Chapter Text
“Another one?”
“Trust me, you’ll like him better than Kashima.”
Seba wasn’t sure how he got roped into going to the lab to meet Shin’s… he didn’t actually know how Shin and this guy were related, but he knew that they had the same surname.
“Who’s next?” Asakura asked, crossing his arms. “That weird guy with the syringes?”
“What’re you upset about?” Shin asked, crossing his arms in return. “I’m telling you, he’s fine.”
Seba almost felt bad that he was the center of an argument between Shin and Asakura, but he got the impression that they argued a lot.
“What am I upset about? Did you think I’d be excited to see another one of the people who helped destroy my original lab?”
“I wasn’t actually part of their group,” Seba cut in. He wasn’t sure that joining the conversation would help, but he didn’t think Shin was doing a very good job defending him. “It was just a part-time job.”
“Just a part-time job?” Asakura gave him an incredulous glare. “How do you start working for terrorists without meaning to?”
“Kashima put up fliers.” Seba shrugged. “The pay was good and it said I’d be able to work on my own projects.”
“You know—” Shin leaned forward like he was trying to put himself between the two of them “—Seba was the one who blocked the guns from working. Oh, and, he also made my glove.”
“Oh, so he’s the reason you can barely use your hand anymore?”
“It’s not that bad!”
“Wait,” Seba blinked, looking down at Shin’s hand. “What does he mean?”
Shin quickly put his hand into his jacket pockets. “It’s nothing, really.”
“He messed up his hand from using that damn thing,” Asakura said, earning him a glare from Shin.
“Idiot!” Seba felt like hitting Shin. Why couldn’t he ever listen? “How many times did I tell you to be careful?”
“That’s not the point!” Shin said. Seba hoped he didn’t think that would be all it took for Seba to drop the subject. “Seba’s a weapons maker, but that’s not really useful anymore, so I thought you could let him work with you. He’s good, trust me.”
“As if I’d trust you to know something like that,” Asakura told him, rolling his eyes. That said, though, he still turned to look at Seba. “Okay, kid, are you as good as he says?”
“My resume wasn’t enough?” He asked with a smirk. “I mean, like it or not, I was good enough for Kashima to hire.”
Asakura looked at him for a while before sighing. Seba couldn’t tell how old Asakura was, but he was getting the feeling that he only looked as old as he did because of Shin. Well, that and the smoking.
“Fine. If you want to work here, I’m sure we can find you a place.”
“What’re you even working on now?” Shin asked. “Still researching super-human whatever?”
“You’re still a brat,” Asakura told him. “And, no, I’m not doing that anymore. I’m working on integrating prosthetics with nerve endings to make them usable in the same way a regular limb is.”
“Inspired by Kashima?” Seba asked, earning him a glare.
“That weirdo is a whole different story. This is for regular people.”
“Well, that sounds pretty interesting, I guess.” Seba suppressed the desire to feign a yawn. He honestly thought that sounded interesting, but it was hard to shake old habits. “I don’t know much about stuff with the brain, but I’m decent with mechanics.”
“Alright then. Do you want to take a look at what I’ve got?”
“Sure,” Seba glanced over at Shin. “You coming?”
“I’ll find you later,” he said. “You know I’m not a scientist or whatever. And I should go see how everyone else is doing.”
“Okay, see you,” Seba responded, watching Shin walk away. He wasn’t sure how to feel because he knew there was nothing to worry about, but also he didn’t really want Shin to leave him alone. Once Shin was gone, Asakura gestured for Seba to follow him.
“So, how exactly did you and Shin end up as…” Asakura glanced at Seba, a look on his face Seba couldn’t quite decipher. “As friends?”
“We ran into each other at the JCC. He helped me find my little brother and I helped him not die.”
Seba looked at Asakura, trying to put together the questions swirling around his mind in a way that wouldn’t give too much away. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a good way to say he was worried about Shin without it revealing that Seba cared about him.
“Umm, Asakura-sensei–”
“You don’t need to call me sensei,” he interrupted. “I’m not really that kind of scientist.”
“Oh, umm, Asakura-san,” he corrected. “About Shin’s hand.”
“What about it?”
“It’s just… well…”
Seba wasn’t sure what to say, caught between worrying about Shin and being vulnerable. He didn’t like being vulnerable. He hated it when other people knew how he really felt. He didn’t want anyone to be able to figure him out. Feelings were a weakness that could be exploited. Interests, feelings, attachments; they were all easy to take advantage of, easy to exploit.
Other than Mafuyu, Shin was really the only person Seba trusted and Shin trusted Asakura. Also, he could tell that Asakura cared about Shin. So he should be able to trust Asakura not to use this bit of care against Seba, especially not when they cared about the same person.
Still, it was hard.
“Yeah?”
“Is it bad?” He finally managed.
But he needed to trust people. It was the only way to keep himself and the people he cared about safe. Without Shin and his people, he never would’ve saved Mafuyu. Without them, it would’ve been the end of Japan. And now, to make sure Shin was okay, he needed to keep working on trusting people.
