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1. Clothes
The first time Akao laid eyes on Nagumo, she wanted to sock him in the face.
It was not because of his face (perfectly punchable), the annoying drawl of his speeches (incredibly taunting), or that fake plasticky smile he constantly plastered upon in those first few months of school, though they will all come to play later. No, Akao didn’t have the time to notice any of that before the veins on her forehead began to throb and she felt the incredible urge of violence rising to her throat. Look, she may be a monster, an asshole, a mannerless brute — whatever, she heard it all, and she owns it — but she knew better than to jump five rows down the sloped lecture hall just to kill someone and rip his clothes to shreds. Well, Sakamoto would say it was because she was physically unable to do that due to how tightly packed they all were, but no, that would not have stopped her at all; was he stupid? No, it was because she at least had some decorum.
Akao could identify him five rows ahead because of his fucking shirt. Wasn’t that saying enough?
“Whoever that is, turn off the bloodlust for me for a moment. You are distracting the class.” Ahead, the teacher droned on, without even looking back at them. Akao forced herself to take a few deep, calming breaths. Think of Akira. Think of the family beach trip they took before she matriculated. Think of Akira mispronouncing ‘teeth’ because she is still missing her tooth . “Thank you.”
Who the fuck wears neon orange to class!?
Like, sure, it was a lecture— no need to be discreet, or to wear black as to make laundry easier, but like, neon orange , seriously? Neon? Where was the fucking decorum? Akao turned to look at the ceiling to ease her eyesore and almost fucking choked when she saw the orange reflected onto the damn ceiling. She took a moment to marvel before settling down to rage. What the fuck. Who designed this shirt? Who decided to sell this shirt? Who was even the fucking target audience? Fucking night construction workers who want to have some styles? And why was it so fucking big? She saw the scrawny arms poke out under the sleeves, and that absolutely did not match the wide fit of the shoulder. Also, she was pretty sure it was designed to be short-sleeved, so why is the shoulder seam half-way down his elbows? It was fucking ugly, too. Are those patterned leaves weeds?
Oh my god. She might have to kill him. “Sakamoto, I think I’m going to kill that guy.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Sakamoto, I’m serious.”
“Not disagreeing.”
By the first week of knowing him, Akao knows that him even bothering to respond is as good as him saying he wants to shank that guy. She will take that.
Eventually, the lecture was over. Akao didn’t manage to write anything down, seething as she did through the entire thing, but it didn’t matter; it was an intro-level class anyway. Don’t die and we’re good, right?
“Nagumo-san, next time, pick something… less vibrant for class, please.” Akao heard the teacher scold, right as Neon Orange – Nagumo – left the class.
“Got it, sensei~ Sorry~”
And were those cargo pants lime green ?
(It was only later, a lot later — when Akao, Sakamoto, and perhaps the entirety of the JCC faculty and student body managed to tone down Nagumo’s atrocious fashion sense and get him to settle on cringe patterns and mismatched color scheme and at the very least not fucking neon — that they got to learn the reason why he dressed that way.
“Oh, yeah, well…” Nagumo had the gall to look embarrassed. His round cheeks blushed like ripe apples, and if she wasn’t so appalled Akao could squeeze his cheeks like balls of mochi, “At home, everyone usually wears a kimono… And anyway, the clothing staff picked out clothes for me, so I didn’t have to worry about it. Now that we talk about it, I have no idea how they know my size or when anyone bought anything. Huh… I wonder where the clothing room is… Because I didn’t have wardrobes in my room…”
Oh god, Akao was going to kill him.)
2. “It’s one vending machine soda, Akao. What could it cost? 10,000 yen?”
“Fucking damn it,” Akao groaned, punching the vending machine from where she squatted right underneath the coin slots. It was fucking sweltering, this close to summer, and Satouda-sensei had just enough cruelty to make them run laps. “Oi, Sakamoto, Nagumo, y’all have more coins?”
“How much?” Sakamoto asked, fumbling his pocket for coins. Did this fucking idiot not have even a fucking coin purse ?
“I only have cash on me, is that okay?” Nagumo asked somewhere behind her, stupidly not out-of-breath despite the brutal training they just went through.
“Sure, throw me some scraps, young master.”
“Rude~” Nagumo whined, before stuffing a wad of cash onto her hand. Akao was too thirsty and sugar-deprived to bother chewing him out about giving her way more cash than she needed. Whatever.
But it was entirely too heavy. What, did he empty out his entire wallet for her? She heard Sakamoto let out one astounded syllable behind her, as if his jaw and vocal cord had just given up, and finally looked at the wad of cash on her hand. She flipped through them, trying to find the right amount of cash. A 1000 yen bill would be more than sufficient. The bills were neatly organized, she saw, but how many 10,000 yen bills does this filthy rich bastard even have?
Ten, eleven, twelve… Twenty… Twenty-five… Thirty… “… These are all 10,000 yen.”
“Is that not enough?”
“No, you dumbass. The vending machine doesn't even take bills this big.” Akao was trying very hard not to tear her hair out, or, worse, sock Nagumo in the face with his money. That would be very mean and ungrateful. “Do neither of you have, like, some 10 or 100 coins?”
Sakamoto hummed, clearly still counting his coins. At her vantage point Akao couldn’t see how much he had on his hand. Before Sakamoto was done counting, Nagumo deigned it necessary to speak again, “I could buy coins off somebody?”
“You mean, exchange cash for coins? I doubt anybody is carrying around 10,000 yen worth of coins in their purse.”
“Well, we just need some 100 yen coins, right? They don’t need to give me back all 10,000.”
Akao thought that if she needed to participate in this conversation any longer, she might die of a stroke. Come on, Akao, Satouda-sensei and her talked about this… Nagumo is very, very clueless… Gotta cut him some slack… “Do you understand how math works, genius? You do, right? How many “some 100 yen coins” would make 10,000?”
“100 coins? That’s a lot, right? But if the vending machine don’t take 10,000, then just less than that—”
“You dumbass, do you not see how stupid it is to 'buy coins' of less value with your big boy money?”
