Chapter Text
It’s not that they’re in a fight.
There’s… its not that simple, and Nirei isn’t stupid. He’s a member of Bofurin. He knows what a fight is. What he and Suo are doing isn’t fighting…
They’re just debating, or– or possibly arguing. Friends argue, right?
Nirei has had friends before, few and far in between granted, the frankly ridiculous amount of bullying he endured as a middle schooler ensured that, but he knows that not every friendship is all sunshine and rainbows. Take Hiragi and Umemiya for example. Nirei knows they argue. He has pages and pages worth of recorded conversations to prove it. Hiragi having convince Umemiya not to murder the latest kid with a crush on Kotoha (page eight, line six) , Umemiya reminding Hiragi not to be a ‘stick in the mud’ and loosen up (page twenty-two, line eighteen) , Hiragi accusing Umemiya of giving him ulcers (pages seven, fifteen, and twenty-nine, lines six, seven, and thirteen respectively) . There’s documentation aplenty, descriptions at every turn, because that is Hiragi and Umemiya’s usual: this bickering duo who strengthen each other through their consistent bickering .
Which might be why whatever is going on with him and Suo has unnerved him as much, because the tense air and blunted jabs and near-hostility radiating off Suo isn’t their normal. Far from it. Even when including Sakura, Suo has always been Nirei’s most steadfast protector. He’s the one person Sakura trusts to keep Nirei safe when he runs off in their latest fight, the one person Nirei trusts to teach him, so that one day, maybe he’ll be enough to stand at their sides. That’s just how Suo is: steady, dependable, secure. A Bofurin teammate. Their classmate. Nirei and Sakura’s closest friend. Which is, ultimately, why Nirei can’t back down.
Even if it means having this argument day after day. Even if it one day means a real, proper fight.
He loves Suo, and so, just as he has for the past two weeks, Nirei plants himself on top of Sakura’s desk and does not stare longingly at the bento Kiryu unwraps or the protein drink Tsugeura is downing with a frankly inhuman voraciousness or even the omurice Sakura is hesitantly starting to uncover next to him. He does not think about the two lunches he has stashed away in his bag in the unlikely chance this stalemate finally ends and he does his best not to react to the glare he can feel attempting to pin him to his seat.
Two weeks have given him ample time to still the panic growing in his chest. He can do this, he can. For Suo, for Sakura, he can make it through. He slides himself over slightly, just enough to feel Sakura’s warmth spread against his side, and steels himself at the feeling of his friend pressing closer in turn, glancing up at him with that ever-growing concern.
The furrow between his brows that reads the same as it has every time Nirei’s done this: ‘are you sure?’ and then, at Nirei’s nod, the expression devolves to: ‘let me help.’
Nirei gives his head a sharp shake, just once, before nudging at Sakura to start his meal. He does so begrudgingly, frown already in place and shoulders pulled in tight, same as he does before fights. Nirei knows he’s not that far off the mark. Already, the air in their classroom is thick and tense in a way that’s pushed some of their quieter classmates outside to eat. This is an old game, and two weeks in, there’s an established pattern to the way the chaos begins.
There’s always tension at first, broken by a feat of feigned ignorance that Nirei refuses to let Sakura attempt. Whoever decides to take up point, and it has to be someone other than Nirei for the plan to hold any substance, is caught in the crossfire, and he doesn’t want Sakura to jeopardize an obviously coveted friendship just because Nirei is picking a fight.
This is one brawl he can't let his Captain join, and one that thankfully, the rest of his classmates have taken on in his stead. He can feel them all watching, debating amongst themselves on who gets to take up the proverbial sword and face Suo’s wrath.
Anzai and Tsugeura exchange a frantic glance, Sugishita actually looks up over the salad Umemiya helped put together, Takanashi sighs and starts to put down his noodles, but its Kiryu who takes the plate, unphased by Suo’s crackling aura.
“You’re not eating lunch today, Nirei-chan?”
Anzai and Tsugeura exchange a frantic glance, Sugishita actually looks up over the salad Umemiya helped put together, Takanashi sighs and starts to put down his noodles, but its Kiryu who takes the plate, unphased by Suo’s crackling aura.
“You’re not eating lunch today, Nirei-chan?” He asks, gesturing with his chopsticks. His knowing eyes drill into Nirei’s. Kiryu’s been the one most likely to step up to bat, willing and ready to take the verbal smack that’s sure to come. Nirei’s not certain if he agrees with any of what he’s doing, but Kiryu’s set himself firmly in his corner regardless, a welcome balm to the friction between the class captains.
Nirei levels a smile at him, soft and thankful in ways he will never voice aloud.
