Sunflowers in the Sweltering Summer

Summer in Hyogo was a wet blanket that stuck to everything. The AC unit in the Miya living room wheezed like it was dying, but it kept fighting. Atsumu lay sprawled across the leather couch, one leg dangling off the armrest, phone hovering above his face. A text from some number he didn't recognize. He read it twice, then deleted the convo without responding. Same pattern every time—late night, vague compliments, then requests that made his skin crawl but left his heart cold.

He'd gotten good at separating his body from the transactions. The hands that touched him, the mouths whispering pretty lies in the dark—they weren't reaching for him. They wanted the shape he filled, the novelty of a body that didn't match what the birth certificate said. He was a secret. Something to brag about over drinks.

"You won't believe what I did last night."

He closed his eyes and let the phone drop onto his stomach. The ceiling fan spun slow circles, stirring the thick air without cooling it. His binder was a second skin under his tank top, flattening everything out, making him feel almost right. But the straps bit into his shoulders, and the heat made the fabric cling like a damp shroud.

He was fourteen the first time someone touched him. Fifteen when he stopped doing it for curiosity. By sixteen he'd given up pretending it was about intimacy. It was about their need, not his. He provided a service, and they confirmed he existed—even if only in the dark, even if only as a body.

A body that could get pregnant.

He shoved that thought away. Not today.

The front door slammed. Heavy footsteps announced Osamu with the subtlety of a freight train. Atsumu didn't open his eyes.

"Oi, I'm home."

"Congrats. Want a medal?"

Osamu dropped his volleyball bag by the entrance. The fridge opened and closed, the glug of a water bottle. Then the couch dipped as Osamu sat on the other end, close enough their legs almost touched.

For a long moment, neither spoke. This was comfortable. They could exist in the same space without words, breathing the same humid air, listening to the failing AC. The unspoken stuff between them—conversations they'd avoided for years—was just another piece of furniture. Always there, always in the way, but easy to ignore if you didn't look directly at it.

Until someone moved the furniture.

"Hey, 'Tsumu."

Atsumu cracked an eye open. "What?"

Osamu stared at his hands, clasped loose between his knees. His ears were red—the tips, visible under his messy hair. That was telling. Osamu didn't blush easy. He was the mute twin, the one who rolled his eyes at everything and spoke in grunts. He wasn't supposed to look nervous.

"I gotta ask you somethin'. And you can't be a dick about it."

"Bold of you to assume I'm capable of that."

"'Tsumu."

The warning in his voice made Atsumu sit up slowly, facing his brother properly. The binder pulled across his chest—familiar pressure, grounding. He ignored it.

"What?"

Osamu took a breath. Let it out. "Have you... done it? Before?"

The question hung between them. Atsumu blinked.

"Done what?" He knew exactly what.

"It. You know." Osamu made a vague gesture. "Sex."

The word dropped like a stone into still water. Something tightened in Atsumu's chest, nothing to do with the binder.

"Why're you asking me that?"

"'Cause I gotta know somethin'." Osamu finally met his eyes, raw—embarrassment, yeah, but also determination. "I got a girlfriend."

"Congrats. Is she blind?"

"Shut up." No heat in it. "I wanna... I don't wanna mess things up. And I figured, you know..." He trailed off, looking away. "You're the only one I can ask. Who'd actually know."

Atsumu's breath caught. The implication settled in slow, like water soaking into soil.

You're the only one who'd actually know.

Because Osamu knew. Of course he knew. They were twins—shared a womb, a childhood, a bedroom until they were twelve. Osamu was there when Atsumu first refused to wear a dress to their cousin's wedding. When their mom cried and their dad stopped talking. Through the hormone treatments, the whispered phone calls to clinics, the careful way Atsumu started binding his chest.

He'd never said a word. But he'd known.

And now he was asking his sister—his brother—for advice on how to treat a girlfriend, because in Osamu's mind, Atsumu understood women's bodies in a way he never could.

Logical. Practical. Made Atsumu want to scream.

"Fine," Atsumu said, because it was easier than explaining why it hurt. "Yeah. I've done it."

"How many times?"

"Does it matter?"

"Guess not." Osamu scratched the back of his neck. "Was it... good?"

"Define good."

"'Tsumu."

"I'm not bein' difficult." He wasn't. He was being honest, which was worse. "Sometimes it was fine. Sometimes it wasn't. Depends on the person."

