Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

BLUE: AKI

Calm, Responsible, Sadness

He slides another cigarette from the pack with two fingers, the motion automatic in a way that bothers him if he thinks about it too long. The evening light is already turning thin—more gray-blue than gold—and it clings to the glass of the veranda door like a film. He flicks his lighter, shields the flame with his palm out of habit, and draws until the tip glows.

Behind the glass, Power has her cheek smashed flat against it, skin pulled pale where it presses. She’s making a face that would look like a medical emergency if Aki didn’t know her better. Her canary eyes (too bright even in dim light) warp against the pane, swimming into something unreal as she bends her spine in such a fashion that makes him think, briefly, of those flexible toys kids twist into knots. The whole thing is meant to be a performance, a threat, a promise: Look what I’ll do if you don’t give me what I want.

Next to her, Denji leans in too, tongue sticking out like he’s a lizard testing air. He plants the tip of his nose to the glass with a soft tap—as if the action is supposed to badger Aki, like persistent dripping water. Like Aki hasn’t already lived with them for quite some time to recognize the “tactic.”

Aki keeps his face blank and lets the smoke settle into him. The cigarette tastes like paper and old tradition. It’s not even enjoyable, not really. It’s just… quiet. Quiet is rare in this apartment.

He stays out here a little longer because going back inside means the noise will swell again. Voices, feet, the ongoing war Power wages against basic household procedure.

His break is earned, if anything is.

He made the whole place spotless—again—after Power attempted to do laundry and somehow spilled water all over their shared laundromat area like she’d tried to flood it on purpose. Towels, mop, bucket, wringing his hands until the skin went tight. He can still smell damp detergent clinging to the air, a sterile scent that’s been bullied into something sour by hassle.

And then Denji. Denji, who decided, despite Aki’s flat, repeated warnings, that today would be the day he learned to cook.

“I said leave the cooking to me, Denj,” Aki told him. He told him last week. He told him yesterday. He told him like a man reciting a law that should be carved into stone.

Denji tried anyway.

Now there’s a trash bag heavier than it should be for a Tuesday: wasted ingredients, bruised and chopped wrong, thrown out because they’re beyond saving. The pot’s bottom is covered in charcoal, so black it looks like it’s been painted over. The wooden handle dissolved into ash and got disposed of alongside it—like evidence after a crime. Jesus.

Aki exhales, smoke gliding out thick. He watches the two idiots through the glass, still going at it like a pair of bored kids in a waiting room.

Power raises her hands and starts “instructing” Denji with exaggerated seriousness, resembling a coach at a championship game. Denji nods earnestly, because he’s Denji, and then he does what she signals: crosses his eyes, hooks a finger into the corner of his hanging mouth, sticks his tongue out farther.

Aki’s jaw tightens. A click of annoyance, automatic. And—worse—something close to reluctant fondness tries to surface, which he crushes down because he’s not rewarding this.

He stubs the cigarette out even though he’s barely halfway done with it. The ash collapses in the tray. The smell abides. He slides the door open.

The sudden sound makes both of them jerk backward like they’ve been caught stealing. Their faces smack the glass with a dull, stupid thud.

Power yelps first, clutching her cheek. “Aki! What the hell was that?! My cheek hurts!”

“Serves you right,” Aki drawls, flat, and steps past them into the living room. This is an ordinary consequence of their behavior, so.

Denji whines behind him. Aki doesn’t turn, but he can picture it: Denji pointing at him like he’s been backstabbed, his whole body leaning into the complaint, and—

He swears… these two will be the death of him, and not even in a heroic way—more like he’ll slip on a wet floor Power left behind and crack his skull open.

“Oi!” Denji calls. “Let’s go to the arcade! Now! You said if we behaved—”

“Which you didn’t.” Aki clicks his tongue, wipes a bead of sweat off his temple with the back of his hand, and examines the apartment. That’s the thing: even after cleaning, he has to look again. With them, the mess regenerates. Like dust. Like mold.

“—you’ll bring us and treat us to some games—eh?” Denji pauses mid-sentence, thinking laboriously that his face goes slack. “But we did behave, didn’t we, Power?” he tries, turning to her for backup like she’s a lawyer. “I tried to cook us a meal so you wouldn’t have to! Power tried to do her laundry so you wouldn’t have to!”

“And I told you not to,” Aki says. He doesn’t raise his voice. He never needs to. The calm is part of the warning. “You almost killed us. Power almost broke the washing machine, too. You guys are hopeless.”

He glances at the clock. Six in the evening.

They can stop by the arcade near the town center. It’s close, it’s bright, it’s something to do. And if he’s lucky, the machines and the running around will grind them down into tiredness by the time they come home.

Otherwise, if he tries to keep them inside? They’ll ricochet off the walls until midnight, and then he’ll be the one lying awake in the blue-dark with his jaw clenched, listening for the next crash.

“Come on, Aki…” Power drags the words out, pitching her voice into something pleading, almost pitiful if you don’t know she’s performing. “You promised!”

Aki plants his hands on his hips and faces them fully. Their expressions are agitated how kids get when they want something and can’t figure out why an adult won’t just give it to them.

His chest puckers anyway. Small, but vexing. Depriving them feels like trekking on something slushy.

“Look at you,” he says. “You both haven’t even changed from your school uniforms. Is that what you call ‘behaving’?”

They both look down at themselves at the same time, then up at each other, then nod in sync as if it’s a military conclusion. Then they dash back to their rooms so fast the floorboards groan.

Aki takes the peaceful moment to tie his hair up with a band, gathering it at the crown of his head. It’s a diminutive act that makes him feel put together, keeping some part of his life in order.

Within minutes, Denji and Power burst back into the living room.

Denji’s in a cardinal shirt with a black jacket thrown over it, faded blue jeans hanging loose on his hips. Power’s wearing a white-and-raven ringer tee with a print that says I LOVE CATS—the irony never fails to irritate him—and three-fourths joggers. Both of them are still in white socks. School socks, presumably.

Aki rubs his forehead once. He doesn’t have the energy to start another lecture.

“We’re ready! How’s this?” Power sings, bouncing like she’s wound tight inside her own skin, as if she already knows he’ll give in because she’s decided he will.

Aki presses his lips into a thin line and puts a hand under his chin, performing a thoughtful inspection. “What about Nyako? Have you fed her?”

Power’s head flings side to side. “Where is that cat? Here, Nyako! Here, girl!” She storms off toward the kitchen, her feet pounding like she’s marching into battle.

That gives Aki time to get ready properly. He leaves Denji to lounge on the sofa (like he owns the place) and goes to his room. He strips out of his indoor clothes and settles on a plain, loose navy-blue shirt and dark jeans. Nothing flashy, nothing complicated. Navy feels right in this hour. The color of deep water, of evening, of serenity that exists because you’ve forced it to.

He grabs his wallet, his pack of cigarettes, his keys, his phone—then pauses and checks his pockets again because obligation is a muscle you keep flexing until it hurts.

When he steps out, Nyako’s bowl is filled with cat food. Good. He’s not going to come home to another problem.

Denji and Power are sitting close to each other on the sofa, shoulders touching, hands in their laps, faces arranged into something like innocence. The sight is so ridiculous that a stupid sound escapes Aki—almost a laugh, strangled into a snort. One look at them, and anyone else might think they’re young adults. They’re fairly tall for it. Their bodies have lengthened and filled out in that way that makes strangers assume maturity.

But living with them proves how wrong that assumption is.

They’re children in oversized frames. Children with blunt edges.

If Aki hadn’t known any better, he would’ve called it illogical and dumb—how old they look compared to how they act. But he’s lived with them for seven months now, and even if he doesn’t know everything about their histories, he’s pieced enough together.

It’s likely the shelter. The lack of structure. Limited education. Childhood stretched out weirdly; too much freedom in the wrong places, not much guidance in the important ones. Years of doing whatever passes time because time is all you have.

