"You've got a hair sticking out of your coat," Chihiro said in his small voice just as Mondo bit into his burger. He looked down at Chihiro beside him, and he pointed to a small piece of dark hair sticking out of the material on the right arm of his coat.
"Pull it out for me," Mondo responded with his mouth full. Chihiro's mouth turned up in a small, adorable smile as he reached out and pulled the hair out of the material...and that smile disappeared when the hair kept coming.
"What the fuck?" Mondo said, swallowing his food. Chihiro kept pulling, hand after hand, like it was a rope. It took him several seconds until the hair came out.
"That's…a very long hair," he said, holding it up to show its excessive length. He looked up at Mondo, his eyes wide. "How did this end up in your coat?" he asked.
Mondo laughed and said, "Wouldn't you like to know?" with a wink. Chihiro's face turned pink, and he looked down at the hair again, more to avert his eyes than study the evidence.
"Whose is it?" Chihiro asked, flinging the long follicle away. Mondo shrugged, but couldn't help glancing across the room to the owner of the hair, sitting alone with her back to the cafeteria. She poked at her lunch distractedly as she hunched over a book, oblivious to the world around her. Her long dark purple hair hung down her back in its usual two braids.
He could still feel her arms around his waist, holding on against the speed of his bike with her face buried in his coat. An irregular ritual that began when Touko and Mondo met in the school foyer one night.
It had been past midnight, and Mondo had been restless. He'd decided to ride out and find a few of his gang members and get into some shenanigans. As he had been walking through the foyer to the front door, he had seen her in the darkness, pacing along the tiled floor.
She had seen him and gasped, startled, then accused him of creeping up on her.
"Say what? No way," he had protested.
"Then w-why else would y-you be slinking through the night?" she had asked, clearly struggling to not stutter.
"I ain't slinkin' nowhere," Mondo had told her. "I'm headin' out." He had moved past her and had been a step out the door when she called to him, "Take m-me w-with you."
He had halted in his tracks and looked over his shoulder at her. He hadn't been able to see her face in the darkness, but saw that she had hugged her arms to herself. She had turned her back to him quickly and stuttered, "N-never mind, go away, d-don't listen to m-me."
Mondo wasn't sure exactly what was going through his mind when he said, "Yeah, come on. Hurry up."
Chihiro was quick on the uptake, and he followed Mondo's gaze to the girl in question. "I suppose a girl you let get that close to you must be special," he said, and Mondo looked at the smaller boy quizzically until the implication clicked in Mondo's mind.
"Whoa, no way!" Mondo said, flustered. "It ain't like you think. Look, just drop it, okay?" Chihiro laughed in response.
That night, Mondo heard a soft knocking on his bedroom door.
It was nearly midnight, but Mondo was still wide awake. He'd been lying on his bed and reading a comic when he heard the knock. He got up and stretched his arms as he walked over to the door.
Touko stood on the other side, as he had expected. She didn't look at him, but gazed down, hugging her arms to her chest. Without speaking, Mondo pulled on his coat and grabbed his keys, and they walked together through the darkened school and out into the parking lot.
"What're you up for tonight?" he asked her as he got on his bike.
"Wh-whatever," she said, her voice flat and unusually low. She slid on behind him, and as the bike roared to life, he felt her arms wrap around his waist. He could feel her excited breaths on his neck, and he started to get a little aroused.
He sped out of the parking lot and onto the street, wondering what trouble he could find for the two of them to get into. Sometimes they would find an all-night diner and get some food, or they'd explore abandoned buildings or construction sites. She'd even come with him to ride with the Crazy Diamonds once, although she had been a little intimidated them.
As he blew through a stop light, he felt Touko squeeze his right arm and then point upward at a tall building. At her direction, Mondo wove through the streets until they reached the building.
It was an old and condemned apartment block, a dark and menacing mass in the low din of streetlights. Situated across the street from a 24-hour convenience store, it was closed off, defended by a high chain-link fence like many Mondo had climbed before.
As Mondo cut the gas and the bike's roar quieted, he asked, "Think this place is gonna be interestin'?"
She shrugged. "Let's g-go onto the roof," she said. She pointed down the way a bit to a gate, sealed with a chain and lock. "C-can you g-get that open? I-I can take care of him." She gestured to the convenience store shopkeeper, who was peering out the window at them. She was halfway across the street before Mondo could even react. It seemed he was having a bad influence on her.
"I like the way you think, girl," he said more to himself, a smile on his lips.
He chuckled to himself and walked down to the gate. The lock was a heavily-rusted padlock, and Mondo was able to pry it off with some heavy force. The gate squeaked loudly when he opened it, and he slipped inside. Touko joined him less than a minute later, and the two of them walked up to the building's tall doors.
Mondo was surprised to find the doors opened. The pair walked in and were met with inky darkness soon illuminated by a small flashlight Touko had produced. "You came prepared," Mondo said as she walked ahead.
"H-hurry up," she snapped over her shoulder, heading off toward the right.
