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Running up the stairs of the school, Maasa Shirahone was making a beeline for the student council room. It was currently lunchtime, and it was the time of the school day the first-year hated most of all. He was thankful that his senpais chose to eat in the dining hall along with the other students, albeit in a completely different area that separated their refined tastes from their boorish ones. He didn’t want anyone, not even them, to see him with his meal.
Slamming the door of the room shut behind him, he went to the couch and relaxed. Every day it seemed to get more and more tiring going up to their meeting place, but Maasa had been able to manage it. Maybe he needed to do a bit more running to build up his stamina again…
Finally able to be calm, he pulled out his bento box. Of course, being of his status, even the container for his meals represented just the person he wanted to be: elegant, charming, but still sugar-coated and cute. He beamed a bit every time he pulled it out; this is what he finally carved himself out to be, and he will be even better day by day!
He opened up the box, and he saw the lunch he packed for himself each and every day. It was quite easy to make, and it was the most benefiting to him. He savored every piece of sashimi he packed in there, and the omelet he whipped up was even better! Taking small sips of water throughout, he ate slowly and carefully, to make sure he wasn’t eating more than he should.
Seeing the clock tick closer to the time of his next class, Maasa quickly wrapped up the empty bento and tucked It away from sight. He knew that Ata and Taiju wouldn’t look very hard to find it, as they stayed in their usual areas during student council duties. He was actually surprised the two of them hadn’t figured out where he was during this time every day…
The pinkette got up to run off back to his homeroom, but something started to seem off. The door got farther and farther away the more he looked at it, and the room was tilting back and forth slightly. Brushing it off as simply a head rush from getting up from the couch too quick, he started going to the door again. Each step, though, started to feel like weights were attached to his ankles, getting heavier as he kept going. Why am I still tired from the stairs?! Maasa screamed in his mind. This cutie-pie secretary could not go around school trudging around like a disgusting slug!
Eventually, he was able to grab the doorknob and leave the room, leaning against the door when he got it shut again. The weights felt like they were on his shoulders now, making him feel like he was going back in time all over again. The only thing that wasn’t like that was his head, which was on the verge of popping off his body. The first-year still attempted to keep going back to class, though, even if all he could see was a little bit of the stairs…
~*~*~
“I’m surprised he didn’t see us by now,” Taiju told his fellow president as they came up to the stairwell. “It’s been almost half an hour.”
Ata nodded his head. “He’s usually ready to start before we are.” Both of them knew that ever since they joined forces with Furanui and became his Edelstein knights, Maasa was always rearing to meet up after school and see if they had found anyone worthy to help their cause. The more they could find, the quicker everyone could become more hideous and less beautiful than him! He had never told the rest of the council directly, but his senpais knew that was his ultimate goal after his weight-gain campaign masquerading as a sweets festival finished up.
As the two went up the stairs, they discussed who would be their next big target. “He seems to keep this necklace on him at all times,” Ata explained to the third-year. “All I could hear was him muttering how everyone treats their personal items like trash.”
Taiju could see the smirk on his face as he talked about the student. The boy could easily be transformed and cause those around him to believe others are stealing their valuables, and then-
The vice-president didn’t get to hear any more as his second-year friend tripped on one of the steps. Hissing softly, Ata tried to get up amidst the soreness from his hands breaking the fall. “Who in the world would leave something up here?” he grumbled. “That damn Defense Club, don’t they know how to clean up after themse-“
His complaint was cut short when he felt his hand touched something soft. It was light and fluffy, almost like hair. Turning his head, he saw that same hand in the middle of a mess of pink hair. Scrambling to his feet, his stomach dropped to his toes when Ata realized what, or rather who, he had just fell over.
The crumpled, unconscious body of their friend on the stairs.
It all became a blur for the two of them from then on. Frantically checking for a pulse, Ata began screaming orders at Taiju all at once. “Call an ambulance! Then I need towels and water! Get other students if need be. HURRY!” Every command the president barked out, the second-in-command was following just as fast. Neither of them knew how long Maasa had been out cold, and neither could tell if he would wake up within minutes or die within seconds.
Sprinting down to the school cleaning closets, Taiju dialed emergency services at an inhuman speed. “Hello? Yes, we need assistance…Of course, Binan High School…”
Ata was shaking as he ripped off the tie of his school uniform. Maasa’s head had been hit so hard, blood was dripping from his forehead all the way down his face. Until Taiju came back with towels, all he could do was put pressure on it with what he had. “Maasa…I don’t know what you did…” Even his voice shook as he tried to stop the bleeding. “But you have to get through this…you have to…”
~*~*~
White. All he could see was a bright white blinding him when his eyes slowly opened. The eye pain only added to the rest of his misery. His head was pounding, his legs were killing him, and his arms felt so stiff he could barely move them. In fact, when he did try to move, a searing pain surged through his limbs.
