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Ren looks out the window into his home town below, he feels like he doesn't belong there. Not in the way most teens say they don't belong anywhere, but more like he *shouldn't* be there. He misses his friends, ones who don't know him, but he knows them. He doesn't know how or why he knows them but he does all the same. The memories he has of them are warm and kind and remind him that there is some reason to go outside still.
His current friends didn't make him feel like that. They made him more anxious about the world. They talked online and never showed each other their faces- it barely felt like a genuine connection as all they seemed to talk about is how the government is run by shadow forces looking to control people.
And for the first time ever, that sounds so silly to Ren. He will admit that the government is not airtight. Don't be mistaken. But he can't find it in himself to take these 'truths' he's known all his life seriously anymore. Not when his memories with those people in Tokyo proved to him that he should let himself trust people outside of his comfort zone.
And it's not just missing people he shouldn't know either.
When he looks in the mirror the reflection looking back... Doesn't feel right. As if someone had put him into a body that wasn't his. But it was. He was sure of it. He had always looked this way and yet he can't help but feel like he's missing something.
Glasses were the first thing he tries, just a fake pair that makes him look a bit different, but it feels good. It makes him look more friendly according to his mother, and more professional according to his step father. But he wasn't doing this for them. His friends say it makes him look like one of his favourite characters in a tv show.
He wasn't doing any of this for them.
He was doing it for the people he doesn't know the names of. Their faces ingrained into his mind like an image burned into a projector screen.
Just like how he started going out more to try and walk around Inaba in an attempt to find them. But he can't. They don't live near him, he knew that even before he checked this town as much as he could; he didn't even find a person who even look similar to any of them. But he refuses to give up so, instead looking on the internet for anything that may give him some leads.
He felt ready to give up when he finds one of the faces from his memory... Is a model and a rather well known one in Tokyo at that. He starts to worry that maybe he was going insane, making up memories of people by using faces he saw of famous people. That is until he finds a news article for an academy also out in Tokyo, 'Shujin'. The article talks about how the schools track star had his leg broken in an altercation with the gym teacher, a famous gold medalist with a face that sends Ren into a spiral of anger and confusion as to why he's angry.
The smile.
That smug fucking smile.
It was enough to make Ren's skin crawl and make him want to get justice for the track star who was so obviously been done an injustice.
As it turns out getting into the school was the easiest part of the process, but actually being in the school and acting on his anger? Whole other playing field. The moment he entered the school he felt ready to flee and go back to his bedroom, he wanted to hide away, to run back to his room and far from all these people who seemed to worship the ground that 'teacher' walks on. But he knew he was past the point of no return when the first day in his gym class he got hit full force in the face by a spike from Kamoshida. As he toppled over in pain, student came to see if he was okay, however something in their eyes made Ren realize very quickly for as bad as they felt, none of them would stand up to that beast they called a man.
And that's how the cycle continues for the first week at the school, Ren doesn't care however as he finally meets a familiar face- one of the boys from his dreams. A loud-mouthed blonde boy who he was told to stay away from because he was 'trouble'. Ren knows they aren't entirely wrong, but Ryuji won't abandon him if they do get in trouble and that're more than he can say about many people he's met in this damned school. After meeting Ryuji it wasn't long before he met another girl from his dreams- the model he had looked up online previously after hearing her name circle around.
Admittedly, Ren is more familiar with rumours than he'd like to think about.
In a small town like his own that isn't rely on a huge shocker to most, but for him it felt almost compulsive; even when he wasn't involved he had always heard He had spent so long back in Inaba following them for one reason or another- as if he could never stay out of other peoples business. He always had a hunger to learn *why* something had been viewed in a certain way even if others had long since accepted if the rumor was true or false.
That's why he went so deeply into conspiracy theories, not because he thought they were *true*, but because they felt like an interesting deep dive into how far a group of people can believe something before that belief held some weight to it. Turns out; it didn't take a whole lot. People have been doing things like this for centuries- to explain away almost everything that they didn't know how to believe or didn't want to believe.