Sometimes your friends kissed you.

It was just a thing that your friends did, that was all. He had been kissed by Minegishi, Shimazaki, and now Miss Suzuki. That was three of his friends who'd kissed him. He should have been happy. It wasn't like he had ever planned on having a first kiss let alone a third. Three people had wanted to kiss him. Why, he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure, too, if he had wanted to kiss them.

He wasn't even sure if that had mattered.

Minegishi had been his first kiss. He glanced over at them. They were sitting near the door of the train car, their face buried in a book. The title was in a language that he couldn't read. They had their feet up on the seat and they were using Shimazaki as a pillow. They looked kind of…cute, that way. Cute was a good word for them, he decided. It fit really well. They way their nose scrunched up, the way they looked so small, the way their short hair stuck up on it's own…they were cute. Sometimes they were pretty. Sometimes they were even very pretty…he had liked them, before, back when they had kissed him. He had even liked it even if it had been a little…confusing.

Since they had a boyfriend.

Shimazaki had kissed him too despite being with Minegishi…but he kissed everyone. He and Minegishi were in an open relationship, which meant that they were allowed to kiss other people, not that Serizawa understood anything about that. He didn't get the point of being together if they were both just going to kiss other people…and he didn't know why he had to be involved in it at all. Shimazaki had kissed him for no reason it felt like. Minegishi had at least kissed him because they had been sick and he had made them soup and watched over them. They had been showing that they were grateful even though they really shouldn't have…that kiss had left him with so many feelings. Shimazaki had only left him with one feeling.

A feeling that he didn't like boys.

He just…didn't. Minegishi had been born a girl and yes, they looked like a boy sometimes, but they weren't a boy. They were a they, actually, and he liked them and if it had come down to…things…it would have been like doing things with a girl…not that any of his friends had ever asked to do things with him! He barely even knew what those things were outside of things that he knew he wasn't supposed to have watched. No, the worst his friends had ever done was kiss him for…for reasons and the worst he had ever done was kiss them back.

Even if he didn't want to.

But he knew that it was selfish to not want to, especially when someone like Miss Suzuki was kissing him. Never in his life did he ever think that someone like her would have wanted to kiss someone like him…and never in his life did he think that he would ever have wanted to reject someone like her. She had kissed him and it had just felt…wrong. Worse than kissing Shimazaki, and Shimazaki was a boy. He didn't know what was wrong with him. She had kissed him and all he had been able to do was think about escaping. It made no sense. She was nice, she was smart, she was pretty, she took care of him, and she was his best friend. He should have wanted to be with her.

Even if she was…kind of….

Young.

He risked at glance at her. She had never looked as young to him as she did in that moment. She was only thirteen, he had celebrated her birthday last year, he remembered how old she was. It just hadn't mattered much to him before. She was thirteen, he was twenty eight. Actually she was closer to fourteen now, her birthday was in a few weeks, but that didn't help. If anything, thinking about her as being nearly fourteen only made her seem all the younger. It just mattered, suddenly, because she had kissed him.

Even though he knew that it shouldn't have.

When he thought of himself he always pictured who he had been when he'd locked himself away in his room, that twelve year old kid, the kid still in the sixth grade, not even in middle school. Thinking of himself in that way had been very easy since he hadn't had a mirror in his room, or a calendar, or any other way to see the time passing. Sure he had gotten taller but he had rarely been near enough to mom to compare their heights…he mostly had forgotten that he had gotten taller, older. That he was supposed to be an adult now.

He didn't feel like it, even now, but he knew he wasn't a kid.

He looked down at the DS in his hand. His game had been paused for pretty much this whole trip. He didn't want to un-pause it. He had played this Zelda game before so many times over the years. He could probably have drawn the entire map from memory if he'd had to. He used to like it, the same thing over and over again, it had been comforting to him, knowing what was going to happen….but it didn't help anymore.

He had no idea what was going to happen.

She was looking at him, now, he could feel it. Her aura against his. He used to find so much comfort in her. He used to know that whenever things got to be too much or too bad she would always be there for him, he would always be able to hide under her, like the umbrella he kept in his hand…but now for some reason he just didn't want to and he didn't know why. She was his friend and she had kissed him, yes, but sometimes your friends kissed you. That was just how it worked, and if anything he should have been happy that she had wanted to kiss him, happy that she had cared about him that much, happy that he had….maybe liked him…

No girl had ever liked him before.

He quickly un-paused his game…only to walk right into danger and lose his last heart. He didn't care, he'd won before, he knew what the ending was like. He kind of wanted to start from the very beginning again, to know every single step of what was going to happen, because right now he had no idea what was coming. She could have liked him…he knew that a friend kissing you didn't mean that they liked you, Minegishi and Shimazaki hadn't liked him when they'd kissed him, and Miss Suzuki could have just kissed him for the sake of kissing him. She didn't like him, he knew that she didn't, because if she did then nothing would make sense. She had lots of other people who could have liked her…he couldn't name any besides Shimazaki right now but even Shimazaki was better for her than he was. Shimazaki could get past the age thing.