As his eyes opened more, Maasa started to grasp more of his surroundings. The walls were also white, and there was a curtain right beside him. He figured out he was laying in a bed of some kind, and his head was propped up for some reason. Where…am I? The first-year couldn’t even think quickly; it was like his entire being was at a snail’s pace.
“Oh, thank god!” He suddenly heard a familiar voice from the corner. The next thing he knew, he saw two blurry figures coming toward him. With a bit of squinting, he was able to see that it was his fellow student council members.
“At least we know you’re still kicking,” Taiju sighed in relief.
“You left us worried for a long time, you know,” Ata lamented, trying not to bombard the boy with 50 questions in the first five minutes of consciousness in his hospital bed.
“You…you gu-“ Maasa tried to talk to his friends, but he stopped as quickly as he started. What replaced it was a furious coughing fit. It was like something was choking him, constantly trying to gag him. He could still breathe, but his gag reflex was being triggered off the charts.
Taiju saw what was happening to him. “Oh man, he’s not liking it.” Running out to the hallway, he called out for someone to help them, saying something about how Maasa was finally awake.
The next thing the shota knew, a nurse was coming in, grabbing a cart from across the room. “Hold on, Mr. Shirahone, I’ll get you out of that.” Putting on a pair of gloves, she pinched something that looked to be close to his nose. “This may feel a bit uncomfortable.” Maasa didn’t know what she was talking about, but he soon found out. He felt something being pulled up from his throat and out his nose, and the sensation made the gagging and coughing increase triple-fold.
Once the wretched thing was finally removed, he felt something else creep up to the back of his throat. Seeing the look on his face, the nurse grabbed a small wastebasket that was by the bed, and gently gave it to him. The boy wasted no time in taking it from her, and within moments he was retching into the bin.
“My word…” the nurse mused, removing her gloves. “It’s not very often we see patients vomit after removal of a feeding tube…”
Down to dry heaves, Maasa’s head immediately snapped up at the mention of what they had put in him. “A WHAT?!” He croaked out. “Why the heck did you put that in me??”
Ata and Taiju exchanged worried looks. “Maasa…” Ata said, coming up closer to him. “Do you know why you’re in the hospital?”
“No, and I don’t care!” The pink-haired patient still attempted to protest. “I’M GETTING OUT!”
Both the nurse and Ata had to hold him down and keep him from getting out of bed. “Please, Mr. Shirahone. You’ll pull out your IV if you move suddenly like that!”
Maasa grew more and more furious, thrashing against their grip. “An IV?!” He was screaming so loud that his voice was almost gone. “What else did you do to me, remove a kidney?!?”
“Maasa, get a hold of yourself!” Ata demanded, pushing him back down onto the bed. “These people are trying to help you!”
“Help me?! How? By gagging me with tubes and stabbing me with needles? Yeah, SOME HEL-“
“Mr. Shirahone, we had to in order to save your life!!”
The entire room went silent once the nurse yelled out those words. Any further accusations that Maasa was about to spew out were now all but gone. “Save…my life?”
“You were malnourished and dehydrated. We couldn’t determine to what extent it has gone to, so we assumed worst case scenario, giving you intravenous fluids and putting you on nasogastric intubation to give you nutrients while unconscious.”
Maasa was still in disbelief at her words. “M-malnourished?” A proud smile grew across his face. “That’s impossible, I’m perfectly healthy! Don’t you see what I look like now?” Tossing the covers off of him, he flaunted his skinny frame (slightly covered by a hospital gown) to everyone in the room.
The nurse was about to say something to her patient, but a cosmic force suddenly burst into the room. “Maasaaaaaaaaaa!” A shrill voice with a body attached sprinted in as fast as he could, glomping his cousin almost instantly. “I’m so glad you’re okay!!! Nanao told me what happened, and I got here as fast as I could once all my chores were done! They’re taking care of you here, right? Wait, no no no, what happened to your head?! Your forehead’s got bandages-“
“GET OFF OF ME, ICHIRO!!” Maasa wailed once again, pushing the fellow first-year off of him, instantly regretting it once pain shot through his IV-attached arm. “Why are you even here, anyway? I’m fine!”
“We’re…We’re family,” Ichiro cowered down slightly, almost like a wounded puppy. “I knew that you were dedicated and wanted to get what you wanted out of that diet…but I didn’t know this would happen…”
“Why are you all thinking that THAT is my problem?! My body is total proof that it ISN’T!”
“Mr. Shirahone,” the nurse spoke up once again, hanging the IV bag up on a mobile stand. “Would you mind if we actually took down your weight measurements?”
With another smug smile plastered on his face, Maasa nodded his head happily. “Of course! I’ll prove it to you all!”
With Ichiro and the rest of the student council trailing behind, the nurse and her patient slowly walked down a hall until they reached an examination room with a digital scale. “Alright, Mr. Shirahone, please step up.”
