Chapter Text
You remembered middle school being a competitive time with the childhood friends you didn’t exactly sign up for. Your parents had been friends and bitter rivals with their parents ever since they were young, and so they expected you to manifest that same friendly animosity and lifelong friendship in the next generation. And so you took that upon yourself very enthusiastically, pouring every fibre of your being into one-upping Hitoya and Jakurai every chance you got.
All of your parents were doctors, and you’d all expected to follow the same footsteps at an early age. And so you worked hard, partly out of determination, mostly out of spite and the eagerness to win. The three of you clashed in every subject, with Jakurai coming out on top every single time, and you and Hitoya would fight tooth and nail for second place, with the three of you sitting consistently at the top of the class. High school came along, and it was the same, as you grew closer. University came along, and it was still the same, as you drifted a little farther apart. Lifelong friends, and fated rivals. You thought things would never truly change.
And then, in medical school, you realized that some people were just born to sit at the top even as you clawed your way up, a place you could never reach no matter how hard you tried. You cried bitterly when you received your marks back from the first major exam, tasting something that wasn’t merely defeat at the other two's hands, but true failure for the first time. You were so used to snide remarks from when Hitoya beat you by a mere one percent, that you didn’t expect it when he came running to comfort you, skipping his evening class for the first time in his entire goody-two-shoes life to keep you company. Jakurai, busy with the med students association meeting at that time, dropped by your dorm later to give you late-night study snacks.
Life had been so much of a competition that you’d forgotten that they were your best friends. And that was when things began to change.
It was small at first, as you stopped comparing exam marks, stopped pretending you didn't pull all-nighters as you dabbed concealer under your bleary eyes, stopped studying alone. Your mentality became less like you had to win all the time, and more along the lines of "together, we will survive med school!". Jakurai was more than thrilled to help you brush up on topics you didn't fully understand. Hitoya stopped making fun of you altogether when he'd gotten one percent higher on a midterm. You were beginning to have more fun, instead of living off of spite and the desire to win.
Your competitive streak wore down, and with it, one day, out of nowhere, you realized suddenly with a horrible sinking feeling that you had fallen in love.
It was as if it were the ultimate form of defeat. It hadn’t ever occurred to you just how much time you had been spending around Jakurai and Hitoya throughout the years, so focused on trying to beat them. You didn’t realize, until it was too late.
And that wasn’t even the start of it.
“I’m dropping out of med school,” Hitoya told you one day, out of the blue. “You can keep chasing after Jakurai all you want, but neither of us are ever going to reach him.”
"What? No way! You're not doing that bad, are you?"
"There are two things I hate," he said. "Being beaten by Jakurai, and being beaten by you. I'm just not cut out for med school, and I'd rather put my time into something else."
"I know both of us can't even hold a handle to Jakurai," you said. "But not a lot of people can."
"But I have to," he said. "This…" he gestured around him. "Is not enough. I'm not enough."
"You're doing so much," you tried to reason with him.
"That's exactly why this is a damned waste. I'm sorry, but my mind is made up."
And that was when everything changed for real.
A year later, you'd dropped out of med school yourself, unable to keep up with the curriculum despite your best efforts and Jakurai's assistance. And worse, you'd then fallen out of touch with both of them, busy as you were after switching to pharmacy school halfway through the semester. You didn't even know that Hitoya had gone to law school. You didn't even know that Jakurai had gone off to work for the military, as a military doctor and an assassin during the war. Life went on, without either of your childhood friends at your side.
You didn't know why you never bothered with just a simple call, or a simple text just to check if they were doing ok. Perhaps you were too proud, too jealous, too heartbroken as you waited for them to contact you first.
But you had been the starstruck fool who had fallen in love with one of your best friends, and school had never taught you how to deal with that. And the result of that and the path you took was completely losing touch with both of them for ten years, until the world had turned upside down with the new era of peace, hypnosis microphones, and the three of you were very different people from when you'd first met in middle school.
