He’d barely gotten his keys out when the door flung open.
“Kyou-kun!” Tooru said, breathless. “You’re so late!”
Kyou blinked at her stupidly.
“She was worried.” Yuki said coming up behind her, face closed and still.
The Rat’s angry, Kyou thought. I haven’t seen that in a while. “It’s late?” He said when they continued to stare at him. He glanced up at the sky, the moon was high above. “I … didn’t notice.”
“Where were you?” Yuki bit out. “We’ve missed dinner because of you!”
“It’s that late?” He said trying to look past them into the apartment to see the clock.
“How could you not know!?” Yuki yelled. “It’s past ten! We had no idea where you were!”
“Oi, oi!” Kyou looked around nervously. He could see some of the curtains on their floor rustling and suspected they had an audience. “Keep it down, it’s late.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Yuki shouted.
“Um, ah…” Tooru carefully wedged herself between the two of them. Yuki had edged forward and was pushing Kyou further back into the hallway instead of letting him into the apartment. “We should talk inside.”
Yuki had been just as worried about Kyou as she had been. But she knew he would be too embarrassed to say so and couldn’t do anything to express it other then get angry. He’d been building up to this for hours, pacing their small apartment and muttering empty assurances to her.
The smaller boy glanced down at her, and then gave Kyou another dirty look before stalking into the apartment. He threw himself down at the table and refused to look at the other boy.
Kyou shifted nervously before stepping past Tooru into the apartment. This wasn’t going like he planned at all. He kicked off his shoes as Tooru closed the door behind him. He waited for her to pass him before saying anything.
He glanced at the clock, and was shocked to see that it was nearly eleven. He’d had no idea he worked so late. “Um… I’m sorry.” He said rubbing his neck. If Tooru or Yuki had done that to him during the weeks they’d been going to school… just gone out and then not returned for hours he would have panicked.
“Don’t be sorry! Don’t do it again!” Yuki slapped a hand on the table, inside he was shaking with relief. If the cat hadn’t come home by midnight he’d resolved to go out and look for him. But he hadn’t the slightest idea where to start. He didn’t even know which direction Kyou had gone off to look for a job that morning. And the Cat could be so stupid and gullible… he was as bad as Tooru and in some ways worse. Never mind that there was always the problem of the curse to worry about. What if he’d been transformed somewhere?
“Look, I’m sorry but-” Kyou started, reaching for the envelope of cash to explain.
“No buts!” Yuki said standing up and crossing the room to get in front of him again. He pushed Kyou, and got in his face. “Do you have an idea how much you worried her?”
His own temper rising Kyou, stepped forward looming over the other boy and making their increasing difference in height more obvious. “Look, I said I was sorry! There wasn’t anything I could do about it! It’s not like we have a phone! I was busy!”
“Busy with what?! What could be so important that you couldn’t even be here for dinner?!” It was the one thing they’d managed to keep doing together, despite the strain their odd relationship had been under. They had at least eaten together, even if it had been quiet and silent meals.
Yuki watched as Kyou’s face went from angry, to incredulous… to blushing?
Kyou backed up a step, rocked on his heels and rubbed his neck. “I.. I uh… I got a job!” He finally said, his mouth quirking into a funny half smile. He looked over at Tooru who’d been watching their exchange silently. “I was working!”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out the envelope Takahara had given him at the end of the shift. “I even got paid!” He tossed it to her. “And he said to come back tomorrow!”
Tooru nearly didn’t catch the envelope, it slipped past her hands and hit her chest but she managed to catch it off the bounce. She glanced at it and then at Kyou and he nodded at her to open it. She opened the flap and gasped at the stack of bills.
“So much?” She looked up at him. She wasn’t sure how much was in there but she couldn’t tell it was a tidy sum for one day’s work. “This is more then I make in a week!”
Yuki walked over and Tooru handed it over to him to count. He riffled through the bills and did some quick arithmetic. He knew his job didn’t pay well, but it would take him close to two weeks to earn this if he worked every day. “What did you do to get this money?”
