At some point in his life, Hideyoshi had found it incredibly difficult to drag himself out of bed. This problem has persisted for the past couple of years, and would likely never really come to an end, as far as he cared. The only thing that had been preventing him from not getting up at all was fear of consequences. If he didn't get out of bed, he couldn't go to school, and if he didn't go to school, he wouldn't graduate, and if he didn't graduate, he wouldn't be able to get a job and-
Hideyoshi forced himself to get out of bed and stumble his way into the bathroom. At least then he could say he did something before he had a breakdown, if things kept going that way this morning. He showered, brushed his teeth, looked in the mirror, and sighed.
He never understood why he looked the way he did. Neither of his parents had blond hair or blue eyes. His uncle did though, and his father usually would answer his questions about this with something about recessive genes, yes I really am your father, yes he'll tell you the same thing, Punnett squares are grossly oversimplified but they're not going to teach you that in high school. Hideyoshi would quietly laugh about that to himself sometimes. It was one of the rare occasions his father seemed human, as opposed to whatever awful thing he could theorize him to actually be.
He was dressed in his uniform and out the door after he finished styling his hair. He wore both like a delinquent (a fact he was made aware of many times), with his jacket open and his hair in a pompadour, but he liked feeling like he was doing something. That he actually had control over something. He had so little control over any aspect of his life anymore. (He stopped on this thought for a while and mused that he never had any control in the first place. Arguably, this was really the only form of control he ever had, now that he thought of it.)
The weather was noticeably better today than it had been for the past week, and for once Hideyoshi's mood was doing the same. Instead of a completely numb state, he was only in a mostly numb state. Thus, the day would go by as a slightly less detached series of events than they usually did.
Hideyoshi wasn't particularly aware of anything today even with this in mind up until his literature class. This was mostly because it had been decided at the beginning of the semester that the class would be split into groups of three to do work together. As such Hideyoshi had to pay attention to the other two group members. (Which honestly wasn't very hard. He thought they were both very strange.) The group consisted of himself (which already meant it was a bad time), Yukako Yamagishi (whom Hideyoshi was terrified of, and was probably one of the people who took that recent disappearance the worst), and Mikitaka Hazekura (who, as far as Hideyoshi could tell, was nice, but something about him just didn't seem right). This made for a rather odd group, and their choice of book didn't help. They were currently doing work based around No Longer Human, which had actually been Hideyoshi's idea. Part of him regretted that decision, but another part felt as though if he could get into the narrator's head and analyze the plot he could find some way to help himself. If not that he could just use his usually poor emotional state to have an easier time understanding what was happening and not have to worry about working as much.
"-so we're going to have to find somewhere to work on it then." Hideyoshi was jolted back into reality by the sound of Yukako's voice. Judging by that last fragment, she had been talking about their current project, which they were behind on. She had probably been saying something about getting part of it done over the weekend in order to catch up. "If it's at someone's house, it's either going to be mine or Hideyoshi's." She was looking at him now and he didn't know what to do. He considered telling her that his house wouldn't be a good idea. He could probably come up with something about how his father didn't like people coming over, but when he thought about it, he could potentially make an exception for a school project. Hideyoshi had a hard enough time figuring out what his father was thinking of most of the time. Would he do something to actively work against him in a school context? Hideyoshi knew he didn't like him but he didn't think he would intentionally set him up for failure and-
"Hey, Hide, you're listening, right?"
"Oh, I- uh- yeah I'm- I'm listening, yeah," Hideyoshi managed to stutter out a response, which was more than he expected to be able to do. Yukako's general disposition reminded him of his father, and garnered similar responses from him. "Um... I mean, we could probably work at my house, yeah... My parents are- they're probably okay with it.
It was a satisfying enough response, and so they planned to meet up the next day in the afternoon, and the rest of the school day went. Hideyoshi was mentally kicking himself for what he said the rest of the day. Was it really that hard to say "no?" He could have suggested they work at Yukako's house instead, she had said it was an option too. He was sure it would have been a better idea. Though, he reasoned, if the two of them were over, his father wouldn't antagonize them, right? He could tell him they were coming anyway, he was almost home, sure his father wouldn't actively help him, but he also wouldn't actively prevent somebody else from working on something just because Hideyoshi was involved, right?
Someone who had been walking the same direction on the sidewalk across the street had been watching him. Hideyoshi could feel their eyes on him, and got a quick look at them. Someone with a weird headband and clothes that gave off the vibe of "I can dress this way because I make absurd amounts of money, you wouldn't understand fashion anyway." Hideyoshi gave them an awkward half-wave and quickened his pace for the rest of the walk home.