"Written in the Chalk Dust", Part 1/2
Title: Written in the Chalk Dust
Part: 1/2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Character, Pairing(s): Akanishi Jin/Becky, Yamapi
Rating: PG
Warnings: Cavity-inducing het romance, children
Summary: There's a sidewalk between their apartment doors, but in the end, maybe there's a lot more connecting them than just cement.
Notes: We realize that this is NONE of the things that anyone is here to read. We also realize that apart from us, there is probably only one person who will read this. But... well, we write what we get inspired with, and this made us quite happy to write. So. ♥ Enjoy!
“Backpack,” Becky mumbled, hurrying around the living room while she was still shaping the rice ball in her hand. “Aiko, backpack!”
“Okay!” Aiko called from the other room, running out. Becky was horrified to see the number of hair clips her daughter had added to her hairstyle for the morning. “Mommy, look! Pretty!”
“Yes, very pretty,” she grumbled, hurrying back to the messy kitchen counter to put the rice ball into Aiko’s lunch box. They were going to be late! She rinsed off her hands, pushed the top down on the lunch box and chased her daughter down. “Pretty, but too much!”
“No!” Aiko complained as Becky took several of the clips out, steering the little girl back into her bedroom.
“You can put as many clips in as you want when you get home,” she said, eyes searching for the purple backpack. She finally spotted it under a pile of clothes that Aiko had rejected for that morning. Becky grabbed a hairbrush and redid Aiko’s pigtails quickly, listening to the girl whine the whole time. It wouldn’t be a morning in their apartment if Aiko didn’t get her hair done two or three separate times.
The backpack finally retrieved, Becky put the lunchbox inside and made sure Aiko’s smock was there for that day’s finger painting. She grabbed her own bag and hurried the girl to the door. “Come on, come on, can’t keep Saki-sensei waiting!”
“Saki-sensei says I’m good at painting!”
“You are,” Becky agreed, fumbling around for her keys. “You’re wonderful.”
“Saki-sensei’s favorite color is green. I like green too.”
There was no way to say ‘then why don’t you marry Saki-sensei’ to a four year old, so Becky just focused on getting the door locked. At least it was a bright sunny day out. Aiko rambled on about the merits of her preschool teacher as she heard shuffling footsteps coming down the passageway.
She got the door locked and turned to see their neighbor heading for his door. Becky didn’t see the man too often. She heard him more. When Becky was curling up in bed, her neighbor was getting ready to go out. And most of the time when Becky was leaving for work in the morning, her neighbor was coming back, eyes bloodshot, occasionally stumbling drunk. Must be nice to go out and have fun.
“Hello! Good morning!” Aiko greeted him, and Becky tugged her pigtail gently.
“Aiko, not so loud.”
But their neighbor, clad in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, dyed brown hair sticking out the back of his baseball cap, turned and smiled gently at her daughter. “Good morning to you, too.”
They’d never really exchanged pleasantries before, just a nod here or there. From his appearance, Becky assumed he was just a lazy partying guy. Maybe he was a lazy partying guy, but at least he was friendly. “Good morning,” she said shyly, ushering Aiko down the hall.
“You have a ponytail,” Aiko called back at him. “Ponytails are for girls!”
“Aiko!”
But their neighbor turned his key in the door and gave Aiko a wink before stepping inside. “Maybe I’m a girl!” he said, closing the door.
Aiko giggled as soon as they were in the stairwell together. “He’s not a girl, Mommy. He’s silly.”
They were lucky the man had a good sense of humor. Didn’t stop Becky’s embarrassment. Aiko had been shy for so long, but she’d gotten chattier in the past few months. Hopefully, she’d be better behaved at the grocery store or in school. People stared at them enough, didn’t they?
Mrs. Takeda was sweeping the steps when they emerged. The woman spoke so that Aiko wouldn’t hear. “Rent, Miss Vaughn,” the landlady said, pronouncing the foreign name as though it was something distasteful. “It’s been three days.”
She let Aiko run ahead to the apartment gate. “I know. And I’m really sorry. I get paid tomorrow afternoon. Is that okay?”
The broom scratched against the concrete, and she was convinced that Mrs. Takeda was sweeping just to have something to do while making people feel ashamed. “Is that purse new?”
It wasn’t. But Mrs. Takeda was cruel like that, wasn’t she? Becky just faked a smile and clutched her bag tighter. “Tomorrow. I promise. Have a nice day, okay?”
--
Jin collapsed on top of his bed with a sigh. Yamashita had been talking out of his ass, claiming that it was a group date. Too bad the group had been him, Yamashita, three other guys and a hostess nicknamed Hokkaido. And Jin had discovered why almost immediately - she wasn’t just cold, but she’d been far away all night. Jin had bought drink after drink without a thank you.
Then she’d left with Yamashita anyway.
His shift was noon to eight, so he could get a few hours of sleep before getting back. But he smelled like smoke and the club and the booze one of the other guys had spilled on his sweatshirt. He’d flopped down on top of a pile of clean clothes which were probably going to be wrinkled now. He had a bad taste in his mouth. And there was a road crew using a jackhammer down the street.
Well, forget sleep. He’d just go without. He was glad he didn’t work forklift shift today. Walking around the warehouse with a clipboard didn’t require a full night’s rest. The shower was a little too cold, but there was always something going wrong with the building. Better a cold shower than the air conditioning unit breaking down again.
It was rare to run into his next door neighbor, but that didn’t mean Jin never heard her. Or at least the little girl. Some days Jin would open his door and see chalk hearts and flowers dotting the concrete path between his apartment and theirs. He’d hear their music or TV until the mother managed to turn it down.
Jin didn’t know his neighbor’s name, but the daughter was Aiko, and she was a rare bit of sunshine in his otherwise boring life. The rest of the building were single working people, and it was nice to have a little cheer from time to time. And after a shitty night with Yamashita and the others, having a cute little kid say good morning wasn’t so unwelcome. Jin didn’t know the mother, but he just knew the colors.
His neighbor had dark hair, usually pulled back with an array of sparkly clips or striped headbands. Her clothes were a patchwork of designs and buttons, cutesy stuff like a high school girl would wear, not a mom. Well, not any moms Jin had met. They were probably the same age. Maybe (just maybe) the little girl was the same age as Yuta was...
He turned the shower off, yanking the towel off the rack. Jin’s calendar on the refrigerator had half a dozen things scrawled on it. Mostly when bills were due or the next gig for Ryo’s band. As he dried off, he knew that if he flipped the calendar to July that the 9th had the red circle around it. He’d write the check, it’d get cashed. Whether any of the money actually went to Yuta’s care or not, he’d never know.
He tossed on some sweatpants and a clean(er) t-shirt, lounging on the couch as the clock ticked the minutes away. The jackhammer didn’t stop, reminding him that most people with real jobs were gone for the day. Most people didn’t work whatever hours were assigned, whatever hours they could get. But he’d take working in the warehouse over a suit and tie, that was for damn sure.
