Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry,” says the man at the calligraphy shop, “But I can’t hire you for this position.”

Langa’s resume comes sliding back across the desk to him; it's the fifth time today, and he’s starting to get sick of the sight of it. 

“Why not?” he asks, perhaps a touch desperately. 

Arching an elegant eyebrow behind his rimless glasses, the calligrapher pulls out a copy of the sign that had drawn Langa into the shop in the first place. Written out across the page in masterful brushwork are the words, Now hiring! Beneath it, in much, much smaller print is the caveat, Must be eighteen or older to apply.

“Oh.” Langa wilts. 

So much for all of his grand ambitions. This place had been the final entry on his list– his very last hope. Forget about square one, Langa has officially fallen off the board. How could it possibly be this hard to find a job?

His interviewer sighs, and Langa realizes that he’s just been sitting there, staring at him, for far longer than is probably socially acceptable.

“What do you want a job for so badly, hm?” he asks. “Are you saving up for some new manga? Buying gifts for some pretty girl? Or is your classwork just not engaging enough?”

“I want to help my mom,” Langa admits quietly. 

Now it’s the interviewer’s turn to stare in silence. Belatedly, it occurs to him that he could have just made up some excuse and bowed out gracefully. Of course he hadn’t though; Langa hasn’t stuck a single landing since the last time he snowboarded with his dad.

Either some of these thoughts must be visible on his face, or he just makes that pathetic of a picture, because the man sighs again and rises to his feet.

“Follow me,” he says, and Langa scrambles after him on legs that have gone numb from sitting.

Down the hallway and up a flight of narrow stairs is an office that looks like it hasn’t seen human life since the invention of the telegram. When the man steps inside to switch on the lone bulb hanging from the ceiling, clouds of dust jump into the air and cling to the hems of Langa’s jeans.

“If you can clean out this office, I’ll pay you eight thousand yen.”

That was all Langa needed to hear. Swirls of dust leapt up in his wake as he dove practically headfirst into the piles of musty old papers and waterstained boxes. The calligrapher watched from the doorway for a few moments before shaking his head and disappearing back down the stairs. 

It’s not particularly intense work, but between having to climb over the mountains of random stuff that’s been piled into the room and stopping every few minutes to sneeze half a lung out, Langa is steadily working up an appetite. He’s already guiltily calculating how much of the day’s earnings he can afford to siphon off into a quick snack before he heads home to his mom.

On the street outside, someone is yelling about a runaway skateboard. Langa tilts his head curiously in that direction, listening. Then he gets back to work.

By the time Langa uncovers the last of the office’s large, breezy windows, the sunlight slanting across the freshly mopped floors tells him that it’s already some time in the late afternoon. Somehow, he’s managed to spend most of his Saturday on this. Considering that he has no friends, no hobbies, and no hang-outs in this strange new town, he can’t really complain.

Finally, he steps back to admire his work. 

The room practically sparkles. Every shelf has been dusted off and stacked with crates of painstakingly organized papers, the cobwebs are all bundled up around an old straw broom that he stashed in the corner, and he even uncovered a beautiful cherrywood desk beneath the detritus. A single moth is fluttering around the naked lightbulb; Langa shuts all of the windows to keep out any of its friends that might try to blow in with the cooling evening air. 

All that’s left to deal with is the bucket of nearly-black mop water. 

Most of Langa’s attention is elsewhere. Distantly, he is aware of his own hands throwing open one of the street-facing windows, while the other hoists the sloshing bucket on high. 

The water goes crashing down onto the cobbled pavement, and Langa is snapped back down to earth by the sound of a garbled scream.

For a moment they just stare at each other – Langa, and the boy Langa has just dropped about forty-five years worth of disgusting water on. Langa cannot even begin to imagine what his own face is doing right then, but the other boy’s eyes are wide and his mouth is hanging open in the purest expression of astonishment Langa has ever seen on another person. The corner streetlamp clicks on just as the headband slips out of his sodden hair, landing with a wet plop on the skateboard tucked under his arm. His shoulders rise as he takes a breath to speak–

Langa slams the window shut. 

Chapter Text

On Sunday, Langa takes one third of his earnings from the calligrapher’s shop to an internet cafe near his house and prints a hundred copies of a flier he had carefully designed the night before. 

He puts them on every streetlight and telephone pole he can find. Up and down the streets, across the stairs that lead to the ocean, even slapped onto the windows of every storefront whose owners don’t chase him off when they see him approaching with a roll of tape; by the day’s end Okinawa is alive with pictures of his face. 

“What a talented young man,” coos the creaky old lady who spots him sneaking a flier onto the library bulletin board. She pinches his right cheek so hard that even the left side of his face hurts for an hour afterwards. 

“What are those squiggles in the drawing supposed to be? Stink lines?” asks a kid who can’t possibly be over seven years old. Langa pretends he doesn’t understand Japanese and runs away. 

“Stop! Vandal!” The cop who chases him away from the already heavily vandalized underpass is slow and stupid, and Langa easily loses him by squeezing into the greasy space between two buildings. 

He’s about to shimmy back out when he catches the sound of wheels on pavement and his brain says, skateboard. 

Langa is one with the wall. He is a being made of brick and mortar, not mere crude flesh. There is a garbage bag full of old banana peels and fish heads split open near his feet; this, too, is part of him now. He does not speak, he does not breathe, he does not think–

Three college-aged guys in baggy jeans and heavy bling skate inexpertly past his hiding spot. Their hooting and chortling fades as they turn a corner at the end of the block. Langa is a master of disguise. 