"How do you know if it's gonna be one or the other?"

Atsumu stared at his brother. Osamu stared back, earnest and awkward and so painfully young in that moment. He wanted a formula. Do A, then B, then C, and the girl will be happy.

There was no formula. Atsumu knew that better than anyone.

"You don't," he said finally. "You just... pay attention. Listen to her. If she says stop, you stop. If she seems uncomfortable, you check in. It's not rocket science."

Osamu nodded slowly. "That's it?"

"That's the basics. The rest you gotta figure out together."

A long pause. The AC wheezed. Outside, a cicada screamed.

"Did you ever..." Osamu started, then stopped. "Was there ever a time it went bad?"

The question hit Atsumu like a physical blow. He felt it in his gut, in his lungs, in the space behind his eyes where he kept the memories locked away.

Thirteen. A boy from the prefectural team, three years older, nice smile. "Don't worry, I'll pull out."

The pregnancy test. The phone call. The silence on the other end.

The clinic. The cold table. The nurse who wouldn't look at him.

"Yeah," Atsumu said, voice flat. "When I was thirteen."

Osamu went still. Completely, utterly still.

"Thirteen?"

"I was young. He was older. He said he'd pull out. He didn't." Atsumu shrugged—cost him more than he'd ever admit. "Ended up at a clinic. Alone. Paid with money I saved from my allowance."

The words fell out like stones, heavy and final. He hadn't told anyone this. Not the full version. His parents knew there'd been an incident, but they assumed it was a scare, not a full procedure. They never asked. He never volunteered.

"Tsumu..."

"Don't." He held up a hand. "Don't do that. I don't need your sympathy."

"Then what do you need?"

The question caught him off guard. What did he need? He'd never let himself think about it, because thinking meant acknowledging its absence. He needed someone to look at him and see him, not a body. He needed to be touched with reverence, not hunger. He needed sweet words that weren't lies. He needed flowers. He needed to be courted, like in old movies their grandmother watched—men with bouquets, poetry, meaning every word.

He needed to be loved like he was worth loving.

"Not your problem," he said instead, and stood up. "I'm gonna take a shower."

---

The bathroom was the coolest room in the house—tiled and dim, a small window letting in a sliver of fading light. Atsumu locked the door and leaned against it, pressing his palms against the wood, breathing.

The conversation scraped him raw. He felt the edges of old wounds bleeding through, the carefully built walls trembling. He didn't want to think about thirteen. Or the clinic. Or the boy who never called again. Or the way his parents looked at him afterward, like he was something fragile and broken.

You're not fragile. You're not broken. You're Atsumu Miya, best setter in Japan, and you don't need anyone.

Old mantra. Still worked. Mostly.

He stripped off his clothes—tank top, then carefully unclasping the binder. The relief hit him the moment it came off: the ability to breathe fully, deeply, without compression. He looked at himself in the mirror, as always, cataloging.

Broad shoulders, narrow hips, the start of muscle from years of volleyball. And then the breasts—full, round, definitely not a boy's chest. A D-cup, the doctor told him last year. Hormones had done their work. Surgery was still a distant, expensive dream.

He hated them on good days. On bad days, he wanted to carve them off with a kitchen knife.

Today was somewhere in between.

The shower was scalding, nearly painful, and he stood under the spray and let it wash away the sweat and heat and the memory of his brother's earnest, pitying eyes. Water sluiced over his skin, over the curves he didn't want, over the scars he couldn't hide.

You're the only one who'd actually know.

Osamu meant it as a compliment. Atsumu knew that. But it still stung—reducing him to his body, to the experiences his body forced on him. He wasn't a person who had sex. He was a body that could get pregnant, a body that had proven it, a body that had to be careful.

He scrubbed until his skin was pink and raw, then stepped out and wrapped a towel around his waist. The mirror was fogged. A mercy. He didn't want to see himself right now.

The door opened before he could reach for his clothes.

Osamu stood in the hallway, hand raised, mouth open to say something. Then his eyes landed on Atsumu's chest—bare, wet, impossible to ignore—and his face went through a journey. Confusion. Recognition. Shock.

"Shit—" Atsumu grabbed for the towel he'd dropped, pressing it against himself, but too late.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean—" Osamu backed up, hands raised, face red. "I was just gonna ask if you wanted dinner, I wasn't—"

"Get out."

