TWEWY Book of Oneshots

Guidance From Past Existence

[Light NEO: The World Ends With You spoilers. Spoilers to party members and Swallow identity.]

Prompt: Frindo fic. Requested by user45979048.

The hardest part of this was figuring out what the title was gonna be. (Somehow grammarly didn't slaughter me for "people emotion smart".) It's a reference to Kanon, though. 

This also kinda works out as a Fret character study which is probably why this is so long.

-xXx-

He is absolutely smitten, Fret knows before than anyone else. Or, at least, he thinks he's the first to know. Nagi is people emotion smart, something he's still learning to do well.

Actually, now that he thinks about it. He wouldn't have noticed if it weren't for her. After the Game had ended, he had started playing EleStra as a way to thank Boss for all the support against Shiba's 'presents'.

She had commented during one of their weekly meetups, just the two of them to gush about EleStra together, that his bias wasn't Lord Tomonami like her, no matter how much he did appeal to Fret, but someone else. Fret hadn't really noticed, but gave it some thought sometime later, and, yeah, she was right.

While Tomonami was hot (and having spent time with Minamimoto for a week and the two of them being identical was really not helpful towards his mental health), he had found himself spending more time with one of the more lesser-known characters; a quiet blonde with green eyes. Nagi had pointed out the resemblance to Rindo when they were discussing the game during his progress report.

And Fret realized after Nagi had pointed out the resemblance that, while their eye colors weren't the same, he had often picked responses similar to that of conversations he's had with Rindude himself.

So yeah, Fret thinks, staring fondly at Rindude as they sit inside the Boba shop on Spain Hill, he knows.

And while Fret wasn't a nervous person, he didn't tell Rindude about his feelings for one reason: he didn't know if Rindude swung that way.

Rindo is his best friend, and he always will be, he just doesn't know if their closeness as friends meant more than anything else. Besides, Shoka was more his type, wasn't he? And now knowing having realized that they've known each other for much longer than anyone would've thought, it was hard to know where he stood with him.

"You okay, dude?" Rindo asks, looking up from his phone, probably from playing FanGo with Shoka. "You look constipated."

"Wha?" Fret can't help but let out. "No, I'm good! Just takin' the ol' galaxy brain out for a run, y'know?"

Rindo gives him a long look. "Don't fry your brain." Aaaand back to his phone he goes.

Dammit, when had talking to his buddy become so hard?

What would the other Twisters do right now? Actually, getting advice from them probably wouldn't go too well. Shokie would probably laugh her ass off at him and not be helpful in the slightest and use his feelings to make fun of him. Not in a mean way, of course, just teasingly. But still, it wouldn't go too well. And as much as he liked hanging out with Beat, the older boy wasn't exactly the greatest with that kinda stuff. Fret did appreciate the fact that Beat would support whatever he felt with a passion as he always did.

What about Mr. Minami? Fret quickly came to the decision that he would not be helpful. At all. And he wouldn't be able to get Rindude to help translate whatever math came out of the man's mouth. Fret liked Mr. Minami as much as anyone else (well except maybe not as much as Nagi. And Beat and Neku didn't seem to have good history with him, either), but he seriously needed to tone down the math speak.