And then there’s Makima: the outlying chain of connections that led them here. A friend of a distant relative. A woman who found them, and then discarded them at their local agency like paperwork she was done with.

Power and Denji were the last two orphans in that shelter. Unlucky enough not to be adopted when they were little and pliable. Hapless to hit sixteen and become a problem that a facility can no longer keep.

Aki remembers the first week with them like a fever dream.

Denji sleepwalks sometimes, wandering into the hall at night, slapping Aki in his sleep once like he’d mistaken him for a wall. Denji leaves used clothes scattered like breadcrumbs. He forgets to flush the toilet until Aki yells enough times that it becomes a pattern. He doesn’t wash dishes after eating. He barges in after school with mud on his shoes and doesn’t bother taking them off, like the concept of an inside space means nothing to him.

And Power is worse than him.

Power refuses to flush at all, stuffing tissue papers into the bowl like some deranged, unsupervised animal. She throws unwanted food like a toddler with a grudge—vegetables, mostly—letting them stick to the walls if she launches them suitably. She rants while she does it, waving her fork around, spittle flying, declaring her hatred for anything green.

Table manners don’t exist for her. Manners, period, don’t exist. Personal space is a scuttlebutt.

She’s walked in on Aki showering before. Just opened the door, strolled right in, announced she wanted to wash her feet. No shame, no delay, no thought for the fact that he’s naked and water is running and he’s trying to have five minutes where no one needs anything from him.

It takes everything—Aki’s patience, Denji’s cajoling, bribery, threats—just to get her into the tub to wash up. Once, Aki resorts to humiliation because nothing else works. He gets someone else’s opinion on her stinkiness. The moment Power realizes someone else notices, her face twists, and she storms into the bathroom like she’s going to kill the soap.

It was that bad.

Now… now they’re still rowdy. Still unruly. Still pains in his ass in fresh and inventive ways.

But they listen. Usually.

Mostly when the consequence is immediate.

If they want to eat, they fall in line. If they want a ride, they behave.

Power learns it the hard way the first time Aki tells her, with his best cold façade, “If you want to eat meat, then go out and earn some money to get some. Unless you can’t, then you’re having veggies tonight. With us.”

After that incident, she doesn’t cry about greens again. She doesn’t toss food. She asks—tight-faced, scarcely civil—for her serving to be taken off her plate. As calmly as she can manage, which isn’t much, but it’s progress.

“All set?” Aki asks now.

They nod. Their eyes are bright, both of them, as if the arcade is salvation.

Aki nods too, because this is the price of peace, and he moves toward the foyer. He slips his shoes on. He hears their footsteps thumping the floorboards behind him, speedy and impatient.

They’re by the front door in seconds, wearing their rubber shoes. Aki regards them with a look that’s meant to pin them in place despite their enthusiasm.

“Alright,” he says. “I will bring you to the arcade…”

Denji’s face lights up, mouth opening like he’s about to shout.

“Yes!”

“But.” Aki raises a hand—flat palm. The shush is gentle, but it dismounts. “Promise me you won’t make my head spin once we’re there. Understood?”

They nod so earnestly it practically looks like sobriety.

“If I say we’re going home, I mean it.”

More nodding. Power’s already intolerant, hopping on her heels.

“No fighting with other people,” Aki adds, because he knows exactly what happens when Power sees someone “looking at her wrong.”

“Yeah, yeah, old man!” Power hoots, then grabs his shirt and shakes him. “We promise! Now, can we just go?”

Aki sighs and grips the knob, steadying himself. “Hold on. One last thing. Denji.”

Denji looks up, hazel eyes twinkling, definitely about to bolt the second the door opens.

“Yeah?”

Aki keeps his tone even. “Will you be a good brother and keep an eye on Power for me while you’re at it?”

Denji huffs, crosses his arms, and scowls at Power, as though she’s offended him by merely existing. Power smirks back, fangs flashing out, likely proud of being a problem.

“I’ll try,” Denji grunts. “No promises.”

“Fine.”

Aki twists the doorknob.

The moment the latch gives, they’re out—racing toward the staircases, knocking elbows as they argue mid-sprint about who’s faster.

Aki lets them do their thing and follows at his own pace. He takes the stairs like a tired adult, one step after another, the meter regular, because he has to be constant. Somebody has to.

Outside, the air is sufficiently cool to make his lungs feel aseptic. The sky has that early-evening indigo that makes everything seem a bit further away than it is. Denji and Power are already claiming victory in their made-up race, hollering over each other.

Aki presses his car key. The lights wink. The locks pop.

They rush the back doors, yanking them open, climbing in with too much fervor for a simple trip.

He blows out a breath and drops into the driver’s seat.

“Buckle up,” he orders lightly, not looking back until he hears the click of belts—belts he got custom-made because normal ones didn’t stand a chance against this pair.

They do.

He pulls away from the curb and heads toward the main road. The town center is only a short drive—blocks he’s memorized from living here all his life. The familiarity is both comfort and bruise.

He grew up in this place. He was a kid here. He was put under his aunt’s custody after the accident, the one that wiped his whole family off the map. His parents. His… younger brother. The phrase “tragic accident” is something adults said around him like a wall, like, if they said it many times, it would make sense.

He tells himself he’s gotten over it. It happened when he was five. All he knew then was running, scraped knees, small joys.

But even that is a lie he repeats because it’s easier than admitting how the grief sits in him—soundless, embedded, not rackety, not scenic. It simply lives.

He still dreams about them sometimes.

Especially after long days at work, when he comes home with his shoulders taut and his brain fried. Sometimes he doesn’t even undress. He flops onto the bed in shoes and slacks, blazer and necktie still on, and passes out like a man who’s been emptied.

In those dreams, his family smiles like nothing bad ever happened. They ask how he is. They tell him they miss him. They tell him they’re happy he’s alive.

His brother passes him a ball, urging him to play, because he’s happiest when they do.

Aki always passes the ball back.

He always does what his brother asks, because in dreams, there’s no justification to reject.

Then he wakes up sweating through his shirt, breath coming too fast, eyes darting around his four-cornered bedroom, disappointed in that dull, sick way that comes when reality returns. The ceiling. The silence. The empty spaces where people should be.

“…I won our race earlier, so I got to play the claw machine first!”

Power’s voice yanks him back into the car, into the present. He blinks, grips the wheel a little tighter, and finds a parking spot near the arcade. He brakes, the car settling.

“Out,” he clips.

Like always, they spill out instantly—seatbelts wriggled out of, doors slammed, bodies moving before he’s even exhaustively turned the key. They disappear into the building without waiting.

That’s fine.

This isn’t their first time here. In fact, they probably come more than necessary. Aki knows which corners to search if he needs to collect them. They have patterns. He’s learned them.

He follows at his own pace.

Inside, the arcade is precisely what it invariably is: blinding neon, machine music bleeding into machine music, voices leaping off hard surfaces. The mood stinks like electricity and plastic and stuffy sweetness. People cluster in little groups, laughing too loudly over the noise because that’s the sole way to be heard.

Aki walks in unbothered. He’s used to it. It’s almost lulling in a strange way, shambles that belong somewhere else, comprised inside these walls, not in his kitchen, not in his laundry, not in his daily life.

He spots Denji and Power by a machine, talking animatedly, hands cutting the air. Denji perks his head as he senses him, then waves.

“Aki!”

Aki approaches. “Ah.”

They gesture immediately—two hands, quick movement—card, money, now.

He understands without words. He turns around and heads to the reception area where he gets the Arcade Zone card, the one he loads with real money so they can swipe it and activate games.

He’s been here enough that he’s learned the name of the girl who usually works the desk. Kobeni. Raven hair, tied back. Shorter than this.

Because the person behind the counter now isn’t Kobeni.

