𝚃𝙴𝙴𝙽𝙰𝙶𝙴 𝙳𝙸𝚁𝚃𝙱𝙰𝙶 ,, high&low

chapter twenty - seven |little dove

twenty seven

little dove

After dinner, I stood silently in the kitchen doorway, watching contentedly as Fujio and Nakagoshi shoved each other around the sink while trying to wash dishes, Yasushi and Tsukasa in some strange competition while they tried to put everything away. Yumeko and I were like that once. Before everything changed.

"When you said you got your life back together, I didn't realize you meant that you adopted four teenage delinquents from the worst part of town." Odajima joked, coming up behind me. He had taken his hair out of the clumsy bun it was usually in, falling freely around his face. His sunglasses hung limply from the chain around his neck, his eyes red and puffy. "You don't happen to have my old prescription lying around here somewhere, do you?"

I chuckled, shaking my head before turning back to the kids. "Oi, don't let Fujio touch anything breakable!" I said before opening the cupboard where I kept all my insomnia-related pills, tablets and sleep aids. Digging around for a bit, I managed to find the small bottle of eye drops. It was almost eight years old, so I had no idea what good they still were, but Odajima wasn't really in any position to turn them away.

"You heard the lady!" Nakagoshi said, flicking soap bubbles at Fujio "Begone, thot!"

Odajima laughed, shaking his head as he uncapped the eyedrops. When we were fifteen, he was diagnosed with an eye disease, which is why he always had to wear sunglasses, as one of the side effects was an extreme light sensitivity. "Those kids really are something else."

"I didn't adopt them." I said, drumming my fingers against the pink glass I was holding. "They found me. And they're the best thing that's happened to me in a long time."

I still hadn't told Odajima what had happened with Doubt. I'd told the story too many times lately to tell it again, but I figured he'd need to know at some point.

When the kids were finished in the kitchen, we all gathered in the living room. Nakagoshi sat on the floor next to me, his head heavy on my shoulder as I used watercolor brush pens to draw on his arm. Over my other shoulder, Yasushi was watching with a burning intensity as I went in with a slightly darker red to add depth to the rose I had drawn.

On the couch across from me, Odajima was scrolling through the gallery on his phone, smiling widely when he found what it was he was looking for. "Do you guys want to see this poster from when Midori used to fight?"

Nakagoshi perked up, the sudden movement leaving a streak of paint on his arm. "Yes please."

"You used to fight?" Fujio asked

I nodded "Pro circuit, from when I was fifteen to a few weeks before I left for college."

Odajima passed Murayama the phone. Once it was in his possession, the boy chuckled, showing it to the full timers.