Chapter 5

It was about two hours later when Kirishima finally made it over to Ijuuin's apartment to pick up the pages. He wasn't alone, though; apparently Hiyori had gone over to bring him supper, and when Kirishima mentioned he was going over to see Ijuuin, she had made him bring her with him. She liked the man, even if he was a little eccentric.

Then again, she'd grown up with someone like her father, so Ijuuin wasn't really weird in her book.

"Good evening, sensei!" Hiyori said, a bright smile on her face as she stepped in. The door hadn't been unlocked, so Kirishima had taken initiative and just let them both in. When Hiyori saw the man was slumped over his work desk, she frowned and walked over to him. "Sensei?" She continually poked his temple. "Is he dead?"

"No, just heart-broken," Kirishima said, having a feeling he knew what Shizuko was so pissed-off about. He wasn't so stupid that he was going to fall for the excuse the man had given him about not feeling well.

For one, Shizuko never got sick.

"Oi," Kirishima said, walking up to Ijuuin for himself once he got his shoes off. Ijuuin let out a long sigh, and Kirishima folded his arms. "I had no idea we were in a shoujo manga. Where are your sparkles, you lazy ass?"

Ijuuin lifted his head from the desk, finally seeming to realize that he had guests. He blinked twice at the girl who was poking him before turning his attention to his main editor. "Ah, good evening, Kirishima-san. My pages are right here." He had to glance around a bit, because apparently his pages weren't right there.

Hiyori giggled and reached over, pulling the cover page from his cheek where it had gotten stuck. "Sensei, you're a sloppy sleeper, you know that?" She reached for a hand towel nearby and started wiping his face, which was covered in a mixture of drool and ink. Ijuuin just let her, failing to tell her that he hadn't actually been sleeping, just thinking. But then, who'd believe him if he said that, right?

"I'll be fine, Hiyo-chan." Ijuuin gave Hiyori one of his heart-melting smiles, still effective even though he looked like he'd just crawled out of a two-day college kegger. When he turned and looked at Kirishima, who was rifling through the pages, he added, "Don't worry, Kirishima-san, everything is there."

"Oh I don't doubt that." Kirishima leaned down and evened out the pages on the one solid place left on Ijuuin's desk before slipping them into his briefcase. "Now, if there's nothing else that needs to occur here, I'll take your pages home with me. There's no way I'm going back into the office after you made me drag my ass out here."

"Father, you're not supposed to swear!" Hiyori frowned as she admonished her father, clenching her fists and trying to look formidable. Kirishima was known to play along with his daughter just so she felt like she was having some influence on his life, but this time, he just sighed and turned.

"I need coffee."

"There's a fresh pot over in the kitchen." Ijuuin was still face-down on his desk, but he deigned to lift his head enough so he could see that Hiyori was still standing by him, looking curious. "Something up, Hiyo-chan?"

She looked thoughtful as she tapped her chin, which Ijuuin had to admit was adorable; Hiyo was getting older, but she was still a tiny little girl, who often wore her hair in pigtails. Pigtails that Yokozawa apparently helped with every morning. There were quite a lot of things you heard in Marukawa that you could blackmail people with when the ones talking thought you were too out of it to listen to them.

"Sensei, did you and Ishi-san have a fight?" she asked suddenly. Ijuuin lifted his head a little more, surprised, and she went on. "Father said that Ishi-san was supposed to bring the pages in, but he called into the office and sounded really mad even though he said he was just sick."

Ijuuin let out a long sigh and finally sat up, tipping back in his office chair and causing the wheels to squeak. "Nope. Everything's fine."

"That's what Father says when he and Oniichan fight, but it's really obvious that it isn't fine." She huffed and turned to her father, who was still over in the kitchen, nursing a cup of black coffee. "Father, tell sensei that he needs to say sorry."

"Don't look at me, as long as he delivers, my paycheck is secured." He held the cup up like he was making some kind of toast before turning away from them.

Hiyori huffed again. "Sensei, you need to say sorry." She frowned and reached up to one of her pigtails, fiddling with it with both hands. "I don't like when people fight. But it's even worse when they don't want to make up. Because that means they might stop caring about each other, right?"

It was at that point that Kirishima finished his coffee, and he wordlessly signaled for Hiyori to follow him back out. She nodded, her face back in a smile as she trailed after her father, asking if he still wanted the meal she'd made for him. By the time he answered, though, they'd both gotten their shoes on and were out the door.

Ijuuin let out a long sigh. He was in no state to grovel. He'd do it in the morning.

xxx

It was about seven o'clock that day when someone came to Shizuko's apartment and buzzed in. He lived in a complex and visitors couldn't access it without permission from one of the tenants, and he was tempted to just let them stand out there, thinking he wasn't home. He really wished he weren't, actually, considering Ijuuin knew where he lived and there was the possibility that the man would come after him.

Shizuko frowned and rolled over on the floor where he had dropped the can of beer he just finished. Well, maybe Ijuuin wouldn't come and find him after he had stormed out. The man was dense, and only cared about his precious Misaki-kun. In this case, it was probably just Kirishima, finally getting fed-up with him not answering his phone and going straight to the source.

If that was the case, he couldn't really afford to ignore his visitor. Kirishima was still the head editor, after all, and if he got pissed-off, Shizuko could probably be demoted down to one of their newbie authors until they couldn't afford to keep him away from Ijuuin any longer. There was a reason the man needed two editors, after all.

"Yes?" he asked when he finally managed to drag himself from the floor and press the button on his apartment's intercom.

Instead of his boss' voice, though, someone else greeted him. Though it wasn't like he didn't know this person as well.

