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Sunday is Tooru's favorite day.
Every Sunday, Tooru gets to go play at the park with Hajime for two whole hours. Not alone of course, his older sister gets forced to go with them. Tooru has no idea why that is so important to his mother, he and Hajime are big boys and know their way around the park way better than Suzume anyway. It's not like she even looks after them, she just sits on a bench and reads her stupid, boring books. The books don't even have pictures!
The park is amazing. There are monkey bars, a swing, and a ping-pong table that is perfect for playing cave under.
This particular Sunday has been going amazing as well so far: Hajime has gotten one bar closer to dangling himself across the entire monkey bars without falling down. Tooru told him that 'the monkey bars are boring, can we play cave now' but he is actually proud of his friend. Not everyone has a best friend who is this strong.
Tooru is busy arranging the sticks they have collected under the ping-pong table. Whenever they play cave, Hajime and Tooru collect sticks or stones or leaves as food and then they arrange them carefully so that their cave can be the best cave to ever... be a cave.
"Hey!" Hajime shouts in the 'I have a really fun idea' voice and ducks to also crawl under the ping-pong table.
Not many have a best friend with ideas as fun as Hajime.
However, Tooru's perfect Sunday goes drastically downhill at Hajime's following suggestion.
"I found tiny baby frogs at the pond! We should catch one and bring him here, as a pet!"
Tooru likes the park, he likes the sun, the grass, and the ping-pong table. What Tooru does not like, are hopping green slimy creatures.
Hajime looks at Tooru like he's waiting for Tooru to realize what an amazing idea he just had, compliment him, and start cheering. Lucky for Hajime, Tooru's aunt said he is a very brave and kind little boy. Even luckier for Hajime, Tooru's sister proceeded to laugh until she cried, so he has something to prove here.
"That's an amazing idea! Hey, why don't we catch 20 frogs instead?"
Suzume is busy staring at her book, so she doesn't notice Tooru and Hajime sneak away to the pond. They're not supposed to go to the pond alone, but Tooru thinks that's stupid. He would never fall into a pond on purpose.
Tooru wants to tell Hajime about how stupid he thinks that rule is, but Hajime is busy gaping at the ridiculously small frog sitting on his hand. Like being small, green, and slimy is anything impressive.
"It's so small!!" Hajime whisper-shouts.
"Yeah, so what, my baby cousin is small, too. And he can't do anything, he spends the whole day crying and sleeping."
"Is your cousin a frog?" Hajime asks deadpan. "I didn't think so."
"He could be," Tooru mumbles, but Hajime doesn't hear him. He's too busy staring at the puny little frog. If Tooru was a frog, which he would never be, because frogs are slimy and weird, he would be way bigger and cooler.
Hajime sticks his hand really close to Tooru's face and Tooru does his best to stay where he is and not recoil in disgust.
"Doesn't he kind of look like an alien?"
Tooru gasps. "Aliens are big! And smart! They are nothing like this weird little guy!"
Then, Hajime does something that he does very, very rarely. He pouts.
"If you didn't want to catch frogs, you could have just said so."
Tooru doesn't feel bad for not liking frogs, but he feels a little bad for lying to Hajime. "What do you even want to do with him?"
It's not like there is anything Hajime could say to convince Tooru to tolerate frogs. But his kindergarten teacher always says to 'listen to other's opinions'.
"I just thought that we could take him back to our cave and take care of him. We could teach him tricks. He's probably still a baby, so we can feed him until he grows really big!" Hajime sounds really excited, and then he doesn't. "But if you don't like him, we don't have to, I guess."
A big frog would be kind of cool, now that Tooru thinks about it. A big frog that can do tricks would be even cooler. Even if he isn't big and smart like an alien right now, Tooru and Hajime could teach him. And Hajime would stop looking like a kicked puppy.
Tooru swallows.
"What should we name him?"
"Wait, what?"
"If we want to raise him, we need to give him a name, obviously."
Hajime smiles.
Tooru still won't touch the frog.