A/N: Hello...lol. It's been such a long time since I posted on ffnet and my writing has probably gone bad but ehhhhh I'll do my best!
Also, sorry for the lame pun on the title HAHA.
Disclaimer: I don't own Ansatsu Kyoushitsu. Obviously.
"You must be lonely in this house," Yukimura Aguri had remarked, looking around her.
"No," Akari had lied, nursing the cup of tea before her. But her sister was her sister after all, and she had easily seen through the act that Akari had wrapped around herself.
And that was how Akari ended up with a fish.
She didn't know how in the world Aguri had come up with the idea of a fishy companion. There were so many other choices, but she received a fish.
Technically it was a fish in a fishbowl, wrapped in a big red bow that seemed to mock her as soon as she stepped home. A card was attached to the bow, and she snatched it off. No doubt it was an April Fools' joke, three months early. That must be it.
"Please take good care of Nagisa-kun, Akari-chan! He's VERY shy LOLOLOL!" was written in her brother-in-law's elegant cursive, and below that, "I hope he'll make a good companion. Mine did before he died." were the words of her sister.
Akari groaned. It wasn't April Fools.
The fish bubbled in the bowl, as if sensing her incredulity. It stared at her, and she stared back.
The fish moved away to hide behind the miniature trumpet sunk in the sand.
Akari groaned again and sat down on her sofa, hands on her face. This was impossible.
She couldn't even imagine having a second lodger in the house, much less a fish. Why a fish anyway? Just because her sister loved the one she had didn't mean that she necessarily had to take care of a fish too. Sisters were supposedly alike, but she didn't resemble her sister at all.
Akari dialed her sister's house phone, determined to send the fish back somehow.
"Akari! What do you think of the fish! He's cute isn't he! I specifically picked him out for you, thinking that you might like him!"
Akari swallowed down her complaints. They got caught on the way down, like fishbone.
"How do I take care of it, then?"
She couldn't possibly douse her sister's excitement.
So instead, she sprinkled the water with the fish food her sister had sent along.
"Well, it looks like we're stuck together for a while," Akari paused, and made up her mind. "I promise I'll take care of you as best as I can."
She felt silly for saying this to a fish, which probably couldn't understand her anyway, but she always felt more determined about something once she said it out loud. Besides, the fish bubbled her a response, so it wasn't as if she was crazy and was talking to herself...
Akari was the type of person who went through with whatever she set her mind on and it was this quality that pushed her to a higher work position than most of her peers. It was also this work position that kept her busy in a flurry of papers, and she had little time to act on her promise. She barely had time for food, much less take care of her new pet.
And so the fish had to live on one feed every two days for a week, before Akari woke up on a bright Saturday morning and realized with a start how underfed her fish probably was.
She had fallen asleep on her study table, surrounded by papers from work. Assignments had piled up at an alarming rate over the week and she had to resort to bringing some home. It was the sight of the bottle of fish feed that reminded her of her fish. Yawning, Akari slid off the blanket covering her and walked to the fishbowl, the bottle of feed in her hands. She sleepily poured the food into the bowl and put the bottle down beside it.
"Good morning..." Akari remembered the card. "...Nagisa?"
She watched the fish gobble down its breakfast (and apologized inside her mind for pet negligence) and turned to make her own.
But there was already a bowl of porridge lying on the table before her. There was steam floating into the air and it was obviously just made with human hands.
She was all alone in the house, though. Or supposed to be.
Did someone break into her house and leave a bowl of porridge as an apology? Akari half had the mind to rush around and check if anything was missing, but it also occurred to her that no burglar would be kind enough to leave behind an apology. Did her sister check in on her while she was still sleeping?
Well, that was more plausible. Aguri must have quietly retreated and left her a blanket when she saw her asleep, and made her porridge for breakfast.
Otherwise...Akari didn't dare to consider other options. It was chilling a thought enough that someone was in her house while she was sleeping and she didn't even know. So she sat down, said her thanks, and finished her food.
