Chapter Text
A long time ago, in a faraway land, there lived a happy family of three.
Er, well, not quite the happy family that preschoolers draw for their art assignments, but it’s a happy one nonetheless! Trust me on this!
Anyway, this happy family lived in a big house with a door and two windows and a lawn—
“Shut up, I did not write that!”
“Ow! Mitsutada look, he responded!” Tsurumaru was rubbing the spot on his forehead where the pen had struck him, but that wasn’t going to put a damper on his enthusiasm. More like, nothing ever did. Still, Kuri-chan had pretty good aim and an even better throwing arm. “Time sure flies, Kuri-chan. Where did the cute preschooler who drew this for Family Day go?”
“I didn’t draw that,” Ookurikara hissed. “Mitsutada drew that and made me hand it in.”
“Ooh, more than ten words in a row! Mitsutada, did you hear that?”
There was a too-long pause before mom responded. “Huh, yeah. What?”
Tsurumaru, rather uncharacteristically, deflated in a loud sigh. Ookurikara failed to keep the scowl off his face (actually it was there 24/7 these days, but this time it was out of annoyance rather than just a need to seem like the biggest baddest rebel out there).
Mitsutada’s fingers were twitching. He’d spent the better part of an hour by the window overseeing their front lawn, which also incidentally offered a wonderful view of part of their neighbor’s lawn.
Now, it’s not that mom had an obsession with one-upping their neighbor or anything, but some neighbors are just asking for it and there’s a limit to everything, including mom’s patience. (By the way, don’t try this at home. Testing mom’s patience, I mean.)
Mitsutada seemed to have arrived at a decision. He turned his back on the window and stepped towards the only door leading out of their living room. Which, not coincidentally, also was the door leading to the main hallway and of course the front door. “Tsuru-san, I’m just stepping out for a bit.” He probably intended for it to sound casual, but it came out exactly like a man declaring his intention to go to war. Which was amazing, considering how he was wearing a frilly pink apron over his very formal waistcoat and trousers.
“Again? Mitsutada, our plants are going to die. Stop.”
“It’s just a bit, Tsuru-san,” Mitsutada called out, very distractedly, as he stepped out of their front door, garden shears firmly clasped in his hand.
Tsurumaru moved into the now-vacant window seat to watch, nearly slack-jawed with incredulity but very amused nonetheless. “Can you imagine what they’ll do in winter when these buggers are bald,” he muttered.
Ookurikara rolled his eyes. When Mitsutada was thwarted, it meant that Tsurumaru got his chance to shine, and that was usually far more disastrous than dying plants.
In Ookurikara’s very recent memory, there was a certain Christmas where their neighbors went all-out (and beyond) in putting up Christmas lights. Now, the Date household had never bothered with lights because… they just weren’t a very Christmassy household. Also, no one was actually looking at what Hasebe next door was doing despite his darnedest attempts to be noticed, because the weather was a bitch and it felt like the pits of Satan’s heart out there. Only the determined or the insane were going to be outdoors, and stay outdoors.
Or that was what they thought, until at six in the evening, Tsurumaru failed to show up at the dinner table. Half an hour of hunting for him yielded no results, so in a panic, mom concluded that he must have run away from home and ran out in pursuit. Mitsutada hadn’t even gotten halfway to the front gate when the sound of a creaking pipe prompted him to turn back, and lo and behold! A shitty crane was hanging upside down from their roof, tangled in a nest of wires and eco-friendly fluorescent bulbs that looked suspiciously like the ones in their bathroom.
Screaming ensued and emergency services were called, in that order. Well, mostly because Tsurumaru did resemble a corpse and a ghost all at once, after slipping from the roof and being stuck out in the cold. For the record, Ookurikara did not scream. He only yelled. At Tsurumaru. Incoherently.
One trip to the hospital later, it was concluded that Tsurumaru was actually fine, with no significant brain damage from his minor outing. Or, no more damage than usual, according to Mitsutada, who then proceeded to chew him out over ‘taking his antics way too far, with no regard for the circumstances and TSURU-SAN YOU COULD HAVE DIED, GOOD LORD HOW ARE YOU STILL LAUGHING LIKE THAT, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED ONCE SO YOU’LL LEARN HOW TO BEHAVE’ amongst various other colorful diatribes.
That was also the year Tsurumaru gifted him the frilly pink apron as a joke, but it didn’t quite go as planned because Mitsutada took to wearing it proudly, no thanks to the ugly “DATEGUMI <3” Tsurumaru had stitched on the front.
Well, that just wasn’t his year for pranks.
Hell, that was just last year, actually.
Ookurikara left Tsurumaru watching the confrontation brewing on their front lawn and headed upstairs. His room was the only one in the house that faced the Oda’s, and on days like this when Hasebe was fueling mom’s competitive fire, that was probably the most fortunate thing to befall their household.
He slammed the door shut and reached for the can of M&M’s he kept under his bed. Drastic times call for drastic measures. He picked a couple of M&M’s and flung them at the window facing his. As usual, his aim was perfect, and they went straight in. Before they could hit the carpet and put the three-second rule into effect, a black-gloved hand appeared out of nowhere and caught them.
The sunlight reflected off the glasses that peeked out of the Oda’s window in response to Kuri’s summons. When the light cleared, a pair of owlish eyes could be seen blinking behind the lenses. “Yo, s’up,” Yagen said, in a cool tone that didn’t match his face or age.
