Chapter Text
Not speaking of the way,
Not thinking of what comes after,
Not questioning name or fame,
Here, loving love,
You and I look at each other.
— Yosano Akiko
⋆｡°✩
I love my job, Akaashi Keiji reminds himself as he slips the paper apron over his black button-down and reaches for the bag conveniently labeled BIOHAZARD. We are a pillar of the community.
He takes a final, calming breath before he gathers up the rest of the newly opened biohazard kit and trudges from the maintenance room back to the public floor to clean up a mess he didn’t make.
A few patrons turn their heads to watch as he stalks past them dressed like a doctor about to perform surgery, but he pays them no attention. He doesn’t stop, either, when he hears his coworker Yukie say, “You’re a true hero, Akaashi!” from her spot behind the Reference Desk. A small nod is all he can manage. He doesn’t want to prolong the inevitable.
He walks past the public computers and study tables over to the Adult section, where an orange cone has been temporarily placed in front of a bay of fiction shelves. He moves the cone to the side and crouches down, setting the biohazard bag and the rest of the kit beside him as he sizes up the damage. He tries not to let the smell get to him.
Honestly, it could be worse.
It’s contained to one area, at the very least.
He puts on the blue nitrile gloves and tears open the packet of spill clean-up powder to pour over a small pile of vomit, then sits back and waits for it to solidify. When it does, he uses the plastic scooper and tray to begin scraping the congealed mixture off the carpet and into the biohazard bag. It only takes one attempt for Keiji’s normally perfect composure to start to crack.
The scooper is ineffective, bordering on useless, in cleaning up the mess. Even the word scooper is a generous term to describe the small piece of plastic he’s supposed to use to ease the mixture onto an equally small plastic tray to then deposit into the bag. Bits of vomit-covered gel flick onto the shelves, onto his paper apron. He turns his head away before they can touch his face. At least his glasses provide protection for his eyes.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he mutters under his breath after another ineffective scrape. He drops the scooper and forces himself to close his eyes and count to ten. He’s better than this. He’s a professional.
But because the universe has chosen tonight to spite him, he only makes it to three before the sound of a voice too loud for a public library startles him. Keiji opens his eyes and turns. There’s a man, maybe a year or two older than him, standing there with a horned monstrosity of black and white hair and a frantic expression on his face. His voice is equally loud when he asks, “Do you work here?”
Keiji blinks at him. “I… yes?”
“Score! Do you think you could help me print something?” He waves his phone at Keiji. “I have no idea what I’m doing and this needs to be done before tomorrow morning.”
On any other day, Keiji would have stood up and escorted the man over to their outdated print station to show him the nuances of getting their mobile printing to work. But today is not any other day, and the thought of even looking at the printer right now sours Keiji’s already foul mood.
It’s 7 PM on a Tuesday, and instead of wasting the final hour before close joking with Yukie about something one of their regulars said, he’s on his hands and knees in a ridiculous apron scraping some child’s vomit off the floor—all because he had the misfortune of being tonight’s pre-assigned Librarian in Charge.
So he stays where he is and says, sharper than intended, “I have to finish cleaning up vomit. The woman at the Reference Desk can help you.”
“Oh… there wasn’t anyone there when I came in.”
“I see.”
Before Keiji can tear off his gloves and give in like the model of customer service he strives to be, the patron takes a step back and says, “It’s not like it’s life or death or anything! I can just wait over there until you’re done.” He points to one of the empty study tables near the print station. “Good luck with your vomit!” Then he’s gone, jogging over to the table closest to the printer and pulling out a chair to take a seat.
Keiji stares after him just long enough for it to be awkward. They make eye contact. Keiji looks away. He forces himself to return to the task in front of him, tells himself that, by the time he’s sealed off the biohazard bag and disposed of it in the dumpster behind the building, Yukie will have jumped in to help with the printer, and the patron will have promptly departed the library.
As usual, Keiji doesn’t get what he wants.
When he’s finally able to sit back down at the second computer behind the Reference Desk—ready to write up an incident report and send an email to the Head of Maintenance explaining his attempts at cleaning up the mess—Yukie is back at the other computer, but the patron is still waiting by the print station. He stands up as soon as he notices Keiji and bounds over to him.
“I’m ready to learn how to use the printer!” he announces.
