My One Last Hope

Tsumugi's screams were muffled by her pillow. Her legs thrashed in a most undignified manner as she kicked her feet against her bed. Had her arms not been busy pulling the pillow into her face, she may have pounded them against the sheets as well. She knew she was being immature, she knew she was blowing things out of proportion, but she just couldn't help it! Sometimes, she just got so angry, and it felt like nothing short of screaming, crying and resisting the urge to punch or throw things would help calm her back down.

God, she hated being like this. Hated being so emotional, and feeling so childish. That was why, on most days, she tried to be as shy, quiet, demure and forgettable as possible. Better to have no opinions than have some and become inflamed over them. That, and she was well-aware of her own "ticking time-bomb" personality, so it felt safer to just... hide, than to let her passions overtake her, as they were doing right now.

She'd gotten into a spat with some online friends about anime. Already, she could barely remember the particulars of the fight. She just knew that it got her riled up like nothing else. More serious issues she wouldn't bat an eye at. But for some reason, when it came to anime... That scary side of her that she so loathed, that she so tried to keep controlled, just had to rear its ugly head at the most trivial and inopportune times.

Now, here she was, weeping and wailing like someone a decade younger, and feeling miserable about it. It felt like insult to injury. Alongside being upset about the fight, she was upset about being upset. In other words, a vicious cycle of endless despair, and not the fun kind. She couldn't help but feel very alone in that moment. Was anyone else this overly invested in anime? Or was it just her being... weird?

ooo

Hifumi sighed. Although he was as upset as Tsumugi, his temper always manifested in melancholy while hers manifested in mania (so to speak). As such, even though his strife was internal rather than external, it still wounded him just the same. He knew he was socially awkward, and that he had a bad habit of scaring people off even if he didn't mean to, but he just couldn't help it! He just didn't know how to explain himself, how to put thought into word (ironic, given his Talent), and that always led to people looking at him funny. But he had even less of a clue how to fix the issue as he did in identifying it.

That was why, on most days, he kept to himself, not even trying to talk to anyone, because he knew it would only lead to misunderstandings which, in turn, would lead to awkwardness and heartache. The effort wasn't worth the risk. And he was well-aware of how unlucky he was in social situations. Even if he didn't know how or why it happened, he just knew that he had the uncanny ability to confuse, bore or annoy people enough to drive them away. The stuff he said either made no sense to them, or would put them off even if he genuinely hadn't meant to. It felt safer to just keep to himself than risk causing more humiliation for everyone.

In this most recent incident, he'd tried to gather up a small following of people to listen to another one of his anime spiels. He managed to lure them in by flaunting his Ultimate status, but even that wasn't enough to keep them interested. Before long, they all logged off, driven away by the ramblings of a madman. It hurt and annoyed him more than he'd ever admit. It seemed that even though he could be so eloquent in thought and fanfiction, that skill never translated over into human interaction and it, in a word, SUCKED!

It felt like insult to injury. It seemed like all he ever did was talk himself into a hole, but any attempts to fix it only led to him making the hole even deeper until he'd finally driven everyone off. Nobody cared enough about the weird boy and his weird obsession with weird things to stick around long enough to try to understand what the heck he was blathering on about. Of course, he knew not everyone would understand him or the way his mind worked, he just wanted one interaction where he didn't accidentally say something offensive or weird.