BANG!
… BANG!
… BANG!
Tsukishima Kei groaned as something that had to be gunshots woke him up. There was no other explanation for the intermittent thundering noises outside. They seemed to be getting closer; perhaps he should get up. Tsukishima let out a long-suffering sigh and decided it would be impossible to keep sleeping through all the racket. He stumbled out of bed and put on his glasses, marveling at how his roommate, Yamaguchi, was still asleep. But then again, the man could sleep through anything.
He'll be sorry to see me go, Tsukishima thought. I'm going to die here, go out in a blaze of glory, and he'll be sorry to see me go. Yamaguchi will cry at my funeral and maybe give an inspiring speech about what a good friend I was and how much he'll miss me. Yes, I can picture it now, it will be––
BANG!
Tsukishima jumped, much to his own embarrassment. The noise was closer now. Tsukishima took a deep breath and opened the door of his dorm room.
It was not, in fact, gunshots, but instead none other than one Hinata Shouyou, who, at 3 a.m. in the morning, was running around and slamming the doors to every room in the their hall.
BANG!
Another casualty.
"Hinata, what the hell is going on here?" Tsukishima said in a loud whisper. The only thing keeping him from yelling was the fact that he was a considerate person and did not go around trying to wake the whole dorm at 3 a.m. in the morning.
Hinata jumped at the sound of the other's voice.
"Oh, hey Tsukishima!" Hinata said cheerily, apparently unaware that people are supposed to be asleep at this ungodly hour. "I'm just closing all the doors in the hall."
"I can see that," Tsukishima said through gritted teeth, "and you'd better have a damn good reason for it, too."
"I, uh," Hinata looked nervous at the sight of Tsukishima's barely concealed anger. "Well, you see, there was a moth––"
"A moth?"
"Yeah! Like the insect that flutters around like FWAH!"
"I know what a moth is." Tsukishima pinched the bridge of his nose. He could feel a headache starting already. "So you're closing all the doors… because you saw a moth?"
"I didn't want it to get into anyone's rooms!"
Tsukishima felt like screaming. But he didn't. Instead, he sighed deeply and looked down at Hinata. And blinked. There was indeed a moth in the hall, and it was slowly weaving its way towards Tsukishima's open door.
"It's there," he whispered. The culprit behind all the trouble seemed unaware it had been noticed and continued in the direction of Tsukishima's room. Hinata's eyes widened as he also spotted the moth.
"Shhh!" Tsukishima said before Hinata could shout something. "Keep an eye on it while I grab a tissue."
"Are you going to kill it?" Hinata whispered, finally realizing that talking loudly in the early morning was appreciated by exactly zero people.
"Yes."
"You can't do that! Moths are people too!" Hinata protested.
"No, they aren't. They are insects and while you may be small enough to be an insect, that doesn't make insects people." Tsukishima moved to get a tissue from his room.
"Wait!" Had Hinata missed the day in elementary school when kids were taught what an inside voice was? Maybe he had––that would actually make a lot of sense.
"What is it this time?" Tsukishima hissed back. His heart sunk as he noticed the telltale sparkle in Hinata's eyes as the shorter boy got an idea in simpleminded head.
"We need to save––"
"No." Tsukishima interrupted. "We are not doing anything. I am going back to bed."
"At least help me catch him," Hinata pleaded.
Tsukishima weighed his options. While he could go back to sleep and forget this whole event ever happened, the likelihood that Hinata would actually burn the dorm to the ground while trying to catch a moth was surprisingly high. Or, he could quickly help catch the moth and go back to sleep. Always the pragmatist, Tsukishima chose the safer option.
"I'll help you catch the moth, but on one condition."
"Yes!" Tsukishima winced the volume of Hinata's response. "What's the condition?"
"That you never do this ever again!" Tsukishima almost shouted. Tsukishima was someone who prided himself on having a tight grasp on his sanity, but for some reason, Hinata Shouyou consistently drove him up the walls.
"But what if there's another moth?" Hinata pouted.
"Never!"
"Okay… then what are we wasting time for? Let's get him!"
Throughout all their talking, the moth, miraculously, had not gone far and was fluttering slowly towards Bokuto's room.
"Keep an eye on it," Tsukishima said and went back into his room, not bothering to check if Hinata had followed his instructions. He quickly found an empty mug and a sheet of paper, and ran back into the hallway again.
"He's still here," Hinata whispered, as if the moth could be frightened away by his words. It took all of a ten seconds for Tsukishima to cover the moth with the mug once it landed on the wall. He slid the paper under it and lifted the mug from the wall, keeping the paper against the edge of the mug and trapping the moth within.
"You did it!" Hinata cheered and was subsequently silenced by Tsukishima's glare.
"Don't," he said softly. "Now, you know what to do from here, right?"
Hinata nodded and took the mug and paper carefully, looking as if his life depended on it. Which it sort of did, if Tsukishima had anything to say about it. "Go let it outside and give me the mug back in the morning," Tsukishima instructed, and Hinata nodded again.
"Thanks, Tsukishima!" Hinata called as he raced off to go free the moth from its temporary imprisonment.
Tsukishima could have cried tears of joy to see the other boy go. But he didn't. Instead, he crept back into his dorm room, and after making sure the door was locked, blissfully sunk back into sleep.
