Chapter Text
Sleep. Training. School. Training. Sleep.
You loved routine. In fact, you loved it so much that you had maintained the same routine since elementary school. Surprises were never your thing; they made you feel uneasy and distracted. Bang taught you many things, but perhaps the most valuable lesson he had ingraned in your brain was that discipline was the most important asset one could possess, even more so than strength.
And were you disciplined. Much more than others. You had never missed a class since you started at Bang’s dojo at the age of ten. You would always slide open the doors to the dojo at six a.m. sharp for your daily morning training and leave at seven a.m. for school. But one morning someone wedged himself into your tightly scheduled routine, like a sudden tick appearing after a day out, and hurled your meticulously laid plans into chaos.
“This is Garou,” your sensei gestured with a nod of his head to a boy your age with spiky silvery hair, “he’s going to be training alongside you from today on.”
Your eyes scanned the boy from head to toe. He was taller than you, but you could tell by his stance and the lack of calloused hands that he wasn’t a trained martial artist. With furrowed brows and a scowl on his face, he didn’t even bother introducing himself to you. So you didn’t either.
“Sensei, I’ll make preparations for today’s class,” you bowed, rushing past the new kid and continuing your routine like usual.
This wouldn’t disrupt your plans. Nope, not at all.
Garou showed up at your school a week later. That startled you, you admit. Your homeroom teacher stood in front of the class with Garou beside her, introducing him to you and your classmates before instructing him to sit at the very back of the classroom. Fitting for someone like him.
You were the top of your class, a straight-A student, and the class president. Of course, you sat in the front row. When he walked past you, his eyes connected with yours just for a split second, but you maintained your perfect posture and didn’t acknowledge him.
Still not distracted.
You learned that Garou was a loner. He would stare out of the window most of the time and didn’t bother to talk to other students. Thankfully, he didn’t try to talk to you either. But when you made your way to your usual spot for lunch, someone else was already occupying the abandoned stairs to the locked rooftop. Golden eyes locked with yours, the usual frown on his face, while he had his bento in his lap, already half eaten. The corners of your mouth twitched in ever-so-slight annoyance, but it was fine. This was fine. You took a seat a couple of stairs below him and opened your bento box, intending to spend exactly twenty minutes and thirty seconds for lunch before returning to your classroom.
And with that, Garou had a place in your routine. Every lunch, he’d be there to greet you with an acknowledging gaze, and the two of you would spend your break eating your bentos in complete silence. He consistently arrived first, yet you were always the first to leave. He’d always come late to class and would never apologize to your teacher. With secret glances at his lunches, you learned that he liked steak and would eat it quite often, almost every day. During training, you wouldn’t exchange any words either. You trained alongside him in complete silence and left in silence.
During the few months he was at the dojo, he improved immensely. Sensei had commented about Garou’s abilities off-handedly a few times when you talked to him after practice, but you never told him how impressed you were at the speed he was learning Bang’s techniques. You hated to admit it, but Garou was like a diamond in the rough.
It was months after Garou showed up that the two of you exchanged words for the first time.
“You skipped world history last week,” you stated as you climbed up the stairs to find him already sitting with his bento in his lap like usual. “Stop that.”
“Fuck off,” he said after a few moments of staring at you, probably a little taken aback that you decided to grace him with the honor of being talked to.
Your brows furrowed. You hated delinquents — punks who couldn’t follow even the simplest rules. To you, it was just a clear sign they lacked any real discipline.
“You also didn’t turn in your physics homework,” you added, as if checking off yet another item on the list that you had kept ever since Garou appeared unannounced in your life, “Stop being disrespectful to Master Bang, if you’re at it.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
The intensity in Garou's voice made you pause mid-step. His golden eyes bore into yours, radiating a mix of anger and frustration. You stood your ground, meeting his glare with equal intensity.
"What's wrong with me?" you retorted, your tone cool and collected despite the storm brewing within you. "What's wrong with you, Garou? You think you can just waltz in here, not follow any rules, and act like you own the place?"
Garou's fists clenched, his jaw tightening as he seemed to struggle with his words. For a moment, the air crackled with tension, neither of you backing down from the confrontation.
"I don't answer to you," he finally spat out, his voice low and dangerous.
"You don't have to answer to me," you shot back, your voice rising slightly. "But you do have to answer to yourself. Are you really content with being a delinquent? With wasting your potential?"
Garou's expression darkened further, his gaze piercing into yours as if searching for something, perhaps a hint of weakness to exploit. But you refused to show any. You had been trained by Bang to be unyielding, to uphold discipline above all else.
Without another word, Garou pushed himself up from the steps, his bento box forgotten as he stormed past you, his shoulder brushing against yours with deliberate force. You didn't flinch. You simply watched him go, a mixture of frustration and disappointment swirling within you.