Play Nice (Tomura Shigaraki x Reader)

Chapter 6: Struck a Nerve

She had a pinch in her neck.

It had been there for a while now, she wasn't sure what had caused it. Maybe it was the weird position she'd woken up in a couple of days ago. Maybe it was from the particularly grueling dryland workouts she'd been doing in preparation for the upcoming meet. Or maybe it was something else. Something more gnawing and notional. The manifestation of guilt and stress, pulled through the endless weavings of lies and delusions like:

"This works, right?"

Bingo.

She smiled sadly, "I don't know, it feels a little forced..."

She was currently sitting at a bench in a strip of greenery that barely qualified as a park within the hustle and bustle of Roppongi. But as far as Mirio on the other end of her cellphone was concerned, she had just gotten off the train in Yokohama and was walking the last fifteen minutes to "cram school".

It was a dangerous (and honestly kind of stupid) game she was playing. She and Mirio had always walked to Azabu-Juban Subway Station together to get to their respective after school activities — that leg of walking together by all logic wouldn't change. Only now, rather than getting on the Namboku Line Northbound with him, she had to get on the Southbound — because he, in all of his chivalry, insisted on making sure she got on her train first, even if his direction arrived first. She then proceeded to ride it one stop, and then immediately take the reverse train right back.

And to add insult to injury, he'd excitedly told her this morning how their respective train rides were almost exactly the same length of time so they could talk on the phone for the rest of their walk.

"Isn't that great?!" he'd asked, with an eagerness to please that would've made her feel like she'd kicked a puppy if she said no.

So she'd done her little exercise in futility, took her train to nowhere and back, then walked to the edge of the porte-cochère of Shigaraki's skyrise — a journey which only killed fifteen minutes altogether. S

She didn't enter the building, opting to wander the bustling, affluent streets of Roppongi until she could find a place to sit and wait for Mirio's call so that she could lie to her wonderful boyfriend further in their little simulated commute together.

God, she really was a piece of shit.

"Forced how? We can just talk about what we usually talk about!" Mirio insisted, ever the ray of positivity.

"But we usually didn't even talk that much." she said, attempting futilely to rub the kink out of her neck, "We were on the train looking out the window for most of it."

"We can still do that!"

She cocked a brow, "You want me to just have you on the phone and not say anything for twenty minutes?"

"No, no, no, we can talk about what we see!"

She froze. Shit. What did she see? Shigaraki's skyrise stood obnoxiously across the street, a blinding testament to how much this lie would inevitably fuck her. There was no way she could describe that. And yet she couldn't help but question if everything around her was definitively Tokyo — if that was even a thing. She could see a crepe shop, a Cartier store, and a luxury hotel — they had all of those in Yokohama too, right?!

"O-Okay," she stammered, "You start."

Luckily, he seemed totally unphased.

"Well, I seeee... a cake shop. And some pigeons. And—" he gasped, "Oh my god, is that an elephant?!?!"

She cocked a brow, the verity in his voice making her forget her panic for a moment, "Oh shut up, there is not."

"Cross my heart, babe — it's right in front of me! And woah, I think it stubbed its toe! Someone better call a tow truck!"