Michi's Babysitting Service

First Day - Part 2

The kitchen soon filled with bleary eyed children, those who has only just woken up. Mochi yawned loudly as he walked in, Shion following in not to far behind, he blonde hair wild from sleep. That child really needed to tie his hair up if it's that long. Rindou wiped his eyes before putting his glasses back on and sitting beside his brother. Mucho nodded silently in his direction and Hajime and walked up to him with a timid smile. Kakucho was already standing by Takemichi's side, handing him ingredients as he needed them.

"Hi Takemichi-san, c-can I help you cook?"

"Of course Hajime-kun, I'll be finished with the stove in just a minute and then you can help with the toast alright?" Takemichi replied, using his body to shield Hajime's eyes from the flames under the fry pan.

Hajime nodded and fidgeted with his hands as he waited.

"Take-san? Can I call you that?" Mochi called out.

"Of course Mochi-kun, did you want to ask something?"

"After breakfast, will you play basketball with us? There's seven of us so we can never have even teams..."

"I'd love to, but I'm just warning you now, I'm not very good at sports," Takemichi said chuckling.

"I bet your amazing Michi-san!" Kakucho defended.

"Suck up," Ran mumbled under his breath.

.

"Michi-san, you'll be on my team right?!" Kakucho asked expectantly, looking up at him.

"Sure Kaku-chan, I think to make it fair, there should be two older people and two younger people on each time. It would be unfair to have all the younger kids on one team and the older kids on the other," Takemichi replied, looking at all the children, hoping he didn't say something that annoyed them.

"Exactly, Shion, Mochi, Mucho and Ran are always on the same team, it isn't fair," Hajime whined.

"Can I pick the teams, I don't know your skill level so I wouldn't be biased?" Takemichi asked.

Rindou's eyebrows furrowed, "Takemichi-san, what does biased mean?"

"It's like, well I've known Kaku-chan the longest, it would be biased of me to only spend time with him because I know him better. Do you understand?" Takemichi hoped his explanation wasn't too complex for the eight year old to understand.

"Oh, thank you. So it's like...purposely choosing someone over someone else?"

"Yep, good job Rindou-kun!"

Rindou quickly turned his head to hide the smile that was spreading across his face.

"Alright, so for my team, let's go um..." he had to pick one of the older kids so...Ran was looking at him expectantly but he really should try to build a connection with the other kids too, "Mucho-kun, do you want to be on my team?"

The boy seemed surprised at Takemichi's choice but stepped forward nonetheless, "Sure."

"So I've already got Kaku-chan as a younger so I need one more-"

"Takemichi-san, you said spending more time with Kakucho would be biased...so maybe he could go on the other team." Hajime interrupted.

Kakucho's eyes widened and he shook his head frantically, "No! I wanna be with Michi-san!"

Takemichi didn't want to upset Kakucho, but Hajime was right, and he definitely had been talking more with Kakucho just because it was easier. He bent down to Kakucho's height and gave him a regretful smile.

"Hey Kaku-chan, I need to get to know the other kids to y'know. So just this once, could you play on the other team. I promise in the future I'll always be on your team."

Kakucho sniffed before outstretching his pinky, "Pinky promise?"

Someone snorted in the background but Takemichi ignored it and wrapped his own pinky around Kakucho's smaller one, "I pinky promise."

Takemichi's team ended up being himself, Mucho, Hajime and Rindou. The other team, Mochi's team, held Shion, Ran and Kakucho. Takemichi knew absolutely nothing about basketball but from what he was seeing, the kids weren't particaluarly following any rules. Simply stopping the other team from shooting. Takemichi ended up with the ball and attempted to shoot but missed, Mucho thankfully caught it before the other team, but surprised him when he passed the ball back to him.

"Have another go Takemichi-san!" he encouraged.

Takemichi let out a shaky breath, aimed and threw the ball. And, after almost an hour of playing and doing miserably, Takemichi got his first goal! "Yes!"

"Good job Takemichi-san!" Hajime cheered.

"That was a three pointer," Mochi exclaimed, impressed. Even though Takemichi was double or more the kids ages, he really was as he said, terrible at sports, so it was surprising but nevertheless impressive when he got the ball in.

.

Izana wouldn't call himself a stalker. He simply was on his lunch break and decided to check Hanagaki's social media, you know, to see if he was as responsible as he seemed. No other reason of course. But to his disbelief, not on any social media platform did Hanagaki have an account. What 21 year old doesn't have social media?! Despite Hanagaki seeming shy around him, Izana assumed him to be quite the friendly sociable person. Perhaps he was wrong but it seemed strange. He soon found himself researching the little detective friend. He most definitely had social media. Most of his pictures were actually either of or with Hanagaki. But scrolling further down, he saw many posts of a beautiful young woman. And many of those posts with the young woman also had Hanagaki by her side, very close. He looked at the tagged person in the description, @tachibanahinata. So this girl, was she Tachibana's sister? He looked at the name again, Hinata....Hina? Could that be who Kakucho was talking about? The way he described her, a very pretty lady who was always with Hanagaki. The two looked like the 'it' couple. Hanagaki looked so free and happy, not like now where he seemed to be trying so hard to appear content for the kids.

He scrolled through again, Tachibana has barely posted the past two years, all of them being about police work and recruitment type things. He felt like a creep but he clicked on Tachibana Hinata's account, only to find out the account had been deactivated. The whole thing gave him a weird feeling but he really needed to stop before someone burst into his office, catching him stalking his childs' babysitter.