yeah second part bahaha
this whole thing is in kokichi's pov cus mmyes fight me.
also new headcannon: shuichi has freckles but it's just very little and very faint
it randomly came up but ehhhhhhhh who cares its cyute bye-
last thing-
mono, gene, and death succ pp
bahaha
Made You Up Part 1, Chapter 1: The Tank
Sometimes I think people take reality for granted.
I mean like how can you tell the difference between a dream and real life? When you're in a dream you may not know it, but as soon you wake up, you know that your dream was a dream and whatever happened in it, good or bad, wasn't real. Unless we're in the Matrix, this world is real, and what you do in it is real, and that's pretty much all you ever need to know.
People take that for granted.
For two years after that fateful day in the supermarket, I thought I'd really set the lobsters free. I thought they'd crawled away and found sea and lived happily ever after. When I turned ten, my mother found out that I thought that I was some kind of lobster savior.
She also found out all the lobsters looked bright red to me.
First she told me that I hadn't set any lobsters free. I'd gotten my arm into the tank before she'd appeared to pull me away, embarrassed. Then she explained that lobsters only turn bright red after they're boiled. I didn't believe her, because to me they had never been any other color. She never mentioned Yellow Eyes, and I didn't need to ask. My first ever friend was a hallucination: a sparkling entry on my new resume as a crazy person.
Then my mother had taken me to see a child therapist, and I'd gotten my first ever real introduction to the word insane.
Schizophrenia isn't supposed to manifest until a person's late teens, at the earliest, but I'd gotten a shot at it at just seven years old. I was diagnosed at thirteen. Paranoid got tacked on about a year later, after I verbally attacked a librarian for trying to hand me propaganda pamphlets for an underground Communist force operating out of the basement of the public library. (She'd always been a very suspect type of librarian-- I refuse to believe donning rubber gloves to handle books is a normal and accepted practice, and I don't care what anyone says.)
My medication helped sometimes. I knew it was working when the world wasn't as colorful and interesting as it normally was. Like when I could tell the lobsters in the tank were not bright red. Or when I realized that checking my food for tracers was ridiculous (but did it anyway because it calmed the prickle of paranoia on the back of my neck.) I also knew it was working when I couldn't remember things clearly, felt like I hadn't slept in days, and tried to put my shoes on backward.
Half of the time, the doctors weren't even sure what the medicine would do. "Well it should lessen the delusions, and hallucinations, but we'll have to wait and see. Oh, and you'll probably feel tired sometimes. Drink lots of fluids too-- you can get dehydrated easily. Also, it could cause a lot of fluctuation in your weight. Really, it's up in the air."
The doctors were oodles of help, but I developed my own system for figuring out what was real and what wasn't. I took pictures. Over time, the real remained in the photo while the hallucinations faded away. I discovered what sorts of things my mind liked to make up. Like billboards whose occupants wore gas masks and reminded passersby that poison gas from Hitler's Nazi Germany was still a very real threat.
I didn't have the luxury of taking reality for granted. And I wouldn't say I hated people who did, because that's just about everyone. I didn't hate them. They didn't live in my world.
But that never stopped me from wishing I lived in theirs.
(a'ight that was short soooo)
That night before my first day of senior year at Hope's Peak High School, I sat behind the counter at Makoto's diner, my eyes scanning the dark windows for signs of suspicious movement. Normally the paranoia wasn't so bad. I blamed it on the first-day thing. Getting chased out of the last school was one thing-- starting at a new one was something completely different. I'd spent all summer all the Makoto's trying not to think about it.
"Yo know, if Makoto was here, he'd call you crazy and tell you to get back to work."
I spun around. Rantaro leaned against the door to the kitchen, hands jammed in the pockets of his apron, grinning at me. I would've snapped at him if he weren't my only informant about Hope's Peak-- and my only friend. Gangly, bespectacled, hair green as an avocado and always perfectly brushed, Rantaro was a busboy, waiter, and cashier here at Makoto's, not to mention the smartest person I'd ever met.
He didn't know about me. So saying his saying that Makoto would call me crazy is pure coincidence. Makoto knew, of course; his sister is my latest therapist, the one who'd gotten me this job. But none of the other employees-- like Fuyuhiko, our mute, chain-smoking cook-- had any idea, and I planned to keep it that way.
"Har Har," I replied, trying to act cool. Beat down the crazy, said the little voice in the back of my head. Don't let it out, you idiot.
The only reason I'd taken the job here was because I needed to appear normal. And maybe a little bit because my mother forced me to take it.
"Any other questions?" Rantaro asked, walking over to lean against the counter next to me. "Or is the crusade over?"
"You mean the inquisition. And yes, it is." I kept my gaze from wandering back to the windows. 'I've been in high school for three years already-- Hope's Peak can't be that much different than Hillpark."
Rantaro snorted. "Hope's Peak is different than everywhere. But I guess you'll find out tomorrow."
Rantaro was the only person who seemed to think Hope's Peak wasn't the perfect place to be. My mother thought a new school is a great idea. My therapist insisted I'd do better there. Dad said it'd be okay, but he sounded like my mother had threatened him, and if he'd been here and not somewhere in Africa he would've told me what he really thought.
"Anyway," Rantaro said, "weeknights aren't nearly as bad as weekends."
I could tell. It was ten-thirty, and the place was dead. And by dead, I mean it was like the entire possum population of suburban Indiana. Rantaro was supposed to be training me to work nights. I'd only worked the day shift during summer, a plan concocted by my therapist that my mother had quickly blessed. But now that school was starting, we'd agreed I could work at night.
I grabbed Makoto's Magic 8 Ball from behind the cash register. My thumb went for the red scuff marks on the back of the ball, trying to run it out like I always did whenever I got bored. Rantaro was now preoccupied with lining up a pepper shaker cavalry across the hostile regiment saltshaker footmen.
