I always kinda avoided talking about the story in detail on the off chance that I ever get around to actually doing the story, but I'm gonna let that go now. If I make it anyway someday in the future then so be it if some people are spoiled already lol. I was really "YEAH!" about thsi story for years but for reasons previously touched upon I'm shakier on it now... I feel like it probably shows its age as a thing that I came up with in high school, but that's ok I'm gonna outline as best I can the story in its current form. any number or severity of changes forthcoming, or may not be, who knows. I def don't know. also apology in advance for this post being disorganized, rambly, wall-of-text-y. there's so much stuff that I feel like, thsi sounds totally stupid, when I write it out like this, but I'm somehow convinced I'd be able to work it if I actually made the thing itself. which is an unfounded conviction really, lol. but still. I'll do my best to explain. the story is roughly put into 4 parts (one for each season hah. Autumn, Winter, Summer, Spring in that order. it takes place over a number of years but each part occurs pretty much in that season i guess) the characters:
the rest under the cut SUMMARY TIME!
part 1- autumn- pretty much focusing on daichi's history and character. it's probably mid september or such, autumn has started. at the begnning of the story he has a conversation with his mom that escalates into a little spat, and he storms out to go wander around the hill across the street as usual when he wants to be alone. only this time ~fateful meeting~ suzu is hanging out in his hangout spot. daichi, instantly uncomfortable around strangers/other guys/aesthetically attractive people, awkwardly tries to jsut walk past him but suzu flags him down anyway and asks him to point out in town where the school is. they introduce. renee bursts out of the treeline growling at suzu about leaving her behind, suzu sarcastically comforts her, ropes daichi into getting them somewhere to eat, then end up leaving in a fancy rich person car. suzu asks to trade #s with daichi and daichi lies that he doesn't have a phone and splits, feeling like "glad that's over with" and "I'll probably never see him again" which neither of are true bc suzu accosts him at school the next day, and days thereafter. now they're friends, too bad. they learn about eachother. suzu comes over a lot and daichi opens up actually pretty easily (amazing, is this how it feels to not be just SO gay, for once?), it isn't until one night suzu stays the night and they both jsut fall asleep in the living room, daichi wakes up in the morning and looks upon suzu's ~beauteous sleeping forme~ and realizes he is NOT JUST HIS FRIEND. he helplessly finds himself admiring, touching suzu's hands, and almost puts his face on him as well, and almost gets caught, which the whole thing perturbs him as he feels like he can only ever ruin any friendship he tries to have with junk like that, and he starts avoiding suzu, going so far as to regularly skip school. suzu, understandably confused and with a bit of an inkling as to why daichi is withdrawing now, starts to question himself as well. it's not really until renee sort of forces herself on him in a fit of frustration that he's kinda like woah no, no, no girl. I'd so rather be around daichi right now and, like, all the rest of the time too. he keeps trying to get to daichi to talk to him about it but daichi doesn't want to be found, until suzu finally comes across him at a convenience store at night or something & daichi's like "shet". Daichi ends up confessing as an explanation of why suzu should leave him alone, but suzu's like no bro. I like you tho bro. part 2- winter- actually just the tail end of autumn the season, extending to the end of december. enumerates more on suzu and the bulk of their relationship growth they start going out, whatever that means, but daichi is still insistent on heavy privacy and is still very timid to make moves himself and has no experience with such a relationship. he ends up following suzu's lead except gives no slack in the privacy/secrecy department. things are nice between them, there's a lot more learning deeper thigns about eachother in this part, learnign how to function closely together, etc. suzu's confidence with regard to his family life is refueled; when he was previously, at the beginning of the story, quite worn out from his life of dealing with his mother, enough so that he accepts her deal without question. (the "deal" is that suzu come to live with her, she allows him to play out his last year of high school as he likes, then she gets to steer his college life.) At the time of the striking of this deal, he is weary enough to accept it, one last hurrah for himself and then finally relinquishing to his mother and giving up the fight he's kept on for so many years. but having found daichi, he's a bit screwed now. he doesn't want to accept this deal anymore, he begins to have a new reason to fight his mother again. he becomes impatient with the secrecy on daichi's end, however he can't bring himself to end his sham relationship with renee and incur his mother's wrath either. still things progress anyway, they both are close and it's... not really very secret, at least to daichi's family since that's where they always hang out, but still he never tells. at some point they're out walking in the trees in the snow, a thing happens where daichi's watch gets broken so they miss their safe curfew and end up getting caught by renee, so bam cat's out the bag for suzu and things with his mother start to deteriorate from here. the college thing, which didn't seem as big of a deal to suzu in the beginning when this town didn't really mean much to him, is a sword of damocles now that paralyzes him. he runs away from it by being daichis boyfriend EVEN MORE SO? he brings daichi