"Ok, so now that the last reports have been turned in by the final two classes, I think that's everything we needed to close the file on this year's Culture Fest. Does anyone have any objections?"
Hajime looked up from his notes, where a neatly written list with accompanying check boxes stared back up at him. Putting the last checks next to '2-C report' and '2-A report' had been deeply satisfying and long overdue, and as far as Hajime was concerned if anyone did have any objections, they'd have to be really good ones for him to want to give this list a single extra second of his time.
Fortunately, a glance around the room proved that no one had any objections, and Hajime let out a satisfied sigh.
"Good. In that case..." Hajime set the checklist down on the desk in front of him, then consulted his agenda one last time. "Does anyone else have any business that wasn't on the agenda?"
Again, his question was met with silence, and Hajime looked around the room.
"Ok, then that should be all for today. Thanks for your hard work."
There was a loud scraping of chairs as the twelve class reps quickly got up, along with the actual Student Council. But while the reps quickly fled the room, the Student Council members remained behind, gathered in a loose knot around Hajime as he rapidly flipped his papers into neat stacks.
"I can't believe 2-A and 2-C only just got us their reports," Secretary Chiaki said, frowning as he looked at the two small stapled bundles that made up one of Hajime's piles. "The Culture Fest was three weeks ago, did they lose them? Decide to write them by committee, voting on every sentence?"
He was looking accusingly at Mutsuki as he spoke, and Mutsuki laughed and held up his hands.
"Hey, don't blame me just because my class was abysmally tardy. Preparing those reports is the class rep's job; all I could do, even as the Vice President, is gently suggest he gets a move on."
Chiaki eyed him for a moment. "You never said anything, did you?"
"Nope!" Mutsuki said cheerfully.
Hajime rolled his eyes and reached out for the reports, then paused. "Mio, did you still need these?"
The treasurer promptly shook her head. "Nope, I got the financials from the classes two weeks ago. They had the numbers; they've just been dragging on the full reports."
"Of course they have," Hajime murmured, his expression annoyed, but Mio not needing them made things a little easier. Opening a large binder sitting on the desk, Hajime flipped through it until he found the section he was looking for and opened the spine, then put the two missing reports in with the other second-year classes.
The rest of Hajime's papers went into either a second binder that he tucked into his schoolbag or else the recycling bin, and then he looked around at the rest of the Student Council. "Well, I'm going to take this," he said, picking up the Culture Fest binder, "up to the records room and get it put away...finally..." he said, a scowl crossing his face. "You guys all enjoy the rest of your weekend, I'll see you next week."
Mio, Chiaki, and first-year rep Sawa all said their good-byes, then headed out of the room. Hajime sighed once more, then picked up the binder and glanced at Mutsuki, who'd hung back. "Thanks for waiting."
Mutsuki shrugged, grinning. "Well, you did ask."
"Yes, asked. That doesn't mean you had to say yes," Hajime reminded him as the two of them walked out of the room, locking it behind them.
"Doesn't it? You are my president, after all," Mutsuki teased. "Saying 'no' to you could get me fired, or worse!"
"Believe me, if I had the power to fire people, it wouldn't be you, Mutsuki," Hajime said as the two of them climbed the stairs to the third floor, their footsteps echoing through the empty hallway. Saturday meetings were always the worst, but there weren't a lot of options when the full student government had so many people, and so many conflicts.
"Let me guess, my dearly beloved Class Rep Ishikawa, maybe?" Mutsuki said, his grey eyes dancing, and Hajime's face twitched.
"Seriously, just do the damn work! It should not take three fucking weeks to make one simple report, especially not when they apparently had the financials, the actually complicated part, ready weeks ago," Hajime practically exploded. "What else even is there? A summary, photos, detailed breakdown of what they did. None of its hard, none of it should take long. Most of it they should have had the day after the festival! Yet here we are, three weeks later, only now getting this done? Why do we even bother having deadlines?"
