psychological pacifier starts ww3 

CHAPTER ONE

Most people find that the summer before their final year of high school is the same as an energy drink left in the freezer for too long—an explosion waiting to happen. Teenagers ride the rollercoaster that was the month after exams and view the world from bottom up. You suppose it was the same in your case, that right after second year had ended, things grew less. . .polished. People were different, so were the stakes. But you just never seemed to catch up.

It looked like most envied your freedom, for you were not a child that appeared leashed to brittle parents—publicly, at least—and in the summer that widened the gap between second and third year, your parents decided to push this independence to its biggest limit. They gave you an apartment and called it charity, as if years of obsolete smiles and nails digging into skin would suddenly fade away in the glisten the silver key gave under a white light. As if, you had fabricated the story of poor, little you, just to make yourself a victim when it looked to be far from the case.

Even though all others could see was how small you were in a flat on the twelfth floor of a city-dwelling landlord's residence, they had forgotten that misery comes in all shapes and forms. And as you learn during the dulled-down summers inside a cagey room, gazing out at a rural dream, misery lives in the minds of the weak; hungry for the violent thoughts that protrude out from your skull and all over the floor like blood oozing out of the sockets where your eyes ought to be but you suppose you are just too blind to see what is in front of you. To value what you have, because the morals in every story observe greed as a sin.

Well, perhaps you should be happy in your situation. You were not left to fend for yourself like a hound abandoned by it's kin in a hoarder's den. And there is only one Hiromi Furuta with that odd, confident personality—she lives with you of all people.

Hiromi is a lackey, or that is how you have conditioned yourself to believe. Not in the way that all people in this world who look at you and see only skin and bones are unreal, not-to-be-trusted, liars. But it is a surly, unspoken truth that Hiromi is just in the same puddle you are in, except you claim to drown while she does not.

It's as though you do not exist, which hurts you the most. That this apartment would be more alive when empty than you at your first breaths. You have this often, a pale, unfathomable longing behind you, or who you present yourself as. Because who are you beneath your lies and truths and fears and hopes? You are afraid of that person, you're scared shitless.

You're scared that the person who wants to die, wants to kill, wants to erupt in tangible violence, will outlive the façade you've been playing on for the last eighteen years. You're scared that you're meaningless—you're nothing. And you wait in a lonely bedroom, knowing your parents are enjoying aged wine on a beach in Casablanca as they leech money off people they've never met who break their backs in bricked factories. Their smiles are the same as a pinched centipede that writhes when crawling in the gaping maw of a parasite, scuttled, painful ridges on the spines of the weak that slave beneath the concrete your feet stand on. It's not some awkward crack on the earth of your relationship with them—a form of affluenza that intoxicates them of their own identity with you, anything to do with you. You regard it as your punishment. Apathy.

You wait for the air to grow shallow and tight; the skies dampen with thick ashy black and it's akin to blood oozing out of your wounds as a child, sloppy and almost creational. You wait for the stars to crawl from the darkness against the silhouette of your own eyes and it cements death as the crux in the wheel in your life.

To know you, that is all you must know—the pale monotony of life, of the question as to whether you, in all your atoms and thoughts and soul, exist, or are you simply a miniscule dot against the bright, empty universe, who will never understand or be gifted love. Who will never be anything more than what you are right now. Such a thought is merciless when it strikes you down in childhood up until now. It weighs you down in the bed at night, even if your parents paid for a lousy, cheap fitting, you doubt it was the stiff, toughness of the mattress which gave you angry, intrusive thoughts.

The teacher who is speaking to you cannot get her words through. It's as though her voice is meaningless against the misty void that has clouded your mind. Her tongue is flat with empathy and the syllables cannot break apart the lines sulking between your irises and the gaps in your gritted teeth. After a few minutes, she finally understands this.

Her lips are pursed, forming a frustrated thin line. You cannot meet her eyes but you feel their sadness.

At last, you hear her voice. But it is long and boring and tiring and it does not seem to dawn on you that she is speaking about your homework. Your mind is too preoccupied with the nightmare that left you reeling in terror the night before. The nightmare of non-existence, of no purpose. Of the experiences and concepts of life and death that you, a simple dot in billions, cannot and will not ever experience. You are inconvenient, meaningless in the way of things.

For many it would shackle them to have a breakdown of their own life, to tear apart the crisis and turn it into something bigger, stretch the skin of life until breaking point till the future of a teenager is splattered in blood in the walls of their family home. But you are angry, and you throw your envy into the fire of the bodies you fight to earn a place and the focus of your frustration is stilled into the air around you, a bomb that is itching to go off. Yet. . . you do not hold the trigger. The person who does, is right behind you.

You hear him.

