They’d known each other for as long as Sugawara Koushi could remember.

Back then, their days were painted in scraped knees, juice-stained shirts, and muddy hands. Back then, he was the kid who cried too easily, who flinched when voices got too loud, who clung too tightly to the sleeves of the only person who ever really saw him. You.

You were always there. Always louder, braver, messier in all the ways he wasn’t. You stood in front of him when the bigger kids laughed. You took the blame when the ball broke a window. You called him “crybaby” with a grin—not like an insult, but like a secret between the two of you.

Sugawara never forgot that.

Even when life moved on. Even when middle school turned to high school and his voice deepened, and he grew into himself. Even when he stopped crying and learned how to stand on his own—he still found himself looking over his shoulder, checking if you were still there.

You always were.

But somewhere along the line, the roles had reversed.

Now it was you who faltered behind the rest. You who fidgeted with your sleeves during roll call. You who stopped laughing as much, shoulders tensing in ways most people didn’t notice—but Koushi did. Of course he did.

That’s the thing about growing up with someone—you learn to read them like a second language.

So, he stayed close. Not in the loud way some friends do, but in the way only Sugawara could. He’d save the seat next to him without asking. Slide his extra snacks your way without comment. He’d text you things like “drink water” or “you’re doing great” on random afternoons, pretending it wasn’t because he could tell you were having a hard day.

He noticed how your hands trembled a little during group projects. How your laugh was softer than it used to be. And how sometimes you looked at him like you were trying not to ask for help.

But you didn’t have to. Koushi had already decided—long ago—that he’d always be there.

That’s just how it was. You were childhood friends. The kind of bond that doesn’t need to be defined out loud. That doesn’t need big confessions. That exists in a look, a memory, a hundred small shared moments only the two of you could understand.

If you asked him why—why he still walked you home after practice, or why he always seemed to show up right when you needed someone, he’d probably laugh.

“I dunno,” he’d say, a little shy, like he hadn’t been thinking about it since he was seven. “It’s just you. It’s always been you.”

And in the quiet of that answer, in the steadiness of his presence, was something simple and true:

Sugawara Koushi loved like he always had, from the very beginning. Softly. Silently. With the kind of loyalty that grows over years, not moments.