Haunted archer

Time to say goodbye.

Touji tried to push away his worries and concentrates on the breakfast Shino made for him. It was quite surprising, but his ghost boyfriend had a knack for simple breakfasts. They had made it a regular thing, for each morning to make something together. They ate, then Touji went to school, mostly Shino went with him, They got more and more used to sending the hand signals without anyone noticing that Touji acted weird. But as Touji chewed his food and was joking about Shino's sister being as pretty as Shino. Suddenly the Shino wasn't there anymore. Touji couldn't swallow even one bite after that. It was too hard to see him disappear like this. It was so frequent already that Touji had started to get afraid. When would it be the last time they would meet. Was there a timestamp? When he walked through the school gates he felt his hand brush against another hand, warm and familiar.

"Sorry. Hope I didn't scare you too much." Shino got into walking beside him and held onto Touji's hand. Touji could do nothing else than shake his head and walk on.

After the first half of the school day was over, Touji went for one of their secret spaces. The first place they had met. When he sat there, on the edge of the roof and Shino looked over to the distance, Touji suddenly sat up and turned to him.

"I think we should prepare ourselves, for.. you are probably leaving soon." He looked really a lot more vulnerable than he thought of himself. Before Shino could think of a way to answer Touji continued. "So if you're willing, then I want to go on a trip with you. Even when, they won't see you, I want you to meet my parents. I want to walk with you in all the places you've told me, you want to visit." It was a long silence and suddenly Touji didn't dare to look at Shino. 

"What if you have to finish it alone? What if we can't do it together until the end?" They finally looked into each other's eyes. Both of their fears and secret thoughts were visible.

"I feel somewhat hollow. It's like there are no unfinished things anymore. I can feel that the time I got to spend with you diminishes every second. I want to get to spend time with you, as much as is possible." They reached for each other. Touji closed his eyes from under his closed eyelid slipped out a single tear and fell on Shino's face. The two young boys stood like this for some time. 

When the school day got through, Touji called his parents and promised to come to Tokyo, to meet them. Aside from planning to go to all the places Shino had told him over the days he wanted to visit, Touji had to plan his own future without him being secure and healthy. He knew that if he would starve and fall into such depression that his life's not worth much then Shino would be really sad. And even if he was not here, Touji would not want this sad fate falling on him. At last, he had learned how to appreciate and love another person. It wasn't something he wanted to lose. It was such a precious experience for him.

Touji felt his heart contradicting when Shino again disappeared. It took him quite many minutes until he could get himself to a place where logical thoughts were even possible. He got pretty angry at himself because he could not be sure that Shino was not coming back again. Though he wasn't sure of anything, he naively wished for a final goodbye. Every time Shino disappeared he thought that he would do it next time. Now he wanted to make sure they had their final goodbye, even if Shino did come back again, he would just consider them as a few extra miracles. 

When Touji sat in a plane flying to Tokyo, he was still waiting for Shino to appear again. It was only an hour-long flight, so it should have been an easy ordeal, but all he could think was that Shino wasn't back. They had flown less than 20 minutes when he realized someone was trying to talk to him. Touji raised his head and tried to not show how startled he was, from suddenly seeing Shinos smiling face before him.

Something made Touji look around, but of course, no one had noticed anything. They were still in their own little world, where no one could intrude. Thankfully most passengers were dealing with one or another business, mostly it looked like the plane was filled with business people. So they had eyes only to their own personal dealings and no eyes to a young high school kid who was whispering by himself.