Chapter Text
It was one of those days where Suga, while not having any major regrets, did at least reflect on his career choices. If someone had told him in high school that a few years after graduation, he would be standing amidst a mob of screaming children, half of whom couldn’t dress themselves, let alone go to the bathroom on their own, he would have questioned their sanity.
Indeed, staying sane was a struggle when he had to watch over the “crow-group”, well-known for being by far the most troublesome bunch of the entire kindergarten.
“Suga-saan, Shouyou and Tobio are fighting! Heelp!”, a tiny blonde girl wailed, once again clinging to the sleeve of Suga’s stained sweater, unable to calm down for even just a second.
“Give me a minute, Hitoka, please!” The girl responded to his plea by crying even more hysterically, making Suga worry about her suffering a heart attack at the tender age of three. Why her mother had deemed it appropriate to put a sensitive girl like her in the crow-group was a mystery. To Suga, that was comparable to throwing her to a pack of werewolves.
“No-hoo! They will die! Tobio said- he said-” She sobbed, nearly choking on her words. “He said he’s gonna rip Shouyou’s head off!” Stressed out and the tiniest bit overwhelmed, Suga’s eyes switched from the distraught, red-faced girl to the now no longer crying Tadashi in his arms. A few minutes ago, Yuu and Ryu had accidentally knocked him over during a wild game of tag, leading to him scraping both knees on the hardwood floor. At least he seemed to be better now.
He set the boy down on the floor, and motioned him to find something quiet and hopefully safe to play with before he was dragged into the other room by an agitated Hitoka. The sight wasn’t much of a surprise. Quite the opposite. Shouyou and Tobio, their main troublemakers, were rolling around on the colorful rug between toy cars, dolls, and building blocks, pulling each other’s hair and making animalistic noises as if they were fighting a death match.
Kei, one of their youngest kids, was kneeling a few feet away next to a wooden box, peacefully assembling his army of dinosaur figures without paying attention to the two squabblers despite their excessive screaming. If only Suga himself had been that jaded at three and a half years old. Surely, it would’ve given him some advantages in his current profession.
“Enough of this! Stop it! Now!” he called out as firmly as his gentle disposition allowed.
When that failed, he clapped his hands a few times to give Shouyou and Tobio a last chance to willingly let go of each other. When that also failed since they had tuned out his presence in their bloodlust, he was forced to physically separate the two so they wouldn’t actually tear each other’s heads off. Hitoka, still clinging to his pant leg, was trembling in fear. Suga dreaded that after only one year of kindergarten, she would develop some form of PTSD.
Several scratch- and bite marks, tears, and countless “He started!” accusations later, he had finally managed to calm Shouyou and Tobio down to the point where they were no longer pretending to be gladiators. Instead, they stood next to each other, grumbling and shooting each other bitter looks. Small children didn’t have their emotions under control yet and often expressed them with violence, but Suga hadn’t ever come across children as emotional as them.
“So, now please tell me what that fight was about.” Sugawara crouched down in front of the two children to meet them at eye level. Based on his own experiences, he was most likely to get something out of them that way. For a while, the two said nothing, almost looking ashamed of their little scuffle. Shouyou was the first to speak up, pointing a finger at Tobio.
“Tobio took my ball!”, he complained in fake outrage. Sugawara let his gaze wander around the playroom until it landed on a pink rubber ball in a corner, disregarded and uncared for.
“He said I’m lousy at playing ball!”, Shoyou carried on while Tobio stood wordlessly by his side with his arms crossed and his lower lip sticking out, eyes on the floor, “And then he called me a really bad word! Only bad naughty kids like Tobio use words like that!”
“What kind of word?” Suga turned to Tobio, who looked up at him with huge, one could almost say innocent, eyes, head tilting like a kicked puppy. In fact, he was quite cute with his chubby cheeks and blue eyes. If only he wasn’t such a social disaster. The whole kindergarten staff agreed that he would have a hard time in school if that didn’t change in the next few years.
“Dumbass,” Tobio confessed with utmost nonchalance. He couldn’t have sounded less guilty if he had tried. If Suga hadn’t been in a state of stress all day, he would’ve laughed at the childish pronunciation of the insult. Instead, confusion settled in. Where did Tobio, the baby of the bunch and probably the most clueless of them all, learn those curse words from in the first place? He wasn’t advanced in regards to his language development. Yet he swore like a sailor.
“Tobio, you know that’s not a nice thing to say to a friend,” Suga told him in a calm voice, putting on his sternest expression. Sadly, his didn’t work nearly as effectively as Daichi's.
