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“Well, this sucks,” Manjoume mumbled as he walked over to the counter. This was the last time he ever took bait from Judai.
You see, about an hour ago Judai had suggested that they sneak into the cafeteria after hours in order to steal some sandwiches. Manjoume had told him to go away and that that was a stupid idea, but Judai had called him a wimp, so he caved. He had then been forced to climb through a window in order to get in. (As in, he had originally refused, but Judai had called him a wimp again, so he had, again, caved.)
And, well, the window was high up. They had gotten in by climbing a tree. It was much too high up for them to get out the same way, and the door was locked. They were stuck.
This sucked.
“At least we have access to a lot of sandwiches,” Judai said, practically inhaling one of them, crumbs spilling out of his mouth and onto the floor.
Manjoume wanted to murder him.
“Hey, stop glaring at me like that.” Judai pointed his third (fourth?) sandwich of the night at him. “You made the decision to come with me.”
“What the hell. No I didn’t.”
“Yeah, you did.”
Manjoume picked up a pack of cards that had been lying on the counter and threw them at his not-friend. In an attempt to catch them, Judai dropped his sandwich onto the floor.
“Hey! What the hell?! You made me ruin my sandwich.”
“You suck.”
“You’re mean.”
Judai grabbed two sandwiches and then walked over to a Manjoume, holding one out to him. “Here. Have a sandwich. We’re stuck here, might as well take what we came here for.”
“I did not come here for some stupid sandwiches,” Manjoume replied, but he took and ate it anyway.
“This is nice,” Judai said after they had been standing in silence for a couple minutes. “Me. You. Trapped alone in a store, eating sandwiches.”
“This is not nice.”
“Appreciate the moment.”
“No. Fuck you.”
And then they fell into silence again. God. They had a test the next day and he wasn’t going to be able to get any sleep because he had gotten locked in this stupid store with his stupid rival. What an awful night.
“Hey,” Judai said. “Hey. Hey. Since we’re here… Well, do you have your deck with you?”
“Of course.”
“We should play a game,” He suggested.
Well, that wasn’t a horrible suggestion. And, so, they did. They had three duels, actually; Manjoume only won one of them, which was infuriating. If he was strong enough to lift a table, he would have thrown one of them at the wall. His face had gotten red with frustration. Judai laughed at him, and Manjoume contemplated throwing a chair at him--since he could actually thrift those--but ultimately decided that injuring Judai like that would probably get him into more trouble than he needed right then.
They had sat at one of the tables while they played. Judai got up from his chair, said, “I wanna see what your hand was,” walked over to Manjoume, and shoved his face against his. How close they were made Manjoume’s stomach feel funny in a way that it didn’t for other people. Manjoume could feel his face flushing, too.
It was probably because he hated him. (Though it was weird that the feeling was similar to what he used to feel around Asuka. Ah, well. Probably not a detail worth dwelling on.)
“Ooh, cool,” Judai said. “You probably could have beaten me if you had used this spell.”
He was right. “Shut up. Go away.”
Judai giggled, stepped away, and sat back down and the funny feeling in Manjoume’s stomach started to dissipate.
“Well, what are we supposed to do now?” Judai asked.
“Uh, find a way out?”
“Aw, that’s lame.” The brown-haired boy looked around the room for a moment. “Well, I guess we could stack chairs to climb up to the window. Then we could hop out.”
“Why didn’t you suggest that before?”
“I didn’t feel like it. Didn’t you have fun?”
“No.”
“Aw. Mean.”
They started stacking chairs. It didn’t take too long, though sometimes Judai’s hand would get too close to his as they passed by each other, or as they worked together to put one of the chairs on top of another, and Manjoume could feel his face heat up, and, gosh, it was confusing. It definitely felt different than the annoyance he had felt about Judai’s existence back when they had first met. He didn’t want to think about the reasons behind that, though, it was much too weird for him to handle.
They only stacked two chairs--any more and it would get dangerous for them to climb them, probably.
“I’m going first,” Manjoume decided. “I deserve to escape more than you do.”
Judai chuckled but didn’t say anything. So, Manjoume began trying to climb up the chairs to reach the windows. Unfortunately, this did not go well; he fell off of the chairs and stumbled backwards, bumping into Judai. This resulted in the both of them falling down onto the floor, Manjoume landing almost top of his rival. Grumbling, he turned around to put his hands on the floor and realized that he had just put himself and judai into quite the odd position.
