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“If you eat that fast, you’re gonna puke.”
Darumi, slowly working her way through the hunk of sickeningly sweet candy stuck in her teeth, looks at Tsubasa. Like, really looks. A huge, bug-eyed stare. She gulps and flashes her a multicolored scowl. “And what’s it to you? Did you…” She gasps theatrically. “POISON my breakfast?! And now you need me to eat every last bite of it so that the toxins can ravage my insides?!”
Tsubasa gags. “What? No! I just don’t want you to barf all over me while I’m eating!”
“Hm… Then I guess somebody else slipped motor oil into this.” She takes another bite into the functional katamari ball of sugar in her hands, hiding her smile at Tsubasa’s expression. It’s like she bit into a lemon or something.
She grimaces. Or maybe that’s her. That’s the last time she takes anything lemon flavored out of the Cafeteria’s candy machine.
Darumi keeps eating, making increasingly obnoxious chewing and smacking noises until Tsubasa gets up with a groan and a green tint to her face. She almost feels bad, but… it’s for the best. She’s already busy with that romance game that’s been going on; spending any time around Darumi would probably just screw up her chances. And it’s not like she’s not used to being alone.
A familiar pit in her stomach grows, one that can’t be filled with buckets of junk food. It’s like a cold wind drilling straight into her bones, a gale surrounding her and sweeping her up in a heady blur that takes her away from everything.
Until Gaku sits down across from her, nearly making her jump as he lets out a long-suffering sigh.
She blinks, and somehow he takes that as an opportunity to start talking.
“Man… how do you do it?”
“...Do what?” She’s used to Stammering Gaku, and Perverted Gaku, and Stammering-Perverted Gaku. But Introspective Gaku is a different beast entirely, something weird enough to dissuade her from being… well, weird.
“H-how do you keep being you?”
She’s struck silent for a second time, which is probably a record for both of them.
“I-It’s like you’re never unsure. Never second-guessing yourself, never… thinking?” Rude. She thinks on occasion, when it’s not more fun to not . “But you’re never bothered by it! You just… you’re so confident in who you are.”
Something vile and acidic bubbles in her throat, and she almost wrings Gaku by his.
Of course I look confident to you. It’s easy to look confident when you haven’t been honest to anyone in years. I look like that to you and to anyone else who sees a special little snowflake for them to dote on until they get bored.
Instead of voicing any of that, though, a multicolored tongue flicks out teasingly. “Aw, Gaku! If you wanted to be more like me, all you had to do was ask! It’ll just take a couple teeny-tiny daily beatings for a few years, and BAM!” She slams the table, preening internally as he jumps. Confidence guaranteed!”
“T-that can’t be the only way! I-I’m serious here, Darumi! I really don’t…”
He gulps, tugging his hat down and squeezing it in his hands. “I don’t know how to be me anymore. O-or… or if I really want to.”
And somewhere, deep inside of Darumi’s cold, not-so shriveled heart, she feels a twinge of sympathy. She hates people who see her as a trophy of weirdness almost as much as she hates people who see her as a charity case. They’re both the same: they don’t see her.
But Gaku looks serious. No rude comments, no complaints, just… an earnest plea. It strikes her silent for a moment.
Just for a moment, though.
“Kyohohoho…” She grins. “So… one of you finally comes to me to learn the way of the hikikomori. The path of the loner, of the rebel who rejects society at every turn… The way of-”
Darumi pauses. She needs to come up with something incredible. Something that’ll knock Gaku’s socks straight out of his ratty sneakers. She needs…
“ Amemiyism! ”
“...A-Amemiyism?”
“ Amemiyism!”
She screams it straight into his face, cackling as he sways back and nearly topples out of his chair.
Of course, she immediately loses her balance and actually falls out of her own chair, but it was mostly worth it.
She winces. Ow. Increasingly less worth it.
“So… what am I supposed to be learning here, again?”
Darumi shushes him, peeking her head through the War Room’s doors and peering around slowly. If Sirei’s not prowling the school, he’s usually staring up at the central computer in here mumbling to himself. She’d ask if he took up religion, but she prefers for him to turn a semi-blind eye to all the time she spends goofing off on the computers here.