Hajime was glowering as they made their way down the hallway to the records room, just a few doors down from the Student Council office. And he was still glowering when they reached the door and he pulled out his keys, unlocking and opening the door with a wrench.
Mutsuki had been leaning against the wall as Hajime wrestled with the door, an amused look on his face. "Careful, Hajime, or you're going to hurt the door's feelings. Or possibly just the door."
Hajime gave Mutsuki an annoyed look, not even dignifying that with a response before stalking into the room. And Mutsuki chuckled, glancing down the hallway before following Hajime in and closing the door behind them.
Hajime practically beelined to the section where all the information on school festivals was kept, and it took him barely any time to find the place for this year's Culture Fest binder. Mutsuki watched as the binder joined its fellows on the shelf, then he grinned at Hajime.
"There, it's done. Feel better now?"
Hajime sighed, then eyed Mutsuki, who continued to grin at him before tilting his head and cocking one brow.
"Well?"
Hajime made a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a growl, then turned towards Mutsuki, his hands coming up to cup Mutsuki's face and draw him close. And as their lips crashed together, Hajime had to silently admit that the answer was 'no,' but hopefully also 'soon.'
Some time later, as they adjusted their clothes and smoothed out their hair, Hajime noticed Mutsuki looking at him thoughtfully and he felt strangely self-conscious.
"What's that look for," he asked, his voice somewhat gruff as he buttoned his shirt.
Mutsuki wasn't the least bit upset he'd been caught staring. "What, I can't stare at my boyfriend, not even in times like this? You are cruel, Hajime," he said, his voice light and teasing, and Hajime blushed.
"That's not what I mean and you know it, Mutsuki. You're doing it again."
Mutsuki looked at him, then sighed. "Fine. But if you can tell I'm doing it 'again,'" he mimicked, "then you don't really need to ask, do you?"
Hajime sighed in turn, torn between affection and annoyance. "I've already told you, I'm not stressed. Not any more than I've ever been this year," he corrected, thinking about the workload he was carrying between the presidency, his third-year class work, studying for his college exams, and trying to eke out a social life. Mutsuki knew that.
"See, you keep saying that," Mutsuki said, walking over to Hajime and yanking his tie out of Hajime's pants pocket, "But you just jumped me in the records room. Again," he said, his eyes dancing as he draped his tie around his neck and began to tie it.
Hajime's blush deepened. "Mutsuki, if I'm being-"
"Oh no, it's nothing like that," Mutsuki quickly said. "I mean, you did ask, after all," he said, giving Hajime a wink. But then he sobered up, just a tiny bit. "But much as I enjoy seeing you all hot and bothered amidst the stacks, it's been a lot lately. Can you blame me for worrying?"
Hajime tried to laugh it off. "So now it makes you worry, me wanting you? Seems like the kind of thing most guys would be happy about."
Mutsuki was eyeing Hajime with patient resignation. "Most guys don't know you like I do, Hajime...I hope," he said, his mouth twitching upwards and provoking yet another blush from Hajime. "And with my unique knowledge set," he continued, moving closer to Hajime and smoothing the front of his uniform shirt, "I know that you get horny when you're stressed."
Damn it, why did Mutsuki have to be so damn observant?
"Maybe I'm just horny. I am a teenager, isn't that we're supposed to be?" Hajime asked, trying to ignore Mutsuki's hands moving down his torso. But Mutsuki shook his head.
"Seriously, Hajime, I wish you'd just admit it. You've been wound tighter than a spring for the past few weeks, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who's noticed."
Hajime's jaw twitched in annoyance, but he couldn't argue with Mutsuki's point. Either of them.
"Everyone just needs to focus on themselves and stop worrying so much about me," he said gruffly, looking at Mutsuki. "That goes for you too, by the way."
"Sorry, can't," Mutsuki said, stepping away from Hajime and picking up their schoolbags. "By being close to me, you're stuck having me worry about you in perpetuity," he continued, handing Hajime his.
As Hajime looped his bag over his shoulder, he gave Mutsuki another look that was half exasperation and half affection.
