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The rush of this battle event gets Toya’s heart pumping. There are some formidable new opponents, but even though they’re older, they’re clearly no match for Toya and his partner.
“What do you say, partner?” Akito asks. “Want to put these guys in their place?”
“Sure,” Toya says, and he switches the music to Doctor=Funk Beat. The second it comes on, their opponents know they’re done and the crowd goes absolutely wild.
The new guys talked tough, but they shrink down, and Toya’s satisfied in their win, but then the music changes.
Then there’s the sound of piano, and Toya takes way too long to recognize the song.
Distorted†Happiness.
Akito drops his microphone and feedback causes everyone in the live house to flinch.
“Where’s that coming from?” Shiho yells, and people are scrambling to find the source while Akito goes white as a sheet of paper.
“Akito?” Toya gasps. “Akito, can you hear me?”
“W-where is she?” Akito mutters.
“She’s not here, she’s not here Akito,” Toya says. He pulls Akito up and walks him out of the confusion of the Live House.
Shiho or someone found where the music was coming from and stopped it, but Akito won’t stop shaking.
“Akito? Stay with me, partner,” he says, trying to do for Akito what Akito does for him, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Despite all his hoodies, Akito is shivering.
“Why won’t she leave me alone,” Akito says, starting to hyperventilate. “W-what did I do? What did I do?”
Toya walks him to WEEKEND GARAGE, where An and Kohane are.
“What happened?” An asks.
“New guys wanted to play Distorted†Happiness,” Toya mutters.
He helps Akito into a booth, but Akito’s started to go catatonic.
“Akito?” Toya says carefully. “Akito, do you know who I am?”
“To… ya?”
“Yeah, it’s me, partner.”
“I-if she finds you here, she’s gonna…” Akito starts shaking again.
“Akito, it’s fine. I’m fine, you’re fine. We’re in WEEKEND GARAGE, alright? She’s not going to hurt you.”
“She’ll find a way,” he mutters. “I need to be good or—”
Toya wants to scream. Why is he so bad at this? Akito always knows what to say to talk him down from the ledge so why can’t he do the same?
“Damn it, I should call Ena.” Toya reaches into his pocket, but realizes he left his and Akito’s phones at the live house.
“I’ll be right back,” Toya says. He runs out of WEEKEND GARAGE as fast as he can, barely stopping to say anything to Shiho before grabbing the phones. He doesn’t want to be away from his partner a second longer than he has to.
“You were right, taking out Shinonome’s way better than Aoyagi.”
Toya stops. He hears a group of people talking in an alleyway. It’s their opponents and a third person.
“You.” Toya says menacingly. “You did that on purpose.”
One of the guys looks taken aback, but the other just laughs. “Oh yeah, and what are you gonna do about it, Aoyagi? Run crying to your big brother?”
Toya balls his hands into a fist.
“C’mon, gonna hit me or what? That’s what Shinonome would do, right?”
He knows it’s bait, but he’s seeing so much red he takes a swing at the leader’s face, who just laughs it off.
“You call that a punch?” The leader hits Toya back, and suddenly everything’s spinning as Toya falls to the ground.
The leader laughs. “See if it were Shinonome that’d be a problem, but you? You ain’t shit.”
The three stalk off laughing and Toya slowly pulls himself up. He gets back to WEEKEND GARAGE.
“Whoa, what happened?” An gasps.
“Ran into the guys who did this to Akito,” Toya says. “They wanted to knock us out or something, I don’t know.” It doesn’t matter does it? Akito’s catatonic, staring straight ahead at nothing.
“Akito?” Toya whispers.
No response.
God, normally Toya would expect Akito to look at his face, ask what happened, and then run off like a knight in shining armor trying to defend Toya’s honor, but Toya can’t do the same for him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
~
Akito doesn’t come to school the next day, and everyone’s talking about it, but they have the decency to not do it when they know Toya’s listening.
