Work Text:
It started on a slightly chilly but otherwise sunny day, as all good stories do.
Shuumei had been going about his normal routine of trying to mind his own damn business when someone else tried to fuck with him.
Overall? A fairly normal day.
He’d been walking with Yuzuru and Shimazaki who were chatting about that Wesper J thing or whatever that they both liked. Shuumei tried to pay attention at a few points but it felt comparable to listening to someone try to give you a math lecture in french.
Completely incomprehensible.
Kanako stayed back cause he had some ‘things’ to take care of and Shuumei genuinely wasn’t sure if he was going to beat someone up, menace some random people by accident (again) or hang out with some of his former gang that he was still cool with. Despite not knowing the specifics of this, Shuumei cared incredibly little as he planned to go out as Mei today and ANYTHING that stopped him from interacting with Kanako as Mei was a blessing in his books.
Plus, Kanako had the side effect of, more than literally anyone else, scaring the shit out of the otakus that he knew and he guesses that Shimazaki would be marginally less cool to hang out with if he was terrified the entire time.
That being said, when he heard a familiar voice yell “Oi, Satogiri!” from some fucking roof, he realized that he jinxed himself by wishing too hard not to deal with one type of problem, resulting in him being stuck with the other.
He paused from where he was walking and looked up to see Hanayama perched on a roof near them like a cat, looking as menacing as ever which had the expected side effect of filling Shuumei with a deep sense of annoyance and the urge to punch him in the face.
He heard Yuzuru click his tongue and only momentarily felt a pang of relief that with Yuzuru by his side they’d definitely be able to end this fight in a few seconds so they could continue on their way before he hard a rather small ‘Oh dear’ and remembered that Shimazaki was.
Literally still right there.
Shit.
Alright, so that made it slightly more complicated by proxy of needing to make sure someone didn’t get punched in the face but not by much.
Admittedly, Shuumei didn’t know much (anything) about Shimazaki that didn’t come from Hanae or Yuzuru, but from what he vaguely knew of Otakus, the type of people Yuzuru associated with and what Hanae had said in passing about him, he decided to just treat him like a slightly less nervous Hanae.
Unwillingly, the image of Hanae being hassled by that rando at the school festival came to mind.
As such, Shuumei prepared himself to end this as quickly and violently as possible, squaring his fists and fixing his footing as he spoke in the most annoyed tone he could muster up,
“Hanayama.”
The man in question only rolled his eyes in response to that, moving to jump off that roof and onto the ground. The tiny motion caused Yuzuru and him to quietly yet subtly move a bit closer to Shimazaki who had a look on his face that very clearly said that he’d find this a lot more fun to watch if he wasn’t in the middle of the action. Though, the action clearly wasn’t subtle enough as Hanayama immediately commented on it,
“Oh come on, Satogiri, am I the type of person to get innocents involve-” His voice was almost coy, laced with that tone that Shuumei was never quite able to name but knew indicated a mix of concession and violence,
“Hanae Yuuma.” Shuumei cut him off rather abruptly, trying not to let himself get too angry from the memory of seeing Hanae on the ground, blood on his face, with Hanayama hovering over him.
That at least caused Hanayama’s ‘cool’ persona to shatter as he immediately scowled, “I didn’t do shit that time! You’re the one who assumed I hit him!”
In the background, Shimazaki looked between the two delinquents with an air of confusion as he realized Hanae had not told him shit about the brief hour or so that he’d been kidnapped by delinquents.
Shuumei lost his own composure as he scowled back at Hanayama, “So?! You still kidnapped him when he had nothing to do with me!”
Hanayama let out a wordless noise of annoyance as he looked at Yuzuru and Shimazaki and gestured in a way that clearly conveyed ‘This guy, right?’. This was not a gesture that either Yuzuru or Shimazaki returned. In fact, Shimazaki looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here and Yuzuru looked like he was contemplating if he’d still have to punch someone in the face.