Oikawa smiles too often, like a clown that is on-show at a circus, you suppose. Most would call that a horrible metaphor for a flowery boy, but it is apt given he almost always puts on a show. Maybe you should pull off his nose and make it all claret, string it up in balls of blood to see the real, red nose all those clowns wear. Hah, you smile at the thought.

Your eyes flicker to the doorway where he stands, leaning coolly against the doorway. In his hands is his homework and on his face is that trademark smile—dimples on gentle, ivory cheeks and lips curved smoothly like the edge of a tulip bud. So soft, one would trace their finger over it.

The teacher suddenly smiles too, as though his smile is contagious.

You, on the other hand, quickly drop the smile you had earlier at the thought of turning Oikawa into a Five Night At Freddy's clown animatronic. Motherfucker, it almost slips out. You are lucky you catch your tongue in time before letting that insult rip loose in the tense air. Your Literature teacher already hates you enough, you think.

Oikawa must also be handing in his Literature homework late. It was due last Friday so you question his intentions; his academics flitted between mediocrity and prodigal depending on his mood. His eyes overlook the shambles of your own and you hiss in your head for your teacher to pocket it immediately, but even from where you stand your eyes are tortured by your horrible, illiterate English on dull, tattered paper. Meaningless garble suddenly became important all because you know Oikawa can see it. But why does that hurt you? Why does it anger you?

Your ears perk up, like a small cat, just as his mouth opens and he speaks. But you lower your head once more, realising that there were no snarky insults for you to spit. Like with the teacher, you cannot meet his eyes. You are already annoyed by him just being in this room. He just had to turn up here, didn't he?

Maybe it was because you had lost to him in so many ways, in that he was the perfect example of your own self-worth, if he could not reach you, then no one could. It did not make you weaker but it made your strength become built on the lies you spoon-fed to yourself in the mirrors of public school bathrooms. You cannot explain it, how deep hatred runs, like fuel in the engine of a race car but it burns until it ignites a more killer fire. They should teach it in parenthood 101 classes or in school, to run away from that fire even if you are cold.

Because you didn't run away and now you are trapped in the gauze of the brutal heat, lying to yourself that escape isn't necessary, not when you want to burn yourself alive to teach others a lesson, when really all you're doing is just hurting yourself. It's common sense but kids that grew up with a distant, disgusted look in their parents' eyes don't have the brains to tell good from bad or right from wrong. They make their own way in the world. And they'll use others as a stepping stone.

If you play your cards right, you can use Oikawa as a stepping stone to your own success. Ignoring him and his idiocy in the school would perhaps enroll you in a more sanctimonious lifestyle. Why bother to pop his ego? All you gotta do is make sure yours doesn't explode.

Right?

You watch the teacher's fingers circle certain words on your paper and you swear a compliment comes from her lips. "I want to see you write this from a different perspective, [L/n]. Call it extra credit, if you will."

You exit the classroom as though you are running in the Olympics but you are quite aware from your friends' comments that it is more of a jiggly-hipped middle-aged woman's morning jog.

It's the most optimal form of walking to be both fast and gain distance. Who cares if you look stupid! But your thoughts quickly alter from irritation to panic and then back to irritation when you hear the rubber soles on sport trainers clicking behind you.

Undoubtedly, you can put a name and a face to that sound. It is one you are quite familiar with, since his haphazard runs from his fangirls occur outside the spare classroom on the first floor, which you use with your friends as a getaway.

Oikawa taps you on your shoulder but you do not look back, "[Name]-chan! Right? Let me see your Literature homework, I need help with mine."

"Piss off," It is a flat reply.

That does not deter him. If he was offended, he didn't show it. "Please!" Oikawa pouts, stretching out the word as if it was a cat's screeching purr on a silent street. "We're classmates, right?"

You swore he almost said friends but perhaps you were just growing more delusional as every day passes. And he was right; you had the misfortune of sharing eighty percent of your classes with him. Even his devout club of fangirls with whom you had heard gossiping in the bathroom too many times, complained that no one in the year shared more than half of their classes with him. They too had thankfully forgotten about you. You were not invisible, as much as the devil in your head wanted you to believe. Rather, a lot of people did know you.

Though they certainly would not put you on the same pedestal as Oikawa Tooru. You are violent, disloyal, rude and a known troublemaker who skipped school and "lived alone." Oikawa was the talk of the town, the jewel of Aoba Johsai, the crowned setter or whatever that was. You knew he played volleyball like his life depended on it and that was it.

"Oikawa," You sigh, almost miserable. Today had been already sour but it looked to be growing more and more garbage the longer Oikawa was looking at you. "You're capable. Do it yourself."