"Lucky me."
As they let themselves out of the records room and locked the door behind them, Mutsuki glanced at Hajime, musing aloud,
"Was that sarcasm? Sometimes it's really hard to tell with you."
Upon arriving at home, Hajime and Mutsuki changed out of their uniforms, then Mutsuki drifted into Hajime's room with his schoolbag in tow. Even though the two of them were in different grades, they'd been doing their homework together for years; even back when Hajime was living in the dojo his first year of high school, Mutsuki would often come over and they'd both flop on the floor, noses in their books. Back then Hajime had claimed to hate it; Hajime had always preferred a quiet and orderly approach to schoolwork, while Mutsuki was physically unable to sit still or be quiet for longer than five minutes.
But he'd still let Mutsuki join him, and it wasn't long after they'd all moved into Shigure's old house that Mutsuki started doing his homework with Hajime literally every day. Hajime still complained sometimes; occasionally, even a stellar student like him needed extra focus. Mutsuki was never allowed around when Hajime actually needed to buckle down and properly study. But the rest of the time...in general...he liked it.
As usual, they both sat on the floor. Hajime had a desk, but he rarely used it; him sitting at his desk was the universal sign that he was working on something Very Important and wasn't to be bothered at all for any reason other than an emergency.
Mutsuki had a desk too, in his room...technically. A person would have to dig through several layers of mess to find it, since Mutsuki seemed to consider literally every surface as a place to keep literally everything, but it was technically there. Somewhere.
And that was one of the many reasons that they always ended up in Hajime's room, sprawled out on the floor with their books spread out in front of them.
Both Hajime and Mutsuki were good students, so they tended to move through their homework at similar brisk paces. Today was no different, and even with Mutsuki's idle chatter, they were mostly done after little more than an hour, which was when Mutsuki rose to his feet.
"I'm going to run downstairs and get some snacks. Try not to have too much fun without me," he said, grinning as he looked at Hajime amidst his homework, red-rimmed reading glasses perched on his nose.
"Oh, I'll try," Hajime said dryly, then called after Mutsuki, "Nothing with crumbs, unless you're actually going to clean up this time!"
Mutsuki's room might be a pit of chaos, but Hajime's was so tidy it was almost, as Mutsuki liked to tease him, painful.
Mutsuki didn't respond, and Hajime snorted as he turned his attention back to his physics homework. He was pretty confident Mutsuki had heard him, he was just pretending he didn't so he had plausible deniability when he inevitably returned with something that would crumble and leave little fragments on the floor, fragments that would poke Hajime's feet and drive him crazy in the five minutes they'd linger before Hajime couldn't take it anymore and either made Mutsuki clean them up or just did it himself.
Not like that had ever happened before, once or twice.
He was just starting to write out his next answer when a ringing phone snapped him once more out of his homework mindset and back into the room. With a sigh, he reached for his pocket, then paused as he realized it wasn't his phone ringing, but rather Mutsuki's.
"Hey, Mutsuki! Phone!"
There was no answer, so Hajime guessed Mutsuki was in the kitchen and couldn't hear. Whoever it was could go to voicemail easily enough, but Hajime still reached out to pick up Mutsuki's phone and see who was calling. Depending on who it was, he might even answer it; their phones had never been private from one another, and most of the time people calling one of them were happy to talk to the other.
But as he looked at the screen, Hajime was in for a surprise. The contact picture up on the screen was a selfie of Mutsuki himself, beaming at the camera as his face crowded into the frame with Hajime's own mother. And the contact name confirmed it, 'Aunt Tohru' displaying below the picture in large white letters.
Hajime was startled. Why was his mom calling Mutsuki?
He stared at the phone, hesitating as it continued to ring. Answer? Not answer? A quick check of his own phone confirmed that she hadn't tried calling him, so...
The phone was just about to go to voicemail when Hajime answered, lifting the phone to his ear. "Mom?"
Tohru's voice was almost as startled as Hajime's face had been.
"Hajime?"
