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Objectively, Gakushuu is not doing great.
Between his exams, three essays, one presentation, five hours of sleep in the last week, and a bloodstream consisting entirely of caffeine, Gakushuu thinks he’s doing fantastic. Perfect even, he’s on top of the world, nothing can stop him.
He opens his front door and sees the doll/his new miniature roommate (?) levitating over a crudely drawn Sigil of Satan in a circle of candles. Flames fill the room, and Gakushuu is pretty sure that his apartment is not supposed to be burning.
He closes his door and opens it again, just to be sure, and, yep, alright, it’s still on fire.
His brain graciously skips thinking about the suspicious red liquid marking the circle and instead latches onto the next most important thing: the candles. He doesn’t even own candles. Where did it get them? Did it steal them?
Is he supposed to search the store and explain to the cashier that he’s sorry, his new roomie doesn’t understand the concept of money and paying before summoning a demon yet? But it’s no biggie, they’re working on it, so if they could drop the charges, that would be very much appreciated? Does this make him an accomplice?
Gakushuu blinks—or blacks out for 30 seconds, he can’t tell—and stares. Maybe if he waits long enough, it will just disappear, and he’ll only have to deal with a fire.
Wait…
Should he call someone for that?
The doll’s head does a sick 180 and watches him with empty eyes.
It blinks.
He blinks back.
A shadow rises from the ground.
Yeah, okay, he’s not doing that.
So Gakushuu does what every sensible adult would do: he closes the door, walks away, and hopes that his problem solves itself.
As he said, he’s doing fantastic.
Okay, in retrospect, maybe—just maybe—bringing home some creepy doll some stranger gave you was not Gakushuu’s smartest move.
In his defense, he was in a hurry to make it to his train and approximately running on two hours of sleep and three espresso shots. So sue him for just pocketing the thing to get the weirdo out of his way. He has places to be.
Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 and Gakushuu needs prescription glasses. (He does not, Ren. It’s not his fault his professors need to learn how to write in something other than the equivalent of a six point font size. Or, you know, just how to upload their PDFs. What was his point again?)
Anyways, it may not have been his smartest decision, but what’s he supposed to do? It could be worse. At least the doll does the dishes.
It all started off innocently enough. You know, just the occasional threat written on his bathroom mirror or some misplaced items Gakushuu is like 60% sure he never put there. Hell, he’s never even seen half of them in his entire life (he thinks, honestly, it’s a 50-50 chance).
But really, nothing unusual.
So when he wakes up one day from his 15-minute nap with a knife stuck a hair’s breadth away from his face, he just stares. (That wasn’t there before, was it? No, it wasn’t… Probably?)
His brain plays a quick rewind of his life, just in case he actually died, and oh wow, thanks for nothing, that really sucked. No wonder every adult he ever talked to just smiled uncomfortably and speed walked away as fast as they could without literally running away.
Gakushuu also doesn’t want to deal with that.
So he closes his eyes again and waits. Five minutes later, he’s still breathing and his raging headache is back. Wonderful.
Gakushuu could have sworn his life warranty already ran out the year a bunch of middle schoolers were entrusted with the fate of the world, but somehow he's still kicking. Honestly, it’s impressive that he made it this far.
Gakushuu waits a little longer. Nothing changes except for the increasing pounding in his head.
With a groan, he finally stands up and kicks open the door. It is only when he hears the screech of wood against porcelain that he realizes he has slammed the door right in the doll's face.
Gakushuu watches as it skids across the floor and comes to a stop a few steps away. A vaguely threatening aura rises from it.
“Oh.”
He blinks. The negative energy keeps on manifesting.
“Sorry.”
It doesn’t stop growing, and wow, is he supposed to hear some creepy voices whispering into his ears or is that just his last hold on sanity going on vacation and letting the auditory hallucinations finally take over? Oh well. Gakushuu shrugs. He already apologized, nothing else he can do in that case.
