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Akira doesn’t miss his hometown in the countryside so much as he misses the quiet simplicity of it, when juxtaposed with the comparative chaos of Tokyo. He misses the sound of the river, the wind in his hair and the uneven tremor of the dirt path beneath him as he biked to and from school. He misses the smell of flowers and grass and rain — the way you could actually see the stars at night, and not just the faintest impressions of them.
He doesn’t miss the uncomfortable closeness forced upon the entire town, by sheer virtue of being so small that everyone, in some way, had met everyone else that lives there at least once. It’s one of the only things from his hometown that’s translated so seamlessly over to Shujin, where every student knows his name and presumes to know everything else about him at a glance — even if he can count on his fingers how many of them he’s spoken to himself. It was easy to get desensitized back there, when everyone in his class was someone he’d seen in at least one other through the nine and a half years he went to school there; here, it’s harder when people whose names he doesn’t know will sneer at him from across the halls, where every little thing he does is a cause for scrutiny and a subject of debate.
He hardly ever got headaches back at home, but here he gets them nearly every day — perhaps from not eating enough, because he messed up with budgeting this month and accidentally splurged too much on Takemi’s medicine, or not drinking enough water, because Sakura-san will glare at him whenever he comes downstairs to use the cafe’s bathroom when there are customers and his bladder is yet another thing that needs to be scheduled.
Or maybe it’s a consequence of everything: that they have less than a week left to deal with Kamoshida — that Kamoshida has been trying to provoke him since day one into violating the terms of his probation — that nearly everyone in this school, teachers and students alike, hates him — that his so-called guardian, who’s really more like a landlord, if he’s being perfectly honest with himself, hates him — that his parents haven’t bothered to call even once since they dropped him off at the train station, back at home.
Either way, it’s not uncommon to wake up in the mornings with pressure building near his forehead. He doesn’t dare complain to Sakura-san, because it’s not like he’d let him miss school for a measly headache, of all things, and he’s already made it abundantly clear that there’s no way he’ll waste time on taking care of his teenaged freeloader who should be more than capable of taking care of himself. He doesn’t dare ask to be excused from class to go to the infirmary, because he already knows what will be said about it: from his teachers, that he should come up with a better excuse if he wants to play hooky; from his classmates, that whatever drugs juvenile delinquents like him take must surely be messing with him, and he deserves every withdrawal symptom he gets.
Morgana nudges him on the school rooftop, forcing his head under Akira’s hand, and asks, “Is it another headache?”
Akira gives him a faint smile and runs his hand over the top of Morgana’s head. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. He knows he doesn’t have that strong a case — his bread lies in its unopened plastic wrapping next to him, because this is one of the headaches that makes him feel nauseous.
“Maybe you should go home,” says Ryuji. “You really don’t look good, dude.”
Akira outright laughs at that, and feels only a little bad when Ryuji winces. That would be nice — back at home, he lived close enough to the school that it would be laughably easy to make it home without help. If this had happened back at home, he might have been able to go to a doctor and explain that it’s starting to worry him, that he can count the number of days within the past few weeks that were truly headache-free — and on top of that, not have to worry about where he’s going to find the money in his budget for a copayment, on top of everything else.
“You know…” says Ryuji, “you could come over after school. Take a nap, eat something besides that instant crap…”
It… sounds really good. It sounds so good that it drowns out the immediate guilt for not insisting on spending another afternoon working through Kamoshida’s Palace. He’d be out of Sakura-san’s hair for a whole day, and he wouldn’t have to feel bad about asking for food. He could actually use the bathroom whenever he wants without inconveniencing everyone, and it’s more than a little sad that this is something that excites him.
He’d be allowed to just simply be, without worrying about how he appears to the people around him.
He gives a small nod, and Ryuji’s face lights up like Akira has just made his entire day. He should feel guilty about imposing, but Ryuji makes it impossible when he shows up at his classroom as soon with a wide smile, as the last bell rings. Ryuji’s apartment is empty when they get there, and Akira curls up on the couch, turning away from the window. Ryuji makes him sit up a few moments later and hands him a couple of pills and a glass of water, but he doesn’t protest when Akira immediately lays back down and continues to be what’s likely the worst house guest ever.
Akira falls into a deep slumber for the first time in what feels like forever, and it’s the best five-hour nap of his life. His headache is gone when he wakes up.