Childhood Memories
Title: Childhood Memories
Beta: damagea
Rating: G
Characters: Takaki, Hashimoto
A/N: Tiny Takahasshi. Just because. :'3 And, um. The playground that gave me the inspiration for this fic: 1&2 Takaki's house is the one closer to the swings and Hasshi lives on the opposite side. :D
- - -
The evening was warm and peaceful. The sun had set long ago and the street lamps had already lit up. At the front yard of the apartment house Takaki was sitting on a swing and staring at the sandbox where the kids of the house had forgotten some bright colored plastic buckets and shovels. He should probably have gone home already and do something useful - his homework for example - but he didn’t feel like doing so. It wasn’t like his mother was going to check if he had done anything anyway.
Suddenly, there was a small round-headed boy in front of him. Takaki didn’t know who he was or where he had come from but there he was, just standing in front of him.
“Hi,” the boy said shyly and Takaki nodded at him shortly.
“Hi.”
“Can I swing too?”
Takaki raised his eyebrows, glancing at the row of three unoccupied swings. Did the boy need his permission to use one of them?
“Uh, yes?”
“Thank you,” the boy said and sat on the swing closest to the one Takaki was sitting on. “My name is Hashimoto, by the way. Just call me Hasshi.”
“Takaki,” Takaki said, guessing it was general politeness to introduce himself as well.
“How old are you?” Hashimoto continued his questions. He still looked a bit shy but at the same time it didn’t seem to bother him the slightest bit that they didn’t actually know each other.
“Eleven.”
“Oh. You look younger though. I’m eight but my mother always says I look like I was a bit older.”
It was definitely too late for an eight-year-old to be out alone, and Takaki pointed that out to the boy who just shook his head.
“Oh, they don’t care. They trust me you know. I’m very independent for my age.”
More like very precocious, Takaki thought but he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t interested in the kid’s life anyway.
“Shouldn’t you be home at this time?” Hashimoto asked and Takaki shook his head as well.
“My time to come home is at eight during the school week. I still have half an hour. Besides, there’s no one in there. What my mother doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her.”
Hashimoto nodded and looked around the playground.
“You’re new here,” Takaki said after a while. It wasn’t a question but rather a statement. Even though most of the kids from the homestead were younger than him he still knew them all at least by face, and he had never seen this boy before.
“We moved in a week ago,” Hashimoto said and nodded towards the house in front of them, “I live in there.”
“My home is here,” Takaki said and gestured towards the house behind their backs.
“I know. I’ve been watching from the window.”
“Oh.”
“I was sick last week and I couldn’t come out to play,” the boy explained, “but I sat at the balcony and watched the people and listened to them talking to each other. I already know most of the other children’s names.”
Takaki didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t been hoping for company in the first place (at least not some small kid’s company) and he wasn’t very good at getting to know new people either.
“I was so jealous when I watched all the others swinging here,” Hashimoto sighed and smiled a bit.
“Then why are you just talking instead of actually swinging now that you could do so?”
“I can’t.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know how to swing. No one has ever taught me to.”
“You’re eight and you don’t know how to swing?” Takaki asked, disbelief echoing in his voice. Hashimoto nodded and looked down.
“There weren’t any swings near my old home.”
“Oh.”
So that was why the kid was just sitting there, holding the chains with his tiny hands. Takaki hesitated for a while but then he stood up and stepped behind Hashimoto.
“Hold on,” he said shortly, grabbed the chains and took a few steps backwards. Then he let go of the chains and Hashimoto gasped for breathe.
“Look! I’m swinging!”
If Takaki had really amazed himself a moment ago, now he knew he had done the right thing. He couldn’t help a smile when looking at the small boy’s joy. For a while he just kept pushing the swing again and again, and Hashimoto’s bright laughter rang at the empty playground.
Hashimoto’s feeling was contagious and to his surprise Takaki noticed he was actually having fun. It felt nice to be able to make someone happy. He didn’t remember if he had ever been able to do so before.
“Higher,” Hashimoto asked and Takaki pushed the swing a bit harder, until Hashimoto’s laugh started to get a slightly scared tone. He let the swing slow down a little bit until Hashimoto was feeling safe again, and when the boy asked for swinging higher again, Takaki repeated the same thing.
“Yuya! Dear boy what are you still doing here? It’s late and you should be going to sleep already!”
