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Apparently the universe had decided without his input or consent that Matsukawa Issei simply was not cut out for living in the city.
It was bad enough that his apartment was tiny and suffered from faulty plumbing. And that the air around here was of poor enough quality to give him spontaneous coughing fits every time he tried to brave the outdoors and exercise. And that he had yet to make friends with literally anyone whom he hadn’t known since high school and/or didn’t sell sandwiches off a cart just outside the lobby of his office building.
But this really put the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.
Matsukawa flipped up the collar of his wool coat, wishing he’d had the forethought to bring a hoodie. Or sunglasses. He’d have taken a baseball cap, even. As it were, he had no proper means of concealing the redness at the corners of his eyes, the overbright shine of yet-unshed tears (it was only a matter of time). He buried his chin deep in his scarf as he chewed viciously on his bottom lip and refused, refused to let the bitter sting of frustration overtake his entire countenance.
These were the occasions when he really hated being so damn tall; he stood out from the crowd like an angry sore thumb.
They weren’t going to hire him on, after his internship. He’d known it was a possibility, a significantly non-zero chance from the beginning. His company was the kind of place that brought on a good twice or three times as many interns as it needed, strictly speaking, and fired a large chunk of them right before their contracts ended and the company had to start actually paying for their services.
It had still been good experience, and Matsukawa’s résumé was stronger for it. He’d made some contacts in the industry as well, contacts that may be able to help him find work at a competitor now that his future lay wide open, limp and unreadable as a paperback novel left at an uncovered bus stop in the rain.
He hadn’t fucked up. So why did it feel like he had?
At least his supervisor had had the decency to tell him right before five o’clock, when he could slink away from his desk with his tail between his legs, go home and lick his wounds and prepare for the next two weeks. From the minute the list of new hires went out, Matsukawa and the rest of the unlucky ones would be dead men walking; the subject of pitying whispers from behind cubicle walls that most definitely did not block any sound whatsoever, despite what his co-workers seemed to believe.
He swiped at his eyes. The sleeve of his wool coat felt scratchy on his face, the tender skin around his eyes itching as his tears dried. Fuck. This couldn’t have waited another fifteen minutes? Nope, his body wanted to cry, and the fact that he was still in public was apparently none of its concern. Matsukawa ducked behind the next-tallest person on the sidewalk, pacing his steps so that the man’s hat would conceal as much of his face as possible.
The city was horrible. Unforgiving. Cruel, even. He didn’t want to work here anyway, they could have their stupid paid positions. He needed fresh air and space. Maybe the sea, and not the grimy, iron harbour that ringed the shoreline here like soap scum. Open, blue waves and a salty breeze that maybe didn’t smell like rotting seaweed drying on the breakwaters. Matsukawa sniffed (he held out for as long as he could but his nose was starting to refuse the intake of oxygen), shoved his hands deeper in his pockets, and tried with all of his mental might to push everything to the side and concentrate on the image of slowly rocking waves and clear blue sky. It helped, a little.
But his reverie was broken.
By a cat-call.
Oh yes. Someone behind him had just wolf-whistled. He snuck a glance, hoping that the guy was targeting someone else, not really thinking it was directed at himself at first because honestly, who cat-calls a dude?
“Nice backpack, sweetheart,” the guy said, and he was definitely giving Matsukawa the once-over that translated into yeah, I’d tap that.
Matsukawa was never, ever, EVER letting Oikawa buy him a bag again.
He slowed to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk, baffling even himself. Matsukawa supposed that, if he were used to this kind of thing, he’d have sped off in the opposite direction as quickly as his legs could carry him. But the novelty, the sheer audacity of this obnoxious excuse for a human being who was verbally invading his space had brought him to a halt, and all of the anger and disappointment and general shittiness that had been this godawful day boiled up from the pit of his stomach and flooded his brain until he saw red.
