Chapter Text
The keycard stuck halfway through the slot, because of course it did. Seiya jiggled the plastic rectangle with more force than necessary, muttering obscenities that would’ve made his grandmother box his ears. Down the hall, someone’s bass-heavy playlist thumped through cinderblock walls, competing with the rhythmic squeak of his suitcase wheel catching on every third tile. The fluorescent lights hummed their judgment overhead.
He’d memorized the housing office’s apology email during the train ride here—unprecedented demand, last-minute adjustments—but the reality still punched him in the throat when the door finally clicked open. Three things hit him at once: the sharp tang of citrus-scented disinfectant, the chemical burn of new polyester bedding, and the sight of Yoshinori Masakado sitting cross-legged in a halo of crushed chip bags.
“Oh! Hey, roomie.”
Seiya’s fingers spasmed around the door handle. Masakado held a guitar pick in one hand and a flaming hot Cheeto in the other, the orange dust staining his thumb the same shade as his threadbare tank top. A constellation of textbooks fanned out around him—Introduction to Sheet Theory splayed open across a pillow, Modern Japanese Music Industry propping up a desiccated potted cactus.
“You’re…” Seiya’s voice cracked. He cleared it, staring at the nameplate beside the door. His own surname glared back in fresh vinyl lettering, paired with characters that absolutely should’ve read ‘Joichiro Fujiwara’ from the baseball team. Not ‘Yoshinori Masakado.’ Not the human personification of a schnauzer who’d once tried to microwave instant ramen without adding water.
Masakado scrunched his chip bag into a ball. “Heard some people got reshuffled last minute.” The pick rolled through his fingers as he spoke, red squares chasing blue. “They found black mold in East Wing. Kinda fun, right? Like surprise mystery box living.”
The word fun curdled in Seiya’s throat. His grip tightened on the suitcase handle—a beaten Samsonite covered in airport security tags from his semester abroad. Across the room, Masakado’s own luggage yawned open to reveal a Tetris puzzle of XLR cables, protein powder canisters, and what appeared to be an entire shoebox of loose AA batteries.
“Wait.” Seiya backpedaled into the hallway. Checked the room number. 824B, same as the housing email. Same as the keycard now slipping through his sweaty fingers. When he bent to retrieve it, his glasses slid down his nose, warping the floor’s checkerboard pattern into a nauseating optical illusion.
When he straightened, Masakado stood in the doorway. Close. Too close, leaning against the frame with one arm stretched overhead. Seiya caught the faint musk of cedarwood deodorant over stale snacks.
“Yep,” Masakado said, popping the ‘p’ as he plucked the keycard from Seiya’s frozen hand. “This is definitely your stop.” His grin revealed a fleck of paprika-red seasoning on his canine tooth. “C’mon, I don’t bite. Unless you steal my dumplings again like during midterms.”
Heat flooded Seiya’s cheeks. “That was one time. And you left them unlabeled in the—”
“Common fridge! Exactly!” Masakado tossed the solved guitar pick onto his bed—bouncing on his pillow to disappear into the sheets, Seiya noted automatically—and gestured grandly at the cramped quarters. A bunk bed beside the window framing the parking lot’s sodium-vapor glow. Someone had already duct-taped a ‘Princess Mononoke’ poster over the fire sprinkler.
Seiya’s suitcase wheels left skid marks on the linoleum as he dragged it inside. He focused on practicalities—the warped closet door that wouldn’t fully close, the mini-fridge buzzing like an angry hornet’s nest, the single outlet already overloaded with a daisy chain of power strips. Anything but the way Masakado’s socks didn’t match (one striped, one dotted) or how his collarbone caught the light when he stretched.
“So.” The chip bag rustled as Masakado crumpled it into a makeshift basketball. Swish—right into the trash can by Seiya’s desk. “Top bunk’s all yours if you want it. Bottom’s got better outlets for phone charging though.” He patted the mattress below him, sending a dust mote spiraling through a sunbeam that had no business being so poetic this early in the afternoon.
Seiya’s throat clicked when he swallowed. “I’ll take top.”
“Nice! Vertical supremacy.” Masakado rolled onto his stomach, chin propped in hands, watching as Seiya hoisted his luggage onto the rickety ladder. “Need help with—”
“No.” The zipper snarled when Seiya yanked it open. He willed his fingers not to shake as he pulled out meticulously folded sweaters. All neutral tones. All arranged by fabric thickness. The silence stretched taut between them, broken only by Masakado humming the ‘Cowboy Bebop’ theme around a mouthful of gum.
“Top’s fine.” Seiya yanked his suitcase toward the ladder, knee-jostling be damned. “Less risk of you drooling on me.”
