Chapter Text
“Alright, my dear, I won’t keep you any longer. Have fun, okay? Don’t tire yourself out too much. I love you.”
The call ended with a soft click, his mother’s voice still lingering faintly inside the car. The radio, which had paused in the silence, came back to life on its own. The music filled the space, loud enough to drown out the quiet, but not enough to make it feel any less empty. If anything, it only made the loneliness sharper, pressing into something already raw.
Honestly, considering how the day had gone, the atmosphere inside the car made perfect sense. Atsumu’s day had already gone off the rails in ways most people would consider… catastrophic.
For starters, his landlord had casually informed him that his rent was being raised. Not next year. Not next month.
In two weeks.
Which meant he would be out of a home he was barely managing to afford in the first place. And then there was the other thing. He’d been laid off that morning. The company was downsizing. His position had been “re-evaluated.” The phrasing didn’t matter; he was out. Just like that.
By the time Atsumu found himself sitting alone in his car, barely holding himself together, the breakdown had been coming for hours. And yet, the thing that had pushed him over the edge, the thing that had him sitting in his car trying to hold himself together, it wasn’t even those things. His car had been scratched during lunch.
Was that it? No… no, that wasn’t it either. Something else. There was something else.
Atsumu let out a shaky breath, pressing his head back against the seat.
Right. If he went back far enough, maybe it would make more sense.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The room was dim, lit only by the pale reflection of the moon filtering in through the window. The cold Tokyo air slipped through the edges of the frame, enough to make Atsumu curl further into his blankets. Everything was quiet.
Until it wasn’t.
A faint rustling sound.
Atsumu cracked one eye open.
“Mio…? Hey. Don’t.”
His voice came out rough, still thick with sleep. It did absolutely nothing to stop the small, determined, fluffy creature currently trying to commit a crime against a bag of cat food at four in the morning.
“Please,” he tried again, softer this time. “Don’t do this to me.”
Mio, of course, did not care. She was one bite away from tearing the bag open.
“God—”
With a groan, Atsumu pushed himself out of the tangled cocoon of blankets. The moment his feet touched the cold floor, he flinched. The chill bit into his skin, sharp and immediate.
I should really fix the windows… maybe seal the edges or something.
The thought barely lasted a second before reality caught up with him.
Right. The landlord.
Fixing anything in this place would require permission, effort, and a miracle he didn’t have. The kitchen door had been broken before he even moved in, and he hadn’t been allowed to replace it. Forget sealing the windows or hanging a clock on the wall; the apartment already felt halfway abandoned, and the landlord seemed perfectly content to let it decay in peace.
Atsumu poured Mio’s food into her bowl, watching absently as she started eating, loud and satisfied. For a moment, he just stood there, listening to the quiet crunching. Then he turned, reaching for the glass of water on his bedside table. The wooden floor creaked under every step. Normally, he might have found it atmospheric.
Now it was just another thing.
He drank quickly, already half-thinking about crawling back under the blankets. His hand reached for his phone out of habit. He didn’t expect anything. Which was why the flood of notifications made him pause.
“…Speak of the devil.”
He stared at the screen. A message. From his landlord.
landlord:
miya-san good evening
you know contract ends in 2 weeks
so about the rent… I was thinking
let’s make it 170k?
if not then move out in two weeks
my son is coming back so I will give it to him
also my daughter is preparing for exams and she’s stressed
if you do a session I’ll take it off this month’s rent
you’re a children psychologist right?
170,000 yen.
A hundred and seventy thousand. Half his salary.
More, if he counted bills.
Atsumu felt something heavy settle in his chest. He had fought to bring the rent down to 110,000 when he first moved in. Even then, it had been a stretch. He could barely keep up with the rent, the bills, and everything else on his current salary. And this place; this mold-stained, creaking, broken-door apartment sitting in the middle of a street that always smelled faintly rotten, wasn’t even worth what he was already paying.
And yet, finding something else in Tokyo with this much space would cost even more.
Much more.
He exhaled slowly, the exhaustion from earlier in the day crashing back over him in waves.
