(quick disclaimer: the "at" symbol will not appear in 's text editor no matter how nicely I ask, so I've substituted it with (a). Oh well; thanks for reading!)
Another unpleasantly humid September, another town south of Tampa and north of Miami that nobody cared about, and another conglomerate-owned mall with the AC turned up stronger than the dairy sections of most grocery stores. Nobody ever moved to Kennisdale; nearby Tarpon Springs was booming with everything someone could want out of Florida, but every soul in Kennisdale had lived there their whole life. Most people who graduated Kennisdale High (Go Kingsnakes?) swore that, after college, they'd never return to the grungy little town, but something kept drawing undergrad dropouts back home. To an outsider, the whole of Kennisdale was the bad part of town, but if you grow up there you see an odd charm in the way-too enthusiastic sign spinners, boring architecture, and poorly-maintained roads. It doesn't matter how far you go to get away; if you ever felt anything better than disdain for Kennisdale while growing up, you were doomed to be pulled back and offer your spawn to the town's population census.
Kennisdale had exactly one attraction, that being the Bayside Mall. It was quite possibly the only nice thing in town; a cute but deceptively large open-air mall, including some larger stores and some smaller indoor malls with hole-in-the-wall shops. The old Sally Mall had gotten torn down a good 15 years ago, back when Gakupo and Kaito were in elementary school; rumors had spread at shocking rate that the torn-down mall would be replaced with a Six Flags. While this was sadly a modification of an existing rumor about the flea market (to the point that the flea market put up signs to try to dispel it), work started fairly quickly on a much nicer group of malls to manufacture what Kennisdale had never had: a proper "downtown" area. The mall opened officially when they were in 7th grade, and in that mall the two shared many a low-tier fart joke and made even more friends; Miku, a few years behind them, Dex and Luka, a year ahead, and a kid around their age named Flower who was homeschooled. The Bayside Mall had opened up a ray of sunshine in the lives of these otherwise pretty lonely kids, and things were good for a long time.
They progressed through school, and it was high school when things got more hopeful for the future. Dex, who had been like a big brother to Kaito for years, graduated a promptly booked it to some computer engineering school off in the midwest. Luka, graduating at the same time, took a year off to save funds before getting into her choice medical college somewhere in new england. The next year, when Gakupo and Kaito graduated, they made off to a Californian art school with Flower and a game design college in Georgia respectively. Another few years later, when Miku was walking across the stage, she went on with her theater dreams in Boston. It looked like everyone made it out, but obviously not everything goes as planned.
Kaito wound up dropping out one semester in; certainly not from lack of passion, but definitely from lack of funds. His family rode that very wide line between "poor enough to get lots of aid" and "rich enough to afford college," and the fact that his parents actually weren't contributing to his college funds was lost on the FAFSAs. He spent a year at home, unemployed and depressed, before finally landing a basic sales position in the wireless industry that he'd actually be able to work up from. In the four years he'd spent there so far he'd only moved from "mobile expert" (aka retail monkey) to "retail sales lead" (slightly cooler retail monkey, only one rung below assistant manager), but his coworkers made the job worth the hours and the customer service. Skype, and more recently Discord, made keeping contact with his physically distant friends easy through all this, and although Dex was his closest confidante, his friendship with Gakupo became something…interesting.
Gakupo had been openly very gay since sophomore year of high school, and while his gushings about cute guys were normaly confined to DMs with Miku, he was definitely not even remotely shy about joking about it. There was a never-ending stream of blowjob threats being made, and Kaito thought it was hilarious. There was never a moment too serious to keep them from abstaining from the mention of someone's ass, and nobody's theoretical ass was safe. Case in point, a little exchange from this particular September:
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
kicks down door
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
im coming back to Kennisdale
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
(a)here prepare your buttholes im on my way
DOGTECTIVE | 9/3
gakupo i swear to god
Gal-Paladin | 9/3
I'm going to revoke your (a)/here rights.
keyboard with legs | 9/3
gakupo, I have a request
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
lay it on me
keyboard with legs | 9/3
don't ping me at unholy hours
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
ill have to take it up with corporate
keyboard with legs | 9/3
it is 6 in the am get fucked
Microwaveable Boquet | 9/3
kaito is the only one still there dingus lord. also Stay Away From My Butthole
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
0:3c (a)cardboard cone
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
(a)cardboard cone
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
(a)cardboard cone
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
cardboard cone
cardboard cone | 9/3
PLEASE...
pan fried eggplant | 9/3
do u still work at t mobile fucko
cardboard cone | 9/3
only if you're activating. my ass is ready tho
cardboard cone | 9/3
wait wtf why are you coming back to kennisdale
Kaito was more confused than anything else; Gakupo had worked for years to get out of this town, had just graduated with his BFA, landed a consistent, well-paying job…what the hell was he coming back for? The dim glow from his laptop highlighted the crease between his brows as he scrolled through his DMs with Gakupo. Literally nothing indicating that Florida was back in the menu of possibilities, let alone shitty little Kennisdale. Gakupo had then proceeded to explain that the Lush in the Bayside Mall had an opening, and the Lush he currently worked part-time at was willing to transfer him. Being a colorist for a somewhat popular print comic was paying the bills, but Gakupo liked a little more spending money and the employee discount. He said he, admittedly, missed Florida a little bit; California was similar, but definitely not the same. No ventures on his dad's boat out into the Gulf, no coral reefs, and certainly no place like nearby Tarpon Spring's sponge docks. So, having thoroughly romanticized his time in Florida, Gakupo had made the decision to head back East. Flower, however, was staying out West; they'd been roommates all through college, but Flower couldn't bear the thought of returning to Florida, even just to visit their parents.
