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So, let the record state that Kuwabara Hajime had initially had some reservations about rooming with a first-year. His old roommate was a mild-mannered Engineering student whose main flaw was doing his CompSci homework at 2 in the morning. But at least he kept his concentration techno low and the blue screen reflecting off the wall was almost as good as a nightlight.
Unfortunately for his second-year Nishimura-kun departed for some sort of maladjusted MMORPG-addict’s paradise of a shared apartment, and just as Hajime thought he was going to get away with riding solo the gimlet-eyed dormitory leader had cornered him in the shared kitchenette and that had been that.
So he was already pre-annoyed before he’d even met the new guy. Like, geez, there goes my single! After all the time he’d spent fantasizing about using the spare bed to stack and organize his dumbells and everything.
But then again Hajime was an easygoing fella by nature and a week before move-in he’d mostly made his peace with it.
Whoever this kid is, I just really, really hope he’s got his shit together and I don’t have to senpai him around campus… he thought, mixing up his morning protein smoothie.
One of those hopes was absolutely in vain.
Unfortunately, the first year, when he arrived, had mean, droopy eyes, a truly tragic bowl cut, and a preternaturally sour expression that Hajime remembered seeing on his least-favorite aunt. The really bitter one who smoked like a chimney and whose husband was a no-goodnik with a bad pachinko habit.
Still, Hajime girded his loins and gamely attempted small talk.
“So…” he said, nodding at the guy’s duffel bag, which was absolutely chock full of running shoes “you’re into, like, running? Thinking about joining the track club? What high school did you go to, did they have good program?“
The kid- Sasaki? (Sakaki? whatever) flinched dramatically like Hajime had asked him about the death of his childhood dog.
“Of course I’m joining the track and field club, Kuwabara-san.” he bit out, glaring up hatefully through his bangs. “It would be pointless for me to be here otherwise.”
Wow, jeez. What a little punk. I mean fuck him for trying to make friendly conversation, right?
“Oookaaay.” Hajime said, very reasonably not crushing his head like a grape. “I’ll just let you unpack then. Later!”
As always, whenever life pulled some mildly unpleasant bullshit, Hajime went to the gym. It got him out of the room and hey, that afternoon he broke his own deadlift record so I guess the new kid was good for something.
And afterward, riding out the endorphin rush of a good workout he got to thinking - well, you know, maybe I jumped the gun there. Maybe the kid was just one of those high-strung people and he was all stressed out, I mean - moving, saying bye to the folks. Maybe he was just a little prickly - the way young insecure guys were.
He’d give him a little bit of time to adjust. Wait and see.
Sakaki, as it turns out his name was, got quieter but he did not get better.
Oh on paper he was faking his way to functional, if grumpy, human-hood but something was definitely up.
Most telling would be how Hajime would catch him muttering angrily while on the can or when the water was running. I mean yeah, a lot of people liked to hash out theoretical arguments in the bathroom but Sakaki was the only guy he’d ever met who actually harangued imaginary people in the shower. He ranted. He went on goddamn tirades.
One day Hajime threatened one of his own sanity-preserving rules (light chitchat with Sakaki only, ideally 4 words per sentence or less) and flat out asked
“Hey man, did you like, have a fight with someone? Maybe an old friend from high school? I couldn’t help overhearing-“
Sakaki flushed this horrible red that made it all-too-clear that some of the raised bumps on his cheeks were less freckles and more blackheads.
“Please don’t mention it, Kuwabara-san.” he hissed. “After all it’s really none of your business.”
“Right-o!” Hajime chirped, gritting his teeth, mentally already loading up the bar for his bench press.
Watch out, Tokyo Sports University shot put record! Kuwabara Hajime is coming in hot!
Maybe he’d even dedicate it - ‘to my new roommate: the antisocial weirdo who motivated me to really get out there and train hard! (because staying in the same room with him was real fucking drag)’
Naw.
---
But mostly, thankfully, Sakaki didn’t really come up in any other aspect of his life. Well except for one of the times he went out for beer with the wrestling team and their crew. Sometimes the sumo team would show up too and everything would end up in an impromptu training bout in an izakaya parking lot. Good times.
“Sup dude, how’s your new roomie?” that gossip Koji slid up to him at the bar, neck already a little red from his cheap plum wine.
Hajime made a face.
“He’s… something. At first I thought he was just super awkward but honestly he seems like kind of a dick. Like the kind of guy who bitches loudly about why he’s got no friends and nobody likes him but you know... The problem’s all right there.”
“That sucks bro.”
“Yup.” Hajime shrugged “Oh well. At least those running guys have mad early practices so when I wake up he’s just not even there.”