Nagumo looked at her, seemingly thinking very deeply of some mathematical or non-mathematical logic. He seemed to hesitate. Good, maybe she has broken through him — with words instead of violence, Satouda-sensei should consider her a fucking saint. But good things don’t tend to last, because Nagumo frowned and opened his mouth again,
“But we need coins right now, so economically, it means coins worth more, right? So if I buy coins with cash, I’m at a surplus.”
Nope. No more slack to give. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“But in economics—”
Before Akao could strangle him, Sakamoto spoke, “Nagumo, how much money would you lose if you exchange 10,000 yen for, say, 300 yen?”
“9,700 yen, why?”
“That’s a lot of money, man.”
“Really? That’s barely, like, a month worth of lunch.”
Akao snapped, “How the fuck have you been here for three months now and don’t know how vending machines work? Are you, like, from Mars, or something?”
Nagumo shrugged, “Never used one. They don’t have anything I like.”
“What do you like?” Sakamoto butted in.
“Water.”
“The fuck?”
Sakamoto asked, again, as if this made any sense, “What kind of water?”
“Fillico Jewelry.”
“Never heard of that one.”
“Yeah, they don’t have it here.”
“You really don’t drink soda? Nothing?” Akao asked, flabbergasted. Nagumo frowned, having the audacity to pout at her,
“Everyone acts like that’s weird. I don’t know, we only ever drink tea or water at home. My mom hates the smell of soda.”
“The SMELL! ?”
(It took another ten minutes of bewildering conversation before Akao managed to get a drink from the vending machine, courtesy of Satouda-sensei, before they needed to get back from break.)
3. Phone
Right before summer vacation started, Nagumo had the idea of inviting them over to his family’s vacation home near the beach. According to him, it was a small place (seriously doubtful), in a quaint town off the coast of a small island near Kyushu. They would have to get there on a ferry, which runs daily at 4:00 AM and 5:00 PM, with a special trip at 11:00 AM on Saturday. There wasn’t much to do in town except for the beach, but the town’s summer festival would be put on during one of the weekends they were there, and it would be a nice place to just relax quietly. And oh, if they want more groceries than just cheap seafood and insanely expensive cuts of frozen meat and traditional pickles, they’d have to go back to the main island on the morning ferry.
Truth to be told, Akao didn’t see the appeal in spending two weeks out of her vacation this way; she’d much rather go to big cities or at least go to a place with something to do, but whatever floats Nagumo’s boat, she guessed. It was a little surprising to see that Nagumo was the type to laze around doing nothing during breaks, but perhaps that was not the most unusual pastime for a young master. She’d have to say no, though— it was her first year away from home, and Akira has been over the moon with the prospect of hanging out with her again over the summer.
“Nah, Akira is waiting for me at home.” Akao shrugged, only somewhat regretful, “Another summer, maybe.”
Nagumo’s face suddenly fell, in a twitch of an eye that seemed more genuine than anything he had displayed thus far. It managed to tug at Akao’s heartstring a little, “Awwwww…” Quickly enough, Nagumo recovered with a pout, turning to Sakamoto and whining, “Sakamoto-kun, how about you? Have any plans?”
“Nope. I’d go.” Knowing Sakamoto, he probably would have just stayed on campus the entire time.
“Yay~! Oh, this is going to be so fun!! Too bad you can’t join us, Akao-kun~”
“You can’t annoy me into joining, sorry. Akira takes priority.”
“I know,” Nagumo sighed, flopping down the sticky dining hall table like a fish fresh out of water, “Have fun. We will get you souvenirs, etcetera etcetera …” And yet when Nagumo looked up at her from the table, Akao saw some genuine hurt in his eyes. She felt kind of bad, but also kind of annoyed. This spoiled brat…
“Come on, it’s not the end of the world, isn’t it? We are gonna be here for the next four years,” It’s not the guarantee for everyone, but for them, it certainly was, “If you miss me, just text me or something.”
“Huh.” Sakamoto suddenly looked up, “I don’t have your phone number.”
“What? Oh, wait, that makes sense.” For the past months, they were practically joined at the hip, even Nagumo, who only switched to the assassination course officially last month. If she needed anything, she'd just knock directly on their doors instead. “Here, let me give you mine.”
She made quick work punching her phone number on Sakamoto’s scruffy old mobile phone, of which the marking on the keyboard has almost faded completely away. It’s the type of phones kids got passed down by their grandparents or the cheapest one you can get at a pawn shop. With Sakamoto, who knew which was the case.
“Come on, Nagumo, give me your number. I’ll put it in Sakamoto’s phone, too.”
“Uhm… Hold on.” Nagumo fumbled around his pocket before pulling out a pristine, metallic flip phone, the type that Rion was pretty sure had, like, the best camera on it. He slowly clicked on the phone buttons as Akao secretly marveled (and got a little jealous) at the expensive device, but after a long while of clicking Nagumo still hadn't said anything, only that his brows had furrowed deep into the crevices between his forehead.
“What? Is the young master too good to converse with us peasants? I thought you were whining about not seeing me over the summer.”
Nagumo looked up, annoyance smeared all over his face. If he threw his phone at her, she was not going to return it. “Hold on a second, I’m trying to find my phone number.”
Sakamoto blinked, “You don’t have your phone number memorized?”
“No. Do you?”
“Yeah? Everyone does.”
“The entire world does, dumbasses.” Akao drawled, “Come on, give me your phone then. I’m going to put my number in.”
Nagumo obediently handed it over. Today, she sat opposite of Nagumo and Sakamoto; suddenly, she felt Nagumo blithely flipping over the table to sit next to her. Even as she scooted aside to give him space, she could not help but tease, “I’m not going to steal your phone, you know.”
“I know.” Nagumo answered, eyes still glued to the screen of the flip phone and where Akao is maneuvering the device with ease.
Akao didn’t know why he was on the messaging app, but she quickly navigated to his contact list, intending to add both her and Sakamoto’s number in. Unexpectedly, Akao blurted out a surprised noise. Nagumo’s contact list was completely empty. “Do you even call anyone on this phone?”
