𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐘𝐌𝐏𝐇 || ʜᴀᴡᴋꜱ

23➟ In which I become an inspirational Pinterest quote.

   "How about we put the vase over there?"

"Rin," I stared at the boy with an emotionless face, "I am in the middle of putting together the worlds most complicated shelving unit. It's. Not. Finished. Please do not put the vase on it."

"But-"

"No buts."

"Pft, no butts."

I rolled my eyes, suppressing a smile, "you're such a child."

"Hey, I see you smiling," Rin countered, sitting down beside me and picking up a metal rod.

"I'm grimacing, they're two completely different things. Now give me that rod before you smash anything," I took it from his hands, looking over the overly complicated instructions and attempting to screw it onto a different metal rod.

"I don't think that's the right rod."

"You're not helping," I side-eyed Rin, who was holding the instructions upside down- or maybe they were upright, it was hard to tell. The whole thing was embarrassing really, I mean, I'm a mechanic for gods sake and I couldn't put together shelves?

"No really, look at that," Rin pointed to one of the diagrams on the paper.

"Okay."

Rin nodded.

"Uh, what about it?" I prompted, confused as to where he was going with this.

Turns out he s was going nowhere, the kid was just as confused as me and after thirty minutes of absolutely no progress, we ended in the kitchen, chowing down on the frozen pizza we had bought on our day out. The shelves laid in pieces on the floor, I was sure that I would get around to finishing it at some point.

"You ever had pizza before?" I looked over at Rin who shook his head.

"Nope, not healthy."

I nodded, "makes sense, the unhealthiest thing they gave me back then were chips this one time. I think the cook was off on a sick day and no one else knew what to cook."

"I liked the cook," Rin noted, as he tried to keep his hair out of his face.

I hadn't really paid attention to it, but his hair had grown out quite a bit since I first met him.

"Hey, you need me to get you a hairband or something?"

He looked up from his food, "why?"

"Because your hair keeps on getting in your face when you try to eat."

"Yeah, sure."

I smiled, quickly scurrying into the bathroom where I opened up the cupboard, "bingo." Sure enough, there was a pack of brand new hair bands in there, alongside various other toiletries the commission had supplied. Closing the cupboard I got a look of myself in the mirror properly for the first time in a while.

It was still me, that's for sure and there was nothing too special about that.

What's that thing that if you look at yourself in a mirror for too long, things start to change. Distort. I must've been staring at myself for a hot minute then because I could've sworn there was a dark shadowy... thing behind me. But then I blinked and mystery solved it was just my eyes being overdramatic as usual.

I left the bathroom and gave Rin one of the hair bands.

"So I just...?"

"Use your hands to pull your hair back into one bunch, and wrap the band around it," I explained, mimicking the actions vaguely with a hairband in front of me.