Fic: The Man Who Can't Be Moved
Title: The Man Who Can’t Be Moved
Characters: Masuda, Tegoshi, Nishikido
Rating: PG
Prompt: Apples
Notes: This is a reaaaaally late gift fic for treegonometry . You may never read this now, but better late than never, right? Lol. Thank you for finding that lovely poem from before, it's one of my favorites now. Title and premise of the fic is largely based from the song of the same title from The Script, which you can take a listen at HERE.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, stories are fictional but the characters are not.
******************************
The afternoon sun is yet to set but already the once-busy playground has started emptying itself out. Mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, all trickle away, one by one, headed for home to get an early start for dinner. The weather is pleasant today, as the first signs of the changing season bring forth lovely winds, carrying with it the faintest smell of one of the things Massu likes about the approach of Autumn.
He pauses by the entrance of the playground, giving way to a mother and her two toddlers as they too head back home. Massu silently greets them good afternoon, and after he watches them walk away he turns his head up, a little, and inhales deeply. It’s not here yet, but in a couple of weeks, maybe in a month or so, for sure the scent of apples will once again perfume this lovely town that he’s called home all his life.
The scent of apples brings with it a promise.
He walks toward his usual bench, and finds a lone apple sitting on it.
The sight of it-- one innocuous red apple-- instantly makes his heart flutter, much like the leaves around him, snapping and falling mindlessly at once-- the leaves, not him-- and for a second he could have sworn that the sweet smell of freshly picked apples just drifted by. He immediately scans the area for a familiar face, but it is almost deserted save for a child or two. He looks again, just in case he missed one in particular.
“Excuse me,” says a voice behind him.
Massu turns, still half-expectant, even though he already knows that the voice is not what he is expecting. It’s not his.
“That’s mine.” The stranger tells him, looking at the apple nestled in the palm of his hand.
Massu looks down at his hand, wondering when he picked up the apple. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, and hands the fruit back to its owner. “Sorry.” He repeats.
The stranger shrugs it off, and then sits his self on the bench, leaving Massu unsure of what to do next.
“Are you going to sit, or what?”
“Err… if it’s okay with you--“
“It’s a free park, isn’t it? Sit wherever you want.”
And so Massu sits, to the very edge of the bench, careful not to disturb the person sitting next to him. He hears him crunching away on the fruit, skin and all. He leaves as soon as he is done, throwing the core in a nearby bin, and Massu waits a bit before looking at the empty spot beside him. For a moment he thought it would be Tegoshi, come to visit him or say ‘I’m back’, but it is not him, it is never him.
It’s been that way for months now, anyway. But tomorrow is another day, and he can only look forward to it.
------
The next time Massu visits the playground, he encounters the same stranger again. This time Massu quietly takes his place next to him, more focused on fixing his necktie. He could just as easily just taken it off, he doesn’t need to wear it now anyway, but he despises looking unkempt, and so he fumbles with the fabric. It takes him several minutes before he notices that the stranger is looking warily at him.
“Give it,” He says, indicating the necktie hanging limply around Massu’s neck.
Massu pulls at it, hesitant to ask for help, but holds the tie out to the other boy’s outstretched hand. “If it’s okay with you, can you help me with this tie?”
“I already told you to give it to me so obviously I’d help you.”
“Ah, thank you…” Massu tells him, grateful, then he cocks his head to the side, not knowing what to call him. He doesn’t get an answer until the other boy slides the tie around his own neck, deftly ties it loose, then hands the ring of necktie back to Massu.
“Ryo. I’m Nishikido Ryo.”
------
And so it begins, a tentative sort of friendship between two strangers, one who is just there and another who just happened to be there. Massu would come and visit the playground (“It’s a park, not a playground,” Ryo would say) at irregular days, but he always comes, and whenever he does, he would happen to see Ryo already there, sometimes with an obscure book in his hands and almost always a bored look on his face.
When Massu finally got the courage to start a conversation with him, the first thought out of his mouth was, “Why do you come here?” which sounded a little crude, even for an ice-breaker. Ryo doesn’t take offense though, but doesn’t offer an answer either. Instead he just asks it back, and looks expectantly at Massu for a response.
“I’m waiting for a friend.”
“When is your friend supposed to come?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Huh?”
“He didn’t say.” Massu says. He catches a fluttering leaf mid-air, examines it in his hands for a second, then releases it to the leaf-covered groud.