After a moment, he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply like a single mother before speaking, “Okay, so I didn’t come here to fight. I came to give your dumbass a warning about your little boyfriend.”
Shuumei, who had been on the verge of retorting rather harshly, completely blue screened as he struggled to figure out what Hanayama had just said to him.
His what?
His what?
What the fuck does that mean? WHO was he talking about?? He would’ve thought that was just a jackass and slightly homophobic comment if he didn’t know for a fact that Hanayama was very much attracted to men (or at least Kanako).
Was.
Was he talking about Kanako.
Please god don’t let him be talking about Kanako. Whatever signals that he gave off that he was into Kanako, please tell him immediately so he could fix them immediately.
While he was having a mild breakdown, Yuzuru cut through his spiral with a rather confused, “Hanae? What’s going up with him that’s your business?”
Ha-
No.
Nonono. He heard that wrong.
Hanae-
Thinking it doesn't make it easier.
HANAE?!
Against his will, every single muscle in his body locked up and he could feel his face heat from embarrassment and HANAE?!
HIM!?!
Hanayama apparently ignoring the fact that Shuumei seemed to have ramped up his breakdown from mild to moderate and focused his attention on a slightly confused yet wary Yuzuru and a Shimazaki who seemed to be wondering if he was having a stroke or passed out while watching the BL version of Wind Breaker.
“He’s not my business,” The delinquent said with a roll of his eyes, scowling in a way that it was clear even underneath his mask, “It just so happens, though, that every delinquent in a hundred meter radius has got their sights on him though.”
That properly shocked Shuumei out of his state.
It was as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped on him and then injected directly into his brain. There was a rather cold ‘What’ that someone said and it took the slight flinches from the others to realize it was him.
Hanayama, luckily for his own well being, seemed to quickly grasp Shuumei’s anger and quickly moved on to explain, a slight grimace not visible on his face but clear in his eyes and tone,
“Apparently there’s word on the street that some old delinquent is back in town and has their eyes on him. Every other two bit bastard passed the word around and wants to get their hands on him to either leverage him or beat him up to show dominance, you know?”
He spoke rather quickly, almost in a hurry, which would’ve annoyed (or concerned, depending on his mood) Shuumei normally but at that moment, if Hanayama didn’t explain everything at that exact moment, he would explode.
He might still explode if he thinks of someone hurting Hanae because some idiot thought he was an easy target.
Yuzuru winced, though Shuumei couldn’t tell if that was because of how annoyed he was getting or from the situation Hanae was in. It could’ve easily been a mix of both. Absentmindedly, he wanted to ask why Hanayama wasn’t interested but even with the fog of anger clouding his mind, he didn’t.
Hanayama was many many things, almost all of them bad, but he didn’t go after bystanders. Never. He had a whole code of morals and shit.
“Uh,” A small voice piped up and three heads snapped in the direction instantly to realize Shimazaki was very much still here and very much regretting speaking up (it reminded Shuumei of Hanae at that moment and he resisted the urge to punch a wall) before seemingly gathering his courage again, “If I may? What’s the name of this…delinquent that apparently wants something to do with Hanae-shi?”
Hanayama’s face grew tight with annoyance and Yuzuru’s eyes narrowed at the sight. Yuzuru was a kind person and he would not let Hanayama yell at his friend if he tried to. The realization of that shocked Shuumei slightly into realizing that he might actually need to either thank Hanayama for the information or punch him in the face depending on how he reacted right now.
Luckily for Hanayama’s health, his anger was by no means directed at Shimazaki,
“They’re calling him ‘The Red Eye’.” The title was spat out with scorn and no short amount of mocking, though it still caused both Shuumei and Yuzuru’s bodies to lock up at the sound of it.
Shit.
Shit.
Shitshitshitshit.
SHIT.
Fuck, if that was actually the same Red Eye that he thought it was…
As if seeing their panic, which he definitely did, he rolled his eyes, “Relax. I knew red eye, dumbass. He wouldn’t be going after small fries who didn’t do anything. This is probably some random extra.”
