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#Granny Ogaki
sckyie · 4 years
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GOOGLY EYES
part 10: slip
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written portion:
"Quit sulking, get in the car," Kageyama says. You sighed and got into the passenger's side. It was a quiet ride and you admired the outdoors as you watched the roads.
"Where are we going?" You asked.
"Don't worry about it," he says. "Are you okay?"
His voice was still stern and talking to him felt weird still.
"I'm okay," you lied.
"Liar," Kageyama pointed out.
"Wait, are we going to-" You paused.
"Yes," He says. You pull up to a cliff where Kageyama and you used to go as kids. You two got out and sat on the bench overlooking the city. "Talk to me please."
"I told Akaashi I like him," You say softly.
"The setter?" Kags questioned. "That's not the only reason is it?"
"No. Hiroaki got my number even after I blocked him," You felt the tears welling up. "He keeps texting me and calling me. On top of that Akaashi rejected me. I thought maybe confessing would make me feel better but it didn't."
"Hey," You felt him nudge your arm with a small object. "Eat this."
"You're lame," You sniffled and grabbed the onigiri.
"Look I'm sorry for what I said to you before," Kageyama started. "You're just like a sister to me and I felt overprotective. You didn't deserve to be cheated on. I was just angry that it happened to you even though I warned you about him. I promise not to make a big deal out of your love life like before. And even though it is your life, I'm still apart of it."
"I know I was just being selfish," You leaned your head against his shoulder. "You're not mad I like Akaashi then? I can still like him?"
"Well do you? Since you confessed," He started. "Don't tell me you confessed over text." You groaned and hid your face in his shoulder.
"I know I'm a dumbass," You pulled out your phone and went to your messages.
"Wait- is my contact name just a disgusted emoji?" Kags pointed out.
"Shut up I was mad at you," You show him the texts between you and Akaashi. You sighed and leaned back into the bench. "Are you busy this weekend?"
"No why?"
"Let's go visit Granny in Ogaki," You say.
"Why not, we haven't seen her in a while," Kageyama smiled.
a/n: :(
taglist: @amillionfandoms-onlyoneme @anngelllla @kac-chowsballs @elianetsantana @ntimacy
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chroniccombustion · 4 years
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Phantom Limbs - pt. 2
From “And a Week is All I Need (To Fall in Love With You)“, part of @souyoweek2020​
Genre: supernatural, ghosts and hauntings, bittersweet pre-romance, M/M Rated: T Characters: Hanamura Yosuke, Souji Seta (Yu Narukami), memories of Nanako Warnings: implied/referenced past suicide in pt. 2 Status: drabble collection, incomplete
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(prompts have been done out of order from here on out; previous chapter was day 4)
Ogaki “Granny” Kaede is a reference to Granny Okagi from ‘My Neighbor Totoro,’ with her given name taken from Priestess Kaede from Inuyasha~
Day 4 6: Scent or Stormy
After the ghostly stranger vanishes, Yosuke only hangs around long enough to change his clothes and throw his pajamas into a sling bag with his wallet, charger, and phone, before grabbing his keys and bolting out the door. There is no way he's sleeping in that apartment tonight.
Yosuke stays in a cheap hotel down the street.
After the ghostly stranger vanishes, Yosuke only hangs around long enough to change his clothes and throw his pajamas into a sling bag with his wallet, charger, and phone, before grabbing his keys and bolting out the door. There is no way he's sleeping in that apartment tonight.
He pauses just inside the front door of the apartment building to do a quick search on his phone for the nearest affordable place to stay; luckily there's one not too far from where he is. He doesn't even bother trying to call a cab, he just sprints on out into the rain and books it down the sidewalk like he's being pursued. Hell, for all he knows, he might be. He gets one heck of an odd (albeit sympathetic) look from the lady behind the check-in desk, and while under normal circumstances he might feel self-conscious, right now he honestly couldn't care less about the way her brow quirks at his disheveled, drowned-rat aesthetic. He simply slaps his card down on the counter with a wet and shaking hand, then thanks her as she hands him his key and points him up the stairs.
Yosuke climbs into the hottest shower he's ever taken and stares at the wall in shock until his skin turns pink.
---
The next morning dawns bright and misty, with the sun peaking through the gloom and chasing away all that's left of the rain from before. It's at least something pretty to look at after hardly sleeping for the scant remainder of the night, he tells himself as he's gathering his clothes back up from where he'd hung them to dry in the bathroom. He's not quite sure he really wants to go back home at this point, but if he doesn't vacate the hotel room pretty soon they'll charge him for another night, and if that's going to happen then he'd need to go back anyway to pack an actual away bag. So, for now at least, he's going to try and brave the apartment while he has as much daylight as he can possibly get – and save another hit to his wallet if he can.
