Takao's life sucks.
This discovery (while not actually anything new, as he has this 'realization' at least thrice per week) hits him sometime around the fiftieth gazillion-- or so Takao estimates -- mental disorder he looks up. And, really, his life does sucks. Let's recapitulate:
He is one of two students who failed ninth grade and has to go to summer school while his two best friends are away enjoying themselves. His teacher for summer school is a drunk, senile little old man who loves to make fun of his pain. His only classmate is a violent, bad-tempered robot thing who can probably kill him with his brain. He has to do an extremely loosely-defined project in order to fully pass ninth grade, with the aid of previously mentioned class mate. And the project has to be on mental disorders, of all things, meaning things that a) are defined with big words Takao can't even pronounce, never mind knows what they actually mean and b) he knows absolutely nothing about except that everyone around him definitely has (multiples of them, even). Really! Could his life suck more?
Don't answer that. Takao honestly doesn't want to jinx himself.
"Why me?" Takao asks desperately, thrusting his arms towards the ceiling in a silent plea to whatever god is listening. (That is, none whatsoever.) "Help! I'll do anything!"
"How about you research and stop screaming in a library," Kai deadpans at him without even looking up from his book. For a guy that does absolutely nothing in class, he's surprisingly studious. Even though he looks bored to death and he's reading with an elbow propped up on the table, his face resting against his fist. Well, he's still reading, which is more than he did in their make-up classes.
Takao mentally makes a face and calls him all the insults he knows. Surprisingly few, but it's not his fault his vocabulary is limited. It's not like he's an idiot or something! Really!
"I would," Takao grinds out, "But I still don't know what we're looking for. You just gave me the book and told me to look! An' why are we looking in books anyway? The Internet'd be better! And also--"
Takao shuts up quickly when Kai slams his book closed and looks up, ever-so-slowly, glaring through his bangs. Takao does not remember Kai's eyes being so red before.
I'm gonna die, he thinks pitifully, he'll jump rope with my intestines after eviscerating me and ripping out my tongue with his bare hands.
Let it never be said Takao has a lousy imagination. It's just that it mostly never works out in his favor. And it's a bit violent. Takao blames all those campy horror movies. Damn you, Hollywood. Kai glares at him for a while longer, so long that Takao starts squirming in his seat nervously, before he finally just huffs in exasperatedly and stands up.
"This is stupid," he scoffs, and starts to walk away without another word (or without picking up any of the books, which will be a pain for the librarians later).
Takao shoots up after him, gathering his stuff quickly with a curse and jogging to catch up to Kai's quick, angered strides, ignoring the looks of pure hatred everyone in the library shoots them (that is, about three people, considering it's summer). If it wasn't for the project, Takao would probably have just shouted at his back some sort of snappy comeback (like 'Yeah? Yeah, well, so is your face', because Takao's version of a snappy comeback is mediocre at best), but as it stands Takao needs Kai, whether he likes it or not. And he doesn't like it. Oh no, not at all. But beggars can't be choosers, and blablabla, more cliché phrases no one cares about that include Takao convincing himself.
Man, his life sucks.
"Hey, wait!" Takao yells after Kai, disturbing the three people in the library even more and having the strange feeling he's going to have to run after Kai a heck of a lot in his life. That's stupid, though -- like hell he's spending time with that guy once summer ends. He catches up to Kai just before they reach the exit to the library, and again Takao believes Kai must be magic or something, to walk that fast. "What do you not get about the concept of teamwork, here?!"
Okay, so maybe snapping that wasn't the best idea Takao had ever had. But hey, it wasn't the worst, either. (There was that time, with the lawnmower in that shop, and his brother was never the same after that...) Besides, he wasn't going to be the only one to make some amends for this thing to work -- he's sick and tired of having to bend backward towards Kai's will just because the guy is probably older, stronger, scarier and smarter than he is. That wasn't fair! Maybe it was logical, but it wasn't fair. So there.
Kai, who hadn't even bothered to stop his whole 'la la la walking away la la la I am a robot la la la stop envisioning me saying la la la you're about to think of me as a Disney princess la la la' routine and was subsequently forcing Takao to follow his quick strides by jogging (curse his shorter legs and diminutive attention span, which had nothing to do with Takao having to jog but did make him go off into odd tangents like the one that included Kai being Snow White, and wasn't that just a disturbing thought?), doesn't even look at him as he deadpans:
"The part where I need to spend time with someone who doesn't even see a door when it's coming, that's what I don't understand."
