Chapter Text
That sunny Tuesday afternoon Yosuke had found himself staring at blankly at the chalkboard while twirling his pen through his fingers. He noticed he started to become warmer as the afternoon sun shined through the window and landing on his side. His blissfulness was short-lived after once again the teacher had called on him and the whole class had turned their heads to stare at him when he didn’t answer right away.
Oh no, let’s see, something about the 1700’s maybe? Ugh why did she have to call on me? Is everyone looking at me, oh god everyone is staring at me…
“Uh, um, hey Partner think you could help me out here? Sorry.” he quietly whispered so that the teacher wouldn’t hear.
Despite his best attempt to calmly spout the answer and deepen his lie of knowing the material he fumbled over his words and was scolded for asking for the answers. Dammit he thought as he dropped his head into his newly crossed arms on his desk. The class continued to glare at him for a brief moment before turning back to their own books. He felt awful for depending on his best friend to help him with a simple answer. Why couldn’t he pay attention? Why couldn’t he comprehend how important this all was and how it might affect if he got into a good school or not? His thoughts got distracted, so much so, that when the final bell had rung it had made him jump.
“Hey are you alright, you seemed kind of down earlier?” Souji stood up from his desk.
“It’s nothin’, just bummed I made a fool out of myself again in front of the whole class. Man, why do they always call on me. Well, I mean I know why but still…” He could feel his partners’ eyes on him as he stood up from his desk.
“If you want some help studying I’m free tonight if you wanna come over?”
"A-Are you sure? I mean, that's a pretty tall order you have for yourself, I'm pretty much a lost cause dude." Yosuke started packing up his things. He had tried studying before with his classmates but he couldn’t remember the material as soon as he left the library. His notes were a completely different story. When Yosuke took notes, (if any at all even) he would write down single words and phrases without context so when he went to look back on them later he could never remember what the subject matter was only what little he had written down in his notebook.
"It's no problem at all, I want to help you as much as I can." Souji patted him on the back.
"Well, thanks Partner, I will train well under you oh, great one." He jokingly bowed and slung his bag over his shoulder. The two exited the classroom; saying goodbye to the classmates they knew as they walked down the stairs together.
The sun outside shone down just as brightly as it had in the classroom, the warmth that he had felt earlier made him smile when he felt it again. The two had conversed in small talk as they walked, mostly about the plans for later that night and occasionally slipping in some gossip that he had herd in the hallway.
The conversation died down as they made it almost to the Dojima residence. Yosuke finally spoke up.
“Hey, seriously thanks Partner for doing this, I really appreciate the help. You’re like the only one who has wanted to take the time to help me, so, uh.” He adjusted his bag on his shoulder. A shy smile crept onto his face.
“Of course, we can do this whenever you’re free if it helps.” His partner smiled back at him.
The rest of the walk was somewhat quiet after that. Yosuke wasn't sure why he had nothing to say. He began to space out, noticing all the little things about this place he had lived for a while now. He eventually turned his gaze over to his partner, noticing all these small things about him he hadn’t noticed prior. To the way that he sometimes glanced down just to make sure he knew where he was going to how he was naturally a slow walker and he had to slow his walk just to not leave him in the dusk. Without realizing they had already made it to the residence but Souji had to grab his arm and stop him from walking past.
“Hey, wake up we’re here.” Souji laughed, stopping in his tracks in front of the door.
“Huh, oh, yeah sorry, just spacing’ out over here. Heh” He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well, let’s go get our study on Partner!” He coyly elbowed Souji in the arm. Souji smiled at him and let them both in. He toed off his shoes and followed closely behind his partner as they went up the stairs, greeting Nanako as she watched TV downstairs. Each step creaking slightly as pressure was released from them as they ascended. He couldn’t help but notice that as Souji walked up the stairs he had this kind of bounce in his step and he couldn’t help but smile because of it.