“I’m still on a bit of a diet,” Nirei says. The phrase had been clumsy at first, too much Suo’s and not his own, but after weeks of saying it, the words tumble out of his mouth, only running together in his haste. He runs his hand though his hair, a mirror of all the ways he’s seen his own friend off-set their own concerns. “I’ll wait for dinner.”
Another borrowed phrase, another focused glare that Nirei refuses to flinch at.
He knows Suo is angry. Anger he can handle. He just needs to make sure it doesn’t stray too far into rejection. If Suo really wanted to be done with them, he could be. He could ask Umemiya to switch classes or up and leave during lunch or reject his position as vice-captain. He could do something more extreme and unenroll from Furin High entirely.
But he cares about Nirei’s health enough to stay and wait out his hunger strike, just as Nirei cares enough about Suo’s health to stare him down and pretend his stomach isn’t eating itself from the inside out. Nirei may not be able to match his best friends in a battle of strength but will is something else entirely.
Let Suo be stubborn. Nirei’s more than willing to match him step for step.
“There’s no need for you to diet, Nirei-kun,” Suo says, finally pulling himself away from the corner he’d planted himself in. His smile is plastered on, but the look in his eye is one Nirei never thought he’d see directed at him, one that he now knows just as well as their classes usual targets.
Back down, it warns.
Like hell, Nirei fires back.
“If it works for you, Suo-san, then I should definitely do it!” He chirps, doing his best to put his usual chipper tone into the words. Beside him, Sakura’s face flushes as he mashes his omurice to a pulp, his whole body tense with the need to put off this whole affair. He’s certain Sakura thinks its stupid, how they’re beating around the bush, making both Nirei and Suo miserable instead of tackling it head on.
As if Suo would let them. He’d brush off their concerns if they didn’t have enough backing, and Nirei would know. He’d tried being direct at first, pulled Suo away during patrol and pointed to the downtrend in his weight in stuttering, nervous phrases, only to find the other boy laughing it off.
‘I’m so thrilled to hear you worry that much about me, Nirei-kun. I’m certain the scale was just calibrated wrong.’
It hadn’t been, Nirei had noted it on two separate scales when they were helping the farmers weigh livestock, done the calculations over and over again against previous notebooks on the offchance that he was over-reacting. He wasn’t. Suo was losing weight. Suo was losing a lot of weight, and he’d already been slender to begin with.
Now, when Nirei looks there’s just a bit too much give in his uniform, and a bit too much anxiety in Nirei’s gut, and he has over half a mind to go to Hiragi or Umemiya about it, but then he knows if he does, he’ll lose Suo’s trust entirely. He doesn’t like browbeating his friend or this stupid underhanded ploy in which is own health and safety is forfeit, but Suo’s not giving him a lot of choices and there’s no one else to explain why any sort of caloric deficit with their extracurriculars is an astoundingly stupid idea.
So Nirei sticks to the only guns he’s got: playing hard and heavy against himself and hoping Suo’s protective nature wins out over his need to drive his own body into the ground. He doesn’t give an inch to the way Suo’s stalking over, hands behind his back, calm if not for the precise way his footsteps fall.
“You’re still learning, Nirei-kun. It takes extra calories to condition your body when you haven’t built up the muscle.”
“It takes extra calories to train me,” Nirei counters, drawing a breath to keep his shoulders squared and steady. “You have to show me the moves over and over again. Why would it work for you and not for me?”
His body shakes with the need to tell Suo about all he’s researched, about all the dangers an inadequate diet can have on someone who does the exercise they do, and he presses himself even more against Sakura to try and settle the need buzzing in his chest.
Stay calm, Nirei, he reminds himself. If you stay calm, Sakura stays calm. If Sakura stays calm, you can examine the angles, show Suo the importance of what you’re saying. If you give an inch, he’ll take a mile. He’ll make himself sick, get himself hurt.
This is one battle you cannot lose.
Behind them, he can hear any lingering conversations peter off, as the attention yet again falls to the three of them: he, Suo, and Sakura drawing the rest of the class into their loop.
In front of them, Suo forces a smile that tugs something in Nirei’s gut.
“Not everyone is the same, Nirei-kun.”
“Explain to me how you’re any different than me,” Nirei counters, barreling through the rest of the statement.
The vein in Suo’s temple twitches. The flush on Sakura’s face deepens. Control, Nirei begs. Sakura, we talked about this. Please. Just this once. You said you’d do anything for our classmates, for Suo. Just stay calm .
“I already said, our average daily exercise–”
“You fight more than I do–” Nirei interjects, notebook at the ready. There’s statistics there. He knows it.
Suo’s smile dips slightly.
“My style is designed–”
“There’s no fighting style that stops you from needing more than the average daily number of calories–”
“No, but there’s ones that reduce the number of calories burned.”
