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No matter how much everyone else in her class complained about the amount of homework or how hard their last test had been, Tenma Saki did not feel as if she ought to dislike school. Yes, the work could be difficult or tedious, but at least she was at school with her friends! She sat next to Ichika in class, and she ate lunch with everyone almost every day. She wasn't alone anymore. That much was worth celebrating even if she looked a little out of place quietly cheering when she learned their class was going to have their next science class in the science labs or that their next unit in gym was going to be swimming. (Though she wasn't alone on the swimming thing.)
And maybe her classmates could be a little judgemental at times, but it wasn't anything too bad. They were probably just a little confused, Saki told herself, as to why someone would be happy about math class getting harder. Or they were tired from all the studying and knew that one day she would be too.
So most days if someone muttered something about her energy or her joy, she would just ignore them because they didn't know why she had all the reasons in the world to be smiling during a work period for their essay in Classical Japanese. They were used to school, to being a part of the community, to sitting in class every day and finding happiness in skipping class to hang out with their friends. They weren't the sort of people to know what isolation was like, to feel a deep, deep need to be with others no matter what, to love everything they experienced because all of it had been stolen from them for years. And Saki wouldn't wish it on them, but she had to remind herself of it sometimes when a classmate would ask her directly why getting out of the hospital warranted excitedly chattering to Ichika about a physics assignment.
Other days, though...
The words were a little more targeted, less about her unusual amount of "sunshine" as Shiho had called it once, and more about her friendships. Why, some of the girls across their year level would whisper, were her childhood friends somehow the three people who no one really thought of as people who could be considered a good kind of sociable? Shiho was standoffish, they said, rude and too direct. Honami was the opposite; she "played both sides" and was too agreeable. Politeness was required, they said, but not that much politeness. And Ichika got the least of it, but it seemed to be generally agreed that she was a bit of a loner who didn't speak much unless it was related to class, and even then she wasn't an honour student and thus did not often raise her hand.
Usually Saki would tell herself that these people were lying, that they were just building pictures of her friends in their heads without having spoken to them, without having known them, without having loved them as she did, and then she would do her best to forget about it by the time practice rolled around or they all hung out somewhere when their job schedules aligned. And on some nights the words would haunt her like ghosts she had never met, tantalizing her as if to say that they were true though Saki knew they weren't. She knew her friends. And she knew Shiho was just straightforward and passionate about things, and they regretted it when they did lash out at people because they didn't want to hurt anyone; they simply didn't always have the right words in their mind when something they would later hate came out of their mouth.
She knew Honami was kind, more so than anyone would expect, but that wasn't a problem to Saki. Shiho had been sort of right about Honami needing to learn to stand up for herself, but she was working on it now and she seemed to be doing better; she'd even started reminding Saki about the importance of making sure she wasn't pushing herself too far, and though Saki found that a little annoying at times because she didn't want to hold herself back, she didn't complain. Honami was looking out for her.
And Ichika... Ichika was Ichika. She used to threaten the kids who would try to get under Honami's skin when they were little and she used to argue with Shiho quite a bit. She used to be so headstrong and confident, and middle school seemed to have taken that from her, which explained the rumours about her.
Saki knew her classmates were making things up about her friends. Why, then, did those things still haunt her?
"Tenma-san! Over here!"
Saki spun in the direction of the voice calling to her from across the courtyard. Shimizu-san, she thought. They had a group project together, but... they'd promised to tell each other in advance if they wanted to work on it outside of class. And seeing as Saki was supposed to be heading out to practice right now, she really shouldn't go and talk, but maybe Shimizu-san needed her help with something, so against her better judgement, she sent a quick text to the group chat informing everyone she might be a bit late and headed towards Shimizu-san. "Hi!"
"Hey," she said. "Just checking, you said you'd do the printing if I sent it to you, right?"
Saki nodded. "Yep!"
"Okay, I- can I have your email then? I can't seem to find you in the school database..."
"One second!" Saki took her phone out of her pocket and opened the email app. "So you can copy it."
Of course, because she'd sent texts to the group chat, they all responded while Shimizu-san was looking at the screen.
Group: best friends <3
New messages:
Hona-chan: Okay! See you soon, Saki-chan!
Icchan: [message-received sticker]
Shiho-chan: why are we all responding
got it, saki. see you
"She's really mean, isn't she?"
Saki raised an eyebrow. "Who?"
