WK 20 themes: things to believe in

Bonus theme 1. Law

Omi's favourite subjects tend to be the scientific ones. He likes the neatness of calculation, the comforting absolutes set down in laws. Homework is enjoyable enough an irrelevance that when Ken looks at him oddly because he’d rather work on chemistry than watch soccer, or when Youji dismisses his interest in physics with a deploring shake of the head, he just smiles back.

It helps to think that everything is quantifiable, that you can weigh the hearts of men and come to conclusions. The clarity of scientific laws is something Omi thinks about when he has trouble believing other things.




11. Faith

Youji doesn't say anything when Ken enters the church, though he'd like to. Ask him who he thinks he's kidding, maybe, or what he hopes to find there. Certainly not salvation, he'll reply on Ken's behalf, and laugh, and -- but he doesn't really want to know how Ken would react, so he keeps his mouth shut and lights a cigarette instead, and wonders how Ken can still keep faith in anything.

On the way back, abruptly, Ken says he was just talking to the dead. It shouldn't make Youji feel better, but somehow it does. It's easier to understand.




20. Love

In the end it's always the same face, the same name, whether he's with an anonymous woman or Kimika. She knows that too, which makes things different but not more difficult. The knowledge confronts Youji every time she looks at him, the same way every touch of her lips is accusation, a whisper of Why can't you forget? muffled in the curve of his jaw, the hollow of a collarbone.

Months later, Ken laughs and says So whose name do you call, when you're fucking that Estet bitch? and catches Youji's blow easily. Youji has no other way to respond.




14. Secrets

Aya catalogues his past. There is already too much of it contained in two brief years, so those days belong to Ran, and Aya remembers instead the three years that follow. Even then Ran keeps his experiences separate; there are memories from Tsushima that Crashers know nothing about, recollections from Sendai that no one else can share.

Those who separate their secrets can escape the past, in a way Ken and Youji have never been able to. As the school term moves on Aya thinks he shall have to lock this away too, but he is running out of names.