"Yes, that's right. Everything ok?"
He could hear how flustered his mom was, and that made her next words a relief.
"Yes, of course! Everything is fine, Hajime, thank you for asking! Is everything ok with you?" She asked, and Hajime had to smile at her frantic attempts to collect herself and sound normal.
Tohru had never been good at being calm under pressure, though why there was pressure involved in talking to Hajime, he had no idea.
Then again, he still had no idea why she was calling Mutsuki's phone, either, and while he was relieved to hear that everything was ok back home, he was still confused.
"Yes, everything's fine here. Mutsuki and I were just doing homework, but he's down getting some food right now."
"Oh, of course," his mom said, and Hajime could hear the understanding in her voice. "Well, that's good to hear. You both need to make sure you're keeping your energy levels up, you're both still growing, after all, and homework is hard!"
Hajime cracked a smile at that, looking at the phone affectionately. "We know, Mom. We're seventeen, you don't have to remind us to eat."
"You'd be surprised," Tohru said. "There are days your father forgets to eat, and he's forty!"
"Yes, well, that's Dad."
Mutsuki walked back into the room with a plate of snacks, looking curiously at Hajime with Mutsuki's own bright purple phone. Hajime glanced at him, then back to the phone.
"Hey, Mutsuki just got back, Mom. Can I put you on speaker?"
Was it his imagination, or did Tohru hesitate? But then her voice came, bright and cheerful.
"Of course! It's not nearly often enough I get to talk to you both."
Hajime hit the speaker button, and Tohru's voice filled the room as Mutsuki sat down beside Hajime.
"Mutsuki, hello!"
"Hello, Aunt Tohru," Mutsuki said cheerfully. "How's everything in the great white wilderness?"
Tohru laughed. "It hasn't started snowing yet, Mutsuki, it's only the middle of November! But we're all doing well here, thank you. I hope you and Hajime are both working diligently."
Hajime rolled his eyes and started to answer, but Mutsuki beat him to the punch. "Well, I'm trying to, but I've got nothing on your son these days. You really ought to use some of those 'mom' powers of yours to make him relax more, Aunt Tohru!"
Mutsuki's tone was teasing, but Hajime groaned internally. And his concern was validated when Tohru's voice suddenly turned anxious. "Really? Hajime, have you been pushing yourself too hard again? You haven't been sick, have you? I know school is important, but you need to be sure you're taking care of yourself, too!"
Hajime was looking daggers at Mutsuki, who was beaming evilly back at him. "I'm fine, Mom. I haven't been sick, and I haven't been pushing myself too hard, either. Ignore Mutsuki, he's just being a smart-ass."
"Still-" Tohru began, her voice fretful, and Hajime channeled his firmest 'Dad' manner.
"Mom, I'm fine. Yes, I've been busy, but it's nothing I can't handle. We've got almost a month until exams, and I've got almost another month after that before I've got my center test. Now that everything related to the Culture Fest is over, we don't have any more big events until the end of the school year, so Student Council ought to be a lot quieter. I'll be fine."
Tohru was silent for a moment, then she sighed, almost too quietly for them to hear.
"Well, if you're sure, Hajime. But since you're working, I suppose I'll let you go. It was nice talking to you, though!"
"Goodbye, Aunt Tohru!" Mutsuki said cheerfully. "Say hi to everyone up there."
"Of course, Mutsuki."
"Talk to you later, Mom."
"Have a good day, Hajime!"
Hanging up the phone, Hajime passed it back to Mutsuki giving him an annoyed look as he did so. "Why the hell'd you say that to Mom, Mutsuki? Were you trying to upset her?"
"By telling her you need to relax more? I'm not wrong, Hajime, you do need to relax more."
Whether or not Hajime needed to relax was beside the point, and Hajime wasn't about to start that argument again just now. "You know Mom's been weirdly worried about me ever since I skipped going home for summer break; she already thinks I'm working too hard, and you making comments like that isn't helping."