“What’s his name?”
“Tegoshi.”
And that was the longest conversation they had, in the several days that they happened to meet each other. Ryo usually leaves first, and Massu, alone once again, resumes watching his surroundings.
He wonders where Tegoshi could be now-- last he heard he was off in some foreign city, learning to play something or other. Massu doesn’t particularly know where and what.
------
The next day was a completely different scenario.
Ryo breezes by in a happy mood, along with several rowdy friends. They are meters away from the playground but Massu can hear them clearly, and he turns his head to watch the scene before him. Massu can’t help but smile at how all-- he counts about a half a dozen-- of them are playing around and laughing and picking on Ryo, who is happily putting up a fight. They let him go after a few minutes, waving goodbye before disappearing round the corner.
Ryo plops himself on the bench beside Massu. “Yo.”
“Yo.” Massu mimics, the comfortable mood from the scene earlier rubbing off on him. “Your friends are loud.”
“Yeah, they are.” Ryo says, happily wiping his dirty hands on his pants, the product of pushes and shoves from said loud friends. “Listen, my friends are planning to go to the beach before the weather gets too cold. Want to come with us?”
Surprised at the sudden invitation, Massu can only reply, “Eh?”
“You’d probably get along well with Yasu. Or maybe Okhura. You’d get along well with everyone.” Ryo tells him, then laughs. “Maa, just go, okay? If you come with me they’ll most likely pick on you instead of me.”
“I can’t. I’m waiting for a friend.”
“Oh. That friend again. Seriously, what’s the point of wasting your time here when you could be doing something else?”
“It’s just that, if he comes to visit, I’m sure this is the first place he’ll want to see.” Massu says. His answer does not make much sense, but Ryo lets him off the hook, not in the least bit interested in Massu’s convoluted reasons for loitering in the park every day.
Ryo pulls a book out of his pocket. “Fine, whatever.”
------
It took a while, but eventually Ryo gets curious enough to ask why Massu keeps coming to the park, and Massu got comfortable enough to share why.
“We grew up here together, ne,” Massu starts, looking at the sandboxes littering the playground. “He was kind of annoying at first, but he was the closest friend I’ve ever had, even though we were completely different.”
“He liked going to places, and oftentimes he’d tell me about his adventures, ‘Massu, I went to this amazing city last week!’ or ‘There’s a festival happening over by the next town,’ and he’d always, always ask me to go with him, but I rarely did. Those days, it’s not because I didn’t want to, it’s because I couldn’t. I was worried about unforeseen things happening that I’d back out before I could even justify why, and whenever I realized that ‘Hey, I should go,’, it would be too late and Tegoshi had already gone somewhere else.”
“’It would be the greatest thing if Massu could come with me,’, he told me one time. I thought that as well, that if I could explore the world, I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone but Tegoshi.” Massu looks down at his lap, then stays quiet.
Ryo turns to look at him for the first time since Massu started talking. “And then? What happened?”
Massu turns his gaze to the empty sandboxes in front of them, thinking of what to say next. Tegoshi was a restless person, impatient to see what lie ahead out there for him. He remembers how Tegoshi loves spending time with him, but sometimes, Massu feels that Tegoshi dreams of being somewhere else. The way he crafts stories of how one day he’d like to go someplace or other, he would look as if he is already there, in the middle of it all, and telling Massu the story from far away.
Tegoshi is always going, always moving.
“But then he just up and left.”
“Just like that?”
“But before that,” Massu adds, his eyes sparking with something Ryo cannot identify, “before that, he was telling me how he can smell the scent of apples even though the orchards are far away from here. He said his family might go visit one soon and if he does, he’ll definitely bring some back for me the next time we meet.”
Ryo scoffs. “…and that’s the reason why you keep trying to see if he’ll come to this place again? For that kind of childish promise?” He can’t comprehend such trivial reasons, and he surely does not see the point in all these. Massu does not seem to be listening to him, though, lost in his own thoughts.
Massu remembers how next time turned into days, and the days turned into weeks, and the weeks, into months. And still, Tegoshi has not come back. Not that he’s expecting him to do so now, not really, but back then Massu was young and Tegoshi always stuck to his word. “He said he’ll come back, so I’ll be right here when he does.”