The boy frowns, and you can't tell if he is putting on an act. Another thing you hate about him just as much as yourself; when does the act stop being an act? "Just Oikawa? Not even an honorific?"

"Yes," You wonder if Seiji and Takara are out of Geography now. "I use honorifics for people I respect."

Oikawa dramatically sighs—it was kind of sigh a child gives when nothing goes their way. "I just want to take a little look! Classes are about to end!"

He peers over your shoulder and you decide to cling to the paper as if your life truly depended on it. Now, looking back on it, it was not just Oikawa's immaturity that led to the disastrous turn of events between the two of you. Anyone with a brain can tell that your arrogance is your downfall. Refusing to help Oikawa is one action in the karmic cycle that wants to sweep you off your feet and crush you.

Oikawa is correct with his wails that class is about to end because the two of you are on the ground floor of the school, where the grubby, short first year students swelter in flocks down the corridor. Such a sight is one any Seijoh student sees in a nightmare, especially as a third year, because it was a miserable event that occurred like clockwork, and when observed was reminiscent of rats piled into a bucket with a blowtorch on one end. The rats scramble to get away from the heat and in doing so, kill the others.

The bell rings and you finally look at Oikawa. He watches your mildly infuriated—and rather comical—expression fold into pure surprise, it kind of made him fondly remember the first time he saw a zebra in a zoo.

He's too busy thinking of a funny remark that plays on this to realise he was still fumbling for your paper, something embossed brushing his fingers and he feels someone nudge his shoulder a little too much in the crowd of black like a murder of crows and—

Rip! The sound of paper shredding is enough to make everyone swivel their heads like endoskeletal dolls. Everyone except you. Because you can already feel it in your hands. So all you do is look at Oikawa.

If it was just you and him in the corridor, you know you would have killed him. Okay, maybe not killed him but ya know, it would have come pretty close. Okay, a second goes by, no, it really wouldn't have. Because you can be violent in your head but you know you don't have the strength of an ant to win a fight against a guy that stays after school for sports.

Another second goes by.

Oikawa hurries towards you, but since you are frozen, it does not take long. Besides, it wasn't hard to find you, even if you were just as tall as the first years.

"[Name]-chan!" His eyes widen with incredulity. "I know," The gleam of pure shock, as if his ego had taken a massive hit, quickly evaporated like cold water on the hood of a car in summer. "I shall make it up to you! I, Oikawa Tooru, will take you out on a date. How's that?"

Dumbfounded, you look at Oikawa. Crap, I don't have the time to mentally digest this. "What?"

He ponders for a moment, as if debating on his way of making it up to you, "I will... do your Literature homework as well! Didn't she want your new draft by the end of this week?"

To be honest, you can't fault Oikawa for eavesdropping on the conversation but you can and will fault him for just about everything else. "Just shut up," You rub your forehead with your thumb and your index finger. If someone had stumbled into the corridor—now somewhat vacant—they may have mistaken this quarrel as an exasperated middle-aged couple navigating a divorce. "Shut. Up."

You start to walk away, crumpling up the paper—or should I say, half of it, since the rest was still in Oikawa's calloused hands—hoping that maybe this was a dream. Hell, maybe Hiromi forgot to wake you up today. Yeah, yeah, that must be it.

It wasn't that you were mad. More like annoyed. You just couldn't believe you didn't see it coming. It had quite literally surprised you. Normally, you wouldn't be fazed by much—it's a trait of yours, to detach yourself from most things to avoid getting hurt. But this was something else. A tide riding for change, you suppose.

At least you'll be making Monday lunch interesting for once when you reach your friends and explain why it looks like a dog ate your homework.

Oikawa's voice tears your eyes off your uninteresting nails and onto him for the first time. And you cannot seem to look away. What did this mean? You watch his lips twitch and tongue sharply speak, eyelids flutter and expressions are worn and discarded. You watch the venom inside his pupils seep out of his eyes, as if the skull could not hold back the black liquid. And the potent thing drips down his sleeves and covers the emblem of the school. He turns to face you, eyes stare into each other and everything fades away in the moment; it becomes only two. Then the smile crawls across his face, slowly and steadily, and then you blink.

It was just in your head. A daydream.

Oikawa calls out after you, "Don't pretend you didn't hear it, [Name]-chan! I'll take you on an amazing date! At the beach! Or the park! Or the—"

"Ouch, ouch, ouch! Iwa-chan, that really hurt!" Iwaizumi Hajime saves the day again by pinching Oikawa's ear hard enough to make it bleed and drags him out of your sight like a fake death in a school play.

Ignore him, Iwaizumi mouths and you swear he almost smiled.

——————

Although you have friends, you question their true intentions on a daily basis. This, of course, is the inherently evil, tragically traumatised you, the one that lurks in your mind acting as if it is always in control. Today, you decide they are adequate.