Thankfully for her free time, he’s not around, so she drags Gaku into the room by the wrist. “The first precept of Amemiyism is to not question me! ” Shoving him down into a seat, she grins as he yelps and spins around uncontrollably. “The second is that all Amemiyists need to tell me their taste in visual novels so that I can corrupt them.”
Gaku manages to get his spiral under control and fixes his hat. “D-don’t you mean correct?”
“Nah, I’m pretty sure what I said was right.”
He scowls, peeking up at her under the brim of his hat. “C-can’t you be serious for one second? How is any of this stuff supposed to help me?! I’ve never even played a freaking visual novel before!”
Darumi’s grin spreads wider, from harlequin to Cheshire. “That just makes it even better! An unmolested virgin in the wild world of eroge… I’ll be able to mold your tastes from the ground up!”
He’s clearly not convinced.
Time to break out my secret weapon.
She sniffles, tears budding in the corners of her eyes. “O-Or… do you not trust me? You don’t think that I’m good enough to teach you? Y-you think I’m just too stupid ?”
Gaku practically falls over himself to reassure her. “N-no! I was just, uh…” He turns to the computer, clicking on the first file he sees and twisting back before it opens. “L-look! I’m playing one of them already!”
Darumi’s tears dry in a flash, and she spares herself a second to smirk. Then, she looks past Gaku and feels her grin physically falter.
“W-what? What is it?”
She almost considers telling him not to turn around.
Almost.
“O-Oh, god. Oh god! I-I… I can still see it! Why can I still see it?!”
Darumi whistles lightly as she moves the folder in question to the trash, and looks down at Gaku as he writhes on the floor. “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t have opened that one.”
He stops shivering for a second and glares up at her. “W-why did you even have that on there for someone to see?! T-that was disgusting!”
In hindsight, downloading the functional equivalent of dolphin porn onto a school computer probably wasn’t the best way to get Takumi Darumi’d, but it was really funny at the time. Honestly, she didn’t think a person could even turn that color.
Gaku’s still whining on the ground though, so she rolls her eyes and sighs. “It’s not that big of a deal, you baby. I’ll just show you something else.”
“Wh- if you show me anything else like that, I’m gonna puke!”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll show you something nice and boring for your normie senses.” Blech. If she keeps having to act this nice she might be the one to puke. It’s honestly surprising that Gaku hasn’t given up on getting her help yet. She didn’t exactly take him for someone with any kind of perseverance.
“I’ll cut out the gore, anything too psychological… aaaaaaand… there!” She spins, grinning down at the apprehensive boy. “A perfectly curated collection of the most mind-numbingly boring eroge I’ve got. You’re lucky the 2.5th precept of Amemiyism promotes patience and understanding.”
“...Yeah, like you’re one to talk about patience…” He grumbles some more about her practically ripping his arm off to get him to the War Room, but he gets up eventually, and she jumps up from her seat, bowing theatrically.
Gaku’s obviously not expecting much, but as he scrolls through a few synopses, his scowl eases. “T-these… uh, they’re not bad, I guess.” He lingers on one she remembers as a vaguely dark family drama about illegitimate children and blood magic, before turning back to her. “...But how is this supposed to make me more confident?”
Darumi’s smile falters. She kind of forgot that this whole thing was about his confidence and not just screwing with him. She bobs back and forth for a moment, pigtails swaying, before she brightens. “Better question: why haven’t you picked up any visual novels before now? Your taste might be totally vanilla… but that just means there’s more than enough boring crap out there if you’re really into the whole puppies and rainbows schtick.”
He looks like he’s about to protest the question, before he sighs. “I-It’s not like I didn’t try them because I never wanted to. I just never had the time to… or the money to spare. Do you know how much new computers cost? They’re freaking expensive! I’d have to stop eating for a year to save up enough from my jobs, and that’s not even including my little siblings! I swear, all of them eat like they’ve got another 3 kids stuffed inside them. If I had the choice, I’d-”
She chuckles darkly. “-Cut them all off so your freeloading family doesn’t drain every spare cent you have?”
Gaku stares at her, a vaguely disturbed expression on his face. “U-um. No? They’re not… I mean, they’re not that bad. They’re just kids. And besides, I’ve got enough.”