It wasn’t that he thought the Cat would deliberately do something bad just to bring home some money, but he knew Kyou had been feeling the pressure to get a job these past weeks. In his desperation Yuki wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been talked into doing something stupid or dangerous just so that he could say he was working. Kyou could be gullible, if the wrong person came along at just the right time… For all he knew the cat could have gotten involved with some yakuza group. He probably wouldn’t even question being paid a lot of money to make “deliveries.”
Yuki’s over-active imagination went into hyper-drive. If he had gotten involved with something like that, how was he going to get him out of it?
That wasn’t the reaction he’d been expecting. Kyou had walked home on cloud nine, expecting to be met with a hero’s welcome for finally getting a good paying job. If he could bring this kind of money home every day the Rat and Tooru could quit their jobs and concentrate on school. Why were they looking at him like he’d knocked over some old lady and stole her purse?
“What, ” Kyou said through gritted teeth, “Did you think I was too stupid to get a job? What do you think I did for it? Maybe I mugged old men in the park! Why did you think I was out so late?”
“That’s not-” Yuki said, slapping the money against his hand. He shook his head and started again. “I know you wouldn’t do something like that! It’s just that this isn’t regular part-time money!” He looked down at it. “You can’t accept it. I don’t know what they told you where you got it, but there has to be some kind of strings attached.” He looked up at the cat earnestly. “We have to give it back, I’ll go with you tomorrow and help explain-”
“No way in hell!” Kyou shouted. “I told Tanaka that I’d be back tomorrow morning, and you aren’t missing school!” He grabbed the side of his head and messed up his own hair in frustration, making it spike out in every direction. “Besides which, I’m not quitting! I already took the job!” He crossed his arms.
“It’s too dangerous!” Yuki said throwing the money on the table and grabbing Kyou’s shoulders. “We don’t need that kind of risk!” His mind was still reeling with possibilities of how the Cat could have gotten duped.
“What kind of risk?” Kyou said shaking him off. “I promised to wear both the helmet and a harness when I went up! And right now they’re just having me move bags of concrete, and that’s on the ground. They won’t even let me work on the main build until I’ve been there a few weeks!”
“You fool-” Yuki started and then stopped. “Wait, what?”
“I said, I’m just moving around supplies at the job site right now! I won’t be working on the framework or anything for a while.”
Yuki just stared at the other boy like he was speaking another language.
“Kyou-kun,” Tooru said deciding it was finally safe to interrupt their argument. “What kind of work did you get?”
“Construction!” Kyou said flapping his arms as if it was obvious. “Part time… well, more like full time, really… Shimada said that as long as you show up at the main office someone will take you to one of the job sites most days. So you can work just about any day you want! And if you’re good the site manager will ask you to come back to their site specifically. Tanaka-san already asked both of us, Shimada and I, to come back tomorrow. But because we’re part-timers, we get paid for each day at the end of the day.”
“This much?” Tooru said looking down at the table.
“Yeah,” Kyou puffed up his chest, “Shimada said that’s the normal rate for working a whole day.” He deflated a little. “But, uh, he did say that usually they just hire part-timers to do grunt work for a couple of hours and then send ‘em home. So it might not be that much every day. He said it was a good sign that the construction on this site just started, he said that there is more money and more work at the beginning.” He looked at Tooru and Yuki hopefully. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Construction?” Yuki said. “Like what you were doing back in the village?”
“Nah, this is much easier.” Kyou said, sitting down. His shoulder’s straightened and he couldn’t keep the bragging out of his tone. “I’m just carrying stuff around. Shimada said I was making the other guys look bad with how fast and how much I could carry.”
“Who is Shimada-san?” Tooru asked, setting a cup of tea in front of him.
“Guy I met today.” Kyou said dismissively. The Rat and Tooru were always talking about people he didn’t know from school, it felt good to have his own experience to throw back at them. “We got to talking at the drugstore and he took me to the site after I told him I was looking for work.”
“How lucky!” Tooru said clapping her hands. “Kyou-kun got a job and made a friend today!”
“I wouldn’t call him a friend.” Kyou said, scratching the back of his head. He glanced at Yuki, still standing dumbstruck in the middle of the room.