Now that Suga was forced to be in charge of the group, he missed his two coworkers. Kiyoko, the center of peace and the kind soul of the group, and Daichi, who prevented everything from descending into chaos. Now that the two were sick at home, Sugawara had to carry out both of their roles, and each passing minute proved that he was utterly incapable of doing so.
“Yeah, right! you can’t say stuff like that in kindergarten, you poopy head!”, Shouyou shot back.
If the narrowed eyes and clenched fists were of any indication, Tobio was seconds away from jumping his throat. Over time, Sugawara had gotten into the habit of reading Tobio’s body language instead of his facial expressions. After all, he almost always wore the same scowl on his face, no matter if he was eating, brushing his teeth, or sitting on the toilet.
“Shouyou, poopy head isn’t much better. That’s a bad word too.” Sugawara sighed. He was about to explain to the boys in the simplest terms so that it would fit into their tiny brains, that toys could be shared and conflicts could be solved with words that weren’t insults. Before he could start his rebuke, however, something unpleasant started brewing behind his back.
“Rooollin-” Suga spun around and rushed over to a row of shelves while ignoring the two troublemakers and Hitoka still glued to his leg. A certain four-year-old with windswept hair stood on top of the highest toy shelf, a proud smile splitting his cheeks. It was obvious what he planned to do. In his mind’s eye, Suga already saw countless bruises and open bone fractures.
“THUNDER!”, he yelled from the top of his lungs as he performed a leap that resembled a header sane people would only attempt from a diving board. With a dull “plop”, he landed in Suga’s arms. Fortunately, he had been there just in time to save the reckless boy from a traumatic brain injury.
“Awww! That wasn’t the real Rolling Thunder! Do it again!” Apparently, Ryu, Yuu’s best friend and partner in crime, had been cheering him on from the carpet. Suga made a mental note to not only scold him for that but also explain that even though the playroom was properly heated, it wasn’t hot enough to walk around in just underpants and a sock on one foot.
“Yuu, I told you a hundred times not to climb on shelves!”, he scolded the grinning boy, but it was useless. Yuu, when push came to shove, only listened to Kiyoko, and only her. With few exceptions. Suga didn’t even get a chance to add anything when another kid demanded his attention.
A quick look around was enough. Chikara, one of the quieter and less troublesome children, sat on the floor holding his foot, his face scrunched up in pain. In front of him was his toy camera. The clunky object was made of cheap plastic, and Chikira had been carrying it around for days. On some days, he was so engrossed in his play he was blind to the world around him.
Poor little guy, Suga couldn’t help but flinch. He must have tripped and twisted his foot.
“I stepped on Lego!” he cried out instead, pointing at a tipped-over box in the back. Amidst the mess of tiny colorful bricks, Kazuhito and Hisashi were happily building up their knight’s castle without a care. Suga would never know which of them had knocked over the box. A borderline sadistic glee crept up in him as he imagined forcing the children to clean up the mess before lunchtime. But then again, it was more likely for all the work to be left to him again.
After he had comforted Chikara and scolded Yuu a second time, since Shouyou and Tobio were no longer about to kill each other, he went to look for Ryu’s missing clothes. What the heck did he do to make his pants end up on the ceiling lamp? Maybe it was better to not think about it too hard. After a few minutes of searching, Suga finally spotted Ryu’s shirt and his missing sock in the cozy corner, buried under a stack of pillows. As he went to collect the items, he stopped to stroke Hitoka’s hair, who had been hiding there with a picture book.
If only the poor girl had ended up in the group his coworker Yaku led. Surely, things were a lot more peaceful there.
---
“Suga-san, look, I drew something!”, Tadashi interrupted the comfortable silence that had settled in the other room. Suga had taken a break after warning the kids in the playroom that they wouldn’t get lunch today if they didn’t clean up. It was a cruel thing to say, but hey, it worked.
“That’s a...uh...lovely picture,” he lied after carefully observing the messy doodle consisting of two stick figures, one of whom looked like he was about to be mauled by a dinosaur. It was supposed to look like they were hugging but the creature’s maw was a little too close to the person’s head.
“That’s me.” Tadashi’s bright smile lightened up the room as he pointed at one of the stick figures, “And this is Tsukki.” Of course, “Tsukki” was the one getting eaten by the dinosaur. What a way to bite the dust. With a huff, Sugawara propped his chin on his palms, resisting the temptation to take a quick nap on the table. It was quiet. Apparently, his threat had had the desired effect. Now he wasn’t even remotely sorry for making a majority of the gluttonous brats cry. If he wanted to be in control of the chaos, he had to learn to put his foot down.