-
You’d had to adapt to changes all your life, but what was one more?
The official-looking letter had been handed over from a government official to one of your pharmacy technicians, and you’d opened it after work, confused and a little worried. The new Chuuoku government didn’t exactly send out stamped, sealed documents to ordinary people – usually only those that they intended to invite to the Division Rap Battle.
You had a pharmacy to run! People to help! You couldn’t just suddenly take up rap.
It was, however, not an invitation to participate in the DRB, but an invitation into Chuuoku to watch the semifinals, between Fling Posse and Matenrou, two divisions from districts close enough to yours that you were vaguely aware of their existence, but you didn’t care much. Why a personal invitation from Otome Tohoten herself?
“Wow, I pissed off the Prime Minister,” you said, as you slid into the driver’s seat of your car and started it up. “How lovely.”
It was still a little jarring even when it had been almost three years since the H Age began, that a person could, in theory, rap you to death. Thankfully your work was far away from most of the hypnosis mic activity in the city, nice and peaceful and mostly conflict-free. The DRB was more of a spectacle than an actual battle, so being invited to watch didn’t mean you were in any danger.
But why a personal invitation to come watch for you of all people, a local pharmacist in a small town with a low profile who hadn’t really done anything at all to warrant attention from the government?
You looked over the letter again skeptically when you’d reached your apartment. The central ward emblem stared back at you, daring you to challenge its authenticity.
“Ok! Fine!” you said aloud. “Let’s waste a vacation day to go watch a freaking rap battle.”
-
It had been what, ten years since he’d seen you last?
You’d changed very little, Hitoya noted with a pang, as he saw you snooping around the corner of the venue with a determined look, looking a little out of place. He couldn’t believe his eyes at first. But it was you, in the flesh, in Chuuoku, clutching a letter that looked exactly the same as the one he’d received.
He went up to greet you without a second thought, and you looked positively shocked to see him, which pleased him because that meant he was one step ahead, his competitive nature resurfacing easily.
“Hitoya?!”
“It’s been too long,” he said.
You recovered quickly, and beamed. “It really has! We all kinda just fell out of touch afterwards, right? I can’t believe you’re standing here in front of me! You’ve really perfected that pompadour, wow, it looks sleek as hell on you! Wonder how Jakurai is doing these days…”
Hitoya made a small grunting sound in the back of his throat. If you were here, but you didn’t seem to realize… “What are you doing here for?”
You held up the slightly crumpled Chuuoku letter. “I got an invitation to come see the rap battle. You can’t really refuse a direct order from the government.”
It made sense that the government would invite both of you, perhaps, to see Jakurai’s formidable skills for themselves. He wasn’t sure what Chuuoku was up to, but he wouldn’t pass up a chance to defeat the one he’d been chasing after for so many years, even if it wasn’t in work or academics but something as childish as a fight with hypnosis mics. He’d always had a petty sense of inferiority when it came to Jakurai, and he knew why, even though it made his stomach churn and his heart leap. You were different. It was a more reasonable sense of rivalry, because sometimes he could beat you and sometimes it couldn’t. And, as a grin spread over his lips, it looked like he’d beaten you in information-gathering this time around.
“Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face,” you scolded, laughing. “What are you thinking about?”
“That I win this time around.”
“Literally just saw your face again for the first time in years and this is what you say to me?” You smacked him playfully on the arm. “Must I remind you that you dropped out of med school first, so as far as I’m concerned, I won.”
That brought him up short. “You dropped out too?”
“Did you stay in touch with Jakurai?”
Again, Jakurai this, Jakurai that. There was no conversation he could have with you without Jakurai in it. It made sense, seeing as who the two of you were invited to come see. But there were two things he hated; the reminder that he was still inferior, and the reminder that he had lost painfully to Jakurai in every sense of the phrase.