Takaki winced as his mother ran to them, her high heels making knocking voices on the asphalt road. He had completely forgotten about the time. Luckily his mother didn’t look very angry but she wasn’t happy either. Mostly she just looked awfully busy as always. On her other arm she was carrying a plastic bag of food, and with the other hand she was dragging Takaki’s sleepy-looking five-year-old little brother after her.
“Damn,” Takaki murmured and stopped pushing the swing that slowed down and stopped soon when Hashimoto put his feet on the ground again.
“Come on. Quickly now, Yuya. I need to put Shin to sleep and I won’t wait for you,” his mother told again and flashed a short greeting-kind of a smile to Hashimoto, “You two can continue playing tomorrow.”
Then she rushed towards the apartment house and vanished into the corridor. Takaki knew he wasn’t going to be told another time but he also knew it was better to obey by good.
“I need to go,” he said to Hashimoto who nodded, understanding. He was just about to turn around when Hashimoto made a small noise.
“Um… If it’s not too much… Would you please teach me how to do it by myself? Swinging, I mean,” he asked.
Tonight was full of surprises for Takaki, as he found himself nodding and smiling at the boy.
“Sure. Tomorrow evening, okay? I’ll come here at six. See you tomorrow!”
“See you,” Hashimoto said happily and waved his hand at him.
- - -
Takaki did teach Hashimoto to swing. During the next day and the day after that they spent hours at the swings. It took the boy some time but when he finally got a grasp of it he started learning quickly, and they had a great fun together as Takaki showed Hashimoto what else could be done with the swings.
“Look, you can stand on them and swing! And if you push them all to move when they’re empty, you can imagine they’re enemy spaceships flying in the space, and you need to fly - run - between them from this side to the other, and avoid the spaceships hitting you!”
Soon Takaki realized he never needed to be alone anymore. Hashimoto was always there, and he always wanted to walk home together with Takaki after the school day.
When Hashimoto learned to jump from the swing in the middle of swinging and hurt his knee on a piece of glass that had been hidden in the sand, Takaki took the crying boy to his home where Takaki’s big sister cleaned the wound and put a plaster on it.
When Takaki’s parents left to visit their old friends and the children needed to be sent to grandparents, Takaki was allowed to spend a weekend in Hashimoto’s place and sleep on a futon in Hashimoto’s room. Hashimoto even borrowed his favorite Naruto sheets and a Pokemon plushie to Takaki.
“I don’t need a bedtime toy.”
“But I already promised him he could sleep next to you!”
“Fine,” Takaki sighed.
In the end, when Hashimoto was already sleeping but Takaki was still wide awake and feeling a bit homesick too, he was actually rather happy he had a Bulbasaur plushie that he could hug tightly when waiting for the sleep to come.
When Hashimoto was bullied at the school yard by some boys from parallel class, Takaki rushed to save his friend. His sister winced in horror when Takaki came home with a black eye and blood on the corner of his mouth but Takaki was content - he had won in a fair battle and the other boys didn’t dare to even glance at Hashimoto anymore.
The summer passed quickly, and before autumn the boys were already best friends.
“Hey, Yuya,” Hashimoto said one evening when the boys were sitting at a riverbank near their home.
“Hmm?”
“We’ll always be friends right?”
Takaki laughed gently. He really liked Hashimoto even though they had four long years of age difference. He didn’t mind being like a big brother or a babysitter to Hashimoto sometimes but the happiest he was during moments like this, when he was simply Hashimoto’s friend.
“Sure.”
Hashimoto’s smile was bright and adorable.
- - -
It was a freezing morning and Takaki pushed his hands deeper in his pockets. Even though he was already thirteen and they went to different schools nowadays, they still shared a part of the same road to school and walked it together.
Hashimoto was late, Takaki thought and frowned as he looked at the clock on his cell phone screen.
Finally, right before Takaki was about to leave already, Hashimoto appeared in the front door of the house.
“Do you know what time it is?” Takaki asked, feeling a bit annoyed. He wasn’t too strict about things related to school but he still wouldn’t have wanted to get a mark of being late now that he had actually woken up in time for once. “And where’s your jacket? We’re late already!”
“I’m sorry,” Hashimoto said quietly, and Takaki was surprised by the boy’s defeated appearance.
“What is it? Are you sick? You could have called me so that I hadn’t waited in vain you know.”
“It’s not that…” Hashimoto said and took a deep breath before continuing, “We… my family. We are going to move again.”
That morning Takaki walked to school alone. Later he could hardly remember anything of the rest of the day.
