fanfic; cultivation; part 5

[acperience]

▶ Part 4

—

Come Saturday, and Tiir finds himself in a bit of a dilemma. Namely, one involving Minato.

Tiir knows that that the boy, with his quietness, doesn’t have many friends in the orphanage. He’d hope that he’s one of them, as is Guriko. Perhaps Pueka and Lafra as well, though Minato hasn’t spoken to them often—mainly whenever Tiir is around.

—As for Walter, Tiir prefers not to consider him an option.

It’s normally not a problem, as while Tiir would love for Minato to have more friends, he’s happy that he has any at all.

Unfortunately, it’s Saturday, which means that Minato has no school and Tiir has work. That in itself wouldn’t typically matter, as there’s always Guriko—who, today, is spending time with a couple that seems to have taken an interest in her. Tiir doesn’t know much about them, other than having bitterly noted that the female has pink hair and that they seem nice, though he doesn’t put much stock in that. Plenty of people ‘seem’ nice.

Still, Guriko seems to adore them—or, well, the female—and so Tiir has hope for her.

That leaves Minato, however, who has nothing to do for the day and no one to spend it with. Tiir abhors the idea of leaving him by himself, though, placing himself in a quandary. Guriko is busy, Lafra and Pueka are out on what is a date in all but name, and Tiir has to leave for his job in ten minutes.

The idea of placing him in Walter’s care is, sadly, getting more and more tempting by the moment.

“… Do you have to go somewhere?” Minato asks, looking up at Tiir from where he’s sitting on the chair. One of the longer sentences he’s said, Tiir notes absent-mindedly as he paces.

“My job,” he replies. “I work at a café…”

He halts in his steps, thinking for a moment before he turns to Minato.

Minato blinks.

“Minato,” Tiir begins. “How would you mind taking a walk…?”

—

With any other boss, Tiir might not get away with bringing a child to work, but he knows that with Riphal, he can.

Half an hour later after obtaining consent from Minato and an orphanage worker, Tiir leads Minato the front doors of Glouvil, the café he works at. It’s a fairly small and quaint place, which Tiir likes, albeit still successful, nevertheless.

—What he likes less is the uniform that the workers are forced to wear.

“Here we are,” he tells Minato, holding onto his hand.

“It’s nice,” Minato says. Tiir smiles wryly at that.

“Nicer than its workers…” he mutters under his breath, brushing dust off the pants of his tuxedo, before entering.

Inside is no more flashier than the outside—if anything, with all its shelves, the interior looks more like a book store/café hybrid, which makes Tiir wonder just what Riphal had been thinking when he decorated this place. Considering the occasional eccentricities of their employer, he’s fairly certain no one knows. He wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Riphal had originally intended for it to be a book store, in fact, before changing his mind halfway through.

“Welcome to—oh, it’s just you, Tiir,” says a pink-haired girl around Guriko’s age, dressed in a maid outfit, with her tone quickly going from enthusiastic to monotonous when she sees who it is.

“I always arrive at this time, Kuu,” Tiir replies airily. “Shouldn’t you learn to expect who it is?”

“What if it actually is a customer one day?” Kuu retorts, her hands on her hips. “If I accidentally don’t greet them, it’ll be your fault!”

“And we both know that Riphal wouldn’t do a single thing,” Tiir says, before leading Minato further into the café.

Complaints about the uniform aside, Tiir knows that he probably couldn’t ask for a better workplace, especially given the occasional prejudice towards his eyes. Specifically, he knows that he couldn’t ask for better job security—namely because, once upon a time, Riphal and every single one of the other four employees, Tiir excluded, were perpetrators of said prejudice. While those days have passed, there still remains some ill blood. Though Lir is the only one Tiir still truly loathes (and Riphal has yet to understand that no, making them work the same shift won’t improve their relationship), Tiir wouldn’t claim to particularly like any of his other coworkers either. The fact that two of them—Kuu being one of them—are related to Lir hardly helps.

At the very least, however, Tiir’s job was given as a peace offering, and, in the need of the money, Tiir accepted. Now, Tiir knows, in his attempt to atone for the past, Riphal can’t do much towards him (other than make him wear his uniform)—and thus, he can’t really say no when Tiir wants to bring a child to work.

And so, as expected, Riphal easily allows it. Lize, his right-hand man of sorts, protests, but seeing as how Lize protests against most things Riphal says, no one pays him any heed.

“You seriously brought the kid here?” Lir comments, passing by. Knowing better than to pick a fight with a coworker in the workplace, Tiir ignores him. Riphal would probably still keep him in spite of the fact that Tiir attacked his employee and childhood friend, but still.

—The fact that Lir is the one person who can beat him in a fight may or may not also have something to do with it.