He had to be strong and assertive to be worthy of taking Daichi’s place. There was no other way.
At least Hitoka had finally emerged from her pillow fort and taken a seat next to Tadashi. In her hand was a black crayon, her face pinched in an intense expression as she went on to assault a sheet of paper. Sugawara looked over her shoulder to take a peek at her drawing. Granted, it didn’t look half-bad. Unlike Tadashi, she appeared to have artistic talent. It was easy to see what the strokes of black and red were supposed to represent. Still, it was a bit unusual for a three-year-old girl to draw a picture of a kindergarten going up in flames.
At one of the other tables, Kei had made himself comfortable with a jigsaw puzzle. It was meant for preschoolers, but as long as he didn’t put the pieces in his mouth or stick them in his ears like some of the other children did at times (cough, Shouyou, cough), it was all fine and dandy.
How nice it was to be surrounded by well-behaved children for once. Maybe, Suga’s decision to work in a kindergarten instead of becoming a school teacher had been right after all. Kids were always exhausting to deal with, regardless of their age. Every school class had one or two of those rowdies. At least in kindergarten, he didn’t have to check anyone’s homework.
But then again, children of Shouyou’s and Tobio’s age were “difficult” in their own right. Suga took another glance at his stained top, which he had wanted to change over an hour ago. Thanks to the children, he hadn't had the chance to do so. Of course, as a kindergarten teacher, it wasn’t uncommon to get messy. When helping the littlest ones eat, who tended to confuse their tomato sauce with finger paint, staying clean was practically impossible.
Today, however, his clothes hadn’t even lasted until lunch. For kids being separated from their families at a young age, the transition to kindergarten was always associated with stress. Every child dealt with it differently. Shouyou had demonstrated that this morning when, instead of saying “hello” like the other children, he had thrown up all over Suga’s sweater.
After that, he’d said “hello” to him anyway, smiling, as if that had all been part of his greeting.
Shouyou’s mother had disappeared out of sight a second too soon. Therefore, Suga hadn’t been able to turn her son back on to her. It would’ve been a weak excuse either way since Shouyou was known for getting sick when he got too excited. In times like that, it was better to keep him at a safe distance until he had calmed down, if only for the sake of Suga’s clothes.
Yes, perhaps it was better to wait until lunch was over and the troublemakers were settled in the nap room recovering from their misdeeds. Changing clothes before lunch when dealing with little mucky pups defied common sense. Even if that meant smelling of roughly rinsed out vomit for a few minutes longer. Humans were adaptable. They got used to hellfire if they had to.
It was only a few minutes from noon when little Chikara came toddling into the room in non-slip socks. Suga only had to look him in the eye once. Apparently, the “cleanup” plan hadn’t worked as well as he’d expected. Well, trying never hurt. At least he hadn’t stepped on a Lego brick again, or maybe he’d gotten used to the pain like Sugawara had to his dirty sweater.
“Shouyou and Tobio are fighting...again.” The groan that escaped Suga’s throat could be heard all the way to America. Of course, they were fighting, it wasn’t like they had anything else to do.
“They’re stupid,” Kei spoke up, smirking as he completed his hundred-piece puzzle, “How about we sent them back to nursery with the little babies. They’re too stupid to play with the big kids.”
“Don’t say that. None of our kids are stupid,” Suga scolded him, trying to cut out the mean remarks right from the start, despite his own feelings. Kei would probably have a hard time in school as well, though for different reasons than Tobio. Nobody liked having a smartass bully in class.
“Here we go,” Suga said more to himself than to any of the children, and followed Chikara into the playroom. His right eye twitched as he caught sight of the chaos. Cleanup, huh? The room, unsurprisingly, still looked like a battlefield and there were those freaking Lego bricks everywhere, reminiscent of landmines or bear traps. It was almost impossible not to step on one of the colorful bricks, which could be horribly painful if one was only wearing socks like Suga.
In the midst of all the mess, Shouyou and Tobio were having one of their usual fights. Well, at least this time they refrained from using violence and curse words. That was a big step forward for the two three-year-olds, who sometimes behaved like they shared a brain cell.
“What’s going on here?” Suga asked, and immediately, a horde of children came running towards him, each of them with their own far-fetched explanation for why the room looked the way it did. Thrown off by the jumble of voices, Suga preferred to focus on the essentials. What did Daichi always say? Don’t get roped into their arguments, otherwise, they’ll walk all over you? After taking a deep breath to collect himself, he took a sweeping blow.