Masakado let out a snort-laugh, sharp and sudden, like a soda fizzing over after being shaken too hard. “No promises. I sleep like a St. Bernard in a snowbank.” He flopped onto the lower mattress, making the entire structure quake. A single cheeto orange flake clung to his collarbone.
Seiya had barely started unpacking when a foil wrapper crinkled. A protein bar arced up from below and hit his chest.
He caught it purely on reflex—chocolate strawberry crunch, his favorite brand from the campus convenience store.
“Breakfast of champions,” Masakado said, already unwrapping his own bar with teeth. “Or dinner. Or… whatever meal this is.” He squinted at the clock radio blinking 3:47 PM in angry red numerals. “Housing chaos threw off my snack schedule.”
Seiya turned the bar over in his hands. The expiration date had been carefully underlined in black marker. Beneath it, someone had drawn a tiny smiley face. His chest did something inconvenient.
“You…” He cleared the thickness from his throat. “Remembered these?”
Masakado paused mid-chew. “Duh. You practically lived on them during finals week.” He nodded at Seiya’s arms full of charcoal-gray sweaters. “Though I thought you’d have upgraded to, I dunno, meal prepping in glass containers by now. With little dividers for quinoa.”
“Quinoa gives me gas.”
“Noted.”
Their eyes met for half a heartbeat—long enough for Seiya to register the faint scar through Masakado’s left eyebrow, the one he’d gotten during that ill-advised skateboarding incident sophomore year (blame Ken Kojima and his excellent bright ideas)—before a shrill ringtone shattered the moment. Masakado rolled off the bed with cartoonish grace, answering his flip phone with a “Yo, sensei! Yeah, yeah, lab sign-ups are… wait, today?”
As Masakado rummaged through his disaster of a backpack, Seiya pressed a palm against his chest. His heartbeat thrummed against his ribs, wild and insistent as a moth trapped behind glass. Through the open window drifted the distant chatter of students hauling mini-fridges up stairwells, the metallic shriek of bed frames being rearranged, the citrus-disinfectant sting of new beginnings.
Somewhere beneath the chaos, quiet as a cat burglar, hope took root.
At some point later, it started to rain, a sudden percussion against the window AC unit. Masakado returned to folding shirts inside-out—probably just to occupy himself with something—humming resurrected itself in the form of a love ballad from that mecha romance anime everyone pretended not to binge. His bare foot tapped rhythm against the bed frame, rattling the metal frame with each tap. Seiya pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to focus on arranging his textbooks by subject rather than the distracting rhythm below.
Seiya focused on stacking graph paper notebooks. Neat right angles. Predictable grids. Safe.
But his hands betrayed him, aligning each spine precisely two centimeters from the desk edge. When had he become this person? Last semester’s organic chemistry lab partner certainly hadn’t inspired military-grade stationery alignment.
Then again, his lab partner hadn’t once shown up shirtless to review sessions.
No, no, no, no.
But the memory unfolded anyway—that sweltering April afternoon when the lecture hall’s AC died. Thirty-eight students melting into puddles of sweat and regret. Masakado sauntering to the whiteboard in a tank top that clung like a second skin, dry-erase marker poised like a rapier.
“So if glycolysis were a nightclub,” he’d begun, biceps flexing as he drew a dubious stick figure holding a martini glass labeled ATP, “the mitochondria would be the bouncer deciding who gets into the electron transport chain VIP lounge.”
Seiya had choked on his iced coffee. Three people patted his back while Masakado beamed like he’d discovered cold fusion.
Now, folding socks into origami swans he’d never admit to practicing, Seiya cursed his hypothalamus. This is fine. He’s just a guy. A very hot guy. With no concept of boundaries. But it’s fine.
Across the room, Masakado attempted to balance a textbook on his head while arranging pens by color. Failed. Tried again.
“Shouldn’t you be at band practice?” The words escaped before Seiya could sterilize them.
Masakado's head snapped up, sending the textbook tumbling to the floor. "Nah, we're on hiatus. Creative differences." He made air quotes with orange-dusted fingers. "Inaba wants to go full jazz fusion, but Kojiken's obsessed with this Norwegian death metal band that uses, like, whale sounds or something."
"How does one creatively differ on whale sounds?" Seiya immediately regretted engaging.
"Right?!" Masakado bounced to his feet and leaned against the bunk’s ladder, the mattress above creaking in protest. "That's exactly what I said!" He tumbled forward until he was sitting cross-legged at the foot of Seiya's bed ladder. "It's like trying to put wasabi on ice cream. Theoretically possible but fundamentally wrong."
