Chapter Text
“What if she’s allergic to roses?”
“She’s not allergic to roses.”
“What if I’m allergic to roses?”
Kenma stared at her. “No, you’re not, Yumehara…”
It was lunch, two minutes before the clock struck one and the students would have to return to their classes. Kenma’s classmate had asked him for some advice—whether she should confess to her long-time friend and crush, Kokomi. Kenma had said that it would, and here she was, asking him how she should do it.
“That sounds too bold, I don’t think I—”
She broke off into a ramble after that, repeating the same things again and again, and Kenma waited until she paused for breath before quietly saying, “Confessing to your friend of three years is bold enough as it is.”
Surrendering, Yumehara ran a hand through her hair and exhaled. “Honestly, I have no idea how people do it.”
Kenma tightened his hold on his backpack, not sure how to respond to that. “Good luck.”
Almost as if on cue, the bell rang. Yumehara let out a yelp of surprise and dashed away to her next class, promising Kenma that she’d confess by tomorrow, and he only allowed himself to let out a sigh of relief once she’d gone. Turning around, he headed towards his own class, hoping that he wasn’t too late.
Thankfully, his teacher hadn’t arrived to the class yet, and Kenma slid quietly into his seat at the back of the class and took out his notebook and class supplies. Next to him, Kuro stretched and grinned. “Who was it this time?”
Deftly avoiding the other boy’s unfairly long limbs, he replied, “Yumehara. Flowers.”
“Is she giving them to Mera?”
“Kokomi,” Kenma corrected, shaking his head.
Kuro let out a low whistle at that. “Bet you saw that coming, huh,”
“Of course. Kokomi likes her back, but she’s too scared to say anything.”
“Well, I’m happy for them,” Kuro said, smiling and leaning back on his chair, feet up on the table. Kenma wrinkled his nose at that. Smelly.
“Yeah. They might break up in 8 months.”
That got a weird groan-laugh-sigh out of Kuro, who complained, “ Why do you always have to ruin it?”
“It’s simple math,” replied Kenma, dodging Kuro’s fingers from where the other boy was trying to flick his forehead. “Most people in the world have more exes than committed lifelong partners, and therefore there are more failed relationships than ones that succeed.”
Kuro snorted, giving up on trying to hit Kenma and slumping back into his chair again instead. “You’re such an edgelord,”
Kenma frowned, about to reply, when their teacher walked into the class. Kuro almost fell over in his hurry to get his feet off the table before she noticed. Kenma wished he could say that he was not so petty as to laugh at that.
Class was boring, as it always was, and after it ended, Kenma was just about to head out the door when his teacher pulled him aside and asked him to stay behind for a bit. Kuro raised an eyebrow in question when he saw, but Kenma gestured for him to go ahead and not bother waiting for him.
“Kozume-san, your scores this year have been flawless,” his teacher started, and that should have been his first sign that something was going on. Kenma shifted on his feet, fingers tightening on the strap of his backpack once again. He wasn’t very good with compliments.
“I’ve discussed this with a few other teachers, and we all feel like our school would truly benefit from your help,” she continued. Kenma wondered where she was going with this. “Which is why we want you to sign up for the student-tutor program, as a tutor.”
Kenma felt his throat dry up. “I—”
“I’d ask you to really consider this, as it would be beneficial for both you and the other students’ grades.”
There was nothing Kenma wanted more at that moment than for the earth to open up and swallow him whole. He desperately did not want to sign up for the program - he was already forced to talk to way more people than he wanted on a daily basis, and this would just result in more work and more talking. And when he opened his mouth to reply to his teacher, he swore that he was about to say no and decline the whole offer—but what came out instead was “Sure.”
It took everything within his willpower to not hit his head against a wall at that very moment.
His teacher, however, looked extremely pleased with the turn of events. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down!”
Kenma just looked at his feet.
“You what?”
“Don’t make me repeat it,” Kenma muttered, burrowing his head deeper into the blankets on Kuro’s bed. They smelled familiar and warm, and he could really do with some familiarity and warmth at that moment.