Darumi looks him up and down, conscious of Gaku’s questioning gaze. She’s probably staring at him weird, but… she can’t bring herself to care right now. Her eyes flick over his clothes, over patches on too-short jeans and a jacket one size too small, over a fringe of hair that explodes out of the back of his threadbare hat.
Gaku Maruko could be described as a lot of things, but having ‘enough’ wasn’t one of them.
She breaks the silent staredown with a smirk. “Well, whatever. Save what you like and you can come back to it later. A new precept awaits!” And with that, Darumi dashes away.
“H-hey, you still didn’t explain what this was supposed to teach me!” But she can still hear him rising from his seat to follow her, and she grins wider.
“If you don’t get it yet, remember 2.5!”
Darumi grimaces down at Gaku as he pants, hunched over. If Gaku was a dog, she thinks, he’d probably be some kind of pug, or a schnauzer. He just oozes pitiable charm.
“W-what…” He gasps, forcing himself to his feet. “W-what the heck are you… staring at?”
I was thinking about what kind of dog you’d be.
“I was thinking about what you’d look like with a bomb collar on you.”
She ignores the resulting spluttering and drags him over to the only occupied cage in the yard, waving cheerily at its inhabitant.
Eito Aotsuki doesn’t look particularly amused. In fact, he looks distinctly unamused , like a poodle about to maul its owner for dragging it and its pristine fur through a puddle of mud.
Maybe she’s stretching this dog metaphor to its limits.
“Hey, what are we seeing this jerk for?”
“Well, I was going to throw rocks through the bars so that Eito kills me first when he inevitably breaks out of here in the third act. You can just sit and watch, I guess.”
Gaku looks disbelieving for a second, but it falls off his face pretty quickly when she actually starts skipping around the Courtyard, humming and picking up pebbles to test their weight. She’s not serious, obviously. But the next part of her genius plan is currently scuttling around the back of her head, and she needs a little more time to pin it down.
Sure enough, Gaku scoffs and takes the bait, turning to Eito. “H-hey, she doesn’t really do that, right?”
He’s silent for a moment… before a sardonic grin spreads over his face. “And what if I said she did? Would you actually do anything about it? Or are you just asking me for the sake of indulging your vanity?”
“W-wha- dude!” Gaku splutters, reddening. “I’m trying to help you out here!”
“Honestly, the idea of one of you aiding me is so repulsive that I can hardly imagine it. But if you really want to help…” Eito’s smile is sickly-sweet. “Let me out of this cage, and I’ll make sure to purge your ugliness from the world as quickly and painlessly as possible.”
Gaku’s struck silent, and Eito presses the advantage. “No response? Then I guess you’re just as abhorrently indecisive as I thought. In fact…” He grins.
“Why don’t we make a game of this? I’m fairly certain I’ve already figured out exactly who you are, but we can run through the facts. You’re obviously not one of the girls, and you don’t have Takumi’s uniquely grotesque scent. Besides, he’s been busy playing that silly game with the rest of you loathsome freaks.”
“Shouma’s more formal than you, and Takemaru’s not enough of a coward to be you. He would have shown the mindless violence I expect from a typical human by now. That only leaves Ima… and you, Mr. Maruko. The exact kind of indecisive, spineless person I would expect to ask me such an idiotic question. Does it make you feel better to offer your pointless platitudes as you hide behind the greater good? I’m sure your ‘family’ will be so proud of you, when they come back to Earth to see their hardworking son turned into a 9-to-5 murderer.”
A dark grin coats Eito’s face. “So? Did I get it right, or-”
Darumi nearly clips him with a rock, relishing his choked hiss as it soars right by the bridge of his glasses.
“Hey! If you forgot about me already, I’m not doing nearly enough work to make you hate me!” She turns to Gaku and winces. He’s already getting all snotty and sniffly. Oops.
“Gaku, I-”
Too late. He drifts away from Eito’s cage and out of the Courtyard without a word, tugging his hat so low that it nearly covers his mouth. She clenches her fists, nails digging into her palms, and without even looking, raises another rock threateningly when she feels Eito just aching to chime in with a comment.
