Teru really should have put 'teacher' or 'mentor' down on his career survey.
Because, really, as good as he was at soccer he was even better at teaching people things. Mainly because he was the best at what he did…wait, no, Shigeko didn't like that. Humble. She liked him when he was humble. He could be humble, he was humble, he was the most humble out of everyone he knew. Everyone knew he was the most humble and that was why he was going to, humbly, help Go with whatever extremely pressing matter it was that made him seek Teru, and his wisdom, out specifically.
And privately.
Usually when he went to the Awakening Lab they all worked in the main room, and hung out in the main room, and ate in the main room. The main room was the main place to be. Teru hadn't even explored the building that well before. He'd had no idea that there was a tea room just off of the kitchen. Shigeko would have loved it here. She loved small, intimate, spaces like this. It had been so long since they'd been alone together…not that he was complaining! She had her friends and he had his and he wasn't about to be one of those clingy guys who couldn't let their girlfriends have any space because they were so insecure that everyone seemed like a threat to the relationship. He knew Shigeko, he loved Shigeko, and he loved it when she was happy and her friends made her happy.
And it wasn't like he didn't like her friends.
Tome could be a lot, and he never really understood the whole 'aliens are real' thing but it wasn't like she was any worse than the people he used to hang out with. He almost shuddered. The old him hadn't been the best at keeping company…but he wasn't that person anymore. He was a better person now and Shigeko loved him for who he was and he loved her and he loved her friends. Even Tome, who could be a lot, and even Rei, who…well, things had been kind of awkward for a minute there but they could both be adults about this. She came onto him, he let her down gently, and then that had been that. Nothing was weird between them and that had nothing to do with why Shigeko never asked him to hang out with her and her friends…not that he wanted to intrude on her time with them!
Though it had been a long time since he'd heard from her…
"…so what should I do?" said Go. Teru, who had been in the process of surreptitiously checking his phone, looked up. Right, Go. The reason he was here in the first place. He took a sip of his tea and nodded as he tried to think back to what it was the Go had said…
He came up with nothing.
"Well…" said Teru, trying his best to sound calm and collected. He took a deep breath and calmed his aura. He crossed his legs at the ankle, he had been drumming his toes against the floor nervously, he couldn't look nervous. He couldn't look like anything other than himself.
He was Teru. He didn't get nervous.
"I mean it's not like I don't like her, I just…she kind of freaks me out, that's all." said Go. Teru nodded again. That was something that he could work with. He at least knew who Go was talking about. It wasn't like he had that many girls in his life willing to hold his sticky fingers-
Ok, no, he took that back. That had been mean. Shigeko wouldn't have liked that at all.
"Have you told her how you feel?" asked Teru as he put his tea cup down and folded his hands. Go gave him a horrified look…ok, maybe he'd mis stepped there…no, no, he could use this.
"Are you crazy? Yeah, sure, that'll go over really well. 'Hey Rei, how are you? I'm fine aside from the fact that you freak me the hell out!'" said Go
"Not in so many words, obviously." Said Teru in a tone that told Go that, yes, he was the one being stupid there but not so insulting that Teru came off as an asshole. Because he wasn't. This was just how good mentoring went, that was all.
"I can't tell her any of that in any words! I think that she might be in love with me, I can't hurt her like that." Said Go, holding his head in his hands. Teru wondered if it was better to stick to the conversation at hand or tell Go that he was dangerously close to getting his sticky, red fingers near his eyes…
"Did she say, specifically, that she was in love with you…and you may want to get your hands away from your eyes." Said Teru. Go, thankfully, moved his hands before he had two problems.
"Huh? Oh yeah." Said Go
"So, she did tell you that she's in love with you in that many words?" asked Teru. Just because he was curious. Just because he wanted to know everything that there was to know about this. Just so that he could help Go out. That was all, he just wanted to be a good friend, and it had nothing to do with the fact that Shigeko hadn't told him that she was in love with him until after they had slept together for the first time…it wasn't a contest and even if it had been he wasn't about to turn into that kind of person again. What he did with Shigeko he did because he loved her and not because he was trying to get through everything anyone else did.
And also Rei moved a lot faster than Shigeko, and Go didn't exactly have a lot of experience when it came to relationships either, so really there was no point in comparing the two of them either.
"Well…no, but like I said, she's acting like it and it's kind of…I mean I like her a lot but I don't know if I'm in love with her." said Go as he looked down at his shoes. Teru crossed his legs and reached out with his powers for his teacup. He was nearly out of tea…he didn't sip for real. He just took the time to figure out what to say. He was starting to put the pieces together in his mind…though he didn't have all the pieces. If he were to misspeak then he would have looked like a moron…
But if he asked Go to repeat himself then it would have all been over.