“Yuu, we’re about to have lunch soon, so take off the superhero costume. Kazuhito, Hisashi, put your Lego castle on the shelf so we have space for the beds later. Ryu, you put your pants back on right now, we don’t want half-naked kids sitting at our lunch table!” After he had spent a good minute talking his head off, he called over Shouyou and Tobio. The two pointed their fingers at each other while chattering wildly, the latter only coming up with swear words again.
“Tobio said I look like a garden gnome!” Shouyou whined, but this time, Suga didn’t cater to his tattling, only raised a hand to shush the little guy. He then put on his friendliest smile as a stroke of genius occurred to him. It couldn’t hurt to use their rivalry to his advantage, right?
“Why don’t you make a game out of it? Whoever picks up the most toys wins. Sounds fun?”
Suga chuckled to himself as the kids stared at him with eyes wide like dinner plates, the dusty gears in their heads turning. A mere second later, they beamed at him with excitement, and he hadn’t even announced a reward for the winner. Most kids had to be bribed with candy first. Not them.
“I’ll pick up more toys than that stupid poopy head over there!” Shouyou declared war on Tobio, and before Suga could snap his fingers, they were dashing across the room to pick up all the Lego bricks, animal figures, toy cars, and torn-off doll heads from the floor. In their frenzy, a few toys ended up in the wrong box, but it was better than leaving them to rot on the floor.
Suga helped Kazuhito store his and Hisashi’s castle on the shelf, while Hisashi carefully sorted the remaining Lego parts by size and color and put them in a separate box. Yuu had listened to Suga for the first time that day and took off his costume without a single complaint. Fortunately, lunchtime was still more important to him than his “super cool” cape. Even kids who jumped off shelves with death’s courage had to be hungry at some point.
Ryu, after he’d found his pants, started cheering on Shouyou and Tobio, who were racing from one side of the room to the other, tidying up the place almost single-handedly while screaming for no reason. Their parents’ eyes would fall out of their skulls if they saw how quickly two toddlers could whip a playroom into shape. All they had to do was flip a switch, like that of a toaster.
The analogy worked, but he’d better not tell their parents he was equating their boys with toasters.
---
Suga was quite proud of himself for managing to gather everyone at the table within a few minutes, unscathed, unharmed, and fully clothed. Today they had spinach with scrambled eggs for lunch, a healthy meal for kids who were still in their growing stages. With Shouyou and Yuu, Suga had always been surprised they were so short for their ages, considering how they stuffed their faces at every meal. However, that wasn’t the case for some of the other kids.
“Kei, aren’t you hungry at all?” Suga crouched down next to the little one who was poking at his food, making no attempts to try any of it. Kei looked up at Suga for a brief moment, blinking through his thick glasses before reverting his eyes back to his plate. He frowned, lips pressed together.
“I don’t like veggies,” he muttered. Suga shook his head at his statement, one he was used to hearing in altered versions every other day. “I don’t like chicken, I don’t like curry, I don’t like tomato sauce-” It was always the same. If he didn’t like the tomato sauce that was being served, he also didn’t like the noodles because they were contaminated with tomato sauce.
“If you don’t eat, there won’t be any sunshine today. Only big rain cloud!”, Shouyou chimed in. After fidgeting through his meal, he was almost standing on the edge of his chair. Yuu and Ryu understood his words as a sign to get terribly upset. They wanted to play power rangers and space pirates in the backyard, and now Kei was ruining all their plans. Kei, unimpressed as always, shrugged while continuing to draw various geometric shapes in his spinach.
That was unfortunate. Kei was skinny as a beanpole and his parents wouldn’t be thrilled if Suga told them their son hadn’t touched any of his food. Of course, he couldn’t force him to eat, but if little Kei wanted to get some meat on his bones, he had to eat, whether he liked it or not.
All of sudden, Suga was hit with a genius idea for how he could get him to eat his veggies after all.
He disappeared into the next room where the children kept their stuffies and blankies for naptime. Kei also had a toy like this, and of course, it was a dinosaur. A little brown one with black beady eyes, tiny arms, and a wide-open maw. For a three-year-old, the toy looked more frightening than cute, but Tsukki was attached to it like Kenma from Yaku’s cat-group was attached to his tablet. Even after nap time, Kei always found it hard to part ways with his dino.
When Suga entered the room holding the stuffed animal, his heart filled with confidence. At the end of the day, Kei was still a small child, even if he tended to act more mature than his peers. His hopes were confirmed when Kei’s eyes grew wide and shiny upon seeing his dinosaur friend. “I-Ichigo!” he exclaimed in delight, his voice cheerful as he made grabby hands in the air, “My Ichigo!” It was adorable if a little weird to call a dangerous-looking dinosaur toy “strawberry,” but that was one of the few foods Kei wasn’t disgusted by.