“My mom,” Nagumo nodded. “She bought me this phone to call her when I got to JCC. I promised to call at least once a month.”
Akao scoffed, “It’s like you have never owned a phone before this.”
“It’s not that weird. Me neither.” Sakamoto chimed in.
“Well, at home, if I need to call for somebody, I just buzz them through the intercom.”
“What? ” Both Akao and Sakamoto whipped their heads to stare at Nagumo, completely baffled.
“The house is too large, and everyone stays in their own wing until mealtime. If you want to bother somebody, you have to call them first to know where they are.”
Okay, first off, wings? “And you all can’t just use your phones for that?”
Nagumo shrugged, “You have to remember their phone numbers for that. With the intercom, you just have to click one button.”
“Nagumo, buddy, sweetheart,” Akao clenched her eyes to will a headache away, before staring back to the wide, deep, empty oblivion of Nagumo’s eyes, “You can save people’s number on your phone. Then you just have to click one button to call them.”
Bewilderingly, with the monstrous magnificence of witnessing a natural disaster unfold, Akao felt time slowing down when she stared back into Nagumo’s eyes, those fathomless pool of the finest ink seemingly swirl and then still, before he began to blink like a baby doe — a gigantic, stupid, beastly baby doe — and quietly whispered, “... I know that.”
“Liar.”
“I do, theoretically.” Nagumo pouted, somehow beginning to shrink down to a ball (like a normally-sized, stupid, beastly baby doe), “I don’t know how to do it, though.”
Sometimes, Akao genuinely thought her friends were absolutely, genuinely stupid. She knew Nagumo had good marks in class, yes, and she knew that Sakamoto could come up with ways to kill with an unsharpened pencil faster than anyone can count to ten; but on god, they can be so, so stupid.
“Just show him how to do it, Akao.” Sakamoto, from across the table, suddenly found it necessary to be nice to Nagumo.
“Damn, fine.” Akao relented, but she could not stand to be nice about it, “Look closely, young master, I’m only going to do this once.”
Nagumo nodded excitedly, like Akao was going to give him candy, or something. She suppressed the urge to tease him more, and instead very patiently (as patiently as she can) taught him how to use his phone: where to click to add a contact, how to input their name, their phone number, and, if he felt like it, a contact picture (it was so damn convenient, having a phone with a camera), a dumb nickname, and a note in case he hit his head one day and forgot who Akao Rion was. When Akao was done, she made Nagumo practice putting Sakamoto’s number in. The way he fumbled while typing words on the twelve-tiled keyboard was a little funny, but Sakamoto kicked her on the shin before she could laugh at him. It may be just a little endearing, how focused Nagumo was with putting Sa-ka-mo-to Ta-ro-u into his phone.
Finally, Nagumo leaned back, raising his phone up as if it was the future Lion King, “I did it~!”
“Good job, man.” Sakamoto flatly commented, even clapped a little. For him, this is practically jumping for joy and dancing on the street.
“Yay~” Akao tried to chime into the parade. They may look a little stupid, teaching the prince of JCC, one of the best the assassination division (and the intelligence division, before this) had to offer, how to use a damn flip phone, but the look on Nagumo’s face said that this was something very monumental. Who gives a damn. If someone dared to laugh, Akao would sock them in the face.
“Alright, I’m going to teach you how to take a photo next— so you two dunderheads can send me pictures over the summer—”
4. Laundry
Nagumo officially transferred to the assassination division near the end of their first term, but it took the start of the second term for him to be moved to the assassination dormitory. By then, death and resignation have opened up some rooms. So ending was the era of Nagumo being chronically late to their shared classes (or so Sakamoto hoped). When Akao asked Sakamoto if he was excited that Nagumo was going to live right across from him now, he only shrugged at the time. Nagumo whined some at that, which annoyed Sakamoto into a brawl in the middle of Satouda-sensei’s class (bad idea), but now, having time to think about it, Sakamoto supposed he was excited. Nagumo and Akao had been trying to get them to have regular movie nights, something like that, and he supposed having Nagumo nearby only made it easier. And they could walk to classes, to meals, and everything else together, too. That’d be fun, he thought.
Sakamoto didn’t think much of it when Nagumo asked when he was going to do laundry, so he just shrugged and said, I don’t know, Saturday maybe? Now he had to do laundry on Saturday. When Sakamoto got to their floor’s communal laundry room, Nagumo was already there, lounging on the waiting bench with a puzzle book.
“Yo, Sakamoto-kun~”
“Hey,” Sakamoto greeted, “How long have you been here?”
“Since the morning.”
“It’s 11 AM.”
“You didn’t tell me when you were going to come,” Nagumo shrugged, “It’s okay, I entertained myself.”
Sakamoto scrunched his brows. Was Nagumo the clingy sort? He knew that Nagumo can be a tad bit annoying; but also that the other boy played it up just to get on his and Akao’s nerves, the way they do the same to him. But also, was it unusual to sit in the laundry room waiting for your friend to come and do laundry with you? Sakamoto wasn’t the best with what was considered normal “human interaction”, as Akao put it, so maybe this was more normal than he thought?
“Wanna grab lunch after this?” Nagumo asked, nonplussed.
“Sure.”
“Okay~ Hopefully Akao is already awake~”
Sakamoto hummed, pulling up to the nearest empty washing machine. The laundry room was always busy on the weekend, but at least they can take advantage of the morning lull. Nagumo scuttled to the washing machine right next to his, and, as Sakamoto stuffed his clothes in, did the same.
But even though Nagumo had finished putting in his laundry before Sakamoto did, Sakamoto heard his movement stilled. Only when Sakamoto slammed his washing machine door shut, accidentally with a lot more force than he intended to, he heard an equally loud noise coming from one washing machine over.
“... You don’t actually have to close it that hard, you know?” Sakamoto said flatly, completely ignoring the hypocrisy.
“Oh. Okay.”
