At exactly seventeen-thirty, Ms. Fujioka stood and excused her class, ushering the group of bored twenty-somethings out into the hallway. The students chattered to themselves as they filed out of the auditorium where their English lessons were held, their voices all blending together into one loud, droning jumble of incoherent phrases. Backpacks unzipped and shoes shuffled against hardwood floors, the silence that followed nearly deafening as it marked the end of another lesson.
Only one of the room's occupants still remained—she was a young woman with a flashy appearance, unable to be more conspicuous if she tried. Her two-toned blonde and pink hair was styled with an array of girly clips, light purple eyeshadow on her lids complementing the periwinkle of her eyes. As she leaned over her desk to write something down, the professor approached, a concerned frown tugging at her lips.
"What are you still doing here, Satou-san? Class is over."
Yui looked up from her paper, an apologetic smile on her face."Sorry, Sensei, but could I stay here a little longer? I was hoping to get some more quiet study time in."
She didn't miss the way the older woman took in her apparel, clearly finding it distasteful. What was so bad about her crop top and skirt, really? Sure, they were both a little short, but it was hot outside. Who could blame her for trying to cool down? "You can go to the library for that. This room is closing for the day."
Stern as ever... She thought, sighing softly as she packed her belongings into her zebra print handbag. She'd been the one to design it herself for one of her classes, and she was pretty proud of how it turned out. The hot pink trim and gold accents were extremely cute, in her opinion.
"Alright, alright. See you next time, Fujioka-sensei."
Waving goodbye to her unimpressed teacher, Yui strutted out the doors in her three-inch platform boots, idly pulling her phone out of her back pocket as she did so. She admired her Sanrio phone case for a moment before struggling to unlock the screen with her long press-on nails. Yes, they were inconvenient, but a wise philosopher once said that beauty is pain.
Upon checking her notifications, her face fell when she saw that one of her clients had messaged her earlier, his text making her insides churn.
16:04 How much for you to come over to my place and fuck?
Sickened, she shoved the device back into her pocket and tried to ignore the dreadful feeling building in the pit of her stomach. It wasn't the first time a client had asked about sexual services, but it never felt any less dehumanizing. Just because she wore makeup and dated men for money didn't mean that she was some cheap whore who'd let herself be used in place of some creep's body pillow.
Besides, she'd be too expensive for him, anyway.
On her way down the hall, she spotted a pair of girls who she vaguely recognized from her photography class. They were leaning up against a bulletin board, iced coffees in hand as they shared the latest gossip, probably about some stupid frat party or how the economics teacher was pregnant again. Shaking off her unease, she sent them a smile and a wave, watching one of them make eye contact.
Instead of waving back, the brunette nudged her dark-haired friend until they were both staring at her, leaning over to whisper to each other and giggling profusely. Flustered, Yui put her head down and started walking faster to escape their judgmental gazes.
What's their problem?She thought, her legs shaking as she rounded the corner and finally slowed to a reasonable pace. They don't know about the dates, do they? No... they couldn't.
She hadn't told anyone, and as far as she knew, nobody from Shusei had ever spotted her while out, either. Sure, there had been a few close-calls, but Tokyo was a pretty big place. The chance of somebody she knew walking in on one of her "business meetings" was next to none. She placed a hand over her chest to calm her rapid heartrate, writing it off as just the two of them being catty. That was nothing new for her, after all.
Yui pulled her headphones up over her ears and turned MIYAVI up to full volume, wanting nothing more than to just drown it all out. The stares, the cliques, the drama... it was all so pointless, so juvenile. She'd come here to pursue her passions, not make a bunch of frenemies and feel like shit every single day.
Music continued to blast in her eardrums as she made her way to her locker and stopped in front of it, her mind distracted by the day's events. She twisted the lock and entered in the combination, pulling out her textbooks to cram them back inside for tomorrow. A university having lockers was strange, but she couldn't say they didn't come in handy. With how big the campus was, getting a locker or a cubby in each major building made it so much easier for her to go between classes without having to carry a million heavy books all at the same time.
The minute the slatted metal door popped open, Yui was greeted with the sight of a person standing in her locker.
Or rather, falling out of it.
"Kyaaaaa!"
