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Tamba and Watari could be unbearably loud, sometimes. Not that Ken had a problem with them or anything! He just got stressed out easily, and he couldn’t tell them that they were stressing him out because that would be rude, and the thought of that stressed him out even more…
He was doing fine, anyway. Completely fine. He might be shaking a little, but not enough that it was noticeable. He sucked a shaky inhale in. He was fine. Everything was fine. Ken clasped his hand around his wrist, hoping the pressure and mild pain would be enough to pull him out of his anxious thoughts. This, of course, did not work because nothing could ever go right for Hasegawa Ken in an environment with more than two people. How pathetic.
He tried to distract himself by counting down the seconds until class was over. Two minutes left. Two lots of sixty. One hundred and twenty seconds. He mouthed the numbers to himself until he reached the final minute. Sixty seconds to go. He counted backwards: fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven…
The bell rang. Ken jolted in his seat. No, no, that couldn’t be right; they still had almost an entire minute to go! Why was it early? Why was the bell early? Ken stood up, head swimming, his chair scraping loudly as he did so. His cheeks reddened. Why was he so loud? He was panting. Trapped, he felt trapped. He needed to get out of here. He needed to go.
Ken fled the classroom.
-
Kazutoshi watched Ken practically flee the classroom. That was weird. He’d left his shit behind, too. Why would he do that?
“Chiba,” he grunted, already halfway to the door. “Can you grab mine and Ken’s things and take them with you? I gotta go check on him.”
“Okay!” She chirped. He was only half listening. He slipped out into the hallway, only barely keeping an eye on Ken as he pushed himself through the crowd of students. He wasn’t in it for long, though, throwing himself into the nearest boy’s toilets.
“The fuck?” Kazutoshi muttered to himself. Obviously, he couldn’t fault the guy for needing to piss or whatever, but Ken was acting weird. All jittery and shit.
Kazutoshi’s eyes widened, and he cursed under his breath as he realised exactly what was going on with Ken.
He slipped into the bathroom Ken had fled to, nearly jumping out of his skin when he made direct eye contact with him. Ken was crying and had scratched the hell out of his hands, too. “Shit, Ken!” Kazutoshi called. “You alright?” Stupid question. Clearly, he fucking wasn’t.
“Uh, uh- Y- yeah,” Ken replied, as if Kazutoshi couldn’t see him crying and hyperventilating right in front of him. He tugged on his tie. “I’m fine.”
“Do you think I’m fucking stupid?” Kazutoshi wrinkled his nose. “You’re going to choke yourself to death, man.”
“It’s fine,” Ken whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut, painfully swallowing the excess saliva in his mouth. “I’m fine.”
Kazutoshi let out a long-suffering sigh. Ken was Kazutoshi’s only bearable classmate, the only one who wasn’t a sheer, complete and utter idiot, but sometimes he’d work himself up into a state, and all that would be thrown at the window, and he’d devolve into a giant moron. Typically, when Kazutoshi himself was involved.
It was always ‘I don’t want to see you get hurt’ this, or ‘I care about you, Kazutoshi’ that, like he didn’t feel the same way about Ken. Hypocrite.
Unfortunately, there was a glaring difference between the two of them. Whilst Ken might be awkward and quiet around their classmates, he at least knew how to calm Kazutoshi down. Kazutoshi, on the other hand, was completely out of his fucking depth here. What was it that people did to help with panic attacks? Square breathing? Kazutoshi would deck someone if they pulled that crap with him, but maybe Ken was different…
Shit, his tie!
“Ken, will you let me take your tie off?” Kazutoshi asked, trying to soften his voice. He’s fairly certain he just sounded like an idiot, but anything for Ken.
“Huh?” Ken blinked back into focus, still pulling on the damn thing. “Oh, I- I guess so.”
“Thanks, man,” Kazutoshi praised, doing his best to loosen the tie and pull it off without getting all up into Ken’s space. He undid Ken’s top button for good measure.
“I don’t-” Ken keened, squeezing his eyes shut as he choked around a shaky inhale. “I can’t-”
“You can breathe; you’re just doing it too fast,” Kazutoshi interjected. “I know it feels like you’re dying, but you’re not. Come on, are there any statistics about that? Come on, quiz show boy, tell me how many people die from panic attacks per year.”
“W- Well, none, technically,” Ken answers, snapping into focus upon being asked to explain a statistic. He was still breathing too fast, but the question had successfully pulled his attention and got him to focus. “There’s no way to die directly from a panic attack. You can pass out, but then you’ll just start breathing normally again. If someone appears to have died from a panic attack, the most likely explanation is that they had a different medical condition that contributed. Or, something like passing out could’ve led to a head injury that made them bleed out.”
“Good job, man, great stuff,” Kazutoshi complimented him, watching his breathing fall back into a reasonable pace the more he rambled. “And then, if there’s blood, I’d clean the crime scene or whatever.”
“Oh, right!” Ken blinks, nodding along. “Some- Sometimes I forget you do that, honestly.”
“Ooh, the celebrity forgets his peasant friend’s careers.”
“N- No!” Ken bursts out, a fresh wave of panic settling in his eyes. “Of course not! And I’m not a celebrity or anything, you know, it’s just local shows and-”
“Relax, Ken.” Kazutoshi’s eyes softened. “I was just messing with you. That’s my bad; I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Ken exhaled shakily. “I- I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have overreacted.”
“Nah, man, you just had a panic attack. You get ‘overreacting’ privileges for the rest of the day. At least,” Kazutoshi scoffed, putting air quotes around overreacting.
“Right, right. Um, can I have my tie back?” Ken cringed.
“Of course, of course!” Kazutoshi’s cheeks flushed. “Yeah, here you go, Ken.”
As he redid his tie, Ken’s lips pursed. “I left pretty quickly without my stuff… I should run back and get it… Oh, you too, Kazutoshi! I don’t see your things with you!”
“It’s good,” he shrugged. “I asked Chiba to get it, and she probably did.”
Ken paused, briefly checking himself in the mirror to make sure his tie was straight. “Do you think she could carry all our stuff by herself?”
“Uh,” was Kazutoshi’s astute reply. “Beats me. But if she couldn’t, she’d probably bug Hama to help, I dunno.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
A beat of semi-awkward silence stretched out between them before Kazutoshi sighed. “Come on, Ken. Let’s go get lunch. You cannot leave me to deal with those idiots by myself.”
“O- Okay!” And though there was still a slight shake to him, Ken seemed much happier.