I nod. I open the glove compartment and check Aizawa's folder: coordinates, diagrams, margins. My finger traces the numbers like one traces the rim of a crystal glass to make it ring. (I'm not shaking, I'm just present. It's different.)
We descend. The air has that chilly quality that lingers between your skin and your shirt, as if it wants to be remembered until next year. I stretch my back; the noise of the world has changed now, emptier, more tense. Somewhere I hear the sound of running water. Somewhere else, a little bird that has probably lost its way home.
Ahead, less than two hundred meters away, the ground has been roughly combed by impatient hands. There are hesitant footprints, small raised clods, an unnatural rhythm. The trees hold their breath as they watch us. The fence of the old construction site leans, a broken strap on the right side; a shred of hazard warning tape remains on the fence, faded but stubborn. I move close enough to feel the weight of the place.
Katsuki closes the door with unusual care, as if the sound had to stay below a certain threshold. He doesn't say " are you ready?" And I don't answer "yes". We unzip the pockets, fasten the hooks. Actions come before words: better this way.
I inhale four, exhale six. I turn toward him just enough to touch his presence without entering it. The field described by Aizawa is ahead. It awaits us like a question that doesn't tolerate long answers.
(So far, so good.)
My friend, the terrain before us is a sentence full of pauses. My job is to read them and stitch together meaning between one pause and the next.
I open the folder and check the coordinates precisely, as you do when a bill arrives to be paid. Then I begin: I take short steps, trying to distribute my weight, walking with soft knees. I use chalk to make small marks where the ground changes. I listen with the soles of my feet, more than with my eyes. The wind passes over our heads relentlessly, as if it could see but didn't want to be complicit.
Katsuki stands behind me in half-shadow, too close for safety and too far to be comforted. He doesn't speak. He moves like a mobile barrier, always a half-step to the side, always in my blind spot. When I reach out to plant a flag, his shadow appears just before mine, ready to cover my arm, my sternum, whatever. I know what he's doing: he gauges the danger with his body and then gets in the way. He'll never admit it.
I'm telling you, my friend, because he wouldn't stand it: "He doesn't want to talk to me, but he defends me as if I were his only cover."
We proceed. The signs align, a thin corridor beginning beneath our soles. At a certain point, a flash of thread, just a hair's breadth of light, pricks my vision. I raise my palm to stop him, but he beats me to it. He already has it, a sharp gesture, moving me three centimeters, taking the risky angle upon himself as if it were a water bottle. "Don't move," he whispers, and the word vibrates, scratched. (I think: you don't have to shout to hurt. This tone is enough.) I move the flag two centimeters. The thread becomes nothing again.
Another step, another pause. I feel his breathing quicken as he realizes before I do that the earth there has been reworked by hand. He wants to shield me, always. And always too much: a shadow in front of my chest, an elbow that intercepts the air, a profile that places itself between me and everything. An energy ready to explode throbs in his veins, but instead he holds it back like one holds back a cough in a library.
"Katsuki, take a half step back," I murmur without turning around. It's not an order, it's a distance. He stiffens for a moment, I feel it in the way the silence shifts shape, then he obeys, but awkwardly, like someone carrying a burden he doesn't recognize as his own.
The corridor grows. I mark, measure, take notes. He covers, covers, covers. A couple of times he really takes a risk: he puts his foot where I wouldn't even have placed a shadow, to draw the line of fire, to intercept a potential mistake. I stop him with a low "no" that leaves no room. He makes that noise between his nose and teeth that's almost a growl, almost a surrender.
Finally, the map is complete: an entrance, an exit, two pockets to avoid, three suspicious spots to flash from a distance. We retreat in the same direction, lightening the world as if it were a bag hung on a hook. I check the flags: straight, visible, stubborn. Mission accomplished.
We haven't even really breathed when the tension, his, mine, the one we've been building for hours like a steel wire, decides to take its toll. It happens near the car, the smell of iron and gravel clinging to it.
"You stood in front of it three times," I say dryly. "It wasn't necessary."
He shrugs, his eyes elsewhere. "I did what had to be done."
"You took the risk, not for the mission. For me."
His jaw clicks. "You're the one who's getting into trouble if you think you-"
"No." I interrupt him. The word falls sharply. "I'm the one doing my job. And you're doing yours. Only today you also pretended not to see me."
He turns and snaps. "Don't start."
"You're the one who never starts, Katsuki. You don't want to talk to me, but you cover for me like I'm your only cover. And then..." the sentence comes back to me, it stings. "Then you blurt out that thing...'it was just a quickie'...as if it were enough to erase what you don't want to hear."
He steps back a half step, but not out of fear: to avoid hitting. Something flashes before his eyes that resembles a collapse seen from afar: first the crack, then the dust. He opens his mouth. Closes it again. His hands tremble slightly, just enough to know a boundary is giving way. "I..." he begins, his voice breaking off on one syllable.
I look at him and in that moment I would like to put before him the rules we have not respected and also the truth that is pushing against his teeth.
Then he half-shrugs, turns his face, and lets out a sharp "Tsk," like you'd throw away a shrapnel. He turns and walks away. Two steps, three. No explosion. Just a distance I'm starting to hate.
I stand there, with the map in my hand and my heart that doesn't understand how to bend. (Inhale four. Exhale six.) It's not enough. I do it again: Inhale four. Exhale six.
Friend, I won't lie to you: this time nothing can hold me. I feel like the ground after you've removed a mine, safe, yes, but with a hole you have to learn not to fill in hastily.