“Do you know why your dino is here?”, Suga asked in a cooing voice, making the stuffed animal walk around on the table like a hand puppet. Kei’s eyes followed the movements of the stuffed animal as if he was hypnotized, and finally looked up at Suga with pleading eyes. The dining room was quiet. None of the children made a peep. Even Yuu had stopped yelling to Ryu about power rangers, and to his left, Shouyou had climbed on top of the table to get a better view. The fact that half of his shirt was covered in spinach didn’t concern him in the least.
“Your Ichigo is all sad because you won’t eat your veggies, Kei. Dinosaurs love eating spinach and all kinds of veggies. If you want your dino to be happy again, you have to eat yours, too.” Suga beamed, still excited about his fantastic idea. While it was kind of mean to manipulate kids, the method seemed the most fitting given the current situation. Surely it would-
“No!” Kei slammed his tiny hands on the table, shooting Suga an icy look, the latter associated with both little Tobio and his old English teacher, “Ichigo is a T-Rex! They don’t eat veggies, only other dinosaurs. And Ichigo eats humans too.” The last sentence sounded like a threat. Now, looking at the stuffed toy with its “sharp” teeth and deep red maw, his mistake seemed foolish, something he should’ve realized long ago. But who would’ve expected an adult with a higher education to be lectured by a toddler on dinosaur lore?
After this disgrace, Suga gave up his attempts to make Kei try his lunch. Instead, he went to comfort Hitoka, who was trembling in her chair after Kei’s words about man-eating dinosaurs. Suga assured her that the stuffed toy wasn’t about to eat her alive and that Kei had just made a bad joke. After that was taken care of, he placed Shouyou back on his chair and scolded him for eating like a feral animal before tugging his spinach-stained shirt over his head.
“Suga-san! You said half-naked kids can’t sit at the lunch table!”, Ryu complained, throwing his chopsticks on the floor in an act of defiance, “If Shouyou’s taking his clothes off, I wanna take off my clothes too.”
Without waiting for Suga’s reaction, he carried out his plans until he was sitting at his spot at the table dressed in nothing but underpants and socks. With a content smile, he went back to eat as if the world was at peace again. Suga would have to take his temperature later. Perhaps his sense of warm and cold was disturbed and that was why he felt the need to constantly get naked.
---
There was one advantage to having a budding exhibitionist in the crow-group. Suga never had to encourage Ryu to take off his clothes for nap time. After the kids had brushed their teeth in the bathroom, Suga helped the younger ones change into their pajamas and set up their beds. After lunch, he had barely managed to keep Tadashi from falling face-down into his half-eaten spinach. Suga chuckled as he carried the now fast asleep boy into the darkened room.
“Shouyou, are you sure you want to sleep next to Tobio?” Like the day before, he had placed his futon right next to that of his “nemesis”. Suga didn’t buy Shouyou’s excuse of “making sure he doesn’t do anything stupid”. The two might’ve been arguing and insulting each other all day long, but when a nap was in order, they were attached at the hip, almost like twins.
Maybe it was because Tobio was half a year younger and Shouyou felt inclined to look out for him? Maybe? The more Suga thought about their strange friendship, the less sense it made.
“Suga-san, what story are we reading today?” Yuu jumped up and down in his superhero print pajamas as if he hadn’t been bouncing around non-stop since six in the morning, “Can we read a scary story? Please! Scary stories!” Ryu followed him no less excitedly, dressed in his usual outfit and dragging a stuffed animal in the shape of a great white shark behind him.
“Shh!”, Suga reminded them, putting a finger to his lips, “Tadashi is sleeping. If you two keep making noise, there won’t be any story today.” Daichi had made this threat before. On a day when Shouyou and Tobio had been yelling at each other at nap time until Hitoka had burst into tears, he had carried it out. Hopefully this time, a threat would be enough. As much as the kids drove him up the wall sometimes, he didn’t want to deprive them of their bedtime story.
“Please no scary stories!”, Hitoka wailed with tears in her eyes, clinging to his leg again. Sugawara tucked Tadashi in, who continued to sleep without a care in the world and then took care of little Hitoka, whose anxious nature meant she always needed more help falling asleep. Scary stories were out of the question. Suga had made it a habit to read from a storybook consisting of child-friendly fairy tales, careful to not choose one that might result in nightmares.
So he sat there, in the midst of half-awake children, reading today’s story. The dim light that crept in through the gaps in the blinds calmed his frazzled nerves, making him feel more at ease. The story he had chosen was an imaginative fairy tale, one that his parents had read to him many years ago when he had been that young. It was a nice feeling to share a part of his childhood with “his” children, even if they had no idea how much this particular story meant to him.