Monday comes too soon. 

Langa slumps down at his desk, eyes glued to the corner of his desk where his phone has been sitting undisturbed since he arrived that morning. When informed about his plan, his mom had warned him not to get his hopes up– he could probably expect to receive next to no job requests for the first few weeks. Word of mouth was the best way to find work like this, she had assured him. Then for the rest of the evening, he had caught her sneaking worried glances in his direction.

He shouldn’t have told her. The whole point of him finding a job was to help share the burden, not to give her one more thing to fret about. Without his dad, it was up to Langa to step up and do his part! He had to start showing more responsibility, tact, decorum–

His phone buzzes. Langa lunges for it, paying no mind to the notebook and pencils that go flying from his desk. 

This is Handyman Hasegawa, right? Can you stand in for a table busser at my restaurant during rush hour tomorrow? read the newest message in his inbox.

Of course, he’s able to type back, before his phone is unceremoniously snatched from his hands. 

“You can have this back at the end of class,” the teacher snaps. “Consider this your first and only warning. The next time you disrupt the class like that, it’ll be detention for you.”

Langa ducks his head as she stalks back towards the front of the classroom, and slowly the stares of the entire class lift off of him. As quietly as he can, he pushes his chair back and begins fishing his fallen stationary off of the floor. 

He’s just finished gathering his pencils when he spots a lone gel pen that rolled beneath the desk next to his. Sneakily, he reaches over the beat up blue sneaker of whoever it is that sits beside him… and that, of course, is when he spots the skateboard. 

Langa freezes with one arm outstretched. Slowly, he looks up. 

What had not been apparent in the twilight two days before is suddenly much more obvious. The boy’s hair has been dyed a striking crimson, and it stands up in wild tufts around the edges of his headband like it has a mind of its own. There’s a small set of wrenches and a screwdriver multi-tool clipped to his belt with a beat up carabiner. He’s got his chin propped in his palm as he watches the teacher scrawl equations on the blackboard; Langa can tell from the crookedness of his profile that his nose has been broken at least once. 

And his eyes, when they slide over to meet Langa’s, catch the sunlight and turn into molten gold. 

THUNK! Langa’s head hits the underside of his desk. When he pops back up and seats himself, the teacher looks too baffled to be angry. Langa decides to view that as a win. 

There’s a muffled clattering to his right that he chooses not to investigate, and then suddenly the cap of his lost gel pen is inching into his peripheral vision. It’s followed, naturally, by the rest of the pen, and then by bandaged fingers that Langa traces all the way back up to the face that he had thrown old mop water on. 

Resentment, he had expected. Disgust, he would have taken in stride. So when the boy’s mouth twitches like he wants to smile, Langa is left feeling a little bit wrong-footed.

Wordlessly, he accepts the pen. 

The smile finally cracks free– and it’s blinding. It’s the type of smile that pushes the whole rest of his face out of the way to make room for itself, scrunching up his brown eyes and tugging the barest hint of a dimple into place at the corner of his mouth. Langa didn’t even realize a smile like that was possible, and it makes his own face hurt just to look at. His cheeks feel hot and itchy, surely out of a deep sense of sympathy. 

“Hi again, Langa,” the boy whispers into the chasm that separates their two desks. “No hard feelings.”

Chapter Text

Langa has never bussed a table in his life, but he’s a quick learner so he’s pretty sure no one can tell. 

There are three sets of tables, two along the walls and one in the center of the main room, which are numbered one through seven, nine through sixteen, and seventeen through twenty-five. Table eight is missing and he has no idea where it went.

Parking his scooter behind the restaurant and walking in through the kitchen was a new and somewhat exciting experience, but by the time he’s hauled out his fifth bag of trash and compost the heavy, pockmarked door is just as unextraordinary as every other door he’s ever seen. The employee manning the register clearly resents Langa for filling in, so he learns to look busy at all times or else risk being banished to the bathrooms with bleach and a mop. 

“Can I take this out of your way,” Langa asks the table of two ladies who had shown up before him and spent hours scrolling separately on their phones over their wilting cob salads. The moment his hand crosses over the edge of the table both ladies wrap themselves, squid-like, around their plates and empty wine glasses. 

“No, we’re not done yet!” trills one of them. The other nods bleary-eyed agreement. As soon as he steps away, they’re both back on their phones. 

The dinner rush begins to thin eventually and Langa is in danger of running out of things to do. He has just finished making another ambling pass with a sweating water carafe when one of the customers shouts at him.

“Eight!” he slurs. Langa’s heart leaps. Does this man know about the vanishing table?

“Where?” Langa asks eagerly.

The customer makes a dizzy noise and gestures in a wide circle around the restaurant floor. Langa carefully fills one of the empty cocktail glasses on the table with water.

“You,” a wobbly finger appears in front of Langa’s nose, “Have made eight rounds with that dumb water jug! Give it up, pal! No one wants any water!” 

He throws back the water Langa has just finished pouring like it’s a shot. “Wahoo! That’s some good whiskey!” Then his head keeps going back, and back, and back, and within seconds he’s passed out snoring and drooling on the shoulder of his very exasperated looking wife. She tips Langa generously when he helps her carry her husband back to their car. 

He goes back inside using the rear door to avoid the register employee and ends up achieving true zen while polishing sets of silverware and folding them into napkins. The whole world falls away; even the clattering of the restaurant’s owner and head chef puttering around with the dishwashing machine is but the whisper of a sakura-scented breeze in his ears. Langa is no buddha, but he has found his bodhi tree. 

