Chapter Text
“Why did her parents even put her in school if she can’t speak Japanese?”
“I heard that her parents went through a legal battle to get the inheritance. I bet they played dirty and don’t actually have any right to that money.”
“Isn’t her brother some sort of prodigy or something?”
“I heard that her brother’s prize money is going to get her into a university! It’s so shameful that she can’t do anything herself…”
The “slow American” kept her expression neutral, as she always did, as she walked through the halls of Shujin Academy. Despite her annoyance at the falsity of most of their claims, it was honestly kind of refreshing that people said what they really thought when they thought that she couldn’t understand them.
Max, in reality, could understand them just fine. It was just speaking the precise language of Japanese that she struggled with. However, explaining that concept was too much of a chore for too many reasons, and she was going back to the United States in about three years anyways. Only 1,064 days to go. She could go back to Arizona, where it was warm, where they didn’t have school on Saturdays, where it wasn’t common for public schools to require their students to wear stupid uniforms, where she actually was taken seriously.
“Jones-kun!”
Max kept walking for a moment, but then she remembered that she was in Japan, where “Jones-kun” was her title, until she actually made friends who she could tell to call her Max. However, considering she had been here for a month, and the rumors about her still hadn’t stopped spreading, she would be comfortable betting all of her instruments that she wasn’t going to make friends anytime soon. The strawberry blonde stopped and turned, gazing up at the PE teacher. Instinctively, she took a step back, so she didn’t hurt her neck trying to look up at him. Also, he was standing way too close to her. “Hello, Kamoshida-senpai,” she said carefully. “I can help?”
He smiled down at her, and Max did her best not to flinch. His smile, somehow, was worse than the other teachers’ smiles-- just as condescending, but there was something containing more...something. It wasn’t a good something, and it made Max want to get away from him as soon as she possibly could. “Do. You.” Kamoshida pointed at her slowly but firmly. “Know.” He pointed repeatedly to the side of his head. “How to play volleyball?” He set the volleyball that he had been carrying under his arm like a has-been volleyball player who had nothing going for him in his life anymore.
“Okay, Max, that was just mean,” she chastised herself in her head. He was creepy, for sure, but to be fair, she didn’t trust any of the faculty at this school. Why trust someone who just viewed you as a burden and a waste of their own oh-so precious time?
“Yes,” she said simply, keeping all of the negative emotions in the back of her head. Kamoshida’s grin widened, and she smiled fakely back at him.
Please leave.
“Good!” Kamoshida gave her a thumbs up and handed her a bright yellow flyer to her, advertising the volleyball try-outs that were coming up. Max nodded in understanding, and bowed to him slightly.
“Thank you, Kamoshida-senpai, for information. I go to lunch,” she muttered before rushing away. She passed by a blonde, Saka-something, she didn’t really pay attention to whatever the other students were saying about each other, even if she was pretty sure that he was in her class. The more she cared, the harder it was for her when she remembered her squashed desires for friends and damn it, just something resembling happiness.
“Another victim,” Saka-something said spitefully. Something about his tone caused her to grit her teeth. “Doesn’t even speak Japanese, but she’ll bend backwards to please him, like every student here. What a joke.”
Max didn’t know if it was because he referred to her as a victim, or because he compared her to all of the gossipy nitwits that assumed she was lesser because she couldn’t speak Japanese as well as they could, but something snapped in her brain. She spun on him and glared at him.
“Shut up!”
Saka-whoever jumped back, clearly surprised at her reaction, and Max froze.
She had just spoken. She had spoken Japanese to another student for the first time in her month-long period at Shujin Academy, and her first words had been “Shut up?” Whoever was in charge of the universe, please kill her. Quickly, she got her wits about her and mustered as much dignity as she could. “Not a victim. Not like other people. Stop,” she explained further, standing up straighter. She couldn’t bring herself to look the blonde student in the eye, so she stared past him at the wall.
Pretty wall-work. Yyyyyyyep. Pretty wall...all painted with the school colors and stuff.
“You can understand me?” he asked, looking both shocked and angry. “Have you been lying to everyone to get some kind of special treatment or something?”
Max balled her fists at her sides. This kid was as dense as a ball of takoyaki, and his accusations were only making her blood boil even more. Did no one at this hell of a school understand? Did no one understand that she didn’t want to be here either? Did no one get that the only reason she never spoke was because her Japanese sounded like it was coming from a toddler’s mouth? Why had she even bothered trying to stand up for herself in the first place? Why…
“Frick, uhhhh...uhhhh, stop crying? Please? I’m sorry, I guess? I just don’t get why you wouldn’t talk if you knew how to speak Japanese?” Saka-whatever said, though every phrase that passed through his lips sounded more like a question rather than a statement.
Max brought a hand to her cheek and was surprised to see that tears had actually fallen. That hadn’t happened since her first day here. She rubbed at her eyes furiously with the sleeve of her Shujin blazer. “Bad with talk,” she finally answered, despite the growing lump in her throat. “Understand, but no talk.”
The other student nodded slowly. “So, uh, you can’t speak Japanese all that well, but you can understand what I’m saying right now?”
Max nodded, sniffing back the rest of her tears. Who knew what the rest of the students would say if they saw her crying? “Yes.”
