Oh my God. This isn't romance...again, technically. But it's so tense and impatient. It's a...less pretty sort of angst than I usually do, it's more frenetic and teenager and Hikaru. But it's a good read, I promise.
I sat on the train, checking my watch every so often.
It was 5:41 pm.
That meant nineteen minutes until the train would pull into the station and this whole stupid camp thing would be over with. I scowled at the thought; Mom had had the bright idea to send her twin boys off to two different high-end summer camps to help them be designers just like her. And I hadn't seen Kaoru in two weeks.
5:42 pm. I willed the second hand to move faster.
Now I had a bag full of doodles and sewing patterns and random fabrics. What good were those? I would just learn everything again at some college or another.
5:43 pm and twenty-three seconds.
I sighed and worked through a few quick arithmetic problems. 977 seconds.
When I looked down, it was already ten seconds shy of 5:45.
So, now it was more like 890, or something. I tried counting off every five seconds, but that got boring and I became antsy again.
5:47. Thirteen minutes. Damn.
My hand went to my pants pocket absentmindedly, but it was tragically empty. That lunatic (Mom) had even taken away our cell phones! Something about never paying attention to the material if we could talk to each other….or something. I hadn't been paying much attention at the time.
I purposefully didn't look at my watch. Maybe time would pass faster if I didn't know.
What's more, she had sent Kaoru off to Bass-Ackwards Nowhere to study business accounting. What the hell? How could we be twins if he didn't even know the same things as me?
Oh, wait. I guess it does kind of make sense…kind of. Like, he would do all the numbers, and I would do all the designing and stuff. So…we would be the Hitachiin Twins, always together, all through life.
Well then…
She should have asked us if that's what we wanted!
But that is what I wanted. This short (long as hell) separation was…sort of fixing the possible future separation of our careers.
So Mom was right?
Well…she should have asked Kaoru, at least.
Oh God, that's right. Kaoru. What did he think of all this?
What if this had been the most free two weeks of his life?
And it already hurt enough not to say 'our life'.
What if he really had expected to just drift apart after college or whenever? Because, even if we studied the same subjects, and went to work in the same designing company, one of us would be promoted before the other…
5:54. Damn it.
I just needed to calm down. I knew Kaoru; he couldn't have changed that much. He would just be a little more math-y than me, and I would be a little more design-y.
And we would be different. Separate.
5:55.
His train got in at four or something. So he would be waiting for me, right? Unless he'd already forgotten me. Which is ridiculous because you don't just forget the first sixteen years of your life just like that and why am I getting so worked up over this?
5:56. We had gotten into the city now, no more grass and mountains everywhere.
I just needed to calm down. Kaoru would be there.
I listened to my heartbeat. And I knew that Kaoru's was beating at the same pace, at the same time, because we were twins and you just can't mess with genetics…
So I sort of drifted, listening to my heartbeat and his. One minute away, I felt his start to get faster, and mine followed, naturally.
I had all of my bags out of the trays and places as the train slowed down. I rushed (pushing and shoving a little more than was polite) to the doors, to be the first one off.
Kaoru was one door over, looking at the windows and coming closer. He locked eyes with me just as the doors automatically opened.
He stepped back as I jumped down the double-step and threw all of that stuff – the things that would keep us together forever – to the ground. There was a quiet moment when the people behind me began to shuffle out, and he didn't smile. I was too hopeful and hopeless to smile first.
Then he closed his eyes and said, "Man, Hikaru, don't give me that look. Is it so bad that Mom's setting us up to hang out forever?"
There was half a second where I processed what that really meant.
I grabbed his shoulders and hugged him and said, "It's perfect." My voice broke for a second, and I may or may not have cried. "Don't…worry too much about it."
And it was perfect. It was fine.
Because Kaoru had been just as worried as me, it was perfect.