writetomyheart | [team three] Selfless

Sorry I'm a little late! Not too surprisingly, I'm back with more fic from the Yarou Gumi drama.

Since you get very little backstory for most of the characters in Yarou Gumi, I took it upon myself to create some of my own. This is sort of a snippet of what I came up with for Futaba and Rokutanda based on the fact that you see Futaba speak French in the drama (in what I assume is supposed to be a natural way), Futaba is supposed to be from a wealthy background, and Rokutanda and Nanase were friends from junior high school.

"Like a field trip...?" Rokutanda asks, trying to be as patient as possible, putting on a kind smile to hide the fact that he's already exhausted and he doesn't see things getting any easier in the near future.

"No, not like that," Futaba replies with a pout, gesturing vaguely. "It's not something you do at school. Just that everyone does, and you might go with your classmates from school, but you might not, and it's during a school break..."

Rokutanda sighs, racking his brain for anything he can possibly remember from the children's French textbooks he'd studied with as a child. Being the child of a diplomat who had been stationed in French-speaking countries for the past decade and a half did have its advantages (though Rokutanda can't help the slight complex he has about the fact that his parents have always taken his older sister with them while living overseas, while they leave Rokutanda behind in Japan...), and Rokutanda has always done his best to understand how privileged he is in his lifestyle and education. But when his parents had suddenly told him just before beginning high school that the son of one of their friends from France would be enrolling in the same high school and asked him to help out, Rokutanda had been expecting... well, really anything but Futaba. After all, Futaba is 100% Japanese by blood and speaks Japanese natively thanks to, among other things, years of private tutoring, but having done the first seven or eight years of his schooling in Europe and the last two years before high school in an international school in Yokohama, he not only struggles to understand some of the more complex Japanese school-related terminology, but also is in the midst of a huge culture shock.

And Rokutanda has empathy for him, certainly; he knows how unpleasant it feels when his parents visit Japan and bring Rokutanda out to parties with their European colleagues only to scold him for not knowing the appropriate etiquette for certain relatively uncommon scenarios, but Futaba, perhaps from moving around to different countries so many times in his youth, or perhaps because he grew up in a culture where it's socially acceptable to be extremely direct, or perhaps through a quirk of his personality, is... not the most tactful or the most aware of the feelings of others around him. Rokuchan sympathizes with his frustration when he struggles to express himself in Japanese, often mixing in the French names for cultural concepts and ideas that he doesn't know how to express in Japanese, but when Futaba gets frustrated and whines and complains and wants Rokutanda to drop whatever he's doing to help day in and day out, it gets more than a little tiresome. Especially when he's used to spending every day in middle school with Nanase, who is about the most tactful person that Rokutanda has ever met...

But for now, the goal is, as it often is, to guess at the meaning of a word that Futaba can't figure out how to express in Japanese but that Rokutanda isn't familiar with in French, and so, "...so... a vacation...?" he offers weakly, not sure why Futaba can't just use Google translate or explain what he wants to say in a full sentence, even if it's not the most concise or precise way to say it. But Futaba frowns and replies, "No, not like that either!" like a child on the verge of a tantrum, Rokutanda wishes he could just evaporate into thin air and be anywhere but here. He knows that the culture shock must be hard to deal with, but, he thinks, if he has to spend every day with Futaba for the next three years, he's going to have to consider fleeing the country, himself.

The day feels like it drags on forever (or perhaps Rokutanda's energy levels and general tolerance for tedious things is reduced when he has to deal with Futaba), but at least he has something to look forward to at the end of the day. Once he packs up his things and manages to escape from Futaba, he heads to the regular meeting spot, and seeing who's already there waiting for him brings a smile to his face in and of itself.

"Hey," Nanase says when they meet up after school as they do almost every day to walk to the station together, so long as Nanase doesn't have soccer practice. "You look tired, did something happen?"

Perhaps from an outside perspective it seems like a relatively casual greeting, but the way Nanase smiles warmly at him when their eyes meet is enough to make Rokutanda feel totally recharged, no matter how hard his day was.

"Not really," he replies with an embarrassed laugh and a shrug. "Just Futa-chan... as usual..."

Nanase rolls his eyes, and Rokutanda feels a little bad for painting Futaba in such a bad light to Nanase... but he can't help but feel a little comforted to have Nanase validating his feelings, as well. "Can't you just... ignore what your parents want and stop helping him all the time?" he asks, frowning. "It's not your responsibility to watch out for him all the time."

Rokutanda shakes his head. "I know, but... I want to. I mean... I'm all he has. My French might be terrible, but it's not like there's anyone else here who speaks any French at all..."

"Your French is great," Nanase insists, and even though Rokutanda knows that his French has a lot of room for improvement and that Nanase would have no way of gauging anyway, he can't help but smile.

"Thanks," he replies after a moment, looking down as they walk along the path by the river together. "I know it's hard sometimes... but I want to help. I can't imagine if I had to go to school in France all of a sudden and didn't know anyone and no one could explain to me in Japanese, so..."

Nanase laughs a little and puts his hands in his pockets, looking up at the sky, and, unsure of the meaning behind that reaction, Rokutanda looks at him inquisitively, tilting his head to the side. "What's up?" he asks, hoping that he hadn't unintentionally said something to upset him.

But, "Oh, nothing," Nanase replies, turning to smile at Rokutanda beside him. "I was just thinking how you're such a great person. I wish I could be as selfless and kind as you are, Rokuchan."

Rokutanda immediately both flushes and grins, looking down to hide his blush and quickly insisting that of course that isn't the case and he's really just normal and not selfless at all, but he has to admit that hearing it from Nanase makes the thought of facing Futaba again tomorrow a lot easier.

You're up,

ext_4265261!