Kuro was laughing at him, spinning around on his chair and shaking his head. “Man, you have really got to learn how to say no.”
“I know ,” Kenma groaned, words muffled by the pillow under his face. “But if I’d said no I’d have to come up with an excuse and she’d probably hate me for the rest of the year, and that’s just. Too much effort.”
Kuro just laughed again, used to responses like this from his best friend. “Do you know who you’re supposed to be tutoring?”
“Yeah,” he replied, finally getting up from where he was lying face-first on the bed. He fished his phone out of his pocket and opened it up to his email, where he’d received all the details of the student-tutor program from his teacher, and held it up to show it to Kuro.
“Hinata Shouyou.”
Taking the phone from him, Kuro hummed in consideration. “He’s probably new, never heard of him before.”
Rolling his eyes and plucking the phone out of the other’s hands, Kenma replied, “You don’t know everyone in the school, you know.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure I do.”
Kenma stuck his tongue out at him. Kuro responded with the same.
After a few more minutes of silence, during which Kenma managed to finish another cup on the Mario Kart app, Kuro spoke up once again.
“Oh, hey, you’ll be able to fill in your human almanac! You haven’t added someone new in a while, right?”
Looking up from his phone, Kenma said, “Don’t call it that. It’s weird.”
“Your people handbook? Weirdly stalkerish secret diary?”
“It’s just a notebook . ”
“One hell of a notebook, for sure. Hey, speaking of—I haven’t seen it in a while, where have you been hiding it?”
Said notebook was currently squished underneath a week’s worth of homework, pencil shavings, and food crumbs. It took Kenma approximately three minutes to salvage it out of his backpack, during which Kuro took the opportunity to tease him about his disgustingly messy habits. When he finally found it, he threw it unceremoniously onto the bed, where it lay in all its glory.
See, this notebook was definitely not “ just a notebook”. It was better suited to the names which Kuro had picked out for it—an almanac which contained five years worth of intensely detailed information on every single person which Kenma had been acquainted with.
No one else knew about the notebook except for him and Kuro: it had been birthed right here in his very room, after all. A 2:00 am conversation about the intricacies of love had found Kenma determined to prove a point to the other boy—that people’s feelings were easily predictable and manipulated.
“But love comes from the heart ,” Kuro had argued. “You can’t predict the heart.”
“The heart is an organ which pumps blood. Love is just a bunch of chemical reactions in the brain.”
Kuro had simply groaned and said, “You absolute nihilist.”
“We’re in seventh grade, you shouldn’t know that word,” Kenma had replied, narrowly avoiding a forehead flick.
“We’re in seventh grade, you don’t know how love works yet.” (Kenma remembered thinking about how ugly Kuro’s smug smile after saying that had looked.)
“You know what,” had been Kenma’s response, as he fetched a blank notebook from his bag and started scribbling down something in his messy handwriting. When he was done, he had closed the notebook and declared, “I’m going to get you a girlfriend by the end of the week.”
Kuro had laughed at him, then, but Kenma had stayed true to his word and managed to set him up on a date with a cute girl from their class in less than four days. That had mollified Kuro enough to satisfy Kenma, but the other had gotten weirdly invested in the notebook after that. After continuous egging by Kuro to expand it and include entries on other people, Kenma conceded—and his career as the school’s unofficial matchmaker took flight.
If he was being honest, seeing people fall for each other simply due to his involvement was satisfying. While that made him sound like some form of sociopath, he regarded the whole thing as some sort of video game. Everyone around him were characters whom he could manipulate; and it wasn’t exactly hard to put two and two together to see who was pining for who. He’d have stopped updating the notebook long ago if it wasn’t for the fact that it was something to do—it kept him entertained, and that was enough for Kenma.
Now, as the two of them sat together in Kuro’s room five years after the notebook’s inception, Kenma felt a vague sense of nostalgia prick his heart. Kuro picked up the notebook silently, brushing away the crumbs of potato chips onto the floor, and flipped it open onto the first page.
