After Kaigaku gets back, he doesn't leave his room for much other than work. Zenitsu stops calling him to dinner, so he stops going. Meals revert back to the cheapest thing he can find in the store, eaten alone at his desk as he continues his struggle to find a new job.
He frames his experiences one way. Bitter. He tries another way. Bland. His stomach growls, and he deletes tonight's iteration of his resume. Maybe he'll be in a better state of mind for this tomorrow, he deludes himself into thinking.
Before he goes to sleep, he reads another chapter of the novel Gramps gave him.
Some days, he finds himself on the verge of giving up. He can always look forward to the silent drives to the clinic and the food wrappers filling his trash can and the never-ending shifts at his shit, shit job. It all blows, but it's something. There's a certain comfort in routine after all, in a cart wheel guided by a rut.
Other days, the angry blue haze threatens to overwhelm him, and he throws everything he can into outrunning it, into finding some way of escaping. His resume, version number who-can-even-count-that-high, gets printed out and passed on to Generic Company X and Another Company Y. Every so often, he gets a second interview. Never once does he get an offer.
They run out of toilet paper one day, which sucks especially much because Kaigaku gets to find out the hard way. He searches through the entire house twice, through every cabinet, every nook and cranny, and finds a whole lot of things that aren't toilet paper.
He almost buys single-ply before remembering he doesn't live by himself anymore and someone would definitely give him an earful about it. Rolling his eyes, he picks out a family-sized pack of two-ply toilet paper. One on the cheaper end, though - he's not made of money.
As he's struggling to get his keys into the lock of the front door, his arms filled as they are with the toilet paper and a bag of groceries dangling from one hand, he hears Zenitsu's car pull up in the driveway. He turns, watches Zenitsu help Gramps out of the passenger's seat, and their eyes meet. Zenitsu's mouth drops open.
"We literally just bought more," he says, pointing to the toilet paper. Kaigaku wants to explode.
But, for whatever inexplicable reason, Zenitsu chooses this night to knock on Kaigaku's door for the first time in over a month. Kaigaku freezes midway through a bite of tonight's soggy sandwich.
"Yeah?" he says around the wad of food in his mouth.
"Dinner's ready. Beef stew."
It sounds way better than the sandwich he's clobbered together from discount ingredients, that's for sure. But Kaigaku's wary. Except to coordinate Gramps's appointments, Zenitsu hasn't talked to him at all since the phone call, so he's not completely sure this isn't some kind of fucked up test to get back at him for something or another.
Nevertheless, he makes his way to the dining room, sticking the remains of his sandwich in the fridge in case he gets hungry later. The stew smells amazing, which he's not going to publicly admit, so he just sits down wordlessly at his usual spot instead.
Gramps and Zenitsu go on about their days, all the pointless crap that happened to them and the stupid shit they saw, and the part that pisses him off the most is the fact that he kinda misses it. There are things whose presence are only noticeable after their absence, and this, out of everything, is the first such thing in his life?
Wack.
He does the dishes with Zenitsu. The kitchen sink isn't quite large enough for two people to use it at the same time, but they make do. Zenitsu hums something Kaigaku recognizes as Chopin, though for some reason he's decided to give the rhythm a jazzy kick.
"Thanks for the meal," Kaigaku says quietly, and this time he means it. Zenitsu bumps their shoulders together.
"It was kinda weird cooking for two, actually. I kept making too much."
"Don't ever touch me again."
Laughing, Zenitsu repeats his earlier motion. Kaigaku growls and splashes soapy water at him. Just like the good (bad?) old days.
He sits down at his desk after everything's done for the night. They each have their own nighttime ritual, and as much as he hates his, he opens up his laptop for tonight's round of job hunting. Entry-level jobs that don't require he starts to type. The blue haze looms over his shoulder.
Leaning back in his chair, he takes a deep breath. His eyes roam across his room and land on the book open facedown on his nightstand. Despite his painfully slow progress, he's at the last chapter already, and he doesn't really want it to end.
He taps a finger on his desk, mulling. Then he deletes what's in the search bar and replaces it.
The first link, nicely enough, is a compiled list of what he's looking for. He clicks around and sets a few filters; amazingly, there's a position open that's not too far away.
This version of his resume requires him to pull up records he hasn't looked at or even thought about in a while. The whole process ends up taking him longer than he'd expected as he listens to song after song in nostalgia. He reads everything over again when he's done, and some part of him can't reconcile it all as his own lived experiences, as if every Kaigaku that had existed before the twenty-two-year-old Kaigaku sitting here at his desk had been part of a fever dream.
The printer at home is running out of toner, but there's enough left that both his resume and the application form are mostly readable. He fills the form out, grabs his checkbook, and writes the refundable deposit.