“Well, kid, you’re a hard worker and I like your attitude, but I just don’t have any permanent work for you,” the owner tells him after he’s helped close up. For his troubles, Langa receives an envelope of cash and a sympathetic clap on the shoulder. 

Okinawa is quieter at night, and cooler. He parks his scooter at the top of a stone staircase that trails curiously down into the water and just thinks about the feeling of the ocean air on his face. It’s damp and seaweed-y, cold in a way he never’s never experienced, even back in Canada. 

Looking down from where the waxing moon is gilding the crowns of distant waves, Langa notices that there is a picture of his family pulled up on his phone screen. It’s a good picture. They all look happy. Langa’s dad is caught mid-sneeze.

But it’s already gotten late, and Langa promised he would be home before she went to sleep, so he kickstarts his scooter again and gets rolling. His stomach is turning after having been around rich-smelling food for hours, so he doesn’t stop to eat anything. He just hasn’t had much of an appetite, lately.

Chapter Text

He almost doesn’t notice the note, when he sets his things down inside his locker. It’s only the smell of it – artificial in the over the top way where you can’t tell if it’s floral or fruity – that makes him look twice, because no locker he’s ever owned has smelled like that. His eyes water like he’s in a department store perfume aisle.

The paper itself is pale pink stationary, the type that has little cartoon cats with x-shaped buttholes printed along the top and bottom. The dissertation-length brick of text in the middle stretches on too long and gets cramped at the end, where the author has clearly bent over backwards to avoid writing on top of the pictures. 

Langa skims it, squinting at some of the words he doesn’t recognize, and eventually he gets the gist of what the author is trying to say. With a surreptitious glance around the empty locker hall, he slides it through the slats of the next locker in the row and continues on his way. 

He thinks that’ll be the end of it, but then he leaves his desk to use the bathroom and when he comes back he can smell perfume from the classroom doorway. 

“What is that thing, Hasegawa?” asks the person who sits in front of him. “It smells like the death of a vocaloid idol.”

“I don’t know,” Langa lies, pinching it delicately between two fingers. Behind one of the storage buildings, he singes his eyebrows on it before he even manages to set it on fire. 

That, he assumes, will really be the end of it– until just as the bell rings for the end of the day when a girl comes shuffling over. The classroom empties quickly, and soon it’s just her and Langa–

There’s a muffled snore to his right. 

–and Reki, who had fallen asleep sometime during the last period and now seems to have slept soundly through the bell.

“Did you get my letters?” the girl asks shyly. 

“No,” Langa says immediately.

“That’s alright, I made copies.”

She slides copies of the two letters over to him, and arranges a third neatly beside them. Langa just stares at them in silence for… well, it feels like a really, really long time. 

“I don’t think I’m really… the type of person you’re looking for,” he says at last. 

“You are,” she says firmly. “You’re really quiet, but I know that’s just because you haven’t met the right person yet! You need someone who understands you even without words, and who can always be by your side, no matter what!”

And with every word, Langa’s interest slowly grows. His reading skills are still a work in progress; it was entirely possible that he had misread that first note. He hadn’t even read the second one. He pulls the copy over and peers down at it. Maybe this was just a big misunderstanding, and he was about to make his first real friend since the move.

“If I stood by your side you could probably rest your elbow on my head. Since you’re so tall,” the girl continues bashfully, dashing all his hopes in the same instant his eyes land on the abhorrent words creamy white skin sitting at the top of a bulleted list. There’s a little heart drawn next to it. “I like boys with long legs, and you look like you probably shave–”

“Not interested,” Langa interrupts. He’s too busy eyeballing the papers for any obvious signs of biocontamination to notice the steely resolve that crosses over her face. 

“I’ll let you choose where we go.”

“Pass.”

“I’ll split the bill for dinner with you.”

“No thanks.”

He isn’t sure he knows enough ways to say no, and she is starting to look desperate. Reaching into her folder, she yanks out a final page and slaps it down in front of him. It’s one of the fliers he’d hung up around town. 

“I’ll pay you.”

Langa is silent. This was something very different indeed. “If I go on a date with you, you’ll…”

“Pay you,” she confirms. Then she pulls out a wad of crumpled-up bills. “Up front. Will you do it?”

Langa looks at the money, then at her, then back at the money. 

“Of course.”

“Good! Tomorrow after school, then.” Magnanimously, she shoves the pile of bills across the desk to him. “Keep those. I have your number, so I’ll just text you where and when to show up. Make sure to wear something nice!” 

With that, she rushes out of the classroom, leaving a sharp cloud of perfume in her wake. Langa wrinkles his nose. Beside him, Reki sneezes himself awake. 

“What time‘sit?” he mumbles, lifting his head. Langa’s eyes land on the huge red crease on the side of his face, where he must have pillowed his head on his folded arms. Reki’s eyes land on Langa’s desk.

Langa jolts. With as much nonchalance as he can muster, he dumps the money, the love letters, and the flier into his open school bag. 

“School’s over,” he says. He can’t stop staring at the little wrinkle that has appeared between Reki’s eyebrows. 

“Really?” Reki reluctantly looks away from Langa’s bag to squint at the clock– and then sits bolt upright. 

“I’m late!” he yelps, scooping up his own backpack and his skateboard as he makes a mad dash for the door. He pauses only long enough to give Langa a smile and a wave. “See you around!”  

