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In their defense, they hadn't planned to throw the entire scenery on top of poor Ijichi's head, it had been an accident.
Suguru had been trying to fix the wooden supports of the backdrop which had been loose for way too long when Shoko came along and tackled him almost to the ground because he'd apparently eaten her last pocky. (He had, but that is irrelevant.) He had tried to wrestle out of her grasp, but she'd wrapped her arms around his waist tightly. So they'd been locked in the world's weirdest tug of war until he'd pushed her back a little too hard and her back had crashed against the backdrop.
Which, as aforementioned, had loose supports. The rest is easy to put together.
Yaga is very much not impressed with their perfectly reasonable explanation. He even takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. "You two realize that you could have seriously harmed your classmate, right?"
"I mean, the backdrop is made out of cardboard—" Shoko starts but immediately shuts up under the principal's death glare.
"We're sorry," Suguru offers, kicking her in the shin under the table. "It was an accident."
Yaga lifts a hand to silence him. "I don't wanna hear it."
They both bow their heads in shame. Funny thing how they're seventeen and still a single berating can make them feel like naughty kids.
"I'm making you two clean the storage room," he continues. "It's been due to be cleared out for some time now and I think it would be a fit punishment."
Shoko glances at him, terror evident in her eyes. Everyone knows the legend of the storage room. It's the most terrifying chamber in school, filled to the brim with trash accumulated over the years. If you were sent in there to get an old map or an extra desk, you would be lucky to get out alive. Some people even say a kid named Kato Asahi once died there, which is of course, bullshit, but the uneasiness remains.
"The storage room?" He asks meekly. It can't seem like he's scared, but he can't help it. "Isn't that a bit extreme."
"You two are always getting in trouble, and I keep letting you get away scot-free. Consider all your crimes paid for with this."
As he stands up and leads them out of his office and down the hallway, Shoko bumps her shoulder into his. "This is all your fault."
"Mine? You started it!"
"You manhandled me against the backdrop!"
"I was trying to get you to let go."
"I'm suing you for sexual harassment."
"What?"
"Geto, Ieiri," Yaga calls them. In his hand, the keys to the dreaded storage room shine. "Are we ready?"
"We have to go now?" It's almost time for the final bell, there was no way they could clean anything more than a candy wrapper (maybe two) in the half hour they had until they could go home.
"I mean, you could come on Saturday if you want to—"
"We're going, we're going."
Yaga slides the key in the rusty lock and pushes them inside. Suguru is immediately slapped by the cloud of dust that springs from the ground and every single flat surface of the room. Shoko unconsciously clings to his sleeve.
"You have until the bell to clean and organize as much as possible. If you're not done today, you will come back tomorrow until this place is less of a clutter. Understood?"
And he slams the door closed, leaving them in absolute darkness. A click is heard. Oh, great. They're locked up.
He feels a set of nails digging into the soft flesh of his elbow. Okay, this might not be so bad.
"Are you scared?" He flashes a grin towards her. She can't see it, but he's sure she can feel the smugness emanating off him in waves. "Want me to hold your hand—"
She slaps him and lets go. "Asshole."
He chuckles, but as soon as his laughter dies down, the reality of their situation settles in. They're alone, in the storage room, in the dark. They can't see anything other than vague outlines of piles and piles of who-knows-what stacked over each other in precarious balance. Something creaks on the far corner. Cockroaches, maybe rats.
Maybe Kato Asahi.
Nope, not going there.
"Let's find a light," he proposes. Whispering is not intended, but unfortunately, it happens.
"Do you have your phone with you?"
"No, I left it in my bag."
"Same."
"We're screwed. Kato Asahi is going to eat us."
She elbows him in the gut. "Shut up. Let's find the lights."
They spread out in different directions, arms outstretched so they don't bump into any of the columns of stuff and get the karmic retribution for dropping the backdrop on Ijichi. He hears too much shuffling and then a curse as Shoko seemingly bangs into something.
He grazes a wall with the tips of his fingers. There are cobwebs everywhere, and he pulls back in disgust when about a million of them stick to his skin. Suppressing the urge to never touch anything again, he traces the damp bricks (why are they damp?!) and eventually stumbles upon a plastic case. It's relatively cleaner than everything around it and it has a switch on it.
"Let the light be made," he says and jerks it up.