He trudges back to the apartment building and takes his sweet, sweet time getting up to his floor, dragging his feet in the stairwell to the point of almost tripping over them. It's as he's hesitating near his door, key in the lock but unturned, that he hears a voice behind him.
“Oh! Well hello there, dear, I don't believe we've met yet.”
Yosuke looks up to see an elderly woman in a periwinkle dress, grey hair pulled back into a tight bun and held in place by a wide white bandana. Her back is hunched slightly with age, and while her face is heavily wrinkled and sports a large mole just where her left eyebrow starts, her eyes are sharp and kindly – as is the warm smile stretching across her features. Near her feet are an array of plastic grocery bags; in her hand is a set of keys, no doubt for the door to the apartment directly to Yosuke's left, which means she is likely his neighbor. He blinks at her for a moment, exhausted and bedraggled in more ways than one, but finds that no, he still doesn't recognize her. (Then again, he hasn't really met too many of his neighbors – he's been too busy trying to finish settling in.)
He swallows to unstick his weary tongue from the roof of his mouth. “N...no, we haven't,” he manages, though it's rough and crackly and very much not the kind of first impression he was hoping to make. He clears his throat to try and force himself into some semblance of being human again, rolling his shoulders to try and stand a little straighter. “Hanamura Yosuke,” he introduces, “I just moved in about three weeks ago.”
The old woman smiles a little wider. “Such a polite young man,” she says approvingly. “Ogaki Kaede – but call me 'Granny,' won't you?” She chuckles. “Nearly everyone does. I don't think I'd even remember to respond to my actual name anymore, if someone were to use it.”
Dumbly, Yosuke just nods; he's far too tired and far too rattled still from last night to properly interact with other human beings. As he's standing there, staring blankly at his neighbor while continuing to not unlock his apartment, 'Granny' unlocks her own. With a low grunt she tucks her keys into the pocket of her dress and slowly bends down to gather up her shopping bags.
It's as perfect an excuse to continue stalling as any, and it's also a way to make a better first impression, so Yosuke takes two long steps closer and hovers near the old woman's side. “Can I help?” he asks quietly, throat still a little rough from dashing through the rain to the hotel.
Granny gives him another warm smile. “Well thank you, that'd be lovely.” She takes a step out of his way and Yosuke carefully grabs what bags he can carry; he loops the handles of ones that he can't over his forearms.
“Come in, come in,” she says as she pauses near the door to toe off her shoes before stepping aside to let Yosuke in. “Would you like to stay for some tea, dear? You helped me get the bags in, it's the least I can do.”
“Uhhh,” he drawls, brain lagging. On the one hand he doesn't know how much energy he has left to spend on polite small talk with his neighbor; on the other, even if she winds up trapping him there for a couple of hours showing him pictures of her grandkids or whatever, then it's a few hours more that he doesn't have to constantly feel like looking over his shoulder in his own home. Though he admits that part might be a double-edged sword, considering he would rather brave his apartment while it's still daylight, rather than lose precious hours of sun.
He's still trying to come up with an answer when Granny looks up at him with a raised brow, eyes knowing, and says, “It's quite alright, dear, I'm not going to be offended if you say no.” She chuckles and takes the bags from Yosuke's hands. “I will say, though,” she says as she begins tottering over to the little kitchen space identical to his own, just set against the opposite wall; “...you didn't seem in too much of a hurry to get back home.” Wrinkled hands set the bags down on the counter and she gives him another look with eyes that know far too much. “Could almost say you looked like you'd seen a ghost.”
Yosuke's head snaps up, amber eyes going wide as his heart doubles its beating for a split second. “Wha—but—huh?” Several sounds try to make their way out of his face at once, none of them succeeding. It's such a specific thing to say, and yes, it's a figure of speech, so it's not like she'd straight up said anything direct, but of all the figures of speech to use here, and the glint in her eyes. Yosuke closes his gaping mouth so quickly his teeth click together, and all the while, Granny's shoulders are shaking with silent laughter.
“I thought as much,” she says, taking the tea kettle down from the cabinet above her head. She turns on the faucet and starts filling the kettle up with water. “When you live in one place long enough you start to become familiar with the patterns of the building.” She taps at her temple, smirking a bit. “Not just the people, those can change over time – someone has a baby, someone gets divorced, things like that – but the building? No, the building and its rooms are quite set in their routines.”
Yosuke just kind of stands there, staring at her as his brain tries to play catch up while she putters about putting her groceries away and a faint string of steam begins to drift from the kettle. Eventually Granny just huffs in amusement and, shutting the cupboard door on the last of her things, she shuffles back over and gently puts a hand on Yosuke's arm. “You've seen him, haven't you, dear? The boy at the window?”
Yosuke swallows hard, nodding slowly.
