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smoking was something shigeo had never thought he'd end up doing. it was something he'd never wanted to do when he was younger. growing up watching his dad smoke nearly five cigarettes a day and eventually developing lung cancer when shigeo was no older than sixteen definitely should have kept him away from the awful things.
however, with adulthood came a certain sense of stress that shigeo had never experienced in all his years of middle school to college. he'd been on his own for two years before finally finding and moving into a place with teruki. in those two years, shigeo could only find solace between work and bills in the presence of his fiance and in the small little sticks of cancer.
teruki had, of course, tried to get shigeo to convert to electric cigarettes and nicotine patches, but there was a certain comfort that could only be found in the burning of smoke in his lungs and the all-too scent.
meeting keiji had given shigeo a reason to smoke less. the last thing he wanted to do was follow in his father's footsteps of smoking around children. especially a child such a keiji, who already had to deal with going home to watch his already-sick mother drink her life away with no regard to the affect she was having on her own child.
keiji had once approached shigeo one of the rare times shigeo couldn't help but treat himself to a cigarette in the office.
“shishou, why do you smoke those?” keiji had inquired. his dark, tired eyes peered curiously from beneath his messy bangs at shigeo.
immediately, shigeo could feel guilt twist in his gut and snake its way up his throat, making it hard to breathe or even speak for a few moments. he quickly put out the cigarette, and gave keiji a small, guilty smile.
“they're supposed to help with stress,” shigeo decided to respond with, over his dad's insistent words that cigarettes were “god’s stress relievers”.
“do they?” keiji eyed the ash tray, where shigeo's cigarette continued to simmer and smoke. “do they really help?”
the question was one shigeo found suddenly hard to answer. of course, at first the cigarettes had been the only thing keeping shigeo from drowning in his stress, as teruki had been so busy with his own work that the two hardly saw each other. but now, with his fiance working constantly with him, and with keiji’s additional presence to their dynamic, shigeo suddenly realized that the cigarettes no longer really had the same use that they used to.
“not really, no,” shigeo murmured. he would have to talk to teruki about investing in nicotine patches again.