When the door to his room was thrown open, Kurita was unsurprised to find Momo on the other side. What was more surprising was the pile of books in his arms.

“Kuri-chaaan, let me study in your room!” Walking past him, Momo flopped down by the table without waiting for an answer, dropping the books on it with a loud thud.

Kurita blinked. “Study for what?”

“‘M tryna get a certification for work, but I’m getting shit-all. It’s supposed to make me more money though.”

“Why here?” Kurita sat down in front of his computer again, where he had been working on the next chapter of his novel.

Momo flipped open one of the books, squinting unhappily at the pages. “If I do it at home I get too bored and me and Yata-chan end up fucking instead and then I’m completely dead for the rest of the night.”

Kurita felt his face grow hot. “Oh. Okay.”

Bending down over his book, Momo’s finger followed along the rows of text. Kurita returned to his writing.

They fell into silence, the only sounds Kurita’s typing and the flipping of a page.

 

The silence lasted all of five minutes, before Momo dropped down on his back on the floor with a loud groan, dragging his hands down his face. “Fuck, I’m losing my mind! Why’s this shit so hard!?”

Kurita leaned forward to look at Momo’s book, eyes scanning the words. “Wow, more goes into mixing drinks than I thought it did.”

He would have thought that the groans Momo let out were the sounds of a man dying, had he not been able to see him. “I feel like I'm getting dumber by the minute.”

“That’s not possible.”

At the look Momo sent him, Kurita raised his hands, face flushing. “I-I-I didn’t mean it like that, I swear! I just, you, you, that’s not how it works, is all!”

“Uuuuhu.” Momo sat up, a pout on his lips. He flipped the page in his book, though it was clear that he wasn’t even looking at it anymore.

“You’re…” Kurita ran his fingers along the keys of his keyboard, staring at the blinking text selection cursor on the screen. “You’re not as dumb as you think you are, you know.”

 

Momo snorted. “Yeah right, I barely finished elementary school, no way I’m not dumb.”

“Yata-san would cry if he heard you talking about yourself like that.”

Pausing the flipping of pages, Momo’s eyes turned toward him, curious. “And you?”

Kurita floundered, not knowing how to put his thoughts into words. “I think… I think if you really put your mind to it, you’d realise you can do a lot more than you think. You’re not stupid, you were just dealt a bad hand, so it’s a tougher start. Haven’t you gotten pretty far compared to a year ago?”

For a long moment, Momo didn’t say anything. His eyes stayed locked on him, not wavering. It made Kurita feel like he had said the wrong thing, even though he had spoken from the heart.

“...I guess I have.” He looked down at the book again, still with his fingers holding on to the next page. “Doesn’t make this less hard though.”

“I’m sure your boss will let you take your time to learn it. He wouldn’t tell you to learn it if he didn’t think you could do it, right?”

Momo’s nose scrunched as he grimaced. “Him? Even though he’s threatened to fire me like a million times?” He rolled his lip between his teeth, before clicking his tongue. “I guess it’d be a waste of money to train me for nothing.”

Kurita let out a quiet laugh. “If that’s how you’re going to accept it, I suppose that’s fine.”

Momo rolled his eyes, sticking out his tongue before finally turning back to his book.

 

At least for a while longer, it seemed like he was willing to give it a shot.

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