Looking down at his friend-that-he-definitely-didn’t-want-to-be-in-this-position-with-would-his-brain-please-stop-thinking-weird-things-please-and-thank-you, Manjoume froze, his face definitely turning the same color as Judai’s stupid jacket.
“Um, so…” Judai said, almost whispering, “are we just going to sit here for a while, or… ?”
“No! No. Uh.” Manjoume got off him and lied on the ground next to him.
“Well, that didn’t work,” Judai commented. Manjoume lifted his head to look at the chairs; while they had been… whatever that was… one of the chairs had fallen onto the ground. Manjoume had no idea how he hadn’t heard that.
“Do you want to talk about… um, what just happened?” Judai asked.
“There’s something to talk about?” Manjoume replied.
“Um, I guess not, then.”
His tone of voice was weird. He almost sounded upset, which was not an emotion Manjoume was used to seeing on Judai.
“What? Are you mad?”
“No.”
“Then why do you sound mad?”
“You’re always mad at me, why does it matter if I’m a little annoyed?”
Manjoume made a sound that would probably be best described as a growl. Judai laughed and then then sat up. Manjoume copied him and sat up so that they were facing each other.
“Well, I think we should talk,” Judai said.
“About what?” Manjoume asked.
“Oh, y’know… “ He gestured towards himself and then towards Manjoume.
“Huh?”
“Well.” Judai said. “I mean, I’ve noticed… God, I don’t know how to phrase any of this.”
“I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”
“Well--ugh. Wanna kiss?”
“... What?”
“You heard me.”
Manjoume was shocked that his first reaction to that question wasn’t to recoil. He had thought that he loved Asuka but, well… he hadn’t been feeling the same way about her in awhile. And a lot of the weird feelings he had been having about Judai were similar to what he had used to feel about her. Not exactly the same, he didn’t feel as… consumed by them. But his stomach would start to hurt in the same way when Judai got too close, and his face would heat up if Judai’s hand ended up near his, and he had been feeling more of a desire to spend time around his rival lately, and--
Well, shit.
Okay, fine. Maybe he had developed… developed feelings for him.
Admitting that to himself kind of made him want to throw up. And the thought of admitting that outloud kind of made him want to dig a hole and bury himself alive.
But Judai was sitting there, waiting. And he didn’t want to say no.
Was there a way that he could make Judai get the message without saying anything?
“Um… “ Manjoume said instead of actual words because he was kind of having trouble forcing any out of his mouth. “Uh… um… “
It took him what felt like a century, but he was finally able to stop making sounds and say, “Okay,” so quietly he almost thought Judai wouldn’t be able to hear it, in which case he was just going to give up because forcing himself to respond was causing him both mental and physical pain.
Judai moved closer and then began leaning towards him. He paused for a second, looking at Manjoume, before he finished closing the distance between them and pressed his lips against Manjoume’s.
It… well, it certainly didn’t feel wrong.
The kiss lasted for barely a second before Judai pulled away. They looked at each other for a moment before Judai grinned and stood up. Manjoume continued sitting there, his mind having not quite processed what had just happened enough for him to be able to move on and stand up.
“Did we just--”
“Come on,” Judai interrupted. “Help me stack the chairs again. I bet we could do it without falling this time if we believe in ourselves. Or whatever.”
“Um… O...okay.”
They stacked the chairs again. This time, they managed to get out without falling on top of each other.
“That was fun,” Judai said, still grinning. That stupid expression had been painted on his face since they had… they had… um… kissed.
“... Sure.”
Judai laughed, grabbed Manjoume’s hand, and began pulling him back to the red dorms. “Come on, we should try to get some sleep tonight so that we don’t fall asleep in class.”
“Hey, you’re just going to sleep in class either way!”
“Are you saying you want to keep spending time with me?”
Manjoume scowled. “No. I actually want to get as far away from you as possible.”
“Sure you do.”
He still had that stupid grin on his face. Manjoume hit him with the hand that Judai wasn’t holding.
“Wait,” Manjoume said before Judai could start dragging him back to the dorms. “What were you upset about?”
“Oh, you’re just… an oblivious idiot.”
“Huh--?”
Before Manjoume could react, Judai laughed and started walking again. And, so, they headed back to their dorms together, bickering and holding hands the entire way.