Takao throws a bemused look at him. Sure, he ran into a door earlier, but that didn't have anything to do with the subject at hand--
BAM.
Oh, look, straight into another door. That's what Kai meant.
"... Ow," Takao says eloquently, rubbing his forehead where a huge bruise is already forming. Doors are evil. "Owwww. My life blows."
Kai stares at him blankly from the doorway right next to Takao's. His door is open, the stupid lucky bastard. It's like everyone in the entire Universe was working together to mock him horribly. Screw the universe. And doors. Especially doors. In Takao's perfect world, there are no doors. You enter houses through giant windows. Which are basically doors, so really Takao sucks at coming up with alternatives for doors. Stupid doors.
"My life blows big baby chunks," Takao adds, as if hoping Kai would pity him enough to stop staring at him like he is mentally retarded. Or maybe he just wanted to say big baby chunks. Or maybe hitting his head against doors so often as made him completely idiotic. Yeah, that works.
Kai stares at him with an extremely pained expression; as if every moment spent in his company hurts him physically from 'the dumb' Takao exudes. Perhaps he's worried that he will catch stupid. That's silly, though -- you can't catch stupid. At least Takao thinks so. Hopes so, considering who their teacher for the summer is. Though Tao's specialness is not stupid so much as pure craziness, and while Takao isn't a hundred percent sure you can't catch the stupid, he learned from his grandfather that madness is not a disease you can catch. Otherwise he'd have it already. Takao isn't crazy; ADD, kind of slow, tactless, lazy and prone to fits that make people believe he's crazy, but not actually crazy. Also, he has a history of running into doors and feeling extremely suicidal, but that still doesn't make him crazy. Might point towards the 'special needs' class, though.
Or maybe madness is hereditary, because wow but his train of thoughts derailed there. Forever.
"I hate doors," Takao announces, belatedly. Very belatedly. He blames his self-diagnosed ADD, which is probably a lie and just hereditary nutsiness, but that thought is too depressing, so, self-diagnosed ADD it is! "Ahurrr -- uhm. The project! We have to ... do it together," he finishes lamely.
Fuuuuuuuuuck doors. Seriously.
"... We have until summer school ends," Kai tells him in a tone of voice normally reserved for the special children who are currently eating glue and naming all their toes at the same time.
Takao just gapes. "So, wait, if we have like, six more weeks, why the heck did you even drag me to the library in the first place?! Dude! Uncool!"
That is totally uncool, man, and his grandfather's madness really is hereditary. That or speaking like that is something you learn by running into doors. A lot.
Had Takao said 'fuck doors' yet? Seriously. Fuck doors.
"Do you honestly think I want to spend six weeks in your company?" Kai drawls. "The sooner we're done with this stupid team project, the sooner you can stop following me and running into doors. I don't do teams."
Oh, look, Kai was doing the bitchy loner speech. How original. Not. Takao huffs, blowing his cheeks up childishly and crossing his arms. Kai looks terribly unimpressed, probably because it makes Takao look like a giant, flesh colored frog. Meh. "There's no I in team, you know," Takao says, mockingly, using a higher tone of voice to make it sound like the kind of annoying lesson for kids it really was.
"There's no Kai in team, either," Kai mimics with the exact same tone of voice, and then looks just as bewildered as Takao when he realizes he bothered replying to such childish taunting. In the same childish fashion, to boot. And with the worse comeback since 'yeah well so's your face'. "I'm done here," he adds, aggravated -- at himself; maybe, though Takao is willing to be a gazillion dollars he is aggravated at Takao, life, the universe, and everything more than himself.
And then he turns around and leaves through the open door, while Takao just stares for a while because, really? He totally should've seen that one coming. He's about to charge after Kai when he remembers that, directly in front of him is a closed door, so he glares at that one for half a second and takes a step to the left.
"You're not getting me this time,"Takao tells the door triumphantly, and then marches off to get to Kai.
And promptly walks into the wall, because he should've taken a step to his other left.
"BIG BABY CHUNKS," Takao curses loudly.
The librarian, who had been ignoring him and Kai all this time, throws him a look.
"Shhhh."
Takao's life sucks.
Like a Hoover.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
Takao gives up on running after Kai for the day, for multiple reasons.
