They Grow Up So Fast

Jiro was a boy of simple pleasures. He liked corn chips, he liked the new Spirits-like game that kept kicking his ass, and he liked going home the second the final bell rang.

Consequently, Jiro hated Souji.

‘Souji’ was unique Japanese in that it was basically forced labor dressed up in honorific mumbo-jumbo—making the students do the cleaners’ jobs for them.

Even if they did it only once a month, it was still too often!!

Jiro groaned, sliding down in his chair. He looked around the classroom.

Usually, this was when Hayami vanished. Jiro had actually timed her once. She usually wiped one desk and bolted before the mean girls could force her to do some dastardly appropriate activity—for example, cleaning the toilet stalls.

But today, she didn’t run off.

“Let’s leave this stupid high school grudge behind!”

Jiro dropped his chin. Hayami was standing on her chair. She looked like she was addressing troops before a charge.

“You three!” She pointed a finger at the clique of girls who usually tormented her. “Grab the rags! Let’s clean!”

Jiro waited for them to laugh.

“You heard her,” Hina barked from the back. “Move it. I want this floor clean enough to eat off of.”

The girls scrambled like terrified mice.

Jiro stared.

He positioned his phone in such a way that even Ms. Makima wouldn’t be able to see, and turned on his camera.

How the school hadn’t already banned phones from entering the building was a mystery to him.

\\

Hayami hopped down from the chair.

She grabbed two brooms and turned to her partner.

“Here you go, Akira. Let’s do the dusting.”

Akira accepted the rag. He held it with two fingers, examining the contours of its jagged form.

All this while still having a blank look on his face.

“...Hayami,” he said slowly. “What is this?”

“It’s a rag. You know… For cleaning dust.”

“I know what the object is,” he said, his brow furrowing. “But what is this… er, custom?”

“Souji!”

“I see. I presume we need to give this to the cleaning staff when they come.”

Hayami blinked. “It’s a public school, Akira. We clean our own classrooms.”

Akira looked around the room. He looked at Jiro, who was currently on his hands and knees, half-heartedly scrubbing a stain near the podium.

Akira looked genuinely horrified.

“This is barbarism,” he whispered.

“Oh my god,” Hayami sighed. “Have you really never cleaned before?”

Akira straightened his blazer.

“I had better things to do. More important things. I was touring at fourteen.” He gestured vaguely with the rag. “And technically, my incompetence is a form of philanthropy. My lack of domestic skills keeps three housekeepers and a butler employed. I am a job creator.”

“You’re a brat.”

He tried to wipe a desk. Tried being the keyword. He did it with a strange, circular flailing motion that just moved the dust from left to right.

Jiro stopped scrubbing. He sat back on his heels.

"Can’t believe I got this footage.”

"You’re recording?!" Futami whispered harshly, dunking his rag in the bucket. "The assembly will host a hanging, starring Satoru Jiro!"

They watched as Hayami groaned and grabbed the Prince’s wrist.

“Stop,” she said. “G-Give me your hand.”

Jiro’s eyes widened.

Akira paused. He looked at her hand, then at his own gloved one.

“So,” he murmured, a mischievous glint entering his eyes. “You want to show me how?”

Hayami felt her face heat up, but she stood her ground.

“May I?”

She stepped into his space.

She molded his fingers around the cloth. “You n-need firm pressure,” she stammered. “Flat palm.”

She placed her hand over his, guiding it down to the desk surface.

“L-Like this. Long, sweeping strokes. With the grain.”

She pushed his hand forward. He easily followed her lead, his muscles relaxing under her touch.

“Fascinating,” Akira whispered.

As Hayami thought about what he meant, she felt his breath fanning against her neck. When she realized she was practically under him, a Hayami-filled explosion felt imminent.

So she promptly responded by kicking him in the shin.

“Ow! Ow, ow!”

“S-Shut up and scrub!”

“I’m scrubbing. I’m scrubbing.”

He didn’t sound too annoyed. He sounded… well, he sounded enthused.

Hayami guided his hand back and forth.

“You’re very handsy, you know,” Akira murmured.

“I just need to s-show my s-sissy of a guy friend how to take c-care of himself.”

“Dude,” Jiro whispered to Futami.

“Duuuude.”

Hayami looked up to check his technique.

She found his face inches from hers.

Akira had stopped scrubbing. He was staring at her lips.

The air in the classroom seemed to vanish.

It was very hard for him not to go further. It would be so easy to close the gap, to taste the lemon polish and the nervousness on her breath. He wanted to. God, he wanted to.

He hovered his lips over hers, close enough to share the same breath, close enough that she could feel his natural body heat.

“Is this…” he whispered, “part of the technique?”

Hayami’s brain short-circuited.

She braced herself, remembering that the purpose of this whole exercise was to get people like Jiro to film in the first place. ‘Time to make it official.’

History won’t remember Jiro all too well.

But he can always tell his grandchildren he ran the account that perpetrated the biggest K-pop scandal of the 2020s.

\\

One day prior…

“This… this is harsh, even for me,” Akira said.

The sun was setting. Long, bruised purple shadows cast across the empty classroom. On the desk between them lay a laminated notebook.

Akira couldn’t believe what Hayami wrote.

He rose stiffly to his feet. “I would be asking you to let the world fall in love with you, only to break their hearts—and yours—so I can have a safe landing with another woman.”

Biting the inside of her lip, Hayami said, “N-No, Akira. I am asking you.”