When he left for work, Mrs. Takeda was watering the plants in the front garden, even if they were always half-dead no matter what. “Mr. Akanishi,” she called as Jin passed by.
“Yes?” he asked, body finally started to get a little grumpy that he hadn’t slept. He needed coffee, not a life lesson from the landlady.
“Do you ever talk to Miss Vaughn?”
“Who?” he asked, trying to avoid the watering can as Takeda moved to water the bed of dying flowers by his feet.
“Your neighbor,” Mrs. Takeda said, a rather nasty scowl on her already nasty face. “She never pays rent on time. Maybe if you said something?”
He didn’t want to get involved in other people’s problems. He’d had money troubles before himself, before he’d gotten this job. But the thought of the pretty mother next door with her colorful clothes and the cute little girl not being able to pay their rent was a harsh one. Mrs. Takeda had gotten people evicted before without blinking an eye.
The chalk pictures and the giggles would disappear.
Jin turned around and headed off. “Sorry. It’s nothing to do with me.”
--
She'd never been one to think that inanimate objects were in the habit of trying to make her life more difficult, but the longer she stared down at her bank account ledger, the more she was starting to believe it. The numbers were written and crossed out and then written in again, filling up the margins with arrows and plus signs and tiny subtractions when she thought of something else she could eliminate. She hadn't had a haircut in months, her best pair of shoes had a crack in the soles, and she was already buying 100 yen shampoo from the convenience store down the street.
Becky put her pen down and ran her hands through her hair, pushing tendrils back around her ears. Staring at the numbers longer wasn't going to magically increase them. With the hours cut at the clothing store, she was going to have to simply get rid of more expenses in her monthly budget.
It was do-able. It sucked, but she could swing it. She could make more rice to make up for the lack of meat and make sure to give Aiko most of it. She could go longer without getting new work clothes. And if push came to shove and she had to stop taking classes... well, she would. Aiko came first. Aiko always came first.
The television in the living room was loud, and Becky didn't want to get yelled at by Mrs. Takeda again.
"Aiko, can you please turn that down?" Becky called, shuffling through some of her old paychecks for the umpteenth time, just to make sure. Some commercial for ramen cups was playing with an annoyingly loud musical track. She paused, waiting for the volume to diminish. "Aiko? Can you turn it down?"
Nothing. She got up and went into the living room, expecting to find her daughter absorbed in whatever the latest commercial was attempting to sell to the masses, and instead found Aiko's stuffed bunny sitting in the middle of the floor alone.
"Aiko?" she called. Her heart felt like it was in her throat. The front door was slightly ajar, and she pushed it open without really thinking. She wasn't thinking about the numbers in her bank account anymore, she moved without conscious thought, out the doorway and onto the sidewalk that connected the small apartment complex.
Her daughter's voice floated back to her on the breeze. It helped soothe Becky's nerves, but her steps were still quicker than normal as she made her way up the curve to her neighbor's doorway, where Aiko was crouched with her little bucket of sidewalk chalk.
"Mommy!" Aiko said happily, holding up the green piece. "I'm making trees!"
Mr. Ponytail was there, too, crouched beside Aiko and drawing something with the tan chalk. Becky took a deep breath, trying to calm her still pounding heart.
"What did I say about leaving the house without telling me?" she asked, as she reached their location on the stoop. "It scares me when you leave like that."
"I'm sorry," Aiko replied.
"I'm sorry, too," Mr. Ponytail said. "I didn't know you thought she was still inside. I found her drawing on the sidewalk out here."
Aiko pointed to a mass of color near Becky's feet. "He drew that one! Isn't it good, Mommy?"
"Oh," Becky said. She stepped aside so she could see the whole thing. It was a wobbly outline of what appeared to be Aiko herself- at least it was wearing a pink dress similar to what she had on. "It's very pretty."
"But not as pretty as Aiko's drawings," Mr. Ponytail said.
Aiko just giggled and went back to working on her puppy drawing. Becky's neighbor stood up and wiped some chalk dust from his hands on his jeans, which left colorful lines up the denim where his fingers were. "Really, I'm sorry," he said again. "I would have taken her back home if I'd known you thought she was inside."
"No, it's okay," Becky said, sighing. "It's not your fault. But thank you for watching her."
"It's cool," he said. He paused for a second, and then shrugged a bit, a lopsided grin splitting his face. "I'm Jin, by the way. Akanishi."
"Becky Vaughn."
They stood in silence for a few moments, watching Aiko add in a collar and a water bowl to her dog picture. Then Becky sighed again. "Okay, Aiko, time to come inside."
"But I want to stay and draw," the girl said. Her lower lip started to jut out in a pout, which meant that the tears weren't far behind, and Becky desperately wanted to avoid that.
"Well, Mommy has work to do inside," Becky said, and the lip moved out further. She could see the shine in Aiko's eyes.
"I can stay here and draw with her," Jin offered. "I mean, if it's okay with you. If you have stuff to do. I promise I'll get her back when the sun goes down."
Becky didn't know him- not really. She didn't know him, but she knew Aiko's smile. She knew the instinctual feeling in her gut, and that was enough for now.
"Okay," she said, slowly. "Okay. Aiko, you can stay out until it's dark, and then you need to come in, okay?"
There was a happy trill of acceptance from the little girl, still bent over adding some spots to her puppy drawing. "Okay!"
Becky turned to leave, and then stopped, looking at Jin once more. "Thank you. For doing this. You don't have to."
"Naw," he said, and there was that smile again, one corner quirking up more than the other one as he ducked his head and reached for the pink chalk. "I love kids. She's great."
"Okay," she replied. "Well... thanks."
When she got to her apartment door, she turned back to watch the two of them, kneeling on the cement and having some kind of conversation about what color the flowers should be next to the puppy. Aiko was giggling again and scribbling with the blue piece, and Jin was adding in something with pink that was making both of them laugh harder.
Becky opened the living room window before she went back to the table to work on her budget again, so that the sounds of Aiko's laughter soothed her nerves as she continued crossing out numbers and reworking the expenses.
--
He took a long drag of his cigarette as Yamashita drunkenly fumbled with his own lighter. “You are wasted, Pi.”
“Yep,” Jin’s friend admitted, holding out the lighter. “Here. I don’t want to be on fire.”
The club music was only a noisy hum in the building behind them, and the fresh air felt good and clean on his skin, even if the alley was kind of nasty. He lit Pi’s cigarette and listened to some couple further down the alley having some kind of argument.
“You on fire would be kind of funny though,” Jin told him, laughing.
Yamashita made a face. “So what have you been doing? You been working the late shift again?”
He nodded. “Yeah, sometimes.” It was messing up his sleep schedule something awful, but work was work, and if Jin didn’t go in to get paid for it, they could easily find someone else.
“I don’t like you being all night time-like. What’s the word I’m thinking of?”
“I have no idea.” Their conversations always took a turn for the pointless once they were away from the girls and getting lost in the music.
“Nocturnal? I’m thinking of nocturnal?”
