Work Text:
Soundtrack: Wii Party -Main Menu music (yes. that specific one.)
It was a magnificent late May afternoon at Mishima Polytechnic High School, one of those slow, lazy afternoons. Students were chatting peacefully in the courtyard before classes resumed; the atmosphere at the pic-nic tables was serene, light and lovely.
Except for one pic-nic table. A very specific pic-nic table. An extremely specific pic-nic table. One under a tree, which provided shelter from prying eyes but not enough shelter from Ling Xiaoyu’s acute eyes, as she had sensed a certain heaviness lingering even from a distance.
Two specific people were sitting at that table, and the air around them promised nothing good. So, naturally, Xiaoyu was approaching quickly, because whatever was happening, she wouldn't miss it for the world.
Hwoarang was sitting back, legs kicked out and arms crossed over his chest, a look of absolute smug satisfaction on his face.
Opposite to him, Jin Kazama looked like he had finally given up; on life specifically. Which wasn't strange, per se, but it was certainly unusual for it to happen this early in the day. His forehead was pressed firmly against the wood of the table; one hand, resting near the edge, gripped a red pen with such intensity it looked like he was considering stabbing the table. Likely a preventive measure to avoid stabbing the person in front of him. If it weren't for that rigid almost desperate grip, he looked mostly… dead. He wasn’t, presumably, but he was certainly wishing he were. Which was absolutely not unusual. But, again, it was way too early for that level of misery.
Scattered between them were a crumpled sheet of paper, an English vocabulary dictionary, and a heavy philosophy textbook.
Xiaoyu vaguely recalled a conversation between the two about some school assignment the day before, a necessary one actually to keep Hwoarang from failing the class entirely.
She quickened her pace in anticipation, squinting at the pair. As she reached them, Hwoarang acknowledged her with a lazy military salute. She laughed inwardly, and receiving absolutely no feedback from the motionless shadow on the other side of the table, she leaned over him to check if Hwoarang had actually "finished the job" like he always threatened to do.
"What are you guys up to? Jin, you okay?" she asked quietly, with a hint of worry, reaching out to poke the back of his head lightly with one finger. A tiny flinch in his shoulders was the only clue that he was, in fact, still alive.
"Leave him, Xiao-yah. He is being very dramatic about this whole thing," Hwoarang said, clicking his tongue in disappointment.
"What whole thing?" Xiaoyu asked, her eyes falling on the paper in the center of the table. "What’s that?" She sat down next to Jin, who was undeniably the one in more desperate need of moral support.
"A masterpiece," Hwoarang declared, rocking back on the bench and dropping his heavy boots onto the table.
The thud made Jin’s shoulders flinch again. Xiaoyu watched as the grip on the pen tightened; she could almost hear the plastic crackle under the absolutely unnecessary force.
"A massacre," Jin’s voice came back instantly, faintly and muffled by the wood.
Hwoarang scoffed. "I will never ask for your opinion again, Kazama!" He seemed deeply offended, more so than usual, anyway.
"Eh? …Eh?" Xiaoyu looked from one to the other, completely lost. Jin didn’t lift his head; he just waved a hand weakly toward the paper on the table.
"He asked me to check an essay," Jin groaned into the wood. "An English assignment. About …Philosophy."
"It’s called 'Mario: The Idea vs. The Man'," Hwoarang stated, tilting his chin upwards, looking incredibly pleased with himself. Too pleased. Way too pleased.
She blinked, tilting her head. "Who is… Mario?"
"Mario like… Super Mario," Hwoarang replied with a grin. "The plumber. The legend." He gestured with his hands as if he were pitching a movie to a studio.
Jin let out a long, annoyed groan against the table. "Just… read it, Xiao. Just read it." He reached out, blindly grabbing the paper and waving it in her direction without lifting his face.
Xiaoyu took the paper from Jin’s limp hand. She noticed immediately that Hwoarang’s messy, aggressive scrawl was met with red ink, that seemed….angry?Jin’s notations were all over the place but strangely precise, and looked like they had been stabbed into the page.
She cleared her throat and began to read: "'Everyone knows Mario is cool as fuck...'—Oh, that’s... bold?" She tilted her head, the corner of her mouth arching up.
"See? She gets it," Hwoarang said, taking his feet off the table and leaning in with excitement.
"Horrible opening. Really. Horrible opening," Jin muttered, giving the table light punches as he enunciated the statement, with the hand still gripping the pen, refusing to look up.
Xiaoyu continued, her brow furrowing as she hit the next line. "'But who knows what he’s thinking? Who knows why he crushes… turtles?'"
Right beneath it, Jin had scribbled in red: [To save the princess? Also, gross.]
"O...okay." Xiao looked at Hwoarang, her eyes widening a bit in contemplation.
"Yeah, yeah, continue Xiao-yah," Hwoarang encouraged, his eyes glowing. "It only gets better."
"It really does not," Jin whispered into the wood. Another thud followed.
"'And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mythical (nonexistent?) Dr. Pepper?Per..perc…Perchance." She stopped, her confusion mounting, one hand reaching her chin as she tried to elaborate on what she just read.
Near the sentence, Jin had written several large question marks, but next to the word 'Perchance', there was an aggressive statement in red:
[You can't just say perchance.]
"Go on," Jin groaned, finally lifting his head. His eyes were bloodshot; he looked tired and thoroughly defeated. "Read the paragraph about Kant." He gave a desperate emphasis to the philosopher’s name.
