Chore Chart? We Don’t Need No Steenking Chore Chart!
Fandom: A3!
Characters: All Troupes
Warnings: A little swearing, otherwise this is a totally clean fic. Pun intended.
Genre: fluff/slice of life
Words: 5K (help, I’m crazy)
Generally speaking, all of the boys are responsible for keeping their personal rooms neat. And once a month there’s a dorm-wide deep-clean of bedrooms that includes vacuuming, washing the windows, wiping down the baseboards, clearing out cobwebby corners, etc, etc. And then Sakyo inspects your room, and woe to you if you don’t meet his standards. (This wasn’t how things started, btw, but after SOMEONE (cough.Itaru.cough) kept eating during all-night gaming sessions and then not cleaning up, the dorm got ants before opening night of Romeo and Julius.) Sakyo actually inspects weekly, but that’s a quick glance-around to make sure things are neat and nothing is broken. Everyone is also responsible for their own laundry, but that’s kind of a given since no one wants to deal with anyone else’s dirty clothes.
The issue, though, is the rest of the dorm. They have cleaners for the actual theatre, and part of rehearsal time in the practice rooms involves a quick sweep and mirror-clean. No, the problem is the common areas of the dorm building. Mankai funds don’t extend to a weekly housekeeper. In order to keep the dorm actually clean and running smoothly, Izumi starts a rotating chore chart. This…kind of works. Eventually, everyone winds up with a steady chore instead of rotating between them all. The only additional problem was SOME people (cough.Itaru.cough) simply conning others to do their chores. Eventually, Izumi had to make a rule that anyone taking on someone else’s chores gets paid by the original chore-holder. This eliminated a lot of the issues with people taking advantage of the people-pleasers in the company.
(Twice a year, they also do some major deep-cleaning as a whole crew. Loud music, dancing with the mops and brooms, the smell of lemon pledge and floor-cleaner. The whole deal. Everything gets taken out of drawers and evaluated, tons of things get chucked, and every single thing in the dorm is cleaned. No one will admit they have fun doing it, but everyone admits they like how the dorm feels when they’re done.)
As for their assigned chores…..
Spring Troupe:
Sakuya: A lot of the families he stayed with wound up using him as free labor, so he knows how to do all of the surface stuff. He loves Mankai and would probably take on half the chores himself if everyone let him. (This is why we have chore charts, Sakuya.) He’s so good-natured that even Itaru kind of feels bad taking advantage of his goodwill, but Sakuya is savvier than they all think. He uses the chores to make a few bucks a week - but only for people who are overwhelmed or busy or sick. During midterms and finals, he rakes in the dough. His own weekly chore is window washing. There are a LOT of windows in the dorms, so this is a heck of a job. He LOVES it. Something about leaving the windows perfectly sparkling just makes him completely happy. He gets to walk through the whole dorm, winds up chatting with everyone. It takes a few hours, but he smiles every time he sees the sun shining through the glass. The combination of socializing and taking care of his home and feeling like he did a good job that people appreciate is almost a drug to him.
Masumi: Rich kid had housekeepers, so even learning to clean is a challenge. Izumi has to suck it up and teach him, but at least he catches on real quick and realizes that a clean dorm makes her happy. Like Sakuya, now he has to stick to the chore chart to avoid him cleaning everything for free. Except Sakuya just wants his friends to be happy and his home to be clean, and Masumi wants to be able to tell Izumi that he cleaned the entire dorm for her. Because he’ll do anything so long as it gets him praise from Izumi, he’s eventually put on washing dishes. It’s a daily chore instead of a weekly one, so he can show Izumi every day how much he loves her! Everyone is responsible for getting their own plates into the dishwasher, but he’s in charge of the pots and pans from cooking. He starts this because it allows him to stay in the kitchen with Izumi while she cleans up, but he keeps doing it once Omi joins the troupe and takes over the cooking. Omi is one of the few people he really likes (usually). Masumi is meticulous about his washing because anything less than perfection is unacceptable when the target of his obsession affection is at stake, so all of the kitchen gear is usually spotless. Omi winds up taking Masumi under his wing and teaching him a lot about cooking - and Masumi actually enjoys it when Omi teaches him how to season a cast-iron skillet.