“I don’t know, man,” he said, dropping his cigarette and stomping it out. “But I work, I go home, I do chalk drawings.” He was drunker than he thought he was if he was going ahead and admitting to his most recent pastime.
“Chalk drawings?”
“Yeah,” he said, thinking about the forest of monkeys he and Aiko had drawn together near the mailboxes the other afternoon. Mrs. Takeda had made him hose it down as soon as Aiko had gone inside. The old bat was a real killjoy. “Yeah, my next door neighbor has a daughter. I keep an eye on her sometimes. Draw on the sidewalk.”
Yamashita snorted. “You? You like little kids?”
“Nothing wrong with little kids. They aren’t grown up enough to be assholes like you or me yet,” he said. “She’s cute.”
Pi nodded. “Mitsuki still not letting you come around, is she?”
Jin leaned back against the alley brick at the mention of Mitsuki’s name. He had to check his bank balance one of these days to make sure he had enough to send for Yuta. He never thought it was enough, but it wasn’t like he ever got asked for more or even a thank you for what he’d sent. “Nope.”
“Sucks man,” Pi said, knocking some ash off of the tip of his cigarette. “Really sucks. Like you’re probably buying her a new purse or something, not diapers or whatever.”
“He’s five and a half,” Jin interrupted. “He doesn’t wear diapers now.” At least he hoped not. It wasn’t like he could go and check.
“I wore diapers until I was four,” Pi announced, “No shame in that.”
“You’re an idiot,” Jin teased him.
“It’s a joke, you know. Haha. Like a joke, funny?”
“Sure.”
Yamashita shoved him. “So what about your neighbors? Too lazy to watch their own kids? They at least paying you to babysit?”
“It’s not babysitting,” Jin said. Well, technically it was, wasn’t it? “But she’s not married. At least I don’t think so. Never seen any guy around.”
“Oh?” Pi asked. Suddenly, his friend was interested. “What happened there?”
Like he even knew. He didn’t even know the woman. It wasn’t like he was going to ask a preschooler where her daddy was or if mommy and daddy even lived together. But if he had to venture a guess, he’d vote for single mom. She had the bags under her eyes that said single mom working her ass off.
“Think it’s just a mom and a kid. It’s different from when you and I grew up.”
“Sure, sure.” Pi crushed his cigarette under his sneaker. “She hot?”
He blinked at the question. He was drunk, but he wasn’t drunk enough. Sure, he’d noticed her. He was a guy after all. It was hard not to notice when you had a cute girl living next door. But it was hard to think of her, of Becky like that. She wasn’t hot like some actress or AV idol. Her eyes were kind of big, and she was short and on the skinnier end of Jin’s usual preference.
“She’s cute enough, I guess.” He thought of the name in katakana on the mailbox just beside his. “A bit exotic looking. She’s probably half-American or half something European.”
His friend smirked. “And you watch her kid for free?”
Jin thought about his bank balance decreasing every month for a little boy he never got to see. He thought instead about the monkey forest and chalk dust. “Yeah. I watch her kid for free.”
--
"I was watching the TV yesterday," Aiko said, knees coated with chalk residue and bits of rock that stuck to the skin.
"What did you watch?" Jin asked. He was working on a fairly elaborate band logo on the cement in front of Becky's stoop. It looked good enough that he wanted to take a picture and then do it again on some paper with an ink pen, just to keep it around before Mrs. Takeda blasted it with her hose. He briefly entertained the notion that it would look even better if he added a small cartoon head of Mrs. Takeda with an angry storm cloud hovering over it, but the old bat might think it was too antagonistic and do something drastic in response.
From inside, he could hear the few times that Becky would start mumbling to herself. She never really explained what she did, but from her odd hours and varying states of dress when she left, Jin wagered she had more than one job. And from what he could gather through her self-utterances, she was taking a few classes to finish up a college degree. He thought she was doing class work at the table, but he wasn't sure.
"Well, there was um, a lion?" Aiko explained. "And he chased a bird. And then there was a porcupine who liked candy."
"Candy?" Jin laughed. "That sounds like a commercial."
Aiko clapped her hands. "Yeah! For candy!"
"I like candy," Jin admitted. "Do you like candy?"
Aiko replied with something that was garbled but sounded a bit like "chocolate".
"So the porcupine sells chocolate?" Jin asked.
"But I can't have candy," Aiko said. The admission didn't seem to sadden her too much, but Jin watched her as she added a few looping flowers to her scene- which was a lady-bug, he guessed- and then sighed a little while looking down at her drawing so far.
Jin toed the chalk bucket, ignoring the fact that he'd sat right on top of his first attempt at a guitar, and no doubt had chalk imprints all over his butt. "Why not?"
"Mommy says I have to go to college."
Jin glanced up towards the windowsill above his head. He'd probably been right on with his single mother assessment; if Becky told Aiko she couldn't have candy because she had to go to college, it meant she was probably strapped with bills she could barely pay on her own. She had her head above water, as far Jin knew, but only barely.
He couldn't imagine having not been given some candy growing up. Chocolate did kids good.
But he didn't want to make Aiko sad by mentioning it again, so he switched to a new topic of conversation. "Do you go to school?"
"At daycare," was Aiko's answer, which helped Jin sort out how old the girl was. Not yet at Kindergarten age, then- a little younger than Yuta. Maybe half a year or so, maybe more. He pushed thoughts of Yuta out of his head, pointing down at the drawing Aiko had just finished.
"And what's this supposed to be?" he asked. It looked kind of like a gyrating blob.
"Jin!" she giggled.
Jin laughed, too. "That's me? Am I smiling? I look like I'm smiling."
"Jin is always smiling," Aiko answered, and went back to working on her ladybug while Jin leaned back against the wall behind him. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had told him he was always smiling- maybe never. Pi joked that if Jin kept his face contorted like it usually was, it was going to stick that way.
He wondered when he'd started thinking it was more enjoyable to spend time with his neighbor's daughter rather than get drunk with Pi and his posse.
"Jin's always smiling because Aiko is so fun," Jin said honestly, picking up the blue chalk again, and it was worth it to see the little girl's face shine like it did.
--
Ryutaro’s mother always sent her notes on fancy stationery. It didn’t make the message any easier to bear. It was always the same. One line of small, neat writing on the sturdy paper.
Please do not send any more pictures.
A fat teardrop stained the paper, and Becky set it down on the table next to the pictures of Aiko she sent every few months without fail. They were always returned, always from his mother. The father of her child had never written a message. She wouldn’t stop though. It was unfair to Aiko if she didn’t try.
She sniffed in an unladylike way, and so what. Nobody was there to see her. Or so she thought until there was a knock at the door. “Crap,” she mumbled, getting off the couch and wiping her eyes and her nose. No makeup, lounge pants. At least she was wearing a bra.
It was probably Mrs. Takeda. She always started her complaints about rent a week in advance now since she was convinced that Becky was incompetent. Maybe Mrs. Takeda wasn’t that wrong. But when she looked through the peephole, she saw Akanishi standing there holding a convenience store bag.