It was food, after all. She would have to be dumb to reject the offer.
And yet over the next week stranger things happened, things that made Akari reconsider.
She would wake up in the mornings and find breakfast laid upon her table. Sometimes it was pancakes, other times toast, but there was always the plate of food sitting on the wood. It would be there, steam curling innocently in the air, and she would sit down and say her thanks and eat and leave for work, as if there was nothing wrong with that. Yet there was everything wrong with it, and Akari couldn't keep the fear from creeping into her mind.
She tried waking up earlier one morning to catch her mysterious chef but when she crept cautiously down the stairs, there was her breakfast (an egg omelet) waiting for her as always. Akari had peeked into the kitchen and found all her kitchen appliances laid in the same order as always. At first glance everything seemed to be in order, but the early morning rays caught upon a small puddle of water at the entrance.
It confused her infinitely for she was sure there was no such puddle last night, before she went to bed. This must be a clue to her mysterious chef, except Akari could make neither head nor tail of it.
Her fish had then flailed in his bowl, and Akari had hurried over to feed him.
Over the week Akari learnt to confide in her new pet and realized how truly valuable a companion he was. Fish couldn't judge people, after all. Most of the time they just stared aimlessly and silently, which fit Akari just right. She didn't need more people to judge her for who she was. She had had enough of that in her childhood, but her family had been there during those times. Now it was only Aguri left.
Which was why she couldn't worry her. She called Aguri once after the (failed) surprise attack, and asked if she had come over to visit. At that Aguri laughed, confused, and replied that it was going to be finals for her students soon, and did she really have time to visit her dear sister when she was spending all her time with her students? Akari sniffed and said yes, if she would spend less time in bed with her husband and more with her sister.
Aguri had spluttered at that, embarrassed, and Akari had hung up with a sort of grim satisfaction, turned to her pudding, and continued with the rest of her lunch...
"Yukimura-san, please look over these reports." "Yukimura, check these stats." "Yukimura, re-do this bit."
...lunch that was quickly swapped with the files that lay before her. Akari sighed, and started to methodically work her way through the swamp.
It was past midnight when she had finished. She was the only one left in the office by then, and much as she was tired, Akari had a rule to never sleep in the office. So she turned off the lights, locked up, and made her way home. It wasn't very far and she took little time to reach her house, ready for her three-hour sleep.
Akari paused at the entrance, and looked. The lights in her living room were on. Very bright and obviously on. She assessed the situation in her head. Empty house, late owner, bright lights. All these factors could only lead to one answer: an unwelcomed intruder.
She silently slipped off her heels (because heels made it harder for her to run in case she needed to) and grabbed the umbrella that she had accidentally left by the door. She unlocked the door as quietly as she could and cracked it open, bringing in the night breeze. Akari took a quick look at the entrance. Nothing seemed to be amiss so far. Good.
She crept further in (she briefly laughed in her mind at how she was sneaking in her very own house) and peeked into the living room. So far so good.
She had one foot on the bottom stair when she spied blue at the corner of her eye. Akari frowned. She knew for a fact that there wasn't anything blue in her house except for her fish because blue didn't fit into the color scheme.
She turned and nearly tripped down the stairs in shock.
There was a body draped across her sofa.
A very naked body with blue hair.
She couldn't tell if it was a male or female, based on the androgynous face, until she noticed the addition of some...parts that proclaimed their owner as male.
Akari flushed and tried to breathe through her nose but it was such a difficult matter when there was a naked person sleeping in front of her, in her sofa. So she quietly walked back to the entrance, slid on a pair of comfortable sneakers, and closed the door. She stood there for a while, wondering what the hell had happened.
It was all a hallucination. She was so tired that she had hallucinated seeing a man on her sofa. That must be it.
Akari turned and made her way back to her office. She was going to sleep there and pretend that this never happened. Because this never did, and when she went back home later today, she was going to find nothing sleeping on her sofa.