“Just follow me, all right?” Tiir tells Minato, ruffling his hair. Minato nods—and with that, Tiir obtains a little shadow.

The majority of his shift goes by smoothly, with Minato blankly trailing behind him wherever he goes, though in a small café like this, Tiir has no worries about him getting lost. On occasion, he has Minato try to remember the customer’s order in an attempt to keep him entertained—he’s not sure how bored Minato does or doesn’t get, doing mostly nothing.

Many of the customers remark on his presence, either to ask about him or comment on how cute he is or both.

“Who is he?” one asks.

“My little brother,” Tiir answers without hesitation. “Now, what would you like to order?”

—

Things go less smoothly towards the end of Tiir’s shift, when a large family enters the café. There’s something familiar about them, but Tiir doesn’t think much about it as he smiles and gets out his notepad.

“Good morning,” he says. “Can I—”

“Minato?” one of them interrupts. “Is that you?”

“Ah…” Minato blinks. “It’s you.”

‘You’, as the realization dawns on Tiir, must refer to the entire family. Now that he looks closely, he can see the resemblance.

These are Minato’s relatives.

“It’s good to see you again!” the mother says, smiling. Tiir’s own doesn’t falter, though it takes a bit more effort to maintain it as he waits with an air of patience.

“Why are you here?” the father asks. “Is this your relative?”

Tiir tries to ignore the bitterness rising inside of him.

“… We’re staying at the same orphanage,” Minato answers, with Tiir noting that it’s neither a denial nor confirmation. “He took me here.”

“I see.”

By that point, Tiir decides that he’s had enough of this reunion, and speaks up. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

Fortunately, that gets their attention away from Minato and towards him, as they give him their choices. He’s all too happy when they’re done, walking away from the table with Minato following, even now.

He can see why. He can see as clear as day that they have enough children, and the logical part of his mind tells him that they can’t really afford to take in another. It’s understandable. It’s understandable. Certainly, Minato doesn’t seem to resent them at all.

Yet Tiir hates them for it anyway—for not being Minato’s family.

—

“… Are you upset?” Minato asks as Tiir’s about to leave, his shift over. Tiir blinks and turns to him.

“Why would you think that?”

Minato looks at him, ever expressionless, but there’s an understanding that Tiir can see in his eyes.

“You seem angry,” Minato says. “… Ever since they came.”

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out whom he’s referring to. Tiir mentally berates himself for apparently being so obvious about it—at least, enough for Minato to notice.

“I’m fine,” Tiir replies, smiling. Now that they’re gone, at least. “Don’t worry about it.”

That seems to be the end of it, as Minato remains silent while they walk through the café. On the way out, Tiir grabs a handful of candy from the bowl on the counter, stuffing them into his pocket.

He’s proven wrong, however, when Minato speaks up again as they walk through the door (Tiir pretends not to notice Kuu sticking her tongue out at him as he passes by).

“… Do you want a family?”

Tiir stops at that, unsure if he heard that right.

“Do I… want a family?” he repeats, to which Minato nods. A moment passes, before Tiir smiles gently down at him and resumes walking.

“You, Guriko, and everyone at the orphanage—you are my family,” he says, and it’s true—after having lived there for most of his life, knowing that he’ll be there until he’s too old to stay, he can’t imagine living anywhere else. “I don’t need an ‘official’ family.”

Besides, as he doesn’t say to Minato, he knows. At sixteen, there isn’t anyone who would adopt him—as well as the fact that he still possesses many of the traits that repelled potential foster families, even when he was a child. His eyes are only the start of the list.

—He’s never wanted to be adopted, and that hasn’t changed.

“Why do you ask?” Tiir says, grasping Minato’s hand as he leads him down the street. Minato is quiet, and that tells Tiir all he needs to know.

Sometimes, silence speaks louder than words—and for someone like Minato, who speaks mainly in such silence, Tiir has learned to read his moods.

And again, he resents Minato’s relatives, even if Minato won’t.

“You’ll be adopted one day, Minato,” he tells him. “I’m certain of it.”

He doesn’t know if Minato still hopes for it, or if he’s given up on the prospect—but even if it’s the former, Tiir will hope for him.

Minato isn’t like him, after all.

—

“Tiir-nii! Minato!” Guriko rushes towards them once they enter the room where Walter is once again reading as he drinks from a glass of water, while Lafra and Pueka are seated a table, playing Monopoly—with Guriko, previously. A few pieces now litter the floor from where she stood up too quickly, wrecking part of the game. Pueka calmly cleans up her spot.

“How was your day, Guriko?” Tiir smiles brightly, crouching down to be at eye-level with her. Guriko smiles back.

“It was very good. Rinne is nice,” she says. Tiir assumes that to be the name of the pink-haired female.

“I’m glad—oh, here.” Tiir reaches into his pocket and digs out a piece of candy, holding it out to Guriko. “This is for you.”