The sudden, sentimental thought made him interrupt his flow of speech and look around the room.
Hitoka was fast asleep next to him, her head resting on a pillow on his lap. As long as Suga kept stroking her hair, she wouldn’t make a ruckus. On his other side, Tadashi was sprawled out on his back. In his deep slumber, he didn’t make a single noise. Tobio had also entered the realm of dreams, often falling asleep in a matter of seconds. Shouyou, on the other hand, was sitting up on his bed with his knees drawn up to his chest, eyes falling shut over and over again.
Even Ryu and Yuu were quiet for once and listening to the story, despite it not being a scary one. The others were either asleep or busy with their stuffed animals. Kei was curled up on his side next to Tadashi, in his arms none other than his beloved Ichigo, whose name he kept muttering to himself in his sleep. Suga smiled. A warm sense of contentment settled in his core. Even though those weren’t his children, he loved each and every one of them all the same.
“Aww...Is the story over already?”, Shouyou interrupted his musings. Instead of scolding him, Suga shook his head and went back to reading. Even if a majority of the kids would sleep through the conclusion, it didn’t matter. Few kids were lucky enough to be read to by their parents every night. Most of them worked long hours, had no time, or simply no interest in reading. He wanted to make a difference, so none of the kids had to miss out on storytime.
By the time Suga finished reading, the room was quiet, except for soft snoring and breathing noises.
It wouldn’t be long before the first kids woke up. Yuu was an early riser and, at four years old, didn’t need his nap anymore. Once he was up, Ryu wouldn’t sleep for long either. Hitoka woke up at the sound of a needle dropping, and little Tobio was plagued by nightmares every now and then. Suga had to savor the time silence ruled and they all got their much-needed rest.
With another huff, he leaned against the heater and closed his eyes. Fatigue had crept into every nook of his body. Surely, he’d be able to fall asleep any moment now. In times like this, he envied the kids for not having to worry about anything, flopping over with complete trust. One look at Hitoka, a bundle of nerves during the day, sleeping at his side, confirmed his views. Being able to have faith in someone like that must’ve been wonderful, really.
Maybe he should message Daichi and Kiyoko. Surely, they were worried, since he had just finished his training and was now left alone with a group of lively, and sometimes unruly children.
With a puff of pride, he would tell them how he had settled a dispute between Shouyou and Tobio, saved Yuu from imminent death, and got the kids to clean up their playroom in record time. He would only have to leave out the part where he had embarrassed himself with the dinosaur plushie if he didn’t want to be laughed at by Daichi. Suga was about to enter a light doze when a sudden rustling noise on the other side of the room forced him to pry his eyes open.
Shouyou stood on his mattress, fuzzy hair even more tousled than usual, eyes swollen from sleep. He hadn’t been able to stay in bed for long. “I...have to go potty,” he said in a soft voice, before turning on his heel and making his way to where he believed the door to be. Groggy as he was, he tripped over the pile of blankets under which Tobio had been sleeping peacefully.
Until now.
Shouyou looked genuinely surprised when said Tobio jolted out of his sleep with a terrified gasp, promptly venting his anger about the rude awakening in his own way. Before Suga could so much as think of intervening, Shouyou was on the floor, Tobio on top of him.
Their squeaking caused Hitoka to wake up with a startled cry. Yuu took the noise as a sign to leap up from his bed and yell “wakey wakey” into everyone’s ears. Half of the, now very alert children then remembered they had to go potty too, and very badly! After brushing their teeth, Suga had urged every single one of them to take care of that before going to bed, but well, tell that to kids between the ages of three and four. That was the end of today’s naptime.
The only one who slept through the chaos without a single blink of an eye was Tadashi. Bombs could be dropped over Tokyo, volcanoes could erupt, Tadashi would sleep through all of it. And while the apocalypse raged outside, he dreamed of his adventures with Tsukki and his man-eating dinosaur friend as they danced hand in hand into a poorly drawn sunset.
---
Suga hadn’t looked in the mirror in a while, and yet his face had to be adorned with stress wrinkles and dark circles under his eyes. At least he had finally managed to put on a clean shirt. When it was time to join the cat- and owl-group outside in the backyard, he had to at least look presentable, not like he had just tumbled out of bed after a night of binge-drinking.
Speaking of binge-drinking...
“Tobio, don’t you think you’ve had enough? You’re gonna get a tummy ache.” Suga watched the boy pour himself his fourth cup of milk. The blank look he gave him answered all of his questions.