The weather is cool, and the leaves are piling up everywhere in golds and yellows and oranges, littering the playground. It reminds Massu of the last few times he’s spent with Tegoshi. The trees were getting more and more barren, and the late afternoon skies were mimicking the color of the leaves. Massu looks up at that exact same sky, and inhales deeply, as if he wants to catch a whiff of something. Back then, the way Tegoshi had been so excited about apple picking made Massu imagine that he already has one in his hand, red and round and sweet-smelling. It made him excited too, knowing that Tegoshi would carefully choose the best ones to bring back for Massu.
‘I’ll pick the reddest apples, the ones with golden leaves still attached to it, and bring it back to Massu. So please wait for it, ne?’
“It could be anytime now.” Massu turns to Ryo with the same spark in his eyes as before, and Ryo recognizes the look. Anticipation.
Ryo avoids looking at him, because somehow he does not know where his words are coming from and why he is saying them. “You’re better off moving on. There is so much out there to see, so many things you can do, with another person. Hell, I could just as easily bring you a goddamn apple. I’d bring you to an orchard or wherever you want.”
“I’m not moving.”
“Well I don’t think your friend is coming at all.”
“I’ll wait.”
Ryo rolls his eyes. “Do you really have so much faith in him that he’ll come back?”
“No. I--“
“No?” Ryo scoffs. “Then what the hell are you doing here.”
“No.” Massu looks at him, and this time his eyes are determined. “It’s because Tegoshi has enough faith in me to believe that I’ll be right here when he comes back.”
------
Several days have passed after that conversation, and once again, Massu has found the time to visit the playground. He’s a little early today, because he had free time and he might as well spend it here, while watching the afternoon skies turn from blue-gray to orange.
There is something different about today, and for a while Massu struggles to identify what about this day is different when he notices his surroundings. The air is thick with it: the scent of apples. It perfumes the playground so strongly he wonders why nobody else seems to be noticing it. He pauses by the entrance, breathing deeply. The fragrance is intoxicating, and makes him just a little more hopeful that today would turn out unlike the previous days, weeks, months.
Massu heads to his usual bench, and finds a lone apple sitting on it.
The sight of it-- a shiny red apple-- makes his heart flutter again, and he walks quickly over to it, dry leaves crunching loudly under his sneakers. He picks the fruit up and notices that it is fully ripened, the skin barely containing the tart, sweet smell that is slowly filling Massu with heady hopes.
“Excuse me,” says a voice behind him.
Massu turns, apple nestled in the palm of his hand.
Tegoshi is standing right in front of him, looking older, bigger, worldly. But it is still Tegoshi all the same. His hair is a golden mess, and his cheeks are shiny red from the late afternoon chill. He looks happy-- happy to have gone to many places, happy to finally come back and find Massu right there.
“It’s been a while, ne.”
END
******************************
OUTTAKE:
That conversation was weird, was the only way Ryo could describe the last of Massu’s musings. He doesn’t particularly give a care about whatever is happening with that guy, but he couldn’t get the conversation out of his head too. Which is probably why he’s back again today, to this chilly little park, sitting himself at the same bench for the hundredth time. He is not really waiting for Massu, but he convinces himself that he just happened to be there and he might as well see if the other boy will show up.
Ryo has gotten used to stopping by the park on his way home, and has gotten used to seeing Massu stay at his usual spot. The fact that it has been several days and there has been no sighting of him, it bothers him just a little.
“Strange. He’s adamant about not going anywhere and now he’s nowhere to be found.” Ryo muses. He thinks that maybe Massu has finally stopped waiting for Tegoshi to show up, but he is a little irked that he can’t even find Massu here to ask him himself. Not that he’s interested in finding out what happened, but at least Massu could have let him know! Especially since Ryo took the time to actually listen to his boring story.
“And here I am, doing exactly the same thing, coming back to the same place again and again. Very smart, Nishikido.“
“Excuse me,” says a voice behind him.
Ryo turns, and sees a stranger hand him an unknotted tie. “Can you help me with this? Thanks.”
Ryo blinks at the sudden intrusion, but takes the tie, wraps it around his neck, ties it into a loose ring before handing it back to its owner.
“Oh, thank you~ Ah, and by the way,” the stranger says, sitting himself next to Ryo on the bench. He cocks his head to the side, and gives a rare smile,
“I’m Yamashita. Yamashita Tomohisa.”
