It still made Inosuke nervous sometimes, being around this many people in an unfamiliar place. He hadn't really wanted to go to college, hadn't wanted to leave the place he'd finally been able to call home, but the old lady had insisted in that voice of hers that always felt like a gentle nudge to his back, so he'd relented and let himself be shipped off into the city. They'd gone there once for a campus tour some number of months ago, but he couldn't for the life of him remember anything they'd seen. It upset him.

He glanced around from under the hood of his sweatshirt, desperately trying to figure out where he was supposed to go. Old Lady Hisa's back had been acting up lately, so he'd boarded the bus - all by himself - this morning to get to campus, only to find out once he got there that he'd forgotten to bring the map she'd printed out and marked up for him.

It was too late to go back to grab it now, now that he'd been loitering around the dropoff area for around half an hour. His back was sticky with sweat from lugging around his overstuffed backpack, the handle of his suitcase, just large enough to contain all his earthly possessions, unpleasantly slick in his hands. Not that any of that could make him take off the sweatshirt and give up what little shelter he had from the overwhelming crowd of people around him.

After a few more minutes spent walking in vague circles and sweating quietly, he spotted a group of girls around his age accompanied by a couple of adults and trailed behind them across campus. Luckily, they were indeed incoming freshmen like him, and he shuffled into one of the lines at the new student tables, for once waiting his turn.

When he got up to the table, a young woman, probably a few years older than him, smiled at him. There was something slightly off about her expression, but he put it down to his nerves.

"Incoming freshman?"

Inosuke nodded, trying simultaneously to puff himself up and to hide from any further human interaction.

"Welcome to university. What's your family name?"

"Hashibira," he mumbled, shoving his free hand into his pocket.

"Oh." She gave him a look of confusion. "The H's are over there." He followed her finger two tables over, and his face must've visibly dropped because her eyes softened."Don't worry about it. I'll just grab your packet from Hinaka. Given name?"

"Inosuke." She nodded, scribbled his reply down on a sticky note, and got up from her chair to weave her way through the other volunteers to the other table. He watched as she talked to another girl who looked almost exactly like her, growing antsier as the people behind him jostled him.

"Here you go then," she said when she returned with a blue folder. She opened it up and took out an envelope, tapping the number written on the front below his name. "You've been assigned to room 293 in the west dorm. It's a triple, so you'll be living with two other freshmen. The combo to the room is inside here; don't lose it before you memorize it."

She slid the envelope back into the folder pocket and handed it over to him. "You can read the rest of the papers whenever you get a chance. They include lists of places to eat around campus, a couple of maps, useful information like that. Good luck, and don't forget that the convocation ceremony starts at three."

Clutching the folder tight to his chest, he scurried away from the crowd and took a moment to compose himself under a tree, concentrating on his breathing the way the old lady always told him to. Regaining some semblance of his usual confidence back, he took the printout of the campus map from the folder and tried to make sense of where he was supposed to go. To his relief, the route to his dorm was highlighted just like the old lady always did it.

He straightened his back, huffed, and set off, pulling his beat-up suitcase along behind him. If he was going to be stuck with two random other guys for the next year, then he was going to show them that he was the boss and that his word was the one that went around here.

Though it looked old from the outside, covered with crawling vines, the dorm was blissfully air conditioned inside. He tugged off his hood and stood in the entryway, letting the cool air wash over his face. Someone walked by him and did a double take. Inosuke glared in return.

The rooms on the first floor were all numbered in the hundreds, so he wandered around until he found a staircase and dragged his suitcase up, the thumping matching the stomps from his feet. He heard some tittering around him, but he did his best to ignore it, determined not to let his cheeks redden no matter what happened.

His room was at the end of the hall. Unlike the rest of the rooms he passed on the way, it had three, instead of two, pieces of brightly colored construction paper taped to the door, which was at the moment slightly ajar. He squinted at the papers. On one, he recognized his own name in terrible curly handwriting. On the others… He paused. Ken - Tan - Gon? Gonpa. Chirou? Gonpachirou Ka - Kamaboko. What a stupid name. The other was Zen - Mon? Monitsu. Monitsu Aga -

He gave up on the family name and barged in. The black-haired boy inside yelped and dropped a pile of clothing onto the ground. Inosuke's eyes were drawn immediately to the yellow jacket with light triangles patterning that had fallen on the top - he sure wouldn't ever be caught wearing something like that, so his presumed roommate had to be pretty bad at things to even own it. Pathetic.

