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It was eleven in the evening, yet the streets of Grain City were still flooded with sleep-deprived salarymen, drunk or sober adults, and college students hanging around with the store lights still illuminating the streets despite the absence of the bright building lights from earlier.
Most citizens were asleep at this time of hour, but time flows differently in a city. They were still college students who were running towards their deadlines like their life depends on it or studying in advance for their course — college students like Kageyama Ritsu.
He was in fact the latter, Ritsu’s class just ended by ten in the evening, but it was supposed to end at exactly nine PM but due to the overtime lecture, he had no choice but to come back to his dorm by estimated eleven in the evening. Ritsu had made a time-table for his study hours, at one of them were eleven PM up to one in the morning, but the younger Kageyama could still make an adjustment — hell, he can even pull an all-nighter right now even though there were no exams scheduled for the next day. But, who knows, a surprise quiz can always happen.
As the train moves at a high speed with its sleep-deprived passengers, Ritsu tried to kill time by checking his phone for any messages and maybe checking some of his online notes. He received a couple of messages from his roommate, Takenaka, an acquaintance from middle school, now roommate-slash-friend from the same program. Takenaka never changed, he’s still the same tease yet matured as the time goes on. But, to Ritsu, he was still the same telepath they invited during the hunt of extraterrestrial beings.
FROM: Takenaka (7:34 PM)
hey i got off early i made som food
ik u will be off til 9, but a reminder still works
u gotta eat sometimes u nerd, dont just study or ill tell on ur bro
He won’t , Ritsu thought.
FROM: Takenaka (9:30 PM)
dude where the hell r u
r u still in class wth
but yea anyway fud on the fridge, just reheat it
The other messages were from his family, mostly encouraging him to take care of himself and at the same time keep up the hard work.
FROM: Shigeo (9:00 PM)
are you coming home this christmas break? it’ll be nice, i promise. this time i’ll bring teru-kun around :)
i hope you’re taking care of yourself there, we’re cheering you on
Ritsu’s drowsiness dropped and his senses awakened from his brother’s message. Shigeo will bring Hanazawa to the family dinner this year? That’s big news, indeed. After years of pinning each other, they’ve finally come to their senses. Good for them, Ritsu thought proudly.
TO: Shigeo (10:48 PM)
That’s great news, nii-san! I can’t wait to come home now, haha
I’m fine right now, nii-san. Thanks for the acknowledgement :)
Ritsu sighed, closing the message application and opening Mobgle Drive to review some of the Power-points as the ride went on. It’s good to be prepared as always, and that kind of mindset as he grew up. The quiet train ride motivated him to keep studying, it put Ritsu’s mind at ease and made him able to focus on the material he’s trying to learn. Most people listen to music while they study, but Ritsu is the exact opposite. In fact, he almost never listens to music in his day and age. It’s not the fact that it’s a complete hindrance to his focus, but it’s just that being alone with his thoughts felt more like he can focus much more.
“ Huh? It’s technically the same, you don’t make sense sometimes. ” A familiar voice told him, so young yet felt so old due to the fact that it was said to him a few years ago, and somehow Ritsu’s mind remembered it.
Ritsu unconsciously let out a small smile with the memory, and when he realized it he frowned. It’s weird to smile out of nowhere, he noted. And, thus he continued on reviewing his course material until the train reached his desired destination.
The younger Kageyama walked to the dormitory with his mind juggling the information he had just reviewed from earlier. As he walked, he tried to understand each concept and made sure to imprint all that information to his mind permanently. As soon as he reached his assigned room with Takenaka, it was completely dark — meaning the telepath was already asleep.
Ritsu checked the time on his watch: 11:05 PM . He pulled out his key and opened it carefully without making a creaking noise, yet it still made one. Ritsu cursed internally, Takenaka really waited for Ritsu to come home and managed to fall asleep on the couch. It’s a good relief that Takenaka was a heavy sleeper for a telepath.
The younger Kageyama put down his belongings to his room and took a quick detour to Takenaka’s room for a blanket and laid down the said blanket on top of his sleeping roommate carefully, and at last Ritsu prepared to take a bath. There, he thought about what he would do next other than eating his dinner. Study, again? Well, he would admit that there’s a specific course he had been struggling a little bit and Ritsu made a clear goal to be able to pass all his courses in each term. While the night was not yet over, he could still study for a bit or pull an all-nighter to that specific course subject. He really didn’t want to fall behind as someone who’s considered to be a Dean’s Lister.
