Who Do You Remember?

Chapter 9: Skids and Scraped Pride

It was frighteningly quiet in the Sekiguchi household. Granted, it was always pretty quiet, but this was significantly more deliberate. Keiji's room was lit only by thin slits of sunlight through the window, as he refused to open the blinds or turn on the light. It was hard to read or study that way, but he was willing to admit that he was moping. He'd been moping for a few days. His parents didn't come in and he hadn't expected them to– in part because he generally preferred to be alone when he was in this low spirits, and in part because he'd been a disappointment. Haruto kept texting to check up on him; Keiji had wanted to ignore the messages but wasn't dumb enough to break his promise not to ghost, so he'd instead lied and said that the reason he was out of school was because he was sick.

Due to this, though, Bisque didn't have the context to know that his happy-go-lucky nature was not going to make him feel any better. He'd been sending pictures of a collaborative line of ceramics that he was making with his mentor for a fair. And they were fucking awesome, and that was infuriating.

He wanted to keep playing that RPG. It would feel good to do some more quest chains.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," he muttered to himself. Frantically, he turned the light on and went fishing for new facts. Time passed in a blur of flashcards and colored pens and suddenly the amount of flashcards in his Leitner box had nearly tripled and he now had to study these rigorously over the course of several days and it felt so good, it felt so right to finally be getting back on track. A strange euphoria was bursting out of his chest. The part of him that had accepted Haruto's impact on him cautioned against burnout and recognized this all as self-sabotaging. But he was MAD at that part of him right now, so he gleefully ignored it. When his parents left to do something, it felt even better. Because look at his amazing self-discipline, toiling away without anyone to even know he was doing it! That's real ambition.

Then, what do you fuckin' know, Haruto called. Keiji picked up swiftly. "It's the goddamn man of the hour! What do you want?" Emboldened by being alone in the house, he nearly shouted the words.

"Uhh... to come to your house and give you any homework you need to catch up on? I figured tomorrow I could go talk to all your teachers or whatever, but I don't know where your house is."

"Don't even think about coming over here! Besides, do you think I'm an amateur? I've been emailing them and staying on top of that shit."

"Oh wait, I can just ask Mom, she drove you home."

"Did you even hear me, dipshit?" Keiji drummed his fingers on the desk impatiently.

"Huh? Uh, yeah, sorry. Took me a second. Are you okay?"

"Peachy. Better than I've been in a while, actually."

"Are you... like, drunk or something?"

"Nah. I'd honestly probably be friendlier drunk. Not that I've tested it."

"Are you one of those people with a weird personality when you're sick?"

"Y'know, you're a bad influence on me."

Haruto broke out in laughter, refusing to pull his face away from the receiver. "Are you fucking for real right now?"

"Do you KNOW how productive I am right now? I made like 150 flashcards in the past like three and a half hours! I'm learning so much shit and this phone call is wasting my time!"

"WHAT THE HELL DID I EVEN DO, YOU FUCK?!"

Keiji nearly dropped the phone in an effort to plug his own ears. He trembled a little. He tried to force the words out. He wanted to apologize again, but instead what exploded out of him was more screaming. "YOU'RE SUCH A DISTRACTION! I'VE SPENT SO MUCH TIME BABYSITTING YOU THAT IT'S BECOMING A PROBLEM!"