Serizawa couldn't no matter how much he tried.

"Serizawa, are you alright?" Miss Suzuki asked. He nearly threw his Gameboy. That would have been bad, it would have landed right on Shimazaki, and he would most definitely have taken it the wrong way. He caught it, though, and even managed to keep his powers under control. He was on a train right now, that was very important.

If he lost control then everyone would have died…the thought doesn't help him stay in control at all!

"Serizawa?" asked Miss Suzuki. She was reaching over, past everyone, to…he didn't know! Her hand was going to his hand and he just…he had held her hand before but now it might have meant something else and he didn't want it to mean anything but if it did then he would have been making it worse and if it didn't then he just would have been making everything awkward by assuming so…so…so he did the only thing he could do.

He dropped his DS and stuffed his hands in his robe pockets. It was highly effective.

"Serizawa, you dropped this." Said Miss Suzuki as she picked up his DS and handed it to him. He quickly took his hand out of his pocket, grabbed it, and then put it back in with the DS. He didn't want to play right now anyway. He didn't want to do anything…he wished that he had been back in his room, or a room. Really, any room would have done just fine. Any space where he didn't have to worry about people.

Any space where he didn't have to worry about anything.

"Thank you Miss…Miss Suzuki." Said Serizawa before he turned and looked out the window. The world was going by so fast…he turned away. Miss Suzuki was still looking at him…there was nowhere to look. He tried looking down at his shoes…his feet were so much bigger than hers. He was so much bigger than her. Had he always been so much bigger than her?

Of course he had, he was nearly twice her age.

"You're not going to lose control and kill us or anything, are you?" asked Sho. Serizawa shook his head quickly.

"No! I mean I don't want to but I can't control it that well and…and I'll try not to!" said Serizawa

"That doesn't inspire confidence." Said Minegishi, their feet turning away from his. Shimazaki's turned towards theirs. His whole aura turned towards them. Because he liked that, that was why he got to be so close to them all the time, that was what you did when you liked someone…Miss Suzuki had always been the close to him. Did that mean that she liked him, too? Had she liked him this whole time? Had she just been waiting for…for he didn't even know what before trying to get him to like her back? Was he expected to be her boyfriend now? He didn't want to be her boyfriend. He had never expected to be her boyfriend or-or anyone's boyfriend! He didn't even know if that was something he was capable of being! And certainly not to her!

He knew that it was mean but the age thing was just…it was just too much for him to handle.

He grabbed the handle of his umbrella and tried to keep his breathing level. Beside him he could feel Hatori's aura spreading away from him, sort of like he was trying to put a barrier up, but through everyone's electronics. Like he was trying to link them together or something. He could feel Hatori in his phone, his Gameboy, and his DS….it was kind of like having a tiny version of Hatori in his pocket but not as fun as it should have been because he was in danger of killing them all and he didn't want to!

These were his friends and also even if they hadn't been killing people was wrong!

"Toshi, give him a bar or something." said Shimazaki

"I'm sorry, I hadn't realized that they were yours to give away, Ryou." said Minegishi

"What's a bar?" asked Sho

"The bitter long pills that make you ravenously sleepy and ravenously hungry, too. I'm pretty sure you got into one once when you were a kid." Said Shimazaki

"No, that was me." said Miss Suzuki

"Oh, well, whatever. He legitimately feels like he's getting close to the edge and aside from Toshi, who I'm touching right now, I don't know if I could get to the rest of you in time to, you know, save you from what's sure to be a quick but painful flaming train explosion death." Said Shimazaki. Serizawa grasped his umbrella even more tightly in his hands. So tightly that he swore he heard the plastic snapping. He was going to kill his friends…he was going to kill everyone and it was going to be his fault and then he was going to be all alone in the world and it was all his fault because he didn't know how to return Miss Suzuki's feelings if she even had any towards him and-

"We're all going to die if we don't get home soon." Said Hatori as he reached over and shoved his charger into the train's outlet. Serizawa gasped and practically threw himself against the train wall. Miss Suzuki was making shushing sounds at him lie he was Mukai and patting the top of his hand…but that wasn't helping!

"Big Sis, make Minegishi give him something before we all die." Said Sho

"Seconded." Said Shimazaki

"Um…alright. Minegishi, can you please share with Serizawa? I know that you don't like to share those but he's really freaking out. I think that riding the train twice in two days is just too much for him." said Miss Suzuki. She was both right and wrong. Taking the train, even if they were in the kind of train with sliding glass doors separating them from all of the strangers, it was still a lot. She understood him so well but also, somehow, not at all. He was mostly freaked out because of her, because of how much difference she had put into their relationship, because he had no idea where he was supposed to go from here…she had done all of this…

But he couldn't have been mad at her even if he'd tried. She was his best friend after all.

"Fine…but just this once. I'm not about to send him down the same path I sent you down. I just wouldn't be able to live with myself." Said Minegishi as they reached into their bag. As they fished around they muttered something about really meaning it this time. He didn't know what they meant by that but he was grateful for any kind of relief he could get from everything that was going on in his head.