Sakamoto thought the answer was odd but didn’t think much about it. He reached back for his bottle of detergent and pulled out the relevant tray. Split second after, the same sound came out of the next machine. Sakamoto poured a few dollops of detergent in. Then, Nagumo spoke,
“What is that?”
“What? What is what?” Confused, Sakamoto turned to frown at his friend.
“The thing you are pouring in the machine.”
“This?” Sakamoto raised his bottle of detergent, suddenly feeling like he was lost in a dark, magical forest, “It’s laundry detergent.”
“What does it do?”
“It’s soap for the clothes.”
“Oh…” Nagumo awed, eyes subtly widened as if he was hearing about it for the very first time, “I don’t have that. Can I borrow some of yours?”
“How have you been doing laundry without detergent?” Sakamoto blurted, completely mystified.
“Back in the Intelligence dorm, I just asked somebody to do it for me.” Nagumo shrugged, “We had a schedule. They come to get my laundry every weekend, and I pay them.”
Sakamoto felt his eyes ready to bulge out of his sockets, “You can do that?”
“Sure. They’ll do anything to get me to remember their names.” Nagumo said, downcasted eyes hidden behind his bangs. Sakamoto passed him the detergent and told him only to use a little, “Family influences and all that jazz, you know how it works.”
Sakamoto really did not know, but he also did not care enough to ask, “How much did they charge you?”
“10,000 yen.”
“Nagumo.” Sakamoto exclaimed. It came out flat, he knew, but it was the most emphatic he had felt the entire week. “You got scammed.”
“I’ve been told that I hand out cash like they are paper.”
“As a compliment?”
“Vaguely as an insult, I think.”
Unexpectedly, Sakamoto felt veins popping on his temple, “Who said this?”
“Some senior who followed me around back in Intelligence.”
“He actually said that?”
“Yeah, he did.” Nagumo exaggerated a sigh. Sakamoto slipped a 100 yen into the coin slot and clicked the Start button. Even mid-conversation, Nagumo’s eyes quickly followed his motion and repeated after them, “It’s not like here, you know; I can’t just fight people macho-style. That’s just brutish. In the spy world, you have to insult without being insulting, and you have to pay back without paying back, see? So the following week, I just paid someone to pour red dye over his laundry~”
“Huh.” Sakamoto was somewhat impressed. “It doesn’t sound fun.”
Nagumo was quiet for a while. Between them, the laundry machine roared in sync, both machines starting merely seconds apart. “Yeah. It wasn’t a lot of fun.”
Sakamoto blinked. He wished Akao was here right now, or that she’d somehow magically pop up behind the door to the boy dorm’s laundry room, ready to make a joke or something that would lighten the mood. He had nothing to say to it at all, no words, besides what sounds like poor imitations of Akao’s teasing. Finally, Sakamoto settled on,
“Want to grab Akao for lunch? The laundry would be done by then.”
Nagumo bounced back up, his smile so wide it reminded him of the moon, “Okay! Let’s go~”
5. Microwave
Somebody had warned him about this. During the first week, someone had joked about the probable frequency of fire alarms in a dorm full of men who barely know their way in a kitchen. Sakamoto himself was used to living alone, so even if he couldn’t cook much, he can at least reliably cook rice and boil eggs without any issue. Once in a while, especially during that first week, there were fire alarms in the middle of the night over a forgotten stovetop or a microwaveable ramen somehow missing its water content— run of the mill stuff, only a little annoying. Sakamoto had forgotten all about that by the third alarm-free month, only to be woken up half-way through the second term by the same old siren.
As he dragged his feet out of his room, Sakamoto heard whispers, “I swear, I’m going to kill whichever idiot that woke me up for this.” Sakamoto, half-asleep, felt inclined to agree. He tried to scan for Nagumo in the crowd — at their height, it should be easy to spot him — but puzzlingly the other boy was nowhere to be found. Sakamoto thought about walking back up to knock on Nagumo’s door. It was a real possibility that he simply refused to get up, even with the fire alarm blaring. But seeing as this was not a “real” emergency (he saw the smoking microwave on their floor on his way down) and that the slow moving mass of people was incredibly resistant towards a change in direction, Sakamoto abandoned the thought with only the slightest bit of hesitance.
Akao was already down in the yard by the time he arrived. Sakamoto forgot that the boys and girls sides of the dorm were technically connected, so any disturbances on one side would affect the other. Akao looked like, well, she looked like she was rudely woken up mid-sleep by some asshole who got hungry in the middle of the night and completely botched up a midnight snack. If she wasn’t so sleepy, her anger-aura right now might be as deadly as her usual bloodlust.
“Yo,” against wiser advice about approaching a cranky tiger, Sakamoto greeted, “How was sleep?”
”What do you think? Dumbass!” Akao growled, angrily fussing her already-messy blue hair with her hands, “God fucking damn it! I’m going to kill whichever idiot that started this! It’s always the boys, too, you know? Why did we also get woken up!?”
“Safety, I assume.”
“Safety, my ass! I’m going to fucking kill that fire myself!”
“That’s not how fire works,” Sakamoto teased, keeping his voice monotonic.
“Shut the fuck up!” Akao growled, jumping at him to violently shake his shoulders as if she was going to give him a concussion, “ARGHHHH!!!! Where is Nagumo!? I need to duke it out, right now. All three of us, macho-style, let’s go.”
“Can’t find him,” Sakamoto shook his head, “I tried to look for him amongst the crowd, but didn’t see him. Could still be asleep.”
“No fucking way,” Akao replied, aghast, “Nobody can fucking sleep with those blaring alarms. Nuh-uh.” Then, she began to scan the crowd. Sakamoto knows her eyesight is super-naturally a thousand times better than his, so he trusted her to do the job, “You are blind as a bat, Sakamoto. He is right there!”
“Where?” Sakamoto followed the direction of Akao’s fingers, somewhat offended, “No way. I got up as soon as the alarms started. There is no way he got up before I did.” Every morning, Nagumo’s alarm woke him up before it could stir its intended victim. The only reason why Nagumo got up was that Sakamoto pounded his door and they tussled over how annoying Nagumo’s thirty-minutes long alarm was.
