Tachibana-sensei | MakoHaru

two

like the first time we met

What does one feel whenever they see the cherry blossoms fall and fly with the wind?

Do they feel warmth in such beautiful loneliness or do they ever fall in love with someone they will find under it?

Or do they feel pain from all the memories they tried to leave behind?

The cold wind was trying its best to bring out the falling petals and let them dance, frolicking all around in quiet somersaults in the month of April. Makoto lets his eyes wander around the same surroundings—letting them fall free into the scenery. Some things have changed quite bit—the little details; the climate; the buildings and even people that come and go—all of them have changed the past few years, but why does he feel like he is stuck on an eternal loop?

In the spring of April lies another loop of meeting different people, different students in the entrance ceremony that the teacher somehow got used in attending. Flashing a soft, gentle smile to everyone, he greeted them mindlessly, often forgetting the faces or the names of the people he had exchanged to, making him tired.

He stood outside for a moment, still gazing the beauty of them falling around. It somehow calmed him, with the people's faint chatter in the background and the twittering of the birds resting in the shades and the branches of trees. Beautiful—he thought of it again, not until he saw a figure standing in front of him.

'Tachibana-sensei.' Makoto's heart palpated, with his eyes slowly moving to the person calling out his name tenderly. A hard smile appeared on his grimacing face—it was his reply to joyful smile of the student he once loved, underneath the nosediving sakura.

It was three years since then.

'Haruka?' Bewildered and lost, he did not move an inch, but instead let his own eyes see him in front of himself. Haru spoke nothing, but only look into his eyes with the teacher gazing on what he called was sadness. The shining of his eyes were implying that he was about to cry, and for a moment, he panicked. He doesn't know what to do with this sudden situation—it felt too fast for him. The genuine smile he had for a second made him happy, but he then realised that the student was just trying his best to smile in front of a teacher. He wanted him to see only the fake happiness with the withering pain underneath. What could've happen to them before? Eyes averting, Makoto felt like there were feelings rushing all over him. He, as evil as it sounds, felt like an possessive lover seeing his other half coming back to him in defeat.

But isn't this what he wanted?

Didn't he wish for him to come in his sight again; to come in his life and to relive the memories and fantasies that were all in his mind from the very beginning?

A few days afterwards, they meet again.

Not as a teacher and a student of before.

Strangers.

It was a blind date composed of brokenhearted gay men at a fancy hotel, with Makoto single-handedly written 'brokenhearted for 4 years' on that one form his friend gave him. In seemingly worn out but still presentable clothes, he sat down on one of the tables, unknown to the fact that there's a familiar person on his far east that he never wanted to meet.

It was the jet black-haired, blue-eyed Haruka.

Haru's eyes were wandering around the golden-lit room, along with unfamiliar strangers trying their best to fill the hole of his heart with their suggestive stares and inviting gestures. Dressed in a light-colored suit, he was slumped—lost, scared, anxious.