A silence passed between the two as students rushed by them trying to get to their lunch spots. The kid finally cursed under his breath and pulled her towards him and the vending machine and gestured at the machine.
“Which soda do you want?” he asked, pulling out two bills of yen. Max blinked, confused.
“What?” she asked.
“Which soda do you want?” he asked again, slower this time. Despite saying the sentence slower, he didn’t sound like he was babying her, like some of her teachers did when she stayed after class to ask a question about the homework.
“Why?” Max asked, revising the question. The kid looked down at his shoes and shuffled his feet.
“I guess I kind of feel like an asshole. You know, for asking you if you were trying to get special treatment. Making you cry. I know a lot of people don’t like me much, but even I don’t like making girls I don’t know cry,” he explained, cracking his neck by rotating his neck side to side.
Max cocked her head to the side, studying him. He didn’t seem to be making fun of her in any way. “The girls you know cry?”
He paused his neck cracking and stared at her, confused. “I mean yeah? Girls cry all the time. I mean, guys cry too, I guess, but-” He stopped short and stared at her for a moment, processing the other meaning behind her words. “Wha-hey! I don’t make them cry either!”
For what seemed like the first time in months, Max cracked a small smile and snorted. She pointed to one of the melon-flavored sodas in the vending machine. “Personality?” she suggested in an innocent tone. The kid’s mouth dropped in offense again, and this time, she full-on laughed at his expression as he spluttered out some witty retort, but she patted his shoulder comfortingly. “Jokes.” Her soda fell out and she picked it up. “Thank you very much. Name?” she asked, pointing at him.
He stared down at her, as if deciding if it was worth it to get involved with her. “Name’s Sakamoto Ryuji. What’s your name, American?” he asked, leaning up against the wall as he unscrewed the cap of his Pepsi.
Max raised an eyebrow at the title. “Jones Max.” She unscrewed her soda and let out a string of curse words in English as the fizz spurted this way and that, getting on her face, her uniform, and her hands. Sakamoto snickered, but in his defense, Max supposed, he did try to hold it back when she glared at him. “Thanks,” she drawled, trying to make her tone as sarcastic as possible to let the kid know she was less than amused.
“Don’t mention it.”
The two sipped their sodas in awkward silence for a while, slouched over their drinks while they leaned back against the wall. Sakamoto seemed to be doing it to appear standoffish, which, granted, didn’t seem to be that hard for him. However, Max was trying to be as small as possible, trying to cover the light pink stains on her white shirt. Maybe they got some guarded looks, maybe they didn’t; Max was just trying to gauge whether or not she could make this situation work. Having a friend, an intimidating friend at that, might make the rumors stop. No one would be dumb enough to spread rumors about a buff, athletic-looking kid like Sakamoto right?
“Wow. Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Max heard a girl with a giant pink bow at the base of her bun say in shock to her friend. Her friend, who was sporting a classic black headband, nodded.
“If you mean the school troublemaker being friendly with the slow American, then yes,” she replied. “Do you think she knows what he’s saying? Or did he just smile and she assumed that means he’s being nice?”
The girl with the bow snorted. “If there’s one thing about Sakamoto-san that I know, it’s that he’s the opposite of nice.”
Headband Girl nodded solemnly. “Completely true.”
Max’s brows furrowed. The dude had just bought her a soda with caffeine and was letting her stand next to him when she had yelled at him in the first place. What the hell was the definition of “nice” in Japan if this wasn’t it?
“Just ignore them,” Sakamoto advised boredly. “If you’re gonna hang out with me, you’ll get used to it eventually.”
Max looked up at him, shocked. “You want friends?”
Sakamoto looked offended. “Of course I want friends. What kind of freak do you think I am? I just bought you a soda, didn’t I? ‘S not my fault if you don’t think I’m nice enough,” he snapped. He pushed himself off the wall, and picked readjusted his bag on his shoulder. Max panicked. She grabbed his arm and pulled him towards her as he tried to leave.
“Stop. Please,” Max begged, miming a “stay” motion with her hands. Sakamoto looked down at her, crossing his arms impatiently, but he didn’t leave. She dug through her bag that was covered end-to-end with various pins and photograph key-chains of her and her friends from the States. She pulled out a notebook and frantically began writing her intended message. She handed Sakamoto the notebook.
He squinted at the page as he read her haphazard katakana, and she prayed that the message made more sense than her fragmented spoken Japanese did. His shoulders relaxed, and he sent a reluctant smile her way. “No wonder you don’t speak. You’re going to really piss someone off one day,” Sakamoto responded, smirking.
Max’s shoulders relaxed, but she gave him a look that she hope screamed, “No shit, Sherlock!” However, she stayed silent and waited for his serious answer.
“Eh. Why not? Just don’t kill my vibe, alright newbie?”
Max blinked as he turned and walked away. Max blinked. Did she make a friend just by asking? What, was she back in second grade where this sort of thing was common and acceptable? Wait, if he said yes, then why was he walking away? What was even happening?
Sakamoto walked back to her and raised an eyebrow expectantly. “Well? You coming or not, friend?” he asked, emphasizing the last word to make sure there was no miscommunication this time around. He waved his arm towards him, and she found herself following him to the roof.
And so began the friendship of the slow American and Shujin Academy’s resident troublemaker.