He didn't care if these made him sleepy, he would rather have been sleepy than have accidentally killed everyone on this train.

"Give me one of those too." Said Hatori, the power cord swinging with every word he spoke. He held out his hand, Serizawa did the same, though Serizawa was the only one who got anything. It was just like Shimazaki had said, a rectangular pill. It looked kind of like one of those chocolate bars that you broke apart to share but white and tiny. He put it in his mouth.

It certainly didn't taste anything like chocolate.

"None for you." said Minegishi as they dropped a second pill into Serizawa's hand. It quickly joined the one in his mouth.

"But…Mob?" asked Hatori, looking toward Miss Suzuki. Serizawa tried to focus on swallowing the pill in his mouth. It wouldn't go down. It was too big and too bitter…but he had to swallow it. It was a bitter pill to swallow but if it made him feel better then he would force it down.

"Minegishi said no." said Miss Suzuki as she reached into her bag and handed him a water bottle. He expected it to be filled with milk but, no, it was just water. He drank what he needed and then passed it back to her…that had been her water bottle, it had been blue with snowflakes on it. He'd drank from the same water bottle as she had…but they'd done that before, it hadn't been weird before, so why was it weird now?

Did that count as an indirect kiss now or…or…

"Hey, I'm under just as much stress as Serizawa is right now, you know." said Hatori. Serizawa didn't feel very stressed. He just felt…he didn't know what this feeling was. It felt kind of like he was light and heavy at the same time.

"What, did your phone die too?" asked Minegishi. Serizawa pressed his head against the glass window separating him from the outside…it was really pretty out there, he decided. He didn't know why he had been scared of it. He wanted…not to go out there all the way but this…this was perfect. Even if it was going a little too fast and rocking him a little too much.

"No, it's not about my phone, it's about Suzuki and how pissed he is right now." said Hatori

"Dad's mad? Why?" asked Miss Suzuki

"Because no one's home to be in charge and he's been trying to get ahold of both of us but our phones have been dead and-" said Hatori

"So I was right about the whole 'dead phones' thing? Right?" asked Shimazaki. Hatori said something that Serizawa couldn't quite place and wasn't sure if he wanted to. He was good at combining bad words to make new bad words. Sho was good at it too, so good at it that sometimes Serizawa forgot that he and Sho weren't real brothers…he wondered what that would have been like, having a brother. Maybe like having a friend who didn't try and kiss you. That would have been nice, actually, not having to kiss your friends or worry about them liking you or…or maybe he shouldn't worried and just trusted Miss Suzuki….

"Someone should have remembered to bring chargers on this rescue." Said Sho. Serizawa opened his eyes. Right, right, he was supposed to be here and…and they were talking about something important…right, right….

"You guys didn't need to rescue me but, yes, someone needs to be in charge of remembering to bring chargers whenever we go somewhere far from home." Said Miss Suzuki. She was so smart, that was such a good idea, all of her ideas were good. Everything about her was good. She was such a good person…she was nearly perfect…no, not nearly.

She had kissed him, sure, but he could deal with that if it meant keeping her as a best friend…keeping her in his life.

"That sounds like a Shibata job." Said Shimazaki. Serizawa agreed. Shibata was so good at taking care of them…almost as Miss Suzuki was…she was so good at taking care of them…of him. He didn't know what he would have done without her…maybe put his head down and gotten some sleep?

That seemed like a very good idea right now.

"Shibata's not here to vote, though." Said Sho. Serizawa tried to keep his eyes opened. He failed.

"So? We can vote about him but without him. If he's got a problem with it he can bring it up next time we go somewhere. Right, Mob?" asked Shimazaki. With his eyes closed Serizawa could see their auras better. Shimazaki's was trying to connect with Miss Suzuki's, Miss Suzuki's was moving away from Shimazaki's, and Hatori's was everywhere all at once…and it seemed kind of scared…

Minegishi really should have shared with him, nobody should ever have had to feel like that.

"I agree. Ok, so it's settled, next time we're out Shibata is going to be in charge of the chargers and Hatori isn't allowed to have anything from Minegishi's mint tin." Said Miss Suzuki. Serizawa didn't mind looking at her, now. He had been so worried before but now…now he was kind of not. Because she was his friend and it wasn't like she wanted anything more from him, right? And if she did well, then, he would have to do his best. So what if he didn't like her like that, and she was so much younger than him it made him feel weird, and also maybe the President would beat him up?

She was his friend and it was his job to make her happy.

"That's such a good idea, Miss Suzuki, you're so smart…" said Serizawa as he felt himself get more and more tired. She was so smart. She was right all the time. He never had to think when she was around. If she thought that something was a good idea then it was a good idea. It didn't matter how he felt…he didn't even need to feel anything or think anything when she was around.

He trusted her, he loved her, and he would do whatever he asked of her no matter how weird or gross or wrong it made him feel. That was what real friendship was.