Hashimoto’s father had gotten a sudden job offer from somewhere near Tokyo, and they were going to move day after tomorrow. Hashimoto didn’t go to school anymore as he needed to help his parents to pack their things into big brown cardboard boxes.
On his last day in Osaka Hashimoto came out to the yard where Takaki was waiting for him like he always did. They sat in the old swings and looked how some men carried the Hashimoto family’s furniture out of the house.
“We’ll keep in touch, right?” Hashimoto asked about the hundredth time, and about the hundredth time Takaki promised they would. But how long would it continue? Children forgot things so quickly, Takaki thought gloomily and felt very adult with the life experience of a thirteen-year-old. Hashimoto would definitely find some new friends in the new place, and eventually he would completely forget about him.
Without looking into Hashimoto’s eyes Takaki stood up and stepped behind the boy.
“Hold on,” he said shortly. Hashimoto nodded and quietly let Takaki push his swing again and again, until Hashimoto’s mother came to look for the boy.
“It’s time to go now, Ryosuke,” she called and waved her hands. Slowly, reluctantly Hashimoto stopped the swing.
“I need to go.”
“I know.”
Takaki looked away and bit his teeth tightly together. He wasn’t going to cry. Big boys didn’t cry. Not even when their best friends moved far away. Suddenly, Hashimoto took a step closer to him and wrapped his arms around his waist, pressing himself tightly against Takaki. After a second of surprise Takaki answered to the hug.
“Bye,” Hashimoto said with a brave yet slightly wavering smile when he stepped away again.
“Bye.”
The white truck drove away, taking Hashimoto away and Takaki was left alone in the silent yard.
After all, he still had to stop in the stairway and dry his cheeks on his sleeve before going back inside.
- - -
Half a year later Takaki was living in Tokyo too. His parents had decided they wanted to live closer to his grandparents, and the family had moved in the beginning of the summer.
Even though they hadn’t heard about each other in a long time anymore, at first Takaki had been hopeful and imagined he’d maybe meet Hashimoto now that the both of them were living in the same city again. However, as he soon noticed, in Tokyo one might easily see ten new people in a day and the odds were he’d never see the same people anymore. There was no way he would just accidentally meet Hashimoto somewhere.
By the autumn he was already starting to get used to his new school and schoolmates, as well as his new job.
After getting to see the concert of his long-time idols he had wanted to try if he could get in and do such cool things as dancing and singing, and he had demanded his mother to help him with the application form.
The dressing room was full of boys around Takaki’s age, all in different stages of clothing. The first practice of the next month’s Shounen Club episodes was about to start within ten minutes and no one wanted to get scolded of loafing. Takaki was already wearing his costume and stood in front of a mirror, trying to brush his hair in some bearable order when his friends Nikaido and Kamei rushed to him.
“Takaki, come! The new juniors are already in the dance hall,” Nikaido said eagerly and bounced on the balls of his feet as if he couldn’t wait to see the new ones.
“Come on, we need to go there before the others do, and make a good first impression - then we’ll forever be their favorite senpais,” Kamei explained with a grin and Takaki chuckled. After a last glance to the mirror he followed his friends. Only a miracle would have made his hair look good anyway so he could as well go to the dance hall already.
“Nice to meet you, senpai,” a tiny boy called Yamada said and bowed to them, not confused at all even though Nikaido was immediately there to ruffle his hair and poke his cheeks.
“The new ones really get smaller and cuter every year, right?” Nikaido chuckled and Yamada beamed happily at what he clearly supposed was a compliment. Takaki, however, didn’t have eyes for the boy or ears for Nikaido and Kamei.
In the middle of the room there was a bunch of new boys who were standing together in an awkward silence, only sheltered by the knowledge that they weren’t new alone. One of them eyed the room from behind his overgrown front hair carefully, as if he couldn’t quite decide what to think about the whole thing.
Takaki would have known that round head and those curious brown eyes anywhere. Someone said something to the boy who laughed nervously, and Takaki felt his hands shaking.
Then, quite by accident, the round-headed boy looked up towards Takaki. Their eyes met and Takaki saw how Hashimoto’s eyes widened in disbelieving surprise before he let out an overjoyed squeal.
- - -
The boy wasn’t showing any kind of signs of being an awkward fresh junior anymore, nor was he acting like a good and respectful kouhai when he ran straight to Takaki and started to talk with him. Nikaido raised his eyebrows curiously as he looked at the two boys.
“Does he know the kid?”
“Judging by what we’re seeing, I'd say so,” Kamei said amusedly.
