Chapter 4
Hiro hadn’t felt like working on many of his projects lately. He occasionally picked up a few robots he’d put together and tinkered around with them, but he lost interest or motivation a few hours later. And he hadn’t had much inspiration to start new projects from scratch, either. He could remember a time when he was so engrossed in his projects that he would work well into the small hours of the morning without even realising, until Tadashi yelled at him to go to sleep. He missed being so productive. He missed his brother being around.
It was about twelve midday by the time Hiro woke up. He didn’t feel like doing anything. He barely had the energy to drag his laptop onto his bed to watch a film, but somehow he managed it. He found an old bottle of soda under his bed that was flat enough to make him wonder exactly how long it had been there, but he just couldn’t bring himself to care. He still drank it as he dug up some old anime film to stare at for a while.
It was about twelve thirty when he heard someone knocking on his door. “Yeah?” he called out and Aunt Cass walked in. She was carrying what looked – and smelled – like a big plate of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies.
She’d been doing this a lot lately. She usually greeted him now with delicious treats she baked special – though he had to wonder how ‘special’ it was if she was doing it every other day. Sometimes when he wandered over to the fridge, he found a note with his name and a heart next to all sorts of baked goods that he loved: lemon tarts, ginger slices, rocky road, apricot pastries, chocolate brownies… With the amount of sweets he was eating, he was actually starting to get a bit, well… tubby.
“Still in bed, Hiro?” she asked, shutting the door behind her and making her way into his bedroom. He shrugged, watching her rest the plate of cookies on the lower-half of his bed. She sat down next to them, folding one leg smoothly over the other. She looked at him with soft concern in her expression. “Are you feeling OK?”
“M’fine,” Hiro mumbled. He jabbed a finger at his laptop and paused the anime film he’d been watching. He sat himself up a little and rubbed at his eyes. “Just… tired, that’s all.”
She nodded understandingly. “…You know, Tadashi told me what you said a while ago. About wanting to enrol at SFIT.”
Hiro just wished now that he’d never even mentioned it. He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” He tried to sound as if he didn’t care, but his bitterness still came through. “It’s not as if they’d want a stupid kid like me there anyway.”
“Hiro,” Aunt Cass exclaimed quietly. She looked genuinely shocked. “Hiro, you’re not a stupid kid – whoever said you were?”
“Well, no one, but…” He heaved a sigh and the words just poured out, even though he hadn’t meant them to. “People still treat me like I’m just a little kid. I graduated from high school four years before everyone else my age, but that doesn’t seem to convince people that I’m any more capable than them. If no one was going to respect me then… why did I even bother pushing myself in school? I don’t know, I’m just… so sick of it.”
He felt awful repeating his thoughts out loud. He shouldn’t have said anything. He braced himself for the inevitable response whenever he brought this up: but you are still a kid, you still have a lot to learn, and so on and so forth. He didn’t much care to hear it. But Aunt Cass surprised him with something completely unexpected.
“I don’t see you as a little kid.” He looked up at her and she was smiling tenderly. “You’re my smart, mature, competent, amazing young man. You’re my Hiro. And if they don’t want you at their Institute then that is their loss. You’re already better than everyone there.”
He actually broke a smile at her at that. She actually managed to make him feel a lot less worthless than he had felt just this morning. “Thanks, Aunt Cass. That… means a lot to me.”
For a minute there he had almost been distracted from the secondary reason why he had so badly wanted to enrol at SFIT: he wanted someplace else to be other than home. Alone, and yet with Aunt Cass always there.
“What are you watching?” she asked, leaning around to have a glimpse of the screen.
“Oh, uh – it’s nothing.” He closed the lid before she could get a good look. “Just a film.”
“Not porn, then?”
Hiro’s mouth fell open. He felt like he’d just been smacked in the face with a hot frying pan – and he looked like it too. “N-No!” he yelled, confused and suddenly defensive. “W-Why would you think that? Look.” He opened up the lid of his laptop again. Aunt Cass was laughing as he started up the film and turned the screen to her. “I don’t watch that kind of thing!”
“Oh,” she laughed, “so it was a good wholesome movie after all. I was just teasing, Hiro.” She brushed her fingers along his hot cheek and it was enough to freeze him in place. “I don’t mind if you watch porn. It’s perfectly normal for a young man... Not a stupid little kid…”
She started running her fingers through his black mess of hair. It probably didn’t feel very clean, but it didn’t dissuade her at all. She still touched him like he was the softest fabric in a materials store.
He started to wonder why he had even tried to convince her he didn’t watch porn in the first place…
“Hey, Hiro,” she whispered close to his face, startling him out of his thoughts. She was smiling almost mischievously. “There’s an old film I’ve been meaning to watch for a while. Would you like to watch it with me?”
He was staring right into her eyes. They were such a lavish spring green, and round – so different to his own. He could almost count every one of her long lashes. “But… bakery… run?”
He couldn’t form the coherent sentence that he’d wanted to, but Aunt Cass still managed to catch his meaning. She shook her head gently. “They don’t need me downstairs right now. My bakery is in good hands…” She smiled like she’d just thought of a good joke, like there was something she wanted to say, but she didn’t share it. “So how about you get started on those cookies and I’ll just fetch that film for us. OK?”
“…OK.”
She kissed him then, right on the lips. There was definitely no mistaking it for accidental this time; it was very much deliberate. It was slow and soft and warm and made his stomach swell with butterflies – just like what he always imagined a real kiss felt like.
It was only until after she’d left that the content haze subsided and Hiro began to hear himself screaming in his head. What was he still doing here? Why hadn’t he run far, far away yet?
He turned his head towards the cookies Aunt Cass had baked. That’s right, baked. Just for him. With valuable ingredients that she used every day to make a living. He picked one up and took a bite. It was still warm. It was crunchy on the outside but soft and partially melted on the inside. It tasted delicious. She went to all this effort, and it would be rude to refuse her now… Right?
He put down the cookie. He wasn’t so sure. He didn’t feel sure of anything anymore.