Chapter Text
Classroom 2-E has been empty for the better part of 5 years, according to Nirei. The graffiti along the walls is peeling and chipping, the room dusty and dry. Nobody even comes to hang out in it thanks to there being so many unused classrooms—Furin’s reputation doesn’t draw many prospective students its way, unless they’re like Sakura.
Sakura, whose futon is neatly folded and shoved into the locker at the back of the classroom that usually holds cleaning supplies, towels tucked under the teacher’s desk. There are water bottles crammed into the under-desk storage of the few student desks that aren’t stacked in the back, as well as a few bags of chips and other snacks.
Honestly, save for the lack of bathroom, shower, and kitchen, it’s basically the same as his previous apartment. (Not that he even used the kitchen there for anything other than storage.)
Previous, huh.
Yeah.
It’s clear to most—Sakura is a bit stingy with cash. He avoids the vending machines unless he’s desperate—usually on his third day without food, when the gnawing in his stomach is enough to make him woozy and irritable. Kotoha knows the only way to get him to order anything at Pothos is to assure him that it’d be on the house—he’d still drop a few 50-yen coins in the tip jar when she’d have her back turned, though, just to momentarily quell the guilt playing in his ears like a godawful song on repeat.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t stingy enough.
He knew, when he had to pretend he wasn’t home while the landlord smacked his fist on the door and called for him with a growing anger. He knew, when his hands shook as he counted and recounted the bills he had in his wallet—and of course, there was no way it’d be enough if it fit in his wallet. He knew when he packed his minimal belongings into the roll of his futon, hugged it to his chest, and wandered into the moonlit streets of Makochi, the emptiness a familiar discomfort.
And now, he’s here.
He draws the small curtains over the hallway windows and tapes a few papers on the windows of the sliding doors. The far door stays locked, if only for his peace of mind. He sits at a desk against the wall closest to the hall, keeping his ears perked as he looks through the job listings on Furin’s town website. Sakura chews on his lip as he sees a few that would hire high schoolers and fires off some clumsy messages.
It’s early—5:27am—when he finishes. He spends the few hours no one is in the school sleeping and bathing, to keep himself from getting caught. Unfortunately, a lot of the grade captains hang around after patrols well past sunset, and Umemiya is at the school as soon as the sun rises so he can dote on his garden like the proud plant-father he is.
That gives Sakura about 4 hours to bathe, get his schoolwork done, and stretch. (He can’t risk his flexibility in battle over something as trivial as being homeless. He’s had worse.) The other 5 hours are for however much sleep he can manage. The floor is barely less comfortable than in his previous apartment—the tatami mats absorbed some of the hardness and cold, there.
His temple starts to ache not long after he curls under his blanket. The floor is pressing uncomfortably into the bony jut of his hip, so he has to readjust his entire sleeping position. It’s unsettling, how exposed he feels with his stomach facing the ceiling.
(But he’s had worse than this. It could always be worse than this.)
It takes a lot of mental reminders to not turn back on his side.
(He’s reminded of Suo teaching Nirei to get into the pill bug position in case he’s being attacked. Sakura hadn’t known the name prior to then. It seemed like a natural move—protecting one’s vitals. Sakura figured it out in elementary school, his body’s instincts helping him to keep hospital visits down. Pretending to be unconscious was another good one, back when he wasn’t strong enough to make it through a fight with middle and high schoolers without a healthy dose of cowardice.)
There’s only an hour before Umemiya comes in, by the looks of the blue creeping into the murkiness of the night sky, but Sakura is so tired. He makes sure the doors are locked and tangles his fists into the blankets.
He’s startled awake by the morning announcements, his lower back creaking and the back of his head thrumming with a dull ache. He cracks his neck.
If he were still at his old place, he could throw his head under some cold water and get his brain going. The closest he can do is grab a bucket from the classroom’s supply locker, open a bottle of room-temperature water, and pour it over his hair.
The water drips along his neck, soaking uncomfortably into the collar of his shirt. He’s not sure when he’ll have enough money to go to the laundromat, so he settles for keeping this shirt on instead of switching to one of the four other identical shirts he has. One of his two towels is sacrificed for now, but he reasons that he can just put them on the windowsill to dry later, if he needs to, since wrinkles wouldn’t matter on them.
He uses his reflection from the dark screen of his phone to adjust his hair, a little annoyed at some of his black strands trying so hard to mingle with his white hair. They stick together more, now that they’re wet, and it’s harder to make out the darker hair in the darkness of the reflection.
