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As if anticipating a bit of a commotion, beforehand, Kirijou has a group of volunteers set up those retractable belt stanchions—the type you see at movie theatres and amusement fairs—from the front of the table in question and into a maze shape, weaving in and out and steering any line movement out of the courtyard and around the front of the school. The intention is to keep the rest of the courtyard open so that the festival can go forward as planned, and so they’re not all just wading through the chaos of the line if they want to get some takoyaki or something from a food stand.
What ends up happening as a result is that the line goes all the way around the school building and down the next two and a half blocks. Which, if you’re keeping track, shouldn’t be possible. Shinjiro didn’t even realise there were that many girls attending their school… but there’s no arguing with reality.
Yuki, for some god forsaken reason, brought binoculars, and he uses these to track the chaos now. “Mm. I think some of those uniforms are from one of the public schools…”
“They’re allowed in as long as they bought tickets,” Takeba responds, hands on her hips. She looks unhappy about the proceedings here, but this could be as much to do with what she’s wearing under her windbreaker, a cutesy maid costume, as it is to do with the line. Which is, frankly, absurd, Shinjiro isn’t denying that… He just doesn’t think it’s what’s getting Takeba’s goat right now. “And Sanada-senpai won’t kiss them if they don’t pay up, so it’s fine, right?”
“It’s fine,” Iori huffs, with a persistent pout on his face that has been there for the past two and a half hours that the festival has been running, “except it ain’t exactly fair, is it? I mean, look at some of these girls! This is crazy!”
Shinjiro agrees. Although he thinks Iori is more jealous than anything else. He’d probably rather be the one in the hot seat… or at least, he thinks he’d rather be the one in the hot seat; realistically, Iori probably just wants the attention of one girl, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but in this moment, they’re angry about the same thing, so Shinjiro holds his tongue. In fact, he’s been holding his tongue for the entire festival. He doesn’t expect anything reasonable to come out if he does open his mouth, and boy has he been tempted a handful of times.
The story goes like this: Aki did not tell Shinjiro that he was running a kissing booth.
Not that Shinjiro is either someone who Aki ought to report that information back to, or ought to hide it from. In fact, he’s hardly a student at this point in his life, so why would he be concerned in the proceedings of the school? It’s ludicrous. Except that this is something he might’ve liked to know, and he thinks Kirijou must’ve guessed that too… which exactly why she didn’t tell him. Kirijou, Shinjiro’s a little more miffed at for that, but he finds it hard to stay mad at her so he doubts he’ll sulk over it for long.
No, the problem is Aki. Because if Aki had, at any point in time, mentioned this idea to Shinjiro, Shinjiro could’ve come up with a list of five or more bullets on why it’s a terrible fucking idea. Aki’s little fan club at their school is nothing more than a nuisance, ordinarily—and the majority of them won’t even cross boundaries, they’ll just stand around gossiping every time Aki happens to walk down the hall, and then disperse like a ton of ants the moment he passes by—but something like this was only ever going to embolden them. And not just them; teenagers, but teenage girls especially, are particularly prone to peer pressure. That is to say, with everyone in the area showing up at this school festival to get their kiss-for-pay, it was only natural that the rest who heard about it would at least try to make their way over.
And—it’s—fine. It’s a downright genius business decision on Kirijou’s part. (That is, Kirijou approved of it; she wasn’t the one who proposed it, being far too prim and proper to ever think of pitching such a thing.) And Aki clearly doesn’t mind, because there’s no way to force Aki into something like this no matter how lame he seems other times… When it comes to touch, Aki just won’t allow it if it isn’t on his terms. So there’s no chance he’s sitting there feeling like he’s about to crawl out of his skin. The second that feeling emerges, he’ll get the hell out of dodge. That’s one thing Akihiko can be relied on to do.
No, it’s actually…
Shinjiro doesn’t have Yuki’s binoculars, but his vantage point of a window on the second floor allows him a decent view of Aki’s booth. It’s nothing fancy. It was set up by high schoolers, after all. A table, a sign, a cash register. Aki doesn’t need a calculator or anything, because he’s fastidious, more like obsessive, when it comes to numbers and figures. He probably knows exactly how much he’s made and even has an estimate of how much is still on the table. There’s not a covering, since the weather has cooled down with the end of summer and there wasn’t any rain forecasted, which means that Shinjiro can see it.
