Chapter Text
People talk about how awful middle school is but do they really talk about it enough?
Seriously, everybody’s too caught up in stupid rumors about crushes or whatever bullshit is going on, and it just makes you wanna isolate yourself from everyone and never make any friends. Maybe to others hating the social statuses the students held each other to sounded stupid, but to Mihael, it didn’t, he knew many didn’t share that same view because, “everyone wants friends” but honestly it didn’t feel like that to him sometimes.
If anything he really just wished they could all leave him alone, and just… stop treating him as if he wanted friends so they HAD to talk to him or that since he was a loner they had to act like a savior to him by becoming friends with him.
Then again it was either that or they treated him like he was trash, lots of kids make up rumors and all that, and sure it was a lot to deal with, but after a while, he kind of just became numb to them, especially because he could tell they were running out of ideas.
Though to be honest, the whole “Mihael has no friends” thing wasn’t technically true, Mihael actually had one single friend, his twin Nate, and do they really count as a friend if it’s his sibling? Mihael was also technically Nate’s only friend, because kids at school somehow hated him more than they hated Mihael. Kids called Nate slurs pretty often, but he never seemed to care, they just focused on their own shit.
And yeah, in Mihael opinion, Nate could be kind of stuck up and rude at times, but was that really enough to call him slurs? He never got their point in all of that himself, he didn’t really like spending time with them, or talking to him but… it just felt like those kids always went too far simply for their own entertainment.
“Mihael,” Mihael was taken out of his thought process as Nate spoke out, they looked at Mihael with tired looking eyes, he had spent a large portion of the night on his homework, because for some reason they’re only able to do it at one in the morning.
“Huh? What do you want Nate? I’m trying to focus on… walking,” Maybe that was a bit harsh but Mihael not really in the mood for conversation in the moment. It was a long walk to school in the middle of the rain, and he had to focus on the roads, so he didn’t get hit by a car.
Nate took a moment to think out his words before he eventually questioned Mihael, “Did you hear about that new kid joining our grade?” Nate picked under their nails a bit while he spoke, before eventually biting his pointer finger nail off a bit after he finished speaking.
Mihael tilted his head a bit before responding, “…No I didn’t… which teacher did you hear about that from?” Mihael pointed his fingers towards Nate. He knew that Nate would acquire information that most students didn’t even know because of how well he got along with most teachers in their grade.
“Counselor brought it up to me… his name’s Mail Jeevas, he comes from South America,” Nate lightly bit on his nails, this time it seemed as though they were mentally holding himself back from biting off any of them.
“Oh… what country there?” Mihael responded, he wasn’t too interested in the new student, he sort of just wanted to make conversation so it didn’t feel awkward.
Nate twirled their hair with their finger, taking a moment to remember the counselors words from the previous day, “She said he was from… Chile…”
“Huh…”
Mihael kicked a small rock, and watched as it bounced around. He looked over at Nate for a moment, who finally started minding their own business, as he messed around with his backpack strap, pulling it back and forth in a continuous motion.
Mihael looked up for a moment, and noticed that it was time to make a turn onto another street, and started walking while he kicked that same rock, for some reason not caring to look up.
Not until he felt a hand grab onto his collar, which tugged him back, just as Mihael was about to yell at Nate for grabbing onto him so suddenly for no reason, a car rushed past him, clearly going above the speed limit and not paying attention for any kids. Mihael turned around, expecting to see Nate being the one basically choking him, but instead Mihael saw him.
His oldest brother, Link, was the one whose hand tightly gripped the collar of his shirt, making sure he didn’t get run over.
Link was a sophomore in high school, and was at the top of his classes, well technically he was tied for the top of his classes with some other kid named Light Yagami, who Link was kind of friends with for some reason.
Link was good at everything he did, he spoke about 15 languages, he was in double accelerated for every subject he could be in double accelerated for, he could draw, play the guitar, drum set, piano, violin, viola, bass, clarinet, tuba, etc, etc, was extremely talented in technology, and has even helped the police solve multiple unsolved cases.
Link was the exact kind of person Mihael wanted to grow up to be when he got into high school, top of his class, avoided by people who couldn’t understand his greatness, respected by teachers and peers, who would know he was a genius.
But that dream high school life Mihael wanted would never be reality. Why may you ask? Well it’s because compared to some of the kids at his school, he was a complete fucking imbecile. He was the fourth smartest kid in his grade, losing to Nate, Blair Baedeker, and Azrael Nkoana.
Compared to Mihael and Nate, Blair and Azrael were extremely popular, probably because they actually knew how to socialize. People always make it seem like smart people or nerds aren’t very popular, but in Mihael’s school they seemed to be. He supposed people only hated you if you were a weird kind of nerd…
“Mihael, be more careful next time, you can’t be rushing into the street,” the sound of Link speaking was what brought Mihael out of a frozen state of shock from being almost run over.
“Yeah… got it, sorry,” Mihael felt his voice shake a bit as he spoke, but he had to hide it, he couldn’t look weak, he had to prove that he could be held up to Link’s standards and trusted with the same responsibilities as him.
Though Mihael did have to say thanks whatever God lied in the sky, Link was there to save him. Stuff like this is the reason Mihael liked Link more than Nate, he actually cared about Mihael and protected him, Nate just kind of… stood there.
