Chapter Text
“So,” Rize says after the waiter walks away. “What’s the good news?”
“Well...” Haise smiles at them, broadly. “I got a job!”
Rize and Shuu start, in astonishment. They congratulate him, and then demand details, and as usual, Haise tells them everything. He’s substituting at a high school until the end of the year — teaching literature — and if things go well, there’s a good chance he’ll be hired permanently.
“That’s great, Haise.”
“Magnifique! You’ll be hired for sure!”
“Yes! Well, I hope so. There’s...there’s just one thing.”
It’s a couple hours away from them, he explains, and immediately they both know exactly what he’s saying.
“I suppose we’ll have to visit, “ Shuu says, and Haise nods, and they are sure he knows exactly what they mean too.
Of course we’ll be there.
The mood is falling.
“Anyway, it sounds like a good opportunity. Just don’t break too many high school student hearts out there, Haise-sensei,” Rize says cheerfully. Haise grimaces. Shuu kicks her under the table, and Rize glares.
What? she demands silently.
Like this, he mouths.
“Haise-kun,” Shuu calls, “tell us what books you’re planning to teach,” and Haise’s eyes light. He launches into it, and Shuu shoots Rize a triumphant smile, and she huffs.
Later, Rize and Shuu check their work calendar, and both of them request that day off.
:::
“And…voila!”
Shuu opens the door and sweeps his arm with a flourish. Haise blinks.
“O-oh...wow.” Haise swallows. “It’s...um, it’s...”
“Tiny, unfortunately,” Shuu says apologetically, and Haise coughs.
“...right. Tiny.”
“Well, you know how city living is, Haise-kun. Under the circumstances this is the best I could manage.”
Shuu gestures for Haise to follow as he shows him the amenities: a bathroom with a porcelain tub and fancy toilet, a combination washer-dryer, a Western-style living room with a widescreen television, a tatami room, a balcony with a lounging chair and table, a kitchen outfitted with a stove and an oven and…
“Look!” Shuu exclaims. “There’s even some kind of statue here.”
“That’s a rice cooker,” Haise says.
“Oh? How lovely, I’m glad you recognize the style.” Shuu sets the rice cooker down carefully and gives it a good pat and yelps when the lid flips open. Haise reaches over to close it, and Shuu sighs.
“You’re so good at fine arts, Haise-kun. Those students won’t know what hit them.”
“Well, it’s literature that I’m teaching, not...fine arts. Or cooking, for that matter. In any case,” he says quickly, “this is all...well...much more than I expected. Thank you so much.”
“Non, non, don’t thank me yet, we aren’t finished!”
Shuu guides him to the last unopened door, and indicates that Haise should open it himself. Haise does, cautiously. He observes as Haise’s gaze scans the room, first with surprise, and then confusion, and then surprise again. The room’s walls are completely eclipsed by empty, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
“Kanae was throwing a fit about assembling all of these,” Shuu explains, “but I knew if I left you with just one or two they’d collapse in a week. We need this to last so you can store all your little books when they realize how good you are and hire you on permanently. Ah...you like it, right? Haise-kun?”
“It’s...yes. It’s great. Fantastique, in fact.” Haise smiles at him, and Shuu beams.
“Then,” he announces, “now you may thank me,” and he shuts the door.
:::
“Did he like it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Did he seem okay?”
“It...seems that way. But in a couple months...”
“Yeah. I’ll go visit him next.”
:::
Afterward, they wander into the kitchen. Despite the fact that it’s evening, Haise starts making a pot of coffee. Rize leans against the counter, wincing as the steel chills her bare thighs.
“So,” Rize says, as Haise watches the coffee drip down. “How was your first week?”
“It was...good. Yes,” he says, decisively, and with a rub of his chin, “it was good,” and Rize snorts.
“Alright, how many troublemakers are there?”
“None,” Haise says. Rize stares, waiting, as he pours out coffee into a little mug.
“...one,” he admits, finally. “But she’s not really a troublemaker. Well, not too much, anyway. She’s just...a little behind. I decided to set up an extra tutoring session with her.”
“So? Has she improved?” Shuu asks when they meet up a couple weeks later, and Haise grimaces. This time they didn’t have much time for much other than chatting; Haise had come home late, because of tutoring.
“N-no. She’s more behind than I thought. I actually have multiple sessions with her every week now.”
“What?” Shuu wrinkles his nose. “How troublesome. Just place her back a grade and be finished.”
“No,” Haise snaps. He bites his lip. “I — I m-mean — sorry. I said that too sharply. No, I can’t just...leave her. She’s...”
He trails. “Well, to be honest, she’s a lot like me.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, she also lost both her parents. And...” He trails.
The next visit is Rize.
