Smile for the Camera!

Chapter 5

Tsukasa woke up at his desk, alarm blaring in his ears. Damn it, he's definitely late! The boy pulled himself up from his desk and rushed to get all his school supplies in his bag. He chucked his costume into his bag, not even bothering to go through with the "purifying process" that he had hoped for. He slipped on his uniform and ran out of the house, hoping maybe, just maybe, he would be able to get to school on time by a sliver of luck. Sadly, he didn't make it. He burst through his classroom door and all heads turned to him, staring at the loud individual. "I'M SORRY FOR MY TARDINESS!" He said in his usual loud voice to the teacher before sitting down. Rui chuckled at Tsukasa, finding his slight embarrassment amusing. Amusing of course that Tsukasa was embarrassed, not that he looked cute being embarrassed at all. Rui snapped out of his thoughts when Tsukasa caught him staring. He quickly turned his attention back to the teacher, and so did Tsukasa. Once class ended, Tsukasa took note not to go to the roof again after yesterday, instead just wandering the halls. He wasn't hungry, so he was just walking around. Rui raised an eyebrow, what's up with him? He walked to Tsukasa and spoke, eliciting a surprised yelp from the other, "Hey Tsu— Tenma. What are you doing?" Tsukasa turned his attention to Rui before sighing, "Oh it's just you. I don't think what I'm doing is any of your business, leave me alone." Rui was, for some reason, a bit hurt by this? Surely his ego was just hurt that even somebody as annoying and loud as Tsukasa would brush him off, and not anything else. Rui wasn't giving up though, "Want to have lunch with me? It's nice outside, and the roof is usually empty." Tsukasa brushed him off once more, seemingly irritated, "Don't bother."

Tsukasa had tried for so long to be friends with Rui just to be brushed off. So now that Rui finally got what he wanted, why was he bothering Tsukasa? The blond was annoyed and confused, but he didn't really want to deal with this clear nonsense. He kept walking, ignoring Rui once more. The taller was left defeated, standing there looking wounded. He should've expected that, why is he sad about it? He turned his head and went to the roof, he wasn't going to let some cute blond ruin his lunch!

You can't spell "ruin" without "Rui," and that's exactly what he did. He ruined Tsukasa's mood. Tsukasa came across an empty classroom and walked in, observing the area. It was quite spacious with a lot of desks and chairs scattered and stacked on top of each other. He walked to an empty seat and looked out of the window, admiring how pretty the scenery looked. Then, he saw something falling apart in front of the window. A wrench landed in front of the window, right into the bushes. He opened the window and reached out his arm, grabbing the fallen tool. Once he closed the window, he took a closer look at it. The wrench was clearly very old, chipped everywhere and shouldn't even be qualified to be a wrench. Who the hell owned this? He shoved it in his bag and left the room, heading back to his classroom. Luckily, literature was next. He's really good at writing, unlike the author, so he really enjoys the class. The whole time he couldn't help but look over at Rui from time to time. How could he not? After all, Rui looked very troubled, and Tsukasa was a rather curious person.

Once class ended, he immediately went straight to a hardware store. Hopefully, whoever dropped it would show their face soon. He grabbed a new wrench off a shelf, it looked pretty nice and definitely was an upgrade. He bought it and walked out of the store, heading to Phoenix Wonderland for his usual rehearsals. When he got there, he saw Rui still moping, and Nene and Emu looked like they were trying to console him. He approached the odd huddle, "What happened here?"

Nene sighed, "He lost his only wrench today, and he's upset about it. We're trying to convince him he'll find it again, but he doesn't seem very convinced. Tsukasa raised an eyebrow, Rui lost the wrench? It was pretty beat up, had Rui always been using that thing? He tapped Rui on the shoulder and handed him the wrench from out of his bag, "Is this it?" Rui immediately grabbed the wrench and smiled, as if he wasn't mourning just a few seconds ago. Well, Tsukasa also found no use for the newly bought wrench, so he handed it to Rui too, "I figured whoever lost it would want a new one since that one looks like it's about to fall apart, take this one too please." Rui raised an eyebrow and took the wrench, a little surprised at the gesture.