After his short bath, he took out his meal and reheated it, hoping Takenaka wouldn’t wake up with the microwave noise. As soon as Ritsu got his meal reheated, he went to his own room, sat on his desk and opened his laptop and notebooks. he glanced at the digital clock on the bottom right of his laptop: 11:26 PM
In any matter of time, his day would finally end and he would put another entry to his journal. The same as earlier, he started reviewing his course materials and slowly understood each concept and tried to imprint it in his mind permanently. As Ritsu worked, a question lied faintly to his mind: What’s his reason for excelling in every subject? In fact, he was not even competing with his block-mates for the grade and he was not the arrogant type of student to feel like showing off his grades. In conclusion, Ritsu was born naturally smart and it was like destiny told him that he will excel in every subject as long as he still tried his very best. And ever since that, he has been known as someone ‘perfect’ and it’s a situation he will never get out of. The title had been imprinted to his very being: the oh-so-perfect student Kageyama Ritsu. So, to make a minimal mistake, it’ll feel like Ritsu’s world will crumble into millions of pieces. His reputation of being perfect will be judged, but it’s not that he built all that reputation to gain everyone’s attention. That ‘reputation’ was his everyday lifestyle, and it’s not something he can change now if every person he meets already knows that he’s some kind of a ‘perfect’ being.
Time check: 11:57 PM . Ritsu sighed, he pulled his drawer to get his journal that had been with him since his first term in the university. It was a birthday gift from an old friend: “ It’s thick ‘cause you have to use that thing throughout your freshman year, so take care of it, alright? 300 pages, in fact! Just tell me if you ran out of pages, hehe. ”
Speaking of an old friend, it had been a while ever since Ritsu had spoken to him. After Ritsu began his studies in Wheat University, his conversations with Shou lessened as the time went by due to his tight schedules. They rarely speak face-to-face and message each other, but Ritsu still remembered that red-haired friend of his. He could never forget an individual, like Shou, due to the fact that he made a big impact on Ritsu's life. He would admit that it was his fault for not reaching out after three months of inactivity, but Ritsu understood that Shou might be also busy with his chosen university degree. Maybe someday with less deadlines and stressful academics, they can chat again.
Ritsu had thought of Shou as he wrote his journal entry, and added the fact that he had missed his friends and family while being seven kilometers away from them other than the usual loathing of his annoying professors. And, after that he put down his pen and closed his journal, and Ritsu sighed. Ah, right, I’m not yet done studying this shit , he cursed.
Before Ritsu could keep on studying, he heard a soft knock on his bedroom window and glanced with an alert look. But, the said alert look faded as soon as he recognized the face of the intruder. The younger Kageyama sat there on his seat with mouth hanging agape, and the said intruder’s smile dropped and was replaced with a frown and motioned to the window lock.
“Are you going to let me in or nah?” the intruder said, his voice muffled against the glass. Ritsu tried to silence him, and at the same time approached his bedroom window and opened it.
“What the hell are you doing here, Shou?!” The said man grinned, but Ritsu kept asking, “I thought you were busy… like this time of hour, like you know…?”
Shou motioned him to go on before going inside, “Just go in.” And the red-haired esper did so.
Shou: “Can’t I wait to visit my best friend and see what he’s doing at this ungodly hour?”
Ritsu: “I thought most architecture students all pull all-nighters with a pencil up their ass.”
“You looked like you had a pencil up your ass.” and that earned Shou a dirty look from Ritsu. “Okay, okay, fine. I couldn’t get any inspiration for my assignment so instead of brainstorming, I went to you ‘cause I wanna kill some time with you.”
Ritsu: “W-Well, I can help you out with your brainstorming?”
Shou: “You don’t have to! Let’s just hangout, alright? It’s been a while…”
Ritsu: “That is true, but…”
The two teenagers stood there in the middle of the bedroom, and embraced each other.
Shou: “You rat-haired bastard, why didn’t you ever talk to me?! What’s the point of exchanging numbers, then?”
Ritsu: “Same as you, you dumbass!”
Whenever Ritsu wrote a journal entry at midnight, instantly it meant that his day was already over. It had been always like that, but whenever Shou visited him every past 12, it turned out that Ritsu was wrong. His day never actually ends when Shou comes to the picture.