Not Entirely Unpleasant (KuroKen)

First glimpses of friendship

While not much can be said about that first class where the students, in what later proved to be the most interesting class of Kenma's first year at Nekoma High School, gave their first introductions, there were certainly some interesting ones. A particularly memorable one, to our protagonist, at least, was that of the single most noisy girl Kenma had ever seen.

The most noticeable thing about her would probably be her uniform. While she had obviously taken great pains to keep within the expected blue blazer, black skirt and jumper, red tie and white shirt boundaries, apart from all of those conditions being met her uniform looked nothing close too any of the other girls, with her blazer reaching almost to her knees, completely covering her skirt, and her jumper somehow falling past the blazer in question, serving as some sort of black knitted dress. Kenma frowned as he tried to imagine how irritating it would be to constantly have to pull his sleeves up every time he wanted to do something with his hands, although for some reason he really wanted to try this strange style for himself; it would probably be amazing in terms of warmth and really comfortable, like a blanket.

The girl slowly walked to the front, her shoulder length toffee-coloured hair falling around her face, and her quiet and timid voice was no surprise to anybody considering her closed demeanour. Surprisingly, she didn't seem to notice or care when some people in the room snickered as she spoke, instead fidgeting with the tips of her small pink-tinted fingers under the cover of bunched sleeves.

After a few more people who Kenma hadn't really payed any attention to, our black-haired child's name was called. Kenma's golden-coloured feline eyes swept the room from underneath the comfortable cover of his chin length black hair, falling over his face like a personal curtain.

He was painfully aware of every minuscule movement that his fellow students made. Every change in posture, every differentiation in the tone of their voice, every time someone's eyes fell on the poor self-conscious child he jumped like a frightened baby kitten out in the wild with no protection. He felt so overwhelmed just sitting in his seat facing straight down that he felt he would surely faint if he so much as heard his name leave somebody's lips in any sort of condescending tone. 

White-painted knuckles shakily dug into numb thighs. Perhaps focusing all of his strength into the effort of trying to give the flesh somewhere between Kenma's crotch and knee some breathing space was what was making the rest of him feel so weak, the dark haired boy's wandering mind concluded.

Why was he so anxious? He had no idea what the problem was. Was he stupid? It seemed that his cool nonchalance of earlier had completely vanished, and for what? Just some students in a class that he would be spending a vast majority of his time each day with for the foreseeable future? Was his resolve that weak that that he was already contradicting what he had been so determined to believe just a few minutes ago? No, it wasn't that he was contradicting himself, the truth must be that even though he wasn't the slightest bit interested in putting in the work to make himself acceptable to others, he was deluded enough to want people to like him anyway.

That must be the truth.

What more proof could he have than what he was doing right then? While everybody else in the class had at least made the effort to go up to the front of the class to introduce themselves, no matter how rattled they seemed and how much courage they needed to muster up, because they knew that they would regret it if they didn't for obvious reasons, Kenma had stayed put. Exactly where he was.

Most of the class probably only realised that Kenma really wasn't going to finally stand up and walk over to the front after a long mental struggle when he eventually quietly murmured his name and how to spell it. If the tangible awkward atmosphere, the way that there was nothing, no smiles, no giggles, nothing muttered under their breath, for a while after Kenma's turn, counted for anything, this year would not be a good one.

Kenma had singled himself out from the start.

Kuroo, a year ahead of Kenma and in his own form on the other side of the school, was chatting with his friend Yaku. Yaku was a short, scrawny boy with light-brown hair, falling from his head in short soft curls which barely made it a quarter of the way down his neck. One of the most noticeable features about him would be his eyes, which were large and round yet upturned. His pupils were surprisingly slim and sharp, though, giving him the look almost like a cat or some sort of feline creature.

Yaku, being one of Kuroo's rare close friends since middle school, was inevitably aware that somebody very close to Kuroo called Kenma would be starting that day. Of course, in his mind he had been imagining a mentally inept, unstable, argumentative, manipulative, impossibly annoying, hyper, narcissistic... well, a lot of things, let's just say. And he had been beside himself with excitement at the prospect of finally meeting him and listening to Kenma rant about his friend from his own point of view. It was always fun to hear different opinions on the pathetic excuse of a human being that was Kuroo.

It would also be equally fair to assume that, them being such close friends, Kuroo would have already mentioned a little something about Kenma to the smaller child, or, in Kuroo's case, more like screamed every tiny little half-interesting or noticeable random thing about the not-yet-pudding head at the top of his lungs to the next person to walk by, let alone one of his close friends with whom he had shared countless troubles, pointless conversations and funny stories with.

Funnily enough, many of Kuroo's troubles, pointless conversations and funny stories had been about Kenma, about how, for example, in the true otaku fashion, Kenma would, for days on end, refuse to leave his house, and that his parents had gotten used to the introverted vampire of a son that lived in their home. That sometimes they would call Kuroo round as he was just about the only one who could get Kenma out of the house(sulking and stubborn, always looking down either at his phone or at his hands through the fabric of his hood, but out of the house all the same) to get some fresh air.

"He's a good kid." Kuroo would say. A strange thing about Kuroo was that he would always talk his kouhai at school as if they were from a different generation entirely. It was impossible to tell whether he did it on purpose as a joke or not. Yaku found it hilarious, Kenma found it irritating. "But he's a [hopeless] social vampire. Although if he doesn't want to talk to you at all he'll make it very clear... Kenma has surprisingly long nails, you know? It's probably because he's too lazy to cut them. Actually I forgot to remind him about that-"

Funny how friends do that. How they can just completely ignore something that their friend has said, and choose to replace it with something else. Yaku probably hadn't had any ill intentions in thinking what he did about Kenma. Actually, it was highly likely that he hadn't had any intentions at all. Yaku himself was a good kid, I'm sure you'll agree.

Kuroo had let slip earlier that he hadn't yet told Kenma about being determined to force him into joining the school volleyball club. Yaku was ecstatic, vigorously assuring a politely declining Kuroo that he would 'do his best to advertise the club and its extraterrestrial standards'. Whatever that meant. He couldn't wait to see this infamous Kenma and while he hadn't really been able to picture the younger boy in his head, he was already thinking of ways to harassing him until he agreed to join the club, not only due to his budding sense of responsibility as one of the new seniors but because Kuroo had seemed strangely resolute that this childhood friend had to be on the team with him.

Like, even more than usual.

The smaller boy could only try to understand what his best friend was feeling, as none of his own old companions had really engaged in the volleyball madness that had come over him so suddenly over the long drawn out period of his life that could be described more or less as Primary School, and he had always had Kuroo to play with in Middle School, not to mention the rest of the team back then.

If you had someone as amazing as Kuroo try to convince you to play volleyball, what reason could you possibly have to refuse?

He needed to know.

I'm practicing my keyboard art lol-

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...It's Bakugou, Iida, Uraraka and Deku...
The one on the far right can be whoever you want it to be idk man idk.