And shit, that’s right. It’s not Suo’s style, Nirei doesn’t think, but it makes him falter. Stumble. He’d planned for this, goes to open his mouth, to debate, gain back ground. Suo beats him to it.
“Not that you’d know,” he says. There’s a frigid note to his words, a reminder that Nirei, no matter how hard he tries, will never stack up to the physical prowess around him. Cold and calculating, the way Suo is with an opponent, the way Suo never is with Nirei.
He flinches back, hurt, and that’s all it takes. In a second, Sakura is on his feet, tracking towards Suo with all the fire he’s known for, and for the first time since they arrived at Furin High, Suo drops back into a fighting stance, more than ready to meet him head on.
“Enough of this bullshit,” Sakura snaps, as if the line of his shoulders didn’t jerk when Suo refused to back down. “For all your lame talk about adults and children, you’re the one acting like a child. Nirei’s worried about you, jackass.”
The smile on Suo’s face wavers.
“I can handle myself.”
“You don’t seem like you’re handling yourself. You seem like you’re wearing a damn shirt that somehow is now two sizes too big. Wonder what did that.”
Shit– Nirei stumbles over himself to try and get between them, to stop the tension rising in the room. This isn’t what he wanted. The rest of the class behind him is scrambling to their feet, ready to pull the two apart, but they won’t make it in time.
Suo and Sakura are going to absolutely rip each other apart, and its all Nirei’s–
“Do any of you know how to keep yourselves under control for one day–”
They jerk to a stop. Nirei, Suo, Sakura, all their classmates stutter with the new addition, eyes widening as they take in Hiragi and Umemiya’s forms in the doorway. Their bubble of privacy pops in a way that makes Nirei feel all of five years old. Anzai and Takanashi both fumble for their food, Kiryu is already somehow back at his desk, while Sugishta and Tsugeura decide, for some insane reason, to both start lifting the nearest weights they can find.
It's the most suspicious thing ever, and the cherry on top is the way Suo and Sakura refuse to act like they weren’t seconds away from tearing out each other’s windpipes. Nirei doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what he should do, considering his captain and co-captain are obviously the cause of all the noise, and for once, Umemiya’s usually cheery face looks more concerned than he’s ever seen it.
“What the hell,” Hiragi hisses.
“I didn’t think it was this bad,” Umemiya sighs. He runs a hand through his hair, looking all at once put out and resigned, like for all he says he’d been expecting something like this. “I guess there’s nothing else to be done. The life of a big brother is so hard.”
Hiragi shoots him a look but doesn’t argue as Umemiya lets himself further into the room, clapping once as if all attention isn’t already riveted onto him.
“Looks like we’re going to have to change up the way we do patrol today, everyone! Class one is doing a captain and vice captains’ only day.”
This at least gets Sakura and Suo’s attention away from each other.
“A what ?” Sakura sneers, pulling his hand off Suo’s collar.
“A day for you three idiots to stop terrorizing your class,” Hiragi clarifies, as he marches over and catches both Sakura and Suo by the shoulders. In one motion he has them both turned towards the door and starts frog marching them towards it. Umemiya laughs at what must be their affronted faces, clapping them both on the shoulders before raising his gaze to Nirei. His smile softens.
“That does include you, Nirei-kun.”
Nirei shakes himself out of his daze.
“R-right!” He yelps, vaulting over his and Sakura’s bags to jog to his side. “I- I mean, of course it does. You said captain and co-captains and I’m–” he stutters under Umemiya’s raised brow. “I’m going! That’s what I was about to say. I’m going!”
“Of course you are,” Umemiya chirps, dropping his hand down on Nirei’s shoulder. He raises his other hand and waves at the rest of their class as he leads them out. “I’ll send Kaiji your way a bit later. For now, relax! You’ve got the day off!”
Nirei risks a glance back at them. No one, not even Sugishta, looks relaxed. The three of them have put their class through the wringer. He’ll have to apologize after this whole mess is over, if it ever is over.
The dejection must show on his face, because Umemiya’s grip on his shoulder tightens ever so slightly.
“Have faith in your brothers, Nirei-kun. Sometimes there’s a little friction in a family. It’ll all work itself out.”
Nirei nods, scooting himself closer to Umemiya’s unending warmth.
“I– I really hope you’re right, senpai.”
He lifts his gaze to watch Hiragi march Sakura and Suo, still stiff as boards, up to the roof. There’s none of their usual ease here. Sakura doesn’t drift to tap their shoulders. Suo doesn’t raise his hand to ruffle Sakura’s fringe. Nirei hasn't pulled himself up to his usual spot, just a step behind, knowing in his head and his heart that they’ll wait for him before they cross the threshold, presenting themselves as a unit even when he struggles to keep up.
Just a month ago, that was a given. Now, Nirei just hopes that one day they can get even an ounce of that ease and trust back.