Matsukawa watched with almost a detached, clinical interest as the stranger approached him. It was as near to an out-of-body experience as he’d ever had. Was this actually happening to him right now? Was he actually about to get propositioned in the middle of the street, in tears, by some guy with pink hair and oh good lord, was that Starbucks in his hand?
The stranger broke into a suggestive smirk, his gaze drifting down to Matsukawa’s shoulders, his chest. “Hey gorgeous, where you headed?”
Matsukawa blinked. This was the part where he was supposed to respond, his brain reminded him. He tugged the scarf off his face and faced the guy head-on.
“Excuse me?” His voice was a bit rough, largely due to the stubborn knot in his throat, and it lent him a blessedly ominous rasp. The stranger’s eyes made it back to Matsukawa’s face, and something in his expression changed but Matsukawa was talking before he had a chance to find his words.
“That is none of your fucking business,” Matsukawa spat, “you unbelievable asshole. You can put away the fucking swagger because I am not intimidated by you, you diminutive piece of human excrement, and even if I were, I wouldn’t be fucking attracted to you. No, I’d be running away as fast as I possibly could because you are a creepy piece of shit and I am having literally the worst day I’ve ever had and I do not, I do NOT need this right now. So kindly fuck off and leave me alone.”
At this point the stranger had taken to gaping like a fish, and Matsukawa had the sudden and powerful urge to slam his coffee cup out of his hand and onto the concrete. But that was verging on assault, and he really just wanted the hell out of there so he could lose his shit in peace.
“Are you okay?” the guy asked hesitantly, the way one might address a tiger who had escaped its cage at the zoo and was converging on its pink-haired, Starbucks-toting prey.
Matsukawa scrubbed furiously at his eyes, which were threatening to spill over. “No, definitely not okay. Which is precisely why you need to get the hell away from me.”
“Okay this is going to sound weird, and I get it if you want to say no, but I know a good place to cry and it’s only like a block from here. If you need to, um, let that out or something.”
“Where, your unmarked van?” Matsukawa snapped.
“No, although I probably can’t blame you for saying that.” The guy studied his shoes, suddenly shy. “My friend works at a used bookstore, and the fourth floor is all military history and shit no one cares about. I go there sometimes when I need a place to be alone. I don’t think he’d mind, anyway the choice is yours dude.”
Matsukawa considered his options. There was a good chance this was going to turn into a really creepy venture, but all things considered, could this day realistically get any worse? And the pink-haired guy actually did seem somewhat remorseful.
And Matsukawa really could use a good cry.
“Fine,” he mumbled, “but if you shank me in a back alley somewhere, I’ll have you know, my roommates will notice that I’m missing and call the cops on your ass.”
“Okay, I may be a bit of an asshole on occasion but I swear to you, I'm just trying to help. It’s over here,” he said, pointing back the way they had come.
The bookstore was on Matsukawa’s usual route home, and yet he’d never actually noticed its existence before. Probably because it was situated directly above a sex shop that was, in comparison, much more salient. Starbucks guy led him up one narrow, creaky set of stairs, then another, and Matsukawa followed his back through winding floor-to-ceiling shelves of self-help and philosophy and do-it-yourself woodworking books until they opened out onto a little landing and a spiral staircase. The peeling paint had been worn off the handrail entirely, and flakes of it collected on stacks of old books piled underneath the stairs.
Starbucks gestured with both hands and a coffee cup toward the final staircase. “Doubt anyone’s up there, you can usually hear the floorboards. But I can take a look if you want, I’m pretty good at scaring people away.”
Matsukawa let out a tiny laugh, in spite of himself. “Yeah, I can see that.”
Starbucks shot him a toothy grin, far more endearing than the first one he’d witnessed. “As long as you don’t hold it against me.”
With a deep breath to steel himself against the possibility of the stairs collapsing under his weight, Matsukawa climbed up to the fourth floor. It was much smaller than the second and third, with a couple of tiny windows that overlooked the flat roofs of the neighbouring buildings. There was a fine layer of dust coating everything in sight. Someone had been rifling through the top book on a pile of German-language memoirs; Matsukawa could make out the fingerprints.