He’s not satisfied, but whatever. He has to get to class before Umemiya’s done talking about… whatever the hell he’s rambling off about today. Something about the taste of ripe peppers.
He quickly shoves his futon into the closet, cleans up just enough, and unlocks the door near the teacher’s desk.
Nirei is quick to lecture him when he arrives, voice in a harried whisper. “Sakura-san, you’re late! We were worried you were gonna miss first period. Suo-san and I were ready to check if you got sick again, right, Suo-san?”
Suo nods, a firmness in his gaze despite the softness of his tone. “You should just text us next time. It’s not nice to worry your friends like that, Sakura-kun.”
“Uh, sorry…”
The teacher taps the ruler against the chalkboard. “You three, please pay attention.”
Partway through homeroom, Sakura’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He ignores it, but there are two more vibrations and no one else in class has their phone out, so he thinks it’s probably something more worth paying attention to than the groupchat, at the very least.
He sneaks it from his pocket to the cubby, unsure if he looks suspicious. How does Kiryu do this all the time? He squints his eyes. Looks like some of the jobs he applied for are already responding to him.
The convenience store rejects him gently, letting him know that they only have overnights and can’t reasonably hire a high schooler for them. Makes sense, though their listing should’ve clarified that. Whatever.
There’s a themed café that eagerly informs him that they’d love to have him—he rereads the job post. A catboy café? Why would anyone care if a cat at a café is male or female?
…He passes for now, but they make sure he knows to contact them if he ever reconsiders.
Then there’s another café. It’s one of the ones further away from the main body of town, not far from the train tracks that separate Furin and Shishitoren turf. Thanks to the groups’ almost overlapping coverage, patrols rarely take anyone over there, and everyone much prefers the places nearby the school, especially sticking to Pothos.
It’s perfect. Sakura fumbles through a message to them saying that he’d love to start as soon as school is over for the day, and they respond eagerly in turn.
Maybe Sakura will be able to afford a place sooner than he thought.
Eyes peer at him, but he doesn’t notice.
The café isn’t as nice as Pothos. It’s a bit less warm, more white and sterile than the homey golden-earthiness Sakura’s used to. The owners—a husband and wife—don’t mind his lack of experience. They barely bat an eye at his previous jobs, smiling in a way that makes Sakura feel uneasy, but he brushes it aside because money is money, and he could only park himself in 2-E for so long before someone found him. (And wouldn’t that be something, everyone knowing that the first-year grade captain was a bum, a pitiable leech that curls up in a classroom and takes handouts from the townspeople every chance he gets. A fucking charity case.)
Sakura tries to hide his grim expression as best he can. The owners don’t seem to notice or care, just leading him around and showing him how to operate the coffee machines, the milk steamer, the different syrups all in a line on a counter, the only difference between each silver bottle being the pristine black-and-white labels.
(Sakura remembers the syrups at Pothos—they were all different colors, and Kotoha had a smug look on her face as she made Sakura guess each one. He was wrong every time, of course, which made her cackle like a hyena as his cheeks flushed red. She was in hysterics when he pointed at the dark chocolate syrup and confidently said that it was a trick question, that was the coffee. Obviously. He would not forgive her for recounting it to Suo and Nirei.)
After a quick rundown, the owners tell him he’ll officially start tomorrow, handing him a few bills.
“But I haven’t done anything…”
The wife just smiles, waves him away. Sakura doesn’t know how to protest this without risking his job, so he just stuffs the bills into his pocket, nods his thanks, and makes his way back to school.
Sakura’s never been good at math. Any types of studies that require him sitting and thinking are also on the list of things Sakura’s shit at, but math tops the charts. So when he sneaks into the classroom and locks the door behind him, he counts the bills, and then counts them again. Pulls up his phone to see what apartments are going for, right now, and uses the old, dirty chalkboard to slowly figure out how long it’ll take to save up.
It’s an hour later, when there’s barely any sunlight at the horizon, that he realizes it’d take at least a week of nonstop work to save up for one month, and that he’d probably have to live even further out than he did before. It’ll take another week to have a security deposit, and at least one more month to have the ‘additional three times rent’ that most places require to even rent to him in the first place.
And that’s not counting for time he’d have to take out of the equation for school, homework, and patrols.
Sakura dips his head, shoulders slumping.
Fuck.