Carry Me (Ushijima x Reader AU)

Chapter 06

"I HATE THESE GODDAMN THINGS!"

The school year had been going a little more than a month and that was long enough to get you frustrated enough to make you scream out into the empty barn. 

You were preparing the feed buckets for the horses and had to open a new bag of food. While that didn't sound like such a daunting task, Kikuchi's new rule of 'bags need to be opened the proper way' made it a lot more difficult than one would think.

The bags were sewn shut with string and while if you knew how it was done properly they opened in a matter of seconds, if you didn't know it was a job that could take five minutes.

Opening the bags was one of the reasons you always carried a pocket knife around the barn. It wasn't the 'proper' way and you had to dispose of the string discreetly to get rid of the evidence, but it was at least faster to cut every stitch. The alternative was fiddling with the string until you gave up and take a different bag to repeat the process until you found one that, miraculously, did open.

Last year, when Arai had still been president, you were allowed to just cut the bags open and leave the string untouched. While it was definitely way neater to use a bag that was opened with the string and, you had to admit, even a little bit handier, the time it took you to do it just wasn't worth it for you.

You had just pulled out your trusty knife to get the job over with when a voice from behind you scared you to death.

"Is everything alright?"

You recognized Ushijima immediately and turned around, annoyed, after picking up the knife you just dropped.

"You just scared the bejeezus out of me! I was holding a knife, I could have hurt myself!" You lashed out more sharply than intended.

"Sorry, I called out when I entered the barn, but it seems like you didn't hear me." He apologized.

"Obviously..." You muttered before turning your attention back to the bag of horse feed.

"So, is everything okay? I heard you yell." Ushijima asked again, making your face heat up in embarrassment. It had never been your intention for someone to hear your mini-meltdown.

Damn Ushijima and his evening jogs...

"Yeah, I'm just so annoyed at these stupid bags. Can they not think of another way to close them?" You sighed as you bent down to start cutting at the stitches.

"You can't open a string sealed bag?" He asked, still standing behind you.

After letting out an annoyed sigh you turned towards him again. "If I could, I wouldn't be using my knife now would I?"

"I can show you how to do it." He proposed, making you raise an eyebrow. You considered it for a moment before nodding.

"Okay..."

He squatted down in front of the bag and you did the same next to him.

"You've got the correct side facing you." He told you and pointed at the string. 

"You want the side with the single thread facing you, the other side has two threads." He pushed the top of the bag down so he could show you the other side. 

"Always start at the right side, not the left." He took the end of the string in his right hand and pointed with his left. "Do you see the end of the string here, how it's pulled through the loop?"

You moved a little closer to be able to see what he was talking about. "Yeah..."

"Make sure you pull it out of the loop first and then you can slowly pull the entire string loose." He explained but didn't do the action himself. Instead, he moved aside a little bit and released his hold on the string.