"I'm good, thanks." They said dismissively in VC an hour or two later.
"Me too, honestly." Dex chuckled. "Wouldn't touch that place with a ten foot pole after all those years…and you're going back for a retail job?"
"My main job I can do from anywhere, dude," Gakupo hummed. "I—"
"Anywhere at all, and yet back to Florida you go." There was an echo to their voice; Kaito figured they were in the dorm room.
"Same jobs, familiar place, and it's close to my parents so I can visit," Gakupo paused. "Y'all don't even kinda miss the sponge docks? The little reef under the last channel marker?"
"Not even remotely." Flower deadpanned.
"Wow. Cold. Kaito, unmute your little bitch ass and get in on this."
Kaito dutifully unmuted his mic, and squeaked out in the tiniest voice he could muster, "Hello, I'm a bitch!"
"Listen, bro-"
"I've been summoned!"
"You're making me angry."
"My little bitch ass!"
"And when I get angry, I get horny."
"I really don't know why I expected this conversation to go anywhere else," Dex choked on a laugh. "Are we officially derailed?"
"And when I get horny, I-no, wait, shut up for a sec Kaito!" There was a clatter and some shuffling as Gakupo assumedly dropped his laptop and tried to readjust. "Hear me out on this. I'm coming back because it's convenient. I'm not gonna be living in the same place, obviously, I'm gonna be closer to the mall, so I get everything I benefited from in Cali plus the fact I can still go use my dad's boat whenever. I'm gonna get my boating license renewed before it gets cold, so in the summer I can go snorkeling out in the Gulf."
"Traitorous." Flower hissed.
"Dramatic." Gakupo shot back. "So, Kaito, I'm flying back over next Friday night to the Tampa airport."
"And you need a ride to your new place?" Kaito paused, and opened the email tab to look at his work schedule. "Uhhh, I might be closing. What time do you land?"
"Yesss…Scheduled to land at 10:30." Clicking sounded as Gakupo typed away at something else. "My new place is off Commercial Street, it's a cute little two bedroom, two-and-a-half bath—"
"The hell you need two bedrooms for?" Dex interjected.
"A bedroom for me, and an office studio room." Gakupo sighed. "I've tried working in the same room where I sleep, and it was not good for my grades…I still gotta follow some semblance of a schedule if I want the quality of my work to be up to par. Besides, it's not like I can't afford it."
"Lucky you," Kaito snorted. He absentmindedly checked his schedule again.
"I'm closing Friday night, so I'll be out at like 10 and the airport's only like a half hour, forty five minutes away. Also apparently I'm opening today and I gotta get up anyhow."
"Cool beans!" Kaito could hear the smile. "I gotta book it, my dudes; Flower and I still have a lot of packing to do."
"You have a lot of packing to do." Flower, barely audible at this point, retorted. "I'm outta here tomorrow, my shit's cleaned."
"Can't polish a turd." Dex chuckled. "I gotta get back to work myself. Talk to ya later."
"See yuh, guys."
Kaito hung up the call and watched Flower's, Dex's, and Gakupo's icons disappear from VC in turn. The laptop on his nightstand dimmed as the battery ran low, and Kaito dragged himself from his bed to his desk to get his charger. His eyes drifted up; full-time work selling and repairing phones was okay, but his apartment wasn't a manor by any means. For a fairly roomy one-bedroom in a nice area pretty close to the mall, it wasn't terribly pricy, but he was still paying for the one year of game design classes that got him no closer to his dreams. To be perfectly honest, it made him a little salty that everyone else had pretty much gotten what they needed. Especially Gakupo, who'd never had to pay a dime of his own money for his education. Kaito was living comfortably, but not remarkably so, and certainly not enough to justify having a superfluous bedroom. Lucky bastard.
With VC off and the window AC unit still unplugged from the previous evening, the usual noises of apartment mornings started up. A neighbor on one side (he couldn't tell which) was doing laundry, the washing machine spinning loudly; the upstairs neighbor, less-than-lovingly nicknamed Sir Stompsalot, housed a great dane apparently named Killer, excited for whatever this sunny Saturday held for them. Kaito's apartment was on the bottom floor, so he fortunately had no downstairs neighbors to worry about disturbing as he stumbled exhaustedly out of his bedroom and into the kitchen. Judging by the pattern of thuds, Killer upstairs was getting breakfast, or just having a case of the zoomies. Once the coffee pot was on, he looked over his apartment; with Gakupo back in town, maybe he'd have a reason to clean it up. Kaito's remaining high school friends pretty much lived at the comic store, and even then he himself was only ever there for D&D since he could never afford to play Magic. It'd be nice to actually have someone other than his mom over. It was then that he looked at the clock and realized he had less than 15 minutes to leave in order to get to work on time.
Kaito, back on autopilot, chugged a pot of coffee and stood motionless in the shower for about 10 minutes before realizing he hadn't done anything and rushed through washing his entire body. He hastily dragged himself out, ran a comb through his hair and a brush over his teeth, and threw on his work clothes in as close to an orderly manner as he could muster before rushing out the door and hopping in his car.
Maybe I should get a puppy, he thought for no particular reason as he pulled into the mall's parking lot. I need the company, and maybe the responsibility would help me keep an eye on time. Plus….puppies. Win win. Maybe I'll bring Gakupo along to pick one out.