I look like this, and not like that." There was disgust clearly written on his face, but Ryuu couldn't deny the fact that he was more comfortable around Kazu instead of Kazumi.
"Well, it kind of...you know...changes a lot," Ryuu awkwardly mumbled, and Kazu just shook his head before frowning out over the city.
"So if I invite you over for a sleepover-"
"I'll have to politely decline," Ryuu finished for him, laughing slightly at Kazu's joke until he realized that Kazu wasn't laughing.
"We're the same person, you know," he said softly. "Sure, we look different, but we have the same soul. It's..." He blew out the breath he'd been holding in. "It's kind of frustrating," he admitted, without explaining himself before his voice grew disinterested and indifferent once more. "So, now that you're avoiding Kazumi, are you going to avoid me, too?"
Ryuu looked at him in shock. "No way! You're my friend, Kazu-"
"But Kazumi isn't your friend," Kazu finished for him.
"Well...not...exactly..."
Kazu just nodded, looking down at the ground with serious eyes, an expression that he rarely wore. "So in all truth, you're a half-stranger to me," Kazu concluded.
Oh, crap. How do I get out of this one? "Kazu-"
He looked at me, and I expected him to be angry, but instead, I saw a sadness in his eyes, a sadness that I'd put there. "We're both Kazu, and we're both Kazumi. So unless you can accept all of me..." He walked away from me, backwards, his hands up in a shrug. "Then you can't have any of me."
And then he was gone.
***
Ryuu's initial response was to track down Kazu and apologize, but he needed to really think about it first.
I mean...would not being friends be such a bad thing? I have other friends...
Then Ryuu realized how little of time he'd been spending with the friends he'd known since childhood. Lately, all of his time had been monopolized by Kazu.
Why do I spend all of my time trying to make Kazu acknowledge our friendship, when Kazu clearly couldn't care less whether I'm with him or not?
Maybe this is some kind of a sign that I should walk away...
Ryuu was apprehensive, he decided to sleep on it.
Friends, or strangers?
His sleep was restless that night.
***
The next day, Kazu and Ryuu met on the roof/
For a few minutes, neither of them spoke.
Then ryuu swallowed and exhaled slowly. "Look, Kazu. I've been thinking..."
Kazu's mouth straightened into a thin line. Clearly, he was against the implications of Ryuu possessing intelligent thought, but he made no move to stop Ryuu.
"I think...we should stop being friends."
Kazu said nothing, just nodded slightly and turned away, his hands lookse at his side. "So what you're saying is...we should stop knowing each other."
Ryuu hesitated. Because Kazu was facing away, Ryuu couldn't read his expression, and his voice gave away nothing. He felt helpless, even though the decision had been his own. "Let's go back to being strangers."
There was a beat of silence before Kazu turned, looking Ryuu in the eyes. "All right. Then let's pretend like we never met."
The words struck Ryuu more painfully than he'd anticipated, and he nearly started to take back his words, but by then, Kazu was already gone, the door to the roof already swinging closed.
***
Kazu stopped coming to the roof.
Ryuu supposed it made sense; if they'd never become an unlikely pair of friends, Ryuu probably wouldn't have let his kouhai stay on the roof.
Despite the fact that Ryuu had spent his afternoons alone before he had met Kazu, he couldn't shake off his sense of unease.
He stopped going to the roof.
Instead, he decided to spend more time with his old friends, and they welcomed him back in. Before long, he was going after school to hang out with them, but even though he was surrounded by different faces, he kept seeing Kazu - when they went to karaoke, when they ate lunch, when Ryuu slept over at a friend's house, when he walked home from school.
He was lonely, he realized.
He'd always thought that Kazu needed Ryuu more than Ryuu needed Kazu, but maybe he'd been wrong.
Maybe this had all been one big mistake.
But now it was too late.
He'd already hurt Kazu in the worst way possible.
They were strangers now.
Even if he wanted to apologize...
They didn't know each other anymore.