She kind of regrets it, though. Breaking things isn’t nearly as fun as everyone else makes it seem.
Darumi wanders through the halls of the academy, an incomprehensible funk clouding her thoughts. It’s not like she had to give Gaku any advice. And besides, she did the best she could for basically winging therapy. She’s the last person he should have asked. The last person anyone should have asked, if she’s being honest-
“Gah!”
Darumi jumps back with a yelp after turning a corner and getting a faceful of fabric. She looks up, and scowls to see the start of this whole mess.
“Hey, watch where you’re going! Doesn’t hitting on three different girls give you some kind of sixth pervert sense?”
Takumi frowns. “You’re the one who ran into me. And no, I don’t have a… pervert sense.”
“So you didn’t pick up anything from all that time messing around with Kyoshika? Lame.” She’s about to push past him and return to her aimless circuit, but he looks genuinely upset. “Jeez, what’s eating you?”
“N-nothing. It’s just…” He fidgets, scuffing the tile with his sneaker. “...Sometimes, I feel like… like this game isn’t going to work out how everyone thinks it will. Like… Moko keeps saying that I’ll find ‘The One’, and I know I’ve still got my time with Tsubasa left, but… the more time I spend with them, the worse I feel. I-I can’t even look at Kurara anymore, and Kyoshika…” He trails off, eyes glazing over before he snaps back to attention, frowning at her. “Wait, why are you even asking me?”
I wish I knew. “I’m bored, duh. Plus, you looked like you were about to start crying. If you’re gonna get murdered by a spurned lover or something, I wanna be on the ground floor for that!” He scoffs, turning to leave.
But before he does, he pauses, turning back to her. “...You know, sometimes… I’m really jealous of you, Darumi.”
She’s struck silent. “You and everyone else. …At least none of you have to worry about hurting anyone like this. I wish… I wish some of this wasn’t my responsibility.”
He walks away, and Darumi stands there for a while, processing. In the midst of this whole romance game, she hadn’t really spent any time thinking about the participants. It didn’t have anything to do with her, and the whole situation just reeked of boring normie drama. She had enough problems without thinking about Takumi playing tonsil hockey with 3 different girls.
But what he said… his jealousy. That sticks with her.
And for the first time all morning, she knows exactly what Gaku needs to hear.
She just needs to figure out how to say it.
Darumi bangs on his door over and over again. She’d think he was out, but she checked the fire extinguishers before running up here, and both of them were accounted for. He’s just moping.
Sure enough, after about 20 or 30 knocks, the door swings inwards and Gaku comes out with a mullish scowl.
“D-Darumi? Look, I-I don’t care about what I asked you, I just-”
“I’m jealous of Ima.”
He chokes on the rest of his sentence.
“W-what?”
She closes her eyes. Knowing what she wants to say doesn't make it any easier to actually say it. But not being able to see him helps, just a bit. “As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to fly. Like, not just wanted. Prayed for it, honestly. Getting popped by Murvrum’s the closest I’ve ever got to that. And Ima’s here, and… he doesn't even appreciate it. If I could fly, I’d… use it to leave. Get away from all of this, the war, the SDU… everyone. I’d finally be free.”
Darumi opens her eyes, something in her chest aching with the words as she forces a smile. “It’s super lame that I’m jealous of a middle schooler for anything, but… that’s how I feel. That’s how everyone feels, really.”
“Nobody’s happy. Ever. Everyone wants something someone else has. Takemaru probably wishes he was as smart as Tsubasa, and Tsubasa probably wishes she had his guts. Kako’s probably jealous of how strong Hiruko is, and Hiruko’s probably… jealous of something she has, too. Like… her visions?” She can see Gaku’s growing skepticism, and coughs lightly. “A-anyways, that’s just… how it is. But that doesn't mean you can’t appreciate what you’ve got.”
He scowls. “B-but that’s the problem! I don’t have anything! Not compared to any of you guys-”
She steps into Gaku’s doorframe, poking him with a finger. “Then stop comparing yourself to everyone else. Seriously, if I spent my whole life worrying about what everyone else could do, I’d never get anywhere . You have something. Everyone has something. You can’t tell me that you took care of all those kids and you didn’t learn anything, right?”