She let out a shriek, her books scattering to the floor as they flopped out of their hiding spot and knocked right into her. Both her and the stowaway went crashing to the ground, their limbs tangled up together in an awkward and uncomfortable imitation of a pretzel. As she glanced up with a groan, she caught sight of blue-black hair and sharp brown eyes that seemed rather unfazed by the whole situation.
"S-Sasaki-san?!" Yui recognized the goth girl immediately—how could she not? Like her, they had a unique, eye-catching style. And also, much like her, they were a frequent target of bullying and the subject of many a rumor. In some ways, she was lucky to at least have fake friends, but she only ever saw Mizuki alone or getting harassed by dickhead jocks and their bimbo girlfriends. "Wh-what were you doing in my... Oh, my god! Are you okay??"
After she got over the initial shock, she looked them over and realized that they were absolutely covered in bruises and... was that dried blood? "There's no way you got this bruised up just from a fall! Wh-" She paused and cut herself off, able to guess at what probably happened without having to ask. Besides, they'd already made enough of a scene; she didn't need to embarrass her classmate further by bringing more attention to their predicament, certainly not where everyone could see them.
"Well, never mind that. Come on, let's get you to the nurse. This is serious!"
Hurriedly stuffing her dropped books back into her bag, Yui reached a hand out to Mizuki, offering them support to get back on their feet. Before, she'd always avoided them like everybody else, curious to know more but afraid to get close and bring even more unwanted attention to herself. By doing this, she could very well be opening up Pandora's box and inviting the wrath of her fellow students like never before—she could practically already hear them coming up with all kinds of inane theories about how she must be dating the 'emo freak' and how they were probably fucking in the bathroom, or something like that.
But that was neither here nor there. Right now, the most important thing was that she had someone in need of medical attention right in front of her, and she wasn't heartless enough not to at least take them to get help. "Can you walk on your own? Don't worry, there should be some ice packs and painkillers in the infirmary."
At least, there always were whenever she got dragged into a fight or 'accidentally' hit in the face with a ball during gym practice.
Stuffed in a cramped locker together with the belongings of the one the said locker belonged to a young man was calmly scrolling through his phone as he was deciding what to listen to while waiting for someone to come and open the door for him. If this was him a few years back he would be frantically banging on the door, shouting to get attention of anybody in the vicinity to get them out, but after realizing that all the adults would rather just try to hide the unpleasant things like physical violence and bullying to not ruin the reputation of their 'oh so precious school', and the students reactions ranging from indifference and name-calling to getting his as beaten again and stuffed in locker or sports storage room for round 2 he stopped caring and trying. Honestly the best course of action would just be scaring the unfortunate owner of this locker and flee before they'd realize who the bloody mess of a goth stuck in their locker even was, and at least reaction could bring him a little joy if it was good one.
Only thing that really bothered him was the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. If he could get energy drink to wash it off that would be nice, since spitting it out on some poor students books or locker wouldn't exactly be the nicest thing to do. Again this taste was so familiar to him that at this point it was just a mild inconvenience.
He looked at the time, and saw that the clock was almost 17.30, which meant that it had been roughly two hours since the incident that led to this current situation, and honestly it was the typical confrontation he found himself at least once a week. Some popular clique walked pass him, bumped on him purposefully and demanding an apology. Instead of one the black and blue-haired goth replied with a snarky remark of the one bumping being blind and maybe get their eyesight checked, which followed the men of the group pinning him against the wall, socking him a few times in the face and stomach while calling him with names and slurs before stuffing him in a locker and spitting on him by a good measure.
This was the life of Sasaki Mizuki, an art-major who never really fit in anywhere.
After scrolling through the Spotify and finding out that one of his favorite bands had removed their discography from the platform he let out a sight "Gotta fucking love the fact that the unethical greedy fucks can't even pay artists to their rightful pay... At least I have their albums physically... And Flacs on my phone..." he thought excited the app and went to his personal music library. For all Mizuki knew he would be in the locker the whole night if the one it belonged to had already left the school, and if they did not have classes for the next day... Then he was fucked and would probably have to start banging the door and call help eventually. He did prefer to keep living after all, and as for his other bodily needs... Well he'd cross that bridge when he'd get there.
