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“Not here… not THIS… NOT this one, either…”
Eating their King’s Frosted Cornflakes, Ace and Taro heard their father searching and scouring the back of the kitchen, muttering through the sound of rustling laundry and clanking drawers.
“Three minutes,” Marie called out the time check, wiping milk from Taro’s cheek. Distracted by his father, the little Ultra kept turning around and splashing milk everywhere. “Finish your flakies, sweetie.”
“Why do we have so– many– towels ?!” Ken poked his horned head out of the laundry room. “Marie, my shirt– have you seen the blue one? And tie?”
Marie gave her husband The Look. “It’s with all your shirts and ties.”
Ken knew better than to ask again. His head dipped back in.
“You’re always losing your things… Two minutes!” Marie looked at the door anxiously. With both of them being called to Garrison HQ, only one of their conveniently single friends was available to watch the boys at short notice.
Speaking of which, in that moment of distraction, two little silver head fins ran underfoot towards the laundry room, almost tripping her up. When did they leave their seats? “Ace? Taro?!”
“Father!” Ace ran up to Ken, Taro at his heels. “Here, you can wear this!”
Ace held up a neon-yellow, polka-dotted tie.
“We found it for you!” Taro added helpfully.
It was last year’s Father’s Day gift. Ken stared at it, indescribable feelings (a mix of fatherly love and gratitude, but mostly horror at the neon monstrosity) filling him.
“One minute!”
He closed his eyes and took the tie. “Thank you, boys.”
The doorbell rang. Marie answered it in relief. “Ah, Belial, thank you! Sorry, the sitter cancelled at the last minute–”
“Yeah, yeah. Scram, you two.” A gravely voice rumbled from the front door. “I got this.”
***
Belial’s snores filled the living room. Once the brats finished their King’s Frosted Cornflakes, he threw them some pillows and soft toys to keep them busy, and checked all doors were locked and sharp or pokey implements hidden away. As far as he was concerned, his job was done.
Ace and Taro were building a pillow fort at the foot of Belial’s sofa. They had been working on this for weeks now.
“It’s not standing…” Ace struggled to balance the Plasma Spark (a frilly pink cushion) at the top. “Taro, I need you to– Are you listening?”
Taro was apparently not listening, as he spied the edge of a blue cloth peeking out from under Ace’s tower. He snatched the cloth without a second thought, sending the carefully constructed Pillow Tower of Light crashing.
“Niisan, look!” Ace’s yells of dismay were but background noise to his discovery. “This is dad’s shirt!”
This caught the older Ultra’s attention. Putting aside a well-deserved smack for Taro, Ace took the shirt and studied it.
“Father’s always losing his things,” he observed solemnly, echoing Marie’s comment. It was very crumpled and smelled funny. How long had it been hidden here? He was about to put it in the laundry when he noticed Taro’s expression.
The little Ultra’s face was scrunched up in deep concentration. Taro remembered when he lost his favourite kaiju toy. It had made him very sad. He remembered crying until his eyes bled (they hadn’t) and his throat became dry and scratchy (it had), until Ace finally gave him one of his toys.
He didn’t want his father to feel the same. Unlike Taro, he didn’t even have an older brother to give him a shirt!
“Ooh, I know! Let’s write dad’s name on it!” Taro’s eyes brightened. “Just like mummy does! Then he won't never lose it!”
Ace considered the idea. Their mother wrote his and Taro’s names on all their belongings – their lunch boxes, pants, jackets, school bags, school books, and especially their toys (Taro always insisted that Ace’s jet fighter was his and tried to swap them). If mom did it, surely it couldn’t be bad?
“Then if it gets lost again, someone will return it,” Ace murmured. They would be helping their father too.
“I’ll get the markers!!!”
Before Ace could finish, Taro was midway to the study, emerging with an armful of colour markers.
Ace laid the slightly funny-smelling shirt on the floor and uncapped one marker. As the older brother, he should take the first step. And he had been practising his writing with Brother Zoffy… He paused, suddenly nervous.
Taro sat next to him, puzzled. “Um… what should we write?”
The unexpected pressure of his younger brother looking up at him washed over him. Ace found a source of confidence from deep within, and decisively declared, “Err– ‘Father’”, of course!”
He wrote the word in bold strokes on the shirt pocket.
“I want to write too!” Emboldened, Taro clung onto his brother’s arm, begging pitifully. “Pleaaseee Niisannnn! Let meeee…”
“Okay, okay,” Ace reassured him. He knew where their father’s shirts were kept. “We’ll write on all of them.”
***
“What the heck are you twerps doing?”
Belial’s deep growl startled the two boys, causing them to jump. So intently had they been writing, they hadn’t heard the Ultra get up from his sofa and crouch behind them.
Belial himself couldn’t identify what had woken him up, save for an instinctive aversion to peace and quiet. Having been something of a rascal himself, he was always wary when kids got too quiet. And these two brats, especially, had been quiet for a while.
“W-we’re writing father's name on his shirts,” Ace explained. Though filled with a sudden dread, he instinctively moved in front of his brother. His earlier confidence was drying up, shaken by a niggling sensation – his still-young brain feeling a growing sense that this might not have been a good idea…
But Taro, ever unperturbed, announced proudly from behind. “We’re helping dad! He won’t lose his shirts ever again!”
Belial peered at the markers – ‘permanent, red’ ; another ‘purple’ – gripped by the young Ultras. He looked at the pile of shirts, the word ‘father’ written with varying levels of legibility on each shirt pocket. He imagined Ken walking into Garrison HQ every day, a different scribble on his chest.
Belial shrugged, reaching out. “Eh, I’ll help. Hand it over.”
Ace and Taro broke out into huge smiles, and the three spent the rest of the afternoon labelling Ken’s shirts.
((Image inspiration below!))
