until your breathing stops (ayano x budo)

chapter one

Her father was kind, warm, but... faded. Like he had been hollowed out and turned into this shell of a human being, always being walked on by her mother.

He was, she thinks, always scared that she would take after her mother a little too much.

She didn't care.

Her mother always told her that love would fix her.

It should've hurt, really, being told that she was broken and needed to be fixed, but it didn't.

Nothing ever did.

Her days were filled with dull ennui and emptiness, never feeling joy. Anger. Sadness.

Nothing.

It was no surprise that she had felt the same indifference when her parents had told her that they needed to go to America and that she'd need to spend the year alone.

-

Her life is neatly structured, folded into little boxes that she checks off every day.

The first day of school is like any other day. She gets up at the same time she always does. She gets dressed. She eats breakfast, which is always simple.

Today it's toast.

Unfortunately for her, the toaster jams. It takes some tinkering to get it to work again, and that took time.

Meaning that if she didn't leave immediately, she was going to be late.

Muttering a curse, she grabbed her toasted and bolted out of the house and down the street, looking down at the ground and not paying any attention to where she was going—

She crashes into someone, and lands on her butt with an undignified "oof". There's someone on top of her, a boy, arms braced at either side of her head. He wears an Akademi High uniform.

Interesting. She's never seen him before. He must be in a different grade.

There's something strangely off putting about him, she realizes, as he raises his head to look her dead in the eyes— something animalistic, primal. It's almost like—

Irrelevant, she needs to get to school.

"Excuse me," she says in her usual dull tone, "I don't need to be late for school. Do you mind?"

The boy looks flustered, for a moment, then collects himself. "Oh, yeah, yeah. Sorry," he squeaks out, before lifting his hands, allowing her to extricate herself from underneath him. Wordlessly, she sidesteps him and dashes to school.

-

She's on time. Barely.

She's pressed up against some students she doesn't know in the gym, where they're packed like sardines in the center of the court and clamoring to get a good look at the stage, where the principal and all of the club leaders stand.

She has always regarded Principal Shuyona with the same brand of apathy that she regards everyone else, but she'd be a fool if she'd never noticed his wariness around her. She had always wondered why, of course, but it was probably unimportant. She had oftentimes been told that her eyes were unsettling.

As Shuyona stepped down from the podium, Kuroko Kamenaga steps up. Interesting that the vice president of the student council should be giving the speech. Megami Saikou is nowhere to be seen, interestingly enough. Ayano doesn't take much stock on that train of thought.

She zoned out of the the speech, not noticing when a girl with bright, messy hair, took the podium, nor when Oka Ruto did—

"I'm Budo Masuta, and I run the Martial Arts Club!"