Seiya paused mid-sock-fold, suddenly aware that his carefully constructed wall of disinterest had a Masakado-shaped hole in it. "I suppose some combinations are just... incompatible."
"Nah, just unexpected." Masakado's eyes lit up, catching the fading daylight. "But I guess, once Sano-chan enters university, we’ll be more stable again, I won’t rest until I have him as our drummer again.”
Seiya nearly dropped his sock. "Sano-chan? As in Masaya Sano? The music prodigy who composed for the National Orchestra at sixteen?"
"The very same!" Masakado grinned, then tipped backward onto the floor with a contented sigh, arms stretched like he was claiming territory—more grounded now than theatrical, as if the floor itself was familiar. arms stretched. "He's my childhood friend. Almost like a cousin? Something like that. Our grandmothers played mahjong together too and used to bet family heirlooms when they got drunk on plum wine."
"That's..." Seiya searched for an appropriate word that wasn't 'terrifying,' "...unconventional."
"Family tradition. Speaking of which—" Masakado rolled onto his side, propping his head on one hand, "—why are you folding your socks into cranes?"
Heat rushed to Seiya's face. He glanced down at the half-formed origami bird in his hands, its cotton wings twisted at awkward angles. "I'm not."
"You absolutely are. That's the third one I've watched you make."
"It's efficient packing," Seiya muttered, stuffing the evidence into his drawer.
"It's adorable is what it is." Masakado's voice held no mockery, just a warm curiosity that made Seiya's stomach flip. "Do you do the little swans too? My sister makes those with napkins at family dinners."
Before Seiya could formulate a dignified response, his phone chimed from somewhere beneath his pile of neatly folded t-shirts. He fumbled for it, grateful for the distraction, only to feel his soul leave his body when he saw the message.
From: Stupid Jo
> Heyyyyy~ Housing office says they mixed up our assignments, or something, idk lol? Something about black mold and last-minute changes, dunno if I believe that. I'm in 218A with Ohashi. I will gain weight with how amazing his food is. You got stuck with Masakado, right? Rough break, thought we could have fun together as roomies this semester. He snores but makes killer ramen apparently. Good luck! :P
Seiya stared at the message until the backlight dimmed. His thumb hovered over the keyboard, paralyzed between typing "Help me" or "It's fine." Neither felt quite right. The truth—that Masakado was somehow both the most irritating and magnetic person he'd ever met—remained locked behind his teeth.
"Everything okay?" Masakado asked, suddenly closer than before, peering up at Seiya's bed. "You just went pale as my grandmother's rice porridge."
"It's nothing, just Jo." Seiya locked his phone, sliding it into his pocket. "Says they mixed up the housing assignments."
“Ah, right.”
Seiya’s phone pinged again, and another message appeared from Jo.
From: Stupid Jo
> try not to stare too much at the poor dude thou ;)
> not until you’ve admitted you’re down so bad for him :P
> funny how fate plays out, right? :D
Seiya stared at his phone screen. He stood abruptly, chair screeching protest as he bumped into it. “Bathroom.”
“Second door past the fire extinguisher that may or may not be expired!”
The hallway fluorescents buzzed like angry hornets. Seiya locked himself in a stall patterned with decades of graffiti—crude hearts encircling initials, philosophical debates about cafeteria meatloaf.
His reflection in the metal soap dispenser warped into something panicked and cartoonish.
At the sink, he cranked the faucet. Cold water splashed his wrists. Someone had scratched ‘ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER’ beneath the mirror. He glared at his dripping face.
“One semester,” he told his flushed twin. The words bounced off mint-green tiles. “Eighteen weeks. One hundred twenty-six days.”
From down the hall, muffled through three layers of drywall: “Seiya-kun! You want curry or mapo tofu? The rice cooker has a *cake* function!”
His forehead met cool glass. The mirror fogged where his breath hit. Somewhere beyond the biology building, a skateboard clattered against concrete. Laughter pooled in stairwells.
“Survival,” he whispered, “not optimal conditions.”
The reflection didn’t look convinced.
Seiya emerged from the bathroom clutching the edges of his composure like fraying rope. The dorm room smelled abruptly of cumin and burnt toast—Masakado had plugged in the scavenged rice cooker atop a precarious tower of biology textbooks, steam curling around a sticker of Pikachu riding a skateboard.
“You missed the grand unveiling,” Masakado said, wrist-deep in the appliance’s innards. A screwdriver protruded from his mouth like a chrome cigar. “Previous owner left half a cup of ancient jasmine inside. Fossilized, probably.”
“And you’re… cooking in it anyway?” Seiya hovered near his bunk, calculating the minimum safe distance between himself and the boy currently licking residue off his thumb.