“You never explained. How bad could it be? You’re not going to tell me that a high school girl is a veteran of gang wars?” Rize laughs, and stops when Haise doesn’t join along. She clears her throat.
“At least tell me she had a better name than ‘Centipede,’” she says, trying to lighten the mood. Haise smiles, without humor.
“She didn’t tell me, but I’ve been investigating a little. I’m pretty sure she was ‘Rabbit.’”
“Cute.”
The coffee machine begins to emit a tune; it’s finished. Haise pours himself a cup. After sipping, he coughs and frowns down at his mug.
“Something the matter?” Rize asks, and Haise shakes his head.
“No, it’s...it’s fine. It’s just...much worse than I remember.”
Rize plucks the bag of ground coffee up from the counter. “It looks like the same kind you had last time.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s probably because...well. Nevermind.” He drinks anyway.
:::
The next time the three of them get together, Haise is eager to show them a piece of paper.
“Look!” he says, and they do. There’s a lot of kanji, and a lot of numbers.
“Wonderful,” Shuu says uneasily.
“What is it?” Rize asks, taking the paper and squinting.
“Her score! Well, it’s my entire class’s scores, but the important number is here. This one is Touka-chan’s — ah, I mean, my student’s — the one I’m tutoring.”
They nod, slowly.
“It’s...good...?” Shuu ventures, and Haise’s head bobs.
“It’s great! It’s the first time she’s done this well. She’s learning. She’s really learning. And — and I think she’s even starting to enjoy reading.”
“That’s great, Haise. It looks like being a teacher really suits you after all,” Rize says warmly, and Haise smiles.
“Thank you. I really hope that I get to stay.”
He seems even happier than when he gets an opportunity to go to a bookstore, and won’t stop talking about tutoring that ex-troublemaker of his. He’s practically effervescent — and for some weeks, both of them hope secretly that the mood will continue unabated even though there’s only a little over a month left.
:::
It doesn’t.
Work picks up, and when they do have some spare time to go see them, he’s always busy — grading assignments or exams, or preparing tutoring sessions, or whatever else.
He’s being honest with them, probably. As the day comes closer and closer, however, his responses become more curt, until finally he’s just saying, “No. I’m busy.”
Rize and Shuu exchange frowns.
“Haise-kun,” Shuu says, sweetly, into the phone receiver. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks. Thank you.”
“That’s so nice to hear. Listen, don’t worry. We’ll be there for the anniver —” Shuu cuts himself off as Rize hits his shoulder. “Ah, we’ll be there tomorrow, okay? We’ll be there.”
For a long moment Haise says nothing.
Then they hear, “Thank you. I...would really appreciate that.”
:::
The next day, there’s a storm.
All the trains are stalled by electrical issues and then so crowded that the two of them are lucky to have a position smushed up against the windows. They race as fast as they can, but by the time they make it to the restaurant, it’s two hours past their meeting time. The employees can’t tell them anything except that a man fitting their description left without paying his bill, which they hand to them, alongside his abandoned apartment keys.
”Merde,” Shuu hisses, checking the receipt. Rize snatches it from him, and hisses too.
”Shit.” The only thing Haise ordered was alcohol.
They pay for him, and call his phone over and over, to no effect. They run through the downpour, searching every other restaurant for him, and even nearby love and capsule hotels. At loss, they start speeding through the bookstores and the library and even a manga cafe, peering over the low walls in hopes of spotting him.
No luck, no luck, no luck.
It’s three in the morning when they trudge, dripping and muddy, back to his apartment. It’s just so that they both have a private place to compose their increasingly obvious distress, and both of them are dumbfounded when they arrive and find Haise sleeping peacefully in his own bed. Shuu claps his hand over Rize’s mouth to muffle her scream of fury, and restrains her from shaking him awake.
“I’m going to kill him!” she snarls in the living room as Shuu closes the door. She was so worried. She was so worried. And — “I’m going to fucking kill him!”
“I want to kill him too,” Shuu tells her, flatly. “But let’s wait, just a little.”
“How did that idiot get back in here? How?”
“Let’s check.”
“Check? What the fuck are you talking about? How can we check?”
Shuu opens up a compartment in a wall nearby and starts withdrawing a device with a little monitor.
“Shuu, what are...what is...is that a camera?”
“Of course! For security purposes. We can’t have anyone stealing Haise-kun’s precious possessions. Even if all he really owns are books.”
“How do you even know how to use something like that?”
“A little mouse taught me,” he replies, absentmindedly. He sets the device on the low table in the room, and presses buttons until the screen flickers to life. They both crane over at the little screen, which shows Haise sleeping in bed: his current position. Shuu rewinds the footage. As they watch, another figure emerges onto the screen.
“Who the fuck is that?” Rize demands. Shuu doesn’t answer; he keeps rewinding, so fast that the picture blurs. He goes until the room turns black, and then presses play.