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As usual, Touka wakes up early, and heads downstairs into the cafe. This time, though, she just stands in front of the espresso machine, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
Is…it still okay to make coffee for him? The last time she saw him was…well…she doesn’t know exactly how to describe it.
She purses her lips. Why is she even debating this? She’s been making coffee for him every day for weeks. Why should today be any different?
He was so drunk that night. He might not even remember anything.
“People usually forget the things they do when they were drunk, right?” she asks when Ayato comes downstairs.
“Um...depends. How drunk?”
“Really drunk.“ Probably, Touka adds to herself. Ayato frowns.
“Who are we talking about?”
“Nevermind,” Touka says hastily. The coffee’s done. She snaps a plastic lid on the paper cup, and leaves before Ayato can ask her anything else.
:::
Maybe the real question is, does she want Sasaki-sensei to remember?
No, she thinks, probably not, but by the time she’s made it to his office door the answer has become a wobbly Yes. Maybe.
She turns the knob, and leaves the cup on his desk, and steps away, and looks back, and approaches his desk again. She rotates the cup so that its mouth is facing the chair. She starts to exit again, and then huffs and races back quickly and uncaps a marker from his drawer. She positions the tip of it against the cup’s side, and writes.
Hang in there today.
Then, finally, she goes to class.
:::
I shouldn’t have done that, she thinks halfway to the classroom, gnawing on her lip.
It’s fine! It’s just a note, she thinks as she sits down. Maybe it could cheer him up a little, if he’s still upset.
He had been...so upset...
She’s resting her chin on her hand; she repositions, so her palm and fingers cover up her mouth and heating cheeks. She can still sort of feel the weight of Sensei’s hands on her waist — how big they’d felt — and how warm, even through her rain-soaked clothing. Afterward he’d completely passed out, and his face had been flushed and yet finally serene. The niche made by his chest and his arm looked warm, and cozy, and just her size, and she covered it up with a blanket and practically fled.
Too late she realizes she’s been so consumed by thoughts like these that she only has a couple minutes left to actually try and think of how she can look him in the eye during class today. She panics, and is somehow even more stunned and horrified when their Literature teacher walks in and is not anyone that she recognizes.
“Good morning, everyone. My name is Takizawa Seidou.” The person hesitates, then bows. “I’m, uh, substituting today for Sasaki-sensei.”
“W-where is he?” Touka gasps. She stiffens as several people turn to stare at her, and then she straightens, pursing her lips.
“I-I’m just wondering because he’s supposed to have tutoring sessions today. You’re not taking that over too, are you?”
Takizawa-sensei rifles through the attendance chart. “Uh, sorry...Kirishima-san, is it? I wasn’t prepared to head those up today. But now that I know, I can supervise them for however long he’s absent.”
“Th-that’s okay. I should be fine.” Touka leans back in her chair.
Is Sasaki-sensei really sick or something? Did he poison himself after all? Did he hurt himself? Her mind races and though she’s only recently managed to get to a point where she can keep up in Literature, she can’t focus on anything. Takizawa-sensei is both nervous and uncommonly strict and the fact that she spots him sipping out of a cup with a particular note written on it makes her brain boil.
“Don’t worry, Touka,” Yoriko tells her. “I’m sure he’s fine. There’s a bug going around, you know? I’m sure you won’t fall too far behind without tutoring.”
“Yeah,” she mumbles.
But Sasaki-sensei doesn’t show up for the next two days. Touka passes the time reading, and discreetly unpeeling and writing on sticky notes beneath her desk. At the middle of another session of Takizawa shouting over the class about — whatever — she decides that she can’t take it anymore.
Fuck this. Her fists clench. I’m going to see him myself.
:::
She makes a cup of coffee and takes a train to his apartment. The lobby guard nods at her, and she smiles back shyly and as soon as the elevator door closes she mashes the button for Sasaki-sensei’s floor.
As the elevator ascends, her decisiveness begins to waver. This isn’t too weird, is it? Going straight to her teacher’s residence to check up on him? But Sasaki-sensei isn’t just a normal teacher, right? He’s also her tutor.
