Chapter Text
beep.. beep.. be-
The phone alarm, that had been set to an optimistic 7:15 the night before, goes off diligently until the phone's owner interrupts it and shuts it off.
"fuckin' shuddup already.. i'm up, i'm up." Yuuji mumbles to himself as he places his phone back down next to where his head rests on his pillow. Signing deeply, not ready for a new day to begin just yet, Yuuji decides to just rest his eyes for a little longer.
Predictably, he in fact does not end up just resting his eyes, and it is in fact not only for a few minutes.
The second time Yuuji gets woken up it's not as gentle, if you can consider an alarm to be gentle. Instead, it's his uncle's doing. He isn't even really Yuuji's uncle, just one of his dad's friends who got the unprompted honor of raising a child he hadn't even known about, pushed onto him in a seemingly normal late afternoon.
How did that story go again?-
The clock was ticking away, having just reached 8:43, as Kenjaku was returning to his apartment from a night shift. What counts as a home depends on who you ask, and if you were to ask Kenjaku at that very moment, his was his humble one-bedroom apartment, on the outskirts of Sendai.
How his janky fridge loudly makes its presence known in the late nights when the rest of the world seemingly fades away, or how his couch can't seem to forget the imprint of his backside, always loudly protesting his choice of sitting down; things that could deter some from calling it a home, but not Kenjaku. It ain't much, but it's home, as the saying goes. At least it had been, up until that chilly morning.
Having been ready to crack open a cold beer and disappear into his dirty green couch since he left for work, Kenjaku seemingly could not get home fast enough.
There were barely any people out, the sun was still rising and the only thing reminding Kenjaku that he was, indeed, still on earth were the cicadas singing in the distance. All this worked to take the edge off Kenjaku's conscience, just a day like any other. At least, it could've been. If there hadn't been a kid sitting in front of his apartment complex's front door.
Not really knowing what to make of the situation, Kenjaku gently put the plastic bag of groceries he had been carrying down, unable to look away from the child who was staring at him like Kenjaku might hold the answers to life.
That's how they "met". An abandoned child and an overworked, unimpressed man who REALLY didn't know what to make of the whole situation. Sure, the kid might have forgotten his key at home and was waiting for his parents to come home, but the little backpack in his lap, as well as the note he had in his hand, told a different story. Everything about this 4 foot something child was off-putting to Kenjaku, the dried tear stains on the child's chubby cheeks, the way he certainly wasn't dressed for the weather, wearing only a yellow zip-up hoodie along with a pair of knee-high shorts, when the weather was closing in on 10 degrees Celsius.
The note that "the kid", Yuuji, had held in a death grip read;
"Hey Kinji, long time no see. So long story short, my new girlfriend and I are gonna skip town for a few days, you know, lay low and all that, and I would really owe 'ya if you looked after the brat for us. It won't be for long, and he doesn't complain, barely speaks actually, so I bet even you could handle it. Just make sure to feed him a couple times a day and give him somewhere to sleep until we get back, sound good? Cool, see 'ya in a couple days then!
And that was that. A dude Kenjaku had met only a couple months ago at a bar, had seemingly dumped his kid on him. Awesome. No really, fucking splendid. I'm sure this won't ruin his plans for the rest of the day (week? month?) or anything.
Needless to say, Kenjaku's "friend" had not only been away for "a couple days" as the letter, if you could call it that, had implied. In fact, it had been maybe four whole years since Kenjaku had last heard from him, and that was only in the form of another, more proper, letter with a few thousand yen along with it, as if that was anywhere close to enough to raise a whole ass fucking offspring in his stead.
All of this had, at best, mangled any potentially paternal feelings Kenjaku might've held towards Yuuji, and reduced the man's view of Yuuji to just another chore, another unnecessary burden on his shoulders, a responsibility that had been thrown at him by the universe."
So anyway, Yuuji's self-proclaimed uncle had actually managed to wake Yuuji up this time around, where his phone alarm had failed to, by loudly, bordering on violently, slamming his bedroom door open and inviting himself in.
"I'm shipping you overseas if you let that fucking alarm of yours go off again, dumbass. I'll really do it this time too, so don't fucking test me." Kenjaku opened with, whilst taking in the state of Yuuji's room, well technically it wasn't Yuuji's, but hell would freeze over before Kenjaku willingly let a hormone pumped teenager loose in the rest of his apartment, so he had given Yuuji his own previous bedroom and taken up residence on his trusty cough instead.
"yeah, yeah, i'm sure you will. I was just getting up anyway." Yuuji half-mumbled back, certainly not having had plans of getting up before Kenjaku came in. Nonetheless, Yuuji waved Kenjaku off whilst pushing himself up into sitting on his bed, though not moving further than that, just letting gravity settle in his body while forced to accept that there was no more postponing the day.
"-oh and don't even think about leaving this room like this. It seriously looks like a fucking bomb shell went off in here," Kenjaku stops examining the bedroom as his eyes land on a very much "over-it" looking Yuuji, and snickers, "- not that you look much better yourself."