“Bye,” Langa says, a few seconds too late, to the empty doorway. 

When Langa’s date meets him outside the aquarium the next day, dressed to the nines, to say that she’s unimpressed with him is an understatement. 

“I must have forgotten to tell you,” she hedges, “But the restaurant I picked is one of the nice ones in the tourist district. You know, the kind that people… dress nicely for?”

Her eyes are fixed on the wrinkled collar of his shirt, which he knows still sports an alarmingly large ketchup stain. He holds out a hand, palm-up.

“Oh!” she blushes, placing her hand delicately into his own, “You’re such a gentleman, Hasegawa-kun… I suppose I can forgive you just this once. Maybe no one will even notice–”

“No,” Langa cuts in. He pulls his hand free and holds it out again, this time more insistently. “Dressing nice wasn’t part of the agreement. That’s an extra charge.”

“What?” 

It takes a second for that one to sink in. Langa hopes beyond hope that this will be enough to scare her off. Surely even someone who pays for a fake boyfriend can recognize when they’re about to get scammed.

“How… much…?”

Or not. Langa resigns himself and holds up two fingers. 

Shoulders stiff, she nonetheless places two more thousand-yen notes into his palm. After she pays his way into the aquarium, Langa goes to the restroom and swaps his wrinkled and stained shirt with the clean one he had packed in his bag. 

“Much better,” she announces, chipper, and then reaches for his hand to hold.

Langa puts up three fingers. 

And so it goes for the rest of the evening. Langa enjoys himself, all things considered. He likes aquariums, despite not going very often. Watching the swirling of moon jellies in their little tube-like tanks is probably his favorite, although he also spends quite some time watching the aquarium’s lone shark swim listless circles around its own too-small tank. 

He finally finds the upper limit of his date’s willingness to spend when he ups the price of hand holding to three thousand yen every five minutes, by which time he’s already accumulated a pretty tidy amount of cash. When she half-jokingly asks him how much a smile would cost, he answers with a fully serious ten fingers. 

The tourist district is a place he hasn’t been since the beginning of his job search. It’s too crowded and noisy, especially during the hours when the rich foreigners are shaking off their jet lag and dragging themselves to dinner. 

Langa charges one thousand yen for him to order on his date’s behalf, and then spends so long squinting at the menu that she lost her patience and gave him a suggestion anyways. He eats, she pays, and then he makes another three thousand yen plus bus fare for him to accompany her home.

“Well?” she asks, turning to him on the sidewalk outside her family’s modest home, “Didn’t you have fun?”

Langa sighs. “Sure.”

Far from being discouraged, she lights up. 

“Really? That’s great! I knew if you just went on one date with me, you would see how we’re meant for each other! So, next time can we not do all this stuff with payments and just have a good time?”

“Look…” 

Langa has been accused of obliviousness in the past. When he speaks, he uses the wrong words and gets confused when people mistake his meaning. But at that moment it’s like there’s a little angel sitting on his shoulder, whispering into his ear the exact words to say to end this whole nightmare.

Once and for all.

“...what was your name again?” 

And her expression just– shatters. Distantly, he feels bad for causing her so much hurt over something she really never stood a chance at anyways. 

Langa knows, okay? That rejection just batters at the edges of your soul. Being told over and over again that you’re not good enough – resumes pushed back across the desk, letters left unanswered – has this way of assailing the way you look at the whole world, including the reflection you see in the mirror. 

He wishes he could give her something better than just another rejection. If he had advice to give her, that would mean that he could help himself, too. 

On his way back home, Langa uses the money he’s earned to buy his mom a bouquet of flowers and a plushie with a round, gentle face that reminds him of his dad. 

Chapter Text

A text comes in during his early morning bus ride to school, but his arms are pinned to his sides by his fellow bleary-eyed commuters, so he isn’t able to pull out his phone and check it immediately.

Langa sits down at his desk with one eye on the clock and one eye on the door. At the first chime of the morning bell, the homeroom teacher stands up, already reaching for the tardy slip that’s been taped expectantly to the blackboard since before Langa’s first day–

The door slams open. Both of Reki’s feet land on the floor inside the room just as the bell cuts off. 

“Cutting it very close today, Mr. Kyan,” the teacher says through gritted teeth, with a scowl like he’s wishing for a referee and a play-by-play verification. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Amidst the jeering and chattering of their classmates, Reki bounds over to his seat. He sits with a played-up groan and runs a hand through his hair to scoop off his headband, which he uses to begin mopping some of the sweat off his forehead. 

“Gross, Reki,” says the girl sitting two desks down. Reki goes a bit pink.  

“Good morning,” Langa pipes up.

“Good morning Langa,” Reki answers. The smile he sends Langa’s way is gratifyingly flustered; even though he knows Reki is probably just embarrassed, he still wishes he could take out his camera and snap a – very, very – discrete photo. Langa goes so far as to pull his phone from his pocket before the notification on his lock screen distracts him. 

It’s a message from a number he doesn’t recognize. Can you make a delivery tonight, at around midnight?

Of course, Langa texts back. 

At half past eleven Langa is standing in the street, looking up at the building he’d been given the address for, and wishing he’d pressed this latest client for a few more details. 

Dope Sketch! says the sign above the door; there’s no mistaking what the artfully drawn logo and colorful window displays are depicting. On the sidewalk out front of the store, someone has taken sidewalk chalk and sketched out colorful stickfigure characters catching air on a series of ramps and rails that flows like a surrealist’s daydream.

Steeling himself, Langa enters the skate shop.