“Toya, my love! How are you?” Tsukasa-senpai asks, finding him during lunch.
Toya doesn’t say anything, just picks at his food.
“Toya, what’s wrong?” Tsukasa-senpai says, sitting next to him.
Toya sighs. “I’m a bad partner,” he says.
“What? What makes you say that?”
“Senpai, if someone deliberately played classical music to trigger me, what would you do?” Toya asks.
“Make sure you’re alright and then kill them,” Tsukasa-senpai says without missing a beat.
“Akito would too,” Toya says, “but me? All I got was this.” Toya points to his black eye.
“That doesn’t make you a bad partner.”
“But they said they targeted Akito because they knew I wouldn’t be able to get back at them. If I was better, then they wouldn’t have tried it.”
“That’s a sign that they’re terrible people, not that you’re a bad partner,” Tsukasa-senpai says. “What are you planning to do after school?”
“I’m going to check on Akito and watch some movies.”
“Exactly! Because you care about him! That’s what makes you a good partner, not your ability to enact revenge on a bunch of jerks,” Tsukasa says.
Toya frowns. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
Tsukasa hugs him. “Look Akito needs two things right now, one is someone to comfort him, two is to be able to know that won’t happen again. One way to make the second one happen is to beat up those guys and let everyone know about it, but we can handle that. You’re the one who can handle the first one.”
Toya nods. “You’re right, senpai, after school I’ll go to Akito and— did you say we?”
“Huh?”
“You said ‘we’ can handle that.”
“Oh well…”
Suddenly Toya realizes how odd it is he hasn’t seen Kamishiro-senpai.
“I’m sorry Toya!” Tsukasa-senpai says. “If we knew you’d want to get back at those guys we would have told you sooner.”
Toya sighs. He’s probably not going to get a second chance to fight those guys now, so he might as well focus on Akito.
~
Things Akito hates most in the world right now:
Fuyune FUCKING Shimizu
His fucking brain
The pricks who did this
The fact that they have school today so Toya can’t be here.
The best he can do to remind himself that he’s not in her damn apartment is curl up and listen to Toya’s singing. It’s a band aid on a stab wound, but when his brain starts to drift he can remind himself that Shimizu would never let him listen to Mirai.
He’s watching the door carefully so he sees the second it opens up and hides his phone.
Then it’s just Toya, and he relaxes.
“Hey,” Akito says, trying to seem fine.
“Hey,” Toya says. “I brought movies.”
“Great.”
Akito moves over and lays his head against Toya’s shoulder, threading their fingers together. He doesn’t really pay attention to what Toya puts on, just tries to focus on where he is right now.
He thinks about Toya’s words from yesterday. She’s not going to hurt you.
He’s with Toya, so it’s fine, he tries to tell himself. If she were here, Toya wouldn’t be able to get near him, because she’d–
No. Bad train of thought. The point is if Toya’s here then she’s not.
“Hey partner?” He says. “You promise you’re here?”
“Yeah,” Toya says, not missing a beat and running his hands through Akito’s hair. “I’m real. I’m here.”
“Love you,” Akito says.
“Love you too.”
~
With Shiho-kun’s help Rui finds the three guys he’s looking for.
“Hello!” Rui says. “Were you performing last night on Vivid Street?”
“Yeah, whaddaya want?” One, the leader, says.
“Oh, I really liked your show! Can I have an autograph?”
Rui pulls out a notebook and pen and the leader gives a smirk.
“Sure,” the leader says. He takes the pen out of Rui’s hand and is racked with pain as the buzzer goes off and shocks him.
“Wh-what the fuck?!”
Rui simply gives his best villain smile. “I recommend you leave the BAD DOGS alone if you value your well-being. If you try anything , I’ll know.”
The other two try to help their leader up, and Rui presses a switch in his pocket again and all three are shocked.
“Have a nice day!” Rui says before turning on his heel and leaving.