Chapter Text
"i just can't... was my invitation that bad?"
Kaito cut himself up with another shot, the burning sensation not nearly as strong as the music pounding his ears. Until around 30 minutes ago, he had been talking to the guests and setting up the vibe, making sure everyone was somewhat tipsy before he could start his depressive drinking.
"don't beat yourself up, you know she doesn't really like parties, maybe she was just looking for an excuse when she said that"
shuichi's hand moved along his back, hoping to bring some sort of comfort and distraction as he hid the whisky behind him. That poor man had never been a drinker until literally ten minutes ago, and he wasn't in the mood to find out what exactly happened when you mixed Kaito's already odd behavior with unhealty amounts of alcohol.
The trials as keeping him from getting drunk clearly weren't useful-that man had taken four shots and was now chugging down a random drink he found nearby-crushing the plastic cup with his head as if it were a beer can in the hands of a metal fan.
Before he could even attempt to get him to drink some water-or just drink nothing for a change-his phone buzzed in his pocket, then again, and then once more as he picked it up, maki had sent over 10 messages in a minute. When he first became friends with both of them, getting stuck in this weird position as their perpetual love advisor was the last thing he expected to get.
maki:u up?
maki:call me
maki:i'm with tenko
maki:like rlly call me
maki:why did u introduce me to that asshole
maki:btw does he like ribbons or is that too much?
maki:for like the chocolates
maki:tenko sucks at advice when it comes to men
maki:i need someone that can think about something other than girls
maki:i tried to call pekoyama but she's at that goddamn hang out
i can't call, i'm also at the party
maki:too bad
maki:go to the bathroom or smt and call me
maki:not like you're making out with someone, kaede is also here, she's the one that told me to call u
as he tried to stand up, he felt something cold holding him in place. He turned around to see Kaito clinging to him for dear life. Either he had started to do weed in the two seconds he looked away, or he had been crying.
"man... What do i even do to win her over? Does she think i'm a creep because I fell behind her?"
"Kaito i-"
the vibration of his phone cut him off, softly moving over his free hand. How does someone call 4 times in a minute? why couldn't kaede advice her for this once
Shuichi had to hurry, Maki couldn't find out he was actively talking with Kaito about her, and he couldn't find out she liked him while a blackout got closer-any unexpected news and he might explode. He somehow managed to free himself, pretty much just yelling at him so the message would get across as quickly as humanly possible.
"Kaito, why don't you just tell her? you're friends, make a plan to tell her tomorrow, take advantage of the day"
Kaito's eyes sparkled as he watched his buddy leave, what had he said? He had to make a something, but the word got lost between the music and people's muffled conversations... make a letter! that had to be it! he would give maki the most kaito-ish letter to have ever been written. Before anyone tried to talk to him-or check up on that poor drunk man-he was running up the stairs and into his room, nothing was gonna get in the way of his heartfelt confession.
•
Maki paced around as she waited for an answer. How hard was it to walk outside and call her? He was online, but hadn't picked up the phone, did he think she was that hopeless?
"still no answer, are you sure we even need his opinion?”
“hell nah we don't, he's a man. A man got you in this problem, a different one won't get you out”
she immediately got cut off by tenko, who hovered over her to speak. How did she get stuck in this situation? She had been beating herself over saying no to him the whole day-so when the opportunity to go to the gym with tenko arose, she didn't doubt to take it.
By some twisted reason, as they walked out and were ready to head home, they stumbled upon kaede-who was now giving each of them a drink-as she was leaving a piano lessons she taught.
“Don't be so pessimistic! shuichi must be about to call, he knows more about men than all three of us”
How had she ended up here? one thing was to accept the invitation to her place, but a totally different one was to confess her whole situation under literally no pressure. For a highly trained assassin-it didn't take much to get information from her.
Maki sipped her lemonade, feeling defeated. When kaede had asked her why she hadn't gone to kaito's party, she just spat everything out without really thinking it-the chocolates, the invitation, her ongoing crush-everything. And of course, love issues must be solved with a “girls night”, because who can help her get with a guy more than a misandrist, and a girl who never had a single problem to bag a guy?
Before the absolute absurdity of it all drove Maki to ask for a shot, Shuichi finally got his stuff together and called her, immediately getting all three of them to sit around the phone the second she picked it up.
“Dear christ Shuichi, what took you that long?”
the girls put the phone on speaker before settling it on the table. The loudness of a party could be heard in the background, dimmed by some light static sound
“i can't just answer whenever you want me to. There was this whole mess inside and it took a million years to get out”
Kaede was the first to talk about this whole situation. She was fairly sweet about it, trying to give him the most unbiased version of it without anyone quite asking her to do so. Then came Tenko, who was everything but sweet about Kaito. All three of them had very different views on maki's problems-5 minutes went by and she hadn't said a word, just listening to them make a podcast out of her miserable love life.
She finally got the chance to tell shuichi about what she wanted to ask-keeping it as short and straight as possible-wanting to dwell on it as little as possible, at least she now understood why people loved all of those dramatic love shows, trying to make sense of someone else's personal inferno did seem like quite the good adrenaline pump.