Aki slows. The employee has their back to him, long auburn hair falling straight down, and they’re wearing the same uniform: black short-sleeve polo, black pants. They’re inspecting something behind the desk like they’ve decided the world can wait.

Aki stops at the counter. “Uh, excuse me.”

No reaction.

They keep doing whatever they’re doing. Aki waits a beat—then clears his throat, keener. “Excuse me.”

This time, the employee glances over their shoulder, leisurely as if Aki is an inconvenience in their day rather than a customer.

When their eyes meet, Aki registers the expression first: bored. Deadpan. It’s like they don’t want to be here. Like they’re chewing on something, jaw working.

A piece of gum, maybe.

“Yeah,” the employee says, voice carrying a passable edge to be deliberate. “I heard you call the first time. What’s up?”

Aki’s eyebrow twitches.

It’s rude. Not even subtle about it.

He doesn’t argue, though, because he’s not here for a fight, and because he’s tired in a way that makes confrontation feel like extra chores.

“One Arcade Zone card,” Aki says, pulling out his wallet. He keeps his gaze controlled and refuses to react to the employee’s attitude.

The employee turns wholly now, produces a card with robotic efficiency, and holds it ready.

Aki can feel the air around them, some kind of negative aura, disinterest made bodily. It irritates him on principle. He’s not asking for conversation. He’s not asking for willingness. He just needs the card, and he’ll be out of their hair.

He thinks, absurdly, Women, and then immediately regrets the thought because it’s lazy and he’s usually better than that.

“For how much?” the employee asks.

“1,400 yen.” Aki places the cash on the counter.

The employee’s fingers brush his as they take it—brief contact, nothing meaningful. Aki doesn’t pay attention to the transaction beyond what matters: card, points loaded, done. Goodbye.

But then the employee speaks again, a little louder, and Aki’s brain catches up to something he missed at first.

That voice.

Something about the tone—lower, flatter, androgynous—makes his assumptions tilt.

Aki’s gaze flicks, quick and clinical, to the employee’s throat as they hand the card back. The motion is subtle, but it’s enough.

“Here you go,” the employee mutters.

“Thanks…” Aki trails off, eyes dropping to the name tag as if to correct his own mistake in silence.

Angel.

“Sure,” Angel replies, already turning away, boredom reinstalled like a mask, supposing Aki was a task on a list that’s now been checked off.

Aki leaves the counter and heads back to Denji and Power. He passes the card to Denji, who lights up like he’s been given a key to heaven, throws an arm around Power, and drags her off into the crowd.

And then, without meaning to, Aki glances back.

Angel is leaning over the workspace with one elbow, chin resting in their palm, eyes scanning the arcade with the same detached expression. As if they’re watching fish in a tank; none of it reaches them.

Aki looks away, a slight, private amusement bucking at him—less humor than a murky chagrin at his own assumption.

He’s a guy. My bad.

An hour into the whole babysitting-Denji-and-Power shenanigans, fatigue begins to creep into Aki’s shoulders like brumal sinking into bone. Keeping a vigilant eye on two blithering idiots is, unfortunately, a job that never stops being taxing. It isn’t even the type of somnolence that comes with accomplishment; it’s the kind that accumulates in smallish, petty pieces: the constant scoping for disaster, the split-second calculations of what can go wrong, the endless anticipation that something will.

He’s been standing near the basketball arcade game for the past several minutes, arms loosely folded, posture relaxed only because he’s trained himself into it. Denji and Power are still as energetic and cutthroat as they were when they arrived, shoving shoulders, screaming, debating over rules that don’t exist, and slapping the ball-return slot like it’s a must.

Aki watches in case one of them breaks something—either by force or by sheer foolery.

Power hurls the ball with too much confidence, brags the moment it rattles in. Denji responds by launching his ball so hard that it caroms off the rim and comes back like it’s out to punish him. The machine blares a congratulatory jingle anyhow, because machines don’t have benchmarks. Denji shouts something triumphant like he’s just won an Olympic medal. Power immediately calls him a liar.

Aki pinches the bridge of his nose, gradually, and reckons that if he stays inside another minute, the noise will start to feel like it’s plowing into his skull.

He tears his attention away from them and heads for the building’s designated smoking area—out on the open balcony instead of by his car, where he parked it along the pavement. He prefers this spot, even if it’s colder. At least it’s the official place. And more importantly: it’s where Denji and Power know he’ll be if they decide to hunt him down, which they inevitably do, like bloodhounds with no shame.

The balcony doors push open with a draft that immediately snakes under his shirt.

Aki shudders.

October has teeth. The country is already turning over to fall, and the atmosphere carries that particular sort of chill that doesn’t bite adequately hard to impair, but chews constantly enough to remind you it’s there. It smells clean in a barren manner. Thin, astute, and unwelcoming; almost as if it wants to scrape you hollow.

He leans against the railing and pulls out his pack of cigarettes. His hands move without thought: lighter out, a stick nudged free, the filter caught gingerly between his teeth.

The flame blooms. He lights it, takes the first drag, and feels the smoke roll into his lungs. A familiar weight. He blows a string of gray, then watches it unravel into the frigid air. Gossamer, ghostlike, and immediately swallowed by the wind.

He takes another drag. Then another, spacing them out, rationing quiet.

The ember thickens as he taps the filter with his finger. Ash clings stubbornly. He flicks it off over the edge, and it breaks apart mid-air, vanishing before it actually hits anything.

This is the part of his day where he feels almost… still. Not sunny. Not subdued, exactly. Just motionless enough to hear his own thoughts.

Then he hears a scoff to his right.

Aki turns—

—and nearly drops the cigarette out of his mouth.

Crouched low beside his leg, looking like he’s been there the entire time, is the redhead employee from earlier. Angel. He’s down near the floor with his back against the balcony wall, eyes half-lidded, chewing like he has all the time in the world. When he looks up, he blinks slowly at Aki with a bored, unimpressed stare, eyebrows pinching toward his hairline.

“Great,” Angel grouses, deadpan as a brick. “Now there’s dirt on my burger.”

Aki freezes for a second, then jerks back a step, startled enough that the cigarette wobbles between his fingers. “Fuck— I’m—I’m sorry,” he ends up stammering, because he really hadn’t seen him there. “I didn’t see you.”

Angel simply looks at him like that’s not his problem.

He dusts off the tip of what he’s eating—an actual burger, wrapped halfway in paper—then rises to his feet in one smooth motion, sluggish. He takes a bite like nothing happened, munching mindlessly, eyes wafting out over the street below as if the cold is an aesthetic rather than a sensation.

Aki stands there with the cigarette hovering near his chin, processing the absurdity of nearly stepping on a grown man having a balcony burger like some ilk of lurking gargoyle.

He realizes he’s staring.

He clears his throat and pivots away, assuming that fixes the humiliation. He takes another puff, then kills the cigarette early, pressing the filter down beneath the sole of his shoe against the concrete until the ember smothers out.

A little wasteful, but he’s suddenly not in the mood.

Behind him, Angel mutters—not quite sardonic this time, but still not exactly friendly. “Mm. Still delicious,” he says through muffled chewing, like he’s offering a review to nobody.

Aki’s attention snags nonetheless. He glances back, brow cocking, waiting for… something. Another jab. A complaint. A dismissal.

Instead, Angel continues, still chewing. “Right. So. Forgiven.”

Aki blinks. “Huh?”

“I said… for-gi-ven.” Angel tilts his head a little as he assesses Aki, then lifts the burger a fraction. The food is his witness. “Why are you smoking? Wouldn’t that be bad around your kids… or whatever?”

Aki’s brain stops in place.

He scrunches his nose, genuinely taken aback. “M-my kids?”

Angel tips his chin toward the door. “Yeah.”

Then, like the universe is collaborating to mortify him further, Angel adds, “And here they are now.”