“Oh, no.” Akao sighed before she let out a frustrated growl, pinching her brows like she got a headache coming. She had been doing that a lot when it came to Nagumo.
Suddenly, Akao sauntered to the very back of the crowd, where Nagumo quietly rested his back on a tree, strangely not engrossed in conversations with any of the girls that were more than ready to pounce on him like a slab of fresh meat. It was still bizarre, to Sakamoto in those days, how Nagumo could swiftly manipulate the social fabric around him without anyone else knowing, most happily go along like puppets. Even Akao got tricked sometimes. They briefly made eye contact when Nagumo looked up, and, as swiftly as the turn of light, the other boy disappeared into the shadow.
It only pissed Akao off even more.
“BASTARD! I CAN STILL SEE YOU!”
A few heads turned to look, but they all quickly went back to their conversation when they recognized Akao. Even if they were curious, they were too afraid to hang around for more. Akao sped up, and Sakamoto followed suit. Suddenly, Akao jumped… up the tree? Sakamoto hesitated, knowing that he would bring more attention to them if he jumped without knowing where she was going. Looking up at the dark canopy, deeply confused (and too sleepy to figure this out), Sakamoto was called back to attention when he heard Akao’s whisper, “Pssttt, up here! Quick!”
Turns out, they were not so far up. Now that it was brought to his attention, Sakamoto can see the bottom of Nagumo’s scruffy sneakers, and, slightly higher up, Akao’s flip-flops she wore around the dorm. He took a few steps back and leaped, catching on the steady branch just below them, then swinging up to sit on it. Nagumo’s calves were right at his face, and he swatted it upwards just because.
Above him, Akao launched in a whispery tirade, “Was that you, dumbass? Did you set off the damn fire alarm at, fuck,” Akao turned on her phone, which shone bright white light to her chesire eyes, “4 AM? What the fuck were you doing awake?”
”Homework.” Nagumo answered sullenly.
“What homework do we even have?” Sakamoto asked, very confused. They don’t have homework—
“Not the important part of the question, come on.” Akao growled.
Nagumo sighed, “For the Disguise class. You two are not in it. It’s an elective.”
”The hell you mean ‘elective’?”
”It means classes you take as additional requirements outside of the main Assassination course, Akao-kun. You’ll have to take them starting next year, you know.”
Sakamoto swatted Nagumo’s calves again, ”Why are you taking it now?”
“Because it’s the one class I had fun in in Intelligence. They said I can finish the series as an elective.” Nagumo whined, kicking him back in the face. Sakamoto dodged. “We have homework for that one. And a practical, also tomorrow… well, when the sun rises, now.”
”Blergh, that’s why I hate those Intelligence pricks. Homeworks is sooooo boring.” Akao clicked her tongue. Her swaying on the branch was shaking the tree a little.
“And you set off the fire alarm?” Sakamoto asked, just for the measure.
”Yeah…”
”Prick, how come you didn’t answer it when I asked but only when Sakamoto asked?”
”Because he is less mean than you, Akao-kun. Try having a better attitude, next time.”
“Do you wanna fight? Wanna duke it out, right now? Macho-style?”
“And how did you set it off?” Sakamoto swatted Akao’s legs this time. He was trying to stay on topic, damn it.
“I got hungry, so I put one of those microwaveable-meal-things in the microwave.”
“And how did you manage to fuck that up?”
“Those instructions are lies, you know. You can’t cook food through in two minutes. That’s not how cooking works.”
“… Go on.”
“Well, approximately, cooking time for meat is about fifteen minutes…”
“No fucking way, dude…”
Below them, the dorm inspector’s voice rang through the crowd, inaudible at first; then, it crouched closer, rousing the mass of people below them, “… it’s charcoal now, so whoever did it better thank the firefighters, and clean up the damn microwave!”
“… So, there is that.” Nagumo added, dejectedly.
Sakamoto felt kind of bad for Nagumo. If he was forced to stay up until 4 AM after a full day of training, got hungry, and then burned it, and then triggered the fire alarm for the entire dorm, he would be pretty upset, too.
Looking up, he saw Akao massaging her temples with the balls of her hands, clearly occupied with some other concerns, “First of all, listen carefully, meat doesn't take fifteen minutes to cook, unless you have an exceptionally thick slab of chicken or something, okay? It depends on what meat you are cooking, how thick the cut is, how you are cooking it, and the amount of heat you are putting in, yeah? Got it?”
Nagumo and Sakamoto nodded. Sakamoto should write this down somewhere.
”Second of all, sweetheart, the microwavable food is already cooked. Did you know that? All you needed to do was to warm it up in the microwave, which is why two minutes is sufficient.”
”Oh…”
“There we go, that’s Cooking Basics 101 for you. Get that to count for an elective.”
Nagumo hummed quietly, not even going to jab or push at Akao for poking fun at him at every turn. With the conversation over, Akao jumped down from the branch, clearly having cooled off and wanting to return to bed. When Nagumo didn’t move — somehow in the blink of an eye has curled up in a ball — Sakamoto reached up to grab his shoes, pulling on it to tell the other boy to get down. From down here Sakamoto couldn’t see Nagumo’s face, but he is betting money that he’s pouting right now.
Maybe food will motivate him? Akao always teased that she can use food to make Sakamoto do anything, so.
“If you are hungry, you can try again. With my microwavable meal. It’s in the common dorm freezer.”
”Sakamoto-kun, I’m pretty sure that was the meal that I burned.”
Oh, Sakamoto might actually kill him.
