Yun Lu soon is smart.

He finds this out at an extremely early age, knows he is at an extremely early age. He learns to walk quickly, learns to talk soon after and, hungry to know more, he starts to read a little too.

Nearing one and a half years, his parents flash proud grins at him and subtly boast about their brilliant child, and he is smug because, even if it is an accepted occurrence in this world, he is still somewhat a rarity. He is also very suddenly whisked away to Japan and dumped in a place where he does not know the language or the culture.

Almost as if to compensate, his parents start taking turns with their neighbours as to who will take care of their similarly aged children so that he can learn things through interaction. For months, Lu soon practically pays no heed to his playmate half out of arrogance and half out of embarrassment at his lack of ability to communicate with the boy. He picks up more from the boy's air headed parents who use words he can understand are wrong but appealing all the same to his curious mind. So it takes him until two years of age to realize the truth about his playmate.

Koenig Ryuga is a true genius.

He is the son of two academics: Koenig Tanaka, who is deeply rooted in the sciences, and Koenig Saki, who has literature as her passion. Both are smart, intensely smart, and their little boy inherits both their scientific and literate minds. He learns Korean faster than Lu soon learns Japanese (it's humiliating that Lu soon doesn't notice this until they're knee deep in a conversation), starts to read fluently quicker than Lu soon can, is more knowledgeable than he can comprehend.

Yes, Lu soon is smart, but Ryuga is above him, dancing on a higher plane with his red-rimmed glasses perched on his nose and head buzzing with intelligence. It's even more of a hard fall from cloud nine when the Korean picks up on the blonde trying to act sillier than he is as a comfort. His whole stupid act isn't entirely real and it's all for the sake of his idiot playmate who believed he stood on top of the world.

Yun Lu soon is humbled at a very young age.

It is then he starts his secret studying. He forces himself to become better, to stand upon the same ground as his playmate turned friend turned unknowing role model. If Ryuga is a natural genius then Lu soon is a worked at genius who can't quite beat the raw talent but will damn well try.

Aged three, they both start kindergarten. Their crazy teacher groups them with two girls, one with long dark hair and the other with shortish blonde hair. The former is mature, someone Lu soon can see himself getting along with, but the latter is naive, young, bubbly and oblivious. He doesn't hate her, it's honestly rather hard to hate the girl because she means so well and he can see Ryuga's image in her kindness, but she's not like them all. Kurokawa Hana borders on the line of genius but Sasagawa Kyoko is ordinary.

Hana adores her however. Lu soon finds out that her mother left her and her father when she was just a little girl and, whilst Kyoko is not smart, she is soft and gentle and brushes away her friend's sadness with the comfort her vanished mother hadn't provided. She is a treasure and Lu soon respects this, but it is as a result that Hana and him do not ever kindle a meaningful friendship.

Anyway, the two girls move groups all of a sudden a little while later-Kyoko's brother gets injured apparently by these older boys and she is terrified of the other sex for years. It does not help that he and Ryuga are so smart that they can give off the air of being older and the girl is so quiet in her suffering, not wanting to hurt their feelings with her terror, that he feels her relief when she switches to an all girls' group. They do not socialize at all after this.

A few years later and the two neighbours, two close knitted friends, are in elementary school. Ryuga's bordering on obsessive tendencies come to life there, or are at least put under the spotlight.

Ryuga's parents are good people. They are passionate about their work-it brings them to life when they talk about it-and they are hardworking and they feel so much pride for their son. But Ryuga's parents aren't good parents.

Their passions mean that they have tunnelled visions with only their love for their work being in it most of the time. Their hardworking attitudes mean that when they are home they are not relaxing with their family, they are on their laptops or writing in their study. Their pride for their son means that they feel he is mentally old enough at least to not need any babying or huge displays of love.

Ryuga is locked out of their small worlds. He can see into them, get a few waves from the people inside them, but he is not a part of these worlds. And he gets why he has been locked out, understands why his parents are good people and is happy they are happy, however, understanding why and wanting it are two separate things.

His parents are happy though so he says nothing. Lu soon says nothing either.