Yeah, yeah. She strides down the hallway.
Furthermore, no one knows what he went through just recently, except for her. Really it’s the responsible thing to make sure that he’s alright. Yes, it’s responsible, and she nods to herself, and takes a breath, and after another minute she convinces herself to rap on Sasaki-sensei’s door.
She hears footsteps, and then the door swings open. Touka looks up, and pales, and then turns completely red.
A person has opened the door — a person who is definitely not Sasaki-sensei. What they are, though, is dripping wet, and wearing nothing except a towel that they are pinching into place around their waist.
“Hello?” They look left and right, and then down.
“Oh,” they say, with a smile. “Why, hello there, ma chérie.”
This person has muscles where she didn’t even know there could be muscles on a human body. Are they real? Is this person real?
“I — u-uh, I —”
STOP STARING, she screams at herself. She wrenches her gaze down, but it only falls on the — towel — which, really, they are not putting much effort into holding up —
STOP STARING!
When she finally manages to speak, it’s directly to the ground.
“I’m, uh — s-so sorry — I think I — have the wrong door — sorry!”
She flees down the hall before they can say anything, and hides behind the corner until she hears the door shut. Coffee has spilled out of the cup and onto her uniform shirt, and she rubs at it, trying to calm down.
She can’t believe that she knocked on the wrong door. She recites the number to herself, and walks back, and stares in disbelief as she finds herself back in front of the door that she just opened.
Maybe…Sasaki-sensei…has a visitor? Maybe he has people looking after him after all. Maybe she she should just leave.
But…she wants to see him.
It’s just a human body, she thinks. What’s there to be scared about? They obviously didn’t care that I saw them.
She knocks again, and steels herself. She’s completely prepared to see the same person that she did before, and that’s why she wilts when the door opens to reveal someone completely different. This person is wearing a slightly damp camisole and underwear, and is wringing water from their long, wet hair onto the floor.
They stare at each other. The person looks Touka up and down, and Touka swallows, and tries to stop herself from looking at the person’s breasts, which are quite a bit larger than hers, even though they — um — obviously aren’t wearing a bra.
This new person makes a slow smile.
“Hello, there. You’re Kirishima Touka-san, right?”
Even their voice is beautiful. Touka opens her mouth, and then shuts it, and just nods.
“We’ve heard about you,” they say, and from behind them comes that other person again, propping themselves up against the doorframe. “I’m Kamishiro Rize. And he is Tsukiyama Shuu.”
“N-nice to meet you. I’m —” Touka stops. Well, they seem to know her name already.
“You’re one of Haise’s students,” Kamishiro finishes for her.
She calls him Haise. Touka swallows.
“Y-yes,” she says. “W-well, I’m not just one of them. I’m the one that he tutors. Um…if I can ask…who are you?”
“Hmm.” Kamishiro glances at Tsukiyama, who smiles at Touka benevolently.
“Well, we’re…friends of his,” he says, with a wink. “If you know what I mean.”
She, in fact, has no idea what this is supposed to mean, but quickly reins in her brain as it leaps to a dozen different conclusions.
Sensei never mentioned having a girlfriend, she reassures herself, trying to haul her heart out of the pit of her stomach. Or — or a boyfriend, for that matter. He’d definitely mention that to me. He’d definitely mention SOMETHING.
“Anyway, what do you want?” Kamishiro asks, and suddenly it seems so stupid that Touka is here, in another part of town so far from her family’s shabby cafe, in this fancy apartment with these two beautiful and inexplicably wet people, holding an already-cold cup of coffee that’s already spilled on her shirt.
“I just wanted to check up on Sasaki-sensei,” she says, in a voice that is much quieter than she intends.
“‘Sasaki-sensei?’” Kamishiro covers up her smile. She looks at Tsukiyama, who is grinning back at her.
“Mon dieu,” Tsukiyama laughs. “Sasaki-sensei! That’s adorable.”
Touka feels her fist clench around the cup and takes a deep breath.
