The late afternoon sun spilled lazily through Yoshiki’s open windows, the light catching on motes of dust that drifted in the slow churn of the fan. The air was heavy and warm, the faint buzz of cicadas bleeding in from somewhere deep in the trees beyond the village. A few glasses of barley tea sat sweating on the low table, untouched.

Hikaru sat cross-legged on the tatami, his back relaxed against the wall. He was idly running his fingertip along the grain of the table, tracing slow, absent-minded shapes. His pale eyes shifted toward Yuuta now and then, watching with that faintly amused expression that could mean anything or nothing.

Yuuta leaned against the doorframe, one shoulder pressed to the wood, eating from a bag of chips with the lazy rhythm of someone who’d been in the same spot for too long. “Man, it’s too hot to even think,” he muttered, shaking the bag to fish for another handful. “That fan’s doing absolutely nothing, Yoshiki.”

Yoshiki, sitting with his knees drawn up, shrugged without looking away from the view outside. “It’s better than nothing.”

Yuuki had given up entirely, sprawling sideways across the tatami with her head propped on one arm. She fanned herself with a folded magazine, the slow, deliberate movements making the paper crinkle in the quiet. “We could’ve gone to the river,” she complained. “At least there’s shade there… and water.”

“You’d just complain about the bugs,” Asako said from her cushion near the table. She sat neatly, hands resting in her lap, her gaze flicking from Yuuki to Hikaru.

Yuuki groaned dramatically. “Better bugs than roasting alive in here.”

“I wouldn’t mind the river,” Hikaru said quietly. His voice was soft, but it seemed to slip into the air differently than anyone else’s, lingering just a little longer.

Yuuta glanced at him over the chip bag, his expression tightening for the briefest moment before he went back to chewing.

Outside, a breeze rattled the shoji panels, the sound sharp in the heat-stilled air. The scent of the mountain drifted in — damp earth, resin from the cedar trees — mixing with the faint saltiness from Yuuta’s chips.

Yoshiki leaned his head back against the wall, letting the hum of the cicadas and the murmur of voices fill the space. The silence between exchanges wasn’t uncomfortable exactly, but it had a certain weight to it, one that always seemed to settle whenever Hikaru was in the room.

The fan clicked on its slow rotation. Yuuki’s magazine fanned the air with a lazy rhythm. A fly landed on the rim of one of the tea glasses, its tiny legs moving over the condensation.

Nobody moved to swat it.