Chapter Text
It was the weekend, and for most people that meant bliss. An escape from the 9-5 reality that plagues most people for their lives is gone for two days once the date roles over to Saturday. No school, no work, just the relaxation needed to do it all again the next week.
Unfortunately for Miwa, that was not his reality. He would rather go to school every day if it meant not having to go to HQ and avoiding one miniscule problem.
“Hey lead-guy.”
Now, some might say, ‘Miwa, your being too dramatic. How can it be that bad?’ And Miwa would simply say ‘Fuck you' and storm off because there isn't one person on the planet that could understand the situation he is going through right now.
“Hey, snake-guy, are you ignoring me?”
It seems as small as getting a rock stuck in your shoes, or getting a splinter that falls out at the end of the day, but for Miwa it was as if those splinters and rocks manifested into a person trying to talk to him.
“Now I’m wondering if you can even hear me. Should I speak louder?” Miwa watched his drink finally fall from the vending machine and he snatched it up violently. Yuma stood a foot away from Miwa, who had been trying to get his attention the whole time he was monologuing to himself. He sees Miwa turn towards him, and Yuma has a slight hope he'll talk to him until Miwa shoves past him towards the hallways he came from.
It had been exactly three weeks since the pipsqueak started coming up to him at HQ, and it had been three weeks since Miwa started to ignore him. Every day without fail he would find some way to intrude into his life. If he got food at HQ, the pipsqueak would be in line next to him, if Miwa was in the solo-booths he would be in the booth next to him, and one time he managed to weasel his way into Miwa’s squad room when Midorikawa stopped by.
It was exhausting, and it was too much for it to be a coincidence. He wanted something, and Miwa wouldn’t give him a chance to ask.
He steps into his operating room, noticing the lack of Yoneya and Narasaka in the corner of the room hooked up to his computer working on intense math homework that Miwa doesn’t even want to look at. Ren in the back room is talking to some other operators over a voice chat, leaving Miwa to grab a drink and sit at the table all by himself. He fiddles with his phone for a bit before getting bored and reading a book that provided the same level of entertainment.
Just then Yoneya waltzes in, Izumi and Midorikawa in tow. They’re talking about some video game when Yoneya spots Miwa and sits next to him. His face is smiley as always, his eyes slightly squinting together and the dimples popped onto his skin, but through their time together Miwa has noticed the slight differences in his smiles; this one meant he was concerned, and Miwa told him off before Yoneya could even say anything.
“I’m fine. Thank you for asking.” Instantly Yoneya pouts, and the other two sit across from him.
“Shuuji, you’re no fun.” He draws out his name and Miwa looks away from him. “How do you know what I’m going to say before I say it?”
“You’re predictable.” Yoneya somehow pouts even harder than before, and he turns to the other two in the idiot-trio.
“Is it true?” The other two nod with no hesitation and Yoneya sinks into the table in defeat. Izumi and Midorikawa laugh at him. This was a common occurrence around the operating room, Yoneya would bring his friends by and for a moment Miwa feels like a kid, like he’s getting better and having a good time, until he’s brought down to his knees again.
“Hey, have you two seen Yuma around?” A simple sentence from Midorikawa is enough to sink him down again and luckily, they don’t notice Miwa’s eyebrow twitch as they talk.
“I saw him by the solo-booths a couple hours ago, but he’s probably moved by now.” Izumi says, resting his head on the table. They shift to Yoneya who shrugs and they move to Miwa who gives them the same shrug. Izumi isn’t convinced however and perks up to point at him.
“You’re quite predictable yourself y’know?” Miwa frowns.
“How?”
“Whenever you’re lying, you do the same thing Yoneya does. You always shake your head when your telling the truth.” His eyes lower, but Izumi doesn’t shrink away from him. Sometimes having no brain is beneficial.
“Really? Mr. Bullet-for-brains can read into something that deep?” Izumi smiles. He was ready to entertain the snake.
