There no shame when it came to Mother Nature’s call. Crossing his legs like his life depended on it; Yata skated around the alley way for a toilet. True, he had the option to do his business behind a trashcan or just wet his pants and use his waist-tied jacket to cover the stain. No. Not in a million years. Yata would never admit it to himself, but he hated being dirty.
When push comes to shove! Yata screamed in his head. Then, in the distance, he saw salvation. A dimly lit entrance to a restroom came into view and Yata busted the door open with his baseball bat. Tossing his skateboard and bat aside, he rushed to the urinal and let it go.
Yawning, Yata scratched his nose and felt freedom wash over him. Then, he heard a spray; someone was spraying the urinal next to him? Frowning, he turned his head and saw his ex-best friend, Fushimi Saruhiko. The tall blue had a rice-crispy in his mouth as he…Yata made a face of disgust. Did Fushimi wash his hands before putting that marshmallow treat in his mouth?! Where exactly were those hands before?
Fushimi glanced at over at Yata, saying ‘What?’ with his eyes.
“That’s just wrong,” Yata shook his head. Finishing his business, Yata grabbed his skateboard and baseball bat and headed to the door. Weird. The stupid door handle wasn’t cooperating. Yata body slammed the door and whacked it with his baseball bat. There wasn’t even a dent on the frame.
“Yo Saru, the door won’t open.”
Fushimi gave Yata a look. “You didn’t even flush.” Shaking his head side-to-side, Fushimi flushed his and Yata’s urinal before giving Yata a ‘Was that so hard to do?’ hand motion.
Yata stared at Fushimi. Was this blue deaf or just really stupid? “Saru…The. Door. Won’t. Open,” he said in a staccato voice, shaking the door handle for emphasis. Even though Fushimi wore glasses, he must’ve been blind as well.
“Tsk, you didn’t even wash your hands.” Turning on the tap, Fushimi washed his hands, and he used paper towels to dry his hands off and to turn off the tap. “Was that so hard?”
Yata breathed deeply, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. “Why are you even here,” Yata managed to say. “WTF man. WTF!” If that was enough, Yata waved his arms around for emphasis. Maybe Fushimi only got the message through charades.
Fushimi laughed before switching to his authoritative voice. “Sometimes I wonder about that myself.” Then, his voice went back to light and airy. “So, the door won’t open, hah?”
“Yeah.” Yata crossed his arms. Fushimi rolled his eyes.
“The door can’t be…” His voice trailed off when the door handle proved more difficult than he thought. “Locked.”
No. If Fushimi couldn’t even open it, Yata was in trouble. How cruel fate was to him. Being locked with your ex-best friend for the next who-knows-how-long was going to be fun. “You know what this means right?” Fushimi leaned and whispered into Yata’s ear, “We’re stuck in here together.”
Shuddering, Yata backed away. “In a restroom?! That’s just nasty…”
And it didn’t take that long for Yata to realize how filthy their prison was. Grime and rust coated the sink pipes (the restroom didn’t even have modern sinks!) and the lights were so dim that Yata could barely see his reflection in the broken mirrors. The cubicles smelled horrid enough and there was a little door leading to the janitor’s closet. If this place stinks, the closet’s ten times worse. But, Yata had time to waste, and he took full advantage of it.
Hooking his headphones to his iPod, he jammed music through his ears and rapped in front of a broken mirror until Fushimi pushed him aside to check on his hair. Yata skated back and forth across the restroom’s sticky tiles before Fushimi drew out his sword and threatened to stick Yata onto the restroom’s grimy walls. Enough about Yata, let’s focus on Fushimi.
Keeping a cool head, Fushimi paced back and forth across the restroom.
“How is this any different from me skating?”
“My walking is much quieter, Mi~sa~ki~”
“Don’t call me that, Monkey!”963Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh820A9f5Nj
963Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrYIh63z9Pf
Tired and bored out of his mind, Yata sat on his skateboard and wheeled himself into a corner. Pulling his beanie off, Yata messed with his reddish orange hair. “Saru…I’m hungry.” Leaning against a corner, eyes closed, Fushimi opened his eyes and smiled.
“What are you going to do about it?” He titled his head. Yata raised his hand up to give Fushimi the finger.