Gaku fidgets, eyes flicking down to her outstretched finger before coming back up to meet her gaze. “I-I mean… I guess I’m good at… sewing? B-but that’s not-”
Darumi cuts him off again, ignoring Gaku’s yelp as her finger digs into his chest. “ See? That’s something! It doesn't matter if you can’t do whatever everyone else is good at. Just do you .”
He doesn't try to make a retort. He just stands there, and she takes that as her cue to leave.
But before she can make it down the steps, he calls out. “W-wait! You mentioned everyone else, but… what’s your thing, then? If… if you think everyone’s got something for them.”
She turns back, smiling, and even she can tell how fake it must look. “I guess… I’m good at finding out how to fix everyone else.”
The rest of the day is… uneventful. Gaku goes back to his room, shutting the door with a strangely pensive look on his face, and she goes back to hers. Her social battery feels pretty much drained for the day, so she doesn’t bother going down to the Cafeteria for lunch or dinner. She just empties her drawers of junk food and busts out some of her grossest manga. It makes her feel a little better, but… she’s still thinking. Thinking about how unnaturally candid she was with Gaku, about whether he’ll actually take her advice.
All thinking’s ever done is depress her, so why can’t she just stop doing it?
The next day isn’t much better. She gets up horrifically early (for her, at least) after a night of insomnia, and she barely manages to drag herself out of bed to head to the Cafeteria. If she wasn’t out of snacks from last night, she probably would have just kept rotting.
When Darumi gets down there, she sees Takumi and Tsubasa eating together, the mechanic giggling at something he said. It’s super gross, honestly. But as she turns away to scarf down her breakfast, she feels like she sees Takumi’s smile… falter, twitching around the edges.
Ugh. His teen drama probably gave her a brain parasite.
She’s about to dig into her eggs, liberally soaked with maple syrup, when the Cafeteria doors slam open.
“There you are!”
Gaku paces over to her, scowling. “Jeez, since when did you head to the Cafeteria this early? And… ugh, is that maple syrup? You’re gonna rot your freaking teeth if you eat like that!”
Darumi just kind of stares at him.
“Whatever. I was thinking about what you said yesterday, and…” He thrusts a hand into his pocket and pulls out a bundle of fabric. “Here. It’s been a while since I sewed anything that wasn’t a patch job, but… I think it came out alright.” Gaku drops the bundle into her lap, and she picks it up, fumbling when the pile splits into two separate pieces.
“They’re hair ties! You’ve got a bunch of it, and I used to make them for some of the kids back at the home. They were outside a ton, and if I didn’t tie it up I’d be picking twigs and crap out of their hair for ages. The fabric’s made from a bunch of different stuff from the Gift-O-Matic, and…” His voice fades into background noise, and Darumi pulls apart the two… hair ties. They’re navy, the dark blue contrasting with bright pink embroidery, and her hands tighten around them as something in her chest tightens alongside it.
“...would you believe that I had to pull out jacket lining for some of this stuff? The smaller stitches were a real pain, and I had to ask Yugamu to borrow some of the stuff in the Bio Lab to use as dye, and…” He trails off as she looks up to meet his eyes, and for the first time, she notices the darkened bags under them.
“Y-you… t-they’re okay, right? Ugh, I knew it! I just saw your bows, and I thought you might like them. B-but obviously it’s not like you need more than one way to hold up your hair-”
“No.”
“N-no?”
She reaches up, silently unknotting her twin bows, and reties the delicate fabric of Gaku’s ribbons around her loosened locks.
“I like them. I… I really do.”
Darumi beams, jumping up from her seat. “Aw, Gaku! If you wanted me to teach you more about Amemiyism, you could have just asked!”
He scowls. “Wh- I didn’t do it cause I want more advice from your bogus religion!”
“Quiet, disciple! The fourth tenet requires absolute silence from all Amemiyists on any possible scam related situations!”
She dashes out of the Cafeteria, snatching Gaku’s hand and dragging him behind her. He groans, mumbling something under his breath about not even knowing what the third tenet was.
But he doesn’t pull away, and her fingers loop in between his own, locking them together like the brand new ties holding her hair in a messy set of pigtails.