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Kurona’s apartment is on the eighth floor of the dingiest building you can imagine. His apartment itself isn’t that bad, mind you. It’s sparkly clean (as clean as it can be, with a hedgehog as a roommate, anyways), and he’s only encountered one roach in the entire five years he’s lived there. The same cannot be said for the communal areas of the building— like the lobby and the elevator. He’s seen the same mice in different fonts scurrying around the ground floor so many times, he’s starting to recognise some of them.
Kurona doesn’t really mind. Sure, the walk to his apartment is a little bit gross— there’s graffiti on the walls, and he has to go through an alleyway or two to even get to his building in the first place— but as long as his home itself is clean and doesn’t stink, he doesn’t really care.
All this is to say, it doesn’t really come as a shock to him when the elevator to his apartment breaks down.
The incident happens when he’s walking home from a trip to the supermarket. In one hand, he holds a bag filled with all kinds of groceries— eggs, rice, bread, the essentials. In the other, he holds his phone.
Kurona’s mindlessly scrolling through some social media site. He likes a few posts from his friends, and even attempts to comment on one (Kurona Ranze? Interacting with other people online? Who is this imposter?)— but it’s really hard to type with just his thumb. He gives up and just replies with a random, barely-related emoji.
He enters the elevator to his apartment, and presses the button to the eighth floor. The door’s halfway closing when Kurona sees a guy he doesn’t recognise rushing towards him through his peripheral vision.
Kurona looks up from his phone, and sticks his leg between the doors. They slowly slide back open.
“Thank you!” The guy, a few centimetres taller, with yellow underdye hair and keychains hanging off a carabiner on his belt, gives him a polite smile. He stumbles into the elevator, a tote bag covered in pins held in his hands. If the sun was a person, Kurona’s just met him.
The first thing that Kurona thinks when he sees this guy, is cute.
The sun’s quietly humming to the tune of some unknown pop song as he presses the button to floor sixteen. The doors close, and the elevator starts going up.
In the five years of living in this building, Kurona’s certain he’s met all of its residents. Not recognising the stranger beside him, Kurona comes to the conclusion that he is definitely just visiting.
(Kurona also realises that this means he will never see him again after today. Kurona’s not sure why, but that thought makes him a bit sad. He doesn’t even know the guy! Talk about parasocial.)
Kurona tries not to stare at the guy next to him. And he doesn’t. Kurona’s just admiring him. Big difference. The stranger’s wearing a pair of white headphones, with scratched up stickers that look like they’ve seen far better days. There’s some chipped paint on his shoes, and— are those dolphin socks? No way. Kurona’s wearing shark socks. It’s meant to be!
The guy catches Kurona’s admiring, and their eyes meet for just a split second. Kurona awkwardly looks away, embarrassed, and— is the guy chuckling? Nevermind. It’s not meant to be. Screw him for finding someone cute, I guess. He’s never looking at pretty dudes again. He’s turning heterosexual. Yeah. Yeah. Thank god he’ll never have to see this guy again once he reaches his floor. Which floor are they on now, anyway? Floor six? Only? Can’t this elevator go any faster?
Turns out, it can’t. It can only go slower, actually. The elevator groans and creaks, and abruptly, it stops going up. It gets stuck between floor six and seven. Kurona stumbles a bit. Shit. Is he really gonna die now? Right after he fumbled?
The two stand there for a second, waiting for the elevator to keep going up. It doesn’t. Awkward silence fills space between them. Kurona just hopes and prays that the elevator doesn’t come crashing down. He can’t die like this.
“Ah. Uhm,” the living embodiment of the sun spoke. Kurona turned to look at him. “Does this… happen often?”
Kurona hesitates for a bit before responding. “No, no.” He put his phone in his pocket. “This is the first time it’s happened to me, me.”
“Ah. Shucks. It’s not gonna fall, right? That’d be a really lame way to die.”
Kurona chuckled in response. “Yeah. Lame, lame…”
Another moment of silence. Kurona suddenly finds the wall very interesting.
It’s another couple of seconds before the sun speaks up again.
