Gundham comes into the class one day and he’s super proud and showing off the baby hamsters to everyone. He’s a little embarrassed to ask for help, but he’s working on a very important conservation project or something, so he asks if anyone would be willing to keep an eye on them for an hour or two at a time over the next few days, insisting that it wouldn’t be hard, all they really had to do was make sure they didn’t escape and call Gundham if something went wrong. At least like half the class offers cus the babies are just so damn cute, Soda only offers cus Sonia did and he’s trying to impress her.

Gundham sets up an enclosure for the hamsters in the classroom, and everyone picks a time to come by to watch them.

When Soda’s turn rolls around a few days later, he’s secretly a little excited. He’s been complaining about it the past few days to keep up appearances, can’t have anyone suspecting that even tough he can’t stand Gundham, he also kind of has a soft spot for him (What? Dudes handsome), but he’s actually pretty psyched to get to spend some time just chilling with the baby hamsters. He’s never had his own pet, but he’s always wanted one.

Anyways, when he gets to the class he checks on all the babies and as far as he can tell they’re all good. He gives pets them for a bit, but then they seem like they’re trying to go to sleep so he leaves them and sits at a desk to play around on his phone for a while. Like 40 minutes later he gets up to check on them again.

They’re pretty much all huddled up, and Soda thinks it’s super cute, but he notices one lying down a bit away from the rest. He assumes it must have rolled away in it’s sleep, or that it got kicked out since its the smallest one, so he goes to move it back over to the hamster pile.

It’s cold when he touches it.

He knows pretty much right away what that means, but he doesn’t want to believe it. He pokes it a bit and tries to scratch it’s whiskers to get it to react, but it doesn’t move. He’s already crying, but then he starts thinkin about how it was probably something on his hands that killed it. He didn’t was his hands after finishing up in his garage, and he must have had oil or something on his hand when he was petting the hamster and now it was dead.

He’s hyperventilating.

He’s worried he killed them all, but looking at the hamster pile, the rest of them all appear to be breathing still. He’s too scared to touch them to make sure.

He’s sure its his fault. His fault for touching the hamster with dirty hands and his fault for not paying more attention. The hamster was probably acting weird before it died, if he had just been paying attention he could have called Gundham and it would still be alive.

He’s a murderer.

Sonia was supposed to be the next person watching the hamsters. He couldn’t let her see the dead baby hamster, couldn’t let her know he killed it. He looks around the room and finds a little box to put it in. He’s chocking on his sobs as he picks up the hamster, and he nearly drops it because his hands are shaking so bad. Once it’s in the box he has to take a moment cus he thinks he might vomit from how guilty he feels. 

There’s like 10 minutes before Sonia is supposed to get there, so he takes one last look at the other hamsters, picks up the little box that has no right feeling as heavy as it does, and leaves.

He doesn’t really know where to go so he just heads up to the roof to get some fresh air and think, sobbing the whole way. He’s pretty sure he saw Sonia down one of the hells on his way up, but he just prays she didn’t see him and that she doesn’t remember how many hamsters there were.

He sits with the box in his lap, shaking. 

He thinks he feels it shift.

His chest seizes up. Was it alive? Had he really not killed it? He can feel the hope swelling up inside him as he slowly opens the box-

It’s dead.

It’s definitely dead and now its lying on its side and its little eyes are staring right at Soda and it takes him a minute to realize his sobs have turned into screams of agony. The hope made it so much worse.

He closes the box again and sets it down so gently beside him, before curling in on himself and just sobbing and screaming into his hands so hard his whole body is shaking from it.

He’s a murderer. He killed a defenseless animal. A baby. It was only a few days old and he killed it.

Suddenly there’s a warm hand on his back, rubbing just a little and bringing him back down to earth. His sobs slowly get weaker and he manages to look up, though his vision is still blurred with tears. He can make out dark clothes, pale skin, and a bright purple scarf. He assumes Gundham is there to punish him.

Gundham just asks him what’s going on, says Sonia called him because one of the hamsters was missing and she thought she had seen Soda running away from the classroom earlier. They assumed he had taken one of the hamsters for himself, but that didn’t explain why he was crying on the roof.

Soda realizes that the only reason Gundham isn’t beating him senseless is because he doesn’t know the hamster is dead.

“I killed it.” He starts sobbing harder the second the word leave his mouth. He feels Gundham’s hand tense on his back

“What.” Gundham definitely sounds pissed now. He’s not yelling, but his voice sounds deadly. Soda accepts that he’s about to get the shit kicked out of him, accepts it even. He deserves it.

“I-it must have been the oil on my h-hands or something, I don’t know. I s-should have been paying more attention, but when I looked at them gain it was-” his voice is cut off by another sob, and he’s just waiting for Gundham to hit him. To his surprise, some of the tension in Gundham’s body dissipates.  

“Where is the poor creature?” Gundham doesn’t sound angry anymore and Soda doesn’t understand. He just gestures towards the box, he’s too much of a coward to even look at it again.

Gundham gets up and opens the box. Soda hear him exhale sadly after a moment, before returning to Soda.

“It would seem we have both been mislead.” Gundham sits beside Soda and starts rubbing his back again. He explains that Soda did not kill the hamster, it seemed like something must not have developed right internally, and it simply died of natural causes. There was nothing either of them could have done to save it. Soda is just amazed how calm Gundham is being.

He asks him why he isn’t more upset, and Gundham sighs and tells him that it’s unfortunately something he sees a lot, so over time he’s just gotten used to it.

Soda’s just like “That fucking sucks.” and Gundham kind of laughs sadly and say “It fucking sucks indeed.” Soda’s kind of startled by Gundham swearing and it forces an awkward little laugh out of him. 

They’re both quite for a while, then Gundham tells him he’s touched by how upset Soda was over the hamsters death, and that he’s sure the hamsters soul appreciated him mourning it, but it is simply part of the circle of life and death, so he shouldn’t get too fixated on it. Soda’s still crying a little but he nods and says he’ll try, Gundham keeps rubbing his back.

They stay up on the roof for a while longer. Soda has mostly stopped crying, but Gundham’s hand is still on his back and he tries not to think too much about it. When they stand, Gundham picks up the box before Soda can even think about it and motions for him to follow him.

They bury it in some nearby woods, Soda insists on leaving some flowers. He asks Gundham not to tell their classmate about how much he cried. Gundham just says ‘of course’, as if they didn’t spend most their free time looking for new ways to get under each other’s skin.

Later, Gundham insists that Soda comes to see the healthy babies, telling him it will help him feel better. Soda is scared to be left alone with them, so Gundham just stays by his side the whole time. Even after Gundham finishes his project and brings them back to his place, he invites Soda over to see them. He starts teaching Soda about proper hamster care and they slowly grow closer and closer.

Sometimes Soda gets a little teary eyed while looking at the other hamsters, and he’s worried Gundham will make fun of him. He never does, he always just silently rubs Soda’s back, until one day he pulls him into a hug as well.

Gundham wakes up in the middle of the night and follows a trail of broken vibrator bits and empty energy drinks to Soda’s garage lol. Soda is sitting in the dark building some unidentifiable monstrosity and Gundham just shakes his head and asks him what the hell he’s making at 4 in the morning.  Soda turns and is like 80% unhinged and just says “Art.”

Gundham sighs and drags him back to bed, assuring him his art can wait for the morning. Soda yells that he’s stifling his creativity but goes anyways lol