love comes in many forms

bane of my existence (monarisa - r18)

Note: Set in the same universe as Tokuyama Daigoro wo Dare ga Koroshita ka?, but before the actual events in the show.

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As the familiar sound of the school bell signaled the beginning of class, the hallways and the classrooms of Keyaki Academy filled with the equally familiar sound of students scrambling back to their designated seats.

Shida Manaka, on the other hand, just couldn't bother.

She didn't even acknowledge the bell - music blasting straight into her ears from the blue headphones she was wearing - but she'd already weighted her options before she'd taken her spot sprawled onto the chilly surface of the school roof. Next class was Chemistry, and she'd already had enough of everyone's crap for the day. So if she was faced with the prospect of having to sit through a whole class with freakin' Tokuyama (who always made her feel like she was in desperate need of a shower simply by existing in the same room as her, and really, how was he even allowed to become a teacher in the first place?), the choice had already been made for her.

She was gonna skip the hell out of Chemistry.

And that had been the end of it.

So when the rock music fitted snugly against her ears was suddenly replaced by the relative silence of the rooftop, needless to say, it was a bit of a problem.

Just as she was about to open her eyes to check just who it was that dared to pop her peaceful bubble, the perpetrator made herself known.

"What are you always listening to?"

And the voice just happened to belong to the bane of her existence.

"...Give me back my headphones, Watanabe."

Watanabe Risa, one of her classmates. With her dyed hair and the shiny earring she was purposefully showing off by keeping her short hair pinned behind that particular ear, the rest of the class (aside from her little groupies, Saitou and Ishimori) seemed to percieve her as intimidating and rebellious, but as far as Manaka was concerned, the girl was not worth any of her time. Manaka knew for a fact that the only one in the class actually rebelling against anything was her and Watanabe's whole shoddy 'I don't give a damn' attitude was nothing more than an empty little charade to make her stand out from the rest of the honor students.

Manaka didn't have to look at her to imagine the infuriatingly smug expression she probably had plastered on her face. And as much as she'd normally want to pick a fight and finally prove who's actually on top of the food chain once and for all, right now Manaka just wanted peace and quiet. The first step to acquiring that was to get her headphones back.

"So that's what you always do when you disappear from class? Come up here and listen to music?"

Well, sometimes she'd just leave school altogether, but ultimately, most of the time she'd skip class just because people were a pain in the ass and she'd wanted to breathe free. The rooftop happened to be rather great for such purposes, so she liked to take advantage of that.

Of course, she was under no obligation to provide such information to the girl who proved to be a constant source of irritation in her life.

"What do you care?"

Manaka finally opened her eyes without making the effort of lifting herself up from the ground, and eyed the girl standing above her with a perfectly calculated mixture of disinterest and hostility.

Risa didn't appear too interested either as she planted her knees on either side of Manaka's skirt and placed the headphones she'd taken halfway over her ears. "Guess I don't."