Go would have known that he hadn't been paying attention. Then he would have told the others that Teru wasn't much of a mentor at all. Then they'd stop asking him to help them with their powers. Then he wouldn't be able to come around anymore, they wouldn't have had any reason to hang out with him anymore, and then he wouldn't have had anywhere to go after school when he didn't have biking or soccer. Then he would have had to go home and sit alone until something came up…so he'd pretty much just end up looking like a total loser and the last thing he wanted to be was a loser-
-not that he still thought of people in terms of winners and losers or anything like that.
"Did you at least tell you that you liked her? Or have you been letting her make all the moves?" asked Teru, though it wasn't really asking, since he knew Rei and Go. Rei, of course, had made every single move because that was just how she was. She wasn't the kind of girl who baked you cookies and hung around your desk until you asked her out, she was the kind of girl who grabbed your shoulders with both hands and tried to kiss you like it was a manga or something. Go was the kind of guy to run away screaming, kind of like a kid would, even though he wasn't that much younger than Teru. Teru would have been amazed at the difference a year could bring if he hadn't been well past the 'girls are terrifying' stage when he had been thirteen. Hell, he had gotten past that at nine!
But not everyone could be blessed with maturity like he had been.
"I've…kind of been letting her make most of the moves…" said Go quietly.
"And by 'most' I'm assuming that you mean 'all'." said Teru
"…yeah…but it's just…I've never done anything before! She's the only girl who's ever tried to kiss me, I mean she did kiss me, but-but no girls ever wanted to so much as kiss me before and it's really freaking me out! Like, I don't know what to do!" said Go…maybe a little too loudly. There weren't a lot of rules here but he didn't need Matsuura kicking them out for being too loud…and he didn't need Takeshi hearing, too, and coming in. Takeshi and Go were kind of…a lot…when they were together. Not that he had a problem with that! He was happy that his friends got along…
Even if they got along like a house on fire.
"Don't worry, I know exactly what to do. You don't need to freak out." Said Teru. He wondered if it would have been too much to reach out and put his hand over Go's reassuringly…he kept his hands where they were. That would have been entirely too much, the more he thought about it, and he didn't want to make things awkward. They were getting to the line and Teru was, if anything, skilled when it came to finding the line but not crossing it. Getting just to the edge of it. Being just helpful enough that Go would keep on coming to him for advice but not so helpful that it started to look disingenuous.
Teru was many things but fake wasn't one of them.
"That's easy for you to say! You've had, like, a million girlfriends before!" said Go
"Not quite so many." Said Teru
"Well…I don't know, like a hundred then? More than I've ever had…I've never even had a girl like me before. I don't know what I'm supposed to…do…with it, you know? Like, she always wants to hold hands and kiss and…and I think other stuff too and it's like I want to, I mean she's really hot and nice and she smells really good all the time, but also I don't want to because I have no idea what I'm doing and if I do it wrong then she's never going to want to talk to me again and…and also it's like…scary? But don't tell anyone I said that!" said Go. Teru raised his hands in surrender and nodded.
"Don't worry, your secret is safe with me." said Teru
"Thanks…and really, don't tell anyone. Takeshi doesn't even know how freaked out I am about this. He thinks that Rei and I doing it, like, all the time and it's like I want to tell him the truth because he's my best friend and I shouldn't lie to him but I don't want him to think that I'm weird, either. I mean she's my girlfriend and I'm supposed to want to, and I do, but when she tries to kiss me and…and all the other stuff it's kind of-" said Go
"A lot." Said Teru before he could think. He was getting dangerously close to the line, to a line, and he knew he needed to pull back. The last thing he needed was for it to come out that he had been extremely freaked out when Shigeko had asked him to sleep with her. Nobody needed to know that he had spent an entire week doing nothing but researching what to do and when and how…and nobody needed to know about all the notes he took…or the ones he wrote on his arms and taped behind his headboard…and nobody needed to know how he had still managed to mess up during…
Nobody needed to know that he was that kind of person…that was he was anything other than the person he wanted to be.
"I mean it's important to take these things slow even if she's trying to go fast." Said Teru
"Wait…but she wants to go fast. If I go too slow she's going to find a guy who wants to go as fast as she does…and that's pretty much any guy! I mean not the gay ones, Sho says that she used to be into both him and Ritsu and they're the gayest guys I know, but like…she's really hot and nice and stuff and if she wanted to find another boyfriend it'd probably take her, like, ten seconds." Said Go
"Yes, that is always cause for worry, but if she really loves you then she won't leave you. It's important to go slow so you, um, don't go too fast and…yeah." said Teru. He maybe should have planned that out better before he opened his mouth. That had come out a mess, a complete and total mess!
"I…don't get it." Said Go
"I'm my experience, which we've established is considerable, I think that you should wait for her to tell you that she's in love with you before you make any decisions." Said Teru quickly. There, that made sense…right?
