for best experience, listen to lola by lilith czar while reading this chapter

twenty six

lola

Hiroto hissed in pain as I pressed a soaking wet dish towel to the cuts on his hands. Though she looked fairly harmless, Sarah could pack a punch. And take a punch, for that matter.

All in all, we got back from the Funk Jungle in better shape than we could have, but Noboru was still annoyed that we had gotten into a fight.

"Seriously!" He shouted "It's not even like Bernie hit you first, you could have just walked away."

I shook my head, turning back to the stove. I didn't realize how long I had slept for, and how long we had been out: it was almost four o'clock.

The men continued to argue amongst themselves while I threw some raw chicken into the cast iron frying pan, turning quickly back to a stainless steel pot where I was making curry.

The entire day felt like a waste: we'd gotten nothing done at the Funk Jungle, but left covered in bruises, the full-timers had been calling me non stop, to the point where I'd had to turn my phone off. Above it all, I felt like I was suffocating in some sort of inescapable hell. Trapped in my own mind, and that any second I would wake up and it would be different.

But it wouldn't, because this was reality for me.

And my head wouldn't stop hurting.

I took a deep breath, brushing my hair behind my ears and turning to the cutting board. It was all going to be fine. Just two hours where nothing went wrong. The doorbell rang, and I swear I jumped out of my skin, the knife falling between my fingers and clattering to the floor. Breathing heavily, I knelt down to grab it, Murayama shooting me a concerned glance.

"You okay?" He asked quietly

"Yeah, that just startled me." I said, still slightly out of breath "Hey, can you watch the stove? I'm just gonna go see who that is."

"Yeah, no problem." He said, pressing a quick kiss to the side of my head as I ran out of the kitchen.

Wiping my hands on my jeans, and pushing my glasses further up my nose, I reached for the handle of the door. No sooner than I had opened the door, was I engulfed in a bone-crushing hug, a mass of blond hair in my face as I wrapped my arms around whoever it was.

"Yasushi?" I said with a nervous laugh. "You're crushing my ribs, kid."

"I thought you were dead!" Yasushi replied "You weren't answering our calls, and Murayama was gone as well."

"We were worried." Another voice said. Looking up from the seventeen year old who's arms were around me, I saw the others: Tsukasa, Nakagoshi and Fujio.

"So that's why you were calling. Sorry, I had some things to sort out." I said, separating Yasushi from my body and giving Nakagoshi a quick hug, the worry evaporating from his face.

"We were just worried." Nakagoshi said "Nobody has really ever cared about us this much."

My face fell as I pulled Tsukasa in for a hug. "Come inside. All of you. I'm making chicken curry."

"Knew it smelled good in there." Fujio laughed, the usual overtly cheery expression on his face as he patted me on the shoulder and went inside

"What, no hug from you, Hanoaka?" I chuckled "Hey, how did you dummies even get my address?!"

Fujio shrugged "We live in Hope Hills. There's always a guy that knows a guy."

I shook my head with a small smile, herding the full-timers inside. They all seemed to look around nervously, like they'd never been inside a real home before. Coming up behind them, I herded the kids into the kitchen, their jaws dropping when they saw who else was there.

"Those are the Amamiya brothers!" Nakagoshi shouted, grabbing on to Yasushi's arm, to which the shorter boy swatted it away before looking at Masaki with awe in his eyes

Hiroto chuckled, turning to look at the kids. "I see our reputation precedes us."

"Well, yeah." Tsukasa said "You're kind of local legends."

Murayama rolled his eyes at the kids "Hello, I'm here too!"

"Oh." Yasushi said, waving slightly. "Hi, I guess, Murayama-san."

I chuckled, turning back to the stove. I smiled as I watched the full-timers geeking out over the Amamiyas. Masaki definitely looked like he was enjoying the attention. I just hoped that Yasushi wouldn't bring up the whole me-and-Masaki deal.