It's been warming up outside the last couple of days, but the night air is still chilly. He grabs a coat before he heads out to send the envelope off, shutting the front door as silently as he can.
The dropbox is only a couple of streets down, but during that short walk doubt, hesitation, and that angry, angry blue haze start creeping into the back of his mind. He stands in front of the box for several minutes looking at the envelope in his hand, looking at the slot, looking up at the moon and wishing it would tell him what to do.
An owl hoots somewhere in the distance, startling him. He shoves the envelope into the dropbox and stalks back home.
As he finishes the final chapter before going to sleep, he thinks about the weight of a blue haze, about an envelope traveling from point a to point b, about the citrusy smell of cleaning products and what it means to walk down a different path.
His phone buzzes in the middle of dinner, and somehow, with every ounce of his willpower, he manages not to fish it out of his pocket. It buzzes again, then again and again until the noise is a constant whine. Gramps and Zenitsu stare at him.
Face red, Kaigaku pulls out his still-buzzing phone. The screen is lit up with a nonstop series of texts from Gyuutarou, all consisting of various curse words and emojis. He excuses himself, walks to the living room, and calls.
"What the fuck? I'm in the middle of dinner."
"Get your ass over here, man. We've got a problem."
"Explain."
"Venue called and said we're playing too fucking many covers and not enough goddamn original songs, so we've got three weeks to fucking write something and get it to be presentable. Cancel all the other shit in your life until we've got this, capiche?"
"I can't just not go to work," he protests, though the thought is certainly tempting.
"You hate that goddamn job anyway! You never stop complaining about it! Just say you're sick and take the fucking week off."
Well, he's sick of this bullshit, that's for sure. But who's he to argue when Gyuutarou offers to triple his pay from the band for the week? He sends a quick email to his manager and heads back to the dining room.
"I'm going out," he announces, picking his keys up from the counter. "Emergency band practice. I'll be back in a few days."
"I see," Gramps says, nodding. "Have fun."
It's definitely not going to be fun, and he's not looking forward to sleeping on that piece of junk couch again. But at least this time he can pack his toothbrush and a couple changes of clothing before he leaves.
The elevator is as nasty as it was last time. Kaigaku figures out how long he can hold his breath - luckily, it's a little past the point at which they reach the eleventh floor.
"Do we really have to start right now?" He grimaces as he takes in the disaster setup of the apartment.
"We're working twenty-four fucking seven until we're done," Ume declares, throwing a pen at him from across the room. He ducks, and it hits the wall behind him.
"You're gonna get evicted for noise complaints."
"Shut up and write."
He hasn't collaborated with anyone in years and, as expected, it's a bumpy process when all three of them are strung up on caffeine and stress. They call it quits around three in the morning, and Kaigaku hunkers down on the horrible sofa for another night's worth of unquality sleep.
By the fourth day, they're all beyond tired of each other's company. Lounging across the couch (insomuch as he can "lounge" on something so uncomfortable), Kaigaku worries away at a loose thread on his shirt hem as Ume and Gyuutarou argue in the background over whether a line of the lyrics sounds stupid or not. He hums to himself, as he's been doing for the past half hour, trying to drown out their bickering.
The thread snaps. He holds the loose piece up to the light coming in from the window, twirls it between his fingers, and hums a few more notes. Something clicks. He opens his mouth to sing the motif he's plucked out of disorder, making minor adjustments as he does. His bandmates stop shouting at each other.
Head nodding slightly to the beat, Ume picks up her guitar and joins in with a harmony. They clash a few times when one or the other of them experiments with something new, but Gyuutarou's stopped scowling and Kaigaku doesn't want to torch the whole place anymore, so he supposes they're making some real progress.
While Gyuutarou hammers out the percussion, Ume and Kaigaku wrestle the lyrics and melody into the uneasy beginnings of cooperation. Dinnertime comes and passes, but none of them notice.
"Alright," Ume says, hours after the sun went down, "other than this shitty bridge, I'd say we've got a workable draft."
"Can I go the fuck home then?" Kaigaku asks. He rubs his eyes and imagines taking a shower with reasonable water pressure and soap that doesn't smell like cheap aftershave.
"Yeah, yeah." Ume waves a hand dismissively in his direction, still fussing over the sheet of lyrics in front of her. "Come back tomorrow afternoon."
Before he heads out, he texts Zenitsu, praying there's something left over from dinner for him to eat. And, as unwilling as he is to subject himself to the stench of the rickety elevator again, he still takes it down. His physical body feels a little like jello after several days of sleep deprivation, and he doesn't trust his legs not to give out on him.
