Your Free Passes Are Over
"You don't know what he is like behind closed doors."
"He didn't hook up with the girl. He gave her the money back."
Tyson sighs quietly, covering his face with his hands. He recalls their first meeting.
The weekend rager. Hilary drinking till she was bold enough to walk over and tap on Kai's shoulder. Him turning with a curious furrow between his brows. The sharp cut of his jaw. The feather light quality of Hilary's giggles.
Then again outside the house. Hilary in his arms. Kai's head bent towards hers. Tyson recalls the shock of his surprise when he saw them kissing. His best friend's hands gingerly holding onto the neck of the coolest guy in their campus.
His best friend. Who chose a dude she met a week ago over Tyson. The boy she'd known since kindergarten. Why?
Her absence carves a hole in his chest the size of a crater. He checks his messages again. Still nothing from Hilary.
Why? he wonders again.
They have always been that duo everyone around them called a package deal. You couldn't find one without the other. They were attached at the hip for years. Always sticking up and standing by each other no matter the circumstance. They were Bonnie and Clyde. Hilary his ride or die.
For her to choose Kai over him...
"You don't know about all the things he said to me."
What did he say to you? What could he say to make her fall in love with him so hard she couldn't see reason anymore?
He wants to run over. Knock up on Kai's door this late in the night. Shake him awake and ask him: What did you say to her?
What did you do?
Tyson presses his mouth against his fists. The room swathed in darkness around him. The only light streaming in from the windows next to his bed. Max sleeps soundly a few feet away from him. Snoring loud enough for the entire dorm to hear.
Tyson takes his phone back in hand and open his texts again. No new messages. A tweet pings at the top of his screen. He taps on it.
It's a picture of a ridiculously tiny penis with the caption: "What Tyson sees when he looks down in the shower." His mentions have been blowing up since the small dick tweet from The CampusScoop came out.
Kai's lovely work.
Underneath the first tweet is a reply from forty three seconds ago. "I don't think it's visible from that distance."
Tyson rolls his eyes. Stupid people.
The laughter and the taunts don't really affect him (except for that one weak moment in the shower earlier when he'd checked himself to make sure he wasn't the wrong size), but they are still a nuisance. He turns his notifications off.
He wonders if Hilary knows he's the new laughing stock of their campus. What she thinks about the mess if she does. He misses her dearly.
He falls into his bed and stares at the ceiling. There are glow in the dark stars above him. Max's doing. It's a nice view.
He has a meet coming up next week. He should focus on that. But his thoughts are scrambled. Tyson shifts his weight onto his side and unlocks his phone once more.
He had sent over a million texts to her by now. She hasn't responded to one.
He scrolls through the messages he'd sent and takes a screenshot of them to show them to Rei. Who is probably still awake. His recent insomnia putting him on a nightly movie marathon.
"She will not forgive me this century," he writes to his friend, adding a sad emoji and a gang sign at the end, below the attached image and hits send.
Rei does not respond. Weird. Did he manage to fall asleep today?
In which case, he probably shouldn't disturb him with further texts. Tyson sits back up and puts on his shoes. He can't sleep. He might as well go take a walk and work some of the excess energy off.
A stroll around the garden near the building will help relax his mind too.
Tyson closes the door behind him soundlessly and pads down the hallway.
Most of the students are already asleep. There's light streaming from underneath some of the doors though. Toho university of Tokyo is one of the top three in the whole country. Tyson got in on the basis of his outstanding performance on track. So did most of his friends. They all have athletic scholarships. Hilary excluded. She got in through sheer determination and perseverance i.e., she studied hard as fuck in her last years of high school.
Emily, his ex girlfriend, and now bestie, is here because this is where she has always belonged. The girl is a true genius. Tyson had fallen in love with her brains and beauty back in sophomore year at Sky High. They lasted for a year before Emily met new kid Michael and couldn't pretend she was in love with Tyson anymore.
The break up had been brutal on him. He had cried and holed up in his room for literal weeks till his friends stepped in and dragged him back to his usual self. She was his first love. And she had broken his heart when she told him she never loved him half as much as he loved her. That she'd been completely faking her attraction the final three months of their relationship.
