Shirogane Miyuki was having a lot more fun than he expected to in Mana's birthday party.
'It can't be helped. Every kid gets giddy when you talk about self-defense.' Prior to this, Miyuki had always grouped himself closer to the older members of the group, considering he was about double the birthday celebrant's age, but to make this admission, he labeled himself a kid.
Miyuki was excited. He learned so much more than he expected. Every point felt important, backed by the teacher's various experiences.
All of it was made even more fulfilling because of the company.
One genius Miyuki had identified previously, Mana, who despite getting distracted and losing attention at times, was always participative and willingly helped the lesson along as the live example. He would also call upon various people at times to help him showcase parts of the lesson. He was like a teaching assistant. Miyuki felt like Mana's exuberant participation helped make the lesson more interesting.
Aqua, the other one who interested him, was also diligently typing notes down. Typing it, not writing it, having borrowed the phone of Mana's friend, Ai, to make notes. Miyuki felt impressed that Aqua could see the worth in learning and working hard as much as he did, and felt like he should watch over the boy in the future so that he grew up less like his exuberant friend Mana and more like the way he is right now.
Among the others in the room currently, he was surprised to see even adults taking notes. His father, while a little weird, was also asking questions, clearly listening. Miyako, Aqua and Ruby's mother, was taking notes on her tablet with a strange look in her eyes. Mana's mother was watching over from the back, silent, but clearly paying attention.
The ones in the room who paid the least attention were Ruby, Kana, and Miyuki's dearest little sister Kei.
Ruby, Kana, and Kei were all highly interested at the start, but Miyuki could tell that their interest waned as time went by.
The last person Miyuki was going to note was Ai, Mana's friend.
Ai is energetic, incredibly so, in a way that reminded Miyuki of their mutual friend Mana. She seemed to him to be very nice and sweet to lend Aqua her phone to type notes, and was close enough to Mana to be invited to his birthday party and actually go.
'She is very pretty.' Miyuki noted, his cheeks flushing a bit as he watched her giggle at Mana who was dragging her into a 'guided scenario', a sort of reenactment of a scenario wherein one could be in danger.
The scenario was that Mana was a crazy, crazy murderer(Mana used the word meanie, but Miyuki could tell what he really meant by the phone he'd repurposed and swung as if it were a knife).
Mana knocked on the door (just the wall), and spoke in an exaggeratedly gruff voice. "Ai-san, congratulations on your birthday.". Mana's eyebrows furrowed, his face exaggeratedly tight and serious.
Miyuki thought his acting was lame. 'Is he really an actor?' He wondered.
Ai, playing along, gasped theatrically, opening an air door. "Huh?!" she gasped, palm held up to her face. "Who are you? How do you know my name? How do you know where I live?" she questioned in quick succession, completing the exaggerated reaction with a step backward. "Ah, but it's not my birthday though." She rapped on her head, sticking out her tongue teasingly.
Miyuki couldn't help but think that she was amazingly pretty as she did that.
"Wait!" the teacher interrupted, one hand on her hip and the other in the air. "Ai, you shouldn't open the door for just anyone, especially if you don't know the person!" she scolded the woman. "What you should do is look through the door's peephole, question them through the door, at most open the door only through the door chain! You can't just let anyone have access to your home this easily!"
"Huh?" Ai looked confused, and while Miyuki thought she looked cute even with how confused she was, Miyuki was confused that she was confused at all. 'She didn't know that?' Miyuki didn't understand why. 'Even I knew that.' His impression of her intelligence diminished a little.
"Why not?" the one asking was Kei, Miyuki's dearest and most adorable little sister, whose head was tilted to the side in confusion.
"Well, you see…" Hayasaka straightened up, clearly about to give a lecture. "Everyone, pay attention, this is important!"
Miyuki felt his attention center on their teacher.
"The world has a lot of bad guys - meanies." She gestured at Mana, who did his best to look stern and swung his phone like a blade several times. With his size, he just looked cute to Miyuki, but Miyuki could understand what the teacher was trying to say with that.
