Chapter Text
“Mom said get the cookbook from the attic,” Miya said as he plopped down onto the couch, scooching between Reki and Langa and taking the bowl of popcorn from Reki’s lap.
“Mom? Why does mom need a cookbook?” Reiki asked. Kaoru made a point of never cooking, he refused to so much as make his own tea.
“Something about dad being too stubborn to use a recipe, I dunno. But you’d better hurry, you know he’s not a patient man.”
Reki snapped his head to look at him in annoyance. “Why aren’t you doing it?” He asked, watching his adopted brother dig his hand into his bowl. He scrunched his nose at the sight, reluctantly dragging himself off the couch.
Miya shrugged, shoving a few pieces into his mouth. “Don’t want to, duh.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full, it’s gross,” Reiki said, before mumbling “and you’d better be so happy company is here…” to himself and turning on his heels. He stopped in his tracks, and said, “Langa, you should come with me. Bring the remote with you.” He grinned, knowing that if he paused the TV and took the remote, Miya wouldn’t be able to change the channel and take over the TV just to turn on some show he’d liked.
His boyfriend did as he’d said, giving the remote to Reki who slid it into his sweatshirt pocket.
“That’s not fair!” Miya yelled, probably already getting up to go tell their mom.
Reiki paid his brother no mind as he led Langa to the steps, finally stopping under the pull-down attic door.
“Watch out, they never clean the attic. You might get attacked by something.” Reki mumbled, wrapping the string around his fingers. He tugged down the door, slowly unfolding the steps.
To be honest, Langa didn’t know if Reki was kidding or not. He just kept his distance, hands folded behind his back. “Don’t hurt yourself.” He whispered, brows furrowed in concern as he watched from a few feet away.
Reki dramatically coughed, waving his hand in the air to rid it of any dust. “It’s a motion detected light… I think… We’ll see.” It didn’t seem too promising, but once Reki had started on the first few steps, the dim light flickered to life.
For a few seconds, the two just stood up there, staring at what Reki would call ‘All that old shit from the 2000s’. It was a bit overwhelming, as the boys didn’t exactly know where to look first. There were four bookshelves filled with books, most of which didn’t even have titles, the words having been worn off long ago with use.
“Why would he want a cookbook from up here? What’s so special about it?” Langa asked, making his way to the first bookshelf to begin looking.
Reki squinted his eyes, looking at all of the titles, “I don’t even know, they never use the ones from up here… Mom didn’t even give us a name. We literally just have to hope we find the right one.”
Langa’s lip upturned, his fingers dragging across the dusty titles on the books. As he was looking, the words ‘Class of ‘08’ caught his eye. When he pulled it out, even the dust couldn’t hide the design. It was a tacky, terribly printed eyestrain photo. He’d assumed that things that were ‘old’ would be ugly and horribly printed, but he didn’t think it’d be that bad.
“Did you find it- oh.” Reki turned to look at Langa. He was sitting cross-legged, flipping through the yearbook. “Is that… They always told us they lost their yearbook from their senior year, no way.” Reki sat down beside Langa. “Nanjo, look for Nanjo first.”
Langa flipped through the pages, finally stopping on the page that had a big ‘N’ on it. The two sets of eyes scanned the page, searching for the familiar head of green hair.
“Right there, right there! That’s my dad!” Reki exclaimed, pointing to his picture. He had a dopey smile, a red jersey with gold accents, a huge black number one printed on the front. He looked the exact same, hair still long and messy, except he didn’t have the few strands of silver hair Reki loved to point out.
Langa looked up at Reki. “He played basketball…?” he asked. He was confused. Basketball wasn’t the most elegant sport, one that didn’t require a lot of balance and focus on the feet. How did he become one of the most popular skaters at ‘S’? How did he become a chef? It wasn’t adding up.
Reki nodded his head, a hum coming from his throat. “They always told us that they lost their yearbooks in the process of moving from their parents’ houses to their own. All Miya and I knew was that my dad was captain of the basketball team and my mom was a star-student. I only saw the jersey and trophies for shit. That’s it.” he rambled on.
“I think I found out why,” Langa said, holding up the yearbook. “You won’t even believe this.” He pointed to a picture.
Reki looked down at the book, his mouth falling agape. “Is… Is that Adam?!” He examined the photo. His parents looked so happy with the other man, all three of them grinning as though they were mid-laughter. Adam was sandwiched between Kaoru and Kojiro, arms wrapped around the couple. To his surprise, Kaoru’s hair was just thrown into a half-up-half-down style, bangs covering his right eye. It was a far cry from the perfectly styled hair he had now.
The caption under the photo was: “The Big Three”, fitting for the green-haired basketball captain, the uncanny blue-haired leader of the mathletes, and the pink-haired head of yearbook.
As they slowly flipped through the book, seeing at least one photo of the three per page, Reki and Langa fell into a stunned silence. One picture was even captioned: “Most Unexpected Couple”, a photo of his parents at what he’d assumed was prom. Unsurprisingly, they were both wearing crowns, indicating that they’d won prom king and queen.
Even more shockingly, there was a photo of Kaoru’s parents beside Adam’s, the two teenagers awkwardly standing between the two families. Unlike most of the other photos, it seemed like there was a strange tension in that one. The caption read: “Our School’s Top Donors”. Apparently, together the two families donated a total of 55 million yen over the course of four years.
“Dude, there’s no fuckin’ way-” Reki abruptly stopped, turning his head to the entrance of the attic when he heard footsteps.