Gakushuu walks past it, takes out his phone, and opens a barely used, very one-sided chat.
“I’m probably going to get murdered this week.”
His father calls. He blocks him.
It is scary how fast you get used to something. At least that’s what Gakushuu would think if he even had an ounce of care in his body, but alas, he doesn’t.
So he just ignores the knife that bores into the wall next to his head and keeps reading his code. Maybe if he stares it down long enough, it will start working.
Or should he look away? It could have performance anxiety.
He blinks and the characters dance across his screen. He blinks again, and they’re back where they started. Fascinating.
Tiny footsteps disrupt his focus. Gakushuu turns around and watches the doll walk into his room.
“You’re here for the knife?” he asks.
It freezes in its step and falls over, back to being an inanimate object. Honestly, it’s kind of cute, you know, in the weird demony and ‘trying to murder you’ kind of way. And like any sane person, Gakushuu snickers and pulls the knife out of the wall.
“Here.” He puts it next to the doll. “You really have to work on your aim.”
Gakushuu could have sworn it just glared at him, but he shrugs and walks back to his laptop. Maybe now his code decides to work. (It doesn’t, but it’s showing him a new error message, so hey, progress.)
“You look like death.”
“Love you too, Ren.”
Gakushuu watches as a blurry Ren shakes his head on his laptop screen. (The blurriness isn’t because of his camera quality, everything is just kind of blurry right now. But that’s a problem for future Gakushuu.)
“Sometimes I wonder why I even bother anymore.”
“Because you love me.”
Gakushuu smiles, and—just to be even more obnoxious—forms a heart with his hands. Really, Akabane is not a good influence on him.
Ren looks at him with a flat stare. (At least Gakushuu thinks he does. He can’t really make it out through the blur.)
“I hate you.”
“Fair enough. My father does too.” Gakushuu shrugs.
“Shuu …” Ren sighs like a disappointed parent. (And trust him, Gakushuu knows very well what that sounds like.)
“I'm not even going to ask when you last slept, because I know I won't like the answer.”
“I mean, I think I passed out two days ago for like an hour.”
“Shuu, please.”
Somehow, Ren sounds even more defeated. Gakushuu wonders how low he could get him. “What time is it for you, anyway?”
“Like 4 am. Don’t worry, I have to be up in two hours anyway, so it’s fine. I’ll get some sleep after my presentation today.”
He does not plan to, but that’s nothing Ren needs to know.
“I know you won’t.”
Gakushuu smiles. Guilty as charged.
“It’s a wonder you’re still alive. Please, Shuu, just—” Ren stops and stares at something behind Gakushuu.
“Hm?”
Gakushuu turns around, looking for anything unusual. But everything is in its normal place. His shelf, some scattered books, multiple empty mugs, the doll walking over his dresser, some notes stuck on various surfaces, the yellow octopus plushie.
“What’s wrong?”
“Did I just see a doll walk across your room?”
“Oh, that. Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry about it?” Ren nearly shouts. “Gakushuu, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a doll has just climbed and—”
Gakushuu’s lights go out. Huh, weird timing for a blackout.
He looks out the window. The streetlights and some lone windows are still illuminated.
So weird.
“Oh, you’re so going to die.”
“Nah, it’s fine.”
Gakushuu did not, in fact, die. (Hah, take that, Ren.)
It’s a hassle to gather all his papers and everything in the dark, but he makes it work.
At least the pain from falling flat on his face helps wake him up.
After his third rendezvous with his lovely apartment floor, Gakushuu’s lights graciously decide to work again, and he watches as the doll observes him from the door frame.
Somehow he can feel its disappointment with him, and wow, maybe he should change majors.
Asano Gakushuu, number one and the first student to graduate in disappointing others, does have a nice ring to it.
He chuckles and burrows his face back into the ground.
“Give me a minute, alright?”
It took him more than a minute, but he’s back on his feet, staring at the concoction in his cup, which he affectionately dubbed ‘pure caffeine’. If Gakushuu were being honest, it looks like death liquified. But he isn’t being honest, so he just downs the drink in one go.