“You’re going to help me look.” Rolling his eyes and sighing, Fushimi helped Yata. Truth be told, restrooms didn’t offer any usable energy sources for two growing boys. But there were plenty of roaches. Alone, the two found at least thirty crawling under the sinks and seven hanging around by the janitor’s closet. “If there are roaches, there must be food,” Yata kept telling himself. No. He refused to admit that he was going to starve in a dingy restroom and have roaches eat away at his cold, dead body. He refused to believe it! They should take Fushimi first!
Eventually, he and Saru did find something. It was a pickle jar but…pickles don’t have legs and antennas. Sitting on his skateboard, Yata curled up into a ball and quietly cried to himself. “We’re going to die!”963Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQ5mG9hIw7C
963Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFFtjMmyeKy
It’d been at least two hours since the search for food. During the time, Yata found some Q-Tips and used them to clean his ears. His baseball bat had fresh blood on it, roach blood, that is. When a roach came crawling in front of him, Yata swung his bat and crushed the fat bug. Legs, wings, and roach guts stuck to his bat like the plaque. Tsk, I’ll have to throw this away if I get out of here. It was a shame too. Yata liked this bat very much.
Head deep in thought, Fushimi sat next to Yata (sitting on Yata’s skateboard, of course).
“Truth or dare?”
“How old do you think I am?” Yata said with grit teeth. Fushimi hesitated but smiled.
“Truth or dare?”
“Dare.”
“I dare you to eat that.” Fushimi pointed to the roach guts on Yata’s baseball bat. Yata gave him a look that said, ‘How desperate do you think I am?’ Shuddering, Yata whacked another crawling roach.
“Truth,” Yata sighed. Fushimi didn’t seem bothered that Yata changed his mind. Twiddling his thumbs, a thought came to his head.
“Do you hate me?”
“Saru, that’s a complicated question.”
“Hm…okay. Your turn.”
Yata rolled his eyes. This was getting nowhere. “Truth or dare?”
Fushimi thought long and hard before answering, “Truth.”
Great, I can’t serve payback…Wracking his brains for a question, a light bulb went off in Yata’s brain. “Why did you leave HOMRA?”
“Complicated question,” Fushimi answered, stifling a growing smile. Yata clicked his tongue and lightly punched Fushimi’s arm.
“Really? Answer the question.”
“Answer mine. Do you hate me?” Fushimi asked.
“I…” Yata’s voice trailed off. He looked the other way, fiddling with his baseball bat. He never thought about this question before…“You made me pissed, Saru,” Yata finally said, pulling his beanie off. “You just up and left HOMRA without warning.” Fushimi’s growing grin fell of his face and his eyes narrowed, moody or were they hiding from the past? So Yata dug further into his answer. “Mikoto did so much for us. You could’ve given him more respect. Instead…you just…stabbed him in the back and ran off with the enemy.”
“I left because of you,” Fushimi mumbled.
“BS, man. That’s a load of BS,” Yata shook his head. “I wasn’t ignoring you. I was just shifting my attention to Mikoto. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen! Look at yourself, Monkey! Mikoto trusted you and you deserted him.”
“How do you think it feels to be ignored?” Fushimi asked. He looked at Yata, really looked at his ex-best friend in the eye. “It hurts…when it comes from a best friend.”
Yata closed his mouth. Holding back the pain, he finally mumbled, “The pain I felt hurts me more than it does to you. Saru…I lost my best friend.”
“What do you think I lost?” Fushimi asked in a heartbeat. “Who do you think I lost? My best friend.”
“You betrayed HOMRA.”
“I was returning the favor.”
“How?!”
“You cut me off. You didn’t care about me anymore.”
Exchanging moody looks, the two ex-best friends kept silent, swallowing the new information they just heard from one another. Yata sniffed and was surprised to feel his eyes go watery. He had to admit. It’d been a long time since the two actually talked since that fateful day years ago. This was the first time Yata ever got to hear Fushimi’s side of the story.
He saw the taller individual glance at him. “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,” Fushimi said, smiling. “It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to you like this, a really long time…”
“Yeah…” Did Fushimi forgive him? Or, would Fushimi ever forgive him? Yata’s heart was in the mood to change, but it was still hard. He looked around and whacked a roach with his baseball bat. “Bathroom. I still can’t believe I’m stuck in this bathroom with you, out of all people.” He heard a stifled laugh from his ex-companion. “This is not funny, Saru! It’s sad!”
But soon, both old friends were laughing their butts off. It was like back then, before they joined any group or gang, back when they were high school students sharing a soda in front of the local store.963Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJChUtdSvBn
and then Add to home screen.