So this is where they kept the outcasts, Matsukawa thought to himself. Fitting that he should end up here, in his state.
He settled in the cleanest corner, between ornithology encyclopedias and seventeenth-century literary criticism, and let himself loosen. They came slowly at first, the sobs, then all at once, and he dipped his head into his lap and shuddered through it.
He’d wanted that job. Badly. And this was his moment to grieve its loss. But there would be others, potentially better opportunities out there. One door closes and another opens, and all that.
He’d be a mess today, and that was okay. He was here, blissfully alone in the middle of a metropolis, crying his eyes out the way people probably did every single day at inconvenient times in inconvenient locations. Later, he’d go home and tell Oikawa and Iwaizumi what happened, and they would wrap him in blankets and tell him how amazing he was, and Iwaizumi would cook, and they’d pile on top of each other on their two-person couch and watch The Bachelor at Oikawa’s insistence and everything would feel a whole lot better.
He was glad he didn’t have to have his personal pity party in front of his roommates. Having it in front of complete strangers, well, that wasn’t exactly ideal. But for all of his assholery, Starbucks seemed to understand on some level. Maybe he’d curled up in this very same corner too.
Matsukawa heard footsteps on the floor beneath him, pottering around between the shelves. He tried to get his breathing under control.
“Oh, sorry, you can’t go up there.” That was Starbucks’ voice.
“Why not?” The other voice sounded gruff and humourless, the kind of voice that might accompany a really thick mustache and a monocle.
Starbucks sighed heavily. “Flooding. Yeah, real bad flooding. Books floating around, water up to your knees. Not pretty.”
Pause. Matsukawa sniffed again.
“Wouldn’t it be coming down the stairs, if the top floor were flooded?”
“We built a dam,” said Starbucks, blithely. “The Encyclopedia Britannica was dense enough to keep it in. No offense to the British.”
Matsukawa stuffed a sleeve in his mouth, fighting the absurd desire to break into teary-eyed hysterics.
“Is there someone up there?”
“Uh, no, that’s the raccoons. They, um, caused it. You know, chewed through the pipes. Nasty stuff. We tried getting rid of them with a broom but they wrestled it from our hands with their tiny, pointy claws. I think they're planning a coup of the entire store, it’s absolute anarchy.”
“Young man, I do not appreciate being toyed with.”
“Tell that to the raccoons.”
Matsukawa, who had up until that point been valiantly holding his breath through the convulsive urge to laugh, broke. He tipped back against the bookcase and howled with laughter, until his face hurt, until he couldn’t find it in him to resume his previous state of hopelessness. Someone somewhere was playing a cosmic joke on him and fuck it, he was along for the ride.
Once he was sure his face had dried and felt the redness going down, Matsukawa dusted off his pants and made his way back down the stairs. The other customer had left, no doubt to complain to someone about the riffraff blocking the stairway. Starbucks was still there, however, seated on the bottom step and reading a manga. His coffee cup was perched on a shelf beside him, and from there Matsukawa could make out part of his name. Something–hiro, it said in a hurried scrawl of black ink. Matsukawa tried to peer around to get a closer look, but Starbucks turned.
“Feeling better?”
“Yeah, loads. Thank you.”
“Not a problem. But hey, keep it between us, okay? This place is the city’s best-kept secret for a reason, I make good use of that fourth floor and I don’t need everyone and their mother up there when I need it.”
Matsukawa smirked. “Roger that. What are you reading?”
“What, this?” –-hiro turned the book over in his hands. “Vampiric Love Saga, apparently. No clue what’s supposed to be happening, there’s a guy doing magic and the girl is dead but also not dead and someone who I think is supposed to be her sister is revenge-fucking the guy who murdered her. I’m only ten pages in, too. This shit moves fast.”