To his scant credit, Sakaki WAS quiet. Brooding over whatever-his-deal-was, was, by design, a low-noise activity. And he was decent at sneaking out early too, especially after the first time he’d knocked over a stack of protein powder containers and Hajime had sleepily chucked a barbell at him. I mean, what? It was only an itty bitty two kilo one. It could have been rats! Disgustingly refined Tokyo rats who were obviously after his precious wheat germ and bee pollen.
Look, Hajime wasn’t much of a logical thinker at 4am.
Anyway morning practice blissfully meant that Sakaki went to bed early too. So while Hajime was watching a little late-night anime (with the screen turned away and noise-cancelling headphones on. I mean, he didn’t like the kid but he wasn’t an animal.) Sasaki and his perpetual lemonface formed a peaceful inert lump on the other side of the room.
At least until the headphones slipped down Hajime’s neck during a stretch break and he heard the other boy noisily flip over and mutter “...Kurahara.”
Oookay. So he was asleep though. Hajime crept over on tip toes and resisted the urge to poke him with something. But no, Sakaki was out cold, drooling into the side of his pillow, his little noodly runner arms curled up into claws and clutching at his comforter.
“Kurahara...” he warbled in that creepy voice that sleep-talkers did on TV. Hajime had never seen this sort of thing IRL before and, as advertised, it was pretty freaky.
Up close Sakaki's eyes were twitching around frantically under his eyelids. There was an epic frown line forming in his forehead and he was breathing hard, like he was running in his sleep… or whatever.
“...you bastard. I’ll break you…”
For the sake of his sanity. Hajime crept away and cranked the adventures of Princess Hime Hime-chan up a little louder.
Yikes.
---
Unfortunately ‘Kurahara’ kept coming up. Now that he knew to listen for it Hajime could hear it popping up in Sakaki’s shower rants and, to his utter freaking dismay, a week or so after the first sleeptalking incident there was another one.
Even more regrettably ‘Kurahara’ was not some kind of scapegoat imaginary friend or fevered figment of Sakaki’s slightly sideways brain - he was an actual flesh-and-blood guy. Hajime had been deeply, deeply bored (and maybe a teeeny bit curious, in spite of himself) so in the end he’d just googled ‘Kurahara’ and the name of Sakaki’s high school and got lucky.
The image search results spat out a yearbook photo of a skinny, pissed-off looking, square-eyed dude with his very own tragic bowl cut. At least this one seemed to be of the more honest ‘I’m an athlete and I can’t be arsed to care about my looks’ variety (Sakaki, as Hajime couldn’t help but notice, painstakingly over-mousse-ified his every morning).
So. OK. Mystery solved. And honestly, that should have been that, except how two beers in he got chatty and mentioned it to the guys back at the bar.
“Look, it’s a classic story.” Hirogawa from lit class sketched out his theory with a half-empty takoyaki skewer “Bet you anything it’s his former BFF. They were the inseparable Bowl Cut Aces of No Name Podunk High and then Sakaki got into Tokyo to live the good life, his buddy got pissed, and now they got mad beef. The themes are ‘the tragic brevity of adolescent friendships’ and ‘income inequality.’ Very boring. Very YA.”
“Uhhh, I don’t know man,” Hajime muttered “my gut says ‘no’ on that one.”
“And Hajime-san’s abs are right as usual!” Koji was a little more sober tonight and hamming it up, practicing his sports broadcaster voice “I just googled him myself and Kurahara was kind of hot shit. He shows up front and center in all the articles, right next to their track team coach. It’s just your average case of small-fry-hates-successful-guy. Probably a little light internet stalking on the side. Simple. Pathetic. Fits the profile.”
“No!” Mayuzaki slammed his beer down a lot harder than he’d meant to. Sumo dudes, always a little dramatic. “It’s waaaay more than that. Gotta be. 500 yen says it’s some repressed gay shit. Hajime-san says he moans Kurahara’s name in his sleep and everything. Classic subtext. Sublimating athletic jealousy for forbidden desire~~”
I guess it was, technically, sleep-moaning. He didn’t wanna think about that. Hajime raised his hands and theatrically backed away from the whole thing.
“Right. So. It’s been real, fellas. Now I gotta go to the aquatics building and stick my entire brain in a pool full of bleach.”
So he got outta there, but not before he heard Koji say “Hey, Mayu-chan I’ll take that action. Though seriously, you gotta stop reading that BL basketball manga. It’s rotting your brain.”
---
So he felt a little bad.
He’d blabbed about his roommate’s private stuff and the guys had gone way overboard and made Sakaki out to be this closeted psycho stalker. How was Hajime supposed to look him in the eye after this? I mean, metaphorically, he had like 14 centimeters on the squirt.
But Sakaki did an excellent job of downplaying those guilty impulses by being his same old squirrelly, antisocial, shower-hogging self. Not to mention he kept leaving oozy ¾-eaten nutri-yogurt packs in his trash can. Which is why it was super suspicious when he came in after lunch, positively humming with some weird, anxious energy and asked to borrow Hajime’s old brick of a laptop.