A quick sweep of the room revealed just how cramped it was, barely able to contain the furniture crammed within it. Between the three desks, two sets of drawers, regular bed, and weird bed-stacked-on-top-of-another-bed, there was just about enough room for one person at a time to move around.

He pointed to top of the bed-stacked-on-top-of-another-bed and proclaimed, "That's where I'll be sleeping!"

The black-haired boy gave him what was probably supposed to be a withering stare. "I already put my stuff up there. Tanjirou wanted the single bed, so you've got the bottom bunk," he said matter-of-factly as he crouched down to pick up his clothing. Inosuke scowled.

"I don't care what you or what's-his-face say. I'm taking that one." Squeezing forcefully past Roommate #1 over his protests, Inosuke climbed up the ladder and set his backpack down on the mattress, tossing the blankets already there down to make room for his own bedding.

"What the hell! Get down from there!" He felt a surprisingly strong grip on his ankle, and before he knew it, he was slipping from his perch, tumbling down onto Roommate #1.

Ah, a scuffle. He knew how to deal with these. He twisted around onto his feet and assumed a low stance, grinning ferally. Words were hard for him sometimes. Fighting had always been the easiest and clearest way to deal with things where he grew up.

To his surprise, Roommate #1 almost immediately began bawling and curled into a ball.

"What's wrong with you? Why're you such an asshole? What'd I ever do to you?"

Inosuke hesitated. The memory of Old Lady Hisa, voice always so gentle, feeble hands trying in vain to pull him away from yet another kid he'd gotten into a fight with, came unbidden to his mind. He could feel her now, trying to pull him away again as he listened to Roommate #1 blubber and curse at him, and he stared, hypnotized by the phantom sensation across his arms.

"Tanjirou! Help me!"

Inosuke snapped out of his trance to find who he assumed was Roommate #2 standing in the doorway, a look of bewildered dismay on his face. Roommate #1 quickly dived behind this newcomer.

"I went out for two minutes to use the bathroom, what in the world is going on?"

"I'm taking that bed," Inosuke said brusquely, pointing to the bed he'd just claimed, "but he won't stop whining and crying about it."

"Zenitsu already claimed the top bunk though," Roommate #2 said, falling deeper and deeper into despair as he began to grasp the situation. His earrings swung as he looked between the two of them several times, the light from the window catching on his burgundy hair.

"Fight me for it then!" Inosuke charged at the two of them. Roommate #1 screamed incoherently and curled up again, but Roommate #2's expression unexpectedly hardened. He caught Inosuke's tackle, stepped to the side, and used their combined momentum to throw him onto the floor of the hallway. Inosuke immediately rolled and bounced back up, balling his fists. Finally, someone who was willing to resolve things his way.

"Please don't fight me! I really don't want either of us to get hurt."

What the hell? Inosuke ignored his plea and ran toward him. Roommate #2 dodged again, but Inosuke anticipated it this time and redirected his punch. It landed, though far weaker than he'd intended. He smirked. First blood went to him.

A crowd of students was starting to gather at the end of the hallway now, curious about the commotion, whispering excitedly to each other. Some had their phones out, and Roommate #2 pointed at them, wincing as he pressed a hand against his ribs.

"Can one of you get an RA instead?" One student lowered his phone and shoved it into his pocket with a sheepish look, then took off down the hall.

Inosuke leapt forward again while Roommate #2 was distracted, but evidently Roommate #2 wasn't as distracted as he seemed because he braced himself for the impact, grabbed the front of Inosuke's hoodie, yelled "I'm very sorry for this!", and smashed his forehead right into Inosuke's.

Someone shined a light into his eyes. He flinched and swatted at the hand holding the offending object. Refocusing his gaze, he looked around himself. He was in some sort of doctor's office, lying in the examination chair. Roommates #1 and #2 sat off to the side. The former was clutching his head and muttering non-stop to himself, the latter sitting quietly with eyebrows furrowed, teeth worrying at his bottom lip.

"Where am I?" he asked. His head hurt. Before the nurse could stop him, he put a hand against the area the pain was radiating from. The center of his forehead was very tender and very warm. Weird.

Roommate #2 shot up from his seat and bowed so low he almost slammed his head onto the ground.

"I'm so sorry! I didn't think I'd give you a concussion!"