Today was one of the rare days that her neighbor had gone out without a baseball cap or some other kind of hat. His hair was pulled back in a lazy ponytail, and Becky had to admit that it was nicer when she could actually see his face.
She undid the chain and pushed the door open. He looked up and turned red. “Whoa, sorry. If it’s a bad time...”
Becky shook her head. “No, no, it’s fine. Something...something on TV...” she lied poorly.
Jin nodded, still looking uneasy. “You’re okay?”
“I’m great.”
“Ah. Good, good.” He finally remembered the bag in his hand. “Oh!” He pulled out a rather fancy looking candy bar with a cartoon animal on the wrapper. “Is Aiko home?”
She shook her head. “No, she’s staying with my parents this weekend. Sorry.”
Jin actually looked disappointed. It was nice to know that someone cared about Aiko, even if Aiko’s father didn’t. “Well, she said she wanted one of these, so I thought it would be a nice treat.”
He handed her the candy bar, and she sighed. “She told you to buy this for her?”
“Well,” Jin hesitated, face looking almost adorably lost. “She didn’t tell me to. I mean, she brought it up. She said there was a commercial and a porcupine and I just thought...”
Her apartment was in a state of half-clean, half-disaster, but it was rude to make him stand out there looking embarrassed. “Did you want to come in for a minute?” He said nothing, just stepping inside and slipping off his sneakers. They looked massive next to her own shoes and all of Aiko’s. “Something to drink?”
“Scotch if you’ve got it.” She turned to see his sheepish smile. “Water’s fine.”
He was rather goofy for someone who looked like bored was his usual default setting. “Water it is,” she said, setting the candy bar down on the kitchen counter while she rummaged around for a clean glass. Becky heard a squeak as Jin sat down on her couch.
“Oh god...” she heard him say as she brought the water and the candy bar into the room. He held up a doll body and a doll head. “Did I break it?”
She smiled. “That’s Princess Riko, and her head always comes off.”
Jin set the doll and head aside, accepting the water with a muttered thank you. She could see his eyes scanning the coffee table, the pictures of Aiko and the note. She took a sip from her own glass, not knowing if she should explain something so personal to her neighbor, but he’d been more than a neighbor. He was Aiko’s friend in a way.
She decided against complaining to him. “So she told you about the porcupine commercial and you bought her a chocolate bar?”
“Well, she said she never has any candy. I just thought it would make her happy.”
Becky would have been touched by the gesture, but she couldn’t help laughing right in Jin’s face. “She told you she never has candy?”
Jin looked completely lost. “She said she has to go to college someday.”
She set down the water glass and picked up the candy bar, undoing the wrapper and taking a big bite of it. “Ah, so good,” she mumbled. It had been weeks since she’d had chocolate.
“What are you doing? I didn’t buy that for you.”
She smiled, hoping there wasn’t chocolate or caramel on her teeth now. “That little liar. She has candy at least once a week as a reward for doing her chores. I’m sorry, Akanishi-san, but she played you.”
Jin scowled. “But she said she can’t have candy.”
“She can’t have candy for breakfast,” she informed him. “And she can’t have it every day. I’ll have her apologize for misleading you when she comes home.” She unwrapped a little more of the chocolate and held it out. “Wanna bite?”
He shook his head defiantly.
She pushed it under his nose. “Come on.”
“I went to five stores for the porcupine wrapper.”
He was downright adorable. He was rivaling her four year old for adorable, and it was good to laugh again. With Aiko away from home and the letter from Ryutaro’s mom, it hadn’t been the best day. Jin took the candy bar from her hand and took a huge bite out of it.
“Well?”
“Damn good,” he mumbled, mouth full of chocolate.
“You finish it. I’ll buy her another one when she comes home.”
They sat in silence while he munched on the candy bar. She reattached Princess Riko’s head and set the doll back in her place in Aiko’s toy corner beside Mr. Sheep and Kiki Frog.
“How far do your parents live?” he asked, washing down the candy bar with some water.
“Yokohama,” she said, trying to subtly move a pair of underwear behind the chair with her foot before he saw them. “My parents have three dogs, some birds, a turtle. It’s like a zoo. She loves visiting them.”
“I bet.”
“Yeah, she’ll be a real pain when it’s time to come home,” she thought bitterly. Aiko never meant any harm when she said the apartment was ‘boring’ since the dogs weren’t there, but it hurt nonetheless. It would be a long time before she could afford a building that allowed pets.
“Are these...” Jin started, poking at the pictures on the table with his pinky. “Uh...”
“Ah, yeah. They’re all pretty recent.” She picked up the note from Ryutaro’s mother and crumpled it into a ball. “From Family Day at preschool, some of them are just taken around the neighborhood.”
Jin nodded. “Cute.”
She smiled weakly at a picture of Aiko in the tiara she’d gotten a little too attached to a month ago. It had given her quite an attitude problem, and so the tiara was hidden in the cupboard before her daughter went any more power mad. They were all pictures she’d taken with care and love, and they were sent back with just a simple note.
“Can I have one?”
Becky stopped, looking to see her neighbor pick up a shot of Aiko jumping in a puddle. “What?”
“That’s weird,” he said, embarrassed. “Never mind, I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said, unable to hold back a smile. She was seeing her neighbor in a new light. He didn’t just put up with Aiko to be nice, but he seemed to genuinely care about her. “Please, take one if you’d like.”
He held it gently in his fingers. “She’s got mud on her face.”
“Yeah, you think it looks cute, but bath time was a nightmare that evening.”
Jin laughed. She wanted to hear him laugh a lot more. But she was forgetting herself. The water was gone, the candy bar was gone, and she had work that evening. “I’m sorry but...”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, sorry for staying so long. I have to go to work.”
Him too? They both kept unreliable hours. He held the picture and walked to the door, picking up his sneakers instead of putting them back on.
“Thanks for the candy bar. I promise, I’ll buy her the same one and bring it when I pick her up. I’ll even say it’s from Onii-san.”
“Onii-san?”
She grinned. “She’s always talking about you. I think she’s in love.”
“I don’t know how to take that,” he said nervously.
“Thanks for coming, really. I appreciate it.” She saw him out, and he gave her a little wave. She was just going to retrieve that stray pair of underwear when there was another knock at the door.
It was Jin again. “Sorry.”
“You leave something?”
“Ah, no. No, I didn’t,” he said. “I was just wondering. Do you take the train to Yokohama?”
She was surprised by the question. “Yeah?”
“Well, I...I have a car, so if you think it would be faster, I’d be happy to drive you. I mean, if you want. It’s no trouble.”
He still had the picture and the empty convenience store bag in one hand, his sneakers in the other. He hadn’t even gone back into his apartment yet.
“That would be great,” she said, bowing her head slightly. “Thanks, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Great. See you.”
“See you.”
She closed the door and leaned back against it. Becky was starting to see why Aiko was so fond of her next door onii-san.