Both Keiji and Yukie stop typing. She gives him the ‘Do you want me to take this one?’ look, but Keiji shakes his head and stands up. “Okay,” he says aloud, already making his way around the desk to get the interaction over with as quickly as he can.
He gestures for the patron to follow him to the printer and hands him one of the cards with the instructions for mobile printing. After the patron takes the card, Keiji asks, “How many pages is your document?”
The patron looks down at his phone, then back up at him. “Maybe 100? 150?”
You are a professional, Keiji reminds himself for the second time tonight. Relax.
He takes another long, calming breath and tries to keep his expression neutral. He will not cause a scene. Carefully, he squares his shoulders and says, “Okay. After you upload the document to the web portal, it will tell you how much you owe. You’ll insert the money into this machine. It only accepts banknotes or coins.” He gestures to the coin-op beside the print station. “It’s going to take a while to print once we release the job. The machine is old and doesn’t always cooperate. You’re welcome to try it, but we close in thirty-two minutes. If the document hasn’t finished printing by then, you will have to come back and pick it up tomorrow. We open at 9 AM.”
It’s not his first time giving this speech, and Keiji knows it won’t be his last. On a good night, he can usually convince a patron that they are better off stopping by in the morning to send the job over—or go somewhere else entirely when they realize they can’t pay by card—but he can already tell from the way the man in front of him enthusiastically opens the web portal and clicks on the button to upload his document, Keiji will be dealing with him until the final closing announcement is made.
“It’s going to ask for your email address. You’ll use that as your release key at this computer.” He leans against the counter that houses the printer and the print release computer. “Don’t put it into the computer until you have confirmation on your phone that the job has gone through. Otherwise, you’ll get an error message, and I’d rather not have to reset the computer tonight.”
“Take my time. Got it!”
He watches the patron type [email protected] into the email field, then again into the proper box on the computer. When the screen pulls up his job to release, Keiji can only stare at it. He uses what little remains of his composure to keep his features schooled.
230 pages. Over 5000 yen.
The wall clock above them ticks over to 7:30 and, on cue, one of the circulation staff comes over the PA system to announce that the library will be closing in thirty minutes.
Keiji looks at the patron. “Insert the money, then click ‘print.’ It will ask you how you’re paying—choose ‘vending device.’ Don’t be alarmed if it doesn’t print right away. A job of this size could take up to ten minutes to transfer to the printer.” He steps away from the print station. “Now, if you’ll excuse me… I have to make sure everything is done before we close.”
He manages to walk two steps in the direction of the Reference Desk before the patron calls after him with a loud, “Wait!”
Slowly, Keiji turns.
“I just wanted to say thank you, uh…”
“Akaashi.”
“Akashi! Thank you! I would have been totally screwed without your help.”
“It’s…” Keiji starts to correct him, then realizes it isn’t worth the effort. There’s no point dragging out a conversation with someone he knows he’s never going to see again. He gives the patron a small nod and says, “It’s fine. I’m just doing the job they pay me to do.”
“And now I know who to ask for the next time I come in!” The patron grins at him, hands resting proudly on his hips, and Keiji takes another half-step back. “Bokuto Koutarou, by the way.”
“Okay.”
The printer humming to life behind them saves Keiji from having to engage in unnecessary small talk. He gestures to the machine and says, “If it’s making that noise, then everything should print on time. You won’t have to come back tomorrow to pick it up.”
He doesn’t understand why Bokuto seems to deflate a little when he says it, and he doesn’t care enough to ask. Deeming the interaction over, Keiji turns around and makes his way back to the Reference Desk to ask Yukie what still needs done from their closing routine.
She leans in as soon as he reclaims the seat beside her and, keeping her voice low, asks, “How bad?”
“230 pages.”
“Are you serious?”
Keiji nods. “I tried to get him to come back tomorrow, but it’s fine. They’ve started printing, at least.”
He and Yukie look up to watch their ancient printer spit out Bokuto’s document one page at a time.
It makes it through ten before the lag starts to kick in, and when it does, getting worse after each subsequent page, Yukie’s eyes widen. “Did we remember to refill the paper tray?” she asks.
Keiji feels his entire body stiffen. His mind blanks.