“That’s volume seventeen,” Matsukawa pointed out.
Starbucks cocked his head, re-read the cover. “Oh. No wonder they didn’t have any exposition.”
“You’re weird,” said Matsukawa, shifting his backpack on his shoulder. The stairs creaked underneath him. “Also, can I get down before this entire thing caves in on itself?”
“Hm? Oh, sure.” He stood, swiping the empty cup off the shelf as he let Matsukawa pass (his fingers covered the name on the side – damn). “And thank you for that, I consider weirdness a compliment.”
“You’re very welcome.” Matsukawa glanced at the exit. “I’m gonna go.”
“Right.” Starbucks hesitated, seemed to want to say something more. Maybe hit on Matsukawa again. But he changed his mind, opting for a slight incline of the shoulders as a farewell. Matsukawa gave him a half-wave that sort of turned into an awkward salute, and turned on his heel to go.
“Hey, wait! Backpack!”
Matsukawa paused on the stairs. “Yeah?”
“Whatever it is you’re upset about, don’t let them get you down, okay? You seem like a good guy, you’ll be alright, you know…” Starbucks trailed off, suddenly very interested in the floorboards.
Matsukawa smiled, crookedly. “Yeah, I probably will be.” And then he descended the steps, out of sight.
Both of his roommates were home by the time he made it back. Matsukawa barely got his shoes off before Oikawa was already dragging him into the conversation (read: argument).
“Mattsun!” Oikawa chirped from the kitchen table, smartphone in hand, “please tell me the world won’t cease to exist if I accidentally forget to put the laundry in the dryer.”
“It’s not going to cause the apocalypse, Trashkawa. It will cause mold though.”
“Iwa-chan, it was only three hours! Three hours is not nearly enough time to grow cultures of anything!”
“It was only three hours because I found it sitting in the washer, dumbass!”
“Guys,” Matsukawa said, holding his hands up, palms out. That gesture had become a thing of power in their household, a power that so far only Matsukawa, as the perpetual neutral third party, could wield. Iwaizumi cocked an eyebrow but fell silent, and Oikawa followed suit.
“Iwaizumi, he’s right, it takes like a day at least for that to get nasty. Oikawa, you’re going to set yourself phone reminders next time. Lots of them. End of discussion. So, who wants to hear about my day?”
Oikawa propped one elbow on the table and gestured for Matsukawa to sit. “I do. How was your day, Mattsun?”
“Awful, then worse, then really fucking awful, but somehow okay by the end of it.”
“What happened?” Iwaizumi asked, looking up from the tomatoes he was chopping. Iwaizumi had one of those big blocks of proper chefs’ knives that each looked like they could neatly lop off a limb in one go. The fact that he used murder tools for such unbearably domestic purposes somehow suited him as a person in a way Matsukawa couldn’t fully articulate.
“I didn’t get the permanent position.” Matsukawa let his head rest on the vinyl tabletop. Oikawa made some sort of despondent cooing noise and patted him on the shoulder. Iwaizumi’s feet shifted, deliberating on what to do to best provide support. Matsukawa watched his legs as he rinsed the tomato goop off his hands, dried them, and came in for a backwards hug.
“Why not?” Oikawa asked. “You were so good! And you did all that overtime, I don’t get it.”
“I was good. But some people were better I guess.”
“Ridiculous,” Oikawa stated. “They clearly don’t deserve you.”
Iwaizumi let go, ruffling Matsukawa’s hair before he turned back to the cooking. “So what happens now? You’re not moving back home, are you?”
“Whaaat?” Oikawa looked horrified. “Mattsun, no, you can’t leave! Who’s going to save me from our Neanderthal of a roommate?”
“I resent that, you ass.”
“It’s a figure of speech, Iwa-chan.”
“An offensive figure of speech.”
“I’m not moving,” Matsukawa cut in. “I can find other work here.”
“Oh thank god,” said Oikawa, and he slumped dramatically in his chair. Iwaizumi made a face, and chopped harder. “So was that the really fucking awful part of the story?”