Part 2
Part: 1/2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Character, Pairing(s): Akanishi Jin/Becky, Yamapi
Rating: PG
Warnings: Cavity-inducing het romance, children
Summary: There's a sidewalk between their apartment doors, but in the end, maybe there's a lot more connecting them than just cement.
Notes: We realize that this is NONE of the things that anyone is here to read. We also realize that apart from us, there is probably only one person who will read this. But... well, we write what we get inspired with, and this made us quite happy to write. So. ♥ Enjoy!
“Backpack,” Becky mumbled, hurrying around the living room while she was still shaping the rice ball in her hand. “Aiko, backpack!”
“Okay!” Aiko called from the other room, running out. Becky was horrified to see the number of hair clips her daughter had added to her hairstyle for the morning. “Mommy, look! Pretty!”
“Yes, very pretty,” she grumbled, hurrying back to the messy kitchen counter to put the rice ball into Aiko’s lunch box. They were going to be late! She rinsed off her hands, pushed the top down on the lunch box and chased her daughter down. “Pretty, but too much!”
“No!” Aiko complained as Becky took several of the clips out, steering the little girl back into her bedroom.
“You can put as many clips in as you want when you get home,” she said, eyes searching for the purple backpack. She finally spotted it under a pile of clothes that Aiko had rejected for that morning. Becky grabbed a hairbrush and redid Aiko’s pigtails quickly, listening to the girl whine the whole time. It wouldn’t be a morning in their apartment if Aiko didn’t get her hair done two or three separate times.
The backpack finally retrieved, Becky put the lunchbox inside and made sure Aiko’s smock was there for that day’s finger painting. She grabbed her own bag and hurried the girl to the door. “Come on, come on, can’t keep Saki-sensei waiting!”
“Saki-sensei says I’m good at painting!”
“You are,” Becky agreed, fumbling around for her keys. “You’re wonderful.”
“Saki-sensei’s favorite color is green. I like green too.”
There was no way to say ‘then why don’t you marry Saki-sensei’ to a four year old, so Becky just focused on getting the door locked. At least it was a bright sunny day out. Aiko rambled on about the merits of her preschool teacher as she heard shuffling footsteps coming down the passageway.
She got the door locked and turned to see their neighbor heading for his door. Becky didn’t see the man too often. She heard him more. When Becky was curling up in bed, her neighbor was getting ready to go out. And most of the time when Becky was leaving for work in the morning, her neighbor was coming back, eyes bloodshot, occasionally stumbling drunk. Must be nice to go out and have fun.
“Hello! Good morning!” Aiko greeted him, and Becky tugged her pigtail gently.
“Aiko, not so loud.”
But their neighbor, clad in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, dyed brown hair sticking out the back of his baseball cap, turned and smiled gently at her daughter. “Good morning to you, too.”
They’d never really exchanged pleasantries before, just a nod here or there. From his appearance, Becky assumed he was just a lazy partying guy. Maybe he was a lazy partying guy, but at least he was friendly. “Good morning,” she said shyly, ushering Aiko down the hall.
“You have a ponytail,” Aiko called back at him. “Ponytails are for girls!”
“Aiko!”
But their neighbor turned his key in the door and gave Aiko a wink before stepping inside. “Maybe I’m a girl!” he said, closing the door.
Aiko giggled as soon as they were in the stairwell together. “He’s not a girl, Mommy. He’s silly.”
They were lucky the man had a good sense of humor. Didn’t stop Becky’s embarrassment. Aiko had been shy for so long, but she’d gotten chattier in the past few months. Hopefully, she’d be better behaved at the grocery store or in school. People stared at them enough, didn’t they?
Mrs. Takeda was sweeping the steps when they emerged. The woman spoke so that Aiko wouldn’t hear. “Rent, Miss Vaughn,” the landlady said, pronouncing the foreign name as though it was something distasteful. “It’s been three days.”
She let Aiko run ahead to the apartment gate. “I know. And I’m really sorry. I get paid tomorrow afternoon. Is that okay?”
The broom scratched against the concrete, and she was convinced that Mrs. Takeda was sweeping just to have something to do while making people feel ashamed. “Is that purse new?”
It wasn’t. But Mrs. Takeda was cruel like that, wasn’t she? Becky just faked a smile and clutched her bag tighter. “Tomorrow. I promise. Have a nice day, okay?”
--
Jin collapsed on top of his bed with a sigh. Yamashita had been talking out of his ass, claiming that it was a group date. Too bad the group had been him, Yamashita, three other guys and a hostess nicknamed Hokkaido. And Jin had discovered why almost immediately - she wasn’t just cold, but she’d been far away all night. Jin had bought drink after drink without a thank you.
Then she’d left with Yamashita anyway.
His shift was noon to eight, so he could get a few hours of sleep before getting back. But he smelled like smoke and the club and the booze one of the other guys had spilled on his sweatshirt. He’d flopped down on top of a pile of clean clothes which were probably going to be wrinkled now. He had a bad taste in his mouth. And there was a road crew using a jackhammer down the street.
Well, forget sleep. He’d just go without. He was glad he didn’t work forklift shift today. Walking around the warehouse with a clipboard didn’t require a full night’s rest. The shower was a little too cold, but there was always something going wrong with the building. Better a cold shower than the air conditioning unit breaking down again.
It was rare to run into his next door neighbor, but that didn’t mean Jin never heard her. Or at least the little girl. Some days Jin would open his door and see chalk hearts and flowers dotting the concrete path between his apartment and theirs. He’d hear their music or TV until the mother managed to turn it down.
Jin didn’t know his neighbor’s name, but the daughter was Aiko, and she was a rare bit of sunshine in his otherwise boring life. The rest of the building were single working people, and it was nice to have a little cheer from time to time. And after a shitty night with Yamashita and the others, having a cute little kid say good morning wasn’t so unwelcome. Jin didn’t know the mother, but he just knew the colors.
His neighbor had dark hair, usually pulled back with an array of sparkly clips or striped headbands. Her clothes were a patchwork of designs and buttons, cutesy stuff like a high school girl would wear, not a mom. Well, not any moms Jin had met. They were probably the same age. Maybe (just maybe) the little girl was the same age as Yuta was...
He turned the shower off, yanking the towel off the rack. Jin’s calendar on the refrigerator had half a dozen things scrawled on it. Mostly when bills were due or the next gig for Ryo’s band. As he dried off, he knew that if he flipped the calendar to July that the 9th had the red circle around it. He’d write the check, it’d get cashed. Whether any of the money actually went to Yuta’s care or not, he’d never know.
He tossed on some sweatpants and a clean(er) t-shirt, lounging on the couch as the clock ticked the minutes away. The jackhammer didn’t stop, reminding him that most people with real jobs were gone for the day. Most people didn’t work whatever hours were assigned, whatever hours they could get. But he’d take working in the warehouse over a suit and tie, that was for damn sure.
