haha bodo amat

They were against going to Tokyo Tower. It’s too cliché, nothing interesting, everybody goes to Tokyo Tower, his friend once exclaimed.

They end up going anyways. The girl can be quite persuasive when she wants to be.

“It’s always in dramas,” Tatsuta defends Tokyo Tower once they’re on the main observatory, “It’s big, and red, and kinda romantic.”
Honestly, Sorahashi is not interested by the view of the city from above. It’s impressive, yes, but he’s seen a fair share of the same cityscape back in Chiba. Tatsuta, however, stays plastered to one large window, eyes darting from one part to another and endearingly indentifying places they’ve visited.

But when the clear blue starts bleeding into oranges and pinks, casting a glow across Tatsuta’s face, Sorahashi finds an exhale catch in his chest cavity. He quietly watches Tatsuta as she watches the sky change colour, until it’s a black that is so black it makes the megacity below seem like it’s rapidly lighting up to keep itself alive, and yeah, okay, maybe it is a bit romantic.
Unconsciously, Sorahashi fingers the little folded strip of paper in his pocket. Earlier when they visited Meiji shrine, they had taken turns receiving an omikuji by making a small offering and picking a fortune sheet. It was purely for experience’s sake.

Sorahashi desperately hoped to divine an answer to a question named Sadanaga Tatsuta.

At 250 metres high up away from the rest of the world, Sorahashi tries to be brave. He goes up next to Tatsuta, takes a deep breath and before he could change his mind, Sorahashi kisses her half smile experimentally, in a place where they are both lost strangers, suspended in the air. There are a handful of people left on the observatory, but he feels no urgency, except for the speed that his heart is beating at, fighting to burst out of his ribs and just stop altogether. When Sorahashi pulls back he is startled by how young Tatsuta suddenly looks, her teeth tugging at her bottom lip, uncertainty dancing across her dimmed eyes. He hopes against hope that this is the answer he’s looking for, but the gut tugging feeling that summer fleets by him and fuck, fuck, fuck, he thinks he’s screwed up again because Tatsuta won’t look at him.

At 250 metres high up in the sky, the rest of the world seems tiny and insignificant. Event when Sorahshi thinks his tiny, insignificant world is ending, the lights far away below, melding together into rivers of bright gold just keeps flowing; the city of Tokyo never dies.

How pathetic, grow a spine, Harugo Sorahashi.