As if on cue, Aki hears Denji’s high-pitched voice first, optimistic and piercing even through the arcade’s muffled noise, followed immediately by Power’s even shriller screech: “Aki!”

“We’re hungry!”

“Let’s go!”

“I wanna go home, Aki, I’m beat!”

They’re standing by the entryway to the balcony, arms raised, waving like he’s a lost parent in a crowded mall. Power is practically hanging off the doorframe. Denji’s darting on his heels like he can’t physically contain himself.

Aki’s jaw clenches. He grits his teeth at how sonorous they are, throwing demands at him like he’s an unfeeling vending machine that dispenses rides and dinner on command. They don’t even pause for him to speak.

With Angel’s your kids still echoing in his mind, Aki turns—ready to correct the guy, ready to say they’re not mine, we’re not——

But Angel is already wiping his cheek with a napkin. He folds the wrapper tighter around the burger, tosses something in a bin with a lazy swish, and glides past Aki like the conversation is finished because he’s chosen it is.

“That’s that,” Angel mumbles. “My twenty-minute break is over. See ya.”

And then he disappears back into the building without another look.

Aki is left standing there, stunned, his mouth opening and closing like a fish—words stuck behind his throat.

They’re not my kids. Do I look like the father of two teenagers to you? Don’t we all look the same age?

Truth be told, he’s at least twelve years older than Denji and Power, and he knows that, and he feels it in his joints and his patience and the way he plans his grocery list like it’s a martial function—but still.

He wouldn’t think of having kids that prematurely. If anything, the ideal age for him to become a dad is thirty-three. Not—what? Twenty-one with two sixteen-year-olds clinging to his sleeves like barnacles? Geez.

Mildly perturbed (and more annoyed at himself for being perturbed), Aki backs off from the railing and shuffles toward Denji and Power. They’re pulling faces again, blowing raspberries, making weird, animal blusters in their impatience.

“Coming,” Aki says, clipped but controlled. “Hold your horses, will you?”

Power folds her arms over her chest like she’s offended he didn’t teleport. Denji rubs a finger under his nose like he’s trying to look cool and failing.

Aki herds them back inside.

The moment they re-enter Arcade Zone, darkness and flashy neon swallow them again—the floor buzzing, the machines chirping, cheap music oozing into cheap music. Denji and Power trail after him, talking loudly among themselves, their voices ricocheting off everything.

They pass the counter.

For a second, Aki’s gaze catches—and locks—with Angel’s.

Angel is back behind the desk, bored expression reinstated, hands moving as he tends to a customer with the same disinterested productivity. His eyes meet Aki’s for a brief moment only.

Then Angel looks away first, the connection cut short.

Aki lets it go. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter.

The three of them leave the arcade, the outside ambiance more callous now that his skin has adjusted to warmth. Denji and Power climb into the backseat, collapsing after battle, still chattering, still petitioning for food, still somehow clangorous even when exhausted.

Aki slides into the driver’s seat, starts the car, and pulls out.

As he drives, the neon fades behind them, and the streets go back to their ordinary dimness. Storefronts. Streetlights. The blue-gray of evening pressing down gently on everything.

He keeps his eyes on the road, mulling over what his strange little family can have for dinner, nothing more.

If anyone points out that Aki is a slave to the corporate world, he would’ve told them no. Denied it instantly. Shut them out with a look so intense to count as a door slammed in someone’s face.

He used to loathe the idea, if he’s being honest: the image of a man packaged into a suit, reduced to schedules and performance metrics and fluorescent lighting. He used to think he was better than that. Or at least, that he wouldn’t let it happen to him.

And yet.

He’s aware it’s the truth, raw and unbending as it is. He can’t run from it, not when even his own body can’t escape the workload that’s piled above it. Not when the strain and tension gnaw at him in places he can’t reach—behind his eyes, under his ribs, in the way his shoulders remain poised like they’re bracing for impact even when nothing is happening.

Lately, he’s been lethargic. Not in a lazy way—never that—but in the way a machine becomes listless when it’s overused. The way he wakes up already tired. The way his thoughts take half a minute longer to lock into place. The way he can sit at his desk and gape at a sentence he wrote and feel the tiniest lag between seeing it and understanding it.

He doesn’t like what it implies.

In hindsight, he could’ve quit. He lived by himself before. He’s single. He could’ve lived with less, could’ve survived on what he already has, could’ve chosen a more modest job with a smaller paycheck and fewer directives.

Back then, all he had to worry about was… himself.

This time, however, he doesn’t have that luxury. He doesn’t get to treat “freedom” like a personal philosophy anymore. He has mouths to feed. Tuition. Clothes. Food. Lights that need to stay on. A roof that needs to stay above all their heads.

This is how he operates now. This is where his talent and skills lie. It’s where his mind goes automatically, day after day, no matter how much his body grumbles.

He’s told time and time again that he’s efficient. Diligent. Meticulous.

Their company needs him more than he thought it did at first.

And now—worse than that—he has a family to take care of. He’s not alone anymore. Not on his own.

“Knock, knock!”

A rasp against wood pulls him out of his thoughts. Aki looks up from his workstation to see Himeno’s face, grinning like she’s about to cause trouble, poking around the border of his cubicle wall.

She’s carrying a thick folder hugged to her chest, packed with papers. Aki recognizes it immediately. October. Of course it’s October. The month might as well be spelled R-E-T-Y-P-E.

“You good over there?” Himeno asks, cheerful. “I brought you these. You probably know what they’re for…” Her grin turns sheepish then, like she knows she’s handing him a crisis and can’t pretend otherwise.

“It’s cool,” Aki assures, long resigned. “Just leave it there.”

He gestures to the annexed table beside his desk. He’s been in the middle of typing a report—something about quarterly projections, something that makes his eyes glaze if he looks at it too presently. Himeno ducks in and places the folder down, nudging aside the clutter in the process. Stapler. A box of thumbtacks. A couple of erasers. Another pile of papers that had been stacked orderly until the rest of the world interfered.

Himeno hovers instead of leaving, leaning against the cubicle frame like she’s sunk in for a chat. The office around them drones—keyboards clicking, phones ringing, the somber murmur of polite voices and restrained irritation. The office smells like coffee that’s been reheated too many times.

“So…” Himeno starts, casual on the surface. “I heard Denji is graduating soon. That’s in a couple of months, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Aki’s answer comes out instantaneously because it’s true, and because he does know that. He’s signed papers for it. He’s looked at timetables. He’s paid expenses. He’s been reminded in emails and printed notices.

“And then Power would be in her last year in high school after that.” Himeno inclines her head slightly. “Have you thought about what course they’d study in college?”

Aki’s fingers pause over the keyboard.

He stares at the screen for a beat too long, the blinking cursor suddenly accusatory.

Because right. He hasn’t given it much thought.

He’s been busy with the obvious things: keeping the apartment from collapsing, keeping them fed, keeping them alive. Getting them to school. Getting them home. Preventing the type of hodgepodge that ends with fines or hospital bills or neighbors calling the landlord.

But the future?

Denji. University. A plan.

He hasn’t really sat the boy down and asked, What do you want to be? because asking it feels like standing at the kernel of a bigger conversation. Denji’s face flashes in his mind—open and vociferous, unabashed, thoughtless. Denji’s manners, or lack of them. Denji’s bare, rebellious energy like a stray firework.

Power, though… Power, who would probably answer “President” or “God” with a straight face and then throw something if you laughed.

Aki exhales quietly. “I… don’t know yet.” He rubs his thumb against the side of his index finger, a diminutive quirk when he’s pondering. “But thanks for the reminder. I should ask him.”

“That you should,” Himeno says, and there’s warmth in it underneath the teasing. She wiggles her eyebrows—Aki can only see one clearly; the other is hidden behind her jet-black fringe. “He’s not getting any younger.”

Aki’s lips quirk despite himself. “I know.”