Sleep is gone now. Completely.
By the time he found himself sitting in the dark living room with a cup of coffee, Mio curled somewhere nearby, he had already opened his banking app. He had savings. Good savings, even. Years of careful spending, of saying no, of doing everything right.
And still, he didn’t want to spend it on this.
Not on this life.
His fingers moved almost automatically, opening rental listings. The first apartment somehow looked even worse than his own. It was proudly advertised as having “minimal sunlight,” as if living in complete darkness was part of the appeal. Another one had no bathroom photos at all. And the thing was, they weren’t even fucking cheap. Atsumu stared at the screen for a long moment before letting his head fall back against the couch.
Tokyo was cruel in a very specific way. It always made sure there was just enough space to survive in. Never enough to breathe.
“…I might have to sell you, Mio.” The cat, currently licking her paw with complete indifference, did not look concerned.
Fair enough. She had been a stray. Not exactly high market value.
tsumtsum:
hey… can I stay with you for a bit until I find a place?
my landlord’s raising the rent and I don’t think I can afford it
(sent, 05:14)
He stared at the message for a long moment.
Then locked his phone.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
“As you know, artificial intelligence has developed enough to read and analyze data.” Atsumu’s ears were ringing from lack of sleep, but even through the haze, he could tell exactly where this meeting was going. “Many companies are already using AI to make significant financial gains, while we are still falling behind.”
His gaze moved around the meeting room. It wasn’t hard to identify the few people whose fate had been tied to his. The unlucky ones.
The already-chosen ones.
Nobody spoke while the files were being passed around. The only sounds in the room were paper sliding against the table and the distant hum of the air conditioner. Atsumu recognized almost everyone sitting there. Some avoided eye contact entirely. Others looked strangely calm, the kind of calm people reached after panicking for so long their body simply gave up.
“Therefore, please review the voluntary resignation packages we have prepared for you.”
Voluntary resignation packages. In Japan, companies couldn’t always fire employees outright, so instead they offered packages like this. Which was basically a polite way of saying: We cannot fire you, but if you don’t leave on your own, we will make your working life unbearable.
Everyone in the room looked down at the files placed in front of them. Atsumu let out a deep breath.
As if losing his home wasn’t enough. Now he had lost his job too.
Of course, he would receive a lump sum if he agreed to leave. But between finding a new place, moving costs, living expenses, and the time it would take to find another job, he could already see that money slipping through his fingers like water.
For the first time in years, Atsumu genuinely had no idea what the next month of his life would look like.
On his way to reception, he looked back at the office where he had spent the last five years of his life. Not because he would miss it.
He wouldn’t.
But the thought that he had poured years of his life into these four walls made something in him ache.
“Thank you very much for your contributions until now, Miya-san. The payment will be deposited into your salary account within twenty-four hours. We wish you the best of luck.” The receptionist’s thin, monotonous voice scratched at something inside him. Atsumu could only thank her.
“And Miya-san?”
He turned back at the sound of her voice.
“Did you park your car in lot B? I think someone scratched it.”
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
“Samu, I’m being so serious right now, I’m going to tear myself apart. What else can happen to one person in a single day?!” Atsumu had pulled his car to the side of the road and was telling his twin brother everything that had happened, one breath away from crying.
“I mean… yeah, that’s seriously bad,” Osamu said from the other end of the line, his voice calm in that annoyingly steady way of his. “You know I’d send you money if it weren’t for the hospital expenses, but I don’t think much would come out of me right now either.”
Osamu’s composure helped, in a way.
His words did not.
“Don’t tell Mom anything,” Atsumu warned. “I’ll handle it somehow.” Osamu gave a small hum of agreement. Atsumu could practically picture him leaning against some counter with that stupidly composed expression on his face, like he wasn’t casually listening to his brother’s life collapse piece by piece.
Their conversation slowly shifted into something more routine, but Atsumu’s mind was already somewhere else, busy turning over a thousand problems at once and trying to find a solution among them. His brother’s words went in one ear and out the other, echoing uselessly inside the car.