First, his head hurts. This is unsurprising, considering your head generally hurts when you ram it into things repeatedly. Second, in the few minutes it took him to stop cursing doors, walls and every other non-open space that exists in this world, Kai had probably managed to get halfway through the city, and Takao really doesn't feel like running that far. Or at all, to be more honest. Third, after checking out the project outline and being assured that it was indeed only due on the last few days of summer school, Takao has decided that he is going to become Mr. Procrastinator Extraordinaire and not care anymore for a while. At least until tomorrow, in any case. Lastly, he is really tired of chasing Kai. It's no fun at all.
So, there it is. Takao is going to go home (truth), start his homework (lie), ignore his grandfather (truth), do his other chores (lie), and then lie in bed (truth) and forget about the whole thing entirely (complete bullshit). That's all he'll do for the night.
Tomorrow, of course, is a different story. He'll have to find a way to corner Kai and force the guy to plan some project-working time with him, even if that means dragging him back to his home or whining to Tao about it. Seiryuu forbid he has to resort to that, though. He and Kai will talk, and that's what's important. It's not like he wants to know the guy. It's strictly going to be about school work. Kai does seem to care about that, at least. A little. Sort of.
That talk is really going to be needed.
Takao just hopes it goes better than the one his brother almost had with him over video conference about 'Puberty and the Changes You're Going Through'. Takao had never been so glad to see his dad interrupt a conversation. Especially considering how blunt his older brother could be. Man, he'd dodged a bullet there.
So, anyway. Today, home. Tomorrow, talk with Mr. Stuck-Up about the project. That was the schedule so far, and Takao was sticking to it, and not going to let anything distract or divert him from it, ever.
He heads on home, determined to make this thing work.
... And then, he steadily ignores Kai at the riverbank, because it would screw up the schedule.
Oh, shut up.
~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~
As it turns out, Takao would have been better off going against schedule.
The next day, he's unable to talk to Kai at lunch because of a few incidents that led to him 'exploring the city' with Tao (which Takao has promptly forgotten for the sake of his sanity, forever and ever and there were so many pairs of shoes). He figures, there's no harm in that. After all, even though he's been unable to talk with Kai during classes (he'd tried, even going so far as seating himself next to Kai, who'd looked disgruntled but didn't kill him, which was a good thing, but if he whispered Kai ignored him, and if he talked loud enough for Tao to hear him he was advised not to cheat, this was an important test, which was ridiculous because Kai had done no work at all, and they weren't even taking a test anyway, so he'd just given up in the end) and the only time he had left to talk with him today before Kai disappeared forever was at the end of classes, either here or at the riverbank, it was still entirely possible.
So, he was still determined, one hundred percent ready and hating math like you wouldn't believe. Not that the math had anything to do with, well, anything, but he still hated them. (Screw your statistics, world. There totally are such things as lucky numbers!)
A knock on the door cuts off his mental ranting at math and angry doodling of numbers and percentages being thrown off a cliff (or what any other person would call 'scribbles and lines and stuff', because there is no coherence in them whatsoever). A few seconds after the knock, which actually made Tao look up from his magazine (on shoes, why shoes, why) but failed to bring Kai to look anywhere but the window, Principal Daitenji enters the room.
"Principal Daitenji!" Takao exclaims, still stuck in his dream that one day the principal will tell him he is in summer school because of an unfortunate error, or that all this time he's been on one of those weird reality TV shows that try to trap you in surreal situations. He knows the chances of that are infinitively small, smaller than Kai actually cracking a smile, but it would still be nice.
The Principal smiles at him politely, dabbing at his forehead in a nervous manner. That meant he hadn't come for good news. Damn it. "Good afternoon, m'boy," Daitenji tells him in his best 'loving grandparent' voice, and this is why Takao can never stay mad at him, ever. Daitenji's too... well, nice. "Tao-sensei."
Tao smiles at the principal, bowing his head in acknowledgment. "Principal! To what do I owe this honorable visit?"
"I'm afraid I'm not here to visit," Daitenji responds. "I'm actually here for Mr. Hiwatari -- Kai? M'boy?"
All eyes are turned to the figure steadily ignoring everything going on around him. There's not even a twitch of response. Takao is under the sudden impression Kai is totally sleeping. Daitenji, for his part, simply sighs and dabs his forehead with his handkerchief again. Way too nervous. Wonder what Kai did?