He returns to typing, the keys clicking under his fingers, while Himeno finally retreats—leaving the folder like a force on his desk that he’ll have to move eventually.

During lunch break, Himeno drops by again—this time with the clear intention of tangibly prying him away from his chair.

Aki’s not planning on eating. Not really. He’s been focused. He’s on a roll. If he stands up, he’ll lose momentum, and momentum is precious in a job like this.

Himeno does not care.

“You’re eating,” she declares, more or less announcing a policy. She grips the back of his chair and hauls. “Come on.”

“I’m fine,” Aki starts.

“You look like a ghost in a tie,” she shoots back, and keeps towing until Aki gives in, because resisting her is exhausting and also pointless.

So they end up at the ramen stall outside the building, just across from the office, where steam fogs the air, and the scent of broth is strong enough to make the city feel succinctly human again. It’s tumultuous there too, but a distinct category of raucous—spoons clinking, cooks shouting, customers conversing with their cheeks full.

For a change, Aki reaches for his wallet. He’s about to pay for both of them.

Himeno beats him to it regardless. Again.

“My treat!” she chirps brightly, sliding her money down before he can. “I know you’ve got your hands full with two high schoolers under your wing, you poor baby. I got it.”

“Himeno—” Aki begins, chafed on principle.

She leans in and puts a finger over his lips, shutting him up like it’s nothing. Her nail taps his lip once—light, final.

And that’s the end of it.

They eat, the ramen being amply hot to burn his tongue if he’s uptight. The warmth resolves in his stomach, much like a small mercy.

Outside afterward, walking along the asphalt with the office building looming nearby, Aki adjusts his necktie and ultimately tries once more, voice low with restrained annoyance. “Seriously, Himeno… I have enough savings. You hear me? If you think after working since I graduated college—which was what, six… seven years ago?—I wouldn’t have loads of money stowed away in the bank, then you’re wrong. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Oh, really now?” Himeno draws the words out like she’s entertained. “But won’t that apply to just yourself alone?”

She lights a cigarette as they walk, the movement practiced. The flame pithily reflects in her eye.

“Dude,” she continues, smoke curling from her mouth. “If you haven’t realized, you’re like a father of two fully grown people now.”

Aki’s head snaps a fraction toward her, but she barrels on with relentless logic.

“Not only do you send them to school, which means you pay for their education, clothe them, feed them three times a day, maybe even sometimes five, knowing your underlings…” She gestures vaguely, like she’s pointing at Denji and Power in the air. “But you also treat them to other things! Don’t you? Of course you do. You wouldn’t stand a chance. You love them too much.”

Aki’s cheeks flare hot at that—at the bluntness of it, at the way she says it as though it’s a fact he’s been trying not to anoint. His lips part.

Himeno doesn’t let him reason.

“And to prove my point,” she says, jabbing a finger at his chin, “let me ask you—where were you last night?”

Aki’s brain supplies the image immediately: the arcade, neon lights, Denji and Power yelling his name like sirens, his own weariness twirling in like mist.

He opens his mouth again.

Himeno steamrolls it.

“Out with them, weren’t you? You brought them with you and spent dimes on them.” She exhales hard; been holding in the rant. “Those are things you pay for with money now, Aki. And who knows for how long? Will those savings you speak of really suffice?”

She sighs after the monologue like she’s tired from being right, then takes another drag, eyes half-lidded. “Besides…” Her voice softens, just narrowly, into something almost fond. “You’re Aki. Believe it or not, but I like wasting money on you.”

She snickers.

Aki gazes ahead, the afternoon light harsh and pale against the street. Moments pass where he can’t find anything to say that doesn’t sound defensive.

He ends up with a flat, defeated, “Oh,” because it’s the only honest thing left.

Himeno smiles like she’s won, because she has. She always does.

They meander into the alley beside the ramen stall, an unofficial little smoking spot where the wind is weaker, and the city noise dulls. Aki leans back against the brick wall, checks his wristwatch.

Quarter to three.

Fifteen minutes before they have to go back and become useful again.

Himeno offers him a cigarette, a peace treaty. Aki takes it because squabbling would take energy he doesn’t have. He torches it with his own lighter, the blaze enduring in his hand.

They smoke together in silence for a few beats.

Then, as Aki finishes the last dregs of the cigarette, the recollection hits him out of nowhere—spiteful and dumb.

That tangerine-haired Arcade Zone employee.

The bored eyes.

The deadpan voice.

Wouldn’t that be bad around your kids?

The awful notion skims into his mind again, and something about it—how easily it was said, how casually it fit in that guy’s maw—makes Aki choke.

He coughs, hard and sudden, like his body is trying to eject the thought physically. The sound rips out of him.

“No!” he yells, frustrated and unconscious, as if the word could swat the memory away.

Himeno jolts. “Aki—what is it?” She steps closer, panic flaring, and pats his back with brisk concern.

Aki coughs again, more sharply, and throws the cigarette away, sending it to die against the brick with a flavorless spark.

It’s not the smoke making his throat itch. It’s the mortification. The sheer nerve of it.

He drags in a breath through his nose, shoulders stiff.

“Nothing,” he mutters, voice rough. His face burns in disgrace as if someone can see the insult stamped on his thoughts.

I’m not a father, you— he thinks, vicious and childish. You freaking redhead.

Himeno studies him for a second, conceivably in disbelief, then breathes out through her nose. “If you say so…” She checks her phone or her watch—Aki can’t tell which. “We should go back. We only have five minutes.”

“Okay.” Aki pushes off the wall, rolling his shoulders, shaking the moment loose. “…Yeah. We should.”

And with that, he follows her out of the alley and back toward the building, the afternoon feeling eternal, the office waiting like a quiet blue mug ready to gobble him likewise.

He drives to Denji and Power’s school after clocking out, timing it how he always does—late so he can avoid getting stuck in the densest traffic, and early so they won’t be standing around too long. The day clings to him in the form of rigid muscles and a mind that’s still running on office linear lamps. Typical.

He doesn’t feel like cooking tonight. Not because he can’t, but because the idea of another pot, pan, another cleanup makes his insides shrink with lassitude. Frenzied, yawning, and foreseeing Power’s pickiness and Denji’s bottomless appetite, he supposes they can eat out instead.

It’s practical. It’s easier. It’s one less skirmish.

He eases the car toward the front gate and switches his hazards on near the curb. Students pour out in waves, uniforms and backpacks and overlapping voices, the sidewalk turning into a moving current. Some of them pass close enough that Aki can see their reflections in his tinted windows—kids using the glass as a mirror to fix their hair, adjust collars, practice expressions.

Aki winds his window down and waits.

The vibe outside is nippier than it was at noon, that same October slink—dry and pristine and slightly acute. He rests his forearm on the door and lets his eyes sweep the crowd with assiduity that’s less equilibrium and more muscle memory.

It takes a while. Long enough that his foot starts to go numb from staying pressed sparingly on the brake. Long enough that he has time to smoke one cigarette, then chew a piece of popping candy afterward, in case one of their teachers recognizes him and decides to walk over.

He’s learned what happens when adults approach him while he still reeks of smoke: Power gets vehement, Denji says something inappropriate, and Aki ends up looking like a man trying not to drown in public.

Thankfully, no teachers appear.

Then, like a siren you can’t ignore, he hears Power.

Even before he sees her, her voice slices through the crowd with manic clarity. She’s waltzing through a throng of students, yapping and obnoxiously telling them some delirious story she’s absolutely invented on the spot. Her arms fly as she gabs. Her entire body is part of the skit.

Laughter bursts around her, boisterous, dissonant. Kids slap hands with her. Some applaud. Someone shouts inducement like she’s doing stand-up.

Aki watches—blankly—because if he sighs now, it’ll come out like a groan.

Without thinking too hard about it, he lifts a hand and waves; small, restrained, meant only for her.