“Sterilized the hell out of it.” Masakado snapped the lid shut with a mechanic’s flourish. His T-shirt rode up as he stretched to plug it in, revealing a strip of sunburned skin above sweatpants slung dangerously low. “Protein bars are survival rations. This—” He gestured to the chugging machine, “—is civilization.”
Seiya focused on aligning his pens perpendicular to his notebook. The geometric precision steadied him. “You realize we’re not allowed hot plates in here.”
“Technically it’s a multi-functional grain hydrator.”
“That’s not a real thing.”
“It is now.” Masakado tossed a packet of curry roux across the room. Seiya caught it on reflex, the foil crinkling loud in his palm. “Found it taped to the bottom of my desk drawer. Fate wants us well-seasoned.”
The overhead light caught gold flecks in Masakado’s eyes when he grinned. Seiya’s throat went dry. He busied himself arranging highlighters by color spectrum, mentally reciting the periodic table. Hydrogen, helium, lithium—stop staring at his collarbone—beryllium, boron…
“So.” Masakado flopped onto the lower bunk, making the entire frame shudder. “Top bunk guy gets first shower privileges. House rules.”
“That’s arbitrary.”
“All hierarchies are. Want to arm wrestle for it?” He flexed, bicep swelling under ink of a cartoon squid holding a lightsaber.
Seiya’s clipboard clattered to the floor. “I’ll take the showers.”
“Smart man.” Masakado rolled to his feet in one fluid motion, invading Seiya’s personal space to peer at his meticulously labeled storage cubes. “You also alphabetize your socks?”
“By fiber content.”
“Dangerous.” A calloused finger tapped the ‘COTTON/BAMBOO BLEND’ bin. “What happens if you get a polyester pair?”
“They go in the donation pile.”
Masakado’s laugh exploded like popcorn—warm, sudden, filling every corner of the room. Seiya’s sternum vibrated with it. “Remind me to buy you argyle,” he said, ruffling through a crate of mismatched kitchenware. “Synthetic fibers. See how long you last.”
The rice cooker beeped. Steam billowed upward, fogging a window already streaked with pollen. Masakado pried the lid open with a victorious “ha!” and began layering ingredients with the concentration of a lab chemist—rice, water, a handful of dried shrimp that made Seiya’s nose wrinkle.
“You’re really going to eat that?”
“Street vendor near my old place used these. Adds umami.” Masakado sprinkled paprika with a magician’s flair. “Trust me.”
Seiya didn’t trust him. Didn’t trust the way his own pulse jumped when Masakado sucked soy sauce off his knuckle. Didn’t trust the domestic ease of their silence as the cooker hummed—Masakado assembling a bizarre stir-fry from condiment packets, Seiya color-coding lecture notes with military precision.
“Hey.” A ceramic bowl appeared under his nose, steaming chunks of tofu glistening. “Truce offering.”
“I didn’t know we were at war.”
“Roommate cold shoulder. Phase one: territorial organization. Phase two: passive-aggressive post-it notes.” Masakado balanced his own bowl atop a stack of manga. “I’m preemptively surrendering.”
Seiya prodded a mushroom with his fork. “This isn’t poisoned, is it?”
“Only with nostalgia.” Masakado shoved a heaping bite into his mouth, talking around it. “My obaasan taught me this recipe. Well—her version had actual vegetables. This is the convenience store remix.”
The first taste burst across Seiya’s tongue—garky, sweet, unmistakably cheap. Yet somehow perfect. He hid his approval behind a cough. “It’s… inventive.”
“High praise.” Masakado toed off his sneakers, bare feet propped on the radiator. “So. Fashion major, right? Bet you’ve got your whole life spreadsheet-ed.”
Seiya stiffened. “Planning prevents chaos.”
“Chaos makes good stories.” Masakado flicked a pea at him. It bounced off Seiya’s textbook. “Ever done anything spontaneous?”
“I applied for single occupancy housing, that should cover a lifetime of it.”
“And got me instead. Universe’s little joke.” The radiator hissed. Masakado’s smile softened at the edges. “Relax, I don’t bite.”
Worse, Seiya thought, chopsticks trembling slightly, you mesmerize. The realization crept over him like dawn—dangerous and glowing. He studied the boy lounging in rumpled glory, sauce smudged on his stubbled chin, and understood with crystalline despair that this would not be a story about survival.
The rice cooker clicked to ‘keep warm’ mode. Somewhere down the hall, a violin screeched through scales. Masakado began whistling along, horribly off-key, probably on purpose.
Seiya quietly placed another tofu cube in his mouth. Let the heat linger on his tongue.
Just a room. Just a semester.
Just a lie he’d keep telling until it became true.