Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s Fuu-chan who points it out, because Fuu-chan has the habit of pointing out things. She’s always the first to notice when Cherry-sama gets a haircut and the one that remembers exactly how many days it’s been since Cherry-sama and Joe argued. Fuu-chan is also someone that says “It’s raining” when it’s pouring, or “Are you sad?” when someone’s crying, and “We’ve been here for hours” when, yes, they have been at S for hours. Misaki tunes her out half the time, because her eyes work perfectly and she doesn’t need people pointing out the obvious.

Except sometimes she does need someone to point things out, because it confirms that she isn’t hallucinating. Like tonight.

A kid stands at the starting line. Not ‘a kid’ in the way Kotori-chan is a kid because she’s sixteen, or the way some people call Misaki a kid because she’s nineteen, but an actual kid. He’s tiny next to the skater he’s about to race.

“That’s a child,” Fuu-chan says, looking up at the boy on the screen.

“I think I’ve seen him before,” Utako-chan says slowly, tilting her head.

“Of course you have,” Kotori-chan says. “He’s been on the news.”

“Oh!” Fuu-chan claps once and keeps her palms together. “Chinen Miya!”

Misaki has no idea who that is. Next to her, Yumi-chan raises a hand and asks, “Is he famous?” thus saving Misaki from embarrassing herself with the question.

Fuu-chan nods. Kotori-chan, however, looks hesitant.

“He’s a candidate for the national team. That makes him famous in some circles.”

“The skateboarding national team,” Fuu-chan pipes up.

“Yes. Thank you, Fuu-chan,” Kotori-chan says dryly.

Fuu-chan beams.

The beef starts. The boy might be fast, yes, but he’s still, well, a boy. Misaki watches his hoodie’s cat tail trailing in the air after him and tries not to think of how small he looks.

“How old is he?” Yumi-chan asks, her eyes on the race.

Utako-chan takes out her phone and taps at the screen. “He’ll be thirteen in February.”

“So he’s twelve,” Fuu-chan says. “Your brother is twelve, isn’t he, Misaki-chan?”

Misaki crosses her arms over her chest and nods.

“Who lets a twelve year old come to S?” Yumi-chan says.

“Bad parents,” Kotori-chan replies.

All five of them exchange a look.

On the screen, Miya's rapidly approaching the factory, his opponent far behind. He’s skinny and it makes Misaki think of sneaking candy bars into her backpack during long car rides, because her brother’s always hungry.

Misaki's skirt has pockets. There's a tin of mints in one of them and she plays with it while she watches the competition.

The beef was boring. The guy he raced wasn't better than a rookie. Hadn't he been skating for years? What had made him think he could win? He didn’t even qualify as a slime, but Miya had yet to bother thinking of what was below that. Before today, he hadn’t imagined that something so low on the scale would dare defy him.

Miya huffs and looks around. Nothing else to do here tonight. He's taking out his phone when a group of people approaching him catches his attention.

They’re an easily recognizable lot, what with their white, black and purple color scheme. They’re also… oddly silent. He’s always seen them screeching; he didn’t know they were capable of keeping their mouths closed.

They all freeze when he looks at them directly. He stares at them. They keep their eyes on him.

Miya doesn’t know why, but he can’t be the first to blink; he feels it in his gut.

He wins the staring contest. The first one to move is a girl with long hair and nothing remarkable. The others have cherry blossoms on their clothes, or a fancy blouse, but this one seems to have settled for showing up.

“That was really cool,” the girl says, gesturing around the factory.

Another one of the girls, this one wearing a cherry blossom hairpin, covers her face with her hand and mutters, “Utako-chan…”

“It wasn’t that cool,” a third girl, one with short hair and a rather distant look in her eyes, says simply.

Miya bristles and the remaining girls either cringe or facepalm.

“His opponent was bad,” Short Hair continues, unaware of the reaction to her words.

“Thank you, Fuu-chan,” Hairpin says dryly.

“You’re welcome!” Short Hair (Fuu-chan?) says, smiling.

The two girls that haven’t said a word yet exchange looks and a silent conversation seems to happen between them. The one wearing a beret gestures with her head towards Miya. The one with glasses sighs and turns towards him.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid we didn’t make a very good first impression,” Glasses Girl says, offering him a small smile.

“What do you want?” Miya says, crossing his arms in front of his chest. He lowers them a second later, because he was told that people do that to protect themselves and he has nothing to protect himself from. He can’t show weakness here.

“Nothing,” Glasses Girl says, shaking her head. “We only wanted to congratulate you on your win.”

“Okay.”

Silence.

Beret Girl clears her throat and starts digging through her skirt’s pockets. She takes out a small tin and shakes it. “Want a mint?” she says.

“Yes, please,” Short Hair | Fuu-chan says.

“No, thanks,” Miya says at the same time.

“Alright.” Beret Girl hands the tin to Short Hair | Fuu-chan and turns her attention back to Miya. “The beef itself was boring, that's true,” she says, twisting her mouth, “but you were really cool.”

Miya frowns and finds himself leaning back. Why are these girls talking to him? Shouldn’t they be bothering Cherry Blossom? That’s what they’re here for, right?

“Yeah, I was,” Miya says, taking a step back. He’s relieved to see that they don’t try to get closer.

He decides to leave before they come up with another awkward attempt at conversation.

“That… could have gone a lot better,” Utako says after Miya has left. “Sorry, girls.”

“It’s not your fault,” Yumi-chan says, patting her shoulder.

Misaki-chan nods and takes off her beret to start spinning it with her hands. “We should have planned beforehand what we were going to say.”

“Maybe it’s because we’re strangers?” Kotori-chan says. “I’d be freaking out if five grown-ups came up to me out of nowhere.”

“You aren’t a grown-up,” Fuu-chan says.

Utako and Misaki-chan choke on a laugh, while Yumi-chan disguises her own as a coughing fit.

Kotori-chan’s glare would make a lesser woman die, but Fuu-chan has proven several times that she’s immune to embarrassment. Frankly, nobody should join a fanclub if they have the ability to feel shame, but Kotori-chan has yet to get the memo. It might be because she’s sixteen and thus still insufferable.

“Kotori-chan has a point, though,” Yumi-chan says.

“Yeah, we’re strangers to him,” Misaki-chan says, putting on her beret again.

“Then we should introduce ourselves to him next time,” Fuu-chan says.

Kotori-chan opens her mouth, undoubtedly to say something not very nice, so Utako’s quick to cut her off before she can start. “It might not do much, but we don’t lose anything by trying, right?”

The others nod. Kotori-chan pouts and Fuu-chan offers her the mints.

Cherry Blossom’s fanclub is there again the next time Miya goes to S.

He sees them coming towards him, led by Beret Girl, but they get distracted when Cherry Blossom passes next to them.

The change in disposition is shocking. One second these girls could be mistaken for belonging to some elite school with an odd uniform, the next they’re all screeching and throwing compliments at this man that won’t deign to spare them a look. Hairpin is the one that makes Miya blink, because the blushing schoolgirl skipping in her spot doesn’t match the prickly teenager he interacted with a couple of weeks earlier.

And then Cherry Blossom is out of sight and all these girls go back to being normal people. It’s mildly terrifying. Especially when they turn their attention back to him.

The interaction isn’t any less awkward this time around, but it’s mercifully shorter. They just… tell him their names.

Beret Girl is Misaki-san. Glasses Girl is Yumi-san. Short Hair he already knew, but she’s confirmed as Fuu-san. Hairpin is Kotori-san. The unremarkable one is Utako-san.

The information is relayed in less than twenty seconds and then the girls are off, with Misaki-san shouting instructions about viewing spots, cameras, acceptable behavior and… an ER fund?

She doesn’t seem to be the oldest or most responsible of the group, but the others clearly acknowledge her as their leader. If they were characters in a game, the beret would be enough to mark her as the head slime. They’d probably attack using cherry blossom petals.

He laughs to himself at the mental image of these girls as a miniboss in a game.

Then he has to jump out of the way. Joe’s fangirls run past him, yelling about viewing spots, cameras, acceptable behavior and an ER fund.

Miya looks up at the projection on the mountainside. Judging by his interactions with the fanclubs, he’s not surprised to see that tonight’s first beef is between Cherry Blossom and Joe.

Will he have to deal with that sort of stuff when he’s older? Scary!

They were too much, Misaki’s aware of it. Five women, approaching a kid out of nowhere? Yeah, that’s not normal. They failed the fanclub’s ‘Don’t be creepy’ rule.

He tells them all to pull back, so the kid can feel at ease. They can keep an eye on him from afar, and that's what they do.

Misaki has been coming to S since she was sixteen, so she knows a thing or two about how to exist there. She knows how to get attention and how to avoid it. She knows how to be seen and she’s an expert at being ignored. She knows that, without her beret and sweatshirt, she’s just another girl among the dozens. When she doesn’t want to be noticed, she keeps the recognizable items in a bag and walks around with her head low and her hair loose, and she gets to take a good look around. Miyuki, from Joe’s fanclub, joins her sometimes, and together they try to find good viewing spots and to see which of the capped men aren’t doing their jobs as they should. During those walks they also review the general script for their clubs’ next scheduled ‘confrontation’, and ground rules for the inevitable spontaneous ones that happen all the time.

She’s in jeans and a t-shirt, waiting for Miyuki at the entrance to S, when she sees Miya arrive in a car. He’s in the backseat, staring out the window with an expression of such utter boredom it makes Misaki want to yawn. He seems startled when he notices her, but the car keeps going and takes them out of each other’s sight.

That looked… Shady as fuck, frankly. She’s still thinking about it when Miyuki arrives. She’s in jeans and a hoodie.

“You have your thinking face on,” Miyuki says instead of a greeting. “What the hell,” she adds in English, reading off Misaki’s t-shirt and laughing.

Misaki rolls her eyes. “Nothing. Probably.”

Miyuki hums. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

For a second, it looks like Miyuki will probe, but then she shrugs and says, “Alright." She clicks her tongue. "I want your opinion on a girl?"

"I'm not helping you cheat on Fuu-chan," Misaki jokes, relaxing.

"You know I wouldn't," Miyuki says, looking as besotted as the first day. Misaki pretends her stomach doesn't churn and hopes that when they get married, or whatever, they'll give her a place of honor at the celebration, for bringing them together. "No, this girl says she wants to join our fanclub."

Misaki lets go of all her best friend thoughts and enters her fanclub leader mindset as best as she can. “Tell me about her.”

She doesn’t stop thinking about Miya.

It’s weird to think that Cherry Blossom’s fangirls sometimes aren’t Cherry Blossom’s fangirls. That they can blend in with the rest of the world.

Misaki-san was just. Standing there, silent and normal. Dressed in a black t-shirt, and if it wasn’t because the text on it was pink, Miya might not have linked the young woman looking around expectantly to the girl in a beret he’s seen running and screaming so many times before. A random battle when Miya was expecting the usual type of NPC.

She passes next to him later that night and hesitates when their eyes meet. She stops and smiles, tentative and warm.

“Hi,” she says, with a small wave. There’s a large bruise on her forearm.

Miya narrows his eyes and doesn’t answer.