Power’s head whips in his direction, instincts as perceptive as a hunting beast. She sees him and lights up as if the day has finally become worth living. She waves back so hard her whole arm flails, quaking with exuberance, nearly smacking a boy beside her with her gangly limbs. He flinches. Another kid laughs. Power doesn’t notice.

Aki chooses not to berate her in public. He gets out of the car instead, shutting the door feebly, and motions for her to come over.

She bounds to him with a cheesy grin, hands clasped behind her back, an innocent little gem all of a sudden. The act lasts just enough to be insulting.

“Get in,” Aki hisses quietly, leaning in so she can’t pretend she didn’t hear. “Where’s Denji?”

Power makes a theatrical show of thinking, finger under her chin as she hums. Her shell-pink hair bobs with every movement. “I don’t know?” she says with a shrug that’s far too colloquial. Then she blows air out of her mouth, making her fringe flutter. “Ah! Maybe he’s still hanging around that nasty group!”

Aki’s eyes narrow. “Nasty group?”

“I heard what they were talking about this morning,” Power continues, delighted. “They were teasing Denji with that one girl!”

The way she emphasizes girl—like it’s a dirty word—ends in a peal of manic laughter.

“Who?” Aki asks, already preparing for the worst.

“Some girl named Asa!” Power plants her hands on her hips like she’s delivering a verdict. “She’s quite cute, but I don’t think Denji would like her.”

Aki pauses. “Why not?”

Power’s gaze darts around the gate—Is she checking for eavesdroppers? Then she tips closer into Aki’s space, cups her hand around her mouth, and whispers with conspiratorial glee: “Because he’s into boys…”

Aki’s brain trips on the sentence. He sputters, blinking dumbly. “W-what… How do you know?”

Power straightens, offended he even asked. “Duh! We’re, like, together all the time! Of course, Denji told me stuff. A loooot of stuff.” She shudders dramatically. “Have you any idea how pervy he is? Ecchi, ecchi, ecchi! He’s sooo gross!”

Aki’s face goes blank in the way it does when he’s trying not to react. Hm.

Power barrels on, pleased by her own storytelling. “Fun fact! When we were younger, Denji made it his number one goal to… fondle boobies!”

Aki’s heart is in his mouth.

“But now,” Power declares, jabbing a finger into the air, feigning solving a mystery, “that the Nyako’s out of the bag, it’s safe to say it was all a lie. A big, fat lie! Liar, I tell you! Hmph!”

She spins, smug, and then sings, “Say, you should really hang out with us every once in a while so you know better, nii-chan~”

The honorific hits Aki harder than the rest of the nonsense. Nii…chan? He feels his chest do something trim and tight: a rubber band snapping into place. His thoughts stumble.

Did she just call me… her older brother? She acknowledges that we are—?

He doesn’t get to devour the thought.

Because Denji’s voice ascends from the front gate, bright and vibrant, awfully apparent, surrounded by other voices. The group Power mentioned. A knot of boys and girls in uniforms, orbiting Denji like they’ve found something amusing to poke.

And there she is—Asa (allegedly), semi-long black hair, standing on Denji’s right side. She looks disgruntled, like she’d rather be anywhere else. Denji looks the same—expression twisted into mutual disgust.

“Come on, Denji!” someone shouts, laughing. “She’s so into you, bro!”

“Yeah!” another voice trills. “Just look at her blushing!”

For a moment, Denji and Asa glance at each other—

—and then both turn away at the same time, sticking their tongues out in exaggerated, synchronized revulsion.

Aki shakes his head, like he can jostle the scene off his eyeballs. Then he raises his voice, marginally. “Denji! Here!”

Denji perks up and grins broadly at seeing him, relief flooding his face, rescued from torture. “Aki, oi!” He jogs over, leaving his friends behind without much thought. “You’re early.”

“Yeah,” Aki says. “I’m taking you and Power to eat. I don’t have the energy to cook tonight.”

Denji’s grin widens. “Really?! Then count me in!”

He hops into the backseat without waiting for further instructions, like the car is a lifeboat.

Aki gets back into the driver’s seat, buckles his seatbelt, and checks the mirror.

“Strap in,” he orders impetuously, watching until both of them click their belts. He doesn’t move the car until he hears it. It’s become law.

Then he pulls away from the curb and merges into the road.

Denji and Power immediately start bickering about what to eat—booming, passionate, rashly earnest. Denji wants the biggest burger imaginable. Power wants something “worthy of royalty.” Denji calls her delusional. Power threatens violence. The usual.

Aki keeps his eyes on the road, letting their noise wash over him like rain.

Somewhere beneath it, another thought taps at his brain—Himeno’s question. College. Plans. The future.

And then Power’s earlier whisper slides in too, unwanted:

He’s into boys…

Aki’s grip tightens on the wheel. For support, perhaps. He debates whether he should have that sit-down talk with Denji about college—and maybe about the other stuff—as soon as they get home, or… Or wait until the weekend when Denji can’t wriggle away with excuses.

Cornering him might be easier then.

But imagining the conversation makes Aki feel jaded in advance.

“Aki… when will you buy me a cell phone…!” Power whimpers, draping herself over the passenger seat from behind like a dramatic phantom plaguing him.

She’s been at it for at least half an hour (ever since they left the school), moaning, sighing, whining, making blusters that suggest she’s being denied basic human rights rather than a piece of technology.

Meanwhile, Denji has been glued to his phone the entire ride, thumbs flying, grinning at something on the screen for whatever reason.

“I already told you, Power,” Aki sighs. “Once you turn seventeen. That’s a couple of months away.”

“But—!”

“No buts.” Aki rolls forward into the Burger Stop drive-thru, easing off the gas. The menu board glows too colorfully against the evening dim. He can smell fryer oil instantly, like it’s seeped into the air itself.

“Bleh! I got this on my birthday last month! Wait your turn, dumbass!” Denji chortles loudly, and it’s like he’s tossed gasoline on Power’s jealousy.

She lunges for him. He yelps. They begin wrestling in the backseat, limbs tangling, the seatbelt straps stretching.

Aki doesn’t even turn his head. “If you dent my seat, you’re walking home.”

They quiet down negligibly, but the drive-thru speaker crackles to life either way.

“Hello, welcome to Burger Stop. What would you like to have?”

Aki exhales through his nose. “Alright, enough. Time to order.”

“Yatta!” Power cheers, abruptly dropping her assault on Denji as if she’s never been upset a day in her life. She lunges forward, practically folding herself over the center console. Her whole torso is over the gear shift, crowding Aki’s space.

“Power—” Aki starts.

She ignores him and rattles into the intercom at full speed, voice radiant and commanding. “Chicken nuggets! Coke! Burger! But no pickles, please! Large fries!”

Denji shoves his phone away and pushes her back like she’s a curtain in his way. “Hey! My turn!” He leans in. “I’d like a burger too! The biggest one you have! Double patty! Large drink of whatever, I don’t really care, and fries! Huge fries!”

He sits back smugly.

Aki just stares ahead for a second, nonplussed.

“…Um,” he says into the speaker, already knowing the answer. “Did you get all that?”

What he gets back is a toneless, exhausted: “No.”

Aki’s glare in the rearview mirror could cut glass.

Denji and Power both go sheepish immediately—like guilt is a switch they can flip when terrorized.

Calmly, because calm is sometimes the only thing keeping him from losing it, Aki repeats their orders at a normal pace. Then he adds his own: a one-piece chicken meal with rice and gravy, a regular Coke. He drives forward to the payment booth.

A woman in a Burger Stop uniform greets them with practiced cheer. “Good day! That’s 2,098 yen in total!”

Aki hands over a five-thousand-yen bill. She gives him change and instructs them to wait at the next counter for the food.

He nods, pockets the coins, and rolls forward.

He’s so busy slipping the change away that he doesn’t register who’s at the pickup window until Power, leaning between the seats again, muses loudly:

“Oh, look. It’s the pretty guy from Arcade Zone! He also works here?”