Tsuzuru: Between his part-time jobs, scriptwriting, college classes, wrangling spring troupe into something resembling good behavior, and the actual acting, Tsuzuru is already busy 24/7. He wants to help, he really does. He spent his early years cleaning and his teenage years teaching and encouraging his younger brothers to take care of the house. But he’s just…so….tired. He’s one of the only ones that Izumi and Sakyo take pity on when it comes to the chore list. His job is mostly to “help a bit” if he sees someone struggling or confused over their chore (which, let’s face it, he’d do anyway). And, so it doesn’t look too much like favoritism, he spends one day a month clearing out and reorganizing the prop storage with a few of the others. He actually really likes this, because looking at all the old props gives him a lot of ideas for future scripts. He also sometimes does other people’s chores for cash when he has time. Unlike Sakuya, he doesn’t discriminate - money is money.
Itaru: “F!” The only way you’re getting this guy to do chores is if it’s something he can do while using up energy in one of his games. So things like cleaning the bathroom are out (wet hands and buckets of water plus his phone equals disaster). In the beginning, he was one of the ones who paid Tsuzuru, Sakuya, and literally anyone else to do his chores until Izumi said he wasn’t allowed to be a lazy shit and leech off others. He had to try his hand at every single chore and pick one. And then he had to stick to it unless there were extenuating circumstances, like illness or a business trip. Eventually, he settles into vacuuming and dusting. It doesn’t hurt the cleaning at all if he stops vacuuming for five minutes to set up another battle and then goes back to it. Same with the dusting. There’s a lot of rugs in the main dorms, and a lot of knickknacks to dust. With how often he stops to take care of his games, he winds up taking HOURS to do his job - but it gets done. And he REALLY likes the feeling of freshly vacuumed rug under his bare feet.
Citron: He’s a prince, so he’s never done a minute of housework in his entire life. But it’s all new and so much fun to learn! The problem is that he’s terrible at it. After months of badly washed dishes, freshly-swept floors that still crunch with grit, and gardens where the grass is high, the flowers have been clipped off, and everyone actually gets to see Tsumugi angry enough to yell, Sakyo finally relegates him to grocery shopping. That’s…that’s it. It’s the only thing he can be trusted to do on his own without screwing it up. And only the farmer’s market. He charms the madams and gets them deals, so that helps everyone. He’s also part of the “can be tagged to help” team for almost any heavy chore…so long as someone else is supervising.
Chikage: Doesn’t seem to like cleaning, but he really appreciates having a home and endeavors to keep that home clean. He’s really good at picking up after himself around the dorm and you’ll NEVER find anything of his left out of its spot. Because of his day job, he has most of his free time on the weekends, so that’s when he does his part for the dorm. Part of his job is to go around the dorm and make sure all the pictures, flyers, etc, are straight on the walls. He also does the weekly possession round-up. Everyone knows that on Sundays, the dorms need to be immaculate for Sakyo’s inspections. So, on Saturday nights (early Sunday mornings if he’s got a Saturday night performance), Chikage goes through the dorms and rounds up any stray items and delivers them into the rooms of their owners. He somehow knows who every single item belongs to, even if it’s something as impersonal as a yellow pencil. It’s kind of creepy.
Summer Troupe:
Tenma: Another rich kid who’s never done anything resembling manual labor in his life. Starts to put up a fuss (“Don’t we have staff for this?”) until Yuki calls him an incompetent, stupid child for being unable to turn on a vacuum. He tries his hand at everything, but his head just isn’t in it. He’s almost as bad at housework as he is at getting somewhere without getting lost. He’s all about delivering perfection, and housework (especially in a huge dorm like this) will never be perfect. It frustrates him. He gets something perfectly clean, and ten minutes later it’s messed up again. He’s so obsessed with keeping the areas he’s responsible for clean that he winds up starting even more fights. After one bad shouting match with Yuki, Izumi tells him to take a walk while she thinks. He goes to storm out of the dorm but, while getting his shoes, he randomly straightens the rest. Because of his desire for perfection and his love of traditional Japanese spaces, he winds up being in charge of the entrance area. Every night, he sorts out the jumble of shoes and slippers that collect by the door. He finds the mates for every stray shoe, sets them up neatly, and makes sure that dorm member slippers are separated from guest slippers. Somehow, it reminds him of his bonsais. Woe to you if you mess up his system.
