Work Text:
Shiori finds memos all over the museum.
Suga has many, many pads of identical memo paper. When she asked if he ever wants to vary it, he writes that he’s used to this one, and it’s cheapest. Shiori guesses changing it after so many years would be a little like suddenly speaking in a different voice.
Suga keeps one memo pad on him at all times, along with a handful of commonly used memos. ‘Yes’, ‘no’, and most recently, ‘thank you’ are among their number. He’s learned to write very quickly for whatever else he has to say. He can speak now, but his voice is rough with disuse and keeps breaking, and he finds memos are still easier for everyday conversation.
Shiori’s gotten used to having conversations like that, and she’s gotten used to finding his notes elsewhere.
Attached by a magnet to the fridge, for example, is a memo: ‘Going shopping soon, do you like waffles or pancakes?’ Shiori finds a pen in her pockets and circles ‘waffles’, adding a small ‘thank you!’ underneath.
Suga buys waffles on his next trip to the store, and Shiori makes sure to make them for their breakfast before he can get a chance to attempt preparing them. His cooking has gotten slightly better under her tutelage, but only slightly.
There’s a guitar in a box in the children’s room. Next to it, a memo: ‘Untuned, haven’t played in years’. Shiori isn’t sure how to tune a guitar, so she borrows Suga’s computer long enough to write down the basics. He doesn’t lock his door any longer unless he’s sleeping, and she wants to be able to surprise him with it.
Suga finds her in the children’s room practicing chords. He sits down and listens, and when she notices, claps for her. She smiles and then pushes the guitar towards him, to which he pulls out his ‘no’ memo. She asks him please, and he hesitates, before finally taking the guitar and starting to practice scales and then simple songs.
She asks him if, when children still came here, he played for them. He nods.
In one of the older rooms of the museum, the ones that haven’t gotten tidied up very recently, Suga has left a memo: ‘Should clean this’. He means it as a note to himself, presumably, but Shiori takes the time to straighten up a few things and then scribbles on ‘okay!’ Suga looks embarrassed the next time he sees her after that, and writes ‘you didn’t have to clean for me’. Shiori smiles and says it’s her home too.
And it is. She still has to go to university again when her break is over, but this is the place she wants to return to, that holds the person she wants to return to most. She couldn’t think of staying anywhere else, now.
That the first time she said it Suga was startled enough to let out a squeak, and that even now whenever she mentions the museum as her home, he flusters enough that his normally immaculate handwriting gets shakier, is a bonus.