Chapter Text
They say first love is the first dose of addiction. It happens randomly but is highly anticipated. During the ripe ages of fifteen and eighteen is when it usually comes. Silent, happy glances and genuine bursts of happiness—all deemed as childish with no significant meaning as people get older. But it’s love, it will always be. It’s what you thought it was, and so it shall be. It was your kind of love.
It was love for what you knew love to be.
The second one aches the most. Mature minds meet, they wander and look for the kind of adult they once dreamed of as witless little kids in a partner. This is when passion comes into the picture. It burns wildly to the core and reaches man's darkest and most vulnerable parts. Vexing as it may be, it’s delectable. There are talks of college, marriage, and kids and you know a part of it is harmless adult pleasantry, but there come nights where you see visions of it being true, and so your expectations are the highest they could get.
Realizations are then present and it seeps into the many little cracks and once they flourish, growth within one’s person arises. The process is painful, mayhaps the most painful of them all, the kind that stands on the boundary between an ugly and a beautiful memory.
It’s exceptional, nevertheless.
The third, however, is like a refreshing series of cold breezes on a mellow day. It’s silent as it creeps up on you. You don’t see it coming, you never do—because you don’t seek it.
That’s how Kuzuha is to Kanae.
As a man in his early thirties, Kanae’s clock had stopped turning at the death of his unborn son, along with his late wife. Altogether, he had stopped hoping for any kind of shelter to be within his reach. What completely caught him off guard though, was the fact that shelters are never found once looked for.
You build them with another, and Kanae’s took the form of the slender build of a white-haired man in an arcade.
An arcade.
Kanae wonders if it’s them or fate doing the playing.
As a man married to his office desk, he often finds himself longing to bring back his childish spark amid mountains of paperwork, and what better way to do that than spending his spare coins on a Sanrio claw machine? His eyebrows furrow in unparalleled confusion, fingers fiddling with the joystick as he tries to accurately pinpoint My Melody’s location. He pushes the button and prays a silent prayer.
“I hope you know that machine is scamming you, mister.” A raspy voice from behind him emerged.
Kanae can feel the stranger’s figure tower over him even though his eyes stay on the prize. He pays the man no mind and inserts another set of 100 yen coins. Minutes pass and he continues to play, still no Melody at hand. The man behind him sighs and Kanae finally hears the sound of fading footsteps.
Shrugging, his mission continues.
The roaring of car engines ceases, as well as the blaring lights that surround the miniature arcade. It’s four in the morning, and Kanae stares at the claw from the almost blurry glass in anger and clicks his tongue. Ah, five thousand down the drain.
Kanae retreats from mission impossible and speed walks towards the station to catch the last train. As he waits, he catches a whiff of a familiar strawberry scent. He looks to his side and to his surprise, he sees the same man from, quite literally, fifteen minutes ago. The white-haired man was busy browsing through his phone, so Kanae took the chance to observe him.
What Kanae first noticed is that the man, in every sense of the word, reeks of college.
He stands there looking every bit of a university student: disheveled hair, deep eyebags, and of course, the all-black outfit.
Kanae smiles lightly, reminded of the old days.
The train arrives and they both enter at the same time. Only a couple of people were there, all drowsy, tired or dead asleep. Kanae sits close to the doors. Once sat, his eyes looked for the white-haired stranger. He doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t want to find out.
He sees him standing despite the many unoccupied seats. The backpack loosely hanging by one of his shoulders was very… worn out, to say the least.
Kanae exhales and averts his eyes away from the blob of white hair and closes them. He stays like that for a few minutes, dozing off in the process.
Courtesy of muscle memory, Kanae wakes up just in time for his stop. He steals a glance at the same spot the college student was once standing, to find him long gone.
Kanae exits the train swiftly, dead tired and ready to retire for the night. Ah, if only he could retire from corporate as well.
The next day comes in a blink of an eye.
Once you reach your working years you’re forever bound in a dull cycle. Kanae thought he was exempt from it if he was employed in a job he liked.
Long story short, he ended up hating it.
Working in marketing was exhausting, he had to put on flawless smiles and big boy shoes all the time because rich people couldn’t seem to get off their high horses. In that dull, lifeless cycle, his only form of solace was arcade crane machines.
It’s 3 a.m., fresh from work as he gets his hands on the crane game’s worn-out joystick.
*
It’s 4 a.m., fresh from university as Kuzuha sees the same man yet again, every day in the arcade.