Yuki: Where else would you put Yuki, except in charge of the costumes? Like Tsuzuru, he’s dealing with school and acting AND the additional work of costume designer, creator, and master. Asking him to do dishes or whatever on top of it seems excessive. So, like Tsuzuru, once a month he deals with the costume/fabric room. He reorganizes it, inspects everything for damage by mice or moths, mentally catalogs what’s already available to him for the future, and uses it as inspiration. This doesn’t sound like it should be too bad, but he’s constantly rearranging the fabric section. Sometimes he sorts things by fabric content, sometimes by the weight and drape, sometimes by color. It’s why no one asks to help him - one wrong move and he’ll snarl at you. He also airs out the older costumes, makes sure everything is stored correctly based on its fabric content, and draws designs of his ideal costume storage area to spring on Sakyo for funding. He’s also an assistant in the strange housekeeping category called “atmosphere.”
Muku: He’s one of the ones it was easy for the others to take advantage of, before Izumi’s payment system, because he just wants everyone else to be happy. And he doesn’t believe he deserves leisure time in the same way the others do. He still picks up money doing other people’s chores, but now it’s because it helps fund his manga addiction. However, he never does the chores…right. Like Itaru, he struggles to keep his mind on the task he’s performing, but with him it’s because his imagination runs wild. In his head, he’s playing the role of the lowly peasant cleaning the floors of the princess’ palace, catching glimpses of her and wishing he could express his love, and before he knows it he’s trying to mop the couch or about to mix bleach and ammonia. Sakyo eventually makes him dorm librarian, which isn’t exactly a housekeeping chore, but it suits him. It also keeps him away from the cleaning chemicals. There’s a lot of books and scripts in the dorm, and someone is always looking for one right at the time someone else has it. So Muku keeps a log online of who has what, and he updates it about once a week. Due to his strength, he’s also an Assistant Heavy-Thing-Mover.
Misumi: Mostly he’s responsible for cleaning anything above shoulder-height. Misumi’s the one who dusts the tops of shelves or the blades of the ceiling fan. He cleans out the cobwebs in the corners of the 12-foot ceilings. Without a ladder. He’s also the one who cleans his own footprints off the walls. He doesn’t have a set schedule, but he always wants to do the best job he can so he cleans frequently. Additionally, any time someone finds a small triangle, they hide it where he’ll only find it while cleaning. It makes everyone nearby smile when they hear the cry of “Sankaku! Sankaku!” And suddenly Misumi shows up and tells them the story of how he found an onigiri eraser while dusting. (He knows troupe members are leaving him little gifts, and he loves them for it. The joy of finding a triangle is just as important as the triangle itself, and he loves them all for knowing that.) He’s the second Assistant Heavy-Thing-Mover, and he also picks up extra cash doing extra chores sometimes.
Kazunari: He’s big on presentation and the appearance of things, so it’s no surprise that he’s actually neat. He’s unfortunately also trying to see everything as art, or off in his own social-media-la-la-land, so it’s hard to pin him down and get him to clean sometimes. He winds up being the Master of Stain Removal. You’d think that would be Yuki - and Kazunari does sometimes go to Yuki for specific issues - but he’s had to get so many different art supplies out of so many different fabrics that he’s actually pretty good at it already. Most of what he doesn’t know, he can find a video for on YouTube. He’s actually started a second Insta account for his stain removal videos, and it has a significant following. He helps the boys with stains in their laundry, takes care of the couches when someone spills something, and deals with issues with the carpets. Although this isn’t a “chore” the way, say, dusting is, it takes up the same amount of time and keeps the dorms looking fresh. He likes being needed, and every time someone compliments him and shows him a previously ruined shirt that looks new again, he feels cared about in a way he usually doesn’t.