"You been here before?" he asked as he caught up to her.
"N-no, never," she said, and she was silent as she led him to a stairwell. By the time they emerged onto the roof, Mondo was a sweaty mess. He'd taken off his coat and slung it over his shoulder, breathing hard with exertion. The building was about twenty stories, Mondo had discovered.
The roof was dark, as very little streetlight reached from below and the moonless, starless sky provided no light from above. A chill breeze blew between the air conditioning units and cooled the sweat on Mondo's skin. With her flashlight showing the way, Touko led Mondo to one edge of the roof and looked out onto the horizon. From where they were, they could see the spire of Hope's Peak Academy in the distance.
"So what'd you wanna do on this roof?" Mondo asked her.
She turned out her flashlight, and she turned on him.
Totally taken off guard, he didn't expect Touko to slam into him with her full weight, and he went down. He hit the ground hard, and pain sparked down his back and up his neck, although he managed to avoid hitting his head. Touko crawled on top of him, cackling in a way very much unlike her.
"What the fuck?" Mondo shouted and tried to push her off, but she seemed to have gained some sort of supernatural strength. She clamped down on his sides with her legs and leaned forward, pressed her chest to his, and he felt her hand run down his throat.
"How so sad for your filthy little friend that you can't tell when she's not herself," Touko laughed. "Oh, she's gonna miss you." Mondo opened his mouth to say something, but felt a sharp razor at his neck. "Now, now," she said, and then, in a much weaker voice, "No…n-no."
Suddenly Mondo felt her weight lift off him, and he sat up immediately, searching through the blackness for Touko. He heard her shuffling across the roof floor, and he searched along the ground for the flashlight.
"I won't let you hurt him!" he heard Touko cry in a raw voice. "Stay away from him!"
She went quiet for a moment as Mondo found the small flashlight Touko had dropped. He turned it on and looked around, and he caught a glimpse of purple fabric hunch behind an air conditioning unit.
"Touko?" he called out, getting to his feet. Ready for whatever she might throw at him, he approached the unit and shined the light around the corner he saw her go, and found her balled up at the machine's base. She looked up at him and then away, turning her back to him.
"G-go," she said weakly. "G-get out of h-here."
"I ain't leaving without you," Mondo said, and she glared at him over her shoulder.
"Don't you see?" she snapped at him. "She's—I'm going to hurt you." She couldn't hold it back anymore, and she started to cry. Mondo eased down next to her and turned the flashlight off. "W-what the hell are y-y-you doing?" she asked through her sobs, and he heard her turn toward him.
"I don't think you're gonna hurt me," he said lightly.
"H-How can you possibly think that?"
"'Cause you don't wanna."
She was quiet for a moment, catching her breath. "I d-don't have that m-much control."
"You got more than you think."
"Y-you don't know me w-well enough to know that."
"I want to," he responded. She was silent after that, so he said, "I know you got issues. I got 'em too. I ain't sayin' we gotta cure each other. But I like ridin' with you." Still, she didn't say anything, and Mondo wracked his brain for something else to say.
But then she placed her hand, cold from the air, on his forearm. She shivered slightly, and Mondo realized she must be cold. Carefully, he put an arm around her small shoulders. "This okay?" he asked, and she nodded, leaning her head against his shoulder.
He held her like that for a while, until her breathing became even and steady. He covered her small hand with his large one, warming her fingers. After some time like that, Touko finally spoke.
"We should head back."
"Yeah." Neither of them moved.
"I-I don't think I c-can be…what y-you want m-me to be," Touko admitted.
"Hey," Mondo said, "I ain't askin' you to be nothin'. I ain't askin' for no sweet nothings or stolen kisses or whatever it is that sells your books. I don't care if you never wanna so much as look at me during the day. But if you need to, you can wake me up from the deadest sleep to go ridin'. That's all."
She let out a long-held breath. "Are y-you for real?" she asked.
Mondo laughed. "Don't tell nobody that I got a soft side, okay? I got an image to keep up."
He heard her own scoff, and she moved to stand. Against his own desires, he let her go and got to his feet, stretching out his long, sore limbs. He was sure he'd gotten some bad bruising from their scuffle, but it certainly wasn't the worst injury he'd ever sustained. She retrieved the flashlight and he his coat, and they made their way down the stairwell on jelly legs.
They made it back to the bike, taking care to stay out of the view of the convenience store window, and they rode back to the school. Mondo noticed a difference in the way she held onto him. It wasn't that she held on against the force of their speed, but against a far stronger current inside herself that Mondo could not understand.
They pulled into the Hope's Peak parking lot at nearly three in the morning, and Touko hopped off the bike first. She turned back to Mondo—a menacing grin on her face.
"Looks like you got out alive this time, cutie," she taunted with a harsh cackle. Mondo felt his stomach drop, and his muscles tensed up as he expected another fight.
She stuck out her tongue and tapped the tip of his nose with the tip of a pair of very sharp scissors. Then she laughed again, turned and sauntered into the school, her laughter echoing through the foyer.