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In a town of less than 10,000 people, situated somewhere in a hidden crook of Hokkaido, it was hard for Shinsou not to learn the names of the people who frequented the grocery store. This wasn’t the bustling Sapporo or Asahikawa, where someone could afford to not know their customers' (and their children’s and their partners’ and their mother’s) names. Even Shinsou’s constantly sleep-deprived mind could, after so many visits, come to expect Yagi Toshinori’s monthly prescription pick-ups and Aizawa Shouta’s scout for Hi-Chews and Hello Panda boxes for his daughter Eri. There was Sero, who once bought absurd amounts of duct tape so he could fashion a skirt out of it, his friend Kirishima, who had called Shinsou’s finger tattoos “super fucking manly, dude!” and Kirishima’s friend Kaminari, who would buy a single bag of shrimp-flavored chips as he waited for his friends to finish their purchases.
Which was why, when the excitable blonde slammed down a package of kinu tofu onto the checkout counter, Shinsou had a name to the (undeniably pretty) face. He had a voice, too, because they did occasionally exchange words, though it was usually nothing more than a simple “Did you find all the items you were looking for?” and a “Oh, yeah, definitely, thank you!”
(Though there was that one time during one of Shinsou’s much-dreaded graveyard shifts when Shinsou had directed a stumbling Kaminari to the energy drinks section. He had looked Shinsou in the eyes and said, with a seriousness that could only be achieved by being in a grocery store at 2AM, “You are my hero.”
While that alone wasn’t enough to spark a crush, the combination of that unadulterated reverence and the disgustingly sexy chokers that Kaminari wore almost every time he came by most certainly was.)
Shinsou willed his heart to calm down in the face of the fidgeting boy, and he rang up the tofu.
“That’ll be thirty yen, please.”
Shinsou had barely finished saying please before Kaminari clinked three ten yen coins onto the counter and sped outside of the store with the barest finger-waggle of a wave and a quickly fading, “Thank you!”
‘Well,’ Shinsou thought to himself, caught vaguely off guard by Kaminari’s zooming speed in the face of his own lackadaisicalness. ‘That was weird.’
Kaminari was generally more relaxed than that, but it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to assume that he had some sort of urgent dinner plans. Shinsou drummed his fingers on the glass of the counter, checking his phone for the time. It was nearing 8PM, and the idea of Kaminari having a barren fridge with only a single bunch of wilted greens, a bottle of ramune, and a stick of butter made, for some reason, a great amount of sense in Shinsou’s mind. That could possibly explain the rush to get something for dinner, though Shinsou would argue that momen tofu would be better nutritionally, especially if the fridge was in such a sorry state—
A yellow-black blur swept into the store as Shinsou mused his own dinner plans, and after a moment of rummaging, Kaminari appeared by the checkout counter again. Only this time, he held three packets of kinu tofu in his hands. His smile was bright and buzzing with something uncontrollable, and Shinsou resisted the urge to pinch his cheeks. Instead, he asked, “So, doing a lot of cooking?” The question, when asked in Shinsou’s customary deadpan, flattened into a statement, but Kaminari still rapidly shook his head in denial. His hair fell into his eyes.
“Oh no,” he said, pushing back the stray hair with a cursory hand, “something much better.” Kaminari grinned at Shinsou as if they were both indulging in an amusing inside joke, but Shinsou was too struck by the weirdness of Kaminari’s words and the attractiveness of him pushing his hair back to say anything but, “...right,” as he rang up the tofu. Kaminari took the tofu packets into his arms, disregarding the plastic bags, and shot a wink at Shinsou before speeding out of the store. The doorbell chimed cheerfully as he left.
The moment Kaminari’s back became indistinguishable from the outside view of the store, Shinsou slumped down, placed his head on the cool glass of the counter, and banged his head a few times. “Okay,” he muttered, head still on the glass, “Kaminari just winked at me and bought tofu for possibly nefarious reasons. Kaminari just winked at me and bought tofu for possibly nefarious reasons. Okay. That makes sense.” It made absolutely no sense, but Shinsou was going to speak sense into existence if he had to. He waited for a few more minutes, just to make sure Kaminari didn’t take another trip to the store, and then finally stood up.
It was 8:30. There was no way Kaminari was coming back if he actually had dinner plans. Shinsou sighed through his nose, and decided that he didn’t want to figure out if he felt relieved or let down by that thought.
Another thirty minutes passed, and Shinsou resorted to flipping through the gossip rags that were on the shelf behind him. ‘Tech Mogul Midoriya Izuku Cheating On Partner For Model And Designer Bakugo Katsuki?’ one read. ‘All Might Industries CEO Midoriya Izuku Cheating On Partner For Deputy Prime Minister’s Son Todoroki Shouto?’ another headlined. Shinsou sighed for what seemed like the millionth time in the past half hour and wondered how these magazines had never heard of polyamory when the tech mogul CEO in question was clearly dating both the model and the Deputy Prime Minister’s son. And good for him, Shinsou thought as he thumbed through the article, only bothering to look at the pictures. All three of them were seriously handso—
“Hey!”