6. Roomkeeping (Personal Maintenance)
Rich people are as fragile as glass, Akao thought with disdain. She thought that the trope of little princesses falling ill after just a drop of rain graced their forehead was something only seen on the television, but now… They were training in the forest that surrounded campus when the rain started this morning. Earlier, the little young master was already wondering if class was going to be cancelled because of the forecast, and Akao had laughed him off. Only prissy Intelligence kids worry about being out in the rain. Then, because they have classes right after, the horde of twenty-something first-years got the honor of running across campus while dripping wet, introducing environmental hazards for everyone in the main building. Apparently, it’s a ritual thing. All first-years must have at least one Yamada-sensei class in the rain like that. Fuck Yamada-sensei, honestly.
Nagumo was already quiet at lunch, but from the frowny looks Akao just assumed he was being pouty about the rain again. Sucks to sucks. She had kicked his shins, telling him to man up, and that had roused a few sentences out of the young master. But maybe she had gotten just a little more worried when Nagumo looked like he was going to fall asleep in their last class together and then skipped dinner and movie night altogether; but that was neither here nor there. Damn it, even Akira didn’t get sick playing in the rain, and they grew up in the rusty air of Tokyo’s industrial parts; how did rain in the fresh fucking forest made someone sick?
Sakamoto reckoned they should just let Nagumo sleep, but Akao had at least the foresight to get him some dinner and dropped it outside of his door. Her knocks came unanswered. She could barely sit through Terminator 2, something at the back of her head nagging at her. When she left Sakamoto’s room nearly three hours later, the plastic bag on the floor was completely untouched.
Which is why in the morning, she came to fetch Sakamoto for breakfast and, conveniently enough, to see whether Nagumo woke up at all last night. She narrowed her eyes when the box of dinner was exactly where she left it. It had gone bad by then; she grumbled as she threw it into the trash. After breakfast, Sakamoto knocked loudly on Nagumo’s door, enough that some douche across the hall woke up to yell at them, but no sound came from Nagumo’s room. Was he actually fucking dead?
“Sakamoto, I’m gonna break in through his window.”
“Is there a way to do that?”
“The fifth floor is not all that high up. I’m going to climb up and then, if he’s immobile, break the window.”
Sakamoto reminded her, “His bed is right next to the window, I think.”
“If he’s out cold, he’s not going to worry about some little scratches.”
Sakamoto decided to stand underneath and catch her (bullshit, like she was going to fall— she appreciated the sentiment anyway), while Akao, arguably the more agile one out of the two, climb up first and attempt to open the window, preferably without breaking it (booooring). The wall outside was rough, frictious concrete. With enough training, any half-ass assassin can scale it fairly easily, even as the footholds were minimal. Akao leaped and scaled a few floors, resting a little on the window sill of the fourth floor before making the final jump. As she crouched outside of Nagumo’s window, bracing on the top of the metal window frame for stability, Akao can see his sleeping form curling underneath the navy-checkered duvet, which was pulled all the way to his forehead. It took a few seconds to figure out that he was, in fact, facing the window. Akao kicked loudly on the glass panel, screaming some just for the fuck of it,
“Nagumo! Wake up! Nagumo!”
The mass underneath the duvet stirred. Impatiently, Akao pounced again,
”Nagumo! Come on!”
Nagumo peeked over his duvet with an impressive speed for an aging tortoise. His eyes widened at the speed of light seeing Akao crouching outside, her hands gripping tightly on the minimal upper edge. He leaped forward to open the window and hell, the poor little young master looked miserable.
”Why are you outside my window, Akao?”
”Because your dumbass didn’t answer your door? Because we thought you might be fucking dead?” Akao leaped inside. She tried not to wince about her muddy shoes landing on Nagumo’s bed, “What’s up with you? You look like shit.”
Nagumo’s face was simultaneously blushed red and bone-gray, his pupils more shiny than bright, glossing over like a still lake. Strands of hair stuck wetly to his forehead, which must have been still glistened with sweat, and a look around the room made Akao squint. Nothing but empty Pocky boxes littered the floor, some of them half-finished, spewing crumbles all over the wooden tiles.
“Are you done yet? Close the window. I’m cold.”
“Hold on, I’m getting Sakamoto to climb up,” Akao shrugged off her sneakers (because she was not a total brute, especially to a sick person), before glancing out of the window, “Sakamoto! Come up here! Try not to jostle the food too much!”
“‘m not hungry.”
“Shut up, little baby.” Akao scolded, turning back to see Nagumo curling up under his cocoon again. Sakamoto made quick work scaling the wall — the fucking bull that he was — and dropped the take-out bowl of congee onto her hand before jumping in, making no qualms at all about his dirty soles being all over the duvet.
“You look like shit, Nagumo.”
“Thanks.”
“Get your shoes off, oaf.” She scolded, feeling strangely like an aunt (or mother) again. She kind of disliked it.
While Sakamoto obediently did just that, she jumped off the bed — a twin-sized dorm bed is crowded enough for two on a good day — and tried to stir Nagumo out of his duvet again. “Come on, eat something. You didn’t even have dinner last night.”
“‘ate Pocky…”
“That’s no fucking food, and you know it. Stop giving me more troubles for once, won’t you?”
Nagumo violently turned to her and tried to glare, but apparently the effort was enough to send him into a coughing fit. What a fucking princess. The glare didn’t even work that well with him blushing like a peach and his hair matted like a drowning corpse, so Akao could only sighed, “What I mean is, you are being more difficult than you need to be, and it would be real fucking sweet if you let us do what you clearly know is good for you, instead of being difficult just for the sake of it, alright?”
“That’s the nicest thing Akao ever said to you, Nagumo. Better take it.”
“Shut up! I can be plenty nice!” Akao yelled at Sakamoto, before turning back to look at Nagumo, “And you, sit up and eat the congee while it’s still warm. Whenever you feel better I’m going to fucking steal your wallet.”
“You can steal it now. He probably can’t fight you.”
“Yeah, I know, and that’s no fun.”
“I can still hear you, you know.” Nagumo rasped, finally making the effort to sit up, “You two are loud. Shut up.”
“Were you seriously asleep this entire time?” Akao asked, concerned. Maybe he was near death last night or something. Maybe he wasn’t even strong enough to get to the door, and they should have broken in last night—
“On and off. I heard you. Just didn’t want to answer.”