They had both sit down on either side of the small table in Soujis room. Souji grabbed his bag and took out a couple textbooks and a notebook.
“Alright teacher where should we start?”
“How about English?” Souji opened up his notebook. Yosuke groaned, throwing his head back. Out of all the subjects, English was probably his worst. He could never remember how to phrase things right or how to come up with sentence structure, part in due because of his less-than-good method of taking notes.
Despite his protest however, Yosuke opened up his notebook and listened intently as his partner went on about what they had been learning in English over the last couple of weeks. Souji noticed his notebook and offered to rewrite his notes in a way that you could make sense of them.
“Y-you don’t have to do all that partner, there’s probably like a billion pages of notes you’re gonna have to rewrite…” His partner uncapped his pen and layed his notebook next to Yosukes and started copying all his notes down in a very organized fashion.
“Trust me if you keep trying to decode all of your notes you might never understand. At least this way you’ll be able to have some context to what you’re trying to study.” Souji lifted his head for a brief second to smirk at Yosuke before going back down to his notes. As he wrote he tried explaining what he was writing but it was hard because he was sitting opposite from Yosuke, so he flipped the notebook over so it was readable to Yosuke and he moved himself to the other side of the table. This kind of closeness made him tense right up, especially when he felt Soujis knee bump against his. He didn’t know if the redness he felt all over his face was actually present; he hoped not. He looked up carefully to see Souji also with a hint of pink in his cheeks.
“Oh, s-sorry.” He shifted his knee away, avoiding eye contact. The pink still visible on his cheeks.
“N-no it’s fine.”
He had noticed something about his partner that he hadn’t been able to notice before. He had never seen Souji act shy and uncomfortable before. He avoided his gaze; staring down at his notes for a brief second before picking up his pen and continuing his note copying. It was interesting to Yosuke to see him like that. He wondered if anyone else had gotten to see this very rare side of the tough-as-a-brick-wall Souji. He was lucky. The small moment had come and gone in a matter of seconds and the two went quietly back to English sentence structure. After he had finished copying the notes and explained what exactly he was writing, it sort of made sense for Yosuke.
“It’s weird, when I hear it in class it makes no sense but when you explain it I completely get it. You ever thought about being a teacher?”
“I mean maybe, I don’t think I’d do very good teaching a whole class though, but I’m glad you’re getting the hang of it.”
“I mean it dude, you pretty smart. It’s insane how smart you are I’m super jealous.” Soujis cheeks flushed a light shade of pink from the sudden compliment. He hadn’t realized how long they had been sitting there until Yosuke started to feel his leg cramp up. He tried to untie his legs but moving them just made the cramp worse.
“Hey, uh, partner, could we maybe call it a night? I’ve been sitting so long I can’t feel my leg.” He laughed and pushed himself off of the floor slowly only for the tingling to become pain and almost push him back onto the floor.
“Are you okay? We can just watch some TV or something if you want?” Souji laughed, closing his textbooks and packing away all his school stuff.
“Yeah, sounds good Partner.” He looked out the window and was surprised to see that it had become dark out.
“Hey, actually partner I didn’t realize it was this late. I should probably get home or else my mom’s gonna send out the military to come find me.” He laughed, stretching his whole body.
“Oh, right, sorry I hadn’t noticed either.”
“H-hey, I have to work tomorrow night, but maybe Thursday after school we could… do this again?”
“Of course!”
Souji had walked him downstairs and walked him outside into the brisk night.
“Thanks again man, see you at school tomorrow!”
After walking for a couple minutes, the Dojima residence completely out of sight, Yosuke felt his phone buzz in his pocket. When he went to check it the light from his phone was almost blinding compared to the darkness of the night. It was from Souji.
Hey, you left your notebook here
If you wanna walk to school together I can give it to you before class starts.
See you tomorrow!
He smiled as he responded to the text.
He continued to walk home to the loud, fast beating of his heart and a smile that lasted him well into the night.