He wasn’t a good… player, whatsoever. But Kuzuha absentmindedly stays to watch him from start to finish. At first, it was innocent curiosity because you don’t usually see an employed man hanging by a Sanrio claw machine until the crack of dawn. He would watch silently with no intent to actually approach the man.
The one time he did though, he was given the cold shoulder.
Kuzuha smacked his lips close, tightly, as if they could contain the insane amount of shame he was feeling at the moment. But it was okay, he supposes. It’s not like it would happen again.
“I could get you one if you’d like.”
Shut the fuck up, Kuzuha. It’s like saying he’s absolute shit at the game.
The man, still dressed in work clothes, stops in his tracks and turns to look at him—confusion on his face. His face.
Oh god, his face.
Stop.
The blue—almost gray-eyed stranger, blinks but chuckles as he stretches an arm out, coins on his extended palm. “Go ahead.”
Kuzuha subtly (hopefully) takes a deep breath internally and reaches out to get the coins. Their hands touch for a brief moment, and it’s colder than how he remembers Tohoku to be.
“Which one do you want, mister?”
“Kanae will do.”
“What?” Kuzuha racks his brain for a good minute trying to recall the list of Sanrio characters his sister sent him a few weeks ago.
“Just… call me Kanae. ‘Mister’ makes me feel older than I already am.” Kanae replies. “You can get whoever you want. It’s you playing anyway.”
“But it’s your money.” The white-haired reasons.
Kanae swiftly wets his lips in thought and contemplates hard. He looks at Kuzuha only to see him staring back at him and he’s now too embarrassed to say that he has zero interest in Sanrio. It just happens to be the machine closest to the entrance.
Kanae shakes his head. “No, it’s okay. I insist.”
The familiar sound of the machine starting up makes Kuzuha smile for a brief moment. Milliseconds later he’s staring at a miniature Kuromi plushie like how he plans to obliterate his AP Calculus homework once he arrives home.
30 seconds.
“Do you uh… play a lot?”
“Not… necessarily. I just play in my spare time.”
“I see.”
22 seconds.
“Do you not work the usual 9-5?”
“I get off at 7 p.m. actually, I just do a lot of overtime.”
“I see.”
17 seconds
“How about you? I don’t think classes end at around this time.”
“Ah, I do part-time at a convenience store but I go back to the library for my exams.”
“That’s nice. Isn’t juggling work and school hard, though?”
“It is, but I can manage.”
10 seconds
“Is this for your daughter?”
“Oh, I don’t have children.”
“Still, I bet you’d make a good father.”
For a brief second, all Kuzuha could hear was the peaceful whirring of the machine and the sound of cars speeding past the red light.
Kanae chuckles, thankful. “Yeah, I probably would have.”
The loud, stereo-y “Congratulations!” resounded in their ears as Kuromi fell from the claw’s clutches. Kuzuha bends down to get it and faces his… employer.
“Wow! You got it one try.” Kanae claps his hands in awe at the white-haired’s skill. “I started playing weeks ago and couldn’t get anything.”
“Ah, that reminds me,” he added. “I never got your name.”
The man hands him the Kuromi plushie and took a step back once Kanae received it. “It’s Kuzuha.”
“Kuzuha.” Kanae repeats. It rolls off his tongue quite nicely, he observes. He approaches Kuzuha and shoves the plushie into his half-open bag. “You can have it.”
“But-”
“It’s thanks for today.”
“You don’t have to, really.” Kuzuha takes Kuromi in his hands but Kanae stops him before he could come closer.
“We still have tomorrow and the day after,” Kanae says, smiling. “You can always get me one just in case I fail miserably again.”
Kuzuha scoffs in response. “You failed miserably today and you don’t even want it.”
The brown-haired raises his eyebrows to spur him on. “So I’ll take this as a ‘This is the last time’?” Kuzuha visibly pauses, trying to think of what to say.
Kanae laughs quietly at the struggling student in front of him. “Kidding, kidding. I was just trying to see if you would humor this old man.”
“One of each, then.”
“What?”
Kuzuha runs his fingers through his scalp to hide his embarrassment. “The characters… I’d get you one of each.”
Kanae smiles gleefully, oddly endeared. “I’m looking forward to it.”
That day was just like any other day, passing in a blink of an eye. The only difference was that the walk back to the station wasn’t lonely and that the distance between them on the train was smaller than yesterday.