to his house once when his mother is out, plays some piano for him etc, daichi makes some disparaging comments on the nature of expensive excess etc. suzu's like yeah I agree but also is a little awk cause he had gotten daichi an expensive replacement watch for his birthday, and now balks and can't give it to him. cute whatever stuff happens like suzu teaching daichi to drive, daichi showing suzu places from his childhood, etc etc crap like that. they get more comfortable experimenting with closeness. it's all good except suzu is more and more avoidant of that sword of damocles hanging over him that daichi doesn't even really know about. all escalates around the point of suzu's birthday, 2 days before christmas, a notoriously fraught day for him, and since things have been deteriorating steadily with his mother over the course of this part everythig comes to a head on this day. suzu invites daichi over to spend his birthday with him however neglected to mention that his mom, is holding a christmas party, on the day of her son's birthday, so the house is fancyparty and daichi feels MEGA AWKWARD, not helped by the fact that suzu has to make overtures at hosting guests as well as trying to hang out with daichi, exposing daichi to his (frankly kindof unpleasant) "dealing in enemy territory" facade persona that he has around his mother/her ilk/anyone in general he feels antagony for. in any case it's the perfect environment for suzu to end up acting like a mega ass, and because of how charged thigns are with his mother he ends up doing the one thing he's been afraid that he would do since the beginning (which is, to use daichi as a way to get under his mother's skin), which offputs daichi, and eventually leads to a screaming match between suzu and renee in the hall, which daichi freaks out about, and they argue and he hides in suzu's room. later suzu goes in and apologizes and they make up, having a good heart to heart about what they are to eachother, only to have his mother come in in a rage, kick daichi out and lock suzu in. she announces that the deal is off and that she's pulling suzu from school and taking the wheel, RIGHT NOW, and that she's already made arrangements for him to be sent back to his father in the very next morning, to wait pending starting college under her control. suzu's response is basically "THE FUCK? I FUCKED UP. I FUCKED UP. I FUCKED UP. IM SORRY. IM TRASH" and in desperation he escapes and rides daichi's bike to his house, it's now late at night and daichi is still awake. he lets suzu in and suzu is like, despondent and ragged and daichi can't get a comprehensible word about what's going on out of him, so he lets him stay the night, wherein he affirms that suzu's really important to him and he doesn't care who knows about them together anymore, and he'd even want suzu live with them for a while. so daichi feel salright but inside suzu is like, I done goofed. real bad. and he hates himself a lot by now, it's all come crashing down on him, so he can't deal he slips away in the morning and arrives back home. daichi wakes and is confused, then pissed, then goes to suzu's house to see what's going on and is extra pissed to see suzu moving his stuff to leave. it's bad! they're both sad! but daichi gets his head screwed on and they end up agreeing to try long distance. suzu gives daichi that watch he'd been too shy to give him before. then leaves. part 3- summer- this part isn't really only summer it actually covers a wider area of time than the first 2 parts (which were only abt a couple months each) it concerns the fate of their attempt at long distance (spoiler: not that great) (also the image above is from this part) skip a little time, suzu is in Penitence Mode because he knows he's wrecked so much stuff. His confidence has taken a huge hit and he's now hyper aware of how his actions could affect daichi, daichi's mood, daichi's opinion of him, etc. So his actions in this part are driven both by a desire to minimize daichi's suffering but also punish himself. he doesn't fight his mother anymore and takes on a lot of schoolwork and shelves piano. he purposefully witholds from daichi anything about how difficult things are for him, how bad he feels, and forces himself to be artificially positive rather than yoke daichi with his suffering anymore (as he thinks confiding in daichi would be, at this point). the effect is, though, that mistrust grows within daichi. at this point they're only communicating via phone regularly. suzu continues to emphasize that he's fine in hopes of reassuring daichi and keeping him from being depressed. daichi doesn't feel comfortable speaking candidly to suzu after all that's happened, so he doesn't really let on the depth of how badly he feels over this arrangement. every time they talk, they're both witholding something. daichi gets a job in this part. Suzu manages to score some time off so he hastily makes to visit daichi with very little planning, desperate as he actually is to see him. the visit is badly timed it turns out, and daichi has to work through most of it. both are hardly able to contain their frustration at the situation, and the visit ends up being very hot and cold and bittersweet. suzu departs to go back and his workload really starts to build up, resulting in less availability to talk. their phone calls become less frequent, suzu is getting exhausted but still tries to maintain the positive thing. So from daichi's perspective, suzu calls him less and answers his calls less and less, and when they do talk suzu is vague about how he's doing and basically daichi just starts to feel like suzu is moving on from him. Daichi feels such lows when he's alone, highs when he gets through to suzu, crashing back to lows after, up and down. he finally snaps and tells this to suzu, that he's tired of every day being a roller coaster not knowing if they're