“I’m not buying that.”

Aki doesn’t even look up from his magazine to see the new shirt you’d chosen. Sighing loudly, you put the shirt back on the rack.

For someone who had made you sleep outside on the balcony the first week of living together as punishment for spitting in his face, Aki had been oddly concerned when he found out you didn’t have a change of clothes outside your usual work uniform.

His snarky line of questioning had quickly turned into genuine curiosity and confusion when you came clean about never being in school either, something he had confirmed after going behind your back and asking Makima about your prior enrollment status. You had parents somewhere, you had told him, they just didn’t find school that important.

The tirade he went on about how important school was for someone your age felt like hours upon hours, and you spent most of it wishing he would stick his nose somewhere far away from you.

After the lecture, Aki had went silent and gone outside to smoke, and you had assumed that was the end of it. After all, Public Safety was full of kids your age and younger, but this is your eighth store of the day, and you’re still empty-handed with a headache. You’re beginning to wish his apathy had been the case after all.

“Why can’t you pick out something nicer? Something that doesn’t look like you went digging through a trash can for,” Aki asks, finally glancing up from his Better Homes and Gardens magazine, his nose wrinkling in barely veiled disgust.