Xiaoyu obeyed, her voice trembling now with a hint of amusement. "'I believe …oh i’ts crossed out ok.. so let’s see.. it was Kant who said “Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.” .. oh that’s.. okay?'"
She observed Jin’s eyes narrowing in irritation at the statement.
"Did Kant really say that?" Xiaoyu asked him.
"Kinda," Jin replied, his brow furrowing as he sounded a little amused despite being completely resigned. "Now... the t…turts." Another thud on the wood.
Xiaoyu’s eyes scanned the next sentences while Hwoarang nodded intensively in the corner, looking deeply satisfied with himself. Way too satisfied.
"'Mario exhibits experience by crushing turts'—there was a thick red line under that word—'all day, but he exhibits theory by stating “Let's-a go!” Keep it up, baby!'" Xiao noticed Jin’s note: [????? stop]. She let out a light chuckle as she counted the question marks. Five.
"'When Mario leaves his place of safety to stomp a turty, he knows that he may Die.'"
Jin had circled the capital 'D' in Die with: [OK?]. and crossed out stomp a turty. She could imagine exactly how his eyebrow furrowed doing that.
Xiaoyu looked up to meet hwoarang gaze , her eyes glinting. "Did you... did you actually write 'Keep it up, baby'? And Hwoa... what on earth is 'crushing turts'?" she asked playfully.
"It’s for emphasis!" Hwoarang exclaimed, gesturing passionately. "Like, to make you hear the violence of the gesture! To make you feel their shells crack while he is having fun ! 'turts' sounds way better than just 'enemies'."
"Wait," Jin interrupted, his voice almost a whisper, a desperate whisper. He grabbed the paper from Xiaoyu’s hands, leaning toward her almost desperately, and pointed a trembling finger toward the bottom of the second page, the pen still in his hand by the way.
"Go to the lifekind part. Read it."
The corner of his eye was twitching; the pen in his hand gave a loud, final crack under his grip. Hwoarang huffed, shaking his head and whispering, "Cham-na, so dramatic, goddammit."
Xiaoyu’s eyes scanned down, finding a sentence that Jin had underlined so many times the paper was nearly torn.
"'And yet, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value. A tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. We think of Mario as a hero, but he is simply a one percenter'—Jin had written: [Why are we saying this?]—'of a more privileged variety. The lifekind.'—[What?]—'Perchance.'"
The last 'Perchance' was circled so hard the red ink had bled through.
"See? How did I transformed it?" Hwoarang said instantly, leaning forward with total conviction, winking at her "It adds layers! It makes you actually think! I might honestly be a secret genius! It’s the best thing I’ve ever written? A masterpiece? Perchance!"
Jin finally snapped. He slammed his hand onto the table, the pen finally shattering completely, and crushed the paper into a ball with the other. "IT’S NOT!" he yelled, his voice cracking under the strain. "It has nothing to do with the assignment! And for the last time, Hwoarang, you can't just say 'perchance'!" He threw the paper ball directly into Hwoarang’s face.
"OW! HEY! YOU—" Hwoarang barked back, looking offended as he tried to catch the ball before it tumbled off the bench. He smoothed the crumpled sheet back out and leaned forward, flapping it in Jin’s face.
"That is my voice!"
"Then don't use that!" Jin snapped, his eyes flashing with a mix of fury and exhaustion gesturing with his hands in the air, like he wanted to chop or strangle the redhead in front of him. "Don't use it! Ever! For any reason!" He added while snatching the paper back to slam it back onto the table.
"I kinda get what he wants to say," Xiaoyu interjected, picking up the remains of Jin’s first nervous breakdown of the day. She leaned her chin on her hand, squinting at the page. "It's layered... he does have a point."
"Xiao, please don't," Jin interrupted, placing his hand on her shoulder shaking her a little, his eyes pleading and his voice dropping to a desperate whisper. "I am begging you. Don't validate this. It is hurting my brain. You don't understand..."
"No, you stupid-face, you're the one who doesn't understand my complex and genius mind," Hwoarang smirked, slumping back on the bench and crossing his arms. "I'm operating on a level you can't understand. You're too boring to get what's in my head!"
"I don't want to understand it," Jin hissed. A clear crackle echoed as he ground the remains of the red pen in his palm. He stared at the broken plastic, then at the essay, then back at Hwoarang. "I want to erase everything I read from my memory. I want to go back to a time before I knew you thought 'crushing turts' was an actual English sentence."
"Well, you have to admit he’s creative... and all of the words are actually spelled right!" Xiaoyu said, tilting her head toward Jin with a bright, mischievous smile.
“You heard her!" Hwoarang said with a wide grin. He winked at Jin. "Perchance," he added slowly. He immediately regretted it, though, when he saw Jin reaching for the heavy philosophy book, absolutely with no intention to read it.
Xiaoyu blocked Jin’s hand. “Whoa, easy, behave! If you hit him too hard, you’ll knock out the little he actually learned, and then your situation just gets worse, Jin. You’ll have to start all over again!”
She then flattened the crumpled paper and took a photo with her phone.
"This is going straight into Mi-Chan archive, by the way," she said in a singsong voice.
Jin defeated by that reality, put his head back on the table and let out a long groan. "Stop. Both of you... just stop.”
As he rested his head on the cool surface of the table, Jin felt a slight breeze brush against the back of his neck. Was the wind picking up? Was a storm finally rolling in to put an end to his misery?
Perchance.