"It's like one day you flipped a switch and became someone I never knew."

"Hey, Captain!" a mellow, accented voice called out to me right before I was barrelled into for a hug as someone jumped on my back, causing me to spill the remaining half of my hot tea on the ground. Irritation radiated off of me in waves as the person was removed from my back, and the culprit dragged along by the owner of the mellow voice entered my field of vision.

"Inoue, the next time you pull that shit and make me spill my caffeine, I'm flipping your ass," I state bluntly, my eyes narrowing almost into slits at the 5ft 4in blonde boy being dragged by the collar by none other than my vice captain, Ortiz-Castillo Raul, a 6ft dark skinned exchange student from Guadalajara, Mexico, and my closest friend that I had made at the university.

"Take it easy, la trigresa (tigress)," Castillo teased with a small smile that reached his chocolate brown eyes, causing me to roll my own eyes and take a deep breath, calming myself.

"Callate, Castillo," I responded in Spanish, with an annoyed voice that had almost no real bite to it, earning from a chuckle from him as I turned my attention to the nervous first year that was Inoue Tatsuki, who was silently awaiting my wrath, and threw him some money which he caught with his top notch reflexes, "Tatsu, bring me a black tea before practice start, and I'll consider not making you stretch with me for the day."

At that, Tatsu paled before nodding with determination and running off like a man on a mission. Stretching with me was terrifying for most of our teammates since flexibility was something I was quite stern about and would push them past their limits to the point it would often make them more sore than an actual sparring session would.

"You're going soft, Captain," Yamazaki Shoma, our other 1st year, a guy who was nearly 6ft 4in in height and had shoulder length black hair that he kept pulled into a low bun, commented with a sigh. I rolled my eyes yet again before elbowing him in the gut just hard enough to knock the wind out of him, causing the giant of a man to hunch over and putting him almost at eye level with me.

"Want to run that one by me again, Yamazaki?" I asked with an oddly kind smile that always unnerved my teammates because I had quite the reputation for being a bit of a demon captain. I was never unnecessarily tough on my teammates, but I did have high expectations and was quite strict as a result.

Yamazaki gave me a small smile and shook his head in response. A pat on my back ended our little back and forth as Castillo motioned towards the gym before looking at his watch. Despite the aching in my back as well as my arms and legs from the various other events from this morning,a sincere smile found its way onto my lips. These guys, plus our two 2nd years, who had better hope they were already in the gym, as well as our manager, Castillo's younger sister Luisa, made me feel at home. Or at least, they created a space that was what I imagined home was supposed to be: warm, kind, and most importantly of all, safe.

Unfortunately, practice can only last so long, and as usual for me, my day passed in a flash. Judo and my classes were the best parts of my life. For those 8 hours combined, Monday through Friday, I was strong, free, safe, and in charge of my own life. Those feelings were amazing but temporary, and I was always reminded of that fact almost as soon as I stepped through the door of my apartment.

"You're five minutes late," Katashi's low voice commented, irritation lacing his words as I gave him a nervous, apologetic smile.

"Sorry about that, Katashi. A classmate stopped to ask me for some notes she missed," I responded honestly, though with how nervous I was for his reaction, my voice shook, making it sound like I was lying.

"Really? Are you sure you weren't flirting with our new meat head of a neighbor like you were this morning?" he immediately accused, and I felt my head fly into a panic.

"I wasn't flirting with him!" I insisted, but Katashi's unconvinced green eyes had me questioning my own memory.

Maybe I did flirt with him! But I was so sure that I didn't. I made sure to use a formal honorific, only used his last name, refused to take his hand when he tried to help me up... We only touched when we ran into each other on accident and when he grabbed my arm. Was me not scolding him for that mean I was flirting?!

"See you later, Endou-channnn!" Katashi mocked Bokuto's voice from this morning, and I felt all the blood leave my face as I knew now why he was angry.

"I-I'm sorry, Katashi... I was already almost outside, and I didn't want to yell at him and disturb everyone," I tried to explain, but the man I had been in love with for three years cut me off.

"Enough of your shitty excuses. I'm hungry and want spicy curry for dinner. Don't fuck it up this time, and I might just forgive you," he spat before going into the spare room he used as a streaming space and slamming the door.

Taking a deep shaky breath, I wiped the few tears that had manage to escape the confines of my tear ducts before setting my stuff down at my desk in the living room and heaving straight to the kitchen to hopefully earn Katashi's forgiveness for the mistakes I had made today. Right as I put on my apron, my phone buzzed, and as I read the message, I felt an all-too-familiar panic begin to crawl up my back just a bit more.

It'd better be ready in 30 minutes. ~Katashi

Sending a silent prayer to whoever or whatever might be listening, I focused on getting the food prepared as quickly as possible. I finished with a couple of minutes to spare and gently knocked on the door of the streaming room. I waited for Katashi to yell out "come in!" with a friendly voice that I almost only heard nowadays when he was still live streaming. I opened the door giving him a smile as I handed him his food.

"Where's my drink?" he asked in a fake kind voice that sent shivers down my spine in the worst way. I mumbled an apology and ran to get his drink and brough it back with another warm smile plastered on my face until he shooed me off.

I took this opportunity to work on some of my homework for my Russian class. As part of my linguistics degree, I needed to be able to pass at least 4 language proficiency tests, including the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, an exam that even made Japanese majors have a spike in blood pressure. So far, I was fairly confident that I could pass that one as well as the tests for Spanish (thanks in no small part to Castillo) and English.

Russian, however, had been plaguing me since I started studying it freshman year of college. Early on I made up for that by spending a lot of time in the language lab getting extra tutoring from Haiba Lev, a native speaker who was also fluent in Japanese, however, around 6 months after Katashi and I started dating, Katashi had asked me to stop going. He didn't trust Haiba, who unfortunately for me was the only Russian tutor there. It was frustrating given that it was largely thanks to the ridiculously tall guy that I had such a strong basis of understanding for the beautifully complicated language.

A boom of thunder accompanied by the power flickering out for a couple of seconds snapped me out of my internal lament. Those thoughts were instead replaced with a silent plea that Katashi was at least done streaming by the time the power went out. A sharp blow to my back accompanied with the sound of glass shattering and the feeling of broken glass cutting into my shoulder blades answered the plea which was then replaced with the though that at least the storm should have been loud enough to drown out what was sure happen next.

-

Song: Come Hang Out by AJR

A/N: From now on, if the quotes at the beginning don't have a name credited to them it's because the author is unknown. They aren't my quotes, but I haven't found them to be credited to anyone either.