A weak lightbulb turns on above their heads, shedding a faint, yellowish light over them. Shoko blinks up as she finds herself stuck between two old desks and a freakishly tall pyramid of shabby books.
"How did you even get there?"
"Truth be told, I don't know, and I don't think I wanna know."
He rolls his eyes. "Come on, let's start cleaning. Maybe we'll finish before we turn eighty."
At least now they can see the dust that's been making their throats itch. That should be an upside, but it also means that the mess they are to so valiantly battle is visible as well. And boy oh boy, is it a Mess, with capital M. The lamp barely lights up a tiny portion of the room. Beyond, there's still darkness and the silhouettes of different objects, but none of them dare go venture further. What they have in front of them is enough to entertain them for weeks: boxes and boxes full of old papers that had long yellowed and gone brittle. The bottom ones, neatly organized, the top ones hastily discarded all over the place. Colorless school posters that used to hold different lessons like digestive systems, the first World War, the germination of plants. Faded maps in which land merged with the ocean in a gray plain. Old desks with old stories imprinted in their wood. Chairs that belonged to other principals' offices. An ancient record player still leaking verses from a song lost to time. More boxes. More papers tied together with yarn. A broken toilet. Garlands that had lost their gleam since the last time they'd been used. The remains of a microphone.
"Holy shit," Shoko whispers, buried underneath a bed sheet who knows where she found. "Yaga was not kidding. This is a pigpen. They are not paying the janitors enough."
"Good thing they have misbehaving kids," he jokes and she laughs.
"Come on, I don't want to come back tomorrow."
They honestly have no idea how they could possibly make this place any less chaotic. If they so much as touch something lightly, they run the risk of the entire room crashing down on them. So they settle on carrying the boxes to the sides of the room in the vain hope that it will look like progress by the time they're let out.
Time goes by slowly, and they work even slower. Everything is covered in a thick layer of dirt and cobwebs, so they have to make an enormous effort to avoid becoming part of the mess. Four minutes in, they stop trying to maintain their uniforms clean and begin pushing with their entire bodies instead of just their hands. It doesn't take long for them to be able to blend in with the background.
Shoko in particular seems to have stuck her head in a big spider's nest. Her hair is decorated with so many thin silver threads she almost looks like an old woman. She rubs her sleeve over her face and then sneezes. He can't help but chuckle. She's not amused.
It's kind of funny, really. She's very petite and she's body slamming boxes over twice her size to get them to move. She insists her growth spurt is right around the corner but right now, she's tiny.
And cute.
He really ought to get rid of those thoughts, they're not appropriate to have for one of his best friends, but right now, he indulges them a bit. No one is here to see him stare after all. Satoru can't make fun of him this time.
With no spectators to his undoubtedly very shameful staring, he leans on one of the boxes and does just that: he stares. At the wrinkle of her nose when more dust is kicked up every five seconds, at the loose lock of hair that hangs over her forehead, at the soft curve of her lips as she puckers them when the desk she'd been trying to move refuses to budge.
She's impossibly pretty, he thinks with a mental sigh as he rests his cheek on his palm. A cliché staring pose, but a good one.
In the future five seconds, he learns that doing that had been what is widely regarded as a "bad move"; his box topples and he loses balance. The floor greets him with open, dirty arms and all the contents of the box are scattered around him.
Great.
Shoko almost snaps herself in half with laughter. She has to grab onto something to avoid joining him on the ground. It doesn't matter how pretty she looks when she laughs, he still feels deeply embarrassed and also kind of offended that she didn't even ask if he was fine.
"Thanks for your help," he mutters as he tries to sit up as dignifiedly as possible.
"Oh my God," she chokes, "Suguru, you're an idiot—"
"Again, thanks."
She approaches him and offers him a hand. He takes it and tugs on it a little too hard, making her fall down as well. And just as clumsily might he add. Is it cruel to take a little satisfaction in her shocked expression? Maybe, but who really cares?
Plus, she falls half in his lap, let him have this.
"Hey, what was that about?" She whacks him on the chest and he cackles maniacally.
"If I suffer, you suffer with me."
"Fuck you."
"I'm flattered, but do you really want to do that in such a dirty place?" He clicks his tongue disapprovingly. "How unsanitary. I thought you wanted to be a doctor."
"Shut up."
They get up and start putting the things back in the box. She fetches something black and white from the floor.
"Hey, look at this."
He turns to her and is met with an old mask with its features twisted in a grotesque grin. "What the fuck?"