“Prick!” Akao growled, barely repressing the urge to knock Nagumo on the top of the head, “Did you know how worried we were? We were scaling the fucking walls to get up here, you know that?”
“Didn’t know you guys can do that…” Nagumo sulked. As slowly as a snail, he finally sat up. Akao thrusted the bowl of congee onto his lap, “Sakamoto, get the tray table, please. It’s right beside your feet.”
Sakamoto looked slightly confused before he looked between the bed and the wall, where, evidently, a folded up tray table was wedged in. “You are a fucking princess.” Sakamoto awed. For him to say that basically means Nagumo was, well, a spoiled to hell and back little young master.
“Just give it to him,” Akao sighed, already tired, “Why would you be surprised that we can scale the fucking wall, dude? You can’t do that?”
“... No.”
Akao scoffed, “Fucking young master.”
“I’ll teach you when you feel better.” Sakamoto soothed, patting Nagumo’s legs after he deposited the tray table over Nagumo’s lap. Nagumo let out a small thank you noise.
“The fuck? I’m clearly the better climber.”
“You are short. The technique is different.”
“Fucking— It’s only three fucking centimeters! Three!”
“Nagumo told me that boys finish growing after the girls. So that number is, uhm, subject to change.”
“Fuck you!”
Akao and Sakamoto tussled over it a little more over the floor, not seriously or anything, Akao just really wanted to get a hit in. Nagumo had been a terrible influence on Sakamoto. Speaking off, the little young master was now obediently sipping little sips of congee, for once not even bothering to complain, as he was wont to do. Soon enough, he turned his focus onto them, even laughing a little bit, before another coughing fit hit.
Just then, as Akao managed to keep Sakamoto down with her thighs and strangle him with her forearms, she turned to ask, “Have you taken any medicine yet? Got any in your room?”
“No. Also no.”
“Good fucking god, who prepared you to live alone?” Akao bemoaned, finally letting go of her silver-haired companion, “Sakamoto, would you be a fucking dear and get the young master some flu and cold medicine? Fever reducer, too, while you are at it? Just take his wallet.”
“It’s on my desk,” Nagumo helpfully added.
“Okay.” Sakamoto stood up without protest, swiping Nagumo’s wallet with incredible pick-pocketing speed, “I’m getting the children’s kind. Tastes better.”
“Make sure to grab enough~” Akao sing-songed, sticking out her tongue as Nagumo threw them both a middle finger. When Sakamoto put on his shoes and jumped out of the window, she turned to Nagumo, “It’s rude to not answer the door when people have been pounding for, like, ten minutes, y'know? Did you hear the other douche yelling at us?”
“Didn’t want you two to come in…” Nagumo answered without looking at her eyes, his body deflating. It looked pathetic and it pissed Akao off.
“What? Have some goddamn complexes about it?”
“Could be contagious.”
“Moron. If we already didn’t get sick from the rain, how would we get sick now?” Akao squatted at Nagumo for good measure, “Besides, how do you get anyone to take care of you if you don’t let them in?”
Nagumo hummed, eyes softly closing as if ready to fall back to slumber. He slid under the tray table, pulling the duvet over him again. Akao couldn't see him behind the pale wood of the tray table when he spoke next, “By morning, the morning staff would have known. And then they’d call for Granny Kazuko.”
Akao pulled the tray table off the bed just to see his face, “Who is that?”
“My nanny.”
“You have a fucking nanny?”
“Sure do. She’s staying on until I’m fifteen.”
Akao blinked. She was flabbergasted, just a little. She was either loosely watched by her older brother or left alone when she was smart enough not to set the house on fire, and since she was somewhat sentient, was occasionally put in charge of watching Akira, not have a fucking nanny. “So what, now that you are here?”
“She can’t follow me to JCC, of course, but she’s around when I’m back at the compound.”
Compound — Akao was going to get a headache. A compound as a house? What was this, the fucking military? “Do your parents not, like, capable of raising their own children? No offense.”
Nagumo shrugged, “Everyone has nannies.”
“In whatever secret cult of rich people you were in, sure. I don’t have a nanny. Sometimes, I’m my niece’s nanny.”
“Oh, that’s strange.” Nagumo scrunched his nose, “You have any credentials?”
“What credentials? Not setting the house on fire? Capable of operating the phone? Can microwave up some lunch for the both of us? Can turn on the TV and entertain the child while I do my own thing?”
“Do you not… What do you do when you are nannying your niece?”
“It was more like hanging out with her than anything.” Akao shrugged, “If I don’t want to do my homework, I play with her. Read her books sometimes, apparently it’s good for kids or whatever. Or watch movies with her. Or play with toys. Y’know, plenty of things to keep a kid occupied; it’s not that hard. What did you do?”
“Granny Kazuko taught me how to read,” Nagumo shrugged, “and classical Japanese, and English, too. We tried to start on French, but didn’t get around to much of it before I left for JCC.”
“That sounds more like a live-in tutor than a nanny.”
“Nope, the tutor is a different person.”
“Your life sounds like a very boring nightmare, no offense.”
Nagumo hummed, his way of being mildly offended but not really, as Akao learned, “Granny Kazuko made it fun.”
“Too bad no one taught you how to take care of yourself, huh?” Akao teased. The crumbles of Pocky’s on the floor were itching her eyes. She despised having to clean up after other people that were not Akira, especially incompetent little young masters at that, but today she had to cut him some slack, “For all the good it will do you, if you die in your bed none of it would matter.”
Nagumo hummed defeatedly. Akao should let him rest while Sakamoto makes his way back with the medicine. She looked around for a plastic bag and, having found some, began to clear up the trash on the floor. Akao had no illusion that Nagumo would have a broom in his room, so when all the trash that could be picked up were picked up, she picked the lock of the custodial closet outside for the broom and dustpan to sweep around his bed. And then, disgusted by the idea of Nagumo not understanding that he needs to sweep his room, sweep up the rest of the floor, too. At least the single dorms here were not too big. By habit, she swept both under his lofted bed and under his desk, then dumped the content into the tableside trash can. She expertly made a knot, changed the can lining, and threw out the plastic bag and stowed away the cleaning equipment she stole. She hated to admit it, but once she got over the energy barrier to cleaning, menial work like this brought her an unexpected pace of peace. She can afford to let her mind run or be at ease as her muscles fall into the rhythm of the task.