“The last time I saw him it seemed like he wasn’t doing well,” Touka says, calmly. “So…so I just wanted to…see him. And make sure he’s alright.”
“Well! I would have expected your school’s principal to explain properly,” Kamishiro says, “but, just so you know, Haise’s pretty sick. That’s what he gets for running around in the rain. It’s very sweet of you to be concerned about him.”
“Not to worry, though,” Tsukiyama adds. “We’re taking very good care of him.”
They way they’re talking to her is grating. Touka takes another deep, deep breath.
“Can I see him?” Touka asks. “Just for a couple minutes?”
They exchange glances.
“Désolé,” Tsukiyama says. He flips his hair, and Touka winces as a couple droplets of water land on her face. “Unfortunately, he’s asleep right now.”
“Yes, yes, he’s sleeping,” Kamishiro agrees. “He needs to rest if he wants to get better. So, it would be inconsiderate — ah, that is, rude — to wake him up. But maybe there’s a message we can pass on for you, Kirishima-chan?”
That’s. It.
“Don’t call me chan,” Touka snaps. “And don’t act like I’m five years old. I don’t care if you’re Sasaki-sensei’s friends — or — or whatever. I don’t have any respect for people who think that they can treat anyone younger than them like they don’t know anything. If you can’t talk to me politely, then don’t bother!”
That shuts them up. They straighten, eyes narrow, but Touka just glares back. She shoves the paper cup into Kamishiro’s hand, and then rifles through her bag for a book and shoves it against Tsukiyama’s abdomen.
“Give those to sensei for me,” she says. “Please. As for messages to pass on — well. Just tell him to hurry up and get better because the substitute that we have now is terrible and if he tells us to pay attention in lecture one more time without actually having anything interesting to say, I’m going to rip his head off.”
She pauses to catch her breath, and then bows stiffly, and storms to the elevator.
:::
“Wow, Shuu. Chewed out by a high schooler.”
“Excuse me, but you were also chastised. How absolutely shameful.” Shuu pauses. “She has lovely eyes, though. Well, at least one lovely eye.”
“Is she gone?” Haise asks weakly as they approach. He’s lying down, and wrapped up in blankets; Rize and Shuu stand behind his couch, and wait for him to blow his nose before answering.
“Yeah, yeah, she’s gone. She stormed off after saying…well, I’m sure you heard her.” Rize sniffs the cup Touka gave her, and frowns. “This is coffee, I think, but it’s completely cold. I’ll just dump it in the sink for you.”
“D-don’t!” Haise gasps, and sits up, and begins coughing.
“I-it’s a waste,” he explains, once his throat is clear. Rize and Shuu’s frowns deepen, but Rize sets the cup down on the kitchen counter anyway, while Shuu sighs and hands him the book Touka brought.
It’s the last one he loaned her, Haise realizes — and it’s completely filled with sticky notes that he doesn’t remember putting in himself.
Where did they all come from? Did Touka put them in herself? It seems so. They look to be highlighting certain passages, or else commenting on them.
This is going to be a tragedy, isn’t it, one of her notes says, a couple pages in. Sensei, whyyy do you like tragedies so much?
Something bright wells between his ribs. He covers his mouth and snaps the book shut and sets it aside, rubbing his head, like he has a headache.
What is he going to do when he can’t use a cold as an excuse to stay away anymore? How can he possibly interact with her — and continue being her almost-daily tutor — when he’s like this?
“Haise,” Rize says. “Are you alright?”
No.
“Just sick,” he mumbles, rubbing his face.
“We’ll get you something to eat,” Shuu decides. “What do you want?”
Nothing.
“Soup?” Haise says feebly.
“Buono! We’ll get some immediately.”
:::
Fresh soup is better, Rize argues, so rather than ordering some, they get dressed and go to get ingredients. By the time they stop bickering over what kind of soup to make, and get back to the apartment, Haise is deeply asleep, with the book Touka brought open and facedown against on his chest. Rize takes this opportunity to throw the coffee out, and finds that the cup is already empty.