Maasa practically strutted onto the measuring stand, standing proud and tall. He was ready to show them that he was perfectly fine, he had just had a little accident on the stairs! He watched the numbers shift up and down for a moment, until the numbers finally stopped on his magic number. “HA! See? I’m great, only at 38.6 kilograms!”
He turned around, ready to see everyone with a happy smile on their face, only to be met with looks of horror and shock. The nurse was in a stunned sense of silence, Ata and Taiju’s faces were pale, and Ichiro…Ichiro looked ready to faint just like his cousin had a few hours before. “What?” he questioned. “Are you guys jealous or something?”
Taiju was the bravest of the group. “Maasa…you think that’s a good thing?”
“I’m not jealous. Rather, I’m worried immensely,” Ata spoke up next.
“This is horrible!!!” Ichiro chimed in. “We have to help you!”
“Boys, boys,” the nurse came in-between the four of them, splitting them up. “I understand your concern, but I believe I can handle this.” She already knew it was clear that Maasa was not going to understand without clear and concise words. Kneeling to his level, she started to lay everything down. “Mr. Shirahone…do you understand what being underweight is?”
“Sure I do,” he replied almost immediately. “It’s when you’re barely weighing anything and look like a toothpick! Heh, kinda like that chicken carcass kid in class!”
Not understanding what his last comparison meant, the nurse continued. “No, that’s not really the best definition. Being underweight means that your body weight is below what it should be in order to live a healthy life.”
“Alriiiiiiight…but I’m not underweight, then! I feel totally healthy!”
“Um…” Ichiro started, “They found you out cold on the sta-“
“Mr. Dougo, please.” Focusing on keeping his cousin quiet, she turned back to her patient. “Mr. Shirahone, with what I have recorded as your height, 38.6 kg is extremely unhealthy for you. If I have calculated correctly, you need to gain at least 7.7 kg before you even scrape a normal-“
“WHAT?!?” Maasa’s shriek could be heard echoing through the entire hall. “There is NO WAY I’m gonna gain that much weight!!!”
“Mr. Shirahone, please-“
“NO!!!” He didn’t hear the nurse anymore. He didn’t hear his friends, his cousin, he didn’t hear anyone’s words anymore. All Maasa could hear was his own inner voice, a voice he wanted to disappear for almost half a decade…
“Come on, you loved being like that, didn’t you?”
“All you have to do is go back, it’s EASY!”
“People loved you that way. You were the center of attention!!!”
Phrases kept bouncing around in his head, getting louder and louder with every passing second. One slip, and he could end up back where he started. If he slipped, he would end up back where he started. Everyone would think he was that person, that he had returned to those ways after just covering it up. He wouldn’t…he couldn’t!!
“Shut up…shut up…SHUT UP!!!!” The boy could have silenced the entire hospital with the bloodcurdling scream that ripped from his vocal cords. “I’M NOT YOU. I’LL NEVER BE LIKE YOU AGAIN!!!” All he could do was collapse to the ground, his IV stand clanging down along with him, clutching his head as if it would explode in moments.
Ata and Taiju were frozen in place; they knew their friend was falling apart at the seams, but what could they do? They didn’t even know who the “you” even was…
He didn’t care if the nurse kept trying to shut him down, Ichiro was not going to let his cousin keep this up. He dove down to his knees and took the pair of clammy hands into his own. “Maasa, come on! Snap out of it!!”
“SH-SHUT THE HELL UP!” was the only reply he got. “YOU JUST WANT ME TO BE LIKE THAT AGAIN, DON’T YOU?!”
It was now Ichiro’s turn to snap. “Don’t you even hear yourself?!” Not knowing what to do, he grabbed the floral gown covering his cousin, pulling him close, and shook him frantically. “You’re going nuts!!”
“WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?! YOU’D LOVE ME MORE IF I WENT BACK TO BEING THAT PERSON!”
After that one last scream, the hallway went silent.
The other three couldn’t move, let alone speak, after seeing what had just happened. Maasa had finally ceased his cries and wails because of one thing. The stinging handprint that was now on his cheek.
“Maasa, you’re the one who needs to shut up!!” Ichiro couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t care if his cousin had his body or feelings hurt, he wasn’t going to let him live in this delusion anymore! “Don’t you get it? You aren’t that person anymore. You stopped being him the second you wanted to change! But you’re gonna DIE if you keep doing this! Staying like this or getting any smaller is going to KILL YOU!!”
“But-“
“’But, but, but,’ JUST STOP! By trying to be this tiny, you passed out and almost got KILLED falling down the stairs! You call that healthy?! All I hear is a cry for help! We all want you to be who you want to be, Maasa, but we can’t just let you stay in this fairy land and starve yourself to your grave!!!”