He's walking past a dilapidated park on his way to his car when he hears someone running after him and yelling his name. He turns. It's Ume, waving around something shiny. Kaigaku shoves his hand in his pocket, and sure enough, it's empty.
"You forgot your keys, dumbass," she pants, tossing them to him and doubling over as she catches her breath.
"Thanks." Kaigaku pockets them. He feels a little awkward leaving her on the sidewalk alone after she'd gone out of her way to bring him his keys, so he jerks his head toward the playground. "You wanna sit down for a bit?"
She nods, and they make their way over to the swing set. The whole thing has a layer of rust on it. Kaigaku sits down gingerly, preparing for it to collapse underneath him. Thankfully, it doesn't.
Ume kicks at the ground. The chains of the swing creak as she moves slightly back and forth, filling the stillness of the air between them.
"So," she starts, and she sounds… sad? He steals a glance in her direction. Her face is half-shadowed in the flickering light of the streetlamps, and she stares ahead at something in the distance. For the first time in a while, he realizes, he's watching Ume as Ume, makeup-less and slightly sweaty; not Ume as DaKi of SixthMoon or Ume as Gyuutarou's sister or Ume putting on a front for the rest of the world to see.
"Do you really hate your brother?"
Something ugly inside him rears its head. His stomach twists; his grip tightens on the chain of the swing.
"Do you hate yours?" he retorts, and he isn't sure why it comes out so angry and nasty, but he can't control it.
"Of course not."
Kaigaku starts. The conviction in her voice runs deep and strong, cuts into some vulnerable part of himself that's been slowly dragged out into the open over the past few months. He doesn't want to be having this conversation, not now, not ever, but he's paralyzed under the weight of the stars in the night sky.
"Don't get me wrong, he's an annoying shit," she continues, "and maybe I fantasize about pushing him off the fire escape sometimes, but he single handedly raised the two of us. He might not have done a perfect job, but he sure did his best. And, I don't know, that counts for something, right? I wouldn't want anyone else in the world to be my brother."
Ume sighs, and her shoulders sag. The expression on her face is hauntingly familiar, and with a pain that skewers eighteen-year-old Kaigaku, he remembers where he's seen it before.
Not too long after he'd graduated high school, he and Zenitsu had gotten into a fight. A bad one. He'd stormed off, and later that night at dinner, when Zenitsu thought he wasn't looking, there'd been those same furrowed eyebrows, downcast gaze, lips unable to decide whether to frown or smile and eyes whether to cry or not.
His brother had tried to say something, tried more than once, but every time it happened, Kaigaku had taken a loud gulp of water or set his chopsticks down with a clatter or reached over to the other end of the table for another serving of food he hadn't wanted.
His mouth is so dry.
"And if you ever tell him I said any of that, I'll personally end your existence." Ah, there's the charming Ume who everyone knows and loves, whose punches he can roll with.
"What is it with you Shabana siblings and death threats?" he asks dryly. "It's always 'I'll kill you' this and 'I'll end your miserable existence' that. Either make good on your promises or get a hobby."
Ume barks out a laugh. "Well, aren't you a riot. I can see why we keep you around."
"You don't 'keep me around,'" Kaigaku scoffs. "I stay around, and you're lucky I do."
"Yeah, I'm sure you think so. But, you're just trying to dodge the question, aren't you? Do you really hate your brother?"
He doesn't say anything for a while. A back-and-forth exchange of nebulous thoughts and feelings goes on in the background of his head as his chest tightens. He's twelve; he's eighteen, he's sixteen he's twenty-two and somewhere in the far distance he's thirty-something with a void next to him that, if he squints, might be in the shape of Zenitsu.
"I don't have to like him," is the closest he can get to vocalizing any of that.
"You don't," Ume agrees. She takes a deep breath in. "Maybe it isn't my place to say anything, but he seems like an earnest guy. I think you might be too hard on him sometimes. And on yourself."
"I'm going home."
Ume rolls her eyes. "Fine, be that way. See you tomorrow - you better show up."
"Or I'll perish from this earth?" he asks, hopping off the swing.
"Or you'll perish from this earth," Ume echoes, but her voice is gentle in a way that he knows for a fact she'd never let any of her fans or followers hear.
Why me, then? he wants to ask but doesn't. He knows better.
A/N: wow i really procrastinated posting this chapter. in my defense,
fun fact: i wrote the dialogue for kaigaku's fistfight w gyuutarou (beginning of last chapter) and for his convo w ume (end of this chapter) before anything else in those two chapters, and actually before i even finished ch. 1, so it was a fun (horrible) challenge trying to stitch the story together around them bc i knew i wanted to keep both