“So…” The guy glanced up at the car position indicator. It was frozen, stuck on the number six. “What’s your name?” He looked at Kurona. His voice is friendly— a bit quiet— soft, maybe? Kurona wishes he had paid more attention during language class. Words are failing him. His voice is cute. Yeah. That’s a good enough description.
“Kurona, Kurona. You?”
“Bachira!” He smiled, teeth showing. Oh my god, he’s really cute. “So, ah- you live here?” Bachira asked.
Kurona paused for a second. Is this guy trying to make smalltalk with him? No way. Maybe he does have a chance.
“Yeah, yeah.” Kurona replied. “You’re visiting right, right?”
Bachira gasps. “How did you know?”
“I could tell.” Kurona’s words only register in his head after he spoke. Oh god. That's the worst response he could’ve given. He sounds so creepy. Kurona The Creep. If this was the Sims, he probably just lost 50 relationship points. “I mean— uhm— I’ve been living here for a while, a while. Five years. Yeah, yeah… I just didn’t recognise you.”
Bachira chuckles. Kurona wants to retreat into his imaginary shell and never come back out. He’s embarrassed himself in front of this cute guy twice already. He can’t afford to keep fucking up.
“So. Uhm, uhm… who are you visiting?”
“My friend, Isagi! I’m helping him with some weird art project he has. Didn’t expect him to live in a place like this, though.” Bachira gestures around at the— well— everything. “Not that there’s anything wrong with living here,” He quickly adds, “I just expected him to live in like, some expensive upper-middle class high rise.”
“Isagi, Isagi…” A picture of a taller boy, with dark blue hair and a sprout on the top of his head, pops into Kurona’s head. He fades back out immediately after. “I’ve run into him a few times. He’s nice, nice. He lost his soccer ball once and I let him borrow mine.”
It’s hard to ignore the way Bachira’s face lights up the moment soccer is mentioned. “You play soccer?! That’s so cool! Which position?”
“Centre-forward,” Kurona replies. “I just play for my school team, nothing special, special… I like to think I’m kind of good though.”
“Me too! You know, we should play together one day. Everyone on my team is good, but can’t match up to me. Maybe you could, though.” Bachira’s grinning. He’s looking at Kurona with so much confidence in his eyes. God, it’s cute.
Kurona doesn’t like overly egotistical losers, who don’t have the evidence to back up their claims. This time though, and Kurona’s not sure why, he just has a feeling that this guy is saying the truth. He’s never even seen Bachira play, but for some reason, something about him just screams ”I’m really fucking good at soccer.” Maybe it’s the soccer ball keychain hanging off his tote bag, which Kurona now realises is covered in all sorts of different football memorabilia.
(Also, in this case, and this case only, his confidence just adds to his charm.)
“Maybe, maybe,” Kurona hums, hesitant to commit to anything just yet, especially when there’s no guarantee he’ll ever see Bachira again after today anyways. It’s not a promise in any way, but Bachira beams anyway.
“I like your socks, by the way,” Bachira says. Holy shit. He noticed too. Maybe it is meant to be.
Kurona’s face flushed. He sputters for a second, before settling on a response. “Thank you, thank you… I like your socks too. I like dolphins, dolphins. Sharks a bit more. But dolphins are cute, too.”
“I love dolphins! They’re my favourite animal, they always look like they’re having fun.”
You’re fun to be around, too, is what Kurona wants to say. He’s not strong enough to say it. Instead, he says, “Lots of fun, fun.” The lamest possible response he could’ve chosen. Pathetic.
Bachira gives a hum of agreement. Kurona realises that this elevator probably isn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon. He puts down his bag of groceries— it should be fine. He just hopes he doesn’t accidentally step on anything.
“Should we press the help button?” Bachira asks.
Kurona notices that Bachira moves his hands a lot when he speaks— he’s wearing a lot of bracelets too, all handmade. There’s a dolphin themed one, a bee one, a soccer one— Seriously, how much personality can a guy fit in just his apparel?
Kurona realises that he’s staring (ahem, admiring), and quickly utters some apologies. Bachira reassures him that it’s fine with a polite smile.
“Probably, probably,” Kurona mumbles, “It’s a bit embarrassing though.” He adds, in a quieter voice.