It tastes like getting slapped across a room and barrelling into a wall at full speed in front of an audience of a bunch of middle schoolers. (Gakushuu should know, he’s an expert at it.)
It’s not the worst thing he’s ever tasted. (Natsuhiko’s attempts at ‘baking’ still hold that place.)
His hands are shaking.
He tries to stop them.
They don’t.
“Interesting.”
Gakushuu turns to the doll, and the room keeps spinning. That’s fine, he can work with that.
The world stopped being blurry, so he takes it as a win.
Gakushuu stumbles over to his pile of notes and shoves them into his backpack, ignoring the few stragglers that float to the ground. If they don’t want to come to his presentation, fine, he doesn’t need them anyway.
The doll watches him, and he can’t keep from feeling judged by its lifeless gaze. Which, first of all: rude. Second of all: alright, that’s fair.
He’s halfway out the door when he looks back at it, struck by a flash of genius.
“I’m going to be late today, so you might as well start making dinner. I know you know how to handle a knife, so no excuses. Ingredients are in the fridge.”
That freeloader has been living with him for the last week. The least it could do is to make itself useful.
The door slams shut behind him.
To say Gakushuu is exhausted would be an understatement.
Needless to say, he is less than amused to discover his miniature roommate spilling some tar-like liquid on his carpet upon coming home. He really liked that carpet.
The doll’s head turns to him. More liquid (?) drops from its mouth, landing on his rug with a squelching sound.
Gakushuu does not have the energy to deal with that. Black is encroaching on the edges of his vision, and his head throbs like it’s holding the world's biggest concert.
“You have to clean that.”
Really, if the doll wants to ruin a carpet so badly, it should buy its own one. It’s already living here for free. (Maybe he should charge it rent?)
Wait, does the doll have a job? Is there something like a doll currency? Is… is he a doll homeless shelter?
The doll starts levitating, black particles whirling around it, and a rotten smell permeates the air.
Ugh.
Gakushuu closes his eyes.
This is not a problem for current Gakushuu.
Passing out right here, right now, actually sounds really appealing. Let future Gakushuu deal with whatever this is.
Sadly, he doesn’t pass out, and the doll continues causing havoc in his living room. (God, Akabane will pester him to no end about the broken octopus mug. Gakushuu doesn’t admit that he actually liked it as well.)
Maybe he can sue the doll for damages. Do courtrooms accept cases against dolls?
He should really give it a name. They’ve been living together for a week, it’s only polite. At least he thinks so, time is kind of a big blur right now. (And, you know, he’d have a higher success rate in a trial if he could actually name the culprit. Probably.)
He squints at it. (Shit, maybe he really needs glasses. Something that close isn’t meant to be that blurry, is it? Wait, no, that’s not important right now. Focus Gakushuu, focus. Where was he?)
He looks at the doll.
Ocean eyes shine unblinkingly on immaculate porcelain skin, and a gentle smile—at least Gakushuu assumes it’s gentle—adorns its face, framed by golden locks. Long hair, twisted into elegant curls, and its pastel blue dress and delicate lace sway softly in the wind. (That’s a neat trick. Gakushuu looks at his closed windows.)
The black, tar-like liquid pours out of its mouth. Okay, scratch that unblinking part, the doll definitely just blinked.
Gakushuu stares, and the blurry doll stares back. He doesn’t know if the haziness is caused by toxic fumes, the doll’s weird ritual, or his lack of sleep. Or, you know, his apparently less-than-stellar eyesight, but that’s not something he wants to think about right now.
So Gakushuu just continues staring, until he can literally feel his last two brain cells collide, gifting him with the perfect name before logging off and letting him fall into the welcoming arms of unconsciousness:
Norman.
The first thing Gakushuu notices when he wakes up again is that the world has graciously decided to stop playing carousel.
