Digital Intimacy (Love Mode, Reiji/Naoya)

Naoya absently toyed with the tiny electronic in his hand. It was a simple thing – a cell phone. Nearly every person in Japan had one, though his was a more recent acquisition. He hadn’t even picked it out. Reiji had just handed it to him one day and said it was his. Reiji had a bad habit of doing that with things Naoya really didn’t need.

He’d gotten along fine for the first eighteen years of his live without a cell phone. He still didn’t think he needed one, despite Aoe’s and Kiichi’s protests that it would come in handy in case he needed to get in contact with them. It was unnecessary, a wasted expense, but still, somehow, it was touching all the same.

Naoya had never really noticed how many good people he’d managed to surround himself with until Aoe had given him the phone. Flipping open the phone, Naoya scrolled to the address book. He still wasn’t sure how to work half of the things on his phone. Izumi had tried explaining once but he’d talked so fast that it had all just flown straight through Naoya’s head.

When Reiji had given him the phone he’d expected never to use it. He hadn’t expected to have anyone’s number in the phone except for Reiji and Kashima’s – those had both been programmed in before he’d gotten it. Even now, months later, he was amazed at how often he used it. He wasn’t on the phone nearly as much as his classmates – he’d seen girls who seemed to never close their phone. The fact that he used it at all was more than he’d originally expected.