berries | (platonic! takagi x reader)

watermelons

Sitting next to a boy who hardly speaks was one of the most boring things Y/n could think of.

Y/n liked boys, contrary to the protests of the other girls in her class when the teacher declared boys would be sitting next to them. Y/n hoped that the cute boy with the long hair would be assigned the seat next to her. Or maybe the loud quirky boy who flirts with everyone. Or maybe her friend, at least.

But no. Instead, a boring kid with mediocre looks sat next to her. And he had the window seat anyway. All he did was stare out into the sky, never writing down any notes because he knew everything already.

Y/n looked behind her toward her friend Takagi, who was scribbling furiously in a notebook. This one had a blue cover. Takagi had been very busy writing up storyboards for Mashiro to read and hopefully draw. Y/n was extremely invested in Mashiro's and Takagi's strive for recognition. Y/n wanted Takagi to write some romance mangas instead of all science fiction, but every romance plot Takagi thought of were far too cliche and unoriginal.

Craning her head behind, she watched Takagi bite his lip as he stared at his papers. The first time Y/n had seen him, he struck her as a ray of sunshine. He smiled and beamed whenever he spoke to her and smelled like watermelon soda. She loved being near him, maybe because he was reminiscent of summer- the bright blue sky with the wispy clouds floating by, sailing down the road on a rickety bike, cicadas filling the air with their songs, finding acorns on the ground- all of that seemed to gather together and manifest itself as Akito Takagi.

But she was stuck sitting next to a basic boy and listening to droning lectures. She was supposed to be gathering information for the upcoming exams. She picked up her mechanical pencil to copy down the jargon that was scribbled in grainy white across the blackboard, but her brain instantly shut off and she suddenly couldn't understand what the professor was saying. She quickly tried to rewrite everything into her notebook anyhow, because maybe when she returned home she could make everything out, but with the eraser and a sweep of the hand, everything up front was gone.

She dropped her pencil and laced her fingers behind her head and leaned back. It felt hopeless. Her mind felt so full of unnecessary things that it had no motivation to interpret and contain the information that she really needed to pass school. It was a miracle that she's scraped by this far anyway. Stuck in this loop of neverending assignments, pop quizzes, and exams felt like a gloomy winter day that would never let up.

She envied Takagi and Mashiro, who were making an effort to claw their way through the cold numbness and find their future. Y/n wished she could do the same, but how? Her mother always kept a close watch on her and despised the thought of Y/n breaking out of the mold she had plastered on her. Y/n's father was a thriving businessman and her mother was an important underwriter for a successful bank, and her parents wished deeply for all their children to be as important as them.

One day, a long time ago, her older sister had spoken up. "I want to be a ballet dancer."

Her mother laughed and said, "That's impossible. Debuting as a ballet dancer is very difficult, and it's not even certain if your performances will make enough money to support you and our family's name."

"That's okay if I don't make much money," She frowned. "I just wanna dance."

"Well, you're not." Her mother gave her a stern stare. "And if I'm catching you lacking on your studies because you're sneaking off to dance practice, you're dead."

That was several years ago. Since then, Y/n's older sister became a hungry woman, always desperate for knowledge and acknowledgement. It scared Y/n to the point where she would be scared stiff to do anything, really.

In her bookbag, she had an exam paper that was so covered in red pen markings that the teacher could have had a bloody nose while grading it. She was mortified to show that paper to her parents, so she had kept it hidden the last couple of days. Of course, her father and mother would soon find out about the fact there was a test and get suspicious as to why their daughter hadn't shown them her score.

Getting punished and scorned was something Y/n had experienced often, but it was also something she could never get used to. She feared going home everyday, because she would almost always expect an onslaught of disappointed remarks dumped upon her.

Maybe that was why she revered Takagi so much. His mother and father resembled her own; successful people that couldn't bear their offspring to take different paths.

To snap Y/n out of her thoughts that led her down a never ending path, the bell rang. It was lunchtime.

She stood up and crossed over to Takagi. He gathered his multitude of notebooks and tapped them on his desk and gave Y/n a wide grin, albeit very tired eyes. "This is just my brain dump of this period."

"That's quite a lot," Y/n gave the eyebrow raise and slight nod of the head, indicating suppressed amazement.

"Yeah. Hopefully Saiko finds at least one of them good. I'll give these to him and we can go to the gas station."

Y/n fluttered her eyelashes, "Did you just inadvertently ask me to go with you?"

Takagi gave her an incredulous stare. "You always go with me anyway."

That was true. Every day since school started, Takagi had been going to the gas station across the street and buying something there. Y/n always enjoyed going with him, either with a few friends or just the two of them. She never bought anything because she never brought money.

This lunch period, it was just the two of them as they walked across the cool cement. Takagi shoved his hands in his pockets and said, "How are your parents treating you, L/n? I know it's been kinda tough for you. Especially this summer,"

Y/n let out an unnecessarily lamenting groan as she tossed her head up to the sky. "It's like they have me at gunpoint! There's a limit to how much yelling I can deal with, and I think I'm about to reach it."

Takagi sighed, his hair falling over his glasses. His hair was sandy, like on the beach of a picture-perfect ocean. "You really think you're at your limit?"

She turned her head away to look past the chain link fence beside them. She stared at the large football field that sprawled like a green-and-blue-carpet.

Takagi kept speaking. "You're a lot more durable than I was. I experienced the same thing you are. I snapped when I was in fifth grade. Have you ever let them know you wanted to break away?"

"I want to," Y/n said, moving out of the way of a stop-sign. "My older sister tried once when she was my age, but my mother shot her down so fast and she's never been able to recover. I'm afraid of that happening to me."

They walked in silence for a moment. Y/n hated silence, but when silence settled around Takagi, it felt refreshing and comforting; as if the silence was a break from the wind, or rushing of water; as if flowers and vines bloomed and thrived each second that sat in silence. She looked at him, who was looking ahead and admired the way the white sun glowed off his soft features.

Finally, he spoke, "Would you like 'Xtra Cheddar' Pringles or 'Sour Cream and Onion'?"

"Barbecue."