Worlds Apart

9

Y/N could feel the awkwardness that was in the air. She had tried to get to work early, on the off chance that Shouta wasn't a morning person. She quickly found out he was definitely not a morning person, but that didn't stop him from getting up early anyway. Y/N didn't understand why, since he still looked tired and was yawning all the time. He looked like he could fall asleep standing.

So why the hell didn't he just stay in bed and let her do her job? It would be so much less awkward. There wouldn't be this terrible silence between them. Y/N wouldn't have minded it, if they hadn't ever been talking. But... he had tried to talk to her and be her friend and... and she had gone and smacked him right across the face. He deserved it, yes, but still. Y/N couldn't shake the feeling she could have handled that much better. Maybe an apology was in order.

But damn it, it just felt way too weird with the way they were not talking. It made no sense to her to be the one to start saying something. She couldn't think of anything to start the conversation that wouldn't make it more awkward. And Shouta didn't look too bothered, either. Well, that bruise on his face looked pretty bad... and it was kind of her fault for not stopping them.

Why did stuff like this happen to her? Why was she the one to make friends with the rich kid? Was life trying to make things as awkward for her as humanly possible? Because that's what it looked like. Why couldn't things be easy for her? Why couldn't she just be some middle class kid that was not an immigrant and that was not constantly living with the threat of getting the electricity shut off at home? With a nice middle class boyfriend and with time to go on dates and do nice stuff, instead of cleaning other people's houses? Maybe she'd even have time for a hobby that wasn't reading books on the way back home... But no. She was poor as fuck, working jobs to help her mother out and with a rich guy having a weird friendship with her.

The other thing that was at the back of her mind was the union meeting this afternoon. She knew that there was another strike that was supposed to happen soon. The workers in the meat plants had been unhappy for quite a while and things hadn't changed much, so she'd soon be knee-deep in translations of pamphlets, because the fact was that a lot of the factory workers were foreign and a lot of them didn't speak Japanese all too well, either. But they somehow had to learn their rights.

The owners of the meat plants were banking on the fact that they were employing immigrants almost exclusively, thinking it would be easy to make them work under horrendous conditions, since they wouldn't be familiar with their rights and wouldn't be able to understand the language too well. Which would be working, if it wasn't for the unions and their pamphlets.

The thing that came with the territory was, however... well, all those rich people stuck together. And a lot of them knew who was involved in the unions. It was illegal to do anything based on that, but Y/N knew that she could count on having the electricity shut off a few times due to an accident. It wouldn't be the first time it happened, but it still sucked. At least she'd be able to shower at some of her friends' places. But unfortunately her entire family would have to suffer from it. Thankfully, they were very supportive when it came to her role in the union.

But strikes were also the times when the cleaning work was getting rougher. Most people were making off-handed comments that were supposed to be jabs at her and the strikers, but some people were outright cruel to her. And one of the worst of them was Mrs Aizawa. The Queen Bitch. Y/N definitely wasn't looking forward to the special treatment she'd be getting from her.

"Y/N." she heard a voice from the couch. She startled a little, as she snapped back to reality and looked over at Shouta, who had put his phone down and was looking at her. She couldn't quite place the expression on his face, mostly because she felt too guilty about that slap the day before.