Chapter Text
Sweeping floors was nothing new to Iwaizumi Hajime. From the minute he could grab things with his small baby hands he was cursed to forever clean up after those more fortunate than him. However there was a huge difference between the palace he had once had lived in and the dusty streets of a broken country.
He had repressed many things since the day of its fall, but the sweeping motions laid stuck in his muscle memory. ”Born a servant boy, live a servant man and die a servant coot”, as he’d once heard a poor excuse of a mentor say an hour before dying of alcohol poisoning. Quite the role model.
His depressing thoughts were interrupted out of seemingly nowhere. The sound of sweeps and crying children had been replaced by a familiar melody making its way through the air. It was too odd for him to move. He stayed stiff, letting the snow fall around him as he listened closely. The mechanic sound of a music box being played brought him right back to eleven years ago where it had been played to him in a hidden corner of a palace. Played to him by a beautiful boy in hideous robes that he…
He shook his head, stopping the thoughts before they put him into another anxiety attack. Mustering up the most deadpan look he could, he turned around to face the source of the sound. It wasn’t as surprising it should’ve been.
”Hanamaki, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
His friend simply grinned, sat on the edge of a stone wall separating a decent enough street from the straight up dump he had been attempting to clean up over two weeks. The sinister look on his face served as a contrast for the innocent glow of the golden music box he had in his hand.
Iwaizumi was in for a pile of shit bigger than the ones in this alley. That was an alarming fact.
”So you do remember it,” Hanamaki said. ”It was a long shot, I admit, but thank goodness I didn’t just waste my life savings on a useless toy”
”I’m sorry, you’ve what” Hajime scoffed. He knew his friend was an idiot, but not quite to this extent.
”You know who this is rumored to belong to, don’t you?”
Of course he knew. He knew that Hanamaki knew that he knew. At the young age of eleven, he could not have foreseen just how much of a mistake telling his new family of his past would become. Poor little Hajime had simply figured it would be necessary to earn their trust.
As of the revolution, nobody who had an ounce of self preservation would’ve associated themselves with the royal palace. However Hajime had only been a servant boy. A mistreated one at that but that was too common to complain about. Out of the four families he had been shoved into a room with upon escaping the tragedy, a lady Hanamaki and her three children had been especially intrigued by the young boys past.
In gratitude of the motherly care the lady had so graciously given him, he’d offered her and her son Takahiro the more juicy details of his palace life. The tale of a bored prince who had given him one night of rest and recreation was regarded as a tear jerker by the mother and an excellent opportunity by the son. In the early years of their friendship, the younger Hanamaki’s daydreams and ”what if’s” had been entertaining but after a couple of years it was just an annoying reminder of how uneventful his life had been ever since.
”Please don’t tell me you honestly spent the only money we had on the useless junk of a dead kid.” He angrily replied.
”The rumors on the streets would beg to differ. Word is that the youngest boy survived”
”The rumors on the streets-” He scoffed, but was quickly interrupted.
”Furthermore, the rumor of my very own friend- no, my brother, confirms it even further. If anybody should believe he survived it would be you.”
”Every member of the royal family was executed, Hanamaki.”
”But in difference to every other member, his body was never found. Coincidence?”
”It’s not a coincidence, it’s logic. All I did was get him out of the palace but at the end of the day he was nothing but a spoiled prince. There’s no way he survived the harsh world outside of his castle.”
”That is no way to talk about your childhood friend.”
”We weren’t friends, I was his escape route… In more ways than one.”
”Well, an old emperor dowager wouldn’t see a difference.”
”What the fuck are you talking about?”
”So, there’s this reward-”
Hajime picked up his broom and walked away without a word. He was not about to waste hours he could be working to earn back that wasted money on whatever delusion his entrepreneur of a friend had.
”Oh come on Iwaizumi! it is not as big of a deal as you’d think. Just weeks ago somebody from this very city tried walking right up to him, posing as his deceased grandson. In difference to that guys though, we might actually have a chance of making this work”
”Make what work, Hanamaki? Fraud? ’Cause I guarantee you neither of us would make for a good prince.”
”We’ll find someone. We’ll just hold auditions in some abandoned hall somewhere and who knows, maybe the real Tomoharu just happens to show up! Nothing is impossible, Zumi, come on!” This pitch of his sounded way too practiced for Iwaizumi’s comfort.
”Forget it, I’m not doing it.”
”Do you want to be stuck a street sweeper forever, Iwaizumi? Because if I spend another week of getting ordered around by ’big-sis-know-it-all’ you’ll find me at he bottom of the nearest bridge. I’ll handle everything; the contacts, the auditions, the preparations, the actors… But I need you. Please.”
Hajime does not react. Not in any way that reveal his thoughts to Hanamaki. He just stares down at his broom in tense silence, scowl ever present. Hanamaki begins to walk away in defeat.
”Ten.”
”What?” Hanamaki stops abruptly and turns to his friend.
”I will sit with you and review ten actors. That’s it. Happy now?”
And to this day, Hajime swears the wide grin his face morphed into is the ugliest sight he ever came across in his entire life.
”I’m overjoyed”