Aki’s head snaps up.

And—yes. It’s him.

Angel is inside the little window stall wearing a Burger Stop crew uniform, hair the same tangerine-auburn, expression the same bored neutrality. Like he’s been transplanted from one workplace to another by some cruel god of minimum wage.

“It’s you,” Aki blurts, and the words come out annoyingly breathless. Like he’s surprised. Like he cares.

Angel lifts his gaze, unceremoniously. “Hey.” Then, with the same nonchalant, deadpan cruelty as before: “You’re with your kids again, I see. They talked so fast, I couldn’t catch up with them earlier.”

Aki’s jaw drops. “They’re not…” my kids.

He opens his mouth to correct him—he’s ready this time—he—

Angel keeps going.

“Sure, they do. They’re so hyper, dude. What do you feed them? Caffeine? Batteries?” His tone doesn’t change, like he’s asking about the weather. “Anyway, here’s your food.”

Angel extends two paper bags through the window, arms steady. Aki takes them helplessly.

“Enjoy.”

“Thanks,” Aki manages, because manners come first even when he’s peeved.

Denji snatches one bag and starts rummaging. Power grabs the other and digs like she’s mining for treasure.

Angel hands Aki the drinks next, and just as Aki draws breath to speak—to finally, finally say hey, so, they’re not mine—

Angel turns away.

A voice crackles in from the intercom behind him. Another order. Another customer.

Angel slides the window shut, the glass reflecting neon and headlights, and a sign flashes in Aki’s line of sight:

CLOSE THIS AT ALL TIMES — AIR-CONDITIONED FACILITY

It feels personal.

Aki sits there with the drinks in the cup holder and the bags in his hands, robbed once more of the chance to correct the misunderstanding.

Damn it.

Maybe next time.

…If there ever would be, still.

Aki takes to doing the laundry as soon as they get home, because if he doesn’t do it now, it becomes a problem later—and later is always worse. The apartment is still warm from the day, but the air has that somewhat musty aftertaste of fried food and soda, one that dawdles in curtains and hair.

Denji and Power are done scarfing their portions of Burger Stop as though it were a competitive sport. Now they roam the place with that post-meal restlessness, loose-limbed and uproarious, hovering around him the way animals loom around a kitchen when they sniffle something they didn’t get.

Aki can tell—without either of them saying it—that they also want his food.

Denji keeps eyeing the remaining meal like it’s insultingly within reach, glancing from the table to Aki with unconcealed craving only a teenager can weaponize. Power paces the hallway with Nyako tucked under her arm, carrying the cat like a trophy. Every time she passes the laundromat entryway, her gaze points toward Aki—furtive, calculating. Is she casing a target, or what?

On her fifth slow patrol past the doorway, Aki heaves a sigh.

He caves.

“Fine,” he says, voice bland with resignation. “Power. You and Denji can have mine. Just—” he pauses, eyes narrowing in warning, “make sure you throw away the trash and clear the table before you pass out on the floor.”

Power stops like she’s been struck by divine permission. She beams.

“Yay!” comes her cheer, immediately loosening her grip on Nyako. The cat squirms free and skips away, tail up, relieved to no longer be used as a prop. Power gives Aki a crisp two-finger salute. “Aye, aye! Will clean up after ourselves!”

Then she swivels toward the living room and bellows, “DENJIIII!” as though he’s two miles away instead of in the next room, already helping himself to a bite the moment he sensed victory.

Aki returns to the washing machine, because if he watches them eat his meal, pique will become something intenser. He measures out detergent powder with care, pours it into the compartment, shuts the lid, and starts the cycle. The machine churns to life—steady as usual, and reliable, a small mechanical promise that something will get cleaner if you just let it run.

When he’s done, he grabs his pack of cigarettes and lighter and steps out of the laundromat toward the veranda.

The sliding door is cool under his palm. The moment he opens it, night air slides into the room like water.

He stands at the railing and lights up.

For a moment, he watches Denji and Power through the glass, fighting over whose turn it is to grab a piece of chicken, hands darting, voices growing, a petty scrabble that somehow contains their entire personalities. Denji laughs, winning. Power shrieks as if she’s being oppressed.

Aki lets it blur into background noise as he shifts his gaze outward.

The city below plays out in tiny moving squares of starlight. Streetlights and lampposts line the roads, turning wet pavement into insipid ribbons. Cars pass at persistent speed, taillights threading red through the dark. Pedestrians cross at intersections—elders with lagging steps, kids with bouncing backpacks, couples walking close enough that their shoulders brush.

It’s around nine in the evening. Not too late for the streets to empty, not too soon for them to feel lively. Just the in-between hour where everyone is either going home or acting like they’re not.

Cyclists scull by in helmets and gear, pedaling along the bike lane, their reflectors flashing like blinking eyes.

Aki takes a drag and blows, watching smoke dissolve the way thoughts do when you refuse to hold them.

Then he sees someone he recognizes.

Himeno.

She’s crossing at a red light, head tilted down at first—then she looks up, spots him bent over the railing, and grins like she’s been waiting to witness him in a quiet instant. The grin is so big that it makes her seem younger than she is, like she hasn’t been ground down by the same things.

Aki nods in greeting, cigarette held between two fingers.

Himeno lifts her hand back—then, almost right away, changes direction, the verdict effortless.

It takes her less than ten minutes to show up at their doorstep.

The knock is mellow, sure. Perhaps she believes she belongs here as much as he does.

“I’ll get it!” Power announces, broadcasting it to the whole apartment, she might as well be delivering news to a stadium. Aki hears her footsteps pounding across the floorboards. A second later, her voice wakes again, gleeful and malicious in the way only Power can be.

“Your girlfriend’s here!”

Aki’s eyes squeeze shut.

From the foyer, he hears Himeno’s warm, amused laughter, unbothered.

Aki exhales and slides the veranda door shut with more force than necessary, the glass thudding into place. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he intones as he returns inside, tired of this conversation. “How many times—”

“Yo,” Himeno says, head lolling to the side in a teasing angle. She stands there in the entryway, shoes still on, holding two plastic bags that seem to contain food. She smiles, proud of her own ambush.

“Himeno,” Aki says, already knowing he’s going to lose. “You didn’t have to—”

“Oh, come on, Aki,” she drawls, toeing her shoes off and ambling into the apartment. “Don’t make me regret buying these.”

She glances toward the living room with a look that says she can already read the scene—Denji and Power with crumbs in their wake, the suspicious cleanliness, Aki moving around like someone who hasn’t eaten.

“And let me guess,” she continues, “you haven’t eaten because Denji and Power ate your food, didn’t they?”

She winks at Power.

Power giggles into her hand, unrepentant.

Aki stares, then frowns. “How did you know?”

“Never mind how I knew. It’s too obvious.” Himeno points at his stomach.

One that rumbles—traitorous and low.

Heat rises into Aki’s face. He looks away.

Himeno scoffs. “Let’s just eat, alright? I’m starving.”

Aki blows out a breath. He doesn’t fight her. Fighting her is like fighting gravity.

“Fine.”

So they eat.

Himeno brought fried rice in takeout boxes and a bundle of spring rolls, late-night sorts of food that feel like a favor before it hits your tongue—hot, greasy in a merciful way, and made by someone who didn’t ask you to exemplify yourself first. There are extras, too. Enough that Denji and Power pounce again without an ounce of remorse. Dinner had been a rumor all their lives.

They treat their stomachs like bottomless storage.

Aki sits there with them and lets the scene run. Denji talks with his cheeks covered in crumbs, wheezing at his own jokes. Himeno laughs—real laughter, one that comes from the chest—and Power makes a stealth attempt at stealing an extra spring roll, only to get her wrist tapped and recoil boorishly like she’s been stabbed. Nyako weaves through ankles, opportunistic, tail flicking.