"These mean people can hurt you. They can steal your things. They might even hurt those around you." The teacher warned, speaking with the simplest terms available to her.
"That is why we have self-defense. You have to know how to protect yourself and those around you so you can remain safe and happy." She concluded.
Mana had a question, raising his hand. He waved his hand energetically as if desperate to call attention to himself. "Teacher! I saw in an article somewhere that most crimes are committed by someone you know! Is that true?" Mana asked, and the idea astounded Miyuki.
It was even more shocking to Miyuki when the teacher nodded in agreement.
"Yes. Most violent crimes are actually perpetrated by people you know and are aware of. That is why, you should always make sure to be alert. Make sure that you are careful with who you trust. If you think that someone is going too far, then leave them, go somewhere safe, make sure you find someone who can help you." the teacher explained.
Miyuki nodded, taking her words to heart. "But teacher, we're all good here, right?" a knot of pressure built up in Miyuki's stomach.
The teacher nodded lightly, her head tilted to the side in thought. "Yes, perhaps. But don't get me wrong. You should not be afraid to trust people. There are many good people out there in the world, just as much as there are bad people. But no matter what, you should still always be careful. If you think something is weird or suspicious, make sure you're safe."
Miyuki nodded, the pressure in his stomach lightening softly. His eyes softened as his gaze washed over his new friends in the room. "Right."
Hoshino Ai watched as the teacher waved goodbye, declining to eat lunch at the party to go to another appointment, and was instead sent home with a packaged meal of food to go alongside her payment - by Mana, who sent her off with a big smile.
They were quite close, she observed as the teacher headpatted Mana before she left, but she realized that as his English tutor, they probably met up a few more times than she and her kids met up with Mana.
Ai was not the most excited for Mana's surprise to end.
While she was not the most interested in self-defense personally, she could see the need. She did, after all, once live in an orphanage where she had to take care of herself to survive.
She also worked as an idol. Every now and again, she would hear rumors, stories of idols facing stalkers, fan harassment, hate mail, death threats, sexual advances, the whole package of dangerous little things.
Ai knew just how beautiful she was. She worked hard to develop and maintain that beauty, after all. Beauty was everything to an idol. She calculated and controlled everything, from the food she ate, to the exercises she did, the products she applied on her body, the facial expressions she lets others see, her body language, all the way up to even the tone of her voice. She used everything she learned at the Lalalai theater group to become beautiful.
As someone beautiful who has heard all of the stories of bad things happening to people who are beautiful, she was always prepared with pepper spray no matter where she went.
Getting a more in depth look at self-defense was interesting to her too, since at least, now, she had more viable targets to target and defend herself.
One thing she really learned was the importance of awareness, especially around her front door.
Ai smiled as she recalled Mana dragging her to perform in front of everyone, and the subsequent lecture she got from the teacher as a result of how carefree she was when she opened the door.
Her countenance darkened when she thought about it. 'If a stalker followed me home and I opened the door like that, who knows what would happen to me, or worse, Aqua and Ruby.'
She recalled seeing Miyako and Aqua take notes on the self-defense lesson and palmed her phone which Aqua borrowed.
Her eyes widened. 'Aqua took down a lot of notes. He must have been paying a lot of attention.' Ai was surprised at how many notes Aqua was able to make. There was even a word here and there that she didn't recognize. 'Aqua's quite the little genius.' Ai thought, the barest traces of a proud smile on her lips.
"It's time for lunch!" Mana called out excitedly as he, Kana, and Miura, the three members of the Arima family, received the ordered food from the delivery man and started distributing it to everyone.
Ai leapt to her feet to help out, leaving Ruby and Aqua to socialize with Miyuki and Kei. They seemed to be doing pretty well. Ruby had approached the shyer Kei to make conversation, as Ai expected. She was extra proud that Aqua, who was often the shyer of the twins, was giving effort to make conversation with the older child Miyuki.