- - -
Beta: damagea
Rating: G
Characters: Takaki, Hashimoto
A/N: Tiny Takahasshi. Just because. :'3 And, um. The playground that gave me the inspiration for this fic: 1&2 Takaki's house is the one closer to the swings and Hasshi lives on the opposite side. :D
- - -
The evening was warm and peaceful. The sun had set long ago and the street lamps had already lit up. At the front yard of the apartment house Takaki was sitting on a swing and staring at the sandbox where the kids of the house had forgotten some bright colored plastic buckets and shovels. He should probably have gone home already and do something useful - his homework for example - but he didn’t feel like doing so. It wasn’t like his mother was going to check if he had done anything anyway.
Suddenly, there was a small round-headed boy in front of him. Takaki didn’t know who he was or where he had come from but there he was, just standing in front of him.
“Hi,” the boy said shyly and Takaki nodded at him shortly.
“Hi.”
“Can I swing too?”
Takaki raised his eyebrows, glancing at the row of three unoccupied swings. Did the boy need his permission to use one of them?
“Uh, yes?”
“Thank you,” the boy said and sat on the swing closest to the one Takaki was sitting on. “My name is Hashimoto, by the way. Just call me Hasshi.”
“Takaki,” Takaki said, guessing it was general politeness to introduce himself as well.
“How old are you?” Hashimoto continued his questions. He still looked a bit shy but at the same time it didn’t seem to bother him the slightest bit that they didn’t actually know each other.
“Eleven.”
“Oh. You look younger though. I’m eight but my mother always says I look like I was a bit older.”
It was definitely too late for an eight-year-old to be out alone, and Takaki pointed that out to the boy who just shook his head.
“Oh, they don’t care. They trust me you know. I’m very independent for my age.”
More like very precocious, Takaki thought but he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t interested in the kid’s life anyway.
“Shouldn’t you be home at this time?” Hashimoto asked and Takaki shook his head as well.
“My time to come home is at eight during the school week. I still have half an hour. Besides, there’s no one in there. What my mother doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her.”
Hashimoto nodded and looked around the playground.
“You’re new here,” Takaki said after a while. It wasn’t a question but rather a statement. Even though most of the kids from the homestead were younger than him he still knew them all at least by face, and he had never seen this boy before.
“We moved in a week ago,” Hashimoto said and nodded towards the house in front of them, “I live in there.”
“My home is here,” Takaki said and gestured towards the house behind their backs.
“I know. I’ve been watching from the window.”
“Oh.”
“I was sick last week and I couldn’t come out to play,” the boy explained, “but I sat at the balcony and watched the people and listened to them talking to each other. I already know most of the other children’s names.”
Takaki didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t been hoping for company in the first place (at least not some small kid’s company) and he wasn’t very good at getting to know new people either.
“I was so jealous when I watched all the others swinging here,” Hashimoto sighed and smiled a bit.
“Then why are you just talking instead of actually swinging now that you could do so?”
“I can’t.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know how to swing. No one has ever taught me to.”
“You’re eight and you don’t know how to swing?” Takaki asked, disbelief echoing in his voice. Hashimoto nodded and looked down.
“There weren’t any swings near my old home.”
“Oh.”
So that was why the kid was just sitting there, holding the chains with his tiny hands. Takaki hesitated for a while but then he stood up and stepped behind Hashimoto.
“Hold on,” he said shortly, grabbed the chains and took a few steps backwards. Then he let go of the chains and Hashimoto gasped for breathe.
“Look! I’m swinging!”
If Takaki had really amazed himself a moment ago, now he knew he had done the right thing. He couldn’t help a smile when looking at the small boy’s joy. For a while he just kept pushing the swing again and again, and Hashimoto’s bright laughter rang at the empty playground.
Hashimoto’s feeling was contagious and to his surprise Takaki noticed he was actually having fun. It felt nice to be able to make someone happy. He didn’t remember if he had ever been able to do so before.
“Higher,” Hashimoto asked and Takaki pushed the swing a bit harder, until Hashimoto’s laugh started to get a slightly scared tone. He let the swing slow down a little bit until Hashimoto was feeling safe again, and when the boy asked for swinging higher again, Takaki repeated the same thing.
“Yuya! Dear boy what are you still doing here? It’s late and you should be going to sleep already!”
