Hiding The Pain || MonoShin [BOOK 1]

Chapter 12 - Which Side Are You On? (II)

Fukidashi rushed Monoma into the booth and to the changing rooms, quickly handing Monoma his hero outfit. "Go and change! Your date will be here in..." Fukidashi checked his watch. "3 minutes! Move! Move! Move!"

Monoma moved inside and changed quickly, but still made sure he looked acceptable before he walked out.

He could hear the muffled voices of Fukidashi and someone else. The voices stopped for a few seconds, so Monoma took it as a cue to leave the changing room and find out who his date was.

Monoma walked out, and on sighting his date he nearly screamed out of anger, embarrassment, and happiness, so he couldn't help but to exclaim;

"The fuck?"

Fukidashi and his date both turned to Monoma, his date's eyebrow raised in mild annoyance.

"Y-You!" Monoma spluttered. "W-Why? H-How? W-What? W-Where? W-When? W-"

"It was a dare." Shinso explained, folding his arms across his chest. "When I said I'd choose a random person, there was a 90 percent chance of me getting one of your other classmates. Of course the universe gave me the 10 percent chance it would be you." Shinso sighed. "Whatever. Let's get going."

Monoma knew he should have been angry at Shinso's words, but he couldn't bring himself to care much. Their relationship was... complicated, to say the least. One minute they could be laughing and joking, then the next they're bickering and fighting. Monoma teasing Shinso earlier that day probably didn't do him any favors. Monoma could see why he would take his chances with virtually strangers, especially if it was strangers or Monoma, though he couldn't understand why Shinso would take the dare.

"I'll just head out with you guys, you know, supervisor and all-" 

Monoma cut him off. "It's fine Fukidashi-kun, it's Shinso anyway, so I'm sure we'll be fine."

Fukidashi seemed a bit apprehensive, seeing as his speech bubble had a suspicious looking emoticon on it (ತ_ಎತ), but he eventually came to a decision.

"Fine, but if anything goes wrong, call me Monoma-kun."

"Will do, Fukidashi!" Monoma replied, before turning to Shinso.

It was like they were on Fake Date Number 3.

Monoma and Shinso walked out of the booth and into the small stone crosswalk in front of it, and Monoma had the distinct feeling that something was watching them. Shinso must have felt it too, because he grabbed Monoma's hand and they walked side by side. Shinso's guard was up, Monoma could see it through his stance, though Monoma didn't know what Shinso was guarding against. It wasn't like it was a villain, the school had taken precautions that that wouldn't happen, but Monoma guessed it wouldn't hurt to be on guard.

Attempting to make small talk as they walked, Monoma decided to get some answers from Shinso.

"Why did you take the dare?" Monoma asked, because Shinso didn't seem like the kind of person to feel pressured by peers.

"Some kind of weird official initiation process, at least that's what Denki said." Shinso stated, and Monoma slightly flinched at the use of Kaminari's given name. It had never set well with Monoma whenever Shinso said it, and he knew he didn't need to be a rocket scientist to understand why.

"Besides," Shinso continued, "I can get a break from that cafe. Saying hello to people and asking for their orders can get annoying." At the last word, Shinso gave a very pointed look at Monoma who just flushed and huffed.

"Whatever..." Monoma mumbled. 

They made their way over to the restaurant, and that's when Monoma started to question why Shinso would choose a restaurant of all things. Was he just being unoriginal because he decided not to put any real effort into this 'date?', or was it that he had been expecting to get a particular person, so he chose it? Monoma didn't know what to think, but the logical side of him told him that the former assumption was probably the truth.