"Why're you apologizing to him again? And more importantly, how come you didn't get a concussion too?" Roommate #1 glared at the both of them, grinding his teeth together. "I'm gonna get expelled. I can't believe it. Do you know what you've done? I haven't even gone to a single class yet. I haven't gotten to spend long nights working with a cute girl on a group project, I haven't gotten to have a summer fling, and I'm gonna get expelled already. My life is over. Gramps is gonna kill me. All because you guys got me expelled on move-in day."

"What's going on?" Inosuke asked irritably, giving up on deciphering the cryptic statements spouting from Roomate #1's mouth.

"You have a mild concussion," the nurse explained, scribbling something down on a notepad. "It seems you're experiencing some memory loss, so I'm going to start the tests over again. Do you remember your name?"

"Of course I do. This is dumb. I feel fine." Inosuke moved to get out of the chair, and the nurse stopped him warily.

"I can't let you go until we're done. Can you state your name?"

"Inosuke Hashibira," he grumbled, settling back down with his arms crossed.

"Do you know where you are?"

"I was in my room," Inosuke replied, squinting at his roommates, "but Bowl Cut was being stubborn - " Roommate #1 squawked " - and then Earrings came in and…" he trailed off as his memories turned into a sea of fog.

Roommate #2 shuffled his feet and looked down. He definitely had something to do with what was going on right now. Inosuke stared at the red spot in the center of his forehead, right where -

Inosuke's eyes lit up. "You did that with your head?"

Roommate #2 started, then began laughing nervously.

"I have a hard head. It runs in my family. I panicked, sorry. I wasn't sure how else to get you to stop."

"Is that the last thing you remember?" the nurse interrupted, scribbling again. Inosuke screwed his face up in concentration. If he tried really hard, he could push through the fog to recall the fisticuffs, but after that he'd just somehow magically appeared in this interrogation session.

"Yeah. That's really cool! I'm gonna learn how to do it too."

"Do not give yourself or anyone else another concussion," the nurse barked. He rubbed his face and muttered, "Freshmen," but Inosuke was too busy imagining what kind of training routine he'd have to go through to get the same head strength as Roommate #2 had. Maybe running into trees over and over again? Or he could keep headbutting his roommates. The possibilities were endless.

"Inosuke, please focus." The nurse pulled out a stack of cards. "I'm going to say a series of numbers and letters, and I want you to repeat after me, ok?"

"Can I just go instead?"

"No."

Inosuke groaned but submitted to the tests. Half an hour later, he was finally allowed to leave the examination room with his roommates, a follow-up appointment in a week, and a stern warning to take it easy, which was laughable at best. The words "Inosuke" and "take it easy" did not go together.

He squared his shoulders and marched up to Roommate #2, getting right up in his face. The determined set of Roommate #2's eyebrows never wavered, a rather unconvincing affair given the baby fat still on his cheeks, the softness of his jaw and his button nose.

"What's your name?" he demanded.

"I'm Tanjirou Kamado. Sorry I made us all miss convocation. And I promise I won't give you a concussion ever again."

"Whatever. You, Bowl Cut - " Inosuke pointed to his other roommate, who seemed in just as foul of a temper now as he had been before finally being convinced that he wouldn't be expelled.

"I have a name too, you know. It's Zenitsu."

"You can have the bed stacked on top," Inosuke finished, kicking at the carpet as he admitted his first defeat in a long while.

"Yeah, no, I don't care. I'm moving out. There's no way I can live with the two of you. I'll literally die if I do." With that, Monitsu did an about-face and stormed off, leaving a bemused Inosuke and a sputtering Gonpachirou.

"Zenitsu, wait!" the latter cried out, taking a hesitant step after him. Tanjirou whipped his head back around to Inosuke. "I'll go talk to him, don't worry. Why don't you unpack first? The room's pretty cramped, so I don't think we'll all be able to do it at the same time. By the way, I heard there's free dinner today. Let's meet up before then? Maybe try to redo introductions."

Inosuke grunted, hooked already by the phrase "free dinner." He supposed that if he had to, he could try and get along with these two. Maybe impress them enough that they'd see they ought to give him the respect he deserved and become his… what was the word he'd picked up the other day? "Squad"?

Boss Inosuke and his minion squad. That was a concept he could get behind. He stretched as he watched Gonpachirou run after Kenitsu, and for the first time since Old Lady Hisa had brought up the concept of him being in college, he felt a sense of excitement for the year to come.