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.