...ah.

"They might?"

"...start saying you're gay, too. If you hang out with him too much."

"Might they. Gosh. Well, I wouldn't want people to have the wrong impression about me, would I?"

She nods. "Right! That's why I thought I ought to tell you."

"Well, thank you, that's very useful information to know. Yamada-san, was it?"

"Yeah. But, um, you can just call me Ichino," she says, blushing a bit. "If you want."

"Ichino-san, let me give you something in exchange for this bit of information. It's a little bit of advice.

"You shouldn't make assumptions about other people, especially people you've just met."

"...uh."

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to my next class, which apparently has at least one but possibly multiple gay boys in it. It was nice to chat!"

...bwuh?

But Suwan-san is not in that next class.

If Yutaka asks the translation club people Haru usually sits with at lunch, they say he fell down the stairs "again" and has probably already been taken to the hospital.

...he fell down the stairs badly enough to be taken to a hospital??? Is he okay??????

"Oh, he's always been fine before. He owes me money now though, he was betting it'd be the ice next."

"He... falls down the stairs and slips on ice badly enough to need to go to the hospital often enough that it's unremarkable?"

"He doesn't always need the hospital. But yeah, he falls down a lot."

"Yeah that does sound like a lot. Uh. Alright. Thank you for letting me know, I guess?" Damnit, he kicked his own closet's door wide open and for what?

Well, that's alright. He's got other options. And maybe once it's sufficiently out in the open there'll be the closeted guys who want to do some experimentation on the DL texting him quietly, those are always fun.

Suwan-san is back in school the next week on Monday! He's in a really good mood in spite of the wrist brace.

By the time he comes back, it's become an open secret that Iwasaki's gay; he's not quite as straightforwardly open as Haru, in that if you ask him he won't say yes, but he will also relevantly not say no. Despite all of this, he still has a persistent cadre of hangers-on, courtesy of being really fucking rich, because, oh, yeah, everyone's pretty much sure he's Iwasaki Iemasa's son, even though he also won't say yea or nay about that.

Whether Haru will learn any of this, of course, will depend on how much he'll care to. Iwasaki himself isn't going around announcing any of it, just conspicuously failing to deny it, and when he sees Haru again he lights up. "You're back! How've you been?"

"Convalescent! I'll make a complete recovery. And yourself?"

"I've been alright. I've taken notes over the week, if you want to copy them off me later. Your friends told me you fall a lot?"

"Yeah, I have all my life. We were looking into getting me a wheelchair, back in Canada, but never got around to it."

"—a wheelchair!" he says, inanely, because he's just been blinded by that smile again. Except, also, that smile is throwing errors in his brain. Why is Swan so happy? Surely it can't be just because they're talking again? Yutaka is as full of himself as they come but this would be a bit too much wishful thinking even for him. "And I guess it doesn't get quite as icy here?"

"It actually does but the maintenance is a bit better, most places I go are salted."

He squints. "Forgive me if I'm being too forward here, Swan-san, but did you win the lottery or something?"

"Nope, I'm just in a good mood."