Instead, Ryuga begins to work harder. He starts working on more ambitious scientific projects, starts writing stories with more complex words. Every now and then, he offers them to his parents with hopeful smiles hidden behind his newest creations and his parents are proud, they are always so proud of their darling boy and their hearts swell. Then, they go back to their work.

Lu soon starts bringing him sweets and snacks to gorge on during the day.

So Ryuga tries harder. Everything he does becomes grander and more impressive by the passing day and his teacher's are in awe, Lu soon's parents are flabbergasted and Ryuga's parents are proud. They are then called in to go to work and do a new incredible thing of their own, leaving Ryuga at home because he's a big boy now who is responsible enough to make decisions alone.

Lu soon makes him stay over at his that night and they stay up till midnight, throwing pillows, playing games and lying awake with their bodies almost touching.

Time blurs and suddenly Ryuga's asking Lu soon what middle school he's going to. Lu soon doesn't answer until the blonde tells him he's going to Midori Boys'. The Korean begs his parents to go there instead of Shimon middle school and they eventually accept. Both boys get a perfect score on their entrance papers and are both asked to give a speech when they do enter the school. Lu soon's parents are absolutely delighted and Ryuga's parents are proud (but Saki then flies off to Germany for a conference and Tanaka has to help a student).

Lu soon asks his parents to make another cake for Ryuga for what was initially just his congratulatory party in getting into such a top end school.

Midori is a trophy school. Every student is there to win them prizes and improve their reputation. Their trophy cabinet shines and there are rumours that the metals inside are polished everyday without fail. Within a year, Lu soon has his name on about a fifth of them all with Ryuga with his name on a third. The ever constant pride is followed by a look at the awards his parents have won, all far more accomplished than trophies awarded for mere middle school science and literature contests.

Lu soon starts coming over at regular periods and reminding Ryuga that the strange feeling in his stomach is deep hunger and that light headed feeling is lack of sleep and the pain in his hand is from gripping a pen too tight.

Ryuga asks his closest friend, the person who he has the closest bond with, what high school he's going to. There are no pretences this time and the golden eyed boy replies 'where you're going, idiot'. It ends up being another trophy school and Lu soon hates it, detests the suffocating pressure that makes him want to scream and swear at his teachers, but Ryuga doesn't even take the slightest notice, too preoccupied with his parents being proud of his choice and then rushing off to answer important calls.

Lu soon mouths off about Tanaka and Saki for the first time and the blonde chokes on his laughter, yet sees that the Korean is not doing it just for comic effect.

The final straw is when Ryuga chooses another image obsessed place to go to university. Lu soon shouts at him and tells him straight out that his parents will recognize his achievements but won't recognize their son's struggle to get their attention for just a few goddamn minutes. That this is all for nothing, not him, not his parents, nothing, and the shock makes the blonde flunk a small unimportant test. For the first time, Saki and Tanaka look at their son with eyes of concern and don't rush off to do something else related to their passion.

"All these years and the only thing I'd needed to do was fail." Ryuga says after rejecting the offer to talk to his parents, lying on Lu soon's bed as the boy sits on the floor. "Although I think I wouldn't have even done it on purpose if I'd known. Constant pride is better than disappointment."

That very next day, the blonde asks Lu soon if he'll go to a university in Italy with him. By then, Lu soon's parents just roll their eyes with smiles and say that he might as well finish the job and follow on his friend's heels. He likes to think of it instead as him cleaning up the idiot's mess and making sure he doesn't die early. Ryuga drops literature and focuses on science because that's what he's really wanted to do this entire time and the new country, the distance between his parents and himself, is liberating for him. Lu soon does psychology, which makes the blonde call him his personal therapist. He gets a swat over the head with a book for that, not the answer that Lu soon is so finely attuned to his hidden emotions that he understands the more open thought patterns of other people so easily now.

They're only a few years in and Ryuga gets an invitation to a secret club of scientists. A few months later and instead of being in a lecture hall, Lu soon is holding a gun and running down alleyways, swearing in every language he knows and blaming Ryuga for everything. The scientists the blonde was working with are dead and it's all very quickly turning into a horrific nightmare, although both feel more alive than they were ever before. They hide out in brothels, get drunk in low class bars and avoid the Millefiore like the damn plague.

