There was something especially gross to coming home and the first thing you do when you take off your shoes is stepping into something wet.

 

Looking down, Hachin stared tiredly at the open beer can in front of his foot, that had poured out onto the worn floor of the apartment. Holding in an annoyed groan, he pulled the drenched, stinking sock off his foot, nudging the can with a toe to see how much had been drunk versus poured onto the floor. How drunk had she been when she got home to just drop the can like that?

 

Murmuring a quiet, “I’m home” to the cluttered hallway, he made his way to dump the sock in the bathroom, carefully stepping over the puddle on the floor that would leave the wood reeking for days, considering it seemed to have been lying there for a few hours at best.

 

Hachin tiptoed around the trash, peering into the livingroom to see that the tv was on, his mother staring into the machine with barely there eyes. Idly he wondered if he would have to take her to the hospital to check for alcohol poisoning tonight, as he deemed it safe enough to step into the room and open the window without fear of retaliation.

 

With the crisp air of winter now making it possible to breathe, Hachin changed into other clothes, pinning his bangs out of his face with hair clips decorated with flowers.

 

Shivering against the cold, he pulled on an extra sweater over the one he was already wearing before rolling up his sleeves and getting to work on cleaning the mess somehow created during the hours he’d been away.

 

️

He was in the middle of lugging the laundry to the coin laundry when he heard someone call out to him.

 

He felt his cheeks grow hot when he locked eyes with Yasu, and he became acutely aware of his not-very fashionable clothes and the way his hair was on end after all the cleaning. Not to mention he probably had smudges of dirt on his face. For his rival (and lifelong crush) to see him in such a state was downright embarrassing. He hadn’t seen Yasu so close to his home in years, so meeting him like this hadn’t even crossed his mind.

 

Still, seeing him always made his heart pound in his chest, and he lit up, a smile replacing the boredom he’d felt while walking through the street. “Faah! Yasu, what’re you doing here?!”

 

Yasu looked at the big laundry basket in confusion for a moment before recognising what it was, dark blue and yellow eyes relocating to look back into Hachin’s light blue ones. He smiled back at his sort-of friend. “I’m running an errand for mum. You live in this area?”

 

Hachin nodded. He’d had time to get used to the fact that Yasu didn’t remember him from their childhood, but every reminder of it still stung. “Yup. We used to play on that playground over there, remember?”

 

Following the direction of where Hachin was pointing, Yasu squinted at the worn out jungle gym and the swings that barely kept together after all these years. “I think I… might’ve seen that monkey painted on that wall…”

 

Shifting the basket to his hip, Hacchin bounced on his feet, nodding enthusiastically. “Yeah! We got scolded for painting moustaches on the animals on the jungle gym once when we were like, eight. Your mum bailed us out when she picked you up though.”

 

The memory of his own mum slapping him right in the face after she found out about the vandalism made his teeth ache. He still had a chipped tooth at the back of his mouth from the incident, along with a scar on his tongue, but he couldn’t help but remember the activity in itself fondly, even now. It must have shown on his face, because even though Yasu didn’t seem to be able to remember it, he was smiling at him. It was an expression that made Hachin’s cheeks grow warm again, and he was thankful to the cold making it seem like that was why he was flushed, and not the fact that he was blushing like a fool.

 

He tapped the toe of his boot against a crack in the pavement, looking at the other boy as he moved the basket back to hang in front of him. “Uh, I gotta get laundry done. See you tomorrow?” Hachin felt his heart flutter when he met Yasu’s eyes and the two-toned gaze stayed on him for a prolonged amount of time.

 

After a moment of silently looking into each others’ eyes, Yasu nodded. “See you at school, Hachin.”

 

With a bit more pep in his step, the bumblebee boy made his way to the coin laundry, walking backwards for a few steps to look at his bandmate’s retreating back. Maybe Yasu was a tiny bit closer to remembering him. He could only hope, and keep prodding his memories.

 

One day he’d make sure that Yasu remembered him.

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