Chapter Text
“Good morning, Suehiro-san.” Teruko’s cheerful voice filtered out as she stood by the doorway greeting students.
Tecchou looked up from where he was hiding behind his mother, tightly clutching her hand, “G’morning Ookura-sensei.”
He looked around the classroom and took in the new surroundings. From the table next to the wall for working and eating during lunch. To the carpet in a corner for reading and sleeping. To the back of the room where there were big windows for the teachers’ spot.
And he also noticed how tiny this class was; with it being in the morning class and all, it was already going to be small. Oh well, more toys for him then.
“...chou...Tecchou. I’m going to go to work now.” His mother said, shaking his shoulder gently.
He softly replied, “Bye-bye mummy.”
“Good-bye dear. Be good now.”
“Yes, mummy.” He replied, eyes watching her every move, and they still trailed her when she walked out the door. He stood there for a beat, not knowing what to do, before turning around and seeing the blocks box.
“No running now!”
Woops. He slowed his running down and leaned into the box and let out a little smile at the abundance of green blocks.
“Hup!” Getting himself comfortable on the rug, he began aligning the blocks into a tower that was rapidly growing taller.
Realizing that the tower was growing taller and taller, and wobblier and wobblier, he nudged it out of curiosity, “Woah….”
And watched as the tower of blocks crashed to the floor, splattering in an infinite amount of directions.
“Can’t you be quieter…” Someone snarled in another corner. Tecchou turned his head only to be met with the back of his classmate, facing the wall, fuming with metaphorical thunder over his head.
“Wanna play?” Tecchou asked, holding up a block. Though that was kinda pointless since the other boy was still staring at the wall.
“No.”
He stared at the tiny hunched body in confusion before asking, “Why not?”
“They’re stinky.”
Tecchou brought a block to his nose and took a self-conscious sniff of his blocks; wrinkling his nose a bit at the plasticky smell. But he couldn’t smell anything wrong.
So he just decided to move on with that. “So do you wanna play-”
“Yeah, okay, fine, sure.” The silver-haired boy got up, dusting himself off, assembling his white cane that was strapped to his wrist before standing up, turning around the classroom, “Where are you?”
Tecchou looked up when he heard the question before he saw the closed eyelids and understood - as much as you could when you haven’t learned much on blind people, that is - and he replied, “Right in front of you.”
“What’s your name? I’m Suehiro Tecchou.” He introduced himself as the boy came to sit across from him.
“Jouno Saigiku.” He said, sitting down and picking up blocks and clanging them together in amusement. Jouno who had planted himself right across from Tecchou gave him the opportunity to take in his classmate. From the silvery hair that seemed to shine and glow in the sunlight to the little specks of red that were beginning to collect at the tip of his hair.
“Um, Suehiro-san?” Jouno asked, his silvery eyebrows coming together, as he leaned backwards from Tecchou who had apparently leaned into Jouno’s personal bubble during his staring. Leveraging himself on his eyebrows as his center of balance threatened to topple, Jouno asked again, “What are you doing?”
Tecchou, noticing how he was nearly going to push Jouno backwards with his presence quickly clambered back into his square on the carpet saying, “Woopsies.”
Waving it off with a block in his hand, Jouno replied, “It’s no big deal.”
Building a block wall in a color pattern, Tecchou asked, “So do you wanna be friends?”
“Friends?” Jouno paused, from where he was playing around with the blocks with engravings.
“Yeah.” Tecchou calmly replied, continuing to build his wall of blocks (but with a window so he could see Jouno)
Pursing his lips as he thought of this life-changing decision, Jouno ran through the pros and cons, and heaved a deep sigh. A sigh that his little body had no job carrying. He didn’t know yet how much frequent these sighs would be coming.
Jouno heaved a breath, blowing strands of hair away from his face that was flushing at the question, “Yeah, I’ll be your friend.”