With a final look at them, Hanayama nodded a single time at Shuumei before speaking in his normal vaguely snake adjacent voice, “Make sure your boyfriend doesn’t get jumped, thief.”
Shuumei tried to figure out which part of that sentence to respond to or process first but before he could, Hanayama had leapt up onto the room of the nearby building and had disappeared, demonstrating how similar to a cat he was.
There was a minute of stillness, where all three parties stood there in a rather shocked silence before Shimazaki spoke up,
“So, who’s Red Eyes and why did you act like you just spent an arc sealing him away?”
Shuumei understood like a handful of words in that sentence but Yuzuru seemed to understand it fully and answered in a light tone that rather poorly hid his stress, “He’s basically like if delinquents had someone to look out for them and by ‘look out’, I mean hospitalize them if he thinks they’ve gone too far or just generally being too much of a dick.”
Shimazaki blanked for a moment, “...ah.”
“Ah, indeed.”
Shuumei groaned aloud, resisting the urge to start loudly swearing as it tended to scare passerbys and also definitely otakus, “Fuck, I thought that dude died in war or something.”
“What.” Shimazaki blankly said as if reeling from the implications of that, “When do you think the last war Japan was in was-”
“Dude, I’m pretty sure he just left the country or something,” Yuzuru retorted rather casually, completely ignoring Shimazaki’s stunned interjection. “But regardless, there’s no way it’s actually him. It’s probably just someone using his name or something.”
Shuumei took a deep breath in then let his shoulders drop,
“Yeah, I know, just weird to- where the fuck is Hanae?” Shuumei cut himself off mid sentence with the realization he absolutely needed to hunt down that fucker to ensure no one else hunted down that fucker.
Shimazaki seemed to startle as if remembering that as well before scrambling for his phone, “Oh shoot, hold on, he told me this earlier. He’s, um, I think he’s picking up his sister from a club-”
No sooner than he got confirmation of that, he took off running, yelling a simple ‘Talk to you later’ behind him before he focused on booking it.
Red Eye might’ve not been back (thank god), but there were very much still delinquents gunning for Hanae.
At the very least, his only blessing was that the real Red Eye was far far away and out of mind.
.
.
.
A young man browsed rather casually through the shirts on display. He didn’t quite like the style of most of them but at the very least, the red went with his hair. (And his shoes, which still had a bit of dried blood on them.)
He’d have to touch it up soon, he dyed it a month or so ago before his flight because he underestimated how much it’d grow in that time but his roots were already showing. He would leave it like that but the Japanese were fun with thinking obviously dyed hair was a sign of delinquency.
During his stay in America, he’d seen many absolute nerds with brightly dyed hair so it was by no means an actual indicator of whether a person was a delinquent or not.
Well, in his case it was, but that was besides the point. It was about stereotyping.
Though his eye patch didn’t exactly help his case, he'd always preferred it over a fake eye as he always feared the thought of someone punching him in the face and shattering it. Obviously he’d shatter every bone in the person's body for doing that but it’s the point of the matter.
As his gaze swept through the rather tacky shirts, his gaze landed on an abandoned doll. It was from that one idol band that got popular, but that was never exactly his forte. Regardless, he picked it up and squinted at it.
If his intel was correct, Yuuma loved the girl this plush was made of. He didn’t get why, he’d heard her songs, they were rather eh. But who was he to question taste.
Actually no, that WAS his job.
Regardless, he sighed and tucked the doll under his arm. He’d see Yuuma soon enough, though he had a meeting in Tokyo he couldn’t afford to miss so he couldn’t exactly visit now.
Belatedly he knew he could’ve contacted Yuuma quite easily. After all, the boy was not exactly the most secretive with his personal information for someone so online (hell, he could’ve also just gone through Hiyoko. She certainly would’ve been shocked to see him show up after these years.)
But the man decided to let it be a surprise.
Why not?
It’d be funny to see the look on his face.