Whatever look passes over him at even the thought of something hindering the print job’s ability to finish before close must be just panicked enough, because Yukie frantically waves her hands in front of her face and says, “I’m kidding! I’m kidding! I refilled it like an hour ago, and I don’t think anyone has used it since. Finish what you were working on; I’ll make sure everything else gets done.” She stands up and walks around the desk to begin shutting off the lamps at the unoccupied study tables.
Keiji sighs and turns back to his computer to search for the folder with the incident report template in it. He downloads a copy and starts entering as much information as he can into the required boxes about the patron who had told him her son had thrown up while she was browsing in Adult Fiction. This part is easy. He focuses on the task in front of him, not realizing how much time has passed until he’s startled back into the present by the fifteen minute announcement being made over the PA system.
When he glances up from his computer screen, Bokuto is still there.
The printer’s lag is getting worse.
The clock ticks over to 7:46.
Fuck.
Keiji manages to submit the report, but the sound of the printer’s incessant whirring ruins his concentration when he tries to compose an email to the Head of Maintenance about the incident. He watches Bokuto pace in front of the machine. It’s overheating again, and the large stack of papers waiting in the output tray doesn’t look like nearly enough to be 230.
7:47.
“Well,” Yukie says when she re-takes her seat beside him at 7:48. “I still have to check the restrooms, but everything else is done. He should be the last one down here.” She nods to Bokuto. “Do we think he’s almost done?”
“The printer’s been going for more than ten minutes. He should be.”
“Did he say what it was for?”
“Just that it needed to be done before tomorrow morning.”
Yukie presses her lips together. “Hm. Do you think he’s a teacher? I mean, he doesn’t really seem like the type, but I would believe that over him having a corporate job. Oh! Maybe they hired him as a coach? He’s got the shoulders to be a swimmer, don’t you think?”
Keiji shrugs and tells her, “Maybe.” He doesn’t put much thought into it—his answer or Bokuto’s profession. This late in the workday, he can’t bring himself to care about anything beyond getting to pack up his things and go home.
The clock at the bottom of his computer screen rolls over to 7:50, and when Yukie doesn’t attempt to keep the conversation going, Keiji flexes his fingers above the keyboard and wills himself into finishing his email. He presses ‘send’ at 7:53. Then, mercifully, at 7:55, the printer stops.
He looks up in time to see Bokuto gathering up his stack of papers with one hand. With the other, he waves to Keiji and announces, in that same too-loud voice from earlier, “All done! And I had time to spare. See ya later, Akashi!”
Keiji offers him a small, awkward wave in return. He doesn’t correct him on his name this time either—doesn’t say anything at all—just continues to stare after him until Bokuto passes through the library’s automatic doors and lets the parking lot swallow him up.
Keiji refuses to look at Yukie in the silence that follows, and before she can ask him about the interaction, he scoots his chair back and says, “I’ll check the restrooms.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. You did everything else. I don’t mind.”
He moves around the desk and starts walking towards the first floor restrooms with his head down. There’s an uneasiness snaking its way underneath his skin that he tries to combat by tapping restless patterns against the fabric of his light gray dress pants. He catches it, too, in the mirror’s reflection when he pushes open the door to the men’s restroom and steps inside. The tiniest indication that something is off.
Keiji shakes his head and tells himself he’s just tired. That it’s nothing more than an aftereffect of reaching the end of an overly long workday. He doesn’t understand why it would be anything else.
After making sure the men’s restroom is patron-free, he knocks on the door to the women’s restroom and does the same, then checks the two single-occupant restrooms before alerting the staff at the Circulation Desk that the first floor is clear. One of them gets up from her computer and goes to lock the automatic doors.
7:58.
He’s so, so close.
He turns to give Yukie the ‘all-clear’ thumbs-up from across the room and she gives him one back.
The second floor staff come downstairs to announce that they’re clear, too.
7:59.
Keiji isn’t sure he’s ever been so relieved to hear, “It’s eight o’clock, the library is now closed,” when the hour is finally up. He walks back across the library so that he and Yukie can enter their department’s workroom together and gather up their things.
At his workstation, Keiji bends down to retrieve his messenger bag from underneath his desk and drops his ID badge into it. He slots his empty tea thermos into its designated pouch and slings the bag onto his shoulder. From the station next to his, he hears Yukie say, “You deserve an award for keeping it together tonight. I don’t know how you do it.”
“An award feels unnecessary, but a raise would be nice.” He manages a half-smile. “I’m just glad I’m getting out of here on time.”