Kumon: He’s pretty decent at all chores. He always had chores at home and he’s big into health, so he knows that a clean environment is part of maintaining a healthy body. He floats around, doing all the random, leftover chores on the chart every week. Until the flu hits Mankai. Because of his obsessive mask-wearing and hand-sanitizer use the second anyone so much as sneezes, he’s one of the few to escape getting sick. He spends his days sanitizing everything that’s high-touch - light switches, doorknobs, the handle on the fridge…it reaches a point where whenever anyone who’s sick walks through the dorm, he’s following them around and spraying anything they touch and wiping it down. (It annoys the absolute shit out of Banri. Only knowing he’s too sick to fight Juza right now keeps him from deliberately coughing in Hyodo Jr.’s face.) Sanitizing of high-touch areas becomes Kumon’s daily job, and he actually really enjoys doing it. (He thinks things like Lysol wipes are too wasteful, though, and he has his own spray bottle of homemade cleaner that he uses along with washable microfiber cloths.) He’s especially happy the next flu season when Izumi points out to him that only three people got sick, and they’re three of the people who work with the public regularly. She credits a lot of the health in the dorms to Kumon.
Autumn Troupe:
Banri & Juza: They got into a fight in the bathroom once, not long after they joined Mankai. By the end of the fight, one shower head was broken, water had soaked the entire room, there was blood in the towels, and, inexplicably, shaving cream all over the floor. After patching them up, it was surprisingly Izumi who read them the riot act and stood over them while they cleaned the bathroom and Omi replaced the shower head. Banri’s another rich kid who’s never done manual labor, but he picks up on everything instantly - even cleaning. Juza (like Kumon, duh) had chores at home, so this isn’t new to him. A few hours later, the bathroom was spotlessly clean. For awhile, every time they fought, they got assigned the communal bathrooms. Eventually, they just got assigned the bathrooms. Izumi saw it as a great way to get the bathrooms cleaned regularly, and Sakyo saw it as a team-building exercise. It actually worked - they wind up talking (okay, mostly snarking) while they’re cleaning (what else is there to do, right?) and the few hours a week they spend doing this chore do a LOT towards getting them to tolerate each other.
Taichi: He’s another one with more enthusiasm than skill, just in the opposite direction of Citron. Cleaning is a battle in him - he doesn’t want to clean, not at all. Cleaning is boring! But he also wants people to like him, and everyone likes and appreciates the person who cleans! So he leans towards popularity and overdoes everything. Instead of barely washing things, he washes them so hard he breaks them. He’ll spend an hour sweeping a single floor in order to make sure every iota of dust is picked up. This is so ridiculously inefficient that Izumi has to think of something he can do that will employ this meticulous nature. (She’s beyond shocked because one doesn’t normally think “meticulous” when they think about Taichi!) His job eventually becomes polishing and cleaning the wood furniture. He likes the smell of the wax and rubbing the product deep into the wood to produce a shine is oddly calming for his brain. He gets positively lost in the task. He does a couple of rooms every weekend after Itaru has finished the vacuuming and dusting.
Omi: Once everyone realized who the cook in the company was, no one else wanted to take the job. No matter what they cooked, there were complaints. The job of cooking then becomes a confusing mix of Izumi and her Curry Hell, and Omi, who can cook anything. So…the man cooks. He also does some of the shopping (he gets the essentials while Citron gets the farmer’s market stuff). He also makes sure the dishwasher is running at night and puts the dishes away in the morning. He also makes up plates and bento boxes out of leftovers for anyone who needs a lunch at work, or anyone who missed dinner. He ALSO cleans out the fridge once a week to make sure nothing starts growing in there. HE ALSO cleans out the cabinets during the deep cleans, making sure there’s no bugs in the flour and everything is clean and organized. A lot of the time, he winds up doing other people’s chores by accident. Someone make this man take a break.
Sakyo: I mean…we know the guy can clean. He’s too meticulous and organized to tolerate a dirty living space. But at this point, handling the finances of the dorms takes up a lot of his time. Add in his weekly, monthly, and biannual dorm and theatre inspections, and he’s pretty busy. But because he doesn’t trust anyone else with the company’s money, he’s also the main dorm shopper. He’s the guy you see at the warehouse stores trailing a bunch of teenagers and five carts worth of stuff. It takes a lot of time and planning to keep a dorm with 26 people in it stocked with things like toilet paper, paper towels, canned goods, drinks, and so forth. Then all of that stuff has to get transported home and then put away. The man’s old, give him a break. (Not really, but he thinks he is.)
