The plan was incredibly simple. So simple that for a second, Keiji feared it'd blow his cover. But then again, it also meant even someone like Bokuto would have to get it.

He'd basically send a message every second day and hope for it to suffice to get regular morning-messages again afterwards. Just like a few months ago.

It was a wonderful Sunday-forenoon; Keiji had already finished his homework, done the laundry and tidied his room. His whole week was planned through and now he didn't have any excuses left not to work on the first thing on his list.

#1 – Thematizing Marks

Of course Bokuto wasn't the first person you should contact if you felt like talking about school stuff, but he did go to a university now so he'd have to care at least a bit, right? Maybe even enough to brag about his mediocre marks – whose mediocrity he easily overlooked because he was the best!

Keiji was almost a little nervous when he grabbed his phone and felt like a little girl, and felt the tip of his nose turning just a little bit pink while doing so. He felt like a little girl.

You never complained about the marks yet, Bokuto-san.

His intention obviously was to get Bokuto to do that exact same thing again like he used to. Maybe marks weren't his favorite topic but at least they were a constant thing he could nag about.

It took no more than a minute before Keiji already received an answer. As for any other person, he'd have rolled his eyes at getting a voice message, but considering Bokuto's attitude of messing up his kanji and typing sentences that no sane human besides Keiji would be able to understand, it had always been better like this.

He pressed the play button and let the compressed naivete wash over him, feeling a small smile building up on his face.

"No need! I'm the best after all, hey hey hey!"

Why had he even considered this might work? Of course Bokuto would still brag about things everyone else would keep secret because they were embarrassing. But maybe it was enough to keep the conversation up?

#3 - Talking about the university

Sadly, Monday evening and Tuesday morning came earlier than expected and had Keiji accept the fact that his first attempt at getting Bokuto to regularly text him again had severely failed. He had been too subtle after all.

He still didn't feel too confident acting like a clingy girlfriend and making up weird text messages, and that was the reason he was almost late for class – after spending too much time on his choice of words – for the first time in ever. Or maybe the second, if he added that one time where he'd had to give Bokuto a crash course in mathematics right before an exam – which, in hindsight, had been a drop in the bucket anyways.

Your notes regarding your choice of electives is still at my place, Bokuto-san.

"Akaashi! When would I have made such a list?!"

How Bokuto managed to sound proud of his laziness was completely beyond Keiji.

In a narrow sense, it was true that he had never made that list, though. Actually, he'd been watching half-fascinated and half-asleep while Keiji had been looking up everything he could find about the electives Bokuto had thought about choosing on the internet.

Thinking about it now, Keiji wasn't sure if he had done it hoping that Bokuto would actually care about those notes some other day in his life or rather because spending time with each other besides playing volleyball had just sounded great to him in any kind of way at that time. Honestly spoken, it had probably been the latter.

The fact of matter now was that his second try didn't seem like it was going to work either. And no way would he send another message explaining that he had made that list. Firstly, because he'd made the rule to not send more than one message a day, but secondly – and way more importantly – he didn't intend on giving Bokuto any kind of reason to brag to his new friends about being Keiji's hero and epitome of divinity.

So for now, he was going to wait.

#5 – Wakening Ambition

It wasn't a surprise to Keiji that he hadn't got any new messages by Thursday, but this time, he made up his mind fast and just sent the message without revisiting it.

The annual novella-contest starts again soon, Bokuto-san.

It was actually a contest for middle school students but then again that was probably even above the level of Bokuto's usual intellect, so it didn't really matter.

This time, he had to wait longer for an answer. For a moment there he dared to believe that that meant Bokuto had actually thought about what he was going to say for once.

"I'll just submit the story from last year, hey hey hey!"

Keiji felt as if at least three thousand of his brain cells had just died at this stupid answer. He stopped himself from slamming his head into the next door.

Besides the fact that it was incredibly stupid to try and win with a story from the year before – which already hadn't been good enough back then after all – that was probably also the only answer he was going to get.

He needed to change his strategy somehow. There had to be some sort of unknown variable he had forgotten about, something he needed to implement so his plan would work. Of course he knew that Bokuto was far from the sharpest tool in the shed and traveling through Aokigahara promised to be less likely to go wrong then trying to talk sense into him, but that didn't mean it wasn't frustrating that Keiji hadn't got anywhere after almost a whole week. He just couldn't accept it!

But when he headed for the gym for volleyball training – which had gotten more difficult because he wasn't even closely as good in motivating people as Bokuto was – he got another message and stopped again.

"Akaashiii! The library is so boooooring!"

He listened to it twice before a small smile formed on his lips. Maybe his plan wasn't so completely hopeless after all? Sadly though, the voice message mirrored Bokuto's stupidity perfectly because Keiji didn't doubt that it had been screamed in the middle of said library for even a second.

You shouldn't risk your phone, Bokuto-san, or it'll get even less bearable."

He didn't get another answer and closed his eyes for a second. This was some horrible timing for Bokuto to have his phone taken away, but it wasn't to be changed for the moment. Maybe Keiji should've just burst out with what he had on his mind after all.

Then again, Bokuto would get his phone back one day or another, so it wasn't a big drama anyways. At least it gave Keiji some time to rethink his plan.

In the end, all he needed to achieve was making his messages obvious enough so even a completely hopeless idiot like Bokuto would understand him. And he didn't even think about giving up on that.