She gives him a nod in return. “Why don't you come and sit down?” she says softly, patting his arm. He finally slips off his shoes and she leads him further into the living room over to the couch. The kettle whistles in the kitchen.
“I'm sorry,” Yosuke whispers, still trying for normalcy as his neighbor turns around to heed the call of the kettle. “I... I don't mean to impose...”
But Granny just waves her hand dismissively and shuts off the stove. “Shush, you're not imposing on anyone.” A few moments pass and she shuffles back over with a little tray, setting it down  on the low table she'd seated her guest at. She sits opposite him and busies herself with the teapot and cups. “You're not the first to see him,” she says after a short silence; her smile holds a hint of sadness as she looks back up at him. “My grandson Kanta lived there for a bit while he was in college. He moved out only a month or so before you moved in, actually.” She points over to a few framed photos on the wall behind the small couch at Yosuke's back, one of which is of Granny and a lanky young man with short, short black hair that Yosuke can only assume is Kanta. Granny chuckles warmly, but her eyes hold that same odd melancholy. “Every time there was a storm during finals week, Kan-chan would come over here and pull his all-nighters at my place; even slept on the couch. He said it felt like he was intruding on something private whenever it rained.”
Granny pauses in her talking to take a long drink of her tea. In the quiet, Yosuke holds his own cup with both hands, staring down into the steaming liquid in thought, and letting the warmth of the porcelain ground him as it seeps into the palms of his hands. He pulls in a slow, deep breath as Granny's cup makes contact with the surface of the table once again.
“...What happened in the apartment?” he asks her quietly. He can feel his exhaustion from the night before still lingering in his bones. The real problem, though, isn't just the fear he'd felt, the lack of sleep, the adrenaline that had kept him going as he'd sprinted though the rain – it's the last few seconds of the stranger's existence in Yosuke's living room that's been playing on loop through his head like a damaged cassette tape. He's never seen anyone with an expression so helplessly lost, so utterly afraid and confused, since his crush back in high school had died. Yosuke remembers seeing the way her little brother's face had twisted at the funeral – just for a moment, when he thought that no one else was looking – and the image has been burned into a sad, hollow place inside Yosuke's his mind ever since. He'd hoped he'd never have to see anything as devoid of hope ever again.
But then he had, and it's left him cold in a way that nothing seems to help – not the burning shower in the hotel, nor the tea stinging his hands through the sides of the cup.
On the other side of the table, Granny hums. “Well,” she starts, drawing out the sound as if she's thinking. “I don't really know the whole of it, but before Kan-chan came to live next door there was another boy named... Oh, what was it.” She puts a knuckle to her lips for a moment, muttering to herself as she tries to recall the name. “Seta, I believe it was,” she finally says; “Wonderfully kind young man, said he was getting ready to start college in the fall.” Her frown deepens. “He was always alone, though; I think the only time I ever saw anyone next door besides him was the day he arrived, and even then it just looked like a pair of hired movers.”
Granny sighs from one side of her mouth, an odd, unrecognizable emotion coming to rest in the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She takes another long, deliberate drink of her tea. When she sets it down again, there is a look of grief and deep regret set into the lines of her face, and her lips press into a harsh, thin line as her eyes begin to mist over. With painful slowness she turns to stare over at her own sliding glass door.
“...They found his body on the sidewalk not even a year after he moved in,” she whispers. “A suicide, they labeled it; said he must have jumped from the balcony somewhere around 3:00, 3:30 in the morning.”
Her shoulders slump. “It was storming so badly that no one even heard him land...”
---
Yosuke winds up staying with Granny until late afternoon, unable to leave a kindly old woman alone with her sorrowful memories after that. He does eventually wander back to his own apartment, the shadows having just begun to shift as he leaves, but this time there is no fear, no panic or racing heartbeat. Instead, there is only a quiet kind of melancholy that makes him drag his feet and lean heavily against the front door as he closes it behind him. He stares unseeing into the slowly-darkening interior of his home and lets out a long, quiet lungful of breath through his nose.
“...Are you here?” he calls softly into the silence of the room.
The silence does not answer.
It doesn't answer later that night, either, as Yosuke sits on the carpet and watches the cloudless, moonlit night outside the glass of his sliding door. Nor does it answer the next night, or the next one, or even the next. It continues not to answer for a week's worth of setting suns as they bring nothing but clear and storm-less skies.
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ceruleanrambles · 4 years
Conversation
Granny Ogaki: All right, everyone, I have a box here. We're each going to put something we love in the box.
Michiko: Can I put Satsuki in the box?
Granny Ogaki: No.
Teacher: Can I put Mei in the box?
Granny Ogaki: No.
Kanta's mom: Can I p-
Granny Ogaki: No one may put Satsuki or Mei in the box.
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