His ego had been bruised. He'd sworn never to fall in love again because of how much it hurt when their relationship had ended. But, two years later, he'd met Maria in this university. Maria was a breath of fresh air and they'd gone out for six months before she revealed to him that she was still in love with her childhood bestfriend Rei.
Interestingly, the bad breakups had resulted in two great outcomes. His rock solid friendship with Michael and Rei. He'd met both of them through his past girlfriends who had been in love with them instead of Tyson. He should have ended up hating their guts. But once he got to know them it was bromance for life.
Soulmates they were. Platonic ones of course.
Tyson and Maria don't speak anymore, though he'd tried to preserve their friendship (and failed), but he and Emily are great buddies now. Max says that Emily and Tyson are so good at being friends because they were never actually in love but that is not true. It's mostly thanks to Emily, who is a terrific, well-rounded person, miles more mature than him. Her maturity balances out his spontaneous recklessness perfectly.
Maria's inability to look him in the eye and not feel guilty about stringing him along with her for six whole months in a cliched love triangle clashes sorely with Tyson's need to keep people in his life forever, resulting in the current situation where they avoid each other like the plague for the sake of everyone involved.
Both the couples are still going strong.
Tyson wonders when he will meet his better half.
The corridor is deserted around him, or so he thought, and that's why he nearly shrieks and jumps out of his skin when a dazed Brooklyn appears before him seemingly out of thin air.
"What the fuck" he curses in a strained whisper at the moony boy. "Dude, I thought you were a ghost. I nearly pissed my pants!"
The guy looks drugged. He always does. But tonight, he appears even more so.
"Hey, Tyson. Wanna see something cool?" he asks him conspiratorily.
Tyson stares at him dubiously. Wondering what the hell this guy is on about now. "Sure" he finally replies with a shrug.
There is no harm in humouring the dude once in a while, is there?
Tyson doesn't get him. Brooklyn is constantly zoned out. At campus, in classes, in the cafeteria. At first, Tyson had assumed he was a stoner. Before Rick told him he is naturally like that. Which prompted a question: "Is he okay in the head? He doesn't seem all there."
"Who knows?" Rick had asked rhetorically in response.
He follows him out the back exit of the building now. There's a low fence around the perimeter. Brooklyn crouches next to it and waves him over.
Whaaaat? Tyson checks both his sides to see if there are other people lurking about. He finds none. Feeling like the biggest loon on the planet, he slowly walks over to the fence and lowers to his level.
"Shh" He says with a finger on his lips. His blue eyes twinkle in the streetlight. He signals Tyson to look over the fence.
He does so curiously.
There is a handful of dudes - the Blitzkriegs, Tyson realizes with a start - near the edge of the campus grounds, where the in road meets the main. They're standing next to a truck idling on the main road, unloading what looks like a...what is that?
"Is that a boxing ring?" Tyson asks Brooklyn uncertainly.
The weird guy just glances at him weirdly, his eyes gleaming, and turns back to the scene.
They wrestle the ring onto a pickup truck waiting on the road that runs all around campus. Tyson spots Kai standing a few feet away, talking on his phone, and gesturing instructions to them when needed.
"They're transporting a boxing ring?" Tyson asks Brooklyn quietly.
He shakes his head. "No."
No? "They're bringing a boxing ring into the campus?" he tries again.
This time he nods. Impressed.
"Why?"
"Think"
"To hold a boxing tournament at the next 'wild' party?" he throws his first guess out.
Brooklyn shakes his head.
"They're holding a tournament in the campus?" he asks again, making it less specific.
The crazy dude leans toward him suddenly and says in a whisper. "It's The Ring."
Tyson raises his eyebrows. Bewildered.
"Top secret boxing match. One should never speak of it." He mimes zipping his lips shut and locking his mouth.
The Blitzkriegs were conducting illegal boxing tournaments at their university? Fantastic blackmail material. "I won't speak a word," he swears like he's going to tell everyone as soon as the sun comes up.
Brooklyn squeezes his arm. Tyson almost yelps in pain. "You can't tell anyone," he insists. Panic in his eyes.
Tyson feels bad for him and he promises immediately. "I won't."
"Good" He lets go of him.
"Man, look at her boobs. Unreal." Eddie holds up his phone for Tyson to see.
He swats it away.
"Dude, she sent them to you. Don't show them to me."
"No, but what do you think?"
"I'm not looking at that."
"Just take a peek."