Misaki-san exhales heavily and looks around awkwardly. “Yeah, uh… Good to see you?”

Miya narrows his eyes further and squares his shoulders.

Misaki-san puts her hands in her pockets and removes them immediately, muttering a curse word. She digs in one of her pockets again and takes out a Kit Kat. She studies it and offers it to Miya.

“Do you want some candy in terrible condition?”

“No.”

“Alright. That's fair.” She opens the bar and grimaces at what she sees. “See you,” she says. She walks away while licking melted chocolate off her fingers.

Miya makes a disgusted face and heads in the opposite direction.

For reasons that have never been explained, Adam holds a Valentine’s Day event every February 14th. There isn’t much to it, other than the winner of each beef getting very expensive chocolate as a reward. Utako-chan looked up the brand last year and all of them sighed dreamily over the pictures of their various products.

“Should we get something like this for Cherry-sama?” Kotori-chan said then, still new enough not to understand how the fanclub worked.

“No!” Misaki-chan shook her head furiously. “Too expensive and he won’t eat them!” Yumi knew that Misaki-chan was running the numbers in her head at that moment.

So this year, like the previous three, they all contribute a set amount and buy Cherry-sama a sealed box of chocolates. Out of her own pocket, Misaki-chan buys flowers for Joe, just as she did her previous years at S. Unlike the previous years, though, this year Misaki-chan hands Yumi the flowers, waggles her eyebrows and tasks her with the delivery, leading the others to give Cherry-sama the chocolates.

Yumi’s headed Joe’s way when she becomes aware of the boy walking next to her, watching her curiously.

“Hi, Miya,” Yumi says, looking at him.

He startles, like he really believed she wouldn’t see him. Naive, when he’s dressed in bright green and seems to have done nothing but grown since the day they met. Or maybe this is another element for all of them to worry about, like the fact that he’s at S instead of safe at home, or that some mysterious car brings him to Crazy Rock.

“Why do you have flowers?” Miya asks.

“They’re for Joe,” Yumi says.

Miya tilts his head, seems to try to process the information and evidently fails. “Why are you giving him flowers?”

Yumi shrugs. “It’s a tradition Misaki-chan has. She says it’s because being Cherry-sama’s fan wouldn’t be half as fun without Joe around.” Also, Joe’s a chef and his White Day gifts are to die for. Misaki-chan cried shamelessly over last year’s truffles.

“Why not chocolates?” Miya asks.

“I don’t know.” She’s never given an explanation and Yumi gave up on getting one. “I think Misaki-chan just likes flowers.”

Miya follows Yumi all the way to where Joe is and watches her give him the flowers. She smiles at Joe and ogles him openly, under the critical looks and outraged spluttering of Joe’s fanclub. After a year of this, they should be used to Yumi’s flirting, but it seems like they won’t accept that she shares their ability to appreciate this man’s abs and pecs. And his arms. And his back muscles. There’s a lot to appreciate, is what Yumi’s saying.

As for the man himself, he has been flirting back since the day Yumi told him her age.

“Do you mind if I take one?” Yumi asks, toying with one of the flowers in the bouquet.

“Not at all,” Joe says, letting her steal a pink rose.

“Thank you,” Yumi says, tapping the rose to her cheek and winking at Joe before turning around and leaving.

Miya trails after her.

“I thought you liked Cherry Blossom?” he asks, sounding confused and looking weirded out.

“I do, but I’d never dare to flirt with Cherry-sama.”

Understandably, that makes Miya look even more bemused.

When they join the rest of the girls, they find Misaki-chan holding the chocolate box they got for Cherry-sama.

“Another year, another rejection,” she says, sighing dramatically, but looking largely unaffected. Kotori-chan, on the other hand, looks heartbroken. Fuu-chan is patting her shoulder.

“He doesn’t take your chocolate?” Miya asks.

“Nope. Never,” Misaki-chan says, at the same time that Kotori-chan says “No!” with the amount of angst that you only achieve when you’re a teenager with a crush.

“But… it’s chocolate,” Miya says, looking at the box.

“It is!” Fuu-chan says. “And it’s delicious!”

Miya keeps eyeing the box. Misaki-chan looks pensive for a moment and offers it to Miya. “Do you want them?”

Miya bristles. “I’m not taking Cherry Blossom’s trash!”

“It’s not trash, it’s chocolate!” Fuu-chan protests.

Misaki-chan laughs. “Come on, Miya. If you don’t take it, we’ll eat it.” She shakes the box.

After a moment of hesitation, Miya snatches it out of her hands and takes a step back. “Don’t expect anything on White Day.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it, don’t worry,” Misaki-chan says.

Miya runs with his prize and Misaki-chan smiles at him.

“You’re too soft on kids,” Kotori-chan grumbles. “Now we don’t have chocolate.”

Misaki-chan makes a face. “Sorry.”

Miya was given chocolates by a couple of his classmates, but he had to hand them over to his parents so they wouldn’t ruin his diet. He doesn’t know what they did with them; they might have thrown them away. He goes and messes everything up anyway by accepting the ones that Cherry Blossom’s fangirls offered. They weren’t even for him! What had he been thinking?

He tentatively opens the box on the ride back home from S and marvels at the assorted chocolates, prettily organized by flavor in five neat rows. He samples one of each, mentally ranking them. They’re all delicious, even the spicy one that initially makes him scrunch up his face.

He carries the small heart-shaped box in his backpack the whole week, to ensure his mom won’t find it, and tries not to eat everything at once. Despite his self-restraint, he’s out of chocolates by the time his birthday arrives.

Part of him hopes that Cherry Blossom’s fanclub is somehow aware of his birthday and will give him more chocolate the next time they see him, as a late birthday present. He’s uncomfortably expectant on the next S night, but the girls only wave at him from afar and go back to running after Cherry Blossom. They could have at least asked him if he’d liked the chocolates!

He should have known that they didn’t care. He just happened to be there a couple of times, that was why they’d talked to him, and they’d outright said that he had to take the chocolates because their intended recipient rejected them. He made a mistake in accepting them, in wasting his time with slimes. He has to keep them away from him so they won’t ruin his diet again. Next time they might ruin something bigger, harder to fix.

He challenges them to a beef.

"If I win, none of you will talk to me unless I talk to you first," Miya says, looking at them down his nose.

The girls exchange looks.

"What if we win?" Fuu-san says.

"That's not happening," Kotori-san says. Utako-san nods her agreement. Misaki-san grimaces and scratches the back of her neck. Yumi-san exhales heavily.

"If that happens, I'll owe each of you a favor," Miya says.

Fuu-san looks pensive.

"We don't stand a chance," Kotori-san says.

"Yeah, that's true. But we've never raced here," Fuu-san muses.

"None of us has ever raced," Yumi-san points out. Misaki-san clears her throat. “Not on a skateboard, at least.”

“None of us can skate!” Kotori-san throws her hands in the air.

Yumi-san opens her mouth.

“What you do doesn’t count!”

“She can roll around on a skateboard. That’s skating, isn’t it?” Fuu-san says.

Misaki-san snorts.

"Girls, you can’t really be considering this." Kotori-san covers her face with her hands. "It'll be embarrassing."

Yumi-san smiles. "I think it’ll be fun."

Kotori-san peeks through her fingers and whines, "We'll humiliate Cherry-sama!"

"Half the time I'm not even sure he remembers we exist?" Misaki-san’s tone is too light and amused for what she’s saying. "And, come on. Joe's fangirls haven't had the honor of racing a pro. This will get us a point over them!" She grins.

“We already have the ultimate point over them,” Yumi-san says, smirking, and Misaki-san high fives her.

Miya really needs to stay far away from these girls.

"I don't want to have anything to do with this," Kotori-san says, stepping away and covering her face again.

Misaki-san shrugs. "Suit yourself." She turns towards the others. "Okay! Yumi-chan, you're skating?"

"Yeah!"

"Anybody else want to leave? This is your chance."

The other two girls shake their heads.

Miya doesn't know where they get a skateboard. Yumi-san can stand on it, but it's easy to see she doesn't know how to do much more than going back and forth on it. She hands off her glasses to Misaki-san and squints slightly at her surroundings.

It’s an extremely easy win. Miya crosses the finish line long before Yumi-san has even reached the course's halfway point.

Kotori-san is waiting at the factory with her face in her hands and mumbling something. The tips of her ears are bright red.

Cherry Blossom and Joe are at the factory as well, and Joe's mocking Cherry Blossom for his fans' hubris.

Meanwhile, Joe's fangirls are watching Yumi-san on their phones. Suddenly, they burst out laughing.

Miya takes out his phone to see what exactly Yumi-san could have done that's worse than what she’s already done. Namely, worse than going at a snail's pace and screaming about not knowing how to turn a corner while going downhill, which had forced Misaki-san to run to try to stop her from crashing.

He blinks at the screen.

Yumi-san is sitting on the skateboard, trying to keep her huge skirt from dragging on the ground by holding the hem tightly between her knees. Thankfully, she’s wearing tights. Utako-san and Fuu-san are each holding one of her hands and pulling. Misaki-san is behind her, pushing the board, her sweatshirt tied around her waist. Everybody around them is pointing and laughing.

At the factory, a couple of Joe's fangirls are wheezing so hard they're crying.

"I'm leaving the fanclub," Kotori-san is saying loudly, pacing and pulling at her hair. "I'm founding my own. I'm kicking them out of the current one." She makes a series of frustrated, screeching noises. "I don't know any of them anymore. Forgive me, Cherry-sama!" She wails, but she never leaves. She stays in the factory, waiting until the rest of the girls finally get there after far too much time. Miya should go home, but he wants to gloat, he wants to mock these girls for taking up a challenge they couldn’t possibly win, for daring to go against the hero.

When the girls arrive, they stop at the entrance so Yumi-san can stand on the skateboard and enter the factory on her own. She makes a show of dusting off her skirt and putting on her glasses first, and even bows before pushing herself forward and crossing the finish line twenty minutes after Miya did.

People stopped laughing long ago, and even Kotori-san’s embarrassment grew quiet after a while. Miya can’t find it in himself to laugh, because there’s something about the way Yumi-san smiles as she jumps off the board that makes him envious. Yumi-san turns towards Cherry Blossom and waves excitedly at him. He only stares, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Next to him, Joe looks like he’s having the time of his life, and he even waves back at Yumi-san. It gets him outraged looks from his own fanclub. Yumi-san blows him a kiss.

“No fraternizing with the enemy!” Misaki-san yells from the factory’s entrance, where she’s using her beret to vigorously fan Utako-san and Fuu-san, who are lying and sitting on the floor, respectively. They're panting and sweating, their cheeks flushed and their hair sticking to their foreheads, but they look happy.

Miya is the one that should be happy, but instead he feels uncomfortable. Untethered. He doesn’t even feel smug; what’s the fun in beating a slime? Especially one that clearly never took the competition seriously. One that accepted the challenge just because it’d be ‘fun’.

The girls embarrassed themselves, but they’re the ones laughing now. Even Kotori-san has stopped her meltdown and is being dragged into a group hug by Utako-san. Kotori-san is still complaining, but this time it’s about how the other girls stink.