"Hinomori. She's, you know, a loner? And she- even in that text! Sorry, I just- it kind of appeared, but isn't that a bit rude to talk to your friends like that? And Mochizuki... she plays both sides. You can't really trust someone like that, can you? Especially after everything that happened last year." She paused as if letting it sink in, and then said, "I got your email address. Thanks! I'll send you the stuff when I get home!
And then she sauntered off. Saki couldn't help herself from staring at her as she disappeared off towards her friends and outside of school.
Negative parts of school, noted.
She looked back down at her phone once Shimizu was far enough away. Honami had sent another text to the group chat, asking if Saki was okay. That was a little confusing until she looked back at the chat logs and found that she'd accidentally sent a message that was just gibberish. None of the words had any meaning. She didn't know how that had happened.
I don't feel well, she sent, and then she noticed how much her hands were trembling. Shimizu had just been parroting the rumours. She wasn't- none of that was true. Nothing. It was just- it was- Saki shouldn't be listening to the words but they followed her. The implication was clear. Your friends aren't good people, never mind good friends. It's weird that you're so close to them.
Saki felt so, so cold. She also felt like she was going to be sick. She wanted to go to practice but she would be unable to do much in this state.
The group chat promptly filled with new messages.
Saki couldn't look at them; she couldn't even think about it. She needed to forget about what Shimizu had said and go hug her friends to reassure herself that the girls whispering in the halls were wrong, so wrong, that they didn't know, that they could never know Shiho and Honami and Ichika the way she did because they had already written them off as loners and two-faced liars even though they were nothing like that.
She loved her friends more than anything.
Her phone rang. Rang, this time, as she was getting a call and not a concerned text. Apparently she had neglected to answer for long enough that someone got so worried they figured they should just call. Saki picked up the second she realized it.
"Are you sick?" Shiho asked. "Wait. No. Are you okay?"
Saki could feel her eyes just begging to let salt water run down her face. "I... I'm not sick," she said, and letting her guard down made it so easy for her to start crying. She sniffled reflexively.
"Saki?" Shiho sounded downright panicked. "Who- do I need to fight someone? Where are you?"
"School."
There was a noise much like a cell phone being wrestled away on the other end of the line, as well as a distant Tell me who they are and I swear I'll- before Honami's voice greeted her. "Saki-chan, would you like us to come over?"
She was properly crying now, holding none of it back. "Whose... whose house is closest again?"
Honami repeated the question, which led to a flurry of discussion from her side of the line before Ichika came on and said, "I think it's yours, Saki."
"Okay." She wanted to hug them all right now, she wanted to be with them now, she wanted her friends, she was alone and she wanted them, she- "See you soon?"
"You don't have to hang up," Shiho pointed out. "I told you we should've just put her on speaker!"
"Shiho-chan, you were threatening to hurt someone." Honami sounded like she was scolding them. Saki could picture how red Shiho's face was now. God, how she missed them right now. "But now that that's over, it's okay."
"Fine," Shiho muttered. "Saki, we're packing up. It might get a bit messy."
"Okay." She was still standing there. Unmoving, her phone to her ear, her clothes now contaminated with tears. She sniffled again. "I'll start walking."
Slowly, slowly, she managed to get herself out of the courtyard and onto the train, at which point the call ended because everyone was on public transit and they were expected to be quiet. That in turn made it even harder for Saki to keep herself from crying loudly; the tears could silently make their way down her face and that would be alright because she was not disturbing others on the metro, but if she were to cry in such a way that it would be deemed "ugly", to express that sort of emotion in public, there would be stares and people would whisper amongst themselves.
Perhaps in some other place no one would care but in some ways that would be worse, would it not? To live in a world where your emotions were treated as if they had no importance and no one cared that you were suffering. (Sometimes Saki thought she had caught a glimpse into such a place when she was alone late at night in a room that was not hers in a hospital she yearned to leave more than anything else in the world.)
Thankfully her parents were still at work and Tsukasa was off at Phoenix Wonderland with his troupe so there was no one to ask her why she was crying, to ask her for a reason, because that would only make everything worse.
Saki left the door unlocked and put a note on the inside saying it needed to be locked once everyone arrived. Then she took off her shoes and went upstairs to her room.
Maybe she should read back the group chat while she waited; it might calm her down and it would be a good way to push back on that picture Shimizu had tried to paint.