"So I have to wait for her to actually say it? But she's showing it already." Said Go
"You've got to realize that you could always be misreading her signals. You yourself just said that she's your first girlfriend. For all you know she could be trying to go fast because she thinks that's what you want. This whole thing could just be one big misunderstanding." Said Teru, slightly annoyed that Go was questioning him like that. Sure, alright, Teru might not have been a complete and total expert but he knew more than Go did.
"Yeah…that makes sense. She hasn't actually come out and told me that she loves me and she might just think that I want to…I mean I do but I don't…but I won't have to unless she tells me that she loves me…yeah!" said Go. Teru nodded humbly and finished off his tea.
"Anytime." Said Teru as he put his teacup back down. It made kind of a hollow sound when it hit the table…probably because he had forgotten to use a coaster. But Go didn't notice, he was too wrapped up in his relationship problems to notice that Teru had messed up there.
Good.
Because, really, it was such a small thing that it didn't matter. It wasn't worth him discrediting himself over. He wasn't going to draw attention to it and call his judgment into question, because there was no reason to, because he had the best judgement. That was why people came to him, not the other way around, and that was why he was the only one here who was qualified to give important advice like this.
Because he knew what he was doing…he always knew what he was doing.
"Hey Teru, one more thing." Said Go. Teru nearly sighed. He didn't, though, because he wasn't exasperated at all. He was a wealth of important information and whatever it was that Go was going to come to him with he was ready for.
"Yes?" asked Teru
"Do you know where I can find a dog on really short notice? And for free?" asked Go
"I…what?" asked Teru. Well, that hadn't been what he had been expecting…and he officially was out of ideas. He liked animals from a distance. They were cute and fun and all of that, and Shigeko loved them, but they were also messy and a lot of work and liked to jump up and shed all over you.
"I spent all my money on hot chips and crane games and I don't get any more allowance until next week and even then I don't think that I'm going to have enough for a dog." Said Go
"And you need a dog because?" asked Teru
"I kind of told Rei that I have a dog…" said Go
"Don't lie to your girlfriend, girls really hate that." Said Teru. There, that was advice that he didn't even have to think about. If there was one thing that girls like it was honesty, or at least Shigeko did, not that he would ever have lied to her…and certainly not about something as easily disprovable as whether or not he had a dog.
"I know, I know, but I wasn't thinking and now it's this big thing, I mean it's going to be this big thing, and I really need a dog but I don't know how I'm supposed to hide it from my mom and I'm kind of broke, too." Said Go
"Shigeko found a few puppies when she was out on a job with Reigen. Maybe Reigen would be willing to spare one for you." said Teru, mentally patting himself on the back for his incredibly resourcefulness and ability to think on his feet.
"You think Reigen would tell Rei?" asked Go
"No, she's actually very good at keeping secrets, though maybe don't tell Shigeko. If you tell her something then it's pretty much like telling Tome and Rei, too." Said Teru
"Yeah, like how she's always telling Rei about you and stuff." Said Go. Teru could have sworn that there was a bitter not to Go's voice but it was hard to focus on that, not now, not when he knew that Shigeko was talking about him to other people…to her friends…but what had he given her to talk about? He almost never messed up. Aside from the disaster that had been their first time…
"What-uh, what does she say about me?" said Teru, picking up his empty teacup just to have something to do with his hands. Not that he was nervous, no, but it would have been very easy to mistake him for nervous. That was all.
"Just that you're so good at messing around and stuff that she happy cried and stuff…" muttered Go. Teru didn't care that he was crossing his arms and practically glaring a hole in the table. Shigeko had actually said that! She had…well, yes, they had both cried and it had been embarrassing on his end…but still!
"Oh. I hadn't realized that she had shared that with everyone, or that it was getting around." Said Teru humbly, because he was humble, he was the most humble.
"Well, yeah, she did and now Rei probably wants to happy cry too and I don't know how to make a girl happy cry. It seems kind of dangerous. Like what I think she's happy crying but I'm actually so bad at it that she's crying for real and then she never wants to see me again? And also she'd be really sad, too, and I don't want either of those to happen but they could-" said Go
"She'll tell you how when the time comes." Said Teru. He was getting dangerously close, again, to the line. The line between giving advice and looking like an idiot who hadn't known what he'd been doing…but he wasn't crossing it. That was just good advice, that was all, and it in no way made him look bad.
"She will?" asked Go
"They always do. So just do whatever she says, when the time comes, and you'll be fine…and stop lying to her, too, at least not about big things like having a dog. She'll never trust you if she finds out that you've been lying to her." Said Teru
"It's not a lie anymore. Not if I borrow a dog and teach it to live in my closet while I'm at school." said Go. Teru decided to keep the fact that Go's idea was terrible, the worst he'd ever heard, to himself. He'd given enough good advice today…mostly good advice.
No, the best advice, because that was what he did. He helped his friends with their problems…he told them what to do. He was the master after all, a good master, and a good master gave good advice to his students.