The fact that his partner still hadn’t properly replied to his message wouldn’t normally have bothered him. But this time, the way she had brushed past it was exactly what bothered him. They had been together for three years. He had slept over at her place almost every week anyway.
Is she scared I’ll never leave?
The thought wouldn’t let go. Atsumu stopped listening to his brother entirely and looked down at the messages again.
tsumtsum:
hey… can I stay with you for a bit until I find a place?
my landlord’s raising the rent and I don’t think I can afford it
(seen, 07:20)
haruhii:
baby
I don’t know
my family wouldn’t approve either
I’m leaving for work now too
(recieved, 07:47)
Atsumu hadn’t replied after that. He had thought maybe he had made her uncomfortable and didn’t want to push it further.
But still. Something about her answer stayed lodged in his mind.
Not even cruelly, either. That was the worst part. Haruhi hadn’t sounded angry or annoyed. Just… distant. Careful. Like she was already stepping away from the situation before it could become hers too.
“Anyway, I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about me. Tell Suna I said hi. Bye.”
With an idea suddenly snatched from the mouth of one of the many foxes running wild in his head, Atsumu turned the car toward a bakery.
If he bought Haruhi her favorite cake and went to her place before she got home, maybe he could prepare a small surprise. Maybe they could watch a movie. Maybe whatever strange tension had formed between them could be fixed before it grew into something else. The more he thought about the day he had been having, the tighter his chest became. If each problem had come one by one, maybe he could have handled them.
But they hadn’t.
They had fallen on him all at once.
And the worst part was that he had no idea how to get out from under them. If he wanted to find a new place, he didn’t have enough money to comfortably do it. If he wanted an advance, he no longer had a job.
In a single day, he was facing the possibility of becoming both homeless and unemployed.
The realization still didn’t feel real. It felt like the kind of situation people in dramas ended up in before some miraculous third-act recovery. Except there was no soundtrack playing in the background. No inspirational montage waiting for him. Just a rapidly draining bank account and a landlord who texted like a scam bot.
With the strawberry cake from the bakery resting carefully on the passenger seat, Atsumu drove the last five minutes while trying to form a plan in his head. Haruhi usually came home in about half an hour. That gave him just enough time to get there, plate the cake nicely, put on a movie, and wait for her.
A small surprise. A normal gesture.
Something soft at the end of a day that had been anything but.
He parked in the apartment complex lot, entered the familiar building quickly, and headed for the stairs to the second floor. As he tried not to shake the cake box too much, he fished through his keychain for the right key.
His fingers found the one with the pink tag just as he reached the apartment door. He pushed the key toward the lock.
It didn’t fit.
Atsumu frowned. The key Haruhi had given him just last week didn’t just fail to turn; it wouldn’t even enter the lock. He took a deep breath, set his backpack down, and tried again. One hand held the door handle while the other guided the key carefully toward the lock. The rustle of the things he had set down and the scraping of the key echoed through the stairwell.
Nothing.
For a brief second, Atsumu wondered if exhaustion had genuinely fried his brain enough to make him forget what apartment he was standing in. Since the key still refused to work, he stepped back and raised his head to check the apartment number.
Before he could see it properly, the door opened.
“Who are you?”
Atsumu’s frown deepened at the small voice and the child standing in front of him.
The boy tilted his head as if insisting on an answer. He looked around seven or eight years old. Messy dark hair. Oversized socks. Completely unimpressed expression. Since Atsumu still couldn’t see the apartment number properly, he glanced around in silence and murmured,
“I’m here for Haruhi—”
The child cut him off.
“Dad! Someone’s here for Mom! Can you come here?”
For a moment, nobody moved. Atsumu just stood there in the doorway holding a strawberry cake like the world’s stupidest affair partner while the kid continued staring at him suspiciously.
Right. Of course.
How could he forget?
Atsumu’s whole life had turned upside down in a single day. First, he had lost his home. Then his job. His car had been scratched during lunch.
And by the end of the day, he found out that his girlfriend of three years was a married woman with an entire family.