However it seemed that there was a plenty of waiting ahead of the goth, and what better way to spend it than do a King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard discography deep-dive while reading something. While his style indicated that he'd most likely only listened to metal- and deathcore with some pop-punk and emo-classics sprinkled in he actually really enjoyed all sort of alternative music, and a literal musical chameleon that could change their genre album to album like KGLW had a magical draw to him. That would ensure that if the worst came to be Mizuki would not get bored.
As he was calmly listening to the track 'Motor Spirit' and tapping the rhythm of it slightly against his thigh he heard little click of someone opening the door, and suddenly a bright light illuminated the dark locker, blinding him for a short while and making him squint his eyes. This coupled with the fact that his feet were already a little numb from the awkward position of his and cramped space made the goth loose his balance as soon as the door was open, and fall flat on his face on the cold hard floor.
The goth that had just fallen out rocked a more feminine outfit today, a black crop-top that had cross-lace going in the middle of it, a high-waist skirt with a similar cross-lace in the middle of it, detached sleeves, with one of them having fallen off during the scuffle and located next to the locker, and piercings on his ears.
After a few seconds of silence the feminine goth man let out a pained groan.
"FUCK!"
Only after letting all the pent-up frustration out of his body with a one shouted swearword he looked up and saw another famous figure of the school looking over him. Satou Yui. A flashy gyaru associated with all the bad rumors that were associated with all gyarus. A cheap slut who'd spend most of their time fucking and getting paid for it. Probably has a handful of sugar-dates and is an extrovert who gets along with everyone, but who every woman seems to despise. Of course these were all just baseless rumors like the ones of him circling around, but he was none of the wiser, and honestly he did not care to find out if they held any ground. He did not want to associate with her, and most likely this would be their first and last time interacting with one another.
"Yeah yeah that's me. The freak of the school. Want to take a picture to show your pals as well?" he says with a sarcastic tone of voice and spits some of the blood from his mouth next to him. He flashes pained expression overshadowing her little sarcastic smile that he flashed at her, and tries to stand up to get his sleeve, but fails to do so. His legs are still numb and for some reason his vision started to blur a little, however that did not manage to stop his little sarcastic routine.
"Just practising my little comedy-routine that's all. A little gay humor you know? Coming out of the closet and that shit." he decides to play to the rumors as he jokes about with his dry sense of humor. "Just think of these bruises as a divine retribution for my crappy sense of humor." he says and adds a little laugh and forced smile at the end. "Just let me rest here a little and go about your day kay. I bet you have places to be." he ends as he is ready to just lay down and wait till he feels like he can walk again, but to his surprise the two-tone haired gyaru was not about to leave him there like anyone else would've.
This was the first time someone had shown any concern to him for a long time, and he was not sure how to reply to it. "There's got to be something she is after." was what he thought. Why would a popular girl want to ruin their reputation by helping the outcast. Did she want to make herself look like some kind of big-hearted mother Theresa there for everyone and earn some brownie points among teachers? Like the saying goes 'there's no such thing as free dinner', and till this point everyone who associated with her in non-hostile way had always something they wanted to gain. Be it good reputation or get him to do favors or pretend to be his friends, so they could use him as a convenient piggy bank.
"Quit that holier than thou-bullshit" was what he wanted to say, but instead Mizuki just let out a pained grunt as he tried to stand up again, but yet again failed to do so. The world was spinning to him, and the pain in his stomach made him want to throw up, so whether there were some hidden agendas or not he found himself in a position he could not really choose to deny her help. Now that he was out of his predicament and the adrenaline was dying down the pain and the symptoms hit him like a freight train. The guys who beat him up really didn't show him any mercy.
Mizuki took her hand, and once he was pulled up it was clear that he most likely needed support to get anywhere. "The sleeve." he pointed weakly at the only missing piece of clothing on him, wanting to take it with him.
"Could you drop me at the restroom first... I feel like I can't make it to the nurses office so..." the infirmary was a familiar place to him as well, and much to his dismay he knew the routes to it probably better than the nurse themselves. "Need to drink and... Maybe something else there..." he clarified not really wanting to go into overt detail of most likely spilling out all the food he had consumed today, which was not a lot.
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