Misaki-san turns towards Miya and smiles at him. She’s the only one that doesn't look exhausted, but her face is red and wet too. She takes out her phone, speaks into it and approaches him. Miya scowls and she mimics zipping her mouth shut. She holds out her phone and presses play on an audio file.

“Congratulations on winning!” Misaki-san’s voice comes from her phone’s speakers. “I know we can’t talk to you now, but I wanted to say that.”

The audio file stops, Misaki-san puts her phone away and bows before returning to her friends, two of which are now busy arguing with Joe’s fanclub. Yumi-san is talking to Joe and Kotori-san seems to be apologizing to Cherry Blossom.

Miya feels lonely.

They might not be able to talk to Miya, but Cherry Blossom’s fangirls find ways to work around that. Mostly they wave at him, smile at him, and speak around him instead of to him.

“Did you see how cool Miya was tonight?” Yumi-san says to Misaki-san when Miya passes next to them.

He makes a face at them that they don’t notice.

“Extremely, but I worry that he might not be sleeping enough,” Misaki-san answers. “He’s growing, he needs his rest.”

Every time Misaki-san says something about Miya, she brings up his well-being, or his happiness. It’s odd and overbearing and he didn’t think she’d offer him so much after what he did to keep her and the others away from him.

There’s no event for White Day, so there’s no going to Crazy Rock that night. On the next S night, however, Miya asks the driver to stop at a supermarket on the way to the mine and buys a bag of mini marshmallows. He was taught to always pay back his debts, to be polite because you never know when a journalist will be around, or someone with a camera. He forgets those lessons sometimes. He forgets them whenever the spotlight isn’t on him.

He hands over the bag to the first of Cherry’s fangirls he comes across that night.

He shouldn’t do this, not when he said he wouldn’t. Not when nobody’s watching, which means nobody’s judging or expecting anything. If he does this, it’ll be like turning on the spotlight himself.

Utako-san holds the marshmallows stiffly and looks from them to Miya several times.

“I’m not going to eat them. They’re bad for me,” Miya says. “But all of you should share them.”

At that, she finally smiles. “Thank you!”

“I didn’t get them for you.”

“Yes, but you could have given them to someone else. So, thank you!”

Miya squirms. He thinks she knows that he’s lying. He stands there, wanting both to leave and stay there, with one of these girls that wonder out loud if he had a good day when he’s close enough to hear them.

“Can I ask you something?” 

“You just did,” Miya says, unimpressed.

Utako-san doesn’t acknowledge that. “Your hoodie’s from ‘Kitty Cat’s Sugar Rush Adventure’, isn’t it?”

Miya tries not to get excited at the topic. Adults try to make small talk all the time, but they rarely know more than the basics. “Yeah.”

Utako-san lights up. “Did you get the update? The one with the Tangerine Witch?”

“It came out in October,” Miya says. “Of course I did.”

“Okay, okay, don’t get mad,” Utako-san says, waving a hand and grinning. “I was so excited when it came out!”

“Me too.” It slips out of Miya before he can stop himself. It’s just that nobody talks to him about anything besides skating, and he wishes he could have someone to tell about all these useless things that don’t get him any interviews or attention.

“It’s so good! I keep thinking about it! The- You finished it, right? You defeated her? It’s not a spoiler if I talk about it?”

“Yeah, I got through it,” Miya cuts her off. And then, because he wants to brag, he adds, “In the first month.” He didn’t even need to look up how to win.

“Wow,” Utako-san says, and it sounds genuine, even though it has nothing to do with Miya’s skating. It’s only a conversation about a game. “I didn’t get her until Christmas and only out of luck. One of my attacks missed and hit her portrait.”

Miya raises an eyebrow. “It took you two months to figure out that her heart wasn’t in her chest?”

“I know!” She grimaces. “Embarrassing!”

“Yeah! She brought up her portrait all the time!” Miya says, judging. “She obviously wanted the player to pay attention to it!”

“Don’t remind me!” Utako-san says, shaking her head and waving her hands, not sounding embarrassed in the slightest. Her expression softens. “I felt so dumb when I realized. But also, that’s why it’s such a clever thing!”

Miya frowns. “I thought it was sad.”

Utako-san tilts her head, the same way the Tangerine Witch did in the game. “Sad?”

Miya nods. “The whole time, she gives you everything you need to defeat her. She puts the necessary weapons right at the door of her lair, and she immediately tells you that the only way to end her is by finding her heart, and then she never shuts up about her portrait.”

“Ah. Yeah, I get what you mean,” Utako-san says softly, pensively. “She’s very lonely, isn’t she? One look at her and you can tell that she wants a friend.”

“A friend? She tells the player how to kill her!” Miya didn’t mean to raise his voice.

“But that’s an option,” Utako-san says, infuriatingly calm. “You know you can choose not to destroy her heart, right?”

Miya hesitates. “Yeah.”

Utako-san nods. “What did you do with her heart? I put it in my inventory.”

“I left it where it was,” Miya admits. “The Tangerine Witch doesn’t really do anything against the NPCs.” He mumbles, “I’m waiting for them to release something that lets us fix her heart.”

“Have you been back to her lair since you fought her?”

Miya shakes his head.

“You should. I’ve done it. She gives you healing items and holds tea parties. It’s very cute.”

Utako-san looks at him… kindly. It’s like Misaki-san’s voice when she wonders aloud about his happiness. It makes Miya feel his age and it’s horrible and humiliating.

He takes a step back. Then another one. Utako-san’s expression changes into concern.

“You’re weird,” he says. “You’re all weird.”

He turns around and runs, vowing to stay as far away as possible from Cherry Blossom’s fangirls.

Chapter Text

The obvious way in which Miya starts avoiding them would be cute if it didn’t make Misaki bite her lip in her concern.

She keeps an eye on him and worries and worries and worries, until she draws blood.

Considering what Adam said after he lost to Langa, Miya expected consequences. He expected to stop receiving advice, to get kicked out of S, for proof of what he’s been doing to be sent to his parents.

He knew that something would happen, but he believed it’d take time. He didn’t imagine he’d be left at S with no means of going back home. Up to this point, a car sent by Adam took Miya to and from Crazy Rock. After the beef, Miya calls the usual number and there’s no answer.

Miya tries not to panic. There are people around. He’s still safe. He thinks he saw Shadow somewhere. Reki… there’s no point in finding Reki, he’s probably riding with Langa, which leaves no room for Miya. He’s talked to Joe a couple of times and the guy always seems eager to help, so maybe Miya could ask him for transport? If he isn’t with some girl?

There’s still the option of following the crowd to the bus stop. He’ll get home later than expected, but he’ll make it. It’s fine. He’ll be fine.

Someone clears their throat and draw’s Miya’s attention to themselves.

It’s Yumi-san. She has her arm locked with some other girl’s that Miya doesn’t remember seeing before, but who is wearing too much makeup. It’d make him scrunch up his nose if he didn’t have more important things to think about.

Miya stares. Yumi-san doesn’t say anything. The other girl looks uncomfortable.

Yumi-san sighs and turns to her companion. “I’m sorry, dear, I want to talk to him but I can’t because I lost a beef against him.”

“You skate?” the girl says, at the same time Miya huffs, “I didn’t think you’d take it so seriously.”

Yumi-san looks at both of them and says to the girl with her, “I can stand on a board without falling. Unless I have to turn a corner.”

“Oh,” the girl says, wincing. “No wonder you lost.”

Yumi-san nods and looks at Miya. “Of course we took it seriously. There are almost no rules here, so we should respect the ones we have, don’t you think?” She makes a face. “Plus, Misaki-chan would probably kick us out of the fanclub if we disrespected the terms of the beef and made you uncomfortable.”

Miya frowns and decides not to ask.

“Sorry for approaching you,” Yumi-san says. She licks her lips. “You looked a bit worried and I wanted to check on you.”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?” the girl with too much makeup says, too softly. What does she care? Where do all these people that worry come from? Why are they flocking to Miya?

“Yes!” Miya resists the urge to stomp his foot like a child. “I- I missed my ride home.”

“I have a car,” Yumi-san says tentatively. “I can take you.”

“I’m not telling you where I live.”

“Alright, that’s a good security measure,” Yumi-san says, twisting her mouth. She looks at her companion. “Hey, I know I promised you we’d go to my place now, but…” She reaches to brush the girl’s hair behind her ear. “I don’t feel right just leaving. I understand if-”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep you company.” The girl smirks. “But you better make it up to me later.”

Yumi-san matches the girl’s expression and Miya sticks out his tongue in disgust. Yumi-san seems to be as bad as Joe. Who’d have thought? She looked like the biggest nerd of the lot!

“Who do you trust to take you home?” Yumi-san says to Miya.

“Reki, La- Snow… and Shadow? Uh… Joe?”

Yumi-san hums in thought. “I have no idea who Reki is but- Ah!” Joe has just come out, alone. Yumi-san starts calling him and waving, gesturing at Miya, and after a moment of hesitation, her companion joins her efforts to get Joe’s attention.

“Hey,” Joe says when he reaches them, looking from Yumi-san and the other girl to Miya and visibly concluding that this isn’t a flirting situation, judging by how he adjusts his jacket over his shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“Miya doesn’t have a ride home,” Yumi-san says.

“I can speak for myself,” Miya snaps.

Yumi-san winces. “Bad habits. Sorry.”

“I can take you,” Joe says to Miya.

“Thanks,” Miya says.

“Thank you, Joe,” Yumi-san says, smiling at him. “We’ll be going then, alright?” she adds, once again linking her arm with the other girl’s.

The two of them say goodbye and leave, and Joe waves at their retreating backs. Miya’s making a face at the ground.

“How do you usually get home?” Joe asks, gesturing for Miya to follow him.

“Adam sends a car.”

Joe stops walking and gives Miya a look he doesn’t understand. “Is this because you lost?” he asks, his voice strangely somber.

“I don’t know.” And he doesn’t know what’s next either. If he’ll ever be able to return to S.

Joe hums and starts moving again. “Maybe you should find somebody else to bring you here.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

He decides to bother Shadow. His car is very distinctive; Miya will track him down.

Something changed after Miya’s beef against Langa. Misaki doesn’t know what it is, but at the next S night, it makes Miya stand in plain view of them, watching them, and make a comment that he probably thinks is witty and mean. Misaki finds the effort cute. It makes her want to ruffle his hair.

Misaki bites her lip to try to keep herself from smiling.

She can’t keep smiling when she watches Adam race against that redhead. It’s cruel to a degree that makes her want to go home and hug her brother, her parents, her grandfather. Tell them all she loves them and ask for protection, even though she knows she’s better than that.

She forces herself to keep her lips curled upwards and her voice bright the rest of the night, because Kotori-chan looks about to cry and the others were also shaken by what they saw.

Reki said he wouldn’t leave and Miya decided to believe him. Because he needed to. Because he wanted to. Because, if he didn’t, he might have finally given in and cried, and heroes don’t cry.

It’s good to have someone to talk to, even if it’s always only about skating.

Having Reki and Langa (and Shadow, Cherry and Joe) around made Miya feel self-conscious about how he handled the first lot of people that tried to talk to him. He wanted to approach them, but, well. They had to take Reki to the hospital the next week.