“look maki i… i can't force you to confess to him-i wish i could-but i don't, what i can do is to reassure you for the one thousand time that you should just tell him, worst case scenario he says no and things are awkward for a week tops. You know him, he's not great at holding grudges”
He wished he had been brave enough to add “or at hiding feeling either”, but he stopped himself-this wasn't his relationship, it wasn't his place to go and tell them how the other felt, even when everyone else knew.
“he's right maki, you just need to loosen up a little! kaito's clearly into you, just give it a little try”
kaede-however-didn’t face the same ethical dilemma he did. Why would she hide something so sweet from her friend? If giving her a little push would be what made them get together, then why wouldn't she? Shuichi was shy before and only confessed because Kaito pushed him into doing so-if anything, she was just returning a favor.
They eventually hung up and left him return to the party, hoping that maybe they could talk maki into confessing tomorrow-which obviously didn't work out-but the girls reached an agreement, Maki would give leave the chocolates on his locker before he arrived, she would also put a small note, cryptic enough for it not to be obvious she left them-but not so much he had no idea.
Finally, Maki could go back to her place, having friends to talk to about this felt nice, almost like those movies for kids where girls had sleepovers and talked about boys-turns out they weren't so fictional as she had thought. Kaede gave both of them some snacks to take home as they left, watching from her window as they left and parted ways.
It was much darker outside than she had thought, how was it already three AM? it was barely eight when she walked out of the gym. She walked home with the hood of her jacket on, both hands on her pockets-walking alone at night wasn't scary when compared to all the stuff she had been exposed to before-but holding a knife sure felt safer than being empty handed.
The walk to her place wasn't over twenty minutes. She lived at a big apartment complex, she rented the cheapest room she couldn't find that wasn't in the middle of some ghetto, it was mostly college students and divorced old men living there, no one who got many visits, let alone letters, so imagine her surprise when she saw the silhouette of a man in front of the Mailbox, hunching over it as he looked for a name.
Her hands clenched her knife as she approached the entrance, the smell of alcohol that radiated off him reached her way before his face did.
“Kaito…? dude, what are you doing here?”
maki let go of her knife, keeping her hands in her pockets still. He stank of alcohol, sticking the scent all over her as he went for an unnecessarily tight hug-her neighbors would whine to her about the smell she left on their floor tomorrow.
“omg hi! i was like, looking for you! i mean, not you you, you're not a mailbox-i was looking for your name on a mailbox, but i can't really read kanji rn…stupid fancy boxes…”
Kaito's voice slurred across every single word. He drank so much that everything he said and did seemed to surprise them both. Before any of them had time to process what was going on, he put an envelope into her hands, a soft lilac color with some space stickers all over it.
“oh i got this delivered to my apartment by accident! I guess it's for u?”
Once the envelope was on her hands, he walked away backwards, trying to maintain eye contact in a naturalish way.
In the attempt to take a closer look at whatever this little thing was supposed to be, she ended up getting her hands full of glue and glitter. The flickering street lights didn’t quite help to notice that the letter wasn't filled with stickers, it was just a bunch of drawings and decorations he glued on-he had made this like half an hour ago max.
“Kaito, did you write me a valentine's letter or something?” She tried to approach him, which only resulted in him walking away faster. “dear god-kaito you can't walk straight when sober, you're stoned-at least face the way you're walking.”
“it's not a valentine's letter!... i mean, not that i know of, it got delivered to my house on accident, the guy told me a really cool guy wrote it for you”
Her expression was somewhere within the limbo of amusement and confused as Kaito spoke-fully settling into it as he turned around and ran away from her as fast as his uncoordinated limbs would let him.
“i really hope you like the mysterious letter!” Kaito yelled as he escaped her, “the person that wrote the letter told me to tell you you're really really pretty!”
She stayed there as she watched him turn the corner and leave her view. What had just happened? Maki went inside and almost ran to her apartment to read his letter.
Once she was finally alone in her room, Maki sank into her bed, carefully opening the envelope. The letter wasn't any different than what one would expect-purple and space themed decor all over. glitter and fresh ink ready to stain everything it touched.
There were many things she expected to see inside this mystery letter, but a poem sure wasn't one. It wasn't particularly well written-if you took more than ten minutes to analyze it you'd realize how much of a mess it is-but it was also fairly sweet, the mental image of a drunk Kaito flooded her mind as she read.
I've believed once before.
only stars could be this pretty.
that notes were the only noises.
that could ever make music.
yet the day i first met you.
I had to admit to my error.
your eyes were prettier than a sun.
your voice more harmonic than all orchestras.
yearning for the warmth of the first time i took you home.
wishing for my love to find shelter in your soul.
i can't demand to be accepted by you.
i'll settle at knowing you're aware that i love you.
♡
She carefully folded the paper and stored it back into its home, making sure not to wrinkle it. The poem was surprisingly cute-sure, it wasn't the best grammar in the world-but the idea of him thinking about her as he made this. It gave her the boost of determination to get to decorating her bag of chocolates for him, she could only wished his drinking didn't hit hard enough for him to forget everything he did today.