Chapter Text
The next morning Takemichi’s life is thrown completely out of balance. He wakes up with his duvet and bed sheets uncomfortably clinging to his skin and reaches over to turn off his alarm clock which momentarily sticks to his fingers before gravity pulls it back down onto his desk. This snaps him out of his sleepy state and he struggles to climb out of his twin sized bed which just ends up with him tumbling onto the floor into the mess of empty food packets that also end up sticking to his skin. Frantically, he peels them off as best as he could and makes a mental note to finally clean his room. He convinces himself this is happening because of how much he must have sweat during the night. It is summer after all so it's the most logical reasoning for all this to be happening, Takemichi tells himself. He goes and takes a cold shower in hope that all this sweating and sticking will end, not caring that it will make him late for school.
And it does. For a little while.
Once he arrives at the front of the school he meets up with Chifuyu who was waiting for him like usual. He notices Takemichi’s clear discomfort but before he could say anything the bell rings which causes the pair to rush inside the building so they don’t miss registration. Chifuyu decides he will ask about what was wrong later but that doesn’t stop him from worrying about his friend's unusual behaviour. No matter what time he arrives, Takemichi always greets him and the change has thrown him off and lets concern continue to build.
It's lunch time when Chifuyu asks Takemichi what had him so frazzled in the morning. They are sitting comfortably at a secluded part of the school roof where nobody will be able to eavesdrop on their conversation.
“Hey michi?” Takemichi hums in response to acknowledge his friend due to his mouth being full of food. “What was up with you in the morning? You seemed agitated when we met up.”
Takemichi swallows his food before answering Chifuyu’s question.
“I had the craziest morning fuyu. Everything feels weird, it's as if everything I touch sticks to me and I dunno why. At first I thought it was because I woke up sweaty but I got a feeling that's not the reason.”
“Huh, that's strange.”
“RIGHT! Like even my alarm clock stuck to me for a moment! Look! Even now stuff is still sticking to me!” He says as he holds out his hand with his palm facing the floor demonstrating that his food wrapper was stuck to his hand.
“Okay the whole alarm clock thing is strange. Are you sure that part wasn’t a dream or something? And plus the wrapper could be like that because of sweat like you said before.”
“NO IT WASN’T! Let me prove it to you! Pass me a pencil or something like that.” Sceptically, Chifuyu reaches into his bag and pulls out a spent pen and peels off the empty wrapper off Takemichi’s palm and replaces it with his pen who then flips his hand upside-down.
“SEE!!!” Takemichi exclaims. “I’m not even doing it on purpose I swear.”
“What the hell? Takemichi, you're a freak.”
“WHAT?!?! THAT WAS SO UNNECESSARY??!”
“Hmmm. Debatable.”
“You’re the worst.” Takemichi grunts as he attempts to throw his empty carton at Chifuyu which surprisingly doesn’t stay stuck to his hand. Simultaneously, the pen drops from his other hand. Chifuyu easily catches the carton with two hands due to the weak throw and immediately throws it back but with a harsher force. Takemichi’s hand shoots up and catches the carton before it even touches him, leaving them both shocked.
“I DIDN’T DO THAT ON PURPOSE.”
Chifuyu is speechless for a few seconds as he tries to formulate all the thoughts running through his brain to come up with a reason why all this is happening.
“Wait. Remember that spider that bit you last night? What if it was actually radioactive and its venom has turned you into someone with spider-like senses because no way you just wake up and learn how to catch.”
“HEY??? Also, that is such a ridiculous idea fuyu who have you been hanging out with apart from me?”
“Actually, earlier Kazutora was telling me about some manga he was reading which had something similar happen to the main character.”
“Oh god do not let your huge crush rot your brain.” Takemichi sighs.
“YOU DIDN’T LET ME FINISH? As I was going to say after you rudely interrupted me, that famous freaky lab has been rumoured to be testing how different organisms react to substances created from another organism and it could have been spiders and their venom.” He finishes, crossing his arms proudly at the reasoning he had come up with.
“Well I guess that makes sense?”
“We should test out your new reflexes and see if anything else about you has changed.”
“Yeah that seems like a good idea. Thanks fuyu I dunno what I’d do without you.” he smiled.
“You’re welcome michi.” he smiles back.
“Hey there you two are!” Emma shouts as she and a smiling Hina rush over to them. “You know it wouldn’t kill you to answer your phone when someone calls it.” Emma jokingly complains.
“Hey!” Chifuyu greets. “Sorry I didn’t hear it go off.” he apologises even though he knows it's not really necessary.
“Don’t worry about it!” Hina chimes in as she takes a seat next to Takemichi. Emma sits next to Chifuyu who turns to grin at her knowing exactly why Hina sat next to Takemichi. They share a chuckle about how oblivious their friends are about each other's feelings as if they aren’t as in similar situations themselves and dive into a conversation about the release of the newest chapter of a shoujo manga they are both reading.
“Hi Takemichi! How has your day been so far?” Hina asks.
Horrible, he thinks to himself. “Ah.. well it’s been okay, could've gone better but it’s alright. What about you?”
“Oh i'm sorry to hear that hopefully you have a better afternoon!” she smiles. Oh how he loves her smile.
“Thank you.” he softly smiles back.
“My day has been good so far, I learned something interesting in biology. Do you want to hear about it?”
“Of course.” Takemichi hates all types of science as they bore him to death but for Hina he would listen to her talk about it forever if he could.