“No, actually, that was the awful. The worse was when I started tearing up in public-”
“Oh, Mattsun-”
“I’m fine now, Oikawa, it’s okay. That’s not the worst of it. The really fucking awful part was when I yelled at a random stranger for wolf-whistling at me while I was busy tearing up in public.”
Iwaizumi looked over, eyes wide. “Are you serious?”
“I am.”
Oikawa snorted. “Wow. Rude. So you yelled at him?”
“I did. I gave him a sound talking-to. That I believe went something along the lines of ‘kindly fuck off and leave me alone.’”
“Good for you,” said Iwaizumi, waving what could only be described as a broadsword in one tomato-ey hand.
“What did he do?” Oikawa had put down his phone, which must have meant he was really, really invested in the outcome of this story.
“He asked if I was okay, which I wasn’t, and then he offered to take me to his friend’s bookshop because they have a fourth floor and it’s a good place to be alone if you need to cry.”
Iwaizumi stopped chopping. “Wait what?”
“Did you go?” Oikawa was leaning across the table now.
“Yeah, I went. And it was. A good place to cry, that is.”
Iwaizumi crossed his arms. “Let me get this straight. Some creepy dude propositions you, sees that you’re upset and therefore vulnerable, and then tries to get you alone… and you went!? Mattsun, the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Yeah,” Oikawa said, “I have to agree with Iwa-chan on this one, that’s pretty sketch.”
“Even for him, Mattsun,” said Iwaizumi, gesturing at Oikawa with his culinary death-blade. "That’s saying something.”
“Iwa-chan!”
“Just a figure of speech, Oikawa.”
“Guys, it was fine, alright! He didn’t try anything, he even fended off the other customers so I could have a moment to myself. It was chivalrous, if anything. I mean, okay, he was an asshole at first and his subsequent actions don’t change that, but by the end he was actually pretty sweet.”
“You know what, fine.” Iwaizumi went back to his overly-violent chopping. “If you like him, Mattsun, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Oikawa squirmed in his chair. “So did you get his number?”
“No. I didn’t even get his full name. The second kanji was Hiro, that’s all I saw.”
“Hiro? That’s cute. What’s he like?”
“Um, about your height and build, good-looking. Pink hair, that was a weird one. Not bright pink either, like a muted pink, almost brown.”
Oikawa looked slightly ill. “Hiro, you said?”
“Yeah. Why? You know him?”
Oikawa didn’t answer, he was busy scrolling through his phone so fast his thumbs were going to catch fire. So much for that conversation.
Matsukawa turned to watch Iwaizumi dump a pile of vegetables into a wok. “I know he goes to that bookstore on a semi-regular basis, that’s pretty much all I have but I guess I could track him down from that. Not too many people in this city have pink hair, at least.”
“This him?” Oikawa shoved his phone in Matsukawa’s face. He leaned back a little to look at the photo.
“Yeah, it is. So you do know him?”
“Well…”
Iwaizumi groaned. “You slept with him, didn’t you?”
“Uh.”
“Oh goddammit Shittykawa, keep it in your pants!”
“Hey! How was I supposed to know six months ago that Mattsun would also want in on that! It’s not my fault, he was drunk, I was drunk, that’s pretty much all there is to it. Iwa-chan stop giving me that look, it was only once!”
Iwaizumi continued to give him that look.
“Okay, well, one night. Maybe more than once… shut up Iwa-chan!”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“No, you didn’t. You can judge me just as well in perfect silence, can’t you?”
“Well,” Matsukawa cut in, “that’s certainly going to make things awkward if I invite him back here. Oikawa, does your one-night-stand have a name? Something with –hiro in it, perhaps?”
“Hanamaki Takahiro. I’m on his Instagram page, if you want to see.”