“We’re closed! I thought I locked that door already…” 

Langa shuffles out of the way when a huge stack of boxes rounds the counter, supported by someone with familiar bandaged and band-aided hands. 

“You’re welcome to come back tomorrow, we open at 8:00 on weekends and now that this shipment’s come in we’ll have a whole lot more– ouch!”

The tower of boxes teeters. At the very top of the stack, the corner of an unsealed box has gotten caught on the ceiling fan. In slow motion, Langa watches it get dislodged and come plummeting down towards his face.

Dodge that, says the part of his brain that’s been hardwired to duck fast moving obstacles– only, it speaks in his father’s voice. The slopes appear before his eyes like an afterimage, something pale and washed out. A rush of wind stings his cheek and he starts to turn his head, certain he’ll catch a glimpse of dark blue…

“Catch that!” 

Langa blinks and suddenly he’s looking down at the box where it is cradled safely in his arms. He looks up and there’s Reki, grinning ear to ear at him from around the now-diminished box tower. 

“Wow, Langa!” Reki sets it down with a wince, He takes the final box from Langa’s unresisting hands, keeping his bandage-swaddled left arm tucked close to his chest. “I had no idea you would actually be able to catch it! Nice reflexes, man.” 

Langa stares at his hands like it’s his first time seeing them. “Thanks.”

“So, what brings you to the best shop in the city?” asks Reki, voice echoing weirdly from the cabinet he’s just stuck his whole head into. He only rummages around in there for a moment, not even long enough for Langa to draw a breath to answer, before suddenly popping back out. “Wait. Are you interested in learning to skateboard?”

There are stars in Reki’s eyes and Langa sort of wants to study them, maybe with a telescope. Definitely from a distance. Langa feels unmoored still, like something that has spun out into space and been left to ice over in the dark. Maybe he’s just an asteroid being dragged in by the gravity of the first brightest sun it sees. Langa imagines himself being launched into a fiery inferno and incinerated on impact.  

Reki, still caught up on skateboarding and completely oblivious to the turn Langa’s thoughts have just taken, tries to push himself to his feet. There’s a loud pop – Reki’s wrapped-up wrist buckling under his weight – and a yelp that’s one part pain and two parts outrage, and then the squeak of shoes on the concrete floor.  

Langa blinks and finds that he’s managed to catch Reki by the arm. Under his fingers, today’s pick of Reki’s never-ending rotation of worn out hoodies is soft and warm. Langa can’t help himself, tightens his grip just a hair to feel the suggestion of bones and dimpling skin hidden just out of sight. 

“Thanks,” Reki laughs, like it’s nothing, “I’m such a clutz sometimes.”

The tips of his ears are red enough to match his hair and when Reki smiles up at him Langa notices that there’s a chip in one of his back molars. It’s old, worn smooth, and Langa pictures Reki worrying it absently with his tongue while deep in thought. It would take nothing at all for Langa to lean in and do the exact same thing. So much for distance.  

“I’m here to make a delivery,” Langa says. Then, when Reki’s eyebrows pinch in confusion, adds, “The manager asked me to.”

“I told him I could handle it,” Reki mutters. “I’ve made that route a thousand times.”

He clambers to his feet, brushing off Langa’s hand with a casual shrug and picking his way over the scattered, half-unpacked, and then abandoned boxes to where a couple of black carrying cases are propped against the wall. 

“Sorry for making you come all the way over here so late at night for nothing,” he says, beginning to unzip one of the bags, “But I’m just going to grab a board and zip over–”

Langa turns his phone around to display the last text he’d received. It’s in all caps, and just in case Langa had missed it the first time, the manager had made sure to send it twice in a row. 

DO NOT LET HIM GET ON A SKATEBOARD!! 

“I’m fine!” Reki whines. Before Langa can react, he swipes Langa’s phone right out of his hand and begins texting madly away. He peers over Reki’s shoulder and sees that there is a rapidfire all-caps argument taking place between Reki and his boss. And Langa’s messaging app is the chosen theater of war. 

When the phone rings and Reki picks up, launching into a verbal continuation of the all-caps argument, Langa doesn’t even bother trying to keep up with what’s being said. He just closes the half-zipped bag, shoulders it, and walks out the door. 

His scooter rumbles to life. He appreciates it for the freedom it gives him, but otherwise feels nothing in particular about it. His mom had pulled it out of a storage unit full of other useless things her own had left for her instead of calling every once in a while to assure her that they still cared about her. The kickstand is broken. Instead of taking it somewhere to fix it, Langa’s just been leaning it against walls and bike racks while parked. 

Langa has just pulled away from the curb when he hears the jingle of the bells tied to the skate shop door, and then suddenly there’s an extra passenger squeezing onto the single seat and an arm wrapped snugly around his shoulders.

“I don’t care what Manager Ota says, I am not going to be left behind,” Reki says hotly. “They’d never let you in on your own, anyways. Now come on, hit the gas, or we’re going to be late!”

Langa hits the gas. 

The scooter put-put-puts its way uphill and goes careening downhill, same as always, except instead of the cool night air there’s another body pressed up close and warm to his back. Two people and a large bag is an awkward fit, so Reki’s chin winds up hooked over Langa’s shoulder as he shouts directly into his ear. 

Loud and bossy are two words that describe Reki well. Langa adds them to the list he’s been keeping in his head as Reki directs them up another winding side street. The city slowly falls away, replaced by sparse forest and weedy grass and the churring of the bugs that live by the side of the road. There’s a sensitive spot just behind Langa’s ear that probably would have gone undiscovered for the rest of his life if Reki’s warm breath hadn’t gone and brushed across it with every exhale.