“He’s lost most of the flexibility in his wrist and I think his knuckles as well,” Asakura explained. “He could get surgery and it would be fine, but he’s stubborn and keeps insisting it’s not a big deal.”
Logically, Seba knew that he’d warned Shin not to overuse the glove. And he knew that without the glove, Shin probably would’ve been dead before he could sustain permanent injuries. He knew that Shin was a stubborn asshole who wouldn’t listen to what he said unless he wanted to.
He still felt bad.
“Speaking of Shin,” Asakura continued, jarring Seba out of his guilt. “His wrist isn’t the only problem, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something going on with him and I can’t put my finger on what it is, but something is wrong.” Asakura thought for a few moments. “Maybe I’m imagining things, but since… Well, since everything, he’s been a little different when we talk, but I don’t know why.”
Seba thought about it and, yeah, Asakura was probably right. It was hard to pinpoint exactly when the change happened. Before The Order and Slur teamed up, they’d really only gotten to talk after the museum exhibition, before Seba headed back to the JCC. They talked to each other after that, but it had been in the midst of everything else, so that wasn’t a good metric. It wasn’t until everything was, more or less, back to normal that they talked more and, thinking about it, Shin had seemed different.
“You might be right,” Seba acknowledged with a nod. “But I don’t know any more about it than you do. You spent more time with him during everything, so you probably know more than me.”
The more he thought about it, though, the more things stood out. Shin didn’t talk much about what happened and he didn’t talk about how he felt. He didn’t talk about it and Seba didn’t know how to ask.
He didn’t know how to ask why he stared into space, seeming detached from reality until someone physically got his attention. He didn’t know how to ask why sometimes, when Shin laughed, it didn’t reach his eyes. He didn’t know how to ask about Shin having to spend days in bed because of headaches.
“I don’t know,” Seba repeated, shaking his head. “He doesn’t like to talk about things like that.”
“It might not be serious,” Askaura offered, looking a little concerned. Though whether it was about Shin or Seba, he couldn’t tell. “It hasn’t been that long. He probably needs time to adjust. We all do.”
“That’s true.”
Seba hadn’t wanted to be an assassin and even he felt strange in this new, assassin-less world. And, sure, Shin had planned to live a quiet life before Slur made that impossible, but from what Seba understood, Shin hadn’t had much time to get used to that normal life before everything went back to being not so different from his life as an assassin.
“Well, there’s no use talking about it if neither of us knows,” Asakura said with a shrug. “Why don’t I show you what I’ve been working on so far.”
By the time Shin returned to Asakura’s lab, it had gotten late. After a little bit of making fun of Seba and Asakura for getting so wrapped up in their ‘dorky science stuff’ that neither had noticed the time, he suggested that they stay the night instead of rushing to get the train.
Asakura had shown them to an empty room with a bunk bed, two desks, and a metal dresser. Seba was hardly picky and for a short stay, it was a fine room, but he did have to wonder about anyone who stayed in rooms like this all the time.
When Seba got back from the bathroom, Shin was sitting at one of the desks. His back was to the door and he was wearing the headphones Seba had bought him after learning Shin didn’t have any.
After the JCC closed, Seba and Mafuyu had been living with the Sakamoto family which meant sleeping on Shin’s floor. Mafuyu, along with a few others, had eventually moved into the dorms of a high school in Tokyo, but Seba didn’t know what he was going to do without assassins, so he’d stayed.
At first, he’d planned to move out, not wanting to stay too long. He was a guest, after all, and he was sure having a guest would get old fast for everyone involved. Lu still didn’t seem to trust him and while Heisuke had been easy enough to win over, Piisuke still seemed wary of him. Sakamoto didn’t seem to have an issue with him, but he wasn’t the easiest person to read, so Seba could be sure. Regardless, he’d started to make plans to move out even though he had no clue where to go or what to do.
But when she realized what he was doing, Aoi insisted he stay, saying she wasn’t going to turn a kid out onto the street. She told him that Shin didn’t seem to mind sharing the room, so he was welcome to stay as long as he wanted. He didn’t mention that he really wasn’t that much younger than her and simply accepted the offer. It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. He definitely didn’t want to move back in with his parents.
Even though he made sure to tell Seba he didn’t mind sharing the room, Shin, by his own admission, wasn’t used to sharing a room with someone. If Shin hadn’t said anything, Seba probably wouldn’t have realized since Shin didn’t seem to have much trouble sharing the room. The only strange thing was that Shin had taken to stealing Seba’s headphones because he, apparently, didn’t own any of his own. His excuse had been that since this was his first time sharing a room with someone, he’d never needed them.
Instead of arguing about how insane that was as an excuse—Seba hadn’t grown up sharing a bedroom, but he still used them—he’d just gone out and bought Shin his own headphones. He didn’t want to be weird, so he didn’t wrap them, but Shin had still made a face that seemed to say he was unused to receiving presents. The expression had twisted Seba’s heart in a way he didn’t think was possible for anyone but Mafuyu at his lowest and he still wasn’t totally sure what to make of that feeling.