Admittedly Mihael’s hope and plan was to just keep walking to school, that was until he noticed that the car that almost ran me over earlier had pulled over to the side of the road. Then a woman walked out of the driver's seat of the car, she had dark brown hair, brown eyes with a green kind of tint (so hazel eyes maybe?), was wearing a dress with black and white stripes, and looked extremely pissed off.
“Excuse me young man, but do you know how much money you could’ve just cost me if I ended up running you over, just because you hadn’t taken the time to look both ways before crossing the street!” The lady had a noticeable accent but Mihael wasn’t focusing on that, there was only one thing Mihael was thinking while that woman spoke, and that was how loud and annoying she was, even though the whole situation wouldn’t have happened if she was paying attention!
“Well if you had actually been paying attention to the damn road you wouldn’t have almost ran me over,” Mihael quietly mumbled hoping she wouldn’t hear him speaking, though sadly his hopes were incorrect.
“What the hell did you just say to me you spoiled little brat?! I am a single mother, do you know the debts I’d have to pay if you caused me to run you over??!! My son is in the car, and his life could’ve been impacted by your carelessness!” The woman moved to the side a bit to reveal a young boy around Mihael’s age, he seemed to have dark hair and goggles on his head. Mihael also noticed the was the boy was burying his face into his hands, damn poor kid had to deal with a mom like this, one who was an asshole and who was likely to commit a murder by not paying enough attention to the road.
Mihael was preparing to insult the woman back, pissed at her response to his mumble, that wasn’t even intended to be heard by her, until he heard a soft obnoxious voice speak from behind him, “..Sorry about my brother, it won’t happen again, but we’re going he to be late to school if your argument continues, so I hope you can excuse us leaving,” Nate said, looking the woman dead in her eyes, before grabbing Mihael’s wrist and harshly pulling him away from the situation.
Mihael wanted to fight back, he wanted to give that woman a piece of his mind, but Link was there, and if he were to do that, he would instead just be proving himself as immature, the exact opposite of how he wanted Link to see him…
When the siblings finally left the proximity of that lady, Mihael ripped his wrist away from Nate’s grip, God dammit… he felt like a child… he felt weak, needing to be patrolled by Nate just so he wouldn’t end up in a fight with some old lady…
Especially due to the fact Nate had decided to do that right in front of Link. Seriously, Mihael would’ve eventually calmed down and maturely handled the situation, but instead Nate decided to make a fool of him. Dammit he felt like an idiot…
Link eventually had to go off in a different direction, since he was at the high school. Mihael and Nate had to walk to their middle school instead, hoping they wouldn’t run into that lady again, or any other issues. In the end, the walk ended up going fine and they got to the school a few minutes after Link went on his own, without running into any problems.
Guess it was gonna be another long day at school…
———————————————-
As soon as Mihael got home he threw his backpack onto the floor of his room, climbed up the ladder to the top bunk, and started doing his homework. He needed to get good grades, he needed to surpass his peers, anything to be up to Link’s standards.
Mihael sat there for a few minutes focusing on his homework, holding himself back from reaching onto his shelf and grabbing that Scott Pilgrim comic, only surviving the time due to the chocolate promised to him by his caretaker, Mr. Wammy, if he were able to complete the homework within an hour of getting home.
After some time of sitting there, Nate walked into the room, and collapsed on the bed below Mihael.
It was silent for a moment, the two just lying there minding their own business until Nate spoke up, “How are you doing?” He questioned as they sunk into their bed.
“Fine I guess… though my science teacher was being an asshole again,” Mihael chewed on the tip of his pencil, trying to figure out the answer to the math problem he was working on, circumference of a circle and all that stuff, the unit was pretty easy, especially considering all the other things they had been learning in math that year.
Nate paused for a bit, trying to remember the teacher's name, “…Mrs. Phayon?” His voice sounded rather deadpan.
“Yeah, her.”
“I think she’s pretty nice…” Nate mumbled from below Mihael.
That angered Mihael for some reason, he didn’t know exactly why, but it just did… “That’s because you don’t have her as your teacher Nate, if you did you'd know exactly what I mean, she’s a passive aggressive bitch who pisses me off!” Mihael’s voice suddenly got loud and annoyed out of nowhere, causing the conversation to steer into a more hostile direction.
“Ok, ok, I get it… you don’t need to yell…” Nate responded, clearly trying to tone down Mihael’s anger.
They both went quiet, neither willing to respond after the interaction, despite being in the same room.
Almost all of their conversations ended like this, it always felt slow, and awkward, and that would cause Mihael to freak out and get mad about something small, then Nate would notice this and try to deescalate the conversation, then they would just… stop talking…
Mihael wasn’t sure why he always did this, he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t have a normal conversation with Nate without getting mad over something stupid, it made him feel stupid, and immature. Maybe it was his jealousy towards Nate, or he just disliked his sibling for no apparent reason…
Either way it made him feel like a selfish asshole towards his sibling. Though in all honesty he didn’t have as much time to focus on Nate, because if he didn’t finish this math homework, Mr. Fadlee was going to drop his grade, which he did not need at the moment, when he was still struggling to keep his science grade up.
He ended up finishing his homework by 6pm, with all the free time he had, it would be a good idea to apologize to Nate, but Mihael knew he was asleep. They always were when they got home from school, Mihael wasn’t complaining or anything, he liked the quiet but he felt kind of bad, not to say he didn’t mean to get mad, he clearly did, but he still felt like it was unnecessary…
Though honestly, Mihael felt pretty tired at that moment… maybe the best idea would be to just sleep it off…