even going to be able to talk or if it's even worth it to try anymore, at which point suzu finally sees how his shit has backfired yet again. part of him relishing in a failure he deserves, he tells daichi that he won't bother him anymore. he'll give him the space, and refrain from contacting him, but he promises that should daichi reach back out to him, he would answer, without fail; a promise that frankly daichi can't really believe in. so, even though never said in so many words, they break up. daichi doesn't end up calling him. daichi leaves on a note of hopelessness, even though the door is left open to him he doesn't really see it that way, and instead works on regressing back to the outlook he had at the beginning (basically passive acceptance that he's just gonna live a life devoid of joy and that that's somehow ok). However suzu, by virtue of being the one leaving the door open, has a spark of optimism to hold onto. the thought of daichi being able to reach back for him at any time is, for a little while, a serious enough possibility to get him to really look at improving himself to finally be worthy and, a not, shitty, person :| part 4- spring- timeskip a few years, the final part. did u kno: the first version of the story had them just stay breaked up but then I was like no I need a more amicable resolution purely for my own sake. if this feels tacked on I apologize. feel free to ignore if you don't think a ~happy end~ could ever be applicable in this case. I certainly felt that for a while but it only caused me suffering so I thought, know what? this is my story and I can do whatever I dam wel ples ok suzu's road of self improvement led him to not a bad place. he's graduated college fitting his mother's guidelines to a T, immediately after he's out he cuts off from her cold turkey. daichi's journey hasn't brought him to as good of a place. there's not much improvement for him since last part... well I guess he's less volatilely depressed and more flatline now. He approaches life blandly as he did early on in the story, only with more of a cynical air and less shyness/timidity/fear than when he was younger. Basically the only improvement, if you can call it that, is that he doesn't care as much how his living of his life affects other people. He's got an alright job, a little apartment in the closest city, and he doesn't really expect much more than that out of life. That's how daichi is when suzu starts thinking about seeing him again. the thought takes root and in one final flight of fancy suzu breaks that years old promise of space and calls daichi's cell; regardless, that number is out of service now, but one stop on this road leads to another and soon he learns where daichi's moved to and makes a drop in. he arrives and daichi isn't home, but hotaru is there, and she kindof freaks out and doesn't know whether to let suzu in or not, but then daichi arrives home. suzu is humble and normal but daichi is just kind of shellshocked. he'd let his feelings for suzu crystalize and hid them away, never intending to touch them again, and thinking that meant he was over it. but it's clear to him in the instant he sees suzu again, that he's not. caught off guard, at first he gets angry and confused and suzu almost has to grovel just to get him to listen. suzu apologizes and is like I know I can't expect you to make a decision right now but I want a chance to talk so I'm gonna be staying in town, you take the day to think and I'll come back around tomorrow, if you still want me to leave I will be gone. and he steps out, leaving daichi confounded and conflicted. he talks it over a little with hotaru, during which she confesses that everyone has worried so much about him and how he's been living, and gets him to look at himself. so he decides, shakily, that he really does want to see suzu again for a chance to work out what's going on, but he doesn't feel confident that he won't chicken out and withdraw by the next day, so he goes out immediately to find suzu himself instead. he actually is able to find the hotel he's at quite easily, wheedles his room number out of the clerk, and goes up to his room. suzu is really surprised like, how did you even know where I was. and daichi's like, it's the nicest hotel in town that isn't owned by your dad, and you haven't actually changed much have you. and that breaks the tension a bit and harkens back to how they used to be. daichi comes in and, while the bravery still has him, bares his heart about how he's felt the past while, and expresses a desire to learn if things can still be how they were, back when they were so happy. like if it's still possible. he recognizes he should be angry, or should be confused or sad, but he just doesn't want to anymore. he wants to pretend for a little while that he doesn't need to react that way, and see if there's anything besides those bad feelings still left buried in him with the rest of it. and woop de doo, they agree to try. happy end (I guess?? I can't really tell anymore hahah) yeah though it all works out, it's ok. I'm now free to imagine stoopie goopy nice stuff with them like, getting married or moving into a place together, in peace. suzu still hadn't taken piano back since he dropped it in college. he finds he's frustrated and misses it, but has nowhere to play. he's rejected his mother across the board, including her money, so he is kinda in a lurch, still being a bit spoiled and not knowing how to support himself well. daichi, who is an uncomplaining worker bee, gets frustrated with this. suzu eventually ends up finding a used instrument shop to play piano at and ends up working there, going on to inherit the business and there's his career from then on. they move out of the city eventually together too.
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April 2016
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