So, on the night of Langa’s beef against Adam, Miya finds himself looking around for Cherry’s fangirls while he waits for the main event to begin. There are a couple of other beefs before that, none of them that interesting. Cherry will be skating tonight, but everybody knows how that one’s going to end. The only surprise was that he accepted the challenge. Miya asked him and Cherry said it was because he wanted to do some calibrations.

The girls haven’t approached Miya without reason since he started avoiding them and they don’t talk about him anymore. Probably. He can’t know, since, well, he has been avoiding them, but why would they waste breath on someone that’s doing their best to stay away? He wouldn’t.

He finds them caught in a staring contest with Joe’s fangirls. Misaki-san’s rolling up her sleeves and the girl that leads Joe’s fanclub is taking off her earrings.

“They’re… very active, aren’t they?” Shadow says. He sounds like he’s describing the destructive power of a bomb.

Yumi-san grabs Misaki’s ponytail and pulls her back as she’s about to lunge for the girl from Joe’s fanclub. Kotori-san steps up to argue and the screams can probably be heard throughout the whole mine. It’s a wonder none of these girls has given out S’s existence yet.

The announcement of the night’s first beef stops them from throwing hands. They look around and the girl from Joe’s fanclub starts running.

Misaki-san starts running too, but she’s impeded by her efforts to remove her sweatshirt at the same time. She drops the garment to the ground as soon as it’s off, her beret coming off along with it, and breaks into a sprint.

She runs past Miya and Shadow, her ponytail trailing in the air, her eyes hard and her expression focused. She catches up to the girl from Joe’s fanclub in a blink and promptly leaves her behind. Even though she’s in a skirt, even though she’s shorter. People jump out of her way, because she doesn’t look like she’ll slow down.

The rest of Joe’s fangirls are following at a jog. Cherry’s, meanwhile, have stopped to pick up and dust off Misaki-san’s clothes.

“What was that?” Miya asks them when they pass next to him at a leisurely pace, forgetting in the weirdness that he’s not really talking to them.

Fuu-san and Yumi-san light up when they hear him. Kotori-san seems surprised. Utako-san approaches him.

“Miya!” she says, sounding delighted to talk to him again.

“You know them?” Shadow says.

“You weren’t there for our beef?” Miya says, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.

“They can skate?”

Miya can’t help but agree with his evident bewilderment at the possibility.

“Not at all!” Utako-san says, laughing. “We embarrassed ourselves in front of everyone. But it was a lot of fun!”

“Really?” Shadow asks, disbelieving.

Miya huffs.

“Yeah!” Utako-san takes out her phone. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it, people were laughing for weeks. I think they even made gifs for the forums.”

“I was busy.”

“Don’t worry, you can see now.” She hands him her phone. “That’s the highlight reel version, though. It took us half an hour to reach the factory.”

At that moment, the beef begins and Utako-san turns to watch the projection on the side of the mountain. Miya thinks he hears her sigh when Cherry takes a corner in that precise way he does everything.

“He keeps getting better,” Utako-san says dreamily. Shadow makes a face and shares a look with Miya, who forgot for a moment that Utako-san was very much a fangirl.

When the beef ends with unsurprising results, Utako-san puts a hand to her chest and says, “Beautiful.”

Then she turns towards them again and starts the video she’d been meaning to show them. It starts with Miya and Yumi-san getting ready to race. Miya sees what he missed while he was busy thinking of beating them: Utako-san giving him and Yumi-san concerned looks, Misaki-san taking off her sweatshirt, stretching and jogging in place in the background, Fuu-san studying him curiously.

He sees again what came next: the embarrassing start, not much different from Langa’s, except Yumi-san wasn’t a prodigy and so she had to settle for slowly advancing, miraculously staying on the board while Misaki-san jogged behind her. The moment she almost crashed, when Miya decided he’d had enough and left her behind. Misaki-san running and pulling her back and off the board, falling on her butt with Yumi-san on top of her while the skateboard buried itself in some bushes. Yumi-san being pushed and pulled to the finish line. The video ends with Yumi-san reaching it.

The contrast between the comedy show that was the girls’ skating and the elegance of Cherry’s efficiency doesn’t escape Miya. It almost gives him whiplash.

Except that, today, he can actually appreciate what happened. It was funny and the girls looked happy. Even Kotori-san.

He shakes his head. “That was pathetic,” he says, trying to sound scathing.

Shadow, meanwhile, is wheezing. “What was that?” he asks between laughs. It’d be cruel if Utako-san herself hadn’t put the video in his hands, welcoming the mocking.

“Our best!” Utako-san says, laughing too and taking back her phone. “You want a copy?”

“Please.”

Utako-san beams. Miya watches her gleefully share her humiliation and once again feels a stab of envy at the ease with which they accept their slime status. They went into it knowing what was going to happen, judging by how Misaki-san warmed up while Yumi-san stood at the starting line.

That reminds him. “What was that before the beef started?”

“What?” Utako-san asks. “Our fight with Joe’s fanclub? The usual.” Her eyes narrow and she adds, through gritted teeth, “They were dissing Cherry-sama’s calculations.”

“No, not that,” Miya says. “After that. When everyone started running?”

“Ah, that!” Utako-san nods, her face clearing up. “Yeah, they were trying to beat us to our favorite viewing spot. Just to be mean.” She shrugs. “I don’t know why they try; our Misaki-chan is unbeatable.”

“She was fast,” Shadow says. “There too,” he says, pointing at Utako-san’s phone, possibly referring to the part of the video where Misaki-san runs after Yumi-san. Downhill.

“She’s really athletic.”

Miya frowns. “How? Isn’t she a nerd?”

“And?” Utako-san says. “So is Cherry-sama!”

Shadow gapes. Miya snorts.

“Are you allowed to call him that?” Shadow asks.

“Why not?”

Miya’s shoulders shake with laughter

“Aren’t you his fan?!”

“Yes! And he’s a nerd!” Utako-san says, not even the least bit intimidated by Shadow’s bewilderment. “That’s why I like him. Have you seen his skateboard?” Utako-san shakes her head and lets out a small, amazed little sound. “It’s art. What he did there… Every time I think there’s no way he can come up with something new, he does. I love it.”

Miya blinks.

“You… love… him?” Shadow asks.

“No!” Utako-san says. “I love what he does! AI skating?” she laughs, delighted. “It’s brilliant! And it’s the sort of technology that could probably be adapted to so many other areas too…” Her hands flutter as she gets excited talking. “My cousin hates driving because of issues with depth perception - imagine what something like that could do for her. Or- Or it could be integrated into mobility devices!” She pauses to think and, laughing, adds, “Or we could have AI roller skating!”

Shadow looks at Miya. Miya looks at Shadow. They both look at Utako-san.

“Are you Cherry’s fan… because you love his AI?” Miya says.

“Yes!”

“So it’s not about his skating?”

“It is too, in a way,” Utako-san says, shrugging. “It’s his skating. What he did with it when he combined it with technology. I’m a fan of what he’s doing.” She spreads her arms. “He’s making something new! It’s exciting! It’s inspiring! It makes me want to do so much!”

Miya has so many questions now, but the rest of Cherry’s fanclub is coming back and Utako-san gets distracted. She turns and waves.

Misaki-san is once again in her sweatshirt and beret, looking proud. When she notices Miya with Utako-san, she jogs to them, smiling.

“Isn’t Cherry-sama incredible?” Misaki-san says, a hand to her heart and another on her cheek.

“Yes!” Utako-san says, skipping in her spot. Her enthusiasm is genuine, Miya always knew it, but he’s struggling with the knowledge that it’s for Cherry-the-person, not Cherry-the-skater.

Maybe, when Utako-san talked to him about his hoodie that one time, she was talking to Miya-the-person too. Maybe Misaki-san was serious when she wondered out loud about him.

Speaking of Misaki-san: she’s digging in her skirt’s pockets. She takes out a box of Pocky. How big are her pockets?

She offers the Pocky to Shadow, Miya and Utako-san. Miya doesn’t accept. The others do.

“Aren’t you a kid?” Misaki-san whines. “Why are you rejecting sugar?”

Shadow shakes his head. “He doesn’t just reject sugar. He rejects actual food.”

“I’m an athlete,” Miya says, giving Shadow a judging look and raising his head to look at Misaki-san down his nose. It doesn’t seem to affect her.

“Athletes have cheat days!” She proceeds to stuff three Pocky sticks into her mouth at once, chomping on them in an eerie imitation of a wood chipper, to Miya’s disgust. She sticks her tongue out to him.

“I’m good,” Miya says, grimacing. There are Pocky bits on her tongue.

Misaki-san sighs the same way she did back on Valentine’s while talking about Cherry rejecting her chocolates. She grabs Utako-san’s arm and starts pulling her away.

“Let me know if you change your mind, okay?” she says to Miya, and then she and Utako-san are gone. Both of them turn to wave goodbye before they get lost in the crowd.

Neither had to speak to him tonight. Utako-san could have ignored him. Misaki-san could have kept her Pocky to herself. Maybe the other three would talk to him too, if he gave them the chance. To Miya-the-boy, not Miya-the-skater.

In the chaos that ensues when the police arrive, Misaki thinks of Miya. There’s a panicking, running crowd, and he isn’t small like when she first saw him, but he still isn’t a man. He’s got growing left to do, and that means he can still get crushed in a situation like this.

She looks around for him and only feels herself breathe when she sees Shadow guiding him to safety.

Their eyes meet and Misaki waves. Miya frowns at her.

It’s now obvious to Miya that Cherry’s fangirls’ interest in Cherry is different from the interest that Joe’s fangirls show for Joe.

Cherry’s fangirls scream, swoon, have themed outfits and one of them even made a little doll in Cherry’s S clothes, but none of them ever actually talks to Cherry. Joe’s fangirls, meanwhile, are always hanging off his arms. It’s weird.

And then there was Yumi-san flirting with Joe a few times. It doesn’t fit. Miya knows what the deal is between Joe and most of his fangirls, because it’s the same deal he has with all the other women Miya has seen him with. It seems to be the same deal he has with Yumi-san, who is supposed to be Cherry’s fan. It’s obvious that the other girls know about it, but other than Misaki-san jokingly faking outrage, they all seem okay with it.

Weren’t fangirls supposed to be obsessed with someone because they liked him? Miya knows that Cherry’s popular. He’s seen women try to talk to him. He’s seen girls that aren’t in Misaki-san’s group approach him with intentions that Miya can guess from the way they move and talk. But not Misaki-san’s lot. Their adoration, while sincere, is distant. Miya doesn’t understand.

“Do any of you actually like Cherry?” Miya asks Fuu-san one day.

The sun is shining, neither of them is in S clothes, and Miya should pretend he doesn’t know her, because they’re in the street. But he ran into her while he was thinking about the fanclub and the question burst out before he remembered not to bring up S in public.

Fuu-san had been looking at her phone. When she hears Miya, she lowers it, looks around and spends a couple seconds staring at him, as if trying to figure out what’s happening. Or maybe whether to acknowledge Miya in public.

Finally, she frowns. “Of course we like him. We’re his fans.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about…” Miya makes a face. “Romance. Don't any of you want to date him?”

