As Never Was

Chapter 2

Shao Long was worried. As he had every right to be. Science bedamned, this was starting to get wayyyyyyyy too realistic to be anything other than real. The burn on his hand was still very much there, and so was the fabric over his body. The teacher's voice was clearer than ones he'd normally associate with dreams. The clock was moving, there were no blurs around the edges of his vision, and the main thing was that: It had been a full day already. 

Sure, the teachers gave him strange looks, his peers whispered about him behind his back, he was called out by Albert (Oh look, the once King of England was, in fact, a tiny teenager once upon a time) for zoning out during a meeting he half understood, half didn't give a damn about. Something about studying, which Shao Long found as extremely nostalgic and extremely disgusting. He hadn't looked at a diagram of the lymphatic system for a decade at least, and he was upset to have finally broken the streak today. 

The thought of, "No matter, 'tis but a retelling of life that shall soon end before you'd be cast to the depths of hell," no longer applied when he tucked himself to bed and felt himself feeling drowsy. 

By then, all rationality was lost to him, and Shao Long snorted for the hundredth time that day.

"...Fuck."

Shao Long being weird was a normal occurrence. Usually that meant that he wanted something, and was not-so-subtly trying to get it. For Gion, he took it as a chance to grab a bucket of popcorn and find a good comfy seat on which he could sit while watching whatever bullshit will unfold as Shao Long cook up another storm to confront Charles. Sometimes— no scratch that. Most times it always ended up with Shao Long making a fool out of himself and them stomping away like some unruly child who needed to be checked by the local pediatric psychologist. Immediately. 

For Livio, he mostly viewed people in a more empathetic way than Gion could ever care to, but even he drew the line with Shao Long. There was a difference between an insecure child trying to prove his worth and a traumatized teenager attempting to find the meaning of life. Shao Long was categorized as the former by Livio long, long ago. 

With Shintarou, things were a little funnier. He was outright disgusted with the guy. Nothing Shao Long did was ever reasonable to him, and sometimes, during a very normal day, he would try to find Shao Long to antagonize, recounting all the times when the Chinese would skip meetings and ditch them all for something or someone. That used to not end very well for both of them, but mostly Shintarou always ended up more pissed than he already was.