Toman's Little Sister

68 | Letters

Second shelf to the far right.

"What second shelf? Was there a shelf that was important from back then?" Takemichi thought for a moment. If it's something so important, why would you say it so discreetly?

He searched through his memories with you but never found any sort of shelf significant.

You were always so hard to understand. He never knew when you felt happy or sad or angry. Tears weren't common for you but they also weren't nonexistent. You never lashed out but he could feel your rage. A smile was on your face but happiness wasn't confined to a smile.

He stared across the table. Mikey sat there, fidgeting with the flag in his food. Hina and Emma wanted to go out to eat together and he and Mikey were both dragged into it.

"Mikey," Takemichi began to the boy seated in front of him. "do you know anything about a shelf?"

Mikey blinked. "A shelf?"

"Y-Yeah, Y/N... told me about one...."

"A shelf?" Mikey repeated. Although, in the back of his mind, he couldn't help but wonder why you told Takemichi and not him. "She has bookshelves in her... room..."

Takemichi tilted his head, noticing a change in Mikey's eyes. Like he just realized something.

"No. Not the bookshelves in her room." Mikey slid out of his seat and picked up his drink, only half of it drunken. "Emma! We'll be headed back now."

Emma looked away from Hina. "Uh, sure, I'm not forcing you to stay. I'll pay the bill, okay?"

"Thanks."

Mikey took Takemichi's arm and dragged him out the restaurant's door. "You want a shelf and Y/N-chin said it to you like she was telling you you're a target for an assassination, right?"

"Um... yeah?"

"Then I know where to go."

He dragged Takemichi to his motorcycle. "Did you bring yours?"

"Uh, no, Hina and I took a bus."

"Then get on."

Mikey was different than Takemichi expected him to be when he returned to the past. He thought that Mikey's dark impulses would've taken over him by then.

But right now, he seems calm. Not happy, but... calm.

He clung to Mikey's shoulders as he sped down the road. It was like how it was a few years ago. Just him and Mikey... being friends.

Mikey stopped in front of what Takemichi recognized as the previous building for S.S Motors.

"Here we are." He said, swing his leg over his motorcycle as he kicked the stand. "Let's go, Takemitchy."

The two walked inside and Takemichi saw the shelf where you kept a first aid kit and a few other boxes. He remember it from the last time he was in here, severely beaten and with Inui.

"This is the shelf. You were asking for a significant one, right? Not just some random one?" Mikey walked up to the shelf, staring at the messily hammered nails with multiple dents from when the builder missed.

• Flashback •

"What's that?"

Shinichiro looked down at you and Mikey. "What, this?" He lifted the box he was dragging around his shop. "It's just a shelf for the back since Y/N's scolding me for being disorganized."

"Because you are! Your tools are always everywhere and you keep having to buy a new ash tray because you keep losing it or stepping on it!"

Mikey laughed. "Y/N acts like a mom!"