“Okay, turn here,” Reki says, pointing to a gap in the trees that looks like barely more than a fox run. To Langa’s surprise, it opens up into a decently-sized path marked with curiously small parallel wheel tracks, as if this was a road frequented by miniature cars– or dozens upon dozens of skateboards. 

They come to a gate set into a high chain link fence. All sorts of clutter has been zip-tied to the fence, from worn out skateboard wheels to snapback hats, and even what looks like a set of dental braces. 

A man melts out of the shadows to block the gate while Langa is stowing the scooter against an old tree. 

“Making a delivery,” Reki says, hoisting the black bag as proof. 

The man nods at Reki, then turns to squint at Langa from beneath the low brim of his hat.

“Who’s this?”

Reki crosses his arms. “My assistant.”

“No guest pass, no entry,” says the guard. He watches Langa shuffle closer to Reki’s side as if he’s afraid the two of them will try and jump him to get through the gate. 

“Uh… he has a pin!” Reki says nervously, tucking his free hand behind his back. Something small and golden glitters up at Langa from between Reki’s fingers, and he reaches out to take it as subtly as he can. “Langa, show the man your pin.”

Dutifully, Langa presents the object Reki has just handed him. It is indeed a pin, emblazoned with a stylized design that matches the emblem sewn onto the guard’s sleeve. The guard inspects it, and then Langa, with a frown. 

“Whatever,” he sighs, “Just behave yourself, Reki.”

“Sure thing,” chirps Reki, and then they’re in.

Passing the gate and crossing a small ditch, they come to a wide dirt road hemmed in on both sides by a jostling, jeering crowd. Everywhere he looks he sees baggy pants and cropped tops, piercings and ballcaps, outrageous makeup on men and women both, and of course, skateboards. The crowd goes nuts when two people on boards go flying down the road, leaving clouds of dust in their wake, and he sees money changing hands as he and Reki shoulder their way through. 

“Welcome to S,” Reki shouts over the din, grinning, and reaches out to grab Langa’s wrist when the crush of people threatens to eat him whole. 

Eventually someone yells Reki’s name, and they make their way over to what looks like the beginning of the track where a rangy man and his twitchy girlfriend are facing off against a juggalo. 

“See, I told you my board was on its way,” sneers the guy, while his girlfriend nods vigorously by his side. He reaches out and claps Reki roughly on his shoulder, reeling him in and forcing him to drop Langa’s hand. 

“Reki, you little punk, where the hell have you been?” he grits out, “I have a lot riding on this beef, you know?”

“He was probably too afraid to show his face.” brags the man they were facing off against. Langa keeps his eyes firmly north of the border; the green and white greasepaint is hard to look at, but significantly less upsetting than the too-tight leggings that leave nothing to the imagination. “How about it, kid, have you built another board for me to burn yet?”

Reki’s eyes flash. “I’ll make you eat those words, Shadow–”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, listen next time either show up on time or don’t show up at all,” hisses the wiry dude, grabbing the bag and ripping it open. “This custom board better work miracles like everyone says or else– what is this?”

All eyes turn to the board he’s just pulled out. It’s scratched and worn, looks like it’s been beat within an inch of its life, and no two of its wheels are the same size or color. Langa’s no expert, but even he can tell it’s not going to be winning any races tonight.

Reki goes white as a sheet. 

“That’s the wrong board,” he croaks. “Oh no. I forgot to check before I left–”

“I can’t skate on this!” 

Langa would feel bad for the guy, if his hysterics weren’t clearly pushing Reki closer to freaking out too. The two of them are talking over each other, Reki apologizing and the other skater shouting himself purple in the face, and they are quickly beginning to draw their own small circle of gaping onlookers. Somebody in facepaint similar to Shadow’s shouts, “Beef!” and cheers break out around the crowd. 

In the confusion, the dastardly conflict-causing skateboard itself has been tossed to the side and forgotten. Langa fishes it out of the weeds and holds it up, inspecting it closely. 

It’s short; that’s the first thing he notices about it. It isn’t quite half the length of his old snowboard, but it comes pretty close. There are also no footclips. Langa has seen people skateboard before, and he knows that they have some other way of keeping themselves attached to the board although for the life of him he can’t figure out what that is. Maybe that’s what the sandpapery coating on the top is for. Does it function like velcro when it comes into contact with the bottom of a shoe?

Langa sets the board on the ground. He puts one foot on it and gives it an experimental push.

“Langa?” Reki has noticed what he’s doing and is ignoring the skater who is now quite literally yelling in his ear, “What are you doing? Hey, wait–”

Langa lifts his other foot, fully intending to put it on the skateboard. Only, that’s not what happens. 

Like it has a mind of its own, the skateboard shoots out from underneath him. He feels the lurching of his stomach and has just enough time to think to himself, Oh no! before the ground comes rushing up to hit him like a piledriver.

As he’s laying there, utterly winded, he slowly comes to realize that the ringing silence in his ears isn’t just from the shock. He opens his eyes to find the entire assembly frozen in slack-jawed disbelief.

Across the circle, the skater named Shadow is laid out on the ground with a look on his face like he just got hit by a lightning bolt on a clear day. Already there is a goose egg growing in the center of his forehead. Silently, the busted-up skateboard rolls past him and disappears into the forest. 

