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(From this headcanon ask meme on tumblr)
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protect-namine:
5 and 20 for Joshua or Neku? (I enjoyed your 750-word essay btw)
lostboywriting:
Thank you! Someone else just after you asked me 20 for Joshua, so I'll go with Neku for these. (And haha, thank you about the essay ^^;)
5. Guilty pleasures
- Since coming back from the Game, he's really trying to open up and get better at engaging with people, but this comes with its share of difficulties, and there are still plenty of people out there he just flat-out doesn't like. After he vented to Shiki about a particularly bad day dealing with a particularly authoritarian high school teacher, she made him a little cloth doll and gave him pins to stick in it as a joke. He is embarrassed by how vindictively satisfying he finds this, but he does it anyway, pretty much every time he has math homework due.
- He loves watching Beat skateboard, to a degree that he's kind of realizing is only partially about 'holy shit he's impressively good at that' but also about some level of attraction, though he's not sure if it's purely a physical thing or if it's Beat's enthusiasm, his joy in what he's doing, that draws him in. Either way he feels more than a little uncomfortable about finding one of his best friends attractive, and he doesn't really ever want to act on it or let Beat know; he's pretty sure it's not reciprocated, and even if it were he's afraid it would end up making things weird between them. He really doesn't want to screw up their friendship. But he doesn't quite want to stop watching, either. He spends a lot of time at the skate park sketching, says it's practice at capturing motion and energy on paper, but the truth is he'd watch for hours whether he had a pencil in his hand or not.
- Shiki shoves fashion magazines at him on a regular basis. He will never confess to kind of enjoying some of them. It's just… it's… research. Gotta keep up, you know, in case Joshua ever gets bored or trigger happy or whatever and drops him in the Game again.
20. What-ifs/Alternate timelines
There's a timeline where Neku never suffered the trauma that drove him so strongly into isolation and misanthropy. He still hung out at the mural all the time, but he was with his best friend instead of alone the day that Joshua came hunting. Joshua was originally still going to shoot Neku, but Best Friend pushed Neku out of the way and Joshua said 'oh, all right, I suppose you'll do as well' and shot him instead.
Best Friend's entry fee was Neku's memories of him, and Joshua made certain that Neku forgot the shooting entirely. But Neku couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing, and that something had gone terribly wrong, and in the following days he found himself wandering Shibuya, feeling lost and restless.
And then he met this strange boy near Hachiko, who he knew he'd seen somewhere before, who seemed to know him too… and who, in this timeline or any other, never could pass up the opportunity to mess with someone's head a bit.
(I should write that one sometime…)
Thank you for the ask! 💜
5 and 20 for Joshua or Neku? (I enjoyed your 750-word essay btw)
Thank you! Someone else just after you asked me 20 for Joshua, so I'll go with Neku for these. (And haha, thank you about the essay ^^;)
5. Guilty pleasures
- Since coming back from the Game, he's really trying to open up and get better at engaging with people, but this comes with its share of difficulties, and there are still plenty of people out there he just flat-out doesn't like. After he vented to Shiki about a particularly bad day dealing with a particularly authoritarian high school teacher, she made him a little cloth doll and gave him pins to stick in it as a joke. He is embarrassed by how vindictively satisfying he finds this, but he does it anyway, pretty much every time he has math homework due.
- He loves watching Beat skateboard, to a degree that he's kind of realizing is only partially about 'holy shit he's impressively good at that' but also about some level of attraction, though he's not sure if it's purely a physical thing or if it's Beat's enthusiasm, his joy in what he's doing, that draws him in. Either way he feels more than a little uncomfortable about finding one of his best friends attractive, and he doesn't really ever want to act on it or let Beat know; he's pretty sure it's not reciprocated, and even if it were he's afraid it would end up making things weird between them. He really doesn't want to screw up their friendship. But he doesn't quite want to stop watching, either. He spends a lot of time at the skate park sketching, says it's practice at capturing motion and energy on paper, but the truth is he'd watch for hours whether he had a pencil in his hand or not.
- Shiki shoves fashion magazines at him on a regular basis. He will never confess to kind of enjoying some of them. It's just… it's… research. Gotta keep up, you know, in case Joshua ever gets bored or trigger happy or whatever and drops him in the Game again.
20. What-ifs/Alternate timelines
There's a timeline where Neku never suffered the trauma that drove him so strongly into isolation and misanthropy. He still hung out at the mural all the time, but he was with his best friend instead of alone the day that Joshua came hunting. Joshua was originally still going to shoot Neku, but Best Friend pushed Neku out of the way and Joshua said 'oh, all right, I suppose you'll do as well' and shot him instead.
Best Friend's entry fee was Neku's memories of him, and Joshua made certain that Neku forgot the shooting entirely. But Neku couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing, and that something had gone terribly wrong, and in the following days he found himself wandering Shibuya, feeling lost and restless.
And then he met this strange boy near Hachiko, who he knew he'd seen somewhere before, who seemed to know him too… and who, in this timeline or any other, never could pass up the opportunity to mess with someone's head a bit.
(I should write that one sometime…)
Thank you for the ask! 💜
