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This isn’t exactly out of character, but Shou would never admit that one of his guilty pleasures is people watching.
Huh, wouldn’t have thunk. Shou could confirm that his life is probably as exciting as it gets. What, from the psychic powers to his dad trying to take over the world, you’d think he’s had enough excitement.
No - well - he doesn’t particularly enjoy people watching for the excitement. The people he watches are completely normal; A businessman typing away at his keyboard (he likes watching videos with dogs in them when his boss isn’t around), a college kid going on his morning jog (Shou thought he was fun to mess with, you know, make small things float when only the guy is watching. Might be the reason he changed his route? Oops). There was this nice family that visited the park once a week. The kid - Hitoshi - would tell his dads all about his new invisible friend, Shou. They listened intently as Hitoshi rambled on about Shou, even though they thought he was imaginary (hey, he might as well be, since he’s invisible ninety percent of the time).
So, yeah, completely normal, boring, plain old people.
And that’s fine because the appeal isn’t the excitement, but the normalcy. The little tidbits of what he’s supposed to have. He didn’t go to school and eat lovingly made bento boxes at lunch like normal kids. He didn’t have a dad like the businessman who likes dogs. He didn’t have any siblings like the jogger kid. He didn’t have parents who took him to the park on Sundays or cared to listen to him ramble about invisible people he’d met.
These little scenes of people’s lives he witnessed were kinda comforting. See? The world isn’t completely fucked!... Well, not really comforting, it was really a form of escapism. He didn’t have to worry about his own life if he was invisible! Does an invisible person really exist? Like the whole “if a tree falls, and no one hears it; did it really fall down?” thing.
Uh- Actually, don’t think about it too hard. Shou just really enjoys people watching; just a Suzuki Shou fun fact!
Though, he’s found much less enjoyment in the activity now that he actually has friends. People to interact with instead of watching from the sidelines.
In fact, he’d almost completely quit people watching. Now that there isn’t much of a need, the act hasn’t been as comforting as before.
Key word: almost. Enter Ritsu Kageyama. He might just be Shou’s absolute favorite person to watch. Hell, might be his favorite person all together!
Ritsu's just so… interesting. No, he was not stalking Ritsu. It- he just- Okay. At first Shou was curious if Ritsu acted the same towards him as he did towards other people. He just had to make sure - you know, being new to friendship - there weren’t any lies or pretenses or anything like that (not that he didn’t have any faith in Ritsu! He just wanted to know what kind of guy he was when he wasn’t around).
Turns out, Ritsu is more polite to people who don’t quite know him as well. Though, there was still that underlying intimidating coldness. He wasn’t quite as expressive at school as he was at home. Which was interesting. Ritsu’s older brother painted Ritsu as this cool sporty popular kid. But it seemed to Shou that Ritsu didn’t have friends that he really liked. Well, what did Shou know? He isn’t exactly the friend expert, being how he literally burned down his first friend’s house. So he brushed it off.
He intended to just leave it at that, but he couldn’t stop? He was just so curious. What did Ritsu’s trip home look like? What did Mr. Perfect (grades, hair, face-) do after school?
Shou stopped himself from going into Ritsu’s house, which was against his rules of people watching. Well, that was against his rules of Ritsu watching anyways. Shou conceded that going inside Ritsu’s house while invisible was maybe a bit stalkerish.
So he made himself visible and floated up to Ritsu’s window to knock.
Ritsu’s aura did a little spike as he was startled from where he was sitting in his desk chair. His shock quickly turned into a scowl, but Shou grinned as Ritsu moved to open the window for him anyway.
“Can’t you use a door like a normal person?” Ritsu complained, closing the window behind as Shou climed in.
“Why? I was just gonna end up here anyways.” Shou made himself at home in Ritsu’s desk chair.
Ritsu just crossed his arms, his hip poked out to the side for extra sass. “What do you want, Suzuki?”
“Oh come on, Ritsu! We’re friends right? I just wanted to hang out.”
“I have homework.” Ritsu shoos him out of the desk chair to sit in front of said homework.
“Wow, that’s a lot.” Shou observed. There’s packets of paper on the desk that Ritsu returned his attention to. Shou leaned against the desk to watch him work, Ritsu didn’t tell him to leave, so he guessed it was fine. “Do you always have to do this much?” He asks, picking up a sheet that Ritsu wasn’t working on at the moment.
“Not always, I just have extra because I’m on student council.” Ritsu doesn’t sound as cold when his attention is divided.
“That’s dumb.” He doesn’t get an answer, so Shou looks at the sheet Ritsu is working on. He thinks it’s math? But there’s letters. That can’t be right. “Why are there letters? This is math right?” Ritsu jumps, not quite expecting Shou to be speaking so close to his ear.
“W- What? It’s algebra. Quadratic Equations? You know.”
“Uh, no, I don’t know.” Ritsu gives him an incredulous look. Shou’s confidence doesn’t waver often. Should he know this stuff? Was this another thing that made him not normal?
“Is- Is that a bad thing?” Shou asked with uncharacteristic nervousness.
“No! No, it’s okay.” Ritsu backpedaled. “Just- how much schooling have you had?”
Shou shrugged, back to his careless front. “I dunno, dad decided psychic powers were more important when I was about- what, six? I'm technically homeschooled.”
“And who’s homeschooling you now? You’re with your mom now right?”
Shou plops himself down on Ritsu’s bed. “Well, she doesn’t really have the time. New boyfriend and a new house and -.” Shou panics when Ritsu gives him a sad look. He didn’t mean to make Ritsu upset. “It’s alright though! We kinda just assumed I’d live off my Dad’s fortune after I turned 18, so I wouldn’t need a job or anything. I’m good either way-”
“I can teach you.” Ritsu blurts.
Shou pauses “What?”
“I-” Huh, Ritsu blushes pretty “I can teach you everything you missed.” He goes on when Shou stays quiet. “That is, if you wanted to. Living off your dad’s money isn’t bad, might as well reap the benefits of your fucked up childhood right? But it’s an option, you know. I can make time.”
“You- You’d do that?” Shou asks breathlessly, a small excited grin forming on his face, so different from his others.
Ritsu laughs- oh he laughs pretty too. “Yeah, I have good grades. I have all my old notes and textbooks.”
“That’s- yeah! Yeah, let’s do it.”
“Alright.”
“Yeah...”
“Ah, well I still have homework to do for now” Ritsu swiveled his chair back to face the desk. “I’ll make lesson plans, though.” He glanced up to his calendar on the wall, tapping a pencil against his chin as he thinks. “I have every day except Wednesday free, does 4:00 work for you?”.
“That’s perfect.” Shou’s grin is back, if not a bit brighter than before. And Ritsu returns it with a small smile of his own.