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Rui scowled up at the sky after feeling a drop of water hit his nose. He shouldered his bag a little tighter and picked up the pace he was walking to get to the station. Reaching it early, he sat down on the nearest bench and closed his eyes.
He had learned that was the best way to do things. Be as unassuming as possible, blend into the crowd, don’t get overexcited.
Rui dug a little robot out of his bag to work on, fiddling with screws and adjusting the positions of the wires. He muttered to himself as he reconfigured the settings of the bot, his back hunched over and hair falling in front of his face. The rain had begun to pick up, falling in sheets down on the ground. Sheltered by the cover of the station, Rui paid it no mind.
“Hey, you!”
Rui looked up from his project, looking like a deer caught in headlights. A group of kids his age, from his school it seems, were walking over to him wearing repulsed and almost apprehensive expressions.
“Get off the bench! It’s ours!”
Rui wordlessly put the robot back in his bag and stood up, walking off to the side of the seat. He could hear the laughter of the kids behind him, the whispers they didn’t care to be discreet about.
“See? I told you! You can just order him about and he’ll do it! Serves him right for all the trouble he’s caused. I heard that…”
Rui didn’t want to hear more. Tightening his grip on his backpack’s strap, he navigated through the crowd of people waiting for the next train until he was a considerable distance away. Unable to work on his robot, he was left with his own thoughts.
Unfortunately.
Luckily for him, before he could fall down a spiral of self hatred and pity he was pushed into the rain by a rambunctious group of high schoolers who had no respect for personal space. Rui winced as he stumbled into the unsheltered area of the station, the rain stinging his skin every time it hit him.
Rui hated rain with a burning passion.
It was disgusting. It ran down his skin, soaking his hair and sticking to him no matter how much he dried off. The water soaked not only his hair but also his skin, seeping into his bones. He was always left with a dirty sensation oozing on his body despite rain supposedly being cleansing.
Cleansing, his ass.
A droplet of water got into his eye.
His long, tangled hair stuck to his face.
His socks were drenched.
He felt so incredibly stupid.
And that made him even more mad, because he isn’t stupid. He’s well aware his intelligence is above average, it was just a fact. Although that fact has also led him to be estranged from everyone his age, he wouldn’t trade his intelligence for ‘normalcy’. Life would be boring otherwise.
But sometimes, on dark, rainy evenings like that day, he wished to have a glimpse of what life was like for normal kids. Would he have friends? Would he get invited over for sleepovers or playdates or whatever people his age do? Could he have had some sense of belonging if he wasn’t cursed with the label of ‘genius’ or ‘prodigy’, which followed him wherever he went, defining every aspect of himself?
But these were only trivial daydreams, as fleeting as the rain pouring down from the skies.
The rain that he was somehow shielded from at that very moment.
Glancing to his right, Rui saw a blond boy around his age holding an umbrella up for them both, protecting them from the relentless downpour of the clouds.
Rui was rendered speechless at first. He didn’t know this guy, he wasn’t familiar at all. Why was he doing this for him at all?
“...Do you want something?” Rui’s tone wasn’t exactly harsh, but not soft either. Maybe apathetic would be the right word, flat and unfeeling. The only reason behind his words was pure curiosity, nothing else.
The boy turned his head to look at him. He was shorter than Rui, maybe by a few centimeters. His uniform was different from Rui’s, he must go to a different school. He had amber eyes, ones that were slowly blinking at him right now.
“Do I look like I want something?”
The boy’s words matched Rui’s tone, but there was an underlying layer of amusement behind his indifferent words. Like he couldn’t imagine why anyone would ask that question to him.
“People don’t just do this,” Rui gestured up at the umbrella. “For no reason.”
“What I want, huh…” The boy put his hand up to his chin in a mock imitation of someone trying to think hard. “I guess what I want is to not see you soaking wet and miserable.”
Rui simply stared at the other boy.
What a weirdo.
Then he internally laughed at himself. Who was he to be calling someone a weirdo?
“I’m Tenma Tsukasa, by the way!” Tsukasa smiled and stuck his unoccupied hand out to Rui. He was loud, Rui noted.
He stared at the hand offered to him.
“Kamishiro Rui.” He slowly took Tsukasa’s hand in his and shook it. Tsukasa had a warm, solid grip. It was grounding, in a sense. Rui almost mourned the loss of that warmth once they pulled away from each other.
After that, they just stood together, staring off into the distance. Their shoulders brushed, Rui could feel the heat radiating off Tsukasa’s body next to him, eyes trained on some undefined point. Normally, Rui would feel the need to pull away from someone so close. But something about Tsukasa, something Rui couldn’t quite put his finger on, made him want to stay close.
