childhood days

---

Chapter One: joyful one and quiet one

The first time anyone noticed how close they were, it was a summer evening, warm and lazy, when the cicadas sang so loudly it felt like the whole neighborhood was vibrating.

Their mothers sat on the porch together, laughing over bowls of cut fruit, while inside the house two small boys lay sprawled across the tatami mat. One was talking a mile a minute, waving a toy car through the air like it could fly. The other just watched with a soft half-smile, quiet eyes following every exaggerated swoop.

“Look, if you drive fast enough you can jump over the mountain!” the louder boy declared, making the car leap across a pillow. His hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, but his grin was brighter than the sun outside.

The quieter boy didn’t argue, didn’t correct him, didn’t laugh—he just reached for his own smaller toy truck and parked it neatly beside his friend’s. “...It can wait for your car,” he murmured, voice barely above a whisper.

The extroverted boy paused, blinking, then broke into another grin. “So they can go together? That’s good. You’re smart.”

That was how it always was. One talked, the other listened. One reached out, the other stayed steady like the ground beneath.

Their mothers would tease—“Like shadows and light, those two”—while their fathers, seated at opposite ends of the dinner table, avoided each other’s eyes. The company both families were tied to had been struggling for months now, decisions clashing, pride getting in the way. But in the middle of that invisible battlefield, the boys never noticed.

They shared the same kindergarten classroom, tiny desks side by side. The shy one never had to raise his hand; his best friend always had enough words for both of them. At nap time, when the room fell into a drowsy hush, it wasn’t unusual for them to roll closer, blanket corners overlapping, small fingers brushing until they fell asleep.

It became normal: Saturday sleepovers, juice boxes with two straws, secret forts made of blankets and chairs. The extroverted boy would chatter endlessly about how one day they’d grow up and build their own company, better than their dads’, where nobody would fight. The quiet boy would nod, not because he believed it, but because the sound of his friend’s dreams was more comforting than silence.

One night, after a long day of playing in the park, they lay side by side in the dark. The extrovert whispered, “Hey… you’re not gonna leave, right? Even if our dads don’t like each other?”

The quiet one blinked in the dark, heart too young to name the feeling that swelled in his chest. He turned his head and whispered back, “I won’t leave.”

Their fingers found each other under the blanket. Small, clumsy, but sure.

Outside, the cicadas sang again, and for that moment, the world felt perfectly still.

---

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***