"Just let it go already." The blond boy groaned, his headache increasing, while his brain begged for just a few more minutes of being able to stay idle.

"Well, I think it's kind of a scary thought." Shizuo raised an eyebrow, signaling that he had absolutely no fucking clue what the other boy thought to be scary. "People forgetting about you, I think it would feel like you're not even really there to begin with. Like you could just vanish the next second, as if you hadn't ever really existed."

And basically, this kind of gloomy statement was what he had been waiting for the second he had asked Izaya why he wanted to leave a lasting impression on him so badly.

It almost felt like Izaya willingly set up these kinds of situations, where he could say depressing things like that, maybe to get rid of them and to not have to dwell on them any longer than he probably already had. Because no matter what they talked about, even when Izaya was the one asking Shizuo a question, the conversation ended with the shorter boy sharing some tidbit of his rather despondent concept of truth with the blond student.

If the dark haired boy wanted to talk about himself so much, he could've just fired away, instead of dragging out these pointless conversations until he found a chance to inconspicuously share his opinion.

It led the blond boy to believe that Izaya was either trying to manipulate him into having an equally hopeless outlook on life, or attempting to make Shizuo realize that this was how he viewed the world and possibly feel the need to help him, since it wasn't really much of a secret that Izaya was a fucked up person, for reasons Shizuo wasn't sure he wanted to find out about.

The question was, whether Izaya deliberately tried to come across as needy for encouragement and someone to talk to, or if that was just another act simply to get attention and leave that lasting impression that seemed so inexplicably important to him.

All Shizuo knew was that the other boy seemed lonely, that he was lonely himself and that there was something not quite right with their friendship already, because from the way the shorter boy managed to get under the blond student's skin with pretty much every word that came out of his mouth, he couldn't help but think that somehow their so called relationship ran deeper than he felt comfortable admitting.

The blond boy was just helplessly confused by all those dazzling smiles that were thrown his way while sharp, red eyes analyzed his reaction and always carried a sliver of sadness in them Izaya seemed to be unaware of.

When their teacher entered the room for two mind numbingly boring math lessons, Shizuo was glad that classes were starting for probably the first time since he had become a student. It gave him an excuse to not have to talk to Izaya, to just turn off his brain and let his mind go blank, as he stared at the confusingly cryptic symbol of their school on the back of the pullover the student in front of him was wearing.

Like small needles pricking his skin, he felt the presence of a certain pair of red brown eyes gazing at him every now and then, observing him and demanding attention at the same time, but he kept his eyes where they were stubbornly until even after the lesson had ended and the seat in front of him had been abandoned.

It took long for him to snap out of his daze and realize that some students had gathered at the back of the classroom, where a couple of people seemed to have gotten into an argument.

Shizuo inwardly rolled his eyes when he recognized three of them as the assholes who believed they were really high up on this school's so called pecking order, just because they had managed to make pretty much everyone fear them by picking on the weakest students and beating them up after class.

And in the middle of all of this ruckus stood Orihara Izaya – of course he couldn't just have kept his nose out of other people's affairs – positioned between the three tall, burly boys and their emaciated, pale faced victim, which was already lying on the floor, wide eyed and horrified, while shielding his head with his arms.

If he looked closely, Shizuo found that Izaya resembled the boy on the ground quite a lot in terms of being skinny and appearing slightly unhealthy, only that there was a barely contained, belligerent look on his face that made it seem like he wasn't aware of how weak and defenseless he looked compared to the three terrorists staring at him, as if they couldn't believe they'd live to see the day they would witness something as tragically amusing as someone trying to stand up to them.