See… Aki. The little grin on his face, the one he gets when he’s reading the matchups for his next boxing tournament, or listening to Yuki debrief them before entering Tartarus. It’s the same smile that makes his brows raise, that makes him look almost a little incredulous. Not one he ever wore back as a kid, but he wasn’t very confident, back then. When Shinjiro sees that smile—usually it makes his heart race, and in a not-totally-unbearable way, but now he just feels kind of sour. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, positioned in a spot where he can stare down at all the peons and think about how much better than all of them he is for not participating in this holiday nonsense.
Hence why he’s up here kicking it with his upperclassmen, who are truly only on this floor because it’s where their maid and butler café is stationed. Speaking of, Yuki glances at his phone and grunts, giving a little jerk of his chin to his friends. They operate in a funny way, these three. Shinjiro’s still not totally convinced that Takeba and Iori are friends at all, but they effortlessly fall into step wherever Yuki is involved, like the three stooges.
“Have fun,” Shinjiro says, the first thing he’s said in hours. Yuki hums agreement, pulling the binoculars off his neck and handing them over; Shinjiro’s so stunned he just grabs them, blinking. “What am I going to do with—”
“You should really get in line, Aragaki-senpai,” Takeba advises, as she makes her way to the door. “I think it’d make him happy.”
Shinjiro chokes on his own spit. By the time he’s regained enough motor function to curse them out, they’ve left the classroom. It’s just as well. Shinjiro’s not sure he has an effective rebuttal to any of that, he’s just… embarrassed, that someone like Takeba saw through him so easily. Then again, it would be Takeba, wouldn’t it. Shinjiro lets out a long sigh and pinches his nose with the hand he isn’t using to hold the binoculars, slowly pivoting back to stare out the window.
He hadn’t even really meant to come. Can’t come to the school festival if you’re not a student, right? Shinjiro’s not involved in any of the festivities. He’s essentially just taking up space. But his immediate suspicion when he heard Aki was running a kissing booth was that he’d been pressured into it somehow, and that feeling had overwritten all logical sense until Shinjiro found himself already at the school, ready to intervene. Now that clearly isn’t the case, yet he’s still standing here. Lurking, like some kind of creep.
Another girl steps forward in line, down below. Shinjiro refuses to use the binoculars to look at her, since he can see well enough what’s going on from up here, anyway. She’s blushing, playing with her hair. Aki greets her with that dumb grin, and waits for her to put her money on the table before he leans forward and kisses her on the cheek.
All the festivities for a damn kiss on the cheek. It’s honestly predatory. These girls should stage an uprising or something, try and get their money back… but instead the latest customer just blushes deeper and bows, turning and rushing away. More or less the same reaction Aki’s gotten out of every girl so far, and Shinjiro’s got a good enough angle on the guy to see the way he leans back and chuckles, turning to chat with one of his classmates, who is presumably standing there as hired muscle, as if Aki wouldn’t be able to defend himself should something go down. He’s probably only there because it would look lame if Aki was sitting at the booth alone, which is a little more understandable.
…There’s no way Shinjiro’s getting in that line. Finally using Yuki’s binoculars, Shinjiro can see that there are indeed some boys in the line, and Aki kisses them all unflinchingly (which gives Shinjiro really complicated emotions) but he has to imagine that most of them are there because they were dared to be. The ones who do step away blushing make an obvious attempt at concealing it, tugging on the collars of their jackets. It’s too bad it isn’t winter yet. These summer uniforms just aren’t the most conducive to disguising your embarrassment.
Shinjiro’s pretty sure the gender issue wouldn’t be a big deal. It wouldn’t be the worst thing anyone’s said about him, that he’s a pansy or whatever—and he’s pretty sure Aki’s reputation as a boxer is so ironclad it’d just wash off his back like cold water. Not to mention the amount of dudes he’s kissed already, and the even larger proportion of girls he’s going to kiss to balance the cosmic scales of gay behaviour.