Takaki winced as his mother ran to them, her high heels making knocking voices on the asphalt road. He had completely forgotten about the time. Luckily his mother didn’t look very angry but she wasn’t happy either. Mostly she just looked awfully busy as always. On her other arm she was carrying a plastic bag of food, and with the other hand she was dragging Takaki’s sleepy-looking five-year-old little brother after her.
“Damn,” Takaki murmured and stopped pushing the swing that slowed down and stopped soon when Hashimoto put his feet on the ground again.
“Come on. Quickly now, Yuya. I need to put Shin to sleep and I won’t wait for you,” his mother told again and flashed a short greeting-kind of a smile to Hashimoto, “You two can continue playing tomorrow.”
Then she rushed towards the apartment house and vanished into the corridor. Takaki knew he wasn’t going to be told another time but he also knew it was better to obey by good.
“I need to go,” he said to Hashimoto who nodded, understanding. He was just about to turn around when Hashimoto made a small noise.
“Um… If it’s not too much… Would you please teach me how to do it by myself? Swinging, I mean,” he asked.
Tonight was full of surprises for Takaki, as he found himself nodding and smiling at the boy.
“Sure. Tomorrow evening, okay? I’ll come here at six. See you tomorrow!”
“See you,” Hashimoto said happily and waved his hand at him.
- - -
Takaki did teach Hashimoto to swing. During the next day and the day after that they spent hours at the swings. It took the boy some time but when he finally got a grasp of it he started learning quickly, and they had a great fun together as Takaki showed Hashimoto what else could be done with the swings.
“Look, you can stand on them and swing! And if you push them all to move when they’re empty, you can imagine they’re enemy spaceships flying in the space, and you need to fly - run - between them from this side to the other, and avoid the spaceships hitting you!”
Soon Takaki realized he never needed to be alone anymore. Hashimoto was always there, and he always wanted to walk home together with Takaki after the school day.
When Hashimoto learned to jump from the swing in the middle of swinging and hurt his knee on a piece of glass that had been hidden in the sand, Takaki took the crying boy to his home where Takaki’s big sister cleaned the wound and put a plaster on it.
When Takaki’s parents left to visit their old friends and the children needed to be sent to grandparents, Takaki was allowed to spend a weekend in Hashimoto’s place and sleep on a futon in Hashimoto’s room. Hashimoto even borrowed his favorite Naruto sheets and a Pokemon plushie to Takaki.
“I don’t need a bedtime toy.”
“But I already promised him he could sleep next to you!”
“Fine,” Takaki sighed.
In the end, when Hashimoto was already sleeping but Takaki was still wide awake and feeling a bit homesick too, he was actually rather happy he had a Bulbasaur plushie that he could hug tightly when waiting for the sleep to come.
When Hashimoto was bullied at the school yard by some boys from parallel class, Takaki rushed to save his friend. His sister winced in horror when Takaki came home with a black eye and blood on the corner of his mouth but Takaki was content - he had won in a fair battle and the other boys didn’t dare to even glance at Hashimoto anymore.
The summer passed quickly, and before autumn the boys were already best friends.
“Hey, Yuya,” Hashimoto said one evening when the boys were sitting at a riverbank near their home.
“Hmm?”
“We’ll always be friends right?”
Takaki laughed gently. He really liked Hashimoto even though they had four long years of age difference. He didn’t mind being like a big brother or a babysitter to Hashimoto sometimes but the happiest he was during moments like this, when he was simply Hashimoto’s friend.
“Sure.”
Hashimoto’s smile was bright and adorable.
- - -
It was a freezing morning and Takaki pushed his hands deeper in his pockets. Even though he was already thirteen and they went to different schools nowadays, they still shared a part of the same road to school and walked it together.
Hashimoto was late, Takaki thought and frowned as he looked at the clock on his cell phone screen.
Finally, right before Takaki was about to leave already, Hashimoto appeared in the front door of the house.
“Do you know what time it is?” Takaki asked, feeling a bit annoyed. He wasn’t too strict about things related to school but he still wouldn’t have wanted to get a mark of being late now that he had actually woken up in time for once. “And where’s your jacket? We’re late already!”
“I’m sorry,” Hashimoto said quietly, and Takaki was surprised by the boy’s defeated appearance.
“What is it? Are you sick? You could have called me so that I hadn’t waited in vain you know.”
“It’s not that…” Hashimoto said and took a deep breath before continuing, “We… my family. We are going to move again.”
That morning Takaki walked to school alone. Later he could hardly remember anything of the rest of the day.