******************************
Thank you for reading :)
ps: 2 apples were peeled, sliced, and cored (and sniffed! XD) in the making of this fic. All in the name of research! :P
Characters: Masuda, Tegoshi, Nishikido
Rating: PG
Prompt: Apples
Notes: This is a reaaaaally late gift fic for treegonometry . You may never read this now, but better late than never, right? Lol. Thank you for finding that lovely poem from before, it's one of my favorites now. Title and premise of the fic is largely based from the song of the same title from The Script, which you can take a listen at HERE.
Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, stories are fictional but the characters are not.
******************************
The afternoon sun is yet to set but already the once-busy playground has started emptying itself out. Mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, all trickle away, one by one, headed for home to get an early start for dinner. The weather is pleasant today, as the first signs of the changing season bring forth lovely winds, carrying with it the faintest smell of one of the things Massu likes about the approach of Autumn.
He pauses by the entrance of the playground, giving way to a mother and her two toddlers as they too head back home. Massu silently greets them good afternoon, and after he watches them walk away he turns his head up, a little, and inhales deeply. It’s not here yet, but in a couple of weeks, maybe in a month or so, for sure the scent of apples will once again perfume this lovely town that he’s called home all his life.
The scent of apples brings with it a promise.
He walks toward his usual bench, and finds a lone apple sitting on it.
The sight of it-- one innocuous red apple-- instantly makes his heart flutter, much like the leaves around him, snapping and falling mindlessly at once-- the leaves, not him-- and for a second he could have sworn that the sweet smell of freshly picked apples just drifted by. He immediately scans the area for a familiar face, but it is almost deserted save for a child or two. He looks again, just in case he missed one in particular.
“Excuse me,” says a voice behind him.
Massu turns, still half-expectant, even though he already knows that the voice is not what he is expecting. It’s not his.
“That’s mine.” The stranger tells him, looking at the apple nestled in the palm of his hand.
Massu looks down at his hand, wondering when he picked up the apple. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, and hands the fruit back to its owner. “Sorry.” He repeats.
The stranger shrugs it off, and then sits his self on the bench, leaving Massu unsure of what to do next.
“Are you going to sit, or what?”
“Err… if it’s okay with you--“
“It’s a free park, isn’t it? Sit wherever you want.”
And so Massu sits, to the very edge of the bench, careful not to disturb the person sitting next to him. He hears him crunching away on the fruit, skin and all. He leaves as soon as he is done, throwing the core in a nearby bin, and Massu waits a bit before looking at the empty spot beside him. For a moment he thought it would be Tegoshi, come to visit him or say ‘I’m back’, but it is not him, it is never him.
It’s been that way for months now, anyway. But tomorrow is another day, and he can only look forward to it.
------
The next time Massu visits the playground, he encounters the same stranger again. This time Massu quietly takes his place next to him, more focused on fixing his necktie. He could just as easily just taken it off, he doesn’t need to wear it now anyway, but he despises looking unkempt, and so he fumbles with the fabric. It takes him several minutes before he notices that the stranger is looking warily at him.
“Give it,” He says, indicating the necktie hanging limply around Massu’s neck.
Massu pulls at it, hesitant to ask for help, but holds the tie out to the other boy’s outstretched hand. “If it’s okay with you, can you help me with this tie?”
“I already told you to give it to me so obviously I’d help you.”
“Ah, thank you…” Massu tells him, grateful, then he cocks his head to the side, not knowing what to call him. He doesn’t get an answer until the other boy slides the tie around his own neck, deftly ties it loose, then hands the ring of necktie back to Massu.
“Ryo. I’m Nishikido Ryo.”
------
And so it begins, a tentative sort of friendship between two strangers, one who is just there and another who just happened to be there. Massu would come and visit the playground (“It’s a park, not a playground,” Ryo would say) at irregular days, but he always comes, and whenever he does, he would happen to see Ryo already there, sometimes with an obscure book in his hands and almost always a bored look on his face.
When Massu finally got the courage to start a conversation with him, the first thought out of his mouth was, “Why do you come here?” which sounded a little crude, even for an ice-breaker. Ryo doesn’t take offense though, but doesn’t offer an answer either. Instead he just asks it back, and looks expectantly at Massu for a response.
“I’m waiting for a friend.”
“When is your friend supposed to come?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Huh?”
“He didn’t say.” Massu says. He catches a fluttering leaf mid-air, examines it in his hands for a second, then releases it to the leaf-covered groud.
“What’s his name?”