The second thing he notices is his—thank god—clean carpet next to the couch, on which he miraculously finds himself plus a blanket. He’s pretty sure he passed out right at the entryway, but who is he to complain? His back is thankful for it, and he has a roomie who apparently can clean up after themself. Really, what else could he possibly want?
The third thing Gakushuu notices is a plate of food and a still steaming cup of tea on the floor. He picks it up and sniffs the cup. Chamomile. Never mind that he doesn’t own any tea or half the ingredients he spots on the plate, it’s the thought that counts. In the back of his mind, he hears his father’s voice chide him, he’s right, there’s probably like a 50-50 chance that this meal is poisoned, but eh, he’ll take these odds. They’re not the worst.
“Thanks, Norman!” he calls into the void and receives a glass shattering against the wall as an answer. And like the well-adjusted adult Gakushuu is, he shrugs, touches his nose, and yells, “Not it!”
Norman, very evidently, does not appreciate Gakushuu’s carefully curated name. Tough luck, it’s not like it gave him any other suggestions, so Norman it is. Really, Gakushuu does not have the bandwidth to deal with its childish tantrums. He has better things to do. So he ignores the petty property damage and gets back to his essay.
“Ren called me to stage an intervention.”
Gakushuu stops his pacing and leans against his bulletin board, paper crinkling against his back. He squints down at the very red blob on his computer screen, half buried beneath his plethora of notes that didn’t find a spot on the wall.
“For what?”
“What do I know? I mean, you look like shit, but that’s nothing new.”
Gakushuu scowls. It would be great to see Akabane just as exhausted as he feels, but alas, such victories aren’t granted to him. Instead, he only receives a shit-eating grin and a taunting eyebrow raise.
“I don’t want to hear any opinions on that from someone committed to impersonating a stoplight.”
Akabane squawks and Gakushuu couldn’t be more thankful for the 3-hour pass-out session he had that restored his eyesight from blurry back to passable. Small mercies.
“Glad to see you’re still the same asshole as always. But for real, I have seen dead people, and somehow you look worse. However you managed to do that.”
“Always happy to exceed expectations,” Gakushuu answers with a dry tone and a small bow. “Be honest, why did you call? If I wanted someone to tell me how bad I look, I would’ve just called Ren again.”
“I told you, Ren told me to! Said something about trying to stop you from getting yourself murdered.” Akabane waves his hand in the air with a shrug. “No idea what he wants me to do, seeing as you're on the other side of the globe. And you know, very much not in mortal danger, at least from outside forces.”
Gakushuu pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Ren called you,” and he tries his best to channel as much of his irritation and disbelief as possible into that one word, “to talk some sense into me?”
“Your words, not mine.” That shit-eating grin is back. “And you know, as the smarter one of the two of us, I’ve deigned to impart my unending wisdom to you.”
“It was one fucking point!” Gakushuu hisses, and oh, touchy, aren’t we? Maybe he should work on that, unpack his unhealthy relationship with grades and failure. Might as well work through the train wreck that is his father. (Who’s he kidding, he won’t.)
Akabane cackles in the background, and Gakushuu takes a calming breath.
“As you can see, I’m perfectly fine, and do not need your ‘assistance’.” God, he hopes he sounds as annoyed as Akabane makes him feel. “I have no idea what Ren meant, but if you don’t mind, I have—”
A knife bores into the wall, a finger’s breadth away from his head. Akabane’s cackling abruptly stops.
“Asano Gakushuu.”
Ohoho, his full name. Well, two can play at that game.
He nods. “Akabane Karma.”
“Is that a knife?” Akabane’s voice sounds weirdly serious.
Gakushuu looks at the knife, then back at his screen.
“Yes, it is.”
And then—because never let it be said that Gakushuu doesn’t encourage his peers to improve—he raises his voice.
“A bit more to the right next time, Norman!”
“Asano fucking Gakushuu, why is there a fucking knife flying at your head?” Akabane nearly yells.