"I am Thalia, Muse of Comedy and Idyllic Poetry," she croons in her best attempt at a booming voice. She then lifts another mask, this one bearing a haunted, sad expression. "And this is my sister, Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy. Feed us your soul."
"Those are the names? Really? I always called them Greek masks."
"Your oversimplification of our rich history is deemed offensive. Feed us your soul." He laughs and rips it off her face. Underneath the mask, he finds a pouting Shoko. "Hey, come on."
"We're here to clean, remember?"
"You're so boring, Sug." She takes the mask from him again, but doesn't put it on again, instead choosing to wear Melpomene's. "You're like… my personal tragedy."
He raises an eyebrow. "Go on."
"I'm the sweet damsel, trapped by a cruel fate to you and your boring ass. And you'll be the death of me. It'll be tragic, and people will weep as I tragically die in your arms and you will scream to the sky 'Why did I have to be so boring?!'"
"Seriously?"
"It'll be just like Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream . Tragic."
He shakes his head in amusement. "Sho, A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy."
"Wait, what?" She drops her mask. "Really?"
"Yes, really."
"Okay, it'll be like The Taming of the Shrew then."
"That's also a comedy."
"Much Ado About Nothing?"
"Comedy."
"Goddamnit, is there anything this man wrote that wasn't a comedy?"
He chuckles to himself. "Romeo and Juliet?"
"In that one, they both die, and I don't want you to die." She blows a raspberry behind her mask. "I want you to outlive me so you can forever regret being so boring."
"You're an idiot," he says fondly. "How can you think of all those slightly more obscure Shakespeare plays before you thought of his classics? I mean, the man was known for his tragedies."
"Well, excuse me for not being as trained in Shakespeare as you."
"I am not trained in Shakespeare," he grabs the comedy mask and adjusts the elastics behind his ears. "And I am not boring."
She lifts Melpomene from her face, revealing her much more beautiful one. "You will not convince me of that by wearing the mask now, you bore."
"Then what could I do to amuse you?"
"Well," she taps her chin. "You would have to be unpredictable for once. Do something fun."
"I do fun things—"
"Shut up, I'm not done." She places a finger on the curved lips of his mask. "You would have to surprise me too. Can you do that?"
"I can think of a few very surprising things I could do right now."
"Oh yeah? I wanna see."
Actually he can only think of one very surprising thing to do, and it's probably a bad idea. As in, a very very very awful, terrible, incredibly bad idea. But when Shoko challenges him with a smug look, all logic and reason is thrown out of the window.
So he drops Thalia back in the box, cups her cheeks, leans in and places a small kiss on the corner of her mouth. Her skin is soft under his lips. He's given this exact moment lots of thought and he never considered she would be this soft. Maybe he should get his imagination checked, it's clearly failing him in the areas he needs it the most.
He lets the touch linger for a moment and tries to pull back, but she clutches his collar to bring him back down. "Really? Was you missing like an idiot part of the surprise?"
"No…?"
"Then do it properly if you want to really surprise me. Because let me just say that I am not the tiniest bit surp—"
He cuts her off, this time like he's supposed to. She responds immediately, outraged like a prideful actress by such a rude interruption. And she has so much reason to be as proud as she is, he thinks, because she might be the best performer he's ever seen. He feels warm and electric and ecstatic, and he will give her a standing ovation as soon as he's able to breathe.
She hums when she breaks apart, leaving only a deliciously small space between them. He smirks. "Surprised?"
"Not at all," she rolls her eyes. "I've seen how you look at me, Shakespeare boy."
"And here I thought I was being subtle."
"You wouldn't know subtlety if it slapped you across the face."
He laughs. "Well, did you like it then?"
"Hmm," she brushes her lips against his. "Yeah."
Just as he's about to ask for one final show, the bell outside rings and the door clicks again. Yaga. They know exactly what happens to the people the principal dearest had caught making out, so they are standing a few feet apart by the time he arrives.
He sighs when he takes a look at the scattered contents of the box. "Did you even do anything?"
Suguru is tempted to say they kissed, but he figures that might not be the right answer.
"Nevermind," Yaga shakes his head. "Get out of here before I call your parents. You'll return tomorrow."
Shoko smiles at him, and he smiles back. They don't exactly mind their punishment being extended. After all, the storage room happens to be a very nice place to kiss in.