Quick author's note before we start. I'm sorry about not updating this story in like a month, I got busy with school and life and whatnot and my mental health has not been the best, but I'm gonna try my best to continue this story consistently! One more thing, I've been practicing writing these characters a bit more lately so hopefully they'll be more accurate to their actual personalities now! Also ty for the comments reading them makes me very happy :D anyways, here's the story!
---------------------------------------------------------------
Shuichi walked out the door of the school, the icy winter wind greeting him by blowing back his bangs. He shielded his face with his forearm and squinted. He looked to his side, Kokichi and Kaede also looked bothered. Kaede's arms were crossed and she was making an annoyed expression, her hair flying in her face as she desperately tried to fix it, to no avail. Kokichi was using his checkered scarf to keep the wind out of his face, but it wasn't exactly working all that well.
They approached Shuichi's car. "Need a ride, Kaede?" Kokichi said, despite the fact that it wasn't his car being used. "No thanks, I'll meet you guys there." She gestured to her car across the parking lot, half yelling over the howling wind. The sky was already darkening, despite the fact it was only about 3pm. "Alright, see you there, then!" Shuichi replied, slightly annoyed at Kokichi for offering without his permission, but he was going to ask the same thing, so he supposed it was fine. He gave a little wave and got into the driver's side of the car, with Kokichi quickly getting in the passenger side.
Shuichi started the car and began to back out. "Kichi, can you put on my music for me?" That was Shuichi for you, he was the kinda guy who wasn't willing to take his eyes off the road for even a second to put on music. "Mhm, sure." Kokichi replied. Having done this many times before, he grabbed Shuichi's phone from the cupholder where it had been awkwardly placed and put on a random playlist.
The first song it played was Devil Town by cavetown. "Aw hell yeah! I love this song!" As Shuichi exited the parking lot, Kokichi rocked back in fourth in his seat, singing along incredibly off-key. Shuichi chuckled. "Hey, whats funny?" Kokichi said sarcastically in between verses, making Shuichi laugh once again. Kokichi continued singing along to whatever songs he knew on the way to Rantaro's, purposefully trying to sing badly to get a laugh out of Shuichi, but also because he knew if he actually tried, he wouldn't do much better.
Eventually they pulled up to his street, and Shuichi recognized Kaede's car parked outside of one of the houses. Shuichi knocked on the door of the small house. The door opened and Kaede was the one to greet them. "Oh, hey you two! Took you long enough!" She said with a teasing smile. "Maybe if *someone* wasn't distracting me by singing the whole damn time we could've been here earlier!" Shuichi retorted, elbowing Kokichi. Kokichi said nothing and stuck out his tongue indignantly, letting out an annoyed huff, although his eyes told that he knew they were just joking around. "Oh! Come in, you two must be freezing!" She stepped aside and the two walked into the house.
The house was warm, offering a welcome relief to the harsh weather outside. The sun was setting rapidly and with it came the temperature. Rantaro was laying on the couch with his injured foot propped up on a pillow. His wrist was also bandaged, which Kaede hadn't mentioned for whatever reason. "AVOCADO BOY!!" Kokichi yelled way too loudly. "Nice to see you too, Kokichi.." Rantaro replied, smiling exasperatedly and giving a small wave with his good arm. Shuichi hesitantly sat down on a chair adjacent to the couch where Rantaro was sitting. Rantaro sat up, taking a decent amount of effort to do so, making room for Kaede and Kokichi. Kaede sat down next to him, but Kokichi opted to sit on the floor instead.
Almost as soon as she had sat down, Kaede got up. "I'll go get us all drinks." She said on the way toward the kitchen, leaving them all alone. A tense atmosphere hung over the three as the room settled into an awkward quiet. "S-so, Rantaro, how've you been? Its been a second since you've been in school." Shuichi said after a few seconds, breaking the silence. "Oh, I've been fine. Actually, I think I'll be okay to go back to school next week." He replied simply. "How about you guys? How are things at school?" "Things have been great! I've been working on this art project, and.." Kokichi seemed as if he was about to go off on a rant before Kaede walked in, holding four glasses of cola.