"Ah, Ishi-san?" Takahashi asked, hesitation clear in his voice. "Kirishima-san said this was your apartment number. I hope I'm not bothering you, since you got sick so suddenly."

Shizuko leaned away from the speaker and sighed. Leave it to naïve little Takahashi to actually believe that he was sick. He never did like naïve people. It just made it harder to do things in his job because they'd believe the crock of shit stories authors gave editors in an attempt to get their deadlines extended. "What do you want, Takahashi?" he asked, trying to at least keep his tone even. It wasn't like it was Takahashi's fault that he was feeling like crap.

Except that it totally was.

"Ah, Kirishima-san said you were sick and had to leave work early, so I thought I'd bring you soup." There was a gentle quality to Takahashi's voice that Shizuko didn't think he'd ever heard before. He'd certainly never used it in the office, but then, the office wasn't exactly the place for gentleness. "Can I come in?"

Shizuko just stood there for what had to be ten seconds but felt like ten hours. Finally, when his watch beeped for the hour, he sighed again and nodded to himself. "Come on up, I'll buzz you in."

After he'd let Takahashi in, Shizuko abandoned the intercom and looked at his apartment. It wasn't really dirty or anything, but he hadn't picked up after his meals in a few days, so it was really starting to look like a stereotypical bachelor pad. Add the pack of beer he'd picked up on his way home, and he almost felt ashamed that Takahashi would be seeing his room like this.

Shizuko let out a huff and threw away the takeout containers. The beer stayed, though. He was going to get drunk tonight even if it meant he'd go into the office tomorrow hung-over. It wasn't like he'd look any worse than any of the other editors did during Hell Week.

It took about three minutes for Takahashi to make it from the ground floor to his own, and when Shizuko answered the door, the other man was grinning brightly and holding up an insulated bag. "Good evening, Ishi-san!"

"…good evening, Takahashi." Shizuko stepped back so Takahashi would have room to take off his shoes in the genkan. But also because he was emitting the shiniest, happiest aura Shizuko had ever seen, and he wasn't sure if he could stand it for long. Was this really how Takahashi was outside work?

Rather than dote over Shizuko anymore, though, Takahashi slipped off his shoes and went into the apartment, immediately figuring out where the kitchen was and getting to work. It seemed that Takahashi hadn't actually brought soup, but was going to make it right there and then. Shizuko was about to protest, but for some reason, he stopped.

Takahashi was humming happily there in the kitchen as he went about, figuring things out quicker than it had taken Shizuko. When he first moved into the apartment, it had taken him probably two months before he was sure where everything was and how it worked. Takahashi just had to open a cabinet or glance at an appliance and he somehow got what he wanted or knew what to do.

"…you'd make a good housewife." Shizuko sighed and sat down at his low dining table, folding his legs under himself. He expected Takahashi to be offended by that, but the man just smiled as he went about his work. "…you're a weird kid, you know that?"

Takahashi glanced back at him, blinking a couple times as he chopped up the carrots expertly. Shizuko was ready to wince when the man inevitably cut himself, but it never happened. "Well, I like doing housework. I clean and cook for Usagi-san instead of paying rent."

Shizuko frowned where he had his head on the table. He knew that "Usagi-san" was Usami-sensei from context, but this was pretty much more about Takahashi's personal life than he needed to know. He lifted his head and pushed back his chair, not even realizing how much like Ijuuin he looked when he did that. "So you pretty much are a housewife. Why'd he let you out of the kitchen, huh?"

"Ah, I didn't want to waste my college degree." Takahashi couldn't have been less offended by the obviously baited remark if he tried. "Besides, eventually I… kind of want to live on my own. Or at least be able to. So not getting a job would be counterproductive to that."

There was silence between them as Takahashi went about cooking the soup, and Shizuko put an elbow on the table and cupped his chin in his hand. A lot of thoughts went through his head, most of which he wouldn't be saying. Finally, he took a breath and spoke. "…why are you here? I know it's not because you thought I was sick." Because he quite obviously wasn't. Unless Takahashi was even more dense than Shizuko originally thought.

"I just…" Takahashi paused at that and frowned, staring down at the slowly-warming soup. "I… guess I wanted to make sure you weren't going to tell anyone about me and Usag- er, Usami-sensei." He blushed a little when he realized that he'd been calling the man by his nickname for him. "I got the job at Marukawa on my own merits, after working really hard. If people thought it was because I live with him then…"

Shizuko sighed and tipped his chair back a little more. "I'm not going to tell." He didn't even have to think about his answer. He wasn't a gossip.

Takahashi's face lit-up at that, and he went back to paying attention to the soup. "Thank you, Ishi-san!" He was humming to himself. "Ah and… you can call me Misaki-san, if you want…"

Apparently he thought they were friends now.

"…fine." Shizuko yawned and put a hand over his mouth, putting his chair back on all four of its legs. "You can call me Ishi-sama."

Misaki dropped the wooden spoon he was stirring the soup with and reared around to face the other man, looking unsure how to respond to that.

"It's a joke. Geeze." Maybe Shizuko and a sense of humor just didn't match.

xxx

Misaki, Shizuko discovered, was a really, really big lightweight when it came to alcohol. He'd barely had one-and-a-half beers and he was passed-out on the floor, a position Shizuko found him in when he finished his shower and went back into the living room. The fact that he was still there was weird, for one. But Shizuko had no idea what to do in this kind of situation.

So he did the only thing he could do: he dragged Misaki onto his couch, tossed a blanket at him, and went to go to sleep in his own bedroom. He was too tired to bother figuring out how to get him home, especially considering the kid was drunk. Misaki's cell phone went off as Shizuko was heading to his own bed, but he ignored it. He doubted it was important.