He ignored your words, proudly puffing up his chest. “I went to law school, sorry I was too busy to check up on either of you guys.”
“Oh! Oh! Did you pass the bar exam?”
He glared at you good-naturedly. “Who do you think I am? I own the damn Amaguni Law Firm right now.”
“Wow, congrats!” you said. “Belatedly.”
“So, what are you up to these days? Don’t tell me you’re in these rap battles?”
You huffed. “As if! I ended up going into pharmacy just before the war. And ‘cause of that, I got a job pretty soon after graduating. Nothing as flashy as lawyer or doctor , but my student loans are all paid off.”
“Wow, congrats.”
“You’re making fun of me!”
“There are two things I like,” he said, “Catching up with old friends, and making fun of them. But you’re certainly doing well. I’m proud.”
“Did you get married or something? Are you a father now? Why do you sound like one? Ugh, gross.”
Hitoya thought about Jyushi and Kuko, and grimaced because you weren’t too far off the mark.
“Oh god, you really have kids.”
“Not mine!” he said quickly, earning a choked laugh from you.
“Hey, I’m not judging,” you said, sounding delighted. “If I weren’t so busy, I might consider it too.”
“You’re seeing someone?”
It was a strange question after all these years, because he didn’t really know what you’d been up to all this time. You could’ve gone to space, and he would have been none the wiser. But for some reason, he wanted to know. His old childhood friend, unlikeable and competitive and rude as shit, maybe really did beat him in snagging a lifelong partner first.
“You think I have time for that?” you asked, narrowing your eyes at him. “I’ll fight you, Hitoya. Stop sniggering like that. It’s not funny!”
It wasn’t, but Hitoya felt a weird sense of relief and the only way he could hide it from you was to laugh. At least the two of you were on the same page. And Jakurai... “Right, right,” he said. “My bad. It’s a busy time for all of us.”
“And you freaking adopted some children ,” you said. “Does that mean you win, or are you losing?”
“Oh, definitely losing,” he said sourly, and you laughed again at that.
“Well, it’s a good thing Chuuoku forced us to waste some vacation days for this garbage,” you said. “It was nice to catch up with you. Do you think the rap battle is starting soon? Wanna head in together? I’ve never been to like...a rap concert before. Are there seats? Do we stand in the back?”
“We hang upside down like bats,” he said sarcastically, glancing over at the posters on the walls that you clearly hadn’t noticed, plastered with Fling Posse and Matenrou ads. “Who are you cheering for?”
You gaped at him. “We’re supposed to pick a side? Oh god, I didn’t do my research. Maybe Matenrou then? Shinjuku’s like, a little bit closer to my city…oh shit.” Your eyes followed his gaze, and found yourself staring directly at a poster with Jakurai standing behind some colourful, strange-looking folk like he was an angel descending from heaven. “That’s Jakurai! He dropped out of med school too?! To be a pop star? Holy shit.”
Hitoya side-eyed you hard. “I do believe the rap battles are a side gig, but I’m not well-versed in hypnosis mics either. You came here without knowing that Jakurai was battling today?”
“Well, the letter didn’t say,” you said defensively, tearing your gaze away from the poster and Jakurai’s flowing hair. “I have never seen him let his hair down like that. I need to see this in person. Let’s go inside and get some good seats!”
Now you were talking, Hitoya thought. He followed you into the venue as you continued to laugh in disbelief, chatting about how the three of you had to catch up after leading such very different lives.
“Maybe not today,” he said uncomfortably. “Didn’t you see the back of the letter?” You shook your head at that, and he thought about how you were probably the kind of person who didn’t read legal documents thoroughly before signing and continued, “They asked us to keep a low profile.”
You glanced at your letter. The back was blank. Odd.
“Haha, if you’re too shy to see Jakurai you can just say so,” you teased. “I’ll get his autograph for you.”
“If you come near me with one, I’ll burn it,” he promised threateningly. You just grinned at him, completely unfazed.