Mascots

"What are you doing?"

Haru's attention got drawn away from her papers and notebook, at the table she was seated at, as she heard Goro's voice. "Oh, I was just looking over some stuff for work."

"And that would be?" He asked, raising an eyebrow at all the drawings of burgers and other fast food items with eyes and mouths spread across the table.

"The marketing team thought we should introduce some new mascots for Big Bang Burger. So I'm looking through the ideas the design team submitted."

After a quiet moment, Goro took the seat across from her and picked up one of the papers to look at it.

That took Haru by surprise. "What are you doing?"

He shrugged. "You looked like you were struggling to make a choice. So maybe you could use a second opinion."

"You don't have to, but... Thank you either way!"

"It's the least I can do." He didn't look her in the eye as he said that, but Haru knew why.

Goro had always made it very clear that he didn't intend on apologising for what he had done in the past. Because saying "sorry" wouldn't undo anything. He wasn't even sure if he felt regret for anything he did, exactly.

But... He did feel some guilt for being the reason why Haru had to take on her father's responsabilities so early. Specially on days where she would be tired from work or struggling exceptionally hard with it. No matter how much he might have thought Kunikazu deserved his fate, seeing someone he had grown to care so much for in those situations felt awful for him too. The least he could do was give her a warm welcome home and help with whatever else he could.

(Well, he had originally thought the least he could do was distance himself from her as much as possible. But she had been far too insistent.)

"Is the current mascot supposed to be some kind of an alien?" Goro asked, snapping her out of her thoughts.

"Oh? Well..." She tilted her head to the side, a hand on her chin. "I think it's supposed to be some kind of UFO? It does have that little antenna and the round blue part around it."

"Hmm..." Goro looked through some of the other sketches.

"But now that you mention that..." Haru looked through the papers, struggling for a few seconds to find what she was looking for. But she soon had what she wanted.

It was another burger design, but this one inspired more by Big Bang Burger's chicken burger. Despite being the same type of food, it had enough differences from their main mascot. It had two antennas instead of one, both with little green balls at the tips, and it wore a pair of big goggles that looked pitch-black.

It did remind her of aliens a little bit. "This one might work!" She showed it to Goro.

"Isn't it reduntant to just have it be another type of burger?"

"Maybe, but they did say a group of mascots might work better than just a single new one. So maybe I could ask them to add some more spaceship elements to this one and say it's a relative of the original mascot." She said with a smile.

Some of the other designs were starting to connect a bit more in her head too. The task wasn't feeling as challenging anymore.

She grabbed her pen and started writing her thoughts into the notebook. "I think I have this figured out now. Thank you!"

"I didn't really do much though..."

"Just talking with you helped me not be so stuck anymore." She leaned over, and placed a kiss on the bridge of his nose.

She couldn't help but giggle at the way his cheeks turned slightly pink.