When he left for work, Mrs. Takeda was watering the plants in the front garden, even if they were always half-dead no matter what. “Mr. Akanishi,” she called as Jin passed by.
“Yes?” he asked, body finally started to get a little grumpy that he hadn’t slept. He needed coffee, not a life lesson from the landlady.
“Do you ever talk to Miss Vaughn?”
“Who?” he asked, trying to avoid the watering can as Takeda moved to water the bed of dying flowers by his feet.
“Your neighbor,” Mrs. Takeda said, a rather nasty scowl on her already nasty face. “She never pays rent on time. Maybe if you said something?”
He didn’t want to get involved in other people’s problems. He’d had money troubles before himself, before he’d gotten this job. But the thought of the pretty mother next door with her colorful clothes and the cute little girl not being able to pay their rent was a harsh one. Mrs. Takeda had gotten people evicted before without blinking an eye.
The chalk pictures and the giggles would disappear.
Jin turned around and headed off. “Sorry. It’s nothing to do with me.”
--
She'd never been one to think that inanimate objects were in the habit of trying to make her life more difficult, but the longer she stared down at her bank account ledger, the more she was starting to believe it. The numbers were written and crossed out and then written in again, filling up the margins with arrows and plus signs and tiny subtractions when she thought of something else she could eliminate. She hadn't had a haircut in months, her best pair of shoes had a crack in the soles, and she was already buying 100 yen shampoo from the convenience store down the street.
Becky put her pen down and ran her hands through her hair, pushing tendrils back around her ears. Staring at the numbers longer wasn't going to magically increase them. With the hours cut at the clothing store, she was going to have to simply get rid of more expenses in her monthly budget.
It was do-able. It sucked, but she could swing it. She could make more rice to make up for the lack of meat and make sure to give Aiko most of it. She could go longer without getting new work clothes. And if push came to shove and she had to stop taking classes... well, she would. Aiko came first. Aiko always came first.
The television in the living room was loud, and Becky didn't want to get yelled at by Mrs. Takeda again.
"Aiko, can you please turn that down?" Becky called, shuffling through some of her old paychecks for the umpteenth time, just to make sure. Some commercial for ramen cups was playing with an annoyingly loud musical track. She paused, waiting for the volume to diminish. "Aiko? Can you turn it down?"
Nothing. She got up and went into the living room, expecting to find her daughter absorbed in whatever the latest commercial was attempting to sell to the masses, and instead found Aiko's stuffed bunny sitting in the middle of the floor alone.
"Aiko?" she called. Her heart felt like it was in her throat. The front door was slightly ajar, and she pushed it open without really thinking. She wasn't thinking about the numbers in her bank account anymore, she moved without conscious thought, out the doorway and onto the sidewalk that connected the small apartment complex.
Her daughter's voice floated back to her on the breeze. It helped soothe Becky's nerves, but her steps were still quicker than normal as she made her way up the curve to her neighbor's doorway, where Aiko was crouched with her little bucket of sidewalk chalk.
"Mommy!" Aiko said happily, holding up the green piece. "I'm making trees!"
Mr. Ponytail was there, too, crouched beside Aiko and drawing something with the tan chalk. Becky took a deep breath, trying to calm her still pounding heart.
"What did I say about leaving the house without telling me?" she asked, as she reached their location on the stoop. "It scares me when you leave like that."
"I'm sorry," Aiko replied.
"I'm sorry, too," Mr. Ponytail said. "I didn't know you thought she was still inside. I found her drawing on the sidewalk out here."
Aiko pointed to a mass of color near Becky's feet. "He drew that one! Isn't it good, Mommy?"
"Oh," Becky said. She stepped aside so she could see the whole thing. It was a wobbly outline of what appeared to be Aiko herself- at least it was wearing a pink dress similar to what she had on. "It's very pretty."
"But not as pretty as Aiko's drawings," Mr. Ponytail said.
Aiko just giggled and went back to working on her puppy drawing. Becky's neighbor stood up and wiped some chalk dust from his hands on his jeans, which left colorful lines up the denim where his fingers were. "Really, I'm sorry," he said again. "I would have taken her back home if I'd known you thought she was inside."
"No, it's okay," Becky said, sighing. "It's not your fault. But thank you for watching her."
"It's cool," he said. He paused for a second, and then shrugged a bit, a lopsided grin splitting his face. "I'm Jin, by the way. Akanishi."
"Becky Vaughn."
They stood in silence for a few moments, watching Aiko add in a collar and a water bowl to her dog picture. Then Becky sighed again. "Okay, Aiko, time to come inside."
"But I want to stay and draw," the girl said. Her lower lip started to jut out in a pout, which meant that the tears weren't far behind, and Becky desperately wanted to avoid that.
"Well, Mommy has work to do inside," Becky said, and the lip moved out further. She could see the shine in Aiko's eyes.
"I can stay here and draw with her," Jin offered. "I mean, if it's okay with you. If you have stuff to do. I promise I'll get her back when the sun goes down."
Becky didn't know him- not really. She didn't know him, but she knew Aiko's smile. She knew the instinctual feeling in her gut, and that was enough for now.
"Okay," she said, slowly. "Okay. Aiko, you can stay out until it's dark, and then you need to come in, okay?"
There was a happy trill of acceptance from the little girl, still bent over adding some spots to her puppy drawing. "Okay!"
Becky turned to leave, and then stopped, looking at Jin once more. "Thank you. For doing this. You don't have to."
"Naw," he said, and there was that smile again, one corner quirking up more than the other one as he ducked his head and reached for the pink chalk. "I love kids. She's great."
"Okay," she replied. "Well... thanks."
When she got to her apartment door, she turned back to watch the two of them, kneeling on the cement and having some kind of conversation about what color the flowers should be next to the puppy. Aiko was giggling again and scribbling with the blue piece, and Jin was adding in something with pink that was making both of them laugh harder.
Becky opened the living room window before she went back to the table to work on her budget again, so that the sounds of Aiko's laughter soothed her nerves as she continued crossing out numbers and reworking the expenses.
--
He took a long drag of his cigarette as Yamashita drunkenly fumbled with his own lighter. “You are wasted, Pi.”
“Yep,” Jin’s friend admitted, holding out the lighter. “Here. I don’t want to be on fire.”
The club music was only a noisy hum in the building behind them, and the fresh air felt good and clean on his skin, even if the alley was kind of nasty. He lit Pi’s cigarette and listened to some couple further down the alley having some kind of argument.
“You on fire would be kind of funny though,” Jin told him, laughing.
Yamashita made a face. “So what have you been doing? You been working the late shift again?”
He nodded. “Yeah, sometimes.” It was messing up his sleep schedule something awful, but work was work, and if Jin didn’t go in to get paid for it, they could easily find someone else.
“I don’t like you being all night time-like. What’s the word I’m thinking of?”
“I have no idea.” Their conversations always took a turn for the pointless once they were away from the girls and getting lost in the music.
“Nocturnal? I’m thinking of nocturnal?”
