Chapter Text
“Are you sure you’ll be okay on your own?” asked Miyaji, a small frown creasing his brows as he completed his duty of escorting one of Shuutoku’s students to their assigned dorm room.
“C’mon, Miyaji-san~ I know how to take care of myself,” reassured Takao with a dismissive wave of his hand. While he busied himself unlocking the front door of his apartment, he pointed with his free hand to his own eyes. “I have these two puppies on my side. If anyone or anything gets a bit too close for comfort, they’ll start ‘barking’ at me in warning. So rest assured, if I spot anything weird going on around the dorm, you’ll be the first to know!”
“Fine,” groaned Miyaji in exasperation, adding a quick roll of his eyes as a freebie. He placed his hand on top of Takao’s head and strongly ruffled his hair, turning its black locks into a total bird’s nest. “If you do see something, don’t even think about trying to play the hero, you hear me? Just because your ability is good at telling you the truth, it doesn’t mean it can protect you from it. Understood?”
Believe me, I know that better than anyone else, bitterly sighed Takao in the back of his mind, only outwardly laughing awkwardly at the dorm leader’s little warning spiel. Once Miyaji removed his hand from his head, he tried to comb down his new wild hairdo with his fingers, but meh, he was about to spend the rest of the day locked up in his apartment, why bother with his appearance? “Welp, I’m off to binge some movies or something. See ya tomorrow, Miyaji-san!”
“Good, good. If you need something, just text me or something,” said Miyaji, snorting softly at the exaggerated salute Takao had given him. With their goodbyes bidded, he started walking down the corridor, mentally preparing himself for whatever task awaited him next in this hectic night.
“Haa… I’m so tired…” sighed Takao once his front door was finally closed. In all honesty, tired didn’t even begin to express how drained he truly felt at the moment. Quite a lot had happened in less than 24 hours, so he was exhausted both in the physical and mental sense. He might be a User, but in the end, he was still just a kid, a teenager in middle school even. Expecting him to deal with so much stuff all on his own was beyond unreasonable.
That’s why he really looked up to people like Midorima and Miyaji, for example. One was the same age as him and the other was only two years older, yet they flawlessly carried as much responsibility on their shoulders as adults normally would have.
The existence of Users was a very recent development. The Miracles had awoken to their abilities only three years prior, followed by the so-called Uncrowned Kings and all other Users. In just two years, Akashi, the other Miracles and all Users that had awoken so far had joined forces, faced the government’s persecution head-on and created Teikou Academy from scratch as a haven for all Users.
Although it was technically on Japanese land, Akashi, together with the Student Council and the headmaster, had managed to purchase the land Teikou Academy and the dorms stood on and turned it into a special district within Tokyo. The laws enforced in Japan were also enforced on Teikou; however, it was up to Teikou to deal with them and implement the consequences of breaking the law. So long as no regular human was ever injured or mistreated, the Japanese government had no say or power about whatever happened within Teikou’s borders. To keep their word on their lack of animosity towards humans, the student council kept a tight leash around every User, making sure no one was up to no good and caused mayhem inside or outside Teikou.
Takao wasn’t very privy to that period of Teikou history, mostly because he was still just a regular human when it was unfolding. However, he really respected the effort put in place to make it a reality. Two years. In just two years, a bunch of elementary and middle school kids teamed up and created an entire organisation that guaranteed their safety and protected them from being used and abused for their superpower-like abilities.
Wasn’t that amazing? A feat akin to be called a miracle? Not that Takao thought that the Miracles’ abilities themselves had much to do with the brilliance of their moves. Midorima’s or Aomine’s abilities, for example, could be viewed as some sort of militaristic pressure due to their destructive power, but they contributed little to nothing when it came to bureaucracy and management. Their human skillset and voracious desire for a normal life was what truly spurred them into doing what they did and accomplishing everything that followed.
Takao was wholeheartedly thankful for all of that. As a User who had only awoken a few months ago, it was smooth sailing for him. His ability suddenly appeared and restored his previously blinded vision, the hospital quickly realised what was going on and implemented some sort of emergency protocol, and in less than 24 hours Takao was being visited by a representative from Teikou Academy. Easy peasy, right?