She turned her head to focus on her self-assigned task. "Kana, give me a bunch! I'll help out!" she grabbed a few party paper plates from Kana, who thanked her cheerfully, and then started distributing them. After she finished with that task, she moved on to helping Mana who was helping distribute utensils and cups instead. He seemed to have distributing utensils and cups covered, even going so far as to provide a cup holder, so Ai followed him around pouring drinks on everyone's request.
With everyone equipped and their plates filled with food, Ai's gaze followed Mana as he went in front of everyone again, catching everyone's attention.
"Here you go guys!" Mana announced as he set everyone up to eat. "I chose for us to have easy to eat pizza and chicken so that we can eat while we watch the movie!"
Everyone cheered. Ruby in particular seemed extra excited to watch the movie. She wasn't able to see a lot of the recording. She was not able to see Ai and Mana act together, and no matter how many times the people involved told her about it, it never diminished her excitement to see the scene. Or rather, she just wanted to see her mother in everything. 'Isn't my daughter just the most adorable?' Ai cooed in her head, and it was almost enough to distract herself from the fact that she did not want to watch the movie with everyone.
Ai even set an appointment for a recording at 2:30, after lunch, so that she had an excut leave early to prepare for the recording
She'd even let Mana know beforehand the other week so that he would know to expect her to leave early, and her exit could go smoothly.
Mana stepped down from the stage, smiling at Ai. "Ai-nee! I thought that it would be a shame to watch the movie without you because you were such a big part of it, so I set it up in a way that we could have lunch while the movie was playing so that you could still make it to your recording appointment after!"
Ai sweat dropped. 'Of course Mana found a way for me to stay.' She opened her mouth to say no, but Mana stepped forward, grasping her hands.
"Ai-nee, is it okay if we watch it together?" his sapphire colored eyes glistened as they looked at her, and her heart melted along with any desire to resist.
'It's unfair that he looks at me with eyes that remind me so much of Aqua's eyes…' she pouted, knowing that she was beaten. His eyes reminded her of Aqua's eyes, even back then when they first met during the recording.
Ai's hand wiggled out of Mana's grasp and propped forward onto his red mane of hair, stroking it gently. 'Now that I think about it, this is the first time I'm actually headpatting him. Usually Mana is the one headpatting me.' she realized something shockingly embarrassing in hindsight.
"Me too, Ai-nee, me too!" the cheeky brat stood there with his hand raised high.
In one smooth motion, she knelt down so that he could reach her head, and he started headpatting her back.
Mana smiled at her, softly, and Ai blinked in surprise. 'His smile seems softer than usual.' she noticed.
His hand trailed down from her hair, brushing against her ear, and fell onto her shoulder, holding it gently. "Thank you for staying to watch, Ai-nee."
Before she could find the words to respond, Mana had already turned around to the others, picked up some food, and started the movie.
I heard that people wanted more gigachad wholesomeness and so I did my best to deliver. Or something like that, HAHAHA
Also, Miyuki incessantly noting that Ai is very pretty. Bro, if you were a 9 year old and you spent any amount of time near Hoshino Ai, you would for sure develop some kind of minor crush on her. Ai is indeed very pretty.
Too bad for Miyuki that Mana's wholesome gigachad aura is way too overwhelming LMAO
Also, I realized from a comment that people didn't actually really know what Mana looks like. At this age, he kinda looks like Kana as a child, just male, and with blue eyes. He also has red hair, like Kana does, but it's a slightly lighter shade of red.
Conceptually, he has blue eyes like his mother and shares the red hair from his father with his sister. Kana has her father's red eyes.
Uhhh I actually have no clue what the parents really look like, so yeah that's just me declaring it. We never really get a very clear image of them unfiltered.
Also, Oshi no Ko S1 finally ended, it's amazing, everyone is amazing, I love it so so so much! I'm glad that I'm writing this, ehehe
I lie once more: We will have more fanfics! More more more!
This lie will come true :))