She set them down on the coffee table, and everyone claimed a cup. "Thanks, Kaede!" Kokichi said, taking a sip. "So.. now that you're both here, how did you hurt yourself, Avocado Boy? You were just roller skating, right? How do you screw it up that badly?" Rantaro chuckled. "To put it shortly.. Kaede and I were skating around together when I tripped and fell on a lolipop some kid dropped. My ankle landed at an awkward angle and, yeah.." He smiled tiredly and sighed, gesturing to his bandaged foot. "That doesn't explain your wrist, though.." Shuichi said, tilting his head and putting his finger on his chin.
At this, Kaede blushed and buried her face in her hands. "Babe, don't-" She mumbled before being cut off by Rantaro. "Its okay, Kaede, I've already told you a million times I'm not angry.." Shuichi suddenly regretted the question but was curious. "Basically, Kaede isn't too graceful on her skates, but she wanted to try and help me. As she tried to turn around, she ran right over my wrist." Throughout his retelling of the incident, Kaede made a big show of waving her hands in Rantaro's face in an attempt to get him to stop talking. The reason she hadn't mentioned his wrist at school was clear to him now.
Kokichi burst out laughing. "PFFFT- that's great!! You really did that, Kaede?" Kaede nodded, her face red as a tomato. "Kokichi! Shut up, she obviously feels bad!" Shuichi said, but he had to admit he found it a bit funny himself. With that, Kokichi restrained himself from laughing, although a mischevious smile remained plastered to his face.
As soon as the dreaded awkward silence began to creep over the group again, Kaede clapped her hands together and looked around at everyone. "So..! Do you guys wanna watch a movie?" "Sure!" Kokichi replied enthusiastically. Rantaro and Shuichi nodded in agreement. "Alright!" Kaede excitedly grabbed the remote and put on netflix. She selected her profile and went to her list, putting on some cheesy romance movie.
Everyone pretended to be interested minus Kokichi, who looked overwhelmingly bored and wouldn't hesitate to sigh and groan at the particularly bad parts. Luckily, Kaede didn't seem to notice, or if she did, she didn't care. About halfway through the movie, Shuichi moved onto the floor and sat next to Kokichi. "Shumai, you aren't actually enjoying this, are you?" He said a little too loudly. He put his finger to his lips urgently before leaning over and whispering to him. "Of course not. This is stupid as hell, I just dont want Kaede to feel bad." "Hmph." Kokichi crossed his arms and rested his chin in his palm, sighing dramatically.
A few minutes later, Shuichi felt weight on his shoulder. He looked to his right, and to his surprise, Kokichi had rested his head there. His face lit up in red and he stayed incredibly still, having never had something like this happen to him before. After a few minutes, he reached his hand around and wrapped it around Kokichi's shoulder. He felt rather awkward, knowing Kaede and Rantaro were right across the room, but he didn't really care. More than anything, he was happy.
He loved Kokichi, of course, but he was just so hard to understand. He could never tell when he was being serious or not, and it was so hard to figure out what he was thinking. It seemed as if he was always coming up with these kinds of elaborate plans for every little thing in his mind. But something like this happening showed, at the very least, some kind of progress. He felt like he was finally starting to understand him.
After a while, he shifted his attention back to the movie. The generic male character was doing some kind of dramatic confession to the generic female character. He sighed and thought to himself how glad he was that his relationship with Kokichi wasn't like that. He looked over to Kaede and Rantaro, who were sitting squished together, both looking totally absorbed in the movie. He laughed quietly and looked back at Kokichi, who, oddly enough, had the same enchanted expression on his face.
He raised one eyebrow and was about to write it off as nothing before Kokichi glanced over and met his gaze. He immediately sat up straight, forcing Shuichi to let go of him. He made the same bored expression from before as if nothing had happened. "Kokichi..?" Shuichi said, thoroughly confused. Kokichi shot him a quick glance before pretending as if he hadn't heard him. Shuichi sighed and buried his face in his hands. He wasn't any closer to understanding Kokichi at all.