Azami: Another rich kid, but if you think Sakyo didn’t make him do chores when he was younger, you’re crazy. At this point, he refuses to do anything that can cause skin damage, so no working outdoors or doing dishes for him. He tries to convince Sakyo that monitoring everyone’s skin care regimen should count as a chore. Sakyo doesn’t buy it. One day, after an absolutely BLAZING argument, Azami is told to inventory the dorm supplies. Just to be a little shit, he documents EVERYTHING in the dorms, down to the picture frames. Which are separate from the pictures inside them. This backfires, because Sakyo decides his permanent chore is to keep up with this inventory list. Out of spite, Azami tries to mess with it once or twice, but regrets it immensely when the dorm runs out of toilet paper during one of Izumi’s Curry Marathons. After that, he maintains the list regularly. Obviously things like the picture frames don’t need to be updated much, but knowing if they actually have a 10lb bag of rice in the pantry or if that got used last week is important. In the end, he kind of likes the responsibility and the feeling of taking care of the others. He hates the fact that he’s basically Sakyo’s assistant. (He will NEVER admit that he also kind of…likes…the fact that he’s Sakyo’s assistant.)
Winter Troupe:
Tsumugi: Izumi doesn’t have to lift a finger to get Tsumugi to contribute. He actually asks permission to basically take over the garden, and she is more than happy to not have to fight with a bunch of teenagers over mowing the lawn. So Tsumugi smiles and goes back to his element. He takes care of the flowers, obviously, but also keeps the lawns mowed (with Tasuku’s help), the mulch fresh, the trees lightly pruned, and so forth. One of the guys tries to object one winter, stating that once the leaves fall off the trees, there’s nothing left to do and Tsumugi basically gets the winter off. Tsumugi takes the next weekend to teach the objector exactly how much work goes into a winter garden - especially one that is still in use and should be attractive. Keep in mind, he also grows food. You can grow beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and tons of other things in the cooler months. That’s not even to mention the number of decorative plants that grow well in winter. In fact, just to teach everyone a bit of a lesson, mischievous Tsumugi shanghais the whole dorm into helping him set up for spring. Gardening is no joke.
Tasuku: He likes routine, which is ironic considering he has the least-routine set of chores. The only chore he does regularly is taking out the garbage on his way out the door for his morning run. Otherwise, he occupies the position of Head Heavy-Thing-Mover. He’s also Mr. Fix-It. So he tends not to be called on unless something heavy needs to be moved, or something needs to be fixed. Given how often something is happening in the dorms, he’s got something to do almost every day, but it’s never the same thing. He kind of hates getting pulled away from what he’s doing every time one of those two things comes up - but his bruised sense of companionship is pleased that someone needs him and thinks to call on him instead of struggling by themselves. He kind of wishes he knew how to tell them that, because everyone (except Tsumugi) seems reluctant to approach him, and some of them, in the beginning, seem downright terrified. If he has nothing else to do, he winds up helping Tsumugi in the garden. He can barely tell the difference between a weed and some decorative grass, but he can haul mulch, mow the lawn, and follow directions. He also cleans the gutters a few times a year.
Hisoka: Uh…..good luck. He fell asleep while Izumi was explaining the chore chart. Izumi struggles for a long time to find a steady task for Hisoka. He initially resists cleaning at all, but when he sees everyone else contributing he feels bad enough to ask for a task. These people took him off the street and gave him a home, a purpose, and a family. The least he can do is a few chores. (Plus, Homare gives him marshmallows when he finishes something.) Together, he and Izumi try to figure out something he can do that utilizes his speed and agility. The problem is that housework isn’t a speed run, usually, it’s just repetitive and persistent. Izumi considered almost every chore, including the ones that only have to be done a few times a year, like cleaning the oven. Then she pictured Hisoka literally falling asleep with his head in the oven and gave up. Eventually he winds up salting the pavement after any kind of ice or snow, since he doesn’t slip on the ice. Finally Izumi has a brilliant idea and puts him in charge of the household laundry - not the personal laundry, but things like kitchen towels, bathroom rugs, couch blankets and cushion-covers, Kumon’s microfiber cloths, and so on. He can nap during the wash and dry cycles, and folding items like that takes no time at all.