"Why did you let them in?" Murayama whined, wrapping his arms around my waist and practically draping all of his weight on me

"What was I supposed to do? Send them back to that cesspool they call Hope Hills?" I said, pressing a quick kiss to Murayama's lips. "Come on, I never really had this when I was younger. It's the happiest this house has ever felt."

Nakagoshi burst out laughing behind us, a huge grin on everybody's faces as Hiroto launched into the story of how the two brothers had defeated Mugen, a story I had heard during my brief stay at their place just outside Sannoh.

"You're so fucking cool." Fujio said to Hiroto, much to Masaki's dismay

"What? No, I'm supposed to be the cool one!" The older brother shouted "Tell them, Midori."

I laughed, using the tongs to mess with the chicken I was frying. "Masaki is definitely cooler, have you seen his record collection?"

"See, point proven!"

"She's an ex-fling!" Hiroto protested "It doesn't count."

"Ex-fling?" Nakagoshi raised an eyebrow "Did I miss something?"

"No!" Masaki and I shouted at the same time, a knowing look on the faces of both Tsukasa and Yasushi

I looked around my kitchen, realizing that even though Noboru had since retreated back to the basement, I had everything I had ever wanted: a family that cared. Sure, they were a group of delinquents and two millennials with no job who rode motorcycles all day, but it was definitely better than Yumeko and my mom.

There was only one person's presence that would make this complete. When Murayama went back to sit around the island with the others, I reached across the counter for my phone.

Midori : hey, did you want to come over for dinner? it's probably better than whatever they're feeding you at housen

His response was almost instantaneous.

Odajima : depends what you're making

Midori: chicken curry

Odajima : i will be there in five minutes. i just have to talk shida into doing my homework.

I smiled, turning back to the kids.

"Hey, do you want to hear about the time I got into a fist fight with the King of Surzuran?"

"Wait, Genji?" Yasushi said, surprised

"No." I grinned "This was way before Genji's time. I'm talking about Tomo Serizawa."

"I went to Surzuran." Masaki mused "Good times. When I wasn't almost dying."

Fujio gawked "You went to Surzuran?"

"Christ, children. Give the guy some space." I chuckled, passing stacks of plates to the kids. "Make yourselves useful and go set the table or something."

"Yes, ma'am." Nakagoshi joked, reaching for the stack of plates

"That's 'mom' to us, Goshan." Yasushi joked, hitting the other kid in the back of the head. It meant a lot to me that they were getting along.

About half an hour later (and a lot of yelling), the curry was finally ready, and my glasses had fogged up so much that I couldn't see. All in all, dinner preparation went better than I thought: Fujio only broke one plate, and it's not like it was an expensive one, and nobody had managed to light anything on fire.

"Guys, there aren't enough table settings." I said quickly, placing a large bowl of curry in the middle of the table. "Tsukasa, can you go and grab another plate and a set of cutlery?"

The blond nodded, rushing back into the kitchen as Murayama asked who the extra place setting was for.

"I invited Odajima."

Murayama's eyes widened "Like, your best friend from high school Odajima? Idiot from Housen who crashed our date Odajima?"

"Yes." I said simply, sitting down at the table as Tsukasa came back. "I haven't seen him in years, babe."

I looked around the table, noticing that all of the full-timers had frozen in place after hearing the name 'Housen'. Out of all of them, Yasushi looked the most frustrated. I had briefly heard about what had happened during the Kidra Incident, when he had gotten his head bashed in and then the staples were yanked out in the big Housen fight. The scar on his scalp had never quite healed properly.

"You know someone from Housen?" Nakagoshi started slowly "And you invited him here?"

I sighed "Listen, what happened between Housen and Oya is in the past. Odajima is a good guy, I've known him since I was fourteen."

"Oh, and he's one of Housen's Four Kings?" Yasushi's jaw dropped

"Just give him a chance, okay?"

The kids sighed, muttering amongst themselves as Tsukasa finished the last place setting and the Amamiyas settled themselves on opposite sides of the table.

"So." Fujio started, breaking the silence. "We never did get to hear your Surzuran story."