Well, actually, no.
This was when Takao’s trust issues came into play.
The black he had gotten used to seeing suddenly turned into a sick, colourful show of pure, naked truth. The lies he had been fed with became disgustingly obvious, and his entire life was flipped inside out. The very same moment he saw his parents for the first time since becoming a User, Takao’s heart was shattered completely.
So much so, he tried to claw his eyes out.
Between him becoming more stable, mentally and physically, and the tiresome court battle that only ended once his parents were charged with medical child abuse, it took a bit over a month for Takao to fully be moved into Teikou permanently.
Although he was feeling a whole lot better by then, the traumatic experience left Takao with a couple of new habits, most of them counterproductive to a good social life. It was hard to trust others when you were able to see their true self, down to the smallest of details. The world was filled with people who weren’t evil nor good, but instead a mix of the two. No matter how kind hearted and pleasant someone was outwardly, they still had some evil lurking deep within. It was simply how humans were designed, and no one could do anything about it.
No matter how many times Takao told himself that it was fine to be with others, that nothing bad would happen just because everyone had a tiny little black spot of evil wrapped inside their colourful goodness, he couldn’t help but think…
If my own parents could hurt me like that, what’s stopping unrelated people from doing the same or worse?
He had no idea what the right answer to that question was. Just because he could see the true shade of the world around him didn’t mean he had the solution for every mystery of the universe. Such an abstract doubt could not be sorted out by his ability. Or maybe it could, but Takao refused to seek it, far too scared of what other tragedies he would unleash by knowing too much.
In the end, Takao decided to keep a healthy distance between himself and everyone else. He smiled and joked around with the few Users that approached him now and then, but he had a small buffer between them at all times. That’s why it was so easy for him to skip classes on a whim, even though he used to be a very assiduous and well-behaved student when he was just a normal human. He was more than happy with being by himself in his apartment, as the reach and scope of his always-turned-on ability scratched away at any hints of loneliness and yearning for social interaction. After all, it was hard to feel alone when Takao could tell every single movement of everyone around him, even from a good distance away.
Takao had been perfectly content with keeping that going until he graduated from high school. He had no idea what he would do once he reached adulthood yet but he was sure he could wing it somehow. If worse came to worst, he could just stay at Teikou, dubbing as an addition to their surveillance system. Yes, he was perfectly content with just that.
Or he used to be perfectly content with just that, until a bad fall down the stairs connected him with a certain moody Miracle.
For some reason, even though he could see those specks of evil within Midorima’s ridiculously big green blob, it didn’t give him the same sensation of aversion as it did with everyone else. Out of all the Users currently at Teikou, Midorima was in the top 10 of ‘Who could kill him the fastest’ and yet he never felt any distress about having him close by, especially when compared to other Miracles, like Akashi.
Does that mean we click well or something?, wondered Takao in the back of his mind as he sat down on the sofa and turned on the TV, mindlessly flipping through the channels in hopes of finding something to keep him entertained for the rest of the day.
As far as he was concerned, yeah, they did get along pretty well - even though Midorima would probably vehemently deny it if anyone asked him about it. Funnily enough, the thought of that amused Takao more than it annoyed him. It was fun to poke fun at Midorima and tease him with little remarks. It was even more fun when he lightly hinted at seeing something with his ability when, in actuality, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary when it came to Miracle-grade Users. He probably should have told Midorima that the truth he could see was shared with him through the means of colours only rather than words, so it was up to Takao to decode all of that and change it into actual meaningful knowledge. But well, it was fun to joke around about his all-seeing eyes, so he’d keep that misunderstanding going for just a little longer.
“Hehehe, I can’t wait for all of this to be sorted out so I can keep bugging Shin-chan at the infirmary, now that I have his permission to go there whenever I feel like without needing a medical emergency of some sort,” snickered Takao, a mischievous grin popping up on his lips. It had been a long time since he had looked forward to something this badly, a little tidbit of truth that he was unable to ignore, not because of his eyes but because it was that obvious. “It’s sad that my days of whining about tiny paper cuts are over, but I’m sure I can find a good replacement for that, nfufufu~”
Time seemed to fly by as Takao thought about all sorts of pranks and jokes he could use on Midorima, together with all the possible responses he’d have to each case. Only when he put his evil little schemes aside due to his growling stomach did he notice the sun had set and it was nearly pitch dark outside his windows, with only the lamp posts giving the suburban scenery some shadowy shapes.