“It’s just…”

He looked at her, his eyes almost pleading.

Hayami shut down that stupid thought of hers to give in to him. “Uncle K-Kenji is planning something, and I don’t know what.”

“I know. You told me all of that already.”

It was surprisingly easy to get the words out of her mouth. It was an act of venting. She needed it more than Akira needed the information.

Of course, Akira scolded her, before sheepishly telling her he had been spying the same way.

“What damage can one man do? I have a team of strategists and loyalists who can stick up for me, and what does your Uncle have? I mean, he moved back to your apartment for a reason, right? He can’t afford a team of lawyers…”

“I don’t k-know about Uncle’s financial situation. At all. Y-You can’t count on that.”

She recalled the leather couch sitting in her living room.

“Even still, Hayami, you get nothing out of this. You get the stigma of being the ‘ex.’ And in the end, you get left behind.”

“I m-meant what I said,” she whispered. “About taking what we can g-get.”

“Hayami—”

“I-If I can’t have y-you, then I s-suppose this is j-just practice for m-me. For when I p-pursue my own r-relationship.”

Akira stopped pacing. The air left his lungs.

“I-It’s the truth,” she continued, “Y-you make me feel safer. My safest space, really. I h-have no one else that makes me feel this way. Who better to choose in my crash course g-guide to romance. You’d teach me how to be a girlfriend. How to hold hands. How to… k-kiss. If you think a-about it… you are doing me a favor.”

She looked down at her hands, twisting her fingers together.

“And when we b-break up… I’ll be ready. For someone who can actually s-stay.”

“...Let's run through this idiotic plan. One more time.”

“We go public during Souji tomorrow,” Hayami recited. “Now Uncle won’t have leverage against you. We create a Cinderella story. And when your Agency is happy… we end it.”

Hayami chuckled. “It’s just like a story straight out of Kindred…”

“This works out too well for me. Not for you. At all. I get my reputation fixed. I get my freedom. I get Veronica. And you… you get used.”

He reached out, afraid to touch her. Afraid that if he did, he wouldn't be able to let her go.

“‘Practice’ isn’t a good enough reason.”

Hayami finally looked up. The fading sunlight caught the unshed tears in her eyes, turning them into glass.

“I g-guess… I guess I’m just t-thankful for the time w-we’ve spent together.”

She looked at him with a simple honesty.

“You h-helped me gain the confidence to e-even conceive of this plan. And even if it’s fake… e-even if it has an expiration date… for a few weeks, I g-get to be the girl you chose.”

She placed her hand over the notebook, covering the word Veronica.

“That’s enough for me.”

Akira stared at her.

He realized then that she was stronger than him. And he realized that when this plan was over, when he inevitably had to let her go, he was going to be the one who didn't survive the breakup.

“Okay,” Akira whispered.

‘After all…’ Hayami thought darkly.

She looked down at the paper.

This was going to be her hardest Assessment yet.

It had started as simple lessons. How to speak. How to stand. How to make friends.

It’d now long gone off the rails of Akira’s original plan.

She wasn't just doing this to survive until graduation. She was doing this to take the weapon out of her Uncle’s hand, whatever he held—and force Rocketblast Recordings to back down.

Hayami closed the notebook with a soft, decisive thud.

‘Love is war,’ she told herself. ‘And I intend to win.’

\\

Kenji stared at his phone screen.

The video of the so-called "Souji Flirt" was playing at full blast.

Hayami genuinely looked awestruck at that famous boy.

Last time he saw her like this was… when her Grandma was still around.

Akira leaning in, the intensity, the way the classroom light caught Hayami’s terrified, blushing face.

It was Kenji's own fault. He encouraged Hayami to become closer to Akira. But he thought Akira would make her more cautious, not less.

"You idiot girl," Kenji mumbled.

He looked at the calendar on the wall. August 13th. Obon. Mere weeks away.

Japan's own Festival of the Dead. In the streets outside, lanterns were being hung to guide the spirits home. Hell’s gates would creak open, and Grandma's soul would roam the earth once more.

But for Hayami, it couldn’t be as simple as greeting all souls. She had to greet his mother's soul.

Their family descended from Chinese migrants, and those old roots ran deep. Qingming—the proper time for sweeping graves—was not popular in Japan, and she had missed it in April.

Here she was, months late. The gravesite hadn't been cleaned. She needed to bring Grandma food so she would not be hungry in hell. He’d been largely successful in stopping that foolish endeavor.

Kenji was not in the least bit religious, but he did believe in luck.

If that Akira boy gave her enough confidence to embrace her grandmother’s memory, he wasn't just making Hayami feel better. He was opening the door to the very misfortune Kenji had spent years running away from.

The past four years were dedicated to keeping her away from that grave.

But after moving here, he saw something had changed in Hayami. That boy surely had something to do with it.

Meek, obedient Hayami never had the guts to say “no” before. Even though she’d been largely unsuccessful with his entrance into the residence so far.

But this kind of public outing proved she was building some confidence.

He could not allow that to happen.

The truth was far simpler: the Sato bloodline was cursed with failure.

Kenji had moved in hoping to use… no, to convince Akira to help the Satos out of poverty. But Akira was doing something far more dangerous—he was pushing Hayami to honor the very woman who had ruined them.

His brother had died drowning in debt. His sister-in-law followed shortly later. Kenji believed bad things happened for a reason and he didn’t want to be next.

“You don’t give me a damn choice, kid.”