"We'll still get a few stragglers," he said. "Creepy late nighters. We got this really drunk guy one time— you remember him, Fuyuhiko?"
A thin line of cigarette smoke trailed through the short order window and up to the ceiling. I'm response to Rantaro's question, several large puffs clouded the air. I was pretty sure Fuyuhiko's cigarette wasn't real. If it was, we were breaking a hundred health codes.
Rantaro's expression went dark. His eyebrows drew together, his voice flattening out. "Oh. And there's Shuichi."
"Shuichi who?"
"He should be here soon." Rantaro squinted at his condiment skirmish. "He comes on his way home from work. He's all yours."
I narrowed my eyes. "And why, exactly, is he all mine?"
"You'll see." He glanced up when a pair oh headlights illuminated the parking lot. "He's here. Rule one: don't make eye contact."
"What, is he a gorilla? Is this Jurassic Park? Am I going to get attacked?"
Rantaro shot me a serious look. "It's a definite possibility."
A kid our age walked through the door. He was wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans. A Meijer polo dangled from one hand. If this was Shuichi, he didn't give me much of a chance to make eye contact; he went straight to the corner table in my section and sat with his back to the wall. From my experience, I knew that seat was the best vantage point in the room. But not everyone was as paranoid as I was.
Rantaro leaned through the short-order window. "Hey, Fuyuhiko. You got Shuichi's usual?"
Fuyuhiko's cigarette smoke curled in the air as he handed over a cheeseburger and fries. Rantaro took the plate, filled a glass with water, and plunked everything on the counter beside me.
I jumped when I realize Shuichi was staring at us over from his seat, from underneath his hair. A wad of cash had already been placed on the edge of the table.
"Is there something wrong with him?" I whispered. "You know.. mentally?"
"He's definitely not like the rest of us." Rantaro huffed and went back to building his armies.
He's not a Communist. He's not wired. Don't check under the table, idiot. He's just a kid who wants some food.
Shuichi lowered his eyes as I walked up.
"Hi!" I said, cringing even as the word left my mouth.
Too perky. I coughed, scanned the windows on either side of the table. "Um, I'm Kokichi." I lowered my voice. "I'll be your waiter." I set the food and water down. "Can I get you anything else?"
"No, thank you." He finally looked up.
Several synapses imploded in my brain. His eyes
Those eyes.
His glare peeled away the layers of my skin and pinned me to the spot. Blood rushed to my face, my neck, my ears. He had the yellowest eyes I'd ever seen. And they were completely impossible.
My palms itched for my camera. I needed to take a picture of him. I needed to document this. Because the Freeing of The Lobsters hadn't been real, and neither was Yellow Eyes. My mother had never mentioned him. Not to the therapists, or to Dad, or to anyone. He couldn't be real.
I screamed curses at Makoto in my head. He'd forbidden me from bringing my camera to work after I'd photographed an irate man withan eye patch and a peg leg.
Shuichi nudged the was of cash towards me with an index finger. "Keep the change," he muttered.
I grabbed it and raced back and raced back to the counter.
"Hi!" Rantaro mimicked in a high falsetto.
"Shut up. I didn't sound like that."
"I can't believe he didn't bite your head off."
I shoved the was of into the register and brushed my hair back with shaking hands. "Yeah," I said. "Me either."
When Rantaro stepped out back for his break, I commandeered his condiment armies. Fuyuhiko's cigarette smoke wafted toward the ceiling, pulled into the vent. The oscillating fan on the wall made the papers on the employee bulletin board flutter.
Halfway through my recreation of the Battle of the Bulge, I shook Makoto's Magic 8 Ball to find out if the German saltshaker would be successful in his offensive.
Ask again later.
Useless thing. If the Allies had taken that advice, the Axis would have won the war. I kept myself from looking at Shuichi for as long as I could. But eventually my eyes wandered back to him, and I couldn't look away. He ate with stiff movements, like he was barely keeping himself from stuffing everything down his throat. And every few seconds, his hair slid over his eyes and he'd push it to the side.
He didn't move as I refilled his water. I stared at the top of his blue-haired head as I poured, mentally urging him to look up.
I was so busy focusing that I didn't notice the cup was full until the water ran over the top. I dropped it in shock. The water splashed all over him— across his arm, down his shirt, into his lap. He stood up so fast his head smacked into the overhead light and the entire table tipped.
"I- Oh, crap- I'm sorry-" I ran back to the counter to where Rantaro stood, a hand clamped over his mouth, his face turning red, and grabbed a towel.
Shuichi used his Meijer polo to absorb some of the water, but he was soaked.
"I am so sorry." I reached out to dry his arm, very aware that my hands were still shaking.
He recoiled before I could even touch him, glaring at me, the towel, then back at me. Then he grabbed his polo, shoved his hair out of the way, and escaped.
"It's fine," he muttered as he passed me. He was out of the door before I could say another word.
Rantaro, composed, took the dishes from me. "Bravo. Brilliant job."
"Amami."
"Yeah?"
"Shut up."
He laughed and disappeared into the kitchen.
Was that Yellow Eyes?
I grabbed the Magic 8 Ball and rubbed the scuff marks as I looked into it's round window.
Better not tell you now.
Evasive little bitch.
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Oh shit oh fuck and upload???? Who even am I tbh
Thanks for reading guys hope you enjoyed it lol. New part coming soon of course because I'm super bored with nothing else to do. If I finish the next chapter before the first of March, then I'll make this it's own book. By copying and pasting it I guess. It's February 20th as of now. Hmmmmmmmmm lots of work but oh well.
2353 words.