The afternoon train arrived soon after, and the two boys walked in sync inside. In some unspoken agreement, they decided to sit next to each other. Rui kept his head down and studied the fabric of his pants when the kids from his school walked past them. After they were gone, he decided it was safe to pull out his robot and work on it.
“What’s that?” Rui’s body tensed when he heard Tsukasa’s question. He hoped his voice would come out normally when he responded.
“It’s a drone. I built it a few years ago and I’m fixing it now. By using this kind of metal…” Rui rambled on about how it worked. He could hear that voice in his head telling him Tsukasa didn’t care, or that he would think he was weird. But he couldn’t stop himself. Once he started, stopping was a foreign concept, if anything.
By the time he was finished, Tsukasa’s gaze was fixated on his face. Rui felt uncomfortable all of a sudden, like he was stuck in place. He squirmed in his seat and awkwardly looked away.
“Sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for? That’s awesome! You seriously built that all by yourself?” Tsukasa was practically buzzing with excitement, his eyes lighting up. “Can I touch it?”
“...Yeah, I guess. Just be careful.” Rui wasn’t expecting that response. He handed the drone over to Tsukasa. He took it gingerly, as if it was some kind of fragile artifact.
“You don’t have to be that careful with it. It’s not going to break.” Rui just barely smiled at Tsukasa’s cautiousness.
“I know, it’s just so cool!” Tsukasa looked like he was going to say more, but he glanced at Rui, who was still smiling, and the words died in his mouth.
“Is there something on my face?” Rui wiped at the corners of his mouth.
“No, no. It’s nothing. So are you going to be an inventor or something when you grow up?”
“...I’m going to be a stage director. Like a director of plays, y’know?” Rui twiddled his thumbs. He was pretty sure Tsukasa would call him strange for that, he hadn’t met a single person that wasn’t one of his parents that thought wanting to be a director was normal.
“Really!?” If Tsukasa was loud before, he was positively deafening now. His exclamation turned more than just a few heads, at least. “I’m gonna be an actor! The world’s future star! People everywhere will soon know the name of Tenma Tsukasa! Maybe we’ll work together when we’re older!”
Rui sat in stunned silence for a few seconds before feeling the corners of his mouth tilt up again. He couldn’t think of a time he smiled more before that day.
“That’s serendipitous.”
Tsukasa blinked slowly at Rui. “What?”
Rui tried to stifle a laugh, but his attempt was unsuccessful. He let out a small chuckle, which then intensified to actual laughter.
“Hey, just because you know all these big words doesn’t mean I have to,” Tsukasa huffed, which made Rui laugh even harder. It wasn’t even that funny, he didn’t know why he was laughing so hard. He clutched his stomach and rubbed a tear out of his eye.
“Sorry…”
Tsukasa tried to hide his own amusement as well, but his attempt was about as triumphant as Rui’s.
Before they knew it, it was Rui’s stop. Funny how the ride usually seemed much longer, but today it felt unbearably short.
“I need to go…” Rui reluctantly got up, the smile dropping from his face as he gathered his things, taking the drone from Tsukasa’s hands and slipping it back into his bag. He stood up glanced back expectantly, hoping Tsukasa was going to the same place, but turned around after Rui saw him make no move to get up.
“Wait!” Tsukasa called out to Rui. Rui looked back at Tsukasa, wondering what he could have possibly wanted from him. Their eyes met and in that moment, Rui felt like he couldn’t breathe. Anticipation hung in the air between them, unbroken by the people walking through the gap.
“I’ll see you around…?”
Rui felt something warm spreading through his chest, an unfamiliar feeling but not unwelcome.
“Yeah.”
He slipped out of the opening train doors, stepping off just before the train started again. Rui looked through the window from outside the train, hoping to see a glimpse of Tsukasa before the train turned into nothing but a blur of shapes and colors. But it left too fast, and Rui was left standing, his gaze fixed towards nothing in particular for a few seconds. He sighed and started walking back home. That weird warm feeling was still there, a reminder of what had happened only minutes ago.
Rui had never felt this way before.
It was new.
Scary.
But he couldn’t bring himself to hate it.
Rui never really had what could traditionally be called a friend. The closest he ever got was Mizuki, and even then he wasn’t so sure friendship was the right word to describe their relationship. Even then, hanging out with Mizuki was exponentially different from the few minutes he had spent with Tsukasa. With Mizuki, things felt… numb. Cold. A welcome difference from his usual hurt, but detached nonetheless. Plus, that nice relief of having someone understand him left the moment Mizuki was out of his sight.
Nene hardly counted. She was so familiar, too much of a constant to feel this way.
With Tsukasa, someone he had only met an hour ago, Rui looked forward to the next day. That was certainly new. Life was a chore, something to dread rather than enjoy. Never something like this.
Never something exciting.
Rui found himself smiling again as he walked back home.