“I don’t know, man,” he said, dropping his cigarette and stomping it out. “But I work, I go home, I do chalk drawings.” He was drunker than he thought he was if he was going ahead and admitting to his most recent pastime.
“Chalk drawings?”
“Yeah,” he said, thinking about the forest of monkeys he and Aiko had drawn together near the mailboxes the other afternoon. Mrs. Takeda had made him hose it down as soon as Aiko had gone inside. The old bat was a real killjoy. “Yeah, my next door neighbor has a daughter. I keep an eye on her sometimes. Draw on the sidewalk.”
Yamashita snorted. “You? You like little kids?”
“Nothing wrong with little kids. They aren’t grown up enough to be assholes like you or me yet,” he said. “She’s cute.”
Pi nodded. “Mitsuki still not letting you come around, is she?”
Jin leaned back against the alley brick at the mention of Mitsuki’s name. He had to check his bank balance one of these days to make sure he had enough to send for Yuta. He never thought it was enough, but it wasn’t like he ever got asked for more or even a thank you for what he’d sent. “Nope.”
“Sucks man,” Pi said, knocking some ash off of the tip of his cigarette. “Really sucks. Like you’re probably buying her a new purse or something, not diapers or whatever.”
“He’s five and a half,” Jin interrupted. “He doesn’t wear diapers now.” At least he hoped not. It wasn’t like he could go and check.
“I wore diapers until I was four,” Pi announced, “No shame in that.”
“You’re an idiot,” Jin teased him.
“It’s a joke, you know. Haha. Like a joke, funny?”
“Sure.”
Yamashita shoved him. “So what about your neighbors? Too lazy to watch their own kids? They at least paying you to babysit?”
“It’s not babysitting,” Jin said. Well, technically it was, wasn’t it? “But she’s not married. At least I don’t think so. Never seen any guy around.”
“Oh?” Pi asked. Suddenly, his friend was interested. “What happened there?”
Like he even knew. He didn’t even know the woman. It wasn’t like he was going to ask a preschooler where her daddy was or if mommy and daddy even lived together. But if he had to venture a guess, he’d vote for single mom. She had the bags under her eyes that said single mom working her ass off.
“Think it’s just a mom and a kid. It’s different from when you and I grew up.”
“Sure, sure.” Pi crushed his cigarette under his sneaker. “She hot?”
He blinked at the question. He was drunk, but he wasn’t drunk enough. Sure, he’d noticed her. He was a guy after all. It was hard not to notice when you had a cute girl living next door. But it was hard to think of her, of Becky like that. She wasn’t hot like some actress or AV idol. Her eyes were kind of big, and she was short and on the skinnier end of Jin’s usual preference.
“She’s cute enough, I guess.” He thought of the name in katakana on the mailbox just beside his. “A bit exotic looking. She’s probably half-American or half something European.”
His friend smirked. “And you watch her kid for free?”
Jin thought about his bank balance decreasing every month for a little boy he never got to see. He thought instead about the monkey forest and chalk dust. “Yeah. I watch her kid for free.”
--
"I was watching the TV yesterday," Aiko said, knees coated with chalk residue and bits of rock that stuck to the skin.
"What did you watch?" Jin asked. He was working on a fairly elaborate band logo on the cement in front of Becky's stoop. It looked good enough that he wanted to take a picture and then do it again on some paper with an ink pen, just to keep it around before Mrs. Takeda blasted it with her hose. He briefly entertained the notion that it would look even better if he added a small cartoon head of Mrs. Takeda with an angry storm cloud hovering over it, but the old bat might think it was too antagonistic and do something drastic in response.
From inside, he could hear the few times that Becky would start mumbling to herself. She never really explained what she did, but from her odd hours and varying states of dress when she left, Jin wagered she had more than one job. And from what he could gather through her self-utterances, she was taking a few classes to finish up a college degree. He thought she was doing class work at the table, but he wasn't sure.
"Well, there was um, a lion?" Aiko explained. "And he chased a bird. And then there was a porcupine who liked candy."
"Candy?" Jin laughed. "That sounds like a commercial."
Aiko clapped her hands. "Yeah! For candy!"
"I like candy," Jin admitted. "Do you like candy?"
Aiko replied with something that was garbled but sounded a bit like "chocolate".
"So the porcupine sells chocolate?" Jin asked.
"But I can't have candy," Aiko said. The admission didn't seem to sadden her too much, but Jin watched her as she added a few looping flowers to her scene- which was a lady-bug, he guessed- and then sighed a little while looking down at her drawing so far.
Jin toed the chalk bucket, ignoring the fact that he'd sat right on top of his first attempt at a guitar, and no doubt had chalk imprints all over his butt. "Why not?"
"Mommy says I have to go to college."
Jin glanced up towards the windowsill above his head. He'd probably been right on with his single mother assessment; if Becky told Aiko she couldn't have candy because she had to go to college, it meant she was probably strapped with bills she could barely pay on her own. She had her head above water, as far Jin knew, but only barely.
He couldn't imagine having not been given some candy growing up. Chocolate did kids good.
But he didn't want to make Aiko sad by mentioning it again, so he switched to a new topic of conversation. "Do you go to school?"
"At daycare," was Aiko's answer, which helped Jin sort out how old the girl was. Not yet at Kindergarten age, then- a little younger than Yuta. Maybe half a year or so, maybe more. He pushed thoughts of Yuta out of his head, pointing down at the drawing Aiko had just finished.
"And what's this supposed to be?" he asked. It looked kind of like a gyrating blob.
"Jin!" she giggled.
Jin laughed, too. "That's me? Am I smiling? I look like I'm smiling."
"Jin is always smiling," Aiko answered, and went back to working on her ladybug while Jin leaned back against the wall behind him. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had told him he was always smiling- maybe never. Pi joked that if Jin kept his face contorted like it usually was, it was going to stick that way.
He wondered when he'd started thinking it was more enjoyable to spend time with his neighbor's daughter rather than get drunk with Pi and his posse.
"Jin's always smiling because Aiko is so fun," Jin said honestly, picking up the blue chalk again, and it was worth it to see the little girl's face shine like it did.
--
Ryutaro’s mother always sent her notes on fancy stationery. It didn’t make the message any easier to bear. It was always the same. One line of small, neat writing on the sturdy paper.
Please do not send any more pictures.
A fat teardrop stained the paper, and Becky set it down on the table next to the pictures of Aiko she sent every few months without fail. They were always returned, always from his mother. The father of her child had never written a message. She wouldn’t stop though. It was unfair to Aiko if she didn’t try.
She sniffed in an unladylike way, and so what. Nobody was there to see her. Or so she thought until there was a knock at the door. “Crap,” she mumbled, getting off the couch and wiping her eyes and her nose. No makeup, lounge pants. At least she was wearing a bra.
It was probably Mrs. Takeda. She always started her complaints about rent a week in advance now since she was convinced that Becky was incompetent. Maybe Mrs. Takeda wasn’t that wrong. But when she looked through the peephole, she saw Akanishi standing there holding a convenience store bag.