“I don’t know…” Fuu-san locks her phone and starts toying with it. “I’ve never asked the others…”

“What about you?”

Fuu-san tilts her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“You’re in his fanclub,” Miya says slowly. “Don’t you want to date him?”

“No!” Fuu-san waves her hands rapidly in dismissal of the idea. “I’m already dating someone.”

“And if you weren’t?”

Fuu-san’s hands have yet to stop moving. “He’s not my type.”

Miya gapes. He recovers enough to ask, “Then why are you in his fanclub?!”

Fuu-san’s hands still. “He’s aesthetically pleasing.”

“...what.”

Fuu-san nods and says, keeping count with her fingers, “He’s tall. His hair is long, soft, and a very nice color. His eyes are golden. His skin is flawless. His arms are toned.” She nods solemnly several times. “No matter how you look at him, he’s a fine man to look at.”

Miya squints. “So… you find him attractive… but he isn’t your type?”

Fuu-san nods again, sharp.

“Then what’s your type?”

“Miyuki!” Fuu-san says with a delighted smile.

“Who?”

At that moment, the girl Miya recognizes as the leader of Joe’s fanclub approaches them. She’s dressed almost the same way she dresses for S, with her shoulders bare and shorts so small that they make Miya uncomfortable.

Miya resigns himself to the end of the conversation, because it’s impossible for civility to survive when any two girls from the rival fanclubs are around each other, and he doesn’t expect it to be any different during the daytime.

Except that Fuu-san’s smile becomes a grin so wide her cheeks must hurt, and the expression is matched by the new girl.

Miya has a sudden suspicion about who ‘Miyuki’ is.

“Hi, babe,” the girl from Joe’s fanclub says. “Hi… Boy,” she adds, looking at Miya questioningly.

“Miya is fine,” Miya says, at the same time Fuu-san says, “Miyuki!”

She puts away her phone and takes Miyuki-san’s hand.

“She’s the person you’re dating?” Miya asks.

“Yes!”

“Two years next week,” Miyuki-san says, tugging Fuu-san closer so she can kiss her temple.

“I thought you were rivals?” Miya says. He thinks he’s gaping. A bit. He shouldn’t be blamed for it, this is weird.

“Only at S. And even there, I try not to argue with Fuu.” She lets go of Fuu-san’s hand to put her arm around her shoulders. “I mostly fight Misaki there.”

“...is the rivalry an act?” Miya asks.

“Yes and no?” Miyuki-san tilts her head. “I’ve been friends with Misaki since we were thirteen, but we do argue at S. Just… not as seriously as it seems.”

“Then why are you in Joe’s fanclub? If you have a girlfriend?” Why must everyone at S be so weird. What does it say about Miya that he spends so much time there? Is he going to end up like that?

“He’s hot and I like to look at him,” Miyuki-san says, matter-of-factly. “Same reason Fuu’s in Cherry’s fanclub.”

“Oh!” Fuu-san claps once and keeps her hands together. “Miya just asked me if any of the girls wants to date Cherry-sama. What do you think?”

Miyuki-san hums. “I think Kotori-chan does? The others know better.”

“What does that mean?” Miya asks.

“Eh…” Miyuki-san clicks her tongue and shakes her head. “It’s not my place to say.”

Miya frowns, but it only makes Miyuki-san shake her head again.

She puts her free hand in her pocket and takes out a wrapped candy that she offers to Miya.

“Do you want it? It’s cinnamon.”

Miya makes a face. “That’s spicy. Why would I want that?”

“Maybe you have weird tastes.” She hands the candy to Fuu-san, who happily takes it. “But, really, it’s more about how I don’t think Misaki would forgive me if she found out I talked to you and didn’t offer you any of my candy.” She laughs. “She’s out to ruin your diet, Miya. Watch out.”

Fuu-san hums in agreement. “You should let her. She always has good snacks.”

“I’m good, thanks,” Miya says.

The girls go on their way, leaving Miya with a lot to consider. It bothers him how Misaki-san keeps showing up in these conversations. How she seems to be at the center of this whole… quest to talk to him that the others are on. It makes his skin prickle, his pride hurt by the babying.

Empirically, Misaki knows that people exist outside of S. She’s been to Sia la Luce (such good food; Misaki almost cried over her ravioli), and Utako-chan is always dragging her to AI calligraphy demonstrations (Misaki still doesn’t understand what AI calligraphy is, but Utako-chan is always so excited over it that she feels bad asking).

Considering that Miya has been on the news a couple of times makes it even more evident that he is a real person with a life beyond S.

Still, Misaki freezes when she runs into him while buying wheels. He stares at her. Maybe it surprises him to see her in normal clothes, her ripped jeans and the black tank top with a pink heart and a skull printed on it so different to the proper outfit she wears at S.

He narrows his eyes and walks over to her, and Misaki almost doesn’t dare to breathe.

“Tell the others that now they can talk to me whenever they want to,” he says, his arms crossed over his chest. “They don’t have to wait for me to talk to them first.”

“What about me?” Misaki asks.

“You still have to wait for me to talk to you first,” Miya says, and leaves Misaki standing in the middle of the store with too many questions

Once, seeing people from S outside of S rarely happened. Now, Miya can’t seem to be able to escape them. He’s just left Misaki-san when he sees Kotori-san at the bus stop. She’s with a group of girls her age, crowded around one of them, who seems to be showing them a video. They’re laughing and teasing each other. A charm shaped like a cherry blossom hangs from Kotori-san’s backpack.

Kotori-san, still laughing, looks up and sees Miya watching her. Her eyes widen and she quickly lowers her head.

It’s pretty funny how deliberately she doesn’t acknowledge his presence until her bus finally arrives and she and her friends leave.

Misaki and Kotori-chan are waiting for the others when Miya approaches them, looking very, very amused by something. Kotori-chan groans and covers her face with her hands before he has even opened her mouth.

“You suck at acting natural,” Miya says smugly.

Misaki snorts and opens her mouth to agree before remembering that she can’t talk to Miya. He turns to her and she closes her mouth, opting for nodding vigorously. He stares at her while Kotori-chan mumbles about how she panicked when she saw Miya in public, and Misaki mimics zipping her lips together.

Miya proceeds to tease Kotori-chan, all the while deliberately not addressing Misaki.

Adam announces a tournament later that night. It’s easy to see he just wants to race Langa.

The ‘Kitty Cat’s Sugar Rush Adventure’ update comes out unannounced and Miya stays up late playing it under the blankets. He needs to know how the Tangerine Witch’s story ends before the next S. He wants to brag about it to Utako-san, threaten her with spoilers and ask her what she thinks of however much of the storyline she has managed to get through.

He’s exhausted from the lack of sleep by then, but he achieved his goal.

Except that, when he sees Utako-san, he can’t approach her. She brought up the game back in March, but she might not care about it anymore. Or maybe she doesn’t care enough about it to discuss it at S, where she goes to to admire Carla and hang out with the rest of Cherry’s fanclub. He understands that the girls worry about him, but it doesn’t mean they want to spend time with him. They aren’t his friends. They aren’t… whatever Reki and Langa are to him. They’re just an odd group that hovers around him and wonders about his well-being. Like weird aunts.

Miya stuffs his hands in his pockets and decides to look for Reki and Langa. Or maybe Shadow. Not Cherry or Joe, because he doesn’t have the energy in this moment to deal with whatever is going on between them and Adam that makes them be oddly intense at random intervals.

“Miya!” Utako-san calls, running towards him. She’s nowhere near as fast as Misaki-san. For some reason, she’s wearing sunglasses. “Did you get the update?” she says when she reaches him, gesturing towards Miya’s hoodie to make it clear what she’s talking about.

Miya forgets to be wary. “Yes! And I finished it!” he says proudly.

Utako-san grins and says, “So did I!” And then she yawns.

Miya snorts. “Have you slept?”

“Not nearly enough,” Utako-san says, resignedly amused. “But I knew you were going to be a brat if it took me forever to get to it, so I had to finish it before tonight.” She yawns again. “I cleared the thing five minutes before leaving my place.”

Miya can’t find it in himself to be offended by her assumption, considering how right she’d been.

“What did you think of it?” Miya says.

“I cried like a baby.” Utako-san raises her sunglasses so Miya can see her red eyes. “Poor Misaki-chan thought someone in my family had died, or something.”

Miya twists his mouth at the mention of Misaki-san.

“You cried,” he says flatly. As if he hadn’t felt a knot in his throat when the Tangerine Witch hugged Kitty Cat and thanked him for caring.

“How could I not? I’ve made Kitty Cat go to have tea with the Witch for months, Miya. I’m attached to her! And then? When you take her heart out of the inventory and it turns out it’s been fixed?” She sniffles. “When she says she’s grateful you came into her life? And then thanks you for not listening to her when she tried to talk you into destroying her heart?” She pushes her sunglasses up with the heel of her hand to try to dry her eyes. “How did it go for you? Because you left her heart where it was, right?”

“I had to take it in the end. You can’t fight any of the new minibosses if you aren’t carrying around her heart,” Miya explains.

“Ah, that makes sense.” She sniffs. “I bet all the people that killed her when she first showed up are looking for ways to reset that.”

“They are.” Miya checked the forums.

“I hope they don’t find one. It’d serve them right,” Utako-san says, with a degree of viciousness that Miya didn’t think any of these girls were capable of.

Then again, this is S. They periodically come to see a competition with no rules that can put people in the hospital.

“Doesn’t that go against the spirit of the story?” Miya says, raising an eyebrow.

Utako-san laughs. “Misaki-chan said the same thing.”

Miya twists his mouth.

“Ah, sorry,” Utako-san says. “I forget you don’t like her.”

“It’s not that,” Miya says. “She’s just… weird.”

“As opposed to…?” Utako-san gestures around, at the circus that is S.

“Not that way. I just. Don’t understand her.”

“There’s not much to understand. She saw you were thirteen and she didn’t like that you were coming to a place as dangerous as this one.” She shrugs. “She figured that, if nobody was going to be responsible around you, we could try.”

It doesn’t make Miya feel better.

“So that’s why you all talk to me?”

“No, that’s why we’re responsible around you. We talk to you because we like you. You think I don’t have anybody else to talk to about this game? Misaki-chan plays it too. So do some of my classmates.” She sets her sunglasses on top of her head and looks Miya in the eye when she says, “We talk to you because you’re a cool kid.” She grins. “If you ever want or need someone to cheer for you, tell us. We’ll be happy to.”

Miya raises an eyebrow. “Then why don’t you already do it?”

“Because people will think we’re creeps if we do that!”

That… makes a lot of sense.

“Alright. I’ll let you know,” Miya says, and bites his tongue before he can ask for them to cheer on him during tonight's qualification races. He knows he's going to make it, he doesn't need the support.

Several things register when Adam hits Cherry. Miya looks away, but he can still hear everyone around him, and their reactions make him want to cover his ears. There’s screaming and crying. The moment he notices that Joe and Shadow are running, he forces himself to focus on the projection against the mountainside again. Cherry lies on the ground, motionless, and Miya wants to drop to a crouch and hug himself.

