NEO-POP | Iwaizumi Hajime ✓

04 THE CHRONICLES OF IWAIZUMI & CO.

CHAPTER FOUR
the chronicles of Iwaizumi & co.

Iwaizumi's fourteen when you and him actually start talking on a regular basis, and it's no longer because you were in a group project together once. You're in multiple group projects together now since your Physics teacher likes to assign new lab partners at the beginning of each term, and because the two of you have been assigned as partners, you hang out nearly everyday in school when you can, as well as after your extracurricular activities, to work on the biweekly lab write-ups.

By mid-term, it's gotten to the point where it's routine and even when there's no lab to work on, he still waits for you after your art club activities since volleyball practice always ends earlier, just so you can walk home together. You've spent so much time together at this point that this is not bizarre, and your obscure responses no longer phase him as much as they used to.

Then, around the later half of the term, you're finally formally introduced to Oikawa Tōru. Although it is awkward the first few times you two meet and Iwaizumi's sort of worried you and Oikawa might not get along as well as he'd hoped, the both of you eventually get over it for his sake after noticing the shrivelled expressions on his face. At first, he is ecstatic when his two friends are finally able to get along, but then Oikawa takes it upon himself to dote on you and teach you his problematic ways (he's unsuccessful for the most part, yet Iwaizumi can't help but feel the slightest bit irritated at his attempts regardless), which entail annoying Iwaizumi at every opportunity, and it occurs to him that maybe this was a bad idea.

"[L/N]!!! I drew this picture of Iwa in my Advanced Drawing class today, what d'ya think?!" the brunet exclaims as he steals a chair from the adjacent table and sits down with you and Iwaizumi, sliding over his fanart across the table for you to voice your opinion on. "It looks a lot like him, doesn't it? I tried to capture his features as accurately as possible 'cause we're in the realism unit right now, but you can see here that I took some artistic liberties with his chin."

"It's so good," you muse, much to his delight, even though objectively nothing looks right. You continue to shower him with more half-hearted compliments, throwing in a piece of criticism once in a while for honesty points, which Oikawa of course quickly disregards in favour of the compliments. Curious, Iwaizumi tries to catch a glimpse of the drawing and see what the whole hype is about, but then it's snatched away from your grasp by the original artist, who derisively sticks his tongue out as a taunt.

"You don't get to see this masterpiece."

He frowns indignantly. The urge to throw a volleyball at his best friend right now is Brobdingnagian (really big), but unfortunately there are no nearby balls in the classroom and Iwaizumi doesn't feel like running all the way to the gym, so he instead settles for verbal defence.

"Why not?" he argues. "I'm the subject of your drawing."

"So? It's only for [L/N] because they're the only one who appreciates my efforts! You're always such a hater, you'll probably say it's ugly or something and then rage-tweet about it on Twitter. Tell him, [L/N]! Go!"

Iwaizumi fails to hold in his laugh. What are you, a Pokémon? You don't seem too fazed by it though.

"So true. I found one of your tweets in a cringe compilation once."

He scoffs in disbelief at both your preposterous claim and the fact that you're siding with Oikawa — out of all people!

"That is not true. I'm filing a claim against the both of you bozos for defamation," he declares, and then his brain plunges through the Five Stages of Grief all at once because not once in his life did he think he'd ever use such an insult. He already knows what's coming; he can sense it from a kilometre away.