Yukie laughs around a mouthful of candy she’s just shoved into her mouth. “A raise! Isn’t that the dream!” She tilts her head back and sighs.
They turn off the workroom light and walk through the door that leads into the staff hallway, then down the hallway over to the staff exit. As Librarian in Charge, Keiji has to wait for everyone else to leave the building before he’s allowed to go, but he doesn’t want Yukie to think she needs to wait around with him for those few staff members that always take an inordinate amount of time packing up their things.
He tells her he’ll see her in the morning, and as she slips out the door, she calls, “I hope tomorrow is easier! ‘Night, Akaashi!” with a final wave of solidarity.
The Youth Services Librarian that leaves with her asks, “What happened?,” but the door closes before Keiji can hear what Yukie tells her in response. He’s certain, though, that by the time he gets in tomorrow morning, the entire building will know not only about the vomit, but whatever version of Keiji’s interaction with Bokuto Yukie decides to share. At a library as small as theirs, it doesn’t take much for gossip to spread.
He adjusts and readjusts his messenger bag strap while he waits for the last of the staff to leave the building, counts down the seconds until it’s his turn to push the door open and let the early April breeze cover his skin, too. When the last two finally pause their conversation long enough to say their goodnights to him, Keiji lets out a relieved breath, turns off the lights, and follows them outside.
He makes sure the staff exit locks behind him before starting down the sidewalk in the direction of his apartment. It’s colder than he had anticipated it being, and his lack of jacket becomes apparent when the wind picks up. He doesn’t have a far walk from the library to his apartment—and, really, on any other day, the convenience of location is one of his favorite things about living where he does—but right now, closing his arms around his chest as he trudges down an empty street, it feels like a herculean task just to stop his teeth from chattering or his fingers from going numb. One more thing to add to his neverending day.
Keiji picks up his pace.
He all-but jogs through the neighborhood until he sees his apartment come into view. It’s a tan, two-story, box-shaped house that has been converted into a series of single-occupant apartments. Keiji walks up the exterior staircase that leads to his unit on the second floor and reaches into his bag for his keys, unlocks the door, and steps inside.
Warmth envelops him as soon as he sets down his bag and slips off his shoes. Exhaustion, too. Standing in the genkan, he feels the day catch up to him in full, but instead of fighting it, Keiji walks over to his cream-colored couch and sinks down onto the cushions. From wherever she had been hiding, Akiko hops up to join him. She settles onto his chest with an affectionate chirp and Keiji instinctively reaches out a hand to scratch between her ears.
“You’ll never believe what happened today,” he tells her.
The calico cat slow-blinks at him, then lowers her head. She’s asleep before Keiji can even begin his story.
He laughs to himself, then yawns, then starts to drift off, too.
⋆｡°✩
“What the hell happened last night?” Keiji hears Konoha ask the following morning.
He turns around to see his coworker enter the workroom from the door that connects to the staff hallway just before nine. Yukie is not far behind. They both stare at Keiji expectantly, and from the way neither of them bother to remove their jackets or set their things down at their respective workstations, Keiji knows they want to hear his retelling of last night’s events.
“I thought I was going to see Akaashi snap,” Yukie admits. “I think I would have if it were me.”
“Akaashi was going to snap?” It’s Kaori’s voice. She enters the workroom through the opposite door—the one separating them from the public floor—with a cart of books needing to be taken to the processing department for relabeling. “Can’t believe I missed that. Nothing exciting ever happens on Thursday nights, does it, Konoha?”
“You want the excitement?”
“I want anything that makes the time go by faster.”
Konoha laughs at this, and Keiji thinks it will be enough to change the subject. Instead, Yukie says, “We had this guy come in super last minute who had to print all of these pages. And that was after Akaashi got stuck cleaning up a kid’s vomit.”
“You did what?” Kaori’s eyes widen.
Keiji shrugs. “Just another Tuesday night,” he deadpans. “You can read the incident report, if you want.” He stands up from his desk chair and grabs his tea thermos and favorite pen. “I made it as detailed as I could.” Then he steps around them and announces he’s going out to the desk to be ready for the regulars waiting to get in when they open three minutes from now. Kaori says she’ll be out after she drops off her cart. Konoha assures him he’ll stop by to hear the rest of the story later.