Shiho had sent several concerned texts, each one getting a little more worried each time. Honami and Ichika had also sent quite a few, but the tone was similar throughout. We're worried about you. What's going on? Do we need to take legal action? (That last one was Shiho. Apparently 'legal action' had turned into 'vigilante justice' a little too quickly.)
They wanted to know she was okay.
They loved her. They cared for her. They were good friends. Saki didn't need to worry. She-
"Seriously, though, if you need me to kill someone-"
"Shiho-chan!" Honami sounded extremely offended. "If you murder someone-"
"You'll kill me first, Honami, is that-"
"No." Honami took a deep breath.
"I'd help you hide the body," Ichika muttered. "Oh. Saki, um- we did try to get them away from that train of thought."
Saki chuckled. "Shiho-chan, please don't kill anyone."
Almost immediately, they sighed but then relented. "Only because you don't want me to."
"Listen to Hona-chan and me." Saki took a deep breath, but it was shaky.
Shiho sat down next to her on the bed and wrapped their arms around her. "Honami wouldn't let me hurt any of the people who were bullying her!"
Ichika cleared her throat. "Shiho, please stop talking about violence."
"You were in on this too- you're lucky I love you three."
"So," Honami began after they'd all settled down, curled up together on the bed. Really, there wasn't enough space for all of them, but they made it work. It was nice to be hugged by multiple people at once, Saki thought, especially when they were her friends. "Saki-chan, do you want to tell us what happened today? Shiho-chan, no murder."
"I wasn't going to- Saki, go ahead."
Saki had finally managed to get her eyes to stop watering. "One of the girls in our class told me some stuff about the three of you that just- it was really mean, and-"
"I think I have the right to override everything about being neutral," Shiho grumbled, but they didn't move an inch. "Sorry."
"It's okay, Shiho-chan." Saki took a deep breath. Ichika was holding her hand. It was sort of inconvenient, she realized, that she only had two of them, because then she couldn't hold all her friends' hands at once (which was a purely platonic thought). Focus. "She was just... she said, 'can you really trust people like that?' and-" The rest of the words didn't find her. They sat on a shelf in the back of her mind that she could not access.
Shiho promptly hugged her with much more intensity. "No murder. Even if I really want to."
"Please don't," Honami said. "I'm sorry about that, Saki-chan."
Saki could feel the tears poking out of her eyes again. She hadn't allowed herself to cry in this manner in a while. At least she had her friends back.
Shiho loosened their grip on her a little after Ichika expressed concern about how tightly they were holding her, but Saki sort of wished that hadn't gotten brought up because it was nice, in a way, to be able to feel that they were there and they weren't going to leave again.
She didn't know how long they stayed like that; she only knew that she cried and she let them comfort her, let Honami kiss her on the forehead and let Ichika take her ponytails out and curled ever closer to Shiho.
It was funny how even though she was struggling to keep her mind afloat, how she wanted to scream at this world and at the girls who said awful things to her friends and about them, she found herself perfectly content being here, being held by Shiho and Ichika while Honami brushed her hair out because according to her, it wouldn't hurt, and Saki could do it herself, would rather do it herself (at least around her family), but she was fine when Honami helped her out because it didn't feel like she was trying to be patronizing. This was a normal thing that friends did, Saki knew, and so that was why it was also fine that Honami had spent about five minutes brushing Saki's hair out with her fingers rather than grab the perfectly visible brush on her nightstand.
Eventually, somehow, even though there were so many things Saki wanted to say, wanted to scream, she managed to leave it behind her, to put it off to the side, and then they started talking about other things like it was as natural as breathing and Saki loved it.
Shiho rambled about a girl band they'd recently discovered; Ichika talked at length about the Miku producer she'd loved for years and about her cactus; and Honami spoke about a good book she'd recently read and all of them were silent as she told them all what she had thought of it. Saki wasn't sure what she wanted to say when it was her turn but she eventually settled on the manga series she'd been following since she got out of the hospital, describing all the plot twists even though Shiho was probably going to ask her to borrow the first volume soon judging by how hooked they were on her words.
Normal friend things done with good friends. Saki knew she didn't have to prove the girls at school wrong about herself, about her friends, but if they could just see the four of them right now, laughing and teasing and smiling like there was no tomorrow, rejoicing because they were together and nothing could tear them apart.
(The next day at school, Saki could've sworn she saw Shimizu looking a little shaken up, and Shiho looking a little too smug, but she pushed the thought off to the side. Strangely, the rumours died down quite a bit after that.)