Seba walked over and tapped Shin on the shoulder, making him jump. He wondered if maybe the headphones were enough to drown out thoughts as well as sounds and that was the real reason why Shin had never used them before.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” Seba said when Shin recovered.
“I was focused,” he grumbled, looking embarrassed as he flipped over the manga he was reading. For some reason, he refused to use bookmarks, instead just leaving books and comics open if he wasn’t finished with them. “So, you and Pops had fun.”
It wasn’t a question, probably because it was clear just based on the amount of time they’d spent talking.
“I’ll admit, it was interesting.”
“Obviously you can do what you want, but I think it would be a good fit.” Shin glanced around the room before looking back at Seba. “And if you’re worried about the rooms, most of them aren’t this bare, I don’t think. Or, if you wanted to, I’m sure you could commute from Sakamoto’s.”
Did Shin want Seba to move out? Then again, it made sense. Why would he want to share a room when he never had before?
Shin frowned and looked away, but Seba was still able to see an anxious look in Shin’s eyes that he didn’t understand.
“Or, I guess you could also just find an apartment and still commute.” Now the anxiety was gone, but his eyes were simply dull. “You don’t have to commute from Sakamoto’s.”
“I don’t want to overstay my welcome,” Seba said. “But I don’t want to live here. Everyone seems nice, but I think living in a lab makes you a little weird.”
Shin laughed and Seba felt relief wash over him as life returned to Shin’s eyes.
“As if you aren’t just as weird. And I’m pretty sure you were living in the lab at the JCC, so don’t act like you’re better than that.”
“Shut up, asshole,” Seba shot back, Shin sticking his tongue out in response.
Seba shook his head and Shin laughed, whatever that had been seemingly passing.
“I’m glad you didn’t hate it,” Shin said, his voice more genuine than Seba knew how to handle.
“Yeah…”
Seba should thank Shin. He wanted to thank Shin. He knew Shin was worried about him and that’s why he insisted they come here. Shin was trying to help and Seba needed to thank him.
But it was hard. Seba didn’t know how to thank Shin without sounding disingenuous or overly sappy. Mostly the former. Seba was good at a lot of things, but he wasn’t so full of himself that he couldn’t admit when he wasn’t good at something. And being genuine? It wasn’t something he was good at.
“Top or bottom?” Seba asked, heading to the bunk bed.
“Take a guy on a date first,” Shin responded with a smirk.
“What–?” Seba felt himself turning red as he put it together. “You’re such an asshole. You don’t get a say anymore, I’m taking the top bunk.”
Shin laughed, turning back to his comic. “That’s fine.”
Seba paused before he pulled himself onto the top bunk, turning to look at Shin.
“You’re not coming to bed?”
“I’m not tired, I’ll stay up for a little longer.”
“Are you sure? You’ve been staying up late a lot recently.”
“I always stay up late,” Shin told him with a wave of his hand. “I was only going to bed early because I didn’t know when you and Mafuyu went to bed.”
“Shin, you need sleep,” Seba said more firmly. “You’ve been looking pretty tired lately.”
“You’re imagining things,” Shin informed him flippantly. “I’m really not tired. If I lay down now, I’ll just get antsy. It’s better if I stay up.”
Seba continued to look at Shin, trying to pinpoint why he felt so uneasy. He did think Shin had been looking more tired lately, but he didn’t look that bad. And he couldn’t really lecture anyone about having poor sleep hygiene or whatever.
But there was still something nagging at the back of his head for a while now and it had only been made worse after talking to Asakura. He didn’t know what, but something was off about Shin and he wanted desperately to fix it.
He knew it wasn’t as easy as just knowing what was wrong, but he thought that would be a start. He didn’t get why Shin didn’t want to talk to him, but it felt like that could be the key. And, sure, he knew they weren’t that close, really. They’d been living together, but they hadn’t even been friends for very long. They hadn’t known each other very long, so it was presumptuous to think he could do anything to help.
But that didn’t matter. He knew something was wrong and he wanted to fix it. And that would start with him knowing what was wrong with him.
Shin flinched again and Seba didn’t understand why. He hadn’t said anything and obviously he knew Shin could read minds, but nothing he’d thought should’ve gotten that reaction. Looking closely, he thought Shin looked like he was trying not to cry which was wildly different from what Seba would’ve expected. If anything, he thought Shin would either make a joke or tell Seba something about fixing himself first.
“Just go to bed,” Shin said, burying his face in his manga, obviously not wanting Seba to look at him.
Anger or jokes, that was what Seba expected. Not this. Never this.
Shin reached for his headphone and Seba knew he needed to do something. He had a sinking feeling that he knew at least part of what was going on and he needed to test it.
Stupid Psychic, he thought loudly, earning him a small turn of Shin’s head. Then, much quieter, he continued. Shin, please look at me.
That second thought didn’t earn him anything, not even a pause. Shin simply put his headphones on and went back to his reading, leaving Seba to try and come to terms with what he was pretty sure was going on.
Something was wrong with Shin’s clairvoyance.