"Takao, m'boy -- would you mind unplugging him?"
Takao stares. Un...plugging. Oh man. He knew Kai was a robot. Daitenji, catching his look, shakes his head and chuckles softly.
"The earphones, boy, the earphones," he adds, and Takao is not disappointed at all.
Okay, maybe a little, but at least it explains what Kai does in class all the time.
He reaches over and, finally seeing the telltale signs of the earphone cord (black, like Kai's shirt, and that explains why he'd never noticed before), tugs on them slightly. Kai's head swivels around, unplugging them himself in a swift movement, glaring murder at Takao and practically bristling with indignation.
He should have said he minded and let Daitenji do it himself. Eep. He makes a face back at Kai, gesturing to Daitenji with a 'Pay attention' look on his face, and man it feels good to be able to do it to someone else, for once. Daitenji coughs loudly at the same time, to get them to pay attention, and then he gets the stares of two teenagers on him at once, one suddenly carefully blank (Kai's) and one accusing Daitenji of trying to get him murdered (Takao's, obviously). He dabs at his forehead some more.
Takao notes that he can't hear what music Kai was listening to at all, and is definitely not disappointed again.
"Kai, m'boy, your grandfather sent someone to get you," Daitenji explains softly, only a hint of nervousness in his voice. "You've been excused for the reminder of the day."
Kai stares, silently, before nodding, getting up, grabbing the few things he had and start to leave without a word.
Takao, for his part, just gapes. "Hey, wait--" he starts to protest, but Daitenji shakes his head at him and he stops, frowning.
"He says it's very important business," Daitenji tells Kai, and Kai just shrugs, unmoved, stalking past the principal and heading off into the hallway.
What is going ooooooooon.
"Well, Tao, I'll see you later. Takao, m'boy, do work hard on your studies? And don't worry, Kai will be back tomorrow. Now, good day," Daitenji tells them, closing the door behind him as he follows Kai.
There are a few questions in Takao's mind, right now.
Like, what kind of business did Kai's grandfather want with him? Why had Daitenji been so nervous about it? What kind of man was Kai's grandfather? Did Kai live with his parents, or just his grandpa, like him? Where exactly did Kai live? What did his house look like?
What was for supper?
"Oh, yes, things are getting quite interesting," Tao muses aloud. Takao nods in agreement, absent-mindedly.
Then he realizes what he's doing.
"Wait, what? What's getting interesting?" Takao demands loudly, staring at Tao wide-eyed.
Tao, for his part, merely gestures innocently to his magazine. "The shoes, of course! What else would I be talking about?"
Yeah. Of course. What else indeed.
...
This totally threw off his schedule. Damn it.
SPEAKING OF THINGS THAT THROW OFF SCHEDULES, hello real life how nice of you to top me for so long.
I HAVE... a multitude of reasons as for why this took forever, including the fact that I moved into an apartment, started school again, family things, ETC, but since my reasons are actually legit no one cares anymore and so I shall move on to this chapter.
It is regrettably short and devoid of anything particularly interesting, and the project is ignored la la la. You see, I realized I didn't need to rush things on this side of the fence, since I have 2 months of storytime running parallel with, uh, ten months of storytime. I am going to run out of material if I rush things. SO. There you go. Besides I'm far more pumped up for the main storyline, especially since chapter 10 is the Special Kai chapter, so that one gets to be huge and interesting. This is filler. Okay? Okay. MOSTLY THIS IS FUNNY. I THINK. I MAY OR MAY NOT LACK PROPER HUMOR WHEN VERY BUSY. Sorry, guys.
Thank you for all the reviews/faves/stalkering (humhum, you know who you are)! I'll do my best to get the next chapter out in the normal given time of a week, instead of you know a month and a half that was lame. Yeaaah. :D;
Hope you enjoyed it,
-Zia
(ONE HUNDRED PERCENT KAI CHAPTER COMING UP NEXT I REALLY AM PUMPED UP FOR IT!)
PS: As an apology gift (and total pimping of myself) for this taking sososo long, copy and paste this http :// chibizia. deviantart. com/ art/ Kai-Hiwatari-Cosplay-134787733 into your web browser (MINUS THE SPAAACES) to see a picture of my Kai cosplay! Oh, shut up, you totally do care. (Don't you? ;o; )