“It happens every once in a while, and why did you lie, huh? You don’t like Yuma?” Miwa shakes his head. He doesn’t just dislike him, he’s repulsed by him.
“Of course I don’t like that pipsqueak. He doesn’t belong here.” Izumi shrugs again, and Yoneya realizes the signs too late for what’s about to happen. He tries to gesture towards Midorikawa to stop Izumi, but the words spill out of the blonde’s mouth too fast to react to.
“Honestly, he belongs here a lot more than we do. He knows more about triggers, he’s been in wars with them, maybe he should be telling to kill you instead of the other way around. Maybe you should talk to someone about your problems instead of blindly hating someone. Do you even know what he’s like?” Izumi steals a glance towards Yoneya who had been trying to signal at him to stop for the past few sentences and he throws up his eyebrows.
Miwa glances back towards Midorikawa, who stiffens under his gaze. Miwa knew he was friends with the pipsqueak, so he was probably looking at him funny too, and Yoneya had never got his hatred either. He felt alone, despite being surrounded by people, and he got up to take a walk around HQ again despite doing that a couple minutes ago.
It seemed like ever since that pipsqueak walked into his world for the first time, he had thrown his whole world for a loop. Kido always taught Miwa that Neighbors were the enemy, that they were to be eradicated, and yet a Neighbor founded Border, and this pipsqueak was his kid.
Why?
Why was everything crumbling around him?
And to add insult to injury, the moment he steps into the rank-war area he sees the pipsqueak scanning the area for someone to fight, Miwa hoping he doesn’t see him trying to walk by. But of course he does, and their eyes lock for a few moments. Then he bounds over to Miwa, giving him a wave.
“Hey lead-guy. You see anyone around here that wants to fight?” What he wants to do is turn and walk away like what he had been doing for weeks now: forget this pipsqueak even exists and go about his day like normal, but something about what Izumi said stuck to him.
‘Do you even know what he’s like?’ It was a simple question that left him feeling guilty.
He turns towards the white-haired kid.
“It’s Miwa, not lead-guy.” The pipsqueak smiles.
“And my name is Yuma, but you probably know that by now.” Miwa lowers his eyes; he would be a cocky little sh- no. Try to be nice. Imagine he’s just like everyone else.
“Who are you looking to fight?” Miwa asks him. He puts his hands behind his head and shrugs.
“Anyone really, I want to be ready for my match in a few days.” He looks up at Miwa for a few seconds.
“Did you want to fight?” He shakes his head.
“No, I have other things I need to do.” Yuma keeps his gaze for a few seconds before focusing on the people in the area again. Miwa notices a smirk forming on the edge of his mouth and before he can say anything, Yuma speaks up.
“You can just say no. You don’t have to lie about why.” Miwa huffs out his nose. That’s right, he has a built-in lie detector in him. He can’t just make up shit on the spot, how annoying.
“Fine, I simply don’t want to fight you right now.” Just then some other B-rank agents spot the pair and they usher Yuma over towards them. Yuma faces Miwa one last time to wave him goodbye.
“Hopefully we’ll talk more lead-guy.” Miwa opens his mouth to yell at him about the nickname when Yuma winks at him, he was joking, and Miwa settles down again. He watches as Yuma bounds over towards the group, their heads occasionally turning towards Miwa until they walk over to the booth where the pipsqueak disappears into one of them.
“You finally said hi to him.” Jin’s voice from behind him makes him jump, and he sends a glare towards the Tamakoma agent. He’s snacking on his usual brand of crackers and he offers them to Miwa, who declines quickly.
“What do you think of him?” Jin asks. It didn’t take long for Miwa to spout out his answer with a hiss.
“He’s a cocky little shit, who thinks he’s better than anyone else. Oh, and he’s a Neighbor,” He turns towards Jin who holds the same expression as before, “Is there anything else to say?”
Jin shrugs and takes another chip within his mouth.
“You will learn what he’s about as the days go by.” He taps the side of his head, “My side-effect says so.” Miwa shakes his head. He always uses that as an excuse to say anything, and today isn’t any different.