NAME: Tetsurou Kuroo
BIRTHDAY: November 17 (Scorpio)
PERSONALITY TRAITS: cool on the outside but actually a snake and a loser, cries at most movies, pretentious
INTERESTS: science, gacha games, fish, whatever tv show is popular currently
TYPE: someone who can keep a conversation going, athletic, with a sense of humour
IDEAL DATE: probably playing some sports, or going to the mall and entering shops to try on random accessories
CRUSHES: Mina (grade 6-7), Yaku (grade 10)
RELATIONSHIPS: Mina (grade 7), Akemi (grade 8), Hanako (grade 11)
ADDITIONAL NOTES: will never let go of an embarrassing memory
Snorting, Kuro flicked through the other pages before finally landing on the last filled page.
“Approximately 80 entries,” he declared, and Kenma tried not to correct him and say that there were actually 86. “And you’ll be able to add another one to the list when you finally meet this Hinata kid.”
“Yes, I’m super thrilled,” replied Kenma, in a completely deadpan voice. It was hard to tell whether he was being serious or not. “Except for the fact that I have to teach him math for the rest of the year.”
Kuro tch-ed like he was an antagonist in some shounen anime, saying, “Technicalities. You’ll get through it.”
“Hopefully.”
The next day found Kenma waiting in the library after school, messing around on his phone as he waited for his new student to arrive. He would much rather be playing the new game he’d downloaded over the weekend—but he wanted to give it his full attention rather than waste away time. Scrolling through Instagram, he found a picture of Yumehara kissing Kokomi’s cheek with the caption “guess what” . A small, proud smile made its way onto his face as he double tapped the screen and commented, “took you two long enough”.
“Hello!”
The loud voice startled Kenma enough that he almost dropped his phone in a hurry to turn around. A short, orange-haired boy with a smile that felt like it was pointing a torchlight in his face was standing in front of him, looking expectant.
Fumbling with his words, Kenma managed to say, “Oh, um. Hello…”
“Are you Kozume-san?”
“Just Kenma is fine,” he replied quietly. “You must be Hinata?”
The other boy’s grin widened, if such a thing was even possible. “Yep! You can call me Shouyou!”
Kenma was still a bit shaken from his sudden appearance, and his mouth was taking some time to catch up to his brain. “Um, so… math?”
He winced internally at his inability to hold a normal conversation, but thankfully, Shouyou didn’t seem to mind. The other boy flung his bag onto the table and threw himself into the chair next to Kenma, groaning all the while. “Ugh, math. ”
Kenma resisted the urge to roll his eyes, as overwhelmed as he felt by this tiny, loud spitfire. He had half a mind to just stay quiet throughout the entire session and just let the other boy figure out things on his own—but if there was one thing Kenma hated, it was going back on a promise (also, he really liked his math teacher). So instead of doing what he’d rather be doing, he put aside his phone and pulled out his textbooks, saying, “It’s not that bad.”
“No, it’s the worst! Just a bunch of stupid numbers and shapes and stuff that doesn’t make any sense,” grumbled Shouyou, and Kenma thought that he already knew what sort of person thiswas. Loud, passionate, a little dumb sometimes but with a heart of gold. The sort of person who was the main character in a shounen anime.
That wasn’t really Kenma’s thing. He’d much rather be the side character who appeared in one season and got killed off in the next.
“Okay, well…” he started, trailing off.
He was interrupted before he could figure out what to say next, though: “Yeah, it’s kinda weird, isn’t it? Math is supposed to be all logical and meaningful and stuff.”
Kenma hummed, not sure what to make of this new development. It wasn’t something he’d expected the other boy to say. “Sure, I guess… but it doesn’t seem weird to me. I’m here to help you anyway, so.”
Shouyou brightened up considerably at that— why, Kenma had no idea. Maybe he wasn’t as predictable as he originally thought he was.
“Yeah! I’m glad!”