“Hmm, what should I have for dinner tonight?” Takao mumbled to himself, jumping out of the sofa and nearly skipping to the kitchenette area attached to the living room. He made a beeline to the fridge, intending to quickly warm up some leftovers before returning to his comfy couch. That plan was promptly shot down, however. “Ah… I got so busy looking for my blindfold and then everything that followed it that I completely forgot I was supposed to do some shopping before returning to the dorm.”
Takao could only stare in silence at his frighteningly empty fridge. He wasn’t used to living on his own, so he had nearly no skills when it came to cooking, something that he planned on changing… eventually. For the time being, he was surviving on ready-made meals sold at convenience stores and grocery stores, frozen food that just needed to be popped into the oven for a while, or your average snacks. He was living the cliché poor college student lifestyle as a middle school student, basically.
“Have I really been neglecting grocery shopping this badly lately…?” asked Takao to his own buttons. When he went to check the freezer, of course he was greeted with more empty shelves. All he had in there was a pint of ice cream, which wasn’t even one-third full. Definitely not enough to feed a growing young man. He looked around the kitchen some more, munching on a granola bar he had found forgotten in a cupboard as he peeked here and there. The conclusion was… “Well, I’m definitely screwed.”
At this point, the sensible thing would be to dress up and go on a quick grocery store run, if only to buy enough food for today’s dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast. The nearest store to Shuutoku dorm was just a 15-minute walk away. It wouldn’t take him all that long to get everything he needed, so long as he didn’t waste too much time picking the items.
The main problem with that was that he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere on his own, especially at night. He liked to think that his life wasn’t truly at risk and that Akashi’s warning came as just a precaution. He also preferred to think that no one would be dumb enough to attack him or other students two times in the same day, all the more so now that security had been doubled or maybe even tripled. Everyone was on high alert, both regular Users and powerful ones.
“Asking Miyaji-san to go grocery shopping with me would be too much, wouldn’t it…?” mumbled Takao under his breath, still feeling quite indecisive about how he should proceed. While he was on speaking terms with his dorm leader and had even exchanged contact information with him a while ago, they didn’t have a very close relationship. Asking a friend could be a good compromise but… C’mon now, Takao was a loner. He pretty much had zero friends. “Oh, I should ask Shin-chan to go with me! …No, never mind, he’s not here at the dorm right now. I guess he’s still at that meeting with the student council. Now I kinda regret not having asked for his phone number yet…”
Thanks to his ability, Takao could instantly tell that Midorima’s big green blob was nowhere to be seen. Given the reach of his eyes, he was considerably far away, most likely inside of the student council building, which was located deep inside the school grounds. They had parted ways a good while ago, even before Miyaji walked him to his apartment. Since it was already so late, they must have been discussing some other topics aside from the earlier attack… At least, Takao hoped that was the reason why the meeting was being stretched for so long.
“Hmm… If I use my ability, I might be able to pick a route to one of the grocery stores without running into anyone,” pointed out Takao as some sort of one-sided pep talk. Even though he wasn’t very familiar with every single street in that neighbourhood, his ability allowed him to have a bird’s-eye view of that whole area on the same level as a map or a GPS. Since he could accurately pinpoint the location of every single colourful blob (aka people, be they Users or not), it would be easy peasy for him to change the direction he was moving towards to avoid any encounter with anyone. Takao closed the door of a cupboard at the same time he nodded. “Yeah, that will do. If I spot anyone acting funny or following me around, I’ll immediately get the hell out of there and notify Miyaji-san.”
With his mind made up, Takao went into his bedroom and dressed a bit more warmly, as it would be quite colder now than it had been during the day. He made sure to bring his trusty blindfold with him, even though it would be mostly sitting inside of his pocket. Armed with his wallet and cell phone, Takao was ready to start his solo cat-and-mouse chase.
If only he had known beforehand this grocery store trip would truly become a game of cat and mouse, him being the little mouse being chased by a pack of hungry cats…