Sanemi feels his face tick along with the clock, hanging crooked on the wall for so long that if it’s worn a faint ring of gray into the white. A staple of his childhood, among other things.
Another minute trickles away. They’re going to be late.
“GENYA!”
Down the hall, the frantic patter of bare feet over wooden floorboards. Going by the direction of the noise, Genya’s just shuffled from his bedroom to the bathroom. Not to the entryway, where Sanemi’s waiting for him.
“Hold on! I’m almost ready!”
“I’ve been holding on for thirty minutes,” Sanemi snaps. He takes another peek at the clock. Okay, maybe he’s—
“You’re exaggerating!” Genya hurls back, completing the rest of Sanemi’s thought in one fell swoop. “It’s only been twenty, actually!”
In another room but really only a few steps away, another voice joins their tussle: “SHH! We can’t hear anything!”
Sanemi abandons his post by the door to poke his head around the corner where the voice came from. He finds the culprit after only a second of appraisal—Koto’s glaring right at him, and the second their eyes meet he sticks out his tongue and dives back into the shoddy little pillow fort they constructed just for tonight. An outburst of giggles erupts from within, the sides of the fort listing dangerously before someone yanks them back upright. Sanemi has no idea how all five of them managed to cram inside comfortably, but it seems to be working out for them. At the front of the room, their movie continues to roll by on the screen, something loud and something Marvel.
The blanket draped over the top of the fort wobbles, signalling the emergence of another face. Sumi blinks at him from her position sprawled over the scratchy rug, chin scrunched up.
“Are you suuure you can’t take us?”
“Sorry, bub. Not this time.”
Sumi plants her face flat in the rug.
“Hey. Get your face off the floor before you catch something.”
Sumi mumbles something incomprehensible, but rolls over onto her back, still sulking.
Above her, Hiroshi leans out from behind a fluffy blue pillow to offer his own compelling argument. “Katsumi’s sister lets him watch grown-up movies with her! And they’re not even that bad.”
“I’ll be the judge of that, thank you,” Sanemi says. A chorus of disgruntled groans rises from the floor.
“But Sanemi…”
Teiko, Shuya, and Koto seem to be engrossed by the TV, content with their entertainment for the night as their counterparts lobby for the right to join Sanemi and Genya on an excursion downtown to see the latest hot feature film. Sanemi had hoped all his siblings would be fully satisfied with an at-home theater experience in a makeshift fort, but he supposes three out of five isn’t bad. Better than zero out of five, in which case they’d probably never leave.
“Why don’t you try asking Mom again?” Sanemi offers. If his reasonings won’t work, then Shizu’s word will shut it down for good.
Hiroshi brightens anew with hope. It’s a futile effort, since they’ve already discussed this, but that doesn’t prevent him from trying anyway. “Mom, can we—”
“Absolutely not,” Shizu answers from the kitchen, still chipping away at the mountain of dishes left behind after dinner. Utterly defeated, Hiroshi retreats back into the fort with a last grumble of not fair. Sumi remains splayed out on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, her pout growing by the second.
YOU ARE READING
Uh Huh, Honey
Fanfiction(This is not mine)////////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Sanemi is a broke university student tiding it over with casual jobs as an adult film actor. Giyuu is a professional in every sense of the word-work is work, wit...
