I'm being coerced. [Do-over]

“Rude way of saying hello, Hanji. Especially from a pillar of virtue or whatever it is you think you are.”

“Shove it, Hiko. You know you’re not welcome here.”

“Neither are you, special case, the roof is off limits.”

Tension mounts the very moment Akihiko appears. The malicious grin on his face makes my hair stand on end, and a look around at the other faces here tells me I’m not the only. Hanji leers at him with hatred in her eyes, and Makoto looks on with a calm rage. Saki grits her teeth, and Akane hides behind Yosuke, her previously nervous expression now filled with pure fear. Yosuke himself looks nothing short of disgusted.

“Taro, my boy, you’re choosing the wrong crowd to get involved with. These posers are nothing. Acting all high and mighty, pretending to be good people. ‘Spreading love and peace.’ We both know what they really are. Fakes. Lying scum. You want nothing to do with them.” He steps out from behind the door and strolls towards me, that same awful grin on his face. Hanji and Makoto immediately tense up, and I notice them adjusting their feet into fighting stances.

“Don’t taken another step, you bastard.”

“And who’s gonna stop me, Hanji? What ever happened to never escalating to violence? Aren’t you the good, peaceful pacifist who just wants peace? The shining light for fucked up people like us?”

“We’re not joking with you. Beat it.” Makoto’s interjection comes a step towards Akihiko, and Hanji raises her right hand next to her face. The confrontation could turn violent at any moment, and I’m caught directly in the middle. Some of the sound is drowned out in my ears by the sound of my heart pounding, and I find myself frozen to the spot. I can do nothing but look in on fear.

“See, Taro boy? These two are nothing but fakes, their rules go out the window as soon as it’s convenient for them.” Instead of approaching the two who are preparing to fight, Akihiko instead strolls right up to me in the centre, slinging his arm around my shoulder. “Hanji here is nothing but a violent thug, no matter how much she pretends. Do you really wanna hang around someone like that?”

My heart is beating out of my chest. I can’t say a word, and the only movement my muscles allow is a surprised recoil when he touches me. The mounting stress makes it difficult to even think straight, and I close my eyes so I can’t see the awful grin on his face.

Please no. Not you four. Not here. Not now.

“What’dya say, Taro? Why not join me instead? You won’t have to follow all their ridiculous and arbitrary rules.”

“Pretending to be sane and in control when you’re anything but. You two liars are perfect for each other.”
Please go away please go away please go away please go away

“Besides, I’ll protect you. You’ll be safe with someone like me. Right, Taro boy?”

“N-no-”

“What was that?”

“Please… please stop…”

Every word is harder to get out than the last. A thousand scenes of the past race through my head, and I clutch my chest as my heart continues to race.

“You’re gonna join me, right Taro? You won’t make the wrong decision here will you?”

I clasp my ears and try to squat down to my knees, but the arm that was wrapped around my shoulder now holds me tightly by the neck, making movement impossible. Every cell in my body is telling me I have to run, but I can’t even bring myself to try.

“Murderer”

“Murderer”
“Murderer”

"You gonna ans-”

Through the hands I have clamped firmly over my ears, I just about hear Akihiko’s voice get cut off by skin striking skin, and I feel his arm loosen from around me. I immediately drop to the ground and curl up, knees to feet on the ground and head tucked in under my hands, while more similar sounds are heard within a few metres of me.

“You can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me.”

I don’t know how many times I mutter that phrase to myself. Maybe a hundred. Maybe a thousand. Maybe it was only twenty. Time ceases to flow as my mind is filled with incomprehensible screams, every ounce of my consciousness trying desperately to drown them out. How long has passed? Who knows? My only focus is on trying to regain the peace in mind. I take deep breaths, trying to steady my heart rate, and I notice the noise slowly begins to diminuendo. As the adrenaline slowly wears away, the extreme noise rattling around my skull finally returns to it’s normal level, low enough for me to drown out it.