It was Tobio’s luck that he didn’t have to share his favorite drink with anyone, since the other kids were too busy fighting over a can of orange juice. The sugary stuff was probably bad for their teeth, but this way no one had to be forced or manipulated to drink. Kei sat at the table, clutching his stuffed T-Rex in one arm as he nibbled on a few chocolate-chip cookies to go with his juice. Fine, if he refused to eat his greens, at least he was eating cookies. Suga didn’t have to tell his parents what exactly their son had eaten today, as long as it was something.
“Are we going to the playground today?”, Yuu asked for what must have been the fiftieth time that afternoon, wiggling around in his chair like he had ants up his butt. His eyes lit up with anticipation of finally playing power rangers, space pirates, or whatever with all of his friends. Ryu demonstrated his growing restlessness by tilting his chair, terrifying a paling Hitoka.
“Yes. But only after we’ve all finished eating,” Suga answered patiently, also for the fiftieth time.
A mere glance out the window told him that Shouyou’s predictions had thankfully not come true. Instead, the sun was shining into the room, blinding a drowsy Tadashi, and announcing the good news to Suga, that he didn’t have to spend today’s afternoon herding cats...er, crows inside. When kids were allowed to indulge their natural impulses, they flourished, were less grouchy, and didn’t fight as often. But they still got into their fair share of shenanigans.
One time, Daichi had sprained his foot after having to rescue Yuu from a tree. To this day, no one knew how Yuu, barely three years old at the time, had gotten up there. For safety’s sake, so that it wouldn’t happen again, the management had decided to cut down said tree. Only later had it become clear that without a tree, Yuu would simply find more creative ways to put his life in danger.
It wasn’t long until Yuu, Ryu, and Shouyou started singing “Go go power rangers!”, loudly and off-key. Meanwhile, Tobio was on the verge of a mental breakdown because Tadashi had accidentally tipped over his milk cup, and Chikara made himself useful by using Hisashi’s blankie as a dish towel. Now, the time had come to take the little monsters outside for some fresh air.
This time the cleanup process went on without any problems, even though Tobio, their youngest, was still sobbing to himself while putting away his dishes. Shouyou tried his best to console him. It was a strange sight, but at least he didn’t laugh like Kei did. Sugawara proceeded to roughly wipe down the table, this time with a proper rag and shooed the fidgety children towards the bathroom so that they could wash up and, most importantly, go to the toilet.
“I don’t have to go, Suga-san. I went already.” Shouyou stood in the hallway with his arms crossed. He refused to join the rest of the kids in the bathroom, even though he had downed three glasses of juice ten minutes ago and was already shifting from one foot to the other.
“Yes, you have to. You of all kids! We don’t have any more spare clothes for you, so get in there!” Suga shoved the fussing boy straight in the direction of the bathroom, unwilling to argue about something that important. To make sure he went instead of doing something like attempting to flush any unwieldy objects down the toilet, he sent Chikara to keep watch. In the meantime, Suga took care of little Tobio and Hitoka, who needed a bit more help getting dressed.
---
Around half an hour later, when they were all in the backyard, Sugawara could finally relax. The afternoon sun warmed his face and the hard bench he had settled on felt almost as comfortable as a proper couch for lack of alternatives. He hadn’t moved all that much, and yet his bones ached. Hopefully, Daichi and Kiyoko would soon be fit enough to join in the chaos again.
A tired but amused smile crept onto Suga’s face as he watched his two troublemakers, Shouyou and Tobio, toss a ball to each other. Of course, these peaceful moments didn’t last long, but they were worth savoring. Whenever the two argued and he questioned their friendship, he reminded himself of Shouyou’s radiant smile when he’d managed to catch a ball Tobio had thrown in his direction. After Tobio’s move from daycare to kindergarten, he’d been struggling to make friends until Shouyou had taken the younger boy under his wing.
“Your kids play so nicely together. I wish my little rascals were like that.” Yaku, leader of the cat-group, plopped down onto the bench next to Suga. He looked as exhausted as Sugawara felt, and apparently, Suga had been worrying about his stained shirt for nothing. Yaku’s looked worse.
“Are you kidding me?” Suga shook his head in disbelief, letting out a nervous chuckle. “They’re up to mischief all day. They didn’t even sleep for half an hour at naptime.” Yaku laughed in response, almost gleefully, before he became serious again, his brows furrowing.
“Lev got Shouhei and Sou to paint the walls. With black sharpie. We don’t have sharpies in kindergarten,” he began, running his hand through his short hair, “Tetsurou clogged up one of the toilets and none of them slept today. Did you know Tora has started throwing food lately?”