The next hour passed as quickly as it started, with Kenma slowly easing up to the other boy and working through his troubles in math. He learnt that Shouyou was actually quite bright, and grasped concepts easily—his only trouble was that he forgot them as easily, too. He wasn’t the worst person to work with, though, and Kenma found himself thinking that maybe the whole tutor program wasn’t a huge waste of time.
Shouyou scrunched up his nose, and Kenma noticed that he had light freckles around his cheeks. He filed that information away for later, instead focusing on what he was being asked.
“How do you solve this one?”
He was pointing at a question in the textbook, a simple factorising one. “Middle-term splitting. Here, I’ll—”
“Kenma!”
Two heads, one half blonde and the other orange, turned at the sound of the voice. Kenma was greeted with the sight of his best friend, a school bag slung across his shoulder, which immediately prompted a sigh from him. He’d almost forgotten that the other was supposed to pick him up. “Kuro.”
He could feel Shouyou’s questioning look on him, so he turned back around to say, “I gotta go. It’s already been an hour, can we continue later?”
Shouyou nodded, with the same vigour that he did everything else. “Sure! When?”
“Uh…” Kenma hesitated. “Is Thursday okay?”
“Yeah, perfect!”
Gathering up his things and getting ready to leave, Kenma glanced at Shouyou. He was staring at his notebook ferociously, as if he could make it give up all its answers with a single look. Kenma smiled, and Shouyou looked up as if he’d just noticed that he was there.
“See you later, Shouyou.”
“So? How was the tutoring session?”
“It was fine.”
Kuro groaned, throwing a pillow at Kenma from where he was lying at the bottom of his bed. Kenma ignored it, too engrossed in the video game currently in his hand—he was only a few XP away from leveling up and he wasn’t about to let stupid Kuro get in his way of doing that.
“Come on, there at the library you actually looked focused for once! I expected you to be half asleep when I came to pick you up.”
He didn’t get an answer for another few minutes, because Kenma was still fixated on his pixels. As soon as the banner proclaiming “LEVEL 92” came on, he set the game aside and flopped over on his belly to face Kuro, finally satisfied.
“It was fine.” Seeing Kuro’s glare, Kenma searched for something else to say. “Not as bad as I’d thought it would be.”
“You don’t exactly have high standards for anything.”
“See, that’s a survival skill. Never have high expectations and you can never be let down by anything.”
Kuro groaned, and Kenma held back a smug grin. “You mean you’re just too lazy to actually care about things.”
“Maybe.”
“Ugh. How was the kid?”
That made Kenma pause. How was he supposed to describe Hinata Shouyou? “He was… interesting.”
Kuro gaped at him, and Kenma was starting to regret saying anything at all. “ Interesting? Coming from you, that’s like comparing him to god .”
“I’m just being honest.”
“At which you so excel. Did you add anything about him in the almanac?”
Kenma shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Those blank pages aren’t sitting around for nothing. Fill them in with the ink they desire,” finished Kuro, with a flourish. Kenma threw the pillow back at him.
“I’ll add him in when there’s something to add.”
Raising an eyebrow, Kuro asked, “What, you’re telling me that your one-and-a-half-hour study date wasn’t enough for you to read his mind?”
Kenma ignored the ‘date’ comment. He ignored most things Kuro said—another survival skill he’d picked up over the years. Instead, he replied, “I thought I had him down, but he’s a lot harder to read than I expected.”
“And why do you think that is?”
He only shrugged in response, already bored of the conversation.
“You are so odd,” replied Kuro, and Kenma frowned. “You staying over for dinner?”
And just like that, the subject changed.
Later that night, when he’d returned home after eating a particularly delicious meal at Kuro’s, Kenma pulled out his notebook from his backpack. There weren’t a lot of empty pages left, but it’d fit a few more people just yet.
NAME: Hinata Shouyou
BIRTHDAY:
PERSONALITY TRAITS: loud
INTERESTS:
TYPE:
IDEAL DATE:
CRUSHES:
RELATIONSHIPS:
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
It wasn’t a lot, so far, but he’d get there.