Mutsuki picked up an apple from his snack plate. "Have you ever stopped to think that if multiple people think you're stressed, you might actually be stressed?"
Hajime simply scowled at him, reaching out to take the second apple. "Why was Mom calling you, anyway?"
Mutsuki grinned at him. "Isn't it obvious? Because she loves me, and considers me the third son she never had."
Hajime eyed him for a moment, then grunted. "Fine. Don't tell me."
Chuckling, Mutsuki turned his attention back to his homework, and Hajime did to his.
Neither one of them brought up the phone call again.
"-So they finally got the reports to us today, and that means we're finally done with everything related to the Culture Fest. It would have been nice to actually be done on time, but," Hajime sighed, shrugging his shoulders as he looked across the table at Kazuma. "There's only so much I can do."
"Clearly," Kazuma said with a smile. The two of them were sitting at the living room table in Kazuma's house with Kunimitsu, dinner spread out on the table in front of them. Although Hajime hadn't lived in the dojo since his first year of high school, he still came by once a week to just talk and have dinner with his grandfather, a routine that all of them enjoyed. Kazuma had understood Hajime's motivations in moving out, but he still missed having his grandson around, especially now that Hajime's workload kept him so very busy.
And once again, it was that workload that was the topic of conversation, albeit more out of curiosity and less out of calculation. Kazuma and Kunimitsu had been hearing about the Culture Fest for over two months now, and they had a vested interest in hearing the story through to its conclusion.
"Sounds like a couple of the class reps need to learn about time management," Kunimitsu remarked, taking a bite of his curry. "You'd think by the time you kids are in high school, you'd know how to get things done on time."
"Well, apparently some people think student government is a low priority," Hajime said with an annoyed sigh. "Though why they agree to do it if they can't commit, I have no idea."
"Not everyone has your sense of responsibility, Hajime," Kazuma said with a smile. "Which is to their detriment."
Hajime tried not to look too pleased at the compliment; as much as he got annoyed by Student Council work, he was proud of what he and his Council managed to do and the work they put in. Some of the class reps might leave something to be desired, but he had no complaints about the actual Student Council. Mostly.
"Well, someone's got to make sure everything gets finished in time," Hajime said. "If it means getting on people's cases once in a while, then I can do that as well as anyone else." At the smiles he got from Kazuma and Kunimitsu, Hajime blushed, then corrected himself, "Maybe better."
"The student government is lucky to have you," Kazuma said. "But I suppose that with the Cultural Festival being over, things have to have calmed down for you now."
Hajime nodded. "Yeah. There aren't any more big events coming up, not until graduation."
The word 'graduation' hung over them all for a moment, and Hajime quickly busied himself with his food so he didn't have to look at the expression on Kazuma's face as he contemplated the idea. Graduation was the weirdest thing; it made even the most rational adults in Hajime's life turn sappy.
And Hajime's family had always been a bit sappy to start with.
"Well," Kazuma said finally, "I suppose that's not all that far away at this point, is it? Just another four months?"
Hajime nodded, looking down at his rice. "End of March."
Kazuma was quiet again, then he smiled. "I imagine the break in Student Council responsibilities right now must be a relief. I've heard you have quite a lot on your plate these days."
Hajime smiled ruefully. "Let me guess, from my parents?"
Kazuma chuckled. "Perhaps."
Hajime knew he shouldn't be surprised, but it was starting to grate on him just how much everyone around him felt the need to worry. His mom was one thing; she had always worried about him, and she'd probably continue to worry about him into the afterlife where she would continue to worry about whatever spirits worried about. But that was Mom.
Everyone else was another story, and that story was getting old.
"Don't worry about me, Grandpa. I'm busy, yes, but I'm managing, same as everyone else."
Kazuma was giving him that thoughtful look of his, and Hajime immediately felt the need to add, "Really."
"As long as you're sure, Hajime."
"I'm sure."
He was not overworked. He was not stressed. The only things stressing him out were all the people accusing him of being stressed.
Why couldn't people just accept that?