Shinsou, in a speed he didn’t know he could achieve, hid the magazine behind his back. Kaminari stared at him from behind the counter, and Shinsou wondered if the light in his eyes was mania or the reflection of the too-bright lights of the store.
Kaminari hurriedly pushed at least ten tofu packets onto the counter. “Sorry, it’s me again, hello, can you please ring up this tofu, come on, come on, come on, come on!”
It was definitely mania.
Kaminari ran out with an excited giggle and an armful of tofu, and Shinsou felt like he’d been hit by a passing tornado. He had barely been given a minute of room for breath when the doorbell chimed again.
Kaminari looked flushed, his choker was askew, and words were flying out of his mouth at a mile per minute.
“Okay, dude, listen, just listen, you gotta—you gotta get me like, like, a whole wheelbarrow of tofu!” Kaminari flung out his arms in an approximation of how much tofu he would need, and his whole body moved with the force of his enthusiasm.
Shinsou ran a hand over his face, the energy from last night’s three hours of sleep dwindling dangerously low. “Listen, you need to calm down. What…” Shinsou briefly considered his policy of not giving a shit about whatever his customers bought as long as they weren’t teenagers trying to buy champagne, but these were extenuating circumstances. “What exactly do you need all this tofu for? A potluck or something? Overzealous meal planning?”
Kaminari glanced around before locking his sparking gaze onto Shinsou’s own tired eyes. “Come with me,” he said, grin morphing into a curled smirk, “and I’ll show you.”
Ah, fuck. I don’t wanna actually follow him, because what if he’s holding some sort of tofu-centered sex cult? But if I don’t find out what he’s doing with all this tofu, my three hours of sleep is gonna go down to one at best, and I’m never gonna get over turning down an offer from my crush. But what if this is all an elaborate plan to get me to join his cult? But what if he’s just made a lot of tofu dishes and wants a taste-tester? Hitoshi, how many times is a pretty boy going to ask you to come with him on a mysterious outing? Fucking never, that’s when.
“Sure. I guess.”
“Great!”
Shinsou stepped out from behind the counter, moving to remove his apron, but Kaminari grabbed his hand and slid their palms together before tugging enthusiastically. “Let’s go!” he said, and Shinsou barely had the chance to flip the store's sign to Closed before Kaminari pulled him away from the store. Shinsou was still wearing his apron.
Kaminari led him by the hand (isn’t this a little bit too intimate for people who are acquaintances at best, Shinsou thought, a little light-headed) and chattered amiably as they walked.
And walked.
And walked.
Several hours had probably passed from them just walking, Shinsou’s hand a mess of sweat by now. It made no sense for the walk to take so long, considering that Kaminari zipped to and from the store in less than an hour, but he seemed content with their pace. Maybe he had chosen the longest route to enjoy the scenery.
(Or to hold hands, but that would be absurd.)
Still, hours of walking meant hours of talking from Kaminari, and Shinsou could say that they were probably friends by the second hour of walking, as long as Kaminari wasn’t too turned off by Shinsou’s short, flat responses.
Finally, when the moon had risen high in the sky and the only sounds were cicadas and their own breaths, they stopped in front of a hole. It looked like an oil well, but before Shinsou could tell Kaminari that he had no interest in having a profession in Japan’s flourishing oil and gas industry, Kaminari pulled a packet of tofu from his jacket. The blonde tore open the plastic, not minding the water that spewed out, and upended the contents into the hole. The tofu fell with a gentle whoosh into the hole, and Kaminari smiled at Shinsou, gesturing with his chin to lean forward. Shinsou did just that, expecting to hear a splat or a plop or a squelch that indicated that the tofu had reached the ground. He heard no such thing, and leaned back next to Kaminari.
“The fuck?”
As if in response, a noise arose from the hole. It sounded like slurping, like the low growl of a lion in one of Shinsou’s midnight nature documentaries as they sunk their teeth into a deer and tore it apart.
Shinsou blinked, and ran a hand down his face. “What the fuck, Kaminari?” Kaminari didn’t respond, not even to ask how Shinsou knew his name, only opening another packet of tofu. “What the hell is in that hole?”
Kaminari sent another block of tofu flying into the jaws of whatever was down there, and he shrugged at Shinsou. “Oh, I have no idea,” he began, digging a friendly elbow into Shinsou’s side, “but it fucking loves tofu.”
“I have… so many questions.”
“That’s great, ‘cause I have absolutely no answers, pretty boy! But I named it Sparkle Baby-kun, and it seems to like that.”
The hole-dweller—Sparkle Baby-kun, apparently—howled an affirmative.
Shinsou wasn’t sure if this was better or worse than a sex cult, but he couldn’t help but huff a laugh at Kaminari’s eagerness and ignore the swirl of his stomach at the words pretty boy.
“So what else can Sparkle Baby-kun eat? Not people, I hope.”
“You know, I’ve never tried that, but maybe if we did a bit of grave-digging—”
“Kaminari.”
“Kidding, kidding!”