Matsukawa scrolled through Starbucks’ (Hanamaki’s) photos. There were a lot of him out with friends at clubs, bars, on hikes, on a boat. A few more were of his dog, a gorgeous irish setter. So he was a dog person, Matuskawa thought, sighing a little bit internally.
He sighed externally when got to the gym selfies.
“If it helps with your decision-making,” Oikawa said, “he’s a fantastic lay. Ow, ow, ow, stop, Iwa-chan, ow!”
The kid at the counter looked about twenty years old, and bored as hell. He didn’t even look up from his novel as Matsukawa laid his purchase down on the counter.
“550 yen,” he said, without any inflection whatsoever. His tone was flat enough to border on creepy. Matsukawa dug a few notes out of his pocket, and his change was returned to him perfectly, despite the fact that the kid never looked up once.
Matsukawa steeled himself for potential awkwardness. “Actually, could I ask a favour?”
“No bathrooms, try the McDonalds,” was the automatic response.
“No, I was actually hoping you could give this to one of your regulars. Hanamaki Takahiro.”
Finally, he glanced up. “You bought Makki a shoujo manga?”
Okay, cross that off the list of things Hanamaki might potentially be interested in. “Inside joke,” Matsukawa said, recovering smoothly. He pulled a pad of sticky notes out of his coat pocket and stuck the first one on the inside cover. The kid eyed him suspiciously.
“Please,” Matsukawa said, “could you just give it to him?”
“Do it yourself,” he said, and nodded toward the staircase.
Hanamaki was heading up the stairs, shaking droplets of water off his umbrella and onto the floor. “Kunimi, please tell me I haven’t walked all the way here in a goddamn monsoon just to be told that my books haven’t come in- oh. Hi.”
“Hi,” said Matsukawa.
“Is that…”
“It’s for you.” Matsukawa held out the book.
Hanamaki took it. “Vampiric Love Saga, volume one. You know I don’t actually read this kind of thing…”
“Shut up, I was trying to be cute. Open it.”
Hanamaki found the sticky note and pulled it out. “Dear Starbucks,” he read, “thanks for the fourth floor, and for turning out to be a pretty decent guy. Sincerely, Backpack.” He smiled. “Is that your phone number?”
“Yes, that’s usually what a string of ten numbers will turn out to be.”
“So I’m not going to get a pizza place if I call this?”
“Nope. Maybe a sandwich shop. Or an aquarium. Possibly the DMV.”
“I’ll make sure to ask for Backpack. By the way, I have an actual name.”
“He knows,” said Kunimi from behind the counter.
“Oh do you?” Hanamaki looked oddly pleased. “Been checking up on me?”
“You’ve met my roommate,” Matsukawa said simply. Best leave that little nugget of information for later. “I’m Matsukawa Issei.”
“Matsukawa,” he said, like he was trying out the feel of it on his tongue. “Anyone ever call you Mattsun?”
“All the time. So, you hungry? Want to get food with me?”
“Only if it’s right next door, there’s no way I’m going back out in that weather. Hamburgers all right with you?”
Matsukawa pretended to deliberate. “You think they have cheese-filled hamburg steak?”
“I think they might.”
“I am so in, you have no idea.”
Hanamaki grinned wide, showing his dimples. Matsukawa melted just a tiny bit. “So, my appalling use of the wolf-whistle actually worked, huh?”
“Oh, I still haven’t forgiven you for that.”
“What if I pay for your dinner?”
“Then I will consider it. But I make no promises.”
“Eh, I’ll take what I can get. Lead the way, Backpack.”
“Starbucks.”
“Rude.”
“Occasional asshole.”
“Hey!”
“Your words, not mine.”
"No, I believe yours were 'diminutive piece of human excrement?'"
"Well."
"Diminutive? Really?"
"You're shorter than me, at least."
"You're a fucking redwood, that's why."
"Yeah, and you seem to like 'em tall."
"Never said I didn't."
As the door swung shut behind them, Kunimi sighed. As if one Hanamaki weren't enough.