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“Oh-no! No no no no no!” Tama wakes up to the horrid, shrill beeping of his broken alarm clock. “No no no! I’m late!” The clock, he realized, had been set to nine AM instead of seven AM, when he was supposed to get ready to leave. “Now Hachi will be angry!” Alas, he had no choice but to accept his inevitable fate, and turned towards the front door of his apartment.
Tama shuffled quietly into cafe Hachiware, hoping that Hachi wouldn’t hear his soft steps. But Hachi, with his impossible hearing of course heard his guilty paws sliding across the sparkling clean floor. “Tama!” He snapped angrily, “There you are! I’ve been waiting since the crack of dawn!” Tama winced at his furious expression, and shut his eyes tight. “I-I’m sorry… I made a mistake. But I apologize, it won’t happen again!” Tama heard Hachi sigh, and open his eyelids to see Hachi looking awkwardly in another direction. “Well…I suppose I’ll forgive you. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again! I can’t have my favorite patisserie running away from me now, can I?” Hachi smiled with a bit of concern, and a bit of an emotion Tama couldn’t quite place. But what came to mind when he saw him make such a happy expression was no curiosity, but a single word: cute. “Wait…cute?! What sort of things am I thinking about my best friend!?” Tama continued through the next ten minutes, flipping between denying what he thought, and justifying it, when the bell rang. He immediately snapped his head up to see none other than Mitsubachi Kanae walking through the doorway. “Hachi!” She cried energetically, and the cat in question turned his head towards her with a smile. “Why hello, miss Kanae. Would you like the usual?” “You know it!” Mitsubachi grinned, and Tama watched a felt a twinge of jealousy when Hachi smiled fondly at her. And though Tama tried to deny it, he heard a little voice in the back of his mind say “Why doesn’t he ever look at me like that?” “Tama? Is something the matter? Shouldn’t you start working on the shortbread?” Tama realized that he had been staring at Hachi while he prepared Mitsubachi’s rose tea. He blushed and looked away, muttering a “sorry” under his breath as he hurried to the kitchen to prepare the cake. He absentmindedly tossed ingredients together as thoughts whirled around in his mind. “Why did I call Hachi cute? Why am I jealous? Am I even jealous? Probably not. It’s just…I’m just tired. Just tired.” With that affirmation, he turned to serve the cake to Mitsubachi. “Um, Tama?” Mitsubachi spoke a bit timidly. “I, uh, think this is the wrong order…but it’s okay! I’ll eat it!” She waved her hands, as if to shake off any bad feeling, but it did nothing to soothe Tama’s burning embarrassment. “What seems to be the problem?” Tama looked up to see a concerned Hachi staring down at him and Mitsubachi. “Oh it’s nothing, it’s nothing! Tama just…made a mistake, that’s all!” She looked a bit uncomfortable at admitting what he had done, but it was nothing compared to the growing fire within his stomach. “Oh, my deepest apologies, miss Kanae! I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive Tama, he’s a bit out of it today.” Hachi made to take away the cake, but Mitsubachi insisted that she didn’t mind. “Don’t worry, I love red velvet too!”
It was eleven PM, and Hachi was closing up shop. “Hachi…” Tama spoke nervously from the hallway to the kitchen. “What is it, Tama?” “I…I just wanted to say I’m really sorry about today, and…I-I promise it will never happen again! I’ll try my hardest!” To Tama’s surprise, Hachi laughed. He glanced at his face, confused, searching for any signs of hysteria. “Hachi? Are you alright?” “Yes Tama, I’m just fine.” Hachi stopped laughing and looked Tama in the eye (which definitely did NOT make his heart flutter.) “Look Tama. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s a bit irritating, yes, but nothing you can’t recover from. Remember we’ll always be B…best friends.” Tama was beyond overjoyed at Hachi’s words, but… something about best friends just didn’t seem…right. And then it hit him like a brick. All those confusing feelings he had, not just only today, but several days in the past. It wasn’t exhaustion, or confusion. It was love. Beautiful, pure love. “Hachi…” before he had realized what he was doing, Tama started nervously, and gulped. “What do you think of being…more than just…best friends?” Seeing Hachi’s shocked face, Tama instantly regretted his decision, and opened his mouth to take it back. But before he could, Hachi had opened his mouth, and said something that Tama could not process immediately. “I…I would like that, I think…” before crossing the room in what seemed like two steps, and planting a soft kiss, right on Tama’s cheek. “I think we both would.”