The room takes on heft. Plates, inputs, heat, the cramped havoc of people taking up space without atoning for it. The apartment doesn’t feel like a unit anymore. It feels inhabited.

It’s ordinary. Almost offensively so.

And somehow that fetches in Aki’s ribs like a bruise he forgot he had.

When they’re done, and the last bits are picked at, Aki returns to the laundromat to give his clothes another spin. The machine whirs obediently, a bland motorized chime that never catechizes. When he comes back, Himeno is at the veranda, elbows on the railing, claiming the view by right of arrival.

Denji and Power have retreated to their rooms by then—Aki told Denji to do his homework, told Power to feed her cat. Whether they’ve listened is anyone’s guess, but the volume in the apartment has dipped, which is a victory in this household.

Himeno holds out a cigarette. Aki accepts, and they smoke together.

The autumn air has since whetted; it nips at exposed skin and sneaks under fabric, making Aki hug himself as he looks up above them, where the sky is safe, uncluttered.

The moon hangs high and stark, gruff, white enough to bleach the railing anemic. No clouds. The stars are pricked through the dark like pinholes, obstinate, unmoved by what anyone is doing under them.

Himeno rests her forearms on the metal and allows smoke out through her nose, speaking without turning.

“Hey, Aki.”

“Hm?”

“We’re getting older, aren’t we?”

The corner of his mouth twitches, not quite forming a smile. “That we are. What of it?”

Himeno grunts, then angles her head a bit so that moonlight seizes her cheekbone. “Any plans on getting married? Settling down, I mean?”

The question doesn’t strike as a surprise. It hits like paperwork he’s been avoiding. Aki breathes in—cold air, tobacco, the fuzzy detergent aroma sailing from the laundry nook, supposing even the flat wants to remind him there’s always something operating in the background.

Plans.

He’s twenty-nine. Thirty next month.

At what point is a person supposed to want certainty? At what point does “later” stop being an answer people tolerate?

If he forces himself toward the simplest route—no romantic guessing, no awkward search—marrying Himeno is an easy solution on paper. She’s here. She knows him. He trusts her.

But he also knows life isn’t a spreadsheet.

He’s never been the type to seek love. Dating has always felt like a social pastime that other people learned naturally. Like banter, like networking, like knowing when to howl. Aki can perform competence at work all day, but romance has always been a language he speaks with an accent.

Aside from Himeno, Kobeni, and Power, he doesn’t have women in his life in any meaningful way: his best friend, a coworker who happens to run the arcade counter, and his so-called “little sister” who is neither little nor actually his sister, but will oppose you if you try to correct her.

Pitiful, some might say.

Aki doesn’t usually care about feeling regretful about it.

And yet—people do approach him. Only last month, four different girls asked for his number like it was trivial, like he was a realistic option. He declined every time, mannerly and consistent, practiced. He’s gotten good at refusing without making a fuss.

Marriage, though—marriage is treated like an essential. A marker. A thing you’re supposed to arrive at if you’re functioning properly.

He isn’t even sure he wants it, but then again: “fathering” two giant toddlers was never part of his plans either, and somehow he’s doing that now, day in, day out, like it’s always been his role.

So who’s to say he wouldn’t manage being someone’s husband?

Aki glances at Himeno.

She’s a senpai to him in the way that matters. An older-sister shape in his life, even when she flirts for amusement. The idea of proposing to her doesn’t feel utopian… It feels like choosing a reliable contractor because you’re tired of living with a leak.

And beneath all that is the real issue, the stubborn core he can’t file away:

He doesn’t know what he wants.

Despite his age.

When was the last time he slept with someone? High school? College? Was it good? Was it a girl? A boy? He’s slept with both—he knows that about himself the way he knows his own birthday, factual and unromantic. But he’s never sat down and decided what it means, what it points to, whether it points anywhere at all.

He doesn’t know what stands out. He doesn’t know what he prefers. He doesn’t know if he prefers anything enough to build a life around it.

And lately, with his habits—too little sleep, skipped meals, the vices he dissembles are minor—there’s a reserved cognition that time keeps moving whether he’s ready or not.

He lets out a sigh. Smoke loosens into the air and disappears.

“I don’t know, Himeno,” he mutters at last, beaten. “Not sure I know the answer to that.”

“Yet,” Himeno cuts in immediately, elbowing him. Familiar. Harmless. “You’ll figure it out.” Then she grins, because she never lets sincerity sit alone. “Although you can always just marry me. I’ve been suggesting it for two years. I still don’t understand why you won’t just go with it.”

She laughs like she’s offering him a coupon.

Aki huffs, a reluctant sound. “You’re really serious about that one, aren’t you?”

“Yep!” Himeno beams.

Aki nods once. He knows she likes him—genuinely, solidly, in a way that isn’t about convenience.

But it isn’t what he feels back.

What he has with Himeno is more sober than an affair. Built out of long days and mutual survival, the type of bond one doesn’t (shouldn’t) question because questioning it feels like jinxing it.

“You’re insane,” he rumbles.

“So I’ve been told,” Himeno replies, and her smile softens into something calm, something unguarded.

Aki finds his own mouth lifting in response before he can stop it.

They linger awhile longer, talking in loose threads. Nothing urgent, nothing that needs to be remembered—until the night deepens and the apartment behind them resolves into stillness.

By eleven, Himeno decides to go home.

Denji and Power are out cold by then, with Power folded into some impossible sprawl, Denji likely half-off his mattress. Even Nyako is quiet for once. The laundry has been hung to dry, lined up accordingly, making it seem like Aki is attempting to persuade the universe he has control over something.

He walks Himeno down and watches her get into a taxi. She waves through the window, calls a hearty goodnight, and then the car pulls away, taillights shrinking until they’re gone.

Aki stands outside a few steps from the entrance in a thin gray T-shirt and basketball shorts, one hand shoved deep in his pocket against the chill.

The taxi turns.

Vanishes.

He swerves to head back—

—and collides with someone.

Slimmer. A head shorter. So solid that the impact steals his breath for a minute.

“What… the… fuck?” Aki staggers, shoulder clipping the wall. His eyes blink hard, re-focusing from the jolt. Then—

“…You?”

Angel stands there, equally thrown off. White shirt. Bear-patterned pajama pants. House slippers. Hair down and messy, like he’d rather not be seen by anyone who knows his name. In his hand is a 7-Eleven paper bag.

They stare at each other, a frozen standoff that happens when two people walk into the same mistake at the same time.

And then, as if rehearsed: “Are you stalking me?!” they accuse each other in perfect sync.

They both flinch at their own words, shooting the idea down.

“You wish!”

“No way!”

Silence.

The entryway suddenly feels too exiguous, the air too crisp, the juncture too foolish for either of them to claim with dignity.

The Redhead’s eyes narrow, just as Aki’s jaw tenses. Neither wants to be the first to admit how stupid this is.

Finally, Angel shrugs—dismissive, waving off the entire situation—and walks past Aki as if Aki is a mislaid object.

“Well, okay,” he mutters and heads inside, starting up the staircase. The 7-Eleven bag swings at his side.

Aki stays where he is, gaping after him.

Angel doesn’t look back. Doesn’t waver. Doesn’t act like this is the third time they’ve crossed paths in a day, and he’s called Aki a father twice.

By the time Angel reaches the next floor, Aki’s brain catches up.

He lives here.

The realization pops like a spark behind his eyes.

Aki has lived in this building for years. June will be five years. He knows the regular faces. The smokers. The loud doors. The heavy footsteps. He has never seen Angel around.

Which means Angel is new.

Aki swipes a hand to cover his mouth and bends slightly at the waist, laughter threatening to spill out. He clamps down hard, muffling it, but it still shakes his shoulders.

I accused him of stalking me.

Did he really just do that?

God. That’s humiliating.

…Fuck.