Monday, May 10th

Shiro felt dejected as he saw Makoto walk away, her form descending down the stairs. Each bounce of her step breaking his heart more and more. But he wasn't going to move. Not an inch. His proclamation wasn't in vain. It was like he was a guard dog. Protecting Makoto's domain. Kinda.

Ohya walked past him, her expression was clearly confused, "Shiro…? Why are you just standing here…?"

"Is it menacing?"

"Hell no. You're trying hard as hell to look menacing but you look like Pinnocino."

His face fell flat, "Oh…"

"But, you didn't answer my question, you know, why are you just standing here?"

He perked up a little, "Oh, I'm just waiting on Niijima-san to get back."

Her face became puzzled as he spoke, "Well…uh, okay. Good luck with that. I have a little thing I want to do with Ryuji."

Shiro groaned, "You should really stop hanging around him."

His response elicited her eyes to narrow with poison, "I don't really think you're in any position to say anything about who I can and can't hang with, Nishikawa."

"I'm just saying, him and that whole group…nothing good comes from them. Especially that oldest Kurusu boy."

She scoffed, "Oh please, you're just saying that because he was around Niijima-senpai so much. Get a grip, Nishikawa."

He bit his tongue as she walked away, "I'm just looking out for you!"

"Kiss my ass!" Her voice echoed down the stairway, leaving Shiro alone as he continued with his duty of being frozen in time in front of the door whilst time moved fluidly in the foreground.

She's going to come back.

Just a few minutes of patience.

Nothing more, nothing less.

A few minutes turned into groupings of ten minutes.

Those groupings morphed into sets of twenty.

Those twenty grotesquely transformed into hours.

And yet, there he was, standing like the faithful idiot he was in the middle of the first years' hallway.

He was sure he'd eventually become the butt of the school, with many of the first years making jokes at his expense.

"Hey, did you hear about the lonely third-year that roams the halls outside of the Student Council office? I hear they call him the 'Ghost of Morooka' since he groans on and on about faithfulness and devotion…"

He could hear it now…Shujin was not a good place for mental and social health.

He should know, considering he actively adds to it every single day.

After a while, with the sun bearing fruit to a beautiful orange hue, Shiro slid against the door, hitting the floor with a faint thump. Exhaustion was getting the better of him as he pulled his phone from his pockets, forcing him to accept the grim reality that Makoto Niijima lied to him and that he simply went too far in actually waiting for her.

At first, he gritted his teeth in anger but it quickly faded away as he expelled out a sigh of wistful longing. He had opened his phone to his movie app, examining some tickets.

"I guess buying these was a waste of time. A limited re-viewing of one of her favorite movies…"

While neck-deep inside of his mindscape, he failed to notice a leg tapping against his, "Hey, kid."

He lifted his head dejectedly, "Niijima-san…?" It seemed as if he was still feeding into his delusions.

"I have no idea who a 'Niijima-san' is…I hope to god it's not the one I'm thinking of…" The man, wearing a slim white suit with a flamingo pink undershirt topped off with a white hat and a suitcase in his hand, cleared his throat to maintain the boy's attention, "Are you okay, kid? I was told by your principal to take a look around here…but it's hard to do that when you look like a corpse on the ground." His voice, now that Shiro had time to get used to it, was rich and smooth, almost akin to coffee itself.

Shiro, heeding the man's words, pushed himself off of the ground, "I'm fine sir, thank you for asking. Just a little…out of it."

The man gave a brief chuckle as he scratched his patchy beard, "Did she break your heart or something, son?"

Shiro was taken aback by the reading, "W-What?" He sighed, "Well…not really. She can't break my heart if she never…oh forget it."

"Must be unrequited, isn't it? If you want her attention, you have to do something rousing. Something that'll really show her you're serious about her–"

"BRRRRRR!"

His phone started ringing as he dug swiftly into his jacket pocket, "Hello? You okay?"

Shiro couldn't make out any of the words on the other side of the line, but it sounded like a bunch of rambling with no coherence.

The man eventually sighed as he ended the call, putting his phone back in his pocket, "I'm sorry kid, but I have to go. Hopefully, that half-baked advice was enough for you. Good luck."

Much like Makoto hours prior, his forme disappeared down the stairs, but instead of dejection, Shiro felt an odd sense of clarity.

The first realization from this?

He needed to get his ass home.

A/N:

HA, I have returned. I wrote this up in like an hour. I'm on a writing high today lmao.

I still need to figure out if I want Shiro to comically be a piece of shit or a serious piece of shit...
Hmm...choices, choices.