NO, THAT'S WRONG! ~~Naegami~~

Chapter 8: The Togami family

This... this couldn't be happening. After all these years, now they were finally contacting him? Had they any idea how often he'd wished them to give him any sign, any sign at all, that they still existed. Had they any idea how many nights he had spent crying over his old messages, his door locked tight. This turn of events should have been welcome, it would've been welcome, if it weren't for the astronomically terrible timing of everything. Here Byakuya was, showing Makoto Naegi, 0f all people, how weak he truly was.

   People looked at him and thought he was strong. Yes, he was arrogant, and yes, he acted callous and cruel to those around him. He'd almost managed to convince himself that that's how he truly felt, on his good days. But beneath it all, beneath the façade of icy glares and clipped remarks, was someone barely keeping it together. Even his father hadn't seen this side of him. Byakuya had had to work so goddamn hard to make himself look strong. He had to be strong, if he was going to make the decisions expected of the head of the Togami corporation. But he wasn't. He'd never been strong. And nobody showed him that quite as much as his siblings.
  
   True, he'd never been close to any of them. He barely knew them, after all. They could be strangers to him. But the few that he did know were a different story. If only things had been different. If only they'd been born as one of the 99%, blithely wandering the world with empty, paper lives, unaware of what they'd lost just by being born to the wrong people. Being a Togami was an honour, of course it was, but it was also a curse. Byakuya had had to do some less than palatable things to maintain his position as the heir to the family. The business world was dog eat dog, no doubt about it. But in order to assume the position of heir, he'd had to beat all of his siblings.

   He was the youngest Togami of his generation. The runt of the group, despite his rather impressive height. He'd had to prove to them all that he was worthy of one day running the corporation. And it hadn't been easy, either. His brothers and sisters had tried everything to get rid of him. His oldest brother, especially. The thought of it made him feel 12 years old again, frightened and small in a dark, smoky room. His brother's sinister grin as he grabbed Byakuya by the neck and- he stopped the memory before it got any further. It would do him no good at all to dwell on that. But what mattered is that he won.

   He won, and all of his siblings had died. At least, died to him. He had been forbidden to contact them, had been forced to block their numbers from his phone. And he hadn't had a problem with it, at first. After all, they'd had their chance, and they'd failed. Byakuya was the victor, he would be the most powerful person in the world one day. Days turned into weeks turned into months turned into years, and Byakuya had almost forgotten them. Until one day, as he was aimlessly scrolling through old texts, he spotted his old chain with his sister.

   He had instantly felt such a novel and unwelcome rush of loneliness that a single tear had escaped his eye and rolled down his cheek, splashing heavily onto his phone screen. He realised that he'd always been lonely, he just hadn't realised it. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to talk to his 14 other half-siblings. But he couldn't. It was impossible for him to do initiate any kind of conversation with them, because they were part of the 99% now. They were meaningless, not worth the space in his head used to think about them, let alone his tears. And on top of all that, he wasn't allowed to talk to them. But, if they initiated the conversation with him, on the other hand... It was a long shot, for sure, but Byakuya had to believe that they would message him at some point or another. He would just have to wait.

   So he waited.

   And waited.

   And waited.

   This wasn't like him! To get so hung up over something. He was Byakuya Togami, for God's sake. He shouldn't be crying over people who'd tried to kill him. He should be stronger than that. He had to be stronger than that. He couldn't let anybody know he wasn't stronger than that. So he distanced himself from everything. A thick wall of ice between his consciousness and anything else. His sympathies turned to indifference, his hopes turned to vague aspirations. The world turned grey and dull, void of anything interesting. And, for a while, it worked. He didn't have a reputation for kindness, but that had never been the case in the first place. He had been preparing for his eventual rise to power, and had amassed billions through day trading. And, when the inevitable letter from Hope's Peak Academy finally arrived, Byakuya felt a semblance- barely a stirring in his chest- of excitement.

   Here was a place where he would finally be among others in the 1%- those who had cultivated a talent worthy of being called Ultimate. Maybe, just maybe, he would even make a (whisper it) friend. He hadn't really found a need for one in the past, but recently his loneliness had begun to make itself known again, a dull ache gnawing at his heart. There was only so much his quasi-friendship with his butler, Aloysius, could do against that.

   He'd arrived there expectant, expectant of something, anything interesting to keep his mind off his siblings. He had been- for the first time in what felt like forever- hopeful. And when he saw the fifteen disappointments in the main school hall for the first time, a dread pit of despair opened up in his chest. That red-faced, green-eyed, brown-haired waste of space had been the worst of the bunch, like a cold knife of hopelessness twisting in the gaping, unsealable wound. But at least he had the staff to look forward to, yes? And the headmaster, Jin Kirigiri. He must be a powerful, strong man to run a school like this effectively. But even that had been a disappointment, insult to injury, salt in the wound. Nobody here, nobody, was good enough. Was it Byakuya's curse to be among failures for his whole existence? Was there nothing he could do, nowhere he could go, where the gnawing hole inside of him would finally begin to close? He went back to his room, barely holding himself together, and for the first time in months, he opened his phone to look at the messages one more time. And for the first time in years, he let himself cry.

   And that was when Makoto Naegi knocked on his door.

Word count without A/N: 1178

A/N: heyyyyyy squadron sorrrry for the long wait and shorter chapter today, not really feeling the motivation to write reallyyyy. I've also been feeling pretty illllll this week so I haven't had the energyyy to write. I'd like to say I'm doing better, so you can expect the next chapter soon, but tbh, im not sure if you can. What I can promise you is that I'll keep working as hard on this as is possible! I reallllyyy love writing this fic, so ima keep at ittt for a while, k? Aaaaannnnnnyyyyywwwwaaaayyy thanks for reading this far, and be sure to tell me how I can improve my writing! Alr peace.
—Winter