I chuckled as everybody began helping themselves to chicken and curry. "So, I was eighteen, and Odajima didn't think I socialized enough, so we went to this keg party in Surzuran's neck of the woods."

"Are you going to tell it right?" Murayama grinned, knowing there were parts of Odajima's retelling that I was going to leave out.

"Be quiet." I chuckled, ruffling his hair

"No, tell the version with all the facts." Nakagoshi encouraged

"You guys are annoying." I said as Murayama began to correct everything I had already said

For the second time that night, my front doorbell rang and I got up to go get it, while Murayama was still trying to tell my Surzuran story the way Odajima had originally told it to him.

When I opened the door, I barely even got a hello from Odajima before he asked where the food was. Typical Odajima Yuken. Laughing, I pulled him in for a hug before directing him to where the table was. He stopped in his tracks, staring at Fujio, who was giving him a nasty glare.

"Yuken." Fujio said simply

"Hanoaka." Odajima sighed "She didn;t tell me that you guys were going to be here."

I rolled my eyes "You idiots need to learn how to get along. Now do you want to eat or not?"

It was a foreign feeling as Odajima settled himself at the table, picking up the Surzuran Story exactly where Murayama had left off- the part where I slammed Serizawa's head into a counter, right before he tied to push me off a balcony. The house felt warmer, livelier as the full-timers and the Amamiya's joked around and laughed, Murayama and Odajima joining in occasionally.

"This is incredible." Odajima said, mouth half-full. "I've missed this so much, you don't even know. Sachio's mom does most of the cooking at Housen, but at most that's once a week. Without Mrs. Ueda, we would probably starve."

"Fujio here eats barely-cooked instant ramen for breakfast." I chuckled "He'd be dead without me."

Yasushi snickered, and Fujio looked like a deer in headlights as he loaded more noodles and curry onto his plate, hands frozen halfway as the pasta fell of the serving tongs.

"It's not like you're ever there in the mornings to make us something!" He defended

"Although." Nakagoshi clicked his tongue, leaning back in the dining room chair "Now that there's something going on between these two, that might change." He hummed, pointing his chopsticks at me and Murayama.

Murayama choked on his coffee, and Odajima coughed so hard that his sunglasses came off.

"You lay a hand on her-" The blond began a threat before I cut him off

"Why don't you stay out of my love life, Goshan?" I shot back at the full-timers

"Fine." Fujio said "But can we pick apart Tsukasa's?"

Tsukasa's face went pink, almost matching the shade of his bold red shirt "How about we don't."

"Oh." I said, raising my eyebrows. "Does Takajo have a crush? Maybe on a certain quiet girl who appeared at the party last night?"

"Now this is where I shine, kid." Masaki grinned "I can give you some real solid relationship advice-"

"I think I'll pass." Tsukasa cut him off

"Good choice." Hiroto said, Masaki quick to kick him under the table

"If you think I'm bringing Sakura back to that hellhole when she clearly left the party exhausted and in tears, you're crazy!" Yasushi shouted "None of you idiots even remotely meet her standards."

"Her standards?" Tsukasa started "Or the standards you set for her?"

Sensing defeat, Yasushi retreated. "Fine. I guess if it had to be any of you, I'd pick you, Takajo. But I'm not happy about it."

The meal lasted about an hour longer, until there was no food left. I underestimated how much everybody was going to eat. It was nice to see everybody get along. I was really starting to feel like I had a place, and these kids were in need of a Guardian Angel. Somebody to look out for them. I was more than happy to be that person, because as much as he tried, my dad couldn't always be. I felt a part of me become whole again as I looked around the table, Yasushi and Hiroto fighting each other for the last piece of fried chicken breast, stuck between their pairs of chopsticks as they pushed it around on the plate, the food eventually flying into the air where Odajima caught it expertly with his own chopsticks, a coy grin on his face as he ate it, the other two staring angrily at him.

I had a family

NOTES!

2258 words of wholesomeness. And I'm not done yet. And the song works so well. I love everything about this chapter.