"No" Tyson pushes the device away from his face.
He's hanging out with Eddie and Michael at the landing between the stairs, sitting on the ledge of the window overlooking the grounds below.
Eddie and Tyson are sat on opposite corners of the same window while Michael sprawls on one on the wall adjacent to theirs.
He has a notebook in his lap as the bell for his first class of the day is about to chime.
He is tapping a catchy beat on the hard cover of the book when he catches sight of Hilary descending the flight of steps to his left. He stands up, the book dropping, when she reaches the bottom, expecting her to acknowledge him, but her gaze falls on someone else instead.
Someone who had walked up the stairs on Tyson's right while she was climbing down from the one on the left.
She halts in the center of the landing as the Blitzkriegs boys and their leader approach her.
"Kai," she calls in a desperate voice to gain his attention. "I'm sorry."
They stop a couple of feet away from her.
Her crush regards her with barely veiled disdain.
"I'm sorry if I hurt you," she says. Tyson is tempted to tear all of his hair out. His friend is going to embarrass herself.
"I never said anything bad about you. Not a single word. Tyson lied because he was jealous. I'm sorry. I never intended to hurt you in any way-" she stops when a palm rises in front of her.
Kai shushes her with only a gesture.
He lowers his hand. "Listen, Hilda-"
"Hilary" she corrects him with a slight frown that disappears just as quickly as it had appeared.
"Whatever your name is," he dismisses the importance of her title with a wave, "First of all, calm down. Take a deep breath."
She does as she is told. Tyson's hand curls into a fist. Eddie and Michael shift uncomfortably anticipating what's about to come. Kai's crew incline their shoulders back as though they are preparing themselves for a good show.
"There. Feel calmer?"
"Yes"
"Good. Now listen carefully so that you understand this. I don't care what you or your friend says or thinks about me. Your existence is a mere annoyance to me. You're like a fly in my ear that keeps buzzing and won't leave me alone."
Hilary's cheeks and neck redden as he continues.
"You're not nearly pretty enough to be my girlfriend or smart enough to hold my attention for longer than you already have."
Her lips thin and Tyson's chest heaves. A lump rising in his throat as he sees the hurt blooming in her eyes.
"We had our fun. Now I want you to fly away, and take your friend with you. I'll like you better if you do," he finishes, and asks her to move out of his way with a wave of his hand. She almost trips on her feet as she shuffles to the side to let him and his gang pass.
He doesn't reach the next flight of stairs however.
Nor does he take one step further than where he was standing.
Tyson grabs his jacket and slams him back against the wall behind him. The Blitzkrieg boys scattering in a moment of surprise.
The shouts go up immediately. "Hey! Take your fucking hands off of him!" they warn him as Kai's head bounces off the wall with a thud.
He holds his palm up, refusing their help. He doesn't need it.
There's a storm in Tyson's heart as he stares at his face. "Take it back" he growls. "All of it."
Kai's lips press together. "I won't," he utters.
He's so angry he's about to go up in flames. Tyson almost rips the leather fabric in his hands as he twists it in his hands. He's so angry, he doesn't realize how close to the stairs they are standing.
"Tyson, stop!" Hilary shrieks at him. There's a quiver in her voice.
As though she's in tears.
And the last of his restraint snaps. In a sudden moment of thoughtlessness, he yanks Kai sideways, but they were so precariously close to the edge of the first step, Kai's foot slips and he loses his balance.
The collar slides from his grasp, leaving trails of burns on his skin. Tyson reaches for him out of impulse, his heart knocking against his ribs for a second as he fails to grab hold of his hand.
Hilary screams.
The boys shout and scramble to help.
Kai tumbles once down the short flight of stairs, hitting his forehead in the process.
Tyson's hand is still curling in the air when he reaches the bottom. There's a moment of absolute horror before he lands, gracefully so, and holds himself still on his fours.
When Kai finally rises to his feet, and looks up at Tyson, who is at the top of the stairs he just fell down, blood leaking from the wound on his temple, Tyson goes numb with fear.
The blood trickles down the side of his face. "I've run out of patience with you, Granger," he says quietly.
The whole building goes stock still around him.
Tyson's vision blurs down to nothing but Kai's eyes as he says.
"You're not walking unscarred from this. I'm going to make you wish you never so much as breathed in my direction."