There are actually just two main issues. The first being the obvious, which is that no, no way in hell, stepping in that line would confirm things for him and Aki that Shinjiro has been trying so hard to side-step in light of the inevitable, it would be cruel and selfish and goddamnit Shinjiro’s held out for this long a little bit of jealousy isn’t going to kill him…
And the second being the slightly less obvious but still relevant: He doesn’t have the money.
Literally. Shinjiro didn’t bring his wallet. He wasn’t planning on paying for Aki’s affections today. It couldn’t have been further from the forefront of his mind. Granted, Shinjiro’s “plans” today were sort of abstract, mostly revolving around shutting down the whole kissing booth situation before Aki could realise he was uncomfortable with it, but those fell through once Shinjiro got here and saw Aki’s actually fine with the whole deal. Now he’s just. Here. Malingering, you could say. With an underclassman’s binoculars in hand and a nasty, nasty scowl on his face, because he apparently hates fun and everyone who has it, Sanada Akihiko most of all.
Shinjiro groans. Then he puts the binoculars down with a gentleness that he does not feel, on account of them not belonging to him. With that he slumps against the wall and sliiiides down until his ass is on the tile, staring at the ceiling. In under a month, Shinjiro will more than likely be dead. If Amada for some reason doesn’t act, Shinjiro will accordingly die just a little bit after that, whenever the suppressants finally stop pussyfooting around the issue and kill him off. He’s not exactly looking forward to it, but well, what kind of sicko would he have to be, to look forward to something like that?
Here he is anyway. Wasting his time, sulking, the same shit he always does. Sometimes it really—boggles the mind, the amount of attention that Aki still gives to dragging Shinjiro out of his pit, like they’ve got the same relationship they had when they were kids. Like Shinjiro is the person he was back then, able to be unreserved and supportive, to urge Aki to take care of himself in the times when he wasn’t making it a priority… like Shinjiro isn’t a killer now. There’s no reason that Aki should still care, but he does, and even this morning he’d told Shinjiro to come to the festival (without even mentioning his booth, the jackass, Shinjiro had to learn about that from Takeba later) like there was any point in Shinjiro showing up at all.
He thinks it might be easier to turn off the part of his brain that cares about this shit if Aki didn’t keep earning it over and over again. But at the same time Shinjiro’s sure that’s not true. He’s not sure if he’s even wired not to care… but at least if Aki kept his distance, Shinjiro could feel justified in avoiding events like this. If he’d skipped, he would’ve felt guilty, like absolute pond scum, missing out on the last event like this thrown by Aki and Kirijou at all… and being here now, as he is, Shinjiro still feels more or less like pond scum. There’s no winning in his life.
For whatever fucking reason, Shinjiro pushes himself off the wall. He looks back out the window. The line has moved, but not by much. They’re going to be out there for hours, and for what? Shinjiro groans and slumps back down again. He’s got to stop ruminating over this or he’ll drive himself crazy.
Shinjiro ruminates for the better part of several hours, until he hears a rush of teenagers down the hall from where he’s stationed, marking the end of the first day of the festival. He hauls himself upright at that with a hangdog sigh, scooping Yuki’s binoculars off the desk and making his way to the door, where he wordlessly joins the crowd. It’s an easy enough way to leave without drawing attention to himself, at least… and he’s able to drop Yuki’s things off in his foot locker on the way out, which is an added bonus.
The courtyard is still, predictably, crowded, although more people seem to be turning in the direction of home than heading inwards this time. Kirijou’s assigned a couple people to taking down the large gate, and beyond that is Aki, who is finally somewhat alone, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he counts yen bills, a little crease in his brow. Acting for all the world like his activities today were completely normal, like his lips haven’t been halfway around the world by now.
That’s a mean way of thinking about it. Shinjiro feels faintly sick even just letting the thought cross his mind. Aki can kiss who he wants, especially to make money for a school event. He knows why he’s upset and it’s ludicrous; Shinjiro doubts he’d feel this way if they were actually in a position where they would be together. In the first place, Shinjiro shouldn’t have come to the festival, but he especially shouldn’t approach now, shouldn’t go over there and bug Aki with his presence, but…
Rather than announce his presence verbally, Shinjiro knocks his knuckles against the table in front of Aki.
