@knollknelling
Hifumi needs to get out of here. Like, in the cosmic sense he needs to get out of here and get back to Shinjuku, but more immediately he needs to get out of this building. Itâs too stuffy, too lonely. He needs to talk to people and see the sun and feel like a better version of himself.
He carries his suit jacket slung over one arm like a shield, just in case, and as heâs taking the stairs down to the ground floor he feels sort of like the guy in every horror movie who thinks a flashlight is a totally reasonable defense against whateverâs lurking in the basement and then dies to it immediately. Thatâs not fair to women, though. Very few of them lurk and almost none of them have tried to kill him. Hifumi just has issues, and not knowing when heâll see Doppo next is making them worse.
Heâs temporarily distracted from those issues by the sight of a tiny man sitting on one of the lobbyâs fancy haunted house sofas, engrossed in what looks like the first steps of a knitting project. The guy looks too anxious to be knitting, honestly. He circles around to the front of the couch to peer at him.
âWow,â he says blithely, âyouâre super new at this, huh?âÂ
Hifumi leans down over the man to a take a closer look, his half-unbuttoned shirt revealing an awful lot of pectoral cleavage. âAre you just learning to cast on? Looks like you got the first few right, but here,â he says, pointing to a stitch, âyou started pulling the yarn too tight, and here you looped it wrong. Youâre totes going to have to start over. I can like, help show you how to do it right if you want? Iâm good with my hands, yâknow.â He punctuates his cheerful barrage of words with a beam and a wink.
Knoll is trying to learn to knit.
The keyword here is trying; heâs never knitted before coming here, and it shows. Heâs trying not to get too frustrated and give up, because he wants to learn, he really does: he wants to be able to create something, something with purpose, something useful. At the very least, if he is able to clothe refugees in scarves and mittens for the coming winter weather, that will help. It will be the first step in atoning for everything heâs done.
Except... heâs struggling to even cast on. Because clearly heâs not meant for this, heâs good for nothing but destroying, heâs--
Knoll clenches his teeth, looks at the instructions again, waits for the letters to stop swimming and resolve themselves into a language he can understand. Loop the yarn around--
Someone abruptly shoves their way into Knollâs personal space and he jumps, startled.Â
âUh,â he says, looking down and Oh thatâs an awful lot of bare skin, he needs to find somewhere else to look right now--Â âIâm. Sorry,â he says, looking fixedly at his ball of yarn. He should be apologising, right? With a sharp tug, he unravels all his progress from the last hour, trying not to look as sad as he feels about that.
Then his thoughts catch up to him. âYou--â he says, glancing up at the man and forcing himself to look at his face, uncomfortable as that is, âyou want... to help me? I mean-- youâd be willing? Iâd,â Knoll pauses, swallowing his pride, âappreciate. it.â

