He takes a deep breath. And another. He tries to calm down. Cherry will be fine. He has to be fine. Adam wouldn’t have done that if he thought it would actually kill Cherry, right? He focuses on that. Makes himself believe it. He has his own beef to get to. He can think about Cherry after it’s done.

He takes every Cherry-related thought and pushes it aside.

He’s on his way to the starting line when a familiar figure dashes past him. Her white beret falls to the ground in her hurry to take off her sweatshirt. She doesn’t drop the garment, and when Miya looks around he sees that none of the other members of Cherry’s fanclub is following her. He catches sight of them huddled together, hugging each other and crying.

He swallows. He’s considering picking up the beret when another figure appears in his peripheral vision. He quickly recognizes Miyuki-san.

She kneels, picks up the beret and dusts it off.

“Hi, Miya,” she says. Her smile is tight. She doesn’t wait for a reply before she leaves.

After the beef, Miya sees footage of Misaki-san running for Cherry’s skateboard. Picking it up with hands that are shaking so hard that it’s evident from the distance the video was taken from. Wrapping it up in her sweatshirt and cradling it to her chest. And then walking away with steady steps and her head held high.

It’s Utako-san that shows him the video. Kotori-san is hugging herself. Yumi-san has an arm around her shoulders.

“Where is she now?” Miya asks.

“Miyuki drove her to the hospital,” Fuu-san says. She takes out her phone and checks something on it. “They handed over Cherry-sama’s skateboard and now they’re going for food.”

He doesn’t know what to say. All the girls have been crying and Miya can’t think of anything to do, some way to offer comfort.

“I was hoping she’d come back,” Kotori-san mumbles. “She’d already be organizing Adam’s murder.”

That startles a quick, sad laugh out of the others, but it makes Miya uncomfortable. Without Misaki-san around, the remaining four girls haven’t really moved from where they were standing when Cherry hit the ground. He doesn’t know if it has occurred to them that they should be moving, because the night’s beefs are over.

“Can you drive me home?” he asks Yumi-san. “Shadow’s at the hospital with Cherry and Joe now. I don’t have any way to get back.”

Yumi-san blinks and looks at him. Then she looks around, seemingly lost for a moment.

“Yeah,” she says in a small voice. She clears her throat and, more clearly, she says, “Yeah, I can do that.”

They all pile up inside Yumi-san’s car and nobody says a word the whole ride. Kotori-san never really stops crying and sobbing, repeating ‘Cherry-sama’. Yumi-san periodically rubs under her eyes and Miya tries not to think of that when she’s the one driving. Utako-san blows her nose and keeps piling up tissues in her lap. Fuu-san keeps her face covered and her shoulders shake.

Miya can’t break down too. He keeps all his Cherry-related thoughts contained and refuses to examine them.

He texts Shadow and asks him how things are going at the hospital.

If his hands shake when he opens his front door and he doesn’t really register how he makes it to his bedroom, if he curls under the covers without changing into pajamas… nobody saw him, so he can pretend it didn’t happen.

He’s fine. The hero is always fine.

Chapter Text

The forums say that Miya lost to Snake by a wide margin. Misaki winces in sympathy for the kid’s ego and sighs in relief.

He’ll be safe from Adam, then. That’s good.

She’s been checking her phone almost constantly since she left S with Cherry-sama’s board. No missed calls.

They go for greasy food afterwards, and Miyuki drives her home.

“I’m going to see how Fuu’s doing,” she says when Misaki asks her if she wants to hang out for a while.

Yeah, that’s who Miyuki should be with now. Misaki doesn’t fault her for it.

She curls in her bed and spends forever trying to fall asleep. Everytime she closes her eyes she sees Cherry-sama hitting the ground.

No calls the next day either. The fanclub’s groupchat isn’t as active as it should be on a regular day, but the girls are still talking.

They all went to Yumi-chan’s place after what happened. They’re talking about that and wondering about Cherry-sama.

Misaki mutes the groupchat and heads out.

Everything is falling apart and nobody’s helping.

Reki and Langa aren’t talking to each other.

Cherry and Shadow are in the hospital.

Reki shoved him aside and left.

How can anyone expect Miya to sit back and stay calm? Why won’t anyone help him find something to do?

He stays by the elevator until he feels he can put on a brave face. Calming down doesn’t erase his need for… a hug, or a smile, or anything that’ll make him feel like he belongs somewhere, but it makes it easier to pretend he doesn’t.

He’s not saying that to Joe. Much less to Shadow or Cherry.

“Hi, Miya,” Joe says when Miya steps out of the elevator. His eyes narrow slightly when he sees Miya’s face.

“Hi, Joe.” Miya tries to look indifferent under Joe’s gaze. “I ran into Reki just now.”

Joe takes a second to reply, still focused on Miya’s face, but he doesn’t seem surprised. He nods once and says, “He made it all the way up here and left. Langa ran down the stairs to follow him.”

He gestures towards the stairs in question, and at that very moment Misaki-san emerges from them, her eyes on her feet.

Joe visibly tenses up. When Misaki-san sees them, she freezes on the last step.

She’s in ripped jeans again, wearing yet another black top; this one says ‘SK8ER BOI’. The moment she notices Miya reading what’s on her t-shirt, she hurries to cover it with the flowers she’s carrying. It’s a small bouquet, nothing like the arrangement she got Joe for Valentine’s, but also predominantly pink. There’s some white in it to make it easier on the eyes.

Joe and Miya stare at Misaki-san, who grows visibly uncomfortable under the scrutiny. She seems to realize she’s still standing on the stairs and takes a step forward. Then she takes a sideways step to her right. And another one. She looks around and rubs the back of her neck, displaying a large bruise on her forearm.

“What are you doing here?” Miya asks.

She blushes. A glance at Joe shows Miya that his expression has hardened.

Misaki-san lowers her head and says, “Nothing to do with any of you, I promise.”

She takes another step to her right, lowers her head in a clumsy imitation of a bow and walks away. Joe keeps an eye on her and only relaxes when she enters a room that doesn’t belong to either Cherry or Shadow.

“She seems to care about boundaries?” Miya says, unsure of why he feels the need to defend her. Maybe it’s because that’s the only thing he can do for anyone now.

He doesn’t feel like any sort of hero. He feels he’s even less than a slime. He feels like the kid he is, one that’s very human and very lonely.

They run into Misaki-san on the way out of the hospital. They come out of the elevator at the same time she jumps down from the staircase’s second step.

This time, she waves at them, giving them a small, tight smile, and starts walking away. There’s a pink flower tucked behind her ear.

“Thank you,” Joe says before she can get far.

Misaki-san stops and turns, frowning. “For what?”

“For bringing…” Joe pauses, apparently mindful of mentioning S, even though there’s nobody around to hear him. “The other night. It meant a lot.”

“It was nothing. It was…” Misaki-san shrugs. “I couldn’t leave it there.”

“It slipped my mind at the moment,” Joe says quietly.

Misaki-san shakes her head vigorously.

“If it had been Miyuki in his place, it’d have slipped my mind too,” she says, putting her hands in her pockets. She takes out a tin, looks at it and says, “Want a strawberry mint?”

Joe waves a hand. “I’m good.”

Misaki-san looks at Miya, shaking the tin, but Miya averts his eyes. Should he tell her how Cherry’s doing? Ask her how she’s doing? Ask her about the other fangirls?

Miya doesn’t know what to say, and Misaki-san can’t talk to him first.

“Okay.” Misaki-san returns her attention to Joe. “Goodbye.” She leaves the hospital. Miya and Joe were about to do the same thing, but Miya feels rooted to the spot.

“What was that?” Joe asks Miya, gesturing towards where Misaki-san stood not even twenty seconds ago. The words could have been judging with a different tone, but they sounded curious, concerned.

“She can’t talk to me,” Miya says. “I don’t let her.”

Miya puts his arms around himself and Joe rests a hand on his shoulder. It’s grounding and safe, but Miya still won’t let himself break down.

Misaki reads in the forums that that redhead that hangs out with Snow is going to skate against Adam again and feels her gut twist.

“Okay,” she says aloud, alone in her room, and goes to find her mom to ask for a hug.

Her phone is full of texts. From her teammates, half of which are grabbing their heads over how Misaki could have cost them the match by accidentally hurting an opponent. The other half are sympathetic. The coach wants to talk to her.

She has texts from Kudo asking her if she made it home safe after visiting her in the hospital. Telling Misaki that the doctors didn’t make her stay overnight, but that Misaki owes her a meal for getting her injured. Complaining about how texting with only one hand is a pain. Wishing her a good day. Asking her how she’s doing.

Miya purposefully looks for Cherry’s fanclub when he sees him at S, expecting to find them swooning. It’ll be another bit of normalcy, something else to make him feel like the world is back in order now that Reki and Langa are friends again.

They are swooning. Kotori-san is sobbing, talking about how happy she is that Cherry’s alright. But Fuu-san isn’t patting her shoulder; she’s got an arm around Miyuki-san’s waist and she's fangirling from the comfort of her girlfriend’s embrace. Utako-san and Yumi-san welcome Miya warmly, asking him how Cherry’s doing and if it’d be possible for Miya to deliver their good wishes to him?

Misaki-san isn’t around. All of Joe’s fanclub is.

“We all want the same thing, so we called for a temporary truce,” Miyuki-san says when Miya gives in to his confusion, trying and failing to look indifferent. Fuu-san presses herself closer to her.

“Where's Misaki-san?” Miya asks, half expecting to see her appear from behind one of Joe’s fangirls.

Miyuki-san twists her mouth. “She wasn’t home when we went to get her and she told us to come without her when we texted her.”

“She’s not coming?”

“I don’t think so,” Yumi-san says. Her smile is strained.

Miya curls his hands into fists and looks around, hoping to see Misaki-san show up. Her friends are here, waiting for her to lead them. Where is she?

He leaves them before the beef starts. He has to stand with his friends.

Reki gives Adam a lesson and everything starts looking better. Brighter.

Then Miya remembers that Shadow’s still in the hospital and he notices that Misaki-san isn’t with the other fangirls when he sees them after the beef. It brings back a shadow of the loneliness he felt when Reki left.

“She really didn’t come,” Miya says. He feels ridiculous, stating the obvious. “Is she alright?”

Miyuki-san shakes her head. “We haven’t seen her since last week.”

Miya frowns and wonders whether to tell them he has. He wants to point out that you don’t need to see someone to know how they’re doing; not when everybody has a phone and social media.

“How long is this truce going to be?” he asks her to distract himself, pointing at her arm around Fuu-san’s shoulders. “Doesn’t this ruin the fanclubs’ images?”

Miyuki-san opens her mouth, but it’s Kotori-san that speaks: “Joe was pushing Cherry-sama’s wheelchair earlier. Fighting among the fanclubs would have looked ridiculous.” She sounds harsher than usual. Genuinely angry about something instead of simply snappy.

Miyuki-san nods. “We’ll go back to normal next week.”

“Probably the week after that,” Yumi-san says. “We’re all together in hoping Adam loses.”

“Although today was pretty satisfactory,” Utako-san says, her smile lacking her usual enthusiasm. “Did anyone record today’s beef? Misaki-chan will be sad she missed it.”