When Akao returned to the room, Nagumo, despite his silence, was still awake, still staring at her, “Not asleep yet?”
“Was watching you.”
“Watching me clean?”
“I need to learn to, somehow.” Nagumo mumbled, “That’s how I learned how to use the microwave. And do laundry.”
“Just quietly watching like a creep?”
“It’s easy to not be noticed if you know how to do it.”
Akao supposed she didn’t know Nagumo was watching until he told her— she can imagine it, pouty Nagumo curling into a ball as he watch Sakamoto or the other randos on this floor joking around, expertly carrying out mundane tasks that a five year-old would be capable of doing, maneuvering electronics that maybe he has never seen in his life before school. It’s a sort of pitiful life, Akao conceded. It was a life where you are prepared for everything but how to live for yourself.
“When you get better, I’m teaching you how to clean properly. Sakamoto, too. I don’t trust boys to know how to do chores properly.”
“That’d be nice.”
“Sweeping, mopping, dusting, washing the dishes, everything.”
“Yeah… I haven’t done much of that, yet.”
“Next time you are sick, the least you can do is tell me or Sakamoto, okay?”
Nagumo hummed, slowly nodding his head. Akao could only hope that she had broken through to his thick skull.
“If I knew it was that easy, I’d have asked sooner… Like with the phone. I hated to look at it, because I didn’t know where to start.”
“You are an idiot.” Akao ruffled Nagumo’s hair. When it came up as sweaty as it looked, she threw in a towel and roughly dried it for him. She tried not to fawn when Nagumo softly sighed into her touch.
She played with her phone on Nagumo’s chair while waiting for Sakamoto to come back, who, stupidly enough, forgot all about the door and climbed up the window again with the medicine. Seeing Nagumo asleep, he softly landed on the duvet before quietly climbing off the bed. Akao should tell Nagumo to wash his beddings when he wakes from his nap.
She woke Nagumo up to take his medicine. The JCC store, of course, did not carry the baby stuff, but the medicinal tea is at least blueberry flavored. As Sakamoto prepared the tea, Akao walked their little young master through the over-the-counter medicines, and eventually, giving him a laundry list of things he should do: get out of his sweaty clothes, shower, take care of his sweaty (and muddy) bedsheets. But most of that would come later. For now, Akao and Sakamoto chat quietly, waiting for Nagumo to fall back asleep, before slipping out of the front door— silently promising to come back by dinner time.
+1. Cooking
“Alright, good job. What’s next?”
On the stove, the pot of water was successfully boiling, “… The noodle?”
“Okay.”
“And then the spice package.”
“Okay.”
“And then the vegetables?”
“What kind of vegetables?”
“Daikon, horizontally sliced; carrots, also horizontally sliced; spinach, leaves; mushroom, vertically sliced.”
“Good job. What order should they go in?”
“The root vegetables first… Before the noodles?”
“What about leaves?”
“Quickly dunk in hot water, then leave out.”
“Excellent! No notes!”
“Are you adding any meat?”
“Thinly sliced beef… So it should come in after the mushroom?”
“Great work, great work.”
“Alright, now do it, young master.”
Nagumo shooed them off to the side so as not to crowd the stove, as he, hesitantly, picked up the sliced daikon and carrots with a knife and his palm (like Akao taught him!) and dropped it into the pot (“Lower it slowly, Nagumo, so the water doesn’t splash”, Sakamoto added), and followed suit with the carrot. He waited for a minute or two before lowering the noodles into the pot, then, when it softened just so, depositing the sliced mushroom, before putting the lid on top. Sakamoto clapped quietly. Usually, Akao would let her mouth run with abandon, but even she can see the concentration furrowed deep in Nagumo’s eyes. This was serious. Next to them, the smaller pot of water began to boil. Nagumo quickly dunked the spinach leaves inside. Akao didn’t deign to give him a strainer because, well, only prissy rich people use strainer , that was just going to produce more dishes to wash, damn it, so Nagumo just has to employ his (admittedly, sufficient) chopsticks skill. When the spinach turned a bright, appetizing green, Nagumo transferred them to the bowl of cold water that Sakamoto had prepared.
When the noodle was done, he mixed in the spice packages. Sakamoto was, personally, of the opinion that they should come first, but he got out-fussed by Akao. Nagumo even pulled the vegetables to the top and arranged them to look pretty. Then, after placing the spinach on the side of the pot, he turned off the stove,
“Tada~”
Akao and Sakamoto enthusiastically clapped, “ Bravo! Most excellent!”
“Eat it up. I’m not going to cook for you idiots every day~”
“Shush. If you don’t practice regularly, your skill is going to atrophy.”
“And who taught you the word ‘atrophy’?”
“Let’s not split our hair about it.”
“Nagumo, I want a fried egg, too.”
“Wait, me too!”
“Huh? The noodles will get cold!”
“Not if you are quick about it, come on! Sakamoto, grab the eggs from the fridge. Nagumo, start the stove and the oil, like I taught you!”
“Alright, alright.”
Quickly enough — even if Akao had to put the noodles back on the stove to keep warm— they had three greasy fried eggs, just the way Sakamoto and Akao both liked it, on top of the noodles. They ate straight from the pot (“Less dishes to do”), three pairs of chopsticks weaving between and colliding against each other over the last bit of mushrooms and carrots; they took turns slurping the broth until it was all gone. Sakamoto, unexpectedly, couldn’t handle his spice at all. They left the dishes in the sink to wash later before cramming all onto Sakamoto’s bed to watch Terminator 2 again, the third time this year, and all in the world was forgotten as they piled on top of each other by the end credits, eyes closing as the night passed by.