You'd both looked forward to this day all week. Date night, finally. You'd picked out a good movie, prepped ingredients for a meal you and Yoichi would absolutely devour later on, and lit good smelling candles around your apartment. Everything was set.

Until you opened your phone that morning and realized you had accidentally double-booked yourself. The text reminder was sitting there like it was screaming in your face: babysit for mom's friend's co-worker, 6pm when your date night with your boyfriend was right at the same time. On the same day.

Well, a job is a job, and your babysitting side hustle has been helping you cover material costs for school and takeout with Yoichi whenever you insisted on paying, though he tried to stop you. Then again, its been, what feels like, forever since you two went on a date, so it's not like you could just cancel on him.

So the compromise? He'd come over to your place anyway. With snacks and another one of his hoodies for you, like the original plan. Except you'd have two little kids with you. He agreed to it really fast, confident and charming, and you believed him. Turns out, babysitting wasn't his strongest suit.

The moment the kids were dropped off, a little after him, he was absolutely starstruck at the fact that kids had so much energy. Like, an abnormal amount of energy. He figured that kids loved to nap, but the bunch you're handling today? Absolutely not.

He did help around still, bless him. He folded a paper plane for the kids and it flew well, then they proceeded to ask him to make a dozen more with whatever paper they could find around your place. Scratch paper from your homework, grocery list on your fridge, an info sheet from school, whatever.

He offered to help build a tower with toy blocks they had brought and they had him sit on the base plate as they ran around him in circles for a good ten minutes. They asked him to draw a velociraptor. He googled it and got scared him self. Oh, he was so outmatched.

Meanwhile, you? Effortlessly in your zone. Directing the kid's attention when you picked up the fact that it was getting too much for him, made deals with them when they were trying to have more snacks than healthy, solving disputes between plushies. Your side gig, sure, but in Yoichi's eyes, it was more like a superpower. And that made watching him flounder just a little bit endearing.

At some point, he ended up on the floor beside you, the juice spilled on his jeans drying slowly but surely with a mix of rocket and princess stickers stuck to his shirt. The kids had quieted down, one fully asleep and one slowly falling asleep to a cartoon you put on with their blankets over them.

Yoichi looked at you like you hung the moon. "I heard being good with kids is a really good trait," he says quietly, being mindful of his volume. "I kinda, well, don't have that, but you do and I think that makes me love you a trillion times more."