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The idiot entourage shows up to Akane’s front door, zero warning, drenched from head to toes, towing an extra shadow among their ranks. He feels a headache blanketing over the top of his head, down the back of his skull, encapsulating his entire being until he is nothing but a consuming weariness, melting hopefully into the sewerage under their foundation. He is not here. Do not perceive him. He does not exist.
“People,” he sighs, more headache than boy. “What now.”
“Hey Aoi,” Lemon says, eyes stuck on his phone. “We got a question for ya.”
Akane’s grip on his door immediately tightens. He takes a shuffle back.
“What did you do now?”
The Trouble Two step aside to reveal the Extra Shadow, a strikingly familiar face. He has no glasses on, his hair is ready to depart from the all consuming grief gripping him by the neck. He knows that face.
“Hey pal,” Nene waves, nervously stamping down her giggles. “So uh, how do you feel about hiding a fugitive?”
“A what? Who is that with you?”
Yugi Amane blinks big eyes across to him, clothes too long on him. It’s raining hard, but there’s no mistaking the red splotches of wet blood on his arm sleeve.
“Hey boss.” He tips his head to the side, voice railed by running under a storm. “Got room for one more?”
Akane should not have opened the door.
This is roughly what had gone down, in no particular order, because the Trouble Three cannot narrate chronologically to save their lives. He is deflecting. There are three musketeers and a guy who shouldn’t be here, parked in his dorm room. He is rightly furious.
The events as as followed:
- Yugi, one part out of a whole unit of Problem Brothers, Yugi ed., upped and disappeared in the middle of high school from Kamome - the Mass was heartbroken, bereaved, unable to move on
- Now, in the middle of everyone’s second year in university, he reappeared, somehow managing to pinpoint exactly where the Trouble Two live and when they would be home from club activities
- Nene expected him to return, but didn’t expect all the wet clothes, dark eye bags, bloody clothes, general shady cloak weighing like three years of unsolved mystery the guy was toting about. Aoi apparently had called it ages ago
- They technically aren’t allowed random unenrolled old high school mates in their lodgings
- Further, they definitely aren’t allowed men in their dorms, a laughable fact given well, Aoi
“So, why here and why me?” He flings another towel at Lemon who dripped through his bedsheets from the top covers. In new, dry clothes. How is he doing that?
“Ey,” Lemon flops his wrist as if he holds no bones in them. “He’s not stayin’ in my place, that’s for sure.”
“Guy,” Nene turns to him. “You don’t even have a place.”
Lemon gestures vaguely at her as if she answered everything about this problem and how it is chiefly not his problem.
“You just feel like a safe choice,” Aoi unfairly and correctly, points out.
“He’s right,” Nene nods. Lemon bobs his head along with her. Akane scowls at them. “What~” Nene draws it out, crooked teeth and misleading puppy eyes. “You’re scowling because I’m right.”
Yugi Amane thankfully knows to express some forms of courtesy by ways of humbling himself and not running his mouth demanding that he is entitled to a space in Akane’s dorm, unlike these dorm raiders he’s boarding under duress. Akane forced the poor guy into new warm clothes because the blood did not look good but a hypothermic long-lost old classmate who dropped dead where he calls the shot? Not an ideal situation.
“What’s the story?” He wearily asks Yugi, who doesn’t have the shoulders to fit into Akane’s shirts but makes up for it in sheer gangly height. “None of you speak for him, I wanna know why I should be storing him here.”
“He’s not a thing, Aoi,” Aoi clicks his tongue. “Weren’t you two close?”
Akane is trying to remember that memory of being anywhere remotely resembling closeness, ‘buddy buddy’, to one of the Yugi boys. Aoi has a deeply disturbing talent of making whatever he said sound true, even though there had been no basis whatsoever for whatever he said. The dorms. Skipping out on gym. Dyeing his hair however he wants. It’s an endless list. Pretending like he’s related to Akane. It goes on.
“In the strictest sense of the word, I’m close with Minamoto One.” He scrubs a hand over his face, dislodging his glasses from his nose and uncaring about how he looks. He’s this close from not seeing the evil happenings altogether.
“He sat on you last week though?” Nene frowns, being a friend of Minamoto Two and the Minamoto Adjacent.
“Maybe it’s homoerotic wrestling,” Lemon yawns. “Yugi, if you’re not staying here, can I? Akane has a good bed.”
Akane lifts a single eyebrow. Lemon holds both arms up, unrepentant. He’s not going to do it, Akane hopes, but he wouldn’t trust this one ever since he shaved a slit in his eyebrow last year.
Aoi looks thoughtful at ‘homoerotic’ while Nene’s face blanks out completely at ‘wrestling’.
“I only ask for two nights.” Yugi looks up, light eyes, hair shuffled through a storm. What a heartthrob. What a lovely sight. No wonder the Trouble Two said ‘Nothing will go wrong if we dump him onto Akane’. “I mostly will curl up into a foetal position and pass out at night, and I won’t be here during the day. You won’t have to worry about me.”
It is tempting. This cannot go down any worse than last year with Lemon Yamabuki. A whole year with Lemon. He’d rather share bathrooms again with the entire sports cohort than go through that again.
“You won’t tell us why or how you’re back then?” He tries for one last time, because he needs to know so he can draft up his alibi when the cops hound up his door.
Yugi shrugs. Nene points at him and laughs.
“Do you remember my brother?” Yugi asks. As if anyone could forget Tsukasa.
“Knife bender? Pointy bastard? Yeah, I do vaguely recall.” He drawls, hip checking Yugi out of the way to grab blindly at the counter. “Funny how memories work.”
“That attitude,” Yugi Amane whistles, voice catching around a smile. Akane frowns, pulling his contacts to his chest.
“Tic for tac, Yugi. Where did you go? How’d you get back?”
“North,” Yugi shrugs, bird shoulders bobbing up and down. “I thought you wore contacts?”
“Got lazy once I joined uni and I have no time. How and why are you back, Yugi?”
Yugi looks into the mirror, where their eyes meet. He’s a blur of a figure next to Akane and there’s nothing vaguely human or warm about him.
“It’d be a long night, Akane.” He lifts an eyebrow, in imitation of Akane’s previous actions - reflected on a surface. Akane lifts his chin.
“Try me, Amane.”