Seiji watches you slump into your seat at the cafeteria as though you were a dog on a leash. "Mirror, mirror on the wall," He stares at his phone screen protector as if it projects a glossy, mirror-like reflection, "Tell me, what is bothering [Name] today."

"A lot of things," You mutter, "Where's Takara? Didn't you guys have Geography together?"

Seiji shrugs, carefree, "Bathroom? Not like I'm gonna go trudging in after her like a war soldier. But anyway, I can tell something is pissing you off."

Seiji Yashiro is one of your closest friends, fresh out of middle school he had cornered you one day after Maths to bunk P.E and now the two of you have been squabbling ever since. A lot of girls seem to admire him from the corner of their eyes—you have noticed this phenomenon a lot, as the years go by. But in your vision, you cannot quite fathom it. Why do they assume this lanky boy with a nose that didn't heal correctly from that one time he broke it playing soccer, and droopy, ungelled black hair, was handsome?

You unzip your backpack, ignoring the ripped homework that blanketed your packed-lunch, "Nothing's bothering me. Oh, look! Hiromi made me another cheese sandwich. Tch, does she think she's my mom?"

Seiji rests his chin on his palm and edges nearer until he's close enough that you can hear his slow breaths, "You should be a spy, I doubt even water-boarding could make you crack." His pea-green eyes become almost beady the more they observe you.

"Fuuuuuckkk," You exhale, slouching your shoulders—your posture is god awful sometimes. "It's fucking Oikawa. He ripped my homework by accident and I don't really care but at the same time, I care, ya know?"

You lean in further to Seiji, dropping your voice. "And guess what," It's barely a whisper, "He thinks he can make it up to me by asking me out on a date."

"Are you guys...kissing?"

You quickly pull away, "WHAT?"

Seiji, on the other hand, struggles to contain his laughter. The two of you looked up at Misaki, was it? She ran the Oikawa Fanclub, if you recall. Misaki is the snake that enticed Eve in the Garden of Eden, you swear they are the same person. I mean, no one believes you because naturally, Misaki is a snake, but only a metaphorical one. Her eyes are feline in nature, slits that ebb out the most cruel of hunts, blackness beyond blackness as irises bear into the world around her. They are a beautiful grey, like the washed-out skies following a dark storm, silver like the lining hidden amongst stars, maybe the twinkle a god leaves in their waltz.

You don't know Misaki well, but just like the arrogant person you can be, you presume you do. You presume the same. You may have an uncanny ability to learn people well, but Misaki's interest has never, not once, ever been in you. You are but a dot, a thorn in her plans. Prick the defenses of her rose and repercussions will follow.

Her words are soft and blunt, so unlike the cold, icy forked-tongue a viper would rapture it's prey with. "Sorry," Misaki laughs, "If I was disturbing your... canteen date." She says it slyly, as if she enjoys juggling her words, picking them out carefully, like her outfit for the day. "It's just," Misaki takes a seat quite elegantly next to you, "Is it true that Oikawa asked you out on a date? Why?"

Fuck it, why not.

"Yeah."

Misaki waits for you to elaborate. You do not.

She huffs, "[L/n]! You can't just leave us hanging like that. Oikawa doesn't just ask any girl out, you know."

You frown, putting down your sandwich which, having been clenched in your hands for so long, looked less and less like a sandwich and more like... dumpster trash, "Yes, he does. It's been three weeks since term started but I am pretty sure he has already been dumped."

"And look how fast he's moved on!" Misaki jumps to a conclusion so quickly that she ought to be a gymnast with that mindset. "Besides, I'm only worried about you because..."

She lowers her voice—the second person within five minutes to have done so, what was this, middle school cooties? "Oikawa might end up ruining your life if you're not careful. I would hate to see you get hurt."

Seiji arches an eyebrow, "Funny coming from you, Goldilocks. Don't you have the most to lose if [Name] dates Oikawa? You're the head of his fanclub right? I see you cheer for him at all his matches."

Misaki waves off his words, "Hah! You're quite funny, Yashiro-san. I'll see you around, [L/n]."

You watch her leave the table and your eyes follow her figure up until when her gaggle of friends gather around her with an cruel, odd look of fervor in their eyes. Once you are certain that Misaki is out of hearing distance, you snicker along with your friend.

"Goldilocks? I know she dyed her roots and got a curler but help, that was brutal!"

——————

bringin' back seiji from ff bc i missed him??? rip to lolita shes a ff classic she will not be in this fic. if u see any stuff from ff NO U DIDNT T_T anyway, i realised this story may be more comical that originally intended but i like the Funny so lets keep it. also did i seriously write 3.9k words. yes, yes i did.