Hashimoto’s father had gotten a sudden job offer from somewhere near Tokyo, and they were going to move day after tomorrow. Hashimoto didn’t go to school anymore as he needed to help his parents to pack their things into big brown cardboard boxes.
On his last day in Osaka Hashimoto came out to the yard where Takaki was waiting for him like he always did. They sat in the old swings and looked how some men carried the Hashimoto family’s furniture out of the house.
“We’ll keep in touch, right?” Hashimoto asked about the hundredth time, and about the hundredth time Takaki promised they would. But how long would it continue? Children forgot things so quickly, Takaki thought gloomily and felt very adult with the life experience of a thirteen-year-old. Hashimoto would definitely find some new friends in the new place, and eventually he would completely forget about him.
Without looking into Hashimoto’s eyes Takaki stood up and stepped behind the boy.
“Hold on,” he said shortly. Hashimoto nodded and quietly let Takaki push his swing again and again, until Hashimoto’s mother came to look for the boy.
“It’s time to go now, Ryosuke,” she called and waved her hands. Slowly, reluctantly Hashimoto stopped the swing.
“I need to go.”
“I know.”
Takaki looked away and bit his teeth tightly together. He wasn’t going to cry. Big boys didn’t cry. Not even when their best friends moved far away. Suddenly, Hashimoto took a step closer to him and wrapped his arms around his waist, pressing himself tightly against Takaki. After a second of surprise Takaki answered to the hug.
“Bye,” Hashimoto said with a brave yet slightly wavering smile when he stepped away again.
“Bye.”
The white truck drove away, taking Hashimoto away and Takaki was left alone in the silent yard.
After all, he still had to stop in the stairway and dry his cheeks on his sleeve before going back inside.
- - -
Half a year later Takaki was living in Tokyo too. His parents had decided they wanted to live closer to his grandparents, and the family had moved in the beginning of the summer.
Even though they hadn’t heard about each other in a long time anymore, at first Takaki had been hopeful and imagined he’d maybe meet Hashimoto now that the both of them were living in the same city again. However, as he soon noticed, in Tokyo one might easily see ten new people in a day and the odds were he’d never see the same people anymore. There was no way he would just accidentally meet Hashimoto somewhere.
By the autumn he was already starting to get used to his new school and schoolmates, as well as his new job.
After getting to see the concert of his long-time idols he had wanted to try if he could get in and do such cool things as dancing and singing, and he had demanded his mother to help him with the application form.
The dressing room was full of boys around Takaki’s age, all in different stages of clothing. The first practice of the next month’s Shounen Club episodes was about to start within ten minutes and no one wanted to get scolded of loafing. Takaki was already wearing his costume and stood in front of a mirror, trying to brush his hair in some bearable order when his friends Nikaido and Kamei rushed to him.
“Takaki, come! The new juniors are already in the dance hall,” Nikaido said eagerly and bounced on the balls of his feet as if he couldn’t wait to see the new ones.
“Come on, we need to go there before the others do, and make a good first impression - then we’ll forever be their favorite senpais,” Kamei explained with a grin and Takaki chuckled. After a last glance to the mirror he followed his friends. Only a miracle would have made his hair look good anyway so he could as well go to the dance hall already.
“Nice to meet you, senpai,” a tiny boy called Yamada said and bowed to them, not confused at all even though Nikaido was immediately there to ruffle his hair and poke his cheeks.
“The new ones really get smaller and cuter every year, right?” Nikaido chuckled and Yamada beamed happily at what he clearly supposed was a compliment. Takaki, however, didn’t have eyes for the boy or ears for Nikaido and Kamei.
In the middle of the room there was a bunch of new boys who were standing together in an awkward silence, only sheltered by the knowledge that they weren’t new alone. One of them eyed the room from behind his overgrown front hair carefully, as if he couldn’t quite decide what to think about the whole thing.
Takaki would have known that round head and those curious brown eyes anywhere. Someone said something to the boy who laughed nervously, and Takaki felt his hands shaking.
Then, quite by accident, the round-headed boy looked up towards Takaki. Their eyes met and Takaki saw how Hashimoto’s eyes widened in disbelieving surprise before he let out an overjoyed squeal.
- - -
The boy wasn’t showing any kind of signs of being an awkward fresh junior anymore, nor was he acting like a good and respectful kouhai when he ran straight to Takaki and started to talk with him. Nikaido raised his eyebrows curiously as he looked at the two boys.
“Does he know the kid?”
“Judging by what we’re seeing, I'd say so,” Kamei said amusedly.
- - -