Yagen Toushirou was kind of (but not really) one of the unsolved mysteries of the neighborhood. When he had first moved in from out of town, rumor had it that he had a falling out with his family and was being sheltered by his relatives here (though in all honesty no one could see his relation to Hasebe or Souza). Rumor also had it that he had been cornered by the gangs from the local high school in his first week and had been asked, not so nicely, to surrender all his pocket money – but then some shady thing happened and they ended up giving him all their money instead. Then the rumors that he had ties with the mafia started flying around, that he was a genius who had already secured a place in med school but wanted to finish education the ‘normal’ way, that he had all the local thugs at his beck and call… It sure gave every housewife in the neighborhood enough gossip fodder for two weeks (and also gave them reason to keep their runts off the street, a minor blessing because Tsurumaru couldn’t try to prank them then).
Anyway, Ookurikara thought it was all bullshit. For one, Mitsutada was the first to visit Yagen himself and find out about his family circumstances, which – surprise – were nowhere as dramatic as rumored. For another, Yagen was a freaking 4th grader. There was absolutely nothing threatening about him, he was barely 10. Even if he was already planning to go to med school.
Ok, so he also drove a hard bargain. But that wasn’t public knowledge.
It can’t be helped. Ookurikara cut straight to the chase. “Hasebe is at it again.”
“Well, yes. And?”
“Mitsutada’s cookies are supposed to be baking now, but they’re not. Three guesses why.”
“Damn.” Yagen pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Hasebe will get suspicious if the power conveniently trips again.”
Ookurikara decided to give him a bit more incentive to try harder. “Mitsutada’s deco-ben if you can get them off the lawn by three.”
“Gotcha. Give me five minutes.” Yagen disappeared from the window, presumably off to cause some minor chaos that would require Hasebe’s immediate attention.
Ookurikara didn’t stay either. He popped back downstairs, where Tsurumaru was still watching the drama from the window. Except now he was also chewing on a fistful of cookie dough purloined from the kitchen.
“Oh, Kuri-chan, that took a while. Big one?” Tsurumaru held out the cookie dough, without taking his eyes off the window for even one second.
Ookurikara had to resist the temptation to take the dough and chuck it at his face. “None of your business, and that’s gross.”
Tsurumaru retracted his hand. “Well you can help yourself, there’s more in the kitchen.”
“Mitsutada will be back soon,” Ookurikara warned. Five minutes, Yagen said. He flopped down on the couch and reached for the TV remote. Best to be feigning inattention when shit hits the fan.
“Ha, no way, he’s only snipped like half a leaf this time…” Tsurumaru chortled, realized his hands were empty of cookie dough, and shrugged. “I’m going to get more. Sure you don’t want any, Kuri-chan?”
Silence was his reply. Tsuru shrugged again and sauntered off to the kitchen.
Mitsutada was very frustrated.
Yes, it was his idea to come out and trim the hedges, but there wasn’t a single misplaced leaf. At all. The hedges were perfect.
Unsurprisingly, since he’d gone over them with a fine-toothed comb since they started sprouting at the start of spring.
But then there was always this niggling worry that they had grown unruly since the last time he trimmed them. Even if that last time had been a few hours before.
It definitely didn’t help that Hasebe kept mowing his lawn, rearranging the ornaments, trimming the hedges, feeding the sparrows, installing new garden lights, mowing his lawn, trimming his hedges, mowing his lawn, trimming his hedges, mowing his lawn… you get the idea. It was certainly doing wonders at instilling a heightened sense of paranoia in his neighbors.
Mitsutada’s eyebrow twitched as he heard the lawnmower roar past him for the tenth time.
The roar abruptly died down. When Mitsutada looked up, Hasebe was stepping over that monstrous contraption and coming right up to lean on the fence. “Wonderful afternoon for gardening, is it not?”
No, not at all. It was a bloody hot afternoon.
“Why yes,” Mitsutada said, with feigned cheerfulness. The effect was quite ruined by the sound of his teeth gnashing. “I see you think so too.” Or else why would you be out here, you crazy bat.
Dry laughter on both sides that lasted just long enough to be socially acceptable.
Hasebe conspicuously cast a critical eye over Mitsutada and his lawn. Mitsutada bristled and prepared to receive and rebut whatever comments that were about to be passed on his gardening skills.
Cue them locking glares that sent sparks flying (not from the lawnmower). The shears in Mitsutada’s hand shut with an audible snap.
It never came to… whatever was about to happen, because there was suddenly the smell of smoke and the bang of a door thrown open with so much force, it hit the wall behind and bounced back and was thrown open again.
Even as the two turned towards the sound, Mitsutada’s first reaction was to pray that it wasn’t coming from his house, because the damn insurance company would jack up their premium if Tsuru wrecked it one more time.
“Uncle Hasebe! The oven is on fire!” Yagen hollered as he staggered out of the front door, waving his hand to fan away the smoke in front of his face.
“What!” As though he wasn’t just having an eye-power showdown just two seconds before, Hasebe sprinted towards the door that Yagen was holding open. “How did that happen?”
“Um… maybe the circuits overloaded?” Yagen suggested as Hasebe sped past him into the billowing black smoke. He followed it up with some suspiciously fake-sounding coughs in Mitsutada’s direction and opened the door wider to let the smoke out.
While watching dumbstruck, silenced by the sudden realization that oh it wasn’t Tsuru this time and that their home insurance premiums weren’t about to double overnight, Mitsutada could have sworn that the kid was mouthing “please don’t call the fire department”.