“Right.” Bachira nods. “We can wait for a while more, then. Got any snacks in your bag of goodies, Kurona?”
Kurona jolts, caught off guard by the question. “I think so. Wait, wait, I’ll see if I have anything.” He crouches down and digs through his bag of groceries. There’s rice, some loaves of bread, veggies— oh, a box of Apollo Chocolate. “We can have this, this.” Kurona hands Bachira the box.
“Oh! Can I…” Bachira makes a box-opening gesture with his hands. His bracelets rattle as he does so. Kurona gives him the go-ahead.
Bachira opens the packaging, and pops a few triangle-shaped chocolates into his mouth. “You want some?” He asked, gnawing on the chocolates with his molars.
“Yeah, yeah.” Kurona cupped his hands, like he was a toddler asking for more porridge or something. Bachira giggles and pours the chocolates from the box into his palms.
Kurona’s about to start eating when Bachira notices something.
“Oh my gosh, you got a lucky star!” Bachira gasped. He reached to pick up a star-shaped chocolate in the sea of triangles within his hands. As he does so, Bachira’s fingers lightly scrape Kurona’s palm for a split second. All thoughts in Kurona’s brain come to a halt.
“That’s rare, you know! Means you’re lucky,” Bachira said, holding the chocolate between his fingers like it was some sacred, rare artifact. “I’ve been eating these for yeaaars and never found one. That’s so cool! I’m taking a picture.”
Bachira used his free hand to dig through his pocket. Meanwhile, Kurona was frozen in place. Holy shit. Their hands just touched. That’s basically handholding. Pretty dolphin boy held his hand!
Kurona is thrown back to reality when he hears the clacking of multiple acrylic keychains coming from Bachira’s phone charm. Bachira’s phone, just like its owner, is colourful and covered in accessories. Bachira snaps a picture of the star-shaped chocolate and puts it back in Kurona’s hand.
“I— uhm. I like your phone case.” Kurona blurts out. Bachira freezes. The corner of his lips twitched upwards.
“Thanks,” he promptly responded. Was it just him, or were Bachira’s cheeks flushing? Bachira occupied himself with the chocolate, eyes looking everywhere but at Kurona. Cute.
Suddenly, the elevator started groaning and creaking. But instead of crashing down like Kurona had expected, it slowly began going up again.
“Oh, oh. Looks like it’s fixed.” Kurona mumbled. He sighed, and picked up his bag of groceries. “You can keep the rest of the chocolates, chocolates.” He smiled, turning to look at Bachira one more time as the elevator reaches his floor. Bachira’s eyes widen, like he’s realising something, and he starts digging through his phone like his life depends on it.
The elevator stops. On purpose, this time. The doors slide open, and Kurona gives one last look to Bachira, still scrolling through his phone like there’s no tomorrow, and steps out.
“Wait— ah— Kurona—“ He hears Bachira frantically spamming the open door button behind him. Kurona turns around, and Bachira dashes out of the elevator. He holds his phone up to Kurona’s face, open on the Add New Contact screen.
“If you see a— uhm— cute guy with braids and shark socks and a bag of groceries with Apollo chocolate in them… can you help me give them this?” Bachira hands Kurona his phone. “I want their contact— uhm. I want your contact.”
Bachira watches Kurona with a nervous smile, waiting for his response. Holy shit. That’s so fucking corny. So, so fucking corny. And Kurona’s first reaction is to blush.
“Yeah- yeah- of course!” Kurona drops the bag of groceries and starts putting in his information, triple-checking it to make sure his phone number was entered correctly. Once he’s certain he’s correct, he hands the phone back to Bachira.
Just in time too, as the elevator doors started to beep, and began sliding closed. Bachira beamed at Kurona, his smile reaching his eyes. “I better go now— see ya, Kurona!” Bachira waved goodbye as he rushed back into the elevator.
“See you around.” Kurona smiled, and the doors closed, Bachira disappearing behind them.
-
The next day, Kurona’s at home watching some television when he gets a notification.
~ Bachira Meguru
heyeyyyy r u free this sunday? ( ^ω^ )
You
yeah, are we going to play soccer?
~ Bachira Meguru
u bet ^_−☆
Kurona puts down his phone, and giggles.