Silence returned to the hall when Ichiro finished his speech. Everything was still. Everything was mute. It was as if time itself had halted.
The next thing that anyone heard in that hallway was a sniffle. A hoarse gasp. A whimper. A sob.
No one’s heart hadn’t sunk to their toes when the next image appeared in front of them. Screams weren’t echoing through the hall anymore. They were, instead, replaced with wails and sobs from the high school freshman. He had curled himself up in the fetal position, not caring how ugly he looked in front of everyone, and continued to cry and bawl. “I’d rather die!! If I stop eating what I normally do, I’ll just end up like him again!!!”
Finally able to find their words, the second and third-years joined Ichiro. “Maasa, it’ll be alright,” Ata consoled his fellow council member. “Those carbohydrates will not cause you to become obese if they ever enter your system.”
“Ata’s right,” Taiju piped in with his own statement. “It’s all about finding the right balance and keeping it. Doing that will keep you like you are, but you won’t be putting your life on the chopping block.”
Looking up at everyone around him, puffy green eyes started to close the waterworks. “But…but how?”
The next thing Maasa knew, arms were wrapped around him once again. But this time, it wasn’t harsh and sudden like the previous glomp he had experienced. It was calm. It was warm. It had love through it all. And most surprising of all, it had come from the same person who gave him that horrid glomp. “We’ll help you. All of us! We will, we will, we WILL!!” As Ichiro repeated this, Ata and Taiju nodded their heads. Their secretary, no, their friend, would not suffer like this any longer. Not if they had anything to say about it…
~*~*~
“I’m NOT doing that, Ichiro!!” Maasa barked at his cousin, currently sitting across from him in the dining hall. “You can’t make me!”
“Aw, come on, Maasa~” Ichiro cooed, a cheesy smile glued on his face. “It’s doctor’s orders, you’ve gotta add more carbs in your diet!”
“But I don’t need it like this!! The whole hall is watching us!”
“I still don’t know if we can trust you really will eat this stuff. You may just spit it out or something!” Maasa tried to look at his friends for help, but they were absolutely useless. It looked like they were actually enjoying seeing him in this embarrassment!
Continuing the act, Ichiro grabbed a dish off his lunch tray. “Besides, it’ll be fun until then!”
Maasa didn’t think that he could get any more embarrassed, but his face grew redder than ever before once Ichiro scooped a spoonful of ice cream up. “Now be a good boy for me, open up and say ah~!” With the full spoon near his lips, it was hard to tell whether it was him or a tomato in that uniform. But, as he still had to follow what he was ordered to do (and he didn’t have another spoon on him), he complied with his cousin’s wishes, opening his mouth just like a child in a high chair would have done.
“Good, good, good!” Ichiro applauded, putting the spoon in. “I’m surprised you’re doing this so easily!”
Enjoying the sweet taste for a moment, it didn’t take long for Maasa to rip the spoon out of his mouth and storm away. He had enough carbs for the day, anyway. He didn’t need his cousin’s humiliation “tactics” to help him out…
Returning to his rightful place in the hall, Maasa returned to sit with Taiju and Ata, who were still in the midst of eating their own lunch. “Has Papa Dougo given you enough to eat today?” Taiju teased, taking a bite of his meal for good measure.
“UNAZUKI-SENPAI!!!” Maasa squealed at the blonde. He was already embarrassed by his cousin, he didn’t need his friends to follow suit!
Ata chuckled a bit at the horseplay between the freshman and the senior. “Oh, also,” he butted in. “What’s your report this week?”
Maasa was finally starting to get the flushed look out of his cheeks… “Ibusuki-senpai…”
“Come on, we’re not going to broadcast it. We just need to know.”
Knowing they were right, the pink-haired boy lowered his head, still slightly embarrassed. “1…1.36 kg…”
Both of the senpais beamed at their kouhai. “That’s perfect, Maasa,” Ata congratulated him.
“You’re almost at the goal!” Taiju praised.
Hearing both of his friends happy about him gaining weight was still jarring to him, but he knew that it was for his own good. Ichiro had managed to (quite literally) slap a bit of sense into him. The fact that he took that tumble was the biggest warning sign that could’ve been put up for him. Ever since then, he had been trying to follow what the nutritionist had said and eat more balanced meals versus the three sashimi slices and one-egg omelet he fixed every day before the accident. It was still hard not to analyze if some part of the food was a practical carb-bomb, but with the help of those around him, the time flew by a bit faster.
He still wasn’t fixed 100%, not even close. He was still technically underweight, he was still wary around a plate of pasta, and the inner voice still hadn’t faded from his memory completely. However, Maasa wasn’t going to give up. Alone, the task of changing how he had been for four years of his life would have been seen as impossible. However, with a bit of moral support from those he cared for (and were a bit annoyed by), the little fat around the edges of his muscle didn’t seem like as much of a challenge as it did before…