“Umm, sure” Hajime had said reflexively, caught totally off guard. Sakaki had sounded downright friendly.
Aw man, he was still thinking about it halfway through his warmup set I really hope he doesn’t use it for porn. The old thing got viruses at the drop of a hat and Hajime really, really didn’t want to know.
When he got back it was late enough that the sun had gone down. In the room the lights were off and a pack of purplish shadows had made themselves at home on the walls. Sakaki was haunched spider-like over his desk, the fans on Hajime’s old Samsung whirring away under strain like it was being tortured. He was scrolling obsessively through some kind of photo gallery - a bunch of random dudes in mismatched tracksuits goofing around, stretching, lined up on the sidewalk in front of a grocery store.
And Hajime almost missed it, almost chalked it up to some innocent rival team research if he hadn’t seen the guy on the far left. Square eyes, bowl cut, face still kind of blank but less obviously miserable. Kurahara.
Goddamnit.
“Look, dude. I don’t mind if you need to read something for class but you can’t use my computer to stalk your old high school buddy.”
Sakaki jumped up like a pan-fried tanuki, slamming the screen shut on his fingers, then curling them into his armpits and sticking his chin out like he’d totally meant to do that.
For a cool half-minute they just stared at each other.
“That hypocrite and I were never friends.” Sakaki spat-hissed eventually. He pushed the laptop away and tried to sweep out dramatically, which was pretty hard to do in a cape-less, smelly practice tracksuit. Hajime really hoped that he didn’t go straight to the computer lab to pick up where he’d left off.
But who was he kidding.
Anyway, after he’d rescued Moriko (the laptop) and rubbed her down with no fewer than three antibacterial wipes Hajime clicked around a little himself. The much-maligned Kurahara had apparently ended up at Kansai U with some obscure-but-plucky track and field club. They seemed like a real home-grown outfit but their website was pretty nice. There was even a twitter feed and a fanclub mailing list! Good for them! They looked like a neat bunch of guys. And you had to admire their ambition. A brand new team trying for the Hakone qualifier, if nothing else, it was gutsy.
Thankfully Sakaki was gone for the weekend and they didn’t have to do the awkward ‘hey I know all about your totally creepy obsession!’ dance, but Sunday night he showed up with his own, brand new laptop, thus once again one-upping himself on Hajime’s annoy-o-meter. Wow. Must be nice to have rich parents who mysteriously hadn’t noticed that they’d birthed a moderately-fast turd.
Worse, he was totally flaunting it, leaning back in his chair, slurping on a giant bubble tea with the Kansai university track team webpage, their fundraising Etsy store, Instagram account, and Twitter feed in full 15inch retina display glory. Every five minutes he’d shoot Hajime a smug look over his shoulder and switch tabs.
Hajime queued up the third Princess Hime Hime OVA. The one with the rousing musical number in the middle of an epic space battle.
He pulled his headphones out of the jack.
---
Anyway just as Hajime had had enough time to be appalled at his own descent into total fucking barbarism, when he’d finally made up his mind to spill the beans to the dorm leader, clear his conscience, and maybe, just maybe get Sakaki into some much-needed counseling - his roommate’s inglorious stalking career came to an end.
It began with Sakaki storming in, looking way more untidy than usual - hair and mouth flat. A pretty serious bruise was decorating the whole left side of his face. It looked real painful. One his ever-present blackheads had burst.
“Hey man, are you O-” is as far as Hajime got before Sakaki grabbed his jacket and his laptop bag off his chair and darted off, slamming the door behind him.
A few minutes later there was a clatter in the hallway and a series of taps on the door. He opened it to a pack of grim-faced track-and-field guys in matching green sweatshirts.
“Hello Kuwabara-san, have you seen your roommate?”
Hajime pointed down the hall.
“Just came in. Looked like shit. Took off that way, hell for leather. He’s got a heavy laptop bag so y’all’ll probably catch him around the curves.”
They ran off with a chorus of “Thanks!”
Sakaki didn’t come back that night.
---
Of course as it happened that day was half-price dinner specials at the ramen bar and the guys were all a bunch of gossips and they had the scoop. Apparently the only thing that could beat the 5000m Tokyo Sport University record was a juicy rumor.
“Soooo~~ I heard your problem child’s in the doghouse!” Koji slid over into his booth like he owned the place.
“It sure was quiet tonight.” Hajime said noncommittally “Got a lot of studying done.”
“No seriously, he’s in deep shit! And how!”
“No, no, start with the high school chick.” Koji’s buddy Takuya popped up over his shoulder.
“Right so yesterday, your roommate went all the way to Toyonaka to get decked by a high school chick.”
“What chick? Are people saying he knocked up a chick?!” Mayuzaki seemed mostly concerned about any whiff of heterosexuality compromising his bet.