“Please, I introduced myself because he was talking to me every day, not because I want to be friends with him.” Jin simply hums in his throat, grabbing yet another chip to throw in his mouth.
“This is just the first step, y’know? Maybe you can find someone to help you talk about your sister next.” Miwa again shakes his head, but slower this time. The next time Jin offers him a chip, he takes it, carefully chewing it in his mouth. It wasn’t time for him to talk, not now, and especially not with Jin.
“If you keep frowning like that, you’ll end up with a permanent scowl.” Jin flicks his forehead just pissing him off more and Miwa storms off for the umpteenth time today. It didn’t matter where he went, it seemed like everywhere he went had the same annoying people in them, feeding him . Why was it that big a deal?
Miwa spends the rest of the day holed up in his operating room, and when the sun finally dips below the horizon, he gathers his things to head out.
The next day is filled with the same mind-numbing training and patrolling that he was used to doing a million times before. Yoneya stays ahead of him, bounding across rooftops and slashing apart Neighbors when they appear before Miwa even gets close. He turns towards Miwa a couple hours in, his face full of mischief and his hands twirling his spear.
“Shuuji, I’m bored.” He twirls his spear around his body, landing to point it at Miwa, hoping the agent would play with him for a bit. Miwa takes the tip of the spear and bats it to the side, which slumps Yoneya.
“We’re almost done. Then you can go mess around with Izumi.” Yoneya sighs and walks alongside Miwa.
“He got this new game the other day that we we’re going to play.” Miwa hums.
“We were going to get through a few levels before school tomorrow.” Yoneya says in an unenthusiastic tone. He huffs and Miwa only appears to agree. He liked going to school, it was a way to escape the constant barrage of questions people were asking him at Border. At school he could make the excuse that he had studying to do, and no one would think twice if he went into HQ. But on the weekends, there was an unspoken rule that you went into HQ, even if you had nothing to do that day, and that messed Miwa up.
Their shift was over and the two of them made their way back to HQ, Yoneya bounding away towards Izumi’s room, leaving Miwa to walk cautiously back to his room, hoping no one will talk to him on his way back.
He looked over his shoulder at every turn and snuck along the side of the hallways when someone walked past. He was nearing his door and Miwa relaxed seeing the final stretch of his journey. All he needed was a few more turns and he would be left alone for the rest of the day. He sneaks over to the corner and peaks past it; there his room sat, no one in sight. Nodding to himself, he approaches his room as a voice from behind him sends him screeching to a halt.
“Why are walking around like you’re avoiding someone?” Miwa jumps from his voice and he turns around to see the pipsqueak standing behind him. He wasn’t expecting anyone had snuck up on him, he looked over his shoulder at every turn, how did this little Neighbor get behind him so easily?
Miwa takes a step back and clears his throat.
“I am trying to avoid anyone who wants to talk to me. Like you. So could you please move along and do whatever you were going to do before you started stalking me?” He makes a face with puckered lips and shakes his head.
“I don’t want to.” Miwa feels his eyebrow twitch. How annoying.
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t doing anything before I saw you this morning and I followed you because I wanted to talk you.” Miwa takes another step back. He wasn’t willing to talk to a Neighbor so frivolously as he was suggesting.
“Why would I talk to you, Neighbor?” He shrugs.
“You talked to me yesterday after a couple weeks of ignoring me.” Miwa sighs, that was the only point he had. He turns away to avoid the kid and tries to walk towards his operating room door when the pipsqueak flies past him to block him from entering the room. He crosses his arms to form an ‘X’ and he matches Miwa’s movements as he tries to get around the kid.
“Damn your annoying. You hang out with Jin too much.” He gives Miwa a grin and gets into a cat-like stance. He was ready to fight Miwa, but he wasn’t having it and spun on his heels to walk away from Yuma. He hears the pipsqueak make a nose from behind him and he jogged up to walk alongside Miwa.
“So where are you going now?” Miwa glares at him.
