Tsukasa Tenma and his Well-Hidden Anxiety

Ch. 3

A/N: Heyyyy, sorry this wasn't updated for a while lol. tbh i forgot i posted this on wattpad ,,,, anw enjoy the next few chapters 👍🏼

Tsukasa watched as Rui turned his back on him and left. He kept staring at the figure slowly get smaller, until it turned a corner and disappeared. I should probably pack my stuff, He thinks.

Should... move.

Tsukasa continues to stand there. His mind tells him to move, but his feet stay planted, and his eyes blur over in a daze, not focused on anything.

He hears voices. What are they saying? They sound so far away.

"-kasa? Tsukasa?" He feels a hand touch his arm. He blinks, startled, and sees Nene looking at him.

"Oh... sorry. What were you saying?"

Her face wore that worried expression again. She opens her mouth before hesitating, probably wanting to say something, but she instead settles on, "Don't forget your things in the back."

"Oh, right," he sighs in relief. "Thank you."

Finally, he moves away and walks towards the stage.

"Tsukasa?" He hears her call.

"Hm?" He turns around to look at her as she fidgets with her hands. "You know that we care about you, right?" She asks, leaving him in a slight shock once again.

"Of course, I do," He lies. It's better than letting her worry about him. "Honestly, do you really think you need to worry about me? I'm offended." He tries to keep up his act, and it seems to work.

She sighs in annoyance. "I worried over nothing," she says, even though she's smiling a little. "I'll see you tomorrow at school?" She begins walking away.

"Yeah! See you."

He waved to her, lingering from that spot as she leaves, and watches as Emu also skips behind her. "Bye, Tsukasa! You can call me whenever!" She cries.

"Yeah, bye."

—

Tsukasa's homework had gone untouched for a while now. He's resorted to drawing silly lines in the margins of his paper, eyes blurring over once again. It's been happening a lot these past few days, as if to make up for the past ten years of him repressing himself.

He just hopes it'll go away soon.

He tries, desperately, to think about the work in front of him, but every time he lets himself think, that boy is the only thing that comes into his mind.

Rui smiling at him, smug and sarcastic as always.

Rui trying to convince him to try something new, calling him wonderful.

...And Tsukasa himself, believing him.

He groans, throwing his head back to stare at the ceiling. Coming to the conclusion that he won't get work done tonight anyway, he lazily gets up to walk to his bed, then throws himself into the blankets.

"..." He can't stop thinking about Rui today.

Specifically, how Rui was when he left. Why was he in such a hurry? He sounded a bit urgent too. Strange, because Tsukasa can remember him saying he had no plans for the rest of that day.

Why was he in a hurry to leave???

...Did he not want to be with me?

Part of his mind already knew this; he had just repressed those thoughts and pushed them away, hoping to never deal with them. But they always come back around eventually.