“Taro? You back to us yet, man?”

Just like before, the ethereal voices are cut by a real one. I slowly open my eyes and raise my head from hands to see Hanji and her friends stood over me. Yosuke and Akane with expressions of concern, the other three looking somewhat impatient.

“H…Hanji.”

“You’ve been like that for over fifteen minutes, dude, we thought you’d gone totally nutso.”

“I… sorry. The stress…”

“Trigger a flashback or something?”

“Y-yeah. Something like that.”

As soon as Akihiko put his arm around me, that scene from years ago came back to me. The one I never want to remember, and the one I can never seem to forget. The one they won’t let me forget.

“Don’t worry, man, we got rid of the fucker.”

“Had him running and screaming.”

As I start to take in more of the details in front of me, I realise both Hanji and Makoto have some minor injuries. Makoto’s lip is bleeding, and Hanji’s fists seem to have lost some skin.

“You… I thought you don’t escalate to violence?”

“Unless someone else starts it, yeah. Ain’t violatin’ someone’s boundaries and hurtin’ their mind just as violent as hurtin’ their body?”

“I… suppose so.”

It certainly is a type of violence, but I had expected Hanji and Makoto to have a more rudimentary definition of violence. Perhaps my judgement really is unfair.

“Besides, remember rule 4?”

“Uhh… help people who help you?”

“Bingo. You said you were gonna join me, right? Well this brings us back to even, doesn’t it?”

“I… guess so, yeah.”

Hanji and Makoto both shoot me a grin, although the slight uncanniness from before is back, so those expressions may be a little forced.

I slowly get to my feet (not a single person offering me a hand) and put a hand to my chest. My heart rate is still fast, but not nearly what it was.

“You two reckless idiots, you just know he’s gonna spin this against you now.” Speaking up from behind me was Saki, who had her face in her right hand.

“Ah, we’ll be fine. Everyone knows what Hiko is like, especially the other collectors.”

“Still, you went harder on him than you needed to. That last low kick when he was running away was unnecessary.”

“Eh, just call it a warning shot. He had it comin.’”

Hanji doesn’t seem too torn up by being forced to void her anti-violence rule. In fact, she sounds pretty happy to have had an excuse to lay into Akihiko. It seems their ‘rivalry’ is even more fierce than I had thought.

The looks on Hanji and Makoto’s faces when he walked in is etched into my mind. In all my 18 years on this Earth, I’ve only seen disdain so pure on one other occasion. And it was directed at me.

My thoughts are interrupted by a dull ringing coming from below us. The lunch bell. I haven’t eaten a thing.

“Shit, already? Yo, Taro, you got chem next, right?”

“Huh? Yeah, I think so.”

“Cool, that means we’re together again. Wanna walk there together?”

“Sure, but aren’t they gonna ask about…”

I point at her slightly bloodied head, which is red enough to stand out quite a bit.

“Eh, I’ll just lie and say I hurt it at Muay Thai yesterday.”

“What if Akihiko tells them you’re lying?”

“He’ll lie too.”

“Why do you assume that?”

“Cos they’ll stop us collecting if they find out we got violent.”

This answer confuses me. The teachers are aware of this practice?

“They let us get on with it cos they know trying to stop us will be more hassle than it’s worth, but their blind eye is gonna open pretty wide if people start getting into fist-fights over it. It’s not worth it for either of us to dob in the other.”

“I-I see.”

This college is even more cutthroat than I’d expected. Two bitter rivals both refusing to report the other for violence because it could cost them their human trophies? The student body practically run by factions led by self-proclaimed sociopaths? There’s no way I’m getting anything like a peaceful schooltime experience here.

Still, what Yosuke said before rings true. Hanji seems the better option. I can’t say I trust her, but she was willing to fight to protect me. Even if it was just to gain my favour, I appreciate it. Maybe I’ll be safe with her.