“I’ve got it, don’t worry,” Miyuki-san says.

The girls are strangely subdued without Misaki-san around. Miya doesn’t like it. He wonders how long it’ll take them to bring her back.

Misaki doesn’t open the video that Miyuki sends. She doesn’t answer when the girls call or reply to the many texts they start sending.

She can’t do anything if she runs into one of them in public, but she can do her best to avoid accidental meetings. She’s spent over three years herding them and the ones that came before them - keeping their schedules in check, remembering their habits and quirks to ensure the fanclub never got a reputation beyond ‘loud and always trying to make money’.

Her best is impressive. After Miyuki left her at home the night Cherry-sama was hit, she manages to go over a week, and counting, without seeing anyone she knows from S.

Her encounter with Miya and Joe at the hospital doesn’t count, because they don’t actually know each other.

Cherry’s fanclub is back to its normal levels of energy by the time of Langa’s beef against Adam. Misaki-san, however, isn’t back.

“She’s avoiding us,” Kotori-san answers through gritted teeth when Miya asks about Misaki-san, arms crossed over her chest and her fingers digging into them.

“And?” Miya asks, judging. “Don’t you have her number? Her address?”

“It doesn’t seem right to barge into her life…” Yumi-san says, shaking her head and raising her shoulders, her tone mild. “She’s avoiding Miyuki-chan too, and they’re actually friends-”

“I thought you were her friends.” Miya isn’t proud of how harsh his voice comes out. It sounds like he cares. He’s not going to care, he knows better (Reki came back, but Miya still remembers how much it hurt that he left).

Utako-san lowers her gaze. “I thought that too, but… she isn’t here.”

“You aren’t with her either,” Miya says, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

Fuu-san opens her mouth, but Miya doesn’t want to hear what any of these girls has to say. He’s going to watch Langa skate and win, and then he’s going to forget about Cherry’s slime fanclub. Friends are supposed to be there for you. Friends don’t let you disappear.

He thinks about Misaki-san, always running to handle things: to keep Yumi-san from hurting herself, to secure a viewing spot, to grab Cherry’s skateboard. She ran after Miya too, and Miya tripped her every chance he got.

Misaki-san went for Cherry’s skateboard when nobody else did. Miya can go for Cherry’s fangirl, since nobody else is doing it.

He goes back to the store where he ran into her some weeks ago to try to guess what she was doing there, hoping for a clue.

The moment he arrives he wants to cover his face and groan, because what he finds isn’t a clue, it’s the whole answer. She’d been holding some wheels when he saw her. This particular shop specializes in roller skating.

He takes out his phone and enters ‘Misaki’ (in every way he can think of to spell it) and ‘roller skating’ into the search bar. On a hunch, he adds ‘roller derby’.

He gets a lot of useless pages: product reviews, articles on the sport, videos…

After scrolling a bit he finds what he wants: social media posts from random people. He’s uncomfortably aware that this might border on stalking, despite his good intentions.

He views dozens of selfies of girls from all over Japan, team pictures and tournament pictures, and he finds her by accident. Some girl posted a picture of her arm in a cast about a week ago, captioned ‘Did this hurt like a bitch? Yeah. Did I meet the lovely Hishika thanks to this? YEAH. Was the lovely Hishika the cause of this? YEAH!!!’

Thinking about Misaki-san in the hospital and the flower behind her ear leads Miya to check who liked or replied to the picture. And he finds Misaki-san’s account, which doesn’t have any clear pictures of her face and doesn’t have her name anywhere, but Miya recognizes the ‘SK8ER BOI’ t-shirt that the girl in one of the pictures is wearing.

More importantly: he recognizes the skatepark where most of her pictures were taken.

Miya gets on his board and sets off.

What he finds at the skatepark is a girl in a cast whooping and cheering for a girl in a black tank top who is busy doing various jumps and pirouettes. Miya doesn't know anything about artistic skating, but he knows enough about people to see that this girl isn't graceful. He can also tell that, despite it not looking pretty, this girl is landing her jumps.

Until she sees Miya and slips, falling on her butt.

"Hishika!" calls the girl in the cast, rushing to Misaki-san's side.

Misaki-san tries to brush her off, but the girl plants her feet, grabs her arm with her good hand and pulls her up. She lets go of Misaki-san when she's steady and brushes loose strands of Misaki-san’s hair behind her ear, while Misaki-san visibly struggles with what to do with her hands and keeps glancing at Miya.

The girl fussing over Misaki-san turns to find what it is that's distracting her companion.

Miya approaches the girls at an easy pace, like he didn't rush here with hopes, and raises his hand in greeting when he's close enough to be heard.

"Hi. I'm Miya," he says to the girl. She's taller than Misaki-san, of a similar build, and the tips of her black hair are dyed pink. She's in sweatpants and a red tank top. Her hand is casually resting over Misaki-san’s forearm and Misaki-san keeps her eyes on it while the girl's attention is on Miya. She looks like she's preparing herself for some trial, but Miya can't imagine what it could be.

"Hi?" the girl says. Her eyes go from Miya to Misaki-san and back. "I'm Kudo."

"Nice to meet you," Miya says, bowing his head, trying to be polite. He turns his attention to Misaki-san. "Do you have any mints today?"

Misaki-san’s head snaps up and she blinks and smiles. Then she catches herself.

“No… But I have orange gummies?”

“Okay. Give me one,” Miya says, extending a hand.

“Oh, you know each other?” Kudo-san says, visibly relaxing.

“Kind of,” Misaki-san says, at the same time Miya says, “Yes.”

Misaki-san blinks again. She gives Miya the candy and doesn’t comment when he takes three pieces before giving it back.

Kudo-san once again looks from Miya to Misaki-san. Her hand hasn’t moved yet.

“Alright… I gotta be going now,” she says to Misaki-san, her thumb rubbing over her forearm before letting go. “We still on for tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Misaki-san says, her hand coming up to cover the spot that Kudo-san had been touching. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Great! See you then, Hishika.” Kudo-san’s smile reminds Miya of the ones Joe gives to the girls he flirts with. The difference is that Kudo-san’s is directed with deadly precision at Misaki-san and is accompanied with a focused look, like she doesn’t want to miss a detail of anything Misaki-san does. Kinda like how Joe looks at the beefs Cherry’s in.

Her expression is softer when she says goodbye to Miya. Her focus seems to be reserved for Misaki-san.

“She likes you,” Miya says when Kudo-san is gone, aiming for teasing.

“Yeah,” Misaki-san says, undoing her messy bun. “She does.” She smiles softly, brushing her hair with her fingers and re-tying it into a low ponytail.

They look at each other for a moment. Now that he’s closer, Miya sees that this tank top says ‘complicated’ in white, blocky letters. Miya has never really looked at Misaki-san before, but now that he does, many things make sense. This is the girl that pushed Yumi-san on a skateboard through half of S and reached the finish line with enough energy to fan her companions. The girl that climbed eight floors of stairs and only flushed because Miya read her t-shirt. A girl that’s always ready to run.

‘Athletes have cheat days,’ she said once, and it occurs to Miya that she was speaking from experience.

“You haven’t been back to S,” Miya accuses. The candy in his hand is melting and making his palm sticky.

“I didn’t feel like it,” Misaki-san says, shrugging.

"Cherry’s fanclub is weird without you. They need you." Miya takes a piece of candy and puts it in his mouth. It's soft, easy to chew, and full of sugar and chemicals that he really shouldn't be allowing into his body.

"They can tell me that themselves," Misaki-san says, stuffing her hands in her shorts' pockets.

"They say you're not answering their calls," Miya points out.

"They know where I live."

"That's crossing a line." Why is he using the same arguments that didn’t convince him?

Misaki-san raises an eyebrow. "Miyuki is my friend. She knows she can visit whenever she wants." She huffs. "Utako-chan had no problem making me go with her to AI calligraphy things, you know? She shouldn't have any issues barging into my house. And Fuu-chan?” She scoffs. “She barely understands general manners, so I don't see what could be stopping her from finding me if she wanted to!"

She closes her mouth and looks away from Miya.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

“Why?”

“You shouldn’t be listening to this. It has nothing to do with you.” Misaki-san shakes her head and takes her hands out of her pockets. She wipes them on her shorts.

“Don’t baby me.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to be responsible.” She looks around and exhales heavily. “Okay, no. This isn’t working. Follow me.” She rolls away from Miya, who puts the rest of the candy in his mouth and goes after her.

They find a bench and sit down. Neither talks for a while.

“What did you mean?” Miya says. “About being responsible?”

Misaki-san sighs and stretches her legs in front of herself. “I’m… feeling things and thinking things. And I have to handle them the best possible way, yeah? Piling them on a boy that has nothing to do with the problem isn’t the right way.”

“You’re not piling anything on me.”

“Not directly, maybe, but I’m talking about them and making you worry.”

Miya huffs. “Who says I worry?”

“Miya…” she says knowingly. “You immediately brought up the girls. You’re worrying.”

Miya lowers his head. “It’s just… it’s weird without you there. I don’t like it.” He hates how he sounds. Like a spoiled child that can’t accept changes.

“That doesn’t mean it’s your job to solve it.” Her voice is soft and it makes Miya uncertain.

“I’m not trying to solve it.” He doesn’t know if he wants a hug or to get angry at Misaki-san for thinking he needs to be coddled.

“You are. You were literally trying to solve it five minutes ago.”

Anger it is.

“Because nobody else is doing it! Your friends should be here, not me!”

“Exactly,” Misaki-san says kindly. “This isn’t about you, so it’s not your problem to solve.”

“But I don’t like it.” He doesn’t like that so much has been happening and all he’s allowed to do is stand back and watch. He doesn’t like that he hasn’t even been able to win his beefs.

“I know. But I can’t go back to S.” Misaki-san runs her hand over her face and sighs. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” She drapes her ponytail over her shoulder and starts playing with it. “I’ve been going to S for years, you know? And it’s always been weird and wild, I won’t deny that. But what Adam did to Cherry Blossom? It scared me.”

“Cherry Blossom? I thought you called him Cherry-sama.”

“Only at S.” She laughs to herself. “My life doesn’t actually revolve around him.”

Miya frowns and thinks about his conversation with Fuu-san. “Do you even like him?”

“In what sense?” Misaki-san asks, tilting her head and frowning.

“Kotori-san has a crush on him. Utako-san admires him. Fuu-san thinks he’s attractive.” Miya keeps count with his fingers. “Yumi-san… I don’t know.”

Misaki bites her lower lip in a futile attempt to keep herself from smiling. “Yumi-san also thinks he’s attractive, just… in a way we can discuss when you’re older.”

Miya makes a disgusted face. Misaki-san laughs.

“Okay, I think I get what you’re asking,” Misaki-san says. “I’m not… interested in Cherry Blossom in any way. I don’t care for his looks, or his work.” She shrugs. “I just needed a reason to scream and run, and he’s what I found when I was sixteen.” She makes a face. “Ugh. That’s also another thing I shouldn’t be telling you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re thirteen, Miya. I’m twenty. I should be looking after you, not giving you reasons to think you have to look after me and the girls.” She rests her elbows on her knees and leans forward, putting her hands over her neck. “You’re too young to carry other people’s problems.”