“Tegoshi.”
And that was the longest conversation they had, in the several days that they happened to meet each other. Ryo usually leaves first, and Massu, alone once again, resumes watching his surroundings.
He wonders where Tegoshi could be now-- last he heard he was off in some foreign city, learning to play something or other. Massu doesn’t particularly know where and what.
------
The next day was a completely different scenario.
Ryo breezes by in a happy mood, along with several rowdy friends. They are meters away from the playground but Massu can hear them clearly, and he turns his head to watch the scene before him. Massu can’t help but smile at how all-- he counts about a half a dozen-- of them are playing around and laughing and picking on Ryo, who is happily putting up a fight. They let him go after a few minutes, waving goodbye before disappearing round the corner.
Ryo plops himself on the bench beside Massu. “Yo.”
“Yo.” Massu mimics, the comfortable mood from the scene earlier rubbing off on him. “Your friends are loud.”
“Yeah, they are.” Ryo says, happily wiping his dirty hands on his pants, the product of pushes and shoves from said loud friends. “Listen, my friends are planning to go to the beach before the weather gets too cold. Want to come with us?”
Surprised at the sudden invitation, Massu can only reply, “Eh?”
“You’d probably get along well with Yasu. Or maybe Okhura. You’d get along well with everyone.” Ryo tells him, then laughs. “Maa, just go, okay? If you come with me they’ll most likely pick on you instead of me.”
“I can’t. I’m waiting for a friend.”
“Oh. That friend again. Seriously, what’s the point of wasting your time here when you could be doing something else?”
“It’s just that, if he comes to visit, I’m sure this is the first place he’ll want to see.” Massu says. His answer does not make much sense, but Ryo lets him off the hook, not in the least bit interested in Massu’s convoluted reasons for loitering in the park every day.
Ryo pulls a book out of his pocket. “Fine, whatever.”
------
It took a while, but eventually Ryo gets curious enough to ask why Massu keeps coming to the park, and Massu got comfortable enough to share why.
“We grew up here together, ne,” Massu starts, looking at the sandboxes littering the playground. “He was kind of annoying at first, but he was the closest friend I’ve ever had, even though we were completely different.”
“He liked going to places, and oftentimes he’d tell me about his adventures, ‘Massu, I went to this amazing city last week!’ or ‘There’s a festival happening over by the next town,’ and he’d always, always ask me to go with him, but I rarely did. Those days, it’s not because I didn’t want to, it’s because I couldn’t. I was worried about unforeseen things happening that I’d back out before I could even justify why, and whenever I realized that ‘Hey, I should go,’, it would be too late and Tegoshi had already gone somewhere else.”
“’It would be the greatest thing if Massu could come with me,’, he told me one time. I thought that as well, that if I could explore the world, I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone but Tegoshi.” Massu looks down at his lap, then stays quiet.
Ryo turns to look at him for the first time since Massu started talking. “And then? What happened?”
Massu turns his gaze to the empty sandboxes in front of them, thinking of what to say next. Tegoshi was a restless person, impatient to see what lie ahead out there for him. He remembers how Tegoshi loves spending time with him, but sometimes, Massu feels that Tegoshi dreams of being somewhere else. The way he crafts stories of how one day he’d like to go someplace or other, he would look as if he is already there, in the middle of it all, and telling Massu the story from far away.
Tegoshi is always going, always moving.
“But then he just up and left.”
“Just like that?”
“But before that,” Massu adds, his eyes sparking with something Ryo cannot identify, “before that, he was telling me how he can smell the scent of apples even though the orchards are far away from here. He said his family might go visit one soon and if he does, he’ll definitely bring some back for me the next time we meet.”
Ryo scoffs. “…and that’s the reason why you keep trying to see if he’ll come to this place again? For that kind of childish promise?” He can’t comprehend such trivial reasons, and he surely does not see the point in all these. Massu does not seem to be listening to him, though, lost in his own thoughts.
Massu remembers how next time turned into days, and the days turned into weeks, and the weeks, into months. And still, Tegoshi has not come back. Not that he’s expecting him to do so now, not really, but back then Massu was young and Tegoshi always stuck to his word. “He said he’ll come back, so I’ll be right here when he does.”