Gakushuu rolls his eyes. Yeesh, overreacting much? It’s as if Akabane has never seen one before. Really, it’s a miracle they all survived middle school if that’s his reaction to one measly knife.
“Calm down. That just means I gotta go, dinner’s ready.”
He walks offscreen.
“Dinner’s rea— Gakushuu, you little— Where are you going? Come back here!”
Gakushuu pops his head back into the frame, much closer than before.
“Oh, Norman broke the octopus mug you gave me. Sorry. Toodaloo.”
He ends the call.
Gakushuu is so close to being done. His unchangeable all-white text editor burns off his retinas in the darkness of his living room, but he’s so close. He can literally taste his salvation, his freedom. Never mind that the letters and numbers on his paper slowly merge into one big blob. Gakushuu hasn’t perfected the art of typing blindfolded since he was nine for nothing. He’s crushing this.
Dropping quality because of impossibly tight deadlines? Pfhh, who? Not him.
Double majoring was the best decision of his life.
And then his laptop crashes.
Gakushuu blinks at the black screen.
This is fine, it’s fine.
He just has to turn it back on, he has autosave. He has his regularly scheduled backups.
It’s.
Fine.
Corrupted. All of them.
Gakushuu blinks again. He laughs.
What a funny joke, haha, that got him real good. He’d like his work back, pretty please, this isn’t funny anymore.
Still corrupted.
He said this isn’t funny anymore.
His laptop starts levitating and a tar-like liquid leaks out of it while a crescendo of voices reverberates through his walls.
That motherfu—
Gakushuu glares at his room until his eyes land on Norman. He’s 99.5% sure the doll is in a different spot than the last time he saw it, but he couldn’t care less.
“You,” Gakushuu says, and his voice is eerily calm as he walks up to it. “I'm going to take a nap and in one hour, you will wake me up. And if I wake up and my papers and programs aren't back, untouched, I don’t care what or who you are. I will find you, and you will pray that there is even just a single soul that cares enough to remember you before I’m done with you.”
The voices stop and Gakushuu steps out of the room.
“Now fix this.”
Norman does wake him exactly one hour later.
If Gakushuu squints hard enough, he could almost imagine that the doll looks guilty as it stands motionless at the end of his bed. Almost.
A neon pink sticky note is stuck on his laptop. It reads—in frankly even worse handwriting than a grade schooler—‘Sorry’.
Gakushuu peels it off his plastic case and simply stares at it. A small laugh escapes his throat. Because, in the deepest parts of his subconsciousness, his shortly-rested brain finally registers the absurdity of the whole situation. Really, what has his life come to?
But his paper doesn’t write itself, so Gakushuu does what he has always done: he packs all of this mess into a neat little box, adorns it with a frilly bow and a wide yellow grin, and banishes it to the back of his mind, buried amongst its countless siblings. He can have a mental breakdown later, he’ll somehow fit it into his schedule.
At least all of his files are back to normal.
He is done.
Gakushuu stares at his monitor. He is finished, it’s done.
Oh wow, he might be getting emotional. (Or it might just be his eyes trying not to die of dehydration.)
He looks at his paper, his magnum opus, lovingly dubbed ‘finalFINALdraft3.41_I_hste_tHis’.
They grow up so fast. Is this how parents feel when their children move out? He should ask Ren about that.
With trembling fingers Gakushuu uploads his work, triple-checks if he forgot anything, then checks it again just to be sure, and finally turns off his computer. He stands up, a blissful smile on his lips, crumbles to the floor like a wet paper towel, and promptly passes out.
Norman watches the body of the human.
It’s been 26 hours since they last moved. It rams another knife into the ground next to them. Nothing.
The apartment shakes and multiple items drop to the floor. (Norman takes care to ensure the safety of the flat lightbox. It doesn’t want to know what would happen if it were to break.) Still no reaction.
It’s done. Its last humans weren’t this infuriating.
Norman leaves.