Miya brings his legs up to the bench so he can hug his knees. “But nobody’s doing anything! Of course I worry! If things are left alone, they get worse and then it’s all…” People leave.

“I’m sorry, Miya,” Misaki-san says softly.

“So you’re not going back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Cherry’s fine, by the way.” There’s some hope in his voice that he really doesn’t want her to have noticed.

“Yeah, I guessed. It’d have been on the news if he’d died.”

More silence. Misaki-san hesitates and says, “I know I’m not the right person to ask this, but… how are you, Miya?”

He doesn’t let go of his knees. “I’m fine.”

She hums, unconvinced. “I mean genuinely. How are you? ”

“Why wouldn’t I be fine?” Miya snaps, giving himself away.

“Because seeing a man get hit in the face with a skateboard is traumatic?” She turns her head and looks at him in the eyes. “I’m not fine. I keep wondering who’s getting hurt next.” She stares at the horizon. “I’m going to say something… Please don’t misunderstand me, Miya, but when I read that you lost against Snake? I was relieved.”

Miya wants to be offended. He wants to muster up the energy to bristle, to say he’d been fine against Adam during the qualifying round and he’d have been fine against him again. That he doesn’t need to hear anything even a bit reasonable from a girl that wears a themed outfit to match a guy who refuses to notice her existence. But the truth is that he’d been relieved too. The image of Adam’s board hitting Cherry’s face has been stuck at the back of his mind since it happened and he was scared. He’s still scared, in some part of his mind that he tries not to acknowledge.

“Me too,” he finally admits. He hugs his knees more tightly. “He could have hurt Reki. He could have hurt Langa. I don’t want my friends to get hurt.” He throws his head back and yells, “Skating is supposed to be fun!”

He lets his head drop forward, hiding his face behind his knees.

There’s a tentative touch to his shoulder. He pulls away from it.

“Sorry,” Misaki-san says.

Miya shakes his head.

“Skating is supposed to be fun,” he repeats. “But… it could have ended up badly. Cherry was in a wheelchair! And Joe… he was so serious. Joe’s not supposed to look serious. And… and Langa at the end? He could have been hurt. Everything could have gone so wrong! I’m happy it didn’t, but…” He sniffs. “Can you give me more candy?”

“I thought you had a strict athlete diet?” Misaki-san teases.

Miya raises his head to glare at her, but her eyes are soft.

“Come on, Miya,” Misaki-san says, standing up. “It’s almost dinnertime and I’m starving. Where do you wanna go?”

“Do you have money? Your fanclub is always broke.”

Misaki-san laughs. “The fanclub might be broke, but Hishika Misaki never is.”

She takes him to a ramen place. The cook knows her, tells her there’s a new item on the menu and Miya suffers the uncomfortable experience of watching a grown woman cry over food.

“You look better today,” Misaki says when she sees Miya again at the skatepark, two days after he found her there.

“I talked to someone,” Miya says. “It helped.”

Misaki can’t help herself: she beams. “I’m glad.”

Miya studies her, his head tilted, and says, “You mean that.”

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Miya shrugs. “I thought you were only trying to seem nice.”

“I don’t have the energy for that, Miya,” Misaki says, laughing. She already spends enough on worrying about everyone. “No, I was concerned. S isn’t a good place for anyone, but especially for a kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” Miya says, visibly annoyed.

“Barely.” Misaki huffs. “I’d like to have a word with whoever it was that brought you to S when you were twelve.”

Miya smirks before he says, “It was Adam.”

Of course. Who else could it be but the man that attempted murder in front of an audience?

“Oh, look! Forget talking, I should fight him!” She twists her mouth. “Do you think he’d agree to a beef against me, but with me on roller skates?” she muses.

“No,” Miya replies immediately.

“Pity.” She sighs for effect. “I’d win that.”

“Sure,” Miya says flatly.

Misaki raises her eyebrows. “You don’t believe me?”

“I’m only saying I haven’t seen you skate,” Miya says, faux-casual. “Why should I believe that you’d beat him?”

Misaki stares for a couple of seconds and starts laughing at the obvious provocation.

“Just watch, kid,” she says, and heads for the bowl, gesturing for Miya to follow her.

They roll around for a bit, watching each other, warming up. Misaki tucks the hem of her t-shirt into her shorts. Today’s design is a white ribcage over black fabric, with a stylized pink heart on the left, and it happens to be one of her favorites.

She stretches her arms over her head, gathers momentum and rolls up a side of the bowl, doing a handstand on the edge before dropping down and rolling back to where Miya is.

“Your turn!” she says, grinning and spreading her arms.

Miya’s quick to do a handstand on his board, to Misaki’s delighted applause. He follows it with an ollie and the most insufferable condescending look Misaki has ever been subjected to.

“Oh, you’re on,” Misaki says, unable to even try to sound mad about it. If he wants to taunt her with his own sport’s basics, she’ll taunt him with hers. Nevermind that the jumps and pirouettes are something she practices in her free time, that nobody has ever coached her in, that she’ll never get to turn into a career.

It escalates to the point that they gather a small audience. Some of them are recording this silly competition that Miya and Misaki have dragged each other into.

“All we need now is music,” Misaki says, once she’s out of tricks.

“Any requests?” calls out one of their spectators, waving around his phone.

Misaki looks at Miya, thinks of his S outfit and calls back, “‘Silly Math Joke #35’, from the ‘Kitty Cat Sugar Rush Adventure’ soundtrack!”

The guy taps at his phone.

“How do you know that song?” Miya asks.

“From playing the game, of course,” Misaki says.

When the song starts she cheers and rolls back towards the center of the bowl, where she starts a complicated series of dance steps that she finishes with a jump, all of it to the beat of the music. She points at Miya and gestures with her head, challengingly, so Miya flips his board and maneuvers it so it hits the ground in a steady rhythm, matching the song as well.

They’re both grinning by the time the song ends, and Misaki claps at Miya’s success.

The kid lights up at the praise, and the anxiety that’s been curling in Misaki’s gut over him for months finally starts to dissipate. It’s also the first time she feels she can actually breathe since she saw Adam go against that redhead weeks ago.

She feels herself about to start laughing again, but this time it comes from her core, not as a reaction to something amusing. It’s simple happiness, born from the reminder of what drew her at S when she was a teenager: the fascination of watching people try beyond the limitations set by the rules of their sport, the freedom to be whatever you wanted to be, the fun of sharing the experience with others. Being nobody but the person she decided to be there.

“Skating is fun!” Misaki yells, raising her arms to the sky.

“It is!” Miya says, laughing freely, and holds out his fist. Misaki bumps it with her own and bows to their audience, gesturing at Miya that it’s time to leave.

“Miya?” Misaki says before they part ways.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for today. I really needed that!”

Miya tilts his head back, proudly. He’s smirking when he says, “Didn’t you tell me I shouldn’t have been worrying about you?”

Misaki makes a face. “To be honest, I still believe it, but I can appreciate what you’ve done.” She hesitates. “I’m sorry I made you feel you had to do it.”

Miya’s expression softens and it’s his turn to look unsure. “Are you ever coming back to S?”

Misaki’s face falls. “I don’t know. But I promise to make it a spectacle if I do.”

She’ll go back at some point; she started a fanclub, she’s got to be responsible for it. She just… wants to be a bit selfish for a while longer.

Miya sighs. “Alright. We’ll have a beef then. I’ll ask Langa to tell Adam to make it so you can race me on roller skates, so it can be fair. Until then…”

“Yeah?”

“Can we keep doing this? It was fun.”

“Yes. Definitely!”

The video is everywhere in less than a day. Miya has complaints about the editing.

People are still watching it by the next S night.

“She looks familiar,” Reki says, watching it on his phone.

“She’s one of Kaoru’s fans,” Joe says. He dodges the upcoming kick from Cherry so swiftly that Miya knows he used his name on purpose.

“I never imagined they had any sort of skill at anything,” Shadow says, watching the video over Reki’s head.

“They bake,” Langa points out. He’s right. They have a small business selling homemade cookies around S. They’re much better than the ones Joe’s fanclub sells.

“That doesn’t count.”

Before the conversation can continue, Cherry’s fangirls, minus Misaki-san, run over to them. Utako-san is waving her phone around, but it’s Kotori-san that says, “Where is she?”

They don’t even spare a look at Cherry.

Miya looks at the phone, where the video’s still playing, then back at the girls.

“On planet Earth,” he says.

“That’s not what I mean!”

“Obviously,” Miya says, head tilted back and tone judging. “But that's all I’m telling you.”

Kotori-san opens her mouth, but Yumi-san puts a hand over it and pulls her back. “It’s important for us to talk to her. Can you please tell us where she is?”

“No. I don’t want to.”

“Miya…” Reki tries to chastise.

“No. I made the effort to find her and I knew even less about her than they do.” Some of the anger and hurt he felt before because of Reki comes back, unprompted. He tries to squash it down, but he sees Reki’s frown out of the corner of his eye and thinks about his conversations with Misaki-san and one he had with Joe in-between. “You’re her friends, aren’t you? Find her yourselves. It wasn’t hard.” He takes a deep breath and says, “Friends don’t leave.”

Kotori-san pulls down Yumi-san’s hand and says, “She left first!”

“And we didn’t call her,” Fuu-san says quietly.

The other girls look at her. Around Miya, it’s clear that everybody else wants to leave and not witness this.

Fuu-san hugs herself and says, “When she left, we stayed here. We left Miya at his place and we all went to Yumi-san’s apartment, but we didn’t call her. It was Miyuki that told us how things went. And then Miyuki went to get me and none of us called her until the next S night.” She swallows. “The first rule of the club is that we stick together. The second rule is that nobody fights alone.” She sniffles and lowers her head.

This is very, very uncomfortable. Cherry’s staring at the horizon. Reki and Shadow are studying their own shoes. Joe looks around, his eyes never setting on anything. Only Langa watches what’s happening, and Miya doesn’t think he realizes that he shouldn’t be paying attention.

“I’ll get the car,” Yumi-san says quietly, just as Kotori-san starts crying. Loudly. Utako-san hugs her, and Fuu-san joins the hug and forces her to try to comfort the two crying girls while holding back her own tears.

There are people around watching and everybody next to Miya looks ready to run. Miya, meanwhile, thinks this is all rather overdramatic and would rather see if anything actually interesting is going to happen tonight.

He’s about to go elsewhere when he makes a sudden decision. He looks at Reki and says, “I forgave you, but you still owe me an apology.”

Reki startles, blinks, and shrinks. “Yeah, I do. I’m sorry I lied, Miya.”

It doesn’t make up for how hurt Miya was when Reki left, but at least it’s an apology. It’s enough.

“Good.”

Miya smiles and walks away to make a phone call, leaving behind a lot of confusion, awkwardness and shame.

This is the grand event at S, a month later: for one time only, a beef between someone on a skateboard and someone on roller skates.

Misaki-san might be the first person in the history of S that’s come to it wearing the appropriate protective gear.

“If I win this, you’ll have to start wearing it too,” Misaki-san says.

“If I win this, I want snacks every week,” Miya says.

“Deal.”

They shake on it.

And the beef begins.