Now, Suga was the one laughing. To think that he had envied Yaku for his peaceful, well-behaved children. “Ever since Lev joined the group, it’s been pure chaos. Don’t ask me how a three-year-old manages to tear down the curtains four times a week, but he’s doing it.”
Suga followed his coworkers’ gaze to the light-haired boy, whose sheer height made him look like a schoolchild. At the moment, he was trying to push one of the girls from the owl-group on the swing. Emphasis on “trying”, because a second later he had pushed the girl off the swing. Fortunately, the child seemed to be one of the tougher ones and got a good laugh out of it.
“I’m more worried about Kenma, though,” Yaku said all of sudden, “He’s not exactly new to the group, but now that Tetsurou has made friends with that Koutarou from the owl-group, he’s lagging behind. He always talks so little, never approaches other kids...It’s difficult.”
Suga scanned the playground for a boy with shiny black hair and eventually spotted him in the sandbox. Just then he was being harassed by Shouyou, who was wildly gesticulating for him to play. Tobio stood beside them, still clutching the ball from before and observing the situation with his usual scowl. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Kenma,” Suga said, nudging Yaku with his elbow, “He’ll be fine. He’s just a little quieter than most kids.”
“I hope you’re right,” Yaku replied with a smile. Apparently, Suga had an ally amidst all the chaos. While Yuu and Ryu ran around the playground, flung themselves onto the ground, and rolled down the hill, Sugawara made use of his newly discovered free time to talk to Yaku. With the stories about what their kids had been up to all day, one could fill entire books.
It didn’t take long before the first kids were picked up by their parents, grandparents, or older siblings. Time had gone by in a flash and slowly but surely, the sun was starting to set.
“Moom!” Shouyou yelled over the entire playground when his mother showed up at the gate. Without further hesitation, he jumped from the top of the monkey bars, ignoring a baffled Tobio as he hurried over to greet his mother. Their reunion was as joyous as ever. Only after countless kisses and hugs did the little boy finally let go of his mother. With a skip in his step, he made his way towards the bench where Sugawara and Yaku were sitting to bid them goodbye, almost tripping. His mother followed him with measured steps, smiling at the endless energy of her son, who was far from tired even without a proper nap.
“Was my little darling good today?”, she asked, half addressing Shouyou and half addressing the teachers, which she always did when picking up her son. Suga, hit with a flashback of all the unpleasant scenes of the day, wanted to give her an honest answer. He really did. But then he made his biggest mistake of the day by looking at Shouyou. The boy was clinging to his mother’s long skirt, looking up at him with big brown doe eyes. It should be illegal to be that cute.
“Shouyou’s always a good boy,” Suga replied, resisting the urge to slap his forehead, “He played nicely with Tobio and Kenma today, and he’s...fairly independent for his age.” His last statement wasn’t a lie. Nevertheless, “good boy” was not a term that suited the fuzzy-headed troublemaker.
His mother didn’t probe deeper, only nodded as one of her hands made its way onto her belly. “That’s great to hear, now that he’s gonna be a big brother in a few months,” she finally confirmed Suga’s suspicions of her pregnancy. As if on cue, Shoyou started bouncing on the spot, chattering about how he looked forward to getting a baby sister. Suga was torn between excitement for the new baby and a silent fear that the existence of a mini-version of Shouyou would cause the universe to explode. Nevertheless, he wished the young family all the best and said goodbye to Shouyou, who, for once, didn’t puke on his lap or anywhere else.
Slowly, the stressful day came to an end. Shortly after Shouyou and his mother had left, they met up with Tobio’s parents at the gate. The two rascals, still full of energy, spurred each other on to flip the nearby park upside down. Now someone else but Suga was responsible for their well-being. Hopefully, they’d be back the next day without any broken bones.
Tadashi and Kei were picked up by both of their parents as well. Tadashi had fallen asleep on the carousel and hadn’t even noticed he was being spun around in circles by Tetsurou and his buddy Koutarou. Lev didn’t get the chance to inflict more bruises on himself or the other kids. When his whole family came for him, he proceeded to get on the nerves of his older sister instead.
All in all, it was a relaxed afternoon, and Suga couldn’t think of a better way to end his workday. More than anything, though, he was glad to receive a message from Daichi.
He had recovered from his flu and would soon return to his regular duties. Now only Kiyoko was missing before the crow-staff was united again. Sugawara waved after a smiling Hitoka, the last to be picked up by her mother after Lev, and finally set about packing up his belongings.
An eventful day at kindergarten was coming to an end, but many more eventful days would follow.