This is the first time he’s seen the crown prince frown at a piece of strawberry shortcake.
“Is he trying to buy my affection with this?” Kei goes back to his book. “Should I be simpering because of a plate of sweets?”
Kuroo is loathe to do this, but he has to, placing samples of wedding invitations beside the tea and the cake. “Your betrothed wants to know if you would prefer this or the lemon cakes. He also asks you to kindly pick a design to be sent to the guests next week.”
It’s almost admirable how Kei controls his rage, snapping his book shut and standing; dignified, poised, controlled.
The crown must not act out of his emotions. A prince through and though.
“I want you to tell him to kindly fuck off.” Kei says calmly. “I will not be married.
“Your Grace,” Kuroo reaches out, touching the arm of the monarch he helped to grow and groom into power. “You know your place. You know your duty.”
Honey eyes flashing, Kei moves his arm away. “Of course I know my place. You haven’t failed to remind me, remember?”
“Kei,” he tries to placate him again, and it hurts to see him flinch. As if hearing Kuroo say his name hurts.
“If you’re a better man, you would’ve whisked me away from here,” Kei hisses. “We would’ve ran away together, left all this misery. But your duty matters more than me.”
“You are my duty,” Kuroo swears, and it makes Kei laugh.
“You’re more afraid of disappointing my brother than losing me.” It’s bitter, the venom Kei spits out. With a glare of a thousand suns, he storms off, a flurry of silk and curly locks: beautiful, fiery.
He’s at a party, but he can’t help his mind from wondering about Kei, how he found him alone in their room, crouched over schoolwork and giving one word answers to Tetsu while he changed.
He’d been like that for a days after Tetsu said he’s dating Alisa.
Or maybe Tetsu’s just looking at this with a skewed perspective, that part of him he thought he already stabbed to death; rearing it’s ugly, bloody head, telling him Kei might be jealous.
Kei is not jealous. He might be in one of those moods. Yes, moody Kei is more probable.
As he downs his fourth bottle, he imagines Kei on the bullet train tonight, all blonde curls and honey eyes and round spectacles, ears hidden by his expensive headphones.
Tetsu can’t help but feel like he missed some opportunity he doesn’t know.
He abdicates the throne six years after inheriting the crown.
His new omega seethed when she learned what Tetsurou has done.
They have been pressuring him to produce an heir, the same parliament that worked with the crown to bind him to Kei.
It’s a miracle he escapes his guards, driving for hours until he reaches a sleepy seaside town where no one seems to know him. He rents a homestay, small and inconspicuous, managed by an old man.
He finally hears real quiet for the first time in his twenty-nine years on Earth.
No one bothers him when he wakes up early and sit by the sea. No one talks to him when he goes home late. The old man would serve his food and leave him alone. He knows he lives with a small kid, a grandchild, but Tetsurou has never seen him.
Here’s the thing: no one believed him. He was fresh out of university, armed with basic baking skills and a business degree, he really can’t blame them. But Kei knew he could do it, so he did.
He bought the small stall near the market district and turned it into a pastry shop.
Mooncake was Kei’s first baby. He handled everything; the finances, the recipes and cooking, and only hired help when needed. His team is small, just him and Yachi and Tadashi. But they made it work like it was a ten man team instead. He’s proud of it.
Of course the fear that Mooncake would never take off remained inside Kei perpetually. The market district they were in was famous for their hole in the wall shops and stalls, a new player led by an untested leader in this kind of environment sounds like a bad idea.
Hajime doesn’t acknowledge him, fixated at the carnations at his feet, slowly pelted by the cold, light rain that morning.
He’s battered and bruised, was only able to get out the hospital that week after the accident, but he stands proud in front of an empty grave.
“Kei hates chrysanthemums,” Hajime snaps as Tetsurou stands beside him, arm outstretched to place a bouquet on the gravestone. “Reminds him of your fucking family.”
“He used to paint them a lot for me.”
The symbol of the royal family. ‘My family,’ he used to say with a blush.
“And what good did it cause him, making you happy?”
He knows the answer, but he keeps his silence, watching Hajime crouch down, arranging the other flowers on the grave and brush grass and dirt off the marble.
They took his belongings after the official announcement. And for the first time, Tetsurou sees the paintings Kei had worked on.
Violent and chaotic, crimson across the canvass, so unlike his earlier works as a child. Kei liked his palette with soft, warm colors. Gold like his honey gaze, white like his skin, rosy like his cheeks.
They took it all away, and he was left with nothing.
Just like Kei wanted.
“Tooru will be betrothed soon.”
It’s Kenma, flipping through Kei’s death certificate. He’d been insufferable since morning, bothering Tetsurou with paperwork and pitching the image the royal family wants him to portray to the public: a grieving crown prince, a widowed alpha.
Their realization comes ironically after the four of them finally reunite.
Sure, Keiji checks up on Koutaro to make sure he’s alive and filing paperwork for his taxes, and Tetsurou still sends memes to annoy Kei when he’s not running around doing errand for JVA.
It’s not overt, perhaps insignificant enough that a couple hours of catching up can’t cure, but it’s there; embedded in the way the jibes land on the wrong places, the exhausted replies, and the general sense of being there out of some pathetic attempt to hold on to nostalgia.
They’ve outgrown each other.
There’s sadness, knowing that these people who once knew so much about you are leading lives devoid of your existence. They are making new memories, new friends, new connections. That they have kept some people close while they let you drift away.