COUNSELLING ROOM

Hibiya has grown to hate this door and its plaque, ridiculously pink and reeking of mothballs. Only the troubled students in the school came here. The addicts and occasionally, the mentally unsound.

He'd be in the second category of course; at the very least he wasn't an arsonist. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the idol sit down on the plush beanbag two seats down from him.

She waved to him and smiled, the closest semblance to a true friendship he had ever had. He nodded back at her, wrapping his trembling fingers around his pale grey jacket.

That's how they would always meet. Two disturbed young adults on the same leaking boat full of holes.

She'd always smile at him and say, "Well good luck then," before disappearing behind the wretched pink door that marked hours of disbelief and frustration.

Hibiya put his head down, as the scene flashed before his eyes once more. The truck, the flashing red lights, and the blood. It was why he was forced into these sessions with the shrink.

People didn't take it lightly when you hyperventilate in the presence of heavy traffic vehicles at the intersection. And hence, the child specialist for traumatic encounters.

He was told that his memories were repeating because his mind couldn't wrap itself around what had happened and it was plausible that it was all a nightmare.

At least according to the experts, it was like that. But Hibiya didn't believe it for one bit.

He felt that he was supposed to learn something from this event, achieve that one learning point. The moral of the story.

Kisaragi Momo was four years his senior, but somehow, that didn't stop up the welling admiration he had for her.

He was amazed how she could survived like this, alone and facing a crowd of judgmental eyes. She'd be classified under the second category as well, gone through a traumatic childhood and never recovered perhaps.

She was famous though, and people loved her. Strangely though, it also seemed to generate the opposite effect as well.

I have no friends, she'd say to his wavering gaze. Why not? He'd ask and the reply was that people were selfish and jealousy was the final conqueror.

Also, whenever he'd see her get into a fix, she would just shrug it off as if it weighed nothing upon her heart. But he could see, he could read the same expression he sometimes made himself, the one of a cornered animal.

It was there, under all the masks.

"You know, what if, what if all of these never happened? What if we could live normal lives like all the others around us?" she'd asked him that one day as the duo sat waiting for their counselling-sessions.

"Well," Hibiya lifted his gaze from his lap. "We wouldn't be that special anymore then, we'll just be another person in another place."

"Isn't that good then?"

He let out a derisive laugh. "Well, maybe. But then, I wouldn't remember the things that would make me myself anymore and then what would that make me? I know what I saw, no matter what everyone else tells me, I'll still believe in myself. Who'd be left to help me if I would no longer help myself?"

He'd gotten a stare from her, followed by a long silence- in which he berated himself for opening his big mouth; he was never the most sociable anyway. Blame the childhood trauma.

"I guess you're right then," the idol said, staring at the bright ceiling lamps. She put a hand out in front of her.

"But sometimes, I feel as if I don't know who I am anymore. At this rate, I'll just become what people want me to be." She let out a soured smile as she dropped her hand.

"But then I guess that's what you're here for. You're the angel sent to cheer me up right?" She grinned at him, a genuinely happy emotion, before pinning him in a hug. "You talk to me more truthfully than anyone else who has ever tried."

Hibiya wasn't sure how to react. He was barely on talking terms with this girl and yet here she was hugging him. The weird thing was, he didn't feel inclined to stop her.

He nudged the pink fabric of her hoodie, cocking his head to the side as he met her gaze for once.

"I've just realized you look like a cow, oba-san. I suppose it's why your hoodie is written like that, has it ever crossed your mind to change it? I mean, you are old, right."

What am I doing with my life now. I'm going to get back my English results tomorrow and the lord knows I screwed it up, big time. /flips

Well, I thought I'd try a new writing style. Perhaps a series on this MomoHibi AU thing on psychological disorders. Hmm.