“No, geez! Like anyone would sleep with Hajime-san’s freaky roommate. The girl, you know? The girl who’s Kansai U’s manager or something?“
People did not know about the girl and had to be informed. Then Koji shusshed them all and got on with it.
“A-n-y-w-a-y! Everyone shut up, I was getting to the good part. So according to my sources, the Kansai U team was doing some small track meet before the Hakone qualifier and our track club was supposed to be there with just the third-string guys. But Sakaki volunteered to help out just so he *happened* to be there. And as soon as he sees the Kansai U guys he fucks off and leaves his water station and waddles over there ranting about how Kurahara (that’s Kansai’s ace, bee tee dubs) is a shitty person and a glory hound and Kurahara just, like, sighs and says ‘why are you even here? I don’t even know you, go home’ then Sakaki, like, loses it and he starts screeching about how Kurahara had to be screwing his team captain because he always gives him hand signals and makes him passing room-”
“Wait, you mean like a club captain is supposed to do for the team ace?” Sugimoto from the cycling club raised his eyebrow.
“-Dude I know. But seriously, a couple of our guys ran over cause what the hell water station was empty and they only heard the tail end of what he was yelling. But it was nuts. It was totally off the reservation. Something like ‘You only let him fuck you because he’ll never surpass you with that gimp leg!!’”
“Shiiiiit.” said about six guys at once. The crowd around them had grown.
“Duuuude! YESSSSSS!!” Mayuzaki was pink-cheeked and practically climbing over the table. “I told you Koji! I fucking told you! Didn’t I call it? He’s got some sad closeted hateboner for that Kurahara dude. It was totally a gay thing, pay up!”
Koji frowned and started rooting around in his coin purse. He fished out 500 yen but was clearly having second thoughts about handing it over. I mean they were all broke as shit and 500 yen was at least a couple of convenience store rice balls.
Still, the evidence was hard to argue with. Mayuzaki grabbed the coin out of Koji’s hands, held it aloft in triumph, and immediately blew it on a side order of curry.
“So is Sakaki dead then? Is he in traction? Cause no offense I saw Kurahara’s Facebook page and he looks like some kind of psycho running robot. Dude doesn’t even know how to smile.”
“Oh he was about to be. Dunno about Kurahara but all the other Kansai guys jumped up and they were right there I swear, my guy from the third string said that the pale skinny one was gonna beat Sakaki to death with a big fat volume of JoJo. But, anyway, right before they start on that, ZOOM comes high-school chick on her bicycle and she throws down her stopwatch and she fucking decks Sakaki right in mug, none of that cutesy drama slap shit, a real backhand-”
Koji seemed to realize that he’d been talking nonstop and started coughing. Hajime, who’d been pretty quiet himself, pushed his glass of water into Koji’s hands and watched him drain it.
“-and then anyway Sakaki’s flat on his ass and she’s yelling about how he’s a pervert and stalker and how she’s so sick of his mean little rat face and she gets so worked up that she starts crying and then she’s swooning and these two twin guys from Kansai U are holding her up and she reported Sakaki to the track meet officials for saying lewd stuff and the whole thing was a Fiasco. Capital F.
It was just NOT a good look for Tokyo U. Our Coach looked like he was gonna shit out enough bricks to remake Nagoya castle. Anyway Coach shows up, drags Sakaki away by the hair, his teammates are standing around like ‘what the fuck, bro?’, still thirsty, lowkey worried about getting beat up by the Kansai U dudes. Then this dead-faced cockroach of a reporter shows up and starts needling people for statements. Anyway one of the Kansai guys is a law student and apparently the whole time he’s been taping Sakaki harassing them, like all the way since last spring, and he’s got everything - video, Twitter screenshots from their fanclub spotting him creeping around, a whole dropbox folder of transcripts of every nasty thing he’s ever said to Kurahara and then he gives it all to the reporter and now there’s a restraining order and Sakaki can’t go to Senriyama no more. And the lesson is... do not fuck with the team that’s got a goddamn lawyer on it.”
“God’s honest truth right there.” said Hirogawa, flicking ash off his cigarette “Maaa-an~ Sakaki’s probably in the Dean’s office bowing so deep he’s eating carpet. Gotta be kinda hard to go to track meets when you can’t be with in 500 feet of another team’s ace, right? Isn’t he here on a track scholarship? ”
“Well ain’t that innaresting.” chucked Tomura the fourth-year meanly with his Kansai accent. “Yannow, might wanna hold tight Hajime-kun... might be getting a new roommate soon.”
Hajime hefted a beer in his massive hand and watched the droplets roll down the cool surface of the glass. He had a feeling of deep satisfaction. A sense of karmic justice made manifest. A vision of barbells perfectly arranged on an empty bed.
“Mmhmm” he said slowly “you know what, I’ll drink to that.”
~