Play Date

“Haru-chan!”

The loud, high pitched voice brought Haruka out of his daze as he looked up from the grass and out at the four boys waving to him.

“We’re here to playyyy!” called the little blonde, Nagisa.

Haru stood up and cupped his hands around his mouth, calling back, “Come inside then!” He started back towards his house and waited for his friends to follow.

“I’ve never been to your house before,” Rei remarked, stepping inside. That’s right, Haru thought. It was the first time that all five of them would be together outside of elementary.

“So what are we gonna do, Haru-chan?” Rin asked, sitting down cross-legged on Haru’s living room floor.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “This was Makoto’s idea.”

“Haru-chan was telling me that he wanted to see all of us more often,” Makoto said, sitting down next to Rin. The other boys soon followed until they had made a circle with the five of them.

“That doesn’t mean I know what to do,” Haru muttered.

“Heyyy, Haru-chan where are your parents?” Nagisa asked. “I’ve never met them!”

“They’re in Tokyo,” Haru said. “My grandmother watches over me. She’s taking a nap.”

“Are we being too loud?” Rei asked, concerned.

“No, it’s fine,” Haru said, standing up. “Wait right here, I know what we can do.”

He walked into his room and grabbed his box of crayons and a large sheet of paper. He didn’t know if his friends liked drawing, but it was worth a try. He marched back to the living room and set the supplies down in the center of their little circle.

Rin’s eyebrows creased in something that looked almost like confusion to Haru. “We’re… drawing?”

Haru didn’t hesitate to pick out a blue crayon and began drawing. “If you want to,” he said, carefully drawing out the outline of a fish.

Rin shrugged and fished out a crayon and the other boys did the same. At first they were only silly doodles. Animals, trees, stick people, and the like. Then suddenly, Nagisa popped up from his position of laying on his stomach to excitedly point at what he’d drawn.

“What is that?” Makoto asked.

“It’s an alien!” Nagisa beamed proudly. “I’m going to find one of those when I grow up. In space!” He spread his arms out wide as if trying to convey the hugeness of space. “I’ll get to wear those cool suits and ride in a rocketship!” he chattered excitedly.

“You want to be an astronaut, Nagisa?” Rei asked. Nagisa nodded happily. Rei took his crayon and began drawing something that looked like a test tube.

“I want to be a scientist!” Rei boasted, showing off his drawing like it was the Mona Lisa. “I’ll get to create new things, experiment, figure out how things work.” He adjusted his glasses, which had begun to slide down his face in the midst of his excitement. “I might even be able to cure diseases!”

“That’s so cool, Rei-chan!” Makoto smiled. “You’ll do great! You too, Nagisa.”

“What do you want to do, Makoto?” Rin asked.

“Well…” He bent down and began a drawing of a fire truck. “I’d really like to be a fireman! Saving people’s lives sounds really great. I don’t know about all that fire though…” He looked down, mildly embarrassed.

“That’s cool, Makoto,” Haru said.

“Yeah, definitely!” Nagisa chirped. “Fire trucks are really cool!”

Makoto blushed, and then gave a huge smile.

“You know what I want to be?” Rin asked, finishing up a drawing that he was working on. It was a police car. “I wanna be a police officer. Catching bad guys, solving crimes, riding around in a cool police car.” He imitated shooting a gun. “That’s what I want to do.”

“Wow… cool!” Nagisa all but squealed.

“What about you, Haru-chan?” Makoto asked.

“Yes, Haru, what about you?” Rei added.

Haru felt the weight of all the eyes on him. “I- I don’t know.”

Suddenly it became the other four’s mission to find Haru a dream career.

“Doctor!”

“Writer!”

“Artist!”

“Swimmer!”

“Singer!”

“Janitor!”

“Teacher!”

Finally, Makoto suggested, “How about a chef? Haru-chan’s a good cook.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Haru said. He drew a frying pan on the paper.

“It suits him. But Haru-chan probably just wants to be a fish!” Rin said, proud of his own little joke.

The other boys laughed.

“No matter what we are when we grow up,” Haru said, “we’ll be together, right?”

They all nodded in agreement.

My contribution to Style Five Week! This is day one for the Future Fish/Beginnings prompt

#stylefiveweek #day 1 #Beginnings #Future Fish #fanfic