Trust Me | Tsukimi Shin

(Part One)

Alright, first and foremost- Hi. I had played 'Your Turn To Die', as well as 'Your Time To Shine', and I fell in love with the game (cried, even!) and it felt like a crime to not write a fic about the one character I was so fixated on since he's so interesting.

This might be obvious but... beware of spoilers for 'Your Turn To Die'! There aren't any spoilers for 'Your Time To Shine' aside from like... finding out Shin likes soup and has no upper body strength... Also, because the game isn't technically finished... some things may not be accurate later.

Also, some things won't make sense. I will be throwing random hints together that form nothing, they're just there to make you think I'm some literary genius when in actuality I am a mess and I just want to see these characters happy.

Anyway, enjoy~!

Shin was utterly beat. Having to even drag himself out of bed, push open a door, and shuffle inside the lecture room... it was all far more exhausting than it should have been. It didn't help that the biting cold from outside had left his cheeks stinging and his nose nearly runny, and he pulls his sleeves over his palms and rubs his cheeks furiously with them to warm his face.

The lights overhead were dim, a warm golden glow instead of a painful white that he knew some lecture halls had, but they still burned his eyes and made his migraine pound insistently. He pulls his beanie down to cover his eyes and slouches back against the bench. Shin had been berating himself for weeks to start going to bed at least a half-way reasonable hour, but every night, he found himself forcing himself to bed at three in the morning-- at the earliest.

Shin was dead sure his morning could not get any worse, but then his stomach growled, and the pain that nipped at his insides made his fists clench inside his jacket pockets. Hopefully, he would have time to grab something from the vending machine down the hall after class.

He hears the doors open, and he hooks his thumb over the edge of his beanie and barely lifts it over his eye to see who it was. He catches a familiar head of long, black hair, the usual thin braid that draped down her back messy and tangled as if she slept in it. Her bangs were clearly tossed around by the wind, and with her arms full from her books and jacket, she was having trouble correcting it, her fingers barely managing to even reach her face. Shin nearly jumps out of his skin when a bang resonates through the room after she drops her books on the table. She sinks into the seat across the aisle from him soon after.

She melts into her chair, head craning back and eyes firmly shut as she rubs her upper arms, the sleeves of her mauve turtle-neck pulled up to her knuckles. Even from across the aisle, he could see that her fingers, nose, and cheeks were a bright cherry red.

He could also see the heavy bags under her eyes.

The woman- Takahashi, as he recalled- was not someone he really knew well. He had heard other students briefly talk about her before... some comments bad, some neutral, some rather inappropriate. They often passed each other in the halls or around campus, and he could spot her head in class, but he never really saw her outside of that. He never got a chance to get a good read on her personality until nearly two months ago when he caught her and one of her project partners getting into an argument.

...And apparently, he just couldn't help but get involved in it, but he tried to forget what had happened that day.

Her lids part, pale, rose-colored eyes staring straight forward as the woman continued to warm herself. Her gaze meets his and Shin flinches, realizing how obviously he had been staring at her, as well as how long. His throat tightens from the embarrassment, and right before he moves to drop his beanie back over his eyes, she smiles at him.