The weather is cool, and the leaves are piling up everywhere in golds and yellows and oranges, littering the playground. It reminds Massu of the last few times he’s spent with Tegoshi. The trees were getting more and more barren, and the late afternoon skies were mimicking the color of the leaves. Massu looks up at that exact same sky, and inhales deeply, as if he wants to catch a whiff of something. Back then, the way Tegoshi had been so excited about apple picking made Massu imagine that he already has one in his hand, red and round and sweet-smelling. It made him excited too, knowing that Tegoshi would carefully choose the best ones to bring back for Massu.
‘I’ll pick the reddest apples, the ones with golden leaves still attached to it, and bring it back to Massu. So please wait for it, ne?’
“It could be anytime now.” Massu turns to Ryo with the same spark in his eyes as before, and Ryo recognizes the look. Anticipation.
Ryo avoids looking at him, because somehow he does not know where his words are coming from and why he is saying them. “You’re better off moving on. There is so much out there to see, so many things you can do, with another person. Hell, I could just as easily bring you a goddamn apple. I’d bring you to an orchard or wherever you want.”
“I’m not moving.”
“Well I don’t think your friend is coming at all.”
“I’ll wait.”
Ryo rolls his eyes. “Do you really have so much faith in him that he’ll come back?”
“No. I--“
“No?” Ryo scoffs. “Then what the hell are you doing here.”
“No.” Massu looks at him, and this time his eyes are determined. “It’s because Tegoshi has enough faith in me to believe that I’ll be right here when he comes back.”
------
Several days have passed after that conversation, and once again, Massu has found the time to visit the playground. He’s a little early today, because he had free time and he might as well spend it here, while watching the afternoon skies turn from blue-gray to orange.
There is something different about today, and for a while Massu struggles to identify what about this day is different when he notices his surroundings. The air is thick with it: the scent of apples. It perfumes the playground so strongly he wonders why nobody else seems to be noticing it. He pauses by the entrance, breathing deeply. The fragrance is intoxicating, and makes him just a little more hopeful that today would turn out unlike the previous days, weeks, months.
Massu heads to his usual bench, and finds a lone apple sitting on it.
The sight of it-- a shiny red apple-- makes his heart flutter again, and he walks quickly over to it, dry leaves crunching loudly under his sneakers. He picks the fruit up and notices that it is fully ripened, the skin barely containing the tart, sweet smell that is slowly filling Massu with heady hopes.
“Excuse me,” says a voice behind him.
Massu turns, apple nestled in the palm of his hand.
Tegoshi is standing right in front of him, looking older, bigger, worldly. But it is still Tegoshi all the same. His hair is a golden mess, and his cheeks are shiny red from the late afternoon chill. He looks happy-- happy to have gone to many places, happy to finally come back and find Massu right there.
“It’s been a while, ne.”
END
******************************
OUTTAKE:
That conversation was weird, was the only way Ryo could describe the last of Massu’s musings. He doesn’t particularly give a care about whatever is happening with that guy, but he couldn’t get the conversation out of his head too. Which is probably why he’s back again today, to this chilly little park, sitting himself at the same bench for the hundredth time. He is not really waiting for Massu, but he convinces himself that he just happened to be there and he might as well see if the other boy will show up.
Ryo has gotten used to stopping by the park on his way home, and has gotten used to seeing Massu stay at his usual spot. The fact that it has been several days and there has been no sighting of him, it bothers him just a little.
“Strange. He’s adamant about not going anywhere and now he’s nowhere to be found.” Ryo muses. He thinks that maybe Massu has finally stopped waiting for Tegoshi to show up, but he is a little irked that he can’t even find Massu here to ask him himself. Not that he’s interested in finding out what happened, but at least Massu could have let him know! Especially since Ryo took the time to actually listen to his boring story.
“And here I am, doing exactly the same thing, coming back to the same place again and again. Very smart, Nishikido.“
“Excuse me,” says a voice behind him.
Ryo turns, and sees a stranger hand him an unknotted tie. “Can you help me with this? Thanks.”
Ryo blinks at the sudden intrusion, but takes the tie, wraps it around his neck, ties it into a loose ring before handing it back to its owner.
“Oh, thank you~ Ah, and by the way,” the stranger says, sitting himself next to Ryo on the bench. He cocks his head to the side, and gives a rare smile,
“I’m Yamashita. Yamashita Tomohisa.”
******************************
Thank you for reading :)
ps: 2 apples were peeled, sliced, and cored (and sniffed! XD) in the making of this fic. All in the name of research! :P