Guriko takes it. “Guriko shall graciously accept this offering.”

Tiir bows his head. “Your humble servant is honoured.”

Guriko ruffles his hair, before he lifts his head. Guriko stares at the piece of candy, twirling it between her fingers.

“… This is the first time Guriko’s had candy,” she says in an off-handed manner, but Tiir picks up the implications—regardless of whether or not Guriko’s even aware of them. Kuu, who shares a room with her and knows her to be one of “his kids”, as she puts it, has told him a few interesting things.

—Nightmares and scars are never a good sign. He should know.

Tiir adds another family to his implicit list of despised people.

Guriko, on the other hand, seems oblivious to his thoughts. Placing her hands on her hips, she bounces lightly on her feet.

“However, Guriko now needs for her humble servant to be Tiir-nii again,” she says. “Guriko has something she needs to tell him and Minato!”

Tiir stands up, ushering Minato into the room. “Oh? Well, go ahead.”

“Walter…” Guriko begins, just as Walter takes a sip, eyeing her. “Walter has lost the fair maiden’s hand against Senel!”

Walter chokes and splutters all over his book.

Tiir and Minato stare.

“She means that Senel finally beat him,” Lafra pipes up.

“We weren’t fighting over anyone.”

No one pays any attention to Walter.

“Is that so? My, what a pity,” Tiir says as he moves forward and sits next to Lafra, with Guriko resuming her position next to Pueka. Minato wanders off to Walter, who is pointedly glaring at them all.

“Guriko is winning,” Guriko says. Tiir can see that she’s not.

“You and Minato are free to join us,” Pueka says. “Minato can team up with Guriko.”

“We already invited Walter,” Lafra adds. “Unfortunately, he turned us down.”

Walter storms out of the room.

“… I’m going to have to put that away for him, aren’t I?” Tiir glances at his abandoned glass of water. “You’d think that he’d have learned to clean up after himself by now.”

“Walter operates by his own set of rules, remember?” Lafra says with a smile. “And Shirley’s.”

“Walter has lost the battle, but not the war,” Guriko says profoundly, presumably reminded of their previous topic at the mention of Walter’s ‘fair maiden’. Tiir simply laughs.

“As long as he doesn’t hear you say that, Guriko…”

“It’s easy for you to laugh at,” Lafra says, though still smiling. “At least you don’t have to share a room with him and Senel. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep tonight.”

“I’d be happy to exchange you with Lir,” Tiir tells him. Lafra raises an eyebrow.

“And put Lir through that?”

Tiir blinks. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Does Tiir-nii want Guriko to beat up this Lir for him?”

“No, that’s all right, Guriko.”

“Well,” Lafra says. “Actually, it should probably be ‘And put Walter and Senel through that?’”

Tiir thinks over that for a moment. Though he can’t say much about Senel, between Lir and Walter, it’s really no contest.

“… I suppose you’re right,” he relents. “Not even Walter deserves to suffer Lir’s company.”

“Very noble of you,” Lafra notes. “I’m sure Walter would be thankful.”

Guriko and Minato look perfectly confused.

“By the way, Guriko,” Pueka says as she passes Go, “you still owe me ten turns’ worth of rent.”

As Guriko goes into a long explanation as to why she’s currently unable to pay Pueka (with the short version being that she’s bankrupt), Tiir assumes the position of banker and, after sharing a glance with Lafra, discreetly places more money in front of Guriko.

In spite of the (recurring) illegal help, Pueka still wins the game, leaving Guriko slightly indignant and Tiir to wonder if Minato is perhaps just cursed at board games. Guriko, fortunately, is pacified when Tiir gives her more candy.

He makes a note to introduce her to more things when he gets the chance. He doesn’t know how much longer he has, but he’s determined to give her as much happiness as he can.

—

At the signal for dinner, Guriko runs off—“Don’t run in the halls!” Tiir calls after her—with Minato looking at Tiir, who nods, before following after her at a much slower pace. Tiir simply watches both of them go, smiling softly.

“… I really am fortunate,” he murmurs. Lafra stops beside him.

“What?”

Tiir shakes his head. “It’s nothing.”

He thinks of Guriko’s families—the one that left her here to begin with, and the one that adopted her afterwards. Tiir has no love for either, even though he’s never met them. He thinks of Minato’s foster families—the ones that couldn’t keep another child or didn’t want him.

—He thinks of someone else, even though he’d rather not.

There are far too many families that he hates. He’s known that for most of his life.

But it’s like he told Minato—he doesn’t need one. He already has one.

“Let’s go,” he says to Lafra and Pueka, as they head down the hall after Guriko and Minato.

And though he knows that it can’t—

—nothing ever does—

—a part of him wishes this would last forever.

—

▶ Part 6