Blearily, Langa looks out across the dumbstruck faces until he finds Reki, who has his hands buried in his hair and looks ready to start ripping it out. Their eyes meet. For a second, Reki looks like he’s going to break down in tears. 

“Oops,” says Langa. 

Then something miraculous happens. Reki lets out a single strangled-sounding guffaw and it’s like the floodgates open. The laughter bursts out of Langa’s chest like fireworks, so suddenly that he startles himself. It’s as if he’s hearing his own voice for the first time in months, and the sound of Reki’s own gasping, hooting laughter settling in alongside his own just feels so right. He’s wheezing, clutching his aching sides as he rolls around on the ground collecting a layer of dust, but then Reki appears in front of his face and their noses brush until he hauls Langa to his feet and takes off running back the way they’d come from. 

Sparing a glance over his shoulder, Langa finds a posse of livid skateboarders hot on their tails. They’re being led by Shadow and the dissatisfied skateboarding couple, all differences put aside in favor of catching Reki and Langa and, presumably, zip tying them both to the chain link fence for the rest of eternity. 

“Run, Langa!” gasps Reki between his laughter, so Langa does just that.

They make it back to Langa’s scooter and Reki has to hold the gate shut while he untangles it from a thorny bush. Even when they hop on and take off through the woods, the skateboard mob manages to match their speed; if only S hadn’t been at the top of a hill, they might have been able to make a clean getaway. Instead, Reki plasters himself to Langa’s back, leans forward to put his hands on the handlebars next to Langa’s, and jerks the front wheel hard to the right down the first side street they come across. 

“I know a place where we can lose them!” Reki shouts.

“Just tell me what to do,” Langa shouts back. 

Up and down the hilly streets of outer Okinawa, under overpasses and over underpasses, left at a fork in the road and right into a covered parking garage; Reki orders him to wedge his scooter between a beat up pickup truck and an overflowing dumpster and Langa eagerly obeys. The whole time, he can’t stop thinking about how nice it is to have someone around who actually knows what he’s doing and what he wants. For the first time maybe in his life Langa has no trouble picking a direction; he knows he’ll be happy going whichever way Reki goes.

And Reki goes up the greasy, dimly-lit staircase of the parking garage, climbing until they reach a door warning about an alarm sounding when opened. They throw themselves against it until it pops open, not locked but with a sticky latch, and no alarm sounds at all. 

“Watch this,” says Reki, and then he throws himself off the side of the roof and onto a rusty ladder bolted to the side of a neighboring building. His foot slips and Langa’s heart jumps into his throat. But Reki recovers, swarming up the creaking rungs until he reaches the roof and waves excitedly back at Langa. 

“Come on!” he whisper-yells, beckoning. 

Langa sizes up the distance. Maybe it’s just the leftover adrenaline, maybe it’s just the way that he can feel Reki’s eyes on him like a burning spotlight, but his pulse is racing as he steps back and takes a running start off the edge. 

There is a phantom weight beneath his feet as he soars through the air; it feels like his snowboard. The wind blows through his hair, and even though it smells like the sea it tastes like the slopes. In the moment before he goes crashing into Reki he thinks he catches his own reflection in those big brown eyes. He looks happy.

“Langa!”

Reki’s shout is joyful, astonished, and mostly muffled by Langa’s shoulder as they roll across the roof together in an indistinguishable tangle of limbs. When they lurch to a stop, Reki lands on top of his chest and immediately levers himself up on his uninjured elbow to stare down at Langa with wild eyes.

“Langa, that was incredible! I’ve never seen anyone jump that far,” Reki says, words tumbling over themselves in a rush. “How did you do that? Do you think you could do it again? Could you show me how–oof.”

Langa’s hair hangs down around his face. The ends brush the red apples of Reki’s cheeks; the endearingly silly headband he always wears has fallen off somewhere along the way during their grand escape, and Reki looks like something mythical laying there with his breaths coming fast and his back pressed against the dirty concrete. 

“Well?” he breathes, squirming as Langa’s arm snakes into the space between the ground and the valley of his spine, “What are you waiting for? Kiss me.”

It’s wet and so, so warm. Their lips slide together and the humidity of their mingling breaths makes Langa’s skin feel damp and sticky. His nose drags across Reki’s cheek; he’s pretty sure this counts as a bad kiss because he has no idea what he’s doing, but Reki doesn’t seem to mind. One of Reki’s hands is carding through the hair at the base of Langa’s scalp and he can feel the drag of each blunt fingernail like they’re leaving trails of fire in their wake. He grabs Reki’s other hand and stretches it out over his head, then nearly regrets it because the sight of that and the sound that Reki makes hits him with such a sudden wave of heat that it makes him dizzy. 

“Langa, mfph, Langa,” Reki says, muffled. 

He twists so that Langa’s next kiss crushes against his cheek instead of his mouth. Langa makes an absent noise and tries to follow him. 

“No, wait a second, just listen– Langa!” Reki stifles a breathless laugh, tilting his head back out of range but inadvertently leaving the column of his throat wide open to attack. “Listen!”

Langa pauses with his mouth set on Reki’s adam’s apple, but nearly loses focus when it bobs and he feels the skin shift against his tongue. He keeps his wits about him for long enough for the sounds of a busy street and the clattering of skateboard wheels to filter in. 

“Where did they go?”

“I swear I saw them turn this way…”

“Hey, lady! Did you see a couple of fairies on a moped pass by here?”

Over the hubbub, another, more official voice rings out, “You hooligans better get lost before I call the cops!”