“Hopefully somewhere you won’t follow me to.” Yuma wraps his hands behind his head as they walk down the hallways, other agents giving them looks as they walk by. Miwa admits in his mind that the pair stick out like a sore thumb; Miwa was always someone that avoided contact with other agents outside his squad, save for Izumi and occasionally Mr. Kazama, and Yuma was the ace of Tamakoma-2, who also looked concerningly young for being an agent.
As they enter the cafeteria, Miwa grabs himself a tray of food along with Yuma trailing behind him like a puppy.
He sits down, and Yuma sits in front of him. Miwa looks down at Yuma’s tray to see he got nearly the exact same meal as him, the only difference being the milk carton Miwa grabbed at the last moment.
“Why are you following me?” Miwa asks again. Yuma takes a bite of his sandwich and shrugs.
“You’ve been looking kind of down recently, Midorikawa was talking about that too. I just wanted to say hi.” He bites into the sandwich again, crumbs falling off his face and into his lap. Miwa stares at his food, suddenly asking himself why he got lunch. He wasn’t hungry, he hadn’t felt that sensation in a couple weeks, and even when he was he never got anything that was on his plate at the moment.
He looked up again to see Yuma nearly finishing his plate, and he pushed his tray towards him. Yuma tilts his head to the side, his eyebrows thrown up in dramatic fashion.
“I’m not hungry you take it.” Yuma doesn’t hesitate and grabs his plate before he’s even speaking. He chewed on his food with the same intensity as he had seen Yosuke do thousands of times before, and his expressions were as exaggerated as Midorikawa’s. It almost made him seem like a kid, like a human.
But he wasn’t; he was a Neighbor, and Miwa had almost started giving him some sympathy.
Miwa gets up to walk away as Yuma scrambles to finish his food to follow him. Miwa waves him off.
“Don’t follow me, I’m just going to my squad’s room.” He says in a stern voice. This time the pipsqueak takes the hint, and he slows down his bites.
“Alright. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Miwa wished he didn’t say that because that would imply that he was going to HQ tomorrow, which he was not planning on. He just wanted to finish the school day and relax at his house, away from people, away from anyone who made him think.
He wraps his scarf tightly around his neck and nestles into it as he walks towards his squad’s door, hoping this time no one will stop him from enjoying the blissful silence that accompanied the inside.
Strangely, none of his other squad mates were inside. On the weekends at least someone would be inside studying or playing games on the table. It almost made him wish he was back outside, emphasis on almost. He traveled towards the back of the room, passed Ren’s desk, and laid down on his bailout mat. It wasn’t abnormal for him to pass out on the weekends, but for some reason he felt more tired than usual.
A white-haired pipsqueak flashed in his mind and he narrowed his eyebrows. That was probably why he felt tired. Just being around him drained his energy, and every mention of him was a punch to the gut. Something within him simply hated the kid, something that he hadn’t been able to describe in quite a while. He closed his eyes and tried to explain why to himself. He knew he hated the pipsqueak, he was only being nice to him because he couldn’t kill him, but he couldn’t pick out the why to that. His eyes fluttered open again.
Why do you hate him? His conversation with Izumi echoed in his mind again; he didn’t have an answer to that, not anymore. He could only hope that the pipsqueak would leave him alone for the rest of his life so he could go back to how he was before.
And again, a voice rang through his skull: ‘what was so good about how you were before?’. No answer. It seemed like there were a lot of unknowns still, or maybe there weren’t, and he was just trying to shield himself from the truth of the situation. Maybe everything that was shoveled into his brain was a lie, and maybe that’s why nothing had felt right since the pipsqueak came by.
He placed his palms into the sockets of his eyes. He had been thinking too much, he needed the rest his brain was denying his body and without it he would feel shitty for the rest of his day. Yet that’s where he stayed for hours, constantly fighting between the two immovable forces in his body, leaving him feeling worse than ever when he finally convinced himself to go home to sleep with the same amount of success.