Endless

8. Dead of Night

Kayama Nemuri, a woman better known as the R-Rated hero(ine) Midnight, has two friends she loves dearly. Unfortunately, they are both massive idiots.

They were idiots long before the whole Nu situation that meant Famine refused to call Shouta anything but an idiot. They were idiots long before the two of them decided to be roommates. Oh, yes, their idiocy went way back, fifteen years back in fact. And Kayama, their friend who's known them since the idiocy began, finds it thoroughly amusing.

And the most frustrating irritation she's ever come across.

"You're staring again," she mutters, stirring her mug of coffee as Shouta prepares a fresh pot since she took the last of the old one. Shouta, stiff, rational, unemotional Aizawa Shouta, that man's ears definitely don't turn red.

"No, I'm not," he grumbles, either lying or honestly not realising he's been doing it the whole lunch period.

"Sure, hon," she returns, "and I'm straight."

She leaves him to his coffee, letting him think over his poor life decisions. Instead, she crosses to Hizashi, wonderful, bright, cheery, Yamada Hizashi, the focus of Shouta's stares. Wonderful, bright, cheery Yamada Hizashi who is humming and grinning as he eats. "Alright, what happened? You're glowing like you're pregnant but your body is unfortunately male so I know that isn't the case."

"Nothing," he squeaks, voice about four octaves too high for him to be telling the truth.

"Sure, hon," she says for the second time in less than a minute, "and Snipe was born in Texas."

"Nothing, like, happened happened." He glances over at the kitchen where Shouta is still standing in front of the coffee machine as it groans and gurgles. There's no chance Shouta will hear a thing. "We talked is all."

"Talked?" Kayama doesn't believe that for a second. Actually, no, she does. She wishes one of her idiots could be a little more forward so they could kiss already. She isn't asking for much, just a kiss, that's really it. Though she wouldn't be upset if more than a kiss occurred, she's just learned not to get her hopes up like that.

Hizashi goes red, his face, his ears, his neck, all over, and he thwacks Kayama's arm. "Yes, Nem, talked."

She sighs, a languid, exasperated thing. "Alright, fine, what did you talk about?"

"Nu," he answers and she can't help but snicker. Yes, Nu, the random kid they found and have essentially temporarily adopted. "We've both been kind of- You know, with how Nu's acting around us at the moment and what happened to her, we've both been feeling guilty. We let those people take her, we promised her she'd be safe, convinced her they were safe, that's on us."

"You weren't the ones who vetted them," she reminds him, not for the first time. "Police thought they were good, hell, Nezu thought they were good and nothing slips past that guy."

"But she knew, we should've paid more attention to how she reacted to them. I think back on how she looked at us. She only went because we told her too."

"Hizashi, it's done now. You can't change the past."

The conversation has pulled away his smile and Kayama regrets asking him about this. He's her friend, she didn't mean to upset him like this. He nods, and determination sparks in his eyes like the start of a wildfire. There's the Hizashi she knows. The smile will be back. "So we talked about her and how to try to make amends and it felt really good that he trusted me enough to share how he was feeling with me. One thing we realised was- Well, it was him actually, you know how smart he is." Smart. Yeah, smart dumbass. "He looks at her behaviour kind of like a stray cat's, and even though she's upset with us, she still hangs around us which means she still trusts us not to hurt her. So we made a mistake but we haven't completely destroyed her faith in us, you know?"