Yes, they're scared, but it's hard to dwell on it too much when you're avoiding the heavy lead flying towards your heart and adrenaline makes your nerves sing. It's breathless and dangerous and exciting and Ryuga feels like it is the biggest 'fuck you' he's ever given his parents who expected such different things.

The reign of terror then ends and they're formally invited to a banquet thrown by the Vongola. They're basking in the defeat of their enemy and Vongola Decimo makes an appearance with his startlingly familiar wife with blonde hair and kind smiles. Lu soon and Ryuga learn then that Sasagawa Kyoko grows up to no longer cower in the presence of males but instead lash out when she is treated like an object to be used like she was when those boys had forced Ryohei out to face them. She goes to fight Mochida Kensuke when he calls her a prize, slaps a boy when she is seventeen for wanting to 'bang the hottest girl around to get everyone jealous', is discreetly subdued when another mafia family claims her husband uses her to seduce possible allies. The woman is still kind but she is also not entirely helpless.

Briefly, Lu soon entertains the idea of a world where Kyoko had been smarter to begin with and still just as kind. He imagines that Ryuga's obsessive tendencies wouldn't have gotten so bad as she would've pulled him out of that vicious cycle of work, work, work. He imagines them having been happier from an earlier age.

Ryuga asks him later what he wants to do now. His whole life so far has been spent rushing after this boy who has physically turned into an adult but is still his silly little playmate that learnt Korean as so to talk with his arrogant toddler self. He finds no fault in the idea of continuing this mission of his so he claps Ryuga on the back and truthfully answers 'I want to do what you want to do, stupid'.

That ends up being all the validation for his existence that Ryuga ever needs.

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Everyday I fall in love with you more and more. Except yesterday, yesterday you were pretty fucking annoying.

Details about chapter

Ryuga's parents: They are exactly the same in 'Kyoko' but I have never gone into much detail about them so this is what they're like. In 'Kyoko' they just didn't have as much as an effect on their son because he had a wider circle of friends who validated him and were also quite pushy about pleasing others not being something you should work towards. Eg. Kyoko hating Midori and being incredibly vocal about not wanting to go there (Ryuga still goes to Midori boys but it wasn't to please his parents entirely so he is happier there).

Maybe an interesting note-One of my parents is an academic (their partner now is also an academic). So a lot of how Ryuga's parents are is inspired by that and Ryuga's reaction of understanding their loyalty to work because they're happy doing their work. Ryuga's experience of it is a little more intense than it is for me but there is a lot of pressure to do well (more really just expectancy of it like it's obvious that should happen) and the feeling of having your own achievements being a little glossed over as a result. I'm terrible at putting it all into words ugh.

I will follow you to the end: Lu soon is very clingy to Ryuga in this because of the fact that they only really have each other as close friends. Kyoko and Hana do actually make Ryuga more confident and give Lulu some assurance that he can handle being on his own sometimes. Without their influence, Ryuga is more self contained and it makes Lulu stress out.

Obsessive tendencies: Kyoko and Hana stop that quite effectively. They spend so much time as friends just hanging out that Ryuga doesn't fill his time with work-although they do shine through a little when he does things for the Bovino.

Love?: I was trying to show more in this thing that Ryuga and Lu soon have a more complex relationship than just childhood friends that act like a silly married couple. So yes, the somewhat jokey shipping of them does have depth behind it. If I'd made this longer I might've showed some more developing feelings but I don't want to go into the details of their whole life right now at least. Maybe more fluffy extras in the main fic though. Maybe.

Kyoko no object of yours: If you did not read the manga, you would not know that in the first chapter Kyoko literally has to be held back when Mochida calls her a 'prize'. That girl was ready to fight. (Now if only she was more ready for that throughout the series ._.)

YO YOU ALL WERE ASKING FOR THIS AND I GAVE IT YOU I DO GOOD JOB YES.