Homare: Yet ANOTHER rich kid who grew up with staff that did the housework for him. It’s actually canon that Izumi had to teach him to clean up after himself. His brilliant idea is just to pay someone to come in and clean for the dorms. It’ll cost nothing! Nothing at all! It’s his gift! But by the time Winter Troupe joins, Izumi has seen the effect of the bathroom cleaning on Banri and Juza and now insists that cleaning the dorm is a team building activity and not to be foisted off on others. (Homare still has someone come in on Saturdays to clean his and Hisoka’s room rather than do it himself.) He considers being a Hisoka-minder his contribution to the dorm, but Izumi disagrees. He tries everything to get out of cleaning, but Izumi is implacable. He’s forced to attempt every chore, but he’s the worst combination of the worst members so far. He’s as bad at cleaning as Citron, as daydreamy as Muku, but he also just vanishes in the middle of whatever he’s doing in order to write a poem. Finally, he declares his contribution to the dorm to be “art.” He gets Juza to calligraphy some of his poems onto scrolls and replaces some of the more staid art with them. He replaces throw pillows that get destroyed. He also (supposedly anonymously, but everyone knows it's him) supplies or replaces things in the dorms for members who don’t have a lot of money. When Sakuya’s desk chair breaks, for instance, he comes home the next day to a new one out of “house funds.” The whole dorm is appreciative, but, much to Homare’s displeasure, Izumi still makes him sweep the front steps every morning. He’s written several poems on indentured servitude.
Azuma: By the time we get to Azuma, Izumi is ready to tear her hair out over half of Winter Troupe’s “contributions” to the dorm. She’s expecting Azuma to be a trial, and he is. He’s as bad as Azami about not wanting to damage his skin, hair, or nails. He’s naturally physically weak, so he can’t join the Heavy-Thing-Mover team. And, frankly, he has absolutely no interest or intention to clean. He winds up paying Homare’s house cleaner to also tackle his room when she comes to do Homare and Hisoka’s. Azuma picks up after himself, makes sure all of his things go back into their homes, cleans up anything he spills, puts his own dishes in the dishwasher, wipes down the sink in the bathroom when he’s done using it, and basically acts as if he’s still living alone. The major problem for Izumi is that he’s a grown-ass man, not a teenager, so she can’t play the adult in this situation and just order him around. She has to negotiate. When Izumi finally gets it through his head that he needs to do stuff for the community he starts to think about it. One day, out on the balcony, the tables are covered in fallen leaves. He brushes them to the floor, but now they look bad and he wants to enjoy this glass of wine in serenity. Without even thinking too much about it, he goes to get a broom and brushes all the leaves on the balcony down into the garden. Congratulations, Azuma, you’re now in charge of the balcony! He keeps it swept, salted in winter, and nicely decorated. He adds colored fairy lights to coordinate with holidays, cons Tasuku into putting up some hanging plants that he then cons Tsumugi into taking care of. He also takes on the role of Master of Atmosphere. He coordinates with Homare and Yuki when things in the dorm need replacing. He also supplies every room with incense burners and scent-diffusers and keeps them fresh and full. It’s a little thing, but the whole dorm is happy, and it reminds Azuma that he’s not alone anymore.
Guy: By the time Guy joins the troupe, pretty much every chore is taken care of. He has no logical objection to any of the tasks that he could be asked to do, and he starts off by jumping in on all of the seasonal tasks, since they tend to require more strength and stamina than simply doing dishes or taking out the garbage. By observing everyone in the dorms and their habits, mannerisms, and ability to focus, he is eventually able to pair them with a seasonal task that suits their strengths. He also makes a calendar, coordinating seasonal tasks to when those people don’t have midterms, finals, or performances. When he brings the list to Izumi and Sakyo, to help improve dorm efficiency, they could both kiss him. Seasonal tasks are always on the list during the big biannual cleanings, but with everything on their plates, things often get left behind or forgotten. Guy is now in charge of all seasonal tasks. He pitches in and helps with them, but mostly he’s just in charge of them. (This organization actually helps him when he opens his bar - it was good practice for scheduling employees and making sure things in the kitchen get cleaned regularly.)