“Did you get lost up there? Come on, he’s finally agreeing to use the cookbook. Get it down here while he still has an open mind,” Kaoru said, waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
The boys shoved the yearbook back on the shelf before scampering around the attic, searching for the first cookbook they could find to present to Kaoru. Reki mumbled something about going back up later to continue snooping, to which Langa agreed. He too was fascinated by the glimpse they were getting into Kaoru and Kojiro’s pasts.
The two adults were secretive when the topic of their teenage years were brought up. Reki had always assumed they were embarrassed of the dumb shit they did as kids, having a sneaking suspicion that they’d gotten up to borderline illegal activities and were trying to keep from giving the kids any ideas. What he hadn’t expected was to discover that his parents were not only some of the most well-known kids in high school, but friends with Adam of all people. But then, why weren;t they still friends? What had happened?
Without the time to think about it, Reki pushed the yearbook from his mind for the moment. He and Langa hurried to get the cookbook down to Kauro, sheepishly brushing off his questions of what had taken so long.
“You both look dumb,” Miya commented as the two walked back to the livingroom, “Give me the remote.” he demanded.
Reki sucked his teeth. “No. Go watch TV in your room.” he said, tugging the remote from his sweatshirt pocket and holding it up out of Miya’s reach.
Miya looked at him, his lips turning into a snarl. “You go watch TV in your room, just because you have company doesn’t mean you’re special.”
“Go tell mom then.” Reki retorted, unpausing the show he’d been watching.
Miya bit down on his bottom lip. That’s exactly what he was going to do. He was mom’s favourite, he already knew he’d get his way. So, he stood up and made his way to the kitchen.
“He’s such a brat, oh my god…” Reki mumbled. He loved his brother, but the younger kid was frequently a pest.
Miya greeted his parents in the kitchen, sitting down at the island counter beside Kaoru. “Reki’s being a bully again.” he complained, grabbing at the sleeve of his shirt to get his attention.
“Bully him back.” Kaoru said bluntly, flipping through the cookbook to find what Kojiro was cooking. “Can you go back up to the attic for me? Reki grabbed the wrong book, I wanted the one from the year after last, not this one.”
Miya blinked, furrowing his brows. “You’re not going to make him give me the remote?” Miya asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Maybe after dinner. You were watching TV all day yesterday.”
Miya rolled his eyes, walking away from the kitchen and back up to the attic. He didn’t see why he had to go, Reki was the one who messed up and got the wrong book, he should have been going up to the attic.
“You know, he gets his attitude from you.” Kojiro stirred the vegetables into the oil, scooping the diced onions into the pot. “Remember when we were younger? Whenever I did something, you’d always say you were gonna call my mom.”
Kaoru closed the cookbook and slid it off to the side, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “And? You always apologized as soon as I said it and you never tried it again.” he joked, turning in the barstool to look at his husband.
Kojiro laughed, turning down the fire on his vegetables. “It wasn’t even funny at the time, I don’t know why I believed you’d tell her, I never even gave you her number.”
As they were reminiscing, Miya’s feet came pitter-pattering down the hallway down to the kitchen. “You guys will never guess what I found!” he said, basically throwing himself onto the barstool again.
A soft gasp escaped Kaoru’s mouth as he looked down to what Miya slammed onto the marble countertop. “That’s not a cookbook-”
“It’s your college yearbook!” Miya grinned. Not only did he find the yearbook, he thought 2008 was so long ago that they had to be in college by then. Ouch.
With that, Kojiro had finally turned to look at what they were talking about. “It’s from our senior year, it’s nothing special. We weren’t interesting,” He tried to deflect, immediately walking over to the island table to look at the yearbook. He tried to take it from Miya’s hands, but the boy held on tight. He flipped it open and coincidentally landed on the same page Reki and Langa had been on, staring at the photo of Kaoru and Kojiro laughing with Adam.
“You were friends with Adam?!”
There it was, that’s what they’d been hiding for the past 13 years. All that trouble to avoid the truth, just for Miya to blurt it out to what felt like the whole world, even though they were in the privacy of their home.
Reki perked up, rushing into the kitchen with his boyfriend following behind him.
“Friends with Adam?” He dramatically covered his mouth as if he hadn’t found this out a few minutes ago. “Tell us the story,” he demanded as he placed his hands on the table, a grin on his lips.
Kaoru held up his hand, shaking his head “There is no story. Everyone can just go back into the living room, because there’s nothing to tell!” he assured them, shaking his head. The last thing he wanted to do was recount his friendship with Adam, especially in front of the kids一one of whom had already been injured by the man, all of whom had some sort of trauma from him.
Miya clicked his tongue. “The yearbook doesn’t lie. Actually, didn’t you write the yearbook?” He pointed a finger, pointing at the caption, “This says ‘The Big Three’. Is this not you?” He basically shoved the photo in his face, tapping at the one with the pink hair.
Kojiro sighed. “I guess they were bound to find out one way or another…” he said, pulling the oven-mitt off his hand, placing it against the counter. “It’s better if it comes from us and not Adam.”
Kaoru knew he was right. He knew if they worked up the courage to ask the man, he’d tell some sob story about their relationship that was not at all true. So this was their only option; they had to tell the kids the story of the golden year 2008.
“It was the beginning of our senior year, your dad and I didn’t know each other yet…” he began, eyes glued to the photo of the three. It was going to be a long, confusing story that would take ages to tell.