Today was one of the rare days that her neighbor had gone out without a baseball cap or some other kind of hat. His hair was pulled back in a lazy ponytail, and Becky had to admit that it was nicer when she could actually see his face.
She undid the chain and pushed the door open. He looked up and turned red. “Whoa, sorry. If it’s a bad time...”
Becky shook her head. “No, no, it’s fine. Something...something on TV...” she lied poorly.
Jin nodded, still looking uneasy. “You’re okay?”
“I’m great.”
“Ah. Good, good.” He finally remembered the bag in his hand. “Oh!” He pulled out a rather fancy looking candy bar with a cartoon animal on the wrapper. “Is Aiko home?”
She shook her head. “No, she’s staying with my parents this weekend. Sorry.”
Jin actually looked disappointed. It was nice to know that someone cared about Aiko, even if Aiko’s father didn’t. “Well, she said she wanted one of these, so I thought it would be a nice treat.”
He handed her the candy bar, and she sighed. “She told you to buy this for her?”
“Well,” Jin hesitated, face looking almost adorably lost. “She didn’t tell me to. I mean, she brought it up. She said there was a commercial and a porcupine and I just thought...”
Her apartment was in a state of half-clean, half-disaster, but it was rude to make him stand out there looking embarrassed. “Did you want to come in for a minute?” He said nothing, just stepping inside and slipping off his sneakers. They looked massive next to her own shoes and all of Aiko’s. “Something to drink?”
“Scotch if you’ve got it.” She turned to see his sheepish smile. “Water’s fine.”
He was rather goofy for someone who looked like bored was his usual default setting. “Water it is,” she said, setting the candy bar down on the kitchen counter while she rummaged around for a clean glass. Becky heard a squeak as Jin sat down on her couch.
“Oh god...” she heard him say as she brought the water and the candy bar into the room. He held up a doll body and a doll head. “Did I break it?”
She smiled. “That’s Princess Riko, and her head always comes off.”
Jin set the doll and head aside, accepting the water with a muttered thank you. She could see his eyes scanning the coffee table, the pictures of Aiko and the note. She took a sip from her own glass, not knowing if she should explain something so personal to her neighbor, but he’d been more than a neighbor. He was Aiko’s friend in a way.
She decided against complaining to him. “So she told you about the porcupine commercial and you bought her a chocolate bar?”
“Well, she said she never has any candy. I just thought it would make her happy.”
Becky would have been touched by the gesture, but she couldn’t help laughing right in Jin’s face. “She told you she never has candy?”
Jin looked completely lost. “She said she has to go to college someday.”
She set down the water glass and picked up the candy bar, undoing the wrapper and taking a big bite of it. “Ah, so good,” she mumbled. It had been weeks since she’d had chocolate.
“What are you doing? I didn’t buy that for you.”
She smiled, hoping there wasn’t chocolate or caramel on her teeth now. “That little liar. She has candy at least once a week as a reward for doing her chores. I’m sorry, Akanishi-san, but she played you.”
Jin scowled. “But she said she can’t have candy.”
“She can’t have candy for breakfast,” she informed him. “And she can’t have it every day. I’ll have her apologize for misleading you when she comes home.” She unwrapped a little more of the chocolate and held it out. “Wanna bite?”
He shook his head defiantly.
She pushed it under his nose. “Come on.”
“I went to five stores for the porcupine wrapper.”
He was downright adorable. He was rivaling her four year old for adorable, and it was good to laugh again. With Aiko away from home and the letter from Ryutaro’s mom, it hadn’t been the best day. Jin took the candy bar from her hand and took a huge bite out of it.
“Well?”
“Damn good,” he mumbled, mouth full of chocolate.
“You finish it. I’ll buy her another one when she comes home.”
They sat in silence while he munched on the candy bar. She reattached Princess Riko’s head and set the doll back in her place in Aiko’s toy corner beside Mr. Sheep and Kiki Frog.
“How far do your parents live?” he asked, washing down the candy bar with some water.
“Yokohama,” she said, trying to subtly move a pair of underwear behind the chair with her foot before he saw them. “My parents have three dogs, some birds, a turtle. It’s like a zoo. She loves visiting them.”
“I bet.”
“Yeah, she’ll be a real pain when it’s time to come home,” she thought bitterly. Aiko never meant any harm when she said the apartment was ‘boring’ since the dogs weren’t there, but it hurt nonetheless. It would be a long time before she could afford a building that allowed pets.
“Are these...” Jin started, poking at the pictures on the table with his pinky. “Uh...”
“Ah, yeah. They’re all pretty recent.” She picked up the note from Ryutaro’s mother and crumpled it into a ball. “From Family Day at preschool, some of them are just taken around the neighborhood.”
Jin nodded. “Cute.”
She smiled weakly at a picture of Aiko in the tiara she’d gotten a little too attached to a month ago. It had given her quite an attitude problem, and so the tiara was hidden in the cupboard before her daughter went any more power mad. They were all pictures she’d taken with care and love, and they were sent back with just a simple note.
“Can I have one?”
Becky stopped, looking to see her neighbor pick up a shot of Aiko jumping in a puddle. “What?”
“That’s weird,” he said, embarrassed. “Never mind, I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said, unable to hold back a smile. She was seeing her neighbor in a new light. He didn’t just put up with Aiko to be nice, but he seemed to genuinely care about her. “Please, take one if you’d like.”
He held it gently in his fingers. “She’s got mud on her face.”
“Yeah, you think it looks cute, but bath time was a nightmare that evening.”
Jin laughed. She wanted to hear him laugh a lot more. But she was forgetting herself. The water was gone, the candy bar was gone, and she had work that evening. “I’m sorry but...”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, sorry for staying so long. I have to go to work.”
Him too? They both kept unreliable hours. He held the picture and walked to the door, picking up his sneakers instead of putting them back on.
“Thanks for the candy bar. I promise, I’ll buy her the same one and bring it when I pick her up. I’ll even say it’s from Onii-san.”
“Onii-san?”
She grinned. “She’s always talking about you. I think she’s in love.”
“I don’t know how to take that,” he said nervously.
“Thanks for coming, really. I appreciate it.” She saw him out, and he gave her a little wave. She was just going to retrieve that stray pair of underwear when there was another knock at the door.
It was Jin again. “Sorry.”
“You leave something?”
“Ah, no. No, I didn’t,” he said. “I was just wondering. Do you take the train to Yokohama?”
She was surprised by the question. “Yeah?”
“Well, I...I have a car, so if you think it would be faster, I’d be happy to drive you. I mean, if you want. It’s no trouble.”
He still had the picture and the empty convenience store bag in one hand, his sneakers in the other. He hadn’t even gone back into his apartment yet.
“That would be great,” she said, bowing her head slightly. “Thanks, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. Great. See you.”
“See you.”
She closed the door and leaned back against it. Becky was starting to see why Aiko was so fond of her next door onii-san.
Part 2