***
I sit for a moment with my forehead resting on the dashboard of the car, my friend, counting the hum of the engine off in my brain, which continues out of habit. I adjust my seat belt without fastening it, as if the gesture could give me a sense of safety.
Suddenly, the door on his side explodes. Slam. First the cold wind blows in, then him. The seat sinks under his weight with a brief, metallic sound. He turns the key in the ignition. The engine coughs and starts. Hot air blasts from the dashboard at full blast and caresses my frozen hands.
"Don't you ever try to tell me how the fuck I'm supposed to move on a mission again," he says through gritted teeth, not looking at me. His knuckles on the steering wheel are bright red, the smell of nitrous in the air.
Anger rises in my throat like a backfire. "And don't you ever try to stand in front of me again like I'm a legless target."
"I kept you alive." Clipped words, planted between us like knives in pillows.
"You kept me quiet," I manage, and then something breaks in my throat. My sentence breaks in mid-sentence, my nose burns, my eyes fill before I can help it. My vision blurs with blurry lights. "You don't want to talk to me, but you defend me as if I were your only cover..." My voice escapes in a short sob, a hic I hadn't invited. I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand, but the tears don't stop.
He laughs without a smile, a kind of bitter breath. "I saved you three mistakes. Three." He jerks his chin toward the field, beyond the windshield. "Out there, you don't philosophize, you breathe or you die."
"I did my job out there," I say, and I walk in, crying, without lowering my voice. "And you did yours. Only yours was taking risks in my place because you can't sit still in the silence between you and me."
His jaw clicks. Tic. His eyes stay forward, staring at nothing. The windshield wipers go once, then regret it and stop mid-stroke. "You don't know anything about me."
"I know what you say when you want to hurt," I whisper, and another sob comes over me, cutting my sentence in two. "'It was just a quickie.'"
His neck tenses, as if the sentence had pulled an internal thread. He doesn't speak. His breathing changes sound.
The road ahead is a dead tape. He shifts into first gear, then stops, then stops again. "Don't start, Junko." My name comes out like a scratch. "It's over, period."
"It's not over. It's stuck halfway like a nail." I let out a loud breath, and I have to swallow to get back on track. My fingers tighten around the hem of my pants to keep them from shaking.
"And you keep using it as an excuse to yell at me. But I don't need your body as a shield if your voice is always a weapon against me." The last word breaks in my throat and I quickly recompose it, between my teeth, tears streaming down my cheeks.
This one comes in. I can see it making an impact. I know it first because he doesn't respond immediately and second because a kind of emptiness passes over his face, a shadow that passes and takes away the volume. I think he's about to tell me the real thing, he opens his mouth twice, "I...not..." and nothing. The word that could change everything remains nestling under his tongue.
He grips the steering wheel. He grips it again. The car moves a few centimeters, like a restrained animal. "Don't..." he begins, then stops. A wicked laugh escapes, a laugh that isn't his, or rather: it's his when he's scared. "Do you think you know everything?"
"I think I can count," I reply, panting like someone who's just finished crying but continues to do so softly. "How many times you cover me instead of looking at me. How many times your hand tries to restrain mine, not to help but to possess the gesture. How many times is your 'tsks' a wall instead of a response?" I look at him from three-quarters, through a veil of water. "And I think I know that out there, when you saw the wire, you were more afraid for me than for yourself. That can't be fixed by raising your voice."
He jerks his shoulder, as if trying to shake off his skin.
"Stop psychosomatizing... or whatever you're doing."
"Talking," I say, sniffing inelegantly. "It's called talking. The thing you avoid as if it were an unstable explosive."
He finally looks at me. Two seconds. Everything is there: the fire, the ash, the hand that doesn't know where to rest. "If I speak, I'll bother you." It's almost a whisper, lower than the hum of the hot air.
My heart sinks, but I stay. "If you scream, you'll bother me anyway," I reply, my tears now falling silently. "If you're silent, you'll leave me guessing. Choose: not for me. For you."
He remains still. The engine sputters for a moment. I try to get my breathing back on track: I inhale four times. I exhale six times. There's no point in doing so, but he insists. His rhythm is broken, like a cardio workout that's lost its metronome.
"I need the truth," I say again, softly, tears in my eyes. "Even if it were small. Even if it were ugly. But yours."
He turns suddenly toward the windshield. His hands slip a millimeter, then they clasp again. His profile cracks. He's about to say something, I feel it coming like a shock that rises from the floor to my teeth. He's about to…
Then he withdraws into himself. His face hardens, his eyes fade just enough to become a screen.
"Tsk." He drops it between us, like a bolt in the engine compartment. He shifts into gear. The car shoots forward over the gravel, then onto the asphalt strip. The world begins to slide past us again like a film reel.
We don't talk anymore. The radio is off, but inside me there's a station that doesn't work: only hiss. I keep my gaze on the white line dividing the lanes, as if it were a thread to sew without piercing my skin. I think about the mission rules, low voice, no plugs, and I realize that here, in the cockpit, they are my only rope. I hold it tight so as not to fall.
Outside, the sky gradually changes its mind about the afternoon. Inside, I'm a mess. He drives, taut as a bow held at full draw. I count every tick of the indicator as he turns, every vibration of the gearshift, every time he doesn't look at me.
My friend, this is how I close the chapter: two people in a car, the road like a four-hour corridor that opens up before us as if it had never ended. I, with the promise sewn under my tongue, tomorrow I'll speak softly and certainly less, he, with the truth stuck between his teeth.
The tears dry on their own, not because it's all over (if only!), but because the body tires before the heart. And we go on, until we reach a point that doesn't yet have a name. And there, finally, this page will end.