“I’m sure you will,” Keiji tells him. He opens the door leading to the public floor and crosses the threshold without saying anything else, already shifting his focus to preparing for whatever today might bring, the events from last night a thing of the past.
The morning passes the way it always does. He and Kaori help people install apps on their smartphones and download PDFs for printing. They take turns dealing with the local man who calls for answers to everything from the daily weather forecast to the score of last night’s game between Seibu and SoftBank. Keiji helps a woman find a good mystery novel. Kaori convinces a man in his seventies to check out her current favorite movie: 1st Kiss. It’s steady, routine.
Then, five minutes before he’s meant to go to lunch, Keiji hears, “Hey! Hey! Hey! Akashi, hey!”
He freezes beside the seasonal display he had been refilling, one hand still clutched around a guide to perennials, and takes a long breath. When he doesn’t immediately turn to look at him, Bokuto says again, “Akashi?”
Slowly, Keiji faces him and says, “It’s Akaashi, actually.” His voice is quiet in contrast.
“Huh?”
“Akaashi. My name… it’s not…”
Bokuto’s mouth forms a large O before he loudly exclaims, “Dammit!” with no regard for the institution he’s in. He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I totally messed that up. Gah! Sorry, Akaashi.”
Too stunned to react to anything that’s happening, Keiji lets Bokuto continue. “Anyways, I wanted to stop by to say you really saved me last night. I probably could have printed them when I got to school, but there’s always a line and I’m really trying to be better about managing my time this year, so—”
“It’s my job. I told you, helping with the printer is what I’m paid to do.”
“They must pay you to do a lot of things.”
There’s a small grin on Bokuto’s face that Keiji chooses to ignore. Shrugging, he says instead, “It’s the nature of the profession. I’ve come to accept that no two days will be exactly the same, but, uh, yes. Last night… you caught me under unexpected circumstances. I should apologize if I seemed irritable. I’m glad everything worked out.”
“Does that kind of thing happen often here?”
“With the printer? Every day. Cleaning up something like that? No, thankfully not. At least, not down here. I’m sure our Youth Services staff deal with their regular share of messes, but they’re on their own floor. We try to keep it mess-free down here.”
He doesn’t know why Bokuto laughs at this, but the sound of it, so boisterous and free, causes a slight flush to creep across Keiji’s cheeks. He turns to the display to straighten the book cradles already in place, not looking back at Bokuto until he hears him say, “Well, I know who to call if I ever need a mess cleaned up.”
“A professional?”
More laughter.
Then: “HA! You’re incredible, Akaashi!”
“I…”
“Anyways, I should probably get back to the school, but I’ll see you around.” Bokuto gives him a big wave, the rest of his body already in motion towards the exit. “I know where you work!”
Keiji remains at the display long after he watches Bokuto leave through the automatic doors. Part of him wonders if he hallucinated the entire interaction—that years of sleep-deprivation have finally caused his grip on reality to slip. When he eventually walks back to the Reference Desk, though, he knows that’s not the case. The universe wouldn’t be so kind.
Kaori is no longer there, but he sees Konoha and Yukie smirking at him from behind the computers. He narrows his eyes at them and asks, “What?” more defensive than intended.
Yukie’s grin widens. “Don’t worry about it!”
“Just saw something interesting, is all,” Konoha adds.
The line between Keiji’s eyebrows deepens. “I’m going to lunch,” he says.
“Alone?” Yukie cocks her head, and if he hadn’t spent the past year working with her, Keiji might think her question was innocent. He knows better now.
“I don’t see why I would be going with someone else?”
His coworkers exchange a look, but Keiji doesn’t stick around to let them question him further. He grabs his thermos and pen and tells Konoha he can log him out of the computer before he stalks across the library to the workroom. Kaori is at her workstation, along with the head of his department and one of the part-time assistants. Keiji gives them all his best attempt at a smile and repeats that he’s going to lunch with an award-winning level of calm.
He’s standing outside the library before anyone can question if he’s okay.
It would be a ridiculous question to ask anyway, he knows. Obviously he’s okay. The slight flush on his cheeks, the sound of Bokuto’s laughter still loud in his ears, none of it means anything.
He is here to do a job.
Interacting with a loud, well-intentioned patron that happens to also be relatively attractive is just a byproduct of that. Nothing more.