"'Tsumu—"

"GET OUT."

The door slammed. Atsumu leaned against it, heart pounding, breath coming in short gasps. The towel clutched against his chest like armor, too thin, too flimsy. He felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with nudity.

This was why he never let anyone see him. Why the lights stayed off. Why he always faced away. Why he left before sunrise. Because the moment someone saw him, really saw him, they stopped seeing a boy and started seeing a collection of parts that didn't fit.

He sank to the floor, back against the door, and pressed his forehead to his knees.

The words came out before he could stop them. A whisper. A prayer.

"I wish someone would say sweet words to me. Bring me flowers. Treat me like I'm worth something."

He said it to the empty bathroom, to the steam still rising, to the cracked tile. He didn't expect anyone to hear.

But Osamu was still standing on the other side of the door.

He didn't say anything. Maybe he hadn't heard. Maybe Atsumu's voice had been too quiet, swallowed by the AC and the cicadas. Maybe he'd finally get to keep this one small piece of himself hidden.

He dressed in loose shorts and an oversized t-shirt that hid his shape. When he came out, the hallway was empty. The house was quiet. Dinner was on the table, but Osamu was nowhere to be seen.

Atsumu ate alone, and told himself that was better.

---

He woke the next morning to the smell of something floral.

Took him a moment to place it—his room usually smelled like sweat and volleyball tape and old posters. But this was different. Fresh.

He opened his eyes.

On his nightstand sat a bouquet. Sunflowers, mostly, faces bright and open. Mixed in were white daisies and sprigs of baby's breath, tied with a simple blue ribbon. No vase—wrapped in brown paper, stems still damp.

Next to it, a note.

Atsumu's hands shook as he picked it up. Handwriting messy, cramped, unmistakably Osamu's.

You said you wanted sweet words and flowers. I don't know sweet words, but I know you're my brother. You've always been my brother. I'm sorry I didn't say it before.

— Samu

The paper blurred. A tear dropped onto the ink. Then another. He hadn't cried like this since he was thirteen in that clinic bathroom.

He didn't hear the footsteps in the hallway, didn't hear the door creak open. But he felt the weight of Osamu sitting on the edge of his bed, the mattress dipping, the warmth of his presence.

"I'm sorry," Osamu said, voice rough. "For yesterday. For not—for never askin'. For actin' like it didn't matter."

"It does matter," Atsumu managed, voice breaking. "It matters, Samu."

"I know. I know now." A pause. "I shoulda said somethin' years ago. Shoulda told you I was proud of you. That you're braver than I could ever be."

"Shut up."

"I mean it."

"I said shut up."

But Atsumu moved first. He set the flowers carefully on the nightstand and turned, and then he was hugging his brother, face pressed into Osamu's shoulder, body shaking with sobs he'd held in for years.

Osamu held him back. Tight. Real.

"I got you, 'Tsumu."

"I know."

"I'm not gonna stop. I'm gonna keep gettin' you flowers. And I'm gonna learn sweet words. And I'm gonna—"

"Samu."

"Yeah?"

Atsumu pulled back, wiping his face with the back of his hand. Eyes red, nose running, probably looked absolutely disgusting. But for the first time in years, he didn't feel ugly.

"You already said enough."

Osamu's face crumpled, and then he was crying too—because they were twins and always terrible at keeping their emotions separate. They sat there, two seventeen-year-old boys on a bed in a sweltering summer house, crying like they were seven again, scraped knees on the playground.

The flowers sat on the nightstand, bright and golden, filling the room with light.

Later, they'd go downstairs and make breakfast together, burn toast, laugh at the smoke detector. Later, Osamu would text his girlfriend: I gotta cancel tonight, family stuff, and she'd understand because she was good like that. Later, they'd sit on the couch and watch old volleyball matches, and Osamu would ask careful questions about binders and surgery and what it felt like to be trapped in a body that didn't fit.

And Atsumu would answer.

Not because he owed Osamu an explanation. But because Osamu had earned one. Because he'd brought flowers. Because he'd said brother like it was the most natural word in the world.

Because he'd stayed.

The sun set over Hyogo, painting the sky orange and pink. The cicadas sang their evening chorus. And in the Miya household, two brothers sat together, closer than they'd been in years, finally learning how to speak the same language.

It wasn't perfect. It wasn't fixed.

But it was a start.