“Shit! Let’s roll.”

Langa and Reki peek out over the roof ledge just in time to see their unfriendly entourage of angry skaters take off down the street, pursued by an old woman with a broom. 

“Yes!” crows Reki, “We beat them!” 

Meanwhile, Langa is squinting down at the milling crowds and bright lights, struck with a sense of deja vu. It’s only when he looks out, over the sea of rooftop air conditioning units and hotels with laundry hanging from the balconies, and spots the distant lights of the aquarium that he’s able to put his finger on where they are.

“This is the tourist district, isn’t it?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Reki says easily, slinging his arms comfortably over Langa’s shoulders, “It’s always crowded no matter what time it is, so I figured this would be a good place to lose them.”

A feeling of contentment washes over Langa. Reki is so smart. Langa had just known that he would be putting himself in good hands. He resumes his earlier investigation of Reki’s mouth without delay.

They’re interrupted by a growling stomach. Reki splutters a laugh against Langa’s ear as Langa mouths wetly at the hinge of his jaw. 

“Are you hungry?” Langa asks.

“A bit,” says Reki. “Are you?”

Langa noses into the thick red hair behind Reki’s ear. “No, I’m–”

Langa’s stomach complains again, loud and unmistakable.

“I’m… I’m starving,” he realizes. 

Reki’s grin scrunches up his whole face. 

“Then let’s go find something to eat.”

After acquiring two bowls of pork belly and a donut to split, they return to the roof. They sit side by side with their feet dangling off the side of the ledge and their legs pressed close together.

Reki talks so much that he forgets to eat his food. Every other bite he loads onto his spoon just ends up hovering halfway between the bowl and his mouth, which is too occupied with his mile-a-minute chatter to be useful for chewing anyways. Langa has no such problem; he’s content to shovel as much food into his mouth as quickly as possible as he nods along to everything Reki is saying. When his bowl is empty he stares mournfully down at the bottom of it for a few seconds before turning his attention to Reki’s bowl. 

“So,” Reki says, slapping away Langa’s questing spoon so he can scoop up the last of his food, “Do you forgive me?”

“Yes,” Langa answers immediately. He reaches for the spoon but Reki shoves it into his own mouth before Langa can get to it.

“Oh yeah?” challenges Reki, mouth full, “What for?”

Rewinding Reki’s monologue in his head takes a few moments, during which time Langa stalls by leaning in, mouth open like a baby bird expecting to be fed. Reki plants his palm on Langa’s forehead to keep him at bay, and chews faster.

Langa finally sifts apart the question he’d been asked. He stops, pulls away to frown at Reki.

“Getting chased out of S wasn’t your fault, it was mine,” he says, puzzled. “I’m the one who grabbed the wrong bag.”

“But I should have checked,” insists Reki, “You’re my assistant, remember? So as your supervisor it’s my fault that we didn’t get to finish the delivery. And on top of that, I basically gave you more work by making you drive all the way out here.”

Reki continues to think quite deeply on this for a little while, during which time he completely fails to respond to the tiny pecking kisses Langa scatters across his mouth and cheeks. At last, he brightens and grabs Langa firmly by the shoulders. 

“I know,” he says, “I’ll just have to make up the difference. Name your price, Langa!”

Langa purses his lips expectantly. 

“I would do that anyways,” Reki says, exasperated.

“Then why don’t you?” mumbles Langa. 

“It has to be something else. Come on, isn’t there anything you want?” 

“I already owe you one,” Langa says. “From when I accidentally dumped that water on you.”

“And I already told you I forgive you for that,” groans Reki. 

“Still.”

“Okay, how about this.” Reki rolls up his right sleeve, revealing a cluster of woven thread bracelets in every color known to mankind. “I make these during class sometimes when I’m bored. Pick out whichever one you want!”

Langa leans in, inspecting each bracelet with a careful eye before pulling one out of the tangle. It looks like it might be one of the older ones; where it was once probably a vibrant crimson, the threads have now faded to an exact match for Reki’s hair. 

“Good choice,” Reki beams. 

He tugs at it, but it has clearly been tied on; it’s too small to slide off over his palm. Reki picks at the knot for a little while, tongue sticking out in concentration, before he gives up and tells Langa to help. It takes a few minutes, but eventually he’s able to loosen it enough that it falls off.

They’re quiet as Reki begins tying it into place on Langa’s wrist– both of them are one hundred percent focused on watching Reki’s hands. But then Reki meets his eyes, an uncharacteristically solemn look on his face. 

“If you really want me to cash in that favor you owe me…” 

“Yes,” Langa prompts.

“Then please just… be careful, okay? With this whole ‘handyman Hasegawa’ thing you’re doing.”

Langa tilts his head. “What do you mean?”

“I heard most of the conversation between you and Suzuki,” Reki says reluctantly, “About her… paying you to go out on a date.”

Langa freezes in place. 

“And some of her friends were talking about it in class today,” he continues. “Listen, I’m not going to tell you how you should and shouldn’t earn money, but– it can be dangerous, okay? When you do the kind of work where there are feelings on the line, people can sort of lose their minds a bit. Just… in exchange for that favor, could you promise me that you’ll be careful and not accept ‘any’ job, if it looks like it’s going to get you in trouble?”

Reki’s eyes are trained on the glittering streets below them, where even the most nocturnal businesses are beginning to close up shop as their owners head to bed. Langa leans insistently against his side until his gaze slides hesitantly back over. 

“Of course,” Langa promises, and seals it with a kiss.