“Oh! Sorry, the booth is closed—we’ll be open tomorrow if you’re interested, my frie…” Aki trails off, his eyes widening. “Shinji! You came!”
Of course that would be his first reaction. Shinjiro grumbles. “Didn’t do much of anything though.”
“But you’re here,” Aki says, with a grin. “Did you just get here? Your timing could’ve been a little better, we’re cleaning up for the day.” He looks over his shoulder with a two-note hum. “Maybe the takoyaki stand still has leftovers, we could—”
“I’ve been here all day,” Shinjiro admits… for whatever reason. Aki’s head whips back around, his eyes going wide again. That look is hard to meet right now, so Shinjiro drops his gaze and sighs. “Not that I did anything special, again. Just camped out in a classroom.”
Aki tilts his head to the side. “One of the empty classrooms?” When Shinjiro nods, his brow furrows. “Now why would you do that? I know I told you to come however you could, but I didn’t realise that coming to take a nap was on the table or I would’ve been a little more specific…” He looks so troubled by this, he’s pouting a little. It’s endearing, but it also draws Shinjiro’s attention to his lips, which are… kind of red. But of course they are. Aki’s used them more today than he has in an entire lifetime, and probably will ever again. The thought shouldn’t make Shinjiro upset, but he can’t help scowling anyway.
“Stupid reason,” Shinjiro decides. “I’m gonna head back. See you at the dorm.”
“Well—wait!” Aki quickly cuts around the table. He’s gotten so agile, his gloved hand is locked around Shinjiro’s wrist before Shinjiro can even get very far. It’s too much to ask that Shinjiro turn around, but he does stop, waiting for Aki to speak. “Are you… mad at me?”
The absurdity of the question pushes a scoff out of Shinjiro. “Why would I be—”
“You look—you’re making a face,” Aki stammers. “And I don’t, I mean, I don’t know. Did I do something? I can’t really apologise if you don’t tell me.”
It’s a stupid thing to ask. But what else would Aki think? He’s a straight shot—far from simple or stupid, but his mind functions in a particular way, and he’s not always looking for signs of something different. That is, until Shinjiro says he’s been jealous, he’s not going to consider it… and there’s no reason to even put the thought on the table. Aki’s not his. Never has been and certainly can never be now, all considered. Even if they were in a relationship, it’s a kissing booth. It’s a school festival classic and a genius idea on the part of whoever proposed it, considering Aki’s cult-like popularity…
Still, Shinjiro’s heart is beating a little hard and the most inconvenient part of it is that for as well as he knows Aki, Aki also knows him. If he lies, it’ll probably be seen through.
“Guess I’m just bummed I missed out on all the action,” Shinjiro finally says. His attempt at levity sort of falls flat, because his voice comes out that way, completely even. It’s close enough to how he actually feels that Shinjiro can release some of the tension in his chest, though, and Aki must feel it, because his hold on Shinjiro’s wrist loosens too.
“Oh.”
There’s a pause. Without looking, Shinjiro can’t tell what Aki is thinking. Not that he’s always easy to read anyway… Usually Shinjiro can tell how he feels, but not what he’s going to do; draws of having an impulsive friend like Sanada Akihiko.
Shinjiro isn’t left in suspense for long though. A gloved hand brushes his cheek, and Shinjiro is turned; it’s a gentle touch, guiding, leading more than anything, but Shinjiro still follows it instinctively, his eyes widening as Aki turns him around and suddenly leans in.
He’s clearly aiming for the cheek… but he misses. His lips press against the corner of Shinji’s mouth, soft and a little warm, and then he pulls back. He’s not smiling as he has been for the rest of the day. Rather, Aki’s face is a bit pink. He chuckles, after a moment, and averts his gaze.
“I don’t got any money,” Shinjiro croaks, at length.
“That one was on the house,” Aki murmurs, then looks back at him. Smiles, finally, the lopsided smile that looks a lot more like his real one. “So you wouldn’t miss out on all the action.”
This guy’s ridiculous. With an offering like that, though, Shinjiro breathes a loud sigh and turns to face him all the way. At the very least, from here, Shinjiro can help with cleanup and teardown… even if it’ll give Aki more chances to try and needle Shinjiro into attending the festival again tomorrow.